A/N: Right. Guys, this is it. Fin. The end. I don't even know how I feel. Trifecta has been my baby for the past month and a half. Ugh I can't believe it's over. I'm going to grab this opportunity to say a big, biiiiiiig, FUCKING HUGE thank you to EVERY SINGLE ONE of my readers, and in particular, to those who left kudos and comments. You seriously have no idea how much they helped me. They pulled me out of a slump, helped me with the plot. Basically, the only reason this story is even complete is because of you guys. (Though I think most of you now hate me and have abandoned me after the turn this story took xc)
Anyway, on this last chapter, I'd like to talk a little bit about the title of the fic. I've, more than once, had people on various forums telling me they expected a Yokozawa/Kirishima fic because of the title. Now, this is what I picked up from a dictionary for 'Trifecta'.
a bet in which the person betting forecasts the first three finishers in a race in the correct order.
• [ in sing. ] a run of three wins or grand events: he will attempt a trifecta of the long jump, triple jump, and 110-meter high hurdles.
ORIGIN 1970s: from tri- 'three' + perfecta .
I just chose the title because I felt like this was somehow symbolic of the events of the story, if simply for irony's sake.
Aaaaanywayy, this is Zeb signing off, and don't forget to hit up my tumblr (miteranyx on there too!) with your prompts! I'll write for any iii fandom and Free!, so go wild. Thank you so much, guys!
The day had dawned astoundingly clear, as if the Universe itself was aiding and abetting the advent of the one time Yokozawa had been both unconsciously anticipating and had hoped would never come. So strong had been his trepidation that he had seriously considered just going back to Japan the previous day.
But here they were, standing at the door of the grandiose church— Gothic, he remembered, from the little brochure his scoping out had yielded him, feeling like he was about to projectile vomit.
"Oniichan, relax," Hiyori, standing at his side, patted his arm.
"You're one to talk," he retorted gruffly, turning to his daughter, who looked pretty green herself. "Besides, it's not every day that I'm about to hand my kid over to another man."
"Oniichan!" Hiyo began indignantly. "I'm not—,"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, you're not being handed over, you're still your own person," Yokozawa sighed. "Still, look at you. About to get married. You can't blame your oniichan for getting a little misty-eyed."
And the girl did look a vision. Her long, caramel hair, so like her father's, cascaded down over her shoulders, misted over by a white veil. Along with the long, regal-looking white dress that lent a perfect complement to her tan skin and her hair only slightly darker, she looked honest-to-god like an angel to the older man.
The sounding of an organ from inside the church interrupted his reverie, and all of his conflicting emotion boiled up his throat and down to his fingertips in a sick rush, making his palms sweat.
"That's our cue," he muttered anyway. From the way the grip on his arm tightened, he had a feeling he wasn't the only one dangerously close to passing out.
As soon as they took the first step, though, Yokozawa stopped dead.
The guilt he'd learned to smother, maybe even partially forget in the intervening years, suddenly hit him like an anvil, crippling his legs.
No matter what he himself, or anyone else tried to say to convince him otherwise, the fact remained that he'd never be right. Not for this, not for anything concerning Hiyori's future. It was supposed to be Kirishima there, leading his daughter down the aisle, entrusting someone else with the most prized entity in his life; or at least someone who had a better claim to this girl than being her father's ex-lover.
Years of experience, coupled with her natural sensitivity, alerted the younger girl, almost immediately, to his line of thought.
"It's okay…" she said, voice sounding like it'd break if she spoke too loud. "I miss him as much as you do. I wish, more than anything else, that he was here with me today."
The taller man knew the expression on her face, even in profile. It was the same one she'd worn at her father's funeral, the same one that'd haunted his dreams for months after that day.
"But," she gulped, as if swallowing back a sob, still looking straight ahead. "You're here, and there isn't a person I want more in this world."
The words stabbed at Yokozawa's chest, but it wasn't a bad kind of pain.
"Don't- don't cry," he said awkwardly, thumbing away a stray tear from her cheek. "You'll ruin your makeup."
She almost laughed, then, finally turning to look at him as she took a rose from the corsage in her hand and pinned to his tuxedo lapel.
And then they were walking.
The organ music sounded blaringly loud in his ears as he led Hiyori to the altar. Even as they walked forward, though, face, surroundings blurring in their path, he felt like he was being shunted back in time; back, back to long-forgotten words and lingering moments.
"Then just what kind of man would you accept for her? I bet you'll be hiding in a corner sobbing when she gets married."
