Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

We're a thousand miles from comfort
We have travelled land and sea

But as long as you are with me
There's no place I'd rather be

- Rather Be, Clean Bandit ft. Jess Glynn

They meet twice before they really meet, that’s what’s weird.

The first time is in London, 2010. Some dive-bar music venue in Camden, where a band is playing that Taichi has never heard of, or particularly wants to hear play again, but felt compelled to go and see, all the same.

The place is loud and damp and crowded. Everything smells like beer and BO. It makes him crave the days when people still smoked indoors, because at least the smoke was something to mask the stink.

He’s at the bar, trying to get served and isn’t sure what it is that makes him turn around. One second, he’s distracted by something stuck to the bottom of his shoe - some awful glob of bar-floor debris - and the next, he’s getting this prickle at the back of his neck, a shiver of cold in the otherwise sweaty room.

When he turns, there’s a guy looking at him across the crowd, and Taichi is instantly sure. That guy is the reason for the shiver. 

Before he can even think of doing it, he’s moving, tearing his sneaker from the sticky puddle and elbowing through the people gathered in front of the stage, dodging all the grinding hips and pumping arms to reach the only two square feet of this stupid place that matters now — the spot where that guy is standing.

He’s attractive, yeah, but there’s something else about him. Something familiar, that draws Taichi in.

“Hi,” Taichi says, loud, to compete with the strength of the bass. “Do you go to UCL?”

The guy raises one of his blonde eyebrows, which are slender and neat, like a girl’s.

“No,” he says, and in just that one word, his accent gives him away as a local. 

He’s here with a group of mates. Taichi can see them milling in the background, side-eyeing and nudging one another, full of disdain for the scruffy-haired dude with the vintage sneakers and California twang, who’s trying to pick up one of their own.

But Taichi’s been studying abroad in London for nearly three years now. He’s over being offended by twats like them. All that matters is what the boy with the blue eyes thinks, and so far, he’s yet to lose that gaze.

“You’re American,” the boy says. 

“Sure am,” Taichi says. “Something wrong with that?”

“I don’t like American accents.” 

There’s a haughty tilt to the guy’s chin as he says this, a way of looking down from on high, despite being only an inch or two taller than Taichi. 

The words aren’t true, though, that's the thing. He’s just saying them to be a dick. Taichi knows, because even this, this shitty attitude, has an ache of familiarity to it. Taichi gets it. Knows how to respond to it. It’s a case of just brushing the coldness aside and reaching right through it, to put his hands on this guy’s waist. 

“We don’t have to talk,” he says. 

It’s forward, but the guy doesn’t flinch at that. Instead, his gaze flickers over Taichi’s face. Thoughtful. Processing. 

And then, “Ok,” he says, as he takes Taichi by the hand. “These tunes are boring me, anyway.”

They trail one another into an empty bathroom stall, its black walls covered in half-torn stickers and lewd messages scratched in white-out. Taichi flips the lock on the door, before turning to face the guy squeezed in beside him. 

Even in the unflattering bathroom light, he looks immaculately put together. His hair is carefully styled, bangs arranged in a fluid swoop of spikes. He’s wearing a long-sleeved, charcoal-grey cotton shirt that’s understated, but obviously expensive. He's rich, then. For a student at least. And conscious of his appearance. 

Taichi steps closer, seeking out more clues. The boy’s eyes are a deep, sharp blue. They’re beautiful, sure. But they’re shadowed, a little hollow, like he doesn’t get quite as much rest as he needs. And his lips are slightly chapped, dry from being bitten.

His body, meanwhile, is all wiry muscle, its dips and grooves accentuated by that expensive shirt and jeans that bite at the waist and ass. He’s obviously spending enough time at the gym to tick the right boxes, but he’s also on the thin side — like eating is more of a struggle than it should be, too.

Closer still, and Taichi spots a tiny scar at the height of one cheekbone. The mark of something old and forgotten, some distant memory of a moment of violence. 

The guy has been quiet, tolerating Taichi’s investigative gaze. Now, he inclines his chin. 

“So,” he says.

“Yeah,” Taichi agrees, and drops to his knees on the bathroom tile. 

There’s no point drawing anything out. Taichi gets right to work, unfastening those expensive, perfectly-fitted jeans, reaching his hand inside them. This is mostly what his studying abroad sex life has been like so far. No strings. In and out. Nothing to write home about.

But as he slides his mouth around this guy’s dick, hears the intake of breath through clenched teeth, Taichi gets the strangest sensation. It’s an empty tug, deep in his stomach, like going over the drop of a rollercoaster. 

He lifts his gaze and meets blue eyes, looking down. ‘Do we know each other already?’ he wants to ask, but doesn’t, partly because it feels like a weird question, mostly because his mouth is full.

The sense of Deja vu is so fucking strong, but if the guy feels it too, he doesn’t show it. He pushes his fingers into Taichi’s hair, urging him on.

“Mm, that’s good,” he says.

Squashing the feeling, Taichi gets back to it, patiently working the guy over until the fingers in his hair are tightening, and there’s the hot, sour taste of come at the back of his throat.

Pulling off, Taichi swallows, because it’s too late to do much else. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stands up, feeling a twinge in his knees from too long on the hard tile.

Back on the same level, they stare at one another again. There’s colour in the guy’s cheeks now and his eyes look darker, black sinking into blue.

Taichi wants to kiss him, but senses that this isn’t on the cards. 

Sure enough, as soon as he’s caught his breath, the guy turns to go.

“Thanks,” he says, one hand already on the door latch. 

It’s abrupt, and Taichi finds himself shocked at the idea of ending things like that, hard in his pants and still none the wiser.

“Wait,” he blurts out, and when the guy pauses to look back at him, he holds his hands out helplessly. He’s not going to push for reciprocation if the boy wants to go, but they don’t even know one another’s names and leaving him without even that feels cruel. 

“Seriously?” Taichi says.

He can see the guy wanting to walk away, but hesitating to actually do it, maybe aware that he’s being unfair. An echo from high school English class: Wouldst thou leave me so unsatisfied?

After one last look at Taichi, with the click of his tongue against his teeth, the boy slides the latch of the door back into place.

“Fine,” he says, turning and coming back at Taichi, surprisingly fast. He catches him by the shoulders and spins him around, hustling him face-first against the side of the bathroom stall.

He’s stronger than his slender limbs would imply, crushing Taichi into the wall with body weight pressed to his back, nudging his knees apart, making space to manoeuvre a hand into his pants.

It’s aggressive and unexpected. And hot.

“Damn,” Taichi manages to get out, turning his cheek against the cold wood of the stall. “Are you mad at me?”

“Yes,” the guy says, as he shoves one hand beneath Taichi’s shirt, while starting to tug at his dick with the other. “I don’t know why.”

It’s one of the shortest hand jobs of Taichi’s life. He’s already too worked up, and the combination of this guy’s tight grip on him, his fast strokes, and the barest graze of teeth on the back of his neck, against the soft skin, right behind his ear, has him coming in what feels like seconds.

“That was quick,” the guy comments, as he wipes his palm on the inside of Taichi’s pants, leaving a dark, damp smear for him to carry around for the rest of the night. Taichi doesn’t care. He thinks that’s hot too.

“Take it as a compliment,” Taichi says, and turns to offer the guys his hand, despite the fact that his pants are still open and he’s barely tucked his limp dick away. “I’m Taichi.”

The guy ignores the hand, and steps away from him.

“Taichi. Odd name for an American,” he says. “What were your parents thinking with that?”

“They’re old hippies,” Taichi says, as he buttons his fly. “I was born in a commune. I mean it literally. That’s not a joke. Before we moved to San Diego. What’s your name?”

The guy is back over by the door, but he hasn’t left yet. He seems reluctant to do so, now. “Yamato,” he says.

Taichi raises his eyebrows. “And what’s your parents’ excuse?”

“Scholars,” Yamato says. He runs his fingertips across his chapped bottom lip. “It’s a period of ancient history.”

“Neat,” Taichi says. “So, Yamato, can I get your number?” 

He steps back into Yamato’s personal space and reaches past him to finally unlock the door, releasing them into the restroom at large. Yamato steps aside to let him past, and then follows him out.

“No,” he says.

Taichi heads for the sinks, turns on the tap. “Wow. Ok, Elsa.” He glances up at the chipped mirror, screwed to the tile, catches Yamato’s eyes in the glass. 

'What?" Yamato looks confused, momentarily unguarded. It’s a pretty look on him, Taichi thinks. 

“Ice queen,” Taichi explains, turning his hands under the running water. “You know, like in the movie?”

Yamato remains ironically frozen in place, apparently bewildered by this absolute basic of a pop culture reference.

“It’s just a kids’— Forget it. Fucking hell,” Taichi says. He shakes droplets from his fingers. There are no towels or hand dryer, so he resorts to wiping his wet hands on his shirt.

Yamato approaches the sinks, and surprises Taichi by saying, “Give me yours.”

Taichi meets his gaze in the mirror again. “My what?”

The tap gurgles and splutters before the water begins to flow. Yamato pulls his iPhone from his pocket and opens it with his passcode, then hands it over to Taichi.

“Your number, idiot. Put it in my phone and I’ll make up my mind if I want to use it or not.”

“Does this cold shoulder shit work for you a lot?” Taichi asks, quickly thumbing in the digits of his phone number, as Yamato finishes washing his hands and shaking them dry.

“All the time.” Yamato takes back his phone with a smile that makes Taichi want to drop back down to his knees for him. “Anyway, it’s been fun.”

It’s ending, Taichi realises, with a jolt of alarm. This encounter is over. They’re about to go their separate ways, with maybe no chance of seeing one another again. He hurries to follow, as Yamato is heading back out into the bar, catching the door before it can swing shut in his face.

“Do you want to go get something to eat?” he asks, hoping it doesn’t come across too desperate. “I’m kind of hungry.”

“No thanks,” Yamato says, still walking.

There’s a kind of panic rising up inside of Taichi now. A feeling of urgency that has come out of nowhere and feels inappropriate to the situation. 

“Wait,” he says, catching Yamato by the shoulder. And when he looks at him, Taichi says, “Can I kiss you?”

Yamato doesn’t answer that, which Taichi takes for a yes, or at least a yes to trying his chances. 

He leans in and presses his mouth to Yamato’s, feels the rough skin of his chapped lips, the gentle brush of his tongue.

It’s a kiss he’ll remember for a long time to come, so full of something that he will spend years reaching for, but will never quite be able to grasp again.

As they separate, Yamato is breathing fast, and Taichi is shocked to see tears forming at the corners of his eyes. He lifts a hand and touches his face, just as one of the tears spills down and rolls over his cheekbone. 

Yamato stares at his fingertips, like he can’t make sense of where the moisture on them has come from.

“What the hell is this?” Taichi asks, out loud, maybe to himself, not really to Yamato, who seems just as unsettled as he is, still staring at his damp fingertips, which glisten in the low lights of the bar.

“I have to go,” Yamato says, then, pulling away, cocky attitude completely gone, no longer meeting Taichi’s gaze.

He pushes his way through the crowds, and melts out of sight. 

This time, Taichi doesn’t stop him.

He thinks about him a lot, though, turning every second of their meeting over and over in his mind, as he travels home in a shaking carriage of the Northern line, all the way back to rowdy Clapham, trudging the dark streets and rattling his key into the temperamental lock to the ground floor flat that he shares with three other UCL students.

Over the coming days, as Yamato doesn’t call and doesn’t call, Taichi will remember the deep blue of his eyes, think about the dent of that tiny scar on his cheek. 

He will find himself staring after other blonde men he sees around town. Stepping through the doors of the underground, getting into line at the grocery store, a face glimpsed through the window of a bus.

It’s never him. And after time, the memories of Yamato fade. Never again are they as strong as they are on that first night, when Taichi climbs into cold sheets and struggles to fall asleep. Only, when he finally does, to dream uncomfortable dreams of hot, crackling flames and smoke that fills his lungs, leaving him waking with clammy skin, and the sensation of being unable to fully breathe.

Chapter Text

When he turns 26, Taichi gets an uncontrollable urge to hit the reset button on his entire life. 

He ends things with the guy he’s been seeing — a fair-haired investment banker, who lives in Canary Wharf and spends too much time talking about his dogs — and quits his finance job in the city. 

Over the course of an evening, sat in his rented studio apartment, he withdraws all the money he’s been saving for a deposit on his own place, and buys himself a one-way plane ticket to Bangkok.

This accomplished, he closes the lid of his laptop and sips from his glass of Sonoma Valley pinot noir, as he stares out at the twinkling view of the London skyline — the same view he’d admired so much when he first moved in.

Later that week, he’s soaring even higher above the city, headphones in his ears, forehead pressed to the plastic oval of an airplane window, wondering if he’s ever going to bother coming back to London again. Picking up and leaving is something that Taichi has always been good at. He’s lived most of his life with a deep-seated feeling that, ultimately, nothing really matters.

Bangkok to Surat Thani to Ko Pha Ngan. He loses himself in the backpacker circuit of humid bars and crowded streets, intricate temples and glorious white sands, enjoying the fleeting anonymity of the interactions he has in hostel dorm rooms, backpacker cafes and the sleeper carriages of endless, slow-moving trains.

All the while, he has a vague feeling that he’s searching for something. Some sense of meaning to the journey. 

Some days, he can’t work out why he’s here at all. He’d picked Thailand on a whim, after staring at a map of the world, settling on Asia (because it seemed different enough to what he’s used to), and then discounting China (too much visa bureaucracy) and Japan (for no real reason other than a gut feeling of not wanting to go there). 

“You should see Angkor Wat,” a Finnish man tells him, in the breakfast room of a beachfront hostel on the island of Ko Samui. 

He’s a blonde guy, named Elias, who Taichi is considering trying to fuck tonight. He’s always been drawn to blondes, and found himself opening up to this man over their Thai omelettes and rice.

“That’s Cambodia, right?” Taichi asks, taking another sip of his weak filter coffee.

Elias nods. “Yeah, Siem Reap. Try to catch the sunset there. It’s the closest you’re going to come to finding meaning out here, my friend.” He stirs a teaspoon into his tea, then picks up his cup and sips the drink scalding hot. “Trust me,” he adds. “I’ve been everywhere now.”

They do fuck that night, in the bunk room that Elias is sharing with his two travel companions, who both studiously pretend not to hear them going at it.

The next morning, Taichi takes a cab to the airport and buys himself a seat on the first flight to Phnom Penh. As he waits to board, he sits on his rucksack in the crowded terminal, eating cheese flavoured crackers and matcha KitKat fingers, purchased from the news kiosk.

Six hours later, in Phnom Penh, he’s caught off guard by how different it is to a city like Bangkok. The poverty, the scars of genocide; all of this alarms him. Taichi has never experienced hardship himself, not really, and finds that he doesn’t know how to respond now, when faced with it in the flesh.

After three days, humbled, unable to stop thinking about the comparative extravagance of London’s banker wanker lifestyle, Taichi boards a bus to Siem Reap.

He arrives just hours before sunset, checking into his hotel, and dithering about what to do next. 

The receptionist suggests he wait until the next day, to see Angkor Wat at sunrise. It’s a better time to visit, she assures him, and offers to book him onto a tour.

“More pretty,” she says, as she hands over his key, “And not so hot.”

Already tired from the long bus ride and craving a shower, Taichi heads to his room and slings his rucksack onto the bed, which is draped at one end with mosquito netting.

He stands in the middle of the room, still holding his key, staring at the late afternoon sky through the gap in the curtains. 

Sunset, Elias had said.

Fuck it, Taichi thinks. 

He skips the shower, just splashes a little water onto his face, and then heads back down to the lobby, where he convinces the dubious receptionist to cancel his morning tour and help him to flag down a tuk tuk that can speed him to the temples right away.

She certainly wasn’t wrong about the heat at this time of day. Taichi is sweating as he joins the other visitors hiking through the red dust to reach a suitable viewing spot, beside the hilltop temple of Phnom Bakheng.

At the top of the hill, he stakes out a spot where the view isn’t too obscured by people in front, and downs half a bottle of water, while he waits for the looming evening to descend.

It isn’t long before the sky over the temple complex has turned a vibrant, golden red, and the sinking orb of the sun is throwing its rays into the intricate ridges of the buildings’ stone towers, creating a spectacular display.

There’s a hush in the crowd, everyone watching the slow movement of the light, and Taichi takes the opportunity to snap a few pictures with his phone, wishing he had a proper camera, with a tripod and a decent lens, like some of the people around him. 

His first snaps feel inadequate, so he tries harder for the next, planting his feet more firmly, making sure the screen is completely level and that he gives the phone’s tiny lens enough time to fully focus.

He’s happy with his setup, hovers his thumb over the button to take the photo. But, just as he presses down, a man who’d been crouching to rummage in a camera bag on the ground straightens up and turns around, placing himself right in the middle of Taichi’s shot.

Taichi groans, lowering the phone, and staring at his screen. He can tell the picture would have been perfect. The image quality is clear and sharp, and he’s successfully managed to capture the golden luminosity of the sunset light. But instead of that light bathing an impressive UNESCO world heritage site, it’s throwing itself all over some hipster dude with a man bun.

“Sorry,” the guy says, in a British accent, holding up a hand in apology. “Did I just fuck up your picture?”

“You did,” Taichi says, looking up at him, and finding that he instantly forgives him, because in person this hipster is no slouch. In fact, he’s very good-looking. Elias, who? “But don’t sweat it.”

“You sure? Do you want to use mine to take another?” 

The guy steps closer, the walking boots on his feet crunching over the stony ground, as he holds his camera out to Taichi. It’s compact, expensive-looking, with a hefty lens.

Taichi shakes his head. He’s not interested in the camera. The man on the other hand…

“We’ve met before, right?” he asks, running through the people he’s encountered on this trip so far, all the temporary friends and bunk mates from hostels to hotels, searching for a name to put to this man’s face.

“Yeah,” says the man, drawing his camera back towards his chest, cradling it there. “You do look familiar. Did you study at Oxford?”

“UCL,” Taichi says.

“Oh, London, though. Ok, so maybe just around town,” the man says, doubtful, like he’s not fully satisfied with this answer, but can’t come up with an alternative. “I live there.”

Taichi gestures beyond, to the waning sun. “What do you think of this?”

The man twists to look at the sky, which is growing steadily more pink. “It’s nice. Isn’t it?”

“Nice?” Taichi repeats.

“Fucking stunning, then. What do you want from me?”

Taichi smiles. He can see the man prickling. “Hey, if nice is your opinion, that’s your opinion.”

The guy narrows his eyes. “Are you taking the piss?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I am. I’m sensing you can take it.”

“I can.” The man offers a hand. “I’m Yamato.”

“Taichi,” Taichi says, as they shake. 

Yamato’s palm is warm and dry. His fingertips are calloused. From musical instruments, maybe. Or guns. He’s got that monied British accent, after all. Like he’s from the type of family that goes shooting on the estate at weekends. Taichi knows far too many people like that from his days working in finance.

If Yamato is from that kind of family, though, he’s clearly well into his ‘burning through my inheritance’ phase, because he fits right in with the bohemian backpacker set. 

His blonde hair is sun-bleached and just above shoulder-length, the top half tugged back into a small bun at the crown of his head. He’s dressed in a loose-fitting, cream-coloured linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing tanned skin that might once have been pale, and a pair of lightweight khaki pants. 

A short necklace made from small wooden beads sits against his collarbones, and where his hair is pulled back, Taichi glimpses earrings in both his ears — a metal cuff at the top of one ear and two silver studs in the lobe of the other.

He’s got a great ass on him, too, Taichi observes, as Yamato bends down to lift his camera bag onto his shoulder.

“Are you going to head straight back down?” he asks, tucking the camera into the bag. The sun is almost completely below the horizon now, and dusk is creeping in, turning the temples a hazy, periwinkle blue.

“Sure,” Taichi says, and falls into step with Yamato, as they start back down the hill at a slow stroll. 

“Have you been in Siem Reap long?” Yamato asks, making classic backpacker small talk.

“Just got in today,” Taichi says, “From Phnom Penh. I was there three days. Thailand before that.”

Yamato nods. “We’re heading to Thailand next. Just came through Vietnam.” He lifts a hand and pushes a lock of hair, which has escaped the bun, behind his ear. “How are you finding Cambodia?”

“Difficult, honestly,” Taichi says, finding he already feels strangely comfortable in Yamato’s presence. Must be the British accent, so reminiscent of the last place that he called home. “Phnom Penh was…”

“Yeah. It’s a hard one.” Yamato adjusts the strap of his camera bag. “Have you ever visited Auschwitz?”

“No.”

“It felt a bit like that to me. It’s important. You know. To bear witness. But at the same time it doesn’t feel like a place for tourists.”

Taichi knows what he’s getting at. “Siem Reap is easier.” 

“Right,” Yamato agrees, “Here, we can all be distracted by the temples.”

At the bottom of the hill, Taichi spots his tuk tuk driver, waiting for him, as requested. “Where are you staying?” he asks Yamato, nodding to indicate the vehicle. “We can share a ride.”

Over the course of the bumpy journey back into town, they establish the basics.

Yamato definitely does not come from one of those landed gentry families, but he’s grown up comfortable, safe in the knowledge that money will never really be a problem. His parents are both college professors and there’s long been a presumption that Yamato, their only child, will follow in those academic footsteps.

“I did read history at Oxford,” he says, “but that’s about as far as the studying went.”

Much to his parents’ distress, he’s spent the years since finishing college bouncing from one no-strings job to the other, travelling in between, and dabbling in various arts, the latest being photojournalism.

“My dad says you can’t expect to live like Lord Byron in this day and age,” Yamato says. “But I disagree.”

“Didn’t Byron drown? Like, in his twenties?” Taichi asks, frowning.

“That was Shelley,” Yamato tells him.

In return, Taichi shares memories of growing up with his three older sisters, untethered and limitless, on the small ranch outside of San Diego that his mother inherited from her parents. 

“Nobody cared what we did,” he says, gripping the bar at the side of the tuk tuk’s canopy as they trundle over a particularly bumpy stretch of road, “So we did a lot.”

“How did you get from that to being a finance twat in the city?” Yamato asks.

“I don’t know,” Taichi says, feeling momentarily homesick for California’s endless, mellow summers. “Maybe I needed the structure.”

“It’s masochistic is what it is. The stupid hours those guys work.”

Taichi rubs a hand over his head, feeling the sandpaper sharpness of growing hair. He cut it right before leaving London, buzzed all over, shorter than it’s ever been. It’s good out here, for the heat, but he’s still not totally used to the feel of it.

“Honestly, I think I was trying to get as far away as possible from where I started. I wanted to live in a big city. Always kind of had this feeling growing up that I didn’t belong.”

Yamato is silent in response to that and Taichi wonders if he’s over-shared, something about the dark peace of the evening journey making it easy to open up more than he usually would to a stranger.

The tuk tuk rattles into town and parks in the middle of the Old French Quarter, which is where Yamato is staying. Taichi’s hotel is a little further away, off of Pub Street. 

Yamato steps down from the vehicle, and shoulders his camera bag. Just as Taichi is considering the best way to ask him out, he looks up and says, “Want to get a lassi with me?”

“Excuse me?”

Yamato smiles. “It’s a drink. With, like, yoghurt and fruit. No alcohol. I owe you for my half of the ride. They’re good. You just have to ask for no ice. Because the water out here is…” 

“Sure,” Taichi agrees, already reaching into his pocket for notes to pay their driver.

They go to a little cafe on a corner, with wooden bench seats that are layered with batik-style cushions. There are soft lights shining in wall sconces, huge leafy plants in pots and the smell of sandalwood in the air. The seating area opens onto the street and, every now and then, the relative peace is interrupted by the roar of a tuk tuk, racing past.

The place is already serving cocktails, but Taichi orders a mango lassi, on Yamato’s recommendation.

“Don’t let me stop you getting a beer, or whatever.” Yamato stirs his straw into the sunshine yellow liquid in his glass. “The thing is, I don’t really drink.”

“No. I’m excited to try this.” Taichi sips experimentally, and is pleasantly surprised by the fragrant, delicately sweet taste. “Delicious. Who needs drinking?”

“Oh, drinking’s the best. I’ve just done too much of it.” When Taichi raises his eyebrows in question, Yamato adds, “I really struggled when I was younger. I was anxious about a lot of stuff. Just wasn’t happy, you know? Drank all the time to cope with that.” 

Yamato’s gaze wanders off, lingering on a table across the room, where a server is just setting down a tray of shots for a group of people. “I had this, like, episode a couple of years ago. I don’t know what you’d call it. A bad panic attack. Chest pain. I couldn’t breathe. Thought it was a heart attack. I ended up in hospital.” 

“Christ,” Taichi says. He has a strange vision of Yamato, a few years younger than he is now. Sharp and angry. Too pale. Too thin. 

Yamato refocuses, attention back on their table. “I don’t know why I’m telling you that.”

“It’s important to be able to talk about that stuff.”

“Yeah.” Yamato sips from his lassi. “Not necessarily to the hot ex-banker you’re in the middle of trying to hook up with, though.”

Taichi finds himself grinning at that. He wonders if Yamato is sharing a dorm with other people — like Elias, back in Thailand — or if he has a room of his own here they can go back to.

“So anyway,” Yamato continues, “After that, I stopped drinking. And I came to the conclusion that I don’t really care about anything at all.” He reaches into his pocket, produces a gleaming vape pen and sets it on the table in front of him. “This is my vice now.”

Curious, Taichi picks up the vape, and turns it over in his hands, taking in its shiny black surface, the little nozzle at one end, where Yamato would put his lips. “I don’t care about anything, either.”

“My point is, if you want a beer, get a beer,” Yamato says, “Get a fucking shot if you like. Just please don’t be offended if I don’t partake.”

“I don’t want a beer.” Taichi passes the vape back. “I’m more interested to hear about this dude you’re trying to hook up with.”

Yamato sits back in his seat, shoulders sinking into the cushions. As he studies Taichi, his eyes narrow, like he’s trying to make sense of some shape in the distance.

“Funny you should say that, because I don’t actually know him that well.”

Taichi flips his hands over on the table, showing open palms. “What do you want to know?”

Yamato thinks for a moment, the tip of his thumb resting against his bottom lip. A cheer explodes from the table with the shots. This time, he doesn’t even glance their way. 

“Ok,” he decides. “The big question. What is it you’re running from?”

Beyond the lights of the cafe, nighttime has truly set in. The hum of insects has intensified. Their chirps compete with the whirr of the ceiling fans, slowly turning overhead. It’s humid still. The fans don’t offer much relief. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Everyone out here,” Yamato gestures around the cafe, indicating patron after patron with his finger, “every single person — is running from something.”

There’s a high pitched mewling sound and Taichi glances down, to see that a slender tabby cat has wandered in from the street. It looks up at him with pale green eyes. 

“I don’t think I’m running from anything,” he says slowly. He reaches down a hand to the cat, and it bumps its brow against his knuckles. “I think I’m searching for something.” 

“Interesting.” Yamato watches the cat, threading through the wooden legs of Taichi’s chair, only to return to his hand again. “And what’s that?

Taichi runs his palm along the cat’s spine. It steps into the touch, before coming to sit just in front of their table, staring out at the lights of a passing tuk tuk. 

“I don’t know. Some guy back in Thailand told me I might find it at the top of that hill, looking at Angkor Wat.”

“And did you?”

“Maybe,” Taichi says, letting his gaze make his meaning clear. 

“You mean me?” Yamato pulls a face as he reaches for his vape and tucks it away in his pocket. “That’s cheesy. I hate it. I’ll never fuck you now.”

Taichi just leans his arms on the table, still holding Yamato’s gaze. “Yeah you will,” he says.

Suddenly, the cat startles, bolting away from their table. A second later, a tall man is pulling up a chair between them. His face is flushed, from too much sun, and despite the fact that it’s already dark outside, he has a pair of shades on top of his head, half-buried in his thick hair.

“Hi,” he says, addressing Yamato. “How was it? Did you get some good pictures?”

Yamato doesn’t look surprised to see him. “I did." Glancing at Taichi, he gestures towards the man. “This is Felix. My boyfriend.”

Momentarily blindsided, Taichi can’t think what to say. He’s starting to stammer out an embarrassed hello, when Yamato cuts him off.

“No, I’m kidding. I just wanted to take you down a peg or two. He’s not my boyfriend. I use that a lot, though. To get out of things. We’re friends from school, from way back. Felix, this is Taichi.”

Throughout this whole explanation, Felix’s face is frozen in a pained smile. 

Instantly, Taichi can see that not only is this guy in love with Yamato, but he has to endure this type of oblivious friend-zoning on a daily basis. 

“Hey man,” he says, offering his hand, which Felix takes. “How’s it going?”

“Hello,” Felix says, in an identical accent to Yamato’s. “It’s not so bad.”

“Felix,” Yamato says, “Are you getting a drink?”

“Ah— yes, I guess I’ll get one.”

“Ok, you can order at the bar.”

There’s an expectant pause, and then Felix gives a little cough, and gets up from the table. “Right-oh.”

As soon as he’s gone, Yamato leans in a little. He has a tiny scar at the top of one cheekbone, Taichi notices, a flaw that somehow makes his face even more appealing.

“I don’t like your pick-up game,” Yamato says, “But the ‘searching for something’ thing? I get that. I think that’s what I’m doing, too.”

Glancing towards the bar, Taichi can see Felix still waiting in line. At the side of the room, the tabby cat cautiously pokes its head out from behind a potted fern. 

“How long are you here for?” Taichi asks, feeling a sudden thrill of urgency. He has the sense that it’s important for them to spend more time together.

“We’re leaving tonight,” Yamato says, almost apologetic. “Heading to Bangkok on the sleeper train.”

Taichi’s stomach sinks. “Oh,” he says.

“And after that, we’re aiming for Laos.”

Taichi discards the lie he’d just been formulating about needing to return to Bangkok himself. This is a better option.

“Laos is on my itinerary, too," he says. It is, after all, the logical next step after his plan to cross the border to Vietnam and travel the length of the country from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi.

“So maybe we can connect there,” Yamato says, looking pleased by the idea. “We should be in Vientiane in about three weeks.”

“Three weeks. Vientiane,” Taichi repeats.

“Yeah,” Yamato reaches for his camera bag, removes the camera and sets it on the table. “Do you know what? Why don’t you take my email? We can coordinate.” 

Back home, they would just swap numbers. Out here, the lack of good WiFi and temperamental phone signal means it makes more sense to rely on internet cafes and emails. It’s one of the things Taichi likes about backpacking — being semi- cut-off from the rest of the world.

Yamato takes a book from his bag, and removes a scrap of paper that he’s using to mark his place between the pages. Taichi reads the title upside down. It’s The Stranger Beside Me, by Ann Rule.

“I like crime,” Yamato explains, when he sees Taichi looking. Taichi’s never heard of the book, but he holds his hands up anyway, to show no judgement. 

Curious, he reaches for the camera instead. Handling it gently, he switches it on and begins clicking through the images stored on the memory card. There are lots from the temples, close-ups of intricate stone carvings, and shots of buildings broken apart by huge gnarled tree roots, the jungle taking the ancient structures back.

“These are great,” Taichi says, as he reaches a series of shots charting that evening’s sunset. “Do you share them online?”

Rummaging again in the camera bag, Yamato finds a ballpoint that’s missing its cap. He has to scribble on the paper to get the ink flowing, before he can use it to write. 

“I’m not on Facebook or anything,” he says, pressing the paper hard into the tabletop, to tear his email address off in one long strip, which Taichi pockets. “I hate all of that.” 

They are already getting to their feet as Felix approaches the table again, holding his drink. He stands there, with a bewildered expression on his face. 

“Give me two seconds,” Yamato tells him, and hands him the camera bag.

“Nice to meet you,” Taichi calls over his shoulder, on their way out, and Felix waves a hand at him, still looking just as confused.

On the street, Taichi stares up and down the dark road. He is wondering if he should try to hail a new tuk tuk, when Yamato steps out in front of him, and points off to the right. 

“Pub Street is that direction. You can walk it easily from here.”

“Thanks,” Taichi says, but doesn’t make a move to go. 

Behind them, the tabby cat slinks out of the cafe and bounds off silently, into the night. Taichi stares after the animal and then finds his gaze travelling up, towards the clear, moonlit sky. It’s a world away from the dreary, light-polluted skies over London. Here, each star stands out as a dazzling pinprick of white. 

“Can’t believe how clearly you can see the stars out here,” he says. 

There’s the scrape of boot tread against tarmac and then Yamato is beside him. 

“The stars make me sad,” Yamato says, “I don’t like to look at them.”

“Really?”

“They feel lonely to me. Or something.” 

Taichi glances over and finds that Yamato has his face turned up, eyes fixed on the stars anyway.

“I have nightmares a lot,” Yamato says, then. “About being trapped behind closed doors, desperate to get through. I hate them.” He lowers his gaze, shifts it to Taichi. “Crazy, right? I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before. Anyway, the stars remind me of that.”

“I have a recurring dream,” Taichi admits.

“You do?”

“Mine’s fire. All around.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I saw a therapist about it, actually. Back in high school.”

“Did it work?”

“No.” Taichi glances off, down the street. Time to go. “Vientiane,” he says.

“Vientiane,” Yamato repeats.

There’s a pause. Taichi feels reluctant to leave, dreading their separation in a way that doesn’t really make sense. Probably because they haven’t had a chance to bang yet, he tells himself. That horrible, creeping feeling in his stomach must just be intense disappointment at being cockblocked by a sleeper train. It has to be.

