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It takes a few months, after joining the club, but then Arakita starts to get the hang of the bike racing thing.
At least, he thinks he does. Practice makes him steady, and quick, so that he doesn't struggle shifting gears any more and even proves himself a little in his first race. But he's still a fresh beginner, newly inducted into the world of competitive cycling, and there's so much he still doesn't know.
That's what his seniors in the club are for, but like hell he's going to keep admitting to them his naivete. A few extra years of experience doesn't make them his betters, and if they aren't careful, resting on the laurels of their past successes, Arakita will figure out how to blow past them. He's hungry for it, determined, and even Fukutomi tells him he could compete on the national level, with time, if he works hard enough. He just needs to stop coming to Fuku-chan with all of his asinine problems.
He needs to take Fukutomi's advice and train on his own, while using every advantage he can build for himself. It isn't cheating to turn to the internet; searching around for advice articles and bike forums is making use of resources available to anybody. If other people in the club are too stupid to put in the effort to use those things, it's their own damn fault and like hell is Arakita going to feel bad about it.
It takes Arakita a week, after finding a forum he likes and browsing around, to commit to coining a user handle.
There's a sub-section of the site for questions. It's just what Arakita needs, but he resists, not about to brand himself an uninformed cretin by a bunch of elitist bike enthusiasts. He knows how communication on the internet goes. But he posts his question about the obnoxious thing his bike chain has been doing that he didn't want to tell Fuku-chan about, and the responses he gets are simple and helpful. No one tells him he's an idiot at all.
He asks a few more questions, this time about upgrades – he isn't ready to invest any cash in extra do-dads but he hears people in club talk about new stuff for their bikes and like hell is he going to ask about those things to those people directly. He'll keep his mouth shut on his ignorance around that one snobby senpai, when all he needs to do is get to a computer in order to unlock all the answers.
Arakita is starting to get a read on the forum, after his first half-dozen threads. He figures out who knows their stuff and who is full of shit, and which posters everyone thinks are annoying as hell. He also notices that every time he posts a question thread, he gets a reply from this guy, "BikeKing11." His username is laughably uninspired (at least Arakita's "lonewolf" handle has some personality), but his information is unanimously good.
Arakita starts browsing his threads. It's nothing dedicated, he just wants to see what else the guy does on the site besides hanging out in the questions sub-forum like some kind of serene bike guru. It turns out the king also spends a lot of his time in the ride reports section, meticulously documenting the trips he goes on. Before he knows it, Arakita is eight threads deep in the guy's forum history, eating up the reports like he's starved for them.
The pictures aren't even that great. Even Arakita can tell that the person holding the camera doesn't know jack about composition, and yet there's still a quiet appeal in the shots of open stretches of road, of mountains looming up in front of where the photographer stands and placid expanses of water reaching out toward the horizon. Each picture is captioned only with the location and the amount of distance currently traveled, like it's some kind of scientific report. Keeping it simple. Arakita gets that.
He decides to start commenting on the king's trips, what the hell.
There aren't many new ones, the king's last couple of reports widely spaced over the past handful of months, but it's no big deal. The guy also has a thread where he and a handful of the other posters talk about their daily training routines, and Arakita chimes in there, too. He's got stuff to say, with the way the Hakone club works its members. He's tired all the damn time. His muscles are sore. He's been eating almost as much as Shinkai. Arakita talks about hakogaku's training, and everyone in the thread sounds suitably impressed.
Weeks pass, and Arakita realizes he's really getting into the forum thing. He works harder – in training by himself, if not always in front of the jackasses at his club – just so he can brag to his forum audience later. He gripes in his postings, but it feels good, to see his efforts measured up against all these other dedicated riders, none of them acting like they're better than him, and to see that he isn't coming up lacking. He's moving forward.
He talks to "BikeKing11" a lot. The guy is on the forum once a day like clockwork, keeping up with his training diary and following a couple of ride report journals and replying to any new threads in the questions section. Any time Arakita goes ahead and voices something for discussion, the king is there, and every time his replies are straightforward and to the point, answering questions with an authority Arakita will admit is deserved. The guy knows biking and isn't haughty about it – he just wants to deliver good input to people who are asking for it.
Arakita posts a comment about how his club has been working him like a dog, and it's only when the king replies with "After so much hard work, the thing you deserve is rest" with an actual gif of a sleepy puppy under it that Arakita realizes he might have made a friend.
