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It’s a stupid idea born from a stupid night. The silence between them isn’t uncomfortable, but it’s unnaturally heavy with unspent energy.
The fight hadn’t even really been Leo’s fault this time, not in the way it usually is. Some older guys, with suits undone and ties loose, had gotten handsy with a group of girls near the entrance of a karaoke bar. Harassing them, pulling on them, all that shit. Leo hadn’t even said anything for once, just slid his phone out, recording with that damning little red light. One of the suits had noticed, taken a swing. Leo dodged, liquid-quick, and the swing became a shove that sent a table of drinks crashing. From there, it was violent chaos: shouting, the manager’s furious face, security grabbing collars.
Sho had just sighed, born from reluctant familiarity, and waded in to extract Leo by the scruff before the cops showed. And regardless of whose fault it was, they’d both been unceremoniously ejected into the alley, banned for life from another establishment.
And now they’re here, in the liminal, greasy glow of a 24-hour konbini’s signage, crouched at the end of the curb. The last train had left hours ago; in part, Sho thinks Leo planned this: a desperate dance to stretch the night out, to keep them in limbo for a while longer. Sho gets it, kinda, but mostly he’s just annoyed. They could’ve camped out any other night but tonight. It’s fucking cold out. He wants to be warm.
The sad-looking plastic bag at Sho’s feet holds the remains of their dinner, or breakfast, or whatever this meal is: two lukewarm pork buns with a few onigiri, a bottle of green tea, and a family-sized bag of spicy chips Leo had insisted on, then barely touched.
Leo’s got a hot sauce bottle caged between his knees, peeling the plastic off the top with deft fingers. He somehow does it with one hand, the other holding his phone, bits of plastic falling into his lap. He scoops them up and holds them out in his hand, and when he looks up at Sho, the fluorescence casting his face into a grotesque light as he smiles, a picture of distorted innocence despite the thrill of their night.
“Sho-chan, throw these away for me~” His voice is sickly-sweet.
“Throw them away yourself, asshole.” Sho unwraps his own onigiri, the nori crackling softly. He takes a bite, the salty salmon filling a bland comfort. The rice is slightly too cold, grains sticking to the roof of his mouth.
He watches as Leo, undeterred, lets the plastic bits flutter onto the pavement between his scuffed sneakers before unscrewing the cap and dousing his own rice triangle in a violent red flood. He eats then with a swift efficiency: three large bites and it’s gone. Sho is only halfway through his own.
“You always eat like someone’s gonna jump you, man.”
“What, are you gonna write a book about me now?” Leo’s response is waspish. He licks a drop of hot sauce from his thumb, his eyes scanning the nearly empty street, tracking a lone salaryman stumbling home. “Congrats, you can make basic observations.”
Sho snorts. “Chill, dude, I’m just saying shit.” He doesn’t look away from Leo’s face, watching the way the muscle in his jaw tightens and releases.
He finishes his onigiri, crumpling the wrapper into a tight ball. It’s his sign to Leo that he’s not going to press the issue, but as he watches Leo deliberately slow his next action – meticulously screwing the cap back on the half-empty hot sauce bottle instead of tossing it – he wonders what it all means. It’s a thought he shoves, half-formed, into the back of his mind. It has no place here in the plant-cracked concrete between them, in the way Leo doesn’t even look at him, eyes glued to that phone of his.
“My place is a fucking hike from here,” Sho says, stating a fact, not an invitation. He leans back on his palms, the concrete cold and gritty through his jeans.
“So?” Leo still doesn’t look at him. He’s typing something furiously on his phone, the blue light carving shadows under his eyes. Probably harassing some old rich man on the internet again. Sho doesn’t care enough to ask for specifics.
“So, it’s late. And you live in the opposite goddamn direction.”
“Your powers of deduction are stunning. You should be a detective.” Leo’s voice is flat, unamused. He pockets his phone and stands up, stretching with a casual, predatory grace. The bones in his spine pop audibly. “Wandering’s fine. I don’t sleep much anyway.”
