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“I can still drive you back,” Kyouji reminds him, apparently unaware that’s no longer an option. It stopped being one the heel-turn instant it took Satomi to quit pretending that the choir festival ever meant more to him than Kyouji Narita.
Now, sitting in between Kyouji and the corner of the couch, Satomi just shakes his head and takes a too-large swallow of his orange juice. The karaage that one of the younger guys had placed in front of him is sitting heavy in his stomach, and his eyes still twinge from the tears he’d shed earlier; despite it all, he’s glad. Kyouji is next to him, not on an ambulance stretcher, and Satomi can’t find it in him to care about much else.
Barring the short while after Satomi’d finished his performance, the competition was carrying on as (he assumed) normal. The back-slapping and laughs from earlier had faded, and now all the guys who hadn’t sung yet were sitting looking tense, while the ones who had gotten it over with were steadily getting drunker. Though the karaoke was not much better than what Satomi had heard a couple weeks back, some of the guys he remembered from practice had actually taken his advice. It’s good to know his near heart attack from that day hadn’t been completely in vain.
“Hey, so what’s the real reason you skipped out on the chorus performance?” asks Kyouji as a Fei Fei Ouyang song winds down. “I thought we agreed we’d both try our best.”
“I never agreed to that.” Satomi’s thumb makes a squeak on the condensation of the glass. The AC, a dust-crusted thing on the ceiling, is on, but he imagines it’s not doing much more than circulating the smoke and sweat. “I skipped because... I was worried.” About you. Obviously. “Besides, it’s not like it matters anymore. It’s over now.”
“C’mon, you would’ve done great. I almost teared up at your Kurenai.” Kyouji playfully elbows him, but he’s always a little too rough. “That can’t be the last time I hear it. You’ll sing it for me again, won’tcha?”
“No way.” He grips the glass until his cheeks stop prickling. Singing is not something he wants to do anytime soon, maybe ever again. His throat is still stinging. Wada will most likely replace him as main soprano and Nakagawa as head of the chorus after today. Turning that over in his mind, Satomi finds he doesn’t feel very strongly about it. Should that surprise him, that he doesn’t care? He made his choice, so it’s not like he’s owed anything from them now.
“Are you angry at me, Satomi-kun?” Kyouji turns to him as the intro to the next song begins with a gutsy electric guitar riff. He still looks rough, usually-tidy hair hanging loose, shirt with flecks of (Satomi tries not to think too much) something rusty red.
He looks up. “Do you want me to be?”
“Whoa- scary! Sorry, sorry.” Kyouji puts two palms up, leaning away for only a second before snapping right back into Satomi’s personal space. His hand finds Satomi’s hair and ruffles it, causing his glasses to be askew. Always too rough.
The guy on stage screeches into the main chorus, yakuza all around drinking and smoking and doing whatever else they warn against in health class, and Kyouji brings his face close to Satomi’s to tell him, “At any rate, I’m glad you’re here.”
I’m glad you are too, Satomi doesn’t say. There’s no room to reply anyway; apropos nothing Kyouji ducks up to plant a kiss at Satomi’s temple.
It’s just a quick thing, yet he feels like the rest of the room gets smaller. As he’s yanked closer by the heavy arm that’s been around his shoulders since the two of them sat down, as the tip of Kyouji’s nose presses cool against Satomi’s skin, as his grip on the drink goes so tight that his knuckles begin to hurt.
Satomi stares at Kyouji for any sort of explanation; the usual smirk, a teasing shove, but finds none of it. Kyouji’s looking past him to call out to one of his brothers for another drink, or something. It must be, actually, because while Satomi’s eyes remain locked onto the middle distance, someone grabs his glass and replaces it with a fresh one right into his hands.
“Thanks,” he says absently. The velvet of the couch is weirdly welcoming when he sits back against it. He gives the rest of the room a cursory glance over. No one is looking at them. They’re all understandably focused on the competition. The guy who has just stepped off of the stage bows deep to the kumicho.
“Hayasaka...” comes the kumicho’s scratchy smoker voice. “I think we’ll call that one a six for now. Might change.”
An ‘oooh’ sweeps through the room.
Kyouji clicks his tongue. “He’s smart, picking that song. It was the first dance at the boss’s third wedding.”
Satomi, inexplicably, feels his shoulders unclench.
The heat from Kyouji’s arm still slung around him has morphed into something anchoring him rather than trapping him. They’re already really close, but Satomi inches a bit to the left until their thighs touch. No one looks, nothing changes.
He rests his head against the space between Kyouji’s shoulder and neck. This gets Kyouji to turn his head in acknowledgement, but Satomi stands his ground, lidding his eyes, willing himself to be nonchalant. It’s not a big deal, if Kyouji can do it then so can he. Plus, now he can tune out the singing a bit if he focuses on that heartbeat against his ear.
“Tired?” Kyouji shakes him lightly by the shoulders. It reminds Satomi of what his uncle would do when Satomi would sit and read next to him as a kid.
“I’m fine.”
“Good.” Kyouji says. Quietly, just for him, as the next song fades in. “That’s good.”
Satomi had only closed his eyes because the lights had been a bit bright, and he was dreading getting a headache considering he also nearly cried earlier. What he could recall of after was sliding in and out of consciousness, sort of like he was swimming through one of those giant buckets of pudding they have at Donki. Dimly being annoyed at Kyouji’s laugh, sounding unfamiliar and rumbling from this close to his chest, like construction work on a Sunday.
