Work Text:
That first night, Shotaro didn’t sleep at all.
With Akiko and the rest of the welcoming party gone, and the agency in still and silent darkness, Philip’s return was dreamlike; impossible. Shotaro rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, straining to see the ceiling above him. He tried to picture Philip on the other side of that door: sleeping in the small bed in the alcove on the lower level, or sacked out on some other surface because he'd been somewhere strange when he got sleepy.
It felt unreal. An idea with as little substance as Philip had had, in the end.
*
He pushed a cup of coffee towards Philip instead. Their hands brushed, and Shotaro pulled his own hand back, curling his fingers in towards his palm.
“Morning,” Shotaro croaked. He cleared his throat and attempted to look less bedraggled than he felt. A hat would have helped.
“This is very bad, Shotaro,” Philip observed. He took a second sip, a small furrow appearing in his forehead. He looked up, his mouth quirking. “Your coffee-making skills haven’t improved after a year under Terui Ryu’s tutelage.”
“Why, you …” Shotaro reached out to swipe at the back of Philip’s head. Philip ducked away, his eyes bright.
Shotaro could still feel the ghost impression of Philip’s hair sliding against his fingertips.
The problem was that he’d had one chance; there had been one moment when Shotaro could have grabbed Philip in a hug and held him as tight as he wanted to. But Shotaro had no practice at hugging, and Philip had no practice being hugged either, Shotaro supposed. So instead there had been a flailing tackle that caught and didn’t hold, Philip laughing as he ducked away. And now there was no way to get the moment back and Shotaro just –
“That punk motorcycle won’t let anybody else near the coffeemaker when he’s around anyway,” Shotaro said.
The detective agency door swung open before Philip could respond, letting in Akiko. Terui followed her in, for reasons Shotaro chose not to question at 8 o’clock in the morning.
“Philip-kun!” Akiko cried. “I wondered if I had dreamed it again!”
She made the admission easily, coming in and propping herself against the bench. She stretched her arms above her. “Ahhhh, I haven’t slept so well in a year.”
“Did you have dreams about me coming back, Aki-chan?” Philip asked.
She pulled out her slipper, hitting his shoulder with it – more gently than she would have done if it were Shotaro. “Idiot!” she said. “Of course. Ah! But usually I was Skull, and I was fighting an imposter pretending to be Fang Joker. I knew he was an imposter because you were gone, but just as I would land a hard punch –” She demonstrated with a jab to the left. “You would remove your belt and be yourself!”
She leaned back against Terui, who had come to stand behind her.
He stiffened for a moment, then gingerly touched her arms at the elbows, keeping her steady. He gave Philip and Shotaro a nod of greeting, faint colour staining his cheeks.
Shotaro was losing to Terui Ryu at knowing how to reach out to someone when he wanted to.
Also: “You were Skull?” Shotaro demanded of Akiko.
“What? What?” she demanded. “I’m not good enough to be Skull?” She darted around the counter and launched herself at his back, one arm tight around his neck while the other brandished her shoe.
In the resulting confusion, Philip shoved his cup in Terui’s direction. “Coffee,” Shotaro heard him say, his tone dictatorial. “Shotaro is trying to poison us.”
Shotaro couldn’t be outraged at both this and Akiko’s attack, so he settled on trying to wrest Akiko’s slipper away. “You!” he protested. “You’re still a thousand years too early to be Skull.”
His ears rang as the slipper connected, and he didn’t hear the next thing she said.
He wouldn’t say it, because she didn’t need any encouragement, but Shotaro was fairly sure Akiko couldn’t be anyone but herself. As much as she was her father’s daughter, if she became a rider she would be her own rider, with nobody else’s name.
She hit him again, harder, and he gave a howl of outrage, turning to engage with her attack properly.
Terui took Philip’s proffered cup, carefully breathed in the aroma rising with the steam, and stalked to the sink. He lifted his chin, looking at Shotaro where he grappled with Akiko. “This is terrible,” he said evenly, and poured it out.
Akiko subsided against Shotaro’s back, her arm a loose link around his neck instead of a stranglehold. Her chin dug into Shotaro’s shoulder. “The detective agency felt quiet without you, Philip-kun,” she said.
Shotaro thought about pointing out that Philip had been making less noise than any of them. But it wasn’t as though she was wrong.
Akiko sidled towards Terui, who was now making coffee, and Shotaro met Philip’s eyes. They were sparkling. It was the old look of wondering curiosity, as though all of them were scientific subjects. But there was so much fondness mixed in that he looked like a different person to the kid Shotaro had promised to take care of, the devil he’d promised to ride with, three years ago. He looked like that boy’s brighter twin.
