Chapter Text
Stepping into the rosarium feels the same as it always has.
Yoichi feels a gentle breeze playing with his hair; it rubs lightly against his bare forearms and legs. It follows its natural course through the flower stems, it steals petals and leaves all the while capturing Yoichi's gaze effortlessly as it catches sunlight only to then disappear forever.
This feeling is surprisingly grounding and familiar.
Yoichi has two suitcases still in the car that his parents have rented; he’s here for two whole months. However, it feels as if he is finally home from a very long vacation trip.
Yes, he thinks with a smile. It’s as if I’ve never left. The roses are well-maintained; they all harbor different shades of pink, red, orange and white. They offer a private, secret sunset. The majority of them are already living their most beautiful, thriving moments, almost as if parading their rich, powerful colors with the confidence of star dancers, perhaps anxiously waiting for the others, who still cling onto their youth and their last few breaths as little buds, who hug themselves as if to shield their inner-self from the public. It is as if they are waiting for little fairies to force them open one night as to finally let their flourished appearance be seen the morning after.
Still alone, at least for now, Yoichi looks for every little buds hiding behind leaves, and takes careful steps so as to not disturb the meticulously crafted peace. He thinks he gets it, the need to fear change, to stunt one’s own growth and never leave the last sweet, heartwarming moments before becoming an adult. Yoichi is seventeen, has two dogs and two best friends back in Japan, good grades, a comfy bed at his parents’ house, and an itching anxiety that everything might stop the minute he turns eighteen in a few months.
Spending the summer break in Germany was not Yoichi’s choice, but he is less and less regretting to have let his parents drag him here.
He feels his phone vibrating inside his pocket. When he turns it on, he sees exactly two notifications from his friends in their group chat.
Princess Hyoma
hey mr. overthinker, just wanna make sure you aint dead. answer me when u see this
Bubble Bee
what he said !! (◕‿◕)
i already miss u best friend !! pls don’t die (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞
You
don’t worry guys, im alive
i kinda missed this place
i'll send u pics if u behave
im going to spend the rest of my life in this garden
Bubble Bee
awww but yoichi!!
u promise u would come back to us !!
You
ofc meguru
you can’t get rid of me that easily
Princess Hyoma
believe me i tried
You
next time i'll make sure to mix blue dye in your shampoo
Princess Hyoma
i'll buy u the super expensive kintsuba from your favorite pastry shop
please yoichi never try to do that again i almost had a cardiac arrest
You
we’ll see
talk to you later guys
love u
Princess Hyoma
yeah love u too
Bubble Bee
SEE YA YOICHI <3
“Yocchan,” his mom excitedly yells from what Yoichi can tell is the front door, “come say hi right now ! You father and I have to leave in half an hour.”
Yoichi glances at the flowers with longing, and answers almost to himself, “I’m coming.”
There’s little need for lengthy presentations, in all honesty. Yoichi probably knows ‘uncle Jean’ better than his parents do. There are approximately three minutes of awkwardness, which he spends quietly wondering if he should bow, shake hands or go for a hug. The ackwarndess vanishes as uncle Jean lets out an amused sigh before taking both Yoichi’s hands into his own and slightly pressing his thumbs over his knuckles.
“It’s good to see you, Yoichi.” There’s a kind smile on his face and a playful glint in his blue eyes. He doesn’t seem any older than he did the last time they saw each other; if anything, the French man has a little bit less hair now, and his smile holds more wisdom. It probably is a grand parents thing. “It’s been a while.”
Yoichi smiles and wants to say it’s good to be home, but his parents are still fast-pacing around the living room, trying hard not to get lost in aunt Anne’s rant about her daughter who still hasn’t given them any words since she left fourteen years ago and became an actress, or about the crows that can’t seem to let her garden alone, or about how her technically-still-son-in-law is doing worrying deeds behind their back again, and how worried she is about her grandson.
“I missed you too,” he says instead, and they share a knowing look.
“Where’s Michael?” Iyo, Yoichi's mom, suddenly asks (maybe she wants to interrupt Anne before they have to leave later than intended), unintentionally looking in Yoichi's general direction.
