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“Cat!” Kazutora exclaims in a tone that, if he heard someone else use it, would have him smirking and declaring he’d kill them. But no, it’s Kazutora that uses it as he throws his bag into the corner of Baji’s room and all but runs to the desk by the open window.
The cat freezes at this, its haunches rising and its hair standing on end until Kazutora stops and slowly offers out a hand for it to sniffs. When it seems satisfied, his fingers trickle underneath its chin and he begins scratching it gently. It closes its eyes and tilts its head into Kazutora’s touch, content.
Baji watches all of this unfold from the still open doorway, his own school bag hanging off his elbow and his mouth half-open in words now forgotten.
“I’m excited,” Kazutora says suddenly, turning to Baji, the cat now forgotten. He’s positively vibrating, bouncing in spot on the balls of his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets and then removing them and running one over his tightly cropped hair and then back into his pockets. His already wide eyes are wider and glittering like he’s feverish. It’s a manic look that terrifies Baji in the same way it endears him.
“For tonight,” he finishes and sits himself up on Baji’s bed, heels kicking gently. “Mikey’s gonna love it, right? Of course he is, it’s a sick bike how could he not love it?”
"Yeah," Baji replies and grins, ignoring the small hook inching into the back of his brain and lets his bag fall to the floor, then tugs off his school shirt and throws it into the clothes pile in the corner of his room. He dresses in a large black hoodie and black jeans, similar to Kazutora.
"You've gotten stronger."
Baji looks over at Kazutora. His heels have stilled, his hands tucked under his thighs as he leans forward. His eyes are lingering on Baji's no longer bare stomach, then they flicker up to Baji's eyes, an unfamiliar look settled there.
Baji fixes the edge of the hoodie and shakes out his arms. He's not... uncomfortable. That's not it. But it's also not not it.
"Yeah?" Baiji answers reflexively and strikes a pose, kisses each bicep and then smirks at Kazutora. "One of us gotta be."
Kazutora’s on his feet in an instant in a poor imitation of a boxer's stance, his grin mischievous. He's been watching a lot of boxing lately, convinced he could be one, that that American everyone still talks about wouldn't have a patch on him. He bounces on his toes and weaves in place, throwing a false jab at Baji.
"I could still kick your ass," he says, though history isn't on his side.
"Yeah?" Baiji grins, sharp teeth bared over the curl of his lip as he raises his guard waiting for Kazutora to strike. But Kazutora drops low like he's weaving again and then Bajii is on his back, staring up at his white ceiling.
The cat in the corner looks at them for a few moments then back to its food.
"Cheap shot," Baji huffs through the weak struggle he continues, but stays laughing.
Kazutora manages to squeeze his thighs tight enough to make Baji stop, and catches his wrists by his head. The pose means he has to lean forward, close to Baji’s face, as he grins down. They both know Baji could break out of this with just a little effort, but they both remain where they are.
“No, you assumed and you were wrong,” Kazutora tells him matter-of-factly.
“What happened to boxing?”
Katura tilts his head gently, the long earring he wears jingling as he moves. “I’m more into MMA,” he says each letter slowly and with over-exaggerated pronunciation because he’s always been terrible with English, “now.”
Baji moves his torso, but Kazutora forces his weight down and squeezes harder with his thighs and Baji goes limp again.
“Oh!” Kazutora says suddenly and is off Baji and hunkered by his bag in an instant. “Look what I stole.”
When he turns around, A proud smile covers half of his face and he’s got some glossy magazine clutched in his hands. There’s a woman on the front of it in nothing but her underwear.
But Baji’s watching Kazutora, uninterested in the spoils, and crosses his legs where he sits on the floor.
Kazutora laughs gleefully as he lands heavily on the floor beside Baji, but there’s a nervous tenseness in his shoulders as he opens up the magazine to a picture of a dark-haired woman looking directly out of the page at them, but Baji doesn’t quite see her. He’s not interested in the magazine and the images inside it. He’s not interested in any magazines like this on a regular day.
“Cool,” Kazutora says as his fingers glide over the page and turn to the next one.
It stays silent with a weird sort of tension between them that Baji can’t place, interspersed only with the gentle slide of glossy paper on glossy paper as Kazutora’s long fingers glide over it, his short, bitten nail catches the edge and turns it to the next page Baji doesn’t look at.
“Do you think Draken’s slept with the girls in his apartment?” Kazutora asks eventually, letting the magazine fall flat against his legs. Baji is grateful for the excuse to stop looking at it and to look at the sharp lines of his profile.
“Nah,” Baji answers playfully, “they’re like his moms, that would be weird.”
Kazutora sighs and falls back against the edge of Baji’s bed, the magazine falling off his lap as he lets his head loll back to look at the roof, his stretched out legs begin to move and he taps his socked toes against each other.
“It’s so lame,” he says, staring at a spot on Baji’s ceiling so intensely Baji feels compelled to turn and look with him, but then his head turns slightly and his eyes are back on Baji, “I’ve never even kissed anyone.”
Baji wants to grin at him, to punch his arm and tell him he’s lame even without that part, but he doesn’t find him lame, and he doesn’t know how to admit there’s a little gnawing in his stomach from Kazutora pulling out that magazine and it’s entirely related to the reason Baji doesn’t like those magazines in general. And that reason is looking up at him with his characteristically large eyes and with an open porno magazine on his lap and talking about how he wants to kiss someone and Baji knows that as much as he might want to kiss Kazutora, he’s not who Kazutora wants to kiss.
