Chapter Text
Kinjō Aigo isn’t used to the cold.
Every morning starting mid-October, he’s been dragging himself and his blanket around the icey floors of his house and sitting in front of the heater, eating still-cold rice for breakfast and drinking outlandish amounts of boiling coffee to cope. He’d probably be late for work consistently these days if timeliness wasn’t beaten into him through less-than-stellar means.
Hanging on his wall next to the water heater control panel was a picture frame his little sister got for him of the river (if it could be called that) near their house, complete with ducks and everything. It sits there perpetually reminding him of how nice and warm Okinawa is compared to this frosty, dreadful hellscape of a city. Every morning, he’d stumble past it and glare at it; a nostalgic one, yes, but a glare. Stupid Tomoe and her stupid photography aspirations and her stupid little obsession with being the most compassionate dipshit humanly possible.
Most years, he’d be the one to fly back home for the Holidays and spend the coldest weeks there for a sort of half-assed reprieve, then come back to Tokyo to brave his way through the rest of January through February. However, apparently and unbeknownst to him until just two weeks before he would’ve set out to leave, his parents and extended family had decided to be intrusive, frustrating, meddlesome fuckwits instead and fly over here, despite the general lack of money, a place to stay or his fucking permission.
Every morning starting mid-October, he’s been dragging himself around his way-too-cold house, clutching his fluffy blanket like a lifeline. This morning is no different; he would’ve opted to stay in bed until the temperature had at least risen to an acceptable (but still absolutely bone-crackling) 7ºc, or at least until he could see the fucking sun over the horizon, but alas, he’d be a dick of a son, brother, nephew and grandson if he didn’t at least try to make it to the airport in time to celebrate the arrival of his asshole family and co. surviving their multitude of exciting plane rides.
He supposes he should be happy his parents had opted to spend some of their time travelling the world with everyone before deciding to harass their firstborn son for a little while. Still, all he feels is regret that they couldn’t have found a plane with an ETA more considerate of his frozen ass.
Nothing he can do about it now, he supposes with a heavy sigh as he calls a cab.
———
Aigo is pretty certain that most people don’t have their bosses tag along when they see their family from the airport. Work friends, sure, maybe, but bosses? Not to mention two of them, one of which technically shouldn’t even mind Aigo at all? Kind of weird.
Then again, Aigo is also rather certain that the four of them barely constitute for ‘most people’.
(The day after Mom had called him, he’d come to work notably grumpy. Momose, with those ridiculously kind eyes of his, had asked him, “Are you okay? You seem sort of off, no offence!”
Aigo shrugged and laughed a bit, and when he’d explained the situation to Momose, the guy had offered to accompany him at the airport if it would’ve helped.
“Yes, me, too,” Shirosaki had also said with a simple nod. Given that he was practically joint with Momose at the hip, Aigo had expected no less, but it was a nice sentiment anyway. See, this would’ve been absurd enough on its own, if it wasn’t for Chief and his frankly adorable antics.
He had grumbled something under his breath from where he was sitting a little bit off to the side, something that Aigo wasn’t able to catch, but he thought he knew the general gist of it.
“Aoyama, would you like to come, too?” Might as well invite the entire company at this point. He might invite Reika from HR, anyway. She’s funny and would make a wonderful barrier between him and his mother’s questions. “The more the merrier, right?”
His face lit up and he accepted with no hesitation. Well, that was that, then.)
Momose looks pitifully at the unattractively large coats Aigo shows up wearing, looking less like a properly composed adult that has acclimatised to the city he’s lived in for more than a couple of years now and more like a fragile snow child living up in the arctic with his seventeen cousins that match him like nesting dolls, all waddling in the snow in boots too big for them.
“Good morning, Kinjō,” he greets good-naturedly with that pleasantly mild smile of his.
Momose himself is wearing a tasteful knitted sweater under a long coat, looking far more composed and adult-y. Shirosaki follows suit beside him in their looking-like-adults club thing they’ve got going on, sporting a jumper, jacket, hoodie and scarf, which, now that he thinks about it, is top-heavy compared to the simple black jeans he has on.
Suddenly and without warning, a small child barrels into Aigo’s legs at record speeds and nearly topples over the poor guy. Ah, the plane must have landed a bit ago, then, he registers faintly as he tries to keep his balance.
His pair of companions discover that this is Kinjō Satoshi, his eight-year-old little brother who, according to him, is “the greatest race car driver in the whole entire world, and when I grow up, I want to be a bulldozer!” He also, without a single falter in his confidence, informs them all, “I know that my dreams of being a bulldozer are not real, but that’s the point of dreams!”
