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He keeps kneading Suguru’s shoulders, even after it’s clear that Suguru isn’t going to respond. He’s sitting blank and slumped on the couch, his shirt too loose, like a sail that’s lost wind and collapsed. Satoru says his name to silence.
“Suguru.”
In the reflection on the window, he can’t even see himself at all. It’s just Suguru gleaming there, a picture, flat, the glass as black as misery.
—
The radio is playing softly, oldies, from the bathroom sink. He runs the water until it’s steaming and wonders how much they could fix if he simply boiled Suguru, just a little, like an egg. Sometimes heat is enough to denature a protein, make it change its form. Suguru’s old form made more sense to him.
“Okay, sweetheart,” he says, turning to the shape sitting listlessly on the floor.
Satoru works the sweat-damp shirt from his boyfriend’s back, pressing a quick kiss to the nape of his neck, and when they’re both undressed he carries Suguru into the tub. They sink together like a bad idea. “Not so bad, see?” he says, as Suguru starts to breathe heavily through his mouth.
This is the music they used to dance to, preparing vegetables in the kitchen. Onions and peppers, the little bulbs of garlic like pearls cradled tenderly in Suguru’s hands. They had it down to an art, Satoru washing down produce and passing it to Suguru, with his long fingers so quick and capable on the knife. His tenderness, his violence. When Satoru was getting ready to take him home from the hospital, the first thing he did was get rid of all the knives. Then, to be safe, the chopsticks.
Nina Simone is singing and Satoru is kissing Suguru’s knuckles one by one as he cleans them, finger by finger, burying a kiss in the center of his palms. “You’ve got this,” he says, as Suguru’s breathing gets sharper, uneven. “It’s going to be all right.”
Sometimes he wonders. Through the steam there’s the gleam of Suguru’s back, the ropey muscles diminished, fallen away. Suguru has fallen away. Satoru soaps the thin line of his arm.
The cuts have healed now, mostly. He knows Suguru kept tearing at them in the hospital, that they had to bind his hands. The first time Satoru visited, Suguru told him not to come back. His face was so white, a slice like the moon, and his eyes were dark with shame. He never looked Satoru in the eyes. “This isn’t how I want you to remember me,” he said.
“I don’t have to remember you,” Satoru said, hands in his pockets. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re coming home.”
And now he was home, or something in his body was home, and Satoru was combing jojoba oil through his hair. Something about Suguru’s hair had always enchanted him, that dark curtain. It was like a screen before the movie played, or just after. The beginning of the story, or the end. Satoru kisses the crook of his neck, then the soft space behind his ear. “I know they took care of you at the hospital,” he says, “but I missed this. Taking care of you.” Suguru’s shoulders hitch.
He should have done a better job, is the thing. They were both so consumed with work, not talking to each other, not listening, but Satoru should have seen. Should have realized the takeout he brought back was going uneaten; should have noticed Suguru murmuring to himself; should have caught the repetitive little rituals, the exhaustion under his eyes. He was spraying himself with disinfectant constantly, hands raw and chafed, and when Satoru touched him he flinched. But he always hated to be nannied. Hated the implication that Satoru was the strong one. Satoru never wanted him to feel that way.
Suguru was strong. Suguru was the strongest person he knew.
He dries Suguru’s dark hair with a towel, rolling it between his hands. How much has it grown since Suguru’s been away? An inch? Two inches? He steadies Suguru as he helps him up, disguising it as a slow dance; not nannying him, but loving him. Billie Holiday is singing now, so sweet and baleful, and Suguru smells like home again, and something in Satoru aches with sweetness just thinking about it, just holding him, happiness candied in his mouth. “Missed you so much, baby,” he says, softly kissing the crook of Suguru’s neck. “Missed everything.”
Missed the person he used to know; missed the endless days in the hospital, the love of his life restrained and medicated; missed the nightmares that kept Suguru awake in the months before it happened, finding him smoking apologetically in the living room, the window just cracked open, his arm hanging loosely out. “Sorry, Toru,” he’d said, and Satoru didn’t even know what he was apologizing for—not really; not yet.
Missed the first weeks of their relationship, those lazy kisses, sake-smelling, both of them hopelessly drunk and very much in love. “Your smile changes when you’re drunk,” Satoru had said, touching it with his finger, like he was the one drawing it there. Shiguru had said nothing back, just rested his chin in his hands, smiling, smiling.
Missed nights coming home to the warm lamp at Suguru’s bedside, their apartment window shining in the dark. He was always reading the most depressing philosophers. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
“You read this for pleasure?” Satoru asked, poking at the book like it might bite.
Suguru’s mouth twitched. Satoru thought it was a smile.
“Not quite,” he said.
Satoru settled next to him, one arm casually slung over his shoulder.
“You know, some people go home and kick back and watch Great British Bakeoff.”
He really was smiling now, lopsided.
“Satoru,” he said, “when have we ever been some people?”
That was fair enough.
—
So now Suguru is cradled against his chest, hair damp and kissable, and they’re watching Great British Bakeoff. The window is open, the chill of late fall, the smell of broken leaves, and Satoru’s heart is breaking, breaking. “If you don’t like it,” he says, rubbing Suguru’s hands, “we can always change it.”
He’ll never understand it, really. He keeps touching Suguru all the time to remind himself he’s real, he’s home, but his hands especially, tracing the silky lines of his knuckles, the creases in his palms, like he’ll finally get it, how Suguru could have done it. The hateful notes he’d written out with those lovely hands, deranged; the gashes he’d made up his arms, the lines brutal and unforgiving. How did Satoru miss the violence? The tenderness he had known. It was all he saw in the months when Suguru was away, the pictures that ran when he lay down, alone in bed, and watched the ceiling. He doesn’t know when Suguru stopped forgiving himself.
But he hadn’t answered when Satoru called his name, and he hadn’t opened the bathroom door, and when Satoru had broken it down and found him inside, half-conscious on the bathroom tiles, retching—when Satoru had found—
When Satoru had—
“Change it to what?”
Satoru startles, despite himself. Suguru rarely speaks anymore. His voice is still light and soft, recognizable, but rasping. The way he talks Satoru always expects to see bruises, plum-dark, on the sides of his throat.
“Change it to what, Satoru?” he repeats, and there’s urgency in the question now. His eyes are half-lidded but sharp, his chin tilted up, the suggestion of something defiant in him still. It makes Satoru feel absurdly hopeful, and terrified. He doesn’t want to be the one who lets Suguru down again.
Pictures again: the bathroom floor, red smeared on the tile. The strange angles of his body, one arm outstretched and reaching. The soft fanning of his hair. Black, miserable.
He threads his fingers through Suguru’s and squeezes.
“Something better,” he says.