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When Kunigami had made it into university-level soccer, satisfied that he’d been accepted into his — well, not quite his first, but perhaps his third or fourth — choice in a varsity team, he’d expected a few things: an uptick in difficulty and passion for the sport, certainly, but also the wary expectation that the players around him will have much more personality than he’s used to.
As it turns out, talents and genius types tend to have a screw loose, and he’s right about the sheer amount of personality in his new team. There’s the sunny half-blond who’s not quite right in the head, the one who doesn’t seem to feel anything but rage, another with black and white hair who’s vaguely unsettling and may have grown up in a jungle (Kunigami’s not sure if he should take his claims about fighting bears seriously), and several with more energy than he’d thought was humanly possible. Even Isagi Yoichi, the dark haired boy who had (to Kunigami’s relief) seemed sensible enough at first, had promptly torn up any hope of getting a somewhat sane teammate when he’d stepped onto the field and turned into a manic, terrifying, all-devouring football beast. Kunigami is simply grateful that he’s not like that all the time.
But then there’s the beautiful, red-headed player.
He learns his name is Chigiri Hyouma, and that while he’s icy and reserved at first, which quickly has some of the others calling him oujo-sama — and he’s certainly pretty like one, Kunigami privately thinks to himself — he also experiences the thrill of soccer like the rest of them. He learns that Chigiri is most radiant after scoring a goal, when his shoulders are loose after the rush of adrenaline, eyes fierce but bright with his victory, and hand clapping against Kunigami’s own with a grin.
Chigiri turns out not to be so icy after all — at least, not towards Kunigami and a handful of others like Isagi and Iemon and, shockingly, Bachira.
(Later, he finds out that Isagi, Bachira, and Chigiri are housemates. It begins to make a little more sense once he realises they’ve had more time to warm up to each other, but to his credit, Bachira is also the type to bully himself into a friendship.)
So he often finds himself pairing off with the redhead when he can help it, and it’s nice. Companionable. He still doesn’t know Chigiri very well outside of soccer, and the few times he sees him outside of practice, they’re with the team.
Sometimes they part ways and the impression of red-pink lingers in his mind. Kunigami tries not to think about it too hard.
Kunigami is sitting outside, enjoying the lovely weather, and finishing off his store-bought lunch when he hears his name being called.
“Kunigami!” comes the sound of Bachira’s bright voice, and shit, if that doesn’t sound like trouble—
He barely has the chance to scarf down the rest of his food and grab the handle of his bag and jump up before Bachira is crowding into his space with an unnerving wide-eyed grin. “Kunigami, why do you look like you’re trying to run away?”
Behind Bachira, a head of dark hair pops up.
And look, he’d normally be relieved that Isagi’s there to be the voice of reason, but he doesn’t have a good feeling about this. This — the slightly desperate look in both of Isagi and Bachira’s eyes — this is definitely trouble.
“Hey, Kunigami, you love sweet things right?” says Isagi, smile strained.
At that, Kunigami frowns. While he indulges sometimes — rarely, actually, athlete diet and all — he’d hardly say he had any kind of sweet tooth. Almost the opposite. He’s not quite sure where Isagi and Bachira had gotten the impression that he did.
No, not really, is at the tip of his tongue, except he sees a flash of red-pink over Isagi’s shoulder, and then one Chigiri Hyouma is peering up at him with his pretty pink eyes. He’s dwarfed in a soft sweater and his hair is tied up and there is an unreasonably large basket cradled in his arms and — Kunigami thinks he knows where this is going.
“Oh,” Chigiri says, in his smooth, lovely voice, “I didn’t know you liked sweets.”
Kunigami, in an incredible act of foolishness, says, “Uh, yeah, I love sweets.”
“Really?” Chigiri brightens, along with Isagi and Bachira, and, well. That doesn’t seem to bode well for Kunigami. “Hey, d’you want these cookies then? I made a ton and these two—” he jabs Isagi in the ribs here, “—refuse to eat them.”
“You’ve already made us take at least a dozen though,” Isagi says with a slight wheeze.
“Um,” Kunigami looks down at the basket. He should say no. He has to say no. The basket is huge — even if he did have a sweet tooth, he’s not sure it’s even possible to finish so many alone. “Um—” And then he makes the mistake of looking back up into Chigiri’s expectant eyes, and — “Of course I’ll take them.”
The delight on Chigiri’s face makes him feel a little faint. He barely registers the wave of relief that visibly washes over the other two.
Bachira, eyes still wide, raises an eyebrow, “What, like all of—”
“Yeah, all of them.”
“You really like sweets huh?” Chigiri says, bright-eyed and pushing the basket into Kunigami’s arms. “I didn’t peg you for the type.”
I’m not, he wants to say, in maybe a last ditch attempt to save his blood sugar, but his brain to mouth connection fails him when Chigiri pats his arm after depositing the basket.
“Maybe I should make some more then, sometime,” Chigiri smiles, “I hope you like them!”
Ten minutes later, Kunigami is sat back down in the same place the trio had found him in, this time with none of his dignity and instead an enormous basket in his lap that he hasn’t had the courage to open.
Chigiri probably didn’t even mean for him to take the whole basket, he had realised after the whole ordeal. Chigiri must think he’s like some child with an insatiable appetite for sugar now. Fuck.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut, he mourns to himself, scrubbing his palms against his eyes. Ahh, damnit, why did I have to go and take all of them!
He lifts his head out of his hands, still not recovered from the whirlwind that is Chigiri and his high ponytail and his sm — Kunigami stops his train of thought there — his new hobby and Kunigami’s own weak will in the face of it all, and grabs at his phone to send a text to Isagi.
Kunigami
Are they really that bad?
Isagi
WWWWWWWW
^ Bachira
No?
But good luck
Thank you for your service (￣^￣)ゞ
Kunigami drops his head back into his hands.
They’re not that bad. Really.
They’re simple sugar cookies (or shortbread? Kunigami hasn’t had enough of either to be able to tell), and they’re not terribly sweet, and only a little dry, and some of them have little chocolate chips in them so at least there’s variety. A quick google search had told him they wouldn’t go bad for about a week, so he has some time to figure out what to do with them. All things considered, it’s not that bad.
