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Hakoda wakes up the following morning, and there's a mug of coffee staged on his bedside table.
Hakoda's bedroom still seems too big for just him—even after six years without Kya. A large bed once seemed like a luxury. Now it's just an emotional after-image in the middle of Hakoda's bedroom. An undisturbed blue afghan betrays emptiness, and Kya's absence is so conspicuous that her non-presence glows like a neon sign. It's the morning after the sixth anniversary of that day. The shallow within Hakoda deepens, and his bedroom feels abandoned. Quiet.
Hakoda breathes. The air smells like coffee.
The cup has long since stopped steaming, but it's still hot. A slat of syrupy wintertime sunlight peers in from a gap in the curtains. It illuminates a strip of the wall, turns it golden. Dust motes dance like embers in the sunbeam. Hakoda blinks blearily at the mug of coffee, then reaches out from underneath his heavy comforter to take the cup in his hands. Warmth bleeds into Hakoda's palms, and something in his chest thaws.
Almond milk, a scoop of cinnamon sugar. Not how Hakoda always takes it, but still his favorite.
A tinkling noise downstairs—like someone dropping a fork onto a glass plate—breaks the fragile silence of the morning. Hakoda recognizes Bato's deep murmuring voice through the floor. There's the unmistakable sound of his children's soft laughter, and Hakoda cradles the coffee mug close to his heart.
Bato left a flower cutting by the coaster on his bedside table. The hyacinth's stem is long and thick and bright green. The stalk is heavy with blossoms, a deep indigo color—like the ocean at night. Hakoda picks up the flower, twirls it in his wide hands. The sweet scent of pollen and nectar mingles with rich, spiced coffee. The flower has a slight curve to its graceful form, weighted down by its own petals. It curls inward like a spine. Hakoda rolls his shoulders.
He places the flower back on his nightstand.
Hyacinth—purple: a shared sadness. Expression of regret. Forgiveness, gentle.
Hakoda gets out of bed.
There's another flower waiting for him in the evening.
It's a Sunday, so Hakoda wastes all day in town with the kids. They drive together in the late morning. Hakoda's pickup truck—which is so old it predates Sokka—jostles them roughly over every divot in the dirt road leading away from the house, but Katara still argues with her brother over control of the radio and Sokka makes it his personal mission to only play the kinds of music that Katara can't stand. They're still so young, Hakoda realizes as he's signalling a left turn. He feels the inexplicable desire to hold onto them as time passes. He wants to anchor them here, now, and it's almost like trying to keep his grip on a rock in the middle of a river. The weight of time's passing current pushes against his chest as his children float downstream—Sokka's about to start public school next fall—but they don't even seem to notice.
Hakoda shifts the column transmission into park outside the market, and shakes himself out of this strange headspace. He owes it to his kids to be awake.
They spend the afternoon down on the bustling harbor by the marina where Hakoda and Bato keep their ships docked. A tent market popped up for the weekend; Katara shoves Sokka as they chase each other through the throngs of people, a few sailors recognize Hakoda and call out to him in greeting, merchants smile indulgently at Hakoda's unruly children. An elder with a kind face sells Hakoda a sweet chocolate beet cake, and he splits it between Katara and Sokka.
The sight of his beloved son and daughter—their faces sticky from jellied cake—settles Hakoda. The salty ocean wind stings Hakoda's eyes, but a light drizzle kisses his cheeks like an apology. He'll be okay. Him, Sokka, Katara, and—Bato. Grief is water, his mother-in-law told him once. It sources and it flows through all things. It has a flood, and an ebb. It won't always be the guiding force in your life, but you have to let it dry. You have to move on.
Today, the grief inside of him drains—becomes more like a river than a sea.
The drive back to the house that evening is quiet. Acoustic music plays softly through the spotty car radio, accompanying a honeyed voice that croons about love and moonlight and other beautiful things. Sokka is snoozing in the front seat, his younger sister cuddled up into his side on the bench beside him. Hakoda is filled with affection for them, and he takes one hand off the steering wheel to gently smooth Katara's long hair away from her forehead. The stars blink away sleep up above. Hakoda drives extra slow on the gravel road heading home, careful to avoid holes where the road gives way.
The light is on at the house when Hakoda pulls into the driveway. Hakoda parks his truck behind Bato's hatchback. It's newer than Hakoda's long-bed truck, but not by much. There's a wooden canoe mounted to the top, and bumper stickers from his travels all over the back window. Acadia National Park—The Way Life Should Be!
Bato doesn't technically live with them, but he's been Hakoda's best friend for so long that he's always around anyway.
