Chapter Text
Reading romance novels had always been his guilty pleasure. Kojiro had the formula memorized by now — boy meets girl, they fall in love, they face a conflict and overcome it, they say the three magic words, they kiss and live happily ever after.
He thought perhaps he and Kojiro took the long and overly complicated way. But he wouldn’t change a thing.
What wasn’t in the novels was the warning that they would pick up a bunch of rascals along the way.
“So you really weren’t married?” Langa asked, looking thoroughly shocked. “But Reki said—!”
“I said it was a theory here in the ‘S’!” Reki defended. “I didn’t say it was fact!”
“You said there was proof,” Shadow pointed out. “And that Joe’s women were just beards.”
Kojiro shook his head. “I can’t believe your source was a high-schooler, Shadow.”
“Hey, man, you always acted like a married couple. It was easy to believe, alright?”
“You are all idiots,” Miya said, barely even looking up from his Switch. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, they’ll be married for real sooner or later.”
Heat collected on Kojiro’s cheeks. “Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We literally just got together—”
“After a decade of dancing around and being disgustingly in love with each other,” Miya pointed out.
“—and Kaoru is still recovering, let’s not stress him out with the prospect of permanently shackling himself to me.”
“Kojiro.” The call came from feet away, and he perked up in attention upon hearing the voice. At this point it was a Pavlovian reaction.
“Be right back.”
He turned to fetch Kaoru, still wheelchair-bound, who had stayed by the wall where they left their things, drinking water from his tumbler. It was the final night of the tournament and naturally, it was Adam against Langa. Everyone was worried, but they all recognized that this was something those two monsters had to do.
Adam was on thin ice though. Should anything happen to Langa, Kojiro would beat that jerk up. It was long overdue.
As Kojiro walked through the crowd that parted for him, Kaoru looked at him over his shoulder and smiled. It was just a smile, nothing Kojiro hadn’t seen before. Granted, this type, soft and gentle, was rare, but his eyes were glinting the way they’d glinted back when they were 15 and 18 and 21, always, always beckoning Kojiro closer, as if there was nowhere else for him to go. Maybe that was true. Maybe he belonged to Kaoru, whether he wanted to or not.
They were 26 now and that same, familiar feeling still arrested Kojiro. His legs were moving without permission, bringing him closer to Kaoru, and when Kojiro reached him, he felt like he could breathe a little easier, even though his heart was beating a mile a minute. Kaoru always did invoke such contradictions in him. Love, hate. Admiration, irritation.
This wasn’t the stuff of romance novels. There was no dramatic kiss, no horses to ride into the sunset with, no magic or mystery or great tragedy.
They had their own story, and not one that most would even find compelling to read, but that was fine. Their story could remain here, in a small city in Okinawa, their kisses imprinted in a rundown diner, in an abandoned mine, in an Italian restaurant, and in an intersection in the streets that held many goodbyes and even more hellos.
“Hello,” Kaoru greeted him now. “Push me?”
“I know Carla is right here and functioning, you spoiled brat.”
“Hmm.” Kaoru’s smile got bigger. “I can hear you idiots from here.”
Kojiro flushed as he remembered the topic. “Um, about that—”
“I want a spring wedding.”
Blinking, Kojiro took a moment as his thoughts stuttered to a stop. “Huh?”
When he felt fingers tugging down at his bomber jacket, Kojiro instinctively leaned down.
“I said,” Kaoru murmured against his lips before leaning back and breaking the kiss. “I want a spring wedding. But not yet. Maybe next year, or next next. Depends when you’d propose, really.”
As Kojiro stood there, stunned, Kaoru ordered Carla to wheel him away.
This city already had everything he could ever want, that was what Kojiro had always thought. He didn’t realize just how right he’d been until now.
“Kojiro,” Kaoru said again, voice getting fainter as he slowly approached their friends.
Kojiro looked at him, marveling at the way his entire life was already set.
“Are you coming, slowpoke?” Kaoru called out, impatient now. The distance between them was widening, to both their displeasure.
“Yes, dear.” And as always, he followed, fingers curling on the handles of the wheelchair when he reached him. He learned forward to whisper in Kaoru’s ear, “I don’t know why you thought I kept waiting for you to catch up to me, when I was the one always chasing you.”
“Guess we were both just running around like idiots, then.”
“Guess so.” He pressed a kiss to Kaoru’s cheek. “But I don’t mind following you for the rest of my life, precious.”
“Good. Because you’ll be doing that forever now.”
As Kojiro took over pushing Kaoru towards the friends that had turned into family, he thought forever sounded just right.
Forever sounded like happily ever after.