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Akihiro woke up.
His eyes slowly blinked open, taking in the gray-shadowed ceiling. He felt much drowsier than most mornings, and yawned before slowly sitting up, taking in a small motel room, light bleeding around edges and junctures of the curtains. He looked down at the man dozing quietly beside him. Dark, gently curled hair and cappuccino skin with just a hint of fine lines; he was handsome. He’d been sweet, in a way that had seemed warm and genuine, not just the flirtation game of strangers in a bar.
Akihiro drew up his knees and loosely hugged them, continuing to stare down at his anonymous companion. He’d had a soothing voice and way of speaking. He was just the right age for Akihiro to project the needs of an unwanted orphan onto. He’d made Akihiro feel calm, maybe a little happy. He’d lied about his name, Akihiro had heard it and smelled it, but that had been both mutual and the norm among men Akihiro had gotten into bed with.
There was something special about him. Something Akihiro couldn’t identify. And in that lingering calm, a fancy occurred and slowly bloomed in his mind, something Akihiro hadn’t ever had the daring to consider before. He could have this. He could have this life. And he wanted it so badly.
Akihiro let go of his knees and shifted, hooking a hand over the headboard for balance as he leaned down, softly kissing the man’s lips. He stirred, drew a deep breath and sighed, eyes fluttering open. His lips and eyes shifted into a slow, sleepy smile. He reached up, touching Akihiro’s cheek. “Good morning, Géraud,” he whispered.
“... My name isn’t Géraud,” Akihiro said quietly.
“And I’m not Marco.” His companion gave another sigh, this time wistful, gaze drooping, and he shook his head. “Terrible that we have to play such games to protect ourselves. It’s the world that’s ill, not us.” He looked up again with a hopeful little smile. “Does this mean you want to tell me who you are?”
Akihiro took a deep breath and swallowed. “My name is Akihiro. Who I am will take much longer to say,” he replied.
The man chuckled softly, sitting up and curling an arm behind Akihiro’s neck, drawing him in and leaning their foreheads together. “Mine is Carl. My mother wanted ‘Carlos’, but she and Poppa decided making it more English would cause me less troubles,” he murmured, and then smirked. “Funny though, I don’t think it made me any paler.”
“I suppose not,” Akihiro huffed in bittersweet amusement. “I used to pray my eyes would turn brown, that I’d look a little less like the perfect, little embodiment of all the neighbors’ bottled up humiliation for the American occupation.”
Carl hummed softly. “I didn’t think that was a Montreal accent,” he said, warm humor in his voice. “I like your eyes though, I’m glad they didn’t change, you are such a unique work of art.”
“I’ve killed people,” Akihiro whispered.
Carl went silent and still for a minute. “... You were fighting for the states then, and you’ve run away to Canada?” he asked, drawing back a little to look at him, but there was still warmth in his eyes, now mixed with sadness. “I don’t wish to disappoint you too badly, but it’s not quite the fantasy land you may have heard.”
“It wasn’t the states. It wasn’t a war. Not an official one, or just one, anyway,” Akihiro said, and took a deep, shaky breath, eyes turning to the side, away from Carl’s. “I said it could take a while to tell you who I am.”
Carl leaned toward him, wrapping him in a loose embrace and nuzzling his shoulder. “Well checkout isn’t for a few hours,” he murmured.
000
Akihiro lifted his head just enough to see the numbers on the Plato clock over Carl’s shoulder. “Checkout is in twenty minutes,” he whispered.
Carl sank his fingers into the hair at the back of Akihiro’s neck and cinched him in close again. “Th-Then let’s find somewhere else to go for a while,” he said, his voice that had been so soothingly calm last night now quavering a little. “We’ll get breakfast and then- and then find somewhere else.”
Akihiro bit his lip until he tasted blood and closed his eyes. “... Don’t you think you should run now?”
Carl was silent for a minute or two, then he breathed, “I think we should both run now.”
