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It’s been hours since they went to bed, but Tadashi can’t sleep.
There are A Million Little Thoughts crawling inside his brain. They aren’t biting him as hard as they were earlier in the day—or maybe they are, and Tadashi is just numb from exhaustion—but their presence is distinct and undeniable, and they hit just enough sensitive points to hold him captive in consciousness. He tries to fight against them, counting sheep, counting frogs, counting the in-outs of Kei’s soft breathing…
But alas.
It makes him want to cry. He might have, bruised and delicate from sleep depravity as he is, if it weren’t for the fear of waking Kei, who’s turned on his side in sleep next to him. And so, he keeps silent and still, staring at the waning shadows on the ceiling. He imagines that he is on a mission, and the mission is to be a good, quiet boyfriend who doesn’t wake up his partner and make him suffer purely because he himself is.
It works until he starts wondering how many hours are left until their morning alarm goes off, how much longer he has before he loses his chance to get any sleep. Carefully, he lifts his phone from the nightstand with the intent to slide it under the blanket so that he can check the time while shielding Kei from the brightness of the screen.
The phone turns on a second too early, flooding light into the room. Tadashi drops it on his face.
“T’dashi? You awake?” comes Kei’s voice, thick and muddled from sleep.
“Sorry, Tsukki,” He whispers back. “I was just trying to check the time.”
Kei rolls over so that they’re facing each other. His eyes are sleepy, still mostly closed. “You weren’t asleep before though… were you?” He yawns, more fact than question. “Can tell that you haven’t really been sleeping well this past week.”
“Yeah, not—not really,” Tadashi admits.
“Something on your mind?”
Tadashi sighs. He has A Million Little Thoughts, really, not just a single something, but it all stems from a shared cause. “It’s… it’s this deadline at work on Friday. It’s really important, and the boss is putting a lot of pressure on us.” He forces himself to pause by biting his bottom lip into his mouth, pressing back the flood of anxieties that threaten to spill out. This isn’t a therapy session—this is his boyfriend asking him why the hell he’s awake at four in the morning. “I guess I’m a little too stressed to sleep,” he finishes weakly.
Kei makes a humming noise in the back of his throat. Slowly, deliberately, he wraps an arm around Tadashi’s waist and pulls him closer. “Come here.”
Tadashi goes willingly. He settles his head on Kei’s chest, right under his chin, and snakes an arm around his middle. Their legs intertwine. Kei’s hand slides up from his lower waist to the space between his shoulder blades. There, he rubs Tadashi’s back in slow circles, gentle, but with just enough pressure to make Tadashi sigh and relax further against Kei’s body. A few minutes later, he switches to rubbing his bony knuckles in parallel lines that sandwich his spine. Again, some time later, he goes back to the circles.
There, tucked in Kei’s arms, Tadashi thinks that maybe it’s okay to feel safe.
Time passes, the shadows in their bedroom continue to wane, yet Kei’s hand doesn’t cease for a second. It makes Tadashi’s brain go all fuzzy—the intimacy, the attentiveness, the devotion. But it doesn’t make him sleep. And Kei seems to know this, because Kei doesn’t sleep either, regardless of how long he has to rub Tadashi’s back.
Suddenly, worry spikes through Tadashi, and his entire body tenses back up. He lifts himself from Kei’s chest. “Sorry, Tsukki, I’m keeping you up. I’ll go sleep on the couch.”
“Stay,” Kei replies. His long fingers catch around Tadashi’s wrist. “The couch isn’t good for your back.”
“No way. You’re never going to get any sleep because of me,” Tadashi argues.
“So?”
“So,” Tadashi echoes, dumbfounded by why Kei isn’t getting it, “You’re going to be tired at practice tomorrow. You can’t be tired at practice.”
Kei huffs. “That’s my decision to make.”
“Kei—”
“Tadashi,” Kei says. His voice is quiet, but there’s a substratum of tenacity that tells Tadashi it’s unlikely that he will win this argument. “It’s late. Just stay here tonight, and we can have this conversation when we’re both more awake.”
