Work Text:
Ainosuke stands in the cold light of dawn; the rays of the morning star in his eyes. He came out here, rage at a simmer, after a long night.
That boiling anger - laced, as it was, with the bitter touch of betrayal - wasn’t a mood fit for planning. He sees no escape yet, no way to make the most of this; maybe that’s why he’s found himself out here, intent on digging for the burned remains of his skateboard as though it can save him.
It hasn’t been successful so far, but it’s the only thing he’s got.
Instead he finds, wrapped carefully in twine and placed with a delicate touch on the top of the trash, a series of notebooks, labeled in sequence. He grabs them, and can imagine the phantom heat of another person’s hand, as if they had only just been laid to rest; passing ships, bearers of memory, in the night.
With no space for thought in his head, the old need to seek comfort emerges. He strokes the spines, runs his fingers below the twine; familiar knots, familiar ties. Instead of digging deeper in the trash, he leaves the scarred edges of his past behind and steals away with this instead, a heavenly bounty.
---
“What are you doing, Tadashi?” Ainosuke asked, peeking around his shoulder, pink eyes soft in the lamplight. Tadashi was writing in a notebook, long and bold strokes from a fountain pen, blue-black ink shifting like the night sky across the soft paper. He finished out a stroke - some English word, if Ainosuke remembered correctly, larger than life in the curlicues swirled across the page.
Tadashi turned to him, gifted him with an indulgent smile. If Ainosuke were an artist, he would paint them. “Ainosuke-sama,” he said as he fanned at the ink. “I’m just practicing.”
---
He takes the journals with him to America; he knows they're Tadashi's - the careful way the numbers are written on the outside edge gives it away. He's got the steadiest hands Ainosuke has ever seen; not faltering even with betrayal, complicit and lying.
They're a comfort hidden below his bed, even though he doesn't open them for a while. He doesn't know what to expect when he does, but there must be a reason why they called out to him, why he dragged them all this way.
A moment comes. It's a hard day - no one touches him here; not casually, like Tadashi would, correcting his form or catching him when he tripped, and definitely not like Kaoru or Kojiro, friendly and welcoming. It's as much a blessing as it is a curse. No one's touched him for weeks; he understands now what it means to be hungry, starving.
This moment of weakness is when he cracks. Reaches under the bed, pulls out the stack of books, still roped together with the same twine. Possessed, ravenous, he peels the knots apart, presses the first book to his face, inhales.
It smells like dirt and roses; he wants to lick it.
He doesn't know what he thought he might find. Tadashi’s private diaries, maybe? A log of the garden? Endless scribbles; his practice calligraphy?
It's none of those things - the first page inside the cover has a large heart drawn on it; inside, their intertwined hearts. He flips it over, to find the next page is dated years in the past. He would’ve been a child then, Tadashi the bright-eyed boy still learning to hold a fountain pen. The words inside are testament to that; penmanship still trying to get a grip on the careful, methodical script it would become.
Here, a log of their youth, eternal and dreamlike, it runs wild and free.
Topic: Ainosuke-sama is how it begins, and at first he scoffs - Tadashi, so buttoned up and pristine even as a kid, so unlike the reckless youth he was, so startling in their contrast.
He keeps watching us while we work; I don’t know why he’s doing this. Dad says there’s nothing to fear, but he’s not convincing. I think he’s worried. Mom says that extra eyes are the devil’s plaything.
I think he’s lonely.
“How dare he,” Ainosuke mutters, but there’s no one to hear him. Even across time, Tadashi’s always been right.
The journal logs sightings of him as an adventurous, sneaky little imp; early childhood memories scored with love and pain. He remembers watching the curiously older boy, symmetry wrecked by the mole under his eye like he’d been touched by some blessed deity. The smell of roses in the garden, mulch, soft mud pressing below his shoes.
Stern gaze when he tracked dirt onto the stairs in the entryway. Firm hands correcting his bad habits.
Then suddenly a change in the writing - exclamation points, radiant joy.
