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“Y’know, I don’t think I’ve been in a room alone with just you since you were last at Reimei,” Jun points out over the silence.
It’s late at night, the time after most of the other idols in the dorms are done with their skincare and bedtime routines, resting just to wake up to another day of the same routine. Distantly, though it is but a couple feet from him, Jun can hear the shower running and the drain dripping with water.
He does have a point with his conversational starter, though most likely not a very ideal one for the light blue haired individual that lays, again, just a couple feet from him. As if everything that he can touch is too far to reach out and grab. As if every sound and smell and sight exists only to taunt him.
It’s not every day that you’ll see HiMERU and Jun together; let alone by themselves in with no words. Silently and mutually agreeing upon it— or, more like HiMERU inforcing it and Jun not caring enough or having the time to bring it up— the two haven’t dared speak of their past experiences together, or the Hell that they held hands through. The phenomenon only occurs as a little odd to him, as they were practically inseparable during their first year of high school, but people change. Time is a manipulator. He cannot ask HiMERU to treat him the same as he did when they were fifteen. That would just be unfair and unthoughtful towards how HiMERU has evolved and grown in the past three years. As easy as it may be to chalk it up to growing up or differing work schedules, Jun can’t ignore the way HiMERU ignores him. He knows it’s on purpose; his short and cruel answers, his purposefully standing on opposite ends of the room whenever they happen to end up together.
“That’s not true. Oukawa is here.”
Jun stares at the man next to him. Conversation is next to impossible with him now. It’s not like it ever was, though.
So Jun shrugs, laying down on his back above the comforter, basking in the warmth and comfort that is his bed, “You know what I meant. There’s no way you’re still that stupid.” His eyes close subconsciously, and just the action of talking with HiMERU has his memories rewinding to his time of turmoil and his words sound just a little too immature. But HiMERU makes it slip from Jun almost too easily— it’s comforting in an odd, freakishly way.
“HiMERU is not stupid, and he was never stupid,” he corrects from the couch in front of the TV with no comidic value in his tone. Jun still laughs, his eyes lazily open to catch golden ones staring at him from the mirror he has placed adjacent to his bed. A little unnerving, considering that HiMERU didn’t want him to see him staring if him averting his eyes quick enough for Jun to even doubt he was staring is anything to go by. A little disappointing, considering that HiMERU will only look at him if it is through a secondary source.
He finds himself lost in them; a honey that used to watch his every muscle movement while he secretly practiced during the day, a stare akin to hunger— one of a sad, starving, stray animal desperate for anything to fufill them— and spill out into his eyes with love late at night. Jun finds that it’s entirely too easy to feel like a stupid fifteen year old in love just by thinking about Kaname for too long, so he averts his gaze, not wanting that sweet trap to suck him under like it’s done many times before, even if the feeling is addictive and seeping into his veins.
Jun loved every strand of hair on Kaname’s head, every eyelash that dotted his waterlines, and every pore that dug into his skin. Maybe that’s a stupid thing to say, but Jun loves the stupid side of Kaname, so he’s learned to love everything odd or dumb or out of place in this world. Maybe it makes him look like a loser, but aren’t they both? Isn’t he but a teenage boy trying to figure why he feels so strongly towards someone so foreign?
“Whatever you say, dude.”
HiMERU gives him nothing in response but a nervous swallow of spit. Weird. He should’ve been whining that “that’s not his name.” Jun can’t help but wonder why he doesn’t anymore. He tries, he really does, to chalk it up to growing up or the stress of having to be perfect in such an industry as the one they work in, but do regular people change how HiMERU has?
Moving on from all they’ve been through is too hard when jealousy is involved, and when anger and frustration are factors that play into it. Maturing and moving forward is impossible when HiMERU has already gotten over Jun— not in the way that it happened faster, but the fact that it was so effortless— yet Jun still lays awake at night every so often craving for the other man to look at him just once. Just one conversation of closure is all he needs. He zones out during jobs thinking about his teenage lover and his stupidly, perfectly handsome face, and even if he looks just a little different from how Jun remembers, Jun still gets that same butterfly feeling when he looks at him in magazines or during lives. Every Tuesday, his daydreams are nothing but embarrassingly sappy scenarios with the two of them. And every Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday, and every other day that he can’t think of because they've all been blurred for as long as he can remember.
Overpowering was his love for Kaname. Completely consuming was his infatuation with showering his poor soul in affection and recieveing that in return. Cradling one who’s own people had stomped on him for fun and used him as a slave, treating him as if he were mindless, when he is fully aware and conscious of every drop of blood that’s punched from his body and every hand that slaps him around.
