Chapter Text
Sometimes, he wished he could free fall into the sky, let the spectrums catch him by the hem of his sweater. He wished he could dive right in, gravitational pull letting him go and hurling him through time and space and every nebula in its wake. He wondered what stars looked like up close. He wanted to touch them, hold them, press them tight against his chest - let them burn their way into his core. 100 thousand degrees Fahrenheit. They’d reduce him to nothing. He'd be part of an abyss.
But the nearest star was 93 million miles away, and he knew he'd never reach it in time.
He'd never reach her in time.
Hiro curled his spine back into a seating position. Only now did he notice how cold the metal was. His limbs were shaking, fingers numb, lips dry. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been staring at the sky. Time was stupid. It seeped right through his cracks when he didn't pay enough attention. Time either moved too fast or too slow, but it was never steady enough for him to keep his footing.
Hiro watched as a cloud migrated over his stars - smothering them, muting them.
Time had been the last thing on his mind.
Hiro pushed himself onto his feet. The fire escape groaned and creaked like he was inflicting pain on the brittle little bars. Mochi was pressed against the window. She was staring at him, giant button eyes screaming 'fucking feed me'. Hiro flicked a finger against the glass. The cat didn’t even flinch. Sometimes, he wasn’t even sure if Mochi was actually a cat. Maybe she was an alien, a furry fat alien that liked eating shoe laces.
Hiro pulled the hem of his sweater up to his elbow and flicked his wrist. The watch buzzed to life, display twitching.
5:34 a.m.
They’d be open soon.
Hiro locked the window. Mochi’s eyes widened. Her paws started batting at the reflection staring back at him. It looked like she was gauging his eyeballs out. Mochi hissed. Hiro hissed right back. She was going to eat his shoe laces. And by the way her eyes were going all radioactive, she was going to devour his mattress too. Hiro narrowed his eyes. Mochi started gnawing at the glass. He had to buy more catnip.
Hiro climbed down the fire escape. It was like he was descending into another layer of the atmosphere. He liked to pretend he couldn’t breathe as well down there. He liked to pretend it was darker, deeper, like a pit that was clawing at the hem of his sweater, ready to devour him with one single bite.
And when Hiro reached the concrete below, he was 18 stories away from his stars. 18 stories and 93 million miles away from 100 thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
And her.
✦
Hiro wove himself in and out of the early morning hours, feet firmly planted onto his board. He liked using it in the alleyways. No boardwalks. He could zoom as fast as he wanted to. He could kick it up onto the brick walls and the edges of dumpsters, wavering in between the verticals. The buckles were cutting through the material of his sneakers and bruising his skin. He drifted over a puddle, air pulling the water with the tow. The back of his legs were drenched. He didn’t care. He was tired. He hadn’t slept. That wasn't something new.
The alleyways were weary, lulling in and out of a twilight coma. Everything was strung out, tired and beat from the happenings of another night. The last few passers-by had their heads dangling a little lower, fingers curled around half-empty liquor bottles and dying cigarettes. And in this light the streets didn’t look scary, the way they usually did. They were just sad and sick - and maybe even a little apologetic.
Hiro kicked the heel of his feet into the buckles, and the board upped its pace, panel sending vibrations up his muscles until his skin started to itch. His head was tingling with sleep and caffeine withdrawal and stars.
He broke out of the concrete maze. He shifted his board uphill and wove himself into a race with the trams and the first commuters. The scenery started changing, two places melting into each other like colors mixing on a palette. It was weird realizing that San Fransokyo didn’t just consist of decaying alleyways and sewage toxins. There were nice places here, too. Clean. Cozy. Places where families lived, where kids learned how to drive bicycles on sidewalks, where they had gardens on rooftops, where they had organic markets and hipster bistros and stores that sold vinyls for a buck fifty - where you could take the hoodie from your head and smile, and it wouldn’t be wrong to expect one back. This was a place where everyone smiled back. Everything was too soft, too friendly, too bright for Hiro not to narrow his eyes and blink like crazy.
His stomach started to churn. Bile bubbling.
But then here he was, racing to a fucking cafe to get a fucking cup of coffee he was just barely capable of affording. Sometimes, he did stupid things like this, and he kept questioning them, and he kept dodging the answers until he stopped looking for reasons. He just did this. He bought the cheapest cup of filter coffee in a place that made his stomach churn.
The Lucky Cat Cafe was dipped in the glow of the lantern lights. Not one light was broken. Not a single one. And even though it was still dark, it felt like these streets were a place where it was an endless loop of lazy afternoons, where even the shadows were nothing but soft discolorations in an afterglow. Pleasant lights. Pleasant breeze. Pleasant colors. Everything was lukewarm. Hiro punched a fist into his abdomen, just hard enough to make the spinning stop. His tongue was getting bitter.
It was a few minutes past six. The air around the building smelled like cayenne pepper and coffee ground. Hiro smiled. And then he stopped smiling.
He didn't want anyone to see.
He slipped his feet out of the buckles, flailing as he bounced onto the ground. It was always a little weird getting used to the steadiness. The concrete didn’t shift, didn’t twitch, and Hiro felt a little dizzy as he clambered up the flight of stairs leading to the door.
They had a new sign. White. No dents. Neat letters. Soft curves.
We’re open! Come on in!
