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Skating as a trio works like this: each of them urging their boards to go a little faster, grinding on the rails they pass to make sparks fly as a display of their skill. It’s laughter, matching grins, and the crisp wind in their faces, a lightness to each of them as they toss aside the expectations laid upon them during the day. Ainosuke has yet to tell them everything— but he doles out information bit by bit, the tightly wound up persona that was his father’s son, his aunts’ nephew, being shed a little more each time he sees Cherry and Joe skate with him.
It’s discovering something entirely new, being with them like this.
Cherry is perhaps the riskiest of them all, mocking the cops that try and fail to stop them, his piercings easily drawing Ainosuke’s eye each time the three of them meet up to skate together.
Joe is more steady, always there to nudge them when Cherry or him are about to take a foolish risk, doing his best to make sure that things don’t land on the bad side of risk.
And yet, there’s times when it does, even when they all thought it would never touch them.
Ainosuke hits the ground with a strangled cry, a spike of pain jolting him as his board goes flying out of his reach. He had been so confident about that slide, but then his balance shifted in a bad way—
“Adam,” Joe cries out, the first to realize that he isn’t pulling their leg.
“Are you OK?” Cherry follows, comforting concern laced in his voice, and the two of them approach at the same time.
Ainosuke gets his breathing under control, his chest rising and falling as blood begins to leak from the nasty looking skid on his knees. He only nods, and then grimaces as he takes Cherry’s hands, his own hands tender from the hit of the fall, failing to stop himself from the damage. It’s nothing he hasn’t experienced before, but the pain feels new each time it happens.
“My knees,” he says, and then lets out a curse as it turns out that he really can’t put any weight on them for now. Skating for the rest of the night is out of the question, really.
Both Cherry and Joe stop Ainosuke’s reacquaintance with the ground. Joe supporting his back; Cherry making sure he stays steady as all of his weight is between them. Ainosuke soaks up the closeness between them—he can never get enough of it, not even when the thing prompting it is his own injury.
“We can go to Joe’s,” Cherry says. “His place is the closest from here.” From what he’s gathered earlier from their casual chatting, Joe’s parents were out of town for the time being, and one early night without skating wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Joe, seemingly catching onto Cherry’s plan in the span of a second, nods. “I have bandages back home. And we can watch a movie and have dinner. I’ll cook.”
He’s never really spent any kind of time at someone’s home—at least not someone that was outside his father’s circle of friends, with their mansions and similarly curated living spaces—before. Ainosuke is enchanted by the thought. A home without servants and entirely free rein. The very idea of it is alien to him.
He wets his lips, the pain fleeing his mind for a moment. “If both of you insist on such a date.” Then, he gives Joe and Cherry a cheeky grin. “Aren’t you going to kiss it better first?”
Joe’s groan and Cherry swat at his head is more than worth it, and his face takes on a warm glow as Joe then presses a kiss to his cheek with Cherry following with a peck to his lips.
Skating with Joe and Cherry is like being part of something bigger, but being with them like this, in the simple matters, makes Ainosuke grin all the same.