Work Text:
There are a number of tasks Tadashi is entrusted with that would be unusual for most personal secretaries to undertake - tasks to do with S ’ management, firstly; chauffeur by car and helicopter, secondly; but more mundane things as well, such as errands, sorting laundry, or - most regrettably - stakeouts and stalking.
Usually, if that work winds up reserved for him, it was because it has some sort of tie to S, and can’t be charged to anyone else - but some of it truly is inconspicuous everyday servant work, that somehow still winds up tasked to him in secrecy, for Ainosuke is just that untrusting of a person - or perhaps just to pile things on him out of spite. Though, if that really was his reason, Tadashi’s infallible diligence in getting everything done without showing an ounce of overexertion must have only served to aggravate him further. His workload has lessened somewhat since the tournament’s conclusion. Perhaps it's moreso his idea of fun.
He quietly scoffs.
Today’s order of business : picking up clothes from dry cleaning, then thirteen bouquets of red roses, orderered for a variety of purposes - petal baths, petal showers, fancy entrances, fancier exits, petal trails, redecorating, dressing the table, throwing around, posing for a mirror, dragging across his skin and surely a myriad other things one dares not imagine.
Nothing unusual, in sum, nor anything that should take much time - under normal circumstances. He knows the way to both outlets well, and both are only a short drive away ; a measure that means very little, when his vehicle refuses to kick into gear. He sits in the driver’s seat, stoically - turns the key several more times without panic. Time ticks on - still nothing. He considers borrowing a different car, or even taking a cab - both reasonable options. Reasonable, time-consuming options.
He exits the car, steps onto a bicycle from the public bike sharing point down the block, and heads onto the road and down his itinerary. The fastest option, though absurd by every other standard .
Tadashi doesn’t use bikes too often, but riding one comes almost as intuitively to him as the board. If your definition of ‘riding’ also covers ‘keeping your hands almost always off the handlebars, standing dead straight on the pedals, flexing and unflexing your legs with your shoulders still parallel with the ground, angling your entire body along with your bike and lifting your leg to shift the handle when turning corners’, that is. He is dressed in his three-piece-suit that he fears a standard bicycling stance may wrinkle or wear out, and figures this stance will preserve somewhat. (That, and he simply enjoys riding it this way. Whether he admits it to himself is hard to say.)
Whether or not it's effective, it certainly makes him stand out ; his head is stood higher than most other vehicles on the road. Even taking the helicopter might’ve drawn less attention ; at the very least, it would have made it far less likely that he’d be recognised. Perhaps a stop by a ready-made store for a hat and jacket might be in order.
Still : Time is of the essence. He is expected to return at 9:10, and little else matters.
Without the usual windshield and seatbelt, the ride to the dry cleaner’s feels completely different than it usually does, even as he follows the same itinerary, stops at the same crossings, deals with the same brusque drivers. Of course, the experience is different : braking, pedaling, slaloming around and slithering between the cars - the task should feel a lot more arduous, but it comes all too easily. It feels soothing, intuitive, comes so smoothly and feels so right that it ought to be wrong. It’d almost irritate him, but Tadashi’s already had to face the facts months ago, when he stepped on a board for the first time in over a decade and felt as though he’d never stopped at all. Back then, the urgency didn’t allow him any time to let it sink it ; by now, it was too late. He hadn’t changed - he may have believed that he had grown, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t been able to snuff out that part of him, only cover it up. Rather than be able to face that realization, he’d had to bury it too, observe it objectively in the back of his mind, ‘accept it’ like one accepts losing an argument, rather than feel it.
The realization has long past, and therefore so has any chance to make peace with it. All that lingers is a vague, awkward unpleasantness. The good thing about that is that, at least, his mind is clear (excessive worry makes one a hazard on the road).
He does not remain clear-headed for long, however, as the road begins to slope .
He holds his breath, closes his eyes - for just a second. Air slashes at his face, blows back his hair. He sees nothing, but feels as though he is elsewhere - as though he is back there, in what is by all means a race down to hell (or at the very least, the hospital), an asinine endeavor that, in his case, invokes not thrill, but intense focus and wholeness. A silent sonata, with a beginning and an end, without a single misstep along the way. Decisions are given mere seconds to be made - and yet, he knows exactly what he’s doing. Or feels that he does.
