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He’s a walking contradiction.
Really. Hajime notices everything about him. He walks through life overconfident and sparkling, gleaming at every facet; white teeth and skin so clear it shines, hair soft and smooth and the epitome of careless perfection. It’s underneath all of that where the boy he loves really lives; the boy who cries ugly, snot dripping all down his chin after everyone else has gone and he thinks nobody will see. The boy who spends an hour curating his appearance to a glassy, untouchable flawlessness; the boy who flirts and laughs and waltzes about narcissistic and self-righteous is the same boy all cracked with insecurity who can’t help but doubt himself. He’s a walking contradiction; he’s beautiful and brilliant and ugly and stupid and overbearing and shy, full, empty, hungry, perfection incarnate, broken, everything and anything all at once. But he’s Hajime’s Oikawa Tooru, and he loves him.
Maybe that’s why he finds himself here now. It’s love that coats his fingertips and is left in soft-touched traces all over his partner’s arms, neck, jaw, cheek, chin; love that he presses in droves, kisses peppered gentle on every inch of Tooru’s skin, hands ghosting downward to slide up under his soft faded blue t-shirt, the one Oikawa loves from the science and natural history museum with the ugly green alien on the front. His lover shivers all over as Hajime’s hands find his hips, his stomach, his sides and memorize every bit of him. Oikawa Tooru. The boy he loves.
The boy he loves, who is pushing him away all of a sudden. Back down and out of his shirt the minute Hajime feels bony extruded ribs underneath goosebumped skin, and he pulls his hands off of him like he’s been burned.
“Sorry,” He whispers. “Sorry. Too much, right? I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Tooru mumbles, face flushed red and mortified. “It’s okay, just… I got scared.”
“I know. I’ve got you.” Hajime murmurs as his boyfriend presses his face into the crook of his neck. Soft hair tickles Iwaizumi’s chin. He holds him tight. Tooru’s voice had sounded like cracking glass, fragile, hollow.
“I’ve got you.” He says again, more sure.
“I love you,” comes the response, muffled, words spoken into his shoulder.
“Wanna just go to sleep?” Iwaizumi offers it, a lifeline, careful and slow. He doesn’t mind.
“No, it’s okay.” Tooru looks up with that sparkling determination that hallmarks him gleaming in those big brown eyes. “I want to keep going.”
“Okay,” Hajime whispers as he presses a kiss to his forehead, his eyebrow, the spot between his eyes, and then his cheeks, the tip of his nose, and down, down, down.
It’s okay, really. And he’s okay. Really.
That’s what Oikawa tells him, anyway. But Iwaizumi knows him like the back of his hand, maybe better, and something is wrong. It’s in the way he’s started dulling in the eyes since losing the Inter-Highs, the way he pokes at his food with a vague disinterest and the way Hajime can see his window full of TV light long after 3am. And it’s different, too; Iwaizumi has always been able to say next time. We’ll win next time. We’re going to nationals next year. But there is no next year, there are no girls to swarm around him and feed the black hole of his empty ego, and in the summer heat without an answering recruitment from any Japanese professional teams, Oikawa Tooru stagnates.
He’s a walking contradiction, maybe, but still has never been a word for Tooru. He’s always doing something, running somewhere at breakneck speed. Always working himself half to death. Still is not a word for Tooru. But here he is now, eyebags heavy and purple, stirring his miso soup without taking a single bite, hair disheveled, and altogether the reality is clear: Hajime’s best friend is falling apart.
The volleyball in his room is slowly collecting dust as it sits in a corner, something Hajime has never seen it do, and his mother’s weight scale downstairs is missing its layer of powdered vacancy. Even more importantly, Oikawa is slowly collecting dust as he lays in bed, tangled in blankets with all the lights off on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Shittykawa.” Hajime is trying to be gentle, but it’s not something he’s used to. If he’s being honest, he wants to do something. Anything. Tooru is a wilting flower and it’s all he can do not to crush him to his chest, hold him, never let him go. He wants to be gentler and harsher all at once, to shout a whole lot of things his best friend doesn’t know until he gets them, but Tooru is a flower, and for now, he can’t take it. “Crappykawa, it’s daytime. Get up.”
His best friend doesn’t respond. Iwaizumi considers chucking the volleyball at him.
"Oikawa." He says again, roughly, and this time, the setter stirs.
