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Max didn’t have a license, he’d said, though the words had been something more like “I am afflicted by the absence of license”—and Yuki had to hold a laugh. At least he tried. A lot of foreigners didn’t.
And Yuki thought no man in his probably late twenties had any business not having a driver’s license, but he never asked Max why. After all, it meant Yuki had a job, and it was driving. Not asking personal questions.
But two weeks after their first drive anyway, Max explained, in a much-improved Japanese and without being asked, that he did have a license, except he was only a point away from getting it revoked and dealing with that kind of conundrum in a foreign country wasn’t anywhere near the top of his to-do list.
After that, Yuki had stopped silently judging Max for his lack of license and started silently judging him for being terrible enough of a driver to rack up that many infractions, though he never said that out loud either.
Yuki enjoyed the silence, mostly, and so did Max. His Japanese was a weird mix of out-of-place colloquialisms and sentences that seemed pulled straight out of a historical drama, and Yuki wasn’t polite enough not to correct it once in a while, just for the sheer pleasure of being right about something. Max didn’t seem to take any offence though, just nodding eagerly, making that face like he was taking a lot of mental notes about something important, even though in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t.
Though Yuki never corrected Max when he called himself boku—even if it was way too informal and boyish for the context at hand, Yuki secretly enjoyed the familiarity the silly mistake got him feeling. He didn’t feel like he was at work at all, sometimes.
He’d started driving for Max about a month ago; Takeshi gave him a call and said some foreign actor needed a driver, they could probably make him pay about double the fare without any questions getting raised, it was good business, and besides Yuki’s English was good.
Not that kind of famous, probably filming for one of those late-night filler shows, Takeshi had said when Yuki didn’t answer, although that wasn’t what Yuki was thinking about at all.
He’d managed to convene with Takeshi that they’d only charge the guy extra if he was particularly rude—Max turned out to be a very nice person, the kind of polite that would’ve had Yuki’s father frothing at the mouth were he to have been his son instead.
Yuki never mentioned about having a decent grasp of English; Max never asked, and continued to say things like I find pork stew to be candid and traffic is suicide.
Sometimes he practiced his lines in the car on the way to the set, but Yuki never really got a grasp of what he was filming. When he wasn’t talking with Max, his eyes were on the road and his ears on the brake-pedal rumbling of the dishevelled Renault that the Dutchman had rented at the airport with all of the trust in the world, and that had a couple quirks but none worth filing a complaint about. Just that weird noise that the brakes made sometimes, the moodiness of the gear shift—too stiff half the time, loose when it was the least convenient—, and the radio being entirely broken, beeping what sounded like morse code from time to time despite being turned off.
The first time the other man came with them, Yuki suddenly remembered Max was an actor.
That information had sort of fallen into the backdrop of their relationship: Yuki drove Max to the sets—sometimes the outskirts of Osaka, sometimes all the way to Suzuka—then back home, occasionally to some social event to where Yuki could tell he would rather not be at; waited around for Max to be done, smoking at the nearest café, sometimes birdwatching at the park, never drinking until he’d dropped Max off at home for good.
Yuki took his job seriously, even if it did not feel like much of a job and more like a daily activity.
Which he supposed was what jobs were, in essence.
Max’s own job didn’t come up much in conversations—the Japanese required to speak about acting was a lot more contrived than that for conversations about driving, the view, or the local cuisine.
Or at least Yuki assumed. He’d never been big into movies, probably never would be.
So after a month or so, Max was just Max.
But whoever this other man was, he wasn’t just someone.
Tall, tan, dressed with intent more than well-dressed, exuding an aura of calculated nonchalance that was seldom found in anyone trivial, at first glance the encyclopedia picture of a socialite, the important kind. He embodied that image of the idealized western type that all girls Yuki’s age dreamed of eloping with—something he’d imagined could only be an escapist fabrication of their post-adolescent minds, but that now stood right before him in the flesh, smiling a toothpaste commercial brand of perfect smile.
