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Ever since he can remember, Touya's life has never been normal. That probably has to do with his ability to see ghosts and spirits and know things other people don’t know. He caught up rather quickly that what he saw wasn't what everyone saw, and that it made people uncomfortable when he mentioned it, so he just… stopped doing it. His mother knew because they were the same (‘In more ways than one’, Fujitaka likes to say, but that is a statement that Touya would rather not focus on), and his father knew because he had loved Nadeshiko like that ever since day one, but it’s no wonder that Sakura never noticed. Besides his little sister being a bit… absent-minded, Touya stopped talking at all about his odd visitors and his sixth sense the same day their mother died.
To this day, he still wonders if those powers have anything to do with his feelings for Yukito. Once you start living with a foot on the odd side, it is only a matter of time till you catch… inconvenient feelings. He is particularly ashamed of these, not because Yukito is a man, but because Yukito is... well, because Yukito isn't a man.
It took him a minute to realize that Yukito wasn’t human and only a day more to start liking him anyhow. Ever since then, those feelings did nothing but grow, and Touya had tried to appease his appetites by redirecting as much energy as possible elsewhere. Working at home, studying for school, working himself to the bone with side jobs that allowed him to help his father pay the bills but that also left him too exhausted to think too much, too hard, too deep. Yukito is not human, and as much as Touya loves- loves, yes, no point in lying to himself- him, it isn't right to want him. To be with him isn't, with all certainty, Yuki's purpose for being in this world. Touya ought to help him, the same way he is kind to that little girl that sometimes Sakura uses as her stand-in, but nothing more; it isn't right to mess with whatever purpose Yuki has to fulfill here on Earth.
It isn’t until Sakura awakes her magic that everything Touya thought he knew and believed gets turned upside down. If his little sister, kind and pretty and good, can be magic and still star in school plays and play dress-up and stupidly pine after boys, maybe Touya can be allowed to like Yukito, too.
But then things start deteriorating too quickly for Touya’s liking- for someone with a sixth sense, he is a man of staying close to the ground and carrying on with life in sure strides. Yukito starts to vanish and telling him the truth is way more important than any feelings Touya could have for him, and both Akizuki’s intromissions and Touya’s own inability to do something to help push him to the edge. Asking Yuki to never leave him! The nerve of him to place such weight on Yukito’s shoulders! How could he be so selfish?
Somehow, things get easier when he gives up his powers for Yue. First, because he has indeed helped Yukito to the best- to all- of his abilities. But also because one of the few good side effects (but who cares about side effects, the good thing is that Yuki is still solid and very much real under his fingers; the rest is just water under the bridge) of losing his powers is… not being forced to know all the time.
He has seen Yuki's "real" non-human form, there is no way to deny that, but it's easier to push that truth to the back of his mind (you shouldn't want him, he is not yours to have) when he can’t see it with his own physical eyes all the time. When Yuki smiles at him and it gives him butterflies in his stomach but he does not see a spectral aura. When he can almost pretend they are two normal, regular guys, and he just happens to be in love with his best friend and nothing more convoluted is going on.
But at the same time... he does know now. If he could ever play dumb, that time is now over- he has seen Yuki’s other form, and he knows that his purpose here is to protect Sakura; a good purpose if Touya has ever heard of one. Touya can not meddle with that.
And then Yukito tells him that Sakura confessed to him.
It is a relief, in a way; both because having a crush on the same person as his little sister was making him a tad uncomfortable and because Touya already knows that Yukito is not theirs to love, and the sooner someone opened that wound on Sakura, the sooner it could start to heal.
(He won’t talk to the fact that he has known since day one, and here he is, three years later, bleeding and aching, but still loving him.)
"It was about time. I thought the monster was going to explode if she stared at you any harder."
He says it to make Yuki laugh, but Yukito, his back pressed against the door of Touya’s room, is not laughing. In fact, he is frowning, and Touya hadn’t known this sweet, always tender man could frown. It is concerning enough to make him put down his pencil, his nerves on end.
“I let her down as gently as I could, but she still caught up on my feelings for you.”
A long silence follows Yukito’s words. For Touya, it was never a matter of not knowing or not mentioning the feelings between them, but he can still admire that Yukito is being brave by bringing them up. Yukito is now looking down at the floor, fists clenched at the sides of his body. Touya says nothing- aren’t things between them crystal clear?
“She also thinks that… um… that you might feel the same way I do. Is that true?”
It is, at the same time, the moment Touya has been longing for three years and the moment he hoped would never come. Their relationship has always been an unstable equilibrium, and they have already been pushing their luck too far during the last couple of months. Now things are only ought to break.
“Yuki, I gave you my powers. I asked you to never leave me. What else can I say?”
“But do you love me?” Yukito’s voice is trembling, and Touya feels his heart pounding inside his chest. His gut is screaming at him to stand up and go cup Yukito’s chin so they could look in each other’s eyes and be sure that everything will be okay.
But that is not what Yukito is asking of him now.
“Of course.”
“Don't of course me!” Touya has so rarely seen Yukito express any other emotion than utter contentment that this anger feels like whiplash. “If you feel something, you should say it.”
