the fireworks begin in earnest, lighting up the sky behind them. he doesn’t really notice, though, too enraptured in the proximity of their lips, “i love you,” toshinori says, breath ghosting tender skin; the first words of the new year, & it feels like a promise, “happy new year, shouta.” heart pounding louder than the booming overhead, he leans in & closes the gap between them.
It’s hard to believe that the years would crescendo to a gentle caress, that the wars in streets and within your own mind that blackened your bones to soot and marred your innards to ribbons would slow to a roll and stop. That you can stand here beneath the booming colors above with your hands twined in cornsilk hair and feel for once, that you are at peace.
You are not an easy love to hold, you are jagged edges and broken glass, long nights and bruised knuckles and you are nothing short of inhospitable. A heart with no business having occupants. Yet despite that he still reached, pulled past barbed wire to extend his hand to you and you are left dazed and awestruck in his wake.
A graveyard is the perfect place for corpses. You are rows of gaping earth waiting for another body to inhabit it, crumbling headstones and carrion birds, and he is harrowed from his life, casket bound and skeletal hands, picking the last pieces of himself apart to feed others. In some cruel and twisted way you were both broken people, with puzzle piece edges that fit together perfectly.
That much is easy to see in the way you both stand nary a breath apart, with softening eyes and words of affection perched on warm tongues. He tells you that he loves you and you find yourself smiling, like a teenager fawning over crushes again.
His lips are soft as they always are and he kisses you like praying at an alter. With the devotion of a holy man chanting hymns to his gods. You never understood religion until he kissed you, pulling divinity from your mouth and haloing you both in light. The fireworks around you both are drowned out in favor of him, every atom in your body falling silent to listen to his breathing, the thrum of his heart, the blood in his veins.
You think, as ragged hands pull through his hair and caress and cheeks, that you are smitten with him. Enough that you might say something silly like--
“Marry me, Toshinori...”
