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“If you are not long, I will wait here for you all my life.”
Oscar Wilde
One
Every bone in his body ached. Like a violent, crackling thunder, he heard his joints popping which absolutely wasn’t normal for someone at the tender age of twenty-three. Probably had something to do with the fact that he had been completely trashed when he fell into his bed, waking in an awkward position where half his body was hanging off the edge, one arm wedged between the mattress and the dresser. His fingers were completely numb from lack of circulation, and he flexed them a few times to restore the blood flow.
Scrubbing his face, Oliver groped for the water bottle perched near his lamp, twisting the cap with his functioning hand, and gulped down half in one go. The water hit his gut hard, making it ache and twist. He breathed through the pangs of nausea, willing himself to rehydrate, and begged his body to forgive him for the horrible abuse he put it though every other night.
His phone on the nightstand was blinking with notifications. He knew they were all going to be from his flatmate, asking where the hell he’d gone the night before—he remembered that much at least, leaving the club while everyone was dancing—so he didn’t bother with checking.
Running his hands through his hair, he twisted his fingers through it in some attempt to order the mess, though he had resigned himself to being a total disaster. After a moment of letting some dizziness pass, Oliver eased himself onto the floor, grimacing at the ache in his feet as he padded toward the bathroom.
His piss smelled like straight vodka which kicked up his nausea again, but emptying his bladder offered some relief, and he decided nothing was more important than a shower. Luckily, their house took less than thirty seconds for scalding hot water to pour from the tap, so he stepped under the stream and used some of his sibling’s soap to scrub away the filthy scent of club, sweat, cigarettes, and booze. His fingers skated over the raised skin on his shoulders, the faded scars still puckered and rough, and he tried his best to ignore the way it made him feel every time he had to touch them.
As the water cascaded over his back, he pressed his forehead to the cool tiles and wondered if he’d ever come out of this phase. This reckless, showing up half an hour late to lectures, barely scraping by on Cs, trying to drown himself in booze, phase.
Wasn’t he supposed to be a little grown up by now? He had one degree under his belt, his graduate classes going smooth as they ever could for someone who rarely paid attention to anything. But he didn’t have even close to a solid topic for what he wanted to write for his thesis, no job, no real responsibilities, and he knew damn well he should by now.
With a heavy groan, he turned the shower off, wishing he had washed himself down the drain, but he was feeling a little better. Dressing in sweat pants and a ratty old t-shirt, he stared at himself in the mirror for a bit, frowning at the dark circles under his eyes. It was bad, but he’d been worse. He scrubbed the last of the club taste out of his mouth—the cheap booze and random tongues—then headed for the kitchen where he saw his far too perky flatmate sitting at the counter.
She had her dark brown hair done in a perfect coif at the back of her neck, wearing a pantsuit, meaning she was going to be working on her teaching hours. “Morning, Mr. Sasaki.”
“It’s too early for you to be last-naming me, Ms. Hernandez.” Oliver glowered his displeasure at her as he blindly reached into the cabinet for a mug. Coffee was sitting hot and ready by the stove, and he gulped it down without caring that it seared off several layers of his tongue. “What time did you lot get in?”
Coco shook her head. “God, I don’t know. Three, maybe? Brandon let us stay after they locked up the doors, but that’s only because they were in the middle of a poker game. Which Leo won big, by the way. I told him tea’s on him tonight.”
Oliver snorted as he opened the fridge door and glared at the stack of Styrofoam take-away containers. He knew they should start at least attempting to eat like normal, grown up people, but the effort that would take was too daunting. “Tell him I’m in the mood for a good curry.”
Coco rolled her eyes. “In the five years you two have been living here, you haven’t found a single curry place that matches your standards.”
“S’not my fault London does it better,” he muttered.
With a snort, she pushed her chair away from the counter. “You’re picky and obnoxious, and London does it better because you guys colonized the fucking East without giving a shit about people who didn’t want to be colonized. Prick.”
He widened his eyes. “Listen, darling, I’m not evenwhiteEnglish. I’m bloody Japanese.”
“You’re ridiculouslyrich, half white, Japanese-English.”
“Excuse the fuck out of you!” he demanded, though he knew he was too tired to have this argument with her again.
“Are you really going to argue this with me, rich boy?” Her brown eyes narrowed, challenging, and eventually when she saw defeat in his eyes, she grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “That’s what I thought. Anyway, Leo’s in bed and probably suffering from some level of alcohol poisoning, so you should go make sure he doesn’t need a hospital or something.” Crossing the room, she grabbed his shoulder and yanked him down to press a kiss to his cheek. “See you later.”
He watched her as she flounced out the door, winking before it slammed shut. Running a hand down his face, he put his half-drunk coffee on the table and headed up the stairs. His sibling’s room was directly next to his, and the door was cracked. He could hear a gentle snoring, and he smelled traces of smoke and booze coming from the pile of clothes at the end of Leo’s bed.
Oliver had always been protective over his sibling, and when he decided to attend a University in the States rather than follow his mother’s carefully planned out path for his Cambridge education, he made sure he had his claws in Leo. He wasn’t going to leave without him, not after what they’d suffered.
It was a funny thing, Oliver discovered, growing up getting anything you wanted. His father had come from Japan, accepted into Eton, finishing his degree at Cambridge where he made connections and started up a Publishing company. From there he’d met his mother, a straight-backed, aristocratic English woman who’d come from both money and extreme religious ideology.
Oliver hadn’t spent a lot of time with his father, even as a child, but he remembered from a very early age wondering why his parents ever bothered to get married. They rarely saw each other, and when they did, there was never any sort of affection between them. Once, before his father moved to the States, he’d asked him and he shrugged, saying, “She seemed nice enough, and I thought we’d make intelligent, attractive children.”
That hadn’t been a lie. Oliver had always been aware he was good looking. In spite of the fact that he was Japanese, half his mates from school referred to him as ‘the K-Pop star’. He was tall, thin, with his mother’s sharp cheekbones, and his father’s eyes, and straight dark hair he only recently cut short. His mouth was full, and he could pout like a professional to get his way with most anything.
Leo was much the same, though several inches shorter, but there was no mistaking the siblings were related.
They’d grown up with little regard for material possessions, and a deep hatred for their mother—the woman who did everything in her power to ensure they were stuffed full of internalized hatred for who they were as people.
Oliver discovered his sexuality fairly early, wanking in the wee morning hours at his boarding school to the images of the rugby team. It wasn’t long before he was being thrown in detention for having snogging sessions with some of the more curious boys behind the stands, and eventually when the Headmaster wrote home about it, he was given a sound beating and locked in his bedroom for three weeks during the Christmas holidays.
