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At precisely 6:00 PM of the twenty-fourth of December, Tobio was to arrive at Tooru’s front door with flowers and sweets. Tooru surely wouldn’t be ready by then yet, would drag Tobio inside to wait while he did his hair or ironed his shirt. They’d depart at 6:30 PM, 6:40 tops if Tooru was particularly enamored with the colour of the flowers or didn’t quite have a vase. They’d get to the restaurant just in time for their 7:30 reservation either way, spend approximately an hour and thirty minutes there inclusive of dinner, dessert, and chatter. Ten minute leeway for slow service. The walk to the park took 17 minutes at a leisurely pace, leaving them with about 43 to wander before the lights show started at the square.
It was all supposed to be perfect; Tobio and his weeks and weeks’ worth of plans had made sure of that. But one sudden wave of cold later and the power all over the city was out, it was 7:43, and he and Tooru were nowhere near on their way to the restaurant and were, instead, snowed in by what was apparently the strongest early December blizzard Sendai had ever seen.
The snow had been unnaturally heavy on Tobio’s way here, already ruining one phase of the elaborate scheme and leaving Tobio trudging through the streets clinging to a stuffed penguin rather than a bouquet. A giant miscalculation prompted by the weather on his part, really, because Tooru had apparently never owned a stuffed penguin before and grossly exceeded the thirty to forty minutes allotted for his fussing, and by the time they were ready to head out the door, it was jammed and Tobio was glaring up at the sky just about ready to set it ablaze.
He just wanted to have a really good Christmas with Tooru. But apparently, according to the weather, that was too much of him to ask.
Tooru himself didn’t seem upset. His grin was bright as he clapped his hands together and declared that it would be a quiet indoor Christmas, only faded a little when the power died, and came back stronger than ever as he sat the both of them on the couch, candle on the end table, and insisted that this wasn’t going to be the worst date ever, almost as if he knew it was his job to make up for all the enthusiasm Tobio now lacked.
“It could be just like… you know, the primitive days!” he said. “Back when we didn’t have good phones and still got grounded and couldn’t go outside or watch cartoons. What did you do then? Iwa-chan and I used to play hide and seek. We could play hide and seek!”
As much as Tobio would’ve loved to play games for six-year olds some twenty years too late, he couldn’t promise that he’d find it in him to go looking if Tooru did decide to disappear somewhere and hide, but he kept his response friendly, his face blank.
“Or… I don’t know. Statues?”
Okay, he had to raise an eyebrow at that.
Tooru bit his lip, but the thin line quickly curled into a smile. "Ooh, I know! How about Fukuwarai?"
His eagerness, and one about a game only slightly more educational than Pin the Tail on the Donkey, was as dubious as it was obvious, and glaringly excessive. Tobio frowned. "It’s not New Year’s,” he said. “And we don’t have any of the pictures."
“I know some other ways we can play it,” Tooru said. His smile as he offered a hand was too wide, unhindered by Tobio’s carefully selected complaints, but Tobio held onto him anyway, let himself get hauled up and all the way to the corner of the room and gently ushered against the wall.
“What is this?”
“You’ll see.” As he walked away, Tooru fished a handkerchief from his pocket and, once he was far enough, tied it over his eyes, the corners of his lips still quirked up as if he knew Tobio was watching in a nervous silence. “I’ll spin a few times and then try to find you, and you have to let me hear your voice once in a while as a guide.”
Tobio couldn’t quite find any words, instead watched Tooru blindfold and then strip himself of his own bearings, whirling—like he would in an actual game of Fukuwarai—with a toothy grin that remained even after he came to a stop. His aim wasn’t terrible, his body facing the dead lamp just inches away from where Tobio stood, still watching, still waiting for even the vaguest idea of what was going on.
It didn’t take much to figure it out, though, the moment Tooru spread his arms out, moved blindly forward, and puckered his lips.
The back of Tobio’s head banged against the wall, the rest of him desperately attempting to melt into it. “Tooru,” he warned, the combination of Tooru’s blindfold and wandering hands and lips resembling a duck’s somehow threatening. “Tooru, this is ridiculous.”
“No,” Tooru corrected, managing to angle himself better, “it’s a nice and simple couple’s Christmas. Now pucker up, Tobio.”
“ No .”
His protest was only met by a confident surge forward. Tobio threw a hand over his loud mouth, let his feet steer him to anywhere Tooru wasn’t careening towards, his steps creating only the smallest of noises against the wooden floor and still somehow finding their way to Tooru’s ears.
