Between Gemini and Leo -- Part 2/2
Title: Between Gemini and Leo
Chapter: Part 2/2
Author: invisiblehabits
Genre: AU, Romance, Angst
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Adult content, serious illness, character death
Pairings: Aki/Hiroto
Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t know. Won’t make money unless you feel like paying me to read.
Summary: Some people say cancer is a gift...
Comments: And yes, this is officially the longest "oneshot" I've ever written!
Edited to add: And now this part is proof read too! Yay!
It only took Dr. Ishikawa three days to contact him, but it was three of the longest days Hiroto had ever experienced. Aki stayed with him the entire time, calling in sick to work despite Hiroto’s protests to the matter. He didn’t cry much after that night though, both because it hurt too much and because it seemed pointless. It was nicer to curl up with Aki and watch movies, volume turned down so low they had to use subtitles because they sometimes couldn’t hear what was being said. They cooked, or at the very least ordered takeout, every day because Aki insisted he had to eat, that his body needed the strength more than ever. And they made love, even when Aki questioned if he had the strength to, because Hiroto needed to feel him close.
When the doctor finally called however, it was only to say that he’d gone over Hiroto’s medical file and the tests Dr. Nakashima had run. Dr. Ishikawa didn’t want to say anything until he’d run more tests of his own, but he was happy to take Hiroto on as a patient and a week later Hiroto was back at the hospital yet again. He was really starting to hate the smell of antiseptics or whatever it was causing the typical hospital smell.
“Don’t frown, baby,” Aki whispered, trying to be discrete even when he’d insisted on coming along. Hiroto was happy he was there, even when they’d agreed he’d stay in the waiting room rather than risk the questions that might follow if he was to be in the room. “You’re here to get help, and he’s the expert.”
They were meaningless words and Hiroto knew Aki was aware of it, but somehow they still helped the way words said by someone who cared always seemed to. Hiroto nodded and wished he could lean his head on Aki’s shoulder, it hurt and felt heavy, but he didn’t want people to think they were more than friends. If anyone asked he’d say Aki was an old friend, someone who’d agreed to come with him so he didn’t have to be alone. It was unfair they’d have to lie about their relationship, but both agreed it was for the best.
His name was called and he got to meet Dr. Ishikawa for the first time. He was older than Dr. Nakashima, salt and pepper hair thinning out around the temples, but he gave off a warmth Hiroto hadn’t expected. Like he genuinely wanted to help. They had a long conversation about Hiroto’s headaches, when they started, how they felt and affected him, how they’d progressed lately, etc. Dr. Ishikawa drew more blood for tests and requested another x-ray for reasons Hiroto didn’t fully understand. All he knew was that he trusted the man.
All in all it took the greater part of the day and he felt bad for Aki who was waiting in the lobby area. He hadn’t had a chance to tell his boyfriend it was okay for him to leave, constantly tossed about and ordered around. In fact he hadn’t even been allowed to have lunch and he was dead hungry by the time he finally slumped down on the chair next to Aki in the corner of the waiting room again.
“Tired?” Aki asked and placed a hand on his knee, a quick gesture that meant the world to Hiroto.
“Mhm,” he replied and yawned big. “But my head doesn’t hurt! Dr. Ishikawa pumped me up on painkillers and gave me a new kind to bring home.”
He held up a big jar made of brown glass with a label full of text printed in such a small font it was barely readable. “I’m not allowed to take more than five a day, but they help!”
It was true, for the first time in what felt like forever Hiroto wasn’t half blinded by his headache. He could still feel it, a sort of numb heavy feeling inside his head, but he could see straight and move around without nausea making him taste bile and spikes of whitehot pain shooting through his entire nervous system. Compared to what he’d lived with in the past few months it was like being well again. Sad how in less than a year you could forget what a normal life felt like.
Aki smiled at him, not quite as wide as the grin Hiroto could feel on his own lips but it was obvious he was happy about it too. The fear was still visible in his eyes though. Hiroto had seen it the first time shortly after he’d told Aki about his tumour. He assumed it’d been there the first time he woke up with Aki’s arms around him after delivering the news, but it’d taken him a while to see through the pain enough for it to register. It made him feel guilty, making Aki worry about him, and it was slightly scary, a constant reminder of the severity of the situation. Yet at the same time it made him feel good, less lonely, because it proved Aki cared what happened to him, and that felt good.
“Come on,” he said lowly and nearly took his boyfriend’s hand before remembering they were in public. “Let’s go home. Right now I feel like I could watch a movie and actually hear the sound effects for once.”
The older nodded and stood up, nibbled on a piercing and Hiroto knew he wanted to ask something so he nudged him in the side. Aki took the hint.
“Are you going to tell me what the doctor said?” he asked as they crossed the lobby and walked out the hospital doors. “I haven’t been able to eat all day cause I’ve been worrying about you.”
“I haven’t been allowed to eat all day,” Hiroto pointed out and pulled out his phone. “Let’s call in an order to the Thai restaurant on the corner, we’ll pick it up on the way. Then I’ll tell you once we get home, okay?”
Any protest Aki might’ve planned to put up died the moment his stomach growled loudly. “Okay fine, I want the yum pork salad then.”
He laughed as Hiroto called in the order, getting massaman curry with tofu for himself, and twenty minutes later they picked it up as planned. There wasn’t a lot of talking getting done as they wolfed down food like two teenagers starved for weeks, constantly stealing little bits and pieces from each other too. It was light and fun and exactly what they needed to relieve some of the stress built up during the day.
But as they curled up together on the couch after dinner, Hiroto having taken a second painkiller because it’d been nearly four hours since his last one, the mood dropped slightly again. Aki wrapped his arms around the younger’s body and repeated his question from before, words whispered into Hiroto’s hair. Hiroto wished he could ignore them, but he knew he owed Aki the truth.
“Dr. Ishikawa says the location of the tumour is promising,” he began. “From his experience there shouldn’t be a problem in removing it, but brain surgery always poses a risk. He also said it sounds like the tumour is growing pretty fast, since my headaches have gotten so much worse in the past few months.”
“But you’ll be okay?” Aki didn’t sound scared, or in any way different from how he always sounded, as he spoke. But the fear shone brighter than ever in his eyes.
“If I have the operation I should be,” he answered honestly, because he’d never lie to Aki about something as important.
“And if not?”
“Dr. Ishikawa couldn’t say exactly, but he said six months to a year would be a good guess.”
There was no need to specify what would happen in six months to a year if he didn’t have surgery. Aki hugged him closer and Hiroto buried his nose into his boyfriend’s neck. He smelled good, natural since he was avoiding any strong scents, another sacrifice made to spare Hiroto’s head.
“You need to have the surgery,” Aki said after a few long moments of silence. “I don’t care if it’s dangerous, not having it means giving up.”
Hiroto sighed and sat back, met Aki’s eyes and knew it wasn’t a question. It wasn’t an order either, but Aki would do everything he could to make him go through with it. And he would do it, because now he had something worth fighting for.
“I will,” he promised out loud and took Aki’s hand, felt his boyfriend squeeze his fingers in return. “I will.”
Aki smiled and pulled him into a tight hug, whispering his thanks and promises of support into his ear without letting go.
- - -
Dr. Ishikawa was a busy man, but the kind who only took on as many patients as he could deal with at a time. Hiroto had been lucky, a prioritised case appearing just as Dr. Ishikawa got an opening in his schedule. They met two more times, for further tests and evaluations, before scheduling an operation. Hiroto was slightly dazed over the pace of everything, but Dr. Ishikawa said the tumour was currently of a size that he could operate on and they didn’t want to risk it growing any larger. If it did there would be need for treatment to try and shrink the growth before removing it with minimum risk, and there was no telling if such a thing would succeed.
Aki accompanied him every time, saying he didn’t care if he got fired in the end because Hiroto was more important. He still stayed in the lobby every time, but Hiroto appreciated the gesture and found strength in the knowledge Aki was in the same building. It was nice to be able to sit down next to him and share a few words, hold his hand for a few seconds even, between the tests and the talks. They kept it discretely, trying to pose it off as close friendship and nothing more, and thought it was tiresome it was still better than not having Aki there at all.
“Mr. Ogata,” a nurse called out to him from across the waiting room. “Dr. Ishikawa would like to see you for a few minutes before you leave.”
With a minor sigh and a whisper of “Hang in there” from Aki, Hiroto got up and walked to the by now rather familiar room. At least it smelled better than the hospital in general, fresher and less sick, and without the overbearing antiseptic smell. Dr. Ishikawa was behind his large desk and the look in his eyes was concerned in a way that made Hiroto uneasy.
“Mr. Ogata, please sit down.”
“Is there something wrong?” Hiroto asked after following the invitation.
“I wanted to go over your symptoms one more time,” Dr. Ishikawa explained. “To make sure we’re not missing anything.”
He read through the list they’d put together before; the headaches, the nausea, the fatigue that had at one point turned into insomnia only to go back to extreme fatigue. Hiroto confirmed all of them and couldn’t really see the point of the meeting when Dr. Ishikawa put the paper back on his desk.
“Are you sure we’re not missing anything?” he asked. “It’s important we have it all covered so that we are prepared for any situation that may occur.”
