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Dice feels like shit.
The thing is, he’d known that going to see Jinguji Jakurai with Gentaro would have consequences. He’d known it’d probably end badly, known he was covering for a mistake his teammate should never have made, known it might shatter their delicate balance for good. But he hadn’t realised just how hard it’d be to live with Ramuda again, after hearing the doctor call him a narcissist and a life-ruiner and whatever other bullshit he’d come up with. Not because he’d believed it, or because it had hurt to hear someone say all that about a friend, but because they’d gone behind Ramuda’s back to do it. Because Ramuda, for all the teasing, had never been anything but good to him, and it’s a bad way to repay that debt. And unlike Gentaro, Dice didn’t have the smarts or the knowledge to tell Jinguji where he could shove all his medical jargon and elaborate theories. So all he had done, all he’d had the power to do, was cling onto his truth about Ramuda, and shout it as loudly as he could.
And that truth keeps getting eroded by how fucking guilty he feels.
To be honest, feeling like shit isn’t a new development, and it’s been happening on and off for the last two weeks. But he feels especially like shit today, because Ramuda seems to be in a good mood. He’d woken up to a text from his leader and housemate, with even more kaomoji than usual, instructing him to come to the kitchen after he’s showered for his latest nefarious plot. And Dice usually loves Ramuda’s adventures, even the ones that end with him losing – but he’s not sure he can do it any more.
Still curled up in bed in Ramuda’s spare room, he tabs over to a different message window.
Driven into a corner and unsure what else to do, he’d texted Gentaro late last night, on his way out of the casino. He’d made his exit earlier than usual, because not even gambling can make his stomach settle these days. Can make him stop feeling like he’d crossed a line of no return.
> im gonna tell ramuda
> today
> i cant do this gentaro
There’s a read receipt under it: early this morning, before Dice had woken up himself. Hours and hours and hours ago. And Gentaro leaves him on read all the time – nothing personal, he’s just like that – but it usually doesn’t feel so fucking ominous.
Talking to Gentaro used to be easier, too. Dice doesn’t think he’s imagining the progress they’ve made over the last months; getting him to be slightly less guarded, slightly less quick to lie, like he’s a person first and an author second sometimes. He’d even thought, on the day Gentaro had invited him over, that maybe it meant he would be honest. That maybe he’d even own up to the way he was always looking at Dice, or the way Dice had hoped he was always looking.
Not like that matters now. Not when he hasn’t seen Gentaro, alone, since their visit to Shinjuku – and when, every time they’re together as a unit, he never seems to be looking at anything at all. Oh, he and Ramuda still hold their usual conversations, but their words all glance off each other, these days.
And Dice tries not to let himself get tilted by things like this, but he’s a gambler at heart, and it comes with the territory. There isn’t a gambler alive without some kind of lucky charm, who doesn’t think that having a bad dream or stepping on tatami wrong or a hearse passing by on the street impacts the night he’s going to have at the casino. And every sign Dice has seen in the past week and a half has been pointing towards some kind of disaster. Maybe someone better than him, someone smarter or more empathetic, could steer them away from it, navigate them around the rocks Fling Posse are threatening to drive themselves onto. But all Dice can do is hold on, and keep holding on –
Another text comes through from Ramuda, and it startles him out of his thoughts.
> DiiiiiIIIIIIIIICE! (´;ω;｀)
Well, if his leader’s spoken, he can’t exactly ignore it.
So he gathers his things ands heads to the bathroom, ignoring the ominous noises that drift out of the kitchen, and autopilots himself into the shower. Even after months, it still feels like a luxury to live somewhere with hot water and plumbing. Hell, he practically has his own bathroom, cause Ramuda’s got an ensuite, and the only rent he has to pay is putting up with his landlord’s teasing.
And you repay that by backstabbing him?
He ignores that thought. Because it might’ve been a shitty idea to go with Gentaro to see Jinguji, but it would’ve been a shittier one to let him go alone. Probably. Three is such an inconvenient number, because it had been a choice between throwing his lot in with Gentaro and throwing it in with Ramuda, with nobody to balance it out.
(Although it makes sense that Ramuda wants to stay away from four-man crews.)
From there, his mind wanders further. And, as it always does these days, it comes back to the sticking point, and the things he’s been trying not to admit to himself.
Before this, before everything, he’d kind of been in love with Ramuda. How could things have been any other way? He’d swept into Dice’s life like a pastel nightmare, kicked his ass in a rap battle, and dragged him kicking and screaming into friendship. He’s a whole different class of person from the people Dice ran into on the casino circuit, from the people he’d gotten to know on the streets, even the people he’d known from his life as Dice of the Arisugawa family – actually, that isn’t fair. There’s nobody else like Ramuda, not in the world. He could spend a lifetime trying to find someone like him, again, and come up empty.
