Chapter Text
Pop.
The grisly grimy guts of an unfortunate mealphid shoot out the side of its plump and grubbish body. It has been done in by a wrathful thumb sporting a coat of chipped confetti nail polish layered over an older coat of chipped pink.
“Look at them all.” So follows a second to join its companion in the afterlife. Pop. “Parasites.”
Makoto honestly expected more of a squish. It would’ve been preferable, anyway. He recoils after each pop like his are the thoughts being punctuated by this act of brute force insecticide.
“I don’t know how this keeps happening,” Rin sighs beneath the tent of fingers pressed to his forehead. “These feed shipments are bioscanned no less than three times between the factory and here and we still get bugs.”
“Fewer,” Gou corrects. Pop. “Learn to speak. This is why no one takes us seriously. You sound like a country boy.”
“Shut up,” Rin whines, dropping his hand and curling his lip. “You are insufferable today. That a big enough word for you?”
She isn’t having it, shooting glare daggers at him across her desk. “I said nothing about the size of the words but I could see why someone like you would think that’s all that matters.”
“I swe—”
“Guys,” Makoto intervenes, setting his empty mug down on the desk next, but not too next to, the box of writhing mealphids that have been found among the feed shipments. So far. “Be nice. I came over to get away from mean customers.”
Gou gasps and clutches her weaponized hand to her chest. “Are you calling me a customer? Makoto, I didn’t think you used words like that on your friends. Shame on you.”
“Seriously, Makoto,” Rin agrees. He folds his arms and leans back in his chair. “Too far. Practically a slur.”
They always do this to him. This being… whatever this is. No clear cut definition. Only that Makoto knows when they’re doing it. Premeditative, conspiratorial behavior. That trope bit where two characters are fake-arguing to get someone to let their guard down before turning on them and robbing them at gunpoint. “You know what I meant!”
“Well neither of you knew what I meant,” Gou recovers, thank goodness, no lasting damage done. She replaces the top to the box of crawlers. Makoto makes a mental note of which hand she was using to kill them and quickly decides which evasive maneuver he will do to keep it from touching him when it’s time to leave. “I was talking about the tourists.”
Rin produces an unattractive noise of disgusted annoyance. “If I could kill one and get away with it I would. But no, we live on a pebble. I take a piss and everyone knows about it within five minutes.”
“Are you guys okay?” Makoto seriously wonders. “You’re more violent than usual.”
Gou slumps down onto her own chair and then sinks into it, making it appear more oversized than it already is. She folds her arms over her coveralls and pulls her face into a frown as she rotates the seat side to side. “Another stupid investor pulled out.”
“Oh,” Makoto says, looking to Rin, who also confirms it with his scowl. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s so frustrating. They keep wasting our time.”
“Same problems?” Makoto inquires.
“Same problems,” Rin confirms. “Show them the demo, they eat it up, tell them what we need to upscale, they laugh in our face. Like, these are living plants. They’re not fucking robots off an assembly line manned by other robots. Takes a lot to grow something from nothing. Takes a human touch. Can’t get it through these thick circuit board skulls. All they care about is automating it. We’re not gonna do it.”
“It just gets old,” Gou sighs. “And we get bored. It’s a lot of work, right, but it’s also so boring trying to maintain at this level. Y’know, productive enough to try and attract the money, but also losing our ass on it while we wait for something to come through. The few clients we have don’t cover the costs, we can’t raise the rates or we’ll lose them to synthetics. We’re on thin ice with them as it is having the growhouse out here in the backwater’s butthole of the galaxy.”
Rin nods. “You would stroke out if you knew what we spent on organic transport.”
“I have an idea,” Makoto counters. “I do inventory for the kitchen. Seventy percent of the Wanderlust’s expenditures are on food imports.”
“God this sucks,” Rin continues. “Don’t know how much longer we can do it. Dad left us with a fucking mess.”
“Probably why he died,” Gou muses. “Just to get out of it.”
Rin snorts while Makoto pales. “Gou.”
“What? He’s our dad. We can make jokes about his sudden and traumatic death to cope. It’s what he would’ve wanted.” She pulls her legs up to cross in front of her and sits taller on the chair. She splits her high pony apart at the band to tighten where her long red hair has started to come loose. “He didn’t have it under control. Just because it was cheap to set up in Proxima doesn't mean it was smart. Rin’s right.”
Rin looks to Makoto and gestures towards Gou, palm up. “Finally says it.”
“All this being the case,” Makoto attempts to pivot before another argument can break out, “wouldn’t this gold rush be good for you? Orius hasn’t been this busy since the last major Sol migration. We need the interest, right? Developers are already scouting for parcels. Last week, a coalition of city managers and Centauri federation representatives came through talking about incorporation.”
“That’s a lot of words,” Rin says with narrowed eyes like it’s an accusation of treason. “You been around them too much. They’re corrupting you.”
Makoto frowns, somewhat wounded. Rin knows Makoto is sensitive about his stature here. The in-group and out-group mentality entrenchment in places like this is vicious. “My point is I think we won’t be backwater much longer. There will be more ships passing through again. Your radiation scrubbers are here already for whichever refineries and manufacturers show up to service the ships. It will be cheaper to invest in you at that point; you’re already established. The tourists are a sign of life.”
“Mmm,” Gou hums thoughtfully. “That’s true. However, counter point: I hate them. They’re everywhere. They’re loud and they’re pretentious.”
Rin nods. “She has a good counter point.”
There is nothing that benefits Makoto to point out the hypocrisy. Dinner shift starts soon. “They’re bringing a lot of money with them, though. We’d never even used the No Vacancy sign until last month. We’ve been able to repair basically everything. We got one of those industrial coffee drink makers. With the foamer.”
“Well. Good for you.” Rin rolls his eyes. “Ever since they realized they could make a buck down there on that death rock, us people who fucking live on this stupid moon— which apparently you’ve forgotten you’re a part of— we gotta deal with them making a mess and slurping up all the supplies faster than the stores can keep it stocked and jacking up the utilities to keep the air and water recycled. Haven’t been able to get a hold of a single aspirin in two weeks.”
“It shows,” Makoto quips. “The town will adjust. Already is. Maybe you’re not being open minded. If they actually manage to develop Proxima j,” he explains as he bounces his hands over an invisible wall, “we can move off the stupid moon.”
