Chapter Text
Ukyo draws in a long breath as the shape of Australia grows closer on the horizon. The coastline is still distant, little more than a dark line against the bright blue of the ocean, but after weeks at sea, even that faint strip of land feels significant. The air has changed, too. It’s warmer than it was when they left California, carrying the dry, unfamiliar scent of the Australian coast instead of the salt and dampness that have clung to everything aboard the ship for days. Sunlight glitters across the water, almost painfully bright, and Ukyo squints toward the shore before tilting his face back to let the warmth settle against his skin.
His hands flex against the railing of the ship. Around him, the others are beginning to stir with the same restless anticipation. Some of the other members of the crew have gathered along the deck, pointing toward the distant coastline and talking among themselves, while others are busy checking equipment or securing the things they’ll need once they make landfall. Yo’s already gathering a basket of corn to show off. There’s a general sense of energy running through the ship, the kind that comes from finally reaching somewhere after spending so long surrounded by nothing but water.
It’s been over a year since Ukyo has seen Gen, Chrome, Senku, or Ryusui. They’d split off from Ukyo’s group to travel toward Spain and then onward to India and then to Australia, continuing their resource-gathering and reviving people along the way. Ukyo had gone back to Corn City in California with Luna, Taiju, and Hyoga so they could revive their friends and rebuild the group there.
It was…fine. Especially once they revived Nikki and the others, things had settled into a comfortable routine. There was plenty of work to do, and Ukyo was never particularly good at sitting around with nothing to occupy him. Corn City had people to revive, food to grow, a computer to build on the instructions of Ryusui’s mysterious brother Sai, revived in India.
Still, Ukyo had been a little lonely for the last year. He was twenty-seven then; he’s twenty-eight now. Everyone else was in their early twenties at best, or a former enemy who still came with enough baggage to make friendship complicated. Nikki in particular had always been easy to talk to, and she had a warmth that reminded Ukyo of his cousin Kajsa, but even with her, there was still an age difference that Ukyo couldn’t quite ignore - she’s only nineteen. Taiju and Yuzuriha were only twenty. They were wonderful and surprisingly mature for their age, but they were still at a different stage of life than Ukyo was.
Before the petrification, he’d had a job. He’d had an apartment. He’d had coworkers and relatives and a life that wasn’t built around trying to survive the collapse of civilization. Most of the people in the Kingdom of Science had been literal teenagers when the world turned to stone.
The ones who weren’t were people like Yo or Hyoga, and neither of them was someone Ukyo had ever felt particularly comfortable around - especially Hyoga after the Stone War and the moment Ukyo had jumped in front of Hyoga’s spear to keep Senku from being harmed. The scar on his chest has been healed by multiple petrifications since then, leaving his skin whole and unmarked, but Ukyo can still remember the shocking pain of it. He remembers the spear breaking through him, remembers the sudden loss of breath and the horrible realization that he’d put himself directly in the path of an attack meant for someone else.
Hyoga is on their side now, but Ukyo is still wary of him. He doesn’t understand how Senku can be so forgiving of everyone who has tried to kill him. Senku doesn’t seem nervous around Tsukasa or Xeno at all, despite the fact that Tsukasa broke his neck and Xeno ordered him shot. Maybe Senku is made of sterner stuff, or maybe he’s repressed it so thoroughly that he doesn’t even think about it anymore.
Yo is hypothetically redeemed, too, but the core of his personality is still the same. He’s selfish and obsessed with status, and Ukyo can’t forget that he was a corrupt police officer in the modern world. Minami is closer in age, but she has never liked Ukyo much, mostly because she never forgave him for betraying Tsukasa. They can manage a polite conversation when they have to, but they’re never going to be friends.
So, selfishly, Ukyo is excited to see his friends again after over a year away from them.
Gen had a job before the petrification, and he’s in his mid-twenties. He understands what it’s like to have an adult life outside of all of this, even if that life was probably very different from Ukyo’s. Senku is so bizarrely mature in so many ways that it’s hard to imagine him ever having been a teenager at all. Chrome is young, but he and Ukyo have always gotten along well, especially after Ukyo helped make sure Chrome had the tools he needed to escape when he was captured before the Stone War.
And then there’s Ryusui.
And look, Ukyo knows his crush is pointless and hopeless, but hearts are fucking stupid.
