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Ash never really bothered with Christmas. He used to, when he was much younger and Griffin was still around. He and his brother would decorate a small tree in the living room with popcorn garlands and paper chains and lanterns they’d made themselves, and they’d exchange presents (or, more accurately, Griffin would give him a present from ‘Santa’, which was usually an affordable toy, and something small from himself, like a chocolate bar, and Ash would gift him something stupid but cute like a crayon drawing or a shiny rock he’d found. Their father gave them money in an envelope in lieu of an actual present, but he would invite them to come and eat a Christmas meal with him and Jennifer at the diner).
Once Griffin left, despite Jennifer trying to include him as much as possible, getting him to help decorate their tree and dressing him in knitted ugly sweaters, it wasn’t the same. One especially painful Christmas at home was marred by his abusive Little League coach palming him off with money and some candy canes ‘as a special treat’ after violently buggering him on Christmas Eve. Rather than being excited for Santa, like most kids his age would have been, he’d cried alone in his room all night, his back and thighs aching and his mind full of a shame he didn’t understand. The following year, his last Christmas at home before he ran away, was blighted by the fact that just two months prior he had killed the bastard with his father’s gun, and it seemed to him all the locals were split between pitying him or blaming him. He found it hard to get into the spirit when kids he’d once considered friends had abandoned him and now called him names like ‘fag’ and ‘rent boy’, although it was likely they had no idea what those words meant, or even exactly what had happened to him, and had heard them uttered by their parents.
He hadn’t bothered celebrating personally since.
On the streets, he didn’t have the money, and what was the point if you had no family to spend it with anyway? Street kids who still had family and homes to go to would return for a few days of celebration, but those who were alone like him just tried to ignore the season entirely. At least he could get free hot food at the soup kitchen, and people tended to be more charitable around that time of year. While under Dino’s roof, he had been showered with expensive gifts he didn’t want or need and Dino celebrated with a veritable banquet he was expected to attend, but Ash enjoyed none of it. Dino got roaring drunk and would become handsy and rough, forcing him to sit on his lap while he felt him up and kissed him sloppily, the whole experience about as far from being a ‘happy holiday’ as it was possible to get. If he had been allowed to hole up in his room for the entire holiday season, he would have done.
Shorter had invited him over one year, after he had finally escaped the mansion and been let out of juvie. He’d been intrigued, wondering how the Chinese Americans would celebrate Christmas compared to white Christian Americans, Shorter explaining that they did much the same present-swapping and stuffing themselves silly with food that everyone did only without any religious significance attached, and it was more an excuse to have a good time than anything else. Shorter and his gang were planning to meet up at the Chang Dai and sing karaoke until the early hours of the morning after they’d finished family obligations. Ash had declined because he didn’t want to intrude on someone else’s family and celebration; apart from Shorter, he didn’t know the other Chinatowners all that well. He told all his own gang they shouldn’t worry about him either, and they should go home where they belonged.
The following year he had Griffin back, and he tried to celebrate with him the same way they had done when he was a kid, decorating a small, cheap tree in Griff’s room where he could see it, but whether Griffin acknowledged the sentiment or not he didn’t know. He’d made turkey sandwiches in lieu of a proper Christmas meal, only Griffin choked on his so the whole affair ended in panicked Heimlich manoeuvres, tears and apologies.
He'd missed his chance to celebrate with Eiji when he was in America. So much had been going on, what with him having just escaped the mental facility and then hitting the ground running in his ongoing campaign. Plus, the Japanese don’t view Christmas in quite the same way as Americans, so neither of them had made a big deal of it during the run-up period. The only thing that stood out for him was that Eiji insisted on going to KFC on Christmas Eve, wearing a headband with tiny reindeer antlers on it. Kong and Bones had escorted him, returning with a bucket of fried chicken which they’d shared together. The big day itself, Ash had spent out the apartment doing gang business and revelling in how quiet the streets were. He’d gotten back late to find Eiji had left a slice of sponge cake decorated with cream and strawberries out on the counter for him before going to bed. A post-it note tucked under the plate read ‘Merry Christmas’ with a doodle of a snowman. He’d felt a little guilty for leaving him alone all day, and guiltier still that he was stuck in America and not at home with his family, but Eiji never said anything and didn’t appear to be offended or upset by it. He’d explained that Christmas for him was like Valentine’s Day – a greeting’s card holiday mainly for couples to enjoy. At the time, they had not been a couple, so he’d just shrugged it off.