Rin snarls, disgusted by the very idea. “Maybe you’re a bootlicker.”
Makoto can’t keep the scrunch off his face. “What? What does that even mean here?”
“Rin,” Gou sighs with tedium, “remember he only likes them because he has a crush on that one broody guy with the scientists doing the survey in the jungle.”
“Excuse me!” Makoto protests, whirling to Gou and slapping his hands on the desktop. This in and of itself is a damning gesture. Too reactive. He bounces his attention between the siblings. “I have never ever said anything about that. Ever. About anyone.”
Rin slaps him on the shoulder. “Buddy I just got done sayin’ you can’t take a piss here without the whole town knowing. Save your breath.”
“Haru,” Makoto sighs. It isn’t that he hasn’t told anyone, he just hadn’t told the Matsuokas on purpose.
“Should put a muzzle on that guy, Makoto, but mostly for my own amusement. No this juicy scoop came from—” He turns and drumrolls on the desk in a bid to be the worst person Makoto knows today. “—Isuzu!”
So it was Haru. “I didn’t tell Isuzu!”
“Oh,” Rin says. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to tell her.”
“I’m sure he did,” Gou counters. “You know what is actually so sad? Three years of watching you stare longingly into the sky every other hour and never ever doing anything about it. I don’t know what that silly stint at the Novas Academy did to you back then but you’re worse for it since you came back. Like you tried one thing that didn’t work out and now you’re too scared to do anything.”
Makoto winces away from her incisiveness. Sometimes these two forget you can have observations and opinions about others that are really not necessary to share with the subjects in question. “Did I do something to make you both hate me recently? I don’t understand the dogpiling.”
“Hey. We’re just having a day. Don’t take it personally.” Rin’s tone backpedals, perhaps agreeing that they’re needling him too far. He holds his hands up in deescalation, then immediately throws a thumb in Gou’s direction. “And don’t listen to her of all people. Do you know how many times she has broken up with Isuzu for no reason? Girl’s got commitment issues.”
Makoto expects Gou to reach across the desk and slap him, at the least, but she only averts her gaze to the ground, soundly chided by an elder sibling. It’s a fair criticism. Isuzu’s a good person, absolutely adores Gou. Better than most to be as patient as she is with a recovering serial monogamist. With the Matsuokas above all having a reputation for being difficult people to crack. That or as a fellow closeted serial monogamist, Makoto likes to look at their situation and see hope for himself yet. Maybe someone out there can have that much patience for him.
“I saw him last time they were here,” Gou remarks, pouty and quick to volley the conversation back to the other side of the net. “He stepped out with a drink after his detail finished dinner every night. Real big guy. Very handsome. He sure seemed… I don’t know. Unapproachable? But not in a mean way. Like, in a professional way. Always on the clock type.”
Despite the conversation taking a turn down a road he is not sure he wants to go down, he cannot help but react as if he is on the job and hearing this. Because he is. “A drink?” Makoto puzzles. “We close the bar at nine. That group is in their rooms after that since they don’t get back from the field until late.”
“Ohhh, he’s a little deviant then,” Rin says with a grin. “Taking a handle from behind the bar in secret. You like bad boys?”
“That’s your definition of a bad boy?” Gou pffts. “You are a little deep space bumpkin.” Rin clicks his tongue. “He runs protection on a gaggle of bumbling scientists in a hostile environment for like ten hours a day. Haven’t you heard about all the wild animals and the rumors about pirates? Of course he needs a drink. What I want to know is what you see in him, Makoto? Isn’t he a little… maybe… too much? For someone light and sweet like you.”
“Oh. I.” Sidestepping the unsolicited judgment of his temperament, maybe Makoto thought it was inherently obvious. Gou rather nailed all the main ideas with her explanation. Apparently what is attractive about a large, handsome, stoic man who protects the physically weak from threats with his bare hands is not obvious to these two. A clandestine drinker now too, alone? After hours? The air of mystery it all conjures? What’s not to like? “Well. As you said… all of that. And he’s really quite polite to the staff. The customers have been difficult lately and he requires very little and is appreciative.”
“How low the bar is. Someone who’s nice to you.” Rin goes right for the throat. “No offense, but does he even know who you are? How long you been watching him anyway? Got a name? All you do is lurk and admire people from afar like a ghostly, forlorn maiden haunting the foyer.”
Makoto thinks if he answers all of it at once, they won’t hone in on the first answer. “No, they’re here five days every month, and they all call him Yamazaki.”
“So impersonal.” Gou hums and taps her chin, then shrugs. “Guess that’s business.” A notification suddenly flashes on the monitor to her right. She groans. “The humidity levels are off in the east house again.”
Makoto thanks the east growhouse for always being on the fritz. It has saved him from an uncomfortable interrogation at least four times in recent memory. His break is more than up anyway. If he doesn’t leave now, Haru will hunt him down, and then he’s not getting out of the interrogation. It’s a sporting event when the three of them are together.
“Christ,” Rin curses, rising from his chair. “All right. Back to work. Wanna trade? These fucking plants for your tourists?”
Makoto gathers his mug to take back to the kitchen and stands as well. “Only if you want dead plants.”
“Yeah exactly. Bails me out of this mess. And I’ll hand you back dead tourists. Problems solved. What’s the issue?”
“Body disposal, mostly,” Makoto supplies.
“Fertilizer, duh.”
Gou grabs her box of bugs, no doubt destined for the incinerator. “Should say something to him, Makoto,” she urges. “These expeditions don’t last forever. Funding runs out eventually.”
Makoto strains a smile. “Well, that’s a lot of the problem here, isn’t it? No one sticks around for long. We’re just a rest stop.”
“So you have a little fun for once, and the guy continues on his merry way.” Rin shrugs. “No shame in that. Ain’t always gotta be a thing. Gets your… feet wet.”
“Nice save.” Gou dismisses the alarm with the arm not loosely securing a box of an invasive species. “You literally live and work at a bed and breakfast on a tiny moon. Could not be any easier to bag a hottie, Makoto. It is being handed to you from on high. He has nowhere to hide.”
