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10.
When he’d dropped that half-joke about Moopy during the last after-hours cocktail party, he didn’t think anything would possibly come of it.
“So the story goes,” the bright-eyed fashion journalist says excitedly with a flutter of her incredibly long false lashes, “that your debut spring-summer line was inspired by your cat? How did that happen?”
Makishima tries not to sigh too heavily as he fidgets with one of the wrap bracelets wound around his wrist and then nervously re-tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “Well,” he begins reluctantly, staring steadily at the beam of sunlight that cuts across the gap between them on the couch, “when I sketch things at home, my cat, Moopy, likes to—”
She suddenly thrusts a hand out between them, and Makishima leans away slightly from her gleaming blue gel nails. “Hold on, Moopy? Okay, now I need the backstory on this cat.” Her eyebrows scrunch together as she smiles disbelievingly. “Moopy?”
He’s already starting to regret accepting this interview. “Yes, Moopy. My, ah, partner named him that...”
Her eyes are fixated on him like a raven’s would be on a packet of rhinestones. Makishima bites the inside of his cheek and wants to bang his head against the wall even as he remembers Arakita’s reminder about not showing weakness in front of someone who critiqued clothing for a living (and Arakita would know a thing or two about that).
“Anyway, Moopy’s always interested in what I’m doing when I’m sitting and drawing for long periods of time,” Makishima barrels on, brazenly ignoring the obvious but unspoken follow-up question about his ‘partner,’ “and this time, he... punches? My arm while I’m in the middle of drawing.”
The journalist puts down her tablet and demonstrates a cross punch. She has excellent form despite sitting with her legs crossed, and her reach is nothing to scoff at, so Makishima leans back a little farther. “Like your cat full on punches you?”
“Nnnno, that’s not,” Makishima exhales, frowning down at his knees in consternation. “It was more of a...”
“Okay, so he must’ve, like,” she hums, pulling up one of Makishima’s sketches up onscreen on her tablet. “To make this kind of billowy shape, he had to...”
Makishima didn’t imagine the journalist came to discuss cat physics, but somehow that’s what they end up mostly conversing about, and at any rate she seems pleased enough with the other vague answers that she manages to get out of him. He thinks he’s cleared the last hurdle when she puts away her things and stands to leave, but when he escorts her back out to the entrance, they find Arakita and Marguerite, his assistant, chatting at the front desk with a huge bouquet of flowers between them.
“Oh, there he is,” Marguerite says with a smile, gesturing to the bouquet. “For you, Mr. Makishima.”
“From...?” Makishima prompts hesitantly, glancing quickly and with desperation at Arakita, who doesn’t seem to get it.
“I brought ‘em,” Arakita replies glibly, teeth flashing in a smile as he casually leans his hip against the desk, and Makishima wants to hurl him outside and let the streets of Manhattan at rush hour do their thing.
The journalist turns to look at Makishima with an appraising gleam in her eye. “Is this...?”
“He’s...” Marguerite starts, but trails off immediately when Makishima pins her with a glare.
“I’m just the IT guy,” Arakita replies without missing a beat, nodding in a self-important way. “I heard he’s finally getting to do his big fancy debut, so I figured why the hell not?”
Makishima hurries over to the front desk, glaring at Arakita for a split second as he murmurs with stiff politeness, “Thank you, you didn’t have to.” Arakita quirks a secret grin back at him. Makishima wants to kick him but refrains, instead focusing his attention on fishing a small dusty pink rose out of the bouquet. He snaps off most of the stem and returns to the journalist, tucking the blossom into her curled hair. “For you. Thank you for coming by today.”
She’s absolutely charmed by the gesture and parts from them with a vibrant smile and a faint blush on her cheeks. Once she’s out of sight down the street, everyone sags with a sigh of relief. “We barely dodged that one,” Marguerite moans into her hands, but her eyes twinkle when she looks up at Arakita. “The IT guy? Really?”
Arakita shrugs and hefts the sizeable bouquet into Makishima’s arms. “Half-true, kind of. And she looked like she bought it, right? Here, Yusuke, take your damn flowers. And congrats.” His hand is warm on Makishima’s side, his lips just this side of chapped as their mouths brush. He smells like cologne and aftershave and, very faintly, cat.
Makishima accepts the flowers and leans into the kiss, but he stills steps on Arakita’s toes entirely on purpose.
9.
Makishima is sitting on the sofa, sketchbook propped up against his legs and the cat very helpfully sitting between him and said sketchbook, when Arakita yells from his office in the other room.
“Did the Giants lose again,” he calls without looking up from his work, his frown intensifying a few degrees as he bends his elbow at an awkward angle to see and draw around Moopy, who easily takes up half the page.
He hears the creak of Arakita’s desk chair and feet pattering quickly over the floorboards. “It’s December, you idiot, the postseason’s over already!” Arakita says as he enters the living room, but there’s none of his usual annoyance in his voice; in fact, he seems rather unusually delighted by something, judging by how fast the words are coming from his mouth. “Yusuke! Look, isn’t this your stuff? It’s on one of those billboards in Times Square!”
Makishima looks up just as the cat bats at his pencil-holding hand, and the angle of the sleeve he had been working on goes wide and wobbly. He has no time to bother with correcting it, as Arakita unceremoniously shoves a tablet into his face. Onscreen is a paused video of a TV news reporter interviewing a pedestrian, apparently about their New Year’s resolutions going by the headline splashed across the bottom, but in the background is the whole array of Times Square billboards, all of them still festive and bright after the holiday season.
In the corner, on a rather small, non-LED display, is a smoky-eyed woman decked out in a deep red gown with a floral motif and covered in large, glimmering gems of all colors. In one hand she holds a gold, jewel-encrusted bottle of perfume; in the other arm, she cradles what might be a tiger cub.
“I’m... surprised you recognized that,” Makishima says at length, poking a finger onto the tablet to play the clip, which doesn’t focus on the billboards at all, least of all his most recent collaboration with a perfume-maker. “That dress wasn’t even anything that great in the end, they just got a Victoria’s Secret model to wear it and then covered her in shiny rocks—”
“I remember that dress!” Arakita butts in loudly, yanking his tablet back and swiping at it furiously. “That was from like—November? Yeah, it was November, I remember ‘cause you were sick with food poisoning, but you kept working on that thing for three days straight—ah, here it is, this one, right?”