What he doesn’t expect is to wake up to a much emptier room, so quiet that Satomi briefly does not recognize it without all the commotion.
“Heyyy, sleeping beauty,” comes a voice from next to him. Satomi jolts back instinctively; he’s never heard Kyouji sound that unassuming and considerate.
“Sorry,” Satomi rubs his crusty eyes under his glasses, too out of it to care if he gets fingerprints on them. His neck tinges with the pain of having slept wrong. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“All good,” smiles Kyouji, like it’s a joke Satomi doesn’t get. Being so tired that he had used the closest person as a pillow, like a kid past his bedtime sleeping in his mom’s lap is pretty bad, but he discovers, more than any feeling of embarrassment, he wishes Kyouji would just stay still and allow him to close his eyes again.
Instead, he sweeps a stray eyelash off of Satomi’s cheek, and says, “Let me go get one of the guys to give me their keys.”
Satomi can’t figure out what Kyouji’s talking about. Or why he’s getting up. “Keys?”
“So we can get you back home.”
Home? Satomi’s still trying to understand why the snack bar is this deserted. “Where is everyone?”
“They started heading over to the afterparty a few minutes ago. I wanted to let you sleep for as long as you needed.”
“Afterparty?”
“Yep. At one of the clubs the family owns,” he pulls his jacket sleeve up to check his watch. “It’s only like four o’clock right now. These things typically don’t end ‘til about two or three a.m.”
“Where’s the club?”
“Downtown.”
“Okay,” says Satomi, slowly getting to his feet. “Let me use the restroom and then we can head over.”
“You wanna come?!” laughs Kyouji, baffled.
“Oh, am I...” he shrinks back, at last beginning to feel awake. “Am I not allowed to?”
“No, no it’s all good, just— are you sure?”
Is he sure he wants to follow Kyouji and the rest of these yakuza (whom, he reminds himself, he hates) a second time? That’s like kidnapping 101; never let the perpetrators get you to a secondary location. This is how guys disappear, says a voice in the back of Satomi’s mind.
“Well, I don’t really feel like going home. So, if it’s fine...”
This would all be a lot clearer if Satomi didn’t trust him more than he has any right to. Just because he hasn’t tried something doesn’t mean he won’t. Maybe it's a long con. But, all things considered, he’d already made his choice when he threw that door open and sung Kyouji back to him.
“Man... even more time with Satomi-kun, huh... this day’s really the best.”
“Didn’t you get hit by a car less than three hours ago?”
Across from him Kyouji looks pensive, though evidently not for the reasons he should be. “But won’t your folks be worried about you?”
Seeing as it is a bit bad that Kyouji had to be the one to bring it up when it had not even occurred to Satomi, he takes a second to actually consider this.
“We—the rest of the choir, I mean—were planning to go out for a meal after the performance anyway. My parents aren’t expecting me back until later.”
“Where were you guys gonna go? Katsudon?”
“We hadn’t decided, but probably like, Saizeria.”
Kyouji smirks. “Well, this place the afterparty is at isn’t quite as nice as all that, but it’s still pretty cool.”
Satomi has never been in a club. He could confidently say the thought or desire had never even crossed his mind. And as one of Kyouji’s brothers parks the car in some street lot and leads them down the stairs to the place, handrail suspiciously sticky, Satomi can just as confidently say he was correct in feeling as such.
It’s like karaoke, but worse.
Though this is much more modern, it puts Satomi in mind of those old Kurosawa samurai films his mother will always go out of her way to catch on TV; a dingy locale with tables dotted around, each with scary-looking men and girls with short dresses sat at them, all leading up to a bar in the back with a bartender behind it and bottles behind him.
Satomi grips his schoolbag over his shoulder and trails after Kyouji. Thankfully, unlike a movie, everyone present just ignores them. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if the music had screeched to a halt and they had all stopped dead, turned around to size him up.
“Well, long time no see.”
The girl at the end of the bar turns in her stool to greet them. She’s got long shiny hair, curled at the edges, and rings on nearly every finger.
“Beer again?” Kyouji points to her glass. “Not very ladylike.”
“Who cares, I like it. Acting like you’re not about to order the same.”
“Nah, I don’t drink.”
Satomi’s been trying to make himself small, unsure how to speak with someone like her. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Unfortunately, all his fidgeting draws her attention, and when her eyes fall on Satomi, they light up like she’s just caught sight of a tiny dog in a sweater.
“Hello,” she waggles her fingers. “And are you Kyouji-kun's arm candy for the night?”
“Uhm.” Satomi says, “It’s not really nighttime, yet.” ...Why on earth would he counter that part and not the other?
“Stay here a sec, Satomi-kun. I gotta go greet the boss’s old lady.” Kyouji pats him on the shoulder and then disappears. Satomi stares after him a while (it’s not hard, he’s like one of the tallest people in the room), and then is forced to confront instead the woman next to him, who has been doing her own fair share of staring.
He gives her a smile and a tiny bow of his head. She snorts. Satomi picks at the skin around his thumb, his back to the bar. Thankfully, she swivels herself back around and seems to decide the bartender is a more interesting conversation partner.
Faintly, he wonders if he could ask for a water. His mouth has been dry since he woke up. And since the only thing he ate was a plate of karaage at the snack bar, he’s starting to get hungry. Maybe when Kyouji gets back he’ll ask if they can go out to get something to eat after this.
