Gift fic for misao_duo & razberrycreme
To: misao_duo & razberrycreme
From: hilaryscribbles
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Recipients: razberrycreme and misao_duo
Title: hangdogs (1/9)
Pairing/Group: Hayato/Ryu (Gokusen 2)
Rating: R
Warnings: Spoilers for every single season of the Gokusen television series, for the Gokusen film, and a little tiny smidgen of the manga as well. Also, excessive hair ruffling, awkward silences, tense gazes, meaningful declarations about friendship and tears from the heart, Ara punks, Yankumi, Gokusen-appropriate watered-down criminal activity, and Ryu’s balcony. Yes, that last one is a warning. There are some weird time discrepancies that might deviate somewhat from canon, but canon itself deviates from canon all the time, so hopefully it won’t be too big an issue.
Notes: Title derived from the saying, “Give a dog a bad name and hang him.” Also, many million billion thanks to my beta, the best human ever, the Tsuba to my Takki.
Summary: Ryu and Hayato fight and stuff.
---
hangdogs
---
They meet at a department store while hiding from their parents. They’ve both chosen the same circular shirt rack to duck into, elbows and knees folded up into their stomachs to prevent exposure. There is a brief territorial struggle before they realize they share a common goal.
“I hate my dad,” says Ryu. He is very tiny, and his voice is a high squeak. Hayato thinks he must be many years younger. (He isn’t.)
“Oh good,” says Hayato. “Today I hate mine too.”
The shirts are varying shades of red, casting their little hideout in a fuzzy pinkish glow. They spend two hours tucked away in their women’s apparel fortress, sharing a piece of rock candy Ryu has hidden in a uniform pocket. Hayato’s parents haven’t enrolled him in school yet; his dirty, bright green sweatpants have no pockets.
“Will we see each other more?” Hayato asks quietly, when his small bladder starts to prickle in protest.
“I want to,” says Ryu, shyly. When their parents finally find them, Hayato makes up this stupid story about how he was scared and so Ryu protected him. Their mothers set up a grudging play date, even though Ryu’s stony-faced dad doesn’t like the idea of his son messing around with the child of a trucker.
---
Hayato and Ryu have known each other for three weeks when Taku is born. Hayato swears he will never ever EVER come home ever again in his WHOLE LIFE because how dare his mother look at any other boy the way she only used to look at Hayato?
He runs really far away, past his front yard and into real traffic, all the way around the apartment complex across the street, and then he gets on a bus that takes him two stops away to Ryu's house. He doesn't want to run away to Ryu's house, of course, because Ryu's dad is like this mean-faced grouchy statue who will probably try to eat him if he sneaks candy out of the candy bowl at night, so he runs away to Ryu's backyard instead. He's never known anybody who had a backyard before Ryu, and he doesn't think a lot of people are in the backyard since Ryu's dad is evil and doesn't play with Ryu a lot, so he sets up camp under the tree that shades the kitchen from the smoggy Tokyo sun. He plans to live out his days under this tree, eating grass and bugs.
That, of course, is how Ryu finds him, his mouth full of lawn clippings. Ryu looks like he might puke.
“Don't eat grass,” he says sharply, and sits down to pound the coughs of disgust out of Hayato's chest.
“I HATE grass,” Hayato declares, trying to see if his tongue has turned green or not. It has.
“Grass isn’t to eat,” Ryu says. “You are stupid.”
“YOU'RE stupid,” Hayato snaps. “Go away, this is my tree now; I live here.”
Ryu socks him. “This is still my house,” he says while Hayato curls up into a painful little ball. “How come you’re eating grass?”
“Cuz I ran away,” Hayato says hoarsely, “but I must've run away to the wrong place.”
“This is the wrong place?”
“Cuz friends don’t hit their friends, STUPID.”
Ryu blinks. “Why'd you run away?”
“Because I HATE my baby brother. I wish he'd die.”
Ryu's jaw drops. “He’s a BABY.”
“He's evil. He stole my mom.”
Ryu watches him for a minute, quietly, with his scary old grandpa eyes. Then he nods. “Oh. She was yours first. He should run away.”
“Maybe I'll put him up for adoption,” Hayato says, a bit brighter, sitting up slowly.
“We'll sell him,” Ryu keeps nodding.
“We'll sell him to the circus for a billion million trillion yen,” Hayato agrees. “Then we can buy our own house on the ocean.”
“Okay,” Ryu nods. “We’ll make posters.”
Ryu brings Hayato inside, and Ryu's mom brings them paper and crayons. Hayato doesn’t really know how to write yet, not so that anyone knows what he’s talking about besides his name, so Ryu does that part. “BY UGLY BABY” he scrawls at the top of the page, red letters jagged and furious against the newsprint’s gentle muted brown.
Halfway through their totally dastardly art project, Odagiri-mama brings them snacks. She sits down beside them, and Hayato tries to hide the papers from view.
“Oh,” she says. “You’re selling your little brother, Yabuki-kun?”
“No,” says Hayato furtively.
“That will work just fine,” she goes on, turning to Ryu. “Ryu-chan’s always wanted a little brother, right?”
Ryu nods. “Yes,” he says, coloring happy blush circles onto Cartoon Taku’s baby cheeks. “He’s very cheap.”
“He’ll be your new best friend, right?”
“Yes,” Ryu replies placidly.
Hayato’s lip curls up in annoyance. He doesn’t care that Odagiri-mama is watching him be rude; he yanks the pictures away from Ryu and crushes them into a ball.
“You can’t have him,” Hayato snaps. “He’s my baby brother and you already have a best friend.”
Ryu’s bushy eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “I do?” he asks.
“Me, duh!” Hayato yells, and shoves Ryu right over. Odagiri-mama offers them more juice.
Hayato never tries to sell his little brother again. For years and years afterward, Ryu considers this the crowning achievement of his mother’s parenthood.
---
Eventually they wind up in school together. Hayato is a really bad kid. He’s always in trouble. He steals pencils from the other kids and dips Megumi’s hair in poster paint and kicks stupid little Takemori-chan in his ankles. (Everybody wants to kick Takemori-chan, because he’s a brat who picks his nose and eats it, but only Hayato actually does it.) He is a big stupid bully. Ryu doesn’t know why Hayato isn’t a bully to him, but it doesn’t really matter.
Ryu likes watching Hayato be bad. Everything Hayato does, Ryu wishes he could do, too. It’s hard being tiny skinny Ryu, who nobody ever likes until he brings really expensive toys or food to school. Even as a little child, Ryu understands all about people only liking you for your stuff and not who you are. When they like you for your stuff, after you put your stuff away, they go back to thinking you’re tiny and scary and girly.
Hayato doesn’t think of him that way. Well, okay, that’s not true-Hayato totally does, but he likes Ryu for it. Hayato likes standing up for Ryu because it makes him more important. Ryu thinks Hayato doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because Hayato likes to kick people and all but he never really protects anybody; when he gets kicked back he just falls on his butt and starts to cry. He’s actually pretty bad at being a bully.
Ryu doesn’t mind. Hayato is Ryu’s first and only friend, and Ryu likes him just the way he is.
---
Hayato and Ryu do everything together. They meet at school, go to class, play Sentai or Frisbee or casino heist or Batman (they are both Batman; neither want to be Robin) or baseball or a rousing game of kick-a-first-grader-while-sensei-isn’t-watching (that’s mostly Hayato; Ryu just likes to watch) at recess, go back to class, sleep in class, get yelled at for sleeping in class, eat lunch, go back to class, get put on eraser cleaning duty, clean the erasers, get yelled at for being held after school again, and then say goodbye. On Sunday, Ryu’s nanny or Hayato’s mom might take them to the park, or to Hayato’s house, or wherever else they might go, and then they’ll avoid doing homework in lieu of hide and seek or kick-the-neighbors (Hayato, mostly, again), and finally return home. The early years of their friendship are easy and serene and exclusive, because neither is very good at sharing.
---
It is Ryu’s eighth birthday. Ryu doesn’t want a birthday party, but his parents make him have one anyway. They don’t understand why Hayato’s the only one of Ryu’s classmates who attends.
Hayato sneaks Ryu into the bathroom to give him a lumpy package that’s really heavy, taped messily together with newspaper. It’s been scribbled on in bright yellow and dull brown crayon; words like “bubble bursting” and “market devaluation” are smudged by the forms of dinosaurs and prize fighters and something that looks like a giant lizard shooting a machine gun at a giant banana.
“Happy birthday!” declares Hayato proudly.
Ryu tears open the ugly wrapping to reveal a badly beat-up razor scooter. He blinks at Hayato questioningly, and Hayato beams.
“It’s a scooter,” he says. “Let’s go ride this.”
“It’s old,” Ryu says flatly.
Hayato’s face falls instantly. “Well, duh, I can’t buy you a new one.”
Ryu stares at it, turning it over in his hands. The initials “SA” have been scratched into the handlebars on the left hand side.
“You took it?” Ryu says.
“No!” lies Hayato.
“Oh,” Ryu weighs it; checks whether or not the wheels spin. They seem fine. “Okay,” he shrugs. “Let’s go ride it.”
Their mothers let them leave early to go play around on the sidewalk outside. Ryu wonders briefly who SA is, but it doesn’t matter. Hayato is running beside him pushing him toward the sunset and he is eight years old and nothing in the world could ever hurt him.
Two days later SA and his friends, who live three doors down, catch Ryu on the way to school and beat the snot out of him for stealing their scooter. When Hayato demands to know what happened, Ryu lies and says he crashed the scooter into a tree and it broke.
---
Ryu loves Hayato’s mama. She is beautiful, with a big soft round face and Hayato’s eyes and pug nose. She makes pastries and cookies for fun and always smells like vanilla and alcohol, because she likes beer just as much as Hayato’s dad. She carries Taku around on her back even though Taku isn’t so little anymore, and reads them stories and takes them to discount cartoon movies on the weekends, and always says nice things about everybody, except for when they’re stupid. She doesn’t like rude people, even though she can be sort of rude sometimes, and always, always packs Ryu extra things in Hayato’s lunch box because she knows Ryu likes her cooking better than his housekeeper’s. She keeps Hayato company when his dad is off driving around the world or whatever and hugs both of them goodnight before bed. Best of all, Hayato’s mama loves Ryu back, and says so all the time. Ryu doesn’t remember anyone else ever saying they like him, much less love him.
“Come over more often, Ryu,” she always says, and kisses him on the cheek like a fairytale princess. Ryu looks in Hayato’s mama’s big brown eyes and thinks she is his dream girl, before Hayato takes him away to play Legos or a game on his television that is a hundred years old and makes Ryu forget about everything in the world except for Hayato.
One time, when they are fourth years, Hayato accidentally rides his bike into an old lady and Ryu gets blamed for it, also.
(“IT WASN’T ME!” Hayato wails at the scene of the crime. As an afterthought, he grabs Ryu by the elbow and says, “AND IT WASN’T HIM EITHER!”
Of course nobody believes him.)
When Ryu’s father finds out, he hits Ryu across the face and leaves his eye black and purple and fat like a giant blueberry. Hayato’s mama sees him at school and marches Ryu and Hayato straight to Ryu’s house, in the middle of school, instead of making them go to class. It is Ryu’s dad’s day off, and he’s really angry at Hayato’s mama for doing something so horrible, but it doesn’t matter to Hayato’s mama at all.
“Your son did nothing wrong,” Hayato’s mama says, a vibrant, red-dressed force in Ryu’s stony silent white house like a hurricane. “Hayato made a mistake, not Ryu. Ryu shouldn’t be punished for something he didn’t do.”
“My son will learn his place in society,” Ryu’s father tells her in his empty statue voice, but Hayato’s mama never flinches. Normally people bow and apologize and are very proper with Ryu’s father, but Hayato’s mama is not normal people.
“Your son is a very good boy,” she says back, voice loud and bouncing from wall-to-wall. Ryu’s mother is hiding in the family room. Ryu wishes she was there. His father is terrifying. “You should appreciate him.”
Ryu’s father says something back, something about Hayato and propriety that Ryu doesn’t understand, but whatever it is, Hayato’s mama becomes so angry that she takes Hayato by the hand and announces he won’t be coming over any time soon.
Hayato’s mama threatens Ryu’s father, “Ryu will not come to school looking this way again, or I will go to the school board. You should be more careful of your reputation, Odagiri-san. Isn’t that what you’re trying to teach Ryu?”