He genuinely hadn’t liked Ryusui much when they first met. Ryusui isn’t great at first impressions. He’d come across as loud, demanding, and selfish, completely focused on himself and whatever he wanted at the moment. He’d revived commerce, declared his attraction to practically everyone on sight, and immediately demanded rights to an oil field they hadn’t even discovered yet.
Ryusui was so unapologetically himself, flaws included, that for a while, the flaws were all Ukyo could see.
It took time for Ukyo to warm up to him. They’d had to spend a lot of time together when the ship was being built after the oil was found. Ukyo’s hearing had been useful for testing whether the wood was rotten, since he could pick up subtle differences in the way it sounded when it was moved or struck. Then there was the radar and the sonar, and all the work that went into getting those systems functioning properly. There were long hours spent around the shipyard, with Ryusui moving between different groups of workers and barking instructions while Ukyo listened to the construction around them.
He’d somewhat assumed Ryusui was a blowhard before that, someone who could talk a big game but wouldn’t necessarily be able to back it up. Ryusui was a rich kid, only twenty years old when they first met. He’d likely had everything handed to him his whole life, and what hadn’t been handed to him had been bought or done by someone else. What knowledge or skills could a rich kid, heir to one of the largest companies in Japan, really have?
Ukyo had spent his whole life trying to get people to take him seriously. Being half-white in Japan had meant continually being treated as an outsider, especially given that he’d inherited his Swedish father’s blue eyes and pale hair. People noticed him - sometimes they stared; sometimes they asked where he was from. He was soft-spoken and a pacifist, and he’d grown up in the more rural Ehime Prefecture rather than somewhere like Tokyo where he might have been surrounded by more people who looked and lived differently. People regarded him as a curiosity, but that didn’t mean they respected him.
Sometimes, Ukyo thinks he joined the SDF partly because he wanted to lend himself some gravitas. He knows what it’s like to have people look at you and decide you couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about before you’ve even opened your mouth. He knows what it feels like to be underestimated, to have other people make assumptions about what you can or can’t do based on what they see.
So maybe he should have been a little more generous toward Ryusui.
It took him a while to recognize that Ryusui actually knew his stuff. He was talkative and borderline too confident, but he was genuinely extremely knowledgeable about sailing and ships. He understood navigation, weather, currents, wind, and the practical realities of getting a ship and its crew from one place to another.
Ryusui also had a remarkable understanding of the things that could motivate people: money, recognition, hope for a future, and he had a genuine desire to see them achieve their goals. He understood that people needed different things to keep moving forward, and he was rarely embarrassed to offer them. If someone wanted money, Ryusui would talk about money. If they wanted adventure, he’d promise them adventure. If they wanted a better future, he’d talk about how much there was still left to build.
He never seemed all that bothered when someone was weirded out by his declarations of attraction to everyone. He was so firmly himself, without shame, that there was little anyone could do to make him uncomfortable about it. At first Ukyo had found that confidence obnoxious. Eventually, he found it almost reassuring.
Ryusui was funny when they worked, constantly making Ukyo laugh with his wit, and generous with his time and food. He’d share baked goods Francois made with Ukyo, sometimes simply dropping something into his hands while they were working and continuing with whatever he was doing as if it were nothing. Ukyo would still be withdrawn and borderline prickly, unsure of his place in this strange new Kingdom and in Senku’s plans for reviving humanity, and Ryusui never seemed to take it personally.
Ryusui had been genuinely interested in Ukyo’s life, in all the parts of him that felt too plain and boring in the face of Gen’s flamboyance or Senku’s brilliance or Chrome’s ambition. He asked about Ukyo’s time in the SDF. He wanted to know what he’d done before the petrification, what he liked, what he knew, what he thought about things, what his family was like, his experience of being half-white in Japan. He listened when Ukyo talked, too, rather than waiting for his turn to speak.
Ukyo was so used to being passed over that having Ryusui’s attention focused on him - him! - felt a little alien. He hadn’t been sure if he could trust it at first. It was one thing for Ryusui to be friendly because they were working together. It was another thing entirely for him to seek Ukyo out when there were so many other people around who were louder, more interesting, or more obviously useful.