This is what Kunigami tells himself when he bites into his tenth cookie that day.
“Since when did you like sweets?” Raichi asks, eyeing the container filled to the brim. He’s haphazardly shoving things into his gym bag while Kunigami waits, always more efficient than his gym buddy when it comes to his post-workout routine.
“I don’t,” Kunigami replies miserably, “Someone gave them to me. Please take some.”
“Fuck no, I don’t want your empty calories,” Raichi says, and finally zips up his bag. “Did you get a girlfriend or something?”
Unbidden, his mind conjures an image of red-pink hair and a bright-eyed look much different to the cool composure he’s become used to, and he takes a second too long to respond, “…No.”
Raichi gives him a searching look — glare? — before deciding, “You’re lying. Holy shit. You got a girlfriend! I gotta tell the boys — Imamura might actually kill you—”
“—He can try,” Kunigami grumbles. “No, hang on, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“So, what, someone gave you something you don’t even like and you’re gonna eat all of it?” Raichi snorts, “What a gentleman. Give them to the rest of the team and they’ll eat that shit up in five seconds flat. Problem solved.”
And isn’t that an idea, except for the fact that Chigiri is on that very team and Kunigami fears he may not survive if the other boy ever found out about it — Chigiri has a uniquely withering look that he’s seen in the early days of their team and Kunigami thinks he might simply dissolve into the ground if it were ever directed towards him. Even if he managed to give them out behind his back, he’s sure he wouldn’t be able to stop Isagi and Bachira from catching wind of it, sociable as they are and loud-mouthed the rest of the team are.
It would also just feel wrong to give away something Chigiri made. For him. Kind of.
“I can’t,” Kunigami blurts out.
“What the fuck do you mean you can’t—!”
“The person who made them, um, they’re on the team.”
Raichi’s face scrunches.
“…It was, um,” Kunigami debates with himself for a moment, “It was Chigiri.”
A pause.
“The princess?” Raichi’s face scrunches even more. He thinks it’s from bewilderment. “You’re telling me that the princess has a thing for you?”
“What? No!” Kunigami waves his hands in abject denial, almost flinging the open box of cookies across the floor. Distantly, in the back of his mind, there’s a voice that sighs, man, I wish. He ignores it. “He just made too many. And the roommates didn’t want to eat them, so…”
“So he bullied you into eating them?” Raichi cackles, “Shit, I didn’t know you were so afraid of our ojou-sama! Haha!”
It’s not quite the truth, but it’s marginally less embarrassing than telling him it was because Kunigami had lost a few too many brain cells in the presence of said ojou-sama (and his smile, and his pretty hair, and so on). If that is the conclusion Raichi has come to, perhaps it’s the more believable one.
He picks up another cookie and sighs, “Don’t tell him that.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Don’t tell the others either.”
“… Maybe if you treat me to some hamburger.”
Somehow, the next time he has Chigiri’s baked goods pushed onto him, it’s not during practice.
He finds Kunigami in the library half-heartedly scrolling on his worn laptop, and then completely distracts him by sweeping into his periphery with his red-pink hair fluttering prettily behind him. Kunigami doesn’t get a chance to prepare himself for the rare sight that is Chigiri in his casual clothes before the redhead sets down two bags in the empty seat right across the table.
“Yo,” Chigiri greets, while Kunigami’s brain struggles to kick start itself into something functional. “I made cupcakes.”
“Okay,” Kunigami says, a little dumbly.
There are a lot of questions he could be asking here. Did he make them just for me? Is he only here to give them to me? Why not during practice? And also, how the hell did he know where I was???
All were very good and valid questions, but Kunigami knows he’s not having any of them answered because he’s too busy being bedazzled and looping a single thought in his mind, which is — wow, pretty.
Chigiri, for his part, slides a bag across the desk at him and plops down into his newly taken seat with a bearing reminiscent of a cat. It takes a moment to realise that the look that he’s wearing now is an expectant one.
“Oh — Um. Thanks,” Kunigami finally says.
In return, Chigiri’s eyes curve in a pleased smile and he leans forward, propping his elbows on the desk. He hums, “So, cookies from last time. How were they?”
Please never make them again, he wants to say. Kunigami’s not even halfway through the supply and he never wants to see another sugar cookie. He swears he’s been eating one every waking hour. He might actually be getting cavities.
“They’re … good,” is what he says instead, diplomatic, and promptly chokes on his breath.
Maybe cavities are worth it, he thinks faintly, if his words can coax such a brilliant smile from Chigiri. What did he even say? The cookies were good? Well, then they were amazing. Spectacular. He’s completely fine with cavities, really.
… Or maybe not, he thinks later, after he’s spent an indeterminate amount of entertaining the other in a conversation while in a daze, and the redhead leaves with a small smile and a wiggle of his fingers, and he opens the bag to find a massive cardboard box with too many tiers to count and caramel soaked cupcakes filling up each one of them. Abruptly, he can feel his teeth begin to ache.
His head drops onto the library table with a thud as he curses his weak will.
It strikes Kunigami one day, when he’s heading to training, that he should get Chigiri something in return.
Of course, the sweets being dumped on him have been more troublesome than anything (the cloying feeling of sugar and caramel perpetually lingering in his mouth is proof of that), but it can’t have been cheap to make all that food, and making it must have taken Chigiri so much time…
Before he knows it, Kunigami’s standing in front of a vending machine, scratching his head at the options. He’s not quite sure what Chigiri prefers, but, well, a Pocari Sweat can’t hurt, right?
As soon as the coach calls for a break, he’s jogging over to Chigiri, drink in hand. The redhead is half-sprawled on the ground, panting with exertion, sweeping his damp hair out of his face, looking as beautiful and unruffled as ever despite the sheen of sweat over his skin, and Kunigami thinks it’s incredibly unfair. He takes a second too long admiring the vision, and so caught up in catching his breath, Chigiri doesn’t notice the drink being held out to him. When Kunigami clears his throat to make himself known, it’s also partially because his mouth has become much too dry.
