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Tetsurou had been waiting for that summer since New Years, when his uncle asked him to go work in his hotel on the South Coast, to scoop ice-cream for less than four-hundred yen a hour on the beach. It wasn’t really a great wage, but to be honest, it wasn’t really a job either. A working shift from three p.m. to six p.m. and then he was off, splitting his days between swimming and exploring a hotel in total freedom, the only rule being not to disturb the residents, the major perk being he got to stay there for free the entire month of vacation from school.
His father had been very hesitant, at first, but eventually he’d loosen up, cause it was a good occasion to start giving his son responsibilities and cause Grandpa had just died and they were all a little sad and needed some kind of change.
“Just make sure to do your homework,” he had said. “Grandma and I will come by on the weekends.”
And then his uncle had said: “Does Kenma wanna come too? I’ll give you guys the same shifts so you’re not alone.”
Tetsurou had suspected Kenma would refuse, and he had been right. On summers he looked forward to AC and long gaming sessions, not underpaid jobs on the beach.
“But won’t you miss me?” Tetsurou had asked.
“You’re coming back, aren’t you?” Kenma had answered, not looking up from his console.
“Yeah, but we always spend summer together,” Tetsurou shot back at him, with a pout. “And next year we’re going to different schools.”
“They’re not that far,” Kenma retorted. “We’ll still take the same train on the morning.”
“Hmpf!”
“If you think you’ll miss me so much just don’t go.”
“But I love the beach!”
“Then fucking go!”
Tetsurou had laid on Kenma’s bed then, contemplating on wether or not he should have told him what he had planned to tell him once they were far from their parents, on the South Coast, living the summer of their lives. “I like you,” he had said, after a long silence, only interrupted by Kenma’s game's soundtrack.
“Yeah, sure bud,” Kenma told him, still focused on recharging his character’s gun while he was hiding from enemies behind a semi-collapsed wall. “I like you too.”
“No,” Tetsurou said, sitting up so fast he could see stars blurring his vision for a short while. “I didn’t mean that in a friendly way. I—I meant… like lovers do.”
And then, Kenma’s character died under a sudden charge of bullets, and Kenma said, loudly: “What the fuck?”
And then, Tetsurou felt like dying. He went to sleep that night thinking his friendship with Kenma was over and woke up to the sound of people talking in the kitchen.
His Grandma and Kenma’s mother were having a conversation and a cup of tea while Kenma was sitting besides her, looking sickly pale.
“Hi Tetsurou, honey,” said Chyou. “Kenma changed his mind, right?”
Tetsurou furrowed his brows, in utter confusion, while his heart started pumping faster. “About what?” he asked, still half asleep.
Could it be…? he thought. Would he send his mother though?
He threw away that hope, begrudgingly, and made his way to the kitchen table. He had just been rejected by his first crush ever and he couldn’t even tell anybody cause he was a boy and, apparently, people didn’t react well to that. What could have been worse?
“About the job this summer,” Kenma's mother said to him. “He’s coming too. I’m sure it’s gonna be a great chance to grow up.”
Judging by the slightly threatening tone, the one who had decided for him to go was her. Judging by Kenma’s terrified face, he was about to get executed.
Grandma smiled really wide, said: “I’m gonna call Saburo real quick and let him know.” Then, to Kenma: “I bet my Tetsu is all the more impatient to go, now.”
Wrong. You didn’t really wanna be around when Kenma was angry or uncomfortable. It made everything difficult, getting on his nerves.
“You’ll make great memories,” Chyou said, cheerfully. Tetsurou let out a half hearted laugh, agreed with her and, when she was too preoccupied with giving compliments for how good the tea was, he whispered to Kenma: “Did you make her angry?”
Kenma didn’t even spare him one look, he just mouthed Shut up and then started fidgeting with his legs under the table. He wanted to go so bad, to escape from Tetsurou’s house and looked like he would be very much happier if he could have been as far as possible from him. Also, it was early on a Saturday during Spring Break: Kenma would have probably preferred to be in bed, sleeping the morning off. His enormous eye bags, along side with his mother’s evident irritation, convinced Tetsurou he had probably stayed up playing till dawn and that was her way to teach him a lesson.
It wasn’t uncommon that, when Kenma was punished by his parents, Tetsurou ended up paying too, cause he became an easy mark for Kenma’s frustration. This was his normal behaviour even when he didn’t get confessed to by his very own best friend.
It was going to be one hell of a summer.
