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It isn’t an issue in the beginning.
The tongue that glides over wet lips is merely an observation at first– it’s winter, the air is dry, and chapped lips are a seasonal occurrence. Kid, it seems, even with his reaper body, is not exempt from dry lips. Black☆Star just happens to glance over during class, and Kid is running his tongue over his lips, lost in thought. Black☆Star looks away again, and doesn’t think twice about it.
Until it becomes a problem.
It rapidly becomes a commonplace occurrence, for Black☆Star to look at Kid in conversation, or to glance over at him during class, to share a joke with him, but the snickers and words die on his lips as he notices Kid is worrying at his mouth again. Black☆Star is downright transfixed at the sight of slick pink darting over plump lips, white teeth pulling at a full bottom lip and releasing it with a wet sheen, and more often than not, Black☆Star finds himself swallowing thickly and diverting his attention elsewhere, ignoring the prickle of blood rushing to his face.
It isn’t long before he’s wondering how those lips taste. It’s been maybe a week– a week of torture and Kid nursing his chapped lips with a quick tongue and glinting teeth. When Black☆Star first noticed these unwelcome thoughts drifting into his head, he’s flustered and shocked and quickly shakes them out – he doesn’t want to think about one of his best friends like that. But when Kid seems to be constantly provoking him, pursing his lips in thought, or worrying them between his teeth, the thoughts burst through his mental defenses like a tidal wave against a dam. He’s angry, initially, because he doesn’t want to be distracted by Kid’s mouth or the flicker of his tongue or white teeth sinking into his skin. It makes it difficult to talk to one of the most important people in his life, and when his gaze is mostly fixed on Kid’s mouth when they talk, Kid might raise a brow in confusion, but he continues talking and brushes off Black☆Star’s odd behavior.
Black☆Star thinks his lips must taste like coffee. For how often he sees Kid with a Deathbucks cup in his slender fingers, he decides there’s got to be a residual taste of bitterness on his tongue. He ponders how it would taste wrapped up in with his own flavor, and how the mix might sit on his tongue. The thought makes his throat go dry and his cheeks heat, and he pushes back the onslaught of other thoughts, worse thoughts, that begin to crowd his mind
Kid is oblivious as anything. They’re sitting in the dining hall, and Black☆Star’s got his head propped up on one hand, lazily poking at his food while Kid talks to him. Kid prattles on about something or nothing-- Black☆Star isn’t sure at this point, he long stopped listening to the words falling from his mouth. But every so often, he catches it. Kid will pause for a moment, lick his lips, and continue on while Black☆Star resolutely stares. Occasionally, there will be a flash of teeth, and Kid’s bottom lip will be pulled in, and released red and swollen, and Black☆Star will choke on the air he breathes. He notices Kid has asked him a question, just a moment too late, because Kid’s looking vaguely irritated and his brow is furrowed.
“Is something distracting you? Is there something on my face?” Kid asks, exasperated, and he wipes his forearm over his mouth for good show.
“No,” Black☆Star lies, and he thinks, ‘it is your face’.
Kid looks at him doubtfully, but simply repeats the question, and this time Black☆Star has an answer for him. But he still shoots a glance at Kid’s mouth, and though he doesn’t feel like eating his lunch, he’s hungry.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but now that he seems to have a fixation with Kid’s lips, Black☆Star has come to the realization that Kid has a very expressive mouth. While his deadpan gaze never gives anything away, his mouth will tilt just the slightest bit--a crease at one corner or a vague tick upwards, and it’s become easy for Black☆Star to read. He knows when Kid is irritated, elated, anxious, upset--just by the ambiguous slight of his mouth. He knows that Kid’s frown is more like a straight line--tight and even, but his smile, when he really smiles, is wide and the slightest bit crooked , and pink lips show a fraction of white teeth behind them.
Two weeks into this disaster, and Black☆Star wonders how Kid’s lips feel. He wants to run the pads of his fingers over the swell of his lower lip, wants to push his thumb against his cupid’s bow, wants to lick and bite and taste peach colored lips stained by coffee. He imagines they’re soft, if dry and a bit chapped, but smooth where they meet and silky. He licks his own lips in anticipation, imagining Kid’s own lips in place of his tongue. A flush rises to his face and he keeps his head down for the rest of the class, purposefully not looking at Kid.
