Chapter Text
It’s late, definitely later than the bedtime curfew he’d been instructed to follow by Hijikata, taken straight from the How to Show Your Kid You’re In Charge: For Dummies hardback Kondou had gifted him last mother’s day. He’s been sitting in one place for so long, legs crossed and tucked under his torso, that his feet feel like they’ve become one with the cushion beneath him.
His coffee had gone cold three hours ago and there’s somebody outside his door.
He’d felt the presence before he’d actually heard the rhythmic slap slapping of flat footed boots against the concrete outside, and he swears his psychic abilities are only growing stronger by the day. Before long he’d be smacking the cigarette straight out of Hijikata’s mouth with a solid wall of ESP (He’d totally seen it on TV! It’s totally legit!) and watching him fumble around on the ground like an earthworm returning to the soil.
The door handle rattles and clicks in rapid succession and Sougo curses the bastard outside and his thick-headed lack of personal space, only before taking a single step forwards and diving nose-first into the carpet.
His feet are numb from sitting down for so long, and now his legs and nose and bottom lip hurt too and there's a terrible, horrible presence at his door trying to break it down and all he can do is try and crawl forwards and then maybe, hopefully upwards so he can make a grab at the seven different locks keeping the outside from welcoming itself in.
He’s able to get himself to a point where he’s standing up and unlocking each lock one by one until, finally, he’s panting a little from the effort and the front of his hair is sticking unflatteringly to his forehead, but he’s got a hand on the doorknob and it’s opening with a click. The cool night air tickles his cheeks and eyelashes as his eyes drift towards the figure shifting his weight on Sougo’s doormat.
There’s a sharp, invisible tug that snaps his spine straight up and Sougo’s jaw clenches, feeling the tugging of the strings tied to the tips of his teeth; a taut fishing wire all razor sharp and glimmering down the back of his throat, down into the slick crevasses of his body and into the dredges of whatever parts of himself he keeps stored, hidden between the bones in the small of his back.
Warm fingers, much warmer than they should be in winter (Yato run much warmer than someone like Sougo. Fire and power in their blood, or whatever, blah blah, Kagura had told him.) skirt the soft line of his jawbone before swiping his bottom lip and settling the tip into the corner of his mouth.
Kamui leans forward, ever closer, and smiles.
“Hey.”
Sougo considers biting the finger clean off.
Another hand snakes its way up and around to clutch loosely at the nape of his neck. Sougo leans a little into it and hates himself just a little bit more for it.
“Your finger’s wet.” He says dully, blowing hair out of his eyes and trying his very best to disturb the finger worming its way further into the side of his mouth. “You’re bleeding.”
Blue eyes blink once, twice before widening in recognition. “It’s not mine, I think. Sougo, it’s cold. Let me in.”
He blinks a third time after Sougo blows air onto his face. It’s revenge, he thinks, revenge for coming here and looking at him like he owes him something, like he needs something from him, something that Sougo doesn’t particularly care to place.
He steps backwards, shrugging off the hands framing his skull and letting Kamui follow him in, pausing for a second to shut the door behind them because he knows Kamui won’t.
In the muddy light of the small kitchen area Sougo’s able to place at least four different patches of blood soaking ambiguously into the grey fabric of his outerwear, leaving it unclear as to whether or not Kamui was lying about whose blood it was. He reaches out and pokes a finger into the middle of a particularly large spread of blood, just under his pectorals. Kamui laughs.
“I said the blood on my hands wasn’t mine, I swear it isn’t- I swear. That hurts though, that might be mine.”
Sougo tuts. “Careless. Stuuupid.” He drags the vowel out as he lets his finger wander lower to a rip near his navel. “Thought you were supposed to be good at this.”
“I am,” Kamui starts, a furrow forming between his brows. “I was thinking. Lady got a one-up on me. Or a two-up. I don’t remember.” He taps his temple twice and grins. “I told you, I was thinking.”
Truly a miracle, Sougo thinks, and proceeds to tell him the same. He watches Kamui press his lips together tightly, smiling as widely as he possibly can, coming together to form an abnormal sort of grimace that splits his face in two.
“Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what I was thinking about?”
“Not really,” Sougo lies. He tilts his head to the side. “It’s probably not that important. Or interesting. It’s whatever.”
