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It was a drunken mistake.
For Kaoru, it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be a mistake when he came home half-drunk with his hips swaying to the songs in his head while Rei helped him to take off his clothes. It was supposed to be another mistake when he slurred, “I’m not drunk!” and Rei laughed and Kaoru felt himself intoxicated by it. It was supposed to be a mistake when he pushed Rei to bed and straddled him with only his pants on. But Rei welcomed him.
It was supposed to be a drunken mistake when he kissed him, hungrily, and Rei wasn’t supposed to kiss him back, but he did. And it shouldn’t feel great, but it felt like bliss.
And he wasn’t supposed to remember how Rei’s lips felt against his, but he remembered. Rei wanted it, Rei wanted him. The taste lingered in his tongue, the softness clung to his lips, the traces Rei left on his neck still could be found even though Kaoru tried to use his concealer to cover them up.
They didn’t work. And they certainly didn’t cover the memory of Rei rejecting Kaoru when he tried to take off his clothes too, the shame pumping on his head when Rei dropped Kaoru from his lap, avoiding his gaze, walking out of his room.
“You aren’t sober, Kaoru-kun.” He could feel Rei’s lips on his temple when he asked for a reason, his hand brushing his hair softly. “I don’t want you to regret it. Besides, you’re my best friend.”
Best friend. The words haunted him like the ghost of Rei’s lips when they first kissed.
And he wouldn’t, Kaoru knew it. He wouldn’t regret it if it was Rei. Wouldn’t mind it if Rei roamed around, explored his body, kissed his lips again just so he could taste Rei’s favourite cologne. He would prefer if it were Rei than a stranger whose name he would always forget when morning comes and only chose because they reminded him of Rei but they were never him—never the man whose ruby eyes radiated the moon, whose hair was as dark as the black horizon behind the sealine at night.
They were never the man who kissed him in the bathtub at a party they had enough of, a stranger whom Kaoru didn’t expect, three days later, would be his roommate for more than three years.
Kaoru sighed. The cold water rained from the faucet, filling the empty bathroom with its scream, colliding with the song from Kaoru’s phone. Rei had gone to work, and he was once again alone in their large apartment.
It’s funny, really, Kaoru thought as he took a big gulp of cold water. Like it’s some kind of game. It’s funny how the world works, and how three days turned to three years, and now the stranger he used to yearn for lived with him, and it didn’t cease any of the distance he felt. In fact, it only grew larger.
Because now that he woke up to Rei’s face and spent his days almost always together with him, he knew Rei had never looked at him.
Not once, not ever, not even if the whole world stopped and stared at him. Kaoru knew Rei would never do the same.
He sighed, absentmindedly tracing the rim of his cup with his finger, the droplets touching his skin. Kaoru slumped on the table, staring at the chair where Rei liked to sit, the dirty plate sat comfortably on the table, a trace of food smearing the surface.
“Seriously,” Kaoru whispered, a soft chuckle leaving his lips. “You can’t expect me to clean up every time, Rei-kun.”
But he did anyway. He gathered the plate from his seat, then the glass, and then his own cup, standing up lazily after he piled them up. He hummed a song he remembered Rei liked listening to these days, having to hear it these few days had engraved the melody and lyrics into his mind. Kaoru took his time to walk across the room, and instead of using the dishwasher, he decided to clean the plates with his own hands. He turned on the faucet, still humming to the same melody, his feet dancing to the beat of his own voice.
His hands stopped when it was Rei’s plate turn. He could smell his cologne, a touch of smoke, together with a hint of coffee and night. Kaoru thought it was his imagination. It was either that or the fact that Rei’s scent had long since lived in every crook and cranny of their apartment. His hangover hadn’t ceased yet and the alcohol was still alive in his blood—roaring, even, and he didn’t know if he was still drunk on the alcohol or on his feelings. His senses were running wild.
But knowing himself, it was likely to be the latter.
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The sun was beginning to pack its belongings when Kaoru heard the sound of a doorknob being turned. He was cuddling with a pillow on the sofa, leisurely taking his time to choose a movie to pass time while waiting for the right hour to make dinner.
“Kaoru-kun.”
Smoke and coffee and night. The fragrance tickled his nose even when Rei was standing by the door. Kaoru smiled. “You’re back?”
Rei nodded. He was busy taking off his shoes. “Yeah. Band practice ended early so I thought I’d just go home.”
“Not hanging out with your mates?”
“I invited them, actually,” Rei said, “to come for dinner and then join us on our usual TV night. Do you mind?”
