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It’s a ridiculously hot day, and with the old-as-hell dorm building they lived in having air conditioning on the wrong side of “fucking useless,” everyone had ended up outside to participate in various degrees of “hosing each other down.”
It was fun for a long time, no real water balloons or water guns in sight, the team made do with cups and hoses and their water bottles, enjoying the game of pretending like the water didn’t feel so damn good. Goshiki gets absolutely beat in this game, since everyone, unanimously, agrees to team up on him and soak him down to the bone, but they figure it feels pretty good in this heat. Tendou dances around, escaping most of the fire only to feel himself overheating and heading back into the fray, letting Leon empty a cup of water over his head and laughing.
He ducks under Ushijima’s arm, tucking himself around to hide and make his much broader boyfriend the shield and victim of this, as Leon doesn’t care much who he gets as they turn on a hose and go to town.
Wet and hot in a way Tendou had found shockingly unsexy, their laughter fades off once the worst of the heat has been washed off from under their skin. Tendou struggles to catch his breath between his grinning, watching Shirabu flick water out of his eyes and turn to wander off, away from the worst of it. Semi puts his hands on his hips, calming down, and Tendou feels Ushijima pull away from him, slipping from the group.
They’d go back inside, but their dorm was an easy-bake oven and Tendou was not into that. Instead, they call a momentary truce to catch their breaths and stretch themselves out, soft chatter between his friends starting up. He watches Ushijima slowly climb a hill of dark green grass, lowering himself down and turning around to sit, underneath a tree and in a patch of shade that looked quite inviting for a myriad of reasons. Not least of which was because of who was sitting there. There are so many versions of this exact moment - Ushijima sweating and soaked in hose water - that he would have found delightful, if only his brain wasn’t fucking melting.
Tendou hauls himself up the hill after him even though the action of climbing a hill in this heat should be illegal. He sinks down into the cool grass in front of Ushijima, and turns around to lean back.
“You are too warm,” Ushijima says immediately, but even as he does, his arms have grabbed him and hauled him up between his legs, so that he could lean back against his chest.
“Move me, then.”
“...no.”
Tendou smiles, tilting his head back against his chest, squinting as he looks up at him and thus directly into the sun, one eye fully closed.
Ushijima looks down at him, and there’s a moment of perfect, heat-stroke induced bliss that rolls through him. The heat becomes almost pleasant, the overbearing stuffiness suddenly a blanket of comfort. He thinks he could fall asleep here like this, and if his body wanted to melt and die in the meantime, well that wasn’t his goddamn problem.
Ushijima leans back after a minute, propping himself up on his palms in the grass, and looking up to the leaves of the tree above them. The moment seems to stretch out forever, then, and Tendou sinks back into him, enjoying the heat despite himself, and feeling his mind wander out of his body, turned exhausted just from overheating.
It’s a good moment - a perfect one, maybe. He’s lucky. He doesn’t often think he’s lucky, but right now he is. To be with friends like this, in the summer heatwave, playing games and laughing instead of sitting in front of a fan alone. Just a year ago such a perfect instance wouldn’t have been even imaginable for him. But he had it, he’d found it. His people - his person.
Although he had previously prided himself on being an independent, unattached monster, Ushijima had come into his life like a direct challenge. Everything he didn’t want. Maturity, stability, consistency, reliability and adoration. A kind of adoration that was intoxicating, addicting, something he hadn’t thought he’d ever feel but suddenly made him understand those grand romance stories talked about in movies. It made him feel so much more than just himself - he was a part of them, their partnership, their relationship. Their heatwave, their summer, their lives.
“Have I told you I love you lately?” Tendou asks, his hands having fallen down to start picking at grass, distracting himself by finding longer blades and tearing them into as many tiny confetti pieces as he can. He hears Ushijima hum to acknowledge the question, having to think about it for a second.
“Define lately?”
“Hmm… within the last day?”
“Last twenty-four hour period, or since we woke up?”
“Twenty-four hour period.”
“Yes, last night.”
Tendou tosses his grass confetti forward, most of it caught in the wind, some of it fluttering down to settle on his and Ushijima’s legs. He thought it would stick, but when he reached forward to brush the grass off Ushijima’s knee, he found the skin dry. The heat had taken care of the water, it seemed. “Did I not say it this morning?”
“I do not believe so.”
“Shame. I’m a terrible boyfriend.”
“I do not believe anyone could be a good boyfriend in this heat.”
This makes Tendou laugh, and he tilts his head back again. “Oh, he’s got jokes today.”
“I have jokes every day.”
Tendou smiles. “That’s true.”
There’s a moment of quiet, and he settles his head more properly against his shoulder, closing his eyes and enjoying the painful heat baking into his skin. He’s going to be sunburnt tomorrow, he knows, but his unfortunate red-haired genetics meant that that fate had probably been sealed for him long before this particular heatwave hit. It was better to just pretend it wouldn’t happen and enjoy it. He kind of likes it, the way the heat stings.
