Archive of Our Own

Kentarou looks down at Yahaba's outstretched hand. "And why should I listen to you?" he asks.

He waits until after the washing up is done, right when Kentarou is stretching to put the last dish away. There's still a bit of wet clinging to the arms he wraps around Kentarou's waist, enough that usually Kentarou would jump and swear or jump and laugh. Today, he just flinches back from the cold, but nothing else.

"Want to talk about it?" Shigeru asks, nose buried in Kentarou hair. His lips brush the back of Kentarou's neck.

It takes a while for Kentarou to answer "No," he says. His voice is quiet. Tired. "Not right now."

"Okay," Shigeru says. His lips press again to Kentarou's neck before he goes to move away.

"Wait," Kentarou says, hands grasping at Shigeru's arms. "Can we... can we just stay like this, for a minute?"

He can feel Shigeru blinking, his eyelashes tickling against his ear. "Of course," Shigeru says, and Kentarou lets himself relax against his arms.

The inside of Kentarou's mouth feels like vomit, though he's sure he hasn't done that yet. Pretty sure. Things might have gone a little hazy a few drinks back. It hasn't hit the hollow spot, though, the one that's slipped in behind his eyes and down his throat, to his guts through his mouth, so he has to keep drinking.

"You look like shit," says Yahaba, because apparently Yahaba is here, squinting at Kentarou like he's deciding how to make fun of him first.

"I feel like shit," Kentarou says, but his tongue's the wrong shape for it, so it comes out slurred. "Fuck off," comes out a little better, but seems limited in effectiveness.

"You know, I never pegged you as the type to go overboard with drinking," Yahaba says. "Where’s—“

“Don't.” Kentarou's palm lashes out, not quite coordinated enough to land on Yahaba's mouth completely, but getting close enough that he can feel Yahaba go still, then relax in the slow way of someone forcing their muscles into it.

"How much have you had?" he asks.

Kentarou honestly tries to remember.

"Right then," Yahaba says. "You need to sleep, not drink more. I'll drive you."

"Can't go back there," Kentarou says, addressing the statement more to his empty glass than Yahaba's carefully blank of sympathy face.

"Fine," Yahaba says, tugging the glass away. "I've got a perfectly serviceable couch at mine. Come on."

"Where the hell is the referee even looking, does he even have eyes? Are we hiring eyeless referees, now? That was in, you idiot, it was in!"

The referee in question turns and glares. Shigeru just makes a face back before leaning back with a snort, still muttering under his breath.

"You're too loud, asshole," Kentarou grunts around a mouthful of chips. "You'll get us kicked out again."

"Bah! Let 'em try." Shigeru's foot is tapping out an anxious pattern on his footrests as he watches the game below. He’s gotten scrawny with age where Kentarou has gone round, his skin wrapped too delicately tight around his joints, never more obvious than in the gnarl of his shaking hands.

Kentarou is still pretty sure he could take the ref in a fight.

“Shut up and watch the game,” Kentarou says, aiming an elbow across the armrests of the chair to clip lightly against Shigeru’s shoulder. “Sayuri’s gonna get subbed in soon, you don’t want to miss that.”

“I’m not gonna miss it,” Shigeru says, smacking at Kentarou’s elbow. “Though it’s the damn coach’s fault if I do, should’ve put her in ages ago. Her serve’d be more than a match for this little turdwipes.”

“Papa, that’s unsportsmanlike,” says Haruna from behind her camera. Her attention has remained fixed on the game no matter how loud either of them start to yell, flag at the ready in her other hand. “You’re supposed to be setting a good example for the kids.”

“I’m a great example,” says Shigeru, puffing up his chest. “I’m just calling it how I see it, and those little snots couldn’t make a receive on Sayuri’s serve if their grades depended on it.”

“They’re middle-schoolers,” Kentaoru says, just to be annoying.

“Shut up and stop hogging the chips,” Shigeru says.

Kentarou doesn’t really get together with his old high school classmates. He’s never been very social, for one, and he has too much shit to do, for another. He has two jobs, one in construction and one in a cubicle for some office supplies company doing sales, and between the two he comes home most nights too exhausted to do more than watch some mindless television show and let himself drift off. On weekends he goes over to help his dad around the house, hear him complain about whatever the hell he’s done wrong this week, goes out to dinner with his sister or babysits so she and her husband can have the rare date night. It’s not exactly exciting, but Kentarou’s fine with that, and he ignores friend requests and invitations to reconnect whenever they come in, figuring he’s been looped in more out of politeness sake than anything else.

