Chapter Text
They’re 25 and just getting by. Rent in Tokyo isn’t cheap, train fare is a necessity, and Tadashi’s finally finished his six years of prerequisite veterinary studies. He works and he studies, and he’s managed to snag a job as a vet tech under a doctor who doesn’t mind that he’s just barely finished his first year of classes at Nōkōdai for his own doctorate’s; it doesn’t pay a lot, but he and Kei don’t need too much more than tuition, train fare, and food, and Kei has a job as well.
Their small, one-bedroom apartment is just big enough for both of them to spread their materials out across the floor and sit back to back in the living room to quiz each other. Tadashi asks Kei about laws and statutes and ethics for his bar, and Kei asks Tadashi tedious questions about biology and medicine and chemistry. The paint peels slowly off the walls, the hot water goes a little too quickly, and there’s a breeze in the winter, but they’ve lived here for nearly seven years, ever since they came to Tokyo together, and when it’s cold, they just put another comforter on the bed and make sure they’re wearing socks.
The apartment itself is ratty, but it’s been lived in with love and care and stubborn devotion. It’s seen fights and the subsequent apologies. It’s seen screaming fits about giving a damn and effort and the fallout from bad grades in an essential class. It’s seen both of them stubbornly sleeping on the floor away from the other and frantic cramming sessions and weeks where they choose between school, rent, and food; it’s seen endless midnight coffees and morning kisses. It’s seen tears over how it took Tadashi’s parents two years after they told them they were dating to come around and accept that Kei was who was best for Tadashi.
It’s small and old, but it’s home. It was there that they chose to make their life, and there where they slipped the thin, silver rings on the other’s finger and decided that they’d make whatever the future brings them work, their arguments be damned.
They’re 25 and stubborn and still young with dreams that are built on aspirations, love, and persistence.
It’s early April: the air is still a bit too cool in the mornings, but it’s balmy in the afternoon as the cherry blossoms that drift through the air like New Year’s confetti track in and out of the apartment like drifts of snow from their shoes and coats and bags.
He’s fishing one out of Kei’s hair when his phone rings, loud against their laughter. “It’s my mom,” he murmurs, face pinched with concern.
Kei waits patiently as Tadashi talks, his voice dropping from conversational to tight and hushed, face whitening underneath his freckles. Kei frowns and watches as Tadashi brings a shaking hand up to nervously twist a strand of his hair around his finger. He pulls it free of his small ponytail at the nape of his neck as he talks and starts stretching the elastic band between his thumb and forefinger as he listens to his mother on the other end.
Kei leans aside as the band snaps and flies towards him. He looks at Tadashi, who’s still in his bright, printed scrubs from work, hair lose around his neck and looking strained and nervous. “Um, I’ll make the necessary calls,” he says, “And I’ll tell Tsukki and see if he wants to come too. How long?” He pauses, then nods and swallows. “I’ll call you back. Yes. Okay, I love you too. Bye.”
Kei tips his head to the side and steps forward, wordlessly ushering Tadashi to their small makeshift living room. It’s just an old sofa and their TV, surrounded by dusty piles of video games and consoles and DVDs that they only occasionally watch; it shares the space with their kitchen, with the washer and dryer tucked into a small alcove behind a brightly printed curtain (once, there were doors, but those were long gone).
Tadashi sits on the threadbare sofa, leaning into Kei as he settles beside him. “So what’s up?” he asks, sliding a hand against Tadashi’s shoulders, pressing his fingers into the cotton of his scrubs.
Tadashi rubs his hands against his face, and then cards them through his hair. “Um, one of my cousins—I don’t really know her well, to be honest, but… She and her husband were in a wreck and… well, they both died the day before last,” he says quietly. “They had a daughter and she was at home with the sitter, so she’s okay, but the entire family is meeting for the service and after, they’re going to talk about what’s going to happen to her. Mom was only just now able to call me about it.”
“That’s… horrible,” Kei says slowly.
“It is, isn’t it?” Tadashi laughs. It’s a warbling, faint sound and Kei knows from experience that it means Tadashi’s panicking slightly. He slides his hand up into Tadashi’s hair and tugs him forward to rest against his chest. Tadashi tucks himself into Kei’s lap and continues laughing for a few seconds before his voice cuts off into a half-swallowed sob. “Her name’s Kana, by the way. …All I remember is that she was older than me, her mom is...my father’s sister, I think. We weren’t able to meet up with that side of the family often since they lived so far away. She gave me sunflowers once when I was little. She’d gone and picked them off the side of the road. We both had freckles, and she knew I didn’t like mine,” he murmurs softly. Kei listens quietly as Tadashi slowly pieces out small memories and facts about his cousin, one by one, until the brunet could put together a person to mourn. “So she picked the sunflowers and told me that we both were like sunflowers, since our freckles were proof we turned our faces to the sun. Actually, if I think about it, we looked a lot alike… She came to one of our games once, our third year. Did you know that? She was on a business trip to Sendai, and came during her lunch break, but couldn’t stay. When we got home from the tournament, there was a bouquet of sunflowers for me.”
