Chapter Text
Nagahama is officially out of her goddamn mind.
It’s one thing when your senior from high school turns out, against all odds, to be one of the coolest people Mari has ever met. Another thing entirely when said senior is a connoisseur of shady-business-running that Mari somehow got roped into. A third thing altogether when Mari finds herself on the receiving end of a lecture about conscience and the future from the woman who taught her how to throw a proper hook.
It’s a little half past seven in the evening when Mari wakes up to glass bottles clinking and some really fucking loud TV playing in her living room. Her blissful, much needed nap interrupted by none other than Nagahama Chio.
“Seven, eight, nine- boom, two-thousand dollars,” Nagahama rifts through her bills, ignoring Mari’s rather angry stomps and the vicious scowl on her face from being woken up.
The cash sifts through Nagahama’s fingers easily, right in front of an open window facing the neighbours. But that’s Nagahama on the better days, less of an asshole and spiked with all that brazen greed. Humbly shameless with fingertips that never smelled of anything but fresh money and pockets so swollen you couldn’t find one fuck she could give.
“Real subtle,” Mari says, plopping down next to Nagahama with a sigh, eyes still droopy with sleep. “If you tried to be more subtle, you couldn’t.”
“Shhh,” Nagahama hisses between numbers, doesn’t even look up to ask, “How are you feeling?”
“Like complete shit before, shittier now with you trashing my apartment and drinking my beer,” Mari grumbles down at Nagahama, who shoots her a nasty look.
“Pay for your own hospital bill next time someone fucks you up, yeah?” Nagahama slaps a stack flat against her palm with a solid clap. “Ungrateful little shit.”
Which, fair, considering Nagahama’s the reason Mari didn’t wake up to a four-figure bill from the ER along with everything else currently wrong with her body. She’d shown up at the hospital sometime past nine in the morning and paid the whole thing off in cash at the front desk without so much as blinking. Then she’d sat in the waiting room for two more hours until visiting hours opened, only to walk in and call Mari an idiot to her face the second she saw her awake.
That’s the thing about Nagahama nobody outside the warehouse really gets. She’ll fleece a room of grown men out of their rent money, but she’ll also cover a hospital bill and pretend it never happened. Amazing, this girl.
“I didn’t ask you to pay it,” Mari mutters now, tugging a throw pillow into her lap.
“That’s the whole point of paying for things,” Nagahama finally looks up from her counting, eyes sharp despite the lazy sprawl of her posture on Mari’s couch.
“Okay, but I would’ve handled it.”
“You would have handled it the way you handled everything, which is not at all,” Nagahama sets the stack of bills down on the coffee table, takes a swig of Corona, and shifts her demeanor from casual to less casual. “Speaking of which, I am officially banning you from the ring.”
“Excuse me?” Mari’s stomach drops and instantly sits up.
“You heard me,” Nagahama’s voice remains even. “You’re done, no more fighting. I’m not running you through my books anymore, and if you show up anyway, I’m telling Todo to turn you away at the door. Surely you don’t want to cause a scene with the big guy?”
“The fuck? You can’t just do that.”
“I run the club, Mari. I can do a lot of things,” Nagahama leans forward, elbows on her knees, and what’s scary is the tired and old and somewhat worried look in her eyes, buried under years of business-first bravado. “You almost fucked up your lungs, your face is held together with actual thread. You’re twenty-eight years old and the more injuries you sustain, the worse your body deteriorates. I’m done pretending that’s fine just because it makes both of us money.”
“Where did all these moral standards materialize from?” Mari is sitting fully upright now, reaching over to grab the half-finished beer. Though she’ll probably need something stronger than cheap beer to navigate this conversation.
“From nearly two decades of friendship. Because prizefighter is such a shit title for you to die by, let alone live by,” Nagahama shrugs, indifferent and sarcastic at the same time. “Not doing it anymore, I mean it.”
From the TV, still blaring away behind them because neither of them has bothered to mute it, some rerun crime drama picks this exact moment to have its own anti-hero mutter something about how “the game is the game” - nobody gets out clean, nobody gets out easy.
“Are you kidding me,” she mutters, half a mind to hurl the remote at the TV and shatter the whole overpriced screen into smithereens, symbolism be damned. Except that TV cost her a couple months of saving, and breaking it wouldn’t prove a point so much as it would just mean watching Disney+ on her cracked phone screen for the foreseeable future. Which, hell no. “Turn that off.”
Nagahama is doing a truly heroic job of not bursting out laughing as she grabs the remote to jab at the power off button. “Even basic cable’s got notes for you tonight.”
Trust Nagahama to press remote control buttons and all of Mari’s buttons. She leans back, frustrated, on the couch a little too hard, almost blowing off the rib that has just started annealing itself together. Hissing in pain, she tells Nagahama to, “Fuck off, please.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you to beg for money on the streets,” Nagahama pulls a slightly creased flyer from her jacket and tosses it to Mari. “Himeka is looking for an assistant coach at the boxing studio I co-own with her. Real gym, real paycheck, taxes and everything, god help you. You’d be good at it - you’ve got the fundamentals down cold, and you’re patient with beginners even when you pretend to be a dick to them. Keeps you around the sport without me having to watch your skull get rearranged every other week.”
Mari gathers the flyer and Nagahama’s words under her scrutiny and decides, not even half a second later, to crush the paper under her healing knuckles and chuck it towards the garbage. Misses it. “You want me coaching children.”
“I want you to have a life, Mari, one that you can be open and proud of,” Nagahama’s voice softens, just barely, just enough to make Mari cringe at the uncharacteristic sincerity of it. “You’re better than an underground purse, always have been. About time you start planning for your future.”
Future is a funny word. Mari’s never quite known what to do with it, tossing it around in her head that never lands on either side clean. Before, future meant something concrete, like boxing scholarships, maybe, or at least a life that looked something like her mom’s, simple and easy, unglamorous but ultimately hers. After, future stopped meaning much of anything but this vague, foggy shape out past tomorrow that Mari’s stopped bothering to squint at, because squinting takes energy, and also because every time she tries, she just sees more of the same: same apartment, same scars, same world with too-loud silence and too little oxygen.
It’s hard to feel much of anything these days, not the good stuff or the bad stuff. Everything is just flattened out into the same grey hum ever since the funeral, ever since she stood in the ugly rented suit and realized nobody was going to yell at her for skipping meals anymore, nobody was going to wait up.
Grief is supposed to hurt, she’d heard, some sharp and dramatic thing that rips your heart open. Hers didn’t. Hers just turned the volume down on everything else and never learned how to turn them back up.
Fighting is the realest thing left. That’s the whole ugly truth of it, the thing she’d never actually say out loud to Nagahama’s face even with a beer in her and broken ribs to keep her honest. Because while pain might be an opinion, it’s also proof of life, evidence that something’s still capable of reaching her, and some nights that’s worth more to Mari than the money ever was.
Out loud, she says: “I can’t tell if you’re trying to fix my life or ruin it. Also, that’s not how emotional conversations work, there’s supposed to be, like, a build-up. You don’t just spring this shit on people.”
Nagahama snorts. “I don’t have time for a build-up, I have a business to run.”
“Everyone has time for a build-up. It’s called pacing.”
“I’ll pace you into the hospital myself if I ever see you step foot into the warehouse again,” Nagahama pinches the bridge of her nose, the universal sign for I am one sentence away from regretting every choice that led me here. “So, the answer is yes?”
“You can shove that answer up your ass,” Mari scoffs, leaning forward and immediately regrets it again, ribs staging a full protest. She pushes through it anyway, wheezing slightly, because apparently this is the hill she’s chosen to die on. “The money I make down there is not extra for me, it’s not buy myself a Starbucks money. It’s everything that keeps me alive, rent, hydro bill, and oh my god- my Crave subscription. What’s assistant coach pay, minimum wage and a pat on the back?”
“I’m not saying jump in broke and drowning, genius,” Nagahama drags a hand through her hair, exasperated. “I’m saying I’ll bridge it if I have to, I’ve got the funds. I just need you out of that ring before it’s not a rib, it’s your fucking skull, and there’s no bridging that.”
Mari huffs something that’s almost a laugh. She stares at the flyer crumpled up on the floor, then back up at Nagahama - older now than she was at sixteen, sure, sharper around the edges, but somehow still exactly the same person who dragged a stubborn freshman through her first real jab-cross combo two decades ago and never let go since.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to just quit cold turkey,” she says. “You taught me everything I know.”
