Chapter Text
Shuuichi shakes off the heel of his right shoe at the genkan, before he remembers, and turns around to rearrange his shoes to face the door. He even stops to take the trouble to undo the laces first.
The umbrella in his right hand gives him a little more pause. Would it be better to keep it open to dry, or leave it in the rack as-is?
A compromise. He leaves the tie on it unbuttoned before flicking it into the rack.
"I'm back," he says, the words sliding easy off the tongue, familiar with enough exposure, like an old photograph. He shuffles his feet for a moment, adjusting the fit of the slippers beneath them.
A slight squeaking, like wheels over wood.
Seiji swivels, still seated, at the kitchen table.
Instead of one of the dining room chairs though, he's in the office chair Shuuichi had gifted him for his last birthday. Dark leather with a subtle gloss, all padded ergonomics.
A tap of a key, as Seiji hits a finger to pause on something on his laptop screen.
From the vague outlines of charts Shuuichi can see through a squint, it looks something like a quarterly report for some board or another, in the kind of meetings that necessitates the airing out of one of Seiji's Western suits.
"Welcome back," Seiji says, and tilts his head. Mildly, without much perturbation: "It's 8:42. In evening hours."
Shuuichi could have sworn he had sent a text to Seiji on his correspondingly late shoot time. Had he fallen asleep faster than he thought in his agency-assigned van?
Seiji pauses at that rejoinder, and extends a hand behind him to the corner of the kitchen to brush over its surface.
His expected phone fails to materialize in his palm.
Seiji turns back, crossing one knee over the other, with a wholly nonchalant air.
"In my defense," Shuuichi says, curving his mouth into his most apologetic smile, "two of the most popular train lines had shut down, and the traffic detour the driver took was a nightmare. Every extra minute that kept me apart from you held naught in store but unshakeable misery."
Seiji snorts, a line of his hair falling loose along his neck as he does. "No work talk after 6pm, including script rehearsal. Wasn't that our rule?"
But after another moment of a narrow-eyed stare, he relents, tugging in Shuuichi for their habitual greeting.
"The yellowtail in the oven would be charred to cinders by now," Seiji says, with a detectable note of pettiness that only Shuuichi seems to provoke.
"Oh? Should we buy something else from outside then?"
"Don't be so picky, Shuuichi. The charms of a convenient conbini dinner could hardly be outweighed by a nutritionally-appropriate meal cooked with love, can it not?"
Shuuichi shakes his head, with a light laugh. "I didn't hear you singing the same tune when I brought back those rich milk caramel rolls at one in the morning last week."
"Pedantic," Seiji says, and flicks his fingers against Shuuichi's palm that he had been holding.
Shuuichi laughs a little harder, until he sucks in a breath at the pull he feels at his side.
Seiji pauses at that.
That searching glance in his eye is back.
The same stare of some sharp-toothed predator in the grass, deciding whether to press their luck and fight, or to flee back to recognizable territory.
He sees it when Seiji makes a decision.
His fingers undo the buttons on the cuff of Shuuichi's left wrist.
The sleeve rolls up—and Shuuichi feels Seiji's eye sweep over the length of his elbow, and the obvious outline of the bandages that could be seen there.
"Besides your side," Seiji says—calm as snowfall along a cliff's edge, sintering into crystalline clarity—"where else are you hurt?"
*
Evening dinner is further delayed by Seiji's insistence on checking over each and every small cut.
He had somehow managed to manhandle Shuuichi to the sofa with one hand, as he had unlocked the latches of the emergency kit he had already fetched from the bathroom.
Shuuichi had rolled up the cuffs of both arms at Seiji's instruction, and loosened the collar by three buttons.
The scrapes on his left forearm were still a darker red-brown, clotted over after the first set of bandages he had been treated with on set.
Seiji removes those in scathing silence, although his touch is careful.
Disinfectant next, with Seiji half-kneeling by the arm of the sofa, to dab a cotton ball over the scrapes.
"Didn't it hurt?" Seiji isn't looking at Shuuichi as he says this. An exhale as he sets down the disinfectant, to tie off the ends of one bandage.
"Not in the moment," Shuuichi says.
A hand drifts lower to the right side of Shuuchi's ribs.
"And here?"
