Archive of Our Own ^beta

Osamu is thirteen when he learns that the earliest historical record of onigiri isn’t some painted wall scroll depicting travellers eating the snack. That it isn’t the onigiri he knows now, wrapped in seaweed and stuffed with tarako and picked plums.

Instead, he learns that the first onigiri in the world is now a huge fucking carbonised chunk of rice, grilled and wrapped in bamboo leaf. On display at a museum in Ishikawa. Still carrying the evidence of human fingers, pressing it into shape. Perfunctory, a vessel for leftovers, easy to carry.

At twenty-nine, Osamu knows that while on a surface level the food has changed, its function is still more or less the same. It has been made easy by machines and triangle moulds packaged on conbini shelves. By mothers, as an afternoon snack after long volleyball practices.

That’s the sort of thing he finds charm in, with onigiri. He’s never tried to elevate it to some far-reserved kind of form, never tried to make a spectacle of it. As far as food goes, it’s probably the most honest representation of anything he’ll get. It’s perfect as it is.

He thinks that the same sort of principle applies to a bunch of other things. Household tasks, such as folding clothes, or organisation. Utensils, such as chopsticks. Going on dates. Cooking for a loved one. Falling in love.

Embellish shit too much, and the whole thing sorta just falls apart. It loses the core of what it was supposed to be in the first place. That’s why he’s never felt the need to stuff Kagoshima A5 beef into his onigiri, never felt the need to serve things like fancy barrel-aged sake or premium wine. It’s just onigiri.

It’s just onigiri, Osamu repeats to himself, his gloved fingers clasping around rice. Taking it in between his hands, in the square of his palms, the weight of it instinctive, familiar. He remembers how the OL in the pink coat takes hers with the clam miso soup, a side of boiled egg and pickled cucumber. Remembers the salaryman who always takes the corner seat, remembers his love for katsuobushi. One mentaiko, for Suna. Umeboshi, for Kita. Takuan, for his mother. Negitoro for Atsumu— with as much toro he can possibly manage ‘til bursting. He remembers it all. It’s his job, after all.

They’re all crammed around the counter to celebrate his (and Atsumu’s) birthday. It had been a combination of coincidences and determinism that had led them all to Tokyo at the same time— Suna here for a game, Kita here on business, his mother here to visit her sister and her family in Saitama. Atsumu, here because he could not bear to be left out.

It is so very like him, Osamu thinks. Atsumu had showed up on his doorstep at eight in the morning with some flimsy excuse about shopping for omiyage and some new limited edition flavour of Tokyo Banana that Osamu knew he didn’t care much for at all. But he’d accepted it with a shrug and a little hint of self-satisfaction, because he had a feeling his brother would do such a thing. Twin intuition, and all that.

“Are you eating well, Samu?” their mother asks, her hands perched on the counter top, draining the last of her tea.

She looks good, Osamu thinks. She looks good in the sense that she suits the sort of glamour of downtown Ginza; she always seems to fit in every space she inhabits. With practised ease, she'd slipped into the image of the considerate mother during every single one of their parent-teacher interviews, the doting mother at their volleyball games.

“I own a restaurant,” Osamu replies.

“That’s not what I asked,” their mother says, a smile curling around her lips, just-so. For as long as he could remember, she'd always smiled as if she knew some astronomical secret to the universe. Osamu was convinced she did, at some point in his childhood. Both of them did.

He looks up from his prep station at her. She’s wearing the Chanel earrings he’d bought her several birthdays ago, a cut from his first paycheck after opening Onigiri Miya Tokyo.

“Sorry,” he says, out of instinct.

It’s the wrong answer— he knows it is, because he sees his mother frown.

“I am. Eating well, I mean.” The conversation confuses him; he knows that it's her backwards way of asking whether he’s doing okay, but she of all people knows the kind of reverence he treats meal times.

He knows that none of this is really about eating at all.

She hums, and smiles.

“So? You’re the owner of two successful restaurants. You’ve made a name for yourself, just like your brother,” her grin becomes conspiratorial. Osamu glances over towards Atsumu seated next to her, who is still midway through telling Kita about their latest trip to Italy for the Nations’ League. He too, looks content.

Don’t say it, he thinks.

He knows that whatever his mother says has the absolute propensity to make him spiral, because he knows her, and he knows Atsumu, and he knows that every single bone in his body absolutely would give a fuck.

He loves his mother to death, he knows that neither he nor his brother would have gotten so far without her patience, her love, her support, and the crushing weight of her expectation that both her boys make something spectacular of themselves.

Don’t you dare.

“What’re you going to do next, Samu?” She drawls, looking pleased with herself.

Shit.

Osamu braces himself for a storm.

—-

Osamu’s routine goes like this:

Five-thirty A.M: wake up. Snooze his alarm for five minutes, then hobble over to the shower to actually wake up.

Six A.M.: drive to the local shotengai to pick up the day’s produce from Takeyama Oji-san who owns a farm up in Saitama.

Seven A.M.: get back to the restaurant. Drop some shit off, and then head back to his apartment to do paperwork. Mindlessly scroll twitter for ten minutes, retweeting videos of cute cats.

Midday to Eleven P.M.: work.

Eleven P.M.: go home, shower. Contemplate about the salaryman in the corner who orders twenty onigiri at a time. Google: What day do I take out the burnable trash, Shinagawa, Tokyo.

Google: How to know if you’re stuck in a quarter life crisis.

Much to his dismay, Osamu doesn’t find out either of those things, and hopes for the best as he stealthily places his burnable trash on the rubbish pile.

He wakes up the next day to texts from Atsumu about some USB-powered onigiri warmer, and promptly turns his phone off.

The week following their birthday is about twenty nine different shades of awful, because Osamu gets about a cumulative four hours of sleep and the seven-eleven coffee machine has the audacity to splutter all over his shirt on Monday morning. Because his usual fish supplier’s van suddenly breaks down on the freeway, which means that prep won’t be done until extremely last minute. Because water is wet, and he can’t fucking stop thinking about his mother’s damned words.

He’s only got a precious year left until the big thirty, after all. The year that their Gran will inevitably start sending him marriage interview pamphlets by snail mail.

Up until now, Osamu really had thought that he had things more or less under control, after all. He isn’t an Olympic athlete, but he knows he’s damned good at what he does, and he gets a real kind of pleasure from people enjoying the food he makes. And outside of work, he has a social life. He has the group LINE chat with his high school classmates that pings every minute of the day. He goes to the gym regularly. He spends his off days sitting on his plush Italian sofa bought from his onigiri money, and watches past episodes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure until he falls asleep.

Everything in moderation, he tells himself. He has plenty of moderation.

He tells this to Suna, crouched over a stack of crates behind a dimly-lit izakaya. The ground is spinning, because it seems that he no longer has the alcohol tolerance that he once had five years ago. The ground is spinning, and he feels a little bit of pride for still being able to deftly snatch the cigarette out of Suna’s fingers before he has the chance to light it.

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” Osamu says, his words slurring a little bit more than he’d like them to.

“Pot, meet kettle,” Suna just looks down at him, amused. He doesn’t look pissed off in the slightest, which is a bit terrifying by his standards.

“I’m not a professional athlete,” he replies.

There’s a pause, but Osamu doesn’t know how long it drags on for. A minute, five, an hour— he’s too tipsy to figure it out.

"Well," Suna casts his gaze away, "neither am I."

"What?" Osamu barks, head snapping up to meet him. Through the fog of alcohol, he's sober enough to react to such a bombshell revelation. When had—? "You're joking."

He can never tell with Suna, sometimes. It's that same kind of deadpan expression that he uses when he's telling jokes that crosses his face now, and although Osamu's pretty well versed in the many faces of Suna Rintarou, he can't seem to decipher this one.

"It's either I quit, or I get the fourth surgery on my knee," Suna replies, matter-of-factly, "and I'm thirty in a few months. The choice seemed logical. I won't be renewing my contract next season."

Somewhere in his head, Osamu had just assumed that his friends would be playing volleyball forever, even though he knew it wasn't logically possible. Had time really passed quickly enough for retirements to start happening, passed quickly enough that he was still in a similar place to where he'd started?

"Well, shit," Osamu replies, because he damn doesn't know what else to say. Studying Suna's face yields no answers. Osamu suspects that he's had to come to terms with it a long time ago.

He hands back the cigarette. Suna laughs softly.

"Honestly? You look like you need it more than I do," Suna says, taking out a lighter from his pocket. Osamu watches as the flame flickers for a few moments, casting patterns over Suna's track jacket. He holds it back out for Osamu to take.

"Nah, I quit ages ago," Osamu remarks. "Changes the smell of my food, or something."

They lapse into momentary silence, but Osamu's brain is working about a mile a minute, trying to process the information that Suna's just given him. Trying to process what it all means. Trying to process the fact that his classmates are all working towards bigger and better things, entering new stages in their lives. Aran, in Italy for the next season. Atsumu, in São Paulo. Even Kita, he knows, has employed a team of staff to help him run the farm due to increased demand.

"So? What are you going to do after you retire?" Osamu asks, pulling himself out of his momentary lapse into existential crisis mode.

"Travel, I think," Suna says, all nonchalant, but Osamu knows that this is probably something he's wanted to do for a while. "There's lots of places that volleyball took us, but it's not as if we had time to do whatever the hell we wanted to do."

A little part of Osamu can't help but feel like he's made himself scarce again— it's the illogical part of his brain talking. All of his friends, in some far-off corner of the universe, untouchable. No longer a few hours' shinkansen away. And he knows he's doing well here, he knows by all logical points of view he's maintaining a business that is only growing, but damn.

"Sounds nice," Osamu says instead, a little bit forcefully. He's not looking at him anymore, just looking down at his hands instead. "You've earned it."

He feels a tap on his head, and jumps out of his momentary reverie to see Suna's face peering at him curiously.

"Alright, spill," Suna says, curtly.

“What?”

“Don’t give me that shit. What’s gotten you like this? You’re sulking like Atsumu.”

Fuck.

Osamu pinches the space between his brow. He’s got a massive headache— he thinks he must be dehydrated from all of the booze. He doesn’t dare to look up at Suna.

“Do you think I'm boring, Rin? Everyone keeps goin’ up and doing shit— and here I am at the same goddamn restaurant. My hobbies are nonexistent. I haven’t posted on my Instagram profile in years. Even Tsumu’s about to go abroad.”

All of it comes out like a motherfucking waterfall, unfiltered, because he has no semblance of self control when he has this much alcohol and this much misery in his system. And he supposes it's a little bit out of place for him to say this kind of shit— he rarely even dumps his nonsense on anyone, but it's because it's Suna that he feels comfortable enough to spill the beans about how incredibly in a rut he feels.

Goddamn. He was doing fine up until last week, he really was.

“I dunno. I thought I was doin’ fine, until I wasn’t. I love what I do, I really do— but what next? I have no fucking clue.”

Suna takes a draft of his cigarette. Makes a show of it, almost, leaving Osamu in his own silence to watch the smoke fall from his lips, illuminated by the neon lights of the bar district.

“I think you just need to get laid,” is what Suna replies. Osamu’s jaw falls onto the floor. “When was the last time you let off steam, Osamu?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, but that’s a lie.

He knows that the last time was before his twenty-fifth birthday in Osaka, just before his previous scene partner announced she was getting married.

Like all things in Osamu’s life, getting into the rhythm, the subculture of BDSM had been a complete and utter accident. It had involved another drunken night out with Gin spilling out his guts about his current hyperfixation with orgasm denial. Involved Suna chiming in with advice that he’d passed on from other doms in the Kansai scene. It wasn’t often that Osamu found himself totally in the dark when it came to something, so naturally curiosity got the better of him.

He’d ended up trying close to every trick in the book. Ended up at munches and in-person instructive rope sessions, at play parties both public and private. He’d enjoyed it— there was always something that kept him coming back. And then life had sort of gone to shit.

Not that now is any better, he supposes.

“If you’re interested, I know someone experienced who’s looking for a switch,” Suna’s grin is wide, like a fox. “I think you’d be perfect. What do you say?”

—-

Osamu inspects the clear file that has been given to him, slid over the wooden surface of the table by perfectly manicured hands. There’s some Shonen Vai character on it that he doesn’t recognise, a tall man with two-toned hair wearing a maroon volleyball jersey. Inarizaki red, he thinks, off-handedly.

“Ah, sorry. It was the only file I had on hand— I got it from work,” Akaashi Keiji smiles down at him mildly, and Osamu can’t help but shake the feeling that he’s at some kind of business meeting. It’s a little bit unnerving.

He knows the man already, has spoken more than a few words to him in passing— but he doesn’t know him like this.

Had no idea that he was Suna’s experienced friend until Suna had slipped him his details and a time and place last week.

“Here are my latest test results, Miya-san.”

“I appreciate it,” he says, in reply, passing his over too. No clear file; his latest blood test results just folded into his back pocket like an absolute fucking madman. “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a bit rusty, it’s been a while.”

“That’s fine,” Akaashi replies, eyes flicking over the page certifying that Osamu’s in the clear of any diseases. “Did you look at the preferences list that I sent you? Any questions?”

“Do you have a preferred consent system? Are the colours okay?” Osamu asks, his finger tracking down Akaashi’s list. They’ve lucked out in the sense that their likes and dislikes are fairly compatible, both of them eager to switch for the other.