“No, that seems to be all of it,” Hiroto said. “If there’s anything else linked to it I haven’t thought of it.”
Dr. Ishikawa nodded slowly and made some kind of mark on his paper, like a doctor in an old movie Hiroto thought.
“The nurses say it seems like you’ve been talking to someone in the waiting area,” the doctor said. “Is that right?”
Hiroto swallowed nervously but knew he couldn’t lie about it. “Yeah, a...friend of mine, his name is Aki.”
“How long have you known each other?” Dr. Ishikawa asked and it didn’t seem like he suspected they were anything more than friends. “He must be a good friend if he’s accompanying you on these visits.”
The praise, unintended as it was, made Hiroto smile and he nodded. “He is. I’ve known him for almost a year, but we’ve become really close quickly.”
“I see,” Dr. Ishikawa said and the wrinkle between his eyebrows made Hiroto think he might’ve said too much. He’d never been good at keeping the emotions out of his eyes, so maybe the doctor had seen how he really felt about Aki when he spoke of him. “Do you think Aki would meet me? Maybe he has noticed something you have missed yourself?”
It sounded like a reasonable request, but Hiroto couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong. Nodding he excused himself and went back to the lobby. Aki rose to great him and Hiroto desperately wished he could’ve gotten a hug.
“Are you ready to go?” Aki asked.
“No,” Hiroto confessed and hated the way Aki’s face dropped ever so slightly. “Dr. Ishikawa would like to meet you.”
“Me?” the older asked, clearly surprised. “Why?”
He explained how the nurses had seen them in the waiting room and Dr. Ishikawa’s hopes Aki might’ve noticed something Hiroto himself had missed. It was a better chance than the doctor knew, considering the two of them had practically lived together for the past months. Hiroto decided then and there he’d ask Aki to move in with him officially once he’d gone through the surgery and recovered enough to think about the immediate future.
Together they walked back to Dr. Ishikawa’s office and Hiroto held the door open for his boyfriend. “Dr. Ishikawa, this is Ichiki Akihito. Aki, this is Dr. Ishikawa.”
It was easy to tell that something was wrong with the way Dr. Ishikawa stared at Aki and his brows furrowed even more. Hiroto, not knowing what to do, pointed Aki towards the second chair in front of the desk, the one he’d always assumed were for the sobbing wives, nervous parents, or whomever happened to accompany the unlucky cancer victim to the doctor’s appointment. Up until now it’d always remained empty during his own sessions.
“Dr. Ishikawa,” Aki said and bowed deep to try and ease the sudden tension. “Thank you for what you’re doing for Hiroto. I’m not sure how much I can help, but I’ll do my best.”
When the older man didn’t reply he glanced at Hiroto nervously before taking a seat. Hiroto didn’t know if he was more shocked or confused over Dr. Ishikawa’s behaviour, the man had always been perfectly polite towards him and anyone else Hiroto had ever seen him talk to. But he walked over to the other chair and sat down next to his boyfriend, still refraining from taking his hand even when he wanted to.
“Is there something wrong, doctor?” he asked and tried not to bite his lip.
“Hiroto,” the older man said and Hiroto knew something was wrong because Dr. Ishikawa had never called him by his first name before. “Is your friend currently sitting in the chair next to you?”
More confused than ever Hiroto tried to answer something, but all he could do was look between his doctor and boyfriend and nod in obvious confirmation.
“I wish there was an easy way to say this,” Dr. Ishikawa said and turned his full attention to him, ignoring Aki in a way that could be called nothing but rude. “There are only two people in this room Hiroto, you and I, and there is no one sitting in the other chair.”
Hiroto stared at the man for a moment or two. Then, not knowing what else to do at the ridiculousness of it all, he burst out laughing.
- - -
It took a long time for the information to sink in, for him to realise Dr. Ishikawa wasn’t trying to raise the mood with some failed joke but was in fact deadly serious. A nurse, one Hiroto had met several times and trusted as far as hospital personnel went, had to be called into the room to confirm that there was only one visitor in the room, Mr. Ogata Hiroto.
And then he panicked, fear far greater than he’d felt at the knowledge he had cancer filling him up until all he could do was deny the words and block the possibility. Dr. Ishikawa saw and didn’t try to force more out of the day, merely begged him to come back the following day once he’d had time to process the idea. Hiroto barely listened, convinced he couldn’t get out of the hospital fast enough and that he’d never return as he tried to stay composed on his way through the hallways and lobby area. He knew he was being rude, walking into people, little short of shoving them aside to get past, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to listen to the footsteps he could hear walking behind him.
Whether Aki wanted to spare him the embarrassment of talking to thin air or if he was simply too shocked to react right away, neither alternative making any sense, he waited until they were outside the hospital before grabbing hold of Hiroto’s elbow. A sob, all the emotions he refused to let out, got stuck in the younger’s throat and he tried to shake the other off, but Aki held on tighter.
“No, let me go,” he whispered wetly, little short of a plea. “Just, please...I need to get home.”
The fingers holding on to him tightly, a very real grip he could most definitely feel, slipped away and despite himself Hiroto spun around, for a moment afraid Aki had disappeared. It wasn’t true, couldn’t be when Aki so clearly stood on the sidewalk not ten feet from him looking lost and confused, scared even.
“Can I come with you?” he asked lowly and Hiroto nodded before he had time to think. He didn’t want to be alone.
They walked all the way back to Hiroto’s apartment even though his head was pounding by the time they reached it. He swallowed two painkillers at once, not caring if they dulled the pain, put him to sleep, or slowly killed him just then, and flopped down on the sofa. His head landed in Aki’s lap and for the first time ever he felt himself freeze up at the physical contact his boyfriend provided. That was, until he realised Aki’s hand hanging in the air just above his forehead was shaking.
“Do you think it’s true?” Hiroto barely head him whisper. “Am I...not real?”
It sounded wrong, surreal, ridiculous, yet Hiroto couldn’t brush the question off the way he wanted to. Tilting his head back slightly he met Aki’s eyes even when his own vision still swam a bit from the pain, caught the other’s hand and brought it down to kiss his palm. Aki had soft hands, except for the pads of his fingers which were slightly calloused for reason’s Hiroto realised he’d never asked about. He had funky fingers, all crooked and funny looking. There were too many details to his hands alone for him not to be real.
“You are real,” he said and looked into Aki’s warm brown eyes, suddenly so sad and confused. “I can see and hear and feel you, so you must be.”
“But Dr. Ishikawa said... The nurse, she-”
“I don’t care!” he cut off and groaned slightly as the outburst sent whitehot pain through his skull. “I don’t care, they’re wrong, it’s just... It doesn’t make sense.”
He curled in on himself, closer to Aki’s warm body, stomach rising and falling with his breath and the dull thrum of a heartbeat deep inside. The hand not caught in his own began to card through his hair softly, massaged his scalp in the way that always seemed to help best against his headache, and Hiroto wished he had the energy to cry. He didn’t want to think of Dr. Ishikawa’s troubled look or the one of completely confusing on the nurse’s face, both their assurance Hiroto was the only visitor in the doctor’s office. But his mind wouldn’t shut off and he kept thinking back on the past year, the time he’d spent with Aki. How they’d never hung out with other people, that he’d never been to Aki’s workplace and they always spent the night in his own apartment. It hadn’t seemed strange before, but lying there trying to fall asleep Hiroto realised there was not a single person who could assure him the man he’d fallen in love with did in fact exist.
- - -
They woke up on the couch, Hiroto only to realise Aki was already awake. He always seemed to be. But he was there, a solid form beneath his cheek and his chest hurt at the idea none of it might be real. Aki saw it in his eyes, that he was thinking it, like he always did. So many things that’d always seemed right suddenly seemed suspicious, potentially wrong, and Hiroto hated himself for questioning it all.
“You should go see Dr. Ishikawa,” were the first words out of Aki’s mouth.
Hiroto shook his head. “We should.”
For the first time ever they almost argued, Aki not seeing the point of him coming along and Hiroto needing him to. He hated the way Aki already seemed to have accepted the idea when Hiroto definitely wasn’t ready to admit he might be forced to. But eventually the older agreed to accompany him once more, even let Hiroto hold his hand as they walked from the metro to the hospital. When he tried to pull away in the lobby, standing in front of the reception disk as Hiroto asked if it’d be possible to see Dr. Ishikawa without a booked appointment, Hiroto held on and refused to let go. No one seemed to notice of care.
- - -
Dr. Ishikawa agreed to see them on what should’ve been his lunch break. Hiroto could still feel Aki’s finger in his, warm skin on warm skin, as they entered the office, and unlike all the people in the waiting room Dr. Ishikawa threw a look at their intertwined hands. Hiroto swallowed and almost remained standing, but Aki nudged his wrist slightly and he moved forward to his regular seat. Aki again took the one next to him, but only after a pointed look.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” Dr. Ishikawa admitted, leaned forward on his elbows and if hunger troubled him he didn’t show it. “But I’m glad you’re here Mr. Ogata.”
Hiroto finally looked up to meet the older man’s eyes. “You say Aki’s not real,” he began and skipped politeness altogether. “How come I can see him sitting next to me, hear him speak and feel him touch me?”
