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It’s Shion’s seventeenth birthday, but he couldn’t find it in him to really enjoy it.
Aotsuki was invited to the party. Or rather, his uncle Takumi invited him, and nobody objected, so here he is: sharing the same slice of cake with Takumi and using the same fork. Shion wonders if anyone else notices that they’re swapping spit so openly like this but he knows, deep down, that he’s the only one who cares this much.
Everyone else has forgiven and forgotten. Even Nozomi, who’d raised Shion since they landed back on the artificial satellite, had learned to get along with Aotsuki for his uncle’s sake, even if it wasn’t easy. Shion was only ever taught that Aotsuki was a special friend to Takumi, and considering no one knew he remembered the full truth of Aotsuki Eito, he was expected to just accept it. Nozomi taught him manners, after all. So if he noticed they sat a little too close together, or shared the same fork, or drank from the same cup, he knew better than to say something.
But he remembers everything now.
“Are you two married?”
Takumi blinks, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks as he looks at Shion. They are in an alley just next to the bar where everyone else is still celebrating his birthday. It’s half past midnight and though he’s been seventeen for all of thirty minutes, he followed his uncle out of the bar when he said he needed a bit of air like a duckling after its mother.
Unlike Shion, Takumi had been drinking. He rubs the back of his neck and tries for a laugh, tries to play dumb. “Who do you mean?”
“You and Aotsuki-san.” Shion watches the way his uncle’s shoulders tense and knows he must have hit a nerve. There isn’t a ring on his finger, nor on Aotsuki’s, so Shion knows the answer before Takumi can give one. But he still wants to hear it from his mouth. “I’m old enough to know that you two aren’t just friends, uncle.”
He exhales slowly. Takumi keeps his gaze trained on the street next to them instead of at his nephew as he says, “No, we aren’t.”
Shion takes a step towards him. “And that makes you sad?”
“It… doesn’t make me sad, it…” Another step. “Look, it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to you.”
“Shion—”
When Takumi looks back at him, he’s already crowded him against the wall. Shion cages him in with a hand, palm pressed to the dirt and grime of the wall as he stares at him.
“Do you want to?” he presses, speaking over the rush of blood in his ears, “Do you want to marry him?”
And Takumi just— doesn't answer. Not right away. He's thirty-four and still stumbles through his sentences, comes up with a half-hearted explanation, it's complicated, Shion, and it's always complicated when it comes to Aotsuki and Takumi, isn't it? Nozomi always said so, when she thought he was asleep for the night and Yugamu would come over for tea. Complicated. Those two are complicated.
His hand closes into a fist against the wall. Complicated.
“It's not that simple,” Takumi says, eyes flickering between Shion's and towards the end of the alleyway, “It's just… grown up stuff, kiddo.”
Even now, he thinks of him as a child. Shion doesn't blame him. Takumi had been there since he was a baby. Shion wasn't attached to anyone like he was to Takumi. There had always been this innate, intense longing to be with him, at first unexplainable but now he knew it was because of their time together before the satellite. When they were both teenagers without a clue, playing on the beach and watching fireworks. The most Shion had ever lived until now.
Takumi was pretty, then. He'd always been pretty to Shion, before he even knew what the word pretty was as a child, but there was something boyish and charming about his uncle when they were seventeen. Now, after years growing into the rest of himself, he'd rounded out into being handsome. A catch, Moko would say with a laugh. Who knew Takumi would turn into such a catch?
But here, pressed against the wall with streetlights splashing against his face and hair, Shion could see: Takumi is pretty. Still pretty. Still the same pretty boy Shion wanted to cling to, wants to cling to now. Maybe even more so. Before Aotsuki took him away from his pining little nephew.
Shion knows he isn't being nice. He knows Takumi isn't sober either, but he doesn't care. Everyone is still at the party and Aotsuki hasn't come looking for Takumi so he stays right where he is, towering over his uncle as he tries to leave.
“C'mon, it's your birthday. We should head back—”
“I've loved you longer,” Shion says, “I always have. I loved you before I knew what it meant to love someone.”
His uncle stares, wide-eyed, at him. It's thrilling to have his full attention like this, Shion thinks. There is no Aotsuki to distract him here. Takumi has no choice but to look and listen, pinned to the wall where Shion can reach for his hand and thread their fingers together like he's seen Aotsuki do so many times.
Takumi looks from their hands to his nephew's face, and the rosy flush that paints his face is prettier than any streetlight.
“Shion,” he breathes, shaky and a little slurred, “y’don’t know what you’re saying.”
“But I do!” Shion squeezes his hand, brings it right to his chest so Takumi could feel the skip in his heartbeat, and he knows he’s being the child Takumi only knows him as but he doesn’t care. His uncle never could resist Shion when he asked for something. Everyone knows that. Shion knows that. “No one else makes me feel this way. I’ve never wanted something this badly, and I— Takumi, uncle, whichever you want me to call you— I want you. Please?”