Kamui has the gall to look slightly offended. His eyes are unfocused and wide open, refusing to stay still and keep Sougo’s gaze the way he normally would, all weird and unblinking.
He looks away from Kamui to squint at his reflection in the microwave with contention.
Perhaps normal was the wrong word to use, he considers, feeling his thoughts fade to static as he reaches a hand out towards smooth skin to coax out the furrows from between Kamui’s eyebrows. He can’t think of a single thing normal about him, from the bitten and broken fingernails ridging the tips of his fingers to the barely noticeable bent tip of his nose that had come to fruition after one too many hits to the face. He flicks it and Kamui’s face scrunches up even further and somewhere, deep down, underneath sinew and ribcage, Sougo’s heart might have skipped a beat.
“Look me in the eyes, stupid. Can’t usually get you to stop your creepy staring and now I can’t get a look in. Creepy. Creep. Go back to normal, weirdo.” He places both hands on Kamui’s shoulders and pushes him backwards. Kamui, in all his confusion, relents and lets Sougo settle him against the kitchen counter, and it's then that he realises there’s definitely something wrong with him: Kamui has never relented to anything. To anyone, ever.
“Oi, are you sick? Are you sick, is that it?” He leans back out of Kamui’s personal space and leaves him against the counter. “I don’t want it in my house. I’ll get sick, and last time I got sick Kondou-san got sick too and he kept crying and got snot all over my sofa and in my cutlery drawer.”
Placing the palm of his hands onto the surface of the counters and twisting, extending his elbows, Kamui jumps up and launches himself onto the counter surface in closest sitting range, narrowly avoiding slamming the back of his head into the cupboard behind him.
He hums. “I don’t think I’m sick.” He makes a half grab at Sougo’s wrist and yanks it forwards when he feels contact. He unceremoniously places the back of Sougo’s hand against his forehead, and it's warm and dry and smooth to the touch, warm but not dangerously so, warm but like Kamui usually is, and Sougo grinds his teeth a little because again, Kamui’s become a usual thing to him and he doesn’t even know how or when this happened.
He removes the hand from his face and looks down.
“You still have your shoes on.”
Without thinking he kneels down and starts working at untying the laces of Kamui’s boots.
“Did you know,” He says, looking pointedly at his fingers as they pull at the tongue of his boot. “That before she met her untimely death, my mother loved to warn people of a curse that would follow them may they ever trek their shoes into her kitchen. By curse I meant her. And by warn I meant threaten with a bread knife.” He taps Kamui’s calf twice, once to get his attention and twice to rub it in, and yanks off his left boot. “My poor, dear, darling mama. She must be rolling in her grave. Somersaulting even. It’s a travesty.”
He wraps the palm of his hand around the heel of the second boot and pulls. It comes off, and he tosses it over his shoulder to join the other. Probably.
Kamui sighs, a short exhale whistling through closed teeth, and wriggles his feet beneath the wool of his socks before resting them on the top of Sougo’s head.
“Bastard,” Sougo pouts. “That’s something your stupid sister would do. I hope you’re ashamed.”
His feet raise momentarily only for Kamui to drop them back down and push at his forehead with his big toe. “That doesn’t work on me,” He says petulantly, eyes narrowing as he tries to stick a toe up Sougo’s right nostril. He bats him aside, elbows digging into Kamui’s thighs for support as he stands up.
He’s still bleeding, he notes. He doesn’t know if Kamui cares, or if he even notices, but there’s a blunt feeling worming its way through his gut that’s dragging his hands to pat at the hem of Kamui’s bloody outerwear.
“Up.” He tugs once. Kamui’s hands drift above his head, and he rests his palms flat against the wood of the cupboard behind his head, letting Sougo pull the garment over his head and dump it in the sink next to them.
There are four gashes of varying lengths, two long ones down the sides of his ribs, and short punctures that he recognises as the patches of blood he’d prodded at earlier. They aren’t very deep, at least not anymore, the longer ones are now little more than cat scratches, but Sougo swallows anyway. He pretends like he isn’t staring at the tracks left by a thin rivulet of blood down the seam of his collarbone.
Kamui, shockingly observant even with his eyes now closed, seems to smile even wider.
“Ooh, that’s not mine either. I’d never let anyone get that close to my face.” Sougo huffs out a laugh as Kamui proceeds to drop forwards to rest his bloodied cheek against the side of Sougo’s, and sticks his tongue into his ear.
