by Riley Knight
For a long moment, Luca just looked at him, and then he nodded slowly.
“I could try to get a steadier job,” he said. “Something local, so I won’t have to be gone so much. Report on things that really matter …”
For a moment, Julian felt dizzy. Luca, around more. Taking a job in town, maybe, so that he could hopefully be closer to Julian? Or was Luca even considering that part of it? What they were starting felt intense as hell, at least to Julian, but he shouldn’t assume that Luca was feeling the exact same way.
More than that, though, it seemed that Luca was seriously considering Julian’s offer. Which meant that he was going to have to potentially hold up his end. To his surprise and delight, though, the idea of writing a song, at least in this one, hopeful moment, didn’t feel completely impossible.
Maybe he could do it. Maybe he could finally make himself face himself long enough to put himself into a song. Because hadn’t that always been the problem? That he couldn’t stand to write something that wasn’t authentic to him?
Looking at Luca, he thought that he just might be able to write something after all. He had ideas already. That wasn’t so unusual, he had ideas for songs all the time, but something about these ideas felt like they would be more solid. That he wouldn’t get halfway through the song and then find himself grasping for something that had proved utterly ephemeral in nature.
“Okay,” Julian said, and he was surprised by how strong his voice came out, how firm. “Then it’s a deal. You write in a way that makes a difference, and I write my own song.”
It could have just been a casual comment, more of a joke than anything else, but for some reason, Julian didn’t think that was the case. He felt like they had made a sort of pact between them, when it was, doubtless, far too soon for them to be doing that sort of thing.
It felt right, though, and for Julian, who never went just on instinct, it was deeply thrilling to let that be enough. Just this once, he would allow himself to rely on that instinct, though the concept was terrifying to him.
There was a bit more chatting, but soon enough, Julian felt the welcoming arms of sleep wrap around him and draw him deep into rest. He relaxed into it, and even though he never shared his bed with anyone else, he slept soundly in Luca’s arms.
* * *
“I’ll see you at the bar.”
That’s where they left it, and somehow, that seemed to be enough. They didn’t exchange phone numbers, though Luca suggested doing so. Julian, however, needed some time to make sense of everything that was happening. This was so out of the realm of the ordinary for him.
Besides, part of him couldn’t help but think that it would be good to give Luca the option of just not coming back if he wanted to. They’d gotten very close in a short time, and Luca, honestly, gave off the sort of vibes where he wouldn’t really be all that interested in anything so serious.
He’d always been the type to be cautious with his heart, and if Luca were done with him now, he would prefer to just give the man a chance to make a clean break of it. Before Julian got his heart too involved.
If it wasn’t already too late for that.
* * *
“Julian!”
Somehow, it was a good month later, and Luca was still around. Not only that, but they had spent much more time together than Julian would have expected, and he still hadn’t scared Luca off. Not yet, anyway.
It was almost tempting to have hope about the whole thing. One month was, by far, the longest relationship that he’d ever had before, even if it wasn’t even official.
“Sorry,” Julian murmured. He smiled over at Luca, who gave him that free, easy, open smile right back as he reached over to take Julian’s hand in his. Without any hint of shyness or self-consciousness, Luca linked his fingers into Julian’s.
Somehow, Julian had always assumed that people would care. If they did, though, they were keeping it to themselves. They got a couple of looks, always accompanied by smiles, and that was it. Most people didn’t even do that.
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” Luca said, while Julian fussed with his phone to check on their timing. He was sure that they were running a little bit late. Or maybe he only wished that they were.
“It’s not so long, just a week,” Julian said, and then gasped as someone bumped into him from behind. His phone plummeted to the floor, and it must have hit at the exact wrong angle, because it exploded into pieces, the screen cracked and crucial pieces scattered all over the floor.
“Hey!” Luca called, but the person, just some anonymous stranger, didn’t even look back. It seemed doubtful to Julian that they even knew what they had done.
“It’s okay. It was old, anyway,” Julian assured the other man. “Come on. We’ve got to get you to your gate.”
The airport was crowded, and Julian took a deep breath and let the urgency of his mission distract him from everything else. Yes, his phone was broken. Yes, he could already tell, just from seeing it in several pieces on the floor, that it wasn’t something that could be repaired.
And, yes, he was walking Luca so that Luca could leave him. But it was just for a little while, and he took comfort in the task of getting Luca to the plane on time. It was something he could do, something he could control.
“I wanted to finally get your number,” Luca said, and Julian shook his head. There wasn’t time.
Kiran was there already, and the plane was already boarding, when they got there. It had taken longer than Julian had hoped. The airport had been so much more crowded than he’d thought it would be. He’d hoped for a few more minutes to say goodbye.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Julian said to Kiran, and he hoped the words didn’t come out too stiff and formal because he did mean them.
Kiran nodded, and he was polite enough, but he looked like crap. He was always so handsome, so pulled together, and seeing him with his hair messy and dark circles under his eyes, wearing loose, shapeless sweats, it was jarring.
