Fic: Snowbound, Part 4B
And, at last, here's the chapter that broke this story for a year, and made me give up writing. And thank goodness for that. That shit was making me nuts. ;D
Refuge
It's twenty minutes past three a.m., when he hears the courtyard door to the guest suite slide open. Mori knows, because he sits up in his bed and looks over at his digital clock.
He's been dozing, between fits of anxious consciousness. Waking up tense, worried whether Arai is all right. If he's warm enough. If he's able to rest in a strange bed. If the utter dark and stillness of the country night bother him at all. If he's lying awake feeling lonely, and far from friendly company, the way Mori sometimes feels when he stares up at his ceiling in the deepest hush of night.
These are not monumental problems, he knows. Given the other options for how the night could have turned out, they are practically luxuries. Every time he nods off, he sees the clean untouched snowbank lining the road; his flashlight bobbing across its inscrutable surface, and feels the roiling dread in his stomach again, how close it had come to immobilizing him.
When the whispery vibration of the courtyard door reaches him, it's very nearly a relief. It's an excuse to get up at least, and put his questions to rest.
He pulls on a sweater and a pair of track pants, steps into his lined house slippers, and then carefully slides open his own door to the courtyard, and peeks out.
The night sky is clean polished black, and the waxing crescent moon hangs razor-edged, brilliant, pouring icy light across the landscape. Snow softens the line of the courtyard walls, and the grounds are a pure expanse of bluish gray, edged with crisp charcoal shadows.
"I never knew it was so beautiful here at night." Arai's voice barely troubles the stillness. "So quiet." He's swaddled in a quilt, a few steps out on the porch to Mori's left. Mori can just make out his profile, caught in the spill of moonlight; ageless, untroubled. Like a figure sculpted in pale stone.
"Did you need anything?" Mori will not mention the cold, that Arai should really be resting in a warm bed, after what he's been through. The urge is certainly present, but he senses a fragile peace here and in light of recent experience, he's acutely reluctant to disturb it.
"Hm. I thought I would sleep for a week when I got in that bed." He tilts a look over his shoulder at Mori. "That's a really comfortable bed."
"I'm glad," Mori says. It occurs to him that out of his four guest rooms, he's never once inspected the beds.
"The bath," Arai nods. "That was great too. Huge."
Sakura-san must have doted on him a good deal; the communal guest bath was built to accommodate five people comfortably. "Too bad you don't have people out here more often," Arai mused. "Big bath like that shouldn't go to waste."
Mori says without thinking--"I should have let you use it--." And then he does think. "....Before."
He is conscious of how the word hangs between them, weighted with stumbles and missteps; the held breaths, and prickly silences that had multiplied over the past months. The shoulds and should-not-haves, and missed connections. He wonders if they can ever escape the shoals of their previous mistakes now, with all the damage of bad timing and omissions always there to remind them.
And then Arai says, in a cloudy sigh, his profile tilted to the moon again, "I couldn't sleep because I missed you. You were right in the next room, and. I miss talking to you. I miss....being friends with you."
Another loaded word. Mori swallows, and musters the courage to invite further elaboration. "Friends."
"You're the best friend I've ever had." Spoken with such candid simplicity, that it puts Mori's dread of amicable separation to rest; it sounds like Arai, as he generally does, means precisely what he says.
Though he can't help but wonder what they are to each other now. If there is a different name for this uncertain truce, accommodating boundaries and obstructions where there used to be understanding and effortless affection. And laughter. He misses the laughter.
And maybe he's over-thinking it. He misses being friends, too.
"We could talk inside," he offers. "Where it's warm."
Arai turns with a considering look for Mori, and the open door at his back.
"Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense." He gathers the quilt higher on his shoulders, so it doesn't drag on the porch, and shuffles over to follow Mori back inside.
**
Somewhere around the halfway point on the long, tedious drive back to the estate, Arai started doing some mental arithmetic. His adrenaline had drained off by then, leaving him wrung out all over, the truck was warm finally, and there wasn't anything to look at besides the loader, creeping along a few vehicle lengths in front of him, and Takashi's headlights in his rearview mirror. He had to do something to stay alert. So he got to thinking.
Three times that night, he had barely scraped past serious catastrophe. First, he'd managed not to total the grocery truck, when he went skidding across the ice. Second, by all rights, he should've spent the night where he got stuck on the shoulder. Third, he'd completely lost his head and yelled at Takashi, and yet Takashi still helped him, and came back to talk to him before they left.
If he tallied up all the things that could have happened, but didn't, he had beat some major odds tonight. He had seen more sheer dumb luck in a matter of hours, than at any one time in his whole life.
And he hadn't earned any of it. Which was to say, he hadn't tried or hoped for any of those things to happen, they just did. He'd been in enough trouble to face the worst possibilities, but none of them came to pass. And yeah, there were still some troubles left to work out, but in all, he was really, incredibly lucky.
Fatigue may have played a large part in this, but the more he considered his luck, the calmer he started to feel in general. Maybe his friendship with Takashi wouldn't ever be the same again, but on the other hand, he hadn't flipped the grocery truck into a ditch, or bashed it into that road sign. And maybe he'd be going back to face a major dressing-down from his uncle, but he hadn't frozen to death on the side of the road. He hadn't slept through the loader passing by. And Takashi had come back to talk to him, instead of cutting him off completely, even though Arai had been terrible and hurtful to him.
So it was mostly with an odd, dazed sort of gratitude, that he finally pulled up in his usual spot near the kitchen door of Takashi's house. Mounted the snowy steps, when the door opened and Sakura-san urged him in; all that light spilling out, so startling after hours of darkness. There was the heat of the pantry, and Sakura-san praising his return, fussing over him with warm towels and unexpectedly tight hugs, and Kuki-chan hovering nearby with dry house slippers. And then the kitchen, the most welcome place in the world, clean and bright and warm, something delicious cooking on the stove, and Hito grinning his twinkling, mischievous grin from the kitchen table.
This. This was what it must be like when you finally made it home, Arai thought. To a family waiting for you, honestly glad to see you. He'd never realized, until that very moment, how much he had always wanted something like that. Just to come in from the cold and dark, to a place where he belonged, where everyone cared, knowing they all had been looking out for him.
There wasn't anyone, anywhere as lucky as him, he knew that then, and with Sakura-san already on the phone with his uncle, and Kuki-chan taking his gloves, hat, and jacket, this impossible bittersweet relief blurred and burned in his chest, and then spilled over.
Sakura-san handed him the phone, and he sat on one of the kitchen stools, and his voice broke when he told his uncle he was okay, he was sorry, so sorry, but the truck was okay, he'd made sure. Somebody put some tissues in his hand, and he sniffled and hitched in a few breaths, blinking away the glittering smeariness in his vision. Tried to get a grip on himself, while his uncle told him not to worry anymore. He was safe, and that was all that mattered.
"I'm proud of you, Naoki," his uncle said, and Arai's jaw dropped. Surely he hadn't heard that. But his uncle was still talking. "You did the right thing, staying put and waiting on help to come. That was the smartest choice you could've made, and believe me, some folks who get stranded in these storms aren't that smart. Sometimes, they don't make it."
"I was--I got lucky," he said, with his throat all tight and hoarse, thinking it was too much; this was so much more than he deserved.
"Yeah, you did. But you also kept a cool head, and I'm proud of you for that."
"I can try and get the truck back tomorrow. I'll see about borrowing Takashi's snow chains--"
"Not a chance," his uncle cut in, though not unkindly. "The whole town's snowed in, and I for one, intend to take a few days off. You do the same. Sit tight until they get the roads clear. Sakura-san already told me she intends to keep you," he added, chuckling. "So try not to hassle her by arguing. I don't think she'll be budged."
"Oh-okay," Arai nodded. He wiped at his nose with the tissues, and hazarded a glance at Sakura-san, who was eying him like she expected he might argue, and she intended to head him off quick. He ought try just a little, for the sake of courtesy, but maybe later. For now, he was too worn out to think straight.
He didn't have it in him to put up much resistance even, when Kuki-chan wanted to lead him off for a hot bath, as soon as he got off the phone. Takashi and Oshiro were still out securing the vehicles in the garage, and he wanted to go and help, but Sakura-san insisted he have a care for his health.
