Archive of Our Own

Thom was going to Japan, and Ted couldn't wait. He'd seen plans lying around Thom's apartment, order forms for artwork and vases, unsigned contracts. Thom occasionally tried out Japanese phrases on him, but it all sounded like a collection of syllables strung together in Thom's chattery New York accent, so he couldn't tell if Thom was actually any good or not.

Thom was going to Japan, and it meant that, for a while anyway, Ted wouldn't have to plan on setting aside one night a week to go over to Thom's apartment, sleeping in Thom's huge bed and maneuvering around each other in the bathroom when the morning came. He didn't know why he planned on it, Thom didn't seem to care if he saw Ted Sunday or Wednesday, so it felt fairly useless to even choose to set aside a day. One night a week. Easily tucked away, easily forgotten about.

He supposed they could go on this way indefinitely, dividing their lives up as if they were a pie, cut into thinner and thinner slices. He could keep on going to work and pretending he'd never seen Thom naked, go home and try to organize his own life - look at galleys for the book, pay some bills, try to be a good friend, good son, good brother - and then go and be with Thom, in a world so far removed from his own that it seemed like outer space sometimes.

He wondered sometimes if Thom would want to bring him into the world of glitterati if he was different. He'd been in that world, briefly, but it was only as an observer, just someone doing a job. He'd have been lying if he said that he wasn't interested, but that was different, wasn't it? Maybe there was some arcane set of rules to follow, and he just didn't know what they were.

Even back in his twenties, he'd never been much into the whole social scene that seemed to be de rigueur even now. He hated the soulless electronic music that always seemed so popular in clubs, he couldn't dance, and the whole tradition of faceless, nameless hookups left him cold and uneasy. It all seemed so unnatural to him.

It was a landscape that was as alien to Thom as it was to him, but he figured that Thom was better suited for change. He sometimes tried to imagine Thom as he must have been at twenty-two or twenty-three, on the run from school with nothing but a portfolio under his arm, plunging into club life headfirst and never coming back up. Fifteen-odd years ago, he'd wanted that too; he just hadn't been able to break out of his comfort zone that far. Back when he was twenty-four or twenty-five.

Now he was turning forty. He wasn't any closer to change.

Thom was going to Japan, and Thom couldn't stop talking about it, his mind taken up with the excitement of traveling, the creative rush of work, and Ted couldn't really do anything but listen and keep his thoughts to himself.

Thom's apartment always looked as if it were in the process of being moved into. Ted supposed he was getting used to it, the contrast of Thom's mixture of spare and sloppy and his own crowded warehouse of an apartment. There were clothes and suitcases lying around the living room.

"My God, it looks like a minefield in here," Ted said when he walked in.

"I know, right?" Thom said. "I keep starting and stopping. And then I, like, forget where everything is. Don't know where to start anymore."

"You know, there are such things as personal assistants, Thom."

"Ohh..." Thom shrugged. "That's just one more thing I have to deal with. It's my own fault anyway, I've been in and out all week. It's like one crisis after another over there."

"I thought it was always like that."

"Pretty much, yeah. I think it's just because I'm leaving. You know how it is. I've been, like, bouncing from one place to another."

He wondered sometimes about the nights he didn't spend with Thom. He'd met Thom's friends on a couple of occasions; a motley crew of other designers and various high society dilettantes. They all seemed to look to Thom, follow his lead, do whatever he wanted. Most of them were single. Most of them were very good-looking.

Thom had told him that he didn't get involved with his friends. Ted had tried to get a read on how true that was, sitting in Thom's kitchen over too many drinks too late at night, saying the names he remembered and mentioning, casually at first, their relative attractiveness. Thom sat poker-faced throughout; if there was anything beneath the surface, Ted couldn't see it.

It got under his skin, Thom's steadfast resolve. He'd kept mentioning names over the course of the conversation, over more and more drinks, until Thom put his head in his hands and said, "Jesus, Ted, I know all of them too well to sleep with them."

"I wasn't saying that," he'd protested. "I was just - what do you mean, you know them too well?"

Thom raised his head. "I mean, you know, I've spent too much time with everyone's little weird habits and hanging around with everyone. How'm I supposed to sleep with that?"

"Well, Thom, we've spent a fair amount of time together. You and I."

"Oh, you're different."

"Why don't you tell me exactly how I'm different, Thom?" Ted said quietly.

Thom was silent for a long time. "I mean, it's not like we went to college together or something."

"That has nothing to do with it."

"What's the big deal, Ted?"

"It's a big deal," Ted said, "because I've slept with you. And you've just given me the news that you don't sleep with people you know."

"You were talking about my friends, not just random people. You weren't talking about work, or, or, whatever. And you're not, like, part of that group. You're not part of the non-work group."

"Got any other arbitrary classifications you want to toss at me?"

"I think you're making too much out of this."

"Keep right on thinking that, then."

"What the hell am I supposed to say, Ted?"

"Nothing," Ted said, suddenly feeling tired. No matter what answer Thom gave him, it wasn't going to be the right one, it wasn't going to be what he wanted to hear.

Thom said things without thinking. It wasn't malicious, it wasn't meant to hurt, he was just absolutely incapable of having a thought and letting it go unsaid. He kept telling himself that it wasn't meant to hurt.

He'd just thought Thom knew him better.