-#-
"Be careful with the rollers," Fukutomi says, without his pace dropping by even a hair as he continues to pedal.
Arakita snorts, his lip curling up in distaste, as he catches his bike before he actually succeeds in falling. He's been doing this long enough now that he can ride on rollers just as well as everyone else, thanks, and Fuku-chan should know that. Arakita just tries to dismount too fast sometimes, breathing hard and ready to rotate with whoever's waiting to use the machine, and then he stumbles.
"I know that, Fuku-chan," he snaps, rolling his bike to the side so he's out of the way.
"I don't want to see you injure yourself, or harm the equipment," Fukutomi says, as if that's any explanation.
He's so serious about it, a regular stone-faced stick in the mud, and Arakita snorts again in derision. Fukutomi cares too much about performance. He thinks he's so good, with his endless endurance and smart, well-timed gear shifting. Arakita watches his back, remarkably steady as his feet turn the pedals, and wishes that Fukutomi wasn't more than an equal to the skill he thinks that he has.
He watches Fukutomi's shoulders, broad beneath the white t-shirt he's worn to practice that's just starting to stick to his spine from his building perspiration, watches the lone trickle of sweat inching down the back of Fukutomi's neck. He wishes that Fukutomi didn't have such a commanding presence, so that he could focus on something else in the room.
Or maybe that part is just Arakita.
"I won't break anything, Fuku-chan," he drawls, dismissively. "I've bounced off the ground from this bike enough times that it'd take more than a fall from a roller to fuck me up, and those things are fucking indestructible. Don't be so damn paranoid."
"I'm not," Fukutomi says. "I'm only offering advice."
"You could be less smug about it," Arakita complains. "That's not advice, that's just being a fucking busybody. I've gotten advice, and it doesn't go that way."
He's aware that he's being kind of a dick, more so than Fukutomi likely deserves, no matter how many times he reminds Arakita about basic-ass shit. He wishes he were madder at Fukutomi for it. Instead, he thinks he might just like the way it's showing him attention.
Arakita huffs, which Fukutomi will hear, and jerks his face away, which will go unseen with Fukutomi facing away from him on the rollers. He wants more attention than what Fukutomi gives him, and it'd be one thing if that was time on their bikes, even though he's busting his ass to be less dependent and to be a strong cyclist in his own right. But it isn't – he wants Fukutomi to look right at him, to see his hard work and his effort and his sheer dogged-mindedness, and not look through him at their path to the finish line.
He wants Fukutomi to see the person he's becoming through learning to care about the sport Fukutomi loves.
"There's this guy," he says, casual, looking at the handlebars of his bike and not even at Fukutomi's back. "He gives really good advice. It's too bad you can't take pointers from him because you sure as hell could use them."
Fukutomi doesn't even say anything.
It's so childish, comparing Fukutomi to some online persona and wanting him to lose. But if he proves Fukutomi isn't so great, maybe he won't need Fukutomi to look at him the way Arakita realizes, sometimes, he ends up looking at Fukutomi – like he's the only one in the room, the only other person on the road.
"Arakita," Fukutomi starts to say. "I was considering--"
"I'm going to go bike laps on the track," Arakita cuts in. He doesn't want to know if Fukutomi really was going to apologize, or even temporize, when Arakita is the one being petty. "I'll be back."
He tries not to look at Fukutomi's profile as he rolls his bike out of the room.
-#-
After trading emails with the king of his forum, there's only one thing Arakita can see to do next. He opens a new message, types in "aki-chan is happy to see you," attaches a picture of his dog, and hits send.
She's tail-end to the camera in the shot but caught in the process of turning around toward it, her mouth just opened and her tongue just starting to loll out. It's very much a happy dog picture. It's also kind of fucking stupid and Arakita knows that, but the king is the one who sent him a puppy gif first, and it beats out saying straight up that he's happy to see this guy's email in his contacts, that he's the one glad to have that attention.
It's stupid, but Arakita really likes talking to this guy.
"She looks happy. I'm happy to see her too."
The message comes in so quickly it almost startles Arakita – he hadn't even realized the guy was online, jeez, he definitely hadn't planned on camping on top of his email waiting for a reply – and underneath the words is another picture, this one of a husky puppy leaned up excitedly over the arm of a couch.
