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It was too cold.
That’s the first thing Damon registered in his mind as he entered the obscene pink room, not bothering to switch on the lights.
He went straight for the bed – no thoughts in his head as he slumped down into the mattress, the icy temperature enveloping him fast.
What did he just see?
What was that? A fire?
The elevator went hell mode.
That could happen any time Tozu got sick of them and decided he had enough. Damon could die any second.
He knew that, of course. He knew that beforehand too.
So why was he here, unmoving, laying in his ‘roommate’s bed instead of his own, straight from the trial room, exhausted?
Kai could very well walk in here and kill him any moment. It happened with Wolfgang. It could happen with him.
‘Maybe it could’ve been the fact that he did most of the brainwork,’ His brain provided unhelpfully.
All - excuses, made up in his mind to not fall on the fact that he really believed Eva Tsunaka trusted him wholeheartedly.
‘Maybe it could’ve been true, what she said,’ Wrong. Everything she said afterward proved otherwise.
He forced his eyes to shut. Damon was just so tired.
Sleep seemed an eternity away – the only sound in his ear ringing out was the slight whirr of the air-conditioning.
Right then, as if fate took pity on him, the door gently pushed open. Damon’s eyes remained shut. Perhaps if he feigned sleep, the other boy wouldn’t bombard questions onto him.
He heard slight footsteps - sounds he’d grown accustomed to, living in Kai’s room for three days. The type of steps he took when he was too tired to argue, the type of steps he took when he knew not to bother Damon.
Unbeknownst to him, his lips turned a tired smile. Kai noticed, while Damon hadn’t.
Slight shuffling next to him, Damon completely expected Kai to get into the blanket and the night to end on a quiet note as usual.
..As usual?
It felt routine to him, now – it’d been two days since he and Kai started sharing the bed, this the second.
It felt routine, yet not a routine. It was crazy how much just the feel of the boy’s presence beside him calmed his racing thoughts down.
Suddenly, it felt like it wasn’t about Eva Tsunaka and Wolfgang Akire anymore. It was just him and the warmth of the boy next to him..
..Wait, speaking of, why is he not getting into the blanket? Hell, Damon doesn’t even think he’s in the bed.
His eyes shot open, turning the direction where he felt Kai’s undeniable presence from. “Why aren’t you getting into the bed?”
Now fully turned, his eyes slowly adjusted to the low light – the pink wallpaper making it pretty easy to discern his surroundings, unlike his green-themed room.
He noticed Kai was sitting on the couch, grasping the pillow Damon had used just days ago for his makeshift bed as if he were fluffing it. “You’re sleeping on the couch?”
His voice came out more shrill than he intended it to, a result of both sleep and shock. It’d make sense if Damon slept on the couch again, sure, but the owner of the room sleeping on the couch? Who’d heard of that?
“..Haha...” An awkward laugh rang through Damon’s ears, tuning out the sound of the AC, out.. everything. His attention was on Kai now.
“I didn’t..” Through the corner of his eye, he saw the boy’s manicured nails dig into the sofa. “–want to disturb you.”
His response was instantaneous. “Bullshit. Get over here.”
The response seemed to shock Kai – eyes widening a bit. “Are you– are you sure?” His voice turned something shrill, much alike Damon’s earlier – seemed like he wasn’t the only one sleepy and shocked.
“..yes.” His second agreement was softer, quieter.. why did he do that? He could’ve had the bed to himself..
But as Kai slowly approached, one step like a time into what was supposed to be his personal space.. slower and slower as he got closer, as if he expected Damon to reject him and turn him away any second, Damon knew he didn’t regret it.
He couldn’t really explain why it felt that way. Damon wasn’t the biggest fan of everyone here, and Kai was especially down that line. He was a debater and he had a lot of knowledge on things.
Yet the only thing he knew about this feeling was that he couldn’t rebut it.
A breath away from Damon, Kai whispered, a faint white cloud of mist escaping his lips – was it really that cold? “..This is the reason I didn’t wanna disturb,”
Kai pointed at the side of the bed he usually slept on, the left, and Damon’s eyes followed his slim fingers. Oh.
He was diagonally sprawled across the entire bed. Damon knew the first thing he did when he saw the bed was plop down, but he didn’t expect that he had accidentally hogged the entire bed. Even if Kai tried to sleep next to him, he’d have to push him back by a lot.
Scooting to the right side of the bed and sitting up, he apologized: “I’m so sorry,” Damon found the words slipping his mouth like fire across a branch, fast and hasty. It was something he did in the moment.
It was always things he did in the moments with Kai that surprised his entire core.
An easy smile forming on Kai’s lips pulled him from his reverie. “It’s okay, Maitsu. Get back in.”
He seemed surprisingly firm after that scarring trial, and Damon nodded, getting back into the blanket. It was surprising, yet not unappreciated– he was glad Kai was making up for Damon’s lack of composure in the situation so he didn’t have to feel like total shit in front of his roommate by being weak.
Kai tucked in as well, their arms just grazing eachother.
Damon’s two hands were gripping the blanket tight – also taking a moment to glance at Kai, to make sure he also had the blanket around him and stuff..
His eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling in a melancholic kind-of manner. He seemed far away from the bed that he and Damon lay in. “..Kai?”
Silence quickly filled in the air after Damon’s voice died down. Kai didn’t respond.
Instead, he raised a question of his own.
“You’re thinking of Eva, aren’t you?”
Okay, out of all things that he expected to come out of the pink-haired boy’s mouth, this had not been one of those.