!!!!! I think Ainosuke-sama likes skateboarding! Runs riot across a whole page, like the child Tadashi was couldn’t believe it; like it was so incredible to find a friend, someone to share this love with.
This is the first time it comes up in this log and the memory slams into his head with such force that he recoils at the blow, letting it carry him.
It was the first time he’s seen this, ever. Tadashi stepped onto the board - so simple, so basic - and flew. His body cut through the air, moved swifter than the wind, headed toward Ainosuke faster than he could hope to run. But with a twist in his hips, a small movement of the body, he curved around him. Tadashi kept that welcoming, careful smile on his face the whole time, and Ainosuke could tell he was holding back, like the full force of his energy could burn him.
“Isn’t that cool?” He asked Ainosuke, looking down towards him. “Doesn’t it seem fun? Don’t you want to try, Ainosuke-sama?” Like he was trying to distract him, like the edges of his sleeves weren’t damp and salty with tears.
But… it did look cool; it did look fun. Tadashi looked like he could outrun anything on the board, even adults. And just like that, he realized that yes, this is what he wants, for the first time. Something that could be his, or theirs; something more than being good.
He wanted - and still wants, he realizes, alone and lonely in America - desperately, to see Tadashi when he’s not holding anything back.
Ainosuke nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I want to try!” And Tadashi stepped off the board, reached toward him with that careful, perfect face, and grabbed his hand.
A decade later, Ainosuke recoils; looks down at his hand, can feel the phantom sweat lingering there. He thinks he can almost smell the tears until a drop catches on his tongue, and he realizes he is crying.
An ocean away, and with that impassable wall between them, there's only one way Ainosuke can think to fake the emotions he wants to wring out from Tadashi. In his youth, he sought his joy, his warmth; the blessing of a laugh, the fond spring melt of his gaze. But now, emblazoned with rage, despair, that familiar sting, he wants Tadashi messy and ruined. His memories will do.
So he finds a pen - the ink maroon, dark, like the dried scabs of their scraped knees, the ones Tadashi worried over and bandaged for him before he even thought about his own - and he writes.
---
“Why do you have so many notebooks?” Ainosuke had asked once, peering at Tadashi’s bookcase. While his held novels and textbooks, Tadashi’s were mostly blank logs, half empty journals, a few stacked sketchbooks and small boxes full of pens. A few stacked containers of ink. Tadashi canted his head, patient, familiar doting smile.
“They all do different things,” he said. “Each paper holds ink in a different way. Some work best for quick notes; the ink dries fast, doesn’t bleed through. Some paper wants to be savored.” Here, he held out one of his journals - it’s thin, but there were hundreds of pages in it, and he flipped open to one, letting Ainosuke rub against the pages, feel the buttery fiber beneath the pads of his fingers, below the callouses he’s developed from skating. “You take your time with it,” he explained, “let the ink settle in, become part of it. It’s for the things that matter.”
---
When Ainosuke returns to Okinawa, he smirks in the face of his father's new secretary and sneaks out of the estate.
Tadashi, who stood in the shadow cast by Aiichiro, watches him go. His fingers yearn to write, to capture this memory so that he can always return to it; but if there’s a lesson he’s learned it’s that the written word can betray him.
The scribbled diaries and receipts of a maid in the estate reveal her theft; Aiichiro’s old secretary’s careful, accurate logs implicating him in a far-reaching bribery scandal; his own father’s journals a testament to his unfounded paranoia.
He never tells Aiichiro that his son is sneaking off into the night for the sake of skateboarding, to seek out his Eve in the moonlight, sacrificing sleep and sanity for this foolish quest.
Tadashi follows him every night, trails him in a car and drives him home.
In the morning, Aiichiro studies his face. “Have you been sleeping?” he asks, like he cares. “Of course you haven’t. We need to present well, Tadashi,” he says, and rolls a tube of concealer across the desk. Tadashi hasn’t even reported out the plan for the day, the avenues of attack Aiichiro needs to survive his latest campaign; instead, he’d been barraged immediately by cosmetic concerns.
