Archive of Our Own

It had begun the way all great adventures do: as a desperate attempt to avoid doing extra work.

“So you’re not actually dating someone?”

“I’m totally dating someone.”

Takami Keigo was lying through his teeth, and both he and Usagiyama knew it. Propping herself up on her desk with her arms, Rumi leaned forward just enough to peek out of their cubicle at their manager’s retreating back.

It was all the manager’s fault, Keigo knew. Him, everyone above him, and their holiday parties. Meanwhile, Rumi pulled herself back into their shared cubicle.

“Show me their picture,” she said.

“I don’t have one.” At least this time he was telling the truth. He couldn’t have a picture of someone who didn’t exist.

“Right.” Rotating her chair around so that she returned to facing her desk, she added, “I actually had someone in mind to save you, but if you have someone already, forget it.”

“You did?” Leave it to Rumi. Keigo stared at the back of her head for a moment, listening to the furious clacking of her keys as she pounded out what was undoubtedly a professionally scathing email about their last client meeting.

“Well,” he finally said, “you may as well give me their contact, in case this relationship goes bad.”

He could almost hear her smirk in return. “You got it.”

The reason for the lie was simple. Their office holiday parties, in a word, sucked.

In hindsight, both his and Rumi’s machinations were an overreaction. The worst that happened was that at the end of every year, they had to sit through some wrinkly and overblown chairmen extolling company virtues that everyone knew only existed on paper while they ate catered food by candlelight. And then they had to pretend to believe those speeches when the chairmen came by to make happy small talk.

Small talk which, last year, began to involve less of the chairmen and more of the chairmen’s equally overblown children. Overblown, tipsy, flirty children, who seemed to have never heard of the word boundaries, let alone its meaning. You’re single? How? Why? You don’t miss dating? Don’t you want to at least try?

Okay, no, they weren’t overreacting at all. It had been miserable enough that as soon as they’d managed to escape last year’s party, Rumi had loudly announced in their car that she would be in a relationship before the next party just to avoid those corporate demon spawn, and Keigo had been right behind her.

Evidently, only one of them had managed to complete their mission. Keigo had been compromised by other obstacles, which...well, maybe there was more than one reason that he could use a relationship. Not even Rumi needed to know that part. Which led him to his current predicament: drinking overpriced coffee in the middle of the afternoon with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Piercy on the other side of the table. Also known as Touya. Just Touya.

He looked down at his phone screen, which was open to a text conversation with his so-called savior that Rumi had only described as “a friend of a friendly friend”. It had been about an hour since Keigo had first contacted Touya via text and about five minutes since he had first met him in person, and he already knew he was in over his head.

Rumi had promised him someone reliable. She promised him someone who could adapt quickly. She did not promise him someone nice. In fact, most of the signs she’d given off while giving him Touya’s number pointed towards the distinct possibility that he was not nice.

But based on the fact that he had showed up within thirty seconds of their planned meeting time, he was reliable. Based on his lack of confused questions or expressions as Keigo detailed his entire wretched plan to him, he seemed pretty quick to get on board with anything. And based on his lack of any other expression whatsoever as Keigo cracked multiple jokes about his situation, he was probably not very nice.

He was also, which Rumi had not hinted at whatsoever, extremely hot. How someone like him had an open schedule for the Christmas season, Keigo had no idea, but he was not about to contest it.

“It’s a pretty short job,” he said, trying not to stare at Touya’s mouth as he took a sip of his coffee. “We just need to pretend to date until the day before New Year’s Eve, max. Then we can pretend that we’re going to a party on your side of the family or something—”

Touya raised his eyebrows. “Family?”

“—and then we can discover some difference between us that we can’t reconcile,” Keigo rambled on, “and break up. And I can start off the new year drinking too much coffee in the office to get over it.”

Touya’s eyebrows rose even higher. “Seems like a hell of a plan to get out of some dinner party,” he rumbled over the rim of his coffee mug.

“What can I say?” Keigo said. “I go above and beyond.”

As Touya’s gaze drifted towards the ceiling, Keigo peeked at his phone again. The clock flipped over to three-o’-clock sharp.

