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When the front door opens, Touya’s breath catches in time to the soft click of the latch. Keigo doesn’t notice his presence, too focused on locking the door behind him and slipping his feet out of his shoes. Touya takes the chance to rearrange his posture, shrugging off his tension to throw his arm over the back of the couch and kick his legs out in front of him.
Then, Keigo looks up and sees him. It’s barely visible, the shock that must be coursing through him, but Touya knows how to see the signs; Keigo’s shoulders give an almost imperceptible jolt, and his fingers twitch at his sides in surprise. His face gives away nothing, save for the widening of his eyes and their subsequent rapid blinks, like Touya is an anomaly he’s trying clear from his vision.
Even more noticeable is Keigo’s growing displeasure, gradually increasing in strength until it radiates off him. Keigo glares at him, not moving an inch from the entryway. The tense silence drags between them, prickling at Touya’s nerves until it’s driving him up the wall.
“Welcome home,” Touya says sweetly, against his better judgment.
“What do you want?” Keigo asks flatly, wasting no time. The gold of his eyes glints coldly in the low light emanating from the kitchen as he narrows them.
“Is that any way to treat a guest?” Touya deadpans, more casual than he feels, trying to pretend that the unimpressed stare Keigo gives him doesn’t sting. It does, of course; a thousand little needles of agitation prick over his skin.
“Guest implies that you were invited,” Keigo grits between clenched teeth. His posture is stiff as he stands in the entryway, his body so frigidly tense that it looks like a single tap could shatter him. “Didn’t I take back my extra key from you?”
“You think I need a key to get in?” Touya goads through a mocking twist of his lips, instead of saying no.
The urge to protectively place a hand over where the key burns in his pocket whispers at him, but he ignores it. He doesn’t want Keigo to use the opportunity to take it from him.
Keigo’s brows furrow in frustration, glancing around as he clearly debates something internally. Finally, he sighs, stiffness seeping from his body, and Touya can’t stand the resigned look that overtakes his eyes, as if Touya is a chore — a bothersome but unavoidable routine — something to sweep up and dump out and be done with.
Keigo brushes a palm against the wall of the entryway, hesitating for a only moment before skirting barefoot around the edge of the room to the small kitchenette, clinging to the borders of his apartment like Touya is a sickness he doesn’t want to risk coming too close to.
It makes Touya want to get up and invade his space purposefully, pointedly, but he resists, for now.
When Keigo opens the fridge door, Touya gets a brief look of sparse white shelves before it closes again, too quick, as if Keigo knows what it looks like and doesn’t want Touya to see, but before Touya can call Keigo out on it, Keigo turns to face him and leans against the counter, a plastic water bottle crinkling in his tense hand.
Keigo twists open the bottle, and the seal breaks with a gentle crack. “So what is it, then?” Keigo asks. “Forget something? You can just take it and go.”
The easy dismissal makes Touya’s hackles rise.
“Can’t I just want to be here?” Touya challenges, a sour sensation curdling in his chest. Can’t I just want to see you?
“No, you can’t,” Keigo responds easily, as if he knows shit. As if he knows Touya. Every word he speaks only proves to show that he doesn’t, that maybe he never has; anger spikes in Touya’s chest like a stifled scream. “You don’t. There’s always something.”
There’s a tense pause, interrupted only by Keigo taking a swig of water. In the kitchen light, Keigo almost glows, and Touya takes the chance to observe him, while Keigo tries to pretend he’s not clearly doing the same.
The sweat on Keigo’s brow glistens, evidence of a long and taxing work day. The usual, soft roundness of his cheeks has been carved away, sunken in, his jaw sharper than it used to be. Even the jut of his wrist is more pronounced than Touya has ever seen it, his skin stretched thin over the bone.
Keigo looks like something heavy has been compressing him more and more with every passing moment, making him less of himself. Touya can take a guess as to what, and he silently curses Keigo’s stubbornness.
