Hajime had always thought their apartment looked a bit like a miracle.

Not the flashy, thunderbolt kind — just the quiet kind people only noticed when they paused long enough to breathe. Two mugs drying by the sink. Her shoes abandoned by the door in a way that should have annoyed him but never quite did. A cardigan slumped over the back of the sofa. Her hair tie on his side of the bed.

Evidence that Lou existed in all the same spaces he did. Evidence that he wasn’t just dreaming.

He padded around the kitchen in a worn t-shirt and joggers, rice steaming in the cooker, rows of gyoza sizzling in the pan. The wall clock hummed above the stove. Almost midnight. Again.

His phone lay face down on the counter, screen occasionally buzzing with the group chat.

Oikawa: Iwa-chan, remember to take pics when she cries ok!!! Matsukawa: film it. cinema ver. Hanamaki: I want the ugly sobbing, don’t half-arse it

He’d muted them an hour ago.

Hajime turned off the stove once the bottom of the gyoza was brown enough, and tried not to glare at the clock. At the mental image of Lou in that chaos of fluorescent lights and thin curtains, trying to smile at strangers who arrived half-dead.

He knew the way people looked at nurses in A&E. He’d seen the stories. The bruised-eyed heroes standing between the breaking point and the rest of the world.

He also knew Lou. Knew she’d keep going long after anyone sensible would have sat down, because stubbornness and kindness were two sides of the same stupid coin in her head.

He breathed in, slow. Focus, Iwa.

The table was already set — properly set, not the lazy two plates and whatever chopsticks they grabbed first. Tonight he’d put out placemats, folded cloth napkins in the little way he’d watched on a video, lit a single candle in the middle because apparently that made things ‘warm and cosy’.

There were their favourite dishes, all the things she reached for when she was too tired to think. After she came back late the past few days, he just wanted to do more for her. To ensure her tummy was taken care of, and she could just rest the second she arrived.

He looked at all of the preparation and smiled, his mind wandered to the romantic journey that they had carefully prepared.

Switzerland had seemed perfect when he first thought of it.

He’d sat with his laptop open at two in the morning, after she’d fallen asleep on his chest, scrolling through photos of mountains and lakes that looked too blue to be real. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere far away from the constant beeping of monitors and the smell of antiseptic.

He’d picked a small town with a view that made his chest ache. Booked a lake-side hotel room with big windows. That alone would’ve been enough. But then he’d started planning.

Ring, first.

He hadn’t needed to guess her size. He’d know her hands in the dark, if he had to. The gentlest part of his brain had an entire catalogue of trivial Lou-data: the way her fingers curled around his wrist when she tugged him towards the sofa; the way her thumb fit neatly in the hollow of his palm.

He’d gone to the jeweller with absurd confidence, said, “I know her size,” and the lady had raised a brow but not argued.