Last year had been the closest he had come to having a decent Christmas since Griff had left. Living with the Glenreed’s, he’d been able to experience a proper family Christmas for the first time in years. Max and Jess had opted for a quiet one at home, just them and Michael. Usually, they went over to Jess’ parent’s place, or at least Jess and Michael had for the last few Christmases, but they claimed that after their hectic year, they just wanted to relax at home in each other’s company; Ash suspected that a large part of that decision may have been because of him. Simply put, they were reluctant to leave him alone at Christmas; they had done the exact same thing at Thanksgiving too. Jess had brought them all matching pyjamas to wear Christmas Eve night, which initially Ash refused to wear, but Michael kept insisting, following him around dressed in one of the ugly patterned onesies and carrying a matching garment in Ash’s size, repeatedly begging him to wear it until he caved.
“I’m not family, Michael,” he’d told him firmly.
“Yes, you are!” Michael had insisted, causing Ash to feel a twinge of something painful but warm in his heart. “Please, Ash – match with meeeeee!”
“They’re not my colour!” he groaned, running out of excuses.
“It doesn’t matter! Please, Ash! Pleeeeeeease!”
“Urgh, fine!”
“Yay!!”
Jess had made sure she got a photo of Ash Lynx in a patterned onesie, although he didn’t look especially happy about it as he held hands with a grinning Michael next to the Christmas tree.
Max had cooked a traditional dinner for them on the day, successfully messing most of it up and rather than providing a succulent feast he instead served up a selection of burnt offerings. They’d all laughed about it and had instead gorged themselves on nibbles, Max and Jess getting progressively more and more tipsy on wine and spirits as the day wore on. Max repeatedly sang ‘Clementine’ to a fruit bowl full of the festive oranges, occasionally eating one and finding it hilarious in a Dad-joke way, and Jess kept trying to encourage Ash to wear a sexy Santa suit for a photoshoot for her, slurring her words around her gin and tonic. Ash, naturally, 'politely' refused her request, calling her a 'drunk old hag' and stating that there was no way in hell he would ever do a degrading photo shoot of any nature for her and her Playgirl contacts. They stopped talking for nearly an hour, quietly seething, before her ire switched back to her husband when he splashed red wine on one of the cushions, and Ash chalked up her brazeness to her being intoxicated rather than insensitive. Michael, meanwhile, had opened a modest variety of presents but found most joy playing with one of the larger boxes, sitting inside it pretending it was a car. Ash pushed and pulled him around the carpet in it while he made engine noises.
He'd tried to enjoy himself, he really had. He’d fixed a smile on his face as he sat quietly through the festivities. Max and Jess made him feel as included as they could, even buying him some presents (a couple of books and a new sweater), and Michael was just as energetic and all over him as usual, but… he still felt out of place. Like he didn’t quite belong in the picture. The whole experience left him feeling lonely and regretful, and for the next few weeks afterwards he’d entered a depressive low. He covered it up the way he always did by throwing himself into his work and burying himself away in mountains of books. Max had suspected he might have been feeling a little low following the holiday period, but he said nothing. Ash likely wouldn’t have said anything was wrong anyway, but it was pretty clear to the older man that he was feeling lonely. Towards the end of January, he’d started trying to teach himself Japanese.
This year he hoped it would be different. He’d finally, after a whole year apart, been to visit Eiji in Japan in October. Eiji was trapped in his home country for the foreseeable future due to visa issues, but Ash, for the first time in years, had a clean-ish criminal record (thanks almost entirely to Charlie and Jenkins) and a newfound freedom to do whatever he liked. Before he’d even left Japan the first time, they’d already started planning him visiting again. It had been Eiji to suggest he visit in late December for the New Year celebrations. He was keen to take Ash to a temple for New Year’s prayers and to watch the sunrise with him. Once Ash started looking into flights, he discovered the cheapest ones flew out on December 23rd. Max and Jess were heading to Jess’ parent’s this year and had extended a hand of welcome to him when they told him, but his reply was just to show them the plane ticket he’d brought instead.
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Max had nodded in response. “You’ll probably have a better time over there than with my in-laws, that’s for sure!” Jess glared at him and slapped him on the arm. “Hey – I didn’t mean anything by that, Jess! If I were Ash and I had the choice, I’d rather be with my foreign boyfriend too!”
“Actually, I just couldn’t stand listening to you singing to the clementines again, so I was trying to get as far away from here as I could,” Ash smirked. “It really is about time you learnt more than one verse to that damn song, Pops!”
“Just for that, I’m phoning you special on Christmas day to serenade you, international call charges be damned!” Max threatened.
“I’m unplugging the phone,” Ash muttered.
***
Due to the time difference, he touched down in Izumo airport around 3pm on Christmas Eve. Eiji’s sister met him at the airport because Eiji had a final shift to work before taking time off over Christmas and New Year.
