Work Text:
Growing up with three kids directly imported from the Minamoto Clan, direct descendants of The District Police Sergeant, is jarring. While Princess, Teru-nii and Kou are fluffy little things inside their homes and generally everywhere else, they flip the switch criminally quick when they spot a legal misdemeanour occurring before their eyes. It's impressive, for sure, seeing it in action, but then the trio of reckless idiots always trail back to him for patching up whenever they're done crime catching so no, he doesn't like it one bit.
Kou is normally so self-sufficient, so good at literally everything except crime fighting, that it genuinely stresses Sou out. The kid can probably kill somebody in the kitchen with a rolling pin but tell him to run straight at a suspect and he'll take a left, 10 out of 9 times. Teru-nii bears the brunt of the grunt work, with Princess' speed aiding him. They're more than happy to keep Kou cooking and cleaning where he won't keep dying where they can help it, to which Sou wholeheartedly agrees with. Even he can fight crime better than the brat, and he has had zero of the brutal samurai training regime instilled upon him since birth.
Really. They were going to take photos for his elective class. Before he's eased off the back of the bike for Kou to barrel down the coastline highway in pursuit of a purse snatched...on a motorbike, who then gave up chasing after the guy and threw his bike at him
It worked, but then the ensuing scuffle got both sides bruised up while he and the victim had to call the police themselves and separating the cat fight.
"Stay still," he mutters, easing a cotton ball into the cut on Kou's face. "The fuck did you do, mop the asphalt with your face?"
Kou glares back at him, bright eyes defiant and burning with the flames of righteousness and justice and bike throwing stupidity. He pokes out a tongue, reigning himself in as to not throw his big self bodily onto the ground because he may be an athletic brat but he's a baby to pain.
"Justice must be carried out," his idiot friend huffs, flinching into himself as the iodine touches the raw cut.
"It can be carried out without the use of your face, you moron," he tuts, a hand reaching up to hold Kou's jaw, the grip not too tight that it would look forceful, but stable enough so that he can get his job done.
"I was kinda under a time constraint," Kou wrinkles his nose, hands wound tight into the worn material of Sou's scarf. It never was a problem, his friend holding onto his scarf when he's uncomfortable. It's easier to explain than holding hands, a habit they've never seemed quite comfortable into executing. It's always been this way: Sou wears the scarf, Kou holds on.
He presses the ends of the tape onto the kid's cheek, frowning at him all the while.
"You were under a brain constraint too, dumbass. Be more careful. Who will carry my tripod if you land in the hospital again?"
His words are direct contrasts from his hands, lingering at the jut of a sharp jaw, still retaining some baby fat but shaping up to angle into something menacing and solid. Radish-senpai would even call him hot in her standards. He feels chilled to his fingertips, hand cold and peeling from holing himself away to develop film photos, flakes of skin scraping on the underside of the jaw as he lets his hand drop, eyes still fixated on Kou's eyes.
Kou's eyes are so sharp and they look like they can see every stupid thought Sou carries inside his numbskull brain that he half wants to throw himself onto the road. But then he would be teased to beyond the grave.
Kou breathes out - low, even. This is okay for him. The Jaw Touching is. Fine. Probably.
Okay now he's pressing his face, smooshing his cheek like he's a mochi lump, into the tips of Sou's fingers. He looks young like this. Young and reckless and tiny and smaller than Sou. A brat, yes, but his brat. There's none of that sharpness in his cheeks and jaw. Sou's fingers are starting to bend at a strange angle - double jointed or not, that's going to hurt much later, and he needs these babies for a lot more than touching his childhood friend's suddenly developed jawline.
It is nice, but they are also in broad daylight! He might have a thick face most of the times but he's not about to do anything inappropriate when he is still in the Friend Zone.
They've been dancing around this for a while, since they've come to an understanding that...this is A Thing. Neither of them have approached the topic...so he doesn't want to push or pull any more than Kou is happy to.
