Chapter Text
It starts with a message.
A photo, to be precise.
A selfie, even, if Shintarou wants to be particular. Or what could be considered a partial selfie, as there's no face visible in the picture.
Instead what occupies Shintarou's screen is a close-up photo of a pectoral in very bad lighting, the shadow from the lifted arm covering at least half of it in darkness and making the picture even more puzzling than it already is. The message that supports the image, reading "SHIN-CHAN AM I GONNA DIE??????", doesn't really help the case.
Shintarou sighs and abandons any attempt to decipher the message and the image, opting for simply answering, "Eventually".
The follow-up comes fast, this time adorned with multiple crying emojis: "it itches sooooo bad and it hurts and it's HOT 😭😭😭😭😭😭"
Shintarou rolls his eyes at this written hysteric as the typing dots appear in the app, waiting for the next message to arrive. It doesn't take long, and the ridiculousness of the next line at least provides some context: "what if some kind of venomous spider bit me??? we have these in Japan, right???"
Shintarou opens the picture again and squints. Squints really hard, because apparently the camera sensor had a very limited understanding of what white balance is and decided to make the photo almost as pixelated as some of the most famous UFO sightings, adding rainbowy distortion to the places where it probably shouldn't be.
In this pixelated madness he's able to discern a pinkish spot. Quite offensively pinkish against the almost whited-out background of the skin of the pectoral below it and the ominous shadow above, peppered with greenish squares on the border and around it. He thought it was a nipple at first, but on the second glance the placement is way too odd for that, so he studies it.
It is a bite, yes. Something that looks like a regular mosquito bite, though kind of on the bigger side.
On Takao's left pectoral. A few centimeters above the nipple, closer to the side. Not the easiest place for a mosquito to reach, Shintarou believes, but Takao has pretty animated gesticulation and is known for his adoration towards sports shirts with very deep arm cuts, so it just had to be a very quick job.
And these noisy fuckers are known for choosing the most annoying spots with maniacal precision sometimes.
Shintarou scratches his right hand. He's got one right above the knuckle of his thumb. His pectorals, thankfully, are devoid of any offending bites.
"We do," he agrees and gets barraged with a wall of emojis, again. He can easily stop answering and go back to reading, but he learned the hard way that if he ignores the flood of messages now, he'll get an earful in the morning. And somehow, the earful from Takao is much harder to tune out than the similar behaviour from Kise.
He's getting softer with age.
"It's not a spider bite, obviously," he says between two messages in which Takao proclaims he's gonna sign him into his will. "These have two dots in the epicenter."
Takao gets silent for a few blissful moments, and then the typing dots appear on the screen again.
"mine doesn't have dots!!!"
Somehow, Shintarou feels his cheerfulness even without the emojis. One exclamation mark is usually not enough for Takao to properly convey his emotions, but this time it works just fine.
Takao, however, doesn't stop at that and sends a "YAY" right after. That feels appropriate.
"Heat up a metallic spoon slightly and press onto the bite. That should diminish the swelling and itching sensation," Shintarous types. He scrolls up to the photo and can't help but scold Takao a little. "Also I would advise you to clean your camera's lenses," he adds.
"I PANICKED," Takao sends him almost instantly, adding a few of the bursting vein emojis. "don't you dare shit on my selfie game!"
Shintarou starts typing the response but stops when he gets a follow-up text, simply reading "hold on".
He obediently holds on, throwing the phone on the comforter and getting back to the light novel Oha Asa advised him to have. He'll be going to sleep soon, but the story, surprisingly, is captivating enough for him to keep reading even when the majority of the day has passed.
When he has fifteen pages left, his phone buzzes again. Shintarou reluctantly puts the book down and unlocks it, only to be greeted with another photo. Of a far higher quality than the previous one.
