Samurai Flamenco - Peace [Gotoyoshi]
Jun. 23rd, 2017 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scriveynerTitle: Peace
Fandom: Samurai Flamenco
Characters/Pairing: Gotou/Masayoshi
Rating: T
Length: 3271
Summary:
The rain pattered softly against the metal roof of the bus shelter, the sound muted and ethereal. Gotou lifted his head and stared at the roof, his brow furrowed in confusion, and then looked down to the phone in his hand. Its screen was active, lit with recent notifications that he had been scrolling mindlessly through, thumb on the screen. He was struck suddenly by the fact that this was a dream, because the phone in his hand was not the flip phone he once had, it was the smart phone he’d had for a couple of years now.
He hadn’t dreamed of this, of Her, in a very long time.
The rain continued, one of the soft sounds of early autumn; the air warm and humid but the precipitation cool. He could sense her sitting beside him, her umbrella had fallen so that it leaned against his knee but … this setting didn’t bring him the anxiety it once had. He knew the script down to his bones, had replayed it countless times over the years. He would nudge the umbrella so that it slid and bumped into her knee, she would scold him and laugh; the bus would finally arrive and it would all End.
When he glanced to his side to look at her, she wasn’t there.
It started to rain harder.
#
Masayoshi was sleeping face first into the pillow, and when Gotou shook his shoulder to wake him the pillow stuck to his face for a split second when he raised his head.”You turned off the alarm again,” Gotou said, and Masayoshi rubbed his eyes blearily and shifted over, sitting up in the bed with crossed legs and scrubbing his hand over his face, stifling a yawn. “Also, you are really attractive in the morning, ‘yoshi.”
“Your bedhead is super cute,” Masayoshi muttered and scratched his stomach.
“I don’t drool in my sleep.”
Masayoshi squinted at the window beside the bed, where dawn had long since broken. He yawned again. “I really turned it off? Again?” He kept scratching his stomach. “I don’t remember doing that.”
“You are rapidly losing electronics in the bed privileges,” Gotou tossed Masayoshi his phone from where Gotou had set it on the dresser, before stepping back into the hallway, rubbing his face with the towel around his neck.
Masayoshi was still sitting in the bed cross-legged when Gotou returned from the bathroom. “Are you actually planning on getting up today?”
Masayoshi waved his hand at Gotou. “Look, look, we made the news!”
Gotou hesitated in front of the closet, rewinding the last week in his head looking for something that would be newsworthy. Not finding anything alarmed him all the more. “Why did we make the news, Masayoshi? What did you do?”
Masayoshi looked up at him, insulted. “Why do you assume I did something?”
“Because I know I didn’t, and you’re the celebrity.”
“That still doesn’t mean I did anything!”
“Masayoshi.”
“Hidenori.” Masayoshi parroted back the same tone of voice at him, but held out his phone so that Gotou could look at the article in question. It wasn’t anything as scandalous as Gotou feared, just a small blurb about notable anniversaries and the date marking the World President’s nuptials. Gotou was both relieved and mildly insulted that the picture in the article simply listed ‘World President Hazama Masayoshi and groom.’
Gotou handed him back his phone. “So what do you want to do for your anniversary, World President Hazama Masayoshi?”
Masayoshi, whose hair was still stuck up in all directions, scrunched up his face and said, “I want pancakes.” Then he smacked his hands on his bare legs. “And it’s your anniversary too, Ha-za-ma Hi-de-no-ri.” He took care to enunciate each syllable clearly, as if Gotou hadn’t long since gotten used to his new family name. “What do you want?”
Gotou kissed the top of Masayoshi’s head. “For you to be happy,” he said.
“Oh, that’s not fair,” Masayoshi said as Gotou headed out of the room, now dressed. “Why do you get to be all cool and romantic? I want a redo.”
“Then do something romantic for me after work,” Gotou called, heading for the kitchen to retrieve his lunch bento. “I’ll see you tonight, Masayoshi, stay out of trouble!”
#
It struck him maybe two hours into his shift that leaving Masayoshi with those instructions was perhaps not the best plan of action he’d ever had. Gotou tried not to envision what sort of chaos might greet him when he finally got off his shift because that was the quickest way to drive himself absolutely crazy. Instead, he funneled as much of his attention as he could into the ever-increasing pile of paperwork on his desk.
