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Hina clears his throat right in Yoko’s ear, and Yoko thinks, Please don’t be awake yet.
For some reason, Yoko is naked in Hina’s bed, and he shouldn’t be. He should be alone in his own apartment and…well. Still naked, but not naked with Hina. Naked and alone and—oh, well, if they’re not at his apartment, at least Hina won’t see the tissues.
But how did he get here?
Yoko closes his eyes and thinks back. He didn’t drink last night. Unless he drank so much he forgot an entire day. But his stomach isn’t cleaving itself in half and his head feels clear, so alcohol’s probably out.
…So…?
With the obvious answer out of the way, there aren’t a whole lot of reasonable choices left for him to choose from.
Alien abduction comes to mind. Then it occurs to Yoko that this is a prank. …Which, right. Makes more sense.
Subaru must’ve gotten a couple of staff members to tranquilize Yoko and carry him to Hina’s apartment last night and now there’s a camera somewhere in the room and this will all be recorded and aired on national television and there’s nothing Yoko can do about it except try not to embarrass himself any more than he probably has already.
Damn it, Subaru. Crafty little fucker.
This isn’t the best start to his morning, especially since he spent all day yesterday sleeping and rereading the last twenty-two volumes of One Piece. He only got out of bed six times to eat, use the bathroom, and exchange one stack of manga for another. When Mitsuru finally got home from work around midnight, they opened a pair of beers and drank on the floor, discussing the acceptable price range for a birthday present for Mitsuru’s girlfriend.
The company car’s arriving at nine to drive Yoko to a Monster Hunter commercial filming. Are they in on this? Did Subaru check with someone before he pulled this prank? How many people are in on it? Is this payback for…a lot of things?
Hina’s arm drops around his waist and Yoko automatically sucks in his stomach and tries to squirm away.
“Stoppit,” Hina murmurs. He yanks Yoko closer and ignores Yoko’s half-audible squawk.
The air feels hot, but not as humid as it was yesterday. Yoko chances opening one eye and when he’s sure Hina’s still asleep, opens the other one. Hina’s hair is damp against his temples and his throat is bright with a sheen of sweat, but somehow he doesn’t reek or seem uncomfortable. He’s also got morning wood. Great. Yoko shifts his hips far out of the way, trying to ignore the part of his brain going, Yessss like a horny twelve-year-old who’s discovered his first free porn website.
Well. At least he can finally see Hina’s new apartment this way. For weeks he’s been meaning to hint for an invitation, but that seems too forward. Plus, he doesn’t want to hear Hina recite his schedule out loud to himself in an attempt to find a free time slot while Yoko stands in front of him pretending he doesn’t feel all the staff and other members of Kanjani laughing at them.
This room is much more spacious than the one in Hina’s old apartment – this new bed alone would have taken up half of Hina’s old bedroom. There’re a bunch of framed soccer things on the walls that Yoko’s never seen before, all framed and shining and in foreign languages Yoko can’t identify, as well as some jerseys in glass frames. One of them has Hina’s last name on the back, probably something he picked up on some show as a reward for being the loudest soccer fanboy in Johnny’s.
The clock (only 5:34? Fuck, way too early) is also new. In fact….
Yoko doesn’t recognize anything in this room. Except Hina. Obviously.
And himself.
He doesn’t see any cameras yet, but now he’s convinced this is all a prank. They’re probably not even in Hina’s apartment. Huh. …Maybe this is meant to be a prank on Hina.
But that’s Yoko’s job.
Hina knocks his forehead into Yoko’s.
“Ow.”
“Sorry,” Hina yawns. His breath is rancid. “Trying to stretch my leg, but it’s still stiff.”
Yoko shoves at the arm Hina’s still got around him. “Did you do something to it while you were sleeping?” he asks.
Hina objects to his squirming by tightening his arm and notching his chin on Yoko’s head. “No, it’s just sore again. Quit moving, what’s up with you? Do you have to pee?”
Something in his voice, in the casual way he asks, like there’d be no other explanation for Yoko trying to get away from him and his morning hard-on, introduces some new theories:
1) Hina is drunk.
2) This is not his Hina.
But Hina’s breath is just its standard level of horrifying without the stale stench of alcohol, so the first is unlikely.
And, obviously, so is the second.
