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Sometime in the last few months, Bunny’s apartment has become covered in sticky notes.
“Covered” might be an exaggeration. Observant as Sae is, he doesn’t actually notice the infestation until a few hours after he arrives at Bunny’s for the weekend. In his defense, Sae is a little distracted; he spends those few hours with his attention fully occupied by things other than mysterious sticky notes—namely, Bunny’s hands, and Bunny’s mouth, and Bunny’s dick, and all the other various parts of Bunny that Sae needs to get reacquainted with after a month and a half apart.
So it isn’t until later, when Sae is fresh out of the shower, dressed in one of Bunny’s stupid graphic tees and little else, ready to rummage through Bunny’s cabinets and see if there’s anything left of the kombu snacks he left here last time, that he notices the bright pink slip of paper pinned to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a shrimp. The color catches his eye, first, but then he processes the actual content of the note. A few painstakingly written, shaky but still mostly legible, Japanese characters, and then the romaji scrawled in parentheses below. 冷蔵庫 (reizōko). Refrigerator.
It’s jarring, somehow, to see his native language in a setting where Sae would never have thought to expect it. And it’s definitely Bunny’s handwriting, but that doesn’t give Sae an actual reason as to why Bunny has apparently labeled his fridge in Japanese. Eyes narrowed, he stares for a moment, as though the sticky note will manifest an explanation for its existence out of thin air.
Naturally, this does not occur. Sae glares for another second, then turns away, intending to return to his hunt for salted kelp snacks.
Except—another bright pop of color catches his eye. Orange, this time, stuck to the front of the oven. Predictably, オーブン (ōbun) is written on the note. Sae’s eyes narrow further.
Snack forgotten, he follows the trail of blue and pink and yellow and green through Bunny’s apartment. 壁 (kabe) on the living room wall; ソファー (sofā) on the arm of the couch; 本棚 (hondana) on the bookshelf tucked in the corner; 窓 (mado) right beside the window, with a helpful little arrow pointing toward it; 机 (tsukue) on the small desk shoved right under the window. On top of the desk itself proudly sits a red spiral notebook and a couple of Japanese learning textbooks—opening the notebook reveals pages of carefully written hiragana and katakana, practice sheets copied down over and over, wobbly at first, but gradually growing steadier.
Sae finds that his emotions, upon realizing that Bunny has, apparently, been secretly learning Japanese, are difficult to put into words. Confusion. Fondness. Exasperation. But the one that wins out in the end is annoyance.
On the corner of the desk is a small mug filled with pencils, appropriately labeled 鉛筆 (enpitsu). Sae grabs one of the pencils, checks the tip. Swaps it out for a different, sharper one. Then, he gets to work.
This is how Bunny finds him, five minutes later: back in the kitchen, in front of the fridge, with a trail of corrections behind him, crossing out the romaji on the pink sticky note and writing out the hiragana underneath it. れいぞうこ, neat and precise.
“Sae,” Bunny says, a mix of amused and bewildered. “What are you doing?”
Sae doesn’t look up from where he’s finishing out the curve of the final character. “If you actually want to learn to read Japanese, you shouldn’t use romaji,” he scolds. “You should only be writing in kana.”
Bunny’s loping footsteps draw closer. “Why not? It helps me remember the pronunciation.” Strong arms wind around Sae’s waist, drawing him back against a broad, bare chest. “Mm. You used my shampoo, didn’t you? You smell like me.”
“It’s a crutch,” Sae informs him, ignoring the second part. “It’s lazy. Relying on it will only slow you down. I saw you practicing hiragana—you should be using that.”
With a sigh that ruffles Sae’s hair, Bunny noses at the back of his head. “Eres tan cruel, pajarito,” he laments. “I go to all this trouble to learn your language, and all you have for me is criticism.”
“That’s because if you’re doing it, you should be doing it right.” Sae sets the pencil down on the counter. “Speaking of which…”
Bunny nuzzles deeper into his hair. “¿Sí?”
“Care to tell me why you’re trying to learn Japanese?”
A low hum rumbles through Bunny’s chest, vibrating against Sae’s back. Bunny rubs his cheek against the back of Sae’s head, then leans down to rest his chin on his shoulder, draping his body over Sae’s. He’s always clingy, but especially when they’ve been apart for more than a week or two. “Why not? It’s your native language. I want to be able to communicate with you.”
Sae’s face feels hot. “We communicate just fine. I speak Spanish. And we both speak English.”
“True,” Bunny agrees. “But I want to understand your language, too. Is that so wrong?”
God. “It’s not wrong,” Sae admits, albeit reluctantly. He squirms in Bunny’s grip, twisting around to face him at last. Bunny’s hands settle on his waist. “It’s just weird.”
Bunny smiles at him, soft and heart-meltingly affectionate. “Is it, now.”
“And your handwriting sucks,” Sae adds.
The smile widens into a grin. “This is true in every language.”
“You’re an idiot,” Sae says.
“Sí, sí.” Bunny laughs. “But you like me anyway.”