“Nah, I fucked your life up, just haven’t realized,” says Nagahama, throwing a leg over the other while she cracks another beer open with her teeth. “Let that sink in for a sec.”
“I fucked my own life up,” Mari scoffs. “It’s the one thing I’ll take responsibility for.”
“You were such a good kid back then, too,” Nagahama chuckles then heaves a reminiscent sigh that wafts into the aftermath of their conversation. “You had manners then. Like fuck, now you’re just a piece of shit like me.”
Mari rolls her eyes. “Thank you, you sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
“I try,” Nagahama pushes herself up off the coach with a groan, joint popping loud enough that Mari winces on her behalf, and grabs the stack of cash off the table like an afterthought, tucking it back into her jacket. After a moment, she takes out a few hundred-dollar bills and slides it over to Mari. “Anyway, think about it. I can convince Himeka to hold the spot for you but I doubt it’ll be forever.”
Groaning, Mari nods sarcastically, “Real comforting note to leave on.”
“I contain multitudes,” Nagahama pulls the door open, letting in a gust of the hallway’s stale AC, then glances back one last time. “Give Himeka a call. Or don’t, and keep ending up in beds that aren’t yours, bleeding into hospital gowns.”
And the door swings shut before Mari can hurl the throw pillow towards her.
Mari is still not entirely convinced she’s the one who did this.
Some other version of her maybe, one with better judgement and significantly less pride, must have hijacked her body long enough to call Himeka, show up for a quick chat, and agree to a start date. Because the actual Mari, the one currently standing in the doorway of a legitimate studio in an ironed polo shirt she bought specifically for this occasion, would never have signed up for something so borderline pretentious.
And yet, here she is.
The gym smells the complete opposite of the warehouse. That’s the first thing that throws her. Where the warehouse smells like rust and cigarettes and weed, this place smells of clean sweat and rubber mats and the tinny sound of a radio playing something upbeat from a speaker mounted crookedly in the corner. It’s unsettlingly wholesome, Mari half expects someone to hand her a juice box.
She’s three days into the job, mainly holding pads for a rotating cast of kids who range from “genuinely promising” to “a hazard to themselves”, when she meets the person who will apparently be making her life hell for the foreseeable future.
“You’re holding that wrong.”
Mari doesn’t turn around right away, mostly because she assumes the comment isn’t for her. Then it repeats, closer to her, more annoyed.
“The pad, you’re holding it wrong. Kid’s gonna blow out his wrist throwing a cross into that angle.”
So Mari turns. The woman behind her is maybe her age, arms crossed, wearing a deep scowl. A sharp jaw, hair scraped back so tight it looks structurally load-bearing, and eyes that are doing a very thorough, very unimpressed inventory of Mari from head to toe.
“Are you Kevin’s mom?”
Kevin’s face, the freckle-cheeked, ginger head boy, twists into something scandalous. It’s not Mari’s fault for having the tendency to pick the worst timing to crack jokes in front of the wrong crowd, just that the tendencies tend to grow in the face of assholes like possibly-Kevin’s-mom and Mari couldn’t give two shits about formality or manners.
“Excuse me?” The woman’s arms uncross.
“You’ve got that whole-” Mari gestures vaguely at all of her, the crossed-arms energy, the scowl, the general aura of a woman who thinks playing in sandboxes is bad for their child. “PTA-meeting-gone-wrong typa vibe. Figured you were here to yell at me about a field trip or something.”
Next to her, Kevin makes a sound like a dying kettle, torn between horror and the distinct thrill of watching an adult get roasted in real time. Mari thinks it’s funny.
“I’m not anyone’s mom,” The woman grits out.
“Who even are you?”
“Lisa, head coach,” Lisa, head coach, says it like a threat, not an introduction. “Which means when I tell you you’re holding a pad wrong, you fix it, kid.”
Mari snorts. “You don’t look a day older than me.”
“Oh? I thought I was a PTA mother?”
Kevin, god bless him, looks like he’s about to combust from secondhand embarrassment. “Should I, um, should I go get water-”
“Yes,” both women say at the exact same time, without looking away from each other, and Kevin flees the scene with his tail between his legs.
And that’s just day three. By day ten, Mari has learned the following facts about Lisa: she’s probably got the kind of Botox that permanently fixes a scowl injected into her cheeks, she has zero patience not only for Mari’s jokes but also her entire existence, she corrects Mari’s form in front of the kids specifically because it’s more humiliating that way.
The feeling, for the record, is extremely mutual.
“You’re late,” Lisa tells her, not looking away from the computer screen, the following Tuesday.
“Five minutes.”
“Then you’re five minutes late.”
“Five minutes is a rounding error.”
“Not in my gym.”
Mari raises a brow. “I thought Himeka owned the gym.”
“Himeka owns the building, I own the standards,” Lisa finally looks at Mari, and there’s that flicker of coldness again. “For someone who apparently used to actually fight, you’ve got a real casual attitude about discipline.”
Mari’s jaw tightens. “Watch it.”
“Or what?”
They stare each other down for a solid three seconds. It’s really less about words and more about two grown adults mutually deciding whether today’s the day they finally beat the shit out of each other over a scheduling dispute. Briefly, Mari wonders what would be the better option, to die fighting this crazy bitch or to die by Nagahama’s hands when she eventually finds out the reason Himeka had to fire Mari.
Maybe the best option would be to lay dormant for a bit.
It goes dormant for exactly one more week before somebody - Mari genuinely can’t remember who suggested it first, but she knows it was born out of pure accumulated spite - decides the only reasonable way to settle this is in the ring. They at least have the decency to do it after all their students have dispersed.
“Light contact,” Lisa says, snapping her mouthguard in. “Controlled. We’re coaches, not idiots.”
“Sure,” Mari rolls her eyes, already knowing that’s a lie, already feeling something ugly and familiar light up in her chest for the first time in weeks. The specific electric hum of finally, something loud enough to drown everything out like the adrenaline junkie she is. Broken rib who?
It doesn’t stay light contact for very long.
By the second exchange they’re both breathing hard, Lisa's jab sharper than Mari expected, Mari’s counter faster than Lisa clearly banked on, and there’s an undeniable satisfaction and excitement in fighting an opponent who is honed through proper training and not the scrappy, half-feral thing Mari calls technique, learned the way Mari learned out of teenage rage that needed somewhere to go and refined later into something she could sell by the pound.
Lisa fights like discipline, all textbook distance, textbook recoil. While Mari’s counter comes in half a beat faster but rougher around the edges, more instinct than form. It isn’t pretty, but it’s effective in a way that comes from years of combat in a ring where nobody cared if your form was correct, only if you were still standing at the end of it.
And Lisa is about to learn how unpredictable of an absolute, deranged insanity of a person Mari can be.
“WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING?”
The voice cuts through the empty halls of the gym loud enough that both of them freeze mid-fight, gloves still raised, and Mari turns toward the door already knowing, with a sinking and surreal dread, exactly who that voice belongs to.
Lara is standing just by the entrance, face caught somewhere between fury and disbelief, eyes darting between Lisa and Mari in an attempt to physically process the geometry of this whole shitshow.
“Lisa,” Lara says first, voice climbing. “Since when did you start boxing? I thought you were- I followed you here because I thought you were back doing something shady again, and instead I find you-” Her gaze snaps to Mari, and whatever she was about to say dies completely, her face replaced by blindsided shock. “Mari?”
Mari, mouthguard still in, fists clenched tight, manages only a muffled, “Hey.”
“You know each other?” Lisa’s gloves drop an inch, disbelief momentarily overriding the simmering rivalry thing they’ve had going for weeks.
“She’s my nurse,” Mari says, spitting out her mouthguard, which comes out sounding significantly more unhinged than she means it to.
“I’m a nurse, not your nurse,” Lara pinches the bridge of her nose, visibly recalibrating her very own perception of reality. “Okay, back up. Lisa, you’ve been boxing? Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been having a full-blown crisis for a week thinking you’d gone back to whatever, staged fender-benders, insurance guys, I don’t know, I was this close to calling dad-”
“Don’t call dad.”
“I was gonna not call dad, right up until I followed you to what I thought was a shady underground deal and instead found you beating up a woman I stitched up several times.”
Lisa’s head swivels toward Mari so fast it’s a miracle she doesn’t get whiplash. “Several times?”
Mari is about to conjure up an argument to that until her automated, delayed processing centre in her brain caught up on Lara’s words. “Holy shit, you’re the sister who crashed cars for money.”
