Terminal Velocity

Stripped of his armor, Yuki stood amidst the terminal's chaos, staring at the only hypothesis that mattered.

The distance between them was measured in yards, but it felt like an oceanic trench. Ten yards of gray, industrial carpet stained by thousands of transient footprints. Ten yards of indifferent air conditioned to a constant, soulless sixty-eight degrees. Yuki stood at the edge of the concourse, his chest heaving with a violence that made his ribs ache.

He was acutely aware of how he looked. The reflection he had glimpsed in the security scanner’s glass partitions had been a stranger. His tie, usually a perfect Windsor knot, was pulled askew, the silk loop hanging limp like a noose. His shirt was untucked on one side, damp with sweat that turned the starch into a clinging, uncomfortable second skin. He wasn't wearing a belt. He could feel the waist of his dress trousers slipping slightly, a physical manifestation of his loss of control. He was a system in total entropic collapse.

And there was Kaito.

Kaito stood near the floor-to-ceiling glass, bathed in the harsh, washed-out light of the winter afternoon. Behind him, the nose of the Boeing 737 loomed like a white whale, tethered to the building by the accordion-pleated jetway. Kaito hadn't moved. He held his duffel bag—the green canvas one with the frayed strap—gripped tightly in his right hand. His knuckles were white. The posture was defensive, the stance of an animal that hears a twig snap in the dark.

For a long, suspended second, neither of them spoke. The terminal rushed around them like a river around two stones. A family of four hurried past Yuki, the father dragging a roller bag, the mother scolding a toddler dropping dry cheerios. A distinct, robotic voice announced a gate change for a flight to Denver. The mundane world continued its orbit, oblivious to the singularity forming at Gate B7.

Kaito’s eyes were dark, shadowed by sleeplessness and the brim of a knit beanie he must have pulled on before leaving the hotel. He looked at Yuki not with hope, but with a guarded, bruised confusion. It was the look he gave a piece of equipment that had failed him in the field—a mix of frustration and resignation.

"You missed the turn for the university," Kaito said. His voice was rough, barely carrying over the ambient drone of the terminal. It wasn't angry. It was tired. That was worse.

Yuki swallowed, his throat dry as sandpaper. He took a step forward. His dress shoes, usually silent, clicked sharply on the transition from carpet to linoleum. "I didn't go to the university."

"I can see that," Kaito said, his gaze flicking to Yuki’s shoeless feet, then back up to his face. "You look like you just escaped a holding cell."

"Security took my belt," Yuki said, the absurdity of the statement floating between them. "And I didn't have time to put it back on because the board said final call and..." He stopped. He was rambling. He was citing data points when he needed to be stating conclusions.

Kaito shifted his weight. He looked at the gate agent, who was now unhooking the velvet rope, preparing to close the door. "Yuki. Go home. You hate airports. You hate scenes. And you're currently making both."

"I don't care," Yuki blurted out. The volume was too loud. A businessman on a laptop looked up, annoyed. Yuki didn't lower his voice. "I don't care about the scene. I don't care about the tenure review board. I don't care about the apartment with the northern exposure."

Kaito flinched, a small, almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw. "Don't say that. Don't lie to me now, Yuki. I can take the silence. I can take the rejection. I can't take the polite lie."

"It's not a lie!" Yuki took another two steps. He was close enough now to see the stubble on Kaito’s chin, the small scar above his left eyebrow. "I panicked. On the stage. At the hotel. I reverted to protocol. It’s what I do. It’s a survival mechanism."

"Yeah, well, it works," Kaito said, turning slightly toward the jetway. "You survived. You're safe here. Safe in the lab. Safe in the city."

"I am not safe!" Yuki’s voice cracked. "I am terrified. Do you understand? I calculated the probability of my life without you in the cab on the way here. I ran the simulation, Kaito. It’s a flat line. It’s sterile. It’s just... data. Endless, meaningless data."

Kaito stopped turning. He looked back, his expression hardening. "So what? You want me to stay? You want me to sit in your apartment and wait for you to come home from faculty dinners you're too embarrassed to bring me to? You want me to be a house pet?"

