Kamiya was leaving for America the next day.
Well, The Americas, not the US in particular; he was full of information about all the places he was planning to go and all the things he wanted to see and do while he was there. Soichiro had stopped trying to study after half an hour or so, and just sat at his desk, paging absently through his culinary arts textbook, listening to Kamiya ramble and smiling to himself. Kamiya lay on his back on Soichiro's bed, the bedspread covered with a mixture of travel brochures and printouts of webpages (a habit Soichiro didn't think he'd ever understand.)
"Did you know in Canada they have a dish that's just potato fries and cheese covered in gravy?" Kamiya was saying in a tone of morbid fascination.
"That sounds kind of awful," Soichiro commented. "I expect it's better than it sounds, though."
"I bet it is," Kamiya agreed. "I'm going to try it while I'm there. I'm planning on stopping in Seattle, too. Did you know the first Starbucks was there?"
"Yes, I did," Soichiro laughed. "do you know anything else about Seattle?"
"I've heard they make the best coffee in the world there," he said, but uncertainly. "I'm trying to figure out which shop I should go to, but everyone has different opinions… I found a whole webpage about secret inner-city gardens there, too! I wanted to visit all of them, but I'm only stopping there for a day, so…"
"Please don't go looking for secret places on your own," Soichiro said, knowing this was a battle he was going to lose. "you'll end up in the rainforest somehow."
Instead of giving the immediate "I'll be fine!" he was expecting, Kamiya paused.
"Wish you'd come with me." He said wistfully. Soichiro was suddenly glad his desk faced away from the bed as his face warmed. He bit his lip. He'd been having doubts about his plan for today, almost decided against it, but maybe he should go through with it after all.
"…You know I can't." he said, even though part of him wished he could be persuaded into going. Traveling had no intrinsic appeal to him, but traveling with Kamiya… well, that would be different.
"I know, I know." Kamiya laughed easily. "It's too late for that, anyhow."
"Speaking of which," Soichiro said, forcing himself to change the subject, "should you even be here? Are you all packed?"
"I've been packed for days! You don't know how long I've been waiting for this!"
"I do, actually." He said softly, and left the desk to go sit on the bed next to Kamiya. "This is the one thing you've been consistently excited about the whole time we've known each other."
Kamiya sat up, looking at him curiously, as if even he'd noticed the change of tone.
"Shinonome?"
His heart raced.
"You know I worry about you, but I hope you also know I'd never want to stop you. But…"
He reached out and took Kamiya's hands, and it felt strange, like he wasn't really doing it. He'd spent so much time thinking about this that now that it was happening, it felt unreal. Kamiya looked surprised, but not put off.
"Before you leave," he said, squeezing Kamiya's hands, trying to disguise the slight tremor in his own, "promise me two things."
"Anything," Kamiya replied, far too easily, and Soichiro briefly wondered if Kamiya would promise 'anything' to anyone, or if he was special.
"Number one: Come home safe."
"Of course!"
He drew in a breath that shook only a little with uncertainty. "Number two: Don't forget about me, or what I'm about to do."
"What?"
He did it.
When he pulled away, he saw Kamiya looking at him as if he'd just discovered something new and wonderful. He didn't smile, but his eyes were bright and his voice was soft and serious and confident as he promised, "I won't forget."
He forgot.
At least that's how it seemed when he came home with his head full of "I've found my purpose, Shinonome" and "Let's start a café together, Shinonome" and there were no more kisses. Soichiro went along with it all anyway, because… because he couldn't not.
The night before the café opened, after seven months of the hardest work he'd ever done, with only the two of them as staff, he was as exhausted as he was elated, and Kamiya grabbed his hands, and it was all he could do not to pull away as if burnt. Kamiya thanked him profusely, smiling with his whole face, and squeezed his hands, and Soichiro smiled back and didn't break down crying. Kamiya invited him out for a drink to celebrate, and he said, "Thank you, but we have to sleep if we want to be ready for tomorrow." and didn't even mention that his 20th birthday wasn't for another five months, because he knew Kamiya would feel bad for forgetting, and he didn't want to see him stop smiling.
It began raining as he walked home alone, and he didn't bother to get out of the rain, let it soak him to the skin. The night air was warm and the sky was bright and beautiful and he wondered why he was doing any of this.
