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“Katou-sama? Katou-sama!”
If he has to die, hearing Suzue scream his name is perhaps not the worst way to go. Haru slips off the counter and onto the floor, the world turning first grey, then inky black. His consciousness seems to stretch like a piece of elastic, pulling thinner and thinner, everything getting cold.
Then it snaps, and there’s just darkness.
***
Movement. The sky whirling like a kaleidoscope overhead. Strong bands wrapped around his legs, his back. Between him and the sky, a pale mask with black holes for eyes. No. Black hair, brown eyes, and a scar of a mouth. Kambe hovering above him like a kite, a crown, a king.
His body is trembling, and the whole of his leg is thick with pain. The agony is so intense that it feels like it’s distorting the skin. It arcs through him and he whimpers, head pressed against Kambe’s firm shoulder.
He tries to move but he can’t. He needs relief, needs release. He bites down hard, twisting against the pain. His body is weak, trapped. Kambe looks down. There’s emotion in his face, but Haru can’t read it. His head is spinning, his mind a sieve. He can’t hold onto his thoughts. He’s so cold.
Kambe shifts and for a moment Haru realizes that the strong bands are his arms, that Kambe is carrying him. Under a spinning blue sky, past green trees that blur into shapes and shadows.
Overhead black bars slice through the sky like knives, straight and sharp. A sleek black form appears, the light reflecting on its shiny hide. “Almost there,” says Kambe, and opens the door to a dim interior.
Haru is lifted inside. He flops onto a hard seat and the impact makes him choke, his head flying back to knock against something solid. A moment later Kambe is beside him, holding him, his arms steely. Haru knows he should know what’s happening but he doesn’t, he doesn’t and the world is small and tight and so saturated with pain. He leans into Kambe’s shoulder, his hands tightening against nothingness.
“Take off,” says Kambe, which makes little sense, but a moment later the world starts thrumming. Then it starts juddering, the hard seat under him bucking like a horse. The pain spikes, shooting through him, his cry strangled.
Everything goes black.
***
“Katou-san?”
White. White above, white below. White like his grandpa’s hair in the black-framed photograph. White like snow, before it turns to slush. He makes a soft noise.
“Katou-san?”
There’s someone here. White dress. Black hair. Yin and yang, the colours swirling in an endless loop. Him and Kambe circling each other. Kambe…
“Katou-san, do you know what year it is?”
Haru squints. Year? He remembers: 794 beginning of Heian Period; 1008 Tale of Genji; 1467 Ounin War; 1603 start of the Edo period; 1853 Perry arrives; 1905 – 1931 – 1945 – 1968 – 1989…” years and years and years flash through his mind, thoughts tumbling over one another. Year… “2019?”
“Good. And what city are you in?”
Cities are food, are buildings, are monuments. He feels in his mouth the crumbly hiyoko from Fukuoka, the tangy oyster crackers in Hiroshima. Remembers the bright waters of the Kaiyukan in Osaka and the warm scent of the lavender farms outside Sapporo. But home is Tokyo. Is subways rattling/smell of miso/neon signs/scramble crosswalks. “Tokyo.”
“Good. Do you know who brought you here?”
Strong arms. Jet-black hair. Settled mouth. Intelligent eyes. “Kambe,” he whispers. “Kambe, Kambe.”
“Well done, Katou-sama. You’re being transferred up to the ward now. Please just try to relax.”
He closes his eyes and remembers the scent of Kambe’s shoulder: sunshine and sandalwood.
***
The world is twisting, turning. Above him shadows and light intertwine like snakes, each consuming the other. Haru sweats and shakes. His body feels wrong, doesn’t feel like his. He feels like he’s been dropped into an unfamiliar form, all weight and thick proportions.
Shades pass back and forth beside him, saying things like “Fever” and “Infection” and “Maybe septic.”
And often, often, when he looks up those eyes are there watching him. Dark, the colour of old wood polished by centuries of hands. Like the floors of ancient temples, like the smooth handle of a prayer wheel.