Takumi’s hand is warm as it sits against his chest. Shion’s heartbeat is rabbit quick beneath it, and the pitying look his uncle gives him nearly shatters it.
“You can’t,” he tries, pulling his hand away, “We can’t. I—”
“Is it because of my age?” Shion tightens his grip. “I’m technically as old as you. It’s just my physical body that’s younger.” His voice takes on a desperate tone as he pleads, clawing up memories his uncle might not want to remember. “I was with you at the academy, don’t you remember? We were there together, at the beach and the fireworks, and even before then. Don’t you remember, uncle?”
Shion had leaned closer as he spoke, and only now does he realize just how close his mouth is to Takumi’s. Close enough to smell the alcohol on his breath. Just a few more inches and they’d touch. The proximity is dizzying and he nearly steps away, but he risks being overwhelmed if only to get a reaction from the man in front of him. Anything. Anything.
The hand in his trembles. Takumi’s eyes seem to shift with the realization that Shion’s regained his memories, passing through several emotions too quickly to follow.
And for a moment— his eyes flicker down towards Shion’s lips and it’s enough. What little self-restraint he’s built up crumbles and he leans down to touch his lips to Takumi’s.
It’s too quick. Takumi moves his head as soon as their lips touch, the kiss too brief for Shion to mourn the loss of any warmth. His uncle refuses to look at him or even say anything to him. He’s always been terrible at scolding Shion. There isn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for him.
Or there wasn’t, anyway. Shion listens to the occasional car pass by as he tries to reconcile his own heartbreak with the anger beginning to burn away in his gut. His eyes begin to sting with hot tears that Takumi won’t even turn and see. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.
“Is it…” he takes a shuddering breath and tries to control the tremble in his voice, “Is it because of Aotsuki? Do you love him? More than you love me?”
Takumi does turn to look at him then. “That’s different, Shion. You can’t—” he tries to pull his hand out of Shion’s grasp with a frustrated noise, “You can’t ask that of me. You two are different.”
Shion’s grip is strong and Takumi had been drinking. He’s still a little slow, a little sluggish, and so it’s easy for Shion to keep him where he wants him. It hardly takes anything for him to press his hands against the wall behind him, pinning him down by the wrists as he ducks his head close.
“Whatever he does for you, I can do for you too,” he murmurs, pressing his lips just below his ear, “I can learn if you show me how. Just tell me, Takumi.”
His uncle doesn’t pull away. In fact, he hardly struggles against him, breath hitching when Shion moves towards his neck. Shion is inexperienced but he moves on instinct, fueled by an ugly jealousy clutching at his chest and guided by the few videos he’d seen online before this. He kisses and sucks but doesn’t bite, afraid to ruin this small moment he’s stealing for himself. Takumi’s skin tastes like home and Shion wants to be a glutton.
Takumi tries saying his name again but there’s no bite behind it. No real consequence. Though he does manage to push one of his hands away, even pressing a hand against his chest, it lacks any force. His face is ruddy and his breathing is shallow as he tries to fix his nephew with a glare.
“I haven’t told anyone, but… I do remember, uncle. I remember everything.” Shion reaches for the hem of his sleeve, slipping his fingers under it to grip his forearm. The fabric slides up his arm, exposing more of his skin under the red-blue-green lights of the alley. “Everything you told me about those first one hundred days you lived through… and what Aotsuki did.”
Takumi tries to shake his head. “That wasn’t… That’s not him.”
“He was so awful to you. To everyone. It must have hurt.” Shion continued, rubbing little circles onto the wrist still under his other hand. Takumi’s breathing picks up to a hiccup, and Shion shifts to press his lips to the crown of Takumi’s head. A facsimile of what he’d always done for Shion when he had a bad dream or scraped his knee. “His betrayal during those first one hundred days must have hurt you so badly. I wish I was there to comfort you. I wish I could have done more.”
His uncle stifled a noise that bordered on a sob. Shion shifted his hand until their fingers were threaded, palm to palm, while he held Takumi’s other hand close to his heart again.
“But I can, now,” he says, “I’m here and I can— I can treat you better. I wouldn’t do that to you. I’d marry you. I’d do whatever you wanted me to do, Takumi.”
He’d never seen his uncle cry before. Until now, he wasn’t sure if there was anything in the world that could make his uncle cry. But there is, and he’s probably polishing off their slice of cake in the building behind them. Shion burns at the thought of Aotsuki being his weakness.
It isn’t fair.
“You were my first friend,” Shion says quietly, trying to control the ache in his throat and the oncoming tears, “you’re everything to me. I won’t ask for anything else again. Can’t you give me this, uncle?”
Takumi doesn’t protest when Shion kisses him again. What little fight he had melts away and he lets Shion take what he wants. It’s his birthday, after all. He owes him this much.