Work Text:
“Look,” Issa’s hand slams in front of him. “You need to fuck Ouka already.”
Takaaki blinks, caught between the shock of seeing Issa in morning daylight and the effort to not drop his mug, before he dimly registers the time on his watch—and there it goes, his coffee is spilled, and he spends the next minute squawking and mopping up the scalding mess on his lap. Halfway through, he pauses.
“It’s 7AM,” he says, pants dripping with coffee.
Issa stands there, hands immaculate from not helping at all, leaning casually against the counter as he watches Takaaki clean up what he can. He barrels on. “You. Takaaki. Fuck Ouka.” He glances at his phone, tsking in irritation at the pop-up notification. “I don’t have all day.”
Takaaki straightens up from the floor, silent all the way as he stretches out his back. “Okay,” he breathes, nods, and repeats. “Okay.”
The cogs in his head start to turn: Takaaki can feel them, straining in his brain under the weight of Issa’s gaze. But in the end it is 7AM, his coffee is gone, and the turning leads nowhere.
“First of all, I—” He pauses and holds out a hand. “I don’t even know what to start with, the part where I need to—ahem—get with Ouka or the part where you ’don’t have all day’.”
Issa tches again, and really, Takaaki doesn’t know what else he expected out of him this early in the day. Then again, he also definitely didn’t expect him to demand he fuck Ouka—and with a time limit, no less—so he supposes, there’s room for surprises today.
“Mind telling me what’s up? With all this—” he waves sticky hands in the air, ignoring the way his pants are starting to get cold. “—er, Ouka stuff.” He shrugs as Issa’s eyes narrow at him. “Look, even you have to admit this is kinda out of nowhere.” Takaaki mentally runs through what he knows of Issa’s previous discography, and he’s not exactly the type for sentimental love or encouraging romance. “You’re not a wingman type,” he trails off.
Issa runs a hand through his hair, as if Takaaki not obediently running off to throw Ouka into bed immediately is the height of incompetence. He practically snarls. “Don’t ever put me and the word ‘wingman’ in the same sentence again.”
That? That’s your hangup?! Takaaki almost drops the towel in his hand.
“Look,” Issa starts again, voice floating somewhere behind him as Takaaki turns back to clean the rest of the mess. “It’s not a big deal, ‘specially since you’re already so into him. It’s easy, all you need to do is take the pretty princess to bed. Just—just trust me, and go do it.”
“You know,” Takaaki keeps mopping, not looking back up, as if being face-to-face with the floor will somehow keep him grounded in this nonsense chaos of a conversation. “Oh god, I can’t do it. I don’t know where to start again: with the part where you say it’s ‘easy’? I mean, have you met Ouka?” Takaaki wrings out the towel. “And on the other hand, Issa.” He turns to look him square in the eye. “I still have no idea why you want me to.”
The towel he had in hand slips out and Issa backs away to avoid it as it falls, nose wrinkling in mild disgust, and Takaaki again catches himself with a retort rising up inside. Is this what it’s like to be Yuuma, he suddenly realizes—is this what it’s like to constantly have to be the lone sane man dealing with the idiot members of this unit? He feels a sudden wave of pity for the kid—maybe he should buy him a nice dinner sometime. Meanwhile Issa rolls his eyes with a groan, in that way only a man who hasn’t outgrown his teenage band phase could. He shoves his phone screen in front of Takaaki’s face.
Takaaki backs away before readjusting the screen to read the message. It’s from “Personal Slave”, which his mind pieces together with Futaba’s subservient smile—and he struggles again, for the umpteenth time this morning, between questioning ‘why is Issa like this?’ and ’I can’t believe I figured it out so quickly’. He shoves the concerns down, tucking them away like homework to figure out later, if he will at all, because thinking about every shocking thing out of Issa’s mouth this morning will get him nowhere. “...Sorry, I can’t make you breakfast this morning, I’m going out to help Ouka on his job,” he reads aloud. There’s a cute sticker right below it, a sheepishly smiling apologetic puppy-thing.
“Get it now?”
“Not at all.”
“Tch.”
Takaaki hands him the phone back. “What does Futaba and breakfast have to do with me and Ouka?”
Issa stares him down. “...I honestly have no idea why you’re the leader here, or what the hell that president was thinking.”
“That makes two of us,” Takaaki shrugs. “But go on.”
