Prologue
(Azabu, 2005)
Looking back, it had taken lesser than five seconds.
His hands didn’t shake at all. Five seconds were all it took to make a neat, precise incision on the underside of his wrist, just below the faded bracelets.
There was no shower of blood. Not even much pain. He made sure to use his sharpest scalpel. Razors were just not good enough. When the first few drops of red fell into the sink like ripe apples, he turned the faucet on and watched them swirl away into the dark mouth of the drain.
Then drawing his sleeve over the little red mouth, he went out onto the balcony and sat himself down on the swing there. There was no moon for him to die under but then, romance wasn’t his forte. Never had been and…he wasn’t going to be found having bled out on a dirty bathroom floor either. He was a doctor, for the love of God.
He wasn’t looking for fanfare. Or tragedy.
After all, people didn’t dress up and hang lights out in their yards when they wanted to go to bed, did they? He could feel little stabs in his wrist as the little mouth opened and closed, its teeth tight on his veins. He leaned his head on the ivy-clad links holding up the swing.
No fanfare. No tragedy.
No fireworks.
When he was a little boy, his mother had told him that when the end came, it didn’t come with fireworks or ballads. It came like sleep and like all sleep, you were meant to wake up again.
Maybe somewhere a little different from where you fell asleep in. But you had to wait. You couldn’t fall asleep before it was your bedtime.
That’s what his mother said.
Used to say.
But she never told him who decided when it was time to close your eyes to the world and sleep. She never got to. Because when he was old enough to ask that question, his mother was already asleep. More like beaten black and blue and kicked into her makeshift bed. He supposed that was his answer. Someone else got to decide when you had to fall asleep. God, the universe, myth, legend, his drunk stepfather.
But not for him. He was a doctor. He had the privilege to decide just how and when he would sleep. And for a long time, he spent all his time poring over his books, looking for the best place to make his bed. Pills were too thin a mattress and drugs too thick.
But a scalpel – light grey steel. Sharp and perfect. In five years, it was his most trusted friend – he found, fit snugly under the soft down of his pillow. And he slept better on the nights he could feel it whispering to him, promising him a chance to wake up in somewhere else.
Yes. That was it. His only companion, every night. Quiet and calming.
Not like fireworks.
i.
(Shinjuku, 2003)
He loved sleeping. Waking up or staying up was a nightmare. And being a heavy sleeper, he had no time for nightmares or their more pleasant counterparts. He was in bed the moment he got home. Food was…
The thought made his gorge rise.
He never starved himself. If some colleague at work, looking just a smidge concerned, said he looked tired, he’d bring out that smile, sharp edges and warm fire,
“Just a busy day, is all…three surgeries…you know how it is.”
And they’d nod and smile, convinced because they’d think they knew. Knew the stress and the thankless hours spent staring into tumors and ulcers and open wounds.
They knew nothing.
They didn’t know how he went home and stood under the shower until he was ready to collapse. Ate till he felt his mouth and jaws were going to crack open. Spent even more time vomiting the same food out till his throat felt raw and sore, his eyes burning, his head splitting open with pain. Or how he finally fell into bed, and sank faster than a paper boat in a flood.
They didn’t know any of this when he breezed into work the next day, impeccable and immaculate. A force of nature. Silent and perceptive. Subtle as the ocean and warm as the sun.
Like the pristine cerulean of a winter sky. Unmarred by the ugly, gaudy lights of fireworks.
ii.
“There’s a new noodle place round the corner. Do you want to grab lunch?”
“I’ve got a late shift…”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“I…”
“See you later, Vanya.”
Misha's gone like he was never there. Leaving him standing there, befuddled. Befuddled, but not unhappy. He’s very swift that way, Misha. Talks like the wind and runs like he has wings on his feet. He reminds him of something familiar.
(fireworks?)
Vanya pushes the thought out of his mind and bends over the pulsating heart, scalpel at the ready. If he stares in the mirror a little longer than usual, after washing his bloody hands, he doesn’t notice. He’s usually bone tired, but surprisingly today, sleep can wait.
If his breath hitches a little as Misha takes his hand in one of his own, warm from the heat of his hoodie…
Why does he wear a hoodie to the hospital?
…then, Vanya attributes it to the chill in the air.
iii.
“Vanya…”
He’s drunk. It’s 2 am here, cold and twinkling and bleak, and he’s drunk himself silly. And awake. He’s so drunk he can’t sleep.
Isn’t that funny?
He giggles to himself a little. His mask hasn’t slipped an inch, though. It’s still as perfectly in place as it always is. A perfect fit.
“Like a hand in a glove…” he thinks aloud and this causes another onslaught of giggles.
“Vanya, get up.”
Misha is looming over him, his violet eyes halfway between amusement and concern. Upside down, his face looks a little like the periwinkles that Mother loved so much. Some even grew around her grave. Absently, aching, he reaches the tips of his fingers to brush against the petals. Misha's hand meets his halfway. And then Misha smiles and rests his palm on his cheek.
“Sleep, Vanya.”
Vanya closes his eyes. For the first time, sleep never comes. And for the first time, he is grateful for it.
iv.
He doesn’t see Misha for a week after.
At least he tries not to. He really tries.
