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Plenty of people knew Kiryu Kazuma, he was one of the friendliest former yakuza out there. Sure, that made him less friendly to some civilians, but compared to his boyfriend, he was a saint. The man stops randomly on the street to help people with their weird ass problems, recounting weird stories to Majima that he can only compare to some of his wild days in Sotenbori. He grew out of his helpful samaritain phase, but Kiryu seemed to never do so.
Basically, lots of strangers and acquaintances had entered the life of Kiryu Kazuma. But none of them knew him as well as Majima did. The Mad Dog prided himself on his front to back knowledge of the Dragon, gained through, quite literally, stalking him.
At first, it was just for the fight, he wouldn’t linger for long. But then, he found himself remembering his weird orders at various places. That part was a bit easy, because while Kiryu would sometimes try something new, he very often just got the same things. It was honestly a bit mundane. After a good day of smacking punks off his ass, the Dragon of Dojima would routinely order a simple meal combo from Smile Burger, the same thing, every time.
Now, he has the chance to actually ask why, considering he dates the man now.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Is the lame answer he receives, though with Kiryu’s expression, clearly that answer just seems obvious.
“Ya never feel like doin’ somethin’ different?” Majima himself barely got the same things, always subject to cravings and whims, especially with fast food. The menu wasn't huge, but they’d try new things every now and then that he was a sucker to try out before they were gone.
Kiryu thought for a moment, then shrugged, “No, not really. I just like what I like. I don’t think I’m a picky eater,” That much Majima knew was true after seeing some of the more interesting things he eats, “but the point of Smile Burger is convenience. Nothing more convenient than knowing what I’ll always get, and knowing it’ll be good.”
For that little quirk of his boyfriend, Majima was satisfied. It seemed simple enough, nothing harmless, and nothing truly too weird. If anything, he was kinda right. It certainly would keep the line moving if everyone knew what they wanted when they got to the register, hell, before they even walked into the door.
But Kiryu was made up of all these little quirks. Ones much different than just always having a go-to order at a fast food place.
In regards to food, the man didn’t know how to cook much. Majima has had to step up and teach him, considering he had a child to worry about giving a healthy diet to. Majima worried for Haruka’s calorie intake the first few weeks into their relationship, as he started staying over more and more frequently, and seeing how empty their fridge was of things like leftovers. That much he couldn’t allow.
So, every Wednesday while Haruka was at school, Majima would teach him a recipe. Simple things, meals the whole family could enjoy. It was stupidly domestic, but he got to see Kiryu flounder and make the cutest little focused faces, like he could glare the onions into being chopped. This way, Kiryu could also learn and discard failed attempts, without leaving Haruka to be hungry.
Today, he plops down the groceries for their test trials, announcing their meal with a hand on his hip, “Hamburger steak! Kids love that shit!”
However, it seems Kiryu very much does not like it, judging by the way his eyebrows furrow even more than they usually are. He looks at the ground beef in the bag, as if it’s offending him. “...Alright.” He hesitantly agrees, coming over to help unload the ingredients.
“Ya don’t like Hamburger steak? The hell is wrong with ya?” Majima almost balked, unaware anyone could dislike a meal so unassuming and inoffensive.
Kiryu shrugged, leaving the meat for Majima to grab, “Don’t like ground beef.”
“We just talked about Smile Burger the other day!”
“That isn’t real ground beef and you know it.”
Majima couldn’t argue with that, honestly. Whatever it was, it was good, and that was that in his mind. Like hell did he want to know how the sausage got made in that place. “Well, ya can have some of the katsu left in the fridge or somethin’. Haruka likes it, so ya should learn how to make it.”
Kiryu seemed satisfied with that, nodding in agreement. With a kitchen knife, tanto kept out of the kitchen so as to not mess it up, Majima opens the first ground beef tube, beginning to walk him through the portioning process. He swears he sees the man turn a bit greener at the sight of it, then even more so when he realizes he has to use his hands. Thankfully, that wasn’t the first step. Chopping onions for Majima to then saute, that much he could do.
And Majima got that cute focused face back, so he figured it would all be fine.
With the smell of the onions now filling the air, Majima returns to the meat with the onions cooling in a bowl. He takes his gloves off as he speaks, putting the meat into the bowl, “Now, it’s gonna be a lotta mixin’, and it’s just best to do it all with yer hands. I’ll put in all the shit for ya to mix, so we don’t make a gross meat mess on everythin’.”