Issa rolls his eyes again and groans, louder and more drawn-out this time, until he finally deigns to explain—in that special way unique to Issa and Issa alone.
“I haven’t had a decent breakfast in days.”
Takaaki blinks. “We… have a food service available.”
“I said decent.”
“Ah, I get it, only Futaba’s cooking counts as ‘decent’.” Takaaki snickers. You brocon, he thinks, but doesn’t voice as Issa barrels ahead.
“I need laundry done,” he counts on a finger. “And my guitar polished—” Another finger, “—and my clothes ironed, my hair products ordered, my magazines organized, my sheet music filed away—”
“—Stop, stop,” Takaaki hastily waves a hand. “I get it, you brocon,” Takaaki doesn’t spare him this time. “I get it, you miss having Futaba around.” He raises a brow as Issa puts on a face like a twelve-year-old trying to talk back, but doesn’t let him interrupt. “So what’s that got to do with Ouka? And by your suggestion, why do I have to do something about it?”
If he had a buck for every time Issa tched this morning alone, he could afford to get himself a much nicer coffee than the one currently crusting over his pants. And as Issa shows no signs of stopping Takaaki thinks, Maybe I could upgrade to a large.
“Futaba,” Issa glares. “Has been nonstop shadowing Ouka like a puppy. Going on and on about ‘the Kira Ouka’, blah blah blah, ‘Ouka is so great, doing these kinds of jobs, Ouka is such a pro’, yadda yadda.” Issa glances at his phone screen. “So am I, goddammit.”
Takaaki quickly ducks away to the kitchen sink to hide the creeping smile on his face, turning on the water to wash his hands—and to hopefully drown out the laughter in his voice. “Okay, so Futaba and Ouka are being friends. That seems like a good thing, getting along as unit members and all.”
“It’s not,” Issa slams the kitchen counter again. “My laundry, my breakfast, my—”
“—Yeah, yeah,” Takaaki shuts off the water. “Issa, look: me, er, getting with Ouka isn’t going to solve that.”
“Of course it will,” Issa mutters. “I thought of it: if you distract Ouka then Futaba will be free again. And I’m always right.”
“I can’t keep Ouka distracted all the time,” Takaaki points out. “He and I both have our own work.” There’s a whole lot more he could say, like how he doubts him suddenly hooking up with Ouka could discourage Futaba from being friends and professional peers with him, unless—
“...You think Futaba has a thing for Ouka.”
“He has to,” Issa snaps. “Only something to that level could pull him away from me.”
“Oh god.” Takaaki doesn’t hold his laughter back anymore. “M—pfft—maybe you should consider who’s really in love with who, here.”
Issa groans and buries his face in a hand. “Goddammit. You’re useless. I should’ve figured you wouldn’t be of any help.”
---
By midday Takaaki—foolishly, optimistically—figured that Issa, even being Issa, would have given up and found a path of lesser resistance. Or on a particularly hopeful bent, come to his senses and given up entirely. But of course this is Vazzy, and this is a unit formed by that President—there are always bound to be interesting characters in any unit from this company, and it just goes to show that his own unit doesn’t stray too far from the course.
This is some kind of strange lifelong luck, he thinks. And I thought Shiki in his early twenties was a handful.
Issa has taken the liberty of barging into his room—while Takaaki was out doing his own laundry, like a sensible adult—to leave him a pile of condoms and what is definitely a previously-opened bottle of lube. It’s still mostly full, which Takaaki takes as generosity on Issa’s part: he hasn’t seen him go out of his way to buy anyone anything ever, let alone give things for free, other than autographs—and even those can come at a cost if the requestor isn’t a cute girl, or some kind of music nerd whose tastes are obscure enough to earn Issa’s respect. But in a way, Takaaki figures, the… generous supplies aren’t for free, Issa is clearly still expecting Takaaki to bang Ouka. There’s a brown envelope roughly the size of a DVD next to the pile, with a scrawled note: in case you don’t know how.
Takaaki texts Issa. You didn’t have Futaba go out and buy these, right?
Of course not, the reply comes, and Takaaki breathes out a sigh of relief. It’s premature, as the next replies make him nearly drop his phone.
He wouldn’t know which ones to buy, or how to even ask for them without imploding on the spot.
Make an incompetent baby like Futaba do that?
Miss me with that shit.