"Bocchama will be back any moment, and we would be negligent in our duty if you caught pneumonia because we allowed you to stay in these damp clothes. Please indulge our worries for the time being, Arai-kun," she said firmly. Arai saw there wasn't much choice but to put himself in their hands, and so he did.
***
"You're probably gonna be busy, after a storm like that."
Arai is settled cross-legged on the lower half of Mori's bed, with his quilt tented around him, and Mori has copied his posture, drawing up his own quilts to warm his legs. The room is still dark, save for the glow of moonlight filtering through the windows, touching the walls in shades of gray.
He knows this room's proportions by heart. It's the space he sleeps in every night, and wakes in every morning; without even looking, he knows he could reach out and touch the wall to his left, and the wall behind the head of his bed frame. But a different sense--not at all rational, yet still convincing-- tells him he'd have to reach farther, much farther than that, to touch Arai. It's as though they've brought the full length of the courtyard indoors, in between them. He feels like he should have to raise his voice, just to be heard across the distance.
Common sense tells him this is ridiculous. Arai is right there, a waiting shape defined in shadowy curves, and the faintly lit folds of his quilt. If Mori listens closely he can hear him breathing, they are sitting that close. But for a brief, anxious moment, he wants to crawl down the bed, and reaffirm Arai's presence by touch. Find his shoulders, his knees, the curve of his cheeks and his bed-tousled hair. He isn't sure what's stopping him. Whether it's a reluctance to be disruptive, suddenly crowding himself into Arai's space, in the darkness, for no apparent reason. Or....
Or if he's too afraid of touching Arai, and still being unable to reach him.
This isn't a new suspicion. He's been dreading it, in the back of his mind, for longer than he cares to admit. And now, after all that's happened, he realizes he cannot bear to know for sure, that his suspicions are real.
So he doesn't reach out, and he doesn't raise his voice across the awkward, ill-proportioned gulf he senses. He pretends normalcy, in hope that the actuality of it will come to him.
"I should check the roofs and windows," he answers. "Might have to shovel the steps and porches around the house, so they'll dry." The pool house, he remembers dutifully. He'd forgotten to lock it. At the moment it hardly seems to matter, but if the floors are ruined by snow, he will feel guilty for his negligence.
"You'll have to put me to work too, then," Arai tells him. "Sakura-san says I can't go anywhere 'til the roads are clear. No sense in sitting around, if I can help."
"You don't--." Mori's first reaction is to tell him of course he isn't expected to work, especially considering what he's been through. But he shies away at the last moment, and feels that irrational void in the darkness yawn a little wider. He doesn't want to argue. He'll bend any direction necessary to avoid the stinging slap of Arai's frustration again. But he cannot ignore his imperative need to keep Arai safe, inside, warm and dry, for as long as possible. If he can't pull him close, at least he could keep him secure. It shouldn't be too much to ask.
"Sakura-san," he amends, by way of compromise, "would rather keep you indoors, where she can spoil you."
"If she spoils me any more, I'll be useless," Arai answers lightly. "Kuki-chan wouldn't even let me take my dinner tray back to the kitchen."
"Hospitality is an important family tradition. Sakura-san doesn't have many opportunities to offer it here. But she still respects the standards." And hopefully she won't mind being used as leverage for his admittedly selfish aim in this debate.
"You mean she likes having somebody else around to make a fuss over." There's just the hint of a wry smile behind the words, but then Arai pauses, and adds in a lower, quieter voice, "It's okay, if you don't want me out there. It's just. I know I've caused a lot of trouble for everybody. And if I could do something to help out, I'd like to. But if you don't....y'know. It's okay."
Mori is grateful that Arai can't see him wince. It's all he can do not to slap his palm to his forehead. Isn't there any subject they can discuss, which won't lead him into trouble? Is there some other language he should try, where he could for once say the right thing, instead of all the wrong things?
He wonders if they're even speaking the same language anymore, and then realizes bleakly, that they probably aren't. They haven't consistently spoken the same language for some time; not where it's counted, anyway.
"No," he says. "That isn't....of course you're welcome." How could you think I don't want you, of course I want you, every moment of every day, I want you with me so much it undoes me sometimes.
He pictures his rush of undisciplined feeling, like a flood of bright colors, tumbling down into the disconnected space between them, and instinctively pulls back. He can't let himself fall in after it. He has to stay on safe, sane ground, for both their sakes. "I just thought you might rather rest."
"If it's not a problem," comes the careful-sounding answer. "I'd rather be with you."
"It's no problem." He tucks his hands over his ankles to keep them still, and reminds himself that as awkward as this conversation is, it is infinitely better than no conversation at all.
Actually, he sees with a pang, this conversation isn't substantially different than any other they've had in the past few months, he's just more anxious about it now. Because it should be different. After staring for half the night into the face of one of his darkest, most paralyzing fears, he should not still be afraid of less then two meters of dark space. He shouldn't still be handling words the way one handles edged weapons; with the fear of accidental injury taking precedence over basic honesty. But he doesn't know what to do differently. Just like at Christmas, he is still in this place where there are no good choices.
Or perhaps, no easy choices. Which--when he thinks about it--really isn't the same thing at all.
There's a rustling of quilts, and he can make out Arai's silhouette, shifting about and drawing his knees up in front of him, with a quiet sigh.
"Warm enough?" he asks.
"Yeah. It's cozy in here. Those heaters you put in do a good job."
"I should introduce you to my contractor," Mori answers. "He could give you piles of catalogues and brochures to choose from."
There comes a quiet chuckle in the darkness. "Thanks, but I think we're set."
Mori thinks he doesn't want to discuss heaters. He doesn't know what he wants to say; it's all too backed up and packed down to make sense of. And he is suffocating on it. Their friendship, all the things he has missed so much, they are suffocating right in front of him.
And of course he can never think of that contractor, without being reminded of the evening he'd entirely forgotten Arai, waiting patiently in the poolhouse. Or all those days that slipped past, from summer into fall, where he barely lifted his head from work. All the time he'd lost, while this distance was widening between them.
There is so much Arai doesn't know, and tonight--if things had turned out worse--Mori could have lost the chance to tell him, forever. And now that he has the chance, he's too afraid of the risk. He has let himself be governed for too long, by the fear of what certain truths could cost him.
But he's beginning to see another cost to staying silent and living with this unnatural gap between them. Making meaningless small talk, while the trusting companionship they once had shrivels and wilts, like a tree in a neverending drought. He imagines losing Arai slowly, a few centimeters at a time, until all he can see is an empty vanishing point, and he tastes the edge of the homesick grief that would surely fill the rest of his life.
He can't afford to be safe anymore. He can't afford to keep quiet.
"I wish I'd made more time for you, last summer." This is the first truth, and it comes hard past the flat, bitter taste in his mouth.
Arai stirs, making a soft sound of denial. "What were you going to make it out of? You worked yourself to the bone."
"I'm not sure it was worth it," he admits. At the moment, it doesn't seem worth it at all. "I should've done things differently."
"Are you kidding? Of course it's worth it. Think how much you got done, in one season. You got this place halfway to running, and you didn't even know what you were doing, starting out. That's incredible, Takashi." Interestingly, Mori notes, Arai doesn't sound at all tentative on this topic.
"But I lost track of you. I neglected our friendship." He neglected it for his calendar, his phone calls and appointments, and for a self-imposed workload which, when he looks at it honestly, was as much a way of hiding from uncertainty, as anything. "This project isn't worth that cost. Not to me."
"Wait. You can't just--." Arai shoves off his quilt, and to Mori's utter astonishment, hastens up the bed to him. "You love this place. I know what you gave up to be here." He feels for Mori's arm, finds his hand, and clutches it tightly. "Please don't say you're going to quit now."
Mori stares into the dimness, dumbstruck. How had he done that? How had Arai just crossed that impossible fixed emptiness and reached for him, like it was nothing?
You're here, he thinks, with his head spinning slowly, and Arai's fingers pressing his palm. You really are here.