So for now, even though he still feels like he doesn’t quite deserve it, that he’s massively inconveniencing his boyfriend, Tadashi lets himself relax back against Kei. Now, his left ear is settled right over his boyfriend’s heart. Tadashi listens to the steady beat of it as Kei rubs his back. He counts, one, two, three…
—
The next evening, they’re getting dinner ready together. Kei’s manning the stove, stirring the soba noodles and vegetables with long wooden chopsticks. Tadashi flits between the kitchen and dining table to set the table. When he hears the airy ding of the kettle, he opens the cupboard and takes out Kei’s favorite brand of organic green tea.
But Kei stops him. “I don’t think you should be having caffeine this close to bedtime,” he calls over mildly.
Tadashi feels the catch of Kei’s eyes on his face like a physical tug, and he automatically looks back at his boyfriend, who looks paler than usual. Is it because of the yellow glow of the kitchen lights—Tadashi had picked these lightbulbs up because they were on sale and regrets it—or because Tadashi selfishly kept him up last night?
Troubled, Tadashi drops his gaze to the floor. “That’s probably a good idea. I’ll stick to water, then. Do you still want tea, Tsukki?”
“Yes, but not the green tea. Can you look in my work bag? I picked up some lavender tea for us on the way home.”
The bag is lying limp in the dining chair closer to the window, the one that Kei usually sits in. Tadashi rummages through it and finds a metal tin. There is a gold-foil crescent moon on its blue label.
It makes Something Bigger Than Him well up in his throat, overwhelming and more than a little painful. It stays with him throughout eating dinner, washing the dishes while Kei dries, and curling up together on the couch to watch the cable special on salt marshes; and it only deepens when Kei turns to him once the special is over and he has to look into those full moon eyes and see the shadowy exhaustion pressed into the delicate skin underneath, like crushed fruit.
“I’ll draw the bath for you,” Kei tells him. “Do you want another cup of tea before you wash up?”
“No, Tsukki, I’m okay,” Tadashi says, squirming a little under the weight of Something Bigger Than Him, which is currently leaning uncomfortably against his brain and waking up A Million Little Thoughts. Then, he blurts out, “You don’t have to—I can take care of my bath. And, ummm, you can bathe first if you want? I’m fine waiting.”
“I showered at the gym,” Kei replies.
“Oh, okay. Well, you can just wait here and relax, and I’ll just run the bath by myself—”
“Are you okay?” Kei asks.
Tadashi freezes in his standing position. He looks down at Kei, who gazes back in open concern. “Yeah, yeah! I’m… I’m fine, of course I’m fine—why wouldn’t I be?” he says, but his voice cracks in the middle of the question, so it falls short of light-hearted and crash-lands straight into fucking stupid.
“I don’t get why you’re trying to stop me from getting the bath ready for you. I do it all the time.”
A chuckle that hopefully doesn’t sound too forced. “I’m fine, Tsukki! Everything’s okay.”
Kei stares for a second, then drops his eyes to the floor and scowls. “I understand if you need space and don’t want to talk about what’s wrong, but don’t lie to me.”
The arched line of Kei’s neck to his shoulders is deflated, dejected, and Tadashi would do anything to make it go away. But there’s only really two options for Tadashi right now, both of which may end in Kei’s hardships persisting, or worse yet, heightening.
The first option: he could lie and insist that he’s fine. Kei, who knows him best, will notice that he is lying. The arched line will remain—no, deepen, as Kei’s past has made him hate deception above all else.
The last option: he could tell the truth. He could be selfish and dump all his misery on Kei and force him to be miserable too.
Tadashi agonizes over those two options until the room is spinning.
After what feels like a millennium of silence, Kei looks up again. “Bath?” He offers as a white flag.
“Sure, Tsukki,” Tadashi replies.
