6. attraction - nisaki
Title: Tell Me Baby
Author: jibunnohana
Theme: #6 Attraction
Rating: PG
Pairing: Ni~yaxSakito (Nightmare)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Comments: Erm...Chili Peppers, in case you were wondering where the idea is from.
Café Souhait…. As good a place as any to have a quick coffee. Then…more unpacking. By unpacking, of course, Sakito meant rearranging the little fragments of his life for reassessment at a later date. Standing outside the pseudo-French façade of the tiny café, tucked away in a corner of his new neighborhood he probably would have never noticed if he hadn’t lived two doors down, he gazed at the cheery welcome sign. Petite yellow flowers, surely hand-painted, decorated the rough, whitewashed wood, with the whole piece stuck on a rickety pole in the oversized flower pot that graced the entry to the jumbled outdoor seating area. Sakito had seen similar décor a million times before, in his old town, but such places had never attracted him, with their rural style and quaint charm. No, he had always preferred shops with a certain modern suavity and fashionable flash, or so he had thought up until today, when his tired feet led him here.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside, instantly greeted by the rich aroma of fresh brewed coffee in all sorts of flavors and the wispy chatter of the café’s other patrons, mostly women of middle age. A short, pony-tailed girl behind the counter greeted Sakito and suggested he sit, that someone would be right with him. Most of the tables were taken, save for one in the corner near the window, bathed in light from the afternoon sun. Wading through the other tables and the friendly conversations, he took a seat and glanced over the meager paper menu more out of social habit than being particularly hungry. Skimming once, twice, and setting the page down on the table to idly trace the floral pattern bordering the listing as he gazed out the window at the passerby.
“Ready to order? You look like you could use a donut.”
Startled out of his reverie, Sakito turned away from the window to see his waiter standing expectantly next to the table. The man was somewhat tall, with bleached hair and a playful air about him, enhanced by the twitch of his lips and the glint of his dark eyes. Blinking, Sakito realized he had zoned out momentarily while he took in the waiter’s appearance. “…Sorry?”
Shaking a shock of hair out of his face, the man smiled and repeated his question, “Would you like to order now or do you need another minute?”
“No…I’ll just have a hazelnut coffee, please.”
“Just coffee?” The waiter raised his eyebrows slightly. “You must not be from around here.”
That was an odd statement to make. True, but odd, Sakito thought to himself. “Well, no. I just recently moved here. Why…?”
Pointing toward the glass case filled with pastries under the counter, the man answered, “We carry the best sweets around, I swear.”
“Uhm…no, thank you. Just coffee today….”
With a strangely knowing smile, the waiter disappeared to fill his order. Ruefully, Sakito sat back in his chair and hunched his shoulders forward. His appearance was reminiscent of a very familiar person that Sakito didn’t want to think about. Blond hair reminded him of…
…My ex, Sakito thought, frowning down at the table. But, before he could loose himself in gloomy thoughts, a delicate coffee cup and a delightfully frosted pastry snuck into his line of vision, pushed along slowly by a supple hand. Attention effectively distracted, Sakito looked up to find the waiter had returned.
The same smile played across the blonde man’s shapely lips as he spoke to the unanswered question that must have been in Sakito’s eyes, “On the house.”
* * *
Two weeks later, Sakito entered Café Souhait for the tenth time, and sat down at the same table in the corner. His excuse, of course, was that he hadn’t finished setting up his new apartment. In fact, he was quite far from it and the coffee pot was still hidden in one of the many unmarked boxes that sat lined up in an orderly fashion along the living room wall. At the rate of about half a box a day, Sakito was suspicious that he didn’t want to settle into the sense of finality that was his new home, irreversible and ominous.
