Work Text:
The coffee machine made a sound like a dying cat being strangled by a mechanical arm, and Arisu knew he was absolutely, completely, irreversibly fucked.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he whispered, jabbing frantically at the buttons, which now seemed to mock him with their stubborn unresponsiveness. The machine — Chishiya's beloved, expensive coffee machine, the one he had spent actual human money on and treated better than most of his colleagues — sat there emitting a grinding noise that sounded like it was chewing through its own mechanical soul while steam hissed from somewhere it definitely should not be hissing from. “Please don't do this to me. I'll be good. I'll never touch you again. I'll—”
The machine gurgled once more, then went completely silent.
Dead silent.
Arisu stared at it, his heart hammering in his chest like it was trying to escape his ribcage and flee the country. His hands were shaking. The familiar cold sensation was creeping up his spine — that old feeling, the one that whispered you broke it, you always break things, you're useless, can't you do anything right—
He grabbed his phone before his thoughts could spiral any further and dialed the only person he trusted to handle a crisis of this magnitude.
“Usagi?” he said the moment she picked up. “I need you to take me to the gym.”
There was a long, heavy pause on the other end of the call as his friend processed whatever request he just threw at her.
“… Arisu,” she said carefully, “you hate the gym. You once even told me it was ‘where joy goes to die while doing burpees.’”
“I'm a new man now, Usagi. A gym-loving man.” Arisu paced the kitchen anxiously, running a hand through his hair. “Anyway, can you come pick me up like… right now? Within the next few minutes?”
“… Did you break something?”
“What? No. Why would you— Okay, yes, but that's not the point. The point is I need to not be in this apartment when Shun gets home from work.”
Another pause, longer this time. “Arisu. What did you break?”
“His coffee machine,” Arisu whispered, like saying it this way would somehow make the whole ordeal less catastrophic for him. “The… fancy one that he has special-ordered from Italy and cherishes more than me on a daily basis.”
“He doesn't cherish it more than you.”
“Usagi, he talks to it. He calls it ‘reliable.’ He's never called me reliable.”
“That's because you once tried to cook rice in the electric kettle.”
“That was one time only!”
He could hear Usagi sighing through the phone, the long-suffering sigh of someone who had been friends with him for far too long. “… Fine, I'll pick you up in ten minutes, but I won't help you avoid him forever.”
“I'm not avoiding him forever.” Arisu hissed. “Just… until he forgets about the coffee machine, or I manage to replace it, or I find a way to fake my own death and move somewhere else, whichever comes first.”
“Ten minutes,” Usagi repeated, and hung up.
Arisu looked back at the coffee machine — the corpse of the coffee machine — and wondered how he got here. He had just wanted to make Chishiya coffee for when he got home, and instead of doing something good, he had managed to break the one thing his boyfriend actually seemed to care about besides medical journals and making cryptic comments about how pedantic life seemed to be at times.
You're useless, his father's voice echoed in his head, cruel and vile. You can't seem to do anything right. What a disappointment you are—
He shook his head hard, forcing his thoughts back down. Now was not the time for childhood trauma — not yet, at least.
Taking a deep breath to calm himself down, Arisu looked at the machine one last time before putting everything in his backpack and making a beeline for the door, fleeing the scene of the crime before it could claim him as well.
⭒❃.✮:▹
Chishiya came home to an apartment that was suspiciously Arisu-less.
That alone set off all the alarms possible in his head, because for as long as he could remember, Arisu worked from home, permanently rooted to the couch, hunched over his laptop and muttering about code and game mechanics while empty energy drink cans piled up around him like the hoard of some caffeinated dragon guarding aluminum treasure, so his boyfriend being nowhere to be seen was very unusual.
Taking a few steps further, he scanned through the apartment to see if anything was off, and that was when he spotted the coffee machine on the counter with water dripping to the ground. It was cool to the touch, which meant it had shut off on its own for a while, and there was a mug sat nearby, empty and abandoned, suggesting that whoever put that mug out was planning something nice for him before he got home.
Which, considering the machine's state, didn't sound far off.
Chishiya stepped closer and began fiddling with the buttons out of habit. Nothing seemed to work, so he unplugged it, checked the water reservoir, and noted that it was overfilled while the grinder compartment was packed too tight — amateur mistake that usually happened to first-time users, but easily fixable, and he spent the next fifteen minutes taking it apart, clearing the jam, and reassembling it. When he plugged it back in and hit the power button, it hummed to life perfectly as if nothing had ever been wrong.
“There,” he murmured to the machine. “Stop being dramatic.”
But where was Arisu?