He really does. Against all odds, and against Sae’s best efforts, Bunny Iglesias has managed to break down Sae’s defenses, and has taken up residence inside his heart. When Bunny brings a hand to his chin, tilting his face up and leaning down to connect their lips, Sae doesn’t fight him. It’s soft. Warm. Easy, in a way that Sae still can’t quite believe he gets to have.
The kiss lingers for a few heartbeats, sweet and chaste, before they part. It takes a moment for Sae’s eyes to flutter open again; when they do, he finds Bunny looking at him with that sappy, sentimental expression again.
“I like your hair like this,” he murmurs. “It reminds me of when we met.”
Sae’s eyes threaten to roll out of his head. “Shut up.”
“I mean it,” Bunny insists, lips still curled in a smile. His fingers comb through Sae’s bangs, still damp and unstyled after his shower. “You’re all fluffy. Like un gatito. Or, ah, what is it in Japanese? Koneko?”
“Are you trying to piss me off?” Sae bats at his hand.
Bunny just laughs again. “It’s not my fault you’re cute when you’re angry.”
Never mind. Sae takes everything back. This is terrible, and Bunny is terrible and annoying and the worst ever. “Cállate la boca,” he bites out.
“I love it when you swear at me en español,” Bunny sighs dreamily, free hand sliding around to splay against the small of Sae’s back. Before Sae can smack him over the head, his eyes brighten. “Oh, that reminds me! I’ve been practicing some términos cariñosos in Japanese. I even learned how to say—” He leans down, fingers tracing the curve of Sae’s jaw, lids lowering. “Aishiteru.”
Sae’s soul promptly exits his body. His hand moves on its own—it slaps over Bunny’s mouth, as though trying to stop any other sudden, dramatic confessions of love from escaping.
“What the fuck?” he gets out. If his face felt hot before, it must be on fire now. “You—you can’t just say that, you—” A horrifying thought strikes him. “Oh, God, you’re not about to fucking propose or something, are you?”
Bunny blinks at him, brows furrowed and eyes wide above Sae’s hand, all befuddled innocence. He takes hold of Sae’s wrist, tugging it away from his mouth. “Propose? ¿De qué estás hablando?” His head tilts to one side; really, he reminds Sae more of a puppy than of his namesake. “What did I do wrong? Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this red before—”
“Stop talking. Right now,” Sae snaps. Mortification spreads through him, wildfire catching at dry kindling, eager to burn him up. “Fuck. You have no idea what you just said, do you?”
The angle of the head tilt increases. With every moment that passes, Bunny looks even more like a confused, sad puppy. “That I… love you?” Faint color creeps into his cheeks.
Hearing it in English still kind of makes Sae want to drive to the airport and get on the first plane out of the country, but it’s not like Bunny has never said that to him before. It’s just that it’s a hundred times worse hearing it in Japanese—a thousand times worse, because Bunny obviously doesn’t understand the weight of the word he just uttered. Which means that Sae has to explain it to him, somehow.
Sighing, Sae tugs his wrist out of Bunny’s grasp and leans back a little, but he doesn’t entirely pull away. “Yes, but it’s not… the same,” he tries stiffly. “Saying it like that is, well—a lot more… intimate. It’s more than just—” He’s fumbling badly and he knows it, by the slow-blooming smile on Bunny’s face if nothing else. Sae glares. “Look. The point is, never say that to me again. Or to anyone else. Actually, especially not anyone else. Just don’t say it at all, got it?”
“Did you know you get extra bossy when you’re embarrassed?” Bunny says, grinning.
“Iglesias,” Sae hisses, warning.
Bunny chuckles. “Bueno, Sae, I understand. If it’s that serious, I won’t say it again.” He presses a kiss to Sae’s forehead. “Will you teach me the correct way to say it? The one that isn’t too ‘intimate’?”
For a moment, Sae debates refusing, but he wouldn’t put it past Bunny to whip out aishiteru again at the least convenient time. “… Suki desu,” he mumbles, not meeting Bunny’s eyes.
“Suki desu,” Bunny echoes. His pronunciation isn’t terrible. Could be a lot worse, really. Bunny tucks a knuckle under Sae’s chin and tilts it up again, brushing a kiss against his mouth. “Te amo.”
Sae kisses him again. “Te odio,” he mutters, but there’s no real bite to it. Especially considering that he chases the insult with yet another kiss.
Bunny hums happily, unfazed, wrapping his arms around Sae’s waist. “I have another question,” he says. “How do you say ‘will you come back to bed with me’ in Japanese?”
“I’m not answering that,” Sae says. “I’m not your tutor.”
“It could be kind of sexy, if you were,” Bunny muses.
Sae shoves at his chest. “No.”
A laugh tumbles out of Bunny’s mouth. “Is that a no on coming back to bed, too?”
“Obviously not.” Sae rolls his eyes, and twists free of Bunny’s arms, catching him by the hand and lacing their fingers together. “Hurry up.”
As Sae begins to tug him toward the bedroom, Bunny squeezes his hand. “I missed you, cariño.”
Sae’s chest warms over with something dangerously soft. “Yeah,” he says, and squeezes back. “Me, too.”