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The moment Mikazuki stands in front of his class, Orga's world stops.
He watches as Mika--standing, both arms and eyes seemingly functional, looking a little uncomfortable in his school uniform, obviously bought a little large so he can grow into it, Mika--opens his mouth, says something, watches their homeroom teacher speak, point to near him, wait, what the fuck?, watches Mika get closer, but hears approximately nothing. He is sure that people are saying things, but he's not listening. He sees Mika do that little half-nod-half-bow thing as he sits down next to him, maybe the movement of his lips, and then proceeds to spend the rest of homeroom pretending that he's not staring.
(He is definitely staring, though. He looks over, occasionally, sees that weirdly focused-yet-unfocused expression on his face, and wonders who Mikazuki is now, what he's thinking about. He certainly can't ask.)
Mika leaves with their teacher when homeroom is over and does not return.
Orga spends this class time eyeing the door and going through all of the stages of grief in one fell swoop. It obviously was some sort of odd, shared hallucination, he starts, noting the now-erased spot on the chalkboard where Mikazuki Augus was once written and dully noticing Eugene shooting him looks that almost look concerned, maybe. Then, eventually, he makes his way to I obviously did something bad enough--probably that bit he said before I died about wanting the gun back, who knows where that ended up, yeah, it's about the gun and literally nothing else in this world--that he just upped and left, that's Mika for you, then to if I do something right, he'll come back, to he was definitely a hallucination, I'm just finally going insane, to I'll speak to him normally if he does come back.
He comes back.
Just as he's about to leave for lunch, Mikazuki comes back to the classroom, stares straight back at him this time. Orga uses this as a chance, remembers his promise himself to speak normally, whatever the fuck that meant. "Yo, Mika, you coming to the convenience store with us?"
Stare. Stare. The time between the question and his answer is positively agonizing. It's like watching a computer load in real time, although he's loath to make too many machine comparisons, still entirely capable of full-body cringing at the memory of him attached to Barbatos, unable to move further than his Alaya-Vijnana connection. In the end, Mika only nods, grabs his bag, and looks expectantly at Orga, just like he used to. Orga joins the others--former Tekkadan members, including a few from the adjoining junior high school--and Mika follows.
Mikazuki doesn't say a word the entire walk. Others try to rope him into conversation, ask him things, and he just stares, sometimes moves his mouth like he's about to speak, then doesn't. He can speak, he's pretty sure, so why isn't he doing it? It's about the fucking gun, isn't it? He didn't give Mika his gun back and the righteous anger from this transgression has followed them into their next lives. He's fucked forever and permanently because he didn't give the gun to Ride or someone while he was actively in the process of dying and go, like, hey, really important, give this back to Mikazuki for...however long he lived after, nobody will fucking tell him. It's all coming together now, he thinks. Biscuit is waffling about something behind him, saying something to everyone else that seems to impart understanding. He is sure it's important, but the tunnel vision is too strong for him to notice, calm enough to go through all of the motions but insane enough to not be attuned to what the people around him are saying at all. He's only pulled out of it once they're well into the store and he feels a tug on his sleeve.
"Orga," Mikazuki starts, not even waiting for him to be at full attention before shoving a rice ball into his hands, "This. How do you read?"
"...Salmon?" Wait, huh? It's written in a way that anyone should be able to read. Can he not-- "Mika?" It's too late. He's taken it back and is halfway across the store and checking out. Once again, Orga Itsuka must resign himself to his fate.
Stare. He's not particularly talking to the cashier, either, lots of pointing and nodding, not a lot of speech. It's worrying. Mika was never a chatterbox before, sure, but he was never so eerily silent. (If he was silent like this, it meant something was wrong. What's wrong now?) The thousands of reasons this could be the case run rapid-fire in his head: he doesn't know them at all and is confused why a bunch of wayward teens have suddenly accepted him into the fray, he does know them all and is mad at them--or probably just Orga, honestly, Orga for sure just did something wrong and doesn't realize it yet, or it's the fucking gun thing--or maybe he's just used to being alone now, a different kind of feral child? Or...
"Like I was trying to tell you," Biscuit chides from behind him, seemingly knowing by instinct alone that Orga is having a Certified Moment about all of this, "The teacher said he lived in Edmonton until last month. He can't speak Japanese well yet. You weren't listening, were you?" He was not listening. How could he? Regardless, a sense of relief washes over him, only interrupted by Mika coming out of the store and unceremoniously dropping a handful of protein bars into Orga's bag.
"For you. Eat." Biscuit audibly snorts at the exchange, and yeah, he can hear the accent now that he's paying attention to it, attuned to the fact that the people around him are, in fact, speaking. "Biscuit," Mika points straight at Orga, "He sleeps?"
"No," Biscuit says, just as Orga says, "Yes, every day". Two guardians stand at the doorway. One speaks in truths, the other only in lies. Anyone with remotely any experience between the two of them knows which is which. It certainly does not help when Biscuit immediately pulls out his phone with receipts, damn him.
"Look, he sent this to me this morning at four o'clock." Man, Mika's been back for less than 20 minutes, tops, and Biscuit's already showing him the 4AM doomscrolling texts? It's fucking over, man. Does life's cruelty have no bounds? Yes, he was an orphaned child soldier before, literally gunned down in the streets in a way that he barely remembers but has been told was very traumatizing to those who witnessed it, but this could maybe be worse than that, he thinks. And he's scrolling up on their message log? "This one was at 3:30, see, and here's one yesterday at 1:14."
"He doesn't sleep." Mika remarks, giving Orga a look that could kill.
Biscuit nods. "He doesn't sleep. Hey, Shino, does Orga sleep?"
"No, he fuckin' sent me a text about swans being gay at 2AM yesterday!"
"He sent Shino a text about swans being gay at 2AM yesterday."
"I'm being betrayed here. You are betraying me, Biscuit."
"You deserve it." Mikazuki is nodding along with Biscuit, which is never a good sign. Life's cruelty truly does know no bounds.
-
The second half of the day is a little easier, he thinks, since Mika returns to the seat next to him for their afternoon classes. ("Today's morning class," he was told during lunch, Mika holding up a textbook plainly named Japanese for Returnees, "Japanese is still hard, but English and math are okay." Math is not okay, he realizes later as he watches Mika fighting for his life trying to follow what's going on in class, but it's okay to lie sometimes, he supposes.) It's easy for them to fall into their old pattern; what should I do next is a completely normal thing to ask someone in class on your first day. Even when Mika absolutely dominates in English class, for obvious reasons, he looks to Orga for reassurance that he's doing the correct thing. It's heartening, almost, both because this is how it is after spending the entire morning having a minor crisis thinking that he was forgotten or had done something horribly wrong, but also that he's here.
Mikazuki had talked before about wanting to read and wanting to learn about things, and here he is, having evidently learned so much that he's bored about it. He tilts his paper towards Orga a few times, giving him the answer in...surprisingly neat handwriting, at least neater than the finger writing he saw him do before. (He's about 90% sure they're facing the correct direction this time. His Japanese handwriting could use some work, though.) He feels a bit of pride swelling in him. He remembers fantasizing wildly about this before, deep in the recesses of his mind; Kudelia had mentioned the idea, a few times, of kids just being able to go to school without working, and he couldn't help but imagine the two of them--all of Tekkadan, really--that way, learning in peace. Mika had said that it was impossible to imagine, that he was happy to be unable to do anything but fight in Barbatos, because it made it easier to understand. Would he think it was easier now, he wonders?
"Do you have club activities?" Mika breaks his thought process, causing him to acknowledge that class has, in fact, ended. Does he have club activities?
"Nah." Yes the fuck he does. "Hey, you wanna come over? I'll help with your Japanese homework if you help me with English. Nobody'd be home, it'd just be us." It's an unreasonable ask. It's downright irresponsible. Mika, like any normal person, should say no because that's what you're supposed to say to someone who asks you over to their house, alone, when you've known each other for less than a day at a new school. At least you're supposed to meet at some neutral place, right? Not give away the intimacy of the whole hey, this is where I live and sleep and this is how I live my life thing within hours of meeting? Orga knows how Mikazuki operates, though, and in a way, the nod he gets in return is a confirmation that their dynamic really hasn't changed, he's afraid.