And that seems to stop Anne in her tracks, as she simply mumbles about her grandson either being at his parasyte-like-genitor's house, or strolling around with one of the girls that cannot stop her hands from touching Michael in some way, or maybe multiple of those girls, or maybe he’s with the other troublemaker he started hanging out with in the last year of highschool , and then she physically stops the conversation by leaving the room without saying anything but maybe next time don’t force your son to come with you instead of spending times with his friends, I don’t know, just an idea, not that I care or mind that he’s here but he probably had better things to do.
While Yoichi is already missing Bachira, Chigiri and even Barou or Rin, and while it remains a statement much appreciated on his part, he finds it to be an unfitted description of how he’s feeling. Spending time in this little (big) house will probably be a fine way to spend his summer break.
He shoves in a far, far away corner of his mind the little tidbits of information he gathered about Michael.
Everything will be fine.
And everything is fine, at least for a couple of hours. Yoichi takes his time to unpack his two suitcases in the bedroom Anne has given him the key to — the one he used to sleep in and share with Michael whenever he came here as a young boy. The room is familiar in a way most things are not back in Japan; it's the sort of familiar that resides deep inside his memories, it's the bedsheets and the wooden floor and the view to the front yard from the window and is that the blue dog I painted when I was eight ?
His first suitcase is full of summer clothes and hygiene supplies: the comb that cannot tame his hair on most days and the toothbrush he will have to replace sooner rather than later. It was his mom who insisted on packing them, like the shaving cream and twenty razor blades in case he suddenly grows a beard this summer. Which is ridiculous: Yoichi is seventeen, knows his family's genetic history (which does not include facial hairs growing before turning twenty-one), his voice has not fully deepened yet and he does not even have hairs under his armpits.
His mom is overly cautious and sometimes anxious and controlling in some aspects, but on the other hand she is so supportive of him and his ambitions (of which Yoichi still has none).
In his second suitcase, he finds sweets he knew he’d miss in Germany, two swimsuits, a jacket for colder days, his wallet, papers, his computer (for his two facetimes a week planned with his friends), and drawing stuff. Which has somehow ended up in it the night before the flight, for a reason Yoichi cannot recognize. It has been a while since he has last even touched his watercolors or acrylics.
When everything is unpacked, neatly stored in the wardrobe, and Yoichi has had the time to unwind for a while, he decides it’s time to leave the room and face what is going to be his daily life for the next couple of weeks.
He finds Auntie Anne in her garden, tending to her tomatoes.
“Hi,” he greets.
“Oh, dear.” Anne seems to fake her surprise of seeing him, not looking up from her task. “Mind giving a hand?”
“Of course not.”
“Then can you spread fertilizer from the green bag over the cucumbers in the back?” She says, motioning vaguely towards the area. “Oh and, change your shoes. You should find a pair your size in the shed. Probably.”
And so, Yoichi spends his afternoon looking after Anne’s vegetables and fruits, picking up strawberries and digging out carrots, chatting away with her. He’s glad that she really does not seem to mind his presence, happily sharing gossips her friends at the book club have told her, with some could you have guessed that her husband would actually cheat on her, they had a marriage of forty years or and then she told me that the police came looking for her son but she lied and hid him behind a fake wall in the room where they keep their cheese until they left.
When Yoichi goes back to his room to sleep that night, his stomach full of strawberries that made eating dinner more complicated than it should, he is more relaxed than he has been in a very long time, still silently giggling at one of Anne’s funny stories. Uncle Jean brings him a bottle of water to put next to his bed, wishing him good night, and Yoichi feels in his bones the nostalgia of it all and how every laughter resonates like home, and how everything is fine.
Except everything is very much not fine, Yoichi wants to scream, when Michael fucking Kaiser happens the very next morning. Michael Kaiser, who wears a smirk and now red eyeliner, who now has blue tipped hair; his own friend, childhood friend, childhood nemesis, childhood everything and most probably the very reason for his oncoming headache, and until then the dumbass who deems it acceptable to burst into the kitchen at seven in the fucking morning while Yoichi is still trying to fight against the coffee machine (letting out a squeak that he swears was manly enough). Fight which he loses miserably.
