#and then offering to come in DRUNK to close. no maam stay home. do not ask me if i want you to drunk drive to work to help me close because

[the-trans-dragon]

Every time I buy toothpaste the tube is smaller and I hate it!!! Give me fucking the toothpaste!!!

[myelocin]

love, sicily | kozume kenma

Synopsis: Perhaps it’s through serendipity that you’ll begin to look at the world past the rose colored lenses and finally see the kaleidoscope of gold that it brings.

Characters: Kozume Kenma, Sugawara Koushi

Genre: Fluff, Travel, Eventual Romance, (Mutual) Pining | WC: 4000+

Playlist | Pinterest Board

A/N: This is a commission from @haiikyuuns​ ! I had a lot of fun with this one so thank you for trusting me miss maam ;A; 

commissions

Track 1: Paris in The Rain | “I look at you now and I want this forever; I might not deserve it but there’s nothing better.”

Sugawara Koushi is what comes with Paris.

He’s the first, the only, and the current. It’s through summer nights under city lights, where you first are introduced to what love could be.

Where it could be this. Only this.

The summer of ’13 looking like living in an okay city that doesn’t really have much to offer in the rural side of southern Japan. One convenience store by the train station, and a teashop that most teenagers wouldn’t exactly prefer to frequent. Sunsets by the shore are nice, because your world had always just been nice.

It was okay.

Watermelon and ice drops in June, falling leaves in September, snowy paths you had to shovel every weekend in December, and the Sakura blossoms in March. Routine was okay, so you settled that you were too.

Koushi was who looked like what love could be to you. The word “eventually,” fitting. To be in a constant state of pondering if the word love could ever be redefined.

And in a way, it does. He doesn’t exactly become love, the more you think about it, but rather he just remains as is. Your constant; a day one of some sorts. Serendipity as a thing reserved for what could only be thought of as fiction, because reality had never been an ugly place for you.

So looking through rose colored lenses it was.

From your place you settled the most comfortable in—in the sidelines—you sat and watched Koushi bloom. Where for years it stayed okay. As is. Still a routine that frankly neither of you wanted to break.

Where eventually, the first crack of that well maintained schedule looked like a roundtrip ticket from Tokyo to the city of Paris, a suitcase, backpack, and a map of a city unknown to you.

The sight of Paris and Sugawara Koushi. Silver hair and hazel eyes. Every color that’s linked to what you’ve always known as home found in him. The pastel pink of his lips like the rose petals from outside his home, the silver of his hair as the clouds in the sky because for some reason rain always triumphed over sunshine.

And Paris, in the rain, with what you think as love, in front of you. Seen through your eyes as what you tell yourself is it—the greatest that love could ever become, because all you’ve known are shades of pastels with just a hint of silver.

Just one, perfect, palette that seemed to be enough for you.

(Until it wasn’t for him.) (It never occurred to you that just a few shades and a set of familiar streets would never be enough for him.)

“Paris is great, isn’t it?” Koushi turns to you and says, where he holds his hands out and past the balcony to catch a few drops of rain.

He looks beautiful. (Always has, you think.)

You nod your head.

“I’m coming back here next month because I got the job, actually,” he smiles, looking wistful.

You pause.

Rain still pours, and there’s a little bit of thunder. You think to yourself that if he chose to say any other set of words other than a watered down version of “I’m-leaving-you-and-that-good-for-nothing-town-forever,” you’d already be pulling him down into the streets and kiss him under the rain.

“Like,” you say, trying to sound out your thoughts; your throat feels dry. “—like forever?”

Koushi looks far away, and when he leans further to catch more raindrops, he feels far away. Further away, you think. Has he always been this far away?

“I hope forever,” he laughs, then turns to you. He’s smiling like you share his happiness with him. Are you happy along with him?

Silver hair kind of white against the backdrop of Paris in the rain, and hazel eyes that still look like all the shades of home stare at you. Your palms feel clammy, but you smile.

