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The soft clinking of silverware on the restaurant’s plates underscores the conversation going on around him. Kaoru does his best to focus on that, tonight.
As has been his habit since Kojiro first started accepting Tadashi and Adam — or are they calling him Ainosuke, now? — into his restaurant after hours, Kaoru does his best not to engage. It’s true that he told Kojiro when it first came up that he was fine with it, but even now, several months after the end of the tournament and a smaller, though not insignificant number of months since they began seeing each other outside of S again, Kaoru can’t seem to let it go.
Adam (it doesn’t feel right to use his given name, even when he’s dressed in his Ainosuke costume) has been pleasant. Kaoru can recognize that. He’s made massive strides toward making amends, not just with Tadashi and Kojiro, but with himself. He feels like a different person— more like the person he was before he left for America and came back changed. Before he started searching for his “Eve.” Before… all of it.
But it hasn’t escaped Kaoru’s notice that the only person he hasn’t apologized to yet is him.
Maybe it’s still true, then; maybe Adam really does find him boring, after all. Maybe he was never special. If he was once, he’s certainly not anymore.
Kojiro has scolded him more than once for being “cold” toward Adam (“If you don’t want him here, I’ll just stop inviting him”), and by extension, Tadashi, though Kaoru is certain that’s not true. Kaoru has met any attempt Tadashi has made at friendliness with the appropriate level of polite interest.
As for Adam, after the first night, the man has hardly attempted any conversation with Kaoru at all.
Truthfully, Kaoru isn’t even sure what he should say to Tadashi. Tadashi is the man who stayed by Adam’s side, unwavering, for nearly a decade after Adam turned into the brute he’s trying to no longer be. Why anyone would exhibit such loyalty to a person like that is absolutely beyond Kaoru’s comprehension.
Kaoru sighs. This is the point in the conversation at which Kojiro would point out his utter lack of self-awareness.
And Kaoru would argue that it’s not a lack of self-awareness at all; it’s simply that the two situations aren’t comparable at all.
Adam may have treated Tadashi questionably over these past eight years, but it’s clear how close the two are now, even despite it all— maybe even because of it all. Even if Adam’s attention was largely negative, at least Tadashi had it. Kaoru hadn’t even managed that much. Still can’t, even now.
He lets the sound of Kojiro’s laughter wash over him, soothe him. It’s a familiar sound, one he’s heard a thousand times since Adam left, and it helps with the low-burning ache that fills him every time they have one of these little get-togethers.
Tonight, he’s somehow sat by Tadashi. He’d plopped himself into the farthest barstool, decreasing his odds of having to sit beside anyone other than Kojiro. Except that Kojiro had chosen to sit at the other end tonight, leaving only Tadashi or Adam to occupy the spot next to Kaoru. He’s glad, at least, that he doesn’t have to endure the smell of Adam’s cologne or the occasional bump of Adam’s shoulder against his own all evening.
Instead, he feels a deliberate elbow against his own, drawing his attention to the man beside him.
“Are you alright?”
The question is low, quiet enough that neither of the others should have heard over their own boisterous conversation.
Kaoru attaches his best client-pleasing smile and nods. “Fine, thank you.” He returns to picking at his dish.
Tadashi doesn’t press. He, too, returns to his food, mostly keeping to himself unless Adam directs a question at him that requires a response— usually “Yes, sir.”
Kaoru surprises a sigh. He wonders how long he’ll be able to put up with this before he, himself stops showing up.
The meal ends sometime later, and Kojiro stands to collect the plates. As usual, Tadashi stands to help despite Kojiro’s protests. He’s a servant at heart, Kaoru supposes; it must be a difficult habit to break after a lifetime of it.
As usual, Kojiro say, “Please, Tadashi. Sit. I’m begging you.”
“You heard the man, puppy,” Adam drawls. “He said, ‘Sit.’”
And that’s another thing— what the hell is the relationship between those two?
Kaoru doesn’t even remember Tadashi from when they were younger. He knows he was there — has been around them both enough by now to know that Tadashi’s family and the Shindo family have been linked for generations — but he’s certain he never saw or heard of him before the tournament.
The tiny, petty part of him that eats away at him insists that he must be more interesting than this guy, right? This man who rarely speaks and fades into the background entirely— surely, Kaoru isn’t the most boring person in this room?