Jun is among the top idols of his generation. Jun is a perfect idol. Everyone in the world could call him a superidol, but to HiMERU he would still just be another boy whose name is seldom heard, lest the ties his surname has to controversy, and that is all he will ever be. They do say first impressions last a lifetime, afterall.
“I still have that stupid bracelet you gave me,” he admits, lifting his left arm from where it was resting at his side. He twirls the threaded bracelet around his wrist. It’s tighter than it was when he was younger, and everytime he catches a glimpse of it, he’s reminded of Kaname and everything they couldn’t be. It motivates him in a sort of way.
Tying a frail souvenir of their time together was a pair of hands Jun would hold forever in his own if he could. Forgetting such an exchange, not caring for such an insignificant accessory would’ve been easier if Jun was just a little less mindless when it came to Kaname. To throw away the gift as soon as Kaname turned his back, to be angry that he would leave all of his love in such a small, unnoticeable item would be easy for Jun if he weren’t so utterly in love. Jun would give anything to show it off and shout to the world that their two souls are devoted to one another, but if his lover wanted to keep them hidden and forgotten, Jun would try to accept that. Even if his heart would bleed internally and eternally in result.
“Do you remember?” He asks, not really wanting to remember it himself. Kaname never spoke of their feelings again after that exchange, and Jun knows exactly why.
“Doubt you do, you can barely remember my name, but… I thought you were gonna confess or something,” he laughs awkwardly again. Though, when he thinks back to that moment, he was just a little too hopeful about that happening.
“You were, like, uncannily serious. It was actually scary.”
“Him.. confessing?”
“Nah, I know that’d never happen. Plus, you never would’ve touched my Non-Special Student cooties. Still won’t.”
HiMERU silently ponders to himself, and Jun thinks he might’ve fucked up by saying anything at all. He curses himself, but not too much, because he knows no matter how hard he tries, he won’t ever be able to control what comes out of his mouth when he’s around HiMERU.
Worry rises by the lack of response, but quickly dissolves into a downright upsetting, devastating feeling. The emotion washes over him, starting from his core and attacking up right to his heart. It knocks the air from his lungs and stings the sensitive tissue of his eyes.
“You forgot.”
He isn’t necessarily crying over HiMERU not remembering— there’s just a heavy feeling behind his eyes that tells him to. He wouldn’t ever. His eyes are barely even watering— It’s just that he could’ve sworn they had at least something. He thought up and down. He had dedicated almost all of his love to Kaname, and he can’t even do something as simple as remembering a meaningless gift. One that Jun should’ve thrown away the second he left that damned school and all the shitty people in it behind. It’s nothing but a reminder. An anchor that keeps him in the past. Emotions will always control Jun. For as long as he lives.
Cobwebbed memories remain in Jun’s mind of how HiMERU used to treat him. A whispered word fades as quietly as it was uttered, left only for those it was intended to hear, to hear and to remember. A person, the embodiment of adoration, dies as quickly and as explosive as when they were born, left only for those they were to love, injured and alone.
Deep within, in his soul, hidden by the new cells that have built him over the past three years, lies a yearning. A want for answers. A need to know if he was ever even a little significant to HiMERU. If Kaname learning his name among hundreds of other people, people ten times more important and influential than Jun was, ever meant anything.
He doesn’t live for other people. He doesn’t need to be important to HiMERU— not anymore. He just needs to know.
“Was I really never that important? I mean, you were top of the school, and I was nobody. Never really did stop you from kissing me, though…” Cheap tactic he uses— to pull out such intimate exchanges. He would regret it, but the only way HiMERU will soften up, even if just a little.
HiMERU freezes, his body now nothing but the stare of rotting confliction in his eyes.
“HiMERU…” he starts, the disbelief of betrayal dripping from his tone. Like he wasn’t the one that initiated it, like he wasn’t the one that asked Jun if he loved him differently than he loved anyone else before leaning in, like they weren’t his hands that clumsily held Jun’s bruised face as if he was scared to bruise him more just by the feather-light touch— and maybe he isn’t. Maybe they weren’t his hands, or maybe Kaname really is just a robot made to be consumed by the media now, and any past feelings were a malfunction in his circuit.
“HiMERU wishes not to talk about that here,” he manages to finish his sentence after an uncomfortable silence, both of them drowning silently in Jun’s last statement, and HiMERU looks down in simple confusion as if he trying to remember a mere word that slipped his mind. Mere. Insignificant. Forgettable.
