Chapter Text
Looking back, Nakamura could never remember exactly when he had fallen in love with Hirose. There was no single memory he could point to and say: there.
It was somewhere between the countless walks home after school, the way he could light up the whole room, or the way they could spend their weekends together, doing absolutely nothing and everything at once. For a long time, Nakamura wondered if something was wrong with him for feeling this way. But standing there now, outside Hirose’s front door, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
Because no matter how complicated it was, and no matter how frightening it felt to love another boy — especially his own best friend — one thing had always been certain. Hirose was Nakamura’s entire world. The person Nakamura looked for first. The person whose happiness mattered more than his own. And the more he thought about it, the harder it became to imagine a future without him in it.
That was what Nakamura found himself thinking about now as he stood outside Hirose’s front door, his hand still half-raised from the knock he wasn’t entirely sure he had made.
Ridiculous, It was only a door.
He'd stood here hundreds of times before, after school, during summer holidays, on weekends when neither of them had anything better to and yet-
“Nakamura!”
The sound of his name rang out from inside the house, so unmistakably Hirose’s. Before Nakamura had the chance to gather himself, the front door swung open.
And there he was, Aiki Hirose standing on the polished wood flooring, face already breaking into a smile that Nakamura loved so dearly. A smile his entire day could unconsciously orient itself around.
“You’re finally here,” Hirose said immediately, almost bouncing where he stood. “I’ve been waiting all morning!”
Whatever composure Nakamura had spent building melted away instantly, his face smiling faintly at his enthusiasm.
“Sorry I’m La-“
Hirose cut him off with a dismissive wave before reaching out and catching him by the wrist.
“Enough dilly dallying, come on in!” Turning around, Hirose immediately began marching into the house, tugging Nakamura along behind him. Nakamura stumbled half a step after him, hurriedly slipping off his shoes at the entrance before he could be dragged any farther inside.
Whatever he wanted to say... He'd clearly been waiting all morning to tell Nakamura.
The warmth of the house was almost overwhelming. It smelled exactly as he remembered, the same faint smell of detergent and something slightly sweet, tea maybe. The framed photographs lining the wall were still there, just as they had always been, showing fragments of Hirose’s life that he had always been adjacent to, including a few where he himself appeared. A few things had changed, like the new tv and some of the curtains. But otherwise, It really hadn’t changed in ten years.
Hirose glanced back over his shoulder as he continued walking, still pulling Nakamura along like an impatient tour guide showing him somewhere he had already seen a hundred times. Eventually, they reached the living room, where Hirose dropped onto the sofa, hands briefly hovering in the air like he didn’t know what to do with them, his expression almost giddy with excitement.
“Sit, sit,” Hirose said quickly, patting the space beside him.
Nakamura hesitated for the briefest moment before lowering himself onto the sofa, the cushions sinking beneath his weight. Hirose, meanwhile, couldn't seem to stay still, He had never been particularly good at hiding his emotions, and it was clearly visible in the way his fingers tapped restlessly against his knees trying to contain excitement that refused to stay inside. His foot bounced lightly against the floor, his fingers drumming an uneven rhythm. The excitement radiating from him was almost contagious.
“Nakamura,” he said again. “Guess what.”
There were very few moments in Nakamura’s life where he could identify the exact point where something began to change, sitting there, watching Hirose smile like that, watching him prepare to say something that clearly meant a lot to him, Nakamura had the strange feeling that whatever came next would become one of those moments. He knew whatever Hirose was about to say, There would be no returning to the person Nakamura had been before hearing it.
"There's something I’ve been meaning to tell you!”
Nakamura raised an eyebrow, unable to stop the small smile that appeared at Hirose’s obvious excitement. "And what's that?"
"You have to guess! It’s way more fun that way!”
Nakamura let out an exaggerated sigh.
"You got fired."
"What?! Why would that be your first guess!? Think more optimistically." Hirose pouted.
Nakamura pretended to think, watching as Hirose waited impatiently for his next answer.
"You won the lottery?”
"I wish."
"You adopted a dog?”
"I would've introduced you to it at the front door!.”