“Thank you,” Kiran said. “I’ll have to decide what to do with the company, now that my father is gone. I never thought he’d leave it to me …”
Julian wished that he knew what to say to help, but he really barely knew Kiran. He wanted to tell him about his own parents, he wanted to tell him that he understood, at least as well as another person could. But he didn’t quite dare.
“You guys have to go. Luca …” Julian took a deep breath, and then, ignoring his insecurities for just a moment, he leaned in and pressed a quick, but heated, little kiss to Luca’s lips.
It was over too fast. Luca was boarding the plane, off to yet another assignment, one that he’d, for once, handpicked so that he could afford to go with his best friend to Japan to support him there. That was just the sort of guy that Luca was.
There was the strangest feeling that went over Julian as he saw Luca hand over his ticket, as he watched this man who already meant far too much to him walk away, huddled protectively close to Kiran.
Was this the last time that he was going to see Luca? It could be. The plane could crash, or, more likely, spending time apart from Julian would bring Luca to his senses.
He’d be okay, he tried to tell himself as his eyes fixated desperately on Luca. Even if he never saw Luca again, he would be okay. And he even knew it was true, logically. It just didn’t feel that way, on some deep, instinctive level.
“Luca!” he called out, and the man turned back to look at him, an inquisitive smile on his face despite the fact that the woman taking the tickets was looking impatient at the holdup.
“Julian?” Luca asked, and Julian had to wonder what would happen if he were selfish enough to ask that Luca come back. That he not go to Japan.
He could never do that, though. One look at Kiran made it very obvious that the grieving man needed his best friend, and besides, Luca had to make a living. So Julian pushed the unworthy thought away.
“When you come back …”
His voice trailed off, but luck
ily, Luca took over. He gave Julian one of those utterly stunning, beautiful smiles, and a quick nod.
“I’ll meet you at the bar,” he promised, and then he was gone.
Chapter Six
Luca
It wasn’t in Luca’s nature to push people, but after just a few days in Japan, he was starting to wish that it was.
He still didn’t have Julian’s phone number, and he missed him like crazy. The month that he’d spent with him had been the best month that Luca could ever remember having, and Luca felt bolder, stronger, around Julian, with his quiet, restrained strength of his own. He had even started to do something that he hadn’t done for years, and looked around through various websites for a more stable job.
Back when he’d been single, it had suited him to be able to wander around, though it had always been with this dim feeling that he was missing something. Well, now he knew what that thing that he had been missing was. Or rather, who it was.
Things were good, and Luca’s only regret was that he hadn’t gotten the other man’s phone number. All things considered, that was pretty minor. After all, it wasn’t like he didn’t know where to go if he needed to find Julian.
He wished, more than anything, that he could go back and see Julian right then, but an entire ocean separated them.
Not that Kiran wasn’t doing his best to make him welcome in his home country. Japan was beautiful, with amazing scenery and good nightlife and incredible food. If Julian were here visiting it with him, Luca had the feeling that it would be pretty much perfect.
As it was, he watched the sun go down over Kyoto, and he seriously considered calling Julian at work. Not that he would actually do it, of course. He wasn’t going to be so selfish. He doubted that Julian’s boss would be thrilled to death if Julian started to get personal phone calls at work, and he didn’t want to get his boyfriend fired.
His boyfriend. That’s what he thought was going on, anyway. It certainly was on his end, which was a pretty huge deal for him because he didn’t tend to like the whole committed relationship thing. In fact, it was the sort of thing that tended to give him a panicky feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he was looking down over the edge of a very high cliff, afraid he might fall over.
In this case, though, he had fallen over. Or, rather, he’d jumped, arms spread out. Time would tell if he would plummet into misery and despair, or soar like an eagle.
“You’re in your own world.” Kiran walked over, holding a tray with a pot of what smelled like that delicious green tea that Luca had fallen in love with. He accepted the cup that he was given eagerly, sipping at it carefully to avoid burning his mouth.
“Yeah.” Luca couldn’t even deny that. “Sorry. I'm a shitty friend.”
Kiran shook his head, settling down on the couch beside Luca. He took his own teacup and sipped from it as they both looked out the window at the gathering dusk outside.
“I didn’t say that. You came all the way here, and I know that you didn’t really want to leave Julian,” Kiran pointed out.
Luca seized on that comment eagerly. There had been something that he’d wanted to ask Kiran, and this seemed like the perfect chance to do so.
“Look, I know this is sort of a weird thing to ask, but do you think you could text Ella and ask her to get Julian to text me? Or call me? Something?”
It was a lot to ask. Luca knew that Kiran and Ella had gone to bed together more than once, but they’d both given the impression of not being all that interested in committed relationships. From what Luca had heard from Kiran, they had some fun together, and that was about it. So what Luca was asking was doubtless a bit presumptuous, but he wasn’t sure what other option he had.
It seemed ridiculous to him, suddenly, that he had allowed this to happen. That he hadn’t at least given Julian his number. Luca just hadn’t wanted to scare the guy off, he hadn’t wanted to push too hard, but now, he was regretting it.
