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His shoe was pinching like a penny.
Majima made his way down the street, had been making his way for a while now; earlier he had come out of the comfort of a cab and handed over something: a ten-thousand note perhaps, or the last of his dignity. They left him on the street corner he had specified, and if it wasn't his unadulterated faith in the Japanese cab system he might have suspected he was in the wrong place. Certainly he recognized nothing here. He stopped recognizing things when he first decided to do this: come home, and to steel himself against the inevitable confrontation, had first approached a konbini to put seven hurried drinks down a narrowing throat.
He hobbled. Majima's shoes were scraping his ankles sore where there should be socks. The rain, a deluge that gladdened to its miserable duty, soaked through him; he didn't have the waterproofing of his usual jacket, having dressed in the dark. He'd woke up at four a.m and thought: I want to be somewhere else, and the first thing he had grabbed had been a black t-shirt not his and wearing it he'd stumbled out into the dark, into a cab he rode just so he could be warm, and out again to this familiar street, where he'd on-off lived for months between years.
The shops were all about christmas, all about joy. Even at four-something in the a.m they were all so happy, so full of chutzpah, uncritically offering him the threaded neon and the 60, 70, 50 percent sales, the christmas cakes and the vanilla candles and the cinnamon bon-bon buns about to be baked, crusted with sugar like snow. The windows were all frosted with the cold, so that in the cold-cut glass he couldn't see his own reflection, even the product on display, so he had to imagine what he might look like: if he was keen to. He rather didn't want to know. A slight mess, probably.
His feet found the right stairway before he did, climbed it halfway to the landing before he realized this was the right one. Was it the right one? He had to check: the hardback wires of the 60s wiring, nestled in the power box like fictional innards; the fire alarm, the half-hundred yellowing switches that don't work anymore, the lone dangling bulb hanging off a thin wire down the middle of the stair: yes, this was home.
He climbed all the way up. Hesitated before the door, and sought keys in his ass. He was sure he'd brought it, was sure, but when he reached into his back pockets, he found them much roomier than his usual leather pants. He could put his whole hand into these pockets (unlike the dancing finger-tip squeeze of his own tight ones); in the dark he had put on Saejima's camo pants.
Well — shit-fuck.
Now he wish he'd seen his reflection in the mirror.
If Majima had seen he would have known that he had come to Kiryu's place, dressed head-to-toe in Saejima's clothes: Saejima's black shirt, his wide pants. No wonder the whole time he'd sleepwalked here it felt loose on his hips like his pants were about to fall off his ass. He'd thought it was his imagination, a psychic connection between the state of his outerwear and the state of his innerwear, the general wear-and-tear of his inner-self reflected in the loose gloryhole of his clothes: turns out not. He was dressed in his old-new lover's clothes to come find his new-old lover, and he hadn't brought the keys.
Well, what was he to do? Too late gone now to go.
He slammed the buzzer with his fists. Majima couldn't make anything except a fist if he tried, his hands too curled from the cold.
He stood waiting under the waving yellowing bulb that promised to light long after humanity was dead. It was powered by some municipal delight unknown to the resident of the building. It had a will of its own. It swayed. It swayed now keenly to the side as if it saw Majima was cold, was miserable, and wanted to dance closer to see better. The downstairs neighbor clattered. It was a ramen store and at five they started the stock and it was always noisy. Noisy but delicious.
If Majima was in there now... If he was in there the apartment he'd be on the tatami, lying on a thin futon smelling of lavender, his head on Kiryu's chest, his hands clutching Kiryu's collar instead of stuck in his armpits like this. In a few minutes the smell of tonkotsu and the smell of Kiryu, the smell of the old mold, the inscrutable knitted blanket; all this if he was in there right now.
He waited. He waited. He waited an eternity. He thought Kiryu might be out, might even have moved. This time without the courtesy of sending him a message, which was fair enough: he hadn't given Kiryu the courtesy of an explanation when he left either. Majima refused to believe, and hammered the door; the whole side of his fist and arm tingled.
"Get the fuck up, Kiryu-chan!" He yelled.
When that was done echoing down the narrow space he still had to wait. He turned around, looking at the shit stacked up on the landing. Besides some old shoes were neatly wrapped boxes. Double-sided tape and the works, structurally sound, could be mailed halfway across the country. Majima stared at it, wondering if Kiryu was mailing himself away, going somewhere again, until reality coagulated: these were all Majima's shit. The box at the very bottom wasn't in an anonymous camel-toned mover box, had been too big, and it was his toy kit with the brazen blue robot printed on the side. Scale: 1/100th! Exciting guns! Transform! Laser light kit included!
He cut the sides off a random middle box, and something plastic fell out. His shit. Another box, his shit. Okay, so he hadn't been expected back. Glad to know and predictable, even acceptable, only fair, but in the selfishness of solitary emotions brewing in him he only had hurt feelings; could not be dissuaded by the logic that said it was only what he deserved, walking out on Kiryu-chan. It had no right to clinch his chest so.
What was also included: a place to sit. He sat on the boxes unable to believe Kiryu wasn't in at this time of the day, until the sky began to lighten outside. The tonkotsu boiled. He was beginning to feel cold and stupid; the fates hadn't converged to give him the dramatic reunion he wanted. He had pictured fighting. Tumbling down the stairs maybe, grabbing Kiryu's hair. The tonkotsu was already brewing. He got up to go.
Saw, at the last moment, that because the sky was lightening and the window in Kiryu's apartment was large, now that it was bright inside, two feet-shaped shadows under the door. The whole time the fucker had been standing there, and only now Kiryu could be seen. For a second Majima considered this rejection and if he should accept this. Like always he refused. He strode to the door and said, voice hoarse exactly the way he didn't want it to be, but at least he could be fairly certain it was the cold — and said: "Are ya gonna let me in?"
Moments passed. Moments in which he was certain the breakfast-ramen gang would come in before he got his answer. The bolt shot back. Chains unchained. The door opened a fraction, hesitated, then swung wide.
"What do you want?" Kiryu asked, arms crossed. "Why did you come back?"
They stood on the landing like crowded gunfighters, cramped duelists. Eyes narrow, legs wide. It's all fighting stance.
"At least let me in first," Majima blustered, blazing past Kiryu, shaking his hair like a wet dog. He stained all over the entryway, realized his shoes weren't entirely dry, took them off, and like he never did while he was living here: left them on the rack.
Kiryu hadn't budged from the door. Like he didn't want to bother walking around, didn't want to move from the door only to come back so soon to close it.
"What do you want?" He asked again. It would be nice if he looked angry, but he didn't look like anything. If flat was a look he looked flat.
"Came here to borrow a kotatsu," Majima said, breezily. "Couldn't get mine ta work, yeah? Don't leave a guy out in the cold now. I just need the heater for a sec."
"You can't afford your own?"
"Things are tight," He defended. Had a sixty-inch TV but couldn't afford the things that mattered.
"I see. Well. You know where it is," Kiryu said.
Kiryu neither hindered or helped him. Watched him like an animal while he moved on display, pulling out the kotatsu so it was dead center of the room, dragging the heater over, dual suns hot enough to heat up yesterday's meal. Majima adjusted the angle of the round heater six times before he got the guts to say, "I'm gonna stay here for a nap."
It was a demand and not a request because it was the only way he knew how to speak: a request came with it the possibility of denial, whereas the demand assumed it would not be denied.
