Reaching for the Moon: Chapter Ten
Reaching for the Moon
Chapter Ten:
The Way We Were
Memories may be beautiful, and yet, what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget.
The mourners at the funeral were few. There was no extended family in attendance, and few if any friends. Most of the suits present clad the departed’s business associates. Except for Jack and his parents, none of the neighbors had come, and Jack couldn’t even feign grief at the death of a man who in life had so haunted his own son. Most exhibited only what emotion was appropriate for the death of an acquaintance in the presence of his grieving widow.
And that widow was the only person truly grieving. She cried hopelessly, inconsolably, desperately, as though she didn’t know how to live without him. It probably touched some in attendance there, thinking of how much the departed man’s wife loved him. Her son sitting next to her, knowing the truth, merely looked grim. Sven didn’t raise his eyes once the whole time. He stared at the grass in front of his feet and tried to keep emotion off his features.
The eldest son was not given a seat with his family. He’d been relegated further back to a corner by himself. Most of the people who had come did not know who he was. Those who remembered the Nakaharas that far back were surprised to see him, and not pleasantly so. He was in their eyes, after all, the prodigal son who had only returned in time to see his father buried. The people around him tried politely to ignore him, and keep to themselves their curiosity about the hateful looks the tear-stained widow regularly shot at him.
Taira felt numb. He didn’t care that his mother hated him or that his father was dead, though something in him told him that he should. Even the hatred he bore his father had grown suddenly still and cold; it had not left, but it had numbed. The only feeling he had left growing in the pit of his stomach was a horrified fear that there were no feelings left. The world seemed off, wrong somehow. It was like looking through a glass and seeing an alternate version of reality; he couldn’t help but wonder if at any moment he would return to some other world and mourn the loss of a real father. He did not.
The service was short, and little was said about the deceased. There was little to be said; most of his acquaintances knew him too little, and his family knew him all too well. Voices echoed in Taira’s ears, but he heard no words. Colors and shapes swirled past his eyes, but he saw nothing. Even through the burial, he could not shake that strange feeling of distance.
His mother finally snapped. Letting go of Sven’s arm, which she had so desperately clung to until then, she pointed at Taira and raised a cry that sounded more like pain than sadness, wild and sharp. “You!” she screamed, tears blurring the once beautiful eyes set in her ragged and careworn face. “This is all your fault!”
Taira looked up and saw her, but only vaguely comprehended the harsh decline in the woman he had once called Mother.
“He was fine before you ruined him!” she kept shouting. “After you became such an embarrassment, he blamed me! He blamed me for what you had become! He loved me-he always loved me-but he was so angry! Because of you! If it weren’t for you, he’d always have loved me like he did when we were young. It’s because I had you-it’s your fault-I never should have given birth to you!” Her scream transformed into a wail. The sound of her voice was ear-piercing and terrible.
A cold, dark smile began to form at the edges of Taira’s lips. The feeling that the world was wrong somehow began to morph into a strange paradox of comfortingly familiar pain. Yes, blame me, his tired mind began. Blame me for everything and regret that I live. Be disgusted. Hate me. This is right. This is how it should be.
The next voice that rang in his ears was calm and firm. “That’s enough, Mom,” it said. Taira looked up to see that his brother had interposed himself between them. “The only one to blame for Dad’s death is himself. He’s the one who chose to drink until it killed him.”
“You traitor!” she cried, even as she sobbed into his arms. “It’s because of you children that he became that way!” She kept wailing, but her words melted into the sounds of her crying and became indistinguishable.
Taira blinked at Sven. He was taller than he remembered, and broader, and stronger. At Sven’s clear voice, Taira’s bizarre feelings began to lift, and he could feel the harsh but welcome tint of reality settling back in on his world. He could see the people blinking awkwardly around them and Jack frozen in shock mid-stride over in their direction. With some effort, Taira managed to raise his eyes to the level of his brother’s head. The back of it should have been facing him, but Sven had turned his face toward his long-lost brother. “I have to take her home,” he began quietly, almost shyly, “but I want to see you again, before you go.”
Taira simply nodded in reply. That was enough.