“I don’t remember Totsuka ever having this much paperwork,” Gotou muttered, taking a moment to scratch his cheek with his pen. “Why isn’t this digital? It would make more sense for this stuff to be digital.”
His fellow officer was on door duty while Gotou worked on paperwork. “Do your work, Hazama-senpai,” he scolded, and then glanced back into the office with a wicked grin. Gotou scowled at him and the officer returned his attention to his post. There was no one else in the police box today for Gotou to grumble at over how he got no respect from the junior officers; or at least this one junior officer in particular, Nick-kun. With a sigh, Gotou returned to his paperwork.
Masayoshi, lucky him, had the day off. He had been busy for almost two weeks, away filming once again. He had fretted that the shoot would run over and it would be the first year that they would be apart on their anniversary and Gotou had to reassure him on three separate occasions that it was okay, really Masayoshi, I promise; and still Masayoshi had pulled out all the stops to get things done in time and had only arrived home early yesterday morning bronzed gold by the summer sun.
Gotou smiled, chin in his hand as he stared down at the paperwork in front of him without seeing it. He could almost smell the ocean air in Masayoshi’s hair; the sea breeze trapped in his golden curls.
The day trudged on. It was quiet, not that that was unusual. Gotou did a patrol on foot, stopping to help some tourists and sneaking in a quick cigarette where Nick couldn’t see and rat him out to his husband. When he returned he stood outside, under the shaded awning of the police box and thought, three years.
As he suspected, Masayoshi was unable to keep himself occupied for the entire day. By mid-afternoon he made his presence known, delighting a handful of celebrity stalkers who hung around the police box occasionally in the hopes of glimpsing Samurai Flamenco himself. Gotou looked up when he saw a few people run by the door with their phones out and he sighed, hurriedly finishing up the vandalism report on some graffiti he’d found while on patrol.
Gotou gave Masayoshi twenty minutes with his fans, signing autographs and taking pictures before he rescued him. Gotou gave the growing crowd a stern look and about half of them dispersed without any question; the other half knew that Gotou was The Husband and whipped out their phones again to take his picture, too. “What are you doing here?” Gotou asked, grabbing Masayoshi by the hand and pulling him away from the cluster of people.
“I was bored,” Masayoshi said, letting himself be led away.
“There’s three weeks of sentai on the DVR and you’re bored?” No one followed them into the police box, and Nick planted himself dutifully outside the door, allowing them a brief moment of privacy.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Masayoshi muttered, and then flipped open the cover of his satchel. Gotou seated himself back at his desk and looked up when Masayoshi thrust something triumphantly in his face.
Flowers.
Gotou stared at the small bouquet, blinking. Then he looked at Masayoshi beaming happily happily and sighed out an amused noise. “You bought me flowers?” he said. After a moment of suspicion, he added, “there aren’t toku figures hidden inside, are there?”
“No! Why would there be, that’s really strange.” Masayoshi wrinkled his nose. “I just wanted to do something romantic,” he continued, blushing just slightly. “I thought they were pretty! Don’t you think so?” He wiggled the bouquet in front of Gotou.
Flowers had never really been his thing, but it was romantic so Masayoshi definitely got points for that. Gotou took the bouquet in one hand and captured Masayoshi’s wrist with the other, pulling him down so that he could deliver a brief kiss. “Thank you, Masayoshi. They are pretty.” He frowned then, and looked at the bundle. “I don’t know where I can put them, though. I’m certain we don’t have anything appropriate here.”
“I can take them home,” Masayoshi said cheerfully.
Gotou stared at him. “You came all this way and brought me flowers only to take them home again.”
“Yep!”
He put his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand, attempting to hide his exasperated amusement. “You’re an idiot, ‘yoshi.”
Masayoshi picked up the bouquet from where Gotou had laid it on the desk and swatted him with it. “Don’t call me an idiot, you’re the idiot who married me!”
“And I regret it every day,” Gotou said. He glanced up at the silence that caused, and realized that Masayoshi was staring at him with wide, hurt eyes. Oh.
Shit.
“Do you really?” he said softly.
“What? No I don’t, of course I don’t.” Gotou swiveled in his chair and put his hand on the desk, intending to stand up but Masayoshi took a step back, away from him. “Masayoshi, I love you. That was a stupid thing for me to say, I was just being flippant.”
