Archive of Our Own

"Can we go to your place today?"

Not more than three seconds pass before Yuki regrets asking. Not because it isn't a simple question. It really only requires a 'yes' or 'no' in response, before they continue along the conversational rabbit hole Kakeru is dragging them down. It's inconspicuous and casual and nothing to read into.

The problem is, Yuki has an ever growing suspicion that Kakeru likes reading into things. Likes reading into Yuki, specifically.

"What was that?"

"Huh?"

"Like, what was that weird face about?" Kakeru asks, jumping down the stairs outside the school at an erratic, two-at-a-time pace. The movement is somewhere between anxiety-inducing and amusing for Yuki.

"This is what my face looks like."

Kakeru jostles Yuki with his shoulder, throws the moment off of its axis.

"I know that. Pretty as it is, it still looked different."

Kakeru is reckless in a way that makes Yuki feel like he's about to shatter. He pushes buttons and starts fires as he pleases. He does it for fun, does it for no reason at all.

Yuki fights a red hot itch under his skin. And as it spreads through his chest and burns his throat and tries to warm his cheeks—he has to consider that there might be a reason this time. That there is something to read into, like what he's running from and the direction he's running in.

And the fact that, as easily as he hides his flushed face—he has things he'd like to hide in the first place.

He punches Kakeru's shoulder hard. The impact is nowhere near as hard as Kakeru's pained reaction suggests, however, as he drops to the stairs in anguish.

"You're attacking me…"

"And you're an idiot," Yuki says.

"That's why I'm asking you what's up," Kakeru says, clutching his arm in overdramatic agony. "A genius couldn't read your mind. How am I, an idiot, supposed to?"

"If you're asking me a question, I can't find it in between all the whining."

Kakeru rolls his eyes. "I already told you, you made a weird look."

"Supposedly."

"So there's no reason you randomly want to come over?" Kakeru turns back to the street, voice softer in a way that's barely noticeable. "You can tell me. Even if it's dumb or like, really embarrassing or something."

Yuki pauses, looking at the outline of Kakeru's shoulders as he slumps at the bottom of the stairs. The sun hits him at the oddest angle, light and shadow cutting angular patterns on his back. Yuki bites the inside of his cheek harder than any punch.

Sometimes opening up makes him feel better, he tries to remind himself.

"It's not embarrassing," he says, descending the stairs and taking a seat next to Kakeru. "Well, not for me, at least."

"Oh my god. It's Orange, isn't it?"

Yuki fights the urge to keel over, bury his face in his knees. "Not just him. Honda-san as well. It's just—" Yuki stops himself short. "Never mind."

"Just what? Yun-Yun, don't leave me hanging!" Kakeru presses, leaning in too close—and it doesn't spike the same fear as when a girl gets in Yuki's space. It's his heart beating way too quickly in his chest, not with the anxiety of transformation but from the feeling of warm breath on his skin.

"It's probably nothing," Yuki says.

"What, are they fighting or something?"

"Honestly, that might be better," Yuki sighs. "They've just been… spending a lot of time in Honda-san's room together."

"Alone?"

"Alone. A lot."

Kakeru nods. "So they're fucking."

Yuki clamps a hand over Kakeru's mouth. "Stop speaking."

"Yun-Yun. You think they're not?"

Yuki stares at Kakeru, at his raised eyebrow. He feels Kakeru's smirk against his palm—and his hand is getting warmer the longer it's pressed to his mouth. He decides it's Kakeru's words that are setting him on edge.

"There's no way they're… doing anything like that," Yuki says hesitantly.

It's a strong half-truth.

He withdraws his hand and returns it to his lap. He stares into the street, back ramrod-straight as he tries not to crumble internally. He doesn't think that Kyo and Tohru are doing anything particularly intimate. He's only ever heard them in Tohru's room after school—never in the evening after dinner, and certainly not any later. Kyo is stupid, but not that stupid.

But...

"But?" Kakeru asks, poking and prodding Yuki's arm. It would feel more annoying if Yuki hadn't been touch-starved since birth; it would feel less annoying if he didn't want to crawl into a hole right now.

He huffs a sigh. "Maybe I'm just reading into things."

"I mean. You'd probably hear them if they were fucking."

"Which I don't."

Truthfully, it worries Yuki much more when he can't hear them.

