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00:00
Once, in the liminal hours between night and day when they were both in bed and Kei couldn’t sleep—was too thrown off by Tetsurou’s warmth against his back and the sound of his breathing and the memory of the horrible things he’d said to Tetsurou earlier—he confessed: “I wasn’t made to be with someone.”
Tetsurou, who was still awake and grading papers under the flickering light of the broken bedside lamp, stilled. Pen in hand, mid-stroke, eyes furrowing as if suspended in thought.
Shaking his head at the ceiling, Kei continued, “Not like everyone else. Not like you.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I think you’re insufferable sometimes too, you know,” Tetsurou replied, setting down his pen.
And Kei knew. Wondered if Tetsurou was finally going to say it, those words that Kei couldn’t help but think at times like this, when he felt inconvenient and insufferable and incapable— It’s harder to be with you than it is to be alone. Wondered if it would hurt more to hear it than to think it, or if it would simply be a relief—proof that he wasn’t so horrible, after all, for being so unmoored by the perpetual presence of someone he was supposed to love.
Instead, Tetsuoru said, “You think I like waking up shivering because you’ve stolen all the covers to roll yourself into a human burrito in the middle of the night?”
Kei snorted. “Yeah, but you’re nice about it. I’m not. I’m just—” Mean . Angry. Vicious. There were a million words he could have said, but he didn’t have the courage to say any of them.
Tetsurou took off his glasses, set his papers aside. “One day I’ll kick you off the bed, just you wait.”
Kei laughed, despite himself—a nervous, half-aborted laugh, as if he was unsure that he deserved to feel joy in its entirety.
“We’ll learn,” Tetsurou said after a moment, interlacing his fingers between Kei’s. “We’ll learn how to be with each other.”
Kei didn’t know if he believed him. Even if he wanted to—wanted to believe that it wasn’t some horrible flaw in his personality that sometimes he couldn’t stand being beholden to someone other than himself. That he could be the kind of person who loved easily, and was easy to love. That it was only a matter of learning.
“We’re both quick learners,” Tetsurou insisted, because he knew Kei needed convincing. “You’ll see.”
06:27
And Kei does see, after they fix the broken lamp and Tetsurou agrees not to grade papers in bed anymore, at least not when Kei is trying to sleep. After they buy a comforter one size larger than the size of their bed, thick enough to keep them warm but thin enough that Kei doesn’t overheat. After they swap sides, so that Tetsurou can get up to go pee in the middle of the night without waking Kei, who still wakes up sometimes but at least not every time, not anymore. After Kei finally gets used to the feeling of Tetsurou’s arm slung over his chest, and the difference in warmth between the side of his body next to Tetsurou and the side that isn’t, and the sound of Tetsurou’s breathing—half-purr, half-snore.
After Kei finally wakes up well-rested for the first time in three months, and takes the time to squint.
06:54
In the morning, Kei draws the curtains open as delicately as one might brush a stray strand of hair out of a lover’s face. Still, Tetsurou hisses like a vampire at the influx of light, reflexively pulling the covers over his eyes. Kei has to resist the urge to rip the covers away, because he knows it’ll only backfire, spark a fight. He leaves Tetsurou to instead succumb once more to the heavy hand of sleep, trusting that the second or the third or the sixth alarm he’s set will wake him up, keep him from being late.
Kei gets dressed. He makes enough coffee for both of them. He adds sugar and milk to his, and drinks it in all of three gulps, the liquid still scalding hot. Tetsurou’s coffee won’t be hot anymore by the time he gets to it, Kei knows, but Tetsurou doesn’t like it hot anyway— He’s got a tongue like a cat , his mother had said once, Overly sensitive.
Kei’s finishing his breakfast when he hears Tetsurou pad into the bathroom, yawning dramatically. Kei waits until he hears the toilet flush (unlike Tetsurou, he has the propriety not to barge in on him while he’s peeing) before going in to brush his teeth.
“Good morning,” Tetsurou says, rubbing his eyes blearily.
Kei kisses him on the cheek. Tetsurou tries to kiss him on the mouth, but Kei ducks out of the way, complaining about morning breath. Tetsurou’s too groggy to chase him down—doesn’t even try, just grabs his toothbrush and squirts on far too much toothpaste.
