Chapter Text
It’s 1 a.m. in the morning. It’s 1 a.m., and Bachira is chanting his name.
“Rin, Rin, Rin, Rin, Rin, Rin, Rin—”
“The fuck do you want, bee boy?”
“Rin-chan!” He beams. “We’re playing a game, come, come, come—”
Rin massages his temples. His friends are going to be the death of him.
All he wanted was to stay in bed, play some games, maybe watch a movie — but instead he’s being dragged from his comfy corner on the couch to the floor, the drink in his hand nearly spilling with Bachira’s enthusiasm.
Chigiri nods at him, a teasing lilt to his lips. “Rin, nice of you to join us.”
Something cracks in Rin’s back as he awkwardly lowers himself to sit, and he groans.
They’re not even really his friends. Bachira, Isagi, sure — though he’d never admit it out loud. But Chigiri? Kunigami?
Acquaintances. Friends of his friends. Maybe.
Realising belatedly that it’s a little rude not to respond to someone he doesn’t know that well, Rin tries for a thin smile.
“I don’t think I had a choice,” he mutters.
When he looks up, Chigiri’s already looking away. Bachira’s kneeling next to him, cup raised as he grins at the group.
“So here’s how it works. I ask a question, we go in a circle, and if you skip, you drink!”
“That’s hardly a game,” Rin begins, but Bachira only sticks his tongue out at him, undeterred.
“Sagi-sagi, you go.”
The questions start off easy enough. What did you have for breakfast (can Isagi be any lamer), guess the colour of the next person’s underwear, when did you last cry.
Then, as Bachira empties their third bottle of wine into Rin’s glass, he asks: “How did you find out you like boys?”
Rin blinks. He’s on Bachira’s left.
Across the circle, Kunigami looks lost in thought and Chigiri is grinning the widest he has all night. It’s kind of scary.
“You’re asking me?”
Bachira winks. “I’m asking everyone, Rin-chan.”
His brain stutters for another moment. Then, dutifully, he lifts the glass to his mouth.
“Aw, no fun!” Bachira pouts, but he quickly moves on. “Sagi?”
Isagi’s saying something, but Rin has no idea what. Bachira’s hand is on his shoulder, gentle squeeze — an apology. He stares into his glass.
How did he find out, indeed.
Growing up, Rin never thought much about his sexuality. Bachira had been loud and open about his own since junior high, so the idea of liking boys had never been alien to him.
But despite Bachira’s best efforts to wheedle a name out of him, Rin never had a crush on anyone in their all-boys’ school. And so it goes, he thought.
The day a junior confessed to Sae, Rin watched his parents exchange worried glances over dinner.
“Has this happened to you before, Rin?” His mother asked.
Sae burst into laughter. “Who’s gonna confess to him?”
Rin socked him in the arm and the conversation shifted, but his mother took him aside later as he cleared the dinner table.
“Be careful, Rin. Okay?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Onii-chan’s annoying, but he’s right. Nobody’s gonna confess to me, mom.”
He shook her off, turning to hand the dirty dishes off to Sae in the kitchen. Perfectly timed, his brother threw the cleaning cloth over his shoulder into Rin’s waiting hand.
“Showoff.” Don’t tell them about Bachira, ever.
Rin plodded back out and smiled weakly at his mother. I don’t want them looking at my friend like that.
That was ten years ago. Rin doesn’t talk much to his parents any more.
Rin’s story is simple. Last year, Shidou dragged him to a karaoke party for New Year’s. A boy hit on him for the first time. He was cute, so Rin agreed to a date. Nothing more, nothing less.
It was never an earth-shattering realisation. And to his friends’ credit, they’d never treated it like one.
And now here he is. Sitting on his living room floor, listening to his friends’ gay awakening stories.
Rin’s real story is a little more complicated.
Back in university, Rin had a friend.
He had Bachira and Isagi, of course, but they were usually busy flitting from group to group like the social butterflies they were. Rin tended to keep to himself a little more.
Still, at their insistence, he’d signed up for the varsity soccer club. Occasionally, he even hung out with the team outside of practice.
In school, though, it was a little harder to find people he could talk to. Rin often went entire days without speaking, except to order his lunch at the cafeteria.
(“To be fair, we’re in Japan and you’re taking English Literature,” Isagi had said. “I’m not sure what you were expecting.”)
His classes were mostly made up of international students, except for some related courses conducted in Japanese. Not that it made much of a difference, because Rin would never approach someone first either way.
In his second year, Rin signed up for a Japanese course on literature and psychoanalysis.