Hiro frowned at the new sign. It was a little too - aggressive. And as he pressed his shoulder against the glass door, he debated on wether to tell Cass about the fact that he didn’t like it. And then he reminded himself that Cass was a stranger who worked in a cafe, and that Hiro was a stranger who bought cheap filter coffee at said cafe. Sometimes, he got lost in overestimations. He couldn’t just tell her he didn’t like the sign. But it was an instinct, a habit he needed to get rid of because it was messing with his brain. The universe was messing with his brain. Nothing new. It was like Hiro was it’s favorite play thing. He probably struggled too much. Fucking fun.
The bells chimed above his head. Hiro smiled. He let it drop. His chest was too warm.
The inside of the cafe was quiet, a calm kind of quiet that made him think of afterglows and the state of mind you were in when you watched the sun spread its arms into the sky. It was the best time to be here, right when it opened in the early morning hours. You could sit next to the window and watch the sky open its eyes, watch it wake up. And he liked the feeling he got when he sat and watched and waited. Sometimes, he’d get all gooey, and he'd have this weird inkling of these sensations being familiar. But it was always distant, like burrowed memories, things hiding in the creases of his brain. Shit like that. Hiro would never let anything get too far. He'd shrug it off, and sometimes he'd actually succeed.
Hiro squeezed himself onto the armchair next to the store front window. It was his favorite chair in the whole entire world. Something he hated to admit.
He slumped into the scratched up cushions, squishing his spine further and further into the leather until the strain made his legs ache. He rested his feet onto his board. He kicked it on, and it lifted itself off of the hardwood floor, hovering from left to right in steady motions, as if his toes were drifting over waves. The Beatles were playing in the background. Octopus’s Garden. They only ever played The Beatles. Hiro didn’t mind.
The first beam of sunlight hit his features, and he watched and waited and smiled a little longer than he wanted to.
"Good morning."
Hiro twitched. His smile dropped.
That wasn’t Cass. Cass hung an exclamation mark after each and everything she said. Hiro shifted in the chair, turning to peak at the counter.
"Coffee, right? No sugar, no milk? Small?"
A boy was standing next to the cash register. That was definitely not Cass - but that was his usual order. The other boy was smiling. All big and bright. The epitome of a nice smile. Wide open. It was unfurling the bottom of his slender face, stretching the corners of his mouth all the way to his ears. He had funny ears. They were big. They made him look like a child - a tall child with broad shoulders and slender legs and big hands. Big hands. The kind of hands that reminded him of warm burrows and deep heart lines.
He was wearing a baseball cap. Inside. Who still wore baseball caps nowadays? This guy's sneakers looked like mint candies for fuck's sake. They were a pain in his peripheral vision.
Hiro watched him weave himself through the constellation of coffee tables and chairs, big hands clasping a pen and a notepad. Big hands.
The boy stumbled as he squeezed himself past a shelf full of tea cups. "Whoops. Sorry, 'bout that."
Hiro didn’t know why he was apologizing. Maybe he was apologizing to the shelf. He seemed the type. Maybe. Probably.
"That was right, right?" the other boy asked. He was standing in front of him. Towering. Or maybe Hiro just couldn’t deal with the angle. The boy flicked the bill of his cap out of his face, and he was looking down at him. He had nice eyes.
Timber. Remote cabins. Itchy warm cardigan sweaters bunching around fingers and mugs of green tee. Afternoon glows in October. Cozy.
Lukewarm.
The boy was saying something. It sounded like gibberish, like Hiro was listening to him from the bottom of a lake.
"Or... is there another kid with Kaiju Krogar sweaters and hover boards that comes here at six a.m. on weekdays?" He lifted a brow so high it disappeared beneath the bill. Hiro was still staring. He couldn’t help shake the feeling of this guy needing a Beatle’s song playing in the background wherever he went. All comfy and sunshine. He smelled like it, too. Laundry detergent. Fresh. Hiro could smell it from all the way here.
The other boy’s smile wavered.
Pretty people made Hiro’s brain hurt.
"Okay...uh - sorry. I’m guessing that’s not you then?" He paused, tapped the tip of his pen against the notepad. Ball pen morse code. "New to this. Aunt Ca - uh - the usual barista gave me a rundown on the morning costumers. She’s sick today." He inhaled, chest puffing up, as if he wanted to continue. But he didn’t. Hiro’s board started creaking. The sound fed the tension that was cutting through The Beatle’s like a scratch.
"Yeah."
"Hm?" The boy raised both of his eyebrows until they disappeared.
"To the coffee." Hiro pressed his board to the floor. It stopped vibrating. "Yes, to - the coffee."
"Yes, to the coffee," the other boy repeated. His smile started to twitch, and then it was cracking him open. His teeth were trying to devour his face. Hiro’s chest started to get all gooey. His hands were woven into his sweater. He ripped them free.
"Cool. Okay. I’ll go get that...then...for you," he said. "The coffee. No milk, no sugar, right? Small?"
Hiro nodded. Once. It was one nod, the shift of his chin barely existent. The other boy nodded like some sort of answer to Hiro’s sort-of-a-nod. Hiro shifted on the chair, swinging his head back a fraction, just enough to make his hair fall further into his face.
"Cool board, by the way. Nice engine housings. I like the reflectors."
He said it like he knew what he was talking about. The boy leaned forward, staring down at the board beneath Hiro’s sneakers. Only now did Hiro realize that the shoelaces of his left sneaker weren't tied. He didn’t know why he decided to be bothered by something so stupid at this specific moment. They were shoelaces. The other boy probably didn’t even give a single crap about wether or not his shoelaces were tied - or if there bumps and holes in the rubber soles and indents caused by furry fat alien cat teeth.
"You make it?"
