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Prompt: Tadashi dies and Adam struggles to cope
Sometimes he felt like a traitor, a coward. He would have loved to mourn Tadashi properly. Scratch himself until he bled, his own skin shredded underneath torn fingernails, constant tears and inconsolable wailing. He fantasized about smashing everything he could get his hands on, hands bleeding from slivers of wood and shards of glass, refusing to leave his room, rejecting food or assistance, eyes red and swollen and everything around him as broken and jagged as he felt.
But he didn’t.
He had locked that part of himself away, having learned a long time ago to hoard anything he loved dear to protect it. Put on pleasing mask, one acceptable and easy for people to glance over, to stomach. Let them feel comfortable and complacent so they wouldn’t pry too closely, peek too deeply, dare try tearing his treasure away.
They wouldn’t understand.
They would tell him to get over it, would brand it unhealthy, if they knew the truth. That he still heard Tadashi’s gentle, steady voice whispering in his ear in the morning, Wake up, Ainosuke-sama, and he’d wake with a soft smile only to realize and be devastated all over again. How many times had Ainosuke leaned to mutter something out of the corner of his mouth, some wry remark or off-hand comment, and realized nearly too-late that the person next to him was his new secretary and not Tadashi at all.
No one would understand how he’d fall into contemplation in the back seat of the car, jolted back by a whiff of Tadashi’s subtle cologne, and snap his eyes hopefully to the rear view mirror—
Where his new driver just kept his eyes straight ahead.
Sometimes he wondered if he was going insane. Sometimes he hoped so. That insanity would somehow make the pain more bearable.
He hadn’t expected any sort of attempt at sympathy from his aunts and was actually relieved when they did not disappoint. Maybe someday he could stomach their false platitudes or mention of Tadashi’s name in their aged, nasally voices. But not now.
The others…had been harder.
Joe, of course, had tried talking to him. To this day Ainosuke didn’t recall exactly what Joe had said or how he’d answered. He’d given one of those very Joe-like hugs, steeped in awkwardness and sadness. Ainosuke remembered noting that mentally, like it was someone else’s body in warm arms.
…Were they warm?
Cherry had…tried. But they were too much alike in all the wrong ways, Ainosuke had realized long before this. And too dissimilar when it counted. They weren’t built for caregiving or kind words. While Cherry understood in principle his desire and necessity to be alone, Cherry also thrived under the incessant attention of his best friend. Ainosuke had never really had a best friend and didn’t know how to be anything but alone.
His closest thing to a friend was now dead.
Not surprisingly, Langa had been the most dangerous. The closest to making him crumble. He hadn’t even said anything, the mark of someone experienced with a loss of this magnitude, Ainosuke supposed. He’d simply looked at Ainosuke with sad, knowing eyes and given him an uncertain half-hug to be expected from someone barely into adulthood.
Which suited Ainosuke just fine; an embrace any longer would have cracked his careful veneer.
He swore he was done crying.
But sometimes at his desk, sitting late into the night and staring at nothing, he’d reach up and find wetness trailing down his cheeks.
He’d stare at damp fingertips, wondering whose body this was that he lived in now. And how long a body could survive without a heart.
That was certainly the least of what Tadashi had taken with him when he died.
Maybe he had thrown a bit of a fit—as much of one as he could get away with, which didn’t look like anything on the outside, though he clenched his jaw and fumed internally—and locked himself in his study when his aunts brought up marriage yet again.
He should have expected it; had expected it, really. He barked a rough laugh, harsh enough to make himself cringe at the sound—it was a small miracle they had waited this long to push the subject.
And the very clinical, practical, cutting voice in his mind asked him how long he truly thought they should wait. How long would ever be enough. When he would never be done, never be whole, never cease mourning Tadashi until the day he, too, finally died.
But he was in no mood to be realistic or practical. He didn’t want to understand them, to see their point, to admit they might actually be acting in what they perceived to be his best interests. No, he wanted to pout, to scream, to flail. To smash and break and bawl. To sear Tadashi into his chest, ink him into his skin.
Tear out his hair or gouge out his own eyes, disfiguring himself in his grief, so that there was a scar for everyone to see. Something they couldn’t even bear to look at in its ugliness, undeniable evidence of his hideous, excruciating pain.
But some part of him still heard Tadashi’s voice when he was like this, gently admonishing, talking him down from that metaphorical ledge. The most bizarre, mundane things to snap him out of it just long enough to keep him from doing anything he would regret. Inflicting any permanent damage.
Another harsh laugh escaped him.
As if the damage wasn’t already permanent.
Still.
Those moments where he could almost swear he heard—
Your tea, Ainosuke-sama.
The papers you requested, Ainosuke-sama.
Your tie, please, Ainosuke-sama?
Good night, Ainosuke-sama.
—were precious treasures and searing spikes into his heart all at once.
Tadashi’s cell vibrated with an alert—strange, the things a person chooses to keep, but Ainosuke had not only kept the phone but kept it active. An interesting form of torture he hadn’t quite puzzled through, as if Tadashi could message him from beyond the grave as long as he had a phone. Ridiculous for sure. Yet Ainosuke couldn’t bring himself to deactivate the line quite yet. He lied to himself, saying it was just in case business contacts still used that number.
