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Kun still remembered the promise Leo had made him agree to just before he died.
“Plant me there,” he’d pleaded, “promise you’ll plant me there.”
Leo didn’t need to specify for Kun to know where ‘there’ was. ‘There’ was where they’ve always escaped to. A small cabin locked away in a patch of forest that only they knew about.
And Kun had kept his promise.
He’d made the journey up. Each second a step closer to goodbye.
By the time he got there, the sun was just beginning its journey south. The small ornate porcelain box was gripped tight in his hands as he stepped out and made the rest of the walk by foot up to the cabin.
It still looked the same as they’d left it months prior. Leo’s plaid shirt was right there on the bed where he’d forgotten it. Kun picked it up and brought it to his nose. The lingering smell of them and everything they’d done when he’d last had Leo wrapped up in his arms in it made his heart quiver. He knew this was simply a false trap of the same high he’d felt every time Leo dragged them up here. He tried his best not to let his own memories get the best of him but it seemed impossible when the other man had so intently imprinted himself onto Kun’s brain. But thinking about him only seemed to lead to a hemorrhage of unwanted feelings so he reasoned with Leo’s ghost and tucked the shirt away under the pillow.
It was getting dark, so he headed out the back door and into the small meadow that bordered the dense wood ahead. The forest conversed among itself. His ears filled with the soft chattering of the leaves and the night air. The moonlight sung in merriment with the meandering path of the passing stream. Fallowed land imbued with the spirit of midsummer star-shine shivered gently with the breeze. The humidity clung to his skin in a light jacket of sweat.
He kicked off his shoes and toed off his socks, breathing softly as the cushion of shrubbery and grass grazed against the soles of his feet. It was his first time there without Leo breathing, heart beating and swallowing his words next to him. Now all he had was a stupid porcelain box.
Kun waited until all that could be seen were the faint last traces of the sun. It’s remaining stow away rays still loitering over the horizon had been packed away gently into the night by the time he began to toy with the lid. He supposed he should say something first. Some words of sorrow just in case Leo came back as a disgruntled spirit buried in a shallow grave, or rather in no grave at all. So he swiped one hand across his brow, tugging gently when Leo’s wedding band momentarily got caught in his hair, before he spoke.
“Always.”
For once he couldn’t muster it in himself to say anymore and go on seven different lengthy tangents about how much Leo meant to him. Leo would just have to deal with it he figured.
He popped the lid open and looked inside at the gray ashes that filled the box. If he didn’t feel so numb, he was sure he would have cried just like Leo’s mother did when she handed the box over to him. This was all that’s left of him, grey ash. Decades of talent, memories and experiences carelessly charred down into the palms of Kun’s hands.
He tried not to feel so upset as he turned out the contents into the night. ‘It’s what Leo wanted’ he repeated to himself. Some glided away with the wind, most settled into the ground at his bare feet. Was it disrespectful to step in the ashes of his husband? Maybe. But it was okay; this is what he wanted. And he wanted what Leo wanted so it was okay. It was okay. It was okay as he drove up there by himself. It was okay as he stepped foot on this soil. And it was okay as the cloud of what used to be Leo danced away from him to the sound of the night owls.
Kun’s body swayed subconsciously. If this is what Leo wanted then why did it feel like he’d made a terrible mistake? Scattering Leo’s ashes away from his family, away from Kun? This was wrong. His vision blurred with guilt before coming back into focus and noticing something strange. The meadow pulsated once, twice, before it began to light up in small pinpricks of dark yellow. Slowly it filled up with the steady blinking of several bioluminescent lights. Small fireflies flittered out out into the sky, flying in lazy circles around Kun. Like stars on earth they flew into his outstretched hand, landing gently on his clothes before taking flight again. They flickered and scintillated in a haphazard dance of colours, floating softly in the wind from side to side.
“Couldn’t stay away, huh?” He whispered into the night.
