Work Text:
Shingo Kinjou has a little gray book. This Yasutomo Arakita knows. He heard about it from Toudou, who heard about it from Makishima, who featured in it personally, for about three years.
The actual contents elude Arakita. Apparently it’s a training diary, but is it just a list of stats, long-form notes full of observations, something more sinister? He doubts that, as a first year for the Yonan cycling team, Kinjou has every club member's name in it -- but he's writing something in it after each and every practice. And finally, by about the fourth week of the spring term, Arakita has enough of it.
"Hey, let me see that," he requests -- rather, demands -- in the locker rooms after Thursday practice. Kinjou is seated on the bench across from him, thick-framed glasses pushed up his nose as he makes precise, even strokes with his pen. "Hey!"
"I heard you," Kinjou assures him evenly, in his own time. Nevertheless, he snaps the little book shut and replaces it in his bag, without giving Arakita a glance. "It's too early. There's nothing you'll get from it yet."
"Huh?"
"I need more data."
"Data? What kind of data? You fucking nerd. Fine, don't show me," Arakita gripes, getting to his feet with his hands already stuffed in his pockets. "I don't care anyway."
The corner of Kinjou's mouth twitches upward in the start of a smirk, as he zips up his bag.
"Have you eaten?" he asks Arakita, in the same even tone.
"Why?"
"No reason."
Arakita shoots him down. And does so again after the next practice, and the one after that.
On the fourth occasion, it happens to be on a day when the deposit from his family is late and he hasn't gone grocery shopping in a while so he has nothing in his dorm room. This time, when Kinjou asks him if he wants to grab dinner, the shooting pains in his stomach and wet gnawing feeling in his throat stay his tongue just as he's about to say 'no.' Jaw clamped shut, Arakita lowers his gaze and simply nods instead.
It's a really good dinner. Arakita imagines he only thinks that because he's starving and he's been living on a diet of instant ramen and bean sprouts since the start of term, but it's still really, really good.
And after it, when Kinjou has paid the bill and they're packing up to go, Arakita spots Kinjou scribbling something in his little gray book.
"Not yet," Kinjou tells him, closing it before Arakita can spy over his shoulder. "I have to calculate in a few adjustments."
"Like I want to see what's in your fucking diary," Arakita grumbles, looking away with a funny warmth spreading across his cheeks. "Asshat. You think you're just like Fuku-chan, thinking you got all your shit together. He never--" And things go on like that.
The next morning, Arakita nearly trips upon exiting his dorm room because someone has stacked a set of plastic containers just outside the door, with a note taped on the topmost lid.
The note reads, in full:
"This should help you get more out of practice. Take the leftovers with you for lunch and don't worry about returning the containers. K"
Arakita looks from the note to the stack of containers and back to the note, and suddenly there is only white noise in his ears, as all the blood starts rushing to his head.
"you really did a number on him," Kinjou writes in a text to Juichi Fukutomi, later that morning, while in the midst of cleaning up the dried curry and bits of omelette now stuck to his dormitory door.
"arakita u mean?" is Fukutomi's reply, after a delay.
"yeah."
"is he following u around"
"and destroying property."
"he'll do that"
"what do you do," Kinjou texts, after agonizing for a bit over whether this is really an acceptable thing to ask, even of a teammate's former captain, "to make sure he eats?"
Kinjou asks Arakita to dinner again after the next practice, and the one after that. The following Monday, there is another stack of plastic food containers sitting outside Arakita's dorm room. These, too, end up splattered against Kinjou's door.
So he asks him out to dinner again. And, after their shared economics class on Tuesday afternoon, he offers to let Arakita copy his notes. On Wednesday, Kinjou 'accidentally' buys a second StaminaBar from the vending machine and leaves it on the bench next to Arakita's locker after practice. On Thursday, he has a spare packet of tissues at the ready when Arakita comes down with a cold just before the start of lecture.
On Friday, Arakita explodes at him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" he yells. However, with the headcold, it ends up coming out more like a squawk. "Don't you have anything better to do?! I didn't ask you to babysit me, you gross-ass nerd!"