"Well, I get why they would," Kakeru says, tilting his head like he's deep in thought, solving the mysteries of the universe. "Like, okay. I wouldn't go out of my way to fuck Orange, but if I lived in the same house—"

"Are you crazy?"

"He's hot, Yun-Yun."

Yuki pulls his bag higher on his shoulder as he stands up. "You can talk to Honda-san about that, then," he says, a headache forming behind his temples. "Please don't include me in the conversation."

He starts walking down the sidewalk, but he only makes it a few steps before a hand loops through the strap of his bag.

"Wait, come on," Kakeru whines, pulling Yuki to a stop. "Look, I'm sorry. And I swear that I won't bust a nut over your cousin. Today."

"You're so kind."

"I know."

"What would I ever do without you—" Yuki's deadpan tone spikes with something at its tail-end. A color he didn't intend to let slip into his voice, as he feels Kakeru's chin rest on his shoulder.

It's nothing like a hug, way too casual and without any semblance of a typical embrace. It's in no way remarkable, the feeling of Yuki's elbow brushing against the front of Kakeru's shirt. Skin presses to skin in random, innocuous places. Kakeru keeps one hand threaded through Yuki's bag and slings the other around his shoulder.

It's careless, in the way it doesn't mean anything. Careless, in the same way you'd carry three glasses in two hands and expect to not drop all of them.

"Simple, you wouldn't."

"What?" Yuki asks, coming back to reality.

"Without me. You wouldn't do without me."

Yuki rolls his eyes. "That doesn't make sense."

Kakeru laughs, dangerously close to Yuki's ear. Hot breath on his neck. Ruffled, dark hair in his periphery.

Before Yuki can process the sensation, Kakeru blows past him. He's a whirl of frenetic energy, touching Yuki one moment and then gone the next. He's several bounds away before he looks back over his shoulder, tossing Yuki a grin that's wide and crooked and boyish.

His cheeks are ruddy, face flushed red all of the sudden—probably from the sun, Yuki reasons.

"Are you coming?" Kakeru asks. It snaps Yuki out of his hazy thoughts and abstract feelings.

"Hm?"

"I'm relieving you of babysitting duty. Remember?"

Yuki doesn't bring up the fact that it's less like babysitting and more like accidental voyeurism.

"Oh, so I'm not making weird faces anymore? I'm finally allowed in your home?"

"Yeah, but you're still making a weird face," Kakeru says, wagging a finger as he meanders back into Yuki's personal space. "It's a different one, though. All pink and girly."

Yuki swats at Kakeru's hand, and he's sure that whatever is pink and girly in his expression intensifies to something red and burning. "Shut up."

Kakeru tangles their fingers as he laughs. "Sorry," he says. "I told you, I'm an idiot."

Yuki lets the contact continue far too long. The impulse telling him stop takes forever to leave his brain, intercept the awkward heartbeat in his chest, and travel down to his fingertips.

"I know," Yuki says, reoccupying his hands by straightening out his jacket, adjusting his bag, fixing his tie. When he looks back up, he says, "Let's go, then."

But Kakeru is already strolling to the crosswalk like nothing happened.

Because, Yuki reminds himself, nothing actually happened.

He feels a little bit less warm with every step that Kakeru takes down the sidewalk. It's normal to feel cold as summer turns to fall, though, so Yuki follows quickly behind.

He shivers, even as the sun heats up the back of his neck. It's definitely the sun.

"Yun-Yun."

Yuki flinches at the sound of his door being flung open, the doorknob slamming against his bedroom wall in the process. Kakeru stands in the doorway, breathing heavily like he just ran a marathon—but logically, it's because he sprinted the short distance from the bathroom to Yuki's room much faster than could ever be considered necessary.

Yuki sighs, looking up from the toxic wasteland of his desk. "Yes?"

"They're fucking."

"What? And don't talk so loudly. The walls are thin."

So thin.

"Fine. They're fucking," Kakeru whispers, far louder than an actual whisper.

"And your proof is? Your enlightening trip to the bathroom?"

Kakeru saunters toward Yuki's desk. As he approaches, Yuki mentally prepares himself for whatever tinfoil-hat, sexually-explicit conspiracy theory is about to leave Kakeru's mouth.

"If they're not fucking, then what are these?"