“I’m going back to sleep,” Yoko decides.
Hina yawns into his hair. “Okay. What time is it?”
“Five thirty.”
“Ah, damn it, I have to get up.”
“What? Why?”
“Training,” Hina says, squeezing his neck. “Your brain’s taking its time this morning, huh?”
Yoko pulls back to scowl at him.
“You wanted to come with me,” Hina points out. “I told you I’d be spending most of the trip in training.” He pushes off the bed and wanders out of the room, and as soon as he’s out of sight, Yoko’s annoyance fades into abject confusion.
Trip?
To…where?
Yoko looks around the room, scrutinizing every dark spot in the room, every nook on every shelf and under every pile of clothes, but he can’t find any cameras.
The shower turns on. Clearly Hina knows what’s going on, and he must think Yoko does, too; he’s not that good an actor.
Outside on the street several floors down, a little boy yells something in a foreign language.
Yoko scrambles out of bed and runs to the window, his heart going triple-time. He parts the curtains and shouts in shock.
This isn’t Japan. This is Europe. This is…is…somewhere with a lot of Europeans in it.
Yoko doesn’t notice he’s pulling his own hair until it hurts. He drops his hands to his sides and forces himself to stop chanting, “No way, no way, no way,” under his breath.
Subaru couldn’t do this.
Well. He could, but he wouldn’t care enough. No one would care this much. Who in the entire agency would fund a prank that would require flying Yoko unconscious to Europe?
Renewed fear of his coworkers creeps down his spine.
Maybe this is Matchy’s long-overdue revenge for that time Yoko forgot the lyrics to his songs on national TV.
(…Three times.)
Yoko realizes he’s singing “Gin Gira Gin ni Sarigenaku” — which he spent four months memorizing on the off-chance Matchy would drop by one of their shows again — and cuts himself off.
Nino could afford it. And…Nino would definitely do this.
The shower stops.
Without thinking, Yoko scrambles back into the bed and shoves his head under the closest pillow.
He can just see the footage they’ll use for this moment — him curled up under a comforter with a set of bright, mocking question marks stamped next to the bed.
He hears Hina snickering. “Why’d you open the curtains?”
“Id’nno,” Yoko mumbles.
Hina tosses the towel onto the bed where Yoko’s trying to coerce his mind into remembering what he’s clearly forgotten.
He’s in Europe. With Hina. Who is acting like this is normal. Therefore, he’ll look stupid if he asks what’s going on.
But maybe if he asks about something else, Hina’s answer will give him more specifics. Like what country they’re in.
How is this his life?
“All right,” Hina says, as Yoko’s working up the nerve to ask when he’ll be back, “I’m off. See you later.” He smacks the comforter covering Yoko’s ass and the floor creaks as he leaves the room.
The front door opens, shuts, and Yoko takes all of three seconds to think, I have to figure this out on my own? before he’s out of bed, tangled in a sheet, and sprinting after him. He yanks the front door open, slams his shoulder on the doorframe, and almost falls headlong into the outdoor hallway’s banister. Hina stops, startled, and turns to stare at him.
“What? What’d I forget?”
“What’d I forget?” Yoko counters.
Hina’s staring gains a deeper level of confusion. “What?”
It’s more than a little disturbing how convinced he looks that everything about this is normal.
“I mean,” Yoko says, floundering. “I just….”
Hina smirks. “What, you want a kiss goodbye? I thought you didn’t want to be my housewife.”
“I don’t, fuck you,” Yoko says automatically. “I wouldn’t cook for you if you paid me.”
“Right, because then you’d be my maid,” Hina says, then hums, thoughtful. “Actually, that’d be interesting. Try that out today and see how you like it.” Cackling to himself, he turns and ambles down the stairs, a white windbreaker and an expensive gym bag slung over his shoulder. “Be back later!”
Yoko, having accomplished nothing except embarrassing himself, goes back inside.
And trips on his sheet, bangs his knee on a chair, and cuts his hand on an umbrella.
He decides to sit on the floor where it’s safe to have a quiet panic attack.
After an hour of sitting there in protest of a prank that isn’t funny at all, he decides that this prank has been pulled by someone very inexperienced with pranking, which rules Nino out. Shock pranks like this are funnier when the shocks keep coming. If this were a good prank, something else would have happened by now; another member of Kanjani would have showed up, or the ceiling would have started to leak purple water, or…something.