He crawled into the kotatsu like a war-trench and peered with his one eye out of it, dug himself in, would not be thrown out, would not say: come lie by me. And certainly not: I missed you. Never: I'm sorry.
Kiryu unfolded his arms, glanced at the frosted webby windows. Maybe he was measuring just how cold things were out there, and how much he wanted to throw Majima out. At any rate the scales balanced and he said, "I'm making breakfast. What do you want?"
"Miso and rice and egg. More leeks, if ya got 'em." Majima said, rattling off a meticulous order.
When it came, it was by long habit exactly the kind of runny egg he liked. He inhaled it and sat there hunching his shoulders, prepared himself for the big fight. When he saw it wasn't coming, he went to sleep. Abruptly the tiredness came like high tide. He slept, lulled deep by the smell of warmth and home, folding his arms and lying on his front.
He was aware in his sleep-fog that Kiryu sat beside him like a statue, did not stroke his hair, did not shut the blinds, did not crawl in there with him, but merely sat, legs folded like the statue of Buddha. Which seems apt: man has the patience of a saint. No one else would put up with this shit.
***
"I'm sayin', we're over," Majima said some months ago, for the fourth or fifth time.
Kiryu couldn't be sure, unable to count above the ringing in his ears. His hands stopped mid-stir. He lifted the chopsticks from the bowl, eggs running down it, and placed it on the counter. That was how deranged he was: he'd put egg-soaked chopsticks on the counter.
He turned around to face Majima, and as if he didn't know exactly what it meant, asked, "What do you mean?"
Majima was dancing by the kotatsu like a devil on hot coals, bouncing up and down the way he did, nervously on a string, when he was about to confront or set off a bomb of epic proportions. Gonna go schmooze with the enemy without informing anyone for example, sell out the clan but actually not, making trouble, breaking people out of prison, putting people into it, cracking heads that should be left alone, stirring shit that was better left stewing. Last time he looked like this Kiryu had come down to his okinawan home finding the whole place impounded, bought out by a motherfucker named Majima Goro, and had to haul ass all the way to Tokyo to talk with lawyers, and of course the whole point — Majima. Had to stay in Tokyo for six months to work out the legal ball Majima had detonated; that was the whole plan. Now Majima was dancing again: no longer everyone's idle Goro.
"I'm sayin'," Majima said. "Now that he's out, now that he's back, I got no fuckin' use for ya anymore, yeah? How many times do you want me to say it? I said it nice, said it twice, are you trying to play deaf or somethin'?"
"I am trying," Kiryu said, enunciating every syllable through gritted teeth. "Not to punch your face in, Majima."
"Yeah?" Majima lifted his chin. "That'd do it."
Kiryu turned back to the eggs, picked up the chopsticks, stirred the not-shit eggs into a fluffy consistency it needed to be. Emptied it into the sizzling pan and listened to it speak for the both of them. He tossed it into a plate that clattered across the table, skidding nearly to the edge. Said: "Eat."
"I got lunch plans," Majima said, defiantly.
"You don't have fucking lunch plans. Sit down and eat, Majima, or you won't have teeth for lunch, much less dinner."
Majima sat. Bowls of rice were distributed. They ate in silence looking at anything except each other: the TV on mute cut every other second to different slices of news. The stock market was either crashing, burning, or soaring. The fridge was shuddering every ten minutes when the motor ran, the lights emitted a steady buzz that illuminated the stains on the table. Majima's side was dotted and splattered with soy sauce, teriyaki, spicy peri-peri, tabasco, ketchup, exotic thai chilies, semen-colored kewpie, sweet kikkoman. Kiryu's part was pristine. Story of his fucking life.
Kiryu ate with detachment. He felt like a person sitting behind his eyes. There were hands in front of him moving which he was fairly certain was his, putting food in a mouth with teeth that belonged to him, swallowing eggs down a constricting throat that certainly was Kiryu's, but he saw all this with a dead ringing in his eyes. It wasn't an out-of-body experience; it was a very in-body experience. He felt like he had been shrunk and was sitting badly in someone's head, driving a sight with sore eyes.
Ate. Ate. Ate. When there was nothing left to eat, and they were just scrapping the oil, the crusts, picking up every pebble of rice that usually even the fastidious Kiryu would have thrown away, Kiryu asked, "Why?"
Majima looked at him, and shrugged. That was when Kiryu realized he didn't know. Majima had even less of a chance of knowing how he works than Kiryu did. Majima's eye was dull and resigned as he picked at the dining mat, like he had surrendered the condition of his self and the impossibility of his actions to a deity greater than himself; never being able to understand how he himself worked, Majima had raised his hands and said: alright, whatever my emotions say. Whatever rashness comes, whatever harebrained scheme. I'll do it, and I won't question it; I'll just drink about it when it's over.
"I'm not stopping you from seeing him," Kiryu said out of his well-adjusted teeth. "You can spend as much time as you want with him."
Majima stopped picking the mat long enough to look up, then away.
"I love him," He said, punching Kiryu wham-wham in the face.
"I've been waitin' all these years for him to come outta prison," He said, kicking Kiryu bam-bam in the balls.
"All these years, I've always been waitin', ya know? It ain't like you don't, I told ya before. I mean don't get me... Well, enough about that. I wanna do it proper, I want to give it a right go, try to get back what we had. For twenty-five years all I had was wondering, and regret, and this here is my chance at last to get it all back. I can redeem myself, ya know? We got cut off back then, but it still could. So." He said, twisting a knife several times counter-clockwise in Kiryu's guts, butterfly-stroking across to Kiryu's chest, so that it all converged in a ley-line of tremendous pain where his heart was; so much that he was certain it was all true: the old fairy tale of a man who was so heartbroken they cut him up and all he had was a shriveled prune of a heart. All true. What do you know?
"So you'll be going," Kiryu said. His mouth was flapping and it wasn't him; Kiryu was away. Somewhere between his nose and his eyes, in the back of his head. Maybe on the roof, hanging down like the lights, twisting around in circular motions the wind, suspended by his guts.
"So you'll be leaving," He said, clearing his throat.
"Yeah," Majima said. There was a wet look of expectation there. He was expecting Kiryu to say something but Kiryu didn't know what.
"Okay," KIryu said. "I'll help you pack. Essentials first, and then the rest I'll send over. Let's start with the toiletries."
He pushed the chair back and gathered the dishes, gathered also that this wasn't what Majima wanted; not what he expected. Kiryu had other things to say, but he couldn't say it out of his position of severe compromise, so he lathered the dishes and when they clank onto the drainer they were so loud booming like cannons in his ears; it was a kind of shell-shocked dream.
"I changed my mind," he said, finding Majima standing by the TV with his hands lifted against the overcast light. Majima turned keenly to him, heard him say — the suits should go first, they're the biggest article you've got, and then the rest of the clothing. I'll lend you my suitcase — and turned away to the TV again.
"Did you hear me?" Kiryu said.
"Yeah," Majima said, mock-saluting, a jaunty grin. "Suit yerself."
***
Saejima came to pick Majima up in the p.m.
When he arrived, the man was still asleep, curled up under the kotatsu. No longer half-asleep now: he snored with the unloveliness of a thirty-year-old car, punctuated by snot-filled snuffling, hacking coughs from the back of his throat. If he moved at all, he moved to burrow deeper into the heat, or to tighten a missing jacket around him. He'd pulled at the collar so much, Saejima's shirt had become shapeless.