The tablet is back in his face again, this time open to a folder of photos of the red dress in varying stages of construction. Judging by the background and the fringe of barely-contained artistic chaos framing all the shots, these had been taken in his personal studio, not that he really remembers much of anything from that season aside from the blinding misery of his intestinal tract.
“Did you take these pictures, or Marguerite?” he asks, blinking down at the blur of red as Arakita scrolls rapidly through the folder. “Oh, this was definitely November...”
Arakita withdraws the tablet and returns to the Times Square video, smirking at the screen. “It was November, going into December, after we got back. You put this thing together, start to finish, in less than two weeks, even with all the breaks to barf up Thanksgiving. How could you forget about something like that?”
Makishima snorts and slips one hand behind Arakita to trail the cold tips of his fingers up underneath the hem of his shirt and over the warmth of his back. As Arakita hollers and almost drops the tablet, Makishima returns to his sketchbook with a grin. “When you’ve made as many articles of clothing as I have,” he replies airily, squinting contemplatively at the oddly-shaped sleeve that Moopy had contributed, “it all kind of blurs together, but that’s what I have you for.”
8.
He hates this American tradition called Thanksgiving. He hates it, he absolutely hates it. It involved consuming disgusting amounts of food—of a bird that didn’t even taste as good as chicken but was apparently revered enough to only be consumed in great quantities on the fourth Thursday of November each and every year—and forced interaction, often with distant relatives you didn’t care to see and only tolerated in order to get to pie, which was just this heavy, soggy thing coated in overly-sweetened pumpkin guts and whipped cream.
(“You love tiramisu, and that stuff is just sugar with a shot of espresso,” Arakita points out with crumbs of leftover pumpkin pie clinging to his lower lip, and when some of it falls in Makishima’s notebook, Arakita blanches a little at the scowl he gets in return. He clears his throat and quickly shuffles back out with his plate of pie. “Just saying.”)
Don’t even get him started on the circus that was Black Friday. All he can remember, aside from the incredible stomach pain that had beset him afterwards from being overly-fed by Arakita’s coworker’s Indian mother and great host of aunts, is the excited chatter and thud of feet in the units next to them as well as from outside, as people, most of them young and rambunctious, went out for pre-Black Friday doorbusters and clearances.
His extremely small, low-key online boutique even got serious inquiries about whether a Black Friday sale was going to happen. He had Marguerite blacklist them.
All of that aside, the main reason why Makishima hates Thanksgiving is because some work came in right before that also came with a strict deadline, and American societal customs forced him away from his studio and to an overladen table that covered everything from traditionally roasted turkey to saag paneer to chow mein, where he is asked uncomfortably probing questions about his job as a designer and whether he and Arakita were considering marriage.
Arakita chokes on the last question, but that hardly dampens his appetite, and he more than gladly accepts the two large Tupperware contains bursting with leftovers much to Makishima’s dismay, and not three hours after Thanksgiving dinner is he already heating some of it up.
“I don’t know where that’s going, and I definitely don’t want to know how your body’s going to get rid of it all,” Makishima says with a sigh as he’s grabbing his things to head back out to his studio on Friday morning. Arakita’s already eating another plateful of leftovers for breakfast; Makishima was planning on leaving it all to him and getting a chocolate croissant and coffee from the corner bakery on his way in to work. “I’ll be at the studio all day, text me.”
He leans down to peck Arakita on the mouth for a goodbye kiss, gets a whiff of reheated green bean casserole, and flees while making a gruesome face. Arakita laughs raucously at him as he goes.
Some hours later, Marguerite interrupts him to ask about what he wanted for lunch—he rarely left to go eat out when he was elbow-deep in work like this—and he declines, blaming a lingering stomachache from yesterday’s heavy dinner. She brings him back a salad anyway, and some more of the strong coffee he likes, but the spinach feels like paper in his mouth and the coffee only unsettles him more.
When he gets up to stretch his legs and to pick through his stock of reds for something suitable, his vision goes momentarily white and he stumbles a little, enough for Marguerite to notice. She’s at his side immediately, supporting him back to his chair, and her hand feels stiflingly warm against his forehead as she checks his temperature. “Mr. Makishima, you feel a little hot,” she says with concern, reaching down to feel his pulse against his wrist, and he bats her away. “Should I—”
“We have a deadline,” he reminds her unsteadily, wincing a little as his stomach twists. His hands look and feel icy cold; they’re ashy white from the knuckles down. “I’m—going to go get some air.”
He winds up in the bathroom, heaving his guts out. In between flushes he checks his watch. At least twenty minutes goes by until he feels somewhat well enough just to stand and splash water on his face, and when he peers at himself in the mirror, he has become death himself. Marguerite would probably try to force him to rest, but they had less than five days left to finish the dress, and they were definitely behind, no thanks to Thanksgiving.
Another wave of nausea overcomes him, and another fifteen minutes passes. This time he drags himself back to his work desk, ignoring Marguerite’s fussing and mustering up as much concentration as he can while wanting to pass out on top of his pile of fabrics.
How he gets through another hour of work without Thanksgiving dinner creeping back out of him, he doesn’t know, but the next time he crawls out of the bathrooms with half the dignity he had going in, Arakita is waiting impatiently by his desk, and Marguerite looks guilty.
“You called him,” Makishima wheezes accusingly, groaning as he slumps against a doorframe, and he barely has the strength to resist when Arakita picks him up bridal-style and carries him over to and dumps him onto the sofa.
“I’m sorry,” Marguerite says meekly, all while very unapologetically draping him with a thin blanket, “but you must have the stomach flu or food poisoning, and I thought...”
“The dress isn’t going to finish itself,” he replies tartly, sitting back up and pushing the blanket away, but then Arakita sits his bony ass down on Makishima’s thighs. He glares up at him blearily and can practically feel his eyebags sagging. “Yasutomo...”
Arakita levels a very unimpressed stare at him in return. “At least barf it all out first, Yusuke, Christ. What are you gonna do if you throw up on all that silk satin organza? It came from France, right?”
Makishima wants to scream, but he also wants to throw up again, so he lays back down and snuffles pathetically into the crook of his elbow. “If I could get it all out in one go, I would, obviously... Ugh, get the designs from my desk, please, I can at least pin things together while I’m resting.”