Chigiri’s eyes dart towards the drink, then up towards him in surprise.
“For you,” Kunigami coughs out, answering his unspoken question.
“Oh!” Chigiri takes the bottle, hands twitching minutely in hesitation, and then averts his gaze as he unscrews the lid. “Thanks, Kunigami.”
He almost looks — shy, his mind whispers — and the thought sets something ablaze beneath his skin. “Yeah, no worries.”
It’s the beginning of a new routine — one where he’s given the absurdity that is Chigiri’s baking, and repays it with little gifts of his own. He learns what Chigiri likes (sports drinks, green tea, sweets — which, okay, Kunigami should’ve figured), and what he’ll accept (“Convenience store wagashi is okay. Do not get me the fancy artisan kind, you knucklehead hero.”), and how to go back and forth with some of the harmless jabs Chigiri are fond of now that they’re — perhaps — friends, but not yet how to tell him the truth when he’s shown up out of the blue once again to shove a container of some kind into Kunigami’s arms. He doesn’t think he’ll ever learn how to refuse him when all he can think about in those moments is the brightness in Chigiri’s eyes.
(Raichi confronts him about his new habit one day, after Chigiri had ducked out early with Bachira, leaving the rest of the team to mill about post-practice.
“Did our oujo-sama turn you into his gopher or somethin’?”
Kunigami, who’s distractedly throwing things into his bag and wondering what to do with the box of dorayaki he’d been given the other day (Chigiri had been stepping up his game), doesn’t register the question at first. “Huh? Gopher?”
Raichi glowers at him, except Kunigami’s been around him long enough to know that that’s just how his face is. He doesn’t think much of it. “Chigiri. You keep getting things for him and shit. Is he…?”
He makes a vague gesture with his hands that Kunigami cannot decipher the meaning of, so he simply shrugs, “It’s fine. Just repaying him for something.”)
In between it all, their gift-giving becomes less transactional and more — what, Kunigami’s not sure how to describe. Chigiri stays around longer whenever he passes something along. He joins Kunigami in the library to study whenever he finds him there. They start planning study sessions despite the little overlap in their classes, which means Kunigami gets Chigiri’s number, which means Chigiri now has the option to pester Kunigami at the most unholy hours of the day. And he allows it — welcomes it — like he does with being a personal dumpster for baked goods, because he can’t find himself saying no to Chigiri, who opens himself up to Kunigami in his own way.
He’ll let Kunigami do things that he wouldn’t let anybody else do, and it becomes a point of pride that he tucks away in a fluttering part of his chest. Things like helping him with his leg care from an old injury, or braiding his wonderfully soft hair (after he learns that Kunigami is, in fact, great at styling hair), and it takes everything in him not to ask for more.
(“Seriously, are you in trouble?” Raichi asks him another time, brow furrowed. “Blink twice if you need help.”
Kunigami hikes his bag onto a shoulder, eyes drawn to the swish of pink hair as Chigiri turns around to shoot him a peace sign and a look that says, I’m going on ahead first, see ya, before ducking out the door. Raichi hits his shoulder. “Huh?”
“Blink twice if you need help,” Raichi repeats slowly.
Kunigami only gives him a blank look and, mind still fixed on chasing the strands of red-pink, begins to make his exit. “I’ll see you tomorrow when you’re being less weird.”
“Me—! I’m being weird?” he hears him sputter.
Distracted as he is, he doesn’t notice the look Raichi shares with the other members.)
Isagi and Bachira start to catch on that he doesn’t actually like sweet things.
Or maybe they’ve known from the beginning, but there’s increasingly more pity — and vague judgement on behalf of Isagi, and amusement on behalf of Bachira — in their gazes whenever they watch their third roommate pass the product of some new recipe to Kunigami, who lets the dread seep into his expression as soon as Chigiri’s back is turned. Neither of them have bothered to help Kunigami out though, so what good are they as friends?
Kunigami, on the other hand, has given up on eating all the food Chigiri gives him.
There was one point where he, determined to power through the unholy amount of baked goods in an attempt not to waste any of it, had spent three days in a row eating only pastries and biscuits and cake, had promptly gotten sick at the end of the three day period, and had been traumatised by the experience to the point where he could no longer look at anything of the kind without feeling a fraction of the nausea he’d felt that day.
He cannot eat another sweet. He simply cannot.
(But he does anyway, whenever Chigiri gives him a batch with that bright-eyed look and pretty smile of his. Since Chigiri puts the effort into it, he should at least try one right?)
If Isagi and Bachira won’t entertain his proposal to divide and conquer, and if he can’t give them to the rest of the team for fear of upsetting Chigiri in any way, and if he can’t give them to others in his classes because they’ll cite stranger danger to him without fail, then — Kunigami still doesn’t know what to do with them. He takes some with him to give to the rest of his family on the few occasions he’s made the trip back home, but the rate at which he receives the food is much faster than the rate he can get rid of it and it’s beginning to pile up in his tiny apartment. He’s almost certain he’s housing mold in some of those containers. He’s just glad his roommate is never there.
Isagi, at least, has the decency not to laugh at him. At least, not to his face. Bachira seems to take immense joy in watching Kunigami go blank and trip over his words around Chigiri, though it happens less frequently now.
That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen at all though. Kunigami’s built up some immunity towards Chigiri’s beauty and quiet intensity and occasional grins, but there are moments when he is struck speechless by the full weight of it. He is, after all, only a man.
Case in point: Chigiri linking their arms as they walk together one chilly night, and Kunigami’s heartbeat and breath immediately stuttering to a stop.
They’re not the only ones around — Bachira had managed to convince half the team (and some of his other friends) to drop their studies for some karaoke, and now, late into the night, their rowdy gaggle of university students is on the hunt for a quick midnight snack before they disperse. Around them, their friends squabble about where to eat, who will pay, and other things completely unrelated, but all of it is muted in Kunigami’s ears.
Chigiri yawns as he leans into his side. He has his hair tied back and is swaddled in a thick scarf (courtesy of the cold weather), and like this, when he’s not being swept along with the high energy mood set by the others, he looks undeniably — soft. Cute.
