Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Have you ever tried cockwarming?”

Tobio blinks up in surprise, the article on his phone—‘Why Cats Like Everyone Else And Not You’—no longer interests him. How could it when piercing eyes, black like the sky in the throws of night and the deepest parts of the ocean never traversed, pin him in place.

It hits him then, despite months of knowing, of being aware and actively involved, attentive and omniscient in all senses; Tobio is sleeping with Sakusa Kiyoomi.

Casually, he’d like to add – but nothing about this feels casual.

“Uh—” Tobio trips and stumbles over words that never see the light of day, that will never bask in its glow. Is Kiyoomi asking if he has ever cockwarmed someone else, or been cockwarmed himself? Either way, the answer is no. Tobio doesn’t know why he mentally debated it.

“No,” he says, because he hasn’t. There were lots of things Tobio hadn’t done before Kiyoomi—before Kiyoomi, like there might be an after—but things and people change with the tides. Tobio knows that.

“Would you like to?” Kiyoomi asks, dropping down onto the navy couch cushion beside him.

Kiyoomi asks, because he always does. He doesn’t just take from Tobio, if anything, Tobio gives, unprompted and willingly. This part is easy, Tobio thinks. Pieces of Kiyoomi that aren’t hidden between vague words and noncommittal answers. Kiyoomi asks because he truly wants to know what Tobio is thinking, completely unfiltered and free of judgement, which is simple and easy, except it isn’t.

“Yes,” Tobio answers without any doubt. He isn’t well versed in the art of cockwarming, but he isn’t stupid. Taking what Kiyoomi offers has become second nature to him, which perhaps paints Tobio in a selfish light, but he thinks it would be rude to deny Kiyoomi – and stupid, of which he isn’t.

Familiarity and understanding; Tobio can read every facial expression Kiyoomi makes. Rewrite and publish them under his own name, or even co-author the ones that have been long imprinted. He knows that his answer is the one Kiyoomi had been hoping for, an easily recognisable fire in eyes made from the sea and the sky—both at night and never day. Accomplishment, like when Kiyoomi scores two service aces in a row; not the end, just the beginning. He is just getting started, leaving Tobio suspended in wait.

“Great. How do you want to do it?” 

Usually, they don’t plan out their sexcapades to the minutest of details, but there has been the odd occasion—welcomed with open arms—in which Kiyoomi will want to try something new wherein he will ask Tobio in advance. They also switch roles, although Tobio prefers being the one to unravel Kiyoomi himself. He hasn’t told him that though, just in case it’s not enough words with too many underlying messages. 

Tobio imagines, for a moment, the stillness and serenity of being buried to the hilt in Kiyoomi – for as long as he wanted, or as long as he could handle it. Of the push and pull of the tides that barely ripple on the surface despite the intensity growing on the sea bed.

Kiyoomi’s knees squeezing against his hips, or their skin flush as foreheads are pressed together. Even with a face full of thick black curls obscuring his vision, Tobio wants it.

“I did bottom last time, and I probably have more restraint than you—”

“I want to top.” Above, below, in front of – Tobio will take. Kiyoomi’s smile, suppressed by misunderstood intent, blooms. It stretches and glows; fills the space that Tobio dreams of the most, usually hidden beneath black cloth or a thin line.

“Eager. I like it.” Monotonous and unassuming, but that smile, well, it changes the words completely. “Shall we watch something?”

This also isn’t unusual. Tobio sitting on Kiyoomi’s couch on a Saturday evening, waiting for the right time to eat a meal that will leave them both sated. Watching something, anything, not because there is silence to fill, but because there is no reason for them to fill it.

Tobio nods, placing his phone face down on the coffee table, only leaving its dark encasing on display. Kiyoomi flicks through different options with ease, voicing his interest in a new apocalyptic K-drama that finished airing two weeks ago, one of his favourite genres. He waited to watch it, Tobio’s heart teases, but his brain catches hold of any hope and crushes it. A dramatic theme song surrounds them, engulfing the room in suspense that incites wonder. They don’t fall into silence; they sit and let it wash over them like the tide going in on a calm summer's night. It’s easy.

Easy, Tobio thinks, is loving Sakusa Kiyoomi.

Something that isn’t easy, Tobio decides later on during his routine shower in Kiyoomi’s bathroom, is keeping it to himself.

Not for lack of wanting, nor of control, but because Tobio doesn’t know why. He loves Kiyoomi, he’s sure and certain, like how he knows the earth orbits the sun, even if its waves are controlled by the moon. He knows because Miwa explained it to him once, how her crush on Hirano differed from her love for Maiyu.

Tobio knows because he feels it.

He feels it when he delves below the surface, sinking deeper and deeper until the only thing he can breathe into his lungs is Kiyoomi. He even feels it when he comes up for air; in the quietness of comfortability and togetherness. Of being surrounded by Kiyoomi wholly.

There is something however keeping him from spilling his love and letting it float freely, something other than the potential of rejection. It’s simple, he thinks, as the trickle of water from above washes away the remnants of a day spent in bliss — domesticity.

