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There’s a palm tree bordering on nude swaying overhead, each of its half-dressed fronds lazily rocking with the summer, barely a handful of leaves hanging on to the stems. Kaiser blinks up at them, and if he tilts his head a little to the right, he can see the moon, clear as day, between the gaps of a particular palm frond. He frowns as he counts the leaves, disappointment pushing out a scoff when he only tallies twelve.
A loud splash in the pool erupts into a chorus of cheers and whistles, and when Kaiser sits up to observe, his disappointment compounds with a blend of annoyance and pity, a familiar cocktail. Several other university students have taken it upon themselves to cannonball off the roof and into the water, climbing over each other as they race to the edge.
How boring.
Kaiser stands to make himself a drink, side-stepping drunk classmates and a few deflating Sebastian the Ibis pool floats. He opts for an orange cup and pours himself a whiskey soda. More cheers erupt from behind, and his exasperating curiosity tells him to turn and watch as the same cannonballing students have come to the conclusion that tearing down all of the UM banners and wearing them as capes would assist in making their splash spectacular. Somehow they look smaller, and Kaiser decides on adding more to his cup when he feels the splash tickle the back of his calves.
He knocks back the entire drink and pours himself another, checking his email on his phone because he can’t allow himself an entire twenty-four hours to pass without making sure that he’s still standing on the tallest pillar.
Anticipation hums in his fingers when he opens the unread email from his Thermodynamics and Kinetic Theory professor. It’s uncomfortable; it’s infuriating, the way he feels like he might unravel as he scans the text. The email is congratulatory, celebrating the end of the semester and those who passed the course. This professor has been rumored to highlight his top ranking students, and Kaiser is counting on his reputation.
Sure enough, relief swarms his chest, which in and of itself is simple enough to piss him off, when Kaiser reads his name at the top of the list.
But as he reads the name that sits just below his, anger, agitation, and something else he’s chosen to ignore, pull at a fraying thread.
Yoichi Isagi
Kaiser scans the chairs from across the pool and finds him, criss-crossed and smiling, chatting with someone on his phone while a couple of their classmates try to pry it from his hands and egg him into the pool. Kaiser funnels all of his frustration into a glare and directs it at Isagi, waiting for the moment Isagi looks up so Kaiser can witness the audacity that’s twice his size dismantle with something as elementary as eye contact.
But Isagi doesn’t look up, his concentration stolen by whomever is making him laugh on the other side of his phone call, and laughs like he’s deserved it.
Kaiser shoves his cup into the hands of a passing stranger and makes his way to the other side, ignoring each splash of water that gets dangerously close to his face until he’s looming over Isagi, who still doesn’t look up. Kaiser can’t choose between ripping the phone out of his hands and flinging it in the pool or grabbing Isagi by the hair and throwing him instead.
He settles for kicking the chair leg, prompting a look from Isagi like he’s stepped in dog shit. Kaiser grins; that’s more like it.
“You think you have the right to look at me like that?” Kaiser teases.
“God, why do you talk like that?” Isagi slowly gets to his feet, and Kaiser injects more venom into his smile to resist whatever the hell Isagi’s collarbones are doing to him.
Isagi’s friend says something in Japanese, but he knows enough to recognize the coy lilt and the resulting blush on Isagi’s skin.
One of the most delicious things for Kaiser is to watch classmates who fall into the egregious delusion that they’re his peers dismantle beneath the weight of his own academic success. But watching Isagi flush into a shocking shade of red before hurriedly whispering into his phone before hanging up and putting it in his bag is a close second.
“Don’t say a fucking word.”
“That’s cute, telling me what to do,” Kaiser laughs.
“Whatever.” Isagi looks away and crosses his arms, digging his fingers into his bicep. Kaiser has a difficult time looking away and almost throws himself in the pool for allowing his brain to even go there. “What do you want? Surely you didn’t come here to congratulate me.”
Kaiser steps forward, which is bold considering that his agitation at Isagi’s existence might crumble from the small force of some collarbones and biceps, but Kaiser has never known to be anything else. He’s not allowing Isagi to mean much more than that anyway. “I came to offer my condolences and to suggest that you try harder.”