He turns away, and the rose colored lenses you’ve always seen the world with suddenly crack.

(When you sleep that night, Paris in the rain just becomes a city caught in a thunderstorm.)

Track 2: Paris | “if we go down, then we go down together.”

Kozume Kenma’s always hated looking at a city caught in a downpour.

He was never much for traveling, but he knew a city like this was meant to be explored.

He sighs, suitcase in tow as he opens the door to his hotel room and face plant into the bed. The skies above a city meant to live in sunshine continue to weep, so he turns on his side, facing the window to ponder. Not necessarily about much, because his thoughts have always been quite linear.

Kenma liked schedule. Predictability.

Booking a ticket to Paris three days after Tetsurou’s drunk speech was not predictable.

And because he spoke of the devil, his phone rings, flashing Tetsurou’s name in big, bold letters.

“You know,” Tetsurou’s voice drawls. “I don’t know what on God’s green earth even possessed you to jump on the first flight out of here to fucking—“ he pauses to inhale, before continuing, “—Paris out of every other city, but you did, and everyone’s confused as fuck.”

Kenma shifts in place, frankly wondering the same thing, but of course he’d never tell him that. There’s an ache that comes when he cracks his neck, but it’s a familiar one. He supposes that he’s used to a lot of things. The ache in his neck; the black roots that always grows faster than he can retouch them; Tetsurou’s voice that still sounds worse than his mother’s nagging.

“Why are you even there?” his voice comes again over the phone.

“You told me that I needed to do more,” Kenma replies.

The city still weeps. He wonders if someone’s out there trying to catch raindrops, or perhaps dance and kiss in the rain.

After all, it’s Paris, he thinks. A lot happens in a city people shroud with love.

“Do more,” Tetsurou parrots, confused.

Kenma nods, blinking with the tap, tap, tap that comes from the rain against his window.

The gears don’t turn in Tetsurou’s head until after a few more moments pass, his eyes eventually widening at the memory from three nights ago. It’s always been known that Kenma’s been more of a reserved person when it came to most things in life. Ever the calculated, side character type of person. For the most part it was okay, but he supposes that even the most silent could still have moments where they want to peek a little outside the view from inside the box.

Over the phone, Tetsurou smiles, nodding his head.

“You gotta live a little more, Ken, “ he remembers himself telling the younger man. Given that he was a little past tipsy when he made that impromptu speech, there was never an intention to say it as something to be understood as more than just a passing comment.

“See the world,” he said.

Kenma booked a ticket that night, and three days later he finds himself looking at Paris in the rain, with not much of a plan in mind.

“Do more,” he remembers.

And Tetsurou thinks that this counts.

“You trying to prove something to someone?” he asks Kenma, voice suddenly honest.

Kenma sighs, closing his eyes and thinking of the little world he lives within the big wide universe. He’s never really felt small, but sometimes even Tokyo gets lonely.

“Something like that,” he answers.

“—let’s show them we are better.”

The funny thing about serendipity is that it looks nothing like how it’s supposed to look like.

All your life, when you thought of happy moments in regards to love it was always an image that you thought was set in stone from day one.

Instead, it looks like this:

Wet concrete, a cup of coffee, and the rooftop with the view of the city that’s done nothing but weep since the day you arrived. The rain smelled nice, at least. There was always something about the way it lingered that reminded you of home.

—Of silver, and hazel, and pastel colors, and a goodbye that was said like a hello.

You sigh because you just know Sugawara Koushi’s the kind of person that means to linger after the exit.

But like the nature of serendipity, it’s three minutes later where things take a turn.

It turns into looking like a stranger with golden stars for eyes, a question always looking like it’s wanting to break past the barrier.

He shuffles awkwardly in place, looking like a deer caught in the headlights when you turn your face to look at him. You squint, having half the mind to greet him with a broken bonjour before he’s eventually bowing his head profusely and explaining that he’s sorry with an accent familiar to you.