Simple, and not in why Tobio knows that Kiyoomi will sleep in later on his days off and until the last second on his days on, or how he knows that Kiyoomi takes his coffee with two sugars and organic cream—which he doesn’t believe exists, by the way—not in the scrunch between dark eyebrows as Kiyoomi concentrates on the latest show they have tasked themselves into watching, or in how his hips are extraordinarily ticklish whilst his feet remain steady. Simple, because Tobio doesn’t know him.

He doesn’t know Kiyoomi’s favourite song, or who his childhood friends were, other than Komori. Tobio doesn’t know his biggest fear or what he wanted to be when he grew up. Hell, Tobio doesn’t even know Kiyoomi’s favourite colour.

So yes, it’s simple, or more so, in the simple things.

Tobio loves Kiyoomi, but he doesn’t know anything about him, so the question remains as why, and goes unanswered. How can he love someone he doesn’t know? And how can he keep it a secret?

With scentless soap washed down the drain, Tobio steps out of the shower—wiped down out of habit, or consideration, he isn’t sure—and resists the urge to clear the mirror of its condensation with his palm. Kiyoomi would hate the streak marks, he thinks. Still damp towel dried hair sticks up in all directions. When it was longer, when the black strands would tickle Tobio’s eyelids and he’d blow upwards in an attempt to soothe the itch, he could feel the wetness after showering, sticking to his forehead and dripping into his eyebrows, but that was years ago. He isn’t used to his short hair yet; to not feeling the water.

Tobio wonders briefly, as he soaks up the last droplets on his body with the same pre-washed towel Kiyoomi always provides, how Kiyoomi styled his hair in middle school, or even elementary. Vaguely—which is to be regretful—Tobio remembers unruly curls of an even more unruly teenage boy. One he so presumptuously called ‘average’.

Kiyoomi isn’t average – he wasn’t then and he isn’t now. Tobio just hadn’t noticed; hadn’t sunk to the deepest parts which would be concealed forever if not for his eagerness to prove and ability to provide. If he denied the opportunity all those weeks ago, didn’t stutter out a ‘yes, no, wait—maybe?’, then he wouldn’t be in this situation now. Looking in a mirror with a water tainted reflection, blurred and unrecognisable but still Tobio, he wonders how he’s going to move on, or even better, let his fingers finally touch the ocean’s bed.

Kiyoomi’s bedroom had been an enigma to Tobio for some time. Their ‘mutually beneficial’ agreement only came to fruition between the four walls of Tobio’s apartment in Tokyo, aside from its acquisition—which will remain between them, and God—up until recently.

Three weeks ago, with legs thrown over hips and sweat clinging to skin, Kiyoomi brought it up. He asked Tobio—he asked because he always does—if he’d be comfortable going to Kiyoomi’s apartment for their next excursion, which seemed absurd to consider at the time because Tobio is always comfortable with Kiyoomi, but he knows the invitation cannot be wholeheartedly extended. Tobio holds no resentment, because he understands. At least, he thinks he does. It’s a three and a half hour journey between their homes, and although Kiyoomi hadn’t complained thus far, Tobio felt the faintest prick of guilt stab at his conscience whenever they waved goodbye late on a Sunday evening. Maybe it was more than guilt that pained him, but he deigned to ignore; until now.

It’s an interesting room, despite Kiyoomi’s vehement disagreement. Tobio likes it though. It’s just so Kiyoomi.

Curtains, not blinds because ‘blinds may be practical, but they’re ugly’, Kiyoomi had said when Tobio stared at them for a second too long. A bed, low to the ground with a frame made out of wood and sheets always an assortment of blues, faces North, lying parallel to a window that shows off the East.

Tobio discovered, not that weekend but the one after, that the sun rose through that window, glistening and warm; dripping beneath the curtains like fool’s gold and stretching along in one single strip on the floorboards. Maybe he could’ve spent more time describing it if his eyes hadn’t been glued to the sleeping body next to him, chest rising and falling in time with Tobio’s fingers that began to trace the highs and lows of Kiyoomi’s cheeks, nose, eyebrows. His fingers never touched, just hovered; feelings still unknown and buried deep in an ocean that Tobio never thought to submerge himself wholly into.

Things change, he thinks, maybe with the tides, or maybe they are the tides being controlled by the moon—Tobio doesn’t know. Either way, he feels himself getting swept away by the current again when he takes the dive and steps into Kiyoomi’s bedroom.

There’s an overhead light but it’s switched off, everything in the room being casted in a warm glow coming from a floor lamp in the far corner. Shadows are distorted and swim behind furniture, and a slight, almost nonexistent, movement from the bed refocuses Tobio’s mind on what is truly important.

“Hey.” Kiyoomi’s voice is low and inviting, like the urge to suck in lungfuls of air when there is nowhere else to go but down. Tobio tries anyway, takes a breath to keep himself afloat, hoping it will allow him to stay buoyant for long enough. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to drown just yet.

Kiyoomi is naked, he presumes, just a loose sheet draped over his bottom half. It pools at his waist, the choice of midnight blue mimicking everything Tobio is feeling.