The guessing game seemed to go on for a while, Nakamura was throwing out whatever possibilities came to mind while Hirose sat beside him, trying to hide his amusement. Eventually, neither of them could keep it up anymore, and before long, they were both laughing together.
"I've run out of guesses." Nakamura announced.
Hirose's shoulders bounced with a quiet chuckle "Then I'll just have to tell you."
Knowing Hirose, he thought there was a chance he would drag it out for another few minutes, adding unnecessary suspense just to see his reaction. But Hirose didn’t. Without any dramatic pause or careful buildup that Nakamura might have expected in hindsight,Hirose leaned forward slightly, his grin widening into something bright and boyish that Nakamura had seen countless times before.
-----
“I’m getting married!”
The words came out so naturally, filled with such unmistakable happiness, that Nakamura didn’t immediately understand what he had heard. Perhaps Hirose had said someone else was getting married. A coworker, perhaps a cousin, or one of the neighbours. His mind searched frantically for another subject to attach the words to, his head replaying the sentence again and again, each repetition sounding clearer than the last, until there was nowhere left to hide from it. There had been no room for misunderstanding.
Hirose was getting married.
Nakamura’s fingers curled slightly against his own knee giving him something to focus on besides the strange, expanding emptiness blooming somewhere beneath his ribs. His eyes lifted back to Hirose’s face, His eyes were bright, brighter than Nakamura had ever seen them, already searching Nakamura's face for a reaction that hadn’t arrived.
Something inside his chest tightened. No. "Tightened" wasn't the right word. It wasn't sudden enough, It felt more like a hand had reached into him and begun slowly closing around his heart.
Nakamura felt his lips part as he looked at Hirose. The words caught in his throat as his brain searched for responses.
Congratulations.
That’s great news.
I’m so happy for you.
When's the wedding?
Who's the lucky person?
There were too many possible responses, but they weren’t his. They kept forming one after another like options on a menu he had no appetite for. He had spent years imagining conversations with Hirose, but never had he imagined this one. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, there was no reason this should feel like anything other than expected, Hirose was a kind, charming bright young man. Someone like Hirose was never going to spend his life alone.
“I…” he started, the single syllable caught somewhere in his throat.
There were so many things he could have said. So many things he wanted to say. But none of them belonged to this moment.
“I wish you the best,” Nakamura tried instead.
The words sounded foreign the moment they left his mouth.
Liar, such a big lie.
But what else was there to say? There was no place for his feelings here. No place for the years he had spent together, growing alongside each other,. None of it mattered in this moment, and none of it could change what was happening right in front of him.
Yet somehow, the words were convincing enough.
Hirose’s expression immediately softened, the tension leaving his face as a genuine smile began to form. The relief in his eyes was impossible for Nakamura to miss.
And just like that, the tension Hirose had been carrying disappeared. Almost as if someone had finally loosened a knot that had been tied inside him all day, the words began spilling out naturally. Hirose began talking and talking, something about "...and then she looked at me and.....I seriously thought she'd say no..." The stories came one after another, each memory spilling naturally into the next, about the restaurant he'd visited, about rehearsing the proposal while driving home from work.
"My mum absolutely loves her," Hirose said with an embarrassed laugh. "Honestly, I think she's happier than we are."
"I didn't even think I was the type of person to get engaged this early."
Nakamura heard every word Hirose said, yet they were stripped of their meaning dissolving into nothing more than the familiar cadence of his voice. It was almost cruel that, of all times, the voice he had longed to hear more than any other had become the one thing he could no longer bear to listen to. He searched himself for resentment, hoping to find even the smallest trace of it, but there was none. Hirose had done nothing wrong. He had never made promises he couldn't keep, nor had he carelessly toyed with feelings he never knew existed. He had simply fallen in love with someone else, just as anyone had the right to do. That was why Nakamura couldn't even bring himself to resent Hirose's fiancée. She hadn't stolen anything, after all, Hirose never belonged to him.
It was almost laughable how many years he had spent nurturing a future that had existed nowhere except inside his own heart. He had collected insignificant moments the way children collected seashells, convinced that if he gathered enough of them they would eventually become proof that what he felt wasn't entirely one sided.
How pathetic. To mourn a future that had never belonged to him.
"Nakamura?" Hirose laughed suddenly.