“Resting means, you know, not doing anything,” Arakita grumbles, but he gets up and retrieves the designs and the scattered materials as asked. After dumping a pile of red fabric on Makishima’s chest, he plunks down a small vase with a branch of blooming red camellias on the glass coffee table. He sits, pulling Makishima’s socked feet into his lap, and then thrusts his chin at the flowers. “Why do you have these on your desk? God, your feet are freezing. Are you sure you’re not dying?”
“They’re for inspiration,” Makishima mutters around the pin he clenches between his teeth, and then, absently, he adds, “Tell Marguerite to bring me a bucket.”
7.
Sena floats down the aisle like she’s walking on clouds, her veil almost iridescent as it flutters against her bare shoulders. The luster of her pearl necklace, the fine crystal beading of her bodice, the joyful glow to her eyes—it’s always impossible to say what shines the brightest on a bride-to-be. Makishima’s critical eye quickly passes over the seam of the well-hidden zipper, the drape of her gown, the trail of her train, and then he sits back with a smile of self-satisfaction as she passes them on her way to the altar.
“You did good,” Arakita whispers warmly into his ear.
He snorts quietly. A Mubier gown that cost as much as a year’s rent for a deluxe apartment in the heart of Tokyo—all he did was make sure it fit right and secure a few spots as a precaution. He nods down toward their interlocked fingers. “You’re going to break my hand, Yasutomo.”
Arakita loosens his grip, just a little, enough that his carpals don’t feel like they’re grating against one another. “Sorry,” he mumbles, a little sheepishly, but he doesn’t let go even when the actual ceremony starts. Arakita practically vibrates with nervous tension next to him, and it doesn’t take very long at all until blunt fingertips are digging into the back of Makishima’s hand.
It takes effort for Arakita to let go of him when everyone rises and applauds the bride and groom as they exit, and as the small group of family and close friends begin to filter outside, Makishima slides his arm around Arakita’s trembling shoulders and guides him toward the open doors. “You did good,” he repeats back to him kindly, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket as Arakita begins to bawl loudly and without restraint, much to the amusement of Shizuka, who isn’t that dry-eyed herself.
They’re still wiping at Arakita’s splotchy face when Sena and her new husband summon them for photos in front of a verdant archway covered thickly in deep red camellias and glossy leaves. “He looks like he has hives, is that okay?” Shizuka calls to her sister while pointing over her shoulder at Arakita, who tells her very gruffly to shut up as he stomps over to take his place at Sena’s side.
The stream of clicks from the camera shutter and all the combinations of people are endless—immediate family of just the bride’s side, just the groom’s side, both sides, just parents, just siblings, et cetera ad infinitum—and Makishima stands next to the photographer, very content to stay out of the shot and enjoy a family’s happiness and a bride’s resplendent beauty at a distance.
Sena catches his eye mid-laugh while Arakita and Shizuka are trying to hide under her veil, and she extends a hand toward him. “Please, Yusuke?” she asks sweetly, and immediately everyone else begins to clamor for him to join them. He’s not about to refuse a request from the bride on her big day, and so he slinks in and stands a bit away out of respect for the family.
“C’mon, get over here,” Arakita snaps, grabbing Makishima by the elbow and yanking him close. He drapes his arm casually around Makishima’s slender waist and flashes a grin at him. “Don’t be a stranger, you weirdo.”
“Yeah, you’re practically family now,” Shizuka adds with a sinister little smirk from Sena’s other side. “You’re never going to get away from him alive, you know that?”
“He’s not gonna leave me, unlike all of your boyfriends,” Arakita retorts, squeezing Makishima’s hip protectively.
Shizuka squawks in protest and seems about ready to grab at Arakita when Sena very calmly juts her elbows into both of their sides. “No arguing,” she orders them calmly over the rapid-fire clicks of the camera shutter, and after a few more shots she pushes out everyone else but Makishima.
He puts a hand on her opposite shoulder and stands by her side without prompting, as he feels safe enough around Sena to be in close proximity to her—it was always better to stay at least arm’s length away from Shizuka, even if both sisters could probably break your nose at a moment’s notice. “Why just me?” he asks her out of the corner of his mouth as the photographer snaps away.
“Because one day soon you’ll be famous,” she answers matter-of-factly with a cheeky smile, beckoning her brother to rejoin them. Arakita stands on her other side, mirroring Makishima’s posture with his arm around his sister’s back. As the flashbulbs go off again, Sena says casually, “I want documented proof that you’re my brother-in-law.”
“You’re getting a little ahead of yourself there,” Arakita mumbles, already a little pink around the ears, and when they poke fun at him he blusters loudly over his fluster.
When the photo session ends, Makishima and Arakita meander along with the crowd to the reception hall a short distance away. “No diamonds,” Makishima tells him firmly. “A big fat ruby, maybe. Or a huge onyx. Maybe even an emerald.”
Arakita releases a long-suffering sigh. “Are we discussing this at my little sister’s wedding? Really?”
Makishima laughs. “Well, what would you want? Sapphire? Amethyst? Opal?”
He’s frowning, but he’s also blushing as he grabs for Makishima’s hand. “Just a plain band, obviously! I don’t need a goddamn rock on my finger!”
Up ahead, Sena and her husband have just entered the reception hall to a loud burst of applause and cheering. Makishima interlaces their fingers and leans his cheek against Arakita’s shoulder as they walk up the last few steps together behind Shizuka and Mr. and Mrs. Arakita. “That’s just what you say now,” he says teasingly, eyes glinting, and Arakita snorts and pointedly looks away, face blazing red.
6.
The move to New York is just about as messy and complicated as Makishima expected it to be, and the only reason he’s able to pull through each day of endless unpacking and trying to remember how to navigate a new city in a new country is because he can come home to Arakita every day. Granted, Arakita’s in exactly the same boat, with an added language barrier he’s yet to fully overcome—apparently he’d been taking English lessons on the sly for months beforehand, having expected to move out to London to be with Makishima, but one-on-one conversation with the same language partner every week is nothing like being dumped in a city of fast-talking, quick-witted Americans—and their combined frustrations with their new lives inevitably leads to explosive clashes over something as mundane as who was supposed to sort and put away the dishes.