Ryu’s father turns furious eyes on Ryu. Ryu can’t stop the way his knees shake.
“How dare you?” he says quietly. “I will punish him as I see fit.”
“Punish him for what he’s guilty of, then,” Hayato’s mama snaps. “As for you, Hayato,” she says angrily, “you will apologize to Odagiri-san for the trouble you’ve brought to Ryu. Look what you’ve caused. You should be ashamed.” She forces Hayato’s head down with the palm of her left hand.
Ryu’s father throws Hayato and his mama out. He marches Ryu through the front door and makes their driver take him to school. He isn’t writing Ryu a tardy note.
“I know Yabuki-san is an adult, and you like her,” his father says in the scariest voice Ryu’s ever heard him use, “but she is wrong. You will be punished for associating with people like that. Nobody cares whether or not you were the one involved in the fight. I see it everyday; people are blamed by association. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Father.”
“You don’t want to be thought of that way, Ryu.”
“No, Father,” Ryu shakes his head, feeling like he’s going to throw up.
“You’re a good boy, Ryu,” his father says. It is not a compliment. It’s a warning. “Don’t forget that.”
The chauffeur shuts the passenger door, and Ryu hides his face as they drive away.
---
Sorry, Hayato’s guilty frown says later as he stares at Ryu’s bad eye.
“Your mom is brave,” Ryu whispers. “She’s the bravest person in the whole world.”
---
For a long time Hayato isn’t allowed to go to Ryu’s house, and Ryu isn’t allowed to visit Hayato. Ryu tries to do stuff alone, but it pretty much sucks. He tries telling his housekeeper so, words coming out all delayed and roundabout; she just blinks at him and offers up Young Master some tea for what she understands to be a bad stomachache. It’s kind of pathetic that he doesn’t even know how to complain without Hayato around.
Ryu’s parents peg Hayato something like a “bad influence.” They warn Ryu that if Hayato doesn’t start shaping up, they won’t let Ryu be Hayato’s friend anymore. Ryu doesn’t really understand yet how important it is to get into a good junior high school, so that he can get into a good high school, so that he can get into a good university. All Ryu understands is that his parents want to take Hayato away from him, and despite knowing his dad is the meanest person in his whole real life, he never thought he’d ever be this mean.
Ryu cries when his mother tucks him in. His father hates it when he cries. It’s the first time he’s ever been disrespectful before.
“Let’s go to bed, Ryu,” she says as she switches off his light. “It’s a school night.”
The following day Ryu tells Hayato about how his parents won’t let them be friends unless Hayato starts being better at his grades and stops fighting and stuff. Hayato splits one of his mom’s rice balls with Ryu and stares hard at the ground, eyes narrowed in his “I’m planning things right now; my brain is very busy and serious” expression.
“I’ll just have to read more,” Hayato decides, and steals some of Ryu’s milk. He collapses dramatically against Ryu’s side.
They devise a plan to get lots and lots of books for Hayato to read from the library. He reads about monsters and dinosaurs and television programs from the seventies; about the moon landing and volcanic eruptions in Haiti and books specifically dedicated to different kinds of sea birds. The librarian is very impressed with their ambition, even though it’s painfully obvious the boys get through about ten pages per book and stop. Sometimes Hayato doesn’t even get that far; he just starts scribbling in pen in the margins around page four. It’s okay that Hayato is distracted, Ryu insists, it’s the effort that’s important.
In the end, Hayato tires of reading. They go back to class the next day, and Hayato still feels just as dumb.
Ultimately none of this matters. Neither of them does very well on their assessment tests. They’re assigned to the same junior high school anyway.
“Was this Hayato’s fault?” his father asks solemnly.
“No,” Ryu replies. “I really did try my best.”
“This is the best you can do?” he asks, examining the computer print-out detailing Ryu’s performance. His lip curls in disgust.
Ryu apologizes.
Ryu’s father stops paying as much attention to Ryu after that, and it isn’t such a big deal that Hayato’s mama is such a terrible woman. Ryu’s father knows his son is a failure. Ryu knows he’s a failure.
---
“I’m glad you suck and aren’t very smart,” says Hayato over a shared milkshake. They are babysitting Taku. He sits in the chair beside them doing math problems like he cares about them or something.
“I hate you,” says Ryu.
“I’m glad we’re going to the same school,” Hayato replies, and leaves the candied cherry behind, bizarrely generous.
Ryu is secretly glad, too.
---
As they get older, Hayato has to babysit Taku a lot. Hayato’s mama has to work during the day now, because Taku is probably going to go to good schools, and Hayato’s dad doesn’t make a lot of money. It starts to piss Hayato off a little, because that’s less time he gets to hang out with Ryu and cause problems, so Ryu offers to come over and babysit with him. Hayato’s mama pays him a hundred yen sometimes, just for sitting with Hayato being bored.
It is boring, yeah, having to stay inside because Taku has to do homework and stuff, but sometimes they’re allowed to go to the river and fish or skip rocks. Those days aren’t boring. Sometimes Ryu pretends Taku is his annoying little sibling; that Hayato’s mama is his mama and Hayato is his cool big bro and they’re a family. It’s his happiest fantasy. He dreams about it: picnics and trips to Disneyland, holding Hayato’s hand as they wait in line.
He never, ever admits this.
---
Sixth grade is drawing to a close. On Valentine’s day, a girl confesses to having a crush on Ryu. She gives him a pink note cut in the shape of a heart with her name in the center, all fancy swirling letters and gaudy golden colored pencil. Ryu doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s Megumi, the girl whose hair Hayato used to dip in paint. She sits two seats away from them and giggles a lot. Hayato stares at her and her friend and talks about how annoying they are, but Ryu suspects that he has a crush on her. Ryu doesn’t like the way he watches her; the way Hayato watches any girl. Sometimes he gets stupid and doe-eyed like he isn’t paying attention to anything but them; like there are bubbles and birds and shit filling his vision like the fey pussies in girls’ manga.
“She’s stupid,” Hayato says idly, tossing a baseball in the air. He’s frowning, deep and dark and jealous, definitely not seeing birds. “There are like a hundred girls who are better than her who like me. She’s even kind of ugly.” (Megumi is not ugly at all.)
“I know. What’s wrong with her?” Ryu says experimentally. He takes in the way Hayato glances at him, considering, and throws the ball just a little bit higher. Hayato’s expression smoothes out, just a bit.
Ryu buries his curiosities and crumples the love note into a ball. He dumps it in a recycling bin and never spares it a second thought. Girls, Ryu thinks, are not for him.
---
On their very last day as elementary school students, Ryu spends the night at Hayato’s house. Hayato’s mama makes squid ink soup (which is a really big deal in Hayato’s household because it’s expensive), Hayato’s dad is (of course) gone, and Taku is rolling around on the floor with a stray puppy he’s just brought home. It has fleas and really likes snuffling Ryu’s toes.
Hayato takes Ryu for a walk after dinner. They buy takoyaki they can’t finish because they aren’t actually hungry and blow five hundred yen at the arcade, the most money Hayato’s ever gotten for allowance and spent in one place. Hayato doesn’t get in a fight. Instead, they sit on a DDR pad and make up stories about how awesome they’ll be in junior high; about the gang Hayato will probably form. They feel really grown up.
When they return home, Taku is in bed, and Mama’s made them both a cup of tea. She’s watching a trashy comedy show, and she lets them join her under the kotatsu that should’ve been put away weeks ago.
Ryu never ever wants to go home, the desire to stay so strong this evening that the idea he can’t makes him feel weak and shaky. Hayato reaches out and takes his hand under the blankets like he’s sensed the realization, flushing dramatic purple even though nobody can see what he’s doing under the blanket, and probably wouldn’t care besides.
“Shut up,” he whispers, like his mama-who is two feet away-won’t be able to hear him.
Ryu clutches tighter at Hayato’s clammy, over-warm fingers. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to go home. It’s that he wants to stay home, right here, with his fingers twined between Hayato’s.
---
Junior high school is very different from elementary school. In junior high school, Hayato’s mama’s lunches aren’t cool, liking Hayato and only Hayato makes Ryu kind of queer, and basically all Hayato cares about anymore is face. Ryu knows he and Hayato aren’t really cool, so he doesn’t really understand Hayato’s ambitions, but he figures it’s just another of his best friend’s quirks. It might have something to do with the bullying. There is that.
Ryu shares his lunches with Hayato when Hayato is stupid and leaves his lunch money at home (a.k.a. gets it beaten out of him by the older kids on the way to school).
“So you’re a tough guy, huh?” one of the eighth graders says to Hayato the very first day of class. Hayato stands up to him in front of everybody. Hayato is really stupid.
Hayato doesn’t tell anybody older kids beat him up until he starts beating them up back. He gets pretty good at retaliating, and so does Ryu-an aftereffect of saving Hayato’s ass over and over again, the same as Hayato saving him when they were kids. Hayato, of course, insists he doesn‘t care, that other people‘s opinions are useless, but Ryu knows the truth.
Hayato has a philosophy. He's only twelve, but twelve is a good age to start forming philosophies, Hayato thinks. There are two things Hayato says he knows pretty well:
1. If people think you’re dumb, they don’t care if you do dumb things.
2. If people think you’re good enough just as you are, they won’t push you to try things you’ll fail at.
This philosophy works perfectly, because it’s obvious that by junior high, everybody thinks he’s dumb, and nobody pushes him to try harder, and he can get away with basically anything he wants to. In junior high, as they find out the hard way, the teachers don’t really care about you at all as long as you sit down and shut up. If you get good grades, they bug you to do things they think you should do to make yourself look better for high school. If you get bad grades, you’re just another face in the crowd of nobodies. If you act out, you get your ass handed to you regardless of why you were acting out in the first place. Hayato explains that there’s no reason, therefore, to be anything but mediocre. Ryu can’t bring himself to argue despite knowing Hayato wants to be anything but mediocre.
Ryu knows all about how Hayato is actually really amazing at science and writes poetry for his mom and magnets it to the fridge. (Hayato never swears Ryu to secrecy or anything, but that’s because he doesn’t have to. Ryu knows better.) There are a lot of these little gentle things Ryu appreciates about Hayato, but somehow, somewhere between ages eleven and twelve, Hayato stops seeing what Ryu appreciates about him as something to appreciate about himself.
---
The vice-principal pulls Hayato into his office one day and tells him he will never be good for anything; that he knows Hayato’s type, and they never go anywhere in life.
“A bad seed,” he calls Hayato. Hayato doesn’t cry or anything when he comes out of the office, but he’s angry and preoccupied and depressed and dazed.
“Is that true?” Hayato asks Ryu later, after the day has ended. They’re sitting on the DDR pad again, game informing them over and over again that their score is F-.
“No,” Ryu says. Hayato stares at his hands.
(Ryu gets the same speech two weeks later. Ryu doesn’t get depressed like Hayato did, and he doesn’t ask Hayato whether or not it’s true. Hayato is a good, strong person; it’s just that no teacher will ever take the time to see it. Ryu, though…Ryu knows he doesn’t have any redeeming qualities, so it’s not a big deal if anyone calls him out on it.)
---
Hayato thinks he needs to look tougher, and that also goes for Ryu; just to keep the rough guys off their backs. Ryu thinks it will cause just the opposite, and that Hayato probably wants to look this way specifically because he wants to build up some real street cred, but Ryu just laughs at Hayato quietly, behind his back, when he starts shoplifting stuff like spike bracelets and chains. He stuffs them in Ryu’s pockets; winds them around Ryu’s wrists. Ryu never keeps them on; just kind of finds that sort of thing stupid. As for Hayato himself, he bleaches his hair shortly before the school year ends. “Does it look good?” he asks Ryu. “It’s pretty gangster, right?”
“Yeah,” Ryu says, bored, “you look even more like a girl.”
And he does. It’s pretty.
“Whatever,” Hayato rolls his eyes, fluffing his new, shaggy cut with a shake of his head. “I’m a bad-ass.”
A few weeks later, some ninth year with a stupidly short skirt pierces his ear with a safety pin, but this doesn’t go as well. Afterward, Hayato stands weakly, trying not to whimper, his head bent over a sink in their now-usual arcade. There is blood all over the place, trickling down his jaw and splattered all over the sink basin and faucets because he won’t hold his stupid blond head still.
