“Hazuki-san, I’m sorry for asking you so late but something came up all of a sudden... could you cover for me tomorrow morning?”

He looked at his co-worker and nodded last night - he doesn’t even need to ask why. That’s Hiroko-san, she’s a hard working girl and by the way he owes her a favor (from that time when he got so drunk one night that he forgot he was supposed to be working the next day and, honestly, he could not at all be arsed to get up for the morning shift, so he ended up having her cover for him), she wouldn’t skip work for no reason. 

“Yeah, sure!” He says, and that’s why today he’s at work during the morning, even though he should be going to university right now. One skipped lesson won’t ruin his academic career anyway, will it? Then he’ll go on a groceries round, then go back home, take a nap and then spend the rest of the day attending to the house work. And he really needs to - going to school in the morning and working in the evening is already pretty time-consuming as it is, plus he never really cared much for tidying up. And after all, that’s the good part about living on his own, aside from the fact that after taxes, rent and every other expense he’s always left barely hanging on by month’s end. Since his last roommate left, though, and since he’s been asking whether others were interested and everyone was already settled somewhere, that’s how it’s going to be. 

He does really need a roommate though. Maybe he’ll ask Shimizu-san, although… that would be really weird. He figured out pretty soon that she’s into him, if anything because she kind of let him know by rubbing her hand on his thigh during karaoke night and looking at him that way. The way he used to look at the people he was into, back in high school. Not very often, twice was often enough.

He’s organizing the bar’s supplies in the back, humming a little song he just made up to himself, when the young manager, Ritsuka, pops her head in. 

“Hazuki-san, I need to go pick up the stuff from the van, could you attend to the tables?” 

Nagisa turns around with a nod, happy to exit from the imprisonment of such a cold room bathed in such cool, artificial light, and takes a breath of relief at being surrounded by the sunlight that washes in from the big glass wall facing outside. 

He likes the place. He doesn’t really see the sunlight when he’s in here much, but it really is a quaint, cute spot where people can stop by, drink something, have a nice quiet lunch, and listen to music he can personally choose - that’s actually one of the things he likes most about the job. Listening to whatever he likes, which often ends up making people look around confused and get even more weirded out. The walls are all painted yellow and orange and pink and indigo dotted with tiny drawings made by the children who’ll stop by sometimes, and every other decoration is as artsy as they come, like the furniture which seems to come straight out of a child’s idea of what a breakfast lounge should look like. He had nothing to do with it, he got hired when the place was already like this. 

In the evenings the light becomes colorful yet still soft and playful, at night the colors blend with the darkness and that’s when all the college kids will come in droves demanding for something that will relax their nerves and help them soothe themselves. And, of course, the occasional group of girls cruising and seeking out some fruity alcohol. He’s had to politely shake more than a few off of him before clocking out and actually seeking them back out, since he started working here. Somehow, it became apparent really fast that a certain type of girls would be into the more delicate type of guy, or maybe it’s the way he consciously seeks out every occasion to compliment them. Because so many girls look strong and set on their way, so many of them think fast and will often outwit him. He likes that. 

There’s something incredibly sexy about a woman who’ll leave him bamboozled just by saying something funny and smart and who’ll then smirk like she knows she just won. 

Men can leave him speechless too. Like the one guy who just walked in and sat with his back toward him, looking around at the walls like someone who’s wondering where the hell he ended up. Nagisa can perfectly imagine his face, he’s seen it before, many times. 

Which might be because of two possible reasons. First off, the place really does look peculiar for a small barin the outskirts of Tottori. 

Second, because Nagisa knows the guy’s lost.

He knows him. 

He looks at the new customer with his eyes wide, and then bites his lip trying to decide whether to approach him and have a very awkward human interaction or wait for Ritsuka-san to get back and take care of him. 

