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You need to take him home.
That’s all you can think about. You need to take him home where he’ll be safe, away from the club where you always worried about him anyway and where now your worst fears have played out. You know of course that home hasn’t exactly been safe for him either… but at least there you can lock the door and run the bath and make him tea and. And. And you might not be any more use to him there than you were here, but you can feel a little less powerless, at least.
(Is this more for your benefit, to make you feel like you’re helping, than for his? You can’t tell. It’s all you can do for him either way. You’re so useless and selfish but you have to try.)
You don’t want to put him in a taxi. He’s relapsing so bad, you don’t want to subject him to strangers, even men. Men ask prying questions and think they’re helping when they tell him to chin up, it’s not so bad. Men think they’re qualified to tell Hifumi what it means to be a man, as if they have half the courage he shows every single day.
Luckily Sensei drove here. You just have to get Hifumi’s keys to the club so you can lock up for him and then you can go. Not that you care what happens to this place considering they abandoned him with her -- but, well, you understand doing what you have to if it means you’ll still have a job. And you don’t want him to have to think about anything after you get him out of here.
You’re careful not to go far enough away you can’t at least see him out of the corner of your eye, so you overhear him reassuring Jakurai once again that he’s okay now. You doubt he means it any more than you did. You hate lying to Sensei but there are some things that you aren’t ready to share with anyone but Hifumi. And she’s one of them.
Sensei agrees with you that there’s no sense in trying to call the police. From what Hifumi told you, she’s high up in the government now. And you’re not sure anything she did today is actually a crime, despite everything. You’ll ask him if he wants to try anyway, once you’re both a little further away from it, but … Maybe you’ll talk to that cop in Yokohama, the one who’s weirdly nice to you. Maybe. After Hifumi’s safe at home. You don’t have a lot of hope that there’s anything the system would do to help someone like either of you anyway.
(You don’t want him to need anyone else’s help but yours. You want to be able to ride to his rescue like a knight in shining armor. It’s a childish hope you’ve never grown out of despite the constant evidence of every day. It didn’t go well for you today, either. You always end up needing him to save you instead.)
You ride together in the back seat of Sensei’s car as always, though you sit a little closer than usual. Hifumi chatters on happily like nothing out of the ordinary happened, but he keeps your hand in an iron grip just out of sight. You wouldn’t let him go anyway. You feel like half of a two-headed monster, something monstrous and pathetic and inseparable.
You keep thinking over and over. What happens tomorrow? What if he still can’t keep up the other persona, even with his jacket on? What if the owner decides he’s a trouble magnet and not worth the risk anymore, even if it’s his picture over the door? What if, what if, what if. You keep it to yourself. You’re sure he knows all of this. Between the two of you, you’ll manage something. You always have.
(He probably isn’t thrilled to watch you leave every morning for a job that makes you miserable, either. You both know it’ll never be perfect, not for you. You’ll just both keep clawing your way through it for as long as you have to. For as long as you have each other.)
It’s dark by the time you get home. Sensei gives you a look and you know he’s worried but you just… can’t. If old times have come back to haunt the two of you, then you need to be alone with him for a little bit. You’ll explain it to Sensei later, at least as much as you have the right to explain. But you feel like you used up all your words on her and they didn’t make any difference.
As soon as you close the door behind you, Hifumi slumps against the wall and slides to the floor.
You sit next to him so he can lean on your shoulder. You don’t say anything. There’s nothing much to say. The worst has happened, and here you still are, and now you have to keep going.
You think maybe he wants to cry, or maybe you want to cry, but it’s easier said than done. Maybe you shouldn’t pretend you can understand how he feels. You want it to be something that the two of you shared, that nobody but you can understand his pain, but you’re giving yourself too much credit. You were there after it was too late. That’s the best you can say for yourself.
He’s still deathly quiet. He just leans on you, like he did back then when he wouldn’t speak for days. You didn’t know then if you should have said something, and you don’t know now. You just put your arm lightly around him and let him take his time.
“I’ll run you a bath?” you offer after some unmeasurable amount of time. “If you want. I’ll stay here until you do."
“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “‘m cold.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back.” You go to set the bath to fill, trying to resist the urge to run back to him when you’re done. Where do you think he’s going to go if you don’t hurry? It’s not like you can’t see him the whole time.
He leans against you again when you come back. You do want to cry. This isn’t about you, though.
When the bath’s ready, you lead him by the hand to the bathroom, walking slow. You know the feeling. Sometimes the length of the apartment feels like the furthest you’ve ever gone.
