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For a second, there’s nothing but white noise and the softness of Kei’s breathing on Tobio’s cheek, making the hairs stand on end as he counts the inhales, exhales. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. It’s Kei.
It’s Kei’s fingers brushing his waist so lightly he can scarcely feel it. It’s Kei’s glasses reflecting the street lamp light outside from the bedside table. It’s Kei’s breath stuttering when he speaks.
“I wish I knew what people thought about me.”
“Huh?” Tobio is startled, too lost in his own thoughts and his own Tsukishima Kei to grasp the words.
“I wish I knew what people thought about me. Like, when I just do things. You could be thinking about how much you hate me right now and I’d never know.” Tobio has maneuvered himself to be able to look at Kei’s profile, the curve of his jaw, and the warmness of the street lights through his window reflecting off his cheekbones and the tip of his nose. But the outside light is so far away, so far away from the two of them and from his Kei, because it will always be him and Kei and nothing else will ever matter. “Don’t you feel the same?”
“I suppose. Sometimes,” is what Tobio said, but Tobio is thinking I love you, I love you, I love you-- Tobio wishes he was a better man.
“You didn’t deny it,” Tobio is still looking at Kei and his reflecting cheekbones and the sharpness of his jaw and the way his eyes downcast towards him without him moving his head. His lips are tilted upwards and Tobio’s chest hurts. “I think you hate me.”
“You have a scar on your temple,” is how he answers, instead, because Kei knows. I love you, I love you, I love you-- “where’s it from?”
“Fell off the counter a few years ago,” Kei grins at him, and Tobio knows what’s coming. “Don’t you have battle scars, oh Great King?”
He rolls his eyes despite himself, “shut up.”
Kei’s smile softens, his eyes back on the ceiling staring up at Tobio’s glow-in-the-dark stickers and the room goes quiet again. It’s Tobio and it’s the white noise and the warm light of the street lamps through the window and it's Tsukishima Kei and the softness of his breathing and his hand moving under the cover to find Tobio’s own and, God, he loves him, he loves him, he loves him. It’s him and Kei, always, the wind and the street lights and the bird on the roof of the house opposite can see them, but with Tobio staring at him as if he’d hung the real stars, not just the fluorescent green ones, they know not to disturb them. Tobio brings his free hand up to rest on Kei’s cheek, softly, quietly, carefully. Kei looks at him again, with that barely there smile, and Tobio- well, Tobio wishes he was a better man.
“I love you,” he thinks, he says, he is.
Kei brings his hand up to cover Tobio’s, kissing his palm. Kei knows. Tobio knows, the shared air between them knows. The wind and the bird on the roof of the house opposite and the warmness of the street lights know. Tobio loves him.