The day after that, he finds a way to slip a tube of chapstick into Kid’s pocket, thinking that maybe if the dry spell that’s over Kid ends, then so will his inconvenient fixation. He doesn’t know when Kid finds it, but there’s a sense of satisfaction when he catches Kid using it that afternoon. And then the satisfaction becomes something a bit less innocent and a bit more primal, and Black☆Star has to groan, because now he’s imagining the taste of cherry-flavored lips against his tongue and pressed to his throat and--Black☆Star counts this as a failure.
It takes a while for him to fully come to the realization, but the day is about halfway over when he’s struck by it--Kid hasn’t licked his lips all day. He blinks. The chapstick worked. Like intended. Black☆Star looks over to Kid, who’s in a conversation with Soul, and tries not to feel a little bit cheated.
Another week passes, and he still has a difficult time pulling his gaze away from Kid’s lips when he speaks to him. He watches his tongue glide over syllables, his lips curl over vowels, his teeth stutter consonants. Black☆Star forcefully drags his stare from Kid’s mouth to his eyes, and chokes, because Kid is really kind of beautiful.
He waits until Kid is focussed on something else, and lets his eyes drag over his body. From glossy raven hair, glinting steadily under the sun of spring, to piercing golden eyes which make Black☆Star’s toes curl, to the slender column of pale skin at his throat, to the steady and capable, if dainty, fingers at his hands, Kid is remarkably pretty. Black☆Star’s breath stutters as full pink lips pull back over a stunning smile, and bright laughter, and , ‘Oh,’ he thinks, ‘I like him, as if he hadn’t been waxing over his friend for the past few months.
Black☆Star isn’t sure if he’d ever have said something, if Kid hadn’t cornered him first.
“--and you never seem to be listening, just kind of staring. In fact, you’re doing it right now--what are you looking at?” Kid sounds tired, and exasperated, and Black☆Star meets his eyes.
“I want to kiss you,” he says, and oh, he hadn’t meant to say that at all.
“You-what?” Kid’s expression flashes from surprised to confused to worried, and Black☆Star wants to kiss the brow that’s furrowed.
He coughs into his hand. He made his bed, and so he’ll lie in it. “I want to kiss you,” he repeats, and he cocks his head to the side as if challenging Kid.
Kid just stares at him for a moment. He looks flustered for a moment--and then he looks angry.
“You want to kiss me,” Kid echoes, and it’s not a question.
“Yes,” Black☆Star nods, confidently, though his voice hitched at the end.
Kid takes a purposeful step forward, and Black☆Star does not take a step back.
“You mean to tell me,” another step, “this whole time,” he moves forward again, “we could have been making out?” Kid is pressed to Black☆Star’s chest, and Black☆Star thinks he’s having a brain malfunction, because Kid is close and his heart is thundering, and there’s no way Kid just said what he thought he had, yet somehow his mouth is still working.
“We--what?”
Instead of an answer, Kid lifts his hands to grasp the sides of Black☆Star’s head, and then he’s kissing him.
Black☆Star makes a noise in the back of his throat, eyes wide and hands locked into fists at his side, until Kid’s mouth moves against his own, and then Black☆Star is melting. His lips are rough, they’re not soft and relenting, they are firm and they are harsh, pressing hard against Black☆Star’s own, demanding and hungry. Black☆Star is quick to open his mouth, to press back with his own eagerness, and his tongue meets Kid’s and it is bliss. He takes and he tastes and he drinks his fill of Kid’s moans and his lips, and he only pulls back to gasp for air.
Kid’s eyes are hooded and dark, and his hot breaths are ghosting past Black☆Star’s lips, and Black☆Star just whispers “Fuck,” before diving right back in, his hands in Kid’s hair.
They kiss, and then they part, and then they kiss some more. Kid bites the junction between Black☆Star’s neck and his shoulder, and tells him he’s a fool. Black☆Star just chuckles, and sighs, because Kid’s lips taste better than cherry-chapstick and coffee combined.