“I’ve been dying to race against you.”
And sharp pain to his cheek.
Earnestly locking eyes for the first time in years. A poor excuse for conversation, but it meant the world.
He opens his eyes as the slope flattens. It wasn’t much of a slope to begin with, but enough that he’s going faster than would be reasonable. His chosen posture makes it hard to brake, but at this speed, swiveling the bike from side to side to lose momentum and shifting his weight back suffices to slow him down - putting a foot down to mark a full stop at the yield sign.
Years ago - on that day, as he watched the flames, Tadashi had sworn off ever skating again. It was a promise he’d made to no one but himself, seeing as there no longer was anyone who would honestly listen to him. He felt that nodding and abetting, offering that neutral stability and dedication, being a quiet anchor concerned only with reason and discretion, was for the best. A single instance of reprimand had cemented the fact that he lacked backbone, and restraint was all he was good for. Standing back and choosing the reasonable option. Doing nothing of his own accord.
Even as years passed and Ainosuke returned to skating, and things escalated from there, he kept himself to that promise. He continued to believe that he had been responsible for his destructive behavior, and kept to his chosen position. He would erase from his life anything that wasn’t instrumental to structuring Ainosuke’s.
Yes - he was structure. The spine - solid, linear, stood in the background. Quiet, restrained - but essential in supporting the bold, boisterous, beating ribcage, its passionate heart, spiked ribs and grand aggressiveness. Prone to shattering and crushing. The spine and ribcage, split cleanly apart by an ax years ago, each rendered obsolete by their separation from the other. Silence and cacophony - opposite in nature, yet identical in that both obstructed any communication - hell bent on their convictions, staring in opposite directions. Time only widened the gap, as neither side reached out.
- until.
Tadashi exited the dry-cleaner’s. Seeing as he wasn’t using the saddle anyway, he positioned it as high as it would go, and hooked the pressed clothes onto it - they hung a good few inches off the ground. It would have to do. He also bought and put on a cheap hat and a hooded jacket - it was worth the time loss.
That was the first of his two errands run - unfortunately, it was also the easiest one. While not being constrained by traffic allowed him to make good time even without a motor, the lack of a trunk - or any space at all - certainly turned the transport of thirteen bouquets into an ordeal.
He’d have to make it work. He was already late.
For years, there hadn’t been a single honest exchange between them. That was what he had believed. But since that night under the moon, he’d gained some retrospective - and realized some things. Cumbersome, uncomfortable things. Replaying in his head what he’d thought to be - and was - vindictive verbal abuse, and feeling that it was addressed to him, acted as taunts, screamed, urged, begged him to come out, reach out, speak up - a subconscious attempt at conversation from someone who’d grown to feel nothing but rage. But still, they were attempts. And they were repeated, visceral, passionate. Staring straight into him. To all of them, Tadashi had never reacted and snapped back ; merely bowed and said but the same seven words - infallibly, in monotone - backing down when called out once - fleeing the eyes that looked for his. And each time, he was met in return with distraught contempt. Ainosuke had tried . He hadn’t. And so the gap widened.
- until.
“I’ve been dying to race against you.”
He broke his silence - and was met with open rage. Not pretense, not taunts, but an honest reaction. Their eyes locked. And he let him compete. It was barely a conversation, but it meant the world.
He had stayed immobile for years. He was scared of change. He was scared of failure. He was scared of loss. He was scared of risk. But it was that same fear, which had secluded him into restraint, that convinced him to finally step forth into the flames - misguided as he still was, he had made a move.
Tadashi meticulously studies the structure of his bike, stuffing and tying fifteen flower bouquets - thirteen from the order and two extra that he’s paid for out of pocket in case any get lost, alongside jewelry wire to stitch everything together - to it in as strategical a way as possible - away from the wheels and pedals, not too low to the ground. It nonetheless looks like a great, big, red mess. He’s been honked at several times by now, and this only serves to further aggravate drivers, as he now leaves a handful of petals behind him with each sudden movement.
Nevermind that ; he’ll make it in time, if he gets lucky with traffic lights.
…He thinks that, but his handling of the bike is looser than before - not because he’s lost control, but because he feels restless. He cuts corners - just a little, still taking precautions not to hit anything or get himself ejected from his position, accelerates in roundabouts, takes the sidewalk here and there. But he stops at stop signs and red lights.
