Chocolate Fic for aabass89
To: aabass89
From: calledinvain
title: Strange Country
pairing: Maki/Yamapi
rating: R
summary: They've been circling each other for so long.
A/N: I apologize for the bad porn right off the bat.
She doesn't fall in love with him, not really, until she's seventeen and watching the daily rushes of their scene together, and when Kurosaki looks at Tsurara, she wishes for an instant, that it wasn't make believe.
Yamapi taps her shoulder as she walks away. “Hey, are you okay?”
"I'm fine, why?”
He pokes her gently in the cheek - “You're just flushed, is all,” and wanders off, humming his song.
He doesn't fall in love with her, until two years later, and he's standing in the middle of a busy shopping promenade and everywhere he turns, her face is gazing out from a poster or a billboard. He's known her for four years and thought he was used to her face. It's a pleasant enough face, her smile even and sweet. Pretty, but no prettier than the scores of pretty girls he knows.
In this shopping promenade, surrounded by Maki's face, he wonders how he could have missed it - when the soft baby fat melts into elegant cheekbones, the smooth sweep of her jaw, and the peachy-pink gloss of her mouth. Her sleek hair plays up her delicate features, but even in two dimensions, Maki's steady gaze pierces. He sucks in a breath, and fumbles for his phone.
She picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”
"Merry Christmas,” he says in a rush. “Uh, it's Yamapi.”
"I know,” she says. “I have Caller ID. Merry Christmas to you too - how are the concerts going?”
The amusement in her voice warms him, as does the little fact that she knows his schedule, and he's struck with a hundred different things to say to her. “You know your face is everywhere,” is what he blurts out.
"That'll be my agency doing its job, then,” she says. “Are you in a shopping center?”
"Yeah, I have a free day, so I thought I'd just walk around. Do a little window shopping.”
"Don't tell me you haven't bought your presents yet?” Maki says.
"For your information, I got everyone presents last week,” he huffs. “I'm not that hopeless.”
"Of course you're not,” Maki teases. “I just remember you hate shopping. Toma says you were always late with presents.”
Eventually their conversation comes to a lull, and Maki asks lightly, “Not that I mind, but why did you really call me, Yamapi?”
"Can’t a guy just call his friend?” Yamapi teases back.
"I wonder if we’re really friends.”
Her sudden bluntness disarms him, and he struggles to reply. “That’s cold, Maki-chan. Of course we’re friends.”
"It’s just that you haven’t called me since Kurosagi ended,” she says softly. “I was just surprised to hear from you now.”
"So I’m not the best correspondent,” he admits. “I think we’re friends,” he says, and tries not to look at the poster of her face - he really was surrounded, the only safe place to look was the ground. “I mean, you haven’t called me either,” and he hates how defensive he sounds, but there was a tension in their conversation that wasn’t there before.
"I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” she says. There’s something in her voice that makes him wonder - and he tries to sound nonchalant. “Oh? How about starting at the beginning?”
It’s a lame joke, but Maki laughs anyway. “I think I would use up all of your minutes, Yamapi.”
"I don’t mind.”
It’s as close to a confession as he’s willing to make, and he hopes that Maki can hear it in his voice. She sighs, and the soft flutter of it makes him bite his lip. “Do you want to get some coffee, when you’re back in Tokyo?”
"I’ll call you when I get back.” He says promptly.
She chuckles. “I’m looking forward to it.”
When he wanders back to the hotel, Ryo asks why he’s grinning like an idiot, and he just shrugs and says, “Just because.”
He can’t wait to get home.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t actually get a chance to call Maki until he’s been home for a week. She picks up on the first ring.
"Hi, I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away,” he says in a rush. “The staff’s been working to coordinate our New Year’s activities, and my manager has been really strict about my schedule. I have to go get my hair done, and I have a meeting with my trainer tonight.”
"Oh, don’t worry about it. Toma told me you were back, but that you were really busy - it’s okay, I’ve been busy too.”