“Okay. Well. This has been horrible, as usual. So goodbye.” Makoto is stiff and embarrassed in his backwards retreat towards the door, knowing full well their teasing has him glowing red ear to ear. This is why he only told Haru once, very mildly, that the guy was… interesting. After it was Haru who asked Makoto about him, he might add, not the other way around. Maybe it was the pause he used as he searched for the socially correct word that tipped Haru off. Or when he said he looks nice. Or when Haru said he should introduce himself and Makoto caught a stitch over it and let out a barking, incredulous laugh. In any case, now the Matsuokas think he’s obsessed with someone not two degrees of separation later. “I’m reconsidering spending my break here anymore.”
The siblings exchange a silent glance and then laugh. Gou steps around her desk and reaches for his hand, no doubt to reassure him she doesn't hate him. Makoto, mildly panicked, steps back out of reach. Bug guts. She rolls her eyes and wipes her hand down on her coveralls. He has food to handle.
Rin shoves a pointer finger towards him. “See? Can’t even commit to not coming here. Reconsider. Weak.” Thump. “Say it with your chest! I’m never coming back!”
They are very pleased with themselves, bad day salvaged by an opportunity to pick on Makoto. At least Makoto was there to save them from each other, he supposes. They didn’t say anything he doesn’t already think about himself or hasn’t heard from Haru in gentler strokes. Regardless, dinner prep must go on, and Makoto does not have time to stew on it. They’re anticipating a huge party tonight, practically renting out the entire establishment.
“Goodbye,” he repeats dourly, and allows their departing remarks to hit the door before it can hit him.
He lets himself out of Moon Valley Nursuries’s front office, and walks back across the way to the Wanderlust Lodge beneath a canopy of criss-crossing air space traffic that wasn’t there yesterday. It is a lot of traffic. More than this flyover moon can handle. Most will be forced to sleep in their idled ships. Recently, a massive hotel yacht arrived to take some of the load on from wealthier voyagers; Makoto has heard the vessel has about one-hundred rooms to his thirty. Politicians put it there for schmoozing and surface tours. Finally, some will choose to camp on the planet proper, if they’re daring enough, though Makoto couldn’t recommend that.
As he approaches the Lodge, he already notices a line at the front desk. By the time he arrives at the door, the Lodge’s big digital outdoor sign throws out a white flag of surrender: No Vacancy.
Someone will have to give Proxima j a proper name at this rate.
Dinner is a nightmare Makoto will need time to recover from. There is a sort of cycle to the gold rush going on down orbit on Proxima j and Makoto has determined they’re back at the worst part of the cycle. People arrive, they don’t know how to act. Over the course of their stay, they learn how to act somewhat better as they accept the accommodations out here are not anywhere approaching what passes for normal back home. Makoto gets to sleep at a normal time and no one calls the emergency line for a hot towel. No one is demanding some extra fucking syrup at breakfast when he is moving four plates out of the kitchen at a time. But eventually they finish whatever they came here for and head back to civilization.
Then a new crop shows up. They don’t know how to act.
Makoto is currently there, at that rock bottom part. A massive intra-corporate survey team arrived an hour before dinner started. Goro gave the Wanderlust crew a heads up seeing the reservation in advance, but it is never enough of a heads up. A reservation does not reveal who among the newcomers will be god awful human beings.
Tonight an executive from QuoyComm out of Centauri A thought it was cool and normal to curse Makoto out when he tried to explain why Orius, the tiny speck of moon orbiting a borderline inhospitable planet only recently determined to be worth colonizing, does not possess anywhere near the newest quantum buoy tech and messages may take some time to reach the adjacent stars. Other than calling Makoto a dumb piece of shit, the main problem with her argument is that QuoyComm is, of course, Centauri’s main and only provider of quantum buoys in the first place. If it is not functioning properly, it is because her multi-gazillion centos company has not serviced it to catch it up to this century.
Makoto didn’t tell her that, he just smiled and apologized, but he has since rehearsed what he should’ve said in his head at least ten times. He will perfect it in the shower later. For next time.
He digresses, there is a dining room to clean. And anyway, it wasn’t all bad. In fact, Makoto is in a rather uplifted mood. As he scrubs at a dried out slosh of red curry, a chunk of pasta falls from the left arm crease of where he has rolled up his sleeves. This is actually the thing he keeps thinking about; people calling him a dumb piece of shit is routine in this climate. Today, though, Yamazaki and his scientists also arrived. He’d been so focused on the other arrival he hadn’t checked who else was slated to show up.
The pasta is a gift from the man who was irate his farfalle was undercooked. He was aiming for Haru, who enjoys fighting with guests who try to tell him he has undercooked or overcooked anything, but he was also drunk, so the pasta missile hit Makoto instead. In recompense for the inconvenience, Goro knocked five percent off his weekly rate and assigned Haru special drain cleaning detail as punishment, where he is presently. So it goes.
The only reason Farfalle Man didn’t throw a punch after Haru told him to choke on the pasta is because he was interrupted. As Makoto was preoccupied with getting Haru back into his kitchen kennel, he did not notice Yamazaki’s approach. When Farfalle Man lunged, Yamazaki stepped in front of him, and he said:
“Ryugazaki party. We’re late.”
To which Makoto replied, thinking only in the strictest terms of the business in the moment and not registering the speaker:
“Yes, you are!”
So now no one can say they’ve never spoken.
Usually Ryugazaki speaks on behalf of the group. Makoto can’t help but wonder if the intervention was not for the sake of the expedition group, but for his and Haru’s sake. He is the security detail, after all. Though try as Makoto might as he cleans his way through the dining room, he recalls no further details. No lingering eye contact, no tonal inflection. Nothing that made the exchange personal, that informs Makoto he was anyone other than the first person Yamazaki saw when they came looking for the missing front desk attendant (Kisumi is wont to wander.).
It’s just as well. Yamazaki is not the first person passing through Orius who Makoto has taken an interest in and he won’t be the last. Admittedly, he is the most interesting person who has passed through Orius, but there is never any reason for any of these people to recognize Makoto as anything other than an extension of the Wanderlust. He is the guy who helps serve breakfast and dinner and stays on call overnight for lodging-related incidentals; damnably in the background of the background. What’s more, when Makoto did not live on Orius for that Novas-bound year, he interacted with plenty of front house-facing people in transient spaces who he has since forgotten about. Surely, some of them were interesting, and still left no impression. Just because Yamazaki is objectively interesting does not make Makoto interesting in return.
“You have that look on your face like you’re overthinking something trivial and drawing multiple unfounded conclusions from it.”