But that's enough. He has to go. They have to leave. Now. Before...Before anything untoward can happen before his pure eyes!
Shoving Kou's head sideways, a tad gentler than their usual roughhousing, Sousuke stands, shuffles back, and turns away.
He finds that he can't meet Kou with a straight face. Not when he's blushing hard enough to replace a tomato in term of redness.
-.-
Amane might be committing murder - and seeing it through this time - if the Minamoto brat keeps on hanging off Yashiro like he's five years younger and a million times less attractive.
Amane isn't self-conscious in the least bit. He's pretty sure his stupid radish girlfriend is just as smitten with him as he is with her. But that doesn't mean Nene isn't instinctively drawn to hot boys! She sees a hot guy and she falls all over her face for him! It's unsightly and stupid! It makes him want to scarf down all the vegetables Tsukasa cast aside at dinner so he can gain a few more measly centimetres over his girlfriend when they're out on a date. She has heels and suddenly she looks like she's taking her little cousin out for the park. Yako had not so helpfully began stuffing his shoes with insoles that begin incrementing in height, so that now they look more a couple and less a pair of siblings.
"Senpai," wails Minamoto mournfully, like somebody spat in his cupcakes, face red and swollen. Okay, fine, that looks a bit dumb, but he can do that and keep a respectful distance away from his stupid radish! Why won't he go and do that to Yako? Shijima?
He sticks a pinkie into his ear, slouching in the cafe chair. "What's it this time, brat? And stop pawing all over the radish."
Yashiro tuts at him. "Jealousy is ugly on you, Yugi-kun."
That was low. That was a low blow. He's relegated to classmate, which is about an entire mountain worse than best friend. It's fine. He can sit and behave. Even cry a little into his donut.
"What's his problem then," he features vaguely at the human-like lump with his head slammed onto the coffee table.
Nene stares at him for a while, chipmunk cheeks moving as if there's an acorn in her mouth, as he watches on fondly. She's so stupid. He'll build an entire palace and four commemorative statues for her and her radish ankles.
Minamoto groans out the zombie words. It sounds like soba.
"Noodles?" He frowns. "Somebody told you your food is bad?"
Yashiro hazards a guess. "Toshiba? Your TV broke because your sister tried to parkour in the lounge again?"
Amane turns disbelieving eyes at the kid. "Minamoto Senior would not have let Toshiba as a company and franchise lived if his little princess got harmed."
"Pretty sure she would have wrecked the TV, Amane, not the other way around," chides Nene, as if she's not thinking it too.
Sitting up and wailing, Minamoto sniffs, tears of a liar.
"Sou is mad at me!" Along with a string of incoherent sobbing.
"In short," he says, five minutes after extracting actual teeth from the kid's mouth, hand massaging his temple, "Mitsuba is avoiding you."
Minamoto nods, while attempting to eat his weight in donuts.
"You have to admit it's a bit weird," his girlfriend chips in, arm reassuringly thrown over the broad shoulder of the brat who grew up too fast. "They're always together."
"It's like the goddamn mermaid curse," he snorts, kicking back. "Two souls tied to a single curse, bound by their life force."
Yashiro starts slapping the life out of the kid's back. "Like the red string of fate! You're destined to be together!"
Minamoto groans again. "Stop talking. I just want to talk to my Sousuke." He mulls over it a little. "My best friend," he decides on.
Amane snorts. "Me and Nene count as your best friends."
"Nene and I," his stupid radish murmurs, a habit she attained now, correcting his regional dialect.
Minamoto snorts. "You two count as best as a single best friend."
Nene looks affronted. "I'm at least almost a whole person."
Minamoto lifts his head then, brows puckered together.
"You're like, 90% of a person, senpai," he amends.
Amane can't even be mad at that because he's pretty sure he's only about 5% of a person on any good day after a date with the radish queen, so this is really selling him for double the price he normally put out for himself.
"I can be 10% of a best friend person," he nods, affirmative. "That's 5% more of a person than I'll ever be anyways."
