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When Miya tells him that Sia la luce never opened for the lunch service, the first thing Kaoru does is to actually go and see it for himself.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, of course, to see the closed sign still hanging on the door and the lunch menu nowhere to be found. Miya would have no reason to lie to him, even if, for some reason, Kojiro has roped the boy in to prank him. In any case, Miya would be too smart for that, and Kojiro too busy.
The next thing he does is to go to a family-owned grocery mart at the corner near his old address for some shopping: one box of curry sauce mix, ready to cook pork cutlets, instant miso soup and udon soup, some houjicha and some flavored chocolates on a bogo deal.
They fit comfortably in his basket which he brings to the check-out counter at the other end of the store, a familiar face waiting for him behind the till.
“Kaoru-san! My, it’s been a long time hasn’t it?” His old friend has aged some since last they met—her voice grates a little closer to the back of her throat and her hair is also a little grayer and thinner than the last. Still, she puts on a smile that almost takes him back as she collects Kaoru’s items to punch them into her analog cash register. It’s one of those things that’s only ever efficient because its users have mastered it to the fullest and so no one else is allowed to touch it. Otherwise, it just hurts Kaoru’s soul, looking at its grayed and yellowed surface.
He manages a smile, in any case. “It’s good to see you again, Miyamoto-sensei.” Miyamoto-sensei used to be a school principal in the kindergarten just near there before she retired. “How’s business?”
“So-so,” Miyamoto-sensei sighs, tilting the basket towards her to double check his items against the slender receipt still attached to the register. “Could be better but, at least we’re still in business.” Like the store around her, she hasn’t changed much either. He knows she’s been using the same litany years before he moved in, and he imagines that’s never changed even after he’s moved out to his current address. “You haven’t been dropping by as often these days.” With a powerful middle finger, she smashes the tend key and somehow manages to avoid the cash drawer zooming out to punch her in the gut.
Kaoru laughs quietly and politely as he produces his money clip from within the left sleeve of his yukata. “I’ve just been too busy,” he says as his excuse, dropping his payment onto the plastic tray between them.
“Hm,” Miyamoto-sensei scoffs, reaching from her side for a plastic bag. “Being busy is all well and good, as long as you and your husband still make time for each other.” Thanks to her well-practiced movements, she doesn’t notice him jumping when she takes the tray and files the money away, her short wrinkled fingers a perfect fit into the slats. “Even if neither of you will bear children, quality time is still important in any family setting. Where is Kojiro-kun, anyway?” She returns the tray to him with his change. “I haven’t seen you both here in a while.”
A sudden, “Kaoru!” saves him, one that arrives in the form of a woman who gives him a quick hug before she takes his basket for him. “Let me help you with this. Grandma, all good?” She holds out her hand to take the receipt.
As soon as they escape her grandmother, she sighs out loud, putting down Kaoru’s basket on the empty counter at the back wall so she can start bagging his items. It’s his job, but she does need an excuse to talk to him. “Sorry about grandma. I guess she’s still holding out hope that you and Kojiro can get back together.”
What else can Kaoru do but to smile and shake his head. “I understand. She was the happiest person I know when she found out that we got married, after all.” Definitely beat any one of his family who, to this day, has stayed mum about any knowledge they might have of his brief married life.
“Grandma keeps saying it’s a shame for you both to separate when you look very good with each other. And that more gay couples should stay together ‘cause that’s the only way we’ll convince the government to allow marriage equality.” She giggles briefly when she ties up the plastic bag and finally hands it over to Kaoru. He accepts it with a bow. “She keeps saying she’s a modern woman despite her age, but she doesn’t understand that equal rights means gay couples get the right to divorce, too.”
Kaoru smiles at her logic.
“Well, what’s brought you back here, anyway?” She swings her hands behind her. “Is everything okay, Kaoru?”
“Yes.” Kaoru is quick to assure her. “I’m just here to visit an old friend.”