“Well,” he says, and turns to go.

“Wait.”

Taichi looks round.  

“Let me just,” Yamato says, and then leans in, putting their faces close. A few silent seconds of breathing together, before they are kissing. 

It’s not a particularly passionate kiss. The opposite, in fact. It is casual. Familiar. As he enjoys the soft press of Yamato’s lips, Taichi is struck by a strange, out-of-body sensation, like he is looking down on himself, kissing someone else. 

Out of nowhere, a memory surfaces: kissing a younger version of Yamato, in the middle of a bar in Camden, seeing his eyes fill with unexpected tears. That’s where they know one another from, Taichi realises. What a coincidence, he thinks, to meet again here.

As they break apart this time, there aren’t any tears in Yamato’s eyes, but he is frowning, clearly troubled.

“Maybe I should stay,” he says, still holding Taichi by the arms. “Do I need to stay?”

“You could.”

“I don’t know how to explain that to Felix.”

“What time is the train?” Taichi asks. “Perhaps I can still get a seat.”

“You literally just left Thailand. Why would you go back?”

Taichi shrugs. “I liked it. I mean, it’s a big country. Maybe I could go to the North this time.”

But they are already untangling themselves, stepping away, reasoning their way out of ideas that seemed perfectly legitimate just seconds ago.

“It’s only three weeks,” Yamato says. He tucks that stray piece of hair back behind his ear, laughs a little at how unreasonable they were both just being.

“Right,” Taichi agrees. “And I don’t want to miss Vietnam.”

“You mustn’t. It’s amazing.” Yamato pulls his vape from his pocket, clutches it in one fist. “Take a boat around Halong Bay. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Ok,” Taichi says. He reaches down to his own pocket, feels the folded strip of paper, tucked inside.

“Message me as soon as you get to Laos,” Yamato says. “Imagine I’m your worried mother. You’ll be in big trouble if you don’t.”

Taichi grins. “Yes, Mom,” he says, before he gives a little wave, and then, finally, walks away into the bustle of the city’s nightlife. 

The last thing he sees, glancing back, is Yamato standing silhouetted by the lights of the cafe, exhaling a silvery cloud of vapour into the dark. 

After that, there are three weeks to kill. Taichi spends another couple of days exploring the Tomb Raider backdrops of the temples at Angkor, before heading on to Vietnam. There, he dodges through crowds of motorcycles on the streets of Ho Chi Minh, eats thin white noodles and grilled pork drenched in sour sauce at pavement cafes, and stares, open-mouthed at the towering limestone islands of Halong Bay from the deck of a Chinese junk boat.

The whole way, he keeps the slip of paper with Yamato’s email address safe in the front pocket of his rucksack.

Until he makes it to the old capital city of Hue. There, torrential rain sets in, and the Perfume River bursts its banks, flooding entire streets in the centre of town. Taichi returns from a morning sightseeing around the old imperial city to find that his hotel is being evacuated, and his ground floor room has already begun to fill with water. Most of his stuff is unharmed, but the bottom of his rucksack is soaked, including everything that was stored in the front pocket.

His malaria pills in their plastic ziplock bag are fine, and the balls of spare socks will dry in no time. The strip of paper, on the other hand, practically disintegrates as he attempts to fish it out. It’s sodden, and the ink has bled and run, making the letters illegible.

It’s a setback, sure, but not a complete disaster, Taichi tells himself, as he sits in his replacement room, on the third floor of one of the city’s few multi-storey hotels, surrounded by damp clothes hanging to dry on the backs of chairs and from the handles of drawers. The backpacker circuit is small, especially in a country like Laos. If Taichi’s previous experiences of running into the same people in different bars in different cities is anything to go by, there’s a good chance he’ll come across Yamato again anyway, provided they are both in the right place, at the right time.

For that reason, he takes his time moving from Hue up to Hanoi, and then across the border into Laos, making sure he arrives in Vientiane exactly three weeks after they agreed to meet there.

Then, it’s just a case of working his way methodically through all the typical spots, familiarising himself with the top listings under each section of the Laos Lonely Planet guidebook that he picks up from a second-hand book stall. He hits all the big tourist spots, puts out feelers in the most popular backpacker cafes, grills bartenders and hotel receptionists and tuk tuk drivers.

He makes friends with expats, focussing his attention particularly on anyone British. A couple of times, he even flashes the single photo he has of Yamato — the image of him half-turning in front of the sunset over Angkor Wat. But this feels creepy, like Taichi is searching for the victim of some terrible crime. So, after showing it once or twice, he keeps the picture to himself.

A week in, there is still no sign of Yamato, and, eventually, Taichi resigns himself to having to move on, feeling sort of embarrassed that he has spent even as long as he has searching for someone that he doesn’t really know, purely on the basis that he’d felt a passing connection with him.

And that’s it. They have lost one another again.

Months later, back home — in California this time, not London — Taichi comes across the picture of Yamato, while sorting through old photos from his travels.

Oh yeah, he thinks. That guy.

He has the idea to try to search for him online, but only has a first name to go on, isn’t quite sure how you spell it, and anyway, his first attempts lead to nothing. No LinkedIn. No social accounts. No obvious online presence at all.

But there wouldn’t be, would there? Because, Taichi remembers, Yamato hates all of that.

Chapter Text

It’s hard to see, because of the smoke. 

Every direction Taichi turns, there it is, pushing into his eyes, nose, throat.

Before, he could at least make out the vague outlines of trees. Now, there’s only choking blindness.

He navigates, instead, by the heat — or the lack of it, edging away from the pockets of greatest intensity, where his skin prickles and stings, and towards the cooler spaces. 

There aren’t enough of those, now, though. That reality is slowly sinking in.

It’s too hot and the smoke is too thick for speaking, but Taichi feels the tightening of fingers around his own. Someone’s hand is still in his; someone he wants to keep safe at all costs.

But there is no safety from a wall of fire. The person he is with knows that too.

That’s the thought that lingers when Taichi wakes, shaking all over, smack in the middle of his king size hotel bed. The room is practically frosty with air con, but he’s sweating as he fights his legs free from a tangle of Egyptian cotton, and goes to the bathroom to stare at himself under the bright fluorescent lights.

Thirty has crept up on him. He doesn’t look old. But he feels it, especially on nights like this.

Still hot with that feeling of failure — of not managing to protect something that matters — he turns to the toilet. Urinates. Flushes. Washes his hands and heads back out into the room.

It’s a nice hotel, right in the middle of downtown Fort Worth, with easy access to the convention centre, which is where he needs to be first thing in the morning. All the notes for the talk he’s giving to the delegates are scattered over the desk.

There are reading lamps attached to the wall at either side of the bed. Taichi switches both of them on. He’s not going back to sleep now. 

He’d always assumed the dreams would stop as he got older. But here we are.

Rather than attempt to turn down the AC, he pulls on a big hooded sweatshirt with the star-shaped logo of the Dallas Cowboys on the front — the football team he always wanted to support as a kid and now feels he legitimately can, since moving to Texas (sorry, not sorry, 49ers). He flips up the hood, to cover the mess of his hair, and then gathers all the pillows in the room and builds a squishy tower at the head of the bed, which he flops into, with the TV remote in hand.

The TV is tuned to a local news channel, showing some bulletin about a missing college kid. He’s seen this story before — they get the same channel over in Dallas — so he flicks right on by. 

There’s a Spanish soap opera on the next channel and then a soccer game — a sport Taichi can take or leave — and then the image of a young Anthony Hopkins speaking to an even younger Jodie Foster through the bars of a prison cell. 

The Silence of The Lambs. Excellent. Taichi settles back into his cushion pile.

The movie is nearly over, and Taichi is half asleep, watching Jodie Foster’s character creeping through a darkened building, her gun raised, when he is startled fully awake by the sudden blare of a fire alarm.

It’s a noise that sends him into a near panic. He’s never been able to shake the idea that his recurring dream is some kind of awful premonition, predicting his own horrible death and, as he moves around the room, pushing his feet into the first shoes he finds — a pair of khaki green Crocs he always brings on business trips, because they’re easy to slip on to go down the hall to the ice machine or whatever — he internally talks himself down from a full-on freak out.

His nerves are screaming at him to sprint from the building, but he forces himself to walk, joining the other guests trooping in an orderly fashion through the fire door at the end of the hall and down the flights of concrete stairs beyond it.

The route spits them out at the side of the building, where a small group of confused-looking people are already gathered. Taichi joins them and looks back up at the hotel.

“Do you think it’s a drill?” he asks a balding man in a terry cloth robe, who happens to be standing next to him.

“If it is, I’m getting my money back, because it’s goddamned three am,” the man says.

“It’s not a drill,” another man chips in, from behind, and when Taichi glances at him, he inclines his chin towards the building and says, “Watch the staff.” 

Taichi looks over to where a couple of young hotel employees are speaking in low, urgent voices. There’s a troubling edge of panic to their gestures, and, as he scans for more hotel workers, finding them directing guests through the doors and speaking at a distance into mobile phones, it’s clear that nobody knows what’s going on.

“Oh shit,” he says, staring up to the floors above, trying to calculate how many people might still be left inside.

“Are you worried? Don’t be. It’s probably a false alarm. Some idiot with a cigarette. It happens all the time.”

Taichi looks at the man, who has moved to stand beside him. He’s about the same age as Taichi, tall and blonde and dressed head to toe in navy-coloured loungewear. If it wasn’t for the cheap, white hotel slippers on his feet, Taichi would think he’d taken the time to pull together a whole coordinating outfit before evacuating. 

In fact, he thinks he can sense a whiff of quiet judgement as the man takes in his own appearance, glancing him up and down, from the NFL hoodie, to the clumping green shoes.

“You think?” Taichi says, a little challenging, because he’s stressed out, and doesn’t like being judged, and this guy is actually quite annoyingly attractive, now that he’s looking at him more closely.

“Yes. Hotel fires are quite rare. Besides, I don’t see any smoke.” The man adjusts his dark-framed glasses and looks up at the hotel. “Trust me,” he adds. “I’m a crime reporter. We cover fires all the time.”

“Fires aren’t crimes,” Taichi finds himself saying, not sure why he needs to pick holes in some stranger’s logic.

The man looks at him. His eyes behind the glasses are a rather startling shade of blue. 

“Some of them are. But this probably isn’t one of them.”

As if to prove him right, the hotel fire alarms suddenly fall silent. A relieved murmur runs through the crowd, before a member of staff wearing a high-vis vest rushes towards them, arms raised for their attention. 

“Please, ladies and gentlemen, stay where you are,” he announces. “As soon as we’ve checked that it’s definitely safe to re-enter, we’ll get you right back to your rooms.”

A fire engine is just turning into the hotel’s valet bay, with blue lights on, but no sound of sirens. Taichi watches with interest as the firefighters clamber down in their gear and stride with purpose towards the hotel lobby.

In another life he might have liked to have been a firefighter, he thinks. Obviously, a life where he didn’t have such stupid dreams. 

The balding man in the robe is already marching over to the staff member in the high-vis, clearly intent on expressing his outrage. But Taichi is feeling the weight of fear finally beginning to leave him. He sighs, and flips back his hood, which he’s only now noticed he still has pulled up. They’re in Texas, after all. It’s still balmy outside, even at 3am.

“Well, this sucks,” he says, conversationally, to the blonde man in the glasses, because he guesses they are evacuation friends now. “Before the alarm, I was watching The Silence of the Lambs. It was right near the end. Buffalo Bill had Clarice Starling in his night vision goggles.” He reaches his arms above his head, stretching. “I mean, is there a worse thing to be interrupted in the middle of?”

Deadpan, the man says, “I was in the middle of having a wank,” and when Taichi doesn’t immediately respond, he adds, “That’s a joke.”

“Oh, right,” Taichi says, lowering his arms. He’s already picturing this guy without his clothes on, flushed and close to coming. “Well, now I’m just thinking about you jerking off.”

Clearly not put off by Taichi’s inability to detect a joke, the man offers his hand. “I’m Yamato,” he says. 

“Taichi.”

There’s a spark of something, as they shake hands. An instant attraction that Taichi hasn’t felt in years, since he was in his twenties, out on the scene, meeting new guys all the time. 

He feels something else, too, though. A band of metal against his palm.

“You’re British,” he says, because that much is clear from Yamato’s accent.

“That’s right.”

“And married, by the looks of it.” Taichi turns their joined hands over, indicating the band on Yamato’s finger, before letting go.

“Oh,” Yamato glances down at the ring, like he’s surprised to see it there. “Yes.”

At that moment, a fresh murmur ripples through the crowd. Taichi looks round, to see that the guy in the high-vis is beginning to usher people back inside.

Making a snap decision, he turns back to Yamato. “I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep right now,” he says. “I’m heading to the bar for a drink, if you want to come?”

He is expecting a flat refusal from this hot, married guy, whose husband or wife probably wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of Crocs. But Yamato doesn’t even hesitate. 

“Please,” he says. “I’m so jet lagged right now that I feel like I’ll never sleep again.”

Together, they follow the crowd back into the warmly-lit hotel lobby, and make their way through the people milling around in their strange, makeshift outfits. It looks like some kind of pyjama party gone wrong. 

Just off the main reception is the bar, where the owners have really doubled down on the lone star theming. The decor leans heavily on brown leather, cowhide and black and white photography of Texas longhorn cattle, wide open plains, and silhouetted men in boots and spurs.

Taichi and Yamato pull up stools right at the bar, where, ignoring the fact that they are both still wearing nightclothes, the waistcoated bartender hands them each a cocktail menu.

As Yamato puts his phone down on the bar, Taichi can’t help noticing the picture which is set as the device’s lock screen background. A huge golden retriever is at the centre of the image, sitting on what looks to be a blustery, stoney beach. Yamato is crouching down on one side of the dog, his knee sinking into the shingle, with his arm wrapped around the animal’s flank. 

Positioned on the dog’s other side is a man that Taichi recognises, and, for some reason, it’s only looking at them together that makes him realise that he knows Yamato, too.

The last time he saw him, he’d been standing in the middle of a dusty street in Cambodia, backlit like one of the lonely cowboys in the hotel’s artwork. 

“So,” Taichi says, folding his arms on the bar, as the phone’s screen goes dark, the image blinking out. “Felix eventually wore you down, huh?”

Yamato looks up from the drinks list in surprise. “What? How did you—?”

Taichi nudges Yamato’s phone, making the picture illuminate again. Somewhere, stored on his own phone, he still has a different image of Yamato, half-turning to look behind him, bathed in the golden light of a South East Asian sunset.

“I just realised we’ve met before,” Taichi says, “In Siem Reap. Like a lifetime ago.”

There’s a pause, where Yamato just stares at him, before the recognition drops visibly into place.

“Oh my god. You’re that guy,” Yamato says. “His gaze travels up to the mess on Taichi’s head. “I didn’t recognise you. Your hair…”

Taichi runs a hand through his hair, which has grown back with a vengeance over the years. 

“Yeah. This is the normal look. I was in my Britney chased by the paparazzi phase back then.”

“I see that and I’ll raise you an embarrassing man bun phase.” Yamato passes his fingers through his own hair, which is now neat and short, professional looking. “We’re separated.”

“What?”

“Felix and I. Divorce still pending. His lawyer’s a dick.”

At that point the bartender drifts back over, to place a little bowl of olives in front of them, and to take their order.

“You’re teetotal, right? You want something soft? It’s on me,” Taichi says, trying to contain his excitement, because, separated or not, Yamato is still wearing his wedding band and still has a picture of his almost ex as the backdrop to his phone. Who knows whether he is pleased about the impending divorce, or devastated by it.

“Oh, I’m drinking again.” Yamato tosses his cocktail menu down, and turns to the bartender. “I’ll get a vodka tonic.”

“I’ll take the same,” Taichi says, and when the bartender turns to mix their drinks, he decides to just bite the bullet. Get it all out there. “How separated really are you when you still have the guy as your phone background?”

Yamato is just in the middle of biting an olive from a cocktail stick. He lifts a hand, to cover the fact that he’s speaking with his mouth full.

“I don’t,” he says, around his chewing. “I have my dog. It’s just unfortunate Felix is in that picture too.” He swallows, frowns down at his phone. “I should change that, though.”

“And you’re still wearing your ring.”

Yamato swivels slightly in his seat, so he can better fix Taichi with a testing gaze. He picks up the drink that the bartender has just set in front of him.  

“It’s easier a lot of the time, to be honest. To be able to say that you’re married. Puts off guys like you.”

Taichi reaches for his own glass, as the bartender passes it across. “Ok,” he concedes, “I get that.”

Then, to his surprise, Yamato takes off the ring, and places it on the bar between them, where it gleams dull silver in the low lights. The metal has a slightly burnished edge to it. White gold, rather than platinum. 

“That’s what you want to see?” he asks, still with that look of opposition in his eyes.

“Doesn’t hurt,” Taichi says, and takes a sip of his drink — slow, to show he is unrattled.

Yamato mirrors the movement: lifting his glass, taking a sip, setting the drink carefully back down. 

“You stood me up, anyway,” he says. “I never heard from you, back in Thailand.”

“I know. I lost your email.” Taichi turns the glass tumbler in his hands on the bar. There’s something comforting about how heavy and cold it is. “I looked all over Vientiane for you, though.”

“No, you didn’t,” Yamato says.

“Seriously. I stayed there and looked for you for a whole week.”

Yamato studies him, calculating, then seems to give up on the need to fight. His body language visibly softens, and something lighter creeps into his eyes. 

Taichi likes him like that, he thinks.

“I’m sorry,” Yamato says. “We never made it to Laos. Felix broke his ankle hiking in Chiang Mai. We were in the hospital in Bangkok and then had to just fly back to London in the end.”

“So you’re the one who stood me up,” Taichi points out.

“I guess so.” Yamato picks up his drink again. “Although, let’s blame Felix.”

“Deal,” Taichi says. He sits back in his stool, laying an arm along the leather backrest, and is struck suddenly by how bizarre this is — their meeting again here, of all places. 

Fort Worth isn’t a typical tourist destination, by any means. And, yes, this might be the night before the opening day of the world’s biggest positive psychology convention, but what business would a British crime reporter have in attending that?

“What brings you to Texas?” Taichi asks.

“I’m reporting on a story,” Yamato says. “Missing person.”

Taichi’s mind immediately returns to the TV news bulletin he flicked past earlier.  

“Oh, that girl who disappeared from TCU?”

“That’s right.” Yamato sips his drink. “Did you know she stayed at this exact hotel the night before she went missing?”

“No shit. Really?”

Yamato nods. “It’s kind of similar to this other case we had, back in Europe. But it’s creepy. I don’t really want to get into it now. Anyway, I’m looking into that.”

Taichi is trying to remember the girl’s face from the news reports. There had been some grainy CCTV footage, he thinks, showing someone pale and slender, with mousy brown hair. The type of girl who looks like everyone, and no-one. 

“What about you?” Yamato asks him. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh I live here,” Taichi says, forgetting instantly about the girl. “Well, over in Dallas. I’m speaking at a convention here tomorrow, and the morning traffic sucks, so I thought I’d just stay over to get a good night’s sleep.” He checks the time on his phone. It’s approaching 4am. “Though obviously that’s gone to shit now.” 

“What’s the conference?” Yamato wants to know next. Classic journalist. Digging for details. 

“It’s about positive psychology,” Taichi says, aware that he’s going to have to explain this, because he always does.

Sure enough, Yamato frowns. “Give me the layman’s overview.”

“Ok, you know Freud?”

“Of course.”

“It’s basically the opposite of that. So, instead of diagnosing people with problems and disorders and thinking about how we treat those, it’s about approaching mental health in a more proactive way. Helping people to build habits that are going to be protective. Developing resilience. Practising noticing what’s positive. That kind of thing.”

Taichi’s prepared for the usual criticisms — stuff about how his field sounds like hippie science — but that’s not where Yamato goes. Instead, he holds up one hand, as something else comes back to him. 

“Sorry. I thought you were a banker?”

Taichi shakes his head. “I used to work in finance, but I’ve always been a psychologist. I specialise in nudge psychology.”

“That’s behaviour science. Right?”

“Yeah it’s basically setting the conditions to nudge people into doing what you want them to do, without them realising you’re doing it. It’s all about understanding how people are inclined to act in certain situations, and finding ways to influence their behaviour.”

“Mind control,” Yamato summarises. 

“That’s a pretty dark take on it,” Taichi says. “Though, obviously, financial companies love it because…”

“It means they can influence what people do with their money.”

“Right. But behaviour science is embedded in everything. Advertising. Public health initiatives. Even the layout of a hotel bar.” Taichi places his palms on the bar in front of them. “And in my work now, it’s about helping people to nudge themselves towards behaviours that are going to support their mental health.”

“You’ve decided to use your powers for good, instead of evil. Is that it?”

“Something like that, I suppose.”

“Well, you’re clearly good at it,” Yamato says. “It only took you a couple of minutes to get me to take my wedding ring off.”

“That wasn’t mind control. You did that all by yourself.” Taichi picks up the ring from the bar. Hands it back to Yamato. “Influenced by nothing more than my unbelievable good looks and charisma.”

Yamato takes the ring and slips it into his pocket. He’s shaking his head a little as he does so, but not openly disagreeing with Taichi’s interpretation of events.

Through the windows of the bar, the night sky is starting to grow ever so slightly lighter. It’s hard to tell with the tinted glass, but it looks as though morning is fast approaching. That’s a problem, because Taichi has a keynote speech to deliver before 10am, and he’s now been awake for several hours.

“On that note…” he begins, as he signals to the bartender for the check.

“The note of your unbelievable charisma.”

“That’s right. I think we need to call it a night.” 

Yamato checks his phone, blinks at the time display. “Yes,” he says.

“But this time I want to see you again,” Taichi says. “I don’t want to spend a week trekking around Fort Worth searching for you. It’s too hot here.”

“Agreed,” Yamato says, as the bartender returns with the check, tucked into a black leather wallet.

“I’m putting this on my room,” Taichi says, picking up the wallet, before Yamato can reach for it. “It’s number 304. I’ll be here for another night. You owe me a drink.”

He dashes off his signature, then closes the wallet, and leaves it on the bar, for the bartender. They stand up from their stools, and Yamato lifts a hand to his mouth, stifling a yawn. 

“I’ll be in room 216,” he says, by way of agreement. “Trapped on London time.”

Side by side, they head for the elevators. Taichi’s footsteps feel heavy. He’s exhausted, he realises. All he can think about, suddenly, is the mountain of pillows and the crisp white sheets waiting for him upstairs. Something tells him that he’s about to sleep more soundly than he has done in years.

“216,” he repeats, trying to commit that to memory. Two, because there are two of them. Sixteen, because it is double today’s date, which is the eighth. 216.

“See you tomorrow,” Yamato says, when the elevator stops on the second floor.

Taichi has an urge to reach for him, to try to kiss him, perhaps, or to take his hand, and lead him back to room 304. 

But there will be time for that, he tells himself, tomorrow.

“Good night,” he says, as the mirrored elevator doors are closing. 

And then he is alone again, with only his own tired reflection for company. 

Chapter Text

The next morning, Taichi wakes nervous about delivering his keynote, and filled with regret about how he left things with Yamato.

They should have swapped phone numbers instead of room numbers, he thinks, as he pounds the treadmill in the hotel’s fitness centre to the sound of AC/DC. This could be just like Vientiane, letting something slip through his fingers that the universe clearly thinks is important enough to keep slinging back at him.

He’s still thinking about Yamato thirty minutes later, in the shower, where he considers jerking off to thoughts of his judgemental blue eyes. He decides against it. The pent up energy will help him to perform on stage. 

Dressed and dry and already regretting not jerking off, Taichi finds himself standing by the hotel phone, wondering if he should call down to Yamato’s room, anyway, to check he is still here, confirm plans for the evening. He remembers the room number. It is 216.

But Yamato is horribly jet-lagged, probably still sleeping, surely wouldn’t appreciate being woken right now. 

Taichi sets the phone handset back down in its cradle and heads down to breakfast, trying to shake the feeling that this is the wrong call.

He needn’t have worried. As soon as he steps into the breakfast room, he spots Yamato, sitting at a table by himself. There are sheets of paper spread out in front of him and he is poring over them, his chin in his hand.

Taichi is so pleased to see him that he doesn’t hesitate in pulling up a chair at his table, only belatedly realising that this is kind of presumptuous.

Yamato blinks up from his papers. Fuck, he’s handsome.

“Morning,” Taichi says, trying to fake like it’s socially acceptable to just sit down with someone you barely know without being invited. “I thought you might still be asleep.”

If Yamato is bothered by the intrusion, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he seems pleased to see Taichi, too.

“Jonathan called,” he says, reaching to pull some of the papers towards him, making more space for Taichi. “That’s Felix’s lawyer. The absolute arsehole. Woke me up.”

Taichi watches the movements of Yamato’s hands, as he stacks the papers together. The wedding band is still missing from his finger.

Taichi asks, “How long were you guys married?”

“Barely a year,” Yamato says, “I should never have gone through with it. I don’t know why I did.”

He isn’t wearing his glasses either this morning, and the old piercings in his ears are empty. There’s still that little scar, though, right at the top of one of his cheekbones. 

Suddenly not wanting to linger any further on his relationships with other men, Taichi glances around, for something else to talk about. His eyes fall on a plate at Yamato's elbow.

“How are those waffles?”

Yamato looks down to where his breakfast is growing cold, in a slowly congealing puddle of syrup. “They’re ok. A little dry. But might be how I made them. I think I might have done it wrong.”  

“What kind of an adult can’t cook a waffle in a hotel waffle iron?”

“A British one,” Yamato says.

Taichi’s stomach is rumbling. He can’t stop himself from glancing after a plate of eggs and sausages being carried by a woman walking past their table. He stands up. 

“I’ll make you one,” he announces. “I make a mean waffle. And a great Thai green curry, too, but that’s for another day.”

Yamato is watching him. Taichi likes the feel of his undivided attention.

“Ok,” Yamato says. “Wow me with your mad waffle iron skills.”

The waffle iron is shaped like the state of Texas. Over at the buffet, Taichi pours batter into the familiar borders and closes the lid, waiting for the timer to sound before he flips the iron over.

Back at the table, Yamato is frowning down at his papers again. He is focussed, it looks like, on trying to puzzle something out. 

Waffles made, Taichi piles them with syrup and pats of whipped butter — because honestly, it’s that whipped butter that’s the key — then loads another plate with scrambled eggs, sausage links and strips of bacon. He balances both plates across one arm and grabs the handle of a coffee pot in his free hand, carrying all of this back to their table.

“Oh,” Yamato says, hurrying to move his papers. “Do you need help?”

“Nope.” Taichi confidently sets down both plates and then starts filling their coffee mugs, aware that he’s showing off. “In high school, my first Saturday job was waiting tables in a diner.”

“Seems like you missed your true calling,” Yamato says. “You can’t be as hot shit at psychology as you are with that coffee pot.”

Taichi hands the still half-full pot to a passing member of hotel staff, and then sits down, reaching immediately for a piece of bacon.

“I’ll have you know I’m delivering a keynote speech in the main auditorium of the Fort Worth convention centre in about—” Taichi checks his watch “—an hour and a half. So. You know. I’m hot shit at a lot of things.” He eats his piece of bacon, then picks up his knife and fork and nods to the rest of the food. “Help yourself,” he adds. “And you’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” Yamato says, belatedly. He goes in for a tentative forkful of eggs, clearly less of a breakfast man than Taichi is. “You seem young to be giving a keynote.”

Taichi takes that as Yamato’s way of acknowledging that he’s at least a little impressed. He swallows a mouthful of sausage, and shrugs.

“I guess so,” he says. “I wrote this paper and then gave a TED talk about it. ‘What the bankers don’t want you to know about how they make you spend your money’. It kind of blew up from there. I get a lot of work off the back of that.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Yamato says. “The talk, I mean.”

“Yeah, not to brag, but I’m kind of a big deal,” Taichi jokes. His gaze falls on the papers piled at the edge of the table. He indicates them with his fork. “What’s this? Stuff about your case?”

Yamato side-eyes the papers. “CCTV stills, mostly. I’m just trying to piece together Jane’s last movements — Jane, that’s the missing girl — from what the police have released. It’s all very strange.”

“Tell me,” Taichi says. “Maybe I can help.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, before Yamato nudges a plate aside and pulls one of the papers out of his pile. 

Taichi licks bacon crumbs from his fingers, and leans over to look at the image that Yamato has placed down in front of him.

The picture quality isn’t great; everything is slightly pixelated, the way it always is in CCTV screen grabs. The image shows a short section of brick wall, illuminated by a nearby street lamp, and bordered on either side by stretches of chain-link fence.

Through the fence, a person is clearly visible, walking along the sidewalk. Taichi recognises her as the girl from the news reports. She looks young, in her twenties, probably, and is wearing a purple TCU sweatshirt. It’s hard to tell much more than that from the image.

“Ok,” Taichi says, looking up at Yamato, who has been watching him study the picture. 

Now, Yamato taps his finger on the timestamp in the corner of the image.

“This is at twenty-two oh five. She walks up to this wall. Passes behind it. And then…” He rifles through the papers again, finding another image, and lays it down over the top of the first. The time stamp on this one is just a minute later.

“She’s not there,” Taichi says, looking at the new image.

“Right. She never comes out the other side. That wall is maybe five paces long? But she doesn’t make it to the other end of it.”

Frowning, Taichi picks up the picture, and studies it more closely, searching for a glimpse of the girl who was there, clear as day, in the first image.

“She doesn’t double back, either,” Yamato continues. “Not for the whole of the rest of the footage. It’s like she steps behind that wall and just vanishes.”

“Maybe she turned,” Taichi says, “Walks away to the right. The wall blocks our view of her heading that direction.”

Yamato shakes his head. “There are cameras on that road. She doesn’t show up on the footage from any of them.”

Taichi gives the picture one last look, and then lowers it slowly.

“Weird,” he says, and reaches to pick up his knife and fork again.

Yamato pulls the papers back, returns them to the pile. “That’s only the half of it. Do you know she checked into this hotel under the name Jane Doe?”

“So?” Taichi says, through a mouthful of egg and waffle.

“That’s the name investigators give to unidentified female bodies. It’s clearly a fake name. And a fucking creepy one at that.”

“Dude,” Taichi says, as he slices into a sausage link. “Are we actually in The Silence of the Lambs right now? Are you real life Clarice Starling?”

Yamato ignores this. He is focussed on his papers, shuffling through them again, searching for something else.

“That’s not even the strangest part. There was a disappearance that happened in Berlin, in almost exactly the same circumstances. A kid who was a similar age. Fake name. Seems to vanish into thin air.”

Finding what he is looking for, Yamato holds the paper out. Chewing slowly, Taichi takes it, and looks at the passport photo of a young man that is printed on the page. The boy gazes out at him through a pair of very familiar blue eyes.

Taichi looks up from the page, and stares at Yamato. “Holy shit,” he says, “This kid looks like you.”

“I know.” Yamato takes the picture from Taichi’s hands. Studies the boy again. “I think that’s why I’m so obsessed with this case.” 

Taichi opens his mouth, to ask if he can see a clearer image of Jane Doe, but he is interrupted by the sound of his phone chiming loudly in his pocket. It’s a series of messages from the organisers of the conference, wanting to know his ETA so that they can test the microphones, and run through his slide deck.

“Damn,” Taichi says. “I’m going to have to go.”

Yamato nods. He sits back in his seat, holding his coffee mug. “Being a big deal beckons.”

Taichi pushes his phone across the table. He’s going to do it right, this time. 

“Listen, will you give me your number? I’d still like to see you tonight," he says, "Afraid I’m not put off by your whole creepy Jodie Foster schtick.”

Yamato sets down his mug and picks up the phone. “Really? Shit, that usually works a treat. I’ll have to break out some gory forensics next time.”

“Sounds delightful,” Taichi says. “In fact, that just makes me want to take you out to dinner even more.”

Yamato finishes inputting his number and slides his own phone across the table along with Taichi’s, asking for his number in return.

“Dinner’s on me,” he says. “I already owe you.”

After they swap numbers, Taichi leaves Yamato in the breakfast room with his papers, and walks the block and a half to the convention centre.

Rather than thinking about their date tonight, or the presentation he is about to deliver, he finds himself thinking about Jane Doe — about how she seemed to vanish into thin air, right in the middle of taking a walk not unlike this one.

*

They end up going to a PF Chang’s for dinner, because Yamato is craving vegetables — “I swear to God, all I’ve eaten since the day I landed here is meat and carbs,” he complains, as they stroll through the evening heat — and this is the only vegetable-heavy restaurant in the vicinity that Taichi can think of, where there won’t be a huge line to get in.

Over sesame chicken, broccoli beef, fried rice and cold Tsingtao beers, they pick up where they left off.

“How was the presentation?” Yamato starts, but Taichi dismisses this instantly, with a wave of his hand.

“Oh dude, it was fine. To be honest, all I could think about was your case.”

Yamato snags a piece of broccoli between the points of his chopsticks, from the huge pile of the stuff he has scooped onto his plate. He gives Taichi this heated look as he does so, like showing interest in his work is the sexiest thing a man could possibly do. 

“Gets under your skin,” he says. “Doesn’t it?”

Taichi’s chopstick skills are nothing short of embarrassing, so he is digging into the sesame chicken with a fork.

“For sure. I feel like I’m in the middle of a box set that I just can’t binge. You find out anything new today?”

