Archive of Our Own

In the end, it was all that stupid script’s fault for putting the idea in Aizou’s head in the first place.

Yuujirou had never been particularly interested in television. He preferred stage plays and musicals he’d grown up with—the unique, heart-pounding immediacy of live theater, the fleeting bond between actors and audience members sharing the same space for a few precious hours. Television was slow, impersonal, and awkward in comparison.

He’d only started taking guest and supporting roles in the occasional television drama to keep his acting abilities sharp in between his work as an idol. It didn’t hurt to have another source of income, either. Still, he’d been surprised when his manager told him that someone had reached out to offer him the lead role in an upcoming drama.

The show was pretty standard material: A high school romance about a girl who pretends to date her childhood friend in order to make her longtime crush jealous, only to end up falling for her fake boyfriend instead. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

“You should at least consider it,” Hiyori said as Yuujirou leafed through the script the director had sent over. “It would be your first time playing a main character, right? That’s a big deal!”

Yuujirou shook his head. “It sounds like a pain in the ass. I have enough going on as it is.” LIPxLIP were no longer rookie idols, which meant that he and Aizou had the luxury of picking and choosing the jobs they wanted to take. There was no shortage of magazine photoshoots and panel shows and advertisements clamoring for attention these days.

Speaking of Aizou—Yuujirou’s unit partner couldn’t help but lean over to sneak a peek at the script in question. “Do people actually do that? Fake dating?” he asked, wrinkling his nose at the idea.

Hiyori shrugged.

“This stuff isn’t supposed to be realistic,” said Yuujirou. “It’s just a trope people use to force characters into romantic situations so they can build up into a big dramatic confession scene or something. I think you’d have to be pretty stupid to try that in real life, though.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hiyori said. “I’ve met lots of idiots in real life.” Her tone of voice and accompanying expression suggested that she had very specific people in mind when she said idiots. Yuujirou made the executive decision to ignore it.

“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t work on me. Why would you even agree to fake date someone unless you were already kind of okay with dating that person to begin with? You’re just setting yourself up at that point!”

“...So I’ll just take that as a no for the show.” Hiyori took out her phone and started to reach over the table to take the script back, but Aizou yanked it away first. “What the hell, Aizou?”

“I wasn’t done reading!”

Yuujirou snickered. “What, are you looking for tips? You weren’t even invited to this meeting, technically.”

“What? No, I’m not—Ugh, whatever.” Aizou pushed the script away from him and slouched down in his chair in protest. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

He sulked in silence for a minute, then nudged Yuujirou’s leg under the table with the scuffed toe of his sneaker. Brown eyes sought out blue, both of them used to this kind of wordless communication. I didn’t mean to cross a line. Are we okay?

Yuujirou rolled his eyes. Yeah, we’re good.

Manager Uchida promptly declined the offer on his behalf, and the entire conversation was quickly forgotten. Yuujirou was perfectly happy to go on not thinking about corny romance tropes and fake relationships for the rest of his life—That is, right up until the day Aizou ambushed him during lunch to ask for a favor.

It was a mostly unspoken understanding at Sakuragaoka that you weren’t supposed to confess to Shibasaki Aizou or Someya Yuujirou. Valentine’s Day gifts were allowed, but you shouldn’t expect a response. As supportive as Mobius had been when it came to Yuujirou and Aizou wanting a relatively normal high school experience, that was just a non-negotiable part of idol life—not that either of them really minded. It was a win-win situation.

This explained why Aizou was so completely baffled when a first-year student that neither of them had ever spoken to before approached him in the hallway and asked if he could spare a minute to talk after school.

“So just say no?” Yuujirou hissed as Aizou dragged him around a corner, out of sight of their classmates. “You should at least be able to do that by now!”

“I don’t know, I panicked! It’s not normal!”

“Have Suzumi get her off your back, then!”

“She’s at a track meet today, genius.”

“Damn it.” Yuujirou glared at the chocolate milk in his hand in the vague hope that it would spontaneously sprout little arms and legs and eyebrows, then come up with a solution. “Do you want me to talk to her?”

“I shouldn’t. This is my fault,” Aizou said glumly. “But, uh, I might— I might need you to do me a huge favor.”

“I’ve sworn off physical violence, sorry.”

“What— Okay, first off, I know that’s not true. Secondly, that’s not what I was going to ask you, oh my god.”

Yuujirou had a terrible feeling about this. Of course this had to happen on the one day their junior manager wasn’t around to do whatever it was that managers did to make problems magically disappear. Absolutely not, his rational mind chimed in. Aizou can dig himself out of this one. 

On the other hand, Aizou looked like he was working himself up to a full-blown panic attack. Yuujirou hated seeing him like that.

“Just hear me out first,” Aizou said, his eyes pleading and desperate. 

“Well, so long as we can agree that you owe me…” Yuujirou said before he could think better of it. “Fine. What do you want?”

The unnamed first-year girl had clearly taken extra care with her appearance today in anticipation for this moment. Her makeup was ever so slightly flashier than what someone would usually wear to school, and she kept nervously checking her reflection in the windows to straighten her hair and smooth out her uniform. Yuujirou almost felt bad for her.

(Keyword: Almost. She was still criminally unaware of boundaries and lacked common sense, if you asked Yuujirou.)

“I completely understand if you can’t return my feelings, but just between us, can I ask if it’s just because of your job, or was there really no chance…?”

Aizou’s face wasn’t visible from where Yuujirou was watching, hidden behind a well-placed tree (“for moral support,” Aizou said), but he could easily picture the other boy’s confused expression as he fumbled for an appropriate reply. “No? I mean, it’s nothing personal, don’t misunderstand—“

“Or is there someone else you like? Do you not like girls?” she said, growing bolder in the face of his defensiveness.

“Urk.” Aizou shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he considered cutting his losses and walking away from this entire mortifying situation. “I mean, uh, yes. Something like that.” Behind his back, he signaled frantically in Yuujirou’s direction.

“The crush part, or the liking girls part?”

“...Both?”

According to the original plan, Yuujirou was supposed to keep an eye out in case of an emergency and, if necessary, make up a believable excuse to drag Aizou away before he said anything too incriminating or embarrassing—like making up a crush or accidentally coming out to a near stranger, for instance.

The girl’s eyes flashed with curiosity. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah. But I can’t really talk about it, so please don’t repeat that to anyone! I’m trusting you with this,” Aizou said quickly, starting to back away.

“Of course, Aizou-senpai!” She quickly collected herself, and her voice fell back into that same overly saccharine, affected tone. Yuujirou felt a headache coming on just from listening to this trainwreck. “I really appreciate you confiding in me. I know this is the first time we’ve talked, but I hope you know that you can tell me anything at all! Even if it doesn’t work out with—“

“Yuujirou!” Aizou suddenly shouted from the other side of the courtyard to where Yuujirou had been slowly, casually strolling in their direction. “Finally, there you are! Listen, I have to go talk to my partner about something—”

Yuujirou was just about to turn around and feign surprise when he was bowled over by a yellow blur running full speed into him. He felt the moment they both lost their balance as if in slow motion, a flash of confusion and fear interrupted by Aizou’s arms instinctively wrapping around him and spinning them around so Yuujirou landed squarely on top of him in the grass instead of crashing backwards into hard pavement.

“Ow,” said Aizou.

“Aizou, you idiot.” Yuujirou opened his eyes to find their faces mere inches apart, Aizou’s warm body underneath him on the ground, cushioning his fall. “Since when are you this clumsy?”

Red-faced and breathless, Aizou blinked up at him a few times before remembering to drop his hold on Yuujirou with an apologetic chuckle. 

He shivered involuntarily at the loss of contact and sat up, checking both of their bodies for visible injury. “Don’t tell me you hit your head or something. You’re lucky we landed on the grass.”

“No, I’m okay,” Aizou said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “That didn’t go well, did it?”

“It was awful.” 

A loud, obnoxious wolf-whistle sounded in the distance, and both boys flinched at the realization that in their current position, Yuujirou was fully straddling Aizou on the ground. He cursed under his breath and scrambled to his feet as quickly as possible, then held out a hand to help Aizou up as well. 

All this talk of crushes and romance was messing with his head. Yuujirou didn’t care much about what his classmates thought of him, but Aizou absolutely did, no matter how much he tried to deny it. He’d have to be more careful from now on; nothing good would come from getting caught in compromising positions with his unit partner like some kind of bumbling romantic comedy protagonist.

(Even if—a few light bruises and scrapes aside—Yuujirou might have enjoyed the day’s misadventures more than he would have thought he would. The ridiculousness of it all, the pounding of Aizou’s heartbeat against his hands, the first-year girl’s look of alarm and confusion, Aizou’s embarrassed smile filling his vision.

Maybe in another life, he wouldn’t even mind if it happened again.)

“Shit,” Aizou said later as they walked to their daily practice, now with a comically generous distance between them for good measure. “That girl definitely saw everything.”

Yuujirou kicked at a loose pebble on the sidewalk. “Yeah, well, it’s not like there was actually anything to see, so she can go on thinking whatever she wants.”

No big deal. Aizou was just overthinking, and they could just move on and forget the whole thing in a week.

They recounted the entire story to Hiyori before class the next day. She laughed at them and told them it was categorically their problem, not hers.

To Yuujirou’s great relief, they made it through the rest of the semester without major incident, even if Aizou was even jumpier than before whenever their classmates would crowd around their desks or follow him to watch him play basketball after school. The novelty of going to school with popular idols had thankfully worn off for many of the other students at Sakuragaoka by now, but there would probably always be a good handful of starry-eyed fans and hangers-on circling them wherever they went.

“Do you ever regret coming here? To high school, I mean,” Aizou said, drumming his fingers against the table. He’d already finished inhaling his sandwich a while back, and was currently watching Yuujirou pick through his bento with poorly disguised hunger in his eyes.

He should really be more grateful that Yuujirou always made sure to have a good portion of vegetables left over for him to steal. Maybe even a piece of fried tofu, too. That usually cheered him up.

“No,” Yuujirou said firmly. “It gets weird sometimes, but it would feel wrong to not have school at all. And I like being treated like a normal student.”