“So how about it?” he asked. “Everything we’ll do is on me. Food, tickets, whatever. All I need is for you to take up my time. I can make it worth yours.”

Touya’s gaze began drifting back down towards him. “With what?”

With what, indeed. What was the going rate for a non-professional fake relationship? “We can negotiate,” was Keigo’s best shot.

There was a moment of silence as Touya took a brief break from his drink to exhale. Keigo could have sworn he saw steam come out of his mouth. How was he drinking that? Had all of his sensory taste buds burned off?

“What’s the plan?”

Keigo looked up. “What’s that?”

Touya’s cup clacked onto his coaster. “How often we’re meeting up,” he said. “Times, places.”

“Hey, I know this is fake, but it’s still supposed to be a relationship,” Keigo said. “What about being spontaneous? Having an adventure?”

Touya’s gaze drilled straight through Keigo’s own eyes and into the back of his head as his savior helped himself to another sip of coffee.

“Three times a week at seven, my place,” Keigo amended. “I can text you the address.”

“How forward of you,” Touya said.

“Well, it’d be a little invasive of me to ask to hold it at your place,” Keigo said. “And then we won’t have to worry about making actual fake date plans unless we actually have somewhere we want to be. We can get to know each other, chill, get takeout, whatever.”

Draining the rest of his drink, Touya stared into the bottom of his mug. Keigo had a feeling most of their fake dating would turn out to be more of whatever than anything else.

He wondered again how Touya had ever agreed to even see him. Even just in this café, several patrons were giving them oddly focused looks that he knew were about more than Touya’s shiny helix piercings or unnaturally blue eyes. Such blue, blue eyes.

He was lucky he even had the chance to meet Touya, let alone partner with him to commit petty social fraud. He wondered what he’d done to deserve this.

“Deal,” Touya finally said. “But no sushi.”

Their first date, if anyone asked, was a casual hangout session that started over fried chicken and beer and ran over several hours too long because they couldn’t tear themselves away from each other.

The reality was pretty close. There was chicken. There was beer. And they definitely couldn’t tear themselves away from each other.

“Give me that, asshole,” Touya said.

Keigo’s only response was to take a massive bite out of the drumstick Touya had reached for. “You snooze, you lose,” he said, fried chicken skin audibly crunching between syllables. “You don’t like it, you can leave.”

Both of their eyes automatically flicked to the clock above the front door. Half an hour out of the two they had originally scheduled had passed, and Touya had showed no signs of warming up any further than their first meeting. Maybe he was into playing the chic type of boyfriend. He rolled his eyes as he swiped a chicken wing from the box.

“Should we have gotten another one?” Keigo asked, gesturing with his free hand to the pile of chicken bones scattered over the oil-soaked papers on his coffee table. They’d almost eaten their way through the entire box and he was nowhere near close to feeling full. How much did Touya eat? Where was all of it going? He looked lighter than Keigo and Keigo’s skeleton was practically hollow. He really should have asked Rumi more about him beforehand.

“Go ahead.”

“You think the delivery guy will come back up?” Keigo asked. “He didn’t seem so happy last time. I feel him. This elevator sucks.”

“Go pick it up then.”

“And leave you here all alone? Won’t you miss me?” Keigo said, grinning. He leaned over the arm of his sofa, putting on his best smolder. Based on how Touya dropped his chicken bones on the table, he was not having it.

Dropping his expression, Keigo suggested instead, “Fine, how about we go together?”

That was exactly what they did: bundled up in their coats and, in Keigo’s case, fluffy earmuffs (“Seriously?” / “Think about the wind chill!”), squeezed into the elevator down with a group of giggly teenagers, and headed outside to brave the cold, all in the name of fried chicken.

Five minutes into their walk, Keigo had to consider whether all of this was really worth it.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked Touya through chattering teeth. Ahead of them, the crosswalk light turned green, and he quickened his pace. His partner, on the other hand, made no show that he cared or even noticed the light steadily counting back down to red, and Keigo slowed down to match his speed. The light turned red again, prompting them to stop at the corner.

“No,” Touya said. And then, as though it pained him to ask: “Are you?”

