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For the years Obanai Iguro has known of love, he’s known of its cost, too. It takes many forms; those who love unconditionally, with innocence and devotion; those who love fiercely, with a fiery passion and protection directed at their love. It could be as simple as a passing crush, a faint attraction to this feature or that mannerism. For Obanai, the only love he’d known of was the painful kind.
Another party benefitted, and he was stuck pained and afraid to love again. If that was what love did, he didn’t ever want to experience it again.
…
Obanai Iguro’s first love was Sanemi. Something about him, his strength and his over-the-top personality; the brash and loud nature he cares not to hide. He became a safe space, a safe person.
His safe person.
He could take off his mask, bare the wounds of what little he experienced when it came to love. Sanemi never whispered a pitiful coo to him, or recoiled with disgust. He sat silently, watching his cheeks stretch, and the scar tissue pull here and there. Sanemi had something different in his gaze, something Obanai liked.
Perhaps… oh, perhaps it was love.
A love Obanai was afraid of.
He still let Sanemi in, peeled off the layers of protective shield he wrapped himself in daily. It was to keep himself safe from that hurt again, but he didn’t, couldn’t, fear it from Sanemi.
Sanemi Shinazugawa was Obanai Iguro’s first love, because he loved fiercely, and he loved quietly, and he loved softly, and he loved loudly. He was nothing and everything under the sun, all and none of what Obanai desired from a partner.
A person.
Someone human, who could make him feel human.
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Sanemi Shinazugawa has experienced love in every form. He’s felt the warm touch of parental care, sweet pity for a child they felt they’d doomed to a hellish life. He has heard the praise and hope in his baby brother and sister’s voices, because their Aniki was always there. He has felt the impact of a love that never existed; he watched it live throughout many years, and in every moment he witnessed it, Sanemi Shinazugawa grew a burning, nauseating redundancy to love.
He would never love. Not because he feared being hurt, but rather, he feared he’d be so weak as to be the one hurting.
Sanemi would sooner damn himself to eternal suffering, forced to walk the rest of existence and watch other’s lives go on with no way out, than hurt.
…
Sanemi Shinazugawa’s first love was his family. That fizzled out quickly, huh?
Sanemi Shinazugawa’s second love was Obanai, so callous and calculating, but quiet and small. He could never lay a hand on Sanemi, but Sanemi never feared hurting someone like him. He was strong, he could fend off Sanemi with all the ease a slayer should damn-well have. He was impressive.
Sanemi admired him.
And he loved him.
He loved how unapologetic Obanai was, scrunching up his eyebrows when he was angry or upset, wrinkling his nose when he pouted, and widening his eyes when he was curious.
Sanemi could spend hours watching him.
It was unexpected how close they became. Sanemi hadn’t realized how easily Obanai had broken down his walls until he was sitting on the ledge of a dock, staring down into a small lake, and Obanai pressed the side of his head into Sanemi’s back. Sanemi had gone stiff, but for some reason, his instinctive drive to push and shove was gone. He didn’t know Obanai Iguro had weaselled his way into Sanemi’s heart until it was already too late.
He didn’t stop him. He stopped everyone else, but not him. He was special… somehow.
And he made Sanemi soft.
He wasn’t so afraid to be soft and squishy, like a human ought to be.
Sanemi Shinazugawa’s second love was, and always will be Obanai Iguro. He just hopes that one day, his Iguro will find himself a second love who could love him properly.