Usually Haru startles him half to death this time of night. Tonight Makoto smelled him first. Rancid fry oil and rotting vegetable sludge. Can’t miss it.
“And what face is that?” Makoto questions.
He turns up the last chair onto the last clean table to clear the floor for its nightly auto vacuuming before looking up. Tackling the dining room by himself has worn him out, but Haru looks like he just got back from a grisly ground war stuck in an infinite time loop.
Drain duty is a miserable business full of proto-eldritch horrors. His apron did about as much coverage duty against the sludge for the rest of his outfit as a cocktail umbrella would in a downpour. Haru reliably acts up just around when it’s time for that particular task, meaning it’s almost always his task. Kisumi simply burst into tears on the spot the one time Goro punished him with it. Haru has seemingly become inured and Goro will need to come up with another fight-deterrence task for him soon.
“Bittersweet resignation,” Haru answers. “Like you’ve convinced everyone else to run for their lives while you stay behind and distract the enemy. You promised them you’d see them soon. You knew you wouldn’t.”
Makoto pulls his mouth into a grim line and steps forward to hand Haru a hand towel from his back pocket. “Specific.”
“Thanks. I’ve had a lot of time to study the faces you make.” If anyone else said that to Makoto, he would scream for help. Haru tilts his head and dry scrubs at the stubborn gunky smears on his forearms. “You’ve been a little off since lunch. Quiet since you got back.”
“Oh?” Makoto leans a hip on the table. “I’m in a decent mood, actually. Even Farfalle Man wasn’t a big deal.”
Haru purses his lips at his mention. “No one likes that pasta shape. No one.”
Begs the question why Haru made a batch of it and set it as the special then, but Makoto won’t press it. “So it was undercooked?”
Haru narrows his eyes. “No. It was not. It isn’t my problem that people think freshly made cooked pasta should be mush. What do you think al dente looks like?” Makoto shrugs, having not the faintest idea what al dente is. Haru taught himself his craft out of a library of downright esoteric materials he inherited from a family member he never met. No one ever knows what he is talking about. Took two days to learn how to say farfalle for the guests. “Anyway. I didn’t say bad. Just off. Was Rin picking on you again?”
If Makoto doesn’t give it to Haru straight, Haru will hone in on it within a few minutes anyway. He can’t hide anything from his friend like he can the others. A blessing, because Haru doesn’t let him get away with anything, and a curse, because Haru doesn’t let him get away with anything.
“Gou, actually. You know how they get when the business isn’t going their way.”
“Yes, and so they are like that literally all the time.” Haru removes his soiled apron and balls it up around the towel for the laundry. The stained white shirt underneath displeases him. “Started the big laundry yet?”
Makoto shakes his head. “Was waiting for you so you didn’t have to throw that in with your normal clothes.”
“Thanks.” He decides now is the time to go there and starts the walk to the back. Makoto follows, left in limbo whether or not their conversation is over.
There is another hour before he takes over the on-call, so he may as well maximize his time with Haru who he does not see outside of work as often as he’d like, since Makoto insists on working most days with overnight call for lack of anything better to do with his time. At the laundry drum, Haru hucks in his soiled outfit, pants included, onto the pile of the day’s used linens. Makoto stopped begging him not to strip down in the laundry before the closing shift ended ages ago.
“What was she on about?” Haru continues in the hall towards their lockers.
“Oh. Just… she thinks there’s something wrong with me, I guess, and felt the need to tell me.”
A glint of Haru’s blue eyes peek at Makoto from the side. There’s a hardness there Makoto knows is protective. “Because of Novas?”
Makoto confirms it with a reluctant grunt. He really is omniscient. This or Makoto has abysmally few defining moments in his life and the chances are good Haru could guess correctly on the first pass. Probably that.
“That again. You’re fine,” Haru dismisses easily. It eases Makoto’s heart of strain he didn’t know it was under. “It’s okay to go somewhere else and come back different. No one who never left here understands that. Something changed? On Orius? Oh no, must be bad. Must be the apocalypse. Remember how much everyone lost their minds when I ordered a single crate of bananas? Too exotic.”
Makoto laughs. “I do.”
“You’re fine,” Haru repeats.
Haru rinses what’s left of his ordeal off in the locker room shower in record time as Makoto sits with that, then changes into an identical spare outfit he keeps in his locker for just this sort of day. Makoto was in a decent mood. Now he’s out of sorts. The Matsuokas are catching up with him despite Haru reaffirming him. Maybe there’s some truth in some of what they said.
“Come on,” Haru offers with his hand to Makoto on the bench. “Let’s grab a drink.”
“A drink?” Makoto questions, taking his hand and already falling behind Haru by the time he’s on his feet. Other than a dive bar up the way, there are no drinks this late on Orius.
“Yeah I didn’t want to hear you complain about me stealing from the bar so I don’t do it in front of you.”
“Oh.” That’s two disparate puzzle pieces now joined. Where Haru goes after work sometimes and how one of their guests gets into what is supposed to be a locked liquor cabinet. Haru must stash bottles somewhere behind the bar. “I won’t complain.”
Haru nods, already assuming Makoto would let him off the hook this once. And will continue to turn the other way going forward. The cache of bottles Haru must lift slowly over time are kept behind the menu screen in the gap between the glass and the wall, covered by a loose panel that Haru probably loosened.
He also assumes Makoto will have no preference for the drink, which is true, and pours them a generous amount of something clear over ice, adds a diminutive dollop of syrup, and garnishes it with a pinch of freeze-dried mint dust. As Makoto is not creative enough for anything beyond an unadorned vodka soda, he is not in a position to question it.
They exit through one of the side doors nearest the bar into the chilly night, on the other side of the Lodge to ensure no wandering guest sightings. Temperature regulation downshifts to conserve energy after sundown and Makoto tries to stay inside at that point, but Haru enjoys it after an afternoon in a hot kitchen. He sighs contentment while Makoto grimaces into the wall of frigid air waiting for them on the other side of the door.
He adjusts to the temperature somewhat by the time they cross the receiving ramp and settle at a break table with attached seats, but loses ground when he sips the drink and finds it must be what sipping on liquid nitrogen would be like. He sucks in a sharp breath as the sharp combination of dry liquor, mint, and ice freezes over his lungs. The syrup, he decides, is for a warm finish. He feels his aching hands and concrete feet loosen up from the day’s strain within moments.