He looks outside and she’s still out there - she’s looking at him, unambiguously telling him with her eyes to go serve the man who just walked in and seems to be really in need of help and maybe a hot cup of coffee or something. Nagisa closes his eyes, accepting his fate. He would have had to face him again, eventually. 

Hello… may I help you? 

No, no. Absolutely not.

Hi, can I get you anything?

Ugh, why can’t he just go there and act normal? 

“Sou-chan?” He ends up uttering, with his tablet in his hand as he tries keeping his unease in check. That’s still a customer.

It doesn’t matter that until two years ago they were the kind of acquaintances who would kiss behind the Samezuka pool building, that spent a whole summer going to the beach every day to snuggle somewhere private and kiss and argue, and it definitely doesn’t matter that that’s the guy who helped him get over his very first heartbreak, by just being there, quietly holding him together. 

And now he’s looking up, eyes wide in shock, lips parting. He grew a stubble, his traits are even more square than they used to be, but Nagisa knows his shapes all too well to miss that it’s really him. 

“Oh,” Sou-chan mutters, and then abruptly stands up. “Oh. Nagisa…” 

And Nagisa smiles. It was kind of a given, but it relaxes him knowing Sousuke is just as nervous as he is. 

“I didn’t think I’d meet you so soon,” he says. Despite everything, he’d been sort of afraid ‘so soon’ was going to become ‘ever again’. Sure, just ten seconds ago he wanted to hide back in the storehouse, but sometimes he did think of high school, of the swimming team, and found himself thinking fondly of those times, hardships and all. 

It would be more than okay for him to revisit those times, even if it was just through faint memories. Maybe clarify a few things, too.

“I didn’t think I’d meet you at all, to be fair,” Sousuke says, sitting back down more quietly. “I… so you’re a barman now?” 

He did remember full well what Nagisa’s ambitions had been, once upon a time. But Nagisa gives him a smile, looking at him with a shrug.

“I’m in university, I do this to afford it,” he says, quietly, before shaking his head. “I mean - I’m constantly broke, but I just have to hold on tight for a little bit until I graduate. What about you?” He adds right after, not really caring that much for hearing what Sousuke does. It’s probably something way better that’s going to make him feel inadequate, despite the fact he plans for something actually awesome to do with his life, but ‘world swimming champions’ coach’ sounds way more glamorous, after all…

“Got my shoulder smashed, it’s for real this time. So I’m recovering.” he replies, dry, and Nagisa isn’t sure he’s ever seen him looking so empty before. And that’s not what he was expecting to hear, at all. 

Okay. Nagisa knows better than to press him. There is probably no need to ask anything anyway 

“Oh. Damn.”

“Yeah.”

A long silence stretches in between them and there are things Nagisa would say to break the ice again, maybe he would sit down and start talking about the old days. 

“So can I get you something?” He says instead, getting his tablet at the ready. 

Sousuke looks up at him, with a shrug. 

“I’ll just get an orange juice.”

Maybe he came in here planning to get something more substantial, maybe a full meal and then Nagisa took his appetite away. It’s good nobody knows about who Sousuke is and what was between them a while ago, and how it ended up being like. 

Nagisa nods, rushing back to cut an orange in half and squeezing it in a glass, adding sugar, ice cubes and a straw - all the while eyeing Sousuke who seems to be suddenly very interested in his phone. He could not blame him, this is the most awkward he’s felt in a very long time. 

When he gets back to the table he sets the glass down with the intention of scurrying away immediately after, but as his hand leaves Sousuke grabs his wrist, forcing Nagisa to look at him. 

“Hey, um. Nagisa, listen… when do you get off work?” He asks, gently letting go. 

Nagisa’s attention is all on him now, and he can’t help it. 

“At noon,” he hums, both really wanting to go hang out with him and also wanting to disappear and never see him again. 

Sousuke looks at him, and nods while letting him go. 

“Okay.”

Nagisa tries thinking of something else, but…

“Will that be all?” He hears himself asking, and that is the weirdest way he could say anything right now. But Sousuke smiles, just a little. 

