Chapter Text
Seiji Katayama was twenty-two and staring down the barrel of getting everything he had ever wanted.
It was an unseasonably frigid day in mid-April, and Bobby Rossi née Rodriguez was throwing Seiji a party. This was ostensibly to celebrate the fact that Seiji would be fencing for Team USA in Paris that summer – Bobby had also invited the other qualifiers – but it would also serve as an informal reunion for former members of the Kings Row fencing team, whom Bobby had diligently kept connected through WhatsApp.
Bobby and Dante were the loving owners of an Instagram-famous Pomeranian named Lizards, for whom Bobby had fashioned a little white jacket with KATAYAMA USA emblazoned on the back. Additionally, Lizards had a lucrative brand deal with a pet food subscription service, which came up every time a guest forgot, and went to the refrigerator for a beer, only to be met with rows of dog food.
“Drinks in the cooler,” Dante would recite dutifully when this occurred.
Bobby and Dante shared a cozy, railroad-style apartment in Manhattan's West Village. They also had access to a spacious private backyard with a garden, which they had decorated with drooping strings of fairy lights. Due to the cold, the beautiful backyard sat empty, with their guests congregating mostly around the living room and kitchen.
Beaming, Bobby deposited the Katayama-jacketed Lizards into Seiji’s arms and held up his phone to take a photo. It was at this moment that Seiji heard the door open, and Dante’s soft, low voice rumbling, “Hey, Nick, Chris, glad you guys made it.”
(The photo Bobby would later post to Lizards’ following of 3.8 million would feature Seiji looking as if he’d just had a gun pulled on him, with the immaculate white cloud of Lizards perched sweetly in his arms. Lizards’ face was turned towards the camera like a professional, pink-nosed and pink-tongued, smiling, dumb as bricks.)
Nicholas had arrived with Chris, who must have been about a hundred years old. Well. Seiji had enough self-discipline to have stopped himself from ever launching a full-blown social media investigation of Nicholas’s boyfriend. But LinkedIn was LinkedIn, and so Seiji knew that Chris was at least somewhere in his late forties to early fifties, unless Standard Chartered was in the habit of hiring minors as Legal Counsel. Anything was possible, Seiji supposed. But, looking at Chris, not likely.
Seiji also knew tangentially that Nicholas had moved to New York sometime in the past year and was bartending, but Seiji didn’t know where. They did not run into each other.
At the party, they managed to cordially avoid one another for about thirty minutes before Bobby started giving Seiji extremely pointed looks towards Nicholas, and then making a dismayed expression back at Seiji like someone watching a nature documentary of a gazelle getting devoured by wildcats. Seiji finally put him out of his misery.
“Fresh air,” Seiji announced casually, as he extracted himself from a conversation with Harvard and Eugene. At the opposite corner of the kitchen, Nicholas and Chris were speaking with Jacob, Seiji’s teammate, and Jacob’s fiancée about skiing at Tuckerman Ravine (“Tucks” Jacob and Chris kept saying). Nicholas had never skied before but had plans to go to a resort in the Berkshires with Chris that winter. If Harvard or Eugene could tell Seiji was acting rude and distracted, they conscientiously ignored it. “Sick to see you, bro,” Eugene said when Seiji excused himself. Seiji caught Nicholas’s eyes flick to him as Seiji turned.
“Hey, I’m gonna go say hi,” Seiji heard Nicholas say to Chris as Seiji opened the door to step out into the garden.
“Sure, angel,” he heard Chris say. Seiji also heard the soft, unmistakable sounds of a kiss as he closed the door behind him.
“I didn’t think you would be here,” Seiji said, once Nicholas was outside with him. They stood at opposite ends of the garden, a bit side-on. Old habits.
“I wasn’t going to be,” Nicholas said. “But uh, Chris and I were in the neighborhood and Bobby texted me saying you wanted me here?”
Seiji must have made a face at this, because Nicholas scoffed and went, “Yeah, I think I knew he was lying.”
“No,” Seiji said, “I just.” He shook his head. He felt unmoored and clueless as to how to proceed. It also felt so bad on some level that Nicholas was here with someone, Chris , and Sara wasn’t here. I have someone else, too . Seiji wanted to say, like an idiot. Though, if Nicholas had kept up with Seiji at all, he may have already known. Sara Martin was a prolific documentarian, through at least four different social media platforms, of the minutiae of her day to day. Which, for the past year, had included Seiji.
Sara had fenced sabre in Tokyo, but, late last year, her season had been derailed by a hamstring injury. She hadn’t made the French team; her childhood dream of competing in Paris crumbled in one boring, miserable moment. She promised Seiji that she was happy and excited for him, and that she’d fly out later that spring to visit, but she still needed some time to lick her wounds with her family back in Strasbourg. Seiji understood.
“Thank you for coming,” Seiji said instead. “Bobby said he wanted to get everyone together for this. Everyone includes you.”
Nicholas shrugged and slid his hands into his jacket pockets. “Here I am.”
Nicholas looked good. The last time Seiji had seen him in the flesh they had been nineteen. Seiji had seen pictures of him since then, but, with the years between them, he had forgotten how arresting Nicholas could be in person. Looking at him, Seiji felt like his heart was gripped in a claw. How had he ever endured this?
“It’s good to see you,” Seiji said.
“Uh,” Nicholas said. A furrow formed between his eyebrows. “Look, I’m sorry, man. I gotta go. I thought it would be fine, but, like, now I’m looking at you, and I can see coming here was a mistake.” He now had a hurt, almost panicked look on his face.
“I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your texts,” Seiji said quickly.