Aizou nodded. “Me, too. But I don’t know, I used to follow my brother everywhere when we were little, and maybe part of me thought it could be like that again? Ugh, you can never tell Ken I said this, but I can tell he’s a lot happier… When I think about it like that, I’m kind of jealous that he gets to just be a high schooler.”

“But you don’t regret it.”

“I don’t regret it,” he echoed. “I’m living my dream, after all.” 

Aizou smiled that small, hopeful smile that Yuujirou recognized from whenever he tells some version of the story of why he wanted to become an idol: Because I want to make people happy with my music. Because music makes me happy. Because music is the only way I know how to give and receive love and I refuse to let go of it ever again.

Yuujirou admired Aizou’s straightforward, wholehearted passion more than he was willing to ever admit to the other’s face. For Yuujirou, becoming an idol was equal parts about his love of performing and his need to prove his worth to his family, to himself, to the entire world. It was about taking control over his life and making something of his own. It was selfish and petty, and he hated how small he felt next to the infinite, brilliant light of Aizou’s lifelong dream.

“It’s both of our dreams now, too,” Aizou continued. “It’s funny that I originally wanted to be solo, because I think it would’ve been so much harder to do everything alone. So everything worked out the way it was supposed to.”

And then there was that other thing, of course. Yuujirou’s second purpose that he’d rather spend the rest of his life eating mushy, bitter brussels sprouts if that would get him out of ever admitting to it. Ever since they were brought together as middle schoolers, they were building something entirely new between the two of them. For better or for worse, their fates were completely entangled with one another, and it was no longer enough for Yuujirou to carve out a place for himself—not unless that place could hold Aizou as well.

Aizou shone brightly all on his own, but he was too sensitive, too softhearted underneath all the false bravado for his own good, and Yuujirou would do whatever he needed to do just to keep that spark alive. Just to keep that warmth close to him for as long as possible.

“You can have my leftovers if you want,” Yuujirou said, changing the subject.

Aizou narrowed his eyes at the bento. “You know, a single carrot isn’t going to kill you. Have you ever considered your terrible diet might be why you never beat me in P.E.?”

“Doesn’t count. You have an unfair height advantage.” He stuck a carrot in his mouth anyway just to prove he’s not actually afraid of vegetables. He grimaced at the taste and shoved the rest at the other boy.

“Um—” A third voice suddenly cut through the air from the open doorway to the empty classroom where they usually ate lunch. Yuujirou turned around to see a tall student he vaguely remembered seeing with the art club at some school festival, or something like that. She looked like she genuinely felt bad about interrupting, so he supposed he could give her the benefit of the doubt.

“Can we help you?” Yuujirou asked, plastering on his best winning smile and pretending not to notice Aizou prying his chopsticks out of his hands and going in for a bite of tofu.

She gave a stiff little bow. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you two! I’ll go now. It was stupid, really…”

“No, no, you’re okay. Just so you know, we don’t do autographs or photos or anything like that at school, but was there something else you wanted to talk about?”

“Oh, it’s not like that!” The girl—was her name Nishimoto?—seemed a little too eager to dismiss the idea that she would be a fan, but whatever. “It’s just, some of the girls were talking about you and your… relationship. Nothing bad, though! Everyone is very accepting, I promise.”

“What?” said Yuujirou, utterly lost. He passed his water bottle over to Aizou, who had started coughing uncontrollably in the background.

She nodded with all the understanding Yuujirou was sorely missing. “I’ll admit I didn’t really believe it the first time they told me you were dating because come on, everyone knows you guys are always arguing, but I see it now.”

Yuujirou stared.

She paled instantly and clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry, that sounded so presumptuous! All I wanted to say is, it means a lot to see you guys being true to yourselves, considering how you’re idols and all. Even if it’s not, like, totally public… I’m rooting for you! And, um, my girlfriend is, too.”

Aizou jumped in before Yuujirou’s brain could finish processing where this conversation was rapidly going. People thought they were dating? Romantically? Since when? “Ah… Thank you, then! That’s nice to hear, right, Yuujirou?”

“Yeah…”

All three students jumped at the sound of the bell signaling the end of the period. “Right, I need to go,” Nishimoto said, waving. “See you around!”

“I can explain,” Aizou whispered in Yuujirou’s ear as they returned to their classroom.

“What the fuck did you do this time?” Nobody was behaving out of the ordinary for a regular school day, but he still felt unusually aware of their classmates watching them take their seats, Aizou’s face hovering dangerously close as they talked.

Aizou looked like steam was about to start spewing from his ears any second now. Like a human kettle. “I didn’t mean for this to be a whole thing— After practice, okay? We’ll talk properly then.”

Yuujirou let out a long sigh. “Okay, okay. The usual spot?”

“Yeah, the usual spot,” Aizou said, reassured that Yuujirou wasn’t going to jump him on the spot. (He would never. At least, not without a very good reason, and even then Aizou would easily win the fight.)

It was a perfect evening to spend outside, warm enough to leave their uniform blazers behind but cool enough that Yuujirou could lie comfortably in the grass without feeling like he was drowning in hot air. Technically, there were more than enough places where they could talk privately at the company or even at school, but for some reason Yuujirou still felt the most at ease here in the park, surrounded by trees and the infinite Tokyo skyline.

He didn’t even need to look at Aizou to feel the other boy worriedly pacing back and forth on the grass next to him.

“Just spit it out,” Yuujirou said finally. “It’s not the end of the world. Dating rumors are annoying, but it’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before.”

“Yeah, but it’s definitely my fault this time.”

Yuujirou grabbed onto Aizou’s sleeve to stop him from pacing and yanked him down into a sitting position. “Okay. How?”

“...Remember the girl who tried to confess to me last semester?”

“Yeah, I thought she was leaving you alone now.”

“I mean, she is,” Aizou said. “BecauseIkindoftoldherIwasdatingyouinstead.” The latter part of the sentence came out in an unintelligible rush of syllables.

“Bless you.”

“Shut up.” Aizou glared, but his anger was considerably tempered by his rosy, flushed cheeks. “I lied and said she couldn’t try to set me up with anyone or anything like that because I was secretly dating you, okay? I didn’t think she was going to tell anyone else! I said it was a secret! ” 

Yuujirou had the sinking feeling it was something along those lines. “Why me?” he asked, unable to restrain his curiosity.

“I don’t know. I guess it made the most sense. Look, I’m sorry; I’ll figure out how to clear it up before it gets out of control.”

Their managers always stressed the importance of treating their fans’ feelings with care, but personally Yuujirou couldn’t care less what some random underclassman thought of him. He didn’t have a problem with finding the girl and politely but firmly correcting the misunderstanding himself, if it came down to it. He opened his mouth, about to say as much, but the words died on his tongue.

The initial confession had just been irritating, but Yuujirou’s mind wouldn’t stop replaying their interaction today with the girl from the art club. She’d been so earnest, even relieved when Aizou thanked her, as if part of her was expecting them to be angry or cruel even as she’d already made up her mind to approach the idols. Whatever the rumors said, they must have given her some kind of courage, some kind of resolve to reach out to Yuujirou and Aizou in return. She hadn’t been a fan, but still—Wasn’t that the entire point of being an idol in the first place? Wasn’t that the feeling they wanted to inspire?

Wasn’t that how Aizou had changed him? Wasn’t that their unspoken promise? From now on, you don’t have to be alone anymore. From now on, we’ll walk this path together.

“Well,” Yuujirou said, “we could also just let it go on. If you want.”

“Huh?!”

“It works as an excuse for both of us to get people to leave us alone. Also, I’d actually feel bad about disappointing that art club girl. With the girlfriend. She made it sound like we’re these gay icons.”

“Hey, hold on a second—“ Aizou spluttered. “You can’t just pretend to be a gay icon!”

“The relationship is pretend, yeah, but it’s not like we’re really deceiving anyone besides that.”

Aizou gaped at him. “Wait, are you gay?” he blurted out, looking as if he started to regret it as soon as the question left his mouth.

“I don’t know, are you?” Yuujirou shot back. “We’ve never talked about it. Anyway, I think we’re well past that point after you’ve put your lips on so many parts of my body.”

Perhaps that came out more blunt than he intended. Aizou went silent and buried his face in his hands. “Don’t— That’s different, it’s work. If you say it like that…” he said weakly.

They sat in terrible, awkward silence for what felt like an eternity, not making eye contact.

Aizou broke first. “So, uh. Did you actually mean that? You’re okay with pretending?”

Cloaked in shadows cast by the trees surrounding them, Yuujirou took in the other’s lean shape illuminated by the bright city lights. His unit partner. His rival. His closest friend, if he was being honest. He’d shot up several centimeters since they first met, lost some of the softness in his cheeks, but he was the same boy he’d met at the audition in all the ways that mattered.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

“I offered, didn’t I?” Yuujirou willed himself to stay as impassive as possible as he extended his hand for Aizou to shake, like this was a proper business deal and not a stupid, doomed exercise that could only be dreamed up by a lovesick fool or a lonely teenager so starved for any semblance of intimacy that participating in a mere pantomime sounded like an act of unforgivable greed.

In contrast, Aizou wore his uncertainty openly on his face. His slightly larger hand trembled briefly in Yuujirou’s grip, and Yuujirou squeezed tighter. 

“Okay. Let’s do that, then.”

They had to tell the staff and the company first, obviously.

Manager Uchida informed them as kindly as possible that she thought that they were both completely out of their minds.

Hiyori was immediately suspicious of the entire plan and put extra effort into following them around for a few days, periodically muttering under her breath, “Is this some kind of joke?”

President Tamura was delighted. “How novel! Isn’t that something?” she said to Manager Uchida. “I don’t see an issue, especially if it’s mainly about keeping up pretenses at school. Maybe we should factor it into their concept. A bit of ambiguous sexuality is trendy, if that’s something they want to explore.”

Pretending to kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really secretly date Aizou was fairly simple, it turned out. They already spent most of their time at school together, excepting the occasional extracurricular that one or the other participated in here and there.

