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To their mutual surprise, Akira had as many hang-ups about birthdays as Goro did—more, in some senses. He was allergic to celebrating his own and invested double the energy into other people’s birthdays, and about four times as much into Goro’s. His enthusiasm was charming and overwhelming.
Waking up alone never felt good. He always spent a moment or two hyperaware of his surroundings but without the context for their state, like looking up from his phone in a cab and realizing he didn’t know which part of the city he was in. Missing Akira was like missing a landmark. Goro took a moment to acclimatize, remembered that Akira was in America, and that it was his birthday, and that he didn’t have anywhere to be today.
Then came the relief; there would be no party today, no fancy dinner, no outing Goro had to be his brightest self for. He hadn’t had a birthday he would classify as ‘bad’ in years, but that didn’t mean it was his idea of a good time. Akira made it worth his while.
Today it was up to Goro to do that for himself. The thought was terrifying. He put it away unexamined, and checked his phone. He had a message from Akira, his advisor from grad school, and a few classmates. He didn’t have to read them to know what they said, so he put that away too and tried to go back to sleep.
Every birthday between his tenth and his twenty-first had gone unmarked, uncelebrated. His mother had always been unbearably sad around the day he was born, and though she’d tried to make them special, he knew she didn’t like the reminder of her failure. And nobody in foster homes and group homes cared about birthdays, so Goro rarely thought about his own except as a reiteration of the well-worn guilt of being born at all.
On his twenty-first birthday Akira and Ryuji had taken him out drinking and they’d gotten absolutely plastered and Goro had said things that made Akira and Ryuji laugh still, though all his threats had never made them admit what exactly it was.
Well, he wasn’t falling back asleep anymore. He hauled himself out of bed and wandered out to the kitchen to make coffee and consider his options. He was good at making plans, but Akira was the one with all the desire to make someone have fun. Goro had never figured out how exactly that worked—there was no reliable formula to it, not for him, not when a stray thought could turn a pleasant day into a nightmare.
He was weirdly calm today. He hadn’t thought even once about blood, or his father, or—
Well, now he had. The images flooded in and he could only wait for them to subside. They painted the backs of his eyelids red, but he’d learnt it was better to keep his eyes closed. When his mind was determined to see blood, it’d keep seeing it if he remembered what it looked like. He was really bad at forgetting. Oh, god.
Fuck. His lungs hurt. This shit was fucking unbearable, and as the cost of being a murderer it wasn’t that bad but it was terrible. He was going to have to live the rest of his life like this. He was going to have to live, because it would kill Akira if Goro died. He just wished living meant something other than guilt and panic attacks and missing pieces of himself he hadn’t known existed when he’d sacrificed them for a goal he’d realized too late he didn’t want.
Fuck this. Fuck this.
Akira could blank out his mind when he was stressed. Goro wished he had whatever capacity let Akira live in the back of his own head. It would’ve made everything easier if his life was the worst movie in the world, and he was just another spectator to his many mistakes.
Goro had an almost crippling awareness of his selfhood. It made him want to throw up.
Having the thought meant he did throw up, coffee-flavored bile in the sink. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t stop staring at the awful color of it. He wanted a hug.
Pathetic, an old voice in his head said. You’re so starved for comfort, even now?
Shut up, he told it. He was really fucking sick of himself already and it wasn’t even ten a.m.
If he showered, he’d feel better. This was debatable, and showering was a lot of work, and contained the possibility that the sight of his body would make him throw up again. He drank half a glass of water and went back to bed, disgusted with himself.
Happy birthday!!!!!!! Akira had sent him at two a.m. you’re probably asleep right now but
Goro stared at the message for a few seconds. He could read it in Akira’s voice if he focused, but it just made him want to hear Akira’s actual voice.
I’m awake, he sent.
Birthday boy, Akira replied immediately. My best birthday boy
Shut up.
No!!! i am kissing you. I am giving you your gift
I’m going to throw my phone out of the window so i don’t have to read this nonsense on the one day of the year that everyone has to be nice to me
:(
I told you not to get me a gift
It’s a scarf!! I would get you a scarf anyway
I have too many scarves
I also got you socks bc youre an old man
And a tie
It has mushrooms on it
I’m going to strangle you with it
;)
Goro was smiling at his phone. He stopped the minute he noticed himself doing it, but it left a strange taste in his mouth. Like sugar, and he’d never liked sugar. He bit the insides of his cheeks until the feeling went away.
