The Winter Quarters

by Anna Veriani

“I thought you were straight,” Kai said. “I literally thought you were engaged last month.”

  “One time I thought you told me you had a secret doppelganger,” Hiro said.

  “No, you didn’t.” Kai laughed.

  “I did! You said TV Kai was your evil twin, and I took it literally for about five minutes.”

  “Dear God. I’m never leaving you again.” Kai pulled Hiro toward him.

  “Just stand directly in front of me at all times so that I don’t get confused,” Hiro murmured against Kai’s lips.

  “Sounds good.”

  Hiro kissed him hard all over again, feeling like he had to make up for the days they were apart. He kept his hand on the back of Kai’s head, so close his nose was brushing Kai’s, his knees bent. “You told me you couldn’t get out of the show, though. I know that phone call was the worst ever, but you definitely said that.”

  “I thought I couldn’t,” Kai said. “Kimi’s grand plan was to have a crew follow me to the inn and film me here. That was what she had me call you to ask about.”

  Hiro blinked. He had a sudden horrible fear there were more people than Kai’s driver waiting in his sedan. “You… brought a film crew with you?”

  All he could picture was his dad having either a metaphorical or literal heart attack.

  “If Kimi had called the shots, I would have,” Kai said. “But somehow I thought you might not like that.”

  “You know me so well.” Hiro laughed shakily.

  “I broke contract,” Kai said. “There wasn’t a way out otherwise.”

  “Oh. Kai….” Hiro frowned. “What does that mean, exactly?” He thought wildly of prison.

  “It means I’m free. It means I’ll soon be the founder of a new charity for the homeless. It means more homeless New Yorkers will get into affordable housing this year,” Kai said. Then frowned. “And in exchange, I’m about 90 percent less rich than I was before. I no longer own a car or a kind-of-nice Brooklyn apartment.”

  “Oh.” He didn’t know why, above all things, that nailed home how much Kai loved him, but it did. He could have cried, suddenly, in the happiest of ways. “You gave up being rich for me?”

  “No, no,” Kai said. “For the onsen.”

  Hiro laughed and kissed him again. “Welcome back to plebeian life. Let me take you back to your new—but actually extremely old—abode.”

  It felt unreal, saying that. Also good in a way he never imagined.

  As they walked toward the sedan, Hiro spotted cracked glass on the dirt ground.

  “Your phone?” he said, crouching down.

  “Oh man.” Kai groaned. “It fell out of my pocket when I was running to you.”

  “There’s something else, too.” Hiro reached toward a shadow on the ground and skimmed velvet. He froze.

  It was hard to see in the dark, but it was the size and shape of a jewelry box.

  There was a moment of curiosity, and if Kai had offered an explanation, Hiro never would have thought his next thought. But Kai stilled, speechless. Holy shit.

  “Kai, is that—?”

  Kai dropped to the ground, picking up the box and brushing it off. “This was… not the time or place I had planned.”

  He was on one knee, and Hiro’s mind was a blank canvas. He was aware of his jaw hanging open, of the cold, of the immense mountains around them and the silence of the rice paddies, and at the same time, nothing, absolutely nothing existed except Kai on one knee.

  IT was freezing, and he shivered, the little box almost slipping from his shaky grasp.

  “Hiro,” he began. “You are my best friend.”

  And then he had to stop, because Hiro immediately teared up.

  Kai wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Hiro cry. His car’s headlights reflected gold against Hiro’s wet cheeks.

  “Keep going,” Hiro rasped.

  Kai almost laughed. Big, beautiful, actually-a-bear Hiro. There was never going to be anyone but him.

  “Hiro,” he said again. “We have been friends our entire lives. I remember having my fifth birthday at your inn, and you kicked a boy out when he broke one of my new toys. We wrote our first kanji together. We learned the ABCs together. You went to my first photoshoots and waited for me behind the cameras. I was there when your grandfather gave you your first kimono. We stepped into New York for the first time together. We have done almost everything together, and every moment I haven’t spent with you has been a mistake.”

  “Stop talking.” Hiro choked on his own tears, then pulled up his sweater and violently blew his nose. “I’m crying too hard to hear you, hold on.”

