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I’m in love love!
“Solid start,” Hikaru says, grinning. He looks at Kaoru. “Your line.”
Kaoru bites his lip, tapping his fingers on the table. They’re sitting at one of the tables in Music Room 3, the three of them crowded around a piece of paper that Kyoya is carefully writing on. “From the first time I saw you, I’ve been head over heels in love!”
“Beautiful,” Hikaru says. He snickers. “Haruhi is going to hate us. Kyoya, your turn. “
Kyoya sighs. “Do I have to?”
“Tamaki gave us a task,” Kaoru points out, “so we have to do it. He put us in a team.”
“I hate group projects,” Kyoya mutters. He clicks the back of his pen, up, down, up, down. “It’s like… my heart is stuck in a never ending typhoon.”
Hikaru raises his eyebrows, looking at Kyoya with a weird expression on his face. “So we’re going poetic?”
“It’s just a simile,” Kyoya mutters, “one simile doesn’t make it a poem.”
“A simile,” Hikaru echoes, rolling his eyes.
“Great,” Kaoru says, brushing over Hikaru. “Hikaru, your move. Follow that up with something.”
“How am I supposed to follow that up?” Hikaru asks. “He used a simile.”
Kyoya sighs, clicking his pen again. The sound echoes across the music room, its own kind of song. It’s a nervous habit, and Kyoya isn’t sure where he picked it up, but he’s recently found himself clicking at the pen more often than usual— when he’s in music room alone with Tamaki, when he’s doing homework late at night and listening to Chopin, when the host club clients are gathering around the boys.
He sighs again. Clicks the pen open. “All of these feelings of love keep whipping around in my heart like the breaking waves.”
The twins turn to stare at him, matching dubious expressions on their faces. There’s a spot of silence, and Kyoya looks between the two of them, not quite sure what he said that was so wrong.
Then Hikaru breaks the silence, the three of them all turning back to the paper. “You’re making it a poem,” he complains.
“It’s a love letter,” Kaoru points out, “It should be at least a little poetic.”
“Fine,” Hikaru mumbles. He reads over the letter again, the words coming out of his mouth in more of a stumble than in a poem. Then he grins. “When the typhoon’s rising waters come, I want to rendezvous with you on Noah’s Ark!”
Kaoru laughs out loud at that, his laugh always enough to make Hikaru grin simultaneously. Kyoya, despite himself, finds himself smiling, too. It’s a stupid letter, but it’ll get the job done. All they have to do is get Suzushima to the classroom where Haruhi can talk some sense into him.
The laughter dies down after a minute, Kyoya penciling in a final, “I do! I do!” to the end of the letter, much to Hikaru’s amusement. Kyoya reads over the letter one last time, then folds it up and puts a little sticker to hold it together.
“Beautiful,” Kaoru says, eyes bright. Then he turns to Kyoya, something in his gaze twisting up into the mischievous smile that he usually wears. “So, Kyoya. Who were you thinking about when you said that?”
Kyoya blinks. “No one?”
It's a lie, he knows that before he’s even said it. He knows with a certainty that only comes with unrequited love, because Kaoru says, Who were you thinking about? and Tamaki’s face flashes before Kyoya’s eyes in the eternity of a blink. He knows, because when Kaoru speaks, Kyoya hears Tamaki’s laugh in his head, loud enough that he thinks Hikaru and Kaoru might be able to hear it too.
“Liar,” Hikaru says, a grin widening on his face. “So, who is it?”
“There’s no one,” Kyoya snaps, “and if there were, you two would be the last people to know.”
Kaoru mock-gasps, putting a hand to his chest. “I’m wounded. We’re completely trustworthy.”
Kyoya rolls his eyes. “You two are the worst. Come on, let’s just get this letter to Suzushima.”
“We’ll find out eventually,” Hikaru sings out, even as Kyoya stands up and begins to leave the room. He doesn’t look back, refusing to give Hikaru the satisfaction. Behind him, Kaoru just laughs.
