‘ADAM is getting married’

Friday night, or rather Saturday in the early morning. A man, gorgeous, handsome, comes back to his restaurant with a girl in each arms. On the counter, an envelope waits. Inside resides an invitation in the form of a crimson heart, surrounded by black roses. 

‘ADAM is getting married,’ the card reads. 

Kojiro dismisses his dates to call his oldest friend. 

“Have you heard the news?” he asks. 

The news made its way to Kaoru as well. Adam is getting married. At S. In three months. 

The following day a gloomy man goes to Dope SKetch. He hides his identity under a red cap, but all there know his name. 

“Snake!” Reki and Langa exclaim. A single invitation is given, to the one whom Adam once called his Eve. Both teens and the manager read the card carefully. “Adam is getting married? And we’re all invited?” Reki asks. 

“The invitation is only for Snow,” Snake replies, to Reki’s despair. He turns to Langa. “But you can bring a plus one.” 

Reki beams at the news, until Langa replies, crushing the hype, “I’ll go with my mom.” And shatters his dream into pieces. 

Another stop at the flower shop, then at Miya’s school, and Tadashi’s mission is done. Each party of the small group of ‘friends’ they manage to build together during the year have been informed of Adam’s new wedding. A second caprice. Does he have a new Eve in sight? Tadashi can’t tell. He’s even quite at loss of what to do with the information, considering how their relationship evolved, especially in the last few months. 

Tadashi, exhausted, rests his head for a second only on his wheel and lets out a sigh before starting the engine. 

He finds his master in the secret room where they watch over ‘S’ races together. 

“The invitations have been delivered,” he plainly announces. 

“Good! Excellent! Were they surprised? Jealous? How did Snow react?” 

Ainosuke is ecstatic. He has been for quite a while now. Happy, immensely. Which did a lot for Tadashi’s mood as well. 

But for some reason, Ainosuke’s sudden blissfulness makes him quite wary. 

“If I may share an opinion,” Tadashi says, eyes on the screens—anywhere else but on Ainosuke—“Why didn’t you invite the redhead? Reki is a good skater.” 

Ainosuke turns to him slowly with a grimace on his face. “I don’t want to have to endure the sight of that ugly slime on the best day of my life. It’s my wedding after all, I can choose who’s there or not. Unless you insist on having him?” 

“I thought he would be a formidable opponent for a new tournament, that is all.” 

Ainosuke’s triumphal smile vanishes from his face. “But...Tadashi, this is not just another tournament. This is the real deal. A true wedding.” He says, very carefully—too much for his standard. “We’re going to the City Hall in the afternoon before the reception at Crazy Rock.” 

There’s a blank. A white flash before his eyes, a pain so intense Tadashi almost faints. The aunts have been pressing Ainosuke to marry for months, presenting him a myriad of candidates, some whom Ainosuke dated out of spite and boredness, but one, apparently, who met all his criteria. 

And now Ainosuke is getting married. 

It’s nothing Tadashi has not expected, yet he feels like his world is crumbling. 

“...Do you disapprove?” Ainosuke sounds concerned. Of course, he would be. 

“No.” And he proposes before he can think. “I’ll take care of everything, if you don’t see any inconvenience.”  

Ainosuke lets out a sigh. “If you insist, I won’t stop you; but I’d rather have had anyone else but you in charge, to be honest.” Tadashi looks down, trying to hide the hurt in his eyes—Ainosuke just stabbed him in the back and he keeps pressing at the open wound; he’s not usually so cruel, not with him, never since they reconciled.  

“Do you have any requests?” His voice quivers. He blames the weakness of his heart. “A theme, perhaps?” 

“Just do whatever makes you happy. I’ll entrust everything to you.” Ainosuke brings a cigarette between his lips as he looks for a lighter. “Everything but the costumes. I have this.” 

When it seems he can’t find it, Tadashi steps in and lights Ainosuke’s cigarette. “As you wish, Ainosuke-sama.” 

