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Touch is hard.
For a long time, Sakura didn’t think about touch at all. He lived away from any remaining family members, isolated and ostracized like the diseased beggars from the Bible. He used to feel a little pity for the people in the neighborhood who all went to church with his family, and never knew that they kept the boy with the mismatched eyes hidden in the yard, locked behind the slats of the fences like prison bars.
Ume, Nirei, and Tsubaki have slowly been forcing Sakura through a brand of exposure therapy that makes his hair stand on end. It’s not that he doesn’t want to learn how to take easy handshakes and pats on the back and — well, he could do without the hair ruffling, actually. Still, it’s just that he’s not used to it.
Sakura is used to violence, and quiet, and loneliness so intense it feels like breaking, and then numb calm and the knowledge that he will need to prove himself the strongest and best to become ungovernable. He does not want to be at another’s mercy ever again, and sometimes, his mind doesn’t understand that touch does not have to come at the cost of control.
Jo is considerate of this, and everything else. He’s borderline perfect as a boyfriend, despite the few irritating quirks he keeps around seemingly just to get under Sakura’s skin. Like how he calls Sakura “kitty” and scruffs him when he’s “misbehaving,” or how he likes to bite Sakura’s bottom lip sometimes when they kiss, like a goodbye sting.
That one doesn’t bother Sakura so much anymore, actually. He sort of likes it, even when Jo’s teeth nip a little too hard and he snags a canine, because the throbbing later reminds him he’s not really alone. Sakura sleeps deeper these days, especially on the nights Jo stays, or calls on the phone to keep Sakura company while he drifts off inevitably to the sound of whatever he’s working on. Lately, though, it’s just been his voice.
Tonight is another night that Jo stays over. They’ve had dinner already, one of Jo’s favorites. Cabbage and carrot salad is only good when Jo makes it, because he chops it fine and makes it spicy, and though Sakura would prefer omurice over most things, he has to admit he really likes Jo’s special street-corndogs with the crispy potato batter. Sakura even got to hold the skewers while Jo showed him how to dip them most effectively, long calloused fingers wrapped gently around Sakura’s wrist until Jo could most definitely feel his heart pounding away.
For now, Sakura just hopes Jo can’t feel his heart racing. They’re watching TV together, some American show that Jo grew up on with young kids as the leads, their voices dubbed into Japanese so that neither of them has to pay too much attention to subtitles. It’s a good thing, too, because Sakura keeps blinking long and slow, like when he’s desperately tired and can’t stay upright. It’s just because he feels nice here, curled up under Jo’s arm with his head pressed to the man’s collar.
Cuddling Jo feels good. It makes Sakura’s spine lay flat, where normally he’d feel his proverbial hackles and the prickly sense that someone was lurking in a dark corner waiting to spring. Sakura still isn’t sure where this newer feeling comes from, fully. Maybe the smell of him. He turns so his cheek and most of his right eye is smushed on the bony process of Jo’s shoulder.
Jo always smells like cardamom and sweet smoke and herbs and his favorite brand of coffee. It’s a weird combination, made even stranger by the mint perfume of Jo’s hair-care. Still, the warm scent mingled with the feeling of Jo’s heart thudding below his temple serves to make Sakura feel like an ice cream that’s been left out in the hot afternoon sun. He puddles down into the embrace, one hand twisting into the fabric of Jo’s sweatshirt.
A tiny noise escapes Sakura before he’s aware of it. He chokes it down, nearly inhales his own spit, and has to sputter briefly with his face turned out of Jo’s chest.
“Oop, easy, baby,” Jo mumbles gently.
Jo sits up a few inches, leaning out of Sakura’s space, and for a moment Sakura panics. He just coughed on Jo. What if Jo thinks he’s sick and doesn’t want to cuddle him anymore? Or worse, what if Jo is just sick of Sakura clinging to him?
The hand in Jo’s sweatshirt clenches, and Sakura feels the moment Jo’s body meets the resistance, swaying them both gently towards the centerpoint. Jo freezes mid-stretch, one arm lifted towards the coffee table to grab Sakura’s ramune. Or at least, that’s what it looks like he’s doing, and Sakura went and freaked out for no reason at all.
Great.
“S-sorry,” Sakura mutters, and releases his death grip on Jo’s clothing.
“No problem,” Jo says easily. He settles back, arm returning to its place over the back of the couch, elbow tucked securely behind Sakura’s head. The ramune hovers over his lap as he offers it. “You thirsty?”
Sakura’s eyes water. He snatches the ramune bottle with more force than is probably necessary to hide the way his hands are shaking. Green apple isn’t his favorite flavor, but it’s a good one. It reminds him of the little bag of Jolly Ranchers he got for a holiday in school once, when he was still too young to be left unsupervised. He nearly choked to death on the little rock-lump of sugar and had to give himself what he later found out was the heimlich over the porch ledge. No one else was home, or maybe they were. Sakura used to sit by himself on the short concrete slab that made up his shed patio and watch the sliding glass doors to see if anyone ever even spared a glance towards the boy outside.
No one really did.
He stopped playing the waiting game after his first year there.
When the ramune bottle comes down, it thunks hollowly against the coaster. Half-empty. He sniffles, nose burning both from the carbonation and the ache in his chest. His brow furrows, and Sakura tries to focus on the TV screen again, but there’s a haze over his eyes. He blinks, wetness spilling down his cheeks, and a shuddering breath pours out of him as he realizes all at once that he’s crying.
When did that start?