Tooru sits up slowly and the sunlight catches on the soft layers of his hair at the same time Hajime's breath catches on the edges of his ribs. Oikawa looks like death incarnate; disheveled, pale, thin, exhausted. He looks so fragile. He lifts a slender-fingered hand to rub at his eye and his wrist is so slight it looks like it could snap at the lightest touch, his nails usually so meticulously cared for bitten down to nubs, his cheekbones hollow, eyes dull. Surely he didn't look like that before. Surely he was glowing back during the tournament, body full and flushed warm, muscles rippling, grin sharp across his face. Surely his eyes sparkled back then.
"You look like hell." Hajime gets out.
"I feel like hell." Oikawa gives a weak attempt at his usual smile, the dazzling one that makes him generate his own gravitational field: rings of Saturn just beyond his touch, all full of a swirling storm of compliments and photographs and confessions that never quite reach. Iwaizumi always reaches. Almost always. Not today. Not yet.
"Okay." Iwaizumi marches over, pulling the blankets off of his best friend's brittle form and discarding them, pulling Tooru up towards him. "Time to get up. Your mom says you didn't eat anything."
"I'm not hungry. Oikawa protests. Stares at the ground.
"You gotta eat." Hajime pulls him to his feet. His best friend is blinking in the sunlight, lashes so long and throwing little spots of light all around the room, and God, it's hard not to love him.
"I'm not hungry." He says again, with less conviction.
"You gotta eat." Hajime insists, and this time, Tooru doesn't reply.
They end up downstairs where Oikawa is tearing a slice of milkbread into tiny pieces, shredding it and eating each little fragment slowly, contemplating, staring hard at each infinitesimal bite like it was something deeply controversial. At least the horrible listless look is gone, replaced by a focused intensity that seems to indicate some internal war as Tooru pulverizes his soft slice. His mother flashes a concerned look at Iwaizumi as she pads rice into a bowl for gyudon. He gives her his least obvious shrug.
The gyudon is steaming as she sets it in front of her son, face twisted up into a fear that she can't put words to, an uncanny sixth parent-sense that knows something is terribly wrong. Oikawa murmurs his thanks, frowning at it with a hollow look in his eyes before glancing up at Hajime as if for permission.
You gotta eat, he mouths, and his best friend stares back down at the gyudon while they sit in silence in the kitchen.
"Is this okay?" He worries out loud, checking with him every step of the way, as he presses fingers back against his boyfriend's hips.
Oikawa nods, biting his lip, but Iwaizumi knows him well enough to notice the hairs standing on end on bare arms. He's shaking like a leaf.
"I've got you." Hajime reminds him, and lets his hands travel ever so slightly higher, caressing the skin of his torso, feeling his ribs and the soft fat and flesh beneath the skin of his stomach. Hungry curious fingers roam over the protrusion of his hip bones, up to find their way across his chest. Tooru shivers into his touch, letting out soft sounds that are equal parts scared and starved, aching for more. Terrified of his own wanting.
"You're perfect." It's soft and reverent and maybe a little unexpected, coming out of his own mouth before he can really think about it. But Oikawa's cheeks flush and he covers his eyes, embarrassed, as he melts into the touch.
"...off."
"Huh?"
"You can take it off." Tooru whispers. His voice is cracking and his eyes, milk chocolate-brown, are wide peering between those slim fingers. Nervous and curious all at once. "The shirt."
"Okay." It's a soft thing, the shirt, pale blue with an alien and well-worn. It's Oikawa's favorite shirt. He loves it, and it's worn out, loved as much and as hard as it could handle, and maybe that's the way that Oikawa's always been; loving so deep and hard it threatens him, that he'll tear himself apart for it, for volleyball especially but really for everything. Iwaizumi pulls it over his head with a soft laugh as it catches on his chin and discards it, a careful toss that lands exactly on the top of the existing laundry pile in the corner.
"Smooth, Iwa-chan." Tooru laughs weakly. His torso is on full display now; ribs jagged and pressing up against the inside of his skin as they rise and fall with shallow breaths, stomach soft and hollow, the muscles in his arms apparent, hip bones cresting upwards from underneath his boxers, collarbones angled upward with his shoulders; tense.
"You're so pretty." Hajime tells him. It's the truth. "The prettiest, even."
"Just kiss me." He mutters in response, face flushed. There’s laughter, quiet, hitched with soft sounds as they trace circles around each other.