Kunigami stumbles into him at the thought, and Chigiri shoots him a look for almost bowling him over. If he didn’t know better, he would say he was pouting.
“Can’t walk straight anymore, musclehead?”
“You’re the one who can’t walk on your own,” Kunigami punctuates with a nudge to their linked arms.
Chigiri grumbles something under his breath and draws even closer, head bumping against Kunigami’s shoulder. “Shut up. I’m tired.”
And he certainly looks like it, eyes droopy and half his face burrowed into his scarf. Kunigami doesn’t blame him. It’s a busy time of the semester, soccer training has not been kind to them, and the last time he checked, it was nearing midnight.
“Does the princess need to be carried?” he quips, and laughs when Chigiri tries and fails to trip him. “Come on, if I fall, you’re going down with me.”
“Hmph. You’d make a good cushion, Mr. Hero,” Chigiri says, but doesn’t try it again. Instead he beckons him to lean down so he can whisper something into his ear, “Hey, how long do you think it’ll take them to notice we’re going around the same block for the third time?”
Kunigami looks up.
…Huh.
Beside him, Chigiri looks a little more awake as he grins up at him and says, “Wanna ditch these guys?”
They manage to slip away easily in the midst of the chaos brought by a dozen boys arguing about directions:
“Are you serious? There’s no way this is the right street!”
“Can we please just go to McDonalds?”
“Guys, I swear we’ve walked past this tree twice already.”
Kunigami only hears the smooth voice of Chigiri’s, “Wanna ditch these guys?” echo in his ears as he’s led away by their linked arms, something warm buzzing under his skin.
They enter a convenience store before he even realises where Chigiri is leading them, and the redhead gives him an innocent smile and a little shrug in response to the tired look he shoots at him.
“What?” He says, “All that walking made me hungry.”
In the end, they leave with a bag stuffed with bread and onigiri and half-price mochi (at Chigiri’s behest, though the sight of wagashi makes Kunigami feel a little queasy). Then as they wander about in search of a place to sit and huddle and fill their stomachs, they pass by a quaint ice cream shop that’s still open and—
“Seriously? In this weather?”
“You’re being very judgemental today, Kunigami.”
Chigiri gets a scoop coloured a deep rose. Kunigami tells him it matches with his hair. Chigiri, waving the cup in front of his face with a twinkle in his eye, says that’s the point.
Eventually, they find somewhere to sit — a park bench by a humming lamppost, facing the still-busy streets.
They’re huddled up, sharing their convenience store haul, wondering aloud if the others have decided on a course of action yet, and in the same breath, giggling to themselves about how they must not have noticed that the two of them had left. At some point, Chigiri has unwrapped his scarf to tug around the both of them (“For warmth”, he’d said teasingly), and then Kunigami is close enough to count the lashes in his pretty eyes, to see the rosy sheen of the ice cream on his lips, to feel the warmth of his breath ghosting across his face.
Without realising it, a blanket of silence has settled over them. It is serene and still and delicate like snow, and it is heated and charged and igniting like the blazing sun. At the centre of it are Chigiri’s eyes — bright and beautiful, the same ones that have made Kunigami weak in the knees over and over again — and they’re looking straight at him.
“Hey Kunigami,” he whispers into the tiny distance between their lips, “I’ve got a suggestion.”
“Yeah?” Kunigami breathes back, eyes flickering down, “I might have just had the same idea.”
Another soft breath ghosts over his lips in the shape of a giggle. Chigiri’s eyelids flutter. Chigiri’s phone rings.
Neither of them move.
But suddenly, Kunigami is aware of the rabbit-quick thump in his chest, the deafening rush of blood in his ears, the damning heat of his skin where he’s pressed up against the other. As he tries to wrestle his heart-rate and racing mind under control, he thinks he hear Chigiri hiss something like, “—d fucking damnit.”
By the third ring, Chigiri manages to locate his phone, and answers it with a frigid, “What.”
Despite the caller not being on speaker, they’re very loud, and Kunigami is half-cursing-half-thanking what he thinks is Bachira for the interruption. His head is reeling.
“You finally noticed, huh? Uh huh. Nope,” Chigiri begins looking a little less murderous as he answers Bachira’s rapid-fire questions, and gives Kunigami a tired look, “Yeah, I’m with him.”
At that, he pulls the phone away from his ear and puts the caller on speaker.
“Kunigami!”
“…Hey.”
Chigiri makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snort.
“Didja kidnap our ojou-chan?” Bachira cries, with a slight slur to his voice despite not touching a single drop of alcohol. At least, Kunigami hopes he hasn’t — they’re not quite old enough for that yet. “Nooo, bring Chigirin back!”
“ Bachira— ” They hear Isagi try to cut in, and then the telltale sound of a scuffle. Chigiri’s eyes are dancing with laughter as the line falls silent for a moment. Then—
“Nevermind! Sorry Chigirin, you’ll have to find somewhere to stay tonight! Isagi and I want the apartment allll to—”
“—Oh my god, Bachira!”
The line disconnects. Kunigami has never seen someone’s face fall so fast.
“Sorry for the trouble again,” Chigiri says, as Kunigami digs around his pockets for his keys.
They’re at his apartment after he had offered up his spare futon for the night, feeling sorry for the redhead for getting kicked out of his own place. The redhead in question stands a metre away from him, gaze fixed on a stray fleck of paint on the wall, one hand fiddling with the ends of his scarf.
“Mn. It’s fine,” Kunigami responds absently.
He doesn’t feel fine. He feels — he doesn’t know what, but it’s in the same vein as the hurricane of thoughts swirling in his head, flickering and disappearing at a speed too quick for him to grasp. There’s elation, he thinks, at the thought of his feelings being returned. Exhilaration. Fear, at how those feelings change things. Confusion, about what those feelings really are — when did this passing infatuation become so thoroughly threaded in his life? When did the two of them turn into something so close and so fond?
