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Long after Maki’s father has slammed the door and made off with the money, Touma holds Maki tight. His mother won’t be home until sunset, and so it’s just him and Touma in the tight confines of the hallway, clutching fast to the tender warmth of their embrace.
There's too much to say, and a language full of words that’ll never be enough to say it. Maki doesn't even know if there's a name for this emotion—the heart-wrenching, gut-churning knowledge he'd kill for someone and not himself. He continues to press his face into the damp fabric of Touma’s shirt even when his tears dry, clinging to him like a lifeline. (Once upon a time, Shinjou Touma had been a pedantic little kid, and Maki's cravings had been to be held by the strong, kind, long-haired older brother. But now, well—Maki and his mom have a little extra to spend on dinner this week, and Ryouma isn't anywhere in sight.) And it’s funny, that Maki’s thinking in terms of lifelines when moments, or minutes (or hours; time no longer feels tangible) ago they’d both threatened to sever someone else’s; funny it's only after chasing the heels of death itself that Maki feels so very alive. He can hear Touma’s heartbeat where their chests press together, heavy and thundering. It shows no signs of slowing, and when at last Maki pulls away to wipe the tear stains and crust from his eyes, the loss of it feels he's like losing a part of himself. Without its pounding beat, the room is dully quiet, and Maki is left empty inside.
“Thank you, Touma,” Maki says again, forcing down the next sob that catches in the back of his throat.
“Of course," Touma starts, and his eyes are a little bleary as well. "I’d—”
Tentatively, he reaches out to rejoin their bodies, placing a hand atop Maki's shoulder. Aside the tears, Touma's eyes shine with a wide, eager, earnestness, and like hot vices, his fingers burn through Maki's shirt.
“Don’t say you’d do it for anyone,” Maki warns, placing his hand atop Touma's. “Isn’t that the whole point?”
“I—" Touma seems to start, his cheeks flushed with the barest hint of red. "You’re—”
It's not often Maki sees words escape Touma, and so he can't stop himself from grinning. “Precious, huh?" he remembers. "You flatter me.”
“Maki!" Touma huffs, fully red-cheeked now. "I was being serious.”
“I know, I know. I was, too—I’m just trying to lighten the mood, a little.”
“Oh.”
"Yeah."
"Hey, Maki," Touma starts slowly, and Maki doesn't know if he's imagining the tightening grip on his shoulder. "You said that piece of shit used to hit you, right?"
"I—" The air in the apartment is thick and heavy—when Maki swallows, he finds his throat dry. "Yeah."
(It's definitely not his imagination: Touma's grip is tighter. He squeezes Maki's shoulder with a fierceness, and Maki half-fears his skin will break or bruise or burn.)
"Where?"
"Where?" Maki echoes. "My cheek, mostly. Sometimes my arms or my back."
At the memory, he shivers. But why bring that up again now?
Touma nods as he had in the classroom, but this time, he reaches out. Brings the hand not rooting Maki into place up to cup Maki's left cheek, palm even warmer than his fingers.
“Here?” he asks, and Maki thinks every nerve in his body is alight.
He gulps. "Y-yeah."
And closes his eyes as Touma goes on to cup his other cheek, fingers moving like nimble dancers over the bridge of his nose.
"And here?" His voice is coarser. Deeper.
"Touma," Maki rasps, "what are you—"
“You can tell me to stop,” Touma murmurs, and his hands trickle down Maki’s cheeks to rest on his shoulders again before trailing down further to bracket his biceps, "but I promise I won’t hurt you. I’ll hurt anyone else who tries to lay a finger on you,” he adds as he pulls Maki in again, “but never you.”
“Never me?” Maki asks into Touma’s shoulder. They’re close enough now that his lips brush the skin of Touma’s neck as he speaks, but Touma doesn’t flinch—doesn’t give any indication he’d felt the ghostly kiss at all.
He just holds Maki tighter, lets his palms come to rest on the small of Maki’s back. When he speaks, his voice is steady and affirmative: the promise, Maki thinks, of a boy who’d kill for someone he’s just gotten to re-know. “Never,” Touma says with such conviction Maki has no trouble believing he’ll remain steadfast in this pledge for all eternity. “And if for some reason I do lose control and hurt you, I'll definitely kill myself."
