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As a skater, Kaoru is familiar with blood; scraped knees were a recurrent sight when he and Kojiro ventured into this hobby. You don’t spend years on a skateboard without collecting some scarred tissue—too white even for his complexion. Then again, Kaoru is well versed in flowers, too. He is, after all, the one who made the table floral arrangements for Sia la Luce, those ikebana classes he took in high school finally being put to use after years of the knowledge collecting dust in the back of his mind. Kaoru has also lost count of the number of pieces he has been commissioned to make that, in some way or another, featured flowers. He can’t exactly blame his clients for their—perhaps—lack of originality, not with his family name right there, and not when he knows that flowers are the closest living thing to poetry.
The thing is, those two things—blood and flowers, flowers and blood—do not intertwine, not for Kaoru at least, and not usually. When they do (like that one time he visited his grandmother in Kyoto and landed into her bush of wild roses) it’s different from the messy affair that is having your wound full of dirt after eating pavement and threatening an infection. Back then, the blood pearled on his skin where the prickles punctured it, clean.
There is nothing clean, much less orderly, about what he finds in Kojiro’s bathroom. Kaoru picks up the cherry blossom branch from the sink almost reverently, taking in the sight of the ruffled flowers adorned with spots of blood; if he tries hard enough, he can convince himself they are blotches of red ink.
Or, he can feign Kojiro cut himself during knife-work, and it just happened that the gorilla needed to pick up some cherry blossoms to woo somebody. Surely that must be it, forget that it feels like a lifetime away the last time Kojiro cut himself while cooking—Kaoru knows that, because Kaoru knows everything about his best friend.
So it’s the unknown—in the shape of an abyss, or perhaps like a cliff at Crazy Rock—what makes Kaoru’s breath hitch and his heartbeat pick up an insane rhythm, and no, it can’t be, but then Kojiro is barging into the bathroom, coughing, hand covering his mouth and, again, Kaoru knows.
Because Kaoru is nothing but scholarly, intelligent and traditional, so there’s only one logical conclusion he can draw from the bloody flowers to Kojiro’s blood-stained lips.
“You truly have bananas for brains,” he says, flailing the branch in his hand and making a few petals scatter to the white-tilled floor. Kojiro frowns, the spark of annoyance behind his russet eyes fueling Kaoru further into his diatribe, “Look where all this ‘no strings attached’ sleeping around has landed you, gorilla.”
“Shut up,” Kojiro says, shouldering his way into the bathroom and elbowing him away from the sink. Kaoru lets out an indignant squeal, moving his hand to swat at Kojiro’s biceps when he sees the tense line of his jaw.
Not annoyance, then, Kaoru surmises. He looks at the flowers, and scrunches his nose. They are easy, usually; his and Kojiro’s relationship flows like the Mogami River in May, their shared experiences no different from the first seasonal rains. The fight in Kojiro’s eyes screams anything but ‘easy’, though, but it’s the relentless wind outside what makes Kaoru’s throat constrict.
“You are supposed to be aggressive with this kind of stuff,” Kaoru continues, and he makes an effort to look at Kojiro, who is now splashing water over his face. “Who are you holding a candle for, Kojiro?”
“I don’t wanna hea—”
“No woman can possibly be worth all of this.”
The sound the water pipes make when Kojiro abruptly closes the faucet resonates through the room. Kaoru feels an odd sense of kinship with the pressure those pipes are being subjected to. He has an inkling, too, about what Kojiro’s rebuttal was going to be before cut off his words, but it’s been a while since Ainosuke was more important to him than his best friend.
“There you go, assuming things.” Kojiro gesticulates to accompany his words, but he sounds just tired. A part of him wants to be gentle with him, but Kaoru could choke on his anxiety right now, no flowers needed whatsoever, and that makes softness feel so out of his reach.
“Carla,” he calls out to her, voice strained. She almost doesn’t have time to answer her well-programmed “Yes, Master?”, because Kaoru continues the moment his bracelet lights up, “What is the meaning of the cherry blossom in the language of flowers?”
“Don’t bring your—”
“Apologies, Master, but it—”
“—robogirlfriend into—”
“—appears there is no consensus regarding—”
“—this. Are you even listening to me?!” Kojiro raises his voice, and that sends him into a coughing fit that has Kaoru wincing and gripping the cherry branch until his knuckles turn white.
“—the general meaning of the cherry blossoms in the language of flowers.” Kaoru frowns, and supports himself on the door’s jamb, still looking at Kojiro. “Would you like me to give you an overview of different cultures and the meaning of the cherry blossom?”
