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In the ephemeral moments where the sun breathes skies into hazy gold and sombre pink and Tooru’s fingertips brush gently against his, there are words that yearn to escape his mouth but he pilfers into the crevices of his heart instead.
This is one of them.
Warm lips on soft, warm lips; hands desperately tugging on clothes, pulling them off, off, off; the way Tooru’s dripping cock brushes against his own, sharp gasps and moans punctuated by the soft ruffling of bedsheets. Tooru chants his name like a divine hymn – Tobio, Tobio, Tobio – and the sharp heat of Tooru’s skin against his skin burns through his veins like sunfire. Beautiful, in the way of cosmic stars that shine under the moon’s eternal domain; lazy sunrises on soft, serene waters.
Familiarity, the kind that comes with the meticulous deliberation of Tooru’s body when they are twelve and fifteen and Tooru had become the fixation of his adolescent reverence; an amalgamation of sharp bones against sharp tongue, the bending of his knees and the curve of his back as Tooru serves the volleyball – the same curve he’s come to know so intimately under the fervent prayer of his palms as he traces them into the contours of his memories.
This is another.
When the world has gone quiet and the bright eyed setter curls up against him at night, head buried against his chest with steadily rising breaths. Tobio would lull himself to sleep, breath matching his lover’s breath, in the way he used to do so all those years ago when Tooru had decided he was a threat and a stranger all in one and Tobio had no choice but to learn through the silent emulation of movements day after day after day.
The slow, hazy mornings that begin with butterfly kisses on his lips, nose, cheeks; how he’s so afraid of these precious moments shattering each time Tooru rises out of bed; afraid that one day, Tooru will push their late night trysts to the back of his pretty mind and he’ll be left all alone again. But the uneasiness in his heart is soothed by the murmur of the coffee machine that runs twice without fail. He listens to Tooru’s soft hums as he toasts milk bread to golden brown, and Tobio knows that when he rises out of bed and makes his way into the living room, he’ll see two plates and coffee cups set neatly on the kitchen countertop – one for him, one for Tooru.
There are moments too, that he knows are just for him and nobody else. Moments that he holds close to his heart because it’s voiceless words of affirmation that their days of animosity are gone and they’re something so much more than that now, in the way the him at twelve years old would never dare to dream of.
He does not speak of the fragility that comes with the way Tooru holds himself, the quiver of his pretty lips, how his hands tremble after a close loss. He says nothing at the grating, false laughs that permeate the air when Tooru is uncomfortable, but too proud to bare his heart and soul. On days where purple blossoms underneath tired, hazel eyes, Tobio would lean forward, gently pressing starlit kisses against the bruises. Nightmares, Tooru would say as his thumb gently traces the silhouette of his cheeks, and Tobio knows he really means I’m afraid of not being enough.
And another.
The timid knocks on his door that echoes in his apartment at three a.m. A rare, momentary lapse in the façade that Tooru’s systematically crafted, and Tobio knows that these moments are for him and him only; knows that beneath the arrogant, indomitable strength that Tooru shows to the world, Tooru is a glass-stained window on the precipice of shattering. On those silent nights, he’ll open the door and gently grasp Tooru’s hand, leading him to the bed that’s still warm from the heat of his body. They speak in soft sighs under the luminescent skies, hushed murmurs of conversations that are about everything and nothing – how they watch the steam rise languidly from their coffee in the morning sunlight, how their hands wanes and waxes as the volleyball kisses the pads of their fingers. You are not alone, Tobio wants to say, I will stay by your side forever. Instead, he threads Tooru’s fingers in between his, and watches as stilted breaths lull into the steady sighs of sleep.
For Tobio and Tooru, the unspoken words have always existed in the galaxies that expand and contract in the quiet moments in between sound, existing before time immemorial as their relationship bleeds from kohai to senpai, rival to rival, lover to lover. In the morning, the songbirds will chirp outside their window and Tobio knows they’ll wake up together, and breathe in tandem as one.