Sho gets to his feet, his joints protesting. He knows this dance. Leo will propose something vaguely self-destructive – loitering in a pachinko parlor until they get kicked out, trying to sneak onto a construction site, picking a verbal fight with the receptionist at some bar they’re not allowed to be in. And Sho, out of a mixture of loyalty, boredom, and a stubborn refusal to let Leo do it alone, will follow. It’s their routine. Their fucked-up, unspoken ritual.
But tonight feels different. The air is colder, thicker. The adrenaline from the near-fight has bled away, leaving behind a stupid, clear exhaustion that seeps into Sho’s bones. He looks at Leo, who has already taken a few steps away from the konbini glow, his silhouette sharp and lonely against the dark mouth of a side street.
“Wandering where?” Sho asks, not moving.
Leo turns halfway, a smirk playing on his lips, illuminated from below by the glow of his phone screen he’s pulled out again. “Wherever. Scramble’s dead. Let’s go see if that old ramen place by the tracks is still open. The one with the asshole owner.”
“He hates you,” Sho points out.
“Exactly.” Leo’s grin is mocking. “It’ll be fun. I’ll pretend to cry about my mean parents abandoning me. He’ll call me a little shit. You can stand there looking constipated like you always do, maybe throw a punch if you’re that into it. Classic Friday night.”
Sho doesn’t smile, but something in his chest loosens, just a fraction. This is familiar territory, annoying strangers with Leo’s messed up performance-art misery. He falls into step beside him as Leo starts walking, not too close, but close enough that their shadows merge and separate on the pavement with each step. They walk in silence for a few blocks, past shuttered storefronts with metal grills pulled down, past a lone bicycle chained to a pole like a forgotten piece of art. The world is a skeleton of itself in this part of the city.
Leo walks fast, with purpose, but Sho notices he never gets more than a few steps ahead before subtly adjusting his pace, a barely perceptible lag that keeps Sho within an arm’s reach. It’s a habit Sho has noticed over the years but never commented on. They run circles: Leo with his scathing remarks and violently cynical ideals and Sho with his long-suffering due diligence of being Leo’s partner-in-crime.
“You know,” Leo says abruptly. “That guy tonight. The one who swung at me. He’s a junior associate at that firm that’s laundering money for the Nakagawa group. I’ve been building a file.”
Sho blinks. “What?”
“The suit. The drunk fuck who started it. His company credit card statement is a fucking treasure trove of illicit hostess club visits disguised as ‘client dinners.’” Leo’s voice is sharp in its crudeness. Sho has long since understood that with Leo, it’s a measure of stark disapproval. “I was going to leak it next week. Now I’m thinking I’ll send it directly to his fiancée too, with pictures.”
Sho digests this. He shouldn’t be surprised. Leo lives in a world of hidden connections and righteous vindication served ice-cold. He goes with it, because he knows Leo, because he knows those lowlife fucks deserve it. But he’s tired and cold and annoyed tonight. “You couldn’t just… I dunno, not get into a fight for once?”
“He swung first,” Leo says, as if that explains everything. Sho just grumbles under his breath. Leo’s pattern of vindictiveness is easy to discern if you look in the right places, and for the most part, Sho has to admit, this suit is definitely one of the bottom of the barrel scum. But he has little patience for engaging in conversation past acknowledgement when he’s cold and tired.
The ramen shop turns out to be closed. Just their luck.
“What now, genius?” Sho raises an eyebrow at Leo, who actually looks genuinely frustrated for a moment before he regains his usual arrogant demeanor.
“Find somewhere else–”
“Yeah, no, fuck that.” Sho sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “Come to my place. It’s empty this late. Parents are out in Osaka.”
Leo side-eyes him, face drawn tight. In the flickering lights above them, his golden eyes look almost black from shadow. “I don’t need your pity points, Sho-chan.”
“Asshole, it’s fucking freezing out here. I’m tired and want to sleep. I already told you no one else is there but if you want to be so difficult, be my guest.”
