Archive of Our Own

     The convenience store by the canal starts steaming pork buns around four o'clock in December, which happens to be right when patrol lets out. Suo has started timing their walks home around it. He has never said so, and Sakura has never asked why they always seem to pass by just as a fresh batch comes out of the steamer.

     They eat sitting on the low concrete wall outside. Today Sakura has two. He holds the first in both hands, close to his chest, and tries to talk around a mouthful of it, which is a losing battle: pork buns are mostly fluff, and the fluff takes up all the room.

     "...and then he goes, 'a fate worse than death,'" Sakura says, once he has swallowed enough to be understood. "And I figured that was the scary part, right? But then he says, 'Not death.' Like he wanted to make sure I got that. 'Death is too simple.'"

     Suo has been watching a delivery truck try to back into the alley across the street, three attempts and counting. He turns his head.

     "Bà said that? When?"

     "At the shrine. When I went to ask them about…" Sakura waves the pork bun, which covers a lot of ground. "Stuff. It was the second time, actually. The first time was way back, on the bridge, before you and me were… you know." His ears go faintly pink. He still isn't used to saying it, and he's still a little pleased every time he does. "Together or whatever." He takes another bite and chews, thoughtful. "That one was shorter. Something about how he'd know if I ever hurt you, wherever I was. Before I knew it myself, whatever that means."

     He says it the way he'd tell Suo that the vending machine by the gym ate his coins again. There's no complaint in it. As far as Sakura is concerned, a man is allowed to say whatever he wants to the guy dating his kid, and, if Sakura had a kid like Suo, he'd probably say worse. He'd just say it louder and with less style.

     "I see." Suo's expression doesn't change. He has had a great deal of practice keeping his face just how he wants it to be seen, and he keeps it that way now: pleasant, mildly interested, a little amused. Underneath, he's quietly dismayed. He loves his father dearly, and he's fairly sure his father has made a mistake.

     "Don't make that face."

     Suo smiles lightly. "Am I making a face?"

     Sakura rolls his eyes and ignores the question. "It's not a big deal. He wasn't wrong."

     Sakura has been chewing on that last part for far longer than the pork bun. He looks down at the bite marks, then out at the canal, where the water is flat and brown and carrying a plastic bag very slowly toward the sea.

     He has never done this before: not the dating, not the boyfriend thing, not any of it. Nirei has a tabbed section in his notebook, and Umemiya has opinions, and the couples on the train all seem to know some set of rules that Sakura has apparently been kept in the dark about. He knows how to fight. He does not know what you're supposed to do with someone once they're yours, or which of the hundred stupid things he does every day might be the one that hurts Suo without him noticing.

     "I just don't know what counts," he says finally. It comes out rougher than he means it to. "Hurting you. I've never… I don't know what I'm doing, okay? What if I do something dumb and I don't even notice, and you're just—" He scowls at the canal. "Being nice about it. Like you do."

     For a moment Suo doesn't answer, and Sakura is suddenly, horribly sure that he has said too much.

     Then Suo laughs, very softly, and bumps their shoulders together.

     "Haruka. Nothing you do is going to hurt me."

     "You can't know that."

     "I can, actually." Suo takes the second pork bun out of the paper bag, which Sakura was absolutely going to eat, breaks it in half, and hands one half back. "You're the most straightforward person I've ever met. You say what you mean, usually at full volume while glaring at somebody. When you're happy, your ears go red. When you're upset, you punch a wall or you leave. You couldn't trick anyone if you tried."

     "I could trick people." Sakura sounds slightly indignant.

     "You could not," Suo says with enormous fondness. "The things that really hurt come from someone you trusted hiding what they meant. You can't hide anything. It's one of my favorite things about you."

     Sakura opens his mouth to argue and finds he has nothing to argue with. His ears, the traitors, are going red. Suo watches them do it with open satisfaction.

     "See?"

     "Shut up," Sakura mutters, and eats his half of the bun in three furious bites so he doesn't have to say anything else.

