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Tadashi could not have predicted, back in October, how wrong Christmas Eve could go—would go. He could not have predicted the crumpling of his heart in the warm light of the crowded restaurant, the shame and panic so searing they almost had a flavor (Szechuan numbing spice, maybe). He could not have predicted the absolute opacity of Tsukishima’s silence as he stood beside him, listening to the hostess tell them that Tadashi’s reservation is in their calendar for the right day, but the wrong year.
Tadashi would have thought that twenty-two was old enough to predict things like this.
“I’m very sorry,” the hostess says with a deep and fretful bow, “but there must have been an error with the reservation system—”
“No, that’s okay,” Tadashi insists, feeble as it is, waving his mittened hands to try to calm her down. “I’m sure it was my fault, really.”
“Please accept my sincerest apologies that we’re unable to seat you this evening. We are fully booked until our closing time.”
“It’s okay,” Tadashi insists again, with a shaky laugh. “It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”
“Please come back anytime for a complementary meal, sir,” the hostess says to Tadashi. She looks like she might be on the brink of tears, and as a part-time server himself Tadashi couldn’t blame anyone for feeling that way at work on a good day, let alone on a holiday. She turns to address Tsukishima, who is standing on Tadashi’s left side, and bows to him, too. “Or, if we have any cancellations this evening, you could leave your phone number on the waitlist…”
“Don’t bother,” Tsukishima says mildly, the first sound he’s made at all. To anybody else, it would probably sound brusque, but Tadashi knows Tsukishima well enough to know that he really, sincerely doesn’t want the hostess to put herself out. “Merry Christmas.”
Tsukishima pinches the elbow of Tadashi’s coat sleeve and leads him back out the door.
It’s an especially cold Christmas Eve in the mountains, a crisp cold accentuated by the smell of pine and snow. The sky is so clear that the stars—sharp as bits of crushed glass—could put the light show to shame, if they had a few more colors to choose from. Tadashi tips back his head to look at them when he and Tsukishima emerge onto the sidewalk, his throat raw and tight, his eyes prickling with heat.
“Oi, don’t cry,” says Tsukishima softly.
Tadashi gulps. Tsukishima is right—crying isn’t going to solve anything.
He really, really wants to, though!
He only has himself to blame, really, because Tsukishima had insisted, time and time again, month after quiet month, that just because they were a couple now didn’t mean that they had to make a big production out of Christmas Eve, and he would be just as happy getting a nice dinner and watching the light show in the shopping district as he would be watching anime at Tadashi’s house (not Tsukishima’s house, because Akiteru would be there, and since Tadashi and Tsukishima had told everybody they were going out, Tsukishima could not tolerate Akiteru so much as breathing in too close to them without getting embarrassed). Tadashi hadn’t really known what to do with that, because it meant that, to Tsukishima, just hanging out with him was the same as an illumination show on Christmas Eve—when, to Tadashi, he doubted he could measure up to something like that even if he tried his very hardest.
“Haruno-senpai sat on my cake,” he blurts out.
Then the tears do start coming, thin and hot down his cheeks. He had bought the Christmas cake ahead of time from Tsukishima’s favorite bakery, set it down on a chair just for a minute that morning so he could make some room in the break room fridge, and the next thing he knew, Haruno-senpai let out a yelp, and the box and bow were crushed, and the cake no doubt flattened (Tadashi had not had the courage to open the lid and look at it). He’d still brought it along, though, balanced on the handlebars of his bicycle; still handwritten the little note affixed to it with a brontosaurus sticker: Merry Christmas #1, Tsukki!
After this, mou ippon!
If Tsukishima were to drag him up the mountain and kill him, Tadashi would understand completely.
“You got me a cake, huh,” Tsukishima muses. Tadashi rubs his stinging eyes and looks over at him.
The sight of him in his green checkered scarf and wool coat and earmuffs, with snowflakes in his hair and the neon green light from a nearby Christmas sign in his pale eyelashes, pinches Tadashi’s stomach like you wouldn’t believe. His cheeks have a vivid pink flush to them, and his mouth is hidden behind his scarf. That’s probably for the best. Tadashi doesn’t know how he would conduct himself if he could see Tsukishima’s mouth right now.
“Yeah,” Tadashi says miserably. “From that French place you like.” He knows Tsukishima knows he can’t pronounce the name.
