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Every morning, Aiba would wake up and snuggle up to his husband for five minutes before he got up and got ready for work. His husband wasn’t really a morning person, so it was very rare for him to be up before Aiba unless he had a good reason to. So it surprised him when that morning he woke up and when he held out his hands to get himself an armful of Sakurai Sho, he ended up hugging the empty air.
Making a confused sound at the absence of his husband, Aiba blinked his eyes open. It was true, the spot next to him was empty, and Sho was nowhere to be seen.
Glancing at the clock on the bedside drawer, he realized that it was still 7 in the morning. There was no way that Sho had gotten up that early. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom, he reasoned.
Yawning, he got up to go in search of his missing husband, stepping with bare feet on the cold floor.
As he opened the door of their bedroom, he heard Sho’s voice. It was quiet, as if he was trying not to wake him up. Of course, Aiba reasoned, it was very early in the morning, so it would make sense. But who would Sho be talking to at this hour!?
He threaded lightly on the floor, following the voice to the living room. Peeking from outside the room, he saw Sho sitting on the sofa, still undressed and with bed hair. He was leaning over his planner while he was talking to the phone.
“Let’s keep this between the two of us,” Sho whispered as he jotted down some notes.
Aiba frowned at those words. It seemed weird that Sho would say that. What could it be that he didn’t want anyone else to know?
“Alright, I’ll talk to you later,” Sho was saying now.
Aiba quickly backed up and ran quietly to the kitchen before Sho could see that he was spying on him. And anyway, he was sure that Sho would tell him everything himself. They never had any secrets between them, after all.
Hearing Sho’s steps getting closer, Aiba busied himself with breakfast. His husband came in looking a bit surprised to see him up.
“Hey, I thought you were still sleeping.”
Aiba pouted a bit. “I was, but then I woke up for my snuggles time and you weren’t there. So I thought I would make breakfast.”
“Ah yes, I was on the phone,” Sho said quickly. “It was a work thing, sorry.”
Aiba frowned a bit. From the way Sho was whispering, it hadn’t seemed to him like a work call.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Sho looked at him, and if Aiba hadn’t known better he would have said he looked worried. “Why?”
“It just seems weird that they would call you at this hour is all,” Aiba said.
“Yeah, sorry,” his husband said, looking down.
He smiled. “There’s nothing to be sorry for Sho-chan,” he said as he poured some orange juice in a glass and offered it to him.
Sho nodded and grabbed his tablet to read some news. Aiba looked at him from the corner of his eyes, pushing down any worries he might have.
Aiba had almost forgotten about that morning. To make up for their lost snuggles time, Sho had even woken up earlier the next day so they could have more time to cuddle. That phone call had been long gone from Aiba’s mind since that day.
However, a week later, when he returned home five minutes later than he was supposed to, he found Sho in the living room again, talking to his phone. That wouldn’t have been a weird image for Aiba to see—Sho was one of those people who was always busy all the time, so being on the phone working even after he had gone back home for the day wasn’t that rare for him, so indeed it wouldn’t have been weird to find him in such a predicament—hadn’t Sho’s eyes widened in surprise when Aiba caught him in the act.
“I’m home,” he said distractedly, wondering what was happening.
“Welcome back,” Sho said, flustered.
“I got take out,” Aiba mouthed, showing him the bags he was carrying.
“Ah, yes,” Sho said, “I’ll be there right away, let me hang up.”
Aiba nodded and started walking to the kitchen. He was about to go out of the room when he heard Sho whisper again.
“He’s home now, so I can’t really talk.”
When Sho noticed that Aiba was still there and that he was looking at him, he smiled and got up, exiting the room from the other door. Taking care not to be heard, Aiba tip-toed in the direction he left, but Sho was already hanging up. The only words he could catch before he had to run away were:
“I’ll talk to you later, nii-san.”
“I think Sho is cheating on me.”
Nino, who was sipping on his beer when Aiba said that, almost choked on it. He stared at his friend, at a loss of words for a second, and then spoke.
“What?”
“With Ohno-kun,” Aiba added. “I think.”
Nino shook his head, incredulous. “What are you talking about, Aiba?”
“I keep finding him whispering to him on the phone. And it would be fine if he wasn’t hiding it from me, but he’s always looking so suspicious.”
Aiba could see from Nino’s eyes that he found all of that absurd.
“How do you even know it’s Oh-chan?”
“I heard him call him nii-san last time. And Ohno-kun is the only one I know he calls like that.”
“I don’t know Aiba,” Nino said after a while. “I mean Sho-chan loves you more than anything in the world. And Oh-chan has spent so long trying to get Matsujun to date him that I doubt he would break up with him now that they finally got together.”
“Yeah but…” Aiba looked down at his hands at the wedding ring on his left finger. “We’ve been together for twelve years, and we’ve been married for ten of them. Maybe… maybe he got bored of me…”
“Don’t be silly,” Nino said. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I mean, it’s Sho.”
Aiba looked at his wedding ring again. He really trusted Sho, he did. He just wanted to know why he was being so suspicious about talking to Ohno on the phone if nothing was up, though.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he convened. “Maybe I’m just being silly.”
In the end he didn’t know if it was the drinking or Nino’s convincing skills, but when he got home that night he felt reassured. Sho loved him, and whatever it was that he was whispering about with Ohno, it surely didn’t mean anything.
There was nothing amiss in their relationship. They still kissed good morning and good night every day, they still did things together, they still had dates, they still made love. They were even thinking of getting a pet together. Sho wouldn’t think about getting a pet with Aiba if he was cheating on him and wanted to leave him, right?
“I’m home,” he said as he closed the door behind him, but there was no reply.
Walking to the bedroom, he noticed the lights in the bathroom were on, and he heard the sound of splashing water. Sho was apparently taking a shower, so he decided to wait for him on the bed. Thinking about his husband cheating on him, however unrealistic, had made him miss him. He really wanted to spend some time alone with him tonight.
As he tried hard not to fall asleep, he heard a ping.
Turning around, he noticed that Sho had left his phone on the bed.
Aiba looked at the flashing light illuminating the dark room. He shouldn’t, he thought. He had no right.
‘Just a peek,’ he told himself. ‘Just to be a hundred percent sure.’
Without even realizing, his hands were already closing on the phone. He pressed the home button, and the screen lit up. There, the last unread message from Ohno looked back at him.
‘matsujun will be out the whole day’
Aiba’s heart started beating loudly, and he suddenly felt very much awake. With trembling hands, he opened the chat to see the rest of the messages.
11:03 pm
ready to sweat?
11:05 pm
You’re going to wear me out.
11:46 pm
i’ll wait for you at my house tmr
matsujun will be out the whole day
The rest of the chat was uncharacteristically blank, as if Sho had deleted the messages between them. As if was trying to cover his tracks…
Aiba put a hand on his mouth as his eyes started to water.
He was right.
Sho was cheating on him.