(And while he’s being honest, Dice had been kind of in love with Gentaro, too. Because he’s still a gullible idiot who rolls over for anyone who’s nice to him, doesn’t know how to feel any way but passionate. And Gentaro’s a terrible liar when it comes to hiding his kindness: it spills out of him at the slightest touch, like it’s gone unused for years, and started to overflow. Plus, Dice hasn’t lost touch with his feelings for Gentaro, as much as he has for Ramuda, because there’s no betrayal there. Only the slimy, stifling feeling of their mutual guilt, and their inability to look each other in the eye. He’d dreamed of Gentaro letting him in, but not like this. Not over the secret of Fling Posse rotting away from the inside.)
(And look how all those feelings had worked out for Dice: zero from two, back where he started. Except worse, because he’d been shown the best of all possible futures, and now he can’t go back.)
He’s interrupted by a knocking on the bathroom door. And not a polite knock, either, but a you’re in my house using my water, so you better pay attention knock. “Hurry up, Dice!” Ramuda calls, voice hardly even muffled by the wood. “I’m getting bored.”
It isn’t unusual for Ramuda to bother him like this, but he’s not usually this insistent either. Dice turns down the water so he can yell back.
“Five minutes!”
“Huh? That long? You’re so slooooow.”
“Shouting isn’t gonna make me go faster!”
“Fiiiiiiine! But you better be quick, or I’ll think up an extra punishment for you.”
He listens to Ramuda’s footfalls as they recede; his host is humming some annoying pop song as he goes. Then Dice turns the water back on, finishes up as fast as he can. It’s probably best not to keep someone so temperamental waiting.
*
Back in his room, he changes into his usual clothes and hangs up his towel. Then, barefoot, he pads into the kitchen – and stops in his tracks. Ramuda’s there, ingredients arrayed over the counter around him, and he’s busy mixing something in a bowl, and he’s wearing an apron. And if there’s one thing Dice has learned from the last months of having a roommate, it’s that Ramuda never cooks, ever.
(He misses Gentaro something fierce, but in tiny moments like this, he might miss Ramuda worse.)
“What’re you doing?” he ventures.
Ramuda sets his utensils aside and twirls, not at all surprised by the intrusion. The apron flutters around him in a cascade of pink; it’s tied at the back in a huge, perky bow. “Baking, of course!”
“I thought you didn’t know how.”
“I said I didn’t know how to cook. Baking’s a totally different skill!”
They seem the same to Dice, but he decides not to push it. “Yeah, yeah. What brought that on?”
“Welllllll, I went for macarons with a girl this week, at some place that just opened up. And she was really excited, but they also really weren’t good. But I’ve been in the mood for them ever since, so, I thought I’d do it myself.”
That train of thought is classic Ramuda: incredibly corkscrewy logic, but also incredibly straightforward, in its own way. Because he could buy macarons from any cafe in Shibuya, and half of them would probably give him a discount, but he’s also the type to do things himself so they’ll be done right.
“You called me here… for this?”
“Yup! I was gonna let you be my sous-chef, but you took so long, I’ve already done most of it.”
This is strangely low-stakes, though. Usually Ramuda has some kind of motive, is planning ten steps ahead to catch him in a snare, but this time, it sounds like he really just wants to bake macarons. And Dice is an experienced enough gambler to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially because of who’s trying to gift it to him.
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch!”
“Yeah, right. Who’re you, and what happened to the real Ramuda?”
“Di-iiiiice, you’re hurting my feelings. Maybe I just want to have fun together.”
“No tricks?” he says suspiciously. “For real?”
“Really really!”
“They’re not poisoned?”
“That’d be such a waste.”
“And you’re not gonna make me, I dunno, wash the dishes or anything?”
“Noooo? We have a dishwasher, you know. We’re civilised.”
Okay: maybe Ramuda’s telling the truth, and the worst he has in store is some minor chores. That isn’t going to stop Dice from squinting at him, though.
“Oh, but like I said, there’s one catch! I told you I did the batter on my own, but I made the frosting already too. Though you’d probably have eaten half of it anyway, so!”
“Shut up,” Dice says, “I totally wouldn’t have. That sounds like a you thing.”
“I don’t know, Dice. I’ve seen how you are with food.”
“Frosting isn’t food. It’s, like… a condiment, or something.”
