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In an upscale London café one frigid weekday morning, a Scottish friend of Win asks Team a question in English. “How long have you known each other?” It’s been a while since someone’s asked them that, but Win calls the answer to mind automatically. He knows the time it’s been down to the hour he first saw Team—which would be more impressive if it hadn’t happened right before the swim club’s nine o’clock orientation.
With no idea of the mayhem she’s unleashed, Felicity stirs a full sleeve of brown sugar into her black tea, smiling at Team with a degree of warmth that would probably make most observers think she’s known him for years rather than minutes. That’s just the effect Team has on people, though, and not even the tallest of language barriers can conceal his natural charisma.
Win shifts his smile from Felicity to Team, doing his level best not to admire the red mark he left on the curve where Team’s neck meets his shoulder a few hours ago. Their celebration of Team arriving safely in England last night took several hours longer than Win planned, but seeing as Team is here for the entirety of his winter break and not just a few days like the last two times, Win is committed to making every moment of it memorable—and if that means he occasionally leaves visible hickeys on Team’s skin and Team does nothing but arch his neck and moan and encourage it, then what is Win reasonably expected to do? Abstain?
Team stares back at Felicity as she waits for an answer. To Win’s profound amusement, Team has managed to hate the English language more and more every hour since he arrived, an impressive feat given that he traveled from the airport directly into Win’s bed and hasn’t spoken a word of English until he said “hello” to Felicity eight minutes ago. Having this information gives the thick layer of panic on Team’s face a tinge of melodrama, but when Win stifles a snicker, Team whips his head to the side and raises his eyebrows in a clear demand of, Help. Me.
Win will do no such thing.
He nudges Team’s arm gently with his elbow, mostly for the excuse to touch him in a way that’s socially acceptable in public. They’ve been doing quite a lot of socially unacceptable touching behind closed doors all night, and Win can’t stop his mind from lazily drifting back to the memory of Team’s body shivering in his arms, Team’s mouth open around a breathless litany of Win’s name. If they didn’t need to be here right now, they’d still be upstairs in his bed.
But they do, so they’re here. Wearing clothes. In a café. Pretending to have self-control. Seated together facing Win’s very nice friend and the broad café window behind her, occasionally glancing at the early morning commuters rushing past in either direction.
Two people very much able to go ten minutes without touching each other no matter the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
“You can do it,” Win tells Team in English. “How long have you known me?”
Team makes an anguished noise and scrubs both hands through his hair to communicate the depths of his misery. Felicity grins at Win around the lip of her teacup, likely remembering the time Win told her he tutored Team in English for over a year. Finally, with long-suffering exhaustion, Team says to Felicity, “I have known him many years.”
In Thai, Win coos, “Good job, baby.” He cups a hand around the back of Team’s neck and gives him a fond little shake.
It’s mid-sway that Team dryly adds, “Too many.”
Felicity huffs a laugh simultaneously with Win’s mild, “Hey.”
“You didn’t let me sleep at all last night and now you want me to speak another language?” Team complains.
Win says, “Point taken,” and tells Felicity, “He understands more than he can say, so he might just listen to us.” Then, to prove he’s a loyal boyfriend, he says, “He’s tired.”
Team could sleep for six weeks and still walk blindfolded into traffic before ever volunteering himself for a conversation in English, but Win won’t tell Felicity that.
“Win says a lot of nice things about you,” Felicity tells Team.
Team brightens and then smirks sideways at Win. “Hmmm,” he says, tremendously smug for a spoiled brat who flung himself into Win’s arms last night whinging about everything in his life from the amount of clothes he had to pack to the ferocious hunger pains making him so hideously dizzy that he was certainly seconds from death.
Win loves him to a sincerely unhinged degree.
“So, Win,” Felicity says, “let me just go over some things with you about the cottage, and then I’ll get out of here and let you have time alone with Team.”
A few weeks ago, Felicity mentioned that her grandparents had formally requested to move the family Christmas somewhere warmer than the family’s seaside cottage up in Inverness, which would have left it unoccupied for the first time in twenty-three years. In exchange for a discount hotel rate when they visit Thailand one day, Felicity’s family offered the cottage to Win and Team for two weeks.
Win has never been so grateful to his parents for choosing their current line of work.
He listens attentively as Felicity goes over the house rules set by her grandparents and asks a few questions of his own. Mainly about the nearby town and how to get there for groceries. Team, more than likely bored by all the English and exhausted after an ambitious night of marathon sex, excuses himself to use the bathroom.
He’s still gone when Felicity hands the key to Win and says, “Your boyfriend is genuinely adorable.”
Win pockets the key with a pleased smile. No compliment ever makes him as soul-deep content as a compliment for Team. “He doesn’t think so,” Win says. Mimicking Team, he adds, “I’m not cute! I’m cool!”
“He can be both,” Felicity says, smiling. “You have your moments, too.”
Win tilts his head and hides a laugh, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Thank you,” he says. “When we met, he was very polite to me.” He brings his hands together and dips his head in an impersonation of how he remembers deferential, eighteen-year-old Team. “Always polite, always nice to me.”