He stopped the conversation and withdrew into sullen irritability. Thom grew baffled and finally, genuinely angry, and Ted stomped off home at three in the morning, still woozy and furious at himself.

It didn't last, of course. He couldn't stop working on the show, it was too late for that. He couldn't freeze Thom out at work, the five of them were together too much. There was only so much distance he could put between them before it started looking weird. And there was only so much temptation Ted could handle.

Thom maybe didn't know why he was pissed (so typically Thom, never consider the aftereffects, never even think there might be consequences to opening his mouth), but he had abnormally sensitive antennae nevertheless, infallible intuition, and it all added up to making it extremely difficult for Ted to stay pissed when Thom played to his vanity by telling everyone within earshot how everything Ted made was wonderful, or brought in fresh olives from the deli that had to be at least twenty minutes out of his way (salt-sharp and blacker than black, cold on the tongue and giving softly under the teeth). Infallibly, he knew or guessed exactly how to stop Ted wanting to leave.

Thom was everything he couldn't have, everything he shouldn't have. It was all very easy to think and not so easy to deal with.

He gave himself guidelines and rules to follow. He could see Thom, but there would be no more soul-searching talks over drinks late at night, hell, no more drinks period, he tended to get chatty and reveal too much when he'd been drinking. No more talking about Thom's friends, the life he led that Ted couldn't be a part of. No more pushing for any kind of definition. It would be all very casual and no one would get hurt and he wouldn't set himself up to get knocked down.

He was always good at following the rules, anyway.

"Look, Ted," Thom said.

"Hmm?" Ted said.

"Wanted to show you this," Thom said. He guided Ted into the living room, past the exploded piles of clothes, gesturing at the crowded coffee table. "Look what someone sent me."

It looked like one of those obscenely expensive coffee table books, bound in leather, soft and giving under Ted's fingertips. The paper was heavy. It looked like another one of Thom's architecture books, pictures of the Taj Mahal and the Lake Palace in sharp black and white and saturated color, more real than real. "Oh my gosh," Ted said noncommittally.

"One of my clients sent it," Thom said. He headed back out of the room, leaving Ted on the couch. "She heard about the whole World's Fair thing."

"Did she know you were going to Japan and not India?" Ted said.

"Probably not." Thom laughed. "It's still cool, though, right?" Ted didn't answer.

Thom's dog padded into the room, circling around the clothes and suitcases. He took a moment to stare Ted up and down, sniffing the air, then pacing over to Ted's other side and repeating the whole process. When he seemed to have convinced himself that Ted wasn't a burglar, he hopped up on the couch and put his head in Ted's lap, sighing.

"Just shove him off if he starts being a pain," Thom said. He stood in the kitchen, staring fondly across the room, hands lying palms up on the counter. Ted scratched the dog's head gently.

"You bringing this kid with you?"

Thom sighed. "I wanted to, but...they're weird about bringing animals into the country. They'd, like, have to quarantine him for two weeks or something. He'd hate it. I have to leave him here, I guess."

"Better safe than sorry," Ted said. He looked back down at the book, at pictures of kings and queens and princes long gone.

Thom came back out of the kitchen, sitting next to Ted on the couch. The dog immediately took his head out of Ted's lap and lolled against Thom's leg, tail wagging frantically. Thom rubbed his belly while he looked over Ted's shoulder.

"When are you going?" Ted said without meaning to.

"Wednesday." The dog yawned and yelped at the same time, nuzzling against Thom's knee. "Dope," Thom said tenderly to him.

It had taken a while for Thom's dog to start trusting him. Before he used to growl if Ted came too close to him or to Thom, glaring suspiciously at this intruder in their midst. Ted bribed him with surreptitious pieces of food he wasn't supposed to have, talked nonsense in a soft voice when the dog started growling. Slowly, the dog started liking him, would eventually allow himself to be petted and stroked and put his head in Ted's lap, but only as long as Thom wasn't around.

"Okay, off," Thom said. The dog obediently hopped off the couch and wandered away. Ted turned the page.

"I like that one," Thom said. He pointed at the book, a huge pink Art Deco palace. "Except they're all hotels now. I mean, at least they're being used, but it's like..."

"Defeats the purpose," Ted said.

"Well..." Thom shrugged. "Not exactly. Just...I don't know. I mean, I don't think I'd ever want to do something like this. I like looking at it, though."

"How the other half lived," Ted said.

"Lemme see," Thom said. He leaned in closer, peering over Ted's shoulder.

"Thom, it's your book."

"Well, yeah, but, you know..."

It was funny how Thom could look sometimes, like a student seeking approval. Ted didn't know what he was supposed to approve of. Should he say that he liked the book? Complain about national monuments being turned into hotels? Just settle for general approval? Thom looked so hopeful and anticipatory that it made Ted want to put an arm around him and ruffle his hair.

He had to remind himself that he was still pissed at Thom.

He passed over the book. Thom balanced it on his knees, frowning. He might have been picking out some new design motif he wanted to use, or mentally casting aspersions on the maharajahs' décor choices, or something else entirely. Finally he just made a face and put it back on the table.

"I can't use anything here."

"Keep it around for posterity," Ted said. "You never know."

"Yeah," Thom said doubtfully. He poked at the book, arranging it back into place. His knee was pressed up against Ted's.

Idiot, Ted said to himself. Dumb, stupid, foolish... The rules were about to go right out the window.

