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Jakurai tilts his head back to better allow the water to trickle down from the roots of his hair to the basin below. The fine strands near his temples are growing paler nowadays, no doubt from evenings spent away from home and his team in theatre, resuscitating and healing for what his energy’s worth. Hifumi had politely pointed out the greys during an evening spent food shopping earlier on in the week, and Jakurai, usually never one to fret over personal appearance, had been taken aback by the realisation. It’s not that he hadn’t noticed the crow’s feet nor the laugh-lines over the last few years. After all, he’d survived worse than bad days in hospital; war, old alliances, and Ramuda alone had proven that a rough day in theatre is nothing but child’s play to what he used to have to wade through so he pushes the part of him that shrinks in the sight of stress to the back of his mind. He likes to think that a problem not seen is a problem not felt. His body, now five years after the Dirty Dawg’s breakup, doesn’t seem to agree with the sentiment.
Neither does Hifumi.
Gentle pressure tilts his head further back into the basin. “Ah ah,” Hifumi chides, face upside-down from where Jakurai lies beneath his expert, scrutinising gaze. His lips are puffed into a pout and there’s a smudge of honey soy glaze on the corner of his mouth that Jakurai wants to learn up and wipe away. “No moving! Jakurai-sensei is under strict supervision tonight from his handsome stylist.”
He knows he must be pulling a face of some-sort by the way Hifumi’s expression wrinkles tighter. “My apologies,” he offers, doing his best to ease into the curved basin even when his back protests from the strange angle. Both his and Doppo’s bathroom isn’t quite the best place for a dye-job but Jakurai wouldn’t dare step into a hairdresser’s alone. He’s content enough with the therapy he gives patients and walk-ins at the clinic, let alone the basket-case that is Doppo. Having the table turned on him by an eager ear and scissors to his throat is not something he finds himself cosying up to, thank you very much, no matter how emotionally constipated he’s told he is.
“Sensei,” Hifumi gripes, stilling his head from where it tilts up again. “If you don’t lean back I’m shearing all this beautiful hair off and keeping it for myself. I’ll make a wig.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him, either.” Doppo, curled up on the couch in grey pyjamas and a face mask that Jakurai knows full-well belongs to Hifumi, reclines into the cushions. There’s a pair of sliced cucumbers and a microfiber towel folded on the kotatsu’s surface with Jakurai’s embroidered name on it, cursive and all, matching the ones Doppo has on, and it’s waiting for him like an omen. He looks no less miserable than Jakurai feels uncomfortable in his cucumber-eyed glory but it’s an image ridiculous enough to ease some of the tension Jakurai has built up in his shoulders, enough to get him to relax back into the shower’s spray. Hifumi’s spa Fridays must be a regular thing for Doppo; Jakurai wished he’d have asked for forewarning before being bombarded by an enthusiastic Hifumi in the doorway of their apartment earlier when he’d turned up for dinner after mentioning, in brief passing, that he’d lost a patient earlier on in the day. “You do have beautiful hair, sensei.”
Hifumi, from above, nods. “I ain’t wrong!” The shadows around his head shift as he reaches over and squirts something clean-smelling into the palm of his hand. The dye had been applied by a brush an hour ago, and had been clear upon application. Hifumi had refused to let him see his hair until it had been washed. “It’s a shame to let it go to waste, y’know. That’s why we’ve gotta keep it nice and healthy and colourful.”
Hifumi has all the mannerisms of a trained beautician, Jakurai thinks, as he shampoos his hair with enough pressure to ease the tension headache Jakurai’s had for the better part of the week. It bleeds out through his ears and into the towel around his shoulder as a prickling sensation covers his skull, gentle like popping candy, as Hifumi circles the pads of his thumbs into the pressure points behind his ears.
He finds himself drifting into the touches, into the quiet chatter from above, as he’s rinsed off and towelled dry by Hifumi’s dexterous hands before he’s guided to the couch opposite Doppo in the living room to sit while green paste applied to his cheeks, chin, and forehead. It smells faintly like avocado and had the dinner they’d all shared not too long ago been so filling he’d have been tempted to ask whether or not the face mask was edible. As it was, whatever Hifumi had spiced their salmon with had filled him to a sated bliss. He barely feels the gentle shift of a comb through his hair, or the blanket draped around his waist, as Hifumi turns on the evening news to a story Jakurai hears the dregs of through inane chatter.
“We need to get you something better than that ugly tie, Doppo,” Hifumi says from over Jakurai’s ear as he draws a section of hair from his shoulder to his neck. “I can’t have you showing up to your work’s Christmas do in the same outfit you wear daily. Absolutely not.”