—
From there, it’s a quick 15-minute ride on his motorcycle to his destination—a single-story detached home with a traditional-style roof and modern walls and windows.
Kaoru parks Carla just on the inside of the stone fence and doesn’t announce himself when he steps through the front door using his own keys. He locks it behind him again, changes his slippers at the genkan and makes his way straight to the kitchen just to the left of the empty living room.
After tying up his sleeves and washing his hands, he sets to work. He gets some potatoes boiling as he peels and cuts up some carrots and onions he collected from the pantry, and goes on to prepare the potatoes after putting on the rice. Once he has the curry going, he puts a bag of houjicha in a cup, fills it with freshly boiled water, and finally makes his way to one of the rooms at the back, near the garden.
He doesn’t bother to knock as he steps inside. He doesn’t have to—he’s never kept his intrusion quiet, anyway. “Mio Dio,” a heavy voice welcomes him, the kind of heavy that sounds like it has been dragging an ape of a man all its life and now it’s finally exhausted. “È, è vero?” he groans, his sheets rustling slightly when he shifts but stops before he can turn himself on his side. “O sono diventato delirante…?”
Kaoru replies with the only phrase that has saved him during his honeymoon in Italy: “Non capisco.” I don’t understand. He used to think he may one day become fluent with the language…but that was when he still nursed such dreams. “For as long as I’m here, you are not allowed to speak in Italian.” He sets the cup of tea carefully on the bedside table that is loaded with medicine, an empty glass and a bowl of instant ramen that is still half full. Supposedly Kojiro’s favorite. “Capito, Gorilla?”
Kojiro starts to laugh and makes a valiant effort of it, but that is all that comes of his attempt. “I’m not allowed to speak Italian…but you are?” He’s dressed only in his briefs, his blanket draped over his knees as though it is clinging for dear life, with half of it already spilling out to the floor. His phone is camouflaged into the mix, attached to a power bank.
Kaoru rescues it before it can slip to the floor, storing it in Kojiro’s top drawer. It isn’t likely that he will have the wherewithal to use it, anyway, within the next few hours or so. “Weakling gorillas aren’t allowed to complain.”
“Normally, I’ll be making you feel sorry about that by now but,” Kojiro sighs, watching Kaoru as he dips himself to test his forehead with his palm. “I’m just glad to be seeing you right now.” Oh, he knows. Kaoru wouldn’t be here if he didn’t, otherwise. In fact, Kojiro’s the only person in his entire life he will do this for. “At first, I thought I’d become delusional from the migraine when I smelled my dear husband’s signature curry, but you’re actually here…”
Kaoru raises a brow at that. “Ex-husband,” he reminds him. He starts to pull him up by his thick shoulder. Kojiro is as strong as he is large and vain…
But what their friends and his fans don’t know is that he can be such a whiny baby behind walls. Kojiro is the perfect definition of a giant, after all—powerful, sturdy as a rock, but when he falls, he falls. “Kaoru, I’m not getting up,” he whines.
“Kojiro.” That is all Kaoru says, looking him in the eye. The brown of his irises have always been unique, tinged with a kind of red that makes them glow with their own magma, no matter if the room is dark and all shuttered up. Kaoru remembers going weak over them once, in their better days. Today, he doesn’t relent.
Kojiro’s fight lasts for all of two heartbeats before he finally groans and helps Kaoru carry him up.
While he’s hanging onto him like a sloth, Kaoru arranges the pillows hastily until he can set Kojiro to lean back upon them. Sitting on his bedside, he finally serves him his cup of houjicha. “What did you do, anyway?”
“Worked too hard, played harder,” Kojiro smirks, sipping his tea carefully as Kaoru tilts it towards him. “It was the after-party,” he goes on to add when Kaoru stares on, “and I was exhausted from serving the entire event. I needed a drink.”
“Or twenty,” Kaoru snorts, leaving the cup by the bedside table again. “What have you been eating?”
