Chapter Text
Saturday 13 July: White Eden Wedding Beef – Cherry Blossom v ADAM!
Now that Kaoru’s an adult – even if he sometimes feels like it’s only on the outside – there’s something both exquisitely wonderful and exquisitely painful about shucking off his real identity and becoming Cherry Blossom again. Tonight, with Adam racing next him on the track, his heart beating so hard he’s worried Carla will try to make him slow down for the good of his health, the mixed pain/pleasure is a thousand times worse.
Back when he was a teenager, of course, Cherry was his real identity. Kaoru was the boring, uptight, stick-in-the-mud he was tired of being, who stressed out about exam results, and living up to expectations, and making his mother proud of him. Cherry was freedom and rebellion and danger, and all it had taken was a few piercings and a skateboard.
Right now, in the heat of long-delayed battle, he doesn’t know which of them is most real. Both. Neither. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is proving himself to Adam, even though he’s finding it strangely hard to pin down what, exactly, it is he has to prove. That he’s a better skater than Adam? A better man? That he’s done fine without him?
He has done fine without him. He is the better man. But there’s enough of the teenage rebel still inside Kaoru that he’s determined to win and finally put the ‘better skater’ issue to rest. To – yes – fucking prove it, and in doing so, to prove to the cold, bitter adult at his side that he was worth more than being casually abandoned. He used to look up to Adam so much that the memory of it is embarrassing. His raw talent, his darkness, his sheer charisma. It was like being under a spell. Is it any wonder that back then, age eighteen, his hormones boiling, Adam’s cold, bored rejection of their friendship had felt like being stabbed?
After he’s won, god knows what he wants then. To laugh in Adam’s face. To be the worst kind of gloating winner. And – and to shake Adam until his teeth chatter, and make him be his friend again. Or not. Whatever. Seven years Kaoru’s been carrying round this irritating grudge, gnawing at his insides, and he just wants to be rid of it.
Kaoru pulls ahead, or Adam draws back. Kaoru doesn’t know, doesn’t care, electrified by the sensation of getting what he’s wanted for so long. He’s going to win. Adam’s not going to fight dirty, not today. See, Kojiro, he thinks smugly, there’s nothing to worry about. The real Adam’s still in there, deep down. He won’t let himself hurt me, and I’m going to win, and—
Adam’s suddenly in front of him, dancing, and all Kaoru can hear is the wind roaring in his ears, his breath coming thick and painful, as his brain tries to calculate possibilities and concludes: Shit.
“You’re not going to take me down,” Kaoru forces out, but it sounds weak, insubstantial, as if the words are trapped in his head. You won’t . . . will you?
It’s impossible, but one minute Adam is accelerating into the distance, and the next—
“You’re too optimistic,” Adam replies, with a flat boredom that is somehow more cutting than intentional spite. Kaoru feels the oncoming impact with sharp inevitability. Has felt it coming, if he’s honest with himself, for seven long years. Adam raises his board – how is this happening – and then Kaoru is flying.
What I’ve wanted for so long, he thinks vaguely as the world slows down and congeals into coloured, flashing lights and slow-motion nausea. What he wants has nothing to do with Adam. This race – this fight – is nothing more than an echo of the past. Why is he so stupid?
His eyes are starting to slide shut, despite his best efforts. He hasn’t hit the ground yet, and he’s still conscious enough to fear it.
Kojiro, I . . .
The world pinholes down to nothing before he can finish the thought.
∞
Sometimes, during slow shifts at the restaurant, Kojiro likes to ponder on the important stuff. Things like: which is the superior dessert, tiramisu or gelato? Should it be a crime punishable by law to put cream and garlic in carbonara, in defiance of Italian tradition? And on the – happily rare – occasions when he’s feeling like a loser, whether if Adam hadn’t turned into a vicious arsehole for no apparent reason and fucked off to America, Kaoru would have turned to Adam for help with his heats, rather than to him.
It certainly would have made some stuff a hell of a lot more straightforward.
Fucking Kaoru a couple of times a year hasn’t noticeably changed their friendship, at least. Kaoru’s the same mouthy, manipulative tosser he always is, both in the bedroom and out of it. Their infrequent sessions are athletic, energetic and . . . Can good sex be unsexy? Kojiro can never decide whether he’s more amused or frustrated by it, but right from the start, Kaoru’s made it extremely clear that his main goal in the bedroom – aside from the obvious – is to reinforce that they’re absolutely, one hundred percent friends. Which – Kojiro gets it! He absolutely gets it. They are friends, and that’s the deal. He helps Kaoru through the worst of his heats, and in return, he gets off. Multiple times. That’s all he signed up for; that’s all he should want from their arrangement.
So it makes him uncomfortable just how prominent a role Kaoru plays in all his wank fantasies. Doing things that are . . . not the kind of stuff they do together.