Red eyes halt a moment on his evident dismay. Without missing a beat, Ainosuke breathes out the smoke on Tadashi’s face, and asks; “Are you alright?” 

“Yes. I’m fine.” 

Yet, as a silent confession of his blatant lie, Tadashi flees from the room as fast as his legs would take him, and sends Ainosuke in a state of immense puzzleness. 

A month or so of sleep deprivation and questionable eating habits—and definitely not depression, Tadashi insists—triumphs of Tadashi’s tailored suits. Or so Ainosuke says. ‘I’m the suits expert’, he told him, in the car; Tadashi was too tired to ask him when he had time to get a degree.  

An excuse for a stop to the tailor, he says, to adjust his jacket. 

He stands, his arms spread, in front of a mirror when finally Ainosuke comes back with his faithful tailor—the one who did all of Adam’s costume 

“Is he the man?” the tailor asks; there’s a mischievous air in his smile that Tadashi doesn’t like. 

“Yes, he is!” Ainosuke is as flamboyant as ever. He oozes confidence and charms, and if Tadashi looks harder, he would see a bit of Adam that shines in his eyes. “I need him to look absolutely stunning.” 

“Of course.” The tailor comes to his side, touches them, makes measures. Tadashi allows the intrusion only because Ainosuke permits it too. “There is indeed a small adjustment to make. You have a good eye, Sir.” 

Perhaps it’s true, but then why the need for the sudden adjustment? Their schedule is as tight as Adam’s pants.  

“You’re going to stand next to me in all the official pictures,” Ainosuke reminds him. “I won’t be satisfied with anything but perfection.” 

Tadashi briefly wonders what he means by that before the tailor makes him spin around. 

Ainosuke waits until the tailor goes back to his workshop to speak to him again, in a hushed voice. “I may sound like a broken record, but are you okay?” He runs his thumb under Tadashi’s eyes. The skin there is purple. From lack of sleep, and a sort of desperation. “Is this about the wedding?” 

How can it not be? Ainosuke really has some nerves. “There are a lot of things that still need to be done.” 

Ainosuke lets out a frustrated sigh. “I told you I did not want you to get involved. You have already so much on your plate. Let me take care of-” 

“No.” And as impossible as it can be Tadashi realizes he wants this. He needs to organize the wedding of the only man he will ever love. The only way to be part of it, from the shadows; a great metaphor of what his life with Ainosuke has been. “Besides, everything is almost ready. I just have some questions about the invites: I found none for your aunts, and—” 

“I’ll take care of the three witches just fine,” Ainosuke replies. He withdraws when the tailor comes back with a tape measure. “And I’ll take care of ‘S’ as well,” he adds, in a whisper. 

During Ainosuke’s next two-hour meeting Tadashi scrolls through the emails of the address he created especially for the wedding. He finally settled on a menu and picked the champagne, and out of spite he only chose his own favourite dishes. If this was going to be the worst day of his life, at least, Tadashi wanted to have his belly full of comfort food. So oysters there will be. And salmon. And of course, lava chocolate cakes for dessert, and the reception room will be surrounded by chocolate fountains. Because he loves Ainosuke too much not to indulge him with what he loves as well. 

For so many years he thought Ainosuke’s wedding could never be the happiest day of his life. Years Tadashi spent silently listening to poisonous words from his aunts, as he was doing all in his power to make one with the tapestries, no matter how much Ainosuke insisted on his presence by his side each time he had to face them. 

But now he’s not so sure. Reading the menu gets Ainosuke overjoyed. There’s the same craziness in his eyes than when he skates to his heart’s content. It kills a part of Tadashi each time he has to witness such bliss on his face.  

Ainosuke holds him by the waist in the cruellest, most mindless way. “I love it. It’s utterly perfect.” Then he kisses Tadashi’s forehead. 

He leaves without a word, taking another piece of Tadashi’s broken heart along with him. 

Tadashi is too exhausted for sleepless nights. It just takes him a couple of hours more to fall asleep. The ghost of Ainosuke’s lips, so warm on his forehead, haunts him. And in the mysterious space between awakeness and the secured embrace of Morpheus’ arms, it’s easier to remember what they tasted like. They haven’t kissed in a while.  Not since Ainosuke told him about the wedding. 

