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“Hakaze-senpai.”
Kaoru looks up from where he’s perched neatly on a table, head tilted back as he basks in the sunlight streaming through an open window. It’s a beautiful day today, and normally he’d be outside, at the beach or with a girl—but the year is ending and there’s practice today, and he’s resolved to put his things in order before he graduates. It’s the least he could do, he thinks. He’s not totally irresponsible, despite what the rest of his unit might say.
Besides, it’s honestly a tad bit hypocritical for Sakuma or Koga to be calling him irresponsible when they’re the ones who keep gallivanting off to god knows where to canoodle—as much as he’s happy that they’ve finally (sort of) worked things out, it’s still annoying whenever he walks into the practice room to see it empty apart from Adonis playing his ocarina or doing his homework or something equally inane. Which has been happening with an increasingly alarming frequency.
Still, Adonis is good company, and Kaoru thinks he could probably do much worse. Adonis is quiet and taciturn, doesn’t shout like Koga or go on nonsensical spiels like Sakuma. The worst he ever does is to try and offer him meat, which is maybe mildly offensive (he doesn’t appreciate the implication of weakness, okay, just because he doesn’t happen to have muscles like that) but it’s nothing Kaoru can’t deal with. He’s in class 3-A. Nothing can possibly faze him now, honestly.
So he isn’t particularly surprised at all when he looks up and sees Adonis standing in the doorway of the practice room, backpack slung over one shoulder and wearing an expression of complete seriousness.
“Welcome,” he greets, raising a hand lazily. “It seems we’re the only ones here again.”
“Actually,” Adonis says, “I was hoping I could have a word with you in private.”
That piques Kaoru’s interest. He turns around to face the doorway, swinging his legs over the table as he does.
“Well,” he says, placing his palms flat on the table. “We’re here now. What did you want to talk about?”
“Hakaze-senpai,” Adonis begins. He pauses, breathes in deeply before continuing. “How do you know,” he asks, “if you like someone?”
And—well. Whatever it is that Kaoru was expecting, it definitely wasn’t this.
“You what?” he says, eloquently.
“Romantically,” Adonis adds, as if he needs to actually clarify his question at all.
“I know what you meant, Adonis-kun,” Kaoru says. He shifts, recovering from the surprise to grin brightly at him. “Why the sudden question? Has Anzu-chan finally captured your heart and stolen it away? Oh, how cruel that you should steal her away from me—”
“It’s not like that,” Adonis says. Kaoru’s smile falters. He peers at Adonis, but his face is impassive as ever. If there’s one thing Kaoru is sure about, though, it’s the fact that Adonis would never lie, not about something like this. That boy takes everything too seriously, he thinks. He could afford to loosen up a little. Date someone for a bit. Enjoy his youth, or whatever it is that Sakuma keeps telling him as if he’s eighty years old instead of the eighteen he actually is.
“Although I’m flattered,” Kaoru says instead, “why are you asking me for advice?”
“There isn’t anyone else to ask,” Adonis replies solemnly. Kaoru takes a moment to think of it as a compliment, but then he thinks about the rest of the people in this godforsaken school, and he realizes that Adonis is being genuinely serious. He imagines Adonis going to Sakuma for romantic advice and the thought of it is enough to make him develop a migraine right there on the spot.
“’How do you know if you like someone’, huh?” Kaoru repeats. Adonis is still standing in the doorway, and he motions for Adonis to sit down. He stays where he is though, but Kaoru doesn’t think anything of it. He shrugs. “I guess you just—you think of that person a lot, you know? Moreso than your other friends. And you want to spend lots of time with that person. Doesn’t even really have to be on dates, although that’s nice too.” He runs a hand through his hair absently. “But just… being able to talk to them, even if it’s for a really mundane reason—if the thought of doing that makes you really happy, that’s how you know, right? That that person is special to you.”
Adonis is quiet throughout the entirety of Kaoru’s mini-speech. When he finishes Adonis’s expression shifts, almost imperceptibly.
