The snow is a surprise.

Genos hasn’t really been paying attention to the seasons. Of course not. There are more important things to do, like saving the world and caring for his sensei as well as improving his strength and abilities for revenge, oh and finding new delicious recipes to cook! So when Genos is stuffing the trash into the garbage can before the house, the soft fluff of white hitting his nose is more than just a little baffling. A snowflake, his sensors and eyes tell him. Wait.

A look at the calendar sheet when he’s back inside has him speechless for a second. Oh. So that’s what it is.

“Sensei,” he says, migrating into the living room where his sensei is lounging before the TV, eyes firmly glued to the screen. “It’s Christmas tomorrow.”

Saitama glances over his shoulder. “I know.” He doesn’t move his body, only tilting his head a bit to give Genos a questioning look. “So?”

“Don’t you celebrate?” Genos can’t hold back a smile. Christmas is warmth and happiness, nice food with beloved ones and decorating the tree with his family –

“I used to.” Right. They’re not here anymore. He’ll never forget. Genos sits down at the table and takes out his notes. His sensei keeps watching him, and for a long while, nothing else but the TV’s noise interrupts the silence.

“It means a lot to you, doesn’t it,” Saitama then mumbles. “Sorry?” Genos asks, he couldn’t hear what his sensei was saying.
“Nothing.” – “Sensei?” – “It’s fine, Genos. I’m going to sleep. Don’t stay up too late.” – “Yes, sensei. Good night.” – “…night.”

The new morning is uncomfortably loud. Genos’ senses tingle him awake with an alarming shudder running down his spine. He jolts up from his resting position, heat gathering in the palm of his hand. Last night, he’s fallen asleep on the small table, and now a monster or something is attacking his sensei – the noise is coming from the kitchen!

Genos bursts into the room with all his weapons ready. “Sensei, I’m here – “

But there is no monster.
A green plastic tree gleams in golden and red lights on the stove top. It’s not taller than two feet, and there’s a makeshift star out of gold spraypaint and cardboard sitting on the top. The Christmas tree’s baubles are blown-up plastic bags that look like they’ve been plastered with old newspapers and coloured with beetroot juice. A row of cheap fairy lights is stuck around the tree’s artificial branches and plugged into the outlet where the mixer usually stands.

And next to the stove, his sensei stands, wearing a santa hat and holding a small plate of what looks like Genos’ favourite store-bought cookies. The tiny radio plays Christmas music, some English song about going home for the holidays.

“Merry Christmas,” Saitama says. “It’s not much, but I thought we could-”

Genos knows that he will have to apologize for spilling oil all over his sensei’s shoulder later. But right now, he doesn’t care. His arms wrap around Saitama, his body shuddering from something that would have been sobs if any noise came out of his mouth. “There, there,” Saitama mumbles and lets him be, one hand sliding onto Genos’ hip to hold him, gentle and a bit awkward. “It’s not much, I know. I’m sorry. I hope you still like it?”

“It’s everything,” Genos whispers and smiles. Oil falls from his cheeks. “M-merry Christmas, sensei.”

Tooru honestly never expected the day to come. He’s just never taken Hajime for someone who’s even interested in something like romance, or actual love. So he’s more than just a little surprised when Hajime enters the classroom, flops down on the chair next to him and says: “I have a date after school.”

“Oh,” Tooru says. His chest hurts all of a sudden. “That’s nice.”

“Are you happy for me?” Hajime watches him, arms crossed, something like a smirk playing on his lips. He’s probably really happy, Tooru thinks. And I’m a terrible person for wanting to know why a stupid, annoying girl is better than me.

“Yes,” is what he presses out, forced, but with a smile that flashes over his lips last-second. “Of course I am! Heh, you managed to find a cute one, didn’t you?”

“You could say that.” Hajime’s grin widens. He turns towards the blackboard and doesn’t say anything else as their teacher enters the classroom. Tooru feels like crying. He’s so stupid. He’s had his chance. Outside, snow starts to fall.

Training goes so-so that day. He’s not having one of his better days, and the team notices. Nobody calls him out on it. Hajime plays like a young god (but doesn’t he always, Tooru catches himself swooning), and he still wears that goddamn beautiful smile when they’re already in the changing room.