But isn’t that our thing? To spend every Thursday night together watching TV on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and cans of beers or bottles of red wine if they were feeling fancy? It was like a routine for them to clear any schedule tonight just to spend it with each other. Kaoru was anticipating. It was their thing. And he did mind Rei inviting someone else.
Kaoru shook his head. No, no. Nothing was ever their thing. “Nope. But you should help me make dinner, then,” he replied. “How many are eating?”
“Two. Well, four, actually, including us.”
He was drifting off to remembering what he saw in the refrigerator this afternoon when his eyes caught Rei’s, his rubies bumping his quartz gray, and for what felt like forever, the memories of last night came back to him, and shame began to float back in Kaoru’s body.
Rei broke their eye contact. Kaoru stared at his back as he walked from the entrance to the kitchen. “I just remembered.” He rose up from his seat. “I had a promise with Moricchi and Senacchi. I think Senacchi’s boyfriend did something and he was sad and well, he needed my help.”
“Oh.” Rei blinked. Kaoru noticed a hint of surprise passing by. “Ah, okay. I’ll just… order take-outs, then. Or dine out with the boys. Have fun.”
Why did he lie, anyway? Kaoru didn’t know. But in that moment, his mind encouraged him to go somewhere else that night, abandoning the routine they usually enjoyed together. He flashed Rei an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, okay?”
Rei smiled, almost ruefully, but it turned into a grin before Kaoru could mention it. “Anything for my best friend, really.”
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“So, what, you just chose to run away? Using me as an excuse?”
“No, I was saving myself,” Kaoru corrected. “And I’m sorry, okay? I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him.”
“You live together with him!” shouted Chiaki amidst the noises around them. “That doesn’t make sense!”
Kaoru flinched with the suddenly loud music. Clearly, he didn’t get the memo of a party being held. The club was an ocean of sweat and the people were like fishes, squirming and dancing and shouting over each other, even though it was Thursday night. He thought the bar would be a little quieter, being away from the dance floor and closer to the bartender, the shelves before him packed with bottles of different kinds, but yet here he was, squeezed by a couple who were busy making out on his right and a bothered Izumi on his left.
“Well, maybe if I take some time, I’d be ready to see him again.”
“Kao-kun,” Izumi sighed. Kaoru didn’t like the way he said his name like he had made a grave mistake, and he didn’t enjoy the way Chiaki was looking at him. They were going to chide him and he wouldn’t like it. Kaoru had finished the drink in his first glass when Izumi said: “You know you can’t run away from him.”
“I can,” Kaoru insisted. “If you let me crash in your apartment.”
“Hell no,” Izumi snapped. “You’re not crashing in ours. There’s not enough space.”
“Well, maybe if your boyfriend could stop being so clingy, there would be.”
“Don’t bring my boyfriend into this.”
“Okay, stop! Why are you guys fighting?” Chiaki intervened, dramatically jumping in between them with his arms spread wide, each palm on his friends’ faces. “And why are you so defensive today, Sena? You always make fun of your boyfriend!”
Izumi scoffed. “Affectionately,” he added. “And he’s my boyfriend, I can make fun of him. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, Kao-kun, you need to tell him about your feelings.”
“I’m not telling Rei-kun I like him." Kaoru shook his head. "He called me his best friend. Best. Friend."
“You’re not getting anywhere with him, then,” Chiaki said bleakly, Kaoru glared and he shrugged. “You two need to communicate.”
“Chia-kun is right, you two do.”
“You don’t get a say in this, Sena. I still remember how badly you and your boyfriend communicated.”
“Right!” exclaimed Kaoru. “Communication is hard and you know that better than anyone, Senacchi!”
“We are learning, okay, don’t jump on me like that.”
Kaoru sank his head in between his arms, pressing his cheeks to the cold bar table. He watched the droplets rain from his small glass, each carefully hitting the ground. “I just don’t understand why it’s so hard.”
“What is?” Chiaki inquired.
“This whole feeling thing.” Kaoru peered up. “I thought it’d just be a silly crush because he was a good kisser and the fact that he was my roommate made it funnier, but it lasted for three years and is still going and now I don’t think it’s just a silly crush anymore.”
The bartender gave him a glass of water and Kaoru drank it instantly, quenching his thirst. The talk had made him hungry and parched. Chiaki patted his back, muttering a soft, “There, there.”