“Idiot,” Ryu sighs, holding his hair back away from his face, pressing a big wad of wet toilet paper to his swollen earlobe.
“If I bleed to death,” Hayato says brokenly, “tell my mama-my mom-I love her.” He coughs. He actually coughs. “Taku doesn’t get my Playstation. I’ll take that to heaven before I let him touch it.”
Ryu rolls his eyes, pressing harder, pinching Hayato’s skin between his thumb and the toilet paper. “Hold still.”
“OUCH! RYU, WHY?” Hayato roars, rearing backwards like the idiot he is, hands flying to clutch at either side of his head. He falls flat against the nearest cubicle, sliding down its support wall with the kind of dramatic flair only Hayato can achieve. “Ryu,” he says once he’s stopped hyperventilating, “come here.”
Ryu harrumphs and starts mopping up the mess Hayato’s dribbled across the floor. Hayato grabs him.
“Ryu,” he says, generally panicked and low-voiced, “you’re my best friend.”
This shouldn’t make Ryu feel warm all over or anything. This shouldn’t make Ryu want to hug Hayato or crawl up to a toilet and puke into it or sing a bad boy band song about brotherhood and promises and forever, but it totally does. Hayato is pale and stupid and scared, and Ryu likes feeling needed.
“Shut up,” Ryu says eventually. “I know.”
In the end, Ryu winds up taking Hayato to a clinic. They call his mom because thirteen-year-olds can't simply walk into a clinic bleeding to death by themselves. Hayato gets in pretty big trouble, especially when, two weeks later, she finds out he hasn’t let the hole close up; that he’d jammed a stud into the wound after the incident at the hospital and covered it with medical tape. It gets infected, of course. Ryu also gets yelled at, because Ryu was a kind of accomplice after all. It isn’t really fair…being an accomplice doesn’t mean he’d approved of the whole mess.
---
That summer, Hayato’s dad takes Hayato and Ryu camping. They pile into a tent while Hayato’s dad drinks beer and fishes off the edge of the dock, talking loudly to some toothless old guy who has a boat. Hayato insists they make fortresses of their sleeping bags; they curl up together and read comic books about gangsters by flashlight. Their hair smells like fire and river water and dirt. It’s the best day of Ryu’s life.
Hayato kisses Ryu on the cheek before falling asleep while Yabuki-san snores in his tent across the way.
“What!” yells Ryu, but Hayato shushes him with the slap of a dusty palm.
“I like you,” Hayato whispers fiercely. “I have a crush on you.”
“Is that okay?” Ryu asks as softly as he can, eyes humongous. His dad always tells him to not be girly; to be a man. He hasn’t said not to kiss boys or anything, and Ryu doesn’t feel any less manly, but kissing boys is something he thought only girls did.
Hayato kisses him again, this time on the forehead. His lips are soft, warm, and wet, and they linger against Ryu’s skin for a moment; his breath ghosts across the ridge of Ryu’s brow. Girls, Ryu thinks, have the right idea. Ryu shivers and blushes all the way to the tips of his toes, fingers clutching unnoticed at Hayato’s thermal sleeve.
“I don’t care if it’s not,” Hayato says, and then pretends to pass out. Ryu lays still, totally frozen, wondering how long Hayato’s wanted to do this. Ryu has never considered kissing before, not really, not in this way. He wonders if this makes them boyfriends. Ryu doesn’t know if he wants to be anybody’s boyfriend. It’s bizarre, realizing he doesn’t fully understand something about Hayato.
Hayato keeps kissing Ryu after that, probably because Ryu never stops him. Ryu doesn’t really know how without making Hayato feel stupid, and anyway he doesn’t think he really wants Hayato to stop. It feels nice, and it seems to make Hayato really happy (even though it twists Ryu‘s stomach right into knots). Hayato kisses him on the eyelids, on his cheeks and ears and nose. It only happens sporadically, usually at night when they’re curled up together in bed or in the locker room where nobody can see them, and only when Hayato is in a good mood.
Ryu tries to kiss Hayato instead, just once. They are hiding in a garbage collection corridor behind the greenhouses; the air is thick with damp soil and grass and moist rubbish. Hayato has been really badly hurt in a scrape with a zealous hoard of seventh graders. He is slumped over against a dumpster, wheezing heavily, pride wounded. Ryu is also hurt, his ankle swollen and chin torn, but he’s okay. He presses fingers against Hayato’s bruises, checking their severity.
Hayato mewls pathetically when Ryu squeezes his left elbow, and Ryu hates hearing that sound coming out of his tough best friend. He laughs in quiet sympathy at Hayato; rolls his eyes and leans in to press punch-puffed lips against Hayato’s grimace.
Hayato shrieks, socks him in the gut and runs away with speed no injured kid should be able to manage.
“Why?” yells Ryu when he finally catches up to him. It’s the first time he’s ever yelled at Hayato before.
“Because if you do it to me you‘ll be A GAY,” Hayato says, voice shaking.
“So? You’re a gay too then, and I don’t care,” Ryu snaps, confused and frustrated.
Hayato lets out a roar and kicks an errant trash bag. Ryu doesn’t understand how he suddenly has so much strength back.
“IT JUST IS DIFFERENT,” Hayato says.
“WHY!” Ryu can’t read him at all, or at least he thinks he can’t. Hayato sounds scared.
“IT‘S JUST DIFFERENT IF I DO IT TO YOU. If you get caught being-being a gay-your stupid dad will never let me see you again.” For Hayato, not yet the man of too many words he’ll become later, this is more than he’s ever said in one go since kindergarten. He pulls at his fluffy, dress-code-breaking hair in frustration, with his whole fists, like he’s trying to yank it all out, like he’s a crazy person.
“It’s the same if I let you do it,” Ryu says angrily. “My dad won’t care who is-”
“IT’S NOT. WHY DON’T YOU GET IT?”
Ryu shakes his head in grand confusion. He kicks a crate full of milk bottles. It doesn’t make him feel better. He doesn’t understand why Hayato kicks things.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore,” Hayato says as he watches a styrofoam bowl scrape across the asphalt, leaving behind a soy sauce trail.
“Whatever,” Ryu grunts, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He turns to walk away, but Hayato grabs him before he gets very far. He yanks Ryu to his chest, wrapping him up in his arms. He hasn’t done this since they were really little, and Ryu was sad because he’d accidentally killed Hayato’s goldfish. Hayato smells just like his mom, only sweatier and less like beer.
“Why?” Ryu demands again, nose smashed into Hayato’s collarbone, voice softer this time.
Hayato doesn’t say anything, but his hold tightens. He’s strong and weirdly squishy, already so much bigger than Ryu is, and it doesn’t make any sense because Hayato is being stupid. Ryu just wants to stay where he is, gay or whatever that might make him, because Ryu doesn’t care. He wants to be like this with Hayato. This is where he belongs.
Hayato eventually pushes him off. “Bye,” he says, and runs a hand through Ryu’s hair. He limps away.
Hayato ditches art class and hides in the girl’s bathroom because he thinks Ryu won’t step foot inside. The truth is, Ryu would follow him anywhere…but not if Hayato doesn’t want him there.
---
They don’t talk until the end of eighth grade. There’s this boy, Takeuchi or Takebaba or Takenaga or something like that, in their class, and he’s little and weak and kind of bad at everything. Sometimes he stares at Hayato and Ryu like he knows stuff, and it really pisses Ryu off. He’s like a girl, only he’s worse because he’s just this useless tiny handsome boy.
It doesn’t help that Hayato talks to him. Hayato will say hi to Take in the morning before sitting down, and then look up at Ryu, eyes narrowed and challenging, like he’s waiting for Ryu to lash out at him in jealousy or crawl back to him crying or something. Ryu never does. He just sits there blinking, disinterested, bored, like nothing Hayato can do or say will ever matter to him ever again. Sometimes that makes Hayato so angry he throws his pencils at the floor. Those days Ryu considers good days.
---
By October, it becomes clear that he’s been replaced. Take follows Hayato everywhere, and when they’re together, Take’s more brazen about fighting than Ryu has ever been. He even says bad things to the teacher sometimes. Hayato approves of him; smiles in Ryu’s direction when Take does something crazy, and Take looks back to Hayato for support. Hayato always gives it. Ryu wants to hate them, but it’s hard. Hayato is getting taller and more handsome everyday, and Ryu has to remind himself in the morning that if something happens, he can’t run away to Hayato’s house. Take makes it even worse because Take is pretty nice to Ryu, even though it’s clear Hayato never wants to talk to Ryu ever again. It isn’t fair. Ryu just feels lonely and bored and jealous and trapped. It sucks.
It is near Autumn Festival, and Ryu is walking home from school, bag slung over his shoulder. He has a math tutoring session with this obnoxious kid from across town. Now that he isn’t friends with Hayato, he has no reason not to get into a top high school…preferably in Canada. Or Timbuktu. Or anywhere half a world away from his father.
Hayato is suspended for beating the shit out of a kid during lunch the previous Friday. It’s been easier to sit through class without Hayato glancing up every five minutes with that stupid angry hurt look on his face. Ryu’s sort of been half-assedly saying hello to Take in the morning in some kind of petty backwards friends-stealing revenge scheme he hasn’t fully thought out, and the festival committee they’re on together is okay; not super annoying. It’s been a kind of okay week generally. He doesn’t expect to get his nose broken by a couple of giant ninth years from Jundou Academy.
That’s before he sees Take, r what’s left of him, being pounded into the pavement outside of what used to be his and Hayato’s arcade. Ryu drops his bags without thinking, seeing the straw-tawny mess of Take’s hair smear blood across the pale concrete, and launches himself into the fray.
There are four guys against Take’s one. It’s a terribly unfair fight. Ryu doesn’t really think about that, using his wiry body as a shield over Take’s, hammy fists raining down on him from all sides.
“Who’s this?” yells one of the brutes. “This little sissy girl’s ugly sister?”
SHUT UP, Ryu’s mind screams as he feels Take groan against his knee. He swings at the bigger guys with all his might, spitting a molar and what is left of his baby teeth in their faces.
He’s just about ready to pass out when two of the ninth graders suddenly fall backwards, howling in pain as their heads are bashed together. Ryu looks up through eyelids swollen like pineapples and sees a form that looks like Hayato, a plastic nun-chuck dangling its USB cord in hand. He must’ve torn it straight out of a game machine.
“DON’T TOUCH MY FRIENDS,” Hayato bellows before throwing his entire body on top of the remaining guys. They’re huge and fierce, and Ryu is almost incapacitated, so Hayato gets his ass handed to him fairly quickly. It’s nothing but pure adrenaline and an angry shopkeeper from across the street that keep Hayato from losing teeth and getting his nose wrecked also, when all four of their upperclassmen regain full-strength. In the end Ryu somehow winds up with the nun-chuck wrapped around one guy’s throat. Hayato wriggles violently in the arms of the shopkeeper, and Take lies on the cement with an ice-pack to his forehead. The bigger kids run away like the cowards they are.
“You three are never to show your faces around these parts again,” says the shopkeeper, tending to their wounds with band-aids and bottled peroxide, almost apologetic. The boys don’t pick up on his sentiments.
“Those big guys were trying to kill my best friends,” Hayato protests through a busted lip. “That’s not fair!” He grabs Ryu around the neck, Take by the arm, and drags them toward him like some raging mother bear, like the shopkeeper’s about to attack them like the bullies had. Ryu, exhausted and tired and relieved, leans into Hayato’s side, his swollen eyes mooshing shut.
“I’m calling your parents,” the weary shopkeeper says.
Hayato gives fake numbers for all of them, pizza places and doctors’ offices and connections no longer in service. The shopkeeper finally gets fed up and kicks them out. They limp home in utter agony; drag themselves onto a bus that eventually stops near Hayato’s house.
“Dad home?” Ryu asks tentatively. Take wheezes against his side.
Hayato just stares at him, stoic and silent. He holds the door open; takes Take from Ryu’s side. He drapes him over the hideous coral-pink Western style sofa that wasn’t there when Ryu was last over, kicking Taku off the Playstation, so Ryu can take the beanbag.
“Mom’s working,” Hayato mutters, setting water to boil. “Late shift.”
“Thank you guys,” Take says, coughing up blood. “I would be dead without Ryu.”
