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The Japanese Red Cross Society was sending a bus from one of their mobile blood donation centers to campus. The flyers advertising this event had been hanging on every door and window of every facility building for the past two weeks.
Haruki had been looking forward to it. He'd used to donate blood more regularly and frequently before starting university and packing his schedule chock-full with work and band practice on top. So it was always really convenient when blood drives were being conducted in places he had to be anyway.
Akihiko wasn't at campus that day. It was nearing noon but he might still be dozing off the excitement of the little violin concert he had taken part in the previous evening. The weeks leading up to it had been filled with a lot of practice, stress and jittery nerves.
Even Haruki had shared some of the nervousness and excitement as he had sat in his seat all prim and proper. He had enjoyed the performance a lot and was really proud of Akihiko's achievements.
After a rather short night with an early start into the day, Haruki was feeling a bit tired. He'd only had a light breakfast and a small snack on his commute but nothing since to keep his blood sugar stable for the donation.
He could deal with some sleepiness and a slight hunger but the craving for a cigarette was something else. It made him uncomfortably aware of his real addiction to nicotine and he quickly suppressed the ever recurring idea that he should really stop smoking altogether.
Haruki had suffered through his first courses of the day before making his way over to the JRCS bus behind the canteen. He was happy to see that there were some people in line before him, despite it not quite being lunchtime yet when most students would be swarming the area.
When it was his turn, a nice lady welcomed him and thanked him for his willingness to donate. They went through the usual procedure. She asked if he was here to donate plasma or blood, then checked his digital donor ID on his smartphone and smilingly led him over to a small table, handing him a tablet with the donation questionnaire, on which he had to answer the usual health history questions.
It was a smooth process. Haruki scrolled through the questions, tapping the boxes for his answers. But when he came to the last part of the questionnaire, the one that held the reasons for a ban or deferral for potential blood donors, Haruki froze.
The section read:
To prevent infecting patients requiring blood transfusion, those who match any of the following within the last six months should refrain from donating blood.
Sexual contact between two males.
Haruki felt like someone had emptied a bucket of ice cold water over him. He matched that point. That meant he wasn’t able to donate blood anymore. But he was already here and he was healthy and he had donated so many times before. Why was this now such a deciding factor? It hadn’t been an issue when he’d had a girlfriend. Now he had a boyfriend and yes, it was still all new and sometimes a little intimidating, but they were intimate with each other.
Haruki stared at the tablet, unable to move his finger to select his answer. He felt as if he was forced to admit to a crime, but he hadn’t done anything wrong, had he?
The ice cold dread was replaced with a wave of hot anger and something akin to shame or guilt. Haruki could feel his face burning with it.
Since he wasn’t moving his hand over the tablet anymore, the lady must have assumed he had finished answering the questionnaire and approached him with a smile and the question whether he was ready to proceed.
Haruki was startled.
“Uh, y-yeah, just a second,” he panicked and quickly selected the last few answers, picking ‘no’ for everything, before handing the tablet back over. “I’m ready,” he said and swallowed the big lump of guilt.
Haruki was led into the bus and handed over to a male nurse. He felt sick.
The man was as nice as his colleague had been, smiling encouragingly, probably sensing his nervousness and telling Haruki that he would be gentle. He must have thought that Haruki was afraid of needles.
Nodding numbly through the explanation, Haruki was instructed to lie down on the gurney. He stared tensely up ahead towards the ceiling of the vehicle, waiting for the woman to discover his mistake and come running inside to stop the procedure and throw out the filthy liar. It never happened.
They took his blood and he received a snack and some water to refuel his body. Haruki forced down the refreshments during his mandated waiting time of fifteen minutes. A hellish long time to wait and for the first time in his life as a blood donor he actually did feel like fainting this time. Not from the loss of blood, but from the stress of having fucking lied to medical personnel.
They updated Haruki’s digital blood donation information, adding the current one to his tally, and when his time was up he was finally released and sent on his way, not without a concerned once-over, though, and another packaged cookie handed to him. They explicitly reminded him to keep drinking a lot of water and to rest well. He tried not to sway as he walked away.
Haruki couldn’t shake the feeling that he had fucked up really bad, but when he reasoned with himself he kept telling his bad conscience that he hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone. That particular point in the regulations was homophobic and medically proven to not be a valid reason to keep people from donating blood. He had just wanted to help and be useful.
This mantra followed him throughout the rest of his day at campus, as did the feeling of guilt.
The friends he interacted with throughout the rest of his courses kept stealing glances at him, buying him drinks from the vending machine and pushing little snacks towards him over the table, despite his refusal. They all knew that he’d donated blood.
Someone told him he was looking concerningly pale and if he was sure he was alright. Haruki reassured them with a tense, fake smile that he was just feeling a bit weak, nothing more.
He was so glad when he could finally go back home, hoping that after all these hours of being on edge, he might finally be able to shake it all off and relax.
It was just his bad luck that Akihiko greeted him at the entrance, when Haruki unlocked the door to his apartment.
“Welcome back, Haru,” he greeted his boyfriend with a smile, leaning on the wall with his shoulder, arms crossed over his broad chest.
Haruki couldn’t return the smile. He stared at Akihiko in bewilderment for three seconds, then avoided his gaze, looking down at the shoes he was stepping out of instead.
“Oh, you’re still here…” The lack of enthusiasm was palpable and Haruki bit his lip at the obvious displeasure that was swinging along with the statement.
Akihiko raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I slept in quite late and thought I’d wait for you and we could spend the evening together.”
Haruki shrugged out of his jacket, hanging it up. “Mhm,” was all he said in reply, a noncommittal sound that expressed nothing and so much at the same time.
He quickly stomped past Akihiko, head down, foregoing the usual hug and kiss in greeting as he headed for the living room, where he threw his backpack on the floor beside the couch.