     He feels lighter, though. Suo said it so easily, and Suo doesn't lie to him, not about real things. If Suo says it's fine, then maybe it is fine. Maybe he doesn't have to work out every rule by himself.

     Suo walks Sakura home and waits at the bottom of the stairs until his door shuts. Then he turns around and walks back up the hill toward his own house, a good deal faster than usual.

     Suo isn't angry with his father. He doesn't think he could be. What he feels, somewhere around the third streetlight, is disappointment, and, in eight years, neither of his parents has ever given him cause to feel that before.

     The house is dark except for the kitchen.

     Hua Cheng is at the table with a book open in front of him and a cup of tea gone cold at his elbow. He hasn't turned on the overhead light, only the small lamp by the window, and he reads in its yellow circle half-sprawled in his chair, turning pages with the idle air of a man killing time until his husband comes home.

     "You're late," Hua Cheng says without glancing up. "Gēge went to the store. He said to tell you there's rice."

     "I walked Haruka home."

     "Mm." A page turns.

     Suo takes off his shoes. He hangs up his coat. He washes his hands at the kitchen sink and dries them, folds the towel in thirds and hangs it back on its hook. Then, he pulls out the chair across from his father and sits.

     "You threatened him," he says.

     Now Hua Cheng looks up. His face is as unreadable as ever. Suo has watched him wear that same calm expression through joys and sorrows, truths and lies alike

     "Twice," Hua Cheng says. He closes the book over one finger to keep his place in it. "He told you?"

     "He told me like it was nothing. He wasn't upset about it, bà. He thought it was fair." Suo folds his hands on the table. "He thinks you were right to do it."

     "I was."

     "That isn't what I'm upset about."

     Hua Cheng tilts his head a fraction and waits.

     Suo looks down at his own hands for a moment, then back up at Hua Cheng’s face.

     "He asked me what counts as hurting me. He has been worrying about that since you two talked at the shrine. Weeks, bà. He doesn't know what a boyfriend is supposed to do, because nobody ever showed him. Nobody ever showed him anything. He learned to cook rice from the back of the bag, and how to get through a fever alone, and how to make friends at fifteen when everybody else learned at five." His voice stays level with some effort. "And when he finally got up the nerve to come to the two of you for help, because you're the only example he has, you told him what you'd do to him if he got it wrong."

     The lamp hums. Somewhere outside, a bicycle bell rings twice and fades into the distance.

     "He doesn't have anyone in his corner," Suo says. "He has me. He has Umemiya-san and Kotoha-san and Nirei-kun, and he doesn't know how to lean on any of us yet. He tries so hard. He's trying to do this right all by himself, and he's scared, and he won't say so. And what he got from us was a warning."

     He runs out of words and finds that his hands have tightened on each other hard enough to whiten the knuckles. He makes them let go.

     Hua Cheng doesn't say anything for a while. He sets the book down, face down, and stares at it as he thinks. His thumb moves slowly along the edge of the cover.

     "I won't take it back," Hua Cheng says at last.

     "I didn't ask you to."

     "I know you didn't." Hua Cheng finally lifts his eye to Suo's. "I need you to understand that, Xiao Fei. For me, for your diē and I, you come first. You will always come first. If that boy ever hurts you, nothing he has been through will excuse it, and I'll keep my word." He says it without heat. "But you're right. I forgot what it's like."

     "What what's like?"

     "Having nobody."

     Suo’s eyes widen fractionally.

     Hua Cheng almost never talks about before. Suo knows scraps of it: that his father grew up somewhere poor and far away, a long time ago; that nobody wanted him; that there's a reason he's so careful about small things like the turned-down quilt, the spare toothbrush, and the door left open at night. Suo has never asked, out of respect. After all, you shouldn’t make someone pay for being kind to you by asking what it cost them.

