Work Text:
Monday, May 7, 2018
"Ugh," Yuki sighed, dropping his pencil onto his notebook, "I can't concentrate on English homework on an empty stomach."
Several months had passed since I'd confessed my feelings for Yuki - or rather, my past feelings for Yuki - and explained how I'd let them get in the way of our friendship. Our relationship had bounced back as if there had never been anything wrong, and I was still amazed at how comfortable mundane things like working on homework could be without a forced distance between us. Hanging out with Yuki was safe and familiar, a welcome break from dealing with school issues and trying to stay on top of all the work for the hard level classes.
Of course, we'd been separated for a while over the spring break while I stayed with Professor Keita and Suzubishi-san, but once the new school year started we were together whenever possible. I shared all my worries about extra studies and potentially becoming part of the Suzubishi family with Yuki, and he told me about everything from his student council work to his weekend plans.
My face warmed a bit as I remembered the way he smiled when he told me that he'd be leaving right after classes on Saturday to go shopping with his boyfriend. It was hard to believe that he'd been so guarded around me only a few months before. Trust had returned in full force, and I felt guilty for wasting so much time caught up in my own emotions.
Don't worry, Tomo, we still have two more years at the school! Let's have more than enough fun to make up for lost time!
So I smiled as I poked at his notebook. "You said you were going to finish translating at least two paragraphs before going to get a snack."
Yuki, however, was definitely not smiling. "But this homework is harder than I expected! Hey, Tomo, can't you give me some hints?"
"Don't whine, Yuki. I already helped you with the first paragraph. You're not gonna get any better if you have me do it all for you. Or are you going to do my math homework in exchange?"
He glanced at my notebook as if seriously considering it. "Well..."
"I'm kidding. Professor Sakaki would kill us both if he found out I copied your homework."
Yuki frowned, cheeks pinking a little. "Well... that's true. Still, I'm hungry!" He stood, stretching his arms high above his head with an exaggerated yawn, t-shirt riding up just enough to show a hint of his stomach. I averted my eyes, hiding my own blush behind my hand, pretending to scratch at my cheek.
Crap. I was supposed to be completely over this. I guess it's not that easy...
Yuki fixed his shirt, completely oblivious to my thoughts. "I'm going to see if there's any sandwiches left in the vending machines. Do you want one too, Tomo?"
"If I want anything, I'll just look in your desk." I gestured over my shoulder. "I don't get why you need a sandwich from outside, isn't your entire desk filled with snacks?"
"I'm bored with those snacks! I want something different. Anyway, you keep working hard on your math homework, I'm going to check your progress when I get back!"
"Right, right," I sighed, staring down at the annoying selection of advanced algebra and basic trigonometry problems. Yuki and I had both qualified for the hard level class at the end of last year, which meant that we had a lot of catching up to do. Even more annoying, Yuki seemed to be doing better than me, and he couldn't resist teasing me about it. I guess it was revenge for lording my superior English skills over him all the time.
I knew Yuki would be gone longer than necessary, waffling over the trivial decision of which sandwich to buy. He'd probably come back with more than one and expect me to share them. To be fair, I was getting a bit hungry; a solid two hours of track practice tended to have that effect.
But I wasn't going to let myself be distracted by my stomach. The last thing I wanted was a lecture from Yuki, so I picked up my pencil and bent over my notebook, copying out the next problem. It was surprisingly easy to solve, and I finished two more before I started to feel uneasy. There was no way I suddenly understood how to calculate angles with trigonometry. My skin prickled with a cold nervousness as I looked over my paper and compared it to the example in the workbook.
"This is totally wrong," I sighed, flipping over the mechanical pencil to erase the offending numbers and symbols, but of course I'd forgotten to put a fresh eraser in after using it up in class earlier. I glanced at Yuki's pencil, but it was one of those cheap regular ones, the type with a hard pink eraser that was guaranteed to wear a hole in the paper. Didn't he normally use a separate eraser? But it wasn't anywhere on the tea table, not under his books or even on the floor.
"Ugh, this is so annoying." I stood, taking a moment to stretch my sore legs before heading over to his desk. As expected, his drawers were crammed with snacks, even the shallow top drawer that any normal person would use for office supplies.
I swear, one day your metabolism is gonna catch up with you, and then you'll be sorry...