Kei kisses his forehead before going to the bathroom. After a few minutes, during which Tadashi looks at his reflection in the darkened window and wonders how he’s going to explain what just happened to his boyfriend, Kei calls him over.
Kei excuses himself, and so alone in the bathroom, Tadashi steps out of his clothes and steps into the bath. The water is hot, and the bubbles that Kei added smell of eucalyptus. Like this, Tadashi closes his eyes and lets his body sink deeper down into the bath. He must doze off for a few minutes, because he wakes by knocking on the bathroom door. It couldn’t have been too long though—the water is still warm. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“Can I come in?” Kei asks.
Tadashi hums, and Kei enters with a plate, on which he’s placed two tangerines. He rinses his hands, sits down on the stool next to the bath, and holds up the fruit in a silent question.
Tadashi’s hands emerge from the water covered in soap. Kei gives him a soft, barely there smile. Balancing the plate on his lap, he picks up the first tangerine and slowly peels the skin away around, around, around, around in a long, unbroken spiral. It’s hypnotizing—Tadashi stares at his elegant fingers, blinking heavily every few seconds. When Kei is finished, he sets the peel down on the plate and removes the excess strands of white pith.
Tadashi opens his mouth obediently, and Kei feeds him a slice of the tangerine. It bursts on his tongue, tangy and extra sweet surrounded by the steam from the bath, and Tadashi is suddenly overcome by the thought that he is so grateful for simple luxuries like eating tangerines that have been hand-peeled for him while sitting in a tub.
Kei gives Tadashi another piece. After he swallows it, Tadashi says quietly, “It, ummm… it kinda wasn’t a lie. In the living room, when I said everything’s okay. There’s nothing really wrong, technically.”
“There’s still something wrong, then?” Kei asks. He eats a slice of the tangerine.
“There’s nothing wrong, yet,” Tadashi answers, “But I’m just feeling really… I’ve been feeling extra anxious this past week. Probably because of work, and then the fact that I can’t fall asleep, though I guess I can’t sleep because work has been so shitty ‘cause of that deadline I told you about—but yeah.”
Another tangerine slice for Tadashi. While he chews, Kei watches him with gentle, tired eyes. “And why did you feel anxious about the bath?”
Tadashi swallows, hard. “I don’t know.” But he does, doesn’t he? And once he realizes it, just enough parts clicking into place to see the full picture, however broken, it all spills out, “I just… I don’t want to be a burden to you.”
Kei answers, “You could never be a burden to me,” fiercely and foolishly loyal.
It is so automatic that it pretty much confirms Tadashi’s fears. He tells Kei as much: “But I am! You’ve already not been able to sleep because of my stupid issues… and don’t lie to me about that, I know you way too well for you to lie. I can see how tired you are! I’m making you worry—and for no damn good reason at all—”
He cuts himself off when he realizes that he’s getting too worked up. His arms, which had lifted from the water to gesticulate passionately while he made his point, fall back into the water, which is now cold. A shiver runs down Tadashi’s shoulders.
Kei sets the plate down on the floor. He kneels down on the linoleum flooring so he can reach down the length of the bath and turn the water back on. Sticking his hand into the bath to check the temperature, he swirls the water to mix the fresh hot water into the lukewarm. “I don’t like it when you talk about yourself like that,” He tells Tadashi as he does so. Underwater, his fingers brush against the side of Tadashi’s calf. “Your issues aren’t stupid if they’re bothering you so much that you can’t sleep.”
Tadashi sighs, all of the anger leaving his lungs as he slides deeper into the water until his chin skims the surface. “I don’t know if it works that way, Tsukki,” he mumbles. “And either way, whether I’m right to be stressed or not, there’s no point in making you worry about me.”
“Then don’t think of it as worrying,” says Kei.
Kei stands up from his spot on the floor. Tadashi sees that the underside of his forearm has gotten wet from where it was pressed on the ledge of the tub; the fabric of his shirt is dark. “I’ll be in the bedroom,” he says. “Take as much time as you need.”
