Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1.

“You said how many?”

Yatora, cheeks flushed red, holds up some fingers.

“Four-” Yuka chokes, scandalised. “Yatora!”

“Shut up, god, please,” Yatora flails a bit in that way he does when he’s in public talking about something embarrassing. Not that this is that embarassing. Yuka's more impressed than anything.

“Like, at once, or–”

“No, not at once, fuck– We took breaks.”

“Well,” Yuka scoffs. “As long as you took breaks. You know, when I told you to go all in I didn’t mean that you had to quite go that far. You were being safe?”

Yatora nods. “Yeah, Johan-san was with me the whole time.”

Yeah, that’s not as reassuring as Yatora seems to think it is. Yuka’s heard of Johan from Club Pearl, and for all that he seems to be a good senpai to Yatora, treating him to meals, pulling him into client bookings, Yuka knows how quickly that can turn in Kabukicho.

Which would be unfortunate, the way Yatora talked about him. Yuka would have to go punch a pretty boy in the face if Yatora gets his heart broken. And it’s not because Yatora elicits any kind of protective instinct in him or anything, though Yuka is sure that the customers of the host club and even some of the bar’s regulars are charmed by his earnest puppy vibe, but that’s never worked on Yuka, alright? He’s seen Yatora naked, and that changes a man. Person. Whatever.

The thing is, Yatora has seen Yuka naked too. He had looked at Yuka without the layers of glitter and fabric that they hide their insecurities under, had looked and decided to not cower away from their complexities. And the fact that he makes an effort to never look away ever again means something to Yuka. It’s why he’s allowed to call them “Ryuji”. At this stage, he’s probably the only one who can do that and not make Yuka want to punch something.

It actually feels a little warm now when he does, since he’s the only one. Intimate, like a shared nickname, or a secret. He feels it sometimes when he looks at himself in the mirror nowadays. Yuka at sixteen would never have thought this kind of relationship with his body and that name would be possible, especially not with that cowardly delinquent Yaguchi. Then again, Yuka at sixteen thought lots of things would be impossible for her.

Yuka had never thought that by-the-book, clean boy, Yaguchi Yatora would ever last more than an evening as a host, for one. But since they called him back to cover the busy holiday period, he must have actually done a good job.

Which shouldn’t really be too much of a surprise to them. Yatora had always picked up every gauntlet Yuka had thrown and rose to meet their challenges with bullheaded determination. As a rival, as a peer. Yuka’s stubborn, ugly, shining blue boy.

But still.

“Next time someone wants to pay you to chug four bottles of champagne, think about your liver. Those don’t grow back, you know.”

“Nah, they do though,” Yatora mumbles around a straw. He’s still sipping the water Yuka had bought him from the convenience store. “You can cut 90% of a liver off and it regenerates. We learnt that in bio.”

He never changes, does he, Yuka’s boy.

Yuka elbows him in the gut, hard.

“You’re such a nerd.”

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2.

Tora is so adorable.

He has those big earnest eyes, that little hesitant smile. It puts Johan in mind of those teacup pomeranians that some girls carry around in their little designer handbags, all nervous and overstimulated amongst the glitz and glam.

For all his dyed hair and pierced ears are worth, Tora is a good student from an average family. Johan knows the type. Hell, he has been that type, earnest and eager to please. Adaptable too. It had taken a while for Johan to take on the grit that the city seems to rub onto everyone, but after a few months he did manage to shed the country bumpkin skin from himself under the bright lights of the Kabukicho nightlife. From there, it had been an easy rise to the top of the rankings.

Johan was made for this. He shines the brightest in the shadows of Kabukicho Tower, in the dirty alleys of midnight Shinjuku. He can’t see the stars here in the city but he doesn’t need to, with the glare of the spotlight warming his skin. He loves it, the heat, the vomit, the sweltering press of skin to skin. The way the city is equal parts shouted anguish and whispered sorrow, loud karaoke and the quiet hush of a glancing smile.

Johan loves this city, had bared his teeth at it and tore out a chunk of it for his own. He knows Tora has what it takes to do the same. He’s young, good looking enough, friendly enough. Smart too, smarter than Johan probably – he saw Tora once write out receipts for the tables by hand when their system went down, tallying it all up in his head with more than a few chuuhais in him. And on that note, he’s got a good tolerance for alcohol. The most important part of being a host.

