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It was May, which, in other words, meant that it was finally the most dreaded time of year for students in their final year of high school: exam season. Exams didn’t really bother Hirano as much as it did other students. His grades were above average and he was an honors student after all.
What did bother him was the scheduling of the exams.
Because who in their right fucking minds puts math analysis paper one and physics paper two on the same day and chemistry paper two and math analysis paper three the very next day? All subjects at the higher level too.
Hirano genuinely thought he was going to go insane from the scheduling.
The door to the dorm room opened. Hirano didn’t need to look up from the shared low-desk to know who it was. “Welcome home, Kagi-kun,” he greeted, trying to sound energetic but he couldn’t help the tiredness that seeped in.
“I’m home, Hirano-san,” Kagiura removed his shoes at the genkan, looking at Hirano with slightly narrowed eyes. “Holy shit you look terrible,” he remarked.
“Wow, thanks,” Hirano glared half-heartedly at the taller. “How was practice?”
“It was alright,” Kagiura set his bag by the foot of his bed and shrugged off his jacket, reaching out for the hanger to hang the jacket on the clothes rack sticking out from the wall. “I made a few really good shots and coach praised me for it.” He grinned, pulling his shirt over his head so he could change into his pajamas.
He reached out to open his bag once he was changed, bringing out a carton of strawberry milk and a bottle of melon soda. “I stopped by Lawson on the way home,” he said, holding out the strawberry milk for Hirano to take. “Thought you might want one,”
“Thanks, love, I’ll pay you back later.” Hirano smiled, taking the carton from Kagiura’s hands and opening it, seemingly unaware of what had slipped out. He took a sip before he noticed Kagiura’s owl-eyed stare. “What?”
“Say that again,” Kagiura demanded, jade eyes shining, setting aside his bottle of melon soda.
Hirano took a sip of his strawberry milk. “Say what again?” He asked, picking up his pen so he could go back to solving practice problems.
“That name again,” Kagiura said, sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite Hirano, the low-rise table separating them.
“What name?” Hirano scribbled down an answer to a question, letting out an annoyed huff as he did so. “These questions are ass,” he muttered. If the scheduling was terrible, the practice questions were arguably worse. No, he did not want to know how many books an author sold to get seven-hundred euros as profit, unless it was a novel about a ghost and rejected god.
“You know what you said,” Kagiura insisted, leaning forwards, propping his elbows up on the table and resting his head within his hands, eyes narrowed. “You called me love.”
Hirano’s head snapped up from the sheets of practice problems he was working on, staring at Kagiura. “No the fuck I didn’t,”
“You so did,” Kagiura had a shit-eating grin on his face. “When I gave you the milk, you said ‘thanks, love, I’ll pay you back later.’”
“I said ‘Thanks, I’ll pay you back later’,” Hirano retorted, finishing the problem on the paper, cursing under his breath. “Not whatever you said.”
“Taiga-san, you’re so mean,” Kagiura cried out in mock hurt. “Going all the way to gaslight me,”
“I’m not gaslighting anyone,” Hirano continued to solve his practice problems, his glare becoming more and more intense as he solved them. “You need to fix your ears.”
“Oh, so my ears are bad?” Kagiura leaned even closer, until he was blocking Hirano’s view of the papers on the desk. “My ears work just fine, love. ”
Involuntarily, a shade of pink started to creep up on Hirano’s ears. “Stop it,”
“Stop what?” Kagiura asked, tilting his head innocently. “I’m just repeating what you said.”
“I didn’t fucking say that.” Hirano said, flipping the sheet to the other side so he could finish the problems, narrowing his eyes so he could read the questions through Kagiura’s shadow that was falling on the desk. “You’re my light, get out.”
“You so did.” Kagiura quipped back, settling back down. “Also that did not make any sense.”
“What didn’t make any sense?” If Hirano had to solve one more question about profits, he was going to break his pen.
“You called me your light, and you told me to get out.” Kagiura crossed his arms, a pout on his face. “How does that work?”
“I called you bright and annoying, like the sun,” Hirano grumbled, nearly tearing the paper as he penned down another formula and answer. “So move your ass. One mark for six lines of working, this is hell.”
“I did move my ass,” Kagiura said indignantly. He had sat back down, but his shadow was still covering the papers Hirano had to solve.
“You’re still in my light.” Hirano muttered, accidentally tearing a part of the bottom of the page by erasing a line of working too hard. “Fuck.”
“You mean I am your light,” Kagiura corrected smugly, his eyes shining.
“I swear to fucking god-” Hirano slammed his pen down on the desk. “If you say one more-”
“You started it,” Kagiura raised his hands in defense. “You’re the one who called me love.”
Hirano exhaled, running his hand through his hair. “I’ve called you worse things, Akira,” he said, his tone tired and matter-of-fact.
“True,” Kagiura acknowledged, then he blinked. “Wait - You’re not denying it now!” He gasped, his back straightening like he had just caught Hirano in 4K.