It was two weeks into the course. The professor had given them a bathroom break, and Rin was washing his hands when someone spoke.
“You’re Karasu’s friend.”
It took a few moments to register. A boy stood to his left, studying him with steady blue eyes.
Rin opened his mouth. Closed it. There was no one else in the bathroom.
“Karasu Tabito? You play soccer together?”
Ah. That idiot.
Whatever look was on his face, it made the boy laugh.
“I’m Hiori. I have no idea what’s going on in this class. Wanna exchange numbers?”
And so it goes.
THEN
Rin knows he’s not the most approachable, but he tries. Hiori is easy to talk to, and they become fast friends. He learns that Hiori is studying Psychology, that he loves playing video games, and they laugh at all the same things.
The semester goes on. Rin sees Hiori twice a week in class and texts him almost every day.
Hiori sits with his own friends, but he texts Rin under the table and automatically meets his eyes from across the room whenever someone says something stupid (which happens way too fucking often for a class of tertiary-level students, Rin thinks).
- Hiori Yo
- karasu says hi
- Rin
- Cool, tell him he looks like shit
- Hiori Yo
- interested, are ya? 😏
- sorry rin-kun, i’m straight
- Rin
- I’m straight too, shitty crow
- Hiori Yo
- haha i figured, rin 🫠
Rin’s not insecure about his sexuality. He’s not. He’s twenty-one now, and he’s dated a few girls. None of them memorable enough to keep around, but they were fine.
Somehow, there’s a twinge in his chest every time he says the words. I’m straight.
He doesn’t like to dwell on it.
The first time they decide to meet, Hiori’s the one who initiates it. Rin had been ranting about a project group mate from one of his classes, and Hiori had said, simply:
Rin’s nervous at first, but the beer helps. It turns out talking to Hiori in person is just as easy as talking to him over text, and they still laugh at all the same things.
It’s in this first face-to-face conversation that Rin learns of Hiori’s ex. Rin makes no outward reaction, takes quiet stock of the “he”s, and watches that one stubborn lock of hair fall into Hiori’s eyes as he clinks his glass against Rin’s.
Ah. Another twinge in his chest.
Hiori comes to one of their games once. Karasu made him do it, he says, but he brings Rin a tuna onigiri too.
“Good luck,” he says. “Though I don’t think you need it.”
Hiori has a dimple when he smiles. Just the one, on his left cheek.
“Remember to run your fingers through your hair after you score, Rin-kun. Girls go for that shit.”
“Fuck off, Hiori.” Nobody goes for me, Rin thinks offhandedly.
Rin doesn’t tell anyone about Hiori, but Karasu seems to be watching him more often these days.
It’s no big deal. It’s not like Rin can’t make friends.
One day, as he’s texting Hiori on the way to practice, he bumps into Isagi — who looks at him like he doesn’t recognise him.
“Why… are you so happy?”
Quickly rearranging his features, Rin shrugs.
“It’s my friend from lit. He said something funny.”
“Your friend… from lit…” Isagi falls into step beside him. “The major you said you have no friends in.”
“Yeah, well,” Rin flicks his phone screen off and shoves it in his pocket. “Now I have one friend.”
Isagi looks like he wants to ask more, but wisely keeps his mouth shut.
“Good for you, Rin-rin.”
“Shut up, loser. I’m gonna beat your ass today.”
Spending time with Hiori is nice. Maybe Bachira trained him well, but he’s grown comfortable with him much more quickly than he thought.
They don’t meet often, since Rin is busy practically all the time, but they do make it to a concert.
Then a movie. Then a play.
They’re at a greasy fast food place after, discussing the staging of the play they just watched as they cram fries in their mouths, when Hiori suddenly snorts.
“That’s you, in the spotlight.”
“... What?” Rin asks, nonplussed.
Hiori smiles. He has a nice smile.
“I remember the match against BM,” he continues. “You were the cool one with the teal hair that drove the crowd wild.”
Now Rin is even more confused. “You were there?”
“Yeah, I noticed you then.”
Rin opens his mouth. Hiori slants a look at him, a quick sideways thing, as if he just realised what he said.
“Was that creepy? I mean, uh, that was when I knew ya existed.”
“Hmm,” Rin smirks. “It’s fine if you were staring, Hiori.”
“Aw, shuddup.”
Rin doesn’t tell anyone, but something is wrong.
He goes for all his classes, practice three times a week, part-time shifts at the campus cafe in between.
He’s taking an extra class this semester but still completing all his work on time, even if it means an unhealthy amount of all-nighters.