Pretending to believe that Touya was pained by the thought of his discomfort rather than the inconvenience of having to ask, Keigo looked down at his visibly shivering hands. He bit down a smirk and looked up at Touya, his smolder beginning to return. “What would you do if I was?”

“Take you back inside,” Touya said, focusing on the neon lights of the chicken restaurant up ahead.

“Oh? Going to help me warm up?”

Any snappy reply Touya might have had was abruptly cut off by a sudden whoop from across the street. Both of their heads swiveled around to see Rumi wave and dash towards them, pulling another girl along with her over the crosswalk.

“Well, look who it is,” Rumi said as they skidded to a stop in front of them. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Getting chicken,” Keigo said. “How about you?”

“Shopping for a dinner dress.” Snorting, Rumi gestured to the girl next to her. “You remember Fuyumi?”

Nodding, Keigo smiled and offered his hand for a handshake, which Fuyumi accepted with a warm smile. “It’s been a while. How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been well, and you? Rumi said the office has been busy lately.” Fuyumi’s eyes flicked over to his right, and Keigo automatically took a step away to make space.

“Oh, it’s been lively!” Keigo grinned. “But where are my manners? Let me introduce you. This is…Touya.” How had he still not gotten his last name? “He’s my—boyfriend.”

“You don’t sound so sure,” Rumi said, her smirk threatening to split her face in half.

“I’m sure!” Keigo tugged at the collar of his coat, pulling it over his mouth to block out some of the wind chill. “Touya, this is Usagiyama Rumi and Todoroki Fuyumi—”

“We’ve met,” Touya said.

“Really?” Keigo turned to him, completely missing the expression that crossed over Fuyumi’s features. Touya stared back, his face inscrutable. “How?”

Rumi’s laughter burst between them. “She’s how I found him,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to hold back another snort. “She’s the friendly friend.”

Keigo raised an eyebrow. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Anyway, we didn’t mean to keep you long, our store closes at eight. You have a good night!”

“It was nice seeing you again,” Fuyumi managed to say before Rumi pulled her back towards their original path. And just like that, Keigo was left alone again with Touya and the impending threat of frostbite. In front of them, the light had turned green.

“How do you two know each other?” Keigo asked, but Touya had already resumed his march towards the chicken restaurant.

“Let’s hurry up and pick up your chicken,” Touya said.

Unbelievable. Touya was showing more interest in this chicken than he had in Keigo all day. “In a rush? If you’re really hungry, we can get two. Or we can get side dishes, I wanted to try this one salad they—hello? Oh, now you speed up?”

“So, thoughts?” Rumi asked Keigo the next day in the office.

“You could have told me how you found him first,” he practically whined. She laughed and tossed a stack of papers onto his side of the cubicle.

“You could use a pleasant surprise once in a while. Now take a look at that, management’s going to be asking for our thoughts in half an hour.”

Keigo would have loved to say that Touya was just shy and they got along charmingly afterwards, but honestly, not much changed during the second date other than their choice of dinner (oyakodon), which they ate quietly while Keigo checked work emails and Touya flipped through his pathetic book collection. No luck either with their third date (mizutaki). It wasn’t until their fourth date that things started to change.

Touya had rung his doorbell exactly at seven in the evening, as per usual. Keigo opened the door for him with no pretense of smoldering or cracking jokes; he’d only exchanged the pack of beer in his hand, which he’d requested via text an hour ago, for several yen bills before returning to his perch on his couch, where his work laptop sat open to his email inbox.

Touya slipped his coat off and dumped it unceremoniously over what had become his regular chair. Collapsing into his seat, he peered into the takeout bowls on the table. “Ramen?”

“Chicken katsu ramen,” Keigo corrected, typing away.

Touya popped the lid off one of the containers. Steam rose from the bowl, smacking his face with MSG vapors. “What’s with you and chicken?”

The sounds of Keigo’s rapid clacking against his keyboard continued to flood the apartment. He barely registered his fake boyfriend snapping a pair of disposable chopsticks in half. “Sorry, what?”

“I said what’s with your chicken fetish,” Touya said at the exact same volume, opening the separate box of sliced chicken katsu.

