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Tsuki Ume knows he’s going to marry Maine for certain when they’re home, at last, freed from the shackles of a crowded house with far too many family members to live comfortably. They sped up the going home process, mostly because Maine didn’t pause his habit of wearing the shortest shorts he could find (I mean, seriously, at this point they’re small enough to be Talon’s) and ensuring Tsuki Ume is around him all day. And it drives him a little bit mental, every time. It's not a thing, he just loves Maine, loves to see the long planes of skin that stretch across his body, that Tsuki Ume wants to trace his fingers over like butterflies. It isn’t always an attraction thing, mostly because Tsuki Ume isn’t always attracted to Maine in that way. Most of the time, it’s a need to worship him like a holy statue, to trace every symbol of religion that he knows across Maine’s body to understand the cause of his purity. And he can’t do the things he wants to do, can’t press his lips to Maine’s kneecap or burrow his nose in the crook of his hip, in a home with Maine’s mother and Talon. Tsuki Ume’s cousins would at least pretend to not have seen. Talon would probably cry and run away, and Rozmin would find a slipper and beat him over the head with it. He hasn’t seen violence from her before, however he believes that there are situations that would invoke it in her. And so, Tsuki Ume cannot subsequently worship Maine with his mother in the house, and it has been a loss that he has felt deep in his stomach.
Which is why Tsuki Ume breathes a sigh of relief as they walk through the flat door. It’s a comfortable little flat; it’s home, because Maine’s home, but it doesn’t smell quite like the Strand home, which is perhaps one of the only parts that he mourns. He loves the smell of cinnamon and dried tea bags and the slightly sickly smell of mildew from outside. This flat smells of the cherry scented candles Maine buys every so often, and of fresh air that circulates from the windows that they leave open for the most part, and the citrus tang of the cleaning products that Tsuki Ume scrubs the whole house with every week, pink rubber gloves up to his elbows. It’s fresher, and it’s cleaner, but sometimes it feels emptier. Like there’s not been enough life lived in this flat. Tsuki Ume supposes there hasn’t been. They’ve only lived here for a year or so, it’s not had the life that the Strand house has. He thinks, sometimes, about filling it up with that life, with the smell of children’s crayons and sugary baking projects and calpol reverberating throughout the air that they breathe. However, he supposes that it’s too early to be thinking about all of that stuff; he and Maine might have known each other for a year and two months, but they’ve been dating a seventh of that time, and again, there’s all of the time in the world to start thinking about it.
“Dude, I’m so glad to be home again.” Tsuki Ume exhales lowly, as Maine makes a show of breathing in and out with his arms out as he takes in the fresh air. He looks like he’s about five seconds away from getting to his knees and praying like the scene in Shawshank Redemption that Jasen’s made him rewatch about five million times because ‘ It’s peak cinema, Tsuki Ume, you just don’t get it!’ He kind of wants to rewatch that film, now. He kind of thinks he’ll burst into tears if he tries, because he hates Jasen, mostly, and it hurts to hate him, like a wild thing clawing at his heart and ripping it to feathered shreds because it had never been taught to handle one before. And Tsuki Ume won’t be the one to teach it. He’s already tried. And Tsuki Ume knows how to give up on a losing game. He knows how to resign. Mostly. He doesn’t know why he’s thinking about Jasen right now. He should probably stop. He’ll probably fail, and it’ll probably keep him up tonight, which is fucking miserable. This has been happening a lot recently. He should probably talk to him. He won’t.
“ You are?” Maine laughs, cheeks rosy and apple full on his face. It makes Tsuki Ume want to kiss him like he’s trying to eat him. Not right now. That can wait for later. “Tsuki Ume, I love my mum, you know I love my mum, but oh my God, I do not miss living with her. She wasn’t just like this with you, y’know. You not being a girl does definitely have an impact on things, however she did still have a ‘keep the door open’ rule. In fact, you mostly escaped that, considering that she never suspected a boy could be having his wicked ways with her precious son.” He winks at him slightly, a smile on his face. Tsuki Ume wonders if he saw it falter, for a flash of a second. He could have imagined it. He probably did. But it’s hard to forget that Maine isn’t as kind to himself as Tsuki Ume wishes he was. It’s hard to forget that everything would probably be so much easier if Tsuki Ume were a girl. He swallows softly.
