Work Text:
It takes Hori two years, three months, and seventeen days to finally realize that Kashima is not, in fact, making fun of him when she suggests that he try wearing skirts and dresses.
They’re walking to her house at the time, after eating overly cutesy desserts at a new café that she’d begged him endlessly (twice in person, eleven times on the phone) to visit with her. It’s just past sunset on a particularly hot late summer day — hot enough that there’s still sweat beading along the back of his neck, even with stars fading in overhead. He’s back home from his first year of college for a month or so, and she’s making preparations to leave, finally finished with high school, along with their other friends.
“Mikoshiba’s going to study horticulture, I think. He bought all these books, and he’s even growing some cute little herbs that he showed me! Isn’t that a perfect choice for him, when you really think about it?” Kashima is in such a good mood that she’s practically humming around the shape of each word — off-key, of course. A true stranger to the concept of personal space, she’s walking close enough that her arm bumps his constantly. He’s even getting whiffs of her breath, still smelling of chocolate cream. “I think he’ll be really good at it. And maybe one day I’ll get some nice flowers as a birthday gift!”
“I suppose plants are less intimidating than people. That alone makes it a good fit,” he says. “Hey, careful!”
She’s looking over at him, not even paying attention to how she’s about to step right into the road with cars oncoming. Startled, he reaches for her hand, pulls her back.
“Are you even aware of your surroundings?” Hori can’t help but huff at her as she blinks all innocently with those wide, green eyes. He can feel her pulse, just barely. “You’re an adult now, aren’t you? Don’t act like a five year old who wanders into traffic.”
Kashima considers this. Her smile tilts up higher at one edge, widens. Somehow, she twists the hand he’s holding in one deft motion to just the right angle, her slender fingers winding between his slightly thicker ones and squeezing. “Well, maybe you should hold onto me just to make sure I stay safe, Hori-senpai.”
The next thing he knows, the light has changed and she’s yanking him over the crosswalk. She picks up the conversation easily again, diving right into a detailed explanation of Seo’s post-graduation plans (no college for a while, apparently — just some odd jobs at first to make money and travel a little). For almost a full minute, they’re just holding hands, Kashima’s grip snug and surprisingly strong without being uncomfortable; she even swings their arms a little with each odd step. After walking nearly a block, she finally lets go to fix her shirt collar, tucking the fold down a little more neatly.
And Hori thinks, for maybe the 49th or 50th time all summer: what the hell is going on with them?
It hadn’t seemed like they were spending a lot of time together at first — a lunch here, a walk there. Kashima wasn’t shy about her eagerness to make up for “all the lost special attention from Hori-chan-senpai” after they’d been in different places for a year, even though he was quick to bring up that he’d come back several times to see the drama club’s new shows. But he didn’t say no because...well, he had missed her. Which was information he planned to take to the grave, for the record; he’d never hear the fucking end of it if she knew. Over time, he’d gotten used to keeping many of his thoughts about her private. In his mind, he envisioned them as pieces of paper that he folded again and again and again until they were squares that could be held on a fingertip, neatly stacked and compressed enough that he could pretend they were really that small.
So they had seen a few nearby plays together, sitting in the park afterwards for hours as they discussed actors, set design, plot points. They’d gotten overly competitive at one or two arcades, even betting real money on the outcomes. A weekly meet-up became a twice-a-week meetup, and then it was almost every other day, and all of a sudden, it was hard to find a place on his calendar where plans with her weren’t already hastily penciled in. When they weren’t together, his phone would ping at all hours with little updates and observations, smiling pictures of her with friends, a crowd of fangirls, or even just alone, to the point that he’d start to feel off-kilter if more than an hour passed without an impromptu, emoticon-laden text. Once, while lounging in bed, he’d even given into texting her first after an eerie silence — you didn’t oversleep, did you — only for the vibrations to start with a vengeance seconds later. He’d just closed his eyes and listened to the gentle, sustained humming for a while, his heart embarrassingly swollen, until the phone flipped straight off the side table onto the floor.
Simply put, Hori has no idea what they are right now, or any goddamn clue about how to even start that conversation. Part of him doesn’t want to, because Kashima’s thought processes defy logic more often than not. Maybe stuff like this, holding hands out of the blue, is just a game to her — something fun and light and easily forgotten in another minute or two.
For now, he swallows until his throat gets a little less tight. He stays focused on reality, cut-and-dry details. It’s late August, a Thursday. His stomach feels unsettled— he shouldn’t have let himself be talked into ordering that second piece of cake. The wind’s ruffled some of Kashima’s hair, somehow making it frame her cheek and jaw even more attractively. She’s here, and he’s here, and all in all, it’s been a good day.
“Chiyo-chan said something about taking online classes the last time we met up, at least for the first year,” Kashima is saying, light and cheerful, as they turn onto a less busy street away from the shops, heading back towards her home. “Anything to stay close to Nozaki, of course.”
“Yeah, I remember hearing that.” He’d stopped by the apartment for old time’s sake awhile back to say hello and share some tea over the latest half-finished pages of Let’s Fall in Love, still going strong. “Hopefully, they’ll at least be dating before too long. Sakura’s waited long enough, that’s for damn sure.”