“This is so much information at once,” Lara says, mostly to herself, dragging a hand down her face. “My sister’s secretly a plain athlete-”
“Plain athlete? I’m a boxing coach,” Lisa actually looks offended.
“-boxing coach, not a felon, which, genuinely, thank god, that’s actually great news. And also apparently my sister has been quietly working right next to the woman I’ve been-” Lara stops herself hard, colour rising fast in her cheeks, and pivots. “The woman whose stitches I did. Multiple times as a professional. In a hospital.”
Lisa’s eyes narrow, swinging between her sister and Mari. “Wait, wait. Is this the girl you wouldn’t shut up about for a week? The one with the-” she does an aggressive, utterly unflattering hand gesture in the direction of Mari’s face. “-the stair thing?”
“Shut up, Lisa. Oh my god-” Lara says, very fast, also very red.
Mari, despite the sweat and the busted lip already threatening a comeback and the sheer chaos of the last thirty seconds, feels something click warm and stupid in her chest at the one you wouldn’t shut up about.
“You talked about the stair thing?” Mari repeats, incredulous but weirdly delighted all the same.
“No,” Lara huffs, face so red ketchup might as well drip from it. Mari finds the appropriate word at the sight before her: cute.
“She definitely talked about the stair thing,” Lisa supplies helpfully, leaning back against the ropes and shrugging easily at Mari. Her demeanor shifts from celestially unbearable to slightly intolerable. “For like four days, it genuinely made me want to scream. You want love advice, you go to Luna, not me-”
“Lisa, I will end you,” Lara hisses and then rounds on Mari instead, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You. Get off the ring. Now.”
Mari, feeling oddly warm and giddy, decides to be a little shit. “I’m kind of in the middle of an unsettled dispute with your sister.”
The next couple minutes are spent with Lara literally losing her mind over Mari’s inability to take care of herself, going on some tangent about calling the orderlies and how she’d be committing medical malpractice if she lets Mari off the hook.
Mouthguard dangling from two fingers, Mari glances at Lisa for backup. Lisa just shrugs, noncommittal, already halfway out the ring. “I’d do what she says, she gets scary when she’s worried. It’s a whole thing.”
Just because they stopped punching each other does not automatically mean Lisa dislikes Mari any less than before. She made it crystal clear with an ugly glare and an almost comical threat: next time we ride this out til our last breath, to which Mari responded with a scoff and roll of her eyes.
She lets herself get towed towards the corner of the gym by the wrist, past the mats and punching bags, until they’re tucked semi out of earshot near the water fountain and a stack of folded towels.
“Sit,” Lara orders, gesturing at a bench with the same brisk authority she uses on hospital beds.
“Lara, I’m fine, really,” Mari sighs, for the fifth time.
“Sit anyway.”
Mari sits. Mostly because arguing costs more energy than she’s got left post-spar, and partly because there’s something disarming about being fussed over by someone who clearly means it, even if said person is dressed down in summer clothes instead of scrubs.
Lara slides in next to her, their thighs brushing for a split second. Weird, weird, weird. So weird that they’re not surrounded by curtains and beeping monitors, just the tiny gym radio and Lisa pointedly not-shooting glances at them once every five seconds from twenty feet away while drinking water like it’s the most interesting thing she’s ever done.
“What is wrong with you?” Lara says, slightly annoyed, thumb reaching out to ghost over what is possibly Mari’s eighth split lip of the year. “You’re actually going to die at this rate.”
“Statistically unlikely, Lisa punches like an angry baby kangaroo,” Mari says, willing herself to not lean into Lara’s touch. The world is fucking ending.
“I’m serious, Mari,” Lara checks Mari’s eye next, tilting her head side to side, entirely too gentle for someone who sounded ready to commit a crime ten minutes ago. “Your ribs, how do they feel? Lose your usual nonsense, I want real answers only.”
“Fine, I think.”
“You think?”
“I know they’re fine,” Mari sighs. First time in a while that she’s told the truth. “Lisa mostly went for my face, probably jealous that our students like me better because I know how to smile. Other than that, I’ve been bed-ridden since the last visit. Swear on my life.”
“Right,” Lara’s mouth presses into a thin line, unimpressed, and for a second she looks so ready to launch into another full lecture that Mari has started bracing for it. Then her expression deflates instead, relief sneaking in under the frustration. “Mari, you gotta stop scaring me like this.”
Everything wavers a little around that sentence. It’s the way Lara says it, unguarded and sincere, that makes Mari’s chest feel heavier than broken bones.
“To be fair, I didn’t know you’d be here,” Mari says, sheepish, which isn’t quite an apology, but it’s the closest thing she’s got on hand.
“That’s almost worse, somehow,” Lara lets go of her face, sitting back on her heels, some of the colour from earlier creeping back into her face. “I thought I was here to stage an intervention for LIsa, instead I get to have a small aneurysm over you specifically.”
“The spar was Lisa’s idea!”
“I don’t care whose idea it was, I care that I watched you throw a right hook approximately three weeks after I watched an x-ray of your ribcage,” Lara exhales, a frown sitting tightly between her brows. Mari wants to smooth it out with her fingers. Doesn’t because that would be creepy as fuck. “I’ll need some warning beforehand next time. A text, a carrier pigeon, or-”
“You want my number?”
It’s supposed to come out as a joke, same way Mari jokes about her wellbeing. But the look on Lara’s face heavily implies it had come out as a quarter joke and three quarters truth. And judging by the way Lara’s hands go still against her own knees, Mari knows she fucked up.
Somewhere in the gym, Lisa chokes on water.
“Is that a real question,” Lara starts slow, completely ignoring her sister practically dying in the background. “Or are you just deflecting?”
Fuck it.
Mari tries. “Can’t it be both?”
A beat. Lara huffs out a laugh, shaking her head like she can’t quite believe herself, and reaches for the phone tucked into the back pocket of her shorts.
When Lisa eventually recovers from two life-threatening waves of coughing and the most embarrassing display of choking ever, she yells over at them, voice strained but booming all at once:
“Fucking disgusting,” Lisa wipes her chin with the back of her hand. “Both of you.”
Leaving Kota in charge of the warehouse is a close equivalent to assisted murder. Sick joke or just some nonsensical round of rock, paper, scissors, it’s a known safety hazard assigning them, a barely five-foot-tall shrimp about the horizontal width of a strip pole, the job of overlooking a business run by criminals.
Here in the surprisingly empty fitting room of Oak + Fort, Mari gives Nagahama a worded piece of her mind.
“Do you think this looks good?” Nagahama asks, inspecting one of the pants for her trip to Hawaii in two days, information Mari had been bestowed on circa twenty hours ago. “Should I size up?”
They’re in public, engaged in a conversation about something that could get them both arrested if someone is nosy enough to actually dial in on the context. Though the only other person in this store is the retail staff by the reception, she looks a shift away from regressing into moral extinction.
“You’re going to the beach, not a Paris fashion show,” Mari yawns, picking at her overgrown nails as shopping nearly bores her to death. “I still don’t think making Kota the temporary boss is a good idea. Bro is probably gonna get manhandled by the gamblers if something goes south, which they always do.”
“Relax, Kota’s tougher than you think,” Nagahama smooths a palm over her butt, looks at herself in the mirror and blanches. “I look like an extra from Fast and Furious Eighteen.”
“More like,” Mari looks up. “Slow and Subpar.”
“Fuck you,” Nagahama says, middle finger raised high between them, before disappearing back into the fitting room in a flurry of discarded fabric. Her voice carries easily over the door. “For the record, Kota ran the warehouse solo for a whole weekend last spring when I had food poisoning. Nothing happened.”
Mari snorts. “Because I was there covering their ass.”
Nagahama emerges in a different pair of pants, considers herself in the mirror with the same critical squint she gave herself before, then shakes her head and retreats again. “It’s ten days, Mari. I’ve earned a vacation. You have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve done anything that wasn’t counting money in somebody’s kitchen or bailing idiots out of the hospital at the crack of dawn?”
“You brought that second one entirely on yourself,” Mari rolls her eyes. At this point she might just roll them out of their sockets.
“That’s besides the point,” More rustling. “The point is Kota’s got the books memorized better than I do at this point, they know which regulars to trust and which ones to pat down twice, and honestly the club basically runs itself as long as nobody does anything catastrophically stupid while I’m gone.”
