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Kojiro hated Fridays. Specifically, working Fridays. Of course, he was more thankful for the restaurant and being able to achieve his dream than anything else in life but nothing could soothe the onslaught that the end of the week brought. The staff were always overwhelmed and diners were always hangry, drunk or both. Dishes clashing whilst the smells of pizza and meats hung in the air turned from a restaurant atmosphere to a fear-inducing, eye-twitching experience from hell.
Of course, he delivered every time. Sia la luce hadn’t gained its notoriety for nothing. But that didn’t mean everything was as sound behind the scenes, the towering stack of dishes at the end of these nights looming over him and the clock like a hawk. The clock always an impossible goal to reach. Whilst the kitchen formally shut at 9:30, that didn’t equate for slow eaters and mountains of washing. On days like this, Kojiro was rarely out of the restaurant before 11:00.
But finally 11:00 had long come and gone, and that’s where Kojiro was now. Finally sticking the key into the metal lock, the satisfying click it made as he turned it would forever soothe the aches at the corners of his brain. The stresses and strains from the night slipping away as he slid onto his motorcycle.
Tonight had been especially bad, he’d even go as far as to argue the worst. Some clumsy and intoxicated diner had managed to break three glasses whilst several children had thrown entire plates of food at each other. Numerous staff were off with a terrible head cold (that knowing Kojiro’s luck, he’d likely come down with right before his next beef at S) and the heater for the plates had decided that it would stop working on today of all days. And that only scratched the grim surface. Truly a day from whatever pits of hell he’d seemingly managed to unknowingly provoke.
Though now he could get that all off his head, along with his helmet, as he finally pulled into his apartment’s parking lot. Making his way to the elevator he felt a tense knot in his shoulder he wasn’t even aware of unravelling. Dinner at quarter to midnight was definitely less than ideal but the idea of some easy food like ramen and a glass of wine felt like an Olympic medal after his marathon of a day.
Putting a key into a lock for the last time today he readied himself for the relief of that final, soft click. Except it never came. Turn it again. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
That knot had re-tangled before he even had time to process what was happening. Burglars? But who would burgle him? He owned a restaurant, sure, but that was all he really had going for himself. He lived alone in a two-bedroom apartment in the middle of Okinawa. Surely there were better people to rob.
If not burglars, then why? Perhaps, himself? He’d left the house in a rush after Miya’s incessant begging to be picked up from school had nearly made him late for work. So maybe he’d forgotten to lock it? Or maybe Miya had forgotten something and let himself in?
Holding his helmet in his fist as his only makeshift weapon, Kojiro slowly opened the door. Being sure to tread silently so as to take any potential invaders by surprise. Except, in the end, the surprise had taken him. A strong scent of miso soup and tuna flooded his senses as soft, traditional music weaved into his ears. Man, this was one weird burglar.
Pushing the door fully open with his foot, Kojiro took a ginger step into the room, the low lighting needing some adjusting to after the harsh white of the apartment complex’s hallways. And despite the ‘weapon’ in his hands. And despite having thought he’d seen his worst nightmares that evening. Nothing could have quite prepared him for seeing this after a long shift.
Kaoru Sakurayashiki. Except he was sat, clearly half asleep, at the chabudai. The source of the pleasant smells sat in front of him with two untouched glasses of red wine.
A very weird burglar indeed.
With a sigh, Kojiro took his final steps into the open plan room of his apartment. Shutting the door with more force than necessary, he revelled in the shock it gave Kaoru as he bolted from his slumped position, eyes narrowing like a disturbed cat. His pink hair looked nice sticking to his face like that. Nevermind. The thought had been buried as quickly as it came, something Kojiro had grown used to doing after all these years.
‘Tch, I prepare a meal for you and that’s how you decide to wake me? Talk about ungrateful,’ he was back at the insults already, certainly wouldn’t be Kaoru if he wasn’t.
‘You could’ve at least told me you were coming. Scared the crap out of me when the door was already open.’
‘Not even a word of thanks. Really, I don’t know why I bother.’
Sighing, Kojiro shrugged off his leather jacket and let it hit the ground. He couldn’t help but almost feel a little guilty for Kaoru as he removed his apron and plodded to sit down opposite him. The poor man had gone out of his way to make dinner for him and had been waiting for god knows how long for him to return home just to get a slammed door as a “hello”.
‘Yes, thank you Kaoru,’ he drew out, he may have felt bad but he wasn’t about to bow down and start praying to the man.
‘Busy night?’ he smiled a little as he asked in return. Pushing Kojiro’s wine glass towards him, the other couldn’t help the relief he felt at seeing that slight turn at the corners of his lips. It had only been a few months since everything had happened with Adam at S and Kaoru being discharged from the hospital; so seeing even some semblance of happiness in the man was a pleasant observation.