Kojiro tries to live his life looking forward. It’s not like he would ever have said no to Kaoru, back when they had their first – and last – discussion about their ongoing arrangement. He probably never will say no to anything Kaoru asks for, except stupid, inconsequential shit when he wants to piss his best friend off. But if Kaoru had chosen Adam . . .
Well. Having that particular door closed firmly in his face, right from the start, would certainly have left no room for thinking . . . the kind of stuff he sometimes thinks when he’s being a moron. Like: does fantasising about Kaoru give him a bigger thrill than any beef at Crazy Rock ever could – and if so, what the actual fuck is wrong with him?
The answer to all his questions, he always decides, is . . . gelato is more versatile, although tiramisu has a noble place on the Italian dessert menu. And as for cream and garlic in the carbonara? It’s probably fine, on balance, given that he’s tried out more than a dozen variations on Kaoru, some of dubious authenticity, and been presented with an empty plate each time.
Kaoru likes carbonara. And Kojiro likes . . .
He likes Kaoru in one fucking piece, he thinks as Shadow drives too fast, veering round cars like a maniac and leaning on the horn. Kojiro wants to tell him to slow the hell down, each jolt of the car making Kaoru groan, but he’s too busy thinking terrible thoughts about spinal cords and permanent injury and why the fucking fuck didn’t we call an ambulance to be able to form actual words.
Kaoru is drifting in and out of consciousness, lying like a wet rag across the backseat with his bony head digging into Kojiro’s thighs. There’s a cut on his head, but Kojiro has no idea how bad it is; there’s too much blood, matting his hair and turning Kojiro’s trousers wet and sticky. He knows that even small head wounds bleed badly. Shit, he’s seen a few in his time; injury is an unavoidable part of skating. But there’s knowing it, and then there’s being covered in his best friend’s blood.
Kaoru must have been travelling at a hundred kilometres an hour, and he fell on his head. Except he didn’t fall, did he? He was hit.
Kojiro’s aim has always been to live his life at full power, but he can’t remember the last time he felt genuinely angry over anything. Now he feels so wound up, so nauseous with rage, that he can barely see. He wants to beat Adam to a fucking pulp. He would have tried, too, if Shadow hadn’t stopped him. Right now, Kojiro’s not sure whether to feel grateful or even angrier about that.
“How’s he doing?” Shadow yells, straining to be audible above the blasting of his horn.
Kojiro looks down. The inside of the car is dark, but he can still see the ragged blotches on Kaoru’s cheek, his neck, where his skin met the ground and came off the loser. Is he asleep now, or unconscious? And what’s the fucking difference where head injuries are concerned? He thinks spinal cord again and clenches his teeth so tightly together that his jaw hurts. “He’s still alive,” he grits out, and Shadow puts his foot on the accelerator in response.
The rest of the journey is a blur. Kojiro has no idea how long it lasts; he’s caught in a black, unpleasant funk that he only emerges from when Shadow screeches to a halt outside the emergency hospital’s entrance. Before Kojiro can stress too much about how he’s going to extract both himself and Kaoru from the smallest car in the whole of Okinawa without fucking Kaoru up any further, there’s a team of medics and a stretcher bearing down on him. Kaoru looks even more of a mess stretched out on the white gurney, his hair grimy and tangled, and the way the paramedics clap a neck brace on him in under ten seconds brings all Kojiro’s fears rising back to the surface.
“What’s his name?” he realises a doctor is asking. At least, he presumes she’s a doctor; if she introduced herself, he wasn’t listening. She has a stethoscope round her neck and a firm, no-nonsense expression that Kojiro would appreciate if he was in the mood for appreciating anything right now.
“Cherry Bl—” Shadow starts, with a nervous look at Kaoru, who can be very sharp when people use the wrong name in the wrong place, Kojiro gives Shadow that.
But: “Kaoru. Sakurayashiki Kaoru,” he interrupts, because fuck off. He’s not compromising Kaoru’s care just because Mr Uptight has a complex about people joining the dots. He’s going to be spitting feathers about a whole host of medics seeing him in his skateboarding gear when he wakes up, but bring it. Kojiro has never looked forward to an argument more.
“It was a skateboarding accident,” Kojiro tells the doctor, to compound his sins. “He fell backwards at a high speed and hit his head.”
If the doctor’s judging them right now, she’s hiding it well. “How long has he been unconscious?” she asks as the medics raise the sides of the gurney and begin to wheel Kaoru towards the entrance.
It feels like it’s been a million years. Kojiro genuinely has no clue. “He’s blinked a couple of times,” he says, “but . . .”
“Five minutes?” Shadow interjects nervously, his forehead pulling into a frown. “Ten?”
Shit. That is a million years, Kojiro thinks. “Is he going to be OK?” he demands, unable to concentrate on anything other than the medics buzzing round Kaoru. Even as they’re pushing him towards the automatic doors, they’re shining lights in his eyes, and muttering about pupil size and capillary glucose levels and sticking needles in him.