—
When they were fifteen, Tamaki and Kyoya kissed for the first time. It was for practice, just to see what it felt like. All friends do it, Tamaki remembers arguing, just for practice. Kyoya hadn’t protested nearly as much as Tamaki had expected him to.
Instead of protesting, he had just kissed Tamaki.
Tamaki took that kiss and fell in love with it, and then refused to think about it for the next two years. But now he can’t stop thinking about it, because Haruhi is here and Tamaki is trying so hard to be in love with them, and he can’t bring himself to do it.
All he can think about is the way that he had put a hand to Kyoya’s cheek; the way that Kyoya’s breath had hit his lips; the way that he had made a surprised, happy kind of noise, like he hadn’t expected to be kissed, even though Tamaki had asked for permission several times.
Tamaki, looking back on it, probably shouldn’t have loved that kiss so much. Best friends aren’t supposed to love each other like that, and Kyoya must have forgotten about that moment by now. Best friends aren’t supposed to lean into each other and press their lips to match, even just for practice. But they had anyways, and Tamaki doesn’t regret it nearly as much as he should.
—
After the party ends, the hosts all converge at the Ootori estate, moving up to Kyoya’s room in a mess of laughter and smiles. Kyoya doesn’t know at what point his room became the room that everyone wants to hang out in when they’re with the full group, but he doesn’t mind all that much. It makes the large, empty, soundless room seem brighter. It makes it seem more like a home rather than a room— he always feels more at home when he’s with the hosts.
“It worked perfectly,” Kaoru says, bumping his shoulder against Kyoya’s side as the two of them sit down on one of the lounges. “And we had the accident at the end, and Tamaki didn’t kiss anyone.”
Kyoya doesn’t look at him. “It was entertaining, wasn’t it? The clients liked it.”
“That is what matters,” Kaoru muses. “And not that Tamaki didn’t kiss anyone.”
“I couldn’t care less about that.” Kyoya has always been a good liar. He glances at Kaoru out of the corner of his eye, finding Kaoru looking at him with a smile on his lips. “I really couldn’t.”
Kaoru shrugs, leaning back against the lounge and stretching out his arms. “Me neither. Do you think that would have been his first kiss? It was Haruhi’s.”
“No,” Kyoya says, not at all thinking about it, and much faster than he had meant to.
Kaoru sits up straight, grin widening. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t,” Kyoya tells him. It’s another lie, but this time, it’s not a good one. “It’s just a guess.”
Kaoru hums, looking away from Kyoya and towards Tamaki— Tamaki is lying on the lounge across from them, his head in Haruhi’s lap and staring up at them with that dumbfounded look on his face, like he can’t quite believe they exist. Haruhi has one hand resting on his chest, rising and falling with his breath, and they don’t quite seem to know that they’re doing it.
“Have you had your first kiss?” Kaoru asks. He’s still not looking at Kyoya, but Kyoya still feels like Kaoru is prying straight through him. “I haven’t.”
“Why are you suddenly so interested in this?”
Kaoru shrugs. “Just making conversation.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Alright,” Kaoru says— it’s not defeated, but said with more of a smirk than anything else. Like he knows something Kyoya doesn’t know, or like he has a plan that Kyoya isn’t a part of. It’s kind of terrifying. But he can’t ask without admitting that he’s been lying, and Kyoya will never do that. He’ll just have to sit and wait and see what he does.
—
They’re sitting on Kyoya’s bed, Tamaki reading aloud from a book in French. He knows that Kyoya only understands about every other word, despite how hard he’s been trying to learn French and how hard Tamaki has been trying to teach him, but he seems at peace despite not understanding the book’s plot.
Finally, Tamaki tires of trying to sound out each word slow enough for Kyoya to understand, and he closes the book.
“Mon amour,” Tamaki says hesitantly. “Can I…”
Kyoya turns his head to stare at him, frowning. Tamaki doesn’t meet his eyes, not quite sure how to handle this moment. He’s never been nervous around Kyoya before; Kyoya has never made him uneasy. “What is it?”