<”Ash – hey! Merry Christmas!”> she’d bounded towards him as he came through arrivals and threw herself around him in a friendly hug. <”Did you bring me a present from New York?”>
“Hi Kaori!” he’d greeted her, after getting over the initial shock of a flying glomp. Kaori, being female, didn’t set him off into a panic the way a man hugging him would, but he had still stiffened uncomfortably and had to fight the urge to push her away. The Okumura siblings were both remarkably affectionate for people who grew up in Japan, Kaori maybe more-so than her brother but, being female, she could get away with it more freely in public. <”People think we girlfriend and boyfriend, you not be careful!”>
<”That a problem?”>
<”Not for me, but your brother may get jealous,”> Ash had laughed.
<”Let him,”> she sniffed. <”It’s not every day I get to hug a cute older boy!”>
<”May kill chance of you getting actual boyfriend, people see you hugging American,”> he added slyly.
<”True,”> she said, pushing him away. <”Wouldn’t want Ei-nii’s sloppy seconds anyway!”>
They took a bus from the airport, Kaori chatting to Ash about school and using him to practice her English on. She had a test coming up, and figured she may as well make full use of having a native speaker present to practice as much as possible and gain a valuable advantage.
“Ei-nii help me a lot with my English,” she said, sounding proud. “When he first come back, sometimes he use English and not realise. I think he got used to speak English all time in America.”
“He improved a lot while he was over there,” Ash admitted. “Although honestly, his English was already pretty good when I first met him, but don't tell him I said that 'cause I used to tease him about it all the time. It was only when I started learning Japanese that I realised exactly how impressive his bilingualism was - learning languages is damn hard! Your English is really good too! Japanese schools must be doing something right!”
“He learn more from athlete friends than school. He go to competition abroad, and English is common language. Ibe-san also help him – he been to America before to take photo.”
“Yeah, Ibe and Max had been friends for a while before I met them, and Ibe was real friendly with the cops too,” Ash mused. “I didn’t trust him at first because of that.”
“You not trust Ibe-san?”
“I didn’t trust any adult, especially men, and especially cops.”
“Police there to help people,” Kaori frowned.
“They don’t help everyone, believe me,” Ash sighed. “Maybe they’re better in Japan, I dunno, but I bet the Yakuza keep them sweet so they can go about their shady business practices undisturbed. There’s plenty of places in Tokyo I saw with bribes and blind eyes written all over them! A few of the pigs are alright, like Charlie and Jenkins and Max, probably, when he was there, but most of ‘em can go screw themselves, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Ano…”
“I think I just made this conversation awkward,” Ash said sheepishly. “I’m sorry! I probably said some things I shouldn’t there. It's not that the police are bad, but... My circumstances are a little abnormal compared to most people, and I had some bad experiences with the law, but you're not me. You're normal. You should still go to the cops for help - forget I said anything!”
“No, not awkward, it just hard to keep up with slang,” Kaori said, shaking her head. "Ei-nii has told me you used to be criminal, but you seem good person to me. Police can be bad people, same as criminal can be nice and doing things for good, even if it is illegal. They all human. You probably been unlucky and meet too many bad people."
"You and your brother are a lot alike..." Ash murmured.
<"What?">
<"Never mind.">
The rest of the way they spoke of more banal things, Kaori asking if he could check her pronunciation of certain words she needed to know and use in her test and Ash correcting her accordingly. He also gave her a few tips for remembering languages that he had picked up when he started studying Japanese, although overwhelmingly the best method he had found was just repetition and immersion, so he encouraged her to talk to him in English as much as possible over the next couple of weeks.
“You correct me if I say something wrong, yes?”
<”Only if you do same for me,”> he responded in Japanese. She gave him a thumbs up.
She switched back to Japanese when they got to the Okumura’s residence, letting him into the house and pushing his suitcase down the hall for him to sit at the base of the stairs.
<”Mum is back at 6.30 and Ei-nii is due home at 7, and then we’re getting food, so for now you’re stuck with me!”> she said while he slipped guest slippers onto his stockinged feet. <”I can make tea, and we have some snacks if you’re hungry? You want to watch TV or something? Or we could go for a walk?”>
<”I been travelling all day. Want sleep, but need reset internal clock, so should stay up. Crashing in front of TV sound good.”>
<”I’ll bring snacks. Do you like ‘mikan’? I think you call them ‘satsuma’?”>
<”I eat them.”>
<”Alright – go make yourself comfortable in the living room. I’ll be through in a minute!”>
The living room had changed slightly from when he was last here. There was a small Christmas tree nestled in the alcove where previously there had been some silk flowers. It reminded him a little of the one he and Griff used to have, being of similar height, but the Okumura’s had decorated it with tasteful glass baubles in shades of blue and silver and some fairy lights (currently switched off), rather than the childish home-made tat Ash used to cover their old tree with. The low table in the middle of the room had been altered too, and was now adorned with the thick quilt that before had been folded on the shelf. Ash had assumed it was just a blanket for winter, or maybe an extra guest futon, but apparently not.