Now Akihiko was frowning, aware that something was amiss. He slowly followed after Haruki, who kept his back turned towards him as he unpacked the laptop, probably realizing that he had been a little too rough with his backpack just now, inspecting the gadget for any damage.
“So uh, how was your day?” Akihiko tried again for normal conversation.
“Ordinary.” A one word answer and Haruki didn’t even turn around to face him. Akihiko was losing his patience. He walked over to his boyfriend, grabbing his arm.
Reflexively, Haruki shook off that grasp with a shocked little ‘ouch’. Akihiko’s fingers had pressed right into the spot covered by a bandaid, where the needle had been placed to draw his blood.
He pulled back his arm immediately, apology instantly leaving his mouth, even if he didn’t know what he’d done wrong.
“It’s ok, it’s just the injection from the blood draw…”
Haruki rolled up his sleeve, revealing his forearm and the little plaster that was now covering a small bruise.
Suddenly Haruki was talking normally to him again and Akihiko just nodded stupidly.
“Right, you went to donate blood today.” He blinked, trying to find a connection between that and Haruki’s mood.
Haruki pressed his lips together into a fine line, pulling his sleeve back down as if trying to hide the mark again. He still didn’t look Akihiko into the eyes.
“Does that have anything to do with why you’re angry with me?” Akihiko asked.
Finally, amber eyes looked at him, shock and guilt written all over his face.
“I-I’m not angry at you!”
“Ok, but you’re avoiding me, why?”
Haruki wordlessly shook his head, as if denying the accusation but he had nothing to say in his defense. He took a step backwards, bumping against the couch behind him. He looked absolutely spooked and frightened.
“Hey, what’s wrong, what’s going on?” Akihiko was starting to really worry about Haruki’s weird behavior.
“I… I feel sick,” Haruki said instead, a hand coming up to cover his mouth.
After a tense moment where Akihiko didn’t know whether he should drag Haruki to the kitchen sink or run and catch the closest bowl or something, Haruki just stumbled backwards and let himself tumble down onto the couch, hand falling away from his face again.
Nothing had come up, luckily, but his heart was beating so hard and fast, it felt like it was about to jump straight out of his throat.
Akihiko carefully sat down beside him facing him, one hand on Haruki’s thigh, the other on his shoulder.
“What happened?” he inquired quietly.
When Haruki turned his head to face him he was as pale as a ghost. Slowly, he started telling him what had happened. He confessed that he had lied on the questionnaire and that he kept telling himself all day long it wasn’t a big deal but couldn’t shake this feeling of guilt.
“I just feel so horrible.” Haruki’s head was hanging low, eyes staring at his lap where his hands kept kneading each other nervously.
Akihiko looked at him, trying to figure out where the real problem lay. Haruki already knew that his little lie did not have any negative consequences. His blood donation would be helpful. They always tested the blood for any illnesses anyways before using it, and Haruki was healthy. It also didn’t explain why he had been so distant with Akihiko.
He had a suspicion what the crux of the story was and dreaded digging deeper to uncover it, but they had to talk about it to work their way through it.
Akihiko gently carded some honey blond strands behind Haruki’s ear, caressing his cheek with his thumb and then made his boyfriend look at him again.
“Haruki, what do you feel right now?”
Haruki’s gaze darted over Akihiko’s face, from the piercing in his lower lip, over his nose and from one green eye to the other. Then, shockingly, amber eyes grew wetter and wetter, threatening to spill.
“I feel ashamed.”
The pain on Haruki’s face twisted Akihiko’s heart. He steeled himself for the next question.
“Because you are in a relationship with a man?” He had voiced it as gently as possible, lacking any accusation, but Akihiko could still see how this question hit Haruki like a slap to the face.
“What?! No!” He violently shook his head, his whole body jumped and turned to fully face Akihiko, leaning towards him.
“Aki, no! I lied. I lied about us!” The tears were now spilling over, the truth was finally out and Akihiko could only stare at Haruki in surprise.
He had been wrong, had once more underestimated Haruki’s gentle heart and how easily it bruised.
Haruki was desperate to make Akihiko understand.
“I am so ashamed that my first reaction was to deny our relationship. I love you!” He let out a shaky breath, devastated over his own perceived failure.
Akihiko pulled him into a tight hug and then peppered that wet face with kisses.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind. We don’t have to shout it to the world, we don’t have to prove ourselves to people who don’t understand.”
Haruki cuddled closer, returning the crushing hug and taking strength from Akihiko’s words and those strong arms holding him pressed to his chest.
“It hurt more when you ignored me just now, Haru. I don’t care if you have to lie to donate some blood, as long as you come back to me at the end of the day.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Haruki sniffled.
Akihiko gently carded his fingers through Haruki’s hair, rocking them both back and forth.
“Haruki, I know the truth. You’ve been such a big support to me these past weeks, I don’t think I would have been able to manage yesterday’s concert without you. You have been there for me ever since you invited me to the band, actually, you’ve saved me more often than you’ll ever know. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Haruki blinked away his tears, melting even more into Akihiko’s embrace. His words healed him, he’d been forgiven so maybe he could soon forgive himself for today, too.
“I love you, I love you so much, Aki,” Haruki proved his words by kissing him deeply, pressing against him until they toppled over backwards, Akihiko lying under Haruki and looking up at him with such gentle, adoring eyes.
“I know,” he said and laughed, “I love you, too.”
Akihiko’s confident grin was too beautiful and Haruki dove back down to keep kissing him, hands wandering all over his body, desperate to get even closer.
There would always be some outside forces judging them, trying to stand in their way. Not understanding what they were sharing.
But this was their truth and it was all that mattered to them.
As long as they had each other, they could do anything.