Work Text:
The window panes had frosted over by morning. Snow gathered on the glass, hiding parts of the city. Beyond it, Munich moved beneath a gray winter sky, the street below wet with old snow and tire tracks.
On the dining table, there was a note. The German writing was uneven, pressed too hard into the paper. The word for shopping had been crossed out once, corrected badly, then left alone out of frustration. At the bottom of the note, there were smaller letters. Don’t drink just coffee. Eat breakfast.
Kaiser sat at the dining table and stared at it over the rim of his mug.
Then he drank his coffee. It had already gone lukewarm.
The apartment was not empty. Isagi’s jacket still laid haphazardly over the back of a chair. His folded receipt was tucked neatly under the salt shaker. By the sink was the cracked coffee mug he always insisted was still usable because the damage was only on the outside.
Soon, the apartment would feel empty again.
Off-season always made the apartment colder. After the season ended, everyone dispersed. They booked flights home, had family dinners, and went back to houses full of people who had known them before the stadiums did.
Isagi always looked forward to visiting home.
He tried to be casual about it, but he was bad at that sort of thing. His phone calls lasted longer, and he checked the weather in Japan without meaning to. He bought gifts early, then worried he had not bought enough. The night before his flight, he always folded his clothes with unusual care, as if going home required a different kind of neatness than everything else.
Kaiser had never understood that. Not really.
Home, to him, had never been a gentle word. It was noise. The smell of old alcohol and stale smoke. It meant bringing something back and watching it disappear into someone else’s hand. Money, mostly. Something that might buy silence for one more night.
Isagi’s home seemed to ask for softer things. Softer than anything Kaiser knew.
Kaiser looked toward the chair. The scarf was there, laid over the back beside Isagi’s jacket. Faded blue, almost gray at the edges. One end had begun to fray. There was new stitching near the middle, a darker thread pulled through the wool in a crooked way to act as repair.
Ugly thing.
Isagi wore it every winter.
Kaiser had teased him for it once, and Isagi had only said, “My mom made it,” as if that explained the entire world. Perhaps to him, it did.
The lock clicked. Kaiser did not turn around immediately. Cold air moved across the floor as paper bags rustled. The door shut with a soft sound, followed by Isagi’s voice, slightly breathless from the stairs.
“I’m back.”
The apartment changed. Not by much. But Isagi stepped inside with his cheeks reddened and his hair messy from the wind, both arms full of shopping bags—somehow, the room felt easier to sit in.
Kaiser set his mug down.
“What’s with all those bags?”
“Souvenirs!”
“For your parents?”
“Yeah.”
He carried them to the table and set them down carefully. One bag crinkled under his hand, making him frown before smoothing the paper with his palm.
“I wanted to get them something nice,” he smiled. “Especially now that I’m basically a real adult.”
Kaiser looked at him.
“I wanted to remind them that I can be the one to take care of them now,” Isagi added quietly.
There were many things Kaiser could have said to that.
Some of them would have been sharp enough to make Isagi angry. Some would have been clever enough to make Isagi flustered. Anything, as long as his attention remained on him.
Instead, he watched Isagi take a tin of cookies from one bag and place it on the table. Then chocolate. Then a cuckoo clock. Then a nutcracker. Then a shirt that said I ♡ Munich, still folded neatly in its bag.
Kaiser's eyes twitched.
“What, did you clear out a whole store for them?”
Isagi gave him a look. “Of course not. Just small things. Snacks, mostly. Stuff they can’t usually find in Japan.”
He reached into another bag and drew out a pastry box, holding it with both hands.
“I wanted to bring Apfelstrudel too, but the bakery nearby was closed, so I had to catch another bus to the other side of the city.”
Kaiser raised an eyebrow.
“You crossed the city for pastry?”
“My mom likes sweet things.” He said it simply.
Kaiser looked at the box. White cardboard, a little damp at one corner from the snow. Nothing special. Snacks that would be eaten and thrown away. Yet Isagi held it like it mattered.