-
"Wow. Big house." Are the first words out of Mikazuki's mouth when they finally arrive, a full twenty-minute walk away from the school. He had spent the whole walk pointing out things about the city, about the area he grew up in; mostly small things, things like my elementary school is over there and the lady who runs that shop is really nice, she always gave us extra sweets. Mika had nodded along the whole time, maybe a little too obvious that some of what he was saying was going over his head entirely.
"Yeah. A lot of it's for my old man's work, though. He..." Orga doesn't know how to describe yakuza without just saying the word, but he won't know that one, right?
"Old man?" Doesn't matter. Mika is stuck on a much smaller concept.
"Uh...father, but not really. From before, you remember Teiwaz? Him."
"Oh. Yakuza." He knew the word this whole fucking time. Mika nods with understanding, following Orga inside. Once again, he finds their old dynamic indistinguishable from the dynamic that comes with just being new to something; Mika copies his movements, pads carefully behind him. He's tempted to just take his hand and lead him that way, but worries, just a bit, that it would come off as overbearing, if not overtly affectionate. It doesn't particularly matter what he thinks, though, considering Mika takes his hand about 20 seconds into the journey.
His hand is cold. It's softer than he remembers, too, because apparently "the softness of his hands" is something Orga has devoted valuable real estate in his memory to, but his fingertips are chilly, almost enough to make him shiver. In hindsight, where is his coat? His gloves? He seems to be cared for, all things considered, but it was, like, ten degrees out this morning, shouldn't he be bundled up?
"Mika," he starts, "Aren't you cold?"
"No?" Mika tilts his head, like he certainly will understand if he hears it again at a 20-degree angle, "It's warm. Orga is cold?" It doesn't matter if he is or not, because he can feel a tightening of the grip on his hand, then a second hand on top of the first. "Cold hands."
Well, his face certainly isn't cold now, at least.
"They're fine. Don't worry." Nevertheless, his hand stays in Mika's grip, only wrenching it away when they finally arrive at his room. Orga puts his bag down, pulls out an extra floor cushion, then is finally hit with the notion of manners again. "Fuck. I'll go get drinks. You just stay here, okay?" He barely sees a nod from Mikazuki before he is halfway down the hall.
Okay, so maybe he was lying a little bit about the drinks. He wasn't, he means, he does know his manners, but maybe he wasn't thinking about being a good host, maybe he was just thinking of bashing his head against the wall until he passes out, or at least until he remembers how to be a normal human being again. Same thing, probably. However, he has been told by other people that this is "not an acceptable response to stress" and to "seek help", whatever that means. He's not doing that shit.
The middle ground to this is for Orga to stick his head in the fridge as the kettle heats up for tea. This is very normal. It does not help at all, for some reason.
Undeterred by his failure to calm himself down, he, very normally, continues to stare into space and go through the motions until he's somehow made it back to his room, opening the door to Mikazuki on the phone with...someone. At this point, he is fully convinced that he has gone off his rocker, should go straight to crazy person jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200, because he does not understand a word that he is saying, and
Wait, shit, the English language.
Oh, he's lost his fucking marbles, all right. The proverbial marbles have spilled and are all taking wild journeys far, far away from where he is, at least a few have fallen into a sewer grate and are gone forever, he will perhaps never recover. Mika holds his hands for, like, two minutes, tops, and Orga manages to block out the fact that Japanese isn't his first language entirely. It would certainly be a sign of love if it wasn't a terrifying omen.
"Who's that?" He asks, leaving the question of what he was saying open-ended, just to be safe.
"Mother." Mika stares at his lap for a moment, furrowing his brow indicating that he's trying to summon a word and failing, and fuck, there's something unsettling about being able to read his expressions so fluently so quickly, "...From after I was born. Not real."
"Adoptive?" Orga corrects.
"Aboptive." Mika incorrects. "She's...nice. Like your old man."
Like his old man? "Yakuza?"
"No." At the very least, it earns his first laugh from Mika for the day, a sound he didn't realize he missed so much until this exact moment. "Your old man is nice?"
"Oh. Yeah." Stupid. Stupid. Idiot. Stupid. "Yeah. He's nice."
"I'm glad." A beat, then, like nothing has ever changed, ever, "What should I do next, Orga?"
Orga does not reply. His mouth is super dry all of a sudden, is that a symptom of something? That's a sign that things are normal and should definitely continue, right? He swallows, swallows again, then, "Want to sit for a bit first?" He says this while sitting down, too, an obvious invitation in case his words were not clear enough.
His words were, in fact, clear enough, because Mikazuki Augus sits himself right in Orga's lap. Or maybe they were not clear enough? Which is which? Is he dying? Is this what dying feels like? He knows what dying feels like, but maybe it's different this time? He's gonna throw up? Hello? Are you there, God? It's me, Orga.
"Traditional...Canadian sitting?" Is how Orga's mouth, wholly unconnected to his brain now, chooses to respond. Mika responds with a little affirmative noise. Canadians are insane, he notes in the back of his head.
"Like before." Mika adds, unhelpfully. Okay, so not traditional Canadian sitting, maybe, good job on hearing the question, Mika--wait, shit. He understands the reference once his brain has caught up to his ears, and yeah, he gets what he means now. When they were small, before sitting like this meant someone (Orga) was getting poked in the stomach with an Alaya-Vijnana port. Back when they were young and stupid and both were individually convinced that they had tricked the other into being their own personal heat source--Orga because Mika was a little bundle of warmth, great for hugging, and Mika because he could hide himself under Orga's coat to keep himself extra warm at night. Joke's on both of them, that's how sharing body heat works, they just didn't understand it because they were, like, seven and probably some of the biggest idiots on Mars. "Orga, it doesn't hurt?"
"It's doesn't hurt." Orga murmurs, though he still adjusts his position, trying to find that sweet spot where he knows he'll be comfortable even if they sit like this for a few hours. I'll help you with your Japanese homework, his ass.
"...Hey, Mika. How's your right side? I know you can still walk and all, but..." He trails off after a few moments of comfortable silence, his hand meandering until it rests just on top of Mikazuki's. He's glad that they're sitting like this now, because he might, perhaps, die if he had to make eye contact while asking this. It's a regret he has, now he has both the privilege of hindsight and the literal privilege of not being an actual child soldier. He shouldn't have let it gotten that bad, should've stopped him the first time he got majorly disabled from it, but he pushed on instead like an idiot, and look where that got them. Dead as a doornail before they could even dream of being adults, as much as they acted like them. Literally shot in the back like a dumb asshole idiot adult, then half-expecting to legitimately walk it off like some stupidly optimistic child, or so he has been told. Bewildering. He wants to laugh at it, sometimes. Maybe he did laugh at it when someone first told him what happened, who's to say.
"I'm fine. No problems." Mika murmurs, breaking him out of his reverie, "Orga, too?"
"I'm fine. Just a mark from the..." He stops, remembers the old euphemism, "Whiskers?"
Mika turns back and gestures under his nose with a finger, imitating a moustache. "Whiskers?"
Orga stammers, then shakes his head. He has made it this far in life, and thus has just enough common sense to know that Alaya-Vijnana System, a system that has not even been created yet, is not going to be part of anyone's working vocabulary, and especially not if it's not their first language. How to describe it, though? The old common euphemism obviously didn't work. He pauses, then moves to take off his shirt. Show, not tell, he remembers being told at some point. It might been the opposite, actually. Doesn't matter.
Orga takes his hand and gently guides it to his back, dead center, where a patch of raised, reddish skin from where his Alaya-Vijnana had been remains. He feels Mika's hand run over it, watches the recognition register in his eyes, and then Mika is pulling away, turning around to take off his shirt and reveal the same raised spots in the same area. His stomach drops, but he can't help it; Orga reaches out, mirroring Mika's previous action. He closes his eyes, counting the circular spots, one on his pointer, middle, and ring finger; one, two, three. If he thinks hard enough, he can pinpoint where the skin used to slope, the spot that always made it painful to sleep on their backs, even years after the surgery.
The decision to lean down and press a gentle kiss against each spot is barely made by him, but rather by the Orga of before; his hand taking Mikazuki's again, deliberately his right hand, wanting to feel the movement, hearing both of their breathing speed up as the kisses trail up to the crook of his neck, free hand cupping his cheek, and
The sound of footsteps coming down the hall causes them to separate at speeds previously unknown to man.