“The colours are fine,” Akaashi confirms, opening up what seems to be the notes app on his phone. Osamu knows that this is all part of the process, knows that it’s important for them to discuss details and expectations and limits, but part of him can’t help but feel like he’s experiencing some kind of warped therapy session every time.

It doesn’t make it easier that they have this sort of transactional relationship in the first place— Osamu knows that Akaashi frequents his restaurant; he sees him every Monday morning at eight forty a.m. sharp, presumably before work. During the morning rush. And there’s always a sense of recognition there, and Osamu throws in some extra onigiri for him every now and again, but for the most part they keep to themselves.

Why do they keep to themselves? Osamu frowns.

“I’m thinkin’ that it might be good to start off with something sorta simple. To test the waters out, y’know?” Osamu says, opening up the conversation between them. He shifts in his chair, assuming a more relaxed posture. Takes a sip of his iced latte, watches as Akaashi dips his eyes back to the list of his preferences.

Akaashi’s eyelashes are long, nose pointed and stately, the curve of his jaw slender. Osamu wonders what it would all look like in the morning light, bathed with the wash of dawn, flecks of sunlight catching the brown of his irises.

“Yeah, alright,” Akaashi replies, pensive. “With sex, or no?”

“Without is fine,” Osamu says. He knows himself enough to know that his patience has limits, but this is a condition he’d imposed on himself when he’d first started looking for partners. It was important for him to be able to establish chemistry without sexual contact first.

Somehow, he thinks that he and Akaashi won’t have any problems.

His gaze flicks back up, and Akaashi’s chewing on the straw of his drink— he’s chosen something straight-laced like oolong tea. The paper has almost disintegrated in the twenty minutes that they’ve been occupying this little corner of cafe Excelsior. Osamu wants to know what’s going on in his mind.

He peers at Osamu curiously for a moment, adjusting the collar of his own shirt.

“How familiar are you with ropes?” Akaashi says with a little smile, and Osamu grins.

—-

For all that he is, Osamu always looks forward to the afterword. He’d learnt the most about his past partners this way— what they were really like as people, the things that made them tick.

As it turns out, Akaashi cleans up his things with a kind of bare-minimum precision, with all of the practice of someone who has done this many times before. Clinical, effortless, not a single stroke wasted— sheets turned into the wash, clothes folded into some approximation of order, ropes hung up to air dry in a neat-enough knot.

Osamu himself is more meticulous— call it the practice of a chef or something, but it amuses him to learn things about Akaashi, from the tiny collection of novels that have a permanent fixture on his coffee table, to his preferred kind of tea, down to his collection of patterned socks. The fact that he’s able to count at least three stray airpod buds strewn around his 1LDK. The vinyls tessellated against a record player coated with a fine layer of dust, a haphazard assortment of musical genres— city pop, teenage angst-pop, and Chopin. Bokuto’s national team jersey, framed on his wall alongside a little collection of John Singer Sargent watercolour prints.

The mind of a writer, he supposes.

“Did it work for you?” Akaashi asks him, returning from the laundry with several of Onigiri Miya onigiri on hand. He throws one over towards him, and Osamu catches it squarely in his palm. It’s one of the salted salmon varietals, of which he knows Akaashi is fond of himself.

Full circle, he thinks, shaped from his hands this morning, finding their way back into his grasp tonight.

“What d’you think?” Osamu asks, a little bit sheepish.

There’s a blush that fights its way onto his cheeks. He pretends to be preoccupied with carefully pulling the tabs on the plastic wrap encasing the sheet of nori.

Akaashi raises his eyebrow in amusement, sitting down across from Osamu on the carpeted rug. He places a few more onigiri on the coffee table in front of them, along with two bottles of iced red tea. His hair is wet. Osamu carefully watches a bead of water fall from his cropped hair, trailing towards the nape of his neck. Carefully laments the space in between them. There is plenty of room next to Osamu on the couch, and yet Akaashi had—

“You’d be surprised,” he says, uncapping the twist-lid of his tea. “I’ve had plenty of partners who were enthusiastic during scenes that had slightly differing opinions in the aftermath.” Akaashi gives him a rueful little smile, taking a swig of the honey-coloured liquid. A droplet clumsily falls down his chin, and he hears Akaashi curse under his breath.

“I guess it’s part of the whole act of it— reflecting on what you like, what you don’t like. What your body reacts to. What your mind feels comfortable with,” he says, catching Osamu in the eye. “I guess it makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Osamu says, taking a bite into his onigiri. Tastes the crisp roast of his nori contrast against the soft texture of the rice, the salty-sweetness of market-fresh salmon. The process, he knows down to every single step. It’s familiar, pleasing. Helps to anchor him to the foreign-ness of the whole situation, to the comfortable sort of tension that is their recent arrangement. “I know that. It’s just— all coming back to me, I guess. I hope I didn’t seem too… green.”

Akaashi chuckles, and a fond little smile makes its way onto Osamu’s own lips. How they got here, Osamu has no idea. How he could have dared to imagine this, he has no idea.

Okay— that for the most part is a lie. Osamu knows he’s next in line for World’s Most Stagnant Man, knows that any day now he’s going to wake up, liquidate all of his assets (two restaurants), and then live on a ranch in Okinawa for the rest of his days.

Was this beneficial to his mental state? Did he feel invigorated? He wasn’t sure yet. It felt good, definitely, and Akaashi had the potential to be everything he wanted in a partner, but life-changing? They’d have to work on that.

“Nice choice of words.” Akaashi smirks, carefully unwrapping his own onigiri, and the pin drops that he's talking about their colour system. Osamu pinches the space in between his brow.

“That was unintentional, but I’m more than happy to take the credit for it,” Osamu replies, smiling.

“If you’d like, I could let you take the credit for a few other things,” Akaashi says.

His tone is blasé, as if it’s as easy to him as changing clothes. It sets off something in Osamu, a kind of fundamental urge in him to take up the unspoken challenge in his words.

He takes another bite of his onigiri. Acts like he’s pondering Akaashi’s offer for a moment. Watches the silver light of the Tokyo skyline cast patterns across his skin.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Osamu replies, failing to keep the smile out of his voice.

—-

In the middle of his break, his phone pings with a message from Suna.

It’d been a long weekend, and not the good kind— several of his front staff had come down with some kind of stomach flu, which had meant that he’d had to call in some pretty desperate favours to anyone and everyone he knew. And yet they’d still ended up fairly short, with customers a little bit irritated about long wait times, and a line stretching outside the door.

And of course, he’s thankful that his restaurant could afford such success, but god, it could be tiring.

He swipes the message open with one hand, lunch in the other. Takes slow bites of the awful fruit salad sandwich that he’d swiped from the conbini next door. Sits propped up by a gutter, in the dingy little alley space in between his restaurant and the next building over. Osamu finds himself itching for a cigarette in his pocket that he knows that he won’t find.

There's a travel advert plastered on the wall captioned Escape To Europe!, in comically large font. Osamu thinks that he's looking at a picture of a generic European countryside, but he's not entirely sure, because someone’s done and tagged the half the wall with convenient red spray paint.

Suna (18:23pm)

> How did it go?

 

Osamu (18:24pm)

> Fine.

As far as first encounters went, his time with Akaashi had been one of the better ones. He had a sort of different quality to him— as if he didn't have anything that he felt that he needed to prove. As if he was entirely comfortable in his own skin, down to every blemish and every stretch mark. It’d been refreshing.

It’d helped somewhat that they'd been familiar with each other beforehand, Osamu thinks. They'd sort of breached the barrier of being strangers already— Osamu knows that sometimes his own reservations made him come across wrongly as prickly or disdainful.

Suna (18:26pm)

> Just fine?

His eyes pan back up to the advert on the wall.

He thinks about a Sicilian sun warm on his back, thinks about the sweet smell of spring and sourdough baking in the oven. Thinks about walking through vineyards, everything green with the promise of a fine harvest. The salt of the ocean palpable in the air.

Osamu thinks about some warped, kind of idealised landscape that he knows doesn't exist. Thinks about a room overlooking this dream horizon. Away from the relentless barking of the Tokyo cityscape, away from hours stuck in traffic and early mornings at the unpleasant stickiness of the market.

He thinks that his dream European chateau getaway would have a king bed with thread count sheets worth more than a month of his salary. The air conditioning would be always blasting a cool twenty four degrees celsius, far cry from his own shitty little fan in his own apartment that threatens to topple over every time he turns it on. There'd be a kitchen double the size of his current living room. In the corner, a stack of cookbooks with more recipes than he has ever time for— Rezedpi, Silverton, Crenn, et al. Maybe a little white-haired kitten running around his legs. And tucked into the end of his bedroom, a little reading nook with a cushy set of two armchairs.

Fuck, Osamu thinks. Is he really that lonely?

Just fine, he texts back to Suna, and then tenuously places his face in his hands.

—-

Akaashi’s apartment is nice. It’s not quite as new as Osamu’s own, the furnishings a little worse for wear, but the living space is a comfortable enough size by Tokyo standards. His bedroom window overlooks a view of Yebisu Garden Place, trees lit up with thousands of twinkling lights. Most of the time, Akaashi keeps the curtains drawn— they are too high up for anyone to see them, and his ceiling lights are far too bright to keep any sort of mood going while they’re establishing a scene.

Tonight, Osamu’s thankful for it, amongst other things. Thankful for the silhouette of the city pressed up against the smooth candour of Akaashi’s skin, thankful for the glint it casts on the tiny opal beads stitched onto his garters. He’d already kissed away the gloss that Akaashi’d applied to his lips long ago, but he figured that would have glistened, too.

And they’re done for tonight, Osamu knows, as Akaashi flicks off the last of the garments from his body, as he carefully peels away the stockings clinging to his thighs. As he wipes down a little bit of the sweat pooling on Osamu’s neck with a gentle cloth, glasses back on his nose from their place on the nightstand. Osamu has calmed down from all of it too, heart no longer caught in his throat, thighs no longer burning. A part of him satisfied, a part of him still wanting.

After coming down from his high, Akaashi stroked his hair like any good partner, sat him up with pillows propped up against the headrest. Made sure he was alright, etc. The whole aftercare shebang. The full routine.

“How’re you feeling?” Osamu asks.

“Good,” Akaashi says, lightly. He procures a linen robe from his closet, wrapping it around his bare form. One of the ties trails along the floor as he sits on the little stool near his bed stand. It looks soft to touch— Osamu wants to grab out and reach it. “Kinda hungry.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” Osamu replies, with a little laugh. He feels good too, as if he’s completed a decent stint at the gym, endorphins still running through his veins. They hadn’t even gotten too involved, all things considered, the scene they negotiated lacked penetration— but he feels like he’s just finished a marathon anyway.

He watches as Akaashi’s brows furrow, before he feels something soft hit his stomach. Osamu looks down, feels the fabric in his hands. It’s a bath towel, similar to the one he’d used last time.

“You can shower first, if you’d like,” Akaashi says, lips pressed together in thought, spare hand flicking through some app on his phone. “How do you feel about tsukemen?”

—-

The first time that Osamu had gone out for ramen at some unholy time in the morning, he had returned with takeaway in the form of explosive food poisoning, and he had promptly resolved to never get midnight ramen again.

The second time was with Atsumu, because for what it's worth, Osamu can pretend all he wants that he’s putting on an egotistical front, but he knows that he’s unable to deny his brother anything. Pride willing.

Hence the idea of midnight ramen has always been a little bit of a wary experience in Osamu’s eyes. The shop that Akaashi brings them to looks to be no exception to the rule— the place is a bit shit, a giant lucky cat dating at least thirty odd years adorning the register, old frayed cigarette adverts plastered across cracked wallpaper. Everything crimson, from the glow of red plastic lanterns, down to the tenuous crackle of fluorescent ceiling lights. The colours are vibrant enough that Osamu can barely discern the details of the menu, which comes only in the form of a ticket machine placed in the corner of the shop. He lets Akaashi order first— tsukemen, extra chashu pork on the side— and follows his lead, like he always does.

“How d’you find this place?” Osamu asks him, when they are seated at the counter, tickets handed to the chef. They aren’t the only ones crazy enough to turn up at quarter past midnight it seems— there are several salarymen next to them, all in varying stages of disarray.

“The internet,” Akaashi deadpans, and Osamu raises an eyebrow in turn. “No, really. Have you used tabelog before, Osamu-san? As in the food review site. People don’t fuck around on tabelog, you know.”

Osamu knows he’s notoriously terrible at social media. He knows just enough and then some to one-up his brother, and to keep in contact with his family and friends, but he tries not to doom scroll too much. He’s busy with other things, after all. Busy with his restaurant, busy with his existential crisis.

“I can't say I have,” Osamu says, slowly. “Usually I just go to restaurants that get recommended to me in person.”

“I’m a little bit terrible at sleeping sometimes,” Akaashi explains, a little rueful. “So I go out late at night every so often. To clear my head, the whole works. To look for new places to eat. This was one of those places.”

The chef turns to them with their food, places it on the countertop after a few quick moments of preparation. Two bowls: one bearing the noodles, thin slices of pork fanned out between a slow boiled egg. The other holds a dark coloured broth, garnished with fine slices of spring onion and nori. Osamu wasn't really hungry before, but he certainly is now. The aroma of the chashu and the soup make him salivate— he can practically smell the savoury flavour coming off in waves.

