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Yudai doesn’t want to go back to their hotel after dinner. He’s had a few drinks - Fuma had kept up with him, but Yudai is too slim, probably, and alcohol hits him differently, his marathon runner’s heart pumping the high through his veins with a swaying efficiency.
Please, he says, in the way his fingers press into the muscle of Fuma’s forearm, in the way his eyes are edging towards being just a little too glassy. Fuma waves the kids off into the cars the managers have summoned for them, and the two of them set off alone.
It’s the perfect temperature outside, breeze chasing away the worst of the humidity that comes from being this close to the coast. Yudai is a little too loose, a little too giggly, so Fuma makes them stop at a convenience store along the way, entranced by the way Yudai weaves through the aisles, pointing out interesting snacks, the apples of his cheeks luminous under the harsh lighting. Fuma picks up a couple of bottles of water and watches Yudai drain his on their slow saunter towards Kokura station. It’s only a five-minute walk away, and Yudai insists he’s found the perfect local izakaya where they definitely won’t be recognised, child-like excitement bubbling over, wriggly and bumping into Fuma with every third step.
They spend a few more minutes lost in a poorly-lit alleyway behind the station, dotted with cigarette butts and ringing with broken crooning coming from the many karaoke bars. There’s even an abandoned cinema, the faded illustrated poster on the wall boasting a showing of the pinnacle of male beauty on the big screen; two naked men, locked in an embrace, one of them glaring accusatorily at Fuma as they round the corner and finally arrive at their destination.
It’s a 24-hour izakaya, and smells like it: old grease and lingering cigarette smoke, though the air conditioning is blissfully powerful. It being a Sunday, the counter seats are empty, and they steer away from the one rowdy table by the beer server, choosing one of the tables tucked into an alcove instead. They have to take off their shoes and curl their legs in on the tatami flooring, which Yudai seems all too delighted to do, leaving Fuma to order for them.
The menu is just a list of items, no pictures, and their corresponding prices, a large laminated sheet folded in half, and a little sticky where Fuma runs his finger down the mess of text. Fuma is not a gourmet by any means; overwhelmed, he simply points at the poster of their special on the wall, which looks like an omelette with slabs of fried tofu on it, presented on a hot plate. He whispers for the server to water down Yudai’s highball, then goes to join Yudai at the table.
Yudai pouts when Fuma tries to sit across from him, so he slides in next to Yudai, leaning back against the wall and letting Yudai press their thighs together under the table.
“Fuma. Fuuuma,” Yudai rolls the syllables of Fuma’s name on his tongue, like he can taste them in the whisky he’s just swallowed. “This is nice. Fuuumaaa.”
There’s a scandalised screech from the rowdy table. You came all the way from Tokyo to see this guy’s nipples? It’s almost eleven, and Fuma supposes talking about someone’s nipples isn’t entirely inappropriate for the hour.
Yudai kneads his fingers into Fuma’s thigh. He’d been so handsy today, rubbing his cheek into the back of Fuma’s neck at the interview they did earlier with a local comedian, Fuma hyper-conscious of the fine line between fanservice and exposure, but never able to pull away from letting Yudai take what he wants.
The hot plate tofu omelette arrives, sizzling. Fuma takes an extra pair of chopsticks and cuts the tofu into bite-sized pieces, blowing on one to cool it before placing it on Yudai’s plate. Yudai doesn’t touch it, too busy rambling into Fuma’s ear. He drops names - Fumiya, Keito, Kohei - Fuma has heard them enough to recognise them, Yudai full of anecdotes about all the time they’ve spent together, at dinner, at the sauna, at the futsal games Yudai has yet to join but had wanted to hear all about nonetheless, giggling into his phone. I’ll join next time, for sure. I just wanted to hear your voice, he’d said, Fuma pretending he hadn’t been eavesdropping as he methodically positioned cupboards in his Pokopia underground laboratory, the weight of Yudai’s legs on his lap suddenly a little too heavy.
Yudai eats his tofu, then calls for a refill on their drinks. Fuma makes a discreet pinching motion at the server, who nods, knowingly, and brings them glasses of water with their highballs.