"Yo, Orga, you got someone over? The old man--" The door opens, no knocking, to reveal a certain Naze Turbine, who stops mid-sentence to stare, "Bro, put a fucking shirt on."
"Naze, it's been a while." Mikazuki opts to ignore that Orga is currently scrambling to put on his shirt, face bright red. His face is more akin to that of someone currently watching paint dry. Suddenly, the scene is what one would find in the dictionary as the definition of incriminating--two boys, shirts off, one of them acting like he was caught in the act of something, school bags and snacks present but entirely untouched--and Orga is left to pick up the pieces. Fuck his life, honestly.
"It's been a while, Mikazuki. You seem well." Naze decides to join the shared delusion in which Orga is not having an absolute crisis, especially when he initially puts on what is most definitely the wrong shirt, approximately two sizes too small, and only realizes halfway through buttoning it up. "Orga, the old man wanted me to let you know he won't be home tonight, he wanted to be sure you had dinner. Was gonna take you out, but looks like you're already busy."
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying! I'll leave you with your little crush."
"Orga, what is a crush."
"It means nothing!"
"Naze, what is a crush?"
"You, to Orga." Mika hums in understanding at that. He wants to sink directly into the ground. This is it. He is going to live underground now. He is a mole people now. There's no coming back from this. His bro, one of maybe three people he's shed tears over, one of the few people in his life who he can fully trust and would kill and die for, barring the times he did not, in fact, kill and die for, is throwing him directly underneath the proverbial bus, and for what? What did he do to deserve this? Can life truly be so cruel? Orga wills every bone in his body to suddenly become guided as if by an occult hand straight into the ground. He needs to be gone. Goodbye, cruel world.
"Oh. He is my crush, too." Never mind, life is okay now.
"Oh? That's good." Naze strides across the room, still ignoring Orga's small crisis in true older brother behaviour, and ruffles Mika's hair. "Now, you know what will happen if you make Orga cry, right?"
"Kill?"
"That's right, bud, kill."
"You, too." Mika smiles as Orga watches on in absolute horror.
"Oh, what a deeply haunted child you continue to be!" Naze laughs, then ruffles his little brother's hair, as well, "I'll be back later, Orga. There's some condoms in my top drawer if you need them."
"I will end you."
"Love you, too, bro!" Naze nods towards Mika, then speaks in extremely accented English, "Brother love."
"Brother love." Mika repeats, nodding and acting like that is a normal thing people say in the English language.
The door closes, and Orga stares at it with a brand-new form of disdain otherwise undiscovered. Mika, on the other hand, seems to be entirely unbothered by the interaction, scooting over and finding his spot in his lap again.
"What should I do next, Orga?" He's almost mad about being asked that again, except for the fact that he is currently mad about everything, so it's a bit misplaced, perhaps. The fact that he has a Mika in his lap is definitely helping dim his anger, too. But then, "Also, what is condom?"
"Isn't that an English loanword?" Hey, it's not like they were going to have sex, anyway, not after that. The only boner killer better than having your adoptive-brother-former-space-mob-Brother walking in on you shirtless with your former-space-homoerotic-codependent-relationship-friend is going into the etymology of the name of your contraceptive method of choice, after all. "Con-dom. Uh--" Orga stammers, mustering his best English accent like he hasn't failed every single English class since they started in elementary school, "Condom."
"Weird pronunciation." Mika chuckles, then turns around, standing on his knees so he can meet Orga face-to-face, giving him just a few seconds to process the situation before pressing a soft kiss to his lips. For a short moment, Orga allows himself to be truly selfish; after they separate, he comes back in for another, then another, more and more until they're both panting, Orga pulling Mikazuki into his lap and burying his face into the crook of his neck.
In a surprisingly affectionate move, Mika embraces him tightly, rubbing a hand on the small of his back while the other pats his hair. "Missed you." He hears the other male speak softly, just barely above a whisper. "Wanted to see you, Orga."
"Mm," All he can manage for a minute is a hum of affirmation as he burrows his head further. If asked at any other time, he would say that it was just what felt right, no ulterior motives, but for now, Orga might be able to admit, at least to himself, that he's biting back a sob. Mika is always so difficult to read, after all, even on good days and even when they shared a mother tongue, so having him speak frankly--not in actions that confuse and astound all of those around him, not in bizarre combination pep talk/come to Jesus talk/how many do I have to kill, Orga talks, but in normal words--is perhaps some sort of modern miracle on its own. "Me, too. Was Edmonton..." He trails off, not knowing exactly what he wants to ask, just that he wants to hear something.
"Kudelia is there. Atra, too." Allowing Mikazuki to develop normally--no Alaya-Vijnana surgeries, no malnutrition, no childhood illness, no permanent loss of sight or movement on the right side of his body from the whole "being a child soldier" thing--seems to have been a mistake, in hindsight, because he largely moves like he did at their youngest, tumbling about like it was his job. He wriggles out of Orga's grasp, one of his legs sticking straight up in the air as he rummages through his bag. He is about two wrong movements away from having a foot directly in his face. A bit dangerous, one might say. After a moment, he returns to some approximation of their previous position, phone in hand. "See."
His lock screen is, in fact, a picture of Mikazuki, Atra, and Kudelia in front of what he thinks, maybe, is a high school. He can't tell, both on account of his lack of English literacy and because Mika is holding his phone in front of his face like an old man. He pulls the phone away and, once again, just like an old man, holds it directly to his face, one hand holding the device with a death grip and the other navigating with a single finger. After another minute, the phone is back, this time with a rolling slideshow--Mika might be the first person he's met to actually use the pre-generated videos his phone suggests, completely unironically--of his time in Edmonton. And okay, yeah, impending headache from the phone being less than ten centimeters from his eyes aside, it hits his emotions, just a bit.
He's smiling in some of the pictures. Not widely, not some wild grin, but smiling, nonetheless. Especially towards the end, he thinks, Mika had always had that half-dead look on his face, after he had resigned his life to just fighting in Barbatos. Seeing a normal expression on his face, even if he can also see it in real life, right behind the phone being held in his face like a grandfather would, is refreshing. It changes to a short video clip, and he can't understand a lick of it--seriously, maybe he should be taking Mika up on actually getting help with his English homework--but he knows banter when he sees it. He sees him honest-to-God snort at something Atra says. Who is this mysterious stranger who replaced the Mikazuki Augus he knew, ignoring the fact that the stranger in question is just the same Mika as before, but with nearly double the life experience, almost half of which seems to have come with luxuries like "regular doctor's appointments", "having near-unlimited access to nutritious, filling food", and "a proper education". The Orga and Mika of the past would've balked at having any of these things, whereas they both would probably complain about at least two of the three at any given moment.
"Orga is safe, too?" Mika interrupts his train of thought, staring at him with his mouth still half-open. He looks like he's trying to think of what to say, can see the gears turning in his brain and squeaking along before he inevitably gives up and just says the one word he does know, hoping it carries the meaning. "Yakuza."
"I'm not joining up, if that's what you're asking." Mika makes a small affirmative noise, confirming that that was, in fact, what he was asking, "I'm safe. Kitakyushu is safe. The others are all fine, as you saw earlier." He makes another noise. He's not heard that one in a long time, this is the one that he's managed to forget the meaning of, perhaps having blocked it out of his memory for his own safety. What the fuck does that noise mean?
"But Orga does not eat." Bang. "Biscuit said Orga doesn't sleep." Bang. "Old man wanted to make sure you eat dinner." Bang. Orga, metaphorically, collapses on the street in a pool of his own blood.
Don't you ever stop...
"That's not important."
"Liar." Pause. "Orga does not drink?"
"I drink! There's a drink, like, right there!" That he hasn't touched, but maybe he's drinking by osmosis or something. If he really wanted to, he could say something about how Mika isn't drinking, either, though he's also not too keen on arguing this point.
"No, alcohol." Mika corrects himself, making it somehow worse.
"That was one time." One time, and then Orga got himself killed like an idiot. He was barely legally able to drink before he got himself gunned down in the street, God. "My old man would beat my ass if I came home drunk."
"Beat my ass?" He quirks an eyebrow, Mika-speak for the fuck does that mean?
"As in, kill."
