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Tokyo was a big place, Karamatsu knew, and Tokyo had all types. It wasn’t like he’d never seen them around, those men who liked other men. He’d seen them standing around with their friends, gossiping or fixing their makeup, though he’d been informed, tartly enough, that you couldn’t always tell just by looking at a guy. Not all of them wore rainbow wigs on the streets of Shinjuku.
Some of them, it seemed, looked just like normal salarymen. Or were just normal salarymen, he supposed. He felt like something like that should show, in your face or in your clothes or in your mannerisms. He certainly felt like everyone could see him laid bare and open whenever he caught himself staring too long at another man’s rear end. He’d page through his magazines when no one was around and allow himself to run one slow finger over the toned bodies inside, staring long and hard at lean muscles rather than the clothes that covered them. He’d blush then, a deep, private scarlet. You had to be able to see it, right? He felt like a goddamn open book.
It was so much easier to look at girls, to swoon over soft curves and pouty lips. It wasn’t as if he didn’t like them. He felt unconflicted looking at a girly mag because he was pretty sure all five of his brothers had the exact same one. The men, though. The men. He was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to make his blood go just as hot as the girls did. He was definitely sure he wasn’t supposed to be looking. So he didn’t. Not outside.
Maybe it was because he was so careful about not looking too hard where others might see, or maybe he was as dumb as everyone said. Or maybe there really was no way to tell just by looking at someone. Either way, he didn’t catch onto the wild double life of the salaryman sitting next to him for far too long. And maybe, just maybe, the real reason was that the man wasn’t bothering to live a double life at all.
He certainly wasn’t hiding the way he looked at Chibita, anyway.
Karamatsu noticed it between bites of chikuwa and he damn well nearly choked on it. The man was neat and clean-cut, the kind of guy that probably never ran out on a bill. And he was watching Chibita with open appreciation.
Karamatsu forced himself to keep chewing, and he shifted his attention to Chibita. He was humming as he worked, one of those silly little oden songs that Karamatsu didn’t understand, not for one minute, but that managed to make his heart do little flip-flops all the same. Karamatsu could see the way that his muscular shoulders shifted beneath that baggy shirt of his, and the way his hips swayed to his own music. His cheeks were rosy in the heat of the steam and his lips had that pleased little quirk to them that only seemed to come out when oden was involved.
No wonder the man was staring. Karamatsu was hard-pressed to keep from doing it himself. Instead, he dropped his eyes back to his plate. Safer that way.
He was so intent on his plate and the nervous rhythm his shoe was scuffing out against the pavement that he almost missed it. The thing. The big thing. As it was, he glanced up just in time to see the man leave — and just in time for him to slip something else in there along with the cash he owed for his meal. It took a second for Karamatsu to make sense of the little slip of paper and the bold strokes that had been written upon it. It was a phone number. The man had slipped Chibita his goddamn phone number, and he’d done it with a wink.
And Chibita, fuck, Chibita had smiled at him. There was no annoyance, no disgust. None of that famous temper. Just a little bit of playfulness to his grin as he’d taken his money and wished his (paying) customer goodnight.
They’d been flirting, Karamatsu realized, and right under his damn nose.
He didn’t even notice how he’d been gaping until Chibita gave him a pointed look. “Shut your mouth, idjit. You’ll get flies.”
He shut it quick, with an almost audible snap. He swallowed and tried to right the world even as it tilted. “But he…”
Chibita shrugged as he put the money away, and Karamatsu was dizzyingly, bewilderingly relieved to see him drop the slip of paper into the trash. “It happens sometimes. I don’t think they really mean anything by it,” he said.
Karamatsu sputtered a little. Only Chibita would get actual phone numbers and think they’d been anything other than an explicit invitation. “But he was undressing you with his eyes!” he burst out, and abruptly felt his cheeks heat. Fuck.