He is also naked, a towel—the towel—wrapped around him, working hard to conceal the protrusion that Tobio has been attempting to will away for the past hour. Dark eyes rake over his body, examining each dip and curve, everything but shame written on Kiyoomi’s face. If Tobio had to guess, he would say that Kiyoomi is admiring him, like one would the lost city of Atlantis, regardless of how deep they would have to swim in order to do so, but the potential feels too surreal so Tobio clears his mind of hope, and also his throat. He hasn’t said anything yet.

“Hi.” His voice sounds hoarse, which is strange because Tobio can’t stop choking down water.

“Come.” Kiyoomi pats the empty space beside him on the bed, his free hand coming over to lift the sheet, making it sway and ripple under the pressure. Of course, Tobio obeys, takes a step, as if he would ever deny; as if he has the choice.

This side of the bed, the right from Tobio’s perspective, is reserved for him. He wishes he could say with absolute confidence that it is his side of the bed, but that would imply that there is a them, when he and Kiyoomi will always be separate. Like the sea and the sky; they seem to always be embracing one another with all hues of blue and splatters of white, but they don’t actually come as a pair. Not really. 

Before Tobio places his knee on the comfiest mattress he has ever slept on, he remembers the towel still somehow clinging to his body. Whilst unwrapping it, he attempts to tamper the blush that he feels creeping down his chest. His obvious enthusiasm, previously concealed beneath the teal cloth, embarrasses him, which is maybe the wrong word, but he feels exposed and vulnerable, much too eager for someone who only sees him as a stop gap; an anchor before Kiyoomi pulls himself to shore, only to leave Tobio to drown.

Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything though, he just lets an encouraging smile slip onto his face, which Tobio can’t stand because it makes his throat constrict and lungs feel rained upon.

Turning away seems like his best option, or even going back to the bathroom to rehang his towel. What was Tobio even thinking wearing it into the bedroom? Surely, he thinks, having a damp towel in his room would upset Kiyoomi. Maybe Tobio is stupid.

Just as he turns to walk to the bathroom, a hand—strong and cool to the touch—clasps onto his wrist. It slides down, fingers slipping between cloth and calluses, and takes the towel from Tobio before releasing it from both their grips, leaving it to fall onto the floor below.

Those eyes, dark and elusive that tell Tobio nothing and everything all at the same time, are transfixed on Tobio’s own. They hold him in place as fingers, grounding and all consuming, pull him down. Deep, deep under.

“Leave it.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t care about the towel? Which is why it’s simple and easy and incredibly difficult — Tobio doesn’t know him at all.

He won’t question though, because he doesn’t have the right to.

“Ok.” Tobio barely croaks out the word as he finally places shin to bed, shuffling below the sheet held up so tentatively for him. Kiyoomi’s fingers are still threaded between his own as he climbs into the bed. The sheet falls lower, no longer having a hand to hold it as it comes up to Tobio’s hair. Kiyoomi is naked too, a wave of relief crashing into Tobio because he isn’t the only one prematurely excited.

“Your hair’s a mess,” Kiyoomi whispers like it’s a secret, and Tobio almost apologises, until he takes note of the softness in Kiyoomi’s eyes. Of the slight pull at the corner of his lips. Of the way his fingers don’t attempt to flatten stray hairs, but instead caresses them with attentiveness.

It draws Tobio in, drowns him, doesn’t give him a second to breathe, so he ducks down and presses his lips to the soft skin below Kiyoomi’s ear.

“Yours isn’t.” Tobio mumbles against a mole even though it’s a lie. Kiyoomi’s hair is a mess of rip tides and currents. Whirlpools of black that Tobio can’t help but reach up and tease between the pads of his fingers.

“Don’t lie to me.” Kiyoomi’s hand tenses in Tobio’s hair as his head falls back with a hum.

“I’m not,” he says, wanting to add a ‘you’re perfect’ onto the end, but he doesn’t. Tobio kisses his neck again, leaving no area safe from the only thing he can give. Kiyoomi likes to kiss, Tobio has learnt, but he also likes to feel lips against his unblemished skin. Slow and purposeful, like Tobio would give him anything less than everything.

With the world beneath his lips and oceans seeping into his lungs, Tobio lets himself follow the current. Allows his hand to skim over ripples of muscles and to feel the silkiness of clean skin. He dips lower, both his head and his hand, trying to find something that may keep him afloat.

“Haah—Tobio,” Kiyoomi breathes because he doesn’t have water threatening his livelihood, not like Tobio does, “—wait.”

The plea goes unnoticed, Tobio is too busy chasing the waves and listening to them crash against the shoreline.

“Tobio,” Kiyoomi rasps as his chest rises and falls against Tobio’s mouth. The hand not cradling his nape comes to his cheek, forcefully tilting his head so he has to face dark eyes again.

A moment passes where they’re silent, just staring at each other as every exhale of breath is felt against the other's chest. Tobio takes this moment, not to berate himself because Kiyoomi asked him to wait, but because he had been wrong.