Over time, Ryusui’s flawed edges softened in Ukyo’s mind. His greed was edged with compassion, his directness with a willingness to take the consequences for living how he wanted to. He was funny and kind and driven, willing to get his hands dirty, and only slightly insane. He was willing to pull people up alongside him rather than simply racing ahead and leaving them behind.
Ukyo had always been quiet, a little more passive. He prefers to talk around his feelings rather than be direct unless he has to. He’s defensive of being half-white; he’s always been keenly aware that he doesn’t quite look like anyone else, and he hasn’t had a single person to speak Swedish to in years now. Even before the petrification, he felt like he was scrambling for an identity, for the courage to live it without fear. He’d learned how to be useful, how to be agreeable, how to keep his voice calm and his opinions measured. He’d learned how to avoid making himself too noticeable while still proving that he belonged in whatever room he was standing in.
Ryusui, on the other hand, had never seemed particularly interested in making himself smaller for anyone.
Ukyo isn’t going to call his feelings for Ryusui love. Love is earned in the context of intimate knowledge, in the spaces between just two people, in knowing someone well enough to see the parts of them they don’t show everyone else. He doesn’t have that with Ryusui. He’s Ryusui’s friend, sure, and he trusts him more than he once thought he would, but there’s nothing romantic there on Ryusui’s end, so it doesn’t matter what Ukyo’s stupid heart wants.
Ryusui hasn’t even told Ukyo he desires him in the way he’s done to almost anyone else. Ukyo tries not to feel offended about that, because he knows he’s Ryusui’s first pick when it comes to dinner companions, conversation partners, or strategists. He knows Ryusui trusts his judgment. He knows Ryusui likes having him around. There are plenty of small ways Ryusui has made that clear, whether it’s saving him a place at the table, seeking him out when they need to make a decision, or simply wandering over to talk to him when there are dozens of other people he could be bothering.
That should be enough. But he is maybe, just slightly, infatuated, which is an embarrassing word to have apply to himself at twenty-eight years old.
Australia has been growing larger for the last several minutes, the low coastline spreading farther across the horizon as they approach. The red-brown earth is visible beyond the beach, stark against the blue of the water, and farther inland he can see the tops of trees and patches of green breaking up the dry landscape. It’s not what Ukyo remembers from the world before the petrification - not that he’s ever been to Australia, but he was in the Navy; he’s familiar what a port used to look like. There are no crowded docks, no buildings packed along the shoreline, no traffic or cranes or distant sounds of an operating city. The harbor is quiet except for the activity of the people waiting for them.
He can see tiny specks moving along the shore, then they get larger.
His hearing picks up the distant sounds before his eyes can make out much detail: shouting, footsteps, the clatter of equipment, people calling to one another as they abandon whatever work they’d been doing. Massive mining equipment is still digging into the red earth farther inland, and a cloud of dust hangs around the machinery, but a group of people has clearly decided that whatever they were doing can wait.
They’re running toward the beach. Ukyo can make out Senku’s distinctive hair first, impossible to mistake even from this distance. Gen is nearby, the loose fabric of his haori moving around him as he runs. Chrome is easy enough to spot, too, because he seems to be waving his arms as though that will somehow make him easier to see from the ship.
And there.
The golden gleam of Ryusui’s hair catches the sunlight.
Ukyo swallows, his throat suddenly dry.
He hasn’t seen them in a year.
He’d heard that they’d gone through India and picked up Ryusui’s estranged brother, Sai, but the distance has made more frequent communication difficult, even as their technology has improved. The phones they have aren’t that good, and texting is still based on using Morse code. It’s useful, but slow, and there’s only so much conversation that can happen when every message has to be painstakingly tapped out and decoded.
Even back in the modern day, Ukyo had found that video chatting had nothing on actually being with a person. A screen could show someone’s face, but it couldn’t show the way they shifted their weight while they talked, the way their hands moved when they got excited, or how their expression changed when they thought nobody was watching. There was something fundamentally different about sharing physical space with someone, about being able to hear their footsteps and the rhythm of their breathing without a microphone between you.
He’s admittedly curious about Sai, too. The limitations of their technology and Senku’s own rather unsentimental nature mean that all Ukyo has really been told is that Sai and Ryusui were estranged in the modern day, and that Sai had gone to India. He’s supposedly a math genius who prefers coding, and he’s the one who helped design the computer they built back in Corn City.