They clink their glasses.
“This is so nice, Fuma.”
“Is it, now?”
“You never come out with me.”
Fuma tells himself it’s not an accusation. He places another piece of tofu on Yudai’s plate, making sure it’s topped with a good balance of leek and bonito flakes, folding a little flap of the omelette over the top to keep it all in place. He blows on it, just in case.
“I know,” he says, and Yudai reaches to tuck Fuma’s hair behind his ear. Out of the corner of his eye, Fuma sees a customer pass by their table on the way to the restroom. He leans away, and Yudai’s hand falls back to the table to wrap around his glass.
Yudai never drinks at the dorm. He never has the time or energy for it. Fuma only ever gets to witness the aftermath, the tipsy way he presses into Fuma once he gets home, lips loose and body looser, an overheated, malleable mess in Fuma’s arms, begging for affection. Yudai’s pull is undiscerning, everyone he meets inevitably ending up in his thrall, a siren call that lures in even the most seasoned of sailors like fools.
Yudai’s glass is half empty now, cheeks rounded adorably and lips pursed so small as he chews.
Fuma feels like the biggest fool of them all.
He gets up to use the restroom. There’s only one, and Fuma chooses to wait in line. The lady in front of him stumbles over nothing, and he instinctively reaches out a hand to steady her.
“Aren’t you a kind young man!” She doesn’t seem to see him properly, but beams at him regardless. “Just like my friend’s husband, you know? Kind as anything! And where did that get him?” She hiccups, plowing on, undeterred. “She sleeps with a different man every week while he just waits at home for her! Says he doesn’t want a divorce!”
Her friend emerges from the restroom. They greet each other with surprise and delight, like they hadn’t just been drinking at the same table.
“Are we talking about that friend again?” The stumbling lady has disappeared into the restroom, so Fuma just nods in her stead. Her friend clicks her tongue.
“Some of us need some spice in our lives, you know?” She claps a hand to Fuma’s shoulder. It’s still wet; Fuma flinches. At least it’s proof she’s washed them.
When he gets back to their table, Yudai is sprinkling a generous helping of chili powder onto his next bite, savouring it with a sweet little hum, washing it down with another gulp of his highball. Two more drinks have appeared since he was gone, and Fuma can’t tell if the server remembered his original request. He pulls both drinks to his side of the table to be safe, ignoring Yudai’s grabby hands.
“Fuma!” Yudai whines. “You’re no fun.”
Fuma forces a chuckle, placing the glass of water in front of Yudai instead. Yudai drinks, obediently, looking petulantly up at Fuma through his eyelashes the entire time. Fuma hands him one of the highballs once he’s drained the glass, incapable of resisting Yudai for long.
Yudai’s phone buzzes against the table. It’s been doing that all night, but Yudai has been ignoring it, too busy trying to sneak touches of Fuma’s skin.
This time, though, the buzzing doesn’t stop, the insistent rhythm of an incoming call. Fuma tilts his head at Yudai’s phone, giving him permission. Yudai answers in what he thinks is a hushed whisper.
“Keito! No, I’m with one of my group members now.” Yudai’s face colours. “It’s not like that, idiot! Look, I’ll call you back later. Say hi to the guys for me.”
Fuma picks at the tofu on his plate, mashing up the soft, white insides of it.
“They sound like a fun bunch.”
“They are,” Yudai agrees, fond. Then, quickly, “They don’t know about you, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
The tofu coats Fuma’s chopsticks, stuck in the rough bamboo. Fuma can almost feel the unpleasant scrape against the inside of his lip. He places his chopsticks back down.
When Yudai finishes his third drink, Fuma calls it. He goes to get the bill. The table by the beer server is still going on about nipples, that lady with the wet hands at the restroom trying to pinpoint where the guys’ nipples are by fondling them over their clothes. She spots Fuma, friendly leer on her lips, and Fuma quickly scrambles back to help Yudai with his shoelaces.