He rolls the makeup in his hand, not sure what to do; Aiichiro, who reads faces better than words, would roll his eyes if he were a lesser man. Instead, he retrieves the tube and - using the pad of his ring finger - dabs the makeup underneath Tadashi’s eyes. He uses his other hand to hold Tadashi’s face still, as if he were at risk of fleeing.
There’s no intimacy to this; Aiichiro holds Tadashi in place like he’s an object, a belonging, something the Shindo family can use and discard at will. Tadashi pockets the concealer. “It won’t happen again, Aiichiro-sama.”
It’s hardwired for him to get the last word. “See that it doesn’t,” he says, and waits for Tadashi to run down the day.
Although Aiichiro - and the whole family, it seems - can so easily rip the thoughts from people’s minds by the minute tells on their faces, Tadashi’s found his own method to discard that which he would rather not recall.
Just before dawn, on a piece of paper so smooth and pure, he writes down the memory.
Ainosuke ran a skater into the ground again; minor injuries.
Or.
Paid off a woman from the slush fund; she broke her leg.
Or.
I’m worried about him; I fear for him. He’s becoming reckless.
Or.
What have I done?
And, once the ink has dried, blood on the page, his writing so careful and tidy, so crystal clear, he holds the paper up to the flame of a candle and lets it burn. In the mornings he smells like ash and smoke; Aiichiro gifts him a bottle of cologne that smells like the forest floor.
He feels like a wildfire, the unseen spark of it. Ainosuke is burning, and he’ll feed him the kindling.
---
One rainy day, a year or more after Ainosuke started skating, they found themselves huddled inside, watching rain flood their empty pool. Aiichiro and the aunts were away; family business, unbefitting a child, so the two of them could play together more.
Tadashi learned that he likes Ainosuke like this; there's a lightness to him, like he's only barely tethered to the ground, like he could fly forever if he tried. Skating can only do so much. You always have to come back to the ground.
At that moment, his dearest and only friend was laughing at the sounds the rain made as it hit the window, racing droplets down the glass. Tadashi was so fond; he wanted this moment to last forever.
Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sticker sheet full of little skateboards, one he found at the stationery store and immediately coveted. While Ainosuke was distracted, he pulled one off and stuck it on his cheek, just where his blush would sit under the curve of his eye.
Just where Tadashi's mole rested, he realized, sitting back on his heels, proud of his work. Ainosuke's laughter paused, mouth open in delicate shock, as he turned to Tadashi.
"What was that?" he asked, feeling at the shape of it on his face.
"A sticker," Tadashi said, suddenly shy.
Ainosuke's brows furrowed in confusion, and Tadashi would rather trim a thousand hedges a day than make that expression cross his face again. "Why'd you do that?" he asked. And Tadashi… didn’t really have an answer. He'd been struck by the thought that this was a memory he'd want to carry with him forever. Ainosuke as he was right then, in that moment. But there are a lot of memories he wanted to carry; that's why he wrote them down at night, his careful notes of all things Ainosuke.
He had felt compelled to mark Ainosuke with a sticker because, well. They're a precious commodity; finite, beautiful. But they're meant to be used, and what better way to use them than to adorn his most precious friend?
He struggled with the words, seeking toward the edges of his vocabulary. "They're… ephemeral," he said and Ainosuke's eyes widened in confusion. "They don't last very long. And I thought… even if they don't last forever, I should use them, right? If they make me happy, and you make me happy, then why not put both things I like together?"
Ainosuke gasped, touched the sticker on his face again. He looked at Tadashi, reaching out his hand for the sticker sheet. Peeled off a green skateboard, pressed it just under his mole. Tadashi smiled, so touched by the divine.
Years later, Ainosuke will flip through a journal and find a page covered in stickers. "Ephemeral?" He would write in the spaces between them. "You're a liar, puppy. They're still here."
---
Aiichiro dies and the notice of his death goes out on an indulgent cream cardstock that Tadashi selects, the ink a dark shade of blue a hair away from matte. It's just over the edge of extravagant, and Ainosuke's aunts glare at him for it, but they never really look at him otherwise.