For a moment Dr. Ishikawa seemed to ponder how to proceed, which tactics would be best to use and Hiroto didn’t know where he found the patience to wait it out. All he wanted was for his doctor to tell him he was delusional and that no one had claimed Aki wasn’t real, the man was sitting right there beside him. He had a feeling he would be told he was delusional, but not in a way that would benefit his case.
“Are you aware brain tumours can cause hallucinations, Mr. Ogata?” Dr. Ishikawa finally asked, and when Hiroto nodded slowly he went on. “It’s not too common and not something I’d suspect with a tumour located such as yours, but it happens and hallucinations can vary greatly between people.”
He heard Aki’s sharp intake of breath as the information was absorbed and closed his eyes to not risk looking at his lover, wished he could close his mind to the words thrown at him. All too soon he had to open them again though, or risk being subjected to more truths he didn’t want to believe in.
“You’re saying Aki is a hallucination?” he said, voice thick with emotions he would not let out.
“That would be my conclusion yes, I’m sorry to say it,” Dr. Ishikawa agreed. “With the way you’re avoiding looking at the chair next to you, I imagine Aki is sitting in it?” Hiroto nodded weakly and tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. “How long did you say you’ve known Aki?”
“A little under a year,” Hiroto managed to reply. Dr. Ishikawa picked up his pen and opened Hiroto’s file, asked if he could be more specific.
“Ten months,” Aki whispered next to him, apparently unheard by the doctor. “It’s been ten months since we first met, give or take a week.”
Hiroto didn’t want to look at him but he did anyway, and what he saw in Aki’s eyes, the understanding and the pained acceptance, nearly broke his resolve not to cry as he relayd the information to Dr. Ishikawa.
“I understand if it’s hard to take in and accept,” the man said. “But this is very important information Mr. Ogata. It means your tumour appeared earlier than we expected, could indicate it’s been growing slower than we assumed. All physical tests remain the same though, and I’d like to go through with our scheduled operation.”
Something clicked in Hiroto’s mind at the words and he had no idea what emotions his eyes threw at Dr. Ishikawa as he turned to face the man. His voice portrayed a lot of fear when he spoke at least.
“What will happen to Aki if I have the operation?”
He knew the answer even before it was told to him. If Aki was a hallucination caused by the brain tumour, a symptom of his cancer, then...
“If we successfully remove the tumour,” Dr. Ishikawa said, and the sympathy on his face looked more real than Hiroto would’ve imagined, “all symptoms of it should disappear. Including your hallucinations.”
Without thinking Hiroto reached out and grabbed Aki’s hand and squeezed it hard, desperate to know his lover was still there.
- - -
“You need to have the surgery,” Aki whispered three days later.
Somehow they’d managed to go three full days without mentioning the doctor’s appointment. Dr. Ishikawa hadn’t tried to have a further conversation after his statement, realising perhaps that Hiroto wouldn’t take in a single word more. Aki had been mostly quiet ever since, and Hiroto hadn’t questioned it since he knew it’d result in talking about things he’d prefer to ignore. But the way his lover, real or not, pulled away hurt. Hiroto needed him more than ever, and he hated the way he had to fight for every scrap of attention and closeness. Irony had it Aki chose the night Hiroto had finally managed to fight his way into the older’s lap to bring the subject up.
“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to have it. Not if it means losing you.”
For the first time in days he felt Aki’s fingers comb through his hair and it was the best feeling he could imagine. It was real, it had to be, because he could feel the soft tugs on his scalp and the soothing feeling it brought in its wake.
“Hiroto...” Aki sounded sad yet determined and he tugged on his hair until Hiroto turned on his back, looked up at his lover with eyes free of pain thanks to Dr. Ishikawa’s magic pain killers. “You need to have it. You’ll die if you don’t have it!”
“You will die if I do have it!” Hiroto exclaimed and sat up, tried to ignore the sudden pulse of sharp pain shooting through his head and the tears burning behind his eyelids. He couldn’t think of Aki gone, of losing the only person who had seen him for who he really was, the person he wanted to be.
Aki pulled him into a tight hug and Hiroto went willingly, buried his face into the older’s neck and inhaled his calming scent. The world had become fucked up, confusing, and too much to handle. He wanted to go back to a year ago, when he was lonely but not hurting. Only it wasn’t an option, because it meant never having met Aki and Hiroto wouldn’t trade the past year for anything.
“I will die no matter what,” his lover whispered sadly, obviously not liking the thought. “If Dr. Ishikawa is right, then I die when you do. But you...you can live even if I don’t.”
He didn’t say that he could not die if he’d never been alive in the first place, but Hiroto thought it and he was pretty sure Aki did too. A hallucination was not real, had never been born and therefore didn’t have a real life to speak of. Aki could disappear, be cured like a symptom of a disease, but he could not die because he was not alive.
“Can I?” Hiroto asked honestly, pulled back enough to look at his lover and felt the first tears roll down his cheeks. He didn’t want to cry, not when he hadn’t before. For some reason it made him feel weak.
“Yes you can,” Aki assured and Hiroto leaned into the kiss he offered. It sounded too final for his liking, but for once he felt like he understood Aki as well as Aki had always understood him.
He allowed himself to be pulled down on the couch and kissed deeply. Aki’s hands moved over his body, on top of clothes at first but eventually dipped beneath. A burning sensation too real to ignore, intoxicating and so heady he couldn’t stop even when his head and mind alike were hurting. He allowed Aki to pull the shirt over his head, caress him all over and drown him in physical pleasure. When hands dipped beneath his sweatpants, the only type of clothing he’d worn for days, Hiroto groaned and pushed closer.
A broken sob was caught between them and he didn’t quite know who’d uttered it. Not that it mattered when clothes were pushed aside and skin allowed to touch. Hiroto was on top, unusual but not wrong, and Aki carefully prepped him. There was a bottle of lube beneath the couch, left there long ago in one of their less serious more heated moments, and Hiroto somehow found it for Aki to make use of. One finger, two, three, until he was able to push inside with barely any friction at all.
It was at the same time slow and desperate, a need to feel and a goodbye they didn’t want to acknowledge. Aki seemed to have accepted he was not real, that his time was up and so he should make use of the time he had left. Hiroto was not willing to make the same acknowledgement and so he clung tight until the orgasm shook his body and he felt, felt, Aki come inside him.
“You need to have the surgery baby,” Aki repeated, a broken plea once he found his voice again.
Hiroto didn’t look at him as he nodded, face buried in Aki’s neck with short strands of sweaty black hair tickling his temple. He knew he had no choice, the surgery was only two days away and Dr. Ishikawa would want his answer. It hurt, destroyed the sated happiness he should’ve felt lying in his lover’s arms, but he whispered his agreement onto Aki’s skin.
It was the first and the last time Hiroto ever saw the older cry.
- - -
The day before the surgery he sat in front of Dr. Ishikawa again. He’d called the day before to confirm that yes, he would go through with it. Dr. Ishikawa, while pleased to hear so, had asked him to come in for a final assessment to ensure Hiroto knew what he was getting into. He did, he was setting himself up for a loneliness far worse than he’d felt a year earlier. At least that was what it felt like as he sat before the older man.
“Alright,” Dr. Ishikawa said. “Then we have an understanding. No solid foods twenty-four hours before the surgery, no drinks six hours before. Do you have any last questions, Mr. Ogata?”
“No, but I have a request,” Hiroto found himself saying. It wasn’t something he’d thought about or planned, but something Dr. Ishikawa had said during one of their first meetings suddenly popped into his head out of nowhere. “I don’t want to be awake.”
Dr. Ishikawa paused in his movement, as minor as they’d been, and the nurse by the door looked up from her papers. Even Aki, seated in the chair next to him as always, looked shocked.
“It’s preferable if you are-” the doctor began, but Hiroto interrupted him.
“No, I won’t be awake when you...when you...” He looked to the side, met Aki’s gaze and bit back the tears he refused to cry outside his own apartment. “I can’t be awake.”
From the corner of his eye Hiroto saw the nurse shake her head, but he appreciated the fact she didn’t snort at least. It must seem so strange to people, that he cared so much about someone who wasn’t even there to anyone else but him. But they weren’t important, not now.
“Alright Mr. Ogata,” Dr. Ishikawa finally said. “We’ll arrange for you to be fully anaesthetised during the procedure. It is preferred for the patient to be awake, but considering the circumstances I’ll allow it. However, I want you to sign a document saying the surgery is done with anaesthesia on your request. It is hospital procedure when protocol is not followed.”
Hiroto agreed without hesitation and waited for the nurse to find the proper paperwork. He spoke some with Dr. Ishikawa, but mostly he just sat quiet until he could put his name down on a dotted line and leave, feeling like he’d signed away part of his soul.
- - -
They spent the evening curled up on the couch doing nothing. The TV remained off and they didn’t eat, Hiroto because he wasn’t allowed and Aki because he didn’t need to. They even left the lights off and allowed the apartment to fall into a gloomy darkness before Aki finally asked him to at least light the candles on the coffee table. Perhaps they should’ve talked, Hiroto felt like he should say something but he didn’t know what. So they spent their final hours in silence, curled close and focused on feeling the warmth of the other’s skin.