What Yuki isn't mentally prepared for is Kakeru throwing an entire handful of condoms onto his desk (with an unnecessary amount of flourish).

"You don't have to say it like you've won a prize," Yuki says, his even tone of voice not reflecting the frantic anxiety in his hands.

Kakeru smiles way too smugly. "That's very kind of you, Yun-Yun, but I don't need a prize. Solving a super secret dirty X-rated mystery is enough for me."

"You're finding this much funnier than it actually is."

"I don't find this funny at all," Kakeru laughs.

Yuki tries to quickly gather up all of the condoms, strewn across his homework and textbooks and week-old trash. He doesn't know if he should throw them away, put them back where they came from, chuck them at Kakeru's face—which isn't any closer than Yuki is used to, but his awareness of their proximity suddenly surges for no reason. Kakeru leans over Yuki's shoulder in a way that makes his stomach do somersaults. The condoms in his hands combine with sex cluttering his thoughts.

He quickly opens his top drawer and shoves all the condoms in.

"Those could belong to anybody," Yuki says, shutting his drawer.

"Like who?"

"Shigure, most likely."

"Who? Is that your sexy older cousin?"

"Unfortunately."

"You think he gets laid?"

Yuki does not want to think about that. Then again, the alternative is worse.

He says, "More than Kyo? Yes."

Kakeru pushes off of the desk and paces around the room as he talks. Yuki picks up a worksheet, staring at it until he's sufficiently ignoring everything else.

"But you said it yourself—they're always alone in there," Kakeru says. "All the time."

"They've always been... like that."

"And now there's a stash of condoms in the bathroom? Right next to Orange's room? I'm telling you. It all adds up."

There's an odd twinge in Yuki's chest when he hears Kakeru flop back onto his bed, sinking into the mattress.

Without meaning to, Yuki's mind begins to wander away from his homework. Suddenly and viscerally, he pictures Kakeru tangled up in his disastrous bedsheets. And then he starts to picture Kakeru's skin flushed red, and his hair messed up more than usual, and the top two buttons of his shirt undone—

Nope.

Yuki bites down on his bottom lip. He doesn't know where that came from. He stops the thought in its tracks.

"You're putting two coincidences together and calling it evidence," he says, nonplussed.

Kakeru asks, "Okay, but what if it's three coincidences?"

"I didn't realize you were counting."

"Someone has to, Yun-Yun."

"Are you a detective now?"

Yuki waits for a response, but none follows. In the silence, he hears movement on the staircase. He holds his breath, willing the sound of footsteps to cease. To not continue down the hallway. To please not stop in front of the door next to Yuki's room and knock twice.

"Hey, Orange!"

As Yuki turns his head, he already knows what he's going to see:

Kyo, his hand frozen on Tohru's door knob. A deer caught in the headlights.

Kakeru vaults off of the bed, stalking his prey in the clumsiest manner possible. He leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. "What brings you around here today, Orange?"

"I live here," Kyo says. "Who are you again?"

"Manabe, Kakeru, Vice President… whichever rolls off your tongue better."

Kyo uneasily says, "Okay." He mimics Kakeru's defensive stance, and Yuki can't decide which one of them looks less intimidating like this. Both wearing casual clothes, awkwardly sizing each other up in the cramped hallway.

Yuki has the uncomfortable realization that watching Kakeru and Kyo interact feels a lot like watching two mirror images. Which is to say, Yuki wants to die.

Then it gets worse.

"It's nice to see you out of a school uniform," Kakeru says, winking. Kyo immediately turns red.

"Huh?"

"Please keep it in your pants, or I'm kicking you out," Yuki calls from his desk, suppressing a grin.

"Me?" Kakeru asks, affronted. "I'm not the one leaving condoms everywhere."

Kyo's face flushes a deeper shade of red than Yuki thought was possible.

"What the hell?"

"Well, they can't be mine. I don't live here." Kakeru talks easily, like they're discussing the weather. "But you do. Are they yours, then?"

Kyo looks unnerved, but Yuki knows Kakeru's antics well enough that he almost finds it charming. In an annoying way.

"N—no," Kyo splutters. "I don't… I'm not even—I don't have any of those, and if I did, I wouldn't leave them out… and we aren't—why are you accusing me—"

"Accusing you of what?" Kakeru asks innocently. "And who's we?"