The boy was looking back at him. Cozy eyes. Too cozy.
Hiro nodded. He swallowed. His hair was tickling his eyeballs.
"Cool," the boy said. "Really cool." He was still looking at Hiro. Hiro felt like melting into his sweater until he was nothing but a human mush-puddle in an armchair. The boy blinked. He was still smiling. How was someone capable of smiling so long? It didn’t even look constipated. It looked so nice. It made Hiro want to smack it from his face, the way he swatted mosquitos in the sticky mid-July heat.
"Alright. Cool. Coffee coming right up."
He said cool too much.
Hiro managed another sort-of-a-nod. The boy stood there, staring down at him, waiting, or just breathing, or just taking something in that Hiro couldn’t see. And then his smile went small, and it looked even brighter than before, and The Beatle’s were humming away to "Here Comes The Sun". The boy disappeared behind the counter before Hiro had a chance to make his chest go quiet. He wove his fingers back into the mesh of his oversized sweater. He felt smaller in it, smaller than usual. The sun was blasting through the windows, and it was the first time Hiro thought it was a little too aggressive.
Today was weird.
Hiro couldn’t concentrate on watching the world wake up. He kept his eyes plastered to his untied sneaker. The other boy brought him a mug of coffee, a hue darker than the two eyes hidden beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He smiled, and Hiro frowned, and the guy kept smiling like his facial muscles weren’t capable of doing anything other than cozy affection. He tried to pick up a conversation: the weather, Obama, cool stuff, Christmas, the micro garden he was trying to grow in the guest bathroom.
Hiro couldn’t reciprocate. He just kept melting into his chair, hair bunching up in his face until he couldn’t see anything other than black tendrils and tiny rays of sunshine. And when the boy finally steered back to the counter to help another costumer, his coffee was cold. Hiro’s chest was boiling.
✦
"Morning, babe."
Hiro had just unbuckled his feet. He had jelly legs. His head was a jumble of scrambled brain matter. He was not in the mood for sewage-green hair and cheshire grins and babe.
"Fuck you, Kermit," Hiro mumbled as he shouldered his way past Chess. It was not much of a challenge. It was almost as if he liked it when Hiro shoved him around. Hiro didn’t like it as much. It was a trigger. It made his brain pulsate a little more than usual.
"Kermit...Really?"
Hiro ignored him, and shoved his backpack onto a free spot, waving a hand in the air. The motion sensors were always delayed. Just like everything else down here. The lights snapped on one by one, flickering and twitching until they were brighter than the sun. Hiro wished he hadn’t turned on the lights. The workshop was drowning in chaos. Everything was turned upsides down and inside out. Digital disarray. Nobody bothered keeping it in order - or god forbid, clean. Everyone just used what they needed, not giving a single shit about putting anything back. There was no system in the workshop. There never was. It was a crooked collection of pieces falling into each other. Jumper cables here. Battery holders there. Hot tweezers stuck onto computer screens that had been forgotten to be turned off. Hiro picked up a micro flush cutter from the dusty floor. Somebody had left the remnants of a broken beer bottle beneath a table. Hiro clamped his bottom lip between his teeth. He inhaled longer than he needed to, louder than he wanted to.
"What’s up with you today? You look so-" Chess growled. Feral. "Angry. I like it."
Hiro whipped his head around, narrowing his eyes until the world started to distort and the boy in front of him was nothing but this blurry, black fracture with green blobs on its head. "Fuckable," Chess mouthed. Hiro dug his fingernails into his palms, knuckles strained and ready to rip right through that stupid green skull. Maybe he’d tear those stupid piercings out of his face first. This was definitely not what he needed on a Monday.
This was definitely not what he needed ever. Period.
"Seriously?" Hiro barely opened his mouth. It had sounded like a hiss. "Here? Where we work? With Bee in the vicinity?"
He pointed at a corner of the room. A large figure was leaning against the wall. Gargantuan and silent. In this light, it looked like Bee’s bald head was glowing from the inside out. It was blinding like staring straight into the sun or an atomic explosion. Bee’s head was like a shiny egg sitting on a mountain of flesh-colored silly putty.
"Bee loves to watch," Chess said. Hiro grit his teeth. Bee arched an eyebrow, a chubby middle finger plunging through the air. Bee looked like he wanted to eat Chess.
"Fuck you," Hiro said because he needed to create more tension in the already-strained-to-its-full-capacity atmosphere. Monday’s weren’t their thing.
Hiro fought his way to the cork board, trying his best to ignore Chess' cackles. It was like listening to a hyaena - a big-mouthed hyaena with ripped-up jeans and alt-rock tattoos and ADHD.
Bee stayed quiet. Bee would break the universe if he ever let a word slip.
Their boss had pinned their projects onto the board, crackly letters scratched into ripped napkins or bubblegum wrappers. Hiro rushed through his list, internally screaming because how was he supposed to finish it all by the end of the day? Blake was on a mission to kill them. All of them. Hiro debated on wether to punch screwdrivers through his eyeballs and just get it over with.
"So...I was thinking..."
Hiro groaned. Chess never thought good things. Everything inside of his head was plain toxic and bad, naturally horrible and really, really stupid.
"I was thinkin’ we go for a little test drive? You know...with your bot and stuff. Tonight? What do you say, princess?" Chess fought his way between Hiro and the cork board. His eyes were paler than usual, washed out, like the skies in his irises were wrung dry. He had Vanessa written all over his hollow face. Hiro could tell. Hiro pretended like he couldn’t.
