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“This is a warning. Stay the fuck away from Kikuchi Aiko,” the man who’d cornered him back against a wall hissed, and Taro realized before he could let himself put his dad’s self defense lessons to use that he knew who the man was. So instead of slipping away like his dad would want him to, he bared his teeth and let the growl building up at the back of his throat turn into a full snarl. It only earned him an eyeroll in response. “Oh, don’t give me that shit. A bastard like him doesn’t deserve a loyal Alpha to defend him.”
“You’re Nanjo Dicarlo, aren’t you? Aiko’s cousin.”
The other Alpha sneered, disliking the term, but it was the one that Taro would rather stick to because he didn’t like the more personal ones that Aiko had used to describe what Dicarlo really had been when they were younger. “There’s no way Ai-chan called me his cousin unless it was to complain about us being called that. Reki-nii won’t get it through his head that we’re not family, even if we’re pack now. I’m Ai-chan’s ex. And I’d rather not hear my real name from your mouth, knowing Ai-chan told it to you. It’s Jay when I’m at S, so it’ll be Jay to you.” Taro had heard plenty about Jay and his older sister Kiari. Enough that he already hated them both. After a brief misunderstanding between the two of them, Aiko had started to open up more about the two siblings and their involvement with the best and worst times of his life, so they could understand each other better.
“His ex? Hardly. Classmates, maybe.”
“Shut up!” Jay shoved him back against the wall, bristling as his voice dropped to a snarl as well. His angry scent bloomed between them, bitter tea leaves and pure frustration.
Briefly, it crossed his mind even with another Alpha holding him by the collar that Buddy probably would have been happy if he and Aiko hadn’t resolved their first major fight in a matter of days, right before he got back on a plane to Bangkok. He hadn’t really considered it then, too worked up about the fight and then being too pleased with the easy reconciliation. And maybe he should have talked to his brother during all that, since his brother knew better than anyone what it was like to have their past haunting them and ruining things, especially when that old instinct to use his power to make things better had crept up and made him feel worse about everything, and his brother knew what it was like to have a frightening ability. But he’d done his best to think of what his appa would do, not wanting his family to be worried about his first real fight with a… person outside of his family he was close with.
Confronting the issue head on, blocking Aiko’s escape, and talking things over until they’d gotten over their misunderstanding had gone shockingly well.
He doubted that talking things over was going to work with Jay. And he had no desire to speak to someone like him anyway. Not after what Aiko had told him.
“Look,” Jay spat down at him. “I didn’t come here to pick a fight with you, Mr. Kim. I came to warn you. Ai-chan is bad news. If you stick around him long enough, he’ll turn on you. You’ll end up hurt and heartbroken, and I’d rather let you bail out yourself before Cain- before Ai-chan forces you.”
Taro knew Aiko picked fights with Jay and his sister whenever they encountered each other, but with Jay especially. Physical ones. Though he despised the Alpha already and believed him to be the cause of any fight, Taro knew Aiko was also at fault for actually seeking out and escalating those fights from a simple back-and-forth to dangerous skating matches that left the three of them to slink off with bruised bodies and battered prides. Dirty tricks were expected between them, and Taro had seen Aiko use his board like a weapon and brag about causing opponents to bail, seen how the Beta had no fear when it came to getting too close when skating even when Taro was on one of his bikes and they were seeing how fast Aiko could go. And Aiko had even mentioned some fistfights between he and Jay, fights Aiko egged on until Jay lost his cool and took a swing at him.
Still, Jay deserved it. Aiko made it no secret that he liked to pick fights when he spiraled and could easily be avoided or redirected. “You and your sister treat him like a monster, just because he had a setback that’s taking much longer for him to work through than it did when you were kids. He just needs space- we both just need space, and things are perfectly fine.” That had been a primary complaint of Aiko, that his childhood friends kept lingering when it wasn’t any fun to be around them anymore. And something that the pair of them had rarely struggled with themselves. Taro had learned quickly that Aiko was best dealt with in low doses, and the kadōka only really wanted to see him on occasion as well. After his one surprise visit to Bangkok, Aiko had never felt the need to do that ever again.