“That won’t work,” Kiran said, his voice reasonable, patient enough but firm. “Remember? He dropped his phone. He might not be able to get texts. Besides …” There was a brief hesitation, and something about the tone of Kiran’s voice made Luca turn to look at him curiously. “Ella and I, we aren’t talking.”
Well, that was news to Luca. He arched an eyebrow, catching Kiran’s eye with his own. If he knew his best friend, the guy would try to minimize the whole thing, he would try to pretend it was no big thing, but Luca didn’t intend to let him.
“Okay, well … it’s more like, she’s not talking to me. I told her that I wanted something more than just sex from her, and she walked out. Hasn’t talked to me since.” Kiran spoke quietly, his voice controlled, but Luca winced a little.
He knew just what admitting such a thing, first to Ella and now to Luca, would cost for Kiran. How hard it would be for him.
Luca wanted to say something. He just wasn’t sure what. That he was sorry, yes, definitely, that he thought that Ella and Kiran would have been a cute couple … that, he should probably just keep to himself. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Kiran would need to hear.
“It’s only a few more days,” Luca said quietly, trying to encourage himself, and also trying to change the subject so that his friend didn’t feel so awkward. “It’s not a big deal, right? I can wait a few more days to see him.”
“Yeah,” Kiran said, and then shook his head. “Man, I’ve seen you get pretty worked up about people, but never like this. This is a whole new thing. Have you even stopped thinking about him from the day that you met him?”
Luca sipped at his tea, warm and fragrant and soothing, and then sighed and nodded a little bit after giving it some very serious thought. It was, after all, a fair question.
“Yeah. There are times when I don’t think about him,” Luca admitted. “Some of them last four or five whole seconds. I don’t know, Kiran I feel like this could be something special, you know? Like it’s meant to be.”
He laughed a little when he realized what he’d said, a bit self-conscious. He was always doing that, babbling about things, saying stupid stuff, but luckily, Kiran seemed to take it in stride.
“Well, the funeral is tomorrow,” Kiran said practically. “So after that, you can pretty much just leave, right? Go back to him before your brain explodes or something?”
Luca shrugged.
“Sort of. I mean, I have about another day of work to do on the article, but yeah. After that, if you don’t need me here …”
He was, after all, here to help Kiran, mostly. To be here for him. He wouldn’t leave until Kiran felt like he could handle it. The article was just an excuse to be here, a way that he could actually afford the flight.
Actually, the article itself was an example of what he’d been talking to Julian about. He kept taking these jobs, and most of them really didn’t matter. Take this one. It wasn’t about the amazing Shinto temples that Kyoto was known for or the Philosopher Walk. It wasn’t even about the world renowned cuisine. Not the imperial palaces, and not the former shogun’s home.
No. He was being paid to write an article about the railway museum. That and other tourist traps. Kyoto was one of the most culturally significant cities in the world, to the point where it had actually been spared from being bombed in World War II, and he was being sent here to find the same sorts of places as he could have found in any city in the United States.
That’s what he got for accepting a job with a travel agency, he supposed.
“Hey, Kiran,” Luca said, once more breaking the companionable silence that had fallen between them. “Do you think that I should try to find a more stable job? Something more meaningful?”
Kiran arched an eyebrow, obviously surprised by the question. As well he might be. Luca had never been all that serious about finding anything permanent before, but things changed. Sometimes, things could change almost overnight.
“What? Why? I thought you kind of liked your job. I thought you liked that you didn’t have to go into the same
office every day, stuff like that.” Kiran tilted his head, looking at him thoughtfully, and Luca shrugged, giving a tiny little smile.
“It’s just, you know … I think I’d like to be around home more often,” Luca admitted. Home. He was flying around writing various articles so much that he barely knew what the word meant. Home. His crappy little apartment where most things didn’t work, but he was never there so why bother fixing it? Was that home?
“It’s Julian,” Kiran noted. “He’s the reason you want to be around, right? You want to have a stable job so that you don’t have to leave him?”
Even though Kiran didn’t sound all that judgmental, Luca winced and fought down the urge to passionately deny it. In some ways, his habits hadn’t died down. He didn’t want anyone to feel like they had a claim on him.
Though Julian did. Luca felt like their hearts were beating together, in perfect time, even across the Pacific Ocean. What time was it, where Julian was? Was he asleep? Was he staring out over the ocean, just like Luca was?
“It’s not just that,” Luca said honestly. “I mean, that’s definitely part of it.” It was even a big part of it, he would go that far. But that wasn’t all of it. “Look, I’m just writing these things to get a paycheck. But don’t you think it would be cool if I could write for something that made a difference?”
Kiran laughed softly, and Luca peered at him, not sure if he should be insulted or not. He looked at his best friend suspiciously, who shook his head and, thankfully, stopped laughing.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “It’s just that … you’ve changed, Luca.”
You’ve changed, Luca.
Yes. That’s what that came down to. He’d changed. Maybe the change had even been a while in the making, and Julian was just the catalyst for it. But he’d been growing bored, had found his life feeling somehow stale and inauthentic. He’d changed, and it was time to change his life.