He swallowed, averting his stare to the cross tattooed beneath Chess' collar bones. It was just as ironic as it had been on the day he’d gotten it.
"Can’t." Hiro didn’t want to think about the tiny tin man slumped in his trashcan. He hadn’t had the guts to throw it away. Yet.
"What?" Chess' eyes went huge. "The fuck? Why? Your - I mean, your bot’s ready! I don’t know what you keep bitching about."
Hiro looked up. He had to shift onto his toes.
"It’s not ready."
"C’mon, Hiro." Chess huffed, and a puff of air split Hiro’s fringe in half. Chess' breath smelled acidic. Vinegar. Tobaco. Hiro shook his hair, forcing the strands to fall back into his eyes.
"Dude, It’s ready!"
"No. It’s not."
"Yes, it is!
"No."
"Please?"
Hiro didn’t know why Chess thought saying please would change the fact that, no, he didn’t have a bot. He did have something, but it was not a bot, not something that could win, not something he could be proud of.
"Pretty please?" Chess' voice was sugar-coated, and there was a smile ripping through his skull. It was like dumping rainbow sprinkles onto mold. Chess wasn’t capable of nice things.
The thought made Hiro think about the boy in the cafe the other day, the boy with the October eyes and the nice smile. Lukewarm. Chess was a million miles away from a nice smile. A million.
"Get your face out of my face." Hiro curled his fingers into the other boy’s bony shoulders and pushed him aside.
"That’s not what you said last week," Chess breathed. Hiro let go. He swallowed. His mouth was dry.
"Again." Hiro inhaled. "Bee’s in the room." Hiro exhaled, pushing all the tension out of his insides. But it was still there, and it was coiling his stomach into a knot.
"Bee!" Chuck shouted so loud Hiro's ears were ringing. Bee looked up from where he was staring at his fingernails. He looked so ready to hurt something - or someone. "Bee, my man! Leave! Hiro and I are going to have angry sex."
"Go have angry sex with Bee," Hiro spat.
"That’s actually not such a bad idea." Chess smirked, and Hiro wanted to bash his teeth in. "Depends on wether it would make you jealous."
"Chess. You can screw whoever you want. I don’t give a shit. Just leave me alone."
And with that, Hiro ripped his list from the cork board, fighting his way back to his work table. Chess was staring daggers into his spine. He could feel it.
"So...that’s a yes to the bot fight?"
"That’s a no to everything that has anything to do with you." Hiro tried hard not to flail with his arms, but he felt like trampling around, shattering the earth beneath his feet like a raging child.
"I’ll pretend like that didn’t break my heart, sugar plum."
Hiro tugged his earbuds out from where they’d been dangling around his neck and beneath his sweater. He stuffed them into his ears so hard it hurt. He didn’t turn the music on.
"But what if I wasn’t there?"
Chess never gave up.
Hiro reached for his phone.
"No, look I’m serious!" The boy stumbled towards his table, squeezing himself onto his lap. Hiro shoved him off. Chess was kneeling, looking up at him with those giant pale marble eyes. He was twitching. Everything about him was twitchy.
"I’m sorry, okay?" His voice was too urgent to sound like an apology. "It’s just - You’ve been working on that thing since you’ve started working here. You’re a bot fighting prodigy! I mean, you could become a billionaire!"
Chess' finger was pressed into Hiro’s chest, right in the indent at the base of his ribcage. The boy's fingernails were bitten off, jagged, broken. His knuckles were vibrating.
"I mean, where’s that kid who wanted to take over the fucking world?"
Hiro’s chest went numb. He couldn’t feel Chess' fingers. Chess was an asshole. He hated Chess. He hated Mondays. He hated this place. He hated that broken bot in his trashcan. He hated the fact that he couldn’t do anything anymore. Nothing. And he hated himself, God, he hated himself. But he hated her more. So much more.
And then he realized that this - this right here, right now - was his life. Drinking coffee at nice places wasn’t real. It was a dream, a dimension where he pretended that all this wasn’t his life, that the person that stared back at him in scratched up dive bar mirrors was not him.
The scar on Hiro’s left temple started to throb, as if it was trying to fight for his attention. It was screaming, shattering his ear drums from the inside out.
"Chester...It’s not ready."
I’m not ready.
✦
He didn’t question it anymore. Here he was again. It was early, too early, so early Hiro could still feel the night tapered to his skin. Dried sweat. Liquor memoirs. He was probably still drunk. It felt like he was trapped beneath a steady undertow, liquid rippling through the layers of his skin, as if it was flaking, as if he was human onion, coats slowly drifting apart.
He was most probably still drunk. A little.
Hiro had let Chess drag him to the arenas. He hadn’t fought. He hadn’t had a bot. And it was horrible. Hiro had watched all these fighters with their high-tech robo puppets, letting them bawl and thunder in the cages, and it had been the first time that he’d thought he’d lose against each and every one of them. Those hadn’t been normal thoughts. But Hiro has been thinking those thoughts a lot lately.
He was shifting. Things in his brain were being torn apart and rearranged. It was like he was changing, languidly turning into someone he never thought he’d be.
Someone who just couldn’t.
There was a cigarette clamped between his lips, and he was still debating on wether to light it or not. He didn't even smoke.