Shuuichi clenches his hand, watching the vein spasm.
"A bruise," Shuuichi says.
Seiji shifts aside the fold of the dress shirt, pushing up the hem of Shuuichi's undershirt.
And just as Shuuichi had said—a purplish-yellow patch, larger than the size of his palm, rests there, bared by Seiji's hand for Seiji's scrutiny.
The hem of Shuuichi's shirt wrinkles in a tightened grasp.
The dark hue of Seiji's visible eye goes even darker, not dissimilar to a gathering tidal current.
Shuuichi can't stop a yelp from escaping when the wrapped ice pack presses against his skin, without mercy.
"It would be nice to have some warning," he grumbles, as he adjusts to the temperature.
"And it would have been nice," Seiji says, now half hovering over Shuuichi's form, "if you didn't require such treatment in the first place, would it?"
But his hand lightens the pressure holding the ice pack nevertheless. His other hand traces a trail from Shuuichi's collarbone to his chin, tilting up Shuuichi's face.
First to the left, then the right.
Shuuichi wisely allows the inspection without much protest.
The tenseness in Seiji's frown finally slackens a degree, to a grim line.
"Unless my impressions were greatly mistaken, your other career was supposed to hold fewer lurking dangers than our shared work."
"A filming mishap," Shuuichi says, and does his best to reach up and pat Seiji's forearm. "A slowed-down knife fight scene, you see—and there was a mistimed kick from a costar. The rest—well, you could easily guess."
"A mere mishap, then?"
Shuuichi understands where Seiji is coming from. "From an optimist's perspective, it would be."
Shuuichi doesn't have anything else he could say about the second lead costar otherwise, no matter what kind of painfully backhand greetings he has heard from them during breaks, or the uneasy, prickling gossip carried along the cast grapevine and fan boards.
Seiji leans down, his next words whispering over the juncture of Shuuichi's jaw and his left ear.
"They say a talented hawk should hide its talons, but I fear I lack that patience. Tell me, Shuuichi: where should I begin the hunt?"
"Nowhere." Now, it is Shuuichi's turn to shift Seiji's face towards himself, with the lightest graze of his fingertips. "I don't need you to hare off on some half-thought out quest to avenge me, Seiji."
And Shuuichi smiles, like the sharp ending stroke of a talisman's kanji. "Besides, the recognition from my last international award hasn't quite worn off yet. Hirota-san's own agent is likely dressing him down for giving me any cause to find offense with him."
A flicker of a curve over Seiji's lips at Shuuichi's gaze. He presses a kiss to the corner of Shuuichi's mouth, almost absentmindedly, and lifts the ice pack away.
"Good," he says, looking down. "It should take no more than another day or two to heal."
Seiji's fingertips ghost briefly over the outline of the bruise, a learned gentleness. Then he lowers Shuuichi's shirt again.
Seiji still remains where he is on the sofa, with one knee bent atop the cushion, pressing near Shuuichi's left hip. Both hands grasped against the sofa's back.
"The next time you think you'll be in harm's way," Seiji says, his face closer to his regular mien again, "I beg you to reconsider."
"If that is the case," Shuuichi says, "I'm afraid to think of how many grudges you will bear against every doorframe or set of stairs that even bump into me."
"Yes," Seiji says. A brush of his hand over Shuuichi's face—it rests for a moment to draw a line over Shuuichi's cheekbone with his thumb. "You are not allowed to fall into any harm that would cause you to bleed, not while you're with me. I forbid it."
Shuuichi stares back at Seiji, his own breath tangling up in his throat.
This absurd man.
Shuuichi can't claim he hates it.
"All right," Shuuichi says, feeling the steady pulse of Seiji's wrist in his own grasp, the pads of his fingertips against his chin, his throat.
How easy it is for Shuuichi to be hurt.
How easy it would be, to hurt Seiji equally by proxy.
"So be it." Shuuichi reaches to tug Seiji down. "I would tell you the same. We will try—and neither of us will end up a liar."
*
Dinner is much more delayed than Seiji had planned.
But Shuuichi doesn't think Seiji minds, sitting where they are with their limbs tangled and breaths mingling.
He knows he doesn't.
At least until Seiji's elbow goes the wrong way and hits Shuuichi in the side again.