Yuujirou started bringing along his books to read next to the soccer field when Aizou was playing, sometimes sitting with the other’s belongings on the sidelines and doing his best to ignore the questioning glances from other students.

Aizou tagged along when Yuujirou stopped by the drama club to help out with costumes for their upcoming show, and only complained a little when Yuujirou started sending him back and forth to get boxes from backstage.

“I can’t tell if you’re actually pretending to date or not,” Hiyori told him during a break in her morning run. “You guys are basically acting the same as always.”

“Is it not convincing?” Yuujirou was slightly out of breath from trying to keep up with the junior manager.

Hiyori paused. “I have no idea… I guess if you’re trying to make it so people will definitely leave you alone, you should be more possessive about it?”  She looked down at her phone. “Mona says only a coward would half-ass a fake dating scheme.”

“You did not tell her,” Yuujirou said, horrified.

“I didn’t! I wouldn’t do that. I just said hypothetically, if something like that was going on…”

Yuujirou filed that away under his ever-growing list of problems for later—Mona could mind her own business, thank you very much. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Hiyori to not leak information to her friend (who was technically the competition!), but he’d prefer to keep any potentially embarrassing details as far away from Mona in particular. They’d never live it down.

“Well, what else are we supposed to do? It’s not like we’re going to start making out in the hallway.” Just the thought of it made his stomach sink unpleasantly, like he was standing somewhere very high up and looking down for the first time.

“I mean. You make it sound like you haven’t already done… lots of stuff for photoshoots.” She waved a hand in the air helplessly. “You know what I mean!”

She had a point there. 

Yuujirou was pretty good at compartmentalization, when he needed to be. Back when LIPxLIP first debuted and they came up with the idea for their kiss marks—matching bright pink imprints on the neck to represent their unit name and logo—he had no clue what he was signing up for. The pre-schedule ritual started as something uncomplicated, even businesslike, messing with Aizou for not knowing how to apply or remove lipstick, followed by a firm pressure to the side of the neck. It didn’t have to be awkward if they didn’t make it awkward.

But they were seventeen now, and nothing ever stayed as simple as Yuujirou wanted it to be. Aizou learned to (mostly) do his own makeup, and the kiss marks grew more careless, more daring.

He was always careful to call them kiss marks . Marks, because they were purely decorative. Marks, because they were a means to an end, an item on a checklist and nothing more. That way, Yuujirou didn’t have to acknowledge the tickle of Aizou’s breath over his pulse, the slightly sweet scent of his shampoo as he pulled back his hair to give Yuujirou better access. That way, he never had to talk about knowing just how gently Aizou could put his lips to the corner of Yuujirou’s mouth, or how Aizou once forgot what he was doing and accidentally grazed Yuujirou’s exposed skin with his teeth while trying to continue an argument.

He tried not to remember getting dressed for “LOVE&KISS” and wondering out loud where they were supposed to put their marks so they wouldn’t be covered by the collars of their costumes, and then Yuujirou was kneeling in front of the expanse of Aizou’s bare stomach under his crop top, trying to keep himself from staring like an idiot at the way his partner’s muscles moved with his breathing.

Aizou gave him a smug look. “What, are you into guys with abs?” he said.

“No way. You’re gross.” Yuujirou tore his eyes away and made a face. “I’m into guys who brush their hair properly and don’t drool in their sleep, actually,” he added primly, reaching for a wipe to clean the remaining lipstick from his mouth.

Aizou ignored the remark and gave Yuujirou’s outfit a once-over. “Your jacket is a weird shape.”

“Yeah, there isn’t a good view from the side.”

“Hm.” He took the lipstick from the vanity and ran it over his lips, not bothering to check how it looked in the mirror. It wasn’t going to stay on his face very long, anyway. “Okay, hold still.”

Aizou steered him so they were facing each other, using one hand to keep Yuujirou’s left sleeve from sliding down, and leaned down to leave his mark on the strip of Yuujirou’s shoulder that peeked out between the deep blue fabric. He didn’t pull away instantly, and Yuujirou froze as Aizou looked up at him with darkened eyes filled with a challenge, or maybe a question.

Someone knocked at the dressing room door to signal that it was nearly time for curtains, and Aizou dropped Yuujirou’s arm like a hot iron and scrambled out in a flurry of movement, leaving Yuujirou dumbfounded and alone. 

The first time it happened, Yuujirou’s math textbook was missing. He could have sworn he’d had it in his bag that morning, but he’d gone through it twice to no avail. His locker was the logical next stop on his search, but there was still no sign of the book anywhere he looked.

It wasn’t like him to misplace things. He took special care to keep his locker tidy and organized, so it was hard to imagine how it might have gotten lost or buried underneath his other belongings.

Yuujirou scowled into the void of his locker and wondered if there was any point in just emptying everything out as a last resort. It seemed excessive, but he’d been really hoping to get started on the homework early during his precious hour or so of free time.

“Hey! Yuujirou!” A familiar voice called out from behind him, and Aizou skidded to a stop against the row of lockers in all his disheveled glory. He held up a finger as he caught his breath, then revealed that accursed textbook from behind his back with a self-satisfied smirk.

“You,” Yuujirou said, not sure if he meant Aizou or the book in his hand. Both, probably.

Aizou handed it over. “I must have grabbed it by accident earlier,” he said, mustering enough basic decency to look apologetic. “It’s a good thing I noticed when I did, huh?”

“Yeah…” Yuujirou shut his locker and crouched down to secure the book inside his bag. “Thanks, I— What is it?”

Aizou was trying his best to seem nonchalant and failing miserably. Yuujirou was about to turn around to see whatever he was looking at when Aizou grabbed him by the shoulder and said in a low voice, “Sorry about this, but just be normal.”

“Wh—“ Yuujirou started to say, right at the same time that Aizou leaned down and planted a kiss on his cheek.

Aizou let out a loud, nervous laugh. “Uh. I promised some people I’d play a couple games, so I should get going.” He jerked his head almost imperceptibly to the other end of the hallway, where a small group of students were pretending not to watch the resident idols with wide eyes. “Meet me outside when you’re done?”

Was that okay with you?

Yuujirou gave him a tiny nod. “I’ll see you there.”

Aizou took off again towards the stairs, and Yuujirou found himself absentmindedly reaching a hand up to touch the spot on his cheek where Aizou had kissed him, half expecting his fingertips to come away stained with pink.

Fall gave way to winter, and somehow it kept happening. Yuujirou would doze off at his desk and wake up to Aizou poking him in the side and a kiss to the top of his head. They’d go with their classmates to get ice cream at the place around the corner, and Aizou would complain about Yuujirou stealing from him before landing an obnoxious, sticky kiss on his cheek in retaliation.

Yuujirou watched with amusement as Aizou fidgeted with the pen in his hand. From his vantage point leaning against Aizou’s shoulder, Yuujirou recognized the questions from another one of those magazine Valentine’s Day celebrity features.

“You don’t have to take it so seriously,” he said. “‘What’s your ideal type of girl? ’ Just put something that sounds specific but doesn’t actually mean anything. Like ‘long hair,’ or ‘likes cats.’”

Aizou grumbled but didn’t move to shake Yuujirou off. “I can’t just lie all the time. I’ll get mixed up.”

“Don’t lie, then. What if you pretend it just says ‘ideal type,’ no genders involved?”

“Huh.” Aizou considered it. “Maybe I’ll just write something like, uh… ‘cute’?”

“Lame.”

“Oh, shut up. What about ‘shorter than me’?”

Specific, but also meaningless. “Yeah, that’s good. Write both of those down, then you’re done,” he said, pointing at the bottom of the sheet.

Satisfied, Aizou shoved the completed questionnaire into his bag and stretched his arms out above his head, depriving Yuujirou of his nice, convenient headrest.

Yuujirou made an unintelligible noise in protest and pouted. He had a right to be a little childish, sometimes.

“Don’t try to act cute! You’re not allowed to fall asleep on me.”

“But consider,” Yuujirou said. “I helped you with your question.”

Aizou sighed and slumped back down against the wall next to Yuujirou, freeing up his shoulder like before. “You really are annoying,” he said, half-smiling at the other boy leaning into him once again. “But thank you.”

Tired from a long week of running back and forth from school to the practice room to the studio to the radio station, Yuujirou closed his eyes and let the mundane sounds of everyday life—chattering students, a bicycle whirring down the street, two birds fighting over a breadcrumb—filter in through the open window and lull him to sleep. Aizou felt especially steady and warm beside him, Yuujirou thought. 

Hiyori stumbled into them later that afternoon in that same position, napping in a tangle of limbs and uniform jackets in a quiet corner of the school. And the strangest thing came to Yuujirou as he awoke, too. He could have sworn that, right as he was drifting into unconsciousness, he’d felt something soft touch the side of his head, the briefest moment of comfort—and then it was gone.

On some level, they’d known from the very beginning that this farce couldn’t stay within the bounds of Sakuragaoka High School for long, that sooner or later it would escape into the world and the lie would become exponentially more difficult to take back. Yuujirou knew it. Aizou knew it. President Tamura knew it, had probably factored the possibility into her impenetrable mental calculus long before anyone else.

Aizou was even more hopeless than Yuujirou thought if he really assumed they’d be able to keep their fake relationship from his own brother.

Yuujirou only ever saw Ken in passing; Aizou went out of his way to avoid his brother at school, and Ken at least seemed to respect that boundary, no matter how obvious it was to anyone who looked at the Shibasaki siblings for more than a second that they were related.

And if Ken just being nearby set Aizou on edge, he reacted even worse to the few times Yuujirou spoke to Ken. “Do not listen to anything that guy says,” he told Yuujirou.

“Is he really that bad?”

“Yes! I mean, no, he’s not a bad guy. I just… don’t want him to say something weird to you.”

“Weird like what?” Yuujirou asked, unsure what Shibasaki Ken would even have to say to him. They didn’t have anything in common, as far as he was aware, unless you counted spending a lot of time around Aizou as a personality trait.

“Ugh, you know.” Aizou made a face. “He likes embarrassing me.”

Yuujirou didn’t think to follow up on it at the time, but now he wondered if he should have—because there was Shibasaki Ken, calling out his name like an old friend and throwing an arm around his shoulders.