He sat on top of the old playground turtle, smaller than he remembered it, trying to prepare himself to speak to the one member of his family still capable of a rational conversation. Nervousness about not knowing what his brother would say almost made him think he would prefer to face his screaming mother again. He was still trying to settle the churning in his stomach when he was found.
“I thought I might find you here,” Sven said simply.
Taira glanced up at him. Though his brother was by no means unrecognizable from sixteen to twenty-six, it was strange to see him looking so tall and strong and adult; Taira’s mental image of his brother had never even properly updated for puberty. On some level, this made Taira the more nervous. But he felt no real desire to run away when he noticed the brightness of his brother’s eye had not dulled.
Sven took a seat next to Taira, ignoring how silly they must have looked, two grown men sitting on a big old plastic turtle in a broken-down and overgrown playground. “We used to come here all the time,” he began, letting nostalgia creep into his voice.
Taira simply nodded.
Sven lifted his hand and pointed at a big oak a few yards away. “I would play with the other kids in the neighborhood, and you would sit under that tree and study. When I would bother you to get up and play, you would switch to this turtle and keep studying.” He smiled embarrassedly. “I thought you were so boring.”
Taira smirked. “I was,” he replied.
“No,” Sven said, his smile waning, “I was just clueless.”
“You were a kid.”
“So were you. Too bad he never let you act like it.”
Taira looked down awkwardly. He didn’t know what to say to that.
“Hey, look, Taira,” Sven began, probably even more awkwardly than his brother, “I’ve always wanted to apologize.”
Taira winced. “You don’t have to.”
“No, I do,” Sven insisted. “And not just for what you think. I handled it horribly when you came out, I know. But I spent sixteen years taking you for granted before that.” He struggled momentarily with a stubborn lump in his throat before continuing. “You’re, well, probably the only reason I’m still here and half sane-”
“Don’t exaggerate, stupid.”
“I’m not! Geez, would you listen to me?” Sven sighed. “Yeah, sure, I’m stupid, but I’m not so stupid that I never noticed you’d be the one Dad hit when I made him angry. Or that you would take the blame for all the stupid shit I pulled. Or that the real reason you spent every minute studying was so that Dad would keep his ridiculous expectations focused away from me. I’m not so dumb that I never figured out you were protecting me.”
Taira had no reply to give.
“I am so dumb that I started to get angry at you for it.”
Taira blinked in confusion.
“Compared to you and Mom, I had it easy,” Sven admitted. “I knew that. But even though I didn’t feel the blows, even though I wasn’t the one being yelled at, I hated seeing what Dad did to you and Mom. And I hated how Mom covered it up with a smile and insisted ‘your father’s a good man.’ Even a stupid kid could tell something wasn’t right with that. As I got older, I started to hate her even more than I hated Dad-I hated her for letting it happen. I hated her for rolling over and being the victim. And then, then I got taller than you, and stronger than you, and I realized that instead of my big brother, you were becoming my mom.” He tried to swallow, but his throat was all dried out. “I wanted to protect both of you-you especially, since you’d always protected me, and I thought you had become so small and timid and weak next to me-but I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless and worthless. And then I started treating you like Mom in my head. I started blaming you for letting yourself be a victim. Even though on some level I knew that wasn’t true.”
Taira pulled his knees up and muffled his mouth with his arms, but said, “It was true.”
“But you weren’t like her-you didn’t choose it. You were born into it.”
“I didn’t have to play martyr. I was just being a coward.”
“A coward who saved me.” Sven shook his head. “No, you were braver than you think.” He darkened. “But that still happened.”
Taira winced, but said nothing.
“That was the end of it for me. When I found out you were gay, that was it-you weren’t my brother anymore, you were a repeat of Mom. You were set up in my head to be some man’s victim for the rest of your life, just like her. And it was already happening. I was embarrassed and ashamed of you-like I said, I was stupid. I had always known how strong you really were, when we were children. How else could a six-year-old kid take a beating for somebody else? It was like all that strength had evaporated. I was angry at you for falling short of the expectations I’d set on you, and I was angry at myself for not being able to step up and protect you for a change. So I let you take the fall. And then when you left, I got even angrier, because I felt like you’d abandoned me. I blamed you, but then I missed you, and I hated that I missed you, so I tried to forget about you.” He laughed at himself. “I told you I was stupid.”