In the few years he's spent working under Aiichiro, he's been molded into the perfect, anonymous object, his girl Friday: concealer in the mornings to buffet against the honesty of his dark circles; the cologne, to hide his secrets; the suits, toeing the line between presentable and well-presented; the flash of something bold in his lavender tie.
Aiichiro would never say it out loud, but he loved the flashiness, the fanciful; the sprezzatura, the casual elegance of an open collar; mixed patterns, bold colors. He toed the line of what he could get away with in politics, aesthetically, and passed it on to Tadashi. And Ainosuke.
Ainosuke, who took up Aiichiro's position with aplomb and grace and a small village's worth of hair wax, suits tailored to emphasize his trim waist. Who, after the ashes were interred in the family grave, walked right up to Tadashi, hovered in the space beside his shoulder, and leaned over him to breathe in his ear. "You're my dog, now," he said, and narrowed his eyes as he stepped away. "I trust you understand what that means."
And Tadashi knows; a dog is a promotion. He's a living, breathing thing - more than a tool, a pretty doll. A dog can follow his master's every command. But more than that, a dog can bark. It can also bite.
Life was ephemeral; death can take us at any moment, and we march on. One Shindo replaces another, only this one doesn't mostly ignore Tadashi; this one spits in the face of propriety, smokes and wears a mask and worst of all looks almost happy while doing it, like Tadashi isn't stuck cleaning up his messes, entertaining his whims.
New gods, new masters. As an object, Tadashi was a glorified mouthpiece; a dutiful secretary, but who could say he wouldn't be burned one day. As a dog, he is constantly learning new things - to fly a helicopter, to outrun the police - and his value grows.
He still burns his memories at night; hides the fire in his cologne.
---
If there's one thing keeping Ainosuke remotely grounded, it's the notebooks.
He doles them out through the years; made it all the way through four journals during his time in America, nostalgic and homesick, craving a kind hand, missing his friends.
In the years later he keeps them in a locked box under his bed, hidden from wandering eyes and most crucially Tadashi, who hangs on and watches him still. A loyal dog, his father's most prized possession. His inheritance, his past - the mark of betrayal - and someone who will follow him into eternity.
After every failed attempt at his Eve, he gifts himself pages that he reads in the scant hours before dawn. Memories of brighter times; he wonders why Tadashi held onto them like this, packed away all for him. There's the first time he landed an ollie, the first bruises and scraped knees from something he wanted and craved.
He finds running lists - Tadashi's careful, honest logs, damning in their perfection. All the times he skipped equestrian lessons, next to a log of his scores and placements at competitions, all perfect. The tricks they wanted to perform and the dates they perfected them, Ainosuke always a day behind Tadashi. Their records when they raced what they called ‘the gauntlet’, the long and winding paths surrounding the estate, the prototypical S.
There are also these: lists of the new foods Ainosuke tried and his reaction; the fake names he gave flowers when he was too young to know their real identity; childish attempts to draw his eyes, getting sharper and sharper as the years bore on; notes on their skateboards, the changes Tadashi would make if he had the skills to back them up.
When the scandal surrounding the river dam in Iwate hit too close to him, he found respite first by flying at S and then grounding himself in Tadashi’s perfect handwriting. If his aunts prod him about marriage, he grins and bears it and sips a half serving of whiskey - just a taste to cut the edge - and re-reads old pages, those first childish notes, the questions Tadashi asks - the ones he answers when his mind is only the slightest bit fizzy from drink and he’s reckless in a new way.
Is he lonely? Tadashi asks, in the past. Ainosuke, put back together a bit crooked, answers with an honest Always.
Does he like skateboarding, or does he tolerate it for me?
They’re one and the same.
Why is he this reckless? He worries me.
You know why; you know I can’t break like this.
Will we always be friends?
I want more, Tadashi
Forever. Never. Whatever you need.
Is it normal to want, like this?
That one he can’t answer; he’s never known normal.
This whole time, he’s noticed that here and there are pages missing, neatly torn from the binding, but the evidence remains behind. He wonders what memories were so painful that Tadashi would rend them from their home, plucked like feathers.
