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“Oh,” says Ryuji. “Uh, huh. Hm. That’s… huh.”
Akira, privately, agrees. The two are standing together in the hallway on the third floor of the least seedy hotel they could afford, left alone by the girls, who have already turned in for the night. When they’d discussed paying for rooms, it had seemed only natural that the two of them would share—they’re probably closer to each other than they are to the rest of their friends, and both guys to boot—but neither of them had particularly been expecting this.
“So like…” Ryuji scratches the back of his neck. “Did you know that this was, uh…”
Akira shakes his head. Makoto had done the booking. He’d just followed along and trusted her to do what was right. He’s rethinking that trust now as he hefts his bag and shuffles inside the room, eyeing the source of their current predicament.
After the hours of driving they’ve been doing, even the sight of the single bed with its minimal sheets and old mattress is appealing, especially given that Akira spent the better part of his high school years sleeping on milk crates. He drops his bag and holds his arms out in front of him, framing the bed with his hands. It certainly isn’t the smallest bed he’s ever seen. It could easily fit two, maybe three people his age if they all squished on together.
That’s just the thing, though. It’s also the only bed in here.
“Sheesh.” Ryuji kicks the door shut behind them and lets his own bag fall none too ceremoniously against the carpet, coming to a stop by Akira. He folds his arms and glares at the bed as if daring it to split in two, but of course the universe is nowhere near that merciful.
“It’s a pain,” Akira offers.
“Yeah, it is.” Ryuji itches the inside of his ear. “Nothing for it, though, yeah? Stuck here ‘til morning, and it’s already late. We’d better get some rest.” He kicks the underside of the bed and turns towards the bathroom, waving his hand as he walks away. “You take it, a’ight? I’ll sleep on the floor, got a big coat I can use as a pillow…”
Akira hadn’t been planning on taking the floor himself, but Ryuji’s instruction is still a bit shocking. “Wait—Ryuji.”
“Yeah?” Ryuji pauses at the door to the bathroom, blinking back at him, and Akira finds himself at a loss for words. “Look man, it’s no biggie, y’know? You’ve been driving a lot today so it’s the least I can do. Long day though so I’m pretty beat, better we just get to sleep, yeah?”
He’s closed himself off in the bathroom before Akira can say much else in response, which Akira does find a tad bit unfair. Shrugging off his jacket, Akira stews for the entire time that Ryuji is going through the motions of prepping for bed, brow creased with something verging on resentment. Which also isn’t entirely fair, not to Ryuji. If Akira thinks about it—well, it just makes sense for Ryuji to offer. He’s courteous by nature, oftentimes because he’s always been expected to be. Akira would have thought Ryuji would hit a point, perhaps during high school, where he’d start to resent that, but Ryuji is actually remarkably good-natured despite his tendency to complain about things that don’t really matter.
Kicking at the floor with one of his slippers, Akira takes off his glasses, and then waits. When Ryuji has exited the bathroom, a towel around his shoulders and a hand stifling a yawn, Akira gestures broadly at the bed.
“Don’t take the floor. It’s big enough for both of us.”
“Whu—huh?” Ryuji visibly falters, nearly tripping on his own feet, and barely manages to catch himself on the dresser. “Dude, how could you— what?”
Akira thinks, again privately, that Ryuji’s question is a little stupid. There had been no ambiguity in what he said.
“We’re both guys,” Akira says firmly. “It’s no big deal.”
“No, I know that, it’s just—” Ryuji’s face had turned a shade of pink Akira has never seen it before. He angles his body away and scrubs furiously at his eyes, and Akira feels his brow furrow. Things have never been weird between him and Ryuji before, not like that. In fact they’re actually rather casually affectionate. But Ryuji seems—flustered, and Akira would be stupid to read into it, but at the same time…
Akira’s ponderance is cut off by another question at Ryuji, who is scratching at his ear and peering out with only one brown eye cracked open.
“You sure, man?”
“I am sure.” Besides, Akira is pretty sure that it would be kind of unconscionable to make Ryuji take the floor while he’s already nursing a permanent disability, but he doesn’t want to put it that way and make it out like he pities his friend or something. It’s nowhere near so detached a reason, though surely what Makoto would say if Akira admitted tomorrow morning that Ryuji took the floor while he got to luxuriate up on the bed.
Though Ryuji’s ears are still tipped with red, he nods and makes his way over, dropping down to sit on the edge of the bed. Satisfied that his friend won’t be risking any joint pain for the sake of being respectful, Akira takes his turn in the bathroom, and returns some five minutes later to find that Ryuji hasn’t moved except to take off his shirt, which he’s laid over the back of his suitcase. The sight is nothing new to Akira, who only keeps his own shirt on because he typically doesn’t sleep without one. Especially not on unfamiliar sheets, but Ryuji runs pretty warm, so it’s not like Akira is surprised.
Ryuji eyes him as he walks around the bed and sits down, then some more as Akira is pulling down the sheets to get in. Unfortunately, there is only one blanket, which complicates the matter of them sharing slightly, but it is at least large enough that they won’t have to huddle up together.
(Akira does not ruminate on this thought for very long. It wouldn’t be smart to, with Ryuji literally sharing a bed with him. God, Kurusu, get a grip.)
Swinging his legs under the covers, Akira pauses, then pats the mattress beside him. He isn’t going to bite.
Ryuji immediately shuffles closer, carefully bringing his own legs onto the bed in turn. “Sorry for bein’ all weird about this,” he says, and really sounds it too, his shoulders tucked close to his ears as he glances away bashfully. Akira shakes his head, though he does think Ryuji is acting a little weird about it, it’s more or less understandable. They’ve never done something like this before, despite being friends for a long time. They’ve definitely shared rooms, but never beds, and the other times they’ve slept in similarly close quarters, Yusuke has usually been there too. This is the first time he hasn’t.