Akihiro hesitantly opened his eyes and tried to look back at him, but they were a bit too close together to focus. “He’ll find me. He’ll... I can’t think about what he’ll do to you.” It was hard to speak around the knot tightening in his throat. “To teach me a lesson.”
“No. He’s just trained you to defeat yourself so that he doesn’t even have to bother,” Carl said firmly. “We’ll run far away. We’ll leave nothing for him to follow. He’ll never find you.”
It was contrary to his experience, but for some reason Akihiro believed. “We’ll need money for travel, for new identities. I have assets, but I’ll have to liquidate them,” he whispered, bit his lip again for a moment, thoughts running fast, and noted, “Everything. There can’t be any record of transfers... If the bank keeps a record of the serial numbers on the bills... that would take a bit more time to track, but it is trackable. I’ll liquidate my accounts to cash today. We’ll put some distance between us and Ontario, and I can convert it all to diamonds, then back to currency piecemeal as we move. Small enough amounts not to raise any flags...”
“Where will we go?” Carl asked.
“Everywhere,” Akihiro said, and then hesitated. “I don’t think I can settle. If I stay anywhere too long, there’s a danger of creating a footprint he’ll notice.”
Carl smiled, fragile, affectionate encouragement in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted to see everywhere.”
000
A cruise ship drifted out of Georgia’s waters, bound for Haiti by way of Palm Beach and the Bahamas. In Haiti, they’d look for another ship going somewhere somewhere anywhere. Venezuela by way of the Grenadines, maybe. It wasn’t peak season, there would be a vacancy here and there that the lines would be happy enough to fill at the last-minute. And for now, there was a beautiful sunset silhouetting the disappearing shore, and there was someone to share it with.
“I never left Ontario before... Even just going across to the States was a first,” Carl whispered, standing at Akihiro’s left, close enough that their shoulders were touching slightly, their hands settled on the rail with fingers slightly overlapping.
“Will you miss it?” Akihiro asked, and faltered. “You... need to understand, there’s a chance that if he has someone look into my movements just before I disappeared, you could be identified.” He swallowed against a sudden knot. “Unless I check in at the very next port, show that I didn’t disappear, and send you straight home... you’ll never be able to go back.”
“I’m more afraid of never seeing you again. I’m not worried about leaving behind Toronto, a cramped apartment, a few favorite restaurants,” Carl replied quietly. “The people in my life can get along fine. My brother and sister are old enough to look after themselves.” He took a deep breath and turned his head, Akihiro mirrored to meet his eyes. “You’re the one who needs me now. If I let you go, I’d spend every day of the rest of my life wondering if you’d been beaten to death yet.”
“... I shouldn’t have burdened you,” Akihiro whispered.
“No, I’m glad you did.” Carl shifted his hand to cover Akihiro’s and squeezed it. “You told me because you trusted me. You felt a connection. We were meant to find each other.”
They shared a fragile smile.
000
“There are too many kinds of tea. Aren’t they all the same plant?” Carl wondered, giving the shelves of large, glass jars a grimace. “How can there be so many kinds of tea?”
“Cultivated for different characteristics, just like wine grapes,” Akihiro explained, and then smirked. “And of course not to forget, grown in slightly different climates and elevations. What week was it picked? Was it dried fresh or fermented? Precisely how long was it fermented? Was it dried indoors or outdoors?”
Carl wrinkled his noes in frustration, looking back at him. “It makes a difference?”
“Oh my dear, sweet man,” Akihiro chuckled.
“The markets back home only had three brands, and they were all just tea,” Carl sighed. “The only question was which was on sale.”
“We’re standing at the hub of the Silk Road,” Akihiro said, squeezing his shoulder and giving a cheeky grin. “So yes, they do have a moderate selection of teas.”
“You pick then,” Carl said, shaking his head. “You clearly feel you have a keener eye for tea than me.”
“It’s the nose, my sweet, not the eye.”