“I’ve definitely seen you eat sauce on its own, though.”
“That was one time!”
“At least two. Remember when we got okonomiyaki, and you ended up scraping all the gunk off Gentaro’s, and –”
“Okay, but sauces are savoury. And frosting’s sweets, and I don’t like sweets that much.”
“You know, if you don’t want to eat these macarons, you can just say.”
That’s one of Ramuda’s favourite tricks, but normally he uses it differently, to back Dice into a corner. But because the macarons were his idea, that almost makes it sound like he’s actually asking. And it’s true that today was the day Dice was planning to tell him everything, but, well. At this point, what’s a couple hours more of putting off the truth?
“Nah, I’m in. Sounds fun.”
“Yay!” Ramuda grabs onto his arm, squeezes it tightly. “Thanks, Dice!”
And that means something’s wrong. Something’s very, very wrong. So Dice fights down his panic, and forces himself to think about this as calmly as he can. If Ramuda knew about their visit to Jinguji, he’d be doing far worse than trying to win him over with macarons. That has to be true – and, if he knows anything about Ramuda, it is. He draws in a deep breath, pretends he doesn’t notice how shaky it is.
“So, what’re you up to?”
“I’m almost done, actually. I just need to get the batter ready for baking.” He slides the bowl at Dice. “See, see?”
Dice peers into it. The mixture inside smells sugary and is a bright, vibrant pink, because of course it is. “Uh, sure, but how?”
“Like this!”
Ramuda pours the mixture into a bag with a nozzle on the end, and uses it to squeeze a circle of batter onto the baking tray. Dice waits uselessly, watching as the bowl becomes emptier and the tray becomes filled with small pink discs. They’re not all the same size, but they’re close enough, and he has to admit: they do look slightly like macarons. Or, well, pre-macarons. For a brief moment, he lets himself be hungry – and then the reality of the situation sinks in, and it’s absorbed by the guilt again. He clears his throat and Ramuda, done with his job, glances up. “So we just stick ‘em in the oven now, right?”
“Wellllll, no.” Ramuda peers at his phone screen. “They want us to... leave them out like this, first, so they can set. For an hour.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“Too bad, because last time I checked, you weren’t the baking expert here! And I say we’re going to follow the recipe.”
“Fine, whatever. What’re we gonna do, while we wait?”
“Hmm. We could play cards.”
“What, with two of us?”
“There are games you can play with two people! Liiiiiiike… Cheat.”
“Cheat?” Dice blinks at him. “Oh, you mean Bullshit.”
“It’s called Cheat!”
“Doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s not a betting game.”
“That’s not true. You can bet on just about anything, Dice. Actually, didn’t you win your hypnosis mic in a game of –”
“Well, Bullshit’s still crap with two players. You need at least three.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine! We’ll just deal out a third hand and not use it.”
He argues a little more, but Ramuda being set on this means it’s basically decided, and they eventually take their places across from each other on the floor of the lounge. Still, the third hand doesn’t help Dice’s odds, and he loses the first round horribly. And that feels a lot like the onset of the bad luck he’s been fearing for weeks, even if, rationally speaking, it’s just one loss. The problem from here is going to be making sure it doesn’t tilt him.
“Wait.” Dice rifles through his hand, scowling as he counts cards. “Didn’t you play a king two turns back? How’d you have another?”
“I cheated, of course! But, more importantly, I need to choose my prize.”
And that’s terrifying. “This is, like, a friendly game, right? We established that. So nothing shitty.”
“Hmmmmmmm.” Ramuda pretends to think. “How about… you take out the trash this week? I hate doing that! It makes me feel gross.”
“What, is that it?”
“I can claim a bigger prize, if you’d prefer –”
“No! No, this one’s fine.”
But Dice’s luck holds and, one round at a time, Ramuda fleeces him into doing all the chores for the next month. Which is horseshit, because Dice does all the chores around here anyway, and double horseshit because Ramuda already knows this. He keeps pulling his punches today, and it doesn’t get any less ominous. At some point, he leaves to put the macarons in the oven, and Dice shuffles the deck and tries to infuse it with good luck. It’s fruitless, at this point, because he can see the storm clouds closing in, but he has to try.
“We probably only have time for one more round,” Ramuda says, when he returns. “Maybe two.”
“Wanna up the stakes?”
“Mmmmmm, but to what?”
“I don’t know,” Dice admits. He watches the backs of their cards as he deals them out: one, two, and their imaginary third. There’s only one way he has a chance of turning this around, even if it means burning himself up, so he makes himself commit. “But we could make this way more exciting than chores.”
“Organs?”