Where on earth did Yuki keep his actual supplies, then? The only other piece of furniture with a drawer was his nightstand, which was a weird place to keep markers and stuff, but didn't he usually do his studying on the bed? I shuffled through the junk on the surface, but it was just a bunch of comic books and loose pieces of candy, with some receipts and change mixed in. If I couldn't find an eraser in his drawer, I'd have no choice but to deal with his teasing and tutoring. I wasn't sure I'd ever be mentally prepared to listen to Yuki lecturing me on how to solve math problems.
I pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand, brain somehow managing to register on some level that yes, there were office supplies inside. But.
There was something else, too.
Of course I recognized it immediately. I was a man, after all.
On top of the expected cheery array of cute pens and colorful markers, decorative notebooks and shaped erasers was something almost comically out of place: a large, vaguely realistic, flesh-colored dildo. With balls.
My face radiated enough heat to put a thermonuclear explosion to shame. Sadly, I'd gotten used to finding unexpected surprises around the apartment, which meant that I was always slightly on guard against the next potential horror. But I'd never expected to come across something like that in Yuki's nightstand. Yuki was my best friend, my brother, naive and kind, who always radiated an aura of innocence. He was pure, damnit!
Except he wasn't, and telling myself lies wouldn't change the reality. Yuki's routine of leaving the school every Saturday and staying out until Sunday evening hadn't drawn much attention at first, since lots of people knew about the bakery. But no one would believe any high school guy was visiting his mom and dad every weekend, no matter how cute and innocent he seemed, and it wasn't long before rumors started flying.
Asahina's dating someone outside the school. The student council president has an older lover. Did you hear, it seems like the Ace has a boyfriend. Is it really okay for a first year to be dating a college guy?
All those vague rumors floated from student to student until no one knew who had started them or why anyone cared. It was just another bit of gossip to discuss, one that faded to the background until Yuki did something that sparked another round of speculation.
Asahina seemed pretty happy the day we got our health fair results, I wonder if he was expecting bad news. Well, that's what happens when you slut around with guys.
The memory of the crude words was enough to jar me back to my senses. The only thing that had kept me from punching that asshole in the mouth was the fact that he was the captain of the archery club, and I didn't fancy becoming a pincushion. Instead, I satisfied myself with petty revenge, randomly deactivating his student ID at inconvenient times over the next week. I'd been especially gratified to learn that he'd failed a literature exam because he couldn't get into his room and print out the take-home essay.
But the taste of victory had been soured by the truth I couldn't put out of my mind: Yuki would be disappointed if he knew I'd stooped so low. From then on, I forced myself to take my own advice from when we were in the Bell One together. Don't pay attention to what other people say.
It had been hard with my supposed love of him leaving me sensitive to every perceived insult, but I'd managed. And I would manage this situation in the same way.
My hand trembled as I reached out to close the drawer, resisting the urge to slam it shut. If the thing was jostled out of place and Yuki noticed, he would know I'd been digging through his stuff and found it. And then we'd both die.
With the drawer safely closed, I retreated to my seat at the tea table, willing my face to go back to its normal color. How much time had passed since Yuki left? I glanced at the clock, but it didn't help; I had no idea what time it had been when he left, or even which set of vending machines he'd gone to. Knowing Yuki, he might tour them all, weighing every possible option before making a decision. For once, his gluttony would work to my advantage.
By the time Yuki returned, my heart no longer felt like it was about to explode. But I couldn't manage more than a brief glance as he entered, noting the sandwich clutched in his hand like a proud warrior's kill. "Oh, you're finally back," I droned, the tightness in my throat making the words sound unusually strained. "Let me guess, yakisoba again?"
"Uh-uh," he mumbled around a mouthful, taking a few moments to chew and swallow before adding, "I got the last katsu sandwich from the vending machine on the second floor. Lucky!"
A lukewarm yeah of agreement was all I could manage, eyes stubbornly fixed on the numbers and symbols in my notebook as if they were the most important thing in the world. Yuki's shadow fell across me as he moved closer, and I knew without looking that his head was cocked to one side, a puzzled expression on his face as he asked, "Tomo? You look really serious all of a sudden."
"Oh, uh, it's just this trig homework. I'm trying to figure something out."