Ukyo had known a guy like that once, back before the petrification. A sweet guy, rather nervous, tense and anxious, who preferred video games over almost everything else. Ukyo had had a fling with him a long time ago, back when he was new to Tokyo and before he went into training with the SDF. He’d been awkward and shy, and Ukyo had been inexperienced enough that neither of them had really known what they were doing.
That guy had also been named Sai, oddly enough, although he’d been half-Indian. He’d been the reason Ukyo figured out he was gay, and he’d made Ukyo feel a little less alone in being mixed-race in the vast metropolis of Tokyo.
The ship comes to a shuddering halt, and Ukyo feels the vibration travel through the deck beneath his feet as the engines wind down. Outside, the water laps against the hull, and the sounds of people on shore become easier to distinguish. He can hear voices carrying over the harbor, the scrape of equipment being moved, and the excited shouting of the people waiting for them. The gangway is lowered with a metallic clatter.
Ukyo breathes in deeply and heads into the bowels of the ship. Everyone else is still running around getting things ready, checking equipment and making sure nothing has been left unsecured. There’s the usual controlled chaos that comes whenever the ship reaches somewhere new, with people calling to each other across the deck and carrying supplies toward the exit. Ukyo slips through them, making his way toward the gangway while the others are still occupied, which means he’s the first one to walk out into the sunlight.
The Australian sun is brighter than he expects after the dimmer interior of the ship. He squints and raises a hand briefly to shield his eyes, then starts down toward the beach. Warm sand stretches along the edge of the water, and beyond it the red earth rises toward the excavation site. Dust hangs in the air around the mining equipment, catching the sunlight whenever the wind moves through it.
He barely has time to take any of it in before the people waiting for him come rushing forward.
Ryusui is at the front of the horde of their friends. He’s missing his hat and he’s taken off his cape. He’s wearing his red tunic, already dusty from whatever he’d been doing before they arrived, and his blond hair is longer than Ukyo remembers, tied back to keep it out of his face. His hands are dirty, his boots are coated in red dust, and there’s a smear across one cheek that looks like he hasn’t noticed or cared about.
His grin is huge, his eyes glittering, warm and bright. Ukyo’s heart gives one painful little kick in his chest.
Ryusui doesn’t slow down - he throws himself at Ukyo.
Ukyo barely has time to brace himself before strong arms wrap around his shoulders and pull him into a hug. The force of it knocks a breath out of him, and for a moment his feet nearly leave the ground. Ryusui is warm from the sun and whatever work he’d been doing before they arrived, his clothes smelling faintly of dust and sweat and the sea. One of his hands lands between Ukyo’s shoulder blades, squeezing hard enough that Ukyo can feel the pressure through his clothes.
“Ukyo!” Ryusui shouts, sounding so delighted that Ukyo can’t help laughing. He hasn’t gotten better at volume control.
“Hello to you, too,” Ukyo manages.
Ryusui pulls him closer. It’s ridiculous how much Ukyo has missed this. He’d told himself he was looking forward to seeing everyone again, and that was true. He’d missed Senku’s dry commentary and sarcasm, Gen’s teasing, Chrome’s endless enthusiasm, Suika’s sweetness, Kohaku’s strength. He’d missed the familiar voices and the arguments and the comfortable noise of being around people who had become his friends.
But this is different. This is Ryusui, who Ukyo could very easily let himself fall in love with if he’s not careful.
Ukyo can feel the solid warmth of him, the rise and fall of his breathing, the hand still resting against his back. He can see the loose strands of blond hair that have escaped from Ryusui’s tie, and there’s a ridiculous urge to reach up and fix them. He doesn’t, because that would be strange, and because he’s suddenly newly conscious of every move he makes, how it might come across.
Instead, he lets himself enjoy the hug, just for a few seconds. His arms settle around Ryusui in return, and he closes his eyes briefly. He can feel Ryusui’s heartbeat through the thin fabric of his tunic, can hear it between the two of them. It’s probably faster than normal from running down to the shore, but Ukyo finds himself listening to it anyway, as though his hearing might somehow give him permission to hold on a little longer.