The sound among them ceased to silence, and the only one still blaring was the music in the club and the blinking lights, changing from one colour to another. Kaoru scanned the room. He saw a few familiar faces in the crowd, the students from his classes and the young lecturers he knew all mingling on the dance floor, forgetting the invisible barrier they had around campus. For a moment, he thought he should dance his love problems off. It was making him restless.
After what felt like an eternity, Izumi spoke. “Well,” he began. “The silly one here is you and not your feelings, Kao-kun, because a crush doesn’t last for three years.”
Kaoru groaned. He loved them, these friends of his that had been there since the beginning, but sometimes they needed to shut up.
“Maybe you should just drink,” Chiaki suggested. He ordered another round for the three of them, then turned around with a grin on his face. “That’s the way if you want to forget about it, you know? Just drink and you’ll forget them!”
He doubted that. Getting drunk usually led to endless thoughts of Rei—the way he would take care of him every time he came home drunk, babbling about anything that happened, smelling like another person he had found attractive in the club, taking in Rei’s scent with a deep breath, sobering up but still acting drunk, just for Rei to tend to him.
Hesitation waved at him. Maybe before, he wasn’t drunk enough. He was never truly drunk. Kaoru had never lost his consciousness and let the alcohol take over. He was always sober enough to realise that Rei would pick him up if no one could drive him home.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. He looked down on the glass before him, the drink swimming in it, calling to him. Kaoru thought he smelled desperation from it. “I think we should get wasted tonight.”
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For the first time in a million years, Kaoru didn’t remember how he got home. It was a sequence of blurred events after the sixth—or seventh, he couldn’t remember—glass Chiaki ordered for them. He remembered Izumi stopping after the third glass, saying they should do the same, but Kaoru and Chiaki were too immersed in their competition to stop. Well, Kaoru thought. That explains.
When he blinked, the first thing he recognized was his burning throat. Kaoru coughed, trying to cease the fire scorching and clawing on the walls. He flinched when a cold sensation tickled his skin, his shoulders stiffened, relaxing only when his ears caught a familiar voice.
“Drink this,” Rei said, a glass of cold water on his hand and Advil on the other. “You drank too much tonight.”
Kaoru would have argued if it wasn’t for the pounding on his head. He mumbled a thank you before gratefully taking the glass from Rei’s hand, the cold washing over the fire in his throat. He shook his head when his roommate gave him the Advil. “No, I’m fine.”
“You should, it will help with the headache.”
“I’d rather eat porridge,” Kaoru scoffed. He tried to rise from his seat, but failed miserably and fell on the edge instead. Rei gave him a raised eyebrow and held out a hand. Kaoru shot him a glare, but after another failed attempt, he took Rei’s hand in his.
Rei put an arm on Kaoru’s waist, keeping him steady. “You can’t expect me to take care of you every time you’re drunk, Kaoru-kun.”
Kaoru felt a tingle in his stomach. Didn’t he say the same thing earlier? He felt his cheeks growing warm. “Well, you don’t have to.”
“I like to, though,” Rei chuckled. “Taking care of you.”
He knew his cheeks were set ablaze, but he couldn’t pinpoint if it was from the fire left by the alcohol or the campfire that just settled in his stomach. Kaoru said nothing, silently letting Rei guide him to his bedroom.
“It’s hard, you know,” Kaoru spoke. He laid down on his bed with Rei sitting beside him. “To take care of a drunk person.”
Rei looked at him. “Everything feels natural when it comes to you.”
There it was again, the surge of heat rising from his stomach to his mind, leaving trails on his ears and cheeks. Kaoru thought he saw something in the way Rei's eyes tried to hold his—a thing familiar to longing, like he was seeking something in Kaoru’s cloudy grey, but it might be the alcohol trying to fool him.
“Like what?” Kaoru asked. “Other than taking care of me?”
There was a stretch of silence surrounding them, a soundless room that Kaoru took to ease his hammering heart. Rei broke his gaze away. “Like waking up to your face, for example.”
Kaoru laughed. “Well, you’ve been doing that for three years. It’d be weird if you’re not used to it.”
“I didn’t have to get used to it,” Rei remarked. “Not even from the first night.”
“You don’t even look at me,” Kaoru grumbled. “Not even once. You always avert your eyes from mine.”
“What?”
“Don’t you know it?” He tried to catch Rei’s eyes, trying to stalk the restless rubies, but his roommate kept on staring in a different direction. Kaoru huffed. “You just did it, Rei-kun.”
“I think someone had too much alcohol,” Rei sighed. “And clearly, it’s getting in your head.”