"You’ve been talking to Toma?” He tries not to sound dejected at her apparent blasé attitude. “Whatever he tells you about me is a lie, by the way.”
"That’s a shame,” she says. “I was so impressed with all the mabudachi stories, too.”
"Except for those,” he amends quickly. “We got up to some pretty interesting things, when we were younger. And we still do, I mean.”
"Of course,” and it’s not his imagination, she sounds amused - even flirtatious. “Say, Yamapi, so when do you want to have that coffee? Are you free after your meeting with your trainer?”
"Yes. But I don’t think he’d approve of me having coffee right after a workout.”
"Ah yes. How some tea, then? Or we could skip the beverage and just have a chat.”
"Tea’s fine,” he says. “Where do you want to meet?”
She names a café he’s heard of from his friends, and promises to meet him at nine.
He arrives fifteen minutes early, his hair still damp from the hasty shower at the gym, and scans his surroundings. He spots Maki sitting in a booth at the farthest end of the café, talking animatedly on her cell phone. He makes his way over to her, and slips into the seat across from hers. Her eyes brighten at the sight of him, and she mouths a “hello” before resuming her conversation. “He’s here now, I’ll call you later. Bye!”
She slides her phone shut and puts it into her purse. Then she smiles at him, a shy curve reminiscent of when he first met her, and she was looking up at him through Nobuta’s fringe. It’s reassuring, and he grins back.
"Hey.”
"Hi.”
They smile at each other in perfect giddiness, and he picks up a menu. “Who were you talking to on the phone? Toma?”
She raises an eyebrow at the question, and says, “It was Meisa, actually.”
"Ah, Kuroki-san. How’s she doing?”
"She’s doing very well. She didn’t think you’d show, actually.” Maki looks at him curiously. “Something about a work party and you didn’t show - and you sent Akanishi-kun in your place?”
He groans. “She hasn’t forgiven me for the Byakkotai incident? That was like, years ago.”
Maki giggles, and picks up her own menu. “Girls don’t forget, Yamapi. You should know this, of all people. Akanishi-kun kept on calling Meisa after that - she had to get a new phone. She thinks you don’t like her, and you did it on purpose.”
"Jin called her? Really, I heard different.” What he had heard was that Jin was forbidden ever to make contact with any girl from Okinawa ever again, because they were all beautiful heartbreaking bitches, and stop me, Pi, I don’t ask to be this good-looking, God just has different plans for everyone, and so on until a very tired-sounding Yu had taken the phone away and said shortly, “Jin’s drunk. I’ll tell you about it later.”
"I do like Kuroki-san, she was very nice. About that party - something came up, and Jin wanted to go, so I thought he’d keep Koki company. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was avoiding her.”
Maki’s lips twitch into another faint smile, and she says, “I’ll have to tell her that. Mostly, she was saying it was about time.” She blushes then, and shuts her menu. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. What are you going to have?”
He briefly contemplates saying “You,” and then bites his lip. He thinks that right now, they’re playing a game that doesn’t have any rules, and even so, it would be so easy to say the wrong thing and shatter the delicate balance between them. He settles for ordering the banana crepe with no whipped cream, and a regular tea. Maki orders a crème brûlée with black coffee - off his incredulous look, shrugs and says, “I don’t have anything scheduled for tomorrow, so if I stay up all night, it doesn’t matter.”
It’s his turn to quirk an eyebrow. “Up all night with me, then?”
It’s meant to be teasing, but it sounds more like a dare. Maki looks startled, and then she matches his gaze. He looks away first, and pretends to study the tiny whorls decorating the surface of their table. He looks up when her small hand creeps over his, and she squeezes it lightly. “If you want,” she says quietly.
They linger at the café for hours, talking nonsense and secrets, and the horizon’s a glowing peach color when they shuffle out finally, after he had successfully plucked the receipt from her hands and paid for them. It was a date, after all.