Kei stopped trying to understand why Tetsurou brushes his teeth before eating breakfast a couple months after they started living together. Had tried, valiantly, to show Tetsurou the errors of his ways—but old habits die hard, and eventually Kei had to accept his defeat. How else am I going to be able to kiss you properly before you leave, Tetsurou had explained, petulant, and Kei had to admit that it would be impossible otherwise—he couldn’t stand Tetsurou’s morning breath, and Tetsurou never woke up early enough to finish eating breakfast before he left for work.
Kei sees it best in the mornings—the ways that they’ve learned each other, molded and twisted around each others’ barbs so that the thorns wouldn’t puncture. It’s there in the way Tetsurou pulls back just as Kei goes to spit in the sink, like a tide answering to the phase of the moon. It’s there in the way Kei tears a length of floss for himself and then another, lays it gently on the counter. It’s there in Tetsurou’s palm resting steady on Kei’s back, and the brush of Kei’s shoulder against Tetsurou’s chest, and the careful graze of their legs against each other as they maneuver—a dance half-practiced, half-improvised—around and between each other.
(It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when mornings used to feel less like a dance and more like navigating a field of landmines. All their worst fights started in the morning—the kind that seemed to come out of nowhere and blowup in seconds, leaving them to put out the flames for days afterward. It took Kei months before he realized that it was because mornings were when Tetsurou, a night owl, was at his grumpiest, and Kei, still terrified of being late to work, was at his most restless. It made them vulnerable, and quick to defend; their nerves and mouths two steps ahead of their minds, their hearts. Kei had to learn the hard way how quickly vulnerability could turn into viciousness.)
The clock ticks past seven; Kei goes to take his leave, stage left.
“Leaving already?” Tetsurou asks, as he sprays a cloud of cologne onto the inside of his wrist.
Kei wrinkles his nose, holds his breath. He can never get used to the sharp smell of cologne in the air, even if he loves it on Tetsurou’s skin. “I have an early meeting today.”
“Are we still good for lunch?”
Kei nods. The clock inches toward 7:02, then 7:03, before Kei steps forward to wrap Tetsurou in a hug. He tucks his nose into the line of Tetsurou’s neck, breathes in the scent of Tetsurou’s cologne, still rough at the edges.
“Have a nice day,” Tetsurou says into the collar of Kei’s shirt.
Kei steps away. “You too. Love you.” Then, just as he’s stepping through the apartment door, an afterthought: “Don’t forget to take out the trash!”
18:31
The thing is—Tetsurou remembers, most of the time. Tetsurou takes the trash out dutifully every Tuesday night, and sometimes—sometimes!—Wednesday morning. Or maybe, occasionally , he wouldn’t remember until Wednesday after work, when he goes to throw something away and the trashcan is already full, but better late than never, right?
The third time in as many months Kei got home on a Wednesday and found a full trash can yet to be taken out, Kei tied the trash bag and set it on the dining table, where Kei sat and waited for Tetsurou to get home. Tetsurou laughed, light-hearted at first and then nervously, when Kei’s scowl didn’t disappear, only deepened.
“No,” Kei scolded, adamant that late was, in fact, equivalent to never. “You know what would be better than never? Before the trashcan overflows.”
“It was not overflowing,” Tetsurou said with a roll of his eyes. “It was a bit of a snug fit at best.”
That was when Kei would usually throw his hands in the air and storm away, muttering something about Tetsurou being intentionally obtuse, to which Tetsurou would shoot back, You’re the one being overly critical and unrealistic! But this time, Tetsurou didn’t let him—had caught Kei’s wrist, determined to settle the issue once and for all.
He asked, first: “Tell me, have I ever been more than a day late?” And Kei glared, because Tetsurou had not, and he could see where Tetsurou was going with it. Could see the logical next step, even if he didn’t want to, didn’t like the conclusion it led to. The conclusion being: “What’s the worst that can happen if I’m a day late?”
Kei didn’t answer. Tetsurou knew it was because he didn’t have an answer. Said in his place, “We agreed that I would be responsible for the trash, so let me be responsible for it.”
“Fine,” Kei conceded, because it was the logical next step. “But no more than a day late.”
12:17
On the train to lunch, Kei opens his planner. The cover is worn leather, and when he thumbs through the pages the pad of his thumb grazes along the plastic tabs that jut out like the spines on a stegosaurus. He flips it open to the page marked by a frayed green ribbon and finds a snapshot of his life as described by a spread of color-coded blocks, packed together in a never-ending game of tetris. It tells him what he already knows, which is that his morning meeting ran twenty minutes longer than it was supposed to, and he is late to lunch.