“Yes. Thank you, Carla,” he says, eyes fixated on Kojiro’s bent form over the sink. Kaoru hardly pays attention to her (there is, indeed, something something about women and cherry blossoms), not that he can when the sounds coming out of Kojiro’s throat are hardly human. They make him flinch, shift uncomfortable on his feet, too aware of how cold the tiles of Kojiro’s bathroom feel under his tabi.
Even if Kojiro doesn’t know—doesn’t believe him—Kaoru listens to him. Has always been, through Skype calls, in the thickness of a bush while avoiding the cops, be it about a recipe or a whispered secret in the midst of the night—as long as it’s Kojiro who we are talking about, Kaoru will listen. Now, Kaoru doesn’t listen to Joe exactly, and as much as he wants to compartmentalize this whole situation like he does with everything else regarding them and blame it on his friend’s suave persona, he finds that he can’t do that.
The flowers are too pink, the branches are too sturdy under his sweaty grip, there’s too much blood, the room is getting darker at the corners of his vision, and there was this shogun—his heart is hammering in his chest, Kaoru realizes—who landscaped the entirety of Edo with cherry blossoms because he couldn’t get rid of them. Kaoru is a terrible friend for not noticing until now, and maybe it’s too late, or maybe Kojiro can get better in a less humid place, like Sapporo, and at least that would be in Japa—
“Kaoru. Can you name ten things you see?” Kojiro’s voice seeps through the cracks of Kaoru’s consciousness. The sensation is not dissimilar to when Kaoru applies lip balm to his chapped lips.
He blinks. A toothbrush is the first thing that catches his attention. He tells Kojiro so, but his eyes remain fixated on the toiletry, as if it potentially holds all the secrets to the universe. It’s a single one, no companion in sight. Kaoru’s brain conjures the image of his own toothbrush next to Kojiro’s, and something inside his chest tingles. It is a weird sensation, when you pair it with the tightness from before, how clammy his hands feel.
“Kaoru?”
Kaoru keeps his eyes darting around the room, landing everywhere except on Kojiro, who is at an arm’s reach, giving him space.
“The sink. Your mirror. An ugly shower curtain.” At this, Kojiro snorts. “The door’s jamb, pressing on my back. One of your socks,” he says as he points at one black sock hanging from the edge of the hamper. “A branch of cherry blossoms, but it’s not from a tree.” Kaoru presses his lips until he’s sure they have turned white, and he finally meets Kojiro’s gaze. The air between them is charged, but Kaoru doesn’t know how to dissipate the tension, so he continues, “An incandescent light bulb that I told you to switch to a LED one ages ago.” Kaoru frowns, eyes flicking back to his friend. “You.”
“That’s nine,” Kojiro says, softly.
“And a gorilla,” Kaoru finishes, and he winces immediately after. His thoughts jump to that special person Kojiro is waiting for; Kaoru doubts they call him names like this, no matter how endearing they are to him. Does Kojiro know this?
Warm surrounds him instantly. Kojiro smells like the pestèda he uses to season his pizzòccheri. This entire week, Kaoru had to content himself with the buckwheat pasta instead of his usual carbonara, but now, in Kojiro’s embrace, he doesn’t mind the sacrifice. It had been Sia la Luce’s anniversary, after all. He fists Kojiro’s green shirt with his free hand when he tries to pull away.
“You will tell me if it gets worse, right, meathead gorilla?” he asks. Kaoru hates how small he sounds.
Kojiro hums. Kaoru recognizes that noncommittal sound; it’s the one Kojiro makes when he doesn’t want to burden Kaoru with his problems, the one Kaoru grew accustomed to when Kojiro was in Italy.
“It is not lethal,” Carla says when he asks her. “Shogun Yoshimune retired and died of old age,” she continues. Kaoru chooses to believe her, because he made her to be flawless.
Still, Kaoru fishes his old inkstone from the bottom of his drawer and throws himself into the grueling task of grinding the inkstick. The last time he did so, he was barely starting his career, he remembers. Kojiro was in Italy, too, and he was working on Carla; the time spent in liquifying the pine soot was time used to fantasize about Carla’s code.
