Chapter Text
It is so much like watching himself it makes Kaoru sick to look at him.
It isn’t his fault, but he is not blameless. It was Kaoru who pressed the issue that first night when Langa showed up with Reki, all wide-eyed awe and naivete. It would have happened sooner or later without his interference and Kaoru isn’t stupid enough to think otherwise, but it still itches in his jaw. Makes him frown behind his mask.
He wanted to see what Langa could do, except it wasn’t only him watching.
Kojiro doesn’t ask why he keeps coming to S anymore. They arrive separately and go home together and no one else would dare ask Lord Cherry any questions about it. Kojiro is more insistent about sticking close, more dogged about bringing Kaoru with him when they leave for the night. Kaoru won’t complain.
They both know what happens when Kaoru starts leaning into the sting of something, and neither one of them is eager to go through the motions of it again. Kaoru goes to the mine, and with every trip there, he is watching something catch fire.
It starts slow, or at least slow for Adam. After losing to Langa and vanishing for a few months he shows up again; quieter, less aggressive.
More dangerous. He skates against Langa again, demanding a rematch but making much less of a production out of it than anyone expects. When he loses it is genuine, because Adam does not know how to lose on purpose, not like this, but there is none of the slack-jawed disbelief of the last time. Instead there is a light in his eyes that Kaoru has not seen since it was holding him in place, like butterfly wings pinned to a spreading board.
It is what Adam looks like when he wants to eat someone alive until there is nothing left but bones.
There is only so much Kaoru can do, but he still can’t look away.
Langa falls into Adam just like Kaoru did all those years ago— so hard there is nothing to do but break. They skate against each other until Adam wins, and wins again, and then they are both pushing themselves harder and faster but it does not feel like fighting.
It feels like flirting now that everyone is not holding their breath and waiting for Langa to get hurt. Reki watches with his heart in his eyes and on his sleeve and clenched in his fists and it is agonizing because Langa does not see it. All Langa sees is someone ahead of him, something more, and he’s powerless to resist.
Langa chases Adam and he lets him get close, until they are skating together outside of S. Until they are talking together, leaned up against Adam’s car, Tadashi waiting obediently in the front seat with his face a mask of indifference.
Until Langa is skating against anyone who would try, Adam smiling and touching his face and oh, Snow, show them what you can do for me.
For a while Reki came to S without fail, standing at the periphery of the crowd and collapsing into himself while Adam takes something from Reki and crushes it between his mouth and Langa’s.
Reki doesn’t come to S anymore, and Kaoru wonders at how much strength that takes. Wonders why Reki has it, and why he does not.
Kaoru heard them talking before Reki stopped showing. Please, Langa, he’s dangerous.
Then Langa shrugged, he’s not like that with me, and Kaoru turned with his fists clenched and was grateful he was wearing a mask.
It starts slowly until it is already too late. One weekend Langa is grinning and bright eyed and the next time Kaoru looks up he is ragged. Dark circles under his eyes, and he can’t sit still. Chews his lip until it bleeds. Picks at his fingernails, sallow skin and sweaty hair and Adam standing too close.
There are bruises on Langa’s neck, and imprints from Adam’s teeth. Marks that look like fingerprints Langa wears like a necklace, sometimes. Scratches on his back and his stomach when his shirt flies up as he throws himself down the mine like there is something chasing him. Before he races, Adam tilts his chin up with his fingertips, win for me darling, and Kaoru has to swallow around the bile in his throat.
How many times did he win for Adam, and it will never be enough.
Sometimes Langa’s nose starts bleeding and Adam steps forward and presses a handkerchief to his face. Adam holds his jaw and wipes away the blood, Langa’s gaze fixed on him as he keeps perfectly still, lips barely parted. Then he finishes and Langa smiles, something secret between the two of them, pink in his cheeks.
Langa thinks no one sees, except he catches Kaoru staring more than once, wide-eyed and willing Langa to understand. I see you, Kaoru thinks, but that is not all.
