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zecretsanta · 4 years

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Fic: A Long Drive Home

to: @electric016

from: @gyaxaofficial

Merry Christmas Jinger!!!!!! I’m so happy to have had the chance to write the best OT4 on Earth. I tried to incorporate some of your other prompts and/or headcanons, too. I hope you enjoy!

Their kitchen is quiet. The only sounds are the cat purring gently from his spot beneath a chair, oyster sauce boiling gently on the stove, and the rhythmic noises of Akane and Junpei dicing up cabbage and carrots by the sink. It certainly doesn’t look peaceful, however: all their ingredients are sprawled out on the table, there’s a light dusting of flour over nearly every flat surface in the room (including Akane’s cheeks), and the garbage can is already almost full with the evidence of their first failed attempt at making dough.

“Next time I suggest doing this,” Junpei says after a few minutes of busy silence, “just remind me that there’s a perfectly good takeout restaurant down the street, okay?”

Akane doesn’t turn to look at him, but he can hear the cheeky grin in her voice. “I tried, but you said yourself that it just doesn’t taste—”

“—authentic, yeah, I know. I’m gonna kick past me’s ass later for having good taste.” Junpei leans back against the opposite countertop, watching the Saturday afternoon sunlight play across Akane’s shoulder blades as she works. “Hey, are you sure you should be doing that? I seem to recall that you didn’t get much sleep…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replies, singsong.

“You don’t remember? Because I’m pretty sure I remember waking up at 3 A.M. to pee and you were still scrolling through Wikipedia on your phone.”

Akane whips around to look at him, jaw dropped in an exaggerated pout. “That was important reading, okay! Did you know the most recent reported sighting of the Men in Black was—”

“What, the movie?”

“No, the real ones, silly. It was just last year!” She lowers her voice ominously, pointing the tip of the knife toward Junpei. “And who knows what happened to that guy?”

“Whoa, okay, can you put that down?”

“Oh, sorry.” She gingerly places the knife on the table. The muscles in Junpei’s shoulders relax a little. “Anyway, promise me that if a strange old man in a suit ever comes to our door asking about aliens, play dumb and don’t tell a soul, got it?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He sidles up next to her and kisses the top of her head, then picks up the knife to resume work on the vegetables. Akane begrudgingly scoots over to let him stand by the cutting board, turning her attention to her phone instead. He hears a pensive hmmm. “Any updates?”

“None.”

A thoughtful pause as Junpei tries to think of something reassuring to tell her. “I’m sure he’s fine. He’s got a long drive.”

Beside him, Akane kneels down to the floor to pet the cat gently behind the ears. “Too long.”

—

Carlos drums his fingers against the steering wheel, worrying at his lower lip. Another moment passes in standstill traffic and he decides to turn the radio up louder to drown out the horns blaring around him.

He’s barely an hour into the six-hour drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and if this is how it’s gonna go, it’ll probably stretch into seven or eight. He keeps considering picking up his phone to send Akane and Junpei a quick text explaining the situation, but his law-abiding firefighter brain keeps stopping him.

This is the first New Year’s Eve he’s spent out of the hospital in eleven years (not counting the one at D-Com), and it’s painfully clear to him now that he’d underestimated the holiday traffic patterns. The same anxious voice in the back of his head is now reminding him that he could be back at home with Maria instead of spending half the day alone in his truck. They could spend the evening taking down the Christmas tree that she’d insisted they keep up for a few extra days just because it’s the first time in a decade that they’ve had one, and Carlos could still be keeping a watchful eye on her in case she collapsed again. She’s made astonishing progress in physical therapy, but her muscles had atrophied over all those years lying in bed and her full strength still hasn’t quite returned.

But Maria had encouraged him to go, in that gentle-yet-firm way of hers. Every excuse he could possibly come up with, she’d already covered behind his back. A family friend had promised to come check on her regularly, his boss at the fire station had already approved the time off, and (perhaps most importantly) she’d assured him that yes, really, Carlos, she didn’t mind him leaving, and she was even looking forward to the chance to prove her independence.

“Alright, you could’ve left that last part out. Makes it sound like you’re excited to get rid of me,” he’d ribbed as he hugged her goodbye in the driveway this morning.

“Maybe.” Maria laughed too, but her smile was sincere as she pulled back. “And you’re excited to go! You haven’t stopped missing them since they left.”

It was hard to coordinate, since they were all tied up with work (both at the fire station and with the investigation), but Akane and Junpei had managed to visit him once in the past year since leaving the test site. The pair had bought bus tickets up to San Francisco as soon as they heard that his sister had finally been discharged from the hospital. Maria took to them immediately, as if they’d known each other for years — similar to how Carlos had felt when he first met them. An immediate sense of trust despite all logic indicating otherwise.