Kinjou weathers this with his usual patience, occasionally glancing at the locker room clock behind him. He says nothing. At one point, he nudges his gym bag a little to the right.
"From now on I want you to stay out of my business! You hear me?!" Arakita continues, jabbing a finger at his fellow first-year. Kinjou watches it sway in a loose figure eight in front of him. "You think you're so high and mighty, just because you gave Fuku-chan a run for his money last summer-- I don't wanna see what's in your shitty book anyway--!"
At which point, Arakita's eyes begin to unfocus. Color draining from his face, he tips forward, landing soundly right atop Shingo Kinjou's gym bag.
After that incident, Arakita begins eating the meals Kinjou leaves for him.
"A lot of the first-years have had problems adjusting," Kinjou tells him, two weeks later when Arakita has fully recovered from his cold, enough for Kinjou to drag him out for real grocery shopping. Proper, balanced grocery shopping, for the kinds of calories he's consuming. "That's no good if you want to compete with the upperclassmen, though. We'll need to reset your regimen."
"Fuck you, my regimen doesn't need resetting," Arakita mutters, obediently pushing the cart along as Kinjou adds in plastic containers of tofu, two kinds of spinach, and more varieties of roots and sprouts than Arakita has ever seen in his life.
But Kinjou also tosses a six-pack of Bepsi into the cart, so Arakita guesses he can tolerate him for now.
"a REAL number on him," Kinjou continues in his texts to Fukutomi, a few weeks later.
"r u still on that," Fukutomi texts back, probably not half as annoyed as he sounds.
"you're all he talks about," Kinjou reminds him. "when he's not yelling at me about training."
"funny," Fukutomi replies. "ur all he talks about to me"
He feels fantastic lately. This is a problem, because the last thing Arakita ever wants to admit to that dumb poindexter Fuku-clone is that the changes he's making are working.
Still, he has no shortage of energy for practice. He almost keeps up in his classes (except the readings, but who does those anyway). When the team does selections for the next regional meet, Arakita is surprised to find himself on the short list, above quite a number of upperclassmen. And right next to Kinjou.
"Don't get any ideas," he blusters at his fellow first-year at the meet that Saturday. "I just couldn't figure out all that boring shopping stuff before now. It's nothing you did."
"If you're eating better, that's all that matters," Kinjou replies, making a mark in his little gray notebook before they head out to the starting line. They say nothing else about it.
He nags and nags about it, and so finally, during the first week of summer term, Kinjou shows Arakita the contents of his book.
"What the hell," is all Arakita can manage at first.
"Here's where we changed your diet," Kinjou continues, unconcerned, indicating a point on his graph. "Your performance at practice has gone up week on week since then. If we adjust your weight training regimen, you should be performing equal to Honda-san and Yufuin-san by the end of next term."
"Like hell we will!" Arakita shoots back, raising his voice. "And there's no 'we!' Just 'cause I said that thing about us being a 'super jagged duo' at the last meet doesn't mean--"
"A protein shake every morning," Kinjou goes on, tapping a column of projection numbers. "And extra reps on the machines at every practice. I'll be your spotter, so there's no need to go to Machimiya for that."
"So what do you get out of this?" Arakita snaps. It's clear Kinjou can't be argued out of this, that never works anyway, so he might as well switch tactics.
"I get a strong partner," Kinjou answers simply, laying the book face-down across his knee. "What do you want?"
"I--"
"fuku-chan u gotta save me from this dumass nerd"
"whats he doing now"
"hes making me drink protein shakes u gotta help me"
"sounds like hes treating u rite"
"wtf fuku-chan!!!!!! do u not know how that sounds wtffffff!!!!!!"
The first time Arakita visits the inside of Shingo Kinjou's dorm room, it is too hot. The air conditioning has broken down in the entire building and all of the students have thrown open their windows and doors in a vain effort to bring in at least a sliver of airflow.