"You don't need to go that far," Maki mutters, because if—
If anyone—
If anyone’s going to—
If anyone’s going to hurt him—
"Yes, I do," Touma exhales, and in the span of the ensuing silence, warmth moves itself from the small of Maki’s back to the tucked-in edge of his shirt.
If anyone’s going to, it may as well be—
Touma untucks Maki’s shirt in a single, fluid motion, and then the heat returns to Maki’s spine, but this time, it's on his bare skin. Touma’s thumb is rubbing circles into Maki’s tailbone, and Maki wants to sigh, because Touma is so, so warm—
"Touma..." is all he needs to say, and within an instant Touma’s hands are back on his own lap and he's jumped away from Maki like he’s the burning one.
“Sorry," he says. "You were all over me just a second ago, so I thought—” He bites his lip. “Shit. Did I read into that wrong?”
“... Not exactly,” Maki murmurs.
“Then, did you want me to take my glasses off?”
“Huh?”
“So I’ll look more like Ryouma.”
“Idiot,” Maki laughs, though the motion of it makes him dizzy. “Why are you bringing that up now?” He shakes his head. “Ryouma wasn’t here just now, was he? You were. But I do want to know something," he starts, thinking of Yuta. "Why me?”
“Because,” Touma says, looking at Maki like he’s the idiot and the answer to this question is as simple as two-plus-two. “I found you first. And I don’t want anyone else to have you.”
He looks at Maki like he’s the stupidly dense one, but his gaze seems to burn hotter than all the stars combined.
Maki tilts his head, considers. “Found me, huh?”
The traces of Touma's touch linger on his back like a handprint, and as he thinks about what those hands might feel like elsewhere, gooseflesh raises atop his arms.
Touma's fingers curl into the fabric of his pants. "Is that a no?"
Is it? A month ago it would've been. Two weeks ago, probably. It seems like just yesterday Maki was wrenching his wrist from Touma's grasp, sick and tired of an old nuisance trailing him like a lost dog. At first, it'd been for the money (and there are questions he still needs answers to, like where it's all coming from), and a type of mutual selfishness Maki is about as well-acquainted with as anyone can be, but somewhere along the short line he'd fallen in love with the swing of a racket and the hard smack of a soft ball. Strategizing. Analyzing. Pairing up his teammates like a matchmaker. The visor shielding his eyes from the sunlight, and the sound of tennis shoes squeaking on pavement as he bounces about he and Touma's court.
Scoring. Winning. Victory he's starting to get high on.
And now, this: cash raining toward his father's feet like coins into a fountain, a mutual declaration of fatal war. The intensity Touma's looking at him with, like Maki is a tennis racket and Touma wants to pluck all his strings out one by one by one. It's a passion Maki has only seen him wield so far during club hours, and Touma can claim it's still about tennis, but really, Maki doubts the fact he'd throw his life away to end Maki's father's has much to do with tennis at all.
So, no, Maki can't say he's opposed to... whatever this is. But just because it has nothing to do with tennis doesn't mean nothing does, and just because in this cramped little hallway they feel as distant from the high school as they do the other orbiting planets, it doesn't mean they really are.
And so, in a split second Maki decides "It's a later," because if there's one thing he can do and Touma can't, it's making the executive decision to put his feelings on hold. "I don’t want this to affect our playing style," he adds when the flames in Touma's eyes die a little, because if anything, (now or later or after they finally win), Maki wants to stoke them. "We still need to win, so—I'll think about it. Just... come back to me after the season’s over.”
“You say that like I’m going to leave,” Touma says, as though him staying is a given.
But Maki shrugs. "You might." You did. temporarily, he doesn't need to add. "People do."
"Well, I'm different," Touma declares, and boy oh boy doesn't Maki know it. He sits up straighter, then, puffs out his chest while Maki remains slouched. "I won't."
Touma extends a hand—one of the hands he'd used to touch Maki—and as if they're children again, they link pinkies.
The words l'll swallow a thousand needles boil up on Maki's lips before he douses them, and instead, he says "It's a promise."
They shake, Maki's cold fingers linked with Touma's warm ones, and Maki thinks this may be the first promise he's made where he doesn't quite know what he's promising, just that if the stars align and fate moves in their favor, the reward for keeping it will be gold.