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Tooru is there. He has always been there.
Since Hajime was able to think, Tooru has been there. His presence was either like oxygen or smoke.
Hajime either needed him without noticing, or slowly suffocated on him, noticing him with the veins guiding through his lungs.
There has never been an in-between with Tooru.
In a creeping process, they have been growing closer to the edge.
Hajime has noticed in the way Tooru’s eyes lingered a little too long on white nothings, how his gazes lingered too long on other people, avoiding his eyes completely.
But with every piercing gaze of a dying sun, Hajime shudders. He shudders under the weight of Tooru’s glare.
They drifted apart like the continents, once united as one whole. Now they are scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle floating in an ocean of memories.
Hajime isn’t sure where he ends and Tooru begins.
After decades of living together you just merge into one whole.
Even when Tooru is around him, he feels like bits and pieces have been ripped out of his skin. The feeling is familiar to Hajime. Everytime he and Tooru have been separated he felt like this. Ironic.
For the longest part now, they have been co-existing. Two shadows of once colorful people.
Tooru has always been Hajime’s secret garden on top of a hill, hidden behind a forest. A garden to which no one has ever known the way, because no one has ever been patient or interested enough to find a way through all of the poisonous ivy, quicksand and thorns. No one except for Hajime. And it was worth it.
Every scratch and burn he earned for finding a way through twigs and leaves was worth it.
He saw his garden in every stage. Blooming in a prism of colors like spring and devastatingly rotten like in winter. He still kept coming back.
Hajime has always been able to just go to this garden, lie down and take in the all too familiar scent of love and gasoline.
Tooru has always had high trees around himself for defense and the worst coping mechanisms. Maybe that’s why his garden was drowning in gasoline.
Over the course of decades, trust built up around them like a wall, lulling them into a trance, and Tooru gave Hajime a match in their delirious fever.
But Tooru started to change. Hajime wasn’t able to find the old path back to the garden. Everywhere new thicket towered above him, claws holding him back with a vice grip.
But when he finally found his garden again, a silhouette was there. He wasn’t alone in his garden anymore.
Hajime dropped the match.
Tooru is sitting across of him, like everyday, caressing a glass of wine with his right hand.
The habit of drinking a glass of wine every evening isn’t new. Or two or three. It’s as if Tooru isn’t able to be sober and in the same room as Hajime at the same time.
Those spaces after dinner were once filled with laughter, conversations and butterfly kisses. Now it’s full of stolen glances and staring at the bottoms of glasses.
They still say words, but don’t talk anymore.
Tooru seems tired.
There are bags under his eyes and Hajime knows he hasn’t been sleeping. But he only knows because he’s used to Tooru, not because he has noticed him being up. But does he really know Tooru anymore?
His eyes are frosted over, not resembling the once youthful eyes Hajime was doomed to drown in.
He can still remember how his eyes rolled back and forth while trying to look at all of the stars in the sky at once.
Tooru has always been an all or nothing person.
“Do you remember how they said we’d never last?” Tooru whispers, more to his glass than to Hajime.
The broken pieces in Tooru’s voice with their sharp edges, cut deeply into Hajime’s flesh.
To Hajime’s surprise, Tooru is smiling, showing his teeth off like a predator.
“They were right,” is all he can breath out with a shudder.
Hajime can’t help looking back. Looking back at the times when they used to dream, used to name the stars while tracing futures lying in the dark.
They have been half alive for way too long. Hajime knows and he can’t bear to watch Tooru sinking in the mud which was once the fresh water of their love. They tainted it.
Tooru doesn’t seem to be surprised by Hajime’s answer as he doesn’t even twitch at the words like Hajime supposed he would.
They need to draw the line and set each other free.
They have known for a long time now, but both have been unable to say a word.
It may be his imagination playing tricks on him, but he still loves Tooru. Not as fierce as the storming sea, like he once did, but more like a silent lake.
Maybe he’s just frozen over and needs to wait for summer.
“Have you had enough or do we try again?”
For the first time this evening, Tooru looks at him. Really looks at him. Not only recognizing him as someone he used to love, but seeing him as the man he loves and despises at the same time.
“I think you know the answer,” Tooru says without taking his gaze away from Hajime. And yes, he knows the answer to that, but he doesn’t know if they were fools for each other or fools for falling in.
When Hajime looked at forever, he always saw Tooru, but there’s a sunset in his eyes now and Hajime can’t see anything besides white noise.
But he can’t help looking back.
The first years when they were together their love was burning magnesium.
It’s true what they say:The brightest flame burns fast.