Kaori returned with a teapot, two cups, and a bowl of satsumas. She put them down on the table, before lifting the blanket and switching something on under it.
<”I put the kotatsu on,”> she said, like that meant something to him. She covered her legs with the blanket as she sat down, so he copied her, taking a seat opposite and accepting one of the cups. <”It’ll get nice and warm soon.”>
<”Warm?”>
<”There’s a heater underneath. Didn’t you know?”>
<”No. We do not have this in America.”>
<”You’re missing out, man!”> she said, smiling. <”Kotatsu are what winter is all about!”>
She poured him some tea before switching the TV on with the remote and flicking to a channel showing some weird Japanese comedy. She took one of the satsumas, piercing the skin with a nail, filling the room with their delicious citrus smell.
<”This is the first year we’ve put up a Christmas tree,”> she said, popping a segment into her mouth. <”Ei-nii insisted we got one. He wanted to bring a little bit of America into the house, I think. I have no idea where he found it, but I like it.”>
<”Hmm… It pretty,”> Ash said, sounding sleepy. The kotatsu was beginning to get comfortably warm and cozy, which wasn’t helping with his jet-lag drowsiness.
<”Looks even nicer with the lights on!”> she reached behind her and flicked a switch on the wall next to the plug. The lights blinked into life, glowing with a soft yellow gleam.
They watched the comedy show for a while, Kaori laughing periodically. Once she finished eating, she lay on her side on the floor facing the box, propping herself up on a floor cushion with her elbow. Now knowing that lying down on the tatami wasn’t a faux pas, Ash did the same, moving the floor cushion out from under his butt and resting his head on it. When you lay down, the thick blanket covered your body better, and the heat from the kotatsu washed over your legs and lower body comfortingly. Laying down proved to be a mistake… he found himself drifting off.
He fought the impulse to sleep for as long as he could, but a combination of exhaustion, warmth, and the feeling of safety and serenity being in Eiji’s house brought to him soon dragged him into unconsciousness.
***
He roused with the rough feeling of something or someone shaking him. Warm hands were on his shoulder, rocking him back and forth, while a familiar voice snapped at him.
“Ash! You keep sleeping you no sleep tonight!”
He groaned and risked opening an eye, turning his head to see a bright print of Norinori staring back at him from the front of a T-shirt. “Mrrrr…” he moaned, closing his eye again, curling up smaller and drawing his arms up over his face.
“Do not go back to sleep!” Eiji scolded him, smacking the back of his head. He could be really brutish when it came to waking him up, but he’d found that to be, by far, the best method. Skipper used to do the exact same thing, and Michael took it a stage further and would physically jump on him.
“Nuuuu…”
<”Little bit brutal, Ei-nii,”> Kaori said.
<”Trust me, he won’t wake up otherwise. We’ll be here all night!”>
Eiji grabbed under his arms and pulled him bodily out from under the kotatsu, releasing him onto the cool tatami and muttering in Japanese, <”I didn’t expect to be doing this again, especially not when I got back from work!”> Finally, feeling his body exposed to the cold, Ash pushed himself up slightly as he started to come to his senses, blinking blearily through gammy eyes.
“Eiji…?”
“Yes, it Eiji! You finally in land of living?”
“I need coffee…” he murmured.
“Give me few minutes, I make you one,” Eiji said, smiling. “Also, welcome back.”
“Hi.”
Becoming more lucid, he noticed not just Eiji and Kaori kneeling over him, but their mother was sat with her legs under the kotatsu as well. She gave him a small smile as Eiji left him to go to the kitchen, industrious sounds of a mug being found and coffee sourced heard shortly afterwards.
“Oh my god… I’m so sorry!” he muttered, embarrassed. <”Sorry! I did not mean fall asleep on floor like that!”>
<”Easily done,”> she said, humour evident in her tone. <”Many people nap under the kotatsu. It’s not advisable, because it can be unsafe. Some people say you can get sick from it, because you get too warm, but generally a little nap is fine. You can also roll against the heater and burn yourself, or even start a fire, but… Kaori was watching you. You sleep like a baby!”>
<”Nah. Babies wake up and cry when you poke them,”> Eiji snarked, returning with coffee for him. <”He sleeps more like a sloth.”>
“No present for you tomorrow…” Ash muttered, accepting the mug.
“I just make you coffee!” Eiji argued.
