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Click click click. Tap tap tap.
Splashes of colors swirl on the screen as the sound of ink flicking against each other echoes in Yuuta’s ears while Toge sits snugly in his lap.
Yuuta’s not sure how this happened, but he definitely isn’t complaining. He just knows Toge found his way there sometime after dinner, walking straight into the darkness that is Yuuta’s room with nothing but a switch in his hand and two cans of iced tea tucked under the crook of his elbow. Yuuta barely had a second to sit up and say hello before he’s pushed back down on the sheets as Toge made himself comfortable in the mess of their tangled limbs.
So yes, Toge is in his lap, playing his little Splatoon game, looking so relaxed and nice and soft that Yuuta wants nothing but to push his onigiri-patterned switch aside and kiss him senseless.
But he can’t.
He can’t because he has tried; and Toge, sweet, caring, loving Toge—who’s also too competitive for his own good—has pushed off his attempts in order to splat an enemy square in the face with his dualies, then sprinted on for two more kills while he sulks.
It’s fine, however. It’s totally fine. Yuuta can wait. He likes to think he’s patient. Being patient is honing a virtue, after all. A sort of good that will reward well, and he wants that reward so bad it feels like committing a sin is easier on principle.
As if sensing Yuuta’s grumps, Toge tilts his head back slightly, hair parting to the side to show him the full view of his violet eyes. And god, Toge is so pretty he doesn’t know what to do with himself except to slip back a dopey grin.
“Hi,” Yuuta smiles, leaning down to meet Toge’s bangs in a light peck. When he pulls away, Toge’s eyes have already gone back to the screen, his inkling character running toward some fishing place in the city.
“What are you doing now?” Yuuta asks, pulling Toge closer toward his chest and dropping his face flat into the silver hair. Apple orchard and something distinctly floral slams straight to his senses, and Yuuta can’t help but sigh contentedly.
“Sujiko, tsuna mayo, mentaiko,” Toge replies in kind, wiggling slightly in their embrace to show Yuuta the screen. His inkling is in some kind of clean-up suit with an absurdly huge roller in hand. There’s a flickering, orange neon sign somewhere in the back.
I’m doing Grizzco, he points at the bolded light, it’s like fishing but violent.
Yuuta’s mouth morphs into a circle. “Oh,” he blinks. “Violent? Like what kind of violence? Shooting fish instead of just using nets and rods?”
“Shake.” Yes. Then Toge’s attention is whisked away as the match-up functions successfully register the rest of the crew.
To be honest, Yuuta would be lying if he says he didn’t pout at getting ignored, because he’s pretty sure he did—with the slight pull he feels on his face and everything. But what can he do? If Toge is content nuzzling into his chest and using him as a backprop for his gaming o’clock, then Yuuta is more than happy to comply. He’ll take what he gets.
Still, what can he do?
The moonlight tips into the room, lining the peak of his beloved’s hair like a beautiful ring bestowed by the heavens themselves. Stray dust particles dance around the bouncing halo, with a few skittering around the mussed up strands from the constant motion of clicking and dragging.
It must be pretty late in the night for the moon to shine on Toge like he’s the highlight of her canvas. Yuuta would know, after all. It’d be hard not to.
He’s kissed these ethereal circlets more times than he can count in a lifetime. During nights where he’s caged away from the grip of rest, insomnia a constant bug in his peripherals. Nights where Toge would knock on his door as if he just knows and drops onto his sheets, kissing the edges of his lids until he’s lulled away with a kiss on his lips.
It’s a miracle. It truly is. Ever since he stepped foot into Jujutsu High over a year ago, nothing but a bundle of anxiousness in a concoction of power he’s never known how to hold. The weight of years-long curse hunching down his back and the whispers of this is what you did, after all; this is what you’ve asked for; ringing over and over in his ears.
Sleep has always been a rare commodity to Yuuta, and it was even rarer back then. The few nights where he manages to grasp an hour or three of shut eyes has always been his luckiest.
And it’s not until after the mission with Maki that he starts to rack up more rest, and it’s not until he’s found a new drive to reverse Rika’s curse, the talk with Panda over the windowsills, that the night takes him again, and it’s not until after the mission with Toge’s and his kindness that sleep finally seems more amiable to him.
He’s so grateful for it all. He doesn't think he will ever stop being grateful for everything he’s been given.