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Nagisa says, now really wanting to leave, jump down a hole and never crawl back out. 

“Nagisa?” Sousuke’s voice stops him again, and he sighs turning around. He’s going to say something that will persecute him until noon. 

“I’m really happy to see you,” Sousuke says, and somehow he doesn’t blush, doesn’t act like it’s too corny, it just seems… sincere. He doesn’t usually say stuff like this, but Nagisa got to know very soon that he can actually sound sentimental sometimes. But Nagisa’s chest still fills up with ice as he nods, going back to the storehouse without adding anything.

Now, he thinks as he orders the material by expiration date, let’s get ready for the most embarrassing day of my life. And he’ll have the whole afternoon, evening and night to do and say things he’s going to regret tomorrow. How fun. 

But on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe it’ll be okay. They’ll just talk and then go home. 

Yeah, he’d rather think that way. He still spends some time in there pretending to do something, and when he pops his head out to check Sousuke is gone. 

And now he’s right outside, at noon on the clock, and Nagisa takes a deep breath clutchin his bag as he waves the manager off. And then turns to look at Sousuke with a bright, yet cautious smile.

“So… you wanted to talk, right?” 

Sousuke looks at him, reflecting his smile back. 

“Yeah. Well, I mean, I just wanted to hang out. It’s been a while and all that.”

There is definitely something else, Nagisa thinks. Why wouldn’t Sousuke want to just walk away and forget about him again? They didn’t break it in the friendliest of ways. They actually didn’t break it at all. They just drifted apart, without acknowledging it aloud. Nagisa doesn’t know whether he was getting boring or Sousuke had just realized being with him would be more of a hassle than he bargained for, but all he knows is they set up dates and then either him or Sousuke wouldn’t show up. And then they never talked about it, somehow. 

“Yeah, sounds good. I’m off for the rest of the day anyway…”

“Oh. Well, that’s good.”

“So what do we do?” Nagisa asks, cautious, looking around. “Oh, I know! Let’s go get something to eat, I’m starving,” he says, pointing his finger to a fast food joint. Sousuke looks in that direction, and frowns, then shakes his head giggling. He knows full well Nagisa is a black hole and he won’t care about what gets in him.  

“Nagisa, do you really live like this? Come on, I know a place.”

That’s how they end up in a little family-owned restaurant, with a plate filled with various types of fish sitting between them. Obviously, Nagisa is the first to attack, dragging half of it on his plate. Sousuke smirks. At least in that sense, Nagisa didn’t change at all. He wonders what else stayed the same - what did change. 

“This is good,” Nagisa says, sucking on his fingers one by one after cleaning up a handful of shrimp. Sousuke giggles - he doesn’t even look sexy or anything, he’s just like a kid getting his favorite dish from mom.

“It’s definitely healthier than that trash,” Sousuke comments, nodding. And Nagisa rolls his eyes, annoyed at the preachy tone exactly like he was before. 

“Well, if you’re living in Tottori then how come I haven’t seen you before?” He asks, leaning on the table. 

“I just got here a week ago. Before I was living in Sendai, helping some guys with training and powering up, you know - and then I busted my shoulder… again. I probably should’ve just quit with anything sports before it happened,” he says, looking down at his plate. 

“Does it hurt?” Nagisa asks, his brows knitting together. They might have broken up, more or less, but he remembers how important recovering was for Sousuke just a couple of years ago. 

“I’m under painkillers now, so no, not really. Not right now, anyway.”

Ouch. 

“Yikesh, I’m showwy,” Nagisa says, barely intelligible through the mouthful he’s chomping down on. Sousuke looks at him, with the same smile from before. He still really knows how to be adorable, and Sousuke is pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose. For no other reason than: he likes being cute. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

“Yeah. But it’s alright, I can find something else to do. Maybe I could be an accountant,” he says, his smirk widening as he watches the look of disgust on Nagisa’s face. 