The both of them offer up a quick thanks before digging in. It’s as every bit delicious as Akaashi had implied it to be— the supple chewiness of the noodles, the fatty texture of the pork, all of it married together with the acidity and salt of the thick broth. It’s good. Good enough that Osamu doesn’t mind the food poisoning that he knows might be in store for him as soon as he gets home.

They don’t exchange many words as they eat, but Osamu listens anyway— the look of contentment on Akaashi’s face as he eats is definitely something else. He could probably convince himself into thinking it was comparable to some of the ones he makes in bed.

God.

Osamu forces his monkey brain back into the confines of his pants, willing himself to continue focusing on the food.

The ramen is good. Really fucking good.

Maybe this is it, he thinks. The sign from the gods. His one true calling. The light at the end of the tunnel, et. cetera, et. cetera.

Maybe he needs to open Ramen-ya Miya.

—-

To Osamu, Akaashi feels experienced in every sense of the word— Osamu likes that he has a sense of worldliness about him, that he has an opinion about almost everything. He knows a handful about Akaashi's exploits in the years after high school— knows that he's perpetually working on a novel, knows that he's made a name for himself as an editor in a publishing company. Knows that he still features in Instagram posts with Bokuto, with Konoha, knows that he occasionally will show up on Kodzuken's twitch streams.

All second-hand, all hearsay.

And now— he knows Akaashi like this. Arched across the bulk of his thigh, back sloped, the swell of his ass flushed pink. Gorgeous in every sense of the word, as Osamu studies the microexpressions he makes when his palm makes contact with Akaashi’s skin. The way that he bites down on the left corner of his lip, the flutter of his eyelids shut with every sharp intake of breath. Everything, down to the little collection of freckles that splatter across his collarbone, to the crescent-moon birthmark on the back of his knee.

He knows Akaashi like this, catalogues every little moan and little whimper that falls from his lips, catalogues the high-pitched keen that he utters when Osamu slides his fingers just right. Knows what he sounds under the haze of subspace, brain fogged with endorphins and all of the other shit that makes this kind of stuff worthwhile. Osamu knows him under a Tokyo skyline, knows how his body looks after dinner and before dinner, knows how it casts shadow at dawn and dusk under grey cotton sheets.

Osamu knows all of this. He feels like he doesn’t know anything at all.

—-

Like a lot of other people her generation, Osamu's mother enjoys video-calling her children out of the blue, completely unprecedented. No sign of warning beforehand— Osamu knows not to pick up by now if he's in the middle of important shit. It's likely that she's just wanting to tell him about some marvellous strawberry daifuku that she'd encountered weaving through the countryside, or how she got the latest Celine bag at a discounted rate by charming the sales assistant. (She's done that more than a few times now. He wouldn't be surprised if she had a business reselling this shit on the side.)

She calls him right before night's service, when she knows that they are having family meal before opening. His sous chef, Arima-kun, has prepared a Chinese-style meal with egg rice and slivers of lap cheong— it's delicious, rightfully so.

"Samu," his mother says, in her I-want-something-now voice. He knows this tone, has heard it countless times during his childhood and even more when he’d left the nest. "Would you be a dear and send some produce to your grandmother? She's been in a bad mood lately, as you know— feeling the withdrawal of your grandfather, I assume— maybe a little bit of Tokyo glamour would cheer her up."

That's easy and reasonable enough, he thinks, so he shrugs.

"Sure," he says, motioning to elaborate until his mother cuts him off again.

"Oh, and you have a cousin visiting Tokyo from Okinawa in a week's time, would you be able to show him around a bit? Doesn't need to be anything too much, just the usual Skytree, Toyosu Market, Disneyland kind of stuff—"

Osamu sighs.

"And Mori-san— you know Mori-san, don't you? She used to visit us when you both were still in high school. Anyways, her daughter is doing a school project on the food service industry, and she was wondering whether she could interview you, nothing too long, but it would help her out a lot—"

"Mum—"

"Give my regards to Nakaichi-san and his wife, wouldn't you? She finally gave birth to a baby boy— they've been trying now for close to ten years. It's a miracle, let me tell you— do you mind dropping off some flowers to the hospital? Just something simple, his wife loves peonies, but she's allergic to calla lilies, so don't get her any of those— Samu? Are you still listening?"

"Yes," he says. He thinks that there's a vein about to burst on his forehead somewhere. He's going to need dental work from how hard he's been clenching his jaw over the past few minutes. "Let me— give me a second to write that all down."

His mother can be a handful, but at the end of the day, she was the one who'd singlehandedly busted her ass to raise both of them. Had worked smarter and harder than anyone else, had worked her way up the corporate ladder whilst still managing to find time to give them care and a proper education and carefully prepared bento lunches. And he's aware that family isn't a transaction, but Osamu cares about her enough to cater to her whims somewhat, even if she can get a little bit unreasonable.

This is why all of her words carry some kind of weight. Why she's probably one of two people that have the ability to pull the rug from under his feet.

"Have you been eating well, Samu?" she asks, again, squinting at the screen. She's given into wearing her glasses all the time now, he notices.

"I was literally just having dinner until you called," he says, groaning. If he were younger, he would have gotten a slap on his wrist for his tone.

"Good, good," she says. Osamu can see her preparing her own dinner. "I hope you've given a little bit of thought to what we talked about before, you know. You have the resources and the willpower to branch out a little bit— why not take the leap?"

She looks up at him and smiles.

"I hear Tsumu's doing well in Brazil," she says, with an air of feigned nonchalance.

Osamu's brows furrow.

—-

“Do you have strong opinions about the music played at restaurants?” Akaashi asks him, another night. Another midnight ramen joint, this time in an alleyway somewhere in Nakameguro, down by the river. Osamu can see the golden glow of the Autumn illuminations somewhere off in the distance, the trees lining the bank covered in hundreds of glittering red lights. He’s already missed the last train, but Osamu’s resigned himself to not thinking too deeply about it.

“I have an opinion. I dunno whether I’d call it strong,” Osamu replies, in between slurps of his tantanmen. The broth is lightning spicy, just as he likes it, with a layer of chilli oil thick enough to look like a crimson oil slick. “There’s an art to it, actually. Sort of. It depends on who you ask.”

“Hmm,” Akaashi hums, pensive. His little carafe of sake has long gone cold. “Can I guess?”

“Go for it.” He’s amused. Osamu knows the answer to this, of course— it had been something that he’d been told to by a senior at the little teishoku-ya that was his first restaurant job. Something that he’d heard discussed by famous restaurateurs and mom-and-pop breakfast and bedroom places alike. He’d heard every iteration of everything played at restaurants— from white noise and silence to top forties pop music, to whale sounds and classical.

“Theoretically, you’d want the music to sound good enough to keep the sort of ambience you’re going for in the restaurant, but you wouldn’t want it to be too familiar, right?” Akaashi asks, picking up and moving around the thick slices of pork atop his ramen. “Because playing stuff that’s too popular or too recognizable pulls the diner out of the experience. Like if you’re in the middle of a twenty course set menu and Arashi starts playing when the chawanmushi comes to the table…”

Osamu laughs.

“Nothin’ wrong with a little Arashi,” he remarks. “But yeah. You’re spot on, at least when it comes to the general consensus at fancy restaurants.”

It’s his turn to pick at his ramen. There really is a lot of chilli oil on here, Osamu thinks.

He knows that Akaashi’s asked this question because there’s a tinny little speaker placed some ways away from them spouting out a distinctive enka track that Osamu has no hope of placing.

“I mean— at the end of the day, what does it really matter? There are a lot of chefs out there who talk about food as some kinda ritualistic experience. Everythin’ about the food— from the colour hue of the lightbulbs, to the precise temperature when warmin’ up dinner plates in the oven,” he says, casting his gaze away. “At the end of the day, good food will speak for itself. Isn’t that what you’re tryin’ to prove by bringing me to these shithouse joints?”

Akaashi looks at him, almost in shock, and then barks out a chuckle.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, a little grin peeking around the corners of his lips. “I’m just always hungry.”

“That book that you’re writin’ doesn’t happen to be about a chef, does it?” Osamu asks. “Is that why you know such an obscene amount about this stuff? I don’t even have cast iron cookware around my kitchen, y’know. I know you know that’s the premium shit. The French culinary school shit. I saw it hung up above your stove top.”

“Yeah,” Akaashi taps the edge of his bowl with his chopsticks, idly. There’s a sort of scheming expression on his face that Osamu is no stranger to. “I’m writing about a successful twenty-something chef who enjoys being tied up in his free time.”

Osamu can’t help the laughter that escapes from his mouth.

“Don’t tease me, Akaashi-kun, my stomach can’t handle it right now,” Osamu remarks.

“Who said I was teasing? You asked a question, I replied.” Akaashi leans back in his chair, a little precariously. It’s high enough to reach the counter, and rocks on one uneven leg as he moves.

From Osamu’s line of sight, the electric red of the river illuminations casts a rim light across Akaashi’s frame, highlighting the curve of his neck, the ink of his hair, the tiny little gold piercing hidden at the top of the shell of his right ear.

Osamu wonders what it would be like, to reach out and touch it. The cold of the metal against the warm of Akaashi’s ear. All of their shared intimacy, and yet this is the kind of trade off that comes with a transaction such as theirs— everything planned, nothing out of place.

“It’s sci-fi. I’m writing a sci-fi novel,” Akaashi says, voice suddenly down an octave. He’s nervous, Osamu notes. “Well. I wrote a sci-fi novel. It’s going to be published soon, actually. It’ll be my second published work.”

“Shit, that’s incredible,” Osamu knows that his eyes have gone wide. “You’re incredible, Akaashi-kun.”

“I’m not— Thanks, Osamu-san, but—“ Akaashi’s smile is devoid of any kind of mirth at all. “Plenty of people get published. As long as you have a story worth telling and one right person willing to listen… I mean to say, whether or not it’ll be successful is something else entirely.”

“Sorry,” Akaashi follows up, a little soberly. He finishes off his sake. “You didn’t need to hear that. I should just be grateful, shouldn’t I? God.”

There’s something about Akaashi’s rant that doesn’t quite sit well with Osamu, and he thinks that it’s in part due to the tantanmen, but also in part due to the fact that it’s the kind of story that matches his own. Because were they even supposed to have their shit sorted out by the age of thirty? Was it the continual exposure from their Olympic-champion counterparts that shed a kind of different perspective on what they were supposed to do with the trajectory of their lives?

Cue the soul crushing information about their parents having their first house and first kid by the age of twenty eight. Owning property in Tokyo was next to impossible for the average person; Osamu knows that he’s lucky enough to be almost there after close to ten years of work. And yet.

“Tell me. How do you measure success, Akaashi-kun?” Osamu asks him, lucidly. “You said it before— that I was successful. What’re the metrics involved? Would I still be successful if I made stacks of money, but hated what I did?”

Akaashi ponders his question for a moment. Takes another slurp of his ramen. Clears his throat a little, before he speaks.

“Well first of all, I was talking about my hypothetical character, chef Miya of Sushiya Miya fame,” Akaashi grins, “And there’s a number for that, actually. For the number of copies of a book sold to be considered a success. Fourteen thousand. It’s fourteen thousand copies. That’s a pretty good indication that you’ll get a second and a third chance. It’s two strikes and you’re out, in the writing business.”

“I don’t know what that number is for restaurants, but I’d argue that the line outside Onigiri Miya on a Monday morning is indication enough,” he continues. “And I think being successful and being happy can be two things independent of each other.”

Osamu swallows the lump in his throat.

“I don’t, by the way,” Osamu remarks, “I don’t hate what I do. On the other hand, I fucking love it. But sometimes…”

“Yeah. I know,” Akaashi casts his gaze away. Osamu’s hands itch, chopsticks long placed aside. “I can tell that you love what you do. Everyone can. I do too. Love writing, I mean.”

“We’re luckier than a lot of people, I think.”

Akaashi looks back at him, slowly. Osamu wonders what kind of words are passing over his mind. Wonders of the kind of stories that Akaashi has in his head, dreams of far-off places, dreams of fantastical landscapes. He wants to understand what it’s like, to have to chase some metric that could easily become a marker of self-worth.

Who would he be, in one of Akaashi’s stories? Surely he didn’t have enough presence to be the love interest. A side character, perhaps. The smoking hot bartender that owns the tavern in the middle of the adventurer’s journey. A place of relative rest.

“Yeah,” Akaashi says, voice a little bit husky. “I guess we are.”

—-

Some sort of thing between them seems to just click afterwards, because the weeks following their chilli-oil fuelled tantanmen exploration, Osamu has, unfortunately, never been hornier in his entire life.

Never been hornier, in the sense that he finds his thoughts drifting to Akaashi on a few accounts during his work day. Most of which are vaguely inappropriate. Some of which are definitely inappropriate.

He thinks of Akaashi in leathers, little shorts which barely cover the swell of his ass. A little midriff with a heart-shaped cut-out of skin baring his chest. Matching collar to boot, garters loose and sliding down his knees haphazard with every jolt of movement. Thinks about his expression, fucked out and blissed and open around his cock, whispering filthy things directly into his ear.

He thinks of Akaashi, the palm of his wrists digging into Osamu’s back, his own hands tied with rope. The feeling of being unable to move, unable to speak, of pure sensation, the friction of rutting into the bedsheets underneath him.