Isagi mimics him, getting close enough that Kaiser tunnel visions on being top of their class for another semester rather than acknowledging their proximity, bare chests only a few inches apart. It’s not even that close; it’s not even close enough. Kaiser doesn’t miss the way Isagi’s gaze trails all along his tattoo before leveling him with a glare.
“I was right behind you, you know,” Isagi says like a threat, a grin so wide it reveals his sharp incisors and Kaiser briefly entertains the thought of testing how sharp they are and frowns. “Next time, I’ll offer my condolences.”
Kaiser almost takes a step back as the tenacity in Isagi’s gaze multiplies tenfold, nailing him in place. He thinks back to the first time they met, two fall semesters ago in their Modern Physics Honors Seminar. Isagi, excited and bright-eyed, chose the empty seat next to Kaiser like he had the right, introducing himself as Isagi out of habit and half-correcting himself to Yoichi like he’s earned a pleasantry like name exchanges with Kaiser, who had seen him for what he was: small and incomparable, especially when Isagi had proposed to study together since they could probably learn from each other.
And what could I possibly learn from you that I don’t already have down to an expertise?
And Kaiser had reveled in that deliciousness, in the way Isagi’s face had twisted at the malicious certainty in his tone, in the way that Isagi had slouched in his seat when their first test scores made their rounds and he had just made it into a reasonable grade thanks to the curve Kaiser had set, and in the way he couldn’t look Kaiser in the eye.
Looks like you don’t belong on this stage.
Isagi had froze then, and Kaiser had mistaken it as defeat until he slowly sat up and turned to face him with a grin, wielding a knife’s edge gaze against Kaiser’s throat.
I’ll surpass you.
It took a tremendous force of will on Kaiser’s part to suppress a shiver and exchange it for a smile.
Impossible.
Isagi had set the curve on the next exam, overtaking Kaiser by two, reaching into a deeply buried cavern and unearthing a long forgotten frustration and something unidentifiable that made Kaiser consider a fist fight.
He had also, in that vacuum sealed moment, first noticed Isagi’s collarbones barely peeking out from the neckline of his shirt.
And right now, the effort he’s exerting to not continuously stare at those very same collar bones is embarrassing, which is in and of itself humiliating. He pins all of this brewing bullshit on the alcohol; Kaiser refuses to pin this on himself.
He keeps his foot down, returning Isagi’s gritted teeth with a smile just as narrow-edged.
“I’ll never let that happen again,” Kaiser says, and for a moment, he swears he sees exactly when his declaration needles into Isagi, catching onto the slow-blink of his lashes, clumped together thanks to the Florida humidity.
Isagi gaze glides along his tattoo again, lingering on the rose stamped onto his neck. Kaiser concentrates on keeping his grin steady to prevent himself from glancing at Isagi’s lips. It feels like he hasn’t looked down far enough for hours, for weeks.
Another large splash in the pool, but this time it rains over the both of them. Kaiser had zero intentions of actually getting wet despite attending a pool party, but before he can tear into the culprits, Isagi cuts him off.
“What are you guys doing?”
What could only be described as a gaggle of frats look up from the waters and begin yelling over each other while they break off in two pairs, one student from each duo climbing onto the other’s shoulders.
“We’re playing ‘chicken’!”
“You never heard of ‘chicken’?”
“We know what fucking ‘chicken’ is,” Kaiser snaps, grabbing Isagi’s wrist and pulling him back as their classmates begin wrestling in the water, trying to unseat the opposing shoulder-sitter.
“Kaiser,” Isagi says, tugging his wrist back, “what’s ‘chicken’?”
Kaiser gently pats Isagi’s cheek just to piss him off; it works, and Isagi pats him back with a frown.
“Just watch,” he laughs.
The boys in the pool go at it for a few minutes until finally one duo loses their balance and splashes into the water. The losers climb out and take two shots in defeat.
“I kind of want to play,” Isagi whispers.
Kaiser thinks he would rather drown than do anything of the sort. “Why?”
Isagi just shrugs. “I want to win.”