Every day that Sakito patronized the café, he was always waited on by the blonde man he’d met on moving day, or Doomsday as he’d come to think of it, the unpleasant idea that it foreshadowed the rest of his life having taken root in his mind. The waiter’s name was Niya, he found out after the man introduced himself on the third day, and he was clearly under the impression that Sakito was a miserable human being, consistently giving him free smiles and free coffee with the excuse of ‘forgetting’ to bring the check. It wasn’t that Sakito was miserable per say…he was just not happy.
Sakito’s daily visits to the café had almost turned into a sort of ritualized game between himself and the waiter, wherein he would gaze pensively out the window and Niya would put on his most sympathetic face, asking if he wanted the usual. Today, Sakito began his usual vapid act, but the scraping of chair legs against the tiled floor surprised him. Niya had dragged the chair over from a different table and straddled the seat, resting his arms on the back.
“You must be pretty lonely, coming in here every day,” the waiter commented frankly, a carefully blank look on his usually bright face.
Balking, Sakito looked at the table and toyed with a sugar packet. “…Don’t you have customers?”
“Not really. Just you, right now,” Niya replied, tilting his head to one side and yawning.
“Oh.” Unable to think of a response, Sakito lapsed into awkward silence. Did Niya want something? He couldn’t possibly be sitting there to watched to watch the oh so exciting twirl of the sugar packet in nervous hands.
Niya let the silence drag out for longer than was proper in polite conversation, all the while doing just what Sakito had assumed to be too boring for spectators. Eventually, the thickening tension between them was broken by the sound of the bell indicating someone had entered the café. The waiter glanced behind him and got up before turning back to Sakito with a smile and a wink. “If you keep this up I’m going to have to ask you out, you know.”
* * *
Despite the threat of being asked on a date, Sakito found himself shaking off his umbrella outside the café a mere two days later. Why he felt drawn to the place, he wasn’t sure, but the moment he stepped outside his feet seemed to gravitate automatically to the inane friendly atmosphere. The past two days had been spent in energetic unpacking, motivated by an unseen force to at least start to puzzle out his new life. Rain put a damper on his enthusiasm, but Sakito figured a cup of coffee would perk him up and put him in an energetic mood again. Like always, he sat in the corner, watching the rain dribble down the glass while he waited for Niya to appear.
Sakito didn’t have to wait long before the familiar voice sounded next to his table, but the phrase wasn’t what he was expecting. “I warned you….” A low chuckle, then, “Let’s go see a movie tomorrow, say…8 o’clock?”
Turning away from the window, Sakito picked up a sugar packet and watched his hand tap it against the slate gray tabletop. He would be lying to himself to say he didn’t have any misgiving about agreeing to the offer. So soon…. Niya was nice, to be sure, but Sakito’s subconscious linked the innocent waiter to the very person he was running from. Shaking off the uneasy feeling in his chest, he nodded, but didn’t meet Niya’s eyes for more than a split second. “Well…alright.”
* * *
Evening came too quickly for Sakito the next day, after spending the majority of the afternoon fretting about what to wear and fretting that he was actually fretting about his appearance. How could it possibly matter? Niya had already seen him in his worst house-cleaning clothes. Not only that, but wasn’t he done with dating? Sakito had convinced himself all morning that the waiter was mostly joking and was only inviting him out as a friend. He seemed like the playful type.
His watch read five to eight as Sakito stopped at the door to the movie theater, having finally decided on something casual and mildly more attractive than what his ‘date’ had seen before. Niya arrived a few minutes later, having chosen the same level of style for the occasion, a cigarette protruding from between his lips. The wind moved his bleached hair across his face as he walked through the parking lot, the perfect picture of roguish charm, which was exactly what Sakito remembering thinking about his previous boyfriend. Unfortunately. Turning toward the door to hide his face and frowning, he was tempted to panic and bolt, though that would be silly having already come this far. Similar appearance didn’t mean similar personality at all, Sakito chided himself, struggling between instinct and logic. Inevitably, logic won, and he turned back to the parking lot just as Niya was closing in on him with a friendly wave.