“You brocon,” he half-laughs, half-sighs into the hand he buries his face into. Oh, the people I have to deal with, he thinks as he sweeps the pile into a trash bag. There’s an easier way to go about this, Issa, he tells himself as he drops the bag in front of Issa’s door. It’s called being honest.
---
“Takaaki-san,”
“Yeah, Nao?”
“You kinda suck at this.”
“Nao!” Yuuma chides him from the side, bringing in a tray of tea.
“What? It’s true, he picked a ranged character but he’s totally charging in there like he’s a melee fighter.” He gestures to the screen, where Takaaki’s selected character is collapsing as the last of his HP meter runs out. “See? Your character doesn’t have the vitality stats to handle fighting in the front lines like that. You should’ve stuck behind me and given support.”
“Naosuke?”
“Ugh, not that again.”
Yuuma nudges him from the side. “Nao! Don’t be rude.”
He grumbles and pouts at Yuuma, but eventually sighs. “Yes, Takaaki-san?”
Takaaki smiles. “Just let me kill some stuff, okay? Naosuke.”
“Ugh—okay, fine, I’ll reset the stage. But remember what I said, okay? It’s too late to change your character right now, unless you want to start from the beginning again.”
“Sure thing, Naosuke.”
“You’re totally doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Naosuke.”
“H-how about some tea? Takaaki-san?” Yuuma intervenes, pouring a cup of iced tea. “All we have right now is barley tea, hope that’s okay with you!”
“Ah, Yuuma,” Takaaki smiles at him as he takes the cup. “Of course it’s okay, I’m the one barging in here after all.”
“So you do admit it,” Nao butts in, reaching for the cup Yuuma hands him next.
“Nao!”
“What?” Nao takes a gulp. “He said it himself.”
“It’s true,” Takaaki shrugs.
“Well then,” Nao ventures, fearless in that usually-cute tactlessness of his. “What are you doing here in my room anyway?”
Takaaki pauses mid-sip—it’s only cute when it’s not directed at you, he realizes, and as the silence stretches he watches Nao and Yuuma exchange a glance. A lot of unspoken words pass between them in those seconds and, Takaaki thinks, ah youth. How nice it must be to be so carefree, to not be haunted by your own groupmate who thinks you need to fuck another one to solve his problems.
“Just needed a break,” he settles on saying. And Issa would never voluntarily go out of his way to go near Nao, he keeps to himself. “It’s relaxing here.”
“Okay, I guess…” Nao shrugs and picks up his controller again. “But if you wanna stay, just promise me that you’ll stop trying to die, yeah?”
Takaaki picks up his controller. “Sure thing, Naosuke.”
“Ahh!!”
---
He kills two more hours in Nao’s room until he’s forced to leave the dorms—an outside gig, and worse, conveniently and coincidentally overlapping with a job Ouka has in the nearby area according to their manager. Maybe it’s a twist of fate, or maybe he’s just too conscious of Ouka now thanks to all of Issa’s bullshit. How does he normally act around Ouka, anyway? Sure, he’s been flirting with him every chance he gets, but now because of Issa… well, it doesn’t feel right anymore. Like Issa gets to reap the benefits of Takaaki’s hard work until now, trying to get through to Ouka… and how’d Issa think he was going to succeed in one day, when he’s spent months trying to get close to him?
He arrives at the studio, putting on his best professional face as he inwardly curses out Issa for making it real hard for him to hit on Ouka now. He can’t tease him like usual anymore, not without feeling like a dirty old man with an ulterior motive. Let me have my fun, goddammit, he sulks—flirting with cute cute Ouka is one of the few pure joys in his life, and now he can’t even have that.
---
“Takaaki.”
Takaaki keeps walking blindly, head down and eyes glued to his phone looking every inch the busy celebrity who can’t pay attention to anything around him. The earbuds in his ears aren’t playing anything, only there to add to the illusion of a busy man hurrying off.
“Takaaki,” he hears the voice following him, and wonders if his acting skills have dulled. He hasn’t really gotten any drama roles lately, and—
“—Takaaki!”
It doesn’t work, of course. Ouka has long legs, a fast stride, and most importantly, a real stubborn streak. He slams a slim hand against the wall to block Takaaki’s path, and Takaaki forgets the act he’s putting on.
“Don’t walk around like that, you’ll bump into something.”