So it’s an unfunny prank, and it’s stupid.
When Yoko’s bladder has reached maximum capacity and is on the precipice of bursting, Yoko drags himself and his sheet up off the floor and hurries to the bathroom, where he makes a plan of action.
First things first, he should find his phone, call Subaru, and yell a lot.
Or, actually. First thing is: get dressed.
Wrapping the sheet around him twice, Yoko returns to the bedroom and opens the closet. None of the clothes in here are his, but they’re definitely what he’d choose if he went shopping, which adds more weight to the likelihood that a member of Kanjani or Arashi is behind this. He grabs the first baggy shirt and pair of shorts he sees and retreats back into the bathroom, where he quickly changes and pushes the sheet into the laundry hamper.
Now for his phone.
He searches the entire apartment, keeping an eye out for hidden cameras. If the prankster was smart about his setup, Yoko won’t be able to find any just by snooping around, but he’s not counting on anyone prank-clever working the strings anymore.
The phone he eventually unearths is plugged into the wall, equipped with a European adapter. He doesn’t recognize what country the adapter is intended for, nor does he recognize the phone itself, but it’s the only cell phone in the apartment, and Hina probably has his with him, so. There’s a world map on the phone’s display: Tokyo listed at the top, followed by Rome and New York.
This…can’t be Yoko’s. His phone doesn’t even have a world map in it. Does it?
This must be Hina’s, but Hina has one of those smart phones now. Maybe it’s a rental, since they’re in Europe? But the charger needs an adapter, and the text on the display is Japanese.
Yoko opens the contacts list, convincing himself that Hina won’t find out, and scrolls through about seventeen names, none of which he recog—
Except his own parents. Both of them. Their names are stored together in the address page.
Mitsuru and Tsutomu aren’t there. Neither are the rest of Kanjani.
He slams the phone shut.
He goes back to the bedroom, raking his fingers into his hair, and breathes.
The remaining sheets and blanket on the bed are in shambles, tangled and puddling on the floor, and when Yoko sits down, a ripped condom package crinkles under his weight. Yoko’s breath stops for a moment, but he doesn’t feel anything anywhere in his body like the discomfort that a ripped condom package could explain.
He holds it between his fingers for half a minute until he’s convinced that this isn’t a prank.
—
Over the next seven days, Yoko gradually learns his way around this new world he’s stuck in.
First of all, Hina isn’t Hina. Here, he goes by Shingo. No one has ever called him Hina in his life, probably, until Yoko forgets himself and yelps it when Hina tries to molest him up against the bathroom door. It gets Hina to stop, but at the cost of Hina looking honestly baffled and then asking Yoko over and over for an hour why Yoko called him by a girl’s name. Yoko clams up and blushes and finally starts yelling when Hina wonders if Yoko has a maid fetish after all.
Second difference: Hina’s a professional soccer player. According to the plaques on the wall, he plays for AC Milan, one of the Italian teams, and he actually speaks Italian; he sounds competent enough when he talks to his teammates over the phone, at least.
Third, they live together. Yoko’s clothes and Hina’s clothes hang together in the same closet, Yoko’s key ring has a tiny One Piece character on it to keep the apartment key company, and there’s a stack of video games in the console under the flatscreen that certainly aren’t Hina’s. For the entire first week, Yoko stays inside with the windows and curtains open to the warm summer breeze and plays games that only exist in this universe until Hina gets back from training and drinking with his friends at night.
Fourth, they’re in Rome at the moment. This is one of at least two apartments Hina owns; the other one is in Milan. Yoko theorizes that Hina must have one in Osaka or Tokyo, too, but he can’t figure out a subtle way to find out. Their life seems fixed in Italy, and Hina only ever seems to speak Japanese when he’s home with Yoko.
Fifth…Hina’s not his boyfriend. Exactly. Hina seems aware that they’re living together, and he does make out with Yoko at random intervals throughout the week, and there are a lot of condoms under the sink, and he is kind of more affectionate than the Hina Yoko knows, but sex doesn’t seem like something they do all that often, so they’re probably not actually dating. Sometimes Yoko hears Hina jacking off in the shower, and Hina certainly seems to feel comfortable with the idea of having sex with him, but Hina never makes a move other than to kiss him or manhandle him in bed when they’re sleeping. Yoko thinks they’re probably just fooling around. Friends with benefits, that’s the term, right?