Mari looks up from her nails at the last part and narrows her eyes in suspicion.
“Why do I feel like that was aimed at me.”
“Because it was,” Nagahama steps out in a third pair, hands on her hips. This time she actually looks pleased with the fit. “You’ve been suspiciously well-behaved lately. Not coming home looking like roadkill, and Himeka told me the kids love you. It’s actually fuckin’ weird.”
“Well, what can I say? I’m just that good.”
“Uh huh,” Nagahama meets her eyes in the mirror, gaze flickering to a knowing look underneath the jokes. “And that’s the only reason you’ve been in a good mood lately? The kids? Proper income?”
Mari’s ears go warm despite herself, and she suddenly finds her cuticles fascinating again. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t,” Nagahama smirks, filing that reaction away for future ammunition. “Anyway, point is, I’m going to Hawaii, Kota’s got the warehouse, you’ve got a Real Job. Everybody is exactly where they’re supposed to be for the first time in recorded history. Don’t break that.”
“You have such little faith in me,” Mari places a hand on her chest, feigning hurt.
“Stay out of fights, Mari,” When Nagahama disappears back into the room one final time, her voice has dropped some of its usual sharp teasing edge, washed away in borderline sincerity that catches Mari off guard. “Let me eat my poké in peace, without a heart attack waiting for me.”
Mari reminds her, “I’m a coach. There’s not much room for chaos in a curriculum about teaching kids how to defend themselves.”
“I know, just-” There’s a pause, and some more shuffling. “I’ve always felt bad about dragging you into my shit, guess I feel partially responsible for your overall happiness in life. I like this version of you, though. Boring, normal. Soft, even.”
Mari doesn’t dignify that with a response right away, a heavy weight materializing and twisting in her chest at I like this version of you, delivered so simply through a fitting room door as if it’s not a big deal to say out loud.
“Get those pants, the first one,” she says instead, voice a little rougher than she intends. “You look good in those, might even get you laid. Your love life is as dry as a wasteland.”
Nagahama steps out, back in her own clothes, and discards a pile of clothes straight into Mari’s face.
Mari doesn’t go home often so that she doesn’t have to explain to her family how she got into this strange, fucked up high for constantly getting bruised up and busted.
There’s a guilt in it she spent her whole life avoiding too, because confronting it is an entirely different ordeal and Mari’s got a strict policy against ordeals that don’t involve an opponent she can actually punch. Somewhere along the way she became the family black sheep by a landslide - Yoshiya’s got a real job with extended health care, her dad’s still out there fixing fences and keeping the lights on, and grandma is, well, grandma is just chilling, really.
Meanwhile, Mari’s contribution to the family unit is, depressingly, showing up every few months with a fruit basket hoping that the bruises she covered up with concealer stays concealed for the rest of the visit.
Her mom would’ve had a field day with that if she knew what Mari’s been up to. Would’ve taken one look at her, put both hands on her hips, and told Mari to get her shit together. And Mari would have. She spent almost a decade missing that specific, terrifying tone in her mom’s voice when she’s pissed off at Mari’s stupidity.
So she doesn’t come around much because it’s just easier that way.
Tonight, though, Yoshiya had guilt-tripped her into visiting over three separate texts and one voicemail that says, verbatim: “Dad is asking if you’re dead, please prove him wrong.” Hence here she is, sitting on her grandma’s rocking chair that’s been squeaking for at least five years, contemplating her life.
Her dad and grandma mostly leave her alone when she’s home, simply enjoying each other’s company, unlike the stereotypical asian families who bombard their children with questions. Unlike a certain someone who can’t read the fucking room.
“No boyfriend,” Yoshiya says, not really a question.
“You’re gay?” Mari asks, rocking back and forth on the chair. It’s a miracle she hasn’t spilled her iced tea yet.
“Fuck no,” he blanches. “I meant you. No boyfriend yet?”
Mari confirms, too tired to say otherwise. “No boyfriend.”
“Girlfriend, then?”
Mari chokes slightly on her drink. Across the living room, her grandma looks back at them while chopping onions, an eyebrow raised high to the ceiling.
And of course, because the universe always has nice things in store for Mari when she least needs it, her phone beeps once. Then twice. Then twice more. To the point Yoshiya is now making a suggestive face like he just clocked the national secret. Mari extends her legs to kick at him, but they’re too short, and Yoshiya dodges it easy.
It’s Lara, several text deep into an unprompted saga about hospital gossip Mari would’ve otherwise found annoying, but it’s Lara she’s talking about here - Lara who talks in play-by-play details so unhinged that Mari really can’t ignore, the way she rambles about the most random things. The same Lara who cared enough about Mari, a mere patient in passing, to have a full freak-out on multiple occasions.
It hadn’t started like this though. The first few texts, back when Lara first put her number in at the gym, were stiff. Some formal shit like Hi! This is Lara from the ER, just wanted to make sure you got home okay after the spar to which Mari responded with the bare legal yes lol because her dumbass hadn’t thought about what to do with herself after cracking the most, in retrospect, flirtatious joke.
Then it was Lara sending a bunch of texts asking if Mari is healing properly, if she’s still getting into fights with Lisa, if she’s sleeping in a position that wouldn’t crack her ribs the second time. Mari, against her own better judgement, actually started responding with something that wasn’t awkward and monosyllabic for the first time.
Blink: and now, somehow, it had turned into this. Actual conversations - Lara texting her about hospital chaos not because it’s funny bait for a reaction, but because she just wanted to tell Mari about her day. On the other hand, the last few years Mari spent actively avoiding feeling anything other than kicks and punches had started crumbling down, leaving her checking her phone throughout the day like an idiot.
It’s stupid, genuinely, deeply stupid.
“Wow, rude,” Yoshiya says, apropos of nothing, still sulking from the girlfriend line of questioning. “You get a text and you smile like that, but when I told you I got promoted last month you said cool.”
Smile? Mari is not smiling.
She deflects by saying, “You did get a cool promotion. You get 100% dental coverage plus 80% for massage therapy. If that’s not cool then I don’t know what is, lucky bastard.”
“Damn,” Yoshiya says. “Who flew you in from Saltville?”
“You did,” Mari lifts a bony finger at him. “On Virgin Airlines with that new haircut.”
“You’re such a dick,” Yoshiya recoils, used to this. “Such.”
He flips her off with zero heat behind it and goes back to finally minding his own damn business, muttering something about unbelievable under his breath that Mari chooses to ignore in favour of her phone, which buzzes again.
Also are you still getting into
fistfights with lisa at work or
has that resolved itself
why don’t you ask her
Well she said you provoke her
a lot so
???
shes the one who criticized my
expertise within FIVE SECONDS
of meeting me
Ok that does sound like
something she’d do actually
But didn’t you also call her a
little bitch at some point lol
deserved.
Oh shit. Yoshiya is right. She is smiling.
Without the initiation under professional settings to bring them together, Mari treats this with near reverence that has everything to do with lowkey giddiness and balmy basking. This chill, back and forth texting for the past couple weeks that she isn’t so used to is much like God has forgiven her for the crimes she’d committed.
Cheeks aching and all, Mari relishes in the warmth Lara brings into her days that morning sunlight couldn’t do.
Anyway. Random thought
I’ve been thinking, lisa
mentioned you only started
coaching like what, a
few weeks ago?
yea why
So wth were you doing
before that. that had you
showing up to the ER looking
like you fought a woodchipper
Her thumb pauses over the screen a beat too long. It’s not that the question surprises her - she’s been half-expecting it since the first night, honestly, since Lara stitched her eyebrow shut and asked if the stairs also stole her wallet. It’s more that seeing it typed out plainly like that, no jokes cushioning it this time, makes God’s earlier forgiveness feel like a total flake.
it’s a long story
I got time
i mean like, it’s not rly a text
conversation kinda story
As soon as Mari sends that, panic starts bubbling up in her stomach, worried that it reads like a door slamming shut instead of what she actually means, which is closer to I don’t want to lie to you about this over a screen. And truthfully, it kind of sucks to lie.
There’s something about being at home, watching her brother cuss someone out over video game comms, inhaling the scent of her grandmother’s cooking and her dad’s hard work that makes her want to be honest. This house reminds her too much of the things her family taught her: be good, no matter what was what her mom always said.
Mari’s life is as good as one of those IKEA instructions with a missing screw.
What the hell does be good, no matter what look like anyway?
Her thumbs move before she can search for an answer.
actually r u free tmr?