Kyo's fists tighten, and his eyes dart from Kakeru to Yuki. But when his eyes come back to Tohru's door, he huffs a breath.

"Go to hell, Rat," he says over Kakeru's shoulder, glaring daggers at Yuki. Without another word, he opens Tohru's door and slips inside—and at the last second, he seems to think better of slamming the door. He quietly shuts it behind himself, careful in an awkward way.

Kakeru turns back to Yuki with a satisfied smirk.

"How's that for three coincidences?"

"... Hm."

"Just call me Vice President Detective Manabe from now on."

Kakeru lays down on the bed again, this time with his feet propped up against the wall and his head hanging off the edge. Yuki struggles between rolling his desk chair closer, or hunching over his homework and never looking back.

He gets up and closes his bedroom door instead. He lingers there, unsure of where to move next. How to feel.

"Are you okay?"

Yuki turns to find Kakeru staring at him. Even with his head upside down, gravity pulling his hair in every direction, his eyes are shockingly clear. When his gaze isn't unfocused, it's piercing.

He makes Yuki feel see-through.

"Why wouldn't I be okay?" Yuki responds.

"I dunno. But I wanted to ask."

Truthfully, he doesn't know what he feels. It's strange to know what's going on behind closed doors, his paranoia colliding with reality. And then there's Kakeru on his bed, in his room, running rampant in his personal space and his thoughts.

He can't help the involuntary picture that fills his mind: Kyo and Tohru, pressed flush against each other but never too close on top of Tohru's bedsheets. The vague image fades out as quickly as it came together, and Yuki is left looking at Kakeru. He looks at the distance between them, and how they're not the same as Kyo and Tohru. How they wouldn't have to keep the same distance between them, if they—

A curse will never be the thing that stops him and Kakeru.

That's not what keeps them from getting too close, not really.

"I'm okay," Yuki says.

"Well, that's good."

He doesn't feel okay. He wants to clean his brain. Clean his entire body. Maybe his bedroom, too.

"I have homework," Yuki blurts out. "Don't you?"

Something flashes in Kakeru's eyes. It looks something like vulnerability, and it makes Yuki feel vulnerable, too. But then the moment passes, and Kakeru's crooked grin and easy laughter make Yuki doubt that anything happened at all.

"Only because you won't let me forget about it," Kakeru whines, squirming around until he's upright on the bed again.

He watches as Kakeru grabs a textbook and cracks it open. It's almost like he shifts to one end of the bed, too, leaving space for Yuki to sit next to him.

If he wanted to.

"Someone has to remind you," Yuki says. He walks back to his desk and sinks back into his chair. He feels heavy.

"My President! My savior! What would I do without him?"

"Simple. You'd fail out."

"So mean!" Kakeru cries. "You wound me."

"That was my intention."

Yuki tries to drown out his thoughts with the sound of his pencil on paper. Kakeru hums to himself too loudly as he works. And Yuki keeps asking himself if he did want to sit on the bed next to him.

Did he want to sit next to him and move closer and closer and closer and not pull away and reach out and just touch—

He doesn't move from his desk until Kakeru goes home.

It's a typical Friday night, and—as he's been doing most nights now—Yuki is staring up at his ceiling and contemplating the mortifying ordeal of his own existence.

They say that every person has a breaking point. Yuki has never been sure of his own, but he's been listening to giggling and hushed voices and heavy breathing for the past twenty minutes (give or take an hour). And he's starting to think that maybe, just maybe, his breaking point is Kyo and Tohru having sex.

Every night. In the room directly next to his.

Because they are having sex now—if there's one thing Yuki is sure of, it's that.

He's been patient about it. More patient than most people would be, he thinks, if their roommates were constantly whispering and gasping and doing… lots of other loud things that Yuki does not want to dwell on in any amount of detail.

He rolls onto his side, feeling himself briefly relax as his mattress shifts and his bed frame creaks. For all of two seconds, the sound allows Yuki to not hear a high-pitched moan. He feels truly free.

He thought that it couldn't get worse than it was: Tohru's bedroom going silent without warning, the absence of noise haunting Yuki's anxious mind and conjuring up images he had no interest in imagining.

But he was absolutely, irrevocably wrong.

It's far worse now that it's not silent. Now that he can hear Kyo and Tohru, even with headphones jammed in his ears and his head shoved under his pillow. Nothing separates them but a bedroom wall, which grows increasingly thin with each passing night.