Saejima had knocked. Kiryu said to come in. He did. Kiryu was smoking by the window. One out of three windows was open, and the frosted finish of the rest distilled the distance into washed-out colors; the SALE in red of the opposite building turned into four blotted ellipses. When they rotated against the dark sky it looked like a police search; where the window was open it cast a red rim on everyone. Kiryu's profile, the smoke of his cigarette, the tips of Majima's crumpled hair.
The heat of the room was unbearable. All the heaters were on, must have been on since morning; the room was an oven. Saejima shrugged out of his parka, draped it over the back of a chair, stood by the table unsure of what to say, what was appropriate. The table was bisected nearly in half: stained and not-stained.
Not knowing what to say he traced a mole-shaped mark, bleached into the wood and said, "This his side of the place?"
Kiryu inhaled smoke, exhaled silence. Nodded.
"Figures. The guy always ate like his mouth had holes on the side."
Kiryu worked his jaw, pawed his words, then said, "He's cut up all the table legs."
"Let me guess, while waitin' for the food to arrive?"
"Yeah."
"Used to do that too, back in the day. Yasuko would be cooking, I'd be helpin', and when we came back he'd have drawn a dick onto the table with his penknife." He fingered a white stain, wondered if it was semen. Pictured the two of them on the table, Kiryu holding up his kyoudai, legs wrapped around Kiryu, the sort of adventures that might lead to such an angle. Said, "You should have seen the state of the cafeteria tables at school."
He'd said the wrong thing, and understood that when Kiryu froze, rolling his shoulders to pretend he hadn't close off. There was a tic in his jaw. He stubbed the cigarette out on the sill, bent it in half, said: "You need anything? He said he needed to pick anything up here?"
"Don't think so."
"Right. Then." Kiryu gestured: asking what the fuck he was waiting for, just pick the man up and go.
Saejima took a wandering step Majima-wards, halted somewhere in the middle of the room. It was all greenish-blue from the tatami, the darkness without lights. There was the smell of broth in the room, souped into the furniture, and though Saejima had a bit of a sinus and wouldn't know it himself, he could smell it vividly: Majima had told him all about this room, picturing it with such avid detail, like Saejima was about to paint a picture of it and he was worried Saejima would get the details wrong.
Majima kept saying: there's mold in between the cracks of the bathroom tiles that won't scrub out, and a gash up the sink, and the kitchen drawers are all full of coupons and discount-brochures. A calendar's on the wall — listen to me — hung above the TV usually a whole month late. The TV's the old square kind, hasn't been updated since ten years back, and if you want to watch another channel you have to press buttons on the side and only the forwards one work, remember that, pay attention, and if ya want to watch channel four and you're on five, you have to slam the button nine times, until you reach the end of zero and then start again — are ya listening, Saejima?
"When a person is tired," Majima had said, (like there was another in their holy trinity more likely to be upset than him). "A person can hide in the closet. It's a classic wall-to-wall kind like they don't make in the modern LDKs anymore. You can sit in there and the world just sort of fades to black, and then when it opens up — "
"When it opens up?"
But Majima had clammed up. What he didn't say of course, was that it was likely Kiryu that had drawn him out, and what also wasn't said was how they might interplay across the room. Kiryu might draw him out of the closet, both arms around Majima middle, holding him like a sack — Majima literally boneless when he was tired — pulling him across the room to lie either under or beside the kotatsu, depending on the season. How Majima might clutch at Kiryu like he was falling, in the starling-crowded darkness of his tiredness might in fact feel like he was falling.
Majima had the tendency to build a crust about him. Saejima saw this when they were both young but didn't understand until he was in prison, and saw people who were like but not quite like Majima; in their myriad incarnations and differences he saw the sketches of a Majima that could be, that coming out of prison Saejima confirmed was so: had been.
Someone had once told him, by the communal prison table where cards were consumed and soups waited out. The men had taken turns putting down cards, and each time they put down cards they spoke. There was a dual-circle game being played, so that every time you put down an ace you get to speak: you get one chance to tell your story, but only a short one. You don't want to bore anyone, don't want to be a bore. So you place a card, tell a snippet of your life story — and it can be anything you want to say — the rape charge you've been falsely accused of, or the majestic dump you took this morning, curling like a snake: it's all the same to the listeners.
So one guy had Majima's thing, this crust-building, and he said:
"So the way I felt when I was still in the gokudo game, it was like takoyaki. You don't believe me? I see y'all don't believe me. I see it on your face you think it's kinda bullshity, that feelings can be a kind of food, a dumb-kid food like that. Well, it is. Ya know the way takoyaki builds this real crispy crust on the outside, but the real good ones — like the real good yakuza — well, you prick them, and all their insides are warm and juicy and oozes out, kind of flows out with that exact consistency. Congealed flour, you know? Burning on yer tongue, hotter than hot-hot. At the core a burning chunk of tako. On the outside it looks perfect, like balls that won't break, and inside it's all a hot fucking mess. That's a good yakuza. I was a good yakuza. I was just like takoyaki."
And Saejima said, placing down a card, "Get a better analogy, man."
"It's true though," the guy hissed. "It sounds lame but it's true. It's fuckin' true." And he placed his card and hunched his shoulder in a way familiar to Saejima.
He stood above Majima now but did not pick him up. Kiryu held himself tensely, face angled away. He'd lit a new cigarette and smoked it like a crutch.
When Saejima out-patient him, Kiryu said, "Do you need something? What are you waiting for?" He rubbed the cigarette between his fingers like a sore. It wasn't always like this, of course: when they'd met in Okinawa things had been tense, but it was a different kind of tense. Back then it was just the strangeness of a stranger. Now it was queerness of a forced intimacy, in the form of the man snoring under the electric blanket.
"Would you take him back?" Saejima asked, leaning forward.
"Would I what?"
"If he were to come back to you."
"He hasn't asked," Kiryu said. "Has he asked? Is that what he said?"
"No. But if he did, would you?"
"He didn't ask."
"But if he did."
"I don't like guesswork, Saejima-san."
"He came here last night."
"There's about as much meaning in that as love horoscopes, as luck charms. No," Kiryu said, moving away towards the kitchen, opened and closed the fridge door without taking anything. "If he wants to come back he'll have to say it out loud. Either he asked or he didn't. In this case he didn't, so let's leave it at that."
"Let's not," He returned. "Let me rephrase: would you take him back, if he came with strings attached?"
"Let me guess. The string is you."
"The string is me."
"No." Kiryu said. "I refuse."
Saejima crossed the room, cornered Kiryu as one prizefighter to another, and did what he had resolved to do, which even as he did it had the fantastical nature of a horrorshow, surprised even himself: he seized Kiryu by the hair and kissed him.
It was inappropriate to call it a kiss, the kiss itself inappropriate, but a mashing of lips against lips: chapped, dried, unbecoming. It was less a kiss than an assault. Kiryu shoved him away, punched him hard enough his ears rang; he fell against the sink with the brown stains.
Kiryu did not ask him to explain the fuckery, only raised two fists to say: get the fuck up.