Maki leans against him easily and slips her hand into his. “Good morning, Yamapi,” she yawns.
He leans down and kisses her forehead impulsively. “Yes it is,” he agrees. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
She shakes her head. “No, I can just take the train back.”
"We’re not that far from where I live,” he argues. “I can just drive you home. Look at you, you’re half asleep as it is - I don’t want you falling asleep on the train and missing your stop. Besides, there might be strange men on the train.”
She nods slowly. “There might be. Okay.”
As they walk, Maki suddenly stops in her tracks and looks at him curiously. “Hey, didn’t you take the train to get to the café? And if we take the train to your house so you can drive me home, why can’t we just take the train the whole way? It’d be easier.”
Yamapi sighs. “Because I am trying to be romantic, and you are ruining my plans.”
Maki blinks at him for a moment, and then she ducks her head, embarrassed. Yamapi chuckles, and then lifts her chin tenderly. “I like you, Maki-chan.”
Their first proper kiss happens three weeks later. They had been seeing each other every chance they could steal away from their schedules. After rehearsals, before call-time on sets, he sends her texts, and on his lunch break, he listens to her wry voicemails in response. He memorizes the way she looks when he casually draws a finger down her nape and stops right between her shoulder blades. Their conversations aren't limited to words; she catalogs every noise he makes when he tastes her cooking for the first, the fifth time. He carefully folds her fingers inside his grasp, and she instinctively knows where to lay her head. He can't remember a relationship since junior high, where he's been so slow to claim a kiss, but with every light touch - a look, a pause between sentences, he knows it's inevitable.
She had taken him to the park near her house, and while admiring the ducks that floated lazily on the water, he had wrapped his arms around her waist. “Do you come here often?” he whispered in her ear. Maki shivered a little, and shook her head. “No - my free days I usually spend at home, or doing errands. The park’s a special occasion.”
The implied praise - that he was a special occasion, made him grin and he turned Maki in his arms.
She looked up at him, an answering smile already in place, and he bent his head and kissed her.
Maki’s shoulders stiffen slightly, and when he tries to pull back, small hands grasp his shoulders firmly, and then he can feel her smile against his mouth.
“Thank you,” Maki breathes, and he tries to tell her everything he couldn’t, what the past three weeks have been - in his kiss. What starts out innocently enough quickly escalates to the point where he has to remember that they’re in a public park. Maki remembers though, and quickly detaches herself. She’s a little pink and her mouth - he looks away.
“You’re welcome,” he says, still not looking at her. “I wanted to do that for a while.”
“I-I see,” Maki stutters. She touches her mouth wonderingly, and says, “Imagine if we had waited even longer.”
A laugh escapes him and he bends over, trying to muffle the sound.
“What, it’s true,” Maki says, a little peevishly. “I thought I was going to explode.”
“Don’t say another word, please,” Yamapi gasps. “I’m still recovering here - I can’t believe I’ve been so wrong about you all these years.”
“Well, now you can catch up,” she says, and he feels her hand rest on his shoulder. “It should be fun.”
They kiss a second time, when he walks her up to the front door of her house - a chaste peck at the corner of her mouth. “I had a really good time today,” she says.
“So did I.”
Maki turns to let herself in, hesitates and then looks back at him again. “So when should we do this again?”
“I’ll call you when I get another day off,” he promises. “Probably sooner.”
“Okay.” She gives him a little wave, and then goes inside.
Probably sooner happens three hours later, when he text messages her good night, and gets a reply a minute later - you too, don’t stay up too late. He grins, snaps his phone shut, and turns off his bedroom light.
