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“I’ll take the floor,” Jun says, and that’s just the proper way of it, so Hiyori doesn’t think much of it until half of the pillows are on the floor and Jun’s there too and the entire wide expanse of the bed is left all to Hiyori.
It's a fine enough bed. Decent sized and fairly comfortable. Not, perhaps, the most luxurious bed Hiyori has ever encountered, but it's adequate enough. Of course, it has no right to be anything less than adequate, considering how much bed-related strife he's already endured today and it would be just far too much to bear, wouldn't it? If they'd had not only a single bed when they were meant to have two but a single tiny bed, or a single uncomfortable bed. It'd be an insult added to injury, and Hiyori's already feeling quite insulted over this whole absurd mix-up, thank you very much!
He just doesn't understand it. How do you run out of beds? Reservations ought to help prevent this sort of thing—that's the point of a reservation, isn't it?— and they'd made a proper reservation in order to prevent this sort of thing, and he'd said as much earlier, in a state of fine indignation, when the woman at the front desk had apologetically told them that they were very, very sorry but there was nothing else they could do.
"It's not a big deal, really," Jun told the receptionist very quickly, rather neatly circumventing Hiyori's would-be outburst. He's gotten too good at timing his interruptions. It makes Hiyori feel almost predictable. "Don't worry about it." He smiled politely at her, tugging Hiyori away by the arm. "C'mon, Ohii-san, it's not worth getting upset over."
Jun's far too laissez-faire about this kind of thing, and Hiyori, perhaps rather superciliously, had told him as much on the elevator ride back up. But it hardly matters what tone he uses to talk to Jun about things like this because he never seems to listen. Oh he listens, of course. Jun's an attentive sort of boy, but none of Hiyori's very wise words have made much of an impact and he's still just as mild-mannered and willing to accept countless inconveniences from just about everybody when he ought to only accept them from Hiyori.
Jun, Hiyori had decided there, tapping an impatient beat on the elevator floor with his foot, arms crossed over his chest, can be remarkably dense at times. This is, of course, not the first time he has decided this fact, but it bears repeating. Most of Hiyori's opinions, in his opinion, bear repeating.
So there they are. One bed when they were meant to have two, and it is a silly thing to get worked up about, but it's irritating and it's ruined Hiyori's good mood and he's hardly able to appreciate the comfort of this one bed of his because everything's gone all wrong and the weather's turned foul.
"We did have a reservation," Hiyori says to the ceiling, well aware he's sulking now.
"Mistakes happen," Jun replies, unbothered, though by all rights and reason he really should be more annoyed. He's the one sleeping on the floor. And he can, actually, have quite the temper at times, but Hiyori has observed that he seems to reserve it for the oddest of moments. He doesn't even get mad at Hiyori, not really, even when Hiyori teases him and toys with him. There's no bite to his bark at all when he snipes back. Which is very well, because it'd be immensely foolish of Jun to bite the hand that feeds him, but Hiyori's not sure where the boundary is for Jun and he's— well, he's a little bit curious.
Hiyori sighs, exaggeratedly loud, just to remind Jun that even if he's not bothered by this, Hiyori very much is, and then rolls over and pulls the blanket up over his head when Jun shows no sign of response.
It feels a little bit empty, somehow, this bed. He thinks its because Mary isn’t there. It’s much colder and emptier without her warmth. He tries to stretch out, to roll over and kick his legs out and fill every corner of space he has and it’s satisfying, for a second, but then it’s not anymore and he feels worse than before. He pokes his head out from under his covers.
"It’s probably terrible for your back to sleep like that,” he says aloud, to the ceiling more than to Jun.
“S’fine.” His voice sounds muffled, like his face is pressed into his pillow, or maybe his elbow. Jun likes to sleep with elbow tucked under his head, after all. Maybe Jun was sleeping, or almost sleeping. Hiyori feels almost bad for a second at waking him, before remembering that it's more or less his right to wake up Jun if he wants, and anyways, it's inconceivable that anyone would actually be able to get any real sleep on the ground so it's very unlikely that he actually was asleep.
“But it’s bad,” Hiyori persists. "Isn't it? You'll get all kinds of aches and pains down there."