Minamoto squints. "...Maybe you can have 95% of the human qualities, senpai, I don't feel safe giving him that much percentage."
Nene grins, linking hands with him. "Aww, don't be mean. He's 10% of a human on good days."
He lifts a brow, pulling her wrist to place a soft kiss on it. She smells like mulch and crushed daisies and how the fuck did she get those things on her wrist?
"Not 5 like we agreed on?" He teases.
She grins back. "I'm optimistic on your behaviour sometimes."
Clutching his heart, he leans back, chuckles spilling out. "This show of trust is overwhelming."
Minamoto braves all of this usual flirting with grace, most probably because he's too stuck in his own head to complain about the PDA.
Aiya. Seems serious if he's not bemoaning about his tragic fate.
"Minamoto," he sighs, digging a palm into his eye socket. "Kou-sama. Talk."
Minamoto groans some more and tries to bash his head open on the table.
-.-
Kou is a very very tired man.
Not a man yet, or a person, sometimes, but he's tired. That's correct. He is tiredness in an 18 year old's body.
He is so tired that he had forgone his usual principles. The PDA in front of him? He can't see it, can't hear it, he's not here, he's somewhere taking photos with Sou in his dreamland.
Technically Kou already put himself as a human wedge between them. He can't make it any more obvious that he is going to be severely disappointed if they start another kabuki routine about separated love. He will seriously beat somebody over the head.
"Satou and Koyou no help?" Yashiro asks, because she cares and she probably wants to spend time alone with the Yugi Gremlin Number One. Why, he's no idea, but love is love, and he himself can't protest to that when his own brother is conducting a weird courtship ritual of his own and no, he's not answering questions on that whole entire mess.
"They keep telling me to figure it out already," he stresses, with stress. "I do not know what it is not do I know how to figure it out."
Yugi makes an affirmative noise. "I'll toast to that, bro."
Senpai gives him a long look. "Amane-kun, you don't drink."
He frowns. "And I am not your brother."
Yugi sighs, slumping back into his chair. "You two keep on becoming more and more annoying with time. Like reverse wine."
He considers this. "So like water?"
Yugi waves him off. "Like expired cordial." Sitting up, he stabs a finger to his face. "And stop avoiding the topic. Don't think too much, kiddo. You don't have the brain cells for it anyways. Just do it."
He frowns, mentally adding Yugi to the list of People Who Speak In Cryptic.
"Shia la Beouf?" He offers tentatively. "And you're right. I do not have the brain cells. But you don't need to point it out like that."
Yugi snorts. "I'm not your pretty boy, I'm not going to sugarcoat my words."
"Sou doesn't sugarcoat his words."
"But Sou is your pretty boy?" Yugi quirks a brow, sipping obnoxiously from the fruit cocktail concoction that senpai got and vehemently refused to touch, stirring the melted ice with the metal straw.
He shuts his jaw with a click. The gremlin has a point.
Senpai reaches over to pat him on the back, but also to retrieve her wrist on his back. He's given up trying to stop the unstoppable force and the immovable object once the two are set on a collision course. He just cannot stop the concluding explosion as a mere mortal. Therefore he can only endure it.
"Don't think too much and be someone you're not, Minamoto-kun," senpai tells him, on her tiptoes to give him a hug. He must look as pathetic as he feels because even Yugi's head ruffle is a bit less aggressive today. They insist on seeing him off, standing side by side like a revolting married couple, twenty years into their matrimonial bliss but still disgustingly in love, looking over his sulking form.
Gah! Why is everyone being weird today?
Ah, oops, he should be texting nii-san when he'll be home - but oh, his brother hasn't called. Only missed calls from Sou.
rude bitch friend: oi where r u
rude bitch friend: i was going to see you before going away to see some friends of mine is u mad
rude bitch friend: u can be mad after i give u ur disgusting potato jellies come home quick
Kou sprints home.
("Where were you?"
"Oh, traffic earring. Didn't think little ol' me matters that much to you."