“Uh…yesterday, nothing. Earlier, TKG and…” Kojiro gestures to his unfinished instant ramen. If those two are the only things he’s had in two days, he must be famished, Kaoru thinks. He came in the nick of time.
“Lunch should be ready in 20 minutes,” Kaoru tells him, collecting the plastic bowl and the glass from his nightstand. Before he heads back to the kitchen, he tells his ex with a cocked brow, “Try not to die before then, puny gorilla.”
—
“Master, we’ll be arriving in 2 minutes.”
“Thank you, Carla.” Kaoru has just finished plating up the curry rice when his AI makes the announcement, his special bracelet glowing pink. He sets Kojiro’s meal on the tray on the kitchen counter with a fresh glass of water, walks around it as he reaches inside his left sleeve for his fan.
He makes sure he’s at the door before his visitors can ring the bell. The crimson-haired young man at the front is already reaching for it and is clearly taken by surprise when he finally recognizes the welcoming committee. “Eh? Cherry—”
Kaoru smacks him readily in the face with the flat of his fan, sending him to yowl and stumble backwards, flailing. “If I have to ask you about the rules of ‘S’ one more time, I’ll strap you and your skateboard to a rocket ship headed for the sun.” His blue-haired companion, at least, is marginally smarter than him. “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Langa.”
“And Reki, too!” the red-haired idiot exclaims, hands still rubbing the contact point of his fan. “I was the one who drove him from your house to this address!”
“Yeah,” Langa utters, though he looks a little bit too dumbfounded for comfort. All that time spent together with his best friend might finally be rubbing off on him. But he passes Kaoru’s gym bag to him before he can ask for it so he can inspect its contents. His laptop and his other peripherals are inside, sitting on top of his clothes and other stuff. “So…whose house is this?” Of course, when Kaoru asked them for a favor, he never said anything about the owner of this residence.
Kaoru shakes his head, zipping his bag shut. “Just a friend,” is all he says.
“Smells like lunch, too,” Reki observes, sniffing the air. “Freshly cooked curry rice…” Okay, perhaps he’s not as dumb as Kaoru had put him—
“Is this JOE’s place?” Langa asks him, completely blindsiding him with his and his best friend’s investigative skills. Too smart, too smart—!
Kaoru sees black and before he knows it, Langa is yowling and dancing away from his fan, hands on his forehead. Now he and his friend both fashion a similar blush on their faces.
“And w, why would you think that?” Kaoru spits like a defensive fox, flicking his fan open for some air. His face feels warm to the scalp line. “I told you, it’s a friend’s house!”
“Itʼs the latest gossip in Crazy Rock,” Reki reveals. Kaoru’s movements halt. “When Langa and I arrived last night, we saw some of the girls in the Sakura Viewing Party,” one of the factions of his fans, “crying with each other. They said that…they heard from one of the oldies that you and JOE used to be uh…closer. Like…” Here, he raises his pointing fingers and lets them meet as he purses his lips to kiss.
Kaoru wants to smash his fan on those damn lips again, but to do so would be to admit the truth—that once upon a time, he and Kojiro celebrated their love for each other openly in “S”, where everyone was free to be who they were. As far as he is concerned, their eventual breakup was only spoken of in whispers, behind hands and backs, until someone else found something more interesting to howl about. But…
Well, he supposes his and Kojiro’s love story has always been open-ended. It’s true they fell apart, it’s true they divorced, and it is also true that Kaoru had asked Reki and Langa to collect some essentials for him so he could spend the night with his ex.
But he’s not yet ready to discuss it with these boys, and his patient is probably dying of malnutrition right now, as they speak.
“Maybe that’s what they think. That place has been around for more than half of both your lives,” Kaoru tells them, flicking his fan shut. “People can and will make up whatever they want about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m a bit busy.” He puts his hand on the door.
“Huh? Wait, Che—!” And pushes it shut and locks it.