“Okay, that’s the ugliest thing I ever heard you say,” Nagisa says, almost in a scolding tone. “Absolutely horrifying. Never say that again in front of me.”  

And then he goes back to stuffing his mouth, while Sousuke’s smile spreads. 

“I see you hate this stuff just as much as you did before.”

“More than before, actually,” Nagisa replies, with a frown. It’s been a while since he last thought of Rei, but when he thinks of numbers and counts that’s the first thing he can think of. Probably because of all the maths that Rei tirelessly attempted hammering in his mind. The result was always, of course, invisible if not completely non-existent. 

It’s no wonder, then, that now it’s impossible for him to look at calculations from at least a neutral viewpoint. 

“What about Tachibana and Nanase?” Sousuke asks, “did you keep in touch with them?” 

“Huh? Yeah. Of course. Mako-chan works at the Iwatobi pool teaching kids to swim, Haru-chan… well, he’s with Rin-chan, you probably saw him more than me, right?” Nagisa asks.

Sousuke purses his lips, shaking his head. 

“No… I didn’t really keep up, you know. I mean, after trying to swim again didn’t go through I just… stopped going at their races.”

“Hmmmm.”

Sounds like there was no closure there either, then.

Nagisa grows quiet, holding something between his pressed lips, which Sousuke doesn’t fail to notice. And then he looks up at Sousuke, with a soft smile. 

“I see. So who were you working with in… Sendai, right?”

“Um, yeah, it was a bunch of kids from a volleyball team that wanted to keep playing as pros. Helped them train, fixed their training regimes…” Sousuke says, his voice vague. 

“Uh-huh. Well, maybe now you could just calm down and let your shoulder heal already,” Nagisa says, giving him an annoyed look. Like he’s scolding him, again. They’ve been over this so many times, and Sousuke gets that same sense of irritation he did two years ago. 

Of course, Nagisa is technically right. But Sousuke shaped his whole life around swimming. Back then, giving it up was beyond the realm of possibilities.

“Well, that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” he retorts, with an irritated tone, both wanting to end the argument and let him know exactly how annoying that conversation is getting. 

Nagisa sighs, and quickly cleans his dish. Sousuke fidgets on the table, before starting, “hey-”

“I’m going to pay,” Nagisa cuts him off, and walks past him, going to the counter under Sousuke’s worried eyes. There’s something bothering him and he won’t say it, and Sousuke was never the type to pry. Maybe that’s why it ended, among everything else. 

Nagisa whips his debit card out, throwing a look at him, and then Sousuke sees him whip his head back to look at the cashier with big wide eyes, then back to look at Sousuke. He does a double or triple take, before trotting back, and bites his lip looking completely red in the face. 

He wanted to use the chance for a dramatic exit, but...

“Uuuh… apparently I’m in the red, I can’t pay for this,” he mutters, running his fingers through his hair. 

Sousuke looks at him, and the usual smile that always popped on his face when he was with Nagisa blooms back. There’s really no way he could stay mad at him. That didn’t change.

“It’s okay, it’s on me today. Don’t worry,” he says standing up to go to the counter, and for a moment a weird kind of thought pops in his mind, but he just shoves it back strongly enough to not follow it. It would be alright if they were home and still together, though. 

For a moment, he’d thought about pressing a quick, familiar kiss on Nagisa’s lips.

He does adequately kick himself in his mind while the payment goes through, especially because... it makes his chest grow heavy. And he should not be thinking about what they did when they were a thing. They should just be… friends. That’s it.

Fuck, he didn’t plan on it being anything more than them catching up and hanging out a little. But it comes with the territory of seeing your ex, he guesses. 

He just complicated all of it, didn’t he? 

Nagisa seems to forget pretty fast about what was pissing him off, though, so the rest of the evening goes pretty smoothly, with him talking about the job, the university he’s going at, what he plans to do if things go the right way. 