Just earlier this day (or now, technically, the previous day), Kunigami had held nothing but a fond exasperation at the strange circumstance he’d managed to find himself in where Chigiri kept bestowing food on him. It’s his own fault, of course, but now—
The lock turns in his hand with a click, and Kunigami has a startling, horrifying realisation.
The food. He’d forgotten about the food. The food that Chigiri had given him. The food that he’s been pretending to enjoy, but doesn’t actually, and is no doubt scattered all around his apartment in the containers they came in because he hasn’t eaten them.
“Kunigami?”
“Um,” he says, frozen in front of his door. He turns with a strained smile, moving his body to block his front door — not that the other was making an attempt to barge in — and says the first excuse that comes to mind, “I just remembered that my apartment was really messy. Give me, uh, two minutes to clean up?”
Chigiri yawns, blinks, “Kunigami, it’s almost two in the morning. I don’t care how messy your place is.”
“It’s really bad,” he says, a little hysterically, “Believe me. Just two minutes!”
With that, he shuts the door in Chigiri’s dumbfounded face and sprints to his kitchen, barely remembering to kick his shoes off at the genkan.
It’s technically not a lie. While he keeps his living space tidy for the most part, it’s now largely encroached by the piles of uneaten food that he refuses to throw out for reasons that tonight’s events have shed some light on but he doesn’t want to think about. He’s not sure where he could possibly hide it all — his absent roommate’s room perhaps? But it would be wrong to use it without his permission. Then maybe the bathroom ? — or if he could even gather all the stray bags and boxes and containers before Chigiri fell asleep on his feet outside in the cold.
His mind is racing as he veers around the corner, but there’s no time to think. He’ll simply have to collect as much as he can and figure out what to do as he goes along. He reaches his hands out to grab at the closest pile and—
And realises there is no pile. Or piles. All the containers he’d expected to come back to are gone.
What the hell, he thinks, frozen at the entrance. Did I get robbed?
No, surely if somebody had broken into his apartment, they’d have better things to steal than half-rotting food. Then, what? Did his roommate come back? Somehow, that seemed even more unlikely.
“Hey, Gagamaru!” He calls out anyway, “You home?”
No response. Kunigami flounders as he digs through his pockets for his phone, frantically scrolling through his contacts to send a message to Gagamaru. He receives a reply almost instantly.
Kunigami
Did you eat all the sweets
Gagamaru
Σ('◉⌓◉’)
yeah
soz
Kunigami stares at his phone in wild disbelief. His phone, in return, continues chiming.
Gagamaru
some of it already went bad tho..
had to throw it out
were u saving it for smth
soz
Kunigami
No don’t worry about it
When did you get back??
Gagamaru
?
15 mins ago
… All this time, he thinks faintly, feeling the urge to hit himself. All this time, I could’ve just asked Gagamaru to come home.
“I thought you said you needed to clean.”
Kunigami nearly jumps out of his skin. “Chigiri!”
He looks up in time to see the redhead shrug a shoulder at him from the entryway. “Pardon the intrusion. It’s been more than two minutes. And it’s cold outside.”
“…Sorry,” he says, and puts his phone away. “Turns out my roommate got back earlier and cleaned up.”
Chigiri hums, padding into his apartment with silent steps. He really does act like a cat sometimes, he can’t help but note, as his guest peers around with slight curiosity. “I didn’t know you had a roommate.”
“He’s not much of a roommate…” he says, and at the other man’s confused tilt of the head, elaborates, “It’s Gagamaru.”
“Your roommate is Gagamaru?” Chigiri raises an eyebrow, “Huh. Somehow I can’t imagine him sleeping under, like, an actual roof.”
“He normally doesn’t, as far as I know,” Kunigami says wryly, coaxing a soft huff of laughter from the other. The sound sends a shocked thrill down his spine.
“Well, maybe he just doesn’t want to clean up after you all the time,” Chigiri teases, walking around as if he were doing an inspection.
It’s a sight that makes Kunigami’s stomach do funny things — there’s something about having this redhead here in his space that makes him feel like he’s accomplished something he hadn’t meant to, but also feel unreasonably nervous. He really doesn’t know what to do with himself, after — he stops his line of thought there before it can fluster him again.
Chigiri, in the meantime, has ended up in the kitchenette. He holds up a plastic bag — the one holding the remainder of their convenience store haul that they hadn’t managed to finish — and asks, “Hey, where should I put this?”
Kunigami startles, “Oh, here, I should have space in the fridge—”
He goes to open the refrigerator, only to find his roommate has left more than enough space. What the hell, how much did Gagamaru eat?
A low whistle sounds from beside him as Chigiri passes him the bag and takes note of the emptiness of his refrigerator. “Wow, why does it look like you haven’t gone grocery shopping in weeks? Don’t tell me you’ve only been surviving on sweets — am I the only thing keeping you from starving to death, Kunigami?”
Kunigami groans, running a hand down his face. “Gagamaru must’ve been hungry. Believe me, my fridge normally isn’t this empty. Don’t go taking credit for that — I keep myself alive just fine.” If anything, Chigiri was going to send him to an early grave, whether it be from inadvertently giving him diabetes with his baking or from his whole … Chigiri-ness.
He gets a tinkling laugh in response, which gets his breath catching in his throat and heat blooming across the back of his neck. Case in point. “You know, I really didn’t expect you to like sweets as much as you did. How quickly do you finish them? Where do you even put it all?”
“…I’m a big eater?”
Another laugh. “Mn, I can tell,” Chigiri leans back onto the kitchen bench so that he’s facing Kunigami as he turns away from the refrigerator. There’s a squint at the corner of his eyes that’s reminiscent of a smile, and Kunigami finds himself freezing in place when he sees it. Chigiri’s next words are spoken softly, “Hey, Kunigami, you really eat everything I make, right?”
It feels like Kunigami’s heart stops beating for a moment.
Shit. Shit. Don’t tell me he caught on, he thinks, but Chigiri continues speaking without taking notice of his sudden bout of panic.
“I’ve never seen you share with anyone. That I know of, at least. I don’t mind it if you do, you know, but somehow it feels like you’re treasuring the things I’ve made you. It’s very sweet.” Then he smiles, a wry little one, as if he hadn’t just taken Kunigami’s heart on a rollercoaster ride, and says, “Of course, that could just be my own wishful thinking.”
