We walked slowly through the hotel back to our room after dinner, taking our time and being nosey about the other amenities were available. Aki found a small gym with a heavy bag, and was excited that he had left his hand wraps in his backpack, mentioning that he would make use of it in the morning before breakfast. We strolled casually into the public bath area, laden with steam and humid warmth, and I felt my yukata stick to my skin almost instantly. It looked as if we had walked outside into the forest in the public bath. It was a large space that was dimly lit with warm coloured light, black rocks, and bamboo trees. It was busy, with people wrapped in towels walking back and forth, and we casually looked around for only a moment to satisfy our curiosity about what it looked like.

"If I wake up at two am, I'm going to try my luck going in there." Aki said as we entered our room. He shrugged off his haori and tossed it onto the bed, making his way to the tea maker. "Do you want me to wake you up to go?"

I nodded as I dragged my bag out from its placed tucked in beside the bed. I wanted to retrieve Aki's gift. "Sure. This doesn't happen very often, so I might as well." I sat on the bed with the wrapped box. "Aki, this is for you."

He finished pouring a cup of tea and crossed the room to sit on the bed with me. I slid the box across the cover to him, and he took a sip from the cup, then handed it to me. It was pleasantly warm, and I cradled it with both hands as I watched him unwrap the box, and I couldn't imagine a more comfortable scenario that I wanted to live in at that moment.

"Natsu!" Aki held up the tablet. "Where did you get this? How did you get this? How much was it?" I could see the surprised expression take over his face. He didn't try to hide his excitement. "You know, I had been thinking about this for a while. I've been getting frustrated carrying notebooks and writing by hand, and trying to find compositions after is a nightmare. How did you know? Answer my questions."

He hugged the tablet box to his chest, looking at me and waiting for me to reply. I shrugged and sipped at the tea, indicating I wouldn't reveal any of my secrets. The truth was that I had no idea it was something he had been thinking about, but that I knew him well enough to know it was an item that would make his life easier.

"Fine, keep your secrets." He laughed as he leaned forward to kiss me. "Thank you."

The bath in the room became instantly more inviting as the outside night darkened. The black tile in contrast to the light coloured hinoki wood of the tub relaxed the space, making it easy to see the steam coming from the water. We sat together talking about nothing, sipping tea, laughing, so simply as if we were getting to know each other over a meal all over again. Aki had been coming into focus for me during the whole course of the day, becoming more and more human in a light that I never allowed myself to see him in before. It was something I was aware of in the back of my mind, but I didn't want to fully acknowledge it in the moment. I tried hard to experience the many layers of Aki in the moment.

During the night, I could only remember my mind being blank and at peace as I was held securely against Aki's chest, but I woke up calling his name aware that I was alone in the bed. One second I was deeply asleep, the next I was propped up on my elbows with the sound of Aki's voice trickling into my consciousness.

"I'm right here, Natsu." His tone was soft and low, from the other side of the room where he had his guitar across his lap and the tablet I had given him set on the floor in front of him. He put the guitar down and crossed the room to sit on the bed. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"I don't think I did." I tried to recall if I had been dreaming at all, but I couldn't remember any dreams or nightmares.

He laid down beside me on top of the blankets, resting his head on the pillow, his hands folded atop his stomach. I let myself lay back down as well, relaxed beside him. "You usually wake up calling my name when you have a nightmare." He turned his head to look at me, seeming to be waiting for an answer even though he didn't quite ask a question.

"It's because when I have a nightmare, it's always the same one."

"But you can't remember having a nightmare just now." It sounded like he wanted me to say something, but I just wasn't sure what he wanted to hear. "Do you think it was because you were aware I wasn't beside you?"

I thought on the point for a beat, not wanting to suddenly dismiss it, but not wanting to give it any thought either. I didn't want to admit that I was toying with the possibility of developing dependence on Aki. "Can't it just be because I was having a spicy dream about you?"

