Falling in love for the first time felt like entering a cold body of water in the dead of a hot, muggy summer afternoon. You dip your toe in, and an icy sensation streaks up your leg and makes goosebumps scatter across your skin. You're reluctant to jump in, to willingly submerge yourself in that bitter, harrowing cold. But you finally do it anyways. You hold your breath and you take the plunge, and as the freezing water swirls around you, you rise to the surface and the sun kisses your wet skin and you realize how nice it feels. How desperately you needed to refresh yourself and find some salvation from the hellish humidity that brutally assaulted you.

That was exactly what Eiichi was feeling. His feelings for Van terrified him, but they were so exhilarating at the same time. Van wasn't just a cold swimming pool; he was an entire ocean that Eiichi was diving right into the middle of, fully intending to make his way to the deepest depths. If you spent enough time soaking in a body of water, no matter how cold it started out, your body would eventually grow used to the sensation, and it would begin to feel warm. That's not how things were with Van. With Van, Eiichi felt the warmth swathing him instantly, the cold dissipating as soon as his body and the water met.

It was a nice feeling. A foreign feeling, but an overwhelmingly pleasant one nonetheless, and Eiichi was addicted to it already. Sometimes, though, he wondered if it really was love. If he had never been in love before, after all, how could he tell? He had no frame of reference, no other points in his life to compare this strange sensation to.

Then Van would turn over to look at him in the mornings, his hair mussed and his face alight with the most radiant smile on earth, and any and all of Eiichi's doubts would instantly melt away.

Taking things slow was a given. It was an unspoken rule between them, but it was how they both wanted things to be, so it was how they did them. Van always silently asked for approval before doing anything. He would skate his fingers over Eiichi's knuckles before he entwined their hands, or lightly touch a spot on Eiichi's body before he kissed it. He would wait for the smile passing over Eiichi's lips or the excited, almost childlike sparkle in his eyes. Every single time, he would get them, but he always liked to be sure. You know, just in case.

They still hadn't kissed each other for real (at least not since the official start of their relationship; the kiss at the party hardly counted, anyways), and Eiichi had yet to kiss Van anywhere. Van was ready, of course, he had been since day one. But Eiichi wasn't. Van knew this, so he didn't push it. He would never push him into anything beyond what he felt he could handle. Van never said anything he didn't mean with his entire being, and what he'd whispered into the dark of the hotel room that night still rang true; he would wait for Eiichi as long as the other man needed.

For now, he was perfectly content with being the bearer of all kisses, and keeping his kisses away from lip territory. Cheeks, forehead, ears, neck, and nose were all fair game, though, and Van made sure he never wasted a second that could have been spent kissing him.

Eiichi usually woke up before Van, but one morning the roles were reversed. Eiichi was stirred from his sleep by the feeling of a thumb pawing at his chin. His brows crinkled, eyes fluttering open and blinking several times to help adjust to the violent sheen of the morning sun. His vision wasn't at its best due to the lack of glasses on his face, but he could still see Van clearly enough - not too complicated to do, when the other man's face hovered just inches from his.

"Hiiii," Van purred, his voice colorful and animated and full with all the wonder of a child having woken up their parents on Christmas.

"Hi," Eiichi grunted, voice still thick with sleep. "What are you doing?"

"You drool in yer sleep," Van replied, grinning at him lopsidedly and showing off his cute teeth. "I was wipin' the crust off."

"What?" Eiichi's hands flew to the lower half of his face, scrubbing at the spot Van had already cleaned. "I do not drool."

"Ya totally do!" Van laughed, flicking him in the forehead. "It's cute."

Eiichi rolled his eyes. "Oh, well. At least I don't snore like a goddamn freight train."

Van gasped dramatically, clutching his chest and raising his eyebrows in mock offense. "I beg yer pardon? Eiichan, I thought ya liked my snorin'! I'm hurt!"

"Just because I love you enough to tolerate it doesn't mean I enjoy it."

"Yeah, well just becau- wait. Just because you what?"

A sudden realization sent shockwaves through Eiichi's body, heat reaching all the way into the tips of his ears. His mind flashed with a million thoughts at once as he thought back to the past few moments. He really had said the L-word, hadn't he? The word that, all those nights ago, he told Van was forbidden from usage between them until further notice. And then, without him having even lended any thought to it, it just slipped past his lips. He didn't mean to say it, it just happened, and now they were staring at each other, the world seeming to slow around them.

Then Van's mouth sprawled into the most shit-eating grin, his honey eyes wide and sparkling. Eiichi found comfort in the thought of crawling under a rock and remaining there for as long as he wanted to. "Oh my god, Eiichan!"

Eiichi found himself sheathed tightly into one of Van's ruthless Van-hugs, the air being compressed out of his lungs as Van squeezed his torso. The scarlet hue in his face was now more the fault of lack of oxygen than his own embarrassment.