“I hate you,” Sougo says, letting him wrap his legs around his waist. “I hope you die. You’re terrible, you bastard.” Kamui bites his chin in agreement, and presses his lips against Sougo’s.
He tastes terrible- tangy and violent, like blood, or if he racks his brains a little longer, maybe a little bit like tangerines. He pushes further into Kamui’s mouth. He’s on a mission, he decides, a mission to figure out if it really is the taste of tangerines lining the back of his throat, or if it’s some stupid colour association game his brain is playing with his taste buds and Kamui’s hair and Kamui’s mouth. It’s definitely not an excuse, his brain interrupts, to keep kissing him until he loses all feeling in his tongue and Kamui has bled out all over his clean-ish kitchen countertops.
There’s a hand slotting itself underneath his chin, thumb tilting Sougo’s head upwards, closer, fingers left loose to drum gently against the side of his neck. Kamui’s panting against his mouth, and somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks it’s probably because he’s been absentmindedly scraping his fingernails against his bruised, bloody torso, and after a few moments trying to reconcile whether or not he’s willing to get arrested for letting a man bleed all over his apartment and die, Sougo makes his hands fall against his sides. Kondou would cry if he got arrested again.
He detaches himself from Kamui’s mouth, bringing a fist up to his face and coughing lightly.
“Bathroom,” He gestures a thumb towards the door. “I’ll help.”
Kamui’s eyes flicker open. “Huh?”
“What, did you hurt yourself thinking too hard? I said,” He grabs at the ends of Kamui’s hair and tugs. “Bathroom. I have running water, you know. I pay extra for it. It’s better than all my neighbours' water. I win our estates ‘Best Running Water’ category every year at the Summer Fair. It’s a real feat being able to beat Miya-san next door, she’s a total demon when it comes to boilers.”
He turns on his heel and heads straight in the direction of the bathroom. “I swear to God, I’ll pick you up and dunk you in there myself, clothes or not. You’re dirty and you’re getting blood everywhere.” He tacks a bastard onto the end for good measure.
Sougo pauses at the bathroom door and leans his head against the doorframe. He lets the cool wood dig into the skin of his temple, lifting his arms when Kamui’s chest and head thud against his back, wrapping his arms around Sougo and squeezing, nudging him forwards into the bathroom.
He stays attached like that, giggling against the fabric of Sougo’s pyjamas, his chin knocking against his spine while Sougo leans down to push the plug into the drain. Kamui pokes his head out to the side and squints at the water drumming against the plastic of the bottom of the bathtub.
“You’re awfully active tonight,” He ponders, sliding down into a squat and resting his chin on the lip of the tub. “Are you happy to see me? Aw, are you excited? Did you put Redbull in your coffee by accident again?” He dips a hand into the running water and flicks it at Sougo, who in turn kicks at his ankle hard enough to make Kamui fall over backwards onto the tiled floor.
Sougo is completely unfazed. “Get naked, idiot.”
“Before marriage? You pig.”
“Shut up. I won’t look. The last time I saw your bare legs I nearly went blind. I’m considering investing in a pair of sunglasses for future reference.”
Laughing and unbuttoning his trousers, Kamui rests his head against the floor and manages to slip out of them without cracking his head open on the tiles.
Sougo glares at the reflection of himself in the tap and shrugs off his cardigan. He swears to himself that there’s definitely already moisture creeping up the side of the mirror, and that’s obviously why his hands are feeling a little clammy. His guts feel like they’re drying up into oversized beef jerky.
“Get in the tub. It’s hard enough trying not to look at you naked knowing I’ll be spending all morning trying to wipe your ass-prints off my tiles. It’s disgusting. I feel sick.” Trying very hard not to think about it, Sougo takes his shirt off and throws it into the pile of clothes they’ve been accumulating in the middle of the room.
Kamui slowly gets to his feet, takes a step over and into the water and swears.
“Are you trying to kill me?” He sobs forlornly, drying his foot off on Sougo’s pyjamas. “It’s so hot I think I nearly just melted all over your bath mat.”
Sougo hums in response and turns the cold tap on, bending over to avoid Kamui attempting to enact revenge by jabbing him viciously in the side.