The sound of his name pulled him abruptly back into the room. "Hm?"
Hirose was looking at him with an amused smile, "You in there?” He teased.
Nakamura blinked, forcing himself back into the present. "Ah... sorry."
"I was saying..." Hirose laughed, waving a hand in front of Nakamura's face until he finally looked up. "Thank you. You've always been there for me, through everything, so really, thank you."
He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly, suddenly looking oddly embarrassed. "I don't know, It feels like such a relief finally telling you." His smile grew almost shy, “I’m really glad to have someone like you."
Before Nakamura could think of a response, Hirose leaned forward, wrapping both his arms around Nakamura's shoulders into a warm embrace.
"Seriously."His voice was bright against Nakamura's ear. “Your an amazing person”
Nakamura’s body remained perfectly still, every muscle refusing to obey him as Hirose's warmth settled against him, his breathing stopping somewhere between one heartbeat and the next.
Warm. He was so warm.
It was the same arms. The same familiar weight settling against his shoulder. The same faint scent of laundry detergent mixed with whatever shampoo Hirose always used. It was everything he'd wanted. His hands lingered awkwardly at his sides before hesitantly lifting, only to stop halfway, unsure whether he had the right to return the embrace or if doing so would only be selfish. It wasn't as though Hirose would have minded. He would have smiled the same gentle smile and patted him on the back exactly as he always had. The embrace hadn't changed, no, not at all, only the meaning of it had.
Just minutes ago, he might have allowed himself to indulge in the familiar fantasy that these embraces meant something more than friendship. That perhaps, hidden somewhere within Hirose's easy affection, there existed a feeling neither of them had been brave enough to name. His fingers curled weakly into the fabric of his own sleeves. His eyes drifted briefly to the hallway again to the younger versions of them caught in glass. Two boys who didn’t know what anything would become yet, two boys who had no idea what the future would hold, who had no idea that the years ahead would bring them here, standing on opposite sides of a feeling only one of them carried. Nakamura would have given anything to return to that time. He found himself wondering what those younger versions of them would think if they could see them now. If he had known, all those years ago, that he would one day stand in this room listening to Hirose talk about marrying someone else...
He wanted another minute, another second, Just enough to remember, how it feels to hold every version of him that had ever existed inside this feeling, all overlapping for one brief moment that would never happen again, the warmth pressed against his chest, the comforting weight resting against his shoulder, the steady rhythm of Hirose's breathing that had accompanied so many ordinary days without Nakamura ever realising how desperately he would one day miss it. Because there would come a time when this would be all it was, a memory. Hirose would return to another home, another life, and eventually another person.
The Hirose standing before him would continue moving forward, changing with every passing season, laughing with someone else, growing older beside someone else. But the Hirose who lived within Nakamura's heart would never change at all. It had never had to grow older. Never had to fall in love with someone else. It smiled exactly as he remembered. Looked at him exactly as he wished, so untouched by reality.
Slowly, the arms around his shoulders loosened and Hirose pulled back slightly, still smiling. His hands rested briefly on Nakamura's shoulders before falling back into his lap.
"I wanted to tell you first, before anyone else." Hirose's expression carried no hesitation, only complete sincerity. "Because you're, you know, my best friend in the entire world."
Best friend. Nakamura looked at him, at the boy he loved. Best friend,There had never been another name for the place he occupied in Hirose's life.
Hearing those words placed years of unanswered feelings into perspective. But there was still something strangely bittersweet about hearing the words spoken aloud. Best friend.
The person Hirose called when something exciting happened, the person he trusted most, the person he laughed with most, the person he could rely on the most, the safest place in Hirose’s life.
"I'm... glad." The words barely sounded human.
Fortunately, Hirose didn't seem to notice, instead as if remembering something important, he straightened slightly.
"Oh, actually" he began. "There was another reason I wanted to ask you to come today."
Nakamura's stomach tightened.
"I've been thinking about it for a while." His eyes met Nakamura's. "And honestly, there's only one person I could ask."
"Nakamura." Hirose's smile returned. "When I get married..” His voice carried an excitement so pure it almost hurt to hear. " I want you there. I want you, to be my best man."