Work Text:
March 13th.
Yukako slides into the driver's seat of the glossy green Lamborghini and announces, sternly, "I went to a lot of effort to hotwire this car. I hope you appreciate this."
Her iron gaze stays locked on Okuyasu as he swings into the shotgun seat, snapping his seatbelt on. Most people writhe when she gives them the head-to-toe dressing down. But if Okuyasu gained a coin for every time he faced sour judgment, he wouldn't have to scrimp and save so much, dipping into his oft-checked savings for the purchase he was about to make on this shopping trip. Despite Yukako’s unsmiling scrutiny, he nestles his back into the squeaky upholstery of the seat, knees bumping excitedly. Fresh plastic smell permeates thickly, mingling with the acrid rose spritz that clouds his classmate’s hair. After a couple minutes, the effect wasn't unpleasant so much as sinus prickling.
Sneezing into his arm, he stammers, "Brand new, huh?"
With no reason to hold back, Okuyasu twists around to admire the premises, pointing out that the seats are patterned with crisply embroidered Gucci logos.
"Wait. Holy shit. You really went and stole Rohan's--"
"His misguided attempt to roadtrip with my Koichi." Twisting the ignition, Yukako adds, "I'll push it into a harbor once we're done shopping for White Day presents. I don't enjoy wasting luxury covers. But I do enjoy wasting fools."
He thumps the dashboard at this, hooting, and she indulges in a brief, tight smile.
"That's kinda neat, you knowin' how to drive."
As they're pulling away from the curb, she side eyes him sharply, but he's looking back unabashedly. If there was any gauge for sincerity, he'd be a full tank.
"Commitment," she snaps, terse enough that Okuyasu’s posture lurches ramrod-straight, instinctively taking cover. The steering wheel slides like a viper under her hands, sending them both knocking askance from centrifugal force, but their angled trajectory is immaculate, gliding under the gentle click of the turn signal slowly reeling away. He breathes out; She never seems to have breathed in to begin with, her pallid expression a lake beneath the plump thunderclouds. Whether she hotwired a minor celebrity's vehicle and learned to drive it in the same day, or planned for weeks, the wrathful stillness of her expression implied that she expected anyone who gave an ounce of care to be able to enact the same deeds.
"A-Alright," he says.
"Do you still have the Valentine's gift you got from Josuke?" Spoken not unkindly.
"Of course! Right here. I oughta hop into traffic if I lost this." He shakes his left fist. That blueberry Lip Smackers tube was going to leave a permanent indent in his sweaty palm at the rate he was holding on tight.
As they pull harshly and perfectly within the line behind a red light, she reaches out, then holds herself frozen, mentally ticking through her acquired checklist of having to check for body language. Yukako chews on the inside of her cheek. Rose-tinted spotlights made it hard to tell when someone didn't want to be touched. Dealing with rejection became a new muscle to be flexed and in spite of her nature, she didn’t want to harm Koichi’s friend as a result.
A light switches in her mind. She had earnestly forgotten verbal communication was a tool that could be used to expedite social situations no less quickly than brute force.
Carefully weighing the intuition that floated so unnaturally to her, she asks, very quietly, "Can I touch your hand?"
"Uh, Yeah. Go for it," says Okuyasu, flabbergasted. And pleased.
She touches his hand stiff as a feather, but light as a board.
"I would throw you into traffic, too," says Yukako, blushing a little. "If you ever lost his Valentine's gift, I would make sure a truck hit you. And the truck after that. I would protect your devotion every way I know how."
The traffic light flashes from red to green. Her foot stomps on the gas pedal and executes their jerky acceleration precisely within a mile beneath the speed limit. Sweat pours from Okuyasu's temples and upper lip.
I'm gonna die, he thinks. I'm not gonna make it to the mall.
Glancing up with a sudden start, he swivels his neck like a key in a lock when she taps the glass, pointing to the 18-wheeler that pulled up alongside them. He cringes, but realizes that when she lights up with humor, she’s especially pretty. In lieu of porcelain stoicism, the way her face dimples into a smile ends up emphasizing the charming fullness of her unplucked brows. He tries not to dwell on the fact that homicide is a cute sixteen-year-old who learned what the word 'no' meant about four days ago.
"Remember," trills Yukako playfully, a block of ice melted between them.
Even scared shitless, he does appreciate that this is the first friend that he's made who is also a girl. This, somehow, broaches one of his deeper, insidious insecurities: That he would always be lacking in some indescribable way, repulsing women and children with his twin scars, his coarse speech, his innate struggles with the coursework that never left anyone else so far behind in the syllabus even as he stayed up until the asscrack of dawn to try and catch up. There were days when he struggled to cross the same streets as others, even if the imprint left by their double takes was familiar as anything else. Tensely knotted voices in the back of his mind, all reverberating with the calculated verbal blows of Keicho, reminding him that the world would not overlook his shortcomings no matter how comfortably he could accept that he was lesser.