"Ah." He nods, almost a little too much, all things considered. "Beat ass." This is one going in his personal dictionary almost immediately, it seems. He takes another short pause, then asks, "You will eat dinner tonight."
"Is that a question?" It sounded like one, aside from the parts where he didn't inflect or add any words that would make it sound like a question. Really smart, Orga.
"No," Then, in a move that Mika will, one day, admit was a strategy stolen from his adoptive mother, back from when he was a toddler, he gives Orga two options, no option to refuse, "Buy or make?"
"...Buy, I guess." He pulls out his phone, holding it a normal distance from his face, "You want to go out or order in?"
"We eat at the station." Once again, it does not sound like a question, just a new addition to Orga's continued adventures of figuring out what the fuck Mika means. "Last train is at eight."
"Where the fuck do you live that your last train is at eight?" In lieu of responding verbally, Orga finds himself on the receiving end of a phone three centimeters from his face once again, this time with a view of directions to his house in a map app. "Holy shit. Okay. Put on your shirt, we'll go get ramen. You eat ramen, right?" Mika nods, though he has a sinking feeling he might've nodded regardless of what he said. Whether that's because he's employing a "smile and nod" technique because he doesn't understand or because he refuses to say no to Orga...but also, he's only been in the country for the month, no idea if that was all even in this general area, not to mention that he lives far away and probably has been spending time with his adoptive parents, and...argh, he's overthinking again, enough that Mika is just staring at him having a crisis, shirt already back on.
"Let's go." He holds out his hand, pulls Orga up to stand next to him, then promptly does not let go of his hand. Perhaps one day in the future, this will not drive him absolutely insane every time it happens. Today is not that day. "Ramen is good?" This is a question that only the clinically insane ask, he thinks but does not say.
"You've never had it before?" Another point against Canada, apparently.
"Only with the..." Mika stops mid-sentence as he stares at the clock on the wall. He points. "Orga. The clock is correct?"
"Yeah, it should be, it's..." He directs his attention to the aforementioned clock and promptly considers jumping off the closest bridge, "...Is your train actually at eight?"
"7:59. Local train to Soeda." The way he says it sounds like he has been forced to memorize it, regardless of any apps that could help him with directions, perhaps that it was written on the back of his hand for a good period of time. (Orga looks, later, and finds that it still is written, just on the inside of his wrist.) "But it's 7:57 now." It is. It is seven fifty-seven right now. Last he checked, walking to the station from school takes at least fifteen minutes, ten if you run and don't have to stop at any intersections. Orga's house is in the opposite direction of the station from school. Unless they figure out how to travel at warp speed in the next few seconds, they are, as approximately nobody says, turbo-fucked. "...I call my mother."
Orga does not understand a word of the ensuing phone conversation, aside from a single mention of his name, and visibly balks when Mika hands his phone. He can't even really freak out at talking to Mika's adoptive parents, considering Naze literally saw the two of them shirtless, like, an hour ago, but that won't stop him from trying. He wants to apologize to everyone around him, really; he's not usually this much of a mess--or at least he acts like he's not, which people seem to believe--but today seems to be special, and while he is in pieces, nobody has particularly bothered to come sweep up the metaphorical fragments of him on the ground.
"Orga Itsuka," A familiar voice says to him on the other side of the phone, gentle but firm, prompting him to sit up just a tiny bit straighter, "What are your intentions with my son?"
"Ms. Merribit." Orga is stammering, and at least he can give himself credit for the fact that he seems to have always been like that with her, especially when she asks him insane questions like asking about his intentions with her son. "I--We're. I'm sorry, we got caught up doing homework, I didn't realize that his train was so early--"
"Just homework?" Same as before, he is being rended entirely asunder by her. Mika can't hear nor understand what is being said to him, but this doesn't seem to matter, considering the way he snorts. He makes a gesture, pointing to his cheeks. Are his cheeks red? (His cheeks are red. Strawberries look upon him in envy.)
"Just...just homework. He's helping me with my English." Pause, then, in what may be his worst attempt at speaking to date, "Not so good." The resulting giggle puts him one step closer to jumping off a cliff.
"Well, if it's just homework, can you ask your parents if Mikazuki can stay for the night? Or I can come pick him up, if it's too much trouble."
"It's--my old man's not home tonight--McMurdo, I mean--" He hears a small hum of recognition, then continues. "I don't think he'd mind. He always asks about Mika, anyway." His adoptive father's memories of the events were always a bit hazier than the others'; his running theory is that those who weren't close to the events that transpired don't remember as clearly, like how Takaki's memory gets hazy after they got to Earth or how Eugene is missing some events from when they were separated. No confirmation on whether this is how it works, though, and quite frankly, he is not entirely keen on figuring out the fine details of this situation.
"I see. I'll leave him in your hands, then. Can you hand the phone back to Mikazuki, please?"
"Yeah. Excuse me." He's halfway through a bow before realizing that she can't see him doing it, then awkwardly hands the phone to Mika. After a few minutes of watching yet another phone call he understands approximately none of, Mika puts down his phone and looks towards him.
"I can make dinner," Mika says, almost entirely unprompted. (Ms. Merribit told him to offer, to be nice, she said, but Orga doesn't need to know that.) Orga balks. Not because he's surprised Mikazuki can cook--he can, too, technically, he's taken home economics class, even if Eugene shares the story about how he burnt water whenever he has the opportunity--but because he is pretty sure they have what could be best referred to as Dude Fridge; that is, he's pretty sure there's a few loose items, but nothing that could constitute a meal. He thinks he saw a stray pack of ham in there the other day, maybe, perhaps a singular egg. He eats out more than he should, maybe, though he usually is at practice for his club until late enough that stopping to eat rather than making something at home isn't the worst thing he could do to himself. (Or he just forgets to eat, maybe grabs a Calorie Mate on his way home, but Orga has decided that he likes not seeing murder in Mika's eyes this time around, if he can help it, so maybe now is not the time to mention that.)
"I don't think we've gone shopping for the week yet--" Yes, good, Orga, imply that you normally would have something in your fridge besides an egg and a few stray cannoli, "--How about I take you out? You said you haven't had ramen yet. There's a good place nearby, closer than the station." Mika stares unblinkingly for a good ten seconds or so before nodding, grabbing his bag and taking Orga's hand like it's his job.
For what is not first time in the past hour, Orga is hit with the guilt of having Mika continually just follow him again. There's a little nagging voice in the back of his head--no, not even there, it's almost a physical sensation, like phantom pain, pulling where his whisker should be, so, like, fucking ouch--telling him that letting Mika just blindly follow him is how they're going to wind up half-paralyzed or dead in the street again. Ignore that they're living normal lives now, past Orga, sure. Ignore that the worst thing that Mika has piloted is a bicycle. (Badly.) If they do their weird codependent bullshit again, there will be a price to pay. This may or may not be true, but God, is it physically paining him to let it continue unchallenged.
He'll take some pain meds later, he supposes.
Mika is trusting him to lead the way, holds tight to his hand the whole walk there and back, lets Orga order for him when they eat and follows what he does the whole time. In his head, he can justify it as cultural education; that he literally cannot read the menu, that he doesn't know how to do these things, that he literally said he's never eaten ramen before. He tries to at least reassure himself that he's being very normal and that they are not doing anything bad, lingering guilt be damned. It's culturally acceptable. He's like a responsible upperclassman, but if they were in the same year at school and also not at school at all. Take that, past Orga's lingering guilt after getting gunned down in the street. Bitch.
"What?" Oh, fuck, was he thinking out loud?
"Don't worry about it." Bitch. "You were saying?"
"We're home." Oh, and he just zoned out through that whole thing? Biiiiiitch. He's gonna take old Orga out back and shoot him down in the streets again, just for that. "And Orga is quiet."
"Sorry. It's--I'm tired." That's technically not even a lie, since he was, in fact, doomscrolling at four o'clock in the morning two days in a row. Maybe that was some sort of premonition, in hindsight. (He'd think that this was all some cruel sleep-deprived hallucination if it wasn't for the fact that he can feel Mika's thumb brushing idly against his knuckles.) Orga unlocks the door, makes sure to hold onto Mika's hand as they both take off their shoes.
"Sleep?" This is just barely a question. He has seen the evidence of Orga not sleeping. The homework...well, it can't wait, but he can pretend that it can for a bit.