"Promise me you won't do that, okay?" He is pleading, in utmost seriousness, and Mori does his best to attend the discussion at hand.
There are practicalities involved; he can't altogether surrender his obligation to the estate. He is tied here by principle, and the commitment he'd undertaken. Of course he couldn't walk away from this place in good conscience, but he would certainly be adjusting his timetable soon.
Though what concerns him more at the moment, is Arai's urgency, and his startling belief that Mori could conceivably be less attached to him, than to a parcel of land and a house. For a moment, he is simply baffled.
But then he thinks. And understanding comes, in a painful burst of clarity. Suddenly he sees the origin of the space between them. In a flash, he grasps the shape and nature of it. That space which Arai had effortlessly closed, to beg him not to give up the last of his home and inheritance, without regard for the cost to himself.
What have I shown him, all this time? he thinks. What had his actions proven? How was Arai supposed to understand how much he was valued, given the choices Mori had made? All the times he'd stayed silent when he could've spoken. All the truths he'd kept to himself, leaving Arai to draw whatever conclusions he could.
The gulf he had feared was of his own making. He had created it, in the simplest, most obvious way: by pulling himself back. And he knows, if he is to make any amends between them, this is where he must begin.
"I would promise, if that's what you wanted most," he finally says, and readies himself for a second difficult confession. "But I'm not sure I could stay in this place, if. If we weren't...." He ransacks his brain for a word that doesn't feel like a euphemism. For something even remotely adequate to what he feels, and how deep its roots go inside him. The undeniable necessity of it; the way it unfurls at a thought, spreading out and encompassing all his world. But there is no one word for this, and words were never his strong suit, anyway. To even begin to name it, he'd need a lifetime.
Instead, he takes Arai's hand in both of his, feeling the curve of his fingers, the tendons in his wrist, and the delicate stretch of skin where his heartbeat echoes. "You found me, here. Who else could find me, if you went away?"
"Takashi." It comes as a whisper; Arai kneeling at his side, close enough to touch shoulders. Close enough that Mori remembers all those cautious, tender gestures that had first brought them together. He had longed for Arai back then, every bit as much as he does in this moment; that hasn't changed. But back then, he had always told him the truth. He had never felt the need to avoid it.
"I could have confided in you. I could have given you more time. I have faith in you, but I haven't shown it enough. Now I know better. If you can give me a chance, I will do better." He hears his words crowding together in a rush, and there is so much more to say, so much more than he can possibly say in one night, but he has to slow down and think, and breathe, before he stops making sense.
"Y'know, I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be the one asking for another chance," Arai says. "After I got done apologizing for like, everything. I've been keeping this whole list."
The quiet, frank humility of his admission puts Mori to shame. How can you bear saying these things? he wants to ask. And on the heels of that, What could you possibly need my forgiveness for?
But that isn't a new question. He remembers a morning in early fall, and the shocking bloom of the bruises hidden under the brim of Arai's cap. He remembers scores of times Arai has smiled and passed off his hurts as nothing. And a few hours back, the words he had shouted. The exact words.
"...I know I've screwed everything up... how's my uncle ever supposed to trust me...?"
It wasn't that they'd been speaking different languages. It was that Mori hadn't been listening. He hadn't listened. He hadn't spoken. He hadn't asked. And Mitsukuni had been exactly correct when he had scolded Mori. Only Mori hadn't seen how correct at the time, because he was still too busy looking for easier choices.
He sighs, thinking what a long way he still has to go, and how much damage he must now repair. "I'll hear it if you want. But you're already forgiven."
"So then. You changed your mind?"
"About what?"
Arai shifts on his knees, and answers hesitantly. "What you said, last week. After, um. About letting me go."
Mori hadn't thought he could feel any worse, but the sad resignation in those words hits him like a brick to the chest. Of all his mistakes, this was by far the most appalling. He'd never bothered to think how Arai might've misconstrued him then, and now, knowing the injury he'd caused, and the hurt Arai must have borne every day since, Mori is sickened at himself.
"I spoke carelessly, then," he manages. "That wasn't--at all--what I meant to imply. I should never have...." He's listening to the strained sound of his own voice speaking stilted, inadequate phrases. They may be honest, but they are not enough. He could speak them with his forehead pressed to the floor, on his knees, and it still wouldn't be enough.
"...I should have been brave," he concludes helplessly.
"What....I don't understand. You're always brave."
Mori shakes his head. "No. I wish that were true."
"Was it--wrong? I mean, I've never...." Arai makes a soft sound of frustration, and Mori can picture the troubled frown he always gets, when he's puzzling through a difficulty. "Did we go too far?"
Arai doesn't know. He has no idea what a landmine he'd stood on that night. Mori might be astonished at this, but then again, how was he to know? How could he have any notion of the danger, when Mori had employed all his discipline to keeping silent on it? In one sense, he may have protected Arai, but that was quite obviously no solution for the long term, and the consequences were disastrous.
He quails at what he must confess now. The mere thought of it makes his throat tighten and his heart thump faster. He doesn't know how he can say these things, when he can hardly think about them. How can he express something that in his own mind, is such a tangle of desire and foreboding and shame, that he can't begin to understand it himself?
Somehow, he has to. His remorse demands it. Arai's incredible forbearance demands it. Any hope for their future needs it. All he can do, is start at the beginning, and try to choose his words rightly.
"Sometimes, I'm afraid to be....like I was, when Mitsukuni left. I don't think about it very often. Most of the time, I forget what happened, and why I came here. But sometimes it comes back. I remember everything. I remember how it felt, then."
Arai's fingers close over his hand, with a gentle squeeze, and Mori doesn't think he's ever been so grateful for anything. "That week when it rained," Arai says softly. "When you couldn't sleep. It came back then."
"I thought it....I thought enough time had passed. But then the rain came. All day and all night. And it was...." He falters, knowing this is yet another thing entirely beyond his ability to describe. Lost is the closest word he knows, but it hardly touches the surface of his time spent adrift, inconsolable. Left stranded in a gray emptiness, watching all he had understood and held dear, pulling ever further from him.
"Oh," says Arai, and then draws in a sharp breath. "That's why you said....oh, Takashi. I'm so sorry--." He grasps Mori's arm, and Mori, for whom that autumn day is still a frustrating blank, has to know.
"What? What did I say?" He still wants to know what he did, but isn't sure he's ready to find that out just yet.
"You--you said I'd have to leave. When I was trying to get you to sleep. And then, before you went to sleep, you asked me not to go. I didn't get it--I should've stayed, no matter what. But I had to get back to town, and I couldn't wake you up, I tried, but you were just gone, and....I'm really sorry." Arai's words pick up speed like a stone bouncing down a hillside, and at the end he sounds breathless. But what is most significant, what Mori will always remember, forever afterward, is the way he is leaning in and clutching both of Mori's hands.
This is when Mori understands that he has never seen a finer example of bravery, than the person sitting next to him. For the rest of his life, he will have to live up to this young man who, in spite of his hurts and his doubts, and all that he blamed himself for, continued to reach for Mori, and didn't pull back.
"It's all right," Mori tells him. "I was too tired to remember anything I said."
"No, that's no excuse. I'd said I'd stay with you, and I didn't. I left, and you had to wake up alone...."
He pauses a moment and then asks, faintly incredulous, "That's what you're afraid of? That I'd leave you?"
"I'm afraid," Mori says, grasping after the words as he goes, "that if you leave, it will be worse than....that time before. If I need you too much. I won't know how to live. By myself."
But this is only part of it. It stings and aches, like the interminable drag of a bandage pulled too slowly off a half-healed wound. But it's not enough. This night has exhausted him. His eyes are stinging with fatigue, and he feels bludgeoned, inside and out. But now he sees that the only way to atone for the damage his secrets have caused, is to lay them all bare. To do the very most difficult thing he can conceive, what had seemed unendurable to him before.
Because Arai is brave enough to hold his hands, Mori must be brave enough to deserve him.
"I should be better at it by now. But still I'm not very good." He props his arms across his legs, and works to pull in the next breath past his weary, leaden heart. "I thought tonight, if I couldn't find you. There wouldn't be anything left. Nothing would matter anymore."