Aigo rolls his eyes, ruffling the kid’s hair.
A petite woman donning the glitteriest jacket ever known to the population of Haneda appears from the baggage claim with a similarly matching glittery carry-on. She smiles widely as she catches sight of Aigo, tapping over to them.
“Aigo darling,” she calls, going in for a hug. “It’s good to see you. Who are these with you?”
“Hi, Aunt Miharu,” he laughs softly as she pats his cheek. “These are my–” boss? co-workers? besties? “–friends.”
She claps her hands together, delighted. “Oh, my dear Aigo made friends here! That’s wonderful! I thought your plan was just to sleep around forever until someone decided to keep you.”
He squawks indignantly, instantly reminded that actually, all of his family completely, irreparably and indiscriminately sucks except for maybe Yuzukin.
“Excuse you, I’m great at making friends!” He doesn’t even know why he’s defending himself.
“Perhaps, but I remember you’ve always been quite the loverboy. Don’t tell me your charms don’t work on the classy city-boys of Tokyo.”
“They absolutely work,” he grumbles. “I have plenty of charms.”
“And girlfriends?”
Momose is looking between them helplessly, growing more and more confused with every second. Aunt Miharu takes notice and turns to them.
“I’m Akamine Miharu,” she tells them with a sweet smile, bowing casually in greeting. “Pleasure to meet you.”
The two echo the sentiment back with their names tacked on at the end. Satoshi seems now to decide that Shirosaki is his favourite person in the world and clings onto his leg, much to his dismay and Momose’s clear amusement.
Trailing behind Aunt Miharu is his little cousin Akamine Yuzuki, coming up to grip the back of her skirt.
“Yuzukin!” Aigo hollers, picking him up and spinning him around. Giggles escape him the little boy peels, positively melting his heart and hurting his teeth with how sweet it is. “How was France? Did you have fun?”
“It was kinda boring,” the kid mumbles as he’s set down, still with a bashful grin. “But the aeroplane lady gave me this!” He brandishes a little aeroplane keychain plushie with the JAL logo plastered across its fin, no bigger than Aigo’s palm.
“Dude, that’s so cool!” Aigo tells him enthusiastically, ruffling his hair. “I’m glad you had fun.”
It’s a couple more minutes like that, with his mom wailing dramatically about how it’s been a forever since they’ve last seen each other, his father eagerly shaking everyone’s hand like an overexcited westerner and nearly crushing Aigo’s bones with the hug he gives him, his little sister recounting tales of France with feigned reluctance and his grandmother magically producing chinsukō from nowhere and giving it to his co-worker-boss-bestie-friends.
“My sister tells me you’ve lost your charm,” his mom says loudly as they all loiter chatting around their luggage, prompting his dad to look up from his legitimate and unironic conversation with Shirosaki about the weather in France. “Is that so?”
“Uh– no, excuse you, I’m positively delightful, Ma, I have, like, fifty girlfriends and even more boyfriends.”
She ticks up her eyebrow sceptically. “Oh, really? Do I get to meet any of them?”
And because the universe might hate him, or maybe because he had stopped to listen to their conversation to deliberately appear at the most personally inconvenient time ever instead of just showing up like a normal person, Aoyama manifests like a cutesy spawn of hell to bring unto him a fate far, far worse than having to answer that question.
“Good morning! How was your flight? These are for you.” He hands him a plastic baggy from the airport FamilyMart full of what he discovers is bottles of Kumattechan honey tea, enough for his entire family. Shit. That’s not helpful. (That’s also incredibly adorable and so very Aoyama. Shit. Fuck.)
“It was fine,” his dad interjects before neither he nor his mom can say anything, shaking his poor boss’s free hand vigorously. “Kinjō Ousuke, it’s a pleasure. Are you the bright young man lighting up my son’s world every day and warming his heart on cold nights?”
“Dad!” Aigo cries helplessly.
He can see Aoyama’s eyes narrow suspiciously at his dad from behind his glasses. Aigo hopes, wishes, nay, prays that he doesn’t–
“Yes.”
God-fucking-damnit.
It’s then that he notices most everyone’s gone quiet. Momose is watching with wide eyes and when Aigo looks over, he notices his cheeks are dusted pink, too.
…
“Nice to meet you, son!” is what his dad breaks the silence with, and he’s never wanted more to instantly die from hypothermia.
Aunt Miharu pats him on the shoulder with a Cheshire grin while the others crowd around the FamilyMart baggy that Tomoe snatched out of his limp hand.
“Your boyfriend is nice,” she says, and he almost laughs incredulously.
This is so not happening.