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Adam wakes up alone for the last time today.
Tonight will see the end of the tournament and his wedding with Snow. Tadashi should be on his way to collect the hundred roses he’ll decorate their wedding suite with along with French Champagne. Only a couple of boring reunions separate him from meeting with his Eve again, and they will skate, they will dance, they will love each other as they hurtle down the S path to the abandoned factory. Adam closes his eyes; he’s torn between imagining it all or keeping the surprise to savour the feeling better. At long last, the hole in his heart will be filled, he won’t feel so empty anymore. Life will go on, as it used to-
“Ainosuke sama.” Tadashi enters the rooms with the rose bouquets in his arms; he puts them down on the desk. “You’re late for the meeting with your aunts. I had your clothes prepared along with a quick breakfast.”
He exits a minute to come back with a trail; black coffee with a half sugar on a silver spoon and toast with honey. Adam is smelling the flower’s petals in his underwear when he opens the door.
There’s a single rose on his breakfast trail. It comes from the garden; Adam can tell just by how bigger it is. He can smell it from there.
“Did you-”
When he looks up, Tadashi is already gone.
They drive quietly through the day; it’s even a bit too silent, and if Adam doesn’t expect Tadashi to reply each time he praises Snow or voices his excitement to have found, at long last, what he has been running after all his life - it probably hurt him too much to show any kind of contentment after all, doesn’t he used to have no opinion at all? - the lack of small talk strikes him before they reach noon.
Adam eats with his aunts again. Where does Tadashi usually eat? Does he even eat at all?
Well, there’s no reason to wonder about that now. He’s got more important things to care about.
He’s still as stoic as ever when they meet again in front of the car. Another reunion. Another waste of time.
In the front seat Tadashi looks tense, like there’s something he wants to say but forces himself not to. He looks even gloomier than usual. Adam can’t remember the last time he saw him smile.
He closes his eyes before he can recall what it used to be when they were younger. Too late. The memories still taste so sour.
“If you have something to say then say it.” He says. He needs something to distract himself from the past.
Tadashi stops at the red light and his hands rest on his thighs for a moment. “...It’s nothing.”
Is it about S? About Snake? Is he anxious about tonight? It’s true that Adam had been furious when he found out about his participation; that was betrayal pure and simple, but nothing surprising coming from him, it hadn’t been the first time after all. Had it, Tadashi? Adam is sure he wouldn’t object on the matter.
But him being here will have no impact on the final. After all, Snow is his Eve. Adam chose him. There is no way he can lose.
Night comes too slowly. “Is the skateboard ready?” He cannot help but ask. Usually, it’s the sort of details Tadashi always tells him before they go.
“Everything is ready.” Adam doesn’t check to be sure. He never did. Never needed to.
The silence is unbearable. It finds a way into Adam’s mind and forbids him from thinking about the upcoming wedding with Snow. He should be the happiest man alive and here he is, wondering why suddenly Tadashi has gone quiet as the grave. It itches under his skin to know, and it annoys him even more that he can’t figure out why.
He tries to rationalize. After all, Tadashi is the ever constant in his life. And he has known him for-
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Not these thoughts again. Not tonight.
“Ainosuke sama.” Adam holds his breath. They are at the gate. This is hardly the moment to start a conversation, yet he listens. “Are you having fun when you skate?”
And for some reason Adam draws a blank. Is he? Yes, of course he is - when he skates with Snow it’s even more than that, isn’t it? But it’s not what unsettles him to the point of making him silent. It’s the timing. It’s the fact that Tadashi is the one asking this, when he never wondered before.
“Why are you asking me this tonight, all of the time?” There’s spite in his voice. He would have liked to be asked the same question a couple of years ago.
“...Nothing.” Tadashi turns around, he puts his cap on his head. He smiles softly when he looks back. “I hope you’ll have fun tonight.”
It takes Adam a couple of minutes to get out of the car in his matador costume, as he feels the hole in his chest he had spent years to fill just cracked open once more, and at the worst possible moment. The wound is gaping. It bleeds abundantly, and it doesn’t seem to stop.
As usual Adam takes his place in the spotlight; everyone cries his name as his eyes search for Snow, frenetically, because he’s the only one that can stop the bleeding, that can be his other half, that can fix whatever Tadashi did to him in the past-
Ah, there he is.
He’s smiling way too wildly to his redhead friend and the wound is still there, and even before his eyes found him in the crowd Adam knew it would not be enough. He lights a cigarette and closes his eyes. Memories of the past surge now, the very same ones he tried to banish from his mind all day resurfaced all together, everything in chronological order - his aunts, the beating, Tadashi, skating, the smiles, the strong smell of roses when he would sneak around to his father’s despair, the warmth of hands on his first wounds.
He blows the smoke by his nose. Tadashi hides in the crowd; there’s so many capmen here that he could be anywhere. Adam doesn’t try to look for him. He renounced so many years ago, he is not going to fail now. Not on his wedding day.