Hirano sighed, slamming the completed paper of practice problems on the side of the desk where the pile of solved papers were growing. “Because, clearly, denying it makes you worse.” He said flatly, no bite to his words. “Can you please let me solve these before I throw my pen at you?”
“You never call me anything like that unless you’re, like, half-asleep,” Kagiura’s eyes shone like he’d won the lottery. “Also, I’m taller than you, a pen won’t hurt me.”
“I’m trying very hard not to fucking crash the fuck out,” Hirano muttered, furiously solving a question on complex numbers combined with trigonometric identities. “So excuse me if I’m a little distracted.”
“I can tell,” Kagiura adjusted his position so his height didn’t affect Hirano’s sight. “You’re trying so hard that you even tore a bit of the paper.” He tried to keep his tone serious but his expression wasn't selling it.
“Shut it, you.” Hirano flipped the page over to solve another problem, feeling heat rising up to his face, probably from embarrassment.
Kagiura hummed, resting his cheek in his palm, watching Hirano fondly. “I think you should take a break,” he suggested, an edge of concern to his voice. “You’ve been at this since I left for practice.”
“My math exam is tomorrow morning,” Hirano didn’t look up from the desk. “And I have physics in the afternoon, so I can't. Also you were being annoying.”
“You mean endearing,” Kagiura corrected with a grin.
“Akira,” Hirano said with a warning edge, sparing the boy a glance.
“Yeees?” Kagiura tilted his head, stretching out the syllable and awaiting what Hirano had to say.
“If you don’t shut the hell up, I will start calling you trigonometric identities,” Hirano warned tiredly. “I’m not gonna be nice about it.”
Kagiura was silent for a second. “I don’t even know what those are. And I got you the strawberry milk,”
“And I thanked you for that already,” Hirano groaned, about to tear another part of the paper from how hard he was writing.
“Still doesn’t change the fact that you called me love,” Kagiura countered, leaning forwards again.
“Didn’t we move on from that?” Hirano looked at the paper and promptly gave up on the question, which was yet another one about profits. Why was he the one getting all the economics questions instead of Sasaki?
“No we didn’t. Come on, Taiga-san, it was cute.” Kagiura pouted in the way that made Hirano forget half of the formulas imprinted in his brain.
“Don’t do that,” Hirano muttered, forcing himself to focus on the question in front of him - something about pool depths and functions and pi. “And stop pouting, your ass is already winning.”
“Winning what, exactly?” Kagiura asked innocently.
“You know exactly what you’re winning, you fuckass.” Hirano didn’t look up from the paper.
“Never knew you’d admit defeat, Taiga-san,” Kagiura teased, reaching out to take Hirano’s free hand in his own.
“I’m-” Hirano kept his eyes on the practice problems in front of him, refusing to acknowledge the feel of Kagiura’s thumb rubbing slow circles on the back of his palm. “Okay, fine, I’m admitting defeat.”
Kagiura smiled. “You never really call me stuff like that, Taiga-san,” he said quietly, in a way that wasn’t accusatory but simply making a point.
Hirano stopped writing down the answer to the question.
“I know,” he said after a moment. “It’s just the stress, I wasn’t thinking,”
“Don’t stop, then,” Kagiura shrugged, giving Hirano’s hand a gentle squeeze.
"It's like you want me to be stressed," Hirano muttered, half-annoyed.
"If it makes you act like that, then yes," Kagiura gave Hirano a shit-eating grin.
Hirano could feel his cheeks heat up. He looked at Kagiura, azure blue meeting jade green. “You’re making it impossible to focus,”
“We could split the work,” Kagiura suggested, letting go of Hirano’s hand. For some reason, Hirano missed the warmth Kagiura’s hand brought him. “You study for exams, I’ll keep being in love with you.”
“That is the shittiest deal I have ever heard,” Hirano deadpanned. “Why do you get the easy part?”
“I brought you milk.” Kagiura pointed out with a huff. “That was labour,”
“Walking into Lawson and paying a hundred-fifty for a carton of strawberry milk is not labour,” Hirano retorted sharply.
“I chose you over melon bread,” Kagiura said solemnly.
“You bought melon soda instead,” Hirano countered.
“Best of both worlds,” Kagiura raised his hands in a what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it sort of way. “I chose you first though,”
“That is not the confession you think it is, Akira.”
“A confession is a confession, Taiga-san,”
Hirano stared at the taller. “Okay, whatever. But a footnote saying ‘your partner will weaponize ‘love’ as a source of distraction’ would’ve been nice,” he muttered.
Kagiura didn’t offer a reply, he just grinned and leaned across the table, holding Hirano’s hand in one hand and using the other to gently hold Hirano’s face, tilting it upwards to steal a kiss, soft, gentle and filled with love, before sitting back down like he hadn’t just caused everything Hirano had studied to vanish.
“Still distracted?” Kagiura asked, sweet and innocent.
Hirano blinked absentmindedly, still processing what Kagiura had just done. He stared down at the sheet, his brain refusing to register the question on the paper.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. “Yes.”