Tooru only notices that he’s alone with Hajime when he’s finished dressing. He turns around and Hajime stands there, opening the door to the snow-dotted sky, grey and white fluff. “C’mon,” he says. “We need to get going.”

“Right. Your date.” Tooru hates how small his voice is, how vulnerable. He clings to the strap of his bag and stares at the ground while walking past Hajime.

A warm, rough hand slips into his own. Hajime curls his thumb around Tooru’s freezing wrist and gently strokes along his skin. The touch sends sparks down his spine, but he doesn’t understand, why – why –

“Let’s go. I don’t wanna spend our first date out in the cold.” The clumsy kiss that is pressed to Tooru’s cheek moments later touches the corner of his mouth, and Tooru feels like he could fly. Hajime’s voice has gone scratchy. “’Cause, you know. I got a date with someone really cute. His name’s Tooru.”

“You’re – t-terrible.” And now there are tears on his cheeks, wet and stupid and Hajime kisses them off, a tremble in his lips that tells a story about being nervous and afraid and gathering all courage that he has and god, Tooru loves him. “I know,” Hajime smiles. “Let’s go.” – “Y-yeah. Okay.”

Tooru follows, his fingers warm and safe in Hajime’s grip.

Iwaoichristmasweek’15. Day 2: Mistletoe.

“Do you still remember our first kiss?” Tooru asks and his fingers brush gently over Hajime’s ankle. “I do. I’d never forget.”

Hajime wouldn’t forget either, but he takes his time to reply. The ladder he’s standing on is far less stable than Tooru had assured him, and it keeps swaying dangerously while Hajime attempts to push the green bundle of leaves onto its designated hook over the door.

“Careful,” Tooru says. Hajime can’t see his face (that damn mistletoe just won’t – got it!), but he hears the grin in his boyfriend’s voice. “Stop fuckin’ around and hold the damn ladder.” – “Aww, you know I’d never let you fall, Haji.”

Hajime checks whether the decoration is safely stuck, and then he climbs down the ladder. “You’re such a sap,” he mumbles, letting Tooru pull him by the sleeve of his breathtakingly ugly christmas sweater. “And yeah, of course I remember.”

“Good,” Tooru sing-songs. He kicks the ladder aside, not even flinching when it falls over, and one jolt of his hand later, Hajime is flung into his boyfriend’s arms with an elegant swirl. “Tell me, then. How’d it go again?”

Hajime can’t help but smile. Tooru wants to celebrate the first Christmas in their own cozy flat by reminiscing? It’s cute. He doesn’t say it out loud, of course. Instead, Hajime reaches to slide his fingers into Tooru’s soft hair, pulls him down to rest their foreheads together, and whispers: “Last day of our final training camp. We were out at night, it was forbidden, but you didn’t care. You dragged me to sit on the roof of the hostel and we watched the stars. You said something about aliens, of course you did, and…”

Warm lips press gently against his own. Hajime closes his eyes, smile curving against Tooru’s mouth. They kiss underneath the mistletoe, fingers in each other’s hair and breath melting together, until the door bell rings. “The others are,” Hajime mumbles, and Tooru whispers: “Yeah.” He pulls back, grinning, cheeks as red as the baubles of their small Christmas tree.

“And because you kept staring at my lips, I couldn’t resist. I’d wanted to kiss you for so long. It was kind of strange – no matter what I said, you never looked at the stars I pointed out. You just looked at me.”

‘That’ll never change,’ Hajime thinks, and quickly turns around. “Let them in already. I want to celebrate.” He still hears Tooru’s laughter even as he hurries into the kitchen, and touches his lips with a smile.

hq cat iwaoi please?! I really love your art! Thank you!

tinyriverstory:

WELL ANON YOU ARE IN LUCK, BECAUSE I JUST HAPPENED TO DOODLE SOME KITTY IWAOI THE OTHER DAY

Sadly, Oikawa cannot help that his tail is so enticingly floofy.

Thank you so much for drawing this for me the other day. When I saw it on twitter and you said that it was to cheer me up, I was so happy. I was a little down before that, but after seeing fluffy Iwaoi cats, I was so excited and felt all warm. You’re such a sweetheart and asdfkljkl I am rambling but I’m glad we met. Hugs you, sweet little polar star, thank you Lina! ♥

Iwaoichristmasweek’15. Day 1: Snowmen.

