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There’s an itch he can’t get at, and it’s been there all morning. No matter how much he shifts around in his seat, seeking comfort in the scratch of fabric against his skin, he can’t seem to get rid of it.
It would help, somewhat, to know exactly what part of his back it is that is suddenly itchy but that too, is a problem he is unable to solve. He goes all over his back, once, twice, and then three times and he gets Tadashi to scratch at the spots he can’t reach but it is to no avail.
His skin remains irritated and there’s nothing he can do about it.
It is while he is rutting against his office chair, quite comically at that, that he realises he can’t scratch it out because it has spread all over his body like a rash. The skin under his collar feels tender and his cuffs are too tight. His silky, expensive trousers feel like weather-beaten leather on his legs and for a second, he can do nothing but sit entirely still and let his entire body prickle as if there’s someone inside of him, a wholly different entity, sticking pins and needles from inside of him and trying to crawl out.
The thought is invigorating. Ainosuke shivers.
The clock in his office is way too loud today, he realises and somehow the room feels stuffy even though his windows are open.
Maybe he needs to get the place refurbished. The velvet is still smooth, but the red is starting to bore him a little. He thinks he wants something brighter… something more like…
He is unable to decide what he would rather have as the phone starts ringing at that very moment. Biting back a particularly violent curse, Adam leans forward and picks up the call.
There’s a grating to the voice on the other end, which is surprising to Ainosuke for it is his receptionist, and one of the main reasons he hired that guy was because his voice was amazing to listen to.
He sighs down the phone line.
His body still itches.
…
It isn’t exactly a festival, more like an exhibition to promote handmade crafts by the less fortunate set up by an NGO that the Diet sees more than eye to eye with. The NGO is content to make a show of trying to bring about ‘change’ and the Diet is content to seem cooperative. It is a win-win.
Ainosuke is expected to show his face because, of course, he is and he is starting to think there’s something wrong with the day, his watch feels too tight and his shoes are too sweaty but maybe it’s nothing and maybe that’s true it might be nothing he can’t trust his brain his reality is skewed up and that’s not his fault it’s called conditioning but his watch is too tight so maybe it’s his wrist and not his brain-
Adam tells Tadashi he would rather have it cut off and he means it. He doesn’t remove his watch though and gets into the car without another word.
He decides he’s going to fire his therapist. He tried it, he gave it an honest shot and it didn’t work.
Really, what the fuck is skewed up reality anyway?
His body itches and his wrist hurts. His feet must stink too but there’s nothing he can do. He has to show up, he has to smile and he has to try to be somewhat polite even if all he wants to do is go to S and get himself a good, ole’ beef.
No, he shakes his head. He is supposed to be taking time away from S. He has been told that he is apparently so used to feeling caged he obsessively abused his one escape from the chains till he could carve out a resemblance between skating and his life… the desire, the search for love, understanding… an equal.
Ainosuke grits his teeth.
That fraud of a therapist knows nothing.
…
By the time they reach the exhibition, set up at the temple with stalls starting behind the shrine, Ainosuke has realised his chest feels funny.
It’s not an itch or a watch or his shoes or the clock… it’s his chest. It feels funny.
… like it’s brimming with something Adam doesn’t want to watch as it spills. Too full, too full, he feels like he is suffocating.
Suddenly, his vision is laced with cherry pink, as if he’s peeking out at the temple steps through strands of somebody’s hair and there’s the faintest brush of a hand against his arm because he is shy in his seduction, or at least he used to be-
No way. No fucking way.
Adam grits his teeth and tries to yank the car door open and realises he didn’t unlock it before he began tugging on the handle. He snaps at Tadashi for not unlocking the car and before the man can say anything, he’s storming out, the precious few seconds as he exits the car when nobody can truly see his face his only reprieve before he’s back to smiling, eager to shake hands and quick to trade pleasantries.
It’s this temple. It’s the bloody temple.
Ainosuke realises he hasn’t been able to sleep a wink since he found out he would be coming here the next morning.