It had been a few months. The Takano case had long been forgotten by the press and the masses. The tournament had concluded, and S had resumed business as usual. As for Ainosuke, his demeanor hadn’t changed too significantly, but the intent behind it had shifted. His fire had been somewhat quelled. He still spoke in commands, jabs, theatrics and other loud noises more often than any other way, but he was willing - able - to listen.
…Well, all was relative. Multiple times now, after hearing the usual seven words come from Tadashi’s mouth, rolling his eyes and biting down on his lip with annoyance, he would vaguely gesture with his right hand, and instruct him to ‘Speak.’ - freely, that is. It usually took little more than two or three sentences meticulously deconstructing the logic leaps and absurdities of Ainosuke’s latest grand idea for him to bite harder down on his lip, bend forward on his desk, hurriedly retract his previous statement and go the rest of the day being butthurt.
But the fact was - he did listen, and he did take it into account. Even without needing to use his words, Tadashi could - and did - show agreement or disagreement in the tone of his usual stock response, and be understood. In retrospect, for as vindictive and plainly cruel of a person as Ainosuke was and could be, he did not hesitate to get rid of people, and would sooner do that than keep them around just to torment them. Tadashi hadn’t been gotten rid of, because he trusted him. He was irreversibly attached to him. And with their feelings out in the open, that had only become more apparent - even with all the spite that still stained it.
To an outsider, it may look like not much has changed. And certainly, the road ahead is long. There are some constraints and strains on their relationship, oddities to their interactions that will never fully come undone, due to their situation and their nature as people. But there is something there, where once had been nothing but a gap, a burnt down bridge, axed down long ago. Wounds don’t mend easily, but the dislocated spine and ribcage have slotted back into place.
A miracle recovery he could take no credit for.
Tadashi readjusts his line of sight, his eyes having drooped down alongside his train of thought. Final traffic light on today’s itinerary, two dozen meters ahead.
From the start, he’d been stuck. Stuck in that one moment of letting him down, tainting all that had come before it. He’d been too wrapped up in his conviction that his mistake had been the root cause of it all - that he alone, his presence in his life, had ruined him, and that consequently he alone, the martyr, could fix him by undoing what he had introduced - such that he failed to see what Ainosuke had really needed from him. It was the exact kind of conceit that leads one to drive straight out of a corner, land flat on their back, get run over by a car they couldn’t see. Skaters are idiots. But he was an idiot and a coward, whose sole good decisions had been to step up years too late - and, at the end of the line, step back, letting a third party take the wheel (or, rather, show the way forward).
He shifts his weight forward and to the right, his body moving all at once, as though devoid of any bones at all, curving with the wind and the angle of the road, tilting several degrees lower than his balance should have allowed, the headlights of cars he barely misses hazily blending with the fluttering petals and the red light behind him as he takes the corner and slinks back into place, posture just as flawlessly straight and perpendicular with the ground as before. He runs a hand through his hair as, somewhere far behind, petals land on the tarmac.
He wasn’t upset with the way things had gone, in truth. Tadashi felt it had been for the best. Both of them were too far gone down their respective ruts, and had failed to see things for what they were. He long had believed that he alone knew what ailed Ainosuke, what was best for him, and what he himself deserved for letting things devolve this far. In truth, what he had worked towards wasn’t the best for him - just the path of least resistance. A futile, misguided and self-serving effort. Being humbled in that had been well deserved and well needed.
(Although, letting a third party - let alone one so deeply uninvolved and undeserving of the burden and collateral damage - pick up their slack was its own kind of conceited and selfish, but he… wasn’t one to concern himself with that. Perhaps they’d make it up to him, somehow, someday, if they could expense it.)
“You didn’t arrive on time, Tadashi.”
Without letting it show through, he swallows. Truth be told, he hasn’t checked the time in his hurry - too occupied with parking the bike back to its sharing point, untying his elaborate chain of flowers, and ridding himself of the hat, the jacket, any damaged or extraneous bouquets and of his sweat - but he isn’t surprised.
“...28 seconds earlier, and without a car.”
That tone of envious admiration, thinly veiled as inconvenience, makes it hard no to smirk - and so he does, very subtly.
“...Risk bears some reward.”