The curse he’s finally broken, the forgiveness in Rika’s voice as she wishes him a good life and to move on. The friends he’s finally gained, the opportunity to train and to protect those that he treasures.
And then, more blessedly, the universe—a concept he once believed would never look upon him, cursed child that he is—finally deems him enough to give him the boy he loves the most amidst it all.
“Tsuna?” Toge pokes, and Yuuta flinches, blinking back to life as he stares at the job finished screen on the switch. Oh. How long has he been spacing out for?
“Ah, you’re done?” Yuuta says, then realizes how stupid that sounds, and splutters. “I mean— I can see that you’re done. I don’t know why— nevermind, forget what I said. I don’t know what came over me.”
Toge narrows his eyes at him. “Takana?” You okay?
“Yeah, I’m okay, promise,” Yuuta exhales. “I was just thinking about some stuff.”
“Mentaiko, tsuna?” Like what stuff?
“Just— um… Past stuff. Me stuff. How far it’s been since everything kind of stuff,” he admits, sheepish. “It’s nothing, though. Don't worry.”
Toge doesn’t look convinced. He wriggles in Yuuta’s hold, turning around and putting enough distance between them, then moves his hands to sign. “Your grip got tighter, and you only ever do that when something is stuck in your head,” he pauses, very deliberately poking a finger at Yuuta’s chest, then continues. “So spit it out.”
“It’s nothing, really,” Yuuta prances, faltering slightly at Toge’s unimpressed stare. He takes in a breath and sighs. “I guess it was— I was like, just thinking about how grateful I am for everything. That’s it. No big deal.”
That catches Toge’s attention. His hands fly up again, tracing the sign. “Grateful?”
“Yeah, grateful. Grateful, like… um. Being glad I am who I am today even if it seemed impossible before?” Yuuta starts, eyes darting away. “Like being happy I have you guys now, and that I can actually feel okay being alive, that it’s okay for me to exist.”
“And grateful in the sense that…” His hand trails up Toge's sleep shirt, brushing over Toge’s soft lips, voice gentling, “I get to be with you. I think.”
Toge’s face flushes up, red sparkling from his ears and trekking over the rest of his face. He pushes Yuuta away with a huff.
“You’re such a sap,” he chastises, but he’s grinning a little. “Why did you think about that all of the sudden? Did watching me play Splatoon bring out your undying love and admiration for me?”
Yuuta blanks. “Huh? What do you mean? I always love and admire you, Toge. I thought that much was obvious. Even Maki said I look like a dork staring at you and that it’s kinda annoy—”
“Okaka, Yuuta, okaka," Toge grumbles, bringing his hands up hastily. “You really need to stop saying stuff like that. It's so cheesy.”
That’s true, it is cheesy. Maki used to hate their tiptoeing because of how pathetic Yuuta would get, stealing glances and trailing behind Toge whenever he had the chance like a lost puppy. Every time he came to her with his woes, she’d beat him harder in practice the next day and glower at him to get over himself and confess.
Now that everything’s changed, Yuuta’s pretty sure her scorn got worse. He wasn’t aware her eyes could get any more prickly until he caught the tail end of one recently—it looked like she was in between stages of relief and disgust and being utterly done with their bull-crap, watching them bunch up like magnets at every reunion.
She’s probably a hair strand away from being pissed clean off, Yuuta thinks, and he can’t really blame her. He’d seen how Yuuji and Megumi get around still uninvolved. It’s bad. He’s worse. Worse and not sorry.
“Maybe I don’t want to stop,” Yuuta continues instead, the thought still fresh with oozing confidence. “Why should I anyway? You deserve everything.”
The words are more forthcoming than he ever considered himself to be. It’s true, however. Toge does deserve it all. So unlike him, strong and brave in ways he can’t be. A dream in Yuuta’s opinion, a dream who’s struck Yuuta’s reality like a snake’s bite and everything after is just delirium from poison. He doesn’t deserve him.
At that, Toge immediately tries to scowl out another retort, but Yuuta’s arms are quicker. They encircle Toge's waist, pulling him back against his chest and tucking him right under his chin so Yuuta can mute out the complaints. He rests his head atop the fluttering silver hair. Toge squirms, but he doesn't get far, arms flapping uselessly against Yuuta's back.
The moon dapples around the strands once more in their tousle. Yuuta watches them sway from the top of his head. They’re moonlit. They’re beautiful—Toge’s beautiful.