“I have never had my wicked ways with you, Maine Natarajan, you’re the temptress here, trying to have your wicked ways with me, in your scantily clad shorts. You know, those thighs could make a Victorian man faint. It’d get him comatose, in fact. Vegetative. He might die, Maine, have you thought about how cruel that is to a theoretical Victorian man? He could die, and then you’d be a murdering seductress and the townspeople would put you in the stocks and throw manky tomatoes at you, and they’d shout ‘ pretty princess! Pretty princess! That’s the boy who killed his Victorian lover because he was such a pretty princess!” Tsuki Ume rambles, laughing as flush lands on his cheekbones. Laughs have been bubbling up from Maine’s throat every so often, very clearly resisting burning urges to interrupt.
“Are you done yet?” Maine giggles, chest shaking. Tsuki Ume nods his head, turning the corners of his mouth down in an odd kind of upside down smile. “Well, first of all, the basic quantum physics of this theoretical time travelling world make little to no sense-” Tsuki Ume goes to interrupt, however Maine presses a finger to his lips, and feeling his heart beat its wings against his ribs and his face burn, he’s subsequently silenced. “And aside from that, as beautiful as you seem to think that my legs are, I don’t think that they could actually put a Victorian man in a coma, I think they could just put you in a coma, and I don’t think that these generalisations are fair to project onto poor Victorian men.” Maine grins, and Tsuki Ume can’t help but smile back, only processing half of Maine’s rebuttal to their mock argument. “Tsuki Ume, did you listen to any of that? At all?” He asks, eyebrows raised in amusement.
“I did definitely listen to some of it!” He protests weakly, searching Maine’s face for hidden texture and detail he hadn’t seen before, as if it were an old painting and he were a conservator. He always finds something new about Maine to love. Maine folds his arms over his stomach, clearly about to respond, so Tsuki Ume cuts in. “Just had better things to be focusing on.” He rasps, and Maine’s eyes light ever so slightly. He asks for a silent permission, brown eyes wide and endlessly trusting, and Maine nods firmly. He exhales, slowly, the air working its way through his body like it would through brass.
Then, he dares to lean down, hot breath millimetres away from Maine’s mouth, and a rarely impatient Maine moves forward to meet the gap, kissing him with a chaste softness that connects the two like a string. He sighs into it, like the sigh that one omits when they’ve not been home for too long, and they’ve just stepped foot through the doorway. Tsuki Ume supposes that that’s what this is, for him. Homecoming. It makes him want to cry, a little. The warmth that had been waiting for him. He reaches his hand up to caress the join of Maine’s jaw, the place where the cartilage connects. He traces it, and pulls Maine deeper. Kissing is never dull, between the two of them. Even when it’s tender, and careful, it never stops being as beautiful as it is between them. It never stops Tsuki Ume from feeling just full enough; never too full, overflowing with feelings that spill from him before he can understand them, and never empty, making him reach out for steps that aren’t there in desperation. Maine slips his tongue effortlessly between Tsuki Ume’s teeth, and Tsuki Ume opens his jaw wider to accommodate him, and the wet heat of shared mouths never stops being loving, even as it begins to become something new, blossoming between them.
“I,” Tsuki Ume begins, catching his breath as he pulls away from Maine’s lips. “Need a shower. Didn’t feel clean enough after my bath this morning, and besides, my skin’s had a whole, like, nine hours to accumulate dirt and grime. I need to get it off.” He murmurs, not bursting the bubble between them, with his thumb still circulating that spot on Maine’s jaw. Maine makes a noise of protest, too short to be a whine and too determined to be a whimper. “I’m not abandoning you, not when we just got couple time together after what feels like years. I was thinking more, like…” Tsuki Ume drifts off, looking back at his reflection in Maine’s eyes. “You could come with me? Only if you wanted to, of course. And not as, like- not as a sex thing. I just- oh, fuck, it sounds so stupid now, I just, I was thinking about it, an-”
Maine cuts him off with a sharp kiss that makes his brain short circuit and forget everything he intended on saying. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t going to be anything good, at least. “Yeah, Tsuki Ume. ‘Course I’ll shower with you. I’d like to, actually.” He says, and his face is so unbearably soft that it makes Tsuki Ume want to melt into a puddle on the wooden floor. “It doesn’t have to be a sex thing. In fact, I don’t think I could even get hard right now. There’s remaining anxiety left over for being in a house with that many family members for so long. The little guy needs some time to recover, you know.” He says, and for a moment, Tsuki Ume can’t believe how stupid it is that he’s so insanely in love with a man that refers to his penis as ‘little guy’, and as if it’s an entirely different entity to himself. He smiles warmly.