The beef against Reki - that’s the boy's name, he heard Snow shouting it at least fifty times during the race - is a joke, yet Adam cannot skate the way he wants. He thinks it’s probably because hearing Snow cheering for someone else disturned him, and he’s tempted to give him the same treatment he gave Cherry so that Snow will realize he is not worth his attention. Only Adam is, they are a perfect match after all.
He does not though. At the last moment Adam realizes he is not having fun, not at all, and he finishes the beef first but without panache, and his need of violence dies with it.
He hasn’t had any fun while skating in a long while before he met with Snow. And even that. Even that is not-
It’s nothing like the strong smell of roses.
it’s nothing like hidden smiles behind his father’s back.
Nothing like the heat that rose to his cheek each time Tadashi smiled back.
The memories make him want to puke.
But Snow is here to heal him! His true Eve enters the factory and runs to him. He has never been this beautiful, he owns the smile of an angel, “Langa!” Someone shouts behind him, but Adam doesn’t need to turn around, his eyes are on Snow, he licks his lips as he approaches, “Reki!” he shouts back, and his arms open like wings, and Snow passes by him without giving him a glance.
The boys are arms in arms, beaming like Adam has rarely seen other people do before. Adults don’t have the purity of heart to be this happy anymore. They forgot how to with the years, and the deception life always provides. It’s easier to have your heart enclosed to face the hardship of life, isn’t it, Tadashi? When a heart is too open it’s vulnerable, it’s an easy target, it’s doomed to break if it’s given to the wrong hands.
“You’re disgusting.” He spits. He didn’t mean to, but the sight is too horrendous to keep it to himself. These two dance too close to a broken memory he’d rather had never lived. How carefree and innocent they are, right now, how unprepared they are for the future, and of how it is going to crush their hope and dreams in an instant.
“Hg? Talk for yourself?” The redhead said. What was his name again?
“I won’t let you call Reki disgusting!” Ah, Reki, that’s the name; Snow still clings on him as if he needs him to breathe, as a young boy that would try to skate for the first time would need to hold on his instructor not the fall. Memories after memories Adam revives a part of his past that he thought had burned with his skateboard that day, assassinated with a simple phrase, ‘I have no’- he closes his eyes, behind the mask no one would notice. “Reki is wonderful! Reki is...he’s the very first friend I made here!”
Adam smiles bitterly. That really does ring a bell.
“He’s the one who taught me how to skate!”
Perhaps a bit too much even.
“He’s the one who taught me how to do an ollie! He watched me fall and helped me get up each time! He bandaged my wounds! He even made this board for me!”
The sour taste in his mouth is back. The smell of roses too, unfortunately. It’s Tadashi’s footsteps he hears coming his way.
“He’s the reason why skating is so much fun!”
“Langa, please! Stop it.” The boy blushes, his face is as red as his hair. Tadashi never blushed like that when he used to praise him for his teaching and patience and, just, everything else. Even when they were no longer children.
“Ainosuke sama,” there’s a hand on his shoulder that Adam quickly shoves off. “Are you feeling alright?”
He must have seen his skating was off from the start. He cannot hide anything from him anyway. He’s stupid though; people will wonder what a mere capman is doing, why he dares to touch Adam, the Legend, and why Adam lets him.
“Don’t touch me.” He mutters. He can’t look at him in the eyes now, not when he’s this vulnerable. Not when he knows, and has always known, what was needed to fill the hole in his chest. Not when he knows Tadashi will not let him have it. “Get away from me.”
He needs to be alone. For once, for a second, he needs to know what it feels like to breathe when Tadashi is not holding his hand, even when his skin is as cold as marble.
He walks back into the car. From there he can watch the next beef if he wants; Tadashi set the screen, he always does, and tonight should not be any different, shouldn’t it?
But the screens are off. Adam can find the right password so he stops before the third attempt; he’s stuck alone in a car staring at the darkness of the screens, and bitterly reflects on how it resonates with the one of his heart. Does he even want to see the beef? After all, he has no doubt about who the winner will be. It’s Snow; no one else matters. It’s him he wants to skate with. Him and no one else.
Adam brings a cigarette to his lips. Tadashi will probably scold him later to have smoke in the car, but it is very likely the only thing that prevents him from screaming. To think he would be the one suffering from wedding blues.
Someone knocks on his window: Adam jumps, what is Tadashi doing here? Shouldn’t he be skating?
Of course it’s not him, but the redhead from earlier. He lowers the window.
“You’re not watching?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because you know that capman, right? Snake.” Reki rectifies. He looks perhaps a bit less joyful than he was earlier and Adam is very glad about that. “He looked concerned for you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone looking at you like this.”
Adam smirks. No one does but him. What a joke.
“If you are friends you should come with us and cheer for him. There is no way he’s going to win if he skates alone.”
“What about you? Snow is skating too, you know? Beside, I don’t want-”
“Langa is not alone. I’m always in his heart, no matter where I stand. Even if we’re miles away or on different continents, he’ll never skate alone.”
