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”The trouble with you humans is that
you are so concerned with staying afloat.
Go ahead, be gouged open by love.
Gulp that saltwater, sink beneath the waves.
You’re not a boat, you can go under and come up again,
with those big old lungs of yours,
those hard kicking legs.”
LAURA LAMB BROWN-LAVOLIE.
✣
It’s in that trembling of bones that he perceived it for the first time, those three seconds of stalemate and restlessness that anticipate a shot, a punch, a kiss.
A flicker at the height of his chest, heart being scratched by the sharp teeth of his ribcage, stomach sinking further and further down and the first thought that comes to his mind is: is this a panic attack? A heart attack? I am dying? Index and middle fingers pressed against the sides of his neck, phalanges feeling the carotid pulse and yes, he is dying, his heartbeat is not at all regular; and no, it’s not a heart attack, it’s not a panic one, it’s something worse, much worse for someone who knows nothing about tachycardia; for someone who only knows negative emotions, for someone who would dream of a medical visit at the first complication and zero possibility of affording it—Sakura gives time to time, the only one capable of healing wounds, curing ailments, forgetting flickers and extrasystoles, tremors and attempts at something he doesn’t know but to which he reacts with so much familiarity; and it’s unnerving, having his cheeks hot and red and not being able to taste the cherries against his tongue. Disconcerting, the ease with which his body allows itself to feel things he never gave consent to.
Sakura has always had his doubts about when and where it all started.
Maybe, surely, a part of him is certain that it all started on Keisei Street. Suou’s words are still warm to his ears, cold to others. The anger in his eyes is immortal ambrosia to Sakura’s palate. The possessiveness in his lips so thick it can be felt a mile away, disguised as a warning, a precaution. The usual smile on his lips dull but so alive in a half one on Sakura’s. Maybe it started earlier. He still doesn’t know why he let it happen, it’s not like him to allow himself to feel something that isn’t black and gray. But how difficult it is to try to forget the red when that’s what his fists have always known—only that this, this new shade of that color he has colored his skin with over and over again, is a little warmer, a little more unexpected, a little more intense, and he doesn’t like it at all. Not when it leaves him gasping for more air every time his eyes meet a pair so brown they remind him of chocolate. Not when his fingers itch every time they touch Suou’s. Not when he notices differences and peculiarities that he has never given weight and importance to. Not when his heart dies in his throat every time there is warmth in that face that he now swears he knows by heart. Not when it makes him feel so vulnerable, that feeling that suffocates more and more every day.
Not when he knows that if he allows himself to go underwater he would end up never coming back up again.
✣
Kotoha is the first to say it, because really, who else would dare?
If Photos Cafè is quiet in the morning, it is even more so when the sun has not yet risen. It’s two hours to eight, Sakura has been sleeping, fitfully, but he slept and if his feet carried him there it’s not just because of the best omurice in the whole town but because he knows he would find her awake, behind the counter to arrange everything she needs for the day—and everything that Sakura would also need: the first person to accept him in town, advice, truths spit in his face and the sweetness of a helping hand intent on preparing his favorite dish.
One way or another, Kotoha must have sensed that it was him who crossed the threshold of her cafè; she turns to the fridge and grabs all the ingredients needed to cure the yearning that Sakura holds in his chest, an instant smile on her face and so sincere and free of surprise that he wonders whether the girl is telepathic or not. There is affection in this too, in the way she beats the eggs and puts them aside, the steaming rice that she must have cooked before his arrival, a chair waiting in front of her and a knife in hand ready to cut through any worries Sakura may have.
And yet, it is she who takes the first step, who extends not just a hand but her entire arm, to look inside him, beyond the skin, beyond the ribs, flesh and blood and if she sees a tremor then she doesn’t pretend to be blind; her eyes seem to scream so this is what it is about and are you really that scared of love, Sakura? But she doesn’t make jokes, she doesn’t ask for certainties, she doesn’t reveal what is already known with cruel frankness.
No, everything that she asks is a simple: “Do you think love is a burden, Sakura?”