The sandwich wrapper crinkled as Yuki set it down on the table, leaning close to peek at my notebook. "I can help you, Tomo!" His voice held no hint of the expected teasing; instead, he sounded genuinely eager to explain the law of cosines or whatever. "What do you need?"
He was close. Too close; I could feel his breath on my ear as he bent down to look at what I'd scribbled on the page. That barely detectable stirring of air was enough to set my face on fire again, mind racing through all sorts of wild imaginings. Yuki's breath, his lips, kissing, what else does he do with his mouth, I bet he blows his boyfriend, oh god why am I thinking about this--
I resisted the urge to cover my notebook and forced out a single word. "Eraser."
"Huh?"
"I... I screwed up."
In more ways than one.
I made the additional mistake of glancing up at Yuki's face; god, why was he so close, cheeks slightly pink as he pouted with genuine concern? Those lips... no, I wasn't going to think about it! My eyes went back to the neat lines of pencil on the page. "The homework, I did it wrong. I need an eraser."
"Ohhhh, you don't need help, just an eraser?" Yuki sounded disappointed at losing the chance to teach me something, but he recovered in an instant. "Hang on, I'll get you one!"
There was a tangible sense of relief as he moved away, but it soon turned into a knot of dread in the pit of my stomach as he crossed the room to stand before the nightstand. Would he realize that I'd opened the drawer? The back of my neck prickled as I watched him pull it open.
"Oh!" He sucked in his breath in an obvious gasp. Though Yuki's back was to me, I'd seen his wide-eyed expression of shock often enough to know exactly what face he was making. Face red, mouth open, eyes round. It took him a good ten seconds to recover, and I swear his hand was shaking a little as he dipped it into the drawer, taking care to avoid the thing on the right side, and retrieved a plain white eraser.
His smile was crooked, obviously pasted on, as he sat down across from me and held out the eraser. "Uh, here you go, Tomo."
Our eyes locked for an uncomfortable moment before I forced my gaze to the innocuous-looking eraser in his hand. I forced myself to reach for it.
It's just an eraser. It didn't even touch Yuki's, uh, toy. Definitely not.
My hand stopped, repelled by the eraser as surely as if it had a tiny force field. We froze like that for a few seconds until Yuki pulled back his hand, voice dull as he asked, "You saw it, didn't you?"
There was no point in denying it. "Y, yeah... I saw it."
Silence. At least on the outside. Words churned around inside my brain, explanations fighting for the chance to be voiced: I really was just looking for an eraser, I remembered you do your homework in bed so that was the logical place, your desk was filled with snacks so I didn't know where else to look, I didn't want you to see the stupid mistakes I made on my homework!
Yuki was the one who got control of his words first, and they spilled out in a breathless torrent. "I don't normally keep it there, I swear! It's usually in a box under my bed, but it got annoying having to get it out whenever I needed it so I just threw it in the drawer! But I'd never keep it there if someone was coming over, honest, I just forgot! I, I..." His mouth worked, but nothing else came out; maybe the face I'd felt myself involuntarily making when he said whenever I needed it was enough to jar him out of overexplaining.
I still couldn't speak, but I couldn't look away, so I just stared at Yuki without a word.
The color of Yuki's face slowly deepened from pink to red, and he lowered his eyes. "Uh, um... I guess I said a little too much, huh...?"
"A little..." I echoed. It was light years beyond a little too much.
Several seconds later, he spoke again, voice unusually small and timid. "Tomo... you don't think I'm gross or dirty, do you?"
I couldn't look at him. I didn't want to see the worry on his face, the vague belief that maybe I was that shallow, that I would reject him just because he had a dildo in his drawer. No, that wasn't it. It wasn't the physical thing that I'd run into, but what it symbolized. Yuki was my best friend, like a brother to me, we shared everything, but there was one aspect of his self that he couldn't ever share with me. Yuki was a sexual being, in the true sense, and I simply wasn't. And even if I was, that wasn't something we'd ever share.
He's still the same Yuki. He didn't change just because I saw it, just like he didn't change when he told me he was dating a guy.
It reminded me of something I'd read somewhere in the health fair materials. Being sexually active is just a small part of a person's being. Each of us is a whole person, with many aspects and experiences, and physical intimacy doesn't change the identity of a parent, sibling, or friend. We should all endeavor to treat those around us with kindness and not give into labeling and stereotypes based on rumor, or even fact, about their sexual activities.
