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i. let yourself think about him.
Shuichi was used to getting lost in his thoughts, usually while he was drinking tea, before finally snapping out of it a couple minutes later to find the cup cold beneath his fingers.
A daydreamer, some might call him. But not the same kind that his best friend was. Kaito was the kind of daydreamer who imagined dreams bigger than he was, and chased after them. He aspired to be something. He was a dreamer.
Shuichi, on the other hand, while he dreamt of what he wanted, he felt like he wasn't deserving of having them. So he never acted. He wasn't a dreamer, only a daydreamer—someone dissatisfied with his current situation, but afraid of changing it.
And these new thoughts, the ones that glazed his eyes and turned his cheeks an impressive shade of red, were becoming much of the same. The precise movements of Kaito's body when he spoke or put his arm around Shuichi. Each fluctuation of his voice; the different ways Shuichi's name rolled off his tongue. And especially the way sweat caught on the curves of Kaito's back after they finished training. He was basically asking to become Shuichi's personal fantasy.
So Shuichi thought about Kaito. A lot.
At first, it was okay. Shuichi was sure that anyone who had known Kaito for as long as he had would have experienced the same thing. Kaito was attractive and outgoing, and had more redeeming qualities than not. But it got worse, because in the back of his mind somewhere, there was the persistent idea that he might be in love with Kaito.
So here Shuichi sat, tea in hand, grappling with his feelings for his best friend who was eating breakfast across from him.
ii. associate him with a feeling.
Shuichi's uncle had been in and out of the house lately—Shuichi didn't bother to ask where he was going off to, since he already guessed it was more than likely detective work.
There was a silent understanding between them that his uncle would pay Shuichi to take care of the house and take care of any agency-related paperwork while he was gone. Then, after he came back, he and Shuichi would chat about their day over dinner. Kaito would pop by frequently to keep Shuichi company and, occasionally, to join him and his uncle for dinner.
Kaito hadn't come by their house today, but it still gave Shuichi's uncle the opportunity to bring him up anyway.
"Maybe I should look into buying a bed for the kid," his uncle mused. "He spends enough time here already."
"Maybe." It was better than the desperate "no" Shuichi immediately conjured up, but still quick enough to get his uncle to lift an eyebrow at him. Dammit. The last thing he wanted to do was admit his feelings for Kaito out loud over dinner. "I think he likes the couch, though."
"Right."
That was the usual pace for their conversations, but Shuichi had a hunch that his uncle knew something was up between him and Kaito. His uncle never said anything about it or told Kaito he couldn't come over, though, so Shuichi supposed it didn't matter much to him. Shuichi even considered the possibility that maybe his uncle was encouraging their time alone, but that just sounded ridiculous.
Kaito had called as soon as they were wrapping up dinner and asked if he could drop by. Fifteen minutes later, Kaito was knocking at the door and enthusiastically greeting Shuichi's uncle before settling on the couch with Shuichi. The two of them sat there together for an hour or so, flipping through channels on the television and making fun of most of the things that were playing.
"Come on, let's go outside," Kaito said suddenly, a glint in his eyes.
It never failed to astonish Shuichi that someone as energetic as Kaito had stuck with him for so long. He followed Kaito out to the backyard, where the nighttime chill was beginning to settle in.
"The stars are beautiful," Kaito commented once they settled on the grass.
"Wow, I've never heard that one before," Shuichi teased.
"Well, it's still true!"
They laughed, and in that moment, Shuichi knew.
It was the way the grass stained their pants and left imprints in their palms, and the conversations underneath the twilight sky that Shuichi remembered. Not the neighbors, or the cars screeching down the street. Not when they finally went back inside. It was the way Kaito's hands flailed about when he got excited about something. It was the feeling of sitting outside everything that mattered, and indulging in company that never seemed to bore him.
iii. find a safe word.
"Shit."
Kaito ran his hand across the ripped seam of his galaxy jacket splayed out over his lap, scrunching his nose as he examined it cross-legged on Shuichi's couch. Apparently, it had gotten caught on a doorknob and subsequently ripped at the sleeve.
Shuichi watched him silently for a moment. Then, in an attempt to examine it up close, gently took the jacket sleeve and tugged it closer to himself, except—
Riiiip!