Once, he gets a C on an essay and bursts into tears in his professor’s office.
Rin doesn’t know what’s wrong.
the rinch 
@itshrn
Great day to learn I’m absolute fucking shit at my major.
It all comes to a head when he and Sae go home for summer break. They’re supposed to have dinner with their parents at some fancy restaurant and Sae’s picking him up.
When the car pulls up to the dorm, he spots Shidou in the passenger seat and grudgingly slides into the back.
Sae and Shidou have been dating for as long as Rin can remember. They’re kind of disgusting, but they make him believe in love. Whatever the hell that means.
He doesn’t know why he’s here, though. Shidou doesn’t live close enough to them to— Wait.
“You’re kidding me.”
Sae meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. Just looks, like that solves anything.
“Nii-san, you can’t. They’ll throw you out.”
Unperturbed, Sae turns to check the traffic before turning out of the driveway.
“Let them. You never know unless you try, right?”
“But—”
“Ryu, check the directions for me, please.”
Shidou, uncharacteristically quiet, hasn’t said a word. Rin watches him open the Maps app on his phone.
“I don’t— you— what?”
Sae sighs. “Come, or don’t. We’re late. Do you wanna get out?”
What the fuck?
Rin feels faint. He can’t speak.
They spend the rest of the car ride listening to a tinny voice on the radio drone on about the stock market.
Sae doesn’t get thrown out. But Rin wishes he did.
What happens is that Rin doesn’t remember what happens. He remembers his father yelling, his mother’s horrified face, Sae and his father getting physical, a shoe flying, someone screaming.
Distantly, he wonders who it is. They sound hysterical.
Someone’s rubbing his back, patting his shoulders. The screams quiet.
His father comes to him later and apologises.
“Sometimes your brother just needs to be taught a lesson. You know, Rin? I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Rin says nothing. He wants to go home.
He excuses himself to go to the bathroom and books a cab straight back to the dorm.
It’s the start of the end, after that. Or at least that’s what Rin tells his friends later. Much, much later.
He spends the rest of the summer in the dorm after managing to get a last-minute extension. No one’s around, so he spends most of his time alone.
He ignores Sae’s texts.
Then he starts ignoring everyone else’s.
- Hiori Yo
- omfg look what i found
For about a month, Rin sleeps.
Summer break ends. October brings Bachira and Isagi hurtling into his room at top speed, yelling to the entire dorm that he’s the worst friend ever.
They get noise complaints from multiple floors, but they also get Rin out of bed.
He takes a shower. It feels good.
For the first time in weeks, Rin cracks a small smile. The muscles feel strange, alien on his face.
“Rin. The hell are you doing in there?”
Oops. He forgot he was supposed to be getting ready for dinner with his pissy friends.
“Rin-chan, if you don’t come to the door in the next five seconds, Yo-chan’s going to be my new best friend.”
Rin rolls his eyes. “I’m coming, dipshit.”
Dinner is another two-hour rant about Rin’s disappearance, so he tunes it out after a bit. He’s already apologised, anyway, and this was just a minor blip. Fucking Sae’s fault.
Classes start next week. He’ll be back to normal by then.
“They’ll throw you out.”
“Let them.”
“But—”
But what about me?
Classes start. Rin does not go back to normal.
Chalk up another first — he was late registering for his courses, and now he has the worst schedule known to mankind. An 8am on Mondays, and a 10pm on Fridays.
He’s back to having no friends in class.
For the rest of the semester, Rin sleeps.
Something is wrong, but he still doesn’t know what. Work, practice, school — fuck, it’s easier to just close his eyes.
Rin finds it’s alarmingly easy to fall off the radar. None of his friends take classes with him or even see him during school hours. He doesn’t care about his coworkers at the cafe, so all he has to do is stop signing up for shifts.
The only thing he can’t skip completely is soccer, because then his friends will know. But even then—
Alarmingly easy.
Rin’s never been much of a texter. No one really notices, except Hiori. But even Hiori—
Even Hiori gets tired of terrible friends.
Their texts get farther and farther apart.
Nothing’s wrong, really.
Six weeks in, Rin gets an email from the student affairs office. He ignores it.
He still goes to school maybe once a week, when he can bring himself to. He goes for practice. He’s not a complete lost cause.
Another two weeks later, Rin finds himself — finally, finally, finally — breaking down in Bachira’s arms, with Isagi holding his hand.
NOW
It took Rin almost two years to “get back to normal”. That and a psychiatrist, a therapist, and three different student support officers.