He hates himself for how jealous he knows he’d sound if he dared voice those thoughts aloud. What the hell does he have to be jealous about? It’s not like he wants Adam. He’s well past that.
But… a much less tiny part of him can’t deny the hurt that oozes through him every time he thinks of the word “boring.”
It’s too long before Kaoru realizes it’s been quiet for a significant amount of time. He looks up from where he’s been studying the wood grain of the counter he’s seen more times than he’s seen his own kitchen’s countertops. Kojiro and Tadashi are nowhere to be found. He can’t even hear them talking in the kitchen.
Automatically, his gaze finds Adam to discover that Adam is already watching him, and he startles despite himself.
Adam doesn’t say anything at first. Kaoru stubbornly holds his gaze, because he’s already flushed from the embarrassment of being caught off guard, and he refuses to show any other kind of weakness.
Then, after several long, uncomfortable moments, Adam says, “Have I ever told you I like your hair like this?”
It’s an absolutely ludicrous thing to say, and once again, Kaoru is caught completely by surprise. It nearly makes his head spin how quickly he shifts from confused to pleased to humiliated to angry.
“No,” he snaps. “And I’d suggest you not start.”
Adam just hums, considering. Softer, he says, “I’m glad to see your injuries have healed well.”
Kaoru’s stomach twists. He has nothing to say to that. The memory of that night will sit sour on his tongue forever.
Boring, his brain supplies. He broke your heart twice. Because you’re boring.
Yes, his injuries have healed just fine. All of his physical pain is gone. But the emotional scars have yet to fade.
“I’m… sorry.”
The words sound like they’re being forced from his throat, like he doesn’t want to say them but knows that he should. Kaoru doesn’t deign to respond to that, either.
“For what I did to you,” Adam continues. “During our beef.” As if that needed to be clarified.
He must realize that Kaoru has no intention of humoring this transparent attempt at placation, because he continues after a while without pausing to wait for input.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what I dark place I was in, at the time. It’s better, now, but I’m not foolish enough to think there’s not still plenty for me to work on.” A glance at Adam shows he’s no longer looking at Kaoru, but straight ahead, as if he could see past the wall blocking his view of the kitchen. “I’ve had help, much of it from people who had no reason to show me any kindness at all. But they did. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let those people know how truly grateful I am.”
He pauses, now, presumably lost in thought about something or other. His speech does little to touch Kaoru’s heart. For years, years, Kaoru tried his best to reach Adam. He lost count of the number of times he tried to challenge Adam to a beef. He remembers the moment he stopped attempting to call or text, realizing that Adam had either changed his number, blocked Kaoru’s, or simply didn’t care enough to answer. He remembers all of this with perfect clarity, because he had tried so damned hard to cut through the film of misery surrounding Adam and had been snubbed every time.
More subdued, Adam says, “I know that does nothing to right the wrongs I’ve done to you.”
Anger flares inside Kaoru. What is he supposed to expect? That after all this time, everything is just… fine? That no matter how badly and how often Adam breaks his heart, he’s just supposed to roll over and come crawling back because he speaks a few pretty words?
“I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for your tournament,” Kaoru answers coldly. “I knew the risks of skating against you, and I chose to do it anyway. What you did was perfectly within the rules of S.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” Kaoru snaps. “It means you’re absolved of any guilt you may feel for hitting me. So you can just drop it.” Quieter, “Save your breath for someone you actually care about.”
There’s a long, tense silence before Adam speaks again. “Is that what you think? That I don’t care about you?”
“You made that very clear.”
“Kaoru—”
“Don’t.” Kaoru takes a deep breath. His anxiety is spiking; if it keeps going this way, he’ll have to have Kojiro take him home, and that will ruin Kojiro’s evening. “Don’t try to pretend otherwise. We both know what this is— you, coming here. I’m very glad for you and Kojiro that you’ve managed to repair your friendship. And I’m glad for you and Tadashi for… whatever your relationship is. But I am here because it’s important to Kojiro for all of us to be together, not because I’m operating under any sort of delusion that things will ever go back to the way they were between us.”
His hands are shaking now, so he clasps them together and hides them on his lap, away from prying eyes. His heart is hammering in his chest, each thump sickening as it pounds behind his ribs. He takes a deep breath in, counts, and releases it. It doesn’t help.