Chibita looked a little thrown by that one, but he just shrugged again, a little less sure this time, and closed the money box. His cheeks, Karamatsu noticed, had gone an especially fetching shade of pink. “It’s just because I’m so small,” he said, and his lips twisted even as he ducked his head. “Get a few beers into them, and they keep talking about how cute I am.”
Well, Karamatsu reasoned, that was probably because he was. Chibita was incredibly cute, and anyone with eyes could see it. Sure, his terrifying devotion to street food took the edge off of all that sweetness, but most of his customers probably didn’t know about that — or his experience with kidnapping. They just saw his soft lines and knew, just as surely as Karamatsu did, that he would fit perfectly in their arms.
Karamatsu swallowed. “This — this happens a lot?” he asked, but he knew even as he did what the answer was. Why the hell wouldn’t it? Why the hell hadn’t he ever considered this before, that everyone else could see the same damn thing that Karamatsu had been trying so hard to ignore?
Chibita hummed noncommittally. “Sometimes,” he said, and poked a skewer into one of the vats.
Karamatsu hesitated a moment, wondering if he really wanted to continue down this line of questioning. But the curiosity inside him would not be sated, not even with all the trepidation in the world. “Have you ever… Y’know…”
Chibita squinted at him. Then his eyes widened in understanding. “Called them? Fuck no. Wouldn’t want to scare off any customers,” he said.
Karamatsu bit at the inside of his lip and tried to ignore the way his stomach curled in on itself. That made sense. Chibita wouldn’t want to weird anyone out.
Chibita kept talking, seemingly ignorant to the storm clouds Karamatsu could hardly keep off his face. “Like what would I do if it was a shitty date or something? They’d never come back and I’d be out a paying customer. The trick, Karaboy, is to keep them hungry,” he said.
And then he winked.
Karamatsu nearly swallowed his damn tongue. When he’d retrieved it from its journey down his throat, he finally stammered out, “But— But you like girls. I saw you. With…” He trailed off again, and was barely able to tack on a lame little “y’know.”
All at once, Chibita’s face shuttered. There was a reason why they never talked about her and why Karamatsu had always kept quiet about witnessing their brief tryst. He didn’t say anything for several long minutes. Instead, his busied himself with other things around the cart. Shuffling away some dirty dishes, wiping down the back counter.
Karamatsu felt even smaller. “Chibita—”
“I like both,” Chibita finally said, and there was something defiant in his voice, a strong backbone to cover up an old wound. “And that was a long time ago.”
Both…? Karamatsu felt like something that was hot and cold at the same time was trickling down his spine to pool in the pit of his stomach. “So you don’t mind when…?” he trailed off, not even sure how he wanted to finish that question.
Chibita’s eyebrow quirked. “Guys hit on me?” He gave Karamatsu a long, measuring look. Then, “Nope.”
The hot turned to fire. The cold turned to ice. Karamatsu trembled a little from the combination. His mind was full now, full. Of the way that man had looked at Chibita. Of the way Chibita had smiled back. Of the way his lips had curled around that little “nope”. Of what might happen, one day, if a man approached Chibita somewhere other than the cart.
There was a flash of something hot in his mind then, something steamy and sweet with far too much skin, and Karamatsu shook his head to dislodge those mental images from his head. Chibita might say yes one day, and his mind balked at that for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
It was just bizarre, he decided. And that was it. His fingers curled against the counter top, and he could feel his nails catch on the wooden grain. “But don’t you— Don’t you think that’s kind of obscene?” he asked.
Chibita’s eyebrows jumped and he settled back on his heels. “Not a question I ever thought I’d hear you ask,” he muttered. “What the hell do you mean, anyway?”
Karamatsu hesitated. That was a dangerous note in Chibita’s voice, and he knew it. He was going to have to tread softly here. “Just… Doing that out in the open like that? At work?” He paused, trying to force his tongue to be anything but tied. “I mean, all those men… They don’t come just because you flirt with them, do you?”
