i am sorry. this is NOT a smut, nsfw or even kinky. i have been trying to write something different, but the events from these past days aren’t helping me. this is the thing that came out more naturally, and since i want to write every day, here i leave it.
it’s sort of bittersweet, although it’s tender.
spaceship au.
The ship is eerily silent. One would believe the dead quiet of space wouldn’t bother a crew that has been nursing from its emptiness almost since birth, but it’s not the danger of it what’s making it so spooky.
Oikawa has turned the music off. The low rumble of jazz or the furious beat of hard metal or the annoying but catchy pop always playing on the background has been shut since six this morning, and it’s starting to affect everyone on board.
It’s the materialisation of expectations. As if Oikawa could create matter with his own will, particles seem to shine out of his body. He has been staring out of the command room for hours, now, gaze fixed in an unclear point of the vast immensity surrounding them. It’s not as if he knows the exact spot the coming ship will appear on, but it hasn’t stopped him.
In silent, he waits. And waits. And waits.
*
Tooru’s being awfully cheerful. His smile is so fake it’s actually bothersome and the lack of music would have told Hajime enough about Tooru’s mental state for him not to worry. The addition of Tooru’s floating around, as if Hajime were a piece about to break, doesn’t help Hajime with his mood.
“Jesus, Oikawa, calm down.” Tooru’s smile flinches. “I’m okay. You don’t need to treat me—” Hajime swallows harshly, but the small ocean of sand in his throat doesn’t dissolve. “I’m okay.”
“I know you are,” Oikawa answers too fast. His voice is a hint too high, his eyes a shade too dark, his mouth way too sharp. Hajime shifts uncomfortable on his bed, and tries the foreign feeling of the bed he has always known with this body, half of which he’s starting to properly acknowledge.
Hajime was afraid Tooru would look exactly how he’s watching him now. The uneasiness is understandable, for Hajime’s not the only one who needs to adapt to home with a set of new limbs and pieces. But the cloud of uncertainty on Tooru’s eyes, the way his hands fold on top of each other every two seconds, the way his gaze can’t stay on Hajime more than a heartbeat is exactly what he feared for. Tooru isn’t ready to take Hajime back.
Hajime’s half back. It’s not as if these metal pieces that breathe and crack with his movements, still adapting to his flesh, weren’t part of Hajime. But in Tooru’s reluctance, Hajime feels the sharp stab of his own indecision. After a year in medical facilities across the universe, Hajime has learned to accept this new— pieces of him. It has been difficult and Hajime can’t even count how many times he’d thought of giving up.
But after hours of screams and tears and white rooms empty of Tooru and the Aoba Jousai’s crew, Hajime’d started to see his reality in a new light. He is wounded, yes, but he’s not missing anything. Not because these pieces add to him, but because the crash hadn’t taken from him more than what he allows it to do.
And yet, Tooru’s antics bring the bitter taste of that hesitation back to Hajime’s mouth, nauseas and an upset stomach together with it. Maybe it’s too soon, maybe he should have stayed in the medical facilities—
“I’m glad you’re home, Iwa–chan.”
Hajime can’t bring himself to believe it.
*
It’s midnight when the music comes back. Hajime, cold sweat painting his body, wakes up in a daze. The nightmare lingers on his mouth, dry and sour. Hajime barely remembers it, but for how sore his muscles and nerves feel, he doesn’t have to.
Seconds tick before resentment kicks in. Hajime can’t but hate this stillness, the waking up of the dead. In the other side of the abyss, in those days when he wasn’t hurt and half of him weren’t iron gleam, he’d wake up with a fight. Not a blink and the darkness of his fears becoming another sort of nightmare, no. He’d wake up in a fuss and move around and even make a sound of discomfort.
In the other side of his life Hajime had never been afraid of anything. But in this one, he wakes up with the hands of death tickling his nape, and he can’t even flinch in answer. In this one, the loud melody of a balada is enough to send shivers down his back and bring a tremor to his chapped lips.
Hajime doesn’t stand, the thin blanket of his bed a poor excuse of a shield, but warm enough for him to pretend he’s safe and sound. The smell of his cabin has remained the same on this year, a bit of metal, a bit of wood, a bit of vanilla from that damn candle Tooru had bought him for his birthday three years ago. Maybe it’s the caress of being here again what gives the illusion of safety, and not the blanket.
Doors being opened and closed, of knuckles pounding on metal walls fill the empty space between songs. Hajime finds himself smiling, a tiny thing that feels warm and fuzzy.
He falls asleep with Hanamaki cursing Tooru, and Tooru’s voice, as loud and beautiful as Hajime remembers it.
*
His muscles ache.
The spaceship is shaking.
Hajime’s throat is tight and pulsating. He tries to swallow, but he can’t. He tries to breathe, but he can’t.
The sound of rocks hitting metal, of metal falling into hollow floors, of his stupid vanilla candle and his books falling from their shelves. Hajime hears everything. Feels everything. But his eyes won’t open. His mouth won’t make a sound. Hajime is in lock down, his body paralyzed and his surroundings falling on him.
“Hajime.”
The stillness breaks when Tooru wakes him up from the dream. Hajime stares up at him, so motionless one would think him dead if his heart weren’t pounding as loud as it does. Tooru’s frame looks shadowed by the emergency lights, but Hajime has no problem looking at his features. He’s frowning, that ugly wrinkle of worry breaking his eyebrows.
Hajime wants to take it away, but his arms won’t move. Even out of the dream he’s still as useless as he was inside of it.
“Iwa–chan,” Tooru’s voice is shaky. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ve been calling you for a while.” Tooru tears his gaze away for a beat. Hajime’s chest fills with guilt. “I thought—”
“Sorry,” Hajime says again, the roughness with which it comes out weird and tasteless. “They take— They take some time to react.”