An unfamiliar knot tightens in her chest that isn’t quite dread and isn’t quite relief either. Just some messy, uncomfortable in-between she doesn’t have a name for.
!! yeah I’m off tomorrow
What’s up
wanna show you something
i’ll send an address, swing
by around 9?
She doesn’t say more than that. Doesn’t need to, apparently, because Lara doesn’t push, just sends back a single thumbs up emoji.
Mari has no idea how she’s supposed to explain any of this to Lara without it sounding exactly as reckless and stupid as it actually is. But then again, Mari has never known normalcy.
This is the dumbest thing Mari has done all year, and that’s including the part where she got back in a ring three days post-cheekbone-fracture. Mari has done a monumental amount of dumb things, so this is saying a lot.
She’s been standing on the curb for six minutes now, jacket zipped despite the mild night, running through every possible way tonight could go wrong with the thoroughness of someone who spent too much time in her own thoughts.
Lara is going to see the warehouse and immediately call the cops. Lara’s going to see the warehouse and scream and start sprinting down the street without a goodbye or a follow-up text, just gone forever. Lara’s going to take one look at the dingy string lights and the betting crowd, smell the disgusting stench of sweat and cigarette smoke and finally, finally clock that Mari isn’t actually a person worth all the hourly vital checks and worried texts, just some girl who subsequently makes bad choices and somehow convinced a genuinely good person to still like her anyway.
Which, fine, that’s probably the real fear underneath all the other fears, if Mari’s being honest with herself.
She could cancel, text something vague, reschedule and keep this whole rotten part of herself tucked away where it’s always lived, in the shadows. It’d be so easy. She’s got the message half-typed in her head already - hey I think my apartment’s on fire, raincheck?
Headlights turn the corner before she can talk herself into sending it.
Lara’s car pulls up at exactly 9:01, which is so ridiculously on-brand for someone who probably colour-codes hospital charts by choice. The option to bail evaporates, replaced by the significantly less comfortable reality of Lara rolling down her window and Mari possibly going to jail tonight.
Or worse, Lara seeing that Mari’s life isn’t anywhere near the plane of normal and deciding she wants nothing to do with it.
Bile rises up Mari’s throat.
“Why won’t you tell me where we’re going?” Lara starts. “This is all very strange. Should I be worried?”
Mari shrugs, feigns nonchalance. “Not at all.”
“Cool. Cool cool cool. Great start,” Lara pops the locks anyway, and Mari climbs in, the familiar smell of her car - faint sandalwood - doing nothing to calm the low hum of dread sitting in the pit of Mari’s stomach. “You’re being weird, your energy is weird. I don’t like it.”
Clicking her seatbelts, Mari tries to muster a reassuring smile that Lara’s got nothing to worry about in terms of safety because Mari wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her. The smile comes out as a grimace instead because who’s going to make sure Mari doesn’t go to fucking jail?
She says, “Just drive, I’ll give you direction.”
The directions take them somewhere Lara’s clearly never had a reason to go, duh. Past the nice part of downtown, past the not-so-nice part, into the stretch of the city where streetlights start thinning out and the only word appropriate to describe the area is ghetto.
“Mari,” Lara says slowly, easing the car to a stop where Mari points, on the side of the old building. “This looks like the beginning of a true crime podcast. I should have the local precinct on speed dial.”
“No,” Mari reacts a little too strongly at the last part, her hand acting entirely on impulse to reach out and grab Lara by the arm. She swallows. “I mean- no, it’s nothing like that. I come here often, it’s not that dramatic.”
“There is a man over there checking IDs at a literally folding table outside what looks like an abandoned building. That is extremely that dramatic.”
From the perspective of a tax-paying civilian, Lara’s got a point. “Okay, it’s a little that dramatic.”
Lara puts her car in park but doesn’t move to get out, hands still on the wheel, giving Mari a long, searching look in the dim light. “You gonna tell me what this is all about before we go in, or?”
Mari exhales slowly, the same restless energy from the curb catching up to her all at once. This is the part she’s been dreading since the text last night, having to actually say the words out loud to someone whose face still goes soft and worried every time Mari so much as winces.
“This is where I used to fight,” she says finally. “There’s a whole network of people who are part of a participation list, and they get randomly selected for a match. Underground stuff, cash payouts, no rules besides the ones we make up ourselves. And, obviously, no doctor on standby either, besides whatever first aid Nagahama’s got behind the bar. She’s the one who runs this place, she’s also my senior from high school, which is kind of where it all started since we decided to become college dropouts.”
Silence. Pure silence. Mari keeps her eyes forward, on the dashboard, easier than looking at Lara while she says it.
“That’s the stairs, the railings, all of it. I don’t usually get as fucked up as I did those two nights, but I guess I’m getting old. Can’t fight like I used to anymore.”
Lara blinks twice before exhaling something that’s half a laugh and half genuine disbelief.
“Wow. I mean, I knew you were lying about your mechanism of injury, obviously, nobody trips down two separate staircases in one week and lives to tell about it,” she says, shaking her head. “But I didn’t think the truth was gonna be this melodramatic.”
Sometimes, Mari feels like: “Yeah, my entire life is a fucking soap opera. Shortland Street would be proud.”
Lara turns, fully facing Mari now, shock still plastered on her face though a tinge of it has started melting away into something mellow. She is reacting way better than Mari would’ve expected from someone who has a certificate in Freak Out 101.
“So this whole time you’ve just been what, showing up here every week and getting hit by people on purpose? For money?”
Mari nods idly. “That’s the general idea, yes.”
“That’s insane. You’re actually incredibly, clinically insane,” There’s no real heat in Lara’s words, just genuine, wide-eyed astonishment redoing an inventory on Mari she thought she already had a decent read on. “When did you start doing this?”
“Nineteen.”
Something awful flickers across Lara’s face. “That’s a long time to be doing something that hurts this much.”
Mari doesn’t have a response ready for that one. Instead, she says, “Nagahama pulled me out after I broke my ribs, said I’m done fighting. That’s part of why the coaching job happened.”
“Good,” Lara nods seriously, no hesitation, some of her usual brightness creeping back in. Mari sighs internally in great relief. “I like her. I’ve never met her, but I like her more than I like whoever let nineteen-year-old you think this was a reasonable career choice.”
“That was also her, actually.”
Lara blanches immediately. “Retracting the compliment, then. Jesus, you guys are idiots, all of you.”
Mari huffs something close to a laugh, and Lara’s mouth twitches too, tension easing out of the car in slow degrees. It’s warmer in the air between them, Mari finds that she kind of likes it. Likes it a lot, actually.
They slip out of the car into the cool night air, and Mari leads them toward the folding table, where Todo is slouched in a lawn chair scrolling through his phone with the focused intensity of a man guarding nothing of consequence.
He knows Mari has been blacklisted, but he also has a smooth butter brain. Mari manages to talk her way into the building within just a minute, and when they pass him, Lara mutters to her, “That’s the whole security system?”
“Todo is two hundred pounds of pure muscle without a single intelligent brain cell in his head. Nagahama likes him because he never asks for a raise.”
It is super loud in here tonight. Dimmer, too, string lights halfassing their job against the dark and the air thick with smoke and cheap beer and something underneath it that might just be adrenaline. A cluster of men near the makeshift bar are laughing too loud at something, one of them missing a tooth, another nursing what looks like the beginning of a black eye that predates the night. It’s disgusting, typical, but familiar.
Lara’s hand finds Mari’s arm almost immediately, fingers curling tight around her sleeve.
“Okay,” she says, low, eyes doing a slow nervous circuit of the room. “This is- okay. Um, a little intimidating.”
A woman stumbles past them, laughing hysterically at nothing in particular, clutching a beer that’s mostly foam at this point, and Lara flinches closer into Mari’s side without seeming to notice she’s done it. Mari, for her part, notices strongly, some unknown force threatening to jackhammer their way out of her ribcage at the weight of Lara pressed against her arm, trusting Mari wholly to navigate this chaos she used to call home.
“You’re good,” she affirms, giving Lara a soothing pat on the arm. “Just stay close.”
From a distance, Mari sees Kota near the back, perched on an overturned crate, and turns both of them into the nearest corner she can find. She doesn’t want to go through the trouble of having to explain to them why she’s here when she’s not supposed to, and better yet, why she has a girl with her this time.