On the other side of the room, the Frog Pod spooked as it spotted its reflection in the hand mirror Akiko had left on the couch, breaking into a clamour of all the Saheiji of the Wind quotes Shotaro and Akiko had programmed into it last Friday night. Shotaro jumped and pressed his hands to his ears, loudly abusing the robot’s stupidity as he started towards the couch.
He let himself brush Philip’s shoulder with his hand on the way past. Philip turned to watch, a smile catching up the edge of his mouth. Shotaro told himself, sharply, to stop it: to stop feeling this sharp wanting in his stomach, this sense of loss.
Philip was here. Shotaro could make himself believe that, without needing to prove it with nearness and body heat.
He’d have to.
*
Shotaro turned over and banged his head down on his pillow, setting up a tired ache behind his temples. His eyes were scratchy and his arms and legs twinged with phantom muscle pains. In fact all of him ached, exhausted tension prickling at him all over.
He rolled over again. Then he dragged himself up into a sitting position. He reached out with one hand and pulled the curtain back, a waft of colder air prickling his skin in its wake. He strained his ears but everything was quiet. No sound escaped Philip’s door on the far side of the darkened agency.
If Philip was gone, Shotaro wouldn’t know it.
He wrapped his arms around his up-drawn knees and pressed his face against the duvet. Then he gave a muffled groan and tossed the bedclothes back, rolling out of bed and stumbling almost to his knees on fatigue-heavy and uncooperative legs.
He knocked into what felt like everything in the room before he found his way to the cool metal of the door. Soft light spilled out as soon as he began to push it open.
The light drew his eyes first to Philip’s whiteboard, research notes on something random and archaically obscure scribbling into indecipherability and finally trailing away as Philip gave in to sleep. Then his searching gaze found Philip himself.
Shotaro let out his breath.
Philip was sprawled on the couch, the shape of his shoulders illuminated in light and shadows by the low light at the whiteboard. He’d tucked a coat around himself – not his own; one of Shotaro’s that he must have left down here.
Shotaro moved towards him, almost helplessly.
There was a rustle, and Philip pushed up onto his elbow. He blinked, pushing sleep from his eyes with a striped sleeve. He was still wearing the coloured pegs in his hair. They were snarled up in tangles.
Shotaro sat down on the edge of the couch. His hands twisted together in his lap, his knuckles white. “I dreamed you weren’t here,” he said.
It hadn’t been a dream, because he hadn’t been asleep, but it was the first thing to come out when he opened his mouth, the words hushed and strange in the stillness.
“Shotaro?”
Shotaro made an awful, undignified sound in his throat and toppled sideways, grabbing Philip around the waist and holding on.
“Oh,” Philip said. Shotaro ducked his head and squeezed harder, pressing his face into the clips in Philip’s hair.
After a moment he felt Philip’s hand against his own hair. He was stroking, the touch hesitant and unskilled. The lurch of emotion as he realised it nearly choked Shotaro.
“Even though we were Double the day before yesterday?” Philip asked. He sounded as though he was puzzling it out, Shotaro’s feelings a puzzle box to be solved.
Shotaro wished him good luck with that. He couldn’t have untangled them himself, except that Philip was real and touchable and his breath was stirring Shotaro’s hair, and Shotaro wasn’t sure he could breathe himself without that right now.
He tightened his fingers in the back of Philip’s long hoodie and let out a ragged breath.
Philip shivered, just a little, Shotaro’s breath on the skin of his neck. Senses overloaded, Shotaro leaned in to press a kiss there.
Before Shotaro could do more than begin to stiffen and back off, horrified ice in his spine, he heard Philip make a soft sound – pleased and interested. Philip halted Shotaro’s retreat by laying his hand against Shotaro’s cheek, lifting his chin to look directly into Shotaro’s eyes.
Shotaro was terrified.
He was also incapable of keeping from leaning in again. Not when Philip was looking at him with that expectant brightness in his eyes.
“Are you – sh-sure –” Shotaro tried to ask, and then he wasn’t talking because Philip’s mouth was against his.
It was a soft, quick kiss. Shotaro felt the curve of Philip’s smile against his mouth, taking Shotaro’s breath away the way Philip’s smile always did. Then Philip’s hand was in Shotaro’s hair again, tugging him back in, and this time Shotaro couldn’t have kept from deepening the kiss if he’d been drowning. He caught Philip’s cheeks in his hands, thumb knocking against a skewed green hair clip as his fingers curled against Philip’s ear. He caught the sound as Philip’s mouth opened on a soft exhale against Shotaro’s.
Philip struggled up to his knees, pressing closer and letting his mouth drag against Shotaro’s lower lip. Philip made another pleased sound, breathless now. His tongue darted out to skate against Shotaro’s teeth; testing, then exploring further.