Arakita never stays upset for long, though. Despite his short temper and vicious tongue, Fukutomi hammered the burden of a guilty conscience into him long ago, and he’s nearly always the first to apologize and try to make amends. Makishima thinks privately at first that it’s survival instinct, that Arakita doesn’t want to ruin things with the one person he can trust and rely on in a foreign country, but as the days pass and Arakita settles into his job and the pace of city life, he only winds up circling back to the same unconscious conclusion he came to years ago, hearing stories from Toudou and Kinjou and Onoda: that Arakita is simply a good person, if a little rough around the edges still. There’s no excusing how he picks up how to swear fluently and even creatively in English within a month of their arrival, and how he still occasionally winds up in minor scuffles on the subways, but he enjoys the demanding nature of his job, he enjoys the 24/7 multicultural experience of New York, including the people in it, and he enjoys living and being with Makishima.
Every time he just wants to sink into the pavement and never resurface again after another rejection, another dismissal, another pile of busywork, Arakita is always there to keep him warm on the couch or in bed, stroke his hair, and make him fluffy scrambled eggs in the morning. He wonders just how he would have suffered through the move from London to New York by himself on those days he has to head in to work with his chin held high only because Arakita reminded him at breakfast to fake it till he makes it. If anything, Arakita is his reliable anchor and pillar of stability, and not the other way around.
And then, one day, only a few months into their fresh start, Arakita comes home with a fluffy something that meows.
He looks up from his makeshift desk by their half-built bookshelves and immediately frowns. “Oh, no, Yasutomo, is that what I think it is?”
Arakita bustles over, brimming with energy, and deposits a young cat, just barely out of its kitten stage, on top of Makishima’s sketchpads. It curls in on itself, big yellow-green eyes darting around warily. “Don’t worry, I cleared him with the manager, we’re allowed to keep one pet.” He scratches the cat behind its ears and slants a grin at Makishima. “Cats are nice, right? Independent, not too clingy. We might not have the time to take a dog out for walks twice a day, but a cat—”
“Yasutomo,” Makishima interrupts, and the sharpness of his voice makes the cat jump a little. With a long sigh, he pushes himself away from his desk and stands up, crossing his arms over his chest as he eyes the cat. It’s white and black, more on the roly-poly side. Not a stray at least, by the looks of its clean coat and relative plumpness. From a coworker, maybe. “A cat? Really?”
Arakita puts on his best puppy dog face, which looks scarily out of place on someone whose entire face was set to constant irritation by default. “His name is Moopy,” he says hopefully.
Makishima raises his eyebrows. “Moopy,” he repeats incredulously.
“Look, he reminded me of your boss—supervisor—whatever, what was his name, Mubier? He looks like a cat, like a... kind of fat one, okay?” Arakita explains, gesticulating erratically, and the cat whips around to watch him closely. Arakita positions his index fingers behind his head to mimic cat ears and adds very helpfully, “Like nyaa. Just imagine it.”
Makishima lowers his head into his hands with a soft groan. “No, Yasutomo, what are you...”
Without missing a beat, Arakita continues very emphatically, “But I asked my coworkers, and they completely shot down my first idea, Mooby, because, y’know, ‘moobs’ are a bad thing in English. Like Izumida’s pecs, but... flabbier, right? So we came up with Moopy instead. They said it’s cute, sounds like Snoopy. It’s like a tribute, but not, to your boss, who you idolize. See?”
When Makishima can finally bring himself to look up again, Arakita appears very satisfied with himself and his absolutely bizarre system of naming conventions. He looks heavenward and presses his fingertips to his temples. “So let me get this straight,” he says slowly, squeezing his eyes shut, “you got yourself a cat, which we never agreed to even get in the first place, and you named it after my mentor, who you think resembles a fat cat.”
Arakita drums his fingers against his thigh and chews on his lower lip for a moment. “You think Mooby-san doesn’t look like a fat cat, though? He’s like something straight out of my cat collecting game—”
“Oh my god,” Makishima almost yells, pulling at his hair, and he spins on his heel and retreats to their bedroom in a huff. “No cats, Yasutomo! We didn’t talk about this! And don’t call him ‘Mooby-san’!”
He has to slink back out ten minutes later, because he needs to keep working on his sketches and he conveniently left all his designs in the living room, but after shooting Arakita and the new cat a dirty look he scuttles back to the bedroom and slams the door shut behind him. He wants to be more upset than he really feels, but he’s always known about Arakita loving cats and wanting one of his own, and he can’t deny Arakita much; he’s obligated to indulge someone who loves him and puts up with him hogging their little closet space and plugging up the bathtub drain constantly with his hair.
And besides all that, if there was anybody he knew who would be the best and most doting parent to a cat, it would probably be Arakita. So he tells Arakita very diplomatically over dinner that the cat can stay, provided Moopy keeps out of their bed and the closet. He worked with fabric for a living, expensive fabric, so he wasn’t about to bring cat hair into his workplace, and Arakita nods along very seriously while cradling Moopy like he were his newborn son—who is he kidding, Moopy is Arakita’s newborn son.
It takes all of a day before Moopy starts sleeping on their bed. Makishima begins to leave lint rollers in excess all around their apartment and his studio, and he definitely does not accidentally address his mentor as “Mr. Mooby” on more than one occasion.
5.
Makishima doesn’t know why he’s overcome with such nervousness, but ever since Arakita had mentioned that they needed to talk before he went out to run some errands and drop by Fukutomi’s, he’s foregone going down to Tokyo Station to pick up gifts for his boss and coworkers and has instead been rolling around on the couch in intensifying levels of mental anguish. Just this past week he had told Arakita that he would be moving to New York shortly to pursue new opportunities there—maybe Arakita had finally come to terms with the fact that dating a jet-setting fashion designer-in-the-making didn’t mean any kind of stability or cozy home life? Maybe he wanted someone more normal, who he could actually see on a regular basis, someone who didn’t have green hair and didn’t wear bright orange and purple suits and gold chains without the intent of being mistaken as yakuza—
The front door opens, and Makishima rolls off the couch and onto the floor just as Arakita steps inside. “Yusuke? You’re still here? Weren’t you going to go to Daimaru and buy some cookies?”
He doesn’t even ask why Makishima is sprawled partly on the couch, partly on the coffee table, and mostly on the floor; he just walks over and puts down a white paper bag that smells fragrantly of food on the table and then heads away to the bedroom to set down his things. Makishima slowly clambers back onto the couch and, after a moment, gives in to his curiosity and leans over to peek inside the bag. A container of soup, a large takeout box, and a smaller one on top. Chopsticks and fortune cookies—two.