It takes a few seconds, but soon Yoichi has the time to think and assess the sight of his friend before him. The room is silent, safe for the barely audible, low-pitched white noise coming from the old fridge, because it seems like Michael has surprisingly decided to keep his mouth shut and just look into Yoichi’s eyes, as if trying to find something smart to say.
There is an undeniable tension in the air between the two and Yoichi’s frenetic heartbeats are slowly cutting through the silence in his ears. Because the man in front of him is definitely, undeniably Michael, no doubt about it. Except that there is no trace left of the boyish grin he had when he last said goodbye to Yoichi four years ago; he’s also thirty centimeters taller than at the time, his haircut is somehow messier (and it has blue in it), the black wings at the corner of his eyes have taken a bloody red shade, and, to top it all, there’s an enormous, vicious, snake-like tattoo crawling up Michael’s arm, that has probably bitten his neck and left the blue rose there in he wound to mock Yoichi in this very moment. Michael has a tattoo.
He thinks that he can feel those vines around his throat, if he focuses a little bit. He most definitely feels it when Michael bends slightly towards him, assessing him in return, as his raised eyebrow meeting his choppy bangs (which make him look more Michael-like than any previous haircut he has ever had).
Yoichi knows that his chest is constricting on itself as he realizes how Michael has changed, but during his next breath, his friend’s hand is on his wrist, and his touch is so grounding that while he knows his hand is bigger than before, he cannot help but feel relieved by the familiarity of it all. And Michael actually smiles (Yoichi has been worried for a second that he might only be able to smirk by now, that he would be more of a cocky bastard than he was four years ago), and fondness flickers in his eyes, but it’s gone when Yoichi blinks. It's probably because Michael has to be annoying about everything.
“Hi clown, missed me?”
It’s almost funny, in a sense; Yoichi can swear that the teasing edges of this asshole's words are tangible, and that he can, with a little bit of effort, grab them and shove them back Michael’s throat in order to silence his smart mouth once and for all. (And oh, a faraway dream).
“You fucking wish.” Yoichi spits, as he falls back effortlessly into their usual banter; it clicks like two puzzle pieces from the same detail on a picture, like they both have counted down the years and days before being able to reunite and see each other again.
That’s what it’s always like with Michael, Yoichi remembers with flickering fondness. There is still a little unease inside his chest, but pretty much everything has gotten washed down at the German man’s unmelodious grating voice (he's lying to himself, but for the sake of his sanity he's not). It’s weird, in a sense, how despite the fact that this Michael is so different, he can still see, hear and feel the one he knows best. The arch of blond eyebrows, the shape of his nose, the tooth biting his lower lip like a fang would, the hollow in-between his collar bones.
Michael looks like he’s ready to bring Yoichi to the pond, or ride a bike three kilometers north towards the nearest mini-market to buy those horrible apple candies, or throw him in the nearest wheat field and rub a handful of it against his neck because he knows Yoichi hates it.
“Well, seems like you still haven't hit that growth spurt, Yoichi?” Michael teases after a few seconds of glancing at him, and these German words wash over the younger man. Michael’s smile screams danger, mischief and chaos — he now has no hope for his stay to remain peaceful and restful; however all Yoichi can see right now is fourteen years old Michael, gloriously successing in his attempt to annoy him, as he sighs.
I can already feel the headache coming, Yoichi laments in his head, but the way his chest swells is not out of annoyance or anger, but out of (what he will never consent to admit) fondness.
He grabs Michael’s forearms, makes sure his nails leave a mark, and smirks. “Thanks for pointing out the obvious.”
The first (real) dinner Yoichi has since he arrived yesterday goes better than expected. To be fair, he pretty much presumed that everyone would be completely silent, perhaps they would ask awkward questions about his life in high school or simply let the clatters of cutlery fill the room.
Against no one’s expectations, it starts with Michael being late and grating his chair against the floor as he takes a seat next to Yoichi.
Aunt Anne glances at him in annoyance, but even Yoichi can see the underlying affection and fondness with which she does. Anne has always had a strong soft spot for Michael, as she was the one who raised him when he was a toddler, when his mom left and his dad was dogshit at about everything parenting-related. This affection shows through each of her interactions with her grandson, no exception made for when he is genuinely only being a nuisance on purpose. Yoichi highly suspects it is what made him into the annoying brat he is today.
