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Keiji nearly fell off the step stool he was using to hang streamers from the ceiling fan when he heard the door unlocking.
Mai must have gotten off work early, dangit.
Tanaka, thinking it was Futakuchi, who’d gone to get some more decorations, didn’t seem to think anything of it, but Futakuchi would have had to knock, since Keiji had, very pettily, locked the door behind him. No particular reason this time he just felt like it. Maybe his girlfriend’s harassment of Futakuchi had rubbed off on him. Futakuchi could handle it, he certainly didn’t mind teasing Keiji pretty often. If he could do the teasing he could suffer the consequences.
The point was, Mai was now home, and would walk in their front door in approximately five seconds, and then would see the beginnings of their decorating for her surprise party.
It wasn’t actually that big of a deal, Keiji knew she’d figured it out a week or so ago when Chikara did a poor job of pretending he wasn’t thinking about doing anything for her birthday.
Really, she’d probably worked it out in part a bit before that, when she realized they hadn’t been talking about the plans for her birthday.
If they’d really wanted to hide it from her they probably could have figured something out, but it would have involved a very complicated dance of pretending to do one thing while also doing this, but it just wasn’t worth it when a single slip up would have them figured out.
And Mai didn’t really like true surprises that much anyway, she far preferred being in on the joke.
All in all, Keiji was more perturbed about her seeing the decorations they had so carefully chosen before they were all set up then he was her actually coming in.
Yep, there was the door.
“I’m home!” Mai called cheerfully, causing Tanaka to begin cursing as he realized the target of their surprise party was here, before the surprise party was ready.
“You’re home early, you weren’t supposed to be back for another couple hours,” Chikara called from the kitchen before coming to the doorway and doing his best to completely block it so she couldn’t see into the kitchen as she came into the main area of their apartment.
She blinked around at the decorations in faked confusion. He knew it was fake because he could see the faint twitches in her mouth that said she was hiding a grin. “Oh, were you going to surprise me? My bad. Boss let me off early, since it’s my birthday. Hey Tanaka. Futakuchi around?” She hadn’t even taken off her shoes or put down her keys and bag, she knew she was coming in during their decorating. Rude.
“He’s not here for you to harass I’m afraid,” Keiji said calmly, dismounting the step stool before he made a fool of himself and crossing over to where she was to drop a kiss on her head. “What Chikara’s trying to say, is please go away and come back in a couple of hours so we can finish getting ready. Go do some shopping or something. Get some ice cream.”
“Don’t eat dinner, we have things prepared you can’t see,” Chikara added quickly, and she shot him an amused look. “Go get your nails done or something, pretend you didn’t see us.”
“Really, you should have put someone on keep an eye out for me and distract me duty,” she told them mock seriously. “Anyone I should know about that’s going to be busy until you’re all done?”
“Dateko’s busy, but most of the managers aren’t. I think most of them are last minute gift shopping though.”
“Nice, thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.” Keiji gently took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and started pushing her towards the door. They had decorating to finish, they were on a schedule. “Okay, okay, geez, I’m leaving. Pushy.” She was grinning as she said it though, so she didn’t actually care too much.
“We’re on a schedule,” he informed her sternly. “I’ll text you when you can come back.”
“Alright, alright, I’m leaving. Love you! You too Chikara!”
“Love you too sweetheart, now don’t come back until we’re done!” Chikara called from the kitchen.
She just snickered, dodging out of Keiji’s grip to turn around and land a quick kiss on his lips before darting out the door before he could retaliate. The door locked behind her, so evidently she’d noticed the door was locked when it usually wasn’t and figured it was for a reason. A reason that wasn’t keeping her out since she had a key.
Moniwa also had a key, as did Kiyoko, Nishinoya would if he didn’t just pick the lock any time he came over and found it locked, so Kinoshita had it instead. Keiji had also graciously given Bokuto a key. Mostly because he didn’t think Bokuto would use it for anything mischievous. Well, anything too mischievous.
There were a couple extra spare keys they had in a bowl somewhere in case someone needed to get one temporarily, but they tried to be slightly sparing with who had keys.
Futakuchi didn’t get one on principle.
“I can’t believe she found out about her surprise party just before! I thought we’d hidden it so well!” Tanaka was complaining when Keiji got back into the living room.
“Ryuu, you are literally the only person who thought we had hidden it from her,” Chikara called from the kitchen before there was an alarmingly loud clanging noise. “Whoops. I’m okay. No Chikara’s were harmed in the making of that noise.”
“Good, I’d hate to have to kick you out of the kitchen.” Keiji replied, getting back up on the step stool to finish hanging streamers from the ceiling fan. “And yes, she’s known about this for at least a week, possibly longer. I think she’s suspected since she realized we weren’t talking about any plans for her birthday.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Chikara agreed.
“Really? How do you hide anything from her? Does she just know everything?” Tanaka sounded rather incredulous.
“She doesn’t know everything. She’s just very good at pattern recognition and connecting dots. As for how we hide things from her, generally we don’t. We believe in communication, and that involves not hiding things generally. Also hiding things from her involves a whole lot more effort than either of us are generally willing to put in.”
“No kidding,” Chikara said, popping his head out of the kitchen. “We live together, we’re not hiding much from her. I think the biggest thing either of us has managed to hide from her is which one of us ate the last bit of leftovers of something.”
“That doesn’t count, it’s not usually on purpose. And half the time we don’t remember either,” Keiji shot back, throwing one of the streamers at him. It utterly failed to reach him and just fluttered sadly to the floor. He snorted, and wandered over to pick it up and loop it around his neck.
“I guess you’re right. Counts as something she doesn’t know though. Oh wait I guess technically we’ve each managed to hide the exact destination of a couple dates from her, but that also involves hiding it from each other. Besides, why are you asking Ryuu, do you hide things from Futakuchi?”
“Nah, I was just curious. Guess technically the biggest thing I’ve hidden from Kenji is how mismatched my chopsticks were before we moved in together and I tossed all of mine out in favor of his nice matching ones.”
Chikara snorted at the same time Keiji did. “How did you manage that?”
“Uh, a lot of luck and the fact that we didn’t ever eat at my house unless we got takeout, and the one time we did, we ate with forks.”
There was a bit of silence while they both processed that one, and it was just in time too, since the door handle was audibly being jiggled.
“Hey?? Guys?? Who locked the door?” Futakuchi called, already sounding greatly offended.
Chikara and Tanaka both looked at Keiji, who was entirely unapologetic. Chikara rolled his eyes fondly, going to open the door for Futakuchi. Tanaka settle for a slightly disappointed look and going to meet his boyfriend at the door to help with the decorations.
No regrets, Keiji had found that greatly amusing, and so would Mai when he mentioned it to her later. Almost as good of a birthday present as all the other ones.
First they needed to finish decorating though.