Those eyes, dark and brooding, currently surveying Tobio’s spit laden lips and pink flushed cheeks, aren’t that at all. They glow in the light, reflecting nothing and everything. They could tell Tobio a story if only he was willing to listen, but he isn’t. He can’t.

“This isn’t a race,” Kiyoomi’s eyes flicker between different spots on Tobio’s face, taking something in but keeping it a secret. “We have time.”

Do we? Tobio wants to ask, because right now, he feels lost at sea, only seconds away from going completely under.

Kiyoomi cups his cheeks, that same push and pull from before bringing them mere millimetres apart — not together, Tobio can’t hope. The gap is closed when plush lips brush against his own. Achingly slow and sickeningly sweet, but all Tobio can taste is the bitterness of the sea and how it just might eat him alive.

“I prepped myself while you were showering,” Kiyoomi explains, not letting the space between them grow, “it will be easier.”

Tobio tries not to feel cheated out of the pleasure, and instead lets the thoughtfulness crowd his mind. His mouth moves to say ‘ok’, but nothing comes out.

“Come on.” Kiyoomi shuffles in place, bringing his hands to Tobio’s waist—a feather light squeeze and a circling thumb—to move him up the bed.

With his back flush against the headboard, a pillow wedged at the base of his spine, Tobio watches with intent. Kiyoomi doesn’t tease, not tonight. He swings a leg over Tobio’s hips and braces himself on his knees.

Above, Tobio thinks. He’ll take it.

“Are you ready?” Kiyoomi asks, but this isn’t what they normally do.

“I don’t have a condom on yet,” Tobio announces, prepared to reach over to the bedside table to grab one, but his hand stops mid air when Kiyoomi’s fingers lace around his wrist.

“Not tonight,” it’s hard to tell in the dimly lit room, but Tobio thinks he can see the slightest tinge of pink at the tips of Kiyoomi’s ears. “Unless, you’re uncomfortable not using one?”

Tobio doesn’t get a chance to think about it because he hears himself say ‘no, I’m not uncomfortable’ before he’s blessed with the smile that’s reserved for him, and only him. For them, in this space, where the sky meets the sea and everything in between.

It only takes a second for Tobio to slip in, to crash and fall and start to drown in it, in Kiyoomi. A soft gasp surrounds them, from whom he isn’t sure, but it coats his skin and makes him flinch.

“Are you ok?” He asks because Kiyoomi’s eyes are screwed shut as his hands are braced against Tobio’s shoulders. It takes a second for him to answer, worry and water spilling into Tobio’s lungs, heart, mind, but Kiyoomi nods as the tension starts to bleed from his body.

“Fine.” And then he’s back to kissing Tobio. On his lips, on his cheeks, the tip of his nose and along his eyebrows. Each point of contact drowning Tobio, leaving him breathless and shaking.

It goes on like this, fleeting kisses snuck in between drawn out ones, neither giving Tobio a moment of reprieve, only dragging him down further and further, but never close enough.

Tobio doesn’t know Kiyoomi, he thinks as lips brush along the shell of his ear, a soft hum being left in their wake. He doesn’t know Kiyoomi’s favourite flavour of ice cream or if he prefers sunrises over sunsets. He doesn’t know if Kiyoomi can play an instrument or how many countries he has visited.

This is what Tobio thinks about as his body is surrounded—no, engulfed by Kiyoomi.

“What are you thinking about?” The question is whispered against Tobio’s ear, slightly distorted through the masses of water.

“Nothing.” He lies for the second time, scared of his new habit but less fearful of it than of admission. Kiyoomi meets him again, face to face, dark eyes to clueless ones.

Worry, confusion, disappointment, they can all be seen in barely there creases of a suppressed frown.

“You aren’t being honest with me.” Fuck, he knows. “If you didn’t want to do this, you could have just said.” Kiyoomi resets his face and adjusts his hips in an attempt to move from Tobio’s lap. The drag and pull is too much, and Tobio wants; he can’t let it go.

Habitually trained hands grasp onto Kiyoomi’s shoulders, arms wrapping tight around him, seeking his embrace again.

“I’m sorry,” Tobio tells Kiyoomi’s neck because looking at his face might crush him. He won’t lie anymore, but that doesn’t mean he can’t try and repress the urge to confess. Nothing happens at first. Tobio doesn’t—can’t, won’t— pull away, but Kiyoomi also doesn’t reach out, around, for.

It’s simple and it’s easy and it’s so damn difficult, because when given the option to resurface, to devour lungfuls of oxygen and not bitter water, Tobio finds that he would rather drown than ever let there be an after Kiyoomi.

“I’m sorry,” he tries again, voice choked as he struggles to breathe in dry air.

Hands, the only ones Tobio knows better than his own, splay flat across his shoulder blades. They’re still cool, rough in places it counts and soft in others. Like the ocean, Tobio thinks. The calm they bring as he’s pulled impossibly closer can only compare to the unpredictability of the sea, and Tobio suddenly wants to drink it all in.