“Oh, ha.” Keigo hit Send and watched his laptop screen freeze as it struggled to e-mail his report out to Rumi. Pushing his laptop screen down, he leaned over to grab his own bowl.

Touya reached out and pushed Keigo’s bowl over to him. It slid to a perfect stop in front of him, followed shortly by the box of katsu.

Keigo blinked. “Thanks,” he said, looking up.

Touya stared straight back at him, halfway through slurping up a mouthful of ramen. Keigo hurriedly snapped his own chopsticks open and followed suit.

The room was soon filled with the sounds of slurping ramen and crunching katsu, occasionally overlapped with rapid typing. Their bowls were nearly empty by the time either of them decided to speak.

“Something happen at the office?”

Keigo turned away from an email requesting a year’s worth of data that they’d never been told to collect. Due in one week. “Huh?”

Touya’s eyes flicked towards his laptop, and Keigo sheepishly slid it away. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m wasting your time, this is rude of—”

“You’re not, I’m getting free food regardless,” Touya said. “But if you’re going to be stuck there, I’ll make coffee.”

Keigo blinked. “You can do that?”

“I’ve used a coffee machine,” Touya said, answering nothing. He glanced towards the kitchen.

Keigo squinted.

Did he look embarrassed?

“If you don’t mind, that’d be great,” he finally said, right before three more emails appeared in his inbox, all marked High Importance.

As it turned out, Touya wasn’t bad at making coffee at all. Keigo looked up and beamed as Touya set a steaming mug in front of him, closing his laptop and setting it to the side.

“I owe you,” he said, cradling the mug in both hands.

“I’m aware,” Touya said.

“The office is fine, by the way,” Keigo said belatedly. “Things get busier at the end of the year. People get busy. And I’ve been getting through all my work pretty fast, so, you know, I get a little bit of everything that needs some help.”

Touya settled into his chair, leaning back. “Seems like a bother.”

Keigo shrugged, taking a sip of coffee. “Not really. Someone’s gotta do it, right?”

“Not somebody who’s doing everything,” Touya said.

“Hey, they can’t help it if no one’s as good as me, right?” Keigo asked. He spread his hands out on either side of him, prompting Touya to scoff.

“But you’re still willing to go to a holiday dinner for them.”

“Okay, I was kind of harsh that first day,” he protested. “The dinner’s not really bad. The food’s pretty good, drinks are paid for, everything’s candlelit—”

“You said that last time. Are you into candles?”

“They’re the light of my life.”

“Keep that to yourself. I’m not getting jealous of damn candles.”

Keigo threw his head back and laughed, which quickly changed to a yelp as coffee spilled out of his mug and over his hand. He swiped a crumpled napkin from the table to mop up the coffee.

“Anyway,” he said, trying not to pay attention to how Touya’s turquoise eyes focused on his hands, “don’t dread it or anything. I’m pretty sure all company dinners are like mine.”

“I’ll do my research, then,” Touya said dryly.

Did Touya not have company dinners at his job? What even was his job?

“Family business,” Touya said. Keigo realized too late what he’d done.

“Oh,” he said. He struggled to think of something else to say before stupidly adding, “Your family or someone else’s?”

Touya wordlessly slurped his coffee. Clearing his throat, Keigo took another sip, careful to hold his mug evenly. It really was good.

“If they ask you to do more,” Touya said, “You’re busy.”

“Huh?”

“Tell your office you’re busy,” Touya said. He raised his cell phone, and Keigo grinned.

“Are you going to keep me busy? With what?”

Touya exhaled and tucked his phone into his pocket. “Forget it, you’re on your own.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Keigo leaned back, eyes wide. “This is so sudden, can’t we talk about this?”

“Save that for New Year’s Eve.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve Eve, can’t you at least remember the date of your own party—”

Touya laughed. It was the first time Keigo had heard it, and he knew immediately he would do anything to hear it again.

After their fourth date, true to his word, Touya kept Keigo busy. He began receiving texts from Touya at varying hours of the work day: usually near the end of the day, and usually extremely practical and without encouragement. But they were texts from Touya.

‘Sukiyaki for dinner,’ one text suggested. ‘Beef for once in your life, I won’t ask again.’

Keigo sent back three chicken emojis in response and paid for it in an extra order of vegetables that night.

