Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
2016
The air is warm and sweet with the humming and twittering of Florida’s local aerofauna; a sugary dance of pollen sweeps through the air and flits against the just-blossomed buds of a bunch of coral honeysuckles. A pair of steel-capped combat boots thump against the already beaten sidewalk, crushing a few disappointingly not-crunchy leaves underfoot.
The jingle of a bell at the door of a local cafe rings out, and the cold swoosh of the cafe’s AC attempts to brush Keith’s thick, dark, hair out of his face. He breathes in the cool lobby through his nose, the sugared milk and comforting coffee beans, and steps into the line that branches from the register.
A few minutes pass, a few patrons take their leave, and then suddenly Keith is approaching the counter with a small paper note carrying three different coffee orders.
“Welcome to Grinds’ Balmera, what are you after on this good morning?” A woman, no older than Keith himself, mans the till. She’s tall, taller than him, and clearly visits the gym just as often; well, what with his two jobs and ever-dwindling free time, probably moreso. He clears his throat in hopes to douse the lasting remnants of his melancholy, voice hoarse from how late he stayed up the night prior, grieving.
“Morning, hey, can I please just grab these?” He slides the small wrinkled note across the bench.
“Of course,” the woman lists the price and offers him the card reader. After he pays, he spots a small booth tucked into a corner, and sets his messenger bag down next to himself. Gently, he wrings his hands, retrieves his phone from the bag, puts it back again, and goes back to wringing his hands.
It’s been a while since he’s visited. Takashi calls Celine often and invites Keith to join, but he doesn’t like looking at the headstone through a laptop – he can’t reach out and brush his hand across the words ‘loving father and beloved hero,’ or set his own flowers against the years-old rock. Keith’s affection is a tangible thing, and now that he’s back after a year away, he can’t help but feel the weight of it on his heart.
Some short time later, his name is being called and he’s breaking back out into the warm Spring air outside the cafe, drinks carrier in hand.
He works down the sidewalk once more, continuing in the direction of the cemetery. Anticipation brews in his gut at the idea of seeing his father after a year; he hasn’t asked Celine to give his father updates on his behalf, wanting, again, to do it himself. To share his life with his father is vulnerable and intimate and something he can’t at all do through the medium of his step-mother.
Eventually, he finds himself in front of a tall set of gates, branded Fernhill Memorial Gardens and Mausoleum. He braces himself. It’s with an emotional sigh, squeezed-shut-eyes, and a shaky lip that he steps through, navigating the cemetery like a second home. Or third, by now. He’d follow his dad anywhere, be it the dusty red plains of Texas, or the windy, coastal retreat of Florida.
2018
The drive home was quiet. Cool AC further dried Keith’s cracked lips and he dreaded the soon-to-be-stinging rash of windburn that he got every single time they visited Florida; aside from that, his head constantly hitting the car window over every other pothole was triggering the beginnings of a headache that he could tell would drag into the evening.
The rich waft of soy and honeyed sauce stirs around them thickly as Takashi closes the door behind them; around Celine’s kitchen, the sound and scent of pork and broccoli sizzles. It triggers a steep rumbling in Keith’s gut, audible and embarrassing – Takashi certainly hadn’t inherited his love of cooking from Ryou.
As they round into the dining room and Keith sets his ratty old messenger bag on the flaky leather couch, Celine pipes up gently, “Hey, boys, how ‘you feeling?”
Her wire-framed glasses are fogged from the steam of the pan in front of her and her small, slightly wrinkled hand grips a wooden spoon. Takashi nods, quiet, thoughtful. Keith sees out of the corner of his eye them both look at him and silently prompt a response. There’s no pressure, but they’re all feeling the same, if not similar, emotional tug. Keith scrunches his nose for a short second, sniffing once. “I’m hungry.”
There’s a pressure softly building behind his eyes and in front of his headache that turns the walk to the dining table into a drag of limbs. He sits heavily in a wood-framed chair. Takashi walks over to the table beneath the TV and retrieves a photo frame, bringing it back and setting it at the head of the table to face the rest of the seats. Celine sets a ceramic crock pot of pork stir fry on the centre of the table and lays a serving spoon beside it, along with a steaming dish of white rice. She sits beside Keith as Takashi takes the seat facing him.
