Work Text:
After all is said and done, Matakara doesn’t actually know what to do with himself. Sure, everyone forgave him and accepted him back into their arms, at least virtually, but still. The memories haunt him and lately he’s been feeling awkward around anyone that isn’t Arajin.
It doesn’t help his situation that Arajin, for all that he’s helped and reconnected with Matakara, still seems intent on pursuing Mahoro Jin, which means that at every glimpse of her he’s leaving Matakara in the dust to chase after her. And when he’s not chasing anybody, when it’s just the two of them laughing together like the old times, Arajin still seems… Quieter. A little sad. Like he’s constantly waiting for someone else to show up.
Matakara knows who that is: a huge demonic being that possessed him for the past few months. And he can’t imagine ever missing something like that, considering he still has nightmares of blue covering his body and dragging him into the darkness.
So, everything is alright on the surface. The people of Minato Kai joke around with him but now they avoid jostling him too much, the guys from other gangs turn around whenever he’s spotted and the people unrelated to gangs lower their heads when they catch sight of him. Zabu is sometimes awkward around him, or maybe it’s Matakara who can’t forget the sight of him passed out on the floor while his own foot kept kicking him.
Arajin… Matakara wishes Arajin was more present around him, but he doesn’t want to beg like he did before, lest Arajin get upset with him again.
So for now he’s stuck in limbo: going to class, then Minato Kai’s hideout, then the hospital to see his brother. Sometimes he’ll sneak in a visit to Arajin’s if only to chat with his auntie.
He doesn’t know what he prefers: limbo, or this.
It feels like the breakthrough he needs in all of this. One night, Arajin comes home stumbling while Matakara is in the kitchen chatting with his mom. He has a hand massaging his temple and when he catches sight of his old friend, his face lights up. It’s the one light in Matakara’s darkness these days, as weird as that may sound.
Because, like he said, everyone else may pretend to be fine with him joining Minato Kai again. Everyone else may like him, but they’re still skeptical or even afraid of him. But Arajin, even though he ignores Matakara sometimes, Arajin still smiles whenever they see each other.
“Matakara! Come here!” He calls out excitedly, already going upstairs to his room, presumably.
Matakara shares a look with Arajin’s mom, a sort of ‘what can you do, right?’ before he’s following after his friend. He takes the stairs twice at a time, going straight to Arajin’s room.
“Close the door, the door,” Arajin whisper-yells. “And don’t be loud, that old hag is probably listening,” as if on cue there’s a thump outside, and Matakara can picture perfectly in his mind’s eye Arajin’s mom blushing at his son’s poor choice of words.
Although he’s a little excited too.
“You make it sound like we’re gonna do something bad,” Matakara answers giddily, obeying Arajin’s order. He walks over to sit in the bed while his friend moves to stand in front of him.
“Well, not exactly bad. Maybe surprising,” Arajin says with a smug look, the same he has on his face whenever he practices his seduction lines in front of the mirror. “Alright, remember how, when we fought, we destroyed the honkibito temple? And Senya and Ichiya both left?” Matakara feels all of his excitement drain out of him. Deeply, on a personal level, he doesn’t like to remember their fight. Still, he nods. “Well, today I went to check out the place, and…”
Matakara doesn’t give him time to finish his dramatic explanation. He frowns, for some reason bothered. “Why did you go to that place?” Arajin jumps, like a kid caught doing something bad.
“Well! You know! Um… I was feeling a bit melancholic…” Melancholic. Right. Matakara feels light and warmth fill his body. They used to spend a lot of time in the temple, back when they were kids. He spent so much time being bothered over how his friend was chasing a girl, and the whole time Arajin was thinking of the past. Maybe Matakara should accompany him next time, and they could spend a whole afternoon play fighting and laughing and being together. He almost says this aloud when Arajin continues speaking in his excited tone again, probably sensing his change in mood. “And you will never guess what I found?”
He leans down to stare at Matakara, waiting for his answer. He swallows, nervous. They’re very close. He tries to think of what could have gotten Arajin so excited.
“A cool stone?” He answers, voice almost a whisper. Arajin jumps back, grinning.