Wishful thinking? Kunigami’s heart thuds loudly in his chest. Of course Chigiri’s wishful thinking would just happen to be the very reason — or if not, then the primary one — that had Kunigami acting like such a fool for weeks.
What does he even say here? Wouldn’t this be the perfect chance to correct this ongoing misunderstanding? Chigiri had given him an opportunity to tell him what he’d thought was wishful thinking was true, to open the doors of his own wishful thinking. But how could Kunigami tell him in the same breath that he’d been mistaken — that he had barely touched the food he’d given him, that he hadn’t really treasured it like he’d thought he did?
He wants to tell him he’s right, at least.
Of course, flustered as he is, he instead says, “I — just really like your sweets.”
It feels like Chigiri is gazing into his soul as the words slip out, and Kunigami immediately wants to wither away. Of all the things he could have said — but of course, he’s never been good at finding his words when pinned down by that brilliant, pink gaze. He doesn’t know why he thought it’d be any different this time.
Chigiri however, simply laughs again after a moment, and grins at him, “I’m glad.”
Kunigami gets a chance to run away after that, citing the futon he has yet to pull out for his guest.
Without the redhead’s presence to completely scramble his mental faculties, he first buries his face in his hands as his thoughts and emotions from the past few minutes catch up to him and crash over him with all the gentleness of a wave crashing over rocks. He feels the frustration of being unable to say what he wanted, the guilt of not telling the truth — but also the sheer relief that he’d gotten away with it, and the unnameable swell in his chest at seeing Chigiri so happy about his misunderstanding.
There’s a tiny, terrible part of him that almost doesn’t mind continuing the charade, and it clings onto that light swell of feeling. He tries to ignore it, but not before it has him pulling out his phone for the one who had inadvertently helped to keep this charade going in the first place.
Kunigami
You’re a lifesaver man
Gagamaru
??
He sets up his impromptu guest in the open living space, pushing aside some of the furniture to make room (and it’s here that he’s extremely grateful that there aren’t weeks of baked goods taking up half the area), and leaving out some of his smaller clothes for Chigiri to change into if he so wished.
Any other day, Kunigami thinks he would’ve shepherded the redhead into his own room. They might have sat close on his bed or on the spare futon, watching something on Kunigami’s laptop or on one of their phones, talking late into the night. One of them might have dozed off early, or pulled the other down with a weak excuse like, it’s already late, we both may as well sleep like this, or, it’s cold, isn’t it warmer this way? and they might have laid side by side, pressed from leg to shoulder, sending Kunigami’s heart into overdrive. It probably would’ve been Chigiri saying such things, the bolder of the two.
Tonight, however, it’s already late, Kunigami’s mind is racing too much to entertain such thoughts, and he thinks it would be infinitely worse if the source of his anxiety were sleeping less than two metres away. Chigiri, at least, looks grateful to be able to finally go to bed, mumbling a tired, “‘Night.” as Kunigami retires into his room.
Kunigami whispers back, “Goodnight.”
Chigiri continues on his baking spree. Kunigami is both relieved and incredibly stressed about it.
The comfortable atmosphere between them remains, but it seems that after the redhead had mistakenly confirmed that Kunigami ate his sweets much quicker than he really did (that is to say, almost not at all), he’d begun making them even faster. Kunigami’s not sure how he even has the time.
His one saving grace is Gagamaru and his absurd appetite and that it extends to sweets. And when food inevitably begins piling up in his apartment again — either from Gagamaru falling off the grid for a little too long at a time or from Chigiri’s increased vigor in baking — he recalls Chigiri’s words from the night he’d spent at Kunigami’s place, about not minding if he shared the food.
(Followed by words about how touched it made him, followed by the mention of his wishful thinking — Kunigami wants to talk about that still, but he is both afraid and at his wits’ end about the excess of food that he has no way of getting rid of, so he simply puts it aside to address at a later date.)
Kunigami
You said you didn’t mind if I shared your sweets right?
Chigiri
yeah?
seriously idk how you eat so much on your own in the first place
is it too much now? wwww
A little bit, Kunigami types out, before he thinks better of it and deletes the message. No, not at all, your baking is great, is his new option, before he’s brought back to reality by Isagi clearing his throat beside him. He’s clearly been watching Kunigami struggle over his response for far too long.
“You know, he won’t judge you if you tell him you don’t like sweets, right?” Isagi says carefully, and clears his throat again at Kunigami’s doubtful look, “Well, he might. But just a little. At least tell him to slow down — this is starting to get a little painful to watch.”
“You’re telling me,” Kunigami groans, but sends the second message anyway.
Isagi eyes him with a look of judgement and vague disappointment, and says, “I want you to know that I’m judging you.”
“Thanks, man.”
“What are we judging Kunigami for?”
Kunigami withers internally when several of the soccer team players — the louder ones. Or, more aptly, the ones that can’t keep a secret for the life of them — come marching into the changing rooms, brimming with too much curiosity. He attempts to shoot it down, says, “Nothing. Do you guys want some biscuits?”
He punctuates his question with pulling out a sizable container from a sizable bag, and rattles it in front of the gleaming eyes of his hungry teammates.
Isagi, fortunately, knows better than to open his mouth. Not so fortunately, there’s somebody else here who’s aware of his baking-related problem, and he fits right into the category of a loud-mouthed teammate. The very definition of it, even.
“Hah? Biscuits again?” Raichi scowls, setting his bag down with force. “Is ojou-sama still bullying you into taking his trash?”
Igarashi chokes on a biscuit he’s in the middle of eating, spraying crumbs everywhere and bringing out a collective wince as he sputters, “Ojou-sama made these?”
“Ojou-sama is bullying Kunigami?”
“Is that what we’re judging Kunigami for? Isagi-chan, you’re judging the victim here? Really?”