There has been harsh music playing since they came in, and the middle was cleared for what looked like a dancefloor. A couple of people were making use of it. Satomi felt this was a safe place to look until one of the guys got up behind the girl he was with and started moving his hips against her butt as she laughed. Satomi tore his eyes back down to the floor, feeling his cheeks heat.
Did Kyouji do stuff like that too? When he wasn’t practicing for the contest or driving Satomi around? He didn’t really know much about Kyouji’s day-to-day life outside of what they did together. It was hard to bring the image of Kyouji doing something like that to his mind, though whether that was due to inexperience on Satomi’s part or an actual statement about Kyouji’s character, he wasn’t sure.
In the end, Satomi had been just a small part of Kyouji’s life for a handful of weeks. Standing here beside all the noise and chaos, he is overcome with the emotion that he is not special. Now that the competition is over, will Kyouji still contact him? He had mentioned that they held it four times a year, so if he still insists on singing Kurenai, they’ve can only afford to take about a month off until the one in November.
He will come to him for help again, right? It’s not like he can afford not to.
Without him realizing, someone had walked up to him. Satomi blinks at the bright orange and green sneakers, then his eyes travel up, up, up, settling on the guy’s face. He’s young, with close-cropped hair and a big chain necklace over his tracksuit.
“Hey, this one’s on me.” he grins, and pushes a red plastic cup into Satomi’s hands. Satomi looks at it—some type of juice—and then looks back at the guy.
“Don’t worry, there’s no alcohol in it!” he urges. He has a smile that doesn’t suit a yakuza. It makes Satomi relax a bit.
“Okay,” he replies, nodding a bow of his head. “Thank you.”
“Take it easy.” He claps him on the shoulder, and then walks away. How kind , Satomi thinks. Maybe he noticed me trying to figure out how to ask for a drink and got one for me.
He brings the cup to his nose and sniffs it. It seems like pineapple or orange, so he takes a sip. It’s has more of a bitter flavor than he expected, but it’s good.
“Oh, got yourself a drink?”
Kyouji has reappeared just as easily as he had gone. “Non-alcoholic, I hope.”
“Obviously,” frowns Satomi. “I’m underage.” Technically he could get in a lot of trouble just for being here, but that had been the case since he’d started meeting up with Kyouji at all.
“Someone gave it to me,” Satomi adds.
“Oh yeah? Who?”
“Dunno, I didn’t recognize him from before, or anything. He was in a tracksuit.”
“Tracksuit...”Kyouji chews on the inside of his lip, brows furrowed, eyes shut. “Red?”
Satomi gives a nod, unsure what to make of this new expression on Kyouji’s face. He looks like he did when Satomi first gave him that list of songs to sing.
He makes a sweeping motion over his hair and back with one hand. “Did he have a buzzcut?
“Yeah,” Satomi says, curious now. “Are you guys friends, or something?” He goes to take another sip of his juice, but a finger on the rim of the cup causes him to pause. He allows Kyouji lower the drink away from his lips.
“Could I see this for a second?” He asks, and takes it from Satomi. Then, before Satomi’s eyes, he swings it back and doesn’t stop until he’s finished it. The whole thing.
Satomi can do nothing else but stare, his mouth hanging open slightly. Kyouji’s throat bobs with every gulp of it. When he’s done, he underhand tosses the empty plastic cup into the overflowing trash by the wall.
“Uh?” says Satomi, still trying to understand what had just occurred.
“My bad,” Kyouji looks genuinely apologetic. “I was thirstier than I thought. I’ll get you something else, you choose!”
“I mean, I wanted to drink that one...” Satomi grumbles, his eyes on the empty cup sitting forlornly on top of the garbage. “Just juice is fine, I guess.”
Once the juice has been replaced and they’ve taken a table to themselves, Satomi’s nerves manage to settle a bit. He ends up getting the full story of what had happened before the contest, requesting Kyouji leave out the bloodier parts. He tells him them anyway, of course, and by the time he's finished, Satomi’s stomach is almost as sour as his drink.
“Are you going to get a new car?” Satomi asks, his hands between his knees. “The old one’s way too messed up to fix, right?”
Kyouji makes a put-out expression and slides further forward onto the table. He’s been steadily sinking down onto it since they sat down. He’s always been immature for someone nearly forty years old, but this seems out of character even for him. Maybe he actually is concussed, as Satomi has been suspecting.
“Maan, don’t remind me,” he gripes over the music. They’re sitting far enough away from the main speakers that they don’t have to raise their voices much. “All those good memories I made with Satomi-kun, gone.”
His head is pillowed against his upper arm, eyes looking up at Satomi as he pouts. If it wasn’t for his irezumi peeking out from his rolled-up shirtsleeves, he could pass for a drunk salaryman right about now.
“Don’t lay across the table like that, it’s probably dirty,” chides Satomi as he chews the straw to his drink. He pulls his eyes away to focus on the rest of the place, which is now a mix of both yakuza and regular patrons. He’s thankful he’d insisted they sit at one of the further tables, just because no one’s said anything about a middle schooler being here doesn’t mean that they won’t if he catches the attention of someone still sober enough to make a fuss.
“Satomi-kuuuun.”
A tug at his shirtsleeve makes Satomi turn.
“What?”
“I love Satomi-kun so much.”