“Am I late?” the waiter asked with a sheepish smile, dropping his cigarette and stomping it out on the sidewalk.
Forcing down his misguided fear, Sakito shook his head quickly and tried to smile. “No, I was just early. It’s eight o’clock right now.”
“Okay, good.” For a brief moment, an awkward silence fell over the two men, Sakito decidedly avoiding the waiter’s gaze, and Niya smiling expectantly at him. Eventually, he pulled the door open and held it for Sakito like a perfect gentleman, not knowing what else to say. “Shall we?”
Time seemed to crawl as Sakito unconsciously maintained his aversion to opening up to the waiter, allowing Niya to chat at him rather than with him. In the back of his mind he knew he wasn’t being very good company while his date was obviously trying so hard to bring him out of his shell, but buying popcorn and watching their preferred movie passed stiffly, Sakito unable to wrestle past the unfounded connection between Niya and his former lover. Two hours later, the two men were leaving the theater, finding the evening had turned balmy and breezy, a playful sort of atmosphere that seemed to be affecting every other movie-going couple except them.
Somewhat defeated, Niya decided to try a new approach and a new setting for the rest of the evening, provided his date was willing. “Erm…say…do you want to go look at the stars for a while? Kind of corny, I know, but there’s this spot just outside the city limits….” He trailed off, not really expecting a positive answer.
“Sure,” Sakito replied almost too quickly, eager to continue despite all the seemingly one-sided interest. The decision must have been made by his reluctance to return to an empty, still half disassembled apartment, he mused, but Niya’s relieved smile hinted that it was the a good choice.
“The sky is really something out here. I promise you’ll like it,” Niya reassured him as he lead Sakito, who had walked to the theater, to his car, a battered old thing that looked as if it were long overdue for a tune-up. After a brief, skeptical glance at the machine, he got into the passenger’s side and they were on their way. The ride was short, and the open windows made conversation difficult over the roar of the wind and the engine. Sakito was grateful for that, yet found himself stealing glances over at the driver’s seat where the waiter was concentrating on the road. Otherwise occupied, Niya didn’t notice him discreetly studying his face, searching for little differences to focus on instead of the overall similarities, but he gave up when the streetlamps fell away into rolling fields and wooden fences.
Another mile or so brought them to an intersection in the rural highway, and Niya turned the car onto a short dirt road, stopping partway between the pavement and two squat grain silos. All around, the overgrown grasses bowed and stood in the warm wind, diffusing their sweet, heady scent through the air. Niya got out first, shutting off the engine and walking around to open the door for Sakito, directing him to sit on the hood of the car. The windshield provided the perfect angle for a backrest, and they both settled there, gazing at the splash of visible galaxy above. Enchanted, Sakito stayed silent since stepping out of the car, enjoying the breeze and thinking how glad he was to have given this idea a fair chance.
Now it was Niya’s turn to watch his companion in the trickle of light filtering down from the night sky, but Sakito was too caught up to notice until the waiter’s deep voice tickled his ear. “Why did you move out here? I think you would have told me if it was for a good reason.”
Sakito didn’t answer immediately, though he had almost been expecting the question to come up during the course of the evening. He folded his hands over his chest, pressing his thumbs together in thought. Why had he moved across the country? It couldn’t have just been the break-up, now that he was thinking calmly. A catalyst, perhaps, but not the whole reason. “I guess…I just needed a change of pace. I lived in Tokyo before, it’s suffocating.”
Niya laughed softly, “I can understand that.” He turned on his side to face Sakito, leaning on one hand. “But that’s a long way just for an change of scenery.”
“Well…I also had a…boyfriend there.” Suddenly, Sakito realized with a mild panic why he was having such a hard time warming up to his friendly companion. If Niya reminded him of his ex, who represented the sordid constraint of the city, then the waiter reminded him of that as well. “Turned out he was cheating on me the whole time.”