“Hey,” Jo says slowly, quiet but firm. His arm circles Sakura’s shoulders, drags him into his orbit and up against his chest. “What’s wrong, baby? You doin’ okay?”
The tears burn hotter behind Sakura’s eyes, bubbling down his cheeks as his breath hitches and his throat squeezes a horrible whine out into the air. He chokes on a sob, buries his face hard in Jo’s ribs, tries to silence it, bites his lips and hyperventilates to stuff it back down. He can’t cry like this. Nothing good ever comes from crying.
“Oh, honey,” Jo drawls, voice low and crackling with something hot and comforting and all too good to be real.
Jo turns, his right hand coming up to cup Sakura’s cheek and draw him out of hiding with surprisingly tender strength. It’s weird, the way his touch hurts there. Sakura isn’t used to feeling a palm to his cheek unless it’s paired with the sting of a smack, or worse yet he is more accustomed to the bruising deep ache of knuckles squishing through flesh to melt into his teeth, to jar his bones, to wound his sinuses and make him dizzy and desperate. He can’t fight back against the memories, or Jo’s hand, or the way he unfolds all at once. He has to be good. He’s not supposed to fight.
“Look at me, baby, tell me what’s wrong. You’re okay. You can talk to me.”
Sakura shakes his head, lips pressed tight together, fists clenched. If he can keep it all in, then Jo won’t ever see the ugly parts that would scare him away — drive him crazy and make him tired and angry and turn Jo into someone who scowled and sneered with pity and hatred at Sakura. Sakura always drove everyone away, because he was too small and snivelling and needy and useless to be worthy of love. That had to be why they hated him, and sent him outside, and made him keep his mattress on the floor of a shed that baked his brain in the summer and froze him into lethargy during the winters, and barely let him eat, and… and hurt him.
“Can’t,” Sakura defends softly, voice too high and thready from swallowing every pitchy cry threatening his shaky breaths. “Too much.”
Jo steadies him with both hands on Sakura’s tense biceps, both arms held out straight and shivering to keep Jo at a distance. It’s not really Jo that he’s avoiding, but rather his own spectacular breakdown, and still he sees the muted frisson of hurt that flashes over Jo’s face and then flickers out, suppressed by cool intent.
“You’re okay, baby. What’s too much? The things you need to say? Because I’m here all night, and the rest of our lives if you’ll have me. I know that’s… a lot, but. It’s the truth, and I love—”
Sakura can’t hear anymore. The ache in his entire upper body reaches a boiling point, and spills out of him in great heaving breaths. He hangs his head to try and keep Jo from seeing his expression when it shatters, but Jo catches him in a tight hug; one of his hands comes up to cradle Sakura’s nape and clutches him close. The other loops tight around his low back, hoists him almost bodily off the cushion until Sakura squirms and finds himself seated in Jo’s lap.
The touch on nearly every inch of his body makes Sakura groan with a mixture of pleasure and deep, horrible grief. The last person who held him like this was his mother, he’s almost sure of it. He can remember her smell for a moment, before it’s gone, and in its place he finds Jo, warm and succulent like he spent the day in a garden and a kitchen, trading turns with the fresh Earth and the roasting glow of the ovens.
Sakura can hear himself crying still, deep jagged groans and sobs that force drool to the pooling tip of his tongue and trap hot, irritated blood behind his eyelids until he feels like he might burst. He turns his face into the air, sucks in a few trembling, whimpering gasps before he tucks his nose into Jo’s neck and inhales the smell of him deep, the pain starting to release his intestines from its hooks.
“M’sorry,” Sakura whines, sniffling and gnawing at his own bottom lip as he tries to force a withering moan back down his airway.
“No, baby, no, it’s okay,” Jo coos, sounding a bit like he’s talking to a stray animal, wary and soft and intentionally coaxing. “You can cry, sweetheart. I don’t need you to be sorry. I just want to help.”
The feeling in Sakura’s stomach is like being motion-sick, but without the nausea, sweats, and the upheaval. It feels more like being dropped off a high ledge, losing his footing on the stairs. He grabs on tightly to Jo, arms snaking around his boyfriend’s neck as he clings for dear life. He needs Jo to keep him safe, to make sure he doesn’t fall. Jo won’t let him fall.
“Please don’t let go,” Sakura whispers, too broken to feel embarrassed. He thinks if Jo stopped touching him, he might break into a thousand bloody, gory pieces, and then Jo would be sad. He can’t let that happen to either of them.
“I won’t,” Jo says softly, his voice deep and resolute like a vow. Like all his promises where he seemed far too serious for any sort of setting they could possibly have been in. But now, Sakura thinks maybe Jo just takes him seriously. Cares for him like he’s precious.
A hiccup works its way out and lodges under his sinuses, a concave effort that makes him sneeze, and he wipes his face on Jo’s sweatshirt before he can think about it. He’s so used to crying into his own bed-sheets, washing them with the laundry every week. He freezes, filled with horror and revulsion at himself for ruining date night with his tears and then wiping his snot on his boyfriend.
“I’m sorry,” Sakura chokes, shoulders tensing up beside his ears and knees clenching like he wants to bow and bend away.
He’s disgusting, and he shouldn’t—
“Haruka,” Jo says quietly, leaning into his space and touching his forehead to Sakura’s.
It shuts his brain up spectacularly well. Sakura blinks. Gulps. Feels himself shivering and relaxing in faltering stages into Jo’s lap again. He lets the arms around his waist turn tight without resistance, and he lets Jo nuzzle their noses together without play-biting him. He wants to be his usual fiery self, to spit in the face of kindness because that sort of touch never comes without some sort of price, whether it’s intimidation or lust or fear or dominance. But Jo doesn’t want anything. Except—
“You’re perfect,” Jo mumbles. “You don’t need to apologize for a single thing. It makes me feel good to hold you. You’re so warm and soft and you smell so good.”