He'd have to think of apologizing to Riko next he saw her, maybe snag the man’s number while he was at it. Couldn’t hurt to try.
Max got in the backseat with the new man, and for once the passenger seat felt strangely empty. Ever the gentleman, that Max.
“You have a driver?” asked the newcomer, Yuki tried not to glance too blatantly at the rearview.
That really was a movie star, huh? No offence to Max. Maybe a little offence to Max.
“I practice my lines in the car,” Max fumbled, and Yuki had to stifle a chuckle. Sometimes he did, sometimes meaning something loosely between twice a week or never at all. But the handsome stranger found the explanation satisfactory, for what it was worth.
Yuki took note: this was someone Max cared about impressing.
He didn’t have to ask to know that whatever Max was working on, this man had to be the lead actor.
He told Yuki where they were going—unusual, not somewhere Max would really go to unless forced by one of those social events he so hated, but Yuki knew the city a lot better than the palm of his hands, because the latter he had no real reason to look at when they were on a steering wheel, so he simply flipped the engine on and drove.
“You know Japanese?” the man asked, a little too befuddled for Yuki’s taste.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he heard Max reply. Red light. He snuck another glance at the rearview, the semi-hostility in Max’s tone in stark contrast to a body language that seemed begging to get closer to the stranger, suggesting he would sit in the middle seat if only he’d thought of that before Yuki started the car. “We will be staying here for like, half a year, yeah?”
“And you learn the local language for every place you work at?”
“I try,” was Max’s somewhat resigned response. There was something about it Yuki couldn’t quite place, something endearing in nature. “By the way, Yuki, this is George.” He said George the Japanese way, stretching out the vowels, katakana joo and gi through and through.
Yuki struggled not to burst into laughter. He felt like an actor himself, trying to pretend not to understand anything. They should give him an Oscar.
“He is a very… uh…” Max struggled for words, and though Yuki’s eyes were on the road he knew the frown Max had to be pulling right then. “Good person. Nice… nice man. Very beautiful.”
At that, Yuki couldn’t hold the chuckle. Like it was the case with a lot of Max’s other language learning quirks, it was hard to explain in simple terms that utsukushii was not a word you would use to describe a coworker you found simply agreeable, or a friend, or anyone you weren’t involved with to the point of finding their very existence something poetically touching.
But Yuki had to drive, so he just nodded, huffed out a quick nice to meet you that George wouldn’t understand anyway, and made a mental note to remind Max later that the appropriate word would be something like kakkoii.
“What’d you say?” asked George, voice somewhere between wariness tense enough to cut through with a knife and amazement. “Thought you talked about me.”
“I told Yuki to brace himself for your incessant babbling. You need a warning.”
Yuki heard something that sounded like a scoff. “He has to put up with you every day, he’ll be fine.”
Yuki didn’t hear the rest of it, too focused on the traffic, but it was the most he’d heard Max talk since he’d started working for him, and quite louder than usual.
Through bits and pieces, Yuki deduced that wherever they were going, it wasn’t strictly a work thing, and that neither of them wanted to claim responsibility for having proposed this meeting, which he found quite amusing.
If neither of them wanted to be here, what in the world was binding them to?
He dropped them off in crowded downtown, and having a few hours to kill, Yuki ended up taking a nap.
He picked them both back up clearly drunker than when they had gotten out, George’s arm slung around Max’s shoulders and Max’s face flushed into a hue that would get him thrown in the ripe cherry basket in most convenience stores—Yuki had thought Max loathed that kind of social outing, but he seemed all too pleased and all too intoxicated, so Yuki contented himself with an amused glance before getting in the car.
By the time they stopped, George had fallen stiff asleep on Max’s shoulder, who was sitting in the uncomfortable and narrow middle seat, looking like he’d just gotten electrocuted for the sake of some unethical science experiment.