"And that's why--." Arai's voice falls off in a tired-sounding sigh, and he releases Mori's hands, leans in and wraps his arms around Mori's bowed shoulders. He is warm, strong, and so familiar that it aches, and Mori curls into the embrace obediently, lets himself be pulled in with a feeling of humble, broken surrender.
"I could never just go away, and leave you behind like that." Arai grips him tightly, and his fierce whisper puffs against Mori's temple. "There's no way. If you ever need me, all you have to do is ask. I'll drop everything, I don't care. It hurts, to think of you being all alone, Takashi." He presses a firm kiss against Mori's forehead, and Mori closes his eyes, and breathes in the clean scent rising from Arai's borrowed pajamas, from his skin; the smell of comfort and belonging, and simple, steady reassurance.
He has never felt so wholly wrung out in his life. All he wants is to stay right here, with his head tipped to the hollow of Arai's shoulder, for as long as he's allowed. He wants to trust the strength of the arms holding on to him; he wants to believe, with Arai surrounding him, holding on with all his pure conviction, that hopeless isolation can never overtake him again.
But he hasn't earned this reassurance. Not yet. Not until he has mastered the things he allowed to come between them, and any temptation to ever keep secrets again.
"There's something else," he murmurs. "I have to tell you."
"Ssh, you're tired." Arai strokes his hair, awkwardly in the dark, and his heartbeat is a lulling rhythm next to Mori's ear. "We both need sleep. You can tell me tomorrow."
"It's important. It's about....the other night." He tries to lift up, rouse himself to alertness, but his body has given out on him. The most he can do, is shift his head up to Arai's shoulder.
"It's okay, I get it. You don't have to beat yourself up over it."
But Mori can't imagine sleeping with this perched at the rim of his conscience, staring him down. And when daylight comes, there will be excuses to forget. To put it off. Pretend it wasn't so important after all. He knows, because he's done it more than a dozen times already. And he can't anymore. He can't.
"Sometimes I have dreams. About you," he says, and feels Arai go very still, and then draw in a long, slow breath.
"Dreams. Are they good ones?"
"I don't know." He'd never qualified them as good or bad, precisely. They were unsettling. Vivid. There were those few like violent thunderstorms; beautiful and terrible at the same time. "They aren't....always nice. Or comfortable." He bites his lip, and thinks how to put it. "They make me want things."
"Oh," says Arai, after a quiet moment. "Those dreams." As though Mori had already told him. As though he knew just the ones Mori was referring to. Mori frowns, on the verge of asking what he means, 'those dreams'. And then it clicks.
"You've had them?"
Arai's breath jumps, in a short hitch of a laugh. "Yeah. All the time. They're kind of, um. Yeah."
It feels like someone has just punched an octagon-shaped hole, gently and painlessly, through the middle of his brain, and Mori's thoughts are trying to find their way around the gap.
Arai had. Those dreams. Arai has had. The kind of dreams he had. He keeps attempting to connect the two halves of the statement together, but they keep bouncing off in opposite directions, refusing to coalesce into something he can grasp.
He knows he embarked on this topic with a certain aim, but it's apparently fallen into the startling new blankness in his brain. He decides he blames that, for what he asks next.
"Do you ever want....the things that happen, in those dreams?"
Arai's shivers minutely at the question; Mori feels it across the entire surface of his skin, and this more than anything convinces him that right now, they are definitely speaking the same language.
"Yeah. Of course I do." The low, rougher edge to his voice is something new, but Mori thinks he knows it. "I mean, it's you. Makes me crazy, sometimes. A lot of the time."
He cannot disbelieve that voice; on some level he knows he credits what he's hearing. Because it's Arai, and because Arai sounds for all the world like he shares intimate knowledge of Mori's experience. Yet at the same time he's tempted to pinch himself, to make sure he hasn't drifted off to sleep after all.
This was his darkest, most haunting secret. The thing that had wrecked his sleep, his focus, his peace of mind. The thing that had broken his lifelong adherence to discipline and moderate judgment. Nothing had ever made him feel so entirely helpless, nor had anything so completely undermined his confidence as those nights of feverish hallucination; desire, uncontrollable, like a sudden crippling illness.
And somehow, Arai shared this. Arai, whose every mood was telegraphed in his clear eyes, the quirk of his mouth, and so many expressive nuances of posture. Arai had shared those dreams, and those wants, and Mori had never known. Out of all the things he had overlooked, or failed to heed, he had missed this, and he cannot begin to conceive how.
And then Arai says, "I didn't think it was wrong, to want that. I mean, not if we really care about each other. But. Do you think it's wrong?"
Mori blinks, at once alert to the vulnerability in Arai's question. At this point, a misconstrued answer could do untold harm. But how is he to explain the wrongness of his own behavior, without condemning Arai by implication?
"I don't think it's wrong," he says cautiously, and then on impulse, he reaches up for the hand grasping his shoulder, and laces their fingers together. "But I thought what I wanted was....disrespectful, if you didn't want it too. And my behavior, the other night. That was disrespectful. I am sorry for that."
"You know." Arai stirs, shifting his arms slightly around Mori's shoulders. "The way you kissed me, that time. I dream about that. I thought....I felt like you wanted me. Like the time--that day. When you fell asleep."
"I kissed you then?"
"Here, in your room. And on your bed. I thought it was good. I thought we wanted the same thing. That you were ready to....do more than. Just kiss. Maybe."
Mori allows himself a short moment to imagine this. Not the suggestions hiding in the cautious spaces of Arai's speech, but the two of them, stretched on this bed, kissing the way they had in the linen closet. He imagines how Arai must have looked, the high flush to his cheeks and the heat in his half-lidded gaze. Then he pulls in an unsteady breath, and switches the picture off, before it gets away from him, uncomfortably conscious of the scent of Arai's skin, and the shape of his body so close.
He concentrates instead, on the things he needs to say. "I do want you. I have wanted you, for a long time. But I think. I worry, if we do those things, it will be harder, when you're not here."
"Hm." Arai nods, his chin brushing Mori's hair. And then there's a moment of thoughtful quiet, where they both just breathe together, just like on those long chilly afternoons back in early spring. Curled up on the library sofa, watching the crackling logs in the fireplace. Those days seem so far away to him now, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.
And yet they are right here with him, in potential. They always were, all along. All he ever had to do, was stop and make time for them. Arai knew this already, he had to. How else could he have reached for Mori so fearlessly?
From now on, he thinks he will spend a lot more time listening to Arai, and a lot less time scaring himself to death, with groundless worries.
"You know it's okay, if you're not ready," Arai finally tells him. "I mean, if you're not sure, I'd rather wait. 'Til you know you're ready."
"How do you know when you're ready?" Mori asks. Because while he's certainly heard this advice before, he's never been entirely clear on how it's supposed to work, in actual practice.
"Well. I guess, when you're not worried anymore. When you're sure it's what you want."
"Are you ready?"
"Not if you aren't."
Mori considers that idea, the simplicity of it. He considers how much easier it would've been, on all concerned, if they had had this conversation months ago. If he had only asked, and listened, instead of clutching his fears to himself, keeping them buried in darkness, festering and complicating everything. Suddenly it feels like a huge, awkward burden has been removed from inside him, freeing him up to breathe, and move, and see clearly.
"It'll be okay. We'll work it out." Arai's fingers comb slowly through Mori's hair, a soothing, repetitive motion. "I can take care of you too, y'know. You remember how you helped me, on the balance beam, when I first started on those exercises for my knee?"
Mori nods against his shoulder. "I remember."
"You never let me fall. You always caught me. I never worried about getting hurt, because I knew you'd catch me." Arai's fingers drift down Mori's cheek, to his jaw, tilting his chin up gently. He bends, until his lips brush Mori's cheek, and then his mouth, and he presses a long, soft kiss there. Mori closes his eyes, feels the way the whole earth quietly stops on its axis, at the warm pressure of their mouths; a perfect, indescribable stillness anchoring Mori, running straight through the very center of him.
And then the pressure is gone, but it's all right, because Arai is still touching him, warm steady hands framing Mori's face, and words; soft, but with the surest conviction Mori thinks he has ever heard, puffing against his cheek.