He could see the stars from here. He was lying on the boardwalk, legs angled onto the street, eyes plastered against the spectrums above. It didn’t take long for him to filter out the constellations. To others, the night sky was just this giant dome above their heads, painted with random dots and darkness. But Hiro could see it for what it really was. A system. A structure. Interstellar evolution. An eternal cycle of star clusters flickering and fading in the midst of their Nebulae. The galaxies were the manifestation of the balance between creation and destruction, power and surrender. There was life up there, life amongst the gas and dust. There was love and war and loss, realms trying to stay alive in the order of a cosmic dynasty. And Hiro wished - if just for a second - that he could hear it, the stories, the rhythms of their lives, all the things he couldn’t understand from way down here.
Hiro blinked. He was becoming crazy. He was thinking all the things he used to roll his eyes at when she mentioned them, when she stared up at the neon stars she’d stuck to their ceiling. The whole entire apartment had been a plastic night sky. He’d thought she was crazy. Apparently, Hiro was crazy, too. He missed her so much, so fucking much. And the more he missed her, the more his brain was changing - the more he felt like he just couldn't do this anymore. He didn't even know what this was.
The lights of the cafe flicked on, cozy glows spilling out of the large windows and onto the pavement. Hiro could hear The Beatles. Finally.
He stuck the cigarette back into the pocket of his sweater and rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes. They were burning. Everything was burning.
"Good morning."
Again, no exclamation mark. It was the boy. He was leaning against the counter next to the cash register, smiling like he was trying to replace the freaking sun. Hiro shook his hair into his eyes. He managed a sort-of-a-nod. The boy smiled until Hiro started to blink.
"Coffee? No sugar, no milk? Small?" He asked, already shuffling towards the back of the counter. Hiro didn’t know why he kept asking. He thought they’d established everything by now.
Yes. Coffee. No sugar. No milk. Small.
But then again, it felt like he constantly needed to fill the silence. Or maybe Hiro was just frowning more than usual.
"You look like -"
"Shit." Hiro deadpanned, slumping into his usual seat. The boy coughed. It was an adorable cough. People shouldn’t be allowed to cough so adorably.
"I was going to say you looked like you needed a coffee."
"Same thing," Hiro mumbled into his sweater. He had his shoes pressed into the cushion, legs tucked against his chest, face buried into his knees and the collar of his sweater. He smelled like sweat and smoke. Hopefully October Eyes could transcend his fruit-basket-smell onto him. Because he smelled really, really nice today. Nicer than usual.
A mug of coffee slid onto the table in front of him, big hands curled around the stained porcelain. Big hands. Hiro looked up.
"Here." The boy handed over a packet, waving it in front of his face, gesturing for Hiro to take it.
Hiro narrowed his eyes. The boy laughed. He had a nice laugh, the kind of laugh that tried to tickle its way into his stomach and sprinkle his walls with glitter. Rainbow glitter. It made Hiro want to hurl.
"It’s on the house. Just take it."
Hiro took it. Gummy bears. His brain went fuzzy.
"Cass went insane. We have a giant box full of those in the back." The boy cocked his head to the counter, dark hair flopping onto his forehead. He wasn’t wearing his baseball cap today. Hiro could see his eyes better. "Said...we needed freebies and everything. I can give you another one if you want. We have a ton."
Hiro wanted to nod, but he shook his head. The packet crumpled in between his fingers. He liked gummy bears. And he wanted to tell him that. He wanted to say thank you. He wanted to apologize for being the epitome of gloom. He wanted to ask him what his name was, and where Cass was hiding, and that he didn’t like the new sign hanging behind the door, because for some reason he was allergic to everything nice.
But Hiro kept his mouth clamped shut. He was pressing his teeth into the slots, so hard his jaw was droning. There wasn’t enough alcohol in his system for him to reciprocate. Or to just act normal.
"Cool sweater." October Eyes pointed one of his slender fingers at Hiro’s chest. Hiro swore he could feel it, that finger pressing itself against his skin and bone. The thought made The Beatles sound far louder.
Hiro was wearing an Android Alto sweater. The living, breathing stereotype of all underground punk bands. Hiro didn’t know if this guy liked the crappy font or if he actually listened to them. Because October Eyes looked like he listened to The Beatles 24/7 - and bird chirps in Spring and children’s laughter.
Maybe he’d just wanted to fill the silence, the way he always did. Hiro almost appreciated it. Almost.
The boy stayed a little longer, hovering, waiting for an answer Hiro didn’t know how to structure. His brain was caught in a neurological blender. The boy was still smiling. Hiro wasn’t looking, but he could feel it, like a breeze or like the rays of an overheated lightbulb.
And when he steered back towards the counter with another "cool", Hiro swore he could still feel that smile sticking to his skin. A residue. Lukewarm.
The cafe started to fill, people spilling in and out in a steady rhythm. Hiro had finished the gummy bears, washing them down with his semi-cold coffee and his gibberish-thoughts. But he hadn’t watched the sun grow out from the jagged horizon, the way he usually did. He’d been watching the boy - was still watching him. October Eyes took his time with each and every customer, handing out smiles like fucking birthday presents. And they looked genuine, as if he meant each twitch of his slender mouth. He had the face for smiling. He had the hands for helping. Hiro didn’t know him. Maybe he never would. But this was a good person, someone who did good so well, it seemed effortless, natural. And he fit so perfectly into this place, into this cozy little corner of San Fransokyo, into this dream - into Hiro's escape.
The boy was having a conversation with an old woman. He was leaning over the opposite chair from her, notepad and pen dangling from his fingers. He was laughing, and the woman was laughing, and it was like her wrinkles were disappearing one by one, like this kid was some sort of anti-wrinkle-magician. Hiro’s brain was melting. The boy kicked his head to the side, eyes holding Hiro's stare. Hiro flicked his attention back to the notebook in his lap. His brain was a puddle of goo. It was oozing out of his ears. Hopefully, October Eyes couldn’t see it from all the way there.