When Aki nudged him awake hours later, dawn barely creeping over the horizon, to tell him it was time to leave Hiroto didn’t feel like they’d wasted the night.
- - -
He didn’t cry until he was in the hospital shower, ordered to scrub himself from top to bottom yet again with the sickly smelling sterile soaps he’d already been using twice a day for three days straight. Aki had joined him because Hiroto begged him to, not seeing what difference it’d make if imagined hands touched him or not. When the tears began to drop off his nose he wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Don’t cry baby,” Aki whispered and hugged him close, ran soap slick fingers up and down his spine in a soothing manner that only had Hiroto crying harder. “Please don’t, you need to do this.”
He held him close until Hiroto managed to calm down, but he didn’t move out of Aki’s embrace for long moments still. Finally a nurse had to ask if he was alright, because the team was waiting to complete the preparations for the surgery. Hiroto announced he’d be out in a minute or two and looked up at Aki as he did.
“I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep,” the older promised, eyes emotional but devoid of tears.
“I’d rather you be there when I wake up,” Hiroto whispered and hugged him, skin to skin with water cascading over them. “Promise me you’ll be there if you can, don’t make me wait.”
Aki nodded easily. “I hope I won’t be, but if I can I’ll hold your hand when you wake up.”
It was the best promise he could give and Hiroto knew it. Screwing his eyes shut around the fresh tears he pulled Aki down into a long kiss, the last one he’d ever get if things went well, and stepped out of the shower. The nurse glanced at the clock but didn’t say anything in favour of moving on, and all too soon he was rolled into the theatre.
The only thing Hiroto liked about it was that he’d be half seated in a chair during the operation. It left his hands free and Aki wasn’t late to hold his right one. People ran around them, spoke to him and to each other, but Hiroto only looked at Aki. He must’ve replied to the anaesthetist verbally because he couldn’t nod his head, and then the world was slowly blurring out.
He saw Aki, his gorgeous face and the near black eyes so full of love and sorrow. Watched the pierced lips move in what looked like a confession, but Hiroto didn’t hear it.
- - -
At first he didn’t know where he was when he woke up. The walls were bright white and sunshine filtered in through gauzy curtains. There was an annoying beeping to his left and he thought he could make out an IV drip above him, even if it was blurry. Slowly the memories came back and he looked down at his hands. They were empty, as was the room. Hiroto could so vividly imagine Aki standing by the window, how the sunlight would reflect on his silver piercings. But this time he was imagining it, and he knew it.
The door opened and Dr. Ishikawa walked in, alerted by some silent alarm or by pure chance Hiroto didn’t know. It was near impossible to tell when his doctor was surprised and when not.
“It’s good to see you awake Mr. Ogata,” the man said. “Are you feeling alright?”
Hiroto tried to nod but quickly changed his mind and replied out loud instead. His throat felt dry and raw though, and Dr. Ishikawa helped him drink a bit from a cup with a straw in it. He then looked at some monitors, flashed a blinding light in Hiroto’s eyes, and nodded satisfactorily.
“I’m pleased to say the surgery went without complications,” he said. “We were able to remove all of the tumour with minimum intrusion on your brain.”
“I know,” Hiroto said sadly, too tired to be physically upset even when his insides were already burning with longing.
Dr. Ishikawa caught on quickly and that look of genuine sympathy returned. “Your friend?”
Hiroto dared shake his head no then, not sure he could verbally confirm that Aki was gone. Like a child he wanted to think it wasn’t real until he said it was.
“I’m sorry Mr. Ogata,” Dr. Ishikawa said honestly. “Do you want something to help you sleep longer, it will do your body well.”
He agreed and went back into a blissful dreamless sleep.
- - -
It felt like an eternity before he was allowed out of bed. Hiroto didn’t know why he wanted to get up so badly, it wasn’t like he had anything waiting for him. Dr. Ishikawa made him see a therapist at the hospital, saying it’d do him good to talk about everything that’d happened. The therapist, a woman by the name Kanae, in turn forced him to call his parents and finally inform them he was in the hospital. She didn’t seem impressed he’d ‘forgotten’ to tell them earlier, and Hiroto found his mother was in perfect agreement.
They came to visit him, and it did feel good to see them, get hugged for real and talk to people who knew him. But once they went home the longing for Aki was even worse. Kanae wanted to talk about him, and slowly she made Hiroto see the sacrifice Aki had made for him. Hiroto even told her Aki had been his lover, and she earned his full trust when she didn’t ridicule him for it.
Slowly he healed, physically and emotionally, and eventually he was released from the hospital and allowed to go home. Kanae had warned him it’d be hard to do so, because it’d remind him of Aki, and she was right. But Hiroto also saw things more clearly, how there truly were no traces of Aki in the apartment whatsoever. It hurt, knowing his mind had played him so fully, but he closed his eyes and remembered what Aki had told him.
”You can live even if I don’t.”
- - -
A year went by faster than Hiroto would’ve thought possible. He kept going to see Kanae, who refused to let him call her by anything but her first name, and he quit his job. It was not what he wanted to do and so he began working at a small coffee shop instead. Books lined every wall of it and Hiroto was allowed to read any one of them between serving customers. As such he got to meet people, made new friends, and got a chance to hang out with his old ones once he invited them to come try the coffee or tea. He still missed Aki, but he was moving on.
Perhaps that was why he didn’t know what to make of the small man stumbling down the stairs in the early afternoon one day. He was almost as short as Hiroto himself, had a head full of dark unruly curls Hiroto had no idea how an Asian managed to create, and was absolutely gorgeous behind the large bruise covering half his face. One eye was swollen shut, but the other was pitch black as it glared up at Hiroto.
“What?” the man snapped. “You don’t serve people unless they look pretty?”
“Then I’d have to serve you,” Hiroto replied before thinking and bit his lip as he blushed crimson. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
An amused chuckle cut him off and he dared to look up again. The man was smiling at him and it was a breathtaking sight to say the least, enough for Hiroto to almost forget the nasty bruise.
“Are you okay?” he asked and motioned for the black-eye.
The man shrugged, causing the black hoody to fall off his shoulder but he seemed to wear at least two more layers beneath it. He pulled his fingers, adorned in rings and bracelets rattled around his wrist as he did, through his hair and hissed slightly in pain when the discoloured skin moved.
“Yeah, a reminder not to hit on straight men,” he said and shrugged again. “Now can I get a coffee?”
Hiroto was stunned but nodded and took the order, completed it and brought it to the man. He confirmed the other couldn’t smoke in the café, too many books that could catch fire, and tried to get back to work but found his eyes constantly wandering to the stranger. He looked like Aki, Hiroto thought. Not exactly alike of course, but like they were the same type of people, could’ve been friends had Aki been real. He still missed Aki, but more like a dull ache in the centre of his chest than the all consuming pain it’d been right after the surgery.
The bell above the door dinged and Hiroto found one of his old, and gay, friends walking down the stairs. Shou was tall and beautiful, but not in a way that attracted Hiroto. The older made for a great friend though.
They exchanged pleasantries and Hiroto gave him a hug, having grown very affectionate in the past year. Shou wanted a coffee to go, forever on his way from one project to another, and Hiroto quickly prepared it for him. The older was just about to walk out when Hiroto grabbed his arm and in a whispered voice asked if he could see the man at the back of the coffee shop.
“The tiny one curled in on himself and hidden behind a curtain of hair?” Shou asked softly, adding details to show that yes he could indeed see the man. Shou was one of the few people Hiroto had told about Aki. “I can see him, and if he has caught your eye I suggest you go over there and talk to him.”
Hiroto smiled and hugged him tightly, whispered his thanks and saw his friend out. Then he turned around and hesitantly walked to the table at the far back. He licked his lips nervously and cleared his throat, blushed slightly as the lone black eye turned his direction. The man smirked at him.
“I was wondering if you’d find your balls and come over,” he said and picked up a sugar cube only to place it in his mouth.
“Is it...okay if I sit down?” Hiroto asked and motioned for the other chair.
“Only if you’re gay,” was the somewhat unexpected reply. “I’ve had enough of straight men for a while.”
He gestured towards his bruised face and Hiroto swallowed, because it looked beyond uncomfortable. Still, he took a seat and met the appreciative look the other gave him.
“You dare go around and say you’re gay even when you got beaten up for it?” He said it like a question even when it wasn’t.
“Of course, I can do whatever the fuck I want, including being gay.” He sucked loudly on the sugar cube and Hiroto’s eyes were drawn to his lips. They were bitten badly, but spread in another smirk. “I’m Kenzo.”
Hiroto looked up to meet his open eye again. Nerves fluttered in his stomach and for a moment Aki’s face flashed before his eyes again. But it faded and left way for Kenzo’s, equally pretty and even more perfect behind the bruising. Or so Hiroto imagined.
“My name’s Hiroto,” he said and decided he wanted to know for sure what the other looked like. “And yes, I am gay.”
It was the first time he said the words out loud in public. Hiroto had to admit it felt good to be honest about himself. Kenzo smiled at him and asked if he could have another coffee, cause he suddenly had an urge to stay a little longer.