Every time this happened, Thom got a little closer to him, got a little deeper under his skin, no matter no many rules he laid down for himself, no matter how many times he said he wasn't going to get any more involved. Every goddamn time.

Thom was stroking his neck, absently, one long finger running along his pulse. Ted shut his eyes. It was no good trying to act casual; Thom was too tactile for any of that. He went for Ted's weak spots as though they had fucking bull's-eyes painted on them. "Thom -" he said, fighting the quaver in his own voice.

"Hmm?"

Thom's other fingers were curled against his shoulder. He brushed at the soft skin under Ted's jaw with his index finger, then traced softly back down, down to the hollow of his throat and back up again. Ted imagined Thom's pulse beating through his fingertips, in time with his own.

He didn't want this to be on Thom's terms, too. It seemed like everything was.

"I'd like to take a shower," he said, because when all else failed, he could always stall for time. "I've been running around all day. Thom."

Thom blinked at him. He sometimes seemed so far away from what was happening, lost in his own little world. "Um?"

"Shower, Thom," Ted said. "Although, you know. I can repeat myself again if you like."

"Right, right," Thom said. "Go ahead."

He stood in Thom's shower and didn't feel all that much clearer about anything. The room was filled with steam that smelled violently herbal and there was water pounding on the top of his head and it wasn't exactly conducive to sorting everything out.

He heard the faucet in the sink turn on and then off. "You're wasting the hot water, Ted."

"Just bein' thorough," Ted said.

"I could understand your being in here for a million years better if you'd, like, just been down a mine or something," Thom said. "You haven't picked up a case of OCD somewhere along the way, right, Ted?"

"I'm not sure how well I can hold up under this petty cynicism, Thom."

"Keeping you on your toes," Thom said.

The shower door was clouded over and his glasses were somewhere across the room. All he could make out through the steam was a dark blur, casually slouched by the other side of the room.

"Any special reason you're in here?" Ted said. "I mean, unless you all of a sudden got the urge to scrub my back for me, this can't be too exciting."

"Well, I could, you know." And what killed him was that there actually sounded like there was a question in Thom's voice, like he still thought there was a chance that Ted could say no by now.

Ted turned his face back into the shower stream. He was out of time.

Just this once, he thought, Just this once, I won't let it get to me.

"Yeah," he said. "You could."

It took a minute for the shower door to swish open and shut. "Watch your feet," Thom said behind him. He began rubbing Ted's back with careful fingers. Minty-smelling froth spilled over Ted's shoulders.

"Easy there," Ted said.

"It all gushed out of the thing," Thom said. "I thought it was gonna be..." He ran his hand down Ted's spine. Ted shivered under the scalding water, sliding his feet on the tile. He hissed softly as his heel slipped.

"Careful," Thom said, holding on to his waist. "I don't want you breaking a hip in my shower, Ted."

"This is going to turn into an age crack, isn't it?"

"It already did, honey," Thom said, keeping one hand curled around him. He always hung on a little too tight, Ted thought, he never quite knew when to let go, and the morning after there would be tiny blue bruises on his hips in the shape of Thom's fingers.

Ted wrapped his hand around the cold tap, digging his palm into the metal. He could feel soap running down his back, dripping around his ankles.

"Relax," Thom soothed, carefully maneuvering for leverage, chest pressed up against his back. Ted could feel his nipples against his shoulder blades, hard hot nubs. "It's okay, Ted."

It hurt for a moment when Thom entered him - not quite ready, not quite relaxed enough; pain fading into pleasure or just tangling up in it. He felt exposed, cracked open and struggling to articulate his own thoughts to himself, the way only Thom could make him feel; the only real thought that ran through his head with the stinging, quicksilver flash was He got to you again.

He heard something like a cry that must've been him, garbled under the shower spray. Thom froze.

"You all right? Did I hurt you?"

"I'm all right," Ted managed, keeping his hand tight around the cold water tap, his arm gone rigid. If he was a little different, he thought, he could handle this better, if he just knew how not to get invested in things, it would be okay, he'd be fine. If he didn't have to get attached.

"I think you play too rough, Thom," he said.

Thom kissed the top of his head. "I'm sorry."

Thom took hold of his right wrist, half-guiding him, half-following. Ted felt his cock swell against his palm. It was slippery with water, feeling strange under his touch. Thom slowed his hand, fingers interlacing with his so he wasn't quite sure who was touching who anymore, as Thom shifted his weight to press in deeper. Ted felt like he was being shaken to the core.

Before he came, pure white froth dripping over his and Thom's hands, Ted let go of the tap and twisted around. Thom's face was streaming wet, soft curls stuck to his forehead. He looked up at Thom's enormous eyes and tugged him down to meet Ted's mouth, but it felt just like he was kissing water.

Afterwards, Thom turned the water off and swished the shower door back open. "Got any towel preferences?"

"Mmm." Ted stepped out onto the bathmat. Thom had already wrapped a towel around his waist; now he was rooting through the linen closet. Ted fumbled for his glasses on top of the toilet tank. They were fogged over and not much use.

The bathroom door was open, the steam from the shower was quickly dissipating. The room was filled with layers of cold and fading heat. Ted started to shiver.

Thom was leaving in two days.

"Earth to Ted." Thom shook something green and fluffy at him. "This all right? Don't just stand there dripping."