“Oh,” he says, pulling the useless earbuds out. “Hi, Ouka.” A few seconds of awkward silence seep in, until he remembers where they are and forces himself to break the silence. “What are you doing here?”
“I’d heard from our manager you had a job here, so I came to see.” He shrugs casually, being every inch the cool, indifferent Ouka Takaaki is so familiar with. For a second there he thinks he sees the faintest dusting of pink on Ouka’s cheeks, but then he catches himself—Issa just had to go and say things like that, and because of it he’s getting carried away so easily. There’s no blush, there’s nothing between them—and he ignores how that reasonable train of thought makes his stomach sink.
“See what?” He keeps his tone casual—it’s not like there was anything between them to begin with, other than his occasional flirting for entertainment. He considers the pros and cons of punching Issa personally versus just setting Nao on him, for the unnecessary feelings his morning remark has brought about.
“You had a radio segment with your two previous unit members—I haven’t done much radio stuff or MC-ing in general, so I thought it’d be good to observe.”
“Oh,” he nods. “Rei and Roa, yeah, they started that program recently.” It was fun catching up with them and their lovey-dovey act. “It’s been a while since I saw them, but nice to know some things don’t change. Roa has been all over Rei since the beginning, you know.”
“I know,” Ouka replies.
“Really?” Takaaki blinks. “Were you following them?”
Ouka rolls his eyes, the movement slight and barely perceptible. Takaaki only catches it from the repeat exposure of having been the target so often. “I’ve been following you—which includes your previous unit—like I told you before. Being in this industry means having to keep up with who’s doing what, which you full well know by now.”
He does know, because they’ve had variations of this conversation before. If it were any other time Takaaki would cozy up to Ouka, slinging what now feels like an embarrassingly overfamiliar arm around his thin shoulders. He’d drop some cheesy line about Aw, Ouka, you care so much about me, something ridiculous along those lines, and then Ouka would be his usual prickly self pulling him back down to earth with barbed words. And so they would go on.
He freezes instead. He can’t do that now, as Issa’s words echo back at him.
Ouka, oblivious to Takaaki’s internal turmoil, moves on. “Come on, then.”
“Huh?” Takaaki’s mind tries to catch up.
“Shouldn’t we head home if we’re done?”
“Oh,” Takaaki blinks, again.
This whole day has been a mess but Ouka, sweet Ouka, is his usual taciturn self and they are, at the end of the day, still unit members together. It warms his heart: affection and gratitude sprouting inside Takaaki at Ouka’s adorable cluelessness and stoicism, from the way Ouka says ’home’ and ’we’ offhand like remarking on the weather, the way he angles his body in an open gesture to walk with him.
He smiles and joins him, and all the while resolves to be better to him.
---
Maybe ’better’ would have been going straight home and personally tucking Ouka into his own bed. ’Better’ probably would have been buying him dinner sometime, in a nice place, well after Issa’s terrible ideas have passed. ’Better’ definitely would have been a nice cup of tea, or cake, something and anything that wasn’t Takaaki offering him drinks and chatting about work in his room. On hindsight, Takaaki thinks, he’s the biggest idiot in the world.
“Like I said, Ouka, you can’t sleep here.”
“...No.”
“Ouka,” Takaaki shakes his shoulder. “You have a thing tomorrow, don’t you?”
Despite what Takaaki is saying, Ouka is doing a pretty good job of sleeping here. Too good, actually, Ouka’s entire weight is pressed against his shoulder and Takaaki thinks, amidst cursing himself for his poor judgment, that at least he didn’t take him for drinks in public like the first time they met. He’s well over the age to be hauling another full-grown adult through the streets, and his back aches at just the thought—oh, oh no, that’s Ouka wrapping his arms around his waist. He dimly thinks he should pull him away, but the childish part of him says no, stay, and it’s bolstered by the alcohol pulsing in his own ears.
It’s cute, he admits to himself through the fuzz of alcohol. Ouka, cold, shy Ouka, holding on to him like this. His hands involuntarily lift themselves over Ouka’s, tracing the fine bones and smooth skin. He walks his fingers up his arms, chuckling as the motion doesn’t wake him. They follow their way up until they tangle in the strands lightly brushing against his shoulder and he stops, watching the way his breathing brings the strands in, out, in against his lips. A thumb brushes against them, plush and soft and a dark, deep part of him wants to press in—to open him up, to feel warm tongue lapping around his fingers, to have those pretty lips around him—
—and he realizes, with a start, that the warm wetness is real.