Still, Touya can’t help the instinctive desire to care for him. He can’t help the twinge of concern in his heart when he thinks of Keigo’s empty fridge and thin skin. Before he can think better of it, he offers quietly, “I can make you dinner.”
Keigo stares at him for a long moment. “Make me dinner…” He repeats blankly, before he gives a minute shake of his head. Keigo deflates. “I’m not going to do this,” he murmurs, the words so quiet that Touya isn’t sure whether they’re directed at him or Keigo, himself. “I’m not doing this anymore.”
“What?” Touya demands too desperately, hungry for the confrontation, growing sick of waiting for Keigo to stop running from it. “What are we doing?”
Keigo begins to shutter, and Touya’s heart seizes in panic, not ready to be cast out just yet. He jumps to his feet, his fists clenched tight by his sides, and Keigo glances warily at Touya’s hands as if he thinks Touya is restraining himself from throwing punches, when in truth, Touya holds himself back from the desperate want to touch him, to hold him close.
“What are we doing, Keigo?” Touya urges again, and this time, he doesn’t stop himself from moving closer, giving in to that magnetic pull that constantly tugs him towards Keigo.
“You don’t get to just be here, like everything is normal,” Keigo snaps, nearly flattening himself against the counter as Touya crowds close enough for their chests to almost touch. “We’re not friends.”
“Why not?” Touya asks, prying for an answer — for the truth he knows lurks beneath the surface — trying but failing to keep his cool, his voice too emotive, his face too expressive, his heart on his sleeve. Why doesn’t Keigo see it? “We were, before all this. Why can’t we go back to that? If none of it meant anything, then why not?”
What’s changed? You know what it is. I know it, too. Just admit it.
But his prodding fails. The briefest wince twitches across Keigo’s face before he goes completely blank; he hides in himself, where he knows Touya can’t pursue him. And Touya is brought to an abrupt halt against that invisible wall. He grits his teeth against a rising frustration. Nothing makes him angrier, nothing hurts more than to be met with indifference.
I love you so much I’m sick with it, Touya could scream. The yearning is too vast to hold in his chest, and so it surges up his throat and coats his tongue in a bitter, too familiar taste. It churns and churns in him, the yearning and the desire and the love, and he really could be sick now; his body can only turn on itself in desperate attempt to expel the excess of it all.
It would do no good. Then, he’d only be sick, and still in love.
It’s not as if Keigo will reciprocate — he wouldn’t even if Touya were to upend his guts and lay his eviscerated body at his feet. No, he’ll just do what he does best: stare at Touya with empty eyes that give away nothing. Keigo will give him nothing, and Touya should be numb to the rejection, but he’s not. He’s not. He never once has been.
Touya bites the inside of his cheek, and his teeth sink too quick and deep into the flesh. The distraction of a different pain would be welcomed, but even the thin tang of blood on his tongue tastes as if it is traced with want for Keigo.
And it’s all so fucking maddening, to have to suppress the swelling feeling that courses even through his veins, when he knows Keigo wants him, too.
When there is not a doubt in Touya’s mind that Keigo loves him.
That was never the question, but rather: will Keigo let himself love Touya? Or will he continue to deny Touya his love, the way all other loves have been withheld from him? It’s a form of torture Touya is intimately familiar with — to know the love is there but to be refused access to it — and he should be used to it.
But he’s not.
And Keigo is as stubborn as ever, as separated from his emotions as a person can get; Touya honestly can’t tell if it’s by choice, or not.
“If it didn’t mean anything,” Touya questions lowly, lifting a hand to trace his fingers along the counter beside Keigo’s hip. “Why can’t you look at me?”
Tell me why, he silently pleads, resisting the ache to slide his hand over Keigo’s hip and feel if the bone there is also too sharp now. Just tell me the truth so I can hold you.
Keigo keeps his gaze averted, and his inhale is more of a shudder than a breath. “If you’re looking for somewhere to spend the night,” he begins, his voice slow and full of warning. “You can find it somewhere else.”