“Did you eat already? I got some spring rolls, if you want them,” Arakita says as he returns with a Bepsi from the fridge. Makishima jumps, almost falls over again, and quickly reels in all of his long extremities to form as compact a bundle as possible while he huddles around a throw pillow. Arakita gives him a long, inquisitive look as he unpacks the food. “Something wrong?” he asks, popping open the container of spring rolls and pushing it toward Makishima.
Makishima peers at Arakita from behind the protection of his pillow and says nothing.
“You should eat while you’re here, since you obviously don’t eat while you’re in London,” Arakita mumbles around a swallow of Bepsi. “Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about—”
“Are we breaking up?” Makishima interjects loudly, cringing at his own rather hysterical tone, but now that the dreaded question has left his mouth, he can’t stop. “The spring rolls, they’re not meant to—to soften the blow or something, are they? I know I’m not around that often, and now I’m going to be in New York, but I—”
Arakita looks about as flabbergasted as he could be with a mouthful of Kung Pao chicken. “Wait, wait, wait. Don’t tell me you’ve just been laying around the place all day worried about this?” Makishima gives him a Look as best as he can while he’s close to completely breaking down into pieces, and Arakita sighs, swallows, and rolls his eyes heavenward. “Oh my god, Yusuke. What makes you think we were going to break up?”
After a moment, Makishima deflates and hides behind his pillow again. “You said we... needed to talk, so...”
“If we were going to break up, I would’ve just told you and kicked you out of my apartment, not bring you food,” Arakita informs him matter-of-factly, jabbing his chopsticks in reminder at the untouched spring rolls on the table. “You can be such a worrywart, Christ. Look, what I was going to tell you has to do with New York.”
Makishima peeks hopefully around the pillow and cautiously reaches for a spring roll, even though he knows he’s still too wound up to actually eat.
“So,” Arakita begins emphatically, washing down his food with another swig of Bepsi, “last week you said you’re gonna move to New York, right? Well, right around the same time, I actually heard from my old man that he knows some people who’ve just set up a start-up over there, and they’re hurting for some help. I sent them my resume, made a few calls, had to do some paperwork, and,” he pauses for dramatic effect, then burps loudly before continuing, “last night they gave me the okay. So if I’m ready and willing, they’ll officially hire me on.”
The spring roll has only just barely made it into Makishima’s mouth, but he doesn’t even register the taste or texture of the rice paper over the incredibly difficult logical leaps he’s making in his head. He retracts it mechanically and clutches it a little more tightly than it probably deserves. “Which means,” he ventures shakily, uncertain and absolutely afraid of the little ball of hope budding in his chest, “you’re...”
Arakita grins and reaches over to grab one of Makishima’s pale, trembling hands, his fingers vivid with warmth around his. “We’re going to New York.”
Makishima drops the burst spring roll, starts to cry, and flings himself at Arakita.
4.
Arakita graduates from grad school today, which means Makishima no longer has the option of conveniently being out of the country every time the topic of meeting the rest of his family comes up.
He gets absolutely no chance to try and prepare himself, either, as even with his hair tied back and his suit woefully understated, he sticks out like a sore thumb, flying solo amidst all the clumps of families looking for their son or daughter. Two young women approach him, one with an angular, short bob, sharp eyes, and ears full of piercings, and the other with long, flowing hair, pink lipstick and nails, and a Chanel handbag. “You must be Makishima-san,” the latter says, smiling prettily. “I’m Arakita Shizuka, and this is Sena. We’re Yasutomo’s younger sisters. Thank you for always looking after our brother.”
Makishima blinks as they both dip into graceful bows, and then looks behind them, where an older couple stand waiting expectantly. Those must be the parents, he thinks, and it’s only because of his years of dealing with constant pressure and last-minute panic while interning at fashion houses that he doesn’t just give in to his instinct and bolt right out of there. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” he replies on autopilot, bowing in return. “I’m Makishima Yusuke—”
“You’re a designer, right? You work overseas?” Shizuka gushes, practically bubbling with excitement, and Sena glances at her exasperatedly as she hooks her arm into Makishima’s and tugs him along in the direction of their parents. “Yasutomo has shown me some of your work, and the dresses you make are so pretty!”
“Th-Thank you,” Makishima mumbles, trying to not make eye contact with Arakita senior, who has leveled a severe, unblinking glare in his direction. He angles himself a bit more towards Mrs. Arakita and tries to bow around Shizuka’s arm and endless chatter. “Hello, I’m—”
“Ah,” utters Sena, and a moment later Shizuka yelps and Makishima finds himself getting hauled backwards and crushed against a warm chest, his nose filling with the earthy scent of a familiar cologne.
“Oi, Shizuka, get your mitts off him!” Arakita snaps, both arms wrapped protectively around Makishima. One hand is most definitely on his butt. It might be squeezing—no, it’s definitely squeezing. Makishima wants to squirm, but he knows he can’t, not while he’s wearing form-fitting pants and pressed against the near-knifelike edge of Arakita’s hip. “Don’t you have like three other boyfriends of your own?”
Shizuka sputters loudly, the handles of her purse slipping down her arm and into her hand in a dangerously well-practiced movement. Her lips curl back, revealing a flash of pearly whites and pink gums. “Huh? Excuse you! None of them are fashion designers like Makishima-san!”
Makishima remains awkwardly pinned to Arakita as the siblings, minus Sena, who gives him a sympathetic look, continue to squabble over his head. Arakita and Sena might have the same eyes and cheekbones, but Arakita and Shizuka definitely have the same vitriolic mouth (and dentition), so he knows better than to try and speak up, especially when Shizuka hefts her extremely expensive lambskin purse like a weapon. He could deal with one Arakita sibling on his own, maybe, but two was altogether too much.
Mr. Arakita clears his throat, and immediately Arakita and Shizuka fall silent. “Why don’t we go get something to eat,” he suggests very firmly, turning and walking away before he even gets a response, and Mrs. Arakita sighs at her children and son’s plus-one and beckons them to follow.