They hurtled across the cramped space of the kitchen: Saejima broke the table with the cut-up legs when he was flung against it; Kiryu rammed his head into the fridge door hard enough to dent it. The small fire-escape window turned out to be stronger than steel, could take the combined weight of the two of them grappling against it like hooks, like dancers: one of them whirled and battered the other against it; whirled, whirled again, at the end of the waltz Saejima seizing his opportunity seized Kiryu again, and this time the kiss was no greater than the last and less arousing than even the fight. Kiryu bit Saejima's lips and drew blood. They came apart gasping for unerotic air, and this time Kiryu calmed enough to ask, "What the fuck, Saejima? Are you out of your damned mind?"
Saejima huffed from his side of the kitchen, braced against the window. "Just wanted to see what my brother saw in you."
Kiryu cussed up a storm.
"Can't see it, personally." Saejima said. "Ya ain't my thing."
"Ask me — I would have told you! Shit!" Kiryu wiped his gored lips. "Shit! For fuck's sake! You two are a piece of work."
"Yeah? First time anyone said that about me. Heard it a lot about the kyoudai though."
Kiryu swore across the room, checked on the ruined table. Majima was standing by it, staring at the two of them. He'd woken up too late to catch most of it likely: always slept like the dead, a roof could fall on him and he'd only know at the end of his nap. He stood there now studying the evidence: the tousled mess of a kitchen, the flush on both of their faces, the creeping blush across Kiryu's, almost all anger and an undercurrent of arousal, perhaps, if one had an active imagination.
"Hey?" Majima said. "Y'all been fightin' and ya didn't wake me? This is the kinda shit friendships are ended over. What's with the blush, Kiryu-chan? One woulda think you've been smoochin' my brother while I was out."
"Get the hell out," Kiryu growled. "Every time you show up here you leave nothing but a damn mess and a stain. Are you done? Because if you are — I have a job to go to."
"Same shift?"
"Eight, dammit."
Three heads swiveled at the clock with the broken face. "Okay," Majima said. "There's time. I want some dinner. How 'bout beef bowls?"
Saejima got up to leave, laid hands on his parka. Majima placed a hand on it.
"Kiryu-chan makes the best beef bowls in town," He said. "Better even than Akaushimaru. Can't go back once ya have the real stuff, right? How 'bout that then, Kiryu-chan?"
"I don't have beef."
"Coulda fool me," Majima chuckled. "Ya got nothin' but beef. I'll take chicken. Don't lie and say ya don't, it's discount season."
Saejima waited to see what would erupt, the trajectory of the explosion, tried to predict the extent of the projected ballistic course. He guessed wrong. Kiryu didn't go ballistic, only turning away to hide what? Anger? Relief? Resignation? He struggled with the fridge door that wasn't opening right with the man-shaped dent in the middle, got out the chicken, and made all three of them dinner. The apartment filled with the smell of sauteed onions, grilled chicken, reheated rice. At the end of the meal it was almost eight and Kiryu stepped out of the door, shrugging on his jacket.
"I'm stayin' right here," Majima called at his back.
Kiryu paused beneath the hall light. "Suit yourself," He said, and dashed down the stairs.
Majima turned to Saejima, telling him in another kind of tone: "I'm stayin' here. Don't say no."
"Yeah? How long are you stayin'?"
"A week. Maybe."
"A week, or maybe?"
"A week, okay, seven days."
"Fine," Saejima said, shrugging his own parka on. "I'm coming back to get you after seven days. Ya make sure you finish whatever you want by then."
"I know," Majima sighed. Paused and lingered on some thought. "But what if what I want ain't finishable?"
"You'll find a way and do it anyway," He told Majima, getting up to leave. His kyoudai sat unmoving under the swinging lamp, the small space permanently unlit. While he was gathering up his strewn keys Majima had already stretched out lengthwise by the window, watching the twinkling headlights outside. In the distance the slash of the bridgeway. The signs revolved. "Looks like a cop car," He said, and Saejima thought the same and said nothing.
"Used to think it was comin' to get me, or else Kiryu-chan, and now I guess — you too."
"I like the view," He added. "Even if there really isn't one."
Turned to Saejima and said, "This place is my home too, and you. Only place that never was, was the clan. I don't really wanna choose, Taiga. I know I've already chosen, but still."
"You talk to him then. I told ya so," Saejima picked up nothing. He'd already picked up everything and was just fishing air.
"I can't."
When he looked he saw Majima had clawed thin strips off the tatami, made a rubbery mess of it, and thought: if Majima had done this to his place he'd have kicked Majima's ass for it. He knew instinctively that Kiryu would come back, take one look at it, and browse through rakuten for a DIY fix. By Sunday it'd be as if the tatami had never been damaged. Perhaps a wildcat had come by and clawed it some, but there'd be no repercussions, no chastisement, nothing but a mumbled curse, if even that, and Majima would sit cream-like in the corner both gloating and waiting for the axe to fall; Kiryu would know nothing at all.
"How the hell didja two ever made it together for years?" He wondered aloud.
Majima closed his eye. The shadows were so dark they clustered. "Help me, Taiga. Ya know I won't ask if I could."
"I know," He said. "I'll see what I can do. But Goro — ya realize it ain't a matter of askin'?"
Majima turned back to the lights, the frosted panes, those frosted pains, and said, "I know."
Saejima stood. Waited for timefall.
"I'll see ya in a week," he said, and went home.
***
At the week's mark to the minute Saejima was at the door. Kiryu opened up the door to let him in, and the first thing he said was, "Majima doesn't want to go."
"What's that?"
"He said he doesn't want to leave."
Saejima ignored him, strode right in, and picked Majima up by the collar where he'd parked himself in front of the TV. "I hope you're packed," Saejima told him. "Because ya got every minute you've asked for."
Amidst Majima's loud protest, Kiryu slotted neatly into place in front of the door.
"He said he doesn't want to leave," Kiryu said, repeating it slowly like it would make Saejima understand better, as if it was not understood.
"I get it, I ain't a brick. Thing is, Majima here said he'd stay a week, and now it's been a week. Get out of our way, Kiryu-san, or you'll have to order double-strength nails for your table again. My kyoudai here has to learn how to mean what he says."
Majima punched him hard enough to bruise, and he took it, hit Majima back hard enough to stun, and dragged him by chokehold across the room. To get Kiryu out of the way he said, "The problem with ya, Kiryu-san, is that you're too soft with him. You let him walk all over you."
That stunned Kiryu enough that Saejima breezed past him. He dragged Majima down the flight of stairs, found the parked limo, and dumped Majima like a body into it. Majima cussed him. Saejima seized him by the face and said, "Get the fuck outta here, kyoudai. You said you wanted help, I'm helpin' you."
Majima shoved past him, got back on the curb. "I'm stayin' right 'round here until it's done. I ain't goin'."
"Fuck's sake," Saejima said.
"I'll go sit in a bar or somethin'. I wanna be here first thing."
"Just stay out of the way. You'll just put your foot in it."
He turned to go back to the apartment; Majima latched onto his elbow. Begged: "Taiga. Please. Don't blow this."
"I'll try." He said.
Words tumbled out of Majima in a hurry: "And wait — I'm sorry too. I meant what I said when ya came back, I really did. I thought it'd be easy, right? That since he was always a replacement for ya, it'd be easy to get rid of him now that I have the real thing. I meant it, I did. Only I guess — I didn't figure that he was his own thing too."
