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Karube doesn’t consider himself clingy, he’s always been pretty independent his whole life, a single child with two parents who both worked. He was, easily by definition, a latchkey kid. Not that he ever really minded. So if any of the three of them are clingy, it’s definitely Koma. That becomes all the more obvious when he starts dragging Karube along to Niragi’s room.
It’s late, the big party across the Beach is even starting to wind down. Karube had been planning to go off to his own room when Koma caught him. Niragi had turned in early as usual. He’d never liked the whole party side of the Beach, he’d always just complain about the music and the people. Half the time, he’s following after Aguni or picking a fight with someone. Only Koma had ever gotten him to enjoy himself. Karube still remembers that stupid spark of jealousy. It feels even more stupid now, after everything.
Koma’s hand is wrapped around his wrist, heaving him along. As tired as he is, he could still easily wrangle himself out of Koma’s grip, but then he’d be dealing with a pouting, complaining Koma instead so he just lets himself be dragged along.
“Aren’t you too tired for sex?” He grumbles.
“Yeah, that’s not the plan,” Koma replies, “Aren’t you lonely sleeping alone?”
Karube’s mouth thins into a line. He can’t say that isn’t true, but he doesn’t want to admit to it. Koma must take his silence as answer enough, because his pace picks up, there’s a bounce in his step, clearly pleased at being right.
Sighing, Karube walks faster to not be dragging his feet.
Koma doesn’t even knock when he reaches Niragi’s room, just barges in like he belongs there. In a way, he kind of does. It wasn’t as if Niragi had ever really denied him access, sometimes it seemed like he had more free reign to it than Karube did. With a rough sigh, Karube scrubs his free hand across the back of his head, shooting a look at Koma but still dragged along after him by his wrist. Niragi jolts up, apparently half asleep before the pair had stumbled in. He closes his book, tossing it onto the bedside table, but doesn’t get the chance to even fully sit up before Koma is clambering onto the bed and flopping into him. Niragi huffs a surprised, amused noise, one of his arms swinging around Koma’s shoulders, the other steadying himself. He looks across at Karube, quirking his pierced brow.
“What are you guys doing here?” He asks. Karube shrugs.
“Sleeping,” Koma answers for him. He flaps an arm behind him, trying to coax Karube forward.
Rolling his eyes, he sighs and climbs onto the bed to slot himself into Niragi’s other side. He drops a short kiss against the point of his collarbone, rumbling out a sigh. Under the weight of both of them, Niragi flops back against the bed with a groan. Koma rolls off him, and Karube relaxes down on the other side of the bed.
It’s as good a place as any to sleep, Karube supposes. He shuffles to get more comfortable, yawning.
There’s a few long, quiet minutes. Karube and Niragi shift around, trying to find a comfortable way to lay. Niragi almost elbows Karube in the face as he moves his arm; Karube accidentally knocks their knees together enough to sting, making them both grunt in pain and shuffle around all over again. Finally, Karube just slumps onto his front, tucks in slightly closer to Niragi and curves his arm across his waist.
“I thought you two would be more used to this,” Koma mumbles, easily tucking in close against Niragi’s side, his cheek flattening onto his collarbone. Karube sighs at the interruption, reaching out to jab at Koma’s hip.
“We don’t usually do this,” he answers simply.
“But haven’t you guys been having sex for a while though?”
Niragi rumbles a short laugh.
“Yeah. Just sex. Not this,” he cuts in before Karube can answer. Koma frowns. Shifting, he props himself up on his elbow and looks between the two.
“What about after the sex?” Karube blinks an eye open to look at him, puzzled. Niragi doesn’t answer either. So Koma pressed on. “What did you guys do after the sex?”
“Nothing?” Karube answers, confused at the tone of Koma’s voice. “I’d leave, Niragi would kick me out. Back to our usual shit after we were done.”
Koma startles, jerking back awkwardly. He looks almost like a deer in headlights, just seconds before the crash. They … can’t possibly be serious? Nothing? Just left? He thumps a fist onto Karube’s muscular bicep. Karube grunts, whipping a hand out to knock him in the hip with his knuckles.
“What about the aftercare? With how roughly you two go at it, you can’t just fuck off afterwards! It totally fucks with people’s heads!” Koma complains loudly, breaking the peaceful quiet.
“What are you hitting me for? Hit him, he was the one always pushing me out,” Karube argues. He pauses a moment, then begrudgingly adds, “I tried. Once. But we just didn’t … do any of that stuff. It was just sex until you showed up, we dealt with the aftermath by ourselves.”
“So, what? You guys had never even just slept together until then?”
“Once, before we started messing around, but we didn’t cuddle or anything. It was just sharing a bed.”
“We still hated each other then,” Niragi cuts in again, amused. Karube’s head turns slightly away into the pillow, a small smirk twitching to his lips.
“I thought you were pretty,” Karube confesses, the words mostly muffled by the way they’re spoken into the pillow. Niragi laughs. Slowly, Koma relaxes again with a sigh, tucking back into Niragi’s side. Niragi brushes a hand through his hair and down between his shoulder blades.