Adam takes a deep breath into his cigarette, more by rage than because he needs the rush of nicotine. There used to be a time like this, when he was younger, when no matter where they were, Adam could always feel Tadashi’s soothing presence by his side, enveloping him in an invisible embrace that made him invincible, immune to his aunt’s treatments. The mere knowledge that he’d found him waiting behind the hedge roses was always enough to make his heart beat a bit faster than it should, by anticipation and joy. Oh, he had been happy, so happy in the past.
But now it’s just the opposite.
Tadashi had never been so close yet absent, always by his side like the empty shell of who he used to be.
And for what? Because his father told him so.
The next time he pulls on his cigarette half of it turns into ash.
“Go away.”
The annoying redhead doesn’t move yet. How dare he. “Joe was one of your friends, right? He told us so. Cherry too, even if it’s difficult to believe after you sent him to the hospital - but Shadow almost broke my arm this one time I guess I shouldn’t judge.”
“Get to the point!” The car was a bad idea, because he cannot get away without being utterly ridiculous.
“One day he told me something I quite didn’t understand, at that moment at least; he told me to not stay alone, to not skate alone.” Adam bites in his lower lip, how dare he? “And I think he told me this with you in mind. You talked to Snake too harshly not to be close, right?”
There’s something quite comical now that Adam thinks about this impossible situation, something like divine punishment, perhaps, for the bad turn he took in his life, that makes him look like the bad guy, always, when he had been suffering all his life. If he’ll gladly agree that past trauma can never be a reason to do harm to others, sometimes Adam is angry at all those people who keep misjudging him for his actions, as if he had been the one to decide that he’d rather skate alone and not something that had been imposed on him. He wants to yell. He wants to scream in the loudspeaker that he was the abandoned one, that he wanted to keep skating with-
The ash from his cigarette falls on his thigh, it’s hot but he barely feels it. It doesn’t burn or ache at all next to the name caught in his throat, in his chest, a name he wants to scream at the top of his lungs and which had so much power over his heart in the past.
And he was stupid enough to think it had passed.
Reki turns around to look at the giant screen. The beef started, yet he doesn’t leave.
“You’re going to keep me company until I come with you, aren’t you?”
“Guess you figured me out!” It irks him how easy that kid can smile. Adam wishes this particular rare talent could be more widespread among his acquaintances.
Well, not that Tadashi didn’t know how to smile when they were Reki’s age.
Life really is not fair, not gentle with him. Tadashi is the one who reflects all the time how much Ainosuke has changed, but he never noticed how much he did himself, or that he is the one who started it all.
And now he wants to take skating away from him, as if it was the cause of his misery?
If only he knew how much it was not.
“Are you coming or what?”
Ah, younglings these days.
Adam reluctantly follows the redhead to the rest of the crowd; the beef is impressive enough that no one cares about his entrance and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He feels completely out of it. Everyone has their eyes glued on the giant screens or on their phone, they are shouting both skater’s S nicknames and Ainosuke doesn’t know what to do.
He’s about to enter the aisle and he’s suddenly having second thoughts about everything; he thinks of his first ride, first fall, first ollie, first crush, first love, of his every firsts and his first everything.
Heavens have such a particular sense of humour to make him realize, just before he could catch his dream at long last, that it was perhaps not what his heart desired.
Adam was born from an old wound that could never properly heal. It’s a farce, a costume, it’s nothing but a persona to hide his pain away. He was born to protect Ainosuke from the rest of the world, but he was incapable of treating his heartache, and as to protect him again from one too many mistake, before it’s too late Adam gives him a final reminder that all this, S, the wedding, Snow, no matter how extraordinary he is at skating, all this won’t save him either.
He has always known. What he craves for is someone who set himself off limits with only Ainosuke’s good reputation in mind. During all those years Tadashi refused to call him anything but by his title, he refused to skate with him, he refused to treat him as the friend he was, and now what is he doing? A complete 180° turn, like a love hug, Tadashi is doing exactly everything Ainsouke had always dreamed him to do, with only his good reputation in mind, by destroying the only place that gives him freedom and peace of mind. His only refuge after Tadashi took it away.
Adam hates him, there’s no denying it. Adam hates Tadashi for all he did to Ainosuke, for the coldness, for not standing up to defend the treasure they had built together, their own idea of Paradise. He hates that he chose the worst moment to rebel. He hates that he hadn’t done it sooner.
But Ainosuke loves him. He has never stopped loving him, he kept him close so that no one could have him, just in case one day Tadashi would change his mind perhaps, and that string of hope was what kept his heart bleeding for years, but also kept both of them alive.
He loves him. He wants to skate with him. This could be their only chance.
Snow and Snake are about to enter the abandoned factory. Snake in slightly behind; in front of him Snow skates as if he had wings. All his friends are shouting his name. He’s not skating alone; it’s not the wings that make him fly so high.
“Tadashi.” He curls his fist, he can’t find the strength to shout his name in the middle of so many strangers that know nothing of his turmoil, of his pain, of their history; but inside his chest, his heart only beats for one name.
And it explodes with joy when Snake passes the finish line first.