It was an honor, it was a privilege for him to go. The representative of America in Japan. Just an ocean or so away.

"You're going to catch a cold," Thom scolded, and dropped the towel on his head. Ted pulled it off.

"You okay?" Thom said. "You look unhappy." He pulled Ted into his arms.

Ted pressed his face against Thom's shoulder and wished to God he could say something, anything, find the right words that would make him stay.

*****

Thom's plane was leaving at ten in the morning. He'd long given up on trying to decide what to bring with him, so he just threw whatever into a suitcase, emailed Tessa just to say, "I'm going to Japan!" and then sat on the floor with Paco for fifteen minutes trying to make him feel like he wasn't being abandoned. He still had to go before the dogsitter came, and Paco started barking and crying as soon as he shut the door. He almost turned around and went back inside, but he already was on the edge of being late as it was, and he couldn't stay.

Sitting in the cab, feeling guilty, Thom went through the itinerary again, the various Japanese phrases that he'd written down and half-heartedly tried to memorize. His shoulder bag was full of various odds and ends - copies of contracts in carefully-sealed binders, phone numbers and contacts to call in case something, God forbid, went wrong, final renderings and sketches, the directions that Mr. Sato, the liaison at Aichi, had emailed to him in careful, precise English. He was just making sure everything was in its place.

Half of him still couldn't believe he was about to go leapfrogging over the ocean, and the other half was saying that it was probably a good time to go away. Ted had been distant and obliquely angry for a while, and it was probably due to him being sick of Thom. It was working together, Thom thought, it really didn't do much to help maintain the romantic mystery.

He'd done his best to keep work separate from his real life, but ultimately he was in the wrong business for that. He made deals over brunch and in nightclubs, brought his clients into his circle of friends more often than not, tried to present himself as a decent ambassador for the company. Really, the only way to keep his objectivity was to try to stay emotionally uninvolved. How he really felt wasn't the issue. It was more important to try to give a hundred percent, always.

He thought about this while he hauled his stuff through the airport. A woman in a pink kitten sweatshirt came up and chattered to him about the show, her embarrassed-looking children hanging behind her. Thom was slightly worried that his hair looked like shit, but he smiled and nodded anyway.

"I feel like I know all of you," she said. "Like you're all my friends."

"Isn't TV great?" Thom said. He gave her an autograph and she floated away, the kids looking shyly back over their shoulders.

He felt the way he always did when someone recognized him, which was half pleased that someone had recognized him and half afraid that he hadn't hid how rushed he was well enough. He was better at hiding when he was rushed or cranky nowadays, but he still worried that he was going to slip up one of these days and someone wasn't going to like him anymore.

Ted used to say, back in the early days when they were still trying to figure out how to deal with getting recognized, "It's not that they don't like you, you just can't compare with the image they have of you. They're two different things."

He wanted to believe that, he really did, it was just hard to get through. He figured it was because Ted was a journalist that he was able to deal with this; Thom felt better when he could be aware of every single thing that was going on around him, keep a handle on everything, make sure everything was just how he wanted it. Ted just sat back and observed. Even when he was with his friends (a mixture of other writers from Chicago and some weird artistic types that seemed like holdovers from college), Ted seemed more concerned with just sitting and being with everyone else interact than making anyone follow his lead.

It was something that was totally alien to Thom - he was used to going out and doing stuff, traveling in a great Mongol horde from one club to another. Ted hated big parties, he only schmoozed as much as he needed to, and given the choice between going out and staying home, he stayed home. Thom kept himself in perpetual motion; Ted just was.

Ted had told him once, with a kind of wistful resignation, about how he'd tried to organize a literary salon of some sort back home. Fiction writers and nonfiction writers and journalists, all gathered together in Ted's house drinking booze and talking shop. "I mean, it didn't work, of course," Ted said. "It's all politics. Because, apparently, no one can be in the same room with each other without bitching about who got to interview who, and who didn't understand the last book of essays and whatever. No one just has a nice time together. They've always got to watch their back."

Maybe things had been different back then, but Thom couldn't really imagine having to watch his back with Ted, who sometimes felt like the only thing in his life that was stable, that just was. It was something that he didn't really want to look at too closely. Ted was caught somewhere in between coworker and friend and boyfriend, and he wasn't all that sure how to define the boundaries there. If he examined it too closely, maybe it would disappear on him.

Thom managed to get to the gate just as they started to board. He stumbled onto the plane, stowed his stuff, sat down and realized that he'd forgotten to bring anything to read with him. His iPod was probably lying around somewhere, but he couldn't remember if he'd put it in the carry-on or not.

He didn't want to get up and rifle through his stuff again, so he tried to occupy himself by flipping through the in-flight magazines, but he felt antsy and already bored. He wished he had someone around to talk to.

When the plane started to taxi down the runway, he felt suddenly hollow, as though he were already missing something. He listened to the landing gears pulling up, and for no reason at all, thought about falling asleep against Ted's collarbone.

*****

Ted sat in his agent's office at Clarkson Potter and talked very seriously about the possibility of making some promotional appearances for the book in October, distracted by the dying spider plant hanging over the window. He kept spacing out during the conversation, though his mouth kept moving and he kept nodding when it seemed appropriate.