The eyes bring peace, coolness. Icy fingers brush over his flaming skin, soothing. “Please,” he whispers, not knowing what he wants. Everything is too strange, too incomprehensible. Those fingers sweep over his forehead, down his cheek, bringing relief.
Haru sleeps.
***
When he wakes he knows exactly where he is: a hospital room. He’s in a single, the room small with an adjoining bathroom. There’s an IV tree above him and a vital monitor beeping softly; he’s alone. Near the foot of his bed is a long table loaded with flowers and gifts – mostly perfectly shaped fruit in expensive presentation boxes. Let no one say the Met doesn’t look after its own.
Haru feels refreshed, feels like he’s broken out of a maze so tight and twisted that he had to crawl through the branches, leaves and sticks scraping at his skin. But he’s free now, out in the sun, and his mind is his own.
The nurses come to check in on him, and occasionally the doctor. Food arrives, not too heavy but plentiful, to fill his aching belly. They tell him he had an infection, was delirious for almost two days. He feels shaky, but it’s a kind of weakness he can control and he knows it will disappear if he eats and rests enough.
More confusing are his memories. Twisted images of shades and strange colours, but interspaced always with something very familiar: Kambe. He recognizes now what his mind at the time didn’t. Kambe found him, brought him to the hospital, and has been here with him regularly.
That’s hard to fathom. He closes his eyes and brings back the memory of being carried in Kambe’s arms, Kambe so worried above him. He supposes it looks bad to have your unofficial partner die in your secret basement lair, so it’s only reasonable Kambe wanted to get him out while he was still breathing.
That sentiment doesn’t explain the visits, though.
He’s still pondering it later over some miso soup with tofu when the door opens to admit, not another nurse, but Kambe himself in as usual an impeccable suit with a crisp pocket square. He pauses on the doorstep, taking in Haru’s state.
“Oh. You’re awake,” he says, before coming in anyway.
“Seems like it. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.” Maybe the best option for now is to play dumb about Kambe’s frequent presence. Wait and see what’s unfolding.
Kambe shrugs gracefully, coming over to stand at the bedside. He looks down at Haru with a closed expression, like a medical student examining a particularly boring cadaver.
“I’m conscious that a debt is owed,” he says with his usual haughty chill. Haru’s brows crinkle.
“A debt?”
Kambe waves vaguely at his leg. “You were shot by a member of my staff. Rather than focusing on the individual who posed the greatest physical threat, I confronted my grandmother and left you to deal with Hattori, knowing he has extensive martial arts and weapons training.”
“Kambe, she killed your mother. Of course you should have confronted her.”
“Technically, Hattori did,” replies Kambe. And then, suddenly, he loses some of his iciness. It falls from him like a cloak and he sits, his body weighing down the mattress beside Haru’s knee. “I found him where you left him,” he says slowly. “Unconscious and bleeding out. It would have been so easy… so easy to obtain justice.”
“And did you?” barks Haru, suddenly feeling sick. He had been too light-headed, too weak to contemplate what would happen to Hattori, left behind on the lawn. He should have called for back-up, should have ensured that Kambe would never be faced with the man who murdered his mother.
“No.” Kambe holds himself still, staring not at Haru but at the panel of monitors above his bed, although his gaze is distant. “He’s also in this hospital, under police custody. He will recover, although perhaps not fully. There was extensive damage done to his alimentary canal.”
“So it’s him you’ve been visiting,” says Haru, and then realizes that he’s already let the cat out of the bag. Kambe’s gaze falls to him, puzzled.
“No. I’ve received updates from his physicians, but I haven’t been to see him. The next time I see Hattori will be in court.”
Haru blinks. “Oh. Then… you really were here to see me,” he says.
Kambe folds his hands in his lap, neat, pristine. “Yes. Did you know, you’ve changed the world?”
Haru stares at him, confused. “Pardon?” It sounds like some sort of saccharine romantic statement, but Kambe’s face is calm, serious.