"I know," Saejima said, gruffly. "I understand."
"I meant what I said. I wanted it to be so. Only it ain't."
"Enough, kyoudai. It's twenty five years. You spent more than half together. The only dumbfuck thing ya did was think he didn't matter, and now we gotta mop up your mess."
"Ain't this a bag of dicks," Majima sighed. He curled forward, clutched the lapels of Saejima's parka, buried himself somewhere in the vast cavernous warmth that was Saejima. Saejima wrapped a loose hand around him, looked up at the second floor when the window was opened a fraction wider than normal, where if he squinted and guessed he might see a thin rasping smoke drifting out of it. He held Majima to him, let Majima lean onto his neck. The window closed.
"Alright," He said, softer. "Go to the bar now, Goro. Start some fights, feel better. I'll come pick ya up later."
Majima, done with softening, visibly picked up all his innards strewn about the pavement and put it back in himself brick by brick, and when he was done he was all a wall again; gave Saejima a thumbs up signifying the solidness of his nature, a grin, another thumbs up. Then he was off somewhere, one hand thrust deep in his jacket fingering his knife thinking of all the trouble he was about to cause, to keep his mind off the trouble he'd already caused.
Heavy footfalls under him, Saejima trudged back up to the apartment, banged on the door until it opened and admitted a smoke-tainted Kiryu to him, who said, "Explain what you mean."
"What's that?"
"When you said I was too soft on him. Explain."
"Sure," Saejima shrugged, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. "But we can do it over drinks."
"I don't want to drink with you."
"Is that right? Let go of your animosity, Kiryu-san." Saejima said. "It wasn't me who took him away from ya."
Kiryu's clenched face was only marginally less tight than his clenched fists.
"He was only ever yours on loan."
"I was hoping," Kiryu said. "And if I had known who you were — I'd never have — " Stopped himself when he felt the grain of his nature rubbed against the grain of his thoughts.
"Left me in the sea, yeah? I know. I see it in every twitch of your face. Meant what I said though — I didn't take him away from ya. Majima did it himself. Ya understand the fact of that? We drink, Kiryu-san, and I'll tell you of facts."
Kiryu retreated into the apartment. When he emerged again he was armed with a coat that he held in front of him like a shield.
***
To Kiryu's surprise Saejima did not want to go to a bar, that was not his idea of what drinking and talking was. They bought enough six-packs that even with their combined musculature they had trouble hauling it across the city; when they reached the roof Saejima had envisioned they were breathing heavy like they'd carried a motorcycle across town; they needed that much alcohol because it was inconceivable that Kiryu could let down his guard to talk about his feelings, and Saejima felt awkward playing the counselor unless his blood was diluted one part water, one part alcohol, and almost no part hemoglobin.
They sat on the ridged edge of the skyscraper and could say nothing to each other. The wind blew words out of their mouths, made their teeth rattle. Gust after gust of disorder. There was a full night of stars that couldn't be seen. They tightened their jackets and turned up their collars, cursed the cold beer. The whole time they sat on the helipad. The first thing Kiryu said was, "Why the roof?"
And Saejima said, "Ya know when ya first come out..." His accent slurring into his speech, and Kiryu nodded, understood firmly the kind of solitariness Saejima had come from and unguarded, said:
"I know."
"All ya want to see is trees. The sky. Hell, the breeze. It blew all day in the prison where I was 'til it froze the skin off me, but still I'd stay outside. Every minute I could. I'd let it freeze my balls off, if it meant staying out a minute longer."
"I get it." Sipped beer. "What was the thing you ate when you could?"
"Hell, horumon. I ate so much horumon my brain just froze up. Went to the bathroom and clogged up the whole service, threw it all up, and went back to the table and ordered double helpings of everything. Threw it all back up, went back to the table. At some point the toilet just stopped flushin'. The shit backed up, while I was maybe on my fifth helping. I saw them runnin' in to check. Threw dirty glances at me. I mean — just monumental amounts of shit, with the horumon I threw up, all over the fucking floors, and it smelled so bad that standing near the order window you could catch the stink. I was shamefaced, but all I did was asked for refills." Cracked a new can. "For all their trouble I tipped them double everything I ate that day, but I couldn't stop it if I could, not if anyone begged me to. All I wanted to do was eat. I thought I'd eat 'til I split apart, eat every minute of the rest of my life. Yeah. So it goes. What's yours?"
"Rice," Kiryu sighed. "I went to the mart, bought a whole bag and a rice cooker, wiped out the discount meat, a sack of onions... I cooked until my wrist was sore. Burned out the damned rice cooker steaming rice for twenty-four hours straight." He paused. "You'd think it doesn't matter. It wasn't like they didn't have rice in prison. But it doesn't beat what I can make. It's got nothing on making it yourself, just... Standing there. In your own kitchen. It's not your own but it's close enough. There's no time limit on how long you can stand there. It doesn't matter if you burn the rice. It just... Doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I can stand there forever. I stood there until my legs were sore. What I wanted wasn't the cooking or the eating but the standing still."
"Fair enough," Saejima said, and they drank.
When their blood was more alcohol than blood, mere toxic waste — so that if a person had cut them apart and they'd bled into the lake they'd have killed all the fish — they left. A lake like they were passing now: they made their way down the building, stumbled across the pointed questions of Kamurocho's christmas lights until they went far enough that they fell under the condition of ambient light, past the lake that was beautiful in the day but smelled at night of sinister decay; every moment something sank deeply in the waters. In the park they found that every bench had a streetlight above it, as if a theater production chair with the dedicated lighting designed to reveal the trembling of every brow and the honesty of white teeth. They spurned it. They wanted darkness. They didn't know each other enough; even the diffused light of closed-shops was too much, too revealing.
They finally found a seat that sat in total darkness, and sat on total darkness. Now it wasn't the wind. Now it was the leaves, rustling so loud it was hard to hear each other, if they spoke, which they did not. If it wasn't one thing it was the other. Fucking hell. They sat about as far away from each other as they could without toppling into the grass; the bench was wet, and Kiryu could feel it quietly soaking into the fabric of his pants. Unaccountably he felt rage against Saejima: his pants were thicker than Kiryu's. Kiryu's ass would be wet before him. Unbelievable. Unbe-fucking-lievable.
"What?" Saejima said, and he realized he'd said it aloud.
"Nothing."
Kiryu lit a cigarette, hesitated, handed it to him, then lit another for himself.
"Okay, so," Saejima began, and trailed off. "Do ya fish?"
"Saejima, either talk or take off your clothes and let me hit you."
"Can see why my bro likes ya."
"Hell."
"He's always askin' folks to take off their clothes too."
"Listen, if you've just dragged me around town for this..."
"Facts," Saejima said. "Facts. Alright, I promised ya that. Let's start that. Let's start with what I said: you let my kyoudai walk all over you. That's why you never could keep him the way I could."
"He never left while you were away."
"Didn't he? Depends on how you frame it, how you count it. It sounds to me just from what I heard he left plenty of times, just that you took him back like it never happened, so it won't count as leavin'."
"You heard wrong."
"I suppose only you can tell me, you've been there. Him disappearing for months, you disappearing for years. That sounds like a lot of leaving to me. Sounds like a shitton of tug and war."
"He wanted to go," Kiryu said. "And sometimes he wanted me to go."