Hayato shoots a surprised look at Ryu; Ryu stares determinedly at his hands, popping his knuckles.
“Ryu found me first,” Take explains. “He tried to beat up all of 'em by himself!”
“Well, don’t do it again,” Hayato snaps, and jams a gigantic slab of frozen salmon against his face. “What’d you do to those guys?”
“They always bully me,” Take says.
Ryu glances up again questioningly. Friends as good as he’d thought Hayato and Take were ought to know about each others’ regular enemies.
“I’ve never seen them before,” Hayato says, like Take’s lying.
Take shrugs, toying with loose threads in the purple afghan he has spread across him. “I always get beat up. It’s okay, don’t worry, I usually just apologize and run away and stuff, but…I say stupid things sometimes-”
“We won’t let them. Never again,” Ryu promises, remembering how Hayato tried to save him from bullies when they were little, how eventually they learned never to touch Ryu if they didn’t also want to mess with Hayato. He doesn’t remember Hayato being a lame fighter, but that isn’t important.
Take doesn’t say anything, but he smiles all gross and messy. Hayato is green like he’s going to throw up when he hands Take wet towels and another salmon filet. He doesn’t get anything for Ryu; just nods at him like Ryu knows what to do, like brothers at home. Ryu’s entire body floods with relief he didn’t know he needed, and Hayato turns away from him, blushing like he had that night in the tent.
Later, they make Taku sleep on the couch so Take can take his bed. Take stares up at them reverently, like they’re the best thing that ever happened to him. Neither Hayato nor Ryu know how to react. Nobody but Hayato’s mama has ever looked at them with anything other than fear or expectation, not since they were tiny boys.
“You’re stupid,” Hayato snarls once they’ve piled behind the paper divider that separates Hayato’s bed from Taku’s. Ryu goes to take a pillow, to carry it out to the living room, but Hayato grabs his wrist and yanks him back over.
“You’re really stupid!” Hayato repeats, louder and slower this time like Ryu is old and deaf. Ryu starts to say something, something cutting, but Hayato’s hand drops, and he curls in on himself. “Don’t do stuff by yourself.”
Ryu doesn’t know how to respond. Hayato isn’t looking at him anymore; he’s just staring out the window, striped by the glow of headlights and neon filtering in through the blinds. His blond head is ringed by what looks like a halo. Ironic, that.
He’s slow dragging his feet out of the room, waiting for Hayato to call him back again. Hayato doesn’t.
---
When he wakes up a few hours later there’s a crick in his neck, and Hayato’s mama is bundling Take and Hayato up in jackets. She looks tired and worn and thin. The clock reads two thirty-seven.
“Ryu,” she says harshly, flustered, “watch over Taku for me. I have to go apologize to Take-chan’s mother.”
“Why can’t Ryu come, Mama?” whines Hayato, Take tucked sleepily under his arm. He’s somehow come to acquire a grape purple popsicle.
“Because you’re grounded for the rest of your life. You keep getting Ryu in trouble like this, you‘ll ruin him,” Yabuki-mama says irritably. She spins her eldest son around by the shoulder and ushers him toward the door. “Come on.”
Hayato turns back over his shoulder and stares down at Ryu. “So we’re just gonna leave him?”
“I’ve already called Odagiri-san. They don‘t know about any of this, and they aren’t going to find out,“ says Yabuki-mama. “Now come on. Honestly, fighting in the streets! You’re thirteen!”
“Aw, Mama…“ moans Hayato as the door is slammed behind them leaving Ryu and Taku in complete darkness. Taku snores on, unbothered.
---
Hayato’s forgotten all about ever being mad at Ryu. The day after the fight, Ryu takes his seat without saying hello, not quite sure yet where they stand. Hayato promptly grabs his collar and forces him into a noogie.
“DON’T IGNORE YOUR BEST FRIEND,” he yells. The entire class stares.
---
Because Ryu’s parents have no idea that angel-faced, well-off little Take is an utter hellion-far worse than Ryu’s ever imagined becoming-Take’s place becomes the party house. Take’s mother is stricter than Hayato’s, so they’re not really allowed to go out on the town by themselves, but she's nice; when her husband is around, he’s grouchy in a cheerful, drunken kind of way, and Ryu’s father never asks questions about Take’s family Ryu doesn’t want to answer.
Take’s a really good guy. Although Ryu’s always fought alongside Hayato, he’s never had anyone weaker to protect before; has never known anyone other than Hayato worth protecting. It helps him understand Hayato in brand new ways, the way it feels to force someone behind his back and stare down some brute who’s trying to hurt them. The difference between Ryu and Take is that Ryu’s never really brought on the bullying himself; it always just comes to him on its own. Take, however, has a bad attitude and a gigantic mouth, completely contrary to the gentle, kind, almost creepily insightful boy he becomes when their trio is on its own. Take’s illogical gang-mentality bravado doesn’t make a lot of sense to Ryu, because Take doesn’t have to be such a shit head; he’s not like Hayato, whose entire identity revolves around being the toughest guy in school. Hayato tries to break it down for Ryu with flimsy explanations of “short-man syndrome” and pride and being born pretty and pocket-sized.
“I’m not pretty,” protests Take, laughing and dimpling like a cartoon pixie, punching Hayato in the chest.
Ryu doesn’t like Hayato calling anyone pretty, much less Take, even in jest. Sometimes, when they’re in private, while Take’s feeding his puppy, and they’re hidden away in Take’s room, or they’re ditching PE together while Take flirts with some girl, Hayato gets kind of awkward, like he doesn’t know how to be normal around Ryu anymore. He gets all stiff and quiet and brooding, which makes Ryu go all stiff and quiet and brooding, and then they just sit there grunting at each other, eyes averted. It’s really annoying, but Ryu has no idea what to do with it. Being friends with Hayato again, especially since Ryu’s parents don’t like him, is fragile, and he doesn’t want to ruin it like he has everything else in his life.
“You guys,” Take says if he catches them, “you look weird.”
Hayato always tells Take to shut up; he doesn’t know anything. Ryu pretends not to care.
---
Ninth grade starts, and things begin to change. There is no one left in school to out-muscle, and Hayato becomes restless. He paces the corridors after class, pretending not to want a fight, pretending to goof off and have a good time. But Ryu can see it in his eyes, the harsh edge that grows harsher and harsher all the time. Challenge laces Hayato’s voice when he speaks to anyone outside of their circle, his words loud and boastful and cocky. He starts acquiring things constantly: pencils, bike parts, small sums of money he uses to buy Ryu and Take junk food, key chains, expensive shoelaces, fierce rings for breaking faces and a necklace with a tiny golden cross on it. Take asks where it all comes from. Ryu knows it’s stolen. The girls who used to have a crush on him now stare at him with big eyes and stooped shoulders, like Hayato is a monster. The teachers don’t just nitpick-they hate Hayato, how he yawns during lessons, feet on his desk; how he walks out if he’s bored. They’re all in class D, and it’s pretty apparent they’re going to stay there if they even make it to high school. Hayato talks about dropping out all the time. Ryu can’t stand the thought. If Hayato drops out, Ryu’s pretty sure they’ll never see each other again, not with the way Hayato shuts off when they’re alone. Take won’t stay just for Ryu, either, Ryu’s sure of it. Who would stick around for him?
Hayato starts prowling the streets after school instead of coming to Take’s house. Take says he’s expanding his territory, and Ryu supposes that’s fair enough. He knows Hayato’s met new people; boys from other schools just like them. Hayato never really says much, just shows up the next day with more money and more junk food and new video games. Hayato never explains himself, never says anything about the bruises on his face or the way his wrists are puffed up.
“Be careful,” Ryu says casually one afternoon when Hayato hasn’t come to school. Take watches them quietly.
“I am,” Hayato lies through a cavalier grin.
---
On one memorable occasion, Hayato decides he’s going to dye Ryu’s hair red whether he likes it or not, because red hair is cool, and he’s already bought the dye and everything. Ryu wants to protest more than anything in the world, but Hayato is so enthusiastic he can’t bring himself to. Hayato does it in his kitchen sink, Taku offering pointers beside them. After letting Ryu sit with foil pinned to his head for two hours, they rinse the stuff out. Hayato gasps a little bit when he pulls the towel away from Ryu’s head. He complains about botching the bleach job; the color isn’t right at all. He smooths his hands over it; pulls individual strands this way and that, watching light shift through artificial highlights. Ryu wonders how long he’s going to play with it, wearing that weird, kind of lost look on his face. When he drags Ryu in front of a mirror, Ryu realizes Hayato’s complaining for no reason. He’s done an excellent job-no, Ryu’s hair isn't the color of a fire engine, but it’s a pretty, muted burnt copper that makes his eyes pop and his cheekbones jut for miles.
“It looks so good,” Ryu says, shocked that the almost handsome boy in the mirror is himself.
“Oh…well, whatever. If you like it, I guess it’s okay,” Hayato rolls his eyes, but he really can’t stop touching it for the rest of the afternoon.
(As time passes, Hayato starts congratulating himself on how much hotter he’s made Ryu.
Ryu’s parents hate it.
“You look like a delinquent,” his father says over another tense, near-silent dinner. “You are too young to have hair like that.”
Ryu doesn’t change the color of his hair again until he leaves for college.)
---
Hayato screws up pretty royally when they’re supposed to be playing volleyball. Take’s been suspended again, some dress code violation or something, and Hayato and Ryu have had a really shitty time trying to cope without the buffer he provides. During a bad serve, Class A’s Takahiro accidentally cans Ryu in the head; Ryu just sort of shakes it off and glares at the idiot, but Hayato takes it personally.
“OI,” roars Hayato, “WATCH WHAT YOU’RE DOING, ASSHOLE.”
Takahiro laughs at him. Takahiro is in Class A, but he’s new and just really, really stupid. His friends actually back away from him, whispering warnings Takahiro doesn’t seem to take seriously. Hayato takes Ryu by the back of his shirt, drags them under the net, and shoves Ryu in Takahiro’s face. Their teacher blows his whistle somewhere across the court.
“Apologize,” Hayato spits.
“Hayato,” Ryu growls, “lay off.”
Takahiro rolls his eyes. “It was an accident, Yabuki, don’t be such an animal.”
Hayato shoves Ryu away and goes for the dipshit’s collar, knocking the kid’s glasses askew. “What did you call me?”
Ryu, meanwhile, is sitting on his butt, a little dazed. He watches blood pool in his palm and under the wrecked material of his pants where he made contact with the blacktop. Hayato’s injured him worse than Takahiro did with that serve.
“I’ll never apologize to someone like you,” says Takahiro. “Guys like you don’t deserve an apology.”
Ryu looks up to see his thin, flawless fists clench. This boy has never been in a proper fight. He’s so stupid, really stupid, really good looking, well-liked, and brave…the kind of kid Ryu’s parents have always wanted. Hayato, Ryu knows, is going to kill him.
The teacher is slow pulling them apart. By the time Ryu’s managed to get a good grip on Hayato, yanking him back toward the net, Takahiro’s got a dislocated shoulder and a knot forming on his head. The kids around them aren’t even screaming; they’re just staring. Hayato’s making enough noise for all of them, anyway.
Afterwards, Hayato and Ryu sit outside the administrative office covered in bandages, icepacks strapped to different body parts. Hayato kicks angrily at the floor.
“Fuck this school,” he hisses, hawking a wad of blood that barely misses Ryu’s leg.
A tense silence passes. Their PE-slippered feet tap desperately against the linoleum.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Ryu asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hayato mutters, twisting the chain that curls around his left wrist. “This is the last time you’ll see me.”
Ryu snorts, unimpressed with Hayato’s melodrama, and crosses his arms over his chest.
“What?” Hayato snaps back, scooting farther away down the bench. Everything about his stance is accusatory, like Ryu’s done something to him, like this is all Ryu’s fault. “They told me they were going to in the nurse’s office.”
Ryu’s skin starts to tingle. “What?”
“I’m expelled,” Hayato says simply.
“What?“
“Expelled,“ Hayato repeats, looking for all the world like he’s going to beat the shit out of Ryu the same way he had Takahiro. “The only reason I’m still here is 'cuz Mom can’t come get me.”
Ryu says nothing, his jaw hanging in abject horror.
“She’s really sick,” Hayato bursts out, like Ryu's asked him some stupid question he should already know the answer to.
