Work Text:
In his second year of high school all Kaoru did was slack off, because what else was a guy supposed to do at Yumenosaki? The school wasn’t known for its academics, anyway, so it didn’t matter what he did or didn’t do as long as he passed. He spent most of his time that year in the livehouse, chatting up as many girls as he could. He was damn good at it, too.
But, of course, he did have to attend school every so often. Being behind the counter of the bar with no breaks between did no favors to his mystique, and it wasn’t like he had much else to do. The marine life club was a nice way to kill time, at least. He wasn’t doing anything in particular around the school grounds when he spotted the underclassmen running amok. He thought of calling out to them and telling them to quiet down, and then he saw who they were chasing after.
First year student. Brown hair, glasses, would have passed for a nerd loser if not for the surrounding aura, something in the line of the shoulders, the jut of the chin. Kaoru vaguely remembered this one as Arashi Narukami from Backgammon — Backgammon being a gimmick group that was more trouble than it was worth. Not that he cared all that much, anyway. But he did hear the ruckus. Words he couldn’t catch, but they all seemed like insults, or accusations. Someone grabbed Narukami by the collar; Narukami twisted that boy’s wrist till he let go and cried out, and Kaoru figured that that was his cue to leave and pretend he hadn’t seen anything. That’s what he got for bothering to go to school.
But he made the mistake of glancing over one last time. They caught eyes, Narukami’s expression raw and ultimately directionless, hurt flying like the sparks in a live wire. Kaoru felt it before he realized what it was, and then Narukami turned away.
Kaoru did the same.
“My favorite unit?” Over the line, Anzu’s voice crackles a little at Rei’s question, and really, Kaoru thinks, what is that man’s deal? Calling her up to ask something silly like that… “Because it’s you calling, senpai, wouldn’t I have to say Undead?” She sounds amused. It matches the look in Rei’s crimson eyes as he glances over at Kaoru, who is — and will remain — a healthy distance away from the receiver.
Talk to her, Rei mouths.
Not a chance, Kaoru mouths back.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Anzu says. “I’m supporting all of you guys. But is that all you called for, Sakuma-senpai? What about Hakaze-senpai, where is he off to?”
“Kaoru-kun is right here,” Rei says, even though Kaoru had already gone as far as to get on his knees while whisper-shouting some embarrassing plea. He has to dust himself off and pretend that his pride is intact, even though it’s not like Anzu can even see him. “Kaoru-kun, why don’t you have a nice chat with our dear producer while I go make some tea?”
Under any other circumstances, Kaoru might beg Rei to stay with him, but he can’t have Anzu hearing that. “I guess I will,” he mumbles, and off Rei goes to do something that is definitely not related to the creation of tea. He supposes that it can’t be helped.
The silence is very close to unbearable. She’s still on the other end — he can hear the shouts of some idol group, not Undead but definitely a Yumenosaki alumnus — but she’s not saying anything. Is he that hard to be around? Kaoru wonders.
“Who are you with,” he manages after what feels like an eternity of not speaking. Maybe that’s all he ever needed to say to her. Immediately she launches into a dissertation about Knights’s latest idol activities, because that’s who she’s with right now. Izumi and Leo Tsukinaga are currently in Italy, but the rest of the members are working hard to keep up the pace at Yumenosaki; Suou-kun, Anzu says, has really grown into the leader role, and Ritsu-kun is as he usually is, and as for Arashi-chan —
Kaoru doesn’t know why, but his ears prick up at the mention of Narukami. He doesn’t know her like that, doesn’t think he ever had the opportunity nor the interest during his school years, but she’s the only member of Knights that ever piqued his interest besides Izumi and maybe Rei’s little brother. Maybe because she’s the only one who ever alluded to the inner workings of her group — Knights is such a closed book to him, and he’s trying to care more about his rivals’ modus operandi lately. “How is Narukami?” he asks.