"Because I want him to be happy as badly as he wants everyone else to be happy," he mumbled to himself, feeling bitterness infuse the sweet sponge cake that had been Kamiya's gratitude. Everyone except me, he thought, and immediately felt bad. That wasn't fair. Kamiya just didn't know what he was doing. He just didn't know.
(But hadn't he promised not to forget?)
Soon enough they found a waiter, and then the waiter found them another one, and then one day Kamiya showed up beaming and talking about how he'd found them a chef, and the chef was genuinely the strangest man he'd ever met but he made better food than Soichiro had ever had at a restaurant and he'd be damned if he wasn't grateful for all the help.
It was wonderful to unlock the staff door in the morning and find the kitchen spotless and everything in order instead of just barely clean enough, as it had been when he and Kamiya had had to do everything. It was even more wonderful to take his leave in the late afternoon and walk past customers leaving full of chatter about how they would be coming back and which friends they wanted to bring.
The day a fourteen year old girl ran in the door, shaking and with her eyes full of tears, and whispered to Mizushima that a man had been following her for ten blocks and had tried to grab her, they sat her down in the kitchen, out of view of the windows, until she felt calm enough to call someone to come get her. Mizushima sat with her until she calmed down, Kamiya brought her tea and refused to let her pay, Asselin used his inside voice the whole time, and Soichiro had never been more glad that the café was open.
That was the day that, to Soichiro, Café Parade became not just real, but important. It needed to be there because people needed it. He needed it to be a place where people would feel safe, the way he did, and the way he hoped his new friends did.
Customers came and went. They brought their friends. Their friends brought their friends, and every day he saw a new cross-section of humanity walk through the doors. There were certainly difficult customers, but they were far outweighed by the ones who left happy, who came back to the counter simply to give compliments, who smiled and said thank you. Even if he always walked home on aching legs at the end of the day, it was worth it.
It wasn't enough.
It's commonly understood that one cannot live on love alone, but it never feels real until you come to the end of what you thought was a good month and the numbers don't add up. Happy customers are nice, but happiness alone doesn't make the money stretch further.
The days where he would come back in late to work on an order and find Kamiya asleep on the desk, his brow furrowed even while asleep, grew in number. Increasingly, when they all sat down together to try and figure out how to reduce costs, all they could do was shave off a bit here and there.
The first time they cut an unpopular menu item, only to have a customer shout at him about it, was one of the worst days of his life. Unfortunately, it wasn't the last time either, and worse was to come.
One day he walked into the kitchen to find Mizushima crying while mopping, only to watch him burst into sobs at the sight of Soichiro in the doorway. It took a good few minutes for it to come out that he'd dropped the wedding cake that had been ordered for the next day while trying to make space in the refrigerator. It wasn't his fault. It had just been too heavy and tall for one person to move. Soichiro stared into the distance, feeling empty, even as he hugged his friend for the first time and Mizushima sobbed into his shoulder, apologizing over and over. He wanted to be comforting, but all he could think about was the loss. That had taken four days. How would he ever be able to replace it in less than 24 hours?
They did it, all of them working together, but that was the worst day of his life.
He stumbled home at noon the next day, so tired he almost pulled a Kamiya and got lost on the route he followed twice a day every day. He whispered "I'm home" to an empty apartment, and simply laid down on the floor next to his never-used television, too tired to even undress and get into bed. His hands hurt too much to undo the buttons on his shirt, anyway.
He wondered then, lying drained and alone on the carpet, if it wouldn't be better for him to go home, try to get over his… issue with traditional Japanese sweets, and pretend this whole "café" ordeal had never happened. He wondered what he was doing it all for.
And then he thought about Mizushima's tearful smile when he'd said they could make another one, that the ingredients hadn't been that expensive and it wouldn't be that much of a loss, that the commission would more than cover it. He remembered Uzuki grasping Mizushima's hand and solemnly promising to help any way they possibly could. Uzuki had become something of an assistant for the day, and a capable one at that; Mizushima had handled the entire front of the café alone with efficiency and a bright smile, makeup as perfect as if nothing had happened.
He remembered Asselin looking at him seriously and saying (well, as far as Soichiro could make out) that even though sweets weren't his area, he'd do anything he could, including making the bread and some of the pastries for the day so Soichiro could focus on the cake. Even if everything took twice as long while Asselin followed his recipes for the first time, it all still got done, and it wouldn't have otherwise.