He knows this isn’t romantic. Ryusui is affectionate and demonstrative and completely unashamed of physical contact. There’s nothing special about the fact that he’s hugging Ukyo. If anything, Ryusui probably would have tackled him regardless of whether Ukyo was interested in men, women, both, or neither.
Still, Ukyo lets himself pretend for the few seconds before Ryusui finally pulls back that this is something deeper than just the hug of someone missing their friend.
“Look at you!” Ryusui says, hands landing on Ukyo’s shoulders as he looks him over. “You haven’t changed at all!”
Ukyo smiles. “Neither have you.”
That isn’t quite true - Ryusui has changed. His hair is longer. He looks a little leaner than Ukyo remembers, though there’s still plenty of strength in his shoulders and arms. There are new scratches and small scars visible on his hands, the sort that come from working rather than fighting. He looks older, somehow, despite the fact that it’s only been a year. But he looks happy, with a flush across his cheeks, freckles across the bridge of his nose. He’s so golden and bright and beautiful that it hurts.
“I’ve missed you,” Ryusui says, so genuine, so straightforward, the way he always is - unashamed of his feelings, so willing to say them.
Ukyo’s smile falters for half a second before he gets it under control. He wishes Ryusui meant it how Ukyo means it. “I’ve missed you, too.”
“Good! You were taking far too long to return. Senku’s been unbearable to talk to; all he wants to discuss is alloys.”
“You could have sent more messages if you were missing my sparkling conversation.”
“Those things take forever! Besides, I’ve missed your dulcet tones.”
Ukyo laughs, and Ryusui grins at him like he’s pleased with himself.
Behind him, more of the group is finally reaching the beach. Gen is practically jogging now, his haori flaring behind him as he approaches, and Senku is walking at a more reasonable pace despite clearly having abandoned whatever he was doing to come meet them. Chrome is close behind them, with several others trailing farther back. There’s enough noise coming from the group that Ukyo can pick out individual voices even over the wind and the machinery farther inland.
Gen reaches them first. “Dear Ukyo!” Gen throws his arms around Ukyo before Ukyo can prepare for it, and Ryusui finally steps aside with a laugh. Ukyo gets squeezed from another direction.
“I’d have killed Yo if I had to be on the ship with him any longer,” Ukyo mutters into Gen’s ear.
Gen snorts. “Goes against your pacifist principles, doesn’t that?”
“You’re not the one stuck on a boat with Yo,” Ukyo grumbles, and Gen laughs as he lets him go.
Senku arrives a moment later, hands shoved into his pockets, his expression considerably calmer than the others, but Ukyo can see the faint edge of his smirk. His hair is just as messy as Ukyo remembers. There’s dust on his clothes, and a faint smudge of dirt along one cheek that tells Ukyo he was working before they arrived. Ukyo’s touched that his arrival meant enough to get Senku to stop and come greet him; Senku is so ruthlessly focused on his goals that he often forgets about the niceties of society.
“Yo,” Senku says.
Ukyo smiles. “Senku.”
They exchange a brief clasp of hands, more restrained than Gen’s hug or Ryusui’s tackle, but there’s genuine warmth behind it.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Senku says. “You’re slow, sonar-man.”
“You took the fast boat! You could have come to California.”
“Nah. Better to make you come to me. The mentalist bitches if I make him get on too many boats.”
Gen, standing beside them, looks offended. “I do not bitch.”
Ukyo raises an eyebrow.
Gen considers this. “Okay, maybe a little.”
Ryusui has already turned his attention toward Chrome, who has finally reached them and is talking so quickly that Ukyo can barely distinguish one sentence from the next. The others are gathering behind them, some slowing to a walk now that the first reunion has happened, others calling greetings across the beach.
For a moment, it feels almost like nothing has changed, like they’ve simply been separated for a few weeks rather than more than a year, like Ukyo could turn around and find the Perseus waiting offshore and go right back to whatever discussion they’d been having before everyone went their separate ways. The ship rocks gently behind him in the harbor, its hull creaking as the tide moves beneath it, while the Australian sun beats down on the pale sand and the red earth beyond.
For a moment, all feels right with the world, despite the fact that they still have to build a rocket and solve the mystery of Whyman and revive all of humanity.
Then Ukyo notices someone standing a little farther behind the others - a man who hasn’t rushed forward, who seems content hanging on at the edges. He’s familiar, but Ukyo can’t really place him.