—
“Was that Reki and Langa just now?” Kojiro asks him as he steps back into his room.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep their voices down.” Kaoru doesn’t mean it, though—Kojiro is already on the mend, after all. He kicks the door shut and makes his way carefully to Kojiro’s bedside where he sits, laying the tray on his lap. Kojiro, for his part, inches his way higher up the pillows on his back, though he struggles a little.
“You should have asked them to stay,” Kojiro sighs in relief when he finally makes it, holding the glass Kaoru offers him for a sip. Kaoru sets it aside on his nightstand. “There should be more than enough for all four of us.”
“I never cook too much or too little,” Kaoru counters him, lifting his brow. “You know that.” Thanks to Carla’s calculations, they never had to think about leftovers whenever he was involved with dinner.
Kojiro smiles weakly. “You should have asked them to come up, anyway.” Never mind that he probably hasn’t washed for a day and is only in his briefs. “I like having guests here.”
“They were asking about us,” Kaoru finally reveals, cutting a bit of potato and carrot to mix with the curry sauce and the rice. He blows at it, then feeds it carefully to his ex who opens his mouth readily. “Some oldie in Crazy Rock said something again.”
Kojiro sighs, relaxing a little on his pillows. “And what did they say?”
Kaoru shakes his head, preparing the next portion with the spoon.
“You told them something vague again, huh?” Well, they did used to be married…and before this, they have been friends since kindergarten. That’s not something a divorce can change.
“If I told them the entire story, you might have died from starvation.” Kaoru raises another serving to him.
“Thanks,” Kojiro tells him before he eats the proffered spoon, trying for a joke though it falls a little flat thanks to him feeling weak.
Kaoru cuts up another potato to make it easier for Kojiro to chew and swallow.
“This really hits the spot,” Kojiro whistles. “I told you before, right? I tried to make this after you left.”
Kaoru nods, scooping some sauce onto the rice to mix it. “You did.” He raises the spoon again.
“I even tried to boil the potatoes like you do, but it’s not the same.” Kojiro smirks wanly, raising his hand a little. Kaoru returns the spoon to the plate and helps the man with his water when he reaches for it. “I know I was teasing you the first time I called it your signature curry,” he goes on after he’s had a sip. “Because you’re the only one I know who always boils the potatoes ahead. But after you left,” he picks up the spoon, and stops Kaoru when he reaches for it, “I really missed this.” He feeds himself half a spoonful, then makes himself another. “It grew on me too late. Now I’m looking for it every time I need comfort.”
“And whose fault is that?” It’s the wrong question to ask, and Kaoru bites his tongue too late. The part about enjoying his curry too late, that’s on Kojiro. But the part about their separation…
Kojiro shrugs, a smile still adorning his grayish face as he carries the spoon to his lips to blow it gently…before he offers it to Kaoru. “Who knows, huh,” is all he says.
Kaoru catches himself staring at the golden brown rice, torn between protesting, mocking, and behaving meekly, but two of those options seem out of place right now. And he doesn’t…hate this…this part of their relationship. Romance, friendship, ex-ship, a special kind of friendship, whatever it’s called. There was something else he hated about it.
But it’s definitely not this—not this part where he doesn’t eat alone.
Kaoru gobbles it down in a single chomp and chews with gusto, suddenly remembering that he hasn’t had lunch yet. Kojiro probably knows this, too.
“Let’s share this plate,” Kojiro urges him, with a kind of brightness that feels like it’s desperate to break through his fatigue.
Kaoru nods, putting the back of his knuckles on his lips to hide the bit of sauce and that smile on it. So maybe heʼll always be weak for Kojiro.
—
With his media call and his classes canceled for the day, Kaoru spends the time working on his AI’s codes as he’s watching over Kojiro. It’s a dangerous gamble, knowing how easily he can lose sight of everything else around him once he begins, but just as he expected, he doesn’t concentrate as easily here. For one, his pocket projector is no fitting replacement for all three of his curved monitors back in his office. Kojiro’s writing desk, situated just next to his bed, is also a little too…clean and organized than what he’s used to, and the internet speed in this place is incomparable to what he has at home. Aside from all that, Kojiro keeps looking at him.