And he remembered Kamiya. Kamiya, offering another pair of hands whenever he had a spare second. Kamiya, keeping everything running smoothly out front while in the kitchen nothing seemed to be going right. Kamiya, promising to be there until the cake was finished, and opening in the morning as if he hadn't been there all night. Giving Soichiro a sympathetic smile when he'd returned half dead from delivering the cake, telling him to go home and get some rest.
Even while struggling to stay awake, he pulled out his phone and messaged the work group chat: Thank you all. Please make Kamiya sleep.
He loved them. He knew what he was doing it all for, and it wasn't for the customers, or at least only partially for them; he wasn't made to be like Kamiya, willing to turn himself inside out to make as many people as possible happy. He did it for Café Parade, not for the building, or the business, but for the family they'd somehow become in just a couple of months. He did it all for love.
Love just wasn't enough. Love wasn't going to make ends meet.
Well, and then everything changed.
At first he was incredulous; who would ever want to come see the five of them singing and dancing on stage like a bunch of idols or something? It was ridiculous. They weren't entertainers. True, Mizushima could dance, and Asselin could sing, and Uzuki had a surprising amount of stage presence, and well, Kamiya was Kamiya, but… but why? Of course, the answer to why was, as it so often is, money.
It turned out being an idol was hard work. Sometimes even harder than running the café. It didn't pay that well, either, at least not at first. But what it did do, after a few months of schedules he wouldn't have thought he was capable of keeping up with, was make the café work. As their schedules filled up they increasingly had to cut back the open hours of the café, and that hurt, but as long as it was open, there were more customers than they'd ever had before.
Being on stage was exhilarating, and the more he did it, the more he felt as if he wasn't out of place there. At first performing solo seemed, not just terrifying, but pointless, since surely no one was coming to see him, they were coming to see the group— but the first time he took the stage, looked out over a shimmering sea of green lights and his voice caught in his throat, he understood why he was there.
"What am I doing all this for?"
Café Parade. 315 Productions. The fans. Friends. The people who found a sort of home at the café. The list was ever-expanding and new people were added to it every day. The days when he went to bed exhausted never diminished in number, but the days when he went to bed satisfied only grew.
There was a time when the only person on that list was Kamiya. Sometimes he wondered when Kamiya stopped being in the top spot.
"Say, Shinonome," Kamiya said thoughtfully, as they both examined the week's schedule. "On Thursday, neither of us have work or lessons after the café closes."
"Oh, you're right," he said, with a bit of surprise. "That's the first time that's happened in a while."
"Do you want to do something?"
He stiffened a little, but not as much as he used to. This was the sort of question that used to really hurt, and now was just a bit of a sad reminder.
"Like what?"
"I don't know," Kamiya said, "how about a movie or something?"
Well.
"Not at a theater," he said, trying to keep it from becoming too much like a, well, a date, while not also shooting it down. "tiring and expensive."
"Good point. Maybe you should just come to the house and I'll feed you dinner."
"Sounds good," he said, without thinking, having to devote all of his focus to exterminating the image of Kamiya feeding him. "Oh, will Asselin be around?" Yes, a distraction!
In answer, Kamiya simply pointed to the schedule. No.
Wonderful. Just come to my house and we'll have dinner alone and watch a movie together, alone. No pressure. It's not a date.
It wasn't a date. It wasn't a date because no actual "date" in history had ever consisted mainly of sitting next to your best friend on a couch watching a paused screen and trying to have a discussion about your feelings without actually talking about your feelings.
Dinner had gone surprisingly well. They'd talked about idol work, the café, updates on their families (the biological ones) and everything had been very civilized. Civilized and distant. That was the problem.
They'd only gotten about 10 minutes into the movie, both silent, unable to think of anything to say— and wasn't that the point of watching a movie at home, that you could talk all you wanted during it without bothering anyone else?— when Kamiya had paused it to go use the restroom, and when he came back, he asked, "Do you want to watch something else?"
"Ah, not particularly," he said, and couldn't figure out how to finish the sentence. It hung there, unfinished, for an uncomfortably long moment.
"I… sorry, I probably shouldn't have bothered you to come hang out with me this evening," Kamiya said, the words coming out in a rush.
"What? N- no, it's fine."
