“So, what do you think?” Yoshiatsu turned and looked Minpha in the eye, a strange smile on his face. “I know it’s not much, but…”
Something twisted in Minpha’s chest, something hard and squishy and messy, but also warm. It made his eyes sting, and he could feel the walls closing in on him, like a hug. Everything from the couch nice, soft, fits two people to the clutter lying around it’s the same as him, the same black and dark and occult stuff was nicefeeling. Goodfeeling, in the same way as when Yoshiatsu kisses him or turns to him during conversations, like he has something important to say. It made his chest hurt and his limbs shake and he really, really wanted to hug Yoshiatsu right now.
So he did. He threw his arms around his boyfriend violently, nearly sending them both crashing to the ground and making Yoshiatsu squeak out some words that he didn’t quite catch. Here! Here! I’m here. I’m here and he didn’t just put me here, he let me in and I'm here with him!
Now he’s on the couch and Yoshiatsu’s arms are nice and heavy on his shoulders. Minpha smiles and presses his head to his boyfriend’s chest. He feels lips on his scalp and it makes him smile.
“Wow. Pretty cuddly today, aren’t you?” Minpha just squeezes his boyfriend’s hand in response, causing Yoshiatsu to smile. “If I’dve known that you’d get so happy if I let you move in with me, I’dve done it a long time ago.”
Move in. Those words keep doing something to Minpha’s chest, making his eyes sting. He takes out his phone with shaking hands and turns on the speech app, looking at the cartoonish icons and simple hiragana, ready to respond to Yoshiatsu.
But what can I even say? All the ideas keep running into each other, ideas like lonely and nowhere and gone colliding with memories, memories of closets in foster homes and special ed classrooms and the Ward, all creating a bunch of veryloudveryfast things that threatened to overwhelm him. Not that. The opposite of that kind of feeling. Goodfeeling, instead of badfeeling. Too long to talk about the places I’ve lived. Can’t show him feelings inside my brain.
Minpha grips his phone. I hate words. Words are… how did Yutori describe them? Twisty. Twisty and wrong and too small to hold real thoughts in them. He flicked through several screens, before he found the words he wanted. Too small, but so big at the same time.
“I’m home.”
He wanted to say so much more, talk to Yoshiatsu about being shoved from place to place and never belonging anywhere, of never once in his life having this, getting to live somewhere, somewhere that carved out a space just for him rather than shoving him somewhere and not caring about whether he’d fit.
But that would take time, so he just said it again.
“ I’m home. ” He could feel Yoshiatsu’s lips on his forehead and more wet tears on his cheeks and his boyfriend saying something, but it didn’t matter.
He was home. For the first time in his life, he was home.