Kaiser stares at Isagi’s profile, takes in the slope of his nose and his set jaw, takes note of the sheer determination and the desire to win, like it’s some kind of absolute, coalescing into something acute over something as stupid as ‘chicken,’ and laughs again.
God, fuck those collar bones.
Kaiser takes his wrist again and says, “I like that,” before jumping into the pool and taking Isagi with him.
“What the hell?” Isagi sputters when he breaks the surface.
“You’re fine,” Kaiser turns towards the remaining ‘chicken’ duo, “we’re going next.”
The boys begin whooping and hollering, and Kaiser wants to bury them beneath the pool.
“Losers drink,” they say as one climbs the other.
Kaiser and Isagi stare at each other expectedly, the water rippling as a hot gust of wind slowly rolls over them.
“Well,” Kaiser waves his hand at Isagi, “what are you waiting for? Crouch down so I can get on your shoulders.”
“Huh?” Isagi looks like he wants to shove Kaiser underwater. “Why would you get on my shoulders? I’m shorter than you.”
“Because we’ll win this way. Besides, don’t tell me you can’t bear my weight on your shoulders for a few minutes.”
Isagi rolls his eyes and crouches so Kaiser can climb on, but not before he splashes him the moment he steps forward.
“If we don’t win,” Isagi grunts as Kaiser hauls himself on top, “I’m tossing you back in the pool once we’re out.”
“We’re winni—” Isagi interrupts Kaiser when he stands, his hands gripping onto Kaiser’s thighs like the end of days would befall them if he doesn’t. Kaiser focuses solely on winning and not Isagi’s hand placement, certainly not.
They don’t win.
As soon as Kaiser interlocks his fingers with his opponent, he’s in the water in thirty seconds.
“We’re winning,” Isagi says in his best Kaiser imitation as he knocks back a shot. Kaiser follows suit, anger and hunger and that something else brewing in his chest.
“We’re rematching, and we’re fucking winning.” Statistically speaking, their opponents are twice their size, and student athletes at that. The odds are about as stacked against them as a wall made of cinderblocks.
But that’s never mattered to Kaiser. Not in academia, and definitely not at some random, shitty pool party.
True to his word, Isagi shoves him back into the pool and follows right behind.
“Let’s go again,” Kaiser declares, jumping on Isagi’s shoulders once more, thighs electric as Isagi grips him even tighter, victory one insignificant pair of human beings away.
They lose again.
“I’m getting on your shoulders this time.” Isagi winces when he takes another shot. He’s dripping pool water all over the drink table.
“That’s not happening,” Kaiser wipes his mouth after swallowing his whiskey.
Isagi grabs him by the shoulders, steadying them. Kaiser watches him blink a few times, his eyelashes long and wet and glimmering beneath the LED backyard lights, a flush of pink blooming on his cheeks and chest.
God, he’s a little drunk. They both are. They can’t lose again.
“Then get your shit together.”
They’re in the pool again, Kaiser on Isagi’s shoulders, Isagi’s nails digging into his thighs, the pain just enough to serve as a reminder of why they’re working together in the first place. Kaiser quickly tells himself that he doesn’t like it and engages with his opponent once more.
It’s the longest match, a taut to-and-fro that needs to end soon because Isagi’s hands keep gripping him tighter and are slowly inching up his thigh due to all the movement.
The classmate holding the other guy up readjusts, and Kaiser seizes the moment, twisting his opponent’s hands enough that he has to let go so his wrists don’t snap, which results in him falling in.
Kaiser lifts his hands up in victory, and Isagi throws him off his shoulders.
“We won!” They shout in unison, Isagi winding his arm around Kaiser’s waist as Kaiser finds Isagi’s shoulders, their free hands raised in fists. He allows his fingers to ghost along one of his collarbones, but only once, just enough to ease whatever the hell keeps happening to him each time he thinks about them.
It doesn’t work.
“We deserve a victory drink,” Kaiser says, quickly untangling himself from Isagi and climbing out of the pool.
“Wasn’t the point of winning to avoid drinking?”