“Maine, I do love you so much, but if you ever call your penis ‘little guy’ again, we might have to have some serious recalibrations about the dynamic of this relationship.” He says, mock sternly, with a bright smile still situated on his face, the way that it always is when he looks at Maine. He feels the voracious urge to kiss him silly once more, and has to restrain himself.
“Well, would you prefer I bust out the word ‘phallus’ in polite conversation?” Maine asks, with his mouth in a hard line, but with his eyes twinkling. Tsuki Ume gives him a look that quite clearly says ‘touche’. “Right. Shower. We should probably get doing that, shouldn’t we?” He says, that familiar quirk to his lips returning. Before either of them start the route to their little bathroom, Tsuki Ume starts to kiss Maine again, and Maine isn’t exactly hasty to stop him.
Eventually, they end up in their four by four flat bathroom, with its bath/shower combination crammed in beside a little pedestal sink and the loo. It’s not much, but it does them well enough. Tsuki Ume feels a slight twang in his heart when he registers that Talon’s toothbrush is still sat in a mug there, in the middle of Maine’s soft pink and white one, and Tsuki Ume’s clinical blue and white electric toothbrush. He wonders, for a moment, if there’s a male equivalent to ovulation. If there is, then he’s definitely experiencing it. He thinks about Talon. He thinks about how Talon hasn’t logged into their Minecraft world in a while, about how Talon still resents him, and it’s all his own fault. As Tsuki Ume stares forlornly at the little array of toothbrushes, Maine begins to turn on the shower, and before too long, he’s tapping on Tsuki Ume’s shoulder to tell him to get in. Tsuki Ume wrenches himself away from his own mind.
Tsuki Ume pulls his light pink t-shirt (one of the ones Maine stole in his thievery arc, and eventually had to give back after it stopped smelling like Tsuki Ume) over his head, shaking his hair like a dog when it’s off. It’s odd, to have short hair now. He’s so used to having it float around his shoulders in a thick, fluffier cloud, and now when he reaches, it isn’t there, like a phantom limb. He remembers the plaits he used to wear, before he cut it shoulder length, and he remembers braiding strands of his and Jasen’s hair together. He remembers the first time he cut it, up to his shoulders, and he cried without breathing for what felt like hours. He remembers the second time he cut it, to the ‘masculine’ length it is now, and he stayed dry eyed, but it just never really set in that it was real. He folds his arms over his chest, for a moment. He can get a little bit self conscious, even with Maine. He’s always felt a little uncomfortable with people seeing so much of him, with someone else being able to love the parts of him that just never felt like his own, more just attached to him. The shower begins to steam up, and Tsuki Ume takes a break from his thoughts, pulling down the waistband of his trackie bottoms. He’s always had skinny, paper white legs, that he’s oddly self conscious about. He doesn’t look at Maine, not right this second. He needs to concentrate, and Maine can be remarkably distracting. He sucks in his breath, for a moment, stomach caving in like a capri sun, before taking off his boxers in an awkward moment. He feels blush tint his cheeks. He’s never going to get used to this properly, he doesn’t think. Never.
Maine is undressing too, he’s vaguely aware of it out of the corner of his eye, and his mind fills in the blanks. The expanse of Maine’s back, a warm toned brown with defined muscles that contort when he stretches, like a true Adonis, and it makes Tsuki Ume want to kiss patterns down him. He has a few moles, like stars in the night’s sky, shining brightly to Tsuki Ume, and he’s surprised that he’s never connected the dots with his fingers and made constellations with him. The definition of his torso, a thicker, more muscled figure, but not obnoxiously so, and still as perfect and chiselled as the rest of him, and Tsuki Ume has often thought in burying his head in the thick of Maine’s full chest. The back of his thighs, the firmness of them, whole and plump, and Tsuki Ume wants to take bites out of them, like apples. The vein that joins in the back of his knee, that he wants to press his nose into and just rest it there. Every part of Maine’s body, that Tsuki Ume has always found a way to love, a way to worship and cherish almost everything.