"I won't let you fall either."
*****
Refuge
It's twenty minutes past three a.m., when he hears the courtyard door to the guest suite slide open. Mori knows, because he sits up in his bed and looks over at his digital clock.
He's been dozing, between fits of anxious consciousness. Waking up tense, worried whether Arai is all right. If he's warm enough. If he's able to rest in a strange bed. If the utter dark and stillness of the country night bother him at all. If he's lying awake feeling lonely, and far from friendly company, the way Mori sometimes feels when he stares up at his ceiling in the deepest hush of night.
These are not monumental problems, he knows. Given the other options for how the night could have turned out, they are practically luxuries. Every time he nods off, he sees the clean untouched snowbank lining the road; his flashlight bobbing across its inscrutable surface, and feels the roiling dread in his stomach again, how close it had come to immobilizing him.
When the whispery vibration of the courtyard door reaches him, it's very nearly a relief. It's an excuse to get up at least, and put his questions to rest.
He pulls on a sweater and a pair of track pants, steps into his lined house slippers, and then carefully slides open his own door to the courtyard, and peeks out.
The night sky is clean polished black, and the waxing crescent moon hangs razor-edged, brilliant, pouring icy light across the landscape. Snow softens the line of the courtyard walls, and the grounds are a pure expanse of bluish gray, edged with crisp charcoal shadows.
"I never knew it was so beautiful here at night." Arai's voice barely troubles the stillness. "So quiet." He's swaddled in a quilt, a few steps out on the porch to Mori's left. Mori can just make out his profile, caught in the spill of moonlight; ageless, untroubled. Like a figure sculpted in pale stone.
"Did you need anything?" Mori will not mention the cold, that Arai should really be resting in a warm bed, after what he's been through. The urge is certainly present, but he senses a fragile peace here and in light of recent experience, he's acutely reluctant to disturb it.
"Hm. I thought I would sleep for a week when I got in that bed." He tilts a look over his shoulder at Mori. "That's a really comfortable bed."
"I'm glad," Mori says. It occurs to him that out of his four guest rooms, he's never once inspected the beds.
"The bath," Arai nods. "That was great too. Huge."
Sakura-san must have doted on him a good deal; the communal guest bath was built to accommodate five people comfortably. "Too bad you don't have people out here more often," Arai mused. "Big bath like that shouldn't go to waste."
Mori says without thinking--"I should have let you use it--." And then he does think. "....Before."
He is conscious of how the word hangs between them, weighted with stumbles and missteps; the held breaths, and prickly silences that had multiplied over the past months. The shoulds and should-not-haves, and missed connections. He wonders if they can ever escape the shoals of their previous mistakes now, with all the damage of bad timing and omissions always there to remind them.
And then Arai says, in a cloudy sigh, his profile tilted to the moon again, "I couldn't sleep because I missed you. You were right in the next room, and. I miss talking to you. I miss....being friends with you."
Another loaded word. Mori swallows, and musters the courage to invite further elaboration. "Friends."
"You're the best friend I've ever had." Spoken with such candid simplicity, that it puts Mori's dread of amicable separation to rest; it sounds like Arai, as he generally does, means precisely what he says.
Though he can't help but wonder what they are to each other now. If there is a different name for this uncertain truce, accommodating boundaries and obstructions where there used to be understanding and effortless affection. And laughter. He misses the laughter.
And maybe he's over-thinking it. He misses being friends, too.
"We could talk inside," he offers. "Where it's warm."
Arai turns with a considering look for Mori, and the open door at his back.
"Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense." He gathers the quilt higher on his shoulders, so it doesn't drag on the porch, and shuffles over to follow Mori back inside.
**
Somewhere around the halfway point on the long, tedious drive back to the estate, Arai started doing some mental arithmetic. His adrenaline had drained off by then, leaving him wrung out all over, the truck was warm finally, and there wasn't anything to look at besides the loader, creeping along a few vehicle lengths in front of him, and Takashi's headlights in his rearview mirror. He had to do something to stay alert. So he got to thinking.
Three times that night, he had barely scraped past serious catastrophe. First, he'd managed not to total the grocery truck, when he went skidding across the ice. Second, by all rights, he should've spent the night where he got stuck on the shoulder. Third, he'd completely lost his head and yelled at Takashi, and yet Takashi still helped him, and came back to talk to him before they left.
If he tallied up all the things that could have happened, but didn't, he had beat some major odds tonight. He had seen more sheer dumb luck in a matter of hours, than at any one time in his whole life.
And he hadn't earned any of it. Which was to say, he hadn't tried or hoped for any of those things to happen, they just did. He'd been in enough trouble to face the worst possibilities, but none of them came to pass. And yeah, there were still some troubles left to work out, but in all, he was really, incredibly lucky.
Fatigue may have played a large part in this, but the more he considered his luck, the calmer he started to feel in general. Maybe his friendship with Takashi wouldn't ever be the same again, but on the other hand, he hadn't flipped the grocery truck into a ditch, or bashed it into that road sign. And maybe he'd be going back to face a major dressing-down from his uncle, but he hadn't frozen to death on the side of the road. He hadn't slept through the loader passing by. And Takashi had come back to talk to him, instead of cutting him off completely, even though Arai had been terrible and hurtful to him.
So it was mostly with an odd, dazed sort of gratitude, that he finally pulled up in his usual spot near the kitchen door of Takashi's house. Mounted the snowy steps, when the door opened and Sakura-san urged him in; all that light spilling out, so startling after hours of darkness. There was the heat of the pantry, and Sakura-san praising his return, fussing over him with warm towels and unexpectedly tight hugs, and Kuki-chan hovering nearby with dry house slippers. And then the kitchen, the most welcome place in the world, clean and bright and warm, something delicious cooking on the stove, and Hito grinning his twinkling, mischievous grin from the kitchen table.
This. This was what it must be like when you finally made it home, Arai thought. To a family waiting for you, honestly glad to see you. He'd never realized, until that very moment, how much he had always wanted something like that. Just to come in from the cold and dark, to a place where he belonged, where everyone cared, knowing they all had been looking out for him.
There wasn't anyone, anywhere as lucky as him, he knew that then, and with Sakura-san already on the phone with his uncle, and Kuki-chan taking his gloves, hat, and jacket, this impossible bittersweet relief blurred and burned in his chest, and then spilled over.
Sakura-san handed him the phone, and he sat on one of the kitchen stools, and his voice broke when he told his uncle he was okay, he was sorry, so sorry, but the truck was okay, he'd made sure. Somebody put some tissues in his hand, and he sniffled and hitched in a few breaths, blinking away the glittering smeariness in his vision. Tried to get a grip on himself, while his uncle told him not to worry anymore. He was safe, and that was all that mattered.
"I'm proud of you, Naoki," his uncle said, and Arai's jaw dropped. Surely he hadn't heard that. But his uncle was still talking. "You did the right thing, staying put and waiting on help to come. That was the smartest choice you could've made, and believe me, some folks who get stranded in these storms aren't that smart. Sometimes, they don't make it."
"I was--I got lucky," he said, with his throat all tight and hoarse, thinking it was too much; this was so much more than he deserved.
"Yeah, you did. But you also kept a cool head, and I'm proud of you for that."
"I can try and get the truck back tomorrow. I'll see about borrowing Takashi's snow chains--"
"Not a chance," his uncle cut in, though not unkindly. "The whole town's snowed in, and I for one, intend to take a few days off. You do the same. Sit tight until they get the roads clear. Sakura-san already told me she intends to keep you," he added, chuckling. "So try not to hassle her by arguing. I don't think she'll be budged."
"Oh-okay," Arai nodded. He wiped at his nose with the tissues, and hazarded a glance at Sakura-san, who was eying him like she expected he might argue, and she intended to head him off quick. He ought try just a little, for the sake of courtesy, but maybe later. For now, he was too worn out to think straight.
He didn't have it in him to put up much resistance even, when Kuki-chan wanted to lead him off for a hot bath, as soon as he got off the phone. Takashi and Oshiro were still out securing the vehicles in the garage, and he wanted to go and help, but Sakura-san insisted he have a care for his health.
