Work Text:
“As if today couldn’t get worse. Christmas is ruined.”
Kaiser snorts, nursing a can of soda, watching from his seat as Yoichi puttered around his loft, red-earned and frosted from the burning snowstorm that had taken Berlin hostage this morning.
There’s very little Kaiser expects in December—giving a shit in celebrating his birthday and opening presents under a nonexistent tree is a time-tried tradition he’s never cared to change, after all—but welcoming and housing Isagi Yoichi in the worst of month of his life is the least in all probable events he ever could’ve predicted happening.
“Out of all the days—damn it, I should’ve known,” Yoichi stresses, the wheels of his airport baggage squeaking on the tiled floor as he hauled it up the steps. “I could’ve left earlier, but no, all direct flights had to be booked weeks in advance and I just—ugh—!”
His chattering rant devolves into indistinguishable mumbles, each grunt punctuated by the thud of carrying frozen weight up a flight of stairs. Watching him struggle, Kaiser could’ve offered to help, be the generous host to a guest clearly fighting to keep their cool.
But where’s the fun in that?
Instead, Kaiser lets his eyes close to the sound of yelling, as Yoichi hits the side table hidden behind a beam he never remembered to move and sighed into his drink.
At the very least, this unfortunate December might prove to be entertaining, besides just utterly bothersome.
Kaiser liked being alone on Christmas—cursed to brave his own actuality, as he is—and preferred to pretend it was the same as every other month, like it had no other innate meaning, and simply wash it away in the face of another year.
But—
“Is my room to the left or the right?! Why are there so many rooms and—this one doesn’t even have a bed!”
How the fuck was he supposed to do that with the the clown here?
“Just choose, I don’t give a fuck!”
“I’m taking the one with a window!” Yoichi yelled back, letting him know… for some reason.
Kaiser rolled his eyes. “Whatever!”
His eyes lifted to the TV, the balding weatherman gesturing to the chart behind him and showing a large section of Germany completely at the mercy of this storm. It had started this morning as nothing but somewhat heavy snowfall, but the winds got so high so quick, the storm effectively blocked off all traffic and flights.
Which meant all the people hoping to fly out back home were stuck here. Including this idiot here.
“Did they say how long it’ll last?” Yoichi questions the minute he comes back down, in a new turtleneck sweater with candy canes sown into the collar. He bites back a smirk when he notices a patch of snow still on his head.
“Oh, just until after Christmas is over.”
“Fuck.” Yoichi looked horrified.
“Fuck indeed,” Kaiser replied dully. That meant they were together for more than a week. “Unless you have a friend you can crash with.”
Yoichi’s lips thinned. “… I don’t.”
Which Kaiser already knew. He glances away. “Guess we’re stuck here then.”
Yoichi didn’t reply, but his expression was so severe Kaiser felt a smidgen of offense.
He doesn’t know why he does it. Maybe because this development knocked him off center from how he usually is, maybe it’s because some small part of him felt almost sorry for Yoichi, but whatever it is, it makes him turn around and offer an olive branch.
“Let’s make a truce that we won’t kill each other this holiday. Temporarily. At least until the storm subsides and then we can go back to how we always are. Alright?”
Yoichi looked at him in surprise and also with something else Kaiser couldn’t discern. He was quiet for a moment before Yoichi nodded.
“Yeah. Truce.”
If they were forced to be in the same house for a longer period of time than they’re used to, than it was better to set up a boundary up front instead of waiting for shit to hit the fan and one of them getting locked out in the cold.
Besides, they’re forced to tolerate each other’s presence practically all the time. Just because they’re alone together, well—it’s not like a lot will change anyway.
Obviously.
From the first day, it’s clear Yoichi wants something. When Kaiser gets tired of him staring at everything, Kaiser snaps and asks him what his problem is.
“There’s no decorations around. Do you not celebrate Christmas?”
So that’s why he was judging him. His delicate sensibilities were offended that Kaiser wasn’t feeling the holiday spirit.
“Not really.”
“Can I decorate?” Yoichi asks, and Kaiser is almost surprised he does and doesn’t just do whatever he wants in Kaiser’s space.
The question unbalances him a bit. “Sure? Just don’t bother me while you do.”
Yoichi nods happily and leaves the room with his phone in hand. Kaiser sighs and puts it out of his mind, moving to go to his personal gym and spend an hour or two in there.
When Kaiser emerges back out and takes a fresh shower, he realizes he was in there for longer than expected. Hunger hits him quickly and he leaves to go to his kitchen, hoping to get a snack and go to sleep.
At the threshold, Kaiser stops and stares.
“The hell?”
His home now looked like the inside of Santa’s house. Everywhere he looked, there were lights and decorations that weren’t there before. Kaiser usually kept his place empty, simply because he didn’t care to fill it up with things. But now, it was so far removed from what it looked like before that you could’ve told him this was the set for a holiday commercial and he wouldn’t have doubted you.