It only now dawns on Touya that, maybe, Yukito doesn’t know, the same way he didn’t know about the other being that shares his body. Oh, but that must have made him feel truly lonely and insecure. Why didn’t he say something sooner?
Touya does stand up now and walks the two steps to the door. Yukito does not follow the movement with his eyes, his gaze still boring holes on the wall of Touya’s room. Touya stands as close as he dares and moves his hand up to grab Yukito’s chin. The brown eyes soften almost involuntarily when they meet his own, and Touya clenches his free hand in a fist so the pain can help him resist his most basic instincts.
“Do you need me to say it?” he whispers as tenderly as he can manage. There is a revolution breaking inside his heart and it’s getting harder to reign in his emotions by the second.
“It is not about what I want, To-ya, it is about what you feel!” Yuki’s trembling lips are enticing but it is the nickname that does it for Touya. A small groan escapes his lips and Yukito’s pout transforms into a shivering, uncertain smile. “You don’t have to be a knight in shining armor all the time. You are allowed to have feelings.”
He snaps out of the spell when Yukito places his own hand on top of Touya’s balled-up one and forces Touya’s fingers apart until he can envelop them with his own. It is one thing to be the one touching Yuki, caring for him, guarding him, and keeping him safe. But to think that Yukito can also do the same things for him… no, he can not allow his mind to travel down that path, because it will only lead him to suffer in the long run.
Still, he is not strong enough to move away from that loving touch.
“What is the point? You can’t love me, Yuki.”
“What do you mean?” The frown is back and Touya closes his eyes to not see it.
“When we met, I already knew you weren’t human.” It tastes like ashes to say it out loud- how could he say that Yukito is not human when his warm fingers are squeezing his own and he is exhaling against Touya’s neck? Still, he can not let himself be swayed by something physical like that. “Every magic has its purpose. Mine was to keep you alive. Sakura’s is to save the world or something, I don’t know, nobody wants to be straight with me about what is going on. Yours is to protect her. I can not interfere with that, Yuki.”
Yukito snorts- there are unshed tears glistening on his lashes but there is also laughing on his tongue, and when Touya tries to move away in surprise, Yukito grabs his other wrist to keep him close.
“For someone so perceptive, you really are dull about some things, To-ya.” He inhales deeply, and considering he has discovered that his whole existence is a sham not a month ago, he looks quite centered and calm about everything. More than Touya feels, anyway. ”My body might be a vessel for Yue, but my feelings are my own. My desires are my own, my heart is my own, my purpose is no other than what I want to make of it.” Yukito lets go of Touya’s hands to move both of his palms to Touya’s face, and Touya feels his resolution and his certainty start to crack like a layer of too-thin ice under the tenderness of that gesture. “You were the one that told me that everything I lived with you was real. That works both ways. If you being with me makes me real, my feelings for you have to necessarily be real.” Another deep inhale. Out of both of them, Touya might be the protective one, but Yukito has always been the braver one when it matters. “How about yours?”
Yukito is asking for verbal confirmation, Touya knows, but he has never been good with words- and even if he were, words intense or big enough to express the vastness of his feelings don’t exist. To express this love that has started on day one and has only grown and compound with time and intimacy and smiles and secret looks and the certainty that it could not be freed. It was hard enough to keep everything contained within: now that those feelings are allowed to cascade out of his chest and his hands and his mouth, they are revealing their true immeasurable nature.
Instead of saying anything, Touya kisses him. Yuki reacts with a sound that is half a protest, half the most delightful surprised gasp. If Touya had any doubt left in his mind that this is what Yukito wants, the hands that are now grasping his t-shirt and keeping him close would be all the confirmation he needed.
He hasn’t allowed himself too much time to fantasize about this moment, and even though Yukito has slipped inside his dreams uninvited (and what dreams those had been), nothing could have ever prepared Touya for what this moment feels like. Yukito parts his lips and his mouth tastes like the sweetened jasmine tea that Fujitaka always has ready when Yukito visits. Touya’s hands go for Yukito’s waist, and the apricot fisherman sweater Yuki is wearing is one that Touya gifted him for his birthday last year when he let Sakura loose in a store and asked her to come back with the softest sweater she could find. Yukito’s glasses are starting to get in the way, and Touya takes them off of him by the bridge, a movement almost natural from how many times he has done it in the last couple of months. Everything is familiar and comfortable, making it impossible for him to forget that this is Yuki, his Yuki, his best friend, his… his everything.
He opens his eyes then, somehow more settled than he has ever been in the middle of a mind-boggling kiss.
“Yuki,” he whispers, and it takes his breath away when Yukito moves his face apart a couple of inches and Touya can now see his blown pupils and his kiss-swollen lips. For all that he wants to keep him always safe and happy, he also wants to be the only one to wreck him like this. “Yuki.” The nickname is a bubble of joy erupting in his ribcage. How could there be anything else worth saying in this life, besides that name?
“What, To-ya?” Yukito’s eyes are twinkling with mirth, two small wrinkles forming on his temples, and Touya would gladly spend the rest of his life making sure that they both remember that the only thing that matters is that they are here, they are real, and they have each other.
“I love you.” It is not a confession: it is an axiom that makes up the Universe.
Yukito kisses him again.