Kei feels tears drip onto his collar where Tadashi has his head tucked up against his neck. He lays his cheek against the other man’s head, rubbing circles into his lover’s back. “Which game?” he asks.
“The one where I finally served for those ten points Shōyō had been bugging me about since first year,” Tadashi answers with a shuddering laugh. He pauses and gathers his composure. “The service is a week from now,” he says quietly. “Mom wants me to come to Miyagi as soon as I can to help my grandparents and dad organize the meeting and the ceremony. She also wants help looking after the little girl. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. You… you know how my family is.”
“I’ll make the arrangements to get there,” Kei offers softly, sliding his fingers through Tadashi’s hair. “I’ll go too, so don’t worry.”
Tadashi leans back, eyes damp even though he was smiling softly. “Thank you,” he murmurs, pressing a quick kiss to his lover’s cheek. “I’m going to start calling my professors and Ono-sensei at the clinic.”
“Don’t forget to change,” Kei calls out as Tadashi stands and moves into their bedroom to make the calls. He fishes his laptop out of his bag, which he’d left by the entryway. He brushes the petals off of his bag and starts thinking about who he needed to call as well. There was his job and his professors, and the law firm he interned at every Thursday and Friday. He can hear Tadashi’s apologetic murmuring to his professors, promising to study and to turn in work electronically. He can hear the strain in his voice when he speaks to his sensei at the animal clinic; it makes him angry when he thinks about it, about how poorly Tadashi is treated at the clinic.
Tadashi won’t quit, though, because he loves the job, even though he’s treated like a volunteer despite being certified enough to start clinical work. The clinic can’t fire him, because they can’t fault his work, and they don’t necessarily have proof that Tadashi is gay, because after the first day, he stopped wearing his ring to work, leaving it carefully in a small dish by the front door so he can keep it on as long as he can before leaving, and put it on as soon as he gets home; he knows Tadashi doesn’t talk much there either.
He knows how disappointed Tadashi gets when they hit snags in the road about their relationship—he’d thought that people in Tokyo would be a bit more used to it, a bit more open. It was so different from back at home, in their small town where they’d grown up just as attached at the hip as they were now, where their friends had grown used to their joint presence, and even Tadashi’s parents, as steadfastly against them as they were at first, had relented once they saw how well Tadashi flourished in Tokyo with Kei.
But they’ve both entered highly professionalized, highly academic fields that have a lot of older people dominating the field, and that’s just how it is, no matter how angry Kei gets about it. He bides his time to do something about it until he has a chance, when he has his pin sitting on his chest; sunflowers make him think of Tadashi anyway, so it won’t really matter if he can’t wear his ring in court.
It will please him greatly, he thinks as Tadashi stammers into the phone, bowing out of habit even as he sits on the edge of their bed, that the same symbol of the laws that keep them from being officially recognized as a couple, that make them keep excel documents with extensive bill planning and emergency planning because they haven’t been able to do much else yet, that help keep some of the old, heavily traditional prejudices around will remind him of the man he loves.
It’s taken a while though, to come to this point, where he can acknowledge the frustration that, at the moment it doesn’t matter what he tries—he’s not going to change anything or come out of it with anything more than what he started with. If he were the same as he was when he was younger and bullheaded and scared, he would have never made it to Tokyo with Tadashi. He would have let the fruitlessness of their struggles against the world keep him from making this small home with the other man.
Neither of them are the same, not really. They’ve grown up and left some of the fumbling insecurities of their teenage years, and replaced them with new ones and new goals and fears. The pass rate for the bar is low—Kei’s already taken, and failed, several mock-exams based on it. He’s still got a year of law school left, and then only three chances to take the bar for real. He’s scared that he’ll have worked all this time and end up with nothing. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it gets to that point, honestly.