“I'm not some old man with a bad back," Jun says. He sounds cross. It's cute, normally, when he gets annoyed, and a furrow will form between his brows and confusion and irritation have quite a bit of overlap in the way they look on Jun's face and there's something adorable about the both of those emotions, particularly if they're caused by Hiyori. "Do you want the floor? You can have it, if you're so concerned.” There's rustling from the floor, and then Jun's head appears over the end of the bed. His hair is a little bit rumpled on one side. Hiyori has a sudden inexplicable urge to reach over and ruffle his hair further.
"Of course not," Hiyori exclaims, horrified that Jun would even consider such a thing. "Jun-kun's talking nonsense now."
"I'm not the one talking nonsense," Jun mutters, crossing his arms over the bed and propping his chin up on them. "What's with you?" Hiyori sits up, drawing his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself.
"There's nothing with me."
"Obviously there is, or you'd be asleep." He hates this side of Jun sometimes, the side that's perceptive when he shouldn't be, when Hiyori doesn't want him to be. Jun's usually so good at being obedient and following the exact rules that Hiyori sets out for him and for the both of them, spoken and unspoken alike, but sometimes he breaks all the rules and he doesn't seem to know he's doing it because that's just Jun, isn't it? He's nothing if not sincere.
Hiyori flips through his mental catalog of grievances and woes. "I miss Mary," he decides after a second, smushing his cheek into his knees. He's not lying. He's not sure it's the entire truth, but he's not lying either.
Jun's expression softens, melting like snow in spring and it's terrible and unfair how he does that, how his scowl can turn gentle in a moment like that, and how much affection there can be those eyes of his when he's looking at Hiyori, even though it's also only right. He should always be looking at Hiyori and Hiyori ought to be the center of his universe and yet somehow it startles him to realize that he really might be.
Hiyori has always gotten his way in everything. He doesn't know why getting what he wants is so scary when it's Jun, when it's Jun's affection and Jun's eyes and Jun's smile and the thought that maybe Jun might not just need Hiyori but might even want him too, that maybe it's not just gratitude that drives the affection but something else and something more.
He'd thought once that the thing tying them together was the promise of power and opportunity and it was a leash that Hiyori had held taut, yanking on it as he pleased, lording it over Jun. I don't need you he'd remind him always but you need me. But that was, he'd felt then, only fair. Jun wouldn't be there at all if he didn't need Hiyori, which he did, and Hiyori did not need Jun at all and that was the simple status quo and a reminder of the natural order of things never did anyone any wrong.
And it just wasn't fair that Jun needed Hiyori while Hiyori wanted him and wanting someone is such a raw and terribly vulnerable thing to feel for a person, especially one who only needs you.
Jun was only supposed to need him, and then he was supposed to love him, a well-known and easy to control love and adoration born out of that simple need, but now Jun looks at him and it's not a look of gratitude or obligation or even blind adoration at all; it's a look that sees too much and is full of affection anyways, overwhelming in its gentle intensity, a tidal wave of tender, terrible sincerity and storms such as these are ones that Hiyori never learned to weather.
Jun scoots up, so he's sitting properly on the bed, and for a second Hiyori thinks that he's going to reach out to touch him and his eyes flutter shut, in anticipation of that touch that never comes.
"I miss her too," Jun tells him instead. "Bet she misses us too. We've all become real clingy, huh? It's only a couple days that we're gone and we're acting like it's gonna be months or something."
"She should have been able to come with us," Hiyori mumbles, and then adds, "and we should have gotten two beds!"
Jun just sighs. Hiyori thinks he sees him roll his eyes, but he's let his head fall forward and his bangs have fallen into his eyes and obscured them in pitchy shadow, so it's hard to tell. It seems like something he'd do in a moment like this, though, to roll his eyes, a thin veneer of sarcasm barely hiding a smile. He always does smile these days when he's rolling his eyes at Hiyori.
He never used to. Smile, that is.
"Is it really okay down there?" Hiyori asks tentatively. He doesn't know why he cares. It doesn't matter to him.
"Now I know something's wrong with you if you're worrying about me."
"I worry about Jun-kun all the time," Hiyori insists. "I need you in top form, you know, or it'd make me look bad! I can't have you giving a poor performance next to me."
"I know," Jun nods. "You'll drop me to the curb if I make you look bad, right?" He says it lightly, like it's a joke. It's not very funny. He should know better, shouldn't he? He's always seeing all of the things Hiyori tries to pretend aren't there whenever he looks in the mirror and he can hide them from himself very well but not, it feels, from Jun, who ought to be dense but has still never been dazzled by the super-shiny image Hiyori has projected to the world. So he should know by now that Hiyori isn't going to do that, shouldn't he, that he didn't and doesn't and never really ever did mean it?
