Work Text:
Kojima had once heard it said that Tokuchi looked like he'd stepped off the cover of some foreign fashion magazine. The backdrop of a bustling, tourist-filled airport is certainly incongruous enough to reinforce that particular image. Tokuchi seems comically out of place there, in a typically austere outfit—white button-down shirt, tasteful black slacks, polished formal shoes—while those that pass around him are a tide of color and accentuation, with the odd businessman or two thrown in for flavor. He slouches there against the pillar, sleek feline elegance, and doesn't even bat an eye when Kojima drops his bag in shock at the sight of him, because his presence there is an absolute statistical impossibility.
Nobody knew he was coming, after all—least of all Kojima himself. Three weeks into an uneventful retirement, a very specific strain of wanderlust planted its roots into him, feeding off of unanswered questions and niggling doubts. The flight from Saitama to Okinawa had been just long enough for him to shake it off and start regretting, wondering if he should simply buy a ticket home when the plane landed. The chances of Tokuchi being there were slim to none anyhow—it would make more sense for him to leave his familiar haunt behind so nobody came calling like he's doing right now, to start anew in a place where nobody knew him.
And yet, against all the laws of the natural order, here he is, oh-so-casually whipping the rug out from under Kojima's feet once again, simply by being where he should not and could not be. Kojima grasps for a coherent sentence—a greeting, an exclamation of surprise, something—but he only gets fragmented questions. “Why—? How—?”
To which Tokuchi responds, “I figured I'd save you the trouble of looking,” answering none of those questions and in fact only raising more. “Come on.” He turns to leave, prompting Kojima to hastily snatch his bag from the floor and follow after him numbly.
In the part of his mind not absorbed in making sense of the situation, he has the thought that shadows are not supposed to be this easy to catch.
Practically the instant they step through the airport's double doors, Tokuchi pauses to put a cigarette between his teeth. The lighter's flare illuminates his sharp features for the briefest moment, suffusing him with a glow that seems to linger in his eyes. He clicks it closed and puts it away, sighing out smoke. The ember at the end of the cigarette looks like a dying star.
“Got anywhere to go?” he asks, walking past Kojima, hands sliding into his pockets.
Kojima falls in step beside him. “No,” he answers, with an odd sense of embarrassment. The trip had been so impulsive he hadn't thought to arrange for lodgings or transportation. All he brought with him is money and clothes. He runs a hand down the back of his neck, sheepish. Tokuchi makes a noise in his throat and leads him through the parking lot, to a car that Kojima recognizes. He wonders if Tokuchi had driven it all the way from Saitama when he'd left.
“Your stuff goes in the back.” Keys jingle and a lock clicks. Tokuchi settles into the driver's seat and sticks the keys in the ignition, waiting patiently for Kojima to settle in the passenger's side. After a few hours of cramped airplane seats, Kojima appreciates the leg room.
On the highway, they finally start talking. “So why are you here, Kojima?” Tokuchi asks, tapping ash into the tray in the center console.
It's a question that Kojima is surprised to have an answer to. “Because I thought it was strange, how suddenly you disappeared. I thought it even stranger how you didn't cover your tracks. In fact,” he continues, watching for Tokuchi's reaction from the corner of his eye, “it seemed like you didn't even try to.”
Tokuchi's eyes flick to meet his for a second, then he turns his attention back to the road. “And?” he prods, fingers drumming on the steering wheel in a show of interest.
“And I'm the only one who knows exactly where you came from. It felt like you wanted me to go after you.” A bit of movement catches Kojima's eye—he turns a bit to find Tokuchi smiling as smugly as ever.
“That's pretty impressive. You're starting to think like I do.”
Caught off-guard, Kojima shrugs helplessly. “I'm not so sure that's a compliment.”
“I don't recall implying that it was one.” Tokuchi chuckles when Kojima shoots him a reproving frown. “You still didn't answer my question. You had to have reached that conclusion before you left, but you came anyway. Why?”
To say that Tokuchi annoys him because he makes him think seems weird, and perhaps a little petty. Kojima shuts up, turns the question over in his head while he searches for an answer. When he finds it, he has to force himself to say it aloud. “To see if you were still here.”
Tokuchi doesn't react until they turn off of the interstate. At the first red light they hit, he turns and stares at Kojima as if that's the single stupidest thing he's ever heard. It takes real effort not to fidget or break eye contact. Kojima, compelled to elaborate, opens his mouth, but Tokuchi shakes his head as the light turns green, and he lets the words die unspoken.
Tokuchi doesn't take him to a hotel. The car passes streets that are superficially familiar, but he doesn't recognize anything until he catches one fleeting glimpse of the field past the green wall and the fence. For whatever reason, Kojima expects him to stop there, but he doesn't do that either.
Instead he keeps going, and by now Kojima's lost track of how long they've been in the car. The sky is pitch-black and star-speckled, rather than the twilight haze from earlier. Tokuchi doesn't keep going for much longer after the field, though—he pulls the car to a stop outside an unassuming little house on the outskirts.