Kambe pulls out his phone and taps it a few times. He rotates the screen to show Haru the news. There are a number of similar headlines:
NEW REVOLUTIONARY COMPOUND DISCOVERED
JAPAN SHARES RESEARCH THAT COULD CHANGE HISTORY
CHEMICAL ‘ADOLLIUM’ HAS MASSIVE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL
NATIONS SCRAMBLING TO PROTECT POTENTIAL OF ‘ADOLLIUM’
He reads them, one after the other. “I don’t understand. You released the research? Your parents’ research?”
“No,” says Kambe, turning off the phone and pocketing it. “You did. When you came to find Suzue, just before passing out.”
Haru stares, confused. “I don’t understand.”
“The button to upload the files was on the control panel. You pressed it.”
He feels his guts twist, cold and slimy and horrified. “I what? I didn’t – I never –” There’s no getting the horses back in this barn. As evidenced by the headlines on Kambe’s phone, the research is public now.
Without ever intending to, without thought or knowledge, he’s released something both miraculous and terrifying into the world. Whatever comes of it – salvation, or destruction – will be his fault. He feels intensely sick, nausea seeping through his entire body and making his thigh throb. He turns onto his side, pulling away from Kambe, and curls up in the bed.
“Katou – what?”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, trying to make himself tiny, insignificant, as though that would in any way change what he’s done.
“I’m not angry. Katou – Katou,” Kambe puts a hand on his shoulder and half-turns him, Haru’s eyes opening wide, fearful. “You carried out my mother’s legacy. You did what no one else in my family has been able to do. What we’ve been fighting against and killing to prevent, for decades. It takes people like you to make us see that wealth and power isn’t everything. Sometimes, isn’t anything. Without you, I might not have made the right decision.” He pauses, tongue wetting his lips briefly. When he speaks again his voice is quiet. “I might have become just like my grandmother.”
Kambe’s hand tightens on his shoulder, fingers digging in. Haru’s pretty sure it’s involuntary, Kambe disgusted by his own line of thinking. He forces himself to take a breath and stop trying to burrow into the mattress, turns back onto his back.
“You’re not like her. I mean, you’re a haughty pretentious bastard, but you would never do the things she’s done. Never.” He’s not sure why he’s so certain, but he is. Kambe has none of Kikuko’s evil, her scheming nature hidden beneath a sweet mask. He is nothing like the woman who quietly mothered Kambe in place of the true mother she eliminated.
For just a moment, Kambe smiles. It’s tiny, and disappears quickly, but Haru sees it all the same. Was meant to see it, he thinks. Kambe lifts his hand away. “I hope so,” he says.
“Where is she? Your grandmother?”
“In prison. The judge refused to grant bail given the extreme flight risk. Likely, she will never leave again except for court hearings.”
Haru watches Kambe. His face is inexpressive, skin china-smooth, his wide mouth carefully controlled now as he speaks. But Haru, who relies on emotions and connections rather than wealth to solve his cases, can see the battle waging in Kambe’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Really.”
Kambe shrugs minutely. “She made her choices. She chose wealth over her own daughter-in-law. Over her own son. What purpose does wealth have, if not to protect the ones you love?”
“Do you know what happened to your dad?”
Kambe smooths away the smallest of wrinkles on his trousers with his thumb. “Perhaps. He was injured in the attack on my mother. Both physically and psychologically, I believe. She didn’t tell me where he is. But she will.” The cold certainty in Kambe’s voice is chilling.
“I hope you find out,” says Haru. “I hope he’s still alive.”
The billionaire looks at him, and for the first time Haru sees uncertainty on his face. “Why do you care so much? My family nearly destroyed you – I nearly destroyed you.”
Haru stares back, calm. “Why should I need a reason for wanting a son to be reunited with his father?” he asks.
Kambe blinks, then, slowly smiles. “I suppose it’s selfish of me, but I’m glad I brought you into this mess, Katou-keibuho.”
Irritatingly, the bastard has quite a nice smile, when he’s not being smug about it. Like the sun coming out from behind clouds. It makes Haru want to see it again.