000
The cicadas were singing loudly as red dusk faded to twilight, and Akihiro drifted as he stared out across grass and scrub stretching on and on, the nextdoor neighbors’ ranch not even visible from this one. He was pulled back to present by the sound of the screen door opening and shutting, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Carl coming out to join him. He settled down at Akihiro’s side, and held out a tin of cookies. “Dessert?”
Akihiro leaned over and kissed him, before taking a cookie. He sighed, bracing the other hand on the porch to lean some of his weight against, as he stared out again into darkening bushland. “Summers in Japan when I was a child sounded like this,” he murmured. “Much more humid though.”
“There’s cicadas in Japan too?” Carl asked, and took a bite of cookie.
“There’s cicadas everywhere,” Akihiro agreed.
“It’s not an unpleasant sound. I wish I could turn down their volume sometimes though,” Carl mused, and put the rest of the cookie in his mouth, chewing as Akihiro hummed a vague agreement. After he swallowed, Carl added, “And I could do without them trying to get into everything.”
000
“It’s windier today,” Carl noted, casting a frown up at the vein.
“Only because it’s been dead the last few,” Akihiro said with a grin, pleased by the feel of wind cutting through his hair. “We may reach Pinsac before dinnertime.”
“You know I adore your zest for life,” Carl said, leaning against the windward rail and looking down at the water burbling by, clearly unnerved by the steep list the boat was taking. “It’s not going to tip over though?”
“Do you know how much the keel on this thing weighs?” Akihiro laughed, holding the wheel steady. “It would take a hurricane to tip it over.”
000
“You haven’t seen it?” Carl demanded in a tone of absolute scandal, mint tea momentarily forgotten.
“Movies were never the highest priority in my upbringing.” Akihiro shrugged, reclined on the couch, gazing up at the plaster ceiling. “And it’s old. You do know that you’re an old man, right?”
“What a rude little boy you are!” Carl huffed, drawing a snicker from Akihiro. “And it’s not as if it faded into obscurity, it was Bogie’s best!” Carl protested, and then shook his head and sighed. “Black and white though, of course. It’s no wonder they had the story all inside a dark little bar, I can’t imagine now, trying to capture Morocco without the color.”
“I think being filmed inside a California sound stage might have more to do with it all taking place in a dark little bar.”
000
“You know what it is?” Akihiro asked, glancing over at Carl who had rolled onto his side on the beach blanket, propping his head on an arm to look back at him.
“It’s a collapsed volcano, isn’t it?” Carl responded, seeming puzzled by the inquiry.
“It’s coral,” Akihiro said with a grin.
“Just coral?” Carl raised an eyebrow above his sunglasses. “There’s no real ground?”
“There is a collapsed caldera underneath the coral, that’s what it grew on, but the part above water is all dead coral.”
Carl hummed thoughtfully. “Just like all the archeology under cities. The living build on top of the dead,” he mused, and then sighed. “It is pretty though.”
“So are fossils,” Akihiro said and stretched. “Death can be pretty or ugly... Maybe the difference is if it means something, if it gives something...”
000
“Aki!” Carl’s voice called, thin on the air over the sound of dirt and gravel crunching, bicycle wheels and chain rattling across unpaved ground, and Akihiro’s own laugher as he shot down a not-insignificant hill. After the road leveled out, he finally squeezed the breaks and skidded to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust that caught and clung to the sweat on his skin. He twisted to look back and waited as Carl rambled down the hill behind him, making assiduous use of the brakes on his own bicycle. “One rock in the road and you would break your neck,” he complained.
“I’ve broken my neck before,” Akihiro replied with a shrug.
“So blasé!” Carl rolled his eyes and rolled on past.
Akihiro kicked off and peddled to pull up alongside him. “I smell a lake ahead. Stop for a swim break?” he suggested.
000
The band was playing a fast paced Latin tune, the singer loudly crooning a ballad of the prettiest girl in Sinaloa. Lights, electric and candles, glittered and swayed over and around the deck, as a moderate crowd danced for the band. Carl laughed when Akihiro caught him by surprise and dipped him. There was an oddness, surreality. Could they really dance in public like this? Nobody would stop them?
