Chapter Text
“You’ve been acting weird lately.”
“Have I?”
Shiba took another sip at his coffee, avoiding Azami’s stare.
“Yes,” Azami said.
“I think I’m always a little weird,” Shiba said.
“Sure, weird is your baseline. But you’re being cagey.”
“I feel like cagey is my baseline too.”
Azami huffed a sigh. “You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t,” Shiba said.
He really did.
It had been eighteen months since the end of the war, one year working for the Kamunabi, over a year living as roommates in their two-bedroom apartment. There was plenty of room for the both of them, so why did Shiba feel so cramped?
Azami was a good roommate. He was tidy and mostly worked during the day, slept quietly through the night, cooked often and shared leftovers. They’d never done the sitcom cliché of dividing the living spaces with red tape, never cordoned off parts of the fridge or created a chore wheel. Outside of their typical bickering, they got along pretty much all the time. For the times they didn’t get along, those could be quickly solved by a few sparring rounds or a card game or just a few hours to cool off. It wasn’t worth jeopardizing their situation to stew in their anger or misery, so they didn’t.
Shiba had his secrets, and Azami didn’t try to pry them open like other people might. If anything, Shiba kind of expected Azami to be just a little bit pushy and was almost (almost!) disappointed when he wasn’t.
“Wanna go out tonight?” Azami asked.
Shiba almost flinched.
“Maybe,” Shiba said. It was as good as a "hell no," and Azami knew it, being well versed in Shiba's unique brand of elusiveness.
Though Shiba and Azami mostly got along, they were very different people with very different social needs. They were both handsome men in their mid-20s, though only Azami seemed to be taking full advantage of his youth. He’d go out on the weekends, drinking at bars and house parties and smashing around in mosh pits at punk shows.
Shiba shouldn’t complain. Azami was a great roommate in all other respects.
But, damn. Didn’t the guy ever get sick of partying? He’d never brought anyone home with him—likely out of respect to Shiba—but some mornings Shiba would wake up and Azami wouldn’t be back, and he’d get a little worried.
Then, Azami would show up around noon, hungover, kiss- and bite-bruised so thoroughly that even a high, tightly-buttoned collar couldn’t hide the battlefield under his shirt.
He had once wondered what Azami got up to, but that was no longer the case. Now, the knowledge was branded in his mind the same as Azami’s eyes and haircut and laugh and tattered punk band t-shirts he still wore from high school like the poser he was.
(Yeah, sorcerer cops are real punk, Soushirou. Real anarchists fill out government forms. Way to stick it to the man.)
Before they were roommates, Shiba still had this image in his mind of Azami as a teenager, first year in high school, mature and focused and disciplined and at complete odds with the man Azami was shaping out to be.
So much had changed in Shiba’s world in the last few years.
Shiba could admit to becoming a little bitter. Not just with the world, with sorcery, with the Kamunabi, but with his own friend. It was incredibly unfair of him, but he still found himself pulling away from Azami. The more Azami tried to maintain their friendship, the more Shiba wanted to sever it entirely.
Wanna go out tonight? Absolutely not.
Azami would wear him down, though, just like he did with everything. Azami seemed to think it was his mission to pull Shiba out of the apartment at least once a week, even if it was just to go grocery shopping. Shiba didn't get what the big deal was. He had been less of a homebody before the war, sure, but people often became more content as they grew older, more likely to enjoy a quiet night in with a beer and TV reruns than going out and getting messy-drunk with a bunch of college kids.
Shiba could leave the house if he wanted, but he mostly preferred not to. Azami didn't understand. Azami worried, like an over-bearing parent, nagging Shiba that he should really come and meet this-and-that new friend, and come to this live show, everyone's going to be there, you can' be happy just wasting away on the couch.
Eventually, Azami would wear him down. Usually, Shiba could limit their outings to a quick meal, just the two of them, but Azami was no longer satisfied with a trip to the theater and a bowl of ramen. He was upping the ante every weekend, and Shiba was becoming less capable of denying him. The last time, it had ended in disaster, and Shiba could feel himself slipping again, so close to giving into Azami's whims, so he had no choice, really. He couldn't turn down Azami, and he desperately needed to turn down Azami.