A small breath leaves him, Yuuta closes his eyes and lets his lids lie flat on Toge’s hair. It’s so soft, he breathes it in, and so homey. Just how did he get so lucky?
“Toge…” He mumbles, pressing a chaste kiss on the line of orchard-scented locks, tone faint. “You deserve everything and more, so really, and I mean really when I say this.” Voice muffled under another shy kiss on Toge’s bangs, Yuuta looks up. “Thank you for giving one of those things to me.”
“Okaka, ikura.” Don’t say that.
Yuuta can only give him an awkward smile in response. “Sorry?”
“Mentaiko, takana, Yuuta.” That's literally the most nothing thing to say sorry for, Yuuta. A short pause as Toge's arms cling to the sleeves of his shirt, dragging along the weathered ends. Yuuta feels the tug more than he sees it. “Okaka, tsuna.” And that’s the most nothing thing to thank me for too. You deserve stuff, you know? You deserve me, you can have me.
Then, Toge grouches. And Yuuta’s realization comes seconds early, his thoughts were probably splashed bluely on his face, as clear as summertime’s sky. Standing next to gratefulness like a toxin, the other belief that slithered in, squeezing his brain and suffocating his vessels: unfit, not enough.
There’s still a bit of fight in Toge’s answer, but his words are mellowed out, melting petal by petal like the faint floral tinge of his shampoo. He’s grown soft too, Yuuta realizes. From him. For him. The guilt twists.
Yuuta sighs and rubs his hand along the stripe of Toge’s spine, chest sagging. There’s a moment of silence between them, with nothing but the moonlight twirling around dust particles, and the distant, buzzing melody of Splatoon’s background music.
It really isn’t anything new, he shouldn’t be as surprised about it as he is, they spend more time together than they do apart. Enough lack-of-distances even back then, when they were still spiked up with foreign feelings and flimsy excuses about being too much and too little, dancing-but-not around each other like they were the only two people in the world.
The concept sounds unbelievably simple, the way Toge tells him. He loves Toge, and Toge loves him. That should’ve been it. That should’ve been the answer to everything. The click noise of a lock opening, the reason why he’s allowed to have.
It’s been two years by now. Two years since he’s arrived. Enough seasons, months, and days in between for him to slowly learn that deserving things is fine. Time has passed to the point where he knows he can hold things—hold people—in his arms, and they will bracket him back just as tightly.
Because like Maki, like Panda, like Toge said, over and over again: he deserves it, too.
Unconsciously, he trails his hand toward Toge’s shoulders. Touch as light as a feather, inching their bodies away with a tenderness he’s long since remembered he’s allowed to carry, and cups Toge’s face in the callouses.
Toge just blinks back at him, as if all that is between them is but another normalcy in his life. Ah.
Maybe it is. Maybe they’ve always been like this.
Outside of being sorcerers, the burden of exorcising and taking away lives. Going away and coming back with blood of their own and others. Backed into uncertainties at every corner. Outside of what their destinies have lined, they’re still just two young bubbling seeds, meeting sunlight every morning in each other’s embrace.
They’re still human with love to give and to keep. And they’re still those two gangly, awkward first-years they were back then, learning how to navigate the fate that’s been thrusted upon them.
Yuuta’s hand traces over the seals by Toge’s cheeks, ever gentle. Toge turns his face slightly, soft skin meeting the rough palm of his hand with no care in the world.
It hurts. It hurts knowing he can still love and be loved despite everything. It hurts and he thinks he will be fine living in that ache forever.
Maybe that’s what he’s missing. Maybe he has been avoiding the throb so much that he forgets that turning a key flips the lock too, the switch of a change.
It hurts. But he twists the knob anyway and inhales corroding metal until the smell fades. It hurts. But then the door opens to a flower garden, smelling like paradise, and nothing hurts.
“I love you,” Yuuta sighs and takes it in stride, carefully tilting Toge’s face. “I love you. So, so much.”
Toge smiles softly, a hand resting on his own chest before coming over to Yuuta’s, flat against his heart. It’s not the conventional sign, but Yuuta understands, and he hopes he always will: “I love you too.”
“Can I?” Yuuta asks. Lighter, because he's allowed to ask, allowed to have and to give. And they’re so close already, the sentence feels useless with barely any centimeters between them. Yet, he doesn’t think he can close it like this—he needs to know, wants to, before anything. Even if the result is as clear as the moonlight sparkling through curtains.