Which would have been fine and as expected—if Kojiro just doesn’t keep catching him whenever he looks at him, as well.
“If you have something to say, say it,” Kaoru sighs, readjusting his slender glasses with a touch of his knuckle. “Even wild gorillas have ways to communicate with others.” It’s easier to snark at his ex than to think about why this reminds him of their teenage years, before they started dating. Thieving glances, making all sorts of excuses to justify it…
“Sorry,” Kojiro starts to smile, “I just can’t get over my shock that my cheapskate ex chose to spend his time looking after me instead of robbing his poor students of their hard-earned savings.”
Kaoru feels a vein burst near his ear as he narrows his eyes on Kojiro’s triumphant grin. The man’s weakness had him blindsided. It’s true, of course, that the Sakurayashiki Master Class of Calligraphy demands something of a premium price for one session but it is no less than what someone of his caliber deserved! For Kojiro to insinuate that his skills aren’t worth it…
He pushes his seat back and grabs the pot of houjicha next to him. Kojiro’s features immediately turn to ash.
He’s about to raise it over his head when he hears the familiar melody of Kojiro’s doorbell, and the interruption almost makes Kaoru mad.
“Ah, I think that’s the door I heard…?” Kojiro points out nervously with a hopeful smile, shrinking against his pillow. He’s finished much of the plate that Kaoru prepared for him for lunch but is otherwise still too weak to carry his overblown arms. “S, Sakurayashiki-sensei…if it’s not too much to ask…”
Kaoru all but slams the pot back onto its tray and marches out of the bedroom.
The doorbell goes off again before he can reach the door. It doesn’t even occur to him to inspect the visitor through the peephole before he asks, “Who is it?” and opens the door for them.
Kaoru matches the man’s look of surprise when they meet. “Hiromi?” And right there next to him, barely looking up from his handheld console is… “And Miya…”
Miya glances up at him finally but only so he could say, “Yeah,” before he reapplies himself to his game. “I was in the flower shop with Hiromi so I thought I’d tag along.” He’s not surprised at all…but then again, he was the one who told Kaoru about Sia la luce. Come to think of it, could the reason why he went to Kaoru be because…
“Miya did say we might catch you here,” Hiromi tells him when Kaoru looks at him, by now having gotten over much of his shock, “but I didn’t believe him at first. I said you’d be too busy working the brush to have time for a visit.” He also said something else between the lines that Kaoru heard: that he was aware of the rumor about him and JOE in Crazy Rock, and that he did his best to cover it up when Miya was sniffing too close. Kaoru and Hiromi may not have been friends until recently, but the man has been a part of “S” for long enough to know the murmurs within its crevices.
“I came to check on him,” Kaoru replies simply, putting an end to that conversation right then and there. Finally his eyes fall on the bouquet of carnations and baby’s breath flowers in Hiromi’s arms.
“Uh…” Left without a choice, Hiromi passes the flowers to him, launching into his spiel. “Delivery for Kojiro Nanjo-san from Aya-san and Keiko-san.” Two of his favorite steady girls. “And…” He picks up a heaping basket of sunflowers and orange gerbera from his feet and hands that off to Kaoru, as well, who has to fit it into his arms with the first bouquet. “This one’s from me, Miya, Reki and Langa.”
“Hey, stop right there—!” Kaoru starts to protest, baring his fangs at the diligent flower shop worker like a battle stance.
“And,” Hiromi picks up a majestic glass vase from the ground, one that is bursting with blue and red roses, “there’s also this.”
—
He leaves that one in the living room for Kojiro to deal with some time in his future. The only ones he brings up are the basket and the pink bouquet.
Both of them bring out an instant smile onto Kojiro’s face and encourage him to sit up, though he moves like an old man aching to be young again. “For me?” he asks needlessly when Kaoru passes the bouquet off to him. The basket, he leaves on the floor next to the bed where Kojiro can see it. And where he might step on it when he’s getting up to pee. Hopefully.