Kaiser smiles when he hears Isagi’s wet footsteps slap behind him. He pours orange juice into two cups and nothing else.
“No, the point of winning is to win.” He hands Isagi a cup and toasts before chugging.
“Fair enough.”
They stand there, dripping pool water everywhere. Kaiser isn’t sure of what to do with his hands, his legs, his face, which is a completely foreign concept to him, uncertainty a thing he covered in dirt a long time ago.
Isagi is fixated on the rose on his neck again, which Kaiser takes advantage of and looks him up and down, biceps flexing as he crosses his arms, collarbones shifting, shoulders set and strong, strong enough to hold Kaiser’s weight without issue.
Victory looks good on him.
Kaiser banishes the thought immediately, blaming the err in his thinking on the overwhelming heaviness of summer, the heat and humidity bearing down on his skin and fogging his brain. Florida is entirely too thick.
So it’s a wonder, really, that he takes a step forward, and another wonder completely when Isagi takes one himself.
Another moment, vacuum-sealed, stretching for miles and miles and years and years.
It’s broken when another splash crests over them.
Isagi throws his cup away and looks over his shoulder, hunger leaping out of his gaze and wrapping around Kaiser’s legs.
“I’m going inside to dry off,” he says before padding towards his bag, slinging it on, and slowly disappearing into the enormous house.
Now Kaiser would be incredibly stupid to follow; he stares down the barrel of Isagi and his entire existence and insists that it doesn’t matter, Isagi doesn’t matter. Isagi is beneath him, was beneath him in the pool and beneath him in the email. There are plenty of other students with a nice set of collarbones throughout campus, he doesn’t have to indulge here. He can’t indulge here. There’s nothing about Isagi that matters in any capacity worth anything to Kaiser.
“Shit,” he whispers as he tosses his cup into the trash and walks into the house.
The house is a labyrinth. Kaiser has only lived in Miami for a few years, but he’s been here long enough to know that this is par for the course in a neighborhood like Key Biscayne. It’s expected, but still frustrating as he searches the first floor and doesn’t find Isagi.
He snatches a towel out of a passerby’s hands when he climbs the stairs and dries himself off as he walks down the nearest hall. He spots a familiar bag next to a door and reels himself in before he sprints and dropkicks the door down.
How embarrassing.
When he opens the door, he trips over something on the floor and almost falls over.
“Watch where you’re going!”
Kaiser reorients himself and frowns. “Isagi, why are you on the ground?”
“I couldn’t find a towel and I didn’t want to get the bed wet,” he answers, sheepish.
Kaiser can’t help himself and falls into hysterics.
“Shut up.”
“Here,” Kaiser offers his towel and Isagi stands to snatch it.
“Thanks,” he grumbles as he dries himself off.
They stand there, again, always standing there, right on the precipice but never actually doing anything about it.
“Isn’t it a bad idea to do this in someone else’s house?” Isagi whispers.
Kaiser steps forward and gently takes Isagi’s chin in hand, reveling in the hunger bursting out of the corners of Isagi’s everything.
“It’s okay if you’ve lost your nerve,” and Kaiser means it, truly.
But it doesn’t matter, because Isagi doesn’t waste another second and lunges forward, devouring Kaiser whole.
It’s a messy kiss, elegance thrown out the window as teeth clack against teeth and lips are bitten to abandon but Kaiser doesn’t care. Their tongues are fighting each other practically in their throats and it’s still not close enough.
Isagi backs Kaiser towards the bed, pushing him down until he’s able to straddle his hips, his teeth sinking right above the rose on his neck. Kaiser gives him a minute before he readjusts so he can suck a bruise on Isagi’s collarbone.
He doesn’t allow any of it to permeate anything important; the panting, the moans, the moment their swim trunks are peeled off and they’re skin to skin and everything is livewire, the way that even through the aggression, the hunger, the grapple, Kaiser still manages to think that Isagi’s lips are soft, that his hands feel good on him, that the noises he’s making will play on a loop in his head for the foreseeable future, that he doesn’t really want to do this with anyone else because in honesty, it’s hard to imagine something comparable.
