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The plastic in his hold crinkles as it slides down and hangs on his wrist, the contents jostling when it thumps on Seishu’s thigh as he walks. There is a dull pain when a metal can hits his leg, but he ignores it in favor of keeping his hands in the pocket of his hoodie and leeching off the warm reprieve.
It’s already the middle of March, and yet the biting cold of winter still remains. Seishu would’ve gone straight home after closing up the bike shop, but he has to take a short trip to the store because he is running low on grocery supplies. He would rather do it now than risk starving himself, especially in this merciless cold when all he wanted to do is huddle with thick blankets under his kotatsu.
He yawns, blinks the gathering tears away and lets his feet bring him the last few meters to his home. Still the same as the one before, the garage where Shinichiro repairs his bikes when he was still alive.
Seishu has enough money to move to a bigger and nicer place, but he elects not to and just stays there. The money he earned, he used for necessary repairs. Replaces the furniture, repaints the walls. He does not find it in him to move, for this old garage is much more of a home than some studio apartment in the nicer part of the city.
And well, Seishu is sentimental. He wouldn’t sell the building off when he gets enough resources to keep it.
He reaches the back of the building and takes his keys out of his pocket to unlock the door, only to find it already so.
Seishu sighs and pushes it open, toeing off his shoes by the genkan as he mulls over the thought of investing in higher security measures for his little house.
“You’ve got shitty home security, Inupi,” he hears a familiar voice drawl from the living room. Seishu lets out another sigh as he locks the door now and pads over to the well-lit portion of the house.
“Well,” Seishu replied as he placed the plastic of groceries on top of a table along with his keys, phone and wallet. “It wouldn’t have been if only you didn't keep on picking my locks, Koko.”
He looks up just in time to see Kokonoi’s grin, sharp at the edges contrasted by the rare softness in his eyes. Seishu ignores that in favor of mustering an annoyed huff that doesn’t sound much annoyed at all. Still, he tries, for the sake of putting up a front even though he knows that Kokonoi can see through the poor act.
From the couch, Kokonoi just looks at him. Cat-like eyes intently trained on Seishu, and Seishu tries not to cower in it and tries instead to meet Kokonoi’s gaze head on. He studies him—the silk emerald green robe barely covering his body, it makes Seishu wonder if he does not feel the cold at all; the long, silver hair that cascades over his shoulder like a waterfall, falling until his waist, already a lot longer than the last time Seishu had seen him a year ago.
He wonders then, if how long would he have to go, not knowing when Kokonoi would appear in his doorway or in his living room yet again. When Kokonoi would grace him with his presence in this small garage they called their home more than a decade back.
Seishu remembers the very day they bid farewell. The day he and Kokonoi decided on their respective paths. He pointedly ignored the ache in his chest when Kokonoi turned his back on him and walked away. It was the first time they decided on their separate ways, and Seishu thought it was the last time he would ever see Kokonoi. That the last time he held him was in a harsh exchange of fists, in the middle of a war.
But Kokonoi showed up in the garage, with a tentative smile as if he thought he was no longer welcome in the space. Seishu just welcomed him back, and he would do it again and again even if Kokonoi leaves the next day, the side of his mattress cold to touch when Seishu wakes.
It had been a kind of routine for them for Kokonoi to show up, only to bid Seishu another farewell and disappear from the radar as if he was never there. As if it was only the ghost of his memory that Seishu spent the dark hours of the night with.
Yet Seishu knows it is Kokonoi, knows it in the way his breath hitches in his chest when Seishu leans in to press a fleeting kiss on his thigh, on the lower part of his stomach. Knows it is Kokonoi in the indents of nails left on Seishu’s back, his arms, his thighs. Along with the intimate purpling bruises left on his pale skin in the shape of Kokonoi’s mouth.
He leaves, and then he comes back. He takes Seishu apart in his hands and pieces him back together again. Seishu wonders repeatedly, every night he has to lie alone and stare at an empty ceiling, about the credibility of every farewell that leaves Kokonoi’s lips.
If one day, Seishu will wait and wait, only for Kokonoi to never find his way back again. If one day, that goodbye will be real and will be the last one he’ll hear, then Seishu will never see him again.
(Maybe it was why he kept the garage, despite having a good amount of savings to warrant him a larger place for himself. Because a part of him always hopes that Kokonoi returns, and this would be the easiest place to find Seishu, the best place for them to fall into each other—familiar and intimate, shut out from the harsh reality of the world.)
The thing with Kokonoi’s goodbye is that it is an empty promise just as it is a threatening statement, and one day Seishu is afraid that he would have to deal with Kokonoi no longer being a part of his life. Not anymore.
*****
The mattress was soft on his back and Kokonoi’s body was solid against him. The taste of his lips familiar, a hint of the bitter remnants of cigarette and what must be alcohol.
A moan leaves Seishu’s lips with the expert roll of Kokonoi’s hips against him, and Seishu thinks there are too many layers between them, palms itching to feel and touch; to map out the expanse of Kokonoi’s body as if it was the first time all over again.
He pushes Kokonoi off a little, only to take his clothes off in a hasty manner and slide the emerald robe off from Kokonoi’s body. Pieces of clothing lie in a messy heap on the floor of Seishu’s home, ignored in favor of a heated and addicting kiss, more of a drug to Seishu than those pills Kokonoi sometimes takes and offers to him in his visits.
There is a noticeable ache in Seishu’s chest whenever they do this, whenever he finds himself entangled yet again with Kokonoi’s body. Whenever Kokonoi’s palm slides down his skin, followed by his lips, his tongue and his teeth. Leaving bruises and soothing them sweetly afterwards. Whenever Kokonoi looks up at him while he hovers on his cock, cat-like eyes glinting with mischief as he effortlessly takes the whole of Seishu in his mouth.