Maine looks at him, softly, as though he’s trying to take everything in with deep brown eyes and fluttered eyelashes. It alleviates just a little of Tsuki Ume’s self consciousness, but not all. “Are we getting in, then?” Maine asks, and it’s not expectant. It’s not pressure filled. It’s a genuine question, in a polite, caring tone, and Tsuki Ume can’t quite explain why it makes his eyes prick up with crystalline tears. He thinks that it’s mostly just knowing that Maine will wait for him, when he needs it, and he will never ask for anything Tsuki Ume isn’t willing to give. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing in his strained throat.
“Yeah.” He nods, eyes fixed on Maine’s, wide set and as trusting as he knows how to be. “Yeah, we are.” He mumbles, as the water dripping from the shower pounds against the panelling. Maine takes his word for it, knowing Tsuki Ume doesn’t need to second guess himself right now, and steps in, lifting his knee up and stepping inside, to the shallow water that hasn’t drained yet and the boiling water of the shower pouring down. He doesn’t break the eye contact with Tsuki Ume, not for a moment, pupils trained on him, and it gives Tsuki Ume the courage to exhale, and clamber in with him.
The heat relaxes his muscles almost instantly, and he breathes out a sigh of relief. The water spatters like raindrops onto his skin, and he feels so much cleaner already, eyebrows scrunching together ever so slightly at the sensation of the water running down the scars on his back. It’s a strange feeling; not uncomfortable, just not something he’s used to yet. It’s still so odd to think about the fire, these days. It feels like something that must have happened to someone else. But then again, a lot of things that happen to him tend to feel as though they happened to a completely different person. For example, he can never quite believe that Maine is in love with him, and Maine wants to be with him, and not some sexy stranger inhabiting his body from time to time. It never fails to astound him, whenever he remembers it, as Maine sleeps next to him under the quilt, and Tsuki Ume lies awake, restless. Wondering how on earth he ever could have been as lucky as he is. He tries not to take it for granted, he tries to appreciate every last aspect, but sometimes it feels as though his appreciation can never be enough, and everything he has will be taken away by some invisible onlooker, because he doesn’t deserve it enough, because he never will. But Tsuki Ume has always been an over thinker, and so he tries to ignore it as best he can, in daytime.
Maine watches him steadily, doe eyes not having moved their position since Tsuki Ume got in, not having moved at all, just waiting until Tsuki Ume was ready and adjusted to the water. Maine smiles, slowly, and Tsuki Ume mentally counts being able to watch a smile stretch across his lover’s face amongst his blessings. “I can wash your back for you?” Maine suggests warmly, and it’s such a small act of love and care that it has Tsuki Ume’s eyes stinging once again. Maine’s been like this since it happened. Taking initiative to rub the soothing cream down the wounds, and passing his inhaler over whenever his breath got slightly strained. The simple care of it was enough to make his heart flutter in his chest; he’d never really been cared for like that before, and once he’d finally received it, he couldn’t stop desiring it with his whole heart. Needing it in every touch, in every softly spoken sentence.
Tsuki Ume nods, and Maine doesn’t need any more than that, grabbing the bar of Dove soap from the side of the tub, and lathering it over the creases in his hands, painting the grooves a pure white before moving behind Tsuki Ume in a quick motion, hearing the slight screech of his feet against the floor of the bathtub. Tsuki Ume’s muscles tense as he waits for Maine’s hands to land on his back, in preparation, however, they don’t come. He realises that Maine’s sudsy hands are hovering, waiting for permission. It’s another one of those little motions that makes Tsuki Ume’s heart fill with adoration for Maine. He nods again, licking over bitten lips in anticipation. And then, Maine’s burning hot hands land on Tsuki Ume’s skinny back, shoulders sharp and bones prodding out against his skin. He used to imagine that the sharp bones in his back once held wings, and that he was once a bird person, not an angel, never quite an angel. But he used to imagine that he could once fly, and soared through sky after sky, diving through clouds and eating berries for food. But he was very young, at the time, and as much as he wishes he could still believe it, he can’t.