At some point his eyes fall shut as he attempts to center himself. Stop it, he commands himself. Don’t let him get to you. He always gets to you. Stop being so childish.
“Kaoru, please.”
Kaoru startles at the proximity of the voice. His eyes fly open, and he sees that Adam has moved to the stool directly beside him. He squeezes his joined hands together harder to distract from the need to get up and run. He’s too close. After so much time apart, to be so close now feels like being set on fire, slowly burning from the inside out, every little part of him engulfed in flames that sear pain into his very being.
“May I speak?” Adam’s gaze burns into him, sincerity in his ruby-red eyes that Kaoru cannot allow himself to trust. But he’s always been weak to Adam, and apparently, that hasn’t changed.
“I have hurt a lot of people in my lifetime, and though I’ll never be able to atone for most of what I’ve done, I’m still sorry for it. I have many regrets, but the biggest by far is the way I’ve treated you.”
Kaoru scoffs. If that’s true, why has it taken him months to approach Kaoru at all? Why has he hardly spoken a single word to Kaoru when he’s been here, nearly every weekend, repairing his relationships with the other two men and never sparing a glance at Kaoru?
He asks as much and takes petty delight in the way Adam’s jaw tenses, the way his expression hardens.
“Because,” he says at long last, “you are the most… difficult.”
Kaoru whirls on him, rage flashing white hot behind his eyes. “You think you can say that to me now? Call me difficult, when you were the one who walked away from us first? You were the one who never called. You were the one who came back to Japan and ignored us for years. You were the one who beat me with a skateboard and then had the nerve to call me boring.” He spits the last word out like it can remove the bitter taste from his tongue. It doesn’t.
For the first time is as long as Kaoru can remember — maybe ever — he sees something like genuine remorse flash across Adam’s face. It looks horribly similar to pain, which is absurd; nothing Kaoru does or says reaches Adam, so it’s ludicrous to expect the man to feel anything of the sort. The pain in this relationship has always been decidedly one-sided.
Kaoru stands. He can’t stand to be here any longer. The vignetting in his vision signals the impending onset of a migraine. He’ll need to be home before it hits, or else he’ll be forced to impose on Kojiro, and that just won’t do.
“I’m going. Please apologize to the others for my rudeness.”
“Wait.” A hand encircles his wrist but lets go just as quickly. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think— I didn’t mean it. I only said it because I knew it would hurt you.”
“And why, pray tell, did you want to hurt me so badly?” Kaoru asks, the fight leaving him with each passing second and making way for bitter resignation. It doesn’t seem like he’ll be able to go until this conversation reaches its natural conclusion.
“Because I knew you were still holding onto me, and I needed you to let go.”
“Well,” Kaoru mutters, “mission accomplished.”
He makes for the door again and nearly makes it out before Adam says, “Do you remember when we first met?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
It’s stupid because that memory will forever be engrained in Kaoru’s mind and in his heart. Even if the details have gone fuzzy, he’ll never forget that feeling of enchantment or the way his pulse quickened when Adam was around.
Maybe it’s because he’s too exhausted to filter his thoughts, or maybe it’s because he has nothing left to lose, but he adds, “They say you never forget your first love, after all.”
He can’t help but to look back at Adam’s reaction. No matter how hard he tries to quash it, there will always be a part of him that needs to be seen by him. It makes him hate himself a little, but he can’t deny it in the privacy of his own mind.
He’s not expecting the shattered look on Adam’s face whatsoever.
“Oh, please,” Kaoru scoffs. “You knew that.”
Adam’s continued silence suggests that maybe he didn’t.
“Well, you were,” Kaoru sighs, moving back toward the counter, now fully invested in this conversation if for nothing else than spite and stubbornness. “First love, first kiss, first heartbreak.”
“I didn’t know that,” Adam finally answers. “I’m... surprised.”
“And why is that?”
Adam gives him a long look, gaze sweeping over him in a way that makes Kaoru flush. “I guess I assumed you were more popular.”
“I was plenty popular,” Kaoru says haughtily. “I just... never wanted anyone else. At the time, that is,” he adds quickly. “Obviously that is no longer the case.”
“...Alright, then,” Adam says after a long, considering pause. “You know, you were my first kiss, too.”
The admission shocks Kaoru— No, he had not, in fact, known that. “No I wasn’t.”