“Bullshit,” Leo says, but his voice sounds brittle for a second. A blink-and-you-miss it. Sho doesn’t comment on it. Silence falls, but only for a second before Leo speaks again. “You have a kitchen, right? Make me more of that killer sauce. With the ghost peppers and whatever the fuck else you put in there.”
“You’re just going to eat it raw?”
“Fuck no. Make me something to go with it.” Leo has turned to face him now, chin slightly tilted upward. His expression is difficult to read in the dim light. “If it’s gross, I’m ditching.”
Sho decides not to point out that bringing Leo to his place is for Leo’s benefit, and not his own. He doesn’t really want Leo in his home, and he knows Leo doesn’t want to be there either. Their friendship has been built in the bustling streets of Shibuya and the corner of their cracked school roof. Not in a place of domestic vulnerability. It’s like shooting a piece of glass with a bullet. A Leo-shaped bullet.
“Whatever.”
Sho turns and starts to walk. He knows Leo is following without turning around, though, and they begin the long trek to Sho’s house.
His home isn’t anything to gawk at, but he’s conscious of the gap that lays between him and his little grating maniac of a friend. If Leo can even be called a friend. He keys in the gate code with efficiency, Leo hovering over his shoulder like an annoying gnat. One gate and set of double doors later, they’re standing in the foyer. It’s the same living space Sho’s always known: sleek, fancy and quiet. Their maid had gone home for the night, so it’s dead silent; he flips a switch, bathing the room in warm light.
“Home sweet home,” Sho mutters, toeing his shoes off at the door. Leo does the same behind him, unusually quiet.
That blessed silence lasts only two seconds.
“Oh my god. This place looks like a crappy display case.”
“Shut up.”
Leo just scoffs at him and drifts past. He starts inspecting the furniture, the trinkets displayed on the cabinets, pulling out drawers and mocking whatever he finds inside them. He looks out of place in his secondhand clothes, too big for his thin body. But his phone is out, cataloging everything he sees, and Sho watches with a measure of resigned exhaustion.
“How much is this?” Leo waves something at him – the lighting makes it impossible to see what it is. Probably something expensive.
“Dunno.” Sho walks to the kitchen, stretching so his shoulders crack a little. “Stop touching everything.”
“Make me.” But Leo does at least withdraw from poking rudely around Sho’s home and flounces to the bar stools in the corner. He rests his elbows on the counter in a blatant disrespect of etiquette and pulls out his phone again. “Whatcha cooking?”
“Calm down, I haven’t even started.” Sho has pulled out a cutting board and a polished pot from one of the lower cabinets. A bag of onions thumps onto the counter beside a few potatoes and carrots. “You’re getting curry. Don’t complain.”
“I don’t want carrots.” Leo’s suddenly abandoned his post at the stool and Sho nearly jumps out of his skin to see the other right behind him.
“Jesus fuck, dude!”
Leo sticks his tongue out at him and grins, a picture of innocence. It’s not a very friendly smile to most, but one Sho knows well. He pokes at where Sho had put the ingredients. “No carrots, Sho-chan.”
“God, okay. You’re such a whiner.” Sho pushes the carrots aside with a roll of his eyes. “Go sit down and wait for the food, jackass.”
“Boo~ Sho-chan’s mean~~” Leo pouts at him, eyes widening in a mock display of hurt. Sho shoves him away and Leo makes an affronted noise but at least doesn’t retaliate. It’s always a gamble with Leo, to see how he’ll react, but he seems to be in a decent mood despite the fact that he’s standing in the middle of Sho’s very expensive kitchen.
“Go sit down, man.”
“Asshole,” Leo mumbles, but he at least listens. He makes a show out of loudly dragging the stool back out and sitting down on it. His phone case jingles as the metal charms on it brushes against the counter.
Sho ignores him, the rhythmic thunk of the knife filling the kitchen. Onion first, then potatoes. No carrots, because Leo’s a horribly picky eater. Easy. Oil hisses softly when he drops the onions into the pot. The smell starts sweetening almost immediately.
He knows that if he turns around, he’ll see Leo on his phone. There’s no other reason for why the silence behind him is absolute.
