He takes the steps two at a time. A little overeager, maybe—but it has been two years since he’d left for Japan, and he’d nearly panicked when he noticed that Kazuma had suddenly disappeared from the group downstairs. (He doubts he’ll ever get over how abrupt it had been, the incident on the Burya. The almost sad look in Susato’s eyes when she’d told him that Kazuma had simply gone upstairs was too much.) It’s an inelegant entrance; his footsteps are perhaps too loud, his heels scuff against the wood in his haste, and he really doesn’t understand why these Westerners insist on not removing their shoes indoors.
He reaches the top. As promised, Kazuma’s there. He’s sitting cross-legged on one of the futon Susato had brought from overseas, his posture perfect as usual, and he’s staring out at the full moon through the window. He’s also dressed down, as much as his prosecutor’s outfit allows—gloves and jabot and boots set aside, his saber sitting parallel to the futon on the floor. Ryuunosuke can almost hear him think, and he nearly feels bad when Kazuma breaks his focus to look at him. (Nearly. Because he doubts, even after all this time and everything he’s seen, that a single look into Kazuma’s eyes could make him feel anything besides warmth.)
“Hey,” he says.
Kazuma grins. “Hey,” he says back.
God, he’s missed him. Ryuunosuke feels a smile of his own break out. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”
Kazuma shrugs. “It’s been years since I’ve slept on a futon,” he says, voice light. “I thought I’d get a headstart.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m serious.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t mock me, Ryuunosuke.” Kazuma shifts to the farther half of the futon and pats the other. “Come on. Sit with me.”
Ryuunosuke does, setting his own shoes and accessories aside and drawing his knees toward his chest. He places Karuma parallel to his side of the futon, too—a mirror. Kazuma’s warmth teases in the air between them; he leans into it, letting it press into his side, and he feels Kazuma relax his posture against him. (He should do that more often, Ryuunosuke thinks. Relax a little. Be a little more okay with letting precision go every once in a while.)
“Fine,” Kazuma says suddenly. “I wanted to investigate this floor a bit. See where you’d gotten into all your shenanigans while I was… gone. I’m impressed that you managed to make something of this space. I can just imagine the absolute mess you turned it into.”
Ryuunosuke rolls his eyes. “You and Susato both,” he says. “And I’ll have you know that I knew exactly where everything was! Organizing’s overrated, anyway.”
Kazuma stares at him. In the moonlight, his eyes glow a dark, cloudy gray. Ryuunosuke could spend hours memorizing the way the light reflects in them. “I can’t believe you,” he says.
“Look—as long as you know where everything is and you put it back where you found it, then you don’t need to organize! Simple!”
“That’s a form of organizing, Ryuunosuke! That’s—that’s literally what organizing is!”
“Sholmes agrees with me,” Ryuunosuke says.
Kazuma huffs. “Great,” he says. “That’s my cue to stop listening.”
“He calls it his ‘mind palace.’”
“Terrible. Awful,” Kazuma says with a grin. “Never say those words in succession ever again.”
Ryuunosuke chuckles. “All right, all right. I’ll spare you, Kazuma.”
They fall into a silence—comfortable, ignorant of the distance they’ve traveled apart in the last three years. It never fails to amaze him how easily they slot back together despite an entire continent standing between them, despite that horrible trial that had nearly destroyed them both, despite the time they had lost on the Burya. The fact that they can still hold each other so close to their hearts is a testament, he thinks, to their mutual streaks of stubbornness and affection.
He’d pulled from his thoughts when Kazuma moves to rest his head on his shoulder. He can’t help it; he puts his own head on Kazuma’s instinctively, breathes in as much of him as he can.
“I don’t think I ever apologized,” Kazuma says softly.
Ryuunosuke hums. “For what, Kazuma?” he asks, though he knows all too well what he’s talking about.