But then again, Hiyori supposes, as close to rueful as he's ever going to get, he never has actually said he wasn't going to do that.
The words are harder to say than they should be. They're very simple words, really.
He doesn't want to say them. Jun should know. He doesn't want Jun to know. Jun should just figure it out. Hiyori shouldn't have to say these things, shouldn't have to speak these very simple words that feel like they're catching on his insides like barbed wire as he tries to drag them out.
"I'm not," he manages at last, in a voice that doesn't sound at all like his own, quiet and weird and unconfident and all kinds of wrong. "I'm not going to do that."
"Really?" Jun sounds skeptical, but his voice pitches up in the middle of the word.
"Of course," Hiyori continues, "I'm not going to forgive you if you ever make me look bad, so don't do that, Jun-kun! But I-" he says, and his breath definitely does not waver whatsoever, "I don't want to replace you."
Jun doesn't say anything for a long moment. He just sits there, staring at Hiyori, searching his face. Shy is a word that Hiyori is on very unfamiliar terms with and it is an experience that he has only ever encountered secondhand through other people's reports but he feels strangely close to the sensation right now. There's a bizarre urge to bury his face in his knees and to hide his face from Jun's eyes. He doesn't, because he's not shy and because there's no reason at all to feel like that, but the urge is there regardless and it's more powerful than it has any right to be.
"You're not," Jun says eventually, hesitantly hopeful, "gonna get tired of me?" He can't lie. Hiyori had said that before, right to his face, and he'd meant it. He liked him because he couldn't lie but now it's terrible that he can't lie and doesn't hide anything he feels because he feels so much and it makes Hiyori feel very much too and its all—
too much.
"Well you see," Hiyori's voice is abrupt, too loud, "I've decided that I'm going to keep you forever."
"Saying it like that just makes me sound like I'm your dog or something, Ohii-san," Jun mutters, looking away.
"Don't you want to be kept by me?" Hiyori demands, a lot less haughtily and a lot more sincerely than he wants, an edge of desperation slicing neatly through his words like a garrote wire. "It's an honor, you know, to be mine!" There's a feeling rising in Hiyori like a water spout, twisting furiously. He knows, he thinks, exactly what these feelings are, but they feel messy, out of control, so he looks away and stubbornly refuses to give name to them.
And still, no matter how hard he tries to refuse them, the feelings whirl within him unchecked, something wild, unfettered, dangerous and sweet creeping into the pristine climate-controlled glass greenhouse of his world so far, these emotions an invasive species that cannot be bent into shape or forced to follow his will or whims, creeping ivy vines with a mind of their own.
"Yeah?" Jun smiles at last, a very little and wavery kind of smile. "I guess you're right," he says, "I'm lucky." He looks like he means that. He always means it. He doesn't get it and Hiyori doesn't know how to get it through his thick skull because it's not, really, he knows, Jun's fault that he doesn't get it. Hiyori made this bed. He supposes he's lying in it now. He doesn't like it here at all. It's a lonely bed he's made with his uncareful tongue and his careful snowglobe-sized world of strict hierarchies.
"You could sleep up here," he hears himself suggest, patting the place beside him on the lonely bed he's occupying in reality. Jun gives him a funny look.
"You're not going to sleep on the floor."
"Obviously not! But…" Hiyori hesitates. He's no stranger to whims— they're something of his specialty, after all, but this is a whim that took even himself by surprise. "I suppose there's room for more than one person here." Jun looks at him, then at the bed, then at the floor, and then at Hiyori again.
“I don’t get you at all, Ohii-san,” he says, but he reaches down to the ground to grab his pillow, which he tosses onto the bed and then pauses. “You’re not gonna change your mind and kick me out in ten minutes, are you?" he asks, warily. "Cause I'd rather just stay on the floor if you're gonna do that."
“What does Jun-kun take me for? Do you think I’m that capricious?”
"I'm not," Jun decides, "even going to answer that." Hiyori takes the pillow from him and hits him over the head with it with all his might. "Ow!"
"I didn't hit you that hard." Hiyori tells him. "But maybe I will exile you back to the floor."
"See!" Jun snatches his pillow back and holds it to his chest, hackles raised, and then he seems to deflate. "Seriously though, you're not gonna kick me out?"