“Look at who finally decided to grace us with his presence.” Anne whisper-yells in Jean’s ear, loud enough for Michael to be able to catch it. He smirks, bending down to kiss his grandma on the cheek. She hums, satisfied, and Michael greets his grandpa with a pat on his shoulder from across the table.
Yoichi rolls his eyes when Michael pats the top of his head as a form of greeting, as if they had not already seen each other today. Granted, they did not spend a lot of time together, as the other left to do god knows what after a five minutes long banter with Yoichi this morning, but it’s not like Michael usually cares.
Still, everyone seems happy to be here, minus his friend who scrunches his nose for a second once he realizes that they are having fish for dinner. Yoichi forces down a giggle and tries to concentrate on getting himself a serving of seasoned potatoes without spilling anything onto the table.
Which proves itself to be more difficult than anticipated when Michael straight up makes a face as if the fish had personality insulted him.
“Michael,” Jean failed to say with a stern voice, fighting against his smile. “What’s wrong with the fish?”
Michael’s expression shows nothing but confused, angry disbelief. “Well, for starters that’s a fucking fish.”
“Great job Sherlock,” Yoichi mumbles against his palm.
“Hey, I heard you!” Michael flicks his shoulder in retaliation. Fuck, that actually hurts. That asshole.
When Yoichi looks up to his childhood friend, he’s staring fiercely at Anne.
“You know I hate fish.” Not a question, but a statement. Statement at which Anne merely shrugs.
“And I hate your attitude. We can’t always have what we want, do we? Now eat up, it won't kill you.” She says, shaking her head.
Fortunately, that does the job of shutting Michael up for at least ten minutes; it might not be much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s something worth mentioning still.
“Michael,” Yoichi teases after a while, eyeing Michael’s barely touched fish. “Are you five?”
“Yoichi, why don’t you mind your own business and shove your potatoes down your mouth if you have nothing better to say ?” Michael grits out, and the younger knows he is biting the inside of his cheek to suppress the ‘get fucked and shut the hell up, asshole’ begging to get out.
“What I mean is that you’re old enough not to pick on your food.” Yoichi adds quietly, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “My friend’s baby sister always finishes her tomatoes, which she hates. Imagine being less mature than a six year old.” Jean hides a chuckle behind the back of his hand, and Michael seems like he wants to choke Yoichi to death.
“Boys,” Aunt Anne’s voice cuts through the tension. “Yoichi’s right, Michael. Stop being so difficult, fish are good for your health. Yoichi, you’re only one year younger, you know better than to pick on him.”
Yoichi apologizes, and Michael starts sulking. The dining room is silent for a while. Yoichi sighs. Michael uses his fork to play with the tail of his fish, slightly biting his lower lips. Anne, who is watching her grandson with disapproving eyes, would have every right to call him a mere petulant child. Jean laughs quietly, and takes his wife’s hand in his, affectionately rubbing his thumbs on her knuckles.
As Yoichi feels the somewhat cold touch of Michael’s elbow against his forearm, he comes to a decision.
“Just give me your goddamn plate.” He scoffs, grabbing Michael's plate with a little more strength than intended to get the fish in his own plate. The blond looks at him strangely, his eyes slightly widened. “Auntie, where is the rest of the turkey I cooked for lunch?”
“In the oven, dear. What for?” She asks, pretending not to know what’s going on.
Yoichi stands up, disappearing into the kitchen behind the heavy forest green curtains. It takes a grand total of ten minutes for him to come back with the large reheated plate of turkey, which he leaves without any kind of ceremony in front of Michael. He even goes as far as cutting him a piece, placing it right next to his potatoes.
“Alright. It shouldn’t be too hot.” He announces, satisfied, and sits back down in his seat. He does not wait for any comment on Michael’s part, and goes back to eating his lukewarm potatoes. "Now eat."
Michael does not apologize, or say thank you, or ask him why he did that, but he starts eating Yoichi’s reheated turkey, and that is good enough for now, Yoichi supposes.