He’s younger than Ukyo, though not by much, and there’s something about the way he’s standing that makes him seem almost separate from the rest of the group. He’s got a wild cloud of dark hair, darker skin and wide eyes, and while everyone else is talking over one another, he seems content to wait his turn. His eyes are very familiar, the same warm brown as Ryusui’s.
Ukyo looks at him, and freezes as the memory clicks into place. The noise around him seems to recede for a moment.
He knows that face - from a distant time, from a distant place, from a world that no longer exists.
The dark hair is longer than Ukyo remembers, and the clothes are completely different. There’s the black of petrification marks crawling up his forearms, almost to his elbows, and a faint crease between his brows that Ukyo doesn’t remember seeing when they knew each other, but there’s no mistaking him.
His stomach drops.
No.
It can’t be.
Ukyo knows he’s staring, and Ryusui is giving him an odd look, but he can’t stop himself. He’s looking at a ghost from another life, someone he had never expected to see again because the world they’d known had ceased to exist.
The man notices him looking and lifts his eyebrows slightly. “Uh,” he says. “Hi?”
Ukyo’s mouth goes dry. “Sai?” he says after a moment. “You told me your last name was Mohanty!”
Mohanty had been his mother’s surname, Ukyo realizes now. It has to be, because this must be Nanami Sai - Ryusui’s brother. His heart starts beating harder as the pieces fall into place with horrible, ridiculous ease. Sai had gone to India. Sai was Ryusui’s estranged brother. Sai was a mathematical genius who preferred coding. Sai had helped design the computer in Corn City.
And Sai had once been the nervous, sweet guy Ukyo had met when he was new to Tokyo - the first guy he’d slept with, the guy who had helped him realize something about himself that he’d spent years trying not to examine too closely. The guy who had helped him realize he was gay, at a time when Ukyo had barely been willing to admit to himself that he was attracted to men because it felt like just another flaw on top of being half-white. Sai had been kind about it, patient when Ukyo was awkward and uncertain, and for a little while they’d had something uncomplicated. They’d spent a summer together, talking late into the night, wandering around Tokyo, and slowly getting comfortable with each other. Ukyo had told him things he didn’t usually tell people, including the uncertainty he’d felt about who he was and what he wanted his life to look like.
It had ended mutually when Sai left for India. There hadn’t been any dramatic breakup or hard feelings, just the quiet understanding that they were going in different directions. Ukyo had gone into training with the SDF, Sai had gone back to his country and his studies, and eventually the relationship had become one of those memories that belonged to a life Ukyo no longer expected to revisit.
Now Sai is standing a few meters away on an Australian beach, and he’s apparently the estranged brother of the guy Ukyo has spent years falling in love with, the guy Ukyo has spent an embarrassing amount of time convincing himself he doesn’t have a shot with.
Sai is the guy Ukyo spent an entire summer talking to, the guy who had told him about his family and the pain they’d caused him, who had listened when Ukyo was struggling with questions he didn’t even know how to put into words. Ukyo had known Sai before the petrification, before any of this, when their lives had still been ordinary enough that their biggest problems could be jobs and family and figuring out what they wanted to do next.
Ukyo looks at Ryusui, then back at Sai. Ryusui’s not smiling anymore. His forehead is creased, and there’s a sudden tension around his mouth. His arms are crossed over his chest, his posture no longer loose and relaxed after their reunion. Whatever warmth had been there a moment ago has been replaced by something guarded.
“Do you two know each other?” Ryusui asks. His tone is much less warm than it was just minutes ago, when he was hugging Ukyo close.
Sai is staring at him now, his expression slowly changing from mild confusion to recognition. His eyes widen, and for the first time since Ukyo spotted him, he looks just as thrown as Ukyo feels. “Oh,” Sai says.
Ukyo’s stomach twists.
“Oh,” Sai repeats, much more quietly, but Ukyo’s sharp ears can pick it up like they’re standing right next to each other. “Hi, Ukyo. Didn’t think I’d see you here.”
Ukyo wishes, with a sudden intensity that borders on desperation, that he was back in California. Instead, he takes a slow breath, squares his shoulders, and tries very hard not to look like he’s about to throw himself into the ocean.
Why the fuck does everything have to be so complicated?