The Winter Quarters

by Anna Veriani

  Hiro got up. They didn’t say anything. The tension was still thick in the air. Nothing had been quite right since the massage, and Hiro didn’t know how to make it better. He helped Kai wrap the belt around himself. He mentally fretted over Kai’s thinness, and then Kai took the belt from him, folding and tying the knot himself. They worked well in silence together. Hiro turned Kai’s belt for him so the knot sat against his back.

  Next Kai pulled on the haori jacket, a lighter gray than the kimono. Hiro ran his hands across Kai’s chest, smoothing out the material. Kai inhaled sharply, his brows knitted with worry. Hiro reached out and smoothed Kai’s crinkled skin, too, stroking his forehead. Kai stepped back.

  He looked stunning. Waka-Okami. His porcelain skin and pink chapped lips. His handsome kimono, his unmarred face.

  “Meet me at my car at noon,” Hiro said. “I’ll leave for Ya-san’s then.”

  Kai gave a jerk of his head, briefly regarded himself to make sure his garments were immaculate, and then he left.

  Chapter Twelve

  THEY didn’t speak in the car. Hiro turned on the radio, and Yamashita Tatsuro’s “Silent Night” played. He sang of melting snow and waiting all alone.

  “Jesus, turn this off,” Kai muttered. He crossed his arms and looked out the window.

  Hiro changed the station. “Silent Night” was playing on this station, too, and the stanza they’d just heard started over again.

  Hiro grinned at Kai, but he wasn’t smiling back. Okay. Not in a laughing mood.

  “Is there any kind of hint I can get about why I’m driving three hours to pick up my rice supplier?” Hiro asked.

  Kai didn’t answer.

  “Or why you apparently know more about my grandmother than I do?” he tried.

  Nothing.

  Hiro turned off the radio, which really was depressing. They were driving down an empty road surrounded by dead rice paddies. Hiro wanted to make a joke about how depressing that was, too, but Kai wasn’t even looking at him.

  “Enough of this.” Hiro nudged his steering wheel and pulled over to the side of the road. When he unclicked his seat belt, Kai finally looked at him.

  “We don’t have time for things to be awkward between us,” Hiro said. “Please talk to me.”

  Kai glanced at the clock. “We have two and a half hours.”

  “We have thirteen days.”

  Kai’s eyes widened. There was something about having less than two weeks that increased the urgency, made every second feel as fleeting as melting snow.

  “If you’re mad at me, just tell me,” Hiro said.

  “I’m not.” Kai looked almost hurt at the suggestion.

  “Then what is it?” Hiro took a plunge into honesty, since he wanted Kai to be open with him: “Are you worried I’m interested in Ryohei?”

  Kai looked like he was about to shake his head, then he stopped himself. “…Are you?”

  It was so unusual that Kai would act like this. He’d never imagined Kai jealous before. If Hiro had dated a guy a long time ago, would this have been Kai’s reaction?

  “No,” he said firmly. “Ryohei’s like a kid. The thought never crossed my mind.”

  “Then I guess I’m not worried.” He added, “You probably think I’m stupid.”

  “Nope,” said Hiro. “I realized at dinner last night that I’m jealous of the Big D.”

  “Duffy?” Kai said in amazement. “James Duffy?”

  “Your boyfriend, yeah.” A twinge of bitterness marked his voice.

  “Hiro, we’re not real. You know that.”

  “I do,” Hiro said. “But he still gets to spend more time with you than I do. That’s real. And he’s the only person in the world who gets to call you his boyfriend.”

  It wasn’t conscious now, but they were closer than they’d been. Their thighs were nearly touching, and Kai leaned in even more, like he was afraid Hiro wouldn’t hear him otherwise. “Do you… do you want to call me that?”

  The question hung in the air on the long, empty road, a might of possibility.

  Then it crashed. Too little too late. Hiro had come out too late—and he realized now what he hadn’t been able to see before: The timing of his coming out had been intentional, subconsciously, and it revolved around Kai. He told his parents he was gay before Kai’s trip because he needed, on the eve of his parents’ imminent retirement, to have one small chance with Kai.