“Excuse me?” Both of Chibita’s hands landed flat against his workstation, and the sound was enough to make Karamatsu jump. “Are you trying to say my oden’s not reason enough?”
“No!” Karamatsu said, because he was confused but he wasn’t fucking suicidal. “But…” He thought about the way Chibita had smiled at that man, and the way the man’s answering grin had gone a little hot, a little dopey at the attention. Karamatsu knew he’d be no better off if Chibita looked at him that way. “Smiling at them like that can’t hurt. You must get a lot of guys who come back just for that.”
The rage was melting away from Chibita’s tiny body, leaving something like confusion in its wake. He looked at Karamatsu like he’d never seen him before, eyes roving up and down as if he were a puzzle that Chibita couldn’t quite sort out. “Karamatsu,” Chibita said slowly, “Are you jealous?”
Karamatsu froze, his stuttering foot going abruptly still. “No,” he said. No. Of course he wasn’t. Chibita was — was nice to look at, yeah. And Karamatsu knew that he wasn’t straight, not all the way. He couldn’t be. But that wasn’t the same thing as being jealous that other men maybe sort of had a chance with Chibita. He’d gotten through it okay when Chibita had dated that girl, hadn’t he? He’d had a brief, bewilderingly intense moment of I want that but then he’d tried to go out and get it, hadn’t he? And look where that had gotten him.
Karamatsu hadn’t felt jealous when Chibita was with the girl. He’d felt something else, something very different. He’d felt somewhere between pleased and resigned, probably. Happy that Chibita would no longer be alone, and sad that he was not in the same position. But not particularly surprised, either.
He didn’t feel like that now. He kind of felt like someone had been playing kickball with his stomach. And why the hell was this bothering him so much, anyway? Why did he care that Chibita was apparently gay catnip, or that his oden somehow, ineffably, brought all the boys to the yard? Why did he care that Chibita wasn’t straight? Why did he care that one day, Chibita might end up dating — fuck, he couldn’t even finish the thought without feeling vaguely sick.
He hadn’t thought that he was particularly homophobic before now. It was weird, certainly, and nothing he wanted to be. It was embarrassing. It was one of the many, many parts of himself that he wished he could cut away. But other people, well. Love was love, right?
So why the fuck was he so upset when he thought about Chibita having sex with some guy? Or worse, loving him? He’d been okay, for the most part, when Chibita had loved a girl.
But then Karamatsu chanced a look upward at Chibita, who still looked perplexed more than anything, and he felt a staggering pang of loss that he’d never felt before. And it finally clicked. Before now, he didn’t know that men were even an option for Chibita. He couldn’t lose Chibita because he never could have had him. He’d felt resigned when Chibita had dated the fairy because he’d accepted right from the start that Chibita was going to want a pretty girl, not a man like him. But now, against all odds, Chibita was flirting with men. Men very clearly were an option. It was just Karamatsu that he didn’t want.
Fuck. Fuck. He was so fucking jealous. And he still had zero chance with the guy he wanted. Karamatsu gulped down the acid threatening to climb up his throat and tried to steady himself instead. He’d been quiet for too long, he abruptly realized. He had to say something to throw off the suspicions that were slowly coalescing on Chibita’s face. “No,” he finally said. “Why would I get jealous over you dating? You can do whatever you want,” he said, and then shrugged weakly. “It’s a free country. Have fun.”
He should say something about the beauty of love here, or desire, or — fuck, something — to make it sound genuine. He would’ve said something like that for anyone else. But he just couldn’t make his lips make the sounds. Instead, he just looked down into his lap.
“Karamatsu,” Chibita said, “I meant jealous of me. Not them.”
Fuck. That made so much more sense. Fuck. He absolutely could have passed this off as just being closeted. He was, wasn’t he? It would have been so easy to just make it seem like he was jealous of Chibita’s obvious way with men. It would have fucking sucked, and he probably would have gotten mocked for the rest of his life over it, but Chibita wouldn’t have known the truth. He wouldn’t have known that Chibita was the only man Karamatsu really cared about. Shit. Fuck.