"Bocchama will be back any moment, and we would be negligent in our duty if you caught pneumonia because we allowed you to stay in these damp clothes. Please indulge our worries for the time being, Arai-kun," she said firmly. Arai saw there wasn't much choice but to put himself in their hands, and so he did.
***
"You're probably gonna be busy, after a storm like that."
Arai is settled cross-legged on the lower half of Mori's bed, with his quilt tented around him, and Mori has copied his posture, drawing up his own quilts to warm his legs. The room is still dark, save for the glow of moonlight filtering through the windows, touching the walls in shades of gray.
He knows this room's proportions by heart. It's the space he sleeps in every night, and wakes in every morning; without even looking, he knows he could reach out and touch the wall to his left, and the wall behind the head of his bed frame. But a different sense--not at all rational, yet still convincing-- tells him he'd have to reach farther, much farther than that, to touch Arai. It's as though they've brought the full length of the courtyard indoors, in between them. He feels like he should have to raise his voice, just to be heard across the distance.
Common sense tells him this is ridiculous. Arai is right there, a waiting shape defined in shadowy curves, and the faintly lit folds of his quilt. If Mori listens closely he can hear him breathing, they are sitting that close. But for a brief, anxious moment, he wants to crawl down the bed, and reaffirm Arai's presence by touch. Find his shoulders, his knees, the curve of his cheeks and his bed-tousled hair. He isn't sure what's stopping him. Whether it's a reluctance to be disruptive, suddenly crowding himself into Arai's space, in the darkness, for no apparent reason. Or....
Or if he's too afraid of touching Arai, and still being unable to reach him.
This isn't a new suspicion. He's been dreading it, in the back of his mind, for longer than he cares to admit. And now, after all that's happened, he realizes he cannot bear to know for sure, that his suspicions are real.
So he doesn't reach out, and he doesn't raise his voice across the awkward, ill-proportioned gulf he senses. He pretends normalcy, in hope that the actuality of it will come to him.
"I should check the roofs and windows," he answers. "Might have to shovel the steps and porches around the house, so they'll dry." The pool house, he remembers dutifully. He'd forgotten to lock it. At the moment it hardly seems to matter, but if the floors are ruined by snow, he will feel guilty for his negligence.
"You'll have to put me to work too, then," Arai tells him. "Sakura-san says I can't go anywhere 'til the roads are clear. No sense in sitting around, if I can help."
"You don't--." Mori's first reaction is to tell him of course he isn't expected to work, especially considering what he's been through. But he shies away at the last moment, and feels that irrational void in the darkness yawn a little wider. He doesn't want to argue. He'll bend any direction necessary to avoid the stinging slap of Arai's frustration again. But he cannot ignore his imperative need to keep Arai safe, inside, warm and dry, for as long as possible. If he can't pull him close, at least he could keep him secure. It shouldn't be too much to ask.
"Sakura-san," he amends, by way of compromise, "would rather keep you indoors, where she can spoil you."
"If she spoils me any more, I'll be useless," Arai answers lightly. "Kuki-chan wouldn't even let me take my dinner tray back to the kitchen."
"Hospitality is an important family tradition. Sakura-san doesn't have many opportunities to offer it here. But she still respects the standards." And hopefully she won't mind being used as leverage for his admittedly selfish aim in this debate.
"You mean she likes having somebody else around to make a fuss over." There's just the hint of a wry smile behind the words, but then Arai pauses, and adds in a lower, quieter voice, "It's okay, if you don't want me out there. It's just. I know I've caused a lot of trouble for everybody. And if I could do something to help out, I'd like to. But if you don't....y'know. It's okay."
Mori is grateful that Arai can't see him wince. It's all he can do not to slap his palm to his forehead. Isn't there any subject they can discuss, which won't lead him into trouble? Is there some other language he should try, where he could for once say the right thing, instead of all the wrong things?
He wonders if they're even speaking the same language anymore, and then realizes bleakly, that they probably aren't. They haven't consistently spoken the same language for some time; not where it's counted, anyway.
"No," he says. "That isn't....of course you're welcome." How could you think I don't want you, of course I want you, every moment of every day, I want you with me so much it undoes me sometimes.
He pictures his rush of undisciplined feeling, like a flood of bright colors, tumbling down into the disconnected space between them, and instinctively pulls back. He can't let himself fall in after it. He has to stay on safe, sane ground, for both their sakes. "I just thought you might rather rest."
"If it's not a problem," comes the careful-sounding answer. "I'd rather be with you."
"It's no problem." He tucks his hands over his ankles to keep them still, and reminds himself that as awkward as this conversation is, it is infinitely better than no conversation at all.
Actually, he sees with a pang, this conversation isn't substantially different than any other they've had in the past few months, he's just more anxious about it now. Because it should be different. After staring for half the night into the face of one of his darkest, most paralyzing fears, he should not still be afraid of less then two meters of dark space. He shouldn't still be handling words the way one handles edged weapons; with the fear of accidental injury taking precedence over basic honesty. But he doesn't know what to do differently. Just like at Christmas, he is still in this place where there are no good choices.
Or perhaps, no easy choices. Which--when he thinks about it--really isn't the same thing at all.
There's a rustling of quilts, and he can make out Arai's silhouette, shifting about and drawing his knees up in front of him, with a quiet sigh.
"Warm enough?" he asks.
"Yeah. It's cozy in here. Those heaters you put in do a good job."
"I should introduce you to my contractor," Mori answers. "He could give you piles of catalogues and brochures to choose from."
There comes a quiet chuckle in the darkness. "Thanks, but I think we're set."
Mori thinks he doesn't want to discuss heaters. He doesn't know what he wants to say; it's all too backed up and packed down to make sense of. And he is suffocating on it. Their friendship, all the things he has missed so much, they are suffocating right in front of him.
And of course he can never think of that contractor, without being reminded of the evening he'd entirely forgotten Arai, waiting patiently in the poolhouse. Or all those days that slipped past, from summer into fall, where he barely lifted his head from work. All the time he'd lost, while this distance was widening between them.
There is so much Arai doesn't know, and tonight--if things had turned out worse--Mori could have lost the chance to tell him, forever. And now that he has the chance, he's too afraid of the risk. He has let himself be governed for too long, by the fear of what certain truths could cost him.
But he's beginning to see another cost to staying silent and living with this unnatural gap between them. Making meaningless small talk, while the trusting companionship they once had shrivels and wilts, like a tree in a neverending drought. He imagines losing Arai slowly, a few centimeters at a time, until all he can see is an empty vanishing point, and he tastes the edge of the homesick grief that would surely fill the rest of his life.
He can't afford to be safe anymore. He can't afford to keep quiet.
"I wish I'd made more time for you, last summer." This is the first truth, and it comes hard past the flat, bitter taste in his mouth.
Arai stirs, making a soft sound of denial. "What were you going to make it out of? You worked yourself to the bone."
"I'm not sure it was worth it," he admits. At the moment, it doesn't seem worth it at all. "I should've done things differently."
"Are you kidding? Of course it's worth it. Think how much you got done, in one season. You got this place halfway to running, and you didn't even know what you were doing, starting out. That's incredible, Takashi." Interestingly, Mori notes, Arai doesn't sound at all tentative on this topic.
"But I lost track of you. I neglected our friendship." He neglected it for his calendar, his phone calls and appointments, and for a self-imposed workload which, when he looks at it honestly, was as much a way of hiding from uncertainty, as anything. "This project isn't worth that cost. Not to me."
"Wait. You can't just--." Arai shoves off his quilt, and to Mori's utter astonishment, hastens up the bed to him. "You love this place. I know what you gave up to be here." He feels for Mori's arm, finds his hand, and clutches it tightly. "Please don't say you're going to quit now."
Mori stares into the dimness, dumbstruck. How had he done that? How had Arai just crossed that impossible fixed emptiness and reached for him, like it was nothing?
You're here, he thinks, with his head spinning slowly, and Arai's fingers pressing his palm. You really are here.
"Promise me you won't do that, okay?" He is pleading, in utmost seriousness, and Mori does his best to attend the discussion at hand.