Classic Tokyo boy, you snort.

“Rain kinda ruined the skyline, huh?” you prompt, breaking the silence.

He shrugs. “Not really here to see the city.”

You blink, not exactly phased. You came here following Koushi, so you were practically in the same boat.

“To do more,” he answers. Vague, you think.

Maybe not the same boat. The same ocean, riding the same current maybe, but not the same boat.

“Do more,” you repeat. “So like, are you soul searching?”

“This is beginning to sound like a bad fanfiction,” he mutters, shaking his head, then sighing. “I guess I’m trying to look outside my comfort zone.”

“Ah,” you nod your head. “So kinda like soul searching, but not really; I get it.”

Beside you, he straightens his back. “You do?”

You shrug. “Everybody’s always seeking for something aren’t they?”

He exhales a sigh that sounds more like a laugh so you laugh along with him.

“Mandy,” you say, giving him your name.

“Kenma,” he says, giving you his in return. “So what’s your story?”

You sigh, thinking about it and realizing that you’ve been feeling a little more lost than found lately.

“You really wanna dive straight into that?”

Kenma thinks of what do more exactly means, and settles that maybe this could be count as something to find the meaning to that.

He shrugs. “I’ll dive in if you do,” he answers, and just like that, the man besides you turns from just a rooftop stranger into a stranger with a name who knew just a little bit more about you than the usual you would think is okay.

(Maybe it’s Paris, or maybe it’s just the way your world has kind of tilted, but as you sound out your tale it feels kind of okay.)

Track 3: Roses | “Get drunk on the good life, I'll take you to paradise.”

“You’re going where?” Koushi asks you, eyes wide.

“Italy.”

Serendipity looks like this too. Wide eyes, and an unconvinced tilt to the head. It sounds like Koushi pacing back and forth in a room, his suitcase packed and ready to go, as is yours, but the destination on your respective tickets going somewhere different.

“Shit,” he says. You pause; he never was the type to curse much. “Do you need me to go with you?”

“I’m going with someone actually,” you decline, voice quiet. Mentally, you curse yourself. Why is your voice even quiet? Looking at it from an objective point of view, you’re an adult. You’re in control of your own salary, and sometimes impulsive decisions are granted because in the long run they’re good for the soul.

“You’re going with a stranger,” he deadpans.

You open your mouth, but no words come out. He had a point.

“Are you okay?”

The words he says sound familiar, and a part of you sighs to itself because in a way you’ve missed the familiar. Paris wasn’t familiar, and neither was the idea of Koushi telling you the forever kind of goodbye. Truth is, he could romanticize the see you later parting all he wanted, but that was kind of it. See you later becomes a couple photos you’ll stare at on social media then scroll past, then eventually into just greeting during the holidays before it dwindles into silence.

Just a box of photos of you and him from the coastal side rural city of your hometown, kept in a box, stored in an attic.

“I’m okay.”

You’re not. Sugawara Koushi and the little world back home is all you’ve known, and even if Paris in the rain became just a city caught in a thunderstorm to you, this wasn’t height of what the rest of the world had to offer.

So you smile. “I just wanna do something a little different for a change. I’m okay, I promise. A change is good right?”

The smile he gives you has you feeling terrified.

“—we could be beautiful.” | Italy

And the truth is, a lot of things really could be just that.

Kenma reminds himself that there’s a lot more to Italy than just the deeper saturated colors in the sky, and wider bloom of the roses, but sometimes his eyes wander. Doing more, rings in his head—again and again kind of like as if it’s a broken record.

So “doing more,” begins with thoughts.

He looks at you. A stranger he met by coincidence at a rooftop of a weeping Paris two weeks ago and now he’s suddenly walking along the coast of Italy with you beside him. He knows your name, a little bit of your story, and the fact that you have EDM music plus a couple of sad boy hour songs in your playlist.