I see HIM, Kaoru thinks, Adam brushing Langa’s hair back from his face, snapping his fingers so Tadashi will hand them some water. Langa gives Tadashi a smile that is kinder than those Kaoru used to have for him, more genuine politeness and less wary uncertainty.
Kaoru has gone through a cycle of emotions with Tadashi, starting and ending with an ugly sort of pity but sliding through jealousy, hatred, and disgust on the way. Tadashi is more terrifying than Adam will ever be, in a dozen ways that do not scare Kaoru half as much. Now that he is older, Kaoru knows there are bodies in the ground because of Tadashi. Knows that cleaning up after his master can’t always be so neat and tidy as paying a hospital bill and knowing someone won’t make a fuss.
Even with new pins in his spine, a new ringing in his skull, new words he can’t quite push from the tip of his tongue.
Even in the hospital with blood in his mouth and grit from Adam’s skateboard between his teeth, Kaoru knows he will do nothing. There is nothing to gain and so much to lose.
Kaoru can’t look at Langa for long before he has to look away.
-
Reki is at the restaurant when Kaoru comes in late one night. It has been closed for hours; Kaoru expected to find Kojiro alone. Reki’s presence isn’t unwelcome, and he’s been at the restaurant almost every day he isn’t working at Dope Sketch, but isn’t usually there past midnight. There’s a plate in front of him that is half empty.
Kojiro insists on feeding him if he’s going to sulk around the restaurant and Reki picks at it enough that Kojiro stops giving him pointed looks. Kaoru taps Reki gently on the head with his fan as he walks past and takes a seat further down.
“Cherry,” Reki says in greeting without looking up.
Reki’s sketchbook is on the table next to him, open to something rough and indecipherable. A drawing and not a skateboard design, but he is doing something and that is an improvement.
Since he stopped going to S he has been doing better. He is quiet and drawn into himself but he’s not spending days in his room all alone anymore and he eats Kojiro’s food and skates in places he knows he will not see Langa. Kojiro goes with him, and Kaoru will never say a word but he is so fucking grateful.
Kojiro needed someone like that when Kaoru was too busy beating himself against a wall to notice his friend was in love. To notice that he was, too.
That he left Adam feeling hollow and came to Kojiro to become a person again. That the thrill that went through him when he didn’t know what Adam would do next, when he pulled back all the layers, was just fear.
Kaoru had never really been afraid of something the way he was afraid of Adam.
Now it is Langa throwing himself into the same wall and Reki is strong enough not to watch anymore because Kojiro is helping him turn away. It is what Reki deserves— to move forward. To try and find out who he is without Adam’s shadow cast over him.
It is what Kojiro deserved, too, but he kept reaching out to Kaoru time and time again, no matter how often he pulled his hand back bleeding. It is another way to hammer home what he already knows; that he does not deserve Kojiro. That he never will. That he cannot, with all he has done. Kojiro sees so much of himself in Reki that he cannot stop himself from protecting him.
Kaoru thinks of Langa and has to close his eyes so he can breathe.
“Reki,” Kaoru says back finally, arranging his things on the table and waving his hand at Kojiro, who sighs and grabs an empty wine glass.
Langa and Reki both graduated, but neither one of them really wants to set foot in a school ever again and Kaoru does not blame them. Reki works at the skate shop and waits tables for Kojiro when he needs help, taking as many hours as either of them will give him. He doesn’t need the money that badly but Kojiro thinks it’s good for him. Keeps his hands busy, he says.
Kojiro might be the only person who knows all the little ways to pick Reki up right now, and they talk about how that guts Kaoru. His therapist and Kojiro both have a lot to say that he doesn’t want to hear but he listens anyway. Langa does not have a job, and Kaoru doesn’t need to wonder about that.
Adam throws money around like it’s meaningless, and Kaoru knows just how much he likes to lavish it on his favorite pets.
Reki has his head down on the table next to his sketchbook, pen in his hand unmoving, grip slack. Kojiro pours Kaoru a glass of wine and then sets a plate down in front of him. Reki’s breathing has evened out, body slumped in his seat.