"And then take yours off, too."
Oikawa doesn’t eat for a while.
There's a bite or two of the gyudon, swallowed when he thinks nobody is looking; half of his shredded milkbread slice, taken in tiny bites; a mouthful of Iwaizumi's okonomiyaki taken before he has a chance to think about it. Overall he avoids food like the plague. But when nobody can see him, he finally lets himself exist, in secret shrimp crackers and strawberry Hi-chew with the wrappers scattered carefully out of sight. Hajime notices it anyway, especially when Oikawa is sleeping and he cleans. His best friend's room has gotten rough, but he doesn't say anything. Oikawa is prone to these temporary depressions, and they've never been this bad, but Iwaizumi knows the drill; knows it's a storm that can be waited out. This one is long though, a typhoon that stays pouring until the gutters are all clogged with fallen leaves and the streets are overrun with the flood. Iwaizumi worries, but he always does.
It's a rhythm he's used to. They've known each other since before either can remember, and Iwaizumi has been following him when he spins out into a hurricane forever. He’s been there, holding his hand at the doctor when he played volleyball until the muscles in his legs split and his knee curled around itself. He’s been there, baking him a messy and ugly consolation cake when they were twelve and it rained too hard to go to the zoo. And so Iwaizumi follows him through it just like always.
It's later that he asks. It's another sleepover and he's laying on the futon with the moonlight pouring through the half-closed blinds when Tooru says it, cautiously, slowly.
"Iwa-chan?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you come up here and sleep with me?" His voice is tentative and plaintive, quiet like a child's. "Please, I'm cold."
Maybe it's the thrum of his heart that beats a little faster at the question. Maybe his lungs catch. Whatever it is, it makes Hajime's voice rough as he replies. "Yeah."
Iwaizumi stumbles through the dark a moment to find him, wrapped shivering in two blankets. The exchange is wordless, and it doesn't need any as Hajime wraps arms around his best friend, pulling his frail body closer, swaddling him and rocking him gently, fingers brushing through his hair. They don't need to say anything. It's a mutual understanding that this is okay, that they'll be okay. Beats pass in the quiet, Tooru's breathing evening out against Hajime's chest.
"Oikawa." He whispers.
"Yeah?"
"Why won't you eat anything anymore?" The question is carefully worded, the gentlest poke Iwaizumi can fathom at whatever aching wound is twisting his best friend into pieces.
"I'm cold, Iwa-chan." He replies after a beat, cautious and polite and clear in his every intention. Silence swallows them in the dark.
"Can you eat tomorrow?" Iwaizumi asks.
"I'm not hungry." Oikawa says, into his shirt, and it's muffled.
"You're allowed to be." Hajime replies.
Tooru doesn't say anything, but in the morning, he finishes his miso soup.
It’s slowly and carefully, so so carefully, that they explore each other.
Tooru’s had him dim the lights, but there’s enough to see; see the way they both flinch away from touches that are cautious before slipping back into them, remembering they’re with the other. It’s Oikawa’s stomach and ribs that he’s so insecure about that Hajime kisses slow and soft, carefully carving a trail, leaving a little path of reddish marks that elicit quiet breathy noises from the boy he loves. Meanwhile, Tooru presses fingers into his chest, trails them along his back, finds his collarbones and slides cool hands underneath the hem of his boxers, dipping ever so slightly lower with each consecutive touch. He’s always been like that: scared and hungry all at once, a contradiction, terrified of the more he always wants. Creeping a little closer. He hides his face with his tongue pressed to Hajime’s throat, arms snaked around him to find the dimples in his lower back, the curve of his spine.
Hajime pulls away from him to lean down, biting out blooming purple right above the arch of his hip bones. Tooru’s back arches as he lets out little sounds, shy and sensual all at once.
“Too much?” Hajime questions between heavy breaths.
“More,” Tooru huffs, whiny brat like always. Bashful laughter escapes them both between the sounds of hungry flesh, quiet reassurances hovering in the air.
“It’s okay?” He’s got his lips pressed up against the hem of Tooru’s shorts now, and his lover is arcing backward pale in the dim light, the curve of his ribs and spine all aligned in perfect trajectory.
“Yeah,” He groans softly, pressing upward.
“Can I suck you off?” Hajime asks. The question is blunt and stupid and they both laugh quietly into the night.