I miss you, Akira sent. I wish I could be there
I know. He almost said, me too. But then Akira would know—would know that Goro wanted him, and felt worse without him around. Akira’s unmitigated savior complex already made him feel bad about every minute he couldn’t help Goro, and Goro had no business adding to that misery. You have to be there. You’ll be back next week.
I hate it
I know. He’d said that already, fuck. I hate it too.
<3
Make me a cake
Make one yourself, asshole
But i want your cakes :(
You’re good at baking i always fuck it up somehow
Because you can’t follow the damn recipe
Fuck you i’m an artist
Goro really wanted to hear Akira’s voice. It was so stupid. It was so stupid, and he wanted it so badly he felt sick. Not in the way where he wanted to puke, but in the way where it felt like something small and animal in his chest was trying to claw its way out.
What kind of cake?
It’s your birthday, you decide
He googled birthday cakes first, and rolled his eyes at the results. Next he searched for low-sugar vanilla cakes. These results were more palatable, so he clicked on the first recipe. He’d have to go grocery shopping. If he wanted to go grocery shopping, he’d have to shower. If he had to shower he’d have to get out of bed.
Sometimes Goro really wondered how he’d managed being a full-time student, magic assassin, child celebrity, and amateur spy at the same time. Moral concerns aside, he was no longer physically or emotionally capable of that kind of multitasking. He often couldn’t figure out what fucking flavor of yogurt to buy. He’d taken a solid year to settle on a topic for his thesis. He was writing a thesis. His younger self would’ve killed him out of sheer embarrassment.
The thought made him cheerful. He went to shower. He always ran the water too hot, because drowning made him panic. Hot water was nice, though. And he did feel better afterwards.
He hated how that worked.
Grocery shopping was an ordeal. Finding his gloves took half an hour, and he was ready to give up by the time he spotted them under Akira’s t-shirt. Giving up was, unfortunately, really easy. He’d learned this only in his twenties and it had been downhill ever since.
Usually grocery shopping was easy, because they had a list and a way of working through it and Goro didn’t have to worry about it. He scanned the ingredients four times, unreasonably upset by the thought of forgetting something and having to go back, and then he spent twenty minutes circling the yogurt aisle like the world’s most deranged grocery store vulture.
Akira’s solution to the Yogurt Problem was to buy it plain and modify it to specifications at home. Goro objected on the grounds that the processed shit just tasted different. Akira insisted that that was an advantage. Goro refused to concede this point.
He really did like the taste of artificial flavoring. Sue him.
It was only when he was back home that he realized he should’ve bought lunch. He was going to have to figure out lunch all by himself now, though the yogurt would work for breakfast. Could he have cake for lunch?
He could order in. Some part of him still rebelled at the thought of spending money now that it was their money and not his father’s, but it was his birthday. He could have takeout without Akira deciding they were going to have takeout. He felt proud of arriving at that conclusion for half a second before the shame kicked in. He was, on every level, a failure of a person. He was not getting takeout. He could make his own lunch.
Yeah, right.
He put the ingredients on the table, propped his phone up against the stove with the instructions open, and set himself to mixing butter and sweetened condensed milk together. He’d picked one of the eggless recipes for no real reason, and he was half-sure it wouldn’t turn out well, but it was too late to back out now.
An entire can of sweetened condensed milk was going to be too fucking sweet.
Too fucking late. He measured out flour and sugar. His mind was buzzing like a kicked hive of bees, and he didn’t know what to do with himself when it was like this. Hating himself was old and familiar, and distractions were temporary. It was easier to let it fester.
He had to switch to a bigger bowl halfway through adding the flour. This was going to be too much and too sweet and he wasn’t even going to eat it. He could always just throw it away. Akira would be so upset about not getting any cake. Goro wished he’d never agreed to make it in the first place. His head hurt.
Now that he thought about it, it was kind of pathetic to be making a birthday cake for himself. In fact, it was about the most pathetic thing Goro could think of doing, and if he stopped now he’d have just as much mess to clean and nothing to show for it.
Oh god, the mess. There were flecks of flour everywhere. He hadn’t realized he’d been so aggressive about mixing. Fuck. He didn’t want to clean. He wanted—
Every single year Akira kept him occupied all day on his birthday, because apparently when he didn’t Goro had multiple panic attacks in the fucking kitchen.
He hadn’t even preheated the fucking oven.