"No," Yuki said, shaking his head violently. "No."

"Then what?" Kaito challenged, dropping the duffel bag to the floor with a heavy thud. "How does this work, Yuki? Look at us. You're wearing a suit that costs more than my truck. I'm going to a place where the toilet is a hole in the ground and the nearest Wi-Fi is a three-day hike. We are different species. We require different environments."

"That's bad science," Yuki snapped. The familiarity of the argument, the intellectual friction, grounded him. He felt the panic recede, replaced by the clarity of an argument he knew he could win. "That is a fundamental misunderstanding of ecology."

Kaito blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in tone. "Excuse me?"

"Monocultures die, Kaito," Yuki said, stepping closer, his hands gesturing unconsciously as if he were in front of a whiteboard. "Systems that are too uniform are vulnerable. They lack resilience. If I stay in the lab, I stagnate. I become theoretical. I lose touch with the reality of the organism. And you... if you stay out there alone, you burn out. You take risks. You stop seeing the patterns because you're too busy surviving them."

Yuki stopped two feet away from him. He could smell the cedar smoke that seemed permanently embedded in Kaito’s jacket, mixed with the harsh soap of the airport bathroom. It was the best thing he had ever smelled.

"We aren't incompatible," Yuki whispered. "We're a symbiotic ecosystem. We balance the pH. We regulate the temperature."

Kaito stared at him, his mouth slightly open. The hardness in his eyes was fracturing, revealing the raw, terrifying hope underneath. "You're really lecturing me on biology right now? In the middle of Gate B7?"

"I'm telling you that the hypothesis was wrong," Yuki said, his voice trembling again. "I thought I needed order. I thought I needed control. But I don't want the control group anymore. I want the variables. I want the mud."

Kaito shook his head slowly. "You hate mud. You have a specific pair of shoes just for walking from the car to the front door so you don't track dirt in."

"I'll buy boots," Yuki said. "I'll buy the heavy ones. The ones with the liners."

"Yuki..." Kaito’s voice warned, a low rumble.

"I'm serious. I'm applying for the field grants," Yuki said, the words tumbling out before he could second-guess them. " The National Science Foundation has a grant for longitudinal studies in the Yukon. I looked it up on my phone in the security line. It requires a field specialist and a lead analyst. It requires on-site data collection."

Kaito went still. "You'd leave the tenure track? You'd leave the department head position?"

"I can take a sabbatical. Or I can quit. I don't care," Yuki said, and for the first time in his life, he meant it. The prestige, the office with the mahogany desk, the applause of the symposium—it all felt like ash compared to the way Kaito was looking at him right now. "I don't want to study the world from a screen, Kaito. I want to see it with you. Even if it's cold. Even if it's messy."

"It's really cold," Kaito whispered. "It's dark for six months straight."

"Then we'll buy lamps," Yuki said. "We'll adapt. That's what we do."

The gate agent cleared her throat loudly. She was holding the strap of the barrier, looking at them with a mixture of annoyance and pity. "Sir? The flight is closed. The door is shut."

Kaito didn't look at her. He was looking at Yuki’s eyes, searching for the flinch, the hesitation, the pullback. He was looking for the moment Yuki would remember who he was supposed to be.

But Yuki didn't flinch. He stood there, disheveled and stripped of his dignity, offering up his entire carefully constructed life with open hands.

"You're an idiot," Kaito choked out, a wet laugh breaking through the tension.

"I know," Yuki said. "I'm a very slow learner."

Kaito closed the distance. He didn't ask permission. He didn't look around to see who was watching. He grabbed the lapels of Yuki’s ruined suit jacket and pulled him in.

The kiss wasn't gentle. It was a collision. It was the terminal velocity of two bodies finally hitting the ground after a long, terrifying freefall. It tasted of salt and coffee and desperation. Yuki’s hands found the back of Kaito’s neck, tangling in the hair that was too long, grounding himself against the solid, warm reality of him.