He can't believe this guy. He can't believe that he's actually starting to smile, the corners of his mouth drawing up with no curl to his lip, no undercurrent of distaste. He wonders if his erstwhile penpal just has a whole folder full of puppy gifs on his computer, ready and at hand to attach to any message that needs a little illustration.
"you must really like dogs, huh, if you use so many pictures of them?"
"I admire them for their loyalty, and their tenaciousness. And I find that whenever I'm dealing with stress, looking at these kinds of pictures is the best thing that helps."
Arakita wonders what stresses the king out. He always seems so calm and together, posting on the site, but he has to have a real life, too. Maybe he's a university student. He seems to have his shit more together than most of the jackasses Arakita goes to school with, anyway, but he doesn't seem like a stodgy salaryman, either.
"hah. i guess that's how i feel, too. there's no one like a dog to love you unconditionally."
He's more of a cat person, but he doesn't tell the king that. He might admire cats for their independence and ability to just not give a fuck about anything that isn't getting right up in their face, but he's loyal like a dog. Maybe he'd be better off if he were less so.
"Is Aki-chan your dog? I wouldn't mind seeing more pictures of her, if you don't mind."
There's a picture attached to this next message, too, of two Labrador puppies, one of them starting to climb up on the other in his eagerness. There are absolutely no two ways about it – it's the cutest fucking shit. He can't believe this guy is this excited to see pictures of his dog. He wonders if maybe this guy is just this excited to talk to him in the first place. But he isn't used to having that much attention focused squarely on him, so he doesn't think too much into it.
"yeah, she's mine. she lives with my parents though and is turning into such a shitty, spoiled princess because my family doesn't know what to do with a dog, the idiots."
Arakita attaches a few more pictures to the email, digging through the files on his computer to pick out the best ones. He hasn't been home from school in a bit; hasn't seen Aki-chan in person in a while. Maybe the next time he visits his folks, he'll take some more pictures. He can show the new ones to the king, too.
They keep messaging back and forth, off and on intermittently for the rest of the evening, talking about dogs and pets and a little bit about their families. It's nice. It feels good to have a friend who he isn't constantly competing with at practice, because it turns out Arakita can't get into any sport without fighting to be the best that he's able.
For all his calm demeanor, the king has such a soft side – Arakita never anticipated being so comfortable talking to someone like that.
-#-
Fukutomi is such a hardass. He isn't even a real authority in the club, he's a first year just like Arakita, but for some stupid reason all of their senpais respect him. They didn't look twice at the way he bossed Arakita around, and Arakita never could back down from Fukutomi's demands, not when he might appear as anything less than equal to the challenge.
They have a race that day, but not an official one. It's just the first years following a pre-determined course, with Fukutomi taking the lead by unspoken consensus. Arakita doesn't know if the upperclassmen put him in charge, or if everybody else just defers to him, or if maybe it's simply the fact that Fukutomi is precisely as strong as he constantly asserts. Whatever the case, Arakita fights and claws and struggles to keep up with him, working himself harder than at any other practice of late.
Arakita takes second place, even above Shinkai.
He wants to drop, the instant he gets off his bike, but he knows better than that. He has to keep moving, has to keep his muscles from cramping, guzzles down a whole bottle of water now that he doesn't have to coordinate the way he drinks with how he rides. He doesn't care if there's any more to practice. He's done for the day.
As he's stomping off back to the dorms, Arakita pulls out his phone, starts typing a new email. There's all of one person he can vent to about the indignity of hakogaku's bike dictatorship.
"i'm fucking exhausted. monitor your own condition my ass, there's no way to do that if you bike with someone like the guy i was riding with today. i wouldn't have to push myself this hard if i wasn't keeping up with a fucking machine. how can you tell if the asshole you're biking with isn't even fucking human?"
Arakita gets so absorbed in typing out his vitriol that he loses all outward signs of his ire. He gets back to his room and lets himself inside, throwing himself onto the bed without making any attempt at changing. He's so sweaty. He hasn't taken a shower but he feels like a limp noodle, like he might not be able to stay upright in the shower stall. Fukutomi is trying to actually kill him.
He isn't sure how many minutes pass, before his phone alerts him to a new message. He's gleefully spacing out, staring blankly into the blurred pattern of his bed coverings as seen from barely inches away. He rolls over onto his back, scoops his phone back in toward himself.