Yamapi has been in love before. He hasn’t always loved wisely, or with the purest of intentions - he can admit to himself that sometimes lust was an easier choice than just falling, but what he feels for Maki is something new and wholly different. He’s always liked her - admired her for her work ethic, teased her when her serious nature collapsed in the face of an embarrassing NG take on set, and when she turned her surprisingly sharp wit on him, he nodded and accepted it with good natured humor. She had always just been there - a cute presence even underneath a heavy fringe, her lips pale and chapped. Then she was a year older, dressed in springtime green, her hair in fashionable layers - really, too pretty for a law student down on her luck he had thought, but then he wore ridiculous beards and hid behind sunglasses, and it was the best kind of make-believe. And she had changed, somewhere in between that time, and the next - and maybe it was because he had changed too, so that he saw her again through new eyes.
Being in love with her reflected all those little things, careless details he hadn’t thought he remembered - her laugh, the way she looked so intently whenever she was listening to someone, the droop of her head in her parka, as she napped between takes, only her nose visible underneath the fur-lined hood - little bits and pieces that made the whole of her, reflected and magnified until he couldn’t remember when he had begun to care, only that he did.
He tells her when she’s washing dishes in his apartment, bubbles popping and warm water splashing up to her elbows as she scrubs down a greasy pan.
“I love you.”
He thinks she doesn’t hear him over the running water, so he leans over and shuts the faucet off, and then says it again.
Maki stills, and then carefully wipes her hands with a dish cloth. “I heard you the first time,” she says.
“Oh,” Yamapi says, and then presses on. “Well, that’s good, then.”
She places her hands - and he can smell lemons and possibly a faint scent of garlic, on his face and she leans forward so that he can see his reflection in her eyes. “I know.”
She smiles, mischievously, and flicks the dish towel at him. “Took you long enough.”
“Hey,” he protests. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
“No,” and Maki slips her apron off, tossing it onto the kitchen table behind him. “I think there are a lot of things I can say, but I think,” she traces a line along his collarbone before she tugs at the neck of his shirt, “I’d rather show you.”
He swallows thickly, and trails his hand down her side. “I can live with that.”
The first time they had sex, it had almost been postponed completely due to Yamapi’s inability to find a condom. They ended up at a conbini, two blocks away from Yamapi’s apartment - he had practically sprinted in between the sliding doors, Maki following after, with an amused smile on her face.
They split up, Maki wandering over to the drinks section, while he headed over to the personal care aisle. After scanning through the choices, he picked a box and tossed it into his basket. And then another.
When Maki meets up with him a few minutes later, she’s holding two cans of iced coffee.
Maki peers into Yamapi's basket and then at him. She raises an eyebrow. “Six boxes,” she asks quietly. “Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?”
Yamapi coughs, and puts back three boxes. “I'm not being presumptuous,” he says hurriedly. “I'm being safe.”
Maki nods, and squeezes his wrist. “I know, but six boxes, Tomo? How much free time do you think we have?”
Two weeks later, he goes back and buys eight boxes. The clerk’s eyes widen, and then he smirks, which prompts Yamapi to snap, “I’m being responsible.”
When he tells Maki about it later, she laughs so hard that she nearly rolls off the bed. She wipes her eyes, and gets back under the covers. She pats his arm. “I think responsibility is very sexy.”
“I’m glad someone does,” he says grumpily, and then he says nothing at all, because Maki’s hand has trailed down his torso and her fingers are on him, stroking and guiding the condom onto his cock. She’s gotten very good at it, and it seems like a matter of seconds before her legs tangle with his, and he’s rocking against her, and she’s kissing every spare inch of his face that she can manage.
Afterwards, when they’re laying side by side, her head cradled against his shoulder, she marvels at how quickly the universe can constrict to just a room and a bed - months ago, she would have said her happiness was in her work, her family and her friends. That the future was vast and unknown and a strange country altogether.
Now it was still the same with one difference: Tomohisa. She still loves the same things, the same people. She still wants to explore every inch of the globe, lose herself in various characters and stories, but now she can imagine him by her side. It is both exciting and frightening at the same time.
“I love you,” she whispers to the crook of his neck, her fingers curled up in his. Tomohisa opens one eye and kisses her fondly on the forehead. “I know.”