  It wasn’t like there would ever be another guy. He had just wanted, before he got married, for the possibility of him and Kai to exist, if only for a moment.

  But it was too late. There was no such thing as having a boyfriend for Hiro—not when he needed to be engaged so soon. If he could make all of his choices selfishly, independent of the inn, then yes, he wanted to call Kai his boyfriend. But when he thought of his entire family, of a thousand-year-old tradition resting on his shoulders alone, the word made no sense. Boyfriends didn’t run inns. They didn’t support families. Boyfriends were not husbands.

  “I’m past the time of dating in my life,” Hiro said. “I don’t have room for a boyfriend.”

  Kai’s delicate features seemed to deflate, and Hiro hadn’t even noticed the spark of hope in his eyes until it dimmed. He felt awful, making Kai look that way.

  “You need a husband,” Kai said softly. “Yeah. I understand.”

  They both looked away from each other, but they were so close Hiro’s chin almost grazed the top of Kai’s head.

  “Kai,” Hiro said. “On Thanksgiving night… you asked if we could kiss. Just once, you said.”

  ONE time near the end of their senior year, Kai came back to their dorm to find Hiro drunk and alone. It was odd because Hiro never drank alone, and he rarely got drunk in the early evening, as it’d been. Kai knew something was wrong, but it was confirmed when he found an empty vodka bottle—not Hiro’s usual choice of beer—on Hiro’s bedside table.

  Hiro was maudlin, sobbing softly.

  “It’s too late for us,” he said. Kai was in the midst of finals at the time; they were two weeks away from graduation, and he was so stressed and overworked that he just wanted Hiro to fall asleep so he could keep studying. “We had four years, and it slipped through my fingers.”

  Kai had never asked him what he meant. Now he knew.

  Hiro smelled like firewood from the kitchens. His hand looked so big resting against the steering wheel, and he was Hiro, Hiro Asada, who always did right by everyone, and Kai suddenly loved him so hard he thought it might literally kill him, a violent clutching of the chest.

  Kai had an entire global empire to help run. He had to return to it. But first he needed this.

  “Just once.” He didn’t finish the words before their lips met, the mingle of hot and cold air intoxicating. Hiro. His size, his heat, his breath, his tongue. Kai’s body released itself to Hiro, to the pleasure of his lips. A frisson passed between them. Suddenly Hiro’s mouth was on Kai’s cheeks, his jawline, working down to his neck. He tasted Kai, and when his tongue met the hollow of Kai’s neck, Kai felt it everywhere, burning through him. Just once, they’d said, which meant they could keep going until they had to stop. Kai touched Hiro’s face, the sensitive pads of his fingers brushing rough, barely there whiskers, like a secret you had to touch to know.

  They continued the kiss like they were sinking into a shared dream. Finally, because they were too breathless and their lips too dry and the world was conspiring against them, they had to stop. Kai buried his head into Hiro’s neck. Just once. When he pulled away, he wouldn’t be able to touch Hiro like this again.

  He couldn’t move. He couldn’t let this moment pass. Hiro’s fingers were on the back of his neck, and he loved those fingers.

  “Hiro,” he whispered.

  “Shh,” Hiro said, and Kai knew it was because he was trying to keep this moment from passing, too, but Kai had to say it.

  “Hiro,” he said more urgently. “I need to tell you something.”

  Hiro pulled back
. The moment was receding. Kai expelled the words before it disappeared: “I love you.”

  Hiro regarded him, face unreadable. Kai’s breaths grew shallow.

  “I’m in love with you,” he said, more forcefully, so that he couldn’t take it back. It was getting harder and harder to inhale. He felt like his throat might close up. He said it like it was the air he was looking for: “Hiro, I love you.”

  HIS world had just changed. That was how it felt: the universe made more sense to him now. This wasn’t the world he had known for twenty-six years, where he could be in love with his best friend and no one else gave a damn. This was a version of reality where Kai loved him back. Where he said it three times in a row like he needed to.

  “Hiro.” There was a sharp note of panic in Kai’s voice. “Please say something.”

