Work Text:
(0:01)
Tooru smiles, momentarily, at the sounds of a guitar strum—the beginnings of a new song because he’d forgotten to put theirs on loop.
(0:11)
‘This one is nice,’ he thinks from where he is on the bed—sedated—looking up at the ceiling of his room. He listens to Tori Kelly (he had to get up for a second to see who was singing) and closes his eyes. She has a pretty voice.
(0:39)
Please don’t scar this young heart
Just take my hand
That’s cute.
It doesn’t really hit him until the first chorus.
I was made for loving you
(0:54)
All at once, his brain is scattered, and he scrambles to put the song back to 0:00 to catch the lyrics, eyes already wet and brows already furrowed, mumbling a muted What when he clicks.
(0:11)
A dangerous plan, just this time
Oh boy.
Hajime floods his mind.
A dangerous plan, just this time
A stranger’s hand—
Hajime’s hand in his, as a joke, at the time in their freshman year when everyone was making trends two at a time to cope with the lull in the school year. People like Tooru and Hajime that were caught up in it ended up flirting with a lot of other guys (this was the trend; just flirt with everyone), but somewhere along that line they began to do it with each other in exclusivity.
—clutched in mine
They laughed when it happened, delighted at the implication of them both pretending to reach for a ping-pong ball that had strayed beneath their seats. They didn’t talk about it.
I’ll take this chance
“What?” Tooru said into the phone, one Saturday evening. “Iwaizumi likes me?”
“Yeah,” Takahiro said. “He’s planning to confess Monday.”
So call me blind
“I like you too,” Tooru blushed, even though he didn’t. Not yet.
I’ve been waiting—
Tooru thought, ‘I’m going to marry this guy,’ when he looked at Hajime on their first anniversary.
—all my life
Tooru is sucked back into the present, the weight of reality heavy on his shoulders and pressing at his chest.
He thinks of Hajime—sweet, strong Hajime who could be neither of those things and still be Hajime—and Tooru would love him. Tooru loved him. Tooru loves him.
(I’ve been waiting all my life)
He couldn’t wait another lifetime for something like that. That was impossible.
(0:39)
Please don’t scar—
Tooru closes his eyes. He breathes.
(0:42)
—this young heart
(0:46)
Just take my hand
There is a dam somewhere that he built when he decided to close himself off from all of this. The dam doesn’t break when he’s at school—his façade in perfect place amidst the chaos of third year.
He smiles and lets it go at Hanamaki, who gives him a face that says, ‘Stop pretending, Oikawa,’ and even then, he only cries a little.
It’s the chorus that got him, and it’s what gets him now; something about the beat that didn’t even match the syllables, instead catching up to the tail-end of the words like they waited too long and then couldn’t, to parse the line.
(0:51)
I
was made
for lo
ving you
‘Fuck.’
Even though we may be
Hopeless hearts just passing through
(1:00)
He has to pause the song.
He plays it again.
(1:01)
Every bone screaming,
I don’t know what we should do
What should we do? he asked Hajime, a few days short of two weeks ago.
I don’t know, Hajime texted back.
I love you, Tooru texted.
But it looks like this time I have to let you go
I can’t keep making you unhappy
Hajime didn’t reply after that.
(1:07)
All I know is, darling,
I was made for loving you
Half of Tooru wants to stop listening to the song already. Too much has happened—all in his mind—at this point, and it’s really, really unhealthy.
He wants to close the tab, shut his laptop down, and shove every memory that is good and bad back into the far end of his mind, and return to what he was doing.
What was he doing?
He was listening to their song.
The thought of it threatens him now. Something about the piano music making it sound like things are alright; something about the lyrics saying it will be alright, always, and Tooru knows it’s a lie.
The other half of him wants to hit the spacebar and see it through to the end, because the song was still good—the guitar strums like a woodland sunset he’d fantasized in his youth; the beat like a hollow drum in the middle of a fairy ring. Like him, so long ago, wandering into love when it was like a fantasy. A small part of him still thinks it is.