A sharp intake of breath hitches Touya’s chest. A disbelieving laugh slips past his lips. “You’re so goddamned stubborn,” Touya breathes, shaking his head.
Keigo looks at him then, his gaze burning with the ferocity of his glare. “You’re the one who’s got me backed against the wall after I said I’m not interested.”
“I already told you that’s not what I’m here for,” Touya glares back, angry and more than hurt at the implication Keigo is making.
“Then act like it, and back — ” Keigo lifts a hand and pushes it against Touya’s chest, “ — off.”
Touya stumbles back with the force of the shove, and he fists a frustrated hand in his hair. “You’re so fucking…”
“What?” Keigo challenges, his words slurring together the more upset he gets, dialect slipping into his tone, almost hissing in his anger. “Whatever I am, you’re ten times worse, Todoroki Touya. You’re the asshole trying to wheedle his way back into my bed, after I said I’m done. You — you want to humiliate me, to make me go back on my word, like my consent is some kind of fucking challenge, and I won’t let you.”
“What the fuck?” Touya’s mouth gapes open at the accusation. “That’s not — Keigo, that is not what I’m trying to do!”
“Then prove it, and leave me alone!” The words burst out of Keigo, resonating loudly in the space between them, the most expressive Touya has seen him in a long time. Keigo pants, his voice having reached its crescendo. They stare at each other for a long moment.
“Just leave me alone,” Keigo repeats, his voice quiet and cracked. His hands tremble at his sides, the way they always do when an honest emotion is pried out of him.
Touya slumps in defeat. It’s not the emotion he wanted.
“Fine,” Touya gives in, even though it aches. It’s only for the moment, he reminds himself. Lose the battle, win the war. “Fine, Keigo. I’ll leave. Just… Fucking eat dinner. Something with actual protein. Carbs.”
“Don’t patronize me,” Keigo mutters at him, crossing his arms over chest defensively. “I can take care of myself just fine.”
Touya scoffs, glancing pointedly towards the fridge. “Oh, like you have been?”
Keigo nods, and he smiles, then. On the surface, it looks sweet, but Touya can easily see the bitterness laced beneath. “Yes, exactly like that.”
Touya stares at him pointedly. Keigo goes back to avoiding his gaze, turning to face the wall and placing his shaking hands on top of the countertop. His shoulders hunch, just a bit, and the curve of his spine makes him look small, and lonely.
“I will, okay?” Keigo says. “So just go.” Quieter, more to himself than anything, he murmurs, “I don’t understand you.”
A sorrow so strong that he has to swallow against it surges in Touya’s chest. He wants to cross the distance, to pull Keigo back against his chest, to wind around him and not let go.
Instead, he turns and leaves.
The too small house he shares with too many people is never quite settled; a light is always on, a sound is always echoing down the hall, a smell is always rising from the kitchen, though not always a pleasant one. Someone is always awake, even in the hazy hour that shifts the end of night into the beginning of day.
When Touya drags himself home after hours of listlessly haunting the city, he is greeted by Tomura’s reclined form and the buzzing electro-music of the game console in his hands. Touya dumps himself on the other end of the couch, ignoring the way Tomura’s feet kick at him in annoyance before retracting.
Touya also ignores the feeling of the disappointed look Tomura levels at him, but it burns into the side of his head. The quiet is backed with looping 8-bit music, something choppy and dreadful that Touya feels decently reflects his mood; must be a dungeon, with how it so accurately lays down the ambience of having nowhere else to go.
“Busy night?” Tomura says suddenly, knowingly.
Touya rests his head against the back of the couch and stares blankly up at the ceiling. “No. Not at all.”
The pointed silence resonates between them, only broken up by a clatter that echoes from down the hall, followed by a distant screech. Neither of them react to the sound, well accustomed to the strange shit that happens in their home.
Touya traces the outline of a water stain with his eyes and bites back his anger when Tomura gives a flat sigh, like he could possibly be more tired of this than Touya himself is.