Sakura wants to laugh. Funny, because I was thinking the same about you. But instead, his lips tremble and his nose scorches as a fresh wave of tears crashes against his lashes and drips over.
“Thank you,” Sakura whispers, the back of his mouth aching like he could throw up.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Jo practically sighs, his chest shuddering as his arms tighten around Sakura, a hand splayed in the center of his shoulders. “You’re so welcome. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t want to, you know? I… I love to do it.”
It’s dangerously close to what he nearly said earlier. Sakura gasps despite himself, and braces like he’s waiting for a punch. It hurts worse than an actual hit would. His entire body feels like it’s full of lightning, a horrible knee-jerk refusal that anyone could ever… do that.
Love him. Or at least say it out loud. His family tried their best, he thinks, but they never said it.
Sakura trembles, rubbing his face against Jo’s shirt to try and empty his mind of thoughts except for sensation. The faintly rough pilling of the material drags and tickles through his brows and across his nose, and Sakura numbly sways himself the way he does to calm down when he’s alone and afraid at night.
“That’s it, baby. Just let it out.”
Jo’s voice is in his ears and skull and bones, vibrating in his chest and through his esophagus and up into Sakura’s brain. He mouths absently at the neck-line of Jo’s hood and rubs the pattern of the stitches between his top teeth and the tip of his tongue, his mind slipping even further away from coherence as Jo begins to sway him gently. His breath hitches, more tears bubbling out of him with little gasping cries, but everything feels so much softer now.
Being in Jo’s lap feels like sitting in a cloud, a safety net, a shock blanket to keep him insulated from the elements. He feels like the sort of home Sakura used to scream into his floor at night and beg for. His pillows never made up for what he was desperately clawing for, which was this, this-this-this. Sakura rocks in tandem with Jo’s gentle soothing, breaths hollowing around a wheezing, trapped wail that he tries to keep inside.
“Shhhh-sh-sh-sh,” Jo murmurs into Sakura’s ear. “Breathe deep with me, baby.”
Jo’s chest rises, and Sakura sucks in a rattling gasp of wet, choked air that explodes out of him in another round of aching dry heaves. They come out horrible, like something small and squashed and pathetic in its dying moments. Sakura wants to cram them back inside, and he chews reflexively, the hem of Jo’s sweatshirt now soaked through with spit, but he can’t even care anymore because Jo said it’s alright. Jo swaddles him anyways, and Sakura blinks bleary eyes to stare at the far wall.
The glow from the TV illuminates strange shadows. Most glaringly, Sakura can see the shape of Jo’s head and shoulders, and the tiny lump of a misshapen shade that must be him, tucked right into the width of a larger, sturdier body that grew up on vegetables and grease. Sakura slumps closer to him, whining quietly at the feeling that floods him suddenly, starting like a trickle of ice in his stomach that makes his hands shake.
He’s not afraid. Not quite. But there’s something wrong about this.
“Shouldn’t need this,” Sakura mutters quietly, like a reminder.
Jo shrugs a little, not to dislodge Sakura so much as to nudge his mouth an inch or two to the side, so Jo might hear him. “What’s that, baby?”
Sakura blinks, dazed and electric. His teeth are chattering, his skin tight and sore like a day-old bruise. “Not supposed to,” he clarifies.
Nobody touches Sakura except to train him to do better. It’s the rule, unspoken or firmly established. On the schoolground, the rulebook was typically written onto the tarmac with bloodied knees and scraped elbows, a few bruised knuckles on the occasion other kids actually had a bite to back up their bark. Once you won or lost, the war was on, and affection was no longer a currency to be spent.
At home, inasmuch as you could call that plot of property a home, Sakura was sent away with the threat of more pain if he didn’t listen. They didn’t tell him he wasn’t allowed to ask for things like hugs or touch, but nobody ever came to give him that anyway. That was the sort of thing you got from Mom and Dad, and once they were gone, you had to make do. That’s what Sakura always did. He made do with what he had, even when it was nothing. It was better than having anything to lose, really.
The tears redouble. Sakura bends at the middle like a rain-burdened willow, his forehead tapping gently to Jo’s collar. If a fight is a conversation, Sakura was raised in the silence between screaming. Jo’s touch now, a hand low on his back and the other rubbing tenderly up and down his spine, the bare breath on Sakura’s neck — all of it feels like…
Panic cinches Sakura’s throat tight, his windpipe protesting the surge of mucus and stinging saline and the choppy ragged cough-barks of breath he can manage between pitiful cries. His fingernails dig tight into Jo’s skin, the middle of his back where Sakura has unconsciously wormed his arms underneath Jo’s sweatshirt. His grip is a vice, a set of iron talons, and Jo should be flailing to free himself, but instead—
“There you are, sweet boy,” Jo says quietly, the mellow gleam of something… worshipful in his tone. “Of course you’re allowed to need this. This is just love, and it’s perfectly normal to want it. You weren’t supposed to have it at home?”
Sakura shakes his head hard. “No,” he intones, sounding very far away from himself for some reason. His ears are faintly ringing, his vision swimmy like aquarium glass. “Not anyone’s kid anymore. Didn’t matter if I was… whatever. As long as I kept goin’ to school, and didn’t come in the house.”
