Chapter Text
Akito couldn’t take it anymore. What the hell was that excuse for music?
He cleared his throat and tightened his grip on the microphone when he noticed the confused looks his teammates were giving him, especially Toya's.
Seriously. What the fuck was going on?
Luckily, the audience didn’t seem to notice. At least that’s what he thought when the echo of applause and cheers rang through the venue, loud enough to almost drown out the noise in his head. Almost.
“Thank you for your support! We’re Vivid BAD SQUAD!” Kohane shouted, sounding more confident than ever as she tried to keep the crowd focused.
It didn’t matter anyway. None of it did.
For Akito, the performance had been mediocre. He knew it. And he was willing to bet the others knew it too. That’s why he was the first one to rush into the backstage.
But the moment he stepped behind the scenario, a hand landed on his shoulder.
Toya. Of course. Who else but Toya Aoyagi, his own partner.
“Akito,” he said firmly, raising his voice slightly over the live house speakers. “What’s wrong?”
Akito froze.
There was something about Toya’s grip. Something that could burn him, melt him, break him apart with the slightest touch.
Why? Why did it have to be him?
Why, out of everyone, did Akito had to be this weak for him?
Akito let out an awkward laugh. Even he could hear how forced it sounded. Toya wouldn’t buy any excuse he came up with, and that only made it worse. Trying to lie to his face felt shameless.
“I dunno,” he muttered. “Guess it’s just not my day, dude.”
The nervousness in his voice made it sound even faker. Akito was never nervous. Or at least, he never let it show.
But he hadn’t really lied to Toya… right?
Not exactly. He had just hidden the truth from him.
And that didn’t count as lying… did it?
Toya looked at him for longer than necessary, frowning slightly, still refusing to pull his hand away.
Akito didn’t know whether he should come up with another excuse just to run away or something, because Toya’s touch felt like gasoline slowly spilling over his skin, patiently waiting for the exact moment to be set on fire.
He wanted Toya to keep touching him like that. Akito himself wanted to touch him.
He didn’t even know when that need to do that so often had started, but it wasn’t enough anymore. Running a hand over his shoulder wasn’t enough, holding him by the back wasn’t enough, ruffling his hair wasn’t enough. He wanted more, more than he should want, because Toya wasn’t someone random, he was his partner.
His voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
“Akito,” he said softly. “You can count on me, I’ll help you with whatever that is bothering you.”
Ah. That was the same Toya who would do literally anything for him, but he couldn’t possibly be serious. Toya probably thought Akito was having trouble with his voice, or with the choreography, or something as trivial as that.
Maybe he assumed he had been practicing too late and that was why his performance had been so average, which wasn’t entirely wrong, but it also wasn’t completely right.
The real reason was way much more pathetic.
He couldn’t tell Toya that every time they performed together it was physically impossible for him to look away, or that whenever Toya leaned closer to ask him something, Akito’s mind went straight to the space between his lips.
It was absurd, and embarrassing. And he definitely couldn’t ask for permission to run his fingers through Toya’s hair whenever he wanted, or to slide his hand along the back of his neck.
Those moments were reserved for special occasions, by which he meant accidents that could be justified. This wasn’t one of them. This was just Akito trying not to look like the desperate, cynical idiot he had apparently started to become.
“I want to help you with whatever you need,” Toya added.
Akito would be lying if he said the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. Asking him that question, the one he had been thinking about at least a dozen times. Yes, very specifically twelve.
He swallowed, briefly running his tongue over his lips because they felt dry.
“What if I asked you, I dunno, for something… weird or something?” he murmured, refusing to meet Toya’s gaze.
It was humiliating. The same man who could light an entire crowd was suddenly embarrassed to say something like that to his best friend, the person he trusted the most. What a coward.
Toya didn’t move.
“I guess it depends on what it is,” he replied, a hint of curiosity slipping through his voice.
Well, yeah, of course there was a limit. Obviously there was. Toya had boundaries. He wouldn’t rob a bank for him, and he certainly wouldn’t follow him into something objectively stupid or reckless.
But what Akito wanted couldn’t possibly be as bad as robbing a bank, right? It was just more ridiculous. More vulnerable. Weaker.
If he had asked to do the bank thing, Toya would have refused immediately and then somehow found a way to convince him not to do it, snapping him out of it.
There was a long pause.
“But would you?” Akito insisted, hesitating. Which wasn’t like him at all, but at this point what even was?
Akito wasn’t the kind of person who questioned his entire existence just because he wanted to kiss some guy. He focused on improving, on surpassing his limits, on singing until his throat burned. Not this. Not the way the light got caught in Toya’s hair. Not the way his own name sounded different when it came out of Toya’s mouth.
Out of all people, it had to be Toya. His partner, his best friend, his—
“Yes. If I can help you, I will,” Toya replied immediately.
Akito looked up and finally met his eyes, which were watching him with a mixture of expectation and concern.
He felt like he might drown at any moment, like he was about to explode. At that point there was nothing left to blame but his own irrational impulsiveness for daring to ask the question that had been tormenting him constantly.
“Can I kiss you?”