It kept things thrilling. Kept them both from getting bored or fed up, the excitement of a time limit and long distance. All the brightness and intensity that made up Aiko could be well handled over brief visits and phone calls, texts, and were somehow soothing rather than annoying. The Beta would only reach out when he was in the mood to see him, in need of company or his favorite muse.
They’d have their fun. Then, the two of them could go home. Aiko might go on and on about a tie of fate or talk like they were destined newlyweds, but they were both just possessive and didn’t like to share. It wouldn’t make them happy to be mated or properly together, to be stuck trying to say the other was the most important thing in their lives when they weren’t and would just come to resent the other. Though he would only admit it when it was pried out of him, Taro did like Aiko. But the younger man wasn’t family the way his parents and brother were, the way his pack had grown to be. Taro could return to Thailand, to his pack and his work, and Aiko could go back to his family’s estate and his flower arrangements.
He wondered how Aiko’s childhood friends hadn’t gotten it through their heads yet that if they loved Aiko it was best to let him go off and circle back when he was up for it and not when he felt like everyone and everything was in the way of his art and his interests. Aiko didn’t need to fight him, because they were never around each other long enough to fight.
Well, except for the one time, but Taro felt Kim would have proud of him for handling that so well. And it’d really been his fault, anyway, for just assuming things. His situationship came from a rich background with parents who had a wild enough love story to almost rival some of the couples in Taro’s own pack. So he’d assumed that Aiko’s beloved late grandfather also had a dark side.
But no, just an ordinary gardener who had done his best to look after his grandson.
Taro still didn’t quite get how Aiko hadn’t known about the whole human trafficking background of his late grandfather. But apparently Aiko didn’t believe it was necessary to look into the people around him. Which was bewildering. Taro and his dad always made sure to do that. So it’d been a shock for the Beta to find out that the two of them having a love of plants inherited from their grandfathers wasn’t something so indicative of their destined love after all.
And that had never turned physical. Aiko just raised his voice and gestured a lot, and then stormed off. He wasn’t quite sure how Jay and his sister managed to get Aiko to keep going until he demanded a dangerous skating match or provoked them into striking at him.
“Ai-chan doesn’t talk. He just says whatever he likes and never listens. Did he tell you he’d never hurt you, that you’re soulmates? He doesn’t mean that-” He’d already figured that Jay wasn’t going to say anything meaningful at all, but that just confirmed it for him that Aiko was right. His childhood friends didn’t know him at all anymore. Aiko always listened to him. He always talked to him. Sure, the man really did talk and call too much, and would get carried away on poetics and silly tangents, but when it came down to it Aiko did talk to him. Always responded to him, what little Taro offered in their conversations, in between the endless silly endearments and teasing. “He used to be our best friend, you know? We loved him. My sister was his childhood sweetheart. But he changed. Started going too far. Always pushing to see what he could get away with. And no one else would- they said he’s fine when- even though he- And he won’t let us help him anymore. I’m sick of helping him! I’m sick of him hurting my sister! I’m sick of him hurting me!”
“Then stop bothering him. He won’t hurt you if you aren’t near him letting him challenge you to matches. He doesn’t need you in his life.”
“What would someone like you know about any of this? I thought Ai-chan would get rid of you after he found out you compared old man Kikuchi to your grandfather.” Taro blinked, confused. “He was with my sister when he found out your grandfather was some criminal. She told me.”
“Well, I didn’t actually compare my horrible grandfather to his nice one, so Ai and I are fine now, if that’s what you’re so worried about. We talked. You can leave now.”
“Ai-chan doesn’t-”
“You don’t talk to him. I don’t believe he was purposefully hurting you when you were kids. Ai’s a lot, but he’s not cruel. He was grieving and you shouldn’t have been making things harder for him. No wonder he lashed out and keeps cutting you off. Let me go.”