It intensifies even more when Kokonoi kisses him and pulls back to look at him with kind and gentle eyes, as if he is finally seeing Seishu for himself , and not as a ghost of their past. Seishu aches and aches deeply, even when his orgasm crests and leaves him blissful as he curls up beside Kokonoi and feels fingers weave into his long sunflower blond strands.
“Your hair is longer now,” Kokonoi notes observantly.
Seishu does not raise his head to look at him when he replies, “Yours is, too. Different in color, as well .”
He feels Kokonoi shrug, a slight movement of his right shoulder, “Sanzu has a shit ton of hair dye in his room, and he thought it a good idea to change our hair colors after he got high one evening.”
Seishu snorts, choosing to keep quiet instead of telling Kokonoi that he looks good with the silver hair, that maybe when it catches the drips of moonlight in them it’s gonna have a soft sheen on them that would look like starlight.
“‘Sides,” Kokonoi continues, “I’ve gotta need to change my look every now and then, or the police would have had their hands on me already.”
That next statement renders Seishu quiet. With how big Bonten has gotten, there is no doubt that the police would keep an eye on them, especially when they are now the top and most evil criminal organization in Japan.
Every news that has Bonten in them gets Seishu holding in his breath as he reads or watches, only to sigh in relief when he finds out that none of them were arrested. That Kokonoi’s name is not on the paper nor on the screen of the television, and he remains a free yet wanted man.
Seishu feels selfish, feels guilty about not feeling bad when Kokonoi appears in his house instead of rotting away in a prison cell. When Kokonoi holds him with the same hands that had taken the life of far too many to even count with both fingers and toes combined.
Sometimes Seishu wants to simply plead for Kokonoi to stay with him, leave the criminal life behind. He tried once, but Kokonoi just smiles at him, kisses him and Seishu forgets the question until the next time Kokonoi comes over again.
Tonight, he bites his lip and presses himself closer to Kokonoi until every part of them touches, as if by doing so he could keep Kokonoi’s body in his and never let him go again.
He nuzzles his face in the crook of Kokonoi’s neck, sighs in content when a kiss was pressed on the crown of his head.
Seishu aches and aches deeply, his chest stuck with the kind of words he never allows himself to say, with feelings that span more than a decade, yet he never allows himself to feel. Not around Kokonoi. Not when everything about what they are now is fragile with the uncertainty of every farewell.
The next morning, the space beside him is cold and empty. When he looks around the garage, he finds no traces that Kokonoi even stayed except for the emerald green fabric hanging on the back of the couch.
It is something he expected, but it never fails to leave a hollow cavern in his chest, shaped by Kokonoi’s hands and lips, by his very presence that had been with Seishu ever since they were kids.
*****
When Seishu learns of Takemichi’s time leaping, it was by complete accident. He didn’t mean to walk in on Draken and Chifuyu talking about when Takemichi will be returning in the current timeline, about what will happen when he learns of what is going on with Mikey.
He pretends he didn’t hear, acts normally even though Draken and Chifuyu stumble to show Seishu that there is nothing extraordinary about their conversation.
Seishu turns it over in his head, about the possibilities of changing a future by tweaking some events in the past. He wondered then, was there a timeline where he and Kokonoi had never left each other’s side? Had never needed to walk different paths and live with the everyday uncertainty of whether one is still alive or not?
When he finds out, once again by pure accident and through Kazutora this time, that Takemichi is planning to go back in time to save Mikey, he jumps on the opportunity to talk to him.
“You’re getting married, you know,” Seishu says from the corner when Takemichi appears, making the former Black Dragon captain and Toman’s 1st Division Leader jump in shock as soon as Seishu talks.
“Inupi,” Takemichi breathes out as he holds a hand to his chest. The corner of Seishu’s lips quirk up slightly in a smile, “What’s up, Boss. You off to go time leaping again?”
Takemichi sputters, trying to deny such accusation, but Seishu just raises an unimpressed brow at his friend’s weak attempt of doing so. He leans against the wall with his arms crossed and tells him, “No one told me, if it makes you feel better. I just found out about it on my own. The rest is history. Are you going back?”
Seishu holds his stare as he patiently waits for Takemichi’s answer. He responds with a simple nod.
“It is your wedding, you know?” Seishu tries to throw him off his plan, just like Kazutora did a while ago. With the determined set in Takemichi’s eyebrow, in the pinch of his lips, he knew it was a lost cause. “Are you sure about this?”
Takemichi nods once again, “I am. I have to–no, I need to save Mikey-kun.”
“Alright,” he says slowly, as he pushes himself off the wall. “Good luck, boss.”
He was about to walk away, hands hidden in the front pocket of his hoodie, when he remembered a fleeting thought in the back of his mind which turned into a nagging question that kept him up most nights.
“Takemichi,” he calls without turning around to look at him. “Koko and I, was there a timeline where we ended up staying together?”
He hears Takemichi sigh in relief, as if he thought Seishu was going to chew him out or something. Then, he answers, “Yeah. All of them. This is the first timeline I saw you without him.”
“Were we bad?”
Takemichi chuckles at this, “Yeah, man. The last time I jumped into the future, you two were on my ass before I was able to run away.”
It makes Seishu smile and breathe easy, comforted with the knowledge that in some other time, he and Kokonoi never had to go their separate ways.
Somehow, it helps to know that at a point in their lives, whenever that may be, they never thought that leaving each other was even an option.
He has half a mind to ask Takemichi to save Kokonoi too, but Seishu does not want to impose on him any more than he has to. Knowing is enough, he tells himself and the rest will be up to fate and hope—that if Takemichi successfully saves Mikey, then maybe , just maybe, Kokonoi and him will be back by each other’s side, just as they always were.