"So you, what, just said yes?"
"What was I supposed to do? Beat him into saying no?"
"Couldn't hurt."
"You haven't seen what I have seen," Kiryu blew out a frustrated breath.
"Okay? Tell me."
"I don't have to."
"Don't want or can't?"
Kiryu measured a length of air like it could help him explain, realized it wouldn't, and said, "You were away for twenty five years. You've never dealt with him the years I have. You haven't seen him just... Lying. Down. Defeated, dusted. You didn't pick him up and glue him back together. You — " His voice tightly strung like pearls on knotted string. "You don't get to come back and lecture me. I kept him together all those years."
He looked down at his palms. Closed them nail-to-flesh.
"Just so he could go back to you." Pressed so hard he found blood. "First chance he had he fucking ran back to you."
"I know."
"You don't." He snarled. "You damn well don't."
"Fair," Saejima hesitated, said. "I got other pains, but not that one." He shifted his weight. Felt the conversation stray from his ideal of it, the soft thrum of alcohol in his buzzy brain. "Thank you, though. Never did say that, did I? For keeping my kyoudai all those years. You were his shelter."
"Did he say that?" There was a foolish desperation there that Kiryu knew was shameful, but it rolled off his tongue like a secret moss-stone.
"Not in so many words."
"I see," he said, and couldn't hide the dejection either.
"Ya put too much stock in what's said, Kiryu-san. Sometimes it's what's unsaid that really matters. Always been that way with him." Sighed. "Sorry. I'm doin' it again aren't I. Lecturing ya."
"I don't mind so much — just don't tell me I handle him wrongly. I handled him the only way I could. Listen," He pushed his hair back, hands coming away with mist-dew. "Listen. I know what you're saying. I know I'm too soft with him, and that I can't... Can't wrangle him, even when I know he needs it. Maybe it's because I worked so hard to put him back together, that even though I know sometimes what he needs is a good smashing, I can't do it. I can't break what I've crafted with such effort. All we've gone through together."
"I don't know which no I tell him might be the one to unglue him. And maybe I've become afraid. I used to say no, and sometimes it'd just all... Blow up. A fucking mess. I can't do it. I can't crawl about like that again."
"You're tired." Saejima said. "You're bitter."
"Shouldn't I be? I made him what he is, a sort of together-thing, out of years, and you come back and we're nothing. Nothing. You tell me. Should I be bitter?"
"I asked you if you'd take him..."
"I don't want to share him with you." Kiryu snapped. "He's either mine or yours, I don't do things halfways."
When Saejima said nothing he felt a kind of broiling frustration at the silence, like a denial of his truth, which brimmed full to the boil in him. He said, "Did you hear me?"
"I heard ya. In fact I used to think that way. I heard you so good, I hear it all the way in myself."
"Well, then," Kiryu said, standing up, swaying from the drinks. He glared at the brushing trees, the uncovered sky, like it was all somehow to blame. A great conspiracy of ill-will, the culmination of years of plotting; it felt like the extent of his heartbreak needed a willful malice. It could not just be fate, and it could not be Majima. He loved Majima so desperately, saw his mistakes so shallowly, that he could only blame the man so much, so he had to blame something else: the violence of fate seemed like a good place to start. He made to go, and said. "Got nothing to say then."
"Nothing to say," Saejima agreed.
"Gotta go."
"Agreed. We'll be going the same way. Let's go." Holding onto Kiryu's elbow. When Kiryu looked reluctant, he added, "No sense parting ways, then bumping into each other on the same streets. Don't be a damned coward."
If there was one thing no man could resist, it was the lure of courage.
They wandered in the general direction of Kiryu's place. Walked down the road and turned a corner. Snow fell in droves on them; earlier that afternoon a white christmas had been promised and it seemed fulfilled now: snow fell and curled on the railings and on grates and slipped on sills, clumping on shrubs so the late-shift workers could come at three in the morning to brush them off; at seven the morning crew comes; then the noon-sun came with the snow-shovels and the melting, the kicking of the heels of thousands of pedestrian with their legwarmers.
In the meantime there were heated ads: Midnight dinner, one shop insisted on them. Christmas midnight dinner, the next place elaborated. Christmas midnight dinner but with discounts came next.
By the time they walked far enough sandwiched between the shops, exiting into a full head of neon trees, they really had nothing to say to each other and no solidarity, except for what had trespassed in against their will. It wasn't like they didn't have things to say: prison war stories to discuss, cooking recipes to trade, quirks of Majima to exchange, things to laugh about, say, a love for camping and the wilderness and the fishing yet undiscovered in each other: there too was a trove ready to be mined, discussions that could take days and nights while campfires burned down into nothing between them. They had things in common. It was granted: that was why Majima first loved Kiryu. But all that was too sore. In between them was the invisible, indivisible wall of one Majima Goro, and they could not scale him nor break him nor forget he existed in between, and so said nothing, until they turned a corner and were two blocks away from home; Saejima realized if he did not say something now, try to salvage the situation, he would have to go to Majima and say he'd failed. Not just failed, but failure without possibility of retrieval, and then he too, would have to fill a bag with pieces of Majima to go back home with, and try to puzzle him back into a shape of himself. For the first time he thought seriously about it, realized he had no confidence he could pull it off. Realized perhaps that it had not been easy being Kiryu. All those years.
"Kiryu-san," He said, stopping at the corner. "Can you hear me out?"
Kiryu kept walking, two steps, then stopped. "What?"
"I want to ask ya again to share my kyoudai with me. To formally say: enter into a relationship with us. Or have me included in yours, if you like it better that way."
"I've told you — no."
He lifted a palm. "Hear me out."
Kiryu glared at snow.
"I ask you to choose, because Majima can't. I'm asking you to do it for him. You know as well as I do, he can asskick a thousand men to Osaka but can't sort himself out. If he could do so he wouldn't wait 'til forty-eight and come to this. I ask ya to choose, but more than that I ask you to agree. You say you don't want to hurt him, but what do you suppose this is, with the two of us trading him back and forth, with him swaying between us?"
"I don't want to share him. I don't even know you."
"Get to know me."
"I said — "
"I don't particularly love ya either, Kiryu-san," He added with a sardonic smile. "I don't want to share him either. Don't feel strongly either way the depth you do, but I don't wake up every mornin' thinking it'll be nice to have a third." He spread his palms. "I agree to this because I love him, and I get what he wants and what he needs. It ain't what I want, but what I want most of all is to be happy with him — even for a sec, before the storms come — and I understand that's impossible, while he's like this, suspended between his love for ya and his love for me."
Sucked in a brave breath. "I'm asking you to allow him this so you can be happy too. It ain't about forgiveness. What do you gain, if you choose this? Is anyone the happier for it?"
Kiryu, his profile lit, grounded his heel into the gathered snow.
"For once," He said, voice brittle in the air. "For once I'd like what I want to matter. For once I'd like that my every fucking decision doesn't revolve around his problems."
"That's what ya get when you sign on his dotted line."
A harsh groan. "Shit, when did I do that? Can I take it back?"
"Too late. Ship's sail. Ya fell for him."
"Yeah." Kiryu said, clenching his fist. In the cold his eyes-nose-lips were red. "He always was a greedy shit," He added. "Always taking, always taking. Everything. That's all he ever wanted."
"You wouldn't love him any other way."
"I suppose so."
