Chapter Text
When he checked the address, he noticed it was not that far from the hotel where they were supposed to stay, so after he came back there, he excused himself, waved bye to his Naniwa colleagues and rushed in his room for a quick shower and a change of clothes.
Would a fluffy custard-coloured pullover with darker ochre stripes go, he wondered, or did it make him look too much like a hatchling about to hit life for the first time?
When choosing his clothes, he thought that maybe a faint resemblance to the tiger, symbol of the year they were entering into, could make him bolder.
As soon as he rang the doorbell and was welcomed by Meguro on the threshold of his apartment, though, he had to admit that no matter what he chose to wear, because Meguro would have always -just always- looked way cooler than him. Just so cool.
"Hey. Welcome, please come in," the older guy greeted him, smiling fondly.
Michieda stared, for maybe longer than due. Meguro's jet black hair looked slightly ruffled, as if he had just dried them in a rush after a shower.
The kitchen apron the young man was wearing did not detract anything from the sophisticated beauty that a simple azure blue pullover and a pair of fitting dark jeans gifted him with.
"Oh by the way, I forgot to ask you," Meguro said, turning on his heels to face him and retrieve his coat from his hands. "Do you also like oysters? What about prawns?"
"Are you planning to feed an army?" he found himself asking, a bit more blunt than usual.
"Ah ah ah... nope," Meguro confessed. "But I have to say I hoped you were just as hungry as I am," he admitted, a little too mischievously for Michieda not to notice.
"Aren't you hungry?" Meguro repeated.
"I am. But anything is fine for me, really, you needn't cook to that extent- you must be tired, and-"
"It'll be a pleasure to share crabs with you, really. And, Michieda-kun, please have a seat, it's almost ready, I swear," Meguro added, motioning for him to sit on the sofa before which a table had already been carefully arranged and neatly set for two people alone.
Michieda looked around, gaping at the classy, dim-lit place where, he noticed, no one else was around to see. Apparently, it seemed like it was just the two of them, in the end, and that Meguro's invitation was meant to be addressed to him solely, and him only.
The thought made his mind sway a little, so he resolved plopping down the couch, sighing slightly from second-hand embarrassment.
"Here you are, please help yourself," Meguro appeared again, serving a huge tray of equally huge king crabs and sitting down right afterwards, on the other side of the table. "I hope you like it," he added, disentangling himself from the apron.
"Very much obliged," Michieda said, bowing to the hot plates.
"I'm happy you came," the older guy confessed, looking away for a moment, while Michieda snapped in two halves the first crab that looked just utterly delicious. "I thought that maybe you were already busy... or you would not be allowed, or even, you know, stuff."
"We've just entered 2022, so I won't be underage for long, you know?" Michieda pouted, feigning an annoyance that, he knew, Meguro would quickly detect for what it actually was. Knowing amusement.
"Mh," his senpai muttered, eyes fully set on him while trying hard not to laugh.
"Weren't you hungry?" he objected, grinning.
"Oh, I really am," Meguro retorted. "Beware, Michieda Shunsuke, I'm challenging you: who will be the one eating oysters the most? I bet I'll win!"
"I never said I'm entering the oyster competition, though," he talked back, right before attacking a second crab, while Meguro kept watching knowingly at him.
"We'll see. I'm actually not that good as a cook, but I swear my oyster rice is quite good," Meguro revealed. "As you're being my guest, I'd say you'll have to try, right?"
Michieda said nothing, but under Meguro's attentive gaze he robbed a third crab of his precious content and stuffed his mouth like a hamster, to which the older guy started chuckling openly, hiding his half-full mouth behind his hand. Michieda quickly imitated him, and while he gulped down his morsel before laughing merrily, he realized how his heart started feeling as brimming as his stomach was. The more he filled it with those memories, though, the more it seemed to overflow. And it felt simply amazing.
If he really had to admit it, it was exactly the reason why he felt so truly addicted to Meguro's company. The way they felt naturally at ease around each other, the way they simply basked in each other's presence, having to do essentially nothing in particular to please one another.