The discordant thought slipped mercurially from his mind the next moment.
000
“Do you want to go to the beach today?” Akihiro asked, laying on his side, one arm tucked under the pillow, gazing at Carl.
Carl was awake but still had his eyes closed; he gave a soft sigh and vaguely shrugged one shoulder.
“A stroll? We could pack a lunch and go up the hill to that overlook?” Akihiro suggested. “Or get a boat out to the island?”
Carl smiled fondly, eyes still closed. “Do you have too much energy for a late morning?”
Akihiro shifted and scooted closer, wrapping his arm over Carl. “I’m too awake to dose, but if you’re asking whether holding you isn’t enough entertainment for me, then no,” he murmured.
“Do you think you won’t get bored of me sooner or later?” Carl wondered. “Find somebody your own age to keep up with your adventurous soul?”
Akihiro’s nose wrinkled in discomfited annoyance. “Are you sulking because I said you were going gray?” he asked.
“Not sulking, just thinking,” Carl said softly. “Do you believe that this is forever?” He opened his eyes halfway, but didn’t focus them on anything in particular. “When a very young man goes to a bar and turns on all his charm trying to pick up a companion twice his age... he’s looking to fill a void in his heart, a specific emotional need, one that he may be apt to outgrow.”
Cold hurt suddenly gripped Akihiro, stealing his breath for a moment. He pulled sharply away from Carl and sat up, glaring accusingly down at him, an angry heat round the edges of his eyes. “You’re bored of me,” he whispered, and could feel himself starting to shake.
Carl’s eyes snapped all the way open, worry, guilt and regret painting over him as he pushed himself to sit quickly and reached for Akihiro’s shoulder. “I’m not--”
“Liar!” Akihiro slapped the hand away. His eyelashes felt wet. “You’re tired of my neediness and hysterics and childishness!”
“Akihiro, Mi Amor, shh, it’s okay, shh,” Carl shushed, his hands reaching out and catching, cupping, Akihiro’s jaw gently. “That isn’t true at all. I’m only afraid of making you feel trapped. I don’t ever want you to feel so tied to me it strangles.”
“You can’t leave me,” Akihiro hissed.
Carl shifted and pulled Akihiro against him, warmly enfolding. “Calm down, Mi Amor, it’s okay,” he whispered.
“I need you,” Akihiro whined.
000
Akihiro’s Sama was shaky, and the man in the boat’s English was just as bad, but he wanted to sell a fish and Akihiro wanted to buy one. With much impromptu pidgin, gesturing, and numbers indicated on fingers, a red snapper and the requested sum for it exchanged hands. The man gave a cheerful wave and took up his oars to go try for sales at the other houses. “That was entertaining,” Carl said, grinning as he reached down to take the snapper while Akihiro climbed back up the spindly ladder to their porch. “I’m impressed how much you did seem to understand though.”
“Give me a week or two and I’ll know it all. I’m good at languages,” Akihiro replied with a grin.
“Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t be eating tonight if you weren’t here,” Carl said.
“If I weren’t here, you wouldn’t be either,” Akihiro pointed out, reaching the porch and pausing to kiss him, before taking the snapper back to go clean it.
000
“It’s beautiful...” Carl whispered, gazing around at crystal pools and waterfalls.
“Was the walk worth it?” Akihiro asked, shrugging out of his backpack and kneeling to start pulling out a bottle of wine and a picnic lunch.
“Yes,” Carl agreed, staring at the scenery a minute longer, before turning to grin at Akihiro. “We should go skinny dipping.”
“Obviously we’re going skinny dipping.”
000
Akihiro stared into the mirror mounted above a wicker vanity, fingering his hair, silver strands mixed into the black. “I’m not ‘cute’ anymore,” he announced.
“Cute?” Carl asked from a chaise on the open balcony.
“I’m far from homely, but ‘cute’ has departed,” Akihiro said, and then looked over at him. “Does it still work for you? ‘Dignified’ or whatever we’re calling this?”