“Back then, he- damnit. He’s just going to-”
Before Taro could lose his cool at Jay refusing to give up on his needless warning, they were interrupted by a phone ringing. Jay let him go, grumbling an apology and turning away, his face flushing as he brushed a hand through his light green hair. At least he finally had the decency to realize how overbearing he was being, Taro thought bitterly. Pulling out his phone, he quickly turned the screen away from Jay before the other man could see Aiko’s picture and contact on the screen. It was too late, though. The flash of colors and trinkets in the picture couldn’t be anyone else but the person they’d just been arguing about.
Thankfully, Jay didn’t say anything. He just sighed and let Taro take the call. “Ai, what’s-”
“Roseling…!” Aiko dragged out the pet name in a sing-song. “I’m perfectly fine, but, heh, I’ve gotten into a bit of trouble and I really need to be picked up! If you’re not busy!”
He didn’t dare to ask what happened in front of Jay, who had just pressed him against a wall saying that Aiko was nothing but trouble. He didn’t need to prove the man right. “Where are you?” To specify that he was fine first… Taro had seen that plenty of times growing up in his pack. His uncles and cousins always told Lhung that things were okay to try and minimize whatever bombshell they were about to drop on him.
It did not help him feel any better either as Aiko hesitated. “Well, I’m at the police station,” he finally admitted.
“The police station?” he echoed, in disbelief.
Jay tried to snatch the phone from his hand, all fury in an instant. Taro wrestled it away, refusing to give it up. They met a compromise by Taro not turning off speaker when Jay managed to press the button. “Why the fuck are you in a police station?! You were just on a date with Nee-chan!” he demanded.
Aiko laughed at the sound of Jay’s voice. “Dicarlo! Are you trying to steal my Alpha from me, caro mio? Naughty boy.”
“What’d you do to my sister this time, Cain?”
Ignoring him, Aiko assured Taro, “Oh, Lamb, don’t you worry. It wasn’t a date. Kiari and I were at an event together, that’s all. I made an arrangement, and she did some setup the organizer requested. And then Kiari asked me to go dancing.” He laughed some more. “Don’t you worry either, Jay! I didn’t do anything that will leave a mark for long!”
“You-!”
“A mark? Did she fall during a skating match or something?”
Jay looked like he would kill Aiko if the Beta were there in front of him. How the man managed to handle skating matches when he was so emotional was beyond Taro. Instead, Jay turned his attention to the only person in front of him. He took a step closer to Taro, and then sneered down at him, “Oh, so Ai-chan never told you what he really does to the people he claims are his?” He pulled down the little chef’s scarf he had tied around his neck, showing a thin line going across the base of his throat. “He slashed at me with a knife during our first time at S. You better get away from him or it’ll be you that ends up all sliced up after dancing.”
“Oh, please, cucciolotto,” Aiko drawled casually from the phone, his eye roll clear from the tone of his voice. “We were just children. You know, if you’re so upset that I hurt our dear Kiari, then how about we settle things at the next tournament? My father wants to skate with me again, and I’m sure we’ll have time to skate together afterwards. Tou-chan and Papa always head home early.”
“And then what? We’re all friends again? Or you let me beat up your little mafia boyfriend if I win to make up for you hurting my sister? That wouldn’t even bother you. It’s not fair.”
“My silly kitten’s not even upset about today, really. She’s fine.” Taro was quickly growing tired of listening to Aiko talk to Jay. He didn’t think Aiko was close enough to anyone else to call them endearments, even mocking ones, and he really hated hearing it. “I think you wouldn’t be able to land a hit on my little wolf, honestly! And I wouldn’t forgive you if you did.”
Although a part of him kind of wanted to show off a bit, Taro knew better than to give in to that part of himself, the Alpha instinct and urge for an adrenaline rush and all of the impulsiveness of his pack that had rubbed off on him over the years. Picking a fight with his situationship’s ex who was much taller than him and spent a lot of time working hard in a restaurant was not something he was going to do.
