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"I hear if you get below three hundred thousand points, a giant's boot comes down from the ceiling and squishes you flat."
At Ouma's sudden assertion, Saihara's neck judders and eyebrows scrunch. While it isn't the leader's most outrageous lie of the day, it is the first sentence uttered since Momota and Harukawa left them alone in the enormous playing card maze designating the line for Cowboy Story Mania. For several minutes, Saihara has been searching for something to say to his long-time friend, but found his tongue plugging up his esophagus whenever he caught sight of the dollop of sunscreen outlining Ouma's nose bridge, the checkered sweatband rising his bangs, or especially the tank top hanging off one shoulder.
It's usually not this difficult to be in Ouma's presence. Why is it so difficult today?
"Helloooo? Earth to Saihara?"
"Ah—!" Clenching his fist at his chest, he apologizes, "Uh, sorry. I was just lost in thought." After another breath to recall what he's been asked, he posits, "Where would the amusement park even be hiding a giant?"
"Hmm, probably in the same place they're storing all the bodies of guests who break the park rules." Ouma's finger glides to the vertex of his devilish smile. "It's 'the most magical place on earth,' riiiiight? I bet they can do anything. Including smooshing you into paste when you lose this shooting game to moi~"
Saihara's eyes drift to the collection of two-sided, carnival-style trams whirling on the loading platform just ahead, before disappearing into a cavern of screens occupants aim their spring-loaded firearms at. "If you say so."
An orange stripe ignites across Ouma's eyeline before vanishing. "What's that tone for, huh? Don't think I can do it?"
"Well, I more meant the 'smooshing to paste' thing—" When Ouma's lips drop into a knowing expression, Saihara backtracks: "I-it just doesn't look very… difficult? Compared to the hoop toss, I mean…"
He purposefully neglects to remind the high-strung leader of Saihara's win at hoop toss earlier that day. Or, rather, decimation.
Swampy black gores open Ouma's smile like a bog bubbling on his face. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're challenging me~"
Saihara's lips lift but hastily tug back down. "Hm, maybe. Though it might not be all that, ah, challenging."
Morbidly succulent is the way Ouma's eyebrows shoot up his forehead before trickling back into place. For a moment, he doesn't speak. Doesn't move, either, despite dirty glances shot at him from farther down the line.
Finally, a smirk slithers back up his cheeks and he skips just ahead of Saihara, who follows behind. "How rude of you, Shumai! If you wanted to duel with the Supreme Leader of All Evil, you only needed to ask!" Without warning, he halts, wiggling his eyebrows when Saihara nearly rams into his back. "Let us battle, then!! Who will triumph in this death-defying, ultra risky match? Take your bets now, my money's on the shortie with the disgustingly handsome face."
"To the death, I'm guessing?"
"Nishishi, and here I was just thinking you'd have to buy me an ice cream or something. But I eagerly accept, to the death it is!!" Ouma punctuates it with a nudge to Saihara's shoulder just as they reach the receiving gate and the detective's heart misfires like a jammed assault rifle. "I didn't think you'd be so dramatic, Saihara."
Grappling with his instinct to splutter, he instead presses beyond the opening gate, adorns a complimentary pair of 3-D glasses, and settles beneath the lap bar of the cart. It's cramped enough that, when Ouma claims the spot beside him, their shoulders and thighs are touching. A thought Saihara wrenches himself away from. Or attempts to. It's becoming increasingly more difficult the more Ouma wiggles in place like a jungle cat preparing to pounce.
Calm down… What's with me today?
A jingle blares over the interior speakers closest to Saihara's ear before the tram lurches along the track, plunging them into cybernated darkness. Ouma winds the cartoonish, spring-loaded gun affixed to the front dashboard and tugs at the pull-string with a grin far too diabolical for such a childlike place.
"Ready to eat my dust~?" he coos.
Saihara can't decide if such a grin is broiling his gut or his cheeks more.
"I'll be sure to wave when I lap you."
Another jostle of the cart brings them before a set of screens, cartoon barn and animals dressed in circular targets popping in his glasses as a timer counts down to zero.
And they're off!
With no prior experience in this game, Saihara sets his sights on prioritizing accuracy and highest point percentages. That would be— he sways his firearm— the two pigs at the top corners and the hens scrambling across the bottom. A viable strategy, at least he thinks so.