“Oh? Senpai, since when do you care about Arashi-chan?” Anzu says, playfully, a tone she only ever took with him accidentally when she let her guard down too far, and he could die. “I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
Kaoru jumps on the chance to talk with her like a normal person. “We don’t,” he says, “We really don’t. She’s just — among Knights, she’s hardest to get a read on, you know?” Seeming like one thing and then being another thing entirely. He tries not to think of it too often, but it’s impossible for him to forget that lightning flash of a look in her eyes, even harder to align that with the encounter at the butler cafe, the faraway smile on her face.
Anzu calls something out to the Knights members, then replies, “Who, Arashi-chan?” She laughs. “I guess I can see that, but once you get to know her there’s nothing to read into.” There’s a shuffling sound on the other end, like she’s adjusting her hold on the phone. “Oh fuck — I have to go now, senpai. It’s dinnertime for us. Have you and Sakuma-senpai eaten yet?”
“Ah, it’s still morning for us. We’re hours and hours behind you.”
“Oh, right.” Someone calls her name. “In a minute! We’re living in the future, I guess,” she says to Kaoru.
“Is it a good one, Anzu-chan?” The term slips out, this old habit proof of unrelenting endearment, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” She clears her throat. “I have to go now, but it was good talking to you and Sakuma-senpai. Thank you for listening to me, senpai.”
Kaoru is about to say Thank you back, about to finally say that he’s sorry for the way he acted with her when he was at Yumenosaki, and then Anzu adds,
“I like talking to you when you forget you’re a guy,” and hangs up.
He doesn’t remember it, but he had tried one of his sister’s dresses when he was small. His older sister had had this habit of changing her entire outfit throughout the course of a day, leaving the discarded clothes on the floor of their shared bedroom. This one had been laying around over the course of a few hours. He had thought to yell at her for making it hard for him to find his beloved whale shark plushie, but this bright yellow sundress had always been one of his favorites, because it was a matching set with all of them — dresses for his mother and sister, a shirt for his brother, overalls for him — a pretty family with pretty clothes.
This dress had a gingham pattern and lace accents at the hem and neckline, so delicate and small he couldn’t even stick his little fingers through the holes. When he hid behind her around the older kids that were her friends, he liked to hold onto the blue ribbon that their mom had tied so neatly around the waist, even though his sister always told him not to. It was a pretty dress.
Instead of tattling on her, he tried it on, because he’d always wondered what it would feel like, the shape of it so different from the pants his mother always dressed him in. The dress was too big, too long, the neck too low and the waist too large even when he knotted the ribbon as tightly as he could. But the material was soft and he liked the way it moved with him, the way it swished this way and that. That day, Kaoru looked at himself in the mirror and realized that he could be pretty, too, like his mother and sister. He rummaged around more of his sister’s things and fished out a blue hairband, pushed his hair back, and when he put it on and looked in the mirror again he wasn’t sure if he recognized himself, but then he did.
It didn’t take long before his sister barged into their room and found him in her clothes, got pissed off, and told on him to their mom. Not because she especially hated the fact that he was wearing a dress at all but because it was her dress. His mother didn’t scold him, though, only scooped him up in her arms and kissed him on the forehead. Later she told him that he was her beautiful Kaoru whether he was wearing a dress or not, no matter what. She smelled like a good sea breeze; he remembers that much and nothing else. He doesn’t remember the rest because he can’t afford to.
Does he ever forget that he’s a guy? Hours later, they’re on the couch, thigh-to-thigh under three layers of blankets, kinda-sorta watching some food competition with more drama than a soap opera. Kaoru still cannot stop thinking about what Anzu said. Isn’t it that being a guy comes so naturally, he doesn’t think about it at all? But somehow, he’s sure that’s not what she meant.
“Rei-kun,” he says, watching the screen and wincing as some poor man removes over-churned ice cream from the ice cream machine, “Am I good at being a boy?”
In his peripheral vision, Rei yawns, those canines always larger than they have any right or reason to be. “Do you want to be, Kaoru-kun?” he asks.
The guy on the TV has his head in his hands, his ruined ice cream and haphazard plating coming together to mock him. Kaoru feels bad for him. “Does ‘want’ have anything to do with it?”