‘You could say that. If I ever experience another night like that I might just run away to Italy for good.’ A soft chuckle from Kaoru in response as he clinked their wine glasses together. Wow, first he made him smile and now he’s chuckling? Maybe he finally was on the mend.
Finally taking a sip of the drink he’d been waiting for all evening, Kojiro felt the instant wash of calm crash over him. Everything was quiet now and the smells had changed. There weren’t dishes teetering and tottering on the side of the sink and kids weren’t playing pirates with his furniture.
At this moment it was just him, Kaoru and a good meal. The only two things he wouldn’t be able to live without, as much as he loathed to admit it. Kaoru had been with him through it all. From a blur of green and pink skating down school corridors to countless escapades following lost items in foreign countries. If there was one thing Kojiro was certain of in life it was that Kaoru Sakurayashiki was in the epicentre of it. Except he knew he could never be that to Kaoru.
A bittersweet taste quietly began to linger in the recesses of Kojiro’s mouth as he ushered away the thoughts, opting to, instead, shovel a mass amount of fish into his mouth to try and overpower the idle flavour that was already there.
‘Did your mother never teach you any table manners?’ Of course, it had to be a snide remark from Kaoru that brought him back.
‘Justht meansth the foodsth gud isth all,’ Kojiro responded through his mouthful, earning a more than distasteful look from the other. It certainly wasn’t a lie though, he rarely ever cooked but Kaoru really was good at it when he tried.
The pair sat in silence for a while longer, the food and company clearly hitting the spot and soothing events that neither wanted to speak about. They could sit like this for hours if it came to it, and they had before. Words were never needed, just the company alone reached all the corners that purely verbal communication would struggle with. Silence can only fill the void for so long though.
‘God, how long’s it been since we properly sat down for a meal like this?’ Kojiro threw out there after knocking back the last drags of his wine, the glass making a satisfying thunk on the wooden chabudai as he plonked it down. Some half-assed attempt at a jovial mood as they’d clearly both been thinking for too long.
‘Probably when Adam still acknowledged us,’ damn, so much for that jovial mood.
‘I’d love to say you’re wrong but…’ he trailed off, unsure how wise this conversation was. Kaoru’s physical wounds from that night may have cleared up by now but the emotional ones had been left to fester since high school.
‘Yes, well, I’d been wrong for years clearly,’
‘Kaoru, we don’t have to-’
‘You know I genuinely believed he would change? That if it was me-. That if I…’
‘Kaoru if this is just gonna upset you then you don’t have to keep talking about it. You don’t need to prove some point, I know how…devoted…you were to keeping up with him’ and how devoted you were to him as a whole. A sting began to resonate through Kojiro, that sickly, bittersweet lump building in his throat now. A near lifelong reaction to Kaoru and Adam that he still hadn’t been successful in shaking. The guilt of jealousy never too far behind.
‘No. I want to talk about it,’ oh. Kojiro sat back at this, silently communicating with Kaoru that this was allowed and he was all ears. ‘I think…I think I’ve finally accepted that we can never go back to how it was.’
‘Well yeah, weren’t you forced to by a skateboard to the face?’ Look the joke may have been a little too far but at this point Kojiro was desperate to bring any light at all into the conversation.
‘I think I’ve actually known it for a while now,’ God, he didn’t even react to the taunting. He just sat there. Pink hair now spilling slightly after running long and delicate fingers through it. His posture had slipped and slumped and his glasses hung low. The half plate of food he had left had been long forgotten about and those amber eyes that Kojiro loved so much had softened. Some selfish part of Kojiro that he definitely didn’t want to acknowledge was utterly and entirely encapsulated by how he looked right now.
‘How long’s a while?’ he asked, softening and lowering his voice as he leaned in slightly, scared that any sudden movement or noise could send Kaoru running back to his walls.
‘Italy,’ fucking hell that was a long time ago, ‘When he left for America I honestly felt like the world was ending. He’d already been off the rails for months by then but I still…I still thought I could be the one to change it. I was obsessed, Kojiro. Obsessed with proving to him that I was good enough, that I could keep up. And then when you started talking about Italy at first I just…because you were going to...as well. But you invited me to come with you. Life might have been the most turbulent then but suddenly I realised I’d had a raft the whole time. As early as then some part of me must have known I didn’t need to keep chasing after Adam.’ the confession lingered heavy in the air, both finding it difficult to digest the new information. Suddenly it felt like Kojiro was seeing Kaoru for the first time. That radiance that he had carried with him since childhood was still there even now.