There are practicalities involved; he can't altogether surrender his obligation to the estate. He is tied here by principle, and the commitment he'd undertaken. Of course he couldn't walk away from this place in good conscience, but he would certainly be adjusting his timetable soon.
Though what concerns him more at the moment, is Arai's urgency, and his startling belief that Mori could conceivably be less attached to him, than to a parcel of land and a house. For a moment, he is simply baffled.
But then he thinks. And understanding comes, in a painful burst of clarity. Suddenly he sees the origin of the space between them. In a flash, he grasps the shape and nature of it. That space which Arai had effortlessly closed, to beg him not to give up the last of his home and inheritance, without regard for the cost to himself.
What have I shown him, all this time? he thinks. What had his actions proven? How was Arai supposed to understand how much he was valued, given the choices Mori had made? All the times he'd stayed silent when he could've spoken. All the truths he'd kept to himself, leaving Arai to draw whatever conclusions he could.
The gulf he had feared was of his own making. He had created it, in the simplest, most obvious way: by pulling himself back. And he knows, if he is to make any amends between them, this is where he must begin.
"I would promise, if that's what you wanted most," he finally says, and readies himself for a second difficult confession. "But I'm not sure I could stay in this place, if. If we weren't...." He ransacks his brain for a word that doesn't feel like a euphemism. For something even remotely adequate to what he feels, and how deep its roots go inside him. The undeniable necessity of it; the way it unfurls at a thought, spreading out and encompassing all his world. But there is no one word for this, and words were never his strong suit, anyway. To even begin to name it, he'd need a lifetime.
Instead, he takes Arai's hand in both of his, feeling the curve of his fingers, the tendons in his wrist, and the delicate stretch of skin where his heartbeat echoes. "You found me, here. Who else could find me, if you went away?"
"Takashi." It comes as a whisper; Arai kneeling at his side, close enough to touch shoulders. Close enough that Mori remembers all those cautious, tender gestures that had first brought them together. He had longed for Arai back then, every bit as much as he does in this moment; that hasn't changed. But back then, he had always told him the truth. He had never felt the need to avoid it.
"I could have confided in you. I could have given you more time. I have faith in you, but I haven't shown it enough. Now I know better. If you can give me a chance, I will do better." He hears his words crowding together in a rush, and there is so much more to say, so much more than he can possibly say in one night, but he has to slow down and think, and breathe, before he stops making sense.
"Y'know, I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be the one asking for another chance," Arai says. "After I got done apologizing for like, everything. I've been keeping this whole list."
The quiet, frank humility of his admission puts Mori to shame. How can you bear saying these things? he wants to ask. And on the heels of that, What could you possibly need my forgiveness for?
But that isn't a new question. He remembers a morning in early fall, and the shocking bloom of the bruises hidden under the brim of Arai's cap. He remembers scores of times Arai has smiled and passed off his hurts as nothing. And a few hours back, the words he had shouted. The exact words.
"...I know I've screwed everything up... how's my uncle ever supposed to trust me...?"
It wasn't that they'd been speaking different languages. It was that Mori hadn't been listening. He hadn't listened. He hadn't spoken. He hadn't asked. And Mitsukuni had been exactly correct when he had scolded Mori. Only Mori hadn't seen how correct at the time, because he was still too busy looking for easier choices.
He sighs, thinking what a long way he still has to go, and how much damage he must now repair. "I'll hear it if you want. But you're already forgiven."
"So then. You changed your mind?"
"About what?"
Arai shifts on his knees, and answers hesitantly. "What you said, last week. After, um. About letting me go."
Mori hadn't thought he could feel any worse, but the sad resignation in those words hits him like a brick to the chest. Of all his mistakes, this was by far the most appalling. He'd never bothered to think how Arai might've misconstrued him then, and now, knowing the injury he'd caused, and the hurt Arai must have borne every day since, Mori is sickened at himself.
"I spoke carelessly, then," he manages. "That wasn't--at all--what I meant to imply. I should never have...." He's listening to the strained sound of his own voice speaking stilted, inadequate phrases. They may be honest, but they are not enough. He could speak them with his forehead pressed to the floor, on his knees, and it still wouldn't be enough.
"...I should have been brave," he concludes helplessly.
"What....I don't understand. You're always brave."
Mori shakes his head. "No. I wish that were true."
"Was it--wrong? I mean, I've never...." Arai makes a soft sound of frustration, and Mori can picture the troubled frown he always gets, when he's puzzling through a difficulty. "Did we go too far?"
Arai doesn't know. He has no idea what a landmine he'd stood on that night. Mori might be astonished at this, but then again, how was he to know? How could he have any notion of the danger, when Mori had employed all his discipline to keeping silent on it? In one sense, he may have protected Arai, but that was quite obviously no solution for the long term, and the consequences were disastrous.
He quails at what he must confess now. The mere thought of it makes his throat tighten and his heart thump faster. He doesn't know how he can say these things, when he can hardly think about them. How can he express something that in his own mind, is such a tangle of desire and foreboding and shame, that he can't begin to understand it himself?
Somehow, he has to. His remorse demands it. Arai's incredible forbearance demands it. Any hope for their future needs it. All he can do, is start at the beginning, and try to choose his words rightly.
"Sometimes, I'm afraid to be....like I was, when Mitsukuni left. I don't think about it very often. Most of the time, I forget what happened, and why I came here. But sometimes it comes back. I remember everything. I remember how it felt, then."
Arai's fingers close over his hand, with a gentle squeeze, and Mori doesn't think he's ever been so grateful for anything. "That week when it rained," Arai says softly. "When you couldn't sleep. It came back then."
"I thought it....I thought enough time had passed. But then the rain came. All day and all night. And it was...." He falters, knowing this is yet another thing entirely beyond his ability to describe. Lost is the closest word he knows, but it hardly touches the surface of his time spent adrift, inconsolable. Left stranded in a gray emptiness, watching all he had understood and held dear, pulling ever further from him.
"Oh," says Arai, and then draws in a sharp breath. "That's why you said....oh, Takashi. I'm so sorry--." He grasps Mori's arm, and Mori, for whom that autumn day is still a frustrating blank, has to know.
"What? What did I say?" He still wants to know what he did, but isn't sure he's ready to find that out just yet.
"You--you said I'd have to leave. When I was trying to get you to sleep. And then, before you went to sleep, you asked me not to go. I didn't get it--I should've stayed, no matter what. But I had to get back to town, and I couldn't wake you up, I tried, but you were just gone, and....I'm really sorry." Arai's words pick up speed like a stone bouncing down a hillside, and at the end he sounds breathless. But what is most significant, what Mori will always remember, forever afterward, is the way he is leaning in and clutching both of Mori's hands.
This is when Mori understands that he has never seen a finer example of bravery, than the person sitting next to him. For the rest of his life, he will have to live up to this young man who, in spite of his hurts and his doubts, and all that he blamed himself for, continued to reach for Mori, and didn't pull back.
"It's all right," Mori tells him. "I was too tired to remember anything I said."
"No, that's no excuse. I'd said I'd stay with you, and I didn't. I left, and you had to wake up alone...."
He pauses a moment and then asks, faintly incredulous, "That's what you're afraid of? That I'd leave you?"
"I'm afraid," Mori says, grasping after the words as he goes, "that if you leave, it will be worse than....that time before. If I need you too much. I won't know how to live. By myself."
But this is only part of it. It stings and aches, like the interminable drag of a bandage pulled too slowly off a half-healed wound. But it's not enough. This night has exhausted him. His eyes are stinging with fatigue, and he feels bludgeoned, inside and out. But now he sees that the only way to atone for the damage his secrets have caused, is to lay them all bare. To do the very most difficult thing he can conceive, what had seemed unendurable to him before.
Because Arai is brave enough to hold his hands, Mori must be brave enough to deserve him.
"I should be better at it by now. But still I'm not very good." He props his arms across his legs, and works to pull in the next breath past his weary, leaden heart. "I thought tonight, if I couldn't find you. There wouldn't be anything left. Nothing would matter anymore."