“Goddamn, don’t pull that bullshit. It’s been like three years now, c’mon dude. You might act all high and mighty, but you still act so immature when it comes to us.”
HiMERU shakes his head, his legs crossing as he pulls his arms in on himself, “HiMERU is not immature, and he doesn’t know what us you’re talking about.”
Jun’s face drops in disbelief. Utter disbelief. This is who he fell in love with.
“Are you serious? Tojou, you’re not being for real, are you?” He asks but says it more as a statement. In a way that makes HiMERU out to be the stupid one. In a “you didn’t actually just say that” way.
“Listen, man, I get that you regret a lot, but outright refusing to acknowledge it is just shitty of you.”
“HiMERU told you not to call him by that name,” he snaps as politely as possible, never breaking that facede too much, forgetting to adress the part where he gets reasonably called out. His tone is akin to how he’d speak to Tatsumi, far from the praise and adoration that came with ever word from his mouth whenever they were first years, and now instead with malice and guttural hatred.
“Why can’t I? You can’t pretend we didn’t do all that stuff together just ‘cause you turned into a robot one day.”
“He is not a robot.”
“Whatever, dude. You totally are. I just don’t understand why, that’s all. I just want answers.”
Jun wouldn’t say he still loves HiMERU, after all these years and all the people he’s grown to love, and after all the times HiMERU ignored his waves or intentionally avoided his gaze from across the room. Jun’s pride lies in his self-respect, and he is far above losing himself to someone as immature and insufferable as HiMERU is now. Selfishly chasing after HiMERU when just an arm's length away from him are people that actually love him is nothing but a plan drenched in failure. Self-sabotage. So, no, Jun doesn’t love HiMERU anymore. At least, not in the way that most people would describe love. Because if HiMERU were to just say those three words, if he were to just finally drop the act, Jun’s facade of pretending that he doesn’t care would fall with it. But as long as that never happens, Jun will continue praying into the dark night for HiMERU to change and for them to be in love again someday.
“Why what, Sazanami?”
Why you don’t love me anymore?
“Why you still act like I’m scum of the Earth that’s not worthy of your glance. Why you won’t drop that stupid third-person thing. Why we can’t just talk about this,” he pleads with less frustration than he would’ve preferred it to have.
HiMERU frowns, something very clearly on his tongue that just can’t escape from his tightly sealed lips.
“He can’t. HiMERU can’t tell you why. You wouldn’t understand it, Sazanami. We’re idols, we need to make sacrifices. He doesn’t see why you still care about such a… miniscule.. relationship.”
HIMERU is right— must be, because he is known universally by everyone to be the most perfect idol. Because HiMERU knows everything and Jun is the idiot of the two of them because everyone knows falling in love makes you dumb, and what did Jun do?
Everything about the two of them, their relationship was just ‘miniscule’: meaningless. Kaname being Jun’s first friend, his first kiss, the first person he looked forward to waking up next to him in the mornings when, normally in such a Hell Jun would wake up wishing he had suffocated on his own misery in his sleep— it all meant nothing as long as they are Jun and Kaname. As long as they are idols that have a public image to keep up, then ‘they’, in reference to both their loves as one, as far as its physical aspect concerns, were doomed.
“…I don’t know. I don’t know why either. Just forget I brought it up, okay? It doesn’t matter anymore.”
He says that, but it does matter. They’ve mattered since the second Kaname approached him in that auditorium asking if he was alright, and that importance only grew with every exchange of touch.
People have called Jun a sap, and his tendency to only fall hard whenever he did fall in love is proof of that, but he was never always like that. His life was miserable, and he was mad at the world for everything that’s ever happened to him. He was nothing but a ball of anger needing to release it. Only after his first love came and went did he learn to control himself and cherish moments down to the minute. In the present and the future, and years after death, as long there is still someone that remembers him, he will give out that love to everyone that knows of him— to those who need it. Even if the one he wants to need it doesn’t want him.
“Whatever you say, Sazanami. Don’t mention it again— for the sake of both of us. It’s in the past for a reason.”
“Right.”
Having the rest of his energy and any motivation to do anything else drained in just one exchange of a couple sentences, he only responds with a short agreement and shifts off of his side and onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He wants to reach out and touch it, to feel how cold it really is and finally know what something normally left untouched by the human hand actually feels, but perhaps that is just the projection of his feelings for Kaname. So instead, he reaches for him in the past, twirling it around his wrist, and hurting over how it has worn down into something that could be mistaken as a mere piece of trash. Meaningless.