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. * ✦ * .
With the grace of a plastic bag washing up onto the surface of the ocean, Kyojuro drifts back into consciousness.
Immediately, he wishes he didn't. His mouth tastes like death. His body feels like it. He remembers absolutely nothing of last night.
Within five seconds of waking up, Kyojuro is certain his day can't get any worse.
Blearily, he unsticks his eyes.
Offensively pink first thing in the morning, Akaza grins down at him, head propped up in a palm. The covers have slipped down the statuesque curve of his torso, limned by a ray of late morning light filtering through a gap in the curtains. He's in Kyojuro's bed, and notably shirtless.
(Very notably.)
"Good morning, Kyojuro," Akaza singsongs. His grin slides into a salacious smirk, lashes dipping low. "You were a lot of fun last night."
Kyojuro does the only reasonable thing when waking up in the same bed as his very smug, very shirtless frenemy who he has very complicated feelings for.
He screams at the top of his lungs and punches Akaza in the face.
* * * * *
"Augh! FUHG!"
"Shit!"
"Wha' th' fuhg! My fuhging noze!"
"Shit! Ow– ugh– my head–"
"Fuhg–"
"Ow, shhh– ow, ow, ow–"
Like a sorry pair of quotation marks, Kyojuro and Akaza hunch in on themselves, twin mirrors of misery; Akaza, clutching his smarting nose, and Kyojuro, clutching his pounding head.
Senjuro must not be home, considering that no-one kicks down his door to see if he's being murdered. A small blessing – Kyojuro doesn't want to deal with yet another person while he's the most hungover he's ever been, and especially not before he's figured out how and why Akaza is in his bed.
If he had the wherewithal to blush, Kyojuro would. As it is, he's mostly shocked, mortified, and in pain. It's suddenly and immediately important to remember something– anything– of last night.
"Why 'id you punch me!?" Akaza snarls, though the intimidating effect is mostly ruined how blocked his nose sounds. Besides, it's been a long time since Kyojuro balked at Akaza's sharp teeth and delinquent looks.
"Why are you naked in my bed!?" Kyojuro squeaks back. A chill breezes over his chest, and it's then that Kyojuro realises he's also shirtless. Defensively, he clutches the covers closer to himself. It's a terrible mistake – more of Akaza's toned body slides into view. Kyojuro squeaks again.
"I'm wearing pants," Akaza says.
Kyojuro lifts the covers to check. Immediately, he pins the blanket back down.
"Liar," Kyojuro hisses, and finally feels the flush burn up his neck. The only thing Akaza has on is a pair of tight black briefs; Akaza doesn't own tight black briefs. Those can't be– shit, they must be– Kyojuro's.
None of Kyojuro's questions are being answered, and yet – with a climbing sense of dread – Kyojuro is beginning to form an answer.
"I knew you'd be mad if I said I was just wearing underwear," Akaza grumbles, gingerly releasing his nose. When he dabs at it with a knuckle, it comes away speckled red. "Ow."
Despite himself, Kyojuro winces. "Sorry. That was reflex."
"Pretty good punch considering you just woke up," Akaza says in a contemplative tone. A little bit of blood trickles out. He sniffs.
"Thanks," Kyojuro replies dubiously, watching Akaza swipe the red away. "What happened last night?" He squints, reaching back into his memories with fumbling fingertips. He remembers going out, voices and laughter and the multi-coloured bar lights, and then– "I don't remember anything."
Akaza scoffs. "'Course you don't. You went out with your insufferable group of do-gooder friends–" Here, he pokes Kyojuro's forehead with a punctuating finger, "–who you're friends with because you're an insufferable do-gooder–" another punctuating poke, "–and despite your incredibly low alcohol tolerance – which you know about–" poke, poke, "– you drank all of Kanroji's penalty drinks." The final poke is not a poke at all, but a stinging flick that makes Kyojuro's hangover double over on itself.
Swatting weakly at Akaza's finger of death, Kyojuro groans. "Stop that. Hurts." In his defence– "You know Kanroji is too nice to creeps hitting on her! It's dangerous if she gets completely drunk."