“Right, right, but...I think she’s perfectly happy just getting to spend time with him right now. Sometimes, that’s more than enough, y’know?”
The blue wash of the lampposts cradles her face, gleams across her crescent moon of a smile. It reminds Hori of how she used to look on stage — confident and mesmerizing and ignited like a match, almost as if there weren’t any stage lights at all and the shine came straight from her. He looks at her, and looks at her, and has to force himself to stop looking at her.
“They make such great work partners too! The finished manga pages always look so beautiful. I always thought just one person worked on those — it’s amazing how much there really is to do, when you think about it.” She had been let in on the secret at some point after Hori had graduated; he didn’t know the details of how or why, but it hadn’t really mattered at that point. Nozaki had already found someone else to take over backgrounds duty long ago, even after lamenting every step of the way about why time couldn’t flow like a shoujo manga, where characters can easily spend several real-world years stuck in the same pivotal semester of high school. That had sounded horrifying to Hori. A never-ending time loop of sharpening pencils and vague instructions from Nozaki and sketching the same plain school setting from thousands of slightly different angles. “It sounds really fun to work on a project like that. Creating stories and people and places out of nothing at all, just your own imagination. It’s like putting on a play, a little.”
He has to snort at that. “At least for a play, the people already exist, and you’ve just got to work on how they walk and talk. There’s a lot more grunt work for a manga. I can’t even remember how many all-nighters I pulled at Nozaki’s place, helping him make his deadline.”
Kashima stops short, so suddenly that he walks a few more steps without her before realizing.
“Wait.” She blinks rapidly, her mouth unraveling into a gaping shape. “Hori-senpai, you helped with Nozaki’s manga?”
He's genuinely caught off-guard. “I used to...they didn’t tell you I was an assistant? I did backgrounds.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything!? How long have you been good at drawing? I remember you made some of the backdrops for the plays, but that was it!”
He’s privately grateful that she moved on from the first question so quickly; somehow, I was afraid you and your fangirls would accidentally destroy Nozaki’s apartment doesn’t seem like an answer she’d be happy to hear. “Kashima, it’s really not a big deal. I didn’t draw for fun much at all. I treated it like any other job.”
“But, but, but,” she sputters, “I want to see them! What kinds of things do you draw?” A thought makes her eyes spark with newfound mischief. “Did you ever draw me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he says dryly. I don’t think me or anyone else could do you justice in a drawing is the silent, honest follow-up, so horrifically sappy that he has to resist the urge to slap himself across the face. “I’m shit at drawing people in general. Like I just said, it was a job. I did backgrounds for Nozaki — boring stuff like schools, and parks, and roads that helped flesh the scenes out. That’s all.”
He turns back towards the road in front of them, ready to continue on — only for Kashima to outright gasp and grab for his hand again, turning him back towards her.
“Oh!” She exclaims, nearly all breath. “Is that why you had a copy of Let’s Fall in Love in your school bag!?”
“What are you talking about?” He barely even remembers what he carried around with him in high school. “I guess I did — once in a while, at least. I used it for reference, and to make notes. When the hell did you snoop through my bag, anyway!?”
“You threw it at me once. It made a good projectile.” Kashima sounds dazed, far away in a memory. “So you didn’t read Let’s Fall in Love because you secretly wished you were a shoujo heroine? You haven’t been bravely hiding your heart’s biggest desire to be a beautiful princess from everyone because you were too afraid of rejection all this time?”
Hori stares blankly ahead for a good, long moment. “No,” he says. A car hurries past on the road, briefly painting them in bright light. “What kind of jump in logic is that? Did you…” In his head, he can practically hear the unmistakable, muted click-clack-click of scattered puzzle pieces starting to slot together into a cohesive picture at last. “Let me see if I have this straight. Because I carried around Nozaki’s manga with me one time, you assumed I must have wanted to be the heroine. So since then, you’ve harassed me with frilly outfits, insisted I play female roles on-stage, and basically haven’t let me have a moment’s peace on the topic.”
“I thought it was a secret! I thought you were hurting, Hori-senpai! Never able to live out your fondest dreams in the way you really wanted, or wear what you wanted, or be the person you wanted to be.” She almost sounds choked up from the mere thought. “You thought I was harassing you? Really?”
So much genuine distress bleeds into her face that it actually makes him stop and think: why did he believe she was just doing her best to make him mad back then? Kashima's a little lazy, sure, and careless enough to treat important drama club duties as entirely optional, but she’s never been the type of person to do or say something for the sole purpose of hurting anyone. He knows that like he knows his own name.
“I...well, a little. I thought it was a joke.” He struggles for the right words at first, stares down at his worn shoes on the concrete. “Like maybe you were mad at me for getting on your case about rehearsals, and it seemed like fair payback. I couldn’t come up with any other explanation. Not one that made any damn sense to me.”
When he dares to look back up, her expression has somehow transformed entirely, flipped like a revolving panel. She’s surprised, a little incredulous — but also serene. There’s something warmer too, a feeling he can’t quite pinpoint. It lingers deep in her eyes, then bubbles out in a sudden burst of laughter. The sound isn’t unkind, or at his expense; in fact, it feels like the opposite.