And just as when he plays tetris at work when nobody is looking and he makes a mistake—one block placed sub-optimally, creating a suboptimal base upon which to place the next block—he feels a sense of impending doom, his mind trained to see the avalanche in the snowball, no matter how unlikely or far-fetched.
Tetsurou is already there when he arrives at the cafe, sitting at their usual spot by the window, head bowed as his eyes dart across the pages of a paperback held open in one hand. He’s wearing his glasses, Kei notices—the ugly ones, with the thick black frame that Tetsurou is always complaining makes him look like a nerd. He’s been wearing them more recently, despite his apparent disdain for them; Kei resolves to buy him a nicer pair sometime.
“Sorry for being late,” Kei apologizes, winded, as he takes his seat.
“It’s okay,” Tetsurou says, tucking the paperback into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Kei shakes his head. “It’s not. I should have just left—”
Tetsurou cuts him off. “It is, really. Trust me.”
Kei trails off. He notices then that Tetsurou has already ordered his coffee—a vanilla latte, the only version of coffee Kei can stomach—and so he picks up the cup and takes a sip. Swallows, the coffee and the guilt that’s gathered, bitter at the back of his throat. Lets only the sugar and the whipped cream remain, thick on his tongue as a promise, half-fulfilled.
18:57
Kei knew that life didn’t have to be as hard as he made it out to be. In a way, it made it worse—the knowledge that it could be easier, was easier, for people that weren’t him. That he didn’t have to live this way but did so anyway, if only because he didn’t know how to live any other way.
Still, it was acceptable, when it was just him. In part because it was simply easier to be alone—fewer variables were easier to control, and Kei was always okay as long as he was in control. But also because Kei could believe that it was the only life he deserved—a hard and lonely one, where there were always a million ways it could go wrong and only one way it could go right, the odds stacked so high against him he couldn’t see the top.
And then Tetsurou came along, and Kei had never wanted anything to go right as much as he wanted this to go right. But one in a million were hard odds to beat twice.
He almost gave up, once—that one time he was halfway through making dinner and opened the fridge only to discover that he hadn’t bought the tomatoes he needed for the recipe. He yelled Fuck! and promptly walked out of the apartment, unsure where he was headed but determined to leave, until Tetsurou had chased him down and begged him to come back, to tell him what was wrong.
And so Kei went home with Tetsurou, and on the way home Kei thought about all the things that were wrong—that he forgot to buy tomatoes, that he didn’t have the ingredients to make anything else, that he really fucking hates cooking—and when they got back inside their apartment Kei said, “You deserve better than this.”
“This?” Tetsurou asked, brows furrowed. He seemed to be retracing their steps in his mind—Kei saw it from his perspective then, the absurdity of it, how one second he was in the kitchen and the next he was not, was running out of the apartment.
When Tetsurou spoke next his voice was tenuous, preempted by a thick swallow. “You mean us?”
Me, Kei clarified, or wanted to—would have, if the urge to cry hadn’t immediately been fended off by the disproportionate, opposite reaction to keep himself from crying at all costs, the strength of which had closed around his throat like a fist. Someone who freaks out over a fucking tomato, Kei thought, pathetically to himself. Or lack thereof.
Because after all these years, Kei realized, the boy that had walked out of the third gym was still there, whispering in his ear. And the boy was him, and he was the boy, and he would always be the boy—vulnerable and vicious and hard to love.
Tetsurou was silent for a long time. “I would have gone and gotten them, you know. The tomatoes.”
“I should have remembered,” Kei insisted, voice mangled by the claws of his restraint. “You deserve someone who would have remembered the tomatoes.”
“No,” Tetsurou said, “Just because you’re not enough for you doesn’t mean you’re not enough for me. I can deal with not having tomatoes.” Tetsurou paused. Then, gently—“You can learn how to deal with it, too.”
Kei almost wished Tetsurou would yell, say all the cruel things that Kei thought about himself. But in the face of Tetsurou’s gentleness, Kei’s self-flagellation suddenly felt childish. Like the very proof that he hadn’t learned anything since he was fifteen and too scared of the world to care about it. He cared now—that much, at least, was evident. But he still didn’t know how to deal with it—all of his care, great and tall as a mountain, so steep and formidable he thought it impossible to climb, didn’t even know where to begin to try.