“Hikaru showed me your letter,” Tamaki says, slow, but unsteady. “It sounds pretty… genuine. Haruhi would never say any of it, but I think that there are some people who would.”
Like you, is what he doesn’t say, and he doesn't think that he’ll ever be able to say that, not in the complimentary way he wants to say it. Kyoya closes his eyes, looking away from Tamaki. Not for the first time, Tamaki is grateful for knowing that he’s the one person Kyoya can’t lie to.
“I’m a good writer,” is all that Kyoya says.
“People write love letters from the heart,” Tamaki says, and he can practically hear his own hopeless romanticism coming out. It comes in a song, in a smile, in a laugh. “You wrote that from the heart.”
“I don’t have a heart,” Kyoya says dryly.
Tamaki laughs out loud at that, bubbling and bright. “Of course you have a heart.”
Kyoya opens his eyes and Tamaki meets his gaze, wondering if he’s hearing all of the things that he’s not saying. He wonders if Kyoya knows that he’s saying, My heart is yours, and I want yours to be mine. He wonders if Kyoya knows that he’s promising, I would keep it safe.
But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t think he can ever admit those things. All he can do is argue. “If you didn’t have a heart, you wouldn’t have agreed to write the letter when i asked you. You would have told Hikaru and Kaoru to do it alone.”
Kyoya stares at him for a moment, frowning as if Tamaki is missing some bigger part of the picture. Tamaki thinks that maybe he is missing anything, but if he is, it’s because he’s so busy hiding the worry in his own head: he can’t know you love him.
“If they had done it alone,” Kyoya says carefully, “it wouldn’t have worked.”
Tamaki shrugs, fiddling with the corner of the book cover. He folds it in and out and in and out. “Maybe. But either way, you’re deflecting.”
“From what?”
“From telling me who it is that you love,” Tamaki says simply. It’s just another fact, he tells himself. It’s not something that’s utterly wrecking his own heart to speak into existence.
Kyoya closes his eyes again. “I'm not in love with anyone.”
“Tell me that again,” Tamaki dares him, not quite sure why he’s doing it, “and look me in the eyes.”
“Fuck off,” Kyoya snaps, sitting up with a start. He leans over, grabbing Tamaki’s shoulders and shaking him slightly, Tamaki just letting Kyoya shove him around. He stills after a second and glares at Tamaki. “I’m not in love.”
But his cheeks are turning red, and Tamaki can see the twitch at the left corner of his mouth. Kyoya repeats it, I’m not, and Tamaki wonders what he has to hide.
—
“Just tell us who it is,” Hikaru says, leaning one arm on Kyoya’s shoulder.
Kaoru leans against the other shoulder, looking at Kyoya from the side and wearing those wide eyes that make Kyoya almost want to give in. “We can help you, Kyoya.”
“I don’t need your help,” Kyoya sighs. “You have clients. Please focus.”
“I can’t focus,” Hikaru complains, “when I’m thinking about you and your potential girlfriend.”
Kyoya bites down on his lip, hard enough to draw out the taste of copper. “I don’t want a girlfriend.”
“But—” Hikaru stops. He straightens up, arm no longer on Kyoya’s shoulder.
“Ah,” Kaoru says. “That makes sense.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Kyoya mutters, voice hard and high.
He hadn’t meant to say it like that, to say it with so much meaning, but Kaoru and Hikaru see through him anyways. Somehow, at some point, Kyoya lost his shield against the hosts, against the kind of genuineness that they all live with. At some point, Kyoya had started to be honest with the six of them. Unfortunately, that includes the twins.
Kaoru shrugs. He straightens up too, but only to throw his arm around both of Kyoya’s shoulders, pulling him closer and away from Hikaru, who still stands there, as if in shock. “Just that we love you. No matter—”
“Stop it,” Kyoya says, swallowing. “You’re making a scene.”