But Misha is a lot like the weather. Like rain on a summer evening when you’ve left your umbrella, sitting cozily in its rack, at home. Perhaps like the sultry heat that works its way under the flimsy cotton of your clothes. The sweat that clings to you, drying on your skin, seeping into your flesh, into the roots of your hair.
Misha is…
…like the birthmark on his collarbone. The one he picks at ceaselessly to get to sleep.
And that, he thinks, watching Misha's hair, dyed a soft pink, sticking out, wild and untamed, the uneven nails, the rose of his bitten lips, his eyes, is the problem.
Misha doesn’t know how badly Vanya wants to fall asleep and wake up with nothing but the empty burden of freedom. Or how that his scalpel is his lover in the dark. He doesn’t know about the hangnails, torn and raw. Or about the endless plates emptied into the bin and thrown out with the trash.
Misha is different.
Misha is the periwinkle growing around the grave he’s lying in. Misha loves fireworks and Vanya’s sky has been barren for years now. When Misha comes over to him in bound, throwing his gangly limbs around his shoulders, his blood turns to ice.
And when he laughs into his hair, terror licks at the soles of his feet.
“Vanya, come see the fireworks with me!”
You make me want to stay awake… He thinks.
He says nothing. Pulls himself out of the flowers and walks away. He won’t look Misha in the eyes. So he never sees the hurt that he assumes is there. Never sees the flash of feelings in them.
v.
Any moment now.
His hand’s gone numb. He can barely feel the blood, leaking sluggishly onto the floor, either. He wonders briefly if this is what Mother felt like.
Lights. In the sky. So loud. Bright.
But he can’t hear them too well. Can barely even see.
Their glow hurts him.
When sleep comes, Vanya’s not ready for it.
Belatedly, he murmurs into the emptiness,
“Let me stay awake…just a little longer. I want to see the fireworks...”
vi.
In hindsight, it was a case of terrible timing on his part.
He had forgotten his own birthday. Worse still, he had forgotten inviting Misha to his non-existent birthday party.
“He invited himself…you didn’t,” his sedative-laden mind hisses furiously.
Moreover – and this was the most terrible thing of all – he had forgotten that Misha possessed the spare set of keys to his house. Forgotten that it was he, who after about a year of the latter clinging onto his arms, had had the set made and on one nice, awfully clichéd summer evening, under a sky coloured pink, with cotton-candy clouds, had pushed the keys into Misha’s hand, mumbling
“You practically live here…and your apartment is disgusting.”
“You love my apartment, Vanya.”
Misha had been glowing.
And Vanya had scowled. But not disagreed.
Which is why, exactly two days after his 30th birthday, he was here, IV in his arm, very much alive. Pumped full of something that made him nauseous and giddy. Blood flowing into one arm. The mouth on that wrist sewed shut.
Not speaking anymore…
And Misha, selfish, low, beautiful wretch that he was – is – sitting against his bed, with an unreadable expression in the darkened periwinkle of his eyes.
Misha, who may or may not have dragged him off that swing and held him like a mother trying shake breath back into the body of a dying child, trying to rattle life back into his very bones.
Misha, who had pressed his fingers onto Vanya’s arm, until pain exploded in the wet, running mouth, and held him steady as Vanya had – finally – screamed loud enough and long enough to feel like he would die from that alone.
Misha, who would not let him sleep.
Or die. Might as well call it what it is.
His mind supplies unhelpfully.
Misha, who now makes him want to stay up all night looking into the sky, coloured over with the endless shades of fireworks…
“I think I’m in love with you.”
Misha’s eyes, dark and angry and tired and full of agony flicker up.
And, terrified, Vanya realizes that he’s said this out loud.
vii.
Vanya’s always had a list.
Of things to do. Or not.
And he does not know what to do when Misha strides over to him, brings their foreheads together and weeps into his face, the tears cold against his cheeks.
The list does not tell him. Never had Misha’s name on it.
So, Misha tears it up.
Folds Vanya in his arms. Writes him a new list.
And oh. This is what a dream feels like.
It’s the first one Vanya’s ever allowed himself.
Epilogue
(Kawaguchi, 2010)
Winter.
Cold and wet and again.
He’s wrapped in what feels like a hundred blankets and still cold. A gentle song drifts out of the kitchen, a folk song. Some folk song. A rhyming, rhythmic thing about lost children in the woods and lights to guide them home.
He huddles on the futon laid out on the balcony, enveloped in the cold, looking up at the dark blue sky.
“Tabula rasa..” he thinks, when the aroma of rich, hot chocolate swallows him whole.
Misha makes room without realizing it, shuffling over and instantly curling up against the warmth offered. Rests his head on shoulders that are soft to his touch. No longer sharp enough to draw blood.
“It’s freezing. Did you bring us out here to die?”
He’s trembling now and when the laughter rings out soft by his ear, he huffs and lets himself be held.
Slender fingers tilt his chin up, and when Misha looks up, equally petulant and fond, the cerulean that meets his eyes is full of stars.
His own bit of the sky.
“For the fireworks, lyubov’. Fireworks for us.”
Vanya whispers against his lips just as the night splinters open in a cacophony of sharp, pointed sounds, like the edges of stars knocking into each other.
The sky lights up. Blinding. Beautiful.
Awake.
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