“Ah, Yuujirou—Can I call you Yuujirou? I was just thinking to myself, the two of us really don’t know each other as well as we should.”

Yuujirou blinked at him. “What?”

Ken laughed. The sound was oddly reminiscent of those times when Aizou would force a laugh as a show of false confidence, and it occurred to Yuujirou that Aizou had been perhaps unconsciously imitating his older brother this entire time. It was a horribly endearing thought.

“Listen, I know my brother doesn’t want me interfering with his school life, but I thought he’d at least tell me about the important stuff!” he complained. “Really, what is it? Does he think I wouldn’t be accepting? He should know me better than that.”

“Sorry, I’m not sure I’m following,” Yuujirou said.

“You’re dating Aizou,” Ken said, like it was a well-established fact. Which it was, Yuujirou supposed, but hearing Ken state it out loud so frankly made it feel somehow even more real than weeks, months of casual hand-holding and kisses too quick to really count.

“Um.” They hadn’t really discussed what they were supposed to do in this situation. Aizou said something along the lines of, Ken cannot hear about this, but in hindsight Yuujirou should have clarified if he meant the relationship or the true nature of their scheme. The former seemed like an inevitability so long as they went to the same school, so he had to assume if Aizou had to choose, he’d prefer for his brother to believe he was in a normal, happy relationship than admit to faking one for increasingly convoluted reasons that neither party wanted to address. “Yes, I mean. I am—We’re dating,” Yuujirou managed to get out eventually, despite his burning ears.

If Ken suspected anything, he didn’t let on; he thumped Yuujirou on the back and cooed, “Aw, how cute! Between you and me, I’m really glad. He doesn’t exactly talk to me about things, but I can tell he cares a lot about you. He’s changed a lot since you guys got paired up.”

“Really?” Yuujirou said faintly. He knew what Ken meant about Aizou having changed and matured, but he couldn’t take credit for his partner’s progress in good conscience. They’d both needed to learn so much so quickly, and at such a young age. LIPxLIP had been lucky for the past few years, but the entertainment industry would always be a fickle business, and they had no choice but to look after one another if they didn’t want to get chewed up and spit out.

No, Aizou had helped himself as much as anyone else. Yuujirou was just in the right place at the right time. 

Ken’s smile widened. “Mhm. He used to be a real hopeless romantic when we were little, you know. I think he still is, even if he won’t admit it.” His tone grew serious. “That’s why he takes it so hard when things don’t work out. When he commits to something or someone, he’s in it until the very end. And he deserves someone that feels the same way about him.”

Yuujirou’s stomach sank unpleasantly. It was one thing to deceive strangers and classmates he barely knew, but this conversation had taken such a personal turn that it seemed more impossible than ever to take back their lie anytime soon. “Yes, he’s… He’s important to me, too. I fully plan to stay by his side for as long as I’m able,” he said eventually, because it was true. Fake relationship or not, they’d always be partners, even if he didn’t mean it in exactly the same way that Ken did.

“I know. Shibasakis have good taste, after all.”

Yuujirou was weighing the benefits of telling Ken how much he sincerely doubted that last statement when none other than Aizou appeared around a corner and spotted them with a gasp.

“What the hell?!” Aizou exclaimed right as his brother released Yuujirou from his grip, sending him directly into the blond’s path. “Hey, is everything okay? Was he messing with you?” He looked about as mortified as Yuujirou expected at the idea of his brother and his fake boyfriend joining forces, and something else, too—reflexively grabbing onto Yuujirou’s hand, he almost seemed worried, ridiculous as it was.

Yuujirou suppressed his own laugh and freed a thumb from Aizou’s grip to rub soothing circles into the back of his hand. “It’s fine. He’s just asking about our relationship.”

Aizou swallowed. “Oh… Did you… ?”

“I told him we’re dating.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, that’s all,” said Ken, patting Aizou on the arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll get out of your hair now. Not to brag about my own love life, but I mustn’t keep my dearest Arisa waiting!”

“Eeugh.” Aizou pointedly didn’t return his brother’s wave and stalked off in the opposite direction, still holding Yuujirou’s hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Final exams, graduation, and the sakura blossoms passed by in such a whirlwind, Yuujirou barely had the time to process how easily he’d fallen into his new routine. What was supposed to feel unnatural and forced simply slotted in seamlessly along with the rest of his busy schedule: Homework, rehearsals, Aizou greeting him at his desk in the mornings with a thoughtless kiss to his forehead. Bickering over lunch, practicing choreography until late at night, holding hands in the hallway. 

It was fitting, then, that when the media finally caught wind of what they’d been up to, it wasn’t because of jealous fans or overzealous reporters or any of the usual suspects. No, it was entirely their own fault.

Yuujirou arrived at the company on a perfectly ordinary Saturday morning, only to be met immediately by Hiyori’s phone in his face. “Are you kidding me?” she said, not waiting a single second for him to catch up.

The website on her screen looked admittedly less than reputable, but the photos were crystal clear. As was the headline, which read, “Popular teen idols spotted out on date, getting lovey-dovey over spring break!”

“Hey,” said Aizou, who had been sitting on the side pulling up the article on his own phone. “That wasn’t a real date.”

“You were feeding him mille-crepe cake in broad daylight,” Hiyori said flatly. “Even I know that’s pretty shameless. Why would you even need to pretend to date during break?!”

“I just—People might ask about us when we go back! What kind of freak only hangs out with his boyfriend during school?”

“I mean, we’d still see each other all the time anyway,” Yuujirou said, eyeing the Mobius logo hanging prominently on the wall in front of him.

Aizou threw his hands up in the air. “Not you, too! Don’t act like you’re not involved here!”

“I take full responsibility for succumbing to the allure of free food.”

Hiyori pointed at Yuujirou. “You should really take this more seriously.”

“What?” said Yuujirou, exasperated. “I wouldn’t have agreed to any of this in the first place if I was afraid of other people noticing. Doesn’t it undermine the whole point of pretending to date if you don’t want people to think you’re dating?”

Hiyori went back to her phone, scrolling further down the page to read the comments.

—Isn’t it irresponsible for idols to date so shamelessly? It looks like they don’t care about their fans’ feelings…

  —isn’t it old fashioned to say things like that?? fans should be more accepting and support their idols regardless

—lipxlip gay ?

  —lol

—Ah I knew it

—waaah!! cute!!! 

—i cried for 2 hours this morning it’s really true TTTTTT

—Ahahahhaha my sister owes me ¥5000

“It could be a lot worse.” Hiyori passed the phone around for the others to see. “Maybe because this isn’t your first time dealing with these kinds of rumors. Even though the last time was pretty much based on nothing.” She shuddered at the memory.

Aizou had fallen quiet, still looking at the photograph of himself and Yuujirou at the café. The quality was good for what was presumably a fan-taken image; even wearing casual clothes with hats pulled low, their faces were clearly recognizable.

Yuujirou’s face was at least only partially visible from one side, but the photographer had managed to capture Aizou fully illuminated by the afternoon sun, mouth open in a genuine laugh as he held out a forkful of cake to Yuujirou. They looked every bit the part of an utterly smitten, adoring couple on a date, and they hadn’t even been doing it on purpose.

Yuujirou cleared his throat. “Perhaps it’s for the best if we cut it off now. Just say it’s a misunderstanding, or it’s practice for a music video or something, and we can go back to normal.” He left out the fact that he wasn’t even sure what their definition of normal was anymore.

“No!” Aizou tore his eyes away from the image as Yuujirou started speaking. “No, wait—fuck. I don’t want to go back to normal yet.”

“What?”

His voice was small, deflated. “I… It’s not a big deal. I know it’s fucked up to keep asking this from you, but shouldn’t it be okay to keep this whole arrangement a little longer? So long as neither of us are planning to date anyone for real, it’s like a practice run, right?”

A hopeless romantic, Ken had said.

I feel safer if it’s with you, Aizou had told him on one of the many occasions when Yuujirou asked him if he still wanted to continue their charade. It’s weird, because usually I hate talking about relationships and love or whatever, even though that’s part of our job—or maybe it’s because it’s our job, that I feel like I can talk about it with you.

“I don’t mind either way,” said Yuujirou. He hoped it sounded nonchalant and not at all like he planned to go home after this and freak out in the privacy of his room.

“Yeah, I figured,” Hiyori said. “You’re both weird.”

Aizou looked past her entirely and smiled at Yuujirou in a way that seemed completely inappropriate for the situation. Some smiles should be reserved for occasions that didn’t involve pretending to be in a committed relationship with your partner slash rival slash maybe-best-friend-but-we-don’t-talk-about-it-because-we-got-used-to-the-entire-balance-of-our-relationship-hinging-on-not-caring-about-each-other-more-than-is-absolutely-necessary.

The absurdity of it all hit Yuujirou like a ton of bricks, and he couldn’t resist smiling back. He never claimed to have a good sense of self-preservation, anyway.

Crisis or not, their schedule for the day proceeded just as usual. Yuujirou finished his last recording session early and stopped by the managers’ office, hoping the staff would let him go home early for once. He didn’t know how much longer he could put up with people ogling him and Aizou whenever they stood even slightly close to one another—which was often, since they did almost everything as a pair.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Hiyori said from behind him. She handed him a bright pink can of something. “The machine was out of chocolate,” she explained.

“It’s fine. I like strawberry.” Yuujirou furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, I hope you know what you’re doing?”

“You and Aizou. Please just tell me if you’re screwing with everyone, because it’s giving me a headache. I seriously don’t have time for that this year.”

Right. They weren’t first-years anymore; their classmates were all starting to make plans for after graduation, preparing for college entrance exams, tying up all their loose ends. Hiyori wasn’t the same fish-out-of-water she’d been when she first took this job, and she’d known Yuujirou long enough now to call him out on his bullshit.

“I told you, it’s not a prank. It’s… I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“It’s my job,” she said. “Do you have feelings for him? Because honestly, me and the rest of the staff are here to support you guys, if this is something you’re actually serious about.”

“I—“

“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to right now, but you should probably think about it.”

