Work Text:
There are only two sounds in the room: The steady scratch of a pen on paper and the mechanical clacking of keys – HiMERU’s and your writing respectively. They blend together, creating a pleasant ambient noise you can only wish you’d be able to recreate with an online tool whenever HiMERU’s not around and it’s just your solitary typing in this room barely big enough for two people that you’ve turned into your home office. Not a word is spoken. There’s no need to when each of you is focused on your own tasks at hand, silently enjoying each other’s company while you tackle the day’s work.
Oddly enough, it seems to happen mostly by itself – much less effort involved than what you’re used to – as if the lines his pen stretches over the paper move your fingers along in turn. It’s the natural sort of concentration, one that is easy to maintain and that only comes with truly being in the zone – wherever that may be. For you, it’s right here and now.
Perhaps that means you should make the most of it, milking the moment of effortless focus for all it’s worth. However, as you begin to actively listen to HiMERU’s writing rather than using it as simple background noise to tickle your brain just right, your point of interest steadily shifts – the culmination of which is marked by you shifting in your seat.
Turning to look at him proves to be much more rewarding and infinitely more important than any document possibly requiring your attention. He’s just sitting there, bent over the stack of fan letters, and tapping the back of his pen against his cheek while he’s reading the next one in need of an answer – nothing out of the ordinary, nothing you haven’t seen before.
Yet observing something as simple as that, is something you’d much rather make the most of.
Fortunately, your work isn’t of the urgent kind. Besides, what harm’s done by taking a little break to recuperate? In any case, he’s a sight for sore eyes – without any of the elaborate make-up he wears daily, in a pair of sweatpants, slightly fraying at the hems, and your old university hoodie. You doubt that you ever looked as charming, cramming for exams.
HiMERU’s put his hair up in a messily tied bun at the back of his head, but the style does little to effectively keep it out of his face. Stubbornly, the soft strands kept slipping out of the scrunchy – adding another layer of sound to the quiet room whenever he tried blowing it out of his face – until eventually giving up and absentmindedly tying the whole thing anew. You wonder how long it’s going to last this time.
Following one of the strays further down from his hairline, your gaze ends up glued to his lips – a prime spot for your eyes to linger. They look visibly soft from the vanilla fudge scented chapstick he got for Christmas. As if there was a need to make it even more tempting to lean in for a kiss at all times – perhaps something you should make a mental note of doing later if the opportunity arises. He purses them slightly in concentration. You’ve always been under the impression that he’s been writing these replies for long enough to do so with little thought necessary, the words flowing effortlessly from abundant practice. That he puts as much care into every single one regardless, is endearing all in itself.
Your own lips curl into a gentle smile without much thought. There’s little in your head but him and how cute it looks when he scrunches his nose at the paper – your work long forgotten as if it hadn’t been barely a minute, but half your life spent studying his features. Considering that these letters get filtered by his agency before being handed to him, you can’t help but wonder what oddity managed to slip through someone’s fingers in the process to provoke that sort of reaction from HiMERU. Or maybe it’s just a hair too fine for you to make out from your spot a few feet away, tickling his nose. A sneeze would solve that mystery, but you’re content not lifting it if it meant disturbing the comfortable silence you find yourself relishing.
While you’ve long since twisted all the way around in your seat to be facing him, a different shift occurs in HiMERU – in his posture and expression – only noticeable when you pay proper attention. Fortunately, that is precisely what you are doing. And in a way, it’s also what brings the shift forth: He must have noticed you staring.
It's not like you’ve been trying to hide it in the first place. You like looking at him, no secret there. So, you rest your cheek in your palm and keep watching without any reservations, as if trying to somehow commit him sitting there at his desk to memory as vividly as you possibly can. As mundane a moment it is, it feels precious. Precious to be in his company. To be sharing space. That makes it more than tempting to dwell for a bit longer before getting back to your own work.
Though observing him while he was unaware of you doing so, had been a rare treat – as naturally as you’ve gradually been allowed to see him act at home, it’s still something that feels special – you can’t deny that him trying to focus and remain nonchalant while being scrutinised, also has its own charm. You wonder if him straightening his posture just a tad is supposed to make him look better, more competent perhaps – as if you’d question him being – or if he’s as aware as you are that sitting hunched over as he had been until a moment ago, he’s got no business calling you out on it whenever he walks in on you with you back rounded like you’re but one nudge away from putting your forehead down on the desk altogether.
If you were in his shoes – or at the moment socks – you probably would have fallen asleep at some point of doing all this. Surely, tirelessly reading these letters must get redundant eventually. Perhaps he’s blessed with creative fans. You wonder if he ever caught up on you sending one in – though you tried your best to keep it inconspicuous – or if that had been withdrawn from the lot before ever making it into his hands. If it did, you hope he at least found it a small motivation and reassurance. In any case, as astonished as you are at his endurance and determination when it comes to dealing with this part of his work, above all else you’re glad to see that for once there’s no trace of dark circles under his eyes, even without makeup.
You make a mental note of reminding him to take out the contacts. Without anyone but you around, there’s little point in dealing with the eyestrain of wearing them all day, especially when reading fans’ already cryptic handwriting that only gets more embellished and less comprehensible with every bit of excitement on their part. The dedication is admirable. Last time you had seen as many tiny, doodled hearts on a single page had been in elementary school – because the way your lecture notes looked after meeting him, you do not speak about.
The next thing that catches your attention is him rubbing the tip of his right index finger back and forth over the barrel of the pen in his hand. Even if the way he keeps writing would look completely undeterred to most other people, you are not most other people. Meaning you don’t miss how each word seems to take a little longer than the last to make it out of his head, through the nib, and onto the stationery. Perhaps you are being irritating. You find that you don’t care. All things considered – that being that he hasn’t said a word or made a face to complain – neither does HiMERU.