On the first night, Hina trapped Yoko against the kitchen counter and mouthed at Yoko’s jaw while rubbing circles on his back. Yoko ended up hard and panting, but Hina just offered him a smirk and went to watch TV sporting a hard-on.
The same thing happens repeatedly throughout the week.
Yoko goes along with it. He closes his eyes and focuses on not making the kinds of sounds he always makes while jacking himself off thinking about exactly what’s happening to him and usually succeeds. He knows the noises he’s likely to make are too needy, too high-pitched, and as far from sexy as possible for a man, but he’s never trained himself to sound any other way, convinced that Hina would never actually be present while Yoko was this turned on.
Usually around three or four in the morning, Yoko sneaks into the bathroom and deals with the erection he gets from sleeping crushed under Hina’s torso.
In a strange way, Yoko starts to think of this as a vacation. Apart from interacting with Hina, which is maddening because of the sheer level of comfort and affection Hina is constantly throwing at him, it’s mostly a lot of hanging out and eating and playing video games. Hina meant it when he said he’d be spending most of his time training; he’s met up with his teammates every day for the last week and stayed gone for anywhere between ten and fourteen hours.
It’s almost like watching Hina work as an idol.
Of course, noticing that always leads Yoko to wonder what his job is. Hina never asks him about work and Yoko doesn’t seem to have any angry voicemails from a boss demanding to know why he’s shirking. In fact, he doesn’t have any voicemails, ever.
He doesn’t recognize any of the names on his phone except for Hina’s and his parents’. There’s a “baby sister” listed with a Tokyo cell phone number and a mail address, but Yoko doesn’t dare call or mail her.
According to the internet, Mitsuru and Tsutomu don’t exist, so Yoko tries to avoid researching anyone else he knows out of fear that he won’t find anything. By the eighth day, however, he can’t stand not knowing anymore and does a round of searching.
Yasu is a hair stylist at an upscale salon. There’s an photo of him next to his name, solemn-mouthed and dark-haired and dressed in muted colors. All of it is so clearly a mask for a man much more insecure than the person Yoko knows that Yoko backs out of the site fast and promises himself that he must have gotten the wrong name.
Ohkura has a Facebook page, and his public profile says he graduated from Osaka University and spent some time studying abroad in Australia, which explains why he even has Facebook. He has a lot of foreign friends and his profile photo shows him shirtless on a beach making a peace sign, his face relaxed and amused and exactly the same as their Tacchon. The site doesn’t say what he’s doing now, but Yoko assumes he’s working for his father.
Uchi’s a masseur at a privately-owned spa in Osaka, and his photo makes him look simultaneously awkward and bitchy. Yoko can imagine whoever took the photo made fun of him first.
Dokkun’s also got a Facebook page, but his is much more protected than Ohkura’s. His profile photo is of a chili pepper and his information only gives his name, where he was born, and that he’s currently living in New York.
Maru’s a personal trainer with a long client list of mid-level celebrities. He looks much the same in every photo, his mouth wide and his eyes wider. The clients he’s photographed with all look deeply amused and understandably fond of him.
Yoko can’t find Subaru. He spends hours looking using every permutation of Subaru’s name — kanji, hiragana, katana, romaji — but whatever Subaru’s doing, he either hasn’t left his mark on the internet or he’s living under an alias.
Yoko closes his laptop (the one without a huge AC Milan stencil on the cover) and relocates to the couch where he spends two hours watching a DragonBall movie that only exists in this universe. It’s just bad enough to annoy him into forgetting for the moment that he doesn’t know if Mitsuru, Tsutomu, and Subaru even exist in this world.
He’s even almost managed to convince himself he’s imagined the last eight days when the front door opens and Hina calls, “I’m back!”
“Welcome home,” Yoko mutters into the shirt collar he’s got pulled up over his face.
“Name the last time you went outside,” Hina says with the edge of an exasperated whine in his voice. He drops his bag on the table in the living room and flops down on the couch next to Yoko.