Adam huffs a laugh. “You were. I didn’t have many friends to do those kinds of things with when I was younger.” After another, briefer pause followed by a startled chuckle, he adds, “I suppose I still don’t.”
Kaoru scoffs. “Please. As if you couldn’t have whoever you wanted.”
It slips out before he can filter himself. He blames the glass of wine he had with dinner, just to make himself feel better about letting his guard down when he knows he shouldn’t.
“You have no idea how wrong you are,” Adam murmurs under his breath. Louder, he says, “No, I never had the opportunity to explore that side of myself until I met you and Joe. Can you imagine what would have happened if I’d tried anything at home?” It’s said with a levity that absolutely does not match the implication behind the words. Kaoru’s heart sinks. The past ten years of his life flit through his mind in fits and stops.
Gently, he asks, “What would have happened?”
Adam’s gaze is shocked and guarded when he meets Kaoru’s eyes again, but try as he might to cover it with an easy smile, he can’t hide the way his fingers drift protectively to his forearms. “Oh, it’s just an expression,” he says, even as he caresses himself over his long sleeves.
It’s not the first time Kaoru has seen him do something similar. When they were young, he had an unconscious habit of touching his arms when he was particularly upset about something. Even as an adult, at S, Kaoru has watched him trace his fingers over the hearts stitched there — one on each forearm — and wondered.
He wonders now, too.
There’s a lot about Adam’s life that Kaoru has never known or understood. Adam has always been secretive, always a touch closed-off, except for those moments when they were teenagers when they would steal away together, and Adam would laugh and smile and whisper pretty words about love and destiny against his lips.
Kaoru thinks about Adam’s quest for his “Eve”— something that once deeply hurt Kaoru in the most personal way, but now, recontextualized, makes him feel only sorrow for his old friend.
“Do you regret it?” he can’t help but ask. Adam lifts a questioning eyebrow. “That I was your first kiss,” Kaoru clarifies.
Adam shakes his head. “No. I regret that I was yours.”
The admission aches with something like longing, though for what, Kaoru couldn’t begin to guess.
He’s not sorry— not at all. As badly as his heart was broken by this man, he treasures those memories from his adolescence, holds them dear to his heart.
He won’t say that now; it would be too revealing.
“Don’t,” he says instead. “It’s pointless to think about those kinds of things.”
“Then, what should I think about?” Adam asks.
Kaoru has to think about it for a few moments. He’s guilty of living in the past for too long, himself. He’s had his own list of regrets a mile long painted on the backs of his eyelids, making it difficult to close his eyes and sleep at night. He wants to let them go.
“Think about what’s next. Think about the ways you want to be better, and then do them.” He meets Adam’s eyes and watches his words sink in. Adam is calmer these days. Something in him has begun to settle, though it’s obvious he still has a long way to go. “And I’ll do the same.”
Adam looks like there’s something more he wants to say, but for once, he’s holding back. There’s an ocean of unknowns behind his eyes. Kaoru has always been transfixed by them, since the first time he saw them, and now is no different. He wonders if he’ll always love Adam a little bit, and he thinks, yes, he probably will. But he’s older and wiser now, and he knows when it’s time to move on.
Gently, he says, “I don’t need to come to these dinners anymore, if that’s all you have left to say to me, then.” A cold numbness he didn’t realize had settled over him starts to thaw, leaving all of his old wounds re-exposed. It’s not so bad, though; now they can finally begin to heal.
“That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want, Adam?”
Adam’s gaze searches Kaoru’s face, and Kaoru lets him. He doesn’t shut himself off anymore— he’s too tired to keep doing this.
“I have no right to ask for what I want.”
“That’s never stopped you from doing anything before.”
Adam smiles. “No, I suppose it hasn’t.”
“Out with it, then.”
“I’d like to be friends again,” Adam says. And for whatever reason, it’s the last thing Kaoru is expecting to hear. “I don’t think you’re boring, Kaoru. I just wish I could see you be free, the way you used to be when we were young.”
“I could say the same of you.”
“Then say it. There’s probably some truth to it. I’ve been trapped inside my own mind for a long time. It’s taking a while to come out.”
Finally, it’s this self-awareness that convinces Kaoru that maybe all of this is real, is genuine. Maybe, if Adam can work on himself, then so can Kaoru. So he says, “Alright. We can try.”
Adam smiles, and Kaoru already knows — has faith — that they’ll make it back.
They just need some time.