It wasn't necessarily that he was embarrassed; Van knew that Eiichi loved him, and Eiichi knew the same for him. That was no secret. Even if it had never been spoken in words up until this point, it was always there. Nothing would change now that Eiichi had expressed it verbally. It was just that… the timing was bad. It was unplanned and spontaneous, and nothing Eiichi Otori ever did was unplanned or spontaneous. It completely went against everything he stood for.

Though he'd never admit it, Eiichi had spent a good chunk of his free time fantasizing about the moment he and Van would exchange their first "I love you"s. Perhaps it would be over a candlelit dinner, with a vase sprouting crimson roses placed between them, dim golden lights coating Van's face when Eiichi reached over to stroke his cheek as he professed his love. Maybe they'd be stargazing, huddling together to shield themselves from the cold of the night as they gazed up at the indigo velvet of the sky above them, and their words would come out in white puffs of breath in front of them before they turned to connect their lips with the twinkling lights of the city watching them. Maybe it would be at a beach, their voices competing with the rush of the ocean waves crashing against the shore and the whipping of the wind that was battering their hair to their faces, and Eiichi would savor the taste of Van's lips mixed with the salt of the ocean air.

But it was none of those things. It was in Eiichi's bed (which had since become their shared bed), thrown out casually in the middle of some typical banter for them on an average, lazy morning. There was no strategy behind it, no planning that went into it. Just those three words embedded into an otherwise irrelevant sentence.

And his method of doing damage control was, of course, to make things worse than they needed to be. So the only response he could come up with was, "I didn't say anything."

Van's shoulders trembled as he squealed with laughter like a high school girl. "You did! Ya totally did, oh my God, Eiichan, don't lie to me." He shoved Eiichi's shoulders lightly. "C'mon, say it again, pleeease? Please please please plea-"

His pleas were abruptly stopped short by the impact of a pillow colliding into the side of his face.

Van blinked, stunned from the initial blow. He frowned before a look of mischief eclipsed his face. "Ohoho, you are askin' fer trouble, Eiichan."

He grabbed a pillow of his own from his side of the bed. Eiichi scrambled to get away, but not before he was harshly thwacked on his lower back, sending him tumbling face-down on the battress. Biting his lip to suppress a grin, Eiichi pulled himself back up and delivered another blow to Van's face. He couldn't help but laugh at the little grunt that sounded from his partner, even when Van licked his lips vindictively and pounced towards him.

They were a tangle of scuffling limbs, rolling around in knotted bedsheets and laughing wildly, freely as they attacked each other with their plush weapons. They could hear shouts from downstairs telling them to be quiet, all of which went ignored by the two lovers.

During one particularly heated moment, Eiichi grabbed Van by the forearms just as he was about to strike him again, and flipped him onto his back. The pillow was flung out of his hands and rocketed towards the wall before dropping down to the floor, wrinkled and forgotten about. Before he could reach for it, Van's hands were pinned above his head, his face flushed and chest rapidly rising and falling with heavy breaths. Eiichi loomed over him, their cheeks matching in redness and their panting in sync with one another.

And then, Eiichi dipped his head down and closed the distance between their lips.

Van's eyes snapped wide open for a split second, but it didn't take him long to reciprocate. He closed his eyes and pushed back against Eiichi with just as much force, savoring the feeling of the other man's lips against his. They were soft. Warm. Everything he had expected them to be. He slid his hands up Eiichi's back, around his shoulders and along his jaw, leaving them there to hold his face as they melted against one another.

Eiichi tasted like cinnamon and Van tasted like citrus. They could each feel warm breath against their noses. Sparks seemed to be bursting from the spot where they were connected. They departed for the briefest of moments, only for Eiichi to whisper another, more gentle "I love you" against Van's mouth, his words becoming swallowed by those lips once more.

"I love you too," Van breathed when they finally pulled apart. "I… God, I love you so much, it's killing me, Eiichi."

"Please don't die," Eiichi murmured, planting another kiss along the dip in Van's collarbone.

"I can't promise you anythin'," Van whispered, leaning down to kiss Eiichi's forehead.

"How much do I owe you?"

"Huh?"

"For every single kiss you've given me, I want to give you one back," Eiichi asserted. He straightened his spine so he could get a better look at Van's dazed face and Lord, was it a sight to behold. "So tell me how many I owe you."

Van snorted, covering his forehead with the back of his hand. "Dunno, I wasn't countin'. Wasn't even aware I was s'posed to be."

"For the sake of evening it out, let's just say it's a hundred."

Van grinned. "I have no objections to that."

A torrent of kisses descended upon the brunette, across his forehead, his nose, his cheeks, his chin, his neck, his ears, his chest, his arms. Van laughed as he drank them in. Neither of them were counting, so they couldn't be sure if it was exactly a hundred, but it was probably close to it. Just one kiss from Eiichi felt like a hundred, anyways.

It wasn't at a beach or in front of candlelight or under the stars. There were no fireworks or violins. But there were two people who were desperately in love with one another.

Sunlight began to drip in from the slits in the window curtains, enveloping their room in a golden glow.