Hiro tried to concentrate on the designs sprawled across the pages, but they were all horrible, and he knew they were horrible, and he had no idea why he had opened his notebook in the first place. He was never going to be able to start anything with this. Not now. Maybe not ever. Chess was wrong. Like always.
Hiro's fingers spasmed around his pen. The plastic cracked.
"That looks really good. Yours?"
Hiro slammed his head to the side, so abruptly, he smacked his face into the leather of the chair. The boy chuckled. Hiro tried to hate it.
He looked back at the pages sprawled across his lap.
Really good.
Bullshit.
Hiro tried to cover the pages with his elbows, but October Eyes was already leaning over the chair, looking down at them from over Hiro’s shoulder. It felt like a human cage. Hiro’s brain was literally leaking out of his pores.
"Bots, huh." He pointed at a tiny design squeezed into a corner of a page. "I like this one. Probably runs on impulses, right? I like the way you handled it with a smaller project board. Cool. Looks good."
He sounded like some dad praising his son. Obligatory praise.
Hiro narrowed his eyes.
The other boy leaned back, and it felt like Hiro could breathe again. He could feel his heart. It was still there. His brain - not so much.
"I major in Robotics Engineering," he said, and he looked so proud, it was like he was going to burst. The cafe would probably be stained with glitter and pastel colors for days. He took the empty coffee mug, holding it in his big hands. He had fingers for robotics. They were slender, nimble, tactile.
"I’m Tadashi, by the way." He smiled while he said it, and the words sounded like they were being pulled from left to right like chewing gum.
"Hiro."
"Hiro." Tadashi didn’t smile while he said his name. It was a small word slipping through his mouth, careful like he was scared he’d crush it with his teeth. Hiro was still trying to put his brain back together, but those fucking eyes made it all fall apart all over again.
This was getting borderline ridiculous.
"Nice to meet you." He dribbled his fingers across the mug. "Hiro."
And there it was again. His name coming from another mouth. And people said Hiro’s name all the time. They groaned it and cursed it and screamed it inches away from his face. But they never said it in a way that made it feel personal, too close for comfort, like knees brushing and hands touching.
Jesus Christ.
Hiro moved his head into a sort-of-a-nod. His hair fell further into his eyes.
"Hey! Champ! Your entourage is waiting in the back. Stop flirting with the customers," A voice boomed from across the cafe. They both whipped their heads around. There was a man behind the counter. He was slipping on an apron. The rest of the cafe looked like a doll house. This guy was a giant. He looked like the embodiment of surfing in the 80’s, just a little older and outdated, the kind of person who still said 'dude' while sober. The man was grinning, small wrinkles bunching.
Tadashi gave him a blank expression, mouthing something that Hiro couldn’t understand. It made the 80’s surfer smile a little wider. It was a nice smile, of course.
Of-fucking-course.
Tadashi took a breath, looking back at Hiro with those cozy, comfy cabin eyes. He wasn’t smiling. His mouth was just a little crooked.
"Dashi, you’ll be late for class." The man was fumbling around with his sandy hair. Hiro thought there should be an age limit for pony tails and rainbow tie-dye shirts.
"Yeah, got it!" Tadashi was still looking at Hiro. It was weird calling him that in his head.
Tadashi. Dashi. Tadashi with the October eyes.
"See you tomorrow...Hiro."
Hiro’s brain was crumbling apart all over again. He felt sick. This was sick. He blamed it on the upcoming hangover.
He wanted his name to be Tadashi’s new 'cool'.
✦
Hiro was late. He was so late. And it felt like that fact was nibbling at his whole entire human existence. It was like that feeling you got when you were seconds away from missing a train, not knowing wether you’d make it or not.
The night was rolling in fast like a High Tide. Shards of rain were piercing through his skin. Hiro was already drenched, and his board started wavering, as if it was a few seconds away from giving up. He should’ve recharged it. But Hiro was the kind of person who used something so long until it begged for mercy and withered away before he even had a chance to save it. But he didn’t want to think about that now. Now, he needed to get to where he needed to be. It was just coffee. Fuck.
It was just coffee.
He hadn’t given himself a breather to stop and think and question. He’d been running a lot lately, far too active, far too rushed to let his brain click its gear teeth into the right slots. It felt like he was living in fast forward, everything crashing in on him at light speed. He hated time. It was never on his side; it never had been.
There was a tall figure standing at the door of the cafe, broad shoulders, slender legs - big hands. Tadashi was fumbling with the sign. Hiro kicked the heels of his feet to the back, the board upping its pace so quickly his stomach jumped. He was wringing out the last bar of juice. If it died now, he was not going to make it. His life felt like an apocalypse movie. He hadn't even had enough time to think about wether or not he was going batshit-insane. He’d already established that. He was crazy. He was mental.
The board zoomed over the street, dodging cars and columns of lantern lights. He reached the flight of stairs leading to the cafe, kicking his legs up, board slicing across the glass of the door and crashing to the ground. The figure behind the door stumbled backwards, hands bashing to find his balance and grip the door knob. The door opened.
It felt like Hiro’s chest was bursting from the inside out, as if the adrenaline from before had reached its climax, collecting itself in the middle of his ribcage and exploding. Splat.