“More than a cool stone!” With that, he raises his hand and shoves his hair out of his face, showing off his temple.
It feels like drowning.
Matakara stares at the small shining spot in Arajin’s temple, the bullet cleanly embedded in his head. Time slows down, for him. For some reason he feels betrayed, ten years old getting kicked in the head, fifteen and abandoned.
His hands twitch.
He really, really thought they’d left it all behind.
Arajin grabs his hand with both of his, presumably not noticing his mental state, and Matakara feels something in his chest. Like his heart beat out of tune. He, towards Arajin…
“Come on, come on! It’s time for you two to properly meet!” Like a bucket of cold water, those words cause a full body flinch in him. Hurriedly he rips his hand from Arajin’s grasp.
“Ara-chan… Why?”
“Ah?” Arajin blinks at him like Matakara’s the one being strange, before he lowers his eyes bashfully. “Well, I kind of… Missed… Shut up!”
Matakara has enough presence of mind to realize he’s not the one being yelled at. But still, his body twitches. He wasn’t the one Arajin was missing when he visited the destroyed temple. His eyebrows scrunch up in a confused frown.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to fight anymore. Ara-chan, we were fine… And those guys were fine too, they got their fight and all,” shamefully, the scorn he feels for those demons seeps into his voice. His hands grip his own knees, knuckles turning white. He remembers blue and he remembers a darkness so deep it blinded him.
“Ah, well, you know…” Arajin scratches his cheek, clearly feeling something is wrong. He reaches into his pocket and Matakara, like always, follows his actions with his eyes. “Look, I also found this!”
A shining bullet is held with his index finger and thumb. Matakara only gets a glimpse, because as soon as he notices what Arajin is taking out of his pocket he’s jumping from the bed and sprinting down the stairs.
He’s drowning. He’s drowning, and Arajin’s the one filling the world around him with dark, murky water. He doesn’t hear anything as he sprints across town in a scared haze, not much different from when he was in the process of being possessed. He doesn’t hear Arajin’s worried calls, or his mom’s excited gushing of “it’s just like a high school drama!”.
Matakara gets home and immediately locks himself in his room, ignoring his aunt’s yells at being so loud. He doesn’t sleep that night, but he does pass out from exhaustion at some point.
The next day he shows up to school late and in a daze, sleep deprivation making him slow. The second he sits down he’s crossing his arms above the desk and resting his head on top of them, the teacher’s dull voice calming him down a little. Not enough to fall asleep, but enough that he can close his eyes without hyperventilating. For once, he’s glad that Arajin wasn’t assigned to the same class as him.
Arajin…
It’s the first time that Matakara has ran away from someone. The second the bell rings, he’s out of the classroom like a light, searching for a place to hide.
He finds it behind the school, under the shade of trees long forgotten and overgrown. Matakara leans on his knees, breathing harshly. He didn’t even run that fast or for that long, but just the thought of Arajin and that bullet is enough to send him into a spiral of anxiety.
Just when he sits down, a sound comes from above him. A window opening. Matakara looks up curiously, just in time to move his head out of the way as Arajin crashes down on top of him.
“Owwwww!” His friend yells in pain before planting both arms next to Matakara’s head and rising his upper body. “Couldn’t you be a little more soft?” He asks, annoyed.
Matakara is past the point of making sense. He feels his soul leave his body through his mouth as he exhales, almost starstruck, “Ara-chan…”
They’ve never been so close. Noses almost touching and legs intertwined, Arajin looks down at him embarrassed.
“Listen, Senya told me I was too harsh yesterday, um…” He smiles nervously and Matakara nods, still a little dazed. He did hit his head against the ground pretty hard, and most of his body is still numb. “But he also said that Ichiya would acknowledge his mistakes, and that he really wanted to see his friend again!” He yells it all out in a rush and by the time the words make it to Matakara’s brain, Arajin has already taken the bullet out of his pocket and thrown it against his chest.
All he can say is a small, confused “huh?”, before blue envelopes his entire world.
More correctly, a blue blob floats from his chest straight into his face. “What?” The demon says.