“Hori-senpai, I did all of that because I want you to be happy, and because I love you,” she says. “If it would make you happy to wear those types of clothes or be treated in a certain way, then you should have that — no questions asked! Is that a good enough explanation?”
“Well, you could have just asked me, you know. You’re always jumping to conclusions without thinking things through,” Hori sighs. They've procrastinated on getting her home long enough. He turns away only to almost immediately pause again, one foot already half-arched off the ground. He swivels back to her, suddenly stiff. “Wait, what did you sa—”
What happens next somehow feels impossible and inevitable all at once, like the tide coming in. Kashima leans in closer to him, as if she’s going to whisper something in his ear; at least, that’s how it would look to anyone walking by. She turns too far, though, and her mouth finds his instead, a little mismatched off to one side, such a light, glancing press that he almost believes it could be a mistake for a split-second — but then there’s her hand too, careful fingers curled along the side of his face, tilting him nearer, ensuring he stays right there, and he knows it isn’t. Her other hand squeezes his two quick times, a near-perfect reflection of his heartbeat. She kisses him, and it’s the answer to a question he couldn’t bring himself to even ask in the first place, soft and succinct and certain.
If we were in a shoujo manga, Hori finds himself thinking helplessly, deliriously. If we were, Nozaki would probably call this part anticlimactic.
When Kashima pulls away, she’s flushed and beaming, so incandescently satisfied with herself. “Just so you know,” she says, before he’s even managed to breathe in, “if you ever did want to try being a princess, I think you would be utterly radiant, Hori-chan-senpai.” She lifts his hand and pecks the back of it for good measure, just above the knuckles — always the chivalrous prince, even when she isn’t on stage.
That snaps him out of his shock. He grabs her cheek and pinches it hard between two fingers, just long enough to make her exclaim. “You’ve got some nerve, you know that? Someone could have — I can’t believe you sometimes. No warning or anything!” He turns away fast so that she doesn’t see the warmth on his face. But he holds onto her hand even tighter, as though it’s a lifeline. “It’s getting late. Come on already.”
Kashima doesn’t even bother to try and stifle her giggles. She tells him all about her sister’s middle school classes as they walk the last three blocks to her house, and that's the end of that.
Well, for a while.
*
Everything seems to fall into place easily enough, then. Kashima follows him to the same college (as if there was any other outcome), and they start putting on shows together again (finally, after a whole year of not getting to help her succeed on stage — might as well have been a year without water) and once he deadpans that she spends so much time loitering in his apartment that she should just move her stuff in already, she takes it as a genuine invitation (which, in retrospect, it honestly sort of was). They never even have to talk about it, not really; their relationship defines itself, becomes something solid and comfortable and non-negotiable. Every day, he discovers more things that annoy him about her — the way she leaves dirty clothes everywhere, thinks it’s funny to rub her ice-cold feet on him in bed, arrives late to fucking everything she’s ever been invited to in her life. And every day, in the ways she smiles and speaks and shimmers through life, he finds even more things that he loves about her, to the point of feeling dizzy with it. Embarrassing, really.
After a few months, he realizes that without a high school uniform as the daily norm, the clothes he sees Kashima wearing most often become different — fitted vests, blazers, casual suits, slacks in every color. Sometimes his own shirts when she forgets to hang up the laundry, as long as she can sneak out the door before he notices. She gets mistaken for a guy even more often, by strangers in passing and friends of friends at get-togethers. She never intentionally identifies herself as such but also doesn’t correct people quickly either; it seems more fun for her to just let them have the realization on their own somewhere down the line, when she goes to the restroom or joins the female cast to get dressed backstage.
Hori does wonder at times if there’s something deeper to that. But her response to questions along those lines is always a smiling shrug, an open invitation for people to refer to her however they want. At the end of the day, Kashima is just...well, Kashima. She’s always defied description. No matter how she identifies, he knows he would still be fixed in her orbit just as irretrievably as he already is, just like he has been since the very first day he met her and somehow went hours without realizing she was wearing a skirt. So when a waitress cheerfully asks if his boyfriend would like anything to drink, Hori simply nods, asks for a melon soda on her behalf, and mentions it to her when she gets back to the table. She’ll always be delighted, and he’ll roll his eyes and secretly find it cute.
If Kashima has a fluid relationship with how she presents herself, Hori would describe his own relationship with the same concept as...non-existent. He only looks in the mirror to fix his hair, asks for clothes for birthdays and holidays so he doesn’t have to buy them himself, and wears what he has until it literally starts to disintegrate in the washer. His body is utilitarian, something he needs to create and work on what he’s passionate about, and that feels like the cut-and-dry end of it. He certainly doesn’t take the best care of himself, regularly staying up way too late to tackle new script revisions or set design projects before Kashima convinces him (sometimes through bodily carrying him off while ignoring his complaints) to come to bed, or nodding off in his regular clothes and not even bothering to change the next day so that he doesn’t have to break his focus.