“We’re professing our undying support and love for you,” Hikaru says loudly, snapping out of his shock. “Doesn’t that deserve a scene?”
Kyoya sighs. He probably should have expected this of them. It was why he was never going to tell anyone. But here he is anyways.
“So,” Kaoru says, “who’s the lucky boy?”
And they’re back to this, Kyoya thinks. It always circles back to Tamaki.
—
Tamaki isn’t ever going to confess his feelings— it’s a terrible idea, for a million reasons. He’s just going to sit in the comfort of Kyoya’s friendship, and know that it’ll have to be enough for him. It’s spring, and so he’ll just sit with Kyoya on the lawn and do homework. He rips up clumps of grass and tosses them at Kyoya, the grass scattering over his papers despite Kyoya shoving Tamaki away from him.
It’s the kind of moment that reminds Tamaki why they’re friends, and why he’s so in love with Kyoya: because they’re laughing, and he’s forgetting about the rest of the world for just a moment. For just an instant in time, the only things that he cares about are the wind and the cherry blossoms and himself and Kyoya. For just that second, Tamaki breathes in and out and doesn’t fear anything. Just then, the only people in the world are the two of them.
And what is love, Tamaki thinks, if not safety?
—
By the time that he’s twelve, Kyoya knows that he’s gay. It’s one of those things— just something that has always seemed to be a part of him. He’s never really concerned himself with it, never really cared much about it. It’s just another fact about him, something that he’s never going to be able to do anything about.
He knows the way that his family works— it’s not that they wouldn’t accept him so much as it is that he’ll be put into an arranged marriage no matter what he says, and that’s not going to happen with someone of the same sex. So Kyoya will simply never fall in love.
As soon as he meets Tamaki, Kyoya fails step one.
—
They’re sitting at a table in the music room, Tamaki across from Kyoya as he types up the day’s numbers on his laptop. The only noise is the clicking of the keys and Tamaki’s soft sigh, making Kyoya look up at him.
“I just want you to be happy,” Tamaki says.
He tries to make it as soft and gentle as possible, as if happiness doesn’t come with a thousand stipulations, like, If you fall in love with someone else, I don’t know what I’ll do, and, I’m in love with you, in the grandest and worst sense of the world, and I want you to love me back.
“It’s not that easy,” Kyoya murmurs. He licks his lips, not meeting Tamaki’s eyes. “Please drop it.”
“Wouldn’t it help, though?” Tamaki asks, forgetting every piece of his carefully crafted speech. “You’re so stressed all of the time. Wouldn’t it help to have a boyfriend?”
Kyoya freezes, and then it hits Tamaki what he just said. Kyoya doesn’t know he knows, hasn’t technically come out to him, and Tamaki knows the brand of heart attack that comes with coming out.
Tamaki swallows down his guilt for the moment. “Hikaru told me,” he says, even softer. “Sorry, I meant to… I was going to pretend he hadn’t, and wait for you to tell me yourself, but I— forgot.”
“Right,” Kyoya says numbly. “You forgot.”
Tamaki shrugs, trying to be as casual as possible. He leans over the table, pushing Kyoya’s laptop closed and taking both of his hands. He looks at Kyoya, in the kind of way that he knows says all too much and all too little. In the kind of way that betrays what he feels, like a thousand love letters are piling up in envelope upon envelope, flooding out onto his tongue.
“I don’t mind at all,” Tamaki says quietly, “if you’re worried about that. I love you, you know that, right? Unconditionally.”
Kyoya stares at him for a moment, and Tamaki wonders what he’s thinking. How he’s processing all of that— the I love you, the Unconditionally, the hands on hands.
“I have to go,” Kyoya finally mutters. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
—
Kyoya is not hiding. He is absolutely not hiding from anyone, and he’s definitely not hiding from Tamaki. He is, however, sitting at the back of an empty classroom, an hour late to the Host Club meeting, scrolling mindlessly on his phone. He is, however, decidedly not intending to see Tamaki anytime soon.