And Kei leaves, and Tadashi is left to turn those words over in his head. “‘Don’t think of it as worrying?’” He muses out loud. They echo in the narrow space of the bathroom, light like mountain air.
He washes his hair and body, then rinses off. While he drains the sweet-smelling bathwater, he brushes his teeth.
Kei isn’t in the kitchen nor the living room, so Tadashi goes looking for him in their bedroom. He’s in bed, feet flat on the mattress and knees folded up, a book propped up against his thighs. He’s all tawny in the dim light of their nightstand lamp, and Tadashi halts a meter or so away, suddenly shy.
“Can you get me one of the bookmarks from our desk, please?” Kei asks without looking up from the book.
Tadashi glances at the cover. Lots of yellows, some green. He plucks a canary-colored bookmark from their mug stuffed with the free bookmarks that they got from libraries, museums, with their bookstore purchases.
Kei thanks him once he brings it over, and he tucks it at the back of the book for safekeeping.
“New book?” Tadashi asks, curling up at Kei’s side.
“Yeah. Kageyama bought it, but it was too boring for him, so he gave it to me,” Kei says dryly.
Tadashi laughs. “Funny how he thought you might like it,” he teases.
Kei flicks his arm, then falls silent again as he gets back into the book. Tadashi reads over his shoulder, not minding that he doesn’t quite understand the context for what’s happening in this scene. The sound of Kei’s fingertips tapping absentmindedly against the book as he reads is almost like rain, and each time he turns the page, the glide of paper against paper fills Tadashi with a warm comfort.
Tadashi is actually a little drowsy by the time Kei reaches the end of the chapter and closes the book. “I’m going to wash up for bed,” Kei excuses himself.
But when Kei returns, Tadashi is wide awake again and refreshing his work email on his phone.
“Did you get an email?” Kei asks, slipping back into bed.
“No,” Tadashi admits. “I was checking just in case. I don’t want to miss anything.”
“I don’t think reasonable people who send work emails past eleven at night expect a prompt response,” Kei tells him.
“Maybe,” Tadashi answers, uncertain.
“You can leave the ringer on in case you get something, but you should put your phone away. You’ve checked your inbox already—you know it’s empty.”
What Kei says makes sense, so Tadashi places his work phone face down on the nightstand. He turns back to his boyfriend.
“Come here,” Kei says, and he opens his arms for Tadashi, and Tadashi goes. He smells good, like soap and tea. They hold each other for a few minutes.
“You’re so tense,” Kei murmurs.
“Sorry,” Tadashi apologizes.
“Is there anything I can do to help you unwind?” asks Kei.
And right as Tadashi opens his mouth to admit, oh, we’re not worth it, Tsukki, me and My Million Little Thoughts, Kei grabs his fingers and clutches them in his own, tight yet gentle all at once: the singular touch of a lover. “I want to,” he tells him.
Tadashi’s fingers twitch. They curl around Kei’s until they’re twined together. “Ummm, maybe,” he starts, words slow and uncertain, “Maybe you could… touch my hair, please? When I was a kid, my mom used to play with my hair to help me sleep.”
Kei nods. He lifts one hand away from Tadashi’s and brings it to his head. He strokes his hair slowly.
Tadashi sighs at the sensation—it has an almost numbing effect in the most pleasant of ways, like being rocked by a night train. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on Kei’s fingers through his hair.
“Go to sleep when you’re sleepy, Tsukki,” Tadashi tells him, eyes still closed. “Don’t let me bother you.”
“Does it look like you’re bothering me?” comes Kei’s patient voice.
So Tadashi opens his eyes, and he sees Kei looking at him, really seeing him, with the most gentle amber eyes the world has ever known. And Tadashi sees him too.
Here with Kei, Tadashi is safe. Something Bigger Than Him sits warm in his heart.
“Good night, Tsukki,” he whispers, then dreams.