He thinks of Akaashi, gorgeous as himself. Chest littered with dozens of marks from his own handiwork, lovely under his hands. Moaning, as Osamu focuses the camera onto the view where they’re connected, Akaashi’s hips shaking with the aftershocks of an orgasm.

The real thing, Osamu finds, is much better than he could ever have imagined. So much better, in fact, that he finds himself willing to try new things. He’s willing to try new things. Only for Akaashi. Especially for Akaashi.

One new thing in particular had been something that they had negotiated, a conversation caught under the setting sun, the gentle thrum of a rice cooker in the background. Akaashi had been the one to bring it up.

He was curious, he had said, and Osamu knew at that moment that he would do anything to sate it.

So as always, Osamu gets to work. He prefers to work without prying eyes— it would ruin the surprise, after all— and asks Akaashi to come over an hour and a half later than usual. It is his home kitchen instead of the marble countertops of Onigiri Miya, but it feels no less familiar to him as he opens his knife roll, selects his 270mm Narihira from its slot. It feels no less familiar as he works, preparing Hiramasa kingfish, blue-fin toro (Toyosu), squid, cuttlefish, king crab, uni (Hokkaido). He massages the octopus by hand, a distant part of him thankful that years of competitive volleyball had built up stamina in his arm muscles. The garnishes come next— ikura, tobiko, shiso. He juliennes some white radish into beautiful little white crystal ribbons.

Osamu cleans up, organises his mise en place, and then promptly strips his apron to shower. He showers— unscented soap, as always, not the cherry blossom stuff that he knows Akaashi uses— and then he plates.

It is, undoubtedly, the hardest thing he’s ever had to plate in his life, he thinks. Nothing in his four-five odd years as a line cook, as a stock chef, as a sous chef, could have ever prepared himself for anything like this. But he manages it, somehow, artfully lining up the cuts of delicate sashimi with all of their accoutrements to his satisfaction. He places them in order as he would a tasting menu— lighter fish first, heavier after. The kingfish is paired with a light hint of yuzu zest, the cuttlefish with a sweet soy. The arrow squid is left to its own devices, supple and chewy and sweet. The ikura is next, atop a tiny bed of the rice from his restaurant, seasoned with sushi vinegar, and the octopus nestled next to it. And then comes the bluefin tuna— akami, chuutoro, ootoro, in succession.

His shoulders ache by the end of it, by the awkwardness of the task, but as he hears Akaashi let himself in, as he hears his name die on Akaashi’s throat mid-surprise, he thinks that it is already worth the effort.

“Thanks for waitin’,” he says, a kind of mischievous drawl.

“You,” Akaashi says, and Osamu delights in the sheer hunger he sees in the man’s expression, “I can’t believe— I was expecting a bit of whipped cream and chocolate, Osamu-san, not— this.”

“I mean— not hard to just pack it up and eat it normally, if you’d like,” he teases, and Akaashi immediately replies with a no, don’t you dare, but his eyes are sparkling.

It almost makes up for the feeling of the cold sashimi on his bare chest.

—-

And so, like a dutiful child, Osamu eventually gets around to all of the shit that his mother had asked of him.

He packs away Aomori pears and an assortment of tsukemono, Hokkaido vegetables, sweet potatoes half the size of his forearm, into a little cardboard box. Sends them by express courier to his grandmother's place in Tanabe, forking the cost for the arm-and-a-leg delivery because she lives in the middle of the fucking mountains.

Waits in line for two hours at Tokyo Skytree with his cousin, who has turned out to be an easily impressionable thirty-something year old with a wife and three kids, all under the age of six. That day, Osamu encounters the frantic joy of diaper accidents and literal crying over boredom and spilt ice cream. He grits his teeth as he foots the bill— highway fucking robbery, considering the view is shit in the rain.

Mori-san's daughter is an unimpressed fifteen year old who doesn't have the least bit of interest in school or the food industry as a whole. He learns this over their hastily scheduled zoom interview, in which she looks as if she's playing games on the side the entire time, controller sneakily in her hands. They talk for two hours about Breath of the Wild instead.

And well— Nakaichi-san's baby is cute. That's all he can really say.

Osamu eats well, as he always does. Eats well in the sense that in between meals at his own restaurant, and meals with Akaashi, his stomach is never in danger of forgetting the taste of a well-prepared dish. That much hasn't changed, will probably never change.

"Alright," Osamu tells his mother, over another impromptu video call. "I've done all of your tasks. Can I collect my reward, now?"

"Samu," she chides. Her hair looks styled— she's called him just before a date, or something of the sort. "Of course you did them out of the goodness of your heart, didn't you?"

"Sure," Osamu says, hunched over his phone in the middle of the kitchen. At the end of the day, he's Atsumu's brother, after all. Such kind of childishness is warranted, if anything. "Sure."

"Don't give me that tone, Osamu," his mother pouts. "Not after I've prepared a list of potential candidates for your next branch expansion. I've done all of the market research for you already— well no, I got one of my juniors to do it, but that's beside the point— I hope you're seriously thinking about this, Osamu. You gotta keep this kind of success going, you know? That way you can retire at age fifty and buy me a mansion in the middle of Kyoto."

"Mum—"

"I want an expensive dog, you hear?" She laughs in between sips of a takeaway cup of coffee. "One of those big white fluffy ones. The ones that look like polar bears. What are they called again?"

—-

The longer he’s around Akaashi, the more Osamu notices little details that in every way begin to shape his view of the man, shape the intangible mess inside his skull that is however the hell he feels about him. The little details, like how he hoards receipts for the smallest things, including two hundred yen purchases from the Family Mart down the street. Like how he’ll always forget to unplug the sink after doing the dishes. The peach scent of his chapstick. The gooseflesh commonly imprinted on his forearms.

Osamu sees the little details, like how Akaashi moves quickly and without haste, moves with someone with a singular purpose. Moves carelessly at times, subsequently knocking into things like cabinets and corners. He doesn’t think it’s a lack of spatial awareness— Akaashi’s just prone to episodes of tunnel vision.

(“Did I give you that bruise?” Osamu asks, one day, pointing at a large purple mark on Akaashi’s left arm.

Akaashi looks up at him and winces, slowly, as if he’s recalling the pain from the incident.

“No,” he says, “I wasn’t looking where I was going and elbowed a vending machine.”)

Osamu finds himself thinking about the details— like how Akaashi will snooze his alarm at least six times before actually waking up. Like how some nights he really won’t sleep at all, hunched over his laptop on the dining table with a billion cups of coffee as companion.

When he's over on those nights, Osamu finds himself up, too. Making their second (or third) dinner of the night— usually whatever's in the contents of his pantry at the time. Tonight it's tobiko pasta made from udon noodles, garnished with sliced ribbons of nori and a golden yolk. Full of carbs— the intention is to help Akaashi pass out by way of food coma. It's ten past three in the morning.

Akaashi’s so engrossed in his work that he startles when Osamu places the food in front of him. Osamu chuckles as he does, placing down a portion for himself too.

"Sorry," he apologises, handing him a fork. "I'll make a little bit more noise next time."

"No, it's okay," Akaashi replies, finally looking up from his screen. His face softens perceptibly when he sees the meal in front of him.

"It's not much, sorry," Osamu says. He's exhausted after a day at work too— when he cooks, it's generally stuff like this. Things that are easy to prepare, nothing extravagant or fancy. That was the way of being a chef, after all— you gave your all to your food served up at a restaurant, only to crave simplicity at home.

"You're kidding," Akaashi chuckles, "If I were by myself it would be a box of Pretz and a tangerine, if I were lucky."

He sets his work aside as they eat together. In silence, illuminated only by the soft glow of the kitchen lights. Akaashi slurping down his pasta like a man possessed, hungry even with the dark circles prominent under his eyes. Osamu tends to savour his food a little bit more— he's not a slow eater by any means (he couldn't afford to be, growing up in a household with Tsumu), but he's convinced that Akaashi's appetite is like this because he inhales everything so fast that his stomach doesn't notice that it's full.

"You don't need to do this for me, you know," Akaashi says, after his bowl is clean. "But thank you. Really, thank you."

Osamu just shrugs. Akaashi moves to collect their plates, but Osamu doesn't let him. He's not one of those people who particularly enjoys bringing bedroom dynamics into his lifestyle— he knows that it very much works for some people, has heard of doms taking the decision-making process out of everyday tasks for their subs to take some stress out of their day.

This is not that. This is just him giving a fuck.

"Are you up because you need to work, or because you can't sleep?" Osamu asks, instead.

"Bit of both," Akaashi replies, the corners of his lips upturned in a little self-deprecating smile. "Even after all of these years, I struggle with editing through my own drafts."

"Really?" Osamu's curious. About the whole process of storymaking, about how all of it worked. He's never been good at this stuff— he can appreciate a compelling narrative, but wouldn't even know where to begin. "I would've thought that it would be second nature to ya."

Akaashi laughs, humourlessly.

"Did you sprout out of the womb knowing how to make a mille-feuille? Of course not.” Akaashi takes a long sip of his tea. It's probably long gone cold.

“Touché,” Osamu replies. He deserves that. Deserves that just as much as Akaashi deserves to be heard. So he listens.

“Humour me, then,” Osamu says, hanging up the last of the dishes on the drying rack. “How hard didya’ have to work to get your first book out, Akaashi-kun?”

There’s a long pause, the silence only occupied by the soft tapping of Akaashi’s typing. For a moment, Osamu thinks that he’s overstepped the boundaries between them. And then Akaashi speaks.

“I started writing pretty late, comparatively to my peers,” he says, quietly. “So yes, I had to work very hard. I devoured all of the lessons that I could, listened to the same lectures over and over again until I knew which parts were coming next. All the time I could possibly and mentally manage— I was studying during breaks at work, on the train, when I wasn’t napping or eating or just downright exhausted.

“People continually say that you have enough time, that there’s no rush, no point of drawing lines in comparison to people younger and better than you— but the world doesn’t quite work that way, does it?”

Osamu thinks back to his years back in culinary school. Thinks about the massive advantage that he’d had, starting from a place of relative privilege, starting from an age that was more or less accepted for junior positions in kitchens. Contrasts that to Akaashi, who’d been only indirectly honing his passion during a fifty hour week at work. And he knows that he’s worked just as hard— he’d just been lucky.

“It was a real struggle, you know? It was a real struggle coming home from a long day of work and actively choosing to do something I knew that I sucked at,” Akaashi says, all at once. He doesn’t take his eyes off the screen, even when Osamu pulls up the chair next to him. “I’m sure you of all people know.”

“I don’t know about that,” Osamu laughs. “There was a long period of time where I’d just go home and crash.”

He looks at Akaashi, even though his eyes are still glued to the screen. Looks at him, every little morsel of light that spills across his cheeks, across the lightness of his hands. Wonders how they got here, wonders about all the other little pockets of stillness that Akaashi carries with him wherever he goes.

“Don’t get me wrong, I figured out very early on that rest was equally as important,” Akaashi replies. Osamu sees him crack a small smile as he saves his work, closes his laptop. Drains the last of his tea, before motioning to stand up. He turns to smile directly at Osamu. “But look where we are now.”

And maybe it’s a trick of the light, or the lit-up trees of Yebisu Garden dotting the background, or just the frazzled kind of magic of three A.M., but Osamu’s suddenly overcome with the compulsion to kiss him. Overcome with the compulsion to hold him, to lavish every single iteration of praise into his neck, onto his skin. You’ve worked hard, he thinks. You’ve worked hard.

“C’mon,” Akaashi says, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. “Let’s go to bed.”

—-

Osamu’s routine goes something like this:

Five-thirty A.M.: wake up. Snooze his alarm for five minutes, then hobble over to the shower to actually wake up. Check his phone for any early morning texts from Akaashi, because he knows that the man sleeps at an ungodly hour. (If he even sleeps at all). Ignore the texts from Atsumu. Warily reply to some of them a few minutes after.

Six A.M.: drive to the local shotengai to pick up the day’s produce from Takeyama Oji-san who owns a farm up in Saitama.

Seven A.M.: get back to the restaurant. Drop some shit off, and then head back to his apartment to do paperwork. Try to stop thinking about Akaashi.

Midday to Eleven P.M.: work. Get distracted for the first hour of service, until the salted salmon runs out, and then get pulled back into thinking about Akaashi again. Save a couple of onigiri for him.

Eleven P.M.: go home, shower. Google, cost of plane tickets to Copenhagen, Denmark. Google, best tonkotsu ramen broth recipes. Google, what does a successful restaurant look like.

Google, is it normal to keep thinking about your fwb?

—-

Every so often, Osamu gets invited to chef gatherings, of sorts. Opening nights to new trendy burger joints and high-end Michelin star hopefuls, after-closing tasting menus in empty restaurants that usually seat two hundred. Wine with sommeliers that can distinguish particular harvest years of a particular type of red.

Ninety percent of the time, they’re chefs of similar calibre to him, people that he’d known through culinary school or through kitchens that he’d worked at. Everyone along the way, a snippet of the talent in Tokyo’s current food scene. But occasionally, the older chefs come along too, like tonight— Osamu thinks that he’s the youngest out of all of them by at least fifteen years. Youngest by at least fifteen years, and yet all of them are drinking him under the table— four rounds of sake later, and none of them look the least bit frazzled at all.