  Kai couldn’t stop smiling. When Hiro nodded, he continued, going off script: “Hiro, what you’re doing right now, this is why I need to marry you.”

  Hiro crashed to his knees and swept his arms around Kai to keep from falling. Kai dropped the ring again, buckling under Hiro’s weight, but he managed to keep them both up on their knees. Hiro released a strangled gasp into Kai’s sweater.

  “I love you so much, Kai,” he said.

  “Hiro, let me finish!” Kai reached for the ring. “I have a whole script.”

  “Okay.” Hiro wiped his nose with his sleeve. He didn’t stand up again, but he pulled away a few inches.

  “We’ve experienced so much as best friends,” Kai said, “but there are so many things we’ve missed because we didn’t take the next step. I want to know every part of you. Everything I can about you. I want to experience everything with you. I want to know what it’s like to sleep with you, to marry you, to raise children with you.”

  Hiro sniffed, and Kai kept going. “Hiro, I never saw you cry in all the years I was your friend. It took this proposal to make that happen.” He said it again: “This is why I need to marry you. I need all of you. Absolutely every piece of you.” He held the ring box open. “Hiro Asada, will you marry me?”

  He was no longer shaking. He had an inkling Hiro was going to say yes.

  He was wrong. Hiro opened his mouth and tried to speak, but he couldn’t, so he choked inarticulately and nodded vigorously instead. Kai slipped the ring out of the box and held Hiro’s trembling hand, working it onto his finger.

  “How am I not the one who’s crying right now?” Kai asked, but his voice cracked on the last word, and the tears came. Hiro breathed a voiceless chuckle and scooped him onto his lap, kissing him tenderly in the empty road.

  “Yes,” Hiro finally breathed. “God, Kai, all these years of yearning. Yes.”

  Yes. Kai’s brain repeated it, sparks going off in his head like fireworks. The snow wasn’t even cold anymore. Yes, yes, yes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE moon was a great gibbous light, the clouds wintery wisps around it like an Impressionist painting. Kai was going to remember this sky forever. The one underneath which he’d gotten engaged.

  “My mom is probably waiting for us in the lobby,” Hiro warned after parking his car.

  “She almost definitely is.” Kai followed him up the cobblestone path. “I texted her that the proposal went smoothly ten minutes ago.”

  “I’m going to have to be careful with you two,” Hiro said. “Okami and future Waka-Okami, conspiring together.” But he looked light with relief. “I’m glad I don’t have to be the first to tell my parents. If they’re anything less than ecstatic I’ll hold it against them forever.”

  “I’m glad you’re glad,” Kai said, “because I asked for your father’s blessing before I left.”

  Hiro stared at him. His eyes were still a bit puffy from crying, giving him a vulnerable look Kai wasn’t used to. “Before you left for New York?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kai!” Hiro looked thrilled. “You got my father’s permission. Like I’m your maiden bride.” He paused. “He… said yes?”

  The hesitancy in his voice pained Kai. “He gave me a hard time about it. Messed with me first. I thought I was going to pee myself,” Kai said. “And it was the first time I ever thought he seemed a bit
like you. He’s got your barking dog laugh.”

  Hiro laughed, an unintentional demonstration.

  “But yes,” Kai added. “He gave me his blessing.”

  Kai slid open the front door and stepped in. True to Hiro’s prediction, his mother was waiting in the lobby—along with every other member of the Asada family.

  “Congratulations!” Risa and Shinsuke were beaming. Their parents immediately shushed them, because it was the lobby, but then Hiro’s aunt turned to Kai and whispered, “Congratulations!”

  They seemed to have formed an aisle from youngest to oldest, and all of them wanted hugs. Risa and Shinsuke embraced them first, Kai murmuring his thanks and Hiro going, “I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.”

  “Stop it, Hiro,” one of his aunts tsked him over Kai’s shoulder. Kai was pretty sure he’d never spoken to this woman in his life, but she hugged him tight like she’d known him for years.

  “Are we celebrating that I belong to Kai from now on and forevermore?” Hiro asked. “Because if so, these celebrations could have happened when I was about six.”

  “Your ring!” Risa spotted it and snatched Hiro’s hand. The gold band gleamed.