But it wasn’t the alcohol. It was that he had enough. Enough of pining and wondering, enough of seeking love from the man who always kept his distance from him. He had enough of feigning patience when all he wanted to do was to kiss Rei’s lips and be together with him.
Bile slowly snaked its way to Kaoru’s throat, hanging around his tongue, ready to shoot Rei with the emotions he had swallowed the last three years. He knew he shouldn’t, it could break their friendship, it could burn whatever they had built over the years, turning the mornings and days and nights into ashes, but Kaoru couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t bear the thought of passing another day with his feelings clawing heavy in his heart. He was good at silencing his feelings, but things always faltered whenever Rei was concerned.
“Why aren’t you in love with me, anyway?” Kaoru blurted. “Everyone couldn’t resist my charm, and yet here you are, like you’re some kind of being who is immune to it!
“And it just stresses me out!” Kaoru cried out as he stormed out of bed, standing on the side, challenging Rei to look at him. But Rei didn’t. Instead, he stared on his toes as if they were more interesting than Kaoru. “See? See! This is what I’m talking about, Rei-kun. We’ve spent countless days together as roommates yet you have never stopped to look at me, not even once! And it’s funny, because I’ve always been looking at you!”
He could feel the fire crawling to his eyes, the tears burning on the edges. He blinked quickly. “And then you called me… what, best friend? I don’t even want to be your best friend! Best friends don’t—”
Rei crashed their lips together before Kaoru could finish his sentence. He kissed him, hard, angrily, his hand on his nape, his teeth nibbling his lips, and Kaoru felt his knees going weak at the kiss, at the overwhelming sensation Rei gave him, but he caught him before Kaoru could fall. Rei embraced him, the two of them on top of Kaoru’s bed.
And then it all slowed down. Rei held Kaoru closer to him, his hand on Kaoru’s waist, pulling him in, deepening the kiss, showering him with gentle pecks over his lips, their noses brushing, his cheeks red and searing, and Kaoru let him in. He let Rei take control. He gave in to him. Heaven grew in him. Heaven was around his grip. Heaven was gone when Rei pulled away, his forehead on Kaoru’s, their breath haggard and heavy.
“You’re not only a best friend to me, Kaoru-kun,” Rei breathed out. “You don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you.”
“How long?” he mumbled, resting a peck on the corner of Rei’s mouth. “Tell me, Rei-kun.”
“Three years ago,” Rei answered. “From the moment we kissed in that shallow bathtub.”
Kaoru gawked at him. “What?”
Rei chuckled. He brushed Kaoru’s hair with his fingers. “Who hasn’t been looking now?”
“Are you defending yourself now?” Kaoru quipped. He locked Rei’s waist with his legs, moving closer to him. He turned to Rei, and with a demanding voice, said: “So?”
“I didn’t know how much longer I could hold myself,” Rei uttered, nuzzling his face on Kaoru’s neck. “I always feel like I want to kiss you again, but I didn’t want to make it awkward. And yesterday when you did, you were drunk. I wasn’t sure if it was you or the alcohol who kissed me.”
Kaoru felt a kiss land on his shoulder. He broke free from Rei’s grip, loosening his legs, taking in Rei’s face under the gentle moonlight. His cheeks were as red as his. He pressed their foreheads together, eye to eye now, the glint softening Rei’s edges.
Dazzling, he mused to himself. This is better than any alcohol. He could drink Rei’s beauty and never stop, even when he was already drunk.
He smiled. It was always the same thing, then, that held them back: not wanting to ruin what they had, the comfort they shared, the home they had made out of the times they spent together in the apartment they rented together.
“Kaoru-kun?”
He snapped out of his thoughts. Rei was looking at him, his eyebrows furrowed, a hint of insecurity settling between them. He didn’t like it, that look on him—it didn’t suit him. Not at all. Kaoru rubbed the wrinkles between Rei’s eyebrows with a finger, smoothing his forehead gently. He beamed when they disappeared.
“You can kiss me whenever now,” he whispered before leaning in, closing the distance between them with a kiss. Rei grinned on his lips, his hands cupping Kaoru’s face, his head tilted, Kaoru melting in his lips. They parted away to catch their breaths, but Kaoru didn’t miss the mirth in Rei’s eyes.
“No more waiting and longing, then?”
“No,” Kaoru replied, planting a kiss on Rei’s cheeks. “Sober or drunk, I’m yours to have, Rei-kun.”