Chapter Text
The Sugawara’s country house feels similar to their city one – not in the colors or the shapes, maybe, but in the smells, the furniture, the décor’s tendency towards sensibly child-proof than elegant, the smiles everyone gives him as he ghosts the hallways. Tooru smiles back at the maids gossiping while they put out the evening’s lanterns, curling his fingers in a good-night wave as he ducks into his guest room, locking the door behind him.
This guest room is as much his as his attic in Ba Sing Se, the plain headboard marked by his and Koushi’s childhood antics, the curtains open and fluttering, a spare change of his clothes at the top of the closet. Those were a little small now – he’ll have to leave new ones before he sets off for the North Pole in a few days. His command. His heart thumps, and he leans back on the door, pressing two fingers to his smile.
The flutter of the curtains changes tempo for a moment. Tooru looks up at the open window and the stars beyond, smile growing. “Hello, Iwa-chan.”
Iwaizumi – Hajime – swings in the open window, his bare feet leaving a ring of dust on the old carpet. They stare at each other across the room, Hajime’s steady eyes fixed on Tooru like a steak in a vegetable spread. Tooru shivers, the memory of his sweat-heated body clasped to Tooru’s in the solar that afternoon surging back. “It’s good to see you,” he breathes. Hajime tucks a smile into the dimple in his left cheek. Tooru had never forgotten.
“You too, smartass.” Hajime takes a step forward – step back. “You got taller.”
“It’s called growing, Iwa-chan. You should try it sometime.” Hajime’s face darkens, and Tooru grins as he pounds across the carpet to thump a fist into his shoulder. Tooru winces, clutching the spot – that scar always aches at night. Hajime’s face twists, but Tooru beams at him before he can take it back. “And I was worried you’d feel differently about me after so long!”
Hajime gapes – closes his mouth – huffs out his nose. He grabs Tooru’s face with both calloused hands; before he can yelp, Tooru’s yanked down into a hard kiss, grabby and choking, lips caught between teeth. He wraps his arms around Hajime’s barrel chest, lifting him to his toes to put more of his mouth on Hajime’s, the weight pinning him against the door. Hajime’s fingers shake in his hair, breath heavy on his cheek, in his mouth. Tooru presses his tongue to it.
Unlike the afternoon’s quick, sweaty embrace, Hajime smells like lemongrass and rosemary, herbs sharp over the lingering tea clinging to his hair. He had bathed for Tooru. Tooru splays his hands along Hajime’s spine, bottom one sliding down over Hajime’s ass to grab his thigh and hitch him higher. Hajime responds by dropping his hands from Tooru’s hair to sling both arms around his neck, not breaking the heady kiss as he smashes into Tooru’s personal space with all the grace of a boulder. Tooru’s knees bend, the door the only thing keeping him up.
The knock vibrates through his back between his shoulderblades, three sharp raps. “Tooru? I brought tea,” Koushi’s voice calls through the door. Hajime snaps away from Tooru’s mouth, still entangled everywhere else. They pant in each other’s faces, Hajime’s dark hazel eyes blown wide, pupils huge. “Tooru?”
“Koushi,” Tooru says, low enough to just carry through the door and nowhere else, “I’m entertaining right now. Can it wait?”
“Huh? …Oh!” China clatters on the other side as Hajime glowers at him. Tooru smiles, squeezing his leg. “Geez, you kids move fast these days.” Hajime snorts, a flash of crooked teeth before his forehead knocks against Tooru’s shoulder. “Sure, sure, you boys have fun catching up, I’ll make sure you’re left alone.” Koushi laughs, his soft footsteps padding out of earshot.
Hajime tugs his leg out of Tooru’s hold, both feet on the ground as he nips at Tooru’s bared collarbone. Tooru hisses through his teeth. “I’ve always liked that guy,” Hajime mutters into Tooru’s skin.
“Same,” Tooru tells his coarse hair, still in its braid. “Now shut up ‘bout Koushi and kiss me again.”
Hajime chuckles right through to Tooru’s bone marrow. “Sure, Tooru.”
Tooru shivers – what branch of bending was it that made his own name sound so sinful from Hajime’s gravel throat?
Hajime uses his latch on Tooru’s neck to pull him away from the door, headed towards the loveseat tucked in a corner with a dark sunset view. Tooru follows for a few steps, hooked on Hajime’s lemongrass, but then – he always hated that loveseat. It’s scratchy, and not what he wants to remember about tonight.