Tadashi has a whole doctorate’s program ahead of him, and it’s expensive, and he’s told Kei that he’s afraid that his luck will run out, despite the fact that he works hard. He cries, he tells Kei in a whisper under the sheets, when he has to tell clients that the best thing to do for their pet is to put them to sleep. He’s starting to be afraid that he’s not cut out for the work. He loves the animals, he says, but sometimes it breaks his heart to see them in pain; he’s scared he’ll never learn enough to help. He’s had roughly seven years of training now, but he feels like he knows nothing at all. Kei knows this isn’t true, because he’s quizzed Tadashi on things that he can barely even grasp, and Tadashi rattles the answers off like they’re a grocery list.
They’re both afraid of messing up with each other, of not carrying numbers when doing the bills; they’re afraid of getting sick, of accidents, of ending up without each other instead of winning volleyball games and of bullies and of getting caught kissing in the locker room. And that’s okay, because even though their lives are so much different, the parts that are the same are the things that matter most.
Tadashi is kind and Kei is clever; between the two of them, they’ll get through it. He books tickets on the train to Sendai, and then arranges for a car so they can drive home. He sends e-mails to his bosses and his professors, knowing that they preferred e-mailing correspondence between colleagues to keep their phone lines free for clients; they’ll call him if the need is dire.
It isn’t. He receives confirmation emails all at the same time, and is sent files for review for the firm he’s working for as a pseudo-secretary. He can’t actually work as any sort of professional in the field, and he’d rather die than take an internship without pay, but he’s good at research and proofing, and his sharp tongue has (somehow) managed to snag him some good connections in the field, ending with this job. He sends the ticket and car confirmations to their finicky old wireless printer and closes his laptop.
He strides into the bedroom and kneels on the floor in front of Tadashi. Tadashi reaches out and brushes his fingers through Kei’s hair and smiles faintly at the blond.
Kei reaches forward and turns on the scratched up old iPod on the dresser and rummages through the sheets for Tadashi’s pajamas. He leans up and wipes the damp lines of tears off of his lover’s face, then guides him up onto his feet, and into their tiny bathroom.
“Shower. Change. I’ll make dinner,” he instructs, glaring Tadashi down as if daring the slighter man to question that he knew what was best for Tadashi. Tadashi just laughs and turns on the water, shaking the old handle just so in order to get the hot water going. Satisfied, Kei goes into the kitchen and starts dinner.
They have leftover rice and vegetables, so he chops up chicken and makes a stir-fry with painstaking attention, his mother’s instructions from the sixth month period between getting accepted to college with Tadashi, announcing his intentions to live together with Tadashi, and moving out still loud in his mind even years later.
Before her Spartan training, he’d not really been able to do much: he could make tea and rice, and if pressed, omelets. He was better at helping others cook than cooking, really. But she’d sighed and shook her head at him, sat him down, and then told him that any man worth his salt as a partner had to know how to cook.
You want to be able to take care of Tadashi-kun when he’s tired or sick or can’t cook for you, she said, and you can’t make that boy live off of convenience store food, because he would never do that to you.
And so he’d learned, much to Tadashi’s amusement. But his mother hadn’t been wrong. Tadashi only brought home convenience store food when they were both sick and tired, or as a treat; when Kei got sick, Tadashi cooked for him and coaxed Kei into eating. In return, Kei did the same: The first time he had to take care of Tadashi and cook alone, rather than in tandem with the brunet, he had to thank her. The weak, feverish smile he’d received from Tadashi when he’d brought in soup had been worth his mother’s nagging and eye rolling and endless cooking lessons.
Always wait to salt, always taste before putting in more seasoning. Don’t walk away from the pan. Small tips for fluffier, softer rice that didn’t stick to the bottom of the pan in a glutinous lump that had to be scoured at for ages before it lifted; tips for eggs that didn’t burn at the edges (though that still happened sometimes). How to make miso and stock and how to freeze it in batches.
The instructions play in his mind as he cooks, along with smaller things his parents had taught him that helped him live as an adult. Phone courtesy, how to fold socks before washing so they stayed together in the machine, how to tie a tie. Smaller lessons that he’d never realized he’d picked up on until he was living with Tadashi freely: how to greet your significant other when they come home, how to make small concessions about the folding of the wash. All things to make life for two easier, how to smooth out the rougher edges of their youth so they could focus more on the larger knots and divots in the way, so that when they tripped, they didn’t cut themselves too badly on their inexperience.
Other things, his brother taught him. How to swallow his pride. How to move on. How to apologize. All things necessary for a life that was shared with another person in any capacity.
Tadashi taught him everything else: how to ask for help when he needed it or wanted it, how to acknowledge pride as something constructive, how to smile freely and how to hold his tongue when he could taste his words like acid on his lips. How to share and how to let someone into his personal bubble, how to be gentle, and how to be tactful. How to control his temper.