"I'm not," Hiyori promises, and shifts over to make room for Jun next to him to prove his point. "Unless Jun-kun kicks me."
"I don't kick. I bet you kick." Still, Jun puts the pillow next to Hiyori's and, with lingering hesitance and one last long look at Hiyori's face, he slides underneath the covers.
"I would never kick. I'm graceful and elegant even in my sleep."
"Sure you are," Jun says indulgently, tucking his elbow under his head and looking at Hiyori with far too much friendly fondness. "You're always the perfect princess." He still looks uncertain, but he smiles up at Hiyori, warm and affectionate, hair rumpled and bangs in his eyes and pajamas twisted around his chest and he is so close and so real and it's easy, suddenly, to imagine how the cotton of his pajama shirt might feel under his hands, how warm his skin would be underneath it and Hiyori wants to know how it'd feel, wants to tuck himself into the negative space around Jun and curl against him, to bury his face into his chest and feel his breath like it's his own. He wants, with a helpless fervency he's rarely felt before, to hold him. To be held. Jun's a little bit fidgety about touch, even these days, but he's become steady too, in some ways. If he asked, he thinks Jun might let him have this. If he said he wanted a hug now, Jun just might agree.
Jun indulges many of Hiyori's whims. It wouldn't be that much of a surprise if he were to indulge this whim, even if it's far more intimate than Hiyori's usual demands but he'll do anything, won't he, if Hiyori asks him to? He's loyal like that, loyal to a fault, and he owes Hiyori and neither of them will ever let him forget it, so he might-
Ah, but he'd refused Hiyori's hug before. But that was, he reminds himself, a rather long time ago, and Jun's most likely forgotten all about that. He's almost certainly forgotten that. Hiyori doesn't know why he himself remembers that.
But then again, he doesn't really want to order Jun to touch him. It feels cold, somehow, cold like he'd felt before when the bed seemed too big, and cold like Jun's question You won't get tired of me? had felt, lonely and cold, to think of Jun's hands on him out of an obligation or duty or blind obedience and not at all because Jun himself wants to touch him and he doesn't know, even though he feels that he should, whether or not Jun would even want to touch him. He hadn't wanted his hug before, after all. But at the same time, it wouldn't make any sense if he didn't want him, right? Who wouldn't want him, want Hiyori? Isn't that just the way the world works, that everybody wants him? And Jun's shy, after all, about these things. He's not practiced with them. He's awkward, sometimes, about expressing affection. So maybe he would want a hug as badly as Hiyori but he just doesn't know how to say it.
He doesn't know at all what Jun would want and it feels terrible. He never used to feel uncertain about anything before, not in any way that really mattered, and certainly not about things like this, because everyone always wanted Hiyori Tomoe and he always was assured in that fact and now that previously ironclad fact of his universe is thrown into doubt by this boy who owes everything to Hiyori and has the audacity to look at him like he's precious and yet despite that Hiyori doesn't know what is in his head or in his heart and it matters to him, in a way that it's never mattered with anyone before, what is there but there's no way to know because he can't read his mind and he doesn't know how to ask or maybe he's just afraid to ask because asking means an answer and an answer means it could be no just as easily as it could be yes and he doesn't know what he'd do with a no.
"You okay, Ohii-san?" Jun asks suddenly, that terrible softness returning to his voice, to his eyes. "You look–"
"It's time for bed," Hiyori interrupts him, digging his hands into the skin of his legs, through his pajama pants. "It's late– it's–"
Jun's brow creases, frowning like he's worried, though he has very little to worry about, and it's awfully like him to be fretting now when there's nothing to be upset over rather than earlier, when there was everything to be upset over. Nothing is wrong and nothing is happening.
All of this is very normal, and they're both being strange about it, Hiyori decides, burrowing back down under the covers, trying to tame the tempo of his heart, which pounds against his ribs like wings against the wire walls of a birdcage.
"Okay," Jun says eventually. "Goodnight, Ohii-san."
"Goodnight," Hiyori replies, mostly-muffled into the comforter, "Jun-kun."
It's all very normal, he thinks, watching as the vague shadows of Jun's eyelashes flutter shut, and there's nothing strange about this. Jun's breath begins to deepen and even out with sleep, a most soft and soothing sound that means nothing at all to Hiyori, he's sure, but he listens anyway and the tides of sleep come in sure and smooth to him, carried in on the lullaby made of the breath of this boy besides him.