Satomi furrows his brows and turns away again. “What are you saying?”
“I’m gonna miss you a lot.”
“Why? Are you going somewhere or something?” he says to the far wall, though Kyouji’s probably just talking nonsense. His house is here, his work is here, his... well, Satomi is here. Not that that last one matters.
Kyouji doesn’t answer. Satomi hates when he does this, talk like he knows something that Satomi doesn’t.
“Why are you acting weird?” Satomi questions, still not turning around. The plastic of the straw splits under his teeth, poking his tongue. He places it on the table. Kyouji has told him before that he isn’t good with alcohol, that smoking is his only vice (Satomi doubts that, he is a career criminal), so if that guy from before had been lying and the drink really had been alcoholic...
But Satomi had taken a sip, and it hadn’t tasted any different than the fruit juice his mom bought at the supermarket.
“If you’re that tired, we should just go.” he says. Nothing. A few seconds tick by. “Did you hear me?”
Kyouji’s facedown, forehead resting against his crossed arms.
“Are you seriously going to fall asleep on me?” Satomi nudges him. It’s as if some sort of bubble has popped, leaving him exposed to the real world, not whatever Kyouji had been containing them in.
Even if most of the other guys he’d met in the family have been nicer than he expected, Satomi still didn’t trust them. He’d seen firsthand how short their fuses could be. The only time he was around them was because they were around Kyouji, and Satomi somehow always found himself around him.
The already-dim lights in the place go darker. Suddenly the music that’s been thumping dully in his chest is overtaken by his heartbeat, just as loud. Satomi knows that if he looks past their table and acknowledges the rest of the room, he’ll find every pair of eyes staring at them.
“Let’s go home. Hey, Kyouji-san,” Satomi frowns, shaking his arm harder. “Take me home.”
“We can’t,” he mumbles. “I promised I wouldn’t.”
“You’re not even listening to me...”
Twice now he’s left him by himself. He’s trying to keep his pulse steady and think about his options—leave him here and walk to the nearest subway station, text his brother and cash in on a favor he’s owed, get a cup of ice water from the bar and toss it at Kyouji’s dumb sleeping face—when someone comes up next to them.
“Yo, Narita, I can hear your boytoy freaking out from across the room.”
Satomi nearly jumps out of his skin— his knee hits the underside of the table hard.
“Whoa, relax, relax,” the guy laughs. “I didn’t mean to scare you, honest.”
Doubled over clutching his leg, Satomi looks up. He recognizes him; one of the older guys in the family, pompadour hairstyle, he’d sung that slow piano ballad at the practice. He had also taken the criticism Satomi had dished out really hard, skulking away from the mic.
“Uhm, I’m not sure what’s wrong.” Satomi says hesitantly. The guy rolls Kyouji’s head to the side, causing him to wince, though his eyes stay shut.
“Probably someone swapped out his non-alcoholic stuff for the real thing as a joke,” he sighs. “Huh, Narita?”
So it had been alcoholic. As expected, none of these guys were as good as their word. He'd only had a sip, but that still meant he’d drank it. It would all show up the same on a blood alcohol test. Oh, God. Why would he agree to come here? Is he out of his mind?
He shakes his head, forcing himself to focus on the problem laying on the table in front of him.
“Jesus,” the pompadour guy makes a face, “He’s bad with alcohol, but not this bad. How much did he even have?”
“I mean, he did chug it, but I only saw him drink the one.” Satomi replies. The skin around his thumb is beginning to bleed. “What should we do?” he asks.
“Mm... I wonder. He’s probably got to sleep it off,” says pompadour guy. He pauses for a bit, enough time for Satomi’s brain to run through an extensive list of potential suggestions. His hard line is that he’s not doing anything that puts him in yet another yakuza’s car.
“Oh,” says Pompadour finally, “Take him to that hotel the family runs just down the road. You probably know it.”
“Sorry, I don’t know that I do.”
“C’mon, it’s the one with the pink cowboy hat sign!”
“Oh.” As a matter of fact, he does know this one. “The love hotel?”
...The love hotel?!
He says the first thing that comes to his mind as he watches Kyouji’s shoulders rise and fall with breath. “I don’t think I have enough money to pay for something like that.”
“No worries, they know Narita’s face there.”
Even if he’s out cold?
“Hear that?” Pompadour leans in and rests a hand on Kyouji’s shoulder. “Satomi-sensei's going to take you somewhere you can lie down.”
“Satomi-kun...” Kyouji mumbles with such sincerity that it’d be funny if everything wasn’t going so wrong. Closed eyes, loose smile, cheek smushed against his arm. “You’re so nice... of course I’ll go with you.”
“Okay,” This is something that is happening now. At the very least, it isn’t a school night. “Can you stand?”
Satomi’s probably seen this place pass by out of the car window about a hundred times since he’s lived here. It had always looked really unassuming expect for the neon sign, the silhouettes of ladies advertising prices, and a few adornments on the wall outside.
The lobby is a different story.
It boasts a light-up fountain, statues, and tile floors. There’s a huge touch pad with an inviting message, but Pompadour instructed him to go straight to the front desk when he got in. So that’s what Satomi does, pulling Kyouji by the hand as he had the entire way here.
“Welcome,” comes the voice from behind the curtain, like some weird parody of The Wizard of Oz .
Satomi pitches his voice down, feeling ridiculous. There is no way on earth this is going to work. They aren’t even going to get past reception.