“Thanks.”
<”When you’ve drunk that, we gotta go to KFC. I ordered a party barrel a couple of weeks ago, to be picked up around 8…”> Eiji told him.
“Wait… did I hear that correctly?” Ash frowned. “You… ordered KFC? As in… fried chicken KFC.”
“Yes.”
“Firstly, are Japanese fast-food joints different to American ones, because usually you just walk in or drive up and place an order then and there – they don’t have advance bookings! Second, what is the deal with KFC? You were insistent on having it in America too.”
<”Japanese custom,”> Eiji shrugged, by way of vague explanation.
<”There was a very successful marketing strategy in the 70s, that basically said that eating KFC is just what you do at Christmas. The manager of the flagship store overheard some foreigners saying they missed turkey at Christmas, so they substituted bird for bird and pushed it as an idea for foreigners to try, but everyone cottoned on and it became a thing, especially for families. Before that, Japan had no real Christmas traditions. Why would we, if most of our population is Shinto and Buddhist?”> Kaori explained. <”It’s that popular that you have to order your Christmas party barrels well in advance so the store can cope with demand. Some people eat it Christmas Day itself, but we and many others go for Christmas Eve.”>
<”We’ve done it every year since I was about 8,”> Eiji said. <”I never used to eat much fast food, because it messed up my athletic lifestyle, so I always looked forward to Christmas Eve when I could.”>
<”I can guarantee there’ll be a queue out the door,”> Kaori said, grinning.
“A queue… for fried chicken?”
“You will see,” Eiji promised him.
***
They hadn’t been kidding about the queue.
A neat line of people queued out the door and along the side of the path, mostly adult men buying chicken for their family on the way back from work, but there were a few mothers with little children clinging to them, and several young adults like themselves in small groups. Ash noted he was the only foreigner, but this was to be expected. Izumo wasn’t Tokyo, and Japan was extremely homogeneous as a society. He got a few curious looks as he stood with Eiji and Kaori, coat wrapped around himself to guard against the chill.
“I can’t believe fried chicken is this damn popular!” he said, still reeling a little at this revelation into Japanese culture.
“I cannot either, but here we are,” Eiji said, grinning and offering a slight shrug in response.
It took them half an hour to work down the queue to the counter and claim their bucket of chicken. They walked home fast so it was still warm when they got back. Okumura-san had already gotten plates out, setting them up around the kotatsu, so they just had to open the bucket and help themselves. Ash felt this tradition was strangely heart-warming; a family, gathered around a shareable food under a cosy table, chatting and eating together. In an odd way, it encapsulated the meaning of Christmas as a holiday, without being in any way secular or sickeningly old-fashioned.
Even more heart-warming, in a bittersweet way, was the chicken wing they purposely put on their butsudan ‘for Dad and Granny’.
Afterwards, full of chicken, they sat chatting until late. It wasn’t as energetic as Christmas with the Glenreeds, but just like Max and Jess the Okumura family made sure he felt included. It helped that he could feel Eiji’s legs pressed up against his own under the kotatsu, not doing anything seedy like playing footsie, but just there, reassuring and warm.
They retreated to bed around 11pm, Eiji helping Ash to take his suitcase up the stairs. It was a little late to unpack now, so all he took out of it was his pyjamas and toiletries that he’d strategically packed at the top for easy access. Everything else could wait until morning.
Teeth brushed and nightwear on, lying next to each other in Eiji’s tiny single bed, Eiji revealed the other thing Christmas Eve in Japan is known for; romance. A little coyly, he placed a chaste kiss on Ash’s cheek.
“Merry Christmas, Ash,” he said, smiling as he snuggled up close to him in the bed.
“Likewise,” Ash responded, a light blush rising on his face.
***
The following morning, Ash was ready with presents from America.
“Most of these were sent with me to save on postage,” he explained to Eiji, who sat perched on the edge of his bed still in his pyjamas, yawning. “I have a card from Max and Jess, and then Alex and Sing gave these to me before I left.”
He handed over two packages, one crudely taped with brown packing tape, the other a little neater and enveloped in gold foil wrapping paper. Eiji could guess which was which; the tape was clearly an Alex special. He was right. After fighting his way through the tape, he found one of the gangs care packages full of candy, their usual mix-tape, and cards from the guys. Apparently, Alex had found a girlfriend, and Bones now had a job as a courier. Kong still worked in construction, but had been promoted to supervisor.
“His girlfriend is really hot,” Ash told him. “Her name is Carla. She’s brunette, latinex, smart as a whip… curves that go va va voom… everything the average hot-blooded American man needs in a woman.”
“So, what that make you?” Eiji asked him.
