Chapter Text
“Hell yeah!” Samatoki shouts loudly from behind Rio, who is currently hunched behind one of the counter’s plastic water guns, having just scored yet another bull’s-eye. “Ten in a row, baby! Let’s fuckin’ gooo!”
The worker behind the booth looks vaguely uncomfortable, if not a little concerned, as they hand Samatoki yet another ticket. Rio sets his laser-focused sight on another unfortunate target, Samatoki gripping his shoulder behind him in anticipation, both clearly unaware of their surroundings.
Jyuto glances around. Samatoki’s… palpable… excitement, combined with Rio’s freakish sniping ability, is attracting remarkable attention from the people nearby— couples and friend groups openly staring, and some parents trying to rush their gawking, wide-eyed children away from the weird grown men wrecking a kids’ game at the boardwalk.
He swallows the tiny smidgen of pride that bubbles at everyone’s awe (positive or otherwise) at his boyfriend’s prowess, patting a hand on Rio’s shoulder.
“The reservation time is coming up soon,” he says. “We should go if we want to make it in time.”
Rio’s focus breaks, shifting onto Jyuto, before he glances down to the ginormous watch on his wrist.
“Aw, shit,” says Samatoki, “Bunny Boy is right. What time is it?”
“Nineteen,” says Rio. “We should start heading there now, if we want to be early.”
Samatoki rolls his eyes. “Seriously? The reservation is in an hour, you fucking weirdos.” He holds up the large fistful of crumpled tickets he’d been holding. “We can at least trade in some of these before we go.”
“You’re crumpling them, dimwit,” says Jyuto, holding out his hand. “They won’t be able to scan them like that. Give me them.”
Samatoki rolls his eyes again, but relinquishes the tickets anyway. “Whatever, man, be my guest.”
“And it doesn’t hurt to be early for things,” Jyuto levels a glower at Samatoki, “Something I truly hope you’ll learn one of these days, considering the number of times you’ve kept us waiting for hours on end, only for us to have to go wrench your sorry ass out of bed ourselves.”
Samatoki’s temper, with as short a fuse as ever, predictably explodes. “Maybe if y’all didn’t always wake me up at buttfuck in the morning, we wouldn’t have that issue!”
“Two o’clock, Samatoki. You sleep in past two o’clock in the afternoon! On a good day!”
Samatoki grabs Jyuto by the collar, pulling him close to his face. The force makes a couple of the tickets float sadly away from Jyuto’s grasp. “Eat my fucking dick, Bunny Cop!”
“Please stop, you two,” Rio puts his hands between their chests, ever the mediator, and Jyuto and Samatoki calm down immediately, like clockwork.
He holds his hand out to Jyuto. “I will assist you.”
Jyuto sighs, and accepts gratefully. “Thank you.”
“So you think Mr. Leatherhands carrying those things is gonna be better than me?” Samatoki challenges.
“Well, he’s got a much keener sense of grace than you, for starters—“ Jyuto looks at the tickets in Rio’s massive, calloused grasp, and as if on cue, one of them slips out, joining its crumpled, fallen brethren on the boardwalk’s wooden floor.
Maybe, for once, Samatoki has a point.
“Trading them now would be a good idea,” says Rio.
Jyuto watches the ticket flop weakly in the breeze. “I suppose you’re right,” he relents, cursing all of them for not thinking to bring a damn bag.
“Oh, now you agree?!” Samatoki borderline shrieks, making Jyuto wince.
“Good Lord, do you have an off button somewhere?”
“What’d you fuckin’ say to me?!”
Rio not-so-subtlely moves so he’s walking between them instead of next to them. “Energy spent arguing is energy wasted,” he says. “We must cooperate to complete this mission before we recharge.”
Jyuto can practically feel Samatoki’s eyeroll from a mile away. “Man, you really know how to up the cringey dad-humor, don’t ya?”
Rio grins. “I shall take that as a compliment.”
They stroll down the boardwalk, looking at each booth for the different prizes they offer. Giant rainbow lollipops, mountains of cotton candy, weird little mint candy cigarettes, all of which Rio refuses, due to their “excessive use of artificial coloring”. Kitschy t-shirts of the city, with big lettering and drawings of the surrounding beach, apparently “made of the cheapest shit known to man”, and “how the fuck could anyone stand to wear that?” Random stuffed animals, and little trinkets which look nice, but are cheap ticket-wise, so they wouldn’t be able to spend them all on just that.
They all end up getting one thing each—Samatoki gets a little snowglobe, which he’d been utterly fascinated by; (“A snowglobe in the middle of August? Real shit?”) Rio gets a t-shirt with “YOKOHAMA” printed in quite possibly the tackiest font ever, despite Samatoki’s wrinkling his nose in disgust upon touching the material; (“I quite like it,” Rio had said. “I don’t mind the fabric, either. I think it’s comfortable.” “Bro, you could wear a fuckin’ plastic bag as clothes and still be comfortable.” “Ignore him, Rio, it looks very nice. The fashionista’s just being a brat.” “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, asshole!”) And Jyuto gets a little keychain, a photo of the boardwalk’s view embedded in a little square of acrylic, which will be nice to wear to work as a subtle pick-me-up for when the workday gets too annoying. (And, Lord, has it been annoying, lately.)
But now they’re wandering the booths, trying to find something worth spending the massive amount of tickets they have left, and with each minute that passes, the more hope they lose.
“Well, now we’re actually runnin’ outta time,” says Samatoki, pointing at the now-setting sun in the distance. “So we better decide real soon, ‘cause I’m fuckin’ starving.”