“You keep crawling back to him,” Tomura sneers, his narrowed eyes just visible over his bent knees as they flick over Touya’s slumped posture. “It’s pathetic.”
Touya never claimed he wasn’t. Really, it’s the only way he knows how to be; he can only relentlessly, pathetically plead and pester in the hopes someone will finally take pity on him and just give him the affection he longs for. It doesn’t even have to be happily given. Touya is intimately acquainted with getting by on scraps.
Tomura doesn’t bother pausing his game, well practiced in this late night routine. “When will you finally let it go? Whether or not he likes you means shit if he doesn’t actually want to be with you.”
The words cut straight to the center of it, and Touya closes his eyes against the sting of them. Letting it go, letting Keigo go…
“I can’t,” he croaks.
It is the curse he was born with: as long as Touya knows the love is there, he will never be able to bring himself to stop his pursuit of it. And Keigo loves him. How could he possibly let that go? How could he possibly relinquish it: the chance to finally grasp within his hands what he has been craving all these years…
“I can’t,” Touya repeats, almost too quiet to be heard over the music of Tomura’s game.
“Your choice,” Tomura mutters after a brief lapse. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Touya hums half-heartedly. Tomura watches him pensively for a moment before sighing again, more softly this time. He focuses again on his game, nothing left to say, but one socked foot stretches back out to press against Touya’s thigh, and Touya takes it for the silent camaraderie it is.
Does he know what he’s doing? No, not really. Keigo’s inner workings are more convoluted than a labyrinth, and Touya has no golden rope or bread crumbs to guide him; no, he has nothing but sheer will and desperation.
But there’s nothing else he can do. He wasn’t bred to give up. Limitations, self-boundaries, knowing when to quit… It’s not in his blood.
Even when it hurts him. Maybe especially then.
So Touya lets himself back in.
Keigo must decide that the best way to handle Touya’s unwelcome visits is to simply ignore him — to stop reacting at all and wait for Touya to get bored on his own — because all he does when he comes home to Touya on his couch is stare at him a beat too long before retreating to his bedroom.
It doesn’t deter Touya. He bides his time; he watches television and brings books to read, and he tidies up around the apartment, more than familiar enough to know the proper place of everything. Then, he lets himself out without saying goodbye.
It’s the fifth time when it happens. Touya brings a bag of groceries to make dinner and lays out the ingredients on the countertop. Keigo comes home and takes one look at the food on his counter, at Touya standing there ready and willing to prepare it, and maybe his patience finally wears thin, or maybe the domesticity of it is what breaks him.
Whatever it is, he reaches his limit.
“You bastard,” Keigo greets him harshly. The front door slams shut behind him. There is no hesitance this time; Keigo storms into the room and curls a fist into the front of Touya’s shirt, yanking him close, and the lurch of Touya’s heart has nothing to do with fear. “You just don’t give a shit what other people want do you? The only thing that matters to you is yourself.”
Touya laughs, incredulous. “I’m here for you.”
“Me?” Keigo’s eyes grow wide. He shakes his head rapidly. “All I’ve ever asked is for you to finally fuck off.”
“That’s not what you really want.”
Keigo laughs bitterly. “And you know what I want?”
“I do,” Touya bites back, leaning in close. “I really do. You’re just too much of a coward to admit it.”
Keigo jerks away. Touya can see it in his eyes, how his defenses start to go up. But he refuses to be shut out one more time. Banging his fists against Keigo’s walls will never work; he needs a bombshell.
“I’ve really got to say it, don’t I?” Touya chokes in disbelief, tugging in agitation at the hair curled behind his ear. “You just don’t get it. It won’t get through your thick fucking skull otherwise.”
Keigo bristles, wrapping his arms around himself. Something insecure and fragile flashes in his eyes, there and gone in less than a second, and his voice cracks when he spits out a hurt, “fuck you,” and Touya nearly splits down the middle in an echo of it. Every suppressed feeling tears further at the seam and bursts free.