     "When I was small, younger than you were when you came here, I didn't have anyone." Hua Cheng says, "No family, no friends. People looked at me like something they'd stepped in. I learned early that if I wanted anything, I'd have to take it, and, if I got hurt, nobody was coming to help." He turns the cold cup of tea a quarter-turn on the table. "Then one day, someone was kind to me. He saved me, even though I'd done nothing to earn it, and he didn't want anything in return, not that I would have anything to give even if he did. I don't think he even remembered it for a very long time."

     Suo feels his mouth twitch, gaze already softening.

     "I held on to that for years. When things were bad, and they were bad for a long while, I'd think, That person is out there somewhere. Someone like that exists. It was enough to get up for. It was enough to keep going until I could find him again." The corner of his mouth quirks upwards. "That took some time."

     "Diē," Suo says quietly, reverently.

     "Who else?" Hua Cheng spreads one hand flat on the table. "I can't be that for Sakura Haruka. Neither can your diē, not in the way he needs. He doesn't need a parent scolding him into doing it right or lecturing him on his well-being. He needs something to hold on to, someone he can look at on a bad day and think, That's real. I didn't make it up." He holds Suo's gaze. "That may have to be you."

     Suo has to look away. The kitchen window is black, and in it, he can see the lamp, his father, and himself. The table gleams even in the reflection. Suo thinks of Haruka on the wall outside the convenience store, pork bun clutched in both hands, saying I don't know what I'm doing, okay? like it was a confession of something shameful.

     "I think I already am," he says.

     "Then be careful with him," Hua Cheng says. "Being the reason someone gets up in the morning weighs more than you'd think."

     There's a soft sound from the hallway.

     Both of them turn. Xie Lian is standing in the kitchen doorway with his coat still on and a shopping bag in each hand, a leek sticking out of the left one at a jaunty angle. He's wearing an extremely apologetic smile.

     "I didn't mean to listen," he says. "You were both being so serious that I didn't want to interrupt, and then it seemed rude to interrupt, and then it seemed even ruder not to…" He trails off sheepishly.

     "Gēge," Hua Cheng says, and his face has changed completely. "How long have you been standing there?"

     Xie Lian winces. "Well… all of it?"

     Hua Cheng closes his visible eye. Suo doesn’t quite laugh, but it's a near thing.

     Xie Lian sets the bags on the counter very carefully, and comes over to the table. He puts one hand on top of Suo's head, the way he used to when Suo was small enough that his palm covered most of it, and leaves it there.

     "Sakura-kun is ours too, now," he says simply. "Isn't he?"

     Suo nods. He doesn't trust his voice.

     "Then he shouldn't have to do any of it alone." Xie Lian smiles down at him, and then over at Hua Cheng, a little reproachful and very fond. "Leave it to me."

     Hua Cheng sighs. "Gēge, what are you going to do?"

     "I don't know yet," Xie Lian says cheerfully, and goes to put the groceries away.

     The crane is sitting in the middle of Sakura's table when he gets home from patrol the next afternoon.

     He stops in the doorway with one shoe off.

     It's a paper crane, small enough to sit in his palm, folded from thick cream-colored paper that looks too nice to fold anything out of. Its wings are perfectly even. Its neck is perfectly straight. It stands on the bare wood innocuously, and Sakura is immediately alarmed.

     His door was locked. He checked. He always checks.

     Sakura takes off his other shoe, then crosses the room slowly and looks at the crane for a long moment before he picks it up, as if it might explode. Nothing happens. It's only paper. There's writing on the inside of one wing, showing faintly through, and, when he unfolds it (badly, tearing a corner, because he has no idea how paper cranes work), the writing turns out to be a note.

     The handwriting is the most beautiful he has ever seen. It flows across the paper in long, even strokes, as if the brush never once had to stop and think.

Dear Sakura-kun,

Would you meet me by the market near the bridge? There is something I would like to ask of you.

- Xie Lian

     Sakura reads it twice. His stomach drops through the floor.

     Something happened. That's the only reason Xie Lian would write to him instead of having Suo pass a message along at school, right? Something happened to Suo, or to Hua Cheng, or to the house, and Xie Lian is being calm about it in his beautiful handwriting because that's what adults do when things are bad. Something I would like to ask of you means they need help. They need him, and Sakura is standing in his apartment holding a torn paper crane like an idiot.