Jo freezes, chest stilling on a half-stifled gasp, his hands tightening to an almost painful degree where he’s clutching Sakura close. The bite of Jo’s nails at the nape of Sakura’s neck doesn’t unsettle him the way he might’ve thought, and instead he burrows deeper into Jo’s neck as if by encouragement. He uses the momentum to pitch them back so Jo is reclined more evenly against the backrest, and Sakura can shimmy their hips up together to settle more comfortably.
Once he gets situated, the blood-flow to his calves greatly increases, and he heaves a contented sigh of relief when Jo turns to press a kiss to his temple. He traces his nose on the line of Jo’s herbal oil where he likes to dab it, a tiny secret because Jo pretends he doesn’t use anything other than his shower products. It’s sweet, though, a bit sharper and juicier than citrus, with a tangy note of something earthen and spiced.
“Well,” Jo says after a long moment, his hand resuming its path up and down Sakura’s spine, this time in the vague shape of an infinity loop. “I’m always going to want to cuddle like this, or any way you want to. Holding hands is also on the table for when this feels like too much. But, uh. Just, you know. You can ask me, and chances are I’ll say yes. I…” here, Jo pauses. “I really, really like you, you know?”
Sakura’s heart pinches with a little note of sorrow. He didn’t mean to make Jo reel in what he meant. He would never try to shut somebody up for telling the truth inside.
“Jo,” Sakura mumbles, feeling distinctly brave despite the maggoty feeling in his gut that turns his nerves into pockmarked little shells of rattling feverish anticipation. “I love you, too.”
The declaration makes Jo’s heart speed up. Sakura didn’t realize he could feel it so clearly, but he presses his nose into the thudding in Jo’s skin like he could ease the stream, a kiss to numb the pain. He feels… good, here. And Jo doesn’t want him to leave, so he doesn’t have to, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Nobody wants Sakura like this. Maybe Jo could try, but even his family didn’t want him.
It’s only a matter of time before Jo figures out why Sakura deserves to be alone.
Maybe he already has.
He’s not saying it back.
Sakura sits up, eyes wide and chest hollow with rotten fear. He searches Jo’s face in the silver blue gleam from the TV, the hollows of his cheeks deeply shadowed by the dim orange casts of the corner lamp. Jo’s eyes are wide and dark and… nervous.
“I love you,” Sakura says again, this time quieter, less certain. Maybe he shouldn’t have said it. Maybe Jo didn’t mean it. Maybe it was a slip of the tongue. Maybe he’s not ready, or never will be, or—
“Baby,” Jo whispers. “Oh, I love you, too, sweetheart. I didn’t— fuck, I was trying to make sure I didn’t make you cry again.”
Sakura laughs wetly, mashing his face into Jo’s shoulder as he wipes his tears there, shame slipping further away like water disappearing down a drainpipe. Nothing left in the basin except the residue. Little gleaming droplets that pass as simply as a flicker of light, dispersed through the air.
“You failed,” Sakura teases, but he squeezes Jo tight around the neck to let him know he’s only joking.
His body feels heavy and swollen with sadness, like his blood is sick, or his bones are breaking apart. Still, Jo holds him like nothing is wrong. Sakura whimpers, rocking to try and dispel the feeling from his limbs, the horrible writhing fear inside that makes him shake all over. Jo isn’t going to want to keep this up for long. He’ll get tired. He won’t want this. No one wants this.
“Why are you doing this?” Sakura whispers, overwhelmed with the need to know when he can expect the touch to be taken away. He can’t stop curling in on himself, desperate half to breathe with the flex of his ribs and bowing of his spine, and half to try and remind himself that he used to do this all alone.
His pillows have been his only comforts in the dark for a long, long time. They will continue to be there when Jo decides he’s done.
“Because I love you,” Jo answers steadily. “I want to care for you in a way that makes us both feel good.”
Sakura grits his teeth so hard they grind. “No one wants to do that. With me.”
“That’s not true,” Jo whispers quietly. “You have lots of friends who want to care for you in their own ways. Nirei and Suo are always leaving you those gift baskets. And I know Kiryu is responsible for at least two of those stuffed animals, honey.”
Sakura’s stomach aches. He didn’t ask them to. “Don’t need it.” He shouldn’t. He doesn’t. He can’t, because it’ll get taken. For his own good. Nobody needed the freak learning he deserved things of his own.
It was for everyone’s good that Sakura was alone. With nothing. It must’ve been for the better. Or else, it…
“It’s not for nothing,” Sakura reminds himself.
“What’s not?” Jo asks quietly, the forgotten observer. Sakura hasn’t had sleep paralysis in a long time, but his vision and thoughts are starting to feel like that buzzy static between his teeth again. Where am I again?
“Have to stay in the shed,” Sakura recites, an ancient scroll of rules and rituals that fall from his tongue with the weight of their bitter, bloody ink. “Can’t come out to the porch if there’s guests over. Not supposed to get in fights at school. But I do anyway, so I just have to deal with it when everyone’s mad because I make them mad and I can’t stop and I—” Sakura bites off this tangent. It won’t do him any good to go down the route of how it’s not his fault.
“Not allowed to blame anyone else,” he continues. “Not supposed to ask for food or water. Just supposed to get it. But I’m not allowed to come inside when people are home, and I’m not supposed to take things that aren’t mine, but I can’t ask, so sometimes I just have to be hungry, but I can’t get too skinny or sick because then there’ll be questions, and there’s no time for the doctor…” Sakura’s hands are shaking now. Fuck, his whole body’s shaking. He’s so cold. “Have to stay quiet when it’s cold out. Can’t make the neighbors worried.”