"...We should bathe first." A middle ground, maybe, almost enough to make Mika stop giving him the death glare. "Do homework. Then sleep." This seems to appease him. It also, unsurprisingly, is why Orga is currently having crisis number...three? Four? Of the day in the shower.
It's nothing new. Same ideas as before. Critics would say it's a cheap rehash of everything he's been panicking about all day, nothing special, straight-to-DVD, definitely saw it at a bargain bin at the drugstore the other day, absolute slop. He needs to fucking stop, is what he needs, he needs to faceplant directly into the ground and scream, maybe punch a few things, as is his manly way, talk to Naze about it (if Naze will ever let him live down the shirtless bit). Scream a bit more, maybe. Get sent to the mountains for his health? But no, he doesn't get to do that, he has to get out of the shower and work on fucking physics homework and push down the bitterness and dread, because that would make him nearly seem ungrateful that he no longer has to put his life on the line on a daily basis and instead has to do such wildly taxing trials and tribulations as homework. Biscuit would say something about how some people literally died to give their siblings this chance. He would have to agree and get back to his life. What kind of idiot would he be to complain about it? He hits his head against the wall a few more times, hoping to kill the brain cells that are responsible for the pit in his stomach, and steps out to dry himself off and change.
He comes back from the shower to find Mikazuki staring at his Japanese homework like it's his enemy.
"I'm finished if you want to--"
"Orga." Mika cuts him off, looking like he's about to break his pencil out of some silent rage, and points to the page in front of him. It's nothing difficult--he remembers learning all of this in elementary school--but Mika does not seem to share this opinion. "Why."
"Didn't you used to say the letters were pretty?" This is not a statement that helps his argument, only serving to make him seem angrier. He looks like someone's about to get bit. Mika, yet again, points to his homework, currently asking him to differentiate between 未, "not yet", and 末, "end". "They're easier to tell in context." This, also, does not help. There's murder in them eyes. Orga sighs.
"Hey, I'd say the same thing about English, you know that." He chooses not to do the bit about how the others could and probably will lecture him about dying for an education if he complains about it at school. He could, but he thinks better of himself at the very last minute. "Just power through it." Mika murmurs something he doesn't understand in response, but seems to resign himself to doing it, which is a...victory, maybe?
The resulting writing is, to put it kindly, messy and bad, but there's...always room for improvement? He guesses? Not that it matters or anything, the way that Mika immediately leaves Orga alone with his homework as soon as he's able to. Maybe doing my homework will fix me, he thinks, wrongly, like a dumb, stupid idiot. And, like, it's not even that hard, when he focuses on it and doesn't just have constant crises about it, but that on its own is a bit of a herculean task, isn't it? Orga finishes it, though, with the ancient Japanese concept of 我慢, gaman, which means endurance, patience, perseverance, or bearing (with something), which is untranslatable, is nearly able to give himself a pat on the back for doing so before he is pulled back into the cruel reality of this world--that is to say, Mika joins him, fresh from the shower, dressed in an old pajama set that Orga has long outgrown, and wordlessly plops down in his lap again.
It's cute. He'd never tell Mika that it was cute, but it's cute. The shirt is too big on him by quite a bit; from the looks of it, Mika is a few extra centimeters taller than before, probably something about the lack of malnutrition as a child, but he's still short, probably less than 170 centimeters. Maybe it's because it seems a bit more familiar than the school uniform--the "one size fits all" clothes they always wore before usually meant he was stuck with baggy clothes, the sleeves always rolled up, pants always tied to the side at the waist so that they wouldn't fall down. These aren't nearly that bad, though, aside from the pants legs having been rolled up.
"Bed." Mika is no longer asking, it seems, looking down at Orga's homework for only a short minute. "Finished?" He gives an affirmative noise, which means that Mika performs an acrobatic feat not seen previously in man, moving from his lap into the bed, covers and all, in one swift movement. Orga briefly ponders if Mika, perhaps, moved to Japan to be an Olympic-level gymnast and has just not disclosed this to anyone else for some reason, then decides to indulge him--he grabs the ceiling light's remote to keep by the bed, shrugs off his slippers, and lays carefully next to Mikazuki, who immediately gloms onto him like a cat seeking warmth.
The position they take this time is more familiar: both on their sides, facing each other, like they don't want to roll directly onto their Alaya-Vijnana ports again. The blankets are pulled up tight around their sides, and if he closed his eyes, Orga could nearly imagine them doing this as children, finding the quietest spot they could, the stars shining bright above them, trying to make do with blankets that are decidedly too small. They'd lay there, talking about whatever came to mind until one of them started dozing off mid-sentence, indulging in each other's silly fantasies like children are wont to do.
"What is Orga's future dream?" Yeah, like that, except the Mikazuki saying this one is a high schooler, nearly asleep, staring up at him with expectant eyes rather than a shivering six year-old trying to make sure at least one of them falls asleep.
(For all of his ragging about making sure that Orga gets enough sleep, Mika was usually the one watching Orga fall asleep mid-sentence, especially after the first time he killed someone. The tables didn't turn again until Tekkadan was officially formed, Orga always up taking care of odds and ends while Mika's body desperately tried to recover from fighting whenever it could, whether he wanted to be sleeping or not.)
"Hmm," He has to actually think about it, because the expectation seems to be to give an actual response rather than say something stupid and unrealistic like Being the King of Mars. Quite honestly? He has no idea. He spent the entirety of his last life working towards something stupid and unrealistic like Being the King of Mars, and even the more realistic bits--the "wanting to have a place for his family" bits--are so wildly vague and also, partially solved as-is? Orga almost feels bad, a little ungrateful for the fact that his and his family's lives aren't continually going to shit because, boo-hoo, it's leaving him like a wistful teenager with no concrete plan in life. "I want to run my own company someday. A regular one, not like my old man does. No idea what kind, though." It's vague enough. He hears Mika hum in response, feels his eyes boring into his soul like he's silently judging Orga for that response--or, well, maybe that last bit is in his head. "What about you, Mika?"
"Farm." That's not particularly surprising, considering that was something he brought up all the time before he was dependent on Barbatos for moving half of his body. Mika's mouth moves for a few moments after he says it, brow furrowed and fingers absently toying with the hem of Orga's shirt, before he eventually speaks up again. "...Saying in Japanese is difficult. I studied before."
"That's fine. You can show me tomorrow, yeah?" Mika makes some sort of non-committal noise, then yawns. "Tired?"
"Nn." He shakes his head, but that's definitely a yes. "We can. Together?"
"What, farm? If you want. I don't know anything about it, though."
"No, us." Mikazuki's eyes open every minute or so for a few seconds, like he's trying his damnedest to keep himself awake, but when he's not fighting off sleep, the ghost of a smile graces his face. "Living together."
Once again, Orga should really be saying no to this. Stop being weird and codependent, the voice in the back of his head is yelling at top volume, You've literally known each other again for less than 24 hours, do not say you want to live with him, but what if he really does want to live with him? Besides, Mika is half asleep, it would just be mean to say no now. Not in an insult to his intelligence or anything, just based on the fact that he is visibly dozing off every thirty seconds before waking up again, it would be outright cruel to do anything other than dote on him. It's not like he'll remember it, anyway.
"Yeah," Orga runs a hand gently through Mika's hair, "You gotta sleep before then, though."
"No, I don't," Mika blinks slowly, then adds, "Bitch." Orga barks out a loud laugh at that, enough to wake the dead, though apparently not enough to stop Mika from falling asleep directly against his chest.
He stays completely silent for a minute, watching to see if Mika would wake up, spout out some of the other new vocabulary that he's been irresponsibly teaching him--he'll have to write an apology letter or something, if he's been here for a month not knowing any of these words, now that he seems to have learned all of them the minute he was sent out into this world on his own. Mika doesn't move, though; sometimes, he twitches a bit, curls up into himself a bit more, but after a minute, Orga is free to reach over him and grab his phone off the nightstand, immediately beginning the Nightly Doom Scroll. No, not even today's events could stop him from this absolutely necessary requirement--what if someone said something stupid on the internet again without him? Besides, he has actual texts this time, not just a feed to scroll through telling him everything that is currently going wrong in the world (which is, believe it or not, everything). He scrolls: there are three messages from Naze, one of which is a meme and two of which are just continuations of the previous condom bit, a dozen from various guys from his club, asking why he didn't come, and, more importantly, two from Biscuit.