“This literally doesn’t concern you.” Doppo, now un-cucumbered, sits half-slumped over the arm of the sofa with a hairband holding his fringe from his face. He’s watching more of the news than Jakurai can manage but doesn’t seem to be paying much attention, either. Through the haze of his half-mast eyelashes Doppo curls himself tighter into the sofa, vulnerable and small, unlike the terrifying figure he presents himself as upon stage. He really is the dark horse of our lot, Jakurai muses, wondering if Doppo would look half as imposing as he does to the public if they saw him like this, in his pyjamas with a missed patch of avocado face-mask drying on his forehead. A swell of affection nearly threatens to cut off Jakurai’s airways. “I don’t recall you being invited.”
“It reflects badly on us if you go out wearing that.” The small, thin hairs on the back of Jakurai’s neck tug as Hifumi twists his hair up into a loose knot. He dries the damp skin on the back of Jakurai’s neck with a dry towel before slumping into the spot next to him, flipping the channel to something far more colourful and dramatic if the music is anything to go by, and tucking himself into his side. Jakurai cracks his eyes open -- and when had they closed? -- to a woman storming out of a wedding from a shell shocked groom and a crying mother on the screen Hifumi shakes his head at the events transpiring. “Look how ridiculous that is. See, this’ll be you, Doppo, if you don’t change your wardrobe up. Nothing but disaster.”
“My wardrobe is perfectly fine!”
“You are the product of your own misfortunes.” He offers him a pitying look. “Fashion taste that bad comes from trauma that not even a man as strong as me can help save.”
It’s moments like this that Jakurai wonders if maybe him taking both of them under his own wing had been less of a move on his part to offer shelter to two lost souls and more of a selfish desire to keep two people so fascinating to himself, to take them before anyone else could. He’s always had a thing for healing the wounded and protecting those he could; it’s why he’d taken Yotsutsji under his wing and why he’d found himself so drawn to forming the Dirt Dawg, but here, with Hifumi’s chilly feet tucked under his legs and Doppo’s borrowed quilt tucked around his waist, he wonders if he’d been projecting his own desires all this time If maybe he’d offered shelter beneath his roof to everyone else because it had been such an empty space to begin with.
Because he’s Jakurai, and he has to be a healer for everyone’s sake; Matenro’s, Yotsutsji’s, and Chuuoku’s if they have anything to say about it, but he can’t heal himself. Running after people doesn’t give you much time to lick your wounds.
But, like this, he feels full enough to burst from the inside-out, on the verge of hysterical tears despite the weight of his limbs and the sleep pulling at his consciousness like a lazy tide. As the lights in the room flicker off and the television’s volume lowers, he reckons it wouldn’t be too bad to give in to the flip-side every once in a while and allow himself to be cared for. Jakurai feels safe for a rare, sacred moment, and it’s all it takes for him to drop off to a dreamless sleep with the warmth of people who care about him on either of his sides.
He rises earlier than both Doppo and Hifumi on Saturday morning. They’re passed out on the sofa, draped over one another’s bodies like lazing cats, relishing in the first rays of sun passing through the window in blissful sleep. He cleans up their wine glasses and sets a pot of coffee to steep while collecting his clothes from the utility room, warm from the dryer’s overnight run.
As he steps back into his loafers at the door, leaning against the genkan’s wall, Jakurai meets his own gaze in the mirror hanging just opposite the entryway. He’s always been pale; a shade so papery-white his veins had stood out like wisteria against his skin, making long days in the theatre ever-more obvious on his face. On bad days, he can look grey and sallow.
Jakurai edges closer, almost hesitantly, and reaches up to press against the soft skin of his jaw to find himself practically glowing in his reflection. The lines around his mouth have settled and the crow’s feet of his eyes are thin valleys that soften when he smiles. It has less to do with whatever mixture he’d had applied to his face last night and more to do with how well-rested he feels, Jakurai knows, familiar with the dull throb at the base of his skull that comes with being wholly knocked-out after for twelve-hour’s worth of sleep. Though he’s not ready to completely discount the face-mask. That most likely has something to do with his complexion, too.
Most surprising of all, Jakurai thinks, is his hair. It is identical to how it was yesterday morning. A thin streak of white runs through his fringe and as he tucks it behind his ear, letting it fall to brush his shoulder, he realises that Hifumi had quite literally done fuck all to his hair but wash it.
Of course, Jakurai muses, parting from the mirror to school his expression into something less pathetic. He raises his fist to his mouth to stifle his wobbly smile and slips out the door before Hifumi or Doppo catch him in such a vulnerable position. He thinks they’ve seen enough of that recently, and as much as Jakurai finds himself now relishing in the feeling of being taken care of, there’s only so many bricks he can take down from the wall built around him at once. One at a time, he tells himself, heading out into the street below Hifumi and Doppo’s apartment to the rising sun and the chilly, wintery air of early December. It’s a beautiful day. The last crisp sheets of frost thaw upon the pavement, giving way beneath Jakurai’s feet, as somewhere above his head Doppo and Hifumi share a mug of coffee and proud, knowing grins between themselves.