“Baby, baby,” Jo urges, like he’s been saying it for a while. The hand on Sakura’s shoulder grips him tight, props him up from his slump. Jo’s eyes are wet, his nose red and his brow low with sorrow. “You were just a kid, honey. Y-your parents kept you outside?” he asks, voice breaking clean through the middle, shards pitching upright into shock and horror.
Sakura shakes his head. “Mom died. Dad was gone. Family took me in because it was the right thing to do.”
Jo’s expression hardens. “But they kept you outside in a shed. And neglected you.”
Another head-shake, this one hard enough to make Sakura feel woozy, like there’s water lodged deep in his eardrums that he can’t get out. “N-no. I still had a place to live. Roof over my head, things to eat when I could manage. I had… I slept. I could go there to be alone and do my homework and stay… okay. I was safe.”
“They left you in the cold, Haruka,” Jo says suddenly. “You weren’t safe. You were alone, and little boys who just lost their Mommy and Daddy don’t need to be left alone to just live. You needed someone to hold you, and tell you it was okay to be sad, or angry, and they should have been tucking you in and holding your hand and checking your temperature when you were sick, not… shunning you like some sort of pest. God-dammit, they should have been feeding you, Haruka.”
The bitter venom in Jo’s voice speeds up his cadence enough that Sakura has to sway back a little, frightened against his own will. He wants to trust that Jo is angry at his family, but no one is supposed to be angry at them. Everyone is always angry at Sakura. It’s the way things are. So Jo must be mad at him. For ruining date night, and crying, and making a big deal out of—
“Fuck, baby,” Jo murmurs, and the arms drag Sakura in closer.
Every muscle in Sakura’s body tenses, prepared for the pain. He can feel it in the way his lungs catch below his ribs, and there’s a distinct feeling of weightlessness under his legs like he’s been released, sent into free-fall, except he lands squarely in the familiar comfort of one of Jo’s teary hugs, where he presses his face into Sakura’s hair and pretends he isn’t crying even though Sakura can feel it.
“You were just a little boy,” Jo whispers brokenly.
The words take a moment to land. Sakura isn’t sure what to make of them at first, the fissures they cause when he attempts to touch them with his mind. A little boy. Smaller than even the first-years that Sakura has grown protective over. Less capable even than Nirei, who despite his tears and nervousness has a strong heart that propels him to make the right choices.
Little like the stuffies Kiryu tells Sakura deserve extra special care. Little like the kittens that need extra support, stumbling around blind if not for the nurturing tongues of their parents to ease them into the world.
“No one wanted me to be a little boy,” Sakura says tiredly. He’s exhausted of that truth, the evidence clear in every moment of his life. He was born the moment his Mom died, a sick torch of shame and guilt passed to him as a birthright. “Was supposed to just… go away and be something else so no one had to worry. If I was okay, they didn’t need to do anything special when I was already so much trouble. So I just figured out how to be okay. Didn’t need it.”
“But you did,” Jo insists, and he breathes out a long, trembling sigh that tickles over the nape of Sakura’s neck. “Everyone needs to be cared for. Fuck knows Chouji needed nurturing I couldn’t give him because I was scared, and it nearly destroyed him. You deserved to be loved, and held, and treated like the heartbroken little boy you were, because now you have all that inside and how they treated you instead.”
It feels jarring for Jo to call him little like it means precious and fragile. Like a bird striking a window pane. Sakura rattles, heaving a horrible breath that comes in pieces, sharp and broken and slicing their way down his throat to burn at the bottoms of his lungs. Gee, is this how Jo feels? A wet cough insists, and Jo pats his back gently, rocking once again to soothe Sakura, or maybe himself. His chest is still shuddering underneath Sakura’s weight, stable yet strained.
On the tail end of a ragged exhale, Jo takes another one of those little hitched breaths like he’s going to speak, and then hesitates. Sakura squeezes him tighter on reflex, some latent stab of panic pulling tight around his ribs. The wire of fear strangles, and Sakura holds his breath with his face to Jo’s collar and waits. He squeezes his eyes shut. The pause before the impact is always hardest.
“I’m so, so sorry you went through that, baby.” Jo’s hand comes up the curve of his spine, relaxing the tense pitch of Sakura’s posture on the path back down, gentle and steady, the pressure never changing. “No one should’ve ever made you feel like you were better off going away. I want you to come to me. I would’ve wanted to hold you and kiss away the tears under your eyes and tell you it’s okay. It’s okay to be sad, or scared, or angry, and you can do it all right here. You can do it with me now, honey. I’ll never send you away for it.”
Sakura shakes his head. “You can’t promise that,” he reminds Jo. It’s the truth. No one can ever promise not to get tired of him. It’s just that Sakura is exhausting.
“Yes, I can, baby. I can promise you that I will personally never make you go away because of how you’re feeling.”
The feral, angry growl that rips out of Sakura feels like being ripped open at the seams, white stuffing spilling over the carpet. He wishes it was as soft as that. He wishes it could just be the crying, and the tired anxiety, but it’s so much more. Too much more, and there’s never been anyone who could handle it. Jo won’t be able to, either, and he shouldn’t. If Sakura really loved him, he wouldn’t make him.
“M’gonna make you hate me,” Sakura mutters with so much conviction it burns through his chest like a curse.
“No—” Jo starts to say.
“It’s all I know how to do,” Sakura whispers, the words coming out like the pieces of glass that got lodged in the soft underbelly of him years ago. They crack his bones and split his body into fresh, gaping raw wounds around the buried scars. “I make everyone angry, or scared, or worried until they’re sick and then I can’t do anything about it, and I have to watch them decide they’re better off without me.”