> I saw you two go home together.
> How was Mikazuki?
he's fine <
He holds his phone a good distance from the two of them, taking a quick picture of them in bed, and sends it off.
sleeping <
> He's STILL AT YOUR HOUSE?
> IN YOUR BED?
Oh, yeah, he nearly forgot that the nagging voice of reason in the back of his head is also alive in the form of Biscuit, with the bonus constant reminder that Biscuit literally died because he was being short-sighted and impulsive. Orga has to think carefully; if he doesn't say the right thing, Biscuit will make sure he regrets it.
he missed his train. he lives in the middle of nowhere apparently <
> So you let him stay at your house, okay.
> But IN YOUR BED? WITH YOU?
> Remind me how many rooms you have in your house?
we kissed also <
This is not the right thing to say.
> I'm homophobic now. I cannot believe you.
look. man was literally fighting off sleep like it was fucking arianrhod. you think i'm gonna make him find another bed <
also i'm going to put that in the group chat so everyone knows that you're homophobic now <
He does. He does put that in the group chat. What he doesn't expect is for everyone to immediately chime back with "he's right". Orga can't believe this. He puts his life on the line for Tekkadan, his family, and this is how they treat him? "Me too 👎", Eugene sends in response. Truly, no rest for him. His texts with Biscuit resume.
> I'm just worried, Orga.
> Don't move too fast. Okay?
> Nobody's dying. You have plenty of time to get to know each other again.
i know, i know <
thank you for worrying, biscuit <
> It's my job.
> Now go to sleep. I am not going to be facing Mika's wrath because you were up all night texting.
ok mom <
He's still going to be up, though. He switches from his texts to his social media of choice, and thus the scrolling begins.
It's a lot to unpack, honestly--this is all a fantasy that he did, largely, try not to entertain. Even before, the first time Akihiro mentioned his brother saying something about being born again, he gave himself the luxury of imagining it; no grand fantasies, no, just maybe the idea of them all meeting in a better set of circumstances, maybe being able to find camaraderie in having difficult schoolwork or a boring home life rather than being child soldiers. Then, once it actually happened, Orga gave himself a little time to play with it in his head. Once he started growing up, though, entertaining the thought just made him feel worse--Mika wasn't with him, after all, even when he watched others be reunited. He watched Yamagi and Shino agonize through their courtship in junior high school. He and Biscuit sat up with Akihiro while he talked through his guilt about sometimes being mad at Masahiro for stupid brother things, how he felt he should just be grateful that they're together at all. Biscuit had his own issues with his siblings, how he worried about Cookie and Cracker much more than he really needed to and how he struggled to connect with Savarin again. Orga had McMurdo and Naze, of course, but that's a different beast from his relationship with Mika. There are the relationships you have with the brother you swore an oath to and the man who, in this life and last, saw enough of some sort of potential in you--which you'll never understand--and deemed it enough to support you in whatever you feel the desire to do. These relations are incredibly different from the deeply strange, codependent relationship you have with the guy who put his life in your hands when he was barely able to count his own age on two hands.
Mika doesn't have to do that here, though, he reminds himself, looking at him asleep in his arms. He's survived just fine without me. Learned two languages, moved countries. What would he need me for? (Three languages, actually, since he was required to take French in school, and he was not the one who arranged the international move, on account of his being a high schooler. Neither of those facts seem to matter to Orga.) He saw the pictures. He was doing just fine in Edmonton; he had his own friends, was studying...something he couldn't express in a secondary language while half-asleep? It doesn't matter what. The point is that he was happy and had a good life there, and the fact that he came here was a matter of coincidence, not because he was actively seeking Orga out. Did he even think about looking for them, or was he content to live his life on his own?
On the other hand, Mika was the one to kiss first, definitely said a few things about how he missed him and wanted to see him. Even in his sleep, every time Orga tries to shuffle back a bit, give himself a bit of space, Mika seemingly refuses, grumbling something and holding tighter onto him. Every interaction they've had involves Mika being genuinely concerned for his well-being. Does Orga sleep, he said. He is my crush, too, he said. Living together, he said. Certainly no way to tell if the feeling is mutual.
So. Where does that leave them?
"Orga." Before he can even try to finish that thought, Mika is glaring up at him, obviously still half-asleep. "What time?" Ah. The lights are still on, and, as he picks up his phone to check the time,
"It's 2AM." In other words, he's fucked.
Mikazuki narrows his eyes at him. Or, well, first he rubs his eyes, trying to extract a bit of alertness out of some well deep in his body, then he narrows his eyes. "I don't understand, but talk." In other words, I'm not awake enough to engage in a secondary language, but I'll listen. Or please just talk yourself out until you get tired and finally sleep.
"Biscuit's worried we're moving too fast. That we should be getting to know each other first." Mika hums, indicating that Orga should continue, so he does; he rehashes all of his crises from earlier, probably barely coherent, which doesn't seem to phase the shorter male at all. He just lays there quietly, occasionally nodding, staring at nothing in particular but looking like he's at least trying to concentrate.
"That's stupid," He interjects about halfway through the third iteration of we don't even really know each other, "You're being stupid."
"Elaborate on that?"
"No." Mika pauses, then maneuvers (elbow straight into Orga's chest in the process, fucking ouch) to grab his phone. He spends a solid minute typing, squinting at the screen despite it being approximately two centimeters from his face, then shows the result to Orga.
I don't understand, but I heard the same words three times, so you're probably just saying stupid things you're worrying about for no reason. His translation app provides a stone-cold read, and when he looks up at Mika's face, he raises an eyebrow as if to say, am I wrong?
"Yeah, but--" Whatever Orga is about to go on about is cut off by Mika making the most disgruntled noise he's heard in a while. He sits up in bed, guides Orga's head to his lap, and starts patting his head. The mannerism itself is not gentle, but he's tired enough that the pats on his head are weak, nearly able to be comforting.
"Sleep."
Orga wants to say no, but it's hard to refuse when he tries to turn his head and look up at Mika, only to get whapped in the face almost immediately. Mika is patting his head indiscriminately and refuses to change where his hand is, not to mention that as soon as he sees Orga trying to protest, Mika nearly growls at him. Is he tired or just mad? Who's to say. Maybe both. Orga exhales once through his nose, then decides that it wouldn't hurt to just close his eyes.
-
Orga wakes the next morning before his alarm goes off to find Mika still sitting up, snoring softly as he sleeps slumped against the headboard. For a second, he just basks in the moment; this is real, he's not dreaming--he's been told that's something that people with normal sleep schedules do--and it's not going away any time soon, as far as he's aware. Mika almost looks at peace, too; at some point in their lives, they both stopped sleeping peacefully, opting to get rest in wherever they could fit it and waking up on a moment's notice. He looks like he isn't even a light sleeper this time around. Is he a light sleeper? He shifts in the bed, thinking about grabbing his phone and getting his Morning Doom Scroll in before Mika wakes, but even an action as small as that is enough to wake him.
"Time?" He's barely coherent, rolling his head to try and fix the crick in his neck.
"Almost five. You can keep sleeping, if you want."
"Nn." Mika definitely looks like he wants to. He looks like he wants to keep sleeping for another twenty hours. He does not, though, and opts to reach for his own phone. He squints at the screen for a moment before saying, "Atra and Kudelia say hi."
"Tell them I said hello, too." Orga rubs his eyes, and when he opens them, he finds himself directly facing the camera on Mikazuki's phone. He hears the shutter sound, then the sound of rapid typing. Fuck. "Hey, do not send them a picture of me half-asleep."
"Sorry." Not that he won't do it again or that he won't send it in the first place, just an unblinking apology as he continues to do what he was doing. "Kudelia says not to go too fast. Irresponsible, she says."
Orga is not going to ask how or why, in a world where he's watched him struggle with interacting with a cashier in the past 24 hours, irresponsible became a word Mika would know while half-asleep. He will count his blessings as he snorts. "So she and Biscuit are in agreement."
