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“There,” Tooru says decisively, throwing the final overstuffed down pillow onto the bed and dusting off his hands. “Done.”
Tobio clicks his tongue and stares at the makeshift pillow wall they’ve constructed in the middle of the bed with a grimace, hands on his hips. “This is…fine.”
Ordinarily, Tooru would roll his eyes and make some jab at how high-maintenance Tobio is, but right now he can’t even disagree. The past five hours have been an exercise in a very original, very specific form of torture that began when he’d gone to check in to his hotel room that afternoon and discovered that they’d mistakenly booked him a room with none other than his accursed lifetime volleyball rival. In the honeymoon suite.
No amount of begging and bribing could make a new room appear in a fully booked hotel, so here they are. Building a stupid pillow wall.
Tooru had nearly considered spending the night in the airport when they’d walked in to find the bed covered in rose petals, red scattered everywhere like the scene of a murder. The petals have been neatly swept to the floor now. Angrily, Tooru crushes one underfoot.
He takes a deep, fortifying breath in through his nose and digs a peso out of his wallet. “I’m feeling gracious, so you can pick first. Heads or tails?”
Tobio snorts, glances at the coin in his hands then quickly looks away again. “Heads,” he grunts.
“Monosyllabic as ever, I see,” Tooru says. “Hate the idea of sharing a bed with me that much?”
To his surprise, instead of yelling or throwing things at him, Tobio only stammers out “ye—yeah. You probably hog all the covers.”
Tooru watches the tips of his ears turn red with great fascination. Okay. Weird.
Deciding to ignore whatever Tobio’s got going on right now, he flips instead. The coin spirals through the air, spinning and spinning, and Tooru slaps it down onto the back of his hand. When he uncovers it, the Sun of May stares back at him.
“Ugh. Tobio-chan, don’t you ever get tired of winning? It must get old,” he gripes, sticking his nose in the air.
Tobio stares at him like he’s said something appalling. “No,” he says, scrunching his brows together. “Do you?”
Well—“No,” Tooru admits. “Which side do you want?”
A pause. “Left.”
Seriously? His day just keeps getting worse. “Noooo,” Tooru whines, pleading. “You can’t. That’s my side, I always sleep on the left. I demand a recount!”
Tobio argues with him for a good few minutes and eventually relents, but only if he can flip this time. Tooru watches him do it with apprehension.
Heads.
Is this coin weighted or something? “Flip again,” Tooru demands.
Tobio flips. Heads.
“Ohhh my god,” Tooru groans, kicking more vehemently at the petals now. He feels marginally better when they crumple into a bunch of tiny pieces. “Fine, Tobio-chan. You can have the left side, but just remember it’s because your senpai is so generous and willing to risk back injury by sleeping on the vastly inferior right side.”
Like the ungrateful kouhai he is, Tobio only glares at him, drags his suitcase to the left side, and disappears into the bathroom with clothes and toiletries tucked under his arm. Still, Tooru counts it as a victory every time he gets Tobio all riled up. He’s just so cute like that, with his narrowed eyes and gritted teeth.
Now that he’s gone, Tooru can finally relax, sinking into his side of his bed with a long sigh. The room’s not bad; it’s a fancy hotel, so that’s to be expected, but this suite has floor to ceiling windows and an unobstructed view of the Seine. The only thing Tooru can’t stand is the massive, garish painting of the Eiffel Tower that hands directly over the bed, like some tasteless specter of tourism. In his opinion, it’s an instant mood-killer.
If he were actually getting married, with someone he could see himself falling in love with—not Tobio, but maybe someone tall and pretty and understanding of his volleyball obsession—he thinks he wouldn’t mind staying here for his honeymoon.
His phone buzzes.
<did you kill each other yet>
<aw, were u worried about me, iwa-chan??? im touched!!!!> He types out in reply. <my gorgeous face is still intact> <unfortunately so is his>
<whatever> <just play nice>
Tooru snorts. When is he not? <im always nice>
<sure. have a safe flight back tomorrow>
<so sweet!!!>
He locks his phone and flops onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. It’s just one night. One night with the most annoying person in the whole world, sure, but he’s made it through worse.
Besides, being nice is what got him into this mess in the first place. Agreeing to play a charity exhibition match to raise money for school supplies sounds good in theory, but he’s starting to regret it now. Do kids really need an education? He barely paid attention in class, and he’s doing just fine. Generally speaking.
What’s worse is that he didn’t even win. No, Tobio and his smug face did, taking the game 3-2 after a vicious back-and-forth setter duel. And he knows that’s what it is, because not a single other player cared about a meaningless exhibition match.
Take it easy, his coach had told him before he’d left Argentina for France. We don’t want you getting hurt. Well, his coach simply doesn’t know him well enough, because if there’s one thing he and Tobio have never been able to do, it’s take it easy. Especially not against each other.
The only good thing about this situation, he supposes, is that the bed is so large there’s no possibility of them accidentally touching each other. He doesn’t want Tobio to kick him in his sleep, or push him off, or—god forbid—snuggle up to him. The thought of waking up to Tobio cuddled around him, in his arms and everything, sends a furious shiver down his spine. He’d never be the little spoon, anyway. He has too much dignity for that!
Ticked off now, Tooru punches one of the pillows next to him. It doesn’t even have the decency to deflate, puffing right back up as if to prove how springy and well-stuffed it is.
“I’m done,” Tobio calls out, snapping Tooru out of his reverie. “Bathroom’s all yours.”
