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Years ago, so many years ago that Dan was still a teenager and Phil still felt crushed under the weight of an uncertain future and his own inability to commit himself to doing what normal people are supposed to do when they finish uni, they spent the better part of a lazy spring day reading each other articles on Japan out loud and planning a holiday that seemed like a distant dream.
Phil remembers being stretched out on his bed with Dan, the both of them wearing only pants. He recalls how they’d pass the laptop back and forth when the bottom got too hot against their thighs, or when one of them had another flight of fancy they wanted to chase through a search engine. He remembers the lazy breaks for making out and how he’d watched videos on hot springs that showed fully naked people while Dan went to make them something for tea, and how he’d shown the videos to Dan when Dan got back, and how their food had grown cold while they worked each other up with a fantasy of hot rolling water and so much skin and endless possibility.
He stretches his legs out in front of him as far as they’ll go, listening to his knees pop. There’s a phantom ache to it that didn’t used to be there, from shoving his body into a too-small seat for hours and hours and hours.
“Hey,” Dan says, shifting beside him. There’s a divider between Dan’s seat and Phil’s, but only a half-partition. Phil wishes they could have gotten one of the ones that went all the way down, but he figures it’s probably best for sanitary conditions that most planes don’t allow for full body contact between two people on long haul flights. He doesn’t think he fancies imagining that someone fucked right where he sits.
He’ll have to tell that to Dan later, he thinks. For now he just looks over and meets Dan’s smile. “Hey.”
*
They leave their shoes in the lobby of the ryokan and trail being a polite woman who speaks fantastic English and doesn’t seem to judge Phil any of his stupid British questions.
Phil forgets it all almost immediately, and hopes that Dan remembers enough that they won’t embarrass themselves.
They drift apart once she’s gone, poking into different rooms. Phil’s had a lifetime of hotels in the past year, but everything about this feels less like a mandatory stopover and more like an experience.
“It’s got a control panel just like the last one,” Phil shouts out.
“Television in the mirror, though?” Dan shouts back.
Phil taps his finger at the mirror. His reflection taps him back, but nothing else happens. “No,” he calls back.
He’s not that disappointed. The last one was impractical. You couldn’t even see it from the toilet.
“The view makes up for it,” Dan says. “Come look.”
Dan’s already slid the glass door open and he’s standing on their small deck. There’s nothing but greenery all around, a fantastic garden laid out all around them.
Hakone is beautiful. They’d passed it up last time, too eager to plunge into the city and spend time with their friends, but this… this trip is just for them.
Phil looks down. “More sandals?”
Indoor slippers. Outdoor sandals.
“Yeah,” Dan says. His feet are slightly too long for the plastic ones he’s just put on. “There are wooden ones by the private bath, too.”
“Are they going to know if we don’t wear them all?” Phil asks.
Dan rolls his eyes. “Yes, Phil. I’m sure there’s a surcharge on the bill for going barefoot.”
“You don’t know,” Phil says. “There could be hidden cameras in the trees.”
He pauses and tries to imagine what they’d see if there were: him and Dan, standing with an arm’s width of space between them, staring out into the world.
*
Jetlag, the crispness of the air, the heat of the water, the sound of the birds around them.
Dan drifts off after just a few minutes, head tipped back against the ledge of the pool in an angle that looks uncomfortable. It makes his neck look very long. Everything about him looks long, the span of his arms from the tips of his fingers on one hand to the tips of his fingers on the other, where he’s got them draped along the side of the pool.
Phil stares his fill, because he’s allowed. He looks at Dan’s collarbones and the soft dark hair under his arms and the bruise on his bicep from trying to lift their bag over his head earlier, down and down to Dan’s nipples that are peaked hard in the air and his belly button with the water lapping just over it.
It’s been ten years and he’s not tired of that face. He’s not tired of that body. It doesn’t even occur to him that he might be until he hears someone express their awe.
Relationships last in Phil’s life. His mum and dad. His grandparents, all of them. What you forge together early in your life is built to endure.