"Sou."
"Bought you jellies. Place was further than I thought."
"Why?"
Sou's smile is bright, like it always had been. Kou's breath feels like it's been punched out of his chest by a particularly heavyweight division boxer offender.
"Just because I wanted to be nice to my favourite Minamoto. Or have I lost the right to claim you as my fav?"
He slaps a hand over his eyes, overwhelmed with everything all at once.
"Whatever. As you were.")
-.-
Growing up with Kou, nii-san and Princess certainly has its charms, along with the usual bumps. But he's alright with it. He's happy being the adopted Minamoto, the fourth unheard child of the renowned clan - he loves them all equally.
Which is why it's hard to settle this when Princess has him in one grip and Kou has him in the other, both of them tugging relentlessly.
"He promised to play with me!" The littlest Minamoto screeches, face scrunched in the most adorably murderous pout in the history of pouts ever. Sou would take her seriously, but he is also trying not to laugh at Kou pouting in a lesser intensity next to his sister, voice pitched on a reedy whine.
"He has to study with me or else we both fail our midterms!" Kou hisses back, feral.
Sou tries to placate them. "I'm sure we can compromise, you two -"
"No!" Princess stomps her feet. "I can't lose on principles!"
"I can't lose my tuition fees," stresses Kou, with stress.
His sister pokes her tongue at him, merciless. "It's too bad it's not my problem or money then, nii-chan."
Sou barely manages to get between them, hands rubbing comforting circles on the back of their necks as he tries and searches for a solution. What's going to guarantee a non-screaming, no failing outcome?
"How about you sit with us while we study, and we can both play with you at the same time, hey, Hime-chan?" He pleads, turning to whisper furiously to Kou at the same time. "Play along, stupid."
Kou has a pout on his face, stubbornness threatening to stick like dango even if he is turning 19 and in college already. Seriously. He's too old to be fighting with his middle schooler sister. Someone has to let loose.
"I don't want her to occupy your time with me," his friend admits, scuffing his socked feet into the tatami mat, straw ends scraping as the words beat furiously inside his head. "Kinda just want it to be you and me, Sou."
Princess is growing red in the face. He puts his gay on hold for two seconds to tend to her, where she is fisting her hands into his collar, frowning at him.
"You'll take photos of me later on the vertical rope course, right, Sousuke-nii?"
That was a suspiciously easy acquiescence.
"Sure, Hime-chan. Anything for my Princess."
When she bounds away to bother Teru, Kou pokes him in the side, making him twitch in place. Not turning, he sighs, gathering his hair into a loose ponytail.
"What."
"If she's your princess, what am I?"
"If you're fishing for compliments, you won't find them here, brat. And you're Kou. You're my idiot Minamoto."
"Your favourite idiot?" Kou's voice is small.
He turns around, stifling a laugh. "Always. You're my idiot."
Kou's nerves are jumble upon jumble of messes when he grabs onto a tanned wrist.
-.-
All advice regarding his dilemma of approaching a heart attack whenever he's around his best friend had insofar been very useless, but he takes solace in knowing that at least everyone is as rubbish at feelings as he is. Even the people in relationships don't know how they got there.
In the words of the Gremlin - "Just because I'm dating the Radish Queen Supreme doesn't mean I know I did it."
That's Great. Good to know.
Anyways, he's hip checking Sou out of hogging the sink for his hair curling ritual as if there isn't another mirror in the house that he can hog. He just likes bothering Kou on any level possible, pressing closely to his left side, a line of heat that is constant and always there, humming a stupid tune as he grabs at his hair with the steaming straightener. For his part, he has called off shaving his chin because there's no way he can safely do that in the hazardous zone of hot appliances in the hands of a kid who thought it was funny to throw rocks at him when they were in second grade. He'll sooner die of a Sousuke-induced accident than any other actual accident out there that people statistically die from and that will be how he go.
"Do you need something?" Sou pauses, eyebrow quirked.