“...Do we have to use our hands?” Kiryu muttered, watching as Majima twisted the pepper shaker into the pink pile.
“It ain’t gonna hurt ya if ya just wash yer hands afterwards, ya big baby!” He poked Kiryu with a free hand as he tossed in panko crumbs and salt, then cracked an egg into it to finish it off. “Alright, now just pretend it’s the face of someone ya really hate, and go to town!” He patted Kiryu’s shoulder with the back of his hand, so as to not stain it with the meat residue, then went to wash his hands.
As the soap scrubbed away the fats, he noticed a distinct lack of noise from Kiryu’s station. His peered over with his good eye to see the man standing with his hands hesitating over the bowl, his glare on his face less concentration and more… dread.
Like a tiny light bulb, Majima realizes Kiryu always hesitates like this when it comes to meat. He was better with the big slabs of it, but he always seemed to dread prepping it. Now, he seemed like he’d rather be doing anything else than touching this, even more than when handling things like chicken, where there was actual risk of sickness.
He had made fun of him for it, but there seemed to be real, genuine discomfort at doing this. Majima would always push his boundaries a bit, but he never wanted to go past them. If making Hamburger steak was one of them… Well, it wouldn’t be the weirdest. Still, it was a good skill to learn, ground beef was used in lots of meals.
His eye looks down at the gloves set on the counter. Majima took them off specifically so they didn’t get ruined, but… They didn’t have disposable ones. So, with clean and dry hands, Majima touches the wrist that’s still hesitating on where to start. When those big and soft eyes look up at him like he was caught, he just smiles, “Wanna try usin’ my gloves? I know they fit on ya, even if it's a lil tight.”
“How do you- O-oh, right.” Kiryu remembers that both horrendously embarrassing and deeply satisfying night Majima had caught him wearing his gloves, pushing down the heat of the memory as he grabbed them. “Are you sure? I don’t want to ruin them or anything.”
“Ya can ruin all my clothes in any way ya want, I got the money for it.” Majima nudged him with an elbow, making sure Kiryu got the implication. Considering Majima has been giving him a much dirtier mind, he certainly did.
Kiryu cleared his throat, nodding along to his innuendo laden permission, and put the leather gloves on. Instantly, his shoulders seemed to loosen, and the green tint to his face was gone. There was still a little hesitation and grimace when he finally got his hands into the bowl, but he managed to relax and get comfortable with the feeling. Majima honestly finds himself impressed with how quickly he works at it with the protection to his hands.
So, Kiryu just needed some gloves when working with this stuff. Well, he could get boxes of those for only a few hundred yen, so even without Majima’s funds, he’d be okay with that. It was just another odd quirk Majima’s boyfriend had, it seemed.
Another quirk popped up a few weeks later, this one a bit more concerning and certainly odd to someone like Majima.
It had been a wonderful date night, going on late due to Haruka having a sleepover. Kiryu’s scene was never the clubs his kyodai liked to go to, but it seems Majima liked them as well. However, a few drinks paid for by Majima made any place go down smoother. While the dragon had been warned that this was a place where his boyfriend had gone dangerously crazy before they had gotten together, and that some people with substances may approach Majima as one of their esteemed customers, he had also been promised that he wouldn’t even think about buying from them any more.
Kiryu seemed quietly proud of him, which certainly helped in his decision to get clean, even if it was more for Haruka than for Kiryu. She didn’t need to see her dad fighting with a man coked out of his mind.
Instead, they just drank, and to Majima’s surprise, he hadn’t been approached at all. Maybe his months-long silence to the dealers had been evidence enough of him no longer requiring their services. He thinks he wouldn’t have even noticed if they did, caught up in how Kiryu looks in all the lights and sounds. When they danced, tipsy and a bit stupid, both of them could hardly keep their hands off each other. When Kiryu spins him around, both of them have smiles bigger than their usual. Kiryu’s was still small, but Majima was beaming.
It had been a good night. A wonderful night, even. One with tons of drunken outs in booths and a promise to get out of here and do something much more fun.
So why had that been canceled over Kiryu just sitting in his room, in the dark? Seriously, he had even told Majima to turn the hall light off, the light just under the door was too much. He knows damn well the hangover hasn’t set in already, so… it must have been something he did.
But what? Majima knows Kiryu’s limits as well as he knows just where he can break them. Sure, this wasn’t his scene, but he thought they had a fun time. He hadn’t been laced with anything, right? Impossible, Majima had watched like a hawk for basically the whole evening, especially when the man went to the bathroom. No one had even gotten close. Kiryu would have done the same thing, right? He didn’t look like he was passing out any more than normal booze would have made him look like.