They fall back into a comfortable silence, but Karube can’t seem to find himself drifting off, even though he’s tired. His mind turns over Koma’s words, replaying them, before drudging up a memory. A weird moment, back when they’d first fucked. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it then; Karube’s been curious ever since. Now seems as good a time as ever. He takes a breath before he speaks.
“Hey Koma … what did you mean by ‘it fucks with people’s heads’?” He asks. Koma’s quiet, tucking impossibly closer into Niragi’s side, his eyes childishly squeezed shut as he pretends to be sleeping. Karube thumps a hand lightly on the side of his head. “Don’t ignore me.”
Koma makes a small noise. Niragi’s hand massages the back of his neck. He sighs and pulls away, rolling onto his back to look at the ceiling instead of either of them.
“I used to have this shitty boyfriend,” he says finally, his voice quiet. “I didn’t know he was an asshole at the time. I thought …” he sighs again, roughly, “I thought I loved him.”
Niragi and Karube share a look, then Karube shifts up to look over at Koma, a frown creasing his expression. Niragi glances back Koma’s way as well, curious and silent as he waits for him to continue.
“He wasn’t always shitty, he could be nice. Sometimes. Then he’d be mean and I …” he trails off, his mouth twitching and his brow creasing as he tries to find the words. It’s an odd sight, it’s not often Koma gets tongue-tied. He was always so straightforward. “It was usually my fault, something I did.”
“Koma …” Karube says, gently chastising. Koma flashes a tight lipped smile, working his jaw.
“It’s fine. It’s been a few years since then, I can talk about it.” His gaze trips around the room, seemingly more interested in the familiar surroundings instead of the pair lying next to him. “Uh, we were talking about aftercare, right? Yeah, he wasn’t … he wasn’t great about it. If I’d annoyed him somehow when we were having sex, he’d tell me when we - well, he - was done; tell me to get away from him and give him space. He’d call me ‘clingy’.” He’s starting to ramble now, his voice thready. His chest flutters with quick breaths. His words tumble over each other as he speaks. “It was kind of an ongoing thing really. He didn’t like having to prep me, he expected me to do it myself and then complained if I took too long or he didn’t like if I came too quickly or if I made too much noise. He was always pretty rough and, I mean, I like rough but he -”
Niragi detangles himself from Karube, moving to straddle over Koma’s waist and taking his face in his hands to still and silence him. There’s a kind of intensity in his gaze, his dark eyes flickering over Koma’s face, taking in the shaky twitch of his lips and the way his teeth nervously bite into the bottom one. His thumbs gently stroke over his cheeks, something akin to soothing but there’s a tautness across his body, a kind of darkening in his eyes.
“How long?” He asks finally, his tone unsettlingly clipped and quiet. Koma blinks at him, brings his hands up to curl loosely around Niragi’s wrists, thumbing over the inner side, an attempt at calming whatever was swirling in Niragi’s mind.
“Um, two-ish years, I think?” Karube’s stomach sinks like a stone. He sees Niragi tense up more. “I mean, sometimes he would go away and would ignore me for a few days … or a week. Sometimes longer. I wouldn’t know if we were broken up or not, and then he’d just come back like nothing happened.”
“You’re not still seeing him, are you?”
Koma’s head shakes quickly: “No. Not for a year now. Well, I mean, we haven’t had sex for a year. I’ve still seen him around, but we don’t … talk.” He pauses to hum quietly, thinking. “I guess we never really officially broke up, he just … stopped coming around, and he stopped answering my texts and my calls. I think he’s got a new boyfriend now actually.”
“Good. When we’re all back in the real world, stay away from him. For good.”
Koma shifts awkwardly, his gaze flitting. “He’s really not that bad. I’m probably over-dramatising it.”
“Did he tell you that too?” Koma’s mouth flattens in a grim line. Niragi turns his face, pulling his attention back. “He was abusing you.”
“I don’t think it was that serious,” he mumbles.
“You cried when we had sex.” It’s Karube’s turn to cut in now, but then he pauses. He feels suddenly sick, his stomach flips and drops again, like cinderblocks around ankles hauling towards the ocean bed. His voice thins, feeling choked. “Did I remind you of him?”
Koma’s hand whips out to grab his tightly, painfully, his eyes suddenly serious when they turn and focus on Karube.
“You’re not like him,” he says sharply, then his grip loosens slightly, softer now, warm against Karube’s, “It was just …” he trails off for a moment, his gaze slipping away again, “‘Pathetic’. He used to call me that a lot. Pathetic and clingy an-and annoying.”
Immediately, Karube thinks to strike each word from his vocabulary. Sure, Koma could be all of those things, but Karube would never think to use any of them as an actual insult or for anything more than unserious teasing. He was annoying and clingy like a puppy was annoying and clingy, jumping against your calves and always over-excited to see you no matter how long it had been.
There’s a frustrated, irritated piercing feeling in his chest. Someone out there had been saying that awful shit to Koma for two years and still - still! - Koma was defending him, calling it ‘not that bad’ and ‘not that serious’.
“I’m sorry,” Karube says finally. It’s the culmination of everything he can’t find the actual words for, he only hopes that it properly comes across.