Tadashi was standing in the door, light spilling out from behind him and slipping between his arms and legs. Hiro could feel the warmth trying to grip him, trying to coax him inside. He was cold. Shivering. This was stupid.
"Hiro?" Tadashi opened the door a little wider. "What are you doing here? We’re closed. It’s nine. It’s raining."
He said the last few words, as if it had been a sudden realization. And because the universe enjoyed fucking with Hiro, his board decided to give up right then and there and smack him across the metal railing.
This was really, really stupid.
"Fuck," Hiro groaned, lifting himself up from the wet concrete.
"You okay?" Tadashi was trying to help him up. Hiro hissed like a feral cat, stumbling back onto his feet, unbuckling himself and wobbling onto the ground. It felt like the bones in his legs had evaporated. Now all he was standing on was flesh and muscle and wet concrete. His clothes were drenched, his feet were squelching in his sneakers, his hair was sticking to his face, his eyes were burning more than usual. He probably looked like the saddest thing on earth.
"I’ll get you a towel."
Hiro pretended like those words were an insult. But his ears were rushing, and his ribcage was vibrating, and he wanted to be so pissed off, but all he managed to do was slump further into his oversized sweater.
Maybe it was a little too warm in the cafe, maybe because his skin was too cold to be considered healthy. But Hiro wasn’t healthy anyways. He just got by however he needed to.
Tadashi came back with a mountain of towels, dumping them onto Hiro like he meant it a little too well. Tadashi seemed like the person who had a tendency of meaning it too well, far too well. Hiro dug his face into the fluffy material. It felt like he was inside a cloud. It was a nice smelling cloud, fresh like a fruit basket.
"I thought you weren’t going to come today. No wonder Cass said you were a hardcore customer," Tadashi said, laughing in a way that made Hiro want to kick him in the groin. Because Tadashi wasn’t laughing at him. He was just laughing, just letting those trills reverberate through the atmosphere because they sounded so fucking nice. It was like he was warming up the cafe just a little more. It was scorching by now. Hiro was burning.
"Sit." It was a demand. Hiro hated demands. "Hiro, look - just sit."
Hiro took a deep breath, letting the fruit-basket-cloud tighten around his skull.
Fine. Hiro sat. This was stupid.
He had his eyes closed. The world was dark and warm, and he listened to porcelain clinking and sneakers squeaking. The Beatles weren’t playing.
Tadashi was humming. Maybe Hiro even liked it a little more than The Beatles. But just maybe.
"Couldn’t go a day without the coffee, huh?"
"Sorry." Hiro mumbled.
"Hm?"
"You’re closed."
A laugh. A clink. A squeak.
"That’s alright. I was going to stay down here anyways. Studying."
Of course.
The squeaks came closer. The towels were being tugged aside. A puff of fresh air hit Hiro’s face. There was a mug hovering in front of his nose.
It wasn’t coffee.
"Hot chocolate. You - uh - look like you need some sleep." Tadashi almost sounded concerned. His mouth was small. No super smile. Hiro felt like a five-year-old child that needed to be taken care of. He probably looked the part. He definitely felt like it.
Hiro mumbled a thank you and wrapped his numb fingers around the hot porcelain. The edge of a towel slumped into his eyes. Tadashi snorted. Actually snorted. Even his snorts sounded spectacular.
Nobody touched the towel. Hiro liked it that way.
Tadashi bent his knees. They cracked. Crack. Crack. He was kneeling in front of him, and he was so close that Hiro inched back a little further, the fruit-basket-cloud swallowing him.
"You okay?"
Okay.
Hiro wanted to nod, wanted to say yes because that was what you were supposed to say when a total stranger asked you if you were okay. When people asked if you were okay, it was more of a polite rhetorical question, something that didn’t need to be answered by anything other than a nod or just absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.
And Hiro didn’t know why he did it. He didn't know why this polite rhetorical question deserved an honest answer. He didn't even know if it was honest.
Hiro shook his head.
It was the first time he had admitted that in nine months and 21 days.
Hiro had just admitted that to a total stranger.
No, he was not okay. He was a crazy and on the verge of total insanity. And he was not okay.
It stayed quiet. Nothing but their breaths rushing.
Hiro wanted to disappear. He wanted to smash the mug onto the floor and rip his way out of the fruit-basket-cloud. He wanted to run and run and run, blast off into the sky, and leave all this bullshit behind. But he stayed quiet. He just breathed.
Tadashi stood up. Crack. Crack. He walked away. The Beatles started to play. He walked back. He sat down. Hiro knew that he was looking at him, staring, waiting.
Hiro took his time. His head made no sense. It was just mush. Like always.
And then Tadashi started talking. It was a steady pace, almost languid, but the words were spilling out of his mouth and onto the small coffee table, and Hiro let those words fill the empty gaps in his skull. Tadashi talked about normal things, things so normal, Hiro felt like falling asleep. But he didn’t. He was caught in this afternoon-like doze, lids heavy, skin tingling. He listened to Tadashi talk about his day, when he woke up, what he ate for breakfast, how he drove to school. He talked about his friends and that his aunt’s fiancé liked to call them his 'entourage'. Apparently, Cass was his aunt, which was why he was at the cafe at night in the first place. He lived upstairs - with Cass and the 80’s surfer, her financé. Hiro sort of missed Cass. But he didn’t mention that. He just listened. And Tadashi kept talking and talking until Hiro wasn’t thinking about himself anymore. It was like those words were tugging him out of his own head and coaxing him into another. And Tadashi’s head was a nice place. It was homey and balanced, everything moving in calm patterns.
"You want another one?"