There is no overblown whiteness of the skin and no distorted hard shadows. Instead, what he sees is quite... boudoir-ish. The light is soft, yellow, tinging the skin in the most alive hue possible and casting the farther half of Takao's body in an almost cinematically pleasing darkness. The angle is different, too: the pectoral is still on full display, sure, but it's shot slightly from below, unlike the previous picture that was showing it point blank. That angle also allows him to see a bit of Takao's chin, gradually disappearing into darkness, and the hairy armpit.
He can also make the bite out much more clearly. How he could have mistaken it for the nipple in the previous image is a mystery: they look nothing alike. Both color-wise and size-wise.
"had to dig out my ring light for that," Takao says in the following text.
"Why do you even have a ring light," Shintarou asks, because it's much easier to latch onto the previous message and form a question based on it, rather than thinking about something.
"I take pictures of my cards with it when I put the dupes up for sale," Takao explains in one message and then sends another, "listings with better photos get swiped up faster".
"Well," Shintarou sends and then stops, thinking about what he should say. Can't latch onto cards here as he knows nothing about them. "In this one I can clearly see that it is indeed a regular mosquito bite that made you lose your shit in such a pathetic way."
"your boob is not itching like hell right now so don't judge me"
Shintarou scratches his hand at that and shakes it, as if trying to get rid of the annoyance that Takao is. "I presume you got the bite irritated with the clothes due to the fact that it is located in a place that is quite close to your arm and susceptible to the drag of the fabric whenever you move, which resulted in a heightened sensitivity," he types out patiently.
Takao doesn't dignify him with the answer for a few blissful moments, so he picks up the book again.
It is amazing how the author can destroy what seemed like an entertaining story in just a few paragraphs nearing the final. Shintarou scowls and hopes he'll forget this disaster of an open ending soon enough as he puts the book down. He doesn't want to think that Oha Asa may force him to get the sequels.
His phone buzzes again while Shintarou is fuming. No photos this time, just a simple text, devoid of emoticons: "your spoon trick helped btw".
But it wouldn't have been Takao if a simple line of text was enough. So in a few moments the chat grows with more messages:
"should've seen the look on my mom's face when I started heating up the spoon over the gas stove lol"
"she was like 'I don't think you're stupid enough to do drugs right in front of me but just to be clear I gotta shout at you'"
"had a whole lecture about drugs being bad and stuff"
"showed her the bite and she said that it's just a mosquito bite and I'm an idiot"
"You could've shown it to your mother even before sending me the picture, in fact," Shintarou interjects.
"I panicked," Takao says again, adding "and I felt kinda stupid".
"You are stupid, in fact," Shintarou agrees.
"at least I didn't call an ambulance"
"That would have been quite amusing. Despite being a very irrational way to spend taxpayers' money."
"thanks, Shin-chan"
Shintarou waits a few moments, because clearly Takao is not thanking him for praising his stupidity.
"for helping me," the next text says, "and not brushing me off in the moment of my greatest distress ever".
"And you call me a drama queen," Shintarou types in response.
"we gotta switch sometimes"
Shintarou scrolls up to the picture and tries to assess the severity of the disaster. And, yes, the bite is quite big, a bump clearly visible and the pinkness surrounding it showing clear signs of being scratched way too hard. He can even make out the individual scratch trails in this one.
But there's nothing serious, really. It's still just a mosquito bite. On the side of Takao's pectoral muscle.
That Shintarou now has a photo of. The photo that Shintarou has been looking at for a few moments too long.
Long enough to see in the darkness enveloping the upper side of the image a slightly lifted corner of Takao's lips, the deep shadows in the ridges of his muscles near the bottom, and the small reddish spots of the burst blood vessels on the scratch trails.
The phone vibrates in his hand as he contemplates the fact that he now has not one but two photos of half-naked Takao, and he taps on the little cross in the corner, closing it. As he scrolls back to the most recent messages, the phone buzzes a few more times, and when he gets here, he wants to bury it deep into his comforter and maybe finally block Takao's number.
"goodnight Shin-chan"
"sleep tight"
"don't let the bed bugs bite"
"it sucks, I now know that firsthand lol"
Shintarou leaves him on read.