“Yeah, okay.” Masayoshi said but Gotou could tell it wasn’t by his flat tone of voice. “I’ll see you at home, Gotou-san.”
Gotou stood up but Masayoshi stalked stiffly out the door. Nick did a double-take as he walked past, and then immediately turned on his heel and came back into the police box. “What did you do?” he said in an accusatory manner.
The conversation had left a pit in the bottom of Gotou’s stomach. Masayoshi hadn’t called him ‘Gotou-san’ in years.”
He sat down heavily at his desk. “I fucked up,” Gotou said, and didn’t reach for his phone.
#
The lights were on when Gotou got home, and he carefully took his shoes off in the genkan. “I’m home,” he called with some apprehension, and stepped up into the apartment.
There wasn’t an immediate response, and the pit that had been slowly replacing his stomach widened into a vast fracture. “Masayoshi?”
“Sorry,” Masayoshi called from the kitchen, and it sounded like his mouth was full. “Welcome home!”
Gotou stuck his fingers into the knot of his tie to loosen it and chose the kitchen over the bedroom and getting changed. Masayoshi was indeed in the kitchen, wearing an apron and sampling something from a pot on the stove. “I’m back,” Gotou said again, hovering in the doorway and uncertain if he was welcome to enter.
“Welcome home,” Masayoshi repeated, and he sounded normal. He held out the spoon in his hand to Gotou, and there was red sauce on it. “Does this taste right to you?”
“What did you put in it?” Gotou stepped into the kitchen and took the spoon to sample the sauce. He had been working very hard on expanding Masayoshi’s palette beyond curry and now they only had curry maybe twice a week, instead of twice a day. Progress.
“I followed the recipe,” Masayoshi was squinting at his phone. “I dunno. What do you think?”
“I think it tastes fine,” Gotou said, returning the spoon. “You are a much better cook than you used to be, even if you still burn the chicken.”
Masayoshi made a noise of assent, distracted still by his phone. Gotou felt that twinge in his stomach again and caught Masayoshi by the waist. Masayoshi looked at him, clearly a little confused. “I’m sorry about before,” Gotou said. “You’re right to be angry at me, it was a really stupid thing to say. I don’t regret anything about us.”
“I know,” Masayoshi said confidently, and pinched Gotou’s face.
“Ow!”
“You’re an asshole sometimes, Hidenori,” Masayoshi said, and turned back to the pot. “Get out of your uniform before I’m tempted to splash sauce on it, dinner’s almost ready.”
#
They ate dinner in the small dining area with the television still turned off. Gotou sulked a little guiltily, but Masayoshi made up for it by sharing a whole host of production photos he had taken during the shoot; including some of a new character being introduced in this film. “I can’t upload these anywhere yet,” he told Gotou. “But I can show you!”
“You’re probably violating your NDA,” Gotou said, squinting at Masayoshi’s phone anyway because he was curious. “Mr. Plays-by-the-Rules.”
Masayoshi squawked and yanked the phone back and Gotou laughed, the strange undercurrent of tension fading into the background noise of their regular chatter.
The flowers that Masayoshi had bought were sitting in a glass in the sink. Gotou frowned at them, setting his dishes on the counter beside it. “Why do you have the flowers in a water glass? And why is it in the sink?”
Masayoshi peered over his shoulder. “I feel like they’re gonna fall over. I thought It was safer.”
They were tilting perilously to one side. Gotou started opening cabinets, but he was fairly certain that they didn’t own anything resembling a vase. He didn’t even know where to go to buy one. “Text Mizuki, or I bet Moe has a spare vase kicking around somewhere or they know where we can get one.”
Masayoshi dutifully pulled out his phone. “We can probably get one at the flower shop,” he said, but then he hesitated and a strange look crossed his face. Without a word he turned on his heel and hurried out of the kitchen. Gotou was still crouched in front of an open cabinet that was used as extraneous storage, he looked up and frowned and then got up and followed him.
He made a beeline for the spare room’s closet. “I remembered!” Masayoshi said, and opened the closet door, shifting around some brown boxes that were still taped shut from their move.
“What did you remember?” Gotou asked in amusement.
Masayoshi selected one of the boxes and opened it, rooting around for a moment before producing a white, semi-translucent vase. “I knew it!” He thrust it out at Gotou. “From the wedding reception! I knew we kept one!”