The younger man had given him no indication as to where or why he wasn't home, and when Chishiya opened the tracking app they shared (his idea, really, that started after he got black-out drunk somewhere in Shibuya back when they were just temporary lovers and set it up in both their phones while insisting this was ‘just in case he died in a ditch somewhere’) and found his boyfriend's location to be at the gym.
The gym, of all things.
Chishiya stared at his phone screen for a long while afterward, trying to make sense of what was happening. Arisu, who had once described exercise as “voluntarily making yourself suffer for aesthetic reasons,” was at the gym. Arisu, who took the elevator to go up one floor, was at the gym. Arisu, who had legitimate beef with staircases and considered long walks a form of torture, was at the gym.
That… definitely wasn't right at all.
With a heavy sigh, Chishiya grabbed his keys and headed straight to the gym as fast as he could.
⭒❃.✮:▹
“I think I'm dying,” Arisu wheezed, bent over with his hands on his knees while sweat dripped down his face. “Is this what dying feels like? I think this is what dying feels like.”
“You've been on the elliptical for twelve minutes,” Usagi said, not even slightly out of breath despite having just finished a thirty-minute run that would have killed a lesser mortal. She was doing stretches now, because apparently she was some kind of superhuman who didn't collapse on the floor after physical exertion. “That's barely a warm-up.”
“Twelve minutes of hell,” he corrected, finally straightening up and immediately regretting it as his vision swam. “Twelve minutes of pure, unfiltered suffering. My legs feel like jelly right now and I don't think I can even move.”
“I think you just need to train your stamina for this.”
“I'd rather die than doing so.” Arisu stumbled over to the nearest bench and collapsed onto it like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “Anyway, how long do you think I need to stay here before it's safe to go home?”
Usagi paused mid-stretch to give him a look that was equal parts concerned and exasperated. “Arisu, you can't hide at the gym forever.”
“Watch me. I'll live here now. I'll become gym people. I'll start drinking those weird protein shakes and talking about my gains.” He gestured vaguely at the gym around them, at the people actually exercising with purpose and determination. “I'll get really into meal prep and own seven different water bottles—”
“… Uh, Arisu?”
“—and I'll develop opinions about which brand of athletic socks is superior and—”
“Arisu!” Usagi hissed, pointing at the door. “Chishiya's here.”
The world stopped spinning for approximately three seconds as his brain processed what his friend had just pointed out to him, and then it started spinning again but in the wrong direction, like a washing machine that had given up on life.
“What?” Arisu whispered, whipping his head around so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. “What do you mean he's here? He can't be here. This is a gym and he doesn't do gym, because he'd once told me before that if he wanted to lift heavy things repeatedly, he'd become a furniture mover, not a doctor.”
“Well, apparently he makes exceptions for you now,” Usagi said, and she was right, because Chishiya was indeed there, standing just inside the gym entrance in his work clothes — dress pants, a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, looking completely out of place among the athletic wear and protein shake enthusiasts like a cat that had wandered into a dog park and was deeply unimpressed by the whole situation.
And he was staring directly at him.
“Oh god,” Arisu breathed. “He's here to kill me. He tracked me down to kill me in public so there would be witnesses and he could claim it was justified homicide. ‘Your Honor, he broke my coffee machine. What choice did I have?’”
“He's not going to murder you over a coffee machine—” His friend sighed and packed up her stuffs, clearly recognizing when it was time to evacuate the premises. “—so go talk to him, Arisu.”
“Talk to him? Usagi, I can't talk to him. Talking requires words, and words require brain function, and my brain is currently offline due to panic and also those twelve minutes of elliptical hell.” Arisu was aware he was rambling, but rambling was better than facing the consequences of his actions. “Maybe if I just stay very still, he won't see me. Do you think that would work or should I—”
“Ryōhei,” Chishiya called across the gym, his voice calm and even, which somehow made it worse because his boyfriend only used his full first name when he was either very serious or very annoyed, and Arisu was betting on the latter. “Come here.”
Several people on nearby machines turned to look, because apparently Arisu's humiliation also needed an audience as well.
“I think I'm going to fake a medical emergency,” Arisu whispered to Usagi. “Can you punch me in the face? Make it look convincing?”
“I'm not punching you in the face.”
“My stomach then? Less visible bruising?”
“Arisu, I swear to God—”
“Okay, okay, I'm going.” He pushed himself upright on shaky legs — whether from exertion or sheer terror, he couldn't tell — and made his way across the gym like a man headed for his execution. Each step felt heavier than the last, and he could feel Chishiya's gaze on him with every movement he made, sharp and unreadable.
God, he was so fucking doomed.