Of course, none of that means he doesn’t feel self-conscious from time to time. When Kashima excitedly introduces him to new friends of hers or adoring fangirls (new pockets form and multiply everywhere she goes, so fast it’s as if they grow right out of the ground) as her partner, he’s learned to recognize the off-color flash of emotion across their face before polite friendliness takes over — surprise, mild confusion, a split-second thought of him, really? And he can’t exactly blame them. Kashima is the most attractive person he’s ever known in his life by a wide margin, and he suspects a lot of other people can say the same. She’s practically a genius, extraordinarily talented, exceedingly kind, and has bucketfuls of sheer charisma to spare. And who the hell is he? A short, unassuming guy with gelled hair who’s already developing forehead wrinkles in his early twenties because of stress.
He thinks he may spend the rest of his life trying to figure out what exactly she sees in him, or why it’s worth seeing in the first place. But he can make peace with that, as long as she’s near — in the next room, waiting with a grin at the foot of the stairs, entrancing the audience as he watches from just behind the curtain.
One year passes, then another. It isn’t long before Hori becomes the de facto stage manager in their theatre program, while Kashima is cast in bigger and bigger roles after paying her dues. They review scripts together over hasty ramen and leftovers in the evenings, regularly putting on exaggerated voices for the different characters. They ride the train early in the morning and catch half-empty, late-night ones after rehearsals that run long or their part-time jobs, Kashima snuggling against his shoulder both ways as the city lights ripple by outside. They cook together, and they both get in the habit of wearing each other’s clothes, and they fall asleep still talking about silly things like the best flavor of dango or why people in the theatre world are so superstitious about giving people flowers before a show.
Hori doesn’t think about the conversation they had on that sweltering summer night again until a little over halfway through his third year of college, when Chorus Girl #5 somehow twists her ankle hours before opening night.
*
The costume is a simple, button-up blouse in light blue, with slightly puffed sleeves and some delicate floral embroidery that curls up and up along the half-open collar. It’s paired with a pleated skirt that ends just above the knee and is cinched with a thin tie belt, both in dark gray. There’s also a pearl-colored cloche hat in the style of the 1920’s, along with some light, diamond-patterned stockings. And miraculously, all of it fits Hori pretty well.
“I really think I could still do it! I can put up with a few hours of standing, honestly. I’ve been resting my foot all day, after all.”
“Not just standing. There’s dancing too,” he comments, glancing at the first-year’s reflection in the mirror behind him before returning to a studious overview of himself. The blouse is a little tight in the shoulders, maybe — but if he refrains from stretching his arms out too far, it shouldn’t be an issue. All that’s left is a decent wig and some rudimentary stage makeup, and he could most likely pull it off. “Don’t forget the dance scene. There’s a lot of fast steps there, remember? You could fall on stage and have to be carried off.”
Hana sits up straighter on the dressing room’s tiny, decades-old couch, her temporary crutch set aside. She rises up to her feet in a defiant flourish. “See? No problems,” she says, and takes a step to the side. The lighting in her corner is a little dimmer since she’s further back from the mirrors, but Hori can still see a few facial muscles ripple under the skin in a tell-tale way, her smile pulling too tight at one edge. After a second, much more wobbly step, she sinks back down into the cushions.
“I’m sorry, Hori-senpai,” she says, and crumples one hand against her face like she might cry. “It was an accident. I was with my friends after class, and I didn’t even notice we were already at the stairs, and somehow, I, I just stepped right off and—”
“All right, all right,” he interrupts, softer this time. “Accidents happen. The last thing I want is to force you to go on and turn a sprain into something a lot more serious because we pushed too hard.” He heads towards the overcrowded prop closet to look through the hair options they have left, patting her on the shoulder as he passes. “In the theatre world, being prepared for every possibility is important. We do what it takes so the show can go on. If you can walk me through how you do your makeup usually, that’s more than enough.”
It had actually been Kashima’s idea. Their understudy and alternate list was stretched to the breaking point already because of an inconvenient bug that someone had spread through the cast during the last week of rehearsal, and she’d interrupted the tense conversations about what to do without any hesitation. “Why don’t you play the part, Masa-chan?”
“Be serious, Kashima,” he scoffed. Her face was way too close, practically on his shoulder (personal space was always a foreign concept to her where he was concerned), and Hori shoved it back a little. “I’ve got to call the cues and manage the backstage.”
“I am, I am!” She laughed with his hand still on her cheek and pressed closer again; the warmth of it bled into his fingertips. She was already fully in costume as one of the main mobsters, wearing a well-fitted navy pinstripe suit with a blood-red tie. Her hair was slicked back with gel too, shinier than usual. It was an incredible look for her, so much so that an embarrassing, all-too-familiar heat tugged at his ribs like sudden heartburn — but it was just about the worst time imaginable to be distracted. He stared down at his notes instead. “She’s only in two scenes with no solo lines, right? It’s a small part, so you could still do most of your work like normal! You know all the roles better than anyone. And you and Hana-chan are both petite too, so you could definitely fit into her clothes, I think.”
His eye twitched at the word “petite,” but then Mei, who led the lighting team, spoke up. “I definitely think I could call the cues while you’re on-stage, for what it’s worth,” she said with a hopeful shrug.
“You are the only one who would know the part well enough on such short notice,” Ueno, another third-year student already in costume, concurred.