Kaiser doesn’t allow any of it to matter.
A few hours later, Kaiser wakes, blinking up at the dark ceiling. He reaches for his phone out of habit, but his phone is in his bag, which is somewhere, and in its place is Isagi, sound asleep, face tucked into Kaiser’s shoulder like it belongs there.
Kaiser isn’t rude enough to wake him, but he has to look away, concentrate on something else. He settles for the window, the moon barely visible through the blinds.
He feels Isagi shift, murmuring something incoherent until Kaiser strains his ears and catches onto his half-conscious question.
“How many weeks of summer break do we get again?”
Kaiser stares at the barely-there moon, waiting until Isagi’s breathing slows into slumber, and counts.
“Twelve.”
***
Kaiser’s shirt sticks to his chest as he bikes through the boardwalk, begging for any sort of breeze to whip in between the fifteen-story buildings and jostle the palm trees. He’s still not used to summers like these, everything coming to a halt in the flat, stand-still of Florida. He’s used to a childhood in a valley across the world, where the wind would howl against the heat of June and dry the sweat off your skin the moment it surfaced.
It’s not the worst, though, not really. There’s something to be said about the unmoving everything; you can hear everything else. The constant Miami rumbling of flip-flops on the pavement, the zigzagging cars, the lizards scurrying in and out of bushes, an ocean wave cresting and crashing onto the shore, cheeping birds fluttering from tree to tree, the buzzing bees making a home out of the flora, it’s all culminated into a deep appreciation for Kaiser. It makes his bike rides feel slower than they actually are, like he’s pedaling through a lively river, except the struggle and burn feels good on his thighs.
Academia is always lightspeed for Kaiser, and he would be lying if he said he didn’t love it, especially with something as complex as physics. There’s the rush he feels when he grasps a concept before everyone else, the adrenaline when his name sits at the top of every list like a paperweight made of gold, the satisfaction of being the smartest and learning something useful whirring in his veins. Not only is he the best, he’s the best at something worthwhile.
But the beating sun slows everything down, mingling heat and humidity in a way that forces him to acknowledge something beyond his accolades. It’s uncomfortable, and reminds Kaiser that there are other things to conquer besides mountains.
Besides, straining his ears to listen for unfamiliar noise distracts him from the weight in his pocket and has distracted him for the three weeks.
Which is a bold face lie.
While he certainly has ignored the existence of a certain contact on his phone, he most certainly has not been entirely distracted.
It’s maddening how it’s all he thinks about.
Peel an orange? It’s like peeling Isagi in bed. Bite into the flesh? Well, that’s just unfair. And the juice that dribbles down the chin? A cosmic joke.
But even if Kaiser eliminated citrus from his diet altogether, it wouldn’t matter. He hears Isagi’s wet foot slaps with every smacking flip-flop on the boardwalk, he feels the whiplash of victory over a stupid pool game in the rush of Miami traffic, the burn in his thighs a ghost of hand placement, the buzzing bees in the flora a reminder of what devouring Isagi means.
It pisses him off into oblivion.
There’s the audacity, for starters. Even before the party, Isagi has always hovered in Kaiser’s peripheral, to his left, insinuating an equal footing when he first sat next to him, when he egregiously suggested that Kaiser had something to learn from him, when he grit those teeth the first time and every time after that, the fucking tenacity that propelled him to win one over Kaiser, and the resulting ferocity.
But what’s even more infuriating is that Kaiser bites every time. He notices the bait dangling in the water, acknowledges the hook hidden in the colors, and swims for it anyway.
It shouldn’t bother him to such a degree, but the problem isn’t that there’s a chance he’ll be fished out and left on the shore to dry. Kaiser pours over the course material, studies until he can loudly announce that he’s understood, and at a pace that leaves him above everyone else, his foot hovering over his classmates like there’s a kind of leisure in waiting to step on them.
Isagi disrupts that. Isagi has looked at all Kaiser’s potent superiority, his obvious genius, his deserved seat at the center of the universe, and has decided not to care about any of it. His appetite has expanded almost as large as Kaiser’s, and the impossibility of that leaves no room to fear being plucked out and left on the shore; someone else might beat him to the surface instead.