“Not much.” Yamato thinks for a moment. “Only that Jane wasn’t actually registered as a student at Texas Christian University.”

Taichi gasps. “But she was wearing a TCU hoodie.”

Yamato gives him that look again, clearly thrilled to have such a willing accomplice. 

“I know, right? Nobody actually seems to know who she is. The hotel staff were the ones who reported her missing, and only because she didn’t check out.”

“Her family’s not looking for her?”

"No idea. No real name, so the police can’t track them down.” 

Taichi thinks about that, as he swallows a mouthful of beer. “So, not only did she disappear,” he says, slowly, “it’s almost like she appeared from thin air in the first place.”

“Exactly that. There’s no real record that she exists.”

“How could there be no record of someone existing?” 

“All kinds of reasons.” Yamato ticks them off on his fingers. “Illegal immigration. People smuggling. Human trafficking. International spy rings.”

“Christ. You’ve thought about this.”

“Got to explore all angles. Anyway, it was the same with the boy. The one in Berlin. He checked into his hotel under the name Christopher Isherwood. It was on his passport, but there’s also a famous author with that name. So, I feel like that’s fake, too.”

Taichi’s brain is running on overdrive, cycling through the possible mental health reasons for somebody to just walk away from their life, without a trace. 

In a way, he feels like he has been two steps away from doing that himself. When he packed up and left London, for instance. Or even moving here, for no real reason other than he suddenly felt done with California.

Both of those times it’s not like his family didn’t know where he was, though. Hell, it’s mostly because his oldest sister already lives in Dallas that he picked the city; he liked the idea of being closer to his niece and nephew.

“Do you have a picture of the girl?” Taichi asks. “Of Jane.”

“Not on me,” Yamato says. “Back in my room I do. I can show you later.”

For the first time that day, this is enough to distract Taichi from thoughts of puzzling out the case. 

“I’m coming to your room later,” he says, with a grin. “That’s good to know.”

“Well, yes, if you want to see the picture.” Yamato reaches for his beer, takes a swig, then puts the bottle down again, casual. “And if you want to fuck while we’re at it.”

Still grinning, Taichi picks up his own beer. He likes the direction this is moving in. 

“Is that too dark?” he asks, “Fucking after looking at pictures of missing people?”

“Please,” Yamato says. “That’s my job. I do it all the time.”

Taichi is regretting all over again that he never jerked off in the shower — because, right now, he could really do with having taken the edge off — when, for the second time that day, they are interrupted by the sound of a ringing phone. 

This time, it is Yamato’s. He takes the device from his pocket, levels a death glare at the screen, and decisively cancels the call with the words, “Oh, piss off, Jonathan.”

Felix’s lawyer, Taichi remembers. He digs his fork back into his fried rice. “Why does he call you direct? Shouldn’t he be going through your lawyer?”

“Yes.” Yamato puts the phone down and picks up his chopsticks again. “And no. He’s not Felix’s official divorce lawyer. He’s a mutual friend, who’s trying to stick his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

There’s something in his tone which suggests there is more to that story, so Taichi stays quiet, and sure enough, Yamato adds, “I slept with him a couple of years ago. So, now he thinks he has the right to be all involved.”

“You slept with him while you were married? Or before?” Taichi’s not sure which answer he’d prefer to hear.

“Before.” Yamato narrows his eyes. “Any other slightly too personal questions you’d like to ask me?”

“Yes,” Taichi says, his response instant. He’s been thinking about this one. “How did you get that scar on your cheek?”

Yamato looks surprised at this. The scar is so tiny that Taichi guesses it’s not something that people often comment on.

“Playing rugby at school as a kid.”

“Oh. I thought it might be something cooler than that.”

Yamato touches his fingertips to his cheekbone, feeling out the little dent in his flesh. “What, like some symbolic thing in my past? Like a video game character?”

“Not exactly.” Half-teasing, Taichi says, “You seem like maybe you’re a lot of drama. So I thought it might be something dramatic.”

“I promise I’m not,” Yamato says. “I hate drama.”

With perfect timing, this is the moment that his phone starts to ring again. 

“Fucking hell.” Yamato scowls down at Jonathan’s name on the screen. This time, he picks up the call.

“What do you want? I’m on a date,” Yamato snaps, into the phone. There is a pause, and then he says, “No, it’s a real date. He’s right here.”

The next second, he is holding the phone out across the table. And Taichi certainly doesn’t need to be asked twice.

“Hi Jonathan,” he calls, loudly, putting on as camp a voice as he can muster.

Satisfied with this performance, Yamato returns the phone to his ear. “So can you fuck off, please? And call me another time. Like, never again. Thanks.” With that, he hangs up. 

Behind him, a woman at the next table is giving them a curious look. But she gets suddenly very interested in her lo mein, when she realises that Taichi is looking back at her.

“I mean,” Taichi says to Yamato, glancing away from the nosey woman. “You got to admit that was a little dramatic.”

Yamato scowls, turning his attention back to his food.

“Ok. Sometimes drama finds me,” he admits, grudgingly. “But I definitely never want it to.”

*

After they have eaten, Yamato picks up the check, like he said he would, despite Taichi’s protests that they should split it.

“Us journalists aren’t so badly paid that I can’t stretch to treating you to a bit of fried rice,” he says, waving Taichi’s debit card away.

Back outside, they walk slowly towards their hotel, along pristine red brick sidewalks.

There is a lot that Taichi would change about his newly adopted state, but he loves Texas nights like this, when everything is warm and clear and unhurried.

They pass by the illuminated plaza of Sundance Square, where children are darting in and out of the frothy fountains that erupt from the brickwork in front of a huge outdoor mural of a cattle drive. Their parents watch from the sidelines, chatting around metal patio tables.

“Pretty here,” Yamato comments, smiling as a little girl in an orange sundress gets shriekingly drenched by the jet of one of the underground fountains.

“Not bad, right?” Taichi agrees. “My niece and nephew fucking loved it here, when I brought them.”

“How old are they?”

“Seven and five.” 

“Cute.”

“Yeah.” Taichi slides his hands into his pockets, remembering their stupid little smiling faces as they’d raced through the shooting towers of water. “They are kind of the greatest.”

Back at the hotel, they head through the lobby and take the elevator up to the second floor, where they walk together to room 216, and Yamato swipes his keycard to let them in.

Inside, the room is pretty much a carbon copy of Taichi’s, only the view is nicer, and the living area is a little larger.

“Your room’s better than mine,” Taichi says, standing in the middle of it, glancing around.

Yamato closes the door, and walks towards him. “They upgraded me, because they messed up my booking.”

Together, they look out through the window, at the lights of the city. The sky is a deep, rich purple. 

“Do you want a coffee, or something?” Yamato asks, though this is just a vague suggestion, filling space.

Taichi turns to him. “No, thanks.”

They’ve been talking all evening. Now, suddenly, there is nothing more to say.

Yamato slots his hand against the side of Taichi’s neck, angling his face for a kiss that’s mellow and slow.

They’re already making their way towards the bed, when, out of nowhere, Taichi has a sudden thought: fuck you for leaving me.

This makes no sense, of course, because Yamato hasn’t left him. He is right here, in Taichi’s arms; they have only just found one another. 

But the thought keeps on coming, until it becomes so intrusive that Taichi decides to run with its energy. Without really knowing what he is doing, he knocks the hand at his face aside, then redirects their steps, and pushes Yamato hard against the wall.

Yamato gasps, surprised. Taichi likes that. He reaches up and tangles his fingers into Yamato’s hair, using the grip to jerk his head back, exposing his throat. Yamato groans, and Taichi likes that, too.

“Too much?” he asks, in between pressing sucking kisses to Yamato’s neck. He’s going to leave marks, but doesn’t care.

“No,” Yamato says, testing the word, like he’s still processing what they’re doing. His eyes are narrowed to slits, as he tries to look at Taichi from an awkward angle, not easy with a fist still bunched in his hair.

God, Taichi wants to ruin him. 

Fuck you, fuck you, how dare you make me feel like this, after everything we’ve been through? he thinks.

Yamato has reached a hand down between them and is touching the front of Taichi’s pants, fingers starting to work open his flies, but Taichi seizes the hand and shoves it against the wall, instead.

Then he releases his grip on Yamato’s hair, and starts unfastening his jeans.

Taichi doesn’t feel like himself anymore. He feels like somebody else. Someone powerful. Someone in charge. 

“Yes,” Yamato says, the word hissed out between his teeth, as Taichi wraps a hand around his dick and starts to work him with rough strokes, leaning in to kiss Yamato again as he does so, teeth tugging at his bottom lip.

It doesn’t take long for him to come, wet, across the backs of Taichi’s knuckles. But Taichi doesn’t stop the strokes of his hand, not until Yamato is grabbing at him with his free hand, hunching in on himself, overwhelmed by sensation.

“Stop, stop,” he begs, and Taichi does, releasing his grip, stepping back a little, letting him breathe.

“Ok?” he asks.

And Yamato looks at him with dark eyes, fists a hand in Taichi’s shirt, and pulls him right back in, so that he can kiss him again, with hot, messy energy. It’s a kiss that promises a lot. Taichi feels his dick twitch in his pants.

“I’m going to ride you so fucking hard right now,” Yamato breathes, against his ear, his lips wet from their kisses. 

That’s when Taichi recognises that he’s not really in charge at all. Yamato’s been letting him push him around for the sake of some hot sex, but this man is no pushover. 

Now, he works his fingertips under the hem of Taichi’s shirt and drags his hands up over his chest, feeling out the grooves and bumps of his body, before reaching his neckline and urging the cotton away.

Taichi obliges. Pulls off his shirt.

“Nice abs,” Yamato says, and why does every word that comes out of his mouth sound so sexy in that accent?

“Thanks,” Taichi says, grinning, “I try.”

That intrusive voice, the fuck you for leaving, is ebbing away. Being replaced by something else. Something that makes Taichi want to get down on his hands and knees, and press his lips to Yamato’s feet.

But he can’t do that, because Yamato is already kissing him again, and walking him slowly back to where he wanted to go in the first place — to the big, hotel bed.

Trying not to let their mouths leave one another’s, they climb on top of the pristine sheets in sideways, crablike motions, Yamato unfastening shirt buttons as he goes, and then shrugging out of the dove grey cotton. 

His skin smells amazing. Taichi puts his nose against his collarbone, traces his fingertip gently over a small mole on his bicep. 

Yamato shakes his fingers free of a stubborn shirt cuff, and then his hands are on Taichi’s face, tilting it up. They look at one another. 

“Hello,” he says, and smiles, like they are meeting all over again. 

Taichi winds an arm around his waist. “Hi.”

“How strange is this?”

“What?” 

“All of this.”

He means chasing each other around the world for ten years. Meeting in all the places they have met. Being compelled to reach for one another through time and space. The confusing, out-of-nowhere thoughts.

“I know,” Taichi says.

“There’s lube in the nightstand.” Yamato nudges his cheek, cat-like, against Taichi’s.

It’s right there in the drawer, brazen, sitting on top of the hotel Bible.  

“Heavens above,” Taichi says, stretching to pick it up, “What will the cleaning staff think?”

“Come on. They’ve seen it all before.” Yamato hooks a fingertip into the waistband of Taichi’s pants. “Take these off.”

They shimmy out of their pants, and underwear, then come back together, in a tangle of bare limbs.

“Lube,” Yamato says, again, kneeling over Taichi’s thighs. 

Taichi opens the tube. Slicks his fingers. Works them in, reaching around Yamato’s body. He knows to give him ample time to ease into the stretch. This isn’t his first rodeo.

“Ok,” Yamato prompts, after a moment, and Taichi pulls his fingers free.

He lines up his dick in one hand, guiding Yamato’s hip with the other, as Yamato sinks onto him, tight and so good. 

Seated in Taichi’s lap, Yamato cards his fingers through Taichi hair, leans in and kisses him slowly, relaxing and tightening muscles that make Taichi’s breath catch in his throat. It’s all painfully gentle and controlled. Clearly not his first rodeo, either.

“Ok, move,” Taichi says. He cants his hips up a little, in encouragement.

“No.” 

“Fuck,” Taichi breathes. His legs are shaking. Yamato reaches down and grips the tops of his thighs. Holds him still.

They look at one another. Yamato’s eyes are so blue in the lamplight. Taichi never wants to be in a situation where he is not allowed to do this with him. Poor Felix, he thinks, proposing probably out of desperation at the idea of having this taken away. 

Licking his lips, Taichi gathers himself. He reaches up and grips Yamato hard at the back of his neck. 

“You want to test me? I’ll win. I can take it.”

“Can you?” Yamato flexes his muscles again, and Taichi can’t help groaning. He’s beginning to break a sweat at the effort of staying still.

“Yeah,” he says. He pushes the thumb of his free hand between Yamato’s lips. “I’m the one with my dick inside you, so don’t kid yourself about your place.”

Yamato runs his tongue around Taichi’s thumb, anchors the knuckle with his teeth. His next words are muffled.

“Oh really? Show it to me.”

Very deliberately, he lifts his hands from Taichi’s thighs, and Taichi wastes no time in doing what he’s told, slamming his hips up once, twice, and then shifting to find an easier rhythm.

“Yes,” Yamato says, taking it all perfectly, as Taichi fucks him hard. He pushes down to meet each thrust, his hands finding Taichi’s shoulders. “Oh my God, you’re so fucking hot.”

“Told you I was hot shit at everything,” Taichi manages to say, in between rolls of his hips.

That makes Yamato laugh, and this is the sound that Taichi comes to, burying himself deep inside Yamato’s body, and pressing his face into the side of his neck.

Still breathing fast, they unravel from one another, slowly coming back to themselves. 

Yamato reaches to the nightstand for a handful of Kleenex, to clean himself up. “That was great.”

“Yeah.” Taichi offers his open palm. “Nice work. Lay it on me, Clarice.”

Yamato looks a little bemused at the gesture, but obligingly slaps his hand against Taichi’s, in a high five.

“Told you I’d win,” Taichi says, settling back against the pillows, as Yamato gets to his feet and stretches.

“I’m not sure you did. Though feel free to keep telling yourself that.” Yamato heads to the bathroom, and turns on the light. “Are you staying?” he calls, as he goes.

Taichi folds his arms behind his head, and yawns. “Can I?”

There’s the sound of the toilet flushing, and then Yamato reappears. “Of course.” He pulls on his underwear and then throws back the duvet on one side of the bed, before climbing in. “Though I’m planning to be out for the count,” he warns. “I’ve barely slept in two days now.”

Taichi yawns again, feeling the full weight of his exhaustion creeping up on him. He shuffles around until he has just enough space to work the covers down on his own side of the bed — the right side, the side he always sleeps on — and slides beneath them.

“I’m definitely not mad at the idea of sleep.”

Yamato’s head is already resting on his pillow. He gropes for Taichi’s hand under the sheets, squeezes his fingers once, and then lets go. “Ok,” he says, “Good night.”

“Night,” Taichi says. He reaches across the open drawer of the nighstand, with its exposed Bible, and shuts off the lights.

That night, he falls asleep beside Yamato, and dreams of nothing.

Chapter Text

The room is still dark, and a phone is ringing. There’s a crash and then Yamato leaning out of bed, saying, “Hello,” in a voice that’s scratchy with too much sleep.

A band of gold runs around the edges of the blackout curtains. It’s already past eleven, according to the display on the digital clock by the bed. Taichi stretches out all four limbs, starfish-like, beneath the duvet, as Yamato is turning on the reading light and pushing his glasses onto his face.

“Hang on,” he says, into the phone, and then twists towards Taichi. “Sorry. It’s work.”

Taichi nods, throws the covers aside. “I’ll make coffee.”

His underwear and shirt are crumpled near the foot of the bed. He pulls them on and goes, yawning, to the coffee machine. It’s the fancy kind, with the little aluminium pods. 

“What’s the address?” he catches Yamato asking, raising his voice above the whirr of the coffee machine. 

Without really thinking about anything, Taichi picks up the complementary hotel-branded notepad and pen and offers them to Yamato, who looks up and takes them, in surprise. “Oh, thanks.”

“Black?” Taichi asks.

“Yeah,” Yamato says, and pulls the lid off the pen with his teeth. 

Taichi resets the coffee machine for a second cup, before dragging open the curtains to let in some of that stiff Texas sunlight.

Yamato’s still on the phone, frowning and doodling spiralling shapes around the address he has scribbled down on the notepad, saying, “But I don’t understand. Where did it come from, in the first place?” and so Taichi leaves a cup of coffee at his elbow and takes his own cup into the bathroom, where he turns on the shower. 

He takes a single hot, bitter sip before stepping under the spray. Check out was at 11am. He’s going to have to pay a late fee.

After he’s done in the shower, Taichi’s coffee is lukewarm, perfect for drinking. He takes a hotel robe from the hook on the bathroom door, shrugs it on, and heads back out.

Yamato has moved from the bed and is sitting at the desk on the other side of the room, wearing his navy pyjama pants and a black sweatshirt with the logo of the band The Cure printed across it. He has one knee tucked up to his chest and his hair is a mess and he’s hunching slightly, to peer at a laptop. 

The pose makes him look young, like a memory of him as a teenager that has sprung to life. Not that Taichi really has a clue about what he would have looked like back then.

As Taichi approaches, Yamato takes his glasses off and looks up from the screen.

“What’s the skinny?” Taichi asks, sipping his coffee, wondering if maybe they can fuck again before he has to go pack his things.

“More CCTV,” Yamato says, and uses the computer’s touchpad to scroll the video he has been watching back to the start. “That was Clive on the phone. He’s a contact of mine who works for Texas Monthly magazine. Have you heard of it?”

“Sure,” Taichi grins. “They made a great podcast about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.”

Yamato makes a face of exasperation that Taichi is already growing used to seeing. “Ok, well they also cover a lot of crime. Clive’s a goldmine.”

“In what sense?”

Yamato’s fingers are still hovering over the touchpad, impatient. “What?”

Taichi leans a palm on the desk. He’s standing close enough to smell the warmth of Yamato’s body.

“Like, I’d like for us to keep fucking,” he says. “So, I just wanted to know. Do I need to worry about my man, Clive?”

There’s a pause. Yamato reaches for his cup of coffee, sees that it’s empty, puts it back down. More easily flustered than he likes to let on. “Let’s park the ‘keep fucking’ part for now,” he says.

Taichi nods, still leaning. “Sure.”

“At least until I get a chance to shower. But Clive is fifty-two and married, with four kids.” Yamato reaches out and curls his fingers slowly around Taichi’s wrist — a gesture that feels sexier than it has any right to be. “So, no. You don’t need to worry.”

“Cool,” Taichi says. And then, “Shit. Four kids.”

“I know.” Yamato turns back to his laptop. “Anyway, he sent me this footage. It’s the same camera as before, but this is from yesterday.” 

He hits play and the video starts rolling. Taichi recognises the location. There’s the same section of wall, the same stretches of chain link fence, all illuminated by the same single street lamp.

After a couple of seconds of stillness, a car passes by. There’s another moment of nothing, and then a figure comes into shot. 

“Woah, stop,” Taichi says, and Yamato does, with a smart tap of his finger. 

Taichi moves his hand to Yamato’s shoulder, as he peers closer. The figure in the footage is very obviously not Jane Doe. This person is male. Slim. Not particularly tall. He has a rucksack slung over one shoulder and is wearing a baseball cap, which does a good job, from this angle, of hiding his face. 

But he and Jane Doe have one thing in common.

“He never walked along the sidewalk at the other side of the wall,” Taichi says.

“No,” Yamato confirms.

“What the actual fuck?” Taichi straightens up to standing, taking in the whole scene. “Hit play.”

Yamato does, and together they watch as the man walks unhurriedly out of shot. After that, nothing in the scene changes until the footage runs out.

“I mean,” Yamato says, sitting back in his seat, looking up at Taichi.

“It’s fucking nuts, is what it is.” Taichi puts his coffee down. He wants to watch that video again, but there’s something else he wants to see first. “Where’s that picture of Jane?”

Yamato gets up and goes to a suitcase in the corner. He comes back with a photocopied image of an ID picture.

Jane stares straight ahead, with a neutral expression.

Taichi doesn’t know what to make of her. Objectively, she’s quite pretty. Her features are delicate and her hair is cut in a short, pixie-ish style. In a lot of ways, she’s unremarkable.

It’s her eyes that set her apart. There is a steeliness to them that Taichi feels he recognises. He finds himself thinking of his mother. His niece. All three of his sisters.

Unexpectedly, a prickle runs up the back of his neck. He gives a little shudder and passes the picture back to Yamato. “Jane Doe’s the right name. She’s giving me the creeps.”

“I like her.” Yamato stares down at the young woman, almost fondly. “I was going to spend today retracing some of her steps.” He looks back up at Taichi. “Are you coming?”

*

“Ok,” Taichi says, as he lays his hands on the steering wheel and twists to look over his shoulder, at the darkness of the parking lot behind. “Where are we going?”

Yamato holds his phone out. “This is the address Clive gave me. It’s a stadium.” 

Taichi glances over, mid-manoeuvre, and then swings the car towards the exit of the parking garage.

“Damn, AT and T,” he says, “That’s halfway to Dallas. We need to stop for breakfast on the way.”

It’s already well past midday. By the time they’d jerked each other off, wet and gasping, in the middle of what was meant to be a quick shower for Yamato, and then dried and dressed themselves, they were far beyond the acceptable check out window.

It had taken all of Taichi’s charm, leaning forwards on the front desk, to get the receptionist to waive his late check out fee.

“I’m only doing this because I’m so relieved that I don’t have to report someone else missing,” she’d said, eventually, handing his credit card back across the desk. 

Honestly, Taichi knows that batting his eyelashes also had a lot to do with it, given the way she was blushing. But no amount of flirt could fix the fact that they’d totally missed the breakfast buffet.

“It was worth it,” Yamato had decided, staring at the deserted waffle station, “I came really hard.”

“Amen, brother,” Taichi had said, holding out his fist for a bump.

He’s hungry now, though, as they cruise away from downtown and towards the spaghetti network of surrounding roads. The overlapping lanes are intimidating if you don’t know where you’re going, but Taichi’s been here enough times to navigate with ease.

“What’s your usual breakfast?” he asks, as he guides the car smoothly through the traffic.

Yamato is flicking through pages of something on his phone. “Why? I mean, who cares?”

“I do,” Taichi says. “I want to know everything about you.”

“I don’t know. Toast or whatever. Or I’ll grab something from Pret on my way to the office.” 

“Nice.”

They drive in silence for a few seconds, only broken by the voice of Lizzo, playing on local radio through the car’s stereo. And then Yamato puts down his phone.

“Shit, now I care too. What do you have?”

Taichi smiles. “Eggs all the way, baby.” Spotting the exit he’s looking for, he swipes on the indicator, and pulls them towards it. “Right now, we’re looking at a breakfast burrito situation.” 

They’re soon digging into messy wraps loaded with sausage and egg and hot sauce, in the parking lot of Taichi’s favourite hole-in-the-wall Tex-mex place. 

“How come you got married so young?” is the next question that trips off his tongue, in between bites.

Yamato uses a napkin to wipe hot sauce from the corners of his mouth. “My parents have a really good marriage. I don’t know. It seemed like a normal thing to do.”

Taichi can’t help himself. “Seems impulsive to me.”

“Shame I didn’t have you around to advise me back then,” Yamato shoots back. “But, you know. You’re not capable of keeping pieces of paper dry so you can keep in touch with someone.”

“Hey, that flood was an act of God,” Taichi says. “Completely unpredictable.”

“Pretty sure that Vietnam has a fairly predictable rainy season.”

“And who knows, maybe if we’d hooked up back then we’d be the ones going through a shitty divorce right now.”

“I doubt it,” Yamato says, “Unless you’re as boring a person as Felix is.”

Taichi reaches for the styrofoam cup of iced tea, standing in his cup holder. “All I’m saying is that sometimes things happen for a reason.”

In front of them, a lone blue jay flutters into view and perches on one of the concrete slabs that mark the end of a parking space. Taichi watches as it pecks at some discarded chilaquiles.

The food is splattered on the asphalt in a crime scene puddle of red sauce. 

“You mean fate? I don’t believe in it,” Yamato says.

Taichi looks at him. There is a tiny, adorable fleck of hot sauce on his chin, which kind of undermines his tough attitude. Taichi’s own mouth feels messy, too. He sets his cup back down and runs his tongue around his lips.

“Me neither. I think you make your own destiny,” he clarifies. “But I also think there’s a time in your life that’s right for certain things.”

There’s a self-deprecating edge to Yamato’s voice as he says, “Like getting stupid married to the first man you see?”

“Yeah,” Taichi says. “You picked the wrong time.”

Startled by a distant car horn, the blue jay suddenly takes flight. They both jump as it swerves towards the windscreen, seemingly coming right at them, before flying away. 

“Hm.” Yamato turns his attention to the foil package in his hands, peeling the wrapper down. “This is a really good burrito.”

Taichi nods his agreement and takes another messy bite. “The best.”

*

The last movements of Jane Doe are somewhat confusing. The path she takes is an inefficient zigzag, jumping from one seemingly random place to the next. 

“It’s almost as if she’s trying to throw someone off her trail,” Yamato says, as they step through the doors of a large mall — Jane’s first known stop after leaving the hotel. 

“Maybe she was,” Taichi says, pausing to look at the store locator map and find the number for the store they need. “This way.”

They strike out across the gleaming tile, past the kiosks and planters full of artificial plants. Being here reminds Taichi of his childhood, mooching around his local mall in San Diego, drinking soda and blowing all his money in the arcade.

“What was your first pet as a kid?” he asks Yamato, as they pass by an Abercrombie and Fitch, through a cloud of the same cologne that used to hang outside those stores when Taichi was a teenager.

“Dogs,” Yamato says, with barely a glance at the black and white photos of sculpted male models plastered over the store windows. “I’ve always had dogs.”

“I had a lizard,” Taichi says. “My family had a dog. But she never liked me.”

“A lizard?”

“Yeah, like a gecko thing. It used to eat crickets.”

“My mum bred border collies. Trained them.”

“That’s cool.”

“They’re super intelligent.”

“Yeah? Geckos aren’t.”

The store they are looking for sells sports clothing and memorabilia. All the local teams are represented. The navy blue of the Cowboys makes a big appearance, in amongst the orange of the Longhorns and the purple of TCU. 

“This is where she got her shirt,” Taichi says, the realisation coming to him out of nowhere.

“That’s right. She leaves the hotel at twelve fifteen. Ubers here. Buys a sweater.”

“So, she doesn’t go to TCU,” Taichi runs a hand carelessly across the garments hanging on the nearest rail, “But is making an effort to look like she does.”

Yamato reaches across him, and pulls a shirt from the rack. It’s grey, with the Cowboys star printed large on the front.

“This is your team, right? You were wearing their sweater the other night.” Taichi nods. It’s a nice shirt. He momentarily wonders if he should get it. Yamato hands it to him. “And they’re the biggest team around here?”

“Sure.” 

“So, why not get this one?”

Taichi holds the shirt at arms length, looks at it more closely. He has at least two that are pretty similar. Reluctantly, he hooks it back onto the rail. 

“The Cowboys aren’t a college team,” he guesses. “So maybe it’s not as good for her cover story.”

Yamato slides his hands into his pockets. He glances around the store, and says, “Or perhaps she just prefers purple.”

After buying her shirt, Jane wanders into the next store, which is a Bath and Body Works. She circles through the shelves of bath foam and body lotion, but leaves without buying anything.

“Killing time,” Yamato suggests, and Taichi nods his agreement.

From there she heads to the mall’s food court, where she orders a chicken salad and an iced tea, and eats at a table on her own.

“Ok,” Taichi says, standing in the middle of the seating area, with his hands on his hips, satisfied that there aren’t going to be any revelations here that will crack the case wide open. “Where next?”

Next is the stadium. They leave the mall, and head for the car.

As Yamato is pulling the belt across his body, he looks at Taichi and says, “What’s your star sign?” 

Taichi starts the engine. “I don’t know. April the 14th. What’s that?” He checks his mirrors and then swings the car out. They’re parked between two enormous trucks and he can barely see anything. His mother would tell him to slow down, but he trusts his instincts to take care of the manoeuvre. 

Yamato is counting through the signs on his fingers. He stops, satisfied, and lowers his hands. “An Aries. Of course you are.”

On their way to the exit, a car pulls unexpectedly out of a space in front of them. Taichi hits the brakes.

He notices that Yamato has automatically shoved his own foot down, in a mirror image of his movement. Waiting for the car to finish turning in front of them, Taichi glances over at him. “You know that’s all nonsense, right? You can read the traits of any sign into anyone’s personality.”

Yamato retracts his foot from his phantom brake pedal. “I don’t know. I think it’s interesting.”

The way is clear. Taichi guides the car forwards, more slowly this time. They turn out of the parking lot and head towards the freeway. 

After a moment, Taichi realises he can’t resist. He glances again at Yamato, who is staring out the window.

“What sign are you, then?”

“Scorpio,” Yamato says, without looking over. “We like secrets.”

*

When they pull up to the stadium, the whole place is eerily deserted. Out of nowhere, heavy clouds have rolled in, turning the perma-blue sky a dramatic shade of grey.

Taichi slams the driver’s side door and takes a couple of aimless steps towards the centre of the empty parking lot. He’s only ever been here on game days, when the place is swarming with people. As Yamato steps up beside him, an old candy bar wrapper rolls slowly across the tarmac in front of them. 

“Feels like the zombie apocalypse,” Taichi says.

Yamato huffs out a breath, and passes both hands through his hair. “God, I don’t even know what we’re looking for anymore. This place is huge.”

Taichi looks out across the rows of parking spaces. In his mind’s eye, the stadium comes to life. He can see the crowds of blue and silver. He can smell the grease from the hot dog vendors and hear the victory chants. 

“Why did she come here?” he wants to know. “Was there a game that day?”

Yamato pulls out his phone to check the details. “May 6th,” he reads. “The Cowboys played the Saints. It was a midday kickoff, but Jane didn’t get here until the game was over and people were starting to leave.”

That information takes a second to sink in.

“Oh shit,” Taichi says, “I was here then. I came to watch that game. Fuck. I could have walked right past her.”

Yamato looks alarmed. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Taichi turns in a slow circle, taking the place in, trying to remember where he parked, the route he walked, anything at all unusual. But the memories are a blur, merged with his memories of other days, and other games. “Damn,” he says, “I don’t remember a thing. I bet she would have stood out, wearing that purple.”

There seems nothing more to be gained from standing around an empty parking lot, so they climb back into the car and are soon rejoining the freeway, heading back towards Fort Worth. 

Yamato is strangely quiet and still in the passenger seat. Taichi hasn’t bothered to switch on the radio, and so the silence feels particularly heavy.

“Who comes to a stadium right at the end of a football game?” he muses out loud, still thinking about Jane, standing around in her purple shirt, as the crowds leaving the stadium stream past her.

“I’m going to say something,” Yamato announces, suddenly.

Taichi glances at him, just briefly. There’s a truck in his mirrors that is getting a bit too close. “Ok,” he says.

“What if Jane was only there that day because you were there?”

Taichi hits the indicator and swaps lanes, leaving the truck behind. “Why would she be? She doesn’t know me.”

Yamato is quiet again, but this time, Taichi recognises that there is something behind his silence. “Why?” he repeats, more sternly. And when Yamato remains ominously silent, he adds, “Do I need to pull over for this?”

“That kid in Berlin, Christopher,” Yamato says, finally. “I got this weird feeling he was following me. Or, I don’t know, trying to. But not quite making it.”

In front of them, the bland stretch of freeway keeps on rolling, straight ahead. 

“Explain,” Taichi says. 

“I was in Berlin for a couple of weeks, covering a case,” Yamato says, slowly. “Nothing connected. British banker accused of embezzlement. But Christopher went missing while I was there, and I heard all about it because he was staying at a hotel literally across the street from mine. Like, my bedroom window looked right at it.”

Taichi starts to get a nasty, creeping feeling in his stomach. “Like Jane,” he says.

“Yeah and there were other things. Sightings of him in places I’d been or was planning to go to — the courthouse where the banker’s trial was being held and this particular exhibition at an art gallery that I was only going to because a friend of mine curated it — all in the run up to him vanishing. And then afterwards, looking at the pictures of him. I mean, we look like fucking twins. It was just really weird.” 

Taichi is frowning now, and gripping the steering wheel tightly. Yamato shifts in his seat, and says, “Have you heard about dopplegangers?”

“That’s when you see a replica of yourself?”

“Yes. They say that if a doppleganger appears to you that it’s an omen of death,” Yamato says, “I’m sure that’s nonsense. But the whole thing really freaked me out. So much so that I actually flew home from Germany early.”

The image of Jane Doe’s brown eyes crosses Taichi’s mind, so strangely familiar. Not only because they are like his female relatives’, he realises suddenly, but because they are like his own. 

“Why didn’t you tell me all of that before?” he asks, a little too sharply. 

Yamato is staring at him. He can feel the weight of his gaze, even without looking over.

“Because it makes me sound unhinged.”

Up ahead, the clouds have taken on a yellowish tinge, promising rain. They pass a strip mall. A church. Several fast food joints. Taichi passes every exit, only half concentrating on driving.

Bit by bit, a thought is forming.

“And we followed each other, too,” he says.

There’s a pause, and then Yamato says, “You know, I once interviewed this guy who thought he’d lived a past life. Totally normal in every way. Except, since he was a kid, he’d believed he was once a pilot in the second world war.”