It makes him sick to think something that sounded so in love could manage to hurt him this way. Though he knows it’s not the song; it’s Hajime. Hajime who hurt him, and Hajime who he’d hurt, somewhat.
‘It hurt him to be with me,’ Tooru thinks, pressing play, ‘I’m not hurting him now.’
(1:14)
Hold me close
Oh, great. A duet.
Through the night
(1:20)
Don’t let me go, we’ll be alright
Touch my soul and hold it tight
Tooru knows the next words. He tries to breathe and his hand clenches.
(1:33)
I’ve been waiting all my life
‘I’ve been waiting all my life,’ he echoes wordlessly. ‘I’ll be waiting all my life.’
He replays the last few lyrics.
Touch my soul and hold it tight
Hajime had a gorilla grip on that, didn’t he? What a pain.
He had come into Tooru’s world with little ceremony, dragging his hands over everything there: His dreams. His plans. His hands; his skin, charred where Hajime’s touch had burned him; seared himself into permanence in Tooru’s life.
I’ve been waiting all my life
The dreaded chorus was up next, right after the string of words that dragged the whole thing into some sort of abject crescendo.
Ed Sheeran is singing. He says, I won’t scar your young heart; just take my hand, and Tooru braces himself.
(1:54)
Ed Sheeran and Tori Kelly sing in unison.
‘Cause I was made for loving you
Something about the addition of that first word hits him like a bat to the back of his head. ‘‘Cause,’ he thinks over. ‘‘Cause I was made for loving you.’
Hajime is in his mind’s eye again—this boy he was made to love just because. He could be nowhere near sweet, or strong, and Tooru would love him still. Loves him still.
(1:59)
Even though we may be
Hopeless hearts just passing through
God, Tooru hates that line so much.
(2:04)
Every bone screaming,
I don’t know what we should do
That’s just it, isn’t it? Tooru doesn’t know what he should do. Not anymore, without Hajime.
Between staring at nothing, and sending people unwanted texts, or trying to keep it down whenever he did so much as gulp a glass of water, he truly had no direction at the moment.
(2:10)
All I know is, darling,
I was made for loving you
(2:17)
Please don’t go
It catches Tooru off-guard, how they sing it like a plea. He no longer bothers to suppress his tears, shuddering when the same words rise to the surface from where they have sunken in his bones—please don’t go.
Spoken a hundred times to Hajime. Thought of him a million times over. Please don’t go.
(2:22)
I’ve been waiting so long
Oh, you don’t even know me at all
Tooru thinks his mother can probably hear him.
He thinks, ‘Hajime knows me best.’ Hajime knows Tooru like the back of his own hand—knew what hurt him and what didn’t; bought him small things that he knew made Tooru happy. Somewhere along the way they had lost each other and wandered into different orbits.
Tooru remembers the little fragments leading up to the big moment.
“You’re stopping me from doing the things I want,” said Hajime, four months into their relationship. “It’s suffocating.”
Two months before that, he asked Tooru, “Why don’t you get jealous?”
They had endured two years, three months. In the in-between of seemingly boundless affection and love, they endured the countless fights, the petty misunderstandings—things Tooru knew could have not happened if they had just been better.
In spite of everything, Tooru knows Hajime would always have loved him best.
(2:36)
But I was made for loving you
The song mellows, and this time Tooru knows for sure it’s ending.
(2:42)
I was made for loving you
Even though we may be
Hopeless hearts just passing through
Every bone screaming,
I don’t know what we should do
All I know is, darling —
The room drowns in the numbness of Tooru’s silent sobbing. He thinks, for the thousandth time, of Hajime. It seeps out of his bedroom ceiling and into the stars, where the fact nestles itself for all eternity. Maybe that is how fate works.
(2:58)
All I know is, darling,
I was made for loving you
Tooru could love no one better.