So he remembered what his dad had taught him, the defensive parts and not the offensive, and then ducked past Jay to make a run for it. Yelping in surprise, Jay did his best to swipe at him as he escaped, but Taro was able to dodge him and get to his superbike before Jay could catch up to him.
As he sped off towards the police station, Taro cemented what had just happened in his mind as another incident he could never let his dad find out about. If his dad knew how he’d almost gotten beat up in Okinawa twice, he would never let him go on another business trip again. His appa probably wouldn’t let him either. Also his brother. Taro certainly wouldn’t let Buddy go off somewhere dangerous. Even though he’d ended up alright in both scenarios. Aiko had saved him the first time, and then his dad had technically just saved him the second time.
It’d probably be too suspicious to give his dad an extra long hug as thanks when he got home. His parents had a knack for sensing when something was off with him.
Although the whole situation had been exhausting. He sort of wanted to crawl into his parents’ nest instead of going to pick up Aiko, but he was in another country and could not do that.
Maybe he could pass it off as being exhausted from work.
Thoughts of parents vanished from his mind once he got to the police station and saw Aiko waving at him, a big smile on his face. He barely had time to pull off his helmet and park his bike before Aiko was flinging himself against him to wrap his arm around him in a big hug. Usually such a squeezing hug was nice, and Taro could melt into the scent of roses that usually came from Aiko, both the faint rose of his natural scent and from the endless blossoms he handled everyday. Since he’d come from an event, Taro had sort of expected the smell to be even more, maybe even tinged with a relaxing smoke if Aiko had done his signature move as an artist, lighting his installations on fire to make statement pieces about innocence and romance.
Instead, Taro’s nose crinkled at a foreign scent lingering on the Beta. Sweet cherry blossoms overpowered the roses, cut through with a bitter edge of an Omega in distress.
When Aiko pulled back to give him a beaming, sharp-toothed smile, green eyes glittering with mischief and excitement as always, Taro almost missed the blood smeared across and between the stickers on his cheek, the red nearly blending in with all the different hearts plastered on Aiko’s face. Only a hint of its metallic scent let him know it was there for him to search for.
Though he’d been told that his situationship was fine over the phone, it didn’t do much to assure the Alpha. He searched Aiko up and down for any sign of injury. The only tell that the colorful Beta had indeed been involved in some kind of skateboarding accident was only that his skateboard looked recently used. The wheels were scuffed and dirty, and the underside of the deck had scratches across it with bits of paint flaking off and not yet smoothed out.
Other than the smear of blood and messy skateboard, Aiko truly looked fine. There was no wounds the blood could have come from. It wasn’t his. So Taro was forced to ask instead, “Are you alright?”
Pulling off his winter hat in preparation to be handed a helmet, Aiko answered cheerily, “Yes, unless Jay catches up with us. Kiari says she forgives me for our accident while dancing, but Jay isn’t the forgiving type.”
Right. They were trying to get away from Aiko’s ex. There’d be time for figuring out what mishap had happened once they were somewhere Jay didn’t know about. Curious and eager to find out sooner rather than later, Taro got the spare helmet from his bike and brought them to his apartment.
Asking questions still had to wait even then, as Aiko complained that he needed to clean his face and his skateboard. Seeing how the Beta pouted and dimmed as he started to slowly pull off the stickers on his face, Taro wondered if it had actually bothered Aiko a bit to hear Jay mention the scar on his throat. He knew how badly Aiko hated his own scar on his cheek. He kept it covered up as much as possible, but usually wasn’t so bummed out about it showing when he wasn’t going back out where a stranger might see him.
Wordlessly, he handed Aiko a sheet of stickers from a desk drawer.
Lighting up, Aiko snatched them and practically purred, going, “Thank you thank you! So cute… did you buy these for me, Love?”
“No,” he immediately denied, even though the multi-colored heart and rose stickers could only have been bought with one person in mind. “I was sending postcards to my cousins.” Technically not even a total lie. He had used a couple of the hearts on souvenirs for some of his younger cousins. But that wasn’t why he’d impulsively grabbed them at a store.