“Then as repayment, why don’t you keep me involved in whatever comes of it?” suggests Haru.
“I can do that.”
***
He has a few more days in hospital, physio ramping up while he learns to get around on crutches. At first he can only manage it for half a minute, then a minute, then two. It’s exhausting and his leg aches even when he’s not putting any weight on it. But he’s becoming more mobile.
Surprisingly Kambe shows up to pick him up when he’s discharged, sleek in his heavy black Rolls with the bullet-proof windows and waterproof body. “I thought you would prefer me to Kamei,” he says, handing Haru a bag with a set of his clothes in it. Haru ponders this strangeness in the bathroom while he changes, taking a moment to check his reflection. The nurse helped him wash his hair this morning and he looks clean and well-scrubbed, but his face is thin and there are new lines around his eyes. Gods, he’s in his thirties now.
He swings out slow and cumbersome on his crutches, Kambe holding the door open for him. They make their way down the hall to the elevator together, Haru frustrated with his pace, frustrated with how tired his arms are already after only a handful of meters.
“It would be faster if I carried you,” says Kambe, deadpan, apparently reading his mind.
“Kiss my ass,” replies Haru, but he feels a little flutter in his chest at the thought.
Kambe, for all that he’s an arrogant asshole, is also an extremely eligible bachelor and easy on the eyes. Haru has never fallen for a man but there’s been more than one he’s eyed thoughtfully, his interest more than friendly. Kambe… Kambe drives him up the wall, but there’s something attractive in that antagonism, a spark of more than rivalry. He’s pretty sure Kambe knows it too.
He wonders whether Kambe’s recent attendance on him is owing in part to that spark.
The car ride home is conducted mostly in silence. “You haven’t said anything about work,” says Haru at one point.
Kambe, gloved hands on the steering wheel, doesn’t look over. “Not much to say. Section One is handling the case. Modern Crimes is doing safety lectures at neighbourhood events. The usual.”
“And me?”
Kambe does look at him now, expression stern. “You’re on leave until passed by the police surgeon. You’ll have to go in next week to give your statement. Nothing more.”
He’s off the case. They both are. One injured in the line of duty, the other with a massive personal conflict. “Oh. Right.”
They arrive at his apartment and Haru is expecting Kambe to simply drop him and whisk off to whatever platinum-level event he has planned for tonight, but to his surprise Kambe gets out and follows him up the stairs.
The stairs, which are a total bitch. It takes Haru more than two minutes to get up the single flight, and he’s panting and drained by the time he makes it to the top. Kambe tactfully produces a set of keys and opens the door to his apartment. An apartment which is now spotless, newly painted, and completely modernized. The old laminate and tatami flooring has been replaced by shiny hardwood that glints in the afternoon light. The cheap shoji doorway has been replaced by an expensive modernistic one, and his kitchen has been completely updated with granite counters and new appliances.
“What. The. Fuck,” says Haru, staring in the door.
“The doctors said you shouldn’t be sitting on the floor for a few weeks,” replies Kambe, like that explains this.
“So I’ll buy a goddamn chair – Kambe – this…” he turns and sees Kambe watching him, almost… hopeful? It’s hard to tell but there’s a faint angle to his brows, questioning, wistful. “I don’t want your money, you know,” he says, tiredly. “Or your furniture, or your home decorators.”
“Debts must be paid in full.”
“So be there when I need you. That would be enough.” He wants to protest, wants to stomp his feet and tell Kambe to put it back the way it was. But he’s tired and his leg aches and that hint of hope in Kambe’s eyes is bringing out something soft inside him. He sighs. “I guess we can leave it for now,” he says, and goes inside. He works to toe his shoes off, then heads for the bed, barely making it before his arms give out and he drops onto the mattress with a thump and a groan. Kambe stands over him, looking uncertain.
“Perhaps you should have a home assistant,” he says.