Kunigami feels a headache coming on. Isagi looks like he’s not sure whether to laugh or cry. “That’s not what I was judging him for! Well — wait—”
Kuon, who’s been pensive since entering the room, finally decides to contribute, “If you think about it… He always brings things to Chigiri. And he helps him with his stretches, and his hair, and, uh—”
“—His leg?—”
“—His…leg. Yes. A lot.” Kuon levels him with a narrow-eyed stare. “Could it be…?”
Several eyes land on him, and heat flares across Kunigami’s ears and neck at the observation. “You guys noticed all that?”
Raichi scoffs, “It’s not like you were subtle, gopher boy. Look at how you’re always at his beck and call. It’s obvious you’re scared of him.”
“Oh my god.” Kunigami says, “Hang on. You guys are misunder—”
“So what’s with the biscuits?”
“Fear tactic,” Raichi sniffs haughtily, “Kunigami doesn’t even like sweets. He’s just giving them to him to trouble him and scare him more.”
“You’re so right.”
“That is not right. What the hell are you guys even saying?” Kunigami laments. They ignore him.
This conversation is as absurd as it is mortifying, and Kunigami is reminded exactly why he’s never shared with the others on the team until now. Or, less reminded, and more given a reason as to why — he should have known something ridiculous like this would have arisen from it. The only thing he can do is share a helpless look with Isagi.
Amidst the mayhem, a cheerful voice cries out, “Yoohoo!”
Instantly, Isagi’s face lifts with relief, and he sighs, “Bachira—”
Bachira’s head pops around the corner of the changing room with a curious expression, half-blond hair swishing with the motion, and he says, “Hey, why did I just see Chigirin storm out of here?”
Kunigami’s heart drops.
He doesn’t hear from Chigiri for the rest of the day. Despite the multitude of messages he’s already sent, it takes everything for Kunigami not to send him another, or call, or ask Isagi or Bachira after their roommate for the eighth time. This becomes a little easier whenever he catches sight of the last messages he’s sent that all went unacknowledged.
Kunigami
Chigiri
Listen
It’s not what it sounds like
The boys were just assuming things, I never said anything like that to them
Please don’t be mad
Kunigami
Chigiri?
How much did you hear?
Kunigami
Please reply? We can talk about it.
…Why does it feel like the more he reads his own words, the more he sounds like a scorned boyfriend that had been caught cheating? Kunigami’s head drops into his hands, defeated.
Isagi had tried to reassure him again and again, saying, Chigiri’s not angry, just give him a bit of time, but Kunigami remains doubtful. Why would Chigiri be ignoring him if he weren’t upset at him?
At least you don’t have to eat those sweets now, had been Bachira’s two cents on the matter.
Without knowing how long Chigiri had been listening for and what exactly he had heard, Kunigami doesn’t even know where to begin explaining himself. There’s a ball of fear settled in the pit of his stomach, tormenting him with the idea of their easy companionship disappearing, the unnameable feeling in his chest smothered without any chance to bloom.
He doesn’t realise he’s been agonising over this for hours until he opens his phone again, absent-mindedly checking for a response he knows isn’t coming, and sees — shockingly, finally — a new message.
Chigiri
you still up?
Kunigami’s hands quiver slightly as he rushes to reply. He hadn’t expected Chigiri to talk to him tonight — or maybe even for the rest of the week. Somehow, now that the prospect is there, he feels even more nervous.
Kunigami
Yeah
Can we talk?
Chigiri
come to the park near your apartment
Kunigami’s eyes dart to the top of his screen. It’s near midnight, but he hurries out the door anyway.
The red-pink of Chigiri’s hair catches his eye as soon as the park comes into view.
It’s a small park — an unassuming one across from a strip of small stores and vending machines. They’d passed by it when Chigiri stayed the night, and now the redhead is sitting in one of the dimly lit park benches, hair up in a messy high ponytail — at least, messier than it normally would be. Although, he also seems more disheveled than Kunigami’s used to in general, though he can’t really place why — and looking as though he had also hurried over. Distantly, Kunigami wonders how long he’s been sitting out here for.
“Chigiri,” he breathes as he approaches. Chigiri stands.
“Kunigami.” Not angry, but not pleased. He says his name in a cool, measured tone, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. “You wanted to talk, right?”
He did, but… “It might be better if you go first.”
“Okay,” Chigiri crosses his arms. Stares him down. “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t actually like sweets? Don’t try telling me that it’s not true — Isagi admitted he knew as well.”
“I—” Kunigami starts, but immediately clams up. Of all the things he’d expected him to ask first, it hadn’t been this. He supposes it makes sense, but he still feels his words getting caught in his throat.
Chigiri’s eyes narrow at his silence, “Are you really scared of me?”
And Kunigami thinks anyone else should find that question funny, coming from this pretty pink-haired man asking it of someone much taller and much broader. Except he is scared. Not of Chigiri, but what might become of them — or what has already become of them, judging by the tense silence and steely look the redhead is giving him.
He’s not scared in the way that the others — and now maybe Chigiri — thinks he is, but he’s scared of telling him what he should have the first time he’d come up to him with that accursed basket in his arms, that this is simply a situation borne of Kunigami’s own cowardice and foolishness. He doesn’t want to take away the delight he gets from his hobby, and he doesn’t want to take away the reason why they’d had the opportunity to grow so close. There’s still a part of him that wishes for the thrill of seeing Chigiri’s bright-eyed expeession when he accepts his home-made gifts.
So if he does tell him, Chigiri will ask, why are you so scared of that? and Kunigami will either bare his undeniable truth, or Chigiri will figure it out anyway, and the answer comes back to: Kunigami is scared of what will become of them.
“No,” he simply replies, throat dry.
He can hardly say any of that to Chigiri, except — except he gives him an unimpressed look at the obvious lie, and — Kunigami swallows painfully. He’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut around him anyway.
Chigiri’s eyes are fierce as Kunigami rambles — the same intense look he wears when he’s playing soccer, barrelling towards an opponent on the field like a bolt of lightning, determined to crush them head on. He certainly feels like he’s been crushed when he comes to the end of his piece and is met only with silence and that look.
He clears his throat, “Chigiri, I—”
“Do you know why I kept making things for you?”
Kunigami’s jaw snaps shut.
