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He’s dead sometimes. Not all the time. In the middle of the night, in the middle of breakfast, Satoru will lose him—eyes glazed, shoulders slumped—before he comes back, bleary.
Terrifying, those little moments, although Satoru always plays them up. Our narcoleptic friend, he calls Suguru, raising his eyebrows at Shoko, who just looks tired. For his part, Suguru only seems faintly annoyed. It’s the loss of control he dislikes, undignified. He’s never been good with losing control.
So it’s Satoru who suffers, for the most part. Those unseen moments when it’s just the two of them in bed, one dead, the other clutching his cooling body. “Sugu,” he mutters, a little frantic, like a spell. He’s always afraid this is the end, the moment they really lose each other.
It’s the coming back that matters, of course. What Suguru’s never been willing to do before.
It’s a start.
—
The heat is dazzling, the wideness of this blue day in Okinawa, and his Suguru is tired. He is small, infirm. Satoru rubs sun cream into his warm shoulders and lingers there, just holding him, inhaling the warm space at the crook of his neck, the place where only Satoru fits.
“It’s nice, isn’t it, to get away?” He passes Suguru a glass of guava juice and watches him grimace.
Suguru is unbelievably thin. His face is white and pinched; his collarbones are sharp, in a way that reminds Satoru of teeth. “Tastes like curses,” he muttered once, picking at his rice, and Satoru never pressed him. He makes smoothies for Suguru, something bright, with pineapple, and gives him a straw so it never has to touch his tongue. Some inverted fairytale, a story Satoru read when he was young: if you eat the fruit of the underworld, you stay there forever. So if Suguru wants to stay alive, here in the overworld… does that make any sense? He lives off smoothies, nicotine gum, tiny bottles of Ensure. And Satoru, for his part, lives mostly off Suguru.
They’ve reached a bizarre status quo back in Tokyo, the two of them living like college roommates in Satoru’s apartment, splitting chores and bickering mildly and fucking. The fucking, of course, isn’t very mild at all. It’s mostly Satoru’s space, Suguru seeming reluctant to impinge on it, only placing a framed photo of his girls on the dresser. He studies it for a long time. The next day it’s turned down.
He doesn’t know if Suguru wants to be here. Selfish of him, probably, to ask. There are many days when Suguru doesn’t get up, gazing listlessly up at the ceiling, and Satoru calls out sick and crawls into bed with him, just holding him. He helps Suguru to the bath and soaps his scrawny back, combs out reams of dark wet hair. When Satoru kisses his temples, he smells like yuzu.
Suguru never thanks him, never complains. He doesn’t know if it’s physical or spiritual, what happens on those mornings when Suguru’s body doesn’t work. Being dead probably isn’t good for the constitution.
It’s never been explicit but he isn’t stupid, and Suguru isn’t either. The way Satoru looks at him, worrying his lip, and asks if he’s slept. The smoothies, the little bottles of Ensure he carries in his pockets. The way he holds Suguru at night, arms wrapped close around his waist, chin tucked over his shoulder like the clasp of a lock. The stiff way Suguru breathes, like he’s trying not to let something in.
He lies back on the sand, bringing Suguru down with him, the way he always does. The summer heat bears down like a bad idea. And Suguru dies in his arms for a little while again.
—
“You know,” Suguru mutters, “nothing’s changed.”
They’re sitting under a cabana, watching children run by, sun-reddened, tearing up the sand. Satoru is shoving udon in his mouth; Suguru is tapping impatiently on a bottle of Ensure, eyes unfocused, looking slightly past it.
He could mean anything when he says that. Nothing’s changed: they’re still fifteen again, snorting with laughter, splitting a pair of earbuds between them. Nothing’s changed: they’re twenty-four, each of them pretending the other doesn’t exist. Nothing’s changed: they’re sixteen, huddled under Satoru’s sheets, and Suguru’s breath is wet, a kiss or a wound. “It’ll be okay,” Satoru told him, even though it was never okay again.
When he’s with Suguru he finds it hard to remember how time works. They’ve been so many people, both of them, impossible to reconcile. The reckless boys inside of them, the horror stories crammed next to them, memories that aren’t even theirs to keep. The bottles of antacid he used to keep in his room in case Suguru ever ran out, on a curse-sick night—he kept them the way other teenagers kept love letters. Never mentioned he had them, because he was a coward then, scared of nothing except his own feelings. Wildly, wildly afraid.
He doesn’t even know which version of Suguru he wants. He doesn’t know which version of himself he can give Suguru.
“I’d kill them all,” Suguru says, gesturing with the bottle in his hand. The children, shrieking, bright against the surf. “But I’m tired.”
Ah. So that’s what he means.