Johan loves Tora, loves how when he pulls Tora into hosting with him at his table, the girls coo at his red ears and cute hair. He doesn’t seem to ever get drunk, until he does and then he’s straight at the throwing-up stage. Which means that after he gets some water in him he’s good to go again. Johan shamelessly exploits this, diverting the drinking games his way when Johan himself feels a little too tipsy to still be charming. They make a good team, especially for the games, and the girls love seeing this new side of Johan, the indulgent teasing senpai. Johan is not ashamed to admit that his end of October earnings were so high in part because of Tora joining the crew.

Johan loves Tora, wants him on his team, and he knows he’s got what it takes to make a living out of hosting. But he also knows that Tora will never be number one. Not with the way Tora still calls him “Johan-san”.

As good as Tora is, as good as he could be, he doesn’t have his eyes on the prize, not with the way his whole face sharpens when a guest manages to get him talking about his art.

It is a shame though.

“This city will ruin you, Tora,” he drawls, vision hazy and hair mussed in some alley bar.

Tora looks at him, blinking, soft with exhaustion after the New Year rush, blue dawn in his eyes. Johan can’t help reaching out to touch, just a little, a soft tap-tap of his finger on Tora’s nose.

The moment hangs between them like cigarette smoke until Tora snorts, nose scrunching up underneath Johan’s touch.

“Not if you do first, Johan-san.”

Johan hums. He knows that Tora’s probably talking about the number of drinks he’d pushed Tora’s way this shift. But Johan isn’t thinking about that at all.

Cute little Tora, an art student from a loving family.

He’s right. Johan sure could rub some kabukicho grit onto him, ruin him just a little for the rest of the world.

Johan sighs wistfully.

“I really want to see that happen.”

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3.

Honestly, if you had asked him what he wanted his kid to grow up to be, artist would not even rank.

Maybe a baseball player. Yatora and that kid Sumida had been shaping up to be a pretty promising battery once. But he’d already seen then that Yatora didn’t really have what it took to make baseball his life. Yatora had only really started baseball to make his dad happy.

He’s a good kid. Honest and sociable. He has been since he was little, making friends as easily as breathing sometimes. It’s easy to be a dad to a kid like Yatora. There was a bit in high school where they were a little worried, when he came home with dyed hair one night and pierced ears another. They trusted him to not get into too much trouble – he’s smart enough not to and he did his part in not letting them worry about him by keeping his grades up – but they knew what it made their son look like, what other people would think and assume about Yatora. He never really cared much about that himself, but he knew that it could make life a little harder for his boy.

He doesn’t have much ground to stand on about that though. He thinks sometimes about how much of Yatora’s independence and determination to succeed comes from the instability that he caused. If the company hadn’t gone under and their finances were more stable, would he have a more carefree kid?

Not that he can change any of that, and Yatora understood that too, which, if he thinks about it for too long, does break his heart a little. He never wants to think about how his kid might have cut out the cute and childish parts of himself to grow up faster and better support them, doesn’t want to know what his failures had cost his son. He watched him put on his shoes at the genkan, school bag under his arm, watched him stack all of the bones in his spine up straight on top of each other before walking out of the door every morning. And every time he wonders when his son’s back had become so broad.

He thinks about that back when he goes to see Yatora’s art at the museum. His son had won a prize. He sees those three people, the way his son’s hand had painted them with their backs to him, and he understands instantly what Yatora was saying.

“Huh,” he’d laughed shakily. “Our kid’s an artist.”

He’d pulled his wife close with an arm around her shoulders, squeezing. “Oh, Yakkun,” she sighed, tears in her eyes, so, so proud.

They had looked up together what prize he had won, and stopped by the bank on their way home to open up an account when they saw the little bit of money that Yatora would have received from it. It wasn’t enough to pay for his expenses for long, and they know well enough of how the adult world demands more and more money from everyone just to exist.

Their kid would never accept a handout. Yatora has a hard enough time asking for help from them as it is. So they watch their son leave the house in flashy clothes, smelling of expensive cologne, and hear him come back in the early hours of the morning, if at all. He hears his wife tidy their bathroom counter, mumbling about how many cosmetic and skincare products Yatora leaves lying around. A young adult with a paying job as he is, he still leaves his room a wreck. It’s a little reassuring, to be honest. Their kid’s still a kid who needs them.