Tobio emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, toweling off his hair. For some reason, Tooru can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the strip of skin that keeps appearing and disappearing every time Tobio lifts his arms, or the flex and stretch of his biceps.
In the lengthy list of things about Tobio that are absolutely unfair, right under the entries terrifyingly good vision and hot enough to make girls watch volleyball, is that in the years since high school he’s grown even taller than Tooru himself. Only by an inch, but it’s the principle of the thing. Tooru doesn’t like the idea that if he tried to stare down Tobio now, he’d be staring…up.
He’s been gawking a little too long, because Tobio clues in that he’s doing it, and like the strange guy he’s always been, chooses to return his gaze. For a moment they simply look at each other, frozen.
Now that he plays professionally, Tobio keeps his hair cropped shorter, and Tooru recognizes, abruptly, how strange it is to look directly into his eyes without his choppy bangs in the way. He can see Tobio’s eyebrows, his forehead, and he’s not sure why that excites him so much.
A drop of water forms at his temple and starts creeping down the side of his face, tumbling into the long slope of his neck. Tooru thinks about what it would be like to wipe it off of him with his tongue.
Wait—what?
Okay, something is seriously wrong with him. This whole situation is making him delirious. Cabin fever, that must be it. He remembers Matsukawa heatedly discussing The Shining with Hanamaki in the back of history class once, describing how the main character went insane from being cooped up for so long and started killing people. That’ll be him soon, if he doesn’t get out of this room. A murderer.
Primly, he stands, yanking things out of his own suitcase without checking if they’re the right items or not, ignoring the way his hands are trembling, and brushes past Tobio with barely a glance.
“Hope you didn’t prune from spending so long in the shower, Tobio-chan,” he chirps, voice shaky, and slams the door.
Being around Tobio is making him feel off-kilter, and if there’s one thing he hates, it’s losing control.
Of course, it makes sense that once Tooru’s finally in bed, he can’t fall asleep. The soft, thick mattress feels too lumpy, the thousand-count sheets feel scratchy. One second he’s too hot, then the next second he’s too cold. He shifts as close to the edge of the bed as he can, back turned to the pillow wall, and squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to drift off so this awful day can be over.
But whenever he closes his eyes, all he can see is Tobio, rumpled and wet from the shower, eyes wide open in earnest—and the inexplicable urge to get his hands on him wells up in Tooru, different from how it usually manifests. Instead of wanting to grind Tobio’s face in the dust, he wants to know if his face is as soft as it looks under his fingertips. Instead of making Tobio flush in anger, he wants to scrape his teeth against the base of his throat, just to see if the blush spreads that far down.
It’s so unfair Tooru could rip his hair out and scream. How dare he give Tooru an entire crisis just by standing there?
He doesn’t know what compels him, but he turns around and sits up, looking over the pillows to the other side of the bed, only to find Tobio wide awake and staring back at him, unblinking. His breath catches.
Pale, silvery light filters in through the cracks in the drapery and reflects off Tobio’s irises, so dark in the night that they look like black pools.
Distantly, a car crunches through gravel in the street below. Two women drunkenly giggle, high-pitched and unfettered, petering out as they walk away. An undercurrent of song—some opera, most likely—plays from an apartment nearby, slow and wistful.
They move at the same time, so fast Tooru isn’t sure he’s not dreaming. Tobio clambers over the pillows and crawls into his lap, ducks down as Tooru rises, meeting in the middle with a frenzy. Tobio’s mouth is small, and his lips are a little chapped, but he fits perfectly against Tooru, maybe a little like he’s always meant to be there.
They kiss for what feels like hours, long enough that they end up laying down, face to face, one of Tooru’s legs wedged between Tobio’s knees as they rock against each other slowly. Tobio’s a sweet, almost shy kisser, Tooru learns, and it’s not something he thinks he’ll forget anytime soon.
“I leave for Rome early tomorrow morning,” Tobio whispers, eventually, the first thing he’s said all night. “But you have my number. So if you’re in Italy again, you should call me.”
“Worry about that later,” Tooru replies, because who cares about the real world when they’re cocooned in the sheets like this, warm and dreamy? “There’s more fun things we could be doing. Turns out you’re much less annoying when you’re being kissed, hm? So easy for it…”
That flush in Tobio’s ears starts to bloom again, except this time it travels down and dusts the high points of his cheekbones. Who is Tooru kidding, he’s always been gorgeous.
“You’re so,” Tooru breathes, and reaches down to tug Tobio’s shirt off, letting his hands say what his mouth can’t.
Tooru wakes up the next morning to an empty bed and a crick in his neck. One of the drapes has been thrown open, the one that faces the Musee d’Orsay across the river. He smiles to himself thinking about Tobio bathed in morning sunlight, standing in front of the window and admiring the trees that have just started blooming, frost still thawing on the ground.
Cypress and grapevine linger in the sheets, enticing him to bury his nose in the pillow next to him, imagining he can still pick up Tobio’s warmth, long after he’s left. When he lifts his head again he notices the coin placed in the center of the pillow. An Argentine peso—Tooru’s peso, that he must have dropped sometime last night when they were squabbling.
He picks it up and rolls it between his knuckles, pondering. Heads, he’ll call Tobio. Tails, he won’t.
He flips.
Tails.
Tooru splutters out a laugh at the irony, and he’s still laughing, minutes later, when he grabs his phone to call Tobio anyway.