"You could start by verifying he's not a werewolf. Get some rest, I think you deserve it."
This time, the message is accompanied by a picture of a sleeping puppy conked out right on the rug, with another puppy flopped against its side. They're both so small in their skins that with the way the second puppy's paws brace against the other dog's back, it almost looks like he's trying to cover the first in a blanket. Arakita's eyes are so wide in his face. His mouth is doing an unfamiliar thing that feels too tight, and strange.
He's actually grinning so hard that it hurts, at the indisputable display of affection.
"i'm sure he's not, otherwise he might actually be cool. and he's so fucking uncool. this guy wouldn't know cool if it bit him on the ass, hell, he wouldn't even realize he got bitten, that's how much of a hardass he is."
Arakita fights the urge to roll over and plant his face in the pillow. He's not going to scream like one of his baby sisters about a guy whose real name he never even thought to ask doing something as basic and stupid as showing concern over him. Through puppy gifs, of all goddamn, idiotic things.
Mostly because he's too tired even for that, and needs to conserve his energy for ranting about Fuku-chan.
"He sounds like someone worth training with, for that level of determination. Even if he's uncool."
The image underneath is a golden lab, with a pair of dark sunglasses perched on the dog's nose. Arakita wants to throw his phone across the room. He thinks his king might be even more of a huge, hopeless dork than Fukutomi, sincere as he is with his puppy reaction images and earnest little comments. Arakita wishes, a little, that he didn't like that as much as he does.
The king keeps reminding him of Fukutomi, so that even when he wants to yell and complain about how Fuku-chan gives him tough orders and overworks him and always makes demands of him even when they aren't things Fukutomi bothers to say outright, he can't maintain the proper edge to his anger. He doesn't know why he wants so badly to talk about Fukutomi, when mostly he wants to talk to this guy who is an endearing fucking doofus and who Arakita wants to have paying all his attention to him.
"you're uncool. why do i even fucking talk to you?"
He already knows the answer, he just takes for granted that it won't be typed back to him.
"Presumably it's because you like my company. Or because you don't have enough other friends who are interested in bikes."
Arakita snorts, derisively to himself, so he doesn't have to think about how it's true – on both counts. He tries not to consider it but the knowledge is there, hovering just inside the sphere of his awareness. He likes this guy, with his patient nature and dry humor and hidden soft side that he never shows nearly as much on the forum compared to when he's talking only with Arakita, and he doesn't at all know what to do about it. He'd much rather never do anything about it at all.
"yeah, i guess it might be something like that. you're not nearly as bad as that other jackass i could be talking to, if i wanted to carry the whole fucking conversation."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"what are you talking about, it was a compliment. i'm going out of my way to flatter you."
Arakita reasons that he doesn't have to do anything about the way that he feels, because he's gone and made it so shittily obvious that if the king really still doesn't know, then that just means he wasn't actually worth Arakita's time in the first place.
-#-
Class is out for the day and Arakita is sitting in the club room in his bike shorts, but he isn't in a hurry to immediately hop on his bike. He's early enough that most of the club isn't even there – it's just him, sitting sprawled on a bench with his legs splayed out, and Fukutomi, sitting in a chair a few feet away.
If Fukutomi were to get on his case about it, he might growl and complain and argue about it, but he also would get up and get to work. Fukutomi isn't giving him any instruction, so he stays where he's sat, phone in hand and fingers tapping busily away at the keys.
"being in a school club is so fucking aggravating. no one else is even here. can you believe what slackers they are? idiots. i'm not about to throw myself into practice until some more people show up."
It really is maddening, when Arakita's senpais can't even be bothered to drag themselves to the bike club on time. He's a first year, he shouldn't be the only one devoting the proper respect to punctuality and dedication. Well, him and Fuku-chan. But everyone already knows that Fukutomi is convicted.
It's not that weird, for him to want to complain to a – to a friend, about his stupid, lazy clubmates.
"I'm sure the other members of the club will show up soon. It isn't at all unreasonable, for you to want to wait and practice with the group."
The words are nothing sentimental, but Arakita's mouth twitches slightly when he reads them, and he glances surreptitiously up at Fukutomi to check whether he's looking. He's not, of course, because since when has Fukutomi ever been one to nose into other people's personal business? He's just sitting there, holding his own phone, minding his own damn business.