     He's back out the door with his shoes half on before he finishes the thought.

     He runs all the way: down the stairs, down the hill, along the canal path, and past the convenience store and the school gate. A woman walking her dog flattens herself against a wall to let him by. He takes the last corner so fast that he nearly goes into a stack of crates, catches himself on a lamppost, and skids out into the market with his lungs on fire and his fists already half-closed—

     —and stops.

     Xie Lian is standing at the greengrocer's stall with a paper bag on his hip, laughing.

     He's giggling at something the greengrocer said, one hand over his mouth, eyes creased at the corners. The greengrocer, a stout old man Sakura has never once seen smile, is grinning back at him as if they've known each other for years. The tomato lady has come over from her own stall to join in. As Sakura watches, she pats Xie Lian's arm and says something, and Xie Lian puts a hand to his heart and bows to her, earnestly.

     "Next time," Sakura hears him say. "I promise. The daikon, the persimmons, and a bag of your tomatoes. I'll bring my husband to carry them."

     Nobody is bleeding. Nothing is on fire. Xie Lian ...is buying vegetables?

     Sakura stands at the edge of the market with his chest heaving and the crane crumpled in his fist, with absolutely no idea what to do with the adrenaline currently flooding every inch of him.

     Then Xie Lian looks up and sees him.

     His whole face lights up. "Sakura-kun!"

     He hands his paper bag to the greengrocer, says something quick and apologetic, and crosses the street in a flash. Sakura only has time to register that a grown man is very nearly skipping toward him in broad daylight before Xie Lian throws both arms around him and hugs him.

     Sakura goes rigid. Every muscle he owns locks up at once.

     If Xie Lian notices, he doesn't mind. He hugs Sakura tight and warm, rocking a little, and, when he finally lets go, he doesn't let go all the way. He keeps one hand on Sakura's shoulder, puts the other on top of Sakura's head, and pets him, ruffling the two-tone hair back and forth as though Sakura were a large dog that has done something very good.

     "You came so fast," Xie Lian says, delighted. "Did you run? Your face is all red. You didn't have to run."

     Sakura opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.

     He's like Umemiya-senpai. Sakura huffs at the thought. They have the same total disregard for personal space and the same happy certainty that they’re welcome wherever they put themselves. Umemiya would have hugged him too, and grinned, and asked if he'd eaten, and Sakura would have stood there exactly like this, with no idea where to put his arms.

     "Is Suo okay?" he manages.

     Xie Lian blinks. "Sun Fei? He's fine. He's at home doing his homework, I think." His face falls. "Oh, no. Did my note frighten you? I'm so sorry. I only meant…"

     "You said you needed to ask me something."

     "I did, and I do." Xie Lian beams at him again, apparently fully recovered. "I wanted to ask if you'd spend the afternoon with me."

     Sakura stares at him. "...What?"

     "The afternoon," Xie Lian repeats patiently. "With me. If you aren't busy. Are you busy?"

     Sakura is not busy. He has never been less busy in his life. He's standing in the middle of the market with a crumpled crane in one hand and his heart still trying to beat its way out between his ribs, and every vendor on the street is watching them with open interest.

     "...No," he replies.

     "Wonderful!" Xie Lian beams and takes him by the hand.

     What follows are the strangest two hours of Sakura's life.

     The first thing he figures out is that Xie Lian buys him things. He buys Sakura a taiyaki from the stand by the bridge, and then a second one when Sakura finishes the first too fast. He buys a cup of hot amazake from a cart because it's cold out and Sakura isn't wearing a scarf, and a roasted sweet potato from the old man with the truck because Sakura looked at it for slightly too long. By the third stall, Sakura has learned not to look at anything for slightly too long. By the fifth, he has learned it doesn't matter, because Xie Lian also buys whatever Sakura doesn't look at, on the grounds that he might want it later.