“Perhaps you should get the fuck out, before I shove this crutch where the sun doesn’t shine,” says Haru, but with a slight smile.
Kambe looks at him like he’s aware a joke is being made but not what it is. Then he shrugs and goes, locking the door behind him.
Haru, in his full clothes, lies down on the bed and goes to sleep.
***
The next week is nothing but onerous chores. Physio. Exercise. Rest. Food. Rinse, repeat.
Three days into it Haru is sitting at his new western-style dining room table making meatballs, his hands covered in flour and raw meat, when there’s a knock at the door. “It’s Kambe,” comes the voice. And, a moment later. “I have a key?”
Haru sighs. “Come in, then.”
The lock turns and the door opens, revealing Kambe in his usual beautiful suit and custom tie. He unties and removes his patent-leather shoes and steps in in his silk socks. He stares at the heap of wet, uncooked meat. “Are you processing offal?”
“It’s meatballs, dammit,” says Haru.
“Ah.” Kambe comes into the dining area and pulls out a chair, seating himself. Haru considers making him help with the meatballs, then remembers what happened when he made the billionaire cut vegetables. He keeps rolling them out himself.
“So. What’s up? The media buzz has been crazy.”
Kambe waves his hand with the dismissiveness of one who’s spent his life on the front page. “It will pass. Don’t worry about that.”
“I wasn’t.” Haru drops another meatball on the plate. “How’s Hattori?”
Kambe draws off his gloves and drops them neatly on the table away from the flour and streaks of meat juice. “Recovering. He’s still in the hospital. Section One is planning to offer him a plea deal.”
Haru blinks. “What? He killed three people!”
“At my grandmother’s orders. If he agrees to name her, they’ll take the death sentence off the table. Life in prison, no chance of parole.”
Haru shakes his head. “Some days, I don’t miss it,” he says. “Is that what you came to tell me? You know, I abhor him for what he did to Cho-san and Takei-san, and your mother. But for myself… I don’t care that much. How could my feelings compare to what he’s done to them?”
“You deserve justice. He might easily have killed you. That… I find that reality difficult,” admits Kambe. He speaks calmly, like he’s presenting at a shareholders’ meeting. But Haru can see the depth of emotion in his eyes.
“Thanks. But I’m okay. Worry about nailing them for their real crimes.”
Kambe runs his thumb along the edge of the table, as if testing the angle. “I spoke to my grandmother,” he says, this time more quietly, his confidence diminished. Haru, in the middle of rolling a meatball between his palms, pauses. “She told me where my father is. She told me… he will never testify against her.”
There are many interpretations to that statement, and Haru considers all of them in the moment before Kambe speaks again. “He’s in an institution. In Miyagi, on the ocean. A small one. For patients with brain trauma.” The sentences are short, clipped, factual. The emotion is, once again, in Kambe’s eyes alone.
“I’m sorry,” says Haru, suddenly feeling inadequate in his old oversized t-shirt with his floury, meat-smelling hands. “Do you know…” he trails off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. Is he lucid? Is he present? Will he know his own son?
“I don’t know anything more. But I intend to find out.”
Haru is strangely touched that he was the one Kambe came to tell this to. He could pay for any number of sympathetic ears, and if he wanted genuine affection he has Suzue ready to throw herself at his feet. But he came here, to Haru’s tiny apartment in the middle of a cheap suburb which he mocks. So:
“Take me with you,” says Haru, putting down the meatball and pressing his palms to the table. “You’re going to see him, right? You shouldn’t go alone.”
Kambe looks at him, surprise etched across his face. It’s a good look on him, haughtiness washed away revealing the young, fallible man he is. The man Haru appreciates. “I – you want to come with me to meet my father?”
“No. I don’t have any business with him. I just don’t want you to be alone. I kinda think you’ve been alone for far too long already. Or am I wrong?” He eases back, watches, waits.
Kambe’s eyes flicker closed, his expression soft. Vulnerable. “No,” he says softly. “You’re not.”
“Okay then. I’ll come. When are you going – tomorrow?”