Part 2
From: hilaryscribbles
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Recipients: razberrycreme and misao_duo
Title: hangdogs (1/9)
Pairing/Group: Hayato/Ryu (Gokusen 2)
Rating: R
Warnings: Spoilers for every single season of the Gokusen television series, for the Gokusen film, and a little tiny smidgen of the manga as well. Also, excessive hair ruffling, awkward silences, tense gazes, meaningful declarations about friendship and tears from the heart, Ara punks, Yankumi, Gokusen-appropriate watered-down criminal activity, and Ryu’s balcony. Yes, that last one is a warning. There are some weird time discrepancies that might deviate somewhat from canon, but canon itself deviates from canon all the time, so hopefully it won’t be too big an issue.
Notes: Title derived from the saying, “Give a dog a bad name and hang him.” Also, many million billion thanks to my beta, the best human ever, the Tsuba to my Takki.
Summary: Ryu and Hayato fight and stuff.
---
hangdogs
---
They meet at a department store while hiding from their parents. They’ve both chosen the same circular shirt rack to duck into, elbows and knees folded up into their stomachs to prevent exposure. There is a brief territorial struggle before they realize they share a common goal.
“I hate my dad,” says Ryu. He is very tiny, and his voice is a high squeak. Hayato thinks he must be many years younger. (He isn’t.)
“Oh good,” says Hayato. “Today I hate mine too.”
The shirts are varying shades of red, casting their little hideout in a fuzzy pinkish glow. They spend two hours tucked away in their women’s apparel fortress, sharing a piece of rock candy Ryu has hidden in a uniform pocket. Hayato’s parents haven’t enrolled him in school yet; his dirty, bright green sweatpants have no pockets.
“Will we see each other more?” Hayato asks quietly, when his small bladder starts to prickle in protest.
“I want to,” says Ryu, shyly. When their parents finally find them, Hayato makes up this stupid story about how he was scared and so Ryu protected him. Their mothers set up a grudging play date, even though Ryu’s stony-faced dad doesn’t like the idea of his son messing around with the child of a trucker.
---
Hayato and Ryu have known each other for three weeks when Taku is born. Hayato swears he will never ever EVER come home ever again in his WHOLE LIFE because how dare his mother look at any other boy the way she only used to look at Hayato?
He runs really far away, past his front yard and into real traffic, all the way around the apartment complex across the street, and then he gets on a bus that takes him two stops away to Ryu's house. He doesn't want to run away to Ryu's house, of course, because Ryu's dad is like this mean-faced grouchy statue who will probably try to eat him if he sneaks candy out of the candy bowl at night, so he runs away to Ryu's backyard instead. He's never known anybody who had a backyard before Ryu, and he doesn't think a lot of people are in the backyard since Ryu's dad is evil and doesn't play with Ryu a lot, so he sets up camp under the tree that shades the kitchen from the smoggy Tokyo sun. He plans to live out his days under this tree, eating grass and bugs.
That, of course, is how Ryu finds him, his mouth full of lawn clippings. Ryu looks like he might puke.
“Don't eat grass,” he says sharply, and sits down to pound the coughs of disgust out of Hayato's chest.
“I HATE grass,” Hayato declares, trying to see if his tongue has turned green or not. It has.
“Grass isn’t to eat,” Ryu says. “You are stupid.”
“YOU'RE stupid,” Hayato snaps. “Go away, this is my tree now; I live here.”
Ryu socks him. “This is still my house,” he says while Hayato curls up into a painful little ball. “How come you’re eating grass?”
“Cuz I ran away,” Hayato says hoarsely, “but I must've run away to the wrong place.”
“This is the wrong place?”
“Cuz friends don’t hit their friends, STUPID.”
Ryu blinks. “Why'd you run away?”
“Because I HATE my baby brother. I wish he'd die.”
Ryu's jaw drops. “He’s a BABY.”
“He's evil. He stole my mom.”
Ryu watches him for a minute, quietly, with his scary old grandpa eyes. Then he nods. “Oh. She was yours first. He should run away.”
“Maybe I'll put him up for adoption,” Hayato says, a bit brighter, sitting up slowly.
“We'll sell him,” Ryu keeps nodding.
“We'll sell him to the circus for a billion million trillion yen,” Hayato agrees. “Then we can buy our own house on the ocean.”
“Okay,” Ryu nods. “We’ll make posters.”
Ryu brings Hayato inside, and Ryu's mom brings them paper and crayons. Hayato doesn’t really know how to write yet, not so that anyone knows what he’s talking about besides his name, so Ryu does that part. “BY UGLY BABY” he scrawls at the top of the page, red letters jagged and furious against the newsprint’s gentle muted brown.
Halfway through their totally dastardly art project, Odagiri-mama brings them snacks. She sits down beside them, and Hayato tries to hide the papers from view.
“Oh,” she says. “You’re selling your little brother, Yabuki-kun?”
“No,” says Hayato furtively.
“That will work just fine,” she goes on, turning to Ryu. “Ryu-chan’s always wanted a little brother, right?”
Ryu nods. “Yes,” he says, coloring happy blush circles onto Cartoon Taku’s baby cheeks. “He’s very cheap.”
“He’ll be your new best friend, right?”
“Yes,” Ryu replies placidly.
Hayato’s lip curls up in annoyance. He doesn’t care that Odagiri-mama is watching him be rude; he yanks the pictures away from Ryu and crushes them into a ball.
“You can’t have him,” Hayato snaps. “He’s my baby brother and you already have a best friend.”
Ryu’s bushy eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “I do?” he asks.
“Me, duh!” Hayato yells, and shoves Ryu right over. Odagiri-mama offers them more juice.
Hayato never tries to sell his little brother again. For years and years afterward, Ryu considers this the crowning achievement of his mother’s parenthood.
---
Eventually they wind up in school together. Hayato is a really bad kid. He’s always in trouble. He steals pencils from the other kids and dips Megumi’s hair in poster paint and kicks stupid little Takemori-chan in his ankles. (Everybody wants to kick Takemori-chan, because he’s a brat who picks his nose and eats it, but only Hayato actually does it.) He is a big stupid bully. Ryu doesn’t know why Hayato isn’t a bully to him, but it doesn’t really matter.
Ryu likes watching Hayato be bad. Everything Hayato does, Ryu wishes he could do, too. It’s hard being tiny skinny Ryu, who nobody ever likes until he brings really expensive toys or food to school. Even as a little child, Ryu understands all about people only liking you for your stuff and not who you are. When they like you for your stuff, after you put your stuff away, they go back to thinking you’re tiny and scary and girly.
Hayato doesn’t think of him that way. Well, okay, that’s not true-Hayato totally does, but he likes Ryu for it. Hayato likes standing up for Ryu because it makes him more important. Ryu thinks Hayato doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because Hayato likes to kick people and all but he never really protects anybody; when he gets kicked back he just falls on his butt and starts to cry. He’s actually pretty bad at being a bully.
Ryu doesn’t mind. Hayato is Ryu’s first and only friend, and Ryu likes him just the way he is.
---
Hayato and Ryu do everything together. They meet at school, go to class, play Sentai or Frisbee or casino heist or Batman (they are both Batman; neither want to be Robin) or baseball or a rousing game of kick-a-first-grader-while-sensei-isn’t-watching (that’s mostly Hayato; Ryu just likes to watch) at recess, go back to class, sleep in class, get yelled at for sleeping in class, eat lunch, go back to class, get put on eraser cleaning duty, clean the erasers, get yelled at for being held after school again, and then say goodbye. On Sunday, Ryu’s nanny or Hayato’s mom might take them to the park, or to Hayato’s house, or wherever else they might go, and then they’ll avoid doing homework in lieu of hide and seek or kick-the-neighbors (Hayato, mostly, again), and finally return home. The early years of their friendship are easy and serene and exclusive, because neither is very good at sharing.
---
It is Ryu’s eighth birthday. Ryu doesn’t want a birthday party, but his parents make him have one anyway. They don’t understand why Hayato’s the only one of Ryu’s classmates who attends.
Hayato sneaks Ryu into the bathroom to give him a lumpy package that’s really heavy, taped messily together with newspaper. It’s been scribbled on in bright yellow and dull brown crayon; words like “bubble bursting” and “market devaluation” are smudged by the forms of dinosaurs and prize fighters and something that looks like a giant lizard shooting a machine gun at a giant banana.
“Happy birthday!” declares Hayato proudly.
Ryu tears open the ugly wrapping to reveal a badly beat-up razor scooter. He blinks at Hayato questioningly, and Hayato beams.
“It’s a scooter,” he says. “Let’s go ride this.”
“It’s old,” Ryu says flatly.
Hayato’s face falls instantly. “Well, duh, I can’t buy you a new one.”
Ryu stares at it, turning it over in his hands. The initials “SA” have been scratched into the handlebars on the left hand side.
“You took it?” Ryu says.
“No!” lies Hayato.
“Oh,” Ryu weighs it; checks whether or not the wheels spin. They seem fine. “Okay,” he shrugs. “Let’s go ride it.”
Their mothers let them leave early to go play around on the sidewalk outside. Ryu wonders briefly who SA is, but it doesn’t matter. Hayato is running beside him pushing him toward the sunset and he is eight years old and nothing in the world could ever hurt him.
Two days later SA and his friends, who live three doors down, catch Ryu on the way to school and beat the snot out of him for stealing their scooter. When Hayato demands to know what happened, Ryu lies and says he crashed the scooter into a tree and it broke.
---
Ryu loves Hayato’s mama. She is beautiful, with a big soft round face and Hayato’s eyes and pug nose. She makes pastries and cookies for fun and always smells like vanilla and alcohol, because she likes beer just as much as Hayato’s dad. She carries Taku around on her back even though Taku isn’t so little anymore, and reads them stories and takes them to discount cartoon movies on the weekends, and always says nice things about everybody, except for when they’re stupid. She doesn’t like rude people, even though she can be sort of rude sometimes, and always, always packs Ryu extra things in Hayato’s lunch box because she knows Ryu likes her cooking better than his housekeeper’s. She keeps Hayato company when his dad is off driving around the world or whatever and hugs both of them goodnight before bed. Best of all, Hayato’s mama loves Ryu back, and says so all the time. Ryu doesn’t remember anyone else ever saying they like him, much less love him.
“Come over more often, Ryu,” she always says, and kisses him on the cheek like a fairytale princess. Ryu looks in Hayato’s mama’s big brown eyes and thinks she is his dream girl, before Hayato takes him away to play Legos or a game on his television that is a hundred years old and makes Ryu forget about everything in the world except for Hayato.
One time, when they are fourth years, Hayato accidentally rides his bike into an old lady and Ryu gets blamed for it, also.
(“IT WASN’T ME!” Hayato wails at the scene of the crime. As an afterthought, he grabs Ryu by the elbow and says, “AND IT WASN’T HIM EITHER!”
Of course nobody believes him.)
When Ryu’s father finds out, he hits Ryu across the face and leaves his eye black and purple and fat like a giant blueberry. Hayato’s mama sees him at school and marches Ryu and Hayato straight to Ryu’s house, in the middle of school, instead of making them go to class. It is Ryu’s dad’s day off, and he’s really angry at Hayato’s mama for doing something so horrible, but it doesn’t matter to Hayato’s mama at all.
“Your son did nothing wrong,” Hayato’s mama says, a vibrant, red-dressed force in Ryu’s stony silent white house like a hurricane. “Hayato made a mistake, not Ryu. Ryu shouldn’t be punished for something he didn’t do.”
“My son will learn his place in society,” Ryu’s father tells her in his empty statue voice, but Hayato’s mama never flinches. Normally people bow and apologize and are very proper with Ryu’s father, but Hayato’s mama is not normal people.
“Your son is a very good boy,” she says back, voice loud and bouncing from wall-to-wall. Ryu’s mother is hiding in the family room. Ryu wishes she was there. His father is terrifying. “You should appreciate him.”
Ryu’s father says something back, something about Hayato and propriety that Ryu doesn’t understand, but whatever it is, Hayato’s mama becomes so angry that she takes Hayato by the hand and announces he won’t be coming over any time soon.
Hayato’s mama threatens Ryu’s father, “Ryu will not come to school looking this way again, or I will go to the school board. You should be more careful of your reputation, Odagiri-san. Isn’t that what you’re trying to teach Ryu?”