Taira joined in the self-deprecation with a smirk. “You’re not alone, there.”
Sven let some of his nervousness drain out into a full-on laugh. “And then I got a taste of the shit you had to deal with, and I started to change my mind!” he laughed. “I got the old man to pay for my degree by implying a threat that he’d have no heir left if he didn’t spend that money on me, despite the fact that my grades were never half as good as yours. And as soon as the last school bill was paid, I was gone like the wind!” He laughed heartily, and even Taira had to join in a little at the thought of Sven tricking the old bastard. “And that’s when I could finally admit that I was the one being an idiot. You don’t know how much I worried about you-what if you really were still being a victim? I knew you were stronger than I’d given you credit for, but you were thrown out into the world with nothing and no one-what if you hadn’t made it? Day by day, not knowing if you were dead or alive-I wished to high Heaven I’d done something before it came to that. I wished I hadn’t been stupid enough to hate you for being a victim or for being gay. I even wished I’d gone with you, to help you somehow. After all, you’re-” his voice choked a little bit- “you’re the only person I can really call family.”
Taira saw Sven choking up and tried to interrupt him. “Sven…”
Sven shook his head. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. But I don’t want you to vanish again-I want to be family again, like we used to be.”
Taira’s face darkened. “We can never go back to how we used to be,” he said softly. “I changed, when I was thrown out. I’ve done a lot of things to get by, and most of them are ugly. I can never go back.” He softened a little. “But… I still missed you, too.” He smiled awkwardly at Sven.
A broad smile stretched across Sven’s face when he saw that. “Let’s not go back, then,” he said. “Back then sucked anyway. Dad’s dead and buried, and I’m getting Mom put into psychiatric care. So let’s leave it behind. Let’s throw all that crap away and start over.”
Taira smiled faintly. “I’m glad to have the old man out of the way, believe me,” he began, “but I can’t quite throw it all away yet.”
Sven raised an eyebrow, and noticed Taira’s eyes focusing softly off in the distance. He followed them through the bramble of overgrowth to the vague outline of the Sinclair house, where he could see Jack pacing in agitation on the porch. He bit his lip for a little while, but in the end couldn’t help but ask. “Hey, Taira, are you… you and Jack…”
Taira blinked and turned his face back to Sven. Then he laughed. “No, we’re not together.”
“Oh.” Sven scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Sorry.”
“What for?”
“Don’t you still like him?”
Taira froze. “‘Still’?”
Sven gave an awkward half-smile. “I’ve had a lot of time to think back and put two and two together.”
Taira blushed slightly. “Well, some things don’t need to be said.”
“Does he know?”
“He knows I’m gay. That’s all he knows.”
“Do you think he’d react badly if you told him everything?”
Taira paused, thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he finally answered.
“He seems pretty damn worried about you. Maybe you should try it and see.”
Taira punched Sven lightly in the shoulder. “Who asked you?”
Sven laughed. “What, who suggested that the thought crossed my mind that I’d always be able to reach you somehow if you dated Melanie’s brother?”
“Can it!” Taira teased, pushing Sven and making him roll over off the turtle. “You’ll be able to reach me regardless, now.”
They spent all of Sunday on the train going back home, and didn’t arrive until early Monday morning. Taira was exhausted. He didn’t say a word to Jack the whole trip, and Jack didn’t press him to-he just watched over Taira with worry on his face. When Taira finally turned over to sleep, he felt Jack’s hand softly brushing strands of hair away from his face. It was so gentle, he wanted to cry.
Sven’s words kept turning round and round in Taira’s head. He felt almost guilty for making Sven say them. He hadn’t looked out for his little brother because he’d wanted to be acknowledged or thanked-it was just instinct. And Sven wasn’t the only one who’d handled Taira’s disappearance badly. If Sven felt abandoned, it was because he was. Taira had resented him, too. It was enough just to know his brother didn’t hate him.
And then there was Jack. Even Sven had figured out how Taira felt-Melanie wouldn’t be far behind, and Taira was dragging Jack into an even bigger mess now. He didn’t share Sven’s impression that a confession might not end so badly; even if Jack cared about him, those feelings couldn’t be the same as his. He reminded himself that wasn’t the kind of man Jack was. Taira may have held Jack’s body, but he was still so far from his heart.