They end up near the edge of the ring for the second match of the evening - two men Mari half-recognizes from years ago, both out of practice but making up for it in enthusiasm, the crowd around them thickening fast and loud in the same way Mari used to find exhilarating. Still does, but she tries not to go down that line of thought, at least not when Lara is here.
Lara stays glued to her side the whole time, flinching at every solid hit, gripping Mari’s arm tighter with every exchange, until somewhere around the second round Mari gives up pretending it doesn’t make her all weird and fuzzy and just wraps an arm loosely around Lara’s shoulders instead, pulling her in a step closer.
And, much to her surprise, Lara doesn’t protest. If anything, she leans into it, some of the tension easing out of her shoulders at the contact, like Mari’s arm is doing more to keep her steady than the actual ground beneath them.
It’s a strange thing, having someone fit against her side like this. Mari had spent years being touched excessively in the context of getting hurt, and this is a galaxy’s difference she doesn’t have language for. But Lara’s shoulder is warm and nice under her arm, the faint smell of her shampoo cutting through the cigarette smoke and stale beer, close enough that Mari can feel her breathing, steady despite the nerves.
Her cardiac muscles are doing something stupid in her chest, thudding harder than the low-grade adrenaline of watching a fight should account for, yet it’s not the ring doing that to her. Because she’s watched a million fights from exactly this vantage point and not once has she ever felt her pulse quicken like this. It’s the press of Lara’s skin to her own, trusting her enough to lean in the one place in the whole city where trusting Mari should’ve historically been a terrible idea.
She doesn’t examine it too closely, though. Doesn’t dare, honestly, standing in the middle of the one place that’s ever made her do dumb and reckless things, suddenly aware of how much she feels right now.
Her train of thoughts are swiftly interrupted by the girl tucked under her arm.
“You really did this,” Lara murmurs, eyes fixed on the ring, voice pitched just for Mari. “Every week. For almost a decade.”
Mari licks her lips. When had they gone dry? “Mhm, every week.”
“Did it feel good?”
Mari watches the fight for a second, the crowd roaring at some exchange she barely registers, before answering with the kind of honesty that scares her shitless.
“Yeah. For a while, it did.”
“Let me ask you something,” Lara gargles around an entire mouthful of sticky boba, tapioca balls packed into either side of her cheeks as she speaks. “Do you have friends? Aside from Nagahama.”
“Yo,” Mari makes a disgusted face and presses a napkin into her mouth. “Chew then talk.”
“But do you?” Lara repeats, wiping her lips. Kind of lousy and not really paying attention, but the brown goo of tapioca is gone, at least.
“Not really,” Mari answers. “My childhood fish was my only friend, but Gon-chan died a week after my brother almost flushed her down the toilet trying to refresh the fish tank.”
“I have several questions about that, but I’m gonna table them,” Lara sets her boba down.
Gathering the tiny plastic scraps from Lara’s cup into a neat pile at the center, Mari falls victim to this pet peeve she can’t shake. Not that it’s a flawed quality, just painfully persistent - she likes her area clean and tidy when ingesting. Lara seems to be wired otherwise, tearing off entire seals on her cup instead of poking her straw straight through it. Psychopathic behaviour, but because it’s Lara, Mari can let it slide. Finds it adorable and quirky, even.
She’s gone completely insane.
“You never really mention anyone. Not like- I’m not trying to interrogate you, I just realized the other day that in a month of texting, it’s basically just been you, me, your family, and occasionally Nagahama.”
Mari takes a sip from her oolong milk tea. “I was rather occupied with making money whilst trying to not die from bruises and concussions, no time for friendships. Plus, I like being alone anyway.”
“But,” Lara’s watching her closely now, head tilted. “Isn’t that lonely?”
It’s not a question that demands a solid answer right away, because the honest answer is yes, obviously, for years, except nobody’s ever actually asked her that directly before. People have asked if she’s okay, if she’s eating, if her ribs hurt, all orbiting the same territory without ever quite landing on it.
And loneliness isn’t something she can quite grasp either, sometimes disguised as peace and sometimes hallmarked as an unpleasant, unshakable weight. Mari had spent her adolescence with the notion that if she didn’t need her mother to survive, then having friends is just a redundant concept. Said concept has worked well for the way she chose to live anyway: imagine showing up to multiple dinner occasions with a broken nose and battered knuckles, that’s one hell of an explanation she would’ve needed to come up with.
Yikes, no thanks.
“Nah,” she says, which isn’t technically a lie if she doesn’t believe she’s lonely. She believes in it being a mere lifestyle.
At that, Lara shoots a tapioca ball from her straw, spurting slushy milk tea in splattered droplets, hits Mari square on the cheek. It rolls off Mari’s arm and bounces on the table, leaving a trail of diluted, sugary residue on her sleeve.
Lara stifles her laughter. “You’re a horrible liar, try again.”
“And you’re so gross,” Mari grimaces, wiping her face. But she’s cheesing hard, something so light about a supposedly heavy topic. “Who the hell still drinks regular milk tea?”
Lara launches another tapioca ball, this time hitting her chin, getting her skin all sticky and disgusting. And another, and another, and Mari can feel the eyes of onlookers staring their way from this current war zone of giggles and tapioca their table has transposed into.
“Fuck, okay-” Mari reaches out to snag the straw out of Lara’s mouth. As much as she wants to continue listening to Lara’s fits and giggles at the expense of her personal hygiene, she doesn’t want to risk getting kicked out by the employees.
“You seem to have time for me though.”
How Lara can drop a sentence like that with the most casual composure needs to be studied, because Mari’s nerves are suddenly in overdrive, all but collected unlike this girl sitting across from the table and smiling at her as if the effect she has on Mari is simply commonplace in a day’s time.
Thinking about it, Mari can’t deny that. She’s got a good reason, too, that’s sure to stir the waters. Of course she has time for Lara, and her hesitation is more of a result of whether or not she’s got the guts to actually admit it out loud or keep it hostage inside the tunnels of her chest for the rest of eternity. What she’s certain of is that it’s the bitch way out, because she can’t just up and say I will always make time for you because you’re so easy to be around.
No, that’s off the table.
“Well, I don’t fight anymore, so,” Mari says quietly. It’s not a lie, not the whole truth either, but it’s her measly placeholder for when she’s ready. Possibly never. “You also don’t judge like many others do, and that feels safe, I guess.”
Safe.
Mari’s secret little euphemism for trust. A concept she struggles so hard to share with anyone but herself. Selfish, but a feasible defense mechanism developed throughout the years to prolong her inevitable downfall. A keepsake, of sorts.
“Yeah?” Lara asks, and that might just be validation in her eyes.
Maybe Mari is being hopeful on a cinematic level of cliches, reading all these signs wrong with an optimistic heart full of what if’s. Maybe it’s something more, and that validation is one of truth. Mari’s trying not to get too hung up on the details, but the way Lara looks right now in all this sepia-toned cafe ambiance and mellow, acoustic romance makes her want to lean in, shift closer, do something, fuck.
It’s a bad idea and she knows it, so she bites the inside of her cheek raw to numb the nagging itch that grows each time their eyes meet.
Lara folds her arms on the table. “Am I a friend, then?”
Simple enough question, but the term friend doesn’t fit over whatever’s actually been growing in Mari’s chest for the past however many weeks. Friends don’t cover the texting that stretches past midnight over nothing in particular, nor does it cover memorizing the exact cadence of Lara’s laugh, the specific warmth of her voice on the other end of a phone call at two in the morning.
Friend should be the safe answer. Friend is also a lie of omission roughly the same size as those fucking stairs.
The silence stretches and stretches, long enough that it stops being a pause and starts feeling like an answer all on its own. Mari can see the visible, wordless spiral happening on Lara’s face in real time.
“Actually,” Lara says, quiet, letting Mari off the hook before the silence can turn into something worse. “Don’t answer that.”
Mari wants to touch her, but she doesn’t. For now, she’s okay with watching the sunlight do it for her.
“You and me,” she says, and watches as Lara perks up at those three words. “Don’t gotta label it, just call it you and me.”
That’s it. Lara goes back to her boba, seemingly satisfied, nudging Mari’s foot lightly under the table.
“I like the sound of that.”
A grin breaks across Mari’s face, bright and happy. Simply, in this girl’s presence.
The thing about having been in this “line of work” for so many years is that you end up making a shit ton of enemies.
Comes with the territory - you can’t spend the better part of a decade taking people’s money and their pride in the same swing without a few of them holding a grudge long past the final bell.