He likes the way he can pretend he can feel Ushijima’s heartbeat, in the same way he can feel him breathing.
After a moment, Ushijima says: “To be clear, you are an excellent boyfriend.”
Tendou smiles, feeling the way his deep voice rumbles through his chest. He feels a feels a hand on his arm, Ushijima’s warm fingers tracing a line upwards, to his shoulder. Tendou had liked that the most, about being in a relationship. The little ways Ushijima found to say what he meant, what he liked. He could be rather sweet with his words, but more often than not he’d do something like that - a basic, uninteresting statement of fact, followed by a small gesture, a touch, that made Tendou feel like the most desirable person in the world.
“I am?” he asks, softly, fishing for compliments now as the heat lulls him into a half asleep state.
“Yes.”
“How so?”
Ushijima is quiet for a moment. That hand traced down his arm again, soft and light until it reached his hand.
“You make me happy.”
Tendou smiles. “Is that it? No other qualifications to being an excellent boyfriend.”
“No.”
He laughs in response, because fishing for compliments doesn’t really work when your boyfriend is Ushijima Wakatoshi, so he decides to tease him instead.
“What, not gonna say that I’m funny, or super sexy, or that I give the best gifts?”
“Well,” Ushijima says, in a tone that does not give any hint as to whether or not the next sentence will be hilarious, devastating or make him swoon. “You are all of those things. I like many of your qualities. But they are subjective, so they don’t impact your ability to be a good boyfriend.”
“Isn’t being a good boyfriend subjective?”
“I would assume not. I would say that the requirements are that you make your partner happy.”
“Yes, that’s called subjectivity. What makes one person happy doesn’t make the next, mhm? You’ve found a way to quantify subjectivity. Congrats.”
“Interesting. I’ll have to reconsider my stance on the matter.”
This makes Tendou laugh in a way that is more of a snort, and though he would be embarrassed by the sound, he feels, rather than hears, Ushijima’s chest rise as he laughs. Tendou would like to continue to make him laugh forever, thank you, that would be nice.
So he asks it. Perhaps in a moment of safe sentimentality, when the need to be a heartless monster wasn’t biting at his heels. Perhaps just because this heat was making him stupid.
“Hey, ‘Tosh, do you think we’re going to be together forever?”
“No, one of us will outlive the other.”
Tendou laughs, tilting his head to the side to press his cheek against his collarbone, smiling slightly at the feeling of now warmed water that soaked his shirt. “Not if I have anything to say about it. Murder-suicide, the ultimate solution.”
“It is alarming that this is not the first time I have said this, but please do not murder me.”
“Ultimate solution.”
“No. Do not use murder-suicide as a solution to anything.”
“I’m just teasing you,” Tendou chuckles, tilting his head up slightly to look at him, and finding Ushijima already looking back at him. “But I mean it. We’re always gonna be us, right? Me and you?”
“Depends, do you believe in reincarnation?”
“Only if it lets me be a tiger in my next life.”
“Why a tiger?”
“Big kitty. And I could eat human babies.”
“...don’t?”
“I’m kidding.”
“Don’t eat human babies.”
“I won’t eat human babies, geez, tiger buzz-kill over here.”
“I… I do not know what that means.”
Tendou laughs again, sitting up a bit and away from his chest in the process, trying to calm himself down. For a moment, the air between them is slightly cooler, without the body heat, and he finds himself missing the closeness.
“Sorry, sorry, just teasing you again,” he says, after a minute, turning to look back at him. “What’s this about reincarnation, then?”
“Well, if you believe in reincarnation then I cannot promise you we will be us forever. You will, of course, one day be…” Ushijima waves a hand, confused but speaking anyway: “A baby eating tiger, apparently.”
“I’ll only eat the ugly babies, I promise.”
Ushijima narrows his eyes, before saying: “You say things that worry me.”
Tendou grins.
“Yes, but if that was a dealbreaker I wouldn’t be in your arms right now, would I?” he says, before leaning forward despite the heat, the air between them feeling like that of a furnace as he wraps his arms around Ushijima’s neck, revelling in the discomfort the action brought him. Perhaps he was a masochist, perhaps he liked the way being here with him felt sticky and uncomfortable and unpleasant. Perhaps he liked how grounding it made it, how with the sun baking his skin to a crisp, and Ushijima’s body heat finishing the job, he felt alive. Here. With him, his body is no longer an unpleasant reality, but a privilege, since it allowed him to feel this moment. Heat and all.
And maybe Ushijima feels the same. He does not pull away from the heat, he does not make moves to alleviate his discomfort. Instead, he sat up, leaned into it, met Tendou in the freakish, uncomfortable, boiling place he was and put his hands on his waist to hold him there. A touch that makes his whole body light up in joy, heart aching in happiness.
