Chapter 7: The Morning After
The first thing he became aware of was the taste. Cotton wool and regret, coated in the sour afterburn of cheap whiskey. The second was the light, a relentless, gray-white blade slicing through a gap in the blinds and directly onto his closed eyelids. The third was the pain. A dull, territorial throb in his temples, yes, but deeper, a specific, bruised ache that radiated from his core when he tried to shift his legs.
Taichi’s eyes flew open.
He was on the couch. A rough blanket was twisted around his hips. He was naked from the waist down, his jeans and briefs a crumpled pile on the floor by the futon. His sweater was missing. Memories, jagged and electric, stabbed through the fog of his hangover.
Yamato’s mouth on his. The desperate, clumsy scrabble for a condom. The searing, breathtaking fullness. The way Yamato had looked, shattered above him, whispering that old nickname into his skin.
Oh, god.
A full-body cringe seized him, hot and immediate. He pulled the blanket over his head, fabric muffling his groan. The darkness beneath the wool was a relief. It hid the water stains on the ceiling, the half-unpacked boxes that witnessed everything, the yellowed poster of his own grinning, nineteen-year-old face from a long-cancelled sitcom.
Straight. I’m straight.
The assertion echoed in his skull, hollow and ridiculous. It bounced off the memory of his own choked plea, Yes, God, yes, and the visceral, undeniable proof of his own body’s fervent participation. He’d come harder than he ever had in his life.
From the kitchen came the distinct, quiet sounds of someone else being awake. The click of the electric kettle. The soft tap of a ceramic mug on the counter. Taichi froze, every muscle locked. He held his breath, as if by being perfectly still he could become invisible, could rewind the last twelve hours and wake up in his own bed, alone and unequivocally certain about who he was.
The footsteps approached. They stopped beside the couch. Taichi could see the shape of Yamato’s legs through the thin weave of the blanket. He squeezed his eyes shut.
A soft clink as something was placed on the low table. The scent of fresh, bitter coffee cut through the stale air.
“You okay?”
Yamato’s voice was low, gravelly from sleep and whatever else. It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t smug. It was just a question, stripped bare and hanging there.
Taichi didn’t move. Couldn’t. Shame and confusion were a cement slurry in his veins. How did you look at someone who had seen you like that? Who had held you down and broken you open and made you sob with a feeling you had no name for?
“I brought you coffee,” Yamato said after the silence stretched too thin. “Black. Two sugars.”
It was how he took it. Yamato remembered. That simple, mundane kindness made something awful and fragile twist in Taichi’s chest.
From under the blanket, his voice came out hoarse and alien. “I’m fine.”
“You’re hiding under a blanket.”
“I’m not hiding. I’m… recuperating.”
A faint, humorless puff of air. Yamato hadn’t laughed. He’d just exhaled. “Right.” The legs shifted. Taichi braced for the blanket to be pulled away, for Yamato to force a confrontation in the harsh morning light.
He didn’t. The footsteps retreated back toward the kitchen. “There’s painkillers in the cabinet if your head’s as bad as mine.”
Taichi listened to him move around. The squeak of the fridge door. The rustle of a packet. He was making breakfast, or pretending to. Acting normal. As if the world hadn’t tipped off its axis.
Slowly, Taichi peeled the blanket down to his chin. The room was too bright. His head pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The coffee steamed invitingly. He reached a trembling hand out, grabbed the mug, and pulled it under the blanket fort with him. The heat against his palms was grounding.
He took a sip. It was perfect.
This was worse. Anger would have been easier. Revulsion, regret, a clear-cut line of that was a mistake. This quiet, practical care was disarming. It suggested a continuation, an implication that whatever this was, it existed in a space where one could still make coffee the next morning.
He heard Yamato lean against the kitchen counter. “We should talk,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “Or not talk. But we should… decide something.”
“Decide what?” Taichi mumbled into his mug.
“What happens now.”
Now. The word expanded, filling the apartment. Now, when they had to share a bathroom. Now, when they had a joint interview for that variety show next Thursday. Now, when Yamato’s shampoo bottle was in their shower and his stupid, expensive butter was in their fridge.
“Nothing happens now,” Taichi said, the words too quick. “It was the whiskey. And the rain. And… proximity. It was a one-off. A lapse.”
The silence from the kitchen was heavy. Taichi could picture Yamato’s face, that closed-off, assessing look he got right before delivering a cutting line in a script read-through.
“A lapse,” Yamato repeated, devoid of inflection.
“Yeah. People… experiment. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You seemed to mean it pretty intensely at the time.”
Heat flooded Taichi’s face. “Shut up. You don’t get to—I was drunk.”
“So was I.” Yamato’s voice was closer. He’d moved back into the living area. Taichi kept his eyes fixed on a loose thread in the blanket. “But drunk doesn’t make you do things you don’t, on some level, want to do. It just removes the filter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you wanted it. You asked for it. Repeatedly.”
The clinical summation was a humiliation. Taichi threw the blanket off, sitting up too fast. The world swam, and the deep ache between his legs flared sharply. He winced, clutching the mug. Yamato stood a few feet away, dressed in sweatpants and a worn gray t-shirt, his hair damp from a shower. He looked infuriatingly composed, except for the shadows under his eyes.
“I don’t know what I wanted,” Taichi snapped, the truth escaping before he could cage it. “I still don’t. It’s all just… noise in my head. So don’t stand there looking so fucking knowing about it.”
Yamato’s composure cracked, just a hair. A flicker of something raw—hurt, frustration—crossed his features. “I’m not knowing. I’m just here. In the same apartment. With the same… memory.” He crossed his arms, a defensive gesture. “Look, we can call it a lapse. We can blame the whiskey. We can never mention it again. But it happened, Taichi. Pretending it didn’t is just another kind of lie.”
The option was there, glittering and tempting. Never mention it again. Bury it, move on, return to their carefully curated rivalry. It would be the easy thing. The safe thing.
Taichi looked down at his own hands, pale around the dark ceramic. He saw Yamato’s hands in his memory. On his hips. In his hair. He felt the ghost of that whisper against his ear. Tai.
He stood up, the blanket falling away. He was naked, exposed in the merciless daylight. He saw Yamato’s gaze dart away, a quick, deliberate motion to the window, granting him a sliver of privacy. That small gesture did something to him.
“I need a shower,” Taichi said, his voice flat.
He walked stiffly to the pile of his clothes, gathered them, and held them in front of himself like a shield. He didn’t look back as he walked the ten steps to the bathroom. He locked the door, leaning against it, listening.
The apartment was silent. No retreating footsteps. No sigh. Just the hum of the fridge and the distant, indifferent sound of the city.
He turned on the shower, as hot as he could stand it. Steam quickly fogged the mirror, sparing him from having to look at his own face. He stepped under the scalding spray, flinching as the water hit tender skin. He scrubbed at himself with a rough washcloth, trying to erase the feel of hands, the smell of another person on his skin. The physical evidence washed away down the drain.
But the hollow, unsettled feeling in his gut remained. It wasn’t disgust. It was a terrifying, wide-open question.
What happens now?
He had no answer. Only the ache, and the certain knowledge that Yamato was right there on the other side of the door, waiting for one.