     "I can pay," Sakura protests yet again, digging in his pocket.

     "I know you can," Xie Lian says, and pays anyway.

     Xie Lian talks the whole time, though never about anything important. He talks about the persimmons, which are very good this year, and about the greengrocer's granddaughter, who is learning the shamisen and hates it. He talks about a cat he saw on the roof of the post office this morning, which he was fairly sure was stuck, except it turned out to be sunbathing and was very offended when he tried to help. Sakura doesn't have to say anything back. He isn't sure he could. He walks next to Xie Lian with his hands full of food and lets the talking wash over him, and, after a while, his shoulders start to come down from around his ears.

     Then they pass the arcade, and Xie Lian stops dead.

     "Oh," he says, in a voice of pure wonder. "Sakura-kun. What are those?"

     Four boxes stand just inside the open front of the arcade, glowing pink and blue, chock full of stuffed animals.

     "The claw machines?" Sakura frowns slightly. "You put money in and try to grab a prize."

     "Can anyone do it?"

     "Anyone can try." Sakura considers. "Nobody ever really wins."

     "Will you show me?"

     That is how Sakura ends up in front of a machine full of fat, round, plush ducks, explaining to a grown man how a joystick works. Xie Lian listens with his hands clasped under his chin and his eyes huge, like a kid pressed against the window of a sweet shop.

     Sakura feeds in a coin. He lines the claw up over a duck near the front, one with its head tipped to the side, and hits the button. The claw drops. It closes around the duck, lifts it about four centimeters, wobbles, and drops it again, which is exactly what claw machines are for.

     "See?" Sakura says. "Nobody wins."

     "But you were so close!" Xie Lian is genuinely indignant on his behalf. "May I try?"

     Sakura steps aside. Xie Lian puts in a coin with great ceremony. He takes hold of the joystick very gently and nudges the claw a careful inch to the left.

     The machine makes a dreadful noise, a long, descending electronic whine that no claw machine has made before. The pink lights flicker. The blue lights go out entirely. The claw jerks sideways, slams into the glass with a loud clank, and hangs there, twitching. Something inside the cabinet pops, and a thin curl of smoke drifts up out of the coin slot.

     Then the glass front panel unlatches itself, swings slowly open, and about thirty plush ducks slide out onto the floor in a soft yellow avalanche.

     Xie Lian stares at the ducks. Sakura stares at Xie Lian.

     "Oh no," Xie Lian murmurs faintly.

     The owner of the arcade comes out from behind the counter at a run. He's a thin, harried man in a cardigan, and he looks at the ducks, then at the smoke, then at the claw, which chooses that moment to fall off its cable and land on top of the pile with a final, pathetic thunk.

     Xie Lian is already bowing.

     "I'm so sorry," he says, bent nearly in half. "I'm so, so sorry. This is entirely my fault. It isn't the machine, it's me. Things like this just happen around me, and I should have known better than to touch anything with buttons. Please let me pay for the repairs. And the ducks. And anything else that's broken. Is anything else broken? I'm so sorry."

     The owner opens his mouth. Xie Lian bows again, repeatedly. The owner closes his mouth, looks at the wreck of his machine and at the man apologizing to him with such heartfelt misery, and visibly loses the will to be angry about any of it.

     "It's an old machine," he says weakly. "It's fine. Really. Please stop bowing."

     It takes another five minutes, three more apologies, and a fistful of bills that Xie Lian presses into the owner's hands over his protests before they're allowed to leave. The owner gives Sakura one of the ducks on the way out. Sakura can't tell whether it's a consolation prize or a bribe never to come back.

     Out on the sidewalk, Xie Lian lets out a long breath and covers his face with both hands.

     "I'm sorry, Sakura-kun," he says through his fingers. "I've had very bad luck for a very long time. I should have warned you."

     Sakura looks down at the duck in his hands. Its head is permanently tipped to the side.