Not professional, he told himself, the third time he found himself out in hyperspace somewhere. Get it together, he said. He was sure that spider plant was going to turn black and die right in front of him.

He left the office without making any binding commitments. On the street, he flipped open his phone in an attempt to chip away at the to-do list, keeping his eyes focused on the sky while he dialed.

At the back of his head, he was trying to calculate what the odds were that Thom would sleep with someone else while he was away.

It was a ridiculous thing to be concerned about in the grand scheme of things, but it seemed like he was thinking about it anyway. It was something that they'd never discussed or even mentioned (he'd thought about it before though, who was he kidding), and now it was hammering away at him.

They'd all had plenty of opportunities when the show first started. A little celebrity made for good social lubrication. When shooting days ran long and they all hit the punchy stage, the conversational topic of choice was an X-rated version of Who I Did on My Summer Vacation. Thom had seemed like he partook just as much as everyone else.

Thom was charming, Thom was rich, Thom was good-looking. It wouldn't be that difficult for him to go out to a bar after he'd finished work (everyone spoke English in Japan, the language barrier wouldn't even be an issue) and find someone, some lithesome cool-eyed kid who'd be only too willing to follow Thom back to New York. They'd probably move in together and Ted would have to be pleasant to the kid at parties and it would just about choke him.

His head was beginning to throb, little aching rivets up and down the back of his neck. He managed to finish the discussion with Melanie the line producer and then turned his phone off. By the time he got back to his apartment he was so angry that he could feel the muscles in his throat tightening.

He kept trying to tell himself that he was being an ass, that this was irrational, that it wasn't worth getting angry over, this undefined, partly unmentioned thing between them, but when he went over the relative odds, it seemed more and more likely that this was what would happen, and there would be some young, pretty kid taking his place, some empty-headed twink in his place and there would be nothing left for Ted in that equation.

He lay down on the couch and forced himself to stay still, hoping he could trick himself into believing he was more relaxed than he was. He folded his hands across his stomach and shut his eyes.

He'd always prided himself on being the mature one, the one in control. He'd rolled his eyes at sappy love songs and fallen asleep during romantic movies. He was always the grownup. Except when he was lying on his couch with his hands twisted around his shirt, unable to decide if he wanted to strangle Thom or just wanted to see him, or if it was both.

Numbly, he wondered what the hell was happening to him, and if he could figure out something that would make it stop.

*****

Thom staggered into the station and tried to remember what train he was supposed to get on, and what his chances were of actually finding the right one. He had no idea what time it was. He'd somehow had the idea that he was going to walk out of Customs and into the sunshine and then everything would be easy, but instead he was in some weird tunnel somewhere under Narita Airport, as though he'd burrowed underground like a mole. He supposed the signs he was looking at had English written on them, but he'd been on a plane for fourteen hours and it was hard to focus on anything.

It seemed like everyone around him was a foreigner too, dragging identical luggage with identical drawn expressions on their faces. Thom finally remembered the name of the railroad company ("You will take JAPAN RAIL," Mr. Sato had written, the name in all capitals, probably to make sure Thom would see it), carefully shifted the bag with the important documents in it to his other shoulder and walked towards the tracks, wishing there was some way to change the lighting in train stations so that people stopped looking like zombies.

It took an hour to actually get into Tokyo, the station's walls and floor covered in shiny tile, all reflective surface. He noticed a few discreet glances from other people as he walked by - not because of any recognition of who he was, he'd gotten to know that look, but just a quiet acknowledgement of his difference, an alien figure in the landscape. Gaijin, that had been the word in the phrasebook. Thom mumbled it under his breath, not sure if he was pronouncing it right. "Gaijin."

It was weird to be walking through the train station and the only reason people were glancing at him was because he was different, not because of the show or anything like that. He kind of felt like he was back in high school, wondering if there was something he could do to fit in more.

The bullet train that he was taking to Nagoya looked like something designed by a sci-fi nerd, blinding white and rather phallic. It was, predictably, crowded as hell. He wondered if he could strike up a conversation with someone, but he wasn't sure what the cultural conventions were about talking to people on trains.

He wondered if he should go through his luggage and try to get his cell phone out, try to call someone to tell them he'd arrived, but before he could start opening up his stuff the train started moving and the woman sitting next to him fell asleep before he could start chatting.

The early spring sunshine outside the train window was faint and pale, filtered through a haze of city smog. Even farther away in the haze were soft blue hills.

It all looked, from a distance, like every other city he'd been in.

He still didn't know what time it was when the train pulled into Nagoya. He felt punchy and all-over tense; he had reached the point where the stuff he had to do kind of overwhelmed the need for sleep, so he figured he'd just try to ignore it for now. He was trying to figure out if it would be foolhardy to just take a cab to the hotel or if he should drag his shit onto yet another train or a bus, and just how late was he going to be to the Pavilion? There was a reception at around eight that he needed to go to, but he was supposed to see the space before then, just as a formality, but Thom was somewhere on the verge of panic, imagining that nothing had been done.

Mr. Sato was waiting for him in the lounge of the Hotel Tokyu. He was a small, trim man (Late thirties? Early forties? Thom guessed), and he looked so crisply put-together that it made Thom feel like even more of a haggard slob. "Mr. Filicia, did you enjoy your flight?"

"Oh, hi," Thom said, and then wished he had said something more distinguished. "Am I on time?"