Kashima was bouncing in place by that point, her face bright enough that it was like a firework had erupted under the skin. Hori considered his options, and then he considered them one more time just to be sure, mentally sifting through the tangled web of logistics with a practiced patience. Finally, he sighed and faced her again, nodding. “Well, go and tell everyone already.”
Somehow, despite all of the headaches going on backstage, the show’s opening night goes very smoothly. Hori loves his typical role, loves being able to tug the strings and check the boxes and construct an entire spectacle out of nothing from entirely behind the scenes — but there is something uniquely wonderful about the breathless spark of being on-stage too that he’d almost forgotten about. Learning how to fully embody someone who is so unlike yourself, feeding off the energy from the other actors as lines and stage directions are lobbed around the space like a ball you desperately want to keep in the air. As a glorified extra, he’s even got a one-of-a-kind front row seat to watch Kashima’s performance, which leaves him warm all over with admiration and awe — even if she won’t stop winking at him when they’re not the focus of attention.
The clothes are surprisingly comfortable too in a way that surprises him. He likes the lightness of the blouse and skirt, how easy it is to move around, so much so that he’s not in any hurry to change after the curtain falls. There’s so much to do, after all: wrangling the chaos of the backstage, ensuring that props and costume changes get reset to their positions at the top of show, double-checking that all mics are returned and accounted for as people start to change. His grip on how much time is passing starts to fumble, and he's caught up in discussing possible changes and tweaks they can implement to make the next show even better with various stagehands and cast members when —
“Yo, we have to get going! Hori-chan, you can’t possibly work all night!”
He looks up at a growing throng of people that’s formed in the backstage area, back in their regular clothes and bundled up in coats to brave a brisk February night. “Almost everyone is ready to leave at this point,” Yukimura, the leading actress, calls to him over the dull roar of countless conversations with a big smile. “We have to be on time — we reserved a whole room at the restaurant, remember?”
“You’ll have to go without me,” he calls back. “I haven’t even gotten to change yet.”
“Oh, c’mon. Kashima-kun won’t come either without you, and we don’t want to leave you both behind! But we really can’t wait any longer.”
“Why don’t you just keep wearing that, Hori-chan?” Kakei interjects with a sharp-edged grin. “Those are Hana’s clothes from home that she loaned, right? She won’t mind. And you look so pretty, after all.”
Kakei is the same age as him, and plays mostly supporting roles when he’s cast at all. The guy’s got a decent amount of scrounged up talent, sure, but he fucks around during rehearsals so much that Hori’s always on his case about staying focused. He’s clearly joking, trying to get a rise out of him or simply put him on the spot as though he’ll suddenly be embarrassed, which is ridiculous. They’re only clothes, and Hori’s been just fine wearing them so far.
At the far corner of the backstage area, past a few people’s heads and elbows, he notices the dressing room swinging open again and Kashima coming out, laughing with a few other girls. She always likes to dress up a little on show nights, which is why she’s wearing one of her favorite outfits: a casual dark blue suit with a loose jacket and a form-fitting, sky-blue vest underneath. The sight makes something proud and defiant start to smolder deep in Hori’s chest. He can’t help but think — why the hell not?
“You know what? You’re right,” he says, looking Kakei right in the eye. “I’ll be right behind you.”
*
“You look sooooo cute tonight, Masa-chan. Have I told you that you look cute yet? Because I really, really want to make sure you know!”
“Only ten times or so,” Hori comments, very dry — but his lip curls up at the edge regardless as Kashima laughs softly, the sound mingling with sharp clinks of glasses meeting and utensils against plates. “Are you already drunk somehow? We haven’t even been here for an hour yet. That would be impressive.”
“Of course not!” She insists, sloshing around her nearly full cup as proof. “I’m only on my third one, and you know it takes a lot more than that! All of these feelings are honest, pure, and coming straight from my heart.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” It is true that Kashima’s tolerance is very high — the exact opposite of himself, which is why Hori is sticking to a strict diet of Coke. At most, she’ll start to act more and more like an overly affectionate puppy, wanting to nuzzle and cuddle and drape herself all over him. They haven’t reached any of those stages yet, but she does have one warm hand stuck to his thigh, fingertips tap-tapping in cheerful patterns. That’s all right, though. PDA usually makes him uncomfortable — he’d rather save those moments for a much more private setting — but this particular instance is well-hidden under the table, and there’s something nice about the warm, familiar press of her touch, the way he feels steadied by it. He rests his own hand over hers, their respective fingers criss-crossing.
“Kashima-kun!” Some of the other chorus girls are waving at her from a nearby table, wanting her to come over. “Would you take a picture with us? Please?”
“Oh, of course,” she calls back, her face shifting into a flawless, heart-aching smile like clockwork. Sometimes, Hori thinks they’ll be senior citizens and he’ll still turn around to find her making little old ladies swoon. “But are you sure it’s safe to capture so much beauty in just one photo? It may be too overwhelming to behold all of your precious faces at once.”
As their area predictably erupts into squeals, Kashima starts to stand, beaming over at him. “I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t order dessert without me!”
“You’re the one who always wants dessert, not me,” he says, lifting his hand to let her leave with more than a little reluctance, though he does his best to hold his face even to hide it. “Go ahead.”