Shotaro kissed back, heat and sweetness and the devastating sweep of Philip’s shoulder blades under Shotaro’s hands as he let them slip around to Philip's back, tightening and pulling him in closer still. Philip seemed to be exploring the ways he could get Shotaro to gasp and tremble. He was gently scritching his fingers at Shotaro’s nape, now, shivers of electricity chasing his fingers across Shotaro’s scalp, while he tried out new angles for the kiss.
It was a ridiculous endeavour, since there was almost no way Philip could have touched Shotaro that wouldn’t have made him tremble right now. But the idea that Philip might be making some kind of mental catalogue was so painfully dear that Shotaro let the kiss go and tangled his hands in Philip’s hair, dropping his mouth against Philip’s temple, his hair, and finally pressing their foreheads together.
Philip’s breathing sounded loud and real in the still air, harsh as they both caught their breath. Shotaro pulled back slowly, his hand slipping from the curve of Philip’s head down to his shoulder. Philip’s hand came up to his own mouth, breath still coming hard against his fingers. He met Shotaro’s eyes and his mouth curved in a smile of such sweetness that Shotaro felt weak.
“I was glad to be Cyclone Joker right after I came back,” Philip said, as though they’d been having a conversation.
Shotaro nodded several times. “Oh?” he managed finally.
Philip tilted his head. “I think it was easier to feel grounded, sharing your body,” he said. “Sometimes, in mine, even though I’m as heavy as you, it feels as though I might float away.” There was a chink in the brightness of his smile this time. “Did you know, Shotaro, last night I got up seven times just to walk around the room touching things, and it made me feel more relaxed. Isn’t that strange?”
For a moment Shotaro sincerely wanted to punch himself in the face. Of course Philip would have been more anxious and on edge than Shotaro, after what had happened to him. What kind of partner was Shotaro, that he’d been so caught up in his own feelings and hadn’t seen it.
He thought he understood tonight better, too.
“Was this –” Shotaro cleared the roughness from his voice. “Was that why you – ”
Philip gave him a look of zero comprehension. Shotaro gestured helplessly between them, colour rising on his cheeks. “Because you wanted to feel grounded?” he asked. “Was that why – because if so, I won’t – we can forget about it, if you like –” He swallowed, tried to keep his voice from sinking with his hopes; looked away and back to Philip. “I mean that it doesn’t have to be –”
Philip looked confused. “Well, but I wanted to kiss you before,” he said.
Shotaro gaped. “You –” he said. “Wait – no, that’s – what?” Philip leaned back, out of the way of Shotaro’s pointing finger, and Shotaro snatched it back as he realised he’d been flailing.
“At least, I thought that I would like to, probably,” Philip clarified. “But you never indicated that you wanted to, Shotaro, so it was only a thought.” A warm, delighted smile caught at his mouth, and he picked up Shotaro’s hand from the couch between them. “If I had known this was what it was like, I would have said something.”
Shotaro’s heart tried to beat out of his chest as Philip ducked his head to kiss the pulse in Shotaro’s wrist. He must have felt the way it jumped because he lifted his head to look at Shotaro, bright and satisfied.
Shotaro had never let himself want this, not once. He’d never let the thought creep into his conscious mind, never let even a scrap escape of the longing that thrummed through him for this boy his mentor had left in his care. This ridiculously beautiful, gentle, ruthless boy in love with learning; sharing Shotaro’s mission and his mind and his body; biddable and intractable and insightful and blind and walking around with goddamned pegs in his hair. Shotaro had never let himself even know it – and at some point Philip had simply looked at him and thought, Yes, I would like to.
"Oh," he said. It was more breath than word.
But Shotaro was used to scrambling to catch up, when it came to Philip. He jumped to his feet, pulling Philip up by their linked hands.
Philip stumbled, surprised, and Shotaro used their momentum to spin him around and tip him back onto Shotaro’s arm. Philip let his knee bend automatically to accommodate the movement, easy familiarity with the way Shotaro moved, as if the last year had never happened.
"It isn't always like that," Shotaro said, low and confident. Philip blinked up at at him, his mouth beginning to quirk. Shotaro lay a finger under Philip's chin and tilted it up. "It depends on your partner," Shotaro finished. He dipped him into a showy kiss.
Philip's eyes were bright with laughter as he let Shotaro pull him back up onto his feet.
"Really, Shotaro."
He was clearly about to say something with the word half-boiled in it, so Shotaro pulled him in by the waist and kissed him again. Philip huffed out an amused breath against his mouth, then let himself slip easily from laughing to focused and eager.
He was going to say it anyway, later. Shotaro didn't actually mind.
Philip making fun of him was Philip warm and alive and right there. Finally within reach.