“O-ouka?” He croaks out. Bright eyes peer up at him from under long, thick lashes, and he wonders if he’s finally drunk more than he can handle, or if he’s dreaming. He pinches his thigh just in case. It’s real.
Ouka doesn’t respond, mouth currently busy with opening up under Takaaki’s thumb. One hand snakes up to close around Takaaki’s hand, holding it against his cheek as his tongue wraps around his thumb. Takaaki tries pulling away, softly, but Ouka’s grip holds him in place with sparks of rebellion in his eyes. His tongue moves on to lap up his fingers, and oh, Ouka should definitely not be this good with his tongue. Takaaki doesn’t know where he learned this stuff, unless—
“Wait, wait.” Takaaki pulls his hand out, ignoring the part of him that wanted to see where Ouka would go. “Ouka, er, I don’t know what Issa told you, or what he’s playing at, but—”
“Issa?” Ouka cocks his head, and the confused clumsiness of it clues Takaaki in that Ouka is still very much drunk. “What about him?”
“What about him—what do you mean, ’what about him’?” Takaaki leans back, and Ouka follows. “He didn’t put you up to this?”
Ouka blinks blearily at him, still following Takaaki as he shifts away. “Put me up to what?” He’s practically draped over him by now, and Takaaki’s traitorous body feels warmth sink to the bottom of his abdomen.
“I, uh.” This is too much—this entire day has been a mistake since the moment Issa brought that up with him, and now he’s projecting. He’s projected so much that drunk Ouka looks like he’s coming on to him, and really, he is an adult and should get a grip. “Ouka, hey, I think you’ve had too much.”
“No,” he says, and a small hand fists in his collar. “I haven’t had enough at all.” And with that he pulls himself in against Takaaki’s chest and crushes his mouth against his.
It’s bizarre. He was just dreaming about those soft lips, and now here they were pressing themselves against his. Ouka is stubborn and demanding, he knew that—but not like this, where he sucks at Takaaki’s lips like he’s hungry for more, mouthing to claim every inch of Takaaki’s own. Before long his tongue is invading Takaaki’s mouth, clumsy and demanding and by the time Takaaki’s mind catches up to the reality of their situation he’s out of breath, they’re both out of breath, and Ouka still has his shirt in a vise-grip as his lips trail along his jaw, puffs of breath hot against his skin.
“H-hey?” Takaaki ventures a hand to Ouka’s shoulder, and on contact he’s met with an irritated Ouka looking up at him. “W-what’s gotten into you suddenly—”
He doesn’t get to finish as Ouka pushes him back fully, and as Takaaki lands back flat against his own floor looking up at this kind of Ouka, he first thinks, I might be into this. Immediately after that he thinks, now what does that say about me?
“Shut up,” Ouka mutters down at him, and Takaaki blinks as Ouka’s fingers scramble at his collar to undo his shirt buttons. Thin fingers make quick work of them and Takaaki is soon exposed to Ouka’s searing gaze, leaving him frozen in place. He starts when fingers grab at his belt.
“Wait, wait, Ouka!” He wakes up enough to pull an arm out from under Ouka’s legs, which have straddled him in the meanwhile. He clutches Ouka’s hands at his belt. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Ouka blinks at him, lashes fluttering, slightly swaying. “Oh,” he says, and before Takaaki has the chance to feel relief his hands reach for the edges of his own shirt to pull it over his head in one smooth motion.
“That’s—that’s not what I meant,” Takaaki cries, even as his hands splay against his smooth pale skin. Ouka rolls his eyes, more obvious this time.
“Shut up, you talk too much.” And with that Ouka comes back down to shut Takaaki’s mouth with his own, and the way his hands wander greedily up and down his chest makes Takaaki forget, too, of the ridiculousness of this whole situation. He’s not being a good adult right now—but could anyone blame him, he wonders, as Ouka’s sweet lips press against his, and as he starts to bite Takaaki feels the last of his defenses crumble. He opens up to Ouka, letting him in, letting him take.