Witchcraft, he thinks, nursing the tiny ceramic cup in his hands. Witchcraft, the fact that the chefs around him are able to stomach all of this shit— all of this food and booze with no fear of acid reflux. Ever since he’d hit the tender age of twenty five, something had changed in him, intrinsically changed the makeup of his body— it was always the fucking acid reflux.

Today’s chef’s night out is shabu shabu. Was supposed to be, anyway.

They’re hovering around one of the larger tables at one of his friend’s teishoku restaurant, a portable gas burner at the centre of the table, large plot split into two for different varieties of soup. It’s the most chaotic iteration of shabu shabu that he’s ever had, shoyu and miso broths at a fiercely rolling boil, dozens of skewers with various meats and vegetables and tofu piled around the rim. Typical, proper shabu-shabu isn’t like this, not like some mutant amalgamation of hot pot and oden: it’s kind of a sacrilegious sort of display of crude fusion style cooking. But no one cares. It tastes good— so no one cares.

“Here, Miya-kun,” Koide-san hands him a particularly strange looking skewer, fished fresh out of the steaming miso broth. Something wrapped in tofu skin. “For you. Try it.”

Osamu thanks him, accepting the skewer. He cools it down with a few quick puffs, before biting into it. It’s hot as fuck— his tongue scalds, but he bites down into the savoury flavour of the inari, into the chewy, pillowy texture of the mochi hidden inside. All of it with a little hint of the miso that it has been cooked in. It’s delicious. He struggles to get it down his throat without choking— the hallmark of all good mochi.

“Good, right?” Koide’s looking at him for a reaction. “The wife made the mochi. Been a whole lot more interested in what I have to say about food after our trip ‘round France. I’m the happiest man on Earth.”

Koide grins at him, crows’ feet appearing around his eyes. The head chef at a one-Michelin-star Japanese restaurant, he’d met Koide through a mutual friend over a shared obsession of the subtleties of rice, of all goddamn things. Even in his late fifties, Osamu swears that he has more energy that he could ever bear to muster— Chef Koide’s Instagram page is a whole lot more lively than Osamu’s ever will be.

“She wasn't interested in your food before?” Osamu asks, cooking his tongue with a swig of cold beer. “You told me you guys have been married for what— almost thirty years, now?”

“Thirty-four years in July,” Koide replies, piling in a heap more skewers into the hot pot atrocity. He slaps Chef Oda’s hands away from the lobster, of which he’s in denial about being allergic to. “I’d be the typical geezer and tell you not to marry young, but that’d be a lie. I love it. Every day we learn new shit about each other.”

He grins around the rim of his highball glass.

“Was waiting for the day when she’d understand all of the food stuff. She got it before, but now she tries recipes at home like a woman possessed,” Koide tells him. “And suddenly like— all this stuff— the Michelin stars? The years of cooking? The book deals? Let me tell you, Miya-kun, it pales in comparison to this.”

"Y'know how people say that there are five love languages, Miya-kun? Like touch and words of assurance and gifts and all that kinda crap," Koide says, "I think mine is food. Making and sharing meals. Makes sense, you know? Love as hunger, and all of that shit."

He looks elated, as if he can’t do anything but smile. It’s infectious; the atmosphere is second to none in this little corner of Iida-san’s restaurant, steam rolling off the pot in waves of heat, everything warm— from the glow of the vintage lighting down to the alcohol flush on Osamu’s cheeks. Piles of food stacked high around the table in dozens of small woven baskets— seafood balls, chikuwa, pot stickers, water spinach, wagyu cut so thin that you can see through it. Everything warm.

It’s here that he dares to ask, here that Osamu knows that he’s around friends, around a company that will take care of him.

“Would you consider yourself successful, Koide-san?” Osamu asks, unable to hold himself back. He’s had one too many drinks, after all.

Koide peers at him for a split second, and then laughs.

“Miya-kun, I don’t think you gotta worry about that,” he replies. “I’ve seen the line that your shop gets in the wee hours of the mornin”. Let me tell you, your onigiri are a hot commodity around my wife’s office, and they’re over in Shibuya, for god’s sake.”

Osamu feels his face heat up. He’s not bashful by any means, but it is still incredibly humbling whenever he hears any chef above his stature praise his food.

“But to answer your question— yes. I’d consider myself successful, because why the hell not?” Koide gestures with the end of his fish ball skewer, pointing it toward Osamu. “At the end of the day, I get to decide whether somethin’ is a success or not. And if I get something out of it, I consider it a success.”

Osamu feels like he’s collecting data, almost. Different perspectives. Methods to calm down the storm brewing in his head. Should he be trying more? Trying less? Open up a new restaurant? He thinks he still has no fucking clue.

Maybe it is time to pack up and run away to Europe. Take a month off exploring Bordeaux, the lushness of its wine culture, the endless fields of grape vines. Spend a few days circling Paris, the ivy tipped exteriors of Le Marais, the warm sourdough served up at the pastels of La Fontaine.

Maybe he’d take Akaashi with him. Maybe he should take Akaashi with him.

“That answers your question?” Koide asks.

Osamu blinks.

“Sort of,” he replies. Koide’s unconvinced— it’s all over his face, one eyebrow up toward his receding hairline.

“Miya-kun,” Koide says, sternly. “If you worry this much, you’ll go grey before I will.”

He taps him on the head with the back of his chopsticks, before shoving a few more skewers into Osamu’s hands. One imitation crab, one eel ball, some thinly sliced pork.

“Take it as it comes, Miya-kun,” he says. “That’s all you gotta do.”

—-

The next time Akaashi and he meet, Osamu picks Akaashi up after an evening shift at Onigiri Miya. After all, Osamu's the only one crazy enough to own a car in the middle of Nakameguro, Tokyo— call it force of habit, or a chef's responsibilities. The little Mitsubishi pick-up he has is well kept, despite its apparent age— a relic that had come with him from his first shop in Osaka. He has to unlock the door by manually putting in the key.

He does so, opening the door for Akaashi to get into the passenger's. Akaashi looks tired, in every sense of the word. Tired, in the way there's a coffee stain on the collar of his shirt that Osamu thinks he may not have noticed in the first place. Tired, in the way that his normally interested chatter is a little bit more reserved. Tired, in the way he hasn't yet come to the realisation that his phone flashlight has been on for the past fifteen minutes.

"Something happen?" Osamu asks, at the next red light. Akaashi's apartment isn't far from his restaurant— on the east of Ebisu station bordering a tiny neighbourhood park and a row of standing bars. It's a short drive.

"Work happened," Akaashi says, not even bothering to feign a smile. His glasses are a little bit askew, low on his nose and warped around the temples. "Sorry, Osamu-san. I don't think I have the energy in me to do much tonight."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Osamu replies. The lights turn green; he slowly tips his foot on the gas pedal. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Not really," he says, quickly. And then, a little more certain of himself: "Can you tell me about your day, instead?"

"Yeah, of course," Osamu says, smoothly. He racks his brain briefly for something that springs to mind, and is presented with an immediate answer. "One of our front staff, Nakamura— he's this just-out-of-high-school fellow, he went and bought a fucking pizza oven— you know one of those huge ones that sit in your backyard? I don't even know how the hell he got it. Anyway, he insisted that he serve his cold pizza for family meal today— and that's how half of our staff went home sick."

"You're kidding."

"Nope, unfortunately," Osamu sighs, "Well, it makes for a hell of a good story. Poor kid was mortified. Never thought to check the expiry date on the cheese that he used, or something like that. I suspect that it'll be a while until he uses his oven again."

"Was the pizza even good?" Akaashi chuckles.

"No," Osamu smiles, "If it were actually decent, that would be one thing, but the kid just watched a fuckin' video on Youtube and thought that he was a master at makin' pizza— you know that shit takes years and generations to perfect."

"You gotta give it to him for having the guts, though," Akaashi replies. "I would never."

"When you work at a restaurant, you get funny ideas, I guess," Osamu groans, "But I really do think that pizza is one of those things that shouldn't be homemade— why devote all that time and effort into somethin' that's so accessible elsewhere? You could be wasting years and years of time and effort and never even get close to perfect."

Osamu takes a moment to check his blind spot, his rear view mirrors.

He parks his car in the little slot underneath Akaashi's apartment, one hand on the back of the passenger seat as he reverses his car backward. Neck arched to check his peripherals, chest stretched in a solid curve. Spins the wheel with his right hand, with the effortless sort of precision of someone who has done this thousands of times before.

When he's settled into the spot, he turns the engine off, and glances over to see Akaashi staring right at him, back ramrod straight. His eyes are wide.

"What?" Osamu asks.

The light in the parking lot is dim, but through the yellow cast of his car's roof lights, Osamu thinks that he can see a flush spread its way across Akaashi's cheeks. It stays there for a split second, before Akaashi turns his face away.

"Nothing," Akaashi mumbles, and then speaks up louder: "You know what? I think I've changed my mind."

Osamu’s brows stitch together.

“Are you sure?”

Akaashi taps his seat belt mechanism with a click. Gathers up his things, one foot out of the door. Narrows his eyes at Osamu.

“Yes,” he replies, turning on his heel with an incorrigible kind of smile. “I’m subbing, by the way.”

—-

The first unfortunate truth about being a Miya is this: Osamu knows that it’s next to impossible to keep anything to himself, away from the proximity of his brother. Be it pudding or hair gel or a goddamn crush, Atsumu wormed his way into finding out the truth in some manner or another, and vice versa. As much as Osamu didn’t want to know every single excruciating detail about his twin, it always found its way over to him somehow.

But of all the ways that Osamu thought that his brother would find out about his… nightly activities, he didn’t think it would be like this. Not like this as in through a grainy Facetime call, halfway across the world. Midday in São Paulo, midnight here in Tokyo. Not like this, just after both he and Akaashi had come down from a scene, showered and exchanging snacks on the shitty IKEA dining table of Akaashi's 1LDK.

Not like this, in the middle of Atsumu rattling off some story involving too much tequila at a team gathering. In the middle of him talking about how he's perfected some insane new kind of hybrid serve.

He sees the moment where the realisation sort of dawns on Atsumu's face, because he does that awful thing with his eyebrows that Osamu knows is signal for trouble.

Osamu braces himself for impact.

"Samu, why the hell do you have Bokkun’s MSBY jersey on your wall?" Atsumu all but squawks.

—-

The second unfortunate truth about being a Miya is this: when any of them want something, they'll stop at nothing to get it.

—-

He and Akaashi are sitting in an izakaya in the middle of Daikanyama this time, and it's a little bit nicer than their usual joints: the sign for the restaurant is wooden, printed in minimalist font, an ivy trellis adorning the corners of the sandstone walls. It's definitely one of the fancier izakayas that Osamu's been to, but the faire is no less the same kind of shit as usual— they order yakitori and some kind of house craft beer, sit on stools on a high counter that feels just a little bit sticky. The light in the place is dim, illuminated by vintage light bulbs with visible filaments. They cast long shadows on Akaashi's cheeks, bathe the both of them in a kind of strange nostalgic light.

"Is it really that bad?" Akaashi asks, with a little smile. "People fuck all the time. I'm sure your brother is no exception to the rule."

Osamu cringes, visibly.

"You did not just put that image into my brain," he says, taking a swig of his beer. He’ll need a third and a fourth by this point— he’s almost drained the contents of this one. Thank god he’d left his pick-up back at Akaashi’s.

“Sorry,” Akaashi replies, looking at least a little bit apologetic. “But I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve every right to use your dick as much as he does.”

“Stop,” Osamu groans, “Can we change the subject now?” Akaashi just laughs up at him. His glass is almost empty too— Osamu promptly flags down the bartender for refills.

“Alright, alright,” Akaashi nods to the bartender in thanks, fingers already fiddling around with the rim of the glass. “But what on earth did Suna-san tell him exactly? Did he just put two and two together that we were—“

“Fucking? No,” Osamu sighs. “He assumed that we were together.”

“Ah,” Akaashi’s tone turns a little clipped. Osamu picks up on this straight away— he knows Akaashi’s body language by now, after all— the way that he wraps his own arm around his chest is signal enough that he’s a little bit on the tense side.

And Osamu knows better than to hastily come to conclusions, but his brain is a mess of contradictions at the moment— he wonders what he’s done wrong, to elicit this kind of reaction. Was the idea of dating him so unpalatable?

There’s an off sort of silence that falls in between them; Osamu has the urge to fill the space, but he can’t quite bring himself to. Not amidst all of this shit, not amidst the sinking feeling in his gut that he’s done something wrong.

Which is why fate chooses this exact moment for Osamu’s elbow to catch a little bit too far towards their just-filled drinks, knocking the pint of beer directly toward his lap. He feels the mistake as much as it plays in front of him in disastrous slow motion— the cold liquid soaking through the fabric of his jeans, the unmistakable pang of shame.

The bartender races over to mop up the mess, giving him as many napkins as humanly possible. It’s a mess. Osamu feels like he’s never had to apologise more in a five minute window than he has his entire life. He peers over at Akaashi, who looks at him with a combination of what he thinks must be pity and amusement. It has to be— things don’t get much more pitiable than this.

“Come, let’s get you cleaned up,” Akaashi says, with a smile.

—-

Akaashi brings him back to his apartment. Same white walls, same collection of coffee table books on the counter. Same collection of watercolour Sargent prints on the walls. Same view of Yebisu Garden Place, the trees lit up this time in gold. The same distinct smell: gardenia and citrus, is what the aroma diffuser in the corner says.

The same Akaashi, sweater-clad and ink-kissed, glasses low on his nose.