These things are easy to overlook, and so he makes himself think about them constantly. He starts to stir in the leftover vegetables into the pan with the chicken, stirring it so it wouldn’t stick. He’s divvying up portions and pouring tea when Tadashi pads out into the living area and sniffs the air curiously. His hair drips onto the shirt that Kei knows he bought but can’t remember if it was intended for him or Tadashi, but is now entirely Tadashi’s favorite thing to sleep in, and Kei raises an eyebrow.
Tadashi dutifully raises his hands to the towel around his neck and scrubs at his hair until it’s a frizzy, damp mess; his obedience is slightly ruined by the fact that he has his face screwed up and is sticking his tongue out the entire time, but that’s just normal.
They sit at their small, thrifted dinner table that’s pushed up against the wall on one side to make room, legs sprawled out across from each other, feet in the other’s space.
“I let everyone know I’m going back to Miyagi,” Kei says as they eat. “Family emergency. They didn’t ask whose so I didn’t say.”
“That’s probably prudent,” Tadashi sighs, reaching out to pour Kei more tea. He’s vaguely aware that some of Kei’s colleagues are more open minded than his own, especially the other students, and he’s under the impression that the law firm doesn’t actually care, as long as Kei does his research, smoothes out their mistakes, and bitches at reporters like he’s supposed to. “I’ll let my mom know after we eat. When are the tickets for?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. I figure we can pack together in the morning.”
Tadashi nods, sitting thoughtfully as the tinny music from their bedroom floats through the apartment. “Do you know if my suit is here or in Miyagi? It’s not in the closet.”
“Miyagi because you’re stupid and left it after Hitoka and the idiot’s ceremony,” Kei says promptly.
“You call Hitoka-chan Hitoka, yet refuse to call Shōyō by name?” Tadashi laughs, sniggering into his food.
“Because Hitoka has half a brain. At least. I’m still surprised neither of them barfed or ran away crying at the altar, really,” Kei says, smirk curling across his lips.
Tadashi rolls his eyes and finishes up his food. “You’re sure it’s there, right?”
“Yes.”
“Whose house is it at?” Tadashi asks, chewing on his lip. “We stayed with both of our families during that trip, remember?”
Kei drums his fingers on the table thoughtfully. He remembers. He remembers being drunk after the reception too, and peeling off Tadashi’s suit in the dark, shushing his lover by pushing one of the nice silk ties they were wearing in the slighter man’s willing mouth to bite down on. He remembers fumbling and trying to be quiet himself by smothering himself against Tadashi’s neck, because even though their parents—both sets—were aware of their relationship and approved of them by the time their friends got married, Kei and Tadashi know without a doubt they wouldn’t approve of their sons fucking in their houses (even though they were sleeping together before they lived together). He pauses and strains his mind; he still can’t remember whose family home they’d stumbled their way into, smashed and handsy and filled with unspeakable longing, and he can tell by the blush on Tadashi’s face he’s remembering the second silk tie around his wrists and not whose childhood bed they’d re-christened.
He thinks harder, about the morning when they’d both woken up hungover and slightly sore and overwhelmingly wistful for the things they can’t actually have without leaving the country. “Ah, mine,” he says, remembering the blurry shapes of his old dinosaur collection, still dusty on the shelves even though his parents use his and Akiteru’s rooms for storage now. “We’ll stop by on the way to your house… I should let my mother know,” he murmurs, glancing towards his phone on the counter.
“Probably for the best,” Tadashi agrees. “Let her know we’ll try to come over and visit. It sounds like there might be a lot of puttering around and waiting about—we can probably visit around, too. I wouldn’t let them know before we know if we can, though.”
“No use in getting the idiots overexcited without reason,” Kei murmurs as he stands, gathering their plates. He grabs his phone and tucks it into his pocket after depositing the dishes into the sink.
Tadashi rises from his chair as well, settling beside Kei as they wash and dry the dishes. They bump elbows and get in each other’s way more than they help each other, but Kei allows Tadashi to huddle up into his side. He knows that when the other man is stressed, he craves physical touches; their ever-deepening skinship had been one of the first heralds of their feelings for each other. It hadn’t been the smoothest ride, but the old hurts don’t matter; they’re like this now, and that’s what matters.
Once they finish, he presses his hand to Tadashi’s back and guides him back into the bedroom, flicking off the light in their small kitchen/living area. It’s not completely dark out yet, dirty twilight slinking through the gaps in their blinds from the small window in the kitchen and the larger one over their bed. It doesn’t matter much; they’ll still sleep.