So, Shiba went for the nuclear option.
“I think maybe the roommate thing isn’t working out,” Shiba said.
Azami had been reading the morning paper, taking up half the table as usual. Shiba could see the moment Azami’s eyes glazed over, his mind evaluating Shiba’s words and planning his next action.
“Yeah, okay,” Azami said. “I’ll move out.”
“Okay,” Shiba said.
Shiba had been considering possible solutions to the Azami Problem. He had been under the impression that if he just buried the problem deep, focused on literally anything else, even work at the Kamunabi, he could let it all go, and it would solve itself.
It didn’t work. The Azami Problem lingered and it was ruining Shiba's life.
The only real solution was to give each other some space to breathe.
Shiba needed to pull back, like he did during the war. He was foolish to think just a few months of space would be enough to reconfigure his brain when it came to Azami.
He had told Azami to move in with him after the war. Azami was just doing as he asked.
He just needed some space again. Azami was giving him exactly what he wanted.
Why did it still feel like the walls were closing in?
Shiba drained the rest of his coffee, sat the mug in the sink, and teleported out of the room before he was crushed completely.
He found himself at Rokuhira’s, wandering around an empty house. Kunishige was on vacation, enjoying his small family before reality came hurtling back into his life.
Shiba had forgotten about their trip (even though he had been the one to take them in the first place). He had just teleported to Rokuhira’s on instinct. He wanted to talk to someone, and he couldn’t talk to Azami, obviously.
He thought about calling Rokuhira but decided against it. The man didn’t get much time to unwind outside his home; Shiba shouldn’t bother him with his bullshit drama that even he didn’t understand entirely.
When Shiba returned to their apartment two days later, Azami had already moved out.
He was always so efficient. How annoying.
That night, Shiba tried to focus on anything but Azami, but being in their once-shared space was making that impossible.
Going to the bathroom meant remembering the dozens of times he had complained about Azami’s 30-minute showers. The times he had slammed on the door, threatened to piss on the floor if Azami didn’t let him in to use the toilet. Azami would come out of the bathroom, wet and annoyed, dripping water everywhere while holding one of their cheap, small towels over his groin and leaving nothing else to the imagination.
Shiba would go into the bathroom, promptly forget what he had needed in there in the first place, and wander back to his room before Azami could notice his embarrassment.
(Shiba could teleport. There was a hotel not far away with a lobby bathroom he could use at any time. Yet, he insisted on playing this stupid game. There was no way Azami didn’t see through it.)
Making himself a cup of coffee meant remembering all the times Azami had tried to teach him to use his stupid, fancy espresso machine. Shiba would totally butcher his drink, sometimes purposefully, just to see Azami tighten his lips to keep himself from correcting Shiba, which would lead to their typical comedy duo bickering.
Azami would eventually give in, making both their drinks, and Shiba would sip at his espresso, as pleased as could be, while Azami pouted like the adorable bruiser that he was.
(There was a literal coffee shop in their building. One of the workers had a crush on Shiba and gave him free caffeine fixes whenever he asked. Azami knew about the free drinks, and would tease him about his "barista girlfriend" on occasion. Shiba was so fucking obvious.)
Even going out on the balcony to smoke wasn’t safe. It was probably the most dangerous place of all. It was where Shiba would pretend to look out at the city, but surreptitiously steal glances at his roommate while he did mundane house chores wearing only old, tattered boxers and his sleeveless “cleaning shirt,” which was older than Rokuhira and had more holes than the plot of their favorite D-tier thriller movies. Or when Azami watched his morning yoga videos, stretching himself into shapes that Shiba had once considered impossible for a man of Azami’s musculature, and which bordered on indecent. Or when Azami took a nap on the couch, squished into the corner on his side, leaving enough room for another grown man to squeeze in next to him.
Shiba would feel achy and annoyed, and his cigarette, forgotten, would eventually burn down to his fingertips. He’d stomp back inside and start an argument just to ruin Azami’s routine and ignore the burning feeling in his gut.