Hiro looked up from where he’d been staring at the tiny discoloration on the coffee table.
"Wha - t?" His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat. He tried again. "What?"
"The hot chocolate." Tadashi pointed at the mug in Hiro’s hands. It was empty. Hiro hadn’t noticed. Hiro hadn’t noticed anything. It was like he was being pulled out of the bottom of an ocean. A calm ocean. A warm ocean.
"Oh."
Tadashi smiled. It was a tired smile, small, careful almost.
"No...I’m good."
"Are you?" Tadashi quirked an eyebrow - before it fell back down and his mouth started to shrink. "I - sorry. I didn’t mean to -"
"S’okay."
It wasn’t okay. But it was something close to it, something better than before. It was an almost-okay. But just for now. Just for here.
Tadashi looked down at his fingers. They were twisted into each other, entangled, like he’d been weaving them into each other over and over again.
"I didn’t get to ask you -" Tadashi shifted in his chair. He ripped his fingers out of each other and rubbed his eyes. "Why you were designing robots? Do you build them?"
Hiro nodded. His hair was falling back into his eyes. It was dry again.
Tadashi leaned forward, arms resting on his thighs. He looked like he was waiting for more. But Hiro didn’t have more.
"Is...it a hobby? I mean, what do you do?"
It was weird hearing that.
You.
Hiro had only heard I and me for the past few aeons, and hearing that mouth say you made him feel uncomfortable, the tingly kind of uncomfortable, the kind of uncomfortable that made his heart really loud.
"If you don’t mind me asking," Tadashi mumbled. He scratched the back of his neck.
"I work at a tweak shop." Hiro stared at the empty mug in his hands. Brown liquid was stuck to the bottom in a perfect circle. "I fix stuff."
Tadashi stayed quiet. It was like he was holding his breath, like he wanted to give Hiro as much time as he needed. Hiro still felt like a five-year-old.
"Used to...you know..." Hiro stopped.
Bot fight.
That was a criminal activity. He didn’t know why he didn’t want Tadashi to know, just as much as he didn’t want him to know about his bumped up shoes and his thrift shop sweaters.
"Build bots," Hiro pressed out. "That was a long time ago. The bots...building bots."
"So the designs?"
Hiro looked up. Tadashi had his head angled to the side. It reminded him of Mochi when she watched him make cup noodles.
"I don’t know," Hiro said, letting a puff of air carry the words out of this throat. It felt like they were drifting, not really reaching their target.
"Don’t feel like building them. Waste of time."
"Building is never a waste of time."
"Sometimes it is."
Quiet. Just The Beatles in the background.
"So you fix things?"
Hiro nodded.
"Like what?"
Hiro wanted to laugh. He wanted to let out a fucking guffaw. But he wasn’t ready to let his ears hear that. He didn’t need them to, especially when there was another person in the room, inches away, head kicked to the side.
"Toasters."
"Toasters?"
"Toasters."
"Cool." It sounded amused. "So just toasters?"
"Toasters and other stuff."
"No bots?"
"No."
"Where?"
Hiro scrunched his eyebrows.
"Where do you fix toasters...and other stuff but no bots?"
Hiro had no idea why Tadashi wanted to know that. Maybe the silence was just too awkward to let it stay silent.
"Near Kurai."
Hiro felt a pang in his brain. He should’ve just said the underworld. Kurai wasn’t a good place. Someone like Tadashi was probably told it was a hell hole - which it was, but it was way worse than it sounded. A triple hell hole.
"Okay." It sounded like a question. "Kurai. Okay." Again. A question.
Hiro didn’t know where to look. It was like the world decided to finally hit him again. He was in his dream, and with a single word he was being torn out of it. Hiro felt like a dark blob in a spectrum. This was the spectrum. Tadashi belonged to the spectrum. Tadashi went to SFIT. He was a fucking Robotics Engineering major. He built robots. He had good friends. He had a family and a nice smile. He had a future that people were supposed to have in a place like this - in this spectrum-world, with spectrum-people and their spectrum-smiles.
Hiro lived in the underground. Spectrums made his stomach churn.
And yet, here he was. His life was this ironic little particle spiraling through the universe.
"Cool," Tadashi said.
It didn’t sound cool.
Hiro’s feet twitched. He wanted to run.
He fought his way out of the fruit-basket-cloud. It was stupid. This was all so fucking stupid. Why was he here? Why was he talking to this person? Why did he care so much about what this person was thinking about him? Why?
Hiro stumbled, slamming the mug onto the table. Tadashi looked like someone had punched him in the face.
"Whoah, easy."
The other boy stood up, hands hovering in the air like they wanted to do something. Big hands.
"I - um - I need to - " Hiro twisted his leg out of the grasp of the final towel. "Go. I need to go."
He wobbled towards the door. He didn’t know where the door was. His orientation had evaporated in the heat of this place. But he found the door, and he tried to open it. It didn’t open.
"You need to - To the left. Turn the - left -"
Hiro turned the door knob to the left. The door opened.
"Are you sure you don’t want to -"
"Bye." Hiro cut him off, turning around the second the word slipped past his lips. His mouth was numb. Tadashi was right in front of him. Towering. October eyes so close he could count the creases woven around the pupils.
"Bye," Hiro said. It wasn’t a real word.
"Bye," Tadashi said. It wasn’t a real word either.
And when Hiro stumbled back into the night, he felt so stupid for not saying thank you. He should’ve said thank you. She’d said he should never forget that. His mother had taught him to always, always say thank you.