There was a jingle of noise and there Yoichi was, wearing a Santa hat and holding another pair of garlands. As if he needed more.
“What do you think?” Yoichi asks, searching for his opinion.
“… How the hell did you manage this in so little time?” He asks instead, confused and a little terrified.
“Hmm? It wasn’t hard. I’ve done this before numerous times. I basically enter flow when I’m decorating.”
He doesn’t know if that’s a thing that happens, but it’s Yoichi, so he almost doesn’t want to doubt him.
“And this was all necessary?” Christmas doesn’t even last that long, what was the point of it?
“Of course! We’re celebrating aren’t we?”
Are we?
Wait. We?
“We?” Kaiser blurts out.
Yoichi blinks, then turns his face away. “I mean—yeah. We’re stuck right? At least this gives us something to look forward too in this shitty situation.”
Yoichi must’ve been missing home. He was supposed to go to Japan to meet with his parents. And because he’ll miss this year, he’s become frenzied with decorating Kaiser’s home so it wouldn’t be too disappointing of a year. Yeah, that explains it.
Kaiser can reject Yoichi’s words, taunt him about wanting to celebrate with him, but Kaiser doesn’t, not when December is a somber month and Kaiser is always quiet and contemplative at this time.
“I guess.”
Kaiser lifts a waterfall of stars and moves silently to the kitchen, leaving Yoichi behind him with wide eyes and his mouth on the floor. Not that Kaiser was looking.
“…weird…”
“Huh?” Kaiser calls, staring into the empty abyss of the fridge, only soda and a box of pizza left inside. This might be a problem. In this kind of weather, almost no place did delivery.
“Nothing,” Yoichi says, and Kaiser shrugs.
“Want pizza for dinner?”
“Okay.”
Half an hour later and filled with greasy, leftover pizza, Yoichi asks him a question.
“Do you always buy takeout?”
“Only in off-season. My nutritionist can’t drag my ass if they don’t know what I’m eating.”
“You can always cook,” Yoichi mentions.
Kaiser shrugs. “Too much work.”
That quiets him down, Yoichi’s eyes glancing to the empty kitchen occasionally. They pass the night in mutual silence and under the pretty lights of Christmas.
Looking around, a funny thought pops into his head.
All that’s missing is a tree.
The next day, Kaiser jokingly asks him if he’ll get them a tree to decorate.
Yoichi only frowns. “I don’t think we have the time… it’s too late now, which is kinda a bummer.”
“I wasn’t serious,” Kaiser snorts. Yoichi took this holiday way too seriously.
“I know, you ass.” Yoichi rolled his eyes, but his frown only deepened. “I’m just saying it would’ve been nice.”
“We don’t need a tree,” he reminds him. “This shitty holiday has more to do than decorate a damn tree, isn’t there?”
“More to do?” Yoichi repeats, then smiles brightly. “Yeah, there is! There’s a lot we can do!”
“That wasn’t a suggestion—“
“Have you ever baked gingerbread?”
“No?”
“Great! We can do that!”
That’s how Kaiser finds himself making his first ever attempt at baking a gingerbread house.
“Why are we doing this?” kaiser asks, uncomprehending as he stares at sheets of paper. Yoichi had tasked him with measuring the centimeters of their papers and double checking the dimensions of each part of the house. He and Yoichi were making their own versions, but we’re still making it together until they could assemble their houses.
“Cause it’s fun,” Yoichi chirped, taking out the rolling pin (where did he get that? did he have one all this time?) and beating it against the chilled dough. It was a surprisingly violent display of pastry brutality.
When they finally had all of their pieces ready, Yoichi went about assembling the sugar and candies they’d personalize each of their houses with while Kaiser was in charge of putting their shaped dough into the oven at the correct temperature.
Unfortunately, Yoichi made the mistake of trusting Kaiser to know how to use an oven.
They’re both rudely informed of this fact when a burnt smell coats the kitchen and Yoichi hastily shuffles inside to check their gingerbread.
“Shit!” Yoichi curses, taking out the tray to reveal black-crisped pieces of charcoaled ginger. Yoichi stared at it. “Did you set the temperature to the sun?! That’s not how you bake a gingerbread house!”
Kaiser stares at his pitiful first attempt at using an oven. At least now he knows he’d be a terrible baker.
“Kaiser!”
Kaiser crossed his arms. “Guess you should’ve just done it yourself.”
“Fuck you! You’re helping with the new batch and this time, I’ll put it in the oven!”
“Seriously?”
Yoichi lifted the rolling pin threateningly. “Roll the dough Kaiser, and no one gets hurt.”
Maybe Kaiser was a little in danger after all.
Their attempt at gingerbread making is… commendable. If they were five years old and blind in one eye.