“I love you,” Touya snaps, nearly shouts, breathing too loudly into the sudden, stunned silence of the room. Keigo goes blank again, shocked still. Touya deflates, tears pricking at his eyes, his voice soft and strained as he repeats: “I love you.”
Keigo stops. Disbelief overtakes his expression, takes the sharp edges of it and rounds it out, and it strikes a pained chord in Touya’s chest that only the instinctive denial of Touya’s true feelings could soften his cold features.
“What?” Touya challenges sharply, reared up again. “Think I don’t mean it? Think I’m just fucking around for fun, like I enjoy this shit?”
His voice is too loud again as he looms closer, intimidating in a way he both does and doesn’t mean it to be. Either way, it gets the exact result expected — Keigo ducks further, hugs himself tighter — and Touya is hit with a hazy memory of long white hair and bandages. The sudden, disgusted guilt that clenches in his gut is so strong that it snaps him out of the imposing posture. Touya collapses down onto the end of the couch.
Keigo doesn’t meet his eyes, but Touya can’t tear his gaze away, his mouth parting around empty shapes of words, at a loss for once. The too-taut tension between them all but collapses in on itself. All that’s left is tired, stinging hurt.
“No,” Keigo says finally, softly. “I know you don’t say things you don’t mean. Not when it comes to… to that. It’s why…” Keigo slowly settles on the other end of the couch and winds his arms tighter around his ribs, like cradling the bones there is a habit, holding himself as he does his best not to tremble. “You said it yourself that it didn’t mean anything. We agreed it was just fucking in the beginning.”
“In the beginning,” Touya repeats, numb. The truth sits at the tip of his tongue, sharp as a thorn.
Because truthfully, the beginning wasn’t just the late night in which Touya impulsively offered to share Keigo’s bed with no strings attached, after he precariously convinced himself that he could be just as indifferent to love as it was to him.
It’s not like it means anything, Touya had said, more to persuade himself than to persuade Keigo. And of course, he would do what was typical of him: he failed before he even began, doomed from the start.
Because the beginning was this: Touya had been once again pathetically begging for scraps the only way he knew how, throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck, because he’d never get what he wanted otherwise. It had been a half-thought-through idea tossed out in a moment of weakness, but he hadn’t thought it would work. None of Touya’s desperate, last-ditch efforts for securing his desires have ever worked.
Because the beginning has always been this:
“I’ve loved you the whole time,” Touya admits.
Keigo sucks in a breath, his head snapping up so he can stare at Touya with round eyes, his eyeliner smudged at the inner corners. Touya wants to press his thumbs to the stains. A long moment passes as they stare at each other.
“… What? Why…?” Keigo asks, his voice faint and quiet in distraught, impossibly lost. “Why would you…”
Do that to yourself, he doesn’t say, but Touya hears it anyways.
“I just wanted to — ” Touya’s breath hitches, and he decides that if he wants Keigo to be honest, he needs to match it with honesty of his own, “ — to be with you. However I could. I… I didn’t expect you to say yes, and when you did, I never expected anything more… But then, you fell in love with me, too.”
Keigo gapes at him like Touya is a vehicle coming in hot at 150 KMH and he is the deer caught in the shrinking cast of its headlights, debating if he still has the time left to run before impact. Touya stares at him evenly and silently dares him to deny it.
“You knew,” Keigo realizes. “You knew I felt the same, and you didn’t… You didn’t tell me.” Something ashamed and angry at all once shines in his eyes. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
I didn’t think I would have to, Touya doesn’t say, not wanting the words to come across as a slight to Keigo’s emotional intelligence and strengthen the self-consciousness already leaking into Keigo’s expression.
But Touya can admit this: “I thought it would go differently. I thought we’d just… fall into it naturally. But then you broke it off, you cut me off, and I realized it wasn’t going to be so simple.”
Keigo looks away from him, his gaze searching across the room like he might find the answer to his shocked confusion somewhere in the air.