“Yeah, he’s feistier than I expected.” Felicity picks up her purse from the chair beside her and sets it in her lap, packing up the envelope she brought the key in as well as her glasses case. “You always tell the cute stories about him.” She stands up, drawing her purse strap over her head.
“What’s ‘feistier’?” Team asks as he sits down again.
Win doesn’t know either, but he says, “You,” with a sweet smile.
Team makes a rude noise through his nose and mutters, “Yeah, sure,” under his breath as he dries his wet hands on the thighs of his jeans.
Win tells Team, “You’re gonna be even colder now,” with a disapproving click of his tongue.
“Your bed’s warm,” Team says, winking.
Always with the unexpected right hook; Win’s pretty sure his pupils just dilated.
Felicity says, “All right, I’ll let you two catch up,” and gives each of them a kind smile. To Win, she adds, “Enjoy the cottage! Just send me a message if you need anything or if you have any questions.”
Win sends her off with a wave, smiling when Team automatically wais to her halfway through a suppressed yawn.
When she’s left the café, Win tugs on a bit of fringe hanging over Team’s eye. “Nap?” he suggests.
Team agrees with a sigh and slumps theatrically against Win’s side, dropping his head heavily on Win’s shoulder.
“You’re very funny,” Win tells him. “You wouldn’t prefer the warm bed you were just talking about?”
Team grunts, motionless. “Look up what ’feistier’ means.” Then, “I want hot chocolate.” And, “Why did I have to be here if you were just getting the key?”
Amused and utterly at peace with the world now that his favorite person is with him again, Win finishes his coffee while petting Team’s hair with his free hand.
•
Their train to Inverness doesn’t leave until the next morning, so they spend the rest of the day walking around the neighborhood so that Team can force himself to stay awake and reset his sleep schedule. The more they explore, the more it feels like every block is swathed in string lights. The effect is so nostalgic that not even their breaths freezing into clouds and their noses turning pink dissuade them from continuing their expedition. Team says he wants to see all the places he’s seen in the background of Win’s video calls—even the mundane areas where Win only stops to sit because there’s a bench readily available—and Win’s in no frame of mind to say no to him.
Win likes to see the lights reflected in Team’s eyes. To see Team still as awed by the holiday spectacle as he was when he was eighteen.
While they walk, Team merrily holds onto Win’s hand, sometimes swinging their arms when there’s no one in sight. He keeps smiling up at Win, saying nothing, asking nothing. Just being with him. Beside him. Present here in the way he won’t be able to be most of the time until Win finally finishes his program next year.
After a long silence, Team tells Win about some kittens Del and her girlfriend rescued from behind a hair salon last week, and after five seconds Win realizes he’s being set up. He would’ve noticed sooner, but the round curve of Team’s smiling rosy cheek is begging to be chomped and Win is only barely holding himself back as it is.
“Am I going to come home to everything you own covered in cat fur?” Win asks.
Team pouts almost before Win’s finished speaking, as if he’s been planning this all along and knew how Win would react. “Hiaaa,” Team whines. “They’re small and helpless and they need homes, and Del can’t have cats at her place, and her girlfriend already has three.”
“Your place doesn’t allow pets either,” Win reminds him. University dormitories seldom do.
He leads Team off the main road into a small park with a meandering path and its own selection of golden string lights. Win massages Team’s cold fingers as they pass an older couple pushing an expensive pram holding two poodle puppies wearing pink pyjamas and a young girl on a bench reading a spine-cracked paperback by the lamplight.
“Your mother said she’d keep them at the house until you come home,” Team says. He squeezes Win’s hand and then tugs on his arm with a series of beseeching naa, naa that he knows are effective with the right pitch and tone.
If Win’s honest, though, it’s not the wheedling that works on him this time. It’s more the loud, unspoken understanding in the air that they’ve been actively planning to move into a place together when Win comes home. That Win will have a home with Team. That Team is waiting for him, will keep waiting, has promised to wait.
“One,” Win says.
“Two,” Team says. “One is mean, hia. Cats are social.”
“Oh, I know,” Win says. He presses his cold nose to Team’s cold cheek and then breathes in the faint scent of Team’s hair. “No one knows the needs of cats like I do.”
“Can we get three?”
“What, are you building an army?”
“You’re not taking this seriously, hia.”
Win sighs with exaggerated effect and tucks Team into the snug curve of his arm. “Two kittens,” Win says. “No more.”
Some of Team’s smiles are simple and joyful, but this one is nuanced and each layer is a different and deeper kind of content. As Team winds the arm closest to Win firmly around Win’s waist, he says, “I took a video for you the day before I left. Look.” Win eyes him with suspicion, and when Team shows him a video on his phone of a tiny black and white kitten gnawing on the head of a ghost plush, Win snorts and rubs his knuckles against Team’s scalp until his beloved little gremlin’s laughter subsides.
•
Win’s rented them a double bed on a sleeper car up to Inverness, and Team dozes off before the train even leaves the station. Even Win’s sleep schedule is thrown off, so he folds Team into his arms and smiles when Team makes a soft noise of acknowledgment and gratitude. Win listens to the rhythmic clanking and humming of the train car ambling down the tracks and drifts off soon after. There’s nothing more he wants or needs.