“I went out earlier to hang laundry.” It occurs to Yoko as he says it that Hina’ll dive on the housewife thing again — he really likes that joke, Yoko’s learned — but all Hina says is,
“Oh, right. I meant to ask about that — is the dryer broken?” He reaches over Yoko for the remote and Yoko almost protests until he notices the credits rolling. He glances at the screen, bewildered, and realizes he has no idea what happened during the second half of the movie.
“The what?”
Hina stares at him. “The clothes dryer. You did laundry last week too and you didn’t use it then either. I thought you liked the dryer better than hanging clothes out.”
Oh, fuck. The dryer. How to say, I have no idea how it works, without sounding weird?
“I forgot how it works,” Yoko says, and fights back a wince. That’s not better.
Hina’s expression reflects that. “You forgot?” He grins and then laughs and whacks the back of Yoko’s head. “You’ve been using it for two years!”
Two years. Oh, wait, right. Hina used to play for the Japanese team and got traded or sold or whatever happens to soccer players — Yoko’s just happy he remembers the name of Hina’s current team.
To get Hina off his back about the magical drying machine he now hates, Yoko makes up something about trying a new function that confused the dryer’s controls. Hina says he’ll look at it later, still snickering.
Ever since Yoko woke up in this weird world, he’s spent most of his time alone. Hina’s either been practicing or sleeping, and when he’s not, he’s usually too tired to do more than grope Yoko or fall asleep on him while they’re watching something. It’s a pretty familiar dynamic, all told. The Hina he knows has always had a tendency to be overly affectionate — sitting in Yoko’s lap, sleeping on him during breaks, ruffling his hair, and the like. The rest — the kissing, the full-on body contact, the focused looks — all of that does make Yoko uncomfortable, but as long as it doesn’t move past that, he can deal with it.
“Subaru said he wants your number.”
Yoko turns so abruptly he hits Hina in the face while Hina’s reaching for Yoko’s beer on the table.
“Ow. The fuck?”
Yoko ignores him. “Subaru?”
“Yeah. I made him use Skype over the phone. He hated it, thinks it’s going to charge him even though he didn’t have to give it any of his informa–”
“Subaru,” Yoko repeats.
“Yeah,” Hina says. “You remember him, right? We grew up near each other, met at university. We went out for drinks in Takatsuki last summer, and you two bonded over how much you hate Tokyo food.”
Apparently that’s a common denominator for their friendship. Yoko beams.
“You…do remember him.” Hina gives Yoko a skeptical look and starts laughing again. “Why are you smiling?”
“I like that guy,” Yoko says. “Give him my number.”
“You give it to him.”
Privately amused, Yoko protests, “No! He’s your friend! I hardly know him!” in a low, drawled whine.
Hina gives up with an annoyed sound and flips to a soccer match between…brightly-colored-flag country and darkly–colored-flag country.
If there’s one constant in this world, Yoko’s learned, it’s that at all times of day, somewhere on TV, there is a soccer match.
Knowing Subaru exists is enough to relax Yoko’s shoulders a bit. He glances at Hina’s profile, the line of his jaw and the bizarre shape of his nose, and fights down the urge to stare. It’s fine in the world he’s from, where Hina doesn’t notice and probably doesn’t care. Here, he can’t afford to stare because Hina does notice, and Hina might even care.
“I’m gonna get food,” Yoko says.
Hina makes a noncommittal noise.
In the kitchen, Yoko takes a banana from the fridge and hops up onto the counter to eat it morosely. He must be on the banana diet in this universe, too, judging by the number of bunches in the fridge. Not easy sleeping with a pro soccer player when your day job is apparently playing video games.
“You should leave those on the counter,” Hina says, crossing the kitchen to the sink. “They go bad faster if you refrigerate them.” He fills a glass with water and drinks half of it, beads spilling down his neck.
Yoko redirects his hungry staring to his too-long toenails and hates this universe with an even stronger level of intensity than the level at which he hates his own.
Hina’s hand covers his knee casually. “You okay?” He sets his empty glass down in the sink and refills it.
Yoko says, “Yeah,” without much hope of Hina leaving him alone.
“How’s your back feel?”
Yoko looks up, surprised. “Fine.”
The concern in Hina’s voice matches the look on his face. “Really? No flare-ups?” He glances in the direction of Yoko’s side and palms up and down Yoko’s back. “Do you want to see the chiropractor again before we go home?”