He knows he’ll probably never get back to his high-functioning self, but he’s used to his normal now.
Sae’s fine. Parents are far away enough to be tolerable. Rin worked pretty damn hard to get to this point, and he’s made peace with whatever he lost in those two years.
The only thing Rin regrets sometimes, most times…
Is losing Hiori.
It’s been a year since Rin graduated, four since they last met.
Even Hiori gets tired of terrible friends, he remembers. He knows.
Rin tries not to text him too often, but in moments when he feels his chest physically hurt with the intensity of missing him — he gives in.
The soccer boys still meet up every now and then for (less than) friendly matches. Karasu hardly even looks at Rin any more.
Sometimes, Rin looks at him and feels the words bubble up in his throat. How’s Hiori?
But Hiori’s friendship is more than he deserves. He swallows them down.
Rin never told anyone about Hiori, but they found out anyway.
Since his dramatic breakdown, Bachira and Isagi have not let him spend a single day alone. They got an apartment after graduation, just before Rin’s fourth attempt at finishing his second year of university, and got someone to move all his things over while they distracted him at the cinema.
(“Welcome to your nursery, baby!” Bachira cooed as he flung a bedroom door open. “I hope you like it, we got it done up just for you~”)
He’s in the kitchen gathering snacks for a horror movie marathon one night, trying not to think about Hiori, when Isagi walks in and blows that plan right out of the water.
“Hey, what happened to that friend of yours? From lit?” He yanks the fridge door open and grabs a bottle of iced tea. “Didn’t you use to watch all the horror shit with him?”
Yeah, fuck this guy and his fucking senses.
Isagi turns to look at Rin, knocking the door shut with his shoulder. “Y’all fall out or something?”
Rin sighs.
“Or something.”
The next time, it’s Bachira and his mandatory “roomie wine night”. The dumbass blows his bangs out of his eyes and sighs wistfully.
He’s going to say something Rin doesn’t like. He can already feel it.
“It was so nice to see Rin-chan making friends…” There he goes. “Don’t you think, Sagi?”
Isagi, eyes twinkling, throws in his own melodramatic sigh for good measure. Rin wants to throttle him.
Then Bachira turns to him, big yellow eyes pleading. “Maybe you can be friends again, Rin-chan?”
He looks like that fucking animated cat.
Rin downs the rest of his glass and sets it down on the table. He sighs, sits back. Looks at his hands in his lap.
“I don’t think so,” he says slowly. “I think I really hurt him.”
Bachira gasps, a dainty hand flying to his chest. “Rin-chan, what did you do?! Did you break that poor boy’s—”
“God no, he didn’t like me,” Rin huffs. “I was just kind of a dick then. Remember when I ghosted everyone for three semesters?”
Isagi hums in understanding. “And now you’re pining.”
“I’m not fucking pining. He was nice to talk to, that’s all.”
“Well, when you only have three friends, one is a huge loss, you know.”
“You—”
“I still think he liked you too, Rin-chan.”
“Too?! That—”
“Yeah, I’ve never seen you so happy, Rin.”
“Will you two stop fucking interrupting me—”
The little menaces dissolve into helpless giggles, each grabbing an arm to stop him from manhandling them. Despite himself, Rin can’t help but laugh, warmed by the wine in his belly and the fierce affection of his friends.
Thinking about Hiori still tastes bitter right now, but one day it won’t.
He’ll be fine.
Rin starts to realise something else that night. It’s a sneaking suspicion he’s had for a while now, but hasn’t been able to put into words.
The thing is: Given Rin’s generally prickly nature, Bachira has this moronic theory that every new person who doesn’t give up on him immediately after the first meeting is deeply in love with him.
Well, it’s not so much a theory as it is an ongoing campaign to annoy the shit out of Rin. Guys from the rival soccer teams in senior high, project mates in university, even fucking Igaguri from his part-time job.
The other thing is: It’s always bothered Rin before. Bachira knew when to stop, duh, but it was always an easy way to get under Rin’s skin just enough.
That’s when the words came in, and they always did.
(“He knows I’m straight, dumbass.”)
It’s what he’d always believed. Why else would he be annoyed at the suggestion of a guy having a crush on him?
Sure, okay, he was annoyed when it came to the girls too, but that was a different thing. To Rin, well, girls were just inherently annoying.
The point of all this is:
“I still think he liked you too, Rin-chan.”
Rin doesn’t seem to mind it any more, and it gets him thinking.