He’s been so upset that he threw himself into the fray and forgot everything, even Time itself.  

The first time it happened Tadashi thought it was a spur of the moment. A way to get the adrenaline from their first beef in forever out of Adam’s boiling body. He chose to ignore the second time, but when a third and fourth time came, well, Tadashi could hardly call it a mistake anymore. After all, Ainosuke said he wanted him by his side for the rest of their lives. 

Under the cover, Tadashi clenches a fist.  

The more they get closer to the fateful date, the pettier Tadashi gets. 

A week ago he picked the flowers. The bride’s bouquet. He chose red roses, of course, Ainosuke wouldn’t want anything else after all. But Tadashi added a couple of white chrysanthemums to soften the deep shade, he argued, but in truth it’s just another method to infiltrate the wedding and steal the leading role. He can’t wait to see Ainosuke’s face when, wearing her beautiful wedding dress, her face concealed under the veil, Ainosuke’s future wife would walk along the aisle with a smile, holding their flowers, proudly.  

The rest is anecdotic—white lilies on the tables, more roses, red, pink, and white, camellias at the entrance. The rest, he neglected. Only what can touch, hurt, unsettled Ainosuke holds his interest. 

On a Sunday morning, Tadashi wakes up with Ainosuke sitting on his bed. His hand caresses his bangs out of his eyes. The tender touch burns like ambers. 

“Can you do something for me?” 

How Tadashi agrees to drive to the jewellery shop is a true mystery. Perhaps he’s still too in love to be angry at Ainosuke. It’s Fate he should hate. It’s Japan’s politics that is still intolerant of what they are, it’s the aunts’ impatience, it’s his own ineptitude, his mediocrity, to have failed in finding a better solution for them, and for Ainosuke’s happiness. 

But doesn’t he look anything but happy these days? Isn’t it all that mattered in the end? It should be their greatest victory. After years of concealing his true self under a red devil alias, Ainosuke is finally radiant. His political career is promising, his skating is unmatched—even Tadashi cannot compete—and his moods? Not as unstable as they used to be. 

The rings are strangely sober for Ainosuke’s standard. They are of thick, solid silver, each with a stone, discreet but stunning. One red, the other green. And inside, something engraved. 

‘A&S, for the rest of their lives’

Tadashi smiles bitterly at the irony. Once he gets home, he tries the green one on. A perfect fit. A cruel irony. 

On the eve of the wedding, Ainosuke brings him the suit. 

It’s white. Immaculate. It’s made of the finest fabric. It’s the most beautiful thing Tadashi has ever owned—probably the most expensive as well. 

Not the most precious. That will remain Ainosuke’s love forever. 

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” 

Ainosuke radiates gentleness in his posture, in the depth of his voice, and in the warmth of his hands on Tadashi’s arms. It’s been the longest and hardest month of Tadashi’s life, even harsher than the years he only had his guilt to fill Ainosuke’s absence, the only friends he had known and whom he betrayed, the only one that had mattered. Those were two different kinds of misery.  

Tadashi has been but the shadow of himself for long weeks, and never so close to breaking. So in a moment of weakness, as he understands this is the last chance he has to voice his opinion before the man he loves is united to another soul until death do them part, when he is asked if he is ready to hand over the love of his life to some random stranger, the word passes his lips on its own. 

“No.” How can Ainosuke conceive such a herculean task? How can he ask this of him? Is it because Tadashi never told him, or not enough, how important he was to him? How deeply he had loved him? How he never thought, for a second, of a life without him? 

“I thought you’d say that. I know it’s a lot of stress, but everything will be alright.” Well, at least Tadashi can be sure of that, because he organized the whole wedding. That’s the only reassuring thing in this mess: he knows exactly when it’s going to hurt the most. He planned his own execution.  

“I don’t want to sound rude, but you look terrible. I’m not sure I have enough makeup to hide those circles under your eyes.” 

