Chapter 6: Shame and a Promise
The first thing Taichi felt was the warm, solid weight of Ethan’s arm draped across his waist. The second was the memory, rushing back in a cold, clarifying wave. The nightmare. The confession. The humiliating, childlike plea.
He lay perfectly still, eyes closed, pretending sleep. His back was to Ethan’s chest, their bodies spooned in the predawn gray. The room was silent except for the slow, even sound of Ethan’s breathing against the nape of his neck. It was a peace so profound it felt like a taunt.
Then he felt Ethan stir. A slow, sleep-heavy nuzzle into his hair. The press of lips, soft and unmistakable, against the knob of his bare shoulder.
It was too much. The tenderness felt like pity. Taichi flinched, a sharp, involuntary contraction of his muscles, and twisted away. He sat up, the sheets pooling around his hips, and hugged his knees to his chest. He stared at the opposite wall where the oil lamp’s flame had long since died, leaving a ghost of smoky scent in the air.
Behind him, the mattress shifted. Ethan sat up slowly. Taichi could feel his gaze on the tense line of his spine.
“Tai,” Ethan said, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“Don’t.” The word came out too sharp. Taichi took a breath, tried to soften it. “Just… give me a second.”
But the seconds stretched. The silence wasn’t comfortable anymore. It was a canyon, and he was on the wrong side of it, choked with shame. The words from the night before echoed in the quiet room. Don’t leave me alone. He’d shown Ethan the raw, pulsing core of his need, and now the morning light was making it look pathetic.
“I must seem like such a mess to you,” he finally said, his voice low and aimed at the burgundy drapes. “Coming back here after two years of running. Waking you up screaming. Clinging to you like a…” He couldn’t finish.
“Like a what?” Ethan’s tone was careful, neutral.
“Like a kid who lost his blankie.” Taichi gave a harsh, self-deprecating laugh that sounded more like a cough. “It’s not just the nightmare, Ethan. It’s… everything. The wanting.” He risked a glance over his shoulder. Ethan was watching him, his expression unreadable in the dim light. “For years, I’ve… I’ve wanted a daddy. Not a father. I had one of those. He died. I mean something else.”
He looked away again, the confession tumbling out now, ugly and real. “Someone to… to tell me what to do. To tell me I’m doing good. To tell me I’m fucking up. To just… be there. Solid. Unmoving. No conditions. No take-backs.” His throat tightened. “And after Mom… God, after Mom, I thought that want would just die. But it got worse. It got so much worse, and it got all twisted up with… with you. And I know how that sounds. I know what it makes me.”
“What does it make you?” Ethan asked. There was no judgment in the question. It was just a question.
“Broken,” Taichi whispered, the word finally spoken aloud. “Needy and confused and fucking broken. A twenty-three-year-old man who has nightmares and wants to be held and called a good boy.” He buried his face in his knees. “You must be repulsed.”
The bed creaked. Ethan moved. He didn’t try to pull Taichi’s hands away or force him to turn. He simply shifted behind him, his chest a warm wall against Taichi’s back. He wrapped his arms around him, over his own, encasing him in a fortress of steady pressure.
“I’m not repulsed,” Ethan said, his mouth close to Taichi’s ear. His voice was a rumble Taichi felt in his bones.
“You should be.”
“I’m not.” A firm statement. “You think you’re the only one who’s been lonely? You think I haven’t spent two years in this house talking to the ghosts? Guilt is a hell of a roommates, Tai. And want… want sits in the corner and watches. It never sleeps.”
He rested his chin on Taichi’s shoulder. “You’re not broken. You’re human. You’ve lost people. You’re allowed to need things.”
“This isn’t a normal need.”
“Says who?” Ethan countered, his tone pragmatic, almost light. “Who gets to decide that?”
Taichi had no answer. The tension in his shoulders began a slow, reluctant melt.
“You want a guide? I can try. You want discipline? I’ve got plenty of opinions.” A dry chuckle. “You want someone who won’t leave?” Ethan’s arms tightened. “I’m right here. I have been. Even when you were gone.”
He turned his head, his next words breathed directly against Taichi’s skin. “But you have to let me in. All the way in. Not just the easy parts. The nightmares. The shame. The want. All of it. You don’t get to show me that and then hide in the daylight.”
Taichi uncurled, turning slowly within the circle of Ethan’s arms until they were face to face in the gray light. The older man’s eyes were green and serious, the silver in his stubble catching the first faint hint of dawn from the window.
“You’d do that?” Taichi asked, his voice hushed. “You’d be… that? For me?”
Ethan brought a hand up, cupping the side of Taichi’s face. His thumb stroked over the sharp line of his cheekbone. “I’ll be whatever you need,” he said, the words simple and devastating in their certainty. “As long as you’re mine. And you let me take care of you.”
It wasn’t a fairy tale promise. It was a pact. It had weight, and edges, and the potential for ruin. Taichi could see it all in Ethan’s eyes—the years of guilt, the dormant desire, the determination to do this one thing right.
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against Ethan’s. He closed his eyes. “Okay,” he breathed. Just one word. A surrender. A beginning.
They stayed like that, breathing the same air, as the room lightened from gray to pale gold. Through the window, the tangled outline of the winter garden became visible, the cherry trees bare and sculptural against the lightening sky. A single bird began a tentative song.
Ethan shifted, pulling Taichi down until his head was resting on his chest, his ear right over the steady, reliable thump of his heart. Taichi slid an arm across Ethan’s waist, holding on.
They didn’t speak. There was no need. The fear wasn’t gone, but it was shared now, diluted between them. The want was named, and it lay in the bed with them, no longer a ghost in the corner.
Together, they watched the sun crest the distant roof lines, spilling liquid gold across the floorboards, reaching with silent fingers toward the bed, painting the tangled sheets and their quiet, tangled limbs in a light that felt, for the first time in a very long time, like hope.