You turn to go when he starts to undress and he grabs at your sleeve. You could scream in relief, but instead you just murmur “If you want, I’ll stay.” He lets you take his rings off, pulling them one by one slowly off his long fingers and putting them in the dish by the tub, and you fumble at his earrings until you have those out too. It doesn’t really matter, but it always feels wrong for him to be in his host costume at home.
His hands move clumsily like he’s too tired to wash himself, so you take the soap from him. He flinches a little when you touch him, but when you pull away, he reaches out for your hand. It’s strange seeing him so quiet, but you know how sometimes it feels like there are too many words to choose from and none of them seem like they’ll do any good. He’ll talk when he’s ready.
All you can do is wash his back for him and try to make sure the spray stays on him enough to keep him warm. Your clothes are getting wet, but you’ll deal with that in a moment, you can only do one thing at a time. He needs a bath, and to get in the bath, he needs to get clean. You can do this. Just go down the to do list. Shoulders, back, chest, arms, legs. You don’t understand which of these fancy bottles is his shampoo so you just use yours. Maybe it’d be best for him not to smell like host mode right now.
You wash yourself in a blur once he’s in the bath. It’s strange for you to be joining him there, probably. You’ve never gotten the chance to bathe together as foreplay, and even thinking about that right now makes you feel sick. You just don’t want him to be alone.
(You don’t want to be alone.)
You sit behind him and wrap your arms around him like a cocoon. He sits quiet as a stone, and his skin feels cold no matter what you do. Maybe you're just running too hot with anger. You're so tired and yet you can’t imagine how you’ll sleep tonight.
You talk to drive off the silence that otherwise fills with her voice in your head. You tell him once you’re warmed up, you'll go get takeaway for dinner. Delivery is no good; even if you could be sure it would be a man, you don't know how Hifumi would feel right now about a stranger at the door. You don't always know what he’s going to be able to handle, because he pushes himself so hard to seem okay. Maybe it's just you who doesn't want anyone to come over. Either way.
You don’t know how much of that you said out loud.
You talk about how you picked up some new bubble bath, it was supposed to be a present for him but now is as good a time for a present as anything, after all. You can both be soft and smell nice, not that he isn’t always soft and smelling nice. Not that you really get to know very often how soft he is, but you know he works hard on his skin!
You hope he’s smiling. You can’t see. He’s not cold, at least. That’s a low bar but at least you’ve cleared it.
You love him. You love him and you hate to know that you can’t stop him from being hurt. You could bear everything else if it meant you at least were his protector, but you aren’t. You’re a weakling. She was right.
Still, you need to check off the next things on the list all the same, even if it might come to nothing. Get up, dry off. He can stay in the bath while you order something. Curry, maybe. That’s nearby. Is it safer to leave him in the bath while you’re out, or to talk him into getting up? You tell him you’re going out for a moment and he just nods and it’s probably okay but you tell him to take care anyway.
You overthink everything and yet you don’t remember anything about getting the food. You’ve got it, that’s all you need to know. You’ve got food for him and when you open the door to the bathroom he says your name and he’s safe and he puts his arms around you for a moment when you kneel down to check on him and you almost don’t want to make him get up and get dressed and eat but you have to.
(This must be how he feels about you all the time. You should probably learn something from this.)
You lay out dishes for the two of you and try to plate the food as beautifully as he always does for you. You think about getting out some wine or something, but it just reminds you of the club. Like a horrible parody of a celebration. It’s been so long since you ate a meal together. Can’t you just have something good happen for once, without it having to come from something horrible?
He makes it halfway through the meal before he starts crying. Dry heaving sobs at first, then a horrible, choking wail, the hand holding his spoon hovering in midair and shaking. You gently take the spoon from him and wrap the plates up and put them in the fridge because you know he’d scold you if you let it go to waste, but you maybe don’t do as good a job as you could because you’re hurrying to lead him to the couch so you can hold him.
The crying stops almost as quickly as it started. You understand that, too, how sometimes it dries up stuck inside you. How sometimes all you can think of to do is scream and sometimes you can’t even be bothered to scream because it doesn’t matter if you do or not. You just hold his curled body to your chest and let him breathe ragged and shaking.
“She said something. Something about your job.” It’s the first real words he’s spoken in what must be at least an hour. It sounds like there’s not enough air in his lungs for him to say much without stopping to catch his breath. “What happened?”
“It’s taken care of. It’s not important. “
“Please don’t.”
He’s right. He does deserve to know, even if you didn’t want to tell him yet. How do you explain this quickly? Any other time you’d love to vent for hours about your worse than useless boss, his gullibility and his spinelessness, but it really doesn’t matter now. “Someone tried to make it look like I made a mistake that would get me fired. I guess she wanted me to know that someone was her.”
“She failed, though. Right? You said?”