From: calledinvain
title: Strange Country
pairing: Maki/Yamapi
rating: R
summary: They've been circling each other for so long.
A/N: I apologize for the bad porn right off the bat.
She doesn't fall in love with him, not really, until she's seventeen and watching the daily rushes of their scene together, and when Kurosaki looks at Tsurara, she wishes for an instant, that it wasn't make believe.
Yamapi taps her shoulder as she walks away. “Hey, are you okay?”
"I'm fine, why?”
He pokes her gently in the cheek - “You're just flushed, is all,” and wanders off, humming his song.
He doesn't fall in love with her, until two years later, and he's standing in the middle of a busy shopping promenade and everywhere he turns, her face is gazing out from a poster or a billboard. He's known her for four years and thought he was used to her face. It's a pleasant enough face, her smile even and sweet. Pretty, but no prettier than the scores of pretty girls he knows.
In this shopping promenade, surrounded by Maki's face, he wonders how he could have missed it - when the soft baby fat melts into elegant cheekbones, the smooth sweep of her jaw, and the peachy-pink gloss of her mouth. Her sleek hair plays up her delicate features, but even in two dimensions, Maki's steady gaze pierces. He sucks in a breath, and fumbles for his phone.
She picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”
"Merry Christmas,” he says in a rush. “Uh, it's Yamapi.”
"I know,” she says. “I have Caller ID. Merry Christmas to you too - how are the concerts going?”
The amusement in her voice warms him, as does the little fact that she knows his schedule, and he's struck with a hundred different things to say to her. “You know your face is everywhere,” is what he blurts out.
"That'll be my agency doing its job, then,” she says. “Are you in a shopping center?”
"Yeah, I have a free day, so I thought I'd just walk around. Do a little window shopping.”
"Don't tell me you haven't bought your presents yet?” Maki says.
"For your information, I got everyone presents last week,” he huffs. “I'm not that hopeless.”
"Of course you're not,” Maki teases. “I just remember you hate shopping. Toma says you were always late with presents.”
Eventually their conversation comes to a lull, and Maki asks lightly, “Not that I mind, but why did you really call me, Yamapi?”
"Can’t a guy just call his friend?” Yamapi teases back.
"I wonder if we’re really friends.”
Her sudden bluntness disarms him, and he struggles to reply. “That’s cold, Maki-chan. Of course we’re friends.”
"It’s just that you haven’t called me since Kurosagi ended,” she says softly. “I was just surprised to hear from you now.”
"So I’m not the best correspondent,” he admits. “I think we’re friends,” he says, and tries not to look at the poster of her face - he really was surrounded, the only safe place to look was the ground. “I mean, you haven’t called me either,” and he hates how defensive he sounds, but there was a tension in their conversation that wasn’t there before.
"I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” she says. There’s something in her voice that makes him wonder - and he tries to sound nonchalant. “Oh? How about starting at the beginning?”
It’s a lame joke, but Maki laughs anyway. “I think I would use up all of your minutes, Yamapi.”
"I don’t mind.”
It’s as close to a confession as he’s willing to make, and he hopes that Maki can hear it in his voice. She sighs, and the soft flutter of it makes him bite his lip. “Do you want to get some coffee, when you’re back in Tokyo?”
"I’ll call you when I get back.” He says promptly.
She chuckles. “I’m looking forward to it.”
When he wanders back to the hotel, Ryo asks why he’s grinning like an idiot, and he just shrugs and says, “Just because.”
He can’t wait to get home.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t actually get a chance to call Maki until he’s been home for a week. She picks up on the first ring.
"Hi, I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away,” he says in a rush. “The staff’s been working to coordinate our New Year’s activities, and my manager has been really strict about my schedule. I have to go get my hair done, and I have a meeting with my trainer tonight.”
"Oh, don’t worry about it. Toma told me you were back, but that you were really busy - it’s okay, I’ve been busy too.”