There was no way that Gotou could remember even half of the decorations at the reception if he tried. There had been so much going on that most of the memory was a colorful blur; but the vase did look vaguely familiar. “Huh,” he said, and took it from Masayoshi. It was simple work to trim the stems and he set the flowers on the dining room table in their new holder while Masayoshi finished cleaning up dinner.
They settled in on the couch to watch one of Masayoshi’s shows. “Three years,” Gotou said as Masayoshi snuggled in next to him. “Can you believe it?”
“Well, yeah,” Masayoshi said. “I mean, it was ‘till death do us part,’ right? You weren’t planning on dying, were you?” Masayoshi pushed upright and smacked Gotou in the side. “You are not allowed to die, Hidenori! If you died I’d have to avenge you!”
“Wouldn’t that little shit love that,” Gotou muttered, and Masayoshi smacked him again. “Hey, ow!” He rubbed his shoulder. “And why do you think my death would need avenging? What if I fell off a ladder or something, would you fight the ladder?”
Masayoshi said, eyes wide, “you can die from falling off a ladder?”
“If you land on your head wrong you can die from just about anything,” Gotou said. “You’re twenty-three are you seriously telling me you don’t know that? How many head injuries have you had?”
“Lost count,” Masayoshi said. “And I did know that! I just … didn’t think of the ladder thing.” He scooted very close on the couch, squinting at Gotou. “Stay off ladders.”
“I will,” Gotou snorted, then snaked his arm over Masayoshi’s shoulders and pulled him close. “I love you so much,” he said into the side of Masayoshi’s head, and Masayoshi laughed and twisted and kissed him.
#
Gotou sighed and sat back, holding his phone in one hand. The rain’s patter was annoying now, constant above his head. He glanced down at his phone again, and then to his side. The umbrella still leaned against his knee. There was no other knee to nudge it into.
The old bus shelter was unchanging.
Gotou realized, suddenly, that he wasn’t in his school uniform. He looked down at himself, at the familiar worn blue hooded sweatshirt, and then to the umbrella. Finally, he looked over to his other side, where Masayoshi sat, his own phone out and kicking his foot against the ground. He brightened when he realized that Gotou was looking over at him, and he smiled.
Gotou smiled back.
“Let’s go home,” Masayoshi said as the drizzle slowed, and the rain finally began to clear.
Fandom: Samurai Flamenco
Characters/Pairing: Gotou/Masayoshi
Rating: T
Length: 3271
Summary:
The rain pattered softly against the metal roof of the bus shelter, the sound muted and ethereal. Gotou lifted his head and stared at the roof, his brow furrowed in confusion, and then looked down to the phone in his hand. Its screen was active, lit with recent notifications that he had been scrolling mindlessly through, thumb on the screen. He was struck suddenly by the fact that this was a dream, because the phone in his hand was not the flip phone he once had, it was the smart phone he’d had for a couple of years now.
He hadn’t dreamed of this, of Her, in a very long time.
The rain continued, one of the soft sounds of early autumn; the air warm and humid but the precipitation cool. He could sense her sitting beside him, her umbrella had fallen so that it leaned against his knee but … this setting didn’t bring him the anxiety it once had. He knew the script down to his bones, had replayed it countless times over the years. He would nudge the umbrella so that it slid and bumped into her knee, she would scold him and laugh; the bus would finally arrive and it would all End.
When he glanced to his side to look at her, she wasn’t there.
It started to rain harder.
Masayoshi was sleeping face first into the pillow, and when Gotou shook his shoulder to wake him the pillow stuck to his face for a split second when he raised his head.”You turned off the alarm again,” Gotou said, and Masayoshi rubbed his eyes blearily and shifted over, sitting up in the bed with crossed legs and scrubbing his hand over his face, stifling a yawn. “Also, you are really attractive in the morning, ‘yoshi.”
“Your bedhead is super cute,” Masayoshi muttered and scratched his stomach.
“I don’t drool in my sleep.”
Masayoshi squinted at the window beside the bed, where dawn had long since broken. He yawned again. “I really turned it off? Again?” He kept scratching his stomach. “I don’t remember doing that.”
“You are rapidly losing electronics in the bed privileges,” Gotou tossed Masayoshi his phone from where Gotou had set it on the dresser, before stepping back into the hallway, rubbing his face with the towel around his neck.
Masayoshi was still sitting in the bed cross-legged when Gotou returned from the bathroom. “Are you actually planning on getting up today?”