Arakita waits until Kinjou's roommate puts some briefs on and wanders out into the hallway to set his books down on Kinjou's desk.
"Okay, you told me you'd help me pass Chem," he says. "So help me pass, asshole."
Kinjou bears him a thin smile which, in Kinjou terms, is a pretty excessive display of emotion. He clears some space on the corner of the desk and takes a seat on the edge of his bed, motioning Arakita to a chair.
They work for over two hours, solid, mainly going over Kinjou's notes and a review section from the textbook. It is plodding, dragging, infuriating bullshit and the way Arakita's shirt clings to his back and his back sticks to Kinjou's chair definitely isn't helping.
At some point, Arakita loses even the pretense of paying attention and starts to rock on the back legs of the chair, scowling at the ceiling. The buzz of the cicadas and the scent of hot grass are drifting through Kinjou's open window and it all makes him want to be anywhere else, term finals or no term finals.
"Shin-chan," he finally speaks up in protest, glowering at a small yellow stain in the corner of Kinjou's ceiling. "This is bullshit. Let's go riding."
"'Shin-chan'?" Kinjou repeats, still seated on the bed beside him. "Hnh. Well, I guess we've done enough for today..."
Kinjou draws himself to his feet and stretches, then extends a hand to his teammate. Arakita side-eyes him in silence for a moment, but then accepts it.
So, they go riding. And that's great, awesome actually, Arakita can't remember the last time he just rode for fun and not for the club or to get from one lecture hall to another. Kinjou is spirited and devious in ways Arakita has seldom seen even in solo races, and at the end of the afternoon they end up sprawled across the sunbaked grass on a steep hillside, overlooking much of the town and Yonan University below them.
"Shit, I needed that," Arakita gasps toward the blank sky above, yellowing with the approaching sunset. "What gives, anyway? We're in uni, I shouldn't need to take these shit general ed classes anymore... Fucking garbage..."
"It's been too long since we raced," comes Kinjou's response -- by way of agreement, supposedly. "You're a lot stronger than you were at the Inter-High."
"Eh?" With effort, Arakita manages to loll his head to the side, squinting at Kinjou's silhouette. That Kinjou is being weirdly formal again isn't much of a surprise -- he's like that a lot -- but the praise sounds strange from his lips. It lingers in Arakita's ears until they almost start to burn, and all he can think to do to repel it in that moment is reflect the compliment back at him. "...Well, 'course. You too. I mean. Duh."
Kinjou looks over his shoulder at him, and Arakita could swear he caught a smirk there, even backlit as he is against the setting sun.
This is too weird, Arakita decides. Sucking in a breath, he heaves himself upright into a sitting position, legs crossed. Hands braced on his knees, he frowns at the distant cluster of buildings making up their school.
Up here, he can feel a real breeze and take in every scent unfiltered by the city bullshit, the grass and the dirt and Kinjou's sweat, and it's all so infinitely fucking better than sitting in a dorm room or a lecture hall like it seems he's been doing day in and day out since April. This, here, is like the hill he had met Fukutomi on, way back whenever that was now...
"...Hey. Shin-chan," he says, after a long silence.
"Are you really going to call me that," Kinjou sighs beside him.
Arakita shrugs inwardly, deciding any response is an acceptable one. It just means Kinjou's listening.
"Do you like cats?"
"A bit," Kinjou answers non-committally.
"I have this really fat cat at home," Arakita continues, unconcerned. "He's not really mine, he's just some stray I started feeding and then he wouldn't leave me alone. Real pain in the ass."
He waits to see if Kinjou is going to slide in a lecture about feeding stray animals and the like, but nothing comes. So he just keeps talking, though he's not exactly sure where he's going with this anymore.
"It's not like it's any skin off my back if he starves or whatever," says Arakita. "But I hope somebody's feeding him."
The silence drops in again, punctuated only by the far-off whine of the cicadas. It's not a bad silence, though. It's almost, kinda, maybe, an understanding one. Arakita doesn't exactly want to come out and say what he's feeling directly, so if Kinjou gets it, good. Great. One less thing on his chest.