“Ehhh?” Tsukishima replies, eyebrows arching. “But that’s an hour away. You must really like me, Yamaguchi.”
That gets a laugh out of Tadashi, wet and wobbly though it is. He rubs his nose with his sleeve. He doesn’t know if he can explain to Tsukishima, right then, just how much.
“Come on.” Tsukishima nods his head sideways, toward the end of the road that leads out of the shopping district. “There’s no way anyplace else will be open, but I’ve got an idea.”
Tadashi follows a step behind him, until Tsukishima tugs him gently forward by the wrist and then he follows at his side, completely even. They pass by the various entryways to all the town’s nicest restaurants, from which joyful voices and symphonies of laughter and warm golden light spill onto the street without a care in the world. The sidewalk is well-strolled by couples, from high school kids to people Tadashi and Tsukishima’s age; they meander arm-in-arm, holding tender and private conversations between their bodies; one girl slips her hand into her boyfriend’s coat pocket, and he joins it with his own. Tadashi can smell snow-laden cedar, hinoki cypress incense, charcoal, and, faintly, almost an invention, the laundry soap that has defined Tsukishima’s clothes since they were kids.
The light show really is something else, especially for their little town. Garlands of green and red lights wind around the trees, then move overhead, arching between the rooftops of buildings; every now and then they blink to gold and silver, and Tadashi swears he’s walking down a tunnel to heaven. Silly as it is, a part of him had always supposed that when he did come upon heaven one day, Tsukishima would be at his side. Some of the lights are like wisteria, and blue and purple hues drip down them, rippling and changing as if prompted by a breath before starting all over again. When he and Tsukishima stop to admire them, Tadashi steals a look at Tsukishima: gazing peacefully at the show, with the slightest smile on his face, utterly relaxed.
There are whole Christmas trees made out of lights, and sleighs, and even a lit-up Santa-kun. By the time they come out the other side, Tadashi has cheered up, a little bit—but he’s still hungry.
It takes him far too long to realize that Tsukishima is leading them to Sakanoshita. In fact, he doesn’t register what’s happening until they’ve opened the door and Ukai looks up at them from behind the counter.
“Ah,” Tsukishima says by way of greeting, “I had a feeling you’d be here.”
Ukai gives him the dirtiest look imaginable. It might make Kageyama look cheerful. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Merry Christmas, Ukai-sensei!” Tadashi exclaims with a bow. Snowflakes scatter from his hair and onto the linoleum floor. The store’s tinny speakers are playing Hamada Shogo, that old classic “Midnight Flight” that Tadashi may or may not have moped around to when he was still single and Tsukishima was living in Tokyo.
“Merry Christmas, Yamaguchi,” Ukai replies. Then, grumpier, to Tsukishima: “Are you gonna buy anything, Tsukishima?”
“No. You still have that patio out back, right?”
“What’s it to you?!”
“Yamaguchi bought us a cake and I’d like to eat it.” Tsukishima shoulders behind the counter like he owns the place and beckons for Tadashi to follow him. “Some plates and forks, too, please.”
Ukai’s outraged spluttering fades into quiet as Tsukishima leads Tadashi down a narrow hallway, past crates of bulk Cup Noodles and the employee bathroom, and to an out-of-the-way sliding glass door. He nudges it open with one gloved hand, flicks on a light switch with the other, and then steps outside.
Tadashi stalls for just a moment, then slips hurriedly out after him—and stops in his tracks, mouth half-open. They’ve emerged from old Sakanoshita onto a quiet patio bordered by simple string lights and a stooped-over pine. By the sliding door there’s a beat-up bistro table and two folding chairs, and a small fire pit with an iron grill and a tetsubin on it.
Tsukishima pulls his coat a little tighter around him and gestures for Tadashi to sit. Slowly, Tadashi lowers himself into one of the chairs; rather than sitting down in the other one, Tsukishima picks it up and shuffles around the side of the table to park it right beside Tadashi.
“Coach won’t bother us back here,” he says conversationally; then, he reaches into the pocket of his coat and produces a tiny package wrapped in green paper and tied with a red bow. “Here. Merry Christmas, Yamaguchi.”
Tadashi takes it with both hands, stunned. He unwraps it with great care, not wanting to rip the paper. It’s a limited edition brontosaurus phone charm—matching Tsukishima’s t-rex, which Tadashi had given him for his birthday—by the same designer who’d made the sticker Tadashi used.