“Yes.” You stroke his hair. “We found her out. It’s all right.” Maybe not that all right, considering what you said to Baldy. But you know now that you’ll have support from your coworkers if he tries to take it out on you. Strange how one day can show you unexpected highs and lows of humanity all at once.
“You’re so smart.”
“I had help.”
“Haha. Doppochin’s got friends.”
“Heh. Maybe so.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He presses his face to your leg. “It’s my fault. Hurting you’s the best way. Best way to hurt me.”
“I don’t mind being that important to you.” He laughs, or sobs. Strange how similar the two things sound. “Anyway. She does know me. Maybe she wants to hurt me for me. I sure want to hurt her. I hope she knows that.”
“I wish…” He starts saying something, then stops, seemingly daunted. He wishes you didn’t have to hurt her, probably. You don’t really want him to finish that sentence, so that you don’t have to pretend to agree.
“Thank you for defending me,” you say instead. You wish he hadn’t needed to defend you; you wish he hadn’t framed it as if it wasn’t bad enough that she wanted to hurt him. But you’re still grateful that he cares.
“Of course.” He sniffles into your knee. “I meant it.”
Do you think she expected you to come, so she could try to break you in front of him? Or did she expect you to be incapacitated with anxiety and unable to come to his rescue? Despite how little good you managed to do, you feel sick at the thought of him being alone with her.
Did she just underestimate what you would be willing to do for him? It's not as though you don't fear her. You're well aware how she can destroy a person, and you wouldn't have survived what Hifumi's been through.
Maybe it's pointless to try to guess the motivations of someone like her. It wouldn't have changed what you did even if you had known she was setting a trap to lure you in. Hifumi needed you, so you were there. Even if it didn’t make a difference, you couldn’t have been anywhere else. You won’t abandon him again. Even if all you can do is go through hell by his side, that’s what you’ll do. You decided that long ago.
“What if I never get better?” His voice cuts through your self-pity.
“You will. You’ve got Sensei now too, he can help with anything.”
“What if I don’t, though. What if I’m always like this. What if she was right and I’ve never gotten any less weak.”
“You’re not weak!” You’re so furious to hear her words coming out of him that it makes him flinch. You struggle to push your anger back down. “It doesn’t make you weak to be hurt when someone’s trying so hard to hurt you. She’s a monster. That’s not on you.”
“I still have to live with it. Even if she was gone tomorrow. Even if she apologized tomorrow. I’d still have to live this life.”
“I’ll be with you. I’ll protect you.”
He shakes his head, burying it in your chest. “That’s not it. I don’t want to be protected.” He’s back to having to catch his breath every few words. “I want it to be okay. That I’m. That I’m like this.”
“Hifumi…” Emotion wells up in your chest like nausea.
“Say something. C’mon.”
You’re not any good at that. “Of course it’s not okay. You’re hurting.”
“Sorry. It must get pretty boring for you.”
“That’s not…” Don’t make this worse. You press a kiss to the top of his head. “You really think I’m going to get tired of you? After all this time?”
“Why not? I’m tired.”
“I won’t. I haven’t and I won’t. Not ever.” You always hate saying anything about the future, but you’re sure of this. He’s always been here. Even when you’re mad at him, you’ve never imagined being without him. That’s probably as much about you as about him, but even you have the sense not to say that right now.
You should probably say more. You should tell him all the things you feel about him. You should tell him how relieved you feel when you see him smile, how lucky you are when you get to come home before he leaves for work. How proud you are of him for how hard he pushes himself and how much he succeeds when you can’t imagine not just lying in bed all day every day under the circumstances. You should reassure him that as much as you hate that he's suffering, as much as you aren't ready to say that it's okay and mean it, he doesn't need to heal for you or anyone else, that he's okay, better than okay. You should tell him that you never thought you wanted to get married until you realized that it’s just because it couldn’t be better than the life you already have with him.
But you’d mess it up. You can only see how he could take the worst from it. How self-aggrandizing it is. How self-centered you always are.
“At least we got to eat dinner together,” you joke instead.
“Haha.” He finally looks up at you, and you can see how wet his face is. “You miss my cooking already, don’t you?”
“Desperately,” you say honestly. “Nothing else measures up.”
“Okay.” He smiles, and it looks at least a little convincing. “I guess I’ll just have to keep looking after you then, huh?”
“Guess so.”
It felt good to share those verses with him today, despite everything. To be able to stand by his side and work together. You’re so often passing by each other, only seeing each other’s battles from a distance.
He might never have a lasting victory. Whatever getting better looks like for him (for you), it won’t come with a party. It might not come at all. It might always be like this. Not a happy ending, just a quiet moment, a resigned exhale.
But he won’t be alone. If the two of you have to walk through hell, then you’ll do it hand in hand.