He basically co-parents Sokka and Katara—teaches them math and reading at home since the closest school is a forty minute drive in both directions. The kids adore Bato, and he's always attentive to their different needs. He takes Sokka out on his canoe so the boy can learn his own history—tells him stories and poems and engages his natural curiosity. They can spend all day out on the lake sometimes; fishing and conducting wildlife surveys and exploring the science of the woods surrounding the waterways. Katara doesn't have the patience for slow days on the water waiting for bass to bite. So Bato takes her on hikes—and together they go hunting. Sokka inherited the superior knot-tying—and thus trapping skills—but nobody has Katara's agility. She's got a strong physicality, and an appreciation for beauty and culture. Hakoda thinks it may be because of her waterbending, but the spiritual traditions that Bato takes great care to teach them come naturally to Katara. Hakoda's fiercely proud of his children.
He owes too much to Bato.
They met as young kids from the same village, and were inseparable in their teen years. Bato introduced Hakoda to Kya. When the three of them finally settled, it seemed only right that they do so together, in this little town on the water near where they grew up.
The house smells like roasted sweet potato, squashes, broiled cabbage and chives. Bato cooked a stew while they were gone: creamy tender vegetables and slow-cooked meat. Something warm and heavy that nourishes the body as well as the soul—perfect for a cold winter night. Although the sky outside is purpling and dark like a bruise, the inside of their home glows orange from the hearth. Alone, Bato stoked the fireplace and kept the stove lit. Hakoda inexplicably thinks of the coffee waiting for him that morning, how he didn't even realize he needed it until someone had given it to him.
He can't stop thinking about it as he shepherds the drowsy pair of his kids in the door. Hakoda shrugs out of his thick woolen coat, hangs it on the hook by the stairwell with muscle memory alone. He's about the throw his car keys down out of habit, but stops just short.
The kitschy little plate was a gift from years ago. It's a wooden tray with a pretty shittily painted whale on the face. For lack of better utility, it has held nothing but car keys, junk mail, missing hair ties, and an empty lighter for its whole life under ownership of Hakoda.
Now, though—there's a flower there.
It couldn't have been meant for anyone else. It couldn't have been forgotten. It couldn't have been lost. The bluebell is placed very deliberately where Hakoda would see it, right when he got home. Blue flowers—the color of sunshine through a spring pool—hang like lanterns off the delicate stem. The shapely curve of the plant gives the appearance of a person bowing, or perhaps kneeling in prayer. Hakoda picks up the bell-shaped blossoms so, so carefully.
"'Kota?" Bato calls out in baritone. "Are you hungry?"
Bluebell—true humility, a declaration of friendship. Devotion.
Hakoda stops then, his eyes widening. His whole body stills.
Oh. Hakoda thinks. Bato is courting me.
Hakoda passes a flower shop on the way down to the wharf every weekday, and doesn't really think anything of it.
This morning he pauses to consider it. Briefly.
It's silly—he's nearly thirty-five—but Hakoda is having a new moment of awareness. Someone he's known for practically his whole life—who he tends to view as they were young, with grass-stained knees and toothy smiles—has revealed something private and mysterious about his inner mind. Somewhere in the hallway of Bato's personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that Hakoda's never seen before. It remains maddeningly unknowable to Hakoda, who has neither a map, nor key, nor no real way of knowing exactly where he stands.
Except perhaps...
Hakoda had always let his affection for Bato simmer, like a pot of water on a low boil. He had known—always, somewhere—that they were never just friends. That Hakoda has the capacity to love Bato, if only that seed within his heart was allowed to be nurtured. Spirits, he could. Hakoda and Kya—and Bato, always strong and present—had invented a language together. They had the songs, the jokes, the silly anecdotes that always made the three of them laugh, even years later. They had a language that they built. Grief is love with nowhere to go. Hakoda mourns the language he made with Kya, and loves that Bato still speaks it.
None of Bato's flowers so far have been explicitly romantic. Somehow, they've been more than that.
Hakoda does nothing but think about it all day, while he mechanically sets sail into the bay from the marina where his skiff is docked. The weather is surprisingly beautiful—the past few weeks the skies have been dark and unsure of what to make of themselves yet. The water below is choppy and nutrient-rich, and he pulls up nets of shellfish; blue crabs and Atlantic shrimp and sweet red lobster.
The ocean brine fills Hakoda's lungs with every heave of his shoulders. It only reminds him of Bato.
Hakoda ties off a loop knot to the boat hitch on the inside of the marina. He rubs his eyes, then grimaces. His skin is caked with sea salt and sweat. There's grit in his hair. He desperately wants a shower. He wants to see his children. He wants to be with Bato.
It's so simple, in the end.
The elders teach that there are two kinds of memories. There is the daily struggle to remember where we left our reading glasses, our car keys, our cellphone. And there is the deeper gust of longing that comes from the bottom of the heart. It comes suddenly, involuntarily, and without warning. Hakoda fears he may no longer love the dead because he has forgotten them, but then will catch sight of an unused blanket and burst into tears. To love again, even after he has no stomach for it? After half of everything he held dear crumbled like burnt papers in Hakoda's hands, his throat thick with the taste of ash. When the grief sits with him, its humid chill thickening the air heavy as water—more fit for gills than lungs. The grief that weighs down on him like a second skin, and Hakoda can only think how can anyone withstand this?