Carl glanced up from his book and raised an eyebrow. “I should feel rather insulted by the insinuation that you think I’m shallow.”
“I didn’t say ‘do you love me less’,” Akihiro retorted. “I’m asking purely about base, carnal aesthetic.”
“Because you’re having a crisis that you’ve just discovered youth is fleeting?” Carl rolled his eyes. “You are the one who approached me when we met. I didn’t go into that bar on the hunt for barely-legals.”
“So you’re saying I’m still pretty.”
“Positively beguiling.”
000
“Let’s go camping,” Carl said, admiring the colors of vineyards as he drove the Alfa Romero up SR2 at a leisurely ramble, wind whipping his curls. “Sleep under the stars... Listen to crickets...”
“Get eaten by the mosquitos,” Akihiro added playfully, leaned comfortably back in the passengers seat, hand stretched just a little ways out past the side of the car to play in the breeze slipping past.
“Oh boo. It’ll be worth it,” Carl shot back.
000
The band was playing lively Creole jazz as Carl and Akihiro shared a dish of bananas foster at a small table bordering the dance floor. After the last bite had disappeared, Akihiro watched Carl watching the band, tapping the butt of his spoon lightly against the tabletop to the rhythm of the song. He came out of the trance to glance up, when Akihiro pushed his chair back and got to his feet.
Akihiro held a hand out. “Dance with me.”
000
“I don’t think my long beans are growing right,” Carl complained, frowning at his trellis, carefully constructed out of thin branches and twine.
“Maybe it’s the elevation,” Akihiro offered, laying on the porch, reading a book.
“No, Missus Tan’s long beans are beautiful,” Carl protested.
“So ask Missus Tan what you’re doing wrong.”
Carl gave him an annoyed look.
“Oh Mandarin isn’t that hard,” Akihiro said with a smirk.
“I’m going to tear it down.”
“Don’t tear it down,” Akihiro signed. “Bake something for her, and I’ll go ask Missus Tan if she can come over and take a look.”
“Thank you.”
000
“We should take a gondola ride,” Carl said, gazing out at the canal, a crisp moleche half forgotten in his fingers.
“So touristy,” Akihiro snickered into his wineglass, took a sip, and then suggested, “Maybe you want to retrace all of Katherine Hepburn’s footsteps too.”
“I could get by without a bittersweet ending,” Carl sniffed, and ate the crab. As he chewed, a hint of worry tightened his brow.
“What?”
“We can, you know,” Carl said softly, after he swallowed.
“What?” Akihiro asked again, puzzled.
“Get by without any bittersweet endings,” Carl said, just above a whisper. “... But I need to make you believe we can.”
000
“I think it’s prettier than Lake Ontario,” Carl murmured quietly, hesitant to disturb the tranquility of the vast, crystal lake.
“It’s supposed to be breathtaking in the winter, though I’m not sure the temperature sounds entirely appealing,” Aikihiro noted, gently paddling the canoe with no destination relevant.
“I’m Canadian, you think I don’t know cold winters?” Carl replied, glancing over his shoulder at Akihiro to cast him a look of feigned offense. “The latitude isn’t much different from Toronto anyway.”
Akihiro shrugged. “I’m just saying, the Caspian Sea is nice too.”
000
“You need to write your lists down,” Akihiro sighed, waiting as Carl looked into the canvas bag to review what they’d already purchased. “I bought you that nice pocket notebook.”
“I don’t need a list. I know what goes in empanadas,” Carl retorted. “We need eggs.”
“Is that all that’s left?” Akihiro asked. “We should get the them last, I don’t want to carry eggs all over town.”
“Mmm... We still have plenty of cumin, right?” Carl asked.
“That would have been an excellent question to ask before we left the flat.”
000
“Whose dog do you think this is?” Car wondered, smiling at the Airedale terrier that had decided to trot along next to them on an afternoon walk through the moors for the last kilometer or so.
“Clearly, he is his own dog,” Akihiro replied with amusement.