Which is how Mari finds herself cornered outside a convenience store on a Tuesday, minding her own business with a bag of chips and a Gatorade, when a voice she hasn’t heard in two years stops her cold.
“Oi, bitch!”
Mari turns, and there’s Naoya - bigger than she remembers, or maybe just meaner-looking, arms crossed, flanked by two guys who look like they’ve been hired specifically for their ability to loom. Naoya, who Mari knocked out cold in the third round years ago, who screamed about a rematch for weeks afterwards until Nagahama banned him from the warehouse for being, in her exact words: a sore loser with main character syndrome.
“The fuck you want?”
“Heard you went soft, coaching kids now,” he says coaching kids like it’s an insult, like it’s the punchline to a joke Mari’s supposedly the butt of. “Figured you’d never show your face around here again after I make you eat that L publicly.”
Mari rolls her eyes and scoffs. “I literally beat your ass and you’re asking for more. Real smart.”
“I’m not asking, I’m telling you. Friday, you and me, for real this time. No lucky shots,” his jaw sets, ugly and certain. “Unless you’re scared? Which, given the coaching thing, wouldn’t shock me.”
Mari should say no, she knows she should say no. Knows it with the same clean, obvious certainty she knows not to touch a hot stove, knows Nagahama’s words from a few weeks back are still sitting somewhere in the back of her skull, don’t give me a heart attack, or some shit.
But Nagahama has her feet in sand holding what is probably her fifth margarita of the day, somewhere over the Pacific, blissfully unaware, and doesn’t land until Saturday morning. There’s a particular itch crawling up under Mari’s skin at the sight of Naoya’s smug face, it’s old and stupid and hungry that three weeks of good decisions hasn’t managed to fully starve out.
Old habits die hard. Turns out that’s not just a saying.
“Sure,” Mari hears herself say, before the smarter part of her brain can override it. “You’re gonna regret asking.”
Friday comes fast.
The familiar electric hum in Mari’s chest lighting up the second she steps past Todo’s folding table, who takes one look at her gear bag and just sighs, muttering something about updating his resume.
She’s rusty, that much is true in the first exchange - her footwork’s slower than it used to be, her reflexes dulled by weeks of holding pads instead of throwing real punches, and Naoya clearly sees it, pressing the advantage hard and fast, landing two solid hits before Mari even finds her rhythm.
But rusty isn’t the same as gone. Somewhere around the second round, muscle memory kicks back in, all those years, all that coaching, the drills she’s been running kids through every single day without fully clocking how much she’s been sharpening her own instincts right alongside theirs. She slips a hook that would’ve caught her clean a year ago. Lands a counter that drops Naoya half a step, crowd roaring louder around them.
It’s scrappy, desperate and painfully her, fighting like a grudge because that’s the only language her body’s ever really known. Both of them are bleeding and swinging wild by the third round, neither willing to be the one who goes down first.
“Stop! Stop the fight, right now-”
Kota’s voice cuts through the crowd noise, sharp and unexpectedly commanding for someone their size. They’re already climbing between ropes before the ref can react, physically forcing themselves between Mari and Naoya with an arm thrown out towards each of them like a very small, very determined human traffic cone.
“Kota, what the-”
“I said stop,” Kota’s chest is heaving, glaring between the two of them with a scary level of authority. “This match is over. Both of you, back off.”
Naoya spits blood onto the mat, indignant. “This isn’t your call, kid-”
“You damn right it’s my fuckin’ call, I’m running this place tonight, and I’m telling you the match is over,” Kota doesn’t back down, small frame squared up despite being outsized by both fighters in the ring. “Go home, Naoya. You got your rematch, congratulations. Nobody’s declaring a winner, everybody walks away with their teeth.”
Naoya glares a second longer before finally spitting again and stalking off, muttering something vulgar under his breath that Kota pointedly ignores.
Then they round on Mari, and the authority drops instantly, replaced by exasperation. “Are you kidding me right now.”
Mari sighs, starts wiping blood off her face with the back of her palm. “Here we go.”
“I trusted you! Nagahama trusted you, then the second her plane takes off you’re back here throwing hands with a guy who got banned for being unhinged,” Kota drags both hands down their face, voice climbing. “I have to call her, I have to tell her. I don’t have a choice, this is literally my job-”
Before Kota can do the unthinkable, Mari reaches out to snatch their phone away and puts it high in the air. “Don’t call her, please don’t call her.”
“Give me my phone back,” Kota growls, jumping at Mari but to no avail and ends up making grabby hands in the air. “This ain’t fair!”
“I’ll buy you sushi, just- please,” Mari’s breathing hard, the ache in her face pounding, but she holds Kota’s gaze anyway, almost pleading. “Let me deal with this my own way. I’ll tell her myself, when she’s back, when it’s not gonna ruin her whole vacation over a phone call.”
Kota stares at her for a long moment, jaw tight and eyes narrowing. “You’re insufferable.”
“I know, sorry.”
“Say sorry to yourself, you look like crap,” some of the fight drains out of Kota’s shoulders, utterly resigned and done with Mari’s bullshit. “Buy me omakase.”
Mari breathes out, “What.”
“Buy me omakase and I won’t tell Nagahama how gigantic of an idiot you are.”
“I see, you’re using this as leverage to milk me dry,” Amazing, this little shit. “Fine.”
“Great, we have a deal,” Kota wiggles their fingers around, and Mari gives back the phone with a light slap on their palm. Then Kota jabs a finger at her, entirely unthreatening and sincere at once. “Get out of here, ice something. I don’t want to see your face here again until Nagahama personally clears it.”
Mari rolls her eyes - bad idea, as if she didn’t just get assaulted in the eye ten minutes ago - and lets herself be steered towards the exit, adrenaline draining fast now. Her vision is doing that same unsteady tilt it did the last time this went wrong.
She doesn’t go to the ER first, an old reflex insists on it because hospital means questions and questions mean somebody finding out. So instead, swaying slightly in the parking lot, she does the only thing that actually makes sense to her scrambled, aching brain.
She calls Lara.
“Hey,” Mari says when the line picks up, voice rough and still a little out of breath. “You up?”
“I was just about to take a shower, what’s- wait, why do you sound out of breath?” A pause. Of course, Mari should’ve expected Lara to clock things right away, she hasn’t been thinking clearly, or even thinking at all, considering the event that just took place. “Mari, is everything okay?”
In pain, all she can manage to say is, “Can I come over.”
“Yeah,’ Lara agrees right away, no further questions asked. “Yeah, I’ll send my address.”
The quiet that greets her when Lara swings the door open is eerie because Mari had expected panic, just like Lara always is when she sees Mari hurt. But no, this time there’s no frantic questions, no immediate fussing. All Lara does is drag Mari to her couch in scrubs, still not changed, a frown deepening as she takes in the extent of Mari’s injury.
It’s mostly her face that’s fucked up - busted lip and bruised cheeks.
“Sorry,” Mari mutters, sheepish and painfully aware of how she must look. Pathetic. “For calling so late.”
“It’s fine,” Lara waves and moves towards the bathroom to grab the first aid kit. She comes back with bandages and ointments already taken out of the kit, and kneels down in front of Mari. “Don’t move.”
Where did all the sharp, worried energy Mari’s braced herself for the entire journey go? Right now, in the dead of night, it’s just Lara, uncharacteristically quiet and methodical, kneeling in front of her on the couch, cleaning the split lip with the same gentle precision, except tonight something feels off. The warmth is gone, along with the teasing commentary, the little oh! under her breath.
Her eyes won’t meet Mari’s, and that does it, more than anything. Mari’s used to Lara filling every moment with something, be it a joke, a complaint about hospital shenanigans or just- something. This version of her, sad and hollow-eyed going through the motions without any of her usual light, is somehow more unsettling than any lecture could’ve been.
“Lara,” Mari reaches out to grab her by the wrist, and Lara’s hands still. “You okay?”
How absurd! Mari, bleeding on Lara’s couch, asking if Lara’s okay.
“I lost a patient today,” Lara says, gauze still pressed light against Mari’s jaw.
A weight in Mari’s chest drops into her stomach immediately.
“Coded right when I was about to clock out,” Lara continues, voice carefully even, and continues wiping dried blood off of Mari’s face. Her hands are busy but her eyes have gone somewhere else entirely, somewhere Mari can’t follow. “We worked him for almost twenty minutes, but he didn’t make it. He was about your age, too. His wife was in the waiting room hoping he’d walk back out in one piece.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mari breathes, even though she knows an apology doesn’t mean jack shit in the face of death. But what else is she supposed to say?