Majima hated feeling like this. In the few horrible times he tried out a relationship after his… ‘committed’ one, things like this always happened. Something would happen when they got drunk, he’d say some out of pocket shit he couldn’t remember, and then would get the couch at best. At worst, he’d be flung out onto the street with any stuff he had given them, and told to never come back.
Kiryu has never been like that. If Majima says something out of line, he’ll tell him as such and then probably smack him around a bit, then be okay with it afterwards so long as Majima never did it again. Those were the few not fun punches from Kiryu, they were something personal, though not as impactful and harming as ones from their spars. They were like love taps comparatively. That wasn’t why they weren’t fun though. With those light punches came the knowledge that it was only because Kiryu knew he could do better.
Well, thought he could. Majima’s self depreciation always loved to remind himself of how little he believed in that, unlike Kiryu, he believed it painfully earnestly.
Majima sits on the couch for a good ten minutes, wallowing in a bit of self hatred and anxiety, before he goes to the kitchen. He was hungry, and there was some leftover karaage from a previous cooking lesson. Even just turning on the microwave felt like it’d be too much for Kiryu, like every little movement was a bother, so… he just ate it cold. A bit pathetic, but not the first time. Kiryu made him pathetic, in lots of different little ways.
Kiryu is still in his dark containment chamber when he’s done, so he tries to just busy himself with a game on his phone. Some of them, he could sink hours into, so as he waited for the sword to fall on his neck, he figured he’d just kill the time.
Finally, a little over 30 minutes when Majima checks the clock, the door opens. He closes his phone, sitting up at attention on the sofa, eyes on Kiryu the moment he finally comes out of hiding.
He looks… fine. A bit tired, certainly still drunk, but not any kind of real emotion he can discern other than tired and drunk. He yawns, running a hand through his slightly tousled hair. Warm eyes find their way to Majima, and while the Mad Dog braces, what he says releases all tension, “...Oh good, you ate. I was gonna offer to order pizza, but leftovers works.”
“Haw?” Majima quietly questions, furrowing his brow. Kiryu only slightly tilts his head at his reaction, a combination of too drunk and too dense to really understand. Just to be sure, he clarifies, “Ya ain’t upset or nothin’?”
“Huh? Oh, no, no.” Kiryu seems to only just understand how his actions may have looked, and sobers up a little to clarify himself, “Whenever I go to places like that, I just need to be in silence for a bit. I’ll get irritable if I don’t, and I don’t want to snap at you. I’d get into fights with Nishiki if I didn’t find a silent place after we’d gone out.”
“Clubbin’ gets ya irritable? Then why’d ya agree to go?” Majima didn’t do things that made up bitchy, unless they involved Kiryu.
“Because you wanted to, and I knew it’d be fun with you.” Kiryu seems to have the same reason, a stupidly sweet one at that.
And here he was catastrophizing that it was finally over. No, it was just… another one of Kiryu’s quirks. The rest of the tension leaves his body, in a dramatic sigh as he rolls his eye, “Jeez, ya big softie. I could use some damn pizza though, even if ya eat it like a freak.”
That quirk, he didn’t think there was much explanation for.
The next time they want a date, Kiryu insists on it being one they spend indoors. It had been a few days since the club, but he said he was still a bit drained from it. He wasn’t the biggest social guy, and Majima could use a break from people himself, so it’s an easy yes from him.
A large fan is the only real background noise for their date, rotating back and forth, making it cool enough for Majima to cuddle up to his boyfriend as he likes to. Whatever position he put himself in, he knew that Kiryu would be just fine. Especially when he saw what was probably the real reason for this indoor date.
Sounds of plastic slotting into place, clicking together into a miniature race car. Apparently, Kiryu has been into these things since the 80s, and while they weren’t very popular these days, he followed each release like a hawk. At first, it was a bit weird, seeing a manly man like Kiryu be into something so childish. Joining in on it had been mostly a joke, a way to rile him up more, but it had turned into a way for them to bond. It was still weird to hear him call him Goro-kun, but it was also weirdly adorable.
Besides, he can’t deny that he had actually kind of gotten into them himself. Certainly not on the level of Kiryu, but making his own little car to rival his Golem Tiger had been stupidly fun. Maybe he doesn’t entirely get it, but he understands enough to be able to keep up with him in these little car building dates.
At least, he knew enough to know which questions to ask Kiryu, and the man would do the rest.