They’re built to endure, Phil thinks.
He doesn’t need anyone else’s opinion to know it’s true.
*
Dinner is laid out on a table low to the ground.
Their chairs have no legs and Dan’s knees poke up knobby where he sits cross-legged. They’re too tall for the robes by a bit, but Phil’s at peace with knowing their attendant might get a cheeky flash of thigh or two.
“I never want to leave,” Dan says, tongue swiping out to catch a stray drop of miso soup.
“We could just stay,” Phil says. “That’d solve the problem.”
“Problem?” Dan asks. “Is it a problem now?”
“No,” Phil says. “Well, sort of. It’s a - thing. A thing we don’t know the answer to.”
Dan looks vaguely unhappy with that response, but he doesn’t argue. “Tomorrow, yeah? After we’ve slept?”
Phil’s not going to push it. Not when his belly is full and his heart is full and his body is so tired and he’s thinking of how soft the bed just one room away is. “Tomorrow,” he agrees.
*
But tomorrow brings sleep for half the day, and then a breakfast that’s much tastier than the descriptions might have looked on a menu, and then another long session in the private onsen.
“Seriously,” Dan says. He stretches out his legs so his toes poke up out of the water. “I could live here.”
“Bit pricey to live,” Phil says. “You might have to give up a jumper or two.”
Dan rolls his eyes. “You can’t just let me dream.”
Their knees knock together. The pool is small for two grown men, but proximity doesn’t particularly bother them.
Or does it?
It doesn’t right now, because nobody’s watching. There are no cameras in the trees. It’s just the two of them.
That’s what this entire trip is about - nobody watching. The videos are scheduled, the tweets are scheduled, the audience knows to level their expectations.
There’s nothing on their plates except each other and this conversation that they aren’t having yet.
*
On the third day they stand in a long line in the rain to get black sulfur eggs.
“Seven years,” Dan says.
“I’m going to have ten,” Phil says. “And I’ll live to be two hundred.”
“Seven times ten is seventy years,” Dan says. “Do you really think you’ll live to be one hundred and thirty without any help?”
“Yes,” Phil says immediately. “And you have to eat ten, too.”
“So you want me to be actually sick. That’s the memory you want me to take away from Mt. Fuji this time. How I was sick off black eggs.”
“No, I just want you to live as long as me,” Phil says.
They’re standing close together, crowded in by the throng of people all waiting for their eggs.
It’s so easy to slide his fingers into Dan’s.
Dan goes tense, but he looks at Phil with something sweet and surprised. “Really?”
Phil shrugs. No one is looking, he thinks.
But even if they are…
He’ll just call it a test run.
“Really,” Phil says.
He lets go as soon as they’re to the ordering window.
They each get one egg and stand by a long wooden table to eat them.
“Seven more years, yeah?” Dan holds his up,
Phil clinks the shell against his own. “Seven years.”
*
There’s a bottle of sake waiting to be cracked into.
“We could have sex?” Dan asks, but there’s a reason they haven’t yet. They’re both too distracted, too in their own heads.
But they only have two days left in Hakone. Then Tokyo, for friends and… maybe a celebration.
Maybe.
“Or we could talk,” Phil says.
Sex will come later. Once they’ve made up their minds.
“Fine, fine.” Dan sighs. He stands up, robe falling loosely on his body. Phil takes a moment to look. He’s gorgeous, really. He’s so gorgeous. “Bring the alcohol, though.”
*
“It won’t change anything,” is Dan’s opening bid.
“What do you mean?” Phil asks.
“We already get all the benefits, right? We live together. We’ve got shared investments. We’ve got a joint bank account. We’re committed.” Dan stares up. The stars are out now. “Why is a ceremony the end goal? Shouldn’t the life be the end goal? We’re going to have that no matter what.”
The pool around them is lit by flickering lanterns.
“It wouldn’t be the ‘end goal’ even if we did get married,” Phil argues. “The ceremony doesn’t mean anything. It’s just an acknowledgement of something we already know.”