The heaving comes faster, nearly every other word broken by frantic, shaking gulps of air that burst out in horrible spasming jerks. Sakura can’t stop, though, because Jo still grabs underneath his diaphragm with one wide, splayed palm as if he’s clutching into his chest, trying to reach for the fear in his heart. But that fear is there to protect him. It always has been.
“NO!” Sakura screams, slamming his fists hard on Jo’s chest.
He can’t make him listen to the words, but a fight is a conversation. This is an argument, a fundamental misunderstanding in the language that makes up Sakura’s life, and Jo needs to hear him. He curls his fingers into claws when Jo reaches up and seizes both wrists, thumbs pressed to Sakura’s flexors to keep him from retaliating when Jo hauls him up and back, away from himself.
It breaks something inside Sakura to be pushed back, and he goes limp, crying and trembling violently as he heaves and chokes on his own spit and tears. He hit Jo, and screamed in his face, and tried to hurt him. He’s not safe. He’s not better than the people who—
“Baby boy,” Jo interjects, voice low and deep and steady. “Stop that, now. You’re not gonna be able to talk when you’re this upset. Breathe with me for a minute.”
“I hurt you,” Sakura says quietly, his words a tiny stream forced through a whistling pinprick in the grief that clogs his lungs. “You need to hurt me.”
That seems to hit Jo harder than even Sakura’s fists. His face breaks clean down the middle, all traces of frustration or confusion banished in a scarce moment. The blood drains out of his face, hands going weak like his heart’s failing, and Sakura has to swallow the angry satisfaction that guts him on the way down. He needed Jo to understand, and now he does.
But instead of being dumped off Jo’s lap, Sakura… stays right where he is. Jo folds forward, curls around him, arms looping in a crooked cross that lays over Sakura’s collapsed spine and weighs him down, roots him into place. He squirms, stomach churning and skin crawling as he wonders if each deceptively calm moment is going to turn into the next violent second where Jo snaps. A frightened whimper curls up and out of Sakura’s throat before he can stop it, and there’s a shudder in Jo’s entire frame.
“Haru, darling,” Jo says into his ear, strained with tears and punctuated by a sniff. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not your family. I won’t treat you like a burden, or an outcast, and I’d never hit you for being sad, or scared, or angry. That was wrong, Haruka. They abused you.”
Sakura flinches hard at the word. No one has ever called it that, and they shouldn’t. It’s an ugly, scary word that makes him think of being removed, moved around, turned over to the government and feared for behavioral issues, checked in every school and prefect and sent to therapists who would just tell him he’d been ungrateful, or worse, more family. He made mountains out of molehills. He cried over nothing. Scraped knees and skinned elbows and a little bit of hunger or a flu he suffered alone, like he hadn’t lived through the death of his parents already. He just needed to toughen up. He needed to be stronger. Needed to be strong enough no one could ever hurt him again, except he’d asked Jo to.
“I asked you to…” Sakura realizes, shivering. Why did he do that?
Jo’s arms tighten around Sakura’s chest with a hitching breath, tears slipping off the strong bridge of Jo’s nose and soaking into Sakura’s neckline this time. He hauls him closer up his lap, wordless except to stutter a broken, haunted “Yeah,” into Sakura’s skin.
“Why did I do that?” Sakura asks aloud, revolted at himself and terrified by what it might mean for his relationship. He can’t lose Jo. He wouldn’t be right, after. He knows that, so why did he want Jo to hate him so badly for a second there? Why couldn’t he just be sweet and pleasant and happy for the man who loves him the most? Why couldn’t he—
“Baby, baby, breathe,” Jo pleads, sounding tortured, gentling Sakura backwards and forwards in a way that feels less like comfort and more like a desperate attempt to calm himself down.
Sakura inhales slowly through his nose like Suo taught him, and out through his mouth, feeling lightheaded and buzzy in the blue and yellow light swimming around the dusty apartment air. Moon and lamp war for control over the dominion of peeling wallpaper, and Sakura tilts his head onto Jo’s shoulder and breathes right against his earlobe to help him. Jo wants him to breathe. All Sakura needs to do is make him happy. When his family is happy, nothing hurts.
“M’sorry I made you cry,” Sakura whispers.
Jo sniffles hard, shaking his head. “No, baby. You’re okay. I love you so much. The people that hurt you made me cry, not you. Never you.”
Sakura bites his own tongue viciously hard to keep from protesting. It would just make Jo more upset if Sakura tried to justify that it’s always him that makes people cry, or makes them scream until they’re blue in the face, or invites them in some way or another to land a punch or a kick. He’s never been someone who could be hurt. He was always something to be controlled. He understood, in many ways, that violence was just a tool. He never really understood that it could be anything else until he met Ume, and Tsubaki, and Endo, and Jo.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Sakura mumbles, lips moving over the buzzing texture of ribbed cotton threads in Jo’s shirt where it’s been dampened by drool.
Jo hums gently into his temple. “What doesn’t make sense, baby?” he asks, patient with that little uptick of quiet interest in his tone.
Sakura closes his eyes and rubs his nose and mouth back and forth on Jo’s shirt, lips tingling and breaths slowing as he relaxes into the feeling of being held without the anticipation of change, or rejection. Jo wants him to stay right here, even if he’s sad, or mad, or says upsetting things. Jo loves him. It’s safe here, because Jo loves him.
“None of you want me to hurt,” Sakura says, whisper-soft and sluggish.