“For….” Kazuma lets out a sigh. In that single sound, Ryuunosuke can hear him wrestle his pride aside. “For Lord van Zieks’s trial. For how I behaved. I was… selfish. I was cruel. I’d say I wasn’t myself, but… I don’t believe that. It was just the worst part of me, I think. And I used that to hurt Lord van Zieks. Susato. You.” He turns his head, tucking his face into Ryuunosuke’s shoulder. “I wasn’t the person you thought I was. And I’ll never forget that.”
Ryuunosuke feels a smile pull at his mouth—sad, but not unwelcome. “It’s nothing I haven’t forgiven you for, Kazuma,” he says. “Trust me. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
“… I do,” Kazuma replies, his voice barely above a whisper. “Trust you, that is. More than I trust myself.” He pauses. “Thank you.”
“Always.” He says it softer than he’d intended; he feels his face heat up. He doesn’t know why it’s so much easier to say these things when Kazuma’s right there—all those months of staring at blank pages, pen in hand, desperately willing his body to put what his soul was screaming into words simply disappear in a flash of smoke when he’s sitting beside him.
Well. Maybe he knows why.
“Besides,” he hears himself continue. “I never told you that I missed you.”
Kazuma snorts. Moves so Ryuunosuke has to move, too, that connection broken until he looks into Ryuunosuke’s eyes. “Lie down, partner,” he says, already doing so himself. “I’ve wanted to do this since we boarded that godforsaken ship.”
Whatever Kazuma has planned, it doesn’t help how pink Ryuunosuke’s face must be by now. He slides onto his back. Kazuma’s on his side, elbow propping his head up and eyes on him.
“Turn that way,” Kazuma says, gesturing toward the other side of the room, and Ryuunosuke does that, too. (Because of course he does. He’d traveled halfway across the globe for him, spine bent in a glorified hardwood box the entire way. He’d carried his soul on his hip—as a memory, as a reminder. He’d watched him push himself to the brink at the other side of a courtroom, truth after truth shredding him apart. No matter how much it hurts either of them, there’s only so much Ryuunosuke wouldn’t do for him.)
“What—oh.” Ryuunosuke feels Kazuma press against his back, his warmth a line between them, and feels one of his arms snake around to rest across his waist. He takes a breath in. Settles into it. “Ah,” he exhales. “You wanted to do this, huh?”
Kazuma chuckles, his forehead resting in Ryuunosuke’s hair. “Yeah,” he says. “I never stopped thinking about how much room there was on that bed, to be honest.”
Ryuunosuke’s just glad that he can’t see the red on his face. “There wasn’t that much room.”
“Exactly.”
“Kazuma!”
Another laugh, mirthful, that makes Kazuma’s shoulders shake against him. “I missed you, too.”
Ryuunosuke grins. “Missed you more.”
“Oh my God. We are not doing this.” He sighs again—wistful this time. “Fine. Missed you more.”
“Uh-uh. Missed you more.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Kazuma says, his voice painfully fond.
Shouts suddenly rush up the stairs—Sholmes demonstrating some new invention to Susato and Gina, no doubt. Maybe a serum to determine who, exactly, licked an envelope shut or something. A device much like the inventor himself: equal parts thrilling, inane, and genius.
“You can head back downstairs, if you want,” Kazuma mumbles. “I think I’m gonna stay up here a little while longer.”
Ryuunosuke hums again. And he considers it—briefly. But the thing is, this is Kazuma. Kazuma, who’d stumbled over a tongue twister at the very end of the greatest speech of his university career. Kazuma, who’d almost sacrificed his nearly decade-long goal to reach Britain just to defend him in court. Kazuma, who was so close to breaking into nothing in the halls of the Old Bailey. Kazuma, whom Ryuunosuke loves in all his iterations—and who looks back at him the exact same way.
(… Love. Yeah. It sounds right.)
He takes the hand hanging off his waist in his; he hears Kazuma take in a breath. “It’s all right,” he replies. “I can see if I need to feel bad about Gina’s next investigation later.”
Another snort. “He does make it easy to feel bad for the Yard, doesn’t he,” Kazuma says. And then he gives Ryuunosuke’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Okay. If that’s what you want, partner.”
It is, Ryuunosuke thinks as he lets himself melt into the futon. God, it is.