Ouma's strategy, however, appears to be shooting literally everything.
His fingers tug and reset the cord so quick it's a blur of flesh and molded plastic, spraying a tsunami of digital bullets across the screen. In such quantities Saihara can't even see his own bullets, much less strike his targets on time.
This is going to be an issue.
Ouma cackles when the timer concludes once more and the tram wrenches sideways, pointing a finger at their scores on the center console screen. "Woooow, I didn't think Saihara-chan would be that bad! And after such a cool line. I bet you're praying for your life to be spared right now, huh~?"
"It's only the first round. I'm getting used to how you play."
Mimicking him with his hand, Ouma playfully mocks, "Wah wah wah, all I'm hearing are big, fat excuses."
Saihara bumps his shoulder, earning a giggle from them both. "There's still plenty of time to change the scores."
"Oh I'm so scared." Their cart lurches to a stop in front of another wall of screens, now swarming with balloons. "Better pick how you wanna be executed 'cause you're in for a—!"
As soon as the GO! springs up the display, Saihara strikes while the iron is hot.
This time around, accuracy slips from his focus entirely. Instead, he's taking a leaf from Ouma's book: shooting as many darts in as short of time as possible, but only in targeted diagonals where he anticipates the highest-score balloons appearing.
Ouma gasps, yanking at his pull cord with a scattered range of attack just as before. But he's no match. Before the boy can let loose even a dozen darts, Saihara has already wiped the most valuable balloons from the playing area. Leaving him with practically nothing of worth to bag.
The counter concludes and Ouma throttles back in his seat. "No fair, you dirty, scummy cheater!! You bribed the park manager into giving you a gun with real bullets, I know you did—!"
"What was that about excuses, Ouma?"
If looks can kill, Ouma's expression may spawn a massacre. Although a shiver crawls up Saihara's spine, he refuses to back down. Only smirks. Triumphant, cheeky, daring.
"Oh," Ouma murmurs, "you're so fucking on, detective."
Chuckling, Saihara paws at the pull cord once more in preparation for shattering the computerized dinner plates teasing across the next screen. Already, he's eyeing the battle tank with raised cutlery far more prizable than its surroundings. If he secures them quick enough, he reckons an Easter Egg of some kind will promise even more points, as he's noted in previous—
"Heyyy Saihara-chan, I hate to tell you this but you've got a big, nasty scorpion on your shoulder."
He withers, barely debating if it's truth before rotating his neck and mumbling, "I think you'd be reacting worse if there was— mmph!!"
There was something awaiting him on his shoulder, after all.
Ouma's lips.
So abruptly is Saihara being kissed that every neuron in his brain fires a signal mismatch and subsequently blanks. Sensation drips in the cavern left behind by context: fingers cupping his cheeks, warm lips writing circles in his mouth, taste of the lemony pancake stack Ouma downed for brunch, frantic ba-dump ba-dump ba-ba-dumps! pounding in his eardrums. Overstimulating, unbearably so— thrashing Saihara's stomach in a manner so conflicting it may actually be the most comfortable he's ever felt in his life and he would never know—
Then it's over.
Saihara blinks, lips unlinked and 3-D glasses hanging halfway off his face as his mind's receptors attempt to wad his memory into an understandable globe. There's darkness, intermittent flashes of light, crackled voices over too-loud speakers, Ouma's gun furiously shooting all the plates on the—
"H-hey, hey!!"
Violently snapping back into his own body, Saihara grips his toy firearm and aims for the tank. But no targets remain and the timer reaches zero, leaving behind a staggering tram and abysmal score for the novice detective.
A smirk meets his glare, far less pink than Saihara imagines his face is shaded.
"Whoops! Looks like you were too distracted for that one! Aren't detective supposed to be prepared for anything~? You should thank me for teaching you a valuable lesson." Ouma's giggles expand like acidic balloons as he rotates toward the alien whack-a-mole prepping on the screen. "At this rate, you won't even make it to a hundred thousand—!"
The wisecrack thaws into a gasp, one swallowed by Saihara's lips.
Unlike when Ouma kissed him, Saihara doesn't touch his partner. That's not the point, after all. Sucking at his top lip and nibbling on his bottom is all about vengeance— a "How do you like it now, huh?" Saihara so infrequently gets to impress on the other. Isn't it uncomfortable, those confused moths darting up your stomach? Isn't it igniting questions and dilemmas like New Year's sparklers, too searing to touch but too wondrous to avert your eyes from? Feel the way I do. I want you to be confused the way you confuse me.