     He thinks about the claw falling off its cable. He thinks about the smoke curling out of the coin slot, and the owner's face, and ducks pouring onto the floor as though the machine had decided to regurgitate them, and, before he can stop it, he snorts.

     Xie Lian lowers his hands.

     Sakura tries to swallow a laugh down and fails. It is loud and ugly and helpless, and he has to bend over with a hand on his knee and the duck crushed against his chest while it shakes its way out. The few people in the crowd who know Sakura (personally or by reputation) stare at him in absolute shock. Nobody has seen him laugh before.

     When he finally straightens up, wiping his eyes, Xie Lian is smiling at him so softly that Sakura has to look away.

     "There." Xie Lian claps Sakura on the shoulder. "I guess breaking the machine was worth it."

     He buys Sakura ice cream after that, to celebrate, even though it's December and the soft-serve stand is the only one on the street with no line. Sakura gets vanilla. Xie Lian gets chestnut, takes one lick, makes a face of pure joy, and immediately holds the cone out across the little table.

     "You have to try this."

     "I'm fine—"

     "Sakura-kun. Try it."

     He's holding it right under Sakura's nose. There's no way out that doesn't involve either taking a bite or physically fleeing, and Sakura is too full of taiyaki to flee. He leans forward, scowling, and bites off the top. It's sweet and cold and tastes like roasted chestnuts, and it is, annoyingly, very good.

     "Isn't it wonderful?" Xie Lian asks.

     Sakura chews. He swallows. On principle, he doesn't say yes.

     Xie Lian laughs anyway, as if he heard it, and holds out the cone for another bite.

     By the time the ice cream is gone, the sun is low and orange over the rooftops, and Sakura has eaten more in one afternoon than he usually eats in two days. He's still holding the plush duck tightly. He has a paper bag full of persimmons he doesn't remember agreeing to taking. His fingers are a little sticky.

     He still doesn't know why any of this is happening.

     They're sitting on a bench at the edge of the little park by the river, where the old men play weiqi in the summer. Xie Lian has his face tipped up toward the last of the sun, eyes half-closed, perfectly content.

     Sakura turns the duck over in his hands. He has been working up to this for an hour. He has been working up to it since the crane.

     "Why," he mutters.

     The question comes out flatter and harder than he wants. Xie Lian opens his eyes and blinks at the boy.

     "Why what, Sakura-kun?"

     "All of this." Sakura gestures with the duck at the persimmons, at the empty ice cream cups, at the afternoon. "The note. The food. The… machine." His mouth twitches; he presses it down into a thin line. "You didn't have to do any of it. I don't get what it's for."

     Xie Lian is quiet for a moment. He looks out at the river, where the light is shimmering gold on the water and, when he speaks, his voice is almost painfully gentle.

     "You're family now," he says. "You know that, don't you? You belong to us as much as Sun Fei does. San Lang knows it too, even if he says it in frightening ways." A small, rueful smile. "And I thought… you've had to do everything on your own for so long. Fei says nobody ever took you out for an afternoon just because they felt like it. Nobody bought you sweets you didn't need, or embarrassed you in front of a shopkeeper, or made you try their ice cream." He turns to look at Sakura, and his eyes are very warm. "I thought you might like to know what that's like. Having a family. Not the hard parts, not yet, but an ordinary afternoon of it."

     Sakura doesn't say anything.

     He can't say anything. Something has come up in his throat, fast and huge, and it's taking up all the room there is. His eyes sting. His chest has gone tight and hot, like a fist closing around a coal.

     Don't, he tells himself. Don't you dare. He sets his jaw. He stares straight ahead at the river and makes his face go flat and bored, the face he used to wear in every new classroom and every new kitchen, with every new set of people who were going to keep him for a while. He's good at that face. He has had years of practice.

     Xie Lian looks at him for a long moment. Then he stands up and holds out his hand.

     "Come with me," he says. "Hold on tight."

     Sakura doesn't understand, but he takes the hand, because it's there.

     The wind comes out of nowhere.

