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Ryuunosuke wakes more gently than he has all week. Actually being awake is another story altogether. Any other day on this godforsaken shoebox of a ship cabin and he’d be greedy for the strip of morning light he opens his eyes against. As is, Ryuunosuke wakes up and almost suffers a cardiac arrest.
Asougi is sleeping (stock straight), sans blanket (quite unnerving), beside him. Almost skin to skin, the barest press of weight—the solid form of Asougi’s arm pressing the quilt (and it’s airy and warm with down, heartbreaking) around him. Beside each other on the bed—on the bed?!—and then not at all because Ryuunosuke has slapped a hand to the gasp torn from his throat, snatched his leg back from where it is flung over Asougi’s thigh, and rolled himself right off the mattress and onto the floor.
His life does not flash before his eyes. He lives to see the ceiling, the dust motes floating before him.
He’d kissed his best friend.
Too winded to make noise and facing the serious possibility he’s maybe not going to be able to pull himself up, perspective floods him with much greater ease when he’s plastered to the floor.
His best friend had kissed him.
And okay, at least his arms can move since he’s able to draw them up well enough to unleash a silent scream into the dark of his hands.
Except, the morning still gets in. That stupid thumbprint of a window that gives him absolutely nothing when he’s folded himself into a wardrobe has plenty to say without a wooden door to muffle it. One week and he has woken up only to the noise of Asougi getting ready to leave the cabin. One week pressing himself to the eye of a needle, how he has wrenched open that porthole at the sound of the door clicking shut and let the barren surface of the sea sting his face until he’s had it slapped back into him that Asougi is still near, has one place to return to, and a world of open air they’ve agreed to share at the close of less than two months. One week and maybe Asougi has wanted to kiss him all along. One week and maybe it’s been nothing more than a curiosity, striking when the light is right, or when the light is just low enough. One week and Asougi only stopped worrying the thought when he was more than a few drinks in, or just drunk enough that he could forget.
What could that have even meant? Worse still, what could it mean that Ryuunosuke has fallen out of bed—could’ve died, really—and there’s nothing for him but the thought of Asougi sleeping, a moment’s grasp away, that settles like a stone in the pit of his stomach.
There’s a problem. See, he’d have quite liked to keep kissing his best friend if said best friend hadn’t nuzzled into the crook between his neck and shoulder, testing, like a cat, for the right spot, lowered his weight with his grip curled around Ryuunosuke’s arm…and then shut his eyes and decided to go to sleep.
The bubble of hysteria. Ryuunosuke only bites back the urge to laugh at himself because the strike of dread at what Asougi might say when he wakes resounds like the noon cannon. But still, he can’t help the prickling need to push up on his elbows and look over the state of disarray Asougi had allowed himself to fall asleep in. He cranes his neck, then pulls himself up with about as much wits as the first casualty of a gothic novel, gritting his teeth against the pain of the earlier fall.
Somehow Asougi is still asleep.
And yes, it is a mild sort of terror to see someone sleep with their limbs in such strict lines, but what Ryuunosuke finds himself fixating on is that, for however rigidly Asougi is holding himself, everything about him is perfectly askew. The hachimaki loose, half slipping over one eye, the red fluttering out behind the inky hair, running a map over the starched cotton of the pillow. Down to his chest, rising and falling under the wrinkled shirt, the skin that had warmed Ryuunosuke’s palms, peeking out free of four buttons that he distinctly remembers fumbling with. The suspenders—God. Ryuunosuke’s ears burn. The suspenders that he’d been struggling to unbutton from the loops hidden under the band of Asougi’s trousers, until Asougi had grumbled something about his clumsiness, dragged Ryuunosuke’s hands above his head, pressed them into the pillow with one hand of his own around Ryuunosuke’s wrists, and used the other to unhook the straps himself. Ridiculous. That it hadn’t been a trick, it hadn’t been a come on. That the fingers on Ryuunosuke’s pulse had flexed and then unfurled all together—and the dizzy rush of his blood felt the same as the feverish heat of Asougi’s mouth when he’d drawn back down, like something set to break, and sung a shiver of a whimper onto Ryuunosuke’s tongue.
All at once, Ryuunosuke needs to open the window, he needs to get up and pace the room. He needs to throw himself back into the wardrobe. What he does is stare, again, at Asougi, his slightly parted mouth, sweet-faced in his sleep. And all at once, Ryuunosuke needs to wake Asougi up. The force of it makes his eyes water, his teeth clamped like a dam against their year of friendship. Only weeks ago and they’d been traipsing around Hongo, arguing around the rickety noise of a passing streetcar, about where served the best gyuunabe relative to their pockets, as if they wouldn’t wind up right back at their haunt on campus. Just as any other pair of friends would.