“You don’t need to apologise for anything,” Koma says quickly.
“Yes, I do.” Karube pauses. “You know you can tell us ‘no’ though, right? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do just because we tell you to.”
“You’re not gonna treat me like glass though, are you?” He flushes slightly pink, “I like when you push me around. I do like rough stuff, just not … the mean stuff.”
Karube starts to balance it all in his mind, listing it out and locking it away for when he needs it: Niragi likes mean, the bite of it, the snapping-back, being pushed towards the pointed edge of oversensitivity, he gets teary in a good way; Koma likes the dominance but not the meanness, he delights in praise and constant touching, but needs to be forced to slow down and paid attention to lest he get hurt in his quickness and utter carelessness for himself.
Koma looks back up to Niragi, and turns his head to nip playfully at his thenar.
“Can we stop talking about this now? I really just didn’t want to sleep alone again tonight, not go all ‘deep dive’ into my exes,” he says, sliding his hand up Niragi’s arm, tugging to try and coax him closer.
Niragi leans down to kiss him softly, his dark hair falls in a curtain around their faces. His thumbs stroke along Koma’s cheeks, gentler now, calmer. He pulls back to look at him for a moment, seemingly searching for something in his expression, then moves to lie back in his spot in the middle of the bed. Karube shuffled to give him room. Koma immediately tucks in against Niragi’s side, shifting to lie his head on his chest, cuddling into him. Niragi’s hand lifts to curl into his hair, stroking through his blond locks.
Karube lies on his side, watching them.
It doesn’t take too long for Koma to fall asleep. His expression softens, peaceful. He’s calm, but Karube’s still tense. Niragi’s not asleep either, though his eyes are starting to droop; his gaze is still set downwards on Koma. There’s something unreadable in his expression. Karube knew there was something in Niragi’s past that he didn’t like to talk about, but he’s got no inkling towards what it is. He doesn’t feel like pushing it tonight anyway. Already, there’d been too much discussed and Karube didn’t know how much more terrible stuff he could stand to be told.
Still, his mind wanders. He can’t help but think back on everything.
With Koma, he’d overstepped, been too mean. The image of his teary face flickers to the forefront of Karube’s mind, the whimpered quiet ‘sorry’, the offer that Karube could be ‘as rough as he wants’. It makes him ill to think about whatever this ex-boyfriend had been doing to him, been forcing him to do to satisfy his own sick wants. He should count himself extremely lucky if he never meets Karube. Even if Koma didn’t think it was that serious, Karube didn’t like bullies, not the schoolhouse ones or the ones hiding behind closed doors.
Beyond that, it makes Karube think about Niragi. He didn’t exactly have a history of kindness with him. They’d gone head to head more than once, and that wasn’t saying anything about how he’d treated Niragi in this same bedroom. Had he accidentally overstepped with him too? Hurt him and not known and just left him to deal with it himself? Niragi had been the one pushing him out, but maybe Karube should have tried to stick around and make sure he was okay.
“Niragi -”
“You’re a good person, Karube,” he sighs out before Karube can even ask the question. Karube’s face scrunches, indignant, softly pressing his fingers against the line of Niragi’s ribs.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to ask if you’d ever pushed too far with me.” Okay, so maybe Niragi could read him better than he thought, maybe he wasn’t that much of a closed book. “You haven’t.”
“What about the first time?”
Niragi laughs quietly, careful to not wake Koma.
“Do you know how many times the memory of that first time has gotten me off when you didn’t come around to fuck me?”
Admittedly, it had helped Karube along too. Even in that same night.
“I called you a ‘fucking asshole’.”
“I remember - and I also remember how you didn’t have to help me, you could’ve just walked away. I really wouldn’t have blamed you if you did.” His gaze turns to meet Karube’s. “But you’re an annoyingly decent person who likes to help people, for whatever stupid reason. Besides that, do you really think I would still be fucking you if you’d pushed too far or done anything I wasn’t into?”
It’s oddly mature, making Karube pause for a moment. He forgets sometimes, that Niragi’s smart beyond all the peacocking and aggression and rifle-flailing. Rolling onto his side, he looks at Niragi, hauling his arm over his thin waist and squeezing his hand between his body and Koma’s. Niragi’s hand is still patting through Koma’s hair and the younger is snoring quietly, his cheek mushed against Niragi’s chest.
“You’ll tell me though, right? If I go too far?” He asks quietly, running his thumb over the jut of Niragi’s hip. There must be some kind of tone to his voice, because Niragi’s eyes search him and he answers seriously, without the usual touch of sarcasm.
“Okay … but I don’t think I’ll need to.”
It’s enough to settle Karube finally and he sighs, relaxing against Niragi’s side, tucking in against his neck. Niragi rumbles a noise of complaint, shuffling slightly.
“My fucking arms are going to be numb by tomorrow morning.”
Karube chuckles against his throat, but makes no attempt to move, instead shuffling to get more comfortable. Despite his complaining, Niragi doesn’t try to move either of them, slowly drifting off, one hand in Koma’s hair, the other curved against Karube’s warm back.
There’s still things to be talked about, explained, but they can be left for other days. Other nights.