Damon took a moment to think – with what could he respond to this? He didn’t even know what context this was asked in. He tried to understand Kai’s tone, register it along with some type of human feeling..
—yet all he received was blank. There was not a single emotion in Kai Monteago’s eyes, the windows to his soul, and his voice felt pained in a way that Damon just couldn’t understand.
So, he decided to go with the best course of action – being honest. “..yeah.”
A bitter smile flashed across him in an instant. Kai was still staring at the ceiling, but his eyes visibly darkened. The instant switch in the air scared Damon.
“What Grace had with Wolfgang,” Kai’s eyes circled his room lazily, before he turned his eyes just facing Damon’s stare, still not quite meeting his eyes. “–is that what was between you and Eva?”
Damon felt his brain shut down as soon as Kai looked at him. “Huh?”
He saw a tinge of frustration quiver in Kai’s pupil, facing him with his whole attention.
“—what Grace felt with Wolfgang. With, for, towards Wolfgang.. was that what you felt for Eva?”
..oh. Oh.
“This time, did you get it?”
Damon expected some sort of pink to appear on the other’s cheeks, embarrassment, perhaps, of asking such an absurdly impossible question during this killing game. Yet all he saw in his eyes were.. he now recognized, malice.
Damon’s voice struck a lower chord, feeling his usual annoyance while talking with Kai at the back of his throat. “No.”
“.Ah.” Another laugh escaped Kai’s lips, sounding less awkward than the previous one, only because of how forced it sounded. “I’m sorry for asking such a thing. You wouldn’t want to talk about it. Especially now.” His eyes somehow managed to darken even more, and it seemed like his normally bright yellow would fade straight to pitch black any moment now.
Damon’s eyebrows raised in mild anger, what the hell? “What–? No! I didn’t like Eva in that way. She was–.. my friend. And I feel so shit because I don’t even know if she was my friend.”
Kai mildly jumped at his voice going an octave higher and Damon was once again shocked at how he was trying to justify himself to this boy. Was he actually having this conversation with him? He didn’t have to explain himself!
Kai’s gaze fell from Damon’s eyes to his hands, and then he said..
“I’m sorry you lost a friend.”
Not, ‘I’m sorry for your loss’, ‘she definitely considered you a friend’, ‘its okay even if she didn’t’..
Just, ‘I’m sorry you lost a friend.’
Damon felt the anger in his chest seep away.
“..And I’m sorry you guys lost your leader. He might’ve hated my guts, but he never deserved that.”
A tired smile made its way onto Kai’s face, and it had a genuity that made Damon feel safe in this room. “You’re talking about Wolfgang? Nah, that guy was never built to be a leader,”
A playful smile followed the shocking lines that came out of the Ultimate Influencer’s mouth. Wolfgang was the most fit to be their leader here, and he was saying he was ‘never built to be a leader’? What??
“I see your face, don’t worry,” He laughed heartily, a stark contrast to the emotionless Kai he had just seen minutes earlier. “It was dumb for him to try and separate you and Eva from us.” Damon side-eyed him. “–of course, I thought it was a good idea too at the time because I didn’t trust anyone, but! I know now that you’re a good person.
Eva was, too, but circumstances made her feel like an outcast. You couldn’t blame Eva, nor could you blame Wolfgang. In the end, both of them just wanted to live.“
‘Both of them just wanted to live’.
The sentence rang throughout his head once again, forming itself into a headache in the very back of Damon’s brain.
“And, I say this because.. if we’d just stuck together, the group, Eva and you.. things– things might’ve been different.”
Kai’s voice was shaking near the end, firm tone coming to a stop as he regained his whole Kai persona. “I’m sorry, that got depressing real quick and real fast.” “Those are the same two words.” “I know!”
Kai laughed, and Damon found himself letting out a chuckle as well. He found it relieved the pain in his throat. “..I’ve grown to like you, Maitsu. You’re not that bad to room with.”
There it was – the light brush of pink across Kai’s face that Damon expected would appear while talking about such a dumb thing like him and Eva, appeared on his cheeks as he said it.
“Not gonna lie, you make some pretty strong statements. I could see you rebutting me one day.”
Kai started laughing, a loud, warm, obnoxious, hearty one– just the Kai kind. Damon realized that's why he wasn't paranoid of Kai killing him. He made Damon feel safe.
“Okay, Ultimate Debater, thanks for your godly 10 out of 10 advice. I’ll make sure to remember it in my long and dreadful journey of becoming the next Ultimate Debater.”
“Fuck off, Kai,” Damon sunk into the blanket and turned the other way. He made him feel safe.
“Goodnight, Damon!” He started laughing again, shuffling into the blanket too, and turned to his side.
Damon finally let the bright flush of his ears reach him, the bright smile on his face serving as a reminder that there was still life in this heartless game.
He felt Kai’s legs sprawl out with every passing minute – indicative of his reaching various different stages of sleep, and he felt the boy turn around, warm hands wrapping around his waist.
They slowly became one, he and Kai— the first night an embarrassment, he lifted his torso so Kai could bring the other hand from under Damon to create a tight link with the one over him.
He hugged Kai’s arms around him tightly, letting himself enjoy the warmth the pink-haired boy brought him.
It’d be okay.
They’d be okay, as long as it went like this with them together, and the only thing Damon would need to worry about would be the steady breathing next to him and the feel of the soft pillows under his head.
He always did think the pillows at Kai’s were much softer than the one in his own room…
He dozed off, with the thought that–..
—just tonight, they’d be fine.