There was no point trying to get Hiyori to leave it alone, not once she’d set her mind on fixing a problem. Even if the problem really shouldn’t be her responsibility at all.

“Okay, okay,” Yuujirou said. “I get it. When the hell did you become the relationship expert?”

“I’m not!” Hiyori looked offended at the suggestion. “I’ve just had to deal with everyone else’s drama for the past two years. It’s like I’m living in a shoujo manga.”

“Huh.” Yuujirou wouldn’t have put it like that, but sure. “Thank you, though. For, you know…” He trailed off lamely, unsure of how to express how much it meant to know she was looking out for them, not just as LIPxLIP’s manager but as their friend.

Hiyori would know what he was getting at, more or less. Good friends understood that sort of thing.

Yuujirou was great at compartmentalization.

He knew perfectly well that Shibasaki Aizou was, objectively speaking, an attractive young man. He’d already been cute when they met, and in the years since he’d shot up a few more centimeters, learned basic skincare, and grown into the endlessly charming prince that captivated Julietas all over the country. Yuujirou could deal with that just fine. He wouldn’t have made it very far in this business if he got tripped up every time a devastatingly pretty boy walked into the room.

He promised himself a long time ago that he’d never become as superficial and dismissive as his stepfather, who had taken one look at Yuujirou and determined that this child simply couldn’t fit into whatever image he had in his head of the perfect family, husband and wife and one rightful heir to the Someya name. A person’s value should come from their character and hard work above all, and Yuujirou had better things to do with his time than fawn over anyone with a sharp jaw and winning smile.

Being attracted to his unit partner was fine. Yuujirou’s problem with Aizou wasn’t that he was hot; his problem was that Aizou had to be so kind . Yuujirou wasn’t exactly the easiest person to work with, and that had been even more true when he was in middle school. It didn’t make sense, how attentive Aizou was from the beginning, how he insisted on going beyond the terms of their contracts and infiltrating every part of Yuujirou’s solitary life. Even when his own family situation was equally if not more painful. Even when Aizou was hardly so considerate towards anyone else Yuujirou knew. 

Yuujirou was prepared to fight and bleed and break to become someone special, someone worthy of standing at center stage, and Aizou had the audacity to trust him based on nothing at all. Aizou the idol, Aizou of LIPxLIP—Yuujirou understood what it meant to admire him the way a flower admires the sun, or the way the ocean admires the moon. Something larger than life and distant and luminous. 

But then there was Aizou the high school student, Aizou the eighteen-year-old whose breath smelled like coffee and did handstands just to prove he could. Aizou who still climbed the tree outside Yuujirou’s bedroom window unannounced, looking scruffy and slightly unhinged instead of well-groomed and mature. Aizou who talked with his mouth full and refused to back down from a challenge. Aizou who stared at Yuujirou for a full minute on the last day of their second year before leaving the lightest kiss—so light it could have been a momentary hallucination and Yuujirou had just lost his grip on reality—on the tip of his ear and sprinted away like a giddy schoolboy and not a national celebrity.

For god’s sake, he’d planned an entire surprise vacation for the two of them and pretended it was the company’s idea. What the fuck was Yuujirou supposed to do with that? How was he supposed to feel anything other than the urge to grab the idiot by the collar and kiss him silly until they both ran out of breath?

It was a good thing Yuujirou was an expert in compartmentalization. He hated to let Hiyori down, but it was better for everyone this way. He would fold up all his embarrassing, guilty feelings as small as possible and pack them away somewhere safe and dark and secret. He would pretend not to see how Aizou looked at him, all tender and affectionate and more than Yuujirou knew he deserved.

“We’ve always asked that fans and the media respect our idols’ privacy and their desire to experience a normal high school life,” President Tamura said, smiling past the host and directly into the camera.

“Yes, of course, but surely you understand the confusion,” the interviewer cut in. “A simple yes or no would suffice.”

President Tamura held up a manicured hand. “I’d also like to remind everyone that both of them were minors up until very recently. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to enjoy their free time in their final year of high school as they see fit, so long as it’s not hurting anybody?”

“Well, yes, but— That’s quite the unconventional stance for an entertainment company to take.”

“Why, thank you. As CEO, I want Mobius to reflect my own values and artistic vision.” She turned to look at someone out of camera. “Right, make sure to look forward to LIPxLIP’s new single coming out next month!”

As the interviewer glumly started to close out the segment, Uchida anxiously removed her glasses and wiped them again. 

“Um. I was actually trying to remind you about the copy I sent over this morning…?” she whispered as they prepared to return to the office. She knew President Tamura had a tendency to go off-script, but she and Hiyori had worked hard on that statement.

“Is that so?”

Uchida could never tell what her boss was really thinking.

“Say, Mayu. You’ve been working hard lately, haven’t you? You should take the rest of the day off, treat yourself!” President Tamura gave her a collegial pat on the shoulder.

They moved in together.

“Look, I know it sounds bad like that,” Yuujirou began.

Hiyori called as soon as he texted the news to the group chat for the three of them that mostly served as a one-way channel for the manager to send reminders.

“You can’t be serious.”

“It was a purely logical decision, okay?” Yuujirou had always planned to move out of the family estate as soon as possible, and since Ken started college he’d been talking about getting his own place with his girlfriend, leaving Aizou by himself in an apartment that he barely spent any time in, anyway.

With both of their incomes, it was simple enough to find a two-bedroom apartment closer to the company, so they’d save lots of time traveling back and forth for work. President Tamura had supported the idea, too, sending over listings and offering to help out with any initial costs while they got settled.

“Mona tells me basically half the internet is still convinced you guys are having some kind of torrid affair. There’s fanfiction and everything.”

Oh, he was well aware. He wasn’t above searching his own name every once in a while, just to see what would come up. “Yeah, and it’s fine. Honestly, I don’t even really think about the fake dating stuff anymore.”

“I know it’s working in whatever weird way you guys want it to work, but I feel like if you keep this up, you’ll both end up getting hurt.”

Because it’s Hiyori, she didn’t point out that Yuujirou wasn’t stupidly, pathetically hurting himself already, ever since he agreed to go along with Aizou’s lie—fully knowing it would have been easy as anything to deny it from the beginning, to mercy kill the idea and find another, normal way of helping Aizou maintain his boundaries. 

“Why am I the one you’re always bothering about this?” Yuujirou grumbled. “It’s Aizou’s idea. He knows he can end it at any time.”

“You know he wouldn’t listen to me! And unfortunately, it’s driving me nuts because it’s so simple and I have to watch you both being idiots about it every single day. He loves you. Just talk about it properly like everyone else.”

Yuujirou felt his throat tighten at the word love. “It’s not simple at all,” he said. “It’s messy, and I’m not— He doesn’t know what he wants, and my personal feelings aren’t worth jeopardizing our careers.” He’d worked it all out in his head so many times, and there was no version of events where being honest with Aizou wouldn’t end with someone’s heart getting broken and LIPxLIP disbanding over it.

“So what, you’re just going to stay in your non-relationship forever?” Hiyori asked. “That’s… really sad.”

“Not forever. Just until one of us gets over it, and then we can have a nice, amicable fake breakup and go on with our lives.”

“…So, so sad,” Hiyori whispered. Yuujirou couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or commenting to herself.

“It’s not sad; it’s realistic,” Yuujirou said.

They were young and inexperienced. Aizou had the rest of his life to meet other people who would fall in love with his rougher edges, who could receive his kindness and return it in full. Yuujirou had taken up enough space in his life as it was.

He would be happy as long as he had LIPxLIP. As long as he could continue performing at Aizou’s side, surrounded by lights and cheers and unfettered joy on all sides, Yuujirou couldn’t imagine asking for more.

Positives of living with Aizou: The guy could cook. He didn’t make anything fancy, but it was infinitely better than trying to live off of instant ramen and delivery. “Ken only knows how to make pasta, so when our mom left I didn’t really have a choice,” Aizou explained while the curry simmered on the stove, filling the apartment with its mouth-watering scent.

Negatives: He was terrible at picking up after himself. Yuujirou scooped the orange hoodie off the couch and chucked it at Aizou’s head. “We have hangers, you know. Use them.”

Positives: Despite being a self-professed cat person, Aizou won over Hotaru rather quickly. This may or may not have been due to Yuujirou sticking a bag of treats in Aizou’s pocket to see how well he could resist the dog’s literal puppy eyes following him around the apartment. (He couldn’t. Nobody could resist Hotaru.)

One night Yuujirou surreptitiously snapped a photo of Aizou, asleep and snoring on the couch with a little lump of shiba inu curled up at his side. This was, of course, for future blackmail purposes and no other reason.

Negatives: There was nowhere to go when they fought. Yuujirou knew he’d been in the wrong to get upset over something as small as picking up the mail—it must have been the combined stress of schoolwork and the anxiety of dealing with bills for the first time, but that still wasn’t an excuse for yelling at Aizou.

He knew he’d fucked up as soon as the words left his mouth and Aizou looked at him all wide-eyed and frightened and distant. Yuujirou had never seen him like that before.

Aizou shut himself in his room after that, only emerging in the evening to find Yuujirou quietly sitting in the kitchen with a bowl of soup.

“It’s my mom’s tonjiru recipe,” he said. “Doesn’t taste as good as when she makes it, but it’s okay. There’s more on the stove if you want it.”

Aizou took the empty bowl and spoon from the table and sat down across from Yuujirou.

“I’m sorry—“ they both started at the same time.

Yuujirou bit his lip. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I was still being weird about it,” Aizou said. “That wasn’t fair to you… I know you’re not like that. You weren’t going to just leave me here.” He stared down at his bowl.

Yuujirou didn’t know what to say to that.

“The soup is good,” Aizou added.

“Oh. Thanks,” said Yuujirou. “I can make it again.”

Positives: Everyone at school definitely thought they were in a committed relationship.

One of his juniors from the drama club was kneeling rather dramatically on the floor, hands together in a desperate plea. “Someya-senpai! I require your counsel!”

“Huh?” Yuujirou looked up from the set they were painting—some kind of fairytale castle with an abundance of fanciful towers. “What is it, Inoue?”