After turning off the bedside lamp, the two of them settle in. The bed is large enough for them both, but not so large that they can get much distance from one another. There is maybe an inch or two of space between them, a gentle warmth radiating from Ryuji where Akira can feel him shifting as he gets comfortable atop the mattress. The room is shrouded in darkness now with the lamp off, but the curtain is slightly ajar, enough that Akira can just barely make out the details of the room, of Ryuji’s profile, just half a foot away from him.
It’s hard not to stare in the daylight, but it feels almost impossible under the cover of darkness. Akira pillows his cheek on the back of his hand and takes in the slope of Ryuji’s nose, the light dusting of freckles across his cheeks, the way his lashes flutter as he begins to doze. His roots are growing in again, dark amidst the sea of fluffy blond hair. Akira hates that he feels hesitant to reach over and touch when Ryuji ruffles his hair on a daily basis. He just knows that he would mean it differently than Ryuji does, and that wouldn’t really be fair to do, especially not when Ryuji doesn’t have any choice but to be sharing a bed with him.
Dark, half-lidded eyes roll in his direction, and Ryuji quirks a lazy brow. He doesn’t seem embarrassed at being stared at, nor does he seem quite as wired as he was a bit ago. He offers a smile, and Akira returns it, albeit awkwardly as he is starkly aware of the way his heart pounds against his ribcage.
“This ain’t so bad,” Ryuji admits, voice hushed, and looks up at the ceiling. “Guess this is probably what it’d be like having sleepovers and shit, huh?”
“Did you never have any?” Akira questions.
“Nah. I mean, with my dad…” Ryuji trails off, then shrugs. “Then after that I sorta outgrew all that, or at least I thought I did. By the time high school hit and Kamoshida took over as coach… Not a chance, man.” He waves his hand, seeming relatively unbothered by it. “It’s cool, though. I mean, we get to do this shit all the time now. Guess it’s just different without Yusuke here waxing poetic about the reality of the universe.”
Akira chuckles quietly. That’s true. Having Yusuke here would definitely change the atmosphere. It would certainly make things more cramped.
“What about you?” Ryuji asks, and Akira raises an eyebrow. “I mean, did you ever have like, sleepovers or whatever?”
Akira shakes his head. “No. Not as a kid.” He had friends back then, but none he was very close to, and his parents weren’t ever present enough to facilitate playdates. He very occasionally went over to houses, but always found himself coming home at the end of the night, often to money on the counter for dinner. “It’s fun getting to do it now.”
“Yeah.” Ryuji’s looking at Akira again, and his expression is understanding in a way that Akira thinks often goes unnoticed, in the daylight. Not by Akira—he thinks that at this point it would be impossible for him not to notice things about his friend—but rather by the world at large, as so many of Ryuji’s softer, more admirable qualities tend to get swallowed into the background. It’s a tragedy, really, when Ryuji is one of the best people Akira knows. “What’re you makin’ that face for?”
“Am I making a face?”
“Yeah, it’s like…” Ryuji furrows his brow, then shakes his head. “Nah, I can’t imitate it. I guess it looks kinda sad, though. Y’okay?”
That isn’t an inaccurate assessment, but also not really fair, because it isn’t as though Akira can be honest about why he’s making the face. He doesn’t want to lie to Ryuji either though, so he thinks about it, then shrugs.
“I’m fine. I was just thinking about something sad.”
“Guess it is pretty late, huh?” Ryuji smiles, a bit lopsided. Akira always likes the way that smile looks on him. “Wanna talk about it?”
One of the nice things about Ryuji is that he tends to know when to push and when everything is genuinely more or less alright. When Akira shakes his head, he hums his acceptance and turns back onto his back with a yawn, stretching his arms over his head. Akira eyes the line of his forearm, eyes trailing down to the curve of his shoulder, and thinks about how nice it would be to rest is head there, or else tug Ryuji in to sleep against him like that. He wonders if it would be weird to ask to cuddle, if Ryuji would take it into stride because they’re friends or think that Akira is crossing a line.
Better not to risk it, but the want makes Akira’s chest ache regardless. At least until Ryuji’s arm drops again, draping loosely around his shoulders.
Akira’s mouth falls open, and he looks to Ryuji to try and gauge what he might be thinking, but Ryuji’s eyes have closed. He seems to be drifting off, or at the very least not thinking about it, and Akira is—
comfortable, he thinks, though perhaps he shouldn’t be. Perhaps he shouldn’t be, because he’s sharing a bed with the man he’s been half in love with since high school and because they just skirted around an emotional conversation and because there’s barely an inch of space between them, but he is. He is, because it is Ryuji, and Ryuji is warm, and Akira is far more greedy for the feeling of Ryuji’s arm around him than he thinks he has any right to be.
Unable to talk himself out of it, Akira presses himself tightly against Ryuji’s side, and Ryuji shifts around to hold him closer. Akira is sure that Ryuji must feel his heart beating, but neither of them addresses it, blanketed in the combined warmth from the sheets and their bodies touching, legs twining together like they’ve been doing this all their lives.
Akira’s head drops against Ryuji’s shoulder. It’s firm but a decent head rest, all considered, and more importantly it allows Akira to hear Ryuji’s heartbeat, the way it quickens slightly when he presses his face into the junction between Ryuji’s shoulder and neck.
…Heh. Akira smiles a little into Ryuji’s skin. It’s late, and they’re both tired, and Akira knows it’s because of both of these factors that he can’t find any reasons to tell himself he’s wrong, but… For just a moment, it really feels like he might have a shot, here.
Maybe if Akira is feeling a little brave when the sun comes up, he’ll see what he can do about that.