"You'll think about it?"
"Yes."
"Good," Saejima said. "He'll be happy when he hears it, if he can still hear when I pick him up. Said he'll start trouble, and I wager he's chest-deep in it by now." They walked on, picking up a slow strolling pace. "He'll be relieved."
"Yeah?"
"He was real worried."
"I see."
Because he couldn't leave well enough alone, needed his own brand of reassurance too, Saejima pressed: "Ya could come up to our place sometimes. Ya ain't seen it yet, right?"
"I'll think about it," Kiryu said, eyes fixed on an ad for half-off pork on sale.
"I cook a mean-ass beef bowl too."
"I doubt it's better than mine."
"We'll see," Saejima said. "You'll have to taste it first."
They walked this way.
There was an oddly impersonal suspense.
***
So what really happened was this: Majima was a pendulum. The kid with the divorced parents whose court order wasn't quite sorted out yet, but everyone had come to a kind of under-the-table agreement on who got what, and when.
Mondays to Thursdays he was with Saejima, kitted out in a nice 3LDK place that Saejima sure as hell couldn't afford, but Majima could: at this point of his career Majima could have thirty-five midlife crises and come out with a stable portfolio. Mornings no one was home, and nights no one was home either: they were usually at the narrow bar on the shoplots opposite, cramped in with Kiryu, drinking with the other pub-goers, sometimes just the three of them. They drank at the very end over a semi-circular table. The shop was so narrow — had more beer crates than customers, a hoarding problem, really — that Saejima's and Kiryu's shoulders brushed the walls when they walked in.
"Ya got big tastes in friends," one guy said to Majima.
"I know," He said. "I like 'em big." But he didn't start a fight and he drank his beer goodly at the back, nursed it with a kind of secret pleasure. They didn't talk much. Majima was a chatterer when he was insecure, but the other two men had the rote responses of an answering machine. Fine by him: he rolled off his tongue, hey this morning there was that turf thing down on Tenkaichi? Nishida? And Minami brought the boys — and here was the thing, big fireworks, fire-breathing, some rumors outta Yokohama, ya know that thing they do to bulldozers, painting the sides? Cool, cool. Saejima nursed his beer out of a glass bottle and Kiryu liked his in a steel can. Both felt their choice of container made the beer cooler. Majima did not give a fuck if he was drinking swill or piss as long as they were both right there in front of him.
Kiryu sat like he was about to shit in his pants, so constipated; Saejima sat like loose bowels, deliberately occupying as much space as humanly possible. Man-spreader of the gods. Both were perfectly capable of normal posture: it was just a big-dick contest: these two lugs. Still still happy happy.
Midnight they poured out half an hour before closing, and Majima knew he was forty-eight and not eleven, but still he felt the stirring to run down the street, maybe even with his shoes off, so he could feel the crunchiness of the ice-snow under his toes, like cornflakes, white diamonds, laughing, wanted his hair to be like a magnet but for ice.
What the ideal was is this: snow would fall on his head.
Snow would fall on his head, accumulating in a crown of thorny thawing white, and one of them, didn't really matter who, would brush it off his head. He'd pretend to be outraged, make a big fuss about being a fucking grown-ass man, and then he'd console himself: stick one hand in Kiryu's pocket, stick the other in Saejima's pocket, and then fusing them like this, like a horizontal centipede, crab-like, he can listen to the two baritones complaining: "For fuck's sake, Majima — yer hands are fucking cold, Goro." So on so forth.
Friday to Sunday custody was with Kiryu. He didn't pack up, just moved most of the boxes in the hallway back into Kiryu's place. He went early on Fridays, about eight, so that by the time Kiryu came off the night shift there he was: stewing horizontal against the texture of the tatami, the lines meeting perpendicularly at the small of his back. Him in nothing but his underpants, trying to be all seductive. Fact was that it was cold and it gave him goose-pimples: not the sexiest thing on a middle-aged man, which was why when Kiryu closed the door he dropped the groceries and stood there with the stupidest grin on his face. Laughed at Majima until Majima threw himself at him, caught him in mid-air: kissed each other until they landed on the floor, the door, the sink with the crack. Never did tell Saejima why there was a crack, come to think of it.
Saturday night they hotpot at Kiryu's place; Sunday night beef bowls at Saejima's. For the grand tournament of cook-offs they had been cooking beef bowls for three Sundays straight, and though the honourable judge Majima Goro had a penchant for beef bowls, even he mighty carnivore had trouble consuming four bowls every weekend. Under the scrutiny of identically knitted brows, he declared weakly... "They taste 'bout the same, to tell the truth."
"Can't be," Kiryu said, spooning a mouthful of Saejima's. "Way too sweet," He announced in the tone of a pedant.
"Pretty strange coming from the guy I saw spooning two tablespoons of sugar into his."
"I didn't take you for a recipe thief. An eyes-dropper, Saejima-san? Dishonorable," Kiryu's voice very cold, highly disappointed.
"I didn't take ya for a cheater. You put that sugar in 'cause you knew 'bout Majima's sweet tooth. You were fixin' things."
"Not as much as you did. Sugar and teriyaki? You'll ruin his damned health."
"Don't ruin it more than the blackened tripe ya roast for him. How many did you burn? Half of it?"
"Can ya two please compete 'bout somethin' productive?" Majima begged. "Like how long you can stay hard in my ass?"
It was no use, they were bickering so loudly about some shit called MSG and heat-retention point that they weren't even listenin', and the next time Majima listened in, they were fighting about beer brands. If he didn't knew better it was like they were the couple and he was just the bit of meat in the sandwich. He gave up, scrolled through his phone. Ordered meal-prep boxes and sexy underwear; if he had to eat anymore beef bowls he'd die of atherosclerosis. He lifted a spoonful of rice and ate it.
Speaking of spoons. Spooning other things, in the meanwhile. No sandwiches. There was none of the threesome Majima fantasized about: no double-donks in his ass, certainly no front-and-back action, not even the relatively less intimate (or did he mean more?) act of sleeping together, three in a row like ugly ducklings. He either slept with Saejima or he slept with Kiryu, and if they happened to hotpot late into the night, or stumbled out of last-call karaoke, then he had to pick: either he wanted to be the little spoon or the big spoon.
With Saejima he slept curled in the seat of Saejima's lap, those great arms around his torso, pressing on his stomach. The whole of his back moving in tandem with Saejima's breathing, which grew labored sometimes with cold, a cough, age, and whenever Saejima moved, he too moved with it, so that when Majima closed his eyes and was about to fall asleep, he had the distinct motion of being at sea, of sleeping in the glimmersea of stars; rocking, as he did, with the shape of the water. It held him, saved him, out-cast that he'd been.
With Kiryu he was the larger spoon, despite not being larger: claws on Kiryu's side almost painful, one hand on the oblique, one hand on the serratus anterior. With his head placed on Kiryu's back like a stethoscope he could hear everything: imagined he could hear the hollow beating of Kiryu's heart against its ribby cage, the thrum of blood living within Kiryu, could mold himself until he was plastered against Kiryu's back, nuzzling into the bumps of his spine, opening his eyes in the morning to see the dragon soaring impossibly alive in those skins, ink either fading or renewed, falling and rising being alive, blazingly there.
"How come you only ever wanna be at the back?" Kiryu had once fumblingly asked, husky with sleep. Majima heard it as a rich echo coming from the inside.