Silently, the three of them clasp their own hands together and bow their heads for a moment. Keith breathes in the scent of salty-sweet sauced pork and sesame-fried vegetables and all he can think of is his father. Ryou’s favourite meal. He’ll blame it on the aroma fogging the room, but Keith’s eyes start to quietly water as he opens them again, looking to his side to find his father smiling back at him from behind a ceramic frame.
His chin is speckled with a salt-and-pepper beard that crawls up his jaw, dressing a set of dimples he never outgrew. Sunspots litter his sternum and the thin silver necklace he was buried with rests atop them; inside it is a photo of himself and baby Keith, held by his mother. Nari. Keith has a copy of the same photo, folded into the back of his phone case next to an emergency twenty-dollar bill.
Celine’s soft hand brushes Keith’s elbow, and he looks over to her with bags under his eyes. She offers him the serving spoon.
It was 10:56pm a few seconds ago. Keith curls into his side, facing away from his glowing red alarm clock and towards his open window. There’s a fly buzzing somewhere in his room, face-butting his walls and door and not realising there is a 3-foot-tall window wide open for it to escape from. A billowing wind creaks his window-shutters half-shut and an owl hoots somewhere in the distance.
Somewhere closer by, a boy misses his dead dad.
When he reaches the kitchen and turns the oven hood’s light on so he doesn’t trip but doesn’t wake his brother and step-mother, he almost trips anyway. Sitting on the lounge, in the dark, is the silhouette of a man. He seems to have a slight stubble - speckled salt and pepper. Keith’s breath catches in his throat. He takes in a shaky inhale.
“...Dad?” The man flinches. It’s then that Keith notices the metallic shimmer on his right arm.
Oh.
“Oh, um… sorry, Takashi.” Keith apologises croakily. His voice breaks.
“It’s okay, Keith.” They sit, or in Keith’s case, stand, with that for a second. “Were you hungry?”
Keith shakes his head. “No, uh… I was gonna go for a ride.” He weakly gestures to the keys sitting in a bowl by the front door.
Takashi notices the leather jacket in his grasp. “Okay.” He sighs. “Be back before mum wakes up.”
Keith nods, not moving.
“Drive safe.” Takashi says finally, earnestly. Keith nods again.
He steps out the front door into a cool but not chilly spring evening. As he tugs on the jacket and his gloves, he turns toward his bike. He slides onto the familiar worn seat and rests his hands on the newly wrapped handlebars, courtesy of Celine. He flexes his hands. Before he leaves, Keith grabs a helmet from where it’s resting in the bike’s storage compartment behind him.
As he sets off into the Floridian evening, he tries to decide where to go; his phone and wallet are at home, so nowhere in town, but the coast is right there. No trunks, either, but he can manage. The beach is going to be empty anyway, this time of night.
A quick glance validates his assumption, the emptiness of the shore beckoning him to walk through its lapping waters. He parks in a small lot beside the boardwalk and locks up.
Down the sand dune and onto the shore, he leaves his clothes, sans boxers, in a pile and makes his way to the water. He’s not a particularly strong swimmer by any means, but he can get by. He drifts on his back along the shallow depths and stares tiredly up into the night sky. A million stars twinkle overhead.
Nostalgically, Keith recalls his father showing him the constellations as a young boy. He would convince his dad to take him out almost every evening, regardless of if it was a school night, simply to teach him the lines to draw between the stars. The path to make.
He sees both dippers. He remembers his father saying that the dippers, big and little, were for all of the dads and for all of their sons.
“One day, when we turn back into stardust, I’ll meet you up there. You’re already my star, though. A beautiful constellation, just like your mother.” He brushed his hand, calloused and dirty from a day's work, across Keith’s forehead. Cradling the back of his head, Ryou lent down to lay a kiss upon his crown.
Keith’s view of the stars turns blurry, so he rotates so that his face is submerged, squeezes the tears from his eyes, and turns again to squat in the shallow water. He rubs at his eyes with a shaky breath.
The ride home has him feeling a little less solemn and a little more loved, and as he pulls into the driveway and walks quietly into the kitchen, he sees the horizon shift from deep navy, twinkling with stars, to a kinder and brighter red.
A slow and gorgeous drifting bolero blesses the beach. The woman, tawny-skinned and deft on the strings, sings the high melody and accompanies herself with her classical guitar. The smooth spring air ripples through her thick brown curls that run down to her waist and carries her voice milkily across the shore. Her song is accompanied by the lilting harmony of the keyboard played by a man that looks to be her twin – equally as tall, equally as thin, with skin as golden-bronze and hair as deep-brown; only, it’s cut significantly shorter, waves cropped at his ears.