—
Touch is easy. When they open their mouths they argue, but this is easy: wound in bed together, Satoru sucking kisses into Suguru’s throat, tracing the bow of his ribs. He wishes he couldn’t feel them but it’s comforting, too, knowing that the same bones are in there, the person he loved when he was sixteen is in there. He presses his palm there, fingers spread, like they’re touching hands through glass.
Four years after he left, Satoru saw him on the street in Shibuya, robes drifting behind him, residuals drifting like his robes. He hid behind a building and pretended not to see him. Coward, baby: he leaned against the brick and Suguru’s cursed energy bubbled up inside his nose, like he’d choked on seltzer. He always tasted like laughter.
Satoru captures his mouth, kissing urgently. “Haa,” Suguru breathes, arching his back, and Satoru feels like he’s won something, or maybe just stopped losing it. He buries his fingers in Suguru’s hair and yanks.
“Satoru,” he hisses.
“That’s right,” Satoru says. “That’s right, baby. Say my name.”
“Ahh—”
Then Suguru dies for a while and Satoru keeps kissing, frantic, unwilling to relinquish him. He’s still warm, for a while he’s still warm, and his mouth is tender and wet. If Satoru closes his eyes he isn’t dead at all. He comes back vivid and gasping, like he’s trying to inhale Satoru, and Satoru wants him to. He wants to follow into Suguru’s chest, kept like a curse.
“You’re so beautiful,” Satoru whispers, petting his tangled hair. He smells like sweat and seawater, a tang of salt and blood. When his hands feel under Satoru’s shirt, he breathes out sharply, full of need. “Sometimes I think you haven’t changed at all,” he murmurs between kisses, dragging Satoru’s bottom lip between his teeth. “You still feel the same. Skinny dandelion.”
He’s forgotten they used to call him that, Suguru and Shoko. Or not forgotten, exactly, but placed it aside. Dandelion. They ruffled his hair and he whacked at their hands. He pretended to be so mad but secretly it pleased him. He’d never been close enough to anyone to be teased before.
“Like you can talk,” he says.
Suguru smiles, lopsided.
“I’m skinny,” he says, “but I’m no dandelion.” Then he bites Satoru’s shoulder, hard. Blood creeps down his mouth.
—
Satoru doesn’t know why Suguru always needs to disguise his love in violence. It feels safer, maybe, something he can pretend to have pretended—a gift he can take back, if it’s wrapped in teeth.
In the months since Suguru has come back to him, almost everything has been like that. Satoru has been tender like a lover, helping Suguru undress, washing his scarred chest, his thin arms; Suguru has been tender like a wound, all blood and hurt.
And still he remembers that first evening together. How he’d woken up with his head in Suguru’s lap, soft fingers in his hair, ministering, untangling. Probably Suguru was a little crazy from being dead, but Satoru was a little crazy from being in a box, so that seemed all right.
“S’guru?” he’d asked, bleary.
Suguru didn’t respond, rubbing balm over Satoru’s cracked lips. His touch stung and Satoru couldn’t tell yet if it was like the sting of new skin or scar tissue ripped open. He was half delirious still, remembering time in the box he might have dreamed, visions keeping him company. But even in his dreams Suguru had never tended to him. Even in delirium he was a pragmatist.
“Go back to sleep,” Suguru said, kissing his forehead. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
But he hadn’t been. Not in a way that mattered.
—
“You left me, you know.”
They’re curled in bed, the sun creeping up and Suguru kissing the curve of his back, and Satoru feels so much sadder than he thought he would.
“The fact that you came back,” he says, “doesn’t change the fact you left me.”
The hotel sheets are scratchy, the air conditioning like a moist breath. Yesterday he loved Okinawa and now he thinks he hates Okinawa and Suguru is still kissing, kissing.
“You’re going to ignore every word I say, aren’t you?” Satoru says, stung.
The kissing slows.
“If you had even looked at me in the time when I was drowning,” Suguru says deliberately, “you would have thought I was waving hello.” He lets those words sit in the air for a while, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist.
“That’s not fair,” Satoru protests.
Suguru sits up, stretching indulgently. He’s so scrawny Satoru can see the skin shifting over the bones in his chest.
“No,” he agrees. “It’s not. And it wasn’t then.”
“You have no idea how hard I fought to protect you,” Satoru argues. “For ten years after you left I kept them off your back. You can’t pretend I didn’t protect you.”
“That was not the time to protect me,” he says. “The time to protect me was before. And now you get to protect me because I’m weak, and I’m safer for you when I’m weak. You prefer me that way.” He smiles at Satoru, one of the chilling smiles he’d learned to give after defecting. Serene, dishonest. “But you tried,” he says. “You’re right. Would you like a reward for that?”
Satoru stares at him, breathing hard through his mouth.
“I don’t know why I thought this trip was a good idea,” he says. “You’re such an asshole.”
“It’s why we get along so well,” Suguru agrees, and then his eyes go blank and he dies again.
