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The morning after a rainshower: slow sunlight trickles through cracks in windowshutters, seeps warm through paperthin eyelids, melts dark to a hazy goldred, sets dustmotes afire. The air is a still, heavy blanket of calm – an ephemeral tranquility – like the world is caught between shuddering breaths in the aftermath of a long-overdue articulation of grief.
Eyes still closed, Sousuke soaks up the feeling of comfortable warmth, interrupted periodically when a gust of air caresses his face. He revels in the lazywhir of the ancient ceiling fan, groaning as it sways, like a greatwooden ship reeling from side to side.
Abruptly, the moment is broken: the alarm goes off, screaming shrilly almost directly into Sousuke’s ears, sounding far happier than it has a right to. Sousuke is jerked rudely into (full) consciousness, eyes snapping open, brought down to Earth by a tether pulled suddenly taut. Disgruntled – he has never been a morning person – Sousuke turns the alarm off, and throws an arm over his face, hoping to reclaim his earlier sleepslow state of mind.
No time for that, the mirror over the dresser notes, snidely, you’re going to be late.
Sousuke makes an impolite gesture in its direction as he sits up.
Out in the hall, the smell of cooked rice wafts up the staircase. This early in the morning, the house is so quiet Sousuke can hear the clatter of a lid being put down, the gurgle of water in the kitchen sink, the chink of china. He stands on the landing for a moment, savoring the feeling – the promise of a homecooked breakfast, the proof of not being alone, of there being another person in the house with him, of being loved. Sousuke smiles.
When Sousuke gets downstairs – still in his pajama bottoms, but with face washed and teeth brushed –he finds the kitchen empty. The table has been set, the teapot is on the stovetop, whistling merrily, and the light on the rice cooker labeled keep warm blinks slowly on and off. Sousuke swipes a bit of grilled mackerel from the platter on the table and goes back up to the first floor.
The door to the guest bedroom is slightly ajar, and it swings back silently when Sousuke pushes it further in. Sousuke’s overnight bag is sitting open, on the bed, and the iron has been set up. Haruka is standing at the ironing board, his back to the door, face buried in Sousuke’s uniform shirt.
Sousuke props his hip against the doorframe, clears his throat. He sees Haruka’s shoulders stiffen, briefly, – and then Haruka lays the shirt down, briskly, and unplugs the iron, saying,
“Oh, you’re up, finally,” very no-nonsense, “I was starting to think I would have to come drag you out of bed,” and he starts down the hall, gaze directed pointedly away from Sousuke.
Sousuke stifles his laughter, and, on a whim, reaches out to grasp Haruka’s wrist, fingers catching on sharp-edged scales, and then his hand, bringing their palms flush together, interlacing their fingers.
Haruka says, “wear your trousers properly, you’ll wear the hems out dragging your feet like that,” but otherwise makes no protest.
“Iwatobi SC’s reopening,” Sousuke reads out loud, when he sees the headline. He flattens the newspaper, skims through the rest of the article, “and hey – they’re looking for instructors.”
Haruka lifts his soup bowl to his mouth, his knuckles standing out in sharp relief, oceanside cliffs balanced over the sea of his hands. A six-sided scale, blue-green, catches light. The bowl meets the tabletop with a quiet thud. “So?” Haruka says, deftly stacking his used tableware. He stands, in a single, fluid movement, and carries the crockery over to the sink, done in half the time Sousuke is.
Sousuke shrugs. “So nothing.” He stirs sugar into his tea, and then adds, carefully, “don’t you think it would be nice to get out of the house every once in a while?”
Haruka pauses in the midst of tying on his apron. “I do leave the house,” he says, giving Sousuke a blank look. He opens the overhead cupboard, retrieving a lacquered bento box, “We went to the grocery store just yesterday,” and he begins spooning rice from the cooker into the lunch box.
Sending Sousuke off without food violates one of Haruka’s principles – one Sousuke is particularly grateful for. There is a comfort – an affection, a security – in homecooked food no takeout, no matter how good, can properly recreate. It is a shame the bento won’t last him all week.
Over the top of his newspaper, Sousuke sees Haruka place the lid on the box, hears it click into place. The slap of Haruka’s soles on the kitchen’s linoleum floor echoes, slightly. He places an uncapped thermos on the countertop, and lifts the teapot off the stove, one hand holding the thermos steady, the other gripping the teapot, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, lip caught between his teeth. As Sousuke watches, he runs a long-toed foot down the back of his knobbly knee, the swell of his calf, tapering to a protuberant ankle, very brown against the white of his slippers.
“You’re staring,” Haruka’s voice, laced with amusement, breaks Sousuke’s reverie. He is half-smiling, mostly with his eyes.
Before he’s really thought about it, Sousuke says, “I don’t want to blink and miss you,” surprising himself with the honesty of the statement.
Haruka stills, eyes perceptibly widening. Sousuke lifts his shoulders in an I don’t know either sort of gesture. Haruka caps the thermos. Then he comes round to where Sousuke is sitting and leans into him, wrapping an arm around Sousuke’s neck and shoulders, his fingers splayed along the side of Sousuke’s head, cheek pressed to Sousuke’s crown. Sousuke can feel the staccato beat of Haruka’s heart against his face. Sousuke breathes in the smell of him: hibiscus flowers, seasalt, clean sweat, the sweet-sharp scent of grilled fish.
“Come with me,” Sousuke says, in reprise of an oft-repeated discussion. His mind runs through his arguments: it’ll make for a good change of pace, Makoto can keep an eye on the house, you can come back whenever you want –
“You transfer here,” Haruka tells him, before stepping back and beginning to clear the table.
Sousuke says, “you know I would if there were an opening,” as he is getting up to help.
Haruka huffs, rolls his eyes at Sousuke over his shoulder, impatiently waves off Sousuke’s attempts at assistance. “Twenty minutes till your bus leaves,” he says.
Sousuke is adjusting his collar in front of the mirror in the entrance hall – it is not as bad-tempered (read: vocally opinionated) as the one in the bedroom – when Haruka emerges from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel.
“Your tie is off-center,” he observes, dryly, and before Sousuke has a chance to disagree, reaches up to fix it with quick, practiced fingers. He tightens the knot, adjusts Sousuke’s collar, pats Sousuke’s chest, tips his head back to look Sousuke in the eye. “There, you’re perfect.”
He is smiling a little, crookedly, and it doesn’t take much for Sousuke to lower his head and kiss him, hands settling on the jut of his hips to hold him in place. Haruka angles his head, smooths his hands up Sousuke’s arms and along his shoulders till his fingers are loosely cupping Sousuke’s neck, thumbs pressing indents into the angles of Sousuke’s jaw. He tastes like home and homecooked breakfast, and Sousuke wishes very hard that he did not have to leave.
“Love you,” Sousuke says, almost absently, when he has picked up his bag and is stepping out of the house, onto the doorstep. He feels a pull at his wrist and glances back to see Haruka looking at him almost anxiously, as if he has just remembered something he had forgotten. A summer breeze ruffles his hair, rustles the leaves of the trees growing by the house.
“Love you too,” Haruka says, biting his lip, and Sousuke hears the desperate you know I he’s left unspoken.
Sousuke smiles. “I know,” he says, and, “see you next weekend,” before starting down the steps from the door.
And in the meantime: Haruka stands on the doorstep till he has disappeared around the corner. Then he steps back into the house, slowly pulling the door to a close behind him. It clicks shut with an air of finality, and in its wake, the street descends into silence.
-fin.