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They weren’t playing that night. Some too tired, some too busy, no one really in the mood.
That meant Harua didn’t have the plausible deniability of the game to hide behind, but that was all right. He was okay with this being undeniable.
“The first time,” he said, holding Jo’s elbow lightly but with intent, “was for the others, right? It was an icebreaker, to make everyone more comfortable.”
Jo nodded slowly, brows drawn down a fraction, waiting.
Harua had expected this to be kind of hard. Embarrassing, at least. It shouldn’t be easy to walk up to one’s friend-bandmate-brother and say things like this, but it was. It was because it was Jo, and Jo would never laugh at him.
“So I wondered if maybe we could… do that again, but not for them,” Harua said, wishing he could be more eloquent about it. I want to kiss you selfishly couldn’t quite make it out of his mouth, even though he wasn’t embarrassed. It was just too raw, too direct. Some instinct thought it might be too intimidating for Jo, perhaps.
Rather than flinching back, though, Jo held still and looked briefly down at Harua’s hand on his arm. That was communication, too; not everything had to be gotten across in words.
The pause went on a little too long. Harua sighed. “If it’s no, that’s okay. I just figured I’d—”
“It’s not,” Jo interrupted earnestly. “It’s not… it’s not no. I’m just… thinking. Wondering, I guess.”
“Wondering about…?” Harua prompted, sliding his hand down Jo’s forearm to slip his fingers into Jo’s palm.
Jo squeezed them reflexively, rearranging himself to let Harua’s fingers slide between his and hold on properly. “Why,” he said simply. “Why you want to do that. I’m not sure I understand.”
Harua wanted to laugh, but squashed the impulse ruthlessly. Jo hadn’t laughed at him. “It’s not really complicated or subtle,” he said. “I just really like you, and liked that half-assed kiss, and want to do it again but right this time. Better. But if you don’t feel the same, never mind. Don’t worry about it.”
Not without regret, he let go of Jo’s hand, but he’d meant it. He didn’t want it as something Jo tolerated without understanding. He’d rather have nothing.
Jo didn’t let him go. As Harua pulled away, he followed, long fingers curling around Harua’s wrist to hold him back.
“Like I said,” he continued, doggedly, “it’s not a no. I just need to think a minute, okay?”
Abruptly, Harua was no longer equanimous about not getting to kiss Jo. It was the way Jo was venturing out to try and meet him halfway, working to understand so he could consider things properly. He was always doing that, with everyone. It was one of the things Harua loved most about him. Harua thought he might need to at least hug Jo about it, if that was all he could get.
“Sure,” he said faintly. “Um. Take your time.”
Jo nodded, then tugged on his wrist gently, turning to face down the hall towards his room. He was sharing with Taki at the moment, but Taki was on the couch in the living room gaming with Fuma.
Keep it together, Harua told himself firmly, and allowed himself to be led, and kept his back straight and face impassive as the door shut behind them. He leaned back against it when Jo let go and did his best to be calm and reasonable and patient. He was good at those. They weren’t normally this hard.
True to his word, Jo just stood there and thought for a minute, eyes half-focused on some random spot on the floor. Then he looked over at Harua, and Harua flinched. Jo’s eyes had changed, the way they did when he got serious about something. Darker, both around the edges and into the depths of his pupils. Fixed and unwavering and intense.
“Okay,” he said simply. “I think I understand now. I like you, too, and it would be nice to do it properly. So okay.”
Keep it together! Harua thought at himself fiercely, but it was exponentially more difficult now than it had been a few seconds ago.
“Yay,” he said, a little weakly, and felt silly but helpless. He reached out his hands, arms wide and inviting, but kept his back to the door to keep him steady on his feet. “C’mere, then?”
Now that he’d decided, Jo was no longer awkward or hesitant. That was always the way with him. When he committed to doing something, he just did it, no matter how challenging or uncomfortable it was, no matter how low his theoretical chances of success.
And this wasn’t really a challenge at all.
He was there before Harua was ready, but Harua might never have been ready, not really. Jo leaned one forearm on the door to brace himself, so tall he loomed over Harua without meaning to, and curved the other around Harua’s waist to pull him in.
Harua hooked one hand around the back of Jo’s neck and spread the other on his lean upper back — old white t-shirt so thin Harua could almost feel the stellar scattering of moles across Jo’s skin through it — and leaned up into it, joy tumbling through his blood at the moment of contact.
It was so different from the first time.
It’s not casual, Jo had said, then. It’s Harua.
It hadn’t been casual for Harua, either, though he’d kept that to himself for simplicity’s sake. Not a conversation he’d felt like having, at the time.
He didn’t feel like having it now, either. He’d already said the part that really mattered — I like you — and the rest was just terms and conditions, really. The kind of thing people should go through carefully and think about properly, but that everyone just impatiently scrolled through instead so they could hit Agree at the bottom faster.
There was no one watching, this time. No hurry to be done so the group discussion could move along. Harua had time and the luxury of semi-privacy to really savour the moment, so he did, pulling harder on Jo’s neck and digging his fingertips into Jo’s back to drag him closer.
Jo ran warm, constantly burning off all the food he ate without ever putting on an ounce of weight. Harua tended to run cooler, his own body preferring to put all its energy into making his heart beat fast as a rabbit’s. The warmth of Jo was a savour all its own, surrounding and suffusing Harua through his skin.
Harua hadn’t had as much experience, and wasn’t quite as good at it, but he was a quick and very motivated study. Most of the trick seemed to just be really wanting it and really meaning it, and those were easy.
He didn’t know what Jo was feeling, couldn’t quite tell, but he didn’t think it was nothing. Jo’s hand on his lower back was pulling him closer, too, and he wasn’t stopping, even though he’d already done it as properly as Harua had hoped, and then some.
For his part, Harua kind of wanted to keep going indefinitely. For the rest of the evening, at least. He wanted to curl up on Jo’s bunk with him and go slow and tender for hours, without escalation or destination.
Oh, his mind whispered dimly through the sweet rushing of his blood in his ears, I like him a lot.
Steady, quiet, driven Jo, who kept his inner fire tidily banked in shadows until it was time to send it snarling across the stage. Jo who thought deeply and spoke carefully and always made room for Harua, for all of him. Jo who smiled at him and called him perfect when he most needed to hear it.
How had he ever thought he could just shrug off a no?
There wasn’t room for words, so he said what he needed to say in the language of touch, and knew from the way Jo shifted to pull him away from the door and blindly back towards his bunk that Jo understood and had just pressed Agree, too.
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