“It’s ok…” Kiyoomi whispers against hair that still sticks up this way and that. “Why don’t you want to talk to me?” He asks, because he cares, and how could Tobio not fall in love with him. “If you aren’t enjoying yourself, then I’d prefer it it we stop—”

“No!” Tobio snaps backwards at the implication and his own desperation, Kiyoomi’s hands falling from his skin as Tobio looks at him earnestly. Of course he is enjoying himself; being buried in Kiyoomi, breathing in water and letting it consume him. Tobio loves it. Adores it even.

But, he still wants to know why.

“Uh,” he thinks this could be his chance. He may never be able to touch the ocean’s floor with hands ready and wanting, waiting to love, but in their close proximity, he can still look. “I was wondering…” Tobio turns to the side, unable to physically hide his blush, but at least he can feign, “if you’ve ever had an imaginary friend?” He asks one burning question out of a million.

Kiyoomi blinks, his eyebrows following downwards and casting a shadow over his eyes. Oh no, that was the wrong thing to say. Weird and definitely not appropriate for their current situation, and yet…

Tobio feels it before he hears it. Feels the shudder reverb from Kiyoomi’s ribs straight into his shoulders and through to Tobio’s hands. He’s laughing. It’s choked and scratchy, a sound Kiyoomi doesn’t emit on a regular basis, but Tobio knows because he’s had the privilege of hearing it before.

It feels odd, Kiyoomi’s body moving involuntarily as he’s wracked with senseless humour; grinding down lightly in Tobio’s lap, and he’d remember to feel embarrassed for being laughed at if it weren’t for the coil twisting tight in his stomach.

“S-stop.” Tobio brings his hands to Kiyoomi’s hips, halting his movements from the waist down so he has a moment to collect his thoughts.

“S-sorry—” Kiyoomi laughs some more. A hand to his mouth to hide the smile that Tobio never wants to forget. He squeezes harder in warning. “I just—your dick is in me and you’re thinking about my childhood?” Kiyoomi shakes his head incredulously, but his smile never falters.

“Sorry?” Tobio doesn’t know what to say, but his response feels appropriate when a hand—that damn hand—comes up to caress his cheek. Leaning into the touch, into the water, is all he can do.

“You’re so strange.” If Tobio didn’t know any better, didn’t know that the sea cannot fall in love with the sky, then he would say that Kiyoomi is endeared by him, but he does know better. He’ll take it though. Everything and anything and nothing at all.

“Thanks,” Tobio grumbles and pouts, his hands still buried in the leanness of Kiyoomi’s hips. He could tickle him in retaliation, but it wouldn’t end well, or more so, it would end too quickly. If Kiyoomi thinks he’s strange, then so be it. Maybe it’s finally his divine retribution for Tobio calling him ‘average’ all those years ago, and that’s fine.

Anything, Tobio will take.

“No, I didn’t.” Smooth like silk and the calmness of an ocean after a storm. Tobio can’t help but listen, hanging from three words that mean nothing, but might tell him everything. “Did you?”

He shakes his head ‘no’, a new question already formed on the tip of his tongue. “Did you have any pets?”

“A bird.”

“A bird?”

“Yes.” Kiyoomi relaxes, his full weight being distributed at the tops of Tobio’s thighs. His knees digging into Tobio’s hips. Just how it should be.

Tobio nods, and then says, “What was its name?”

“Tora.” He wants to ask why, but sleek eyebrows raise slightly as if to say ‘don’t’, so Tobio doesn’t.

A moment passes, like before, this time free of its tension and binds, letting Tobio formulate and frame a list in his mind that he’s been wanting to tick off for weeks.

It goes on for some time, Kiyoomi answering questions that seem innocent and unassuming, but mean more than everything to Tobio himself.

Kiyoomi has been to France—more than once—as well as Germany, Italy, and Singapore. He likes pistachio flavoured ice cream and his childhood friends mostly began and ended at Komori. Kiyoomi didn’t have many wants as a child before volleyball and he says that he ‘can’t just choose one song, that would be criminal’. Instruments are for children with talent to bloom and sunrises means he has to wake up early.

It’s all information, new and overwhelming, much like the feeling of just having him there, settled on Tobio’s lap that aches from both stiffness and overstimulation.

There are only a couple more questions that Tobio wants to ask, but his breathing is coming in short puffs and he feels his muscles tense involuntarily. Through it all, he managed to survive and stay above water, but before he is pushed over the edge and inevitably sinks, he has to ask.

“Biggest fear?” Kiyoomi’s face is flushed a beautiful pink; a colour that Tobio has only seen him wear beneath handpicked sheets and walls that daren’t talk.

“Tobio,” he breathes, “I know this was my idea, but I’m getting impatient…” Tobio knows that, can feel it in barely suppressed wriggles and fingers that might leave blooms of purple, red, blue on his skin.

“Just—one more.” He pleads; so close to the bottom, hands almost able to reach out and touch.

“Haah—ok—for you.” For you, as in, for him, and he thinks ‘yes, for me’.

“Drowning.”