“For the trash,” he corrects Kojiro as he slips out a dark blue card from the folds of his obi. In a good mood, Kojiro only clicks his tongue as he breathes in the flowers. “There’s another one downstairs.” He hands the thick card over to the sick man.
“So bring it up,” Kojiro orders him, but the second he changes his mind is audible from the shift in his face alone. His smile freezes and shrinks gradually, pulling his brows low along with its journey. Kojiro sets the bouquet onto his lap as he takes the card and reads the slanted text that is embossed in gold. For a basic get well message, it sure is ostentatious, but the sender at the bottom—ADAM, it reads—explains everything.
“Still want me to bring it up?” Kaoru asks him, though the question is rhetoric at best. He sits down beside the larger man, nudging the basket farther from him by his slipper.
“I’ll take care of it,” Kojiro tells him as he tosses the card to his empty bedside and brings up his girls’ bouquet again. His own smile bounces back in place as he rubs a carnation lightly with his thumb, then brings the blossoms up to smell them again. Why bother about a relationship gone sour when there are prettier things to think about anyway? That has always been Kojiro’s way, anyhow.
“Primate, flowers don’t smell like anything,” Kaoru snaps at him, tossing his long hair off his left shoulder.
“Maybe most flowers,” Kojiro rebuts, finally pulling the white card from the front of the bouquet. “But some do.” He looks at Kaoru when he says that, smiling wider.
Kaoru feels his blood pouring out of every cavity to render him as red as an Italian tomato. It’s an old flattery of his, a play on Kaoru’s names, and a reminder of the better times they had.
He tuts at Kojiro, practically raking his pink tail over his right shoulder. “Can’t you update yourself with a newer joke, you old gorilla?”
“Update?” Kojiro laughs softly, a sound that’s stuck in his throat as he reads the message. “Did you forget you’re talking to a real person, robo-maniac? Maybe your four eyes are getting dull like your sense of humor, too.” And in a moment of pure idiocy, he brings the card to his nose and sniffs it.
A light shudder crawls up like a ninja spider along Kaoru’s arms and he turns his nose from his ex. “Thatʼs unhygienic.” Think of all the surface and airborne viruses—
“Says the guy who eats chips with the same fingers he types his codes with.”
Kaoru snaps at Kojiro again. “For your information, I use chopsticks when I eat them! Unlike a certain gorilla I know, I have culture.”
“But you don’t have taste,” Kojiro giggles, still looking fondly at his card. “Aya-chan and Keiko-chan sure do, though,” he sings like some hopeless teenage boy.
Turning the bouquet towards Kaoru, puts his face beside it and asks in the same melodious tone, “Aren’t the flowers pretty?”
Kaoru huffs. “For gorillas, everything is,” he spits back. “If you’re so enamored about your girls, why don’t you marry them?”
“Japan doesn’t allow bigamy,” Kojiro answers as he chuckles, inspecting his flowers again. “And I can’t choose between the two of them. And even if I could give my heart to them,” there’s something wistful about his smile when he sets his bouquet down onto his lap, “I’m worried I might just do the same thing to them if we start to fight.” What is it they say about habits dying hard?
Kaoru understands, of course. He’s been there, after all, and he let his own habits get the better of them both. His eyes stray to their friends’ basket of flowers, just to have something else to look at. “Not that that was the biggest problem.” He cuffs his hair behind his ear. “Or maybe it was. I just decided to play blind.”
“Maybe it always was,” Kojiro agrees with him, his voice quieter, but he’s still smiling when Kaoru faces him. “We just pretended that it wasn’t.” He shrugs. “At that time, all I could think of was that I was the luckiest man in the world to be married to someone who didnʼt care what I did behind his back whenever we fought. But that’s weird, isn’t it?”