“Eh,” Baji says instead with half a shrug and leans back beside Kazuora and stretches his stiff legs out. “It’s not that big a deal.”
Which, for him, was true. His first kiss was nearly six months ago with a nice girl called Masako, but it only proved to him that he really doesn’t like girls. She also used too much tongue. He felt like the entire time he was too worried about keeping up with the different ways her tongue poked into his mouth to even realise he was supposedly kissing someone.
“You can only say that ‘cos you’ve done it,” Kazutora pouts and takes a deep breath, his chest rising and collapsing slowly under all the layers of clothes. They’ll be leaving soon. They’ve been packed and ready for hours now, that nervous anticipation making them more likely to be too early than too late.
Baji just shrugs and looks back over at the cat now curled on his desk, its small chin perched on one of its front paws, its eyes closed—he always likes to think they sleep better after they’ve been here and had some food.
“Baji…” Kazutora starts, his tone off-kilter and striking something oddly enough in Baji’s chest to make him swallow and shift. “Would it be… weird if I—never mind,” Kazutora finishes quickly shaking his head. He’s bright pink all the way down his neck and refuses to meet Baji’s eye when he looks back at him.
“Would what be weird?” Baji asks, his mouth feeling dry and his stomach feeling like that time they threw firecrackers into a cement mixer just to see what would happen.
“Nothing,” Kazutora says, shaking his head quickly and emphatically, two of his fingers beginning to tear at the magazine pages, leaving little bits of flesh fluttering to the floor.
“Kazu—”
“It’s nothing—”
“Do you wanna kiss me?” Baji asks, surprised the words managed to squeeze through the tightness in his throat.
“Wh-what?” Kazutora stutters but his fingers stop pulling at the pages and his face grows redder and he doesn’t try to move. “Why would I—why would you think—”
Baji shrugs but more to try and casually release some of the strange tension in his body than anything else. “It’s cool if you do.”
There’s only the soft sound of the cat’s deep breaths for far too long while Baji stares at his ceiling this time, and uses everything in his body not to look over at the dark shape in his peripheral though he really, really needs to see Kazutora right now and know how he’s reacting.
“Isn’t that…” Kazutora starts but trails off and there’s movement in the corner of Baji’s eye until Kazutora is in front of him. “Are you sure?” He says, forgoing whatever thought he’d started to say in favour of this one.
Baji nods, his mouth closed tight so he forces it to fall open a little bit, hoping his mouth will feel more normal, but now all he can feel of his body is his lips and all he can look at are Kazutora’s.
Kazutora swallows, his throat bobbing. “Okay,” he says, more to himself than anything, and nods slowly.
Neither of them move.
“Do, uh, do you want me to… start it?” Baji asks and looks up, finally, to Kazutora’s eyes. He looks nervous, almost scared, but not in any of the nervous or scared ways Baji has seen before.
“Yeah,” Kazutora says and licks his lips. “That’s a good idea.”
“Okay,” Baji says and straightens up, pulls his knees beneath himself and shuffles closer to Kazutora. He stops, then shuffles a little bit more until their knees touch, and watches as Kazutora leans a little bit closer, his eyes darting around Baji’s face.
He’s always thought Kazutora attractive. Even his wild eyes and the little beauty mark beneath his right eye—especially those actually—even when Kazutora frowns at them in the mirror and says how he wishes he could change them. Even with his horrible cropped hair that Baji much preferred longer.
Baji has always thought Kazutora attractive, so it makes him nervous to lean in and kiss him even though he’s thought about it a lot. He’s thought about it late at night and early in the morning. He’s thought about it as Kazutora has prodded at the beauty mark under his eye or chewed the end of his pencil in frustration at his English homework. This should make it easy, like something well practised, but as he leans in and presses his lips so gently against Kazutora’s, he finds he has no breath in his lungs and he’s going to fuck it up.
Kazutora presses back, gently at first, and then a little harder. Baji blinks his eyes closed and tries to steady his heart so maybe he can catch his breath. His tooth is digging into Kazutora’s lip and neither of them are moving and it’s arguably worse than his first kiss.
Something seems to suddenly click, slide into place, and Baji is kissing him, properly kissing him. It’s awkward and slow but it still makes Baji’s stomach swoop and his fingers itch to reach out to Kazutora and he knows that nothing that ever happens between them could make him stop feeling this way about Kazutora.
It’s over too soon.
Kazutora blinks at him, his lips parted and a little pink from the kiss. Baji feels his face turn warm and scratches the back of his neck awkwardly.
Sorry, he goes to say but Kazutora speaks before him.
“That wasn’t awful.”
Baji looks at him and the serious set to his face, then reaches out and shoves his shoulder.
“‘Course it wasn’t, you were kissing me,” Baji grins confidently, like he means it, even as his whole body thrums with nervous energy.
Kazutora smiles slyly. “I didn’t say it was good though.”
Baji shoves his shoulder, almost knocking him onto his back. Kazutora catches himself on his hand and lets out a trill of a laugh that makes Baji laugh too, all of the awkwardness draining out of the room.
“What time is it?” Kazutora asks when they’ve calmed down and climbs back to his feet.
Baji looks at the clock and feels a roguish smile curl at his lips. “Time to go steal Mikey a bike.”