Now, the only thing that plagues Kaoru’s thoughts are cherry blossoms. The one from his yard has yet to bloom—it’s the middle of January, after all, but that doesn’t keep Kaoru from frowning at the bare branches he sees from his window. On the bright side, he gets to have cherry blossoms all for himself, long after the trees of the island have lost their flowers. Kojiro has always accused him of being extra, which is stupid because Kaoru might control many things, but the whims of his ancestors are not one of them.
“Whimsical,” Kaoru mutters to himself, applying extra pressure for the last grind. Before he has time to register his own movements, he is straightening his back and picking his brush. There’s a moment of pause; there’s not much to think about the characters he wants to write, that had been an easy choice—as if it had been any in the first place. The ink drips, tiny dark-blue splotches forming on the paper, as Kaoru’s thoughts stray to Kojiro’s special person.
The first strokes are automatic, his senses barely registering the wet glide of the brush, resulting in the first kanji not being as perfect as it should be. Kaoru feels like a teenager all over again.
He doesn’t know who Kojiro’s special person is—someone moody, whimsical and capricious, if he has to take in the meaning of the winter cherry blossom that plagues Kojiro’s lungs, but Kaoru doesn’t exactly care. As things stand, Kojiro could bail badly during a coughing fit; it’s a miracle he hasn’t done it yet, not that Kaoru knows. His grip on the brush tightens, and Kaoru takes a deep breath.
It hurts, to realize there is a part of Kojiro that Kaoru isn’t privy of, that there is something Kojiro has been keeping from him for years, until it got so bad he couldn’t hide it anymore. Kaoru feels inclined to use that hurt to finish the piece; it would be easier than tapping into teenage fantasies long buried and forgotten. He does it anyway.
By the time he finishes, Kaoru can recognize the longing in it. “I would love you,” says the beginning of each stroke. “I can be so good for you” is engraved in every turning cover. “Don’t take him away from me,” scream the endings.
Like every plan Kaoru has, it’s risky, but with a high reward in the case it succeeds. It starts with Kaoru toning down the insults with Kojiro—just the necessary amount—when they are at Crazy Rock. He stops whacking him with the fan, or sending Carla to bully his ankles. The day Kojiro has a problem with the stock, Kaoru takes over his spreadsheet without any biting remark.
Of course, it doesn’t succeed, if the conflicted looks Kojiro gives Kaoru are anything to go by. Kaoru feels at the end of its rope, trying to get Kojiro to notice him, until one day, two weeks later, the rope finally snaps.
It starts with Kaoru complimenting Kojiro’s carbonara in a non-backhanded way, on an ordinary Wednesday night after work.
“You don’t need to treat me like… like this, okay?” Kojiro says, gesturing vaguely at Kaoru. He can’t help but arch an eyebrow at him, urging Kojiro to continue, even if Kaoru doesn’t like where this is heading at all. If Kojiro notices the way he crumples the napkin in his hand, he doesn’t say anything, and continues, “I’m not going to die, four-eyes. You don’t need to treat me like I’m fragile or whatever is going on in that pretty head of yours.” He coughs a bit when he takes Kaoru’s plate, and it sounds less severe, not as agonizing as that night in the bathroom or that one time Kaoru caught him supporting himself on a tree at Crazy Rock. The look in his eyes is unreadable, though.
Maybe his love is starting to be less unrequited, Kaoru theorizes. Panic zings through his veins as Kojiro retires to the kitchen.
“You think you could love me?”
Kaoru hears the sound of a plate being dropped in a steel sink, followed by a curse and more coughing. He remains glued to the barstool, breathing heavily, and trying to come to terms that he is this terrible person who wouldn’t let go of Kojiro even in the event of his friend’s happiness being, possibly, at an arm’s reach. Kaoru never stopped being an egoistic teenager, just like he never stopped loving Kojiro; it just seemed convenient to forget about his feelings.
“What the fuck, Kaoru?”
He clears his throat, before saying, calm and collected, or at least trying to give the impression of it, “If I loved you, and you loved me back, you could get rid of the hanahaki.” He takes a sip from his vine; it’s a Prosecco, because Kojiro knows him so well. Kaoru realizes just how unjust he’s been, getting hurt at Kojiro for hiding something from him when he did the same. He lets the words marinate a bit, keeps the wine in his mouth more than it is socially acceptable. Kojiro’s head emerges from the entry of the kitchen, from where he peers at him, blinking in what seems to be awe. Kaoru clears his throat again, and corrects himself, “If I love you, and you love me back, you will get rid of the hanahaki, —” Kaoru takes a deep breath and has to fight himself to not avert his eyes just when Kojiro was starting to look a bit too hopeful and get too close, “— you ape,” he adds lamely.