“We are home, aren’t we?”
Hina recoils, eyes wide.
It’s the reaction Yoko’s been expecting ever since he realized this world was different from his own — that look of, This is something you should know, so why don’t you? Yoko swallows, struggling to keep his expression neutral and his mouth shut. Don’t make it worse, don’t make it worse. Talking more will only make it worse.
Hina gets over his shock and returns to rubbing Yoko’s back, this time just in one small area underneath Yoko’s left shoulder blade. Yoko arches against it automatically, the sensation warm and unfamiliar. He tries not to squirm when Hina moves between his thighs, his fingers working magic on a knot next to Yoko’s spine.
“You shouldn’t bend over like that,” Hina murmurs. He takes Yoko’s wrists and tugs until Yoko slides off the counter to stand on the floor. He’s still crowded up against silverware drawer, gripping the last third of his banana, and he acknowledges the situation he’s in with a small, awkward grin.
Hina ignores it and pushes his fingers through Yoko’s hair. “Tell me to stop when your back hurts, I mean it,” he says, then presses his mouth to Yoko’s bottom lip.
This time, Hina kisses him deeper, his breath harsh and his fist tight in Yoko’s hair. He sucks on Yoko’s tongue and groans when Yoko unconsciously leans against him, wrapping his free arm around Yoko’s waist and pulling him in until Yoko can feel just how hard he is.
Yoko closes his eyes and thinks, don’t move, don’t move, don’t move, at himself, vehement and nervous. Don’t get excited, don’t embarrass yourself, think about literally anything less hot than this. Seven Okan, Seven Okan, Hina’s hairy legs — fuck, that’s hot — why am I so weird?!
Hina’s hand skates over his ass and Yoko chokes back a whine. He’s more than half hard now and Hina’ll feel it, he’ll know, which is ridiculous because he does know, but — Yoko pulls away from the kiss with an obscene noise. “I-it’s not that bad,” he says, frantic. “It’s probably all healed! My back, I mean.”
Hina’s mouth is slick and dark and Yoko truly despises himself for his inability to do the most unthinkable things he can think of to that mouth.
“You were hit by a bus,” Hina says, staring.
I was? Really? “Well,” Yoko says, staring back. “Uh.” How am I not dead?
“I’m sorry,” Hina says. He sighs and backs off, fixing his T-shirt and adjusting himself with a wince. “I shouldn’t have pushed for it. Sorry, Kimi.”
“Eh?”
Hina ignores him, grabbing his glass off the counter and heading back to the living room where the match is building to its feverish final minutes.
Yoko stays in the kitchen with his mashed banana long after his body has cooled off and embarrassment has soaked deep through him.
—
It happened four months ago. Yoko was out with friends (he has some, apparently) in Osaka and caught his foot on a crookedly-placed manhole cover. He fell into the path of a bus whose driver managed to slow down enough to let him walk away from the incident with deep bruising and a possible spinal injury whose existence none of the six doctors he saw could agree on.
He also got quite a lot of money for the accident that he tried to refuse on the grounds of him being stupid and not looking where he was going, but the bus driver’s guilt led to the story sounding much graver and terrible than it was from Yoko’s perspective.
He tried to keep going to work at Ohkura’s restaurant, but he had trouble moving his shoulder and standing for long periods of time without blacking out, so Ohkura’s father personally gave him a leave of absence. Yoko’s little sister — a college student — stepped in to cover his shift while he’s away, and she wants him to stay gone until she’s saved up enough to attend some Jrock guy’s winter tour.
Hina, when he heard about all of this, responded by demanding Yoko pack two bags and stay with him in Milan. Yoko told him no, never, that’d be weird, and he’s been in Italy ever since.
That’s what Yoko learns from reading his most recent emails to Hina and to his sister, to whom he seems very close. She’s emailed him every other day for the last week demanding to know why he’s ignoring her and asking really inappropriate things about Hina.
He can see why he likes her.
He wonders what Mitsuru and Tsutomu would think of her. Mitsuru would probably like her, Tsutomu might just be distantly amused.
As Yoko’s legs are falling asleep, he picks up the laptop from Hina’s desk and carries it to the bed where he can stretch out. Hina showered and fell asleep earlier after a silent dinner at opposite ends of the apartment. He doesn’t stir when Yoko sits down, but he does roll onto his side, away from the laptop’s glow.