He asked like he owns this half of the land and its immediate territories.
Lou stares at him, flat and unimpressed. "It's my sink, you freeloader. I want to use it, but there's this stain that won't go away."
"There are other sinks in this house. Go find another one," the boy shrugs and turns back to pulling his hair with the hot iron.
Kou stares up at the sky, asking why his ancestors had forsaken him. Why this best friend. Why can't he be best friend with Akane or someone a little bit easier to fight in a hand to hand combat situation? Why Sousuke who knows about his shoulder injury and the weird dodgy knee along with literally every single injury he had ever had? That's an unfair advantage. He should sue for that.
"How about a compromise, traffic earring?" Sou murmurs, holding a strand of long hair between his knobbly fingers.
"Will I die in this compromise?" He asks, just because it's reflex, not because he genuinely care about any aspect of him dying. He can't die. Not until nii-san said it's okay.
"I don't think anything can kill you at this point, unless it's your brother telling you no," snorts his traitorous friend, giving him the heated straightener. "Straighten the back. I can't reach that far."
He takes the straightener, even as he grumbles and snaps at Sou, meaning about none of it.
"Don't order me around, Mitsuba," he nags, pulling the hair strands in between the heating iron. He doesn't tug as hard as he used to do, mostly because the nagging he got as retaliation was too heavy a price for such a momentary satisfaction as hearing Sou hiss like a feral cat picked out of a dumpster and dangled by the nape. They’re both too similar in that they’re equally stubborn, refusing to acquiesce to each other’s burgeoning wants. But it’s a routine rather than any sense of actual malice held in their bones, for Kou would nag Sousuke until he’s bleeding out of one ear but nothing else can harm his Sousuke.
His. That has a nice ring to it.
Sou grumbles but doesn’t jerk his head away, relaxing into the occasional head pats he absently administered onto the smooth head of hair. “I can’t call you Minamoto back, because princess will come running.”
He snorts, and raps a knuckle to the top of that head.
“What’s with the get up today? You modelling instead of photographing?”
Sou shrugs and doesn’t talk. Doesn’t tell him anything besides the order for him to do his hair. For their many years spent together, Kou can’t get a good read on him at all - he is an entire open book of no secrets held, while he barely scratched the surface of his childhood friend. It’s a stale taste on his tongue, though he doesn’t have any right to be feeling affront about not knowing some secrets. He’s not very good with words, and neither is Sou. Sou takes photos to express what he wants to say and Kou punches his way out of things. It’s been what’s established between them.
It’s how he has to get good at reading non-verbal cues, how he can see the tense silences and shoulders.
“Well,” he settles with, because he knows a lost cause when he doesn’t hear it coming. “Don’t mess up the back. You know it takes me twice as long to get you ready than Hime-sama does.”
Sou shifts then, hair slipping out of the straightener, eyes tipping back to meet his - he’s taller now, he keeps forgetting that they’re not quite the same height anymore - light eyes twinkling.
“Do your worst, traffic light earring.”
Something goes twang in his chest and he snaps his head away, blinking out the aftermath of that sound. It's not that unfamiliar once he pays closer attention to it. Ah. This. He knows this by heart. It's always been the same.
-.-
Nene doesn’t usually come to kendo practices - mainly because Amane and Aoi occupy all the time that she has and outside of them, Shijima-san also whisks her away. It’s rare that she gets to run off to see how Kou is and how his preparatory mock matches are coming along. Usually his sister is able to attend his practice sessions and Mitsuba is always there, but Nene is Kou’s precious senpai from Kamome, they should support and uplift one another in their chosen professions. She studies plants, he studies the blade - together they are on complete paramilitary farmer unit.
Amane told her she’s being dumb, but he’s also dating her, so in the end, she’s great at picking people.