Again, a tender thumb runs over them, over his mole. His breath is hot against Tadashi’s ear. 

“Say...it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” 

Tadashi is terrified by what Ainosuke suggests. 

“What do you think? Want to take advantage of my last day as a free man?” 

A last bite of the forbidden fruit? How cruel this man can be, how unfair life is, and how weak Tadashi feels under Ainosuke’s caresses. 

Their first kiss after days of deprivation feels like breathing again. The strong hand that folds his backside brings him back to the living. An ephemeral revival before the inevitable demise. 

Full of love, of Ainosuke, of Ainosuke’s tongue in his mouth, Tadashi’s head spins and his legs wobble when Ainosuke pushes him to the bed. His kisses are eager and desperate. He must have missed him too. Three months is an eternity for two hearts in love. 

But it cannot happen like this. They cannot fornicate in haste and then say goodbye in the middle of the night like clandestine, star-crossed lovers; the world is already ashamed of what they are, they cannot, for their own pride, treat their love the same way. They need respectful closure. Tadashi deserves it. 

He pushes Ainosuke away for a second. “What is it?” says the latter. There’s a hint of genuine worry barely hidden within a charming smile. “A bit rusted perhaps? Or is it that you’re not into married men ?” he adds, raising an eyebrow with malice. 

“Before this goes any further I need to say...whatever happens tomorrow,” as if there were multiple scenarios, “I love you, immensely, and I want to remain by your side forever.” 

“Hey,” Ainosuke caresses his face, kisses the bridge of his nose. “I know that already. In sickness and health.” Goes down to his throat while Tadashi’s frowns, puzzled by his last words. “You should keep your vows for tomorrow. I don’t want to be spoiled.” 

“My vows?” 

“Yes. Vows, Tadashi. I guess it was not on the list, but you sure prepared them, right?” 

There’s a blank. A white flash before his eyes, a joy so intense Tadashi almost faints. Instead, his mind turns utterly blank—it’s empty, pure and simple. Every neuron that was supposed to function decided in common agreement to leave the ship—and his body freezes, hand handing in midair.  

“Tadashiiiii?” Ainosuke says; wanting to sound playful, failing beautifully. It’s only panic that Tadashi hears. “Please, you need to reassure me on one point. I know it is insane that I have to ask, but the chance of you not knowing who I am going to marry tomorrow just occurred to me as a possibility and I’d feel better if we’ll have settled this-” 

“My vows?!”

The long silence that follows feels suffocating for both. 

“...Please, don’t tell me you truly believed I would marry anyone but the man I love.” 

Returning to his senses after this uppercut, Tadashi stammers unintelligible words. His sight is not perfectly back to normal as well—it’s blurry on the edges—but he can still distinguish how Ainosuke is now walking back and forth in the room. 

“I just can’t believe you...Tadashi! I’ve been in love with you before I knew what true love was! How could you imagine I could be this happy with the prospect of marrying someone else?” 

“Well.” He can’t believe it. He just can’t. The wedding is tomorrow. His wedding. With Ainosuke. “You did not exactly propose.” 

“What do you think ‘for the rest of our lives’ stands for then?!” cries Ainosuke. “...Though I admit I could have been a bit more explicit. I once had the idea of asking you to marry me during a ‘S’ night with letters drawn in the sky by fancy fireworks, but figured you wouldn’t like it. Also, I could have never managed to organise that without your help in the first place, which would have spoiled the surprise.” 

Ainosuke only speaks so fast when he’s anxious. If the situation hadn’t been utterly catastrophic, Tadashi would have found him cute. 

“I cannot say I didn’t have doubt, because you looked so down the whole time. But, the menu! The flowers! It was, so us ! There could be no doubt that you were preparing the happiest day of our lives, and that the fatigue came from how invested you were into it,” Ainosuke stops pacing back and forth. He bites on his lower lip. “I thought you would have understood when I sent you to take the rings.” 

“What about them?” 

“The stones match our eyes!” Ainosuke exclaims. 