“I think ‘want’ has everything to do with it,” Rei says placidly. Kaoru looks at him, and his eyes are closed. “I think if you want to be good at being a boy, you are very good at it. I also think that if you wanted to be good at being a girl, or being something else, you would be very good at that. You’re quite versatile, Kaoru-kun.”
“Have you ever forgotten that you’re a guy?” Kaoru asks without missing a beat. Rei’s eyes snap open, bright red and beautiful.
“I — I have not,” he says, like he’s caught off-guard, something like astonishment creeping into his voice. Kaoru turns back to the screen, where the judges rip into this dessert because that’s their job. Beneath the blankets, Rei takes his hand — Kaoru has grown used to this, touch without flinching, affection without recoil — and squeezes it. Rei Sakuma, Kaoru thinks, is nothing if not good to him.
He squeezes back. “All right,” Kaoru says.
As an idol, Kaoru got good at the makeup thing. As long as he didn’t veer into the outlandish lip colors, it wasn’t anything odd, even for a boy. Anyway, it didn’t matter how well he could sing or dance — no girl wanted to see a guy with pimples and undereye bags. Dark circles could be sexy or something like that, but those would be in Rei’s wheelhouse. It was Kaoru’s job to be flawless.
He spread a variety of makeup containers on the surface of the backstage vanity. The live performance wasn't that serious, but he liked to put his best foot forward, and it was impossible to know what kind of audience they could have purely based on the venue. Weren’t the most precious of diamonds found in the roughest of environments? — the fanservice was starting to get to his brain.
Koga walked by, already in costume and hooked up to a mic, leaning over Kaoru’s shoulder. Kaoru could have patted his head, but he didn’t.
“The hell is up with all this crap?” Koga asked gruffly, nodding at the mess of brands and color names. “D’ya really need all this?” Koga was pretty minimal as far as makeup went, but his image didn’t need all that much. It could have been nice to have the wild dog thing.
Kaoru squeezed some concealer on his fingertips and applied it below his eyes, covering up those pesky dark circles. “Not all of it, but we can’t have the fans seeing our imperfections, you know. I’m sure you could use some of this in the future,” he joked, reaching up to smudge some of the liquid on the tip of Koga’s nose. Koga growled and backed up, squinting at Kaoru’s reflection in the mirror as he pawed at his face.
“You put on any more of that and you’ll end up being girl-pretty,” Koga muttered, but Kaoru didn’t feel like it was disdain that was in his voice.
“Aww, Wan-chan thinks I’m pretty?” Kaoru said, smiling even though Koga rolled his eyes, because a backhanded compliment from Koga was still a compliment, after all.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”
Kaoru tried not to think of it too much, but it made him happy. Pretty. It was nice.
Caught up in the tide of Operetta, something that could only be fate or terrible luck, he meets Arashi Narukami again. She’s as charming as ever, which is something that he can admit to himself now. Kaoru wonders if she remembers their first encounter the way he does. He swears when he opens his mouth to talk, her eyes flash with something like recognition before she eases back into that nonchalant way of talking that she always uses. That live-wire gaze has settled into something tamer over the years, just as bright but more focused now. He uses honorifics with her because he’s uncertain of how he could manage without them, but she tells him that they're not necessary — Narukami laughs when she says that, and he thinks of what Anzu said about there being nothing to read into. He and Arashi Narukami aren’t that close.
Kaoru tells her to drop the polite language, too, because it only feels fair. “I’m not sure how to treat you, honestly,” he admits, trying to keep the ice intact but thin. “I feel like I’ll step on a landmine if I don’t watch it.”
Narukami might know what he means, or she might not. “No need to be so considerate, you know,” she says with a smile. “You give off a good first impression.” She says first with enough emphasis that Kaoru is certain that she remembers that moment in his second year, how he had looked at her and then looked away. “Better than guys who act like it’s natural to be insensitive.”
The ice is thinning rapidly. It’ll break if he’s not careful. Kaoru was wrong about the live-wire gaze, the electricity in her eyes; it’s still lethal, only masked under a glaze of affability and the lilt of her voice. “I can understand why you’re so popular, senpai,” Narukami says airily. He’s sweating.