  “I told him ‘diamond or nothing,’ so this really isn’t a great start to things,” Hiro quipped. But he looked at the ring with the softest eyes Kai had ever seen, like he was carrying his own heart on his finger. He turned toward Kai and gave him a quick peck on the lips, which was a bigger display of public affection than Kai had ever seen any other Asada perform.

  “Don’t tell my mother I did that,” Hiro whispered, and she laughed.

  One by one, the Asadas hugged them both. Kai felt like he was walking through a cave of loved ones all offering their congratulations, and he felt warmed both literally—by their body heat—and metaphorically. The last to hug them were Obaachan and Ya-san.

  Both ladies were so much shorter than Hiro that he had to crouch to reach them. When Ya-san’s arms were around Kai, she whispered in his ear, “We’re both new additions to this family. Let’s stick together, okay?”

  “Agreed.” Kai grinned. When they parted, someone grabbed his shoulder.

  “Okami and I made these cakes based on the recipes you emailed us,” Risa said, handing him two small takeout boxes.

  “Oh! Yay.”

  “Excellent,” Hiro said. “I wanted to try some of the cakes I’ve been serving. Didn’t realize it would take a literal engagement.”

  Risa laughed. “The old folks wanted to spend the night celebrating with you, but Shinsuke and I convinced them that you two must miss each other too much after being apart again. We persuaded them to let you guys just rest for the night.”

  Kai was sore, jet-lagged, and, he was certain, smelly after the long flight. It never mattered whether he traveled private or commercial; there was a certain degree of discomfort that you were going to reach when you made your way to the other side of the world.

  “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

  “And one more dessert!” Shinsuke added, shoving a third small cake box into his hands. “Now go be free!”

  HIRO’S quarters were blessedly far from any guest rooms, and the hallway reverberated sweet silence. There were no private gardens surrounding them, but when Hiro opened his door, Kai was hit with the view of the back of the inn: rice paddies, Mount Haku, and a sky so big it transcended itself. Kai couldn’t call it “sky” anymore—it was wholly celestial, the mountain’s white snowcaps petering off into wisps of misty clouds, upheld by a vast canvas of indigo and stars.

  “Wow,” he said breathlessly.

  Hiro’s futon was already rolled out, topped with a generous amount of pillows. His room was neat but full of Hiro: the scent of him, his favorite warm colors. He kept everything he owned forever. Kai was familiar with almost all the cracked paperbacks in his home library; each clothing article in Hiro’s wardrobe; the art; the records; every picture on the wall, and the picture frames, too. God. Kai was home.

  Hiro slid the door shut. “You must be starving,” he said.

  “And exhausted,” Kai agreed.

  “Do you need something more substantial than cake?” Hiro asked. “I can call for a real dinner. Or alcohol. Champagne?”

  “This is all I want.” Kai set the boxes on Hiro’s table. They sat and opened them.

  The first was a Christmas cake, layers of sponge cake interspersed with winter strawberries and whipped cream.

  “The strawberries are from the greenhouses twenty minutes down the road.” Hiro picked one up and pressed it against Kai’s lips.

  Kai bit into it, and sweet juice burst in his mouth.

  “Let’s open the other ones, too,” he said. “Dessert buffet.”

  He went for Shinsuke’s, wondering if Okami and Risa had managed to make the layered chocolate cake he’d sent Okami pictures of.

  “What—” he started. Hiro cracked up.

  In the box was a single clear bottle of sample-size lube.

  “‘Enjoy your dessert,’ indeed,” Hiro said. “God, my cousin’s such a slut.”

  They grinned at each other. Their eyes met, and all at once a different atmosphere clicked into place.

  Hiro was on him in a second, or Kai was on Hiro, their hands everywhere. They almost wrestled, each trying to pull off sweaters and jeans but getting in the other’s way. Their lips crashed together, Hiro’s mouth taking his. Hiro pushed him to the floor, winning their brief struggle, and held Kai’s wrists above his head. He pulled Kai’s sweater and undershirt off in one go, Kai arching his back and lifting his head to help him.

  Hiro made equally quick work of his own sweater and belt, and Kai’s eyes feasted on his broad, bare chest before Hiro dove down, mouthing at Kai’s neck.