They walk back to their hotel. Kokura is more of a large town than a city, and everything is surprisingly close by. Once they get out of the vicinity of the train station and the drunk people squatting and smoking in the shadows, the streets are quiet and dim. Yudai, tipsy and oblivious, tries to take Fuma’s hand and misses, fingers clinging instead to Fuma’s pinky. He swings their conjoined hands between them anyway, humming tunelessly as he meanders, Fuma the anchor keeping him solidly on the pavement.
They must look so strange, to anyone watching. Fuma, broad and stocky, and Yudai, endlessly long and slim and graceful, even inebriated. Fuma, shy and awkward, and Yudai, flitting around at glamorous luxury events, making friends and acquaintances left and right. Yudai, popular movie star with a packed social calendar, and Fuma, sequestered at home, holding him back.
Fuma steers them towards the basement carpark entrance. It’s discreet, they can take the lift straight to their rooms from there. Yudai squeals, something about wanting to see the ocean, separated from their hotel by a dangerously wide strip of highway. He tries to take off down the street past the main lobby, but Fuma digs in his heels until the tug on his pinky becomes too painful, and he has to twist his hand out of Yudai’s grip. Yudai stops, like he’s finally, properly seeing Fuma for the first time tonight.
“I can’t keep up with you,” Fuma says, the bite of melancholy sharp through the haze of alcohol that’s maybe starting to affect him, too, peeling back his layers, revealing too much. “I can’t give you what you need.”
Yudai steps up to Fuma, smoothing his hair down and tucking it behind his ear, like he’d wanted to, back at the izakaya. Fuma lets him, flayed open, mushy and soft and helpless. Yudai’s eyes are bright and clear and brimming with nothing but truth.
“Maybe not,” he says, fingers hot against Fuma’s temple, and Fuma can’t move, trapped under Yudai’s spell, even while his heart drops out of his chest and splats uselessly at Yudai’s feet.
“You’re the only one who can give me what I want, though.”
Anything. Everything. Fuma will flip the world on its axis for Yudai, build bridges in the sky for Yudai to traverse, pull the moon out of its orbit so Yudai can admire its soft brilliance whenever he pleases.
Yudai chuckles, as if he can hear Fuma’s racing thoughts, sense his hapless desperation through the pallor of his skin, taste it in the bleeding valves of Fuma’s heart, cradled in his palms.
“I want you, silly.” He kisses the tip of Fuma’s nose, simple as anything.
Fuma is a fool, the biggest of them all, but he’s Yudai’s fool. At the end of the day, maybe that’s the only thing that matters.
“You’re the only thing that matters,” he says, lost, disjointed, drunk on the scent of Yudai’s floral body wash under the faint smell of grease that clings to his clothes.
The sound of Yudai’s laugh reverberates through the carpark, echoes bouncing back around them like the world is partaking in his mirth.
“Then I guess we can dump out your Pokémon card binders? They’re taking up way too much space in your room.”
“Okay, you’re the only other thing that matters.”
“What about your Pokémon plushies?”
“You’ll just have to get in line.”
“That would make me… the 36th thing that matters?”
“Only if you count all my cards as one item.”
“Damn. I at least make the list, though, right?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Yudai loops an arm through his and walks them towards the carpark lift.
“To even be worthy of consideration by the great Murata Fuma! I must be one lucky guy.”
Fuma is the lucky one, to be so demanded by someone so perpetually in demand. He doesn’t say any of this, though, already stitched back together by the mere touch of Yudai’s hand, now laced properly with his in the carpeted silence of the lift.
Yudai doesn’t let go, even when they alight on their floor.
Please, he says, in the way the pads of his fingers exert an insinuating pressure on Fuma’s knuckles when he tries to pull away to head back to his own room. Stay, he says, in the way the heel of his palm grinds against Fuma’s cock, in the way his throat swallows him down, deep and claiming. You’re the only one that I want, he says, in the way his lips press into the crook of Fuma’s neck, bodies so intricately entwined that Fuma doesn’t know where he ends and Yudai begins. Doesn’t want to know, content to live out the rest of their days breathing as one.