"Last time you did shots, you got three marriage proposals in one night and barely ducked them," Akaza says dryly. But then he softens, and his hand falls away. He won't advertise it, but Akaza is also quite fond of Kanroji– and equally as protective. He gets it. "Whatever. You're a hero. Blah blah blah. Sky is fuckin' blue. Painkillers and water are on the nightstand."
The promise of panacea has Kyojuro sitting up a little too fast. His head spins, his stomach protests, and he has to spend a few moments easing down the urge to throw up.
Stretching over him, Akaza takes the items on the nightstand and hands them to Kyojuro. Kyojuro's entire eye-line gets taken up by a plush pair of tattooed pectorals. Cotton-headed from more than the ill-advised drinking, he tries not to fumble the pills and glass.
I bet they're softer than my actual pillows, Kyojuro mourns, sipping the water. It exorcises some of whatever roadkill died in his mouth, and he nearly forgets to take the painkillers in his haste to wash the rest of it down.
When Akaza gets out of the bed and stretches, the pills nearly kill Kyojuro as he chokes on them.
Kyojuro stares bug-eyed at Akaza's delectable slope of spine and unreasonably cinched waist, which – from past glimpses – he's at least known the existence of. But pair that with an uninterrupted view of all of his Akaza's back muscles rippling as he reaches for the ceiling, and the reflexive squeeze of his toned ass? Kyojuro half-wishes Akaza was back in his bed.
(Who is he kidding? He full-wishes. It makes it all the more frustrating that he can't remember anything of last night. It doesn't feel like he got fucked– but maybe he fucked Akaza– and if he doesn't remember any of that, he might as well drown himself in this glass of water.)
"What are you doing? Stop burbling," Akaza says, looking at him quizzically. Kyojuro burbles unhappily, the sound echoing in his glass. "Kyojuro."
He relents and drinks the last inch of water. Turning to Akaza (and damn it, he looks just as good from the front), Kyojuro refuses to look anywhere below the waistline. He focuses instead on Akaza's face.
"Your nose is still bleeding," he says, at the same time Akaza remarks, "You drool when you pass out drunk."
Both of them prod and swipe at their own face.
They level each other a look.
"Bathroom," they say in perfect sync.
* * * * *
The thing is, Akaza is not his best friend.
Uzui is Kyojuro's best friend, on account of knowing each other since high school, and getting both into and out of a bunch of trouble together. It's saying something that even now, well into their adulthood – with Uzui as a well-known artist that owns a gallery or three, and Kyojuro juggling both workloads as an assistant professor and a historian – their shared shenanigans don't have a completely zero chance of setting someone's hair on fire. (Usually either of theirs.)
So no, Akaza isn't his best friend. Some days, Kyojuro isn't sure friend is the right label.
They're not not friends. Kyojuro likes having Akaza around, and Akaza is around a lot. They've settled into a comfortable routine that had started out as a handful of coincidences– then, on Akaza's part, a campaign of gleeful annoyances.
Their first meeting happened over a glitch in the gym's booking system; on a perfectly random Saturday afternoon, Kyojuro's kendo class found themselves sharing mats with Akaza's mixed martial arts students. It had been slightly awkward, both of them compromising and adjusting what they'd planned on the fly, while herding a bunch of kids and their fickle focus.
In all honesty, Kyojuro's focus might have been a bit fickle too. More than once, he'd found himself watching Akaza demonstrate the right forms with bright curiosity.
(More than once, he'd looked up from a definitive strike of his bokken and caught Akaza quickly glancing away.)
It was a moment of shared inconvenience – intriguing but fleeting. They'd exchanged one somewhat apologetic (mostly Kyojuro), slightly stilted (mostly Akaza) conversation and parted ways.
Then, Akaza had shown up to one of his lectures.