“I… want to confess to someone.”

“And you want my help?” There was no way that this kid didn’t have someone else better suited to the task.

Inoue nodded. “I don’t know anyone else who’d understand— Everyone says you and Shibasaki-senpai have such a strong relationship, and it’s not like there are a lot of boys at school that I’d be comfortable asking about confessing to another boy, you know?”

“Shouldn’t confessing be pretty much the same regardless of gender?”

“Ah, well. I guess it’s not exactly the confession itself, but more like…” He took a minute to find the words he was looking for. “How do you know for sure when someone likes you back?”

Beats me, Yuujirou didn’t say. Not by fake dating them for a year, that’s for sure.

“It probably depends on the person? If he’s a friend of yours, you’d know better than me.”

The boy looked thoughtful. “Would it be okay if I asked you how it was for you and Shibasaki-senpai?”

“I—That’s fine,” Yuujirou said, trying not to panic as he racked his brain for the flimsy timeline he’d agreed on with Aizou. Then again, did that even matter anymore?

“Aizou’s pretty easy to read,” he continued eventually, embarrassed at how fond he sounded. “At least, it’s easy to tell when something makes him happy. And he’s thoughtful, which is annoying. He worries about me more than he worries about himself, even back when we’d only just met.”

Inoue listened with stars in his eyes. “Wow, Someya-senpai. You’re both so lucky to have one another!”

“We are,” said Yuujirou. The words tasted bitter in his mouth, even if they were true—just not in the way his junior interpreted them. “I’m not sure how this is helpful, though. If you feel safe with this person, you should just make the leap and tell him. You’ll never be a hundred percent certain—mmfrgh!”

A familiar pair of hands covered Yuujirou’s eyes from behind. “Don’t you dare ask me to guess who,” he mumbled through the fingers obstructing his vision. “I know it’s you, idiot.”

Aizou giggled—lighter and headier than his usual full-bodied laughs—and dropped his arms so Yuujirou could turn around and smack him in the chest. His face was tinted pink in the dimly lit room, and a weak, melty part of Yuujirou softened at the mental image of Aizou creeping backstage and working himself up to ambush him.

“You were taking too long, so I came to find you myself,” Aizou complained.

“Shibasaki-senpai! I’m so sorry; it’s my fault for keeping him,” Inoue said. “Please, go ahead. Someya-senpai has been a great help to me already.”

Drama club students really were strange. “I hope it goes well,” Yuujirou said with a degree of sincerity that surprised even himself. “I’ll see you around?”

Inoue beamed at the idols as they left, Yuujirou rolling his eyes but still allowing Aizou to weave their fingers together and lead him away. Some of the other students looked up at them as they passed by, bickering loudly in contrast to how tenderly their hands were clasped, but the onlookers quickly went back to their work without a second thought. It was nothing remarkable, after all.

Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.

Negatives: Yuujirou wasn’t getting over his fake boyfriend.

In a stroke of bad luck, Ken couldn’t find anyone to cover his shift on the day of the graduation ceremony, and Aizou was left without any family to attend on his behalf.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said stiffly. Yuujirou raised his eyebrows and continued fixing the hakama Aizou had insisted on wearing to match him. Can you imagine how weird the pictures are going to look if only one of us is in hakama? Unless you want to wear a suit to piss off your dad, he’d said.

You mean I’m going to have to dress you again, Yuujirou had replied. 

“Do you want to come to dinner with me and my mom later? My stepdad is leaving after the ceremony.”

Aizou blinked at him. “Would that be okay? Does your mom know about the whole, uh,” he gestured between the two of them. “That thing?”

“The thing where I’m pretending to date you?” Yuujirou stepped back to assess his work. Aizou would probably forget himself and Yuujirou would end up straightening out his clothes again before the day was over, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. “We don’t really talk about that kind of thing, but she’s probably heard something. Koichiro keeps making all these little comments to mess with me.”

Hopefully, Aizou wouldn’t ask him to elaborate. Koichiro figured out Yuujirou’s terrible, glaring weak spot for his idol partner much too easily for Yuujirou’s comfort.

Koichiro wasn’t deliberately malicious, Yuujirou knew, but it was hard to read him most of the time. Sometimes he wondered if they’d get along better if their personalities weren’t so similar.

He made sure to take a picture of Aizou all dressed up to send to Ken. “Your brother says you look very dashing,” said Yuujirou.

“Ugh.” Aizou pretended to gag. “Tell him to quit slacking off and go back to work.”

Graduation still didn’t feel real, even with his diploma right there in his hands, fake leather cover sticking to his palms. Yuujirou hugged the rectangle to his chest and scanned the crowd streaming out of the gymnasium.

With all the uncanny awareness that comes from three years of wrangling LIPxLIP, Hiyori found them first, breaking away from her group of friends with her phone held aloft like a baton.

“Manager Uchida asked me to get a picture so we can share it!” she said cheerfully, ushering them off to one side. “There, that looks okay.”

“Don’t worry too much about us,” said Yuujirou. Hiyori kept looking over her shoulder at where the rest of their classmates were mingling. “We have to go find my family, so you can go celebrate with everyone else.”

“Both of you?” said Hiyori. “Actually, never mind—I’ll see you at work, anyway. Did you see my parents and Nagisa came to the ceremony?”

“Really?” Aizou swiveled his head around.

Hiyori held up a hand. “You’re not allowed to bother my parents! I refuse to explain your behavior to them. But Nagisa says hi,” she said, her cheeks reddening a little.

Yuujirou tactfully resisted the urge to ask if she was finally going to give Nagisa an answer to his confession from their first year. He wasn’t too familiar with Hiyori’s childhood friend, but the guy sure was patient. Yuujirou never quite understood how someone could love so openly and with such certainty, but he hoped everything would work out for them. Hiyori deserved that much, after how many times she’d swooped in to save Aizou and Yuujirou from their own bullshit.

The wind picked up as Hiyori sprinted away, scattering sakura petals across the courtyard and into the shoes and collars of unsuspecting students.

“Ah, that’s better,” Aizou said, leaning into the breeze. “I always forget how heavy traditional clothes are—Wait, come here.” He pulled Yuujirou closer by the sleeve of his kimono, closer than necessary.

For a fraction of a second, Aizou’s warm, mischievous gaze seemed to linger on Yuujirou’s lips, and Yuujirou felt his heart stutter traitorously in his chest, right as Aizou quickly took a step back and reached up, up to pull a pink petal from Yuujirou’s hair. “Got it,” he murmured.

“Nobody’s watching,” Yuujirou said. He couldn’t say if it was a reminder to Aizou or himself or nobody at all.

Aizou looked down at the petal in his hand. “Right,” he said. “Nobody’s watching.”

Springtime carried a certain sentimentality, a promise of new beginnings and other romantic notions that Yuujirou had learned to keep at arm’s length for the sake of his own sanity. Still, he should be celebrating. He should be happy.

He was happy. 

Why, then, did he still feel a stab of disappointment when Aizou draped an arm over his shoulders like it was any other day? Why couldn’t he look away from the forgotten sakura petal fluttering silently to the ground, fragile and brief and beautiful?

“Sorry for springing this on you so suddenly,” Yuujirou said to his mother as they waited for Aizou outside the bathroom. “His brother couldn’t make it to graduation because of work.”

Tae squeezed his hand reassuringly. “Oh, it’s fine. You were the one who wanted to have dinner with just the two of us—”

“I don’t have anything to talk about with Father! But I missed you… I promise I’ll try to visit more now that school’s done.” He didn’t invite her to stay with him if she ever needed to get away from her overbearing husband, the way he used to want when he was younger and his stepfather even colder.

“I know you will.” Her eyes glinted. “Aizou is always welcome, too. Koichiro tells me you two are especially inseparable these days.”

“Mom.” Yuujirou made a mental note to kick his brother’s ass the next time they saw each other. At least the head of the household viewed social media and celebrity news with an amount of disdain usually reserved for ant infestations and franchise filmmaking.

Tae smiled serenely. “He seems like a nice boy, doesn’t he? I was so worried about you becoming an idol, and then there was high school and moving out… I’m glad you have someone looking after you.”

Yuujirou had been doing so well at keeping it together all day, but the warmth in his mother’s voice was nearly enough to make him burst into tears like a child. “More like the other way around,” he said, pretending he didn’t feel like his entire face was on fire. “He should feel lucky he has me looking after him.”

He hated how relieved he was when Aizou returned, right on cue and freshly changed into casual clothes. “Wow, I’m starving,” he said.

“You’re always starving,” Yuujirou said immediately, then froze upon noticing his mother watching him with amusement. “Uh. Is Chinese food okay with you? It’s a few stops away from here on the subway…” He trailed off, unsure if he should explain how his mother always took him to eat at the same restaurant back before she remarried, before she learned to make the elaborate home-cooked meals they had every night at the Someya estate.

“That sounds perfect.”

Yuujirou wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel and stared at himself in the practice room mirror. This was probably as good as he was going to get without Aizou here to go over the dance with him. 

He retrieved his phone from where it was set up to record his progress, in case they ran out of time and he had to settle for getting feedback from Aizou at home.

The door slammed open suddenly, and Yuujirou almost dropped his phone in surprise. “The fuck was that—”

“We have an emergency,” Aizou announced, his own phone in hand. “Are you busy?”

Yuujirou sighed. “What is it?”

“I forgot I told Ken we’d come over for dinner tonight.”

“We? Did I agree to this?” said Yuujirou. “It’s definitely not on my calendar.”

Aizou hung his head. “Yeah, okay, that’s my bad. Can you make it? It’s awkward if it’s just me with him and his girlfriend!”

“So. Like a double date?”

“...Exactly.”

Much to Aizou’s continued chagrin, his brother had been proposing these “family outings” more often, since they no longer saw one another regularly at school or at home. It’s not like we hung out before, Aizou complained. And he knows lots of couples he can go on double dates with! He’s just being nosy.  

Yuujirou wouldn’t say it to Aizou’s face, but he thought it was a nice gesture. He used to envy the familiarity Aizou shared with his brother; even when they weren’t acknowledging each other’s existence, it was obvious that they’d grown up together. And he knew firsthand what it was like to have a younger sibling who wanted nothing to do with him. 

