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Skinny slivers of morning gold tease at tight shut lids protecting eyes to match the light that seeks them. They dare not flutter or pinch as a breath gets caught in the throat that lives in the same house and is held captive there as though holding onto it will make the arms wrapped snug around his middle pull tighter and never let go. As if it might make the chest pressed warm to the back of him sink into him and him into it so they could be here forever like this and never worry or wonder over words neither have the vocabulary to speak.
Or maybe they do, probably they do, and the words are there whether they find their way past lips that seem to always know each other but only when the sun sets and the clock judges them for keeping it up.
Really, there are no words these days, not like there used to be. Not like before all of this holding and kissing and touching and never saying and always in the dark as though keeping it there means they can be in the dark too, and it isn’t pride that keeps Kenma’s lips open only enough to let Kuro in and never to let anything out.
And maybe somewhere there’s a Kenma who never let Kuro pull him close and close and closer that night after the cherry blossoms fell and Kuro all dressed up in cap and gown and grown in a way Kenma hadn’t bothered to see until he was really looking. And maybe that Kenma’s throat didn’t catch that breath that sealed that first kiss after he was the one to meet Kuro’s eye when he laughed just like he always had yet somehow new in a way that nipped at Kenma's heels like it had something to say. And maybe they were still just Kuro and Kenma without any kind of rotting leaves at their feet and on their backs and in that bed, and Kuro and that clock both would still have patience enough for him.
The clock rings and tells him it’s too late for regret when he answers it. That held breath wasn’t enough to stop it or anything at all as the warmth leaves so quick and quiet he can’t hear the steps of it on the cool wooded floors far and far and farther, and Kenma wonders if it was ever really there in the first place.
So here he lies, to himself, to the sun, to Kuro, eyes squeezed shut until the door announces the coast clear so he doesn’t have to face the disappointment of any of them. Doesn’t have to look and see the blue and purple sneering up at him from the collar of Kuro’s shirt, mocking him with their jeers like they had the night before when Kuro had come and Kenma had seen.
In the dark, he could crash into him and over him and through him and pretend they were marks made by his own brave lips and not some nameless somebody in the pulsing beat of artificial colors and heaving bodies that never held any appeal to him even when Kuro can’t seem to keep away and who is Kenma to deny him his freedom.
Nothing more than a warm and willing body with no words, only gasps and groans and whispered breaths that almost find their way to ears that don’t want them.
Maybe he’d been naive to think they didn’t need words between them because they never had in ten years of growing from sapling to oak and it seems strange to want them now as if they’d always been there, but Kenma misses the drone of Kuro’s thoughts in his ear like he’d just let him crawl right into the depths of him and stay there and never ask for anything in return, so Kenma would give all he had which wasn’t much, but seemed to be enough to keep the roots quenched and the trunk strong in that tree planted all that time ago.
Kenma knows trees can’t grow in the dark, and their’s must have reached as tall as it ever would and not an inch taller. He can feel the bark drying out and the branches turn brittle, but it’s still standing and he thinks it’s enough to have a tree at all, so he won’t take the risk of cutting it down by spilling the syrup drenched words that have threatened his heavy tongue for two years worth of these golden sun mornings and match the color of Kuro’s eyes and that something he’s hiding in them that might as well be an axe, but Kenma hasn’t had the courage to look since he first saw it there.
Or maybe none of it’s true and the only thing keeping Kenma pretending is this single moment here and now when the world stops its incessant spinning for just long enough that he can feel the hot puffs of air close enough to leave moisture on his cheeks and blow strands of hair from his face and the beat his heart thumps against his ribcage at the anticipation in the proximity of it all. A line that neither move to cross, but here they are, every morning, teasing at it anyway.
It’s just the barest of seconds of something like honesty before Kuro's pulling away without ever touching, and another two before the door is shutting feather soft behind him on any given morning like the night never existed at all.
Except- except here today, with the light fighting its way into the room and Kuro’s weighted knee sinking into the mattress where it’s settled heavy like he doesn’t care if Kenma wakes up, this briefest of reprieves from all the what-ifs and maybes and could nevers lasts one second too long while Kenma holds that breath like it’s the only one that can keep him alive, and for one stark naked speck of time the clock finally looks away and soft lips he knows better than his own land careful on his cheek and the last piece of a puzzle he didn’t realize he’d been solving falls into place and finally finally his eyes wrench open in surprise and finally finally he looks.
It’s surprise then that greets him, a flush high on sharp carved cheeks, and that something in those eyes that's kept him glancing away for so long that it climbed its way to the front so now it’s staring back at him and he can see it for what it is.
All these days and nights and weeks and months and years he’s known Kuro and still he’d let himself get lost on trains and cars and cobbled streets and highways that twisted and curved and went around in circles as though he was all alone in this, but he hasn’t had to be since he was eight years old and another quiet boy without many words showed up in his life like he’d been meant to be there all along, and maybe there's a somewhere he had been.
Kenma doesn’t know, doesn’t need to know, only needs this: their’s is an oak that’s roots have shriveled from drought, that’s leaves have browned and fallen and never returned, that stopped growing when rot settled in at its core and never would again, and that indeed is a very sad fact.
But it seems trees are more clever than they’re given credit for and before it went it left something new in a seed buried deep in those decaying leaves that lay in heaps around them, and there before either knew to tend to it.
And here they are, neglecting that seed for fear of endings and beginnings both, but it's settled plain as day in the honeyed amber of Kuro’s eyes just like the one waiting patient in the pulsing depths of Kenma’s chest, though not so patient it seems as Kenma’s found the words or perhaps they’ve just made their way to his lips which are finally opening wide as his eyes, wider even, like every truth of him could finally escape at once if given the chance, but all that really comes out is a very small-
“Kuro, I’m in love with you.”
It’s all the water necessary for a seed to finally sprout in the light of a golden sun morning.