When he wakes up later, he senses that his arm has been taken prisoner. He flexes his hand to make sure and smirks when Team produces a different kind of noise—tired and ornery. He hugs Win’s arm like he’s resisting an inevitable separation, pressing his face against Win’s chest.
According to the clock on Win’s phone screen, it’s only been twenty-four minutes.
“Do you ever think I’m annoying?”
Win says, “What?” and lifts his head, half a laugh on his lips. He sets his phone back down on the mattress above the pillow and tries to see Team’s face.
Team, though, remains as he is, fixed to Win’s chest. “I looked up that word your friend used,” he says. “It sounds annoying.”
Win can’t place what Team’s talking about for a long, baffled moment, and then he remembers the word Felicity used that neither of them knew. Win looked it up later out of curiosity, but he can’t see how Team would read something similar and come away with such a negative understanding to the point where he’d feel this hurt by the comparison. Win is seized by an urge to burn whatever dictionary insulted his baby.
Instead, with all the maturity he can summon, Win presses a kiss to Team’s hair and says, “Everyone is annoying sometimes. You’re just lucky that annoying is cute on you.”
Team grunts and shoves Win’s chest with one hand while keeping a firm grip on Win’s arm. An interesting physical representation of his mood.
What’s most concerning to Win, though, is the long silence that follows.
“You told her I used to be nice to you,” Team says quietly. “Aren’t I still?”
Win makes a soft, affectionate noise low in his throat and shifts to take Team fully back into his arms. The cloudy sky prevents sunlight from filling their room, but Win appreciates the shadows for whatever comfort they might give Team at the moment. Win rests his chin on Team’s hair and tangles their legs, sighing with contentment when Team’s hug evolves into a devoted octopus grip. “Has this been bothering you the whole time?” Win asks.
Team nods once, firmly.
Win rubs his chin along Team’s soft, warm hair. “You’re not annoying,” he says quietly. “You’re relaxed, and I think that means you’re comfortable with me.”
Team says, “I am.”
Win says, “Good. Besides, I like you exponentially more whenever you’re ’feisty’.”
Team is quiet, but his breaths are slow. “You don’t ever wish I was still like I was when we first met?” he asks. “Less…loud? Less mean?”
“You’re adorable if you think you’ve ever been genuinely mean to me.” Win takes care to run his fingertips along the tense muscles in Team’s neck, massaging away the worst of the physical stress there.
“I’ve told you,” Team says, watery, “this long-distance thing sucks. It gets in my head.”
Win will definitely be burning someone’s dictionary.
•
The sex they had during Team’s first two nights in the U.K. was almost frantic. Raw, overwhelming, fueled by desperation—touching each other with a kind of urgency and hunger that reminded Win of their first time.
Win is sincerely surprised he can still find similarities to how they were back then. They’re both more experienced for one thing. They’ve learned as much as they physically can about each other—their most sensitive areas, how hard they need to push each other for more when it’s needed. But they are, after all, the same people, and three years isn’t as long as it can feel.
They’ve aged and grown and changed, and they’re closer now than Win ever would have dreamed they could be when he was twenty-one and resigned to isolation. But Team still laughs openly and brightly the way he did when he was eighteen, able to hold his nightmares at bay in the sunlight the way he never could at night, and Win still wants nothing more than to believe—without a splinter or a fissure—that Team wants to stay with him forever.
The cottage sits a fair distance from the storm-thrown ocean, and Win watches the white-frothed waves pitch toward the shore while Team holds him from behind.
Team tried to move past their talk earlier, to make Win forget it happened, but Win has been turning it around in his mind ever since, examining every angle and puzzling out what could have led Team to doubt—even for a second—that Win adores every part of him.
Both of Win’s hands cover Team’s, their fingers interlocked low on Win’s stomach.
Long-distance has showed them in unforgiving detail where they’re weakest, and Win wonders if Team realizes how impressive it is that they’ve made it a year in spite of everything. Maybe starting out physical was the right way to go after all—sure, they know what they’re missing, but they’re well-fed whenever they have the opportunity.
Team says, “I like who we are now,” and even though the words are mashed against Win’s shoulder, he can understand every word.
And Win could tell him that who they were wasn’t bad—they still liked each other back then, right? Enough to want to do this at all, right?
Instead, he says, “I’ve always liked you,” because he has. Even when Team didn’t know where he stood with Win, even when Win didn’t know where he stood with himself, even when they were almost nothing to each other. Club members, a senior and junior—not even in the same department. Economics, business. Legacy, scholarship.
That sweet and polite younger Team thrives in Win’s memory, but those days weren’t kind or carefree. Even without the nightmares and everything else, those first few weeks were rough and nerve-wracking, tectonic plates perpetually tipping underfoot. They could have ruined this so many different ways, and yet they didn’t.
Win still remembers those bewildered eyes at practice day after day suggesting how stung Team felt by the warmth Win refused to give him.
Win didn’t know his own heart then.
He still doesn’t. He only knows what feels right when he’s walking alone in the dark, following the sound of Team’s voice to the future they’ve promised each other.
“I’ve always liked you too, hia.”