Caught up in the familiar, almost daily rhythm of self-depreciation, he didn't notice that she parked the Lamborghini.
He startles out of his thoughts as a frantic burst of perfumed hair squeezes in front of him and pushes his door open.
"We're here, but we have to move fast. The cosmetics counter is closing down."
----
"So what's good and what's not good?" Hands shoved into his pockets, he feels out of his element, roving across pearly tiles in shoes that were coming unglued in the soles.
"I don't spend my time looking at your beau," she responds, testily.
He says nothing in response, cramming his hands into his pockets. Slouching, he wants to be physically smaller in a gleaming place like this.
She selects her present for Koichi in no time, taking a rechargeable device to the counter and having it wrapped up to her drill sergeant specifications. The Clarisonic lady looks ready to suplex her after all the fussing and commands, but at last, Yukako returns to Okuyasu's side, reminiscent of a shark returning to the pull of a current. Even if the resemblance was uncanny, he remembered Josuke's nephew calmly instilling the notion that sharks weren't unkind. Peaceable, for the most part.
"Don't you look into his eyes?" she issues like a challenge. Despite her behavior bouncing like a match of ping pong, he was beginning to guess that she didn't say these things with the intent to hurt. If she wanted to hurt him, she would have clobbered him with open ferocity. Otherwise, Yukako talked like a hit of wasabi. Eye-wateringly to the point. No subterfuge.
"What's his eyes got to do with--"
"Everything!"
Reflexively, Okuyasu flinched, anticipating a strike. Loud, belligerent voices did that to him. Instead, her hair rolls and snakes around her wrists, mulling over choices before darting out and seizing a bulky carton display of eyeshadows to press into his arms gingerly.
"The most that I can tell my Koichi to do is exfoliate. He's gorgeous and barefaced, but that makes it so much harder to shop for him. But your Josuke likes mascara. Anyone could spot it a mile away."
"Maybe it's natural," he says, embarrassed that he couldn't tell that the dreamy lashes could've just been make-up.
"And maybe-- No." Grimly, she begins swatching the eyeshadows in colorful streaks on his arms. "It's definitely Maybelline. But there's no use getting mascara. That kind of eye make-up will grow bacteria and expire in three months. A bad omen for a long relationship."
Together, they roll up their sleeves for more swatching space and get to work. First to be eliminated is base make-up. No sense in foundation or concealer if they couldn't check how accurate it would be against his skin undertones. Helpfully, this also eliminates blush. Whenever he feels that he's onto something, she steers him away from the flashier glitz, even though he nervously ends up collecting these pieces that would be more befitting of Crazy Diamond than Josuke Higashikata.
They both spend a fair amount of time weighing the pros and cons of a night serum. He thinks he's ruined it by testing it out on the side of his thumb and exclaiming, "Smells like fancy butt sweat," but she almost doubles over at the hip with a sudden burst of laughter. This alone makes him feel like a king.
Despite her assistance in navigating the shelves and the all too keen on helping assistants, he feels ready to toss everything up in the air and let it come crashing down, frustration trickling behind his eyes like the onset of a migraine. Too many colors, too many wand-shapes and custom-finishes, creams versus powders. With such a heavy tax on high end counter goods, he could only really afford one thing, too.
"Brand name," he manages, finally. She was almost excessively thoughtful in her selections and while it made everything sound like a good decision, that seemed to simultaneously diminish the value in everything. If he didn't break in, there would be no end in sight.
Okuyasu continues, "I don't wanna grab something that his mom would use. He'd just laugh, and I'd feel like shit asking to return it. I, uh. Don't know about colors, and. Stuff. Maybe something classic. That he'd use a long time if he wanted to get fancy. Even though he always wants to get fancy." This teases a smile out of him, despite the fatigue.
A loud ping descends like a weight of bricks:
"Shoppers, please bring your final purchases to the counter within five minutes. We are about to close. Thank you for understanding.
"No, I don't, actually!" He beats both fists upon a sturdy glass counter, drawing alarmed stares from the attendants. They seem ready to swarm with carefully worded concern, but Yukako manages to crack a display just by force of near-invisible follicles, timed perfectly to her glare towards any interlopers.
They back away. She pulls Okuyasu to his feet.
"Okuyasu," she says, sadly. "I know you can do this. No one else in the world could."
"You think so?" More hoarse than usual, he's doing his best not to lose his face. Everything feels overwhelming. He's all too self-conscious that he looks meaner the closer he gets to tipping over and weeping; his voice stretches while his expression screws up tight.
"If he really loves you," she says, reaching out to him before twitching to a still stop like a wind-up doll. Interrupting her own thoughts, she coldly asks, as though proposing a business transaction, "Can I hug you?"