Nothing being said is something that changes a moment later though. Still immersed in your staring, you’re unsure how long it takes exactly – it could be anything between a few seconds and minutes. At first, his lips only curl into the hint of a smile, barely there and soft enough to make you feel warm all over and throughout instantly. The words that follow right after – only delayed by HiMERU wetting his lips in the fraction of a second – are equally soft in nature, if a bit more amused.
“Is there something on HiMERU’s face?”
As you’ve established during the last few minutes, there are a lot of things on his face – from the crease of his brow when he concentrates to the tiniest wrinkles in the corners of his eyes when he smiles, each feature not acquired through ageing alone, but tied to a tale to tell. While the most obvious – and adorable – would have been a smudge of ink, that’s the one thing one would look for in vain. As casual as he looks with his messy hair and worn-out loungewear, that’s not an opening HiMERU would overlook, not a blunder he’d commit even in the comfort of your home – at least as far as he’d claim. So, there’s no room for you teasing him for that or for making a funny face.
As much as you like poking fun at him simply because you find both him and his reactions cute – not to mention that he’s at least as guilty of doing so the other way round – right now, doing anything of the sort is the furthest from your mind. In fact, there’s but a single thought in there – one that’s equal parts underlying, yet prevalent, finding the time to shine especially in quiet moments such as these when there’s nothing on your mind but him.
“I love you.”
There's nothing sentimental about the sentiment. You state it like a fact. A simple, universal truth. Not particularly caring about being subtle, neither about admiring him nor about your feelings. No matter how abrupt to the point of forcing a short, ever so slightly bashful laugh from his throat and finally making his steady writing stop in its tracks, it simply feels right to say in the moment – somehow well timed regardless. And so, the words escape as easily as a breath.
It’s a declaration stripped down to its bare essentials, the purity of which makes it all the more resonant.
I love you. I love you. I love you…
Echoing silently.
Just like when you repeat the words to him every day, they never fade out – not in his ears, not in his mind, and most certainly not in his heart. Never lose any of their meaning or impact, unlike what may be common belief.
They bounce back off the walls, multiplying with every reverberation, filling up the room until there’s nowhere left for them to go but to squeeze and spill through the crack underneath the door into the whole apartment, then in the blink of an eye the building, city, world as far as he knows it. All is covered in them. He’s sure that if he ever went anywhere uncharted, they’d already be waiting for him there as well. If not, they’d follow.
The pause on his part is minimal – yet he has no doubt that you noticed with your intent staring. It’s fine if you notice, fine that the stutter in the letters he puts to paper soaks the stationery in a little too much ink and gives away not only his unpreparedness for the statement, but also the vulnerability the temporary opening creates. It is one of the rare occasions when being unprepared isn’t a flaw, but a chance – for pleasant surprises and his heart beating out of order in a way that feels nothing but right.
“I love you too.”
It’s taken practice to say this so naturally, without any self-doubt or hesitation involved, and to this day it remains something that leaves his lips far less frequently than it does yours. He’s lucky that you don’t mind.
But no practice in the world will ever make this statement act like anything other than kindling in his chest, the resulting warmth spreading all the way to his ears – yet another thing unlikely to slip your undivided attention. Fortunately, you don’t comment.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see you sitting there – still staring and evidently equal parts amused by his reddening ears as you are touched by him reciprocating. And even if HiMERU doesn’t make a move to face you with the same upfront mustering, he doesn’t miss the soft look on your face that he’s come to know so well. It’s one reserved for him, usually more prominent when you think he isn’t looking – though it’d be an injustice to claim you’re too shy to do it even when he is, as you’re proving right this instant. With your smile unable to get much wider, the sheer joy seeping into your eyes would be blinding when observed directly, so he keeps pretending to be focusing on his work when he’s everything but. At least for a little while, why not indulge?
And for a little while, that’s what you both do.
However, the time for you to turn back to your computer and your fingers settling on your keyboard to pick up the steady clacking once more, comes much sooner than HiMERU would have guessed based on his experience regarding you and your tendency to dwell.
Yet at the same time, he’s not surprised. While he can’t put it into words exactly, there seems to be a silent agreement between you – one of many established over the course of your relationship – that even if lingering tempts, there is no immediate need to. It’s as if something in both of you shifted by the few words spoken, leaving you so utterly content that it’s not necessary to keep your eyes on each other to feel the associated warmth and for it to continue growing even stronger.
Hence, HiMERU does the same and returns to answering his mail. The blotch of ink left by his pen idling in the same spot for too long gets turned into a little heart. It’s not something he usually does out of professionalism, but he doesn’t feel like dragging today’s work out longer than it needs to by starting the letter over. And while he doubts that all of his fans would be thrilled by the reason behind his own heart feeling so full that it spills over onto the paper and this batch of replies thus ending up sweeter than anyone unaware would expect of him, he also doubts that any of the recipients will mind profiting off the results.
It's well into the night that HiMERU finishes, placing the last letter down on the neat stack he’ll take back to the office tomorrow.
You at one point discovering that the wheels on your chair aren’t only good for rolling back and forth when you’re trying to think, but can also be used to sneakily inch closer to where he’s been sitting all evening until within reach to climb onto his lap – making yourself comfortable like straddling him and burying your face in the crook of his neck while he works is what you’ve been meant to do in life – didn’t make his work any easier. But with his nose resting against your shoulder – the scent of detergent a comfort as familiar as the warm weight of you against him – and his left arm wrapped around your waist to keep you from slipping off after you had inevitably dozed off, it went by quickly, regardless of any inconvenience involved.
Now the only thing left for him to figure out is how he’s ever going to get up again.