—
They don’t talk for two days.
On the second day, he wakes to the sound of Suguru crying into his pillow, quiet and furious. He pretends not to notice.
If you had even looked at me—
It’s not like that, Satoru tells himself. He’s just giving Suguru dignity. Privacy. Trusting him with his own pain.
Of course that’s what Satoru thought ten years ago too.
—
It’s evening when he finds Suguru on the balcony, smoking in his robes. He looks debauched. His eyes are half-lidded, fading bruises on his collarbone, the imprint of Satoru’s teeth. Pink dashes on his forehead, marks another man left.
“Terrible for your health,” Satoru offers, passing him a straw and a bottle of Ensure. Suguru gives him a crooked smile.
“I’ve heard dying is like that too,” he says, cracking the seal on the cap.
Oh, it could be easy. Why isn’t it easy? The sex is fantastic; the heat lingers between them even now, Satoru intimately aware of Suguru’s body, the shape of his thighs, his smell. He smells, even now, like Satoru. Possessiveness makes his throat ache.
“Can I sit?”
“I don’t own the balcony,” Suguru says. “Go right ahead.” He sips unhappily, making a face.
“What does it taste like?”
“Chemicals,” Suguru says. “Which is better than food, which tastes like rot.”
“Kind of ironic,” he says, settling in the deck chair. “Since you’re the one who’s dead.”
“I’m dead, but I’m not rotten,” Suguru says. “You should know—you’re the one who keeps me clean.” He laughs softly. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe the jury’s out on how rotten I really am.”
Satoru reaches over, fingers curling around Suguru’s cool hand.
“You’re not rotten, Suguru-chan,” he says quietly.
For a moment Suguru studies him, eyes nearly shut. Then he releases a thin plume of smoke through his teeth.
“I get the impression that you thought this would be better than it is,” he says. “Whereas I thought this would be worse than it is. So theoretically—” he shrugs—“it all works out.”
Satoru considers this. Some part of himself, a wistful childish part, always thought their problems could be solved if they were back together again. If he could just get Suguru alone in a room, genuinely alone, without the company of all his horrible ideas, his rancid thoughts. But here they are, the two of them, together and rotting.
He brings Suguru’s hand to his lips and kisses it.
“It’s still better,” he says. “To be with you.”
Suguru laughs in his soft way, surprised.
“You say that after getting out of a box,” he says. “Saying I’m better company than you doesn’t mean I’m good company.”
“Good’s overrated, maybe,” Satoru says. He leans back in his chair, testing it. “You do have competition, you know. I could be at the school. I could be catching up with Megs. I could be putting Shibuya back together.”
Suguru snorts.
“You hate Shibuya.”
“I hate Shibuya,” Satoru agrees. “Point is, I have options. I’m not here because I’m bored and I’m not here because I don’t want to be alone. I’m here because I want to be with you, specifically.”
Suguru smokes quietly, his hand trembling. It’s past dusk, the dark beach stretching out below them, and anyone else, Satoru thinks, would have missed it. But he isn’t anyone. There’s something touchingly human about it, the way Suguru’s body fails him. He’s probably going to die again in a few minutes.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Satoru says. “We spent ten years not talking about it; I’m very confident in our ability to not talk about it. We can just have sex, or—” he shrugs. “We could kiss. I could touch you. I like touching you.” He brushes his fingers against the back of Suguru’s neck, pushing damp hair from his skin, and then he settles there, ankles crossed, stroking Suguru’s thin back.
He still remembers touching Suguru for the first time, when they fought. The tension in Suguru’s muscled back, his surprise. He felt so strong. Satoru wasn’t used to thinking of other people as strong. He wasn’t used to thinking of other people at all. Suguru was the first person who was real to him. For a long time Suguru was the only person who was real to him.
And now he’s still real. He just isn’t strong.
“You can’t pretend I haven’t done what I’ve done,” Suguru says, after a moment. “I’m still the person who did those things.”
“I know,” he says. “But you can’t pretend you’re not the person who hadn’t done those things yet, either. And, you know.” He smiles at Suguru. “You could be gentle with me, baby. You don’t have to remind me all the time that you’re different. I won’t forget.”
“You will, though,” Suguru says, his voice breaking. “You do all the time, or you wouldn’t touch me like that.”
“Do you want me to stop touching you?”
Suguru shakes his head, leaning into Satoru’s hand. Satoru rubs his neck gently with his thumb. There’s something happening in Suguru’s throat, words that keep catching there, and his eyes have lost their gloss.
“It’s going to happen again soon,” he says. “Will you hold me when it happens?”
“Always,” Satoru says. And when Suguru falls into him, soft and trusting, it feels for a moment like a night in Okinawa when they were fifteen, Suguru leaning against his shoulder. Like nothing ever happened to them at all.