He'd sat in the back row, in a baggy jacket the colour of a bruise, slouched down in his seat without a laptop or notebook like the rest of the students. His hood had been up, and it's the only reason Kyojuro didn't immediately recognise him when he started interrupting with contrarian arguments. The next hour had hardly been a lecture at all, but an ongoing back-and-forth as Kyojuro presented his interpretations, before Akaza conjured another on the other end of the spectrum. Some of his interjections had been in completely bad faith, with the clear goal of riling Kyojuro up – but some of them had the bite of conviction, which happened more when Akaza was countering with a more cynical view. Despite himself, Kyojuro found himself drawn in, debating this hooded stranger in front of sixty-three students who had never seen Kyojuro so incensed, nor so engaged, before.
When Kyojuro called him a fire hazard from the amount of straw men Akaza seemed so hellbent on amassing, the hood came down, and Kyojuro found himself staring at the familiar pink puff of hair he'd last seen on a mixed martial arts instructor.
As it turns out, Akaza wasn't one of his students. He didn't even go to the university. He'd arrived too early, after being invited onto the campus to teach a couple of self-defence classes at the gym, and slipped into a lecture hall to kill time.
What followed in the wake of their clashing philosophies and thinly-veiled insults still made Kyojuro's students whisper and elbow nudge each other.
Akaza kept showing up. Like a bright pink weed, Akaza cropped up at his lectures, at the gym, in scattered happenstances around town. At first, Kyojuro thought Akaza was also masterminding their crossed paths in the snack aisle or local café, but he'd later found out that those had been honest coincidences.
For a couple weeks, from each other's perspectives, they were suddenly everywhere. Perhaps it's because they were both so recognisable – Kyojuro with his bright hair and arrowhead eyebrows, and Akaza with his equally bright hair and stark tattoos. They could recognise each other through windows and in passing flashes.
Akaza's continuing haunt of his lectures had been a choice though. With his hood down, armed with a scythe-like smirk, even if he kept to the back row (and never being quite as disruptive as he had been that first lecture), Akaza was effortlessly distracting. Then, he was actively distracting, booking over Kyojuro's usual slots at the gym, showing up at the same time as his daily workouts. Akaza teased and prodded and flirted. Sometimes they continued their arguments from the lecture hall.
One night, their debate got so heated they decided to continue arguing over dinner.
Dinner concluded. Their debate did not. It had been surprisingly enjoyable.
From there, their odd routine began.
Kyojuro started to expect Akaza's company, and Akaza continued to encroach until it couldn't really be called encroaching anymore; not if Kyojuro was ordering takeaways for the both of them, if they started sparring after their weekend classes, if they had inside jokes about the same five recurring arguments.
Now, they have keys to each other's places. Akaza has a bottle of his purple shampoo in Kyojuro's shower. Kyojuro has an overflowing snack shelf in Akaza's pantry.
Akaza isn't his best friend. But they're not not friends.
The thing is, Akaza has a toothbrush – it's next to Kyojuro's.
Uzui doesn't have a toothbrush next to Kyojuro's.
(Akaza's toothbrush is, of course, bright pink.)
* * * * *
"Is it weird that you have a toothbrush here?" Kyojuro asks. The water pressure in this apartment has never been the best, but right now, the spray of hot water feels heavenly. Amidst the billowing steam, Kyojuro starts feeling human again.
The shock he'd felt upon waking up to Akaza in his bed is starting to level out. Akaza is attractive, endearingly attentive, and his company is more than enjoyable. It's less that there are worse people to sleep with, and more that falling into bed with Akaza actually sounds... pretty nice.
He'd worry about how it would change their usual dynamic, but Akaza had followed him into the bathroom without any new awkwardness. It was as if nothing had happened.
On the other side of the wet-room door, cracked open so they can still talk, Akaza makes a questioning noise. "Why would it be weird? I need to brush my teeth with something," he replies. There's a clatter as he continues rummaging around under the sink. "It's weirder if I don't."
Akaza says it so definitively. Kyojuro mulls it over for a few more seconds before deciding he's right.
He reaches past Akaza's purple shampoo to grab his own.
"I wish you still lived with Kanroji," Akaza says. "I bet she'd let me plug up my nosebleed with a tampon." More shuffling under the sink. "Neither you nor Senjuro have tampons." Akaza clicks his tongue like it's an unfortunate character flaw.
Soaping up his hair, Kyojuro laughs. "Akaza! Do not use tampons for nosebleeds!"