Kaoru manages to say something about romance and popularity and idolhood all in an awkward string of words that he hopes sounds better than it feels on his lips. Narukami laughs with a light shrug and that’s about all that happens between them. Operetta happens like a whirlwind and he’s not sure how to look at her without opening a wound that might not even be a wound at all.
She’s a delightful girl, though. Kaoru sees her and is certain that she’s delighted to be a girl, in a way that he’s never been delighted to be a boy. He wants to talk to her but doesn’t know if he can, or if he should. She’d get it, he thinks. Whatever it is, Arashi Narukami would get it.
Kaoru had never used girls. When he was younger, he hadn’t treated them right, and that haunted him and maybe will haunt him forever, because he never wanted to hurt anyone, but he wasn’t using them. He did love them — maybe too much, or something. It was just that at some point it always grew suffocating, felt like being a bug trapped in a glass but without the luxury of being carried outside. Left to die under eyes that saw too much. He didn’t know what they saw, but he didn’t like it, so — he broke their hearts first, or let them think that they were breaking his.
And he was over all that, now, but not having a girl on his arm made his image a hard one to keep, because what was Kaoru Hakaze if not a pretty-faced heartbreaker? Who was Kaoru Hakaze if not Yumenosaki’s resident playboy? What did it mean to be a boy if there was no girl, no antithesis, to prove you were one? What happened when you realized that the concept of a girl had never, not for a moment, been your antithesis?
He solicits Arashi Narukami’s phone number from Izumi, who’s back in Japan on Official Modeling Business (capital letters and all), because that’s a cut above getting it from Anzu. Kaoru feels like Anzu would laugh at him for it. At least Izumi only looks at him funny for a few seconds before jotting it down on a scrap piece of paper. His handwriting is terrible and borderline illegible — who can mess up numbers that bad? Kaoru manages to decode it eventually, even though it takes the entire afternoon and additional assistance from Rei.
His phone buzzes in his hands. No funny business, is the message that he receives from Izumi.
Don’t worry, is what Kaoru replies, typing in a new contact for Arashi Narukami.
Kaoru has lost his nerve, a little. It used to be that he could call up a girl as soon as he punched in those precious digits, but this time he has to pause for a moment, staring at her name. It strikes him that he has no idea what to say to her. Hi Narukami, you seem so happy with your gender, what’s your secret? He’s out of his depth. Maybe out of his mind, too.
He hits the call button and takes a deep, deep breath, waiting for her to pick up, trying to plan an invitation to meet up. He leans back on the plush couch of Rei’s living room and exhales when the call tone stops.
“Hello?” Narukami says. Kaoru clears his throat.
“Hi Narukami,” he starts, which is as good a start as any, “This is Kaoru Hakaze — ”
“Oh, senpai, good evening! To what do I owe the pleasure of speaking to Undead’s sparkling Kaoru Hakaze?” She draws out his name so sweetly it sounds like a song, and he has to stop for a moment, staring at the wall to recollect himself. He does not know how to do this anymore.
“No need for all that sparkling stuff,” he says weakly. “I just wanted to ask if you were free to meet up tonight.”
“Ooh, and here I thought you were done with all that heartbreaker business,” she giggles. “Let me down nice and easy, will you? It turns out that Anzu-chan had to work with some up-and-coming producers and no one in Knights felt like practicing late, so I’m to-ta-lly free! Lucky you!”
“Lucky me,” he agrees, means it. “If it’s okay with you, we can meet at Yumenosaki.”
“Ah, you can take the idol out of Yumenosaki, but you can’t take the Yumenosaki out of the idol - I’ll be in the garden terrace,” she says airily. “Don’t keep me waiting too long, senpai!” She hangs up after that, before he can even say goodbye. He’s sure that girls did not used to do that to him, but he finds that he doesn’t mind all that much.
Yumenosaki is a hop, skip, and jump away from the Sakuma house, so it doesn’t take long to get to the terrace. He remembers that the security in this place is tight, but there’s rarely anyone here at night, and not in the gardens. Climbing a few walls isn't anything major, but trying to navigate in the darkness doesn't set him at ease at all.