Haru rests his eyes through his first sip. The night lighting strung up out here is horrible and harsh, but of course Haru wears it well, made paler by it but setting him in eerie contrast to his dark hair fading into the background. Makoto doesn’t enjoy the same palette symbiosis.
“Yamazaki’s back,” Haru says after a spell of shared silence.
Makoto sets his drink down. This can’t be the reason Haru shared his post-work drinking ritual, risking its integrity forevermore. “Why’d you go and tell Isuzu about that anyway?”
“Mm,” Haru hums and half-turns to face out towards the void beyond. As in, mm, that’s also what the Matsuokas bothered you about. “Well after she talked my ear off about Gou breaking up with her again, she mentioned she was working the outgoing docks when they were leaving last month. She struck up a conversation with him while they were inventorying all their science crap. Naturally the Wanderlust came up. You know, how was your stay, that sort of thing.” Haru side eyes Makoto from across the table. “I guess somewhere in there he asked what your name is.”
Makoto wraps both hands around the chilly glass. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Sip. “Oh.”
“...You still didn’t have to tell her.”
Haru sighs, mildly irritated. “I guess I didn’t, Makoto, but she asked so I answered. I thought someone else could pressure you for a change. Everyone unloads on me yet no one takes my advice. You tell me about things you want and do nothing but talk as if they’re things you’ve already lost.”
Makoto immediately protests, “This is what the Mats—” He shakes his head. “You said there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“There isn’t.” Haru leans over his laid forearm on the tabletop, forcing Makoto to make eye contact with him. “There is nothing wrong with wanting things.”
“Well nothing I want works out,” Makoto says, propelled on a wave of mystery ice liquor hitting his sugar-depleted blood stream. “Novas. Us. Why want anything when it goes that way?”
Haru holds his gaze in charged silence, moonlit blues going frigid and steelier than the drinks. He then sits back, and takes another sip. “Those things worked out exactly how they were supposed to.”
Makoto winces and matches Haru’s sip. Bold, for him. Bold for even someone like Rin. “I’m sorry.”
Haru lowers his hackles. “Anyway, it’s just a crush,” he says into his glass. “That’s all. Stop overthinking it.”
Makoto nods, cowed. Multiple things can be true. It isn’t a big deal, and Makoto should try harder. Not mutually exclusive. Flunking out of Novas was three years ago. His and Haru’s ill-conceived romantic relationship, all six entire mostly horrible months of it, ended long before that. It’s all so far in the past that light cannot escape its pull. Yet it all still has too much power over him. He isn’t hung up on the details anymore, but the stench of failure on him is still debilitatingly potent. The contradiction of life on Orius is everyone wants him to do something with himself but no one likes when too much changes. Anyone would walk away from that with a complex.
“Thanks for the drink.”
Haru finishes his in one long, smooth pull and sets the glass down. The ice clinks. “Don’t thank me yet. But do thank me eventually.”
Makoto is prepared to write that off as another one of Haru’s opaque statements until the side door they came through slides open. As Makoto registers the sound and slowly puts its meaning together, Haru rises from the table with his empty glass and says, “I got the on-call tonight. Don’t worry about it.”
Heard another way, don’t use it as an excuse.
Haru then walks away from the table and door, hugging the side of the building until the darkness swallows him, presumably gone to use the back door to get back in through the laundry. Makoto spins on his seat to see Yamazaki walking down the ramp, drink in hand, eyes downcast as he watches his step. Makoto briefly considers running after Haru before he is noticed, then just as quickly understands Haru will have locked the door behind him to trap Makoto out here indefinitely hidden in the cold or forced to interact with Yamazaki if he wants to run back through the side door.
Makoto reaches blindly behind himself for his drink and takes more than a sip once he finds it to fix his abruptly dry mouth. It makes his mouth drier. He reflexively clears his throat, sending the worst message imaginable for the situation: haughty and annoyed. Yamazaki looks up at the end of the ramp with widened eyes as if caught with a backpack of stolen goods.
“Shit, my bad. This is for employees.”
“No, it’s all right,” Makoto rapidly corrects. “It isn’t.” It definitely is. “My drink is just…” Don’t say strong. How pathetic. “...really cold.” Not better.
Yamazaki’s eyes adjust and some spark of recognition raises his lowered brow. “You’re Tachibana.” He raises his arm to point for effect, a stout glass in the same hand. “Pasta guy.”
That title withers him from the inside instantly, but Makoto nods once. “Makoto is fine. I’m sorry about that.”
“Sorry? He was a dick. Hope he wasn’t anymore trouble after that.”
“No,” Makoto sighs. “We dealt with it by giving him exactly what he wanted.”
“I know how that goes.” Yamazaki gestures to the table. “Mind? My usual haunt has some bucket full of rank sludge sitting out? Not great drinking company.”
Haru. How. How does he do it? Life is a stage and he is the director. People are dolls for him to pose. Even if Makoto didn’t want him there, could he honestly say that? Of course not. Perfect set up. “No, I don’t mind.”
Yamazaki takes up not across from him, as Haru was, but next to him on the cross-shaped seating arrangement. He has a bourbon, fixed neat, and sports a well-worn taupe-ish sherpa lined coat. Makoto has never been close enough to him to get a good look at his teal eyes, and that’s probably for the better, because they’re gorgeous and if he had noticed it sooner, he would’ve chosen to hide in the dark. The chiseled angles of his cheeks and jaw were already rather overwhelming at a distance. Makoto has worked hard on appreciating what he has, has even come to believe he looks fine really, but some of that resolve naturally wavers before a person so helplessly attractive to him.
“Yamazaki, isn’t it?” Makoto questions. “I mean, I see it on the reservation.”
“Yeah. Sousuke’s good.” He drinks what Makoto smells as bourbon stone-faced, another intimidating detail. It isn’t Makoto’s favorite. “I hear enough of my work name all day and I hate my father so feel free to balance it out for me.”
“Oh.” It’s a nice name despite the tortured origins. “Sure, Sousuke.” Sousuke nods his thanks. “What is it you’re looking at down there, anyway? Everyone coming through here is so secretive.”