Chapter: Part 2/2
Author: invisiblehabits
Genre: AU, Romance, Angst
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Adult content, serious illness, character death
Pairings: Aki/Hiroto
Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t know. Won’t make money unless you feel like paying me to read.
Summary: Some people say cancer is a gift...
Comments: And yes, this is officially the longest "oneshot" I've ever written!
Edited to add: And now this part is proof read too! Yay!
It only took Dr. Ishikawa three days to contact him, but it was three of the longest days Hiroto had ever experienced. Aki stayed with him the entire time, calling in sick to work despite Hiroto’s protests to the matter. He didn’t cry much after that night though, both because it hurt too much and because it seemed pointless. It was nicer to curl up with Aki and watch movies, volume turned down so low they had to use subtitles because they sometimes couldn’t hear what was being said. They cooked, or at the very least ordered takeout, every day because Aki insisted he had to eat, that his body needed the strength more than ever. And they made love, even when Aki questioned if he had the strength to, because Hiroto needed to feel him close.
When the doctor finally called however, it was only to say that he’d gone over Hiroto’s medical file and the tests Dr. Nakashima had run. Dr. Ishikawa didn’t want to say anything until he’d run more tests of his own, but he was happy to take Hiroto on as a patient and a week later Hiroto was back at the hospital yet again. He was really starting to hate the smell of antiseptics or whatever it was causing the typical hospital smell.
“Don’t frown, baby,” Aki whispered, trying to be discrete even when he’d insisted on coming along. Hiroto was happy he was there, even when they’d agreed he’d stay in the waiting room rather than risk the questions that might follow if he was to be in the room. “You’re here to get help, and he’s the expert.”
They were meaningless words and Hiroto knew Aki was aware of it, but somehow they still helped the way words said by someone who cared always seemed to. Hiroto nodded and wished he could lean his head on Aki’s shoulder, it hurt and felt heavy, but he didn’t want people to think they were more than friends. If anyone asked he’d say Aki was an old friend, someone who’d agreed to come with him so he didn’t have to be alone. It was unfair they’d have to lie about their relationship, but both agreed it was for the best.
His name was called and he got to meet Dr. Ishikawa for the first time. He was older than Dr. Nakashima, salt and pepper hair thinning out around the temples, but he gave off a warmth Hiroto hadn’t expected. Like he genuinely wanted to help. They had a long conversation about Hiroto’s headaches, when they started, how they felt and affected him, how they’d progressed lately, etc. Dr. Ishikawa drew more blood for tests and requested another x-ray for reasons Hiroto didn’t fully understand. All he knew was that he trusted the man.
All in all it took the greater part of the day and he felt bad for Aki who was waiting in the lobby area. He hadn’t had a chance to tell his boyfriend it was okay for him to leave, constantly tossed about and ordered around. In fact he hadn’t even been allowed to have lunch and he was dead hungry by the time he finally slumped down on the chair next to Aki in the corner of the waiting room again.
“Tired?” Aki asked and placed a hand on his knee, a quick gesture that meant the world to Hiroto.
“Mhm,” he replied and yawned big. “But my head doesn’t hurt! Dr. Ishikawa pumped me up on painkillers and gave me a new kind to bring home.”
He held up a big jar made of brown glass with a label full of text printed in such a small font it was barely readable. “I’m not allowed to take more than five a day, but they help!”
It was true, for the first time in what felt like forever Hiroto wasn’t half blinded by his headache. He could still feel it, a sort of numb heavy feeling inside his head, but he could see straight and move around without nausea making him taste bile and spikes of whitehot pain shooting through his entire nervous system. Compared to what he’d lived with in the past few months it was like being well again. Sad how in less than a year you could forget what a normal life felt like.
Aki smiled at him, not quite as wide as the grin Hiroto could feel on his own lips but it was obvious he was happy about it too. The fear was still visible in his eyes though. Hiroto had seen it the first time shortly after he’d told Aki about his tumour. He assumed it’d been there the first time he woke up with Aki’s arms around him after delivering the news, but it’d taken him a while to see through the pain enough for it to register. It made him feel guilty, making Aki worry about him, and it was slightly scary, a constant reminder of the severity of the situation. Yet at the same time it made him feel good, less lonely, because it proved Aki cared what happened to him, and that felt good.
“Come on,” he said lowly and nearly took his boyfriend’s hand before remembering they were in public. “Let’s go home. Right now I feel like I could watch a movie and actually hear the sound effects for once.”
The older nodded and stood up, nibbled on a piercing and Hiroto knew he wanted to ask something so he nudged him in the side. Aki took the hint.
“Are you going to tell me what the doctor said?” he asked as they crossed the lobby and walked out the hospital doors. “I haven’t been able to eat all day cause I’ve been worrying about you.”
“I haven’t been allowed to eat all day,” Hiroto pointed out and pulled out his phone. “Let’s call in an order to the Thai restaurant on the corner, we’ll pick it up on the way. Then I’ll tell you once we get home, okay?”
Any protest Aki might’ve planned to put up died the moment his stomach growled loudly. “Okay fine, I want the yum pork salad then.”
He laughed as Hiroto called in the order, getting massaman curry with tofu for himself, and twenty minutes later they picked it up as planned. There wasn’t a lot of talking getting done as they wolfed down food like two teenagers starved for weeks, constantly stealing little bits and pieces from each other too. It was light and fun and exactly what they needed to relieve some of the stress built up during the day.
But as they curled up together on the couch after dinner, Hiroto having taken a second painkiller because it’d been nearly four hours since his last one, the mood dropped slightly again. Aki wrapped his arms around the younger’s body and repeated his question from before, words whispered into Hiroto’s hair. Hiroto wished he could ignore them, but he knew he owed Aki the truth.
“Dr. Ishikawa says the location of the tumour is promising,” he began. “From his experience there shouldn’t be a problem in removing it, but brain surgery always poses a risk. He also said it sounds like the tumour is growing pretty fast, since my headaches have gotten so much worse in the past few months.”
“But you’ll be okay?” Aki didn’t sound scared, or in any way different from how he always sounded, as he spoke. But the fear shone brighter than ever in his eyes.
“If I have the operation I should be,” he answered honestly, because he’d never lie to Aki about something as important.
“And if not?”
“Dr. Ishikawa couldn’t say exactly, but he said six months to a year would be a good guess.”
There was no need to specify what would happen in six months to a year if he didn’t have surgery. Aki hugged him closer and Hiroto buried his nose into his boyfriend’s neck. He smelled good, natural since he was avoiding any strong scents, another sacrifice made to spare Hiroto’s head.
“You need to have the surgery,” Aki said after a few long moments of silence. “I don’t care if it’s dangerous, not having it means giving up.”
Hiroto sighed and sat back, met Aki’s eyes and knew it wasn’t a question. It wasn’t an order either, but Aki would do everything he could to make him go through with it. And he would do it, because now he had something worth fighting for.
“I will,” he promised out loud and took Aki’s hand, felt his boyfriend squeeze his fingers in return. “I will.”
Aki smiled and pulled him into a tight hug, whispering his thanks and promises of support into his ear without letting go.
- - -
Dr. Ishikawa was a busy man, but the kind who only took on as many patients as he could deal with at a time. Hiroto had been lucky, a prioritised case appearing just as Dr. Ishikawa got an opening in his schedule. They met two more times, for further tests and evaluations, before scheduling an operation. Hiroto was slightly dazed over the pace of everything, but Dr. Ishikawa said the tumour was currently of a size that he could operate on and they didn’t want to risk it growing any larger. If it did there would be need for treatment to try and shrink the growth before removing it with minimum risk, and there was no telling if such a thing would succeed.
Aki accompanied him every time, saying he didn’t care if he got fired in the end because Hiroto was more important. He still stayed in the lobby every time, but Hiroto appreciated the gesture and found strength in the knowledge Aki was in the same building. It was nice to be able to sit down next to him and share a few words, hold his hand for a few seconds even, between the tests and the talks. They kept it discretely, trying to pose it off as close friendship and nothing more, and thought it was tiresome it was still better than not having Aki there at all.
“Mr. Ogata,” a nurse called out to him from across the waiting room. “Dr. Ishikawa would like to see you for a few minutes before you leave.”
With a minor sigh and a whisper of “Hang in there” from Aki, Hiroto got up and walked to the by now rather familiar room. At least it smelled better than the hospital in general, fresher and less sick, and without the overbearing antiseptic smell. Dr. Ishikawa was behind his large desk and the look in his eyes was concerned in a way that made Hiroto uneasy.
“Mr. Ogata, please sit down.”
“Is there something wrong?” Hiroto asked after following the invitation.
“I wanted to go over your symptoms one more time,” Dr. Ishikawa explained. “To make sure we’re not missing anything.”
He read through the list they’d put together before; the headaches, the nausea, the fatigue that had at one point turned into insomnia only to go back to extreme fatigue. Hiroto confirmed all of them and couldn’t really see the point of the meeting when Dr. Ishikawa put the paper back on his desk.
“Are you sure we’re not missing anything?” he asked. “It’s important we have it all covered so that we are prepared for any situation that may occur.”