“A room for two. Please?”
“Rest or stay?”
“Uh.” What is the difference? His eyes glance down at the laminated rules. Free video rental included! Cheapest hourly rates! Hourly. How long would it take for a guy as big as Kyouji to sleep this off?
“Just mark it down as a stay, Marzia,” slurs Kyouji from against Satomi’s hair.
At this, the clerk peeks her head out from under the curtain. She looks from Kyouji to Satomi, Satomi to Kyouji. Her expression is unreadable, but Satomi holds his breath until she sits back down, obscured once more, and taps away at a screen behind the desk.
“Understood,” she places a plastic card with a decisive clack and begins typing something with a rehearsed efficiency. “Here’s your key. Towels are for rent down the hall around the corner, check out ends at 1 p.m., we aren’t liable for any stolen items. Please enjoy your stay at Howdy Pleasure Rodeo East Osaka.”
Unlike the horrifyingly over-decorated mishmash of themes and patterns that the lobby held, Satomi lets out an internal sigh of relief upon seeing the abject plainness of the room. He limps them through the door, shoves the room key in the slot to turn on the lights, and uses the last of his arm strength to drag Kyouji towards the huge bed.
From the time they’d left the club to now, Kyouji had been able to walk (or at least stagger, like he was auditioning for a role in some corny yakuza zombie movie) but on the elevator ride he’d finally given up the ghost and collapsed against Satomi. Satomi had managed to get him mostly laying against his back in the world’s worst hug, and after maneuvering his stupid heavy arms over his own shoulders, there had been no choice but to finish what he’d not even started and haul him down the length of the hallway to the room.
He kicks off his own shoes and then stares at the bed, looking back at him with the promise of soft sheets and rose petals in a heart pattern, and flops forward on top of it, Kyouji on top of him in a puff of perfumed petals.
Facedown in the comforter, he can’t gather the energy to fix their position. All the day’s exhaustion, emotional and now physical, has fallen on top of him just like how Kyouji has. He was already tired at the snack bar, and it feels like that happened ages ago at this point.
The snack bar. When Kyouji had kissed him.
He’s always doing weird stuff like that—getting too close, smiling too much—at this point he expects it. Maybe he’s even getting used to it, which is a troubling thought. Either way, Satomi knows he shouldn’t put too much weight behind it.
He takes a breath and flips them over, pushing Kyouji up with his knees like he’s a big, yakuza-shaped sack of takoyaki flour. Satomi manages to get onto his back but this comes with the added awkwardness of them laying chest-to-chest. When he tries to push Kyouji back and slip out from underneath, his arms don’t cooperate. His plan B of shimmying out is similarly cut short when Kyouji sleepily wraps his arms around Satomi’s torso and squeezes .
“ Agghhh stop, stop, stop...” Satomi grouses helplessly, his face tilting away, his expression tightening as Kyouji nuzzles into his neck. He’s still very much asleep, so Satomi the only one left to stew in how mortifying this is.
“Once you wake up I am never talking to you again. Just so you know,” he decides, aware Kyouji can’t hear him, but maybe if he speaks it aloud it’ll come true.
Their faces are touching, Kyouji’s to the side of his and Satomi’s pointed up at the ceiling, wondering what he’d supposed to tell his mother. If he can ever manage to get himself out from Kyouji’s sweaty, squid-like hold, then what does that leave him with? Asking his parents to pick him up from a known yakuza district, outside of a love hotel? Walking home and hoping he doesn’t get dragged back into a club, with no say in it this time, no Kyouji to hide behind?
He pulls his phone from his back pocket, dreading what the notifications will have in store for him—but there’s nothing except a coupon for gyudon and his mom wishing him luck on his performance, sent more than 4 hours ago. He opens their messages, holding the phone up in front of his face, his forearms trapped under Kyouji’s.
It’s your last time, so do your best!
thank you
i think im going to stay with my friend tonight
you dont have to save me any dinner
What does that mean? You’re not coming home?
Don’t decide those things without asking dad
Where are you?
with everyone
How did the performance go?
good
What’d you eat after?
katsudon
Are you lying?
it was the place we went for dads birthday
where you found a hair in your curry
I hope this isn’t a preview of how you’ll be in high school
You don’t have pajamas or anything. You going to be okay like that?
i'll borrow some
see you tomorrow
He drops his phone to the side of the mattress. Tries to think of nothing but the weight on top of him. It makes it so that he can’t breathe in all that deep, and so that the only smell is cologne, lingering cigarette smoke, and sweat. All mixed together to create something that is so decidedly Kyouji that Satomi thinks no one else has ever used that shampoo, or chain-smoked the exact amount of the specific cigarettes Kyouji does in a day.
Satomi fills his lungs as deep as they’ll go; in, out.
What had that kiss meant?
Nothing, supplies his brain, you weren’t supposed to like it as much as you did.
“Kyouji-san,” Satomi turns his head slightly. The smell of hair gel pervades his senses. “When are you going to wake up?”
Kyouji doesn’t reply, doesn’t stir, doesn’t let go.
“I’m bored, you know,” he absentmindedly nudges Kyouji’s shirtsleeve up with a finger. He’s never seen his tattoo, he forgot he even had it until today. But he is yakuza, so of course he’s got one. Under his suit, all the time, his back and forearms are covered in detailed artwork. Satomi can’t picture it, but it’s there.