“No organs!”
“Then let’s saaaaaay… the winner can pick once he wins.”
“Shit. Sure, I guess.”
Unfortunately, the prospect of a bigger prize still doesn’t improve Dice’s luck at all. There are huge gaps in his starting hand and, one by one, Ramuda exploits them mercilessly. It’s bizarre, that he’s still doing this well with a third of the deck hidden from him. Or are Dice’s tells really that obvious?
“One ten.”
He sneaks a look over at the face-down hand, the one that isn’t being played. If Gentaro were here –
“Cheat!” Ramuda calls, sparkling with triumph. “That wasn’t even a good lie.”
Dice picks up the pile of cards, shuffles back through it to find Ramuda’s most recent cheat. It turns out his opponent had snuck a four in with the queen he’d played two turns ago; the bastard. Then he sorts his hand again, squints at his options.
“Two sixes,” he tries, setting them down without guile. He’s stuck with most of the deck, which is bad, but it means he’s well-equipped to call bullshit, which is good, but he’s also up against Ramuda, which is horrible. And, worst of all, he still hasn’t addressed the elephant in the room – well, the herd of them. Fling Posse could start a goddamn zoo, at this rate, with all the elephants they’re ignoring.
“One five!”
“One six. Hey, are you in a good mood or something? You ain’t usually this nice to me.”
“Hmmmmm?” Ramuda regards him over the top of his cards. “I have nooooo idea what you mean. Is it that weird to think I want to have fun together?”
“Uh, yeah. Usually, your idea of fun’s more… I dunno, malicious?”
“Sounds like you’re confusing me with Gentaro. He’s the mean one in Fling Posse, not me!”
“Nah, Gentaro’s different. He’s, like…” Dice hunts for the words, has to discard about half of them. “Yeah, he screws around, but I don’t think he hurts people on purpose.”
Because, in Dice’s association with him, he hasn’t. Even when talking to Jinguji, Gentaro really, honestly hadn’t seemed to consider that it might hurt Dice or Ramuda. Or, if he had, he’d probably figured it’d smooth out down the line. Somehow.
“So you’re saying I do?”
The difference is that, while Gentaro might not have realised the consequences of his actions for Dice, Ramuda absolutely has to know what he’s doing. There has to be some game afoot, somewhere. Somewhere amongst the macarons and the card games and the openness in Ramuda’s body language as they sit here, amongst their life as teammates and housemates and friends, and the embers of the feelings Dice had for him. But, at the same time, that isn’t a satisfying answer, especially when Ramuda’s eyes are pinning him like that. And when he manages to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, it already feels much too late.
“No,” he says. “I don’t. Or, I think, if you do, it’s not cause you want to.”
“That doesn’t sound like it means anything, though!”
“I mean… I mean that you hurt people on purpose, but you don’t like it.”
“That isn’t true, either! Doesn’t everyone have at least one person they really, really want to hurt?” Ramuda lays down a pair of cards, without breaking his train of thought. “Like a bad ex, or a colleague who’s scheming against them, or a friend who keeps dragging them down. Two sevens.”
And here they are, again, at the issue of Jinguji Jakurai – whichever of those he is to Ramuda. Dice takes a deep breath, ready to argue, but it just makes him realise that the air tastes… delicious, actually. Kind of like macarons. “Hey, uh, sorry to change the subject, but when’s the baking done?”
Ramuda shoots to his feet. His cards scatter across the floor, displaying his entire hand; yeah, lucky for Dice they’re ending this round now, before he has to pay up. He tears into the kitchen without another word, and Dice is left to salvage the rest of the deck. The third hand, the blind one, taunts him as he sweeps it into the pile.
*
Once he’s restored some order and made it into the kitchen, he finds Ramuda balancing a baking tray on top of the stove. The macarons seem mostly fine, if a little brown on top; they’re not perfectly round, either, but it’s all the same once they’ve been chewed.
“Now we have to wait for them to cool.”
Dice leans against the kitchen counter, and watches Ramuda as he fusses with the trays. “There’s a lot of waiting in this recipe, huh.”
“That’s how you know it’s good!”
“Can’t we make it go faster?”
“We could put them in the fridge, but it’d still take ages.”
“And how bad’d it be if we put them together now?”
“The frosting would melt. And the anticipation of eating is better if you draw it out, anyway.”
“That’s not like you.”
“Hmm?” Ramuda cocks his head inquisitively. “Which part?”
“Drawing stuff out.”
“If you want this to be over so soon, you can just tell me.”