Jo rubs his back, up and down, hand pressing inward at the dips and curves of him, like he might be able to reach inside and pluck out the hard pit of fear in him. There’s something cold and shivery in his tummy, and for the first time since he was a little boy, Sakura feels the slimy sensation of hatred intruding into his chest, flooding his lungs like brackish water puddling on the sidewalk. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, whining as he burrows into Jo’s shirt and tries to hide from the feeling. He’s not supposed to hate.
“It’s okay, Haruka,” Jo murmurs. “Keep talkin’ for me, baby.”
An unexpected and unwanted sob curls out of Sakura, ending on a keening whimper that Jo soothes with a shushing noise and a tender kiss to Sakura’s cheekbone as he continues to sway them both together. Sakura honestly can’t feel his fingers anymore, and he forces his hands to claw into Jo’s shirt harder, clinging so he can’t disappear right off the face of the planet.
That specific thought triggers an old fear, something Sakura hasn’t thought about in years. Not since the shed. Not since he was still small enough to think that if he went long enough without being looked at, touched, spoken to, he would start to fade. He once read about the concept of ‘hungry ghosts,’ and he spent nearly a year waking up every night in cold sweats with a scream trapped inside. He used to wander out into the yard and feel the cold dew on the soles of his bare feet just to convince himself he was real. He’d go back inside when he started shivering. If the cold could touch him, then he hadn’t died yet. He was still alive, even if nobody noticed.
“You want me to stay here,” Sakura whispers. “You don’t want me to go away, or hurt, or…” He trails off, because this next part is something that still feels like a distant reality, somewhere far away, on the other side of fogged glass and packed away in gauze, picture perfect and never meant for someone like Sakura.
“Hm?” Jo prompts.
The motion of their combined swaying soothes Sakura like being wrapped in a warm blanket, surrounded by all the comforts of his apartment, the new string lights Jo hung up, the blanket forts Jo has been introducing Sakura to, the heavy sleepy feeling of being fed and held and taken up, almost like a baby. A little kid, the way he never got to be, according to Jo.
“You want me to be… happy,” Sakura mutters, still trying to process it all.
Of course Jo wants him to be happy. That’s what anyone would want for their friends, right? For their partner? It’s certainly what Sakura wants for Jo. It’s part of why he doesn’t think he’s right for Jo, why he thinks Jo should leave, because it’s Sakura who’s wrong, twisted all inside out and mangled until he can’t even be told that Jo loves him without panicking.
Oh.
Oh.
“The people that hurt me… my family,” Sakura whispers. “They didn’t really love me, did they?”
Jo’s arms tighten around him, nearly crushing. “I don’t think so, baby,” he answers, hushed and solemn. His next inhale shakes. “No one that loves you would want you to hurt like that.”
Then that means it was for nothing. The tears bubble inside Sakura like boiling liquid, then pour over down his cheeks for the billionth time as he grips unforgivingly to the man who does love him. They didn’t want him to grow up right, or be better, or learn to be self sufficient like they always said. They just didn’t want to deal with him.
“I didn’t deserve it?” Sakura hears himself ask. He isn’t sure who the question is even for, but he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jo will be honest with him. He always has been, even when it’s terrifying.
“No, baby. You didn’t. You’re such a good boy, and you were… you were so little,” Jo finishes, his entire body wracked with tremors.
Sakura makes an aborted sound somewhere low in his chest as he cries, the precursor to a wailing fit like the ones he used to have as a child. Mom and Dad died, and now there was no one who could make Sakura feel better except himself. That was the way of it. Only…
“I didn’t deserve it,” Sakura whispers to himself. “I didn’t…”
“Good boy,” Jo repeats, like it’s a blessing, a sacred prayer with the rosary tied around both their wrists. “You didn’t deserve the way you were treated. But you do deserve this, honey. I love you so much. You could never do anything that would make me want to hurt you, or send you away. I’m pretty sure you could murder someone and I’d find a way to flee the country with you.”
Sakura giggles, a sound so tiny and ancient it almost doesn’t feel real. It breaks apart between his teeth, dissolved by too much spit and bile. He gasps, wrenching sounds that force him to curl tighter against Jo’s chest. He’s sick to his stomach. He was just a kid who missed his Mom and Dad. He should have been held like this, rocked, and fed, and sung to, until he slipped into dreams. Jo would have done all that for him, if he was there when Sakura was little. And it’s like he said: You can do it with me now, honey.
The words are spilling out of him before he can stop them.
“I miss my Mommy,” Sakura cries, choking on a wail that dies into another round of horrible, wheezing hyperventilation. "Want Daddy."
The hand higher up Sakura’s back slides into his hair, wrapping neatly over his nape, cradling him and gripping to disguise Jo’s own shakiness. Sakura can feel Jo’s heart pounding this time, a thudding drumbeat through his bones and the marrow. It feels tremendous enough to start an avalanche, or an earthquake, or something equally as devastating that Sakura remembers from those little library books he used to borrow from school and keep in his backpack. He always had a backpack, and clean clothes, even when he didn’t have much of anything else.
He should have had a lot more.
“I’m so sorry, Haruka. I wish they’d never gone away. I wish I could bring them back to you, somehow. Fuck, I wish you never had to lose them.”
The lump in Jo’s throat makes his voice sound raspy and wrecked. Part of Sakura remembers faintly, like listening to a story through a window-crack, that Jo also lost his parents when he was younger. He was raised by his grandpa, and there’s a note of cracked anger in his tone that makes Sakura think that maybe Jo is also talking to himself. It hurts even worse, like a lance through the gut.