Sousuke hums. “Way I understand it is there isn’t a lot of good land to build on, so you got prospectors scouting things out for first crack at solid ground. Everything after that takes terraforming. Real messy and expensive. So I’m sure those types are keeping their leads close to the chest. Me, I don’t give a shit, so I’ll tell you. I’m with a bunch of archaeologists out of Chiron University. They’re looking for artifacts or something. There’s some long dead civilization buried there, they think. I don’t know. Money was good. I’m broke. So I didn’t ask too much.”
His voice is deep and smooth, distracting Makoto from the chill and his nerves. Makoto wants to keep him talking. “Wow. Like, non-human?”
“Hard to say, apparently. Ryugazaki said we’ve been in Centauri so long it isn’t impossible that a small group made it there and put down roots a while back.” He gestures to Makoto, as a general representative of Orius. “Got people on its moon for some god awful reason. Wouldn’t make sense no one ever tried to live down orbit where there’s, y’know, natural air and water you don’t gotta scrape off asteroids.”
Admittedly, Makoto isn’t much of a Proxima historian. Like most on Orius, he wasn’t born here. But he would be surprised if even the Matsuokas, who actually were born here, had any real sense of the moon’s origins either. Orius is only ever right now. It has no past and no future.
“I guess it was easier to seed a biome on the moon at the time?”
“Yeah. Maybe. Whatever though.” Makoto can sense Sousuke’s dwindling patience with this brand of small talk. He must have to endure it constantly. He points up and draws a lazy circle in the air, features going soft on Makoto, “So this is where you hide, huh?”
“...Excuse me?”
“Every time I’m here I see you sling plates out as fast as possible then disappear. Can never track you down. I catch you looking. Then you’re gone.”
Makoto always thought Sousuke an appreciative guest requiring little maintenance, but maybe the reason it appears that way is because no one is helping him out and he is too polite to ask. Makoto doesn’t work alone, and he has faith in his coworkers, but perhaps Sousuke has fallen through the cracks amid the ruckus of the rest of the foot traffic. Makoto only worries about doing his job correctly, and he doesn’t lose too much sleep if people aren’t enjoying themselves as long as he’s done that much, but he decides right at that moment that Sousuke is different. Sousuke should think this is the best fucking bed and breakfast in the galaxy.
“Is there a service you’re not getting? I apologize. You can tell me and I’ll make sure—”
“No, hell no,” Sousuke laughs, his eyes catching the light from one the string lights in the movement, compounding the flustering charm of his smile. “Got my clean sheets. Don’t worry about it. I literally mean I can never find you. Didn’t want to get you in trouble by asking around the Lodge. Eventually got your name off one of the dock workers. Was going to try harder this time to corner you but it seems we caught a stroke of luck here.”
Luck indeed, if that’s what Haru calls it. Makoto would rather die than come off as self-absorbed, but an assumption has been shoved within reach of a short step. “You’re… interested? In me?”
Sousuke drinks, then holds Makoto’s gaze over the edge of his glass one long, charged moment before setting it back down. “Is that a problem?”
“No, it really isn’t,” Makoto responds, voice tight and cheeks warming. His palm is numb where he death grips his glass. “Can I just, maybe, ask… why?”
Haru has told him countless times that self-deprecation is unattractive but Makoto must insist that isn’t what he’s doing, albeit admittedly it is his inclination. Makoto has observed and compiled all the things he likes about Sousuke from afar. Sousuke just said he barely sees Makoto, distanced or not.
Sousuke opens his mouth to say something, catches his breath on a wry hook of a smirk and exhales. “I don’t think anyone’s asked me why before.”
A buzz spreads down Makoto’s extremities and ties his tongue up. “Well it’s that… it’s Orius… I’m just surprised. I do try to stay out of the way.” He sighs quick and curt. “You’re very handsome.”
“Yeah,” Sousuke says, amused. “Mutual attraction. That’s usually how this works. Were you eye fucking me for any other reason? Were you just planning on drilling a hole into my wall and watching me sleep and calling it there?”
Makoto shrugs, sheepish now that his lurking from afar is named and put into perspective, and loosens the grip on his glass. His missing confidence returns and levies itself against his nervous stutter. “Can’t imagine anyone who’s seen you would blame me if I did.”
Sousuke, newly at ease, slips into a more personable tone now that he doesn’t have to tiptoe around pretense and posturing. Makoto would’ve still been fine with this were Sousuke just naturally assertive and cocky like that, but the gentler voice he uses next churns a funny, foreign flutter in Makoto’s stomach that Sousuke’s come on act did not.
“There you are,” he all but hums. “Knew I saw some bite in you.”
It approaches paranoia to think Haru also engineered his drink to have just enough alcohol to hit exactly now and no worse, but it is Haru. He nevertheless appreciates the borrowed courage and singe it lends his own voice. “No need to flatter me, Sousuke. Apparently you already knew you had me.”
Sousuke’s hand sliding over his knee and up to grasp his lower thigh really locks him in if there were any lingering doubts. “Wanted to be thorough. Can’t be too sure you won’t run off again.”
“I’d be an idiot to do that. It’s cold out here.”
Sousuke clinks his glass to Makoto’s, sealing their social contract. “Then finish your drink, and we’ll go somewhere warmer.”
Well before dawn in room 17, Makoto carefully untangles himself from Sousuke’s leaden limbs, grabs his things, and slips out the door. He spares his sleeping companion no more than a glance, superstitious of waking him. His internal clock is reliably accurate no matter how late he stays up or what all he gets up to the night prior. This was a bit of a stress test on that reliability; he’s running about ten minutes late. Still, not bad.
Once at home in the rightmost unit of a triplex he has to himself behind the main building, he showers, sighing relief beneath the steamy spray after the cold walk over. He’s surprised somewhat to realize the flighty, buzzy feeling from the night prior isn’t totally gone. He is loose in joints he gave up for calcified by harsh daily use. Partway through his shower, his thoughts sway back onto Sousuke in totality despite his best efforts to pick up and get on with his day. With his life. At the sink, he stares right through his balms and moisturizers, focus nowhere near settled on getting ready.
