This is near the top of Yato's list of "Stupid Things I Have Done While, Surprisingly, Not Drunk." At the very top is inciting a small war (on purpose), closely followed by starting his own mafia (on accident). But this is probably at least number three—and it might even displace the whole mafia situation, depending on the outcome.
As he makes his way to Hiyori's house, he's not even sure he has anything to say to her. All he knows is that his conversational limitations of "yep," and "uh huh," have not worked wonders on her impression of him.
Another storm is forming on the outskirts of Tokyo, but Yato pretends he doesn't see it. That can easily wait until morning. Storms and vents have always come and gone. However, Yato being an idiot, while not exactly a new development, can at least be dealt with without calling on Sekki.
He still doesn't think of his method of entry as "sneaking in" to her room, though in the past she has uncharitably referred to it as such. It's just something people do when they care about someone else: they give them hugs, they buy them food, they watch them sleep in the middle of the night. All of these behaviors are very normal signs of care and affection. Besides, he's been welcomed in here so many times in the past, that he's assumed it's a standing invitation. So when he gets to her house, he clambers lightly in through the cracked-open window—only to see that she's already dead asleep. She didn't even change out of her school clothes, and it really doesn't look like her sleep is all that restful. There are wrinkles working in her forehead and between her eyebrows, like the ones that appear when she's trying to help Yukine with a difficult math problem.
Yato feels a knife of guilt slip in between his ribs; he never wants to see her face look that anxious because of him, and despite his best efforts, it probably is. As he stands, watching her, the wrinkles deepen, and she mutters something inaudible. Maybe she senses his presence in her sleep, and it's bothering her even more. It was a poor idea to come here.
Maybe, if she had been awake, he would have given her a simple apology—if only for the fact that he left without saying anything. As he stands in the middle of her room, feeling aimless and more foolish than ever, he begins to turn away. He takes one or two slow steps toward the open window, but before he crosses the full length of the room, he hears his name.
Yato turns around, thinking she's woken up. His first impulse is to steel himself for the explosion that's sure to happen when she discovers him, uninvited, inside her bedroom. But when he sees her face, her eyes are still very much closed. The wrinkles between her eyebrows are now smoothed out, and she looks completely peaceful.
There's no doubt about it, though—she said his name. She smiles, and sighs:
"Nice smell, hmmm…"
Her words trail off, and he stands transfixed. Is she talking about his smell? The corner of his mouth quirks up in a grin. Huh. Very interesting.
There's no way he's going to leave now and miss out on all the other complimentary things she might say about him, so he prepares to settle in. Before he does, he decides to shut the window. Even though the night outside looks quiet, the wide open rectangle of darkness makes him uneasy. He turns around to go close it, but then he hears one more sleep statement from her. Something that glues his feet to the floor and swivels his head mechanically back toward her.
She repeats it. The first time was just a mumble, but the second is as clear as a bell.
"I love you, Yato."
His weight shifts, and the floorboards groan under his boots. The sharp creak wakes Hiyori up, and her eyes flutter open. He's the first thing she sees, but she doesn't look angry—yet. She looks disoriented, and blinks quickly a few times, like a swimmer coming up for air. Then, shaking the rest of the sleep off herself, she sits up in bed. At last, it clicks with her that he's there: in her room, uninvited, in the middle of the night.
"Yato, what are you—why are you in my room? And what's wrong with your face?"
His face. What's happening to his face? Is there something he's supposed to be doing with his face? What's the most acceptable thing to do with one's face in this sort of a situation? There's a windstorm between his ears, but in the midst of his internal chaos, one fact shines with incandescent clarity.
"Y-you love me?"
For a few seconds, Hiyori doesn't react.
Then, all at once, she does something that blindsides him. She starts to laugh: long, and a little hysterically, rocking back on her bed and holding her chest like she's in pain. Tears force their way under her eyelids, and she keeps laughing for so long that Yato finds himself feeling a bit insulted.
"He-hey…! What the hell, Hiyori! It's not funny!"
"I'm…sorry!" she gasps between bursts of hectic giggles. "I really don't know. I don't know…"
She doesn't finish the sentence, but at last manages to take a deep breath, and presses her palms to her cherry-colored cheeks. She slides her legs off the bed, sitting on the edge of it and facing him. Her mirth has passed, just as suddenly as it arrived, but there's still a spirit of a smile on her lips.
"Yes," she says, simply.
Yato doesn't know why, but he was expecting a bit more of an answer than that.
"Yes…you love me?" he repeats. Just in case she got confused.
"Yep. Kind of a lot."
Oh. Oh.
"How—how much is a lot?" he asks. He wonders how obvious it is that he's trying not to hang on every syllable of her response.
Kind of a lot. A lot. She loves him a lot.
Hiyori takes another deep breath, and her voice is steady when she answers. All except for the last word, which breaks slightly.
"Well…how much do you love me?"
It throws him off. There's no good answer. There doesn't seem to be enough language for it. He doesn't know if he can phrase it in a way she'll understand.
In the meantime, she seems to interpret his silence incorrectly. The wrinkle between her eyebrows reappears, and the longer he stands there, fighting with his inability to express himself, the more she looks as though she might want to curl up and disappear.
"I mean," she starts, in confused humiliation. "I mean, if you do. I just—I thought that—"
"No, no. Hiyori, wait."
He goes to her, and her mattress creaks as he sits down. Her hands have started twisting together painfully, and he reaches out to cover them with one of his.