Shuichi flinched and immediately let go of the even more torn sleeve. "Ah, sorry! I swear I didn't mean to do that!"
Much to Shuichi's confusion, he didn't look mad at all. Kaito chuckled, and Shuichi could feel the tips of his ears start to burn up.
"Wh-What's so funny?"
"You're the worst repairman ever," Kaito joked.
"Yeah, it's not really my calling…" Shuichi giggled, though the embarrassment hadn't fully went away yet. "Um—you're not mad, are you?"
"Of course not! I can live without my jacket for a few days, ya know. I just gotta sew it up."
"You… sew?" Shuichi's brows shot up in surprise.
"Yeah?" Kaito raised a brow back at him. "You don't?"
Shuichi shrugged. "I… haven't had a reason to?"
"Looks like it's time to get into a new hobby," Kaito snickered, playfully elbowing Shuichi.
"You'll do."
Shuichi hadn't intended to say that at an audible volume, but it'd already happened before he could stop it. He promptly clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late. Kaito's mouth dropped open, an expression of utter shock blooming on his face.
"Uh, what's that supposed to mean?"
"N-Nothing. I was just talking to myself."
But, of course, Kaito had no intention of backing down. He turned his entire body toward Shuichi. "You sure about that? Cause it kinda sounded like you wanted to… "do" me."
Shuichi felt the heat from his ears spread to his face. "U-Uh—well, that's…"
Shuichi trailed off, at a loss for words to remedy this predicament, but there still seemed to be a burning curiosity forming. It was Kaito who made the first move, closing the space between their lips—slowly enough for Shuichi to have time to register that he needed to breathe at some point.
The kiss was mostly controlled by Kaito. At first, it was gentle and nervous, then quickly turned to firm and burning with anticipation. It lasted a few short moments, but it was long enough to build a heat between them that Shuichi swallowed whole as they broke away. The pit of his stomach caught fire.
"That, uh." Kaito obviously couldn't find any clear words. He also hadn't pulled too far away. "This was just, y'know, circumstantial?"
Yeah. That was it. The whole "falling in love with your best friend" thing, the kiss, the way Kaito pulled Shuichi into a hug afterward in a constant need to be together… It was all just because the circumstances were aligned.
Circumstantial.
iv. find his limits.
If he was being completely honest, Shuichi had assumed Kaito would be one of those "no homo" types had he ever tried to make a move.
But Kaito had been the one to make that move and ruin Shuichi. One kiss had successfully unwound what he thought he knew about his best friend, and put the validity of his supposed one-sided attraction into question.
From that point on, Shuichi had wondered if he should try to kiss Kaito again.
Maybe it was supposed to be a one-time thing, though. Or maybe it had to be thunderstorming on a Thursday night with Kaito's jacket ripped at the sleeve. Circumstances and all that. Maybe if Shuichi tried to kiss Kaito again, he'd get rejected because the right circumstances hadn't been met.
Four days after the two of them had kissed, not a word had been spoken about it since and they easily fell back into old routine, with Shuichi's uncle off to the agency and Shuichi and Kaito alone at the house while the former filled out some paperwork.
"I dunno, bro," Kaito said. "I think Mexico is kinda overrated."
The topic of conversation at the moment was possible places to travel to after they'd graduated. Shuichi pointed out that neither of them would even be able to afford to go anywhere, but Kaito kept pushing him to play along. So he did. He watched Kaito's lips move, and before Shuichi could contemplate whether or not it was a good idea, he leaned in and kissed Kaito tenderly. Kaito didn't pull back, bringing a warmth to the kiss instead, and Shuichi swore he heard a relieved sigh from him as they sunk into it. Shuichi pulled back after a minute or two, awaiting a response.
"You kiss everyone with that hat on?" Kaito chuckled.
Nagging in Shuichi's chest was the piercing pain through his heart, and he finally understood what people meant when they said Cupid shot arrows through people's hearts. It was love, he realized. It had to be love.
He couldn't stand to deny it anymore, and he fell further, deciding the next step to take would be testing Kaito's limits.