The steam clears, the mirror condensation fades, and Makoto sucks in a sharp breath. He can mentally try to leave yesterday where it is, but it looks like he will be taking the physical evidence with him for the current day. All over his chest. Graciously not on his neck. He brings his fingertips to his lips and suffers a painful lodge in his throat for the memorializing gesture. He drops the same hand down to touch gingerly at the red marks and is dismayed yet thrilled by the way his pulse quickens remembering how Sousuke gave him each one. Fuck. No, no, it was supposed to be a generally pleasant experience, an itch he got out of his system, not something he remembered down to the granular detail. So granular he looks at his two hands and doesn’t recognize them as wholly his own, as now there is tingle in his palms where Sousuke slid his fingers up Makoto’s wrists to thread them into his own.
Now he’s too hot. He splashes his face with water and wills himself to get a grip.
Before his skin is dry, he wedges into a clean work outfit, eager to cover himself up. Looking at his debauched body isn’t helping the rest of the routine come together. It is also forethought, as Haru occasionally visits in the morning before going off to do who knows what until his afternoon shift. If he actually took the on-call pager, he isn’t far. Makoto also forgets he’s running ten minutes late, so Haru’s presence on his sofa outside his room as he is thinking of his friend is jarring.
“You survived,” Haru greets, leaning back with his arms sprawled across the top of the cushions. “How’d it go?”
“It went well,” Makoto answers semi-reflexively.
Haru raises an eyebrow. “So well you came home immediately?”
“...Aren’t you here?” Makoto puzzles.
“Just had a feeling it’s what you’d do.”
“I work. Why wouldn’t I come home?”
Haru persists, “What, is he all looks? Bad head? Sloppy kisser? Weird fetish?”
Makoto stares at him helpless and unsure of which answer is more of a trap. Haru set him up to get laid. He got laid. Is he missing something?
“Nevermind,” Haru sighs. “It’s okay if it wasn’t good, Makoto. Point is you gave it a shot.”
Makoto shakes his head and goes to his kitchen, where he finds yesterday’s donuts still mostly not stale. He takes one and turns the kettle on. “I didn’t say it was bad. It happened and I had a nice time. Do you really need or want the replay?”
Haru appears in the threshold and leans on the wall. “But not enough to want more?”
“Mmm,” Makoto muffles correctively into the first donut bite. Mouth clear, he muses,“I guess next time they come through I wouldn’t say no.”
“I—” Haru stops and scratches at the back of his neck, thoughts impenetrable. “All right, Makoto. As long as you got what you wanted.”
“I think we all did,” Makoto agrees, and even as he says it, it feels wrong. Disingenuous. Yes, he got what he wanted, but he has spent the morning trying and failing to convince himself of it. He carries on with it anyway. “Now you and Rin and Gou can worry about something else.”
The kettle beeps and Makoto fixes himself a mug of instant coffee. Not much left of the donut by the time he has it blended, but worth a dunk. Haru doesn’t move, watching Makoto wolf down breakfast, perhaps waiting for Makoto to lose patience and ask what’s really on his mind. Haru is out of luck; Makoto doesn’t need it today. He has been distracted enough.
Once finished, he states the obvious. “I need to get going.”
Haru crosses his arms high on his chest. “Last night was a bake night. Nagisa probably already has it done and ready to serve. Why don’t we hang out? We never do anymore.”
“He still needs help setting up.” Makoto walks past Haru for his shoes after dumping his mug in the sink for tomorrow’s brew and rinsing his hands. “I’ll see you later for check-in and dinner.”
Haru’s gaze follows him, but he stays put. He can be that way if he wants to. He knows how to let himself out. “Right.”
Makoto says his goodbye and is out the door a moment later. Not for the first time, Makoto questions why he is always so torn up about pleasing them all. Even when he does what they want him to do, they’re still not happy. He got what he wanted, mostly. Wanting things isn’t bad. Isn’t that Haru’s insistence? His logic?
Never good enough. He crushes the lingering ghostly touch still on his palms with balled fists he shoves into his pockets as he walks over to the main building for work.
Makoto serves Ryugazaki’s table breakfast. In fact, he takes over the task from Hanamura just as she loads up the tray off the ready line and fixes to walk it out. Makoto concedes he could’ve said goodbye before leaving as a formality, but this will prove it wasn’t necessary. It can be put to rest and Haru’s silently judgmental Stare of Unfinished Business will lose its teeth. Makoto misplaces his confidence often, but for this it is unshakeable.
None of the six expeditioners nor their security contract spare him so much as a brief look of anticipation, that sort of look that people play off as just looking around but in truth they are looking at the food to see if it’s theirs. Makoto passes out the plates in the order he memorized off the ticket, finishing with Sousuke. A bowl of savory oatmeal and black coffee topping off a table run of sweet scones and short stacks with tea.
Makoto sets it down in front of him, tacky smile he usually wears for guests bright as usual. He feels no awkwardness whatsoever about it. He is at work and Sousuke is a customer. “And here’s the power bowl with black coffee.”
And, as he usually does, Sousuke nods his thanks, and returns to stare somewhere into the middle distance as the Ryugazaki team confers and confirms the itinerary for the day before departure. Seamless return to the same simple pattern Makoto has shared with him since his initial arrival three months back. Not a trace of inquisition on him, no love lost, no new revelations gained.
Just as Makoto knew it would happen, just as he wanted it to happen, just as it always happens. Predictably.
Ryugazaki’s team doesn’t make it back in time for dinner. Makoto arranges for boxed-up meals to go to their rooms while Goro looks the other way. Haru brought out a bolognese special he prepared the day before last and Makoto would not want all the time it took to blend the flavors to go to waste or into the employee freezer for Makoto to inevitably take all of. If they had a long day in the field, the vending machine options would be a let down.
Throughout the day, he can’t shake the ghostly feeling from his palms for longer than a few minutes at a time. He thinks, maybe, wordlessly leaving and serving Sousuke oatmeal is not the closing memory he wants of their brief, but impressionable, experience. It was rude and rude is not who he is. It would explain the persistent sense of Haru-shaped disappointment that has followed him from the morning through now.
Makoto searches for Haru after cleaning up. Their tense morning is another thing he doesn’t like the way he left it. Defiant is also not something Makoto is, not with Haru. Haru is the closest and most important person in the universe to him and he should not treat that with carelessness. If he can’t believe Haru is acting in his best interest, then he can’t believe in anything.