(Azami was doing it on purpose. He could take naps anywhere, take yoga courses at a gym, or clean the house in normal fucking clothes.)
It boiled down to this: Shiba had already had his heart broken by a childhood friend once. And broken again by his comrade-in-arms. He wasn’t stupid enough to go through both again, and simultaneously.
So, he kept his distance, let the bitterness fester, all in the hopes that Azami would be the one to call it all off before Shiba could explicitly destroy their friendship past the point of return.
Then, there was the disaster that flung Shiba’s world into sharp contrast.
Wanna go out tonight?
The lines were no longer blurred, and there was nothing so scary as the lack of ambiguity that followed. There was a huge pillar that now towered over their relationship, if only one of them would turn around and acknowledge it.
It was easier not to, but ignoring it meant ignoring a lot of things.
Shiba ignored Azami, pushed him away, acted annoyed and treated him coldly. Every time Azami noticed, he’d have that pinched, hurt look on his face, and Shiba would feel claustrophobic and disappear for a few days.
Usually he would go stay with Rokuhira, who would try to figure out what was wrong, even though he knew better than to pry. Shiba would put all his energy into watching baby Chihiro, and that would take his mind off things well enough that he could eventually go back to his apartment.
Then, he would see Azami doing normal Azami things, and the cycle would begin anew.
If only they didn’t share an apartment, Shiba thought. With some time and space, whatever was brewing would fade and things could go back to normal.
A few weeks after Azami moved out, Shiba broke his lease and found a new apartment. He didn’t even bother sending Azami his new address, but Azami was probably too pissed at him to care.
(Azami hadn’t sent Shiba his new address either.)
Shiba had also been avoiding work.
At first, it had made him anxious. He had just broken his lease, just lost the roommate who paid half the bills and did most of the grocery shopping, and was then going to lose his only source of income on top of it.
He couldn’t go to work, though. Everyone would notice something was weird. Three weeks of unexcused absence was too long to just come back like nothing had happened. People would ask questions. People were probably already asking Azami questions, and Shiba didn’t want to be in the room while Azami made excuses for him.
Even now, he was letting Azami clean up his messes. He was already guilty of a lot of things. Add it to the pile of things he would one day have to apologize for.
He just needed to get himself figured out. It was like cutting off a gangrenous arm and cauterizing the wound before it could take over your whole body.
He’d done the cutting, the cauterizing. Like any wound, it now just needed time and space to properly heal.
He moved into the new apartment, but left the framed pictures in a box in the hall closet. He considered throwing them away, but he’d regret that once he was settled into a new routine, mind cleared of past roommates and quiet nights on the couch watching bad horror movies, legs tangled together, Azami’s ugly, loud guffaw and quiet, dorky snickers.
Shiba’s not sure how this all snuck up on him.
Things that he had always felt about Azami suddenly seemed to carry more weight and then became something else entirely.
Wanna go out tonight?
He used to feel a kind of big-brother protectiveness when some kid at school said something snotty to Soushirou, and Soushirou would look annoyed, but maybe also a little disappointed that some kids still treated him like an outcast. Soon after, that snotty kid would spend his lunch with his head in a toilet while Tougo held him down and flushed and flushed and flushed.
That protectiveness had morphed into something much darker after seeing the Executioner take on men twice his size, fighting until he couldn’t move anymore and Shiba had to teleport him back to camp where he passed out from blood loss.
Azami was no longer little, knobby-kneed Soushirou, too proud to acknowledge the bullies that called him slurs in middle school. Now, Azami openly flirted with men at bars, and Shiba had to watch without the catharsis of waterboarding them in a toilet.
Shiba’s need to protect Azami had once been innocent, and was now ugly, shriveled and greedy and envious.
As if Azami ever gave a second thought to any of the random men that blew him in the bathroom stall or took him back to their place, never to be seen or heard from again once Azami was done with them.
Wanna go out tonight?
Shiba felt too much, as he always did, and Azami brushed away feelings as easy as he did enemies on a battlefield.