“I like it,” Yoichi says, ever the optimist. Of course he does. His looks like a unicorn puked diabetes-infused rainbows on a crumbling house, while Kaiser’s was a murder scene. He might have gone too far with the red icing. All that’s missing to complete the scene is yellow police tape and the mutilated body of a gingerbread man.
Could’ve been worse,” Kaiser begrudges, poking his crisp-edged roof. “Do we eat it?”
Yoichi, sentimental fool that he is, takes a picture of their houses together first. “Let’s hope it’s not too hard to chew.”
The first bite Kaiser takes has his heart beating in his chest. Not from the sugar or the taste, but from the smile Yoichi gives him over his rainbow roof., his lips coated with a shiny coat of white icing.
“This was fun, wasn’t it?”
And… what can he say to that?
The longer Yoichi stays, the more something itches under his skin.
It irritates him. Any time the clown laughs, smiles, or invites him to do something disgustingly domestic. They’ve been watching movies, old classics and nostalgic trash that Kaiser’s never seen. They’ve been making dinners together after Yoichi rejected another night of pizza boxes, coaxing him to set up the table for two when he’s only ever been alone.
Today, Yoichi wanted to make snowmen.
The storm was still raging, but they take advantage of a small window of opportunity when the winds freeze and fall, a moment where they can go outside and play in the snow.
He’s never cared to, but Yoichi shows him how to keep the head from falling off the body and he finds himself enjoying it a bit too much.
Kaiser’s snowman is bigger than Yoichi’s, but lumpier too. The rocks make it’s eyes look beady on its large head. Yoichi’s own snowman is tidy and neat, smaller with the snow compacted perfectly and a wide smile on it’s face. The outside is criminally cold, but Kaiser doesn’t mind it if it lets his and Yoichi’s snowmen stay together for a longer time.
When they’re done, Yoichi is shivering. His nose and ears and cheeks are red, which makes his blue eyes pop out in the backdrop of white snow. It arrests his attention for a minute. Has his eyes wandering across Yoichi’s pale features.
“Ready to go inside?”
Yoichi nods hastily, but there’s a big smile on his face. When they shuffle inside, they both shiver from the temperature drop and start to take off the extra layers they’d put to go outside.
“Look. From this angle it looks like they’re judging us,” Yoichi pipes up, looking out of the window.
Like Yoichi said, the angle makes it look like the snowmen were conversing, the taller, bulkier snowman leaning into the smaller snowman’s space to gossip, especially with its more neutral and judging expression rather than Yoichi’s outright glee. It’s arm sticks were raised, as if to whisper back.
“Let’s hope they don’t come alive and kill us in our sleep,” Kaiser jokes, moving out of the entrance and padding into the apartment.
“Why would they? They were made with love and joy,” Yoichi rebuttals as his socks slide across the tile to reach his phone, quickly propping himself against the window to take pictures of their lumpy masterpieces. He’s been doing that a lot. Taking pictures. Kaiser didn’t see the appeal.
Kaiser watches him smile at his phone. “Mom says she likes our snowmen! Ah, and that we shouldn’t go outside too much or else we’ll get sick.”
Kaiser leans against the back of the sofa. “How are they taking it? You not being home?”
Yoichi’s smile fades into a smaller, slightly melancholic one. “They’re a little disappointed, but they were sadder when they thought I’d be spending the holidays alone. When I mentioned I was with you, they told me they were glad I had you.”
Kaiser’s skin crawl and his breathing stutters for a single breath. Glad I had you.
No one’s ever said that about him. It was… strange. To hear. To know.
Are you?
Kaiser wants to ask, but refrains himself. There’s no reason why Yoichi would think the same. The only reason he was here was because he had no where else to go and Christmas alone was a season wasted. If it weren’t for their truce, Kaiser doubts they’d have gotten this far tolerating each other as they have.
“If you weren’t with me, you surely would’ve been kidnapped by a crazy fan and you’d have gone with them just to not be alone.”
“That’s a lie, you bastard!”
“Is it? Aren’t you the one that always gets swarmed by fans at events?”
“W—well. That’s…! That’s because I want to greet all of them!”
“If you did, you’d die from getting trampled.”
“They should still be acknowledged!”
“And then they’ll shove you into a rucksack and take you home with them. See? Kidnapped.”
Kaiser laughed as Yoichi beat his chest with his fists and noticed that his furrowed brows and melancholic expression finally disappeared.
As the night came to a close, it was finally Christmas Eve.
Even in the years at Bastard Munchen in the youth devision, Kaiser never truly celebrated this time of year. There was never anything to celebrate when it was the most cursed, unhappy time of his life. The most he’d ever done with his own father was go to the bar and drink a single can of soda on his birthday. At the house, there was never any tree, any decor, or any presents. The only change was on the outside and in people happier than him.