And was he allowed to admit how much he wanted it?
When Jack had held Taira close after he’d fled from that house, Taira had known there was no hope for him-he was hopelessly in love, like a stupid little boy all over again. Taira pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders and steeled himself. Then there was only one option left. No matter the outcome, it was too late to turn back now. He had stopped running away. He’d faced his father; he would face Jack too. There was only one more thing he had to deal with first. It was time to air everything out-to let Jack know everything. Taira trembled inwardly at the thought. If he knew everything, would he be disgusted like everyone else had been, and part ways with him forever? Or would he hold him close, like those soft fingers were suggesting right now?
It wasn’t until they parted ways at the station that words passed between them. As Taira turned to go his own way, Jack called after him, “Hey, Taira.”
Taira paused.
Jack was having some trouble with his words, and all he managed to get out was, “You… you really ought to eat something.”
It took Taira a little while to respond. When he did, his voice was quiet, and all he said was, “Okay, Jack.” Then he left.
Taira stopped leaving Jack’s food untouched by his front door, but he was never there when Jack came by. In fact, Jack couldn’t find him at all after that. The only reassurance he had that Taira hadn’t run away entirely was the empty leftover containers that would appear on his doorstep to replace the full ones Jack had left. For two more weeks, Taira remained a mystery, which Jack wanted nothing more than to peer inside of, but could not yet begin to understand.
Only one more chapter left after this. It's kicking my ass. I wanted to write a sweet lovemaking scene, and... SHIT those are hard. I may end up giving up on it. If I don't, you'll get something... kind of awkward, probably. I'm sorry. I'm really no good at writing those kinds of scenes. But I'm trying. >.<
Once again, I don't intend to spoil what happened to Taira, but if you want to guess-you're free to. I'm curious what people suspect.
Last chapter will go up as soon as I've finished it and re-read over the whole story to make sure I didn't forget any loose ends.
This ride's almost over! It feels so strange! Thanks for bearing with me so far (especially with my spectacular slowness in updating these last few months).
-ALiCe
Chapter Ten:
The Way We Were
Memories may be beautiful, and yet, what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget.
The mourners at the funeral were few. There was no extended family in attendance, and few if any friends. Most of the suits present clad the departed’s business associates. Except for Jack and his parents, none of the neighbors had come, and Jack couldn’t even feign grief at the death of a man who in life had so haunted his own son. Most exhibited only what emotion was appropriate for the death of an acquaintance in the presence of his grieving widow.
And that widow was the only person truly grieving. She cried hopelessly, inconsolably, desperately, as though she didn’t know how to live without him. It probably touched some in attendance there, thinking of how much the departed man’s wife loved him. Her son sitting next to her, knowing the truth, merely looked grim. Sven didn’t raise his eyes once the whole time. He stared at the grass in front of his feet and tried to keep emotion off his features.
The eldest son was not given a seat with his family. He’d been relegated further back to a corner by himself. Most of the people who had come did not know who he was. Those who remembered the Nakaharas that far back were surprised to see him, and not pleasantly so. He was in their eyes, after all, the prodigal son who had only returned in time to see his father buried. The people around him tried politely to ignore him, and keep to themselves their curiosity about the hateful looks the tear-stained widow regularly shot at him.
Taira felt numb. He didn’t care that his mother hated him or that his father was dead, though something in him told him that he should. Even the hatred he bore his father had grown suddenly still and cold; it had not left, but it had numbed. The only feeling he had left growing in the pit of his stomach was a horrified fear that there were no feelings left. The world seemed off, wrong somehow. It was like looking through a glass and seeing an alternate version of reality; he couldn’t help but wonder if at any moment he would return to some other world and mourn the loss of a real father. He did not.
The service was short, and little was said about the deceased. There was little to be said; most of his acquaintances knew him too little, and his family knew him all too well. Voices echoed in Taira’s ears, but he heard no words. Colors and shapes swirled past his eyes, but he saw nothing. Even through the burial, he could not shake that strange feeling of distance.