Hot lips suck at his own, as plush and soft as he fantasized. There’s a sort of hasty clumsiness driving them, possessiveness spurring him to bite more than kiss, alcohol and desire dulling his usual delicacy. His tongue wraps around Takaaki’s, lapping up like he wants to invade every inch of his mouth. The hands against his bare chest have started to wander, too, pushing away the fabric of his shirt to explore further. That’s Ouka, he thinks as nails dig into his shoulders—he’s a completionist, he’s gotta have one hundred percent. Takaaki’s own hands rise to wrap around his thin waist, answering the way Ouka presses himself harder against Takaaki, as if their skin against bare skin isn’t enough. He’s always demanded the unreasonable, and now is no different as Ouka shifts to slide a thigh between Takaaki’s legs.
He runs fingers along Ouka’s back, tracing his spine, and relishes the way Ouka shivers against him. He responds back to Ouka’s demands, answering with tongue, biting back on those red, spit-slick lips. He feels the thigh pressed between his legs shift and grind, and the sensation rises into a moan against Ouka’s mouth. He returns the favor by slipping his hands around his bottom and squeezing, letting the heat of the moment intoxicate his hands into groping harder than he needs to. He smirks against busy lips as it makes Ouka whimper.
“Ouka,” he breathes against his mouth, his jaw, the earlobe he mouths at. “Ouka,” he sighs into soft hair as Ouka bites and sucks along his neck.
“You,” Ouka whispers, nose pressed into his hair, “never shut up—” he leaves marks all over his neck, and his nails dig into his chest. “—Do you?”
Takaaki laughs into his hair as he tangles a hand through it. “Make me, then.” Might as well enjoy this, he thinks, and blames the alcohol. And Ouka never backs down from a challenge: those soft soft lips find their way to his mouth again and he does, indeed, shut Takaaki up. I could get used to this, he thinks, as Ouka’s hand moves down to work at his belt again.
And it stays there, clutching his buckle.
“Ouka?” Takaaki slides his hand down to his own buckle. Maybe he’s having difficulty with it. And then he realizes, there aren’t lips to occupy him anymore.
He blinks. The timing is too incredible, too improbable. He can’t have, not at this timing—
...and he has. Ouka, his familiar, predictable Ouka, the Ouka he knows so well, is back asleep. A soft snore escapes his mouth, lips laying half-parted as his head rests in the crook of Takaaki’s shoulder.
“...Oh.” Takaaki shakes his head and sighs, long and more frustrated than a good adult should have any right to be. But, he thinks, smiling at the peace and comfort on his face, a sleeping Ouka is a familiar Ouka. And there have been enough surprises in one day, he tells himself, forcing himself to give up. He lets himself indulge in Ouka lying against him for a few more minutes, his mind catching up to everything that just happened, then reluctantly gets up to find Ouka’s shirt. It landed surprisingly far, and Takaaki has to stretch to reach for it. As he props the still-asleep Ouka up to gently tug the shirt back on him, he marvels at the gap between the Ouka just a few minutes ago and the quiet, slumbering Ouka now.
“This day sure is full of surprises,” he murmurs out loud. “But you’re always barging into my life like that, y’know. You keep me on my toes, I like it.” He chuckles at how Ouka doesn’t stir, and gently lifts him in his arms to take him back to his room. He hopes no one is awake at this hour as he steps out.
“Takaaki-san?”
...And his hopes are immediately dashed, as Futaba of all people bumps into them in the hallway just outside his door.
“A-ah,” Takaaki sweats. “Hey there.” He shifts, Ouka weighing heavily in his arms. “You’re up late.”
The sight of them should rightly make anyone embarrassed, or something, but Futaba just smiles in that easygoing, too-accepting way of his. “I was just heading back from the practice room.” He cocks his head, gesturing at Ouka in his arms. “Is Ouka okay?”
’Is he okay?’! Is he okay, he asks! It takes all of Takaaki’s self-control to not drop Ouka then. The timing of it all; his mind brings up Issa’s smug face, and he wonders just how much of today has been orchestrated. Though, he glumly thinks, he didn’t actually go all the way with Ouka—he’ll take the small victories where he can. Despite how disappointed the rest of his body is.
“He’s fine,” Takaaki laughs nervously. “Just fell asleep, that’s all. I’m taking him back to his room.”
