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Tooru doesn’t feel it until she’s in the waiting room of the hospital. Hanae is on her left, her mother on her right on the tiny, hard thing that could maybe in some other reality be considered a couch. Feeling their warmth seeping from them to her through her thin gym jacket, Tooru lets the flood of emotions come. She bends forward, whining both at the pain in her knee and in her heart.
“Tooru? Tooru, what’s wrong?” Hanae immediately sits on her knees on the floor so she can see Tooru’s face even though she tries to hide it. Her leg is propped up on a chair and bundled in ice packs, so she can’t move too much.
“Everything,” Tooru whispers. Her shoulders shake, and she tries her very hardest not to make any noise. Her mother places an arm around her shoulders, warm and safe. Hanae slides a hand into her lap and Tooru grabs onto it like a lifeline.
“Tooru, I’m going to see if I can get you a blanket, okay?” Mom says gently. Tooru just keeps shaking, but she thinks she manages an “uh-huh” somewhere in between her choked breaths because Mom leaves.
Hanae squeezes her hand.
“Iwa— Hanae— Hana-chan,” Tooru babbles, tears falling from her eyes and burning when they land on her thighs. She’s still wearing her leggings and the water makes little dark spots.
“What is it, Tooru? What do you need?”
So patient. So understanding, even though Tooru is an idiot with no regard for her own wellbeing and ignored her best friend over and over and—
“Just— um— hold me, please?” Her voice is small, weak. The ugly cries are clawing their way up her throat. Hanae says nothing, just gets back on the couch and gathers Tooru in her arms as best she can while keeping her knee elevated. She pushes one of her hands into Tooru’s hair, underneath the hair tie, and pulls her ponytail out in one smooth, painless motion.
And that’s what does it for Tooru, Hanae knowing her so well that she can let her hair out without it hurting at all. She cracks open, the rest of her body filled with countless hairline fractures that all originate from her right knee. Hanae runs her hands through Tooru’s hair and just keeps talking, her voice a grounding rumble in the tempest that Tooru’s life has suddenly become.
She places a kiss on her forehead. “Tooru, you have to breathe,” she reminds her gently.
Tooru shakes her head. “I can’t, I can’t I can’t, I—”
“With me, come on.” Tooru takes inelegant fistfuls of Hanae’s shirt, trying to get closer, gasping. “You can do it.”
Tooru’s mom comes back with a blanket that she wraps around both of them, and Tooru wants so badly to curl up and disappear into Hanae’s embrace. Problem is she maybe tore her ACL or her meniscus or some other tendon or maybe she cracked the bone clean through—
“Tooru, breathe.”
Right, she’s here with Hanae. And her mom, who has now gathered up what she can of Tooru’s hair and is braiding it even as she hides her face in Hanae’s shoulder. She takes a deep, shuddering breath and lets it out very slowly. Hanae places small kisses wherever she can reach, and the warmth is soothing.
Tooru knows Mom has redone the braid four times now, just because she knows Tooru likes having her hair played with. “Thank you,” she whispers, looking back at her mother.
Her mother just smiles, her eyes sad. “Oh, my baby.” She strokes Tooru’s cheek, and Tooru leans into the touch.
Hanae’s presence is a grounding warmth during all of the scans and tests and the poking and prodding. When Tooru has been thoroughly examined, it’s almost one in the morning and Tooru feels ready to pass out.
Thankfully, Tooru’s mother took the car to get here, and they all pile into it to get home. Tooru falls asleep on Hanae’s shoulder, still covered in the hospital blanket since the hospital staff cut up her workout leggings.
Tooru vaguely registers that the car moves, that they drive past street lights and over speed bumps. Then, a while later, when no lights flash behind her eyelids anymore, she feels herself being shaken and stirs awake.
“Hanae?”
“Just me, Ru-chan,” her mother whispers, stroking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “Hanae’s outside the car waiting. You want me to ask her to stay?”
Tooru shakes her head, bleary eyes once again filling with tears.
“No?” her mother looks confused, and Tooru understands. There isn’t a single moment of her life that she’d rather have spent alone than with Hanae. “Why not, baby?”
Tooru wipes her snotty nose on the already gross sleeve of her hoodie. “Don’ wanna… be a bother. She has school and it’s late and—” she heaves a shaking breath.
“Hey, hey,” her mother soothes, “slow down. Hanae asked me very politely if she could stay on the way home while you were asleep, okay? She wants to stay.”
Tooru blinks, still feeling out of it and like a dead weight for her mother and girlfriend to carry. Her knee throbs, even after the painkillers they gave her at the hospital. She feels woozy and a little bit like this day has been thirty-six hours long. Maybe it has been, she doesn’t know what time it is anymore. “Okay,” she says, and the word is just barely anything more than an exhale.
Her mother exits the car and seconds later her vision is full of Hanae. “Hey, Shittykawa. Do you not want me to stay?” She places a hand on Tooru’s upper arm and squeezes, frowning.
“No,” Tooru mumbles, then scrambles to course correct. She shoots up in her seat and grabs onto Hanae’s wrist with both of her hands. “I mean yes! I mean— I want you to stay. Please, please, stay. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
Tooru shifts in her seat and ends up jostling her carefully placed knee. She winces with it and squeezes Hanae’s arm, hard. “Sorry,” she whispers again.
“Shh…” Hanae crawls into the backseat so she doesn’t have to lean on her hand and can instead put it on Tooru’s cheek and dry her tears. “Tooru, it’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay, okay?”
“Okay,” Tooru hiccups.
“Come on, let’s get inside. I’ll carry you.”
“No, no, Iwa-chan —”
“What are you gonna do, run? Come on, I’m strong, I can do it.”
Tooru agrees that her girlfriend is strong, and she’s too exhausted to argue any more, so she scoots slowly towards the still open door. She glances at her mom and gives her a shaky smile as Hanae settles her arms in the crook of Tooru’s knees and under her shoulders.
Tooru laughs, a quiet and exhausted sort of thing, and turns to Hanae. “My knight in shining armor.”
Hanae sticks her tongue out at Tooru, but bends her head to place a kiss on her forehead. “My princess,” Hanae says in a low tone that makes Tooru blush.
“Girls!” her mother calls from the door. They both giggle at it, and Tooru basks in the pocket of happiness and relative normalcy.
“After you,” she says, and Hanae snorts. Tooru is, and not for the first time, immensely grateful for the fact that her room is on the first floor. Hanae carries her all the way there, and her mom closes the door behind them with a soft goodnight . Hanae is gentle as she places Tooru down on the bed. She goes over to her chest of drawers and pulls out two worn t-shirts. She tosses one at Tooru and changes out of her own right where she is.
The fabric of the brace they gave Tooru at the hospital catches strangely on her comforter, and it’s hard to get comfortable when Tooru has to sleep on her back with her knee propped up on a stack of pillows. They make up for the discomfort by covering her braced knee with a separate blanket, and by Hanae spooning her from her uninjured side.
“This okay?” Hanae mumbles against Tooru’s shoulder, fighting sleep tooth and nail.
“Yeah,” Tooru whispers, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. “Super okay.”
“Good,” Hanae says. Her eyes slip shut.
“Hey, Hanae?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
They drift off to sleep sharing body heat, the pain of the day slipping off of them like water off a duck’s back. Tomorrow they will wake up with new strength, to new challenges, together.