She had also picked up on everything else Carlos felt around them almost immediately, which made for an awkward conversation after they’d dropped Junpei and Akane off at the bus station a few days later. (“You’re in love, Carlos. I can tell just by looking at you.”)

“Don’t worry about me. Just have fun,” Maria continued. “They miss you too, you know.”

A blush crept up Carlos’ neck. “You think so?”

She’d rolled her eyes at him and sighed good-naturedly. “I know they do, Carlos. In fact, you’re being cruel to make them wait a single minute longer. Just get in the car already, won’t you?”

So he did. And to Carlos’ credit, he’d only looked back at her distant, waving figure in the rear-view mirror once.

—

Two hours, three different vegetables, and another rubbery, overcooked pot of soba later, Akane is explaining the difference between a UFO and a flying saucer when there’s a knock at the door.

“Akane, you’ve said too much. The Men in Black are here,” Junpei deadpans.

Akane’s eyes grow wide and round as the flying saucers she’d been describing. Her voice drops to a solemn whisper. “Junpei. I have to hide. Remember what I told you.”

He salutes her as he leaves her in the kitchen to continue kneading their third batch of buckwheat dough. The cat leaps down off the currently-unset dining table to follow him curiously down the hallway.

As Junpei approaches, he hears another short knock, then another, then an obnoxious repeated tapping that only stops when Junpei jerks the door open as fast as he can. He catches Aoi with his hand still raised in midair. A slow grin spreads across Aoi’s face as their eyes meet.

“Ah. Should have known it wasn’t Carlos. He’s not a dick.” Junpei lets Aoi hook his fingers in his belt loops and pull him in close. “Showing up uninvited again, huh? What makes you think I want you in my house?”

“Uh, I was invited.” Aoi kisses him in greeting and Junpei feels him still smirking against his lips. He absently runs his fingers through Aoi’s hair, noticing the dark roots starting to grow in. “By your fiancée, actually. So before you give me an attitude…”

Junpei turns to shout down the hallway toward the kitchen. “This was your idea? You knew this was happening?”

“We need him, Jumpy!” Akane yells back. “We’re on our third batch of soba already!”

“See?” Aoi teases. He lets go of Junpei’s waist, pushing past him into the apartment. “Your wheat-to-buckwheat ratio is probably off.”

Junpei won’t admit it out loud, but he knows Akane was right: Aoi is a phenomenal cook, more by necessity than by choice. Akane has told Junpei stories of how Aoi took it upon himself to pack her lunch for school every day; how he learned to prepare all of her comfort foods whenever she was sick; how he baked every one of her birthday cakes after their parents died and always let Akane decorate them with frosting and sprinkles.

Akane talks about Aoi frequently, about all the times Junpei wasn’t there for, but Junpei can’t find it in himself to get tired of it. Not when he technically has Aoi to thank for — for everything. For all of this.

As Aoi heads into the kitchen to greet his sister, he drops a duffel bag full of clothes on the floor by the couch. Junpei arches an eyebrow and nudges the bag with his foot. “Planning to stay a while?”

He pauses to glance back over his shoulder at Junpei. “With your firefighter boyfriend around?” he scoffs. “You bet your ass.”

—

The nine of them stood over Delta’s body, the old man’s blood seeping into the sand. Akane’s voice was the first to break through the silence. “It’ll be alright,” she’d said to them. “I know who to call.”

Carlos’ hands, still trembling, fell to his sides. Seven other voices suddenly began speaking all at once, but he couldn’t hear any of them over the echo of the gunshot ringing in his ears. He locked eyes with Junpei through the crowd, and Junpei nodded once in assurance, his mouth set in a grim line.

A man with bleach-white hair around his own age pulled up in an Infiniti in less than an hour, flanked by probably no less than a dozen people in sunglasses driving equally expensive cars. Carlos saw Akane throw herself into the man’s arms as soon as he stepped out of the car, Junpei watching from afar but then approaching the pair not long after — and as Carlos silently observed all of this, wrapped in a blanket that Diana had retrieved from somewhere inside the shelter, a name calmly floated into his mind as if carried on the wind. This must be Aoi Kurashiki.

How did he know that? Did he hear Akane talk about him before, somewhere very far away from here-and-now?

“Hey.”

Carlos looked up at him from where he sat on the ground. He managed to find his voice, finally, after a few seconds of trying. “Hi, uh. I’m—”

“Carlos. I know.” The white-haired guy looked amused; Carlos could not relate. “Good work back there.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I’d have done the same thing.” Aoi extended a hand to help Carlos up. “My sister might not have. Her boyfriend could’ve gone either way, too. But me? I say that bastard deserves to rot, and he knew it.”