“The collar somewhat belies that,” Carl chuckled. “Do you suppose this is his regular walk, and we’ve just intruded on it?”
“If it was an intrusion, I think he’d pick a different direction. He likes the company,” Akihiro decided, giving a shrug. “Social but not aggressively chatty like that lady nextdoor. I think he’s my new favorite neighbor.”
Carl laughed.
000
Carl was sitting on the back veranda, his bare feet dangling in the water and the clock from beside their bed in his lap with the back removed and a few pieces sitting on the floor next to him while he tried to clean and fix it. Akihiro could hear him humming, the tune was familiar but he couldn’t immediately pin a name to it, as he sliced starfruit onto a plate, joining the soursop he’d sliced a moment ago. He went to the sink and wet a cloth, before carrying it and the plate out and settling himself down next to Carl. He offered the cloth, and Carl set aside the clock and wiped his hands off.
“We can just buy a new one,” Akihiro murmured.
“Wasteful,” Carl replied, shaking his head and picking up a piece of soursop.
“You’re getting crotchety,” Akihiro chuckled, reaching up to play with a curl that was far more salt than pepper now.
Carl snorted indignantly.
000
They danced slower than the younger couples on the floor, slower than the cheerful bossa nova beat was demanding, but they danced still. Carl had no interest in ceding anything to arthritis, least of all dancing. Akihiro might make an attempt to dissuade him from his usual walk around the neighborhood if he spotted any limp in the morning, but he wouldn’t keep him off the dance floor.
000
“What are you reading?” Carl asked drowsily.
Akihiro glanced up from his page and noted the way Carl had moved one leg to hide it from the glaring sun that was slowly encroaching on their blanket; he debated moving the parasol now or waiting a bit longer. “A French novel about a young woman getting up to all sorts of scandal,” he answered.
“Read it to me?”
“It’s all French-French,” Akihiro reached over and stroked his hair.
“Well then it won’t matter that I’m starting halfway in,” Carl reasoned with a smile. “I like your voice, and I like how clever you sound when you speak international French.”
Akihiro chuckled, eyes turning back to the book to find his place, and he started reading again, out loud this time.
000
Akihiro wrinkled his nose in annoyance, flexed his fingers wide and fisting his hand a few times; the briskness of the morning and altitude was making the joints stiff. He gave it a shake before returning to picking salmonberries, and dropping them in a repurposed yogurt tub. “They’ll collapse down a bit when they bake, yes? How much do you need?”
“They do collapse quite a lot, I’m sure you noticed the void in the middle of them,” Carl agreed, casting him an amused little smile, knowing Akihiro was starting to get bored with the activity. “Two tubs will be enough for a cobbler.”
“You promised me a pie,” Akihiro said, casting him a betrayed frown.
“Cobbler is better than pie.”
“Cobbler is easier than pie,” Akihiro retorted. “You promised me a pie.”
000
“What will we do after this?” Carl murmured, vaguely gazing off at the sea horizon.
Akihiro glanced over at his lover, walking along beside him through the surf, his skin, ever more thin and fragile looking of late, tanned to a cinnamon hue. “Dinner, I imagine.”
“I didn’t mean the walk.” Carl shook his head. “You trust me, don’t you?”
“Completely.”
“You trust us?” Carl asked, turning his head to meet Akihiro’s eyes. “You trust that we’re strong enough together?”
“For what?” Akihiro asked, confused and unnerved by the strange, wistful mood that had taken Carl.
“... Just this,” Carl sighed, gaze drooping to the water. “To run and protect each other. To know that you never have to go back to what you came from.”
Akihiro forced a smirk. “Isn’t it a bit late in the game to be asking that?”
“No...” Carl looked pained and worried, eyes unfocused. “It’s almost morning.”
A sudden lance of terror tore through Akihiro. He stepped quickly in front of Carl, grabbing his shoulders, staring at his face, trying to swallow down the fear. He wasn’t sundowning. “Anata, where are you?” Akihiro whispered.