It startles Osamu, almost, how familiar it all feels. When did he memorise the layout of this apartment like his own? When did he learn where every light switch was, learn the rhyme and reason to which Akaashi sorted his selection of kitchen utensils? When did he learn every single detail, down to the key chains hung above the genkan, down to the little dried flowers pressed against the windowsill?

The little woven hamper in the bathroom already has some of his spare clothes on top of it. Osamu had started leaving some of his things over at Akaashi’s place some few weeks ago— first by accident, and then at Akaashi’s own suggestion. For convenience’s sake, or something like that. For convenience’s sake, he thinks, as he steps out of the steam of the shower and brings the dark t-shirt to his nose. It smells of Akaashi’s laundry detergent, and not his own.

Osamu lets out a long suffering sigh. He doesn’t know whether it’s the alcohol, or the sobriety, or a combination of both of them— but he runs his own fingers down his face. He can’t even remember the last time he’d felt this way. Honestly, he thinks it might be the first. The first in the sense that his past relationships hadn’t felt anything like this— hadn’t felt like he’d fallen past the tipping point before he’d even known it. They hadn’t felt like this, slow and comfortable and all fucking consuming, hadn’t felt like the burning sort of sensation associated with being known.

Hadn’t felt like a well-kept sort of secret tucked away in his breast pocket, close to his heart.

Akaashi greets him in the living room, throws him over a bottle of cold red tea from the vending machine downstairs. Chides him again, ever-so-lightly, for tripping over their meal like that.

If you hated the yakitori so much, you could have just told me, Osamu-san.

And Osamu knows the feeling of Akaashi’s lips on his. Has memorised the way in which they part under his light touch, under his fingertips. Has felt them on his neck, felt them on his chest, felt them on the insides of his thighs. Wrists, ankles, bound and unbound. Gently, over closed eyes.

Everything about Akaashi is familiar to him. He’s kept the snippets that he’s given to Osamu in these past few months. Kept them close to him, under wraps.

Everything familiar, and yet the little wildfire in his throat is so foreign.

—-

Osamu knows it’s more common than not: stories of people falling for their scene partners in some capacity or another. Such is the nature of a kind of relationship like that— the intimacy, the different layers of trust that you have to achieve to really understand each other. Osamu knows this, and yet he'd felt completely detached from such a realisation in past relationships, in past scene partners.

He'd been privy to it, sure— been on the receiving end a few times, even, with various partners cooling down on activities with him because they'd fallen in love. He'd witnessed it through the lens of Gin and Suna on separate occasions with their own partners— it had become somewhat of a running joke between them. Had become a little bit of a running joke when Gin had managed to convince all three of them to drinks somewhere in Umeda, where he'd disastrously spilled his guts out about how ridiculously down bad he'd ended up for his dom.

"It's awful," he'd complained, hands wrapped around the neck of a bottle of the worst kind of Prosecco available to man. "I just can't help it. Can't help the— love, y'know? How absolutely fuckin' awful."

"You wouldn't be the only one to fall for their dom, Gin." Osamu could tell that Suna felt sorry for him, under all of the layers of nonchalance and fine-tipped amusement.

"This is awful. A Grade A fucking disaster," he'd whined, taking a swig of wine right out of the bottle like some deranged madman. "I'm 'boutta abort this whole fuckin' thing. Code red. I'm claiming a code red."

"The hell's a code red?" Osamu'd said, laughing at Gin's state of disarray.

"Y'know. A code red. Red for love, and all of that other bullshit," Gin truly looked terrible. "Don't make me explain it again."

It had stuck, after that— had stuck initially at a way to poke fun of Gin in their group chat. Had stuck until they'd actually gotten together some few weeks later and Gin had announced that he and his scene partner had actually started dating.

And then Suna had up and fallen for Komori, and then the term had actually stuck.

Out of their little trio, Osamu's the only one with the fortune of… not being able to relate, he guesses. He thinks.

He feels like he knows less and less with every passing night.

—-

As much as he could probably kid someone else into thinking that he has his life planned out, Osamu knows that he’s absolutely far more prone to making decisions solely on a whim. Spur-of-the-moment decisions, such as the shoyu soba that’s on the special today for his onigiri restaurant. Spur-of-the-moment decisions, such as the two tickets to Sicily that are sitting heavily in his web browser’s shopping cart, waiting for his credit card’s CVV.

Spur-of-the-moment decisions, such as the fact that he’s here, standing outside the door to Akaashi’s apartment at almost midnight, the thin glow of the hallway casting slats of light onto his surprised expression. Here, arms laden with ingredients in various states, freezer bag full to bursting.

“Sorry,” Osamu explains, hastily. “I know we didn’t have anything planned, but—”

“We’ll plan something now, if you’d like,” Akaashi says. It’s almost unfair, how good he looks, even with pyjamas askew over his shoulders, even with hair slightly damp from the shower. He makes way to let Osamu in.

“We can plan something over dinner,” he replies, looking down at his watch. It’s eleven fifty-two P.M. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“Always am,” Akaashi says, with a lopsided smile.

Osamu ransacks his kitchen. He knows his way around pretty well— he knows by now that the stovetop on the left requires a little bit of TLC to ignite, knows that the fridge makes clicking sounds when left open for too long. He knows how quickly it takes to melt butter in a pan, knows that the humidity isn’t great for making meringue. Knows that Akaashi’s apartment, like most perfunctory Japanese units, doesn't have a proper baker’s oven.

Back at his first job as a line chef, the first thing one of his seniors had told him was that each kitchen had a personality of its own. Cooking a good meal meant knowing the little nuances of a kitchen.

And Osamu knows this kitchen.

He chops scallions with a razor-thin precision, places his stock and soup that he’d prepared earlier in a large pot to simmer. Gently sears slices of thick pork belly in a pan, leaving a golden crust behind which he washes down into the broth. Takes out the hand-pulled noodles from their careful packaging, wrapped in paper foil. Waits for all of the flavours to come together.

“What’s the occasion?” Akaashi asks. He’s seated at the kitchen counter, a novel in hand. It’s got a foreign title that Osamu doesn’t recognise, but he thinks it looks complicated all the same.

“No occasion,” Osamu replies, checking the noodles. “I just thought you’d want to try the first dish of the menu at Ramen-ya Miya.”

“You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“What, don’t think I could run a killer ramen restaurant?”

He looks up, and Akaashi’s smiling teasingly at him.

“I think you could do anything you wanted, Osamu-san,” Akaashi intones, smoothly, without pause. As if it’s the most natural thing to say in the world.

Osamu turns away, because his cheeks are as warm as his broth, because the noodles are close to ready. He checks their texture, checks the bounce of them— before straining them first into a colander, and then onto a flat ceramic plate. Garnish: ribbons of nori, sesame seed, scallion, boiled onsen egg with runny yolk. The pork belly strips, artfully arranged on the side. He places the soup in another bowl, can smell the rich flavour coming off in waves.

He places the two bowls on the counter top, in front of Akaashi. Serves one portion for himself too. Doesn't need to be told where the chopsticks are— he knows that they're in the top drawer next to the stovetop already.

"Wow, this takes me back," Akaashi says, inspecting the tsukemen before him. Dipping ramen, in all of its novelty glory— ramen, with broth and noodle separated. "This was the first meal that we shared, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Osamu's a little taken aback that he remembers, but at the same time he isn’t surprised— this is Akaashi he's speaking to, after all. He doesn't need to hold his breath as Akaashi goes through the ritual of eating, as his long fingers arch around his chopsticks. He knows that what he's made is good. Maybe not perfect, but good.

And he knows that Akaashi's enjoying it, too— he knows enough by now to know how to discern his enjoyment of things, from food to tea to everything else. Osamu knows this much.

"It's really good," Akaashi smiles at him. "But you know that already, don't you, Osamu-san?"

Osamu laughs.

"Wanted to get your opinion, though," he explains, already annihilating a sizable portion of his own meal, too. "Food is a subjective experience, after all."

"You say that, but I still think my cooking is objectively bad," he says, in between swallowing mouthfuls of his ramen. "Fancy utensils and all."

"Well, it's not like I can string two sentences worth a damn, so I think you're in the clear," Osamu replies, offhandedly. He expects a sort of biting response back from Akaashi, but the man has gone silent, suddenly absorbed in the texture of the noodles. Left hand gripping the novel in his lap a little bit too tightly. He swallows as if having to chug down a horse pill— stilted, a little slowly, afraid of choking.

They finish the rest of their meal in relative silence. Osamu's fine with that— they know each other well enough by now to be more than okay with each other's silences. Osamu knows the kind of silence that's acceptable, and knows the kind of silence that isn't. It's a sort of balancing act that he's become comfortable with, knowing when to trust.

And above everything, Osamu's determined to not make an example out of Akaashi. He’s determined in the sense that he knows that his understanding of the man transcends whatever funk his brain has been in recently, knows that their trust runs deeper than skin on skin contact. Knows that he trusts Akaashi not just to keep him safe, but with his choice in back-alley restaurants and herbal teas, with his routines, with his careful words.

Akaashi looks up at him, and there's a kind of lovely smile on his face that Osamu can't recall cataloguing before. The vintage lamplight of the kitchen casts a lovely sort of golden glow on his cheeks, across the surface of his hands, catches the glint of the helix piercing that he's forgotten to take out.

"Thanks for the food," he says, motioning to collect their plates. Osamu watches him as he washes their dishes— there isn’t much to wash up anyway; Osamu knows that his mise en place is always meticulous.

“You know, not gonna lie, I think I still prefer your onigiri,” Akaashi remarks, in the middle of brandishing a yellow rubber glove. “I mean, your other meals are more— fine, I guess. But there’s something kinda nice about being able to take your onigiri with me, you know?”

“Like— even before we started seeing each other— it was something in my day to look forward to.” Akaashi isn’t looking at him, just focused on the dishes, but his hands move as if he’s gesturing. “Fancy food is nice, of course, but I think there’s a real kind of magic in that, too. In having a little piece of someone’s care with you. In this case, with your care, I guess.”

And oh, there's something in Akaashi's words that settles to the bottom of his throat. He's heard his food described in all sorts of ways before— comforting, familiar, experimental. Heard it described in reviews and food blogs and on the occasional prime time television show. But not quite like this.

It's these kinds of moments that make him question what notions of success really are, after all.

"And speaking of magic," Akaashi turns to him, rubber gloves thrown hastily over the drying rack. He winks. He actually fucking winks, and Osamu thinks that he's gone and ascended the golden staircase to heaven. "It turns out that I'm not really in the mood to plan much, after all."

He's never seen Akaashi like this before, either.

Never seen this kind of Akaashi, forward outside the confines of the bedroom, hands already circling the planes of his waist. Chin tipped ever so lightly towards his, smile capturing the slow magic of the evening. Tokyo skyline hanging behind him, the future in its place in front.

"I'm fine with playin' it by ear," Osamu replies, remembering once again how to speak. He runs a hand down Akaashi's cheek, thumb pressed to the crevice where his lips meet. "Or by mouth, if you want."

"That's not cute," Akaashi replies, the amusement in his eyes betraying his attempt at a disapproving frown. "You aren't kidding anyone with your pick up lines, you know."

"Alright, then,” Osamu grins, face close enough to feel Akaashi's body heat radiating from him. “Why don't you show me how it’s done, then?"

Akaashi’s mouth parts for him that instant, warm tongue making contact with the breadth of Osamu’s fingers. Everything searing, from fingertip to pad to base, as Akaashi sucks dutifully, slowly, inch by goddamn inch.

“Still hungry, are ya?” Osamu chuckles, free hand snaking down towards the flannel still askew on Akaashi’s shoulders. He peels the buttons open with the practised sort of precision that comes with having the hand-eye-coordination of a chef, runs his hands soothingly down the valleys of Akaashi’s back.

Osamu gently pulls away his thumb from Akaashi’s tongue, and he’s surprised to have been met with a slight trace of resistance— Akaashi all but whines in response, a needy little sound that does enough to set him off. His eyes are already starting to look a little bit unfocused, which speaks volumes to how particularly ravenous Akaashi’s been all night.

“Safeword,” Osamu breathes, lucidly, before they’re led astray too quickly.

“Same as always,” Akaashi replies, a little hurried— but he pauses all the same to let the matter of fact sink in.

“Good,” Osamu says, the pad of his fingers gently stroking the apex of Akaashi's cheek. Gently coaxing out reaction by reaction, fingertips spanning across his sternum, chest, nipple. Against his waist, leading down towards his thighs. Every little movement hushed, every single movement a precise kind of dance. He hears Akaashi sigh into him, into the space between his neck and collar.

"Sweetheart," Osamu whispers, "as much as I'd like to take you here over the kitchen counter, I'd much rather take my time."

“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” Akaashi replies, in between little kisses at the base of Osamu’s throat.

Osamu leads the both of them to the plush respite that is Akaashi’s double. There’s a little flurry of movement in which Akaashi scrambles to swipe some of his used clothes from their temporary place atop his sheets— Osamu just laughs.

Akaashi just pouts at him, sticking a finger into his chest.

“This is your fault for showing up unannounced,” he explains, before pulling Osamu towards the bed, arms around his neck. “I’m a perfectly normal adult human being with flaws.”