None of the joy ever touched him.
But when he wakes up this morning with the intention to make breakfast with Yoichi and spend time with him, something else takes prevalence to the muted desolation he typically feels on this day and the next.
Tonight was his birthday, and Yoichi would be spending it with him without even knowing.
Anticipation.
A small kind of greed Kaiser never thought to have.
As he and Yoichi go through the motions from the past days, fallen into a rhythm they didn’t have before this week, it’s not the presents he looks forward to—not that they have any for each other, the fact Yoichi managed to decorate his place is miracle enough—but the tolling hour of midnight in front of a fireplace with music and lights and warm hearts as they share the night.
The itch worsens, churning his stomach and drumming against his bones with every action Yoichi takes. Kaiser is almost uncomfortably aware of him, yet he can’t look away when Yoichi putters around, and breathes life in every inch of his once lifeless apartment.
Their first Christmas together was rocking out to be the best one he’s ever had.
Kaiser feels himself thaw the whole day, seeing something in Yoichi he’s never seen before. A kind of grace he once gave everyone but him. A grace Yoichi was offering him, perhaps without even noticing himself.
If Kaiser was ice, Yoichi was the candle warming him up.
When the sun goes down and the outside is darker than ever, Kaiser is making eggnog in the kitchen. The music is soft and airy as it travels through the open space. His phone is faced down, having already texted Ness and the rest of Bastard a Merry Christmas. He knows he’ll get presents tomorrow, but he doesn’t even care to worry about that.
Right now, all he wanted was to be with Yoichi.
And isn’t that the most damning thing of all?
“Merry Christmas, Kaiser,” Yoichi beams, features soft and pretty in the warm lights when it reaches midnight. “It actually wasn’t terrible being with you. Who would’ve thought?”
He agrees, but just to be a little shit, he says, “I could’ve told you that.”
Yoichi rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“Which is why you had to live through it to change your mind.”
“Ass,” Yoichi shoves him playfully.
“I’m right though.”
“Whatever!” He laughs.
Kaiser smiles, and it’s softer than its ever been. Yoichi isn’t looking, lulled by the soft carols of the radio, but he doesn’t mind.
“Still, it’s… nice.” Yoichi mumbles, taking a sip of his eggnog. “I don’t always celebrate either, but when I do, I never regret it.”
Yoichi turns to him. “Do you?”
There’s foam over his lips, forming a mustache.
Kaiser’s shoulders shake from laughter and the words leave his mouth before he can think better.
“Not this time.”
Yoichi’s eyes widen.
Not this time.
Not with you here.
“Oh,” Yoichi mumbles lowly.
He’s blushing. Yoichi is blushing, and this time it’s not because of the cold. No, he’s blushing because of Kaiser.
Kaiser breathes out a gasp. His heart swells with something unnameable.
“It’s late,” Yoichi’s voice trembles just a little. “Tomorrow we can check the news again, though I doubt the storm will be cleared…”
He jerks his head and rises.
Yoichi scuttles up the steps, ears red.
Kaiser sighs and follows him, his room on the end of the hall. When he gets there, he sees Yoichi moving too fast and sees the fallen towel before Yoichi does just as he reaches his door. He moves before thinking.
Yoichi yelps as he slips, but Kaiser is faster. He catches him by the arm before he can smack his face against the hard floor and probably break his nose.
Kaiser hits the door with his back, breaking Yoichi’s fall. They slide down.
“Kaiser?!”
“Fine,” he grunts. He’s had worse falls. His head doesn’t even hurt.
“I’m sorry, shit, ” Yoichi apologizes, rambling, “I didn’t see where my feet was going. Does it hurt? Do you need ice?”
“I’m fine, damn clown,” he repeats, but freezes when he finally notes their position. With his back against the door, his arms were cradling Yoichi against his chest. Yoichi was half twisted to check up on him and they were far too close for his heart to handle.
“Ah.”
“Huh?” Kaiser was brought back to senses when Yoichi didn’t automatically move. “What?”
His eyes were looking at something above them.
Craning his neck, Kaiser saw what it is.
A singularly decorated mistletoe.
Kaiser blinked and chuckled, stilted. “We can just ignore it.”
Yoichi didn’t.
“… are you gonna get up?”
Yoichi wasn’t.
“… Yoichi?”
Yoichi’s eyes snapped to him and—
Oh.
Oh.
Maybe he was the blind one all this time.
With nothing left to say, Kaiser didn’t move as Yoichi cradled his cheek.
In what world, Kaiser thinks, when Yoichi kisses him, do dreams come true?
Apparently, in this one.
Extra:
“You like me?” Kaiser asks him the morning after, his bedhead crazy enough that it drained any nervous every Yoichi had.
“Have been for years, you idiot emperor, but thanks for noticing.”