"You’ve been talking to Toma?” He tries not to sound dejected at her apparent blasé attitude. “Whatever he tells you about me is a lie, by the way.”
"That’s a shame,” she says. “I was so impressed with all the mabudachi stories, too.”
"Except for those,” he amends quickly. “We got up to some pretty interesting things, when we were younger. And we still do, I mean.”
"Of course,” and it’s not his imagination, she sounds amused - even flirtatious. “Say, Yamapi, so when do you want to have that coffee? Are you free after your meeting with your trainer?”
"Yes. But I don’t think he’d approve of me having coffee right after a workout.”
"Ah yes. How some tea, then? Or we could skip the beverage and just have a chat.”
"Tea’s fine,” he says. “Where do you want to meet?”
She names a café he’s heard of from his friends, and promises to meet him at nine.
He arrives fifteen minutes early, his hair still damp from the hasty shower at the gym, and scans his surroundings. He spots Maki sitting in a booth at the farthest end of the café, talking animatedly on her cell phone. He makes his way over to her, and slips into the seat across from hers. Her eyes brighten at the sight of him, and she mouths a “hello” before resuming her conversation. “He’s here now, I’ll call you later. Bye!”
She slides her phone shut and puts it into her purse. Then she smiles at him, a shy curve reminiscent of when he first met her, and she was looking up at him through Nobuta’s fringe. It’s reassuring, and he grins back.
"Hey.”
"Hi.”
They smile at each other in perfect giddiness, and he picks up a menu. “Who were you talking to on the phone? Toma?”
She raises an eyebrow at the question, and says, “It was Meisa, actually.”
"Ah, Kuroki-san. How’s she doing?”
"She’s doing very well. She didn’t think you’d show, actually.” Maki looks at him curiously. “Something about a work party and you didn’t show - and you sent Akanishi-kun in your place?”
He groans. “She hasn’t forgiven me for the Byakkotai incident? That was like, years ago.”
Maki giggles, and picks up her own menu. “Girls don’t forget, Yamapi. You should know this, of all people. Akanishi-kun kept on calling Meisa after that - she had to get a new phone. She thinks you don’t like her, and you did it on purpose.”
"Jin called her? Really, I heard different.” What he had heard was that Jin was forbidden ever to make contact with any girl from Okinawa ever again, because they were all beautiful heartbreaking bitches, and stop me, Pi, I don’t ask to be this good-looking, God just has different plans for everyone, and so on until a very tired-sounding Yu had taken the phone away and said shortly, “Jin’s drunk. I’ll tell you about it later.”
"I do like Kuroki-san, she was very nice. About that party - something came up, and Jin wanted to go, so I thought he’d keep Koki company. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was avoiding her.”
Maki’s lips twitch into another faint smile, and she says, “I’ll have to tell her that. Mostly, she was saying it was about time.” She blushes then, and shuts her menu. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. What are you going to have?”
He briefly contemplates saying “You,” and then bites his lip. He thinks that right now, they’re playing a game that doesn’t have any rules, and even so, it would be so easy to say the wrong thing and shatter the delicate balance between them. He settles for ordering the banana crepe with no whipped cream, and a regular tea. Maki orders a crème brûlée with black coffee - off his incredulous look, shrugs and says, “I don’t have anything scheduled for tomorrow, so if I stay up all night, it doesn’t matter.”
It’s his turn to quirk an eyebrow. “Up all night with me, then?”
It’s meant to be teasing, but it sounds more like a dare. Maki looks startled, and then she matches his gaze. He looks away first, and pretends to study the tiny whorls decorating the surface of their table. He looks up when her small hand creeps over his, and she squeezes it lightly. “If you want,” she says quietly.
They linger at the café for hours, talking nonsense and secrets, and the horizon’s a glowing peach color when they shuffle out finally, after he had successfully plucked the receipt from her hands and paid for them. It was a date, after all.
