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Mei opens up the palm of his hand with a flourish, cheeks flushed bright red. He is a red balloon filled up to the very brim, and the moment Sawamura’s jaw drops he explodes into a million pieces of excitement that lights up the entire room.

“Pretty, huh?” Mei is sure he’s shouting but there is so much energy welled up inside of himself that he has to bounce on the balls of his feet to keep from screaming. “They’re cushion-cut diamonds!” Mei talks so fast he feels like his words are tumbling over each other, tripping and falling, but he can’t bring himself to slow down because the idea of sharing a piercing with the cutest boy in the world turns his stomach into butterflies.

“They’re the best ones you can get, the ones from Eis Stadt–you know, ice capital–and I got Kagura-san to give them cushion cuts because the light just makes them sparkle so much more brightly in this shape just like your smile, Sawamura, and I didn’t know which shape or jewel you wanted so I just decided that I wanted the best jewel for the best person—“

“IT’S BEAUTIFUL,” Sawamura shouts at the top of his lungs. Mei is tackled onto the ground by the elated warrior, attacked with kisses and laughter. “THEY’RE BEAUTIFUL.”

Sawamura’s face is the sun, smile glowing and eyes shining. Mei doesn’t think his smile can get any wider, but he’s wrong because seeing Sawamura so pleased makes him melt into a puddle. Sawamura, the warrior with a stupidly charming grin and a penchant for sweet talking.

“They’re nice, right?!”

And Sawamura nods so hard Mei is almost scared his head will roll right off of his shoulders, but it keeps intact somehow and Sawamura flashes him a grin and a thumbs up as if to say, ‘’Betcha thought my head’d nod right off’. Mei finds himself looking at what he thinks must be the most beautiful boy in the entire universe. Stupid and naïve and absolutely glowing.

Mei thinks this may be the best day of his entire life.

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Sawamura doesn’t need to open his eyes to feel Mei’s presence next to him. Mei is the kind of person that makes his presence known—everyone knows he’s there before he even opens his mouth. He’s a loud character, always quipping comebacks smooth as silk. Sawamura thinks the boy doesn’t know how to shut up, but here, now, they lay in each other’s arms and Mei is silent.

His legs are lost, tangled between the sheets and Mei’s embrace. He can’t remember the last time they were together in silence, but he thinks that it might not be such a bad thing.

Mei is tracing lines on his torso, something that tickles and makes him want to laugh, but Sawamura keeps his mouth shut. He outlines the shape of his abs with one hand, and Sawamura can’t help but feel his face heat up with a blush that threatens to take over his entire face. “What do you think you’re doing, Narumiya Mei?”

Mei looks at him with those shitty blue eyes that make him want to die, just melt into a puddle. “Touching you.”

Jesus Christ.

“W-what do you think you’re saying, Narumiya Mei?! People will misunderstand!”

“I’m okay with that.” His stupid smirk is so shitty and attractive Sawmaura can’t even bring himself to argue. 

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He hasn’t shared a bed with another person since he was five. When Mei wraps his arms around Sawamura’s waist, he flinches. The bed seems so much smaller with two people in it. There’s easily enough space for the two of them to sleep without touching, but Mei makes a point of wrapping his entire body around Sawamura’s, head on his chest and legs curled around each other.

“Are you asleep?” Sawamura finds himself asking in the darkness. He feels the slow rise and fall of Mei’s chest pressed up against his own, and he realizes he’s talking to himself.

“No.” Mei looks up, grins. His face is muddled with sleep, but his eyes are wide and shining. The eyes of a true ace. “Were you lonely? I’m right here.”

“A little.” It comes out of his mouth before he realizes, and Sawamura thinks he might be more surprised than Mei is. Love does weird shit to people, he discovers. He sits up and leans on the bedframe, hoping the creak of the bed will mask his words.

Mei leans into Sawamura’s chest, nuzzling his face into the crook of the boy’s neck. “I won’t bat an eyelash to beat the living shit out of you in pvp, but off the battlefield, I’m all yours baby.”

Sawamura laughs. It shakes his shoulders—he feels Mei shake with him, both of them a giggling mess. It’s not even that funny, but something about the two of them sleeping in the same bed when they are supposed to be enemies sends a jolt of electricity down his spine and sends him into a fit of laughter.