Watari is the plumber who contracts with Kentarou’s apartment complex, though, so he does run into him sometimes. They’ve even had lunch a couple times, a sort of sorry you have to clean my hair out of the pipes have some sushi and sake on me kind of deal, and it’s okay enough. Watari always has stories about his apparent hordes of children and Kentarou can chime in with something about his nephew. He gets sporadic updates on whatever news Watari has heard from the rest of the team, so-and-so’s marriage or whoever’s promotion, and it’s all pretty boring.

“Oh, you remember Yahaba, right?” Watari says once, hands deep in the piping below Kentarou’s kitchen sink.

“Yeah,” says Kentarou, because it’d be pretty hard to forget him, even if he might like to, sometimes. “I remember him.”

“He’s moving back to Miyagi, it looks like,” Watari says, tinkering with some tool. “His mom’s sick, or something? He’s on a lookout for a job.”

“What does he do, again?” Kentarou asks.

“Computer stuff, I think web design mainly,” Watari says. “He seems to be doing pretty well with it.”

“Oh,” Kentarou says. he thinks about Yahaba, waiting for his old anger to come back, but it doesn’t. He just feels sort of blank. “Good for him, I guess,” he says, and he might actually mean it.

“Aren’t winners supposed to have a little grace?” Shigeru grumbles, glaring down at the go board between them. “Is that too much to ask for?”

“Screw that, I fucking won and you fucking lost,” Kentarou says, leaning in over the board to grin obnoxiously into Shigeru’s face. “Say it, say I won.”

“Obviously you won,” Shigeru says, crossing his arm as his face settles into a pout. “I’m not disputing that, you dickhead.”

“That’s Winner Dickhead to you,” Kentarou says with a laugh. “And I’d rather be a dickhead than the guy who has to do all the dickhead’s laundry for the week.”

“I’m gonna turn all your clothes fucking pink,” Shigeru says, knocking the pieces loose. “Don’t test me, I’ll do it.”

“You’d be turning your own pink, too,” Kentarou points out.

Shigeru just sticks his nose in the air. “Well, I look amazing in pink.”

The door clicks shut with a soft snick. Kentarou sags back against the wood of it, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. He feels exhausted. Something cool brushes against his arm and he pulls his hands away to see Shigeru waiting for him, holding out a glass of water.

“Didn’t go well?” he asks.

“They can’t take her,” he says after a long swallow. His throat hasn’t stopped feeling raw since they got the news of the crash. “Well, can’t or won’t, I dunno, but they were awful on the phone, blaming our side of the family for everything, fuck, I would’ve lost it on them if it weren’t for…”

“Yeah,” Shigeru says. He closes his hand around Kentarou’s arm, leaning in to make a solid wall of warmth along his side. “Your sister?”

“She’ll probably end up doing it,” Kentarou says and sighs. “Fuck, I don’t know, though, she’s so messed up from losing all three of them at once, I don’t really think she’s in the right headspace for looking after a baby. Her eyes are just… she needs time.”

There’s silence for a moment, just the two of them standing together. Kentarou can match his breathing to Shigeru’s, fall into that calmer rhythm like a fish out at sea finding a warm current.

“We could take her.” Shigeru’s voice is very quiet.

Kentarou can’t help but look up at that. “I thought you didn’t like kids,” he says, the first obvious thought coming to his lips without thought.

Shigeru gives a little half-shrug. “I don’t mind them,” he says. “And this is… they’re your family. I cared for them all, too. And I don’t want Haruna to grow up alone.”

“Oh,” says Kentarou. “Oh.”

The only warning he gets is a few seconds where there’s the spark of recognition for the pale head bent over the coffee pot before Yahaba looks up at the noise of someone entering the break room and spots him.

At least Kentarou gets to experience seeing the shock hit Yahaba as hard as it hit him.

“Kyoutani,” he says, a weird inflection clogging his voice up. His eyes sweep up and down over Kentarou, measuring or just still hoping there’s a chance he was wrong, impossible to tell. “You… what are you doing here?”

“I work here,” Kentarou says. “I have for years.”

Yahaba just blinks at that information, eyes still overly round with surprise. He looks, well, older, which shouldn’t be a surprise but still somehow is, as if he should have stayed eighteen and round-cheeked forever instead of settling into the more solid lines of adulthood. He’s wearing a sweater, something green and purple and ghastly in the way most supposedly stylish clothes always seem to Kentarou, and he’s wearing it even though it’s not cold. It does look good on him, though.