Contrary to his premonitions of doom (mainly involving explosions and fire), the cake turned out fine. It was ridiculously big and fluffy, and smelled great to people who weren’t him. He couldn’t bring himself to try a slice. He wanted to, but there was a wall in his head and he was too tired to climb it.
He should’ve bought himself takeout, he considered morosely around two p.m. He was very hungry and he’d already scoured the fridge for things to eat and come up empty. He didn’t want to eat yogurt again. The smell of cake was just making it worse, and he really couldn’t eat cake.
At three p.m. he had a stroke of inspiration and ordered a pizza. Lunchtime, he reasoned, was whenever he ate lunch.
It was, he was beginning to realize, a bad day. The worst he’d had in months. Even with Akira’s overseas trips growing more frequent, Goro hadn’t had a total failure in functioning this embarrassing in months. More than months.
It made sense, in a way. It was his birthday, and that had been the worst day of the year for the first two decades of his life. Even when he wasn’t thinking about it the guilt lingered.
He poked at it now. He couldn’t be sure whether it had grown smaller. He always wanted to live, in the mindless way animals did, but he still found it difficult to want to live. To fill his life with things worth living for. Akira had been the first one worth keeping.
Right now, he wanted to live. He wanted to live even if it meant dealing with the mess in the kitchen and figuring out what to do about dinner. It was a very pathetic realization, but he couldn’t muster the energy to hate himself about it. He could have a few pathetic realizations on his birthday if he fucking wanted to. It was a wasted life, but it was still his.
He didn’t want to deal with the kitchen. He dealt with it anyway, and decided yogurt for dinner was a choice he couldn’t be faulted for. He wasn’t ordering in again.
Akira called him a few hours later. Goro had lost track of the time, reading a research paper on his phone and creating a stack of yogurt cups. “Hey,” he said, sounding sleepy. “How was the day?”
He made it sound not trite. It was a skill. “Mostly over,” Goro replied. “Any dreams?”
“Nope.” A pause while he yawned. “Did you…make the cake?”
Goro glanced at the counter. “Yes. I think it’s too big.”
Akira laughed. “How big?”
“Big enough to feed ten people,” Goro said, still disgruntled about this. “I don’t know if we’re going to finish it.”
“I’ll give some away,” Akira said dismissively. “How does it taste?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t try it.”
“Goro,” Akira said softly, and then nothing else. He was far too fucking good at making Goro feel guilty, and it was a relief that he rarely used to hurt Goro. Somewhere he knew he’d never stand that kind of treatment, but it was hard to remember that all the time. It was hard to think of this thing between them as temporary, easily abandoned, when they had an apartment together and every week Akira’s pleas for a kitten came closer to fulfillment. Akira, thankfully, changed tracks. “What did you have for lunch?”
“Pizza,” Goro said. He didn’t want to talk about lunch, or food in general. “I’m going to work on my thesis.”
Akira yawned again. He never slept well when he was overseas. “You do that. I’ve gotta go, I’ve got this fucking meeting.”
“Alright,” Goro said. Akira hadn’t wished him a happy birthday. He wouldn’t, because Goro hated being told to have a nice day on a day that was never going to be anything other than awful. It was stupid to be annoyed about that. Akira had texted him a birthday greeting already. He wasn’t going to feel angry about this, because it was an insane thing to be angry about. “Love you. Bye.”
“Love you too,” Akira said warmly. “Bye.”
He was still angry, but it was nice to hear that.
Since he’d said he was going to work on his thesis, he retrieved his laptop and began reading a different paper. It was, technically, working. He lost himself in collecting sources for hours, and only looked up when realized he needed to put the cake inside. He’d left it on the counter to cool, and then he’d just left it there.
The cake was none the worse for wear. Goro cut it into squares and located boxes to stuff it into, then poked at the last piece. He was hungry, and he needed to eat something.
Happy birthday to me, he thought, and took a bite. It wasn’t bad, objectively, and it wasn’t as sweet as he’d expected it to be with an entire can of condensed milk in it. Still too sweet, but he could tolerate that. His mother would’ve liked it. She’d always liked those spongy pastries.
The realization had lingered around him all day, but it hit him all at once. He was thirty-one. He was officially older than his mother had ever been.
How was he supposed to feel about that? He’d long since admitted to himself that she’d hate the person he’d become. He couldn’t stop loving her. She couldn’t be disappointed in him if she was dead, but she’d never eat a cake he’d made.
He ate another piece.