His mother finally snapped. Letting go of Sven’s arm, which she had so desperately clung to until then, she pointed at Taira and raised a cry that sounded more like pain than sadness, wild and sharp. “You!” she screamed, tears blurring the once beautiful eyes set in her ragged and careworn face. “This is all your fault!”
Taira looked up and saw her, but only vaguely comprehended the harsh decline in the woman he had once called Mother.
“He was fine before you ruined him!” she kept shouting. “After you became such an embarrassment, he blamed me! He blamed me for what you had become! He loved me-he always loved me-but he was so angry! Because of you! If it weren’t for you, he’d always have loved me like he did when we were young. It’s because I had you-it’s your fault-I never should have given birth to you!” Her scream transformed into a wail. The sound of her voice was ear-piercing and terrible.
A cold, dark smile began to form at the edges of Taira’s lips. The feeling that the world was wrong somehow began to morph into a strange paradox of comfortingly familiar pain. Yes, blame me, his tired mind began. Blame me for everything and regret that I live. Be disgusted. Hate me. This is right. This is how it should be.
The next voice that rang in his ears was calm and firm. “That’s enough, Mom,” it said. Taira looked up to see that his brother had interposed himself between them. “The only one to blame for Dad’s death is himself. He’s the one who chose to drink until it killed him.”
“You traitor!” she cried, even as she sobbed into his arms. “It’s because of you children that he became that way!” She kept wailing, but her words melted into the sounds of her crying and became indistinguishable.
Taira blinked at Sven. He was taller than he remembered, and broader, and stronger. At Sven’s clear voice, Taira’s bizarre feelings began to lift, and he could feel the harsh but welcome tint of reality settling back in on his world. He could see the people blinking awkwardly around them and Jack frozen in shock mid-stride over in their direction. With some effort, Taira managed to raise his eyes to the level of his brother’s head. The back of it should have been facing him, but Sven had turned his face toward his long-lost brother. “I have to take her home,” he began quietly, almost shyly, “but I want to see you again, before you go.”
Taira simply nodded in reply. That was enough.
He sat on top of the old playground turtle, smaller than he remembered it, trying to prepare himself to speak to the one member of his family still capable of a rational conversation. Nervousness about not knowing what his brother would say almost made him think he would prefer to face his screaming mother again. He was still trying to settle the churning in his stomach when he was found.
“I thought I might find you here,” Sven said simply.
Taira glanced up at him. Though his brother was by no means unrecognizable from sixteen to twenty-six, it was strange to see him looking so tall and strong and adult; Taira’s mental image of his brother had never even properly updated for puberty. On some level, this made Taira the more nervous. But he felt no real desire to run away when he noticed the brightness of his brother’s eye had not dulled.
Sven took a seat next to Taira, ignoring how silly they must have looked, two grown men sitting on a big old plastic turtle in a broken-down and overgrown playground. “We used to come here all the time,” he began, letting nostalgia creep into his voice.
Taira simply nodded.
Sven lifted his hand and pointed at a big oak a few yards away. “I would play with the other kids in the neighborhood, and you would sit under that tree and study. When I would bother you to get up and play, you would switch to this turtle and keep studying.” He smiled embarrassedly. “I thought you were so boring.”
Taira smirked. “I was,” he replied.
“No,” Sven said, his smile waning, “I was just clueless.”
“You were a kid.”
“So were you. Too bad he never let you act like it.”
Taira looked down awkwardly. He didn’t know what to say to that.
“Hey, look, Taira,” Sven began, probably even more awkwardly than his brother, “I’ve always wanted to apologize.”
Taira winced. “You don’t have to.”
“No, I do,” Sven insisted. “And not just for what you think. I handled it horribly when you came out, I know. But I spent sixteen years taking you for granted before that.” He struggled momentarily with a stubborn lump in his throat before continuing. “You’re, well, probably the only reason I’m still here and half sane-”
“Don’t exaggerate, stupid.”
“I’m not! Geez, would you listen to me?” Sven sighed. “Yeah, sure, I’m stupid, but I’m not so stupid that I never noticed you’d be the one Dad hit when I made him angry. Or that you would take the blame for all the stupid shit I pulled. Or that the real reason you spent every minute studying was so that Dad would keep his ridiculous expectations focused away from me. I’m not so dumb that I never figured out you were protecting me.”