“You…” Sakura can’t even find the right words. Everything feels far away. The only thing he knows is that Jo is here, and Jo is giving him what he needs, and nobody is going to hurt either of them. Not in the space Jo created for him — their nest.
“It’s okay, baby boy.” Jo pairs this with another kiss to Sakura’s temple, this one lingering and damp. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
Sakura inhales raggedly, the weight on his chest morphing with the swell of his lungs until it feels less like an oppressive, sickly dark mass. He can almost exhale it, watch it dampen the corners of the room, purple to Jo’s emerald green. Sakura feels dizzy with every breath, lurching in time to them, still rocked in Jo’s arms despite it all. He isn’t too gross, or too much, or too bad for Jo. He’s Jo’s baby boy. He can let it all go here, and there won’t be any consequences. He doesn’t have to hide, or stifle his begging into the floor for Daddy or Mommy to come rub his back.
You can do it with me now, honey.
“Can I–?” Sakura cuts himself off. It sounds absurd now that it’s almost tumbled out of his mouth. His pulse throbs in his temples, under his fingernails like blood bruises. He wants to shred himself out of his skin and be something else, someone else.
“You can do anything you want, sweetheart,” Jo promises easily, rubbing criss-crossing circles up and down Sakura’s spine underneath his shirt. Figure-eights again, more sure of their shape than before: Infinity.
Sakura clamps his lips tight together and watches the patterns on the wallpaper turn to foggy stars as his eyeline blurs. “Want my Daddy real bad,” Sakura admits, shame souring in his gut.
Jo shushes him soothingly. “I know, baby. I’m so sorry. I—”
“No,” Sakura interrupts, chest and tummy in a vice of terror. But Jo wants him to let it all go, and there’s something in Sakura that needs this. Needs— “Daddy,” he says again, and turns his face into Jo’s neck, drawing the smell of him inward until it cools him down from the inside out. The fear dissipates, and the cramping in his gut slows when Jo doesn’t stop rubbing his back.
“You want me to be Daddy, baby?” Jo asks, voice quiet and reverent.
Sakura nods. He doesn’t want to say it. He’s still so, so fucking scared.
“Oh, Haru, good boy for tellin’ me. Daddy loves you, honey.”
Sakura whimpers, lip quivering and eyes burning fiercely as he noses into Jo’s thrumming carotid like he could follow each pumping gush of blood back to Jo’s heart and live inside of him. The very idea makes him melt, limp and slack in Jo’s arms, helpless. He can be that when he’s here. It won’t get him hurt, because Daddy’s got him, and Daddy loves him, and he won’t let anything bad happen.
“I love you, Daddy,” Sakura whines, scarcely able to force enough breath out to make complete words. They slur and smear together, run-on and drawling.
“Oh, sweet boy,” Jo coos, gathering him somehow, impossibly, closer.
Sakura is somewhat aware of being shifted, his center of gravity flipping and his limbs rearranging by the squish and press of couch cushions when Jo lifts his knees and unfurls slowly onto his back. He lays Sakura out with him, gently organizes them into tangled lines of yarn, ankles and knees crossing and arms still needy-squid squeezing until they could be one body. One heart, beating in time, breath shared between both lungs, oxygen that floods Sakura like calm waters running over his ankles.
He sighs, burrowing into Jo tight. He used to lay like this with his pillows at night, cramming them underneath himself so he could pretend he’d crept into his parents’ bed after a nightmare. Except, the nightmares didn’t stop when he was awake. They only stopped after he left, when he found friends who loved him enough to bring him gift baskets when he was sick, and found Jo. Perfect, gentle Jo.
“You’re good, Daddy,” Sakura enunciates, insistent. “Really, really good. You make me so safe.”
The responding hum from Jo sounds strained, though that could be because Sakura is compressing his lungs now. Still, Jo doesn’t seem bothered. He fiddles with the hems of Sakura’s clothing as he holds him, one hand still rubbing those same infinity symbols all over his bare skin.
“You’re always gonna be safe with me, baby,” Jo says after a moment, nasal and halting with every hitch of his breathing. “Always, perfect boy.”
And for once, Sakura knows that he can trust somebody to keep their word. He will always be safe with Jo.
“Forever and ever, amen,” Sakura recites sleepily, eyelids heavy as he recalls the prayers he used to effuse to a God that never really listened. But Jo will.
Jo’s slight laugh shakes them both. “That’s right, baby. Good boy. Daddy’s gonna love you forever.”
“Mmmmh,” Sakura sighs, content and smiling. He nuzzles tighter into the hollow slope of Jo’s throat below his chin, lips grazing the apple. Maybe that tastes green too. “Love you forever, Daddy.”
The wave of recursive fear doesn’t even come, this time. Sakura lets himself ride the pleasant, rolling waves of sensation. Jo’s hands on his skin, the glow of the TV, the ambient warmth of their bodies and the churning air from the box-fan in the corner, curtains fluttering and wallpaper dancing. Everything the way it should be. Everything in its place, and Jo especially. Sakura can’t imagine a life without him.
And all at once, the realization that Jo can’t imagine life without him either settles at the center. Sakura hums quietly to himself, and Jo responds with a lilting little rhythm that vibrates through his entire chest. Like one voice between them, all things together and entwined.
“Sleep well, baby boy,” Jo breathes into his hair.
“Daddy, too,” Sakura insists, the space behind his eyelids already dancing with the warm bursts of dreamy comforts.
It’s the most peaceful he’s felt falling asleep in a long time.