No one knows about them, about their late night getaways, their sneaky kisses under the moonlight. And he loves it that way, laughs at destiny itself because against all odds he finds himself kissing the ace of the enemy.  

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His blood still throbs in his veins with the adrenaline from earlier that evening. His first ace round of pvp (as a substitute after Tanba fractured his jaw, but it still counts, he swears). It’s a practice match, nothing official but he finds his knuckles white from clutching the hilt of his sword too tightly.

First pvp battle, and it was against this blond haired blue eyed paladin.

He loses gracefully; a level 30 against a level 40, what was he expecting? But he hadn’t backed down easy, took hits on the chin ‘til his eyes started seeing stars and still he kept slashing.

“A two handed sword is nothing against my polearm,” Mei had chirped. “You should have become a paladin instead,” he says after he wins.

Sometimes people misunderstand Mei. They think his comments are rude and backhanded, and they basically are, but he never means any harm. Sawamura gets it. He smiles back with his teeth showing. “I’ll beat you next time, and then you’ll be begging me to change your class to warrior.” 

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Their decision to get earrings together was made mostly by impulse, or so Sawamura thought.

Mei comes up to him one day brandishing these expensive looking diamond studs with the a huge grin that lights up his entire face and tells him that they’re going to get pierced. Sawamura finds himself smiling all the way to the piercer.

Sawamura asks him how he managed to mine diamonds out of Eis Stadt, of all places. Mei covers it up with pretty flower speak and self-praise I am the prince of paladins, I can do anything. Sawamura is an idiot, but even he knows that it must have been much more difficult than Mei makes it out to be.

He decides to ask Carlos, a fellow paladin at Inashiro’s guild because he hates accepting gifts without giving something back in return. Carlos chortles with laughter when he hears Sawamura tell his side of the story.

“Mei brushed it off as an easy task?! Because the prince of paladins can do whatever he wants?!” Carlos is laughing so hard he has to stop and take a breath before continuing. “That’s exactly what Mei would say.”

“So how did he really do it?” Sawamura asks, eyebrow raised. “Did he sell some limbs or something?”

“Well, no. But basically. They made him pay a hefty fee just to enter the city, and then some more to get into the mining grounds. Those guys are cheap fuckin’ bastards, hogging all the diamonds to themselves.” And then under his breath, “Apparently Mei thinks you’re worth all of this bullshit. Sounds like a waste of time though, if you ask me. Talking about indulging the enemy.”

Sawamura pretends not to hear.

“He had to apply for a mining license, too. It’s not like paladins naturally have the skill to go mine out expensive diamonds. He didn’t pass the course ‘til his third try, and even after that it took weeks to be able to mine out a diamond he said was ‘high enough quality for his favorite warrior’. He’d planned this for weeks before you actually got it. And I’m not even going to talk about the groveling he did in front of Kagura just to get him to cut your diamond. The guy threw away his pride just for you.” Carlos takes one look at Sawamura’s earring before he whistles. “Looks mighty good, though. Too bad you apparently don’t give as much of a shit about him as he does about you, seeing as you have your own fuckboy and Mei is just your side bitch.”

Red in the face, Sawamura cups his right ear with his hands. It’s a painful truth. He almost regrets talking to Carlos, because he’s an asshole and tells him things he doesn’t want to admit. He feels the jewel in his fingers, warm to the touch from being enchanted. It’s true. He feels the quality of the cut, of the material even with his untrained perception. And then his fingers run across smooth amber that sits on his lobe; position number two—his body pulses with guilt. Miyuki’s earring comes before Mei’s earring. He loves Miyuki more than he lo-

He can’t even finish the sentence. Not out loud, not even in his mind.

It’s hard to believe someone like Mei would go out of his way to please Sawamura like that. But he thinks about it, thinks about the eager grin and warm hands and maybe it’s not so crazy after all. Sawamura mulls Carlos’ words in his mind, weighs them in his heart until they’re too heavy to bear.

He feels overwhelmed with the thought that he might never be able to pay Mei back.