"They'd be perfect."
"You'd have the string hanging down from your nose. That's a health and safety violation! What if it gets caught in heavy machinery? It'd be curtains for you."
"Death by tampon string," Akaza muses out loud. "You think I'd make the history books?"
Kyojuro puts a hand over his heart, even if Akaza can't see him do it. "Definitely. I'll memorialise you in every one of my classes!"
"That doesn't sound too bad," Akaza laughs. "Hey. You used to have those instant ice packs in here. Did you move them?"
"Oh! I think Sanemi used the last one. Then we never restocked them because Senjuro said they're bad for the environment. We should have the regular gel ones in the freezer!" Rinsing out the shampoo in his hair, Kyojuro gets started on the conditioner.
"Why does it smell like my conditioner? Are you using my conditioner?"
Kyojuro rolls his eyes, combing through his hair with his fingers. "I'm using my conditioner. You're the conditioner thief. You used to think conditioner was a cash grab by "Big Hair", and now I can't get you to stop stealing my conditioner."
"Oh, yeah. You buy the fancy stuff. Smells nice." There's a small thump – Akaza is sitting on the toilet with its lid down.
"I know you earn enough money to buy your own!"
"Sure." A kick on the door separating them. "But I like it when you let me steal from you."
In lieu of proper retaliation (because, really, there's no retaliating the truth), Kyojuro kicks the door back.
Somehow, above the spray of the shower and the barrier of the adjoining door, Kyojuro still hears it when Akaza sniffles. His chest prickles with guilt. "I really am sorry about punching you. You should go ice your nose."
"It was a good shot," Akaza praises, which is so beside the point and painfully Akaza. "Though I'm hurt that your first reaction to my face is to punch it."
Akaza is teasing, but if it was anyone else, joke or not, it would make Kyojuro feel a little shame-faced. Violence isn't usually his first reaction. However, it's Akaza. Akaza spends every late Saturday afternoon goading Kyojuro into throwing aside his bokken and clocking him. "You have a chronically punchable face," Kyojuro says, falsely grave. Akaza squawks.
Kyojuro is also teasing. Mostly. Akaza is pretty in an almost infuriating way, with the fan of his lashes and boyish looks, starkly dichotomised with the sturdy slope of his shoulders and banded tattoos. He gives the impression of something beautiful and brutal; the fractal of a geode within rough-hewn rock, or the arctic snow that could culminate into an avalanche. Couple that with his propensity to tease, half-flirtations edged with an earnest shamelessness, Akaza definitely evokes visions of certain abrupt impulsive actions. (Mostly involving Kyojuro's lips. As well as Akaza's.)
Kyojuro stills under the mild rush of water.
Wait a minute.
He gets finding Akaza attractive. He has eyes, and a healthy sex drive. He gets acting on that for one drunken night of passion, never mind that he doesn't remember it.
But has he always been hot for Akaza?
Flattening both hands against the shower wall, Kyojuro thunks his head against the surface.
"You better not be jerking off in there without me," Akaza throws out, like that's a normal thing they do. It isn't. Kyojuro is getting the idea that he really wishes it was.
Kyojuro thunks his head against the shower wall three times for good measure.
"Alright, alright. If you have to, you deviant freak. Think about Nobunaga's lost artifacts or something and finish quick," Akaza drawls. "I want to go and ice my nose."
"I don't have sex fantasies about Nobunaga! Or historical artifacts!" Kyojuro huffs, side-stepping the shower spray and sliding open the wet-room door to stick just his head out. He glares down at Akaza, who's sprawled on the lidded toilet like its a fainting chair. Akaza blinks up at him. Both his nostrils are stuffed with wadded toilet paper. "Go ice your nose!"
"But you're here," Akaza says, eyes rounding.
The worst part is that this isn't a joke. Smarting nose be damned, Kyojuro knows Akaza would rather ignore it and continue their nonsensical volley, relishing the pure pleasure of a verbal spar. There's something terribly wrong with him. (Unfortunately, there's a part of Kyojuro that harmonises with it in perfect pitch.)
