Work Text:
"Hey N, can you come over here? I need to tell you something."
N looked over at his boyfriend Touya.
"What is it, Touya?"
Touya sighed.
"Uh... it's actually that."
"It's actually what?"
"My name. I... have a confession about my name."
"Okay then."
Touya took a breath and said.
"You know how I told you my middle name was Hilbert?"
"Yeah."
"Well... it's not. Not really."
"Oh? Then what is it?"
"...It's my first name."
N blinked.
"What do you mean?"
"H-Hilbert is my first name. I... I don't really have a middle name."
"Wait... really?"
"Really. I'm... I'm sorry I lied to you. It's just..."
Touya... no, Hilbert sighed again.
"When I was a kid, I was cool with my name until a bunch of kids bullied me for it. Said it sounded like a 'hick' name. That it sounded 'goofy'. I ended up hating my name, so I started going by Touya. You know how my mom is from Kanto?"
"Yes."
"I looked up names from Kanto that had at least a vaguely similar meaning. I settled upon 'Touya' and told everyone that 'Hilbert' was actually just my middle name."
N chuckled.
"And people believed that?"
Hilbert chuckled as well.
"Yeah. I mean, we were kids at the time. Cheren and Bianca were the only ones who didn't believe me, since they'd known me my whole life, but they kept it a secret for me."
"You have good friends."
A smile.
"Yeah, I do."
They sat there in silence for a moment.
"So... you're not mad at me, right N?"
"Why would I be?"
"It's just... I dunno... I was lying about my name for a lot of our relationship..."
"My name is 'Natural'. I'm in no place to judge you for wanting to hide your name."
Hilbert laughed.
"Okay yeah, that makes sense."
"So... do you still want me to call you 'Touya' or...?"
"I'm thinking of going by Hilbert again, actually. I've been thinking lately and... I realize it was silly of me to want to call myself something else."
N nodded.
"Okay then, Hilbert. Personally, I think it's a nice name."
"Do you really? Or are you just saying that because we're dating?"
N smiled.
"Does it make a difference?"
Hilbert smiled back.
"You know... there's a concept in mathematics called a 'Hilbert space'. A vector space equipped with an inner operation that allows lengths and angles to be defined."
"...Okay?"
"What I mean is... you're a Hilbert space and I'm a variable. It fits pretty well, doesn't it?"
Hilbert burst out laughing.
"Did you really just compare our relationship to a mathematical formula because of our names!?"
N started laughing too.
"I did!"
"Holy hell, you're such a nerd!"
N enveloped Hilbert in his arms and kissed him.
"And you love it..."