“Do you need me to stay?” Yuki asked, handing him the keys. He really hoped the answer was no. The car was parked, his job here was done, and Max hadn’t said anything about getting George back to his place as well—but given his state, it was entirely possible he had forgotten.
Max blinked, trying to will humanity back into himself. Failing, by the looks of it. “No, I—it’s fine. I don’t know what to do. He’s asleep.” Funnily enough, Max’s Japanese was better when he was off his face. Bit more confident.
Yuki shrugged. “Wake him up.”
Max’s eyes widened, like he really hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, of course. Yeah, I will wake him up. Thanks, Yuki.”
Yuki didn’t know what he was being thanked for, but he said you’re welcome anyway.
“Oh and—I hope he is not… bothering you? Maybe he comes again. With me.”
Yuki studied both of them for a second, not for lack of answer but because he couldn’t quite place what it was, the relationship between these two men.
The tall one’s sleeping frame, peaceful on Max’s shoulder, the way there were no better words to describe Max’s expression than terrified and yet his hand around the other’s shoulders was something almost protective, an out-of-place gentleness that made Yuki’s stomach lurch with something foreign. He felt in the middle of something already started, like turning on the TV and landing on a movie of which the intrigue was already well set and the characters far past introduced, but staying to watch to the end anyway.
“Why would he bother me?” Yuki shrugged again, opening the front door. “Good evening, Max.”
Max still didn’t move. “Ah— good night.”
George became a regular guest in Max’s moody Renault Clio, and in a week, Yuki learned more about Max than he had in one month of their mostly quiet circling around the streets of Osaka. It became anything but.
It wasn’t too much of a bother for Yuki; he was used to tuning the noise out and focusing only on the road, that was what made him a good driver. He’d had chatty clients before, had gotten good at letting his mouth answer without having to think about what it was saying, some with particular music tastes—some even that he’d ended up adding to his extensive CD collection.
So Max and George’s bickering became one of those things, a new entry in the library of Yuki’s mind: Max stuttered when a comment caught him off-guard, would never admit in front of George to being terrible enough of a driver that he was on the verge of license suspension, he liked his beer cold and was utterly infatuated with the local okonomiyaki, he forgot himself when he spoke about their jobs, his rants about characterization or what have you could go on for an entire ride, and he sounded most like himself that way—the rest of the time he would address George sounding somewhere halfway between flustered and angry. But George kept coming back despite having a rental car of his own and a presumably intact license, so if there was any bad blood between the two men, it shone through only in the words.
And the actions were by far louder.
George was different, almost a polar opposite to Max. He spoke like he was always enunciating for the mics on set to pick up, and the emotion in it was rare, only when Max said something too biting. He listened patiently to Max’s rants, supplying his own when the timing was right—contrary to Max’s impulsive interruptions—, and said a lot of strange words that Yuki didn’t really understand despite being able to watch most American movies in their original versions without losing too much of the plot.
A part of Yuki felt like he was intruding, but he did his best to keep his eyes on the road and his feelings in a box—which was also a good motto for life at large.
He knew many things about them: where they filmed; their favourite places in Osaka, sometimes Suzuka when work had them go there; the name of their series and most of the plot (something about a retired racing driver coaching an up and coming star, with a romantic subplot involving the daughter of a CEO, all of which happened between Osaka and Suzuka for reasons that entirely evaded Yuki.); their tastes in music, women, food; what ticked both of them off.
Only one thing Yuki didn’t understand—and though it was none of his business, the irredeemably curious part of him still wanted to know what they meant to each other, what their relationship was, what it meant that George kept coming back despite them claiming multiple times there were a million other places in the world there would rather be at than next to each other.
With the way Max spoke about George when it was just them two, Yuki was starting to suspect that maybe utsukushii had been the right word to come out of the Dutchman’s mouth, after all.
George-san… bishounen mitai da ne? Max would sigh dreamily, like he wanted Yuki to agree, head against the rolled-up window, autumn rains hammering against the other side.