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“Tell me about your friends,” Mei says in bed one night. The corners of his lips turn up, and his fingers reach out to touch Sawamura’s right ear. “You’re very popular, Eijun. Almost as popular as me, but let’s be real here—you’ll never catch up to me! I’m too perfect.” All jokes, all the time.

Sawamura is never bored with Mei. He loves that. With Mei, life is shitty jokes and soft kisses on the cheek after midnight.

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about your earrings!” It’s funny because Sawamura’s never thought about it before; they know absolutely nothing about each other, not their families, their friends, their hobbies. They are lovers but now that Sawamura thinks about it, perhaps they might be more strangers than not.

Some people comment on Sawamura’s earrings. They make quips about his earrings and tell him he must have a lot of friends, that he must be really popular. Sawamura gives them a shrug and a smile, makes a comment about how he wants to become friends with everyone. He’s popular, maybe.

But then he looks at Mei, whose ears are so decorated he has not lobe piercings and cartilage piercings but also tragus piercings, rook piercings, and piercings Sawamura’s not even sure have names to them. Another level of fame suited only to the prince of paladins.

And Sawamura doesn’t know a single earring. Never bothered to ask, either, he realizes. Maybe he likes it better that way, he thinks. He likes it this way, where they get together and kiss and cuddle and talk about absolutely nothing for hours until one of them drifts off to sleep.

That way it’s all fun, all the time. Nothing serious. No talks about the morals of ‘betraying’ a guild and getting romantically involved with a competitor. Nothing about what it means for their reputations, their guilds. He likes it that way, with Mei.

But then Sawamura looks into Mei’s eyes, looks at their curious tint and he knows that Mei hasn’t given a single thought to it at all. Mei does what he wants, when he wants it.

When he points to the earring that sits at the top of Sawamura’s ear, all curiosity and no malice, Sawamura thinks to himself that this might not be such a bad idea after all. Knowing about your lover, his friends, the people that make him tick.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me,” says Sawamura.

Mei nods and Sawamura starts to talk, tells him stories about a rambunctious monster tamer with a strange affinity for bananas, senpais with too much time on their hands, the best mentor of all time, friends from way back when and friends right at this moment. He tells Mei stories of catching bugs in the sweltering heat to use as target practice for thieves, back when they were all too poor to afford a real guild.

Or how they weaved bracelets out of grass for their guild, how Wakana was the best at it and how he wasn’t even able to thread his needles, let alone sew anything.

Mei sits still when he listens; the only time he is still is when he is paying full attention to something, and Sawamura can’t help but feel bubbling warmth flood his body—it must be joy, he thinks.

“So, what’s this one? It’s huge, it must be your best friend. I would have thought it was Wakana’s earring if I didn’t know any better,” Mei raises a single eyebrow, mischievous grin on his lips. His fingers brush the amber earring on Sawamura’s ear lobe, and it sends a shiver down his back. “Who is this special someone, so I know who I have to beat up to become number one?”

Miyuki Kazuya.

Sawamura’s stomach drops. He thinks of the bespectacled boy, all muscle and logic condensed into one body. He thinks about rough kisses, hungry and desperate for something more. And he thinks about their inability to put a label on what they are, how sometimes he wakes up to someone who doesn’t even want to talk to him, let alone hold his hand.  

Miyuki is there and then he’s gone. They hold hands, kiss, and then Miyuki holes himself up in the library studying tomes for a week and they don’t get a chance to talk until the next guild meeting. They’re lovers, and they’re not.

How does one explain Miyuki Kazuya?

Sawamura hates the idea of cheating, doesn’t condone it, doesn’t want to participate in it. But he looks at Mei’s eager face to learn more about him and remembers Miyuki’s soft lips on his neck, and he thinks for one second that perhaps he may be cheating.

And perhaps Mei might not want to hear about it.

“He’s just a friend to be honest, we don’t really talk much anymore.”

“Oh?” Mei is not convinced.

Sawamura hears his incredulity in his voice and tries to justify it—but he can’t really, can he? What kind of person keeps a broken connection on his earlobe in the number two spot? “I’ve just never bothered taking it out. I’ve just kept it here because it looks better on my earlobe.” He tries to gauge Mei’s facial expression in the darkness. It doesn’t take night vision to see that Mei is clearly unhappy with his answer.