Sympathy was written all over Niya’s face when he snuck a quick glance at the man next to him, and he must have sensed Sakito’s dismay as well. Startled to find a broad hand cupping his cheek, he turned his full attention back to the waiter as he leaned in slowly, lips brushing tentatively against Sakito’s, hovering, then meeting soft flesh with more confidence. He met no resistance from the slender form next to him as he coaxed Sakito closer and teased his spine with the lightest of touches. By the time their eager mouths broke apart to gulp down the fragrant air, the two were completely entwined. Niya freed one arm from under Sakito to rub his thumb along the delicate cheekbone, tenderly, smiling until he saw those dark eyes look away.
For Sakito, every intuition was telling him this was okay, battling with the emotional strain of his recent memories. Inner turmoil won over, and he wiggled out of Niya’s grasp, afraid to look at him for fear of seeing the disappointment that was no doubt plain in his eyes, and fear of seeing more of his ex-lover in the waiter. The velvet indigo sky looked vast and menacing now, swallowing up the fields far in the distance.
“I think I should go home.” Sakito slid off the top of the car and reached for the door handle, fighting to keep the frustration out of his voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Niya hop down as well, slightly dejected, and fish out his keys. Moving was supposed to help him leave the last five years of his life behind, but it wasn’t working as planned. “I’m sorry….”
* * *
Three weeks passed, and Sakito didn’t once go to sit at Café Souhait. Frightened of feeling something more than a passive liking for the blonde waiter, he hid in his apartment and looked for jobs online, avoiding the outdoors and sorting his belongings like the plague. Once or twice, Sakito even considered packing what little he had put away and going back to Tokyo, or even somewhere new, before his emotions had time to take root and blossom into something he couldn’t control. It was in this haze of confusion that Sakito finally decided at the beginning of the fourth week that he needed to see Niya again. Why, he wasn’t sure, having decided it wouldn’t be right to get involved with someone new while he was observably still a mess, but the memory of their first timid kiss lodged in his conscious mind and refused to be removed.
The sun was out again, bathing the street in a golden glow as it had the first time he’d set foot in the fateful café. Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, Sakito opened the door, hearing the familiar bells jingle with the movement. Niya wasn’t anywhere in sight, he noticed with a sinking disappointment. Astonished at his own reaction to the other’s missing presence, he immediately took his usual table, a thought forming in his mind that maybe he was ready to give this dating business another try.
Beginning to suspect with a plummeting feeling in his stomach that Niya wasn’t in that day, he toyed with the sugar packets for at least fifteen minutes, waiting persistently and hopefully for the other to turn up. Eventually, while Sakito had turned his attention to the people out the window, he did show up. Quiet as always, Sakito didn’t see the waiter until he slipped into the chair across from him, setting a hot mug of coffee in front of him. “Hey there, stranger. Long time, no see.”
Startled, Sakito turned his face toward the man across the table, hardly able to look him in the eyes, ashamed of his behavior and undeniably still afraid. “Hi…how are you…?”
“I’m alright, just worried about you.” When Sakito’s eyes flickered up briefly, he could see it was true. Niya leaned forward, resting his arm on the table and frowning in concern.
At least a minute went by before any more words passed between the two. Sakito sighed, finally working up the courage to say what he felt he needed to say, even if he was fairly sure Niya already knew. “I’m sorry…about being such a wet blanket before. And for leaving you hanging like that.”
Niya merely nodded and waited for him to continue, which Sakito did after pausing to sort his thoughts. “I realized as I was walking over here that it’s no kind of life at all to exist constantly cowering in fear. I’m not getting any younger, you know?” he finished quietly, a touch wistful, but added a cautious smile.
His smile was returned three-fold by the waiter, who reached over to touch his cheek. “Good boy. I have to get back to work now, but you finish your coffee and I’ll pick you up once my shift is over. Okay?”
Confirmation probably wasn’t necessary, but Sakito nodded anyway, feeling a hundred times lighter than he had in years. “Okay.”
