The Man Who Ran Off With The Moon - [ Tsukkiyama Art Thief AU! ]

Not Much Life

Days passed with an aimless, drifting quality. It wouldn't take long for Tsukishima to move out of his apartment, but he was putting off the action of boxing his meager possessions. Leaving the apartment would mean leaving behind a particular brand of independence he had based his sense of pride off of over the last couple months. 

Time, unfortunately, had no respect for Tsukishima's pride. 

His landlord had told him to clear out by today or get bulldozed with the building. Tsukishima blinked wearily in the sun and locked the front door behind himself. It would be his last trip from this specific spot to the nearby train station, from the train station to an overly crowded car, a car that would release him at Jr Ueno Station- a short walk from the zoo. It was a path so deeply carved into his memory, Tsukishima could probably do it with his eyes closed. 

He was tempted to try. 

Old men, aging former day laborers, watched him pass. Their faces were etched with the wear of effort, the sustained difficulty of work. These were the men who built modern Tokyo:  the tower, the space for the 1964 Olympics, the metro. The same hands that now gathered cans for spare change had carefully reared the city as Tsukishima knew it. They looked at him with quiet recognition.

You will work and work. You will toil, but you will not live. 

You will not be thanked for your time on this earth. 

Tsukishima did not like to look at the men on the sidewalk. Instead, he marched forward towards the sun.  He heard the faint scuffle of steps and turned to see a blur of a figure dart behind a corner. 

Tsukishima's blood ran cold. Crime was not abundant in Sanya, but it wasn't uncommon. It would be rather embarrassing to be mugged for the loose change and pack of gum that his pocket's held. Tsukishima waited at the corner, fidgeting slightly with discomfort. As soon as the light turned, he darted across the street. It may have been his imagination, but Tsukishima felt that undeniable prickliness that comes from being observed.  He ducked into the station, a small subterranean space crammed thick with commuters. The melay of movement made him feel more at ease, the anonymity of being in a large group. 

The feeling of being watched did not entirely subside until he swiped his card to unlock the door to the reptile enclosure staffer's entrance. 

After work, Tsukishima gathered his things into two boxes and returned his keys to Hiroshi. Specifically, he dangled the keys over Hiroshi's head and made the smaller man jump a bit for them in a well warranted display of bullying. 

Kenma and Kuroo lived in Denenchofu, an urbanized suburb of Tokyo that attracted many celebrities, sports stars, politicians, and high level businessmen. It was about 40 minutes by train from the zoo.  Denenchofu had been designed by a British city planner to look like the suburbs of London, spacious and tree lined. It was one of the few areas of Tokyo that had not been affected by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which Tsukishima found fitting. 

It was an untouchable area for untouchable people. 

Houses were so large that emptiness spilled out the sides. Space and objects outnumbered living, breathing bodies. Denenchofu was also considered a good area to raise a family, a fact Kuroo often repeated to Kenma. 

Tsukishima felt uncomfortable as he passed a woman pushing a stroller. It felt like both her and her baby were looking him up and down, questioning the presence of the tall, box laden man that smelled like raw meat and meal worms. He did not belong here. Tsukishima typed in the gate code at the house and walked up the thin path to the front door. Kuroo had left it unlocked with the instructions to "Just, like, come in whenever. I'll probably be home, or Kenma will be, or neither of us, honestly idk man." 

The interior was white and modern, minimalist and open. The kitchen was well outfitted for Kuroo's cooking hobby, the living room had a deep gray couch and a TV almost as long as Tsukishima. It was always jarring to see the way Kuroo and Kenma lived, how far they had come from the sweaty high schoolers he had eaten barbecue with at the summer training camp so many years ago. 

It wasn't completely alien, though. 

Kuroo and Kenma both had a messy quality to them, a disorderliness that had not faded with age. Books were stacked haphazardly. A suitcase with clothes scattered all around it sat on the kitchen table. There were tangles of wires meant for God know's what and an unhealthy amount of old coffee cups scattered across the counter. Tsukishima set down his boxes in one of the few unoccupied spaces. He poked his head into the office Kuroo kept for his studies, though no one was there. Tsukishima went upstairs, glancing through the thin crack of Kenma's gaming room. The monitors were cold and blank, the chair was empty. Tsukishima was about to head back downstairs to wait in the living room for the pair to return when he heard rich laughter bubbling down from the hall.  

It wasn't Kuroo's ugly, horrifying cackle. The laughter was soft and serious,  Kenma's. In the reflection of the hall mirror, Tsukishima could see Kenma with a plastic bag over his hair, which Kuroo adjusted. With his other hand, Kuroo held a hair dye brush coated with bleach. Kenma wrinkled his nose, making a face at his partner. Kuroo kneeled down to the smaller man's height and kissed his forehead, his nose, his mouth. 

"You're gonna look so pretty." 

"It's the same toner we always put in my hair." 

"Yeah, and you always look so pretty." 

Kenma draped his arms around Kuroo's neck, squeezing him a way that was intimate and a bit childish, "Shut up." Kuroo pulled Kenma up to his feet, wrapping his arms around his waist. "I always hate it so much when you leave." 

Down the hall, Tsukishima's face burned over his accidental viewership of the private moment. He quietly returned downstairs, sitting on the couch, waiting for someone to come down the stairs and tell him where he should be. As he sat, he thought about the men who roamed the streets of Sanya until they disappeared.He thought about the rats that lived and died for the sole purpose of being consumed by the snakes under his care at work.

Mostly, Tsukishima thought of the past.

Seeing the simple bliss Kuroo and Kenma had in the smallest moments of their life was always difficult. It was a bliss he had briefly experienced with Ikumi... and once before then. 

He was too ashamed to admit how much he wanted to share his life with someone, not that he was living in a way that he considered to particularly meaningful or exciting at this time.

It wasn't shame over the idea of needing, the idea of wanting to be heard and seen and touched. Even in his stubbornness, Tsukishima could understand that these were basic human wants. The shame had curdled out of a mistake, a tragedy of timing and surprise that formed a very specific hole in Tsukishima's life.  He didn't want to dwell on it, he never had. It was a unique guilt.

Tsukishima allowed his mind to jump back eight years, to remember, if only for a second. 

"Hey, Glasses. I didn't hear you come in." 

Tsukishima was knocked back into the present. Kuroo leaned in the stairway entrance, a few bleach spots on his dark t-shirt.

"It should be a criminal offense to keep a house this nice so messy", Tsukishima muttered. 

It was a half hearted jab. He looked away, not really into the idea of teasing Kuroo right now.