The first time Roberto cleaned Hiraga's room was early in their partnership, and unplanned. He came to pick Hiraga up for dinner, but just as they were getting ready to leave, Hiraga got an urgent call from his brother and left him alone with whispered apologies.
It was a long call, and twenty minutes into it Roberto's fingers were twitching with the need to straighten out the mess. The contradiction fascinated him: Hiraga was always personally fastidious, and careful to a fault with his lab equipment, but his room looked like a bomb went off in the middle of it.
Thirty minutes in, he gave into temptation and started picking up clothes and books and various paraphernalia strewn around the floor. It swallowed him quickly: putting the pieces together, figuring out what should go where, smoothing out the corners of Hiraga's bright coverlet. He felt serene, centered, sure.
He didn't let himself read Hiraga's notes or rifle through his books for marginalia, but the room still unfolded a picture of Hiraga's mind to him: fast and precise and focused in one regard, carelessly and generously scattered in others.
Only when Hiraga returned to the already spotless room Roberto came back to himself and cringed in guilty embarrassment. It was unforgivably rude, and there was no way to explain or apologize that would've made sense. Hiraga would throw him out. Roberto cursed his weakness in the face of his compulsiveness.
But Hiraga just beamed at him. "How did you do it so fast? It's so amazing, it looks so spacious now. I've forgotten when I last saw my floor. Thank you!"
Roberto smiled back at him, and the relief felt like a drink of cool water. "You're always welcome. Now, about that dinner?"
It became a tradition after that.
The first time Roberto cooked for Hiraga was nothing serious, just some simple pasta for dinner, barely a step up from you could get in the shop. It was more about his own pleasure in cooking than about pleasing his guest. Making food always was soothing, orderly, comfortable.
But when Hiraga took the first bite, the naked, earnest pleasure in his face hit Roberto like a revelation. He listened to Hiraga's praise and told himself it wasn't surprising, of course a person who was raised by a remote father and ailing mother would enjoy the taste of homemade food, but it was a lost cause.
Each dinner from then on became a performance. He scoured the marketplaces for freshest possible ingredients, hunted for old recipes in dead languages, and spent hours in his kitchen, making and remaking dishes until they were perfect, prepared just right. Hiraga would probably have been appalled at the cost of some of the meals.
He knew that in some regards it was a wasted effort, that it was more about Hiraga's open, heartfelt enjoyment of the world than about what Roberto was offering, that Hiraga would probably praise him for yesterday's microwave dinner with the same shining enthusiasm. But it was still satisfying, so satisfying, to hear that praise, to know exactly how many hours of sweat and effort and trial and error went into each bite.
In some indescribable way it felt like taking advantage; in some other, like service. It was just food, he told himself, a harmless pleasure, an indulgence. A sin nevertheless, but surely a small one, unworthy of notice.
Hiraga smiled at him over the table, grateful and fond, and Roberto smiled back and carefully planned the next meal, and didn't worry, didn't worry at all.
The first time Roberto hugged Hiraga was after it was confirmed that Ryota would live. They left to let the doctors work, and Hiraga wordlessly turned to him, face haggard and worn. Roberto opened his arms without thinking and folded Hiraga to him. Hiraga felt feather-light in his arms, shuddering with relief, with lingering fear.
He had never liked to touch or comfort people, and was grateful that he didn't have to choose the diocesan path, which would undoubtedly have proven a catastrophic failure.
(Hiraga, though, with his fierce understanding of God's love! He felt so selfish for being happy nobody had ever recognized this and offered Hiraga a parish.)
But at that time he smoothed his palm down Hiraga's sharp shoulder blades with a feeling of content and said a quiet prayer of thanks under his breath.
Later, after the tumult of Ryota's revelations, of Josef's message miraculously returned to him, he sat next to the boy's bed, fingers absently smoothing the pages of Josef's book. Hiraga slept on the low cot in the corner of the room, dead to the world.
"Roberto-san," Ryota said, "I didn't want to worry Brother, but I do worry about how my cure was found. Who was that man who delivered it? Will it bring trouble?"
Roberto hesitated. Julia had undoubtedly meant trouble of the worst kind. Earlier on, Roberto had urged Hiraga to just accept the miracle as a gift of God, but privately he thought it would come with a steep price. But he didn't care about what it would involve. Hiraga in his arms had shuddered from relief and not from anguish, he had not been devastated by grief, and it was the only thing that mattered.
Out loud he said, "Just focus on getting better. If there's trouble, I will take care of it."
The first time Roberto made a bargain with God about Hiraga was also the last time. He made it when he realized that he didn't know about how to go about his confessions without lying about Hiraga, and couldn't find a good solution.
He wished it was about lust, because lust would've been easy. He could've admitted to studying the line of Hiraga's profile on the long flights, to admiring the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek, on watching his fingers on vials and tubes. It would've been awkward, but uncomplicated, and his confessor would've clicked his tongue and assigned penance and reminded him about vigilance against sin.
What he couldn't imagine confessing, though, was saying things like: "When I watch him eating, it's like serving the Eucharist." Or, "I don't know if I understand God, but Hiraga does, and I want to follow him wherever he goes." Or, "I don't care whether I live or die or stay in the Church or fall out of it, but I need to stay by his side." Or, best of all, "In a vision Devil had tempted me with all the riches of the world, and I stayed strong, but I chose Hiraga the moment his torment was shown to me."
Any of those felt impossible. So instead he went to his knees before the crucifix in his room, and said: "My Lord, I am as you made me. My soul is too cramped and small to truly see you. But you've sent me this man instead, with love enough for the whole world, and I will choose him, and follow him, and protect him, and let his love for You be enough for both of us. Please let it be so."
Of course, God hadn't answered; but then, He never did.
The first time Roberto took a bullet for Hiraga felt orderly and correct, preordained. He saw one of the Galdoune goons fire. Saw, impossibly, the bullet in the air as it sped towards Hiraga's heart. Pushed Hiraga away and stepped into the path of the bullet with serene conviction.
Time slammed back into him after that like a released spring, and then fragmented. There was an explosion of pain in his chest, and the familiar copper taste on his lips. There was shouting; he found himself on the ground, straining for air, with Hiraga leaning over him.
Hiraga's lips were moving but he couldn't hear the words, which was unfair, all things considered. Hiraga put his hands on his chest and pushed. The world shifted into focus, a kaleidoscope of bright colors, and then faded away.
When he floated back into his body in the hospital, Hiraga was hovering over his bed, very angry and gloriously alive. "You can't, you can't just do things like that, never do it again," he whisper-shouted at him, and Roberto's painkiller-laden tongue betrayed him and said, "It's okay, I've made a deal with God."
Hiraga wheedled the rest of the story out of him after that with merciless intent, his face becoming more and more aghast. "Roberto," he said again, "you can't…"
"I'm sorry," Roberto said, miserably.
Then Hiraga took his face in his palms and said, "Then I'm making the same deal, do you understand? The same bargain with God, about you. Are we not partners? We're in this together, until the very end, and I don't want anything else. Remember this, Roberto."
He kissed Roberto's forehead, and Roberto stared at him; his ears were faintly ringing. That's how God answers you, he thought. With grace against all odds.
He said, "I will."