Mr. Sato paused. "Would you prefer to put your bags away?"

It could have been yes or it could have been no, but Thom wasn't up to interpreting the nuances. He said, "I'll just get my key and then we'll hit the bricks."

"Bricks?"

"I'll get my key," Thom said lamely.

Mr. Sato drove him into the hills once his stuff was stored away in the suite. The site looks more like a miniature city than a fair, with thick boxy buildings looping around a circular road, trees and manmade lakes nestled in around everything. The Pavilion, draped in red and blue, was at the end of a long pond that reminded Thom of the one in D.C., except this one seemed too perfect, like it was made of glass. Mr. Sato took him through the entry, through the gallery towards the suite (Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas, Thom thought, his stomach feeling twisted and jumpy all at the same time), up on the second level.

It was one of the few times in Thom's life that he hadn't been able to really supervise the installation, just working from pictures and hoping that the designers on-site were following his specifications. He'd sent over rendering after rendering and swatch after swatch and crossed his fingers and said about a million prayers. He wasn't sure if it was too late to pray now. He was just...hoping.

Mr. Sato brought him into the suite. "I hope you will like everything here."

Thom took everything in for a moment, trying to transfer what before had just been in his head to the space in front of him, to confirm everything was in place, that the couches and chairs were where he'd wanted them, the art was up, the vases were placed correctly. He wanted to touch everything, to make sure it was okay, run his fingers over every surface like a kid. He stood in the doorway and grinned like a fool.

Mr. Sato stood quietly off to the side, looking pleased but letting Thom have his moment. Thom snapped himself out of it and said, "Okay, looks good. I just need to check the space out."

The candlesticks that he'd ordered from Kentucky were still in their boxes, Mr. Sato told him, but they would be on the tables in an hour, and one of the couches had somehow arrived with a huge tear across its upholstery, a fact that made Thom's blood pressure sky-rocket, but it had been fixed up the previous week. The couches and chairs were a little too close together for Thom's liking, anyway, and he had to spend a couple of minutes futzing with them until they looked right.

"It is," Mr. Sato said in his precise, polite way, "important to see your work in life."

"Yeah," Thom said. "Yeah, it is."

They got back to the hotel with basically enough time for Thom to take a shower and get changed. Impulsively, he called Ted's number from the hotel phone. He got the answering machine; he said in a rush, "Hi, I'm here now and it's really great, I'll see you when I get back, say hi to everyone for me," and then hung up.

Afterwards, he felt sort of stupid, because he'd forgotten about the time difference, so he might have been calling at ass o'clock in the morning, and he didn't know why Ted would be interested in hearing a report that amounted to 'Hi, I'm here.' Ted had just been the first person he'd thought of.

He was going to be late.

Back in the suite, Thom met with the members of the board, the sponsors who had helped with the funding, a delegate or two. They came to him in a steady stream, a mixture of other American men with firm handshakes and Japanese men with formal, dignified English, American women who giggled flirtatiously with him about the show and Japanese women who spoke with as much formality as the men, only shyer. Thom said, "Thank you," and "It was my privilege," a thousand and one times. Servers carried plates of salty green edamame and nori-wrapped shrimp.

When he'd spoken to everyone in the suite at least once, Thom sort of wished he'd brought an entourage with him, took advantage of that celebrity perk. It would be cool if there was someone he knew with him, who would understand what he was feeling. He had a couple of other designer friends, but if he tried to talk shop with them, it suddenly turned competitive, and getting into a pissing match about aesthetics wasn't really his idea of fun. He didn't, he realized, talk about very much with his friends, in general. It was all about where they were going to go next, or joking around, or they used him as father confessor, because he'd never been big on judging. But he never told them very much.

That was probably his own fault, though.

He didn't want to be thinking about this now. He turned to one of the American women, who was asking for an autograph, and smiled and said, "Of course."

It was almost one in the morning when he got back to the hotel. He'd been craving going to bed, but his body clock must have been screwed up by the flight or something, because he got into the room and he was wide awake, so he lay on the bed in his suit and watched something on TV that looked like a game show, but they were making the contestants chop onions, or something that looked like onions.

He met with the members of the board one more time in the morning to work out a mission statement, figure out the logistics for when the Pavilion opened tomorrow morning. Nothing really got said, but at least he knew where he had to stand when the suite opened up. He shook hands all around and said his thanks. He took one last look at the suite (someone had moved his table lamps around, and he had to duck back in and rearrange them) and then forced himself to leave.

In the Nagoya shopping district, he bought a brightly colored silk tapestry for Jai, a fat golden Buddha for Kyan, a book of woodblock prints for Carson, an intricately carved jade willow tree for Ted. It took two hours to get through the gift list, but then he just didn't have anything else to do when it was over, so he just kept buying crap. He bought paper fans, teacups, jewelry boxes, teeny tiny spoons, laboriously pronouncing, "Sore wa ikura desu ka?" at the clerks to no visible effect. The money confused him anyway, he couldn't figure out the amounts, and finally he was reduced to helplessly handing over a fistful of yen and hoping he wasn't getting ripped off.

Back at the hotel, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the neatly wrapped gifts that he somehow had to make fit into his suitcase, and wasn't sure how he was going to manage that.

He picked up the hotel phone and called Ted.

It must have been pretty early in the morning, but Ted sounded wide awake, if rather annoyed, when he picked up; Ted tended to sleep badly, or pull all-nighters more often than was good for him. "Hello?"