“Aren’t you going to tell him?” he asks. They’ve been making deposits into the account for a couple of months at this point.

His wife shrugs and grins. “We can just tell him when he’s in trouble, right?” She reaches for the remote to find the recording of that art show she likes. This episode's on a painting they're calling the Blue Boy, by a painter he doesn't catch the name of. Gains-something? The boy's soft eyes, that bright hair, reminds him of his son's.

Yeah. They’ll be here to catch him when he falls.

Chapter Text

4.

“A host… billboard?”

Wow.

Yakumo has always known Yatora would be one to watch. Since their first introductory session where he had seen that glowing orange, ripe like a weeping sun. He had wanted so badly to see it in person. The presence it would have in A100.

And what had him even more fascinated was the painter’s apparent insecurity over it. That fragility that has always been present in Yatora’s work, he saw it most in the pieces Yatora submitted to the AOJ, how open it was, how vulnerable. It felt like the one opening themself up by the skin on their ribs to the canvas wasn’t Momo, Hachi, or him, but Yatora himself in his helplessness.

And here, he sees it again, Yatora’s bloody pulsing heart, thrown open to the world.

Yakumo forgets, sometimes, that Yatora’s a born and bred Tokyo boy. Sure, they had walked together sometimes, flâneurs, running their fingers across the city's grates and veins, but they’ve never really been out together after 10 PM, never had an occasion to. Yakumo isn’t often out that late in the city because although Hiroshima’s plenty big, cases that would make the front pages there barely get a mention in the papers when it happens in Tokyo. Yakumo’s semi-vagrant lifestyle already gets him in plenty of dicey situations and there’s no need for him to court more trouble diving into the city’s underbelly deeper than he can handle.

But this city is where Yatora grew up, and of course Yatora, eager to fall in love, had thrown himself into its depths like a prospector with something to prove.

Yakumo can see it here, in wood and oil paint, how Yatora’s love for this city, its people leaves him so vulnerable. It’s incredible really how these remote portraits of people he doesn’t know, advertising services he’s not interested in, are just gushing with love.

“You’re so interesting, Yatoraaa!”

Yakumo is never going to get sick of watching Yatora grow, is he? That bright, shining potential, as vast and blue as the sky, tempered by the insecurity of youth and inexperience. It’s not long now before Yatora takes a full step into the world of serious art, and Yakumo can’t wait to meet him.

At least he hopes he does. Who knows what’ll happen to either of them on their way there. The world likes to throw its curveballs, as Yakumo would know.  

“Which club was it again? Diamond? Emerald? How’s the pay? Won’t you get me a job there too?”

Yatora gives him a sidelong glance, shaking his head. “No, Yakumo-san.”

Yakumo droops onto Yatora’s shoulder. “What! Why not! I’m gonna run short on rent too this month.”

“Stop it,” Yatora pushes his head away with a palm. “No way in hell am I telling you where I work.”

“Don’t you think I can make it as a host? I can serve drinks!”

“Yeah I bet you can,” he says, snorting. “You’d be way too good at it, probably. But still, better steer clear.”

“Eeeh? What? Why?”

Yatora turns to look at him head on. “You’re too honest, Yakumo-san. You’d be good at hosting, they’d all love you. But you’d have to work at it for a while, and you’re too honest about what you want to put yourself through anything else when you could be painting instead.”

Yakumo blinks, once, twice. Too honest?

He grins, reaching out to scrub a hand through Yatora’s hair. Seriously. Yatora’s the best. And he’s right, though Yakumo wouldn’t use the word “honest”. Hungry, more like. They are, both of them, foolishly throwing themselves onto this treacherous path, hoping to beat the odds.

How many of their peers will quit art before they graduate? How many will still be making art five years after? When the money runs out?

Sometime throughout their friendship Yatora has become someone who cannot stop. It’s in his blood now, on his tongue. Yakumo can smell it, like they’re breathing the same air.

The feeling of that metaphorical hand tugging his wrist along. It’s a heady thing to Yakumo who has had to walk long stretches of this path alone.

“Hah! Speak for yourself, Yatoraaaa! I’m in this for the money!”

“If that’s true maybe stop blowing it on drinks and girls!”

“Never!”

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