And Sakura doesn’t know how to answer, Sakura didn’t even know what love was before he got here. Sakura, with fingers sunk in black and shadowy emotions, Sakura, who welcomed more hatred than acceptance on the tip of his tongue, Sakura, who wonders how to stay afloat without clinging to indifference. How can one swim when his feet are immobile, when the tide pushes him further and further down and if he manages to stay afloat it is not for fear of drowning but for lack of will—how does he drown without feeling pain and cruelty, how does he ignore pain and feel apathy; and it is here, it is here that he realizes how easy his life was before, but so dark, how difficult his life is now, but so full of light.
How can he think that love is a burden when until recently he didn’t even know what love was?
“Do you think you are a burden?” She asks, the same question but in a different way and if before opening his mouth a frown forms on Sakura’s face, Kotoha is quick to make it run away with her index pressed against his forehead—Sakura, taken aback, can’t utter a word and once again, Kotoha is quick to do it for him. “Because if you do, then I’m not going to say that you are not. But if you believe so, then I have to thank you. The weight you have added into my life and that of others is more than welcomed,” and Sakura blinks, Sakura feels his throat burning, his eyes wide open and fixed on the girl’s and there it is, the delicacy that he didn’t ask for but that he receives anyway. “Now, do you think you’re a burden to him?”
And it’s like she’s making him believe that it’s okay, that it’s not something bad, that he can be a burden when it’s something people accept without thinking twice. But it’s also like asking, if love is a burden, and you are too, how can he not welcome you into his arms when it’s something so rare?
✣
Would you like to have tea with me? Suou asks him once, at the end of their patrol shift, when the sun still hasn’t disappeared and the sky a mix of red and orange and blue and yellow and white, light clouds, almost transparent, decorating the universe in thick brushstrokes, an art no more artistic than the one in front of him, Suou’s hair the sun at the center of his solar system, flaming rays fluttering against the landscape with every little gust of wind. I bought some new tea leaves and orange blossoms that I would like to try.
Sakura, who has never drank a glass of tea, is a little too used to the taste of hot water without sugar and aromas to be able to afford something so precious—and if it’s more about the company than the drink, he pretends nothing happened because it’s easier that way, it’s less painful that way.
I— I have something else to do, he answers instead, internally cursing himself for stuttering, for the chain reaction that is the blood rising to his cheeks, his eyes to move on the street to avoid a look he knows all too well.
Is that so? And if the words reach his ears with a note of remorse, Sakura convinces himself that he imagined it. A shame, really. Maybe next time.
✣
It hurt either way, Sakura simply replaced the bandaids with sandpaper. He scraped away the pain and replaced it with one he knows a little better, one easier to bear. A tasteless one that doesn’t have the tang of regret and fear.
✣
Somewhere between the earth and the embers, the sky decided that that day it would open its essence in half and cry out loud so as not to make souls in solitude feel more alone than they are. Makochi, usually full of life during sunny days, is equally so despite the rain falling undisturbed on the streets of the town. The shops are open, some with the lights on, others preferring the slight darkness that the black clouds have given to the sky, abstract bruises destined to remain monochrome forever. The rain falls, ready to roll and tumble, in a transparent and gray vortex. Smell of wetness, an almost inaudible clicking sound creating musical notes on the ground, a score made of dust and petrol, musical instruments whizzing along streets; umbrellas of all kinds to color Makochi with rainbow dots at the end of black sentences, Sakura’s hair one of the small differences in that melancholy and at the same time harmonious and chaotic landscape—a constant reminder of what he is, a constant challenge to those who manage to love more than they have been allowed to do.
The sky one second from falling to Earth like a mirror, gravity attracting towards it everything that stumbles on the air and Sakura is nothing more than a comma in that set of grammar and punctuation, a sheet of paper for a heart, full of scribbles about himself, about him, above all about him—a burden that the wishes to weigh on Suo.
