Work Text:
To yesterday, when lilts of gold dust swam in your eyes.
He’s napping when you call. The prickling buzzing from his phone’s left unanswered, and instead of it waking him, he turns over on his side. Satin white sheets curl around his sprawled out legs. They look more like miniature valleys with the depressions and hills shaping around his legs. A routine clicking from his fan sounds in his dark room. Music’s muted, lights are off, and his curtains are loosely shut (ones that his mom got for a great bargain, apparently. She always stresses the gain in bargain). Terushima fell asleep in the middle of sending his professor an email. Something about a nearing deadline for an incredibly vague project.
Soon, the clicking of his fan’s the only sound in his room; his phone’s quiet again, with the screen lit up with a missed call notification. The lock screen of his phone—a dorky photo of both of you that he snapped when you were in the middle of talking (him being photogenic as usual and you swearing up and down that you were anything but. He managed to convince you otherwise with his waterfall of compliments, saying that you always look good)—fades. And once again, Terushima’s room is nearly as black as a night sky.
If his room is the night sky, then maybe you’re a star in it. Sirius, the name of the brightest star, would suit you well.
No. Perhaps you’re brighter than that.
In the beginning Terushima never thought that he’d get like this. Thinking in clichés, even dreaming in them. He can’t say that it’s all bad, though. He likes it—loves it, rather.
Drool tumbles out of his mouth, and he lazily murmurs something in his sleep. It sounds like part of a pickup line that he’d spout to you in public to embarrass you.
The next time you call, he’s awake, surfing around on the Internet.
“Yeah, babe?” Terushima answers immediately.
“. . .Yuuji?”
Terushima doesn’t realize that he’s suddenly sitting straight up, worry treading over the bumps and curves of his face, and that he’s more conscious of his breathing. Your voice is different. There’s a subtle change that he wouldn’t have picked up on if he was anyone else. A gulp plummets down his throat as he waits for your reply. From the moment (maybe it was the second right before, he considers) you start talking he knows that something’s wrong.
“I-I just—”
He swiftly stands and shakes his room around to find his keys. They make a jingling sound when he’s holding them tightly in his palms.
“Hold on,” he says, “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Keep talking, I’ll listen.”
To yesterday, when I first said it.
Terushima wakes up from the best sleep he’s had in years. His fan’s subtle clicking is ongoing, but he tunes it out as usual. The curtains are kind of cracked, there’s a slim opening that he forgot to close last night. He had something—someone, rather—that he needed to attend to first, so it’s not entirely irksome. He can live with it. It’s not like it’s going to cost him sleep or anything. In fact, there’s one thing on the face of this planet that can interrupt his sleep schedule. You, right here. Next to him. Flesh adorably pink and chest rising and falling.
He thinks about taking a picture of you like this to mess with you, to see that look you give him when you’re mildly annoyed with his antics, but he decides against it, preferring to roll over so that he’s facing you. His shallow breaths hit the top of your exposed shoulder; his long arms slide along the frame of your body, gliding over your skin, and he pulls you to him lovingly. Terushima, though he’d never admit it, almost blushes. You’d never let him live it down, that such an undeniably suave (of course you’d say it with dripping sarcasm) man would flush at the little things like this. There’s no way that a lady-killer like Terushima would react so, dare he think, innocently.
Nope, no way at all. Not possible.
It wouldn’t be too disastrous if you found out, however. Because both of you have plenty of blackmail to use against each other. Lovingly, of course. It’s loving blackmail, he assures himself.
“C’mon, Yuuji, we’re already late for class! We need to leave!”
Terushima sluggishly throws on a shirt; it coils to the dips of his body suggestively, and he flirtatiously winks when he catches your stare.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. You know that our professor said he’d be at least ten minutes late today.”
“But it takes twenty minutes to get to class, especially with the walk.”
Terushima cocks his head to the side with a familiar smirk.
“Then we can be late together,” he says as he slings his backpack over his shoulder. Jingling his keys a few times, he bounds over to you. Terushima bows mockingly and gestures to the open doorway. “After you, my love.”
When he hears your rippling laughter, a quirky kind of sound that he’s burned into his brain, he thinks—no, he knows that all of it, the stress, the late phone calls, everything is worth it. And he’d gladly do it all again for you if that’s what you wanted.
“How romantic, Yuuji. Are you sure that you’ve never been a knight before?”
Both of you walk out of his bedroom with the door closing behind you. His free arm sails over your shoulders, radiating warmth akin to a swarm of fireflies.
“I’m still a knight,” he says with emphasis. “And I fight for you, babe.”
“That’s so cheesy that it hurts.”
It’s his turn to laugh, a sounds that’s harmonious with your own. And, he thinks, there’s not a better combination that exists in the world. It’s probably the love talking, but he doesn’t care at this point. Terushima’s thinking and feeling in clichés. He wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“Oh,” he says after the laughter dies down, “did you get the textbook yet?”
“Not yet. It’s ridiculously expensive at the bookstore. I’m going to have to work overtime to get it.”
A hum bubbles in his throat; with how close you both are it vibrates against your skin.
“I’ll send you the PDF file later.”
Your gasp gives him the reaction he was hoping for.
“Really?!”
Terushima kisses your forehead. He’s going to engrave your overjoyed expression in his head.
“Yeah.” His voice diminishes, its usual grandeur and larger-than-life attitude in decrescendo. “I love you, you know?”
“I love you too, Yuuji.”
And to tomorrow, when I’ll say it again.