“He’s in safe hands,” the doctor says firmly, which is an answer, but not to the question Kojiro asked. The entrance is thick with polite notices, telling him to Sanitise your hands! and All visitors must wear badges and Alphas must declare their status to reception without fail. “If you’ll just wait in reception,” the doctor adds. “Someone will—”
Kojiro doesn’t blank her, exactly, because he has manners, but somehow he’s bypassed reception anyway, following Kaoru’s progress down a hospital corridor so generic it’s cliché. If Kaoru’s going this way, then he is too. He doesn’t think he’s ready to have the four-eyed disaster out of his sight for at least a hundred years. It might make going for a piss a bit of a challenge in future, but fuck it. They’ll work something out.
They end up in a bay that’s too small for all the medical staff, and Kojiro feels both helpless and in the way, equally unable to step outside and unable to leave. So he just stands there as Kaoru is hooked up to some kind of drip and the doctor barks orders – bloods, CXR, EGC, urgent CT. He half wishes he watched more medical dramas and the words meant something, but then again.
When there’s a brief pause in the stream of medical jargon, the doctor turns back to him with a determined expression. “Mr—?”
“Nanjo,” Kojiro says.
“What would be most helpful to us, Mr Nanjo, is if you give me a full report of the accident, and then provide Mr Sakurayashiki’s personal and insurance details to reception.”
“Right,” Kojiro says blankly, allowing himself to be nudged out of the cubicle. He feels a brief, uncharacteristic urge to shoulder-barge her out of the way so he can get back to Kaoru’s side. For fuck’s sake. He scrubs at his eyes – he feels tired as balls – and decides to cooperate because he’s clearly gone insane. The cubicle’s curtain is already drawn firmly behind him now, in any case. And it’s not like he can’t see Kaoru, in a way: every time he closes his eyes all he can picture is him stretched out like a corpse on the gurney. “Fine.”
He talks to the doctor in a cramped side room that smells of disinfectant, sitting on a plastic chair that’s much too small. He’s not sure if he makes much sense, unable to focus, his mouth on autopilot. He thinks he answers her questions. He thinks he tells her much too much about S. Fuck it. Who cares? At some point he washes his hands, the water turning pink. There’s not much he can do about the bloodstains on his trousers.
Some time passes, and then he’s talking to an efficient, irritating hospital official with a form to fill out that’s longer than the Tale of Genji. Before she even begins the sections on Kaoru, it seems he has to submit to a personal interrogation. No, he’s not Kaoru’s alpha. He’s a beta. Yes, really. No, he’s not Kaoru’s husband. No, he’s not a blood relation. No, he’s not next of kin. He’s Kaoru’s friend. Best friend. He can see her looking for a tick box for ‘best friend’ and coming up empty handed. He thinks adding ‘fuck buddy’ to the mix will not help her define his official relationship to the patient, so he bites his tongue. It’s not like that’s accurate anyway, and he just wants to get this over with; he’d be better off wearing holes in the corridor floor outside wherever it is they’ve tucked Kaoru right now, waiting for him to wake up properly so he can shout at him.
Kaoru was weird and pissy when Kojiro broke his leg trying to copy the stunt Kaoru had just demonstrated back when they were, what? Fourteen? Fifteen? As if Kojiro had meant to do it! He’d never understood Kaoru’s reaction. But now, feeling like there’s a boulder on his chest squashing the air out of his lungs, Kojiro thinks he gets the idea. It sucks to be hurt, but turns out it sucks so much worse to be the one who gets to do the worrying.
Shadow comes back – when did he even leave? – with the few bits Kaoru had shoved in the glove compartment for safe-keeping before the race. Kojiro had forgotten the three of them had travelled there together, him crammed uncomfortably in the back behind Kaoru, with the tosser sliding his seat back an extra notch at every set of traffic lights in an entirely transparent, and entirely successful, attempt to piss him off. Shadow has retrieved Kaoru’s phone. A small bag of miscellaneous wires, batteries and random crap that’s almost certainly Carla-related. His glasses and a bottle of contact lens solution. His wallet – with, Kojiro is pleased to see as he rifles through the contents, his health insurance and My Number cards. He tries not to see the carefully hidden strip of faded purikura photos of the two of them as teenagers, arms around each other and pulling ridiculous faces; Kaoru had sworn blind he’d thrown every single one of those away.
Yes, Kaoru will want a private room, he tells the official. No, he doesn’t have any allergies; yes, he’s unmarried; yes, he’s on heat suppressants (What sort? How the f— How is he meant to know that?); yes, he lives alone; no, Kojiro doesn’t have the contact telephone numbers of his immediate family – his parents are both dead, and he’s an only child; yes, Kojiro wants to punch something.