Over the next three hours, Yoko reads through four years of emails. Some from his mother, some from his father, some from acquaintances, a few from Ohkura, and a lot from his sister and Hina. Yoko apparently met Hina at Ohkura’s restaurant before he worked there; Hina was there, already a big deal in Japan, and Yoko was drunk enough to stare at him too long trying to figure out who he was. That’s what Yoko wrote to his sister, but he knows himself well enough to know that he wouldn’t tell any story unless it was exciting, and he can tell that this meeting was boring by the way he’s tried to make it funny for his sister’s benefit.
However, that meeting led to them being friends and over the next two years, they met up for drinks whenever their schedules lined up, which seems like it was fairly often. In that time, Yoko changed jobs from a thankless entry-level position at a factory to the branch of Ohkura’s family’s restaurant where he and Hina met. He made friends with Ohkura somehow — their emails to each other just sort of appear out of nowhere — and Ohkura’s emails gradually began to include more and more dry comments about drool and lovesickness.
Soon after that, something happened, and Yoko and Hina started dating.
Yoko calls it dating, even. To Hina.
The sound of horrified shock he makes should be enough to wake the dead, but Hina just snuffles in his sleep and turns onto his back. Yoko takes the computer out into the living room where he can silently die of embarrassment.
[So…we’re dating. Right?]
Unbelievable that he wrote that. Unimaginable, even.
…He won’t read Hina’s response. He can’t. Obviously it turned out well but — he can’t, really —
[Yeah. Obviously.]
Yoko breathes in deep and holds it so he doesn’t have to worry about making any weird noises.
Hina wrote, Obviously. About them dating. But…why was it obvious? Did they go on dates? Yoko skims through the ten previous emails with a frown. They’re all so short, and they don’t tell Yoko anything important. The real stuff — meeting times and places, day-to-day stuff — must in his phone’s inbox, but the memory doesn’t go back that far. He probably had a different phone, even.
So…he lives here. In Italy. With his boyfriend. His boyfriend Hina. And he’s supposedly comfortable with that.
He must be contributing to the rent, right? Paying for groceries? The bills? If he’s been here for months, they must have worked out a system. Unless Hina just never asked and Yoko felt too awkward about it to bring it up and oh, god, is he mooching off of Hina?
Well, maybe he is, but Hina’s a pro soccer player, right? Ugh, he’s rich in this universe, too. Figures.
But mooching is never the way to go. Especially not if they’re…dating.
This, Yoko decides, can’t get weirder.
He shuts the laptop, sets it on the cushion next to him, and closes his dry eyes.
The sheer bulk of this new life settles on his shoulders and Yoko wants, for the first time, with all his heart, to wake up in the world where everything is uncertain and terrifying, but he has the Hina he knows and the loneliness that’s become comfortable.
He falls asleep on the couch, his eyes stinging and his back aching from phantom injuries.
—
Hina’s gone before he wakes up, but the sink’s still wet when he gets up to pee and the bed’s still warm when he crawls under the blankets. He sleeps until noon, gets up to eat some salad from the fridge, and then goes back to sleep. He repeats the process around dinnertime.
Every movie Yoko has ever seen with this situation always ends with the character returning to their own world just as they’re getting comfortable in the new one, so sleeping through the discomfort might just be the fastest way to get back to where belongs.
He wakes up to a dip in the mattress.
“Hey.”
Yoko keeps his eyes closed. There’s so much in Hina’s voice that Yoko can’t read. He’s not the Hina Yoko knows. He is in so many other ways, but that voice, the way he talks to Yoko, is completely different.
“If you’re not comfortable here, you can go home.”
It’s probably unintentional, the weight he puts on the word “home.” But it’s understandable when Yoko just used it to describe this place. And even though Yoko was only asking for confirmation, Hina definitely read more into it than that.
“Oi, you hear me?”
“I heard you,” Yoko says quietly into his arm.
“What do you want to do?”
Go home. To my apartment. To Mitsuru. To the job where I get to make people laugh. To you.
But that’s not what Hina’s asking. Hina’s not even talking to him. He’s talking to his boyfriend. Who has accidentally been kind of a dick to him.