They didn’t see each other anymore for a couple of days after that. Then, just when Tetsurou had started to seriously miss him, they came back to one another. It was bound to happen, cause they got to school on the same train and cause Kenma didn’t talk to anyone but him at volleyball practice. Never mentioning the confession was like erasing the event from their memories. And that was good, Tetsurou tried to convince himself, if it meant Kenma would stay in his life.
Finally, after two months or so, he graduated from middle school and now there he was, on the side walk at the bus stop, a heavy backpack on his shoulders and Kenma at his side, ready for a month of ice-cream, sun and reckless swimming sessions alone with his best friend.
What could be better?
His father asked the bus driver to keep an eye on them, cause they were minors travelling alone and handed him some kind of document that allowed them to not be under the supervision of an adult. Once they were off, Kenma sighed loudly and started playing a time consuming game on his phone. “She didn’t even let me bring the psp,” he said, with a bitter tone.
“What did you do to piss her off so much?” Tetsurou wandered, only half-sympathetic. He didn’t want Kenma to be sad because he couldn’t spend the summer as he would have liked, but, at the same time, he couldn’t help but be enthusiastic about the fact he would have had so little to do without games that boredom would have had the best of him and forced him to be with Tetsurou all the time.
“The usual,” Kenma answered, shrugging. “She said I need to learn how to control myself. Bitch.”
“Don’t call her names.”
“Can’t help it when I’m super mad.”
Tetsurou looked out of the window and saw a sunny landscape run fast before his eyes, clear mountains on the background, so far away they were blue. There was not a single cloud in the sky, grass so green and bright it hurt the eyes. He didn’t understand what Kenma’s business was at being mad.
“It will be fun, I promise,” he told him. “We’ll roam the hotel and look for secrets. It’ll be like one of your games, when you have to gather all the treasures before fighting the boss.”
Kenma scoffed, but he didn’t look like he meant it to come off as mean spirited as it sounded, so Tetsurou forgave him. “What? It’s your favourite part, I know it.”
“No it’s yours.” Kenma retorted. “I like to kick the boss’ ass”
“Then why do you cry when you finish a game?”
“I don’t cry, asshole.”
The buss ride became less tense after that and a lot more fun. After three hours they arrived at the station, where Tetsurou’s uncle was waiting for them. After a thirty minutes car ride—during which Saburo called his brother to let him know the kids made it safely through the journey and asked them what did they want to eat for dinner— they got to the hotel.
“This is where your room is,” Tetsurou’s uncle said, bringing their backpacks up the stairs and putting them on the ground to open one of the doors in the staff department. “There’s only one bed, is that a problem?”
While they got in, Tetsurou glanced up at Kenma and understood immediately that for him it was going to be a big problem, despite the fact they had been sharing beds since forever. It was only recently they had stopped and Kenma was probably not going to want to start again. Tetsurou knew he would have never shown signs of protest to his uncle, thought, nor he would have talked to him, so he was about to speak up, to ask for a futon or to sleep somewhere else, but his uncle cut him short, said: “My room is right outside, okay? And you start working tomorrow. Come, I’ll show you the ice cream stand.”
Kenma followed them around in evident distress, but didn’t say anything, so the matter just slid from Tetsurou’s mind. It was not that big of a deal anyway. Tetsurou’s uncle showed them around, brought them on the beach and taught them how to do the job. He then gave them ice-creams as a gift and took them to dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. It wasn't until they had both showered and were ready for bed after talking with their parents over the phone, the only one bed problem manifested again.
Tetsurou asked: “You wanna sleep inside?” Kenma usually liked to be close to the wall, cause he moved a lot when he was unconscious.
What a normal question, Tetsurou thought, so generic. The kind you’d ask to a friend who isn’t your best friend in the whole entire world.
“Yeah, cause you always have to get up to pee during the night,” Kenma snickered, but his voice trembled when, averting his eyes from him, he added: “Just don’t try anything disgusting.”
Tetsurou faltered a little. Disgusting? He swore he could hear the sound his heart made when it broke. But, even if he felt like he was about to faint or throw up, or both, cause Kenma believed he was a disgusting guy who probably did disgusting things with other boys and had a dirty, disgusting mind, he managed to squeeze a laugh through, to pretend it was all a joke and Kenma hadn’t just annihilated him with the same ease he destroyed lizard enemies in the Legend of Zelda.
“I’m not a monster” he said, trying to sound casual and unaffected. “You want me to ask to my uncle were can we get a futon?”
Kenma shook his head in a frenzy, still flushed from the shower and a little embarrassed. “I don’t wanna annoy him. Let’s just go to sleep.”