Unfortunately, Kaiser knows best that nothing is impossible.
But perhaps the worst of it is that Kaiser knows that’s not exactly it, either.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, and Kaiser vice grips his handlebars and pedals harder, choosing to ignore the churning in his stomach, the searing curiosity, the vibrating excitement at who could be calling him right now, even after three weeks.
He’s almost at his apartment anyway, he’ll just let the call go to voicemail, and he does.
But another short buzz a minute later disrupts the burn in his thighs, so he stops to take a tiny peek.
Isagi 1:13pm: Hey! I just saw you on your bike. I’m in the cafe nearby going over some upcoming material if you wanted to join me?
The universe is such an asshole sometimes. He should have blocked Isagi’s number after that one group lab report.
Kaiser 1:14pm: Why would I want to spend my free time with someone as inferior as you?
Kaiser does not stare at his phone for several minutes, and he does not grin when he finally gets a text back.
Isagi 1:19pm: I forgot that you also talk like that through text. Weird ass. What, are you too chicken to see how far ahead of you I am?
Kaiser doesn’t even respond, he just jumps on his bike and races to Isagi. He knows exactly which cafe he’s talking about.
The bell jingles when he opens the door, and it’s instant how he finds Isagi, in the corner and out of the way, textbooks and notes sprawled across the table with a laptop at the center. He’s scribbling something down, brows pinched in concentration, teeth in the pulp of his bottom lip as he works through a problem. He’s in a tank top, those damn collar bones sticking out, sweat beading at the corners. Kaiser is torn between shoving all of Isagi’s things off the table to ruin his day and shoving all of Isagi’s things off the table so that there’s room to makeout on it.
He settles for slapping Isagi’s shoulder before sitting down.
“Getting the jump before we can even register for classes? Feeling inadequate?”
“Don’t act like you haven’t been doing the same thing. And how else am I supposed to kick your ass?” Isagi rolls his eyes and fishes his wallet out of his backpack. “What do you want to drink?”
Kaiser hums in lieu of saying something dumb, like oh. He’s not sure why he’s caught so off-guard, Isagi is just like that. There’s nothing that matters here.
“Whatever you’re getting, doesn’t matter.”
When Isagi returns and hands over the iced coffee, Kaiser has half a mind to not just let their fingers brush, but to completely envelop Isagi’s hand in his. He resists and accepts the cup like a normal person.
After a sip, he turns Isagi’s notes towards himself. “What have you been up to here?”
“Getting a start on the Classical Mechanics II syllabus.”
“Smart,” Kaiser says. He means it, but mostly because he’s also been looking over the same syllabus. He scans Isagi’s notes and a combination of something cutthroat, competitive and something too close to admiration pushes a smile out of him. “These notes are pretty good.”
A pause, and then, “Miachael Kaiser praising someone other than himself, I’ll watch out for signs of the apocalypse later.” Isagi speaks like he isn’t flushing in embarrassment. He’d probably blame it on the heat if Kaiser tried to tease.
“You’re making me blush. Look at you, finally conjuring up an adequate appetite.”
“Whatever.” Isagi readjusts his textbook so they can share.
Two hours pass, but it feels like two minutes, it feels like two days. The AC in the cafe is lackluster at best, and yet, somehow, they’ve managed to scoot close enough to be shoulder to shoulder. Kaiser’s concentration begins to dwindle when he fully registers the heat of Isagi’s skin through his shirt, sweat mingling with cotton.
“What made you come to UM?” Isagi asks, breaking the silence, the time warp.
Kaiser bites. “The curriculum in general is top notch, a lot of doctors graduate here, which means a substantial and comprehensive science department with a good budget. I was the smartest in Germany, and now I’ll become the smartest here. Maybe I’ll make my way to Japan afterwards.” Isagi snorts. “My English is excellent, but who’s really surprised? So I scored a full ride.”
Isagi smiles, a satisfaction sprawling on his face like he got exactly what he expected. Kaiser wants to punch him; Kaiser wants to kiss him.