It made him smile, but it wasn't what he was looking for me to say. "You said you weren't dreaming. And you don't say my name when we get spicy."

"Do you want me to start?"

"Natsu." His tone was gentle, but he wanted my attention. There was something I was ignoring, and he didn't want me to keep trying to change the subject. "I still have nightmares too, but that's all they are. I wake up, they go away. They don't continue to scare me, and I'm not afraid to go to sleep because I might have them. What you're experiencing is something else, and I'm worried that it will just keep getting worse if you keep ignoring it."

"You're very patient with me."

He breathed a laugh moved closer, putting our foreheads together. "I've had a lot of practice taking care of people."

I knew he always thought about Masami when he said things like that, and I wanted to change the subject, not because I didn't want him to think about her, but because I didn't want him to be upset. "Can we talk about it when we get home? It's your birthday."

"It's actually not my birthday anymore, it's past midnight. But yes."

"Will you teach me how to play the guitar?"

He laughed like he was caught off guard, completely unaware that I would ask such a question. "Kota will be mad if you don't ask him." He got off the bed to retrieve his guitar from across the room and sat with his legs stretched in front of him, patting the spot between them to tell me to sit.

He put the guitar across my lap, but reached around me to hold it from behind me. He took one of my hands at a time, placing one over the body of the guitar to press my palm flat against the strings, and guided the other to hold the neck. "Here, let's play a scale." He put his hand under mine and placed his fingers across the strings. "Put your fingers here to start." As I placed my fingertips on top of his, he slid them out from under mine so I was touching the strings. "You have to press the strings down until you feel the neck. Then strum the strings here." He demonstrated a strum, holding his hand up so I could see how he positioned his thumb and index fingers together.

"Put one finger down, then strum just that string. Then the next finger, then strum." I worked through placing each finger and strumming in between until all of my fingers were down. "Then we do a shift up." Aki took my hand and moved it on the neck of the guitar a little closer to the body. "And do it again."

I caught on to the patterns in which he was moving my fingers as he guided my hand to travel down the neck, and after a few strums I was able to predict the next position until I played the length of the neck to where it met the body. I played each note slowly and clumsily, but I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment I felt as I shook out my hands. Aki took the guitar off of my lap while I inspected my nails on the hand that I used to strum the strings. The sharpness of the steel and the vibrations it made with every strum was a sensation I wasn't used to feeling through my hands.

"I don't usually play with a pick, but you might need one. I'll get some from Kota." Aki said as he grabbed the hand I was inspecting. He put the tip of my finger in his mouth, as if to kiss away the strange feeling. I looked over my shoulder at him, turning slightly more toward him to see his expression. "I'm glad you picked music. You're good at it. It suits you."

He still held my hand close to his face. "You suit me." I said.

"It's nearly two, there's probably no one at the public bath. Do you want to go?"

"I thought you said this place was tattoo friendly."

He had been wearing the yukata provided by the hotel since we had checked in, and the sleeves were short enough to show a large portion of his highly inked arms. The way he liked to wear a yukata was also more open at his chest, which put the matching chrysanthemums that crawled their way from his pectorals to his jawline on display. "It's tattoo friendly because there are private baths in the rooms. But I shouldn't show up in a public bath full of people just out of consideration, really."

I never really looked at Aki to see what he looked like. I knew every detail of him if I ran my hands over him with my eyes closed, and I could map him in my mind's eye. His tattoos were just part of his skin. As if his skin was simply a different colour than mine. When I really looked at him though, all I could see were the stories unfolding in the ink. He had told me the meaning of each one just one time, when we had first met, but all I could remember about that time was taking in his image. He had been a stranger standing in my kitchen, and I had been more concerned with the shape of his body. I had never met someone so comfortable in their skin as Aki was, even if his skin turned out to be something that offended most of the people who witnessed it.

"Natsu, you're staring at me again." He breathed a laugh. "You want me to take this off so you can have a better look? You already know what I look like."