But the kitchen is already dark and locked up when he checks, with no sign of where Haru went that Makoto can track. The break space out back is empty and the locker room is only the closing staff clearing out. Makoto doesn’t let it shake him, it will take more than that to ruin their relationship. He supposes he deserves to carry the guilt for a night and Haru is entitled to being upset. They’ve been through worse.
With a coat this time, he heads outside. Kisumi has the call pager, giving Makoto a second rare night off call in a row. As he looks up, he thinks he sees a ship coming into the docks. Few other ships it could be at this hour than the science team’s. So Makoto kills time by going home, taking another shower, and finding something presentable to wear that won’t allow him to slip into work mode. His options are dismal other than the t-shirts Haru has gifted him for that explicit purpose. It will work.
He picks out his nicest bottle of Centauri bourbon he owns, which is a technicality as it is the only bottle of bourbon he owns. He received it as a gift from Novas Academy as part of an admissions care package. Obviously he has never had much of an interest in drinking it; gifting it now for this particular reason does wring a humorless laugh from him.
He takes his gift tucked under his arm and coat to room 17, holds his breath, and knocks.
The electric door slides open. Sousuke is on the other side of it, dressed down into a lounge set and visibly taken aback by Makoto’s appearance there. Beyond him, the mismatched off-white palette of the Lodge room to cause Makoto further unease. Pearl fixtures to eggshell comforters to ivory paint.
“Hi.”
“Oh hey.” He looks past Makoto’s shoulder, presumably for a clue. “Something… you need?”
“No, not exactly.” Makoto shifts his weight to the opposite foot. “Did you get the dinner we sent over?”
“Yeah, thanks. Good lookin’ out. Blow the chef or whatever the saying is.” He allows a generous amount of time for Makoto to get his shit together and say more. Makoto does not do it. “...That it?”
“Ah. Not quite. I actually wanted to…” He procures his gift. It only then occurs to him that a gift makes no sense in this context. He quickly fumbles for a better explanation. “...So you have your own. In case you can’t, uh, get to the bar. The owner will find that stash eventually.”
Sousuke takes it and turns it towards himself, examining the label, then looking up under his brow. “You know I gotta be honest with you, I know fuck all about bourbon. If you spent centas on this I won’t have a clue what the difference is. I just grab the first thing I see back there.”
“No, I didn’t spend anything on it and I don’t drink it at all,” Makoto says, likely revealing he is regifting it, if Sousuke’s amused twitch of a smile in response is anything to go off of. “I guess I can’t say I know what else you drink so it was my best bet.”
Sousuke pores over it still as Makoto responds. “This has an Academy logo on it.” He turns it back out and swings the bottle back and forth by the neck. “You go there?”
“Oh, does it? Huh.” Makoto does not answer him. “Anyway. I’m sorry I took off this morning.”
Sousuke shrugs, letting the bottle hang off the same arm to his side. “No harm done. Do what you need to do.”
“It’s not that I had a bad time.”
A sudden crooked smirk cuts across Sousuke’s tired features. “I know you didn’t.”
“I. Okay.” Makoto clears his throat, to Sousuke’s ongoing amusement. “I just didn’t want to leave it so ambiguous.”
Sousuke snorts. “No, I think you made your intention perfectly clear. Cleanest break I’ve seen. Surprised you didn’t fix your half of the bed to try and trick me into thinking I dreamed it all up.” He turns to the side and sets the bottle somewhere near the door and drops his swagger. “Look, Tachibana, I’m not going to take it personally that you aren’t some sentimental person. So be forgiven, or whatever it is you want here. I’m glad it happened. I got like seven months left on this job so come find me if you’re looking to get off again, all right? You want that, just say that.”
Sousuke hands him not only closure but an off-ramp gift wrapped with a bow and Makoto is still standing there hearing his breathing in his skull. This isn’t what he wanted either. The way Sousuke speaks so cavalierly about it now, though, cautions Makoto against making an ass out of himself and admitting that he has implied one thing and means another.
“Right.” Makoto drops his gaze to his shoes, afraid of what Sousuke might see there as he grapples with a wave of panic. He committed to buttoning this up and walking away, though. Is it possible to fail at failing? “Have a good night, Sousuke.”
It would be understandable if Sousuke called it good there and shut the door, but the warmth from inside the unit continues to seep out.
“You’re a… good guy, aren’t you?” Sousuke declares after a moment before a long sigh. He sounds disturbed by it, almost. Tentative to decide so. Makoto isn’t in the frame of mind to try and guess why that would disturb him. Better than him thinking the alternative, Makoto supposes. “Little lost, maybe. I don’t know what’s going on and you don’t need to tell me, but maybe you want to come in and… don’t know how to ask?”
“I think I do,” Makoto agrees, “I just don’t know why.”
“Why again.” Makoto looks up as Sousuke rubs at his jaw in thought. “Can just be whatever you want it to be, you know. You want to come inside, I’m saying it’s fine, so… come inside? Get to know each other?”
Makoto waits to determine if Sousuke is actually asking to simply talk and spend time that way or indulging in coy euphemisms. Sousuke says nothing to tip his hand, but clearly expects an answer. The prospect of breaking that wall down with him is a daunting one, and Makoto recoils from it. Sousuke will like him better if he doesn’t know him, if he is just a fun person to wind down with after frustrating days, and not see how incomplete and restless he actually is. Given how even his good friends see him at times, that is more than Sousuke will have asked for.
“I think we know what we need to know already.”
There is an unexpected outpouring of empathy in Sousuke’s eyes, and a thin line of pity between his lips. Makoto doesn’t know which makes him more uncomfortable, but quickly determines it’s more that he realizes Sousuke is a wholly formed person with a past and with a life and with his own ethos and experience informing on the balance between the empathy and pity displayed on his face. He is not an object of interest Makoto acted on, he is yet another adjudicator Makoto is inviting into his life no matter what he shares or keeps to himself. He braces for the pity to overtake the empathy. As a Matsuoka once said, it is actually so sad.
Then Sousuke neatly folds away the pity, and keeps just enough empathy to make standing outside indefinitely the worse option, yet again. “Well. Then you don’t need my generic advice. Come get what you need. You can leave without saying anything again. Still won’t hold it against you.”
Makoto finds himself nodding before forming the consensus, a subconscious piece of him acting out of line, filling in for Haru when he isn’t there enacting a scheme. Maybe Makoto will find what he’s looking for when he goes inside a second time, so he doesn’t have to come back a third.