“And you? How did Isagi Yoichi get here?”
Isagi looks up at the fan above them, the moving blades casting blinking shadows over his cheeks. Kaiser can’t look away.
“I needed to leave Japan to grow.”
Kaiser reaches over the table to readjust the textbook and says, “Makes sense,” because he doesn’t want to say that he gets it.
They don’t talk about the pool party.
They meet at the same cafe the following week, and the week after that, and the one after.
It’s all academia, all business. Kaiser keeps reassuring himself that he only continues to show up to affirm that he’s still ahead of the curve, still ahead of Isagi. He finds himself guiding Isagi through some of the complicated concepts, and while it gives him the satisfaction of still having a leg up, the growing hunger in Isagi’s gaze, the way his sharp incisors dig into his lip when he concentrates, the competitive smile Kaiser is rewarded with each time they work through a problem is starting to hold a lot of weight.
He wants to shove Isagi into the dirt with his heel. He wants to shove Isagi onto a bed. He wants to hate Isagi, and he tells himself that he does. He wants to visit this cafe every week of the year and watch something bloom.
And then, of course, is the point where they can’t get any farther down the syllabus without material from a professor, and they veer off the course.
What’s left after that? What exists beyond the rivalry, beyond the physics, beyond the highest pillars? What exists besides the mountains and the valley in the center?
Does Kaiser have anything else? Can he?
“There’s another party,” Isagi says during the fourth week, spinning a pencil around in his hand. Kaiser freezes, waiting for the inevitable. “Maurice said he’d give us a ride if we asked.”
“Who the fuck is Maurice?”
Isagi sighs. “He sat behind you in Differential Equations and also Kinetic Theory.”
“Well no wonder, when do I ever look over my shoulder?”
“God, shut up,” Isagi fights through a laugh. Kaiser wants to snatch it from the air and light it on fire. “It’s tonight. He could just pick us up from here since it’s not far.”
“Let’s do it. We deserve another drink.” He grins at Isagi and relishes in the smile he gets back. “By the way, why am I the only one you address by last name? Everyone else calls me Michael.”
Isagi shrugs. “Habit, I guess. You were also the only person to catch onto me fumbling through my introduction. Why? Do you want me to call you Michael instead?”
“No,” Kaiser answers, sing-song, “was just wondering.” He pats Isagi’s cheek, who this time doesn’t pat him back, but just looks at him for an awfully long moment before he gathers his things.
“It’s tomorrow, I’ll text you.”
When Kaiser walks out and looks over his shoulder, he watches Isagi rest a hand on his cheek.
Kaiser’s legs are sticking to the leather seats. The windows are rolled down, and the humidity bleeds into the car, but it’s not a bad thing. Maurice has been driving for ten minutes, yapping with Isagi about something that Kaiser couldn’t give any less of a shit about. How could he, when Isagi’s in the front seat, laughing and smiling like Kaiser isn’t in the back, right there, just out of reach.
Kaiser forces his gaze elsewhere until they arrive at the same house from seven weeks ago.
It’s the same crowd, the same music, the same tune. It would be boring on any other day, and it should be boring now, but Kaiser is a jar of uncertainty and anticipation, every bump and thump and splash and sway Isagi. They haven’t even started drinking yet, and Kaiser already wants to claw his way into Isagi’s chest before Isagi claws his way into his. The same almost-naked palm tree is still standing in the corner.
“Isagi, we’re drinking.”
“Already? We can’t settle in for a second?”
“We’re not visiting our grandparents,” Kaiser says as he pours them shots.
“Fine,” Isagi snatches the shot and gets it down before Kaiser even lifts his cup. He looks at Isagi until they can make eye contact, but Isagi refuses to look up. Kaiser takes his shot and promptly pours them another.
When they’re nice and loose, they find a long pool chair and share it, passing a drink back and forth. Kaiser doesn’t want to think about the implications of sharing, he doesn’t want to think about the implications of where they are in the first place.
“Who were you talking to last time?”
Isagi tilts his head until he remembers. Kaiser almost launches himself in the pool for allowing an honest thought like cute to attach itself to Isagi.