That sentence goes straight through him in a way it probably shouldn’t. Dice forces himself not to ask for clarification. “Nah, I’m having fun. I’m just hungry, is all.”
“Okay,” Ramuda says, “then let’s eat!”
With that, he fetches the frosting and fills a bag with it. Tongue poking out of his mouth, he pipes out the filling onto half the tray of macarons, radiating fierce concentration. Then he makes each of them into tiny sandwiches, laying a second half on top with delicate hands. And then Dice, deciding to jump in, sets each little macaron-sandwich onto a plate, because it’s better than waiting and letting the guilt seep in. It doesn’t work that well, in practice, because the heat of the macaron halves melts the filling and absorbs it. But they stick together, at least.
“Hey, can I do anything else?”
“Nope! I don’t trust you to do this nicely, and there’s only one icing bag anyway. Just sit tight, Dice.”
So Ramuda works, and Dice watches and does his job where necessary. At last, after a surprisingly short time, they’re done. Dice regards the tray of macarons before them. They don’t look perfect, of course, but he guesses that’s how homemade things are. The charm’s supposed to make up for it.
Fuck, he’s going to have to try one, isn’t he. Even though there’s no way he can keep anything down right now.
Sure enough, Ramuda finally turns to him, macaron in hand. “Open wide!”
“Huh?”
“So I can feed you one, of course.”
“No way, man. That’s, like, a thing couples do. It’d be way too weird.”
“But we live together like a couple!”
“We have separate rooms, dumbass.”
“But we go out together all the time.”
“Yeah, as friends. That’s what normal friends do.”
“But you’re tooooootally in love with me!”
Dice’s heart stops, doesn’t kick up again for an infinity. Because Ramuda might not be able to tell the truth, but Dice can’t lie. He’s never really had the will to deceive that his teammates do, that obsession with obscuring his true self, and it’s never really bothered him. Not until this very moment, and how he can’t hide the way that comment shatters him.
“Oh! Is this an opening?”
But he has a slightly more immediate problem: Ramuda swoops in and stuffs a macaron into his open mouth before he can protest. Dice doesn’t think he’s imagining the way Ramuda’s hand lingers against his lips, or the shadow of something more in his gaze.
And he’s not hungry at all, even though he hasn’t eaten today, but he makes himself chew it. It’s awful, trying to navigate the whole thing around his mouth, and the macaron itself is unpleasantly warm, and when he swallows, it goes down like sandpaper. He’s never turned down food before, but this makes him want to throw up.
“See?” Ramuda’s smile could break Dice’s heart, if there was anything left of it. “Don’t things taste better when you’ve made them yourself?”
He’d barely registered the macaron against his tongue, hardly noticed the way it had crumbled under his teeth, and now it’s sitting like a stone in the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t even noticed the lumps Ramuda had been so worried about, or how melted the filling had been, or the crispiness of them overcooking. But he can’t say that, not when he can still feel the ghost of Ramuda’s touch on his lips. So Dice, an honest gambler, offers up all he has left.
“Yeah,” he says weakly. “Yeah, they’re the best, Ramuda.”
There are, it turns out, things that need to be washed up; a couple of utensils that can’t go in the dishwasher, or that Ramuda would rather do by hand. The icing bag, the piping tip, the baking tray. So Dice washes, and Ramuda dries – that is, until Ramuda complains about Dice’s sloppy technique, and they change jobs. They go faster, after that.
At some point, Dice glances across out of the corner of his eye, sees Ramuda’s head bowed over the sink as he works. It’s strange, seeing his neck exposed like this, when he’s normally so careful about his vulnerabilities. There’s a dark shadow under the pink of his hair: his roots are starting to come in again. Dice had helped him bleach them, a while back, so he could redo the colour over it. They’d thrown on an episode of some show in the background and talked shit while the bleach soaked in, and, a little later, they’d not-really-watched a second episode while the dye did the same. It had been an ordinary day, between them.
But how long ago had that been? It could have been two weeks, or it could have been five. All he knows is that it was sometime before everything fell apart.
It hits him, then, that maybe their best days are behind them. That maybe Fling Posse – no, that Dice and Gentaro and Ramuda together – peaked a long time ago. And there was no way he could’ve known, at the time, but it’s too late now. There’s nothing left for them, from here, but the downhill and the crush and the silence.
Is that really how it has to go?
“Dice! Catch!”
He comes back to himself just in time to field the dish towel Ramuda pelts at him. He almost fumbles it and embarrasses himself, but luckily his reflexes haven’t deserted him yet. Then he dries his hands absently, hangs the towel back up over the oven handle. And then: they’re done. The kitchen is clean, the macarons have been constructed, Ramuda is contentedly munching on one of them, and Dice…
Dice still feels like shit, actually.