"i don't want to wait for them. i want to ride somewhere else. somewhere far away from here, away from all of these fucking morons."
He glances at Fukutomi again, as he hits send, out of something like reflexive guilt. He's lying. He might not care for the rest of the club, when he's sure most of those guys couldn't give two shits about him, probably hate him, but he doesn't want to ride away from Fukutomi. It's rare that the club room is so empty – Arakita doesn't bother to tell his friend that he's early, he and Fukutomi are both there well ahead of the practice's start – and he's glad for that.
He's glad that Fukutomi is so absorbed in patiently, rhythmically picking away at his phone, because it means he won't look up and catch Arakita watching him. Watching Fukutomi's stone face in its usual composed set, expression so calm and steady that Arakita can believe that everything is absolutely to rights in Fukutomi's world. It's like his intensity never turns off, no matter what he's doing.
Arakita's phone vibrates in his hand, and he jerks his gaze away, like he hadn't at all been admiring the sweep of Fukutomi's nose and the line of his mouth in the first place.
"You should take a trip. Even during the school year, I will take weekend riding trips when I can. There are many places you could go for a change in pace."
Arakita thinks of the king's ride report journals, and all the wild, remote places that he must have been. If he's still in school, that means all of those places were close to his campus – means that there must be better places Arakita could ride, too, if he knew where to look.
"i've seen your pictures, but i wouldn't even know where to start."
He wishes he did, wishes he got farther from the school whenever he rides on his own.
"There are plenty of places. Just along the Haya-kawa River there are several areas of road that are not only a rewarding challenge to bike, but which are also quite scenic."
Geography isn't Arakita's best subject, but he realizes all at once that he knows that name, is at least roughly familiar with that area. The king is describing a place practically in Arakita's backyard. If Arakita has accurately followed through on the information just now being revealed to him, that means the king is astoundingly local.
"i wouldn't know the first thing about planning a route along there."
He's aware, dimly, in the back of his head, that he's started to hold his breath.
"I could plan the route, and we could ride it together. I already have several options in mind."
Arakita almost can't believe what he's reading. He wants to pump his fist in victory, like Fukutomi does when he passes the goal line to win a race, wants to slam his phone down on the ground so hard it shatters into a million pieces just to stop himself from typing something absolutely and incontrovertibly moronic in reply. His face is doing something weird and tight and exultant. He has to fight himself under control, when it's such a stupid thing to feel triumphant over.
"yeah, sure, why not. when do you want to do it?"
His fingers are gripped so tightly around the edge of his phone, but he can't let up.
"This weekend. There's a coffee shop in the area which is an ideal place for us to meet at beforehand, in order to depart together for the ride."
He's going to meet his online friend, the one who sends him dorky pictures of puppies to cheer him up and who always emails him back, no matter how stupid of a message Arakita might have sent him to start. The one who's funny when he doesn't mean to be and earnest all of the time and who Arakita guesses, maybe, he might have some kind of feelings for, if he wants to be gross and obvious about it.
He stares so hard at his phone, like he's willing it to explode, like if it does he'll stop being too excited for such a stupid, embarrassing thing.
"it sounds like you're asking me for coffee, you know that?"
What Arakita means to ask is, is this a date? But it isn't what he types, because he can't make his fingers pick across the keyboard to spell out those words.
"It must sound that way because I am doing just that."
Arakita's eyes jerk from the screen, dart sideways to rivet on Fukutomi instead.
For a moment, he reassures himself that he's just making sure Fuku-chan isn't watching him, isn't witnessing whatever childish, embarrassing thing his face is choosing to do. But Arakita isn't scared of Fukutomi, or his opinions. There's a heavy feeling welling up in his gut, nauseous and unfairly guilty, and as much as he hopes Fukutomi doesn't look up at that moment to see the way his mouth has twisted, he also hopes that Fukutomi will.
Arakita wants Fukutomi to look at him, to really see him, in this moment just as much as he does at any other point of personal triumph.
He turns back to his phone. It's what Fukutomi was doing – staring down at his phone with that intent look that he only ever directs at things, be they symbolic ones like the goal line or more tangible objects like his bike, that look he reserves solely for things he can conquer. He looks like he's solved something, his face set and determined and done. He won't look at Arakita like that – the closest he's come is the way he regards Arakita after he's sent Fukutomi to the goal line, with a look of such unchallenged satisfaction.