Dried twigs crunched softly under him as he sat down. Ten fingers in the dirt, he pulled at small weeds, drawing out a small glow worm that flashed green in his eyes. A small smile slipped on his face as he thought about how Leo would gasp in wonder at each one even if he’d seen them countless times over the years. He squirmed slightly as the wetness from the ground leached into his pants. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath in. The air was crisp; it smelled of countless summers spent idling and rolling around in the grass with Leo.
It was a dangerous route now, thinking of Leo. Did a blade of grass remember the first raindrop that watered it, the first morning dew that slid down its sapling throat? Because he did. He remembered everything.
He could feel the earth calling to him, urging him to lie down. Lie down he did. Buried in the earth with the fire of a thousand fireflies fluttering around him, he let himself be consumed. Here in the earth he could hear him. The moss cushioned him into familiarity. ‘Leo’ he thought. Leo, Leo, Leo. Vines creeped up embroidering him to the soil in a fleshy cocoon.
There he was. Warm as day and green as the earth.
“Hey.”
“Hey, pa.”
Open stomata rubbed against Kun’s face and he sighed softly as he laid a hand on his cheek. Perhaps a part of him should have been scared to see Leo grow out of the earth itself but he wouldn’t look a gift horse in its mouth.
“How are you?”
A soft gasp left Leo as kun crashed into him, melding their ribs together and holding tight.
“Never better,” he whispered.
Lichens grew where Leo wrapped his arms around him, squeezing him close to his chest. He smelled like the first flower to bloom in fresh soil after a flood.
The fireflies continued to flitter about, landing softly on Kun’s cheeks and plunging him in a rich glow before bumbling away into the night.
Ferns caressed his hips, swaying his clothes away into nothingness. He shivered lightly at the feel of bare greenery poking against his skin but made no move to leave.
“I missed you, Leo. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m gone. You can’t get rid of me that easily,” he laughed, blooming flowers along Kun’s spine with each chuckle.
“You’re not really here though.”
As much as Kun wished he was, he had no instant revival to bring him back. No Lazarus shot to the chest to wake his lover from the dead.
“Of course I am. Right here.” One fingernail to the ridges between his ribs that sprouted a small patch of mushrooms in the alcove of his heart.
“Take me with you.”
Leo’s vines snaked their way into Kun’s hair, drawing him closer to the other man again in an embrace that coated Kun in a layer of Leo’s soul.
“You know I can’t do that right now.”
“Then when?”
He laughed a sound light and delicate like the rustling of air through a hunched cypress tree.
“Soon.”
Kun just hummed, instead opting to study the way Leo’s skin melted away into the earth. Or maybe the earth was what was melting into Leo. The difference was insignificant now that Leo belonged to the ground wholly and entirely. Till death did they part and here they were.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I keep…” he felt silly now, telling Leo how he felt, “I keep looking for you. I feel like I’ll spend my whole life looking for you.”
“You’re grieving.”
“Leo it’s unbearable. Every time I say something funny, I swear I hear you laugh right next to me but…but you’re never there. I thought with this,” he took Leo’s hand and placed it against the skin of his heart, “I was so sure it would be me first. Without football I had you. Now I have neither.” It felt like the universe was hellbent on taking away the things Kun loved most.
A small firefly chittered past above them and Leo caught it on his finger, holding it between them. It flickered yellow and orange before floating away again.
“You need to step out of the dark Kuni.”
“You say that like it’s so simple.”
“Too much of me is you for me to ever be gone from you truly. Love doesn’t disappear, it just changes.”
Kun mulled these words over in his mind, feeling the bitter remembrance of Leo’s death get flushed out with the taste of something sweeter.
“You gone soft in death?” He joked as a few tears slid down his advice. “Careful I’ll start thinking you want to marry me or something.”
Leo smiled wiping away Kun’s stray tears before gathering him tenderly in his arms again.
“Can I stay? Just tonight?”
“Always.”
That night, surrounded by Leo, Kun dreamt of him happy somewhere beautiful and when he woke up, all naked flesh, it was just him lying alone in that meadow, now wearing Leo’s plaid shirt. But with the sun shining against his skin he felt for the first time he’d be able to live with Leo loving him from afar.