“No, that seems to be all of it,” Hiroto said. “If there’s anything else linked to it I haven’t thought of it.”
Dr. Ishikawa nodded slowly and made some kind of mark on his paper, like a doctor in an old movie Hiroto thought.
“The nurses say it seems like you’ve been talking to someone in the waiting area,” the doctor said. “Is that right?”
Hiroto swallowed nervously but knew he couldn’t lie about it. “Yeah, a...friend of mine, his name is Aki.”
“How long have you known each other?” Dr. Ishikawa asked and it didn’t seem like he suspected they were anything more than friends. “He must be a good friend if he’s accompanying you on these visits.”
The praise, unintended as it was, made Hiroto smile and he nodded. “He is. I’ve known him for almost a year, but we’ve become really close quickly.”
“I see,” Dr. Ishikawa said and the wrinkle between his eyebrows made Hiroto think he might’ve said too much. He’d never been good at keeping the emotions out of his eyes, so maybe the doctor had seen how he really felt about Aki when he spoke of him. “Do you think Aki would meet me? Maybe he has noticed something you have missed yourself?”
It sounded like a reasonable request, but Hiroto couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong. Nodding he excused himself and went back to the lobby. Aki rose to great him and Hiroto desperately wished he could’ve gotten a hug.
“Are you ready to go?” Aki asked.
“No,” Hiroto confessed and hated the way Aki’s face dropped ever so slightly. “Dr. Ishikawa would like to meet you.”
“Me?” the older asked, clearly surprised. “Why?”
He explained how the nurses had seen them in the waiting room and Dr. Ishikawa’s hopes Aki might’ve noticed something Hiroto himself had missed. It was a better chance than the doctor knew, considering the two of them had practically lived together for the past months. Hiroto decided then and there he’d ask Aki to move in with him officially once he’d gone through the surgery and recovered enough to think about the immediate future.
Together they walked back to Dr. Ishikawa’s office and Hiroto held the door open for his boyfriend. “Dr. Ishikawa, this is Ichiki Akihito. Aki, this is Dr. Ishikawa.”
It was easy to tell that something was wrong with the way Dr. Ishikawa stared at Aki and his brows furrowed even more. Hiroto, not knowing what to do, pointed Aki towards the second chair in front of the desk, the one he’d always assumed were for the sobbing wives, nervous parents, or whomever happened to accompany the unlucky cancer victim to the doctor’s appointment. Up until now it’d always remained empty during his own sessions.
“Dr. Ishikawa,” Aki said and bowed deep to try and ease the sudden tension. “Thank you for what you’re doing for Hiroto. I’m not sure how much I can help, but I’ll do my best.”
When the older man didn’t reply he glanced at Hiroto nervously before taking a seat. Hiroto didn’t know if he was more shocked or confused over Dr. Ishikawa’s behaviour, the man had always been perfectly polite towards him and anyone else Hiroto had ever seen him talk to. But he walked over to the other chair and sat down next to his boyfriend, still refraining from taking his hand even when he wanted to.
“Is there something wrong, doctor?” he asked and tried not to bite his lip.
“Hiroto,” the older man said and Hiroto knew something was wrong because Dr. Ishikawa had never called him by his first name before. “Is your friend currently sitting in the chair next to you?”
More confused than ever Hiroto tried to answer something, but all he could do was look between his doctor and boyfriend and nod in obvious confirmation.
“I wish there was an easy way to say this,” Dr. Ishikawa said and turned his full attention to him, ignoring Aki in a way that could be called nothing but rude. “There are only two people in this room Hiroto, you and I, and there is no one sitting in the other chair.”
Hiroto stared at the man for a moment or two. Then, not knowing what else to do at the ridiculousness of it all, he burst out laughing.
- - -
It took a long time for the information to sink in, for him to realise Dr. Ishikawa wasn’t trying to raise the mood with some failed joke but was in fact deadly serious. A nurse, one Hiroto had met several times and trusted as far as hospital personnel went, had to be called into the room to confirm that there was only one visitor in the room, Mr. Ogata Hiroto.
And then he panicked, fear far greater than he’d felt at the knowledge he had cancer filling him up until all he could do was deny the words and block the possibility. Dr. Ishikawa saw and didn’t try to force more out of the day, merely begged him to come back the following day once he’d had time to process the idea. Hiroto barely listened, convinced he couldn’t get out of the hospital fast enough and that he’d never return as he tried to stay composed on his way through the hallways and lobby area. He knew he was being rude, walking into people, little short of shoving them aside to get past, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to listen to the footsteps he could hear walking behind him.
Whether Aki wanted to spare him the embarrassment of talking to thin air or if he was simply too shocked to react right away, neither alternative making any sense, he waited until they were outside the hospital before grabbing hold of Hiroto’s elbow. A sob, all the emotions he refused to let out, got stuck in the younger’s throat and he tried to shake the other off, but Aki held on tighter.
“No, let me go,” he whispered wetly, little short of a plea. “Just, please...I need to get home.”
The fingers holding on to him tightly, a very real grip he could most definitely feel, slipped away and despite himself Hiroto spun around, for a moment afraid Aki had disappeared. It wasn’t true, couldn’t be when Aki so clearly stood on the sidewalk not ten feet from him looking lost and confused, scared even.
“Can I come with you?” he asked lowly and Hiroto nodded before he had time to think. He didn’t want to be alone.
They walked all the way back to Hiroto’s apartment even though his head was pounding by the time they reached it. He swallowed two painkillers at once, not caring if they dulled the pain, put him to sleep, or slowly killed him just then, and flopped down on the sofa. His head landed in Aki’s lap and for the first time ever he felt himself freeze up at the physical contact his boyfriend provided. That was, until he realised Aki’s hand hanging in the air just above his forehead was shaking.
“Do you think it’s true?” Hiroto barely head him whisper. “Am I...not real?”
It sounded wrong, surreal, ridiculous, yet Hiroto couldn’t brush the question off the way he wanted to. Tilting his head back slightly he met Aki’s eyes even when his own vision still swam a bit from the pain, caught the other’s hand and brought it down to kiss his palm. Aki had soft hands, except for the pads of his fingers which were slightly calloused for reason’s Hiroto realised he’d never asked about. He had funky fingers, all crooked and funny looking. There were too many details to his hands alone for him not to be real.
“You are real,” he said and looked into Aki’s warm brown eyes, suddenly so sad and confused. “I can see and hear and feel you, so you must be.”
“But Dr. Ishikawa said... The nurse, she-”
“I don’t care!” he cut off and groaned slightly as the outburst sent whitehot pain through his skull. “I don’t care, they’re wrong, it’s just... It doesn’t make sense.”
He curled in on himself, closer to Aki’s warm body, stomach rising and falling with his breath and the dull thrum of a heartbeat deep inside. The hand not caught in his own began to card through his hair softly, massaged his scalp in the way that always seemed to help best against his headache, and Hiroto wished he had the energy to cry. He didn’t want to think of Dr. Ishikawa’s troubled look or the one of completely confusing on the nurse’s face, both their assurance Hiroto was the only visitor in the doctor’s office. But his mind wouldn’t shut off and he kept thinking back on the past year, the time he’d spent with Aki. How they’d never hung out with other people, that he’d never been to Aki’s workplace and they always spent the night in his own apartment. It hadn’t seemed strange before, but lying there trying to fall asleep Hiroto realised there was not a single person who could assure him the man he’d fallen in love with did in fact exist.
- - -
They woke up on the couch, Hiroto only to realise Aki was already awake. He always seemed to be. But he was there, a solid form beneath his cheek and his chest hurt at the idea none of it might be real. Aki saw it in his eyes, that he was thinking it, like he always did. So many things that’d always seemed right suddenly seemed suspicious, potentially wrong, and Hiroto hated himself for questioning it all.
“You should go see Dr. Ishikawa,” were the first words out of Aki’s mouth.
Hiroto shook his head. “We should.”
For the first time ever they almost argued, Aki not seeing the point of him coming along and Hiroto needing him to. He hated the way Aki already seemed to have accepted the idea when Hiroto definitely wasn’t ready to admit he might be forced to. But eventually the older agreed to accompany him once more, even let Hiroto hold his hand as they walked from the metro to the hospital. When he tried to pull away in the lobby, standing in front of the reception disk as Hiroto asked if it’d be possible to see Dr. Ishikawa without a booked appointment, Hiroto held on and refused to let go. No one seemed to notice of care.
- - -
Dr. Ishikawa agreed to see them on what should’ve been his lunch break. Hiroto could still feel Aki’s finger in his, warm skin on warm skin, as they entered the office, and unlike all the people in the waiting room Dr. Ishikawa threw a look at their intertwined hands. Hiroto swallowed and almost remained standing, but Aki nudged his wrist slightly and he moved forward to his regular seat. Aki again took the one next to him, but only after a pointed look.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” Dr. Ishikawa admitted, leaned forward on his elbows and if hunger troubled him he didn’t show it. “But I’m glad you’re here Mr. Ogata.”
Hiroto finally looked up to meet the older man’s eyes. “You say Aki’s not real,” he began and skipped politeness altogether. “How come I can see him sitting next to me, hear him speak and feel him touch me?”