It’s not for another half hour that someone finds him— it’s Kaoru, of all people, who steps into the classroom, and marches straight to Kyoya. “What could you possibly be sulking about?”
“I’m not sulking about anything,” Kyoya lies. It’s not his best lie, and Kaoru just raises his eyebrows. “Fine— I just didn’t want to talk to anyone. Everyone keeps getting on this whole you’re in love with Tamaki thing—”
“Wait, what?”
Kyoya freezes.
Kaoru stares at him.
Kyoya stares back.
Neither of them say anything.
It’s the most uncomfortable silence that Kyoya has ever sat through. He’s usually good with silence, good with sitting in the ending words of a conversation, good with ignoring the awkwardness of the quier. But staring at Kaoru, who still hasn’t said a word, is making Kyoya’s heart crumble.
“Don’t tell him,” Kyoya says quietly, still staring at Kaoru. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“That you’re in love with Tamaki?” Kaoru asks. His voice is an octave higher than normal— while this confession had made Kyoya’s heart crumble, it’s making Kaoru’s heart rise into his throat. “Kyoya, are you in love with Tamaki?”
Kyoya takes a deep breath, trying to tame his heart. “Please don’t make me say it again.”
“Oh,” Kaoru says, eyes still wide. “Okay.”
They both go quiet again, Kyoya searching Kaoru’s face for some sign of— what? He doesn’t quite know what he wants to see, or what he doesn’t want to see, just that he’s looking for something. Acceptance? Anger? Support? Laughter?
Instead he gets: “You should tell him. You might be… surprised.”
—
Valentine’s Day. Ninth grade. Kyoya and Tamaki sit next to each other, and they pass a note from one desk to another. Then they pass it back, and then back again, until the conversation ends. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Tamaki sits at the desk, knee bouncing, eyes still on the teacher, even as the note passes from Kyoya’s hand to his. He’s never been good at sitting still, and he’s never been good at keeping quiet. He has too many things to say, too many places he wants to go. But Kyoya, as their hands brush, makes him want to be still. I made you chocolates.
Kyoya sits there, perfectly still. He tries not to think too hard— not about everything he’s saying, and all of the things that he’s not saying, and all of the things that Tamaki is saying, and all of the things that he’s not. Tamaki passes the note back to him. You shouldn’t have.
The two of them are something strange, something that they can’t quite define. They have been, ever since they met, and they probably always will be. I wanted to.
The thing about Kyoya is that he is very, very good at pretending. He’s very good at pretending to like people, in order to make connections. He’s very good at pretending to care about things he doesn’t care about, in order to make people happy. He’s very good at pretending to think hard about math that he can do mentally in a moment. The one thing that he’s not good at is lying to Tamaki. His hand brushes Tamaki’s fingers as he takes the note back, unfolds it, reads it. You don’t like sweets.
But you do.
—
Kyoya is sitting at the table in his room, plotting out points on a coordinate grid, when Kaoru storms into the room and slams a piece of paper onto the table. Kyoya jumps, hands flying up as Kaoru stands in front of him, arms crossed.
“I’m bored,” Kaoru announces, “and I’m tired of you being lonely.”
“I’m not lonely,” Kyoya says, still staring at Kaoru, not sure how he got into the room and not sure why he had slammed down a blank piece of paper onto the table.
Kaoru rolls his eyes. “You’re doing math homework alone on a Friday night— no, that’s not even homework, is it? You’re just doing math problem sets for fun on a Friday night. That just screams lonely.”
Kyoya doesn't really know how to argue with that— he is alone, doing math problems on a Friday night. Kaoru is technically right about everything, and Kyoya loves technicalities.
“I’m not lonely,” he says anyways.
“Well,” Kaoru says, sitting down across from Kyoya and leaning forward. “I’m here now, and we’re fixing this.”
Kaoru pushes the paper closer towards him, then grabs the pen from where Kyoya had dropped it when Kaoru marched into the room. He shoves that forward too, and then looks at Kyoya expectantly.