“Anything but average,” he responded, “and extremely lucky.”
One of the gang had found a plastic toy lynx somewhere too, and that had been nestled in the box hiding among the candy.
“Who the fuck…?” Ash hissed, holding the tacky-looking little toy between his fingers.
“I think it cute,” Eiji laughed.
“You would!”
The other parcel was from Sing and the Chinatowners. Nadia had provided some apple and cinnamon cookies – apparently the giving of apples at Christmas is a Chinese custom, but due to import restrictions and the fact an actual apple may get damaged in transit, she’d sent baked goods instead. Sing had provided more American candy, and he’d actually sent a small tree bauble of Father Christmas holding, bizarrely, a saxophone. His letter claimed that ‘Saxophone Santa’ was also Chinese.
“Oh, I hear about Saxophone Santa,” Eiji said, holding up the bauble. “Chinese do not have ‘Christmas elves’ with their Santa like Americans do – Santa has sisters instead that help him. And he play music to spread cheer.”
Eiji vowed to next year find and send him a similar item featuring Colonel Sanders in a Santa hat as the Japanese equivalent.
Kaori burst into the room before he had chance to give Eiji his present from him.
<”I’ve never been excited for Christmas before,”> she said, <”but then we’ve never had an American over for the season either!”>
“Merry Christmas, Kaori,” Eiji said.
<”Where’s my present?”> she demanded, childishly. <”Americans always give presents on Christmas day!”>
A little startled by her aggressive forwardness, Ash handed her a wrapped box. She tore the paper off feverishly and found inside a bar of Hershey’s and a pair of Ray Bans. Eiji had told him that she really liked Tom Cruise, for whatever reason, and unisex Ray Bans seemed an apt choice of present. She actually screamed at the sunglasses, shoving them onto her face with a huge grin.
<”Do I look like Tom Cruise now?”> she asked them, giggling.
“Last I checked, Tom Cruise didn’t have tits…” Ash muttered.
<”You look cute, Kaori,”> Eiji assured her.
<”I love them! Thanks Ash!”> she said, dashing out of the room again.
<”She’ll be going on about them for weeks…”> Eiji sighed.
“Least she’s happy,” Ash said. “Just don’t tell her I got them from Chinatown for, like, $10, so they’re probably knock-offs…”
They looked at each other knowingly, and burst into laughter.
He never got chance to give his own gift to Eiji. It would have to wait until later, when the timing was right.
***
Eiji had planned them activities for the entire afternoon. He’d never had a partner at Christmas before, so he was making the most of Ash being here to spoil him. For instance, many couples in Japan at Christmas go out for lavish meals. Usually, this is done Christmas Eve instead of KFC, but Eiji being at work and Ash not arriving until late afternoon had scuppered those plans, and Eiji was strangely attached to the idea of eating fried chicken. Instead, Eiji had booked them a table at a seafood restaurant for dinner, feeling that Ash might appreciate it more on the day itself rather than on Christmas Eve. He knew Ash loved seafood, and winter was the season for a local delicacy: snow crab. There was a restaurant in Matsue which opened purely for the snow crab season, and would let you cook the crab yourself on a grill at the table.
They made their way there around midday.
<”Table for Okumura,”> he said to the waitress, who led them to a booth seat with a grill built into the middle of the table. Hot coals glowed under the grill, emitting a comforting heat. <”Oh wow – it’s like a Korean BBQ!”> he said, happily. Ash held his cold hands near to the grill to warm them.
“I used to do this around flaming trash cans with other homeless kids when I was on the street,” he said with a grim smile. “This is much nicer!”
Eiji copied him. “It does feel nice,” he said in English, enjoying the warmth on his fingers.
The waitress returned with free green tea, and awaited their order. Ash left it up to Eiji to pick – he’d agreed that morning to let him plan and decide everything, Eiji claiming that this was his gift to him this year. He pointed out a few choice cuts of male and female crab from the menu, as well as a couple of other different seafoods to grill, like squid, octopus, and some fillets of tuna and sea bream. Ash couldn’t help but think that this would be costing Eiji a fortune, but he insisted on paying, stating that the fish was locally caught and therefore strangely affordable.
They feasted on grilled crab, digging the flesh out of the shells with little metal hooks and their fingers, the flaky meat sweet and full of umami. Ash had never tasted anything quite like it; he’d had plenty of crustaceans before back in the States, but the deep, cold water the snow crabs inhabited left them with a unique flavour. They were also much bigger than he was expecting, similar to a spider crab with long, juicy legs. The restaurant had pre-killed and prepared the creatures for cooking, but even cut up he could see how large the entire critter had been.
<”It’s always so fiddly to get all the meat out…”> Eiji muttered, fighting with a claw.