“So you do want to?” Dan asks.
“I didn’t say that,” Phil says.
“Okay. Your turn, then,” Dan says.
“I think it would have benefits. We want-” Phil pauses. This is one of those things they know, but don’t say often. “We want kids, one day. It’ll be a easier to get them if we’re married.”
“Not really,” Dan says. “They can’t like, legally deny us. Married or not.”
“No, but. Explaining it people, you know.” Phil finds it hard to explain what he means, but they’ve had this conversation before. The weird tangled cloud of traditional morality Phil can’t quite untangle himself from feels oppressive sometimes and comforting others.
Dan just shrugs. “But does that mean we need to do anything now?” Dan asks. “I’m not ready for kids. I’ve barely scratched the surface figuring my own shit out.”
“I don’t want kids yet either,” Phil says.
“So does that put kids as a pro or a con on the list?” Dan might not agree with Phil but he does at least accept that some things come before others to Phil.
“I don’t know,” Phil admits. “But it feels like something that should factor in.”
“What about the other ‘kids?” Dan asks, doing air quotes. “The ones that we have raised from their youth to their now jaded twenties?”
“Those aren’t our kids. Not with the things they talk about us doing.” Phil shudders. “We could just not tell them?”
“You know how well that works,” Dan says. “People always find out. It would solve a different problem, though. No need to fuck with coming out if we just flash some matching rings.”
“If we were even going to come out,” Phil says.
Dan makes a face at him. It’s another point of contention, another source of indecision. They’re both prone to change their minds each time the wind blows in a different direction.
“My mum wants us to,” Phil says.
“My parents clearly didn’t think it was necessary to rush into,” Dan says, a slight grimace on his face.
“That’s a bad thing?” Phil asks.
Dan shrugs. “I don’t know. But maybe I would want us to be married before we have kids.”
“Fair enough,” Phil says. “We might get tax breaks.”
“We don’t need tax breaks,” Dan says. “But we’ll finally have an answer when people ask if we’re brothers...”
“Yes, and we’re also married?” Phil predicts.
“Exactly,” Dan says.
“No.”
“You’re no fun.”
“But you know what is fun? We’d get to plan a wedding,” Phil says. “And a reception menu! That’s like, second best to interior design. I watched a program last month where they served sliders made with donuts, and the cake was a big donut.”
“That sounds disgusting, and you watch far too much home and design related television,” Dan says. “But I could get a really swish suit out of it.”
“Designers might even put up for it,” Phil says. “Just no Yeezy down the aisle, please.”
“Only in the honeymoon suite?” Dan grins.
“My future self just lost his boner,” Phil says.
“My future self will help him get it back,” Dan promises.
Phil goes quiet for a long time, and looks at Dan. They’re at the same standstill they always come to. Their eyes lock and the moment goes on and on. Finally, Phil says: “It would be nice to be your husband.”
Dan lets out a noisy breath and smiles. His eyes look a little watery. He cries so easily. Phil loves that about him. “It would be really fucking nice.”
*
They spend all of day four in bed and in the onsen, building up a sweat between the sheets and washing it off in the warmth of the water. (Figuratively, of course, because they're polite onsen visitors who wash off properly first in the tiny little wooden stalls that barely fit their bodies.)
It shouldn’t make a difference, Phil thinks. They weren’t lacking anything without it. Their commitment was still a commitment. The part that counts has always been there.
“You should tell people I proposed at Mt. Fuji,” Phil says.
Dan punches him in the arm. “I will fucking not. You don’t get proposal credit.”
“Oh, oh, wait, even better - we could tell them we did that thing where we both took rings and surprised each other!” Phil says, excited.
“I hate you,” Dan says. “Don’t know why I’m even marrying you.”
Phil grins so hard that his face hurts.
He thinks of himself, twenty three and barely able to grasp the concept of a life like this. He thinks of Dan, nineteen and convinced he’ll never have the things he wants. He thinks of all those hours they spent dreaming of a moment like this… and how much better the reality is.