The vibration startled Ainosuke out of his melancholy spiral and he looked at the screen, heart pounding erratically, perpetually anxious now as to what messages were still coming through.
He read it three times but repeated reading did not help it make sense.
“You’ve outdone yourself yet again! Can’t wait for the next chapter!”
Mostly sure it wasn’t some sort of spam he tapped the screen and it took him to a website. A blog? Was this some mistake? Maybe it was spam after all?
Then he glanced at the blog title and his heart stopped for just a moment.
in the garden
When it was all said and done, Tadashi’s laptop was a functional, professional, theoretically very impersonal thing. Yet it was still something Ainosuke kept for himself, refusing to pass it on to Tadashi’s replacement or even let him touch. There had been necessary documents that Ainosuke had retrieved, not prying any further than that, though Tadashi hardly seemed the type to have anything to find. But Ainosuke felt he knew him better than anyone and therefore didn’t want to completely discount the possibility of a few surprises.
The laptop had been one of the things Tadashi had undoubtedly touched more than anything else, so while it may have seemed a silly thing to cherish, Ainosuke had his reasons. He carefully opened the laptop, just barely brushing his shaking fingers over the keys as he imagined Tadashi’s hands there, fingers rapidly typing reports or emails or configuring the cameras and logistics for S.
Looking at Tadashi’s phone, he typed the address into the browser.
Ainosuke’s breath caught. Tadashi was still logged in. He’d had his suspicion when he saw the name but this confirmed it. This was Tadashi’s. And it was filled with—
Stories.
Still disbelieving, afraid to get his hopes up, afraid to assume or jump to conclusions, Ainosuke clicked on the most recent post. For a moment he was lost, as it seemingly picked up in the middle of nowhere and he realized it was simply the latest chapter in a much larger work. Swallowing thickly, pulse racing, he went to click off, find something that would make more sense, when he saw it:
Adam.
His eyes moved of their own volition, unable to look away. It didn’t matter if he had context or knew what was going on—at that moment he knew.
Ainosuke blinked back tears, not wanting to pause reading for even a second. These were their stories.
On the one hand, Ainosuke wanted to soak them up gradually, carefully. Wanted to hoard them, tease them out, save each one. Start at the beginning and read through them methodically, slow and meticulous so as not to miss a word. But on the other hand…
He wanted to devour.
He completely lost track of time, reading story after story. Finally, he mustered up the willpower to find the first post and was shocked to realize Tadashi had started this years ago—when Ainosuke had registered the date, his heart broke anew.
The first post was not a story at all. Well, it looked like it, maybe, to some random internet passerby. But a “story” of a burned treasure, a broken promise, a betrayal by an only friend. Ainosuke had been so consumed at the time he’d completely overlooked how destroyed Tadashi had been. And unable to tell anyone—even if he had dared try to tell Ainosuke, Ainosuke wouldn’t have listened, wouldn’t have wanted to hear it—Tadashi had coped by telling the void.
Only…the void had loved it.
So Tadashi wrote more. And more. And more. Silly things, serious things. Innocent and erotic, sweet and sensual. Poems and novellas. Multi-chapter works, trilogies. Tragedies and happily ever afters. Pirates and princes. Coffee shops and college students. Flower shops and tattoo artists. Magic, mystery, and misery. First kisses, first times, confessions in the rain. Love letters, misunderstandings, pining galore. Actors and idols, arranged marriages and fake dating. Bodyguards, yakuza, assassins, and mafioso. Dancers, escorts, professional athletes. Vampires and werewolves, angels and demons. Soulmates, soul marks, suffocating on love manifesting as flowers. Roses and thorns, jewelry and collars. Kitchen mishaps and sleepy Sunday mornings. Anniversary presents. Beautiful weddings and the occasional elopement.
A family with a precocious little girl with ruby eyes. Or maybe a darling baby boy with eyes of jade.
Tadashi had imagined them over and over again, seemingly every way possible.
Tadashi’s last words had simply been “Ainosuke-sama” and Ainosuke still felt ungrateful and cruel that he’d wanted something more. That it had sounded, to him, like Tadashi wasn’t quite finished before his breath left and his heart ceased.
Just once, he wanted to hear it.
By the time Ainosuke had said it to him, had mustered up the voice to say anything, it was too late. That frantic whisper, his voice cracking around his prayer of I love you, Tadashi, don’t go fell on ears that couldn’t hear and never would again. Every day Ainosuke lived with the regret he hadn’t told him in time.
But now. Looking at these versions of their lives—lived over and over through Tadashi’s eyes, written in his words—tears poured down Ainosuke’s face.
Tadashi had loved him.
Tadashi had loved him.
Ainosuke glanced at the count of unread, unanswered comments. They would remain unread and unanswered forever, now. Unless…
He hesitated. This was Tadashi’s, and Ainosuke was tempted to leave it pristine. Frozen in time, never touched again. But he thought back to that very first post, Tadashi’s lonely, desperate attempt at channeling grief and heartbreak into something.
Maybe Tadashi’s salvation could be his salvation too.
Maybe, in this lifetime, this is how Ainosuke could finally tell Tadashi, “I love you.”
With a quivering breath, Ainosuke clicked new post and settled his fingers on the keys.