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For a while after Jo came back, Yuma prowled around him at an odd distance, squinting, observing, like a cat whose owner had just gotten back from vacation and smelled wrong.
It was still Jo, obviously. Most of the time he was just as he’d been before, soft and quiet and retiring, inclined to show his affection in less obvious ways than the rest of them. He did carry himself straighter, with more outward confidence, and to everyone’s delight, he’d gained another few degrees of security in their love and was yet more willing to push back and riposte and tease when it was the time for that.
Their Jo, but more of him, once again showing off his impressive capacity for growth.
There was just… something else in there, something Yuma couldn’t quite put his finger on, that made him a little wary. He didn’t like that. It felt absurd to be cautious of Jo, like being suspicious of his own left elbow.
And yet.
It took a while to come together. None of the pieces were all that obvious. An amused smile where there would once have been a self-effacing half-grin. A hand brushing over Yuma’s back as Jo squeezed past him in the hallway, when he would normally have flattened himself to avoid presumptuous contact, however welcome. The absence of a blush when Maki complimented his styling before a performance, the tiny suggestion of a grin in its place.
It wasn’t just confidence. Jo had been gaining that in jumps and starts since even before they’d debuted, and they recognized it when that happened and were happy.
It was more… more like….
Yuma just could not pin it down.
Maybe he just couldn’t see from that distance. Maybe it would be more visible up close.
Hm. Still no? Maybe closer still.
“Yuma-kun,” Jo said. “Can I help you?”
Abruptly, Yuma realized that he was peering at Jo’s face from all of twenty centimetres away, most of that distance vertical. He hadn’t meant to get quite this literally up in Jo’s face, but his immediate instinct whenever caught in an embarrassing moment was to lean in, so he didn’t back away. “Dunno,” he said, tilting his head to observe the angle of Jo’s jawline, in case the key to the mystery resided in the hollow behind where it met his ear. “There’s just something.”
Jo was watching him intently, but he wasn’t blushing, despite the perilous proximity. Amused, affectionate… comfortable.
“Something…?”
“Different about you.”
Yuma jabbed him in the chest as if testing to see if he was still the same familiar flesh and blood, and Jo flinched and laughed, and caught his hands to prevent him from doing it again. And held them.
“Different how?”
Staring down at their hands, at Jo holding his hands without immediately letting go and apologizing and going red, Yuma got his teeth into the tail end of the thing and yanked.
“You’re not shy anymore,” he said, slowly. “Or at least, not as shy as you were. Did something change when you were off on your solo sched?”
Jo went still. He didn’t let go of Yuma’s hands, but he did draw back a quarter of a step, looking for air. His dark eyes were calm, serious, thoughtful. The slightest feathered furrow drew down his brows. “I guess something did, yeah,” he said, after a pause. “I didn’t realize.”
Impatient suddenly, Yuma pulled his hands free and resumed poking him, here there and everywhere, trying to flush the difference from the bushes so he could pin it down properly. Here on his shoulder? Here on his hip? Here in his side?
Catching his hands again, Jo held them more firmly this time, a little stern. “Stop that.”
“What is it?” Yuma asked plaintively. It was no fun to ask right out, but he was at his wit’s end and just needed to know. “Come on.”
It often took Jo a few moments to gather his thoughts. It took him a double handful this time, but he got there. “I guess it’s basically just like… I couldn’t relate to some aspects of my character, so I had to work really hard to get into those corners of his head. But when it clicked, it kind of… stuck.”
“…In what way?” Yuma asked, feeling the unconscious guardedness rising up again and resenting it.
Jo shrugged. “Don’t really know how to explain it, exactly. I guess it’s just… I had to learn to be someone who liked touching people, and didn’t feel anxious about it, and liked it when people wanted him to touch them. He assumed people would tell him if they didn’t like anything, and trusted himself to notice even if they didn’t. It just kind of… shifted something. In my head.”
A scalding blush crept rapidly up Yuma’s neck to his ears and over his cheek as he listened, spine straightening, fingers twitching spasmodically in Jo’s grip. He saw it, now. Oh, he saw it, and he was way too close now but couldn’t get away without embarrassing himself.
Swallowing, he tried for a teasing grin. It came out a bit shaky and lopsided. “You’re telling me you’ve got game now?”
One of Jo’s eyebrows twitched up, and the corner of his mouth followed it into a little grin. “Maybe?”
Oh, that was awful. Catastrophic. Unacceptable. Jo had already been wildly dangerous with just his face alone, and the breathtaking gap between his onstage and offstage demeanour. If he’d figured out how to touch people, finally, and do it in a way that he liked, and enjoy it if they liked it, everyone was fucking doomed, the end.
“Prove it,” Yuma whispered breathily, like a complete idiot.
That should have made Jo scramble back, hands up, scarlet and stammering. Instead he leaned down and closed half the remaining distance between his face and Yuma’s, searching Yuma’s eyes intently. “Prove it how, exactly?”
Yuma’s brain went violently offline, but his mouth kept going without the benefit of rational thought behind it. “You like it when people want you to touch them, right? And you like doing it? So touch me. I really want you to touch me.”
Jo’s eyes widened, but only subtly, and only for a fraction of a moment. Then he smiled with devastating fondness and said, “Sure. Let me show you something I just got a lot of practice at.”
He released Yuma’s hands to cradle Yuma’s face instead and kissed him with all the brutal certainty he always had about things he’d practiced long and hard and properly and knew beyond a doubt he could pull off. Unhurried. Unhesitating. Fully focused on the moment trapped between their teeth.
The worst thing was that he’d already been a good kisser before, when he’d been given the opportunity to demonstrate, during the bottle game. He’d already been attentive and deliberate about it. This was easily six times worse, because Yuma could tell he was actually getting something out of it back.
Yuma groaned and leaned up into him. “I believe you,” he said, half into Jo’s mouth, “but don’t stop.”
Jo laughed — a warm and beautiful sound — and didn’t.
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