“Hey, Shun, fancy seeing you here.” Arisu tried for a smile that probably came out more like a grimace as he finally reached his boyfriend. “Are you… thinking of getting a membership? Because I have to tell you, the elliptical is a trap and—”
“The coffee machine is fine,” Chishiya said flatly, cutting off his rambling mid-sentence about gym memberships and elliptical machines and whatever else his panic-addled brain had decided was relevant to the conversation.
Arisu blinked. “… Wait, what?”
“The coffee machine, Ryō.” His boyfriend repeated slowly like he was speaking to someone who didn't understand basic Japanese. “It's fine. You overfilled the water reservoir and packed the grinder too tight, which made it jam, so I unjammed it and it works perfectly now.”
“It… works?”
“Were you not listening to me, or did those twelve minutes on the elliptical kill off too many of your brain cells already?” His boyfriend raised an eyebrow, and there was something in his expression that wasn't quite amusement but wasn't quite annoyance either. “Yes, Ryō. It works.”
Arisu felt like the floor had just dropped out from under him, except instead of falling, he was somehow floating, suspended in a weird limbo between relief and confusion and lingering terror. “B-But it made this horrible noise, and then it died while steam coming from places steam should not be—”
“That was the pressure release valve,” Chishiya cut in with a sigh. “It's designed to do that when the machine gets jammed to prevent actual damage. It's a safety feature, not a death rattle.”
“A safety… feature,” Arisu repeated slowly, his mind still struggling to catch up.
“Yes. A safety feature. You know, the thing that prevents machines from exploding when idiots — and I say this with all the affection in the world — try to make coffee without reading the manual.” The man's tone was dry as always, but there was something softer underneath those cutting words that made his chest go tight in a way he knew far too well.
“I… I thought I broke it,” Arisu said weakly, “and I know you love that coffee machine more than you love most humans on Earth.”
“I have a very low opinion of most humans, Ryō, so that's not saying much.” Chishiya stepped closer, and he was suddenly very aware of how sweaty and disgusting he probably was after his twelve minutes of elliptical hell, but his boyfriend didn't seem to care. “What I want to know is why you decided hiding at the gym was a better option than, say, sending me a text explaining what happened.”
“Because…” Arisu swallowed hard, feeling the familiar cold sensation creeping up his spine again, the one that whispered you're useless, you break everything, you're worthless— “Because I thought you'd be angry about it, and I just… I panicked and didn't think it through.”
“You panicked.” The older man repeated, expression unreadable.
“Yes,” Arisu admitted, looking anywhere but at his boyfriend's face. “I panicked. I'm good at panicking. It's like my primary skill. If panicking was an Olympic sport, I'd have a gold medal by now. Maybe several gold medals. I'd be the Michael Phelps of panicking—”
“Ryō,” Chishiya sighed, cupping his cheek so that they met eye-to-eye. “I don't care about the coffee machine.”
“… You… don't?”
“Well, I'd prefer it remained functional, but—” The older man paused, frowning like he was trying to choose the right words to say, which was never a good sign because his boyfriend only did that when he was genuine about something, and Arisu wasn't sure his poor, gym-traumatized body could handle that right now. “—coffee machines are replaceable. You're not.”
The world tilted slightly on its axis, or maybe that was just the dehydration and emotional whiplash catching up to him. “I'm… not?”
“No, Ryō. You're not.” His boyfriend held his face a bit firmer than before, grounding him. “I can buy another coffee machine if I want to, but there's only one of you and I'd rather have you than those things no matter how expensive they might be.”
That did it for him, and his vision started to blur, heat building behind his eyes as his defenses finally gave out. “Shun…”
“Come here,” Chishiya said, which wasn't really a request so much as an instruction, and before he could protest about being sweaty and disgusting, his boyfriend had pulled him into a hug right there at the entrance of the gym. It was awkward as hell, and people were definitely staring at them, but none of that mattered when the older man was holding him close and gently running fingers through his hair.
“I'm getting sweat all over your work clothes,” he mumbled into Chishiya's shoulder.
“I have other clothes,” his boyfriend shrugged, unbothered. “And washing machines exist. Revolutionary technology, I know.”
Despite everything, Arisu laughed, a wet, slightly hysterical sound that was half-laugh and half-sob. “You're such an asshole.”
“Yes, but I'm your asshole,” Chishiya pointed out with the usual matter-of-fact tone that made his statement ridiculously endearing. “Anyway, let's go home. I'll teach you how to use the coffee machine properly without breaking it down.”
“Deal.” Arisu sniffed, nodding. “Though you're reading that manual out loud.”
“Obviously.”
And that was how they ended up spending the rest of the evening — sitting side by side at the kitchen table, actually following instructions for once, laughing over diagrams and footnotes until the tension finally faded away.
It was, undoubtedly, one of the best night he had ever had.