He starts to step out of his slacks as Tadashi crawls into bed, tossing his phone after the brunet. “Text my mother about your suit,” he instructs, unbuttoning his shirt. He shrugs it off and lets it fall with his slacks and he slides into bed after Tadashi in his boxers and the tee-shirt he wore under his button-up.
Tadashi practically rolls on top of him, fingers tapping over Kei’s phone. “I also let her know why we’re in town and that we plan to visit,” he says. “She might want to call and see if Aki-nii wants to come and visit if he can. It’s been a while since he’s been able to see us.”
Kei snorts and gently pries the phone out of Tadashi’s fingers. “As if I want to subject myself to him teasing us mercilessly,” he murmurs, pushing it under the pillows. Tadashi reaches out and hunts for the charger cord, plugging it in so it wouldn’t die overnight; he lays it next to his own under the edge of their pillows, tapping his phone’s screen to make sure it really was charging. The last thing they need is one of their phones to die when they’re in the middle of a whirl of sudden plans and traveling.
“If I recall correctly, it’s the other way around, Tsukki,” Tadashi chides lightly.
“Is it really?” Kei wraps his arms tightly around the brunet and rolls them over onto their sides. Tadashi presses his forehead into the crook of the blond’s neck and Kei reaches down to pull the comforter over their heads.
“Yes. You had him completely convinced we eloped to Kyoto last time,” Tadashi snickers. “And then the time before last, when I was sick, he called me in a panic thinking we’d broken up because you were so vague about where I was.”
“That one is not my fault.”
Tadashi continues to laugh, remembering the utter despair in Akiteru’s voicemail message where he’d vehemently defended ‘all, like, three’ of Kei’s good points, where at least two of them had to do with Tadashi. He’d texted Kei afterwards, asking why exactly he hadn’t told his brother he had the flu and let him think they’d broken up. The response had been ‘because it was amusing’. He slides his hands up Kei’s back, feeling drowsy under the heavy warmth of his lover and their comforter.
“I set the alarm early so we can pack,” he murmurs.
Kei nods and traces his thumb against the curve of Tadashi’s hip until the slighter man relaxes completely against him and starts to snore. He pulls his glasses off and sets them aside, laying awake for a while before drifting asleep with Tadashi’s leg slung over his thighs and hooked behind his knee, arms wrapped tight around his middle. He acts as an anchor and pillow for Tadashi’s restless sleeping habits and Tadashi keeps him warm and feeling safe. He never can quite fall asleep until the other’s weight is pressed unevenly and sloppily against him and their contained cuddling turns into an awkward tangle of limbs. It’s a bad habit that formed when they were much, much younger, and he was half afraid that if he slipped off to sleep, he’d wake up with Tadashi gone.
He won’t admit it, but sometimes he dreads the days that Tadashi has to work early mornings or late, late nights. Seven years is a long time to grow used to another’s presence; the mornings and nights he has to do without make him remember the times when waking up with Tadashi drooling on his arm or snoring in his ear wasn’t an assured thing, or even something that happened frequently.
Sometimes the distaste he has for being in the apartment completely alone makes him wonder if he’s grown dependent on Tadashi’s love and company.
He’s pretty certain he could live on his own if he had to, it’s not like he lacks any skills that would make living alone impossible. But those skills were cultivated solely for using in a life with Tadashi at his side. To cook when Tadashi can’t or is tired or when Kei wants to spoil him; to do the dishes with Tadashi’s elbows bumping into his own, and their voices mixing over the sink; to do the wash with both of their clothes in the piles and ending up with mismatched socks—one of Tadashi’s on one foot, and his own on the other—and cursing with the other man when it rains when they’ve left their comforter out to air; shopping together and keeping each other from extraneous purchases (‘no, it’s not strawberry season, you will regret it’s and ‘there isn’t any room in the freezer for fries’s)…
Kei is perfectly capable of doing these things without Tadashi, and he knows Tadashi is too. Sometimes they have to do them alone, because the other is at school or work, or out with colleagues or visiting with friends; sometimes Kei goes out and drinks with Kuroo. Sometimes Tadashi visits with Kenma and Lev and Yaku. Sometimes the people are different, someone Tadashi knows from class and Kei never meets or vice versa.
No, both of them are able to be on their own, and live their own lives, but it’s just easier, happier, warmer with the other beside them. Chores aren’t too much work, and even going grocery shopping in the large supermarkets that make Kei’s ears ring and exhaust him is more enjoyable with Tadashi. Going out with other people is more fun when he knows that there’s someone home waiting for him to get back, and will listen to his accounts of the night.
If that’s dependent… well, then, he’s doomed.