Arakita looks down at his phone instead of sideways into Fukutomi's face, because maybe the person at the other end of it will look right into him once they meet.
"good. i want to get coffee with you."
He hits send, then crams his phone back into his bag at his feet. He stands up, stretching with pointed laziness so that the reach of his arms over top of his head will catch even Fukutomi's diverted attention. It works.
"I'm gonna go warm up on the rollers," he tells Fukutomi.
He's going to ride so hard that even Fukutomi and his challenge of three hours will be put to shame. He's going to ride like he can do anything, because hell, he thinks he really might prove that he can.
-#-
The coffee shop turns out not to be very far from Hakone Academy. Arakita can bike there while hardly breaking a sweat, so that he wonders whether the king picked it out specifically for his convenience. It's stupid – he would have biked farther, doesn't need to be catered to or coddled. He can push himself harder. He's going to show the king that none of what he's said on their forum about his skills is just talk.
It occurs to Arakita, only as he's locking his bike up outside what is more of a cafe than a coffee shop, that he never asked the king for his real name.
Some mystery date he is. He doesn't know what to call the guy he got so eager to meet, doesn't know what kind of guy he should be looking out for. His friend could be some rugged mountain man, for all he knows, or some weedy university type, bespectacled and pared down to nothing but muscle and bone. They haven't even seen each other and he's fucking everything to hell.
Whatever. It's fine. Arakita can go inside and loiter in the entraceway – it's not like he's never made a nuisance of himself in a business establishment before – and piss around until he figures out who else is just pissing about without any company to speak of. He heads inside, and abruptly stops.
Since when does Fuku-chan ever leave the school grounds?
Arakita pulls a face, nose wrinkling up as his surprise immediately morphs into affront and disgust. This is just what he needs. Here he is, staking out the door so he can seize up everyone who comes through it, so he can scrutinize and sniff at them until by some goddamn miracle he deduces which one is his date, and now he's got Fukutomi to contend with. Fukutomi doesn't even know what an intrusion he is – he's just sitting there on the bench inside the entrance like he could wait for an eternity.
Arakita can't believe he missed Fukutomi's bike out front. He can't, and he can – he was so focused on his stupid date, because like hell has he ever done anything like this before, and he missed the completely fucking obvious signal to danger – or at least embarrassment – shoved right in front of him.
He just doesn't want Fukutomi to watch him fuck this up.
Arakita shoves his thumbs in his waistband, hunches forward, takes the few bandy-legged steps to sit himself down next to Fukutomi. He wants Fukutomi to get up, leave, to go anywhere else where he won't see Arakita sitting down for a date with someone who isn't – he doesn't want Fukutomi watching him right now. But Fukutomi is there, and it'd be moronic to pretend that he isn't, imbecilic though it still might be to strike up the conversation with Fukutomi himself.
"I didn't realize you knew there were places to be besides campus, Fuku-chan," Arakita says.
Fukutomi looks sideways at him, and Arakita does his best not to fidget on the bench. He succeeds, mostly, even with Fukutomi's gaze weighing him down.
"I'm very familiar with the area surrounding Hakone," Fukutomi says, "since this is the school my father and my brother also chose to attend."
Arakita laughs, once, but it's more empty than scoffing. "Even places like this? It's really quaint, don't you think? You sure you want to be wasting your time here?"
He waves his hand around vaguely, a dismissive gesture that takes in the entirety of the cafe, with its softly-painted walls and cute, rounded tables. Everything is cream and green and warm, medium-toned wood, a little bit cozy, a little bit rustic. He bets a lot of guys from school take girls on dates here. Hell, he's supposed to be going on a date here. If Fukutomi would just buzz off. If his date would just show up.
Fukutomi obligingly glances around where Arakita is indicating, polite, like he doesn't see anything wrong with the situation. "They have very good apple danishes."
Arakita snorts, and it's a little bit disgusted, a little bit despairing. Of course Fukutomi would pick the place out for its desserts. Of course. It's so fucking typical, so completely Fukutomi, so aggravatingly cute. He imagines Fukutomi sitting at one of the round tables in the back, all by himself with his plate of danish, and his heart does something weird and constrictive in his chest.