He watches you smile when you lean down to smell the flowers, then wonders why you seem to look happier against the pink roses instead of the classic red.

All it takes is for you to smile at him, once, starry eyed and looking like all you know is the sun, and his thoughts stop for just a second before it spirals.

It fucking spirals. How does it fucking spiral?

The first thought that rings true and crystal fucking clear to him is that he’s certain that he wants to know than more than what he already does.

Why do you look happier next to pink instead of red? Why did it look like you wept with Paris? Why are you in Italy with a stranger you barely even know?

“—hideaway.”

Truth is, you think that Italy’s just a hideaway. One extra week away from home, so that goodbye isn’t goodbye yet.

When you look at Kenma whose eyes look distant when he stares at the distance, you wonder if he’s keeping his eyes on the horizon or trying to look past it.

Maybe Italy’s a hideaway for him too.

“Say you’ll never let me go.”

You fall asleep each night trying to tell yourself that he belongs with the city that cries, while the pastel colors of home would always be there for yours to cherish.

You don’t know what exactly you want to let go of just yet.

Serendipity has you looking at the world like it exists for you to conquer it, and perhaps for some it does. For you, you think you just want something to call yours, and for someone to call you theirs.

Track 4: All We Know | “Maybe we should let this go.”

Kenma’s the first to tell you about letting go.

You have half the mind to ask him of what exactly there even is to let go of, but it’s this one night in Italy where Sicily pours all over again.

“I didn’t know Europe liked to cry,” you laugh, staring at the streets outside.

“Maybe it’s just crying for us,” he offers as a response. To be fair, his words did work as if it’s consolation, so you give him credit for at least that and laugh with him.

Kenma’s nice.

He’s a stranger, but he’s nice.

It’s in Italy where you learned that he liked computer screens over window panes, and the buzz of Tokyo over the silence in Miyagi. He’s young, but he’s settled. There’s a house he’s trying to call home, and a kotatsu that serves him well during the winters.

He was a setter for a team, and has a friend that nags even more than his own mother.

Kenma likes apple pie, and despite the initial impression, he’s pretty good when it comes to conversation. He blushes when you look at him in the eye and smile, but eventually he stopped trying to avoid your gaze whenever you did do that.

You can feel him looking at you again, so you tug on your coat and walk towards where the awning of your impromptu shelter ends, palms stretched out to catch the rain.

(You think of Paris.)

“Wanna make a run for it?” Kenma suggests, hands shrugged in his pocket, and eyes looking like two pools of the most beautiful gold in front of you.

(—then you don’t.)

“Kozume Kenma’s getting kinda bold now,” you snicker, walking closer towards him then to the edge as the rain falls harder.

He puffs his cheeks, turning away from you to face the side, and shrugs off his coat to hold it above his head and your own.

And it’s true, you think; there’s something about gold eyes against dark streets and the bokeh of city lights that just fit. You think to yourself that you know his name, and a little slice of his life, but you want to ask him more.

You’re in Sicily with a familiar stranger, and it’s in this fleeting, little, perfect moment where you think that Paris has always just been a city. Never a chapter in a romance book or the postcard that you dreamed of standing in.

Italy looks like rain and now, and gold, and familiar strangers.

You’re not in love, but maybe you should let some things go.

A car drives past, and the streets clear. There’s more than just a few puddles on the ground, but Kenma’s eyes look like a prettier shade of the moon when it turns gold. He’s chuckling, in the way you think only you’ve heard among all the people in the world, and he feels close.

“—we’ve passed the end so we chase forever.”

So close that he could kiss you.

Is this what doing more means?

Maybe, he thinks; there’s a lot of maybes that comes with serendipity. With a sharp breath, you look at each other, then break out into a run.

“—this is all we know.”

You’re drenched in the rain and you’re laughing. Kenma’s long past given up trying to squeeze out rainwater from his jacket and instead just leans against the wall to look at you.