“He’s asleep again,” Kaoru says, but Kojiro is already leaning against the counter looking at Reki.
“Only a couple of weeks before I leave,” Kojiro says.
Kaoru hums as he reaches into one of his pockets, pulling out the box where he stores his chopsticks. Kojiro is opening another restaurant in Tokyo, and now that construction is complete and the decorators have finished it is his job to get it up and running. He’ll be gone a couple of months before he comes back to Okinawa.
Both of them have been wondering what to do about Reki, though neither of them have brought it up. Kaoru can feel Kojiro worrying.
“I’m going to take him with me,” he says finally, and Kaoru stops chewing, looking up at Kojiro from under his lashes with his brows raised. He lets Kojiro sit there for a moment under his stare, a million things between them that do not need to be said out loud. Then he looks at Reki, who is snoring softly against the table.
When he looks back at Kojiro he has the decency to look abashed, flushed with one hand buried in his hair.
“I asked you. When he first started coming here all the time, and again when he stopped going to S. Less than a week ago, Kojiro, I asked you—” Kaoru begins, and Kojiro cuts him off with his hands raised in surrender.
“And I was wrong, alright?”
Kaoru is watching Reki sleep now, doing his best not to let the fondness show on his face. Kojiro does not need any encouragement, and without Kaoru to temper his impulses, he will get ahead of himself.
“How long have you been wrong?” Kaoru asks finally, and Kojiro drops his hands to grab the counter behind him, looking at the floor instead of Kaoru.
“Dunno, I guess? Been doing my best to ignore it because I don’t think that’s what he needs right now, but he also doesn’t need to be left here alone for three months with his support system jerked out from underneath him when he’s only just getting back on his feet.”
Kaoru hums, picking at his food more skillfully than Reki— he is better at making it look like he has eaten, but his appetite is barely there on the best of days.
“Did you ask him yet?” Kaoru says, and Kojiro laughs.
“If I ask him, he won’t go. He’s not so lovesick anymore but I don’t think leaving Okinawa entirely would go over well. I just told him I need his help, and it’s true. Familiar face will go a long way to keeping sane anyway.”
He’s not so lovesick, Kojiro says, but Reki still mumbles Langa’s name in his sleep.
Kaoru frowns, even as something complicated blooms in his chest.
“You know how this will go,” he says. Kojiro steps forward to brush Reki’s hair out of his eyes. He’s too pretty for his own good.
“Is that so terrible?” Kojiro asks, and Kaoru breaks then, looks at Reki, soft-eyed and sighing.
“He’s lucky to have you,” Kaoru says. It is so earnest his throat hurts. I am so lucky to have you, Kaoru thinks, but they have been together a long time and he does not need to find the words.
Kojiro takes Kaoru’s hand and brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.
“You still all good with this? I can’t read your mind from Tokyo so speak now or forever hold your piece.”
Kaoru sucks air through his teeth and rolls his eyes.
“If all the girls you torture with your presence don’t concern me, why would this? We’ve talked about this until we’re blue in the face, Kojiro. It bothers YOU more than it bothers me.”
Kojiro has been chasing girls a long while now, ever since Kaoru’s insecurities eased enough for him to realize it didn’t matter to him what Kaoru did, or with whom, but that he was coming home after.
Kojiro picks up Reki’s plate as he shifts in his sleep, saving it from being knocked to the floor by a stray elbow.
“This is different and you know it.”
This is not some one-night stand or summer fling. This is someone Kojiro has made a home for in his restaurant. In their lives. Someone Kojiro has decided to keep, and Kaoru knows better than anyone that there is nothing to be done to stop him.
“Just don’t be stupid about it and everything should be fine.”
Kaoru means to tease but the look on Kojiro’s face is so serious that it takes the playful edge out of the words.
“I will be careful with him.” It isn’t something Kaoru needs to hear, but it is something Kojiro needs to say.
Kaoru thinks of the blood on Langa’s lips and the teeth in his neck and has to close his eyes.