Taira had no reply to give.
“I am so dumb that I started to get angry at you for it.”
Taira blinked in confusion.
“Compared to you and Mom, I had it easy,” Sven admitted. “I knew that. But even though I didn’t feel the blows, even though I wasn’t the one being yelled at, I hated seeing what Dad did to you and Mom. And I hated how Mom covered it up with a smile and insisted ‘your father’s a good man.’ Even a stupid kid could tell something wasn’t right with that. As I got older, I started to hate her even more than I hated Dad-I hated her for letting it happen. I hated her for rolling over and being the victim. And then, then I got taller than you, and stronger than you, and I realized that instead of my big brother, you were becoming my mom.” He tried to swallow, but his throat was all dried out. “I wanted to protect both of you-you especially, since you’d always protected me, and I thought you had become so small and timid and weak next to me-but I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless and worthless. And then I started treating you like Mom in my head. I started blaming you for letting yourself be a victim. Even though on some level I knew that wasn’t true.”
Taira pulled his knees up and muffled his mouth with his arms, but said, “It was true.”
“But you weren’t like her-you didn’t choose it. You were born into it.”
“I didn’t have to play martyr. I was just being a coward.”
“A coward who saved me.” Sven shook his head. “No, you were braver than you think.” He darkened. “But that still happened.”
Taira winced, but said nothing.
“That was the end of it for me. When I found out you were gay, that was it-you weren’t my brother anymore, you were a repeat of Mom. You were set up in my head to be some man’s victim for the rest of your life, just like her. And it was already happening. I was embarrassed and ashamed of you-like I said, I was stupid. I had always known how strong you really were, when we were children. How else could a six-year-old kid take a beating for somebody else? It was like all that strength had evaporated. I was angry at you for falling short of the expectations I’d set on you, and I was angry at myself for not being able to step up and protect you for a change. So I let you take the fall. And then when you left, I got even angrier, because I felt like you’d abandoned me. I blamed you, but then I missed you, and I hated that I missed you, so I tried to forget about you.” He laughed at himself. “I told you I was stupid.”
Taira joined in the self-deprecation with a smirk. “You’re not alone, there.”
Sven let some of his nervousness drain out into a full-on laugh. “And then I got a taste of the shit you had to deal with, and I started to change my mind!” he laughed. “I got the old man to pay for my degree by implying a threat that he’d have no heir left if he didn’t spend that money on me, despite the fact that my grades were never half as good as yours. And as soon as the last school bill was paid, I was gone like the wind!” He laughed heartily, and even Taira had to join in a little at the thought of Sven tricking the old bastard. “And that’s when I could finally admit that I was the one being an idiot. You don’t know how much I worried about you-what if you really were still being a victim? I knew you were stronger than I’d given you credit for, but you were thrown out into the world with nothing and no one-what if you hadn’t made it? Day by day, not knowing if you were dead or alive-I wished to high Heaven I’d done something before it came to that. I wished I hadn’t been stupid enough to hate you for being a victim or for being gay. I even wished I’d gone with you, to help you somehow. After all, you’re-” his voice choked a little bit- “you’re the only person I can really call family.”
Taira saw Sven choking up and tried to interrupt him. “Sven…”
Sven shook his head. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. But I don’t want you to vanish again-I want to be family again, like we used to be.”
Taira’s face darkened. “We can never go back to how we used to be,” he said softly. “I changed, when I was thrown out. I’ve done a lot of things to get by, and most of them are ugly. I can never go back.” He softened a little. “But… I still missed you, too.” He smiled awkwardly at Sven.
A broad smile stretched across Sven’s face when he saw that. “Let’s not go back, then,” he said. “Back then sucked anyway. Dad’s dead and buried, and I’m getting Mom put into psychiatric care. So let’s leave it behind. Let’s throw all that crap away and start over.”
Taira smiled faintly. “I’m glad to have the old man out of the way, believe me,” he began, “but I can’t quite throw it all away yet.”
Sven raised an eyebrow, and noticed Taira’s eyes focusing softly off in the distance. He followed them through the bramble of overgrowth to the vague outline of the Sinclair house, where he could see Jack pacing in agitation on the porch. He bit his lip for a little while, but in the end couldn’t help but ask. “Hey, Taira, are you… you and Jack…”
Taira blinked and turned his face back to Sven. Then he laughed. “No, we’re not together.”