Hajime doesn’t need to explain what they means. Tooru’s eyes are scanning the metal pieces on their own account, taking in what’s left of Hajime’s naked chest.
It looks bad, Hajime knows it does. The patches from his shoulder to his left lung and heart, now half flesh half machine. The arm, mechanisms still visible because Hajime has never been a rich man, and paying for the latest medical advances in this sort of treatments is out of his reach. The bent patch on his right side, covering what was before the shadow of a hipbone and disappearing down his pants.
Hajime knows it looks awful, because he has spent hours on end watching the results of disaster and medicine in front of the mirror. He has had the look on Tooru’s face countless times on his own.
It’s impressive how this is the time it hurts the most.
“Iwa–chan—”
“Just leave.” Hajime turns around, trying to brush Tooru away. “I’m alive. I’m okay. It was just a nightmare.”
Silence fills the room.
Tooru doesn’t leave.
“Will you have more nightmares?” the whisper fills Hajime to the core. He closes his eyes, but it’s already there, inside of him.
Hajime wants to shake his head. Instead, he says, “Probably.”
“Then I won’t leave.”
“You don’t have to see me.”
“What?” there’s actual surprise on that question, so Hajime turns around and faces Tooru with a scowl. Rage is burning up his finally woken up systems, and although it’s unfair to throw it all at Tooru, he can’t help himself.
“You can go. I don’t need your pity. You don’t have to force yourself to look at me— at this disgusting me—”
“Iwa–chan.” Hajime blinks away tears that shouldn’t be there. Tooru’s tone is sharp and plain and tells Hajime he’s pissed off. “I’m not leaving. I’m not pitying you. And I want to look at you.”
Hajime groans, eyes always away from Tooru’s expression, so he misses the blush that stains his cheeks.
“Please, can I sleep with you?”
Without answering, Hajime wiggles to the wall, making room. Tooru manages to fit his tall body into the small space left, his legs tangled with Hajime’s, his face so close Hajime feels his breath on his ear.
“I’m so happy you are here.”
“Oikawa—”
“No.” Hajime stops. “Listen to me. I’ve been— I’ve been really sad without you. I felt—” Tooru’s fingers start caressing Hajime’s shoulder, the fake one. It’s startling for his brain when the touch is sent through, as if he could feel, as if that piece of fake Hajime were, in fact, a real part of him. “It was my fault.”
“Oikawa, no. I don’t blame you. I never blamed you.” Tooru’s crying in silence when Hajime turns his head to look at him. Gods, he’s as ugly as one can get when he cries, but Hajime has never seen something more beautiful. “You thought I’d blame you?”
“It was my fault.”
“It was no one’s fault,” Hajime’s right hand cups Tooru’s face. His real hand, the before the abyss hand. Heat warms it, together with Tooru’s tears. “I’m glad I was the only one who got seriously injured.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t you—” Tooru grabs Hajime’s face and pushes him close, so close their foreheads are touching, their noses are rubbing together, their mouths could be just a plea or a whisper apart. Hajime stares at him, and doesn’t push back. “I’ll never let anything like that happen again. I’ll never let you get hurt again. I will fight any star and any damn black hole to keep you safe.”
Hajime can’t help it. He grins, a sparkle of life in the middle of the darkness. His metal arm still cracks when he moves it, his left shoulder feels Tooru but ghostly compared to how he feels in his right hand. Hajime’s still a bit broken, and in pieces, and yet, he’s finally home.
Tooru whimpers when Hajime kisses him. A soft peck, a caress that pretends comfort rather than anything else. Hajime drinks Tooru’s sobs directly from his lips, and he kisses him again. Hajime’s skin is inflamed and alive when Tooru lets his hand into his hair and keeps him close, close, so close the only thing Hajime sees is Tooru and the only thing Tooru breathes is Hajime.
“Oh, Hajime.”
There’s no need to say anything else. Hajime understands. He has been feeling like a broken doll in a foreign theater for so long, so alone, so dreadful. Tooru’s words are meaningful although so short. Hajime knows.
They kiss each other with growing urgency. Hajime tries to prove himself he’s still alive, no matter the pieces holding him together, and in Tooru’s mouth, he finds his answers. Lips give way to tongues and teeth, and Tooru’s still crying but his mouth can’t seem to stop devouring Hajime’s. As if this were his way of saying I won’t ever let you go. You’re branded by me, now. You are home.
And Hajime is home. When he groans on Tooru’s mouth, he’s home. When his tongue teases Tooru’s lips and cross them, he’s crossing home’s door and saying gleefully, Tadaima. When Tooru answers him with the same need, with the same greed, Hajime’s welcomed with a loud Okaeri. When Tooru never forces his kisses to become something more, although Hajime can feel him against his leg, it’s the soft tug of a hug, the smell of soap and laundry.
This is home. Tooru is home. Hajime has always known, but it’s not until now, half a man half a machine, with the soul scattered in pieces the same way his body is, he finally comprehends. Tooru is his safe port, his spaceship, his night light in a wave of nightmares.
“I thought you’d hate it,” Hajime musters breathlessly.
Tooru has his eyes closed and his lips swallow. “The only thing I hate,” Tooru’s gaze locks with Hajime’s, and for a second it feels as if their heartbeats are in sink, “is that I couldn’t be with you this year. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Hajime kisses him again, swallows Tooru’s sighs and sucks Tooru’s lips.
Hajime devours this little piece of him and keeps it safe, inside his metal chest now so heated up no one could say it’s not flesh, but something else.
episode 4 still haunts me to this day. how he snapped, his confliction and pain, and the damning realization of what he had become went right through my heart and i wanted to draw it so bad so here it is