Because you like baking. Because it makes you happy, he almost says, but he understands the key words to the question.
For you, Chigiri had said. Does he know why he kept making things for him?
He has the feeling he does, deep within his heart, and perhaps it’s the same reason why he himself had let Chigiri — had encouraged him — do so. But he’s not sure if he has the courage to say the words aloud.
“I really thought you liked them, you know,” he continues when Kunigami doesn’t respond, “It made me happy to know it was making you happy. Or think it was, I guess. Do you know how disappointing it was to learn that it was just a nuisance?”
“It wasn’t—”
“Oh my god, don’t try to tell me it wasn’t. You’re too nice, Kunigami.”
Here, Chigiri huffs a tiny laugh, perhaps a personal joke that Kunigami’s not privy to. He turns around to reach for a bag that Kunigami only now notices, slumped on the park bench behind him, and there’s a striking sense of familiarity as Chigiri offers it to him.
“Here,” he says, and Kunigami is reminded of the first time he’d taken that basket.
Like back then, Chigiri’s red-pink hair is in a high ponytail — and the novelty of it somehow still hasn’t worn off on him. His eyes are bright. Fierce. Kunigami feels the same dizzying rush of endearment at the sight that he’d felt back then.
But this time, there’s a simple bento box in place of a basket. This time, he doesn’t feel the dread of an impossible task of sweets.
Kunigami opens it, tentative, and his heart jumps into his throat.
“Since you don’t actually like sweets, I figured I should try something different,” Chigiri says, voice soft. “It turns out there are a lot of things you can make that aren’t mostly sugar. Even sweets.”
The bento box is simple, but the selection of savoury pastries and breads and — just like Chigiri had said — sweets certainly isn’t. Unlike his usual custom of handing food over by the batch, he’s laid out an assortment of things for Kunigami to try: slices of quiche and tarts and pies, knots of golden-brown bread, even kare pan. There’s only a small selection of sweets, but it’s made up of cubes of spongy cake and manju and what looks like shio daifuku. Things that he’s always been more partial towards in the realm of desserts.
It all looks and smells incredible. Kunigami may be drooling.
“Is this what you were doing while you were ghosting me?” he asks, amazed. Is it really possible to do so much in only a few hours? “Ah, wait, thank you, first of all. I mean it. All of these look amazing.”
Finally, Chigiri’s face lightens, and a grin takes over his face. “I hope you’ll be this honest from now on, Kunigami. And — hang on. I wasn’t ghosting you.”
“You didn’t speak to me for hours. I don’t think you even looked at my messages.”
“I was busy,” Chigiri sniffs, “Making these. Come on then, try them. I didn’t do this just so you could use them for decoration.”
So try them he does, and they’re just as incredible as they look. Perhaps it’s from the relief of no longer forcing down sweets, or because it’s Chigiri who made it — Chigiri who put in the thought and care to make all of these for him, who made it all in an inhumane amount of time, who came here and reassured him that the affection he felt was mutual. He tastes it in the way the desserts aren’t at all sweet, the way it was all truly made for him. Kunigami thinks he could keep eating these for the rest of his life.
He says as much, and is rewarded with a bright laugh that has his heart jumping in his chest. “I’m glad, Kunigami,” Chigiri’s smile widens, “Because there’s a lot left over.”
“…I should’ve known.”
He takes another bite as Chigiri laughs again, and he finds that he doesn’t mind it at all.
Omake:
“With how much I see the three of you, I don’t know how I haven’t been in your apartment before.”
“Well, seeing as my roommates are Bachira and Isagi, maybe that’s for the best,” Chigiri says dryly, as he unlocks his front door. “Why do you think I’m bringing you over while they’re both away?”
“…I thought you just wanted to spend time together. Pardon the intrusion.”
Kunigami toes off his shoes at the genkan, precariously steadied with grocery bags in each hand, and is promptly thrown off balance by Chigiri crowding his space. He feels arms wrap around his waist and pretty pink eyes peer up at him, and instantly, his breath catches in his throat. Too close, he thinks, dazed.
It’s a recurring theme as of late. Chigiri finds delight in touching and closeness, and though Kunigami enjoys it just as much — if not more — he finds his higher level of thought stuttering to a stop more often than not. He’s not quite used to it yet.
“Aw, don’t be sulky. Of course I want you here,” Chigiri coos, and it brings heat blooming across Kunigami’s neck and ears. He’s already forgotten what he was saying.
Chigiri releases him before he can properly combust, and leads him into his apartment by the arm. “Kitchen’s over here! Come put the groceries down.”
At a glance, it’s a well-kept apartment. It’s tidy — likely courtesy of Isagi — and there’s a strange blend of tasteful and bizarre choices in decor in different places. The kitchen itself is cluttered with appliances, but not as much as Kunigami had expected, knowing the complicated things Chigiri sometimes liked to make.
“So this is where you do all your baking?” Kunigami comments, “Somehow I thought your kitchen would be bigger.”
Chigiri freezes. “Well, actually…”
“Don’t tell me.”
“I don’t normally do my baking here…”
“Chigiri.”
“I have a friend who has a way bigger kitchen, can you blame me?” The redhead huffs, “How else do you think I kept making so much at once?”
Kunigami’s face darkens, “If I ever meet your friend, I’m making them pay for what I went through.”
“You’re way funnier when you’re honest,” Chigiri says, and tries to appease him by hugging his arm and looking cute. “But you don’t have to worry about that for now — He temporarily banned me from his kitchen.”
“Temporarily.”
“Yeah, after I borrowed his housemaid to help me make that bento for you. Now that I think about it, maybe she was the one who banned me.”
“Why does it feel like I’ve been lied to…”
“That means we’re even now, right?” Chigiri says innocently, but at Kunigami’s stricken look, quickly adds, “I’m just kidding. I’m not mad about that anymore, promise.”
“You’re so…”
“Look, we’re going to be baking here now, right?” Chigiri blinks, “Anyway, you can’t get mad at me now — you said you would eat my baking for the rest of your life.”
Kunigami feels his lips twitch in laughter, “Yeah, I did.”