"And that's why--." Arai's voice falls off in a tired-sounding sigh, and he releases Mori's hands, leans in and wraps his arms around Mori's bowed shoulders. He is warm, strong, and so familiar that it aches, and Mori curls into the embrace obediently, lets himself be pulled in with a feeling of humble, broken surrender.
"I could never just go away, and leave you behind like that." Arai grips him tightly, and his fierce whisper puffs against Mori's temple. "There's no way. If you ever need me, all you have to do is ask. I'll drop everything, I don't care. It hurts, to think of you being all alone, Takashi." He presses a firm kiss against Mori's forehead, and Mori closes his eyes, and breathes in the clean scent rising from Arai's borrowed pajamas, from his skin; the smell of comfort and belonging, and simple, steady reassurance.
He has never felt so wholly wrung out in his life. All he wants is to stay right here, with his head tipped to the hollow of Arai's shoulder, for as long as he's allowed. He wants to trust the strength of the arms holding on to him; he wants to believe, with Arai surrounding him, holding on with all his pure conviction, that hopeless isolation can never overtake him again.
But he hasn't earned this reassurance. Not yet. Not until he has mastered the things he allowed to come between them, and any temptation to ever keep secrets again.
"There's something else," he murmurs. "I have to tell you."
"Ssh, you're tired." Arai strokes his hair, awkwardly in the dark, and his heartbeat is a lulling rhythm next to Mori's ear. "We both need sleep. You can tell me tomorrow."
"It's important. It's about....the other night." He tries to lift up, rouse himself to alertness, but his body has given out on him. The most he can do, is shift his head up to Arai's shoulder.
"It's okay, I get it. You don't have to beat yourself up over it."
But Mori can't imagine sleeping with this perched at the rim of his conscience, staring him down. And when daylight comes, there will be excuses to forget. To put it off. Pretend it wasn't so important after all. He knows, because he's done it more than a dozen times already. And he can't anymore. He can't.
"Sometimes I have dreams. About you," he says, and feels Arai go very still, and then draw in a long, slow breath.
"Dreams. Are they good ones?"
"I don't know." He'd never qualified them as good or bad, precisely. They were unsettling. Vivid. There were those few like violent thunderstorms; beautiful and terrible at the same time. "They aren't....always nice. Or comfortable." He bites his lip, and thinks how to put it. "They make me want things."
"Oh," says Arai, after a quiet moment. "Those dreams." As though Mori had already told him. As though he knew just the ones Mori was referring to. Mori frowns, on the verge of asking what he means, 'those dreams'. And then it clicks.
"You've had them?"
Arai's breath jumps, in a short hitch of a laugh. "Yeah. All the time. They're kind of, um. Yeah."
It feels like someone has just punched an octagon-shaped hole, gently and painlessly, through the middle of his brain, and Mori's thoughts are trying to find their way around the gap.
Arai had. Those dreams. Arai has had. The kind of dreams he had. He keeps attempting to connect the two halves of the statement together, but they keep bouncing off in opposite directions, refusing to coalesce into something he can grasp.
He knows he embarked on this topic with a certain aim, but it's apparently fallen into the startling new blankness in his brain. He decides he blames that, for what he asks next.
"Do you ever want....the things that happen, in those dreams?"
Arai's shivers minutely at the question; Mori feels it across the entire surface of his skin, and this more than anything convinces him that right now, they are definitely speaking the same language.
"Yeah. Of course I do." The low, rougher edge to his voice is something new, but Mori thinks he knows it. "I mean, it's you. Makes me crazy, sometimes. A lot of the time."
He cannot disbelieve that voice; on some level he knows he credits what he's hearing. Because it's Arai, and because Arai sounds for all the world like he shares intimate knowledge of Mori's experience. Yet at the same time he's tempted to pinch himself, to make sure he hasn't drifted off to sleep after all.
This was his darkest, most haunting secret. The thing that had wrecked his sleep, his focus, his peace of mind. The thing that had broken his lifelong adherence to discipline and moderate judgment. Nothing had ever made him feel so entirely helpless, nor had anything so completely undermined his confidence as those nights of feverish hallucination; desire, uncontrollable, like a sudden crippling illness.
And somehow, Arai shared this. Arai, whose every mood was telegraphed in his clear eyes, the quirk of his mouth, and so many expressive nuances of posture. Arai had shared those dreams, and those wants, and Mori had never known. Out of all the things he had overlooked, or failed to heed, he had missed this, and he cannot begin to conceive how.
And then Arai says, "I didn't think it was wrong, to want that. I mean, not if we really care about each other. But. Do you think it's wrong?"
Mori blinks, at once alert to the vulnerability in Arai's question. At this point, a misconstrued answer could do untold harm. But how is he to explain the wrongness of his own behavior, without condemning Arai by implication?
"I don't think it's wrong," he says cautiously, and then on impulse, he reaches up for the hand grasping his shoulder, and laces their fingers together. "But I thought what I wanted was....disrespectful, if you didn't want it too. And my behavior, the other night. That was disrespectful. I am sorry for that."
"You know." Arai stirs, shifting his arms slightly around Mori's shoulders. "The way you kissed me, that time. I dream about that. I thought....I felt like you wanted me. Like the time--that day. When you fell asleep."
"I kissed you then?"
"Here, in your room. And on your bed. I thought it was good. I thought we wanted the same thing. That you were ready to....do more than. Just kiss. Maybe."
Mori allows himself a short moment to imagine this. Not the suggestions hiding in the cautious spaces of Arai's speech, but the two of them, stretched on this bed, kissing the way they had in the linen closet. He imagines how Arai must have looked, the high flush to his cheeks and the heat in his half-lidded gaze. Then he pulls in an unsteady breath, and switches the picture off, before it gets away from him, uncomfortably conscious of the scent of Arai's skin, and the shape of his body so close.
He concentrates instead, on the things he needs to say. "I do want you. I have wanted you, for a long time. But I think. I worry, if we do those things, it will be harder, when you're not here."
"Hm." Arai nods, his chin brushing Mori's hair. And then there's a moment of thoughtful quiet, where they both just breathe together, just like on those long chilly afternoons back in early spring. Curled up on the library sofa, watching the crackling logs in the fireplace. Those days seem so far away to him now, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.
And yet they are right here with him, in potential. They always were, all along. All he ever had to do, was stop and make time for them. Arai knew this already, he had to. How else could he have reached for Mori so fearlessly?
From now on, he thinks he will spend a lot more time listening to Arai, and a lot less time scaring himself to death, with groundless worries.
"You know it's okay, if you're not ready," Arai finally tells him. "I mean, if you're not sure, I'd rather wait. 'Til you know you're ready."
"How do you know when you're ready?" Mori asks. Because while he's certainly heard this advice before, he's never been entirely clear on how it's supposed to work, in actual practice.
"Well. I guess, when you're not worried anymore. When you're sure it's what you want."
"Are you ready?"
"Not if you aren't."
Mori considers that idea, the simplicity of it. He considers how much easier it would've been, on all concerned, if they had had this conversation months ago. If he had only asked, and listened, instead of clutching his fears to himself, keeping them buried in darkness, festering and complicating everything. Suddenly it feels like a huge, awkward burden has been removed from inside him, freeing him up to breathe, and move, and see clearly.
"It'll be okay. We'll work it out." Arai's fingers comb slowly through Mori's hair, a soothing, repetitive motion. "I can take care of you too, y'know. You remember how you helped me, on the balance beam, when I first started on those exercises for my knee?"
Mori nods against his shoulder. "I remember."
"You never let me fall. You always caught me. I never worried about getting hurt, because I knew you'd catch me." Arai's fingers drift down Mori's cheek, to his jaw, tilting his chin up gently. He bends, until his lips brush Mori's cheek, and then his mouth, and he presses a long, soft kiss there. Mori closes his eyes, feels the way the whole earth quietly stops on its axis, at the warm pressure of their mouths; a perfect, indescribable stillness anchoring Mori, running straight through the very center of him.
And then the pressure is gone, but it's all right, because Arai is still touching him, warm steady hands framing Mori's face, and words; soft, but with the surest conviction Mori thinks he has ever heard, puffing against his cheek.
"I won't let you fall either."
*****