The rain is incessant and finds its way in his hair, creating a nest of wetness that only the cold could call home. He has no jacket on, his fingers are red and trembling and cold, as if they were ready to break at any moment, unable to hold on to the rest of his hand—a bit like him, severe towards himself, not eager to feel either his loneliness or that of others, not at that moment, not when he can mingle with people and go unnoticed, not when he is allowed a bite of what he has been trying to suffocate lately. He’s good as an illusionist if at the end of the show he manages to delude his heart too. He’s not a hypnotist, if when the stands are empty he realizes that his is more a lie than a hypnosis.
It’s raining, it’s falling, the sky starts to sink apart and Sakura tries to collect his own. Piece by piece, one step after another, fingers immersed in the wet sleeve of his uniform, to touch pieces of a heart, of a past, of more seasons than he can count; nails tearing skin, filling with mud, getting stained with blood where they have been held tight a little longer against the palm of his hand.
Then he hears it, loud and clear, a voice he hears even in his dreams—Sakura, who spends the night more thinking than hoping, Sakura, who lately can’t turn off his mind and ends up seeing more brown, more chocolate, more red than he thought he could imagine.
“Sakura-kun, what are you— you’re soaking wet.” Concern is evident in Suou’s face as Sakura raises his, allowing the rain to streak down his cheeks more than it already has, for yet another span of time, before his grade vice captain tilts the umbrella towards him. Hurried steps, eyebrows furrowed, Suou is warmer than Sakura thought and if from fifty centimeters away he can feel his warmth, he wonders how hot it would be at ten, if he would end up burning once his hand is in contact with Suou’s
“Just taking a stroll.”
“In the middle of a storm?” Suou sighs, a more understanding smile curving his lips and it’s inevitable for Sakura to think that maybe he doesn’t deserve it at all—part of him also wonders how he would feel if he ran his thumb along that smile. A thought that shook him forcefully.
“It wasn’t raining when I went out,” a half-truth.
“I’m taking you home. My home.” Suou says and Sakura is one step away from speaking when he is interrupted. “You’re going home with me, Sakura-kun.”
And if in the end he decides not to speak, if in the end he decides to get closer to him with the excuse of staying under the umbrella, if he eventually takes steps that would take him to places he hasn’t been yet, then Sakura decides that it’s not out of love or need or desire, but because saying no to Suou is something that doesn’t exist.
If he’s a burden—and now, he hopes that he is—then he wishes to be the gravity of Suou’s world.
✣
A few weeks ago, Suou calls him at two in the morning, shattering a dream and birthing a new one—Sakura stares at the ceiling for a good five seconds before accepting the call with a grunt.
Why the fuck you’re callin’— do you even know what time is it?
Only to get a half laugh from Suou that blows his brain out. Say, Sakura-kun, do you want to have breakfast together tomorrow?
Sakura stands still looking at his screen for a long minute, a photo of Suou that he took himself when he stole Sakura’s phone without him realizing it. The smile on his face is incomparable to what he observes in person every day, with what is often given to him every time the corners of Suou’s eyes get narrower, softer, warmer—it makes him breathless every time.
I swear— only to be interrupted.
Alright, alright. I wasn’t joking, I really want to have breakfast with you but that’s not why I’m calling. There’s a pause, as if he’s waiting for Sakura to say something—something that doesn’t come as much as he wants to, he wouldn’t know how to answer. It’s inevitable, rejecting another proposal with silence simply because Sakura doesn’t know how to accept. I just wanted to hear your voice.
Sakura knows, he really really knows that Suou’s only teasing him, and yet he can’t stop the blush to reach his cheeks, he is unable to stop the trembling of his bones, his heart, his fingers; it’s all a cataclysm that starts from the center of his heart to reach every corner of his body—he has no power, no intention to stop this, and yet, yet he always finds a way to hate himself a little more when it comes to Suo.
Sakura hangs up, turns off his phone, and smothers his face in the pillow.
He doesn’t know what he would do if he started loving himself a little more just for Suo.