They’d added George-san to the triad of conversation topics for two, right after driving and food.
He always said things like that, as if he hadn’t been in the backseat mere hours ago calling George a pathetic and sore loser that deserved to have his head bashed through a wall—though Yuki supposed Max didn’t think he understood the half of it, and admirably they never would raise their voices too much, no matter the magnitude of the insults.
They said them rather politely, actually, trying to keep the tone conversational so that Yuki wouldn’t pick up on them. And he had a feeling neither of them really meant them.
Only on the first day did Yuki drop them both off at Max’s place, though. After that, if George drove with them on the evening, from the set to home, or after he and Max went to presumably some social gathering that George always was way better dressed for, they first stopped at George’s apartment in Kita, and after an awkward goodbye that Yuki pretended to look away from while sneaking glances in the rearview, only five minutes to Max’s, nearer to the border with Miyakojima.
Their relationship was strange: if they weren’t both men Yuki would’ve at first assumed them to be lovers, maybe an onset affair that never quite concluded in anything, hiding it from a partner back home that they worried Yuki might be an informant for.
He knew westerners were a lot more liberal with that whole business, that in some places overseas it was a lot less strange for two people of the same sex to be involved in that way, but it still felt strange for Yuki to picture it—and besides, he had only dropped them off together once.
If they were a man and a woman, it would still be the same: that strangely intimate picture of George’s head sat on Max’s shoulder, that almost terrified look on the Dutchman’s eyes, like moving was akin to a death sentence, then whatever had happened once they were out of the car—they fortunately hadn’t been in by the next morning.
But whatever transpired, it brought the two of them together in a way he struggled to really make sense of.
Romance was a gentle thing, whispered compliments, sneaking touches in the backseat. As many times as Yuki snuck glances there, they were obstinately on opposite ends, pretending not to see each other.
And the words were far from gentle.
If they were a man and a woman, it would have maybe been that kind of sad story about two people who really liked each other but never got around to gathering the courage to be the first to ask, eternally doomed to stay tangled in a contactless dance, more or less graceless flailing around each other without ever quite touching, only for a moment that was broken too soon, obstinately insisting they did not really feel anything other than contempt for one another, proximity by convenience, an endless supply of cowardly excuses to bore the most patient of men.
But Yuki was far from the most patient of men, so maybe, even though he shouldn’t have, he ended up involving himself.
They were driving through Yodogawa from the port, picked them off from a bar with a nice view of the coast, streets golden with evening, a quiet serenity radiating off the backseat that Yuki had grown disused to.
He was dropping George off at his apartment and then Max had a meeting all the way in Taiheji that he sounded anything but happy about, having told Yuki about it that morning while looking uncannily similar to a very annoyed cat. Just some formalities, not urgent but it would be rude not to go, was the extent of what he’d been able to communicate without starting to sound like he was reading dadaist poetry out loud.
“Why don’t you come upstairs just now? I still haven’t shown you that brilliant little car miniature I got from that shop in Nara, you’ll see all the details, they really are something.”
George always said name places in a way that was gratingly English, completely scandalous for somebody who had apparently been living in Japan for three months. But that wasn’t the reason Yuki almost missed the red light and had to brake way too hard to avoid taking the life of a poor elderly woman—no, something in his chest was hammering, his entire body tense.
Without realizing, he’d gotten invested in whatever this little affair was, and the turning point now was clear as day.
Max sounded like he’d had the breath punched out of him. “Ah—crap, I—”
Yuki spoke before the word meeting could come out of Max’s mouth. Of course, in Japanese, because if George understood anything more than good morning and thank you, he really would turn out to be a one-of-a-kind acting talent, would’ve had Yuki entirely fooled. “That will sound like an excuse, by the way. And he won’t ask again, so you better call whoever it was you had a meeting with and tell them you are actively dying of food poisoning, and then you’ll go look at that goddamn car miniature. Please.”