Also, he knew Aizou too well by now. As much as he dragged his feet and complained, his fondness for the few people lucky enough to experience it would win over his stubbornness every time.

“It’s cool how you guys are still together,” Ken said, leaning his elbows on the table as they ate. “I always told everyone, those two are a good match.”

Aizou looked doubtful. “You said that about literally every girl you ever saw talking to me.”

Ken shook his head dismissively. “I was working off a false assumption! I was still right in the end.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment to me,” Arisa said.

“Betrayal!” Ken clutched a hand to his chest in mock despair.

They didn’t need to continue pretending to be a couple, at least not for any of the reasons they started out with. Now that they were out of school and more established in their careers, the deception had spiraled into something more personal, a consequence of how stupid the idea had been in the first place—how easy it was for Yuujirou to fall into this reality where everything was simple and beautiful and Aizou was content to bind himself to Yuujirou for the rest of their lives.

After dinner, the group decided to go across the street for dessert, and Yuujirou found himself alone at the table with Arisa while the others lined up at the corner to order. He could just make out a sullen Aizou arguing with a grinning Ken over the menu.

Arisa’s golden eyes followed the line of Yuujirou’s gaze to where the brothers stood. “It’s always so lively with you two,” she remarked.

“Takamizawa-san?”

“I said you can call me Arisa, right? We’re practically family at this point; there’s no point in being so formal.”

That was true enough, he supposed. Ken liked to proclaim his intention of marrying Arisa one day, which would invariably make Arisa blush furiously and stress that they were still too young to talk about that yet, not before they were done with university—and Aizou and Yuujirou were Aizou and Yuujirou, whatever that meant at this point. They were each other’s first emergency contacts.

“Sorry, it’s a habit,” he said. “Don’t tell Aizou I said this, but I think he really does appreciate Ken making time for him.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around? You both are definitely busier than some ordinary university students.”

Yuujirou shrugged. “Ken’s still his older brother, though.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“Oh, I just remembered something—I don’t think I ever mentioned this, since it was so long ago,” Yuujirou said, the sight of the back of Ken’s head striking a sudden chord. “It must have been in middle school? When we were just starting out, before I knew who either of you were, I think I ran into you and Ken on a date.”

He’d been only fifteen or sixteen, looking for inspiration since his understanding of love and romance started and ended with melodramatic kabuki plays and the like. His mother’s first marriage had been for love, but he’d been too young to remember much of their life with his father before he passed.

If the shelves of manga lining the walls of every bookstore were any indication, love was supposed to blossom in the classroom through an intricate array of social rules and rituals, but that seemed just as unlikely as everything else. Most of his classmates up until extremely recently treated him as a gloomy freak, unless they happened to need help with a literature assignment.

He might have noticed the couple at first due to Ken’s resemblance to Aizou—teachers would mix them up all the time during high school—but the thing that stayed in Yuujirou’s mind was how spirited their bickering had been, how easily they’d made up. “I ended up writing something about how if I were in a relationship, I’d want it to be like that.”

“And do you feel like you succeeded?”

It took a moment for Yuujirou to understand what she meant by the question. “Do I— I don’t know if I can really answer that,” he said, stumbling over the words. “I barely remember what I was thinking at the time.”

Arisa smiled. “I think you’re doing great,” she said. “Every relationship is different. It took forever for me to trust that Ken was serious about us, for one. I might not know Aizou as well as you do, but it’s obvious he’s crazy about you.”

Is it?

Probably mistaking whatever frantic blend of emotions Yuujirou was experiencing for straightforward embarrassment, Arisa graciously changed the subject and moved on.

Yuujirou only realized how hard he’d been clenching his fists in his lap when Aizou returned with two ice cream cones in hand, one piled high with toppings (for Yuujirou) and the other an unassuming scoop of coffee-flavored ice cream (for himself).

“You okay?” Aizou asked curiously. “You practiced a lot today, so I was worried you’d be tired.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m a little tired, yeah, but it’s nothing a truly disgusting amount of sugar won’t fix.”

That didn’t stop Aizou from continuing to shoot suspicious glances at Yuujirou, who stuck his tongue out at him and stared back. Aizou really was handsome like this, too distracted to be self-conscious about their knees knocking together under the small table, lips slightly glossy from the ice cream.

He’s crazy about you.

He loves you, Hiyori had said over the phone. Yuujirou wished he could refute it somehow, prove definitively that his status as Aizou’s assumed date to all parties and functions in perpetuity was based purely on convenience and nothing else.

Funny, that a boy with no charm would wind up becoming the totally unqualified custodian of something as singular and precious as the heart of Shibasaki Aizou. That kind of thing should be illegal.

They made it back to the apartment stuffed with good food and pleasantly drowsy from an eventful day. Yuujirou’s hair was still dripping from the shower when Aizou decided to linger a second too long before unthinkingly, sweetly, cruelly leaving a kiss right on Yuujirou’s cheekbone.

It was far from the most scandalous thing they’d ever done, but still. 

“Good night, Yuujirou,” Aizou said, plodding off to fall face-first into his bed without a care in the world.

“Good night, Aizou.”

Yuujirou had been prepared for the worst ever since those photos of him and Aizou “dating” came out during high school—no, since he first entertained the idea of pretending to date his unit partner. Since the first time he reached out to Aizou onstage and wondered why it made him so nervous when Aizou reached back.

President Tamura and Manager Uchida were always firm when it came to managing their public relations; the president in particular, with her many years of experience in the entertainment industry, had a way of stonewalling troublesome lines of questioning and utilizing her sizeable network that proved invaluable (if a little terrifying) as the company grew. 

And for the most part, things were good. If reporters and variety show hosts seemed to shy away from asking about their personal lives now, if LIPxLIP’s fanbase matured and changed and grew, Yuujirou wasn’t going to complain.

But there were other things that worried him. For the second time in the past two weeks, Aizou mentioned having an individual schedule canceled because of someone backing out, this time being some kind of photoshoot with a fitness magazine. Last week it was a commercial for school uniforms. 

They still had more than enough work between the both of them to keep busy, and Aizou seemed more baffled than offended by the last minute schedule changes, but something just didn’t sit right with Yuujirou. 

“Maybe we should end this,” Yuujirou said when Aizou got back to the apartment.

Aizou pulled his face mask down, surprised. “What?”

“You know,” said Yuujirou. He pointed to himself, then at Aizou. “We keep putting it off, but we’re just lying to friends and family at this point. I did some looking around, and I can definitely afford to get my own place—”

Aizou looked as if he’d been stabbed in the back, shocked and hurt and a little bit disbelieving. “Are you fake breaking up with me?”

“How do you fake break up— That’s not the point! It’s not fair to either of us; I’m not going to risk you potentially losing work because people are uncomfortable with a relationship that isn’t even real—”

“So that’s what this is about.” 

Yuujirou grabbed onto Aizou’s wrist to keep him from walking away. “Just let me finish, okay? I know it’s not a big deal right now, but one of us needs to be thinking long term. You haven’t seen the stuff people are saying online; it’s fine to criticize my dancing or whatever, but I can’t just sit here if they’re going to say I’m, like, manipulating you by being a crossdressing pervert, and then you’ll end up resenting me for holding you back, and— and—” God, this was all going to shit.

“Yuujirou. You are so stupid.”

Aizou easily removed himself from Yuujirou’s grip to dig around for something on the coffee table, eventually pushing a clean tissue into Yuujirou’s hand—Since when was he crying? He swore he’d never be so pathetic, crying like a baby over blog posts and boys.

Yuujirou blew his nose loudly. “That’s my line,” he said.

Aizou ran a hand through his hair, which had already been sticking up weirdly from the baseball cap he’d been wearing outside. “Why do you always try to fix everything by yourself?”

“Wh—”

A warm hand encircled his, mirroring their pose from a minute earlier. “You always do this. You make up a problem in your head and then run off to do something stupid to fix it instead of telling me. And I get that you’re trying to help, but it’s like, do my feelings mean anything to you at all?” Yuujirou felt a lump in his throat. “Ugh, don’t answer that. Just actually tell me what the problem is. We’re supposed to be partners here.”

“I don’t know,” Yuujirou said. “I don’t know what my problem is. Are you really happy with the way things are, or is this just convenient?”

“Of course I’m happy,” Aizou said, as if it was the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “I like living here with you, and I like being your partner. Anyone who has a problem with that isn’t the kind of person I want to work with, anyway.”

“Yeah, well… I guess I’m having a hard time believing that.”

Aizou swept him into a crushing hug that knocked the wind out of Yuujirou entirely, all of his fondness and anger and frustration compressed into a single gesture. Yuujirou took a shaky breath before reciprocating tentatively, his hands hovering uncertainly in the air before settling on the other’s back. “Let me prove it to you, then,” Aizou said softly, burying his face in the crook of Yuujirou’s neck. “Let me do this for you.”

Aizou kept his word, of course. He could never back down from a challenge, even if the challenge was self-inflicted.

If Aizou’s attentions were distracting all through high school, whatever he was doing these days was downright dangerous for Yuujirou’s sanity and peace of mind. “You really don’t need to do this,” Yuujirou whispered in his ear as they peered through the café windows at a group of high school girls chattering over some of the most elaborate parfaits he’d ever seen in his life. “This place looks busy— someone’s bound to recognize us and then we’ll get written up again.”

Aizou shook his head with determination. “No way, you’ve been talking about this for ages. And I don’t care about being recognized. Do you?”

“I… Not really.”

“Great!” Aizou turned to the hostess at the front door. “I’d like a table for two.”

“Are you really not sick of me yet?” Yuujirou asked. They’d told the waiter they were sharing, which in practice meant that Aizou was taking the occasional strawberry off the top and watching Yuujirou eat the rest. “It has to be boring, coming here and just watching me eat.”

“No, I’m not sick of you. Aren’t you sick of me?”

Yes, Yuujirou wanted to say, because it was comfortable and safe and easier than telling the truth. But that wouldn’t be fair to Aizou. “No,” he said. He promptly stuffed another spoonful of yogurt into his mouth so he didn’t have to elaborate.