For a moment Dr. Ishikawa seemed to ponder how to proceed, which tactics would be best to use and Hiroto didn’t know where he found the patience to wait it out. All he wanted was for his doctor to tell him he was delusional and that no one had claimed Aki wasn’t real, the man was sitting right there beside him. He had a feeling he would be told he was delusional, but not in a way that would benefit his case.
“Are you aware brain tumours can cause hallucinations, Mr. Ogata?” Dr. Ishikawa finally asked, and when Hiroto nodded slowly he went on. “It’s not too common and not something I’d suspect with a tumour located such as yours, but it happens and hallucinations can vary greatly between people.”
He heard Aki’s sharp intake of breath as the information was absorbed and closed his eyes to not risk looking at his lover, wished he could close his mind to the words thrown at him. All too soon he had to open them again though, or risk being subjected to more truths he didn’t want to believe in.
“You’re saying Aki is a hallucination?” he said, voice thick with emotions he would not let out.
“That would be my conclusion yes, I’m sorry to say it,” Dr. Ishikawa agreed. “With the way you’re avoiding looking at the chair next to you, I imagine Aki is sitting in it?” Hiroto nodded weakly and tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. “How long did you say you’ve known Aki?”
“A little under a year,” Hiroto managed to reply. Dr. Ishikawa picked up his pen and opened Hiroto’s file, asked if he could be more specific.
“Ten months,” Aki whispered next to him, apparently unheard by the doctor. “It’s been ten months since we first met, give or take a week.”
Hiroto didn’t want to look at him but he did anyway, and what he saw in Aki’s eyes, the understanding and the pained acceptance, nearly broke his resolve not to cry as he relayd the information to Dr. Ishikawa.
“I understand if it’s hard to take in and accept,” the man said. “But this is very important information Mr. Ogata. It means your tumour appeared earlier than we expected, could indicate it’s been growing slower than we assumed. All physical tests remain the same though, and I’d like to go through with our scheduled operation.”
Something clicked in Hiroto’s mind at the words and he had no idea what emotions his eyes threw at Dr. Ishikawa as he turned to face the man. His voice portrayed a lot of fear when he spoke at least.
“What will happen to Aki if I have the operation?”
He knew the answer even before it was told to him. If Aki was a hallucination caused by the brain tumour, a symptom of his cancer, then...
“If we successfully remove the tumour,” Dr. Ishikawa said, and the sympathy on his face looked more real than Hiroto would’ve imagined, “all symptoms of it should disappear. Including your hallucinations.”
Without thinking Hiroto reached out and grabbed Aki’s hand and squeezed it hard, desperate to know his lover was still there.
- - -
“You need to have the surgery,” Aki whispered three days later.
Somehow they’d managed to go three full days without mentioning the doctor’s appointment. Dr. Ishikawa hadn’t tried to have a further conversation after his statement, realising perhaps that Hiroto wouldn’t take in a single word more. Aki had been mostly quiet ever since, and Hiroto hadn’t questioned it since he knew it’d result in talking about things he’d prefer to ignore. But the way his lover, real or not, pulled away hurt. Hiroto needed him more than ever, and he hated the way he had to fight for every scrap of attention and closeness. Irony had it Aki chose the night Hiroto had finally managed to fight his way into the older’s lap to bring the subject up.
“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to have it. Not if it means losing you.”
For the first time in days he felt Aki’s fingers comb through his hair and it was the best feeling he could imagine. It was real, it had to be, because he could feel the soft tugs on his scalp and the soothing feeling it brought in its wake.
“Hiroto...” Aki sounded sad yet determined and he tugged on his hair until Hiroto turned on his back, looked up at his lover with eyes free of pain thanks to Dr. Ishikawa’s magic pain killers. “You need to have it. You’ll die if you don’t have it!”
“You will die if I do have it!” Hiroto exclaimed and sat up, tried to ignore the sudden pulse of sharp pain shooting through his head and the tears burning behind his eyelids. He couldn’t think of Aki gone, of losing the only person who had seen him for who he really was, the person he wanted to be.
Aki pulled him into a tight hug and Hiroto went willingly, buried his face into the older’s neck and inhaled his calming scent. The world had become fucked up, confusing, and too much to handle. He wanted to go back to a year ago, when he was lonely but not hurting. Only it wasn’t an option, because it meant never having met Aki and Hiroto wouldn’t trade the past year for anything.
“I will die no matter what,” his lover whispered sadly, obviously not liking the thought. “If Dr. Ishikawa is right, then I die when you do. But you...you can live even if I don’t.”
He didn’t say that he could not die if he’d never been alive in the first place, but Hiroto thought it and he was pretty sure Aki did too. A hallucination was not real, had never been born and therefore didn’t have a real life to speak of. Aki could disappear, be cured like a symptom of a disease, but he could not die because he was not alive.
“Can I?” Hiroto asked honestly, pulled back enough to look at his lover and felt the first tears roll down his cheeks. He didn’t want to cry, not when he hadn’t before. For some reason it made him feel weak.
“Yes you can,” Aki assured and Hiroto leaned into the kiss he offered. It sounded too final for his liking, but for once he felt like he understood Aki as well as Aki had always understood him.
He allowed himself to be pulled down on the couch and kissed deeply. Aki’s hands moved over his body, on top of clothes at first but eventually dipped beneath. A burning sensation too real to ignore, intoxicating and so heady he couldn’t stop even when his head and mind alike were hurting. He allowed Aki to pull the shirt over his head, caress him all over and drown him in physical pleasure. When hands dipped beneath his sweatpants, the only type of clothing he’d worn for days, Hiroto groaned and pushed closer.
A broken sob was caught between them and he didn’t quite know who’d uttered it. Not that it mattered when clothes were pushed aside and skin allowed to touch. Hiroto was on top, unusual but not wrong, and Aki carefully prepped him. There was a bottle of lube beneath the couch, left there long ago in one of their less serious more heated moments, and Hiroto somehow found it for Aki to make use of. One finger, two, three, until he was able to push inside with barely any friction at all.
It was at the same time slow and desperate, a need to feel and a goodbye they didn’t want to acknowledge. Aki seemed to have accepted he was not real, that his time was up and so he should make use of the time he had left. Hiroto was not willing to make the same acknowledgement and so he clung tight until the orgasm shook his body and he felt, felt, Aki come inside him.
“You need to have the surgery baby,” Aki repeated, a broken plea once he found his voice again.
Hiroto didn’t look at him as he nodded, face buried in Aki’s neck with short strands of sweaty black hair tickling his temple. He knew he had no choice, the surgery was only two days away and Dr. Ishikawa would want his answer. It hurt, destroyed the sated happiness he should’ve felt lying in his lover’s arms, but he whispered his agreement onto Aki’s skin.
It was the first and the last time Hiroto ever saw the older cry.
- - -
The day before the surgery he sat in front of Dr. Ishikawa again. He’d called the day before to confirm that yes, he would go through with it. Dr. Ishikawa, while pleased to hear so, had asked him to come in for a final assessment to ensure Hiroto knew what he was getting into. He did, he was setting himself up for a loneliness far worse than he’d felt a year earlier. At least that was what it felt like as he sat before the older man.
“Alright,” Dr. Ishikawa said. “Then we have an understanding. No solid foods twenty-four hours before the surgery, no drinks six hours before. Do you have any last questions, Mr. Ogata?”
“No, but I have a request,” Hiroto found himself saying. It wasn’t something he’d thought about or planned, but something Dr. Ishikawa had said during one of their first meetings suddenly popped into his head out of nowhere. “I don’t want to be awake.”
Dr. Ishikawa paused in his movement, as minor as they’d been, and the nurse by the door looked up from her papers. Even Aki, seated in the chair next to him as always, looked shocked.
“It’s preferable if you are-” the doctor began, but Hiroto interrupted him.
“No, I won’t be awake when you...when you...” He looked to the side, met Aki’s gaze and bit back the tears he refused to cry outside his own apartment. “I can’t be awake.”
From the corner of his eye Hiroto saw the nurse shake her head, but he appreciated the fact she didn’t snort at least. It must seem so strange to people, that he cared so much about someone who wasn’t even there to anyone else but him. But they weren’t important, not now.
“Alright Mr. Ogata,” Dr. Ishikawa finally said. “We’ll arrange for you to be fully anaesthetised during the procedure. It is preferred for the patient to be awake, but considering the circumstances I’ll allow it. However, I want you to sign a document saying the surgery is done with anaesthesia on your request. It is hospital procedure when protocol is not followed.”
Hiroto agreed without hesitation and waited for the nurse to find the proper paperwork. He spoke some with Dr. Ishikawa, but mostly he just sat quiet until he could put his name down on a dotted line and leave, feeling like he’d signed away part of his soul.
- - -
They spent the evening curled up on the couch doing nothing. The TV remained off and they didn’t eat, Hiroto because he wasn’t allowed and Aki because he didn’t need to. They even left the lights off and allowed the apartment to fall into a gloomy darkness before Aki finally asked him to at least light the candles on the coffee table. Perhaps they should’ve talked, Hiroto felt like he should say something but he didn’t know what. So they spent their final hours in silence, curled close and focused on feeling the warmth of the other’s skin.