For a moment, Yuki went cold, his muscles stiff, frozen. He heard his father’s voice, telling him that he had been born evil and wretched, without respect for anything good, that he would do best to live the rest of his life with his mouth closed lest he ruin the lives of everyone around him.
He almost missed a turn, and was saved by the red light at the tail end of it. A moment to breathe. To tell himself that he didn’t owe it to anyone, anyway, that disrespect was about loathing, and the only thing Yuki ever loathed was—
Then came Max’s voice, no trace of anger in it, just the most profound confusion to ever come out of the mouth of a person. “How—” Yuki was kind of proud, honestly. That ‘nanda?’ had sounded almost like a native’s. “You… are good with English?”
Yuki fought to keep the smirk to himself. “Of course,” he said, eyes dead set on the road, arms relaxing, the thing that had woken up for a second back in its neat little box. “But you never asked.”
And most surprising of all, neither of them had been sneakily mean to Yuki thinking he did not understand. It was his favourite game to play with the foreigners, waiting for them to slip up and then replying in near-perfect English—but these two had been far too occupied being mean to each other to ever comment on Yuki’s shitty haircut or whatnot.
“Ah. Uh… so sorry about that,” Max apologized, using the most formal of registers—what for? Yuki would not know.
“No, no, do keep the Japanese up,” he couldn’t help laughing. Max was probably his favourite person he’d driven a car for, but he’d have been hard-pressed to know why. “You are quite… insightful sometimes.”
The world is not kind, Max would sometimes say when he’d been doing something he’d rather have skipped; you drive like you have a gun to your head, which Yuki had later learned was meant to be a compliment—and maybe not that untrue.
“And don’t be stupid. Say yes.”
He heard the sound of Max flopping back on his seat, an appreciative hum.
“What were you talking about?” George asked, like he often did—about usually the most trivial of rerouting chats.
“Oh—just…” Max sounded strangled. He must be a really shitty actor, Yuki thought, if he had his heart in his throat over something so simple. “Yuki was telling me we had to… change route a bit? The road is blocked off, there’s… a protest, or something.”
All things considered, a good save. Bit shameful for a professional actor, but there was a reason George was the lead.
And Yuki, in his infinite kindness, did take a detour, just for the sake of helping Max look a little less like an idiot. Not that the sea got any wetter if you poured a bucket in it, but at least he’d done his part.
They made it to Kita when the orange in the sky had become nothing but a faint band behind the towering buildings, and to George’s apartment not much later, though the completely unnecessary detours had taken them some fifteen minutes of traffic jams and a restoration of the usual bickering without which the Renault felt uncannily hollow.
Yuki stopped the car. It was probably stupid, to feel this nervous about something that didn’t concern him, but he found his hands a vise grip around the steering wheel as the engine went quiet.
“So, you coming?” George asked.
The breath Yuki took was probably Max’s too, way too shallow for how deep it was.
“Uh—yeah! Yeah, of course. I would—yeah, I would love to. I just have to—you got a phone up there? I have to make a call, but yeah.”
Yuki let the breath go. Fucking finally.
“Yuki, can you… park it where always?” Max’s voice was quivery, and Yuki could truly not hold back his smile. “Tomorrow at ten, we see you there. And… thank you?”
Max always said thank you after getting dropped off, always said sorry when he was late. He would’ve loved being born here, probably. But Yuki knew that in that almost childish doubt, he meant something entirely different.
He parked the car at the usual spot in front of Max’s place, sat in silence for a while before getting out. He had either fulfilled his entire life’s quota of good deeds or made the biggest mistake of someone else’s.
He supposed only tomorrow would tell.
George’s apartment was clean, and it smelled like something Max couldn’t quite place, but that he wanted to rub on his skin and smell of forever. “Nice place,” he could only think of saying, hanging his coat by the door.