"Then get your danish, Fuku-chan, I don't know what the fuck you're waiting around for," Arakita says.
"I was waiting for you."
Arakita rolls his eyes, because that's so stupid, because that way he doesn't have to look right at Fukutomi's face while he says something as stupid as that. Fukutomi will be doing it with that usual even stare, the better to match his earnest tone, and Arakita isn't ready for Fukutomi to stare right through him that way.
"Just. Do whatever you want. I'm not going to stop you, that's fucking dumb."
Arakita can feel Fukutomi's eyes on him, before he seems to take Arakita's advice and stands up from the bench. "Are you coming?"
"What the fuck, Fuku-chan, of course I'm... Not..."
The words Arakita means to speak promptly die on his tongue. He might as well die with them, before he does anything even more stupendously poorly-thought, before he grabs Fukutomi by his stupidly broad shoulders and shakes him until his weird, strong brain rattles hollowly against his skull. He wants to hit Fukutomi, a little, because he can't hit himself for being such an oblivious tool.
"What the fuck," he says again.
Fukutomi waits, standing over Arakita, just like he always does. Like if he just gives it a little time, everything will resolve itself, because for Fukutomi, everything always does.
Arakita digs in his heels, shoves his shoulders back against the cafe wall, and glares up at Fukutomi. "What the fuck, Fuku-chan, did you really have to go through the internet to ask me out for coffee?"
"It was a strange way to get your email," Fukutomi admits. Slowly, like he's only just cared to realize this.
It's only just beginning to sink in that he's on a date with Fukutomi. Arakita is on a date, at the cutest dumb little cafe anywhere near the school, with Fukutomi. His face is starting to grow hot and there's nothing he can think to do to stop it.
He gets up from the bench, springs to his feet all at once, and it's a little too fast, a little too puppy-eager, but it's only just occurred to him that Fukutomi still could change his mind. He slouches, sliding back toward casual as best he can, and says, "Let's sit down already."
"I thought you were going to complain some more about my choice of location," Fukutomi says.
"Just, shut up Fuku-chan, shut the fuck up. Where do you want to sit?"
Fukutomi leads them to an empty table, toward the back of the room right where Arakita imagined he'd sit, and starts to draw out one of the chairs. Arakita skirts around the table, quick, and slides into the other chair before he can find out whether Fukutomi was going to try and be a gentleman at him.
Arakita is pretty sure the waitress is giving them a dirty look, after side-eying them periodically for the past ten minutes, but he doesn't care. She can scowl all she likes.
He's on a date with Fukutomi. He can't believe it.
"I told you that you were a jackass," Arakita says. "To your face. Or, to your email, whatever, but you didn't even say anything. You really are a stone-face."
What he means is, he wouldn't have said half of those things if he realized who he was talking to. He can't believe Fukutomi let him make that much of an ass of himself. He can't believe that Fukutomi wanted to ask him on a date at all, when his favorite subject for months has been Fukutomi's most frustrating of imagined failings.
"You were expressing how you felt," Fukutomi says. "That's important. I wouldn't want to take that from you."
Arakita doesn't immediately have a smart response to that. He sits back in his chair, sullen and flustered, and the waitress at last braves the atmosphere surrounding them. After Fukutomi orders his dumb apple pastry, Arakita asks for a cup of coffee. Just coffee. He doesn't need to be excessive.
"I didn't know it was you," he points out.
Arakita can't tell if Fukutomi just doesn't realize that. He lays it out, tosses it down so Fukutomi will have to acknowledge the fact, like maybe once he's said it Fukutomi will apologize. For what, Arakita doesn't really know, and as soon as he's said it he wishes he kept it to himself. If Fukutomi didn't realize, he could pretend he's been flirting purposefully with Fukutomi all along.
"Just don't get smug about figuring it out faster," he adds, before Fukutomi can draw the breath to respond. "I can't believe how many puppy pictures you have lying around! Is that all you do on the internet, Fuku-chan, browse for pictures of dogs?"
The waitress returns and slides their drinks onto the table. Arakita reaches immediately for his, swallowing down a sip of it even as it scalds his tongue. He's saved most of those puppy pictures Fukutomi sent him. He's just as fucking bad as Fuku-chan, even if like hell is he going to admit it.