Over the years, Kou amassed an alarming number of fans who ooh and ahh over his decisive sword swings, his careful stance, the set to his ‘wide wide shoulders’ - an actual quote, taken from a sighing upperclassman. Nene couldn’t come to the practice sessions because of time and also relationship commitments at first, but she didn’t want to fend off Kou’s fans who tend to hold no reservations about brandishing his sword forms in the spectator area and Nene did not need to see the last strike demonstrated on an actual, unsuspecting person.
Amane laughed until he cried when she cried to him about it and promised to accompany her so that he can protect her from any enthusiastic fans and their swinging swords. She knows it’s just his thinly veiled excuse to tail her every movement, but honestly, she summons him at the smallest inconveniences, so payback is fair. Compromise always in a relationship, that’s how it goes.
Even if she has an inkling of Amane being genuinely interested in chaos and mayhem happening before his eyes. His most favourite phrase besides ‘You called, Nene-chan?’ is ‘I love drama when I’m not in it’.
He’s already losing it before he stepped foot inside the dojo.
Kou is in his head gear, conferring fervently with his sensei. Princess and Mitsuba have taken up first row seats, cheering him on, snapping photos at odd vantage points. She voiced her concern over them possibly hurting themselves in standing in odd positions to grab the ‘perfect shot’, but the artistic spirit must not be confined by the mortal body and instead must drive it to capture the perfect Form, or so Mitsuba’s speech goes. She doesn’t have the entirety of that speech jotted down - only Kou does, because he empathised with the artistic spirit but he is also fond of Mitsuba, so that is where things are.
“Amane-kun,” Nene tries, and fails, to shush her boyfriend. “Stop laughing.”
Amane plasters himself against her side, giggling hard enough to nearly dislodge her shoulder from its designated socket. They’re loud and unsightly about it, as she profusely apologise for her unruly boyfriend and dragging him by the scruff of his neck away, as Mitsuba waves at them from his eternal squat from Kou’s left.
“What’s the brat doing now?” Amane asks as he lifts an arm for her to ease into his side, her phone unlocked to zoom in on the tournament info Princess sent her the other week, the tiny script too muddled for her to decipher. There’s a click of the tongue, as the nuisance she totes around shuffles her on his shoulder, stealing her phone from her.
“Wha - why,” she protests weakly, not even bothering with getting up. Boyfriend...nice...warm...Nene stays.
The warm boyfriend pats the top of her head absently, glasses perched on his nose to squint at the tournament flyer.
“Who the fuck prints flyers anymore,” he mumbles, drawing her closer. “I think it’s just some preliminary qualifiers before the intercollege league,” he mutters, muffling the rest of his sentence into the crown of her head. “Practice is boring, anyways. Why did we come?”
She wriggles an arm loose to pat the front pocket of his hoodie. “I came. You followed me here. There is no ‘we’ in this thing.”
Nene can hear the snort from all parts of her body.
“There is always a ‘we’ in this thing. It started when you asked me out, Nene-chan. That’s the deal. We’re like those buy one get one free package. Can’t get one without the other,” Amane smugly argues and she knows he’s right, but she also can’t lose on principles, because they both like winning. Thinking of some way to rebuff him, she scans around, seeing the opportune moment that Mitsuba’s lens point at them, clicking loudly and embarrassingly, before switching back to clicking feverishly at Kou.
The cheers are even louder when Kou approaches actual match season. Somebody brought in a kendo sword today - she saw it when Amane not so subtly dragged her away to the stand so that she stood out of swinging range of that assault weapon. It’s huge. Can’t really hide it from sight or swing or however that saying goes.
“He took a photo of us,” she whines, hiding her face in his arm. It’s admittedly a very nice, solid, warm arm.
Amane pats her head reassuringly. “For all it’s worth, I think it was to distract you from seeing the million photos he snapped of Minamoto the Second.”
Her whines take on a higher frequency and Amane only laughs at her. Even when he was being pinched for it.
“Mitsuba-kun,” she greets, beelining towards him with the speed and urgency of somebody who needs to get rid of murder evidence. “Send me the photo then delete it from every memory storing device you have.”
