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If someone had told Byakuya Togami that three years on from meeting Touko Fukawa he would be sharing a bath with her, he would have ordered for that person to be removed from his presence immediately.
Of course, in his memory, it wasn’t really three years. More like five if you counted the two years of lost memories.
Three years in his memories. Three years ago, he couldn’t stand the sight of Touko Fukawa. Her grizzling, her heavy breathing, the strange smell of books and unwashed clothes that wafted around her wherever she went. Those staring eyes, magnified to an unnerving degree behind her round lenses, making her look like an off-brand doll with her braids and ill-fitting school uniform.
The bath they shared was just big enough for the two of them. Touko lay nestled between his legs, unbraided hair floating in the water. Her head rested on his chest, tilted to one side. Neither wore glasses, those were removed before bathing commenced. Lids covered Touko’s bare eyes, her eyelashes fluttering occasionally. She wasn’t sleeping, but from the look of her she could have been.
Byakuya ran his fingers through a portion of her hair. Three years ago, her hair never saw the light of day outside of two thick braids. Permanently unwashed, it took on a stringy quality, a complete eyesore. Hints of dead skin lurked at the parting, never dislodged due to the constant braids. Byakuya had always thought Touko’s hair to be darker than it really was until he finally saw it free from its braids. He used to shudder at the thought of tendrils of her hair wrapping around his wrists and ankles, pulling him down into her disgusting little world.
Now, he wrapped a lock of smooth washed hair around his fingertips without flinching and lifted it to his lips.
He used to hate Touko’s hands. Grabby and gnarly, always tugging at her hair or clothes. Grimy fingernails bitten to within an inch of their lives. Fingers calloused from writing hour upon hour.
Three years ago, he wanted nothing to do with those hands. Now, he entwined his fingers with hers, letting the water lap over their connected hands. The ghost of a smile crossed Touko’s resting face, and Byakuya almost shared it.
Three years ago, he couldn’t stand the thought of what Touko Fukawa wanted from him. She would drift around like a fool, sighing confessions of love into the surrounding air that he studiously ignored. A Togami didn’t love. That wasn’t part of the job description. Marriage was entirely a political matter and reproduction was clinical at best. No part of the Togami Conglomerate was built on something as frivolous as love.
Yet Touko continued to plant these thoughts in his head. She did it with her books, with her simpering words by the dim light of his reading lamp. He allowed her to do it in the rare (but not rare enough) moments when his judgment crumbled and they would end up semi-clothed and panting in a secluded corner of the library. These moments would end in Byakuya’s insistent mantra that he felt nothing for her and it was merely curiosity. Just an experiment. A learning curve. She would nod and Byakuya always felt that she didn’t quite buy into his claims of apathy. But that could have been him projecting his feelings onto her, as she did to him.
Touko shifted, causing the water to slosh the sides of the bath. Her hand squeezed his.
When Touko had vanished into Towa City, his first reaction was relief. Thank God, he thought, I’m finally rid of her. Touko would be doing something useful, miles and miles away from him. Perhaps the distance would make her forget him, force her to move on and give her something else to think about. But again, perhaps that was what he hoped to do.
It was only when she was gone, that he realized how much she occupied his thoughts. He’d be sitting at his desk and he would realize that Touko hadn’t brought him the coffee he never asked her to bring but brought anyway. He would be sitting in his apartment and realize there was no pitiful knock on the door begging for his attention. No distant simpered “Byakuya-sama” from the hallway.
And the dreams. He would relive those heated moments in the library. Imagine scenarios in which it was he and not Komaru Naegi stuck in Towa City alone with Touko, having to share a bed with Touko. Dreams of her purple tinted hair and how nice it had looked free from its braids, how soft it would feel between his fingertips. Realizations of how Touko Fukawa was no longer a dribbling child prodigy but a woman capable of incredible things.
While Touko was away, Byakuya realized how much he missed her. How much he valued her by his side. How her irritating quirks had become so embedded in his life that they were no longer irritating but… endearing.
Byakuya realized that he loved Touko Fukawa.
The concept was completely alien to him. He thought himself sick, even seeking out physical and psychological help but all signs pointed to the same thing. The thing that Touko’s books told of and the thing that was whispered under the breaths of his colleagues as he instinctively looked up at the mention of her name.
The day came that Touko would be retrieved from Towa City. Byakuya volunteered to go, under the guise of it being his responsibility that she was there in the first place. In a way, it was – if Touko’s devotion to him hadn’t lead her to sneak on board the helicopter all those months ago, she would never have become caught up in any of the Towa City nonsense.
Byakuya made the journey with a few other members of the Future Foundation. The entire way there, he struggled to control the rate of his once ice-cold heart. Upon arrival, Touko and Komaru waited atop the building where the helicopter was due to land. The moment Byakuya stepped off the helicopter he had been almost winded by a blur of aubergine. Touko threw her arms around him in an unabashed embrace and for one of the first times in his life, he returned the hug, wrapping his arms loosely around her shoulders and telling her what a foolish girl she was.
Yet t was he who was the fool. Letting her work her way under his skin and into his heart without him noticing until it was too late. He admired her for it, really. Byakuya Togami was a difficult person to fool but Touko Fukawa had managed it.
Then began a new chapter. A chapter of Byakuya slowly undoing the years of emotional apathy that the Togami machine drilled into him. Allowing Touko to help him not to flinch at unknown emotions swirling in his chest and in turn trying to make Touko feel loved after years of neglect.
There were still times when he would awake by her side and feel his skin prickle. Times when she would kiss his cheek before work and he would freeze. But these reactions weren’t out of disgust anymore (if they ever really had been of disgust at all) but from childhood conditioning. No mother ever kissed Byakuya unless it was for the cameras. No father even touched him if it wasn’t a brief handshake. No display of affection was ever genuine in Byakuya’s history.
Except Touko’s. At first, he thought she must be delusional. Projecting her perverted fantasies onto him because he was the only one that fitted the bill. But as time went on, her interest never wavered. It only strengthened.
‘Byakuya…’
His train of thought was derailed by Touko’s voice drifting up with the steam from the bath. He looked down to meet her gaze.
She smiled. ‘I love you.’
I love you too, Touko. The words became tangled in his throat and what came out instead was; ‘I know.’
But she smiled anyway and lifted his hand to her lips, planting a kiss on his knuckles. She knew what he meant.
Give it another three years and he might be able to say it out loud.