Ryu’s father turns furious eyes on Ryu. Ryu can’t stop the way his knees shake.
“How dare you?” he says quietly. “I will punish him as I see fit.”
“Punish him for what he’s guilty of, then,” Hayato’s mama snaps. “As for you, Hayato,” she says angrily, “you will apologize to Odagiri-san for the trouble you’ve brought to Ryu. Look what you’ve caused. You should be ashamed.” She forces Hayato’s head down with the palm of her left hand.
Ryu’s father throws Hayato and his mama out. He marches Ryu through the front door and makes their driver take him to school. He isn’t writing Ryu a tardy note.
“I know Yabuki-san is an adult, and you like her,” his father says in the scariest voice Ryu’s ever heard him use, “but she is wrong. You will be punished for associating with people like that. Nobody cares whether or not you were the one involved in the fight. I see it everyday; people are blamed by association. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Father.”
“You don’t want to be thought of that way, Ryu.”
“No, Father,” Ryu shakes his head, feeling like he’s going to throw up.
“You’re a good boy, Ryu,” his father says. It is not a compliment. It’s a warning. “Don’t forget that.”
The chauffeur shuts the passenger door, and Ryu hides his face as they drive away.
---
Sorry, Hayato’s guilty frown says later as he stares at Ryu’s bad eye.
“Your mom is brave,” Ryu whispers. “She’s the bravest person in the whole world.”
---
For a long time Hayato isn’t allowed to go to Ryu’s house, and Ryu isn’t allowed to visit Hayato. Ryu tries to do stuff alone, but it pretty much sucks. He tries telling his housekeeper so, words coming out all delayed and roundabout; she just blinks at him and offers up Young Master some tea for what she understands to be a bad stomachache. It’s kind of pathetic that he doesn’t even know how to complain without Hayato around.
Ryu’s parents peg Hayato something like a “bad influence.” They warn Ryu that if Hayato doesn’t start shaping up, they won’t let Ryu be Hayato’s friend anymore. Ryu doesn’t really understand yet how important it is to get into a good junior high school, so that he can get into a good high school, so that he can get into a good university. All Ryu understands is that his parents want to take Hayato away from him, and despite knowing his dad is the meanest person in his whole real life, he never thought he’d ever be this mean.
Ryu cries when his mother tucks him in. His father hates it when he cries. It’s the first time he’s ever been disrespectful before.
“Let’s go to bed, Ryu,” she says as she switches off his light. “It’s a school night.”
The following day Ryu tells Hayato about how his parents won’t let them be friends unless Hayato starts being better at his grades and stops fighting and stuff. Hayato splits one of his mom’s rice balls with Ryu and stares hard at the ground, eyes narrowed in his “I’m planning things right now; my brain is very busy and serious” expression.
“I’ll just have to read more,” Hayato decides, and steals some of Ryu’s milk. He collapses dramatically against Ryu’s side.
They devise a plan to get lots and lots of books for Hayato to read from the library. He reads about monsters and dinosaurs and television programs from the seventies; about the moon landing and volcanic eruptions in Haiti and books specifically dedicated to different kinds of sea birds. The librarian is very impressed with their ambition, even though it’s painfully obvious the boys get through about ten pages per book and stop. Sometimes Hayato doesn’t even get that far; he just starts scribbling in pen in the margins around page four. It’s okay that Hayato is distracted, Ryu insists, it’s the effort that’s important.
In the end, Hayato tires of reading. They go back to class the next day, and Hayato still feels just as dumb.
Ultimately none of this matters. Neither of them does very well on their assessment tests. They’re assigned to the same junior high school anyway.
“Was this Hayato’s fault?” his father asks solemnly.
“No,” Ryu replies. “I really did try my best.”
“This is the best you can do?” he asks, examining the computer print-out detailing Ryu’s performance. His lip curls in disgust.
Ryu apologizes.
Ryu’s father stops paying as much attention to Ryu after that, and it isn’t such a big deal that Hayato’s mama is such a terrible woman. Ryu’s father knows his son is a failure. Ryu knows he’s a failure.
---
“I’m glad you suck and aren’t very smart,” says Hayato over a shared milkshake. They are babysitting Taku. He sits in the chair beside them doing math problems like he cares about them or something.
“I hate you,” says Ryu.
“I’m glad we’re going to the same school,” Hayato replies, and leaves the candied cherry behind, bizarrely generous.
Ryu is secretly glad, too.
---
As they get older, Hayato has to babysit Taku a lot. Hayato’s mama has to work during the day now, because Taku is probably going to go to good schools, and Hayato’s dad doesn’t make a lot of money. It starts to piss Hayato off a little, because that’s less time he gets to hang out with Ryu and cause problems, so Ryu offers to come over and babysit with him. Hayato’s mama pays him a hundred yen sometimes, just for sitting with Hayato being bored.
It is boring, yeah, having to stay inside because Taku has to do homework and stuff, but sometimes they’re allowed to go to the river and fish or skip rocks. Those days aren’t boring. Sometimes Ryu pretends Taku is his annoying little sibling; that Hayato’s mama is his mama and Hayato is his cool big bro and they’re a family. It’s his happiest fantasy. He dreams about it: picnics and trips to Disneyland, holding Hayato’s hand as they wait in line.
He never, ever admits this.
---
Sixth grade is drawing to a close. On Valentine’s day, a girl confesses to having a crush on Ryu. She gives him a pink note cut in the shape of a heart with her name in the center, all fancy swirling letters and gaudy golden colored pencil. Ryu doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s Megumi, the girl whose hair Hayato used to dip in paint. She sits two seats away from them and giggles a lot. Hayato stares at her and her friend and talks about how annoying they are, but Ryu suspects that he has a crush on her. Ryu doesn’t like the way he watches her; the way Hayato watches any girl. Sometimes he gets stupid and doe-eyed like he isn’t paying attention to anything but them; like there are bubbles and birds and shit filling his vision like the fey pussies in girls’ manga.
“She’s stupid,” Hayato says idly, tossing a baseball in the air. He’s frowning, deep and dark and jealous, definitely not seeing birds. “There are like a hundred girls who are better than her who like me. She’s even kind of ugly.” (Megumi is not ugly at all.)
“I know. What’s wrong with her?” Ryu says experimentally. He takes in the way Hayato glances at him, considering, and throws the ball just a little bit higher. Hayato’s expression smoothes out, just a bit.
Ryu buries his curiosities and crumples the love note into a ball. He dumps it in a recycling bin and never spares it a second thought. Girls, Ryu thinks, are not for him.
---
On their very last day as elementary school students, Ryu spends the night at Hayato’s house. Hayato’s mama makes squid ink soup (which is a really big deal in Hayato’s household because it’s expensive), Hayato’s dad is (of course) gone, and Taku is rolling around on the floor with a stray puppy he’s just brought home. It has fleas and really likes snuffling Ryu’s toes.
Hayato takes Ryu for a walk after dinner. They buy takoyaki they can’t finish because they aren’t actually hungry and blow five hundred yen at the arcade, the most money Hayato’s ever gotten for allowance and spent in one place. Hayato doesn’t get in a fight. Instead, they sit on a DDR pad and make up stories about how awesome they’ll be in junior high; about the gang Hayato will probably form. They feel really grown up.
When they return home, Taku is in bed, and Mama’s made them both a cup of tea. She’s watching a trashy comedy show, and she lets them join her under the kotatsu that should’ve been put away weeks ago.
Ryu never ever wants to go home, the desire to stay so strong this evening that the idea he can’t makes him feel weak and shaky. Hayato reaches out and takes his hand under the blankets like he’s sensed the realization, flushing dramatic purple even though nobody can see what he’s doing under the blanket, and probably wouldn’t care besides.
“Shut up,” he whispers, like his mama-who is two feet away-won’t be able to hear him.
Ryu clutches tighter at Hayato’s clammy, over-warm fingers. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to go home. It’s that he wants to stay home, right here, with his fingers twined between Hayato’s.
---
Junior high school is very different from elementary school. In junior high school, Hayato’s mama’s lunches aren’t cool, liking Hayato and only Hayato makes Ryu kind of queer, and basically all Hayato cares about anymore is face. Ryu knows he and Hayato aren’t really cool, so he doesn’t really understand Hayato’s ambitions, but he figures it’s just another of his best friend’s quirks. It might have something to do with the bullying. There is that.
Ryu shares his lunches with Hayato when Hayato is stupid and leaves his lunch money at home (a.k.a. gets it beaten out of him by the older kids on the way to school).
“So you’re a tough guy, huh?” one of the eighth graders says to Hayato the very first day of class. Hayato stands up to him in front of everybody. Hayato is really stupid.
Hayato doesn’t tell anybody older kids beat him up until he starts beating them up back. He gets pretty good at retaliating, and so does Ryu-an aftereffect of saving Hayato’s ass over and over again, the same as Hayato saving him when they were kids. Hayato, of course, insists he doesn‘t care, that other people‘s opinions are useless, but Ryu knows the truth.
Hayato has a philosophy. He's only twelve, but twelve is a good age to start forming philosophies, Hayato thinks. There are two things Hayato says he knows pretty well:
1. If people think you’re dumb, they don’t care if you do dumb things.
2. If people think you’re good enough just as you are, they won’t push you to try things you’ll fail at.
This philosophy works perfectly, because it’s obvious that by junior high, everybody thinks he’s dumb, and nobody pushes him to try harder, and he can get away with basically anything he wants to. In junior high, as they find out the hard way, the teachers don’t really care about you at all as long as you sit down and shut up. If you get good grades, they bug you to do things they think you should do to make yourself look better for high school. If you get bad grades, you’re just another face in the crowd of nobodies. If you act out, you get your ass handed to you regardless of why you were acting out in the first place. Hayato explains that there’s no reason, therefore, to be anything but mediocre. Ryu can’t bring himself to argue despite knowing Hayato wants to be anything but mediocre.
Ryu knows all about how Hayato is actually really amazing at science and writes poetry for his mom and magnets it to the fridge. (Hayato never swears Ryu to secrecy or anything, but that’s because he doesn’t have to. Ryu knows better.) There are a lot of these little gentle things Ryu appreciates about Hayato, but somehow, somewhere between ages eleven and twelve, Hayato stops seeing what Ryu appreciates about him as something to appreciate about himself.
---
The vice-principal pulls Hayato into his office one day and tells him he will never be good for anything; that he knows Hayato’s type, and they never go anywhere in life.
“A bad seed,” he calls Hayato. Hayato doesn’t cry or anything when he comes out of the office, but he’s angry and preoccupied and depressed and dazed.
“Is that true?” Hayato asks Ryu later, after the day has ended. They’re sitting on the DDR pad again, game informing them over and over again that their score is F-.
“No,” Ryu says. Hayato stares at his hands.
(Ryu gets the same speech two weeks later. Ryu doesn’t get depressed like Hayato did, and he doesn’t ask Hayato whether or not it’s true. Hayato is a good, strong person; it’s just that no teacher will ever take the time to see it. Ryu, though…Ryu knows he doesn’t have any redeeming qualities, so it’s not a big deal if anyone calls him out on it.)
---
Hayato thinks he needs to look tougher, and that also goes for Ryu; just to keep the rough guys off their backs. Ryu thinks it will cause just the opposite, and that Hayato probably wants to look this way specifically because he wants to build up some real street cred, but Ryu just laughs at Hayato quietly, behind his back, when he starts shoplifting stuff like spike bracelets and chains. He stuffs them in Ryu’s pockets; winds them around Ryu’s wrists. Ryu never keeps them on; just kind of finds that sort of thing stupid. As for Hayato himself, he bleaches his hair shortly before the school year ends. “Does it look good?” he asks Ryu. “It’s pretty gangster, right?”
“Yeah,” Ryu says, bored, “you look even more like a girl.”
And he does. It’s pretty.
“Whatever,” Hayato rolls his eyes, fluffing his new, shaggy cut with a shake of his head. “I’m a bad-ass.”
A few weeks later, some ninth year with a stupidly short skirt pierces his ear with a safety pin, but this doesn’t go as well. Afterward, Hayato stands weakly, trying not to whimper, his head bent over a sink in their now-usual arcade. There is blood all over the place, trickling down his jaw and splattered all over the sink basin and faucets because he won’t hold his stupid blond head still.