Akaza's eyes dip down from Kyojuro's face towards his flushed and dripping chest. They linger for a second, before wrenching away. Akaza sits up abruptly, grabbing the candle from the shelf beside the toilet.
He waves it under his nose, frowning. Then he unplugs a wad of tissue from one side of his nose before sniffing again.
"Why do you have a candle that smells like gingerbread in here?" Akaza waves it in his direction. Kyojuro gets a whiff of Christmas before Akaza pulls it away again. "Food scents don't belong in the bathroom. Also, it's July."
"It was a Christmas gift that I stashed away and totally forgot about! I found it again last week!" Kyojuro furrows his brows. "Where would you put it?"
Akaza stuffs the wad of tissue back up his nose. He tucks the candle to his chest. "Anywhere but the bathroom." Getting to his feet, Akaza kicks into his (pink) house slippers. "I'm gonna make food. If your fridge isn't stocked, I'm stealing your card and doing a grocery run."
One thing Kyojuro will never argue with Akaza about is when Akaza decides to cook for him. Kyojuro does alright for himself, if he remembers to be patient with it, but Akaza's food makes him second-guess why he ever thought he knew how to use a pan. Like a dog hearing its favourite words, Kyojuro perks up, a smile splitting across his face. "Yes, please! Thank you, Akaza!"
Akaza ticks up one eyebrow. "Any requests?"
Kyojuro leans against the door-frame. "I'll eat anything you make!"
For a moment, Akaza just continues to eyeball him, candle cradled to his chest. Steam billows out from around Kyojuro, the shower still running behind him. Then, Akaza mutters under his breath – something about "had a dream" and "locker room fantasy" – before striding out the bathroom.
He's still only wearing Kyojuro's tight black briefs.
Kyojuro watches that toned ass disappear around the corner (just to really make sure those are definitely his briefs). He wonders what sort of things they got up to last night. How Akaza might have looked like sprawled against his sheets, flushed and inviting. How he might have sounded, voice lilting in that same teasing confidence to goad Kyojuro on even as he arches desperately against him.
Shutting the wet-room door with a snap, Kyojuro glances down at his hardening dick. He bites his lip.
Kyojuro really shouldn't jerk off before he talks about this whole thing with Akaza. Akaza, who is probably rooting around in his kitchen, black briefs clinging to him like a second skin as he bends over to retrieve ingredients and cookware. Akaza, who's going to serve Kyojuro something delicious, while he prances around in only Kyojuro's underwear because they've both just had a night of amazing sex together (details unknown).
Kyojuro glances down at his dick again.
Groaning, he wrenches the temperature to the coldest the shower can get, thinking intently about endless emails threads and all the papers he still has to mark and anything that isn't Akaza in sexy domestic bliss.
* * * * *
When Kyojuro gets out of his shower, teeth chattering, Akaza is no longer solely clad in a pair of tight black briefs.
He's also managed to find an apron.
Not the one Senjuro uses, thank everything holy, but another one – some gag gift that got stashed and forgotten by Kyojuro, because only now does Kyojuro remember owning a dark blue apron that says, 'EAT ME!' stitched across the front.
Seated at the table, Kyojuro watches Akaza bustle back and forth in nothing but an apron and Kyojuro's underwear.
Kyojuro props his elbows up and steeples his fingers. The situation is officially dire. His train of thought is quickly leaving "Holy-shit-did-we-fuck-last-night-!?" Station and barrelling towards Grand "Holy-shit-can-we-fuck-again-right-now-!?" Central.
"Two minutes!" Akaza calls out, stirring a small pot. He has his other arm braced against the counter's edge, hip cocked as the smell of miso suffuses the air. The tattoo down his spine goes all the way past his waistband. Of course it does.
"Take your time!" Kyojuro calls back. He's never drinking again. Or maybe he should drink again soon? Clearly, drunk-Kyojuro did something right for hungover-Kyojuro to wake up next to shirtless-Akaza. But it doesn't feel like a win if he can't remember anything.
Frowning, Kyojuro closes his eyes and starts rubbing at his temples. Gyomei is always talking about meditation and consciously-forged mental pathways and visualising your best self. Maybe he can forge a mental pathway into last night's memories, visualising his best self in bed with Akaza. He hears meditation can do lots of things, nowadays.