"Like hell; I'll be bawling my eyes out at the ceremony. And you can laugh all you like—but what about you? You look like you'd be worse off than me."
"Well sure, I might get choked up, but I'm not the type to cry in public."
Was he crying now, though? Yokozawa didn't know. He had no idea, as he took his daughter's hand and put it into her groom's, whether he was getting choked up. Even as he heard out the recital of those vows he'd himself made, a lifetime ago.
"Papa," Hiyori had breathed, that fateful day in the family plot. "I'm getting married."
She'd spilled her heart out to the smooth silence of cool stone and the still patience of verdant forest, just as she had used to, so many years ago, sitting by that very man's side.
And they had listened raptly as he'd used to, when she told him I know you'd love him and it's going to be in France, in a month and he's French but he's so much like you, I sometimes think you're here.
Yokozawa had almost smiled at that last one; thinking of exactly what Kirishima would have had to say to that.
But it was only when Hiyori had tactfully wandered off towards the budding cherry blossom forest with a last, whispered, please watch over us, that the ink-haired man had spoken his few words to his erstwhile lover.
"I'd promised I'd take her to Europe," he had murmured, running a hand over where Kirishima's name, weathered some by the years, was carved into the rock. "And here we are."
He'd just stood there for a while, eyes closed, listening to the breeze whipping past his face, reveling in the crisp freshness of it, the gentle caress of it that somehow always smelled like the cherry-blossom scent of a thousand ancient loves crystallized into a flower. And then he'd taken, from his pocket, a single white chrysanthemum, carefully stained a light turquoise blue, and left it at the stone.
They must be in full bloom back home, Yokozawa dimly reflected, watching, as if through a soundless haze, the couple exchanging rings, as his daughter and this man were connected by a sacred union, as happy tears dried and the happy couple was hugged, as champagne was opened and glasses were raised, the sakura must be blooming.
It was a poignant occasion, doubtless, more so for him than most, and god he felt it as he hugged Hiyo, tight, again and again, an ache in his chest which he couldn't entirely place.
But as they all journeyed back to the in-laws', as dusk fell and lights came on and a buffet was set up and musicians appeared out of nowhere, as he attempted to converse in bad French, Yokozawa was also acutely conscious of a deep, intrinsic happiness.
It even made him feel up to cradling a flute of champagne, smiling and clapping along when the newlyweds took to the floor for the first dance. Watching them, he nevertheless felt a lump in his throat as he admired Hiyori's slender, graceful figure, thinking of how much she'd changed from the little girl he'd known and grown to love.
The nostalgia carried him forward after the song finished, to where the twilight outlined the figures of the bride and groom like a dream.
"Pourrais-je avoir l'honneur de cette danse?" he teasingly said as he placed a gentle hand on his daughter's shoulder, internally nodding in approval as her now-husband promptly backed away. Respect was always high on Yokozawa's checklist.
"I didn't know you spoke French!" Hiyori laughed as he took her hand.
"Just goes to show, doesn't it?" he replied, felling just a little smug. He hadn't wanted to marry his girl off without knowing a word off the other side's language, and neither had he wanted to show himself up at dancing, so he'd been brushing up on both on the sly for the past several months.
The younger girl seemed not to hear, biting her lip and glancing off to the side. A strange, perturbed look had come into her eye whenever she'd sighted the older man for the past week or so, but he had simply written it off as premarital stress. Now, though, there was no reason for the troubled face she was making, and it worried him.
"What is it?" he pressed gently. Today was supposed to be a special day for her, after all, and it was only his duty to do his utmost to ensure that it stayed such.
"It's just something I've been wondering for a while now… I suppose having the wedding so close at hand brought it to the forefront of my mind," the brown-eyed girl said hesitantly. "And I realize it's kind of indelicate to ask, but… you and my father were… special to each other, weren't you?"
When Yokozawa didn't reply, she rushed to make amends.
"I- I mean, I'm sorry for presuming!" her eyes glimmered with contrition. "But I thought a lot about why you continued to stay in touch after father passed, and just from the way you look when you talk about him, I just thought—"
"Woah, woah," the dark-haired man stopped her before she could give herself an aneurysm. Honestly, he was surprised she hadn't asked sooner. "It's okay. I figure you should know now, anyway."
With fingers that ran hot and cold at the same time, he broke the dance to reach under his called and fish out a chain with a platinum band on it, the same chain he hadn't taken off for ten years. He showed it to the white-clad girl, who traced her fingers over it like it was precious.
"I," he took a deep breath, looking her straight in the eye. "Once married a man called Kirishima Zen, whom I loved very, very much."