She squeezes his leg, quick and affectionate, before letting go — and then he’s left with several other members of their drama club, who all seem to be already involved in their own conversations. Hori takes a deep breath and taps his foot fast against the floor; he has a lot of restless energy for some reason, so much so that he feels it ping-ponging around his body at unexpected intervals. He looks down at both hands, halfway through the process of cracking all his knuckles, and starts a little at the sight of his half-uncovered knees beneath them. He’d forgotten he was still wearing the skirt for a moment.
He’d stuck to his word. He had only gone back to the dressing room for three things: to grab his regular shoes so he could comfortably walk the six blocks to the restaurant, put back the wig and the hat in their proper places (both were too annoyingly itchy to wear any longer), and brush his hair so that his bangs laid flat. It was already such a sweaty mess from the wig, and besides, he thinks this style actually complements the outfit better. He’d always been good at putting components like that, both in high school and in college which his actors (especially Kashima) were concerned — which colors were the best fit, the right accessories to really make someone shine in the way they needed to for a certain role. He had just never turned that attention on himself before, even in passing. Realizing that now makes him feel strange, off-balance, like he’s standing on a swaying boat instead of solid ground.
“Hori-senpai,” someone says, and he realizes all of a sudden that it’s the second or third time they’ve called out. Looking around, he sees a small group who have gotten up from their seats and circled together; several people cheerily waving for him to come over. An anxious feeling itches along his insides, but he ignores it. He gets up from the table and goes to them.
“We were just talking about how it’s a miracle we pulled the show off at all,” Yukimura says, her long earrings jingling in a pleasant way as she greets him with a smile. “It really seemed like all hope was lost there for a minute or two. Thank goodness!”
“You really saved the day,” Takeuchi says, who’s one of the youngest stagehands. “Thank you for all you do, Hori-senpai. We can always rely on you!”
“Well, it’s a group effort above all else. No one person can do it alone,” he says good-naturedly, “but I appreciate that.”
“So are you taking over Hana’s role for the rest of the show?” Yukimura asks.
“Well, no — not automatically. If her ankle starts to feel better, she’s welcome to come back at any time during the run and take over. It would certainly make my life easier to not do double-duty.”
“Well, you definitely seem comfortable enough with it,” Kekai, standing at her shoulder, pipes up. An undercurrent of barely-contained, slightly drunk sniggering chases after the words.
Hori’s skin prickles over at that — along both arms, underneath the diamond-patterned stockings he’s still wearing. He wonders if they can tell. He doesn’t like feeling so intensely aware of himself. He thinks: why wouldn’t I be comfortable?
Yukimura swivels her attention over to Kekai with a sharp turn of the head, her gaze apparently intense enough that he shrinks back a little, his smile wilting. Hori has always idly wondered if they’re an item — it seems likelier now. “I just meant — well, I wouldn’t be brave enough to do it,” is his fumbling follow-up. “That’s all. Sorry.”
“It’s not about being brave. It’s about getting the job done so that everyone’s hard work isn’t for nothing,” he says, a little more forceful than originally intended.
“Of course, of course,” Yukimura says. Her voice is edged with something newly soft. Apology, or maybe just outright sympathy. “And I think you look great, for what it’s worth.”
There’s that seasick feeling again, rolling, rising. Hori swallows it down. “Thanks. I’m...I think I’m going to ask for another drink,” he lies. “Do any of you want something?”
Everyone declines, and he strides back over to the table. His glass still has plenty left; he downs a good portion of it all at once. Even if there’s no alcohol in it, the sudden rush of coolness down to the stomach is still soothing in its own way, at least for a minute or so. A few more cast and crew members walk by, offering variations of “good job” to him as they head towards new conversations at neighboring tables. He nods in their direction in acknowledgement and notices that two of them do a double take back at him. He’s used to that already. The waitresses have been doing it too, as politely and subtly as they can manage between bringing dishes.
Why exactly did he come dressed like this? Is it just because he didn’t want to give Kekai the satisfaction of getting under his skin, or because he enjoyed the idea of complementing Kashima, or because he just likes the outfit, and genuinely felt at ease wearing it backstage, and didn’t see any harm from sticking with it a few hours longer? Hori supposes the answer is somewhere at the busy intersection of all three answers, and it doesn’t matter much anyway. A better question would be: why the hell does it matter what other people think? He’s had his own struggles with confidence — his height, the way he looks so much younger with his hair down — but nothing that he’s been unable to make his peace with in due time. In college, he thought he was well beyond all of that shit. Knowing that doesn’t change the fact that his nerves keep coiling up like taut ropes, though.
Hori looks around the room again, just to see if he can catch anyone else looking at him. At the same time, the group of chorus girls and other female cast members erupts into a bright peal of laughter. Kashima, still right in the middle, is staring over someone else’s head in his direction. When they lock eyes, she jolts a little, her face warming with a darker, more noticeable shade of pink. She waves and then turns away fast before he can even respond in kind. Almost like she’d been caught at something, or...she felt embarrassed.
He needs to be somewhere else for a few minutes.