"What are you muttering about?" Akaza asks, sliding a steaming plate over to him. A bowl of miso follows it. "What's softer than pillows?"
Kyojuro opens his eyes. "I don't know," he says, sullen. "It's just a guess." The dejection sloughs off from him as soon as he sees Akaza has made omurice, though the ketchup art looks suspiciously like the characters for 'Nobunaga' before the sauce began to bleed together.
"Not sure if it's any good," Akaza warns, sitting down adjacent to Kyojuro. His nose must've stopped bleeding – the tissue plugs are gone. Akaza ducks his head out of the apron loop, leaving it tied around his waist. The front peels away almost reluctantly from his chest. "I just put in whatever you had in your fridge."
Horny, hungover, and ravenous, Kyojuro decides to address at least two of his problems and nearly burns his tongue on the first spoonful. He slows down to actually taste it, and drags up an appreciative moan deep from his gut. Next to him, Akaza straightens like a rope pulled taut.
"Tasty!" Kyojuro says, beginning to demolish his plateful in earnest. "Delicious, Akaza!" Cheeks bulging, he swallows and shovels more into his mouth. "Amazing!"
"You can just eat," Akaza says, but his voice is pleased and amused, watching Kyojuro enthusiastically enjoy his food before he sets into his own plate at a more sedate pace. He's foregone the ketchup, and cuts into the omelette to let it cool.
Predictably, Kyojuro scrapes his plate clean before Akaza is even halfway through his own. Setting his dishes aside, he leans back in his seat, watching Akaza eat. In the bright daylight, Kyojuro recognises Akaza looks a little more tired than usual. How long did they stay up? A liquid heat pools in his gut at the idea of having Akaza for hours, shunning sleep because they can't keep their hands off each other.
Eyes drifting, Kyojuro's gaze surreptitiously sweeps across Akaza's skin. There are various bruises, though most of them look days-old. Kyojuro is sure those are souvenirs from his training. But there's a small fresh one on his back, and another on his collarbone. Could those have been left by Kyojuro? Akaza strikes him as someone who likes to be bitten and thrown around.
Kyojuro frowns, a thought occurring to him. He'd been drunk enough to black out – who says he'd been any good? Under normal circumstances, Kyojuro has enough confidence in his mouth even in the case of whiskey dick, but he's never been this drunk. What if Kyojuro had been terrible in bed, and Akaza is keeping quiet to protect his feelings?
Eyes widening with growing dismay, Kyojuro silently scrambles to find a way to ask without seeming like he needs his ego stroked. Maybe it's bad enough that he can't remember anything. Would Akaza be hurt? Shit, what if he's already mad, and that's why they're not talking about it?
Akaza sighs into his miso soup. "Alright. This has been funny, but I can hear you spiralling."
"I'm not spiralling," Kyojuro lies as his brain spins out.
"Uh-huh." Akaza takes another sip of his soup. "Relax. We didn't sleep with each other. I was just teasing when I said you'd been a lot of fun last night." He starts to crinkle his nose, before he winces and remembers. "You were kind of a terror, actually."
Abruptly, Kyojuro's train of thought screeches to a halt, the carriages of horny thoughts crashing together with the mortified ones, resulting in a chain reaction of wreckage. Everything he's been building up in his head goes up in flames. "What."
"I get a call at midnight. You're very drunk, and insisting I should be there. Then, you get it in your head that everyone needs to say 'hi' to me, and I listen to you strong-arm most of your friends into saying they wish I was there too, even though they definitely don't." Akaza makes a considering noise. "Well, Kanroji probably meant it. That Sanemi guy told me straight-up to fuck off. This goes on for about fifteen minutes." Sliding Kyojuro a look, Akaza continues deadpan. "Then that headband bastard gets on the line."
"Oh," Kyojuro says. "Oh, no."