He set it down carefully and went back to the other bags. He was still sorting when he stopped.
“Wait,” he stared down at the box. “Can I even bring this through customs?”
Kaiser looked up from his coffee.
For all his matches, interviews, and growing fame, Isagi still had moments where he looked very young.
“We’ll check,” Kaiser said.
Isagi relaxed a little.
“Right.”
Kaiser reached for the box and turned it carefully in his hands.
“If they take it, I’ll testify that you committed the crime out of filial love.”
“Please don’t talk to customs.”
“I’ll be very moving.”
“You’re making it worse.”
Kaiser’s mouth twitched upwards. He set the box down with unnecessary care, just as Isagi had.
“Then I’ll stay silent.”
“You can do that?”
“For your mother’s strudel,” Kaiser said, “I may attempt it.”
Isagi stared at him, then he laughed softly. The sound settled into the room with the paper bags and haphazardly placed things.
Isagi went back to fussing with the gifts. He sorted them into two groups, things that could survive customs and things he wasn’t sure about. The pastry box kept moving between the piles. Kaiser watched him do this in silence.
It was ridiculous.
A world-class striker, standing in the middle of a German apartment, worrying over whether his mother would like a box of sweets. The same person who could devour men on the field now smoothing the corner of a paper bag because he did not want the gift to look careless. Kaiser wanted to laugh at him. He did a little. But the laughter softened before it left his mouth.
“You should have told me sooner,” he said.
Isagi looked up. “About what?”
“That you’re going to see your parents.” Kaiser glanced at the gifts. “I should buy something for them too, if your luggage has room for it.”
Isagi paused, his fingers stilling over the edge of a box.
“You want to get them something?”
“Even I have common decency when I want to. Sometimes you describe me like I’m coldhearted.”
“The way you treated me when we first met supports that claim.”
Kaiser smiled. “And yet fate brought us together like this.”
Isagi rolled his eyes, but there was no bite in it. His mouth had gone soft around the edges. Kaiser looked away first.
“What does she like?”
“My mom?” Isagi glanced down at the table, thinking. “Sweet things. Charms, small stuff for the house, maybe. Nothing too expensive, or she’ll feel bad.”
“And your father?”
“He likes practical things. But he’ll probably be happy with snacks too.”
“How humble.”
“They’re not hard to please.”
Kaiser said nothing.
Isagi kept talking, half to himself now, picking through the gifts again.
“My mom will probably say I bought too much. Then she’ll tell me to eat first before asking about anything. My dad will pretend he doesn’t care about the chocolates, but he’ll eat them with tea later.”
The words were ordinary. He didn’t understand them.
Kaiser could picture it too easily. Isagi’s mother opening a box with pleased embarrassment. His father setting tea aside for later. Isagi complaining about being fussed over and secretly leaning into every second of it. A house where bringing something home was optional. Small things, carried across the sea because someone wanted to return with both hands full.
Kaiser reached for his coffee.
It was cold. He did not drink it this time.
The silence stretched, but it was not unpleasant. Isagi seemed comfortable inside it, still arranging his purchases, occasionally muttering to himself in Japanese. Kaiser recognized only pieces of what was said.
The old scarf slid off the chair at some point and fell to the floor.
Isagi turned immediately. “Ah.”
Kaiser stood and picked it up before he could.
The wool was softer than it looked, worn thin from years of use. He held it in both hands, feeling the uneven repair under his thumb.
“This is going too?” he asked.
Isagi looked embarrassed. “Yeah.”
“It’s ugly.”
“I know.”
“And old.”
“I know.”
“And too short for you now.”
“I know, Mihya.”
Kaiser looked at him.
Isagi reached for it, but Kaiser did not hand it over right away. For a moment, he only held the scarf between them.
“You still wear it.”
Isagi’s expression changed. Only a little.
“She made it for me.”
Again, that answer. As if it explained everything.