✣
Tsubaki is the next one to read him and Sakura has never felt so exposed, caught as if he’s doing something he shouldn’t when it’s all about his feelings—only, to hide from his own eyes that his feelings are not little bullets that are harmless to the eye and lethal to the touch, as strident as applause, poisonous like the narcissus, and what an irony that such a beautiful flower and bearer of desire should be so dangerous. Sakura knows nothing about flower language, body language, heart language, but if there’s one thing he’s come to know, it’s that any dose of anything, if not taken in moderation it ends up having consequences—those of Sakura, those of having loved so little that now he can’t keep his heart from dictating words that he never thought belonged to him.
Oh, dear, love got you too? Tsubaki, always so sweet, always so delicate, is a constant sunflower in Sakura’s days and this time, he can’t help but share part of his snack with him. The taiyaki in his hand is steaming, the paper bag between Tsubaki’s legs still hot, if he ate one in a hurry he would end up burning his tongue and if it is not a continuous recurrence, this one, that of getting burned in the most uncommon ways of his own will only to end up doing it in the simplest way possible against his will. Did it wake you up early in the morning saying that it’s time to yearn?
Sakura, always transparent, always so easy to read, has already said too much by staying silent and if Tsubaki isn’t the only one who understood it then Suou probably did too. And now that Sakura has realized it, pretending nothing happened will only make things even more difficult. Maybe he should have done something all along. Maybe, Suou wouldn’t have ended up finding out about it like this. In silence and in fear, in health and in sickness, in insecurities and suffocation.
✣
“Do you want to take a bath?” Is what Suou asks him as soon as Sakura steps into his genkan, taking off his wet shoes and being careful not to spill too much water in the foyer. “I would give you a towel but it would be useless and I wouldn’t want you to catch another cold—”
“Yes,” Sakura interrupts, still out of breath, still with trembling fingers, eyes more fixed on Suou than on his surroundings. It’s the first time in his house and yet all Sakura can look at is him—all his eyes, all his heart, all his soul, all his mind; Suou is so full of him it hurts. “I would like to.”
Suou goes silent, watching him carefully, the brown of his eyes slightly surprised as if he had expected Sakura to run away at any moment. Maybe he would have done it, maybe, weeks earlier, he would have refused to follow him and would’ve gone back to his home instead of taking identical steps in a synchrony that he is not used to. Maybe, it would have gone this way if Suou didn’t know—but Suou knows and Sakura can see it in his eyes and wants to do many things he’s never done, and he doesn’t know where to start, and he’s scared to do it and aware that he wouldn’t be the one to take the first step, not when his heart dies in his chest, not when with every second that passes, with every look shared, with every word said in silence and never out loud, Sakura doesn’t lose parts of himself but shares them with and against his will at the same time and if this is it, love, if it’s following Suou to his house and letting himself be enveloped by the smell of cherries that he’s never had against his palate, if this is what it means to love, to lay himself bare to the first person who has ever shaken his heart, then yes, then maybe Sakura knows what it is or maybe at fifteen he doesn’t know what love really is, but it’s something pure and unexpected and scary, way too scary because now that Sakura is accepted for who he is, he’s even more afraid of losing that acceptance and the small space that he has created for himself without even realizing it in Furin and all Makochi—the small house with narrow walls that he built for himself in Suou’s heart without even knowing it.
“The bathroom is that way,” Suou says, finally, with a small smile on his lips and Sakura feels like he’s drowning. “Make yourself at home.”
✣
“You know,” Tsubaki begins, elbows against the Photos counter, hands hosting the weight of his face as his eyes are fixed on Sakura—Kotoha sipping an Earl Gray from her cup while Sakura stares at his orange juice. His lips wouldn’t welcome the taste of tea now, they wait for Suou to be the first to let him taste his own. “It’s not that bad, being in love, if you learn to carry it the way you want. It’s not all about being accepted or rejected, it’s more that it’s a feeling that belongs to you and no one else. You can decide whether to share it, whether to keep it for yourself or let it live in the open."
“It’s like water,” Kotoha adds. “It’s up to you to choose whether to suffocate in it or stay afloat, it’s not always clean but also dirty, it’s something that changes based on how you perceive it and what you decide to do with it. And if love is a burden, then it’s better if sometimes you let things be heavy the way they are.”