“You find that guy’s fiancée’s socials yet?” He can’t help but speak to fill the silence. He’s usually fine with quiet – it means he doesn’t have to put up with Leo’s grating commentary. But for some reason, he finds himself grasping at the straws of a conversation.
Leo hums. “Yup~” He drags the word out obnoxiously. “It was stupidly easy. She’s got pictures with him all over her Instagram page. What a dumbass.”
It’s unclear if the crude word is directed to the suit or the woman engaged to him, but Sho doesn’t ask.
“You think she’s gonna believe it?”
“If she doesn’t, that’s her own funeral. I’ve got that video of him at the club too. You can obviously tell it’s him.”
Sho doesn’t really know what to say to that other than a grunt of acknowledgement. His attention is now fully on the pot of curry before him. Behind him, Leo has lapsed into silence again, the faint taptaptap of his fingers barely heard above the bubbling curry.
By the time the food is done and ready to be served, Leo looks remarkably bored. He looks up from his phone as Sho slides a plate in front of him, sharp eyes darting over the dish and up to Sho. “Sho-chan, where’s the sauce?”
“Let me breathe a sec,” Sho sighs, and puts down a bottle of hot sauce. Leo snatches it up immediately, cracking the lid open.
With Leo’s shitty tastebuds, Sho’s been at his wits end making stronger and stronger sauces for him. Just his luck that he’s stuck with an annoying ass who does nothing but bother him for food that he promptly drenches in sauce and kills all the flavor anyway.
True to pattern, Leo promptly dumps a sizeable portion of it all over the curry and then digs in. The sauce is more red than brown now, a gross reflection of every fucked up thing he puts into his body. With the way he eats it, no one would ever guess he’d just eaten a spoonful of something so spicy that it could light a small fire.
Sho watches for a moment in exasperation before plating a second portion for himself. He very decidedly does not use the hot sauce and instead eats it normally.
Part of him, in a way, is glad that Leo is eating most of the food in front of him, even if it’s covered in hot sauce. With how little he’s always eaten at school, Sho didn’t need a detective to put two and two together. Leo is picky as they come, but his demeanor and belongings speak for themselves.
“You can take my bed tonight,” Sho says between bites. He’d rolled around the idea in his head, debating whether to offer it, but the words tumble from his lips anyway, falling harshly into the space between them.
Leo pauses, gaze unreadable, before resuming eating in a methodical fashion. Sho doesn’t like that at all.
“Are you trying to get me to share the bed with you~?” His voice is lilting but his eyes don’t match the tone. “Aw, Sho-chan, you’re such a pervert.”
“Shut the fuck up, man, I’m offering. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Leo scowls at him, the weird flirtatious act dropping. “A place as fancy as shit doesn’t have a guest room? Could’ve fooled me.”
“It’s under renovation, asshole.” He almost says don’t be like that but stops himself in time. For some reason, he knows that making Leo get up and leave would be the worst possible outcome for tonight. “So take my bed. We don’t have to share if you–”
“Take a joke, will you?” Leo interrupts. There’s something in his eyes, almost challenging in the way he looks at Sho. “I don’t give a fuck if we share.”
He’s not exactly raising his voice but his words are barbed with unspoken insults, and further underneath, a challenging question. They’re meant to cut deep – not in what he says, but how he says it. It’s an acceptance of the situation, but a blatant rejection of it all the same.
But he still doesn’t get up and leave.
“Then stop being so fucking difficult.” Sho takes another bite of his curry. “We’ll never speak of it again, I don’t care. But I’m not walking back out into the cold tonight and it’s late as hell, so you should just stay over.”
Leo stares at him for a moment.
Sho doesn’t know everything about Leo. He’d be lying if he pretended he did. He doesn’t even really remember the details on how they became acquainted in the first place, how casual conversations turned into hanging out in the late hours under the Shibuya skyline. Sho never minded, because he’s grown used to it over time. Leo is an asshole. So is he. This is how things work. They don’t press, don’t ask, but between Leo’s crude words and Sho’s fists, they’ve created a cobbled together space that lets Sho breathe.