“Oh, so you’re being a brat tonight, are you?” Osamu grins, taking Akaashi’s chin in between his fingers. He can see the way that Akaashi’s pupils are already dilated, brushing against the quickening pulse over his carotid. “Maybe I will keep you waiting, after all.”

Osamu snakes his hands down, gently peeling away the waistband of his sweats, reaching a finger around the elastic band of Akaashi’s underwear. It’s practical today, of course— a little grey pair of briefs that hug his hips enticingly, covering up more than he usually has on display for Osamu. It’s fucking hot all the same, how gorgeous Akaashi is, the little sounds that he makes as Osamu traces his index over the outline of his cunt. Stops on the little bead of Akaashi’s clit, slowly rolling circles, alternating between feather light touch and gentle pressure. He doesn’t let up from here— pushing the rim of the fabric aside to slide a finger into Akaashi’s waiting heat.

“God— Osamu,” Akaashi whines, his grip on the back of Osamu’s neck tightening, latching onto his undercut of hair. There’s already a sheen on his lips, already a sort of desperation in his movements that turns Osamu on more than ever. To see Akaashi like this, so responsive, so open for him— so goddamn wet— he can feel himself already tenting in his pants.

“That isn’t one of the pet names we agreed on,” Osamu smiles— and Akaashi’s too blissed out already to berate him with any sort of fervour. Instead, he lets out another moan as Osamu’s finger curls around his sweet spot, as Osamu quickly replaces the first finger with the gentle stretch of a second.

“Are you going to be good for me?” Osamu asks, as Akaashi's hips flicker towards him. He looks gorgeous, on his back like this, hair casting a halo around him, contrasting against the white of his sheets. Gorgeous and open like this, face expressive with his pleasure, as Osamu scissors his fingers back and forth, slowly and quickly all at once. He takes a moment to capture their lips together, tasting salt and smoke.

"I want you to count, tonight," Osamu says, right on cue— he can tell that Akaashi's close already, by the way that he's rubbing his ankles together. By the restless way that his hands move across Osamu's neck every time his thumb ghosts over his clit. Restless, the way that his eyelashes flutter across Osamu's skin, the way he bites his lip to stop himself from making too much noise. "Can you count for me, Keiji?"

Osamu's timing is perfect. He knows as much, because Akaashi seizes up as he applies a little more pressure to his clit, as his fingers are deep inside of him. Can feel Akaashi's walls constrict, tighten around him. He can't recall Akaashi reaching orgasm this fast before— he knows that he's not the most sensitive of partners, has been told that it's a time and a half to be able to get him to come on command. It's surprising, just like everything else from tonight, just like Akaashi in general.

He slides out his fingers. Gives him a brief moment of respite, before sliding the offending piece of underwear off entirely, down his thighs, off his legs.

“I’ll start off for you,” Osamu says, already lining his mouth up with Akaashi’s entrance. “That was the first.”

If Akaashi looks surprised, he doesn’t know— Osamu shifts Akaashi’s centre of weight, thighs bent upward for better access, legs loosely supported by Osamu’s shoulders. Hips still feeling the subtle aftershocks of his orgasm as Osamu’s tongue makes light pressure with Akaashi’s clit.

Akaashi keens.

He jolts upwards as Osamu presses down harder, as his fingers dig into the flesh of Akaashi’s thighs. His hands, writhing for purchase against the dishevelled state of the sheets around them.

“‘Samu, oh my god—“ Akaashi’s babbling already. Only fifteen minutes, and he’s already like this, already soaked against his fingers, and god, Osamu has no idea how he’ll manage to hold off for any longer either.

There’s a frenzied kind of rhythm that he has going— alternating between lighter touches and heavier ones, between fingers and his tongue. Between taking Akaashi’s clit in his lips, and licking at it achingly slow. And it damn well works— he can feel it, as Akaashi squirms, his body trying to come to terms with the sensations, trying to come to terms with the space between his previous orgasm and the next.

Osamu pulls away briefly to assess his handiwork after Akaashi reaches his next peak. Watches him with rapt interest, watches as patterns of skylight tessellate silver onto Akaashi’s skin. And god, he looks like an absolute dream— legs trembling with exertion, lips biting down against his own knuckle to muffle his cries. Cheeks flushed prettily, apparent even in the low light. Other hand white-knuckled into the covers beneath them.

Overstimulation had been something they’d discussed before, something that had ranked high on both of their interests. Something that they’d negotiated, but had been keeping for a special occasion, of sorts.

Osamu figures that this is special enough. Seeing Akaashi like this makes it all worth it.

He quickly pulls away to procure a box of their commonly used instruments, placed neatly underneath Akaashi’s bed. A length of pea-grey jute, a tiny pink bullet vibrator, a cordless wand. He makes sure there’s access to condoms and lube and shears, clear on the breadth of Akaashi’s little wooden light stand.

And it’s Akaashi that takes the initiative, Akaashi who offers up his wrists before anything else, and god, Osamu curses at how goddamn lucky he has to have him as a partner. How good he is, even already toward the slippery slope approaching ruin.

“That’s two, by the way,” Akaashi’s voice is a low whisper. It makes something in Osamu’s chest sing.

“You’re doing so well for me,” Osamu replies, kneeling down to press the bullet vibe into Akaashi’s waiting cunt, flicking the switch on as he gets to work on his wrists.

He forces himself to focus— counts, lark’s head, reverse tension, six stranded tie. Tail hook, tail split. Checks the cuffs— two fingers inside each to ensure the tension is at the right level.

Offers up his hand, to assess the strength of Akaashi’s grip. His body temperature.

Osamu’s aware that this is a simple knot by any means, but part of their relationship is knowing how to care and mitigate all the same— it’s become second nature to him, second nature to their sort-of craft.

He watches Akaashi move around experimentally. Tests the conviction in his movements, as customary. Osamu can see him get more and more excited by the simple action, sees his pulse move across his throat enticingly at the resistance. His eyelashes flutter.

“Green,” Akaashi says, beating Osamu to the question.

“Good,” Osamu smiles, flicking on the wand and gently feathering it across Akaashi’s clit. Having given him a moment to catch his breath, Osamu figures that this round would feel a little more pleasurable for Akaashi— he knows just how intense overstimulation can be. Knows the limits to how much he can push and pull, which makes it all the more rewarding.

Akaashi moans as Osamu flicks the wand setting higher, letting out a series of pleasured gasps as he struggles lightly against his restraints. Taking the lube from the nightstand with his free hand, Osamu coats his fingers in it. He uses his index to once again tease the entrance of Akaashi’s hole, pressing against the bullet vibrator still keeping him open.

“Going to come for me again, sweetheart? You think you can manage another?” Osamu asks, bringing up the wand setting another notch. He watches, for the subtle changes in Akaashi’s expression, waits until he’s close again to the peak before turning the vibrations down again.

Akaashi just nods, biting down on the corner of his lower lip in a futile effort to muffle his sounds. Freeing up a hand, Osamu reaches up, rubs his thumb soothingly on the junction of Akaashi’s mouth.

“Don’t hold it in, Keiji,” he says— and flicks the knob on the wand to close to the maximum it will go.

Akaashi gasps, intakes a sudden breath as he bucks up in orgasm against the pressure of the wand, hips already trying to shy away from the intense stimulation. But this time, Osamu keeps it there— dialled down one or two clicks, but still very much there, pressed up against the lube-slicked bud of Akaashi’s clit. Osamu watches, as his pupils dilate, as his body instinctively does what it can to free itself from the heightened sensation.

“Samu— Samu, please, oh my god—“ Akaashi whines, and Osamu touches the heat from his cheeks, tests his feeling in his wrists by holding out his hand for Akaashi to take. He’s pleased— Akaashi squeezes his fingers as he expects him to, cries out like he expects him to.

He casts his gaze upward to see Akaashi’s eyes glisten, tears threatening their way down his face— and instinctively dials the wand back, making Akaashi groan from the loss of contact.

“Colour?” he asks. He’s never seen Akaashi cry before, not during any one of their many scenes together.

“Green, Osamu, green—" Akaashi wails, and Osamu exhales slowly, knuckle reaching up to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. His cheeks are ruddy with post-orgasm flush, eyebrows stitched together, hair clinging to the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Silver light catching across his eyelids, catching on his irises, catching on the metal of the helix bud in his right ear.

"So beautiful," Osamu whispers into his skin, increasing the speed of the wand once again. "Perfect like this, a mess underneath me."

He can feel Akaashi approach his release again, quicker this time, still riding off the sensations of his previous orgasm— Osamu can see him move against his restraints to almost thrashing, his ankles knocking against Osamu's own. And god, he's so fucking hard himself, erection uncomfortable in his pants— but today is all about Akaashi, all about Keiji. And that's more than enough for him.

More than enough, as he watches Akaashi begin to sob as he reaches his peak for the fourth time of the night, as he watches him unravel around Osamu, around his fingers, his tongue, the wand at his clit. All of this for him, every whimper and every sound. Alternating between stillness and activity, every single nerve ending on his skin sensitised to no end.

“Keiji, Keiji. Look at me,” Osamu says. He’s a mess. Akaashi looks the way that Osamu feels, pieced apart and put back together all at once. And Osamu has catalogued all of Akaashi’s little reactions before, but this one, he thinks, is the most harrowing: Akaashi in his arms, wrists still comfortably bound, tears soaking through the surface of his pillow. Every sensation heightened, every little bit of stimulation feeling like fucking wildfire. Tears, like little stars.

Akaashi looks at him, and Osamu inhales a sharp breath. He’s gorgeous like this, in every way— down from the marks around his collarbone to the way his ankles rub together in anticipation. Gorgeous, and Osamu is as turned on as he is absolutely fucking terrified.

Everything touched with the silver sheen of midnight. Star-bright, like the lightness of Akaashi’s hands across the planes of his stomach. Like the words that threaten to spill from Osamu's lips.

—-

“Are you goin' to tell me what’s got you like this?” Osamu asks, over their second dinner of the night.

Akaashi turns to him, a smile playing on his lips. He looks coy, almost, unlike someone who just got fucked to hell and back to the point of crying. Freshly washed, wrists massaged, a little dab of cherry scented lotion on his skin.

"Oh, a mixture of things," he answers, feigning nonchalance. He's picking at the bottom-paper of his steamed pork bun with a manicured finger. "This and that, you know. My acne cleared up, I found 1000 yen on the sidewalk, you, et. cetera, et. cetera.”

Osamu’s cheeks heat up. He’s about to point out what was said, up until Akaashi grins and follows up with:

“Does the number fourteen thousand ring any bells?”

—-

Code red, he texts, to Suna and Gin.

Gin responds with at least twenty eggplant emojis. Suna responds with twenty of his own. Osamu isn't counting.

—-

Osamu spends the new year in Kansai, up in the mountains in Wakayama where their grandmother put down her roots some fifty years ago. If there's one thing that he can count on, it is that their family is always together on the thirty-first, no matter the length of the stay or the breadth of the osechi that is prepared. He's sort of thankful in that respect: Osamu knows that it's sort of a privilege, that all of them are able to come home at the turn of the year. A privilege, that they get to sit in the tiny living room of their gran's tiny little two bedroom cottage, peeling persimmons and boiled onsen eggs while watching the countdown on TV.

Not that he'd ever let it be known, what with his grandmother predictably asking for any signs of marriage or children on the horizon, and his mother hounding him for any new career developments.

("Maybe you should look at a partnership deal with Lawson," his mother suggests, over a plate of red bean yatsuhashi. She folds the little triangle in between her fingers, taking it apart, filling from casing, like a young child would. "I hear that they're always looking for snack collaborations.")

This year, for some strange reason, it's Atsumu that he finds himself gravitating towards the most. Atsumu, recently tanned golden from a Brazilian sun, a thin platinum band finally around his ring finger. Atsumu, standing over railings capped with snow in a puffy down jacket and sweats, dyed the cadmium of the streetlights dotting the Yunomine onsen.

Typically, the New Year always fills Osamu with a kind of deep-rooted nostalgia. This year feels different. Feels complicated, of all things, because this is the one year where Osamu feels like he's stood still. On the other hand, Atsumu’s gone and uprooted himself to a different fucking continent, finally having gotten his revenge on Osamu all those years ago for leaving volleyball behind.

He thinks that Atsumu must feel it too, judging from the way that he's been strangely quiet since he arrived home. There's a sort of sheen of something there, a little bit of false bravado, but Osamu knows his brother better than anyone— he knows that there must be something rattling around in Atsumu's thoughts.

He plucks two cans of Yebisu from the vending machine next to the tea house that has been there for about a million years. Shoves one in the general vicinity of Atsumu’s direction without looking too closely. His brother doesn’t thank him, as always.

“So?” Atsumu asks him, expectantly. He cracks his can open with a practised hand.

“So what?” Osamu retorts.

“How’s the crisis going?” Atsumu takes a swig of his beer, other arm slung across the railing casually.

“You’re not makin’ any sense,” Osamu’s tempted to knock the drink out of his hand.

“Quarter life crisis. Samu, you’re goin’ through a goddamn quarter life crisis.” Atsumu smirks around his Yebisu. “I’m right, aren't I? That’s why you’re goin’ out doing weird kinky shit every weekend?”

“Shut up,” Osamu bites back, “and never talk to me about my sex life ever again.”

Atsumu just laughs at him. Fucking gaffaws around his drink like a mad alcoholic drinking out on the streets close to midnight. They're lucky that the town is so quiet— no one around for ages to judge them. No one around to break the little magic of this space, steam billowing gently from the hot spring water below, the winter chill silently making its way across the night.