Kaoru nods. “Even I knew it was wrong. I should have been more selfish with you, but I was more glad that you still liked women because it gave me something to project myself onto. It made me feel less homosexual in front of my family’s eyes.” He sighs out loud, hanging his head back. “We nearly tore ourselves apart because of all our fighting but I really wanted to hang on. Even though in the end, I was the one who asked for a divorce…”
“Someone was bound to put an end to it.”
“But I wished it wasn’t me,” Kaoru mumbles, twisting his hair around his finger. “Years later, and I still can’t own up to the guilt of ending us…”
They’ve come a long way, though, both of them. They’ve managed to move on from such an ugly past and even look it in the face, or at least some parts of it. They know now that their differences will always be a part of their lives, but so will they both be…
Kaoru starts when he feels Kojiro sinking onto him until he is sighing in bliss with his head on Kaoru’s lap. Aya and Keiko’s flowers have been consigned to the void that is his bedside. Kojiro’s eyes are closed, and his smile is unwavering.
Kaoru doesn’t hesitate to touch his lush hair, and to feel it with his fingertips. He cards them idly over his thick, wavy locks, and it magics another happy sound from his ex.
“That feels good,” Kojiro whispers, snuggling deeper on his lap. Like a giant cat.
Kaoru lets himself admit that he’s enjoying this, too, smiling a little at the corner of his lips. His fingers bury themselves deeper into his hair, tracing and retracing bolder paths. “If my legs fall asleep,” he purrs at his contented ex, “I’m going to scrape all your fur off with a bread knife.”
—
He reheated the rest of the curry sauce from lunch and served it with fried pork cutlets for dinner. Even with the full bowl of instant udon that afternoon and some miso soup on the side, Kojiro finishes it almost without help. Kaoru suspects, of course, that he could have gotten himself to a working appetite even without his intervention, but that isn’t the point. It’s the same with Kaoru’s signature curry—the ingredients and the method are hardly the point, so much as the hand behind it is.
“Father and Mother never looked for you today?” Father and Mother—they may have been separated legally but around him, Kojiro hasn’t dropped the habit of calling Kaoru’s parents Father and Mother yet, even when they never liked him after their engagement.
Kaoru shakes his head, running the damp towel gently down Kojiro’s thick arm from his shoulder. He dips it back onto the basin of scented water and lifts Kojiro’s arm to reach under it. His hands stay light and easy, a luxury reserved only for an audience of one.
“Take a shower with me tomorrow.”
Kaoru snorts. “Not a chance,” he says, wiping carefully at his ex’s armpit. “I’ll be sleeping like the dead tonight and if you wake me up for a shower, I will stuff the showerhead down your throat.” He’s tired from looking after his ex and working on his codes, but most importantly, he knows he will enjoy sleeping in someone else’s bed tonight.
“If you can reach it,” Kojiro cackles quietly, chest bouncing slightly. A jab on their height difference. Kaoru could have broken the wrist he is holding as retaliation, but for now, he only dips his towel in the water again and runs it over each of his fingers. Kojiro lets out an easy breath as he sinks deeper against the pillows he’s leaning on, chocolate eyes never quite looking away. “Maybe some other time, then.” His voice is soft, as if to match the back of his finger brushing on the inside of Kaoru’s pulse. A little flutter dances up his arm from the touch. “After I regain my strength to bully you into the shower with me.”
Kaoru smirks as he chuckles briefly. Typical Kojiro. “Tarzan always aggressive.” He leaves the towel in the basin so he can reach for Kojiro’s hair and tuck it behind his ear, then brush his cheek lightly with his thumb. It coaxes a brighter smile from his ex.
“Tarzan no change,” Kojiro promises him, reaching up to tease the tip of his pink hair. “Jane, too.”
He’s finally started to snore when Kaoru comes back from the shower. After pulling the quilt higher up Kojiro’s chest, he sits in front of his laptop again, gathering his hair up for a high ponytail before he logs back in.