“Just suck it out,” Ash said matter-of-factly, expertly extracting his own with his tongue.
“I not as practiced as you, apparently,” Eiji said slyly.
“Was that a dig?” Ash smirked. “Want me to teach you?”
“No,” Eiji assured him, “I am fine with fork.”
He wouldn’t let Ash see the bill when he paid the tab at the till by the entrance. Neither would he let him contribute to the cost.
<”I told you, this is my present to you, so stop whining!”> he insisted.
Afterwards, he took Ash to a fancy-looking ryokan.
<”We’re not staying the night, but you can use the onsen and see the gardens for a small hire fee here,”> Eiji said. <”I remembered last time you came and we went to the bath house… it was a mixed experience, but you seemed to enjoy the bath at least. This way, I could hire a private onsen just for the two of us.”>
“I didn’t bring a towel or anything…” Ash said lamely.
<”Neither did I,”> Eiji said. <”It’s all in hand though – I hired us towels, there’s always soap and shampoo in the onsen, and, erm… I packed clean undies. They’re in my bag.”>
“You… packed underwear?”
“I know we coming, so I take pair from suitcase for you,” he replied, blushing slightly. “I wash them often enough in America, so not like I have not handled your briefs before.”
“I’m not bothered about that, I’m just amazed at your forward planning ability, is all,” Ash murmured. “That, and the fact you’ve been carrying around a pair of my underpants all day.”
The staff had been expecting them, a lone lady in a beige kimono greeting them warmly as they entered and checking their name against a clipboard. After leaving their shoes at the door and donning the guesthouse slippers, they followed the young lady to their private onsen room. She gave Eiji a key, bowed respectfully, and left them alone to enjoy their stay.
The main difference Ash immediately saw between this bath and the ones at the public sento were that everything in here was made of wood, unlike the smooth tile and concrete of the bath house. The air carried the sweet scent of damp cypress wood and a slight sulphurous but not unpleasant smell from the onsen waters. The bath wasn’t fully outside, but one of the walls was open to the elements allowing them to look out over a private garden. Fluffy towels in an assortment of sizes waited for them on a shelf above the shower area, and a modest-sized pool of steamy water awaited their attention.
“This place is nice,” Eiji commented. <”They even have the fancy shampoos, look!”>
Without the threat of older men sharing the bath nude with him lingering over his head, Ash found he could relax a lot easier in the private onsen. He was still a little stage-shy about showing his privates to Eiji, but Eiji was pretty much shameless about his own in this setting. Ash negated his personal issues by cupping his hand over the offending part while transferring from changing area to shower, and while getting in and out of the bath. It was easier to hide it when you didn’t necessarily need a modesty towel.
“You still ashamed of blonde American penis?” Eiji pointed out.
“I’m not ashamed of it,” he stated. “I just… still don’t feel comfortable willingly having the little man hanging out in front of anyone. Call it… cultural maybe? I dunno. It just seems weird to me.”
“Understandable,” Eiji said. “I not offended. At least here we have bath guaranteed to self.”
He didn’t mention that part of the problem was that he was getting… shall we say, a little overly excited, at seeing his cute cinnamon roll of a boyfriend in the buff. The same thing had happened in the sento. He didn’t know if this was a big problem for gay men in Japan or not – baths were not meant to be sexual, but when you associated nudity with intimacy these things just naturally happened, and he'd always been sensitive and quick to react to outside stimuli even if he wasn't personally feeling especially horny - one of many reasons he'd been 'popular' in the Club. It didn’t seem to bother Eiji, but then Eiji was… a little different to most people. He’d never really shown any libido at all, towards anyone, and was also culturally used to communal bathing.
At least the only person who would see him with a semi would be Eiji, which would be embarrassing, but not the end of the world. He might take the piss a bit, or else share in the embarrassment, or a combination of the two, but he wouldn’t take advantage of him, and would likely understand the reasons behind said reaction. If he ignored it, thought of other things and relaxed, it would go away on its own.
Sitting in a hot bath proved to be the ideal cure. The water was hot enough to make his skin tingle, instantly relaxing all tensions and niggles in his body, melting away all worries and halting unwanted thoughts in their path. He sat side by side with Eiji in the bath overlooking the gardens, the two of them leaning against each other in a way that was somehow both intimate and spiritual.
“This was a good idea,” Ash told him quietly.
“I have them sometimes,” Eiji replied.
“Whoever invented the private onsen?” Ash made a chef’s kiss gesture with his hand.
They spent over an hour at the ryokan, relaxing in the water for half the time until they were both pruny and wrinkled, the rest sitting on the bath edge with just their legs in the water while admiring the garden and enjoying the cool outside air on their bath-warm skin.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so clean and relaxed before,” Ash said, getting dressed somewhat reluctantly afterwards.