It sucks that he has to bring this up now, and ruin everything. But, well, one of the three of them needs to be honest, and it was always going to be him.
Gentaro would probably think it’s poetic: that only now, at what might be the end of his association with two liars, is he discovering the impulse to lie himself. To tell an honest lie, coming from an honest place, to preserve a dishonest truth. Dice just thinks it’s awful.
(Maybe this would be easier if he knew whether he were still in love with Ramuda. Or maybe that would just make things worse – either the knowledge that he is, or the knowledge that he was, and he’d lost it. Possibly for good.)
(But that isn’t true, either. Because Ramuda’s someone he could fall for, over and over again.)
“Ramuda,” he begins, “I have to tell you something. Like, something really serious.”
Ramuda pops the rest of his food into his mouth, chews and swallows it. There’s filling on his fingers, because it’s seeped out of the misshapen macaron, and he licks them clean. Without subtext or subtlety; he’s like a kid, trying to get every last crumb. But then those blue eyes turn on Dice, and there’s nothing innocent there at all.
“Hmm. But I think I already know what it is.”
That knocks the wind clean out of him. “Huh?”
“Well, I don’t know, but I can guess. You think I hadn’t noticed you can’t look me in the eye? Or that you never visit Gentaro any more? You went and poked around in things that don’t concern you.”
He looks at Ramuda. The macarons are cooling on the counter behind him, the garish pink unnatural in the white light of the kitchen. There’s no getting around this, any more, and he wets his lips.
“How’d you know we went to see Jinguji?”
Ramuda’s eyes go hard at the edges, and it’s not because of his enemy’s name. “I knew something was going on, of course. You and Gentaro have been sneaking around for weeks, and you aren’t as good at lying as you think. But, actually, you just told me.”
There it is. There’s the catch, that Ramuda’s been buttering him up today to wrench the truth out of him, and it rips through Dice like a knife. Because he had known – he’d known, when he’d walked away from Gentaro at Shinjuku Central Hospital, that he would be the one to crack first. That Ramuda and Gentaro can spin their lies in circles all they like, but he’s not on their level. But just because he’d known it’d come to this doesn’t mean he’s prepared for it. There’s bile rising at the back of his throat, and it tastes exactly like macarons.
“So,” Ramuda says. His voice hasn’t dropped to the bass pitch he uses when he’s really angry, but he’s speaking seriously, every syllable tightly clipped, and there’s a tension to his whole body. “Was it your idea, to go dredging up my past, or was it Gentaro’s?”
There’s no time to think. “Mine.”
“Liar.” Ramuda’s mouth presses into a thin line. “What’s Gentaro done to win you over? Oh, well, I guess it doesn’t matter. What did you think, Dice?”
“Huh?”
“Of my very, very last gift to you!”
This feels a lot like whiplash, tastes a lot like being punched in the gut. “Gift?” he echoes flatly.
“See, everything’s aaaaaaall ruined! So I thought you’d want to have fun with me, one more time, before things fall apart.”
Dice swallows, even though his throat is completely dry. “Like, something to remember you by?”
“Yup. I’m not usually sentimental, or anything, but… I had a good time with you, Dice.”
“So you did have an ulterior motive today.”
“Of course I did! It’s like you don’t know a-ny-thing about me at all.”
“Okay,” he says, “what the fuck?”
“I thought I was explaining it clearly, but I guess I’ll repeat myself and spell it out. There’s really noooooo way at all I can keep going after this, not after you two betrayed my trust! So you can move out later this week, and then it’s bye-bye Fling Posse.”
He can hardly believe what he’s hearing. But, at last, there’s the malice that isn’t malice, the pain that Ramuda doesn’t want to inflict. And it clicks into place, one action, one tiny wound at a time: that Ramuda doesn’t seem to know any way to stop hurting but to hurt more. Dice has met his type before, the type who think winning means walking away from a fight with the least number of injuries, and it’s no way to live.
And Dice wants to choose Ramuda, but he doesn’t want that to mean choosing hurt.
“It’s not – it’s not over. You’re the only one who wants that, and I won’t let it happen.”
“And what can you do to stop it? Snap your fingers, and fix all our problems? Wave a magic wand, and make me into someone without secrets? Go back in time, and stop Gentaro from sticking his nose in my business?” Ramuda tips his head, with a strange glee in his eyes. But it’s a self-aware glee, like underneath he’s not really enjoying himself at all. “Oh, I know – go back in time, and stop us from ever meeting in the first place? That’d make everything better!”