“Kind of scared,” Tooru whispers.
“I’ve got you. I’ll stop the second you tell me to, or we don’t have to, at all.” Hajime reminds him.
“Okay.”
There’s quiet laughter between ragged huffs and breathy moans that fall from his lips as they try. Hajime’s not particularly skilled and Oikawa is shaking anxiously, hands pressed against each other, fingers intertwined. The whole thing is stupid and they just keep laughing with hands pressed against each other– it’s so ridiculous, all of it, and they’re laughing and trembling like spring leaves in the wind; everything is so weird and so scary and so strange, and yet they have each other, just like always.
He gets better slowly.
He gets better in lurches and lulls, too; there are days when he stays in bed like before, staring at the ceiling with his brown eyes that Hajime loves so empty and dull. But there are also days where he eats a hot fast breakfast before he can think about it and runs out the door to play volleyball till sundown. He’s returning to being the boy Iwaizumi knew from before, and though the not-eating has stolen the muscle from his arms and the color from his cheeks, Hajime knows he’s trying. Which is, as usual, more than enough.
They’ve known each other forever and Iwaizumi has harbored his little crush secret for three whole years. But something about watching him return to himself, blooming like a flower in spring and pouring like the first rain after a long drought, is more beautiful than all the days he’s watched before. It was fine before, so why now? Why is it changing now? He grapples with it at first, the sudden need to hold his best friend after years of settling for a vague sense of pining, and eventually just lets it be true.
Maybe it’s because he knows he might lose him, that the boy in front of him is temporary, ephemeral, inches from his own self-destruction. But he won’t, not this time; Tooru is a star who isn’t ready for supernova, who isn’t going to implode yet as much as he tries; and so Hajime feels a grin that he can’t hold down cracking across his face when they finally share a melonpan again like they were kids and his best friend actually finishes his half, or when they finally pull of a coordinated set to spike again, or when the future comes barreling in all of a sudden like a shot.
He opens the email on a warm summery Friday and reacts too slow. But Iwaizumi knows it, knows from the way his big brown eyes open, knows it from the way he knows his best friend and his every little reaction and move and tic. He doesn’t have to say anything, just stares, and Oikawa looks up to meet his gaze with tears brimming.
“Argentina.” He whispers, half broken, half whole.
“Argentina.” Hajime repeats hollowly. And it’s farther than he ever could’ve dreamed, he’s in love with a best friend who is also a protostar, and his best friend needs a different ground eighteen thousand kilometers away to dig roots into and grow into a great flowering tree.
“Argentina.” Tooru says, cracking at the edges. “It’s so far, and I don’t–”
“Shut up.” Hajime says roughly, finding his vocal cords once again. “Shut up, just go.”
“Iwa-ch–”
“Argentina.” Hajime says again, incredulous. His face cracks into a grin. “Argentina. ”
“But you’re– Hajime –”
“Shut up,” He says again, and grabs his stupid best friend, the greatest setter he’s ever known, a fledgling ready to take flight, and kisses him square on the mouth.
“You gotta tell me if it hurts.” He says roughly as he presses the first finger in.
“It’s gonna anyway.” Tooru whispers as he flinches into his boyfriend’s touch, squeezing his free hand.
“I’ve got you.” Hajime reminds him.
“I’m not scared.” He says, and there it is; that arrogance that’s characterized him, a stubborn refusal to admit pain. Hajime laughs and he joins in, fingers intertwined as Tooru shifts beneath him, breathless sounds through grinning lips and little kisses pressed to each other’s cheeks and foreheads.
“I’m not scared.” He insists again, shifting his hips as he lets out little winces of pain.
“Gonna move a little.” Hajime murmurs.
It’s terrifying at first. Oikawa’s body is hot and swallows his fingers with slow swirls of his waist. He’s tense and unfamiliar and strange around Hajime’s knuckles, and they’re both just so unsure; the fear of hurting each other is thick in the air and it’s all just so uncomfortable and bizarre. But they fall into a rhythm like always with a whisper that it’s starting to feel good and a second finger, and they kiss each other love-drunk and stupid. The quiet chuckles of before turn into little moans and bigger encouragements as they explore each other slow and tender, Hajime curling his fingers into different shapes to elicit different sounds each time.
He’s gasping and grinding down after finger two, and Tooru turns with his cheeks flushed a perfect shade of pink and mouths, ready.