A faint wisp of amusement curls through Touya despite himself, and it makes him wonder, “What? Did you not realize you love me until now?”
Touya knows Keigo was oblivious to Touya’s own feelings, but he wonders if Keigo didn’t realize his love for Touya until Touya declared it himself.
But Keigo shakes his head, his stare still absentminded. “I knew,” he murmurs. “I just never thought you… I didn’t think you’d ever feel the same. It never even crossed my mind. That you’d…” Keigo closes his eyes, “Love me.”
Touya frowns at that. “Is it really so impossible?” He croaks around a dry throat, painfully reminded of all the times Keigo assumed Touya only wanted to sleep with him again. “… Do you think I’m incapable of it?”
Keigo is quiet for a moment. Then, he shakes his head. “No. It’s not that I thought you weren’t capable of loving me,” he whispers, staring down at his hands as if he can’t quite believe they’re there. Like he can’t possibly wrap his mind around the fact that they are loved, just as the rest of him is loved. Like love and his being couldn’t possibly coexist.
Touya hears his unspoken words: It’s that I thought I wasn’t capable of receiving it.
Touya realizes then that they’re more similar than he thought.
“Touya,” Keigo begins slowly, words dragged over his tongue like he’s fighting to get them out. “All my life, love just wasn’t something I experienced. It was always something other people had, like wealth or parents or friends. I knew it existed. Just not for me.”
“I wouldn’t even know how to recognize it. I don’t even know if this… ” Keigo clutches onto the material of his shirt, over his heart. “If what I’m feeling really is love.”
Touya can’t help but quietly prompt, “What are you feeling?”
Keigo ducks his head, shrinking into himself. “I don’t know, I… I’m used to being left behind. It’s just how things go, for me. I’m… not something people want to keep, and I’ve accepted that. But you…”
Touya watches him intently, listening reverently.
“I wanted you to stay. I didn’t want you to leave me, too. I don’t think I could take it,” Keigo admits softly, still clutching his shirt tightly. “It’s why I had to leave you first.”
Touya sucks in a breath. “Keigo…”
“I know. I know it’s stupid now. But that’s the thing, Touya,” Keigo rubs a hand over his face and drags in a shaky breath, “I don’t know how to do this… I don’t trust myself not to mess this up. I don’t want to be hurt, and I don’t want to hurt you. But I will. I already have. And I know I will again, and one day, you’ll leave me for good, and I can’t — ”
Touya doesn’t realize how close he’s gotten until Keigo finally meets his gaze, his glistening eyes widening in surprise before they flicker all over Touya’s face — and Touya can almost feel the trace of them, dancing between his eyes, caressing his cheeks, dipping down to his lips.
When Keigo swallows, his throat bobs with the movement, and Touya’s teeth ache with want.
Then, with his face crinkled in the most honest expression Touya has seen him wear, Keigo admits in a whisper: “I’m scared, Touya.”
It surges in him again: a longing that burns. Touya lifts his hands — reaching, offering, pleading — his fingertips craving the familiar feel of Keigo beneath them. “Just… Fuck, just come here.”
It doesn’t take much convincing; Touya grips the front of Keigo’s shirt and tugs, and then, suddenly Keigo is pressed against his chest, Keigo’s arms wound tight around his neck. Touya gasps from the force of it, from the warmth of it, his skin and veins and every nerve sparking. He drags Keigo closer and closer, until Keigo is crawling over his lap, and further still, until he finds his back hitting the couch. He sighs at the gentle weight of Keigo pressing down on him.
Touya can’t stop touching him, torn between tightening his arms around Keigo’s waist and running his hands all over his back, so he commits to both, alternating between them. He buries his face in Keigo’s hair, breathes down the side of his neck, and his brain buzzes under the euphoric rush of it all, his heart jumping up his throat like it wants to burst from his body and dance around the room in celebration.
“Fuck, I love you,” Touya gushes, the words pouring out of him like rushing water, impossible to hold back now that the dam has broken. “I love you, Keigo, I really fucking love you.”