He knew he was red now, and this wasn’t just shyness. He wasn’t just embarrassed. There was the sick roll of humiliation in his stomach, because shit, he’d really gone and done it now, hadn’t he? Chibita would definitely figure out Karamatsu’s stupid little crush. There was no way he wouldn’t.
So Karamatsu did what anyone else in his position would do. He fucking ran. “Thank you for the food,” he mumbled in one quick jumble of syllables, and he pushed himself to his feet. He’d had a beer before Mr. Hot Gay Salaryman had come to call, but he couldn’t blame the way his legs were wobbling now on just one beer.
“Karamatsu—”
He groped around in his pocket for some bills, then threw them on the counter. It was too much for the night’s meal, he knew, but maybe the extra cash would distract Chibita long enough that he could make his getaway. Besides, wasn’t as if he didn’t owe Chibita money anyway.
“Karamatsu, wait.”
“It’s late,” Karamatsu said. “I need to go—”
“I said wait, you goddamn idjit!”
Karamatsu stopped. Karamatsu waited. He still didn’t look at Chibita.
“You know why I flirt with those guys, Karamatsu?”
Karamatsu winced. Because they were attractive, confident, and successful? Because they didn’t hover back at the closet door? Because no one, definitely no one, called them "painful"?
“Because,” Chibita said meaningfully, “They tell me that they’re interested.”
What? What the goddamn hell? The statement was so bizarre, so pointed, so entirely absurd, that Karamatsu couldn’t help but look up at him. Chibita was looking at him flatly, but there was something expectant in his eyes. Like he actually expected Karamatsu to…
It didn’t make any sense. None whatsoever. But there was still a strange little bubble rising up inside him, and before he could think to stop himself, he said, “You mean…”
Chibita sighed, and there was that one look that Karamatsu loved more than almost any other, that fond sort of exasperation that he only seemed to direct at him. “I didn’t throw away your number, did I?” he asked.
And no. No, he hadn’t. He’d stolen Karamatsu’s phone away from him, in fact, two weeks after almost lighting him ablaze. Karamatsu had felt a fire that had nothing to do with torchlight back then, and he’d found himself wandering back to Chibita’s oden cart more often. It’d been the only place he didn’t feel his sorrows. And after that, after awkward visits and haphazard conversations, Chibita had snatched his phone away from him and typed in his own number — just in case he got kidnapped again. Chibita’d said he had a feeling there’d be more of that in Karamatsu’s future, and it wasn’t as if he could count on his family to help him. And Karamatsu had given Chibita his phone number, too. He’d watched Chibita program it into his phone himself.
Karamatsu stared at Chibita, and he could almost feel the gears creaking to life inside his head, unfettered by his own neuroses for the first time. Chibita, with that sweet smile and his fingers brushing against Karamatsu’s, had been flirting with him. Him! And he hadn’t even fucking noticed, too caught up in the simple joy of making a genuine connection.
He’d had a chance. He’d always had a chance. Had he missed it? He opened his mouth, but for once, he truly had no idea what to say. All the pretty words he’d thought to himself in rare moments of privacy, all the endearments and sweet nothings he’d imagined whispering to Chibita even as he’d taken himself in hand, all of them seemed to escape him then, leaving him silent and tongue-tied and wide-eyed in Chibita’s presence.
Chibita sighed and made a little tsk sound with his mouth, then he shook his head and pulled out his phone.
Karamatsu’s heart sank. “Chibita…” he started, begging his heart, pleading with it, to get its damn rear in gear and give him something meaningful to say.
Before he could summon anything up, though, he was interrupted by a soft chime from his pocket. He frowned, then pulled out his phone. He rarely got messages from anyone.
‘Call me. [kiss] [oden]’
A shaky, almost disbelieving smile crooked at the corners of Karamatsu’s mouth, and with trembling fingers, he went to type his reply.