Flustered, he didn’t dare to look at the next smug, dazzling smile aimed his way. “You’re so sweet, Angel. Always getting things for your brother and I.”
“Appa always buys gifts for us kids. It rubbed off on me, that’s all. There’s scent neutralizer in the cabinet,” Taro told him, trying to move past it before Aiko could tease him.
“I thought my little lamb loved roses the most. Well- after mint, of course,” the Beta ducked into view, giving him an exaggerated frown.
He looked away again. “It’s cherry blossoms I don’t like.”
Aiko blinked, and then realized. “Oh. Kiari’s scent. I never notice. Silly girl always forgets her blockers.”
With that, Aiko ducked into the bathroom to properly change his stickers, and soon emerged with the whole rest of the sheet on his face and the scent of bitter blossoms finally gone, leaving nothing but real flowers behind. Taro went and sat on the couch, tossing his jacket aside when he could still smell tea leaves on it.
As soon as he was back, Taro prompted, “So… the police station?”
Waving his hand dismissively, Aiko answered vaguely, “Oh, Kiari was asking for it. Telling me to prove her wrong. Curiosity killed the cat, and she’s always been a little kitten.” Then, Aiko smirked, pulling his hat back on and tugging on a tassel. “She challenged me to a street race- and then let me get too close. I just nicked her a bit, but, well… The officer around the corner wasn’t very happy when he saw us. Kiari really shouldn’t have screamed so loud and looked so helpless if she didn’t want us to be bothered.” Sighing, Aiko didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that he’d been arrested, just mildly annoyed that their skating had been interrupted. Given that his father was a corrupt politician who loved to spoil his beloved son, Taro doubted that Aiko would have stayed in the station very long even if Kiari had pressed some kind of charges against him. Legal consequences were never a worry.
It was hard for Taro to imagine the Beta pulling a knife on his childhood friend, leaving that mark on his throat. He wasn’t anything like his dad, who always had a knife tucked away somewhere on his person. Although Aiko’s outfit would give him plenty of space to conceal one, Taro highly doubted he had one. Still, he brought it up anyway. “Your ex seemed to think you’d stabbed his sister.”
Another sigh and a big eye roll. “How could we dance if I stabbed them? And I didn’t even have a knife on me at all. We were at an event.” Before Taro could really register that that meant he had carried one recently at some point, Aiko did a little twirl to show off his outfit. “Isn’t this yukata pretty? A patron bought it for me. It’s so colorful, all the roses. It’s perfect for formal events.”
Whichever client had purchased it had done well to find a fabric that suited Aiko’s taste, with all sorts of brightly colored roses done in metallic fabric that shimmered at the slightest motion, tied with a bright red belt with hearts embroidered into it.
And, of course, the apartment was filled with the soft clicking of accessories bumping against each other, Aiko wearing his sneakers and bracelets along with his yukata, his shoes, hat, and backpack adorned with pins and charms. Even at a formal event and having been convinced to wear something traditional, there was no stopping Aiko from dressing up the way he liked.
His backpack was purely for his wallet, his ikebana kit, and his skateboard, so Taro wasn’t sure what Aiko could have used to nick his ex-girlfriend. He wouldn’t have dared to use anything from his ikebana kit lest he ruin one of his favorite tools, and that didn’t really leave many other options.
Seeing he was still curious, Aiko winked at him and said, “I just used what I had on hand. Jay can be as angry as he likes, but it doesn’t change the fact that Kiari outright told me she didn’t think I could get her anymore during a street race.”
Maybe one of his pins or the edge of his board.
It just made him more annoyed with the two. “Man, why do they insist on bugging you so much…? Your stupid ex kept yelling at me that you’d hurt him, but then they ask you to go all out. What’s the point of challenging you to races, really, if they’re so upset when you win…”
“Roseling! They’re not called races…!”
“Ai, my whole pack is in motorsports. They’re races.”
“They're really not!”