Masayoshi waved his hand at Gotou. “Look, look, we made the news!”
Gotou hesitated in front of the closet, rewinding the last week in his head looking for something that would be newsworthy. Not finding anything alarmed him all the more. “Why did we make the news, Masayoshi? What did you do?”
Masayoshi looked up at him, insulted. “Why do you assume I did something?”
“Because I know I didn’t, and you’re the celebrity.”
“That still doesn’t mean I did anything!”
“Masayoshi.”
“Hidenori.” Masayoshi parroted back the same tone of voice at him, but held out his phone so that Gotou could look at the article in question. It wasn’t anything as scandalous as Gotou feared, just a small blurb about notable anniversaries and the date marking the World President’s nuptials. Gotou was both relieved and mildly insulted that the picture in the article simply listed ‘World President Hazama Masayoshi and groom.’
Gotou handed him back his phone. “So what do you want to do for your anniversary, World President Hazama Masayoshi?”
Masayoshi, whose hair was still stuck up in all directions, scrunched up his face and said, “I want pancakes.” Then he smacked his hands on his bare legs. “And it’s your anniversary too, Ha-za-ma Hi-de-no-ri.” He took care to enunciate each syllable clearly, as if Gotou hadn’t long since gotten used to his new family name. “What do you want?”
Gotou kissed the top of Masayoshi’s head. “For you to be happy,” he said.
“Oh, that’s not fair,” Masayoshi said as Gotou headed out of the room, now dressed. “Why do you get to be all cool and romantic? I want a redo.”
“Then do something romantic for me after work,” Gotou called, heading for the kitchen to retrieve his lunch bento. “I’ll see you tonight, Masayoshi, stay out of trouble!”
It struck him maybe two hours into his shift that leaving Masayoshi with those instructions was perhaps not the best plan of action he’d ever had. Gotou tried not to envision what sort of chaos might greet him when he finally got off his shift because that was the quickest way to drive himself absolutely crazy. Instead, he funneled as much of his attention as he could into the ever-increasing pile of paperwork on his desk.
“I don’t remember Totsuka ever having this much paperwork,” Gotou muttered, taking a moment to scratch his cheek with his pen. “Why isn’t this digital? It would make more sense for this stuff to be digital.”
His fellow officer was on door duty while Gotou worked on paperwork. “Do your work, Hazama-senpai,” he scolded, and then glanced back into the office with a wicked grin. Gotou scowled at him and the officer returned his attention to his post. There was no one else in the police box today for Gotou to grumble at over how he got no respect from the junior officers; or at least this one junior officer in particular, Nick-kun. With a sigh, Gotou returned to his paperwork.
Masayoshi, lucky him, had the day off. He had been busy for almost two weeks, away filming once again. He had fretted that the shoot would run over and it would be the first year that they would be apart on their anniversary and Gotou had to reassure him on three separate occasions that it was okay, really Masayoshi, I promise; and still Masayoshi had pulled out all the stops to get things done in time and had only arrived home early yesterday morning bronzed gold by the summer sun.
Gotou smiled, chin in his hand as he stared down at the paperwork in front of him without seeing it. He could almost smell the ocean air in Masayoshi’s hair; the sea breeze trapped in his golden curls.
The day trudged on. It was quiet, not that that was unusual. Gotou did a patrol on foot, stopping to help some tourists and sneaking in a quick cigarette where Nick couldn’t see and rat him out to his husband. When he returned he stood outside, under the shaded awning of the police box and thought, three years.
As he suspected, Masayoshi was unable to keep himself occupied for the entire day. By mid-afternoon he made his presence known, delighting a handful of celebrity stalkers who hung around the police box occasionally in the hopes of glimpsing Samurai Flamenco himself. Gotou looked up when he saw a few people run by the door with their phones out and he sighed, hurriedly finishing up the vandalism report on some graffiti he’d found while on patrol.
Gotou gave Masayoshi twenty minutes with his fans, signing autographs and taking pictures before he rescued him. Gotou gave the growing crowd a stern look and about half of them dispersed without any question; the other half knew that Gotou was The Husband and whipped out their phones again to take his picture, too. “What are you doing here?” Gotou asked, grabbing Masayoshi by the hand and pulling him away from the cluster of people.
“I was bored,” Masayoshi said, letting himself be led away.