"I also post on our bike racing forum," Fukutomi says, in such a deadpan that Arakita can't tell if maybe he really is making a joke. "I don't have a lot of time outside school and practice to be online."
Arakita shrugs, a rough jerk of his shoulders, because he doesn't even care about that. Fukutomi could spend all his time online browsing porn, for all Arakita cares. (It'd be weird if all Fukutomi did was browse porn, certainly, and as soon as Arakita thinks it he gets an image in his head of Fukutomi at his computer with his cheeks all flushed, and he abruptly pushes the thought away.) He doesn't care what Fukutomi does with his free time because right now he's spending it with Arakita, and Arakita is driving the conversation into the ground.
"You're so bad at this, Fuku-chan," he says. "What kind of a date is this."
"I've never gone on a date," Fukutomi says. "So I couldn't say. But you want to go riding with me afterward, so it seemed like a good idea."
Fukutomi is so casual, in admitting his inexperience, that it takes a moment for Arakita to realize that for once, in this single goddamn arena, Fukutomi has no more of an idea what he's doing than Arakita does. He almost flinches, a moment later, when Fukutomi's hand peels his fingers away from where they've curled around his cup and folds them together with his own.
He squeezes Fukutomi's hand back like he's trying to break it.
"You always do the weirdest things," Arakita says, and there isn't enough bite in his voice. He tries not to glance around, to check on whether anyone is watching them. He doesn't let go of Fukutomi's hand, clutches it vise-tight.
Fukutomi just picks up his danish with his other hand, taking a bite like he's utterly at peace. "I do what needs to be done. I'm glad you're here with me, Yasutomo."
Arakita blows out the breath he'd been holding. "Don't be gross, Fuku-chan."
Fukutomi spears him with a look, for just a second, before he returns to eating his danish. His other hand doesn't shift, and his fingers remain neatly placed inside Arakita's grip. He feels Fukutomi's thumb traveling lightly across his knuckles, in counterpoint to how hard he's continuing to squeeze.
It occurs to Arakita that Fukutomi is entirely serious, that a date really is a date and that Fukutomi isn't making fun of him at all.
"Give me a bite," he says, abruptly, waving his free hand at Fukutomi's pastry. "Let me try your dumb danish."
He leans forward in his chair a little, expectantly enough that it becomes a challenge. Fukutomi watches him for a long moment, before setting the pastry back on its plate and breaking off a small piece with his fingers. He starts to offer it to Arakita across the table.
Arakita tilts his head to the side, opens his mouth, takes the piece of pastry right from Fukutomi's hand without touching it. His tongue flicks against Fukutomi's fingers in the process, then again with more deliberation, swiping the last flecks of flaky dough off of Fukutomi's fingertips. Fukutomi doesn't pull his hand away, so Arakita makes one last pass, licking the film of frosting sugar off of Fukutomi's skin.
His face is incredibly hot but Fukutomi is staring right at him, and Arakita refuses to flinch away.
"It's not bad," he says.
It's slight, but he sees it when the corner of Fukutomi's mouth starts to curve up, when Fukutomi reveals the beginnings of a smile. "This cafe does make the best apple danishes."
Arakita settles back in his chair, still feeling too warm underneath his skin but no longer working to fight it, and picks up his coffee cup. His other hand has gone loose against Fukutomi's hand but still the touch is there, constant and bracing. He guesses it does feel like a date, now. He gulps down his coffee without bothering to taste it.
Fukutomi keeps eating his danish. It's comfortable, even without Arakita making the effort to talk. He realizes he's run out of coffee when he starts playing with the cup, turning it around and around on its saucer just to keep both of his hands busy.
"Let's go biking, Fuku-chan," he says. "Like you planned."
"Even if you're not familiar with the route," Fukutomi replies, "I trust you will keep up?"
"Of course I will, what the hell kind of question is that?" Arakita protests.
"Good," Fukutomi says. "I like that persistence about you."
Arakita snorts, but doesn't say anything else, because he likes Fukutomi complimenting him. They leave their money on the table, and head back outside to their bikes. The course Fukutomi planned is just long enough to leave Arakita sweaty and panting when they get back to the school, and it's only after they've passed that imaginary finish line, with nothing more for Fukutomi to look forward toward, that he kisses Arakita slow on his breathless mouth.
For that single moment afterward, Arakita is sure that Fukutomi is looking at nothing other than him.