“Why won’t you tell me? I thought you loved me,” Mei whines, clutching the hem of Sawamura’s shirt. He gets whiny when things don’t go his way, and Sawamura can’t tell if he wants to hug the boy or smother him to death. But the wobbling lip is so cute that Sawamura decides he can’t keep being an asshole about it. Not when Mei is trying to get to know him. He almost gets the feeling that the blond haired paladin might like him more than Miyuki does, and it hurts more than he’d like to admit although he can’t quite understand why.

“His name is Miyuki Kazuya.” Sawamura figures it’s okay to say the tactician’s name; they’re in the same guild and it only makes sense that they would be friends. “He insisted that we get these huge amber earrings. Said they matched my eyes.” At least that was true.

“Miyuki…Kazuya.”

“Yeah, do you know him or something?” Sawamura doesn’t know if he wants to know the answer, but he can’t stop himself from asking.

“We used to go to the same C class guild,” says Mei in a voice that is uncharacteristically quiet. “We drifted apart after we graduated though.” He points at the zircon earring on his right ear with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “This is our earring!”

It’s Mei’s acting voice, the one he uses when he’s put on the spot for something he doesn’t want to talk about. Sawamura opens his mouth to reply, and then remembers that he’s a cheating scumbag with his own secrets to hide about Miyuki Kazuya. He shuts his mouth, squeezes out a smile as if to say it’s okay even though he’s not sure if it really is.

“Guess that makes the two of us, huh?” Sawamura tries to joke. He hopes Mei can’t see through his lie, hopes that his charisma stat is high enough to hide the furrow of his brow and strained voice.

He prays that Mei won’t figure out that he’d been kissing the man in question just last week.

“Anyway, we should get to sleep. Early morning tomorrow!” They’re both actors, now. Robotically energetic, trying so hard to hide something that shouldn’t have been secret in the first place.

Sawamura remembers how just a moment ago, he had felt so warm in Mei’s embrace, the bubbles in his stomach of finally getting to know something more about his lover for once. And how cold he feels now, curled up against the wall, face turned away. His fingers are cold, legs are cold. Mei is next to him but it feels like he’s never been this alone in his life.

Everything they had built up that evening single-handedly destroyed by Miyuki Kazuya, and Sawamura supposes that he deserved it. 

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Miyuki doesn’t typically go to night markets. He thinks it’s too sweaty, too crowded. He hates being around so many people all at once, how they push him around and how he can’t really see anything past all those heads anyway. Why go to a night market when he can just stay in the library and read about it? It’s the same experience, just without the gross trashing about in a throng of people.

When Mei and Sawamura ask him to go to the festival for the Goddess of War, he declines. He tells them he has better things to do. He even shows them his to do list. The future captain of a guild doesn’t just sit around all day, he tells them. Babies should go and play on their own while the grownups work.

Mei gives him his signature look the one where his lips jut outwards, and cups his hands on his cheeks. “Pretty please? Come on, you’re just as big of a baby as we are.”

Miyuki laughs. “I don’t compare myself with the likes of you. I’m going to get back to work now, so stop bugging me.”

Sawamura doesn’t take no for an answer. Warriors always tend to be a little headstrong.

Miyuki watches the two boys exchange a glance, share a knowing smile that is a little too sly for his liking. And then next thing he knows, he’s being hauled by a golden eyed warrior and the prince of paladins, each with a firm grip under his armpit—he struggles against their grip but a mage in a physical match against two melee classes winds up looking like a daisy trying to duke it out against a hurricane.

It doesn’t take long for Miyuki to be thrown into the back of a horse carriage, squashed up against Mei’s shoulderblade and Sawamura’s torso. Both of them share the same idiotic grin. “Nice one,” Mei chirps. They slap each other on the back with their heads thrown back in laughter “Outplayed the tactician.”

Sawamura glows. “We’re gonna make sure Miyuki has the best time of his life whether he wants it or not.”

Miyuki doesn’t tell them that he looks forward to going to the festival. He hates the crowds, the people, the noise. But something inside makes him think that being there with the loudest warriors in the entire continent might make the night rather enjoyable. Even if he hates how in-sync they can be. He gives them a small smirk, rubbing the raw spots on his shoulders where they’d grabbed him. “Try me.”