Shiba started to wonder if he had felt this way longer than he’d like to admit. He even started second guessing his feelings for Rokuhira back in high school. Was any of that real? Or was Rokuhira the safe choice? Maybe Shiba had always known that Rokuhira would never take their relationship more seriously than as infrequent makeout buddies.
They had never been especially handsy outside of that. No cuddling on the couch, no giggling about bad movies or whispering about raw onions.
His relationship with Azami, though, that seemed like it could be something bigger. Something further from bad tongue kisses behind the school and closer to sharing a space, sharing their schedule, sharing their workspace, sharing a bed, sharing their lives.
Shiba had flown too close to that and fell too far, listlessly tending to his burnt wings while sprawled out on Rokuhira’s living room floor.
“Rumor has it you quit the Kamunabi,” Rokuhira said.
Shiba hadn’t been to work in three months. He hadn’t exactly given his two weeks’ notice, but there was likely no point to it anyway.
“Yeah, guess so,” Shiba said.
Rokuhira sighed. “I mean, I get it. I don’t blame you. But, I don’t know. You could have told us. Or at least Azami. He’s on his own now.”
“He can leave too if he wants,” Shiba said.
Chihiro was sitting upright on the floor, staring at them with wide eyes as if he were keeping up with their conversation, and maybe he was, smart little gremlin.
Rokuhira reached down and picked him up. He blew his lips against Chihiro’s fat cheek, and Chihiro didn’t giggle or coo, just stared at his dad with that deadpan look that said, “I am not amused.”
It would normally be the kind of thing to shift Shiba’s mood to something lighter, but something about the way Rokuhira said that Azami was “on his own” stuck, and his brain wouldn’t let it go.
“A lot of soldiers left the Kamunabi. It’s not like they need Azami anyway. He’s wasted there, just another bureaucrat filling out paperwork,” Shiba said.
Chihiro smacked his dad in the cheek, sick of attention, and Rokuhira pouted, setting the baby—toddler?—back down on the ground.
“The Soga clan doesn’t have any pull anymore. The Kamunabi have ignored you for two years, don’t even know about Chihiro, and probably wouldn’t even care if they did. There’s no point to gathering information when there’s no information to gather,” Shiba said.
Rokuhira sat back, staring at Chihiro, but the smile on his face was gone.
“He can work there if he wants. As long as he doesn’t pretend he’s wasting his life for some greater good. Self-sacrificing idiot doesn’t have anything to sacrifice himself over anymore, so if he wants to play pretend, that’s on him,” Shiba said.
“Who are you trying to convince?” Rokuhira asked. He looked disappointed, maybe a little angry. It was hard to understand a look that Shiba didn’t recognize Rokuhira ever wearing.
Shiba shut up.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s pointless for Azami to still work for the Kamunabi,” Rokuhira said. “But stop pretending that was the reason you quit.”
Shiba must have looked pathetic, properly rebuffed, because Rokuhira backed off.
“Look, I’m not going to pretend I understand what’s going through your head most of the time, but if an idiot like me can piece some of it out, then Azami definitely can. If something’s going on, just tell us. You’re trying to work this out on your own, and it’s just making everyone miserable,” Rokuhira said.
“Sorry,” Shiba said. Then, miraculously, “You’re right.”
Rokuhira turned to him, eyes wide. “Holy shit.”
“What?”
“I’ve never heard you say those words before.”
“Quit being dramatic,” Shiba said, rolling his eyes.
“No, I’m serious. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard you say them to Azami, and he’s always right!” Rokuhira said.
“The fuck he is!”
They laughed, and the afternoon veered into more familiar, comfortable territory. As they watched Chihiro, Shiba sipping a beer and Rokuhira babbling about Chihiro’s new toddler feats, Shiba realized something had changed.
His relationship with Rokuhira had become uncomplicated without him noticing.
His relationship with Azami, as if to counter that, had become so obstructed that Shiba couldn’t hope to clear a pathway.
It was no fault of Rokuhira’s or Azami’s that Shiba had made things so muddled. That instead of doing something about his feelings, he had hidden away, hurt his relationship with both men, and only fixed things with Rokuhira when his pining had subsided.