“There’s three weeks of sentai on the DVR and you’re bored?” No one followed them into the police box, and Nick planted himself dutifully outside the door, allowing them a brief moment of privacy.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Masayoshi muttered, and then flipped open the cover of his satchel. Gotou seated himself back at his desk and looked up when Masayoshi thrust something triumphantly in his face.
Flowers.
Gotou stared at the small bouquet, blinking. Then he looked at Masayoshi beaming happily happily and sighed out an amused noise. “You bought me flowers?” he said. After a moment of suspicion, he added, “there aren’t toku figures hidden inside, are there?”
“No! Why would there be, that’s really strange.” Masayoshi wrinkled his nose. “I just wanted to do something romantic,” he continued, blushing just slightly. “I thought they were pretty! Don’t you think so?” He wiggled the bouquet in front of Gotou.
Flowers had never really been his thing, but it was romantic so Masayoshi definitely got points for that. Gotou took the bouquet in one hand and captured Masayoshi’s wrist with the other, pulling him down so that he could deliver a brief kiss. “Thank you, Masayoshi. They are pretty.” He frowned then, and looked at the bundle. “I don’t know where I can put them, though. I’m certain we don’t have anything appropriate here.”
“I can take them home,” Masayoshi said cheerfully.
Gotou stared at him. “You came all this way and brought me flowers only to take them home again.”
“Yep!”
He put his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand, attempting to hide his exasperated amusement. “You’re an idiot, ‘yoshi.”
Masayoshi picked up the bouquet from where Gotou had laid it on the desk and swatted him with it. “Don’t call me an idiot, you’re the idiot who married me!”
“And I regret it every day,” Gotou said. He glanced up at the silence that caused, and realized that Masayoshi was staring at him with wide, hurt eyes. Oh.
Shit.
“Do you really?” he said softly.
“What? No I don’t, of course I don’t.” Gotou swiveled in his chair and put his hand on the desk, intending to stand up but Masayoshi took a step back, away from him. “Masayoshi, I love you. That was a stupid thing for me to say, I was just being flippant.”
“Yeah, okay.” Masayoshi said but Gotou could tell it wasn’t by his flat tone of voice. “I’ll see you at home, Gotou-san.”
Gotou stood up but Masayoshi stalked stiffly out the door. Nick did a double-take as he walked past, and then immediately turned on his heel and came back into the police box. “What did you do?” he said in an accusatory manner.
The conversation had left a pit in the bottom of Gotou’s stomach. Masayoshi hadn’t called him ‘Gotou-san’ in years.”
He sat down heavily at his desk. “I fucked up,” Gotou said, and didn’t reach for his phone.
The lights were on when Gotou got home, and he carefully took his shoes off in the genkan. “I’m home,” he called with some apprehension, and stepped up into the apartment.
There wasn’t an immediate response, and the pit that had been slowly replacing his stomach widened into a vast fracture. “Masayoshi?”
“Sorry,” Masayoshi called from the kitchen, and it sounded like his mouth was full. “Welcome home!”
Gotou stuck his fingers into the knot of his tie to loosen it and chose the kitchen over the bedroom and getting changed. Masayoshi was indeed in the kitchen, wearing an apron and sampling something from a pot on the stove. “I’m back,” Gotou said again, hovering in the doorway and uncertain if he was welcome to enter.
“Welcome home,” Masayoshi repeated, and he sounded normal. He held out the spoon in his hand to Gotou, and there was red sauce on it. “Does this taste right to you?”
“What did you put in it?” Gotou stepped into the kitchen and took the spoon to sample the sauce. He had been working very hard on expanding Masayoshi’s palette beyond curry and now they only had curry maybe twice a week, instead of twice a day. Progress.
“I followed the recipe,” Masayoshi was squinting at his phone. “I dunno. What do you think?”
“I think it tastes fine,” Gotou said, returning the spoon. “You are a much better cook than you used to be, even if you still burn the chicken.”
Masayoshi made a noise of assent, distracted still by his phone. Gotou felt that twinge in his stomach again and caught Masayoshi by the waist. Masayoshi looked at him, clearly a little confused. “I’m sorry about before,” Gotou said. “You’re right to be angry at me, it was a really stupid thing to say. I don’t regret anything about us.”
“I know,” Masayoshi said confidently, and pinched Gotou’s face.
“Ow!”
