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love is a transaction. love is an investment in a future where one must live up to their predetermined expectations.
love is painful. love builds you up just to tear you back down in an endless cycle, as it is meant to.
love makes you stronger, in the same way a scab does. more perceptive, like the vigilance that comes with recognizing who’s footfalls are outside of your door, and which ones bring another night of bruises and tear-stained cheeks, or half-hearted head pats and absent-minded praise that he’d learned to soak up like a sponge to water.
love is clinical. love is precise.
love is cold, he remembers, like the nights his aunties would leave him locked outside overnight as fall turned to winter and the morning dew turned into ice crystals. he would shiver as he watched the sun come up and his breath mix with the morning air, all until he heard the telltale click of the door at his back and felt 3 sets of hands pulling him inside, pushing and prodding, wiping snot and pinching cheeks, reminding him of why they had to do this in the first place. because love is a reminder, they’d tell him. love is never without purpose.
but what could be the purpose of this? ainosuke asks himself as he scans the aisles for the ingredients for okayu and zosui, tadashi's favorites from when they were younger.
he so rarely was ever sick, but he remembered the one time tadashi had missed their daily skating session when they were children, and when he snuck into the servant's quarters later that night he saw tadashi bundled up like a burrito. his face was as red as a tomato as he stared at ainosuke from across the room.
it must’ve been the sickness, he had reasoned as he stared right back. and he remembers sitting with him and having the maid bring him zosui and amazake to drink. tadashi later told him his mom used to give him amazake on nights he couldn’t sleep because of thunderstorms.
why does he remember this?
ainosuke shakes himself out of the daydream as he grabs a few bottles of amazake as well. these memories hold no practical purpose, and yet he couldn’t (wouldn’t) forget them, not for the world. he realizes belatedly that he cherished the memories they share like this, and he hasn’t the faintest clue as to why.
but it isn’t love that causes him to rearrange his midday meetings and presentations, including his fiscal proposal to his campaign committee, which he had been preparing with tadashi for the past 2 months.
it isn’t love that brings him to tadashi's apartment unannounced, using the spare key he’s owned for years, but hasn’t had a reason to use until now.
it isn’t love that has him facetiming kojiro up to ask how to make okayu and zosui, kojiro watching him with an unreadable but familiar glint in his eye.
it isn’t love that has him caressing his hair, running his fingers idly through it as he sleeps.
it isn’t love that causes him to place a featherlight kiss to the freckle on his cheek, one of many that he mapped out and memorized since they were young. a constellation along his face that told stories no one else would have the privilege to know. constellations that, even now, ainosuke tries his damnedest to understand and map out.
it isn’t love that brought him here, facing him as he slept soundly in a ball of blankets, tissues, and half-empty water bottles, most of which ainosuke had to bring himself since tadashi was nothing if not stubborn.
no, it wasn’t love that brought him here.
.........
it couldn’t be.
this feeling in his chest was soft, delicate, easy to break and yet ever persistent. it was warm, a feeling that was both so small, and yet it felt like it was bubbling just underneath the surface, ready to burst, coming in undulating waves that bump against his very edges. it was gentle in its persistence, something that radiated from his core.
it’s festered for years now, pushing against his seams, and he feels it grow everytime he looks at tadashi, or speaks to tadashi, or touches the small of tadashi’s back to get past him in the kitchen, or glimpses the silent approval in tadashi’s eyes when ainosuke delivers a killer campaign speech, or watches his face in his rare moments of rest.
like now, ainosuke thinks faintly as he idly thumbs at the sweaty strands plastered to tadashi’s forehead, gently circling around and around. he thinks for a moment that, even though tadashi is the one with a fever of 102, it’s his face that feels warm in this moment, with his skin feeling prickly as he stares down at his resting face almost helplessly. it made it hard to breathe.
and yet, he wouldn’t trade this feeling for the world. this feeling that made his tongue feel like cotton in his mouth, all of the unsaid frivolities and urges that have built up over the years, ready to burst at a wayward glance, their fingers brushing, or god forbid, the smallest of smiles.
no, this couldn’t be love, ainosuke muses as he idly runs his fingers through his hair, tadashi sighing softly in his sleep.
no, this couldn’t be love.
it was something else entirely.