“I miss talking with you.” Is that even true? “...Even if all you do is tell me about things I don’t care about. When you get up, you have to let me talk about something I want to talk about.” His hand drops onto Kyouji’s back without thinking. He winces, worrying that it may been too harsh, but nothing happens.
Satomi lets out a breath. “I’m sorry that I yelled at you.” He shouldn’t be apologizing.
He brings both arms around Kyouji’s back then, like how he’d thought of doing at the snack bar earlier, when he realized he hadn’t lost him for good. He may be super conked out, but his heart is still beating against Satomi’s own chest. Satomi holds him closer, hiding his face into the nape of Kyouji’s neck, and that sweat-cologne-cigarette scent gets that much stronger.
Satomi had thought he was dead. Kyouji had kissed him. Satomi had run away from the performance they’d been working on for months to sing karaoke to a bunch of lousy yakuza. Kyouji had kissed him. Satomi had been the one they asked to look after Kyouji, not even considering doing it themselves, because they were good-for-nothing — but jokes on them, Satomi had done it, Kyouji was here with him right now, breathing. And earlier, he had kissed him.
Satomi had always in the back of his mind been convinced that whatever this was would one day it’d just fall apart; that his parents would catch him, that Kyouji’d stop coming to a middle schooler for help, anything that made sense. And if that wasn’t going to happen then something else had to. In order to confirm that this was real.
Was it this?
He doesn’t get it at all.
Satomi shuts his eyes and tightens the arms he’s got around Kyouji’s solid mass of torso. He doesn’t get it, but there’s something sprouting up between them. Beneath the layers of disgust and embarrassment over what he’s doing, he can start to admit there’s relief (or exhaustion) and satisfaction (or complacency).
Then he moves a bit, an innocent shifting of his hips, and every feeling that had been budding is dwarfed in an instant by a singular new one; one that does not need to be analyzed a million different ways to be understood.
Satomi freezes up. The thrumming of his pulse that he’d been passing off as the adrenaline finally tapering out is suddenly concentrated in one spot. He slowly squeezes his thighs together, needing for some reason to confirm what he can already feel stirring below his gut—
—and he keens.
It would make sense for Satomi to know how to confront a situation as bad as this one. This past summer should have turned him into an expert on how to recognize when something was bad, assess how to get out of it, and then extract himself smoothly. That would have made sense. But the other thing about this past summer is that nothing about it has gone how it should have.
Case in point.
The sound that eked its way past his lips has, much like everything before it, not caused any kind of reaction in Kyouji. Satomi is filled — truly from his socked feet to his overheating brain — with such a disdain for this guy that he almost forgets about his hard-on.
Almost.
Why now? He doesn’t make a habit of touching himself, but surely he can’t be so deprived that his trigger is this hair-thin. Satomi steels himself and attempts once again to move out from under the source of every problem of the past few weeks. Kyouji’s grip hasn’t loosened, and all Satomi gets from trying his very best to untangle them is a fresh shot of heat to his nerves.
Kyouji-san, he hears himself say, frustration at him mixing with a completely instinctive force to say his name.
There are tears budding at his eyes now, because he’s tired, he just wants to sleep, and he never gets what he wants.
So he grinds his hips down and takes the thing he that can get.
And the payoff, the satisfaction is so immediate that another sound bubbles up from his chest.
Kyouji-san... feels good.
Is this what he’s wanted? That can’t be the case— but then why had it felt so right to be close to him, to get kissed by him? Satomi doesn’t know, doesn’t know, doesn’t know. He wants Kyouji to wake up and see how much he’s hurt him and tell him he’s sorry. He wants Kyouji to wake up and see how much Satomi likes him and tell him he likes him back. He wants Kyouji to stay still for once in his life and let Satomi do what he wants.
He tilts his head back into the mattress as he keeps his hips moving. The breath comes hard and fast out of his open mouth. The past few times he’d had a vivid dream and had to quickly take care of himself in the morning before school had been out of necessity only. Is it possible for it to feel this good when he hasn’t even taken his pants off, doesn’t even have a hand around himself properly?
It knocks any other thoughts out of his head. Not what he’ll do in the morning, or the rest of the night, or ten minutes from now. There’s just Kyouji around Satomi and Satomi against Kyouji.
Kyouji telling Satomi that it’s alright, he doesn’t mind. Kyouji rolling over onto his back like a well-rested, content tiger. His eyes half-lidded and smile predatory. Staring up at the frazzled, scared hare who's doesn’t know how to stop, can’t stop. Jackrabbiting his hips as Kyouji keeps him in place against his big thigh. Maybe he’ll be nice and eat him afterwards so Satomi doesn’t have to deal with what he’s done. Oh, God; there is something very wrong with him.
The fabric of Kyouji’s shirt is wet and Satomi realizes that he’s crying, big ugly tears, the kind Kyouji thinks are funny, and he must have been for a while. In fact everything has this wet, sloppy feeling to it; the shirt, Satomi’s face and pants. He’s got that pudding feeling again but this time he’s not asleep, and it isn’t around him but in his head. His brain’s made of pudding.
Kyouji-san feels so good.
But no, not just good. This, trapped in a yakuza-run love hotel underneath the yakuza himself on not-a-school-night, is probably the best Satomi’s ever felt. And Kyouji’s not even doing anything, sound asleep. And yet all of this is because of him. Because since he drove his stupid car into Satomi’s very average life, everything has been because of him.