“Is he done with whatever scan he was having?” he demands instead. “I can wait in his room if not. I want to stay here with him overnight.”
“Visiting hours tomorrow are ten to twelve, then three to eight,” the official says with an apologetic half-bow, pushing back Kaoru’s possessions when Kojiro attempts to hand them over.
“But—” Kojiro says.
“Ten to twelve, then three to eight,” the official repeats. And adds, when Kojiro doesn’t pick up Kaoru’s stuff, “Hospital policy forbids staff members from taking responsibility for personal items of value. I am so sorry. You can deliver them to the patient tomorrow during visiting hours.” She pauses. “That’s ten to twelve, then three to eight,” she says, calm and unflappable and oh so fucking irritating.
If Kojiro had any fight left, he’s mislaid it somewhere. “But—” he says again, giving it his best shot.
“Are you next of kin?” the official asks, even though they’ve covered that issue in about fifty different unsatisfactory ways.
“No,” Kojiro says, because it’s definitely too late to say yes. Who even is Kaoru’s official next of kin? He can vaguely recall meeting other distant members of his family at Kaoru’s mum’s funeral, must be five years ago now, but he can’t remember any of them visiting Okinawa since. He feels a bone-deep weariness. Just because his life is an open book to Kaoru, pretty much, it doesn’t automatically make the reverse true. It’s not like they live in each other’s pockets.
“Then I’m afraid—” the official starts.
“I’ll call in an hour for an update,” he interrupts firmly.
“I must apologise, Mr Nanjo,” she says, “for the fact we can only provide confidential information about patients to—”
“Next of kin,” Kojiro supplies gloomily.
“Thank you so much for understanding,” the official says, with another brief, polite half-bow that speaks more of ingrained customer service training than genuine sympathy, then turns away and trots off with her completed form. He presumes she’s heading towards Kaoru’s doctor – and therefore towards Kaoru.
Kojiro watches her back with a wistful urge to follow her, but it’s hard to maintain a low profile when you’re as tall and buff as he is, even on a good day. And what would he do when he found Kaoru’s room? Hide under the bed? It’s a pain in the rear end, but facts are facts: all he’d achieve would be a speedy introduction to a hospital security guard or three. So he lets Shadow half-drag him outside instead, only protesting when Shadow opens the passenger-side door and attempts to shove him in. He can’t wait inside the hospital, but that doesn’t mean he can’t loiter outside it, right? If he changes his mind, it’s only a short walk home. The fresh air will do him good.
But: “Sulking in the car park is not worthy of an S founder!” Shadow roars encouragingly, still shoving – though he pauses to look round sheepishly, to check no one else has overheard. He’s still wearing his skating face paint, it occurs to Kojiro for the first time, though it’s rubbing off. He looks like a clown that’s melted.
“It’s skateboarding, everyone bleeds,” Shadow adds as Kojiro gives in and squeezes into the front passenger seat. The faux heartiness doesn’t suit him, even though he’s not wrong. “Go home, shower, sleep. Do you want more of the hospital’s fine selection of nurses to see you looking like that?”
Fuck the nurses – the thought of the sour expression Kaoru would pull if he turned up covered in dried blood and stinking of good, honest fear-sweat almost makes Kojiro want to do it, just to be a dick, but—
The thought that Kaoru might not be awake slithers into his guts and rests there for a moment, foul and stinking, before Kojiro gives himself a mental shake. No, Kaoru will be awake when he visits tomorrow. Awake, and intact, and insufferable, in the way that only Kaoru can be. Because . . .
Because Kojiro can’t do without him.
He knew that in the abstract, of course, but—
“He’ll be all right,” Shadow says quietly, over the steady purr of the engine, and Kojiro blinks, startled.
They’re nearly at his shoebox-sized apartment already, the streets well-lit and dotted with people, despite the late hour. The area is too expensive for him, really. If he had any sense he’d move further out, away from the beach and the shops. But the rich tourists and American military families appreciate Italian food more than the locals, so relocating the tiny restaurant somewhere cheaper is out of the question, and he likes being walking distance from Sia la Luce.
Not that a man with his outgoings could afford a much bigger place anywhere in Okinawa, to be fair. And why would he want to move the restaurant further away from his top customer – Sakurayashiki Kaoru? Kaoru’s the sort of greedy fucker who’d stab you to death with a spoon if you tried to sneak his last profiterole, and he brings his clients to the restaurant on a regular basis. Losing his custom would make profits drop by at least 15 percent.
Losing him . . .
“Kojiro,” Hiromi says firmly as he pulls up outside Kojiro’s apartment building. He’s no longer Shadow at all, just a man who badly needs to wash his face. “He’ll be all right.”
Repeating it doesn’t make it true, but. “Yeah,” Kojiro says. And adds, underneath his breath, “He’d fucking better be.”