All along, Yoko hasn’t really given thought to the man he is in this world. Here, he’s not an idol or even an entertainer. He’s a regular guy who works at a restaurant. He’s a college graduate who got hit by a bus and lives in a foreign country and faces the horrible breath of his famous boyfriend every morning.
That man has a perfect life. It’s quietly remarkable and slow-paced and sits directly opposite from the life Yoko leads as an idol with an amusing family of idiots and a man he’d rather die than kiss while sober.
Yoko turns to face someone else’s Hina.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Hina exhales an irritated sound and pulls the covers up so he can climb underneath. Yoko doesn’t move, determined to play this right, until Hina says, “Come on, I have no room, give me some space,” and Yoko blushes and moves. When they’re situated, Hina’s head is on Yoko’s pillow and Yoko is carefully tracing his fingers on the bed between their stomachs. He should probably put his arm around Hina, but he can’t make himself do it.
“How’s your back?” Hina asks.
Yoko pulls in a breath and says, “It’s really fine.” Then, feeling a sudden rush of stupidity masquerading as bravery, he adds, “Feel for yourself.”
Hina grins so readily Yoko wonders if that’s how he’d normally react. He closes his eyes as Hina presses two fingers under Yoko’s shoulder blade.
“Nothing?”
“No. Feels fine.”
Hina’s hand moves down his back. “Here?”
Yoko’s breath shallows out. “Yeah.”
Hina’s hand skims the curve of his lower back. “What about here?”
Yoko’s just tired and relaxed and strangely happy enough to lean forward and fit his mouth against Hina’s lips.
Hina indulges him for about six seconds, then draws back and says, “If your back hurts, I’ll stop. You whined for days last time we tried this.”
Yoko says, “Shut up, seriously,” and feels positive that every version of him, in every universe ever, would have responded the same way.
Hina props himself up on his elbows, forearms framing Yoko’s head, and kisses him from a deeper angle. He rests his chest on Yoko’s, slides one leg between Yoko’s, and closes his eyes.
Some of the most embarrassing moments of Yoko’s life have involved Hina kissing him. Facing down a laughing, obnoxious, and stupidly hot gorilla who always shrugs it off later.
This kiss is different. It feels exactly right, like Hina’s memorizing the contours of Yoko’s mouth by feel. The only source of embarrassment is in the noises Yoko can’t stop himself from making and the fist he’s wrapped around the sheet near his head.
He palms Hina’s bicep with his free hand and arches up to kiss him harder. He breathes out, harsh, and bites down on Hina’s lower lip. Hina grinds against his thigh, panting out a laugh, and Yoko grins back at him, forcing back a blush.
Hina slides one hand down Yoko’s stomach without hesitation or comment on the small swell there and without breaking the slow, thorough kiss he’s slowed them down to. Yoko’s already panting, visualizing every fantasy he’s had this past week while jerking off in the shower.
When Hina’s hand grazes the tip of Yoko’s erection, Yoko makes a noise that horrifies him.
Fortunately, Hina doesn’t let up. He drags Yoko’s pajama pants off — “You do know these are mine, right?” which Yoko chooses to ignore — and says, “Grab the lotion, would you?” while breathing long stripes of hot air down the length of Yoko’s cock.
Yoko swipes it from the bedside table and shoves it at him, trying to ignore that he’s handing lube to Hina.
Hina pumps a handful into his palm, then quickly and efficiently slicks Yoko’s erection. The heat spreads through Yoko’s body and gathers into an almost-painful pinch in his stomach. It pushes Yoko past the point of embarrassment, to the point where he can keep his mouth open for an almost constant stream of noises. Hina seems to know just how fast to go to make Yoko shout, how slow to shut Yoko up with silent moaning, and at least one of the ways of keeping Yoko perfectly balanced on the edge for longer than Yoko thought was possible.
Then, when Yoko is blissed out of his mind, Hina says, “Come,” and Yoko struggles up onto his elbows to kiss Hina while he comes over Hina’s wrist and forearm.
The aftershocks keep him distracted from Hina smiling against his mouth.
He waits until his breathing has evened out before he opens his eyes and faces the Hina he could have.
—
Yoko wakes up in his bed naked and alone at four o’clock in the morning with his phone in hand.
[So, we’re dating, right?] is typed out on the screen.