The first fat drops of rain are beginning to splatter against the windscreen. Taichi reaches for the wiper controls. When Texas rain comes for you, it comes hard. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You make me think of him," Yamato says, as the rain grows heavier. “You and that dream you have. That guy was convinced he remembered dying when his plane went down in flames.”

*

They reach the street with the chain link fence earlier in the day than Jane was there, but there’s no point in them going all the way back to the hotel, like she did, just to kill time beforehand.

It’s strange seeing the place in person, because it looks so unremarkable. A scrap of torn blue and white police tape is attached to one of the fence posts. It flutters in the breeze that has followed the short-lived rainstorm.

But that’s the only clue that anything unusual took place here. There are no barriers, nothing. They’re able to park just a few yards down the street.

The air is filled with the smell of damp, warm concrete as they approach the stretch of brick wall that had been visible in the video. The wall marks out the back of the yard to what appears to be an empty building. There are signs attached to the building itself which suggest that it used to be a video rental store, once upon a time.

Taichi stands with his hands on his hips, staring up at the largest of the signs. Once, it would have been illuminated, but now the surface is cracked, revealing the twisted strip bulbs inside.

Yamato steps past him and walks right up to the wall, putting a palm against its surface. He rubs his thumb across a strange, dark mark on the brickwork. “Clive mentioned this. Looks like scorch marks.”

Taichi comes to stand beside him and runs his gaze over the dark, angular smudges, like the hot metal of a branding iron has been pressed into the brick. The marks measure out a rough oblong, a little taller than the average person’s height.

Taichi doesn’t like the look of those marks. He strolls off, further along the wall, moving in the opposite direction to Yamato, so they can cover more ground. 

Towards the start of the chain link fence, he spots something else. It’s a series of small scratches running vertically down the side of a single brick. At a glance they appear to be casual scuff marks. But on closer inspection, there’s clearly something purposeful about them.

“Look at this,” he calls, not taking his eyes off the scratches, not even when Yamato has walked over, and is standing right at his elbow. 

“I think those are letters,” Yamato says, peering closer. He touches the scratches with his fingertip, traces the shapes of them. “Characters. You know? Like, Mandarin, or Korean. Japanese, maybe?”

He gets out his phone to snap a picture of the scratched letters.

While he is doing that, Taichi turns away, to look off down the street, in the direction Jane arrived from. He is startled to see that they are no longer alone. 

Someone is standing under the streetlight, which has yet to turn on. Dusk is still hours away. 

It takes a moment for Taichi to place him as the man in the cap who’d appeared on the CCTV video they’d watched that morning. He’s even shorter than he had looked in the footage. Beneath the baseball cap, his hair is red and wiry, and his eyes are dark.

As Taichi stares at him, his face splits slowly into a grin, and he clenches one fist in a gesture of triumph.

Taichi takes a step backwards, closer to Yamato, who is just straightening up from bending to get a better shot. 

“Hey,” he says, and elbows Yamato in the ribs, to get his attention. The man in the cap is walking towards them, and Taichi isn’t sure if they should be running away or getting ready to fend off some kind of attack.

As Yamato turns around, the guy says something, excitedly, in a language that isn’t English, seeming to direct the words more to himself than to them. 

Taichi finds himself moving in front of Yamato, placing himself between them.

“Ok, back up,” he tells Yamato, “This dude seems like he might be crazy.”

At these words, the man stops walking, still a few paces away from them. He smiles again, aiming the expression at Taichi. 

In English, this time, he says, “I can assure you I’m not.”

“Sure,” Taichi says, reaching back, getting a firm hand on Yamato’s arm. “That’s absolutely what a crazy dude would say, so...”

His instincts are telling him to get them out of here. He tries to walk away, pulling Yamato with him, but is caught off guard by Yamato planting his feet, resisting being moved.

“Wait,” Yamato says. He is staring at the man, who holds his arms out to either side of his body, in a loose and non-threatening gesture.

“Taichi,” the man says, then, looking right at him. “Come on. That’s no way to speak about an old friend. Especially one who just saved your life.”

Chapter Text

'Cause all of the stars
Are fading away
Just try not to worry
You'll see them someday
Take what you need
And be on your way
And stop crying your heart out

- Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Oasis

Tokyo, 2010 - another lifetime.

Standing in front of the full length mirror, Yamato scrutinises his outfit. 

It’s not good. The whole thing is too tight. He absolutely looks like he is trying too hard.

“Fuck,” he says, as he whips his belt free from the belt loops of his jeans, untucks his shirt and starts unbuttoning his flies. 

Being home from college feels stranger than it has in the past. Maybe because he’s stayed away longer than ever this time. Or maybe it’s the lack of contact with Taichi.

Their usual strings of messages and phone calls in the run up to a return trip, building the happy anticipation had been notably absent. And that’s left things hanging about where they stand - whether they hate each other now, or are going to be plain civil, or are even back to being the friends they were before their whole, messy attempt at a relationship sent them into this godawful spiral. 

That would obviously be the best outcome. Just returning to “go”. But Yamato has no idea if that’s where they can be tonight, because they haven’t said a word to one another in maybe six months.

“Fuck,” he says, again, as he stands in his socks and underwear, the height of glamour, staring into the wardrobe in his old bedroom at his father’s apartment, looking for something to wear that doesn’t truly and whole-heartedly suck.

Eventually, he settles on a soft, charcoal grey henley shirt and an old faithful pair of black jeans that he has had for years.

His reflection in the mirror looks like himself. Plain, neutral Yamato. Giving nothing. It’s the safest vibe to go for.

Grabbing his keys from the dresser, Yamato gives his hair one last finger-comb and then heads off to the kitchen, in search of his phone. He has the vague idea that he might pre-game with some of his dad’s whiskey, because a touch of hard liquor always settles him, and walking unsettled into a room with Taichi isn’t really what he wants to do right now.

The bottle is in its usual place, in the cupboard beside the fridge. Yamato takes it out and slugs some whiskey into a mug sitting on the drying rack. It’s a little more than a standard shot, but he tosses it back in one swallow anyway, because he needs to feel the burn in his throat and his chest, followed by the foggy hug of a big hit of alcohol.

He finds his phone sitting on top of the microwave. When he picks it up, he sees there is a message waiting for him.

You still coming tonight? Looking forward to seeing you.

“God fucking damn it, Taichi,” Yamato says, out loud, feeling the knot in his stomach tighten at the thought of seeing his face. 

It’s typical, of course, that he has to jump the gun and get in ahead of them actually seeing one another again, making sure he is the first to nail his colours to the mast and dictate how he wants the evening to go.

Yamato leans back against the kitchen counter, staring at the message and tapping one fingernail rhythmically against the side of his mug.

After a moment, he pours another rough measure of whiskey, and knocks that back, too, before composing his steelily controlled reply.

Still coming. See you later.

I’m not scared of you, that response says. And you’re getting nothing from me in advance. 

Satisfied, Yamato pockets the phone and his keys, puts the whiskey bottle away and then rinses and returns the mug to the drying rack. 

On his way out the door, he catches sight of an old denim jacket, hanging on a hook. He stares at it for a moment and then turns away, pulling the door shut behind him. 

*

Their backstory starts with that jacket.

It’s January, senior year of high school, too cold for denim, but Yamato is coming straight from a gig — the wedding of their drummer’s cousin. She’d requested old-school punk rock tracks, and they’d agreed to lean into that aesthetic with their outfits. Ripped pants, safety pins, black kohl.

Yamato is shivering on the platform, waiting for his train, with his guitar case slung over his shoulder, and nothing underneath his denim jacket except a safety-pin studded t-shirt with the album cover of God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols printed on the front.

He doesn’t love cramming two commitments into the same night, but today is Sora’s birthday, a date as set in stone as a wedding planned months in advance, and only a complete asshole wouldn’t try his best to be there for her.

Nevertheless, her hug for him is still full of gratitude when she opens her door, half an hour later.

“You really didn’t need to come,” she says, urging him into the glowing warmth of her family home.

“Stop,” Yamato says, looping the strap of his guitar case up over his head and leaning the instrument against the wall. “My present to you is that you get to see me wearing this dumb outfit.”

“It’s not dumb. I like it.” Sora gestures him in further, even as he is still toeing off his boots. “Although you do look freezing. Your lips are kind of blue.”

“Cool. Just the look I was going for,” Yamato smiles.

“I mean, you’re lucky that eyeliner’s working for you, I’ll say that much,” she returns, putting an arm around him and rubbing the chill out of his ribs, as she leads him back into her party.

This is Sora, so the party is, of course, delightful. It’s a small, mellow gathering of only the nicest people in school, and Yamato couldn’t feel more at home as he accepts a canned shochu highball drink from the stash in her refrigerator and positions himself beside the snack table, which is laid with crackers and cheese and crudités.

He chats to Mimi and a couple of guys he knows from the biology class he shares with Sora at school, before he catches sight of Taichi. He’s been on a beer run (which explains why the apartment was as quiet as it was when Yamato first arrived), and has only just stepped back through the door.

They gravitate towards one another, meeting by the windows.

“You made it,” Taichi says, embracing him, and Yamato feels warm at his touch, like he’s stepping in from the cold all over again. 

“Of course,” Yamato says, controlling his expression, giving no hint of how their hug makes him feel.

“I’ve been to get the goods.” Taichi holds up the convenience store bag of beer, which he always seems to convince people to sell to him, despite not being old enough to legally buy the stuff. 

“Good.” Yamato sets aside his warm, half-empty can of chuhai. “I can’t keep drinking this peach shit.”

Over the years, the two of them have had their ups and downs, but their friendship is in a good place these days. So much so that Yamato has privately begun to ask himself – only in the dead of night, or at moments of peak vulnerability – whether “friendship” is really still the right word to use.

Taichi sets the bag on the windowsill and pulls out a couple of cans. He chivalrously opens Yamato’s for him, before handing it over, their fingers brushing in the exchange.

“Hey, so, you know that this isn’t a costume party, right?” he says, reaching out to finger one of the safety pins attached to Yamato’s chest, in exactly the kind of gesture that has begun to make the word 'friendship' feel like a farce.

“Oh my God, sorry,” Yamato returns without missing a beat, “I took one look at your hair and thought that’s exactly what this was.”

“Funny,” Taichi says, popping open his beer. “You’re so funny, man, I can’t believe you’re not on stage with that act.”

He’s already had a few drinks. Yamato can see it in his eyes. That means he’s not at the top of his game.

“Shame,” Yamato says, feeling smug about having the advantage of sobriety. “That punchline could be working so well for you, if it wasn’t for the fact that I have literally just come here from performing on a stage.”

“Hmm.” Taichi sips his beer, and then abruptly switches tactics, to say, “It’s cool. You actually look very sexy in that eyeliner.”

“Fuck off.” Yamato turns away, to better hide the fact that this shot has startled him into a blush. It feels cheap, like Taichi has aimed for something they’ve always agreed was off limits. 

“Seriously,” Taichi says. He catches Yamato by the arm before he can walk off, holding him in place, and suddenly the grip of his hand is a little too firm for this to all be a joke. “Now seems as good a time as any to tell you that I’m totally into boys.”

“What the hell?” Yamato resists the urge to shake his arm free. They are still standing close, their voices low. He stares into Taichi’s eyes. “Did you just come out to me?”

“You don’t have to make it sound so dramatic. I mean come on, you must have known deep down.” Taichi’s fingers flex against Yamato’s arm and then release, in acknowledgement of that thing they never talk about. “Anyway, you look extra hot tonight. Take the compliment.”

Yamato doesn’t have a comeback for this, and so does the only thing he can think of to do. He follows through on walking away.

Back over by the snacks, he gathers himself, playing over what the fuck just happened. 

“You ok?” asks Koushiro, who is also by the table, loading up a plate with tortilla chips.

Yamato swigs his beer and leans against the wall, as he looks across the room to where Taichi is now attempting to follow the steps of some complicated K-pop dance routine that Mimi is walking him through.

“Did you know?” he asks, trusting Koushiro to catch on.

Koushiro comes to stand beside him, holding his paper plate. He follows Yamato’s gaze across the room and then looks back at him.

“Yes,” he says. “Well, I’d put two and two together.”

“That motherfucker.” Yamato watches as Mimi coaches Taichi through crossing one foot in front of the other, to get the turn in the middle of the routine just right. He’s laughing with her, like literally nothing out of the ordinary is happening, while Yamato is over here with his palms sweating. 

He and Taichi have never been emotionally gentle with each other, though. This, he guesses, is just more of the same. 

“Ok then,” Yamato says, definitive, as he pushes away from the wall. Taichi’s set this thing in motion. Nothing to do now but look it in the eye.

Behind him, Koushiro says, “Don’t hurt him,” and then freezes, like he has surprised himself with these words.

Yamato pauses to look back at him.

“Bullshit,” he says. “You know it’s going to be the other way around.”

Koushiro inclines his head and makes a little gesture with his hands. Reluctant agreement. 

“Want a chip?” he asks, awkwardly, offering the plate.

“No,” Yamato says, and heads for Taichi, who at least has the decency to stop dancing when he sees him. 

Taichi grins a grin that Yamato kind of wants to punch right off his face, and says, “Want Mimi to teach you how to shimmy?”

“I can shimmy.” Yamato demonstrates this, to Mimi’s extreme delight. 

“See, Taichi? That’s a professional,” she says, delivering this burn mid-spin.

“I need to talk to you,” Yamato tells Taichi, “Come outside.”

“Busted,” Taichi says, “Sorry, Mimi.”

“We’re not done with this,” Mimi warns him, barely breaking her choreography for their impending drama. “You promised me you’d learn the whole routine.”

Without another word, they put on their shoes and Yamato leads the way down to the ground floor and back out to the building’s small central courtyard. 

There, they circle one another, slowly. It’s still freezing cold, but Yamato doesn’t mind that. The temperature sharpens his senses. 

When they have stopped circling, they pause opposite one another, like rivals in a Western, waiting to draw. Yamato goes first.

“Why did you tell me that tonight?” he asks.

Infuriatingly, Taichi shrugs. “I wanted to,” he says. “What, you’d rather I make it more of a thing?”

Yamato wraps his arms around his body, gripping his elbows, embracing the chill. “You could have at least done it somewhere we could have talked about it. Instead of springing it on me out of the blue.”

Still flippant, Taichi says, “What is there to talk about?”

Yamato steps closer and holds his gaze and Taichi gets his meaning and looks so smug, and says, “Oh, well, I don’t know if that’s something you need to talk for.”

He’s a pain in the ass. But that’s part of what makes Yamato want to kiss him so badly. He leans forwards, and does just that.

“You see?” Taichi says, as they separate, unable to go even a minute without being a smartass. “Talking not required.” 

Yamato shakes his head. “Of course you have to approach this whole thing as getting one over on me.”

“Of course you have to see it like that,” Taichi says. He grips the lapels of Yamato’s denim jacket and pulls him in for another kiss, longer this time, more confident.

Yamato feels the wet slide of Taichi’s tongue against his own and thinks, Oh God, I’m screwed, because the last thing he needs is for Taichi to have any more of a hold over him than he already does, and this will absolutely be giving him too much.

It’s already way too late to worry about that, though. They end up spending the remainder of Sora’s birthday making out.

It’s the start of things between them shifting forever.

To begin with, it’s not all that different. They date in exactly the same way as they used to hang out as friends. They go to the movies or sit by the bay, drinking sodas and planning stupid trips they are never going to take - talking about backpacking around South East Asia or Europe. 

They still bicker and joke and prod at one another. Only now, it’s broken up by fooling around, feeling their way through sex that is a level up from anything either of them has ever done with anyone else.

It’s hot, but not particularly tender. They still aren’t emotionally gentle.

And then, somehow, they are this official thing. That doesn’t sink in until one of the guys from Taichi’s soccer team stops Yamato in the school hallway one day and asks, “Hey, where’s your boyfriend?” and Yamato registers that this guy is not being a dick; he’s just asking a straight-up question. Because Taichi is clearly his boyfriend. And someone is looking for him.

That night, as they lie on the floor of Yamato’s bedroom, staring at the remnants of his old glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars and planets, he finds himself asking, “Where’s all of this going? College is in a couple of months.”

“We’ll take it with us,” Taichi says, without pausing to think. “Obviously.”

They are lying head to head, and the radio is playing. This is the type of thing they do a lot now. They get each other off and then just kind of exhale together, comfortable in one another’s presence.

It’s unsettling to think that their days of doing this together are numbered.

“We’ll hardly see each other,” Yamato argues, his gaze fixed on the green tail of a rushing comet.

Taichi rolls, so he’s lying on his stomach and can look down into Yamato’s eyes.

“Hey, we’ll make it work,” he says. And then, “I love you.”

Yamato’s mouth falls open. He doesn’t know what to do, and can’t say those words back. Taichi grins and rolls back over again.

“Yeah,” he says, and folds his arms behind his head. “That’s just how I thought you’d react.”

His admission is enough, though, to start with. They go to college and force long distance to work for two whole years, planning visits and calls with militant regularity.

Yamato develops a reputation for being a total bore at parties. “Sorry, I have a boyfriend,” becomes a tedious catchphrase that his new college friends are forever teasing him about.

For all their lack of tenderness, and the fact that Yamato never does say those three little words, their loyalty isn’t ever in question. 

Until, that is, the day that Taichi sends an ominous ‘Can we talk?’ message, and Yamato calls him right away with a bad feeling in his stomach and Taichi breaks the news that he’s planning to spend the next year studying abroad, at a university in Montpellier. 

It feels like a slap in the face. International study was always meant to be part of Taichi’s degree, but Yamato has been putting this out of his mind. 

“I picked France because I already have some French, and anyway, I thought it might be easier to convince you to come visit me there than it would be if I went to, like, Spain, or wherever,” Taichi explains, his voice muted through the phone’s speaker. 

“Of course I’ll visit,” Yamato says. “It just sucks that it has to be so far.”

There’s a pause, and then Taichi says, “I know. I did ask about other options, but my tutor says that studying in Europe opens so many more doors than if you go somewhere else in Asia.” He clears his throat, the only tell that he’s not entirely comfortable with their conversation. “On the plus side, just think how much better my French will be after a whole year there. Even your mom might be impressed.”

“Nothing impresses Maman,” Yamato says and bites at his thumbnail. He already feels vulnerable and talking about his mother won’t help that.

Maybe recognising this, Taichi softens, to be as soft as Taichi gets.

“This doesn’t change anything,” he says.

“No,” Yamato agrees.

But of course it does. 

They underestimate the effects of never being together physically, and the eight-hour time difference completely fucks their tried and true schedule of keeping in touch. It means they’re always trying to cram speaking to one another into annoying, too-short gaps between lectures, or right before bed. 

Yamato becomes even more of a drag at parties. He’s forever ducking out of things to make speaking to Taichi work, and even then, for the first time, they start missing their calls.

Two months pass. Then three. The prospect of a first visit is a tantilising glimmer on the horizon. They have a plan to meet in Paris, spend a few days together there, and then catch the train down to Montpellier, maybe head to Marseilles or Toulouse, before Yamato has to fly back to Tokyo. 

But one week out, Yamato’s flights are cancelled because of air traffic control strikes. In the rush to rebook, there’s nothing available for another week, which would give them just a couple of days together before the new semester starts.

They agree that it makes sense to wait.

“It’s total bullshit,” Taichi rages, pacing his room, with the phone to his ear.

Yamato is lying on the threadbare couch in the apartment he shares with two other students, head tipped back against the cushions, his view of the room practically upside down.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, knowing this won’t help, because Taichi is always his most furious when dumb stuff like this happens – annoying, pointless shit that they have no power to control. Nothing Yamato says will change that.

Anyway, it definitely does matter. They both know they needed the visit; they’d been hanging on for it.

Without it, everything starts to fray.

Their calls become even less frequent, and when they do speak, they wind up bickering. Even worse, the lack of contact creates space for murky doubts to creep in.

Yamato starts analysing the pictures that Taichi posts to his social media, scrutinising the people he is with, zeroing in on any attractive guy, cross-referencing with other photos, checking how many times the same boy appears.  

“Who are you with?” he can’t help asking, when Taichi calls him from nights out, with music and other people’s laughter in the background.

The last straw comes unexpectedly.

Yamato is smoking on the balcony with his roommate, Masato, after a gruelling day of physics classes. Yamato doesn’t smoke that often, but Masato does. He’s a music technology major, and Yamato likes him because they have the same taste in bands and hanging out with him makes him feel connected to that other half of himself, the creative side, that he never seems to be able to give enough oxygen to these days.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” Masato says, reaching over to tap ash from his cigarette into the ashtray that is perched between them, on top of the balcony railing.

“What’s that?” Yamato says, only half paying attention. His phone is vibrating and he can see Taichi’s name flashing up on the screen. They’ve been playing phone tag for a couple of days now and he doesn’t want to miss another call.

He never does pick up the phone. What Masato says stops him in his tracks.

Later on, he calls Taichi to tell him about it.

“He likes you,” Taichi repeats, his tone flat.

“Yeah,” Yamato says, leaning back against the door to his room, where he has been hiding from the awkwardness ever since. “Obviously, I told him I wasn’t interested.”

“Did he try to kiss you?”

Yamato drags a hand over his face, re-living his earlier embarrassment. “How did you know that?”

“Did he?” Taichi prompts.

“I turned my head,” Yamato says, “He just got my cheek.”

There’s a hiss over the line, Taichi letting out a long breath through his teeth, before he says, “Why are you telling me this?” 

The question is snapped out, and his anger immediately puts Yamato on the defence. 

“It just happened, so I thought I should. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, why tell me?”

“You’d rather I keep stuff like that secret?”

“Is there more stuff like that?”

“Oh my God,” Yamato says. He can feel his pulse racing, already knowing that this is going to get bad, because this isn’t even about Masato. It’s about everything. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“You won’t pick up my fucking calls anymore, Yamato. How do you want me to be?”

Pushing away from the door, where his voice might be audible to Masato, or anyone else walking past, Yamato swaps the phone from one ear to the other and goes to stand by the window, looking out at his shitty view of broken up parts of other people’s buildings. 

“I was about to pick up right then. I only didn’t because he said that and then he lunged at me, so I was, like, dealing with that. And then I called you straight away.”

“He lives with you,” Taichi says.

“Yes. It sucks. Because now it’s super awkward.”

“Did you punch him in the face?”

“No.”

“Right,” Taichi says, smug, like this has proved some point.

“I told him ‘no’, though. I was totally clear about that.”

“I’ve seen you shoot people down before. Afterwards, they’re not coming near you again.”

“I guess,” Yamato says, wary, not sure where this is going. 

“So, that’s how you’ve left it with him, right? You’ve torn him a new one and now he’s going to move out and not speak to you again.”

“Taichi,” Yamato starts, “he’s my friend, and…”

“Ok,” Taichi cuts him off. “We’re done speaking about this. Go fuck your roomate and have fun.”

Before Yamato can say another word, Taichi has hung up the call. And he doesn’t pick up when, furious, Yamato calls him three times in a row, and then flings his phone across the room in frustration.

It takes two days for them both to cool down enough to speak again. More than once, Yamato has thought about actually fucking Masato, just out of spite. He doesn’t. But when Taichi finally calls him, on the third day, his walls are well and truly up.

“I’m sorry,” Taichi says, and sounds it.

“You’re such an asshole,” Yamato tells him.

“I know,” Taichi says, which Yamato guesses is a first step. At least he’s admitting it. He takes a breath and then adds, “I don’t like how all of this is making me feel.”

“Me neither.” Yamato is about to go to bed. He is already in his pyjamas, with the covers pulled up around him and the music magazine he’s been reading splayed out across his thighs. He’s tired and cosy and feels ready to forgive, because it’s the stress of their situation that is making Taichi act this way. All they need is to see one another again and they’ll be able to get this back on track.

But Taichi says, “I’ve been thinking,” and there’s something in his voice there that makes Yamato’s hackles raise, even before he adds, “That maybe we should just hit pause on everything.”

Yamato stares at the wall on the other side of the room, as a wave of something sickening washes through him. 

“It’s really hard being together like this,” Taichi continues. “It doesn’t feel healthy anymore.”

His words sound rehearsed, and it hits Yamato that this is premeditated. Already decided. Not open to discussion.

All at once, Yamato’s rage from the other day returns, full-force. “Are you shitting me?”

“I think it’s for the best,” Taichi says. “At least while I’m out here. We both need some breathing space to just live normally for a bit.” 

“What the hell does ‘live normally’ mean?”

Taichi sighs. “I don’t know, Yamato, to be able to go to sleep at a normal time without worrying that it’ll piss you off. To be able to hang out with people without knowing I’ll get the third degree. To not constantly feel like a psychopath, driving myself crazy wondering why you didn’t beat the crap out of that guy when he tried to kiss you.”

“Caveman shit, then,” Yamato says. “You’re threatened I might be fucking about on you. And instead of attempting to address that with me like an adult, you want to create the space to get your own back with some French boys without feeling bad about yourself.”

“No,” Taichi says.

“Yes,” Yamato insists.

“Whatever you think,” Taichi says, adopting an infuriatingly patronising tone of utmost calm. 

“Don’t fucking talk to me like that,” Yamato snaps.

“Look,” Taichi says, “if we come back together in a few months and it still feels right, then maybe we pick up where we left off.”

Yamato shakes his head, in disbelief. “Fuck you, so very hard,” he says, and this time, he is the one to hang up the call.

An hour later, he is lying in bed, not able to sleep, when three messages from Taichi light up his phone.

I need to explain, the first one reads.

This is followed by, Trying to be together when we can’t actually be together is making me into someone I don’t like.

And finally, I still love you.

But Yamato knows how break ups work, and he’s not in the mood to try to help Taichi feel better about his choices.

He replies with just one word. Don’t.  

It’s the last message that either of them sends, until, months later, Yamato picks up his phone in his father’s kitchen, and reads, You still coming tonight? Looking forward to seeing you.

*

Fort Worth, 2019

Behind the man in the cap, the sky is beginning to darken again, with clouds that threaten another bout of rain. They stand there, the three of them, until Yamato pulls his arm free from Taichi’s grasp and steps forwards. 

“Who are you?” he asks.

The man removes his cap. “My name’s Koushiro. Perhaps we should go somewhere to talk.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Taichi says. “If we’re talking, we’re doing it right here.”

Koushiro glances up at the sky, taking in the building clouds, making his point with his gaze.

“I’d rather get wet,” Taichi says. This guy gives him the same creeping feeling of suspicion he’d had when looking at that photo of Jane Doe.

“Ok,” Koushiro says, mildly, and turns his attention to Yamato, who considers him for a moment, before stepping back again, putting himself shoulder to shoulder with Taichi once more. 

“Sorry,” Yamato says. “I cover crime. I don’t trust anyone I’ve just met.”

Koushiro indicates Taichi, gesturing with the cap. “Except for him. Right?” 

“Hey, if we’re talking here, let’s get to it,” Taichi interrupts. “He asked who you are. Giving us a random name doesn’t cut it.”

Koushiro holds up his hands, showing them two small palms, the band of his cap gripped awkwardly by one hooked thumb. He couldn’t be less of a threatening figure, but for some reason, that doesn’t put Taichi at ease at all. 

“I don’t have anything to hide,” Koushiro says. “I can answer all of your questions. I just want you to know that it’s going to be a lot to take in. And that you might want to be sitting down for it. With some food. Or a beer. To soften the blow.” He shrugs. “That’s only what I’d suggest.”

There’s a rumble in the distance, thunder hustling towards them.

Unsure now, Taichi looks at Yamato, who is staring down at his phone, at the picture he took of the characters scratched into the wall. He glances up at Taichi and says, “There are a lot of questions.”

Still with his hands raised, like one of them is training a gun on him, Koushiro gestures eagerly with a finger towards the phone in Yamato’s hands.

“You want to know what that says? I can tell you. Hikari left it. In English, it translates to ‘we won’t stop until we bring you home’.” 

Chapter Text

Tokyo, 2010 - another lifetime

The reunion dinner is taking place in the exact same events hall where their high school graduation ceremony was held, which is corny, but whatever. At least Yamato already knows how to get there.

The steps up to the building’s doors are crowded with old, familiar faces. Girls flash peace signs for photographs, while guys hug and shove one another like teenagers. 

Yamato trudges through it all, wishing he could have just stayed at home. 

He walks under a decorative archway made of blue and silver balloons and steps into the hall, where a large disco ball is turning above a collection of white-draped tables and a stage hung with indigo curtains. It looks dated, but that’s the point, according to the girl manning the archway, who checks his name against a list and hands him a paper ticket with his table number on it. 

“Do you like it? It’s eighties themed,” she says, noticing him staring at the disco ball, “To mark the fact that we’re all eighties babies!”

“Sure,” Yamato says, non-committal, because he’s obviously not going to tell her what he really thinks of the decor. Anyway, he’s got bigger problems tonight.

A quick scan of the room shows him that Taichi is already here, standing with Sora and a couple of people who used to be in their homeroom class. He looks relaxed, chatting to them with his hands in his pockets, sporting a Mediterranean suntan and a well-fitting navy blue shirt that someone, who wasn’t Yamato, has clearly picked out for him.

It’s that shirt, more than anything else, that really solidifies the leaden weight that has settled in the pit of Yamato’s stomach.

Across the room, Sora catches his gaze and gives him a little wave before excusing herself from the conversation and heading his way. Taichi, thankfully, stays where he is. 

“Hey,” Sora says, smiling, reaching to hug Yamato hello. “I wasn’t sure if you’d show up.”

“I had to,” he says, returning her embrace. “Can’t look like I’m avoiding anything.”

“Nobody would think you were. They’d just figure this isn’t your scene. Which, let’s be honest…” Sora lifts her gaze towards the ceiling and its slowly turning disco ball.

“I know, it’s hideous. The opposite of my scene,” Yamato confirms. “He’ll think I’m avoiding things, though.” 

They both know who he means. Sora glances back, towards the conversation she has just left.

Yamato refuses to look over there. But he does ask, “How is he?”

“He’s good,” Sora says. “Or, he’s doing a good impression of seeming good.”

“How authentic an impression, in your opinion?”

Sora smooths her hands over the front of the jumpsuit she’s wearing, brushing invisible wrinkles out of the fabric. It’s a shade of chocolate brown that perfectly compliments her hair and eyes. 

“Well,” she says, “the first question he asked me when I got here was whether I’d seen you yet.”

“Oh, come on,” Yamato says, rolling his eyes, instantly annoyed, because of course Taichi has already won their best mutual friend in the room over to his side

Picking up on his irritation, Sora reaches a placating hand to his arm. “You’re not the only one walking in here with baggage. That’s all I’m saying.” 

“He dumped me,” Yamato reminds her, raising his eyebrows, to drive this point home. “Over the phone.”

“That’s not how he tells it,” Sora says.

“It wouldn’t be, would it?”

Sora squeezes his arm before releasing it, in such a Taichi-esque gesture that Yamato wonders if she’s been coached in advance to play that move. 

“Which table are you on?” she asks, changing the subject.

Yamato checks his ticket. “Twenty-four.”

“Oh,” Sora says, in a controlled deadpan – a strange reaction, Yamato thinks, until ten minutes later, when they are asked to take their seats, and he sees the name on the card at the place next to his own.

“God damn it,” he says, picking up the card with Taichi’s name, wondering if he can swap it with someone else’s before anyone catches him doing it.

But it’s already too late. Because this whole night, and Yamato’s entire life, truly sucks, Taichi is suddenly standing at his side and reaching over to take the card from him.

“If you’re going to try to sabotage this, you need to be more subtle about it,” Taichi says, setting the name card back down in its rightful place, “Instead of standing there scowling at my name in front of everyone.”

“I wasn’t going to sabotage anything,” Yamato lies, “I just thought you might not want to sit next to me all night. I was doing you a favour. Giving you an out.”

“My hero,” Taichi says, and pulls Yamato’s chair out for him.

It’s a challenge. No question about that. Unable to do anything else but meet it, Yamato sits down.

On the stage, a couple of guys who used to be in the school’s AV society are adjusting a microphone, plugging in speakers. Yamato recognises them both from running the tech for gigs he played, back in school. They’re not part of the reunion. He thinks they were in Koushiro’s grade. 

Two of the members of his old band are here tonight. He’d sort of assumed he might be sat with one of them, Kentaro, because his surname is Ito, and in the past that’s always placed them near to one another at events like this.

Yamato looks down at the place setting in front of him. It’s western-style, with lines of cutlery for different courses, but there’s also a pair of black chopsticks set neatly on a ceramic rest, just in case. 

“Of course we have to be sitting next to each other,” he says, reaching out to adjust the already straight chopsticks, wishing it was Kentaro beside him instead.

“Sorry,” Taichi says, conversational, as he takes his seat. “I pulled some strings. Everyone else is alphabetical. But Gaku set this whole thing up, and he’s my boy. So, you know. Was happy to help. His dad’s firm is bankrolling this whole event for the school.”

Frowning, Yamato glances at the place card on the other side of his seat. It’s for Yoshida Emi; another ‘Y’. Confused, he turns to Taichi.

“Why would you do that? Did you want to make this as awkward and uncomfortable for us as possible?”

“No, I wanted to sit next to you. And I didn’t think I’d get to otherwise.”

They stare at one another, and Yamato feels the lead inside his stomach start to melt a little, in a creeping return of the comfortable ease he’d usually feel around Taichi. He resists the urge to squash that feeling. He’s going to need it to get him through this appalling evening.