Even after Carlos stood up, Aoi continued to hold his hand out, palm-up. Seeing Carlos’ puzzled expression, Aoi sighed as patiently as possible. “The gun, dude. I need the gun.”

“Oh.” Then, his instincts finally kicking in, suddenly suspicious: “Why?”

“We’re gonna destroy it. Your fingerprints, DNA, gone. No one will ever know.”

“Oh.”

Aoi flashed him a smile that somehow managed to convey both pity and pure, mischievous delight.

Later, after the Crash Keys had made quick work of the crime scene, Carlos found himself in the backseat of Aoi’s car with Akane and Junpei. Aoi rode in the passenger seat this time, busy scrolling through two different tablets as a higher-ranking Crash Keys member (a Crash Key?) sped them down the highway.

Akane was squished in the middle between Junpei and Carlos but didn’t seem uncomfortable in the slightest. Junpei’s hands rested in his lap, relaxed, as he gazed out the dark-tinted window. Beside him, Akane reached over to slip her fingers inside Junpei’s palm. Junpei closed his hand around hers, like a reflex.

Carlos looked down at his own, the ones that had just taken an (arguably) innocent man’s life hours before.

He knew Akane and Junpei had killed before, too, he’d seen it, but in this timeline they hadn’t. Hadn’t they? Sitting in the back of the Kurashikis’ luxury car — one of their cars? — Carlos realized he wasn’t so sure.

He met Aoi’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They held each other’s gaze for just a moment before Aoi turned his attention back to whatever he was reading in his lap. Akane’s hand squeezed his just a little tighter, and when he looked over, Junpei offered him a weak smile, too.

Soon, they would be home.

—

Eight o’clock at night and Carlos can finally turn off his GPS. His truck looks far too big to fit in the driveway, especially next to what he thinks is Aoi’s car. (Is it? He can’t remember. He’s only seen it once.) But he manages to squeeze it in without running over any bushes, and the whole process only takes an extra three minutes or so — not nearly long enough to stall for time as he steels himself to go inside and face the people he’s been dreaming about for the better part of a year.

He stands on the lawn staring up at their door, digging his nails into his palms. What if he’s different? What if the person they’ve invited into their home six months after they last saw him isn’t the same man they had hoped to see?

They’ve missed you too, Maria had said. At the time, he’d believed her, because it felt as true as anything else he’d ever known. But she could have just been trying to make him feel better, and now he’s four hundred miles away standing alone in their front yard feeling like an idiot but his feet are moving on their own and he doesn’t have time to answer any of these questions for himself.

When he gets to the top of the stairwell, he can’t even manage to knock twice before the door swings open.

“Carlos!”

Akane’s cheerful voice is, as always, the first to welcome him, and she’s the first to pull him inside. She throws her arms around his shoulders — which is difficult, at her height — and kisses him before he has time to react. She does it two, three times, light, excited pecks, before he remembers how to move again and hugs her tightly, marveling in the familiar scent and weight of her in his arms.

A few feet away, Junpei stands wearing a sheepish smile, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Carlos returns the smile over the top of Akane’s head — Akane, who turns to look at Junpei and gestures quickly for him to come closer — and once he does, Carlos tilts Junpei’s chin up gently to kiss him hello, too.

“This is so weird,” Junpei mumbles, his cheeks flushed, “I keep forgetting what it’s like to kiss someone taller.”

“Oh yeah? Then who the fuck am I?” Aoi retorts, coming in from the hallway, carrying a cat tucked under one arm.

Junpei rolls his eyes. “Like, a lot taller. You know what I meant.”

“No, I heard you. You think I’m forgettable. Whatever.”

“Carlos,” he hears Akane ask, “didn’t you bring any bags?”

He must’ve left them in the truck, is what he means to say. He also wants to tell them, god, I’ve missed you, and whatever you’ve been cooking smells incredible, and I can’t believe you’re finally in front of me when I’ve been aching for it for months, and I can’t believe I went so long without doing this, I’m such an idiot, but I’m here now and I hope that’s enough, is it enough?

But instead, what comes out of his mouth is, “You have a cat?”

Hearing the soft chime of Akane’s laughter to his left and Junpei and Aoi’s banter to his right, one hand on both Junpei and Akane’s waists, Aoi sauntering up to join them too (with a cat!) — it’s perfect. It’s everything.

He’ll go back for the bags later.

A weight has been lifted from Carlos’ chest that he didn’t even realize he had been carrying. Of course he’s relieved that they’re happy to see him, it’s nice to have that irrational fear quelled at last, but he hadn’t quite been conscious of the dull ache nestled in the pit of his stomach that he no longer had room for: the misery of being separated from the people who truly know you, gone and replaced by the unbridled euphoria of finally coming home.

#zero escape #zero time dilemma #c-team ot4 #zecret santa 2019 #submission

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