Because what Arakita means is: 'Thank you for feeding me, the shitty stray animal who's a long way from home.'
"...Yeah," Kinjou grunts, with a shallow nod of his head.
Arakita releases the breath he hadn't realized he was holding in, and deems that mission accomplished.
He lets his gaze drift from the horizon, down to the hill they’re resting on. It's mostly deserted, seeing as the summer’s dried the grass out too much to make it a good picnicking spot, and they’re so close to evening anyway. There are a few people around, though. Mostly couples.
After a moment, Arakita spots a head of long, bleached hair about halfway down the hill, which he recognizes as belonging to a young woman in his Japanese History class, Yamada-something-or-other. She seems to be with a friend, or well... girlfriend, maybe? There are so many 'out' people in university, it's kind of amazing how narrow his high school life felt by comparison. Even with people like Izumida or Shinkai in the mix. And, well...
"We should head back," Kinjou speaks up beside him, and Arakita is actually grateful to have his line of thought interrupted.
They come to something of an ‘understanding’ anyway, shortly before the campus closes for winter holidays. Actually, it happens in the showers after the team's final practice for the year, and it consists mostly of a look, rather than anything spoken between them.
When they first kiss behind the club building about ten minutes after that, Kinjou hisses and breaks away almost immediately, sucking at a cut on his lower lip.
"Teeth," Kinjou reminds Arakita, and then they try again.
They decide not to tell the team, not out of fear for their reaction, but because they aren't sure themselves how to classify this thing between them. At first, it doesn't move beyond adolescent fumbling -- Arakita has no idea what to do with his hands, or how to use his lips or tongue. He's just all wild, nervous energy such that Kinjou has to spend most of their time together just keeping him from injuring himself.
Finally, after about four or five weeks they manage something resembling sex, although mostly it comes down to hands and friction and, in Arakita's case, too many teeth again. But it's still progress of a sort anyway.
Afterwards, lying together in a sprawl of limbs beneath the comforter of Kinjou's too-small dorm bed -- his roommate is out for the weekend, thank god -- Arakita leans over and licks a dried trail of sweat off Kinjou's temple. It feels something like an apology, and Kinjou can't quite figure out what for, until Arakita starts murmuring beneath his breath.
"...That was your first?" Kinjou asks, reaching over to retrieve his glasses from the edge of his desk.
"--Shit! You don't have to go and--" Arakita drags the comforter over his head, sweat-mussed hair still sticking out in all directions. Beside him, Kinjou chuckles softly. "Asshole. I shoulda never let you buy me dinner."
The most remarkable thing about their new relationship, in the end, is how little it affects any other aspect of their weird friendship. Kinjou continues to spot Arakita during practice and write in his little gray book. Arakita continues narrowly skating through classes and outshining most of the upperclassmen. That they end up spending several nights a week in one or the other's bed is almost beside the point.
Well, almost. And Kinjou isn't completely clear on the scope of it until he gets a text from Fukutomi near the end of term.
"hows arakita"
Kinjou frowns at his phone. Because he's quite sure Arakita texts Fukutomi on his own, and it's not really in Fukutomi's character to ask after an old teammate, even one Kinjou’s been talking to him about. Fukutomi's approach with Arakita always seemed to have been to remain as hands-off as possible, which Kinjou suspects is part of why Arakita developed such a complex, but it's a little late to change things around now...
"you'll see for yourself at the under-20 race in feb," he ends up texting back.
The reply is almost immediate, by Fukutomi's standards. Kinjou has already plugged his phone into its charger for the night when it buzzes, and he debates not even looking at it, but some habits are hard to break. Unfortunately, he can't quite prevent Arakita from seeing the screen over his shoulder, seeing as they're spooned together at the moment.
"Just tell him I'm fucking you," Arakita says, without needing to see the contents of the message.
"Tell him yourself," Kinjou shoots back, flipping his phone closed again. "Oh. And he says someone named Kuroda is taking care of your cat."
"That fucking--"
END