“Gaku,” he says. “Centre forward?”

Taichi nods. “Good memory.” 

“Tell him his decorating sucks.”

“Tell him yourself,” Taichi says, with a laugh. “His name’s Yamaguchi. He’s sitting right across the table from us.”

Gaku’s oblivious, chatting to the girl sitting next to him, on the other side the table’s floral centrepiece.

Yamato can’t help ducking his head in embarrassment, anyway. “You could have warned me,” he hisses to Taichi, who laughs again.

“I had no idea you were about to start criticising his disco ball.”

“Then you don’t know me at all.”

They both look up to the ceiling, with its twirling, mirrored monstrosity.

“He loves that thing,” Taichi says. “He was so excited that he texted me to tell me about it twice.”

Yamato shakes his head. “I don’t think disco balls are even really eighties. You might need to break that to him.”

Waiting staff are beginning to circulate the tables, pouring wine, topping flutes with prosecco. 

Taichi moves his glass a little nearer to their waitress, smiling with all of his charm to thank her, as she pours. “How would you have decorated, then? Mr interiors guru?”

“Normal,” Yamato says, watching as the white foam at the top of his champagne flute melts into pale yellow. “I’d have made it normal.”

“No, that’s no good.” Taichi skips the bubbles and lifts his wine glass, which is filled with red. “You have to have a theme.”

They are well into discussing party decor as the wait staff start setting down the first plates of food, and, by the time their main course arrives, this has moved into house decorating.

They’re not getting deep here, but deep probably isn’t what they need right now.

There is something soothing about the mundanity of discussing colour schemes and furniture options with Taichi, like they can somehow sidestep all their recent issues and head right back down the path they were always meant to be on: finishing college, cohabiting. Being together.

The speeches begin as dessert arrives. Gaku is first, thanking people for coming, hoping they’ll be able to do this again in five years’ time, reminiscing about the good old days of high school.

Halfway through Gaku’s anecdote about him starring in the school play, Taichi leans over and whispers to Yamato, “Oh man, he still loves the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he?”

Yamato, who is leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed and his wine glass in hand, smirks at him. “Are you kidding?”

“What?”

“Have you met yourself? I’ve never heard such a shocking lack of self awareness.”

Taichi reaches for the bottle of white that their server has left gathering condensation in a wine bucket on the table and offers it to Yamato. “I don’t ramble on like that.” 

“You absolutely do.” Yamato holds out his glass for Taichi to pour into. He’s already had a lot of wine this evening, but fuck it. Drinking is making all of this way easier to handle. 

Taichi finishes the bottle, pouring the last of it into his own glass, not caring about the dregs of red still at the bottom. He sits back with his glass of pink-tinged white, and studies Gaku at the microphone, before saying, “Also, what’s up with his outfit?”

Yamato half chokes on his next mouthful of wine, because of course Gaku’s weird velvet suit is terrible, but he wouldn’t have expected Taichi to be the one to draw attention to it.

“Maybe he was aiming for eighties with that, too,” Yamato suggests.

They’re leaning their heads close now, keeping their bitchy comments just between the two of them.

“He’s missed, though,” Taichi says. “Right?”

Yamato nods. “By a long way.”

Taichi swallows a mouthful of his pink wine and pulls a face at the taste.

Yamato gestures towards his glass. “What would your French friends think about you mixing red and white like that?”

“Oh, they’d be horrified. But they already think I have no class.”

“They’re right about that.” Yamato sips his own wine, relishing the pure white.

“Hey, at least I’m not dressed like Gaku. That’s something.” 

“No, you actually look okay tonight.” Yamato eyes that blue shirt, and then, finally, reaches out to touch Taichi’s sleeve. “I like this. Who chose it?”

Taichi sets his glass down and leans one elbow on the table, half turned towards Yamato. “I couldn’t pick something you like out for myself?”

Yamato copies his posture, leaning his chin in his hand. He says nothing, just raises his eyebrows. 

“Mimi,” Taichi admits, then. “She chose it. I had to ask her for her advice. I didn’t want to look like shit when I first saw you again.”

Yamato reaches out to touch the shirt again, brushing fingers over the fabric, this time leaving his hand on Taichi’s arm. “You don’t,” he says.

It’s the closest that either of them gets to asking for forgiveness.

The drone of the microphone has faded to nothing. The disco ball scatters them with harmless circles of light. They’re only focussed, now, on each other.

They spend the rest of the evening sitting through endless speeches, getting steadily more drunk, whispering together, passing judgement on their old classmates, trying to contain their laughter. 

When the seated portion of the event is over, and everyone is excused to the dance floor, where the DJ is just starting to warm up his decks, Taichi says, “Do you want to go for a drink?”

Yamato discards the napkin that was draped over his thighs. “We just spent all evening drinking.”

“I know, but do you want to go for another drink,” Taichi says, as he stands up. “Somewhere better?” 

There’s a squeal from a badly connected speaker, bursts of drunken laughter.

Really, it’s a no-brainer.

“Yes,” Yamato says, and tucks his chair under the table. “I do.”

And so, they leave the hall together and head to a basement bar two blocks over, where they sit at a table in a corner, drinking margaritas in salt-rimmed glasses, reminiscing and getting steadily more and more back into one another. 

The night ends, shamefully, with them abandoning their final round of cocktails and locking themselves in a stall in the bathrooms, where they get each other off for the first time in nearly a year.

“Are you still mad at me?” Taichi says, chasing the question with a kiss, his teeth tugging at Yamato’s bottom lip, the feel of his mouth so very familiar.

“Yes,” Yamato says, as soon as he finds the space to speak. “A little.”

“Good,” Taichi says, with a grin, and then drops to his knees on the bathroom tile. “I kind of like this when you’re mad at me.”

*

Fort Worth, 2019

“How much do either of you know about multiverse theory?”

Koushiro asks this question in between licks of his ice cream cone, as rain pounds down on the other side of the restaurant windows.

They’d made it into the car just as fresh drops were starting to fall, and had stopped at pretty much the first place they had come to, a chain restaurant serving ice cream and burgers – not somewhere Taichi goes often, but usually good for a quick stop. 

Now, they are sitting at a table together, surrounded by families and couples and other normal people doing normal things, while they have perhaps the most insane conversation of Taichi’s life. 

“What, like in sci fi?” he asks, around a bite of his cheeseburger.

“Yes, I imagine that’s where you might have come across the idea, but it originates from the study of quantum physics.”

Here, Koushiro looks expectantly at Yamato, who just blinks and looks away, his hands curled around his cup of black coffee. 

“I’m regretting not getting food,” Yamato says.

Still chewing, Taichi hands his burger over to him for a bite. Koushiro’s eyes follow the gesture, as interested in this as he seems to be in everything.

“So, you guys are…” He trails off politely, not wanting to draw attention to something that might not be true.

“What’s it to you?” Taichi picks up a wad of napkins from the table and passes those Yamato’s way too, because that burger is slathered in sauce.

“It’s not really any of my business, of course,” Koushiro says, and runs his tongue around the ball of orange sherbet in his cone, catching the melting drips. “I’m trying to think of ways to explain. The Yamato I know has a physics background, and that always makes things a lot easier. It’s helpful, you know? For translation purposes.” 

“What do you mean, ‘the Yamato you know’?” Taichi asks.

“I’m getting to it. Hold this.” Koushiro hands him his sticky cone and heaves his rucksack off the floor, as he says, “Quantum multiverse theory speculates that there are multiple universes, all coexisting. It’s a way of explaining how human beings are connected to the quantum world.” 

He pulls a paper folder from a pocket of the rucksack and pauses to stare out of the window for a moment, thoughtful, before he turns back to them, and says, “Do you have that movie here, Sliding Doors?”

“From the nineties,” Yamato says. “Gwyneth Paltrow misses a train, or something? And the film shows how her life goes after missing the train, but also how it would have turned out if she hadn’t missed it.”

Koushiro nods. “Right. Quantum multiverse theory suggests that different possibilities split into different universes. The idea is that all of us experience multiple realities, without ever realising it.” 

“Can I give this back?” Taichi asks. He’s still holding the ice cream cone, and sweet orange trails are beginning to run over his knuckles.

“One second.” Koushiro flips open his folder, which has the name ‘Izumi Laboratories’ printed across the top, and then grabs a bundle of napkins to safely take the messy cone, entirely focussed on continuing to deliver his sci-fi lecture. “You see, somewhere out there in time and space, another Koushiro arrived on that street too late to bump into you guys. And now, instead of sitting here, enjoying a delicious ice cream cone, he’s still out there, taking shelter from the rain.”

“Sucks to be that Koushiro,” Taichi says and wipes his hand on his jeans.

“Indeed. But there’s also a Koushiro out there who is having an even better time than I am. Theoretically, we all have these doppelgangers, who are living other lives, where something went differently.” 

“Doppelgangers,” Yamato repeats.

“Yes,” Koushiro says, looking at him. “They’re–”

“I know what they are,” Yamato interrupts. “What I don’t understand is the point of explaining all this to us.”

“Yeah,” Taichi says, with a chuckle. “I mean, it’s not like you’re going to tell us that you’ve come from a different reality.” 

In the background, over by the ice cream counter, a child is wailing, demanding sprinkles. Outside, the rain has turned into hail, tiny balls of ice that rattle over car roofs and bounce when they hit the ground.

“Well,” Koushiro says, and then holds his hands out in a ‘what do you expect me to say?’ kind of gesture. Stops short of saying something that they all know is unbelievable.

At the other side of the restaurant, sprinkle-gate is escalating, the child picked up by his father, carried forcibly to a table, still red-faced and swinging.

“Bullshit,” Yamato says. He scoffs, pushes his coffee cup away. “This Yamato might not have a ‘physics background’, but I’d bet that people travelling between these theoretical realities wasn’t part of the original proposition.”

“No,” Koushiro says. And then, “I know it sounds improbable.”

Yamato’s anger rolls over them. It tumbles in, out of nowhere, fast as the hail clouds outside.

Leaning both hands on the table, he stares Koushiro down.

“Why are you wasting our time with this? Who the fuck are you, really?” 

Clearly, all the talk of doppelgangers has gotten his back up. It’s Berlin all over again, his nerves making him lash out.

“Okay,” Taichi says, putting a hand out in front of him, because he hasn’t seen this aggressive side of Yamato before and while, ok, yes, it’s kind of hot, getting mad isn’t going to do anything to make this situation any clearer. 

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Yamato snaps, turning his venom Taichi’s way.

Taichi meets his gaze, speaks slow. “I’m not. Just let me,” he says, meaning: I’ve got a plan here. Meaning: please trust me. 

He tries to send this nonverbal message with the whole of his being, and Yamato seems to get it, slumping back in his seat, arms folded, still marking Koushiro with his stare, but at least not being as openly confrontational.

One threat neutralised, Taichi turns to Koushiro, who looks back at him mildly, seeming unaffected, or at least unsurprised, by Yamato’s outburst. He bites into the edge of his waffle cone, with a crunch. 

Taichi tries to gauge what this man’s mental state might be. He seems both harmless and oddly dangerous, at the same time, and Taichi’s not sure where that leaves them.

He’s been around people with delusions before, though, and one thing he knows is that denying beliefs, or calling people crazy for having them, is never the best way to make them open up to you.

“I want to know more about your reality,” he says, neutral as he can. 

Koushiro shrugs, agreeable. “What would you like to know?”

“You say that you know me and Yamato. So, that means that versions of us exist where you come from.”

“Correct.”

“How do you know us there? What are we to you?”

For the first time since they sat down together, a shiver of emotion crosses Koushiro’s face. He looks momentarily sad, lowering his eyes, laying his palm on top of the documents in his folder, the top page of which is covered in dense word-processed text, in what looks to be the same language that was scratched into the wall.

“We’re old and very close friends. Since we were children.”

“I’m sorry,” Taichi says, his psychology training boosters firing automatically to validate the signs of emotion. “It must be really difficult for you to not be recognised by someone you feel close to.”

Koushiro looks up at him, bemused. “Wow, that response is very not on brand with the Taichi I know.”

“Is that Taichi different to me?”

“Yes,” Koushiro says. “And no.”

“Would you like to tell me about him?”

There’s a pause. Yamato shifts in his seat, but Taichi doesn’t look over at him. He keeps his eyes on Koushiro, who is starting to shuffle through the pages in his folder. 

“I can show him to you,” he says, and passes over a photograph that had been tucked between sheets of A4.

It’s an old-school Kodak print, a glossy oblong, slightly off-colour, from back before every image was digital, taken with a real camera shutter and not a tap on a screen. It shows a group of teenagers – Taichi judges them to be around sixteen or seventeen – standing together on a beach. 

As he is scrutinising the picture, Koushiro reaches across the table and points with a fingertip to the boy right at the centre of the image, his arms around the people on either side of him. A feeling of dread rushes over Taichi, then, because that boy has his face.

“Oh shit,” Yamato murmurs, leaning over to look at the picture. He’s in it, too – or a younger version of him is, standing on one side of Taichi. The person to Taichi’s other side is Koushiro. 

“That’s from when we were in high school,” Koushiro says, moving his finger.

Taichi doesn’t know how to react anymore. He lays the photo down on the table. Either he is looking at an elaborate photoshop, or this guy is telling them the truth. 

“Jane Doe,” Yamato says, then, and Taichi follows his fingertip, sees the face of the girl they have spent all day tracking. She’s younger here, and standing next to someone who has to be the same boy who went missing in Berlin.

“Her real name is Hikari,” Koushiro says. “Where I come from, she’s your little sister. And this is Takeru.” He indicates the blonde boy beside her. “He’s your brother, Yamato.”

But Yamato is no longer looking down at the picture of the beach. “What the hell is that?” he blurts.

“What?”

“That big insect thing.” He’s pointing across the table, to where another snapshop is poking out from between sheets of paper.

Only half the picture is visible, but it clearly shows Koushiro, standing beside a red, beetle-like creature about the size of dog. It’s a robot, or something, Taichi thinks – an animatronic, like you might see in a theme park ride – with glassy green eyes that seem to stare right at him.

Before Taichi can get a better look at it, Koushiro has tucked that picture back out of sight, closing the folder, pulling the beach photograph towards him, too.

“That’s something else that I need to explain,” he says, already beginning to pack the folder away, as he takes one last bite of his ice cream cone. “We need to have that conversation in a much less public place.”

Chapter Text

Tokyo, 2010 - another lifetime

For a while, things between them are good. Great, even.

After graduation, they finally rent an apartment together, in a quiet street on the outskirts of Shimokitazawa. There’s a vintage clothing shop on the corner and a hipster vinyl store slash night cafe two doors down. Half their neighbours are pensioners who have lived in their houses for years. The other half are like them - millenials looking for a calmer lifestyle than the frenetic pace of more central areas.

The apartment itself is very cute, with tatami and screen doors and the tiniest kitchen that Yamato has ever seen. He soon has that little space running with military precision – utensils organised and arranged in easy-to-reach containers, pans on wall hooks, herbs and spices lined up in their rack.

Possibly for the first time in his life, Yamato starts to feel like he has an honest to God home.

The apartment block is an old building. They are only two floors above the street, which feels wild compared to the high rises they both grew up in. Their little balcony terrace, off the sitting room, seems almost low enough to reach out and touch the suspended electricity wires, or high-five the riders of passing mopeds that occasionally come roaring by. 

Whoever lived here before them left the terrace filled with plants in clay pots, which they’d been unable or unwilling to take with them when they moved. The plants start out as a host of unidentifiable green shrubs, but explode in colour as summer arrives. 

Soon, they have tomatoes and chilli peppers and sunflowers under their care. Yamato feels some responsibility for keeping these inherited charges alive. He spends evenings Googling how not to kill runner beans, or how much water sweet peas need when they’re enduring the heat of a Tokyo summer. 

For a while, Taichi gets really into the chilli peppers, starts gathering and drying them and bashing them down to experiment with making dishes inspired by the food that his Algerian roommate would make for him in Montpellier. He gets bored of this quickly, though, and soon relinquishes the kitchen — and the plants — back to Yamato’s control. And thank God for that because Yamato can’t deal with him constantly fucking up the carefully-organised utensils. 

That’s not the last they see of the chillis, though. Months later, Yamato is still finding forgotten stashes of wrinkled, darkened jalapenos and serranos, in cupboards and drawers.

“More of these,” he says, one evening, slamming a mug filled with dried peppers down in front of Taichi, along with a bowl of udon.

Taichi glances carelessly at the chillis, and shakes his head. “Where are they still coming from? I swear this is more than I ever picked. I mean, this is borderline supernatural at this point.” He’s already slurping his noodles before Yamato has even made it to the table with his own bowl.

“What, you think we have a chilli fairy?” Yamato says, picking up his chopsticks. “Spreading peppers all around the house?”

“Chilli gremlin,” Taichi says, grinning at him. He rattles the dried chilis in their mug. “He brings the spice party.”

“You’re the chilli gremlin. It’s like a fucking biblical plague in here.” Yamato hooks up a first mouthful of noodles between the points of his chopsticks, then pauses before taking a bite. This conversation is making him want chilli oil. He puts his chopsticks down and gets up to fetch it.

“Or maybe it’s a poltergeist,” Taichi says, twisting in his seat, so he can follow Yamato’s movements around the kitchen as he gets the oil from the cupboard, and then returns to the table. “That all starts with them moving your shit around, right?”

“Don’t you dare make me scared of this house,” Yamato warns, pulling his chair back in, ignoring Taichi’s teasing smile, “I love it here too much.”

It would be easy for them to constantly clash over things like the chili plague, or the state of the apartment, or how they spend their free time, but — to begin with, at least — this just doesn’t happen. Taichi’s out working every day and Yamato is so focussed on getting through his masters. 

If Yamato shoulders more of the housework, it kind of doesn’t bother him. He’s used to it; he did all that when he was living with his dad. Anyway, he cares more about things being clean than Taichi does, so he’d rather do it himself and do it right, than have Taichi fuck it up. 

It’s not like Taichi doesn’t pull his weight, either. He’s always on the phone to one utility company or another, haggling for a better price on a contract that Yamato had no idea was even about to expire.

And it’s his charm offensive against their neighbours that has allowed them to integrate into the community in a way that some of the other young couples in the area haven’t been able to. Mr. Sakamoto, an old handyman from the ground floor is always offering to help them fix things that go beyond their own DIY skills, and the two retired sisters down the hall now leave freshly baked goods on their doorstep at least once a week. Even amongst a bunch of pensioners, Taichi still manages to be the most popular kid in school.

The only thing that really seems to be a long-term threat is their complete inability to make time for one another.

Once Yamato is finally through studying, he’s working all hours, just like Taichi. They’re both ambitious, dogged in pushing forwards with graduate schemes and training contracts.

Beyond that, they still have their own hobbies and their own friends and actually don’t see that much of each other. They fuck a lot. So, there’s that. But sometimes it feels like the only time they spend together where one of them is not inside the other is on weekends. Sometimes, Yamato wonders how healthy that is. 

For now, though, it works for them. Three years trickle by like that. Then four. 

And then, for no obvious reason, something starts to slip.

Not long after Taichi turns twenty-six, they take an unprecedented three-week vacation. It’s on the back of a really intense period of work for the both of them. Taichi is knee-deep in a new role with the French consulate, and after seemingly endless hours of interning and grunt work, Yamato is finally about to step into his dream job as a junior dynamics engineer for Kawasaki. 

Neither of them is able to tolerate the idea of staying still for three weeks, so they plan a whistle-stop tour of a little patch of South-East Asia: Vietnam to Cambodia to Laos.

It’s not really a relaxing time; it’s heaving overloaded rucksacks onto the luggage racks of sleeper buses, sweating in tuk tuks and muddling through train stations where neither of them speak the language. It’s exhilarating, though. A return to the kind of adventuring they used to be so good at, before adult life so soundly caught up to them. 

Looking back, if he’s honest, Yamato had a sense deep down of something not being quite right. Perhaps Taichi felt that too; perhaps that’s why they’d planned the trip the way they had, leaving themselves no opportunity to stop and breathe and take stock.

They race from place to place, neatly sidestepping any kind of analysis, all the while outrunning whatever it is that’s hovering in the background. 

And in amongst all that running – through the crowds, and the sweat, and the confusion – there are moments of true brilliance. 

One evening, they stand together on the bow of a Chinese junk boat, drifting through Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, awed by the collection of towering limestone islands that jut from the water, like rainforest-covered tower blocks.

The sunset turns the sky a hazy purple-pink, and the glowing colours reflect in the rippling motion of the waves. 

Taichi faces the ocean breeze, beaming, so different to the suit-clad version of himself that Yamato usually sees, rushing out of the door each morning, with his laptop bag and a home-brewed latte in a travel cup.

“This is so fucking Titanic,” Taichi jokes, and throws his arms out to the sides. “I’m flying, Jack.”

Yamato leans against the railings and raises an eyebrow at him. The cool sea air feels lucious on his skin, after the sticky heat of the day.

“If this boat goes down, I’m not freezing to death so you get to live,” he says. “Just making that clear up front.”

Taichi turns towards him, and props a foot on the bottom rung of the railing between them. “Aw, but I’d freeze for you, babe.”

“Thank you,” Yamato says, and pointedly leaves it there. 

Taichi laughs at him, sidles closer, wraps both arms around him. The roughness of his five-o-clock shadow tickles against the skin of Yamato’s neck as he murmurs, “I’m always going to love you more than you love me, aren’t I?”

“No,” Yamato says. “I just think anyone freezing to death is stupid. They really could have organised that whole situation better.”

Taichi laughs again. “You suck so very hard sometimes. Do you know that?”

Yamato bends in his arms, twisting the position so that he can brush his lips against Taichi’s. “Let’s go down to the cabin,” he says, “and I’ll show you how hard.”

Below deck, enclosed in the darkness of the cabin that is theirs for the night, Yamato lets Taichi thrust into his mouth until he comes, swallowing everything, not letting up until Taichi begs him to stop.

“You never say what I want you to say,” Taichi complains, afterwards, loose and sweaty, clambering onto his hands and knees in the perfect white sheets.

“I know,” Yamato says, and grips Taichi’s hips. He pushes into him, moving in time with the rocking of the boat.

There are so many moments like this, where they get caught on the edge of this push-pull of something. It’s like they’re locked in a battle for the soul of what their relationship is supposed to be. 

There’s no winner. There never is.

They end the trip in Laos, passing through Vientiane and then heading north to the ancient capital of Luang Prabang. They have been frugal for most of the trip, but here, they check into a hotel that is a true splurge. It’s an old colonial building, white fronted, with shuttered windows and an expansive pool. The rooms have four-poster beds, draped in white linen and cool, stone-tiled floors. 

That night, they eat at the hotel restaurant, clinking their glasses together over plates of steamed fish in banana leaf, fragrant green mango salad, and bundles of sticky rice. There’s a sense of their being on the clock, an awareness that the vacation is nearly over and that they don’t have much time before the reality of life at home comes crashing back in on them. 

It’s a chance for both of them to get things off their chests.

“I know I don’t say it,” Yamato says, sipping his wine. “But you know. Right?”

Taichi nods, and picks up his knife and fork, digs into his portion of the fish. “Yeah. I know.”

Yamato watches him eat for a moment, before setting his glass down and reaching for his own knife and fork. The restaurant is quiet. They’re eating late, and there are only a handful of other couples dotted around. The background music is low, half drowned out by the melodic chirps and rattles of nighttime insects.

“I want to ask you something,” Taichi says, in between bites. “How do you feel about kids?”

Yamato tilts his head, as he slices into his fish. The question is so far off his radar that it doesn’t even make sense to him, at first. “What do you mean?”

“Children. You know. Do you want to have a family?”

Yamato goes still, his loaded fork hovering in the air. “We’re twenty-six,” he says.

“I know. But we’re a same sex couple. It wouldn’t be straightforward. And we’ve never actually talked about it. So, I wanted to ask where you stand.”

Taichi is staring at him so earnestly. Rattled, Yamato lifts the forkful of fish to his mouth, buys himself time chewing and swallowing it.

“I haven’t really considered,” he says, eventually. “I guess I never thought it was on the table.”

Taichi nods, reaching for the mango salad, dishing piles of dressed golden fruit onto his plate. “We could make it work. We’d just have to be smart about it. It would take some planning.”

Yamato puts his fork down. All of the food suddenly looks unappealing. “So, this is something you’ve really thought about.”  

“Yeah. I definitely want a big family.” Ignoring the fact that Yamato has stopped eating, Taichi stretches forwards with the serving spoon, heaps mango onto his plate for him. “You have to try this. It’s amazing.”

“How big? Since when?”

“I don’t know. The bigger the better. And I’ve always wanted a family. You knew that.” 

Yamato feels like their future is unravelling in front of him. “Taichi. This is literally the first time you’ve ever mentioned this in all the time I’ve known you,” he says, and when Taichi looks up at him, dismissive, he points his finger at him for emphasis. “No. I’ve never once heard you talk about wanting a family.”

Taichi picks up his wine glass. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t think I want children.” 

As soon as the words are out of Yamato’s mouth, he knows they are completely true.

They stare at one another, the silence only broken by their waitress approaching, to refill their water glasses and ask if they are enjoying their food.

“It’s delicious,” Yamato tells her, which isn’t a lie; the one bite of fish he’d managed to eat had tasted very good. 

Uncharacteristically, Taichi does not even acknowledge her. He just sits there, silent, waiting until she has walked away, before he leans forwards, and says to Yamato, “How can you be that sure? You just said you haven’t even thought about it.”

“I haven’t thought about it,” Yamato says, “because it’s not something I’ve ever wanted.”

They stare at one another again, both calculating, like competitors over a chess board, waiting to see the next move.

“I’m sorry,” Yamato finds himself saying.

Taichi sits back in his chair, clutching his wine glass. He narrows his eyes thoughtfully and then says, “I think you’ll change your mind.”

“Taichi,” Yamato warns. “Don’t do that.”

But Taichi just shakes his head, and starts eating again. “I’m not doing anything,” he says. 

They finish their meal in uncomfortable silence, something that never happens to them. No matter what is going on, the conversation always flows. 

Later, they go back to their room and Taichi surprises Yamato by turning towards him and kissing him deeply, the moment the door is closed. Sex is how they would usually resolve an argument, so it isn’t exactly out of the ordinary as Taichi guides him back against the nearest wall, and starts peeling the clothes off of him. 

They haven’t really argued, though. Their conversation at dinner was something different, and fucking is maybe not the best way to process it.

More than once, Yamato thinks about putting a stop to things, but he’s never called time on sex with Taichi before, has never felt the need to, and it seems easier to just move through the familiar steps, when, more than anything, what they need now is to make this night normal.

Soon, they are both naked, have done all the usual prep, and Yamato has his palms braced against the wall, pressing his body backwards. It’s maybe one of their more challenging positions, but definitely not impossible. Right now, though, something isn’t hitting quite right.

“Ouch, Taichi,” Yamato says, reaching a hand back, as Taichi pushes forwards, “give me a second.”

Instantly, Taichi stops, startled; usually, things between them are smooth as clockwork. 

“Shit. Sorry.” He bows his head, brushes his lips over the back of Yamato’s neck. “You need a second, or you want to stop?”

Yamato shifts his hips, fixing the angles. Breathes. Releases. He’s struggling to relax.

Something about this feels like a test that he doesn’t want them to fail.

“Alright,” he says, urging Taichi forwards. “Come on.”

Taichi goes slow, repeatedly asks if Yamato is ok, because he’s not an asshole, and Yamato nods, and plays his part and presses back to meet Taichi’s thrusts, searching for that rhythm that will make it feel good. 

It’s not painful anymore, but it’s also not the best. He stands there and takes it anyway, keeps expecting to be able to shake off the unfamiliar tension. 

He doesn’t ever get there, not before Taichi is coming, folding over him, the points of his fingers pressing marks into Yamato’s waist.

Taichi goes down on him afterwards, still against the wall, and Yamato has to close his eyes and concentrate hard, to make sure that he stays in the moment long enough to come too.

*

Back in Tokyo, the daily routine swallows them back up. Yamato starts his new job. They both throw themselves fully into work. It’s not avoidance, exactly. More just acceptance that this is how it’s going to be. 

As the weeks pass, their interactions dwindle. Dashed kisses over morning coffee, as one of them is already flying out the door, or plastering on matching smiles to visit family together at weekends, social engagements that are never as fun as they used to be. 

At the same time, sex gets weird. It’s more aggressive, like they’re competing over something – the right to bend one another into what they need each other to be. Yamato gets used to that, learns to be turned on by it, forgets how to do it any other way.

Two years pass like this, treading water, just about keeping themselves from going under. 

Both of them get promoted, and as Yamato’s office hours stretch, Taichi starts travelling – business trips that take him away for sometimes weeks at a time.

It’s not like there’s nothing good. When Taichi isn’t away, or one of them isn’t working late, they usually still manage to eat dinner together, slurping noodles or shovelling rice at their little table, which looks out on the plant-filled terrace. 

If neither of them has work to catch up on, they’ll slump together afterwards on their old, squashy sofa, watching trash on TV, laughing at how ridiculous the plotlines and manufactured drama is. 

But more often than not, Yamato comes home to a dark and empty apartment, where there is a sink full of dirty dishes, no food on the table and wet laundry just sitting in the washing machine. 

He starts to feel like he’s living with his dad again, and it makes him resent all those hours he spends picking up the household chores, carrying that side of things so that Taichi doesn’t even have to think about it. 

They’re not always the best at communicating, but Yamato’s not completely socially inept. Of course he tries to bring it up, as best he can.

“I’m not your mother,” he says, on a Sunday morning, when Taichi is slouching on the floor, turning the sports pages of a newspaper, still wearing his pyjama pants, and Yamato sets down the laundry basket he is carrying with a thud. “Why am I the one doing everything around here?“

“Do you need a hand with that?” Taichi asks, not looking up from the paper.

“I mean in general.”

Picking up on his tone, Taichi stretches his arms above his head and then gets to his feet. He pads over in his socks, heaves the laundry basket up. 

“Come on, I only just got back from Seoul last night. I’ll do some stuff today.” 

Yamato follows him to their little utility cupboard, watches as Taichi starts to load the machine, still dissatisfied, unable to quite articulate why.

“My job matters too, you know,” he says, as Taichi is measuring detergent into the plastic cup. “It’s not like you’re some big deal and I’m not. I work just as hard as you.”

“Hey,” Taichi says. He slams the machine door shut, then turns and pulls Yamato towards him, kisses him on the lips. “I know you’re a big deal.”

Taichi hasn’t started the machine. Yamato leans sideways, turns the dial to the usual setting. Hits go. “And I’m paid more,” he says. “We rely on my salary, the way the rent has gone up on this place.”

Taichi frowns, his grip on Yamato’s waist loosening, as the machine starts to whirr. “I told you I’d pay you back for the work to fix the boiler.” 

Yamato closes the cupboard door, muffling the noise of the churning laundry drum, not sure why they are suddenly talking about the broken boiler again. 

“That’s not the point,” he says, “It’s already paid for. I don’t care about the money.”

“What are you bringing it up for, then?“

“I miss you,” Yamato blurts. “I find it hard that you’re never here.”

They stare at one another. Taichi’s grip tightens again. He leans in, rests his chin on Yamato’s shoulder, and Yamato lifts his arms, curls them around him.

“I’m sorry. I’ll do more around the house,” Taichi says, speaking into Yamato’s hair. And then, pulling back, “Hey, I have a trip to Rome in the calendar next month. Maybe you could take some time off and tag along?”

But Yamato’s team is in the final stages of delivering a big research project. There’s no way he can get away. 

And then, two weeks after he comes back from Rome, Taichi does something that makes it all so much worse. 

“I got you a surprise,” he says, yanking open the door one evening, before Yamato has even had a chance to put his key in the lock.

“What?” Yamato asks, immediately suspicious, as Taichi ushers him inside.

The surprise, it turns out, is a kitten. A tiny, tabby-striped ball of fluff, with huge, pale green eyes.

“Taichi,” Yamato says, flinching a bit, as Taichi passes the mewling, helpless creature into his hands. “What the fuck?”

“Isn’t he cute?” Taichi strokes the animal’s head with one finger. “Yoko-san, downstairs, was giving them away. Her cat just had a litter. I thought he could keep you company, when I’m not here.”

They both look down at the kitten, who looks right back at them and wriggles slightly, trying to squirm free of Yamato’s grasp. 

The kitten, it turns out, is a complete dick. Yamato has no interest in naming the animal, so Taichi decided to call it Maradona, after the soccer player. It grows up fast and unruly, soon turning into a full-sized monster that steals their food and scratches the furniture and eats the plants on the terrace, and vomits on the tatami. 

The animal will sit there and stare at Yamato with its pretty green eyes, while he curses and tries to fix the mess. 

“This is what it would be like if we did have kids,” Yamato says, tossing the latest vomit-covered rag into the sink, and stripping off his rubber gloves. “All I do now is clean up after this fucking cat.”

“No way,” Taichi says, and snaps his fingers at Maradona, who has just sprung onto the kitchen counter. “I’d be way more involved with kids.”

Yamato folds his arms, glaring at the cat, as it hops back down and winds its way between Taichi’s ankles. “Oh yeah? You’re going to stop working like this, are you? Stop travelling? Get a nine to five?”

Taichi reaches down to run his hand over the cat’s back. Maradona arches into his touch, spine pressing into his palm. “We’d make it work,” he says, confident.

But Yamato knows exactly what that would look like. It would mean him busting his ass to make it work, while Taichi swans around, still being Taichi. 