Aizou didn’t press the matter, though. He did appear perfectly content to sit quietly across from Yuujirou, occasionally smiling to himself at some private internal joke. Yuujirou made eye contact and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

He smiled wider, and Yuujirou came to the conclusion that this man might very well kill him one day, at this rate.

“It’s nothing,” said Aizou. He tapped a spot on his cheek just above the corner of his mouth. “You have a little whipped cream there. It’s cute.”

Yuujirou choked.

Aizou threw his head back and cackled, which was rude, but he also slid a glass of water over to Yuujirou’s side—so Yuujirou figured that all balanced out, once he finished spluttering and fumbling for a napkin to wipe his face with.

“Did you hit your head or something? Are you dying?” Yuujirou asked incredulously.

“I’m being honest! You always look like you’re really enjoying yourself when you eat that crap, and it’s cute. It really pisses me off, you know.”

“That part sounds more like you.”

“Don’t let that get to your head. That’s why I don’t tell you these things,” Aizou said, starting to turn red. “Now it’s your turn to tell me how you secretly thought I was a genius this whole time, or whatever.”

“Over my dead body.”

Aizou went back to smiling, a faint blush still coloring his cheeks. Cute my ass, Yuujirou thought to himself. How can you say something like that while looking like that?

Yuujirou used to think he understood the terms of their relationship, where the boundaries of their feelings started and ended. Aizou was his partner, his collaborator. His roommate. His friend. His fake boyfriend, sometimes.

Aizou welcomed Yuujirou into the deepest, most personal parts of his life, and Yuujirou was too wrapped up in his own insecurities and guilt over wanting more to realize Aizou wanted the same things.

“Remind me again when your musical starts?” Aizou was half-awake at best, slumped over a mug of coffee while Yuujirou scrambled to finish his convenience store bun and make it out the door in time for the start of rehearsal.

“Next Friday,” said Yuujirou. “What, are you planning to show up to my dressing room on opening night with a bunch of flowers and make a scene?”

“Do you want me to?”

Yuujirou threw a rolled-up towel at his head.

When he was first presented with the opportunity to play a supporting role in an actual, real musical alongside professional theatre actors, Yuujirou figured he was at least more than prepared for the grueling rehearsal period after years of balancing high school and his idol career. He was wrong.

Even with all his performing experience, Yuujirou was a newcomer learning an entirely new language with its own norms and vocabulary and expectations. Still, he was determined to do whatever it took to put on a good show and fulfill a lifelong dream. Doing a musical like this had been simply out of the question on a high school schedule, but Yuujirou always knew he wanted to prove himself onstage one way or another.

He’d never live up to his stepfather’s standards as an actor, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find his own path to doing what he loved, alongside the people whose opinions actually mattered to him.

Yuujirou hadn’t had a spare moment to check in with any of his friends since arriving at the theater that morning, and an involuntary smile broke across his face when he unlocked his phone to a string of notifications. Hiyori and Nagisa had insisted on paying for their own tickets, each of them texting him separately about their identical plans despite Yuujirou being ninety percent sure that Nagisa was halfway moved into Hiyori’s place by now. There was a vaguely ominous message from Koichiro that Yuujirou took as the closest thing to “I’m proud of you” his brother was capable of, and a definitely threatening photo of the marquee outside from Mona.

He saved his messages from Aizou for last: A picture of Hotaru napping on the sofa. A selfie taken while sandwiched in between Hiyori and Nagisa, holding up the ticket Yuujirou gave him the week before. Don’t forget to eat something, he sent a minute later. There’s a surprise for you later!!!!! Wait for me after the show.

The opening night performance itself was a blur of lights and sounds and adrenaline, every note and piece of advice from his director and senior castmates running through his mind in rapid sequence. It was an entirely different feeling from the all-consuming dread he used to feel practicing kabuki in middle school, or the heady rush he got performing with Aizou in their shiny idol costumes. It was unfamiliar and difficult and exhausting, and Yuujirou made it to the other side in one piece.

By the time they finished with curtain call and moved backstage to mingle and debrief, Yuujirou was too tired and sweaty to remember much outside of the way back to his personal dressing room, the sole privilege he agreed to just to be safe. Yuujirou cleared his throat, preparing to excuse himself, when an ensemble member clapped him on the back cheerfully. “I think I saw your boyfriend go looking for you back there, right? Blond kid, kind of orange jacket?”

Oh, right. Yuujirou was too relieved to have an excuse to step away to think too hard about when his castmates started calling Aizou his boyfriend, too. He was pretty sure he’d never told them anything like that.

The dressing room door was left slightly ajar. Yuujirou pushed it open to find his presumed boyfriend—or at least, the bottom half of him. The top half was obscured by a cartoonishly gigantic bouquet of flowers tied with blue and yellow ribbons.

“You got that through the door?”

Aizou poked his head out from behind the flowers. “Yeah, it was a process. Come on, I think the company sent some flowers, too.” He laboriously set his bouquet down to point out the other arrangement in the room, propped up against the wall.

Yuujirou carefully shed the outer layers of his costume before examining the gifts. Congratulations on opening night! said a crisp white card signed by Manager Uchida along with a number of other managers, stylists, and staff members. “What am I supposed to do with all this stuff?”

“I don’t know, but it made you smile. Here.” Aizou handed him a gift bag, looking way too pleased with himself.

Underneath the tissue paper was a little plush cat with round blue eyes and a sullen expression. Yuujirou lifted it up to find that it was incredibly soft to the touch, even as it stared resentfully back at him. “It reminded me of you!” Aizou went on. “You’ll never guess how long it took me to win that thing from the machine.”

“You know you could have probably just looked it up and bought it online, right?” Yuujirou said, hugging the plushie to his chest.

“Well, obviously. But it’s more meaningful this way,” Aizou insisted. Yuujirou found that he couldn’t really argue with that.

Aizou always had a kind of sweetness to him, but lately Yuujirou felt like something had changed—ever since he said he wanted to continue living together, since he started this entire project to prove the sincerity of his feelings. Sometimes Yuujirou just wanted to shake him by the shoulders, yell at him that he had nothing to prove and it was Yuujirou’s fault for not deserving him.

The stuffed cat felt strangely heavy in his arms. And who are you to say whether or not you deserve love?

Sometimes Yuujirou looked at Aizou and wanted so much that it hurt. Sometimes he scared himself with the emotions he felt growing in his chest, unruly and wild and threatening to burst him open. Sometimes he wondered if Aizou would be scared of him, too.

At Aizou’s urging, Yuujirou recounted some of the more interesting stories he remembered from the rehearsal period on the way home, stopping occasionally to answer a question or pull up a video on his phone. “—the lead actress was really good, of course, but I personally think Otsuka-san’s character gets the best number, during the second act. You know, it’s the one where she’s giving advice to the lead? It’s not a part I could ever sing, but it’s such a good song.”

He turned to Aizou for confirmation, but his companion looked suddenly embarrassed at being put on the spot. “Oh,” said Aizou, glowing faintly from the streetlights outside their apartment building. “I must not have been paying that much attention during that one. I spent most of the time looking for you.”

Yuujirou’s heart stopped—or maybe it overflowed. There was an entire rainforest taking up residence in his cardiovascular system. 

Aizou’s mouth fell open when he realized what he’d said and how Yuujirou had reacted. “ Anyway ,” he said, patting his coat pockets like he was looking for his keys even though they both knew perfectly well he always carried them in the exact same spot, “I need to, um. Go back and listen again.”

They were standing in front of their apartment door now, well into the crisp winter’s night. Yuujirou snatched the keys from Aizou’s hand and stepped closer to look the other directly in the eyes.

“What?” Aizou said breathlessly, his back pressed up against the door. He didn’t look away.

“God, I’m so stupid.” Yuujirou grabbed him by the collar and kissed him.

The kiss didn’t feel the way he would have expected a first kiss to feel. Then again, it wasn’t exactly a first kiss—it felt like the natural conclusion to years of buildup, years of learning the shape left by Aizou’s lips on his skin, years of memorizing the heat of his breath and the curve of his smile and pretending he never ran his fingers over the side of his neck imagining how it would feel to indulge just once, just one real kiss and he’d never ask for anything ever again.

An empty promise, Yuujirou knew now. There was no way he would have ever stopped at one.

Aizou pulled away to catch his breath, lifting one of his hands to cup Yuujirou’s cheek with so much unbridled joy and wonder that Yuujirou felt like he could burst into tears. “Nobody’s watching,” Aizou said, searching Yuujirou’s face for something.

“You’re so annoying,” Yuujirou said. “And I love you, I guess. I love you so much.”

Aizou caught him in another kiss, featherlight and giddy. It wasn’t fair, how someone who went out of his way to eat bitter things tasted so sweet. “I know, I know,” he murmured. “I love you, too. I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Yuujirou woke up to the sun shining directly into his face. He groaned and turned his head, meaning to bury his face in his pillow but getting a mouthful of hair instead.

Aizou’s arms tightened around him. “Too early,” he mumbled without opening his eyes. “Stop moving around so much.”

Yuujirou eyed the clock on his nightstand. “Not too early. It’s ten in the morning already.”

Aizou loosened his grip just enough for Yuujirou to wriggle into a more comfortable position beside him. They’d both just started to drift off again when Yuujirou forced himself awake for the second time. “Okay, I seriously need to get up now.”

“No.”

“You’re the worst.”

“You don’t believe that,” Aizou said, finally opening his eyes and stretching his arms above his head in one long, languid movement. “You love me.”

Yuujirou slowly rolled himself out of bed, then stopped to take in the sight of Aizou happily cocooned in his blankets, his hair somehow even more of a mess than usual. “I said that before I knew you were a blanket hog. That’s my bed.”

“Are you going to fake break up with me for that?”

“We can get breakfast and call it a real date.”

Aizou sat up with a start. “Oh. Why didn’t you say so?”

Yuujirou just grinned back at him, unable to hold back his fondness from spilling out like the morning sunlight through the clouds, thawing out the last remnants of winter scattered on the ground outside, clearing the way through to spring.