Except, right, his best friend had kissed him. Or he’d kissed his best friend. And damn it all, he’s staring at Asougi’s face, that ridiculous hachimaki that he’s still wearing in the name of a tongue twister that wasn’t even real until he’d tripped over it. And Ryuunosuke is staring, just as he’d been staring last night. Steered into it, that’s always how it’s been with Asougi—one reassuring hand on his shoulder, the unerring focus, and Ryuunosuke is always going along with it. A lawyer, right. He needs Asougi to wake up and tell him how exactly he’d done nothing at all wrong.
And surely he hadn’t, really? Done anything wrong, that is. What else would one do when presented with a bed after sleeping in a closet for a week? What else would one do with a lapful of Asougi? And Ryuunosuke might have been unable to look away but who was looking at him in the first place? It isn’t fair, how come Asougi gets to sleep peacefully?
Frowning, Ryuunosuke shifts onto his knees and shuffles towards the bed.
“Asougi?” First, a whisper. No response.
He tries again, gulping this time, solid enough that the settling of his voice feels far more daunting.
Remarkably, Asougi is still sleeping like mud.
Frustrated now, he doesn’t stop himself reaching out, jabs a finger into Asougi’s shoulder. Asougi’s brows pinch, he shifts slightly. And as if having poked a snake, Ryuunosuke snatches his hand back, dropping to rearrange himself so he’s sitting on his lap, trying to look as nonchalant as one can having fallen off a bed and right into a downward spiral.
“Mrrghrghh,” says Asougi.
Ryuunosuke—sweating, slippery, heart about to flop straight out his ribcage—nods his head and says, quite dumbly, “Yes.”
“What...” Asougi’s voice is rough, sleep-scratched, and it would be amusing watching him groan again, dragging himself upright against the headboard and digging his fingers under his hachimaki, scrubbing it off altogether and leaving a cowlick in his hair in its wake, if Ryuunosuke hadn’t learned all those points of contact last night.
Never mind the half open shirt. Ryuunosuke has to bite his tongue to stop himself from shouting at Asougi to cover his forehead again.
“Water,” Asougi swallows thickly, adds: “Please.” And then he sets his eyes on Ryuunosuke and continues from before. “What time is it?”
Ryuunosuke laughs nervously, winces at the sound and then still manages to respond too loudly, a touch shrill, “Almost time for you to get us breakfast! Wow, really, I forgot what a wreck you become when you drink!”
At Asougi’s grimace, Ryuunosuke shrinks. Glancing to the clock, he tries again, much more subdued this time. “It’s half past eight.”
“On a Sund—” Asougi yawns, one hand scratching at his head, the other coming up to cover his mouth. “On a Sunday.” He’s still squinting. This is very bad.
The line of Asougi’s sight shifts, from Ryuunosuke to the floor and back again, pinning him there, far too shrewd for someone who’s woken up in his day clothes after a few too many.
“Was the bed not to your liking?”
Ryuunosuke blinks, his face flaring, and desperately wishes he could tear himself away. “I-I fell off.”
Asougi’s brows shoot up. “You…fell off?”
Ryuunosuke slaps a hand to the floorboard, hard enough that his palm smarts. “Right! Water!”
He resists the urge to keep low and simply dive towards the jug, instead pulling himself up to his feet, very respectably smoothing down the cloth of his nemaki, and turning his back to Asougi. And it’s not much of a relief that Asougi can’t see the way his hands shake around the glass when he’s hyper aware of the back of his neck, exposed and burning hot.
No doubt he’s not schooling his expression particularly well, but he tries, passing the glass to Asougi and inclining his head in turn when Asougi nods in thanks. It’s hopeless anyhow, the moment Asougi tips back, gulping down the water, the line of his throat exposed such that Ryuunosuke very nearly snatches the glass back to take a sip for himself. When Asougi is done, he tilts his chin up to look at Ryuunosuke, and it’s both a breath released and a breath suspended that there’s a wrinkle of apprehension between Asougi’s brows, uncertainty in the slant of his mouth. And no, very bad. Very bad idea to look at Asougi’s mouth, a drop of water held above the curve of his lip that has Ryuunosuke wetting his own.
Distracted, Ryuunosuke sees the shape of Asougi’s words before he registers the sound.
“Naruhodou…” Asougi purses his lips for a moment. “Perhaps we should talk about what ha—”
And it’s the moment Ryuunosuke catches up, midway, in a panic—what happened last night—that Asougi drops the rest of the sentence, sighing. A hand comes up, to dab at his mouth, the movement so jarring for how delicate a touch it is. Freed, finally, Ryuunosuke grabs for the glass and turns his head, heavy now. He’d like to set himself at Asougi’s feet, suddenly feels entirely inadequate and, somehow, a bit cruel.