“Akaashi is not my quarter life crisis," Osamu says, a little softer. His throat hitches around his name, not unpleasantly.

“Yeah? Well, what is he, then?" Atsumu asks him. Osamu notices that he's wearing one of his childhood scarves— a lovely one made from wool that their mother had bought for them in matching colours during one of their first winters in Yunomine. "You can't deny that you’re in a pinch, but what about when all this dust settles? Where does that leave him?”

"I'm not in a pinch," Osamu replies, tone a little forced. "I wasn't in a pinch, up until it came to my attention that I wasn't doing enough with my life, apparently."

Atsumu stares at him strangely. Stares at him as if he's grown two heads and an extra tail. That kind of strange. His fingers tap against his beer can rhythmically; even here in the middle of nowhere, Atsumu is ever a ball of restless energy.

"Did I say that?" he asks. Atsumu sounds bewildered. A little affronted, even, as if he feels as if he's the only person who's allowed to dish out criticism to his twin brother. And even though he's more than aware that they are their own people, that they have their own separate lives now, part of Osamu thinks that he'll always feel the same way.

"No," Osamu sighs, long-suffering. Takes another swig of his alcohol. It isn't the most pleasant thing in the world, the cold can of beer getting colder and colder by the moment— but it's not as if they're in the middle of Osaka with access to amazake on the side of the road. "Who do you think said it?"

Atsumu rolls his eyes. Osamu feels almost like a child again, skirting around the topic of conversation with Atsumu in this way, talking about things without actually talking about things. It was a game that they'd perfected, a sort of push and pull of wits that had stretched constantly throughout their teenage years when the both of them were going through their own share of angst. And even though Osamu knows that the backbone of any relationship is founded on clear communication, Atsumu is the one person that makes him hold onto his stubbornness like this. The one person that probably knows him better than he knows himself.

“Just because Ma’ said something like that… Doesn’t mean you have to uproot your goddamn life, Samu.” Atsumu isn't looking at him now. He's watching some point on the horizon, flicking the top of his can back and forth with a taped up finger. “You were happy, weren’t you? I’d never seen you happier. And that’s enough, isn’t it? Seeing people eat your food made you happy. Still makes you happy.”

He isn't looking at him, but Atsumu sees him anyway. Every shred of self-doubt and insecurity, every moment of shared confidence. As one-track minded as he knows that his brother can be, Osamu knows that he always has his eyes cast in his direction.

“Is it really wrong to not want anything more?” Atsumu says. His tone comes out low and a little bit rough, as if roused from sleep.

Atsumu looks like he’s ready to bite. Osamu knows that he’s always been hyper competitive, but there’s something in his expression that he’s never quite seen before. Call it adulthood, or whatever, but Tsumu post-Olympics has always seemed a little bit different to Osamu. A little bit more like he’s fully inhabited a sense of who he is.

And part of him— the childish part of him, the petulant little brother part, refuses to reconcile this fact. It rebels as hard as it possibly can, because why the hell would Osamu have it any other way?

Atsumu looks him in the eye. Osamu thinks what he’s feeling is resignation.

There’s a sort of— sense of heightened velocity, maybe, in Atsumu’s presence, in this whole exchange. As if there’s kind of some gravitational force that Osamu feels as if he’s drawn to. The whole act of coming back to his ancestral home. The whole act of being pulled apart and put back together again that comes with being at this point of adulthood. He feels like some of the answers are just starting to slot their way back into place, just by the right of things.

He’s pulled into Atsumu’s trajectory, as always. As much as he would hate to admit it, Osamu feels like those kind of cornerstone moments in his life have in some way been shaped by exchanges with his brother.

He thinks that this might be one of them.

“Samu,” he says, soberly. “How do you measure success? On a scale from one to ten? You and I both know that if we start countin’, we’ll never fucking stop.”

Atsumu grins at him, winter condensation visible with every little breath. Hand balled to the side in a fist, eyes the colour of smouldering ash. This is more like the brother he knows, hands forged of gold and the wildfire of challenge. This is the brother he knows, never once stopping to look back.

“And as tempting as that sounds, I think I’d rather compete with you at literally anything else.”

—-

They return to Tokyo on the seventh of January. He and Atsumu take the Nozomi together— his grandmother packs identical ekiben for them both, like she does every year. (Osamu’s has extra meat. He wonders if this is her way of telling him that she thinks that he’s getting too thin.) Atsumu spends the night at Osamu’s, and then sets off the next day to Narita Airport with Shouyou.

Osamu goes back to work on the eighth.

He tells Akaashi that he’s back on the eighteenth.

—-

Osamu shows up fifteen minutes early, not by intention, but because he’d misread the time on his goddamn phone before he’d left the house. But it’s a good thing that he does, because he has time enough to ask for a secluded-ish spot away from the vicinity of other tables, a spot shaded but still bathed in a little bit of sunshine. All things considered, he thinks Akaashi’s done well— overlapping wooden slats and tiny twinkling lights cascade down the ceiling, lined by evergreens that fence off the side of the cafe. It’s classical French, he thinks. A saloon, or whatever they're called, bustling and alive with people, the frenzied activity of waiters pushing silver carts. A bar in the corner, plenty of stacked up liquor bottles in varying hues of sepia lining the raw brick walls. Geometric lamp shades hanging from the velvet-lined booths bathed in dappled sunlight.

It’s certainly different to back-alley ramen, but he’s sure that this place probably has some insane tabelog rating anyway.

Osamu tries to will his heart to stop beating so fast in the meantime. Absolutely fucking fails at it, because the moment that he manages to calm down just a little, it all goes to shit when Akaashi pops his head around the corner, all rumpled ink hair and hastily wrapped scarf. He looks a little bit winded, as if he’s run from the station, which— probably happened, honestly. His hair looks a touch bit damp— he wonders if he got caught in the rain.

“Am I late?” Akaashi asks, still trying to catch his breath.

“What— no, I just got here really early,” Osamu answers, sliding him over a menu. “I don’t suppose you’ve already picked out what you want, have you?”

“You know me,” Akaashi replies, with a small smile. Akaashi is the only person that he knows that researches the menu beforehand— at least to this extent. A distant part of him wonders if he’d done the same for Onigiri Miya, all those years ago.

Osamu doesn’t focus too hard on what he orders— buckwheat blini with smoked salmon, a smoothie, the standard type of Western cafe faire. But every detail feels drawn out anyway, every breath he takes is shuddering and tense. Every minute he wants to chicken out, he has to remind himself that their relationship is built on trust.

Every goddamn minute, because the food takes an intense amount of time to finally arrive at their table. It’s beautiful— smashed avocado, dill, salmon arranged in ribbons, a quenelle of cream cheese artfully arranged on a thin pancake. It’s beautiful, and Osamu sends up a prayer to the poor chef that put it together as he shoves it in his mouth without being able to taste a whole lot of it.

Akaashi finishes off his stack of soufflé pancakes— he does it in about five minutes flat, even though they’re probably bigger than the size of his face.

It does nothing to his nerves that Akaashi’s talking so openly about his work and the progress of his third novel and his goddamn nation-wide book tour, all the while probably picking up the fact that Osamu’s been strangely agitated. They are in the business of knowing these things about each other, after all.

When their plates get cleared, Akaashi finally asks.

“What’s on your mind, Osamu-san?”

Osamu barks out a tiny self-deprecating laugh.

“You, mostly,” he replies, a little cryptically.

And because Akaashi can't read the contents of his mind: “I think we can’t play with each other anymore. At least for now.”

“You think?” Akaashi asks.

His tone is neutral, flat. Osamu feels the goose flesh prickle on the back of his arms.

“No, I know,” Osamu sighs.

“I know enough to not do you the dishonour of— deceivin’ you, I guess.” Osamu looks at him, makes himself face the weight of his own conviction head on. “It doesn’t feel right to continue, knowing my feelings for you.”

“Ah,” Akaashi folds his hands in his lap.

He’s got a certain kind of presence now, Osamu notes. As if he’s glowing, or something. Was it the success? The self-assurance? Was Akaashi just always like this?

Osamu fidgets with his straw.

“Sorry. I’ve never— I’ve never felt this way about a scene partner before, I’ve always been pretty good at detachin’ that kind of part away from the rest of my life,” Osamu explains, words coming out all at once. “I’ve been doing okay, up until now.”

Akaashi sits back in his chair, tips his head slightly to the side. As if he’s trying to decipher some particularly difficult syntax, or trying to critique a piece of writing. He has his game face on, Osamu thinks.

“Why do you do that?” Akaashi asks, instead. “You put in so much. At work, into your career, into your passion. You demand it. Every last moment, down to your care, down to every single plate of food that leaves your hands.”

“And yet you ask for so little of me. You ask for so little. Why is that? Do you not think of yourself as deserving?”

Mid-afternoon light pools on them both, Akaashi’s cheeks bathed in gold. Even vexed, he looks beautiful. Even vexed, he wears the sort of grace that he holds himself to always, lightning sharp. There’s still a smudge on his right cheek.

And it is here that Osamu feels the world sort of shift again, back on its axis. A culmination of all the little things that have brought them here from the past year until now. He thinks of Ebisu, Akaashi’s little skylit apartment; thinks of the wood and cherry panelling of his restaurant. Thinks of back alleys and discarded milk crates, concrete walls plastered with travel adverts. Thinks of the relentless kind of magic of Yunomine, with its rolling cliffs, with Atsumu. With every little waking moment processing the depth of their conversation, with every waking moment trying to come to terms with figuring his life out at age twenty nine.

He looks up. Akaashi looks affronted. Angry, even.

“Don’t apologise,” Akaashi says, quickly. “Don’t apologise, because what makes you think you haven’t left me just as wanting? That I don’t feel the same way?”

The waiter chooses that moment to put the check on their table. A little bit brusquely even, as Osamu looks up and realises that there are people still in their vicinity, that there are dozens of other people in this dining hall living their own little lives. The chatter is unbearable in his ears, the whole room close to spinning.

He feels claustrophobic, almost. Everything too much, everything not enough. Heart beating to a rhythm without structure, without reason, without schedule.

So Osamu asks.

He offers up his hand. Ghosts his fingers across the pulse point on Akaashi’s wrist. It’s a movement that he’s made countless times before.

Akaashi takes his hand, squeezes it back.

Osamu keeps their hands clasped as he stands to take the check. Keeps them clasped as he pays their bill at the counter, as they exit the bustle of the cafe.

Keeps them clasped and doesn’t look back, leading them to anywhere and nowhere. Osamu moves freely, deliberately, with purpose. He moves as if he’s walking towards their future. His future.

He takes Akaashi around the corner, and then some. He doesn't quite know where they are, isn't familiar with this particular neighbourhood of Daikanyama, but the mid-afternoon light reflects gold off the white exteriors, reflects slowly in this secluded part of town. It doesn't matter where they are— doesn't matter whether they're in some back-alley ramen joint smelling like ammonia, or in the lived-in comfort of Akaashi's apartment, or in some corner of a coffee shop chain. None of it matters, in retrospect.

"Osamu-san," Akaashi says, a little winded. They've stopped in between two buildings, the only two people for a while. "I think it's about to rain."

He's looking at the back of his hand, as if trying to affirm his own words. Osamu frowns— it's bright outside. Still so bright, with minimal cloud cover at all. He reaches his free hand out, feels the tiny pattern of raindrops on his skin.

And sure enough they don't react fast enough as some miracle downpour begins to fall on them, begins to soak through their skin.

They don't react fast enough— by the time they manage to find cover under a building with an outpouched roof, it's already too late.

Osamu curses under his breath, but Akaashi just laughs.

"Do you know why we refer to sunshowers as fox weddings?" Akaashi asks, as they begin to pad the dampness out of their coats. He's smiling, now. Smiling as if he knows some kind of truth, smiling as if he's sure about himself. "There's several sort of folklore type reasons— one of them being that the kitsune summon rain on bright days to prevent humans from their areas in the event of a wedding."

Their hands are still linked. Akaashi squeezes his fingers once again.

"But in reality, it's more likely that someone thousands of years ago saw it happen and assumed that a kitsune had tricked them," he continues. His words are light— they take on an amused sort of tone. "There's something to be said about their implausibility, I guess. Like a kind of sign from the gods that nothing is impossible. If you’re superstitious, anyway.”

Osamu looks over. There are fine raindrops still clinging to Akaashi's eyelashes. They, too, catch little golden flecks of light.

Impossible, like the hundreds of little coincidences that have brought them here. Impossible, like the feeling of inhabiting an ideal life. Impossible, like the feeling of being known.

“Akaashi,” Osamu says, voice a little rough. “Can I ask something of you?”

Osamu thinks that he himself— is happy. There’s a real kind of conviction that spreads to his bones, the kind that speaks to him at every five A.M. start, the kind wrapped in nori and rice. At every stomach fed, at every shared moment of joy. A bowl of tsukemen, serving two.

Love as hunger, and all of that shit.

Osamu links their fingers together tighter. He doesn’t wait for the sunshower to subside.

“Anything,” Akaashi says, words as quiet as dawn. The sunlight casts sharp ribbons across the planes of his cheeks, across the silver in his irises, across the heart tucked in the confines of his chest.

“Anything,” he repeats. Osamu kisses him, and remembers to take his time.