“I’m remaking your website,” Yahaba says in the flat tones of someone not entirely paying attention to their specific words. “Updating it to fit the needs of the modern consumer.”

“Okay,” Kentarou says, because it is okay, really. They probably do need a website update, and apparently Yahaba is the kind of person to do that sort of thing. He just didn’t know he’d be here.

“I moved back to Miyagi,” Yahaba says, flushing a little.

“Right,” Kentarou says.

“I moved out of Miyagi,” Yahaba says. “Beforehand, I mean. I moved out and now I moved back.”

“Yeah,” Kentarou says. “That makes sense.”

“Do you want some coffee?” Yahaba asks, a bit desperate sounding.

“No,” Kentarou says. He had come in for coffee, but he feels wide awake now. “I’ll just… I’ll just leave you to it, then.”

“Right,” Yahaba says faintly. “See… see you around, I guess.”

“See you,” Kentarou says and flees.

Shigeru cries easily. It’s something Kentarou finds kind of sweet about him, even when they get strange looks at the movies or they’ve run out of tissues again at a ballet recital. He’d never tell Shigeru this, of course, because it’s far more amusing to make fun of him.

The idea of Shigeru getting through a wedding without bawling, therefore, is simply unthinkable.

“She’s not even our daughter,” Kentarou tells him when Shigeru is messily wiping his face in the bathroom. He’s a notoriously ugly crier, too, so there’s no way he get rid of the splotches of pink all over his face, though at least he can tackle the snot a little. “She’s our daughter’s friend. Not even her best friend. You’re never going to manage it through Haruna’s wedding if you can’t even get through this one.”

“Shut up,” Shigeru says, blowing his nose into a paper towel. He’s only making the irritation around his nostrils more obvious. It’s incredibly cute. “It’s just… it’s touching, okay? Two people finding love, with all the billions of people in the world, with all the problems that can come up, finding someone they love and support and want to be with for the rest of their lives…”

“It’s can’t be that impressive if we managed it,” Kentarou points out.

“Fuck off,” Shigeru says and laughs, sounding very wet and very pleased.

It’s probably not fair, Kentarou thinks, that after all this time Shigeru just has to move his hips a certain way and flash that one particular smile, the one he only wears when he’s forgotten about actually trying to be sexy, and Kentarou feels like he’s a fucking teenager again. It’s all he can do to make a fist of the grip he has in Shigeru’s hair and drag him down into a kiss, uncoordinated and messy. He tastes good, like he always tastes good, the heat of his mouth a promise and the twist of his tongue a dare.

“Fuck,” Kentarou says and kisses Shigeru’s neck. Shigeru takes the opportunity to do the thing with his hips again. “Fuck.”

“Well, if you insist,” Shigeru says.

Kentarou doesn’t recognize the room he wakes up in. It’s smaller than the bedroom he’s used to, the bed built for one instead of two, and the colors look all wrong even through the haze of his hangover.

There’s a large glass of water and some pain-relievers on the nightstand, both of which Kentarou is happy to see even as his memories from last night assert themselves.

“I thought I was taking the couch,” he says when he makes his way out to the living and kitchen area of the apartment.

Yahaba looks up from where he’s curled up in a nest of blankets, his computer balanced on his knees. “I thought it’d be wise to put you closer to the bathroom, just in case,” he says, voice kindly kept quiet.

Kentarou decides not to call out that obvious lie, but it leaves him with little else to say, and if he’s not speaking, he’s unfortunately thinking. A pounding headache, it turns out, does nothing to help with the shock of pain that still lances through him whenever he remembers too clearly. “Fuck,” he says to himself.

Yahaba eyes him warily. “I have a lot of documentaries,” he says. “Most of them are about bugs, which I know people find creepy, but they’re… you can start one while I make breakfast.”

Kentarou considers whether it’s worth it to draw the line that no matter what, he’s not so pathetic over his break-up that he has Yahaba taking care of him. Then he decides that horse is well out of the barn, and this way he gets breakfast. “Okay,” he says.

“I’m not a very good cook,” Yahaba warns him, shifting to get up.

“I’ve probably made and eaten worse,” Kentarou tells him, and takes the computer.