“What is this?” Kyoya asks, staring at the paper and then up at Kaoru.
“You’re going to write a love letter,” Kaoru demands, “and then I’m going to give it to Tamaki, and then you can both stop being so damn lonely.”
—
Tamaki stands in the prep room of Music Room 3, wiping off the makeup from that day’s cosplay. He’s humming lightly to himself, and for the moment that he’s alone, everything is okay. Then Kaoru pushes the door open with his foot, marches into the room, and shoves an envelope into Tamaki’s hands.
Tamaki takes it, but he doesn’t look at the envelope, not yet. Instead, he just stares at Kaoru, bewildered, as Kaoru turns around and leaves. Just before the door slams shut, Tamaki catches a glimpse of Kyoya standing there, and then walking away.
—
Tamaki,
I’m not good with words. But Kaoru says I have to write this, and I want to, a little bit. I’m not sure why, because writing out all of my feelings and handing them to you in an envelope sounds horrifying. Terrifying. And I was never the brave one, of the two of us.
But I’m trying to be brave now.
You told me, the other day, that you love me unconditionally. Unconditional is a funny word, I think, because it’s almost always a lie. Everyone thinks something is unconditional, but there’s always a breaking point, eventually. Me being gay wasn’t a breaking point for you, but I think me being in love with you is probably a breaking point.
Even if your love is unconditional, that doesn’t make it any easier to hold when someone tells you something like this. It’s not that you won’t love me anymore, I think, it’s just that it will be weird to say. Uncomfortable. Until eventually it’s just uncomfortable to be around me.
Which is why I don’t want to send this letter. But then again— trying to be brave, remember? Kaoru is laughing at me, asking rhetorical questions to a letter that I’m silently hoping will burn before you ever read it. But also, I want you to read it. I want you to know who I am, and some awful, gaping, hungry part of who I am is what I feel for you.
So here I am, laid out for you to see: all my confessions, in less than three hundred words. I hope it’s still beautiful to you.
Thank you,
Kyoya
—
Tamaki doesn’t read the letter. He sits on his bed cross legged, the envelope on the covers in front of him, staring at him. He doesn’t know what’s in it, but he has a feeling— not one that he can place, but a feeling all the same. He doesn’t know what’s in the letter, but he thinks that it’s going to change something. Everything, maybe. It’s going to make everything different, and Tamaki has never been good with different.
So instead of reading the letter, he calls Hikaru. “Help me.”
“Just read the damn letter,” Hikaru says, before Tamaki has even had the chance to explain his problem.
“How do you know I’m even going to ask about the letter?”
On the other end of the phone line, Hikaru sighs. He’s clearly exhausted, and Tamaki realizes with a start that it’s nearing midnight. He’s usually asleep by now, and he knows that now his sleep schedule is going to be messed up for the rest of the week.
“Because I know you,” Hikaru says. “Also I know what’s in the letter.”
Tamaki is silent for a moment. He just stares at the envelope, tapping at the back of the phone with long fingernails. They make a clicking noise that reminds him of Kyoya clicking his pen. “What’s in it?”
“Read it and you’ll find out,” Hikaru tells him, and Tamaki can so imagine his eyes rolling in a bored circle. “Stop worrying so much.”
Tamaki sighs. “Fine. I’ll read it.”
“Good,” Hikaru says. He yawns. “Let me know how it goes tomorrow. I’m going to bed now.”
“Night,” Tamaki murmurs, listening to the dial tone as Hikaru hangs up the phone. He sits and stares at the letter, his elbows on his knees and his chin against the back of his hands. “Hikaru, that was incredibly unhelpful.”
The letter does not answer him.
He might as well read it.
—
“You said you weren’t in love with anyone,” Tamaki says, breathless.