But then, he can picture it. He could take Bato's face between his hands. He could say yes. I will take you. I will love again. If only Bato offers.
Hakoda drives home from town in his shitty pickup truck. The voice on the radio seems to weep. Hakoda hopes that Bato will offer.
The opportunity comes only three nights later.
Hakoda is in good spirits. He hauled more than enough seafood and split his extras amongst the community. At the mid-week market today, Hakoda made sure every one of his fellow sailors received a fresh cod or salmon or Atlantic red to take home to their husbands, their wives, their mothers and fathers and kids. It's already the end of January, but the winter shows no signs of slowing down. The wind outside is deceptively brutal—a roaring fire in the hearth at the center of the house is only barely keeping the predatory chill from creeping into cracks in the windowsills and door-frames.
Bato left in the afternoon after Sokka and Katara's studies, heading a little farther up into the hills to check on his cabin. He lives alone in that lonely wooded house, spends the majority of winter with Hakoda and the children for health and safety. Still—there's a freeze approaching, and so Bato makes the trek to higher elevation to ensure that his pipes don't burst.
It's sundown now, and Bato should be back soon.
Sokka gets sleepy as soon as the day ends, but Katara seems to be more active under the moonlight, so they agree on a board game as an appropriate evening activity for the three of them to share. Hakoda chooses Scrabble, mostly to humor his son. He's already accepted that he will be losing this round, and settles comfortably onto the shaggy rug in the living room to graciously prepare for his inevitable defeat.
Katara is reaching for the 'legal two-word scrabble combinations' list for the fourth time tonight when Hakoda hears the key jingle in the door. His children barely look up—they can be so competitive, sometimes.
Hakoda hoists himself up onto his feet with a soft groan. "You two keep playing," he waves them off, "I've got to speak to Bato about something."
When Hakoda turns the lights on and bathes the kitchen in yellow fluorescent lighting, he's only a little surprised to see that while Bato is struggling to juggle two large canvas duffles on only one good shoulder, kicking the door closed behind him with his large booted foot—he's also cradling a couple messy flower clippings in his hand. His injured hand. The flowers are diamond shaped, with three large petals on each head creating a lilac colored face. At the center of the blossoms the coloring turns dark—almost maroon—and then bright orange. The violets stare at Hakoda from across the room as intensely as if their honeyed centers were real eyes.
Bato finally shrugs off his bags, and they land heavily on the floor.
Violet—I will always be loyal.
"What are those." Hakoda's voice comes out a little too rough. Bato freezes, like he only just remembered the flowers himself.
"They're..." Bato's face looks stricken. He swallows heavily, looks away. "They're gifts."
"Gifts." Hakoda repeats. He steps closer to Bato, trying to catch his dark eyes. His chin is still angled down when he nods. "For me?" Hakoda needs to be sure. He needs Bato to offer.
Violet—Faithful, modest, true.
"Hakoda," Bato says seriously. "I mean no disrespect. The flowers mean as much—" His voice catches a little bit, "—or as little as you want them to."
Hakoda reaches up with one hand to Bato's broad shoulder. He delicately brushes clumps of snowflakes off the thick fabric of Bato's parka. Everything you love you will eventually lose; but in the end, love will return in a different form. A different person, a different touch. Hakoda realizes suddenly that he's happy. He lets his palm rest against Bato's collarbone, feels the way his throat works around a gulp.
Bato curls his fingers loosely—hesitantly—around Hakoda's wrist.
Violet—give me a chance, and I will love you.
"You need only to ask," Hakoda murmurs. His hand migrates upward to cradle Bato's jaw. Bato cracks a nervous smile, and his head tips forward. He bows to rest his forehead against Hakoda's and breathes deeply, his nose pressed to Hakoda's cheekbone—and he does. Ask.
"What will you have me do?" The timbre of Bato's rumbling voice changes pitch into playfulness. It's achingly familiar.
"Oh, just." Hakoda sighs, "Stay. By my side."
Hakoda thinks that the plot of his life doesn't really make sense to him anymore. He keeps following what he thinks may be the arc of the story—yet finds himself immersed in passages that he doesn't always understand. Sometimes they don't even seem to belong to the same genre. He feels giddy, and young, swaying with his best friend in the yellow fluorescent light of his kitchen—a winter storm brewing outside. Some of the best evenings of his life have passed without him even realizing they're significant but this. Hakoda stretches up on the balls of his feet to press a loving kiss to the corner of Bato's mouth, his jaw.
"Yes," Bato says. "I will do that."