It’s then, in that moment, when the waves subside and all that can be heard is the echo of a storm that never reached fruition, that Tobio feels it.

It’s there, between the pads of his fingers and below his feet; the place he so desperately wanted to touch, all for himself and never to share. The ocean bed, of which he is infinitely terrified of, which is difficult, but it’s so easy, because Kiyoomi is scared of it too.

A hand, habitual in nature, grounded and finally able to do something other than wade, moves on its own to hold Kiyoomi’s waist, the other following with its own free will to his head. Despite the numbness and tingling, Tobio manages to push off the mattress that loves him dearly, sprawling Kiyoomi out below him like a pearl in its bed. Glistening with a light sheen of sweat, pretty and pink and all consuming.

The movement rocks them both, moans long held slipping past lips that needn’t talk but only breathe.

Breathe, Tobio tells himself as he looks, and touches, and finally understands why.

“Fuck—Tobio—” A pitch higher than before breaks through gallons of water, reaching Tobio’s ears and enveloping them in its want. “Please.”

He will, he promises, but there’s one more question. Something that will answer the why, and the how and the if—he needs to know.

“Colour…” Tobio rasps as he pulls away, only to push right back in.

“W-what?”

“Favourite colour,” he swallows. The water is easy to bear, he thinks he can survive it this time.

“Ah! Fuck—” Perfectly timed but interruptive, Tobio slows himself because he has to find out.

“Colour, Kiyoomi,” he threads his hands between curls, unruly and intangible and perfect, “tell me.”

“Blue!” He shouts, loud enough for the whole world to hear, for it to reach both the top of the sky and the bottom of the sea. A stray tear slips from Kiyoomi’s eye, but instead of reaching up to wipe it away, his hand finds itself cradling Tobio’s cheek, and then, more softly, halting the world on its axis and slowing the currents so they only ripple and wade, “blue.”

Then, and only then, does Tobio truly understand.

If Kiyoomi is what comes after dusk and what sits on the ocean’s floor, calm and unassuming, then Tobio is the sky after dawn and the surface of the sea; vast and eager, giving everything life and taking what he’s owed.

They are not two beings destined by fate to live a parallel love, not the sky and the sea, but both at the same time. Intertwined and impalpable, inescapable and inevitable. Together by choice, ladened by love or not – inseparable.

And then, he sinks.

Tobio buries himself in the depths never traversed, only by him, and drags Kiyoomi along right by his side. He squeezes his eyes closed as a flash of white paints the inside of his eyelids, followed by navy and midnight blue, teal and turquoise, cobalt and berry.

Every shade of blue he can imagine floods him—deluged—and he is drowning, which is so easy, especially when Kiyoomi, facing his biggest fear of all, descends too.

Chapter Text

Tonight, Tobio and Kiyoomi are trying something new.

Not new because they have never done it before—they have, this is where it started after all—but new because they are no longer Tobio and Kiyoomi. Separate and discernible.

They are Tobio and Kiyoomi, fused together like the space where the sky meets the sea and everything in between.

Tobio and Kiyoomi.

It has a nice ring to it.

“Wait—“ Tobio freezes instantly, that same push and pull that he’s come to love and not fear coming to a standstill as he searches dark eyes that gleam. They reflect the downpour surrounding them as stray droplets bounce from his shoulders and land on Kiyoomi’s chest.

“Are you ok? What’s wrong?” He worries as Kiyoomi sucks in a harsh breath.

“Cramp.” Kiyoomi barely grits through his teeth as those same dark eyes, known by him and him only, squeeze shut in obvious pain. Tobio’s lips part slightly, a clear ‘o’ being depicted between wet lips. He immediately draws his attention to the most likely offending limb.

“Hold on.” He says, and hopes Kiyoomi takes it literally. Tobio plants his feet on the tiled floor, praying that his longevity standing there has dried them somewhat. Tightening the grip he has on Kiyoomi’s ass, Tobio bucks his hips and shucks his shoulder, letting the twitching leg fall from it gracelessly.

“Ffffuuck.” He isn’t sure if Kiyoomi is verbalising his pain or pleasure, too busy pulling him close with one arm and extending the other to straighten a quivering knee.

“I told you your leg would cramp,” Tobio explains, not chides, as he reaches behind himself to rub the spasming calf.

“Shut u-UP!” Kiyoomi bites then shouts, the intensity bouncing off the foggy glass and richocetting through Tobio’s ear drum. “I’ve had my leg over your shoulder plenty of times, now shouldn’t be any—different.”

Tobio wants to laugh at that, at the sheer absurdity of ‘plenty of times’ and how three weeks ago he couldn’t ask for anything more than nothing, but here he is, with absolutely everything.

“You’re laughing at me,” Kiyoomi winces as Tobio carries on massaging the rapidly calming muscle. “Stop it.”

“I’m not laughing,” he says, because he isn’t.

“You’re smiling, it’s basically the same.” Kiyoomi goes to fold his arms, momentarily forgetting his precarious balance on Tobio’s dick, and against the shower wall. He huffs as he places his hands back on Tobio’s shoulders for balance.