Keigo stutters out an unsure, “You really — This whole time…”
“Yeah,” Touya laughs breathlessly at the absurdity of it all, at the giddiness of having Keigo back in his arms; he squeezes Keigo as tightly as he can just to hear the way Keigo gasps in response.
“I’m sorry,” Keigo breathes into his neck, his body still wracked with an anxious tremor, and Touya is nearly drunk off the relief that he can finally soothe it, smoothing his hands over every inch of Keigo within reach. “I… I love you, too.”
And Touya knew it all along, but to hear it spoken out loud after all this time and pain still sends a wave of shock through him. When Touya freezes, Keigo leans back just enough for his face to hover over Touya’s own. Keigo brushes their noses together, his eyes wet, and Touya is addicted to the honesty so clearly expressed on his face.
“I love you,” Keigo whispers, ducking down to press a gentle kiss to the corner of Touya’s lips, more of a breath than anything, and he meets Touya’s stunned gaze for a handful of seconds before he buries his face in Touya’s neck again, suddenly shy. “I do,” he murmurs there.
Touya closes his eyes against the sudden swell of them, but the tears cling to his lashes.
Finally, his heart sings. Finally.
Keigo clutches onto him, as if Touya will disappear the moment he lets go, as if this terrifying, newborn thing cradled between them is not meant long for the world and should therefore be tightly gripped for as long as possible, never once willingly released, because there will be a day that comes which will finally, forcibly wrench it from them. He holds Touya like he will lose him — like he already is losing him.
But Touya is not so shaken. All his life has been a lesson in perseverance; it’s the one thing he’s got going for him. And Keigo is not something he ever plans on letting slip away. Not again.
Winding his arms around Keigo’s waist again, Touya turns them onto their sides, pressing Keigo into the back of the couch more out of the desire to be close than to avoid his own body hanging over the edge of the cushion. Touya throws his leg over Keigo to keep him still and winds a hand through Keigo’s hair, gently tugging to encourage Keigo to lift his head from Touya’s neck and look at him.
The eye contact lasts all but two seconds before Touya can no longer resist the swelling desire to kiss him. Their lips meet, tender and slow, separating no further than it takes to release a breath before coming back together, remapping each other’s shape. When Keigo’s unsure tongue lightly traces the corner of his mouth, Touya parts his lips without hesitation, more than happy to open to him.
“You don’t have to go,” Keigo pleads quietly against his lips, tightening his hold on Touya, mumbling between kisses: “I never wanted you to go... I’m sorry I forced you to... I didn’t think you wanted to stay… I love you... Please, don’t go…”
“I won’t,” Touya answers, a promise he intends to keep, nothing less than completely sincere in the face of Keigo’s rare vulnerability. A resulting swell of adoration surges in his chest, and he can only kiss Keigo again and again, deep enough to convey just how intently he means to stay.
When they break apart, Touya raises a hand to trace his thumb over the puffed, shiny curve of Keigo’s lower lip. “I’m sorry, too,” he says, swallowing dryly. “It would’ve been better to be upfront, once I figured out how you felt, but I kept pushing you... Words have never been our go-to, but a lot could’ve been avoided. I’m sorry, Keigo.”
Keigo laughs quietly, ruefully. He gives a simple nod of acceptance and pulls Touya down into another kiss. It starts soft and gentle, until it builds into something deep and slow and drawn out. The passage of time muddles.
“We… should talk more,” Keigo gasps into the hot, minuscule air between them, but the way his hand clamps around the nape of Touya’s neck to keep him close betrays him. “We have to, from now on. It won’t… be easy, but I’ll do my best to — to be present for it. There’s a lot…”
“We will,” Touya promises in a quiet murmur, scraping his teeth against the sharp line of Keigo’s jaw and silently vowing to himself to soften it again. “We have time. We’ll get better.”
“I’m sorry you had to wait for me,” Keigo says, self-conscious again.
Touya presses their foreheads together and whispers back, “I’d do it again.”