"Hi," Thom said. "It's me."

"Hey," Ted said, startled and pleased-sounding, and then his tone faded back into the distance that Thom had gotten to know so well. "Are you still over there?"

"Yeah," Thom said. "I'm in the hotel. How early is it over there? I keep forgetting."

"Mmm," Ted said. "I guess it's early. I was getting some stuff done."

"Like what, Ted?"

"Well, you know. So, havin' fun over there?"

Thom found himself thinking about Ted's apartment, a huge white loft over in the Village. He'd only seen it a couple of times; once, just after Ted had finally given up and sold his house in Chicago, and then again when Ted had just begun to transplant some of his old stuff into it. The furniture, made to fit into a hundred year old Victorian house, was too small for the apartment and just made everything look more blinding white and cold, and Ted had looked defeated when Thom had mentioned it and said, "I didn't think I'd have to give up my damned furniture, too."

He guessed the place must look better now. Ted was resourceful like that. He realized that he never really hung out at Ted's place, not since this thing between them had started. Ted always came to meet him on his own territory. Thom had read somewhere that it was always unsettling to be a guest, to always have to play by someone else's rules.

Guiltily, he wondered if he'd done that on purpose.

"It's great," Thom said. "I had to go to a reception with the Board last night. I don't think they'd ever talked to a decorator before. I was in, like, this alien space."

"You meet anyone interesting?"

"I only talked to the liaison, really. It was just about work."

He thought he heard Ted let out his breath. Something had changed in his voice when he answered, a little less guarded, almost relieved. "I'd have thought you'd want to go out carousing and wreaking havoc."

"I got work to do," Thom said. "The space looks great, but I wish they'd tell whoever it is to stop moving my stuff. I had to sneak in today and put everything back where it was. I'm obsessed."

Ted chuckled quietly on the other end of the line. "But this has to be costing you a lot of money, Thom."

"I don't care," Thom said. Ted's present was lying on his bedside table, wrapped in what seemed like acres of paper, the softly flowing branches hidden and turned to a shapeless mass. "I left you a message the other day."

"I heard," Ted said. "I couldn't get out of bed in time to catch it. Just gotten to sleep, too. I was not pleased with you."

"Yeah." Thom picked at the hotel's bedcover, feeling dumb. "Sorry about that. You weren't asleep just now, right?"

"No," Ted said flatly. "I haven't really...It's been hard to sleep for a couple of days."

"Ted, you never sleep well."

"I...You're...So when can I expect you back?"

"Day after tomorrow," Thom said. "That's..."

He had been going to say, "That's really soon," but then he realized that it wasn't soon, it was just another long day in a place he didn't know, and he had nothing to do with himself, and he wanted to go home.

He tried to start again and regain his footing. "It's..."

"Hey," Ted said, quiet and concerned. "Thom?"

"I'm not upset," Thom said. He wasn't upset, he didn't think, he hadn't really been upset, he'd thought he was doing okay. "I'm not, you know?"

"How're you feeling over there, Thom?"

Ted's voice was so soft and tender that it made him want to cry.

Thom dropped his head back onto the pillows, keeping the heavy phone receiver against his ear. He stared up at the ceiling and then shut his eyes. "Far away."

Ted talked to him in a calming murmur, saying that it wouldn't be long, everyone was proud of him, he'd be back in New York and driving everyone crazy before he knew it. Thom said, "Yeah, yeah, I know."

He started to hear the exhaustion under Ted's voice; what the hell time was it over there anyway, two in the morning? Three? He said, "I'm gonna go."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," Thom said harshly. "I'm okay."

"Okay," Ted said. He didn't sound convinced. "I'll be around."

"I know," Thom whispered, and hung up.

He felt exposed and raw and weak. He used to pride himself on being the strong one. He was the one people went to when they were upset, he wasn't supposed to get upset himself.

Somehow, the specific thought of Ted having heard him like that scared him more than anything else.

*****

The day Thom was meant to get back, Ted wondered if he should give him a call, or if he should wait until the next day to let him get some rest. He'd sounded pretty bad over the phone, worse than Ted had ever heard him, and how much of that was due to jetlag and overwork was up to debate. Thom always pushed himself hard.

He'd been holding on to a romanticized image to some extent, he realized. He was perfectly capable of seeing Thom as scatterbrained, chaotic, occasionally thoughtless. It made it easier to be angry at him.

He hadn't, however, thought that it was possible that Thom could be lonely, too.

At six, the phone rang, he picked it up, and Thom said, "It's me."

"Hey," Ted said. "Are you back?"

"I am." Thom laughed softly on the other end. "I just walked in."

"How'd the flight go?"

"Fine, if you like turbulence. I, um. I got you something."

"You didn't need to do that."

"I wanted to. I can, like, give it to you at work, or, you know." The dog barked loudly in the background. "Yeah, yeah, I know, wait a second."

"Do you want to come over here?" Ted said without thinking. It had come out of his mouth before he could think of why it was a bad idea right now. He sort of hoped Thom would say yes. "Bring the dog if you want."

"I haven't really seen your place yet," Thom said. "Not since you moved."

"I guess you haven't."

"Twenty minutes," Thom said, and hung up. Ted tried to mentally calculate how late Thom was going to be.