“Stupid baby. Stupid evil ginger baby.” Sougo mutters into the void. “I hate lukewarm water. Why must you torment me so. Boo hoo.”
It takes about a minute before Kamui is satisfied with the temperature of the bath. He interrupts his task of picking off flakes of blood now dried to newly healed skin and flicking them at Sougo’s head with his index finger and thumb to flop into the bath and sink his entire head underwater.
“If you drown in my bath I’ll kill you, yeah?” He makes a grasp at the hair on the top of his head and yanks. Kamui burbles. “I mean it,” He warns, starting to remove the bottom half of his pyjamas. “I’ll steal your will and leave all your possessions to me. I’ll give your nasty umbrella to Kagura and laugh at her crying. Or maybe she’d boil it and eat it. Either works for me.” He steps into the opposite end of the bath as quickly as he can and slides his knees up to rest underneath his chin, wrapping his hands around the front of his ankles.
Kamui pops his head above water and snorts derisively, scooting forward slightly and motioning at Sougo to come closer with his hand.
“There’s blood on my back, riiight where I can’t reach it.” Kamui sticks his bottom lip out in a mock simper, batting his eyelashes with force. “Pretty please, please help? I’m so cold and lonely without youuuu..”
Sougo grits his teeth and flicks a finger at Kamui in an attempt at getting him to turn around. After watching him extend an arm out of the water and grasp at a washcloth sat on the rim of the bathroom sink, Kamui pulls his limbs in and wrangles an attempt at turning around to stare at the tap opposite, his body squeaking and flailing around slightly as he tries to accommodate the narrow width of the tub.
He pushes his feet against the opposing wall of the bath and floats himself closer to Sougo, who uncrosses his ankles and lets Kamui settle further between his legs. He dunks the cloth into the water between the flat of his stomach and the ridges of Kamui’s lower back, and proceeds to squeeze a dollop of soap right onto the patch of skin closest to him.
He feels Kamui still slightly, the muscles soft and smooth beneath the skin of his back tensing as Sougo presses cloth-covered fingers between his shoulder blades and begins to rub tight circles into the meat of his shoulder.
“This is only weird if you make it weird,” He moves his hand down to scrub at a larger splatter of blood across the backside of his ribcage. “There’s nothing weird about two men in a bathtub, rubbing each other down.”
“I never said it was weird. Plus, you’re the only one rubbing somebody else down at the moment. Don’t try and shift this onto me, Officer.” Kamui wriggles his shoulders and flicks his head backwards as Sougo prods at the sensitive skin of his waist, lazily leaning his head to the left as Kamui’s botched headbutt lands directly onto his shoulder.
“Ouch.”
His arm’s been trapped by the expanse of Kamui’s back and shoulders settling against his torso, all boney and elbow ridden as he jabs at Sougo’s ribcage, using the soap suds to slide down a little and rest his head against his clavicle.
“I hope you know you’re making this very difficult for me. My hand’s stuck. You’re in my way. How am I supposed to clean anything in these conditions, idiot.” Sougo’s elbow catches against the side of the bathtub as he attempts to dislodge his arm from where it’s been wedged between them both. “My arm’s totally going numb, you know. If it goes nasty and gangrenous and falls off I expect you to buy me a new one.” He sighs and cranes his neck downwards to sink his teeth into the unmarred flesh joining Kamui’s neck and shoulder.
Kamui jolts a little, either from shock or pain or something else that Sougo’s mind won’t let him hone in on (else he falls down a hazy spiral of something-or-other that he refuses to entertain for the moment), and the little leniency the movement offers gives Sougo’s poor, mistreated arm the opportunity to whip itself out from within it’s soapy jail cell and circle around Kamui’s waist, pinching and squeezing at the skin of his stomach in retaliation.
He’d approached a startling conclusion the other week after Kagura had come barrelling towards him from across the street at full speed, demanding to know if he’d heard from her “Ugly, piece of shit brother, that waste of space!”, to which he told her he had, because of course he had, said waste of space had been sniffing around his apartment or doggy treats and belly scratches like the mongrel he is, and Kagura had stopped mid-punch to grimace, poke him in the eye and tell him to stop trying to get pregnant with his brother because “I know you weirdos, it’s a huge plot to lure the Stork down and snap its skinny stork neck! What would happen to all those babies?”