“Don’t these things have some kind of story? I swear seein’ some tie in anime in the 90s.” Majima prompted, truly just wanting to hear his boyfriend talk for a good dozen minutes.
And talk he did. “Yeah, I looked into it after getting Haruka, we’ve watched it together. She doesn’t really like it, but I think it’s pretty good for a show to sell more toys. The cars are the racing cars of these people, who they also sell action figures of, and special cars that can open their doors and let those figures sit in. They’re too big for a pocket circuit though, not official ones. They’re mostly collectors items.”
Majima snorted, “Ya mean they’re just a different kind of toy, more like.”
“...And they’re collectors items.” Kiryu huffed, getting just that perfectly cute face where Majima knew that he knew he was right, but wanted to be a bit petulant about it. “They didn’t run for very long, so they’re really kind of rare these days, and are only gonna get more valuable.”
Majima just hums, jotting that down as a gift idea. He wasn’t above finding the address of someone selling one on a second hand site and taking it for himself. No money even needed! He’d just remember whatever price they were selling it at would tell Kiryu he bought it for that much.
Kiryu continues to go on about the show, giving the show what seems to be a silly amount of critique for a children’s show meant to buy toys. The way he talks about it though, so passionate and invested, it genuinely makes him want to try out at least the first season. It didn’t go on for very long, only three seasons, and apparently Kiryu has a very deep disdain for that last season. He’s treated people trying to kill him with less hatred than the ending of the show.
“Yuzu would have never fallen in love with Taro.” The former yakuza explains about children’s characters named after food they shared the primary color of, “She had expressed no interest in romance before, even a bit of disdain for it with the actual couple of Nashi and Mikan. I thought she was going to be a character explaining how people can be fine without romance, but then they ruin it with her out of character crush. She acts completely differently than the previous seasons, I can tell it was a new team of writers.”
Majima has only seen this level of passion and disdain from old ladies with their soap operas, it was kind of incredible to see it from a former criminal. Especially from a man who often didn’t talk, certainly not as much as this. He had a weak spot for his voice, it was certainly Kiryu’s most charming point. It had apparently been so good, he almost got roped into a damn voice drama one time. Majima would have bought 50 copies if it had gotten made with him in it.
Even when talking about a children’s show that ended poorly, in Kiryu’s opinion, his voice was just magnetic. Paired with the eyes he loved to just stare into, he thinks he could fall asleep like this. His head in Kiryu’s lap while he worked away certainly helped.
The conversation goes on with Majima half paying attention, enough to ask questions to keep Kiryu talking. He thinks it’s been a full ten minutes before Kiryu finally looks down at him, noticing how he’s been stared at this whole time. He locks eyes with Majima for a moment, smile getting just a bit softer, a shadow of pink on his cheeks, then he looks away again, “Am I annoying you?”
“Not at all, keep talkin’ about yer lil cars, handsome.” Majima giggles, “Ya could look at me for longer, though.”
When asked to, Kiryu’s eyes fall to his boyfriend instantly. Majima knows he’s special when the man puts the half built kit down to run a hand through his hair. With another little chuckle, he realizes Kiryu is looking at the peak of his tattoo from the v-neck he wears, “My eye, I meant.”
“Oh.” Kiryu shyly realizes, and does so. His hand goes down to his cheek, holding his place there as he looks into Majima’s eye, and Majima into his. Not like he had really stopped, of course.
Majima could look into Kiryu’s eyes all day, in all the different ways they looked. Especially looks like that, that was all his. Only the Mad Dog himself got to see eyes as soft and loving as that. He greedily took every second of them he got, just a tad possessive of what was his.
It didn’t last long though, only a few seconds, before Kiryu broke it off with a chuckle and another layer of blush, “I get nervous when you stare at me like that.”
“N’aww, cute~” Majima cooed, finding that cute enough to get away with how short it was. It was always pretty short, part of him wondered why it was. The other part reasoned that it was just Kiryu, like all the other little quirks.
The next day, though, he couldn’t help but be a bit curious. He was just on his computer, in the office, away from the man he was thinking about. Work on Kamurocho Hills was running smoothly, he really didn’t have much to do in the big and blue lit office underground other than think about Kiryu.
As these listless days usually led him to, he finds himself surfing the internet. It was a hobby that had turned rather important for work, considering it was where he learned construction, and where everyone on his team learned construction. Going down some rabbit holes was always fun, even if he’d sometimes come out the other side learning something he wished he didn’t. That was the internet for you.