Tooru is on his third energy drink when a quiet howl resounds outside his bedroom window. It’s been snowing all night, a shimmer of white resting on top of the roofs and chimneys of his hometown. The clock on his nightstand whispers 03:00am in neon digits. Tooru isn’t in a hurry when he rises from the bed, emptying his energy drink in one last gulp, and lazily walking over to the window. He keeps the blanket wrapped around himself; it has gotten ice-cold, even though it’s barely two weeks before Christmas.

When Tooru pulls the handle and opens his bedroom window, another howl echoes through the garden below.

“You’re gonna wake the neighbours! Shhhh!” Tooru lifts a finger to his lips, leaning slightly over the sill to frown at the dark figure that sits in the snow.

Hajime’s storm-grey fur is dappled with snowflakes. He looks a bit like an inverse appaloosa, Tooru thinks and grins. But when the large wolf cowers down to aim for a jump, Tooru hastily waves both hands.

“No, no! You’re not getting back in yet! I can’t risk you thrashing the entire room when you turn back human. My parents are gonna go insane, and they won’t believe that it was me sleepwalking and destroying all my furniture again.”

The wolf’s ears drop slightly. Tooru sighs. “I think it’s just another hour or so. Sorry. Hang on.” Then, the animal tilts his head, and jumps up. Tooru quirks a brow. “What are you doing? Don’t make any noise – Hajime? Huh?”

And minutes later, Tooru has to cup a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t laugh.

In the garden, his silly werewolf of a boyfriend has pushed up a pile of snow with his nose. The snow-sprinkled tail hangs low and tense in concentration as Hajime buries almost his entire face in the snow and presses it together into something that looks like – oh. Tooru smiles. He’s such a sap.

“Idiot,” he whispers, and blows a kiss into the garden. “Hurry up. I want to kiss you again.” The wolf shows his teeth and huffs. Tooru can already see his fur going thinner, the facial features changing. It won’t be long. He can’t wait.

In the morning, when Hajime is back in Tooru’s bed and warming up his cold now-human feet, the snow-sculpted heart in the garden is still there.

“I’m an athlete, for fuck’s sake. My body’s not supposed to look like that.”

“That,” Tooru says, without looking up from his book, “is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard you say.” He licks the pad of his finger, turns a page in his book and only then glares up at Hajime. “Who planted this stupidity into your head?”

“It’s true, though.” Hajime shrugs, pretending not to care. But fuck, he does. He’s been playing volleyball for as long as Tooru does, he started weight lifting in college and it’s going really well. It’s not that he’s weak – his spikes have been getting more violent and harder to receive, he’s built muscles, has gained agility and power and has overall physical abilities.

But his lower stomach is still fucking chubby.

Chubby! Why that?! I’m working so hard, Hajime thinks and pushes all air out of his lungs, trying to flatten his body as he looks into the mirror. How can an athlete like him still have baby fat or whatever this is? Maybe he’s bad at –

It takes Hajime a few moments to notice that Tooru hasn’t said anything else. When he turns around, another complaint sitting on the tip of his tongue, Tooru is staring at him. Hajime’s mouth snaps shut. He freezes. Tooru, he –

“You don’t even see one glimpse of how beautiful you are.” Tooru has moved to lie on his stomach, chin propped up on a hand, and he’s looking at Hajime as if he was some kind of miracle. Hajime knows that shimmer in Tooru’s eyes, the softness in his expression, how he tilts his head just slightly and how his perfect lips curve into a smile.

It’s the same look that Tooru wears every night before they sleep. The look he has when he tells Hajime “I love you”, and Hajime mumbles back “m-me too” because he’s still embarrassed about saying it.

Tooru heaves himself off the bed and steps forward. Hajime doesn’t move when warm fingers touch his shoulders, tracing down his broad chest and along the skin of his stomach, hitching from a sharp inhale of breath.
“It’s natural to have that. Doesn’t make you a worse athlete.” Tooru leans forward, making their foreheads touch. He keeps smiling as Hajime feels a red-hot blush rise in his cheeks.

“And you’ll always be gorgeous. I just wish you could see it. That you’re just – “

The only way to shut Tooru up when he gets so embarrassing is a kiss, and Hajime is willingly making that sacrifice before he’s going to combust. What an idiot boyfriend he has. Stupid, wonderful idiot.

oekaki-chan:

Couldn’t resist drawing him when doing assignment :’^)

Source: oekaki-chan

All animals are irresistibly drawn towards Iwaizumi. He doesn’t know why, and he’s awkward and overly gentle when petting them. For a long time, Oikawa is jealous of all those little creatures that Iwaizumi touches as if they’re something precious.