It’s after his attempted funeral, after he’s rested all his weight in Tadashi’s arms, exhausted from the race and his life and everything, seeking the first blazing touch of something better, that he finds his answer.
Tadashi drives him home, holds the skateboard in his hands awkwardly, like he wants to fast forward to this being a memory and not his present. "What should I do with this, Ainosuke-sama?"
He grimaces, already uncomfortable at the reminder. "I dunno," he says, like a kid scuffing his shoe into the pavement. "Burn it, maybe?"
It's not Tadashi's sharp gasp that makes it register, nor the clatter of the board to the ground. It's not even the way he can smell Tadashi's tears on the cusp of spilling, no. It's Tadashi's laughter, first choked off then louder, bright, doubled over so the tears can fall on the ground at the same time.
Ainosuke narrows his eyes. "Why is that funny," he says, but then it clicks and he starts laughing too, sliding down the wall even though the spines along it will scratch the paint until he's on the ground, legs splayed out with Tadashi squatting next to him. It feels like they laugh for hours, until the first glimpses of dawn poke pink in the sky, and finally they part, Tadashi taking the board with him.
When Ainosuke has changed out of his costume, finally washed the sweat and blood and dirt from his body, dawn has long since broken; suddenly greedy, craving it, he pulls the box out from under his bed and reaches for the last book.It feels a touch heavier, a touch thicker than the others; when he opens it, a sheaf of papers falls out, and a quick scan through the journal reveals that it's mostly unfilled, the first few pages dotted with crossed out half apologies.
He flips through the papers, and he suddenly knows what memories Tadashi tore away; not to hide them, but to keep them together forever, safe.
He reads through the list, and makes one addition..
When he sees Tadashi later in the day, he doesn't smell like a forest edged with smoke, like he usually does; instead he smells like roses.
---
When Ainosuke was in his early teens, bored with etiquette lessons, he would sneak into the staff quarters and find the rooms Tadashi and his dad shared. Sometimes he would warn Tadashi that he'd come, a note slipped into his pocket the day before. This time, he came with no warning. His dad was at a plant fair an hour’s drive away, not due back till late evening, and he knew Tadashi had the day off.
He knocked and then walked in immediately, not waiting for Tadashi's answer, knowing what it would be. For his part, Tadashi was sitting at his desk, hunched over. "Welcome, Ainosuke-sama," he greeted, facing the wall and away from him.
"You know," Ainosuke replied, closing the door but leaning against the doorframe anyway. "It's rude to not look at someone when you greet them?"
"Says who?" But Tadashi was already turning in his chair. He smiled at him, but it didn't meet his eyes.
Ainosuke frowned. "What's wrong?"
As if he was suddenly aware that Ainosuke could read his face so clearly, he shuttered it; but he could only read it because it was a page in a book he had spent his whole life memorizing. He could tell when something was wrong, like a word was misspelled.
Tadashi looked between his desk and Ainosuke, beckoned him over. "I'm writing a letter," he said, and that seemed fine, but didn’t explain why he'd close off like this. "To my mother," he finished. And that did. Tadashi's mother lived far north, moved out ages ago; he didn’t talk about her much.
"Ainosuke-sama," his voice was impossibly softer, somehow more muted. "Writing a letter is important work; there are so many parts to it. You have to think about the recipient, and what they might want or need. Some people appreciate drawings, or beautiful letters with meaningless words; other people only want your words, to know you intimately." He put both of his hands on his lap, palms down. Ainosuke desperately wanted to reach out to one, feel his fingers between his.
"Writing a letter is a way to prove you know someone," he said, looking down at his lap. "The stationery, the pen, even the way it's addressed; with these kinds of letters, there's no definitive etiquette, like when you write a formal letter. It's very difficult."
There's a lot Tadashi wasn't saying; he thrived under strict, codified social norms, grounded in rules both spoken and unspoken. But he lived apart from his mother for so long he couldn’t possibly know her, even if he wanted his letter to please her, tell her all the things he yearned for her to know. Tadashi found it difficult to be selfish; he needed something to bring him back to the here and now; to this planet, this eternal moment.