He felt like a shithead.
“I remembered when you did this with me. The avoidance thing,” Rokuhira said.
Shiba flinched. “Uh, yeah. That. Uh, then. I was being an asshole. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I mean, it wasn’t. I was worried that you hated me or something,” Rokuhira said.
This was as close as they had ever really gotten to a genuine heart-to-heart. Usually, that was something Shiba took to Azami, under their Raw Onions Non-Aggression Pact.
“Yeah, sorry,” Shiba said.
“It sucked, man. Please don’t pull the same thing on Azami,” Rokuhira said.
Shiba looked down at his hands, nodding. “Yeah,” he said, feeling pathetic. “Sorry.”
Rokuhira shifted in his seat. “Uh, right.” He cleared his throat. “All is forgiven. Let’s never talk about this again.”
“Agreed,” Shiba said, feeling similarly out-of-sorts.
“So,” Rokuhira started, “how about those Tigers, huh?”
They argued about baseball until Shiba finished his beer, and then it was time for Chihiro’s nap, and Rokuhira had to clean the kitchen and do all the kind of responsible, adult stuff that Shiba was glad to be able to avoid himself.
Chihiro waved at him, looking stern, as if he were disappointed in Shiba too.
Well, if it was for Chihiro’s approval, maybe Shiba could put on his big boy pants and have a proper conversation with Azami.
“Do you have Azami’s address?” Shiba asked.
“You don’t? Then you really shouldn’t teleport into his new apartment,” Rokuhira said.
“I won’t,” Shiba said.
And he didn’t. He teleported just outside of Azami’s apartment.
He stared at Azami’s apartment door, the small nameplate that still hadn’t been updated for its new tenant, and wondered if he maybe should have come up with some kind of game plan before suddenly springing back into Azami’s life after three months.
Then again, this was always how they did things. They bickered, got into arguments, then just as easily made up and were back to being idiots that hung off each other, could trust each other with anything.
Their arguments were usually solved with fists, a good spar to let out a bit of frustration. This argument was different. It was bigger, but somehow quieter.
It felt like the kind of thing that was hard to come back from, which was why Shiba had ignored it for so long. Why he’d told Azami to move out of the apartment, why Shiba had quit his job and instead of doing literally anything, just wallowed in a pool of his own misery.
He did all of that because the alternative—
Wanna go out tonight?
It would be better to never know Azami's response than to lay himself out there and know for sure that he had no chance.
Eventually, maybe years down the line, they’d probably build some kind of friendly relationship again. They’d probably never be best friends—Shiba had surely destroyed the chances of that happening—but they could be friendly. At least he’d still have Azami in his life in some capacity.
This was a mistake.
Shiba’s hand had been raised to knock on the door, but he lowered it again.
Best to teleport out of here before Azami even knew he had stopped by.
“Shiba?”
Fuck Azami’s otherworldly sorcery senses.
The door was opening, Shiba could make out Azami’s hand on the other side, his arm, some dumb old band t-shirt, then up—up—up—Azami’s face, Azami's hair, Azami’s eye.
“Shiba?” Azami tried again.
He could still leave. It would make things worse in the short term, but it would give Shiba a chance to—
Azami grabbed Shiba’s arm, visible eye steely. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Shiba said. “What kind of coward do you take me for?”
Azami gave him a look that said he knew exactly what kind of coward Shiba was.
Of course, Azami knew him. He had been running and hiding from Azami, how foolish.
“Come in,” Azami demanded.
It smelled good in Azami’s apartment. It was late, but not too late for Azami’s busy schedule to sit down for dinner.
Shiba hadn’t eaten at all that day. The only calories he had consumed had been the beer he had a Rokuhira’s house. Drinking on an empty stomach, not advisable. Entering Azami’s domain with nothing but a beer sloshing around in his gut, a brain-dead decision.
“Got enough to share?” Shiba asked, motioning toward the stove.
Azami sent him an incredulous look.
“I haven’t eaten today,” Shiba said.
“Shocking,” Azami grumbled, but moved to the kitchen to pull another plate down to the counter.