“I got off shift just an hour ago and I’ve been sitting here since,” she sets the gauze down, finally, hands trembling slightly now that they’re not occupied with a task to hide behind. “And then you called, out of breath and all and I just-”
Her voice cracks, actually cracks, the first real fracture Mari’s heard in it since she picked up the phone. A tiny, painful thing within her shatters at the sight of Lara’s wet, teary eyes.
“I kept thinking, before you got here - what if this is the call. What if this is the one where you walk through my door and collapse with blood all over your skin and I already spent my whole day watching someone’s chest stop moving under my own hands,” Lara presses the heels of her palms against her eyes, sniffling hard. “I can’t do that twice in one day, Mari.”
Everything in Mari is screaming at her to do something, reach out, pull her in, hug her, press a kiss to her forehead-
“Lara, I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay, you’re bleeding on my couch, what kind of messed up okay is that?” Her voice climbs thin and wet now, tears finally spilling over despite clear effort to hold them back. “I swear to god, if you die on me one of these days, I will dig you up myself. I will find whatever hell hole they put you in and I will drag you back out and revive you just so I can kill you myself. Do you understand me, because I refuse- I refuse to lose you the way I lost him today, I can’t-”
She’s crying properly now, shoulders shaking and choking, the exhaustion finally breaking loose all at once, and Mari sits there for two seconds frozen, useless, every single thing she knows how to do - deflect, joke, punch - utterly failing her in the face of this.
But Lara looks so fragile beneath her, lips pursed and cheeks wet, and Mari can only really focus on the itch coating her fingertips, to care for the only person who’s ever cared for her in the purest way possible without asking for anything in return.
She’s thinking, what am I doing?
Careful not to break this delicate undercurrent, Mari reaches over that indiscernible barrier and takes Lara’s chin between her fingers, surges forward and kisses her.
It’s a little clumsy, off-center, made worse by the split in her lip and the awkward angle of leaning in too fast. For one terrifying second Lara goes rigid with surprise, but then her hands fist into the front of Mari’s shirt, pulling her closer instead of pushing away, kissing her back like she’s been waiting exactly as long as Mari has to stop pretending she wasn’t.
The pain in her face goes numb, gets pushed to the back of Mari’s mind when Lara straightens up to bridge the remaining gap between them, and Mari feels like she is about to explode into stardust. Lara’s soft lips molding against hers, slowly at first, as if Mari could ever pull away, her sanity but a stamped piece of chewed up gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.
Mari presses in and tilts her chin to deepen the kiss, which sends a shiver right down her throat, jittering throughout her skeleton.
When they break apart, Lara’s eyes are still glossy, a little bit of grief and a little bit of shock. Mari could drown in them.
“That’s- that is not how I pictured that happening,” Lara says, half a laugh tangled up in the tears.
“How did you picture that happening?” Mari laughs, slightly out of breath but for an entirely different reason now. Her own hands aren’t quite steady either, resting careful against the back of Lara’s neck like she’s not sure she’s allowed.
“I don’t know. Words, maybe?” Lara laughs again, wetter this time, wiping at her face with the sleeves of her blue scrubs.
“Not really my area of expertise.”
“Clearly,” But Lara is leaning back in as she says it, forehead pressed against Mari’s, careful of the split lip and the swollen eye, breathing unsteady but slowing now, some of the hollow tension evaporating out of her shoulders. “Don’t you dare die on me. Swear it, Mari, swear you won’t ever fight again, or else-”
“I swear,” Mari closes her eyes, swallowing past the exhaustion and adrenaline lodged in her throat and she feels a tingly sensation travelling underneath her skin. Goosebumps. “I promise, Lara.”
It is the one promise she’s most confident in keeping, because with Lara’s hands still tangled loose in her shirt, trembling slightly, the plain, uncomplicated fact is that Mari would rather have this than anything the ring ever gave her.
“Okay,” Lara smiles at last, no longer in the mercy of her sobs, and kisses Mari again. “Good.”
And again, and again, and again.
“He started it!”
“I did not, you literally-”
“Both of you, hands to yourselves, now,” Mari hisses, hauling the two kids apart by the backs of their shirts with practiced ease as she’s done this roughly four hundred times this month alone. Kevin, freckles blotchy with the outrage only a nine-year-old can achieve, glares daggers at the kid next to him, who glares right back with equal conviction. “I don’t care who started it, I care that class is over and both your parents are outside.”
“He called my jab weak.”
“Your jab is weak.”
“Both of you,” Mari repeats, steering them towards the door before this escalates. “Out. Go, be someone else’s problem for the evening.”
They scatter, still bickering, and Mari exhales, rolling her shoulders as the last of the noise filters out of the gym. Across the mats, Lisa is wiping down equipment with more force than strictly necessary, watching the scene with raised eyebrows.
“You couldn’t have helped?” Mari scowls at her, dusting off her shirt from the previous ruckus.
“They’re alive, aren’t they?” Lisa shrugs. “Sometimes you just gotta let natural selection run its course.”
Mari makes a face, shaking her head as she trudges to the water fountain. “What the fuck is wrong you?”
“More like what isn’t,” she tosses the rag aside, smirking. “Anyway, your ride is here.”
Mari follows her gaze towards the entrance, where Lara is leaning against the doorframe in scrubs, hair half up from a shift, looking pleased and absolutely beautiful.
“Hey champ,” she calls. “You didn’t break anyone today, did you?”
“Broke up a fight, does that count?”
“Counts as an improvement, historically speaking.”
Lisa, arms crossed, watches this exchange with a long, suffering expression. “I liked it better when you two were just annoying separately.”
“You love us,” Mari rolls her eyes.
“I tolerate you, know the difference,” Lisa points a finger between the two of them, deadly serious. “And for the record, I still haven’t fully forgiven either of you for this shit. My own sister, dating my coworker. You know how weird that is? I have to see your face every single day and hear about your love life at family dinner. It’s a nightmare, sedate me now.”
“Or you could just be happy for us,” Lara offers sweetly, used to her sister’s antics.
“I’m choosing not to,” Lisa grabs her bag off the locker and heads for the door. “You two, fuck off already. Take your weird workplace romance somewhere else, I have a life to get back to.”
“You literally live with dad.”
“Somewhere else, Lara.”
Mari grabs her jacket, still catching the tail end of Lisa’s muttering as she stalks off to the parking lot, something about Jesus fucking Christ and the entire family’s gone soft, which, honestly, at this point, might as well be the family motto.
“She’ll come around,” Lara says, looping an arm through Mari’s as they head out into the evening.
Mari huffs, feeling her cheeks warm at the contact. God, she’s a fool. “You said that a month ago.”
Lara laughs, a twinkling sound in Mari’s ear. “What can I say, progress isn’t linear.”
Outside, the city is doing its early evening thing - golden light catching low over the buildings and pretty across Lara’s face. In this pink, chemical glow, Mari lightly bumps her shoulder against Lara’s and imagines champagne clouds beneath her sole.
“So,” Lara says, hopping into the car parked by a busy curb. “Dinner? I’m thinking that ramen place I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I’ve been sitting on it, waiting for the right occasion.”
“Is beating up two nine-year-olds’ friendship a right occasion?”
“I’d argue it’s the perfect occasion, actually,” Lara glances over before hitting the gas, expression soft and easy, and slips her hand into Mari’s to thread their fingers. “They serve takoyaki, too.”
Mari groans hungrily. “God, I love takoyaki, let’s go.”
A few serene seconds pass in which Mari wonders if Lara’s hands are this warm and soft even in the winter, not as hot as Mari’s but warm in a way that never gets uncomfortable no matter the surrounding temperature. A perfect kind of moderate. All that trapped heat where their palms collide, Mari basks in the tingling burn.
The radio’s on low, some song neither of them know, and the city slides by outside unremarkably. It’s quiet but Mari finds she doesn’t mind it, doesn’t feel the urge to fill it or feel her knee bouncing at the speed of light. It’s just Lara’s thumb tracing absent little circles over her knuckles at every red light, unhurried, like there’s nowhere else either of them needs to be.
Mari thinks about the version of herself from a year ago, who wouldn’t have known what to do with an evening this uneventful, who would’ve found some way to ruin it probably, out of sheer discomfort with anything that didn't hurt a little.
But now, wrapped within Lara’s devastating warmth, ordinary has never felt so right.