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Nagano’s unexpected. Not in the sense that anything out of the ordinary happens, really—but it’s everything else leading up to it and after the fact that kicks Chris’s feet out from under him and leaves him stunned on the ground without a single measly scrap of mercy to be found. Surprise, surprise.
The heart gets what the heart wants.
Even if Chris thinks he doesn't.
He picks Connor up from his apartment in Tokyo and makes the two-hour drive down Kanetsu Expressway to their first location in Gunma. There’s the usual whining that accompanies any trip with Connor, the bickering that inevitably follows when Chris accidentally-on-purpose sets him off with just a single offhand comment about some lousy opinion of Connor’s, the shallow annoyance that prickles under Chris’s skin when Connor starts fiddling with the radio—and Chris never wants to admit that the frustration always fades into something that makes him feel like he’s warmed his hands against a mug of something hot and soupy after a long winter day, something that feels almost like fondness—but it’s par for the course.
Completely normal for the two of them—which is why he doesn’t see it coming.
He’s passed through this prefecture before, marveling through the windows of a speeding Shinkansen, but he’s never really gotten to stop and look. Grass and soil give way to a light covering of snow as they continue on, and the further they go, the more snow there is until it’s all there is as far as the eye can see.
It’s beautiful.
“You should bring me out here more often,” Connor says at their first stop in Minakami, hands tucked into the fleece lining of his coat. “I can’t believe it took you this long to take me somewhere that isn’t shit.”
“I’m never bringing you anywhere nice again,” Chris tells him immediately, “fuck you.”
Connor laughs, low and a little hoarse. It must be the cold weather that’s making his voice sound a little deeper than usual. In any case, Chris files the thought away and nudges him forward with one hand on his elbow.
He’s definitely not telling Connor about what he’s got planned for future trips, then.
Doai Station leaves much to be desired. It’s too many stairs and an empty subway with nothing of interest, and Chris almost feels bad for dragging Connor down here—right up until Connor decides to challenge no one in particular and race up the stairs with a loud shout that echoes through the cavernous tunnel.
There’s no opponent. He still loses. Hubris, Chris decides gleefully, watching Connor wheeze on a bench a quarter of the way up the steps like his life is about to end. It always leads to nemesis—and Connor is nothing but the textbook definition of downfall at his own hand.
A stop for tonkatsu after lifts both their moods, and then they’re crossing the border into the next prefecture over.
It’s picturesque mountain-lined roads all the way into Niigata, frozen ponds and whisper-thin trees, cliff-high snowbanks that Connor poses under as Chris dutifully takes photos of him with his phone (“Your camera’s the better one,” Connor had wheedled until Chris had finally given in with barely any complaint at all, and hadn’t that just been domestic of him) that he threatens to delete when Connor tries to throw a misshapen snowball at him. They spend far too much money at Echigo-Yuzawa Station on tiny palm-sized cups of sake, ending up on just the right side of drunk as evening falls on the small town, and retire to their ryokan after a satisfying dinner.
“Thanks,” Connor tells him before they fall asleep that night, still pleasantly tipsy and too honest for his own good, “for bringing me along.” He’s stretched out like a cat on the futon with his blankets up to his chest, looking rumpled and sweet.
It’d be so easy to reach out. Some ridiculous part of Chris wonders what his hair feels like. Whether he’d complain if Chris touched him. Whether he’d reach back for Chris.
It’s the sake, he figures. Just the sake.
“Go to sleep,” Chris tells him, and he turns the lights off.
The next morning sees them making the early drive into Yamanouchi for the highlight of their trip. Connor complains the entire way, of course—about the icy weather that’s starting to bite at the tips of their fingers, the eight hundred and fifty metre trek up the mountains with all their equipment, the way he doesn’t get why people come all the way up here just to see a bunch of monkeys—and then they’re actually there.
“Oh—it’s so cute!” Connor’s stopped in his tracks. “Look at them all chilling! Oh—what—” He turns, and his mask is tugged down far enough for Chris to see the warmth that’s risen in his cheeks, the excited smile on his face as he points. “C’mon, that’s cute.”
It is, Chris almost says aloud, but he’s not looking where Connor is.
He’s looking at Connor.
Whoops, goes his heart. Sorry about the kick there. You needed it.
Maybe it’s the way he looks against the snowfall, softer against the white landscape of the mountains and the gentle rise of steam from the hot spring pools. Maybe it’s the way he finally seems his own age—not in that silly, frustrating way where Chris doesn’t understand a single word coming out of his mouth, but in a way that lights up his face and makes him come off as younger than he looks.
Connor, eyes lit up and bright, face flushed from the cold, crouched down right by the edge of the viewing deck as he watches the macaques with wonder. Connor with his scarf tucked around his neck, a clear umbrella tilted over his shoulder, catching Chris’s gaze as the snow falls around them in Kusatsu. Connor, walking ahead of Chris as they make their way back to their ryokan from Ponshukan, figure framed by golden streetlights and a single gentle moonbeam.
Tokyo, Miyagi, Osaka, Fukushima, Tokushima, Kōchi, Gunma, Niigata.
Nagano’s unexpected.
And Chris realises—as much as he pretends he hates going to all these places with Connor as his plus one, as much as they hurl insults at each other and crack jokes at each other’s expense—all of that shrivels up and dies in his throat whenever Connor turns to him with that great big smile and that loud gremlin laugh and looks at him like his entire view of the world is just Chris. Tunnel-vision, laser-focus, direct hit.