"You've been really busy lately, I know you probably just wanted to rest, but…"
"No, it's nice to get to spend some time with you," he said, and internally kicked himself, wondering if he'd said too much.
"Then why don't we do it more often?" Kamiya said, and immediately looked like he regretted it. It still stung.
"I… we're busy people, Kamiya, this is the only time we could've—"
"I know, I just—" Kamiya cut him off, then stopped in mid-sentence himself.
They stood, or rather Kamiya stood and Soichiro sat, like that in silence for a while before Soichiro awkwardly patted the couch next to him. "Please sit down, Kamiya."
"…yeah." He sat.
"I really don't mind coming over to watch a movie with you."
"..."
"I was happy you asked."
"…"
"…Please say something."
"I… miss you."
His heart leapt into his throat. He swallowed it back down.
"…We see each other every day, Kamiya." He said, trying to keep his voice steady and his face calm. The best he could manage was 'impassive.'
"I know, but…" Kamiya looked miserable, and Soichiro wondered if he had gone past 'impassive' and into 'cold.' "that's not the same as hanging out."
"It's not, but—"
"I used to feel like I could tell you about anything," Kamiya continued, looking even more miserable. "sometimes you just listened to me talk for hours, but I knew you were always listening. Even if you told me my ideas were dumb, you listened. I miss that."
"I miss hearing you talk about your dumb ideas," he murmured.
"What happened to that?"
"Life happened to that," he replied, finding speaking increasingly difficult.
"Now I'm lucky if we can say five sentences to each other in a day." I'm lucky. He tried not to read into that, but it did something to his heart. It felt as if something unbearable was growing inside it. "It's not that I'm not happy about everything that's happened, I just wish it all hadn't… done whatever this is that's making it so hard for us to… to spend time together."
"…"
"You knew I chose to open a café instead of a restaurant because it was something I could do with you, right?"
His heart felt full. Too full. It hurt.
"I didn't," he said, before his throat closed and he couldn't say any more.
"I wanted… to be closer to you, I suppose." Kamiya said, sadly, and laughed without much humor. "But now we're spending less time together than ever, so I suppose that didn't work out too—"
The sentence ended early because Soichiro was already kissing him.
He did it not on an impulse, or because he had weighed his options and decided to do it, but because he simply could no longer stand to not be doing it. Even as he moved a hand up to rest lightly against Kamiya's cheek, he felt cold sadness gather in his stomach, knowing he had just done something terrible.
And then, as they say, a miracle occurred.
He felt Kamiya tilt his head slightly, not pulling away, but reciprocating. He felt something brush his arm and a warm hand squeezed his shoulder. Then Kamiya's other hand was on the back of his neck, fingers in his hair, pulling him closer until they overbalanced and suddenly he was pushing Kamiya down onto the couch and feeling considerably more aggressive than he had intended.
Kamiya smiled up at him, eyes warm, laughing softly, "It's been a while, huh?"
"Yeah," he said, a little breathless with exhilaration and emotional whiplash.
Then he realized exactly what that meant, and suddenly felt absolutely blindsided.
"wait, you— you remembered? I thought you forgot about that!"
Kamiya looked up at him with big, confused, hurt eyes. "What do you mean? Of course I didn't forget. I promised, didn't I?"
"You— then why— all this time!"
"You… didn't say anything when I got back, so I thought you changed your mind..."
He sat up. He stared at the ceiling for a moment. He buried his head in his hands in exasperation. "You mean to tell me…" he said slowly and quietly. Kamiya shrank away as if trying to phase into the couch cushions. "…that we spent two years being sad about each other because neither of us wanted to make the first move after a few months apart?"
"I didn't think you liked me! I didn't have anything to go off of!"
"Nothing except for the part where I kissed you on the mouth, you mean?"
"I thought you changed your mind!"
He covered his face with his hands. "I can't believe this."
"…I'm… sorry, Shinonome, if I'd known, I would've…"
"...Yeah, if I'd known, I would've too."
Kamiya's fingertips brushed the back of his hand. "…Can I kiss you again?" He asked, softly.
"No. I'm mad at you right now."
"…Please?" Soichiro moved his hand to look down at him, and saw Kamiya looking back up with an expression of deep, restrained longing. He sighed.
"…Yes."
WOW that was a bit of a rough one but thank you for sticking it out with me. Thank you to everyone who encouraged me on twitter. I would die for any member of Cafe Parade. Peace