Arajin covers Matakara’s mouth, but it still isn’t enough to muffle the horrified scream his friend lets out. Matakara starts struggling underneath him, every second growing more desperate until finally he kicks Arajin and throws him to the side.
“What the hell?” He cries out when he stands up and the creature is still floating right in front of his face. From then on it’s a stream of ‘what the hell’ repeated constantly and in increasing speed, directed at his best friend, at the demon possessing his best friend and at the demon possessing him, apparently.
“Senya said it was a good idea!” Arajin protests. “Talk it out!”
“Senya?” The blob mutters in interest.
“I’m not going to ‘talk it out’, Ara-chan! This guy ruined my life!” Matakara blurts out, fingers tugging desperately at the hem of his white t-shirt to check the bullet embedded in his chest. Which is there, clear as day.
He tries digging it out with his fingernails but that only leaves red trails in his chest, some pooling small droplets of blood. He doesn’t care. He wants it out of his body. More and more smoke pours out, helping the blue genie that’s towering over him as he materializes.
“Wait, Matakara! Calm down!” Arajin rushes over to him, grabbing both of his wrists. Matakara struggles in his grasp, belatedly realizing that Senya is probably giving his friend strength.
“Why, Ara-chan?” Matakara blurts out in one last desperate attempt to free himself from Arajin’s grasp. He can’t quite wrap his mind around it. Sure, Arajin was sort of self-centered sometimes, as much as it hurt him to critique his best friend, but even this was too much for him. He should have known how deeply Matakara was affected by Ichiya's possession. The way it changed him should be permanently in his mind.
“You just,” Arajin struggles with words, but sensing that Matakara probably won’t run away this time, he relaxes his grip, embarrassed once he notices the red marks on Matakara’s wrists. They will probably bruise. Arajin had never grabbed him so hard. “You’ve been weird lately, you’re still sad sometimes… So Senya and I thought that maybe if you made up with Ichiya, everything would be fine again!” He explains nervously. At Matakara’s disbelieving look, he adds. “And Senya wanted to meet Ichiya again.”
Matakara glances at Ichiya, who’s turned around. “How would that even work?” He asks in a wobbly voice, shrinking against Arajin when the genie turns around with a raised eyebrow.
Logically, he knows that Ichiya didn’t actually possess him until the fight with Arajin, that all of his actions were his own. He knows that just like he knows the sky is blue and he is a bad person at heart. But… He can still remember his voice when he asked ‘do you want the monster to grab you?’, when he adviced him on who to attack, when he ordered him to kick his friend and keep kicking while he was down.
Arajin grins a little stupidly. It would be endearing in any other situation. “Like this!” With that, he presses Matakara’s chest and forces Matakara’s hand against his temple, drawing Senya out.
The two genies stare at each other, and Matakara feels himself light as a feather. The last thing he sees is Arajin’s worried face surrounded by darkness.
Matakara groans, slowly opening his eyes. Red fills his vision and when he blinks, Arajin’s face pops into view, eyebrows scrunched up and lips pouting.
“Ara-chan?” He whispers.
“Matakara! You suddenly passed out on me,” Arajin exhales in relief. “Seriously, still causing trouble at your big age…” He mutters, pressing an elbow on the bed and resting his face on his hand.
Matakara would rebuke, except, except…
He’s kind of really glad that Arajin took him to his house and didn’t leave his side. He can practically feel his face softening and his lips moving into a warm smile.
“What happened, Ara-chan?”
“You’re not mad at me, right?” Matakara hesitates but in the end, he nods. He could never be mad at Arajin for long, after all. Arajin’s body sags in relief. “Anyways, those guys talked the whole way until we got here. Ichiya was really embarrassed. Listen, he’s sorry, but he understands if you never want to see him again.”
Funny, considering the blue bob floating right behind Arajin’s head. Matakara stares at him with dread. This really is his life now, huh? At least now he's got Arajin to lean on if Ichiya ever wants to cause trouble again.
The genie looks like he wants to say something, floating around impatiently. Arajin makes a confused noise but Matakara shushes him, wanting to hear the genie. Finally, Ichiya sighs.