"You guys get the brilliant idea of karaoke. Except karaoke isn't good enough for the both of you, is it? No, you two want a concert. You start brainstorming pyrotechnics. I'm still on the phone, by the way, so I'm fast approaching accomplice-to-arson. Then I think someone falls off a table? Whatever. You scream, "I'M NEXT!" and to be honest, Kyojuro, if I'm going to jail for arson, you need to be alive to keep me company. So I haul ass over there."
At this point, Kyojuro is covering his face with his hands, peeking out between his fingers. "Tell me we didn't light anything on fire." He gets the feeling that either way, they're never patronising Daki and Gyutaro's bar again.
"You didn't." Kyojuro sighs in relief. "You were headbanging to BABYMETAL with Kanroji when I got there. Snake boy has the video."
"Just call him Iguro," Kyojuro says, though he knows it's a lost cause. Names are for people Akaza likes. "Okay! So you drag me home?"
Akaza arcs an eyebrow at him. "I didn't drag you anywhere. You loudly and repeatedly insist I use my 'great big biceps' to carry you home, and when I tell you we need to call a car, you start pouting."
Flustered, Kyojuro's mouth flaps wordlessly, heat rising to his face. Alright, so he's noticed Akaza has very nice arms! Of course he has! Akaza wears a lot of sleeveless shirts! "I– That– You– Why were you practically naked! In! My! Bed!" Kyojuro exclaims, changing the topic in self-preservation.
"You threw up on me." Slapping his hands over his face again, Kyojuro makes a similar sound to a whistling kettle. "Thanks for that, by the way." Akaza smirks at him. "It's lucky that I have 'great big biceps'–" and oh, Kyojuro is never living that one down, is he? "–because you were making it really difficult to get your clothes off and wrestle you into bed."
"Okay! I think I got the full picture! All very embarrassing, thank you!" Kyojuro cuts in, flushing firetruck red from his face to his shoulders.
Akaza arranges his face in an exaggerated simper. "Aww, but I didn't even get to the part where you dragged me under the covers to do your best impression of an octopus." Dropping his voice and leaning in, Akaza whispers loudly. "Very grabby. And clingy." He leans back, pointing to his own nose. "Which - before we forget - the first thing that you did this morning is to punch me in the face for it."
"Oh my god, Akaza. I am so sorry," Kyojuro says, appalled. It's so much worse in context. "I'll pay you back for the rides! Grab anything you need from my closet!"
Despite the entire embarrassing account of Kyojuro's behaviour, Akaza seems unbothered. He lifts the bowl one-handed to his mouth again. "Why do you think I'm wearing these?" Akaza asks, lifting the waistband of his briefs with a thumb and releasing them with a snap.
Kyojuro flaps his hands around. "I thought you were wearing them because we slept together!"
Akaza shoots him a look. "I wouldn't fuck you while I was sober and you were drunk out of your mind, Kyojuro." You know me better than that, his eyes seem to say.
Okay, well– that makes sense. Case closed, nice and clean.
"If we were both sober, would you fuck me?" Kyojuro asks.
Akaza chokes on his soup.
"Oops! Sorry!" Kyojuro says, leaning over and giving him a few robust thumps on the back. "Shouldn't have asked while you were drinking."
"You– You're not interested!" Akaza coughs, putting the bowl down. He stares at Kyojuro a little wild-eyed. "It doesn't matter because you're not interested."
Kyojuro blinks. "Who says?"
Akaza throws his hands out. "You say!"
"I never said that."
"You've said 'no' to several lunch dates, Kyojuro! At the very start! You only got dinner with me because you wanted to continue our argument!"
"Well, yes, but–" Something clicks in Kyojuro's memories. "Oh. Oh! All those times– that was you asking me out! I thought you were, I don't know–" Kyojuro squints theatrically and wiggles his fingers in front of him, "–hinting that you knew all the places I liked to eat, and that you were always watching. Like a vampire, Nosferatu-style."
"No, Kyojuro," Akaza hisses, slapping away his wiggling fingers. "I humiliated myself by asking your students for advice, and they gave me list of places around town. They started betting on us, actually."
"Oh." Kyojuro blinks rapidly, taking it all in.
Then, right in Akaza's frustrated face, he bursts out laughing.