Somewhere in the distance, a speaker announced that the moving walkway was ending. Someone dropped a metal water bottle with a clang. The gate agent sighed and latched the door to the jetway. Yuki didn't hear any of it. The world had narrowed down to the rough friction of Kaito’s stubble against his cheek and the frantic, heavy beat of Kaito’s heart against his chest.

It was a public declaration. It was the shattering of the glass wall Yuki had built around himself for ten years. He was kissing a man in the middle of a crowded international terminal, he was missing a flight he had paid a fortune for, and he had never felt more rational in his life.

When they finally pulled apart, they were both breathless. Kaito rested his forehead against Yuki’s, his eyes closed. His hands were still gripping Yuki’s jacket, as if afraid that letting go would cause Yuki to dissolve into mist.

"We missed it," Kaito murmured, his voice vibrating through Yuki’s skull.

Yuki opened his eyes. He looked over Kaito’s shoulder. The jetway was retracting. The massive plane was already being pushed back by a tug vehicle. "Yes. We did."

"That was a non-refundable ticket," Kaito said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"I know," Yuki said. "Inefficient."

"And you don't have a belt," Kaito added, glancing down.

"Also inefficient."

Kaito laughed then, a true, loud sound that made the gate agent look up from her computer. He let go of Yuki’s jacket and stepped back, running a hand through his own messy hair. He looked down at his duffel bag, then at the retreating plane, then back at Yuki.

"So," Kaito said. "No Alaska."

"Not today," Yuki agreed. He reached down and adjusted his glasses, which were hopelessly smudged. "But the Yukon grant application is due in two weeks."

Kaito shook his head, a look of wonder on his face. "You're serious. You're actually serious."

"I have never been more serious. I have the spreadsheets to prove it."

Kaito snorted. He reached out and took Yuki’s hand. His palm was calloused, rough against Yuki’s smooth skin. He squeezed it, hard.

"Okay," Kaito said. "Okay. Let's get out of here before you get arrested for indecent exposure with those pants."

They walked away from the gate, hand in hand. They moved against the flow of traffic, two obstacles in the stream of travelers rushing to be somewhere else. Yuki felt a strange lightness in his chest, a buoyancy he hadn't experienced since he was a child.

They found a row of empty seats near a closed pretzel stand. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a profound physical exhaustion. Yuki sank into the black vinyl chair, his legs suddenly feeling like jelly. Kaito sat next to him, stretching his long legs out, crossing his boots at the ankles.

"I'm hungry," Kaito announced, staring up at the ceiling tiles.

"I imagine so," Yuki said. "You didn't eat at the hotel."

"I didn't eat because I was busy getting my heart broken," Kaito deadpanned.

Yuki winced. "I am sorry. About the hotel. About everything."

Kaito bumped his shoulder against Yuki’s. "Shut up. You fixed it. You ran through an airport without a belt. That fixes a lot of things."

Yuki looked at the departures board ticking over above them. New York. London. Tokyo. Anchorage. The destinations flipped and changed, a kaleidoscope of possibilities.

"We need a plan," Yuki said, the old instinct resurfacing. "We need to retrieve my luggage from the car, if it hasn't been towed. We need to contact the department. We need to..."

Kaito put a hand over Yuki’s mouth. "Stop."

Yuki blinked behind his glasses.

"No plans for one hour," Kaito said, removing his hand but leaving it resting on Yuki’s knee. "We are going to find the greasiest breakfast this terminal has to offer. We are going to drink terrible coffee. And we are going to sit here and watch the planes leave without us."

Yuki looked at Kaito. He saw the fatigue, but he also saw the excitement—the spark that appeared whenever Kaito was looking at a map of unchartered territory. They were the unchartered territory now.

"Okay," Yuki said softly. "Breakfast first. Logistics later."

"That's the spirit," Kaito grinned. He stood up and offered his hand to pull Yuki up. "Come on, Professor. Let's go find some trouble."

Yuki took his hand. He stood up, hiking up his trousers with his free hand. He felt ridiculous. He felt unprofessional. He felt completely, wonderfully alive.

They walked toward the food court, the sound of their mismatched footsteps fading into the hum of the terminal, leaving the sterile safety of the gate behind for good.