*

It’s an entirely unremarkable Friday, the year before they both turn thirty, when Yamato finally admits to himself that it just isn’t working anymore.

He’s in the middle of unloading the dishwasher at 11pm, after a long day at work, and Taichi messages from his hotel room in Shanghai to say goodnight and Yamato realises with a jolt that he’s simply not happy. 

That thought is terrifying. Because if he’s not happy with Taichi, how will he ever be happy with anyone?

He sits with this knowledge for three whole days, until Taichi is back home again.

That evening, as he’s walking the short distance between the train station and their apartment, he catches sight of a small Shinto shrine at the end of a road he never bothers to walk down.

Yamato isn’t especially religious, but he does appreciate the peace and stillness of shrines, finds them comforting in a nostalgic kind of way – memories of childhood visits and school trips to ring the bell and hope for good fortune.

He’s been walking past this particular shrine for years, but today he wanders in, passing under the torii gates and pausing to ladle water from the stone basin over his hands.

The place is deserted, only the smell of old incense and the gentle clatter of wooden charms being moved against one another in the breeze. It’s one of those rare oases of absolute calm in the midst of the city.

Standing in front of the shrine’s main hall, Yamato bows and claps his hands together, the old movements reassuring, and then pauses, wondering what to pray for. 

He thinks about Taichi, all their history, and the future together that he can no longer see.

Palms pressed, he closes his eyes and thinks the words, ‘Please give me the strength to get through this,’ before he bows once more and turns to leave.

Any sense of calm, or strength, he feels is short lived. At the apartment, everything crumbles.

“I feel like you’ve never stopped punishing me for not wanting the same things as you,” Yamato says, justifying himself, when their attempt at a mature conversation descends into shouting at one another across the dinner table.

It’s been a hot day. They are eating with the terrace doors open, the mesh screen pulled across to keep the bugs at bay. From the street below, the sounds of normal life drift up to them.

Taichi pushes his plate aside. Yamato has cooked puttanesca, coiled mounds of spaghetti in a thick, pungent sauce. Tasteless to both of them, now.  

“How am I punishing you?” 

Yamato stares down at his pasta, pushes around the oily red strands studded with olives and capers. He knew they were never going to get out of this easily.

“Every time we fuck these days,” he says, “it feels like you hate me.” 

There’s a pinging noise in the background. Notifications on Taichi’s phone, where it is plugged into the power, his work line never not active. Right now, he ignores it.

“Maybe I’m trying to jolt some emotion out of you,” Taichi says. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt you so shut down from me.” Over his shoulder, his phone pings again. “It seems like you don’t care anymore.” 

“Of course I do,” Yamato says. “I spend all my free time doing stuff for you. I take care of this entire apartment. You think it just cleans itself? And doing the laundry and cooking the food and looking after that asshole cat that you forced on us.”

As if on cue, Maradona, who has been slinking along the top of the bookcase, lands, fearless, right in the middle of the table.

They are both on their feet in an instant, chasing him down before he can make a grab for anyone’s puttanesca, furiously angry at the cat in place of being angry at each other. They are both yelling again, voices overlapping.

“I thought I was doing a nice thing. If I’d known you’d hate him so much I obviously never would have—”

“If you want some mild-mannered little housewife, go find yourself that, because I’m not going to keep picking up all the slack—” 

“I don’t want that. I just want—”

“What? The family I won’t let you have because I’m too cold-hearted to think that introducing kids to this shitshow would be a good idea?”

Taichi slams his fist down on the table, rattling plates and cutlery, sending Maradona scampering into the bedroom.

“I want you to love me,” he shouts. “Like I fucking love you.”

Yamato takes a breath. Down on the street, a moped roars past. It occurs to him that, with the doors open, their neighbours will probably be able to hear every word.

“I do,” he says, more quietly. But Taichi makes no effort to lower his voice.

“Bullshit, Yamato. You checked out of this a long time ago.” He shoves his chair hard under the table, turns away. Picks up his phone, tosses it back down without reading anything. “You think I can’t feel that?”

Yamato had placed both hands on the table, steadying it from the shove of Taichi’s chair. Now, he peels his palms away from the wood and edges around it, moving towards Taichi. 

“I don’t think this is good for either of us anymore,” he says, holding on to that truth. “I don’t want to be the reason you can’t have the life you want.”

“Stop using the kids thing as an excuse,” Taichi says, and then thuds down to sit on the tatami, seemingly exhausted. He turns an accusatory glare towards Yamato. “After everything we’ve survived together, I can’t believe you’re going to let mother-fucking laundry be what breaks us.”

“It’s not about the laundry,” Yamato says. He lowers himself down carefully at Taichi’s side. ”It’s not. It’s bigger than that.”

The breeze from the windows moves the edges of the long linen curtains, which have been half-shredded by Maradona’s claws. When Taichi looks at him again, Yamato is alarmed to see that his eyelashes are damp. He can’t remember the last time he saw Taichi cry. 

“I think you’re giving up,” Taichi says, and there’s a splinter in his voice.

Yamato reaches for him, laying a hand on his thigh. He’s already made peace with the fact that he’s going to be the villain this time. 

“Of course you do,” he says.

Taichi doesn’t push his touch away. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, aggressively ridding them of tears.

“I feel like we have to be together,” he says, with a sniff, the last sign of emotion he’ll show, “because it’s you and me.”

Yamato tightens his grip on Taichi’s thigh, a sign that he was never planning to just let go of everything they have.

“There will always be a you and me,” he says. “That doesn’t mean it’s right for us to try to be one another’s everything.”

That night, Yamato goes to stay at his father’s place. But, in the end, it’s Taichi who moves out, with the cat. 

For a while, Yamato thinks he’ll keep the apartment. He can manage the rent now, on his salary alone. Eventually, though, he decides it’s too weird and sad to stay, so finds his own place, in a different part of town.

It’s not like they never see each other again. It’s not that kind of break up. It never could be, not only because that isn’t what either of them would want, but because they are also partners in a different way. Of course there are moments when they have to come back together for the sake of everything and everyone they value.

Those moments are tough. Yamato will look at Taichi, wind-swept and determined, in front of dark foreboding skies, or lit by the glow of dangerous bursts of energy that crackle with inhuman power, and be struck by how much he wants him still. By how intensely he feels those words that he never felt able to say out loud.

Amidst the roars and the teeth and the panic, those are the times when they are at their best, when they can come together in a way that overrules everything else. But daily life isn’t like that. It never will be. 

They’re like superheroes. Perfect for one another when caped up, but with alter egos that can’t seem to get it together.

Yamato would never admit how much he lives for their shared caped crusader moments, though. It’s why, when Koushiro calls one evening, and asks for his help with a Digital World mission, Yamato doesn’t even consider saying ”no”.

“He wants to go alone,” Koushiro says, his exasperation evident, even over the phone, “But it’s wildfire season. It’s not safe for any of us to go in there without backup.”

“Not even mighty Taichi,” Yamato says, already picking up his keys.

He visits Koushiro’s labs fairly regularly these days. For the past few years the lab team have been conducting research into the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, using the Digital World as a conduit, and Yamato moonlights with them from time to time, when they need a more sceptical interpretation of their highly theoretical ideas. He’s grown to be exceptionally good at reality-checking Koushiro’s army of nerds and their understanding of quantum physics.

Now, as he steps out of his apartment and pulls the door shut behind him, he can already picture the expression that will be on Taichi’s face when he rocks up.

“He’ll be pissed that it’s me,” Yamato warns, as he jogs down the stairs.

“I don’t care,” Koushiro says, over the clack-clack of his typing. “I know you’re the best person to get him in and out of there again in one piece.”

Chapter Text

Fort Worth, 2019

Koushiro has come equipped to convince them. He has piles and piles of photographs.

There is one picture that Taichi can’t stop staring at. It’s of the two of them – him and Yamato, in this supposed other life, pressed close. Yamato is half turning, looking at the camera, his gaze straight down the lens. It reminds Taichi of that picture he has of him from Angkor Wat. He’s wearing exactly the same candid expression. Not quite surprise, more like he has turned out of casual interest to see who is pointing a camera at him, and gotten caught like that.

The Taichi in the picture, on the other hand, is ignoring the camera completely. He is clearly absorbed in Yamato. His eyes are closed, his face pressed to Yamato’s half-turned cheek, his mouth still curved in the last traces of a smile, a reaction to something that must have happened right before this shot.

“You must be twenty-one, twenty-two there,” Koushiro says, noticing Taichi staring fixedly at the snapshot. “That was at some party, I think. Your sister must have taken it.”

Hikari, he means. Jane Doe. Other Taichi’s little sister. Koushiro has already mentioned that she likes photography.

“Your hair is out of control,” Yamato says. He’s sitting right next to Taichi at the dining table, can see the picture in his hands.

Taichi scoffs and looks at him.

“That’s what you’re noticing most about this picture.”

“No,” Yamato says, immediately backtracking his attitude. “I mean, it’s very sweet. We’re clearly in love.”

“I’m clearly in love with you,” Taichi presses. “You look kind of distracted.”

“You were in love.” Koushiro says, and then corrects himself with, “Are in love.” He sighs, a sound of long-suffering exasperation, tinged with sadness. “It’s always been a lot with you guys.”

Taichi lays the picture down. From the tabletop, the other Yamato’s blue gaze continues to bore into him. Under the table, this life’s Yamato reaches for his hand, slips their fingers together in a reassuring press.

“Ok,” Taichi says, not sure who to. He looks up at Koushiro, who stares back at him. He feels uncharacteristically wrong-footed. A little dizzy. He’s not sure he’s ever been faced with a situation that he feels so soundly unprepared to deal with. 

Beside him, Yamato reaches for another photograph. This one is a dreamy landscape shot, showing a wide, sunny plain with vibrant green grass, peppered with unusual-looking wildflowers and hedged by hazy blue mountains in the distance.

“I want to come back to the digital stuff,” he says, and Koushiro turns his attention towards him.

“Yes,” he says, and waits.

“I mean that’s fucking nuts, right? Excuse my language,” Yamato says. “But that part’s got to be bullshit.”

“I’ll concede that it seems unlikely,” Koushiro says. “To be honest, I don’t need you to believe me about any of it. In the end, I just need you to agree to do what I ask.”

Yamato untangles his fingers from Taichi’s and places both hands on the table. “I might be more inclined to do that if you can explain it so I can understand.”

They study one another. After a moment, Koushiro pulls one of his laboratory-branded documents from a folder and turns it over, to the blank space on the back. He takes a pen from his pocket and starts sketching a rough representation of a double helix.

“We’re all made up of data, right? DNA. Atoms. We’re walking code. The Digital World just takes that to a more literal level. Or, I guess the opposite of that. It digitises what was already literal.”

“Ok,” Yamato says. He reaches across the table, and takes the pen from Koushiro. “Let’s run with this insanity.” With short strokes of the pen, he sketches out a smashed up interpretation of Koushiro’s DNA helix, summarising what they have already been told. “You’re saying this place has the power to break a person down into their basic code. And once that’s happened, that code can jump to a new reality, in a way that it couldn’t have done otherwise.”

“Yes,” Koushiro says, as Yamato is replicating the double helix, on the other side of his pile of shreds. “The Digital World flattens time and space, so the usual rules of quantum physics are much more malleable there. It allows you to squeeze between those rules in a way that you couldn’t if you were attempting to hop realities from your own world.”

Yamato draws rough asterisk-style stars around the new helix, to illustrate its impressive rebirth in a new reality. “Got it. Digital World is your connecting station to where you want to go.”

“Correct.”

Yamato tosses down the pen. “And what does that have to do with us?”

“This is all theory, yes? I can’t say for sure. But what I think happened is that when the Taichi and Yamato from my reality crossed into this one, their code splintered and couldn’t reform. Instead, it mixed with yours, like an overlay. Essentially, there was a Yamato-sized hole and a Taichi-sized hole here already. The code automatically slipped into those, as the most logical places for it to go.”

Taichi’s not in the right headspace to listen to this. He can’t stop thinking about the Taichi and Yamato in that picture. About what happened to them. He stands up.

The other two look at him, questioning.

“I’m hungry,” he says. “You carry on. I’m going to go make us some dinner.” 

They are at his house in Dallas. Once they’d left the burgers and cones joint, they had gotten back into his car and hit the road. Taichi hadn’t really known where he was driving, had been on autopilot, distracted by Koushiro’s comments about it being so strange to see him in the driving seat, instead of Yamato, who, in his reality, apparently always drives.

It was only when Yamato had started taking stock of the road signs and asked where they were going that Taichi had realised he was taking all of them home.

Now, he walks into his kitchen and starts getting pans and ingredients out of the cupboards, still dazed, in a kind of out-of-body space, where his ideas aren’t quite joining up with each other.

He has already prepped everything, has cooked down the curry paste, and is in the middle of opening a tin of coconut milk, by the time Yamato comes in. 

“Hi,” he says, and drifts over to where Taichi is standing. He looks over the chopped vegetables, the sliced chicken in a bowl. “What are you making?”

“Thai green curry.” Taichi pours the coconut milk into the wok, where the liquid engulfs the fragrant oils in a violent hiss. “It’s one of about five things I know how to make well.” 

Yamato leans against the counter, at his side. “The famous green curry,” he says, watching as Taichi stirs the sauce. “I don’t really cook myself. I’ve never had to learn. There’s always been someone else around to do it for me.”

“I wonder if that’s the same, in the other life,” Taichi says, still stirring. The sight of the wooden spoon cutting through the simmering sauce is soothing. “I wonder if, there, I make five things, and you can’t cook, but do all the driving.”

”I don’t know.” Yamato folds his arms and looks down at the floor, considering the pattern on the linoleum. When he looks up again, he’s frowning. “So, you believe what Koushiro’s saying.”

“Something in me wants to believe him.” Taichi reaches around Yamato for a bottle of fish sauce on the counter. “He’s starting to feel kind of familiar to me. Like when I first met you.”

Yamato lets out a hum of agreement. He is closely watching Taichi’s every move, as he steps back to the wok and shakes the fish sauce over the pan.

“I wish I could meet them,” Taichi says. He nods towards a plate. “Pass me that chicken, will you?”

“The other you and me?” Yamato smiles a little. “Pretty cool guys, I’m sure.” 

He hands over the plate of chicken, and Taichi scrapes the raw meat into the liquid. Vegetables next. Taichi reaches for those himself, needing the excuse to step close again.

“They’re in us,” he says, glancing at Yamato, meeting his eyes as he moves. “Kind of. Is that what Koushiro was getting at?”

“It doesn’t really make any sense,” Yamato says. “But I think so, yes. According to him, their essence is here.”

“So, that’s why we’ve been so drawn to each other.” Taichi tumbles the chopped up vegetables into the curry.

As he is moving to put the plate back down again, Yamato catches him by the arm.

“I don’t think that’s the only reason I’m drawn to you,” he says, and then tilts his head, so he can kiss Taichi on the lips. 

The pan of curry is still pipping away, simmering on the stove, while their kiss meanders pleasantly on, when Koushiro appears in the kitchen doorway.

“Oh, sorry. I’ll just–,” he says, dithering there, seeming unable to stop staring at them, eventually giving up on the idea. “Gosh, this feels familiar.”

Taichi pulls away, not stepping back further than he needs to, leaving just enough space between himself and Yamato to be appropriate for company. “It’s ok,” he says. “Why don’t you help? Do you know how to cook rice?”

Koushiro looks emboldened by this request. “Please,” he says, moving further into the kitchen. “Do I know how to cook rice? Come on, I’m Japanese.”

But as it turns out, Koushiro does not, in fact, know how to make rice without an automated rice cooker. Yamato seems equally baffled by the rice-cooking process. When Taichi tries to delegate the task to him instead, the first thing he does is get out his phone and Google the cooking method.

“This is ridiculous,” Taichi says, as he’s rinsing the rice under the running tap himself. “You are both clearly so much smarter than me, yet I’m the only one who can figure this out.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Koushiro says, “I’ve been preoccupied with trying to make sense of how to correctly line up interdimensional gateways within the bounds of three separate spacetime continuums. I haven’t had time to commit cooking rice in a saucepan to memory.”

In place of another apology, Yamato steps close to Taichi and presses his lips to the side of his neck, because Taichi is starting to get the impression that Yamato’s main purpose in kitchens is to sexily distract you from what it is you’re meant to be using this room for. 

“I’ll mix you a cocktail instead,” he offers. “I’m really, really good at that.”

There isn’t a huge selection of liquor in Taichi’s apartment for him to work with, but Yamato pulls something together from a dusty old bottle of bitters and some Texas bourbon that was a Christmas gift from Taichi’s brother-in-law, who is a Houston native.

“It’s an old-fashioned, almost,” Yamato says, handing around the glasses, which are filled with ice and amber-coloured liquid.

“Wow, that’s strong,” Koushiro says, coughing and setting his glass down after a single sip. “I guess Yamatos in every reality can hold their liquor.”

“This Yamato was teetotal for all of about two seconds,” Taichi says, smiling at the memory of the boy he met in Siem Reap, with his man bun and his earrings. “Fun fact.”

It feels good to acknowledge that they have a shared history here, in this reality, as well as whatever they might have been through together elsewhere.

“Excuse you, two seconds. It was way longer than that,” Yamato says, reaching for his drink, as Taichi is dishing curry onto plates piled with rice. “And clearly being sober wasn’t good for me, because I wasn’t drinking when Felix proposed to me and I said yes to that shit. So, there you go.”

“Maybe you said yes because you were still desperately pining over that mystery man that you carelessly ghosted in Cambodia,” Taichi suggests, handing him a plate.

Yamato narrows his eyes at him. “Hey dude, you ghosted me.”

“This is fascinating,” Koushiro says. “You guys are just the same. But also not the same.”

“How are we different?” Taichi asks, handing a plate to him, too.

“I’m not sure I can describe it.” Koushiro says, and looks at Yamato. “I can’t get used to that British accent on you, for a start.”

“I like the British accent,” Taichi says. “I bet it’s a good addition.”

“That feels like something my Taichi might agree with,” Koushiro concedes. “He has a thing for that actor, what’s his name? Tom Hardy.” 

“That’s nothing remarkable,” Yamato says, “I mean, who doesn’t fancy Tom Hardy?”

“I don’t.” Koushiro places his palms together and closes his eyes. “Itadakimasu,” he says, and when he opens his eyes and sees Taichi and Yamato both staring at him with blank faces, explains, “That’s something we do. It’s like saying thanks for the food.”

“Oh, like grace,” Taichi says.

Koushiro blinks, confused by the use of this word in that context. “What?”

Yamato picks up a fork. “I still have so many questions about all of this. And none of them are about how much I sound like Tom Hardy.”

“I’m happy to answer any and all non-Tom-Hardy-related questions,” Koushiro says.

“You’ve come to this reality, too,” Yamato points out, getting right to it. “And you’re still in one piece.”

Koushiro scoops up a spoonful of green-drenched rice. “That’s because the doorway that I came through was stable. We spent days establishing and testing it. Yours was ripped open in a panic. It was a last resort.”

“Because of the fire,” Taichi says.

“Yes.” Koushiro blows on his spoonful of curry, chasing away the steam. “And that might have had an effect on things, too. We didn’t experiment with this technology at high temperatures beforehand.”

Yamato pauses his interrogation here, to reach out and lay a hand on Taichi’s wrist. “The food’s really good,” he says, before turning back to Koushiro and asking, “How did you find us?”

“I traced your markers,” Koushiro says. “We all have unique parts to our code. Again, it’s like DNA. You can trace genetic patterns across family lines, that kind of thing. I ran searches across the realities known to the programme until I found you.” 

Yamato looks sceptical. “How can you be sure that we’re the versions of us that you need?”

“It’s not identical. Like I say, the code’s all mixed up. But there’s undeniable markers here that can’t be a coincidence.”

“We have the memories of another reality, too,” Taichi says. “I remember that fire. I dream about it.”

“You do?” Koushiro stares at him, his spoon frozen in the air. He clearly has some traumatic memories of that event himself. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Yamato’s hand has found its way back to Taichi’s wrist again. He doesn’t even seem to be particularly aware that it’s there, although Taichi notices that Koushiro’s gaze is drawn to the point of contact. 

“What exactly is it you want from us?” Yamato asks.

“He wants to get his friends back,” Taichi answers, on Koushiro’s behalf.

“Yes,” Koushiro says. “Very much so.”

“And you think you can do that?”

“I have a theory that I’m fairly confident in, yes.”

Yamato scoffs, letting go of Taichi again. “‘Fairly’ confident. I’m not sure that’s good enough for me.”

Koushiro nods. “I understand that.”

Taichi says, “You want us to, what? Go through that door in the wall?” He‘s thinking back to those grainy CCTV images of Jane Doe, walking past the chainlink fence and then disappearing – not into thin air, it turns out, but into a separate reality.

“If you do, I think it will be like hitting reset,” Koushiro says, slowly, like he’s still puzzling the finer details of this part out for himself. “The alien code, from my reality, will be thrown out, back to where it belongs.”

“What about us, though?” Yamato asks, and at that, Koushiro hesitates, his silence driving the question home. “Yeah,” Yamato says, acknowledging this uncertainty.

“Your code will stay here. Whether it will be exactly the same without the input of my reality’s code – memories, emotions, that sort of thing – that’s the part I’m not sure about.”

“Are you saying that we could lose memory of all of this? Of each other?” Taichi asks.

“You won’t be physically harmed. I can say that much. We’ve tested that part to death.”

“No you haven’t,” Yamato snaps. “You’re telling me you’ve tested this with two other pieces of walking mongrel code? Other people who are spliced inside one another, like you say we are?”

There’s another pause, interrupted only by the whirr of the apartment’s air con system, firing up to pump fresh air. 

Then, Koushiro smiles, and says, “I’ve really missed you, Yamato.” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Yamato tells him, his temper back. He gets to his feet, taking his half finished plate of curry with him. “This is– I can’t with this.”

Once he has left the room, Taichi and Koushiro look at one another across the glass-topped table. When Taichi lifts his hands from it, he leaves behind the fogged image of his palms against the glass.

”I know how all of this sounds,” Koushiro says. “Believe me. I’m fully aware of how much I’m asking, when you have no reason at all to help me.”

Taichi picks up his knife and fork again. “Tell me about them,” he says. 

At first, it seems that Koushiro is going to let this request go unanswered. He stays quiet, and they both continue eating in silence, before he suddenly looks up and gestures with his fork in the direction that Yamato stormed off in. 

“Our Yamato’s a drama queen, just like that one.”

Taichi chokes out a laugh, nearly inhaling a mouthful of chicken. “He is, isn’t he? I told him that.”

“He’s smart, though. You can always rely on him to give it to you straight. He doesn’t let people get away with anything.” Koushiro thinks for a second, before clearly deciding that he’s being unfair to the Yamato from his reality. “And he’s kind,” he acknowledges. “Deep down.”

Taichi nods, imagining the Yamato he knows here, dialled up a notch. “What about your Taichi?”

Koushiro keeps his eyes on his plate, loading and reloading his spoon with different combinations of vegetables, without quite managing to get any of them all the way to his mouth. He’s finding this difficult to talk about, Taichi realises.

“Well,” he says, eventually, “Honestly, he’s the single best person I’ve ever known. Not having him with us has been… it hasn’t been nice.” Here, he abandons the food completely, and sets his spoon down in defeat. 

Taichi doesn’t know what to say to that. He feels awkward, as though he’s to blame for this other Taichi — an all-round more impressive Taichi, by the sounds of it — not being here.

The photographs they were looking at earlier are still piled up at one end of the table. Leaning over, Koushiro picks one up and slides it towards Taichi.

It’s the shot he’d been looking at so intently earlier: the two of them, standing close. They are about the same age as Taichi was when he first met Yamato here in his own reality, at that sweaty gig in Camden Town. 

The Yamato in the picture is missing the little scar on his cheek, and this Taichi’s hair truly is insane, but other than that, they look just the same. Two normal young guys, with no idea what is coming for them.

“I really think this is the only chance to bring them home,” Koushiro says. He taps the photograph for emphasis. “Please, just sleep on it.”

*

The house is bigger than Taichi really needs, living alone, but he’d fallen in love with this street, and his Californian budget had stretched further in Dallas than he’d thought it would. So, this is where he’s ended up. 

He has a couple of spare bedrooms, and sets Koushiro up in one of those for the night, before going to check on Yamato. He wanders the whole house before he finds him, on the wooden bench on the front porch, sitting with one knee drawn up and another old fashioned cradled in his hand.

Taichi parks himself on the other side of the bench and stares out at the dark street. The streetlamps are few and far apart here, leaving patches of near black between the houses. Everybody in the neighbourhood has security lights, and Taichi has only been sitting there for a few seconds when his own blink on, timed to glow to life every night at 10pm, whether he is at home or not.

The sound of the crickets intensifies at the shift in the light. Taichi finds himself looking over at Yamato. He’s handsome like this, lamplit, in profile. Sensing Taichi’s stare, Yamato turns towards him, and their eyes meet.

“Well,” Taichi says. “Today has taken a left turn, hasn’t it? I thought we were in the middle of a murder investigation. But turns out this was a totally different box set.”

Yamato smirks at that. He stretches forwards, offering his drink to Taichi. “I couldn’t be bothered to mix another cocktail. This is just bourbon and water.”

“Why bother with the water?” Taichi asks, and takes a burning, smokey sip of the stuff.

“I don’t know,” Yamato says, with a shrug. “I guess it makes me feel better about drinking so much of it. It’s good whiskey.”

“My brother-in-law’s obsessed with the stuff. He’s a real connoisseur.” Taichi passes the drink back to him. “And hey, if there’s a time and a place for drinking, then this is it. I mean, come on, you just found out that doppelganger you were so worried about is real.”

“Although turns out he wasn’t really my doppelganger, but my brother from another life. I don’t know if that’s more or less terrifying.”

“Takeru,” Taichi says, remembering the name Koushiro had given them.

“Takeru,” Yamato repeats. “He really was following me. That part wasn’t in my head.”

Leaning back, Taichi stretches his legs out towards the street. “Listen to us talking about this like it’s all fucking real.”

“It has to be real,” Yamato says, sitting forwards, the ice in his glass clinking. “I mean, those pictures?” He looks back at Taichi. “If it’s all made up, then it’s a hell of an elaborate hoax. And for what?”

“I know.” Taichi thinks again of that photograph of the two of them. There’s no faking the emotion that shot captures. Despite the evening warmth, he can’t help but feel a shiver. “Give me that whiskey again.”

Yamato passes it to him. The glass is damp with condensation, warmed by the Texas air and the heat of his palm. “What about the monsters?”

There had been pictures of those, too. Theme park imagery. CGI. Each more outlandish than the next. Taichi has the image of bony reptilian talons seared into his mind, huge muscles shifting under tiger-striped fur. 

The other versions of the two of them had been just standing beside the enormous creatures, completely unafraid.

”I can’t think too hard about them,” Taichi says. “My brain just slips over it. Like I have no idea what we’re supposed to do with that knowledge.”

“Right,” Yamato agrees. In one of the photos he’d been mounted on a monster’s back, sitting astride the creature, like it was no more dangerous than a ranch horse. “Where do you put that information?”

Used to the lights now, the crickets have dialled their noises down again. To the left of the house, a pair of headlights sweep in, before a red Land Rover cruises slowly past.

Taichi thinks about getting in his own car tomorrow, driving all of them back to the wall by the chain link fence, so that he and Yamato can step into some frightening unknown, just on the off-chance that it will help to reunite some strangers.

He glances again at the profile of Yamato’s face in the lamplight, and holds their shared drink out to him. “What should we do?”

Yamato takes the glass and sits back with it, resting beside him. “I don’t know. What do you think Digital World Taichi would say?”

Taichi shrugs. “I’m not sure. I don’t know the guy.”

The air still smells damp and earthy from the earlier rainfall. Oblivious to this, the automatic sprinkler system of a house across the street sprays suddenly to life, sending hazy arcs of water scattering over an already drenched lawn.

Yamato stares into the mist of the distant sprinkler jets. “I think he’d say go for it.”

“Oh yeah? You think you’ve got him all figured out?” 

“Yes. I feel like I’ve got a good enough read on him now.” 

“What about Digital World Yamato?”

Yamato tips back the last of the whiskey and then leans forwards, to set the now empty glass down on the porch floor, nothing left in there but ice. 

“Oh, he wouldn’t like this at all,” he says, confident. “In fact, I think he’d probably do whatever he could to convince you to stay here.”

Taichi can picture the calculating gaze of the Yamato from the photograph aimed right at them, across space and time. “He’d probably understand what it all means in a way that we don’t.” 

Yamato shakes his head, clearly thinking about his alter ego, too. “You know,” he says, “Koushiro told me earlier that in his world my parents are both journalists. Here I am thinking I’m such a rebel doing something my parents didn’t want me to do, and it’s exactly what they’re doing in a different reality.”

“Meanwhile, their Yamato is going against the grain by studying quantum physics,” Taichi says, with a smile.

“Right? Fuck that. I can’t believe I’m such a nerd in another life. How embarrassing.”

“For what it’s worth,” Taichi says, “the nerdy Yamato still looks just as hot.”

“I suppose so. I’m glad he’s got something going for him, at least.”

They are turned towards one another now, facing each other on the bench. Yamato lays one arm along the backrest, and Taichi lifts his arm too, in mirror image, allowing the tips of their fingers to brush. 

“I bet that Yamato never had a man bun, either,” he says. 

“Ok,” Yamato concedes, “he has two things going for him.” 

Both of them are smiling, but as they continue to sit there, a feeling of flatness begins to creep over Taichi. He’s thinking of what Koushiro had said about not being sure if memories and emotions would vanish, along with the foreign code.

He already likes the man beside him far too much, given the short amount of time they have known each other. It makes him feel queasy to think of stepping through a doorway and instantly losing what has been blossoming between them. 

Turning his hand, Taichi manoeuvres the brush of their fingers into something more purposeful, an interlacing clasp.

“I’m not ready for this thing with us to end,” he says.

Yamato returns the pressure of his grip. “Maybe it won’t. Maybe we’ll remember everything.”

Further down the street, there is the hiss and patter of another useless sprinkler system, coming to life. Yamato tilts his head towards the noise. 

“What’s changed?” Taichi asks him. “Half an hour ago you were making a diva exit over the fact that none of this has been tested.”

“I don’t know. Maybe this is the whiskey talking,” Yamato says, and shifts closer, sliding along the bench, “But we found each other three times before. I bet we could do it again.” He lifts his hand, smoothes it over the fabric of Taichi’s shirt, the heat of his palm reaching to Taichi’s chest. “What would positive psychology have to say about that idea?"

Taichi’s already returning the touch, running his hand over Yamato’s kneecap, up to the strong muscles of his inner thigh.

“It would very much validate it.”

Midway through leaning towards him, Yamato pauses, glancing back at the street, with its array of automated security systems.

“Are your neighbours going to run me off the property with shotguns if I try to kiss you out here?”

Taichi can just picture the looks of outrage on the faces of his neighbours across the street, Barbara and Dennis, at even the suggestion that they might do such a thing.

“Nah they’re cool,” he says. “Half this street is old hippies from places like Austin. They hate guns.”

“Texas isn’t really so bad, is it?” Yamato says, curling his fingers into the cotton of Taichi’s shirt, reeling him in, “I feel like I could get used to it here.”

Taichi is already caught up in that idea – of Yamato staying here, in his adopted state, in his too-big-for-one house – as they meet in the middle of the bench in a slow kiss. 

He hopes that his neighbours do see it. Suddenly, he feels like he wants everyone in his life to know about this.

If the versions of them from the other reality felt even half as strongly about each other as this, then Taichi can understand how the echoes of them could have spent the past decade seeking one another out again, all across this life. 

As they separate, he stares into Yamato’s eyes and feels like he can see that echo in him – maybe has been able to, all along. It’s like a shifting of focus, in and out, from one Yamato to the other.

The automated sprinkler heads keep churning and the time-activated security lights continue to baffle the neighbourhood crickets, but Taichi and Yamato get up and head inside.

In his bedroom, Taichi urges Yamato’s thighs apart with his hands. He folds over him almost completely, so that he can sink more deeply into the tightness of his body. 

As he rolls his hips, he puts his mouth to the hot skin of Yamato’s shoulder, tastes the salt sweat of him, inhales the amber scent of whiskey and cologne.  

With every slow press forwards, Taichi wonders if it is the same for Yamato, if he can see — can feel — the focusing and refocusing of the other Taichi within him.

Almost as if he can hear these thoughts, Yamato moves his lips to Taichi’s ear, gripping him hard at the back of his neck as he says, “Do you think we’d ever even have met each other in this life, if it wasn’t for them?”

“I hope so,” Taichi says, maintaining their rhythm, with steady rolls. 

“They’ve been trying to get back to each other for years.” Yamato drags his fingernails up and down the shifting muscles of Taichi’s back. His words are a little breathless, glazed with the sensation of the long, slow thrusts of a hard cock inside of him. “And we’ve been screwing it up for them every step of the way.” 

Taichi pauses his movements. He pushes up on one arm, and stares down, struck with a sudden sense of clarity. 

“We’ll go through the door,” he says, and Yamato nods, just the smallest motion of his head against the pillows.

“Ok.” He turns his mouth to Taichi’s wrist, drags his tongue over the soft skin there, before he digs his knees into Taichi’s sides and says, “Now come on, fuck me harder.”

