Breathe Me

Disclaimer: Don't own either Sia's "Breathe Me" or Fujimaki Tadatoshi's Kuroko no Basuke.

Things change; leaves turn over and seasons give way and people leave. It's been almost a year since he left Los Angeles, almost a year since he's been able to confidently put his feet on familiar soil and say he's home and really mean it. Oh, he's managing all right here, but it's so damn lonely. It's hard to place what exactly he misses from back home, because it's easy to say that English rolls off his tongue better and sits better in his ears and it's warmer and the sun touches his skin in a way that he's just used to and he can be more comfortable in his skin and doesn't have to watch what he says or does because that's where he fits in, that's where he has a niche. He left Japan when he was so small, can barely remember the way it was back then, can barely remember a time that he didn't live in Los Angeles. It's almost irrelevant that he was once a native of some other city. At the time, he was too young to feel homesickness, to even be able to start understanding that he should feel that way.

But he shouldn't feel this way now, not when he's shed so many cells and has changed, with the leaves, grown and also clipped himself back, morphed his shape. Even if he goes back right now, will he still fit in his place, or will the city have moved on and stuck another anonymous person there? There must be some kid with unruly hair and no talent who spends all night on the basketball courts and wears his Dodgers cap backwards and is saving up for a fitted for when his head stops growing. And when he comes back, things will have moved on without him, stores closed and reopened and buildings torn down and rebuilt and the skyline changing by fractions until it no longer resembles his home. They will redo the floors in his old apartment, lower the ceilings to fit the new wires in a cheap renovation update, paint over the lead in the walls and rip out the fucked-up circuitry. His middle school basketball records will be shattered, if they haven't been already by the new kids, the next great ones. His uniform number has been issued and reissued. He is fading from Los Angeles, fading from the bright lights and waves of people. He stays up late at night imagining the sidewalks, calm and deserted in the early morning sunlight except for a few people walking their dogs. And the smog, the dust, the way everything is always clogged-it's too clean here. It's too orderly; it makes him terribly uncomfortable.

"Does it get better?" he asks Liu, frowning as the sun sets too early for this time of year, holding a half-deflated basketball in his hands.

Liu knows exactly what he's talking about. He shakes his head, looks down at Himuro and gazes into his eye with that look in his own eyes he sometimes gets. He's thinking about his home, too, geographically closer though it might as well be thousands of miles away (but shouldn't he be thinking in kilometers now?).

They'd been grouped together from day one by that damn Fukui ("Hey, Liu, we have another new weird foreign kid! And he's even in your grade!") and at first they hadn't quite hit it off. There wasn't much to talk about besides basketball, although they had decent on-court chemistry and didn't not get along. They were on different wavelengths, had different interests and different friends. But, slowly, things have evolved. They've grown closer, something that has been (not entirely) related to the departure of the third-years. They're the ones at the top, now. Weren't they already lonely? Yeah. But the spaces are emptier without Fukui's shenanigans and Okamura's complaints, and emptiness gives them time to think, and they do not want to think.

"It gets worse," Liu says, placing a thin hand on Himuro's shoulder. His accent is straining, as if the language is bitter and wrong on his tongue, like he wants to cast it aside and forget it and tune it out. "Because you forget."

And Himuro has already forgotten so much, so many specifics even though he's got an eye for detail, and the scenes he's replayed in his head are blurry and filled with gaps, and he cannot remember names and faces when he tries to anymore because gradually they are being replaced by the people in Akita, and Himuro racks his brain and lies awake at night trying to replay them and fix them, tries to remember even though the memories are sometimes irrelevant, tries to recapture something.

But he cannot. He forgets, and will continue to forget, and even when he goes back there will be gaps and bumps and rough edges in his memories that will cut him over and over again until he stops thinking of them.

Liu sits beside him and for a while does not speak. He reaches out and touches the ends of Himuro's hair, rubbing them between his fingers. He knows he needs a haircut, that the strands are splitting and unraveling and fraying at the ends. Liu leans his head on Himuro's shoulder, not exactly the way Murasakibara does it, more carefully. "I do not like the air here."

It's not just the consistency and the way it's too thin; this air sounds wrong. Music doesn't blast from cars the same way; sound doesn't seem to travel here; it just dies. Akita is where everything dies, Himuro thinks spitefully. They shut out their opponents here and voices don't travel and words shrivel on lips and he is choking on the way the wind blows and he needs to fill his mouth with something more normal so he places it on Liu's.

The other's eyes widen in shock but then he kisses back, hungry and aching in just the same way Himuro is. They feel the same discomfort, the same way of being out of place. It's unexplainable and unfixable, something that may never change. Liu's body is larger and heavier, with the weight of a long stay here, perhaps. They are both tired of being here, tired of walking to some rhythm that's not a setting on their personal metronomes.

Liu's collarbone sticks out and looks as if it's going to poke right through the skin if Himuro bites it, but it doesn't. He whines in surprise, and Himuro admires the pale dents made by his teeth, yet is surprised that he does not break the skin, that the skin is deep enough to form this temporary cavity even if the bite was more pressure than sharpness.

His reverie is interrupted as Liu kisses him, still with the same want, the same need to taste something less bitter than this air.