"So all along, you were—you were—," Hiyo floundered for words, rendered speechless by the sudden revelation, looking dazed. Yokozawa simply nodded. He had often toyed with the idea of telling Hiyo himself, but had always shut it down, not wanting to rock her boat or upset her needlessly.
"You could have told me I'd never been fatherless, onii—um…"
The older man opened his mouth to tell her that she could continue calling him oniichan, same as always, but jumped about a foot in the air as arms snaked about his waist.
"Hiyori-chan, congratulations. I must say, you look absolutely gorgeous tonight," the all-too-familiar voice sounded next to his ear, the voice that had been the niggling worry at the back of his mind all day.
"Congratulations. Although it looks to me like your husband's the one who got lucky here." Masamune was in his tuxedo, hair styled and charm racked up to eleven. "Here's a little something for the beautiful bride."
He handed her a delicate little silvered box, and Hiyori blushed in pleasure. All the years of knowing the amber-eyed man had not made her immune to his charisma. "Takano-oniisan, thank you so much for coming!"
"The pleasure is all mine, but I'm afraid I'll have to borrow Yokozawa for a little while."
"Of course! Just a moment, if you don't mind?"
"So, Takano-san?" Yokozawa ribbed him when Hiyo had left. "Here to ask me to dance?"
"Like hell," Masamune shot back, the familiar moody expression overtaking his face now that he didn't have anyone around to impress. "I don't need to deal with an embarrassment like you on the dance floor on top of these pompous French assholes talking my ear off."
"So you mean to say that your dancing skills have improved since the time you stepped on Manami-chan's toes at our senior farewell party?"
"…Bastard."
The grey-eyed man hadn't noticed it, but in the course of their conversation, his companion had led him away from the party, onto a grassy little hillock a ways from it, overhung by the full moon.
"Jesus, the things I do for the pair of you," the ebony-haired man fell gracefully to the ground, taking a swallow from the champagne flute he was still holding. "The only good thing about this party is the booze."
"That and the small detail of our kid getting hitched," Yokozawa said caustically, sitting down next to him.
"Yeah, that too," Masamune said, with a quick, fond smile, but his eyes were still guarded.
Yokozawa took a good look at him. Although he still wouldn't call himself imaginative, not by a long shot, the years spent with the man beside him had lent him some appreciation for beauty. The editor had always been an open book for him, but now he could relate the emotion in those luminescent eyes as a complement to the way the sharp angle of his jawline sent the rest his face into a moonlit play of shadows and alabaster, to beauty."
"…Worry about yourself first," he said eventually.
"Huh?"
"I said, I'm fine. It's yourself you should be worried about. I get that you're in one hell of an awkward situation here." No matter how you looked at it, attending your lover's dead husband's daughter's funeral was not a comfortable predicament.
"…." Masamune said nothing, just staring out into the blue velvet distance, an unreadable expression on his face.
"You know, when Hiyo wanted to talk to me alone?"
The salesman had often been grateful that he so often instinctively knew what to say to his lover to circumvent his self-defeating, cynical way of thinking, and he was grateful now for the flicker of interest in the amber eyes.
"Hmmmmm?" the brown-haired man inclined his head towards the other.
"She asked me if Takano-oniisan was special to me now."
"And what did you say?" those beautiful eyes lit up with a flash of mirth as a tiny, genuine smile played on Masamune's lips, some of the buoyance coming back into his voice.
"What do you think?" Yokozawa reached for his lover's hand, the years and the disillusionment with societal standards of decorum, coupled with the comfort of being in a foreign land where two men were free to do as they please making him braver than he'd ever imagined himself capable of being. "She was happy for us. Wished us luck."
Masamune took the proffered hand, and the grey-eyed man felt the words slip out.
"He was happy too."
All his life, he had scorned such superstition, but just today, just this once, he let himself say it. Because just the fact that he was sitting here, at Kirishima's daughter's wedding with his first love and their long, convoluted past laid out before them was testament to the fact that anything was possible. "Today was the heaviest sakura fall we've had this year."
"Tsk," his partner just drew his face closer. "Of course he was happy."
"You know," the salesman murmured, faces now so close that he did it against the ebony-haired man's lips. "I think it's time I took you to meet him. I did promise him, after all."
Slowly, softly, with nothing but silver moonlight attending their whispered conversation, their lips met for an ephemeral, eternal moment, and when they finally broke away, like so many things, neither of them needed to say it. Yokozawa saw it in Masamune's eyes, and he knew Masamune saw it in his.
I love you.