I was pretty sure Takato-san had written that. Those eloquently spun words had been a big help when dealing with the various intimate discoveries I made in the apartment.
"Tomo..." Yuki's shoulders slumped.
"N, no, that's not it, I was just thinking about something!" I reached across the table to grab his hands, not caring that the tainted eraser was trapped between our sweaty palms. "I just... from the health fair, the thing about sex and stuff being just a little part of a person, and how that person isn't magically different or whatever just because they're, uh, doing stuff. I've thought about that a lot since then, because Professor Keita and Suzubishi-san... well, I've told you all those horror stories."
Yuki nodded, a tentative smile quirking his lips.
"But that doesn't make them bad people, or gross, or even weird. I mean, I'd much rather not find their personal stuff around the apartment, but it kind of makes them seem like normal people? Like at first I was really nervous around them, especially Suzubishi-san, because of course anyone would be like 'oh man, heir of Suzubishi, better be on my best behavior' or whatever. But he's just a quirky guy who likes sewing and baking and watching stupid movies with the person he loves. And Professor Keita is kind of like you, so lucky that he doesn't think about practical stuff because it just works out magically. They just put on that serious persona in public because that's what they have to do, the same way I put on the director's mask when I have to get stuff done."
Yuki was nodding more, his look of shame faded to one of simple embarrassment, and his smile grew stronger. "W, well... I guess that's true..."
"I'm not gonna think you're gross, Yuki. Uh, I mean, it's still embarrassing... and I think you should be really careful about where you hide things like that... er..."
"Hehe, Tomo, your face is getting red again."
"Agh, shut up, Yuki," I sighed, but I was smiling. And he was too. Sitting across from him and doing homework felt natural. Holding hands and smiling was normal, a sign of friendship, not something tainted with a hint of attraction or jealousy by my one-sided feelings.
As if he sensed my thoughts, Yuki squeezed my fingers, pressing the eraser deeper into our palms. "Oh. Oops, the eraser..."
"Ugh, the eraser!" I pulled my hands back, and the cursed thing landed on my notebook with a dull thump. We stared at it for a few seconds.
I wasn't sure who started laughing first, but by the time we finished giggling, we both had cheeks that were stained with tears. Yuki reached out to flick the eraser toward me with one finger, but I caught it and tossed it into the garbage can. It landed with a satisfying clunk.
"Hey, that's still a perfectly good eraser!" Yuki looked ridiculous, fake pouting while he was trying not to laugh.
"Maybe for you, but I don't wanna use it. Do you have any erasers that haven't been hanging out in that drawer?"
"There's a whole new pack of erasers in my desk." He tilted his head slightly, blush returning. "Um, why didn't you look in there first?"
"I did look in there first, but there's nothing but snacks in your desk!" Thank god we were back to talking about normal stuff like snacks and not... other things.
"Nuh-uh, I keep all my extra supplies in there! You just have to move the snacks that are on top!"
"Yuki, you're an idiot," I groaned, flopping forward onto the table's surface. "How on earth was I supposed to know I had to dig through fifteen layers of cookies to find a damn eraser?"
"Um... I'm sure I mentioned it before? Maybe not. Uh... anyway! You said you messed up your math homework, so why don't you let me help you?" He scooted around from his side of the table to sit next to me, prodding my side. "Hey, don't cover everything up, let me see!"
"Okay, fine, stop poking me! I'm moving!"
I was proud of myself for feeling only the littlest twinge of excitement as Yuki pressed his warm body up against my side, completely unaware that such casual contact might still inspire some kind of response. Somehow I managed to ignore the urge to slip my arm around his waist, instead keeping both hands firmly on the table as I explained which types of problems that were giving me trouble. His face lit up with excitement as he grabbed my workbook and looked over the problems, his smile leaving my stomach fluttering.
But I was stronger than that. Or rather, my relationships were stronger than that.
You beat the board and saved the school with Yuki's help. You can beat the rest of this crush too.
I nudged Yuki with my shoulder. "Hey."
"Hm? What is it, Tomo?"
"Thanks for helping me. I'm glad I don't have to do things alone anymore."
He grinned, blushing slightly. "Ehehe, well, that's what best friends are for, right?"
~ end ~