Every passing night. It's every night now.

Yuki's cell phone isn't on his nightstand. Instead, he glances down from his bed and spots it on his floor. It's been more than a day since he's charged it, but the screen still flickers with notifications and group chat alerts.

He thinks about picking it up and sending out a distress signal. But that would be silly, not to mention childish. So Yuki flops back onto his side and accepts that this is his burden to bear.

It's not as if he's not supportive—especially for Tohru's sake.

He wants her to be so, so happy. He wants Kyo to get his shit together, and he wants Tohru to say something, and he really wants this to not blow up in their faces. Because he doubts his ability to survive another year at Shigure's in the aftermath of… that. He'd prefer them being lovesick idiots 24/7, he thinks, over the house becoming a heartbroken warzone.

But this.

Again, every night.

It's a little much.

It's hearing another moan—twice as loud as the first and decidedly not high-pitched this time—that pushes Yuki over the edge. He slides down to the floor, slumping against his bed and grabbing his phone.

Are you awake?

it's like 10 on a friday night why would i be asleep yun yun
yun yun?
IM SORRY come back

What

what's up??

It's just...
A little loud over here
It's so loud 🙃

oh 🥵 are they saying i love you too loud 🥵

Never mind

IM SORRY ALSKDFHLASHKD I WAS KIDDING 😈
it was a joke i'm sorry
do you think they're gonna….stop soon lmao

No 🙃

that sucks lol

Yuki shoves his phone into his pocket. If he sits here and thinks about it any longer, he'll have to acknowledge that he's upset. And acknowledging that he's upset means dissecting why he's upset—a task not quite suited for his bedroom floor.

"I'll just… splash some water on my face," he mutters, keeping himself company.

When he opens his bedroom door, it takes him a few seconds to comprehend what he sees. It takes him much longer to process the bombardment of emotions that comes with it.

"H—hello, Yuki-kun!"

Tohru in the hallway in front of him. Clothes a bit wrinkled, hair a bit mussed. Her face and neck flushed. A tiny box clutched in her right hand, which she's moving slowly behind her back like she hopes he won't notice.

(He definitely notices.)

"Sorry," Yuki says.

"No, no, don't apologize!" Tohru laughs, sounding frazzled. "Did you need in the bathroom?"

"Uh… yes."

"I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting!"

Yuki struggles to look her in the eyes. "It's really no problem. I'm not in a rush."

"Okay, if you're sure." She shifts her weight nervously back and forth between her feet. "Do you... have any plans tonight?"

"Nothing in particular. Do you?"

"Just homework! With Kyo-kun."

Yuki tries to keep his face pleasant. When pleasant proves to be impossible, he adjusts his goal to neutral, at the very least.

"That's nice."

"Yes! It is... nice," she says, pausing. "Well, I hope you have a goodnight."

Yuki smiles. "You as well, Honda-san." And then he reaches up and pats her gently on the head, smoothing her hair in the process. It's an awkward gesture, but Tohru beams up at him all the same.

"Thank you, Yuki-kun!"

Pure tenderness swells in his chest. He'd do anything if it made Tohru happy.

But then he watches her slip back into her bedroom, condoms in hand. He catches sight of Kyo, inside on the bed, before she shuts the door all the way.

And, as usual, that fond affection is replaced with the horror of remembering what is currently making Tohru happy. Apparently. Hopefully… somehow.

After darting into the bathroom and shutting the door, Yuki skips splashing water on his face and sinks straight down to the floor. He hesitates, but then he pulls out his phone. He has upwards of twenty missed, nonsensical texts from Kakeru.

He skims them and starts typing.

Can you just
Could you
Come pick me up?

jlsdfjkfdhlgksdfhfk HELPP

It's fine if you can't…

i'm crying yun asdfhlsadkhf
the great escape from your boning roommates

Is that a yes or a no 😶

yea once i stop laughing
hang tight i'll be there asap

Great

Yuki stares at his phone in his hands. Something surges in his stomach, and he might call it butterflies if he knew what those actually felt like. If he hadn't spent days and nights trying to keep that feeling and Kakeru in sectioned-off parts of his brain, never to bleed into one another.

He doesn't let himself consider whether this will be an improvement compared to his current situation. But then another series of moans comes from down the hallway—they aren't even trying to muffle them at this point.