“Master, you’ve been working for six cumulative hours,” Carla reports, the C icon at the lower right corner of his dark screen pulsating with her syllables. Kaoru digs inside the black-and-green plastic bag next to him and produces a plain green packet. “Shall I start the countdown?” Might as well, he thinks.
“Count down to three hours,” Kaoru instructs his AI, popping a nugget of matcha-coated chocolate into his mouth. He leaves the packet in the empty teacup beside him to be dealt with tomorrow. By then, he expects Kojiro to be fit enough to take care of it, along with everything else he has left for him.
“Okay, Master,” Carla responds just as Kaoru’s hands glide over the keyboard. A chirp sounds off. “Countdown set to three hours.”
Somewhere during the second hour, Kojiro gets up for the bathroom. Kaoru knows he doesn’t have to go with him but leaves his laptop to keep an eye on his ex, anyway. It’s tedious work, minding another person, but it’s what he and Kojiro have always done for each other, even before they attempted the married life.
By the time the third hour rolls in, it is already past midnight. Much earlier than Kaoru’s usual bedtime but time in his old home works differently on him.
“Carla,” Kaoru yawns, slipping his hair tie off then pulling his arms up to stretch. “Commit and push the code and run unit test. Switch off lullaby playlist and morning call until 24 hours.”
“Roger,” Carla responds astutely, her bracelet extension glowing as Kaoru pushes his seat back and heads off to the bathroom. “Goodnight, Master.”
After brushing his teeth and putting on his night cream, Kaoru finally joins Kojiro after a long day, arms opening up on their own when the man wriggles his way to him and pulls him in. Kaoru lets him put his face on his chest like a child.
Kojiro hisses out a curse, hugging him tighter. “You’re so cold. Do you always sleep like this?”
“Unlike you, I’m a modern man who has a heater,” Kaoru snaps at him, but he doesn’t untangle his own arms and legs around the man. Kojiro is warm, like a living kotatsu.
“I don’t need a heater because I’m hot enough,” Kojiro retorts, bouncing and shifting until their shapes are both comfortably tucked into each other, waist and knees and all. Kaoru digs his fingers deeply into Kojiro’s thick hair, closing his eyes. “Stay close to me. Let my beautiful body keep you warm tonight, il mio fiore.”
Kaoru swears he has a ready comeback at the tip of his tongue—something about gorillas speaking in Italian or other—but he’s out like a light before he can remember it.
—
When Kojiro wakes up the next day, he feels like a new man. The fog is gone, the room is finally too dark for him and most importantly, he doesn’t feel like his precious muscles are staging a coup against him.
As he starts to get up, a fast hand grabs him by the waistband of his briefs, threatening to rip through the garter and pull it off. It takes him by surprise at first, but remembers the lovely dream that was yesterday when he turns back to the man still asleep on his bedside, a beautiful monster hidden under the shiny tresses of his pink hair. Like a sakura tree in full bloom. Spring has come to summer, he thinks.
It’s the first reason for Kojiro to smile that day. Lightly, he brushes Kaoru’s hair back from that look of consternation on his face and soothes his frown with a kiss on his temple. He whispers to him the magic words, “I’ll be back,” and is finally allowed to leave his cave by the dragon.
Outside, the place looks different. There are flowers in his living room and on the dining table, and his kitchen bears the marks of having been touched by another person, the kind that makes him feel like he’s walking with his right foot in the left slipper. His chopping board is in a different location, the drying rack is still fully loaded and he can see where he’s missing a few potatoes and carrots.
He will deal with them all in good time, he thinks, as he opens the fridge for the almond milk he uses for his protein shakes. A quick inspection brings his attention to the pink-and-white pack of chocolates in the middle shelf, dusted with sakura flowers and topped with a yellow sticky note to cover the brand with his first order of the day.
I want carbonara, it reads. No signature.
Kojiro chuckles as he brings the note out with the milk. He sets them aside on the kitchen counter and reaches up to his cupboard just next to the fridge to inspect the contents. It doesn’t take him long to find the pack of spaghetti noodles and bring it out.