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Kojiro's the first one of them to go grey, in the end. It hits at the end of his twenties, and Ainosuke's the one who finds it, staring eagle eyed at a particular spot on his temple before reaching out and pulling.
"Hmm," Kaoru says, from where he's been jostled, resting wrapped under Ainosuke's other arm. "Looks like your boyhood is over."
---
They've come together again. It's hard - and gods above do they know it - to reform something when it's been ripped apart, massage the edges back together. You can always see the tender seams, rub against them to feel how they react.
But for the bounty? It's worth it. For the golden core of them, stitched back together with diamond string? It's worth it. For all the blood and breaking, it's worth it. It has to be, after all.
---
When Kojiro spends the better part of an hour standing in front of their bathroom mirror, pulling at his hair and investigating the roots, that's when they know there's a problem.
"Was he always this vain?" Ainosuke asks, poking his head in. His hands are tying his tie, but he's distracted by Kojiro and all his grace; that is to say, he is brilliant and burning and shirtless in front of the mirror, his lips pouted and plush, and Kaoru's the one who has to notice this for the both of them, that Ainosuke's hands are torn between reaching out and not.
Kaoru's been doing that for both of them, this whole while.
"No," he says, deft hands making quick work of the tie. "I think he's taking after you," nodding at the waxes and pomades and serums that line the sink. Kaoru makes due with sunblock, but he's upgraded to blue-light glasses.
There's a whine that emerges impossibly from the fortress of Kojiro. "Babes," he says, looking at them with big and boundless eyes. "Do you think I'm getting old?"
"We all are," Kaoru says immediately, and regrets it when Kojiro winces, shelling up. Ainosuke grabs his shoulder, turns him to face the mirror and sidles up behind him. Stands on his tiptoes to rest his chin on his shoulder, burning with muscle.
When the world is ripped apart, someone must hold dominion over the missing pieces. Ainosuke ruled like a tyrant, Kaoru like a distant emperor and Kojiro like a boy-king, golden circlet in his hair and his robes ending by his knees, entrusting so much to Kaoru. There's so much undiscovered country for Kojiro, and maybe this is part of it.
In the green waves of his hair, grey and silver dances like an ocean storm, like sand-smoothed sea glass washed up onto the shore. The kind you pick up and hold onto, waiting for better days, rubbing it shiny with your worry and fear. There's beauty in it, Kaoru can tell, but how can you make Kojiro see that, when he's spent countless hours looking and not finding what either of them can see clearly.
So while Ainosuke hugs him, lets his fingertips dance around his ribs and the tattoos there, presses their bodies together and kisses his jaw to soothe the worry in him, Kaoru just opens the blinds.
Let's light stream in. It's an early morning, and the sun passes ceaselessly through this window.
Kaoru's hair is dull in the sun; Ainosuke's shines in the moonlight. But Kojiro's -
"Oh," Ainosuke says, raising his head from where he's nipping at a freckle. "It's like the rays of the sun, at sundown."
The violence of a storm ceases when the sun breaks through the clouds, like a signal from heaven, rays painting the waves bright and golden and beautiful. Kaoru steps up behind him too, cards through the waves of his hair, the thick blocks of grey glowing like a dragon's hoard or a king's blessing in the light.
"It's your crown, Kojiro," he says.
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