I’m so glad I get to live this moment.
Tendou leans forward to kiss him, one hand lifting to Ushijima’s cheek, brushing his thumb across flushed hot skin. And Ushijima kisses him back. In the shade under a tree, behind their school on the hottest day of the year, everything ceases to exist and for a few perfect moments, Ushijima kisses him back.
Tendou wants to make it last forever, but the heat and Ushijima’s hands on him are too much for his self control. He can’t help it. He’s all teeth and hands, grabbing at him, biting at him, tugging on his lip as the heat from the summer kills off any kind of inhibition he might have had before. Ushijima makes a noise - just a soft one, in response to the bite against his lip, and it’s enough to send Tendou’s heart into overdrive.
“Tell me we’ll be together forever,” Tendou says, when he is forced to pull back only due to the fact that he did, indeed, need to breathe. He can see Ushijima’s chest rising, catching his own breath.
“I told you-”
“I know, I know,” Tendou says, laughing and pressing his forehead against Ushijima’s, closing his eyes. He feels Ushijima’s arms wrap up and tighten around his middle, seemingly revelling in the gross heat just the same. “One of us will die first, whatever, just promise me we’ll be together forever anyway.”
“An impossibility.”
“‘Tosh.”
“I refuse to lie to you,” Ushijima replies, and Tendou pulls his head back enough to look at him, huffing slightly at his rather suffocatingly pragmatic boyfriend. “If I promise such a thing, an inevitability will occur, where-”
“What can you promise me, then?” Tendou says. “What isn’t impossible?”
Ushijima has to think about it for a moment, before saying: “I can promise you that I will love you for the rest of my life. And I can promise you that when I promise you something, I mean it.”
Tendou feels himself melting, a smile splitting his face, as he lifts his hands up to hold rest on Ushijima’s cheeks.
“I’ll love you forever, too,” he murmurs.
“No, see-” Ushijima says. “That isn’t true, you will not be alive forever, I don’t think you understand-”
Solution: Kiss him.
So Tendou does, to spare himself the breath of arguing with a man who did not much care for poetry it seemed, and instead returns to kissing him. In a rare moment of lack of focus - perhaps the heat was getting to him too - Ushijima does not seem interested in making his point or finishing his sentence, and instead is indulging the kiss as far as it-
“Ah-!”
Tendou squawks, breaking into laughter as Ushijima suddenly rolls him over, laying him down on the soft grass of the hill.
With the sunlight haloing his head, everything is mostly just shadows and light, but it’s a vision that Tendou wants to carve into stone, plaster behind his eyes and remember forever - or the rest of his life, whatever was Wakatoshi approved.
And then, without the fiery rush of the summer heat that Tendou had brought to the kiss, Ushijima leans down to kiss him gently. He is not a biter like Tendou, he is careful and intentional. He takes his time to do it right, and kisses him like it is the only thought he has in his head, the only thing he cares about doing in the moment, firm and deliberate and leaving no room for anything but the feeling of them, together. It steals the breath out of Tendou’s lungs, and he lifts his hands up to pull on Ushijima’s waist and tug him down, press their bodies as close as possible in this horrible, burning heat, when-
They are both suddenly getting absolutely drenched with blissfully cold water. Ushijima makes no sound, but freezes completely, eyes shutting as something almost akin to a smile crosses his face. Tendou shrieks, breaking into loud laughter and sitting up, having to move around Ushijima to look at Semi, who was currently using his thumb to turn a garden hose into a sprayer and absolutely going to town on them with a cackling laugh.
“You asshole!” Tendou shouts, pushing himself up and escaping from under Ushijima, bolting down the hill.
Semi screams, and then remembers he’s holding a hose, and turns that into a weapon again to blast Tendou with a low-pressure water gun as thoroughly as he could. It’s enough to force him to slow down, lifting his arms up.
“It’s what you get!” Semi shouts, as he soaks him down and that unbearable heat is turned, for just a few seconds, into freezing cold on his skin. When Semi lowers the hose, it almost immediately begins to warm again. “Being all gross with your boyfriend. We shouldn’t have to see that!”
“Don’t look then!”
And then the hose is turned on him again, and he’s screaming.
He spends a little bit of time chasing Semi around, listening to the cheers of the other boys taking sides on who was gonna take who to the ground first - Goshiki and Leon on his side, Taichi, Yamagata and Shirabu all betray him and cheer for Semi.
And then he breaks away, just for a second, breath rising rapidly in his chest as he laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and it is a moment of pure, unfiltered joy that he doesn’t think he’s ever felt in his life. When he looks up, he turns his head back towards the hill, knowing he is currently somewhat approximating a drowned ginger rat, messy and crazed feeling, water boiling off his skin in the heat. He finds Ushijima still sitting under the shade of that tree all the same. Smiling at him.
At him.
I’ll love you for the rest of my life.
And then someone is spraying him with the hose again.