Taichi does. He comes with one hand gripping the wood of his bedframe, the other pressing Yamato down into the mattress by the shoulder, as he stares into shifting blue eyes that seem to hold the meaning of multiple lives.

Chapter Text

Oh, I beg you, can I follow?
Oh, I ask you, why not always?
Be the ocean, where I unravel
Be my only
Be the water where I'm wading
You're my river running high
Run deep, run wild

I, I follow
I follow you, deep sea, baby
I follow you
I, I follow
I follow you, dark doom, honey
I follow you

- I Follow Rivers, Lykke Li

Tokyo, 2019 – another lifetime

Koushiro’s laboratories are in the middle of Tokyo’s business district, tucked away in the basement of a swanky, glass-fronted building that is mostly full of law firms and companies providing financial services. 

It’s the definition of hiding in plain sight. Yamato would bet that most of the salarymen and women who stream through the building’s big revolving doors, flawlessly punctual in their suits and heels, have no idea that there are a bunch of borderline mad scientists attempting to open up interdimensional gateways right beneath their feet.

It’s Saturday, so the whole place is unusually quiet as Yamato swipes his contractor pass at the security gates and then keys in the code on the panel in the elevator that will give him access to the underground floors.

The nineties indie that has been blaring through his earbuds all the way here cuts out as he drops below ground level, any trace of mobile signal lost through the reinforced basement walls. 

The elevator spits him out in front of the small reception desk, unmanned today. Tucking his useless earbuds away, he heads to the right, down a long hallway to the office at the end, where he knows Koushiro will be. 

He can hear their voices through the open office door before he sees them, both hunched over the table in the middle of the room, poring over layers of topographic maps. Yamato pauses there, outside the door.

“There’s some weather fronts I’m concerned about,” Koushiro is saying, as he’s using a compass to plot points on the map, marking out the key locations they need to hit. “We’ve seen more wildfires than usual this year.”

Taichi is standing with his back to the door, but Yamato can picture the exact expression on his face as he says, “Ok, well, let’s worry, first of all, about being set upon by rapid Digimon. And we can worry about the breeze later.” 

Despite Taichi’s flippancy, his prioritisation here is not unreasonable. The whole reason for this trip is because they have reports of a rabies-like disease spreading rapidly through a particular province of the Digital World. 

It’s important to determine the etiology of the disease, so that they can take steps to contain it as quickly as possible. Koushiro has a theory it could be water borne, as well as being passed through bites and scratches, but they need soil and water samples from infected areas to be able to confirm that.

In the office, Koushiro straightens up, with the compass still in his hand. “I wonder if global warming is somehow affecting the Digital World, too?”

“Who cares?” Taichi says.

Koushiro lifts the first map and pulls out another from beneath it, laying that one over the top of the first. He glances up as he does so, spots Yamato, doesn’t say anything about it. 

What he does say is, “Hey, it’s not cool to be a climate change denier.”

“Koushiro.” Taichi steps back, hands on his hips, and Koushiro pauses to look at him, all control. Yamato gets the impression that they have already been having some rigorous debates that morning.

“Yes?”

“I’m at the end of my tether with you today. First the Yamato shit and then this.”

Yamato takes that as his cue to step into the office. “Koushiro called me to help,” he says, to announce his presence. “You don’t have be such a little bitch about it.”  

Taichi whirls round to stare at him. He looks a little drawn, Yamato notes immediately. Strung out in that way that means he’s been working himself way too hard, for too long. He studies Yamato for a second, probably making his own judgemental assessments in return, before turning his attention back to Koushiro.

“You see? This is exactly why I said he doesn’t need to come.”

“I’m sorry for rushing over here, on a weekend, just to cover you from having your throat ripped out by a rabid monster while you’re busy gathering little soil samples in test tubes,” Yamato says, stepping up to the table, and casting his eye over the collection points that Koushiro has already marked out for them on the map. “It’s really thoughtless and unreasonable of me.”

“Such sass,” Taichi says.

“Well,” Yamato replies. “You started that. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it in return.”

They glare at each other, before Taichi sags a little, relenting. “Fine,” he says. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Yamato returns.

Koushiro gives them a beat of space and then, clearly deciding it’s safe to continue as normal, clears his throat and spreads one palm over the map, leaning forward to indicate the first point he has marked, with the lead tip of his retractable pencil. It’s on the shore of a small lake, which is illustrated on the map as a flat puddle of pale blue. 

“This is the gate,” he says. “We need to take a sample here at the shore. And then we need to hit the source and, if possible, these two tributaries.” Here, he swaps the maps over, to one showing a wider region. He points to two small rivers, and then, finally, towards the looped outlines of the mountains that border the area. “The source is at the foot of this peak.”

Taichi leans one arm on the table, bowing forward to get a closer look at the point by the mountains. Yamato gets the urge to touch him. To lay a hand on his back, casual, like he might have done in the past. He gets those urges a lot. He grips the edge of the table instead, shrugs this one away.

“Where have the wildfires been?” he asks Koushiro.

“The other side of the mountains, and to the south,” Koushiro says, running a fingertip in a short, curved line on the map. “I think they’re quite contained by the mountain range, but I’ll be keeping an eye on them from here.” He turns from the table, removes a couple of pimped-up two-way radios, the type that allow communication across the barrier between the worlds, from their charging points. He slides these across the maps. “Radio me, if you get into trouble.”

Taichi quits leaning on the map and picks up a radio. There are day packs on hooks in the corner, pre-loaded with all the standard gear, compass, water bottle, first aid kit, that kind of stuff. He goes to lift two of them down and tucks his radio into a side pocket of one bag. 

“What about the infected ‘mons?” he asks. “I mean, we’ve cleared the area, right? No partner back up if we need it.”

Yamato picks up his own radio, and takes the pack that Taichi passes to him. “We can’t exactly fight something off with our bare hands,” he agrees. 

When they’d first discovered the outbreak, they had all agreed the risk of infection was too high, so have already established a quarantine area, as far away from the infected space as possible.  

Taichi and Yamato, like the rest of the group, have gotten rabies vaccinations themselves, in the hope that being protected from a similar disease might help some. But they can’t exactly give the same vaccines to their partners, when they are completely untested on their species.

For once here, they are truly going to be on their own.

Koushiro nods and goes to a cabinet in the corner. “I’m hopeful you won’t need to use these,” he says, as he unlocks the door and opens it to reveal a neat line of practically untouched rifles. “The infected ones seem mostly to only be active at nighttime.”

As much as they all hate the idea of potentially shooting a Digimon, this disease has a near one hundred percent fatality rate as symptoms progress and, so far, they have not discovered a cure for it. 

Neither of them are exactly master sharp shooters, but they’ve put in enough hours at the range over the years to make sure they’ll be proficient enough in a pinch.

“To be clear, these are for if you run into a snarling, frothing Digimon,” Koushiro says, as he is carefully passing the weapons over to them. “Not if you get into a scrap with each other.”

“We won’t be scrapping,” Yamato says, checking his rifle over.

Beside him, Taichi is doing the same thing. “No promises,” he says, and slings the strap of the gun over his shoulder.

Satisfied that everything’s in order, Yamato shoulders his rifle too. He turns to Taichi, holds out one hand, and says, “Yes, promises.”

Taichi stares at his hand. “What’s that?”

“To shake.”

“I was kidding,” Taichi says, but then sighs and reaches out to clasp Yamato’s hand in his.

Koushiro looks back and forth between them, and nods again. “Good,” he says.

They head down the hall to another office, where the gate to the Digital World is waiting. Koushiro gives them rubber gloves and sample pots in sealed bags.

“These look like they’re for pee,” Taichi says, deadpan, tucking this equipment into a pocket.

“Please do not use them for that,” Koushiro says, looking distressed at the very idea. “And make sure you label the samples. I need them to correspond with the points on the map.”

“Roger that,” Taichi says, saluting, and Yamato rolls his eyes and steps towards the gate. 

“Let’s get this over with,” he says. “I have plans tonight. I don’t want to spend the rest of my day picking up soil.”

Taichi steps up beside him. “Check you out with your plans.”

“Promises,” Yamato tells him.

“I know, promises,” Taichi replies.

“I’m activating,” Koushiro says, and they hear the familiar hum of the gate opening.

There’s the standard, vaguely unpleasant prickling sensation as they pass through, like the feeling of a head-to-toe static shock, and then the rich, earthy smell of Digital World air. 

On the other side of the gate it is bright, and quiet. The wind is moving the few small wisps of cloud rapidly across a vibrant blue sky. They can see the lake right in front of them.

There is a crackle from the radio in the pocket of Taichi’s bag, then Koushiro’s voice, saying, “Taichi, Taichi. Checking the comms line. Over.”

Taichi takes the radio out and holds down the button on the side as he speaks into it. “All good. Can hear you loud and clear. Over.”

They confirm Yamato’s radio, too, and then start to head out, towards the lake, at an easy stroll. 

“So what are you doing tonight, that’s so important?” Taichi asks, as they amble along in the sunshine. “Red hot date?”

Yamato shakes his head, and readjusts his pack on his shoulder. “It’s not important, really. I’m just hanging out with Koji.”

“Band Koji,” Taichi says. He runs a hand through his hair. It’s particularly wild today. Clearly overdue a cut. “You don’t like him.”

“I know. He’s a dick. But he’s good at what he does.” Yamato looks ahead, towards the lake, before admitting, “I’ve sort of started composing again. And I need his help for the mixes. My music tech skills aren’t where they should be.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Taichi says. The grass beneath their feet has turned into the shingle of the lake shore and he stumbles a little over the change in texture, because he’s busy looking at Yamato. “How are you finding the time for that? You always struggled so much when we were together.”

Yamato reaches to his pocket for the sample kit. “Well, I don’t have a boyfriend to hook up with in all my spare time now, so there’s that.” 

Taichi grins at him. “Which is better, though? Sex or music?”

Yamato ignores this. He stops walking and stares down at the beach beneath their feet. “What counts as soil? Does he need this stuff? Or the earth back there?” 

Taichi lifts his radio to his mouth. “Koushiro, Koushiro,” he says. “Do you want shingle? Over.”

Koushiro’s voice crackles through instantly. “What are you talking about?” 

“Like, these little lake beach stones.”

“Oh. Get the sand. Further in.” 

“Copy, thanks.”

Yamato moves closer to the water, which is lapping gently against the shore. He crouches down to scoop sand into the sample pot, as Taichi picks up their conversation where they left off, with, “I didn’t realise sex with me was taking up so much of your time.”

“We did have a lot of sex,” Yamato says. He screws the lid onto the pot, pulls the pen from the plastic bag and scrawls the location onto the label. “And I hired a cleaner.”

“Ok, that’s the one,” Taichi says, watching as Yamato picks his way into the shallow water, and stoops again to fill a second pot. “A cleaner. Hello, high roller.”

Yamato straightens up. The water he’s standing in isn’t even high enough to reach above the thick soles of his boots. “I mean I didn’t get into engineering for the money, but turns out the pay is more than ok.”

He tucks the first samples into his backpack and then they head off together, towards the next location, the water source at the base of the mountains.

As they walk, Taichi asks, “How is having somebody else clean your stuff not making you completely neurotic?”

Yamato finds himself smiling at that. “Oh it is. We’ve already had to have several quite serious discussions about the kitchen work surfaces.”

They are making good time, heading along the border of the lake, moving away from the grassland and edging into forest, the trees gathering closer together as they walk further south. Yamato has the folded map in one hand and is periodically checking their route. 

“How about you?” he asks, stepping over a fallen tree branch, lying across their path. Moving through any forested area in the Digital World is always a pain. There aren’t the manmade footpaths and access routes you’d take forgranted in most places back home.

“I don’t have a cleaner,” Taichi says. He steps onto a large rock, hops off it again. “My place is just always a mess.”

They’ve fallen automatically into a loose formation of Taichi leading and Yamato covering their backs. Almost side by side, but not quite. Scanning the thickening foliage to their right, Yamato resettles the strap of his rifle. 

“No, I mean what’s going on with you? Any hot dates your end?”

Taichi lets out a scoffing sound. “I don’t know how anyone has time for dating.”

It shouldn’t make Yamato feel good to hear Taichi say things like that, but somehow, it always does.

“Are you working too much?” he asks next.

“Probably. I hang out with the guys a lot, though. I played tennis with Sora yesterday. She thrashed me. I’m out of shape.” 

“Really? You don’t look out of shape.”

Taichi corners him with a smile. “Ok, are you hitting on me, Mr Ishida? Because that’s inappropriate. We’re working here.”

“Shut up,” Yamato says.

It’s cool and pleasant in the shade of the pine trees. The lake to their left is still catching the sunlight. The ripples in the water are dazzling. If Yamato didn’t have half his mind on keeping watch for rapid Digimon, this would feel a lot like a vacation. 

They reach a big outcrop of rocks, stretching right into the water. Rather than go off course around it, Taichi takes the decision to go over. He wedges a boot into a crack in the stone and heaves himself up. Once secure, he offers a hand back to Yamato.

“I’m fine,” Yamato says, finding his own foothold, and dragging himself up after Taichi. 

It only takes a few heaves, before they are at the top of the rocks and can start lowering themselves down the other side.   

“I have actually been thinking about us a lot,” Taichi says, as he steps down to the ground, and dusts off his hands.

Yamato is cautious in his response. “Oh, yeah?” He struggles to find a final foothold on his route, but once again refuses the offer of Taichi’s outstretched hand. He opts instead to drop from a greater height than is really comfortable, with a loaded weapon hanging from his shoulder, and lands in a half crouch.

“Not like that. I mean, maybe a little bit like that.” Taichi says, watching him as he straightens up. He squeezes his hands into fists, still clearly itching to help. “But mostly just reflecting on it all.”

“How very un-Taichi of you.” Yamato checks the map, and they start forward again.

“They made us do this short course at work, as part of our professional development,” Taichi explains, as they walk. “Behaviour science thing. About habit formation and how that makes you relate to people.”

Yamato nods, feeling unsettled by the direction their conversation is heading in. They haven’t actually spent that much time together in the year since their break up, not alone like this, without other people to mediate it. There is probably way too much they need to say to one another.

”It’s been really interesting,” Taichi continues, “It got me thinking. You know? I feel like maybe we just fell into bad patterns. Didn’t let ourselves evolve together.” Here, he shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess maybe I’m saying that if I could do it again, I’d do it differently.”

”We had a lot of good days,” Yamato says. 

“I know. I wasn’t the one who called time on them.”

At that, Yamato pauses to take out his compass and compare this to what he sees on the map. “I miss our old apartment, sometimes,” he admits.

Taichi stops, too, doubling back a step, to stand with him. Right as Yamato looks up from his compass, Taichi says, “I miss fucking you.”

They stare at each other and Yamato feels a thump of attraction, so intense that it’s almost nauseating. There couldn’t be a worse time or place for getting distracted like this. He swallows and looks back down at the quivering compass needle. 

“We’re drifting off course a bit,” he says. “Let’s straighten up.”

Taichi doesn’t resume walking, though, and when Yamato risks looking up again, he sees that Taichi thankfully isn’t preparing to continue with the stressful confessions. Instead, he is staring off into the middle distance. 

“What are you looking at?”

Taichi points. “That smoke.”

It’s up ahead, visible through the trees. It hangs above the peaks of the mountains, amber-grey layers of the stuff, overwriting the blue of the sky.

“Doesn’t look far off,” Yamato says.

Taichi frowns. He’s gripping the strap of his rucksack in one hand, the strap of his rifle in the other. “I don’t know. When I was in Cape Town last year, there were forest fires. The smoke was all along the bay. It looked like it was right on top of us, but the fires weren’t that close at all.”

“Those fires were probably being managed by teams of firefighters, not burning uncontrolled,” Yamato says. “Better check it out.”

Taichi takes his radio from his bag. “Koushiro, Koushiro.”

There is a buzz of static, and then, “I’m here.”

Speaking into the radio, Taichi says. “We can see smoke in the direction we’re heading. How’s that fire looking? Over.”

“It’s still contained behind the mountains right now,” Koushiro’s voice comes, over the radio. “I’m going to run some checks in other areas, though. Over.”

“Ok, thanks.” Taichi is just starting to tuck the radio away, when its feed crackles to life again. 

“Taichi, Taichi.”

“Yes,” he says, lifting the receiver back towards his lips.

“On second thought, it’s making me uncomfortable,” Koushiro says. “How far away from the source are you?”

Here, Taichi looks at Yamato, who stares down at the map, estimates the distance, and then does some quick calculations in his head. 

“Maybe thirty minutes at a good pace,” he decides.

“Ok,” Koushiro says, once Taichi has relayed that. “If you can get there and start heading out again in thirty-five minutes, fine. Otherwise abort.”

“Copy that,” Taichi says, into the radio.

Maybe in a bid to head off any unnecessary heroism, Koushiro adds, “You can probably still hit the tributaries on the way back. If you can keep close to the water, you’ll almost certainly be fine. But I’ll monitor and confirm, over.”

Taichi and Yamato look at each other. There is the faint smell of smoke in the air. Nothing dramatic. No more than the scent of a campfire.

“Absolutely worst case scenario, we head back to the lake and jump in it,” Taichi says. 

Yamato nods, and they strike out towards the mountains again, leaving the lake behind, their pace less leisurely now, despite the sharper incline.

For a good few minutes, they don’t speak. Yamato’s thoughts cycle unhelpfully between the smoke up ahead, the loaded rifle on his back, and the fact that Taichi still thinks about them fucking. 

He finds himself casting back to that last night together in their apartment. The thick heat in the air. How truly terrible that last fight had felt. He remembers standing at the shrine, pressing his palms together, hoping for the strength to just get himself through the night.  

That shrine visit started a pattern that Yamato has maintained in the past twelve months. He now goes to his local inari shrine semi-regularly, just for the peace, and to be alone with his thoughts. He often thinks about Taichi while he is there.

As they make their way through the near-silent woods, Yamato finds himself saying, “I know that I didn’t ever really give you the validation you needed back then. I think about that, sometimes. It bothers me.”

Taichi sighs. He tips his head back to stare up at the sky, through the canopy of leaves. Yamato gets the impression he is running through several possible responses, before he settles on, “I appreciate you saying that.”

They reach an entire fallen tree in their path. Taichi steps up onto a manageable section of the trunk. Once again, he offers a hand back to Yamato, the need to help others ever his automatic, uncontrollable impulse. 

Yamato definitely doesn’t need his help, but this isn’t about that. He takes Taichi’s hand, lets him half-pull him up.

“Stop being so mature,” he says, planting his boots on the log. “It’s unnatural.”

“Back at you,” Taichi says, with just a ghost of his usual grin.

“We’re nearly there,” Yamato says, then, and releases Taichi’s hand. “I can hear the water.”

The waterfall that feeds the lake is not particularly big, or impressive, but it is beautiful, all the same. The water tumbles over a series of dark outcrops, and the surrounding boulders are covered in thick strings of green moss. The spray from the falling water hangs in the air, making tiny rainbows wherever the mist catches the sun’s rays.

“Shame we’re in such a rush,” Taichi says, stooping to gather a sample of the dark earth at their feet. “It’s nice here.”

It feels very quiet where they are, despite the sound of the rushing water. Quiet and still. Something about that is making Yamato uneasy. There is a prickle across his skin strong enough to make him unshoulder his rifle. He looks around, running his gaze slowly over the trees and bushes that surround them.

“You hear something?” Taichi asks, noticing this. He is still frozen in his crouch, watching Yamato as closely as Yamato is watching the bushes.

“Just get the water and let’s go,” Yamato says.

He’s aware of Taichi moving behind him, stepping carefully across the wet and slippery rocks, leaning precariously close to a drop, to reach the running water. Then he is back at Yamato’s side, screwing the lid onto the sample pot.

“Got it,” Taichi says.

They head back the way they came, sticking as close to the water as they can. It seems darker than before, and a glance up at the sky through the trees shows that the blue is taking on an increasingly orange tinge.

“Does this look like Cape Town?” Yamato asks. He glances over his shoulder, trying to gauge if the sky behind looks more or less orange than the sky they are walking towards.

“Yes. I guess so,” Taichi says. He stops to look behind, too. “Are we definitely walking the right way?”

“I mean, we’re following the river,” Yamato says, taking out his compass, just to confirm what he already knows. He holds it out and is alarmed to find the needle spinning erratically, refusing to settle. 

“Ok, this thing is fucked,” he says, scrabbling in his backpack for his radio. 

Taichi takes the compass from his hand. “What do you mean?” 

Yamato is already depressing the button to open the communications feed, and speaking into the radio receiver.

“Koushiro, Koushiro,” he says, “There’s something electromagnetic going on here. I don’t know if that’s in any way connected to the virus, or the fires, or whatever, but I can’t get a read on our orientation. Over.”

He waits. Nothing. Just static.

“Koushiro, Koushiro,” Taichi tries, speaking into his own radio, “Do you copy?”

Again, there is no response. All they hear from the radio is an ominous buzz. 

Immediately, a shred of alarm spikes in Yamato’s chest. “Shit,” he says. “How long have we been out of service?”

Taichi stares at the useless radio in his hand. He passes the spinning compass back to Yamato, and then looks up at the orange sky. 

“Let’s keep moving,” he says. “If we stick close to the river, we’ll be ok. We’ll be back at the lake in half an hour, and probably back in signal, too.”

They continue to walk the way they came, hurrying now, not speaking, focussing only on navigating their way through the trees.

“Ouch,” Taichi says, out of nowhere, coming to a halt. He’s turning around and swatting furiously at the back of his neck. “Something stung me.”

Yamato steps over to him and is alarmed to see, there on the ground, a glowing ember. “Did that hit you?” he asks, pointing.

The smoking fragment has landed amongst the dry leaves and pine needles they are walking through. As they stare at it, the leaves begin to smoulder, and then ignite.

“Shit,” Taichi says, moving quickly, to stamp it out. “Was that carried here by the wind?”

All at once, the orange sky up ahead takes on a sinister meaning. Yamato coughs, realises for the first time that the air has started to feel thick.

“Fires can jump, can’t they?” The half-remembered fact comes to him from some source or other, a movie or TV show he has watched in the past. “What’s that called?”

“Spot fires,” Taichi says, dredging up the name from the depths of his own memory.

Yamato considers all of this information. Tries to think. Draws a blank. He looks to Taichi. “What should we do?”

Lifting his foot from the blackened leaves, Taichi tries the radio again. “Koushiro, Koushiro,” he says, enunciating each syllable, making it extra clear. 

Again, only the hiss of static returns. 

Taichi wets his lips with the point of his tongue, then gestures with his radio, off to the left. “The river bank is that way, right? Let’s wade along it in the shallows.”

“That’ll take us twice as long,” Yamato says. “We’ll be slow.”

“We’ll be wet.”

They are both already turning in that direction, starting to hurry towards the water, as a troubling thought occurs to Yamato. “What if the fire’s between us and the gate?”

“We’ll still be wet,” Taichi says. He glances over at Yamato, and flashes him half a grin. “It’ll be ok. You’re not nervous are you?”

“No,” Yamato says, which is a lie. He forces his best attempt at a smile back, and adds, “Hey, if it starts to look like we’re going to die, though, we have to fuck one last time in the river first, ok?”

It’s a joke. Of course it is. Battlefield humour. That’s why it comes as such a surprise when Taichi stops walking abruptly and reaches for Yamato’s face. He kisses him hard, mouth open. Their teeth bump. Taichi’s fingers squeeze, points of pressure at Yamato’s cheekbone, his jaw.

“Deal,” he says, pulling back. “Now, let’s go.”

As they resume their jog towards the river, Yamato’s heart is pounding, from the kiss and the adrenaline of the situation. In a way, it’s kind of thrilling. This is the caped crusader shit he secretly misses so much. They’ve been in worse predicaments in the past, and have always made it out. Taichi is right. This is going to be ok. There is no better person for him to be in this scenario with.

It’s fine. Or it’s going to be fine, until they get within striking distance of the river and suddenly it’s not fine at all, because what looks like a huge rock up ahead shifts, and lurches, moving on unsteady feet. 

For a second, they both freeze. It is not a Digimon that Yamato recognises. It’s hulking and boar-like, with yellowed tusks and matted brown fur. 

So far, they haven’t encountered many signs of life around here. It’s the fires, probably, that have cleared the area. But this monster has stayed. And, from the unsettling jerks of its head and limbs, it has stayed because the worst of its symptoms have already set in; it has no idea that it should even be trying to escape. 

There is no time to stop and take aim. There is just a groaning roar, a zeroing in of red eyes, and then Yamato and Taichi are both turning and sprinting in the opposite direction, away from the charging creature.

They have the advantage of being smaller, able to dodge more easily through the trees, but their stamina is no match for a creature that size.

“We have to climb,” Taichi calls out to Yamato, breathless. 

He picks a suitable tree, jumps for the first accessible limb, pulls himself up. Yamato follows, not bothering to feel out his own path, just placing his hands and feet exactly where Taichi’s have been, completely focused on putting as much vertical space between himself and the creature thundering towards them through the undergrowth. His body moves on autopilot, taking the decisions for him. 

Taichi only stops climbing when the branches up above are too flimsy to hold their weight. There, he grips the trunk, and stares down, past Yamato, to where the monster is wheezing and spitting, backing up to charge the tree.

“We’ve got to shoot it,” he says, and then, “hold on.” They both brace, as the creature rams the tree with its body, the vibrations threatening to fling them from their perches. Yamato can feel the rough edges of the tree’s cracked bark cutting into his skin. 

Adjusting his grip, craning down to look, he sees the animal stumbling backwards, shaking its head, preparing for another run at them. 

“Do you know its name? Maybe it’s usually harmless,” Yamato says. He’s thinking of their partners, of all the other Digimon they know as friends. Though, this creature is clearly too far gone to be spared.

“It doesn’t matter how harmless it used to be,” Taichi snaps. He slides his rifle from his shoulder, anchors himself with his knees and attempts to take aim, as Yamato makes himself as small as possible, flattening his body against the trunk.

But Taichi shakes his head, lowers the gun. “You’re too much in my line of fire. You’re going to have to do this.”

Yamato looks up at him, horrified. “But you’re a way better shot than me.”

“No, I’m not.” Taichi passes his rifle down, to save Yamato having to wrestle his own off his back amidst a tangle of branches. “You’re a great shot. You can do it.”

The creature lets out a guttural shriek as it starts to charge again, and they both brace for the impact, clinging tight. This time, there is a sickening crack, followed by the creak and whine of breaking wood. The tree shudders. There isn’t time to indulge in feelings.

Taking a breath, Yamato tries to secure himself as firmly as he can, gripping the tree limb he is sitting astride with his thighs, pressing his knees painfully hard into rippled bark. He hooks one arm around a branch, steadies an elbow on another, as he lifts the gun into position, stares along the barrel at the panting creature, down below.

“Hold me so the recoil doesn’t throw me out of this fucking tree,” Yamato says. 

Above him, Taichi shifts. Yamato waits until he can feel strong hands gripping him, belting him in. Then he takes a steadying breath and tries to clear his head. Tells himself it’s just like at the range. Trust your body. 

He takes aim. Fires.

There comes a screech. The monster takes two unsteady steps, then crashes, its heavy body thudding to the ground, struck in the neck.

“He’s down,” Taichi says. “That was a nice shot.”

Yamato lowers the gun. He is shaking. “I feel sick.”

There are too many branches in the way for Taichi to offer him much comfort, but he bows his head to press his forehead to Yamato’s temple, and says, “Hey, you just gave us back a fighting chance.”

They make their way unsteadily back to the ground and skirt around the fallen creature’s lifeless body.

Looking around, they take stock. They are in the depths of the woods now, under thick canopy. Despite that, everything feels even darker than it should. It’s the thickening smoke, beginning to block out all traces of daylight.  

The tree they climbed is in the middle of a small clearing, but at the borders of this space, there is thick undergrowth on all sides. Over to their left, in the direction they came – the direction of the river – they can already see the ruddy flicker of flames. 

Turning in a slow circle, Yamato realises that he has no idea which way they should walk, or what they should do next. They seem to be surrounded by crackling orange light. He can’t see an obvious way out and so looks to Taichi, because there is clearly something he is missing here; some solution that only Taichi has seen.

But all he sees in Taichi’s eyes is growing bewilderment, and a creeping sense of disbelief at the reality of their situation begins to set in.

In the air around them, there are flakes of something. It’s falling from the sky like snow, pattering over the ground and onto their heads.

“Ash,” Taichi says, rubbing a soft, grey piece of the stuff between his fingertips.

Yamato coughs again. Notices that he is beginning to feel sleepy. They have been breathing in smoke for too long now. It’s hot here, too, the heat of the fires edging closer.

“What do we do?” Yamato finds himself asking.

“I–,” Taichi starts to say, and then stops. He has nothing. 

There comes a deafening roar to their right. Both of them startle, and whirl towards it. Another infected monster, Yamato thinks, but it’s perhaps worse; turns out to be the sound of a entire tree crashing to the ground in flames, just yards away. 

Yamato’s throat begins to tighten with fear. He thinks of reaching for Taichi, then realises that he already has hold of him, gripping him tight by the shoulder.

But as the thunder of the falling tree fades, they hear a lifeline. It’s a buzz from the radio, then Koushiro’s voice, repeating their names over and over and over, like he has been doing this for some time. 

All at once, the life floods back into Taichi’s face. “We’re here,” he says, pulling free of Yamato’s grip, so he can whip out his radio. 

Koushiro’s voice comes again. “Copy,” he says, “Finally. Listen, I need you to get back to the digital gate right away. I can’t move it from here.”

“We can’t, Koushiro,” Taichi says, not bothering to control an edge of desperation. “We cannot. Ok? The whole fucking forest is on fire and it’s between us and the gate. And us and the river. And us and the fucking lake. We are completely fucking surrounded.”

“Ok,” Koushiro says, “ok.”

“Ok, what?”

“I’m thinking!”

There is silence for a moment. Taichi swipes gathering ash from the radio’s mouthpiece. 

Another buzz, and then Koushiro is back, saying, “Alright. I’m going to try something.” There is a pause, before he adds, “Yamato, I need you to keep your head here.”

“Why?” Yamato says, speaking into his radio. “What are you doing?”

But Koushiro just says, “I’m patching in the code now.” 

The gateway opens in front of them, a slice of dark space that seems to cut through the very fabric of the air, like a mouth cracking into a yawn. 

“What the hell is that?” Taichi says, and Yamato can’t answer him. He’s staring at the black space. He has never seen this in reality, only in abstract calculations.

Beyond the edges of the gateway, the matter inside is blacker than black. It’s a thick kind of darkness that promises to fold in on you, and swallow you whole.

“Oh, shit,” Taichi says, catching on. “It’s that other type of gateway, isn’t it? The one that you’re always yelling at his guys about.” 

Yamato lifts his radio again. “Koushiro, we’re not going through that,” he says. “It’s no better than the fire.”

“Yes, it is,” comes the instant reply. “There isn’t another option.”

Taichi is already closing in on the gateway. “Hey,” he says, and lays a hand on Yamato’s shoulder. “We’ll be ok. I’m with you.”

Yamato whirls to face him, throwing up an arm to point at the yawning void in space and time that is just standing, waiting for them. 

“That’s nightmare physics,” he shouts. “We have no idea what it’s going to do to us. It could tear us apart in ways we can’t even make sense of.”

“Koushiro thinks it’s safe.”

“Koushiro is panicking.”

“No, he’s not,” Taichi says. “It’s a last resort to save us.”

For the first time, Yamato feels true panic start to set in. Caught like this, between two impossible options, being swallowed up by the fire, or swallowed up by the darkness, he’s finding it suddenly hard to take a proper breath in a way that has nothing to do with inhaling too much smokey air.

Taichi takes him by the upper arms. All trace of defeat has disappeared and he’s steely now, as he holds Yamato’s gaze.

“Yamato,” he says. “Let me be really clear. I’m not letting us burn to death here. If I have to knock you the fuck out and drag you through that gate by your feet, that’s what’s happening.”

To their left, a tree branch crashes to the ground in flames, quickly igniting everything around it. Yamato can feel the wave of fresh heat, as the growing fire starts to ripple up the trees, and across the dry kindling of the ground.

“Ok?” Taichi says, ignoring this hellscape, his eyes still on Yamato’s. “We do it together.”

The second Yamato nods at him, Taichi is pressing the button on the side of his radio down, and manoeuvreing them both to face the gateway, one hand still firm on Yamato’s arm. “Koushiro, we’re heading through. Over.”

“Roger that. Godspeed,” Koushiro’s voice crackles back to them.

The flames are billowing all around them now, the little clearing almost completely overwhelmed. Up above, the sky is black, like night. Taichi releases Yamato’s arm and takes his hand, instead. They grip tight. 

“Taichi, I love you,” Yamato says, and they step into the void.

Chapter Text

Dallas, 2019 

The next morning, Taichi showers and dresses and comes out into his living room, to find Yamato standing over by the windows. He is peering through the blinds, into the backyard. 

He’s wearing one of Taichi’s shirts. It’s grey, with the blue Cowboys star on the breast pocket. As Taichi approaches, Yamato pokes a finger into the lines of the blind, pulling them apart, to reveal a slice of the view: the wooden decking, poorly tended summer grass, and a liquid glimmer of aqua.

“There’s a pool out there,” he says.

Taichi feigns surprise. “Is there? No shit.”

Yamato moves his finger and the blinds spring back into place. “That’s been here the whole time. And we didn’t go in it.”

“Do you want to go in it now?”