Ainosuke reached out with one hand, caught Tadashi's chin between his thumb and fingers, guided his head up until they made eye contact and his own hands unfurled from where they're clenched in his pants. He could feel the tension ease out of Tadashi's body. "Why don't you show me what you're writing?" he said, gave Tadashi something else to focus on, someone to guide.
He knew this, after all. Tadashi found it hard to be selfish, except for one thing, one person; for Ainosuke, he would always be a little selfish; this is what Ainosuke can give him.
---
One day, Tadashi walks into the office and there's a small stack of notebooks on Ainosuke's desk; there's a note on top, a little drawing of a dog. Tadashi sighs and takes it, ignoring the warmth flooding his face.
Ainosuke isn't here yet; claimed some early morning errand would drag him away and he'd be in later, so Tadashi settles into his chair and opens the first one.
And freezes.
He knows these notebooks; thought he got rid of them years ago. Threw his heart in the trash alongside Ainosuke's peace, undeserving of love. He never thought he'd see these again.
Counting the books, they're all here; more worn than they had been years ago, like they'd been loved in their years apart. He opens the first one; the same giant heart on the first page, the twined hearts inside, his same childish handwriting. Baby words, baby kana, just getting used to the way his fountain pen fit in his hand.
They're accompanied by something curious though. Marked up thoughts in another familiar hand; Ainosuke's imprint on his heart. He remembers the words he wrote with a striking clarity, so he follows the path the other words, written in maroon, lay out.
Ainosuke started writing in America; Tadashi can tell from the undercurrent of rage running through his words. The question marks drawn next to Tadashi's more esoteric notes; the answers to questions, some sending him blushing shamelessly, hopeful, optimistic, some turning his insides into worried knots, hoping their past has been left behind; the occasional drawings, doodles of hearts, of Tadashi with dog ears, of Tadashi with -
He closes that notebook abruptly, face painted red, a touch embarrassed. Perhaps Ainosuke was too candid.
Suddenly though, one memory comes to the forefront of his mind; the pages he ripped out and clipped together, a running log of his own personal embarrassments. Frantically, he opens the final book, which is oddly and unexpectedly full of text, unfamiliar to him, all addressed as letters. Before he can read even one, a familiar packet slips out.
He knows, then. Ainosuke has always had a stranglehold on his affections, from the moment he let him watch his family garden, hidden behind hedges; gifted him comfort and freedom, the only way he knew how; took that away for the sake of his future, the only thing he can be guaranteed in this world.
Words have power, Tadashi knows; the written word can curse you, secrets spilling forth from even the most innocuous notes. And here, in this packet; his biggest secret, or maybe his most obvious truth.
At the top of the first page, a title, in his childhood script. He started this young.
"All the Things Ainosuke-sama Loves" is what it reads. He holds this packet in his hands, a thick, running log.
He flips it open, looks through; he doesn't see any notes from Ainosuke, but he sees their memories, all the things he carefully catalogued in his own flurry of love and devotion.
The way the world smells after a rainstorm - petrichor, after they explored the gardens, looking for snails.
Catching big air, when he jumped off the archway, eclipsing the sun.
Skateboarding, but that's a given and a late entry nonetheless, when Tadashi finally believed that he loved it for the sake of loving it, for the freedom and the flight.
As they grew up the loves became more beautiful, bolder, more specific.
Skating curves, downhill, at high speeds.
Behaving recklessly, skating like there's nothing worth living for.
Ignoring the future, the path laid out for him; living in a promised bliss.
Dancing.
Living.
Loving.
He turns to the last page, and finally, at the end of it all, there's a new addition, below the final thing he wrote before he threw away the whole stack, his whole heart.
There, in his careful adult writing, so unchanged since then, an unbearable truth.
Everything I have taken from him.
And then, below, in that same maroon pen, writing big and bold and beautiful; more radiant than the sun.
Kikuchi Tadashi.
He gasps. The door to the office opens; there, leaning in the doorframe, his past, his present, his future.
The packet drops to the floor.