Those deep eyes open again, eyes the colour of polished walnut. “No. I still have some things to take care of here. And you need to focus on getting your story together for your report to Section One on Friday. We’ll go after that.”
Haru nods. “Okay.” He has a brief, visceral recollection of the sound of helicopter blades beating overhead, of the seat bouncing under him. Of the intense pain of his wound, which is still not far along the healing process. “We’re not taking the helicopter, are we?”
Kambe glances at him for a moment, inscrutable once more. “We’ll drive,” he says, and Haru lets out a breath.
***
The morning spent at HQ feels interminable, Haru going over his statement again and again for Hoshino and his lackeys. They walk him through it backwards and forwards, vacuuming up every speck of information and capturing it on tape. When they’re finally done he feels like a thin shadow of himself, throat dry and leg aching.
Kambe is waiting in his luxury car when he makes his way out of the building, crutches digging into his armpits. He’s still only up for ten or fifteen minutes of walking, and the building is a bitch to navigate. He heaves himself into the car and stores the crutches in the back seat, sighing. “Thank fuck that’s done,” he says, leaning back and closing his eyes.
“Any issues?” asks Kambe.
“Nope. Let’s go.”
They go, driving north out of Tokyo and onto the motorway that leads towards the northern tip of Honshu passing through Miyagi prefecture, among others, on the way.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to say to him?” Haru asks almost an hour into the drive. They’re not making great time, traffic heavy before the weekend. Flying would have been faster. He almost apologizes for speaking against that option, but it was Kambe who chose to drive. Albeit almost certainly because he remembers their previous flight better than Haru.
He wonders why it is he has such a hard time accepting generosity from this man, why almost every move Kambe makes causes friction between them. And he realises that, while it’s partially Kambe’s superiority and attitudes about money and class, a lot of it is because he, Haru, doesn’t want to back down to him. Because he likes the friction, he almost anticipates their squabbles.
His chest tightens at that realization; he rubs at it and tries to push those thoughts to the back of his mind.
“I haven’t,” Kambe is saying. “For so many years all I wanted to ask him was why? Why did he do it, why did he murder my mother? And I knew I would never be able to, because he had been dead almost as long as her. And now neither of those things are true, and I find myself lost for words.”
“You know you don’t have to ask him anything. You could tell him about yourself. What you’ve been doing, what kind of person you’ve become.”
Kambe snorts. “A rich, smug, pretentious asshole?” he says, his words echoing so many of Haru’s old statements.
“A good man who grew up alone but still learned how to trust. A man who did everything he could to solve the murder of the person he loved the most – and who succeeded,” replies Haru.
Kambe glances at him, his eyes wide, mouth slightly slack with surprise. “Katou,” he says, and the softness in his voice makes Haru’s heart throb.
“Watch the road!” he snaps, and Kambe turns away sharply. Haru goes back to rubbing the knuckle of his thumb into his chest over his heart, feeling the roundness of his ribs, bone against bone.
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments,” says Kambe, after a moment. It may be the least secure thing Haru has ever heard him say.
“I know,” he says. “I wasn’t giving them. But you can probably stand to hear the truth once in a while. Beats the tangle of praise and subservience you usually buy.”
“Ouch.”
“Reality’s a bitch.”
***
The sun is low over the hills, the sky turning peach-coloured when they pull up in the gravel lot outside the rest home where Kambe’s father has been living for the past two decades. It’s on the water, a narrow sand beach just beneath it.
“Will you come in? Or you could stay in the car. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“I’ll go down to the beach,” says Haru, whose back is protesting the five hour car trip. Kambe fishes his crutches out and hands them to him as Haru heaves himself out. Kambe heads into the building and Haru potters slowly down the concrete ramp and onto the beach.
It’s more than a kilometer long and completely barren, nothing but yellow sand and blue water. No driftwood, no benches, not even any retaining walls to lean against or sit on.