Author: jibunnohana
Theme: #6 Attraction
Rating: PG
Pairing: Ni~yaxSakito (Nightmare)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Comments: Erm...Chili Peppers, in case you were wondering where the idea is from.
Café Souhait…. As good a place as any to have a quick coffee. Then…more unpacking. By unpacking, of course, Sakito meant rearranging the little fragments of his life for reassessment at a later date. Standing outside the pseudo-French façade of the tiny café, tucked away in a corner of his new neighborhood he probably would have never noticed if he hadn’t lived two doors down, he gazed at the cheery welcome sign. Petite yellow flowers, surely hand-painted, decorated the rough, whitewashed wood, with the whole piece stuck on a rickety pole in the oversized flower pot that graced the entry to the jumbled outdoor seating area. Sakito had seen similar décor a million times before, in his old town, but such places had never attracted him, with their rural style and quaint charm. No, he had always preferred shops with a certain modern suavity and fashionable flash, or so he had thought up until today, when his tired feet led him here.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside, instantly greeted by the rich aroma of fresh brewed coffee in all sorts of flavors and the wispy chatter of the café’s other patrons, mostly women of middle age. A short, pony-tailed girl behind the counter greeted Sakito and suggested he sit, that someone would be right with him. Most of the tables were taken, save for one in the corner near the window, bathed in light from the afternoon sun. Wading through the other tables and the friendly conversations, he took a seat and glanced over the meager paper menu more out of social habit than being particularly hungry. Skimming once, twice, and setting the page down on the table to idly trace the floral pattern bordering the listing as he gazed out the window at the passerby.
“Ready to order? You look like you could use a donut.”
Startled out of his reverie, Sakito turned away from the window to see his waiter standing expectantly next to the table. The man was somewhat tall, with bleached hair and a playful air about him, enhanced by the twitch of his lips and the glint of his dark eyes. Blinking, Sakito realized he had zoned out momentarily while he took in the waiter’s appearance. “…Sorry?”
Shaking a shock of hair out of his face, the man smiled and repeated his question, “Would you like to order now or do you need another minute?”
“No…I’ll just have a hazelnut coffee, please.”
“Just coffee?” The waiter raised his eyebrows slightly. “You must not be from around here.”
That was an odd statement to make. True, but odd, Sakito thought to himself. “Well, no. I just recently moved here. Why…?”
Pointing toward the glass case filled with pastries under the counter, the man answered, “We carry the best sweets around, I swear.”
“Uhm…no, thank you. Just coffee today….”
With a strangely knowing smile, the waiter disappeared to fill his order. Ruefully, Sakito sat back in his chair and hunched his shoulders forward. His appearance was reminiscent of a very familiar person that Sakito didn’t want to think about. Blond hair reminded him of…
…My ex, Sakito thought, frowning down at the table. But, before he could loose himself in gloomy thoughts, a delicate coffee cup and a delightfully frosted pastry snuck into his line of vision, pushed along slowly by a supple hand. Attention effectively distracted, Sakito looked up to find the waiter had returned.
The same smile played across the blonde man’s shapely lips as he spoke to the unanswered question that must have been in Sakito’s eyes, “On the house.”
* * *
Two weeks later, Sakito entered Café Souhait for the tenth time, and sat down at the same table in the corner. His excuse, of course, was that he hadn’t finished setting up his new apartment. In fact, he was quite far from it and the coffee pot was still hidden in one of the many unmarked boxes that sat lined up in an orderly fashion along the living room wall. At the rate of about half a box a day, Sakito was suspicious that he didn’t want to settle into the sense of finality that was his new home, irreversible and ominous.