‘This is your 4:45 PM reminder to leave at 5, we have reservations,’ said another. The reservations turned out to be for Keigo’s own apartment, where Touya had sent a pizza delivery man.

‘Leave at 5,’ was all he received from one ominous text days later, while he was trapped in the middle of a conversation—it was a team meeting, not an argument—between two of his coworkers who could not agree on how to format three graphs for next week’s presentation. He read it at 6:58.

“I have to go,” Keigo said, standing up abruptly. “Talk it over, okay, email me the draft and I’ll take a look at it.”

Before either his coworkers could object, he practically flew out the door, almost tripping over his chair on his way out, and started running towards his apartment. When he arrived, panting and drowning in sweat despite the freezing cold outside, he saw Touya standing in front of his door, hands weighed down with two paper bags.

His fake boyfriend turned at the sound of him. Keigo was acutely aware of how late he was. Not only had he read Touya’s text almost two full hours after his deadline, Touya had been waiting for him to open the door for at least half an hour by now. He needed to apologize.

“It’s not five anymore,” Keigo wheezed instead.

Touya raised his eyebrows.

“What are those?” Keigo continued, looking at Touya’s hands. “Bags?”

“It’s dinner,” Touya said, apprehensive.

“I love dinner, let’s eat,” Keigo said, fumbling for his keys.

Dinner turned out to be fried chicken, which they had mutually agreed was their best go-to option (“We can say it always reminds us of our first date!” / “I don’t want to be reminded of that one.”) and was just as tasty at room temperature. He even found a small box of chicken dumplings inside one of the bags.

“These are delicious, I didn’t know they had these,” Keigo said, halfway through chewing a dumpling.

Touya picked another wingbone clean and tossed it onto the garbage pile between them. “They don’t.”

“Huh? Where’d you get them from?” When Touya only started on a new drumstick: “Did you make them?”

“No.”

“Oh, shame. I would’ve liked a chef boyfriend,” Keigo said, willing himself to stop and failing. He must have left all his remaining dignity at the office. “Well, if it’s some secret menu, it’s okay. How much was it? I’ll get my wallet.”

“They’re from Fuyumi,” Touya said abruptly. “She made them for your friend and had extras.”

“Rumi?” Keigo speared another dumpling with his chopsticks. “Tell her I said thanks. That was really generous of her.”

“You tell her, you’ll see her at the dinner.”

“If I show up on time,” Keigo said. He laughed, but Touya didn’t join him.

Instead, he picked idly at the remnants of one of his chicken wings. “Are you planning to be late?”

“No,” Keigo said quickly. “I mean, they’ll probably make everyone leave the office on time and get going. Can’t keep the big bosses waiting.”

Touya’s mouth thinned into a line. He poked at the empty chicken boxes for a moment before standing up. Keigo wondered if he’d said something wrong.

“I’ll make coffee,” Touya said. “You looked like shit coming out of the elevator.”

“Really? Thanks! For the coffee, I mean.” Now that he mentioned it, he could really use some. “You can leave the garbage, I’ll do it.”

As Touya complied and headed into his kitchen, Keigo began folding up the papers underneath their trash piles to stuff into their takeout boxes.

“You know,” Keigo admitted as he listened to water pouring from the kitchen, paper and chicken bones crackling under his hands, “I’m going to miss this.”

“What?”

Keigo looked up. Touya stared back at him from behind his coffee machine.

“When we break up,” Keigo said. He thought the sounds of preparing coffee would have drowned him out from where Touya was. “I’m going to miss this. It’s nice to just leave at five and hang out.”

“Or not-five,” Touya said.

“Or not-five,” Keigo repeated. Touya’s mouth twitched.

“Just leave at five,” Touya said. “They can’t stop you.”

“They don’t,” Keigo said. “They’re fine with it. It’s just me, I have stuff to do. Unbelievable, right? Maybe the cold’s slowing me down.”

“Someone else can do it,” Touya said.

“Can they?” Keigo tried to crack a grin. He didn’t need to see it to know how fake it was. That office argument must have taken more out of him than he thought. “Not as well as me, though.”

“Then they need to get better.”