“You’re an asshole sometimes, Hidenori,” Masayoshi said, and turned back to the pot. “Get out of your uniform before I’m tempted to splash sauce on it, dinner’s almost ready.”
They ate dinner in the small dining area with the television still turned off. Gotou sulked a little guiltily, but Masayoshi made up for it by sharing a whole host of production photos he had taken during the shoot; including some of a new character being introduced in this film. “I can’t upload these anywhere yet,” he told Gotou. “But I can show you!”
“You’re probably violating your NDA,” Gotou said, squinting at Masayoshi’s phone anyway because he was curious. “Mr. Plays-by-the-Rules.”
Masayoshi squawked and yanked the phone back and Gotou laughed, the strange undercurrent of tension fading into the background noise of their regular chatter.
The flowers that Masayoshi had bought were sitting in a glass in the sink. Gotou frowned at them, setting his dishes on the counter beside it. “Why do you have the flowers in a water glass? And why is it in the sink?”
Masayoshi peered over his shoulder. “I feel like they’re gonna fall over. I thought It was safer.”
They were tilting perilously to one side. Gotou started opening cabinets, but he was fairly certain that they didn’t own anything resembling a vase. He didn’t even know where to go to buy one. “Text Mizuki, or I bet Moe has a spare vase kicking around somewhere or they know where we can get one.”
Masayoshi dutifully pulled out his phone. “We can probably get one at the flower shop,” he said, but then he hesitated and a strange look crossed his face. Without a word he turned on his heel and hurried out of the kitchen. Gotou was still crouched in front of an open cabinet that was used as extraneous storage, he looked up and frowned and then got up and followed him.
He made a beeline for the spare room’s closet. “I remembered!” Masayoshi said, and opened the closet door, shifting around some brown boxes that were still taped shut from their move.
“What did you remember?” Gotou asked in amusement.
Masayoshi selected one of the boxes and opened it, rooting around for a moment before producing a white, semi-translucent vase. “I knew it!” He thrust it out at Gotou. “From the wedding reception! I knew we kept one!”
There was no way that Gotou could remember even half of the decorations at the reception if he tried. There had been so much going on that most of the memory was a colorful blur; but the vase did look vaguely familiar. “Huh,” he said, and took it from Masayoshi. It was simple work to trim the stems and he set the flowers on the dining room table in their new holder while Masayoshi finished cleaning up dinner.
They settled in on the couch to watch one of Masayoshi’s shows. “Three years,” Gotou said as Masayoshi snuggled in next to him. “Can you believe it?”
“Well, yeah,” Masayoshi said. “I mean, it was ‘till death do us part,’ right? You weren’t planning on dying, were you?” Masayoshi pushed upright and smacked Gotou in the side. “You are not allowed to die, Hidenori! If you died I’d have to avenge you!”
“Wouldn’t that little shit love that,” Gotou muttered, and Masayoshi smacked him again. “Hey, ow!” He rubbed his shoulder. “And why do you think my death would need avenging? What if I fell off a ladder or something, would you fight the ladder?”
Masayoshi said, eyes wide, “you can die from falling off a ladder?”
“If you land on your head wrong you can die from just about anything,” Gotou said. “You’re twenty-three are you seriously telling me you don’t know that? How many head injuries have you had?”
“Lost count,” Masayoshi said. “And I did know that! I just … didn’t think of the ladder thing.” He scooted very close on the couch, squinting at Gotou. “Stay off ladders.”
“I will,” Gotou snorted, then snaked his arm over Masayoshi’s shoulders and pulled him close. “I love you so much,” he said into the side of Masayoshi’s head, and Masayoshi laughed and twisted and kissed him.
Gotou sighed and sat back, holding his phone in one hand. The rain’s patter was annoying now, constant above his head. He glanced down at his phone again, and then to his side. The umbrella still leaned against his knee. There was no other knee to nudge it into.
The old bus shelter was unchanging.
Gotou realized, suddenly, that he wasn’t in his school uniform. He looked down at himself, at the familiar worn blue hooded sweatshirt, and then to the umbrella. Finally, he looked over to his other side, where Masayoshi sat, his own phone out and kicking his foot against the ground. He brightened when he realized that Gotou was looking over at him, and he smiled.
Gotou smiled back.
“Let’s go home,” Masayoshi said as the drizzle slowed, and the rain finally began to clear.