Tsukishima raises his phone, from which the t-rex dangles, as if in a toast. “I promise Rex-kun won’t eat him.”
A moment later Ukai emerges with two plastic forks, a cake knife (which, Tadashi notes, Tsukishima had not asked for—had he forgotten?), and some chipped porcelain plates, setting them down on the table with a clatter and then grumbling back into the shop without another word.
“Well?” Tsukishima asks, blinking his soft amber eyes at Tadashi through his glasses, so arrestingly familiar in the moonlight that Tadashi could cry all over again. “The cake?”
Tadashi manages to set the half-crushed box on the table and smooth down the sides so that they can cut it unimpeded. Tsukishima does the honors, serving one ruined slice to Tadashi and a slightly bigger one to himself, although he scoops one of the biggest strawberries off the top and deposits it on Tadashi’s plate.
Tadashi sits there with his fork in his hand, entranced by the moment and the string lights and the almost imperceptible happiness on Tsukishima’s face. The music from the store speakers is just barely audible outside: it’s gone on to “Ode to Joy.”
Tsukishima chews his bite of cake very delicately, as if to do as little harm to it as possible. He closes his eyes. Tadashi watches the careful movements of his jaw, the sinking of his shoulders. Eventually he swallows, just as delicately, and says, “Beethoven was deaf, you know.”
“Eh? Really?”
Tsukishima nods, digging in for another bite of cake. Tadashi finally has the good sense to do the same, and he marvels at the cloudy fluffiness of the sponge cake, the way the cream holds the sweetness of the strawberry so gracefully: no wonder couples like to share this stuff. It’s better than KFC by a mile.
“He wasn’t always. It happened gradually. At the premiere of Number 9,” Tsukishima continues, “somebody had to go tap his shoulder to tell him it was over, because he was still conducting—he couldn’t tell it had ended. When he was composing, he would put a wooden stick between his teeth so he could feel the vibrations of the piano while he played. In his later works, when he was totally deaf, they say he could only imagine what the music would sound like. From what he remembered, I mean, back when he could hear.”
“Wow,” Tadashi says. “Do you think that made him sad?”
“Maybe. But he still composed, didn’t he? He wrote lots of music even after his hearing went. So, I think there was something in it that he could feel, or sense, maybe, that was just as good as hearing it.”
Tadashi nods, his cheeks suddenly, pleasantly warm. He ducks his head and finishes his slice of cake, then waits for Tsukishima to finish his: he really seems to be savoring it, even though it’s getting cold, and late, and they haven’t even had a real dinner.
“Sorry, Tsukki,” Tadashi mumbles, after a long while. He looks up at the stars again, the same arrangement of them he and Tsukishima have been looking at all their lives, wheeled sideways by a season. “I wanted our first Christmas together to be really special. And I blew it.”
Tsukishima sets down his fork, symmetrically, beside his plate on the bistro table. When he sighs, through his nose, his breath streams out, one big warm proof of life for Tadashi to see the shape of.
“Tadashi,” Tsukishima says—and Tadashi almost goes flailing up to the stars himself. His voice gets tender, folding closer to itself, almost self-conscious. “This is really special. To me.”
Tadashi remembers being nine in Tsukishima’s backyard, their small wrists red from passing the volleyball to one another, their voices and dreams clamoring in the air above them in a way that Tadashi might have always been able to understand even if he lost the ability to hear it.
“Me, too,” he says shyly, “Kei.”
Tsukishima makes a strange noise, then claps a hand over his mouth—then light crackles in his eyes—then he sputters, and crumples forward, and laughs. Tadashi laughs, too, giddy and embarrassed, covering his eyes with his mittens.
“Gyah,” he exclaims. “That’s so weird!”
“You’re telling me.”
“Shut up, Tsukki! Eat more cake!”
They eat the whole cake together, out there on the patio, and then go back to Tsukishima’s house for dinner: even though Akiteru is there, and even though neither of them is really hungry. When they are done Tadashi follows Tsukishima down the hallway, in the pair of extra slippers that has always been his, and before they turn on the TV, Tsukishima leans closer to him in the dark and kisses him.
As they fall asleep under the kotatsu in front of Yu Yu Hakusho, Tadashi swears that if he listens closely he can hear Tsukishima breathing, and the quiet falling of snow.