“Idiot,” Ryu sighs, holding his hair back away from his face, pressing a big wad of wet toilet paper to his swollen earlobe.
“If I bleed to death,” Hayato says brokenly, “tell my mama-my mom-I love her.” He coughs. He actually coughs. “Taku doesn’t get my Playstation. I’ll take that to heaven before I let him touch it.”
Ryu rolls his eyes, pressing harder, pinching Hayato’s skin between his thumb and the toilet paper. “Hold still.”
“OUCH! RYU, WHY?” Hayato roars, rearing backwards like the idiot he is, hands flying to clutch at either side of his head. He falls flat against the nearest cubicle, sliding down its support wall with the kind of dramatic flair only Hayato can achieve. “Ryu,” he says once he’s stopped hyperventilating, “come here.”
Ryu harrumphs and starts mopping up the mess Hayato’s dribbled across the floor. Hayato grabs him.
“Ryu,” he says, generally panicked and low-voiced, “you’re my best friend.”
This shouldn’t make Ryu feel warm all over or anything. This shouldn’t make Ryu want to hug Hayato or crawl up to a toilet and puke into it or sing a bad boy band song about brotherhood and promises and forever, but it totally does. Hayato is pale and stupid and scared, and Ryu likes feeling needed.
“Shut up,” Ryu says eventually. “I know.”
In the end, Ryu winds up taking Hayato to a clinic. They call his mom because thirteen-year-olds can't simply walk into a clinic bleeding to death by themselves. Hayato gets in pretty big trouble, especially when, two weeks later, she finds out he hasn’t let the hole close up; that he’d jammed a stud into the wound after the incident at the hospital and covered it with medical tape. It gets infected, of course. Ryu also gets yelled at, because Ryu was a kind of accomplice after all. It isn’t really fair…being an accomplice doesn’t mean he’d approved of the whole mess.
---
That summer, Hayato’s dad takes Hayato and Ryu camping. They pile into a tent while Hayato’s dad drinks beer and fishes off the edge of the dock, talking loudly to some toothless old guy who has a boat. Hayato insists they make fortresses of their sleeping bags; they curl up together and read comic books about gangsters by flashlight. Their hair smells like fire and river water and dirt. It’s the best day of Ryu’s life.
Hayato kisses Ryu on the cheek before falling asleep while Yabuki-san snores in his tent across the way.
“What!” yells Ryu, but Hayato shushes him with the slap of a dusty palm.
“I like you,” Hayato whispers fiercely. “I have a crush on you.”
“Is that okay?” Ryu asks as softly as he can, eyes humongous. His dad always tells him to not be girly; to be a man. He hasn’t said not to kiss boys or anything, and Ryu doesn’t feel any less manly, but kissing boys is something he thought only girls did.
Hayato kisses him again, this time on the forehead. His lips are soft, warm, and wet, and they linger against Ryu’s skin for a moment; his breath ghosts across the ridge of Ryu’s brow. Girls, Ryu thinks, have the right idea. Ryu shivers and blushes all the way to the tips of his toes, fingers clutching unnoticed at Hayato’s thermal sleeve.
“I don’t care if it’s not,” Hayato says, and then pretends to pass out. Ryu lays still, totally frozen, wondering how long Hayato’s wanted to do this. Ryu has never considered kissing before, not really, not in this way. He wonders if this makes them boyfriends. Ryu doesn’t know if he wants to be anybody’s boyfriend. It’s bizarre, realizing he doesn’t fully understand something about Hayato.
Hayato keeps kissing Ryu after that, probably because Ryu never stops him. Ryu doesn’t really know how without making Hayato feel stupid, and anyway he doesn’t think he really wants Hayato to stop. It feels nice, and it seems to make Hayato really happy (even though it twists Ryu‘s stomach right into knots). Hayato kisses him on the eyelids, on his cheeks and ears and nose. It only happens sporadically, usually at night when they’re curled up together in bed or in the locker room where nobody can see them, and only when Hayato is in a good mood.
Ryu tries to kiss Hayato instead, just once. They are hiding in a garbage collection corridor behind the greenhouses; the air is thick with damp soil and grass and moist rubbish. Hayato has been really badly hurt in a scrape with a zealous hoard of seventh graders. He is slumped over against a dumpster, wheezing heavily, pride wounded. Ryu is also hurt, his ankle swollen and chin torn, but he’s okay. He presses fingers against Hayato’s bruises, checking their severity.
Hayato mewls pathetically when Ryu squeezes his left elbow, and Ryu hates hearing that sound coming out of his tough best friend. He laughs in quiet sympathy at Hayato; rolls his eyes and leans in to press punch-puffed lips against Hayato’s grimace.
Hayato shrieks, socks him in the gut and runs away with speed no injured kid should be able to manage.
“Why?” yells Ryu when he finally catches up to him. It’s the first time he’s ever yelled at Hayato before.
“Because if you do it to me you‘ll be A GAY,” Hayato says, voice shaking.
“So? You’re a gay too then, and I don’t care,” Ryu snaps, confused and frustrated.
Hayato lets out a roar and kicks an errant trash bag. Ryu doesn’t understand how he suddenly has so much strength back.
“IT JUST IS DIFFERENT,” Hayato says.
“WHY!” Ryu can’t read him at all, or at least he thinks he can’t. Hayato sounds scared.
“IT‘S JUST DIFFERENT IF I DO IT TO YOU. If you get caught being-being a gay-your stupid dad will never let me see you again.” For Hayato, not yet the man of too many words he’ll become later, this is more than he’s ever said in one go since kindergarten. He pulls at his fluffy, dress-code-breaking hair in frustration, with his whole fists, like he’s trying to yank it all out, like he’s a crazy person.
“It’s the same if I let you do it,” Ryu says angrily. “My dad won’t care who is-”
“IT’S NOT. WHY DON’T YOU GET IT?”
Ryu shakes his head in grand confusion. He kicks a crate full of milk bottles. It doesn’t make him feel better. He doesn’t understand why Hayato kicks things.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore,” Hayato says as he watches a styrofoam bowl scrape across the asphalt, leaving behind a soy sauce trail.
“Whatever,” Ryu grunts, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He turns to walk away, but Hayato grabs him before he gets very far. He yanks Ryu to his chest, wrapping him up in his arms. He hasn’t done this since they were really little, and Ryu was sad because he’d accidentally killed Hayato’s goldfish. Hayato smells just like his mom, only sweatier and less like beer.
“Why?” Ryu demands again, nose smashed into Hayato’s collarbone, voice softer this time.
Hayato doesn’t say anything, but his hold tightens. He’s strong and weirdly squishy, already so much bigger than Ryu is, and it doesn’t make any sense because Hayato is being stupid. Ryu just wants to stay where he is, gay or whatever that might make him, because Ryu doesn’t care. He wants to be like this with Hayato. This is where he belongs.
Hayato eventually pushes him off. “Bye,” he says, and runs a hand through Ryu’s hair. He limps away.
Hayato ditches art class and hides in the girl’s bathroom because he thinks Ryu won’t step foot inside. The truth is, Ryu would follow him anywhere…but not if Hayato doesn’t want him there.
---
They don’t talk until the end of eighth grade. There’s this boy, Takeuchi or Takebaba or Takenaga or something like that, in their class, and he’s little and weak and kind of bad at everything. Sometimes he stares at Hayato and Ryu like he knows stuff, and it really pisses Ryu off. He’s like a girl, only he’s worse because he’s just this useless tiny handsome boy.
It doesn’t help that Hayato talks to him. Hayato will say hi to Take in the morning before sitting down, and then look up at Ryu, eyes narrowed and challenging, like he’s waiting for Ryu to lash out at him in jealousy or crawl back to him crying or something. Ryu never does. He just sits there blinking, disinterested, bored, like nothing Hayato can do or say will ever matter to him ever again. Sometimes that makes Hayato so angry he throws his pencils at the floor. Those days Ryu considers good days.
---
By October, it becomes clear that he’s been replaced. Take follows Hayato everywhere, and when they’re together, Take’s more brazen about fighting than Ryu has ever been. He even says bad things to the teacher sometimes. Hayato approves of him; smiles in Ryu’s direction when Take does something crazy, and Take looks back to Hayato for support. Hayato always gives it. Ryu wants to hate them, but it’s hard. Hayato is getting taller and more handsome everyday, and Ryu has to remind himself in the morning that if something happens, he can’t run away to Hayato’s house. Take makes it even worse because Take is pretty nice to Ryu, even though it’s clear Hayato never wants to talk to Ryu ever again. It isn’t fair. Ryu just feels lonely and bored and jealous and trapped. It sucks.
It is near Autumn Festival, and Ryu is walking home from school, bag slung over his shoulder. He has a math tutoring session with this obnoxious kid from across town. Now that he isn’t friends with Hayato, he has no reason not to get into a top high school…preferably in Canada. Or Timbuktu. Or anywhere half a world away from his father.
Hayato is suspended for beating the shit out of a kid during lunch the previous Friday. It’s been easier to sit through class without Hayato glancing up every five minutes with that stupid angry hurt look on his face. Ryu’s sort of been half-assedly saying hello to Take in the morning in some kind of petty backwards friends-stealing revenge scheme he hasn’t fully thought out, and the festival committee they’re on together is okay; not super annoying. It’s been a kind of okay week generally. He doesn’t expect to get his nose broken by a couple of giant ninth years from Jundou Academy.
That’s before he sees Take, r what’s left of him, being pounded into the pavement outside of what used to be his and Hayato’s arcade. Ryu drops his bags without thinking, seeing the straw-tawny mess of Take’s hair smear blood across the pale concrete, and launches himself into the fray.
There are four guys against Take’s one. It’s a terribly unfair fight. Ryu doesn’t really think about that, using his wiry body as a shield over Take’s, hammy fists raining down on him from all sides.
“Who’s this?” yells one of the brutes. “This little sissy girl’s ugly sister?”
SHUT UP, Ryu’s mind screams as he feels Take groan against his knee. He swings at the bigger guys with all his might, spitting a molar and what is left of his baby teeth in their faces.
He’s just about ready to pass out when two of the ninth graders suddenly fall backwards, howling in pain as their heads are bashed together. Ryu looks up through eyelids swollen like pineapples and sees a form that looks like Hayato, a plastic nun-chuck dangling its USB cord in hand. He must’ve torn it straight out of a game machine.
“DON’T TOUCH MY FRIENDS,” Hayato bellows before throwing his entire body on top of the remaining guys. They’re huge and fierce, and Ryu is almost incapacitated, so Hayato gets his ass handed to him fairly quickly. It’s nothing but pure adrenaline and an angry shopkeeper from across the street that keep Hayato from losing teeth and getting his nose wrecked also, when all four of their upperclassmen regain full-strength. In the end Ryu somehow winds up with the nun-chuck wrapped around one guy’s throat. Hayato wriggles violently in the arms of the shopkeeper, and Take lies on the cement with an ice-pack to his forehead. The bigger kids run away like the cowards they are.
“You three are never to show your faces around these parts again,” says the shopkeeper, tending to their wounds with band-aids and bottled peroxide, almost apologetic. The boys don’t pick up on his sentiments.
“Those big guys were trying to kill my best friends,” Hayato protests through a busted lip. “That’s not fair!” He grabs Ryu around the neck, Take by the arm, and drags them toward him like some raging mother bear, like the shopkeeper’s about to attack them like the bullies had. Ryu, exhausted and tired and relieved, leans into Hayato’s side, his swollen eyes mooshing shut.
“I’m calling your parents,” the weary shopkeeper says.
Hayato gives fake numbers for all of them, pizza places and doctors’ offices and connections no longer in service. The shopkeeper finally gets fed up and kicks them out. They limp home in utter agony; drag themselves onto a bus that eventually stops near Hayato’s house.
“Dad home?” Ryu asks tentatively. Take wheezes against his side.
Hayato just stares at him, stoic and silent. He holds the door open; takes Take from Ryu’s side. He drapes him over the hideous coral-pink Western style sofa that wasn’t there when Ryu was last over, kicking Taku off the Playstation, so Ryu can take the beanbag.
“Mom’s working,” Hayato mutters, setting water to boil. “Late shift.”
“Thank you guys,” Take says, coughing up blood. “I would be dead without Ryu.”