George followed suit. “You haven’t seen it yet,” he smiled, but didn’t move to lead Max into the apartment. In fact, he stayed right where he was, next to him, like Max had forgotten something important.
“What was the model, you said? A 1980 Renault Fuego? I didn’t think people would make miniatures of that, but I guess here of course there is always surprises.” Max shifted his weight from one foot to another, tried to fumble with the pockets of his coat only to realize he wasn’t wearing it, and George was still not moving, still right by the coat hanger, looking Max up and down like he had committed all of the crimes ever invented. Probably he had. “And, uh, you said you got it from—?”
George rolled his eyes, getting one step closer, not further into the apartment, not one bit. As George’s intensely blue eyes bore into him, Max wondered when suicide would start becoming a socially acceptable out.
He opened his mouth, and nothing came out. He wasn’t looking at George’s perfect lips, how they looked even better when chapped. He wasn’t, it was just a professional observation. It quite suited his character. Method acting and all. He supposed.
“Oh, you said you got it in Nara, yeah?”
“Oh forget about the fucking car, you daft—” whatever colorful insult George was going to hit him with got lost in the kiss that followed, George bridging the distance with a hand crumpled up in the collar of Max’s shirt, a clumsy step forward.
It was tentative at first, more of a question than really a kiss, lips barely pressed together, testing waters that could’ve humanly not been more eager if they tried. When Max’s arms came hurriedly around George’s shoulders, it became hungry and wanting, as if he’d been waiting for it too, as if this was something George had thought about—however outlandish that seemed.
George Russell, wanting him of all people?
His back hit the wall, George’s hands came up to cup his face, his tongue wet and hot demanding access rather than asking for it, Max overjoyed to oblige. George still tasted faintly of Ginjo sake and devoured his mouth like it was his life on the line, like he’d spent the three months they’d known each other for starving just like Max had.
When they broke apart it was dazed, disbelieving, their bodies far closer than they had a right to be, than Max could’ve ever dared to imagine—though his dreams had dared one too many times.
“Will you show me the car miniature later?”
“I made that up, Max. To get you in my bed, you oblivious imbecile.”
Max wondered if that was one of those dreams. But then George kissed him again, and he realized he could truly and sincerely not give any less of a fuck.
He woke up to orange sunlight being beamed directly into his retinas and sore all over, feeling better than he’d ever felt in his whole life, probably.
It took him a few moments, his body knowing before him whose sheets he was tangled in, whose arm that was around his waist. Tan, elegant, a memory of a steady hand webbed with thick veins imprinted on his mind from the night before—though imagining it now under the covers was enough to make Max’s head spin.
His mind wasn’t the only part of him that was waking up, apparently.
His own breath stuttered as he felt George’s close to his neck, warm, tickling his ear, a chest he now knew perfectly sculpted by some kind of god of the male anatomy rhythmically heaving against his back.
“Wakey wakey, sleepyhead.” George’s voice was rough with sleep, and had no right being that terribly attractive. A shiver ran down Max’s spine. “Not a morning person, huh?” His fingers curled against Max’s abdomen, softly stroking up and down. Max had probably gotten into a car accident and died, and this was Heaven—though how he’d winded up here instead of Hell was a mystery.
Maybe God was not all that angry with them for existing.
“You are here too,” Max replied, leaning into the touch. It was met by a wet and open-mouthed kiss on the base of his neck, and his next biting remark about George throwing stones in a glass house was drowned in something that sounded too much like a whimper not to be deathly embarrassing. “Why—ah—why are you here if—”
George giggled, sinking his teeth in to shut Max up for good. “I was waiting for you,” he cooed, hand now breaching the barrier of playful and going straight for the throat—metaphorically. In the literal sense, it was down in his trousers, palm flat against the damning piece of evidence that was his untimely morning wood.
Christ’s sake.
Max really hoped he was dead. If this was the afterlife, it could go on forever, were God to be so kind.