He didn't know why exactly, but whenever he was with his family, his friends or his Naniwa Danshi colleagues, it was not the same.
He liked Meguro Ren. Maybe not exactly like a lover, but definitely more than an ordinary friend would do.
"Now that I've lured you with crabs, please help yourself with some prawns, here you are," Meguro invited him, offering him an awesome looking tray of food he had not noticed before. "Eat 'till you drop, right? I have to make sure you're truly a Kansai boy," he teased.
"Eehh? No way! Koji-kun's company is really having a bad influence on you!" He snorted playfully, much to Meguro's renewed laughter. "It's not like you have to stick -literally- to the Kuidaore thing, it's just a suggestion. I mean, it's as if saying 'look how much we can make you eat, and eat with huge satisfaction even beyond your borders, see?'. That's just it."
"So Koji lied to me," Meguro stated.
"Oh, no wonder. He basically lies to me all the time," he admitted with a nod, "even if I know it's his way of showing affection, in the end."
"But I do genuinely want to know, though," Meguro insisted.
"Know what?"
"How much you love eating."
"Eh? Why?"
Meguro merely snickered.
"Secret," the older guy conspired, speaking in English.
"Touch," Michieda completed for him, in English as well.
"Eh?" Meguro's eyes suddenly widened.
"Ah nope, just a stupid pun," he quickly apologized, waving frenetically his hand. "You know, your Snow Man song... you said 'secret', so I just thought about it automatically. It's so stuck into my head that I just-"
"Do you really?" Meguro cut him off.
"What?"
"Think frequently about it," he asked, looking curious.
Michieda pursed his lips, before nodding quietly.
"It's beautiful," he admitted, picking up one more crab to put onto his plate almost absent-mindedly. "In a soothing way, I think. And... it does also remind me a lot of you, I mean, the Meguro Ren-kun I got to know recently. Th-there's a lot of resemblance, in my opinion." He stopped dead, looking up with worried eyes. "Sorry. I am talking weird, right?"
"Nope. I like listening to you," Meguro revealed, with soft eyes. "Almost as much as I like watching you eat, I would say."
"Y-you never told me you asked my mom to become my foster parent when in Tokyo," he blurted out, blushing a little.
"I don't think I want to be, either," Meguro said, laughing. "You needn't a parent to watch over you to that extent, for you're surprisingly mature and responsible for a guy of your age. When I was nineteen, I barely knew how to handle things about our work. I would say I was quite dense about too many things. You definitely aren't."
"Y-you told me already," he murmured. "Thank you."
"Oh gosh, did I? Now I do -really- sound like an annoying parent who does even forget what he said just the other day!"
"You definitely aren't, either," Michieda laughed.
"You sure?"
"100% sure, uhn," he nodded, beaming at Meguro's almost worried gaze on him. The guy frowned in a way that made Michieda understand he was shyly conjuring a non-verbal question to him, as if confirming his words. He looked cute, and the thought made him blush faintly.
"10.000% sure," he solemnly assured him, nodding vigorously. "Truth is, I could definitely never see you as a parent."
"I'm quite glad," Meguro smiled, and his relief was so evident that Michieda's heartbeat almost skipped a bit.
"Where were we, anyway? Ah yes, you have to taste these prawns, right?"
"And then I'll explode for sure," Michieda confirmed, sighing openly and yet accepting the small bowl Meguro was offering him.
"Good."
"Good for what?"
"Darker-than-black-Ren's plan, of course," Meguro teased.
"Eh?!" he blinked. There was something weird with the way the older guy's eyes turned suddenly more serious than ever, while looking at him non-stop. Even so, he found himself curious to know more, to know everything. To be told all the things that Meguro was currently concealing from him, probably for the best.
He saw him put tidily down the chopsticks and sit more properly on his knees.
"You know, Michieda-kun, in my mind... after you'd have been fully satiated with dinner, I thought you would have felt too tired to stand up and go home. So I hoped that if I offered you to stay over... you would say yes," Meguro confessed. "But I know it's impudent of me to even think-"
"I would say yes," Michieda promptly said.
"Eh?"
"I... i-if you were seriously asking, I would say yes," he repeated.