“Are you okay, Ainosuke-sama?” Tadashi asks at some point but Ainosuke ignores him. He doesn’t have an answer to that and he’s at least trying to be more honest with the man.
He climbs up the stairs and he doesn’t think of a younger Kaoru skateboarding down them and then breaking his jaw when he inevitably wiped out. He crosses the plinth at the entrance and doesn’t think about how Kaoru had asked him to press him against one and touch him where he hadn’t been touched by anyone yet. He walks with quick but measured footsteps across the lawn that had been barren of the decorative stalls spread across it now and doesn’t think about how Kaoru had taken his hand and brought it to his lips and spoken of freedom, that evening.
Night falls around them, slow and steady, the sky transitioning from an infuriating, heart-wrenching pink to a blue just a few shades darker than his own hair. He still has people to meet. He doesn’t think the press has photographed him enough either. He can’t leave before he’s asked for a statement, at any rate. There are rules to this thing, which Ainosuke abhors but abides by anyway.
Destiny, as it seems, is not likely to pity him tonight (- and his chest still feels weird and he has scratched the skin underneath his watch red and- ) for he catches sight of them as they duck out of where they were supposedly hiding behind a couple of stalls into the cleared walkway. They pass from underneath the glow of a lantern, from a stall selling some -pretty ones, too, Ainosuke custom ordered two- and the light reflects off of the edge of his glasses. He can’t see his eyes but he can see the huge hand at his waist and he doesn’t like it that they are here.
… together.
When this was his and Kaoru’s spot. This was their place.
But then again, Ainosuke tells himself he can't be selfish like that. The entirety of Okinawa was theirs back then.
He’s walking away from Ainosuke and once again, he’s left feeling like Kaoru can never even see him, like when he calls out to Adam he doesn’t even know who he’s looking for.
He can never see Adam, but Adam can see him.
… and his piercings and his pointy eyeliner and his ink-stained hands as he took Ainosuke by his, setting them up into a whirl that was more clumsy than anything. Ainosuke didn’t know how to dance and Kaoru was way too energetic for his limbs to ever keep up but they were all alone and all Ainosuke could hear was laughter. He couldn’t tell who it belonged to.
All he knew was Kaoru looked gorgeous under the moonlight.
“What are you so happy for?” He asked, giggling a little.
Kaoru, caught in the euphoria of the moment, for once had nothing snappish to say in response. Or maybe he had felt how his heart rushed the way Ainosuke’s did and he had decided not to break the spell.
He merely rolled his eyes and then spun Ainosuke around before bending him over his leg. Ainosuke could feel Kaoru’s knee digging in his back but he kept his mouth shut and leaned up to kiss him instead.
These empty grounds were so alive that night. There was no silence to be found around Kaoru, he was a celebration all within himself, and every day that Ainosuke spent with him and Kojiro felt no less than a festival, and as important as one, too. More, even, considering how vividly he can still recall how the curve of that waist felt under his palm. He never forgot it, for so much as a second, ever since that first night Ainosuke had snapped his chance and rescued Kaoru from a back-breaking fall.
It’s not his hand at his waist now, it’s Kojiro’s and Adam can’t help but laugh. It’s a bitter little thing and he can’t stop it. He had known this would happen, hadn’t he? The very first time he saw the two of them after he returned from America, he had known it. Kojiro had been looking at Kaoru all this time, but at some point when Ainosuke was gone Kaoru started looking back and now they are here and there’s an actual celebration, actual music, actual love.
Kojiro isn’t invisible to Kaoru like Ainosuke always has been.
It’s difficult to move but he forces his limbs. He gestures to Tadashi to go find a reporter and get this over with. He smiles, he shakes hands, he offers pleasantries.
Whatever was so restless in Ainosuke’s chest saw its chance and escaped and all he feels now is a bone-deep ache that he knows won’t burn out by the time he has to wake up the next morning. It might even be worse. He might even give in and place another stupid commission with Sakurayashiki Calligraphy under yet another dead name, and obtain a love confession that is no longer to be found in Kaoru’s eyes.
God, he thinks as Tadashi closes the door once he is seated inside the car, I really wanna go back to S.