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Eita reaches his leg across the floor and nudges Tendou’s thigh with his foot.
“Hey,” he says. “I’m stuck.”
Tendou looks up from his manga (which he doesn’t seem to realise is upside down) and cocks a brow. “Already, Semisemi? It’s been five minutes.”
“It’s hard ,” Eita snaps, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the whole ordeal. “I can’t find the key to the stupid box. I’ve looked everywhere in the room.”
Tendou puts his manga down face-down and sighs like it’s the end of the world, then slides himself across the floor between their beds to sit close to Eita, close so that their thighs are pressed together and their shoulders bump, and Eita’s heart immediately picks up at the close vicinity.
Tendou leans over to look down at the DS in Eita’s hands. His hair, still wet from his shower, tickles against Eita’s wrists, and Eita tries his best not to focus on the smell of fennel and cinnamon bark. (He does !)
Finally, after what felt like five minutes (of Eita sitting perfectly still and unbreathing) but was probably closer to fifteen seconds, Tendou sits back up and sighs. “Are you sure you looked everywhere?”
“What.” Eita glares at Tendou and suddenly their closeness isn’t so distracting. “Of course I did. Am I supposed to check certain places in a certain order or something?”
“The mirror.” Tendou takes the DS from Eita’s hands and clicks around the room until he finds a mirror that Eita had somehow overlooked (but to be fair, it was pretty hidden).
Eita takes the DS back with a huff and slides the curtain back from the mirror to reveal a red key and trigger a flashback scene.
“I haven’t felt this stupid,” he says while Junpei suddenly remembers his kidnapping in-game, “since I played Danganronpa.”
“You don’t like it?”
“ No !” Eita says, far too quickly. “I love puzzle games. It’s just… hard.”
Tendou hums. “Mm, it gets easier, trust me. This one’s hard.”
“Yeah…”
Tendou doesn’t move back to continue reading (pretending to read, more like) his manga. He just stays pressed against Eita’s side, watching him play and making comments as Eita slowly makes his way through the first puzzle of the game.
At some point, Eita becomes so sucked into the game that he forgets about Tendou, and their closeness, and the smell of Tendou’s fennel and cinnamon bark body wash, and his own stupid, pointless crush on his best friend slash roommate.
He reaches the lobby where the characters in the game start arguing, and Tendou leans his head on Eita’s shoulder.
Eita
goes
still.
Tendou either doesn’t notice or he ignores it.
“This is my favourite game,” he says quietly. “Thanks for playing it.”
When he speaks, hot breath washes over Eita’s collarbones where they’re exposed by the loose neck of his t-shirt.
“Oh,” he says quietly. “Um, don’t worry about it; I like it.”
Tendou hums again, tonelessly. “I’m glad.”
His hands are in his lap and he’s playing with his fingers. Eita can’t focus on the game anymore. He wants to reach out and play with Tendou’s fingers himself.
Tendou sighs again, out through his mouth, and Eita looks back at the device in his hands, tries not to focus on his nice this feels. It’s temporary, he tells himself. He shouldn’t be enjoying this, anyway, not when Tendou probably ( definitely , Eita corrects himself in his head) doesn’t feel the same way.
Eita picks the door he wants Junpei to go through, and then Tendou speaks again, but this time, his breath ghosts across Eita’s neck.
“Hey,” he says. “Eita.”
“Mm?” Eita doesn’t look away from his DS, his pulse suddenly skyrocketing again.
Tendou sucks in a large breath, lets some of it out, then says, “I-”
There’s a loud pounding on the door, and they both jump, Eita nearly letting go of the DS.
Tendou recovers from the shock first, and shouts, “ What ?”
The doorknob twists and the door pushes open until Reon pokes his head in. He looks a bit sympathetic when he sees them, probably for Eita’s sake more than anything, but mostly just relaxed. “Are you guys still coming downstairs? Soekawa managed to get a couple of cases of Ramune without getting caught by Coach.”
Eita closes the DS with a quick snap and stands up, brushes off his thighs. “Yeah, I’m down.”
He turns back to look at Tendou, sees the other boy clearly struggling through something based on the look on his face. But Tendou pulls through it fast and stands up as well. “What flavours?”
“Lychee and something else, I didn’t see; I just came up to let you guys know.” Reon gives Eita a look then, an unspoken question in his eyes.
Eita pretends he doesn’t see it.
“Let’s go,” he says. “We can play more Zero Escape later.”
Tendou stuffs his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants and slouches forward. “Whatever you want, Semisemi.”
As they follow Reon back out of their room, Eita can’t help but feel like there’s something being left unsaid between them. Something important. He tries not to let it bother him.
Really, he does.
And it’s not his fault if his mind lingers on fennel and cinnamon bark as they descend the dormitory stairs.