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Oda wakes slowly from his half-slumber at a light touch to his shoulder and the soft press of a kiss to his brow. When he blinks open his eyes, he sees Kunikida kneeling on the bed beside him, gazing at him gently, his hair still a mess like he’s only just woken up. Kunikida withdraws his hand from Oda’s arm, and immediately Oda begins to miss his comforting touch.
“Good morning,” Kunikida says, “and happy birthday.”
“Thanks,” he smiles, sitting up and resting his weight on his hands behind him. “Good morning.”
A shy smile flits briefly across Kunikida’s face. “I wasn’t sure how you wanted to do this, but I brought you your present,” he says as he reaches for something on the bed beside him and holds it out for Oda to take. It’s a relatively small neatly wrapped package, finished off with a bow and ribbon.
He sits up more fully before accepting it, unknotting the bow and gently working off the paper, mindful of his lover’s loathe for messes and careful not to make too much of one. Inside is a journal, bound in a deep blue the color of the sky opposite a sunset on a clear night, and a pen similar to those he’s seen Kunikida using with his own journal, engraved with the kanji of his given name. It’s beautiful, but—
The hesitance must show on his face, for Kunikida says then: “For when you decide to write, so you’ll have something.”
His gaze draws down over the gift again. He hasn’t planned on writing, hasn’t even thought about it in years. He gave up on his dream of buying a house with a view of the ocean and becoming an author five years ago, when his life ceased to matter. And even though he’s found new reasons to live since then, he still broke his promise to Natsume-sensei—he still broke his promise to himself. He still killed again.
“For the record,” Kunikida says softly, and Oda’s eyes snap up to him; his brows are drawn, his own eyes averted, staring down at his hands clasped in his lap. “I think you’re qualified to write about people’s lives.” He takes a breath, and, in a voice hardly more than a choked whisper, adds: “More than qualified.”
Setting the journal aside, Oda leans forward and cups Kunikida’s jaw with one hand. “Thank you,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to his lover’s lips.
Soon he feels Kunikida’s fingers slide up the sides of his neck to tangle in his hair. He isn’t sure who deepens the kiss first, but when they do, he doesn’t mind the stale taste of sleep on his lover’s tongue, and neither, it seems, does Kunikida. They kiss for a while, until Oda starts to forget everything but this warmth, and when they do break apart, it’s slowly, Kunikida pressing soft kisses along the corner of his mouth as he draws back.
“I brought breakfast too,” he says, sitting up almost reluctantly and turning toward the breakfast tray that Oda only just notices is sitting on the bedside table.
“You?” he teases, smiling languidly.
Kunikida raises an eyebrow at him. “You can’t eat m—I mean as actual food,” he adds in exasperation when Oda waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
He chuckles. “I kid, I kid.”
Kunikida huffs in a manner that suggests that he’s rolling his eyes without actually rolling his eyes as he sets the tray on Oda’s lap. “Besides,” he continues easily, “that’s dessert.”
Oda blinks in surprise, then quickly recovers with a wink and an “I look forward to it.”
Kunikida flushes a light pink, eyes darting to the side as he takes up his hair and twists it loosely into some semblance of neatness.
“Where did we even get the tray?” Oda asks after a moment.
That gives him pause, and he blinks a few times in thought as he distractedly lays his hair over his left shoulder and lowers his hands to his sides. “I honestly don’t know,” he says helplessly. “I just found it in one of the cabinets.”
Oda chuckles lightly. “Figures,” he says wryly, reaching for his pair of chopsticks.