“Oh.” Sven scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Sorry.”
“What for?”
“Don’t you still like him?”
Taira froze. “‘Still’?”
Sven gave an awkward half-smile. “I’ve had a lot of time to think back and put two and two together.”
Taira blushed slightly. “Well, some things don’t need to be said.”
“Does he know?”
“He knows I’m gay. That’s all he knows.”
“Do you think he’d react badly if you told him everything?”
Taira paused, thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he finally answered.
“He seems pretty damn worried about you. Maybe you should try it and see.”
Taira punched Sven lightly in the shoulder. “Who asked you?”
Sven laughed. “What, who suggested that the thought crossed my mind that I’d always be able to reach you somehow if you dated Melanie’s brother?”
“Can it!” Taira teased, pushing Sven and making him roll over off the turtle. “You’ll be able to reach me regardless, now.”
They spent all of Sunday on the train going back home, and didn’t arrive until early Monday morning. Taira was exhausted. He didn’t say a word to Jack the whole trip, and Jack didn’t press him to-he just watched over Taira with worry on his face. When Taira finally turned over to sleep, he felt Jack’s hand softly brushing strands of hair away from his face. It was so gentle, he wanted to cry.
Sven’s words kept turning round and round in Taira’s head. He felt almost guilty for making Sven say them. He hadn’t looked out for his little brother because he’d wanted to be acknowledged or thanked-it was just instinct. And Sven wasn’t the only one who’d handled Taira’s disappearance badly. If Sven felt abandoned, it was because he was. Taira had resented him, too. It was enough just to know his brother didn’t hate him.
And then there was Jack. Even Sven had figured out how Taira felt-Melanie wouldn’t be far behind, and Taira was dragging Jack into an even bigger mess now. He didn’t share Sven’s impression that a confession might not end so badly; even if Jack cared about him, those feelings couldn’t be the same as his. He reminded himself that wasn’t the kind of man Jack was. Taira may have held Jack’s body, but he was still so far from his heart.
And was he allowed to admit how much he wanted it?
When Jack had held Taira close after he’d fled from that house, Taira had known there was no hope for him-he was hopelessly in love, like a stupid little boy all over again. Taira pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders and steeled himself. Then there was only one option left. No matter the outcome, it was too late to turn back now. He had stopped running away. He’d faced his father; he would face Jack too. There was only one more thing he had to deal with first. It was time to air everything out-to let Jack know everything. Taira trembled inwardly at the thought. If he knew everything, would he be disgusted like everyone else had been, and part ways with him forever? Or would he hold him close, like those soft fingers were suggesting right now?
It wasn’t until they parted ways at the station that words passed between them. As Taira turned to go his own way, Jack called after him, “Hey, Taira.”
Taira paused.
Jack was having some trouble with his words, and all he managed to get out was, “You… you really ought to eat something.”
It took Taira a little while to respond. When he did, his voice was quiet, and all he said was, “Okay, Jack.” Then he left.
Taira stopped leaving Jack’s food untouched by his front door, but he was never there when Jack came by. In fact, Jack couldn’t find him at all after that. The only reassurance he had that Taira hadn’t run away entirely was the empty leftover containers that would appear on his doorstep to replace the full ones Jack had left. For two more weeks, Taira remained a mystery, which Jack wanted nothing more than to peer inside of, but could not yet begin to understand.
Only one more chapter left after this. It's kicking my ass. I wanted to write a sweet lovemaking scene, and... SHIT those are hard. I may end up giving up on it. If I don't, you'll get something... kind of awkward, probably. I'm sorry. I'm really no good at writing those kinds of scenes. But I'm trying. >.<
Once again, I don't intend to spoil what happened to Taira, but if you want to guess-you're free to. I'm curious what people suspect.
Last chapter will go up as soon as I've finished it and re-read over the whole story to make sure I didn't forget any loose ends.
This ride's almost over! It feels so strange! Thanks for bearing with me so far (especially with my spectacular slowness in updating these last few months).
-ALiCe