Walking on crutches on the sand proves to be much more difficult than he imagined. Each step is almost double the effort of walking on concrete, and after only ten minutes he’s exhausted. His leg starts to ache, then throb, then after another ten minutes to tremble alarmingly. Kambe has the car keys, so he has no way to get back into the locked Rolls.
He stands and watches the waves and tries to concentrate on breathing. In, out. In, out. He’s starting to get light-headed, the sound of the waves crashing in his ears making him dizzy. He feels chilled, weak, his thoughts bleeding out of him along with his strength. He needs to sit, head spinning, a cold fog descending over the world.
From behind him he hears a voice and turns slowly, his limbs strangely light. Kambe is coming over, looking dark. Haru tries to pull his thoughts together from the vast distances they’ve drifted to. “Did you see him?” he asks, tongue ungainly in his mouth.
“No. I didn’t.”
“Oh.” He wants to say more, to commiserate, to console. But as he stands there the last of his stamina burns to ash and the ground seems to drop out from under him. He starts to fall and feels strong arms catch him, his body tipping forward against Kambe, his head on his shoulder.
“Katou?” Kambe sounds alarmed, his grip tight.
“Just – nnh – need sit,” he slurs, his body shaking. The crutches fall away and Kambe lowers them down into the sand, Haru’s legs splayed out in front of him, Kambe holding his body upright with his head tucked beneath Kambe’s chin. He smells of sunshine and sandalwood – familiar scents, comforting scents. Haru closes his eyes and just concentrates on breathing.
Kambe slowly, awkwardly, starts rubbing his back.
“’m sorry. This’s lame,” says Haru, his mouth against Kambe’s neck. He can feel the warmth of the man’s skin, his body as he rests against it. It’s soothing.
“Don’t worry about it. I should have ensured proper infrastructure.”
Haru snorts. “So high and mighty,” he says. “’S a beach. Beaches’re for sand castles ‘n paddling, not ‘proper infrastructure.’”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You must’ve been to the beach.”
“Private beaches, white sand, maids to look after me.”
“You’re here now,” says Haru, still leaning against him. He’s starting to feel better, blood pounding in his head, his energy and stamina evening out so sharply it’s dizzying in a new way. “You’re here with me.”
“So I am.”
He should sit up. He should shuffle back and create some room between the two of them, some distance.
He doesn’t.
“Kambe?”
“Yes?”
He feels well enough to take a deep breath, muscles taking some of his weight. “Am I reading into things here? Or do you feel something?”
Kambe’s hand on his back stills, his fingers instead catching hold of Haru’s jacket, the heaviness somehow reassuring.
“I feel it,” he says. Haru lets out a shaky breath.
“Good. ‘Cause this would’ve been a really awkward conversation if not.” He raises his head and meets Kambe’s eye. “We’re so different, and half the time I want to strangle you, but… fuck, I like it too. I like how crazy you make me, and I like that you give your all to do the right thing, even if I disagree with your methods.”
“Such compliments,” breaths Kambe, his smile shit-eating. Haru punches him lightly in the shoulder, and he laughs. Their proximity, the feel of Kambe’s firm body against him is starting to drive up his temperature, make his stomach curl with anticipation. Kambe catches his hand, holds it. “You’re everything I’m not, everything I sometimes wish I could be. And the idea that I was responsible for your injuries still hurts.”
“I told you not to worry about it.”
“Would you? Not worry about an injury you could have prevented?”
Haru wants to say yes, but he knows the truth as much as Kambe.
“There you are, then,” says Kambe, reading his silence for the acceptance it is. “I hope that in some things I can be at least as stubborn as you.”
Haru looks out at the waves. The sky is all pinks and oranges now, the sun setting behind the hills. It will be dark soon, just them and the ocean. Beside him, Kambe’s sitting in the sand and seaweed in his million yen suit, holding him. “Can we stay here?” asks Haru. “Just for a little while.”
“I have nowhere to be,” replies Kambe.
Haru turns his face up, meeting Kambe’s eye. “For once in your life, that was the right thing to say,” he says.
And he kisses him.
END