Carl looked back up, eyes focused again, on him, and smiled, but there was still a tinge of sadness lingering. “Zanzibar,” he said, and hooked a hand behind Akihiro’s neck to pull him down for a kiss.
Akihiro relaxed.
000
Akihiro swept the tiled floor slowly, listening to Carl in the kitchen, sometimes singing, sometimes humming where he couldn’t remember the words to songs he’d heard on the radio. Sizzles suddenly joined his voice as something went into a hot skillet, which Akihiro’s nose informed him a minute later were eggs. He smiled, sweeping his pile out the door, squinting as the limewash glared brightly in the late-morning light.
As he kept sweeping around the patio, a seagull landed on the low wall and started squawking at him. “Shoo,” Akihiro ordered, waving the broom at it, and then giving it a gentle prod when the threat hadn’t been enough to chase it off. It gave another loud squawk and shat its indignation as it departed. Akihiro scowled at the pile, putting down his broom to go get a bucket of water before the mess dried.
000
“Is this one a weed?” Akihiro asked, fingering a little bunch of small, tender leaves that were a different shape and smell from their neighbors.
Carl leaned over to look. “Mm, no, it’s just got itself into the wrong spot,” he said, grabbing the trowel and passing it over to Akihiro. “The rootball should still be small, we can move it.”
000
“Cocoa?” Carl asked, walking onto the porch of tiny cabin with two mugs.
“You put bourbon in it,” Akihiro noted with a pleased grin, holding out his hands.
Carl passed him both mugs for a minute, while he turned off the light inside. Akihiro waited for him to get settled against his side on the porch swing and join him under a quilt, before passing one of the mugs back. Carl wrapped his hands around the warm ceramic and put his feet up against the railing, looking out at the night sky over the Norwegian Sea and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He hummed appreciatively. “Looks like it’s going to be a good show tonight,” he murmured.
“Mhm,” Akihiro agreed, sipping his fortified cocoa and watching the dripping ribbons of light paint themselves across the heavens. He threaded an arm behind Carl’s back, pulling him in a little closer.
000
“Akihiro?” Carl’s voice called, with that dry, croaky edge it always had now.
“Yes, my love?” Akihiro murmured, moving his arm and stroking his fingers through Carl’s hair.
“Will you stay with me when we wake up?” Carl asked, warm breath caressing the side of Akihiro’s neck. “Do you believe you can? Do you trust us?”
Akihiro’s eyes fluttered halfway open, gazing unfocused into the dark bedroom. He hated it when Carl started asking things in this disoriented way. He seemed perfectly sharp most of the time, but every so often he’d sound as if he thought he was talking to that damaged, anxious boy in Toronto. “You are my world, my heart, my life, Anata,” Akihiro whispered. “I’ll never leave you.”
“Promise me,” Carl breathed, a hitch in his breath.
“I promise.”
“When you wake up, remember that you promised.”
000
Akihiro woke up.
His eyes slowly blinked open, taking in the gray-shadowed ceiling. He felt much drowsier than most mornings, and yawned before slowly sitting up, taking in a small motel room, light bleeding around edges and junctures of the curtains. He looked down at the man dozing quietly beside him. Dark, gently curled hair and cappuccino skin with just a hint of lines. Just the right age for a damaged, anxious boy to project the needs of an unwanted orphan onto.
Akihiro stared down, and he could feel himself starting to tremble, cold panic creeping into his lungs, choking him. He clamped a hand over his mouth. Tears started to hit his cheeks. He didn’t know the last time he’d cried. The last time he’d... He scrambled out of the motel bed as quickly as he could without disturbing the man still sleeping in it, and stumbled over to the vanity mirror. A child, a few months shy of nineteen, stared back at him.
Akihiro’s knees buckled, and he sat down on the floor, covering his mouth again, with both hands this time, staring straight ahead of him through tear-blurred eyes as breaths came fast and hysterical, and he desperately tried to keep them silent. He leaned forward, pressing an elbow and his forehead against the floor, as a surge of nausea swept through him. He shook violently, one hand still clamped firmly over his mouth to muffle himself, for several long minutes, before he finally wrestled back some small amount of control over himself.