Drive faster

Yuki hits SEND and waits.

It's not the first time that Yuki's been to Kakeru's place, but it is the first time he's been over after dark.

He knows that he shouldn't be nervous. It's not like he's here for some illicit meeting; that's what he's trying to escape, he reminds himself.

Still, it's odd to notice the subtle change in Kakeru as they cross the threshold into his apartment. In the car, he's chaos and energy, slamming his foot on the gas and blaring loud indie-techno-jazz through the speakers. But inside, his footfalls are quieter, and his movements are more careful. He stands a bit straighter.

"Is your mom home?" Yuki asks.

"Nah, she's got a hot date tonight," and yet Kakeru still kicks off his shoes so carefully.

Like maybe he's nervous, too.

For what?

"Good for her." Yuki takes off his jacket, hanging it on the empty coat rack. "If only we all could be so lucky."

"What," Kakeru smirks, "am I not a hot enough date for you?"

"I—" but Yuki finds it impossible to form words, to produce sound at all when he feels his face heating up too fast.

Kakeru laughs too loudly. "Oh, huh."

It's not like when something makes Yuki's heart swell with fondness; it's more like his skin shrinking and swelling at the same time. It's like the moment before he transforms—but he's not being touched. He's not touching—

That's not the problem.

Right now, the absence of sensation is much more painful. Much more terrifying.

"Do you want food?" Kakeru asks, turning on his heel. He's down the hallway and rummaging in the kitchen before Yuki fully realizes it.

"Sure."

He plays it over and over in his mind: the flush spreading up Kakeru's neck. His wide eyes and hand in his hair. The curve of his lips as his smirk turned into a wide smile. And the way that Yuki notices his mouth more and more with every passing day, hour, minute, second—

"Hurry up or I'll eat it all myself, Yun-Yun!"

"You wouldn't."

Yuki removes his shoes and follows Kakeru into the kitchen, caught up in his boyish whirlwind as usual.

He must've imagined the rest.

Kakeru can't cook, but not in the way that Yuki can't cook. It's not a fire hazard of epic proportions—rather, it's the threat of shattered plates and food all over the floor, attributed to a lack of focus.

They end up with a bowl of chips and call it a day.

He doesn't argue when Kakeru leads the way to his room, leaving a wide berth between them and the living room.

"We can watch TV in my room since the rest of the apartment is lame."

Yuki snorts. "If you say so."

Kakeru opens the door and waves him inside with a grand, unnecessary gesture—and Yuki likes the way that Kakeru's shoulders relax, the tension leaving his too-tall-for-his-own-good body.

It's as if Kakeru can be exactly who he wants to be when he's in his own space.

And he lets Yuki be there with him—

"Do you think they're fucking right now?"

"I really wasn't thinking about that, actually." Yuki grabs the chip bowl from Kakeru's hands. "And why do you have to say it like that?"

"Because it's funny."

Yuki glares at him. "You're the only one laughing," he says, sitting down in a huff. It's only after Kakeru sinks down next to him that realizes it.

That they're sitting next to each other on the bed.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, Yun-Yun. Really."

It's normal to sit on your friend's bed. It shouldn't make you feel anything weird. It doesn't even matter.

But Yuki has agonized over it day after day, kept his distance, never gotten anywhere near too close. And now here he is, crossing a boundary just because Kakeru pushed a button. Because he let him push a button.

He lets Kakeru push so many buttons.

"It's fine," Yuki says, an itch in his throat. "You can turn something on now."

"Cool."

Yuki tries to dampen his anxiety with the drone of voices coming from the screen. The sound of potato chips crunching. Every time he grabs a new handful from the bowl, he finds his eyes not lingering on Kakeru's hand in his periphery. Not on his long fingers and defined knuckles.

Somewhere in between the thud of his frantic heartbeat and the television casting light on Kakeru's face, Yuki realizes that he doesn't want the anxiety to stop, exactly. It's a fire that he doesn't want to douse with water, in spite of himself. Not quite yet.

"Do you know why it bothers you so much?" Kakeru asks suddenly.

"What?"

"Y'know." Kakeru cracks a grin. "The sex dungeon."

"Stop calling it that," Yuki says, chucking a pillow directly at Kakeru's idiotic face. "It's not obvious why that would bother me?"

