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Yuma wanted. Yuma yearned. Yuma craved.
He’d thought he would be able to handle it. That it would be a small price to pay for living his dream. He hadn’t been entirely wrong, even. It was a small price. Only it was due in a currency he had very little of.
Harua knew, and understood, and had tried to give him what he needed, but it hadn’t really worked. Harua was hungry too, wanted too, but didn’t want him. Not like that, anyway.
Beyond Harua, though, it seemed to Yuma that his options boiled down to people who would never say yes and people he could never bear to ask.
There were some assumptions that were so old that he’d forgotten he could question them.
Of course Fuma wouldn’t say yes. Of course Jo wouldn’t say yes. Of course not.
Unfortunately, it was Maki who changed things.
Yuma really hated owing Maki anything.
“It’s been three years,” he pointed out, having overheard a conversation with Taki that wasn’t any of his business.
Taki hadn’t questioned the assumptions either, because he wasn’t interested in changing anything on that front for himself.
“So?” Yuma asked defensively.
“So,” Maki said patiently, “we’ve been together for a long time. We’ve gone through all kinds of stuff. Things have changed. I don’t think anyone would get weird or upset about it if you just asked.”
“That’s probably true,” Taki agreed after a moment of thought. “I don’t think it would hurt to try.”
So Yuma went back to his room and thought about it. He thought about it for a long time. Laid awake thinking about it, spent all his break time the next day thinking about it, laid awake the next night too, then dreamed about it.
He went to Nicholas, with whom he’d first challenged the boundary, too hard and too early.
It had started with the silly skit during the tour, where they’d pretended to be lovers having a fight and making up mouth-to-mouth in the middle, forgetting what they were fighting about.
While recreating that outside the show, on camera during content filming, he’d missed the timing of the fake-out and made contact. It couldn’t actually be called a kiss, being so accidental and slipshod, but the next one — off-camera and on purpose — could.
They’d done it a couple more times after that, cautiously, until Yuma had relaxed into one a little too far and let it deepen, at which point he had panicked and slammed the door and kept it shut so long that going out again seemed ever more impossible. For nearly eight months, he’d been a porcupine, yearning to do it again but terrified of the consequences to the point of nausea.
K had helped him mend the gap, when he’d finally gotten up the courage to confess, but having Nicholas so close again, touching Yuma constantly to reassure himself that things were really okay again, was a challenge.
And then they’d had the Talk, and it had become fine for them all to kiss each other whenever the mood struck, and the nauseating potential consequences abruptly no longer loomed overhead.
And he still wanted.
So. Awkwardly, with more than a few scowls and sour faces, he managed to explain all that to Nicholas, who was initially amazed, then thoughtful, then understanding.
“So basically,” said Yuma, “I was fine with wanting to kiss some of the others, because I knew it was safe, I knew they’d never say yes so nothing could really get messed up. Like, I can be totally open about wanting to smooch Fuma-san’s face off, because I know it won’t go anywhere, it can just be laughed off as a joke.”
“I… really don’t think that’s true,” Nicholas said, carefully, “but okay.”
“But you,” Yuma continued, ignoring that with great determination. “It wasn’t safe with you, because you said yes. You let me get way too close and start messing things up. And when I realized that, I freaked out.”
Nicholas frowned. “Sorry, are you saying it’s my fault?”
Yuma scowled again, tasting acid at the back of his tongue. “No. Ugh. I’m trying to apologize. Again. I was dumb and handled it badly and I wish I’d been more mature about it instead of, y’know, freezing you out.”
Nicholas was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Apology accepted,” he said, slowly, “again, but… why now?”
An unlovely flush crept up Yuma’s neck and ears. “Well, uh. We had that big talk and everything, and played spin the bottle to boot, and the world didn’t end, so… That was the whole reason I freaked out, and now it’s not a thing anymore. I guess I just. Ugh. Ugh.”
He wished he’d spent a little more time thinking about how exactly to phrase all this before barging in and throwing the whole mess down on the table, but it was too late now. He just had to muddle through, but he wasn’t doing a great job of it.
Nicholas, thankfully, was a lot more sensitive and emotionally intelligent than Yuma was. He found the end of the tangled labyrinth of string and tugged it gently until it unravelled, reaching out to take Yuma’s hand as he did so.
“What I’m hearing,” he said, sitting too close now, thigh to thigh and radiating gentle warmth, “is that you still want to kiss me, and now that it’s okay, you’re wondering if I’d still let you.”
Yuma let out a long, long sigh so strangled it came out more like a growl, low in his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Pretty much.”
“Okay,” said Nicholas, with a nod and a particularly beautiful smile. “In that case: yeah. I’ll totally still let you. Do you want to? Now?”
Yuma did. Yuma very much did. Enough to brute-force his way through the awkwardness and embarrassment and outright humiliation he felt, and lean his shoulder hard into Nicholas as he turned his head over and upwards.
Nicholas met him halfway, sighing through his nose and melting into it with a palpable sense of relief.
The big stupid gash Yuma had inflicted on the bond between them had already healed a lot after K’s mediation and their subsequent conversations, but this picked the last shard of glass out of it and let the remainder finally close over.
Things could be okay, now, so sooner rather than later, they would be. He didn’t have to be scared anymore. He could let the fear go.
Which left all the room inside him open for wanting.
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