Disclaimer: I own very little.

A/N: I had a craving for deathfic. Yamabuki deathfic, to be specific. I couldn't find any. (Recs will be loved muchly.) Therefore, I wrote some.

Tears

Akutsu Jin doesn't cry.

Fine, he has done so before. Way back, when he'd been but a child, a snot-nosed little brat who was yet to figure out the rules of life – like "life is not fair" and "nothing good will last" – he had cried, cried for many things indeed, but over the time he came to realize it was no use and he'd better just be quiet and shut it out. All too often, crying only caused more reasons for him to cry.

Now he is no more a child, he is older stronger and can very well protect himself against anyone who might try to hurt him, and he definitely does not cry. The mere thought of it is ridiculous. Only the weak cry, after all, and he is not weak.

It is a lovely, sunny spring day when Dan collapses. Akutsu is there, watching the practice because he had nothing better to do, and Dan can't even try and persuade Akutsu into participating because the third years aren't allowed any club activities any more. Akutsu is the one who carries Dan into the hospital wing, like the kid were nothing but a mere doll, and he is also the one who goes with Dan as the school nurse decides to call for an ambulance, deciding the problem is beyond her capabilities. He sits in the waiting room until Dan's parents come, because the doctors won't tell him anything, and then he waits as they talk with the doctors.

Dan's mother starts crying. She looks very much like her son as she does.

Akutsu decides he doesn't want to know quite that badly, anyway.

It's long days and nights, after that, during which Dan is sometimes awake and sometimes not. When he is, he's always happy to see Akutsu there, even if he will scold him for not being at school, asking about everybody and everything and bright and curious as ever. Akutsu doesn't smile, because Akutsu never smiles, honest, and if his smirks are softer than usual as he sits beside the hospital bed neither of them mentions it.

When Dan isn't awake, Akutsu still sits beside the bed, a pale hand held in his own and watching, watching the pale face that gets thinner every day, listening to the soft breaths that somehow always synchronize with his own, as though he were helping Dan to breathe. If Dan awakens Akutsu will let go, but if it happens too suddenly he doesn't always have time and Dan notices, but neither of them say anything and Dan smiles, just a little, in that special little way that has nothing to do with his usual hyperness.

Akutsu no more lets go if someone else comes to the room.

Over the time the smiles get rarer, as do the words, the endless flood of happy chatter turning into a few carefully picked sentences, cheerful tones making way for more peaceful, serene ones. Dan never sounds sad, not even once, since at the rare times there's a sad look in his eyes he always stays quiet. Those are the times Akutsu never does let go of the hand, holding onto it as though it were the most precious thing in the world, not that he'd ever even allow himself to think of something like that.

Slowly, so slowly, Akutsu starts speaking instead, telling Dan about school and the tennis team, about Sengoku and Muromachi and everyone, and as time goes on it's Dan who first hears Akutsu got accepted into his high school of choice and not his mother. Dan wants back to school, and on the best days he even tries to study, but he'll always have to give up almost instantly because his head aches and he can't concentrate anyway, and by the time he's at the end of a paragraph he's already forgotten the beginning. Akutsu starts reading the school books aloud to him when he has nothing else to talk about, and books about tennis, and Dan listens and sometimes smiles and Akutsu will continue until Dan falls asleep.

Dan falls asleep often, nowadays.

Soon every spare moment of Akutsu's time is spent at the hospital, all of his spring break, too, and if there are specific visiting hours he never finds out because nobody dares to drive him out and those few who might just don't have the heart. Akutsu suspects Dan's parents have asked the doctors to let him be there, which just makes all too clear where Dan gets his obvious insanity from, but he's not going to protest and Dan seems happier for it so they don't change their mind, either.

Akutsu is the one who sits with Dan as it happens, like he often sits now, almost wishing there'd be more of the endless chatter instead of the nigh-silence. He bears it nevertheless, listening quietly to the dragging breaths that each sound like the next one will never come, and then it doesn't, and the steady beeping of the various machines turns into alarm sounds. He feels strangely calm as it happens, as nurses and doctors rush in and rush him aside, and it isn't until he's forcibly moved that he lets go of the pale little hand. Even as he wanders out into the corridor he still doesn't feel anything, blank like a computer screen after the machine's been unplugged.

Akutsu goes home, then. There isn't anything to keep him at the hospital, now. Dan doesn't need his company anymore.

He's almost surprised to be invited to the memorial, so what if he spent the last few months mostly sitting beside Dan's bed, he's still the dangerous delinquent and can surely be nothing but harm. But Dan's parents insist, really he should come, and so he is there, the sole scowling figure in the middle of all the mourners, and some of the tennis club are there too, former and current members, and Dan's sister hugs him and really the kid should stay away from him.

It isn't until later that it truly hits him, though, that he finally realizes it's over now, over for Dan and over for him, and that there'll be no more going to the hospital and no more bright voice greeting him and no more tired whispers and clinging hands asking him not to go yet even when he has no intention of leaving. For a long while he just sits right where he was, staring at the TV screen but not seeing anything, and his mother talks to him but he doesn't hear because all he's listening to is a pattern of slow, strained breaths that he can't hear anymore.

He isn't sick or wounded, he knows, yet he's aching, a deep pain somewhere in his chest that won't go away no matter what he does, like a dam that's about to burst but won't do so. He almost wishes it would break down, a tiny leak would appear that'll lead to the whole dam crumbling down, but he knows that won't happen and so the pain stays inside him, not going away.

Akutsu Jin doesn't cry.

At the moment, though, he would give almost anything to remember how to.