Maine starts at the point between his shoulders and just below his neck, dead centre, and starts to douse him in the frothy bubbles, circling his hands with care. Hands kiss the vast, white expanse of skin, slowly moving downward as water pours onto both of their heads. Tsuki Ume’s hair quickly becomes limp in its wetness, sticking to the skin of his forehead, whereas the structural integrity of Maine’s curls holds for a few minutes more, before making him look like a half drowned miniature poodle. He looks rather cute, as soggy as he is, water dripping down a Roman nose. Tsuki Ume needs to stop turning around to look at him, he thinks. However, it’s remarkably hard to restrain himself when his boyfriend looks like that. A soaked Hercules. Tsuki Ume gets a visceral urge to kiss him until he’s dry, and brushes that thought away as blush paints his cheeks once more. He’s rarely free from it, around Maine. At least now he can blame it on the heat, and not have Maine tease him for the rest of time.
And then, Maine’s hands make it to the spattered burn scars of Tsuki Ume’s back, and Tsuki Ume takes a sharp breath in at the touch on tender skin. Caring, soft hands scrubbing lightly at the raised skin, with such love it makes Tsuki Ume feel a little like he’s floating. Maine pauses his scrubbing for a moment, just resting his palm on the divot of Tsuki Ume’s back, waiting for him to adjust to the touch. Tsuki Ume breathes out, breath fluttering like butterflies trapped inside his lungs, and Maine takes it as a sign to resume. He places one hand on his shoulder, to steady him, and the other moves its way down the comet like marks, pinkish and splattered like paint. He pauses for a moment to coat his hand in it once more, and takes it lower and lower, trailing down Tsuki Ume’s spine. He makes a gasp like nose for a moment, as Maine’s hand stops short above his tailbone. He’s always loved having his back rubbed, it’s always been a comfort to him, even when it was just a tiny Aya Akane and her starfish hands, with nimble fingers even then. And with Maine, with strong, wide hands stroking the expanse of his skin with such gentleness that he could cry, it’s beautiful.
Maine continues, and after a couple of moments, Tsuki Ume knows he’s done. He almost mourns the loss before he’s even lost it. Maine takes the hand off of Tsuki Ume’s back, placing it on his other shoulder opposite the other, and rests his chin on top. Tsuki Ume looks over at him, craning his neck to see all of him, mouth open a sliver in pure, undiluted awe of him. “Can we stay like this for a little?” He asks, tender, and that’s the moment he knows.
That’s the moment Tsuki Ume knows he wants to marry Maine Natarajan. That’s the moment he knows he wants to marry the man that takes as much pleasure in caring for him as he takes from the care. It’s the moment that Tsuki Ume realises, to its full extent, that he doesn’t know what he’d do if he ever lost him, how he’d live, if he’d live, how he could possibly cope with his life if Maine wasn’t by his side. In the few moments that he thought he’d never have him like this, he felt as though he would never love again, and perhaps he was right. Perhaps Tsuki Ume won’t, perhaps he’ll never love any man or woman again, and he’s perfectly content with that. He never wants to love anyone but Maine. He wants to love him for the rest of his life. He wants to meet him again at the aisle, take his hands in his own and slip a ring onto it. He wants to be bound to him for the rest of his life. He wants to bear him children, and rear them alongside him, and he wants to care for his mother when she’s older and can’t herself, if it ever gets to a point such as that. He wants to sit and watch his little brother’s graduations and cry like it was his own. He wants to grow old and grey with him, sitting in matching rocking chairs and reminiscing about how stupid they were when they were their grandchildren’s age. Tsuki Ume wants a lifetime to love Maine, so a lifetime he’ll get.
“Yeah.” Tsuki Ume responds, lips hardly moving as he shifts to press his own mouth onto Maine’s. He doesn’t tell Maine what he’s thinking. He doesn’t need to. How could Maine ever doubt that Tsuki Ume wanted to love him forever. He opens his mouth to take Maine’s bottom lip between his teeth, water shared between the two, and longs for a day when he has to pull back a lace veil to do so.