Kaiser could have said something cruel. Not truly cruel, perhaps, but close enough. He could have asked whether he was still a child or made him snatch the scarf back from his hands. Instead, he stepped closer and set it around Isagi’s neck himself. The ends sat crookedly, one side longer than the other. Isagi looked down at it, then up at him. Kaiser adjusted the wool beneath his chin.
“There,” he said. “Still ugly.”
Isagi smiled faintly. “Thanks.”
“Not a compliment.”
“I know.”
Kaiser’s fingers lingered a second too long near the edge of the scarf. Isagi did not move away. Outside, a car passed below, light sliding briefly across the ceiling. The frost at the window had begun to melt in one corner, leaving a clear line where the city showed through.
“My parents asked about you,” Isagi said.
Kaiser’s hand fell.
“Oh?”
“I talked to them before.” Isagi touched the scarf, his voice softer now. “About us.”
Kaiser waited.
“They want to meet you.”
Isagi stopped touching the scarf. Kaiser stopped looking at him. The old reflex arrived before he could stop it. Smile first. Make a cruel joke. Put distance before anything too tender started to show.
He did smile. Just a little.
“Of course they do.”
Isagi looked at him. The smile became useless almost immediately.
“Are you okay with that?” Isagi asked.
Kaiser looked at the table instead.
He looked at the pastry box, the nutcracker, the small wrapped trinkets—At all those objects that meant nothing by themselves but became meaningful only because Isagi had touched them with care. Was he okay with it? He did not know.
He only knew that Isagi had been happy all morning. Worried, clumsy, and bright in small, quiet ways. He only knew that the apartment would be colder when Isagi left. Maybe to him, that was reason enough to go.
“What time is the flight?”
Isagi blinked. Then his shoulders loosened.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Then we’ll buy something today.”
“We?”
“I told you I needed a gift.”
“You really want to come?”
Kaiser looked at him.
Isagi’s scarf was crooked again.
“Yes,” he said.
There were better things to say. Softer, truer things. He killed them before they reached his mouth. Isagi smiled anyway, small and relieved. Almost shy. It warmed the room more than it should have. Kaiser looked away and tapped one finger against the pastry box.
“If your mother likes me better than you, don’t sulk.”
“That won’t happen.”
“You sound frightened.”
“Of course not.”
“Poor Yoichi. Replaced in his own home.”
“My mom is not replacing me with you.”
“We’ll see.”
Isagi laughed under his breath and went back to arranging the gifts. The banter faded after that. For a while, Kaiser only sat at the table and watched him. Isagi moved the boxes into one bag, then took them out again. He checked the pastry box once more, then finally set it near the window where the cold would keep it from softening. He folded the top of a paper bag down and smoothed it flat with both palms.
Kaiser thought again that it was ridiculous.
Then he thought that it was fine.
The apartment was still cold at the edges. The window still held its frost. His coffee was still sitting untouched on the table, bitter and useless now. But Isagi was humming softly under his breath, too low to become a song. The old blue scarf sat awkwardly around his neck.
Kaiser did not know much about family.
Or warmth. Or the soft, ordinary things people seemed to understand without being taught. He had never been given the right to be human, much less one deserving of love.
He didn’t truly know what love was. Sometimes he wondered if there was more to it. But if this was love, then maybe he had fallen in love with Isagi before he knew what to call it. And if this was love, then Isagi was the first person who made him understand why people wanted a family at all.
But he decided he didn’t care about the meaning of these words.
He just loved Isagi.
Not that he would ever say that to him, of course.
So when Isagi held up two tins of tea and asked, very seriously, which one his mother would like better, Kaiser leaned back in his chair and looked at them as if the matter deserved careful thought.
“The left one,” he said.
Isagi frowned. “Really?”
“No.”
“Kaiser.”
“The right one.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I am helping. You’re just difficult to please.”
Isagi sighed and chose both.
Kaiser smiled into his cold coffee.
This time, he did not mind the taste.