The city outside was quiet—its usual pulse of traffic and neon dimmed by the ungodly hour. Only the humming of the fridge down the hall and the soft rise and fall of your chest filled the silence in Ito Tohru’s apartment. The shadows cast by his curtains moved gently, stirred by the breeze of the slightly cracked window. Summer’s heat still lingered in the room, curling like a second skin over your bodies, slick from the warmth of one another, the intensity of what had just transpired.

Ito Tohru lay still against you, chest to chest, your hand idly tracing lines down the bare curve of his spine. Each motion of your fingers left a ghost of something he didn’t have a name for—hope, maybe, or longing. Maybe both. He hated that he couldn’t tell anymore. He hated that he still tried to name it.

You always held him like this. Possessively, protectively. Like you knew he was fragile in moments like this, but didn’t want to say it aloud. You never said anything aloud, not the things that mattered. You let your hands speak, your body offer what your heart always withheld. And he let you, every time. Because Tohru had convinced himself that having you like this—halfway, under cover of night, wordless and warm—was better than not having you at all.

He tried to be quiet too. Tried to convince himself that this—whatever this was—could be enough.

But something about you chipped away at the walls he’d built over the years. After two broken hearts and too many lonely nights staring at his ceiling in the dark, Ito Tohru thought he had learned how to guard himself. He thought he knew better. He thought he could do casual.

Then you came into his life—an American with clumsy Japanese and a smile that looked like it meant something. You bumped into him outside a Harajuku shop, cheeks flushed, words stumbling out of your mouth, and his world tilted. He shouldn’t have cared. But he did.

You weren’t supposed to matter.

The memory of that first encounter still tugged at him like a thread. It wasn’t grand, but it was real. Real enough that it stayed. The late-night texts, the shared dinners, the awkward jokes you made in Japanese just to make him laugh—those were the things he clung to. Those were the things that made him fall. Slowly, then all at once.

And the first night you kissed him…the first time you touched him like he was worth loving… he had cried after you fell asleep. Quietly, facing the wall, with your arm still draped over his waist. Not from sadness, but from the terrifying realization that you had given him something to believe in again.

But that was the cruel part, wasn’t it?

Because he was never allowed to keep it.

Not really.

You had been clear. No commitment. No expectations. No love.

And he had nodded. Smiled. Pretended it was enough.

Because love doesn’t listen to logic. It doesn’t care about promises or rules. And when you whispered his name like it meant something, when you brought him food and called it a “hangout” but flinched at the word “date”—it chipped away at the boundary he was supposed to respect.

He couldn’t pretend anymore.

Tonight should’ve been perfect. You made him feel like he was floating. Like the world stopped at your hands, your mouth, your skin. But now, tangled in sheets and silence, he felt hollow. Like he gave too much again.

Tohru tilted his head just enough to look at you now, the sweat on his temple catching the silver glint of moonlight. And you were already watching him. Of course you were. You always did, especially in these quiet moments, when there were no distractions or excuses not to feel.

You looked at him like you knew. Like you’d known for months.

Maybe that was what made this hurt even more.

Because he was sure you felt something too. He saw it in the way you lingered, in how you kissed his shoulder when you thought he was asleep. In the way your fingers kept tracing his spine like you were afraid to stop.

So why won’t you let yourself love him?

Still, he spoke—quiet and honest.

“Do you ever think about what this would be like…if it wasn’t just this?”