Maybe later they’ll taunt each other smoldering and Hajime will say, oh yeah? Ask nicely, and his lover will whine and beg and plead but they both love it, aching for another touch. Maybe later they’ll fuck feral, starved and hungry and loud and filthy. But it’s all new and they’re so cautious now, so terribly, sweetly unsure, and as they press into each other with little questions and careful touches, everything aches new and terrifying and exquisite.
Are you sure? Hajime whispers.
Yeah, Tooru murmurs, and then he opens like a blooming flower.
Iwaizumi pulls away from the kiss and looks him dead in the eye. “I’m in love with you.”
It’s as simple and plain a fact as breathing and he states it with conviction. He might as well have said that the moon and the stars are nighttime fixtures, or that the sun will rise again after; that fish can’t survive out of water and that nothing lasts forever. It’s the same as saying salt isn’t sweet as he repeats his words all over again: “I’m in love with you, and you have to go to Argentina.”
There’s a sliver of silence between worlds; one where Tooru knows he loves him and another where he doesn’t, two split seconds in time. And in this new world, his jaw drops open with a faint pop and his eyes are milk-chocolate brown and big and confused and afraid.
“What?” He says it quickly, maybe before he can think. Every word is harsh. “Why?” The question is bitter and he spits it out cold and hard, but Hajime can taste the aching underneath; the disbelief, the confidence that he’s unloveable suddenly beached for all to see.
“I just do.” He shrugs. “I just do. I just always have.” Tooru stays wide-eyed and so confused, mouth in a perfect o (Horrified? Surprised? Iwaizumi doesn't know).
“It’s impossible not to love you.” Hajime takes a deep breath, steadying himself, and continues. “I love you because we were kids and you always gave me the bigger half of the popsicle. I love you because you taught me how to play volleyball and always grab my hand out of habit when you’re scared of bugs. I love you because you try so hard to be the greatest and I know wherever and however you are you’re gonna be incredible. I know you’re gonna win everything. I love you because you’re my best friend and you have the prettiest eyes and your hair looks stupid good even when you think it looks awful. I love you because you’re always cold and I’m always warm and I don’t mind when you don’t wanna sleep on the futon. I love you because you ate breakfast the other day even though you were scared. I love you because you let me brush your hair and you smiled when the sunshine hit your face because I opened your curtains. I love you and it’s impossible not to. And I’m sorry,” The words are coming out rougher now, tangled, self-conscious– “If this ruins everything, ruins are friendship, but I really do. I really love you. And I love you and you have to go to Argentina.”
It’s quiet for a while. A hundred years and maybe only twelve short successive seconds. But it feels like forever as Hajime swallows the smooth glassy ball in his throat and tries not to choke.
“But I’m so hard to love.” Tooru finally says, a protest, weak and soft and hollow. “I’m so broken and so– so wrong about everything, so stupid, so–”
“I know.” He says. It’s decisive. “I love you anyways.”
“I– I just– why’d you–” Oikawa’s face is screwing up now, cheeks flushed red and tears falling hot down his cheeks as he tries to smooth them over with his fists. Determined as always. “But I love you and I don’t fucking deserve you and I can’t give you anything and–”
“I wanna kiss you again.” Iwaizumi interjects. “If that’s okay.”
His best friend, maybe boyfriend, first love and last love and everything forever stares at him glassy eyed.
“Okay.” He breathes, soft and shaky, and everything is going to be just fine.
“You okay?” He tries. Panting. Iwaizumi is pressed halfway inside of his best friend, boyfriend, and all of it is so, so terrifying.
Who is crying, also. His Tooru who is crying. The tears are hot and they slip out as they squeeze each other’s hands into tight bloodless fists, unspoken reassurance.
“It doesn’t hurt.” He says loudly, too loudly, with tears dribbling off his chin.
“Bullshit.” Iwaizumi grits his teeth to keep from reacting too viscerally— he’s feeling so much— “Tell me if it hurts too much, Tooru.”
“It’s fine.” He grumbles, face blotchy.
“It’s half.” Hajime replies with an arched brow.
Oikawa’s facial expression is priceless— color that drains straight out of his cheeks and his jaw that drops with a tiny pop before he quickly closes his mouth and giggles shakily. “My Iwa-chan is hung, wow.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Iwaizumi groans as his boyfriend slowly rolls his hips to adjust, letting out soft pained sounds all the way. “You’re making this hard enough as it is.”