"Yeah, why not," Akaza grumbles, leaning back in his chair heavily. "Punch me in the nose, laugh in my face. What's next, Kyojuro? Want to kick me in the dick too?"
Still laughing, Kyojuro claps one hand over his forehead, waving the other in front of him. "No, no, no!" he says between gasps. "Akaza, it's– don't you see?" He goes into another bout of laughter, breathless.
"Explain it to me, professor," Akaza deadpans.
Knuckling tears of laughter from his eyes, Kyojuro reaches out to ease apart Akaza's defensively folded arms, taking his hands. Despite his pissed-off expression – as well as the vulnerability tucked away in the unhappy slant of his mouth – Akaza lets him. Kyojuro softens at the grudging allowance.
"Akaza," he starts, so fond he can barely find the right words. He wants to pepper kisses all across Akaza's scowl until it sweetens under his lips. "You have a toothbrush here."
Akaza stares at him. "…What?"
"It's pink, it's next to mine, and I keep spares of it under the sink. My students let you into my lectures and told you all of my favourite places to eat. Even when I thought your flirting was fighting, I enjoyed arguing with you. When I was drunk at a party with all my friends, I called you up to tell you that I missed you!" Kyojuro laughs again – this time, a little disbelievingly. It really has been terribly obvious, hasn't it? "Because in a room of full of people I love, it was only fitting that you should've been there. Then you were there, and all I wanted to do was to go home with you."
Ducking his gaze, Kyojuro continues, still a little embarrassed by his drunken antics. "I was so shocked by the idea of us sleeping together that I punched you in the face. Sorry, again. Yet after thinking about it for just five minutes, I got so jealous of the me that got to sleep with you." Kyojuro shrugs, meeting Akaza's eyes again. "Because I thought I didn't remember, and I wanted to."
"All this to say, Akaza: I think I really, really like you," he confesses. Tilting his head down, Kyojuro kisses the ridge of Akaza's knuckles, before smiling up at him, their hands still tucked close to his face. "I probably have for awhile, and I think everyone but the both of us knew."
Across from him, Akaza's eyes are rounded with disbelief, his hands slack in Kyojuro's. Patiently, Kyojuro nuzzles into Akaza's fingers, enjoying the whorled pads of his fingers rasping across his cheek.
"I thought you were freaking out because you were figuring out how to let me down easily," Akaza says. "Drunken mistake, don't-see-you-that-way kind of speech."
"I hadn't thought about it before," Kyojuro admits. "Before this morning, it wasn't a line I'd crossed in my head. But I've always thought that you're unbelievably pretty. More than anything else, I enjoy your company."
Soundlessly, Akaza mouths, "Pretty."
Kyojuro kisses his knuckles again.
"You think you like me, or you know?" Akaza asks.
"Oh," Kyojuro says, "I know."
Decisive as ever, Akaza presses him back into his chair, hitching one leg up to lean over Kyojuro and surge towards him with a kiss. Quite happily, Kyojuro tilts his head back and kisses him in return, running his hands up the back of Akaza's thighs until he can tuck a few fingers under the elastic fabric of the borrowed briefs. Indulgent, he strokes the soft skin of where the ass meets the thigh, and Akaza moans into his mouth, needy and encouraging.
"You want to know what I think?" Akaza asks, breathy from their kiss. Kyojuro hums, staring up at him with adoration. "I think we should fill in the blanks. Let's do everything you thought you didn't remember." Dipping down, Akaza takes Kyojuro's bottom lip between his teeth and tugs it, scraping the sensitive skin as he draws away. Kyojuro whines into the air between them. "Everything that will make you jealous of yourself the next morning, so we have to do it all again."
With a tug of a string, Kyojuro discards the apron between them, eyes never leaving Akaza's hungry expression. He stands up, pushing Akaza against the table until the hot line of his body is pressed against his. Akaza hooks a leg behind his thigh, cinching him closer.
"Mmm. You know what, Akaza?" Kyojuro murmurs, tracing his mouth up the column of Akaza's throat. He tastes the shudder that elicits and smiles. "That sounds like a lot of fun."
` * ✦ * `