“I don’t know how,” he began, finally, because he had to at least try.
“I just told you, didn’t I?” Tetsurou said, like it was obvious. And maybe it was, for him. To move mountains, to change the odds. “I would have gotten them for you.”
19:12
Kei was hard to love, but Tetsurou made it seem easy—easier than walking, easier than breathing. So easy that surely, Kei could learn, too. Had no excuse not to.
18:47
Kei watches the clock inch past six thirty, then six forty-five. The whiteboard on the refrigerator says they’re making yakiudon today, so Kei lays out the ingredients—shiitake and onions and napa cabbage—and wonders whether he should wait for Tetsurou to get home.
It’s been a while since Kei’s started dinner without Tetsurou at his side—hasn’t had to ever since they decided it’d be easier and faster to cook together every day, instead of separately every other day. But Tetsurou is late, and if Kei waits any longer, it’ll be time to get ready for bed by the time dinner is done.
It’s not that Kei is bad at cooking. It’s just that he doesn’t like it—finds it stressful, and annoying, and would really rather spend his time doing literally anything else. You don’t like cooking? Tetsurou had asked him once, in the early days when they first began dating. Kei had shot back, Do you like brushing your teeth?
That’s different, Tetsurou insisted. Toothpaste doesn’t taste good. Food does.
Now, as Kei slices onions and boils cabbage, he briefly considers the option of simply eating the ingredients raw and saving himself the trouble of this unnecessary transmutation. It’s not the first time he’s wondered if it’s not the inherent inconvenience of cooking that’s the problem but his indifference toward food—that if maybe he was the kind of person who thought of food as more than a means to an end, then the act of cooking would be more bearable.
Kei’s in the middle of deliberating the logistics of inventing soylent when a timer goes off, and then he’s trying to transfer the cabbage to an ice bath while simultaneously making sure the onions don’t burn, all the while realizing that he forgotten to move the pork belly to the fridge to thaw, and he can’t clear the cutting board of scraps because the trash can is full—
“I’m home,” Tetsurou calls, and Kei startles.
He hadn’t noticed the door open. He barely notices Tetsurou now—doesn’t hear the door close, or the slide of Tetsurou’s coat against his dress shirt, or Tetsurou saying, Sorry, I lost track of time . Between turning down the heat on the stove and making sure he didn’t leave the refrigerator door open, the only attention Kei manages to pay him is to grit out, “You’re late.”
Tetsurou drops his keys into the dish, the sound of metal against porcelain a sharp clatter against the noise of the kitchen, jarring enough to grab Kei’s attention.
Kei’s gaze shifts to the clock on the wall behind Tetsurou. “You were supposed to be home twenty minutes ago.”
Tetsurou’s expression sours. “My apologies. I didn’t realize this was an appointment .”
Kei knows he should let it go, and so he does. But he’s never been good at letting things go—not really, not without mangling them in the process—so he adds, “You also forgot to take out the trash.”
Tetsurou stands, shoes still in hand, and asks, exasperated, “Do you want me to help you with dinner or do you want me to take out the trash?”
Kei sniffs. “You were supposed to take it out yesterday . ”
“Okay,” Tetsurou says, stepping back in his shoes. “I’ll go take it out now then.”
The stovetop timer goes off; the noodles are done. Kei barely makes it halfway through straining them when the microwave beeps, and then his phone timer is going off, and—
“Wait,” Kei says, and then Tetsurou’s already kicking his shoes off again—had never re-tied them in the first place.
20:22
It was hard at first, as all things tend to be. And Kei wasn’t good at it, had never been—but he had never felt the strength of his incompetence so acutely as he did then. Because he had never noticed the way with which his thoughts traced the same circular paths that led nowhere until he began to catch himself—and when he got good at catching himself he began to admonish himself for the frequency of his missteps, until the catching and admonishing became its own circular path, well-trod. And so every step forward felt like three steps backward, and any ground gained was just an arc on a circle, as if he were on a merry-go-round with no start and no end and no emergency brake.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Kei said, coming full-circle once again. This time, he’d blown up at Tetsurou for being too loud—in hindsight, Tetsurou was only excited to tell Kei about what happened in class earlier that day, but the ache in Kei’s skull had made funhouse mirrors of his senses, stretching the volume of Tetsurou’s voice to the limit and shrinking his interest in anything other than lying down and closing his eyes. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to be with me.”