The last one destroys him. It really, truly, cuts to the core of what Dice is scared of, but he makes himself keep talking. “No. I know we’re a mess, right now, but… I don’t think we’d be better off if we’d never met.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“No, come on, that’s bullshit. You don’t really think so.”
“Does it matter if I do?”
“Like hell it does!”
“Okay, okay, but we’re getting sidetracked. I’ve decided to say bye, even if you haven’t, but there’s one more thing we need to check off! Cause there’s still something you want from me, isn’t there?”
It’s a sudden change of topic, and he’s not done with his rebuttal. But, as usual, Ramuda leaves him no choice but to be dragged along. It’s like acting in a play where only one of them has the script, and Dice doesn’t know its name or genre or how it ends; only who he’s supposed to be. “Huh?”
“Come on, Dice, we both know what it is.”
“N… no? I don’t?”
“Jeez! And I thought you were supposed to be the honest one.”
Ramuda takes a step towards him, hooks his arms around Dice’s neck, pulls him down. And their lips meet.
Later, he would try to remember anything about the kiss. If he’d had the presence of mind to reciprocate at all, or just let it wash over him; if Ramuda had actually tasted like sugar, the way Dice had always thought he would; how his lips had felt against Dice’s own; whether the kiss had been gentle or rough, or just uniquely Ramuda. But in the moment, the surge of want that had coursed through him had blurred all the details – want, and his eyes stinging like he was about to cry.
“There,” Ramuda says, stepping back. There’s nothing at all in his expression, except a faint, almost sarcastic amusement. No, not sarcastic – just self-deprecating. “Now I’ve given you everything I can.”
His voice is almost gentle. Dice hates it, hates hearing him like that, hates how he can’t tell if he’s shaking from the kiss or the fact that this is supposed to be a goodbye or the adrenaline spiking through him. Because he has one bet left to make, before closing time.
“You’re horrible,” he manages at last. His vision’s swimming, but he can’t let himself blink. If he does, if he lets himself cry, then it really will be over. “You’re really the worst, Ramuda.”
“Now you know,” Ramuda says. “I told you we’d only keep hurting each other, and I was right. And after Jakurai warned you about me, too.”
“No. No, I mean – you don’t get it. You really still don’t get it.”
“What is it you think I don’t get?” He gestures expansively. There’s too much of him right now, too much, and that’s his biggest tell. “I’m waiting! If you think that isn’t going to happen, then prove me wrong, Dice! Or, if you can’t, then hurry up and walk away already.”
Dice blinks, and his tears overspill. They’re too hot against his face, the sensation sharp on his skin. But he makes himself meet Ramuda’s eyes, pours every ounce of himself into his gaze and his words and his feelings. “You’re horrible, and I know you might be bad for me, and I’m still choosing you.”
Because he is. Because the only way to stop hurting and being hurt, that he knows, is to choose kindness. And to keep choosing it, no matter how hard it becomes.
Ramuda, shocked into silence, stares openly. It’s a new expression on him, and so honestly unflattering in comparison to his usual. It’s good to be reminded he’s human too, sometimes.
“So what!” he says at last, tone sharper than Dice has ever heard it. “Gentaro didn’t.”
"Gentaro did!” Dice snaps. He scrubs irritably at his eyes. “Jinguji kept spewing all this shit about you, and I didn’t know how to tell him to fuck off, but Gentaro kept saying he was wrong. And he’s been so damn weird lately cause he knows he fucked up!”
“But Gentaro still went to ask Jakurai in the first place, so who cares!”
“He didn’t know how else to understand you.”
“Then he should’ve just left it alone.”
“That’s not good enough. He wants to know everything about you, and I – I do too. I want all of you, Ramuda. Even the bits you don’t feel like you can show me. And you don’t have to give it all at once, or anything, but that’s not gonna change.”
Roughly, he pulls Ramuda into a hug. It doesn’t go over well: the man in his arms is completely rigid, and he doesn’t move to hold Dice back. But, after what feels like a million years, his hands come up and fist themselves in his shirt, with surprising strength. As they stand there, Dice can’t even tell which one of them is shaking. Maybe they both are.
Is he expected to say something? Because he can’t leave things like this, and he wants to, but there’s nothing obvious to say in this situation. Finally, something floats up from his memory; it’ll have to do. Ramuda will have to understand. Dice tucks his head in and speaks against that strawberry hair.
“You’re a good person,” he says. “And maybe you’re kinda messed up, but I wouldn’t stick around if you weren’t.”
