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Baji Keisuke was a boy who cared very little for romantic things. Allegedly, his first kiss had been taken by their illustrious commander at the tender age of “somewhere in the single digits, don’t care, don’t remember.”
With that kind of attitude, Baji Keisuke naturally has the emotional density of a black hole.
Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Who would have the bright idea of crushing on a guy like Baji fucking Keisuke? That guy’s an idiot and lame as hell. His idea of having a good time is setting fire to cars and dragging his friends into fistfights. The furthest thing from romantic.
Enter Hanemiya Kazutora from stage left.
That’s right. Kazutora’s the poor guy who had the misfortune of developing a crush on the human equivalent of a brick wall.
If someone had attached a sign to Keisuke that said ‘GAY BOYS BEWARE. THIS MAN WILL NOT CATCH A HINT’, maybe he’d be spared the utter agony that is being in love with him, but unfortunately no such thing happened and now Kazutora’s stuck with his very big, very gay crush on his friend.
Though, even if someone had been kind enough to put that warning sign up, Kazutora would have fallen regardless.
For you see, Baji Keisuke may be a lame, dense idiot but he’s a lame, dense idiot who spouts things like “No matter what happens, I’ll be by your side”, “Growing old together doesn’t seem like a bad idea, Tora”, and “You’re my treasure, you know that?”
Who says shit like that!?
The only person who can top Keisuke in one-liners that could be in an award-winning shoujo manga is Mikey, whose favorite line is “You’re mine.”
How is an affection-starved twelve-year-old Kazutora supposed to fend off that inevitable crush with those words flying around?
Being an awkward pre-teen boy experiencing genuine connection for the first time, he’d tried to suppress that gay awakening. He wasn’t willing to risk their friendship for anything. He was going to suppress his feelings and keep pretending he just wanted to be good friends with Keisuke, nothing else. Seems easy enough, his young and foolish self had thought. Nothing has to change, he'd told himself. After all, how hard can it be?
Unfortunately, he forgot one huge caveat about his friend: Baji Keisuke does not settle for the status quo.
“Hey Tora,” Keisuke asks on a very innocuous day that was about to turn memorable really, really quickly.
“Hm?” Kazutora, the fool, hums from where he’s lounging on his friend’s bed.
“You ever kiss anyone before?”
Kazutora promptly chokes on air. “What!?”
“Kiss,” Keisuke turns his head to look at him, cheshire-like grin on his face. “You ever done it?”
“Why would you ask that!?” Kazutora’s voice breaks as he tries hard not to imagine what it’d be like to kiss the boy in front of him. Oh god, had Keisuke finally caught on to his feelings? How’d he realize!? Kazutora’s only just discovered he might be harboring less than platonic feelings for him like last week!
“Don’t be a prude,” Keisuke huffs, turning over to rest his elbows on the bed and looking up at him. “Most people our age are thinking about it, aren’t they?”
Kazutora’s never had a fascination with lips, he swears, but as Keisuke continues to talk about kissing (!!), his eyes can’t help but wander to Keisuke’s lips. They’re thin and chapped, some parts still recovering from where Keisuke’d chewed on them — probably not very nice to touch — but lips have never looked so kissable before.
“I—” his voice breaks again. Embarrassed, he clears his throat. “I mean… I haven’t not thought about it.”
Which was a half-lie. Considering how isolating his childhood was, he’d never been afforded the luxury of wondering what ooey-gooey romance stuff was going to be like. However, after Mikey saved him from his dad that one time, and after Toman’s formation and his parent’s divorce, Kazutora was able to experience what it’s like to be a boy for the first time in his life. With it came complicated stuff like feelings , specifically of the romantic kind.
Trying to play it cool, he leans into Keisuke and whispers conspiratorily, “I heard girls are super soft and smell nice when you kiss them.”
Keisuke wrinkles his nose. “Don’t they have cooties?”
“... Cooties?” Kazutora draws back. “What are those?”
“Dunno, it’s something you catch when you do stuff with girls. That’s what Mikey told me.”
Kazutora, who was in the hero-worshipping phase of his friendship with Mikey, believes it immediately. “Oh… ew. Why do boys kiss girls then? I don’t want cooties.”
“Draken says that’s not real though,” Keisuke continues, chewing on his lip again. His teeth are sharper than most people so when they catch on his lip, he automatically starts to prod at the flesh with them. It’s a bad habit that Keisuke wants to break but he’s never been able to do it. “But Emma was going on about wanting to kiss someone yesterday and it got me wondering.”
Kazutora hadn’t been invited to the Sano family dinner since he’s not an honorary Sano like Keisuke is, but Draken, Mitsuya, and Pah had dragged him out to an arcade so he hadn’t been too sad about a Baji-less day. If listening to Emma yap about her unsubtle crush on Draken was all that was happening, then Kazutora’s glad he wasn’t invited.
“Oh,” Kazutora says. “Wondering about… me kissing someone?”
“Yeah,” Keisuke nods like that’s a totally normal thought to be having about someone. Though, it’s Keisuke so that may be normal to him. Kazutora doesn’t know what a normal thought is anyway.
Kazutora takes a moment to consider his options. Keisuke seems oddly invested in this…
“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” he shoots back, eager to throw him off.
“Hm?” Keisuke blinks. Instead of being flustered like Kazutora was though, Keisuke only smirks. “Well, duh.”
What.
“What?”
“Got that over and done with like a few years ago.”
“What,” Kazutora can feel his childish fantasies crumble. He’d wanted so badly to be Keisuke’s first kiss but… but some harlot (he doesn’t actually know what that word means until way later) had taken it from him?! “No way, you’re lying!”
Keisuke smirks wider. “Want me to prove it?”
The mental tirade Kazutora had been firing off against the imaginary figure of Keisuke’s first kiss abruptly halts. “P-prove it?”
Keisuke nods, pushing himself off his elbows and climbing onto the bed. He grabs Kazutora by the chin. “Uh-huh.”
Kazutora lets out a sound similar to a dying cat.
It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment.
Kazutora’s staring into Keisuke’s oak-colored eyes one second, feeling chapped lips against his the second, and then feeling the bed lighten as Keisuke climbs off it in the third.
“Wha- You—” he squeaks, imitating a tea kettle. “That was my first kiss, asshole!”
Keisuke clicks his tongue, staring down at Kazutora where he’s hovering above him and looking like he has no fucks to give. “Yeah, and?”
Kazutora opens his mouth to give the insensitive asshole a thorough lecture on the importance of firsts but Keisuke’s tongue darts out to wet his lips and he suddenly loses all steam.
“Hmm,” he swipes his tongue across his bottom lip again. “Oh, damn, I accidentally cut my lip again just now. Sorry, Tora, I think I got blood on your lips.”
Mesmerized, Kazutora licks his own lips to check, and yep. He tastes the iron.
He wishes he could say it gets better, but that memory says enough about the state of his situation.
After his first kiss was stolen from him, Kazutora tried to drop hints that he was in love with Keisuke, but everything bounced off the idiot’s smooth wrinkle-less brain.
How are you supposed to flirt with a man who thinks kissing someone is a totally platonic thing to do?
Keisuke’s lucky Kazutora’s so down bad for him because any other guy would have moved on already! Kazutora wouldn’t wish this misery on his worst enemy. Fortunately, as his and Keisuke’s friendship continued, no one else was stupid enough to fall for him.
Then Keisuke got held back a year.
Enter Matsuno Chifuyu from stage right.