“I don’t care how hard it is, okay? I don’t care. I want to be with you anyway.”
“I care,” Kei said, then stopped himself there. Didn’t say, You deserve better, because Tetsurou had already made it clear that it wasn’t an option. Didn’t say, I don’t deserve you, because even if it was true, it only meant that Kei would have to become deserving. Said instead, in a small voice, so small Kei wasn’t sure if Tetsurou would hear: “I just wish it was easier.”
Tetsurou didn’t have to ask what Kei wished was easier. Tetsurou knew—not because he simply knew, but because Kei had told him, a million times over, in a million words and a million ways, all the things that were hard. Not just being with Kei, but being with Tetsurou, too, and all the beings that came with it—loving, loved, and deserving of it. Not because he wasn’t deserving, but because he was . Because deserving was not really a state of being but a state of earning, and nothing earned was ever easy, no matter how easy Tetsurou made it seem.
Tetsurou traced circles into the small of his back, the weight of his touch like an anchor in a tumultuous sea. “It’ll get easier.”
Kei decided to believe him. To believe that someday, it’ll be easier. That someday, the end of the world wouldn’t always be just around the corner. That even if it was, Tetsurou could say it’ll be okay, and Kei would believe him. Without question, without hesitation. As easy as walking. As easy as breathing.
20:34
Later that night, Kei draws himself a bath. Scalding hot with a scoop of lavender bath salt, the way he does it when he feels in need of something particularly nice. He doesn’t protest when Tetsurou slips into the bathroom, clothes already shed, and squeezes his way into the tub, which is already too small for either one of them, much less the both of them.
It’s comical, really. They sit opposite each other, knees bent and legs hooked around each other, tangled into a human pretzel, and Kei remembers why he usually doesn’t let Tetsurou do this. Tetsurou has the audacity to look pleased, like a cat bringing its owner an unsolicited offering. The unsolicited offering being himself, and the uncomfortable bend of their limbs, and the numbness spreading up Kei’s heel and towards his calves.
Still, when Tetsurou pumps shampoo into the palm of his hand, Kei bows his head in offering. Tetsurou’s fingers draw gentle circles into Kei’s scalp; Kei presses up into them until he finds the perfect amount of pressure. Until the pain gives way to tenderness, and the relief emanates across his head in waves. Until the soap foams into a cloud around his head, so light and soft it tickles the backs of his ears, the nape of his neck.
“I’m sorry I got snippy about the trash earlier,” Kei says, the last of the tension rushing out of him in a single breath, half-whisper, coaxed out by Tetsurou’s gentle hand.
Tetsurou’s hands slow, lingering in between the strands of Kei’s hair. “I’m sorry I forgot to take it out this morning.”
Even now, Kei wonders how Tetsurou does it. It’s been years, and still Kei feels like all his time and effort has done nothing to blunt the blade of his nature, lethally sharp and quick on the draw. Wonders why kindness only ever finds him when the day is over and hindsight falls like a shadow over all his mistakes, too little too late. Why, after all this time, it’s still so hard to believe—in Tetsurou, and himself, and the future where belief is not merely a question unanswered but the answer itself, come freely and unbidden.
“When will it get easier?” Kei asks, because he’s tired of waiting for the answer.
Tetsurou laughs, incredulous. “I don’t know. Will it rain ten years from today?.”
Kei splashes Tetsurou half-heartedly with a palmful of water. “I’m serious.”
Tetsurou takes it seriously—the splash, at least, judging by the way he splashes him back, sending a wave of bubbles and bathwater surging toward him. And there really isn’t enough room in the bathtub for the both of them; Kei presses himself to the edge of the bathtub, porcelain shockingly cool against his skin, and still there’s nowhere for Kei to go. So Kei closes his eyes and blindly makes waves in Tetsurou’s general direction, and even with soap in his eyes and a squeal rising in his throat he finds that there is no place he’d rather be.
“You really want to know?” Tetsurou asks in the aftermath, when the waves have been reduced to ripples and all that remains of Kei’s laughter is an aftershock, warm and tingling in his chest.
Kei nods—has never wanted anything more.
Tetsurou smiles. “It already has.”