     One second the air in the park is still, and the next, a gust is roaring around them, cold and clean and smelling faintly of pine. It whips Sakura's hair into his eyes, tugs at his jacket, and yanks the bag of persimmons right out of his grip. He grabs for it, catches it, and squeezes his eyes shut against the force of the wind. For one impossible second, he feels his feet leave the ground. Then they set down again on something that isn't pavement.

     The wind dies.

     Sakura opens his eyes.

     They're standing at the foot of a flight of worn stone steps, with bare trees crowding close on either side. At the top, a torii more grey than red stands against the darkening sky, and past it sits the little wooden shrine with its patched roof. The town is somewhere below them, a scatter of lights just beginning to come on. The river is gone. The park is gone. He is at least two kilometers from where he was a second ago.

     Sakura looks down at his feet. He looks at the shrine. He looks at Xie Lian, who is brushing a leaf off his own shoulder as if nothing happened.

     He thinks about Hua Cheng, who always seems to know where Suo is without being told. He thinks about the crane on his table and the lock on his door.

     He decides, very firmly, not to think about it right now.

     "It's quieter up here," Xie Lian says, as though that explains anything. "Nobody comes by this time of day. Nobody will see."

     "See what?" Sakura's voice cracks just a little.

     Xie Lian steps closer. He doesn't touch Sakura yet. He only looks at him, gently, the same way he did on the bench.

     "It's all right to cry, Sakura-kun," he says.

     "I'm not—"

     "I know you're strong. Everyone knows you're strong. But crying has nothing to do with that." Xie Lian smiles, small and a little crooked. "I've cried more than anyone I know, and I'm still here. San Lang has cried too, though he'll deny it. Crying is only what happens when something matters more to you than you have room for right now. It doesn't make you less of anything."

     That is what breaks him.

     The first tear escapes before Sakura can stop it. He feels it spill over and run hot down his cheek, and he's mortified, absolutely mortified, and he jerks a hand up to scrub it away before anyone can see—

     Xie Lian catches his face.

     He does it gently, with both hands, palms warm against Sakura's cheeks. Xie Lian smiles at him and wipes the tear away with his thumb. He wipes away the next one, too, and the one after that. He doesn't say anything about them, and he doesn't look away, either. He just keeps brushing them off, one by one, as patient as if he has all the time in the world and nothing he would rather do with it.

     "If you ever need help," Xie Lian says softly, "with anything at all, you only have to call me. Day or night. I'll come."

     Sakura believes him. That's the worst part. After today, he would believe this man if he said he could fly, and Sakura is no longer completely sure he can't.

     "Diē?"

     The voice comes from the top of the steps. Sakura's head snaps up.

     Suo is standing in the shrine's doorway with a broom in one hand and a wash rag over his shoulder. He spots Sakura and, for a second, his face opens all at once: bright and unguarded, like a window thrown up on the first warm day.

     Then he sees Sakura's red eyes, the wet tracks on his face, and Xie Lian's hands.

     The brightness goes out as if someone hit a switch. Suo sets the broom against the doorframe very deliberately and starts down the steps, and his face has gone pleasant in the way that means somebody is about to have a very bad time.

     "Diē," he says. "What did you—"

     Sakura doesn't let him finish.

     He pulls out of Xie Lian's hands, takes the steps two at a time, and crashes into Suo halfway up, hard enough to knock him back a step. He gets both arms around him and holds on and buries his face in Suo's shoulder, because his eyes are still leaking and he would rather die than let anyone watch.

     "I'm fine," he mutters into Suo's coat. "Shut up. I'm fine. He didn't do anything."

     Suo goes still against him.

     Then, slowly, a hand comes up and settles on the back of Sakura's head. It stays there. After a moment, it starts to move, stroking down over his hair, gentle and unhurried, and Sakura feels the last of the fight drain out of Suo's shoulders.

     Over his head, Suo and Xie Lian are probably having an entire silent conversation. Sakura doesn't look up to check.

     "Okay," Suo says quietly. His hand keeps moving. "Okay, Haruka."