He sets the glass back on the table and speaks, still not looking back at Asougi. “The bed was nice.” And he hears the air leave Asougi in a rush. It’s as if Ryuunosuke catches it, accommodates it in turn. The sensation now of being stretched so thin that anything and everything might pierce through to the nerve.
“Did you really want breakfast right now?”
Ryuunosuke counts to three in his head and when he turns, Asougi has slung his legs over the mattress to rest his feet on the floor. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed now and Ryuunosuke lets himself be pinned again, always, under his stare. It’s fortifying in its way, that Asougi is looking at him not like something soft, not like something that startles, even though Ryuunosuke has been unravelling since last night—since the moment he’d been rising on his knees to get to that point, midway, to meet Asougi’s kiss.
The first (only) latin maxim that had come to mind, the first in Asougi’s alphabetised glossary. If this here first is so, it follows that…
Asougi, like he’s always watching. The stillness of his eyes. Asougi, like he’s always wanting to hold Ryuunosuke there, like this, like one entire world.
Ryuunosuke shakes his head and starts to move. He makes for the same spot, sits himself down on the floor, cross legged in front of Asougi, and looks up. He watches as Asougi’s eyelashes sweep down, his hands in his lap, pulling idly at the joints of his thumbs. Ryuunosuke has to chew on the inside of his cheek but he does not look away. He keeps himself there, where Asougi stops himself.
Asougi’s hands still, his voice coming measured when he speaks. “Did you really want breakfast right now?” He repeats, swallows. “Because it’s a Sunday morning, I have a headache, and I’d quite like to go back to sleep.” On the last word, Ryuunosuke sees it, the way Asougi seems to chance a glance back at him.
Ryuunosuke draws his knees to his chest. Again, he shakes his head. And it’s against every logical instinct, unfortunately perfectly in line with every indulgent one, that he gathers his reserve of theatrics and pulls the hammiest yawn he can manage, arms and all.
Simple, given like a breeze, the way Asougi laughs and it leaves his mouth softened into a smile. He looks just like he had last night, before his hand had come to rest atop Ryuunosuke’s head.
“Since you thought the bed was nice after all…you could—”
Ryuunosuke darts forward, his hands coming to grip the wooden slats under the bed, not bothering to try and look at least slightly less manic. In an instant, his priorities slide completely, every crick he’s worked out of his neck sings, the lament of his poor spine.
“Now…now you offer,” he grits out, like a man dying.
Asougi looks absolutely bewildered. “Offer? What on Earth was there to offer?!” He frowns, then. And to anyone else, the look would probably be withering. But Ryuunosuke can see the sulky set of his chin. “Clearly the bed is plenty big. You were the one who took one look at it and said you’d sleep in the wardrobe!”
Feeling very much like an idiot now, Ryuunosuke leans in further. “I was trying to be courteous!”
“Courteous?” This time, Asougi’s look hits target. It really is withering. “Well, it doesn’t look very good on you, Naruhodou. You stowed yourself in a damn suitcase for me—tell me, what would be fair for me to deny you?”
“Fair, see!” Ryuunosuke shrinks back, winces as he squeezes his fingers out from where he’d trapped them between the mattress and the bed frame, and sags down onto his haunches. “It’s not like I could just ask.”
Asougi’s eyebrows, his lips, his voice, all flatten. “So what was I meant to do? Knock on the closet and request you join me? ‘Oh Naruhodou, come sleep in the bed, if you please.’”
Of course not! is what Ryuunosuke wants to say. But the pitch of those last words, the put upon pleading in Asougi’s eyes, twists at his gut in a way it shouldn’t.
Even as Ryuunosuke diverts his gaze, he knows he’s blushing and that Asougi can see it. Which makes it all the more difficult to stop.
Ryuunosuke hears Asougi groan, all the fight sinking to exasperation. “It’s not a big deal, anyway,” he mutters.
But clearly it is, or they wouldn’t be here. And it’s a long shot but maybe what’ll do him best is to be a little shameless. Blush and all, Ryuunosuke blinks up at Asougi again, lets his brows draw up and the corners of his mouth draw down.
It works, thankfully, because he’s starting to sweat. Asougi sighs. “Naruhodou, please. I’m sure we can share.”
Ryuunosuke bites back the grin, takes the nervous swoop of his stomach and lets it pull him to his feet. One more bout of theatrics; he balls his hand into a fist and pounds his back a few times, groaning pitifully. Well, the aches really have been getting quite severe…
Asougi rolls his eyes. But he also starts chewing his lip, looking a little nervous, after the words leave him so gently: “I’ve given you a hard time, haven’t I?” He sighs, patting the space beside him, Ryuunosuke’s now.
“Oh, I’m used to all your drama,” Ryuunosuke says, waving a hand, bluffing a self-satisfied smile.