"You asked: how much."
Her back stiffens, and her hands stop wringing themselves in her lap. She nods, unable to look at him, and finally, the words trapped in the back of his throat start pouring out.
"How much do you want it to be? Hiyori, you've never given me a chance to figure out how much I'm supposed to love you, because everything you've done demands more. I can love you as much as you'll ever let me. I can love you up to and beyond whatever limits you set."
She turns her head to look at him in the silence of complete astonishment, and Yato thinks it would probably be a good idea for him to quit there. But he doesn't.
"I can love you until I deserve you."
In the silence after he stops, breathless, he manages to clear his throat. Hiyori still stares at him, her lips parted in surprise.
"So however—however that much is. I guess," he adds, self-consciously. He's a little shocked at his own candor.
Hiyori looks at him like she's just now seeing him. Then, instead of answering, she gives a small chuckle. Yato frowns.
"Why do you keep laughing when there's no joke?" he asks peevishly.
Hiyori just keeps giggling, and one of her hands slips out from under his. It settles over his fingers. Her nails trace the inside of his wrist.
"You're just…way more poetic than I expected, Yato. That's all."
"Is that bad?!"
"No," she answers, after a small pause. Her voice is barely above a whisper, and she's not laughing anymore. Yato shivers as her eyes roam over his face. Finally her gaze falls to his mouth, and along with it she gets a dreamy, half-lidded expression. Yato sees it, and smirks.
Hiyori's eyes widen in realization; she blushes so deeply that her face turns almost as dark as her hair. She pulls both her hands away from his, off her lap.
Now it's Yato's turn to laugh, and when she gets flustered and turns away he catches her chin, gently. He turns her face back toward him, as delicately as though she's made of glass.
"I've had many years to perfect the art of the honest love confession, Hiyori," he says, still holding her chin, even though she's not turning away again. "You should be lucky you aren't swooning in my arms by now!"
Her eyebrows lift in evident skepticism. Then, her breath catches as he leans toward her, pressing his lips to her warm forehead. There's a couple seconds of silence, unbroken by the still, heavy night air around them.
"You're completely ridiculous," she whispers at last, and he can hear the smile in her voice.
/
It turns out that the aftermath of a confession of requited mutual pining is a bit awkward. So after she draws his scent deep into her lungs, Hiyori leans back, but doesn't meet his eyes. He clears his throat again, which is apparently a new nervous habit of his. Then, after a few moments of silence, he says:
"Just now—you didn't really seem surprised. Did you even wonder how I knew that you—you loved me?"
His voice cracks like an adolescent schoolboy's on the first "you," and it makes her smile. A thousand-year-old god. Sure.
"Oh, that."
"Yes, that."
He sounds even more confused. Hiyori sighs.
"I figured it was the sleeptalking. It's gotten to be a real issue for me these days."
A wretched idea occurs to her, and her head snaps up.
"I didn't say anything else—did I? Just the part about being in love with you?"
Yato frowns a little at the second half of her question.
"Oh, 'just' that?!"
"Please, answer me."
The spots of pink high on his cheekbones darken.
"Well, you also said that I smell…nice."
"Oh my god."
The heat of her blush won't fit behind both her hands.
"That's all, I swear! Why are you—what the hell, Hiyori?! It's not that big of a deal!"
He sounds genuinely baffled as she scoots herself away from him, toward the head of her bed. Trying to sound casual, she says:
"Um. Yeah, it's not a big deal. Not at all. It's just a little embarrassing for you to find out like that."
Her back is pressed right up against the wall at the top of her bed, so she has nowhere to go when he moves closer to her. Not that he encroaches too much on her space, but still: that nice smell becomes a lot stronger the closer he gets.
"Let me get this straight. You are fine with admitting that you love me in your sleep, but when you happen to let slip that you think I smell good, that's suddenly worth panicking about?"
She pulls a pillow out from behind her and smooshes it against her stomach, gripping it with bone-white knuckles. But he makes a point.
"No," she squeaks.
Yato doesn't say anything. Hiyori wouldn't be surprised if he's completely nonplussed by her behavior. She would be hard put to explain it herself. He just sighs.
"Well, I think you're a little insane, but if it makes you feel better, you smell really…nice…to me too."
Hiyori's fingers clench around the pillowcase.
"What?"
"Yeah. You always have. Like, uhh…like the sky. Clean."
Hiyori is staggered by this discovery.
That she smells nice to him; has always smelled nice to him. Like the sky.
"Oh."
Her powers of articulation are truly fearsome. But, based on the look he's giving her, Hiyori doesn't feel like she needs to say much else. Maybe all the relief that she isn't able to voice is somehow manifesting on her face.
"You really are the weirdest," he states, and she gives him a betrayed look.
"You're one to talk! Who even thinks about what the sky smells like, I mean…seriously?"
Yato just laughs at her, and scoots a little closer. She clenches the pillow so tightly it seems like her fingers might break.
"I don't know," he admits, reaching out to twirl a piece of her hair around his forefinger. "All I know is that it smells nice. And so do you."
Hiyori wonders why the edges of her vision are swirling tipsily, and realizes it's because she's actually not breathing. She takes a long gulp of air, and when she does, Yato's eyes—twin, fiery blue moons—are on a level with hers. He's asking her something.
"…you okay? Hiyori?"
She blinks; her ears start working again.
"Hm?"
"I asked if I could…kiss you."
Did he ask her that? Yes, indeed he did. So she nods.