"They're probably right. But also, she and Atra were--" He absentmindedly drums his fingers along Orga's shoulder, trying to muster the correct word. "Brides." That is not the correct word, but close enough. "I saw every day. They are also very fast." Mika stops, looks like he's going to say something else, but is obviously trying to string together something coherent in his mind and failing. Or, perhaps, he's thinking about having spent a good portion of his formative years third-wheeling two girls who were, in fact, married in a previous life, along with the suffering that went along with it. After a long pause, he speaks again. "Orga is happy?"
"Yeah." Well, aside the fact that he needs to be taken out back and shot like a lame horse. "What about you? Don't you miss Canada?" Mika stops himself, glares at nothing in particular.
"Orga. I lived in Edmonton." He says this like it explains everything. It does not. (It does.) He only seems to pick up on the fact that it does not about twenty seconds after saying it, going off the expression on Orga's face, and deems it necessary to elaborate on the subject. "Cold. In Alberta. Snow for seven months. No Orga." Pause. "In Alberta."
"Is Alberta a bad thing?"
"The worst thing." He nods sagely, then, after a moment, contemplation obvious on his face the whole time, asks, "Where do you want to live? Together." Certainly no way of telling if the feeling is mutual, especially if your name is Orga Itsuka.
"Ah. I." Orga's face is bright red. It's not like he hasn't imagined it before, after all, one of those wild scenarios he tells himself before he falls asleep. I'mma find Mika and we're gonna live in a big house with everyone, like a big family, Orga had told Naze when he was approximately seven years old. Naze probably has the accompanying drawing, done in crayon and featuring some impressive stick-figure renditions of some of their friends, saved somewhere where Orga can't find it and subsequently rip it to pieces out of sheer embarrassment. "...Near the others, I always thought. Big house, but nowhere special otherwise." Please, please let Mika not pick up on that always. "Where were you thinking?"
"Always?" Fuck.
"You know. When I was a kid and stuff." Yeah, man, super normal, not something that Mika is going to silently judge you for and deem you an idiot for, fuck--
"Oh. Me, too." Mika nods. He rests a hand on Orga's shoulder, but doesn't dare look at him--is he embarrassed, too? "When I was little. I wanted to live with Orga. With a big yard." It's deeply nonspecific, but in his defense, so was Orga's. "But no Alberta." Okay, maybe a bit specific. He decides that later, he will have to read news articles to see what is so wrong with Alberta. (Everything, he will learn.)
"No Alberta. Got it. Canada, though?" He idly checks his phone, makes sure his alarm is set to go off in case they fantasize themselves back to sleep. Mika hums in contemplation, then shakes his head.
"Orga doesn't know English." Hey, well fuck you, too, Mikazuki Who Was Stressing About Kanji He Learnt in Elementary School. (Though only one of them could hold a semi-comprehensible conversation in the other's language, and that is, in fact, not Orga, so props to him.) "We can visit, though. Atra and Kuedlia are probably lonely."
"Mm. That's true." Orga's eyelids feel oddly heavy, like he's meant to be doing that thing called "sleeping" that humans, allegedly, do sometimes. "They got coffee in Canada?"
"They got coffee in Canada." Mika echoes, exhaling through his nose in a way that could, possibly, be a laugh, though he can't tell. His eyes, he's found, are refusing to open, and he can't tell if Mika is just speaking English again or if this is what being sleepy feels like. He hears him say something about a "double double"? What is that?
When his alarm goes off an hour later, the roles from before seem to be reversed. Mika is awake, scrolling idly through his phone. "School?" He asks, barely looking up from whatever he's doing.
"Yeah." Orga sighs, sitting up and stretching. He hears Mika groan in response, definitely non-verbally asking him to skip school. Rather than do the standard I think multiple people we both know would kill you for neglecting your education after all we've been through bit, unoriginal as ever, he opts for the simpler explanation. "Hey. I think Ms. Merribit would kill me if I let you miss any school."
"She would not kill." He responds matter-of-factly before staring off to space, fidgeting with his hands for a solid twenty seconds as he struggles to muster a word. As the correct word dawns upon him, Mika nods, then adds, "Beat ass, though."
"Oh my fucking god." Is he going to get his ass beat for teaching him these words? Orga is going to get his ass beat for teaching him these words. "I'm not getting my ass beat. Get up. We're going to school." He gets up, immediately starts stripping so that he can put on his uniform, throws the pieces he knows are Mika's at him with no grace whatsoever. Kind of sucks, actually, because he really would like to see him shirtless again, or at least the little nagging voice in the back of his head does. (Bitch.)
(Okay. Maybe he does sneak a peek, once he notices that Mika is meandering his way out of his pajamas. Maybe he does look at how his body is toned, but filled out, like he still exercises, but has been allowed to eat as much as his growing body has needed, the faint remnants of tan lines that...)
"Orga. Shirt." Mikazuki drags him, kicking and screaming, back to reality. Refusing to elaborate, he stands up, his own shirt only half-buttoned, and takes matters into his own hands. It takes a full moment for him to realize what, exactly, warrants fixing--he's buttoned his shirt entirely lopsided, his bottom button fastened somewhere in the middle of his shirt, making him look like the absolute idiot he's felt like in the past day. Orga watches as he huffs, fixing his shirt in what is almost certainly a newly learned behaviour.
"Thanks." He says, eyeing Mika with his eyebrows furrowed, looking like buttoning his shirt is an incredibly important and difficult task. "You look cute," his mouth adds before his brain can catch up.
Mika stops, immediately turning around to fix his own shirt. "Do it yourself."
Is he embarrassed? Is he blushing? His brain taking a break from common sense, Orga leans over, peeking and looking at the slight pink-ish tinge to his cheeks.
"Oh my fucking god." For this transgression, Orga is rewarded with a school jacket being shoved in his face.
"School. Now."
And, well, who can say no to that?
-
The walk to school is largely the same as the day before; Orga continues to point out various things about his neighbourhood, Mika nods along, following behind him. This time, though, under the guise of not letting him get lost and keeping Mika's hands warm--because Mikazuki will have to just accept that 10 degrees is "wear a puffer jacket and gloves" weather in Kitakyushu, despite having been "maybe stop wearing sandals" weather in Edmonton--the two of them hold hands as they walk. (Mika also insists that they stop at a vending machine to get a canned coffee, and shoves another protein bar from yesterday in Orga's bag. He has his own bag of dates that have, apparently, been shoved in his school bag the whole time. I ate when you were in the bath, he would later say.)
They stride to the school's gate just as some of the others do. There's a lot of vague, tired hand-waving, good mornings being exchanged, Mika's cowlick bouncing as he continues doing his half-bow-half-nod. Peaceful, nice. Almost too peaceful and nice, maybe.
Eugene, ever-observant, stops, looks directly at their intertwined hands, then shakes his head. "I can't believe you two. It has not even been one day."
"Eugene. Good morning," Mika seems to ignore Eugene's comments, maybe doesn't understand them 100%, just gestures towards him and asks, "Orga. Beat ass?"
"What have you fucking been teaching him?"
"Ass beat, also." He adds, like he needs to expose every bad word that Orga has taught him in the past 24 hours. "And oh my fucking god. Bitch."
"You taught him to talk like a yakuza his first day with you. Unbelievable." He shakes his head.
"Condom, also." Mika says, raising his hand like he has something to add in class. This makes everyone in a two-meter radius' necks snap towards him in absolute shock.
"Do not tell me why you taught him that word, you--" Eugene is obviously ready to throw hands and, simultaneously, throw away years of learned calmness, before he's interrupted by Biscuit.
"Now, now. It's fine. Besides, he's more verbal than yesterday, so that's good, right?" He says, then pauses, looks at Mika obviously not having verbal as part of his working vocabulary, and rephrases. "Lots of talking."
"Ah. Yeah." In near-defiance of this, Mika nods, then does not elaborate at all. He stops, ponders for a moment, then asks, letting go of Orga's hand, "Biscuit. Orga sent texts late last night?"
"A little, but that's okay, I was up, too. He slept at a normal time, right?" Oh, so they're both coming for him now? Is this how it's going to be all the time now? Everyone's going to come and get him? Orga is suffering? Orga's suffering is endless?
"Two o'clock." Orga's suffering is endless. As Mika confirms this, the two of them, simultaneously, turn to him, giving that I'm not mad, just disappointed look. Fuck, when did Mika learn that one? "Biscuit. Beat ass?"