…and to lose.
A shrill ringing sound announces the next round and Saihara begins withdrawing to surely knock Ouma's lead out of the park.
But there's no doing it. Not when Ouma's fingers snake into Saihara's collar, yank him forward, and they're kissing again.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
The taste is familiar, the lips are familiar. But now Ouma winds his other hand through the hair at Saihara's nape and whines something so destitute that logic all but bursts. Just as the bubble of tension enveloping them bursts— sideways glances, unintentional touching, and flirtatious jabs swelling in a tidal bore of sensations at their connected lips. Only made more electrifying by their interconnected chests— hearts booming in a percussion symphony.
Ouma is so eager, pressing against Saihara's lips and body as if to topple him over the tram's edge. Every kiss he offers is hasty, taking Saihara in and spitting him out and starting the cycle all over again, like a starving predator shredding its meal. At this speed, Saihara can barely return each kiss— barely see over the dizzying storm cloud of Ouma rendering him limber. Thus, he slams the gavel down.
At the next contact, Saihara latches ungently onto Ouma's lips for a deep, long kiss. A proper kiss.
Another sound diffuses in his mouth, but whether whine or growl he can't judge before Ouma returns fire by plunging his tongue inside. Saihara's hips unwittingly buck into nothing and embarrassed heat crooks from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. When Ouma only chuckles into his throat, he mewls in an effort to reciprocate— push flat against the muscle tracing the insides of his mouth to defer the duel back into Ouma's home territory. To prove Saihara is a willing, formidable participant in this game they're playing.
Sickeningly, sinfully— Saihara's slipping fingers beneath the spaghetti straps of Ouma's tank top to grip his bare shoulders, and Ouma's hand is wandering beneath his shirt to rest flat on his chest. No doubt, he can feel both the fervent sweat and rampaging heart easier this way, but let him. Let Ouma feel how worked up he's made Saihara by being a stubborn, competitive jackass who pulls underhanded tricks and spouts outlandish tales for the hell of it and feels so fucking good in his mouth—
"Wow, everyone's a winner!! Thanks for playing, partner!"
…oh.
Saihara detaches the kiss and immediately gulps in disregarded oxygen. A toy cowboy and sheep shepherd stand where his gaze lands, comparing ending scores on the screen with another triumphant ditty.
Their numbers are abysmal. But Ouma's are, regardless, leagues ahead.
Blinking, Saihara orbits his vision back down to the boy beside him and his heart jackrabbits afresh at the sight of puffed lips and an immovable stare, 3-D glasses hanging off an ear. Then downward still it travels, landing on Ouma's hand. Still beneath his shirt.
Just as it jerks away.
That hand settles on brushing down Ouma's shirt as if clearing it of crumbs. Cheeks full of air and eyes elsewhere, he mutters, "Looks like I won."
Saihara gapes, before he clears his throat and wades fingers through his damp bangs. "I would argue you played dirty."
"Me? Dirty?" Light swarms as the track dips downward back into the loading platform, lap bars relaxing. Ouma darts out like a rabbit from its burrow, his back to Saihara and hands behind his head. "Only if you're good, Shumai~"
Saihara chokes on air, while Ouma only simpers in triumph and rotates on his heels, a tell-tale sign of him gearing up to sprint off.
Before he can, however, Saihara hastens to climb out of the tram and catch Ouma's hand. It flinches, though subtly, and he loosens his grip in good sportsmanship— lax enough to allow retreat, but inflexible enough to convey how much he doesn't want him to.
"W-wait," he stammers, scrambling for words stolen by Ouma's tongue. "Please, wait for me. Let's see the rest of the park together."
Ouma's lips press into a thin line, while his pupils flick down and up as if dissecting Saihara open where he stands. Uncharacteristically unsure, for the man who was so confidently chasing saliva from Saihara a moment ago. But, perhaps, that wasn't entirely confident, either. Maybe it was just another lie.
Finally, Ouma's fingers tighten around Saihara's and a grin lifts the corners of his cheeks. "Nishishi! Wellll I guess if you want to settle the score, then sure! Onto the next one, subordinate! Together!"