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It’s raining; has been for a couple days now, incessantly, noisily, like it’s winter instead of mid-April. It’s only four in the afternoon, but if one were to glance at the world outside their window, they would find the homogenous darkness broken by dots of electrical lights that usually belongs to nighttime. It’s also 27 hours and 34 minutes until Christopher uncovers the truth about his father’s disappearance and decides to leave Heartland Tower’s labs forever, but neither him nor Kaito have any way of knowing that. Right now, they’re master and pupil, friends, and unofficially coworkers. They share their thoughts, discuss work, experiments, the much awaited possibility of a breakthrough and, in between, they chat about silly things like the weather or what snacks to prepare for Haruto, should they let Kaito see him today. They have no reason to expect things between them to change.
This afternoon, they make coffee (which Kaito can only drink with an abundant dose of milk, as they found that one time he tried to prove otherwise—an awful, embarrassing attempt to look adult that shall never be brought up again). Kaito has taken out their mugs, a boring set with a regular shape and neutral colors – but still a set! – which he picked out at the supermarket not too long after Christopher’s arrival, and is waiting for the coffee to brew. Christopher reaches into the small cupboard above one of the desks and retrieves the battered tin box that contains the secret stash of packets of sugar and cream they’ve accumulated after months of stealth visits to the cafeteria. They’re out of milk today, so he dumps in an extra dose of cream for Kaito, after being handed the steaming cups.
The hot drink is a godsend in this weather. Christopher watches Kaito take his first sip with a blissful expression on his face and smiles: he’s cute and, hopefully, not freezing anymore.
“Better now?”
Kaito smiles back. His cheekbones are pink, most likely from the sudden surge of warmth from the coffee. “I think so, thank you.”
Christopher nods, doesn’t say anything else, not even to comment on the coffee, which Kaito has been learning to brew properly in a – he hopes – totally not obvious attempt to please him; he turns around to watch the rain, instead. There’s lightning, it must be pretty close, and it lights up the sky and Christopher's hair and the slice of his profile that Kaito can see from his chair.
The thunder is unexpected, though, of course, it shouldn’t be: Kaito becomes stupid around Chris. He jumps and yelps and to cover up that childish display he stammers, “About what we were talking about earlier,” which is, in itself, a stupid choice, he realizes too late.
“Oh, earlier,” smiles Christopher. The air of benevolence that he sports on his face in moments like this reminds Kaito of the Virgin Mary (he saw her once, pretty and serene, holding up her hands as if ready to embrace anyone, in an icon Christopher keeps pressed between the pages of a faded book of prayer, hidden under his clothes in a drawer; he didn’t say anything regarding its origin, but Kaito suspects it’s a memento). It makes him selfishly wish to have that unconditional affection all to himself.
Christopher smiles almost apologetically when he says, “I realize it’s weird, but I have never thought about anyone like that,” like it’s really his fault that Kaito is a silly teenager who asks silly questions in a silly attempt to pursue him. “I just never had the time, you know. We’re busy everyday at the laboratory and before,” his eyes cloud a little, “before, I had my hands full looking after my brothers.” He probably believes it a boring answer, for a curious boy in his mid-teens. He has no reason to think, to guess that it’s the best reply he could have possibly given him—an outcome Kaito didn’t even dare to hope for when he asked-stuttered, is there someone you like.
He, Christopher, probably believes that he’s merely being nice, showing interest in Kaito and what he has to say, treating him as an equal, rather than subjecting him to a deadly mixture of shame and panic, when he grins around the words: “What about you?”
Kaito stiffens and blushes from the embarrassment that Christopher doesn’t know he’s inflicting on him. What if he finally notices something, the thought fills Kaito’s mind, ricocheting from one side to the other of his skull like a mad bullet in a bad movie. But, at this point in time, Kaito is not only very young: he’s still very naïve, more or less unconsciously used to wearing his heart on his sleeve when he’s around his mentor, and so, the young Kaito who still knows how to smile an open smile, comes up with a dangerous idea: what if I told him now. He starts sweating at once, in spite of the weather and the broken heating, almost as if those unspoken words had opened some gross kind of tap under his skin: Kaito’s palms are sticky when he clenches his fists and repeats to himself that he’s not going to back down.
He’s trembling when he opens his mouth; Christopher looks at him expectantly then, catching on the stupidly focused look he must be wearing, and just like that, Kaito—sneezes.
“Are you alright? You’re still cold, aren’t you?” Christopher crouches at this side, looking worried just like the doting older brother he’s supposed to be. Kaito’s heart sinks. Christopher takes off his lab coat, then the jacket he’s wearing underneath, and drapes it over his shoulders as if he didn’t trust Kaito to do that right. A doting older brother indeed.
“Please, wear this for now. We need to check your temperature and I will get some medicine just in case as well. I’ll be right back.”
Kaito stares at Christopher’s retreating back, watches it disappear behind the thick sliding doors and thinks that it’s a rather broad back. It suits Christopher’s frame: slender but impressively tall. The jacket is suitably large too, of course, and warm—soaked in Christopher’s body warmth, spreading it to Kaito’s flesh and bones. He holds it closer around himself with a mix of shame and excitement and it swallows up his shoulders, his arms, his torso; it twists him into a child playing dress up, leaving no trace of the young man in love.
“I have to hurry,” Kaito mutters to the empty room. “I’ll grow up, quickly, and reach you.”
It’s 27 hours and 22 minutes until Christopher uncovers the truth about his father’s disappearance and decides to leave Heartland Tower’s labs forever, and Kaito has no idea.