“You know I don’t understand a thing about what you’re saying, right?” Sakura says and it’s like half lying because if on the one hand he understood, on the other hand, all those metaphors and symbolisms are driving him crazy.
“Then let’s try it in another way” Tsubaki chimes in, his lacquered nails tapping lightly against his chin. “Love is like a fist, dear. It’s up to you to decide whether to strike or avoid it. It’s up to you to decide how to do it, be it kindly or roughly. It’s as simple as that, and it’s all yours. Didn’t Ume tell you too? If you can converse through fists, then you can also love through them. Figuratively, in this case, I don’t think it’s wise to hit Suou when he loves you so warmly.”
“He doesn’t—” he couldn’t let himself say it.
“Are you sure about it? I think he does, and we shouldn’t be the ones to tell you.”
✣
Suou finds him still in the bathroom, dressed in a shirt and trousers that are a little too big for him, all smelling of cherry shampoo and argan oil shower gel and if Sakura got a little too lost smelling all the bottles in the bathroom just to look for Suou’s, only he and the walls know about it.
He finds him all alone, with his knees bent and his eyebrows furrowed trying to understand how the washing machine works—his clothes already inside and the door closed and yet his fingers hesitate over which button to press.
“Do you need help, Sakura-kun?”
And Sakura, with detergent in hand and fabric softener on the floor, tries to hide his face in the collar of his shirt but it’s worse when all he can inhale is Suou, all of him, all over him, and he still, still, still loves him enough to allow him a close-up of red cheeks and slightly dry hair, when he turns towards him and stands up.
Suou is quick to remove the towel from around Sakura’s neck, equally quick to run his fingers through his hair and Sakura tries not to shiver too much when his fingers graze his skin.
“No need, I can do it on my own.”
“Oh? Are you sure?” And he’s kind of tired of being asked if he’s sure—about his feelings, about Suou, about himself, but is he? Sure? About all of this?—and yet Suou is warm and nice and he’s not used to it and every fiber of his body begs him to hide his face in the crook of Suou’s neck. But he doesn’t.
“Shut up. But if you insist, you can do it.” And if Sakura has a pout on his lips, then he tries not to think about it too much when everything he’s done ends up capturing another smile from Suou.
“Yeah, I think I’ll do it,” Suou says, and then, then he makes Sakura bloom near him and Sakura can no longer pretend nothing happened, and if he can’t take the first step, then he trusts Suou to make it. And he does.
God, if he does.
“You smell like cherries.”
“I smell of you.” And when Sakura realizes what he said, he can’t help but internally grunt and avoid eye contact—too bad Suou is quick in this too and it’s not difficult to bring Sakura’s gaze to him, chin stuck between his thumb and forefinger, his grip on fire against Sakura’s skin.
“I like it,” Suou says and it’s almost a whisper, his eyes bright, the eye patch almost invisible and if Sakura feels the need to put his lips on Suou’s hidden eye, he keeps it to himself. “I like it better on you.” And two seconds later, with a smirk on his lips. “Better if you bring two packs with you when you go home.”
“Asshole.”
If Suou kisses him there, in that precise moment, long and slow, until Sakura is nothing but a mass of yearning and love and shivers, just the way he likes it; then Sakura wouldn’t mind taking with him the memory of his taste, the way he kisses, the way he loves—nowhere like a fist, water, a burden, but like a sun.
✣
Sakura doesn’t even realize when he starts doing it but he collects things and loves and affections, and now not only his house is full of them but even him: a cloud lamp from Nirei, a bonsai tree from Umemiya’s garden, shirts and trousers that Kotoha personally chose when she took him shopping, Hiragi’s rock CDs, Togame’s sunglasses, Kiryu’s hairpins, boxes of tea that Suou left in his cupboard, a new kettle, a set of cups that he forced Sakura to bring with him for when Suou came to visit him. Still wet kisses along his neck, pecks on his cheeks, the scent of cherry in his hair. A polaroid in the case of his phone.
And if love is a burden—and so many other things—then he wishes to be crushed by it—like a fist, water, burden, sun and all over again.