“It’s fine, things are rough lately and I owe them a lot, so—”

“Leave at five.”

Keigo slumped in his seat. Wouldn’t it be so easy if he could? He opened his mouth to tell him as much, but nothing came out.

Steam began to rise in front of Touya as he prepared their cups of coffee, obscuring his view. Keigo stared, unfocused, as he approached and set their mugs down in front of them.

Their cups were next to each other. Touya’s cup should be on the other end, where his chair was. He should tell him.

“Listen to me. Aren’t you tired?”

He wasn’t tired. Keigo tried to pick up his coffee to prove it, but his arms wouldn’t move. They were just picking up dinner a minute ago. They felt so heavy. What was wrong with him?

“Keigo.”

That was his name. He should acknowledge it. Keigo nodded slowly. Touya sat down next to him, pulling over one of his couch pillows and placing it between them.

“Take a nap,” he said. His voice was soft.

Keigo leaned over so that his head could rest on the pillow, but the pillow was too low, and his head rested on Touya’s shoulder instead.

“But you made coffee,” Keigo said blearily.

“I can make more.” Touya’s voice vibrated through his body, sending a pleasant wave through Keigo. He smiled. He was so warm.

“Can you do something else?” he said. At least that’s what he thought he said. He couldn’t tell anymore.

Even as his eyes began to feel heavier and heavier, Keigo could sense Touya’s eyes on him. “What?”

“Can you laugh?”

He felt Touya shift at his voice, but if he ever did laugh, sleep claimed Keigo too fast for him to hear it.

‘Reservations at the usual. Be on time.’

“Is that who I think it is?” Rumi leaned over to peek at Keigo’s phone, and he pulled it away. She smirked. “You have a usual?”

“Sure do,” he said absently, opening the text window to send back, ‘for what?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘give me spoilers?’

‘Consider it an adventure, you chicken nugget.'

Keigo laughed and sent an egg emoji back.

He still wasn’t sure what had happened after he had fallen asleep that night. He’d woken up on the couch, face smushed against the pillow that had formerly been sandwiched between them, their coffee cups emptied and clean on his drying rack. Touya had said nothing about it, not even at their next date, which they’d spent making fun of his pathetic books and arguing whether they should buy him better ones. The unspoken suggestion of together left tingles in Keigo’s chest far longer than he would have cared to recognize.

But, well...there was only so much together left.

He tossed his phone aside and opened up an email from one of their interns asking for a recommendation letter for a job application. “You’re sure Fuyumi’s coming tomorrow?”

“I’m sure. You know I can just give you her number if you want to text her thank you.”

“Nah.” He glanced at the clock in the corner of his screen. 5:30. He stretched and fired off a quick friendly email to his intern before starting to shut down his laptop. “Anyway, I have to head out.”

“Bye.” Without turning away from her laptop, Rumi raised her hand in farewell. “Say hi to your boyfriend for me.”

The walk home was unusually warm for December. Keigo fiddled with his jacket, pulling open his collar to cool himself off. He wondered what Touya’s adventurous reservations could be. Half-and-half spicy and mild fried chicken? Come to think of it, he never paid him back for the last time.

When he took the elevator up to his apartment, Keigo fluffed his hair to tousled perfection. And it was a good thing he did, because the first thing he saw when the elevator door opened was Touya standing in front of his door with way too many bags around him.

“You’re early,” he said, as if the hottest delivery man to grace his door with his presence didn’t know.

“Not accounting for prep time,” Touya said, jerking his head towards the door.

“What prep time?” Keigo’s keys clacked against the door as he let both of them in. Touya began hauling bags into his apartment, with Keigo quick to follow suit. Instead of unpacking in the living room, though, he unloaded containers upon containers of food in his kitchen. He didn’t even bother turning on the lights.

Keigo shut the door and flitted over to him. “What do you need? The microwave, the oven, I have oven mitts—hey, are those dumplings?”

“Sit down.”

Keigo complied. He propped himself up on the counter instead of returning to the living room, so he could watch Touya deftly pour noodles into two separate bowls and top them with steaming broth and assorted ingredients. All of the containers were unmarked. Where had he gotten these?