Where they belong, he thinks.

“I’m smiling because I love you,” Tobio is caught by those eyes again, transfixed and adoring, after dusk and the ocean’s bed, “get over it.”

Kiyoomi ruins Tobio’s longful gazing by rolling them in retaliation, but his cheeks are red and his lips still twitch in betrayal, that smile—grounding, buoyant, made for Tobio—threatening to spill.

“Whatever,” Kiyoomi’s eyes shift, siren not doe, “make me feel better.” The words drip sickeningly sweet and spoilt rotten, knowing he will get everything he ever asks for as long as it’s directed at Tobio. He jostles his leg free from Tobio’s hold, winding it around sturdy hips to meet his other one.

Tobio doesn’t waste another second; he wants to give and take, above, below, whenever and wherever he can. His lips find Kiyoomi’s all on their own, catching them in a kiss that has become routine, understood and known. He hikes Kiyoomi up higher, the water spraying onto the tile making the slide easier. Arms circle around his neck as the kiss is broken by a soft moan, from who, he isn’t sure.

“I can’t believe you can do this…” Kiyoomi breathes, and so does Tobio, because he can now. “It’s so fucking sexy.”

If Tobio didn’t know any better, then he would say that Kiyoomi is trying to seduce him. To lure him away from the shore and drag him below the ocean’s surface. But he does know, and these words are just mere observations fuelled by want and desire, all truths and no ulterior motives. No drowning, only floating.

Tobio would preen at the praise if not for his impenetrable focus on not finishing too soon.

Not before Kiyoomi, his loyalty protests. Completely unrelated to Kiyoomi’s comment, Tobio pushes him further into the wall, or pulls him closer, he doesn’t know and hardly thinks it matters, each thrust of his hips tipping him over the edge of a cliff, precariously balanced between the sky and the sea. It’s a good thing he isn’t afraid of drowning anymore.

In fact, he embraces the water.

Tobio no longer thrashes in between bouts of murderous waves, and instead he lets the eb and flow of the current pull and push and praise and kiss.

He lets it do whatever it pleases because he knows it now, understands its intricacies and what makes it tick. Why blue matters and how he will make it last forever.

Tobio knows Kiyoomi.

Which is also how he knows that it's almost over, for now.

“Oh, fffuck—“ Kiyoomi’s curls are laden with water, barely bouncing along with the rest of his body as Tobio stares at them in awe.

Of a ripple when he falls and a whirlpool during a storm; Tobio finds himself reaching out, not to swim, but so his fingers can pass over the water.

The contrast of his skin in comparison to the dark strands, clinging to him by the will of the water, mesmerise him. His body proceeds to keep up with the pace he previously set, allowing his mind, heart, soul, to get swept into—not away by—the current that is Kiyoomi. Their chests are pressed together momentarily as Kiyoomi tilts his head back; short breaths barely stutter through parted lips and his eyes are trying to decide between rolling back or squeezing shut.

He’s a vision, Tobio thinks as his hand travels to the nape of Kiyoomi’s neck, the other still wrapped around a waist as his hips roll with the tides. Those hands, built from habits—from practice and knowing—use their free will. One squeezing pale skin, the other travelling lower on Kiyoomi’s neck, fingers tracing his jaw and downwards; creating constellations in the sky and counting the coral in the sea.

“Haah—oh my—fuck, Tobio—“ Kiyoomi’s stream of consciousness gives him away, words that could mean nothing spilling from his lips like a deadly waterfall into a steady stream.

Tobio wants to drink.

His pace quickens a fraction, having held off for so long just so it would be enough for Kiyoomi, because that’s all that matters to him.

Leaning forward, dusk meeting dawn and the sea’s surface meeting its bed, Tobio kisses Kiyoomi; on the stars that litter his neck and the whirlpools that cascade behind his ears.

On the corner of his lips and the bridge of his nose. Rose dusted cheeks and scrunched eyebrows. Everything and anything that Tobio can take, he will.

The hand that ended up back on Kiyoomi’s neck twists, moving to the front to cup a sturdy jaw, keeping his face steady so Tobio can take again, to kiss with want that is returned freely. Given to him through the grace of deserve.

He barely gets to drink his fill before Kiyoomi separates them, pushing Tobio away with the palm of his hand, and five weeks ago, Tobio wouldn't have known why he did that, but he does now.

After all, to be known is to be loved.

“I’m—I’m close,” Kiyoomi chokes out, louder than the stream of water that is keeping Tobio focused on anything other than the end.

The wall barely has any grip, and Tobio’s own on Kiyoomi is starting to slip, so he switches arms, the now free one bringing Kiyoomi’s leg—not the same one from before—over his shoulder to get more leverage, and subsequently, a better angle.

Somehow he manages to tear his gaze from the almost-bliss on Kiyoomi’s face to look down, to really see the push and pull. Water continues to trickle down his back as nostalgia begins to seep into his skin.

Tobio thinks of the first time; the first time he had Kiyoomi almost like this, except when he looked down back then, he was met with eyes he didn’t understand and wet curls he couldn’t decipher.