"I'm afraid so, Mika." Biscuit nods sagely, putting a hand on his shoulder. "We're going to have to beat his ass."
"Okay. Eugene, Akihiro, come help."
"Don't you two fucking dare!"
-
"Hey, Mika." Orga starts one afternoon, a few weeks after their first meeting. The sun is setting as they sit on the school's roof, his head in Mika's lap while he plays idly with his hair. Your train won't leave for another hour, let's sit, he had said after he caught Mika waiting for him after his club practice had ended, trying to savour any and all moments with him. It still feels like a dream, sometimes; he's asked others to pinch him more than once in the past weeks. "Were you mad when you met me that first time?"
"The fuck?" That's another one that he's picked up in the past few days, much to the chagrin of everyone around them. "No. I thought you were mad. You did--" Mikazuki musters his best impression of Orga's expression at the time, at least from his perception: scrunched eyebrows, a frown, maybe a bit of a constipated look in his eye. Not a flattering portrait, that's for sure.
"...I was concentrating." Pause. Guess there's no better time than now to bring up that particular moment of his initial breakdown. "I thought you were mad that I didn't give you your gun back."
"My...?" Ah. Missing word.
"Gun." Orga does some finger guns, makes a few pew pew pew noises under his breath.
"Oh. No, you died." Well, okay, if you say it like that, it sounds like no rational person--though calling Mika a rational person is a bit of a reach--would ever get even remotely mad about it. "I think Ride had it." That gets him sitting up.
"The fuck you mean, Ride had it?" Mika looks more surprised that he no longer has any hair to play with than the whole Ride revelation.
"Atra said. I think." He pauses, then nods, like he's confirming with himself, "Don't know. I died."
"We'll ask him about it later." In this way, Orga is setting himself up for what is certainly going to be one of the most awkward conversations of his life, if not just outwardly emotionally-charged. Little does he know that in a few months, he will give off the impression that he is beefing with a middle schooler, mainly due to the fact that he will be, in fact, beefing with a middle schooler named Ride Mass over the fact that the fuck do you mean, you went on a killing spree to avenge me. (The past Orga is, in the back of his head, a bit proud of it, that irrational, don't you ever stop, always finding some new path to destruction attitude of his, but the Orga of now, the one who is just a literal high school student, is just a tad unnerved by the whole thing.) (The Orga from a few months' time from now is kind of mad that they didn't just bottle that one up and pretend that there was some other reason that Ride's fate was never talked about.)
"Okay." Mikazuki did not hear any of that prognostic inner dialogue. He is concerned with something much, much more important than the impending fallout. "Orga?"
"Yeah?"
"When Orga is old man," Not if, but when, a surprising show of optimism from Mikazuki, "Your hair. What colour will it become?"
"Huh?" It's a non-sequitur, just enough to throw Orga off his rhythm.
"Your hair. It's already grey."
In theory, Orga should be mad that he's making a grey-haired old man comment. It's not a new remark that he's heard, not in the slightest, and in typical nature for him, he usually would get snippy about it, usually in a way that would imply that he was not beating the old man allegations. In reality, because it's coming from Mika, in a way that is almost certainly genuine in every form, he snorts, reaching up to cup his cheek. "No idea. Want to wait and see with me?"
A ghost of a smile graces Mikazuki's face as he nods.
-
In the passing years, Orga can't help but feel grateful as he gets to experience both of them, in their own ways, becoming their own person, someone who can think about their life years down the line, not just constantly ensuring that they're out of any immediate danger, someone with the time to develop interests and skills that aren't just suited towards war. Obviously, he's happy about things he learns about them together, too: that they, according to some of the others, talk like two old men, all of their preferred sitting and sleeping positions, the quiet pieces of their routine that they fall into so easily. It's interesting, though, to see the people they've shaped up to be this time.
He's learnt that Mika has a legitimate, strong interest in farming, he learns, enough that he won awards for growing deeply-specific cultivars of plants when he lived in Canada. (He had a few legitimate tries at growing his own palm dates, too, something about wanting his own personal supply, which all ultimately failed.) He likes watching those crappy food shows on TV and will vocally react to them if they interest them enough. This shop in bumfuck Tottori has a special way of making their miso soup, Orga, he'll say, like Orga isn't also watching the exact same show. He has, purportedly, a set of nice clothes, ones that he exclusively wears when attending Orga's work functions and for when they go on dates.
Speaking of which, Orga's also learned that he likes taking Mika on dates, when he's not actively having a crisis through them. He loves watching Mika's eyes light up when they go into the city proper, feeling his grip on his hand tighten, loves the way that he actively makes sure to share whatever he's eating, the way that he furrows his brow if he has the balls to say that no, he's okay. He's learnt that he's not actually too keen on business when it's not a position cast upon him, but has apparently listened well when others have said that you'd be a great lawyer, you love arguing so much and done just that.
(He's also learnt that Mikazuki still has enough strength to pick him up and spin him around when he gets accepted into his university of choice.)
-
The winter sun is setting in as Orga puts his car into park. A half-hour drive from Fukuoka, just a bit longer in the other direction to Kitakyushu, the house in the countryside is a new build, big in its own right, but small in comparison to the two greenhouses directly situated next to it or the two rolling fields behind it. It's just recently gotten cold enough that everything outside of the greenhouse is harvested; they'll get seeded again in a month or so, a bit of time after the New Year's holidays, but for now, Mika's workload is relatively light. If they play their cards right, they can afford to take a week or two to travel back to Canada, visit family and friends, let Orga try his best to speak the English that he's been studying when he's had free time.
Locking his car--they're rural enough that they don't particularly need to do it, but force of habit--he opens the front door.
"I'm home," he calls out as he slips out of his shoes.
"Oh, Orga. Welcome back." Mikazuki calls from the kitchen, acting like it could be literally anyone else walking through their front door. "First winter strawberries came in today. They're good, come eat one." In the years since high school, he's gotten a bit better at Japanese--well, a fair bit better, though he continually says that he's missing a lot, something about "only being able to read farm manuals well", maybe so that he can continue to entrust the difficult paperwork to Orga--though his accent still shines through on occasion when he speaks. He stands at the counter, a small bowl of strawberries next to him. Most of them, once they're ready to be harvested, will be sent to the local farm cooperative, but these ones, ripened too young and not entirely up to the insane standards Mika keeps, will be kept aside for them as a treat.
"They're good? You had one yet?" This is an important question for Orga to ask, considering--
"No. But I know they're good." There it is, the I have definitely only eaten dates today, but trust me response. "I know what you're thinking. I didn't only eat dates today. Had toast and some soup, also." Okay, weird that he knew exactly what he was thinking, but it's not like that reassurance makes it any better. Mika briefly inspects the strawberries in the bowl, finds the fattest one, and tosses it in Orga's general direction as soon as he's in the kitchen. "And what has Orga eaten today?"
That's a damning question if he's ever heard one, he thinks as he catches the strawberry. Pot, meet kettle, et cetera, et cetera. "I had lunch with a client today. And I ate a proper meal, not just coffee." He bites into the strawberry, "Fuck, that's sweet. They're all like that?"
"Cookie and Cracker came to help." (And to bring home some of the early harvest of strawberries as thanks. Mikazuki does not mind one bit.) "They said that one would be sweetest and to give it to you."
"Yeah? I'll tell them thanks later." Or not, considering how cloyingly sweet the strawberry was. Who's to say. He pauses, watches as the other male continues his preparations for dinner, and deigns this the proper time to tell him. "Hey, Mika. C'mere, I have to show you something."
"Nn?" It doesn't take much for him to follow Orga, anyway, even after all these years, but the way he said it has Mika curious. He puts down what he was working on and pads over to him.
Orga leans down slightly, takes Mikazuki's hand, and guides it along his hairline to a strand of hair just behind his ear. "Akihiro pointed it out today. Said that he was surprised I was the first to go grey, not Eugene."
The lock of hair, once a lilac-tinted grey, has faded to a light soot colour. Mika stares at it for a moment in wonder, mouth slightly agape as he runs it through his fingers, looking like he's assessing it the same way he looks at a strawberry ready to be picked. "Grey." He remarks, simply.
Orga can't help but chuckle, placing his hand over the other's. "So. You satisfied with your answer?"
Mikazuki smiles.
"Yeah."