He’s standing at Kyoya’s bedroom door, having driven to the Ootori estate at one in the morning and banging on the front door until someone let him in. The rest of Kyoya’s family is away at a conference, Tamaki knows, so he doesn’t feel bad about it until he’s staring at Kyoya and thinking that he’s made a terrible mistake.
Kyoya is sitting at one of the lounges, clearly still up doing homework, looking like a deer in headlights as Tamaki stares at him.
They’re both quiet for a moment, Tamaki’s heavy breaths being the only noise. Then Kyoya chuckles; a bitter, tired laugh. “You believed that?”
Tamaki stares at him for a moment, thinking back to the moment— to the blush at Kyoya’s cheeks, to the tight grip of his hands on Tamaki’s shoulders, to the frantic way he had said it.
“No,” Tamaki finally says. “I didn’t.”
“Right,” Kyoya says. “Then you’re not surprised.”
Tamaki thinks again, thinks about all of the things that they’ve done together and done for each other; thinking about the way Kyoya’s gaze always lingers a moment longer than Tamaki’s does; thinking about the way that Kyoya had leaned into that kiss when they were fifteen; thinking about the way that Kyoya had excused himself from the room every time that he and Haruhi danced around some kind of flirtation.
“No,” he admits. “I’m not surprised.”
“Then why are you here?” Kyoya asks. His voice sours as he says it, his words all twisted up in the wrong places.
“Because I—” Tamaki stops. He takes a deep breath. “I don’t have a love letter for you.”
Kyoya sits back down on the lounge, elbows on his knees and head hanging, like he’s just run a mile. “I didn’t expect one.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Tamaki says quickly, moving towards Kyoya. He’s gripping the letter in his hands so tightly that the paper is wrinkling. He drops it on the table as he goes to sit next to Kyoya. There isn’t any room between the textbooks and Kyoya, so Tamaki drops to his knees on the floor, one hand reaching up to Kyoya’s back. “Kyoya…”
Kyoya looks up at him, his face hard, betraying nothing. “Yes?”
“My love is unconditional,” Tamaki says softly, “and it’s my turn to be brave now, okay?”
Kyoya nods, and Tamaki’s throat runs dry, every word that he’s ever known suddenly stuck in his throat. But this is Kyoya; this is the boy he’s always loved. This is the boy that keeps him safe. If it had been anyone else that Tamaki was confessing his love to, Tamaki would have been a nervous mess. But this is Kyoya, and how can Tamaki be afraid of him?
“You’re a part of me,” Tamaki says. “Just as much as I am a part of you. Like you said in your letter.”
Kyoya swallows, staring at Tamaki with wide eyes. He’s not breathing, just inhaling this confession. “Don’t do this. You don’t need to…”
“You can always stop me,” Tamaki whispers. He moves a hand to Kyoya’s back, then to his knee, then to his thigh. He takes Kyoya’s hand, kisses his knuckles, waits for the punch that never comes. “I know I don’t need to do anything. I want to.”
Kyoya eyes flutter open and shut and open as Tamaki kisses the inside of his wrist, kisses at his pulse, at the palm of his hand. “I love you, Tamaki.”
“I know,” Tamaki says. He shifts, his knees digging into the cold hardwood of the floor, reaching up to put one hand at Kyoya’s collarbone and the other at his cheek. Sitting there on his needs, his hands up to Kyoya, Tamaki thinks, Oh. This is what it means to pray. This is what it is to worship.
“Do you…?” Kyoya doesn’t finish the question. He doesn’t need to.
“Yes,” Tamaki murmurs. Kyoya closes his eyes, drinking in the words, and Tamaki guides Kyoya closer, and then he kisses him and the world clicks into place.
Kyoya inhales sharply, then pushes into Tamaki, his hands going to Tamaki’s shoulders, pulling him in; tides and moons, wax and wane. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Tamaki murmurs, his words falling into Kyoya’s mouth. “Unconditionally.”
“Unconditionally,” Kyoya breathes. Tamaki swallows the words, a new love letter hidden in his beating chest, waiting for Kyoya to break it free and read it.