  That first shock of pleasure. Moans spilled from his lips. Hiro kissed the hollow of his throat, tongued at his nipples, making him keen. The cold air continued to kiss at the skin Hiro left wet, and Hiro knew the places to touch as if by instinct—or maybe he didn’t know, but the effect was still the same: he kissed the spot that tingled all the way down Kai’s spine; made his cock stand up before his hands even wandered south.

  They made out, each starved for the other, until Hiro finally made his way to Kai’s zipper.

  “I have to taste you,” Hiro said. “It’s so unfair that you got to suck me off and I never got to have you in my mouth.”

  “Mmm” was all Kai could manage, light-headed as Hiro helped him pull off his jeans.

  “Fucking love your cock.” Hiro thumbed at its wet tip, making Kai arch with a hot zap of pleasure. “My favorite fucking color.”

  “I love the way you touch me,” Kai breathed. Hiro’s assertive strokes, the way he scrambled for Kai like he couldn’t bear the thought of delaying contact.

  Hiro swallowed Kai’s length easily. Kai gasped at the sight, Hiro looking up at him with dark eyes and pushing his mouth down on Kai until he took him to the root.

  Kai tried to squirm, but Hiro pressed his hips against the floor.

  “Fuck, fuck, Hiro, I’m going to come,” he cried immediately. He closed his eyes to make it last longer, but Hiro sucked hard and mercilessly. He reached up and teased Kai’s nipples.

  Kai was embarrassed because he wasn’t going to last a full five minutes in Hiro’s mouth, but then he felt the back of Hiro’s throat and he exploded, all shame vaporizing as his orgasm rocked through him. His hips stuttered, and Hiro let him fuck his mouth, filling it with come.

  Then Hiro slid off him and spat Kai’s load on Kai’s cock. Kai gasped, hypersensitive, as Hiro stroked him roughly, smearing his come all over his shaft.

  “You’re so dirty, baby,” Hiro teased, rubbing his come-painted hand across Kai’s belly. “Now we have to get you cleaned up.”

  He worked his way up Kai’s body, his jeans feeling torturously rough against Kai’s softening cock. Kai kissed him dazedly. He tried to articulate a sudden thought, but it left his exhausted mouth in a tangled mumble.
r />   “Hm, baby?”

  “Really wish we had done this years ago,” Kai breathed. “I wanted you so badly for so long, and I thought you were straight. I would have let you fuck me every night in our dorm.”

  Hiro’s eyes flashed at fuck me. They hadn’t done that yet.

  “Is that how you want it?” Hiro asked. “You can have anything, take anything you like. I’m yours completely, Kai.”

  “I want you,” Kai said. “I want to feel you inside me.”

  “Then there’s no time like the present,” Hiro growled, rolling off Kai. “Let’s go to my family’s private showers. Shinsuke and Risa will know better than to let anyone else in there tonight.”

  WHEN his skin was fresh and tingly after Hiro’s thorough charcoal soap scrubbing, and both their mouths tasted of toothpaste, they decided to soak in the onsen. Hiro had waited so long for tonight—had not even waited, only wanted for years with no expectation of receiving. They would take their time tonight.

  He helped Kai into the bath. The Asadas’ private onsen was indoors, with glass walls that looked out onto a small garden. They could see the sheer white snow coming down in sheets even as the water steamed around them.

  Kai sighed as he sat on the stone ledge of the bath, and Hiro could almost feel Kai’s tense muscles loosening in the heat—or maybe that was his own body finally relaxing for the first time since Kai left.

  Hiro’s ring got hot when it touched the water, and he resisted his urge to make an I burn for you joke.

  “I’m going to be like jelly after this.” Kai leaned back and exposed his perfect throat. “It’ll be so easy to take your cock.”

  All jokes left his mind. The idea of Kai saying these things was still so new—surprise mingled with joy in his chest.

  Hiro leaned down and wrapped his arms around Kai as they kissed. Their legs floated in the water, and Hiro tickled him with his toes. They didn’t break apart until they were gasping, and then they watched the snow in silence for a moment, Kai’s head snuggled against Hiro’s chest.

  “It must be midnight by now,” Kai observed. His fingers played idly along the muscled outline of Hiro’s upper arm. “Ten in the morning in New York. I’m wide-awake.”