“But last time I checked,” Tadashi retorts, “My name didn’t start with an...” 

And suddenly he gasps, bringing his hand to his mouth, to hide the sound and his embarrassment. 

“...I see it’s finally clicking in. We will never be able to wear our engagement rings by day. The only place we can totally be free would be at ‘S’.” 

The A stands for Adam and the S for Snake. 

Everything is getting real, so real, and too fast. Tadashi spent the last three months organizing his own wedding according to his own taste without knowing. Ainosuke never betrayed his love. He wants them to be together until death do they part. 

The only thing that keeps him from crumbling is Ainosuke, his hands cupping his, bending a knee in front of him. 

“If you still have them, I’ll gladly reword my demand. Forgive my trembling hand; I am extremely worried, that after what you went through you would not want to—” 

“Yes.” Tadashi says, without a doubt. “Yes, I will.” 

“Oh. That was not that complicated after all. I hope you have nothing planned for tomorrow.” 

“Oh, just a wedding.” 

“Think you can ditch the groom for me?” 

“I’m not sure. The menu sounds delicious.” 

Ainosuke is overjoyed in a matter of seconds. “I cannot believe you.” He hushes, tears forming at the corner of his eyes, which he will never admit were from relief.  

They decide to stay together that night, chastely, limbs tangled and fingers entwined. Tadashi’s heart beats too fast for him to rest at all. He had planned the ceremony down to its last details, yet its proceeding holds a very different savour at the light of recent revelations, one that doesn’t taste as sour, not at all even. 

There is hardly anyone at the City Hall. Both wearing matching white suits, they sign a couple of papers and say ‘Yes, I do,’ very soberly, to one another. Langa’s mother cries. Shadow too. The rest just applaud and smile, wishing them the best. 

At night things are different; Tadashi stands at the starting line, a ring to his left hand, a rare smile to his face. The crowd is there, chanting their names.  

And then Adam appears, flamboyant as he has rarely been, ruby shining on his ring finger, and skates to him at full speed, holding a bouquet made of red roses and white chrysanthemums. He crosses the line as the lights turn green, and the wedding beef can truly start. The first of Crazy Rock. They are showing the way. 

Tadashi hasn’t felt this invigorated in a while. They skate, they race ; Ainosuke wears his Adam mask and hairstyle, and is not going easy on him. It’s their moment, it’s the beef Tadashi refused to him so long ago, it’s the last stage of their healing. After they’ll cross the finish line, there won’t be any dark side left of their relationship. Their future is bright, just as Ainosuke’s career, and it’s lively; it’s their morning routine and their bedroom who now smells of strong coffee, it’s Tadashi waiting in the car knowing he’s been missed, it’s the sigh that comes after Ainosuke puffs on his first cigarette, it’s their nights at ‘S’, where they skate, with their friends. 

They reach the factory at the same time. Ainosuke is going all out, but Tadashi is just as good; after all, who was the one who taught the other how to skate? Tadashi thinks fondly at how their story started; in a way, it doesn’t surprise him that it ends like this. 

Not that it is truly an end for them; perhaps ‘a new beginning’ is a better way of saying it. 

Lost in his thought, Tadashi loses sight of Ainosuke for only a second, and it’s enough. For his last surprise. 

“Tadashi!” Tadashi looks up, Ainosuke is sliding on the guardrail. “Catch me!” he shouts. 

Tadashi doesn’t even have the time to catch his breath that Ainosuke jumps into his arms, his deck in one hand, the bouquet in the other. He spins to keep his balance on the finish line, the crowd gathered there applauding his exploit. 

Before they are joined by their friends, Tadashi sends his husband an unamused glance. “Was this little improvisation really necessary?” 

AInosuke takes off his mask before he speaks. “We had to cross the finish line with you holding me bridal style, Tadashi. It’s the tradition.” 

Tadashi rolls his eyes, but despite the annoyance, and enthused by the crowd’s applause, Tadashi kisses Ainosuke for their first married man kiss. 

He was told it’s part of the tradition too.