Hayato shoots a surprised look at Ryu; Ryu stares determinedly at his hands, popping his knuckles.
“Ryu found me first,” Take explains. “He tried to beat up all of 'em by himself!”
“Well, don’t do it again,” Hayato snaps, and jams a gigantic slab of frozen salmon against his face. “What’d you do to those guys?”
“They always bully me,” Take says.
Ryu glances up again questioningly. Friends as good as he’d thought Hayato and Take were ought to know about each others’ regular enemies.
“I’ve never seen them before,” Hayato says, like Take’s lying.
Take shrugs, toying with loose threads in the purple afghan he has spread across him. “I always get beat up. It’s okay, don’t worry, I usually just apologize and run away and stuff, but…I say stupid things sometimes-”
“We won’t let them. Never again,” Ryu promises, remembering how Hayato tried to save him from bullies when they were little, how eventually they learned never to touch Ryu if they didn’t also want to mess with Hayato. He doesn’t remember Hayato being a lame fighter, but that isn’t important.
Take doesn’t say anything, but he smiles all gross and messy. Hayato is green like he’s going to throw up when he hands Take wet towels and another salmon filet. He doesn’t get anything for Ryu; just nods at him like Ryu knows what to do, like brothers at home. Ryu’s entire body floods with relief he didn’t know he needed, and Hayato turns away from him, blushing like he had that night in the tent.
Later, they make Taku sleep on the couch so Take can take his bed. Take stares up at them reverently, like they’re the best thing that ever happened to him. Neither Hayato nor Ryu know how to react. Nobody but Hayato’s mama has ever looked at them with anything other than fear or expectation, not since they were tiny boys.
“You’re stupid,” Hayato snarls once they’ve piled behind the paper divider that separates Hayato’s bed from Taku’s. Ryu goes to take a pillow, to carry it out to the living room, but Hayato grabs his wrist and yanks him back over.
“You’re really stupid!” Hayato repeats, louder and slower this time like Ryu is old and deaf. Ryu starts to say something, something cutting, but Hayato’s hand drops, and he curls in on himself. “Don’t do stuff by yourself.”
Ryu doesn’t know how to respond. Hayato isn’t looking at him anymore; he’s just staring out the window, striped by the glow of headlights and neon filtering in through the blinds. His blond head is ringed by what looks like a halo. Ironic, that.
He’s slow dragging his feet out of the room, waiting for Hayato to call him back again. Hayato doesn’t.
---
When he wakes up a few hours later there’s a crick in his neck, and Hayato’s mama is bundling Take and Hayato up in jackets. She looks tired and worn and thin. The clock reads two thirty-seven.
“Ryu,” she says harshly, flustered, “watch over Taku for me. I have to go apologize to Take-chan’s mother.”
“Why can’t Ryu come, Mama?” whines Hayato, Take tucked sleepily under his arm. He’s somehow come to acquire a grape purple popsicle.
“Because you’re grounded for the rest of your life. You keep getting Ryu in trouble like this, you‘ll ruin him,” Yabuki-mama says irritably. She spins her eldest son around by the shoulder and ushers him toward the door. “Come on.”
Hayato turns back over his shoulder and stares down at Ryu. “So we’re just gonna leave him?”
“I’ve already called Odagiri-san. They don‘t know about any of this, and they aren’t going to find out,“ says Yabuki-mama. “Now come on. Honestly, fighting in the streets! You’re thirteen!”
“Aw, Mama…“ moans Hayato as the door is slammed behind them leaving Ryu and Taku in complete darkness. Taku snores on, unbothered.
---
Hayato’s forgotten all about ever being mad at Ryu. The day after the fight, Ryu takes his seat without saying hello, not quite sure yet where they stand. Hayato promptly grabs his collar and forces him into a noogie.
“DON’T IGNORE YOUR BEST FRIEND,” he yells. The entire class stares.
---
Because Ryu’s parents have no idea that angel-faced, well-off little Take is an utter hellion-far worse than Ryu’s ever imagined becoming-Take’s place becomes the party house. Take’s mother is stricter than Hayato’s, so they’re not really allowed to go out on the town by themselves, but she's nice; when her husband is around, he’s grouchy in a cheerful, drunken kind of way, and Ryu’s father never asks questions about Take’s family Ryu doesn’t want to answer.
Take’s a really good guy. Although Ryu’s always fought alongside Hayato, he’s never had anyone weaker to protect before; has never known anyone other than Hayato worth protecting. It helps him understand Hayato in brand new ways, the way it feels to force someone behind his back and stare down some brute who’s trying to hurt them. The difference between Ryu and Take is that Ryu’s never really brought on the bullying himself; it always just comes to him on its own. Take, however, has a bad attitude and a gigantic mouth, completely contrary to the gentle, kind, almost creepily insightful boy he becomes when their trio is on its own. Take’s illogical gang-mentality bravado doesn’t make a lot of sense to Ryu, because Take doesn’t have to be such a shit head; he’s not like Hayato, whose entire identity revolves around being the toughest guy in school. Hayato tries to break it down for Ryu with flimsy explanations of “short-man syndrome” and pride and being born pretty and pocket-sized.
“I’m not pretty,” protests Take, laughing and dimpling like a cartoon pixie, punching Hayato in the chest.
Ryu doesn’t like Hayato calling anyone pretty, much less Take, even in jest. Sometimes, when they’re in private, while Take’s feeding his puppy, and they’re hidden away in Take’s room, or they’re ditching PE together while Take flirts with some girl, Hayato gets kind of awkward, like he doesn’t know how to be normal around Ryu anymore. He gets all stiff and quiet and brooding, which makes Ryu go all stiff and quiet and brooding, and then they just sit there grunting at each other, eyes averted. It’s really annoying, but Ryu has no idea what to do with it. Being friends with Hayato again, especially since Ryu’s parents don’t like him, is fragile, and he doesn’t want to ruin it like he has everything else in his life.
“You guys,” Take says if he catches them, “you look weird.”
Hayato always tells Take to shut up; he doesn’t know anything. Ryu pretends not to care.
---
Ninth grade starts, and things begin to change. There is no one left in school to out-muscle, and Hayato becomes restless. He paces the corridors after class, pretending not to want a fight, pretending to goof off and have a good time. But Ryu can see it in his eyes, the harsh edge that grows harsher and harsher all the time. Challenge laces Hayato’s voice when he speaks to anyone outside of their circle, his words loud and boastful and cocky. He starts acquiring things constantly: pencils, bike parts, small sums of money he uses to buy Ryu and Take junk food, key chains, expensive shoelaces, fierce rings for breaking faces and a necklace with a tiny golden cross on it. Take asks where it all comes from. Ryu knows it’s stolen. The girls who used to have a crush on him now stare at him with big eyes and stooped shoulders, like Hayato is a monster. The teachers don’t just nitpick-they hate Hayato, how he yawns during lessons, feet on his desk; how he walks out if he’s bored. They’re all in class D, and it’s pretty apparent they’re going to stay there if they even make it to high school. Hayato talks about dropping out all the time. Ryu can’t stand the thought. If Hayato drops out, Ryu’s pretty sure they’ll never see each other again, not with the way Hayato shuts off when they’re alone. Take won’t stay just for Ryu, either, Ryu’s sure of it. Who would stick around for him?
Hayato starts prowling the streets after school instead of coming to Take’s house. Take says he’s expanding his territory, and Ryu supposes that’s fair enough. He knows Hayato’s met new people; boys from other schools just like them. Hayato never really says much, just shows up the next day with more money and more junk food and new video games. Hayato never explains himself, never says anything about the bruises on his face or the way his wrists are puffed up.
“Be careful,” Ryu says casually one afternoon when Hayato hasn’t come to school. Take watches them quietly.
“I am,” Hayato lies through a cavalier grin.
---
On one memorable occasion, Hayato decides he’s going to dye Ryu’s hair red whether he likes it or not, because red hair is cool, and he’s already bought the dye and everything. Ryu wants to protest more than anything in the world, but Hayato is so enthusiastic he can’t bring himself to. Hayato does it in his kitchen sink, Taku offering pointers beside them. After letting Ryu sit with foil pinned to his head for two hours, they rinse the stuff out. Hayato gasps a little bit when he pulls the towel away from Ryu’s head. He complains about botching the bleach job; the color isn’t right at all. He smooths his hands over it; pulls individual strands this way and that, watching light shift through artificial highlights. Ryu wonders how long he’s going to play with it, wearing that weird, kind of lost look on his face. When he drags Ryu in front of a mirror, Ryu realizes Hayato’s complaining for no reason. He’s done an excellent job-no, Ryu’s hair isn't the color of a fire engine, but it’s a pretty, muted burnt copper that makes his eyes pop and his cheekbones jut for miles.
“It looks so good,” Ryu says, shocked that the almost handsome boy in the mirror is himself.
“Oh…well, whatever. If you like it, I guess it’s okay,” Hayato rolls his eyes, but he really can’t stop touching it for the rest of the afternoon.
(As time passes, Hayato starts congratulating himself on how much hotter he’s made Ryu.
Ryu’s parents hate it.
“You look like a delinquent,” his father says over another tense, near-silent dinner. “You are too young to have hair like that.”
Ryu doesn’t change the color of his hair again until he leaves for college.)
---
Hayato screws up pretty royally when they’re supposed to be playing volleyball. Take’s been suspended again, some dress code violation or something, and Hayato and Ryu have had a really shitty time trying to cope without the buffer he provides. During a bad serve, Class A’s Takahiro accidentally cans Ryu in the head; Ryu just sort of shakes it off and glares at the idiot, but Hayato takes it personally.
“OI,” roars Hayato, “WATCH WHAT YOU’RE DOING, ASSHOLE.”
Takahiro laughs at him. Takahiro is in Class A, but he’s new and just really, really stupid. His friends actually back away from him, whispering warnings Takahiro doesn’t seem to take seriously. Hayato takes Ryu by the back of his shirt, drags them under the net, and shoves Ryu in Takahiro’s face. Their teacher blows his whistle somewhere across the court.
“Apologize,” Hayato spits.
“Hayato,” Ryu growls, “lay off.”
Takahiro rolls his eyes. “It was an accident, Yabuki, don’t be such an animal.”
Hayato shoves Ryu away and goes for the dipshit’s collar, knocking the kid’s glasses askew. “What did you call me?”
Ryu, meanwhile, is sitting on his butt, a little dazed. He watches blood pool in his palm and under the wrecked material of his pants where he made contact with the blacktop. Hayato’s injured him worse than Takahiro did with that serve.
“I’ll never apologize to someone like you,” says Takahiro. “Guys like you don’t deserve an apology.”
Ryu looks up to see his thin, flawless fists clench. This boy has never been in a proper fight. He’s so stupid, really stupid, really good looking, well-liked, and brave…the kind of kid Ryu’s parents have always wanted. Hayato, Ryu knows, is going to kill him.
The teacher is slow pulling them apart. By the time Ryu’s managed to get a good grip on Hayato, yanking him back toward the net, Takahiro’s got a dislocated shoulder and a knot forming on his head. The kids around them aren’t even screaming; they’re just staring. Hayato’s making enough noise for all of them, anyway.
Afterwards, Hayato and Ryu sit outside the administrative office covered in bandages, icepacks strapped to different body parts. Hayato kicks angrily at the floor.
“Fuck this school,” he hisses, hawking a wad of blood that barely misses Ryu’s leg.
A tense silence passes. Their PE-slippered feet tap desperately against the linoleum.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Ryu asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hayato mutters, twisting the chain that curls around his left wrist. “This is the last time you’ll see me.”
Ryu snorts, unimpressed with Hayato’s melodrama, and crosses his arms over his chest.
“What?” Hayato snaps back, scooting farther away down the bench. Everything about his stance is accusatory, like Ryu’s done something to him, like this is all Ryu’s fault. “They told me they were going to in the nurse’s office.”
Ryu’s skin starts to tingle. “What?”
“I’m expelled,” Hayato says simply.
“What?“
“Expelled,“ Hayato repeats, looking for all the world like he’s going to beat the shit out of Ryu the same way he had Takahiro. “The only reason I’m still here is 'cuz Mom can’t come get me.”
Ryu says nothing, his jaw hanging in abject horror.
“She’s really sick,” Hayato bursts out, like Ryu's asked him some stupid question he should already know the answer to.
Part 2