He likes to think that he’s part of the reason as to why you’ve smiled so much today.

“You good?” he hears you ask, and he nods.

“All good.”

He means it.

-

Track 5: Right Here | “Can we just talk it out like friends?”

-

“Are you running away because of someone?” Kenma asks.

You let his question sit for a few moments to think it through. Are you?

You don’t know, so you sigh, then look at him. “What does love look like to you?”

Kenma shrugs, but doesn’t ask about your question. Instead, he looks forward, twiddles with the frayed string of his sweater and gives you his truth. “It looks like a lot of things.”

He takes your silence as a response, so he continues.

“I love grocery stores at midnight,” he shrugs. “No lines.”

You nod your head, accepting his answer; you suppose that love could be that too. “I love League of Legends,” you try. “Even if some players can get toxic.”

“We should game then,” he mutters.

“Bet.”

You snicker, looking to the side and pretending like you didn’t see the faint dust of red on his cheeks. If he asks, you’ll just say that it’s because of the red in the sky and leave it at that.

He doesn’t, but he does ask for more slices of you. “What else?”

“I love how sunsets look in my city,” you say. “Cosplaying. The stars. My immaculate playlist. Pink roses over red. Purple hair.”

He nods, happy with the fact that he’s piecing together little bits and pieces of you.

“You love someone too,” he says, but the lilt in his voice gives away that he’s asking rather than just stating it.

You think about what he says. When you thought of love it’s always looked like all the shades of silver and maybe a couple palettes with just pastel. It looked like the beige of Paris and the cotton candy skies from home.

Then in comes the rain, the world drenched, and past the rose colored lenses you finally begin to see the first hues of every other color.

Italy, with this vibrant, beautiful kaleidoscope, and Kenma, who stands in the center of it.

You see gold, gold, gold.

“You love someone,” he says, and when the world love registers in your ear you think about how much you loved getting caught in the downpour from last night.

“I do love someone,” you tell him, because a part of you would always call that love. It’s in Italy, next to a stranger, where you learn that love doesn’t always have to be this or that. In reality, it’s actually as simple as being this and that.

The waves off the coast, and the sunny city from the postcards drenched in front of your eyes. The calm before the storm, then the beauty of how the rain falls and wind howls right after. You come to love running from point A to point B in a downpour, with a stranger who held his jacket over you and him as an attempt to keep you dry.

Love can be Koushi, still, and always.

As you calling him later that night and telling him about the adventure that serendipity took you in. He tells you a little bit about Paris, and how he’s always going to be right there, when you need it.

You nod to yourself as he says those words, because you’re fine with the fact that even if he won’t, you can always tell yourself that you’re right here for you.

Track 6: Nobody Compares To You | “Nobody, nobody, nobody compares to you.”

To Kenma, you are what comes with both Paris and Italy and the serendipity found after trying to find a face to correlate with “doing more.”

You’re sitting beside him, on the window seat of a plane headed home, and he spends the duration of the flight above seas thinking that he doesn’t want to approach a goodbye.

At the end of the day, he realizes that he’s just a stranger. And maybe to you he’s just going to be a photograph in an old SD card you’d look at once every couple of years before forgetting about it in an attic, or losing in some corner of a house that would you see you for the rest of this lifetime.

He’s never looked at unpredictability in the face. His whole life he’s sneered at the sight of a break in routine, and what’s unfamiliar, because not everything is laid out for him to acclimate to.

He thinks to himself that maybe Italy would be enough, and the downpour of Europe are wild enough of a memory to catapult him into seeing a little more.

Because he saw so much.

“Do more,” he hears Tetsurou say.

Was booking the first flight out of the country without a plan enough?

Kenma shakes his head no. It was a step, but it wasn’t enough.