They go to an upscale Chinese restaurant, where their arrival is met with a host of exclamations and congratulations from all the assembled aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and—Kinjou? “I didn’t think I’d run into you here,” Makishima admits as they stand together off to the side, watching Arakita get mobbed by confused but excited small children and clucked over by a slew of middle-aged women, who nod approvingly at the glowing Mrs. Arakita. It occurs to him as he looks over the crowd that he doesn’t see any headbands or broad-shouldered blondes with a strong eyebrow game. “Where’s the Hakogaku bunch?”
“I heard that Fukutomi and the others are doing their own separate celebration later, once everyone’s back in town,” Kinjou answers, smiling broadly. “I didn’t expect to be invited, honestly, but his sisters insisted. Machimiya was invited, too, but he couldn’t make it.”
Makishima stares at Kinjou sidelong, equal parts considering and suspicious. “You’re not one of Shizuka’s three boyfriends, are you?”
Kinjou blanches a little. “You think Arakita would let me date either of his little sisters? Moreover,” he leans in close, his voice dropping to a very grave, serious whisper, “do you have any idea what kind of terrifying woman Shizuka really is?”
Makishima laughs. He’s missed Kinjou terribly, he realizes, even his sometimes lame magic tricks and his fatherly nosiness—not that Kinjou has much to ask, given that he stays in regular contact with Arakita, and isn’t that kind of awful of him, that Arakita talks to Kinjou more than he does, but he’s gracious about it. “Life rarely keeps us all on the same path,” Kinjou says sagely, sipping at a cup of oolong tea in between courses. “I’m just glad I can keep tabs on you now that you’re with Arakita. I’m sure you two will make it together, somehow.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Makishima snorts, reaching over to his right, where Arakita sits, to squeeze his knee under the table.
Arakita’s head swings around, a strip of limp bok choy leaking from the corner of his very full mouth. “Fuh?” he says questioningly, and a stray piece of fried rice sails down onto the corner of Makishima’s plate.
On Makishima’s left, Kinjou coughs into his teacup to disguise a choked-off laugh. Makishima kicks him, also under the table, and Kinjou straightens up with a wince. “Nothing,” he tells Arakita with a slanted smile while reaching up to dab at his mouth with a napkin. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Yasutomo.”
3.
“Oh my god, I’m so sore,” Arakita moans for the nth time that afternoon, limbs splayed out without regard to Makishima’s spindly form lying motionless next to him on the floor. “Racing up those hills was a fucking mistake.”
“Liar,” Makishima retorts dryly, and he only manages a displeased grunt when Arakita kicks pathetically at him.
Arakita rolls onto his side, facing Makishima, and cracks a wolfish grin. “Yeah, I guess it was worth it when we told Toudou we went out for a ride without him.”
Makishima was fairly certain Toudou was still blowing up his phone with outraged wailing along the lines of “But I’m your rival, Maki-chan!!”, if his phone’s incessant buzzing was anything to go by. He’s content to ignore it, because reaching for where it sits on the corner of the table requires getting up and using his incredibly sore muscles, and because it’s nice to just lay here with Arakita, lazily jabbing each other with ridiculous insults and snarky comments about their riding styles and listening to the faint sound of sakura petals scattering across the balcony.
Arakita must be paying a pretty penny to have an apartment made for flower viewing, Makishima thinks to himself as he stares out at the swaying pink boughs outside. Arakita had expended the tremendous effort necessary to push the balcony door open, and every so often a wisp of pink flutters inside, carried along by a particularly strong gust of wind, and after an hour or two the floorboards by their feet are scattered all over with fallen blossoms.
He hears Arakita shifting, and when he looks back up he feels a hand alight on the messy braid draped over his shoulder. He freezes.
“One of ‘em landed in your hair,” Arakita explains, his voice oddly soft, and Makishima tries not shake as fingers gently pick through the flyaway strands—and then blunt fingertips scrape cautiously over the skin of his neck, suddenly very close, and he definitely jumps in surprise. Arakita makes a funny face at him. “Whoa, calm down. I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“No, you, just,” Makishima stammers, now very conscious of his trembling and the faint prickle of sweat gathering at his collar—what if Arakita thought he was a gross, sweaty person, god—while the hand grows ever bolder, slipping upward to cup the curve of his jaw, and a moment later the pad of a thumb presses lightly against the corner of his mouth. “Um,” Makishima mumbles, his head spinning and heart stumbling.
“Makishima,” Arakita whispers, eyes narrowing as he scoots closer. Makishima is fairly certain he stops breathing altogether, his eyes only widening the closer Arakita gets, and when they’re just about nose-to-nose Arakita finally halts, eyebrows knitting together with consternation. “Makishima, are you... not okay with this?”
He stares up at Arakita, catches the faintest flicker of hurt past the constant simmer of agitation, and tries to swallow down the heart now lodged in his throat.
It’s not going anywhere, and he thinks he’s going to choke or suffocate or maybe even die, so instead he leans forward and kisses him.
—Which is a nice way of putting it, because in reality Makishima’s fine motor control has long since gone out the window, and what he meant to be a chaste, gentle press of their mouths is more like a headbutt from a charging elephant, and it’s a small wonder nobody ends up with a concussion or chipped teeth when they roll away from each other a second later, hissing and clutching their bruised foreheads.
“Th’ fuck,” Arakita wails, “you couldn’t just have said ‘I like you’ instead, Makishima?”
Makishima doesn’t answer, because he thinks he tastes copper. He pressed his fingertips to his lip, and when he draws them away, there are spots of bright red. “I’m bleeding,” he says plaintively.
That prompts Arakita to get up and go to the bathroom to fetch him a wet towel, swearing vociferously the way there and back and all throughout his dabbing at Makishima’s “stupid, pretty” face. They wind up on the balcony later with alcohol to numb their mutual embarrassment from earlier in the afternoon, and Makishima falls asleep on Arakita’s bony shoulder while the fallen sakura blanket them with fragrant petals and a hand combs through his hair.
When morning comes, he wakes up alone in Arakita’s bed. His lower lip still stings a little when he yawns widely, and stretching his arms over his head makes all the nerves in his body alight with fire. Getting hit by a truck might not hurt quite so badly in comparison, he thinks, flopping back down carefully with a sad whimper.
“Makishima, you awake?” Arakita yells from somewhere. “I made breakfast and coffee, get your ass up!”