“Did that help?” Kaoru asks. Adonis nods.
“Yes,” he says.
“Alright!” Kaoru chirps, getting to his feet. “Now that’s sorted, maybe we should just start with practice first while we wait for those two idiots to show up—”
“Hakaze-senpai,” Adonis says. He’s taken a step forward without Kaoru even realizing. They stand, facing each other, and there’s something about the moment that makes Kaoru’s breath catch. Adonis is the same height as him, but whenever they’re standing in front of each other like this he can’t help but feel like he’s smaller, somehow.
“Adonis-kun?” he asks.
“Hakaze-senpai,” Adonis says again. He looks Kaoru straight in the eye. He doesn’t waver at all.
“I like you,” he says.
And that’s when Koga and Sakuma burst into the room, Koga yelling at the top of his lungs as he does. Adonis takes a step back, but Kaoru remains frozen to the spot, his heart lodged somewhere in his throat. He can feel it, beating in double-time against his skin. His face is hot; he’s flushing, probably, red spreading from the tips of his ears all the way down to his throat.
“Adonis,” he says, but Adonis’s already walked away to talk to Koga about something. Kaoru sees Sakuma looking at him from the other side of the room, and he turns away, ducks his head and squeezes his eyes shut until he’s sure he’s not blushing furiously anymore. When he looks up again no one’s paying him any attention.
“Get your ass over here!” Koga shouts, and right. Right. Practice. He can do this. He can totally do this.
He can feel Adonis’s gaze on him, piercing and heavy, and Kaoru carefully doesn’t meet his eyes at all for the rest of the day.
-
Adonis doesn’t try to talk to him after practice is over, and he’s grateful for that. He skips the next rehearsal too, goes to the beach instead, lies down on the sand and listens to the waves lapping against the shore. He thinks about Adonis’s face, serious and handsome; thinks about his dedication and reticence; his easy friendship with Souma, his respect for Sakuma, the way he plays off Koga’s own brashness.
He thinks about comfortable silences with Adonis, the way he’s always just been there, an anchor in the midst of everything, silent and solid and dependable.
How do you know if you like someone? he’d asked.
Kaoru closes his eyes, and doesn’t think of anything at all.
-
In the end it’s Sakuma, of all people, who pulls him aside in the hallway after school to talk about it.
“I take it that you had no idea,” he says in that stupid archaic way of his. Kaoru looks away.
“No,” he replies, truthfully, because there’s not much else he can say.
“Although I do agree that Adonis-kun can be rather taciturn,” Sakuma says, “it wasn’t as if he was actively trying to hide his feelings, if you understand my meaning.”
Kaoru turns back to him, but Sakuma isn’t even looking smug right now. He’s just being honest, which is maybe the worst part of the whole situation.
“Why?” he says helplessly. Sakuma arches an eyebrow.
“That is not a question for me to answer, Kaoru-kun,” he says primly. “Perhaps you should try seeking an answer directly from the source himself.”
Kaoru exhales.
“I just,” he says, “don’t understand him.”
“I think you understand him just fine,” Sakuma says cryptically. "You've had girls confess to you before, why is this any different?"
Because it's Adonis, he thinks, and remembers the perfectly serious look on his face when he'd said the words. I like you. Kaoru's heart thuds in his chest at the memory, and he inhales deeply, tries to get his heartbeat back to normal.
Sakuma casts him one last measured look, and then turns to leave.
“Wait,” Kaoru calls. Sakuma stops. “Did you—all those times you and Koga-kun left us alone in the practice room—were they on purpose?”
Sakuma blinks at him, all wide-eyed and innocent.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, and smiles.
Kaoru just continues standing there for a long time, even after Sakuma’s left, his mind still spinning with thoughts.
-
He gives himself three more days, and then he quietly turns up for the next rehearsal after that. He deliberately gets there ten minutes late, so that when he turns up the rest of the unit’s already there, Koga and Sakuma deep in the middle of an argument while Adonis sits across them, squinting down at a piece of sheet music.