"Not really."

"Well, they—it's very—" Yuki stops, his thoughts too jumbled to verbalize. He buries his face in his hands. "It's complicated. I care about Honda-san. And so does Kyo, but he's an idiot. I'm just worried."

"Are you sure you aren't just lonely?"

His eyes snap back up to meet Kakeru's. "What?"

"Nothing," Kakeru says, and his smile hides things. It hides him. "Wanna do something fun?"

Yuki blinks, trying to recover from whiplash. He wants to scream. He wants to grab Kakeru by the front of his shirt. He wants to ask him what he means by lonely, ask him how he comes up with these ridiculous questions, ask him how he's always right—

"Sure," Yuki says, breathless.

Kakeru takes Yuki's hand and hauls him the rest of the way up. Yuki barely registers the gust of night air that hits him as he clears the top of the ladder, standing up on two feet again.

"Watch your step, Yun-Yun."

"As if you're any more graceful."

The roof of Kakeru's apartment complex is illuminated by moonlight and street lights and little else. Yuki cautiously trails after Kakeru, who moves with a practiced recklessness. Like he's not afraid of falling off the rooftop. Like he's not afraid of anything.

"So this is your idea of fun," Yuki says.

He can still feel the imprint of Kakeru's hand—strong and firm and with an erratic pulse that matches his own—tingling against his palm, long after they've both let go.

"Aw, c'mon. Not up to your standards?"

"I haven't decided yet. I might need you to sell me on it."

"Rooftops are dangerous! Which makes it fun." Kakeru plops down on the slanted surface, leaning back on his hands.

"Is that all?"

Kakeru's voice goes softer, a bit like a child. "And the sky's cool to look at. I like it."

Yuki doesn't respond. He doesn't know what he could possibly say—when the sky is beautiful, but he finds his eyes drawn instead to Kakeru's dark hair. At the same time as it blends into the pitch-black night, starlight hits it from every direction. And in that moment, Kakeru looks like some sort of unintentional microcosm for the night sky, so insignificant and yet making Yuki feel something so overwhelming, unknowable. So important.

Yuki could never say anything like that, so he silently takes a seat next to Kakeru.

"At least it's not cloudy," Yuki says, wishing he hadn't left his jacket inside the apartment. "It's not very warm, though."

"God, you're such a princess."

"Fuck you."

"Okay. Only if you say please, though."

Kakeru narrowly dodges a sharp elbow to his ribs, and time seems to suspend itself then. What would usually turn into roughhousing between friends is halted. Everything is turned on its head as Kakeru slips off his jacket and tosses it at Yuki.

"What are you doing?"

"It doesn't make any sense for me to keep it, right? I'm fine in the cold. And you're weird about it. So you can wear it."

Kakeru's cheeks flush pink as he laughs softly. Yuki thinks he does that on purpose, when he runs out of words but still has something to say.

Yuki slips on the jacket, and in his mind's eye, he suddenly sees a memory: Kyo draping his coat over Tohru's shoulders, again and again. Just like this.

Yuki feels his face flush hot. The jacket swallows him up; another reminder that Kakeru is just a bit taller than him. He hardly needs the jacket's warmth anymore, not when his entire body feels as though it's overheating.

"Thanks," he says quietly.

In the silence, Yuki wonders if this is what Kyo and Tohru feel like when they're alone on the rooftop, little more than silhouettes cast in shadow by larger constellations. It hurts to think that this is nothing like that. It hurts to think that this is exactly like that.

It hurts to think that he and Kakeru are—

"You didn't answer my question," Kakeru says.

"What question?"

"About being lonely."

"Oh," Yuki says. "You didn't give me a chance to."

"Ah, I guess not." Kakeru runs a hand easily through his hair, and Yuki tries to not let the movement catch his eye. He tries to avoid looking at Kakeru altogether.

"I might be," Yuki blurts out. "Lonely, I mean."

He expects Kakeru to laugh, or tease him. But he just says, "I get that."

"Really?"

"Well, yeah. Being around people like that—all in love and stuff. It makes you feel lonely. Like you're missing out on something… even if you don't have someone you wanna be with."

"Yeah," Yuki says halfheartedly. "I don't."

It feels like a lie—

"Have you ever kissed anyone?"

Yuki sucks in a breath. He releases it.

"No," he admits.