Pocket Circuit was his first search, browsing the different models and kits, finding ones for that show they had talked about. He bookmarked a second hand selling of one of the ‘collectors items’ Kiryu had talked about. Read about the failure to revive the property to its former glory.
Then, it was a few recipes. Anything with ground beef he crossed out, not wanting to leave Kiryu out of a meal he had worked on again. That also reminded him, he wondered if there was something that made him allergic to ground beef or something. Ground beef sensitivity. Just the kind of dumb search Majima would make.
He found a cooking forum, a page titled ‘need help with texture sensitivity!’. When he clicked on it, it mentioned ground beef as of their least favorite textures, not knowing why, but saying they’d gag if they ate or touched it at all. They wanted help with this, if the texture could be changed in order to get in the protein, or for other easy meals to make that didn’t involve it.
A comment from a young mother caught his attention.
‘My son has the same problem. While it may be jumping the gun, a lot of the problems with texture over taste sounds like symptoms of autism. Here are some recipes my son loves that are easy to make and help with that problem!’
Huh. Well, that seemed like a new rabbit hole to go down.
Majima wasn’t ever judgemental of people like this, or with any other disorders. He swears Nishida has some anxiety disorder, and it isn’t like Goro Majima himself interacts with the world normally. If he let himself admit it, he probably had some kind of PTSD in that brain of his.
It’s hard to find a source that isn’t Wikipedia that doesn’t talk about it for parents with autistic children, so he tries to just brave the walls of text in order to find out more. He isn’t the biggest fan of them, they all just blur together and he loses interest fast, but if it’s for Kiryu… Well, he’d never stop being interested.
He’s surprised with how many names there are for it. It isn’t just one thing, it’s different for each person. A spectrum. There’s a bunch of links to click with the terms they use, tabs growing in numbers to try and better understand what he was reading. He doesn’t think Kiryu ‘stims’, but he doesn’t know what he does when he’s truly alone. Maybe he does. There were all different kinds, even. The article even mentions many trying to hide it. He wouldn’t doubt Kiryu doing so, considering the inner workings of shame Majima helped unravel.
Sensory processing disorder, now that was something that sounded like Kiryu a while ago. Well, it did when Majima actually figured out what the hell that meant. The aversion to ground beef, the way he needed time alone in the dark after the club. That actually made a good amount of sense. His brain just couldn’t sift through the noise properly, and it needed to all just be flushed out.
There were still a few problems with a lot of the signs being in infancy, but even the ones that didn’t, they seemed to line up well. The resistance in breaking routine bit reminded him of how disappointed Kiryu would be when Majima couldn’t make it to their cooking lessons. More interested in objects than people, that was almost right on the money. The only people he showed real interest in beyond his odd ways of helping were himself and Haruka. If he didn’t know how loved both of them were, he’d say Kiryu loved Pocket Circuit more than them, but that was just ridiculous.
So. His boyfriend probably had autism, and very likely had no idea in the slightest. Kiryu often thought he was pretty normal, even in the things Majima knew he very much was not. He just thought Kiryu was like that, though, and he still was. It was just also because his brain was literally wired differently than his own.
In the beginning of their relationship, before dating, Majima had wanted to know why he was so drawn in by Kiryu. It wasn’t just his strength, it wasn’t just his looks, the man was magnetic. Like his very soul was drawn into Kiryu’s own. When he watched him do odd things, he wanted to know why. He wanted to get closer. He wanted to figure out the mystery.
This was something like an answer to the mystery he still hadn’t solved through dating him. A very extensive, medical, clinical reason.
Huh.
Well, that wasn’t what Majima needed. What Majima needed to know was why someone like that had fallen in love with someone like him. Maybe it was because he literally was built differently, but that wasn’t who Kiryu was at his core. It was a mystery he thinks he’ll never solve, just like the one that asks him what he did to deserve someone like him.
He bookmarks the tab, then closes it, not needing it to understand Kiryu anymore. That would be his own job, one that could take as long as needed. He could do better research than a bunch of scientists with their diagnosis’ or whatever, and now, he was itching to do so. He had a whole list of new things to learn about Kiryu, after all. The textures he liked, the ones he didn’t, what gets him excited in the way Pocket Circuit does, and if it could include himself. Nishida could handle the rest of the work today, he thinks. No point in sitting here doing nothing, especially when he’s itching to be back with his boyfriend.
Whatever was going on in Kiryu’s brain, it probably couldn’t hold a candle to Majima’s.