Inside of his uniform slacks, he can feel the wetness spreading. At this rate he’s going to get it on Kyouji, leak through the fabric of his pants and smear across Kyouji’s own—Satomi’s whines, his voice cracking again, making him purse his lips closed. His too-tight chest can’t get the air in fast enough, and he wonders if he might pass out.
For some reason this is what does it, his hips stutter, and he groans, high and long, as he clutches on. It feels like it lasts forever. He goes until it hurts, and then goes for a little bit longer after that, too.
What follows, in true fashion, is nothing that he expects.
He extracts himself from underneath Kyouji using what has to be pure mea culpa alone. When he falls onto the carpet upon attempting to stand, a handful of rose petals float down with him. Satomi leans on the side of the bed, his legs gradually solidifying from tofu to slightly more firm tofu, his glasses slid to the bridge of his nose.
Kyouji is, obviously (thankfully?), still asleep. He’s resting more so on his side than his stomach at least now, which is an improvement from completely facedown. Satomi stares at his back, at the spot just above his belt, where his shirt has come untucked and a bit of his ink can be seen. Then he walks into the bathroom, shuts the door, and cranks the waterfall shower on.
Why had he done that? Would Kyouji find out? What was he going to do when he did?
When he’s used up all the hot water running his head in circles, he steps back out and begins the process of, he guesses, getting himself ready for bed. He scrubs the crotch of his uniform pants clean while sitting in a light pink bathrobe on the side of the huge, heart-shaped tub, the kind with jets and lights.
He questions what will happen after this as he dries his hair, then turns the hair dryer to the underwear he’d just washed. They don’t feel very pleasant to slip back into, but Satomi thinks that, accounting for it all, maybe some things shouldn’t feel pleasant right now.
At first, he takes the ugly patterned armchair by the bed. He curls up on it, legs to his chest, and shuts his eyes. Tiredness is on him immediately, but he keeps waking in fifteen-minute intervals to the sound of Kyouji’s deep breathing. His snores.
Satomi listens to him, red-rimmed eyes staring out into the darkness of the room as if he has a personal grudge against the tacky wallpaper. Maybe he deserves this, too.
The chair is uncomfortable, and the bed is big enough for two. Still he saddles up against Kyouji, so that the two of them make an awkward little island in the middle, laying somewhat diagonally to the heart-shaped headboard.
He’s so tired. But his thoughts don’t let sleep past them, and Satomi spends a long time with his eyes half open, trying to commit Kyouji to memory in case either of them ever grows a brain and finds somewhere better to be than next to each other.
Satomi’s plan to get up before Kyouji, untangle them for a second time, and change back into his clothes is shattered when he opens his eyes and finds himself alone on the bed.
He sits up so suddenly that his stomach lurches double, only settling when his ears attune to the hiss of the shower and the light coming from the beneath the closed bathroom door. This state of hesitation lasts until he spots his clothes lain across the back of a chair, and hurries to make it so that Kyouji won’t see him in this stupid bathrobe a second time.
Thoughts accost him as he unsteadily pulls his pants on.
Why did you go with Kyouji to a nightclub? Because I didn’t know what else to do.
Why did you go with Kyouji to a love hotel? Because I didn’t know what else to do.
Why did you do that ?
Because I didn’t know what else to— well.
As he sits and waits, scrolling mindless through his phone on the same stiff armchair that had denied him dignity last night, Satomi listens to the shower run and feels like when the water squeaks off it will do so in time with a bomb, and everything will end in a not-even exciting puff of rose-scented smoke. He doesn’t even know why he doesn’t just leave; it’s not like Kyouji has a car to drive him home with. They’re both going to have to trek to the nearest train station or call a cab at—he checks his lockscreen—11 a.m. Well, at least they hadn’t missed checkout.
When Kyouji opens the door, it’s with a towel tied around his waist. His face lights up, and he goes, “Oh, hey, you’re still here! Thought I had to be dreaming when I woke up next to ya earlier.”
And any confidence or arguments that Satomi had scraped up and out of himself vacate his brain.
The tattoo is massive, even looking at it from the front. It’s splayed just above his chest and it trails down the sides of his body until it disappears underneath the towel.
Satomi says, “You’re naked.”
Kyouji just laughs, coming closer for some reason, which makes Satomi freeze and hold his breath—until he passes him and reaches to grab one of the hotel razors. He goes back to the bathroom, but leaves the door open this time. Satomi trails around the perimeter of the bed (the sheets and comforter are still tucked in, but rumpled, and the petals are mostly strewn on the floor now), taking a seat on the edge closest to the bathroom door.
“Don’t you want to know why we’re here?” Satomi asks after a minute. The back of the tattoo is a different story, more detailed than he’d been able to imagine.
Kyouji meets his eyes through the mirror. “There was a text from aniki waiting on my phone when I got up explaining. My bad,” he turns to face Satomi properly, “for making you do all of that.”
Satomi shrugs, looking away.
“Be right back.” Kyouji says after a few seconds, before he shuts the door once more.
Satomi flops back onto the bed, curling on his side. It still smells a bit like it did last night, but with sunlight through the windows, it feels like a completely different room.
“Alrighty,” says Kyouji when he comes back out, fully clothed. His shirtsleeves are pulled back down and buttoned. Considering he’d slept in those same clothes, he looks surprisingly put together. “How’re you feeling?” He asks as he takes a seat on the bed.