Telling himself that he’s always going to have Sicily isn’t enough. Leaning in close, almost kissing you once, and watching the hues of the world burst like fireworks and settle into paintings against the depths of your eyes just once isn’t enough. Knowing that you love to play league but not know who your favorite champions are don’t even come close to being enough either.

He wants this, and wants to know you.

He’s certain that Mandy is a name he’s always going to remember despite the age, but he wants to ask you so much more.

Kenma acknowledges the thought that he wants more photographs on his phone and nights where he’d have no choice but to run across the street in a downpour. The truth that he finds in Italy is that there’s nobody like you, because you are who comes with the colors that he never thought he’d discover outside of Tokyo.

Suddenly the routine he’s bound to come home to isn’t enough anymore.

You’re both skies above Japan, and he wants to look at you watch the sunset and talk about all the things you love again. Whether it be in Italy or Paris. Japan or the rest of the world. Under the shelter of sunlight or in the eye of the storm.

He wants to ask you why you love pink roses more than red.

This isn’t love—not just yet, but it could be.

Track 7: Something Just Like This | “How much you wanna risk?”

All you’ve known is silver, but perhaps gold works too.

Kenma stands beside you, luggage in hand, and the exit a few steps away. How much does he want to risk exactly?

Not a whole lot.

The routine that used to be enough was never a whole lot.

He shifts his weight back and forth between each foot as he wracks his brain with thoughts of what he could say.

On the other hand, you don’t want to say goodbye.

Something just like what you have now is nice. The company of a stranger you saw the world be doused in colors in with is nice. Parting then potentially forgetting isn’t nice.

You think to yourself that maybe all you’ll be to him is a face to match a name, and a stranger meant to remain in only photographs of this slice of his life.

As you close your eyes, the colors of pastel and silver flashes behind your eyelids, but they aren’t blinding. You know it’s not because of just Italy and that rooftop in Paris that gives an answer as to why you’re suddenly seeking gold.

How much do you wanna risk? What exactly is there to risk?

Kenma’s the first to break the silence. “Do we say goodbye here or are we going to do something dumb like book another ticket to another country?”

You bite back a laugh, peeking at him through the curtain of your bangs. He doesn’t look away this time, so you offer him a smile when he meets you halfway.

Now that you think about it, Kenma’s always sort of met you halfway.

(It’s nice.)

“I don’t think my bank account would appreciate me booking another ticket on impulse right now,” you laugh.

Kenma’s eyes glimmer, and you think, gold.

“So you’re saying you’d still go with me?” he asks.

“Not everybody is a CEO to their own company, so maybe next time,” you chuckle, amused at the way he seems to deflate ever so slightly at your words.

“Next time,” he mutters, nodding to himself. “We’ll see each other next time?”

You shrug. “I mean, I’d run in the rain with you again.”

He laughs, shoulders shaking a little, eyes crinkling along with his smile. “See you in the next time?”

The way you smile at him has Kenma thinking about the boundaries evident between saying that he wants to do more than actually doing more. So it’s when you’ve turned your back, a few meters already away from him where he exhales a sigh and calls out your name.

You turn around before he even finishes.

What you see is gold. Gold, gold, beautiful gold; as the center of the kaleidoscope of colors.

“If I kiss you the next time, would you kiss me back?”

Kenma’s still as he sounds out his words, the taste of it foreign in his tongue. But he welcomes it this time. You’re looking at him like he gave you the sun, and he holds his breath.

“Earlier in the trip, back in Paris you said you were looking for something,” you tell him first. “Did you find it?”

A pause, then a smile. “Answer my question first.”

You think about what you’d have to risk if you answer yes, but the only thing that comes to mind are colors you know you’re starting to grow out of, so you roll your eyes, laughing. “Then I’ll look forward to that next time.”

He exhales, shoulders feeling light. “Good to know because I think I found what I was looking for too.”

You prolong the see you later. “Was it yourself or something else?”

The answer comes to him naturally, and he grins. “A little bit of both, actually.”