He’d wonder if Leo feels the same sometimes, but whenever the mask of confidence cracks, like tonight, he has no further reason for doubt.
“Fine.” Leo breaks eye contact first. He pushes off the stool with a strangled huff. The legs screech against the polished hardwood. “I’m using your bathroom.”
“Third door on the left,” Sho says.
Leo gives no indication of whether he’s heard him or not but Sho hears a door slam shut down the hallway and the sound of running water. Guess he’s found it.
He finishes his food in silence before collecting both his and Leo’s plates. By the time he’s finished rinsing them off and starting the washer, the water had stopped running. But Leo still hasn’t emerged from the bathroom.
Sho heads to his bedroom next, rummaging around the drawers until he finds what could pass as extra sleepwear. He puts it on the table across the hall from the bathroom and raps on the door.
“Leo, you can use the clothes out here.”
There’s a pause. “‘Kay~ You better not be giving me junk.”
Sho rolls his eyes and retreats back into his bedroom, changing into sleepwear himself. It feels weird to have someone over, much less someone like Leo. So many years of knowing him and Leo had never stepped foot in Sho’s home. Sho had never asked to be invited to Leo’s either – that was a transgression even he knew not to cross.
Suddenly, he’s filled with a weird, uneasy feeling, one that he quickly tries to quash. If this had broken anything between them, Leo would have left already. If there’s something Sho can rely on, it’s Leo’s reactions, no matter how caustic or irritating they may be. The fact that Leo had agreed to stay the night is enough, but the discomfort at the sudden clarity of his actions makes Sho regret inviting him at all.
“What are you doing?” Leo’s voice is needling, and Sho looks up to see the other wearing his clothes, hair a bit damp.
Sho is taller and larger than Leo, so if Leo’s regular clothes didn’t already hang off him at loose angles, Sho’s clothes nearly envelops him. The sight is unidentifiably uncomfortable, but Sho hides it behind a scoff and smirk.
“Waiting for your slow ass to be done. I’m gonna clean up. Make yourself at home or whatever.”
He ignores Leo’s look of disbelief as he shoulders past him in the doorway and enters the bathroom himself.
The bathroom here had always been a sterile thing to him, even if he’d made a mess of the interior. With someone else using it, it feels strange to see the imprints of evidence: the slight streaks of fading condensation on the mirror, the scent of his own shampoo, the few drops of water still clinging to the showerhead. Sho goes through his nighttime routine, almost mechanically, trying to put any stray thoughts out of his head.
Before long, he finds himself back in his bedroom. Leo has taken a seat on the bed, legs crossed, scrolling through his phone. He looks both tense and comfortable at the same time, like he’s arrogantly claiming the space as his without knowing what to do with it. Sho sits down on the other edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight.
“Scoot over, you’re hogging.”
Leo makes a disgruntled noise but does as asked, eerily without comment. He takes to leaning against the headboard, phone still in his hand. Sho leans over and flicks off the light, plunging the room into semi-darkness, illuminated only by the moon outside and the glow from Leo’s phone screen.
He doesn’t particularly care if Leo sleeps or not, so Sho lays down, turning away from Leo and closing his eyes.
After what seems like an eternity, he hears and feels Leo shift. There’s a faint click as the other turns off his phone and the mattress wobbles slightly as Leo moves to lay down as well. Sho keeps his breathing steady and even throughout, even if his ears remain tuned to the person laying beside him.
He wonders faintly if Leo will be able to sleep, what it might mean if he does, what he’d do if he doesn’t. For all he knows, Leo could just decide to leave in an hour anyway, could trash his home, do whatever he wants and Sho wouldn’t be able to do a thing. But he finds that he isn’t worried about those possibilities, not when sleep is tugging at him, a promise of relaxation in the midst of the weirdest night he’s ever spent with Leo since they’ve met.
Right before his dreams take him, he realizes, this is kind of like one of those dumb sleepovers. Then, nothing.