Makishima grumbles and sticks his head under the pillows, where it is cool and comfortingly fragrant of something woody and citrusy, the same smell that clung to nearly all of Arakita’s clothes and especially, as Makishima had discovered last night, right around the crook of his neck. He mashes the pillow against his face and inhales deeply, his heart buoyant with giddiness.
The bed creaks and dips, and a second later Makishima wheezes as a pillow collides with his midsection. “I said get your ass up!”
His core muscles scream as he bolts upright and slings the pillow covering his face at Arakita, who rolls away with a grunt, but not a second later Arakita lunges at him, snarling like a wild animal and bowling him over. They crumple back together into the mess of sheets in a heap of skinny limbs and sharp angles, giggling like idiots and gasping for breath in between the sink and swell of their mouths.
2.
In retrospect, he should have figured Toudou was up to no good way before he got the message asking him to check his bag for Arakita’s missing wallet. It was a very Toudou-ish demand that Makishima leave the comfort of his Tokyo hotel to go out shopping with him, but Arakita tagging along had been a surprise—and then Toudou had been very conveniently tied up on the phone for most of the day, which left Makishima and Arakita to converse mostly with each other. However much he’d been concerned about that at first, it wasn’t as if it were the first time they’d found themselves in this sort of situation either, and after the initial awkwardness, it had been relatively easy to ignore and/or make fun of Toudou together while Arakita suffered good-naturedly through being dressed up, and he’d even bought a few of the pieces Makishima had suggested for him.
It hadn’t been an unpleasant day, but he’d also been rather relieved to get on the train heading back to his hotel, and that was when Toudou sent him a frantic text about Arakita not having his wallet. He had no idea how he could have possibly wound up with it, but he checks anyway, and suspiciously enough, there it is, sitting very innocently next to his sunglasses case like it had always made its home there.
He gets off at the next station, catches a train heading in the opposite direction, and heads back to where he had come from while thumbing rapidly at his keyboard in a futile attempt to get Toudou to explain how exactly Arakita’s wallet wound up in his bag. All Toudou replies with is an address—He lives really close to the station, and he’s been tearing up his apartment looking for it! Just deliver it to him, Maki-chan, pretty please!—and because he doesn’t have any means of his own to contact Arakita, he grinds his teeth a little and lets his GPS guide him to a slightly run-down apartment complex about ten minutes away.
There’s no need to ask Toudou what Arakita’s apartment number is, as Makishima can quite clearly hear very loud, very angry yelling that sounds very much like “What the fuck, Toudou, how did Makishima end up with it? I asked you to hold it for five minutes, how the hell am I supposed to—” coming from one of the second-story units.
He eyes Arakita’s mailbox slot and considers just stuffing it in there and making a break for it, because he really didn’t want to experience firsthand the rest of Arakita’s possible many charms, but before he can even reach inside his bag for the wallet in question, an apartment door flies open with incredible force and suddenly he’s looking straight at a wild-eyed, wild-haired Arakita holding a plastic bag bulging with trash.
“He’s here already,” Arakita says into his phone, and then for good measure he adds, “fuck you, Toudou, I swear,” before he says with unnerving calmness to Makishima, “You have my wallet?”
Arakita toes on some slippers and shuffles outside to deposit the bag in a designated trash drop-off area, and feeling very out of his element, Makishima trails hesitantly after him. “I do, and I have no idea how it came into my possession,” he says slowly and apologetically, holding out the worn-down and well-used wallet like a peace offering. “Sorry about that.”
“I’m not mad at you,” Arakita huffs, planting his hands on his hips while he glares at the staircase like it had personally offended him. “Just stupid Toudou pulling his usual shit, making you come back all this way just to hand-deliver the damn thing to me...”
“It, well,” Makishima flounders, again at the crossroads of admitting the truth or being politely dishonest. He wonders when Arakita would take the wallet from him, or if he was just going to have to keep holding it until he was somehow deemed worthy as its deliverer.
Arakita sighs after a moment and then waves toward the stairs. “The least I can do is make you tea before you go.”
Makishima makes every possible gentle deflection known to him to extricate himself from having to sit through any more human interaction for the day, but Arakita grabs him by the arm and hauls him upstairs anyway, and before he quite figures out what’s happened, he’s sitting on a worn-in but incredibly comfy couch, surrounded by upended furniture and boxes, with Arakita’s wallet perched on a throne of a wobbly stack of paper on the coffee table in front of him.
Somehow he winds up staying much longer than expected, helping Arakita put his apartment back into some semblance of order, and for some reason the work isn’t as wearisome as he expects it to be. Scattered all throughout the mess are mementos of high school and college, most of them cycling-related, and unlike Toudou, whose story-telling is oftentimes more facetious ego-stroking than actual substance, Arakita talks about his time on the roads with Hakogaku and Yonan with a mixture of fondness and frankness punctuated maybe a little excessively with swearing. Makishima gets the distinct impression, however, that Arakita still cares a lot about his old friends, even “that dumbass Toudou,” and not for the first time he feels a pang of guilt for not returning calls and letters as often as he should have all these years.
“Hey, Makishima,” Arakita calls from behind as Makishima is finally heading out towards evening, “do you really not ride that much nowadays?”
“I try to make time for it, but it’s never as often as I’d like,” Makishima replies, watching Arakita triumphantly toss down another couple of bags of trash by the side of the building. “You don’t get to ride that much either, right?”
Arakita pushes his hair out of his face, and in the waning orange-gold afternoon light he looks—Makishima swallows and glances away, but it’s not fast enough to quell the sudden, unbidden rush of blood to his face. “That’s what I get for being a grad student at Tokyo U,” Arakita mutters, but he seems pleased nonetheless, and when he smiles at Makishima it seems a little less dangerous and pointy than usual. “Thanks for helping me clear out my shit. I didn’t realize I still had so much junk in my place until today.”
Makishima attempts a smile, but he doesn’t put too much effort into it lest it come out all weird and scary. “And for bringing back your wallet?”
“Yeah, my wallet,” Arakita nods along distractedly, suddenly introspective, and he jams his hands into his pockets almost self-consciously a moment later. “Well, you need to get going. Sorry for keeping you so long, Makishima.”
It feels refreshing to answer honestly for once. “It was no trouble, Arakita,” Makishima murmurs, fingers tightening around his bag as he gulps down a little bit of courage. “Maybe next time we can hang out without ‘dumbass Toudou’ around.”