He waited for an hour before the doorbell went off. When he opened the door, Thom was trying to balance the black messenger bag slung over his right shoulder and the dog, who was trying to get down on the floor.

"Hi," Thom said. He put down the dog, who looked up at Ted and wagged his tail cautiously. "I wasn't going to bring him, but he got all upset when I left this time around and I just couldn't do that again. You don't have a no-pets thing, right?"

"The woman next door has fourteen cats. You tell me," Ted said. "Come on in."

Thom, he noticed, looked like hell, pale-faced and puffy-eyed. His shoulders were tense under the light winter jacket. The dog paced into the apartment and wandered around, sniffing at things.

"Want a sandwich or something?" Ted said. "Or are you still full up on sushi?"

"They tried to give me some crap on the plane, like this weird pasta thing," Thom said. "I thought they'd lost their minds. Yeah, sandwich, great. I should give you this, too." He wandered towards the kitchen, rummaging through his bag.

Ted put a ham-on-rye into the panini press while Thom tried to find what he was looking for. The dog lay by Thom's feet, occasionally glancing up. "How much stuff do you have in there, anyway?"

"Too much, apparently," Thom said and then grinned. "Here. They so totally overwrapped it. I don't know if it's even possible to open."

The package was heavy and shapeless. Ted tore it open; it glinted green at him. Thom watched him, drumming his fingers on the countertop.

It took a second before he realized it was a willow tree, all graceful branches and slim trunk. It looked incredibly fragile, despite its weight; he could see the individual marks in the flowing leaves. The jade was brilliant green.

"Oh my God, Thom," he said, running his thumb over the leaves, expecting them to sway under the touch. "Oh, wow."

"You like it?" Thom asked. "I mean, I just saw it, and I thought...It's cool, right?"

"I don't have many things like this around anymore," Ted said. "I mean, I did, but you know."

"I thought you could leave it out or put it on a table or something," Thom said. "So it'd make things feel more homey."

Ted leaned over and squeezed Thom's shoulder, grinning like an idiot.

Thom looked relieved. "You like it. Yay."

"It's lovely."

"Good," Thom said. "Look, Ted. I wanted to say sorry."

Ted took the sandwich out of the press and gave it to him. "What?"

"For calling. I felt bad."

"For what?"

"You know. I know it was early and whatever."

"You do things like that," Ted said. "I mean, your friends do those sorts of things." He'd almost said the word lover, but he'd chickened out at the last minute.

Thom shook his head.

"I'm somehow missing out on your logic, Thom," Ted said. Thom was eating incredibly fast, like he hadn't had a meal in weeks. "People do things for their friends, even when it's late."

"I, you know, my friends and I have never really done that sort of thing."

This was hard for Thom, Ted realized. He was deeply tense, struggling towards something. Ted said gently, "Well, I mean, you know them. They care about you."

"Yeah," Thom said. "I know them. Not the other way around."

"You know, you can be upset sometimes, Thom. To me, or..."

"I thought, you know," Thom said quietly. "It sounds stupid..."

"What?"

"I guess I figured you weren't going to like me anymore."

"Oh," Ted said. Thom stared down at his plate. "It doesn't work that way, Thom. I mean, it can't."

"I mean..." Thom rubbed at his eye with his knuckles.

Ted leaned over and pushed Thom's hair back from his forehead. "You know," he said, swallowing the sudden wave of fear, "I missed you."

Thom let his breath out. "I missed you too." He leaned against Ted's side.

"Do you want to stay here tonight?"

"Yeah," Thom said with his eyes closed. "Yeah, I would."

He sent Thom off to bed, put the plate in the dishwasher, and laid his willow tree in the front room. The fear was still there, but he was working with it.

He went up to the bedroom. Thom was sprawled out on the left side of the bed, his eyes closed. He was still pale and his eyes were bruised with tiredness, but he looked more peaceful than before, at least.

The dog was lying by the foot of the bed. He looked up as Ted passed and wagged his tail. Ted patted him and then sat on the side of the bed.

Thom stirred without opening his eyes. "Hi," he said.

"I thought you'd be down for the count about now," Ted said. He swung his legs onto the bed. "You've been through a lot these past couple of days."

"I was thinking about your bed," Thom said.

"You approve?"

"Except for the cheap pillowcases, yeah." Thom chuckled and then shifted over, closer.

Ted put an arm around his shoulders. He thought Thom had taken a chance with him, he might as well do the same now. "You know, I expected you to meet someone in Japan. Bring him back with you."

Thom opened one eye. "Really?"

"Really."

"Wow. Who'd you think I was going to find?"

"Oh, I don't know. Someone young and good-looking."

Thom began laughing. "You thought...You thought I was just going to hop over to Japan and get myself a boytoy?"

"Well, it sounds dumb when you say it," Ted said, feeling his face get hot.

"Poor Ted." Thom rested his head against Ted's collarbone, still laughing. "I think I'm a little too old to go out and cruise, Ted."

"I was all ready to hate him," Ted admitted.

"I never pictured you as having a jealous streak, pumpkin."

"I didn't," he said softly. He ran his fingers through Thom's hair. "Not before."

"Poor Ted," Thom repeated drowsily, easing against Ted's side. "So, do you still like me?"

"Yeah," Ted said, and he thought Thom was still awake but he couldn't be sure. "More than that."