Maki leans against him easily and slips her hand into his. “Good morning, Yamapi,” she yawns.
He leans down and kisses her forehead impulsively. “Yes it is,” he agrees. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
She shakes her head. “No, I can just take the train back.”
"We’re not that far from where I live,” he argues. “I can just drive you home. Look at you, you’re half asleep as it is - I don’t want you falling asleep on the train and missing your stop. Besides, there might be strange men on the train.”
She nods slowly. “There might be. Okay.”
As they walk, Maki suddenly stops in her tracks and looks at him curiously. “Hey, didn’t you take the train to get to the café? And if we take the train to your house so you can drive me home, why can’t we just take the train the whole way? It’d be easier.”
Yamapi sighs. “Because I am trying to be romantic, and you are ruining my plans.”
Maki blinks at him for a moment, and then she ducks her head, embarrassed. Yamapi chuckles, and then lifts her chin tenderly. “I like you, Maki-chan.”
Their first proper kiss happens three weeks later. They had been seeing each other every chance they could steal away from their schedules. After rehearsals, before call-time on sets, he sends her texts, and on his lunch break, he listens to her wry voicemails in response. He memorizes the way she looks when he casually draws a finger down her nape and stops right between her shoulder blades. Their conversations aren't limited to words; she catalogs every noise he makes when he tastes her cooking for the first, the fifth time. He carefully folds her fingers inside his grasp, and she instinctively knows where to lay her head. He can't remember a relationship since junior high, where he's been so slow to claim a kiss, but with every light touch - a look, a pause between sentences, he knows it's inevitable.
She had taken him to the park near her house, and while admiring the ducks that floated lazily on the water, he had wrapped his arms around her waist. “Do you come here often?” he whispered in her ear. Maki shivered a little, and shook her head. “No - my free days I usually spend at home, or doing errands. The park’s a special occasion.”
The implied praise - that he was a special occasion, made him grin and he turned Maki in his arms.
She looked up at him, an answering smile already in place, and he bent his head and kissed her.
Maki’s shoulders stiffen slightly, and when he tries to pull back, small hands grasp his shoulders firmly, and then he can feel her smile against his mouth.
“Thank you,” Maki breathes, and he tries to tell her everything he couldn’t, what the past three weeks have been - in his kiss. What starts out innocently enough quickly escalates to the point where he has to remember that they’re in a public park. Maki remembers though, and quickly detaches herself. She’s a little pink and her mouth - he looks away.
“You’re welcome,” he says, still not looking at her. “I wanted to do that for a while.”
“I-I see,” Maki stutters. She touches her mouth wonderingly, and says, “Imagine if we had waited even longer.”
A laugh escapes him and he bends over, trying to muffle the sound.
“What, it’s true,” Maki says, a little peevishly. “I thought I was going to explode.”
“Don’t say another word, please,” Yamapi gasps. “I’m still recovering here - I can’t believe I’ve been so wrong about you all these years.”
“Well, now you can catch up,” she says, and he feels her hand rest on his shoulder. “It should be fun.”
They kiss a second time, when he walks her up to the front door of her house - a chaste peck at the corner of her mouth. “I had a really good time today,” she says.
“So did I.”
Maki turns to let herself in, hesitates and then looks back at him again. “So when should we do this again?”
“I’ll call you when I get another day off,” he promises. “Probably sooner.”
“Okay.” She gives him a little wave, and then goes inside.
Probably sooner happens three hours later, when he text messages her good night, and gets a reply a minute later - you too, don’t stay up too late. He grins, snaps his phone shut, and turns off his bedroom light.