Almost before the words have completely left his mouth, he turns and strides away quickly down the street, cheeks burning with self-mortification, and then Arakita shouts after him, “Yeah, I look forward to it!”
He glances back over his shoulder. Arakita is exuberantly waving goodbye to him, and overhead, the still-green branches of the sakura tree bow along with the breeze as if also bidding him farewell. Makishima smiles a small smile, waves back, and goes on his way.
1.
“Onoda-chaan! C’mere a sec—”
“Arakita-san, no!”
Makishima might have been out of the country for over a year, but his senpai senses haven’t dulled in the slightest, not that any decent person could possibly choose to ignore Onoda Sakamichi when he was in trouble without the burden of their conscience smiting them down where they stood. He immediately about-faces and power-walks back down the hallway and to the back porch, where he finds Onoda and Toudou’s old teammate, Arakita, locked in a strangely intimate embrace.
He’s not quite sure what kind of face he’s making when Onoda turns around at the sound of his footsteps and yelps. “M-Ma-Makishima-san! I-I’m sorry, but do you think you could—”
“Sure,” Makishima says, turning right back around with every intent of zooming out of there and finding Toudou, because surely if anybody were at fault for letting this happen, it was definitely Toudou, and he would keep on breaking those headbands of his until he got Toudou’s descendants to repay him for this kind of trespass against his kouhai.
But Onoda apparently means something else, as he begins to inch toward Makishima while struggling to drag Arakita along with him. “Could you get his other arm, please? He says he feels ill, so we should get him to the bathroom before he—”
Arakita rouses himself from his half-dead stupor and growls out some slurry of words that might have been “I’m fuckin’ fine, now leave me alone,” but with the one step and a stumble he takes, out comes a heaping helping of the Toudou-An’s culinary experience right down Makishima’s front.
Onoda gasps loudly, Arakita mumbles a belated “Oops” several long seconds into the awkward silence afterwards, and Makishima, well.
Makishima has Onoda go summon Toudou immediately, who hustles over with a change of clothes for Makishima and a bucket for Arakita. Toudou is incredibly loud, both in his berating of Arakita for “vomiting on Maki-chan, of all people!” as well as in apologizing profusely, but Makishima pays him no heed, stripping himself quickly of his soiled clothes and changing into the shirt and sweats Toudou has brought him. Once Toudou throws Arakita into a bathroom with strict orders to Onoda to not let him back out until nothing was left in his system, he fetches Makishima another bucket and some detergent to soak his clothes in and then stands there ranting about Arakita’s shortcomings as a human being while Makishima frowns into the sudsy water.
Someone calls for Toudou not long after, and Makishima is left blessedly alone with his bucket of clothing and upchuck. He regrets coming to this party now, but not going would have been nigh impossible when he was staying at the Toudou-An under Toudou’s watch for the duration of his time back in Japan.
The evening passes without further incident, thankfully, but the next day Arakita—who had apparently wound up spending the night—approaches him, sullen-faced and still a little green around the gills. “Sorry about, uh, last night,” he mumbles, looking very much like a kicked dog as he looks down at his feet. “I... really didn’t mean to.”
Makishima weighs his options in his head. He could say that nobody means to throw up on someone else (unless you really hated that person and could let it rip on command), but he knew how unpredictable Arakita’s moods could be, and the less fuss he had with the man, the better. On the other hand, he could just dismiss it and that would be the end of it, but Arakita had thrown up on him, and on his very nice clothes, no less, and that was a disservice to the clothes at the very least.
He ends up just shrugging. “The clothes are clean now,” he says, even though he is sure that that really isn’t a proper answer.
Arakita looks up, blinking with surprise. “Really? I was going to offer to pay to dry clean them at least, or replace them if I wound up... ruining them.”
Makishima blinks in return; he hadn’t expected that kind of social awareness out of a guy like Arakita to be honest, and he wonders if Toudou put him up to it. “It’s fine,” he replies blandly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Handwashing is cheaper than dry cleaning, and replacing them would be...”
A weird kind of glint comes back into Arakita’s eyes, and he takes a step forward, prompting Makishima to take a step back. “Were they expensive? Don’t feel bad, it’s my fault, so I’ll replace them if you’re lying about not throwing them out!”
“I made the pants myself, so you can’t really replace those,” Makishima replies, beginning to sweat a little under the intensity of Arakita’s stare. “And the shirt was... silk, and by a designer, so...”
Arakita’s reaching into his back pocket now. “What, so, more than five thousand yen? Six, seven? It’s fine, honestly, just tell me.”
“No, it’s...” Makishima cringes and immediately feels terrible when Arakita flips open a worn wallet and looks up at him expectantly.
“Well?” Arakita prompts, and judging by his tone he’s getting a little impatient.
Carefully looking away, Makishima says delicately, “The going price for it nowadays is about ninety thousand on the secondhand market, if you can even find it. I’m interning for the designer, so that’s how, I... yeah.”
This is the second long, awkward silence he’s had with Arakita within a span of less than twenty-four hours. The first time was kind of a fluke, seeing as he had been the one to get vomited on then, but this time was definitely all him, and he hoped this wasn’t indicative of all of his human interactions at large, otherwise Toudou was right about his nagging—he really was just a giant walking social faux pas.
Arakita sucks in a deep breath, snaps his wallet shut, and slots it back into his pocket. “Okay, then, that’s out,” he mutters, and then his eyes narrow dangerously. Makishima gulps, understanding for the first time why Onoda always seemed so skittish even now around him, and he’s slowly tiptoeing backwards when Arakita continues, almost like an afterthought, “Can I buy you lunch instead? Coffee at least? Obviously it doesn’t come close, but, y’know.”
He has no idea why he accepts, but he decides to go with it just to smooth out any last bumps between them. Resigning himself to stilted conversation for the sake of social niceties, he goes back to his room to fetch a few things before heading out to an early lunch.
When he glances sideways at Arakita from under the brim of his large hat, he finds himself being stared at quite closely. Heat floods his cheeks and his heart skips a beat—embarrassment from being scrutinized and his fight-or-flight instinct being engaged, he assures himself as he directs his gaze elsewhere.
Nothing could possibly come of it, he thinks, his eyes trailing back to the tiny oblong of pale skin that peeks out from between Arakita’s hair at the nape of his neck and the collar of his jacket, as he follows him down the hill from the Toudou-An into town.