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“What are you thinking,” Kyo asks, but feels the answer already, deep in his stomach, unraveling like string and tugging down on his lungs.
Yuki sits crosslegged on Tohru’s mat; the blanket pools around him like a nest.
Tohru’s fingers clench between the bones of his bracelet. He doesn’t want to move from the doorway, but follows anyway, drawn after her like a planet circling a sun. “You are not rivals here,” she says. “My mother once told me that the night spirits make a special place when it turns dark, and here, I choose that you are not rivals.” Her eyes beg, but her voice doesn’t quiver. “Is that okay?”
The dark renders Yuki unreadable. “Yes,” he says, and Kyo feels foolish and young for not saying it first.
“Yes,” says Kyo, and allows Tohru to lead him to the mat, press his shoulders to get him to sit across from Yuki. She sits at the point of their triangle and holds both their hands. Watching her kiss Yuki is strange, and he can feel his cheeks heating for reasons he doesn’t quite understand.
When she turns to him, she tastes of forests and fresh rain, eager and cheerful and sometimes inadvertently too hard. Their teeth click together. He very carefully keeps his hands on his knees, tries not to touch her too much, draws back and touches his lip when she comes too close to embracing him.
“Okay,” says Tohru, as though they’ve sealed a bargain, but Yuki makes a soft sound in the back of his throat that is not agreement.
It takes a moment to realize what Yuki intends. He leans forward, and Kyo understands only when Yuki is so close that he cannot see his face completely, can only understand him in isolated parts. Eye. Nostril. Yuki pauses when his face is close enough that Kyo can feel his breath. “For Tohru,” he breathes, softly enough that Kyo is sure she cannot hear them.
“For Tohru,” Kyo agrees, equally soft.
Yuki’s kisses are rice-paper light and desperately tentative. Kyo isn’t sure that he wants more, but he also dislikes this unconfident Yuki, so he puts his fingertips on Yuki’s cheek, bare pressure to draw him closer.
Yuki allows the liberty and leans in, one arm around Kyo’s shoulders for balance. They both realize what they’re doing and freeze, but they are still Yuki and Kyo, not cat and mouse. Beside them, Tohru bursts into giggles. “The old gods were old fashioned indeed,” she says, “not to think of this and forbid it too.”
She leans in until all their foreheads press together, warm and cool all at once. “Okay,” says Yuki, and it feels like a victory this time that he has said it first.
“Okay,” Tohru and Kyo repeat together.
***
Shigure sits crosslegged and staring out at the early dawn through the open door of the dining room. All is quiet, the boys still sleeping. Tohru places a cup of tea on the table, faint clink of china, and draws her own teacup into her lap, holding it carefully in both hands.
“Winter is coming,” says Shigure.
“Yes,” says Tohru.
“We seek warmth where we may,” says Shigure. He lifts his teacup and breathes deeply of the steam-fragile air. “Ah, such warmth.” His hands quiver, and suddenly the teacup falls, shatters -- shards like foam in the pooling liquid. Shigure dips a finger into the spill. “But how quickly it cools if we are clumsy,” he says ruefully. “Such a mess, and I must clean it up.” He is very carefully not looking at her.
“It is good that I do not serve Yuki or Kyo such fragile china,” Tohru says softly, staring at him. She blinks twice, then looks back down at her own very delicate cup. “We’d have no dishes left.”