     They stand like that until Sakura's eyes have dried. When he finally lets go, Suo doesn't comment on the state of his face. He only reaches out, tucks a piece of Sakura's hair back behind his ear, and smiles, a little lopsided.

     "Come have dinner with us," he says. "Diē told us he got persimmons."

     "I'm holding the persimmons," Sakura says thickly.

     "Then you'd better come, or we won't have any."

     The big room upstairs smells like clean tatami and the cedar of the closet where the good futons are kept. By the time Sakura gets out of the bath, somebody has already laid two of them out side by side, close enough that there's no gap at all. Sakura is pretty sure it was Xie Lian, if he had to guess.

     Suo turns off the light. The room goes dim and blue, lit only by the streetlamp through the paper screen.

     They lie on their backs, not quite touching. Then Suo's hand finds Sakura's on the seam between the two futons, and their fingers lace together and stay.

     For a while, neither of them speaks. They can hear the faint clink of dishes from downstairs, and Xie Lian's laugh, and a low, lilting murmur that must be Hua Cheng. Sakura listens idly. He's full of dinner (dessert was persimmons, peeled and sliced by Hua Cheng with alarming precision), and he's warm, and he's so tired that his bones ache.

     "You're lucky," he tells the ceiling.

     Suo turns his head on the pillow. "Hm?"

     "Your parents." Sakura frowns, hunting for words bigger than the ones he has. "They're really kind. Both of them. Even your bà, in his scary way."

     "You’re not wrong." In the dark, Sakura can hear Suo smiling.

     Sakura is quiet for a moment. His thumb moves over Suo's knuckles, back and forth, losing himself in the rhythm of it before speaking again.

     "Today was… I've never had a dad. Not really. There were guys whose houses I lived in, and some of them were okay, but none of them ever…" He doesn't know how to finish that, so he doesn't. "Today, with your diē, was the first time it felt like I had one. And it's confusing, because I don't know what to say to him. Like, what am I supposed to say? 'Thanks for the duck'?"

     Suo's fingers tighten around his.

     He thinks of the kitchen last night, of Hua Cheng saying That may have to be you, and understands that his father was right, as usual, and also not entirely right. Haruka doesn't need only one thing to hold on to. He can have a houseful. A home, even.

     "You don't have to say anything," Suo tells him.

     "That's stupid. Of course I do."

     "You don't. Haruka, listen." Suo shifts onto his side so that he's facing Sakura, their joined hands caught between them. "Diē sees the best in everyone. It's kind of his worst habit, but also his best one." His voice softens. "It means he sees you, too. He sees how you take care of people. How you step in front of Nirei-kun without thinking, and carry the tomato lady's crates even though you grumble under your breath about it, and look after all of us without ever letting anyone look after you. So you don’t need to say anything."

     Sakura's face is hot. He's grateful for the dark.

     "I don't do all that," he mutters.

     "You do. You're much better at caring than you think you are." Suo's thumb presses once against the back of Sakura’s hand. "Better than most people I know."

     Sakura has no idea what to do with that. The words sit in his chest, too big and too warm, and the only thing he can think to do is bring their joined hands up to his mouth.

     It isn't quite a kiss, but it’s not not one, either. His lips rest against Suo's knuckles, and he breathes there for a moment.

     "I just want to be good to you," he whispers against Suo's skin.

     Suo forgets all about schooling his face. He smiles, wide and unguarded, and the light from the streetlamp catches it.

     "Haruka," he says. "You're the best part of my life. You and diē and bà." He squeezes Sakura's hand. "I trust you with my heart. I'm not worried about it at all. We’ll be just fine."

     Sakura doesn't answer. He can't, again. But he doesn't let go, and he doesn't turn away, and, after a while, Suo’s breathing slows and evens out. Sakura watches him fall asleep, their fingers still tangled together, and he doesn't close his own eyes for a long time.

     He still hasn't said 'I love you,' but maybe this is even more important than that. Trust is the hardest thing for Sakura to give, and somehow he'd gotten it without even trying.