He hugs Hajime’s waist and hauls him off his feet, Hajime clinging and gasping for a new reason as Tooru carts him to the bed instead, falling back on it, featherspread fluffing around him. He’s laughing, gold bubbles lifting in his stomach that had never been there before – never such a bright metallic. Hajime’s laughing with him, rolling them so their feet aren’t hanging off the edge and he’s on top, crouched over Tooru. He smacks a kiss on the corner of Tooru’s grin, elbows propped wide so his hands can slide up and down Tooru’s arms. “When the hell did this happen?” he asks, tracing the lines of Tooru’s muscle tone. “Last time I saw you, you were a few noodles attached to an airhead.”
Tooru catches his tongue in his teeth. “A lot can happen in a year, Iwaizumi Li.”
“Hajime.” He presses his temple against Tooru’s, heartbeat pounding alongside. “And it was fourteen months, not just a year.”
“And five days.” Tooru twists his fingers in of Hajime’s belt. “You think you were the only one counting?” Hajime huffs, humid breath fogging down the gaping neck of Tooru’s wrap tunic.
“I wasn’t sure.” He nuzzles into the baby hairs above Tooru’s ear. “I never knew, never could, and I couldn’t find anything to fill it up.” He lies down over Tooru, knee up to chest, long steady lines of contact, just what the healer ordered. “Finding the Sugawaras felt like stumbling into the Spirit World.” He worms his hands under Tooru’s heaving shoulders, ankles winding around one of Tooru’s calves. He buries his face in Tooru’s neck. I missed you, the cheap soap says for him. “I never meant to keep you waiting so long,” he whispers.
Tooru swallows on his tight throat, holding Hajime back like they both need. “I never meant to let you.” He reaches up to cup Hajime’s head – tugs the tie off his stupid braid and tosses it to the carpet, unwinding the twists with his fingers. “If you hadn’t sent for me before this trip I was going to come looking again.” Hajime’s hair is loose now, cut still uneven but a hand longer. ‘But ready, this time.”
Hajime hums, melting into his touch. “Have you been training, then?”
“Something like that.” He scratches Hajime’s scalp for him. “I might have scared the daylights out of my parents when I ran away and came back like – well. They hired me a self-defense instructor instead of a babysitter.” He grins at the beige ceiling, the circle of lamplight from his bedside table a flickering orange outline. “The arms are mostly me, though.”
Hajime hums, fingers digging and dancing on Tooru’s back. “So you think you could knock me out now, huh, big guy?”
“Well, maybe not you.” He pinches a pressure point on Hajime’s side. He yelps, jerking in Tooru’s grip. Tooru laughs. “I can always use some more instruction.”
“Oh?” Hajime shoves back to his elbows, hair falling around his face, ends brushing Tooru’s cheeks and collar. He’s still got his dimpled smile on. “And how would you pay me, brat?”
Tooru smiles, tucking some of Hajime’s hair behind his ear. “I could teach you how to dance.” Hajime’s flush grows blotchy, smile falling. Tooru traces his fingertips down Hajime’s jaw, thumb grazing his cheek. His throat works under Tooru’s little finger. Tooru tilts his head. “You don’t have to answer now, Hajime.” Hajime nods, hair falling in his face again. He grimaces and rolls to the side, wriggling so he lies proper on the bed (they had been diagonally downwards), twisting it back around a finger.
“This is why I keep it up,” he growls, gruff coming back threefold. Tooru crawls up beside him, lying in the Sugawara standard of too many pillows, tugging Hajime down so he’s reclining instead of sitting up. Tooru brushes Hajime’s hair from his face, rough and wide and a little squishy and his.
“I kinda like it.” The pad of his thumb finds a light furrow on his forehead, just below his hairline. Tooru frowns. “Is this new?”
Hajime reaches up to it, their fingers brushing. “Ah. That.” His mouth twitches. “Let’s just say the first ostrich-horse I tried to ride didn’t like me.”
“You? Mr. City Boy? Trying to ride?” He tangles their fingers together by Hajime’s ear, snuggling in closer, chin on Hajime’s shoulder and leg thrown over his hips. “How did that happen?”
“Well.” Hajime clears his throat and slides his arm under Tooru’s shoulders, snagging in the hair at Tooru’s nape. “So, uh. The full story?” Tooru nods, nestling in. Hajime sighs.
“Well, after I – left you, I snuck back to headquarters to apologize…”