The restaurant’s bathrooms are in a relatively isolated area, located down a narrow, curved stairwell that opens up into a small waiting area with a few chairs, two tell-tale doors, and a couple of swinging light bulbs on cords, casting the whole space in dull, sterile light. Hori finds himself there, having slipped out of the private room without anyone noticing. He paces the length of the space a few times and then sits, watching a mom with a little girl and a guy in dark clothing, probably a teenager, go in and out. Once they're gone and he's alone again, he goes to the bathroom door himself but pauses when he notices a full-body mirror on the far wall, tucked against the corner. Looking into it, he smoothes down a few of the skirt's pleats, runs his fingernails through his bangs, and considers the entire picture.
He's made a stupid mistake.
“Oh, here you are! I was looking for you!”
Kashima’s voice echoes in the little stairwell. Hori has to swallow a few times to force his heart out of his throat and back down to where it belongs before turning around.
“Masa-chaaaaaan,” she says, gleeful and sing-song, “there were these two cakes I really wanted to try, so I was thinking we could get both and split them! And if you’re not that hungry, we could always take the leftovers home, they’ll still be good tomorro…” Once she gets a good look at his face, her big smile becomes uneasy at the edges, the last word trailing off. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Hori says, finding it hard to meet her gaze head-on. He looks over her shoulder instead, at the stairs leading up. "I’m actually going to head back to the theatre to get my stuff and then go home. I don’t feel great. Maybe it was the food I chose, I don’t know.”
“Oh no. Okay, of course!” She says right away, newfound concern and determination marrying into one decisive tone. “Then let’s go right now! I’ll be your escort, just in case you get too weak to walk and need to be carried.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad, and besides, I don’t want to cut your night short, Kashima. Stay and have fun and eat all the cake you want. I’ll see you later when you get home.”
“But I don’t want you to be all alone when you feel sick! What if something happens!? I won’t be able to have any fun knowing that you could be needing my help right that very second, Masa-chan. What if you throw up, or faint, or someone takes advantage of your weakened state to mug you!?”
Hori sighs, rubs his forehead with a few fingers. He waits until a laughing couple walks past them and goes into the separate restrooms before continuing. “Fine. You know what? I’m not sick, so don’t work yourself up into a panic over nothing,” he says gruffly. “I just...I want to go and change. That’s the truth. Happy?”
Kashima tilts her head a little to one side. She blinks a few quick times, as though trying to improve her vision and see something that isn’t quite clear at first glance. “But why?”
“Because I look silly,” is his blunt follow-up.
She outright gapes at that. “What!? You look amazing! I told you —”
“Kashima, it’s all right,” he interrupts. “You don’t have to reassure me. Let’s just forget the whole thing, all right? I don’t even want to talk about it. Stay, and I’ll see you at home. Just don’t drink too much more, all right?”
He means to walk past her at that point, only to be stopped when she steps closer and takes one of his hands, clasping it very tight between both of her own.
“Did someone upstairs say something to you?” Her voice is suddenly dark, sharp-edged in a way he’s never heard before. “Tell me who. If they did...”
“No, no, it's not like — it wasn’t any one thing,” he insists. “Calm down. It’s me. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous I feel. It was all just a bad idea from the start.”
“But it’s not!”
“You’re only saying that because we’re together. And because you’re a little buzzed,” he can’t help but add, a little bit of familiar, wry affection sifting through.
Kashima gives her head a fervent shake side-to-side, enough to make her bangs split messily. “I’ve only had two and a half drinks and I’m completely in my right mind and you’re beautiful.”
She says it with so much heartrending conviction that it leaves Hori helpless to hold back a smile, at least for a moment. Against his better judgment, he leans towards her, uses his free hand to fix her hair with a few careful fingers. It’s already stuffy down here and the extra body heat isn’t helping make it any better, but he doesn’t care.
“You make this kind of thing seem so easy,” he hears himself say out loud. “You inspired me a little. I guess this just seemed like a good opportunity to...hell, I don’t know. Try something. But it just feels ridiculous. We might as well be on two different planets, because you look incredible, you always do, and I’m just the guy that everyone can’t believe you’re with in the first place.”
Kashima sits with that for a long moment, worrying at her bottom lip. But then she stands a little taller, and a new brightness ripples onto her face, starting in the eyes. “Masa-chan, do you remember what I said to you during that summer when you were back from college? The first time I kissed you?”
It takes a moment of thought, but he does, vividly — the sweaty weight of late summer, the streetlamps flickering harsh blue down a meandering path. Kashima, alight with joy in front of him, and the way he realized all at once, like the first tumbling rock that starts an avalanche, how he’d always loved her with every last corner of his soul, since the very beginning, and had just been too stupid to recognize the feeling for what it was.
“Yeah, for the most part,” he says. “It’s hard to forget you springing that on me without any warning whatsoever.”
Kashima laughs a little under her breath. “I said I wanted you to wear what makes you happy,” she continues, “because that’s all that really matters. If you want to try new things, no matter what it is, you deserve to do that, and I will still feel like the luckiest person in the world to get to be with you. Because you’re smart, and you’re so talented, and do you get mad at me a lot — only when I really deserve it — but you would never judge me, or make me feel bad about what I choose to do. I don’t feel like I have to hide anything at all when I’m with you. You just make me want to be the best version of myself.”