Despite all the scrapes. Despite the countless broken bones. Despite the number of times he’d been abandoned he still shone to Kojiro in a way he really couldn’t describe. Maybe it was the wine or maybe it was the years of keeping a locked box on his chest but suddenly he felt as if he couldn’t stop himself anymore. A person can only put up with an age-old ache for so long anyway. God, he felt like a teenager again. Nervously weighing up confessions whilst they sat around a table late into the night.
Kojiro had ripped off many band-aids in his life so why was he still so unsure about this one? ‘If…’ fuck, okay, here we go I guess ‘If it’s any sort of reassuring, I never got what you saw in him anyway.’
He backed out, Not entirely but still not the whole truth. Of course he did. He’d been in this exact spot so many times now and every time he’d gone chicken at the last second and not said entirely what he meant. It’s fine. He’d been dancing around it like this for so many years now and he could keep doing it for years more. It wasn’t like he was short on women to fill the space.
‘What?’ it was…cold? No. Confused? Kojiro didn’t dare meet Kaoru’s eyes right now and of course, his tone had to be hard to read. Had he worked it out? Did he know? What if he already knew? Okay, whatever, just change the conversation. He was good at that, right?
‘What you saw in Adam…I mean he was a bit of a douche from the start,’ there, easy. Put the focus on Adam, not him.
‘Yeah…what do you mean by ‘saw’ in him?’
‘What?’ now it was Kojiro’s turn to be thrown off. There’s no way. Not all this time. He’d always looked at Adam like…
‘Are you saying I liked Adam?’
‘Yeah, didn’t you?’ he finally met Kaoru’s eyes. Pure shock and confusion were etched onto his raised brow and agape mouth. Suddenly Kojiro had never wanted the ground to swallow him whole more.
‘No. God no, he’s far from my type. I’d never like some privileged prick like that.’
‘But I thought. No, no you’re joking right now. You always looked at him so…so like’
‘So like what?’
‘So just like…in love. And there was that time you nearly fell and he caught you and you looked so…enamoured.’
‘Yeah, I was enamoured but not with him. I was more amazed by how he’d managed to skate to me so quickly. I was enamoured with his skating, never him.’
‘Oh my fucking god. No, you have to be joking. There’s no way, not all this time.’
‘What do you mean, all this time?’
Suddenly Kojiro sprung to his feet, the previous slower tone of the conversation long left in the dust as he started to pace. A big gorilla hand ran through his short green hair. He tugged at the back as he stared at the floor. There was no way.
‘Kaoru if you’re joking please say 'cause this isn’t fair.’
‘Of course I’m not joking, what do you mean not fair? And will you please sit back down you’re worrying me?
‘No, don’t even, don’t even worry about it,’ Even if he never liked Adam that doesn’t mean he ever liked me. This was so stupid. He’d seriously spent his entire life from his early teenage years getting worked up over something that wasn’t even real. Constantly choking on a mouthful that didn’t even exist. Always tripping over-
A sudden ice to his hand stopped him dead in his tracks. Finally having an anchor he realised his pacing had just brought him to Kaoru’s side and his delicate hands were now placed over a tight fist Kojiro wasn’t even aware he’d made.
‘Well I am worrying about it so sit down,’ he’d really gone and done it now. He really just had to give Kojiro that slow, concerned look with those treasured amber eyes. He really had to squeeze his hands as he sank down next to him. He really had to tilt his head in the way that made his hair fall in the ways that Kojiro adored.
The band-aid was falling off by itself and Kojiro was powerless against it.
‘Kaoru, I don’t even know how to start.’
‘Start by telling me what’s not fair.’
‘That’s the whole fucking thing though,’ another bottle of wine sounded very lovely right now. But he couldn’t. If he was this deep in already surely he had to take the plunge. Even if it ruined their friendship beyond repair he really wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep it all below the surface.
‘Then tell me the whole thing.’
‘Fine, okay, God, it’s. It’s not fair because…because I fucking liked you Kaoru. I liked you and I still do like you and it’s not fair because I always kept myself out of it because I thought you felt like that to Adam but you didn’t and I just…oh my god I can’t believe I’ve just said that,’ and there it was. In the open after years of being hidden. A shuddered breath rattled through Kojiro’s lungs, there was no going back now so why not just get it all out, right?
‘You know what, it isn’t even a like. I’ve been so painfully in love with you all this time,’ he finished, the last being more of a mumble but given their proximity there was no way Kaoru didn’t hear it.
What felt like eternities birthed and died in the stunned moments that followed. Why Kojiro had to go and open his big gob he didn’t know. Maybe he could run away to Italy again. Ignore his problems like he always had.
‘All this time?’ the words hung suspended in the infinite time and space between them. Kaoru more unreadable than ever.
