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“You asked me once if I liked running.”
Haiji looks up to the sound of Kakeru's voice from where he's crumpled over his lap, the sound of his desperate panting drowned out by the constant clicks of cameras, of screaming, of cheers. It's so loud he can't even hear his teeth chattering wildly like a ringing alarm clock, and yet he still hears Kakeru's voice.
At first, Haiji has no idea what Kakeru's talking about - not because he's forgotten, of course - it's an important memory, a pivotal moment, where all the carefully laid puzzle pieces he had placed year after year suddenly started to snap into place, magnetic - but because his lungs and knee are screaming at him, both throbbing and angry and weeping.
“And you also asked what running means to me.”
“I did,” Haiji manages to reply somehow through his laboured breath, syllables stuffed through a string of gasps for air and a slight wheeze. He goes to tilt his head to look at Kakeru through his the clump of his wet bangs despite it all, wanting to meet his eyes.
And Kakeru's eyes are weeping too.
Haiji jolts up despite the pain.
“Kakeru-,” he starts to say, but Kakeru cuts him off by leaning back, unwrapping one of the arms around Haiji's waist to place a hand on the nape of Haiji's neck, face beaming with a smile that makes his eyes go into pretty half crescent moons.
“I'm in love with running, Haiji-san,” Kakeru says, fast and sudden. his eyes are fluttering from Haiji's face, then to his knee, then to his face again, watching Haiji's face go red and blotchy in a mix of confusion, exhaustion and hope.
“And what running is, to me, is…” he trails off, and then looks away, unable to stomach it for a moment - the emotions, the giddiness, the fear - before looking back. He can see it on Haiji's face, building - understanding and joy creaking its way out of his body in the ways of the crook of a grin and teary eyes. Kakeru thinks about saying it outright, wonders if he could.
“Yeah,” is all Haiji says, smiling, breath still a little rough and uneven. “Yeah, me too.”
Haiji leans forward to meet Kakeru in a kiss that tastes like tears, but feels like relief, like all the running itself: exhilarating but exhaustive, cumulative and building. Like the answer for his belief in it all, in his dream, in his members, in himself, in Kakeru.
Like love, he thinks.