Kojima can't shake the sensation that he shouldn't be there. He crosses the threshold feeling out of place, even though there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about the house. The living room is tasteful, not excessive, stylishly practical. Normal is not something Kojima ever thought he would find unsettling.
“So?” The lock clicks and Tokuchi passes Kojima without looking back. “You want a drink? Or,” and here he pauses in the hallway, “Would you rather skip the niceties and get down to business? Ask me that question that's been burning a hole in your head since you got here?”
Burning is perhaps the most apt word for it—his head feels flushed with fever. He was a fool to come here. The causal query is so utterly ridiculous that Kojima thinks he'd rather be drunk when he asks it. Then, at least, he could blame it on the alcohol.
But he doesn't. He opens his mouth, shoving down the inane sense of danger that comes part and parcel of dealing with Tokuchi, and asks it.
“Are you really human?”
Tokuchi, unexpectedly, goes stiff. Kojima prepares for the worst, then notices his shoulders shaking and hears the soft, unmistakeable sound of a laugh. Tokuchi looks at him over his shoulder, clearly amused. “Why don't you come try to find out?” he replies, and leads Kojima further into the lion's den.
The bedroom is the sort of clean that suggests irregular use—immaculate, but for the thin film of dust that uniformly coats every flat surface. The wood against his bare back is solid, definitely expensive. While clothes are coming off, Kojima distractedly wonders if Tokuchi does the cleaning himself, or if he pays someone else to do it.
His focus is wandering, probably in self-defense. Having the full force of Tokuchi's predatory attention trained exclusively on him has a way of fraying nerves. Tokuchi climbs into his lap and Kojima can't look at him, can't look into those eyes. His gaze traces dazed circles around the room over Tokuchi's shoulder, searching for an anchor.
The mirror catches his attention first.
Later on, he will remember watching himself cover those maddening golden eyes, as if keeping Tokuchi from seeing if his composure is in place would somehow force him to surrender it. He will remember the sight of a tiny smirk, and the brush of lashes against his palm.
He will remember that Tokuchi's eyes stay closed when Kojima's hand falls away from them.
In an odd twist of tacit agreement, they both pretend as though this isn't the first time they've done this with each other. The afterglow follows a routine that doesn't exist: Kojima moves over to one edge of the bed and makes himself comfortable leaning on the headboard with a satisfied sound, while Tokuchi turns on his back and gets between the sheets a few inches away. Then, just before the silence starts to get awkward, Tokuchi breaks it.
“That's the first time I've been fucked by a man.”
Unprepared for the frank honesty of this statement, Kojima finds himself staring dumbly at Tokuchi, who returns it evenly.
“What's with that look?” he continues, unruffled. “There are firsts for everything, even where I'm involved. It was yours too.”
That is not a question. Neither, of course, is it false. Kojima gives up on being surprised at how much Tokuchi knows about him (that he shouldn't) and heaves a resigned sigh in answer.
For some incomprehensible reason, that makes Tokuchi laugh. “Even if I know what you're thinking ahead of time,” he says, sitting up, “it's rude not to speak when spoken to.” Kojima presses back against the headboard as he leans over him for his cigarettes.
“I was thinking that you never really answered my question earlier.” He then watches on, innocently, as Tokuchi reaches for a lighter that he curiously no longer has.
Two minutes of rustling and an open drawer or two later, Tokuchi finally turns his accusing glare on Kojima. The force of it is defused some by the way he crosses his arms like a petulant child—this is perhaps the only reason Kojima can meet him with a perfectly neutral stare. Getting only this, Tokuchi asks, “Yeah, and what question is that?” Possibly, it's only wishful thinking on Kojima's part that makes him sound annoyed.
“Why did you let me find you?”
“I knew that if I did, this would be the result. Letting you find me was my way of accepting, if you went to all the trouble of coming out to proposition me.”
Another, somehow even more resigned sigh. “You couldn't have just called?”
“That would have defeated the purpose of it. Besides, that's nowhere near as fun.”
“You are, bar none, the most infuriating man I've ever met, Tokuchi.”
“You're not the first person to tell me that.” Without further ado, Tokuchi sticks a hand under his pillow, retrieves a lighter, and proceeds to use it. Kojima double-checks to make sure that yes, the one he'd taken is still in his hand, quite hidden. When his outburst of helplessly exasperated laughter passes, Kojima looks up to see Tokuchi smiling at him, not quite condescendingly. “You're honest, Kojima. Too honest to try and win a liar's game the way liars do.” He blows a puff of smoke, sits up a little straighter, and adds, “You should stay that way.”
“Oh?” He decides against directly asking why, knowing he'd only be deflected. There's another way to get that answer. He opens his hand and holds out the lighter.
Tokuchi glances first to it, then to him, and away within the space of a second or two. “Keep it. You obviously liked it enough to steal it.”
Kojima sets it on the nightstand with a wordless smile of his own, imperfectly repressed. “If you insist. Though I'm not sure what use I'd have for it. I don't smoke.”
“Should've thought about that first, huh? Now you're stuck with it.”
“I can think of worse things.”