Touya slid the bowls between them, along with a dish of the aforementioned dumplings. Followed by an arranged plate of vegetables.

“Food.”

“That sure is food,” Keigo said, staring dumbly at it. “But what about it?”

In lieu of a response, Touya slid two cans of beer next to the noodles, followed by miso soup.

“Drinks.”

“Also great, I could use a drink. You want to tell me what this is about?”

Instead of telling him anything at all, Touya shuffled around in his remaining bags. He looked at Keigo. He shuffled through them again.

“What are you looking for?” Keigo asked.

Touya looked him dead in the eyes. Keigo stared back, willing him to just say something. What was up with him today?

“Candles,” Touya finally said, his jaw stiff.

“What do you need cand—”

And then everything clicked.

“Dude, are you making me a holiday party?”

“I packed them,” Touya muttered, completely oblivious to Keigo’s revelation as he gave one of the bags a half-hearted pluck, “did Natsuo fucking eat them or something?”

Keigo’s head was spinning. Partially because he could not comprehend the idea of someone reasonably eating candles, but mostly because Touya had brought him a holiday party. Touya had come here early to make him a holiday party.

His very own party maker, in the meantime, had moved on from the missing candles and right to his stove. With a deft hand, he flipped one of the dials, and azure flames erupted from the burner.

“Good enough,” Keigo heard him say to himself before he turned back to face him and their entire spread of food.

“Dude,” Keigo said. “I mean—Touya. This is….”

“I made you a holiday party,” Touya said, saving him from having to pick a single word to encapsulate everything at once, “because this may not be your job, but this is about the one you gave me, and I wanted to talk about it before your actual holiday party ruins everything. I know how you can pay me back.”

Oh, right. They’d never decided on that. How had they gotten this far without agreeing on payment? How had Touya essentially been doing all of this for free?

“You still have to agree to it, though,” Touya said, and in the near darkness of his kitchen, with only the dim blue flames illuminating the edge of his face from the stove, he looked very little like the Touya that he was used to.

“Sure,” Keigo said. “I mean, shoot.”

For a moment, they stood frozen in front of each other, and Keigo realized what made him look different. Touya, his snarky savior, his blasé boyfriend-who-was-not, looked...nervous.

“I thought about what you said before,” he said. “That you’d miss this when it was over.”

“Well, yeah,” Keigo said. His cheeks felt warm, too warm to blame on his stove, and he was suddenly glad for the lack of light. “I will.”

“So,” Touya began. He cleared his throat, and began again. “So, let’s not end it.”

Keigo stared. Touya only held his gaze for a moment before he turned away, his hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck.

“Are you sure?” Keigo said. “I—I mean, you don’t have to do that just for me. Not that I don’t want you to, I think it’d be a lot of fun. Not just fun, I mean. It’d be amazing. You’re amazing. You—” he stuttered, and tried again. “You’re amazing.”

“We’re talking about you right now,” Touya said, a wisp of his usual dryness returning to his voice.

“I thought we were talking about both of us. Dude, I would love to, we could eat all the restaurants near your place instead—Wait, hasn’t this been taking up enough of your time?” Keigo was struck with a sudden thought. “I won’t get in the way of your job?”

“I haven’t told you a single thing about my job.”

“I know, what’s up with that? Are you a secret agent? Secret agent Touya? That would explain a lot. Except for the family business part—wait, is it the mafia? Is your family business the mafia?”

Touya laughed. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed so hard he had to lean on the counter for support and the noodle soup quaked in time with him.

“Unbelievable,” Touya said. “I’m trying to ask for you and all you talk about is me.”

“You haven’t told me anything about you yet. If we continue this, will you tell me? Or how about how you and Fuyumi know each other? Is she part of the mafia too?”

“Should I take that as a yes?” Touya interrupted.

Keigo looked at Touya. Looked at his blue, blue eyes, far bluer than his fire hazard stove candle substitute. Looked at his mouth, the same mouth that had captured his thoughts from the very first day he’d seen it picking his scatterbrained plan apart. Looked at all of Touya, and everything he was, and everything he could be. Anything he could be.

For starters, he could be his boyfriend.

Keigo smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “You should.”