But it gets better when Iwaizumi starts kissing him as if Oikawa is his entire universe, stars and moons and the light rising over the earth in the morning.

“Are you hurt?” is the first thing that Tooru says to him when he finds Hajime sitting in the palace garden, hidden underneath a bush with his bloody knee and twisted ankle, the crimson-purple flowers he’s tried to steal for his mother’s birthday carefully wrapped in a linen cloth next to him. But Hajime just shakes his head, and doesn’t flinch away when the other child touches his knee. “I’ll help you,” the boy says, and Hajime later learns that his name is Tooru and that he’s the crown prince or something boring.

Tooru asks him to come back. And so Hajime does, the next day, and the one after that.

“I never want you to leave,” is what Tooru says when he arrives at their secret meeting spot behind the water fountain with hands that are raw from training with a sword and eyes that are tired from hours of studying. Hajime promises that he won’t. Tooru hugs him for the first time and cries a bit. Soon, they lie on their backs and watch the sun set. Hajime goes to talk to that old man in town the next day, the one about whom his mother says that he used to be a guardian of a mighty ruler, that he knows the art of killing and fighting.

It turns out that she is right. And Hajime begins to learn.

“Kiss me,” is what Tooru whispers when they are seventeen and it’s a night that gleams from millions of stars, and Hajime has earned his place in the palace guard yesterday by taking down four of the King’s best men, one after another.

Hajime closes his eyes and breathes, slow. Tooru’s lips are soft that night, and every night after that.

“No!” and years later, Tooru’s voice echoes through the throne hall when Hajime stands before him, his sword drawn, the dagger of a man buried between his ribs and blood dripping onto Tooru’s lap. That is when Hajime turns around as the guards take that traitorous nobleman down. He smiles, his blood falling.

“Are you hurt, my love?” He says, quiet, and only Tooru hears it through the roaring crowd. Hajime closes his eyes. He hopes that he will wake up again.

“Hajime, look! It’s snowing!” Tooru flattens himself against the window of the locker room. “I can’t believe we’re going to have white winter holidays!” He smiles and tries to gets his face closer to the glass, squeezing his nose completely against the cold glass.

Behind him, Hajime gives a low grumble. “Yeah, yeah.” There’s a rustling of clothes and footsteps as Hajime walks up next to Tooru, finally finished with changing clothes. He’s always so slow after training, Tooru thinks, always the last one. But that’s alright. That way, Tooru can watch the soft shift of his muscles when he pulls off his shirt. That way, he can stare from the corner of his eyes, at the man whom he’s loved for – well.

He can’t remember not loving Hajime. It’s so bad. The feeling is warm, his heart burns and sends sparks and god, Hajime is all he’s ever dreamt of.

“Oooh, look!” Tooru peels himself off the glass and whirls around, pulling Hajime by the wrist – “careful, you idiot!” – and out of the locker room. “That’s so pretty!”

They’re standing outside, and Tooru smiles. A snowflake touches his nose when he lifts his head. It’s not much, but the white shimmer is gently covering the whole earth in frost and cold. “It’s going to look beautiful tomorrow,” Tooru says.

“Yeah,” Hajime says next to him, and his hand slides into Tooru’s. “You look beautiful.”

“I – w-what?” Did he just –

Hajime… blushes. It’s something Tooru has never seen before, and he stares at his best friend, lips slightly parted, and his fingers grip Hajime’s more tightly when his friend tries to pull away. But Hajime doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t take it back. This – this wonderful, stupid idiot stares at Tooru as if he’s the winter wonder here, and then he leans in and breathes a soft kiss against Tooru’s trembling lips.

“It’s really pretty,” Hajime says, very quiet. When he starts walking and pulls Tooru behind himself, the redness has crawled all the way into his neck and up to his cheekbones. “C’mon. It’s cold.”

Tooru can’t speak. He just follows, wordless, and rubs an arm over his face to keep those stupid warm tears from flowing. But Hajime’s hand is in his own, where Tooru has wanted it to be for years, an eternity, and that’s all that matters.