“Hey, that’s not fair!” he wailed. “This isn’t how Fukuwarai is played!”
Tobio knew perfectly well how Fukuwarai was played, but if this was Tooru Version™, he’d much rather play the real thing and have cut-outs of eyes and lips and ears pinned onto his face. He didn’t have that option anymore, apparently, and so he hopped up on the couch, stayed stock-still, leaving Tooru looking ridiculous—spinning around and toying with his duck lips and straining his ear for a little guidance—and biting back his peals of laughter.
“I can hear you smiling,” Tooru declared.
Tobio frowned. “What?”
“Aha!”
Still able to cringe at his own stupidity while avoiding Tooru’s furious swipe, Tobio tiptoed his way to the edge of the couch, leapt off of it with his assailant hot in pursuit, scanned the living room for a secure space to creep off to until the ludicrous game was over.
“You can run, but you can’t— whoa —”
But stupid or not, ludicrous or not, there was no way for Tobio to stop his own body as it turned at the first sign of distress, moved to steady the momentarily sightless idiot who’d slipped on his own decorative carpet.
His hand that wasn’t intertwined with Tobio’s, he held against his chest as he took a deep breath, and those few moments were all he needed before, once again, grinning. “Aha, for real!” he cried jovially, quickly grabbing Tobio by the shoulders and firmly ushering him towards the wall as if the game would lose all meaning if he wasn’t there.
At this point, Tobio couldn’t quite find enough exasperation in him to fight.
“All right, nowhere for you to run now, so stay still.”
Or maybe he could.
No longer concealing his grin but not laughing just yet, Tobio ducked to sit on his haunches right as the final blow was delivered, granted himself the front-row seat to the spectacle of Tooru locking lips with his own wallpaper.
The shriek of horror that followed was nothing short of glorious. “Tobio!” Tooru wailed.
And that was about all he could take. Tobio let out an ugly snort, the mere sound of it cracking him open into a well of unrestrained chortling, eyes squeezed shut, voice the only sound louder than the rush of snow outside the window and echoing against the walls of—not quite the candle-lit room he expected, but something close enough.
When he looked up, the final remnants of his outburst still plastered on his face, Tooru’s blindfold was off and his lips were curled in his usual, natural smile.
“Better?” he asked.
There was a glint in his lidded eyes, something that only came to light when they both knew Tooru’d done something right. Tobio glared at it, shook his head but still muttered, “Yeah,” as Tooru took his hand and pulled him up, if only to bring their faces closer together and plant a quick, noisy kiss in between his eyes.
He made a face as Tooru moved to relax on the couch. “You couldn’t have aimed a little better?”
“Maybe. But think of it as your punishment for running away.”
“No ‘thank you’ for saving you from falling to the floor?”
“I was not gonna fall to the floor. That was totally on purpose.”
“Sure it was.”
Tooru proudly tossed his head and looked away, Tobio only left smiling at the lack of conviction in the gesture. He looked as vibrant and beautiful, bathed in the cheap light of a tiny fire, as Tobio knew he would with the colours of Christmas and contentment shining on his face, outside during what could’ve been their perfect evening. The small quirk of his mouth looked fairly content, in fact, for a multitude of reasons Tobio didn’t think he was qualified to guess, not even after their years of mishaps and joys and sorrows and polaroid snapshot-worthy memories.
Somehow, though, it was all Tobio needed to let out a breath, to let all his by-the-hour plans stay plans and hand the rest of their evening over to the blind yet fruitful way they managed to navigate through everything—that had gotten them through the last twenty minutes, that had gotten them to this living room, together just because they could be.
The clock on the wall read a few minutes after eight, though, marking them down as only half an hour late for dinner. Perhaps it wasn’t the entire itinerary that had to fall apart. He glanced around for some unlit candles. “Hey, do you have any ingredients in your fridge?”
“My answer will depend on who’ll be cooking.”
Tobio rolled his eyes. “I’m planning to cook, obviously.”
“Then there most certainly are ingredients in the fridge!”
Shaking his head (Christmas with a person like this, he thought, couldn’t possibly be drab or dry), Tobio set his course for the knives. “Merry Christmas, Tooru.”
“Merry Christmas! Make something good!”
“For you? When have I not?”
Tooru’s laugh was loud even from the kitchen, and Tobio looked out the window, smiled up at the sky.