The first time he was with Kiyoomi was the first time someone had gone down on him and the first time he thought that he might be afraid of drowning.

It’s funny, Tobio thinks, how people change with the tide. How, when they think no one is watching, they let themselves be truly seen.

It’s funny how a towel, teal like a beacon that Tobio didn’t know how to hone in on, went from being Kiyoomi’s spare to being his.

It’s funny that a bed, enveloping and full of words unsaid, was only made for one side to be designated, but now there are two. His side.

It’s funny, and so incredibly easy, because even if Kiyoomi isn’t ready to say it in so many words, that he loves Tobio back, he shows it by giving, and Tobio is more than happy to take.

A hand shakes Tobio out of his daydream, reaching between them, skirting across silk coated skin that is dotted with stars and corals and everything else beautiful, to bring himself to the edge, and this time, Tobio will jump with him. Sacrificing himself to the water willingly, because if Kiyoomi is there, by his side and not in his wildest dreams—hidden beneath dusk and buried below the ocean’s floor—then he will be just fine.

“Tobio…” This is a summoning, not a cry of pleasure, he knows that now.

“Yeah.” Tobio answers, voice hoarse with want, his eyes still locked in on the push of himself and the pull of Kiyoomi below.

“Look—look at me.” A hand, the one that rested on Tobio’s shoulder like it was a lifeline keeping them both afloat, is now pressed to Tobio’s cheek, drawing him in, under, down.

If Tobio knows, then Kiyoomi does too, because this is a tactic he uses frequently to nudge them both over the edge.

Their eyes lock together, like when night meets day and all parts traversed of the ocean. From pastels to neons, rich and vibrant and so very blue. Tobio can feel it in his bones and all the way to the tips of his toes.

Pressing their water coated foreheads together, Tobio silently begs the water to not take him yet. Whispers a, “please, Kiyoomi,” against red bitten lips. The coil in his stomach is wound tight making each second almost unbearable as Tobio chases the feeling of being dragged deep below the sea’s glistening surface.

“Fuck Tobio—!” Kiyoomi screams, showing his teeth when he bites down on his bottom lip to stop anything else from tumbling out. His eyes squeeze shut—and Tobio knows because he can feel it—giving Tobio a chance to look down again, to watch Kiyoomi twitch in his own hand and finish between them both; which Tobio is eternally grateful for, because he follows him right off the edge of the cliff.

“Oh fuck—” Kiyoomi bucks his hips, making Tobio wince from the overstimulation he didn’t anticipate. “Fucking cramp.”

With his vision of blue faded, Tobio opens his eyes again to see Kiyoomi clenching his jaw and sucking in sharp breaths through gritted teeth. This time, Tobio does laugh, unable to stop the pure unadulterated joy and adoration he feels from reaching up to escape at the surface.

“Shut uuup.” Kiyoomi whines as Tobio repositions them so that they’re both back to standing, his hands still placed on Kiyoomi’s waist in order to keep him upright on weak—and apparently cramping—legs.

“Are you ok?” He smiles, worry still swimming in his eyes as his concern is returned with a signature pout and practiced scowl. He doesn’t get an answer, so Tobio kneels down and bends a knee, pulling Kiyoomi’s foot onto it so he can kiss up the expanse of a pale calf.

“I’m sorry,” he says between each touch of wet lips to even wetter skin, still somewhat smiling and not feeling the least bit sorry as the water from above continues to rain down on him melodically.

“You should be,” Kiyoomi scoffs uselessly. When Tobio glances up, he can see the waves of endearment washing over Kiyoomi all the same. “You’re the one who insists on folding me up like some shitty piece of origami.”

He isn’t wrong, but still, Tobio stands to meet those damn eyes again, all consuming and never ending he hopes.

“Only because you say you can,” Tobio kisses a mole below Kiyoomi’s ear, “don’t say things you don’t mean, Kiyoomi.”

“I don’t.” Which he knows is true.

Smiling seems to be turning into a habit whenever Tobio is in Kiyoomi’s vicinity, and he’s ok with that. Even if every time his lips part, all he can breathe in is salted water.

“I love you.” Tobio says, because he does.

“Saying it more often won’t speed up the time it takes for me to say it back you know.” All bark and no bite, isn’t Tobio lucky.

“I know.”

“Then why do you say it so much?” Kiyoomi frowns slightly, perhaps it bothers him, but that’s ok, too.

“Because I do.” Tobio doesn’t have to consider his response because it’s easy and simple, like fingers skimming across the surface of the sea and hands reaching out to the sky.

“Whatever,” Kiyoomi rolls his eyes, entirely unconvincing, “lets clean up and go to bed, I’m tired.”

Tobio nods, and decides he finally understands what Kiyoomi’s ‘whatever’ means, because when they crawl into bed later tonight, Kiyoomi on the left and Tobio on his right, he will close his eyes and let sleep wash over him, but not before he hears a familiar sigh of relief—like walking away from a waterfall that gives much more than it takes—and a privately practiced ‘I love you too’.