‘Of course,’ his voice finally broke, god if this carried on Kaoru might even see him cry for the first time. He was watching the glass dome over his heart shatter before him and there was nothing that could pull the pieces together.
A deep chuckle resonated from Kaoru, not just rubbing but pouring salt into the wound. Kojiro was well aware of how insensitive Kaoru could be sometimes but this was just a whole new level of cruel. The kind of cruel that lingered like a betrayal, even if technically there was nothing for him to be betrayed over.
‘Kojiro, I knew you were thick but I didn’t quite think you were quite this brick-like’
What the fuck. Kojiro just poured out his heart and soul over something he’d spent nearly his whole life tip-toeing and he just laughs and insults him? This evening surely couldn’t have any other plans, this was already a living nightmare.
‘Koji, look at me,’ it took every inch of muscle within his body to pull his gaze up but the old nickname called to him.
Tears.
Of course, the fresh tears that were still lingering on Kaoru’s waterline had to be the first thing he noticed. Certain that he’d ruined his closest friendship, Kojiro really was about to give up in that moment. But as he went to look down again there was another surprise in store. A smile. A simple yet glaring smile that just screamed relief. Those weren’t piteous tears, they were…happy?
‘What?’ was all he could get out, if he tried to push anything else out past that god-forsaken lump that wouldn’t leave him then he would definitely choke.
A long sigh came from Kaoru, the soft and warm breath fanning Kojiro’s face for a brief second.
‘As endearing as it is, you really are stupid. Kojiro, I’ve loved you too. I’ve been trying to tell you for years but I always thought you never did anything because you didn’t like me like that.’
‘Years?’
‘Do you not remember Venice?’
‘Of course but what does that have to with…this’
‘...I let you borrow my hoodies and sleep in my bed when you got cold. I bought dinner twice in a row. When we got drunk…what platonic friend does that? And that’s not to mention the million other times I’ve tried. For God’s sake, even tonight wasn’t just a good friends thing.’
A thousand memories came flooding to Kojiro in this moment. All this time he’d just assumed these gestures had been from a place of loneliness. From knowing that they were each other's only close friends and thinking that that must have been how Kaoru treated an intimate friendship. Maybe he did have a point whenever he said he had a gorilla brain.
‘Oh my god, I’m stupid.’
‘Yes, yes you are,’ the light laugh that came from Kaoru was entirely bright in every sense, a reaction that rarely ever came from him.
‘So when you said all this time…after I said it.’
‘Alright, you don’t need to point it out.’
Kojiro really couldn’t help himself, the perfect time to tease Kaoru had arisen and who would he be not to take it?
‘Well, I guess Miya wasn’t wrong in calling us his parents.’
Producing his fan from what must have been the void, a swift strike came to the side of Kojiro’s face from Kaoru. Except the brutal blow that the former had become so accustomed to just accepting never quite came. Instead, a tender tap stamped across his cheek, the cool wood that wasn’t leaving soothing his cheeks that he wasn’t even aware had started to burn.
Finally letting his rigid spine give out a little, Kaoru slumped forwards. His forehead came to rest against Kojiro, breaking so much of the distance between them as his fan never left his face.
‘So stupid,’ Kaoru muttered, a soft breath that danced on the skin of Kojiro’s lips. If Kojiro couldn’t cope with just telling Kaoru how he felt he really wasn’t sure how to cope with this proximity. They’d been in a similar position after far too many drinks one night in Venice which, with the gift of hindsight, he now knew Kaoru must have been aching just as much as him in that moment. Aching for the touch. Aching for the intimacy. Aching for him.
Of course he couldn’t cope with it, finally the respite for both of their aching wasn’t out of touch, who would he be if he now denied that? So it was Kojiro that finally bridged the gap. Finally killed off the last of the cavity that had been sitting miles long between them for so long as he leant forwards, pressing his lips to Kaoru’s.
They were just as soft as he’d expected. He knew this man had an extensive skincare routine and suddenly he couldn’t help but be a little conscious of how chapped and rough his own lips must be. But who cared about that, they could both finally have what they’d been chasing after for so many years. That horrible knot that had been plaguing his throat finally dissipated, all the tension that it had been holding finally seeping away too as Kojiro melted into the kiss.
Everything about it felt so right. The way their mouths moulded together so perfectly to how Kaoru brought his free hand to Kojiro’s other cheek, cupping his face. How Kojiro’s arm reached around to Kaoru’s back, pressing their bodies together as years and years of pain finally came to its rest. Wounds were allowed to heal. Distances were allowed to close.
Finally pulling back, both had to take in a deep breath as any air that had been in their lungs had long since run its course. Chuckles filled the limited space between them as they fully melded and slumped together. A unison they’d yearned for.
‘God’s sake Kaoru, you’re gonna make me start enjoying Fridays.’