  “I love you,” Hiro rushed, not at all how he’d ever imagined saying it. He hated the stress in Kai’s voice and wanted to soothe him as quickly as possible.

  Kai peered at him, clearly uncertain. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m in love with you,” Hiro said. “I have been my whole life.”

  Kai laughed, more just an explosive breath, and there was no humor on his face.

  “You usually know when not to joke around.” Kai sounded so broken it hurt Hiro. A literal, physical pain in his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” Hiro said. “I’m not joking, though. I think when you’ve loved someone as long as I’ve loved you, it stops sounding like a grand declaration. I’ve thought it so many times in my head that it’s just a fact to me. The seasons change as we rotate around the sun. In the summer the cicadas hum; in the winter it snows. And I’m in love with Kai Ledging.”

  Kai smiled weakly. “I like hearing that.”

  “Yeah?” Hiro said. It still looked like Kai was about to cry. “Let me say it again.” He cupped Kai’s cheek. “I love you, Kai.”

  “I love you,” Kai whispered. Hiro still couldn’t believe he was hearing it.

  It would have been so easy, then, to make their just once a twice. A third time, a fourth—Hiro would never tire of kisses like those. He would crave them for the rest of his life. But they were like watering a seed of yearning, and the more he kissed Kai, the more that yearning grew and grew.

  When Kai leaned forward, Hiro leaned back.

  Kai looked down. “I was afraid you’d do that. But… why?”

  Hiro took his hand. “I think we need to talk about this like adults,” he said as gently as he could.

  Kai nodded. “Of course.”

  “I’m going to ask you a question,” he said, “and I want you to know that my feelings for you won’t change depending on your answer. Okay?”

  “You’re kind of scaring me,” said Kai. “What is it?”

  Hiro inhaled. “Is there any version of the future where you choose Asada Inn over New York?”

  Kai gaped at him, and Hiro’s heart sank in his chest just like he’d known it would.

  “I knew it was too much to ask.” He regarded the steering wheel for no reason other than to hide his face. “I just needed to be sure.”

  “It’s not too much to ask,” Kai said quickly. “It’s just… not possible.”

  Hiro nodded. “I understand. I kind of hoped, for a second. Because you seem to hate your job. But I guess everyone hates their job sometimes.”

  That was a lie. Hiro never hated his job. Enjoying his job was precisely why he’d chosen his family’s inn over New York, where he would have ended up on Wall Street or somewhere equally draining.

  “It’s not even because of that,” Kai said. “It’s my mom. I’ve watched her my entire life. Everyone seems to forget this, but no one even knew who Kimi Takahashi was ten years ago. She’s clawed her way into the industry, into being a household name. She left my dad when he refused to quit his job in Tokyo; she left her entire family to move to New York. She gave up a country. The show isn’t just her career. It’s the center of her entire life. And I’m half of that center.” He shrugged sadly. “I wouldn’t be… famous without her. I wouldn’t be wealthy. I owe her literally everything I have.”

  Hiro nodded. He could never criticize anyone for making sacrifices because of their parents. It’d be awfully hypocritical, for a start.

  “Your contract isn’t forever, though, right?” he asked.

  He briefly allowed himself to envision a near future where Kai was the second half not of a TV show but of Asada Inn. Kai Asada—no, Asada Kai, Japanese style. Hiro loved the sound of that. If all Kai had to do was finish up this season of filming, then maybe….

  “I signed on for four more seasons,” Kai said. “Not including this one. So about four and a half more years. Duffy is signed on for two more. Then we’ll decide whether we can stand each other for longer than that.”

  “Oh.”

  There was nothing else to say.

  “Yeah.” Kai looked miserable. “Oh.”

  There was one more thing to say.

  “This fucking sucks,” Hiro said.

  Kai released a shaky breath, and Hiro could tell his smile was forced.

  “I’m not sure whether it’s better or worse, knowing how you feel,” Kai admitted.

  “It’s definitely better for me,” Hiro said immediately. “It still doesn’t feel real, but once it sinks in, knowing you feel the same way….” He shrugged, feeling suddenly exposed. “That’s everything to me. Or almost everything.”