"Uh. Hell yeah."
She hugs him.
Reverting back to a gentle hush, she continues, "If he really loves you, he'd be over the moon with any face you gave him."
All the blood rushes to his face like a valve. She is the second person to hug him in recent memory, if recent goes back sixteen years.
"Okay," he chokes out.
"Go!" And she pushes his back.
The search takes him eight minutes, not five, but this is a technicality: Yukako wrapped up most of the cosmetics department staff in stiff cocoons of hair, releasing them right as Okuyasu makes a mad dash to the counter, grabs a cardboard-backed item from the baskets of checkout goodies, and fumbles for his wallet. She ambles over regally, barely acknowledging any of the staff with her diamond cutting glare, though it softens as she checks up on him.
He didn't even seem to notice that she intervened with her Stand. Slowly mastering her own behaviors and cues meant that she suspected he did see her hair lash out and restrain others, but he was a self-engaged individual that just decided not to put energy into acknowledging this. What others perceived as oblivious was simply his sweet, straightforward nature.
"This was fun," she says to her friend.
"Let's do it again for Christmas," says Okuyasu, beaming.
----
March 14th.
"How’s it going, Okuyasu?" shouts a familiar voice, towards the slouchy figure stepping through the classroom doorway.
Josuke perches on the edge of the window, flashing a grin. He’s real careful to make himself poised like his pulse isn’t playing skip rope. Seeing Okuyasu always sets his heart darting. Pretty uncool. But in a good kind of way, like when he walks home and the house is warm with dinner on the boil.
Warm-- He feels warm, and it lights his face up in a way that even the BB cream can’t conceal. He just likes watching the way Okuyasu ambles in, hands tucked in his pockets, armed with a cautious grin that carefully bridges the distance between them.
Waving eagerly, Okuyasu comes up and plants a present right in front of his friend, who almost losing his seating out the windows from joy.
"Here. For White Day. Since you got me that Valentine's present and all, I thought. Uh." Tongue twisted, he blusters, "Just tell me if it's no good."
Dropping the pretense of having any chillness whatsoever, Josuke regards the package like he won the lottery again. Rectangular and thickly padded out with several layers of bright magazine covers. He makes a split second effort to peel at the seams of the tape before shredding right to the core, carefully lifting out the last glossy layer of 'zine paper and rolling out the contents.
"Oh, shit!" he crows, delightedly. The gift was an 8-pack of Bonne Bell Lip Smackers. "I've never seen this many all together. I love these flavors, too-- Where'd you get this?"
"Out. Shopping," says Okuyasu, trying for cool and mysterious, leaning his shoulders against the window and staring up at his best friend's Maybelline coated lashes. "Couldn't've done it without Yukako, though."
"What, did she try to force you to swallow these so you’d give up Koichi’s locker number or something?" From the easy shade of his pomp, Josuke scans Okuyasu's expression for a flash of humor in his eyes, waiting for the joke to follow. When nothing broke, Josuke just made a "huh" sound, and put the notion somewhere in the back of his brain to mull over later.
For now. "You still have that Lip Smacker that I gave you on Valentine's, right? The blueberry one?"
"Why does everyone keep asking me that? 'Course I do!"
A playful glint. "Lemme borrow it just for a second. I never see you wearing it so I just thought I'd show you how a real cool guy wears it. Maybe help you put it on."
Okuyasu snorts. "I was hoping you'd say some cheesy bullshit like that. No. Just. C'mere."
He beckons, and Josuke obliges.
----
"I have to do this every day?" Koichi sulks, staring at the high grade exfoliator that he received for White Day. He thinks, despairingly, Why couldn't it have been marshmallows? Even though I'm sure she would've wrestled some endangered albino boar and ground up the hooves to make it.
Nonetheless, this arrangement worked for them. Even though the White Day holiday made matters more customary for the boy to return the girl’s gifts, they switched their tradition around to lessen the stress of acting overboard for their roles. Just a stray suggestion from one of Yukako’s counseling sessions. Not bad for a first try-- and they were willing to actively work together and listen if any missteps occurred.
At least, in time. "Morning and night," Yukako cheerfully instructs, having memorized the handbook in 15 minutes once she'd dropped Okuyasu back at his crumbling residence, and the stolen Lamborghini off the docks, into the sea. "There may be a purging period of horrific new acne until your face adjusts-- But don't worry, Koichi dear. I have a lot of faith in your skin elasticity and your perseverance!"
"That's lovely," he manages, sighing. "Happy White Day, Yukako."
"Happy White Day, Koichi dear." She leans in, about to ask if she can peck his cheek, but catches sight of the boys at the windowsill and cracks a smile so wide and genuine that Koichi looks over and smiles, too.