The bathroom door bangs open, and the man from before waits for his partner. Hori can practically feel his heartbeat echoing off all of the nearby bones, the rhythm deafening. They wait in silence until the woman emerges and the pair have disappeared back up the stairs.
“It’s just clothes,” he finally manages to say, faint and warm and disbelieving. “You really didn’t have to say all of that.” But his voice starts to strain on the last few words, and to hide that, he gives into the fierce impulse that’s brimming in him like a fever, which is to kiss her. It’s not like they’re standing right in the middle of the crowded restaurant — they can surely get away with one before anyone sees.
Well, except that one kiss quickly slides into a second one, and then catapults straight away into a third, growing longer and longer until he can no longer keep track of their beginnings and ends. Kashima holds his face like the way you’d hold something breakable, precious. Hori’s hands find the flaps of her jacket, urging her forward incessantly even though there isn’t any space between them left to erase.
“You have to believe me, Masa-chan,” she finally manages to whisper after taking a breath, her mouth resting right against his cheek, her eyes still closed. “I think — I love the way you look tonight, and these clothes on you.”
His chest is heaving from a lack of air, but Hori somehow finds space in his lungs for a slight, incredulous laugh. “You don’t have to say that to be nice,” he says. “Really, it’s all right.”
“No, no, no.” She tilts him up into another kiss, slow and reverent and unyielding, until he can barely remember his own name any longer. “I haven’t been able to stop looking at you,” she says, and her voice comes out low enough to leave him with a shiver that doesn’t seem to end. “I’ve wanted to touch you all night, so much.”
Oh, Hori thinks. Everything is happening very fast now, and as his back ends up pressed to the wall, his fingers tangled through her hair and her lip caught between his teeth, he hazily realizes that he may have misinterpreted the meaning of her stare from across the room upstairs. Any attempts to rediscover scraps of his self-control are blotted out in a single, vicious instant once he registers the feeling of her hand drifting underneath his skirt.
“Yuu,” he half-gasps, trying to find space to speak even as his body mindlessly, greedily chases after one more kiss. They’ve been together for years, and he still can’t get out of the habit of calling her Kashima in nearly every situation. Only in moments like these, when the world feels like it’s dwindled down to contain just the two of them, does her first name come easy. “Yuu, that’s...goddamn.”
“Can I?” She breathes out the question against his neck, searing enough to almost feel like a burn. Her hand is caressing his thigh, squeezing at unpredictable intervals, inching higher and higher in a way that is both disorientingly fast and maddeningly slow all at once. But she's waiting first, her hoarse voice coming out overeager, almost too fast to understand. “I want to, I really do, could I, can I, please..."
The best Hori can do is move his head in a small, shuddery jerk; he hopes it looks like a nod to her. He relaxes his legs more, twists his feet slightly further apart. Every last part of him has become completely pliable, and he's so far beyond his normal state of mind that he can't even be embarrassed about it. Instead, his focus narrows down to the way her nails keep catching on the stockings for the quickest moments, little, maddening tugs that snap against the skin. He wants her to rip through them. He wants her hands on him, all over him. Even if he doesn’t deserve it, he wants everything she’s willing to give, so much so that the thought aches and swells in every joint. He kisses her until it feels like drowning in the best possible way, and her searching hand finally finds the waistband, stretches down underneath it until her knuckles are straining the nylon, moves to cup—
—and someone’s on the stairs just above them.
The older man who walks by tosses a bored glance in their direction. They’re standing decidedly apart, Hori smoothing down the skirt again with barely contained franticness and Kashima staring ahead with her hands intertwined, flushed, grinning. Once he’s gone through the bathroom door, Hori turns and smacks her on the shoulder.
“That went too far,” he hisses. “We’re in public. Do you want to get thrown out of this restaurant?”
“We stopped in time,” Kashima insists, still cheery. She waves a hand in his direction too as if to say no big deal, and just the sight of her long fingers is enough to make him look away with force. He must be red in the face, so much so that he can practically feel the heat in his throat, his stomach, and beyond. If he thinks at all about the immediate history of that hand, he may need his own short break in the bathroom. “Besides, you acted like it was all right, Masa-chan! And I wanted you to believe me.”
“And you needed to do all that? It was overkill.”
She wipes her smiling, unbothered mouth. "You know me. I can't be helped when it comes to you." Her emerald eyes are still glinting with something heated, and impatient, and irresistible. "We could go home. If we hurry back upstairs, say goodbye to everyone, and run to catch the next train, we’d be there in 20 minutes or so.”
Hori’s legs still feel rubbery, and when she reaches out, curls her arm across his back, he leans into the support as a reflex. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the mirror again, how they fill the frame. They look good together like this, he thinks genuinely — so good that his mind starts whirring like a engine, diving headfirst into new ideas. He can imagine other colors, other styles that would complement Kashima's usual ensembles so well. Maybe an A-line skirt next time, or something wrapped. He could see himself trying out a dress too if it was to his tastes and not too complicated to get on and off. He wonders what her reaction would be to that.
There's no reason to commit to anything tonight — but the possibilities are out there, patient and within reach. His reflection starts to smile back at him.
“What the hell are we waiting for?” He asks.