Shiba took a seat at the counter, watching as Azami worked. Neither of them was ever really a great cook, but they both got by with some basic skills. Azami liked making egg dishes. Shiba felt a flutter of nostalgia as he watched Azami pull out a carton of eggs to whip together another bowl for the tamagoyaki pan.
Shiba had really missed this, and it only served to make him feel worse to experience it now. It might be the very last time Azami made him eggs.
“I meant to say ‘raw onions’ at the door. Is it too late if I say it now?” Shiba asked.
Azami shrugged, focused on finishing his plating.
He was pissed. It was obvious in the tense line of his shoulders, in his inability to look Shiba in the eye, in the way he quietly stewed over the stove.
He put a plate down in front of Shiba.
“Looks great, thanks,” Shiba said.
“Eat,” Azami said. Shut up, was the implication.
Shiba worried that his mental state would affect the taste of the food, but it didn’t. Azami’s tamagoyaki tasted the same as it always did: not like some outstanding Michelin-star restaurant, but good and homey and warm and lovely.
Shiba had cleared his plate by the time Azami settled down with his own. Shiba sat silently, taking in Azami’s apartment while Azami ate.
It was small and tidy. There were personal touches here and there, but, as with Shiba’s, no framed pictures on the wall or scattered on various desks and side tables, the way they had been when Azami and Shiba shared an apartment.
Actually, that wasn’t true, Shiba realized in completing his surveillance of the room. There were three pictures.
Shiba got out of his chair to get a closer look.
The first one was of baby Chihiro. There were no indicators in the picture as to who his parents might be, so Azami probably thought it safe to display.
The second was a picture of all of them—Kunishige, Chiaki, Soushirou and Tougo—when they were younger. Shiba was probably around ten, if he had to guess.
Shiba didn’t remember taking this picture. It hadn’t been one that was displayed in their previous apartment.
They were standing in a line, arms slung around each other. Chiaki had been taller than Tougo at the time, and Soushirou even smaller than them. Kunishige was laughing in the picture, pulling at Chiaki, who looked affronted but was still smiling. One of Tougo’s hands was raised to flash a “victory” sign, and the other was around Soushirou’s neck.
Soushirou wasn’t even looking at the camera, but down near their feet. One of his hands was clutching his own shirt, and his other hand was clutching at Tougo.
“Where’d you get this one?” Shiba asked.
“My mom had it,” Azami said.
“You saw your mom?” Shiba asked, the genuine surprise showing in his voice.
“Yeah, she wanted me to pick up the last of my things,” Azami said.
The last of his things, huh? Shiba wondered. Was it her way of making amends, or was she cutting off the last thread connecting her to her only son?
Shiba wasn’t in a position to ask.
He turned his attention to the third and final picture.
He didn’t recognize the family in the photo, but they did seem familiar. They were dressed in traditional clothing, a traditional family: mom, dad, two kids.
“Who is this?” Shiba asked. He turned to Azami, who lifted his head, briefly, to understand Shiba’s question, before turning back to his food.
“My oldest sister, Hana. I don’t know if you ever met her,” Azami said.
Soushirou was the youngest in his family, his parents’ last effort at a son. His four older sisters varied in age from quite a bit older than Soushirou to much older than Soushirou.
Shiba never had met Hana. If he remembered right, Hana would have been in college when Soushirou was born.
“You talk to her?” Shiba asked, hopeful.
“She reached out to me, yeah,” Azami said. He tilted his face up from his food so Shiba could see his crooked grin. “Seems like we had similar issues growing up, as the oldest daughter and the only son.”
Which was Azami-speak for, “We bonded over our dislike of our shitty parents.”
“Mom told her to start preparing a space for her to move in, and Hana told Mom that she’d better start saving if she wanted to be placed in a nice nursing home,” Azami said.
Shiba smirked. “I bet that went over well.”
Azami snickered, and Shiba had not been away long enough if that dorky sound could still send a shockwave through his entire being.
Shiba wanted to kiss him so bad.
“Azami,” Shiba said. “I wanted to apologize. I’ve been a huge asshole.”