Connor comes up to him some time later, visibly shivering and seeming to have given up on stealing one of the baby macaques away. “My fingers are fucking freezing,” he gripes, and Chris forcibly restrains the horrible desire to grab his hands and warm them that way. It’s offensive to his entire personality, it is, wanting to be this affectionate.
“Well,” Chris says, “can’t have you getting frostbite on my watch, I suppose.”
His hand ends up on Connor’s shoulder anyway, steering him back towards the mountain trail until there’s no longer an excuse to hold him.
It only feels right to end the day with a soak in the onsen. The heat unravels all the tension in his shoulders, the weight of the last few days’ travel. Chris feels like he could fall asleep here. Weightless in the water, cradled by the gently wafting steam.
Connor looks like he’s enjoying it too. He floats by idly, the lines in his face smoothed out and untroubled. For a second, Chris is tempted to tip him over into the water and send him spluttering—but he tamps the mischief back. Let Connor have this one, he thinks. Just this once.
He shuts his eyes. Snowfall, hot springs, mountains. There’s nothing else he could have asked for on this trip.
There’s a splash beside him, and then Connor’s voice says, over the low rush of the water, “Someone’s relaxed.”
“I was,” Chris says, not moving an inch. “Right up until you showed up.”
Connor laughs. It’s fonder than it has any right to be. “You look a lot younger like this,” he says. “It’s good.”
You look good.
Chris tilts his face in Connor’s direction, finally opening his eyes. There’s less space between them than he’d expected—Connor’s almost shoulder-to-shoulder with him in an onsen that could fit a dozen people. “Should I take that as a compliment?”
“Maybe,” Connor says. “If you want.”
“Maybe,” Chris replies, “maybe I do want.”
Connor blinks at him. “Huh,” he says thoughtfully, before breaking away for another lap around the little pool.
Maybe Nagano’s unexpected—and not just for Chris, then.
Their ryokan has two rooms. One bed, one futon laid out across the floor.
Only one room sees any use that night.
Darkness accompanies the total silence in the air when Connor finally approaches. He sits on the edge of the bed, not getting any nearer until Chris shifts closer. Without the light, Chris can barely make out his silhouette—the uncertain line of his shoulders, the incline of his jaw. It’s unlike him to be this quiet, but even when Chris reaches out to him, he doesn’t say anything. He lets Chris push his fingers through his damp, barely-toweled hair, and lightly drag his thumbs along the sides of his face, a hitched breath the only indication that he wants this.
This—this being Chris tipping Connor’s chin up with one hand and kissing him without a word. He tastes warm, like the toothpaste he’d borrowed off Chris just minutes ago, like something Chris wants to keep close. Connor’s hand finds its way into Chris’s shirt, but it stays there. They’re both too tired to try anything and it shows in the way Connor pulls away and sighs, resting his forehead against Chris’s.
His eyelashes brush against Chris’s cheeks when he blinks, syrupy-slow and sleepy.
Fond, screams the little voice in Chris’s chest. So fucking fond.
“If you kick me in your sleep, I’ll kill you,” Chris murmurs, and Connor huffs a laugh before crawling in under the covers beside Chris.
He doesn’t end up kicking him, but he does end up being a total limpet, attaching himself to Chris the entire night.
Chris doesn’t mind.
They wake up just in time for breakfast. It’s the traditional Japanese kind, the kind that comes in a dozen tiny little bowls and are all variations of preserved radishes and leave much to be desired by the palate.
Connor sidles up beside him to eat, and it all feels strangely intimate. The camera’s rolling, so they talk the way they usually do, poke and prod at their breakfasts, and talk about how the trip’s been. It’s excruciating each time their knees brush or their hands bump when they’re reaching for their food.
Then, finally—Connor breaks and turns the camera off.
He drops his forehead onto Chris’s shoulder. “Hi Chris,” he whispers. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
So does Chris. He’ll never admit it though. “Nothing out of the ordinary there.”
Chris waits for Connor’s little indignant huff before he runs his fingers through Connor’s curls like the night before. Connor makes a content noise like he’s a cat being pet, and Chris absolutely refuses to acknowledge how cute that is out loud.
They don’t talk about last night. Not just yet. Chris lets Connor stay there until he gently pushes him off and then tells him to finish his breakfast.
It’s not much use, in the end. Connor still orders McDonald’s ten minutes later. So much for appreciating tradition. “You’re ruining the moment,” Chris says, but he accepts a McMuffin anyway.
They eat, and they film, and then they pack their scant belongings. Chris is making sure all the camera equipment’s where it’s supposed to be when he spots Connor looking nervous. Fidgeting in a way that he doesn’t really. “Connor,” he says, but Connor doesn’t seem to be paying attention.
Chris takes the bags from his hands and drops them on the floor with a thump. “Right then,” Chris says firmly. “What’s this all about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Connor sounds hoarse. “It feels like we’re just going to go home and not talk about this. But I want more than that. And it doesn’t feel like I’m allowed to.”
Something in Chris’s stomach lurches. You’re allowed to, he wants to say. You’re more than allowed to—just let me. Let me.
“Idiot,” Chris finally says, and it’s warmer than anything else he’s said all morning. “I’m about to ask you if your apartment has room for two, and you’re freaking out on me. C’mon, c’mere.”
He tugs Connor in and kisses him until Connor’s smiling, big and wide and beaming like the day before, and it’s only then that Connor responds, “You’re sleeping on the floor.”
“Fucking having a laugh,” Chris says incredulously. “That’s the thanks I get for bringing you out here?”
Connor’s smile shifts into something far more playful. “I could be persuaded to thank you properly.”
Maybe he should treat Connor to nice places more often.
“Check out’s in half an hour.”
Connor’s eyes are bright, so bright. “That’ll do.”