“I got in touch with these guys who run a rescue for the seals and turtles and penguins and all the marine animals that end up getting hurt due to fishing,” he explains while they have a walk down the streets in the outskirts of the city, where it’s more quiet, and for the first time today he looks just as happy as he did as a high schooler, when he was swimming. 

Sousuke nods, really liking the idea. Nagisa was always cooing at little small animals, hating on hurtful practices by humans, so it’s only the logical route to take, for him. 

“Yeah, I could see you doing something like that. It’s cool.”

“But I need a marine biology degree first, so they’re waiting for me to get it.”

“Hmmm. Sounds reasonable.”

Nagisa also hums, looking down at the ground, then glances over at Sousuke’s hand, and then up at him with a brief, yet heavy silence. It takes him a bit, but eventually he says, “you know, I didn’t think I’d have fun today”, slowing the walk down. 

“Huh?” 

Sousuke kind of expected this and what’s coming next, of course, but… what kind of jump is this right now? 

“I thought we would just… stare at each other awkwardly the whole day,” Nagisa explains to him. “You know?”

Oh. Right. Sousuke can’t help his muscles stiffening, and he clenches his teeth briefly.

“Yeah. I thought the same, honestly.”

They take a few more steps, Nagisa with his head low and brows knitting, and finally he turns to Sousuke stopping the walk. 

“Can we talk? I mean, actually talk?” 

Sousuke stops too, and draws out a long sigh. 

“Yeah.”

Nagisa looks around, deciding there aren’t enough people on the street who will care for what they’ll say. They’re still two men after all, and as much as the country’s progressed, two ex-boyfriends being ex-boyfriends in the middle of the street is still… weird. 

“I think we should get some kind of closure. I mean, I’m guessing we share the fault in having broken up… if that’s how you’d call it,” Nagisa says, looking down at his hands. And even though he doesn’t look like a sophomore high schooler, he still looks so small right now. 

Sousuke looks down at him, and it takes him a bit before he feels like saying anything. 

“I’m sorry, Nagisa. I just didn’t know what to say. There isn’t even a reason why I drifted away from you, honestly, I just… didn’t feel like we were going anywhere.”

Nagisa nods, finally looking at him again. He gets it. Back then, their relationship was mostly just cuddling, kissing, having sex sometimes, doing the usual stuff. And maybe, Nagisa got just a little bit too comfortable with that routine. Which, anyone would say, isn’t him. And that’s why it didn’t work out, they’d say. 

“I’m sorry for ghosting you,” he says quietly. “That’s not like me.”

Actually, that’s exactly like you. Once things get serious you will curl up like a hedgehog and refuse to open up, Sousuke would say. But then Nagisa could: 1. get really mad; 2. say that’s exactly what Sousuke does too, which is pretty spot on. He just wouldn’t feel like blaming him.  

“It’s okay” is the only possible reply there could be for closing the issue and not burst in a fight right here. 

Nagisa still looks at him like a guilty puppy and Sousuke sighs, internally. How does he still get so touched and moved by a single look? That’s Nagisa’s superpower. He’s sure of that. 

“Nagisa, what do you say we get some cake?” He asks, eager to change the subject. Which Nagisa seems to be as well, given how soon he opens up in a cheerful smile again. Although he must know the conversation isn’t over yet. 

He thinks about it a few seconds, rolling the concept in his mind.

“You already paid for lunch, should you really pay for more food?” He asks, still conscientious enough to not want to make Sousuke spend too much. Which wasn’t really too much of an issue two years ago. Things have changed in every detail. 

“Don’t worry. Just let me spoil you a bit, okay?” 

Nagisa smirks, still not too happy about the soft thrumming in his chest. 

“If you’re okay with it then… you know I’m always happy to get cake!”

Sousuke nods, marching to a good pastry he knows of, wondering just how the rest of the day’s going to turn out. 

It could really end up being anything.