“I don’t have trunks.”

Taichi smiles at him. “Is that a problem?” 

Rather than pick up the flirting baton, Yamato just turns his gaze towards the dining table, where Koushiro is sitting, facing them. He waves. 

“Don’t mind me. I’m very practised at averting my eyes from things.”

Taichi sighs, all thoughts of fooling around in the pool evaporating. “I don’t really know you well enough to inflict skinny dipping on you.”

“That sort of thing has never stopped you before.”

Heading for the kitchen, Taichi says, “I don’t know about the Taichi from your world, but this Taichi has some modesty.”

“Ok,” Koushiro says, unconvinced.

Turning from the window, clocking where Taichi is going, Yamato calls to him, “Some of us could really do with some coffee.”

“I’m on it,” Taichi says.

In the kitchen, he sets up the coffee machine and then takes eggs from the fridge. As the coffee starts to rattle through the filter, he leans back through the kitchen door, to see Yamato pulling up a chair beside Koushiro. He’s struck by how odd this situation is; these two men he barely knows, sitting at his breakfast table like they are all old friends.

“I have eggs,” he tells them. “Maybe some bagels in the freezer. Not much else. I’ve been out of town.”

“Sounds nice,” Koushiro says, then thinks, and adds, “Is there any leftover rice?”

“Black coffee,” Yamato says. He yawns, and pushes a hand through his hair. “I don’t care about anything else.”

Back in the kitchen, Taichi gets the remains of yesterday’s rice out of the freezer and shoves it in the microwave, because he doesn’t know what Japanese people do with breakfast rice. Then, he cracks eggs into a frying pan and scrambles them with butter. He toasts a bagel for himself and one for Yamato, because he remembers yesterday, when Yamato had claimed not to want a burger and then tried to eat his.

He brings everything to the table, along with the pot of coffee, and they continue their strange arrangement by all eating breakfast together.

“So, what’s the plan?” Taichi asks, once he has finished devouring his eggs.

Koushiro has sprinkled his eggs with soy sauce that he’d asked Taichi for and is eating them spooned over the rice. It looks like a terrible breakfast. 

“There isn’t much of a plan,” he says, “just as soon as you’re ready, we can go.”

Yamato is sitting back in his chair, clutching his coffee. He has already finished eating the unrequested bagel that Taichi had set in front of him. He looks at Koushiro and asks, “What does it feel like?”

“Not much,” Koushiro says. “Maybe like landing in an airplane. It makes your stomach drop.”

Taichi reaches for the coffee pot, and tops up his mug. “How will we know if it’s worked?”

“You won’t, I guess,” Koushiro admits.

“Cool,” Taichi says, sarcastically.

Across the table, Yamato sets his mug down. “I think we should just go. Waiting like this is too stressful.”

Taichi studies him for a moment, then nods. “Agreed.”

“Well,” Koushiro says, and places both palms on the table, as he stands up. “Let me get everything ready, then.”

While Koushiro is booting up his laptop, Yamato helps Taichi to carry the plates to the kitchen. He sets a pile of them down on the counter, without meeting Taichi’s eyes.

As the morning goes on, it feels like there is a kind of emotional barrier forming between them, a professional distance that will insulate them both from what’s to come. It’s the type of self-protective emotion engineering that Taichi would readily coach a patient in, but which feels alien applied to his own life.

He begins loading things into the dishwasher, while Yamato drifts over to the refrigerator and studies the items pinned to the door with old magnets. It's mostly drawings done by Taichi’s niece and nephew, interspersed with a couple of old photographs. There’s actually one up there from Taichi’s time backpacking, a cheesy shot of him posing on a beach in Ko Pha Ngan in Thailand, grinning wide in front of the blue waves and pristine white sand.

That’s not the picture Yamato is focussed on, though. He’s staring at an even older shot, of Taichi and his sisters, from back home in San Diego. 

“These are your sisters,” Yamato guesses, easing the photo out from under the magnet’s grip. “From this life.”

“Yep.” Taichi leans over, to point out the smiling, sunlit faces in turn. “That’s Skylar, Aster and Alanis.” 

They all share the same brown hair and tanned skin, apart from Skylar, the inexplicable redhead, who has a face full of freckles to bring out her brown eyes.

“More hippie commune names,” Yamato comments, and Taichi nods, unable to not smile at the thought of his freewheeling, love-filled childhood, being equally doted on and bullied by those three older girls.

“You know it.”

Yamato returns the photo to its place, carefully positioning the magnet, to make sure it isn’t covering anyone’s face. “Alanis is a cool name. Is that for Alanis Morrisette?”

“Nah, she wasn’t famous until my sisters were teenagers.” Taichi stares at the face of the youngest of his sisters, who has always looked the most similar to him. There is less than a two-year age gap between them. “Everyone always asks that, though. She’s actually getting married in a couple of months.”

“I listened to Alanis Morrisette all the time when I realised I needed to end it with Felix,” Yamato says. “Her and Radiohead.”

Noticing that he has left the dishwasher open, Taichi moves to close it. “How very nineties emo girl of you.”

Yamato folds his arms and leans one hip against the kitchen counter. “She plays the harmonica live on stage. I love that. It’s such an underrated instrument.”

“Are you musical? Like, do you play stuff?”

Yamato nods. “A lot of stuff,” he says, and Taichi feels a pang, because there is so much he still does not know about this man. And now he’s not sure if he’s going to get the chance to find it all out.

Maybe having similar thoughts, Yamato pushes away from the counter and takes up the pen that is attached to the grubby little magnetic whiteboard on the fridge, which Taichi uses to jot down things he needs to remember.  

Scrawling in the black dry-erase, Yamato prints out the words “Call Yamato”, along with a phone number. 

“Maybe if we do forget all of this, that will be a reminder,” he says, as he clicks the cap back onto the pen.

Taichi steps over, to look. Pointing to the start of the numbers, he asks, “What is that?”

“It’s a plus sign,” Yamato says. “That’s plus 44. It’s a UK number.“

“Oh right. Of course.” Taichi steps back. “Your handwriting is terrible. Aren’t you a journalist? How can you ever read your own notes?”

“You’re lucky I didn’t write it shorthand,” Yamato says. “Then you’d really be fucked.”

“I don’t know what that is.“

“I know you don’t. That’s why you’d be fucked.”

Now it is Taichi’s turn to fold his arms. “You know, you’re kind of an asshole. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Yes, all the time," Yamato says. "Though they’re usually pronouncing it ‘arsehole’.”

This feels like when they met outside the hotel in Fort Worth, prodding at each other for no clear reason. That had been a stressful moment, Taichi remembers. Probably, this is their stress response; to just poke annoyingly at one another. 

Taichi holds himself back from making another jab. Without the momentum to keep going, Yamato lets out a breath and replaces the pen in its holder.

“You have my number in your phone anyway,” he says, “But this might be a visual reminder that I was here.”

Taichi nods. “I get it.”

Staring at the photos on the fridge again, Yamato zeroes in on the Thailand picture. He picks it up, and asks, “Can I have this?”

Taichi takes the picture from him, staring down at his own face. He looks carefree there, with his buzzed hair and board shorts.

“As well as my shirt? Sure. Take it all.”

“Do you want the shirt back?” Yamato grabs the grey t-shirt by its hem, as though preparing to take it off. Taichi reaches out and stops his hands.

“No, I don’t.” He shakes his head, looking down. “I just don’t know what to say to you anymore. I hate all of this.”

There is a pause and then Yamato nudges him under the chin with a fist, urging him to look up. When their eyes meet, he says, “We don’t have to do it, you know.” 

“I think we do,” Taichi says. 

Frowning at that, Yamato turns and picks up the dry-erase pen again. “Well anyway,” he says, underlining his number on the board, for emphasis. “Whatever happens. Call me.”

“I will,” Taichi says, and hands him the photo from Ko Pha Ngan.

As Yamato is tucking the picture away in his back pocket, Taichi is googling 'shorthand' on his phone. 

That’s how Koushiro finds them. “Ok,” he says, as he stands in the doorway, and looks to Taichi, “Lead the way, then.”

The day is hot and still, as they climb into Taichi’s car and hit the freeway, speeding back towards Fort Worth. There is no sign of yesterday’s rain clouds. The sky ahead is a clear, endless blue. 

The address of the street with the chain link fence is still saved in the car’s navigation system. It’s easy for them to find their way there. Taichi parks the car in the biggest patch of shade he can find, and they all get out, slamming their doors behind them.

Taichi and Yamato follow Koushiro to the wall in the middle of the chain link. It looks just the same as the day before. There are the dark smudges, like scorch marks, on the bricks. That tiny, scratched message, down at one end.

Taking his laptop from his bag, Koushiro crouches down on the hot sidewalk and starts maximising and minimising windows, his fingers clattering over the keys.

“Just in practical terms, what’s going to happen?” Taichi asks, standing over him.

“You step through, like it’s a regular doorway,” Koushiro says, without looking up from what he’s doing. “But rather than let you through, it’s going to throw you back, into your own space time continuum.”

Yamato looks around them, at the empty buildings and hot, bare street. “Back to right here?”

“I‘m not sure.” Koushiro stands up again, holding the laptop balanced on his palm. “I’ve programmed the gateways so that the timelines are as closely aligned as they can be. Though, there’s a chance there might still be a time slip.”

“What about them?” Taichi asks, and when Koushiro looks at him, unsure, he clarifies, “I mean the other Taichi and Yamato.”

“Oh,” Koushiro turns to the wall, staring at the empty brick. “I hope the same should happen. They’ll be thrown back into the right continuum.”

Nobody says anything else, so Koushiro clears his throat, and then types out a short command.

The door opens silently. One second, Taichi is looking at the brick wall and the next, he is staring into blackness. An oblong of the existing view – of sidewalk and the rough, sunlit pattern of brick – has been peeled aside, to reveal a deep emptiness. It looks as though somebody has cut a slice out of reality, which Taichi guesses is exactly what has happened. Staring into that void gives him a nasty sinking feeling in his stomach.

“I’ll give you a moment,” Koushiro says, and takes a few steps back. He’s giving them space to say goodbye, Taichi realises.

Slowly, he and Yamato turn to one another. 

“Well,” Yamato says. He has his hands in his pockets and it takes Taichi a moment to notice that he is mirroring that posture, his own hands tucked away, too. He makes a point of pulling them free.

He says, “I don’t like not knowing if we’ll find our way back to each other again.”

Yamato lowers his gaze. “I guess you never know what’s going to happen in a relationship anyway,” he tells the sidewalk. “You know. It’s always such a giant leap of faith.”

They haven’t kissed goodbye. It feels weird to, with the new distance they are both propping up, and standing right here, in front of Koushiro. Instead, Taichi holds out a hand. Yamato takes it, and they turn together, to face the door.

Taking that as his cue, Koushiro steps back over to them. “You ready?”

“Let’s do it,” Taichi says, and feels Yamato squeezing his hand.

“Thank you for this,” Koushiro tells them. He looks to the dark space in front of them. “You just have to step in.”

“On three?” Yamato suggests, looking at Taichi again.

Taichi nods. He says, “One, two, three,” and they step together.

Koushiro is right; going through the door doesn’t really feel like anything. There is a slight dropping sensation, like going down in an elevator. And the cool feeling of darkness, like when you first step outside, on a cold night. 

Taichi is holding Yamato’s hand, and then he isn’t. 

Suddenly, it isn’t dark anymore, either. It’s white.

He is standing alone, facing somebody.

They’re the same. 

Height. Jaw. Shoulders. Eyes.

“Oh shit,” Taichi says. 

Another version of himself is staring him in the face. As they look at each other, a smile spreads slowly over this Taichi’s face.

“Thanks, man,” he says, before turning and walking away, into the endless white space behind.

Taichi blinks, and turns around, and he is in his kitchen, holding a bagel. The room is silent. He can hear the whirr of the house’s air conditioning. A distant hum of a neighbour’s lawn mower. Looking down, he stares at the bagel in his hand. What was he doing with this?

It’s breakfast time. Obviously. He checks the time on his phone. It’s 9am. 

Moving slowly, Taichi heads for the toaster. He takes a knife from the block and slices the bagel in half, before dropping it into the machine, and pressing the button to lower it into the heat.

Another glance at the display on his phone tells him that it’s Wednesday. Two days after the convention in Fort Worth. Taichi isn’t working today. There’s nothing in the calendar. But it feels like there is something he really needed to do.

A sense of confusion continues to hang over him, as his bagel pops up from the toaster. He feels kind of jetlagged, like he has been somewhere much further away than the next city over. This is how he always feels after a big business trip; lonely, and not quite himself.

He goes to the refrigerator for cream cheese, but pauses, with his hand on the door handle, getting that sensation again, of something left undone. There is a small whiteboard attached to the fridge, where he jots down reminders, when he can be bothered to. Its smooth white surface is empty now. There’s only the grey echoes of old to-do lists.

Around the memo board, all the familiar photos and drawings are still in place. There’s the shot of Taichi with his sisters. The one of him on a beach in Thailand. His niece’s drawing of a dragon and a castle. The handprint birthday card from his nephew.

Nothing is different. So, why does it feel like it is?

Shaking his head, Taichi opens the refrigerator and takes out the cream cheese. He slathers it onto his bagel and takes it outside, along with a cup of coffee, to sit on the deck for a moment, before the day gets too hot.

The house is kind of a mess, which makes sense, because Taichi has been away and only came home the day before. On his way to the back yard, he pauses to right a pile of work papers, which have avalanched across his dining table. He stops again to pick up a shirt that has been left crumpled on the floor. It’s one of his favourites – soft grey cotton, with the blue Dallas Cowboys star on the breast pocket. Taichi folds the shirt and leaves it draped over the arm of his sofa.

Sitting outside, staring at the pool, he tries again to think of what it is that he’s forgotten to do. But his brain comes back with nothing.

Taichi eats his bagel and drinks his coffee. The grass in his yard looks terrible. He really should cut it. There’s nothing better to do, so he stands up and heads to the shed, to look for his mower.

*

Tokyo, 2019 – another lifetime

It’s with a jolt that Yamato realises that the crossing light has turned green. All around him, people are already moving. He joins them, herded across to the other side of the street. 

He’s outside the inari shrine near to his apartment building, but that isn’t where he was a moment ago. He can still feel the searing heat of Texas sunlight against his skin. 

Once on the other side of the street, he turns in a slow circle, taking stock. He’s been away from this city for a long time and he needs a moment to recall how to get to where he wants to go.

The station is a ten minute walk from here. Yamato directs his footsteps towards it.

He finds the right platform and boards the first train that pulls into it. He’s heading west, towards the other side of the city. It’s six stops to his connecting station.

At the interchange, he gets off and walks to the platform for Northbound trains. There, he waits, impatient, tapping one foot, until a sharp whistle cuts through the air.

Looking up, across the tracks, Yamato sees him. Taichi is there, waving at him from the Southbound platform. 

As Yamato stares at him, Taichi cups both hands around his mouth and, heedless of the people near to him, hollers out, “Hey! Where are you going?”

Yamato steps a little nearer to the tracks, and shouts back, “To your place!”

Taichi laughs loud at that. “I was heading to yours!”

There’s a chime over the station’s sound system, an announcement of a train about to arrive. Taichi is waving again, gesturing towards the exit. “Meet you on the street?” he calls out, and Yamato nods, before there comes a rush of air and a clatter of wheels and the next train is pulling into the platform between them, blocking their view of one another.

Yamato hurries down the steps, practically running, through the underpass and out of the ticket barriers. He whirls around, and Taichi is finally thudding into his arms. They stand together, pressed chest to chest, breath heaving, as the city crowds pass them by, completely unaware.

Taichi’s grasp is tight at the back of Yamato’s neck, as he speaks into his ear, saying, “Hey. It’s ok now.”

“I know,” Yamato says, and feels a shiver, because for a moment he is back in that forest and can’t breathe, and burning tree limbs are collapsing around them, and Taichi is staring into his eyes, and he knows that, one way or another, they are about to lose each other.

He makes an effort to loosen the grip he has now on Taichi’s body, because his fingertips are beginning to grow numb, and that is definitely a sign that he is holding on too tight. Surely, it’s painful, though Taichi has not complained.

There’s a roar from the railway bridge above them, a train departing the station, and then a flood of people through the barriers, jostling past them, and Yamato realises they must look insane, releases Taichi completely and swipes a tear from his cheek as he turns to face the street, trying to be normal.

Taichi takes his hand, not prepared to not be in contact at all just yet. But he does say, “We look like psychos, here.”

And Yamato nods and says, “Yeah, we have to keep it cool.”

The crowds of passengers from the last train are dispersing, but another is already rattling into the station, over the bridge above their heads. 

Yamato takes a steadying breath and says, “Let’s go somewhere,” and swipes at his other cheek, because fuck these tears; they are the absolute definition of not being cool.

Taichi nods. His fingers slide between Yamato’s, turning what was a flimsy grip into an unshakeable clasp. “I need a beer,” he says, and Yamato finds himself laughing at that, despite everything. “More than I have ever needed one in my life,” Taichi adds, and then leans in and kisses Yamato, just once, quickly, in front of everyone. 

Yamato kisses him back, and says, “Stop it, people are looking,” but then kisses Taichi again because fuck those people, and everything else, as well.

Not far from the station, there’s a small izakaya. It’s nothing special, but there are tables free, so they take a seat and order cold beers and sit there and stare at one another over them. It’s a thing they have done so so many times over the years and yet it feels like they are doing it for first time.

The place is busy. Every now and then, the staff all shout, welcoming new guests, in between calling out orders to one another. There is laughter from other tables.

Yamato finds himself studying Taichi’s face with a kind of dizzying intensity, obsessing over every tiny difference. There really isn’t much in it. That’s perhaps the creepiest thing. His hair had been a little shorter. He’d maybe been bulkier — just a touch, from a history of building different muscle groups, the breadth of American football, versus the sleekness of soccer.

Other than that, they are basically identical.

“Do I look the same?” Taichi asks, like he can read Yamato’s mind. Or, maybe, it’s just that he is having the exact same thoughts himself.

Yamato nods. “Do I?”

“Yes,” Taichi says. “You don’t have his scar.” He reaches across the table and brushes Yamato’s cheekbone with his thumb. It’s too intimate a touch for a brightly lit table in a rowdy izakaya. Yamato catches his hand.

“You’re exactly the same,” he says, and then smiles. “Though, actually, maybe his hair was better.”

Taichi laughs, the sound bright and delighted. “Fuck you,” he says, and reaches for his beer. “Well, I thought the man bun and the earrings were hot. So maybe it’s time to bring those bad boys back.”

“Oh sure,” Yamato says, “maybe they can make a comeback along with your motivation to cook for yourself.”

“Hmm,” Taichi pretends to think about that. “Man, I think all of that might have gotten left behind. What a bummer.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Sorry, yeah,” Taichi says. “Might be gone for good.”

Yamato sips his beer, sets the glass back down, with a shrug, and says, “Ok, so maybe you’re gone for good, then.”

From across the room, the voices of the bar staff rise in chorus, welcoming another customer. Yamato glances over his shoulder, taking in the commotion. When he turns back again, Taichi has laid his hand on the table, palm up.

“Do you know what? I think that Thai curry recipe might be coming back to me,” he says.

Yamato lays his hand in Taichi’s open palm. “Is it, now?”

Taichi’s staring at him in that magnetic way of his, which makes it so impossible to look away. He lifts his other hand onto the table and places it on top of Yamato’s, like they are playing a childhood game, hands stacked together, one by one.

“It goes without saying, right? That we’re doing this again,” he says, “After all of that.”

“Yes.” Yamato reaches out his left hand, and puts that onto their pile, too, completing the stack. 

Taichi nods his own agreement. “And you meant it all.”

“I meant it all.”

“No more breaking up,” Taichi says. “That’s not an option anymore.”

“No. We have to just work through the shit.”

“Roll around in it.”

“I mean, that’s a horrible way to phrase it, but sure.”

“I love you still,” Taichi says, and Yamato bends forwards, bowing low to the tabletop. He presses his forehead to their stacked hands, hoping the gesture shows how much he means it.

“I love you, too.”

*

There are people to tell. Family to hug.

Before they have even finished their beers, Taichi’s phone begins ringing in his pocket, and he pulls it out to find that it’s Koushiro calling.

“Oh fuck, they don’t know that we made it,” Taichi says, in a jolt of realisation, fumbling over the phone in his rush to answer it.

Everybody wants to see them. The next few days are a whirlwind. 

Amid it all, they become one another’s calm centres again. Somebody to reach for, when they need to feel grounded.

Only after the excitement dies down can they begin the quiet work of rebuilding their lives.

It all comes together, step by step. They get a new place. Yamato finds a shrine nearby and takes Taichi there, to share in the peace. They both work less. They prioritise each other. Sometimes, in the evenings, Taichi cooks.

They keep on Yamato’s cleaner, but the cat, Maradona, is long gone, having already chosen to move in with Taichi’s neighbour at his old apartment.

“He always liked her better than me,” Taichi says. “I was kind of offended at first, but I think it’s mostly because I was just never at home.”

“I know the feeling,” Yamato says, and laughs when Taichi socks him in the arm for it.

“Hey, I’m home way more now.”

“I know,” Yamato says, because that’s the truth.

They don’t often talk about their other selves, and the other lives they might be living. Just occasionally, it will come up. Like falling asleep together at night, Taichi might murmur from the depths of his pillow, “I hope they remembered.”

And Yamato will slide his bare feet between Taichi’s, their calves brushing, and say, “I hope they did, too,” though honestly, he thinks it’s unlikely. 

At the very least, he hopes that their paths were always set to bend together, anyway. 

The only way for them to know that for sure would be to go back to check. Maybe one day they’ll do that. But for now, they stay. And protect each other, at all costs.

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE

If you gave me a chance I would take it
It's a shot in the dark but I'll make it

- Rather be, Clean Bandit ft. Jess Glynn

Siena, Italy, 2019

Italy is hot. The country is in the middle of a heatwave and, even as an adopted Texan, Taichi can’t handle these temperatures. At home, if it were this hot, he’d be spending practically the whole day indoors, going from his house to his car to some office building or other and back again, maybe with a pit stop at the pool somewhere in between. 

But here, nowhere, not even the hotel, has air con.

“You couldn’t have gotten married in a new building?” he complains to his sister, loosening his collar, halfway through the rehearsal dinner. “Florence has a lot of really nice hotels.”

Alanis glares at him, through her big brown eyes that are exactly like his own. She’s sweating under her make up, and tiny flyaway stands of dark hair are sticking to her temples, beneath the fancy up-do. Taichi still remembers her at six years old, with no front teeth and scabs on her knees.

“This place is beautiful. We’re in a vineyard in Tuscany. How could you find anything to complain about right now?”

“I’m sweating balls,” he says. “Looks like you are, too.”

“Stop it,” she hisses, clapping her hands together as her soon-to-be father-in-law stands up from his seat, with a microphone clutched in his hand. 

Alanis’s fiancé, Nico, is an Italian guy she met through work. He lives with her in San Francisco now, but his whole family is from Tuscany. Ever since they got engaged last year, a wedding in Italy has been on the cards.

It’s a long way to come, but Alanis isn’t wrong: this location is gorgeous. It’s a cluster of peach-coloured stone buildings, old farmhouses, nestled in the hills near the city of Siena. Long rows of grape vines roll out as far as you can see and, despite the heat, the hotel gardens are lush and immaculately tended.

The rehearsal dinner is being held outside, on a paved patio, with more vines dripping from the trellises above, and strings of white lights that glow like fireflies through the leaves.

The food and the wine, it goes without saying, are incredible. But Taichi could really do with some air con.

They crawl through the speeches, a light version of what they are going to have to endure at the wedding the next day. 

Nico and Alanis address the crowd together, in the last speech of the night. Taichi can’t help smiling at how giddy they seem, happy just to be with one another here, surrounded by the people they love. 

As everyone is applauding again, and raising their glasses in toast, Taichi’s middle sister, Aster, leans towards him and, so that only he can hear, says, “They are so into each other, it’s disgusting.”

Taichi snorts with laughter, because it is all pretty over-the-top romantic, them sharing prosecco and gazing into one another’s eyes in the middle of the rolling Tuscan hills. 

Quietly, though, he approves. Nico isn’t a stereotypical Italian. He wears transparent hipster glasses and has a mass of dirty blonde curls. Back in California, he’d be indistinguishable from any other semi-hot Silicon Valley nerd. He’s a nice guy. And good for Alanis. He makes her laugh and seems rock solid in his support of everything she does.

Maybe Taichi’s getting soft in his old age, but he’d kind of love to have that for himself one day.

“It’s cute, though,” he tells Aster, as he lifts his prosecco towards the happy couple and takes a sip.

“Don’t you start getting any ideas,” she tells him. “I can’t be the only single sibling.”

Taichi looks at her, in surprise. “What do you mean single? What happened to Moira?” 

Around them, people are already starting to stand up, eager to escape the heat and find somewhere to sit and drink with more of a breeze.

Aster runs a hand over her hair, which is as short as Taichi’s. Despite being the second oldest, that haircut, along with her nose ring, makes her look younger.

“Oh, you know, we’re fighting. But fuck her.”

“She’s not here?” Taichi looks around, as though the other half of his sister’s on-again-off-again situationship might suddenly leap out of the beautifully pruned hedges. He hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t here, which is probably not a good sign.

“I think we might be done,” Aster says, and then shakes her head, and knocks back the last of her prosecco. “I don’t know. Maybe not. I miss her.”

“Shit,” Taichi says, because she’s looking emotional and this isn't his role in the family. He turns, searching for Skylar’s red hair, hoping she is not too busy with her kids to come deal with this. He’s good at working through people’s issues in his job, but doing it for his older siblings makes him uncomfortable.

“She really sucks,” Aster says, her voice cracking.

“I know,” Taichi says, because if in doubt, just affirm the feelings. 

“I need another drink,” Aster says next, and Taichi leaps to his feet, because that he can definitely help with.

“I’ll get you one. What do you want?” he asks and then, miraculously, spots Skylar, heading their way. “Look. Here. Skylar’s coming.” He squeezes Aster by the shoulder, already psychologically on his way to the bar. “Talk to her. I’ll get you that drink.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” his eldest sister asks him, as they cross paths. She has read the situation and can see that he’s parachute-jumping his way out of an awkward moment.

“Bar,” he tells her, not pausing to explain himself further, because there will be plenty of time for that later.

The bar is inside the main building, bright and hot and crowded with people. It’s only family and the wedding party staying here at the vineyard. All the other wedding guests are at hotels in Siena or nearby towns and will be coming for the reception tomorrow. Family and the wedding party alone are enough to flood the small hotel bar, though, especially when they are all overheated and jetlagged and have just sat through close to an hour of speeches.

The bar is manned by hotel staff in white shirts and black bow ties, who are popping the corks from fresh bottles of prosecco and rattling silver cocktail shakers. Taichi orders beers for himself and his two eldest sisters. 

He’s only been waiting there for a moment when a bartender sets two drinks down in front of him. The glasses are filled with ice and smell like Aperol.

“Oh, I didn’t order these,” Taichi tells the bartender, who just stares at him blankly, like he couldn’t give less of a shit who ordered them.

“Sorry, I think those are mine,” somebody says, at Taichi’s elbow and he turns to see a man reaching past him for the drinks. Like everyone else, he’s doing what he can to cope with the formal setting in this heat. His collar is unbuttoned and the sleeves of his dress shirt are messily rolled up over his forearms. Taichi can smell faint, expensive cologne wafting off of him – great cologne, actually. 

“I love that smell,” Taichi says, before he can sense-check himself.

The man pauses and looks at him. His eyes are huge, and blue, oh God, he’s gorgeous. Why has Taichi just made this so awkward by talking about how great he smells? Too late now.

“Your cologne,” he clarifies, cringing at himself. “Smells good.”

The man blinks his big blue eyes and, deadpan, says, “I’m not wearing any. That’s my natural smell.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Taichi fumbles over his words, “I thought–”

But the guy is already smiling at him. “I’m kidding. It’s Givenchy,” he says, “I actually bought it on the plane over here. It was a really boring flight.”

He’s British. It’s an accent that Taichi loves, but he can’t comment on that now – not when he has already been so weird about this guy’s smell.

“I’m Taichi,” he says, offering his hand, which he realises too late that the man can’t actually shake, because he is holding an Aperol spritz in each hand. 

“Yamato,” the man says, and something about that name rings a bell, in the depths of Taichi’s mind, but he’s distracted by helping Yamato to put his glasses down again, so that they can complete the stupid handshake that he had to go and initiate.

Yamato’s fingers are damp and cold from holding onto the glasses, and he’s wearing a ring on one finger. His hadshake is firm and strong.

“Are you a friend of the bride’s?” Taichi asks, as they release their grip on one another, baffled, because he is sure he would have remembered meeting this man, but can’t shake the feeling that he knows him already.

“No,” Yamato says, and then makes a little gesture with one hand, brushing at the air between them to indicate something slightly uncomfortable. “I kind of don’t know either of them, to be honest. The groom is my husband’s step-brother. We’re not really close at all. I’m just here as an obligation invite.”

It’s only then that Taichi properly registers the wedding band he’d felt on Yamato’s finger. Of course this man is already married. He’s too hot not to be. 

“Are you family?” Yamato asks, and Taichi nods, although he knows it’s already obvious. Despite their age gap, he and Alanis are often mistaken for twins. 

“The bride’s my sister.” 

Sure enough, the next thing Yamato says is, “You look just like her.”

Taichi holds out his hands, in recognition of this truth, and says, “She rocks that white dress better than me, though.”

Yamato laughs at this, and Taichi feels a kind of warmth bloom through his chest in response. The horrible butterflies of a rapidly developing crush on someone he definitely shouldn’t be crushing on.

There is a clatter to their left, the bartender setting three uncapped bottles of cold Peroni down on the bar for Taichi. This offers a natural end to the conversation; time for them both to take their drinks back to their tables, parting casually, knowing they can nod to one another from a distance at the wedding, with no need to take things any further than that.

And yet, neither of them makes a move to do this.

Yamato hesitates, staring at the bottles of beer, adding them up. “Those are for your sisters?” he guesses.

Taichi picks up the bottles, hooking their glass necks between his fingers. “For two of them. And me. There’s four of us all together.”

“Right,” Yamato says, and reaches to take his two cocktails from the bar.

Taichi nods towards the extra glass in his hand, as they begin to stroll together towards the open doors, which lead back to the patio. “That for your husband?”

“Yes,” Yamato says, and wets his lips with the point of his tongue, just a beat of stalling before taking the plunge and telling Taichi, “though we’re actually in the process of separating, between you and me.”

Instantly, excitement rises in Taichi’s stomach. It’s that feeling of being behind in a game before a sudden touchdown brings you back into the running. He knew there was a vibe in the air between them. He wasn’t imagining the mutual attraction.

Yamato continues, explaining, “My husband hasn’t told all of his family yet about the divorce. And they booked my plane ticket here months ago. So, we’re, you know. Going through the motions this weekend.” 

They pause outside, in the darkness, surrounded by the laughter and the twinkling lights. 

“Ok,” Taichi says. He turns to look at his sisters, clustered together around the top table, and then turns back again. “Want to drink with me instead?”

Yamato doesn’t even stop to consider. “Definitely,” he says. “Let me just drop this spritz off to Felix, first.” He indicates a table at the edge of the patio, where a tall, wholesome looking man is sitting, dressed in a pale blue shirt and beige slacks.

For some reason, it’s that name, and the sight of Felix’s face, that does it. 

“Wait,” Taichi says, reaching for Yamato’s arm, realising that he can’t grab hold of it, with all the beer bottles in his hands. Yamato gets the message and stops anyway, looking back at him, instead of returning to his table.

Of course Taichi knows this man. He spent days trawling the humid streets of Vientiane, back in his twenties, showing a photograph of him to anyone who looked like they might have even a clue about his whereabouts.

“We’ve met before,” Taichi says. “You probably don’t remember. It was years ago. In Cambodia.”

It only takes a moment. Recognition floods Yamato’s face. He takes another step towards Taichi, clearly similarly startled by the coincidence of their meeting again like this.

“Oh shit,” he says. “You’re that guy. I didn’t recognise you. Your hair…”

Taichi grins. He lifts his arm, to run a hand through his hair and then remembers again: beer bottles. “I know. I was, like, incognito back then.”

“It’s nice like this,” Yamato says, his gaze running Taichi up and down, taking him in more closely this time.

They’d kissed one another on that dusty street in Siem Reap. Taichi thought about that kiss for years afterwards. As they stare at each other now, Taichi wonders if Yamato thought about it too.

“We have to catch up,” he says, “let’s lose these drinks.”

“Yes,” Yamato agrees. “There’s a gazebo by the top pool. I’ll meet you there.”

Taichi knows the spot. He’d noticed it when he first arrived. It is shadowed and quiet. Secluded from the rest of the festivities. If he were to kiss Yamato again there, nobody would see.

Back at his sisters’ table, he deposits two of the bottles of beer, with a rushed apology for not getting one for Alanis, too. He offers her his own, if she wants it. But she waves the bottle away.

“Who’s that guy you were talking to?” she asks, because of course nothing he does gets past her. 

“I don’t know,” Taichi says, already turning to go. “Let’s see.” 

Across the patio, Yamato is walking away from Felix’s table. He looks back at Taichi, as he saunters from the scene and melts into the shadows of the garden. 

Ignoring everything else, Taichi follows him. Off into the privacy of the hot, Tuscan night.