Sougo, right eye watering and temporarily blinded, had blown a particularly vengeful bubble and bent down to let it pop on the top of her head, before kicking her in the shin.
“Me and your brother aren’t pregnant, dumbass. I feel sick just thinking about it,” He’d paused for a second. “Didn’t he come back to Edo to see you? He was here yesterday.”
She’d shaken her head at that and skipped away,
leaving Sougo by himself on the side of the road, a dull flicker of something like confusion squeezing his insides.
He blinks as Kamui finally succeeds in catching his wrist and pulls as hard as possible at his arm, forcing Sougo to lurch forwards as far as he can in the minimal space between the top of Kamui’s head and his chin, shoulder creaking and aching as Kamui continues to pull his arm forward and if he keeps on going at this rate, straight out of its socket.
“Ha, ow- ow,” He mutters, other hand smacking at the side of Kamui’s face. “Let me go, ow, seriously, ouch, my arm’s gonna fall off.” His finger finds its way into the slick pocket of the inside of Kamui’s cheek and he hooks it, pulling and stretching the skin of his face with merciless vitriol.
He tries again from where his head’s been forced over Kamui’s shoulder, mouth squished against the skin of his collarbone. “Let me goooo,” he grumbles, teeth grazing the skin beneath him. “I’ll bite you again.”
Kamui pulls harder.
“O-okay, ow. Ouch, what’re you trying to say, huh? I refuse to be killed in my own bath.”
“That’s fine. I’ll just get you later.”
Sougo’s arm is relinquished back to him with a slick thwack as it bounces off the side of the tub. He carefully unhooks his middle and index finger from the inside of his mouth, putting his best effort into avoiding sharp snags of teeth lest he get an appendage removed as Kamui’s mouth snaps shut with a clack.
“I still need to wash your hair. There’s stuff stuck in there I don’t even think I could name.” Sougo lies, digging a finger into the base of Kamui’s scalp, just above the nape of his neck. He just wants an excuse to rip that stupid braid out of his stupid head, really. He hates everything about it, he thinks, hates the grimy, pulsating feeling stuck in his lungs like cobwebs that urges him to take a fistful of red and pull Kamui towards him and never let go.
Kamui’s back straightens, head lolling forwards as Sougo unravels the thin band keeping his hair in place. There’s a tepid few seconds of Sougo fiddling as they sit there in hollow silence, before the hair in between his fingers is flicked away as Kamui turns his head to the side.
“You don’t need to do that,” He says lightly, and there’s a small splash as he lies down again, slipping his body further and further down into the water until the pale ring of his face is the only patch of skin left exposed. “I can do that by myself.”
Mind blank, Sougo frames the head floating above his lap with his hands, feeling the sharp jut of Kamui’s chin and papery skin of his neck skitter beneath his fingertips and leans his head down until their foreheads are ever-so-nearly touching.
“What,” He swallows. “If I want to? Try thinking about somebody else for once.”
“I told you, didn’t I? I’ve been thinking.” Kamui reaches a hand out and taps Sougo’s temple, once, twice. “But you said it was boring, and now you’ll never know, sucker.”
“Okay then,” He challenges, closing the gap between their foreheads and smushing his face into Kamui’s scalp. “Am I wrong? Is what you were thinking about really thaaat interesting? Are you even capable of being aware of anything past smacking things around? Have you ever even had a thought before?”
“Aha. Slow down a second.” Kamui tilts his head further back into Sougo’s lap and reaches up to loop his arms around the back of his neck. “It’s something really stupid. Something stupid and annoying and, honestly, truly, it’s ugly too and I’d really rather not have to think about it. Or see it.” He grimaces. “It’s a bit late for that, I guess.”
Sougo’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “Ew, gross. How horrible. I don’t want to hear anymore. How terrible of you to tell me about your Hijikata-related fantasies while we’re both naked and wet.”
Kamui shoots him a toothy grin. “That’s disgusting. I’m allergic to mayonnaise, you know?” His arms tighten around Sougo’s neck. “You look red, Sougo. Are you feeling sick? I don’t want it, the last time I got sick Abuto got sick too and kept coughing all over the dining table.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He flicks Kamui on the forehead. “Do I feel warm to you?”
Kamui looks at him then, eyelid twitching as he puts all his effort into concentrating on Sougo’s touch.
“You feel pretty normal to me.”