Okay, there. Floodlights. At some dark mass which must be a table, he can make out the shadow of a figure which must be Narukami, and he feels the vertigo of apprehension overtake him by the back of the head. He's way out of his depth.
“Ah, senpai,” Narukami calls out to him, and he’s definitely nervous now. They’re not supposed to be out this late, so she must not have turned on the ceiling lights of the terrace gazebo. Because of that, the place is mostly moonlit, but the floodlights at their feet cast an orange glow on the stone tiles. “I was worrying that I’d been stood up! You know, you used to have such a bad reputation around here.”
He knows. Kaoru laughs it off, trying not to trip on anything as he makes his way to sit at the table. Even with the floodlights, it can be difficult to walk in the dark, and he feels dizzy. “I’m not like that anymore! Promise.”
Through the darkness, or maybe that’s his imagination filling in the blanks, she smiles. “Hmm, cross your heart?”
“Cross my heart.”
“And here I was thinking I’d be the latest in the long line of Kaoru Hakaze’s maidens,” she says with an exaggerated sigh. He’s not quite sure if he likes how flippant she is, but he can admit that it’s new, refreshing. In a way, charming. “So, what’s up, Hakaze-senpai? I’m sure you didn’t call me out so late at night just to have a little chit-chat?”
“Well...” It takes a moment for Narukami to notice that he’s serious, but his drawn-out silence speaks volumes. She laughs, throwing her head back, and it’s not a loud laugh, but it’s unbridled. It’s pretty. Her earrings catch the light from the floodlights, and because he can’t see anything else in the darkness, he finds his gaze drawn to them.
“Little old me? I’m flattered, honestly, but that’s surprising.” She rests her elbows on the table and folds her hands, the movement familiar enough to Kaoru that he can catch it even in the dark. “Why?”
Kaoru had not thought this far. He hadn’t thought at all. His palms are sweating, and he’s not sure why but this feels a lot more intimidating than any date he’d ever been on, every little thing magnified tenfold. He thinks of Narukami's gaze like a live wire and the upturn of her lips, but that doesn't help at all. “Narukami, you seem — ” So happy about who you are. “ — You’re so happy about, like, being a girl.” It’s an awkward sentence and he chokes on it when it’s about halfway through.
God, he feels sick. Narukami is definitely looking at him with that live-wire gaze now, but he couldn’t meet her eyes even if he tried. Whatever he’s trying to say, he has no choice but to stick the landing now. “And you’re — you’re like me,” Kaoru stammers, that terrible unsettled feeling in his stomach. “Or I’m like you, I don’t know.” I’m a girl, or something, I’m not a boy, he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it. You’re the only one who could understand, that’s why. He doesn’t know how to say anything.
For a moment, Narukami falls silent in a way she never is, tilting her head, and he’s struck with the feeling of being onstage at the Tokyo Dome, but without adoring fans in the seats, everything empty and silent. Only the spotlight of those bright eyes.
“Oh,” she finally says — breathes, more like — and it kicks the air out of his lungs because suddenly, even in the dark, she’s looking at him like she sees him. Like she gets it.
“Yeah.” It took him forever to gather enough courage to talk to her face to face, and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do now, hadn’t thought he would get this far. Any words that could pass for substantial won’t go past his teeth. “Yeah. And — and I’m sorry for — in your first year, once, I — ”
Across the table, Narukami reaches for his face, and he flinches, not because he minds it at all but because it’s unexpected. He knows that she’s affectionate with people she likes, but does she do this with her friends? She pulls her hand back a little, and if he could make out the expression on her face it might be a question. Kaoru takes a breath and holds it, the only answer he can muster, and slowly Narukami’s hand skips along the edge of his temple, then his forehead, the cool metal of her ring scraping his skin a little. He swallows hard, still staring at one of her earrings because he can never look her quite in the eye.
She pushes his fringe away from his face, holding her hand on the top of his head. Kaoru’s heart stutters despite himself.
“You’re a beautiful girl,” Narukami whispers. Not a hint of irony to the words. He has no idea what he should say to that. He doesn’t say anything at all.
His mother chose the name Kaoru not because she thought it was powerful, or especially profound, but because she thought it was beautiful.