Every day that Sakito patronized the café, he was always waited on by the blonde man he’d met on moving day, or Doomsday as he’d come to think of it, the unpleasant idea that it foreshadowed the rest of his life having taken root in his mind. The waiter’s name was Niya, he found out after the man introduced himself on the third day, and he was clearly under the impression that Sakito was a miserable human being, consistently giving him free smiles and free coffee with the excuse of ‘forgetting’ to bring the check. It wasn’t that Sakito was miserable per say…he was just not happy.
Sakito’s daily visits to the café had almost turned into a sort of ritualized game between himself and the waiter, wherein he would gaze pensively out the window and Niya would put on his most sympathetic face, asking if he wanted the usual. Today, Sakito began his usual vapid act, but the scraping of chair legs against the tiled floor surprised him. Niya had dragged the chair over from a different table and straddled the seat, resting his arms on the back.
“You must be pretty lonely, coming in here every day,” the waiter commented frankly, a carefully blank look on his usually bright face.
Balking, Sakito looked at the table and toyed with a sugar packet. “…Don’t you have customers?”
“Not really. Just you, right now,” Niya replied, tilting his head to one side and yawning.
“Oh.” Unable to think of a response, Sakito lapsed into awkward silence. Did Niya want something? He couldn’t possibly be sitting there to watched to watch the oh so exciting twirl of the sugar packet in nervous hands.
Niya let the silence drag out for longer than was proper in polite conversation, all the while doing just what Sakito had assumed to be too boring for spectators. Eventually, the thickening tension between them was broken by the sound of the bell indicating someone had entered the café. The waiter glanced behind him and got up before turning back to Sakito with a smile and a wink. “If you keep this up I’m going to have to ask you out, you know.”
* * *
Despite the threat of being asked on a date, Sakito found himself shaking off his umbrella outside the café a mere two days later. Why he felt drawn to the place, he wasn’t sure, but the moment he stepped outside his feet seemed to gravitate automatically to the inane friendly atmosphere. The past two days had been spent in energetic unpacking, motivated by an unseen force to at least start to puzzle out his new life. Rain put a damper on his enthusiasm, but Sakito figured a cup of coffee would perk him up and put him in an energetic mood again. Like always, he sat in the corner, watching the rain dribble down the glass while he waited for Niya to appear.
Sakito didn’t have to wait long before the familiar voice sounded next to his table, but the phrase wasn’t what he was expecting. “I warned you….” A low chuckle, then, “Let’s go see a movie tomorrow, say…8 o’clock?”
Turning away from the window, Sakito picked up a sugar packet and watched his hand tap it against the slate gray tabletop. He would be lying to himself to say he didn’t have any misgiving about agreeing to the offer. So soon…. Niya was nice, to be sure, but Sakito’s subconscious linked the innocent waiter to the very person he was running from. Shaking off the uneasy feeling in his chest, he nodded, but didn’t meet Niya’s eyes for more than a split second. “Well…alright.”
* * *
Evening came too quickly for Sakito the next day, after spending the majority of the afternoon fretting about what to wear and fretting that he was actually fretting about his appearance. How could it possibly matter? Niya had already seen him in his worst house-cleaning clothes. Not only that, but wasn’t he done with dating? Sakito had convinced himself all morning that the waiter was mostly joking and was only inviting him out as a friend. He seemed like the playful type.
His watch read five to eight as Sakito stopped at the door to the movie theater, having finally decided on something casual and mildly more attractive than what his ‘date’ had seen before. Niya arrived a few minutes later, having chosen the same level of style for the occasion, a cigarette protruding from between his lips. The wind moved his bleached hair across his face as he walked through the parking lot, the perfect picture of roguish charm, which was exactly what Sakito remembering thinking about his previous boyfriend. Unfortunately. Turning toward the door to hide his face and frowning, he was tempted to panic and bolt, though that would be silly having already come this far. Similar appearance didn’t mean similar personality at all, Sakito chided himself, struggling between instinct and logic. Inevitably, logic won, and he turned back to the parking lot just as Niya was closing in on him with a friendly wave.