"I used to make out with Komaki all the time before we broke up."

"That's, uh. Nice."

Kakeru seems to realize he put his foot in his mouth, his eyes widening. "I just mean, like—" he says in a rush, "You're not missing out on much. It's nothing special."

"Good to know," Yuki mutters. All of their words feel empty.

And then,

"I could kiss you."

The moment knocks the air from Yuki's lungs. For some reason, though, the lack of oxygen doesn't burn like he's grown accustomed to.

"Excuse me?"

It was half an idea, half a question.

A secret—

"I don't mean anything crazy!" Kakeru quickly adds. "Not like… making out. Or whatever the hell Orange and Honda-san have got going on. But I can tell that you don't believe me, and—well, I could just show you what it's like. And then you'd know that it's not worth getting all emo about."

"That's incredibly stupid."

"You say that every time I have an idea."

Yuki laughs, in spite of his racing pulse. "Only when it's a stupid idea."

"Not true!" Kakeru protests. "You said it was stupid when I wanted to start a jazz band, and when I wanted to bring kangaroos to school, and also when I wanted to bring circus performers to school, and when I wanted to do a fireworks display during class, and—"

Yuki grabs Kakeru's wildly gesticulating hands. He holds them tight and meets Kakeru's widening eyes. He holds on, and he doesn't transform into a disgusting creature. Nothing happens that particularly matters. And it all matters so much.

"Please shut up," Yuki says.

And then he kisses Kakeru. And it does make him shut up.

It's awkward but exhilarating, containing all the nerves of a first kiss. Yuki doesn't know where to move his hands. If he should dig them into the cotton of Kakeru's shirt. If he should grab at his forearms. If he should say fuck it and rake them through his dark hair.

Kakeru grabs clumsily at his shoulders; Yuki reaches up and grasps at the touch, noticing every vein on the back of Kakeru's hands.

He doesn't understand why Kakeru kisses him so hard, when it's not his first time by any means.

He's frenetic and earnest as he kisses Yuki. It's like he wants to. He parts his lips, and Yuki gasps.

He feels disarmed by the heat and confusion of the darkness. But in the moonlight, he feels safe, too. Like Kakeru knows him. Perhaps it's not the worst thing in the world.

And in that moment, it occurs to Yuki that he's never pictured his first kiss being with any of the girls at school, or with any girl at all, or even with Tohru. And he realizes that maybe, if he'd spent any amount of time imagining it—thinking that it was even possible—it always would've been with someone who had ridiculous, messy hair and strong hands. A bit taller than him.

Exactly like this.

Yuki pulls away first, afraid of what will happen if he doesn't. He opens his eyes, and his line of vision is filled with Kakeru's eyelids and ruddy cheeks.

His eyes flit down to Kakeru's mouth, lips parted. He watches as his mouth changes from that—an image caught in motion, an expression unfiltered—to a wide grin that's equal parts sincere joy and plastered-on laughter.

"See?" Kakeru asks, just barely panting. "You're not missing out on much."

Yuki tries to slow down his heavy breathing. His head spins.

"Yeah," he says. "Nothing special."

"Hey. That's so rude, Yun-Yun."

"Joking," Yuki laughs softly. Kakeru rolls his eyes and goes back to looking at constellations, the last traces of illumination as the streetlights start to dim. His dark brown eyes are lit up with reflected starlight.

Yuki can't seem to bring his own eyes back to the sky.

"You can stay over," Kakeru says, his gaze focused upward. "If you want."

"Really?"

"It's just late," Kakeru says awkwardly, "so… why not stay?"

Yuki looks at Kakeru then, at his bright eyes and fidgeting hands, and an emotion tears through his chest. It's all-consuming, like it could bury him beneath the earth. It feels a bit like everything.

He wonders if it's anything like what Kyo feels when he looks at Tohru.

"Okay," Yuki says. "I will."

"That's my Prez," Kakeru says, smiling wide and bumping his shoulder against Yuki's. "Besides, can't have the sex dungeon ruining your beauty sleep, yeah?"

Yuki snorts. "Yeah. Something like that."

He feels Kakeru press flush against his side. Neither of them move away from the contact. They stay like that, talking until they lose track of time and then a little bit longer, cast in fractured shadows and light on the rooftop.

And just this once, Yuki lets himself lean into the touch, too.