Work Text:
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you, because I know no other way / than this.
Pablo Neruda, Love Sonnet XVII
✩
Doppo can’t get used to it.
Hifumi does it so naturally, slipping into his role of the good boyfriend in their newfound relationship easily enough.
He greets Doppo at the door when he comes home from work; his welcome home muffled as he presses his soft, carefully glossed lips against Doppo’s before Doppo can even close and lock the door properly. Doppo makes a vague noise of protest at the show of affection. Hifumi ignores him, and he kisses and he kisses him, breathes Doppo in like air. He stops only when Doppo’s stomach loudly reminds them that his last meal was shitty conbini onigiri, and it needs Hifumi’s certified-made-with-TLC homemade food now.
Later, Doppo sets the table, while Hifumi lays out the dishes for their dinner that day. They work in comfortable silence, not saying much, but Hifumi hums a tune and Doppo wonders absentmindedly whether it’s going to be the song for their next rap battle.
They settle, and make easy conversation; familiar. Doppo complains about his work day and his stupid, balding demon boss, and Hifumi snickers at the terrible analogies and imagery while also trying his best to cheer Doppo up.
He licks his lips as he swings his legs like a kid and bumps his feet against Doppo’s shin and he says, Hey, do you want to check out that dessert café that opened in Harajuku last week, and Doppo tells him no bluntly but makes a note to search up the place and save a date in his planner anyway.
For now, Hifumi brushes it off, laughs like bells and windchimes on a summer’s day as he swipes the curry beside Doppo’s lip with a graceful thumb, and proceeds licks it away like it’s a normal thing to do and not something that’s sending Doppo’s heart racing at a hundred kilometres a second.
Doppo swallows, and decidedly does not comment on it.
Hifumi smirks.
The bastard.
Even later, Doppo’s lying on the couch working on a sales report as Hifumi sits by the coffee table with a sewing kit balanced carefully on his lap, fixing the small sleeve tear in Doppo’s suit. Doppo had once asked Hifumi why he bothered doing this for Doppo each night, because wasn’t it an annoyance to do so? Hifumi had hummed, said that sewing was therapeutic for him, and that he didn’t mind it because it was for Doppo.
Now, Doppo looks up from the glaring laptop screen. He watches Hifumi’s experienced hands as he weaves the needle back and forth and back and forth again, lulling repetitive movements, patching the suit up with the grey thread so skillfully it blends in so seamlessly and naturally into the soft fabric, making it look like it was never damaged in the first place.
And even later still, Hifumi douses himself and his own suit in the pungent perfume that makes Doppo’s nose twitch, laughs mirthfully as Doppo tries to hold back a sneeze.
He grins and says, I’ll be back soon, and Doppo replies, Come home safely without a second thought. It’s been years since the last time his breath hitched and voice stuttered over the word home.
Doppo-chin, kiss me goodbye, Hifumi says and Doppo complies at Hifumi’s pout, giving him a peck on the lips, careful not to mess up his perfect host makeup.
(It’s selfish, maybe, the strange manifestation of possessiveness that Doppo feels over Hifumi. How he distinguishes host-mode Hifumi and regular Hifumi, always careful not to smudge the line between the two. It’s selfish, how he keeps this image of regular Hifumi as his Hifumi, pockets it away in the hollow of his chest, out of reach from the prying grasps of Hifumi’s clients.
It’s an inside joke, almost: how perfect, host-mode Hifumi is too good and too perfect for Doppo, and yet — regular Hifumi is perfect for Doppo. Doppo is the only one who can take Hifumi apart, pull this god from his unreachable throne and bring him to his knees, a reminder that at the end of the day Hifumi is good for Doppo only.)
Hifumi leaves for work.
But he’ll come back, in the wee hours of the morning. And, like clockwork, instinct or a habit etched so deep in his bones, he settles in next to Doppo on the bed, kisses the shell of his lover’s ear as gently as a fluttering of moths’ wings. Splays his palms against the warm expanse of Doppo’s chest as he curls up next to him.
Doppo feels Hifumi against his skin; he doesn’t need an electrocardiogram to read the familiar, steady thrum of Hifumi’s heartbeat that whispers his name like it’s the only thing it knows, or the repeated “I love you” spelled out in the hum of his pulse when Doppo turns and nuzzles into the curve of Hifumi’s neck.
They’re at their rawest here.
Bared out like spring flowers unfurling under the warmth of a coaxing sun, the hope of a life to come.
And later, and later, and later — Doppo thinks, he can’t get used to it, still, but maybe, maybe, that is because there was nothing new to get used to.