He can feel the hitch in Toge’s breath as their eyes meet. Then, he nods. The dam that's blocked up in Yuuta's chest slips, rocks crumbling away, and all that there is are breaking loose.
He closes their distance wordlessly, chapped lips meeting soft ones. It ends as soon as it starts, just a quick press, shy of everything they already know. Then again, a little longer, a tad more lingering, because he can. Then one more, because the river is already flowing.
When he pulls back, Toge doesn’t let him. Yuuta has roughly a second before Toge’s soft lips meet him again, more reverent than ever, arms locking behind Yuuta’s shoulders.
Their lips meet in haste, Yuuta’s mind blanks as Toge sighs into his mouth, playing with the short strands at the back of Yuuta’s neck. He nibbles at Toge’s bottom lip, savoring his muffled whine and licking into the gasp he’s given him. Then, Toge parts his mouth even more, and Yuuta thinks he’s never been as single-minded as he is right now.
His tongue meets Toge’s and there’s a quiet, hardly audible groan that’s immediately sucked up in his chase. Soft, wet flesh feels impossibly hot against Yuuta’s mouth. Toge tastes like Kirin’s Lemon Tea, sweet and slightly sour with citrus. There’s a hint of throat lozenges, too, from the mission Toge had earlier today near the Dazaifu Tenmangu.
It’s so sweet. It's so bitter. It’s so Toge that Yuuta has to suppress a hungry whine the second they part for air, before diving into each other again. No better than starving wolves having their first hunt.
Only when their lips are swollen, kiss-bitten to the core, cheeks roseating in the same shade as Toge’s carnations on his bedside, that Yuuta finally lets him go, stealing one last peck against the reddened wet lips.
“Baby,” Yuuta murmurs, reaching up to smooth down Toge’s messy hair that's tousled up in their frantic grabbing. “Are you okay? Sorry if I was too much.”
“Takana, Yuuta. Mentaiko,” Toge mumbles, dipping his head closer to where the heat of Yuuta’s hand rests and nuzzling in. “Sujiko, takana,” I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me, Yuuta. Tired, though.
“I think it’s about time we sleep anyway,” Yuuta hums. He wiggles out of the hug, feeling slightly guilty as Toge’s hands flail up to find him before they realize what’s going on and plop down again. The dull thud sags his heart tenfold.
“Don’t worry,” he promises, pressing his lips against the corner of Toge’s eyes, then backs away. “I’ll be quick.”
And be quick Yuuta tries. He hooks the two, room-temperatured cans with his fingertips and tosses them to the trash at the same speed he uses to snap the windows shut. Toge’s trusty switch ends up sitting on the nightstand next to his phone, plugged in because he bought a second charger for it with how much Toge stays over.
The memory brings a small smile to his face. It’s a little cheesy—and a little sappy, he knows. But the fondly exasperated look on Toge’s face when he was stopped from bringing the device back to charge is worth every sap talk ever and more.
“Yuuta, tsuna.” Yuuta, hurry.
“I’m here,” Yuuta answers, walking back with a small kiss to Toge’s other eye. He lets himself be tugged down, lets Toge rearrange himself against him to his liking, settling his face against Yuuta’s shoulder once he’s done.
Yuuta huffs a small laugh and wraps his arms against him, one palm resting safely on the small of his back, and burrows his face into the sweet, floral apple orchard of silvers.
There's a hand on his chest again, gingerly clutching the fabric right above his heart. The warmth is almost immediate, Toge rolls in further. He doesn't have to think twice about what it means, or what the thin gap wants to say. He already knows.
Goodnight, Yuuta. I love you.
“I love you too,” echoes Yuuta, with a kiss against the corners of his mouth. Snake's Eyes. “Goodnight.”
So, what can he do?
Yuuta breathes in again as the question breezes by. The scent of a well-tended garden and the bloom of home greets him in turn. The answer has always been here; tucked in between the burgeoning greenery of their past selves' soiled hands; tentative touches as their fingers brush for the first time.
Yuuta doesn’t understand why he was so apprehensive about this. They’re together, been together since before he left for Africa, during, after, and through it all. They’re boyfriends. Lovers. The resulting fact is simple.
What can he do? The moon asks. And Yuuta’s response is filed away in the first ever dream he had, one year ago, intertwined with the red carnations on his nightstand.