Jyuto sighs, pulling out his phone to check the time. 7:49. They have ten minutes. “I knew we shouldn’t have done this now, knowing you two picky knuckleheads.”
“What, you finally got a genius suggestion, dickweed?!”
“Well, we’ve walked this entire area and still couldn’t find anything else to do with the tickets. I don’t suppose you have a better suggestion than just calling it?”
“Tch,” Samatoki crosses his arms, silence admitting that Jyuto is right.
“What about that one?” Rio pipes up, pointing ahead of them to a small booth off to the side that none of them had noticed before. Trust the soldier to be able to spot a target from anywhere. “I don’t believe we’ve been to that one, yet.”
“No shit,” Samatoki squints into the distance. “How the hell’d you see that from here?”
They make their way to the booth, their last bastion of hope. Upon getting closer, it becomes apparent that the booth only has stuffed animals—a smiling rainbow unicorn, a teddy bear wearing a t-shirt similar to the larger, human-sized versions…
And right off to the corner, a medium-sized, grey bunny with stubby little arms and legs, big floppy ears, no mouth, and green plastic eyes.
Just like—
“Well, shit,” says Samatoki, “any takers?”
He had one just like it—tan, a little larger. During the worst of his nightmares, holding it made him feel safe, forget about the loneliness of waking up to a cold, empty house, about the awful memories swirling around fresh in his head.
He has no idea where it is, now. He’d almost forgotten it existed.
“Jyuto? Jyutooo—“
He startles to attention, Rio and Samatoki staring at him with confusion evident on their faces. “The hell’re you starin’ at, man?”
He clears his throat. “Nothing,” he says stupidly, still reeling from the sudden memory it brought upon. Samatoki looks in the direction Jyuto had been, and realization dawns on his face.
“A bunny plushie?” Samatoki says, a hint of curiosity in his voice. “Heh heh, it kinda looks like you. Almost looks like it’s frowning, too.”
Jyuto sputters indignantly, nothing intelligible coming out, as his brain attempts to process the way Samatoki said that. Not… insultingly, like he usually does. More like…
As if expecting Samatoki to say something else stupid, Rio steps in. “You can ignore him,” he reassures. “I will get you the stuffed animal if you want him.”
Jyuto manages to snap out of it, straightening his back a little, trying to feel a bit more dignified. “That’s quite alright,” he says. “I wouldn’t want something so childish.”
“Bullshit!” Samatoki interjects. “I thought you were gonna start droolin’, staring at that thing. You obviously want it.”
“Asshole, what the hell are you talking abou—“
“I’m inclined to agree with Samatoki.”
Jyuto whirls around to Rio, betrayed. “Rio?! Not you, too!”
“Plus,” says Samatoki, already walking toward the booth, “It’s just the amount of tickets we have left.”
Jyuto follows, looking at the tag attached to the bunny’s foot.
Ninety tickets. How fucking perfect.
“… You two really don’t want anything else?”
“I’m good,” says Samatoki.
“As am I,” says Rio.
“’Sides, what else would you want, anyway? We kinda exhausted our options, here.”
They hadn’t really thought about this at all when they got carried away at the games. At a place like this, of course there are seldom prizes oriented to their demographic. None of them have anyone else to give a gift to, either.
And as much as he would never, ever admit it to a single soul on the planet, it’s not like he doesn’t want the bunny; he actually really, really does want it, at least subconsciously. Feels a fondness for it, like it’s already his, like he’s had it and loved it for years, which he knows, objectively, is merely a product of projection, and could easily be ignored if he simply walked away. But he can’t, because they’re here, too, and maybe they know him well enough at this point to know when he wants something—maybe they’ve broken through the veneer of pride and poise, dug deep and learned the subtle expressions he’d tried so hard to hide that betray his true emotions. The idea of that makes him feel… something—something weird, that he can’t put his finger on.
“Welp, guess that decides it.”
“Huh?!”
“We’ll take that one,” Samatoki says to the person behind the booth, pointing at the bunny. Rio hands the tickets to them.
“You buffoons! I’m not carrying a stuffed bunny into a public restaurant!”
“Fear not,” says Rio, “I shall carry him for you.”
“You—!” Jyuto exclaims, then sighs in defeat, finding it hard to remain irritated at Rio for long, for any reason. “Fine. Have it your way, if there’s really nothing else you want.”
Rio gleams at that, taking the plush from the worker.
They finally make their way to the restaurant, walking at a faster pace than usual to make it there quicker, the sea-salt wind feeling like it’s blowing harder, now that the sun has set. At some point, Samatoki lags behind a bit, and Jyuto turns to him, about to tell him off for being a slug, before Samatoki motions him to come closer.
“He really likes doin’ stuff for us,” he remarks quietly into Jyuto’s ear as they watch Rio carrying the bunny in front of them. “Look at him. He’s so damn happy, it’s like he’s fuckin’ glowing over there.”
Despite it being an odd remark to make out of the blue, he’s right. There’s a subtle bounce in Rio’s step now, holding the little bunny in his arms like precious cargo, not giving a single damn about the stares he’s attracting. Even Samatoki has a little gleam in his eye, wearing an uncharacteristically soft smile, like he’s sharing Rio’s joy in “doin’ stuff” for Jyuto, in his own way.
It makes that strange, unfamiliar emotion bubble in Jyuto’s chest again. Having them genuinely want to see him happy, wanting to do things for him they think he’ll like, knowing his preferences like the back of their hands…
He’s never felt that before, with anyone, until he met them. Not even his own parents did this. Nor did he, though their relationship never had the opportunity to get to that point.
He looks at Rio ahead of them, completely oblivious to their conversation, the image making him smile a little.
Well, if anything, at least they’re happy doing it.