Not Letting Go
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Rockman EXE series.
Pairing: Developing Netto x Tohru.
Summary:
Hikari Netto knows endings are hard. Returns? That remains to be seen.
Fourteen years today, Hikawa Tohru walked out of my life. No fanfare. Not a word uttered between us, and not a word uttered since. He just up and boarded a plane, and left.
Who am I kidding? Tohru told everybody three weeks ahead. That was the sort of person he was. He allowed the gang time to process. But me? I couldn't deal with it. I didn't want to face the notion of my good friend leaving us. Leaving me. And unlike everybody else, who saw him off at the airport, I got cold feet and stayed home.
We didn't even spend any meaningful last hours together before we – no, before he – parted.
He probably detests me. I sure would. All those happy memories, wiped out in a stroke.
Why, then, do I find a message in my PET this morning from Iceman saying Tohru wants to meet? When did he get back? Why now? He could have given me advance warning! Oh right, he was. That had been 9:45 a.m., and it's 5:00 p.m. I'm being nitpicky.
"You keep thinking too hard, and you'll sprain a ligament," he jokes.
We're somewhere where I don't care where. He's so calm. Although I showed him coldness, he never once raises his voice.
And he's attractive! A sharper profile than I remember. Stubble like his dad.
Ugh, I'm still the same damn twelve-year-old with a schoolgirl crush!
Because despite myself, this is a love story. Mine. They could package it and sell it to moviemakers.
"I always knew." He strokes my ear understandingly. Kisses the ado away.
If this were a movie, there'd be an obligatory lovemaking scene, which, to my relief, there was. When did that happen?
Believe it or not, he's my first. I'm inexperienced as hell, but he's real sweet about it, as he is about everything.
I'm not letting go again.
We bundle up, in the presence of the shadows of the snowflakes as they fall.