“Oh! That was a friend from back home, Bachira. We chat a few times a week, but he still chooses to ignore the time difference.”
“Just a friend, huh?” Kaiser lifts his brows.
“You’re so annoying. What, you don’t have friends back home?”
“There’s not a lot of people good enough to be my friend.”
“Not even one?” Isagi asks.
Kaiser takes the drink out of his hand and takes a sip. “Ness counts. I talk to him a couple times a month.”
They pass the cup back and forth until it’s finished, and then Kaiser strains his ears. Splashes in the pool, cicadas singing in threes, wet foot slaps on the concrete, the heat settling in his bones, the slow drawl of summer. He rests his hands on his thighs.
Isagi snaps him out of it when he takes him by the wrist.
“I miss home, but,” he hesitates, and then leans in until their noses brush and for once, Kaiser doesn’t want to punch his teeth in, “It’s nice to meet someone who gets it.”
And Kaiser unravels.
He snatches his wrist back and gets up, fast walks towards the edge of the yard, which drops off into the sands of the beach. Kaiser almost trips over himself making the journey down. He walks until the noise of the party fades into a murmur, and all he can properly digest is the open sea and the night sky glimmering on the surface.
“What the fuck?” He whispers to himself, slapping his cheeks to get a grip.
The waves crest and crash, another cosmic joke, another reminder of what his chest does around Isagi. The moon glowing over the water, shining over a clump of lashes.
Kaiser doesn’t have room for this, he can’t keep straining his ears and opening his eyes to anything but his success, can't carve out a space for this, his comfortable pride and deserved arrogance demand every inch of him.
How else can he stay at the top? How else can he survive?
He hears someone struggling through the sand and turns around only to see Isagi barreling towards him.
“Stop doing that,” he says when he reaches Kaiser.
“I’m not doing anything, you’re crazy,” Kaiser laughs. “I don’t know what you’re expecting out of me, but let me remind you: I’m only here to crumble you to dust.”
“You’re so fucking irritating sometimes, all the time, actually.” Isagi reaches him and stands shoulder to shoulder, looking at Kaiser like he might bury him alive. “What do you think I’m here for?”
“Who car—”
“What do you think I’m here for, Kaiser?” Isagi grabs him by the shoulders and forces him into eye contact, finally.
“I—” Kaiser looks to the side, up and down, everywhere to avoid this exact scenario he tried to prevent, but since his self-preservation is on the verge of dissolving, he settles for Isagi’s collarbones.
“Don’t play stupid, tell me.” Isagi’s grip tightens, and Kaiser feels like he’s going to grind his molars into powder.
I was the smartest in Germany, and now I’ll become the smartest here.
I needed to leave Japan to grow.
It’s so fucking simple.
And Kaiser hates Isagi, he hates him so much, he hates how he’s taken all of Kaiser’s efforts and laid them out into something simple, tangible, understandable, bridging.
He gets it, and Kaiser can’t hate him for that. He gets it, and Kaiser will try to keep him for it.
He doesn’t shrug Isagi off. “I know why.”
“Yeah, you do.” Isagi steps forward, one of his hands sliding up from Kaiser’s shoulder to cradle the left side of his neck, right where the rose sits. “You have a freckle here.”
“What?” Kaiser smiles, hands on Isagi’s waist.
“Here,” Isagi taps the tip of one of the rose petals, “it’s kind of hard to see under the blue, but it’s there. I can’t stop staring at it.”
“You’re obsessed with me,” Kaiser teases.
“Shut up, and stop looking at my collar bones,” Isagi says before he surges forward into a kiss.
It’s different this time. There’s still a fight here, still, as they practically inhale each other on the beach, practicing all the breathing. It’s unhurried, creeping onto the shore before receding back only to creep up again, leaving a wavelength imprint on the coast. The heat of the summer slowly rolls over them, making a home in their skin. Kaiser wants it to stretch until the sensation of opening his eyes feels like eons.
Isagi breaks the kiss to ask, “How many weeks of summer break do we have?”
Kaiser gently presses his thumb on Isagi’s bottom lip and says, “More than enough.”