“Am I late?” the waiter asked with a sheepish smile, dropping his cigarette and stomping it out on the sidewalk.
Forcing down his misguided fear, Sakito shook his head quickly and tried to smile. “No, I was just early. It’s eight o’clock right now.”
“Okay, good.” For a brief moment, an awkward silence fell over the two men, Sakito decidedly avoiding the waiter’s gaze, and Niya smiling expectantly at him. Eventually, he pulled the door open and held it for Sakito like a perfect gentleman, not knowing what else to say. “Shall we?”
Time seemed to crawl as Sakito unconsciously maintained his aversion to opening up to the waiter, allowing Niya to chat at him rather than with him. In the back of his mind he knew he wasn’t being very good company while his date was obviously trying so hard to bring him out of his shell, but buying popcorn and watching their preferred movie passed stiffly, Sakito unable to wrestle past the unfounded connection between Niya and his former lover. Two hours later, the two men were leaving the theater, finding the evening had turned balmy and breezy, a playful sort of atmosphere that seemed to be affecting every other movie-going couple except them.
Somewhat defeated, Niya decided to try a new approach and a new setting for the rest of the evening, provided his date was willing. “Erm…say…do you want to go look at the stars for a while? Kind of corny, I know, but there’s this spot just outside the city limits….” He trailed off, not really expecting a positive answer.
“Sure,” Sakito replied almost too quickly, eager to continue despite all the seemingly one-sided interest. The decision must have been made by his reluctance to return to an empty, still half disassembled apartment, he mused, but Niya’s relieved smile hinted that it was the a good choice.
“The sky is really something out here. I promise you’ll like it,” Niya reassured him as he lead Sakito, who had walked to the theater, to his car, a battered old thing that looked as if it were long overdue for a tune-up. After a brief, skeptical glance at the machine, he got into the passenger’s side and they were on their way. The ride was short, and the open windows made conversation difficult over the roar of the wind and the engine. Sakito was grateful for that, yet found himself stealing glances over at the driver’s seat where the waiter was concentrating on the road. Otherwise occupied, Niya didn’t notice him discreetly studying his face, searching for little differences to focus on instead of the overall similarities, but he gave up when the streetlamps fell away into rolling fields and wooden fences.
Another mile or so brought them to an intersection in the rural highway, and Niya turned the car onto a short dirt road, stopping partway between the pavement and two squat grain silos. All around, the overgrown grasses bowed and stood in the warm wind, diffusing their sweet, heady scent through the air. Niya got out first, shutting off the engine and walking around to open the door for Sakito, directing him to sit on the hood of the car. The windshield provided the perfect angle for a backrest, and they both settled there, gazing at the splash of visible galaxy above. Enchanted, Sakito stayed silent since stepping out of the car, enjoying the breeze and thinking how glad he was to have given this idea a fair chance.
Now it was Niya’s turn to watch his companion in the trickle of light filtering down from the night sky, but Sakito was too caught up to notice until the waiter’s deep voice tickled his ear. “Why did you move out here? I think you would have told me if it was for a good reason.”
Sakito didn’t answer immediately, though he had almost been expecting the question to come up during the course of the evening. He folded his hands over his chest, pressing his thumbs together in thought. Why had he moved across the country? It couldn’t have just been the break-up, now that he was thinking calmly. A catalyst, perhaps, but not the whole reason. “I guess…I just needed a change of pace. I lived in Tokyo before, it’s suffocating.”
Niya laughed softly, “I can understand that.” He turned on his side to face Sakito, leaning on one hand. “But that’s a long way just for an change of scenery.”
“Well…I also had a…boyfriend there.” Suddenly, Sakito realized with a mild panic why he was having such a hard time warming up to his friendly companion. If Niya reminded him of his ex, who represented the sordid constraint of the city, then the waiter reminded him of that as well. “Turned out he was cheating on me the whole time.”