And so, he enacted his plan the morning after a long night of movies; Kaito was fast asleep on the couch, and Shuichi had gone to the bathroom to freshen up. By the time he returned, Kaito was awake and staring up at the ceiling until Shuichi leaned into his field of vision.
Kaito grinned. "Mornin', Shuichi."
"Good morning, Kaito…"
Shuichi had given himself a ten-minute pep-talk in the bathroom so he was as ready as he could be to see how Kaito would react to something more than an innocent little kiss.
Kaito sat up, and Shuichi sat down next to him on the couch. It seemed that Kaito knew him so well that he recognized when Shuichi wanted to kiss hi because he immediately leaned over to kiss him good morning. It was shockingly easy.
The kiss was warm and romantic, like the last two had been, but Shuichi's desire for a reaction quickly took over. He slipped his tongue into the kiss, emitting a surprised noise from Kaito, but he ended up sliding his tongue in as well. Shuichi moved to straddle Kaito, the feeling of him pulling Shuichi down by his hips already imprinted in his mind. The kiss became desperate, broken by heavy breaths, then returned to with haste and a tighter grip on each other. For the first and final time, Kaito pulled away first.
"Circumstantial?" Kaito asked, out of breath but smiling. His grip on Shuichi's hips loosened, but their position remained.
"Yeah," Shuichi gasped. "Something like that."
v. go all in, or go all out.
The truth was, when you fell in love with someone, you were either going to want to never leave their side for the rest of your life or never want to see them ever again. You were going to want to hold them tight, or make them cry.
When you loved someone so deeply, you gave up on a life of ever just being in their company. You were either in Heaven or Hell. Shuichi knew this; he told himself it every day for the next ten days, hardly speaking to Kaito, until he could gather the courage to say what he needed to.
I love you, Kaito. I've always loved you. I loved you when you took me under your wing as your sidekick. I loved you when I wanted you to fuck me senseless five nights a week and keep the hickies for proof. I love you now, and I don't care what happens as long as you're next to me. I love you every second of every day, and I'm tired of trying to manage it.
Shuichi practiced that one a few times, but it had ended in tears, three cups of tea, and hating who he was in the morning. Kaito had called his phone three times in a row, however, so Shuichi supposed it had to be important enough to stop groveling for.
"Finally, shit," were Kaito's immediate words."
"Is something wrong?" Shuichi asked as he paced through the kitchen.
"Damn right something's wrong! I haven't seen you in almost two weeks, and I'm tired of you being an ass to me about it. I'm outside."
Shuichi internally groaned as silence followed.
"You comin'?" Kaito sounded irritated.
"Ah, yeah—give me a second…"
Shuichi hung up. He was tired, and making his way to the front door seemed like such a daunting task until he actually opened it. Kaito surged forward into Shuichi, kissing him like they had been reunited from war. Shuichi nearly got knocked off-balance, pulling away just in time to catch himself.
"Let me guess: you've been trying to find a way to confess to me, right?"
Shuichi let Kaito's words sink in, then his features—Kaito looked as tired as Shuichi felt, eyebrows tensed. His hands were balled into fists. Shuichi's mind ran in a hundred different directions, and his words couldn't keep up.
"Yes," Shuichi finally managed.
"Say it."
"I…" Shuichi took a deep breath. Screw it. There was no use in being fancy about it at this point. "I love you, Kaito."
"Thought so." Kaito laughed, relieved and light. "And I love you, too. Obviously."
There wasn't a step-by-step guide to follow, Shuichi realized. There was no love guide that guaranteed you would end up happy, or not bleeding out alone in your bedroom. There was no way to fall in love with your best friend that was "correct" or "safe".
There was just Kaito, in all his flaws and the way his body was inexplicably warm whenever they touched or his endearing insistence to be the big spoon in bed; and there was just Shuichi, in all his flaws and the way he'd get excitedly confident around Kaito or entertain Kaito's conversations while he was filling out agency paperwork.
There wasn't a direction that pointed them together, or a certain set of rules they followed that kept their relationship strong, no. There were stages of falling in love, acceptance, and confessions. Two people that were meant completely and entirely for each other in every conceivable way. Thoughts, feelings, safe words, limits, and complete commitment into giving themselves to each other.
And they had mastered it.