Asougi arches a brow, looking deeply unimpressed. “You’re used to my drama?” he huffs. But he still ends up swinging his legs back onto the bed, rolling over to face the wall, leaving three quarters for Ryuunosuke.
And oh, oh right. The sight of Asougi curled up like that casts the tiny victory to the wayside. The actual mathematics of the situation bears down once again, heavy at Ryuunosuke’s feet. Too much space and not enough. A bed and a friend that Ryuunosuke has very recently realised how badly he’d like to touch. He gulps.
Asougi sighs again, not the funny one, it’s the one that Ryuunosuke always wants to fix. “If it’s uncomfortable we could always take tu—”
The bed dips under Ryuunosuke’s weight. And then there is silence, thick as the lump in Ryuunosuke’s throat. He fidgets, tries to shift around, considers making a play of luxuriating but, really, he’s exhausted. All out of cheek. And the bed, God, it really is nice. Distantly, he thanks the birds? Ducks? Geese? Whatever fowl…unless it’s wool…that made this quilt feel so good.
But the comfort gets old fast when he can hear Asougi breathing next to him. He knows Asougi hears the rustle of fabric when he turns his head to look, knows because there’s a tremor in the sound of Asougi’s breath. Ryuunosuke watches it shift him, in the line of Asougi’s back, the red spreading over the back of his neck. He’s still in last night’s clothes. Ryuunosuke twists over, fully on his side now.
They really should...They should really talk about...
“Asougi...”
This close, there’s a futility to how Ryuunosuke tries to press the name as quietly as he can. And what else could happen? Asougi sighs again, shifts to face him, looking just as stern as he does cautious. It’s just the same, the countless times they’d walked together to the Law and Letters building. How the straight line of Asougi’s path—kept by the ginkgo trees on either side of them—would wobble the moment Ryuunosuke would catch up to him. How many times had Ryuunosuke reached up like it was nothing to brush a leaf off Asougi’s shoulder? Out his hair? All the times he’d thought nothing of the way Asougi is looking at him right now, the stutter in his step. As many times as Asougi had touched him much the same, chiding him for his messiness, and under a sheepish laugh Ryuunosuke would glow at the ease with which Asougi would shift a little closer to him and stay that way.
The bed is nice, really. But now it’s been long enough that Ryuunosuke can compare it to the futon at home and decide the latter was more comfortable. The knots in his poor back, in his stomach now as well. He is trying very hard to focus on the cool of the pillow against his face when he speaks.
“It was nice,” He says. Not about the bed this time.
Asougi’s eyes dart but Ryuunosuke catches the flicker of surprise, the translucence of his skin, ears red. He speaks, with the same quickness with which the breath first left him. But he hasn’t quite recovered all the way, an opening left. “You’ll have to do better than that, Partner.”
And huffing once again, he turns right back over.
This time, Ryuunosuke exhales and then shuffles closer. Not quite pressed to Asougi, only almost. Enough that he’s not sure who the heat between their bodies belongs to; enough that the gap is taut, dangerous and delicate as an elastic band. Enough that he can see the evenly cropped length of Asougi’s hair, the base of his skull where it’s shorn close—they’d shelled out together at Kitadoko after their final class last week, speaking of a new city, even knowing the trim wouldn’t outlast the journey at sea. And he’s not homesick, really, home is the last place he’d want to be right now. It’s just Asougi, how the world might be suspended on this mattress in the middle of the sea because he’s right back in the bookstore that Asougi would drag him to so often. Out Kanda shrine and down, down to the foot of the hill. How Ryuunosuke would follow him, weaving around the shelves, offering a question—or an admittedly baseless opinion—now and again, just to see his eyes spark.
Ryuunosuke crosses the distance. The barest touch, and then he offers the solid press of his forehead and his nose, as he bows into the line of Asougi’s shoulder. They suck in their breath at the same time. So too, in tandem, relax.
Yes, the bookstore. How Ryuunosuke would stick to Asougi, whether cramped or near-empty, draw closer still to peek over his back at whatever monthly he was rifling through. The fall of Ryuunosuke’s breath back then lingering with the taste of an earlier stop at the mochi-ya they’d pass on the way—the simple joy of daifuku. All evaporated now into something unknown and something familiar. The sweet memory of anko, puffing warm against the thin cotton of Asougi’s shirt. That’s entirely new.
And Ryuunosuke knows, right now he’s not going to talk about last night. He swallows, unsure if ever. And nonetheless, or maybe exactly so, he follows the instinct to nuzzle into Asougi. Just a touch.
Asougi doesn’t say a word, nor does he kick him off.
Not now, at least.
So Ryuunosuke burrows closer, because that’s all he’s wanted to do since he knew how it felt.
And this, at least, he thinks he can manage.