“You guys are a lost cause.”
Matakara blinks, all forgotten in the face of his confusion. “Hah?”
“Seriously. All the way here, we were trying to convince this idiot to finally confess, but he’s stuck deep in denial,” he sighs, moving his… Head and hands?... In a ‘what can you do’ motion.
Matakara’s whole body tenses. His eyes feel like they could pop out of their sockets. “What!?”
Yelling isn’t enough. He needs to disappear from the face of the earth. Ichiya nods sagely. When he looks down, Arajin is looking pretty nervous himself. Involuntarily, a whisper escapes Matakara, a tiny “Ara-chan?” that has Arajin looking around in paranoia.
“What? What? Is he here? What is he saying?” And then, “shut up, Senya!”
And then.
And then.
Matakara really had never thought of that. He never viewed Arajin with different eyes, his perception of his friend never changed at all. Maybe that only meant that he’d been in love with him since forever, which made sense, considering that Arajin was probably the first person to ever take him seriously. But.
But he’d never imagined…
Sure, memories were surging in his mind. When he thought about it he could picture himself perfectly, always chasing after Arajin with only one request: to be looked at. To have his best friend’s undivided attention. Even after five years, the only thing he desired when they met again was for their fists to connect as they trained together, bodies moving in an unspoken dance.
He can almost feel Arajin’s punch in his gut from all those weeks ago, the one that finally saved him from his darkness. It causes his body to lock up, his legs tensing with the need to run.
He’s always been a runner, which is probably why he could never become a true honkibito. It’s definitely the reason why he’s paralyzed in his bed, when Arajin surges forward and crashes their mouths together.
Arajin’s hands end up grasping Matakara’s arms, and he pushes with enough strength that Matakara ends up falling back onto the bed, a surprised noise escaping him. With no time to think, Arajin drops his body against Matakara’s, lips joining once again.
Matakara closes his eyes, melting against the ground. He doesn’t really understand what’s happening, except that their bodies are pressed together and Arajin is making sounds against his mouth.
Sounds…
Sounds like he’s complaining, actually. Or like he’s panicking.
Matakara opens his eyes and the first seconds where his vision’s blurry, he can see red all around them. Red behind Arajin, covering his entire body from behind. Red…
Senya. Senya pushing Arajin to Matakara, holding his head like he’s playing with dolls and making them kiss. This realization causes Matakara to draw strength from God-knows-where to turn his head to the side, separating their mouths. Arajin crashes against his neck, shouting nonsense.
A loud laugh floats in Matakara’s ears, Ichiya’s. He looks at home, lounging at Arajin’s desk and watching them with an amused expression. When Arajin finally gathers enough strength to raise himself up, planting both hands next to Matakara’s head, he stays there for a second, an angry frown still in his face.
Matakara stares at him, from the irritated furrow of his brows, to the embarrassed scrunch of his nose, the lovely red tinting his cheeks and ears, ending with the pout in his lips.
“That was…” Arajin stutters in a mumble, forcing his eyes closed. “My first…”
Matakara swallows. “Me too…”
“Then, what are you waiting for?” Ichiya jeers from the side, sounding entertained. Arajin flinches like someone just yelled in his ear, too. He turns, angry, presumably to yell at Senya.
Matakara…
He thinks. In the span of a second, millions of thoughts and memories race through his mind. Him, always chasing. Ten years old and training in the temple, ten years old and knowing what it feels like to have a real friend. Ten years old with a name marked in his palm. Fifteen years old, clutching a stone like a lifeline. Fifteen years old with a name marked in his palm, again.
The same name. He was always chasing but, somehow, Arajin was always reaching out for him too.
A hand grabbing his arms and pulling them away from his face. A light in the darkness. Arajin, smiling in the midst of destruction while the sun set behind him.
Beautiful. Breathtaking. Mindblowing.
Before Arajin can pull away completely, Matakara places both hands behind his head and pulls him down, into a proper kiss. Next to them, someone whistles.
Maybe he doesn’t hate Ichiya and Senya as much as he thought.