  Hiro was an adult. He understood that life wasn’t like the movies; he wasn’t going to get to be with Kai just because he wanted to be. He had Asada Inn and Obaachan and his parents to take care of. Kai had his mother, who might be millions of times richer than Hiro’s entire family but still needed Kai as much as the Asadas needed Hiro. He understood all of that, but he still hated it.

  “Being together would be everything,” Kai said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, it would.”

  They descended into a gloomy silence, looking everywhere but at each other. Hiro silently turned the keys in the ignition and started up the car again. The sky outside was a charcoal gray, almost black, and soon it would rain, too warm for snow.

  “We still have thirteen days,” Kai said. “I won’t go home until I said I would.”

  “Just before Christmas.” Hiro couldn’t keep the melancholy out of his voice.

  “What if we….” Kai looked down, sliding away from Hiro. “What if we took full advantage of the time we have together?”

  “I thought we were already doing that.”

  “You know what I mean.” Kai unconsciously fingered at the collar of his sweater. “When we get back, we could….”

  Hiro shook his head. “You have no idea how much I want to—”

  “As badly as I want to?”

  No, more.

  “It would hurt too much when the time comes for you to go,” Hiro said. “We have so little time. It’s not long enough. I’m sorry.”

  Kai’s beautiful face fell, and Hiro frowned, trying hard to keep his eyes on the road.

  “Unless,” he started.

  “Unless?” Kai’s tone was so hopeful it was flattering.

  “I’m not saying this would be easy but, what if we… tried long distance?” His eyes flitted to catch Kai’s expression.

  “No,” he said firmly. His face had closed. “You need someone to run the inn with you.”

  That hurt. He’d been rejected so quickly. But he persisted because these doors had never been open before, and he couldn’t bear to close them right away.

  “Maybe I could ask my parents about having a platonic business partner to help me,” Hiro said. “It would break a thousand-year-old tradition, but it’d be worth it.”

  “I’d have to keep you a secret,” Kai said miserably, “for at least two years. I couldn’t fly over all the time, not when cameras are rolling. We’d go months without seeing each other.”

  Hiro had just said he’d break a thousand-year-old tradition, and Kai was hung
up on months. He didn’t love Hiro. He didn’t. Hiro had to crush any spark of hope before it had even fully formed. He needed to end this conversation.

  “I’d do it,” he said. “I don’t care.”

  Kai shook his head. “I couldn’t do that to you, Hiro.”

  “I don’t think you get to decide for me.”

  “I do when I know exactly how much your family is depending on you to find a Waka-Okami,” Kai said. “You need to get married now. And I can’t be with you right now.”

  Hiro cursed, stopping the car again and leaving it running. He was thankful no one else was on the road.

  Life was like an impossible puzzle. It had plenty of solutions, and all of them were terrible. It seemed odd that two people could want the same thing very badly and still be completely unable to make it happen.

  Kai was rubbing his temples. A migraine coming on, maybe. Kai’s body was so connected to his feelings.

  “Is this going to ruin our friendship?” Kai asked.

  “What—no!” Hiro had to laugh—a confused, breathless gasp of a laugh. The idea of their friendship being in jeopardy was absurd. He was pretty sure they could weather a hell of a lot worse than them both confessing their love.

  “What about when I leave?” Kai persisted. “Or when you find a partner? What about—”

  “Never, you dork!” Hiro attacked Kai’s underarms with his fingertips.

  Kai gasped in surprise, laughing. Hiro couldn’t stand the pain he’d heard in Kai’s voice, so he abandoned the driver’s seat and straddled Kai, pressing on the seat adjustment so they both came crashing down. Kai cracked up, and Hiro forced his arms up so he could tickle him more, reaching under the collar of his sweater, fingertips on the sensitive skin beneath his collarbone.

  “Damn you—Asada!” Kai gasped and struggled. He writhed, unable to throw Hiro off him. When he realized he had no chance against Hiro’s weight, he yanked Hiro toward him, chest to chest, hands wriggling underneath Hiro’s undershirt and tickling up his back.