Sympathy was written all over Niya’s face when he snuck a quick glance at the man next to him, and he must have sensed Sakito’s dismay as well. Startled to find a broad hand cupping his cheek, he turned his full attention back to the waiter as he leaned in slowly, lips brushing tentatively against Sakito’s, hovering, then meeting soft flesh with more confidence. He met no resistance from the slender form next to him as he coaxed Sakito closer and teased his spine with the lightest of touches. By the time their eager mouths broke apart to gulp down the fragrant air, the two were completely entwined. Niya freed one arm from under Sakito to rub his thumb along the delicate cheekbone, tenderly, smiling until he saw those dark eyes look away.
For Sakito, every intuition was telling him this was okay, battling with the emotional strain of his recent memories. Inner turmoil won over, and he wiggled out of Niya’s grasp, afraid to look at him for fear of seeing the disappointment that was no doubt plain in his eyes, and fear of seeing more of his ex-lover in the waiter. The velvet indigo sky looked vast and menacing now, swallowing up the fields far in the distance.
“I think I should go home.” Sakito slid off the top of the car and reached for the door handle, fighting to keep the frustration out of his voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Niya hop down as well, slightly dejected, and fish out his keys. Moving was supposed to help him leave the last five years of his life behind, but it wasn’t working as planned. “I’m sorry….”
* * *
Three weeks passed, and Sakito didn’t once go to sit at Café Souhait. Frightened of feeling something more than a passive liking for the blonde waiter, he hid in his apartment and looked for jobs online, avoiding the outdoors and sorting his belongings like the plague. Once or twice, Sakito even considered packing what little he had put away and going back to Tokyo, or even somewhere new, before his emotions had time to take root and blossom into something he couldn’t control. It was in this haze of confusion that Sakito finally decided at the beginning of the fourth week that he needed to see Niya again. Why, he wasn’t sure, having decided it wouldn’t be right to get involved with someone new while he was observably still a mess, but the memory of their first timid kiss lodged in his conscious mind and refused to be removed.
The sun was out again, bathing the street in a golden glow as it had the first time he’d set foot in the fateful café. Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, Sakito opened the door, hearing the familiar bells jingle with the movement. Niya wasn’t anywhere in sight, he noticed with a sinking disappointment. Astonished at his own reaction to the other’s missing presence, he immediately took his usual table, a thought forming in his mind that maybe he was ready to give this dating business another try.
Beginning to suspect with a plummeting feeling in his stomach that Niya wasn’t in that day, he toyed with the sugar packets for at least fifteen minutes, waiting persistently and hopefully for the other to turn up. Eventually, while Sakito had turned his attention to the people out the window, he did show up. Quiet as always, Sakito didn’t see the waiter until he slipped into the chair across from him, setting a hot mug of coffee in front of him. “Hey there, stranger. Long time, no see.”
Startled, Sakito turned his face toward the man across the table, hardly able to look him in the eyes, ashamed of his behavior and undeniably still afraid. “Hi…how are you…?”
“I’m alright, just worried about you.” When Sakito’s eyes flickered up briefly, he could see it was true. Niya leaned forward, resting his arm on the table and frowning in concern.
At least a minute went by before any more words passed between the two. Sakito sighed, finally working up the courage to say what he felt he needed to say, even if he was fairly sure Niya already knew. “I’m sorry…about being such a wet blanket before. And for leaving you hanging like that.”
Niya merely nodded and waited for him to continue, which Sakito did after pausing to sort his thoughts. “I realized as I was walking over here that it’s no kind of life at all to exist constantly cowering in fear. I’m not getting any younger, you know?” he finished quietly, a touch wistful, but added a cautious smile.
His smile was returned three-fold by the waiter, who reached over to touch his cheek. “Good boy. I have to get back to work now, but you finish your coffee and I’ll pick you up once my shift is over. Okay?”
Confirmation probably wasn’t necessary, but Sakito nodded anyway, feeling a hundred times lighter than he had in years. “Okay.”