This was bad, like really bad. He could still back out. He still had time to say it had been a stupid joke, an extremely awful one. He could pretend he had a fever that made him sick with saying stupid things and run away, he could do anything, and he still couldn’t move.
No matter how many times he had wondered if Toya would let him kiss him if he asked, the answer had always been obvious in his head, a polite, awkward and painful no, more painful than any rejection.
And then Akito would look just as pathetic as—
“Okay.”
Okay? Okay? What the fuck was that?
Akito’s eyes widened completely, nearly choking at the way Toya had said it so casually, the same way he would agree to practice a new song.
“If it makes you feel better, then let’s do it, Akito.”
He couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Toya was looking at him so earnestly it almost didn’t feel real, like he didn’t fully understand the magnitude of what he had just agreed to.
Akito didn’t respond anyway. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he simply couldn’t. How was he supposed to react to that? To his best friend agreeing to kiss him?
“Akito?”
He stayed there completely rigid, feeling the heat crawl up his neck and spread across his face. If Toya was noticing his silence, then he was probably also noticing the obvious blush on his cheeks, the way his hands had started to sweat.
And Toya was still touching his shoulder. He had never moved his hand away, which somehow made everything worse, or maybe better. His touch was firm, but warm. Toya wasn’t as impatient as him, but there was a strange tension in the air. Not in a bad way though, but in a way neither of them seemed to have experienced before.
“Uh—what?” Akito muttered, feeling secondhand embarrassment for himself. “Seriously?”
Toya nodded slowly.
“You were the one who asked.”
Of course he was. This whole thing had started because Akito didn’t know how to lie while looking him in the eyes. There was no going back now, and Toya had already agreed, so… what now?
There was literally nothing else stopping him anymore. Nothing except his own fear, which was ironic if you thought about it for more than a minute. Asking something when you’re already prepared to hear a no is way different from doing it for real.
Toya was still watching him attentively, but he didn’t look nearly as desperate as Akito felt.
“We can go somewhere else if it makes you more comfortable,” Toya said, not even giving him time to respond.
Maybe because Akito didn’t actually want to say no in the first place. He never had the willpower to oppose anything Toya wanted. But again, this hadn’t started as something Toya wanted to do.
The fact that he had agreed to kiss him didn’t mean anything. Nothing beyond wanting to help his best friend. It was the kind of thing that happens when you trust someone enough to do stupid things you might regret later.
So Akito followed him, wondering once again at what point he had lost control of the situation, because now it almost felt like he was the one who had agreed to kiss Toya, not the other way around.
They stepped out through the back door of the live house, leaving the noise and everything else behind. Now it was just his own thoughts and Toya’s slowly breathing eating him alive.
But he wanted to be eaten, devoured even by that selfish and naive desire. He had been starving for this for years.
Toya stopped in one of the alleys, leaning casually against the wall as if what they were about to do was the most normal thing Akito could have possibly asked.
“If it makes you feel better, then let’s do it, Akito.”
Toya was looking at him expectantly, but Akito would be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed the faint tremor in Toya’s fingers resting at his sides.
Alright. They had both agreed. He couldn’t keep dragging this out any longer.
“Close your eyes,” he said, the request coming out more like an awkward command than anything else.
Toya obeyed anyway.
Akito stepped forward until the distance between them disappeared, he could feel his body pressed against Toya’s as if it were possible for them to blend into one.
He leaned in slowly, his heart pounding hard and desperate, but afraid. He hesitated, because it was Toya, his best friend, and he hated himself when that thought turned into the impulse that pushed him to tilt his head and close the distance between them.
The beginning of that attempt of a kiss was nothing more than an awkward brush between the corners of their lips. Akito could barely feel Toya even though their bodies were pressed together. So he pressed closer, shivering when their lips fit perfectly against each other, as if they had been made for it.
He didn’t even know where to put his hands, but he was tasting it—just a small part of something he had been longing to taste for so long. And suddenly he couldn’t help thinking Toya deserved so much better than that. He couldn’t leave it like this.
If that kiss was going to become an awkward memory Toya would bury among the many things he preferred not to talk about, then at least it had to be one worth remembering, not that clumsy attempt that would fade as quickly as it had happened.
Akito took a breath, and this time he kissed him for real. His lips began to move against Toya’s with the same ease they had fit together from the very first moment.
Toya responded shyly, and that was everything Akito needed to know he had regained control. His hands slid to Toya’s waist, reclaiming the confidence he had lost moments earlier.
Akito pressed his tongue lightly against Toya’s lips, as if asking permission to deepen the kiss. Toya opened his mouth slowly, surprised by the sudden change, letting out a quiet moan when Akito began exploring his mouth.
Their breathing synchronized, setting the rhythm and tempo of the kiss.
At some point Toya slid his hands up to the back of Akito’s neck, intertwining his fingers there and pulling him closer, forcing him to stay there. They remained like that for several minutes, silently praying no one would find them, because then they would have to separate.
Eventually they did, not because they wanted to but because the lack of air was becoming impossible to ignore. They pulled back, panting, still close enough that their lips almost touched.
And it was in that moment that Akito realized that it had already become something that wouldn’t disappear so easily anymore.