“What kind of transactional bullshit are you proposing?” Kojiro starts laughing, then he chokes mid-guffaw, and has to hit his chest to alleviate the coughing fit that follows.
“You truly look like a gorilla now,” Kaoru says, and he can’t, for the life of him, stop the fondness that drips over every word he says. He still lets Kojiro struggle with the cough, because if he is laughing at him, he deserves it.
“And you just sounded like fucking Edward Elric, you nerd,” Kojiro volleys back in a raspy voice, and it feels like everything is right in the world even if it isn’t. Kaoru gapes at him, offended, then snaps open his fan when he feels the telling heat of a blush creeping up his neck. Kojiro takes the fist from his mouth, and slaps his hand on the counter in front of Kaoru. “Here, dessert,” he says, and Kaoru has to do a double take because when Kojiro raises his hand, there’s a cherry seed.
Kaoru blinks once, twice, thrice.
“You want the whole discourse about giving you half my life—” Kojiro gently plucks the fan out of his hand; he is only able to do so because Kaoru’s limbs feel like jello, “—or is this enough?” he asks softly, hot breath over Kaoru’s lips.
At the back of his mind, there’s the notion that this, everything, is ridiculous. That he could have spared Kojiro (and maybe himself) a lot of heartache. Maybe it shows on his expression, because Kojiro cups the right side of his face, calloused thumb caressing his apple cheek.
“Fuck off,” Kaoru says, but leans into Kojiro’s palm altogether. He chuckles softly after a moment, and grips Kojiro’s wrist when he tries to retreat. “Stop deflecting, you dolt.”
“Are you seriously asking me to answer your question?” Kojiro sounds positively indignant, and Kaoru revels in the fact that it’s him that makes Kojiro like this, and no one else. “I should’ve puked blood all over your nicest kimono, the purple one with the pattern of lilies.”
Kaoru stores the information about Kojiro’s preferences on his kimono for later, too busy grabbing his jaw in a vicious grip.
“You wouldn’t dare, muscle for brains,” Kaoru grits out. His eyes flicker towards Kojiro’s lips, and Kojiro has the audacity to lick them. Under the restaurant’s lights they shine, spit slick, plump and a tad too irresistible for Kaoru to not feel affronted at the feelings the sight makes resurface. “You love me too much to do that, hm?”
The smile that Kojiro gives him is small, timid almost; it grows slowly on his lips, so his dimples take a while to appear, but Kaoru feels compelled to let go of him to enjoy the sight at its fullest.
“I love you just enough, don’t you think?” Kojiro takes the cherry seed and turns it in his fingers, seemingly lost in thoughts for a moment.
Kaoru seizes the opportunity to kiss Kojiro. It’s intended as a mere press of lips, but Kojiro hums, tangling his fingers in the hair at the base of his neck, ruining his ponytail, and ruining Kaoru for anyone else. He gasps into the kiss, his hands scrambling to get a grip on something until they find Kojiro’s shirt. The metallic taste of blood still lingers on Kojiro’s lips, something at which Kaoru would be disgusted by principle. What he does, instead, is chase the taste into Kojiro’s mouth, until he is on the verge of climbing over the bar just to get Kojiro closer.
It is Kojiro who breaks the kiss, forcing Kaoru to sit again, heavy hands on his shoulders. Kojiro keeps his head bowed down, chest heaving like he just had an intense beef.
“Damn Pinky,” Kojiro says. Kaoru chooses to run his left hand over his green curls. “No matter what, I’m condemned to be left breathless by you, huh?”
Kaoru huffs a laugh through his nose.
“Such a juvenile pick-up line,” he chides, and clicks his tongue, taking the package he brought with him from the empty stool at his right. “Try to get on my level,” he says, gesturing with his chin.
Kojiro cocks an eyebrow at him, taking the package and, it seems, putting the effort in not tearing it like he does with all his Amazon parcels. Kojiro looks, and looks, and looks, at the framed calligraphy piece, and Kaoru starts fidgeting with his fan’s tassel.
“Whimsical, hm?” Kojiro’s voice has a gravelly quality to it when he breaks the silence. His gaze is fixated on a cherry blossom branch he has in a vase next by the wall. “It will be a good replacement when this wilts away,” he says cheekily, winking at Kaoru.
He makes sure Kojiro has put the frame away when he drags him by the collar of his shirt to kiss him again, because he wants to, like the capricious person he is.