The night he gets back from his (boring ass) date with the guy from the karaoke joint, Rin can’t stop thinking.
He sits on the floor of his bedroom, one knee drawn up to his chin, and tries to focus. He has about two minutes before his flatmates realise he’s home.
The one thing Rin can’t wrap his head around is this: How did he not know before that he likes guys? The date sucked, but it all seems so obvious now.
It felt… so natural. To be out on a date with another man. Like that was how it, he, was always meant to be.
If only it actually was another man, he thinks wryly, remembering how the guy had slammed the door on Rin’s fingers while trying to open it for him.
His door slams open with a bang, and Rin blinks up at the short figures silhouetted in the doorway. They’re practically vibrating with excitement when they join him on the floor, waiting expectantly.
Rin takes a breath, lets it out.
“It was boring. But I think I get it now.”
The two heads inch closer.
“Maybe all I needed was a cute guy to be interested in me,” Rin plants a hand on Bachira’s head, digging his fingers into his scalp as he yelps. “Instead of all those fucking Igaguris you kept harping on.”
Under his hand, Bachira slumps and his squeals take on an almost disappointed tone.
Isagi gets to his feet with a firm pat on Rin’s shoulder. “So close, my man. You’re so close.”
Uh?
Pulling Bachira up easily now that Rin’s distracted, Isagi waggles his fingers at him. “Go take your shower. And think harder, Rin.”
They’ve turned the corner, but Rin can hear the glee in the idiot sprout’s voice. “We reconvene in twenty!”
What the fuck is this house…?
The months pass. Every other weekend, his idiot friends try to coax him out of the house (their success rate stands at thirty-two per cent). He gets free drinks and more than a couple of phone numbers, but no one piques his interest.
Then, in his efforts to explore his newfound gayness, Rin accidentally makes the worst decision of his dumb little life.
He opens his conversation with Hiori and navigates right back to the start.
It takes just one night, this time. No thinking required.
The sun has been up for almost five hours by the time Rin sets the phone down, heart heavy and aching and so fucking full.
Cue the earth-shattering realisation, he thinks, faintly awed.
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
He’d liked Hiori.
And he thinks— he thinks Hiori might have—
“I think he liked you too, Rin-chan.”
He’s barely a week into his very own personal apocalypse when Bachira corners him in the kitchen yelling about guests. And now here he is.
“How did you find out you like boys?”
(“How did you know I was Karasu’s teammate?”
Hiori laughs. The stray lock of hair swings around, gentle; soft blue almost translucent in the sunlight.
“Wouldn’t cha like to know,” he teases.)
“Rin. Rin-rin. Rin-kun.”
“Earth to Rin-chan!”
Rin sits up with a jolt. Everyone’s looking at him. Uh.
“What, uh, what…” He looks around the room desperately, eyes lighting on his phone. “What’s the last text message you read?”
“Oooh, that’s a good one!” Bachira claps. “Wait, the last text message you got?”
Chigiri flicks his hair back. “The last text message you read. Right, Rin?”
“Yeah—” Wait. No.
No, it’s fine. If he asks the question, he doesn’t have to answer. Right?
Isagi scratches his chin. “From someone else, right? Not yourself?”
Right?
“What about the last text message you sent—”
“Just get on with it, god,” comes Kunigami’s muffled voice from under a cushion. “Get Rin to read it for you if you have to.”
Pointedly looking away, Isagi holds the text down and lays his phone in the middle of the circle. And so—
Silence.
“Do. Not. Say. A. Word.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Chigiri sighs. “But mine’s boring too. I’m not even gonna blur out the rest.”
Bachira bounces on his haunches. “See, we should do the— Rin-chan?”
Yeah, well.
Of course Rin knows what the last text message he read is.
He’d scrolled all the way through the slow and sure dissolution of their friendship. Then he’d gone back to find this specific moment, to remind himself Just How Stupid He Was, and read these three lines till he could recite them from memory.
“Gasp,” Bachira says. “What is this?”
Isagi nearly falls over himself scrambling to read the message. “Is this who I think it is?”
He’d briefly considered picking something else at random. But this message on its own was relatively harmless. One part of three. It gave nothing away.
Or so Rin had thought. But even Kunigami, who’s also shimmied forward to read it, is regarding him with a small smile.
Mystery is engaging, he supposes.
“Very interesting,” Chigiri comments as he sits smoothly back down. “Tell us more, Rin.”
For maybe two seconds, Rin considers it. Then he shakes his head, slides his phone back into his lap and downs the rest of his Shiraz.
Some things are better kept for himself.