“I owe you an apology,” Yahaba says. It’s all very dramatic, with him silhouetted by the setting sun and the streets winding empty behind him. “For everything that happened when we were in school.”

“Alright,” says Kentarou around his cigarette. “That was ages ago, though.”

“Well, I should have apologized earlier,” Yahaba says, cheeks going pink. “It wasn’t right that I… I knew you wanted more, and I…”

“It’s fine,” Kentarou says, waving a hand. Because it is fine, somehow, the steady trickle of time having worried down the rock of resentment he’d carried in his chest for years when he wasn’t paying attention. “Really. I got over it.”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Yahaba says.

Kentarou shrugs. “Sure,” he says. He expects Yahaba to go back inside, since as far as he knows Yahaba doesn’t smoke, but instead Yahaba just stands there, biting his lip. “Was there something else?”

“The company offered me a job,” Yahaba says. “A full-time position, managing IT.”

“You going to take it?” Kentarou asks.

“I don’t know,” Yahaba says, and looks at Kentarou very levelly. “What do you think?”

Kentarou thinks about how it’s been, having Yahaba around. It’s not like their paths cross all the time, but it’s also not like they don’t, either. He’s seen Yahaba at the bar most of their company goes to after the end of the day a few times, run into him at the corner store twice. He’d thought that’d go away, but he doesn’t think he’d be too upset if it didn’t. “It’d be nice not having the email crap out so frequently,” Kentarou says finally.

Yahaba’s shoulders relax and he smiles. “Okay,” he says. “Good to know.”

“Is she supposed to be this small?” Kentarou asks with rising horror, looking down at the utterly tiny face attached to the bundle in his arms. “None of the others were this small.”

“She’s fine,” Shigeru says, who hasn’t stopped beaming at everything since they’d gotten the call from Haruna earlier. “She’s perfect,” he assures Haruna, who is still lying in the hospital bed, one hand in Shigeru’s and leaning heavily against her pillows.

“She’s tiny,” Kentarou says, hunching his shoulders over her protectively. “She’s too tiny, she could get hurt too easily. She doesn’t even have a name.”

“We were thinking Sayuri,” Haruna says. She looks exhausted but happy, eyes following her daughter around the room.

“I like that,” Shigeru says.

“She’s tiny,” Kentarou says again, staring at the impossibly small face in his arms.

It’s Kentarou that kisses Shigeru, the second time they get together. They’re on Shigeru’s couch, watching a documentary on moths that Kentarou had picked out knowing Shigeru would love it, and Shigeru is just putting his beer down, a bit of condensation clinging to his lips, and Kentarou decides, what the hell. First he’d said he was waiting to be sure Shigeru liked him in the same way, then he’d pretended he just was waiting for the perfect moment, and finally he admitted that he needed to gather his nerve, but in this moment, with dinner plates on the table and Shigeru’s bony knees digging into Kentarou’s thigh, it seems like it might not be as terrifying as it first appears.

That promptly goes away the second their lips touch, of course, but by that time it’s far too late, and even as Kentarou draws back, face heated, he knows there’s no way he can take it back.

Then he sees Shigeru’s face and remembers he doesn’t have to.

There’s a annoying stab of pain along Kentarou’s shoulder, an out of pattern jabbing sensation that pulls him out of his dreams. He comes to with a snort and a flail. “Wha—”

“Kentarou, wake up.” Shigeru’s idea of a whisper is not far below a shout these days, so Kentarou’s glad he decided to start by poking him. “Guess what day it is?”

“It’s not a day,” Kentarou grumbles into his pillow. “It’s night.”

“It’s your birthday!” Shigeru continues, cackling gleefully as he wheels over to the doorway and flicks the lights on. “Congratulations on turning one hundred years old, you moldy old shithead!”

“Kill me,” Kentarou says, trying to get the pillow out from under him so he can press it over his head.

“C’mon, I brought pudding,” Shigeru says. “A lot of pudding. I took all the pudding from the convenience store, actually, so nobody else could have any. It’s all for us. We can watch the sunrise and eat pudding, the birthday of dreams.”

“You’re fucking crazy.” Kentarou says. “What flavor of pudding?”

“All the flavors of pudding,” Shigeru says, eyes sparkling. “Every single one. But you have to get up.”

“Ugh, fine,” Kentarou says. “But only for the pudding. Asshole.”

Yahaba stares back at him, gaze unflinching. “Because we can be great, together,” he says.

Kentarou takes his hand.