Takashi lays on his beach towel as the wind brushes through his hair with a comb of sand; it’d be almost impossible to tell that he was even awake if not for the faint humming from his throat, quiet and sweet. Celine reaches out and gently cards her fingers through his hair, pulling it away from his face.
“You both look so similar to him sometimes.” She says, and it doesn’t slam into Keith with the weight of a brick wall like he thought it might.
“Yeah?” Takashi opens his eyes and smiles at her, almost sadly, but not quite there. There’s still an appreciation for the sentiment.
“Yeah. Your hair is going grey too, just as young,” she says, fiddling with the shallow greys at Takashi’s hairline.
Keith smirks a little, turning his head toward the shifting tide. Back… forth. Back… forth.
Celine gives him a look and chances him a scoff. “Don’t get all high and mighty over there, your hair is getting too long. When’s the last time you had a haircut, hun?”
Her hand retreated from Takashi’s undercut, only to tug on the back of Keith’s ‘unruly mullet.’ He swats her hand away. “There are no good barbers in Arus. Coran has a razor but I would not trust that man with a blade that close to my face.”
“Yeah, he’s not great with hair, but he pours a good tap.” Takashi agrees.
It’s less difficult than it used to be, at least, now that he almost has the money. Five years later, with two jobs that both now pay him his appropriate and full salary, Keith’s savings account is almost there. Almost.
He can nearly hear the creak of old wooden-planked floors, bending under the duress of worn boots and familiar faces, of memories and feelings long buried under the incapacitating grief of bereavement. A yearning that settled in his gut years ago now tugs fiercely, pulling him back to a home that he left, angry, at eight years old. A home that he will soon buy back with all of the nostalgia of a sea turtle returning to her beach of birth, years later.
Keith sits in the hot sand as a warm, Spring-drenched wind hugs around him. He probably does actually need a haircut, he thinks, as a few dark strands sweep in front of his eyes, soon to be tucked back behind his ears by his own deft and calloused hands.
A wave breaks in the distance and its crash is heard all the way from the shore. Noticeably quieter, Keith notices the lack of Spanish-esque music to accompany the melody of the coast, and turns to see the pair collapsing their instruments into various bags. Celine follows his line of sight and turns to where Keith is staring off.
“Takashi, that pair, the one that’s packing up, that’s the kind of music you should hire for the bar. The folk music is nice, but I don’t think it matches the energy you’re trying to go for.” Celine comments, and Keith nods in affirmation. Takashi, having laid back down into the sandy towel, blinks blearily up at them.
“Mmh,” he responds with eloquence, “Kay.”
“Keith, go tip them. Their music was beautiful.” Celine hits him on the back, encouraging him to stand. With her other hand, she fumbles through her beach bag and throws her wallet into his lap. He scoffs and chucks it onto Takashi’s chest.
“Takashi, you do it, and tell them to come back with us when we drive down.”
Takashi, surprisingly, actually stands (albeit with a huff), brushing the sand off his back and board shorts. He climbs the shallow dune up to the boardwalk where the pair are still packing their instruments. Keith can’t hear what they’re saying from down the shore, with only the view of their backs, but he does catch the pianist shucking off his button down shirt to reveal a slim torso with a starburst-shaped scar covering almost the entire expanse.
What could have caused that?
The boy turns toward the water; also, coincidentally, towards Keith. The scar doesn’t reach around to the front of his chest, but it’s a different pull that draws Keith not to look away. His smooth brown chest is littered sparingly with moles and a sheer, almost non-existent layer of hair. It looks so soft.
Though facing him, the boy is completely unaware of Keith’s appreciation; Takashi, however, is not so oblivious. He shoots Keith a look from the boardwalk, a smirk tugging at his cheeks conspicuously. He knows of who Keith’s attraction follows. And this guy? This slender, soft-skinned man who looks to have never touched the concept of a callous in all of his years, with skin stretched taught against his thinly defined muscles? This boy with a mole just above his left hip, drawing Keith’s ever-wandering eyes lower to the dip of his v-line? His happy trail?
It’s a good thing they don’t live in Texas, actually. He’s not massively keen on starting something he can’t finish.