Crawling upwards until he could whisper in Kiryu's ear, nibbling as he said: "'Cuz then I'm the one holdin' on. Means ya can never go."
Can't be let go; only he himself could let go. He once trusted that someone was always gonna hold onto him, and look where that got him. Didn't believe in it anymore. Only Saejima could make him, and that was only habit, really.
"Alright," Kiryu sighed, shivering a little from Majima speaking so close to his ear, falling back into sleep. "Whatever makes you feel safer, Majima."
And he supposed, that was about when Kiryu ceased to be the quite-like-Saejima-thing, and became his own thing.
***
On Christmas Majima had big big plans.
"On me," He suggested. "As much as the both of y'all can eat. Consider me the buffet of the evening."
His two lovers studiously avoided looking at each other, probably worried that they'd see a look as tempted as their own on it. Money was always tight for the two men who couldn't put down their pride to take it from the one guy who had it. Majima clapped hands on both of their shoulders, steered them into an izakaya promising fusion-styled Christmas dinners. It was so well-known that it didn't offer discounts. A sushi chef had appeared on the premise, on loan for the season. While the two hmmed and hawed over the menu, Majima just picked the priciest wine on the list to set the tone for the evening.
"'s on me," He promised generously. "It's all on me. Order whatever ya want, I take care of my men."
The two of them looked at him with morbid distrust. There was something about his tone...
"Are ya plannin' something, kyoudai?"
"What, like spiking your drinks?"
"No, like," Kiryu scratched his neck. "Trouble, probably."
"Always trouble," Saejima added.
"He gets that thing on his face — "
"The scrunch, yeah?"
"Yeah, and the pursed lips like he's tying not to grin — "
Majima grinned fiercely to prove him wrong.
" — and then when ya call him out on him he just smiles like that, thinks he looks angelic — "
" — and just ends up looking really creepy. Cut it out, Majima. We're in public. You'll scare the kids."
Saejima chortled in agreement and waved for the waitress.
"I'm gettin' bad vibes here," Majima complained. "You're tag-teamin' me. Which is really unfair, 'cuz the only agenda I got in mind tonight is for everyone to have a great spanking time."
"Hmm," Saejima said. "If ya say so. I'll take everything on this page." He told the waitress.
Kiryu pointed at five appetizers on two pages and said, "Two of this one too, come to think of it."
"And you, sir?" The waitress came to him.
"Oh, ya know — how 'bout a few more wines? Best sake ya got, the warmest. Thanks, sweetie." Almost rubbed his hands together in glee. Most of the night while he tricked they were treated. He just sat back and nursed his wine stingily. Picked the window-seat so he could look out, had picked the restaurant just because it was expensive enough to have these windows, with the miniature zen garden and everything: some rare stuff in central Tokyo. A smaller window, high-up, was open. Majima craned his neck, inhaled deeply, and imagined he smelled snow.
***
Like a witch guiding two meals home Majima led them both up the narrow stairway of Kiryu's place, leading them one by one up the wooden stairs where both their feet sounded unnaturally loud against the planks. They were dragging it, and all was silent: it was three a.m, Christmas wasn't yet three hours over. Even now the streets whispered louder than usual. Though no one could be seen all around the block, there was a persistent whisper in the snow, in the ground, in the air: like someone was mysteriously celebrating in the basement of the city, just around the corner, some ghostly parade having come just moments before: if you hurry you might just catch it. Just lift your skirts and go. If you don't have skirts, just lift your hearts and go.
Lifted his heart now, as the two of them stumbled into the apartment shitfaced drunk. One of them said: "Where — ? " and he supposed it was Saejima — it sounded like Saejima — though in the moments like these he thought: it hardly matters: he loved them both so crucially the same, and they fit each other palm-for-palm at almost everything, that he once thought it hardly mattered who was who. Well, it mattered, but it also didn't matter. Mattered in some ways and did not in others. The things that mattered were not so important. He yanked the stuff off them that he knew they weren't comfortable in: Kiryu's grey jacket, rolled down the shirtsleeves tight at his elbow, bad circulation. Kiryu was prone to hand cramps. Went to Saejima and zipped up the parka instead; this one ran cold in a few hours unless wrapped up like a burrito. Last of all he went treasure-hunting in the closet and retrieved all the blankets he could find, even the bigger shirts, dumped them all on the ground. Made a bed and made his two meals lie in it. There was just enough space for him in the middle, and he liked to think it was more than serendipity: he wanted to believe there was just enough space for him, because things were meant to be like this. Snuggled into his dent. Smiled at the ceiling.
He got back up some time later to open the window so that the light that was red and sinister could pour in: this night it was not sinister but the red of the sign like some harbinger of Christmas: this night of all nights in the year it had meaning, and wasn't just a blot. He turned up the heater as high as it could go. Laid back down in his place and listened: there were cars out there going by every two minutes on the interstate two, cutting the wind; every ten minutes the fridge stopped and started like an old heart. Trees restless, temperatures falling. The light of the room was blue, and twin snores accompanied him, some dappled pattern on the ceiling above the swaying lampshade. Something outside was looking in. He hoped it saw how happy he was.
"Ya know that thing about making wishes and whatnot on christmas, 'stead of just eating KFC and christmas cake," He was saying. A low grunt answered him. "Ya know that thing? Read about it in an article. Crazy stuff, these youngin's. Said it's the season's for wishing. You believe that?"
"Well," He continued. "I filled a barrel with gasoline and I burned three bricks of paper in it. I'm thinkin' if it's even one percent real, no one's gonna get his wish granted like mine. It's gonna be granted big homeboy style. If there's anyone listening to wishes, they won't hear anything but mine. I sent in so many, it's like fucking spam. Santa will wish he's got a filter on. Though he might already have one. Huh. That's worrying, now that I think about it."
Reached over his insomnia and nudged Kiryu. Kinda wish he'd drank as much as they did now, but that was part of the plan.
"Whadya think," He wheedled. "You're the one who believes the love horoscope shit. Come on — ya think Santa's got a spam filter on?"
"Majima," Kiryu groaned.
From the other side, "Shut up, kyoudai."
"Alright, alright." Majima nattered. "Man just wants some opinions, that's all."
He settled his spine against the curve of a blanket until he heard them snore again, felt the steady tremors of their breathing traveling to his skins. Drew one of them in, wiggling an arm like a Jenga block, hoping nothing would topple. Drew the other one in, until he was pressed right in between. He settled himself in different positions: arm here? Legs here? Maybe a hip... Ah, there it was. That's perfect. Well, he thought, as the distant lights narrowed yet lengthened, the moon hung low, the whole religion of the season coming to an end whispering rumors of a new beginning, wishes being granted; fantasies. Well. It hardly mattered if it wasn't true, he supposed. It hardly mattered if the dappled lights on the walls were not the fulfillments of the season. It hardly matter at all, since it'd come true: all those papers folded like cranes harboring his wishes in their hearts: they had all beat at once and made it all true. Here he was neither little spoon nor big spoon; neither big nor little; being held on not letting go. Things had come true, being exactly as he wanted it to be: the rest, which he knew would come in the periphery, the multitudes of wrinkles in their relationship, they would come like the tide and be carried away. All within was well.
He went to sleep looking forward to waking, to find his head on one love and his hip against the other.