“Shut up,” Ramuda mutters into his chest, but he still doesn’t pull away. “Shut up, Dice.”
Dice does. He’s made his case already, and it hasn’t been completely rejected, so now he just has to wait. So he curls his arms a little tighter, and lets his friend speak first.
“You really are stupid,” Ramuda says at last, an eternity or two later. The words are muffled, but the honesty in them isn’t. “So, so, so, so,
so
stupid.”
“Maybe,” he says, “but I know when I’m dealt a hand worth going all-in on.”
“Not everything’s a game, you know.”
“But I’m serious about games.”
“Hmmm.” Ramuda’s head is pressed so close to Dice’s chest that he can smell him, shampoo and something sweet and something that’s just himself. That Dice imagines he can feel the flutter of his eyelashes when he blinks. “It could be fun, to be something you’re serious about.”
“Dumbass,” he says gruffly. “I’ve been serious about you from the start.”
The thing is, though: this puzzle has three pieces, not two. And the other thing is that, while Ramuda’s the most complicated one, Dice doesn’t know if he can rotate himself to accommodate Gentaro as well, or if there’s a way to do that which also links up Gentaro and Ramuda. But god, does he want to. There’s no point unless all three of them are together.
He wants to raise the issue of their third member, he really does. But Ramuda moves to look up at him, finally, in this strange frozen instant, and Dice realises: I could kiss him, again, and he wouldn’t complain. Actually, the look in his eyes is half tender and half challenge, and almost makes it seem like he wants to be kissed. And Ramuda’s words have never been honest, but maybe, right now, his body language is –
The intercom goes off, loud as a jet engine and twice as violent. The pair of them startle like wild deer, and the moment is gone.
“Oh,” Ramuda says, after he breaks away. He’s as composed as always, and doesn’t look like someone who was trembling in Dice’s arms a few seconds ago – or like someone who’d been making kiss me eyes at him, either. “That’s Gentaro now.”
“Huh?”
Ramuda shakes something out of his sleeve and holds it up. It takes Dice’s addled brain a couple of seconds to process what he’s seeing: the asshole has his phone. He waggles it back and forth, winking as obnoxiously as possible. “I’ve got my sources.”
“Hey! When did you get that?”
“You need to stop keeping things in your back pockets, Dice.”
He snatches his phone back, because it’s that or encourage Ramuda’s shit-eating grin. There’s a notification there, of a new message from Gentaro, and it makes something rise in his stomach.
> I’m on my way.
“Ramuda,” he says. “You know I want both of you or nothing at all, right? Like… I can’t do this without Gentaro too.”
“Whoa, all or nothing! Just like a gambler.”
“Can you talk about this properly for one second, man?”
“I’ll take your wager, though.” Ramuda tips his head, shows him a grin that’s brittle at the edges. “If Gentaro can work things out with me – well, with both of us, but mostly me – then I guess we’ll see. But if he doesn’t say sorry, then we’re done. That’s the end of Fling Posse.”
“And.” Dice swallows. Tiptoes out onto even thinner ice, because he doesn’t know if being kissed by Ramuda means he wants him too, but it has to mean something. “And us?”
“Uh-huh. Us, too.”
Gentaro’s proud, and Dice knows that more than just about anyone. And he’s only heard Gentaro apologise once: in that back alley in Shinjuku, after they had gone to meet Jinguji Jakurai. But he has to know he overstepped. He has to, after the last two weeks, after Dice had turned on his heel and walked away from him, because it was that or deal with how weirdly heartbroken Gentaro had seemed.
So it’s looking like even odds. Heads, Gentaro apologises, and Dice can think about the future again. And tails –
If it’s tails, then he’ll keep surviving.
(It’s just that he doesn’t have to. He could see Ramuda and Gentaro every day for the rest of forever, as Fling Posse or as three people who found each other, and never get tired of them.)
The day they’d first met, in a Shibuya alleyway, he’d bet everything he had on Ramuda; so today, having gained the world and lost more, he’ll bet everything he has on Gentaro. Everything he has – and everything he might be able to become.
“Let’s go down to meet him,” Dice says, on the spur of the moment. “And talk it out somewhere else.”
“Huh? But it’s cooooold outside.”
“I know, but… it just seems like the right thing to do, I guess.”
Ramuda looks at him. And maybe this is the first step to getting to mean something, or maybe he’s just deluding himself again, because trying to make sense of Ramuda is like trying to catch smoke with his bare hands. But at last he breaks out into a smile – not his usual blinding grin, but something a little shakier. A little more real. “Okay. Let’s do that, then.”
And they do.