Tetsurou climbed in bed after him, careful to stay as far away as he could manage. That left him on the edge of the mattress, which kinda sucked, but Kenma didn’t seem to be doing much better than him, squished against the wall like some kind of slime.Tetsurou could have reached with his hand and touched him, but still, the space that divided them felt like the void, like they were two astronauts at the opposite corners of the universe. Then Kenma said: “That was just a stupid joke.” And then: “You can get closer.”
Tetsurou did, without saying anything cause he had a lump in his throat that was about to burst. He just got comfier, still not too close, but close enough to distinguish Kenma’s pupils in the dark, to feel his soft breath on his skin. I could kiss him, he thought, his chest a burning flame. He even leaned forward and pursed his lips and, for a minute, he believed Kenma was going to let him, but then he shifted with a yank and faced the wall.
Tetsurou whispered, “ ‘Night”, turned his back to Kenma and closed his eyes, trying really hard to fall asleep, even though he felt like going for a run and his heart was still beating like crazy.
He woke up in a daze, in the middle of the night, with a parched throat and a heaviness on his hip. It took him a while to remember where he was and to understand that weight was Kenma’s arm and the warmth he felt on his back was because Kenma was straddling him. He had moved in his sleep and was probably still out of it, judging by his deep breaths. But now, Tetsurou was wide awake, sweating and getting mildly uncomfortable in that position so he started to shift lightly to find maybe a cooler place on the mattress.He extended one leg out of the covers and the movement made him lean back a little and accidentally bump into his friend.
He froze for a minute, hoping he didn’t wake him up, cause then Kenma would have pushed him off and made him feel guilty and disgusting for not telling him right away. Also, Tetsurou was kind of enjoying to be hugged that way and didn’t want it to end, even if he was just pathetically playing pretend, but Kenma only groaned and continued to softly snore, pressing his face between Tetsurou’s shoulder blades.
And then he started to rub on him, gently, and shit: Kenma was hard.
“Oh god!” Testurou yelped, sitting up in a swing, startling Kenma from his wet dream.
“What’s wrong with you?” he hissed in response.There wasn’t time for Tetsurou to say anything, cause Kenma looked at his crotch and gasped, jumping off the bed, splurging a bunch of swearwords till he got to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Tetsurou got up too, saying: “It’s okay. It’s normal, Kenma. I get boners all the time too. Don’t be ashamed.”
“I wasn’t being disgusting,” Kenma said, voice muffled through the wood.
“I know,” Tetsurou replied.
“It wasn’t because of you. I’m not gay.” It seemed like Kenma was trying to hurt him. Like he wanted to put him under some kind of shame that he knew would have topped his own.
“I know, it just happens. It’s whatever.” Tetsurou, instead, was just trying to reassure him. It really wasn’t fair.
“Pass me my phone?” Kenma asked. Tetsurou did, sliding the phone on the ground through a small crack Kenma opened for him.
“Huh…” he said, embarassed. “D—do you need me to, like, go take a walk somewhere or…?”
“I’m not gonna masturbate,” Kenma replied, with a strained voice. “I just need to play Zombie Apocalypse for a bit.”
“Oh,” Tetsurou said. “Fair enough. Not like there’s something wrong with masturbating.”
“Stay,” Kenma whispered, then. And Tetsurou stayed, waited for half an hour, listening to the muffled repetitive music of Kenma’s game, to the tump tumps of Kenma’s fingers on his phone’s screen.
“Kuro?” Kenma called in the end, interrupting his almost-slumber on the floor. It had to be 4 a.m or close to that time. He was very sleepy and Kenma’s voice was very soft, difficult to hear if you weren’t used to him and if you weren’t his best friend in the whole entire world.
Tetsurou always heard him loud and clear. “Yeah?”
“Come in.”
Tetsurou got inside and kneeled on the floor, looking up at Kenma, who was sitting on the toilet, features lit up by the screen, hair hanging down the sides of his face. He turned off his phone and lowered himself on the floor too, legs intertwined, across from him. “What happens when you’re gay?” he asked.
Tetsurou scoffed, but quickly put on a conciliating tone, before Kenma could get mad, or hurt and would escape from the situation in every petty way he could think of. And that didn’t exclude hurting Tetsurou more if it was necessary. “Nothing, it’s pretty chill.”
“What if I am?” Kenma asked then. “What does it mean?”
He sounded so close to tears, so so scared, Tetsurou only wanted to hug him and never let him go. He suppressed the feeling: surely he didn’t want Kenma to stop trusting him. “Why don’t we figured it out together?” he asked and reached out with his left hand in the dark. “It’s always been me and you.”
He kept his arm suspended in the void between them, for what it felt like an eternity. And then, Kenma reached from the other end of the universe to grab his hand.
“Good,” he murmured.