Yamapi has been in love before. He hasn’t always loved wisely, or with the purest of intentions - he can admit to himself that sometimes lust was an easier choice than just falling, but what he feels for Maki is something new and wholly different. He’s always liked her - admired her for her work ethic, teased her when her serious nature collapsed in the face of an embarrassing NG take on set, and when she turned her surprisingly sharp wit on him, he nodded and accepted it with good natured humor. She had always just been there - a cute presence even underneath a heavy fringe, her lips pale and chapped. Then she was a year older, dressed in springtime green, her hair in fashionable layers - really, too pretty for a law student down on her luck he had thought, but then he wore ridiculous beards and hid behind sunglasses, and it was the best kind of make-believe. And she had changed, somewhere in between that time, and the next - and maybe it was because he had changed too, so that he saw her again through new eyes.
Being in love with her reflected all those little things, careless details he hadn’t thought he remembered - her laugh, the way she looked so intently whenever she was listening to someone, the droop of her head in her parka, as she napped between takes, only her nose visible underneath the fur-lined hood - little bits and pieces that made the whole of her, reflected and magnified until he couldn’t remember when he had begun to care, only that he did.
He tells her when she’s washing dishes in his apartment, bubbles popping and warm water splashing up to her elbows as she scrubs down a greasy pan.
“I love you.”
He thinks she doesn’t hear him over the running water, so he leans over and shuts the faucet off, and then says it again.
Maki stills, and then carefully wipes her hands with a dish cloth. “I heard you the first time,” she says.
“Oh,” Yamapi says, and then presses on. “Well, that’s good, then.”
She places her hands - and he can smell lemons and possibly a faint scent of garlic, on his face and she leans forward so that he can see his reflection in her eyes. “I know.”
She smiles, mischievously, and flicks the dish towel at him. “Took you long enough.”
“Hey,” he protests. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
“No,” and Maki slips her apron off, tossing it onto the kitchen table behind him. “I think there are a lot of things I can say, but I think,” she traces a line along his collarbone before she tugs at the neck of his shirt, “I’d rather show you.”
He swallows thickly, and trails his hand down her side. “I can live with that.”
The first time they had sex, it had almost been postponed completely due to Yamapi’s inability to find a condom. They ended up at a conbini, two blocks away from Yamapi’s apartment - he had practically sprinted in between the sliding doors, Maki following after, with an amused smile on her face.
They split up, Maki wandering over to the drinks section, while he headed over to the personal care aisle. After scanning through the choices, he picked a box and tossed it into his basket. And then another.
When Maki meets up with him a few minutes later, she’s holding two cans of iced coffee.
Maki peers into Yamapi's basket and then at him. She raises an eyebrow. “Six boxes,” she asks quietly. “Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?”
Yamapi coughs, and puts back three boxes. “I'm not being presumptuous,” he says hurriedly. “I'm being safe.”
Maki nods, and squeezes his wrist. “I know, but six boxes, Tomo? How much free time do you think we have?”
Two weeks later, he goes back and buys eight boxes. The clerk’s eyes widen, and then he smirks, which prompts Yamapi to snap, “I’m being responsible.”
When he tells Maki about it later, she laughs so hard that she nearly rolls off the bed. She wipes her eyes, and gets back under the covers. She pats his arm. “I think responsibility is very sexy.”
“I’m glad someone does,” he says grumpily, and then he says nothing at all, because Maki’s hand has trailed down his torso and her fingers are on him, stroking and guiding the condom onto his cock. She’s gotten very good at it, and it seems like a matter of seconds before her legs tangle with his, and he’s rocking against her, and she’s kissing every spare inch of his face that she can manage.
Afterwards, when they’re laying side by side, her head cradled against his shoulder, she marvels at how quickly the universe can constrict to just a room and a bed - months ago, she would have said her happiness was in her work, her family and her friends. That the future was vast and unknown and a strange country altogether.
Now it was still the same with one difference: Tomohisa. She still loves the same things, the same people. She still wants to explore every inch of the globe, lose herself in various characters and stories, but now she can imagine him by her side. It is both exciting and frightening at the same time.
“I love you,” she whispers to the crook of his neck, her fingers curled up in his. Tomohisa opens one eye and kisses her fondly on the forehead. “I know.”