Satomi sits up. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”
“Ahh, well.” He hits the side of his head with the heel of his palm a couple times, like he’s trying to get water out of his ear. “My head’s still pretty bad. But it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
“I don’t know if I should be concerned about that...”
Kyouji laughs again, the sound echoing off the high ceiling. “I think you’ve spent too long concerned about me recently, Satomi-kun. You’re too nice.”
“Yeah,” says Satomi, eyes falling onto his own lap. “I guess.” If someone could come crash another car into this love hotel, that wouldn’t be all that bad, he thinks. Onto the fifth floor. Hitting only him.
“But really, you sleep okay?” He pats the mattress. “Bed’s huge, right? Bet you’ve never slept on something this big.”
This turn of conversation startles Satomi a bit; mostly because he thinks that it may be the moment that he realizes that Kyouji really has no idea. To him, there’s nothing different between them. Nothing’s changed.
He really isn’t going to say anything about it, thinks Satomi. Does he really not know? Maybe he’s so insane that even something like that doesn’t bother him.
Or maybe, as Satomi is beginning to realize, Kyouji will never confront anything unless it hits him in the face. And even then, he will usually just laugh it off. He pulls out his phone now and begins to text something.
Satomi’s not going to get an answer, is never going to understand if he doesn’t do something. Is it better that way? To just not know, and not make a big deal? Probably.
Satomi wants to hit him in the face.
“Could I ask you something?” Satomi blurts out instead.
Kyouji doesn’t look up from his phone. “Mhm?”
What was that story about the guy with the wax wings? “Why did you do that at the snack bar yesterday?” This is like that. Satomi is that guy, right before he plummets straight down. “Why’d you kiss me?”
His eyes go up, shift from edge to edge, like he’s trying to recall, brows furrowing. “Oh, on your forehead, y’mean?”
Satomi does not reply to this.
“No reason, I guess. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He’s falling. “I want you to do it again.” It’s not even a cool fall, not poetic, it's just kinda pathetic.
Kyouji’s mouth tilts up at one end. “You’re a weird kid.”
Woefully, Satomi thinks: You have no idea.
Satomi is disappointed to discover that it feels more or less the same. No way this was what kept him up all night.
“Okay?” Kyouji says as he sits back, expression looking like it always does.
There has got to be something else. Something to make it real. Otherwise, this is so insanely lame of him.
Satomi brings a finger to his lips. “Here.”
Kyouji’s eyes go there and then back. He tilts his head and narrows his eyes, but his tone isn’t that much different when he follows up with, “Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Both.”
“It can’t be both,” but he leans close again. Satomi can feel the words on his face.
“Well... it is.” Satomi says. “It doesn’t mean anything, right?”
There’s a moment where nothing happens. Then:
“Nope.” Kyouji pops the plosive on the ‘p’, and closes the gap.
In his last year of elementary school, his class had made a list of things they’d like to accomplish once they entered middle school. Satomi can’t recall the full thing, something dumb like pass level four of the kanji kentei, keep perfect attendance— undeniably absent had been ‘kissing a yakuza’, but maybe he should have jotted it down as a way of swinging for the fences, or something.
It’s not a movie kiss, or anything extraordinary; it is his first kiss, little more than a pair of lips resting on top of his. It’s warmer than he thought. It smells like his father’s shaving cream.
Before there’s more time to expunge that thought from his mind, Satomi’s stomach growls. Loudly. And he winces. And Kyouji pulls back. And it’s over.
Satomi can predict the laugh before it comes, so there’s this resulting overlap of the Kyouji in his head and then Kyouji in front of him, and it confirms to him that he really shouldn’t be making any more decisions.
“Oh, yeah,” Kyouji hums. “We didn’t exactly have dinner last night, did we? Can’t send you home on an empty stomach.”
No more decisions. Yeah. There’s nothing else to do but nod and go along.
The breakfast spot of choice turns out to be the family restaurant across the street from the hotel, seeing as Kyouji is out a car and they’re both tired, albeit in very different ways. Satomi orders fruit souffle pancakes while Kyouji is dead set on katsudon regardless of the look Satomi gives him as he orders.
“What, it’s good for a hangover!” Kyouji tells him as he’s stuffing the huge laminate menus back into the holder at the end of the table. “You’ll see when you’re older, Satomi-kun.”
Satomi crinkles his nose and sips his tap water. Will Kyouji even still be hanging around him once Satomi is old enough to drink? It’s definitely better that he isn’t. But after tonight, he isn’t sure he can predict one way or the other. He’ll definitely have to see him less once he enters high school, but as he glances at Kyouji across from him, he doesn’t think he minds him hanging around all that much. The food’s always free.
What he answers instead is, “I don’t ever plan on getting as drunk as you were last night.”
“Yeah,” sighs Kyouji over the rim of his espresso cup. “You shouldn’t. It makes you stupid.”
The pancakes, when they arrive, are way too sweet. Fortunately, he’s hungry enough that he doesn’t mind. Satomi swirls half of a strawberry through the whipped cream before he takes a bite, letting the sugar numb his tongue and then his throat, which hasn’t really stopped stinging all this time. He sniffs.
Another forkful is halfway to his mouth when he looks up to find Kyouji’s eyes on him. Upturned, smiling, indulgent. Satomi blinks, lips parted. A glob of cream drips onto the plate.