“I agree,” Azami said, primly. “Continue.”
“Continue, right,” Shiba muttered. This was why he should have waited and put together some sort of plan.
He had to be careful with what he said next. He couldn’t tell Azami the whole truth, and he didn’t know what the truncated version should look like.
Azami took another bite of his food.
“I have no excuse for it. I just freaked out, and I didn’t closely consider the consequences. I hurt you, and I’m an asshole, and I’m really sorry,” Shiba said.
There, that was more detail without burying Shiba six feet under.
“Sorry for what?” Azami said.
Shiba inhaled sharply, and his exhale came out like a shudder.
“For disappearing. For leaving the Kamunabi without telling you,” Shiba said.
“For abandoning me,” Azami said.
“For abandoning you,” Shiba conceded.
He couldn’t even look at Azami. He was bound to hurt Azami one way or another; he never could figure out how to care about someone in the correct way.
“I was worried I’d hurt you, and I hurt you anyway,” Shiba said, realizing it for himself.
“Worried about what?” Azami asked. “I thought we agreed to always have open communication, that I wouldn’t judge—ah.”
Azami’s eyes went wide, his head jerked up, catching Shiba’s no-doubt horrified expression.
Fuck, he’d been figured out.
“Wait, Azami. Before you say anything, just know—”
“The Kamunabi,” Azami said.
The world around Shiba seemed to tilt, the small side table next to him reaching out so he could catch himself on it in time.
Was this really happening? Was Shiba really that lucky?
Azami’s face softened. “Shiba, you should know me better than that. If you needed to leave the Kamunabi, we could’ve talked about it.”
“Yeah,” Shiba said, breathless. It was happening. Shiba had destroyed everything, and somehow the world—Azami—was still letting him off the hook.
“I did feel abandoned, but just because—I was frustrated. I thought you and Rokuhira had given up on me, didn’t trust me anymore. If it was just because you wanted to leave, I would have understood. We could’ve made a plan. We can still make a plan!” Azami said, brightening, probably at the prospect of putting their collective scheming skills to good use.
“Of course we still trust you.” It was the only thing Shiba could think to say. “I still trust you. I always will.”
Azami smiled, and Shiba felt like crying.
“Can I—?”
Azami motioned him over, and Shiba crossed the room in two long strides, just in time for Azami to stand up and Shiba to pull him into a hug.
Oh, shit. Shiba was crying. The sense of relief he felt was all-encompassing, he was drowning in it, it filled him to the brim and was leaking out of his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Shiba said again.
“We’ll figure it out. We always do,” Azami said.
He was patting Shiba’s back comfortingly, as if Shiba needed comfort. He had just been handed the world’s greatest gift on a silver—no, a diamond platter. The last thing he needed was comfort. He wanted to throw a party, chug a fifth of scotch, ignore the few responsibilities he had left in this world and collapse with Azami on the couch, no longer in fear of being found out.
Azami pulled back just enough to look Shiba in the eye.
“Never again, right?” Azami asked.
Shiba nodded, sniffing pathetically.
Azami shook his head, grinning. “How about I get us a drink? You still like scotch?”
Shiba nodded again, still not trusting himself to speak.
By the time Azami had come back with two glasses of scotch, Shiba had more or less sobered back up, face clear of tears, nose clear of snot.
He accepted the glass from Azami, mirroring Azami’s easy grin.
“You know,” Azami said, twirling his glass and watching the liquor swirl around inside. “I’m pretty relieved, really.”
“Yeah?” Shiba said.
“Yeah. This whole time I was worried this had something to do with the kiss at the party,” Azami said. He didn’t look at Shiba, just tipped back his drink, downing it in one go.
“I think I’ll have another,” Azami said, turning back to the liquor cabinet.
Shiba watched him, mouth agape, dread pooling in his stomach, stronger than any liquor.
He was wrong. The world still hated him.
This whole time, Azami knew. Even though the method was kinder than Shiba deserved, the end result was the same.
Azami knew.
Azami didn’t feel the same.
Azami wanted to bury the topic for good.
Shiba let it happen.