“I see,” Futaba nods and smiles, pure and unassuming, and Takaaki briefly feels relief. He says a silent thank-you to Futaba for his adorable cluelessness, until Futaba himself breaks the silence. “Ah, he’s got a script-reading in the morning, we should probably set his alarm for him.”
“Huh?”
Futaba walks them to Ouka’s room and helps Takaaki settle Ouka into bed. “For his drama, y’know.”
“You know his schedule?”
“Ah,” Futaba scratches his nose, suddenly sheepish. “More or less—I’ve kind of been forcing him to let me tag along to some of his jobs, and so I offered to help him manage his schedule in return.”
“Huh. Issa mentioned something like that.”
“Ah, he did?” Futaba blushes a little, running a hand through his hair. “I was worried he might suspect something... I guess I should come clean now.”
Oh no. Last time he checked, breaking his unit member’s heart with another member wasn’t a part of the deal when he signed up to be a part of Vazzy. And now he’s about to deal with the messy fallout, and of something that wasn’t even his idea! He decides to lock Issa with Nao in a room, that should sort of be punishment enough.
Futaba has already launched into his story as Takaaki plots the rest of Issa’s demise. “...I’ve got my first drama role coming up soon, and so I begged Ouka to let me tag along with him to study.” Futaba claps his hands to his cheeks, suddenly flushing full-force. “I’m sorry to both Ouka and Issa, for making them put up with my selfishness…”
“Uh.” Takaaki blinks again, and really, there is too much happening around these brothers. “Wait, what?”
“You know how I got a super small, very very minor part in a drama recently?” Takaaki didn’t know, actually. And Takaaki didn’t sign up to know the full story of what’s going on with these brothers. But Futaba carries on, oblivious to Takaaki’s growing dread. “Well, I kept it a secret from him. I’ve been relying on him a bit too much lately, ever since I debuted with this unit… so I wanted to try this without making him help me all the time.” He runs a hand through his hair again. “But I ended up relying so much on Ouka instead, and even though my role is super minor he still spent so much time helping me.”
“Were you avoiding Issa because of,” Takaaki gestures vaguely in the air. “This?”
Futaba chuckles nervously. “I thought he’d definitely figure it out if I were to be around him, he always somehow manages to. I wanted to be careful because I’m planning on making it a special surprise for him when it airs. I’ve been thinking of making a nice dinner for the occasion, too!”
Oh my god, Takaaki slumps. These brocons. Issa had nothing to worry about after all—Takaaki feels a sort of vindictive, petty smugness in being right from the beginning, that him and Ouka wouldn’t be able to solve Issa’s problem. Though, it was all because there was no problem to solve in the first place. He feels his legs give out and he plops onto the edge of Ouka’s bed, sighing deeply.
“Takaaki-san? Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing,” Takaaki waves a hand in the air. “Just a little tired, it’s late.”
“Ah,” Futaba agrees, and suddenly turns away. “Takaaki-san, you should head back, too… I’m sure you’re cold like that.”
“Huh?” It takes Takaaki embarrassingly long to realize, with a start, that while he straightened up Ouka’s clothes he never bothered with his. And Ouka, being Ouka, had left liberal amounts of marks all over his skin. He looks down at himself, a tousled, marked, half-dressed mess, and back at Futaba, who is decidedly avoiding his eyes. “...Oh,” he mutters, and buries his head in his hands. “Er, sorry, Futaba.”
“No, not at all, nothing to be sorry for!” Futaba’s voice goes up at least an octave at the end, and his ears are faintly pink. “You two are adults, yep, with your own lives after all!”
“Ah, Futaba, don’t misunderstand—”
“—No, don’t worry! It’s a good thing! I’m sure you make each other very happy, I mean, it makes sense! You guys get along so well every day, too, it was really only a matter of time, right?”
“What? Get along well?”
Futaba fiddles with an alarm clock on the nightstand. “A-anyways, the alarm is set, he should be good now!” Without waiting for Takaaki to respond, he ducks into a quick bow and runs out. “Good night, Takaaki-san!”
“I,” Takaaki reaches out to the already-empty doorway. “I don’t even know where to start with this brother, either,” he mutters, shaking his head. He glances at Ouka, who is blissfully asleep through the entire chaos. “Or you, for that matter.” He reaches over to smooth his hair out of his face, lingering longer than necessary against his cheek. “But I can’t even be mad at you.” He plants a soft kiss to his forehead. “Good night, Ouka.”