When Aki nudged him awake hours later, dawn barely creeping over the horizon, to tell him it was time to leave Hiroto didn’t feel like they’d wasted the night.
- - -
He didn’t cry until he was in the hospital shower, ordered to scrub himself from top to bottom yet again with the sickly smelling sterile soaps he’d already been using twice a day for three days straight. Aki had joined him because Hiroto begged him to, not seeing what difference it’d make if imagined hands touched him or not. When the tears began to drop off his nose he wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Don’t cry baby,” Aki whispered and hugged him close, ran soap slick fingers up and down his spine in a soothing manner that only had Hiroto crying harder. “Please don’t, you need to do this.”
He held him close until Hiroto managed to calm down, but he didn’t move out of Aki’s embrace for long moments still. Finally a nurse had to ask if he was alright, because the team was waiting to complete the preparations for the surgery. Hiroto announced he’d be out in a minute or two and looked up at Aki as he did.
“I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep,” the older promised, eyes emotional but devoid of tears.
“I’d rather you be there when I wake up,” Hiroto whispered and hugged him, skin to skin with water cascading over them. “Promise me you’ll be there if you can, don’t make me wait.”
Aki nodded easily. “I hope I won’t be, but if I can I’ll hold your hand when you wake up.”
It was the best promise he could give and Hiroto knew it. Screwing his eyes shut around the fresh tears he pulled Aki down into a long kiss, the last one he’d ever get if things went well, and stepped out of the shower. The nurse glanced at the clock but didn’t say anything in favour of moving on, and all too soon he was rolled into the theatre.
The only thing Hiroto liked about it was that he’d be half seated in a chair during the operation. It left his hands free and Aki wasn’t late to hold his right one. People ran around them, spoke to him and to each other, but Hiroto only looked at Aki. He must’ve replied to the anaesthetist verbally because he couldn’t nod his head, and then the world was slowly blurring out.
He saw Aki, his gorgeous face and the near black eyes so full of love and sorrow. Watched the pierced lips move in what looked like a confession, but Hiroto didn’t hear it.
- - -
At first he didn’t know where he was when he woke up. The walls were bright white and sunshine filtered in through gauzy curtains. There was an annoying beeping to his left and he thought he could make out an IV drip above him, even if it was blurry. Slowly the memories came back and he looked down at his hands. They were empty, as was the room. Hiroto could so vividly imagine Aki standing by the window, how the sunlight would reflect on his silver piercings. But this time he was imagining it, and he knew it.
The door opened and Dr. Ishikawa walked in, alerted by some silent alarm or by pure chance Hiroto didn’t know. It was near impossible to tell when his doctor was surprised and when not.
“It’s good to see you awake Mr. Ogata,” the man said. “Are you feeling alright?”
Hiroto tried to nod but quickly changed his mind and replied out loud instead. His throat felt dry and raw though, and Dr. Ishikawa helped him drink a bit from a cup with a straw in it. He then looked at some monitors, flashed a blinding light in Hiroto’s eyes, and nodded satisfactorily.
“I’m pleased to say the surgery went without complications,” he said. “We were able to remove all of the tumour with minimum intrusion on your brain.”
“I know,” Hiroto said sadly, too tired to be physically upset even when his insides were already burning with longing.
Dr. Ishikawa caught on quickly and that look of genuine sympathy returned. “Your friend?”
Hiroto dared shake his head no then, not sure he could verbally confirm that Aki was gone. Like a child he wanted to think it wasn’t real until he said it was.
“I’m sorry Mr. Ogata,” Dr. Ishikawa said honestly. “Do you want something to help you sleep longer, it will do your body well.”
He agreed and went back into a blissful dreamless sleep.
- - -
It felt like an eternity before he was allowed out of bed. Hiroto didn’t know why he wanted to get up so badly, it wasn’t like he had anything waiting for him. Dr. Ishikawa made him see a therapist at the hospital, saying it’d do him good to talk about everything that’d happened. The therapist, a woman by the name Kanae, in turn forced him to call his parents and finally inform them he was in the hospital. She didn’t seem impressed he’d ‘forgotten’ to tell them earlier, and Hiroto found his mother was in perfect agreement.
They came to visit him, and it did feel good to see them, get hugged for real and talk to people who knew him. But once they went home the longing for Aki was even worse. Kanae wanted to talk about him, and slowly she made Hiroto see the sacrifice Aki had made for him. Hiroto even told her Aki had been his lover, and she earned his full trust when she didn’t ridicule him for it.
Slowly he healed, physically and emotionally, and eventually he was released from the hospital and allowed to go home. Kanae had warned him it’d be hard to do so, because it’d remind him of Aki, and she was right. But Hiroto also saw things more clearly, how there truly were no traces of Aki in the apartment whatsoever. It hurt, knowing his mind had played him so fully, but he closed his eyes and remembered what Aki had told him.
”You can live even if I don’t.”
- - -
A year went by faster than Hiroto would’ve thought possible. He kept going to see Kanae, who refused to let him call her by anything but her first name, and he quit his job. It was not what he wanted to do and so he began working at a small coffee shop instead. Books lined every wall of it and Hiroto was allowed to read any one of them between serving customers. As such he got to meet people, made new friends, and got a chance to hang out with his old ones once he invited them to come try the coffee or tea. He still missed Aki, but he was moving on.
Perhaps that was why he didn’t know what to make of the small man stumbling down the stairs in the early afternoon one day. He was almost as short as Hiroto himself, had a head full of dark unruly curls Hiroto had no idea how an Asian managed to create, and was absolutely gorgeous behind the large bruise covering half his face. One eye was swollen shut, but the other was pitch black as it glared up at Hiroto.
“What?” the man snapped. “You don’t serve people unless they look pretty?”
“Then I’d have to serve you,” Hiroto replied before thinking and bit his lip as he blushed crimson. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
An amused chuckle cut him off and he dared to look up again. The man was smiling at him and it was a breathtaking sight to say the least, enough for Hiroto to almost forget the nasty bruise.
“Are you okay?” he asked and motioned for the black-eye.
The man shrugged, causing the black hoody to fall off his shoulder but he seemed to wear at least two more layers beneath it. He pulled his fingers, adorned in rings and bracelets rattled around his wrist as he did, through his hair and hissed slightly in pain when the discoloured skin moved.
“Yeah, a reminder not to hit on straight men,” he said and shrugged again. “Now can I get a coffee?”
Hiroto was stunned but nodded and took the order, completed it and brought it to the man. He confirmed the other couldn’t smoke in the café, too many books that could catch fire, and tried to get back to work but found his eyes constantly wandering to the stranger. He looked like Aki, Hiroto thought. Not exactly alike of course, but like they were the same type of people, could’ve been friends had Aki been real. He still missed Aki, but more like a dull ache in the centre of his chest than the all consuming pain it’d been right after the surgery.
The bell above the door dinged and Hiroto found one of his old, and gay, friends walking down the stairs. Shou was tall and beautiful, but not in a way that attracted Hiroto. The older made for a great friend though.
They exchanged pleasantries and Hiroto gave him a hug, having grown very affectionate in the past year. Shou wanted a coffee to go, forever on his way from one project to another, and Hiroto quickly prepared it for him. The older was just about to walk out when Hiroto grabbed his arm and in a whispered voice asked if he could see the man at the back of the coffee shop.
“The tiny one curled in on himself and hidden behind a curtain of hair?” Shou asked softly, adding details to show that yes he could indeed see the man. Shou was one of the few people Hiroto had told about Aki. “I can see him, and if he has caught your eye I suggest you go over there and talk to him.”
Hiroto smiled and hugged him tightly, whispered his thanks and saw his friend out. Then he turned around and hesitantly walked to the table at the far back. He licked his lips nervously and cleared his throat, blushed slightly as the lone black eye turned his direction. The man smirked at him.
“I was wondering if you’d find your balls and come over,” he said and picked up a sugar cube only to place it in his mouth.
“Is it...okay if I sit down?” Hiroto asked and motioned for the other chair.
“Only if you’re gay,” was the somewhat unexpected reply. “I’ve had enough of straight men for a while.”
He gestured towards his bruised face and Hiroto swallowed, because it looked beyond uncomfortable. Still, he took a seat and met the appreciative look the other gave him.
“You dare go around and say you’re gay even when you got beaten up for it?” He said it like a question even when it wasn’t.
“Of course, I can do whatever the fuck I want, including being gay.” He sucked loudly on the sugar cube and Hiroto’s eyes were drawn to his lips. They were bitten badly, but spread in another smirk. “I’m Kenzo.”
Hiroto looked up to meet his open eye again. Nerves fluttered in his stomach and for a moment Aki’s face flashed before his eyes again. But it faded and left way for Kenzo’s, equally pretty and even more perfect behind the bruising. Or so Hiroto imagined.
“My name’s Hiroto,” he said and decided he wanted to know for sure what the other looked like. “And yes, I am gay.”
It was the first time he said the words out loud in public. Hiroto had to admit it felt good to be honest about himself. Kenzo smiled at him and asked if he could have another coffee, cause he suddenly had an urge to stay a little longer.