<”Onsen wash away many things,”> Eiji said wisely. <”Not just dirt, but worries and pain too… maybe we need to come to onsen more often, hmm?”>
“I wouldn’t say no,” Ash admitted. He was starting to love this aspect of Japan, the idea that you can be nude and relaxed with someone and it not be sordid.
***
They returned home to find Kaori had made a Christmas cake. A large sponge cake smothered in whipped cream and strawberries sat on a plate in the kitchen, a couple of slices taken from it.
<”Christmas cake!”> Eiji said, pointing at it.
“Cake? Like the Brits?”
<”It’s sponge rather than fruit,”> Eiji explained. <”I did make one when I was in America, and the gang ate it. We kept you a slice…”>
“Oh yeah! I got that! It was really good! You made that? You should have said!”
“Did not seem big deal.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t spend much of that Christmas with you.”
<”You did though!”> Eiji insisted. <”You took me to the Rockefeller centre a couple of days before, remember? I got to see the massive Christmas tree! Then, we shared KFC on Christmas Eve with everyone, which was loads of fun! That is a Japanese Christmas! Spending time together and having a laugh. I was more upset that you weren’t able to enjoy an American Christmas properly… I was worried about you when you left in the morning, because you didn’t seem very happy.”>
<”I do not celebrate Christmas usually,”> he mumbled in Japanese. <”Bad memories. But this year… best year ever. I like Japanese Christmas.”>
<”Let’s eat some cake,”> Eiji smiled. <”Maybe we can enjoy Christmas even more under the kotatsu with something fattening!”>
***
Ash still hadn’t found the perfect time to give Eiji his gift from him. The rest of the evening they got stuck with Kaori, which was lots of fun as they played board games around the kotatsu, but killed the mood. He really needed to get Eiji alone. He began to worry that maybe Eiji thought he’d forgotten him, but he didn’t seem too nonplussed or annoyed. The logical part of his brain reminded him that the Japanese don’t do the gift exchange part of Christmas like Americans do, at least not to as large an extent – it was a personal choice that varied from family to family, some doing it, others not, rather than an obligation. Eiji and Kaori hadn’t swapped presents, and Okumura-San hadn’t brought them anything either, so it seemed that as a family they didn’t partake in presents. Also, Eiji had never expected anything from him, and was probably giddy with happiness just from spending time with him.
It was when they went up to bed at the end of a long and thoroughly enjoyable day that he finally found his chance.
“Eiji, I… erm… well, I’ve been trying to find the right time all day to give you this, but it never seemed to come up. I wanted to give you this in the morning, but then your sister came in and ruined the mood. Then I thought maybe over dinner, but there were too many people… and after the bath we were relaxed, so I didn’t want to spoil that. Then Kaori again. She’s fun, but a major cock-block!”
“Told you she annoying,” Eiji snorted.
“Anyway, I brought you a present in America. It’s nothing too big, but… I hope you like it.”
He handed over a small, black clamshell box, just a little wider than his hand, with rounded corners and covered in a velour fuzz texture. Eiji accepted it curiously, stroking the fuzz briefly before snapping the box open, revealing an item of jewellery inside.
“I wanted to get something you could keep and that would remind you of me when you wore it, but most jewellery is either really girly, or else chunky. This seemed perfect.”
It was a bangle, nothing too flashy or decorative, just a heavy loop of polished sterling silver, something a man could wear without feeling too effeminate, but which wasn’t too flashy or garish. The inside was engraved, swooping cursive words encircling the metal that would touch your skin, hidden from the world and known only to those who knew it was there. Eiji took the hoop out of the box so as to better read the English text.
“My soul is always with you…” he read aloud. “Oh…”
Eiji’s eyes suddenly burned uncomfortably with the threat of tears, his hands shaking as he held the bangle. He was silent for a long time, his mind strangely blank.
“You don’t like it, do you…” Ash said, crestfallen. “I’m sorry – it’s a little melodramatic, I know, but I thought that-“
Eiji pushed the bangle onto his wrist and positively launched himself onto Ash in a bone-crushing hug. “I like it!” he insisted through tears. <”It’s beautiful! I love it! Thank you so much! I feel bad I didn’t get you anything now!”>
“You gave me the pleasure of your company all day,” Ash said. “That’s the best gift I could have asked for!”
“I am glad I was able to bring you some Christmas joy at least,” Eiji sniffled.
“Merry Christmas, Eiji,” Ash said quietly, holding him gently.
“M…Merry Christmas,” Eiji responded, his accent heavy with his happy tears.