“Hi senpai,” the boy greets cheerily, with an ease of somebody who is used to getting his way, possibly because Kou spoiled him for over a decade. “No, senpai, can’t. Gotta have blackmail material over Yugi-san after all. It’ll come in handy.”
Setting her jaw straight, and also because she has to physically ready herself to take a page out of Amane’s book, she tips closer, mouthing the ultimatum phrase - ‘I’ll tell Kou-chan about the photos you took of him’ - to the taller boy.
The photo becomes her new lock screen photo and its original source eradicated under Amane’s watchful eye, who pats her cheeks fondly and tells her she’s been raised well.
She kicked him for that.
(“What’d you and senpai talked about?”
“Nothing important to you, Kou. Win the match, will ya?”
“I will, I will! You’ll be there after all!”)
-.-
Sousuke wakes up, crusty and tired from running himself into the ground helping the festival not burn down after the horde of fans stampede through after hearing that Kou was competing in one of the gym near the edge of the festival. He was pulling quadruple duties - hype man, security, festival coordinator, camera man - that he honestly didn’t remember how he got home and how he got into a bed. He’s been a bit of a messy sleeper since the start of his birth and he’s kicked off all the blankets, bracketed weirdly by something too warm to be needing those blankets for anyways. A line of heat across his weight, light breeze ruffling through the top of his head and he leans back, blinking at the person draped over him like he’s a Pikachu body pillow.
Kou. Sleeping in the same bed. Cradling him like a personal human pillow. Thigh and knee pressing into his.
It’s not a problem, per se - this hasn’t trespassed into any dangerous, non-platonic lands yet - they’ve shared beds before when there were no futons and he’s too spoiled to sleep elsewhere. They certainly raised each other up to be quite tactile with one another - a habit they quite haven’t lost going into the last year of their teens and into actual, legitimate, adulthood of the scary twenties. They’re always pulling at hair and fixing earrings and fussing over each other’s collars - to slip in and out of ‘this is what friends do’ to ‘this is not what friends do’ - that at this slippery slope, to backpedal is not only ludicrous, but also emotionally damaging on Kou, and Sousuke cannot have that. Over his dead body.
This is warm and comforting and sunshine and rainbows - he doesn’t want to leave, but he’s afraid he won’t leave at all if he doesn’t start hustling out of here in the next three minutes. Why three? Who knows. He’s gay and he’s panicking and his crush is holding him tenderly. Tender cradles are bad and cardiac arrest-inducing for gays. That’s just the rule.
Kou is warm and comforting, who smells nice and looks stupid with his face all smooshed up into his favourite pillow, but Kou is a goddamned athlete with arm muscles the size of Sousuke’s thighs. He cannot dislodge this dead weight off him even if he is held at gunpoint. It’s getting a bit urgent.
“Stop,” comes the mumble, when he tries to shove the tall and lanky moron, maybe-crush bodily off him, “movin’ so damn much.”
“Kou,” he hisses. “I need to go.”
“No~” the baby whines, shuffling even closer to him. Sousuke can feel his breath getting stuck in his throat and never exiting. “Stay.”
“Kou, come on, I’ll give you a pillow in return, just, lift your arm, come now, play nice -”
An icy blue eye snaps open, nose wrinkled up in petulance. “I want Sou.”
“Yeah, and Sou wants to leave, so one of us gotta give, buddy,” he sighs, making no real attempt at escape. “What’s with you today? So clingy.”
He meant it as a joke, for Kou to shuffle back and laugh it off, for them to avoid the issue indefinitely. But sleep must have removed about 99% of all brain functions for his idiot friend, because he’s rolling to his side, both eyes open unevenly, top lip curling in a pout.
“I spoil you all the time. You should spoil me sometimes too.”
“I’ll spoil you when it’s not cuddling. I’m uncomfy,” he reasons back, noticing the tremors in his chest are rising.
Kou’s hand catches on his ankle and he yelps, almost slipping, as his friend yanks him by the leg, as he flails and almost kneed him where it would hurt. A lot.