“Is it?” Tooru asks innocently, quirking a brow and grinding down a little more. “It doesn’t hurt too bad anymore, also. Come on, Iwa-chan.”
“I’m gonna kill you.” He mutters as he presses deeper, eliciting a little yelp that turns into a flushed-face groan. Oikawa presses his hands across his eyes as his chest rises and falls, each rib pressing up against skin as he gasps softly and struggles to find breath.
“Shit you are gonna kill me— hurts— “
Their laughter fades to make room for a whispery synchronized breathlessness as the pair adjusts to this new state of being. It’s so good and so nerve wracking all at once, and Tooru is quaking despite repeated insistence that he’s just fine.
“I’ve got you.” Hajime murmurs as he presses a kiss to the underside of his lover’s jaw, Tooru flinching at every movement.
“I’ve got you.” Oikawa breathes.
A month or maybe just a minute passes before Tooru begins to swivel his hips, whining soft and hungry into Hajime’s every touch. He moves slowly at first, dragging out every noise and being as careful as he can, hands gripping hips as Tooru leans up for another messy kiss with chewed nails scrabbling at his shoulder blades. “I can take it, okay, hurry—“ He’s babbling now, clinging on, arching into everything Iwaizumi gives him, lips finding necks and chins and eyebrows and collarbones.
“I love you.” Hajime reminds him.
“Oh yeah?” Tooru giggles out between gasps. “Since when?”
“Since forever, stupid.” He grumbles.
“For what it’s worth,” Tooru huffs, “I love you too.”
They’re fifteen and looking at the sky. There’s a thousand constellations, salt-sprinkled sparkles in the night, a thousand stars he doesn’t understand.
“It’s so pretty.” He whispers. And it is; breathtaking, complex, confusing, huge. Tooru grabs his hand in the night and lifts it to point.
“This is the big dipper.” He says.
“It’s so pretty.” Hajime repeats. There aren’t words, not really, that could possibly explain the way that those stars make him feel. Like he’s big and warm inside, with his best friend’s hand pressed into his, a guiding light as he explains Ursa Major, Orion’s Belt, Leo, Lyra. It’s a warm night, end of May, and everything in the universe is aligned. Everything is right.
“It makes me feel big and kind of beautiful inside.” It’s clumsy when he says it, but he finds the words irregardless and tries them soft in the night.
“It makes me feel that way too.” Tooru says. And then, quieter: “That’s why I wanted to show you, duh.”
The silence is soft and infinite and comfortable, cicadas buzzing, and he’s falling in love with his best friend.
“Thanks,” Hajime murmurs. “All the stars in the world are better with you.”
In the dark, Tooru grins.
He’s a walking contradiction. But these days, Oikawa Tooru is a little less hollow inside and he smiles like the sun all over again.
“You’re gonna get so tan in Argentina.” Hajime murmurs as he tucks a strand of hair behind his boyfriend’s ear. “I’m so jealous.”
Tooru smiles. It’s tender, until he drops it for an expression of mock horror. “Do you think it’ll ruin my skin, Iwa-chan?”
Hajime snorts and pushes him aside. “You’re so stupid.”
“I’m still sore, you know.”
“Fuck off.” He mutters, flush creeping across his cheeks. It’s just mid-morning. The day isn’t half over yet. There’s still time.
“You love me.” Tooru smirks, but a flush colors his cheeks and his eyes are still shy.
“I do.” Hajime relents, kissing his lover’s knuckles reverently. “I. Do.”
“I’m gonna miss you in Argentina.” Oikawa whispers, the smarmy exterior melting away, the fragile aching Tooru emerging once again. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you, Iwa-chan.”
“I’ll call you.” He murmurs. There’s not a whole lot else he can promise. “I’ll call you, and we’ll visit each other, and–” Iwaizumi can feel the choking feeling rising in his throat and Tooru kisses him between his eyes so, so gently.
“Yeah. And then I’ll come back and win everything.” He says decisively.
“I know.” Hajime chuckles. Grins. “You’re gonna win it all.”
“I am.” Tooru’s voice is hoarse and he looks like he could burst into tears, but he’s smiling so hard his face could split in two. “I love you.”
“I love you too, idiot.” Hajime says with a kiss, and he does.