The expression on Nicholas’s face shifted. He looked surprised, or maybe disgusted. Seiji felt uneven, and didn't know what to do with it.
“Okay, yeah,” Nicholas smiled, cold and sharp as a knife. “Thanks. Going now.” He moved as if to go back inside
Seiji shot a hand out and grabbed his wrist. Nicholas immediately jerked out of his grip, whirling back to look at Seiji, his face contorted in fury.
Seiji felt his heart stutter in his chest. He recalled the last time Nicholas had looked at him like that, soon after they had just encountered each other at school. How that expression had ended with them brawling and bruised, and everything that had happened in the years after. Nicholas’s mouth on Seiji’s thigh. Seiji’s tongue lapping against the warm skin of Nicholas’s throat. And even before all that, the nights in separate beds on opposite sides of their dorm, talking to each other through the duck curtain like a confessional.
“Do not ,” Nicholas said, quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Seiji said again. He felt the warmth of Nicholas’s wrist in his empty hand like a brand. “I didn’t want to lead you on,” Seiji said.
“Lead me on? ” Nicholas repeated, disbelieving. “Seiji. More than anything else, you were my best friend, and I was yours. You could have done anything other than what you did.” Nicholas’s eyes were bright and glinting like shards in the moonlight.
Seiji shook his head, “I know. I really am sorry.”
“I don’t forgive you,” Nicholas said. His voice was shaking. “Do you know how unfair it is for you to disappear when you just don’t fucking feel like dealing with something?”
“What can I do to make things right between us?” Seiji asked, levelly. He knew he was doing something that people hated, that Sara had told him she found wildly distasteful. Distancing himself from emotions by pulling out a cold toolbox. Making it someone else’s responsibility to solve. But he couldn’t help it. What else was he supposed to do. In that moment, whatever was there between them felt irrevocably broken.
“Just leave me alone,” Nicholas begged. “I don’t want to hear about what you’re doing, and I wish I didn’t have to.” Nicholas shook his head, looking defeated. “But you’re everywhere, Seiji. Because we were friends, and teammates, and whatever the fuck else, and now you’re you. And I alone have to live with all that. I know you don’t give a shit, because there’s only one thing you’ve ever cared about, and it’s not me,” Nicholas finished, with a humorless laugh.
“I don’t think you really want me to leave you alone,” Seiji said softly. He had seen the desperate desire in Nicholas’s eyes and knew it was true. Nicholas let out a surprised huff. In the cold night air, Nicholas’s breath hovered, ghostlike, between them.
“Oh, fuck you, Seiji,” Nicholas said.
“Hm,” Seiji said. The unfixability of the situation made him feel mean and annoyed. He leaned his shoulders back against the cold cement of the apartment building. He tilted his chin up, challenging. He suddenly wanted very badly for Nicholas to hit him. Nicholas did the next best thing.
As fast as ever, he lunged forward, shoving into Seiji hard against the wall. His forearm was braced against Seiji’s chest, his other hand slammed to the wall on the side of Seiji’s face.
The air in the garden had turned electric and terrifying. The space between them was charged. Seiji thought Nicholas must remember this feeling too. How on the verge of annihilation they could feel in each other’s presence. Seiji’s eyes fell to Nicholas’s mouth and felt drawn to it as if there were a current connecting them. The wind heaved, blowing through the trees like a song. Seiji's heart was beating fast, and he knew Nicholas must be able to feel that in his arm against Seiji’s chest.
“God damn it,” Nicholas said. The furious expression on his face had broken open into something pained. He was looking at Seiji as if it was torturing him to do so.
“I know,” Seiji said, helpless against it, too.
The kiss was bruising, punishing, vehement. At the lush press of Nicholas’s lips on his, Seiji’s entire body shuddered in response, desire coursing hotly through his blood. He lifted his hands to hold Nicholas’s face between them, and Nicholas whimpered, parted his lips, allowing Seiji to deepen the kiss. They both licked, sucked, bit, and then Nicholas pushed his hips against Seiji, and Seiji saw stars. Seiji’s hand dragged down Nicholas’s neck, then down his spine to cup his ass, and the distraught gasp Nicholas made into Seiji’s mouth at that would be seared into Seiji’s memory forever.
“You’re such an asshole,” Nicholas said, his voice a thin whine, breath warm against Seiji’s lips.
“I know,” Seiji said again.
Their lips met, bodies fitting together like they’d never parted, like they’d spent the last three years doing this. Seiji slid a hand into Nicholas’s hair and he held on tightly. Nicholas groaned into his mouth. Seiji licked into him and tasted the dark lusciousness of the wine Nicholas must have drank that night, and under that, he tasted Nicholas. He tasted just like Seiji remembered. Kissing him had brought everything back. How had Seiji endured letting this go?
At once, Nicholas shoved himself off of Seiji like severing a limb. He took several steps back, chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. Seiji wondered if he himself looked as unmistakably kissed as Nicholas did. Nicholas’s lips were pink, wet, and swollen. Flushed cheeks, dark eyes, mussed hair.
“I never want to see you again,” Nicholas said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Sure,” Seiji said.
“No, I’m done. I mean it.” Nicholas said. He ran his hands through his hair self consciously, straightened out his leather jacket, which was askew and partially hanging off a shoulder.
“I can say I punched you, if that helps,” Seiji offered.
“Genuinely, go fuck yourself,” Nicholas said, moving past Seiji towards the door.
Standing in the open doorway, Nicholas turned back to face Seiji, profile illuminated by the warm golden light of the party: “Have fun in Paris.”