“You’re uncomfortable because your fragile masculinity won’t let you embrace affectionate gestures from people who care about you!” Kou accuses, brow pinched together in a furious frown.
“Fragile? Masculinity?” He scoffs, disbelieving, the tremors momentarily forgotten. “I’m the least fragile thing in this house.”
The other boy glares at him, all kicked puppy and hosed down cat, furiously spitting but also holding one out for him. The tremors are back - spreading from his ribs to his shoulder, along his arm and to his fingers - twitching, anxious energies feeding off from his irrational, baseless fears.
“You keep running away,” Kou notes, unhanding him. “Am I making you uncomfortable? Should I keep my distance? I was only kidding, Sousuke, if it’s truly uncomfortable, I’ll stop -”
He holds up a hand. Breathes in a deep breath.
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
“Now’s really not the time for jokes, Mitsuba-san.”
He slams a palm on Kou’s thigh for that, though he bet the brat barely felt any of that.
“Listen. It’s my fault because it’s my feelings,” he inhales again, almost choking on oxygen. “I’ve been liking you, more than a friend, for a while now, and well, the realisation is still settling in, I guess. It’s not or should ever be, your concern. I’ll figure the thoughts out, just,” he eases himself away from Kou’s range of touch, swallowing his fears. “Needin’ my space.”
The blonde marshmallow stares at him - long and calculating, like he’s sizing up an opponent before deciding where it would win the fastest and the most points then strike. The idiot grew up so well, but this is still Sou’s idiot, the kid who kicked him in soccer and equally travelled with him to obscure hill sides for him to grab a photo of a rare butterfly. They’re in it together for ages now that the feelings, frankly, are a little late on the realisation plane, but he’s here and he’s going to slowly go through it, like he has time to spare.
“You’re still the same to me,” Kou admits, blinking, finally, in that long instance. “Crush or not. I’ve chosen you from the start. I was all - ah ha, mine - from the get go. Whatever we become along the way doesn’t really matter to me as long as we,” he gestures to the air, rigid with tension, “come as a packaged deal.”
In a roundabout sense, the idiot blonde crush is accepting and even confessing his own ingrained, long-realised opinions about them as a concept. It’s not novel or as world-ending as Sou dreaded - a simple acknowledgement, warm fingertips on his ankle, steady, grounding. Even his own crush realisation was lacking in the oh department - he was cleaning his lenses when Kou showed him a cooking video, mumbling into his hair about how he would make it for them later on, and all Sou thought was ‘I live because you are stupid and I love you’. No reason. He just likes the idiot because the idiot wears a safety talisman in the gay ear and is tall and loyal, cooks good, would follow him to all ends of the world.
“I was really stressed out,” he complains, dropping his forehead into his palm. His nerves are racing, from the good kind of adrenaline-induced event this time and not from overreacting cortisol trying to ruin his entire immune system.
“Well,” there is a rustle of blankets as Kou tangled himself in them and Sou has to rescue him. “Well,” Kou starts again, staring into his one visible eye.
Making a disgruntled noise, the idiot reaches to his bangs and sweeps the curtain of hair behind an ear, nodding as he gets access to both eyes this time.
“Well?” He raises a brow, swallowing down the frantic thumping of his pulse.
“Well,” Kou starts again, low and soft, like it’s a secret between just them. “I’ve always been your favourite. There’s been nobody else.”
He corners Kou in the kitchen, two arms braced against the boy’s side, bracketing him in. The blonde blinks down at him, pink apron sashed around his waist, long eyelashes drooping the longer they stare at him.
“It’s not that there’s been nobody else,” he stands on his tip toes, voice soft and low, a truth between just the two of them. “I’ve had my pick of plenty, and I’ve chosen you. There’s plenty of others, but you’re right,” his hand trails alongside Kou’s jaw, behind his ears, to the hair at the nape of his neck, “you’ve always been my favourite, Kou.”