They all look up when he walks in, Adonis included, and Kaoru grins brightly, rubs the back of his neck, and says, “Sorry I’m late! I passed by Anzu-chan in the hallway, you see, and of course I had to stop to chat with her for a bit, it was only the gentlemanly thing to do—”
He’s not sure if his overly cheerful demeanor is fooling anyone, but mercifully, none of them comment on his tardiness, or even his absence from the past few days of practice. They just wave him over as always and shove the sheet music into his face, Sakuma and Koga including him in their argument easily (even though he can’t help but feel like a third wheel when they do), and the day passes almost perfectly normally, so normal that Kaoru lets his guard down for just a moment.
And then the sun starts to set, and Sakuma says something nonsensical about nightfall and vampires, and Koga’s disappeared somewhere too, and suddenly it’s just the two of them again, standing in the middle of an empty practice room, looking at each other, the air between them still and quiet.
It’s Kaoru who breaks the silence first. “I thought about what you said,” he begins.
Adonis doesn’t say anything in response. Waiting.
“I just—” Kaoru’s forehead creases, and Adonis is still looking at him so patiently that he wants to scream. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why—” Kaoru’s voice breaks, and it’s so fucking embarrassing. He looks away. “Why me?”
He isn’t looking at Adonis, can’t look at him. He’s a year older, and he should be the calm and composed one here in this situation. Instead he’s standing here like an idiot, so sure that his face is burning again, and Adonis is still silent, thinking of what to say.
“Do I need a reason why?” Adonis says at last.
“Well, no, but I’m just trying to—understand.”
Adonis is quiet again.
“You want me to explain my feelings,” he says, very carefully. Kaoru nods.
“Like what you said,” Adonis says, “I like spending time with you.”
“But—”
“It’s that simple, isn’t it?”
Kaoru finally looks up, and Adonis is smiling at him, just the slightest tilt to the corners of his lips but he’s smiling anyway, and it’s so rare and precious that Kaoru finds himself staring, at his mouth, and then at his eyes, soft and kind and so very Adonis. Kaoru inhales sharply, puts his arms around himself as if he can actually protect himself from the sudden rush of emotion.
“I’m graduating at the end of the year, you know,” Kaoru says.
“I know.”
Adonis is still smiling. Kaoru’s chest hurts.
"Your best friend hates me."
"I'm aware."
Kaoru takes a step closer.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Yes,” Adonis says, as if he’s never had a single doubt in his entire life, and for the first time, Kaoru actually believes him.
“I’m not going to stop flirting with Anzu-chan,” Kaoru continues.
“I know.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not really.”
Adonis is so close, close enough to touch. Kaoru reaches out a shaky hand, places it on his chest. It’s warm, even through his shirt and jacket. Briefly, Kaoru wonders what it would be like to touch him like this, Kaoru’s hand on Adonis’s skin without the layers of clothing in between. He can feel Adonis’s heartbeat under his palm, quick and hurried, betraying the complete calm of his expression.
“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” Kaoru asks.
“No.”
“Can I kiss you?”
A brief pause.
“Yes,” Adonis says, quietly.
Kaoru steps closer. Adonis is staring at him, his breath warm against Kaoru’s lips.
“Close your eyes,” Kaoru murmurs.
Adonis complies, and then he leans in. Kaoru’s hand is still on his chest. He can feel it when Adonis’s heart skips a beat the moment that their lips meet; he can feel his own heart responding the same way.
When he finally pulls away Adonis’s eyes are still closed. Kaoru raises his free hand, touches the side of Adonis’s face until his eyes flutter open, bright and warm like molten gold.
“That’s how you know,” he says, only a little breathless, “if you like someone.”
“I see,” Adonis says. He puts one hand on the small of Kaoru’s back, tentative, and Kaoru smiles at him. “I think I understand now.”
He leans in again, and this time, it’s perfect.