He rose slowly, unsteadily, to his feet, and took a few silent steps back toward the bed. He unsheathed his claws, teeth clenched hard, glaring down at the man sleeping in it. Akihiro hated him. He hated him for not being Carl, for being just some random, nothing liar he’d found in a dive bar in Toronto. Akihiro took another step, readying to strike, and then froze, shaking, claws poised in the air but unable to fall on the sleeper. He stumbled back, claws withdrawing, and clamped a hand back over his mouth, sinking to his knees again.
Akihiro knelt there, shaking in hysterical, impotent misery for a long, agonizing few minutes, before finally gathering himself back up and going to collect his clothes. He needed to get out of here. Quickly. Quietly. He couldn’t stand the thought of hearing this man speaking with Carl’s voice. Because Carl wasn’t real. This was just some anonymous stranger; he’d called himself ‘Marco’ last night, but that had smelled of a lie. And Akihiro had somehow spun that lie into some elaborate Cinderella dream? How stupid. How childish. Why wasn’t it fading? The details of a dream would usually have dulled by now.
As he was reaching for one of his boots, Akihiro’s eyes fell and caught on a crumpled pair of jeans lying nearby. The stranger’s jeans. He bit his lip hard, blood seeping around his teeth and through his mouth. He told himself no. He told himself to leave it. Then he reached for the jeans, searched them, found a wallet, pulled it free. He flipped it open and pulled a driver’s license out. He looked at it, and his heart stopped, his lungs squeezed.
Valentino, Carl R
Akihiro dropped the license and wallet, and found himself a moment later on his knees again, shaking, nauseous, a hand clamped back over his mouth as his tears renewed themselves. His mind raced, trying to find any moment the previous night when he might have somehow heard or seen the man’s real name. He couldn’t find one. There wasn’t one. He knew. He was certain. It took longer this time to reign in his hysteria. After he finally managed it, Akihiro padded silently over next to the bed and stared down at Carl, still asleep in the early morning light. He was as young as he’d been when Akihiro first met him. Because he’d met him last night. But somehow the rest, everything else, wasn’t a dream, wasn’t just a dream.
There was something supernatural about him. Something Akihiro couldn’t understand. And in that lingering hysteria, a certainty struck and slowly solidified in his mind, something Akihiro knew because he’d known it all along, had it proved beyond doubt. He couldn’t have this. He couldn’t have this life. No matter how badly he wanted it.
Akihiro took one step closer, hooking a hand over the headboard for balance as he leaned down, wanting to kiss Carl’s lips, one last time, but he froze, a hair’s breadth away, and withdrew. It would wake him. Akihiro bit down on his lip and stepped away from the bed. He pulled on his boots and laced them, walked silently out of the room, and pulled the door shut behind him without a sound.
He walked a meter or two along the loggia, before slumping against the wall, and then sinking to the dirty pavement. This time he let little whimpers of sound accompany the raking, rattling breaths and tears that started rolling down his cheeks once again. He’d made a promise. Akihiro remembered that Carl had made him promise. But Carl didn’t understand what Romulus was capable of. He didn’t understand that even if they did somehow, impossibly manage to successfully run away, Romulus would have Carl’s siblings and their families murdered.
Everything had been an impossible fantasy, and if Akihiro didn’t immediately put as much distance between them as he could, Romulus would find them, and he’d use Carl as a way to punish him. Pretty fantasies wouldn’t save either of them. Clinging to some naive delusion that he could have a real life was useless and would only hurt more. Continuing to pretend that he was a person was nothing but a recipe for torment. Giving up on such childish fancies would save him myriad suffering in the long run. Burying the weakness in himself that craved soft things was the only way to keep from torturing himself. Numbness was the only refuge from agony. And it was about time he grew up.
Biting his lip and wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand, he took a deep breath, then Daken climbed to his feet and walked away.