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“Thank you for letting us stay over tonight, Shiraishi.”
“You don't gotta be so conscientious, Toya!” An said with a playful slap to her teammate's back as the boys passed through her opened door. “Your partner could be a bit more grateful, though.”
“I brought the snacks… Ain't that enough?” said Akito in a rather matter-of-fact tone with a low-effort raise of the plastic bag in his hand. To be fair, exceedingly casual acts of service were his typical mode of affection, so it was easier than usual to justify not kicking him in the shins.
“Is Azusawa already here?” Toya questioned as they ventured further into the house, familiar enough with the layout that they could start the journey toward the living room without waiting for her lead.
“Yup! She got here a couple hours ago!” An nodded as she followed along. “Mom totally hounded her with questions, though… She looked like she was about to pop.”
“Makes sense.” Akito shrugged, a bit of color in his cheeks as he recalled the first time Toya met his family. “If my kid brought somebody home, I'd wanna know all about ‘em too.”
“I'm not sure that would work out in my case…” Toya chuckled, throwing out depressing words with a casual tone as he seemed to have an eternal talent for. “I'd have to let father get used to having Akito's scent in the house before allowing any face-to-face contact, just to avoid territorial disputes.”
“Ain't that how you introduce dogs to each other…?”
“Kohaneee~” An called out as they veered through the doorway, conveniently steering the conversation in a different direction. “I'm back! Now we can get this movie night started!”
“Just don't pick any lame chick flicks this time.” Akito vetoed with a huff, depositing the snacks onto the table as his partner offered their tiny groupmate a proper greeting.
“Is it any better than that monster movie you wanted to watch?” An pouted right back, smacking Akito's arm as he rudely seized the liberty of sitting on the cushion farthest from Kohane. “There was barely any plot!”
“Better than havin’ nothing interesting to look at.” Akito fired back with a shrug. “I'm no movie director, but I know crappy editing when I see it.”
“I'm literally gonna beat you up.” An groaned, partially making good on her statement when she bapped Akito again.
“P-please calm down, you two…” Kohane ended up sighing out, because of course her first word of the evening would be a plea for Akito and An to stop trying to pounce each other.
“Yeah yeah…” Akito sighed in tandem with An heeling to the tug upon her leash. “Oi, Toya. Come sit next to me.”
“I was waiting to see which seat Shiraishi would pick.” explained Toya from his quiet position on the sideline. “This is her house, after all.”
“That's why you're the best, Toya!” An immediately praised with a pat on her teammate's shoulder. “Glad somebody gets it, at least…”
“I sat here so you'd have room to sit by Kohane…” Akito grumbled as the rest of the team settled in – in the exact manner Akito presumed, as fate would have it. He chose to leave out that the alternate and far more important reason for his choice of seat was guaranteeing Toya would get the best viewing spot.
“Oh, by the way…” Toya began, opening up the bag that had been slung at his side this entire time. “If nobody has any objections, I actually brought some American movies that Slade gifted to me.”
“Don't tell me we're turning this into an English lesson…” Akito instantly groaned, a sentiment that was visibly shared by An as they sensed the impending mutilation of what was meant to be a relaxing night in.
“Of course not.” Toya shook his head, much to the relief of his teammates and their mutual bated breath. “I simply thought these would be fun to watch together.”
“Aren't these all horror films…?” Kohane questioned as Toya produced the cases from his bag, instantly turning her partner's face pale at the mere mention.
“Yes. Most of them are from the mid 70s to late 80s, I noticed.” Toya explained as he laid up the last of the movies on the table. “Of course, if anyone's uncomfortable with watching, we can choose something else…”
This development ended up creating an unexpected dilemma for Akito in particular. He usually did his best to hide it, but he absolutely sucked at anything involving horror. He couldn't even handle as much as that crappy haunted house at Kohane's school festival, let alone a full-length film shot by professionals…
On the other hand, Toya was visibly excited to share these movies with the squad, and that was always his Achilles’ heel. Over the course of their partnership, Akito had done all sorts of embarrassing things solely to make Toya happy – playing Print Stickers, choreographing for an obnoxious senpai, even entering a dog disc competition… Much to his own dismay, it seemed he'd be adding something new to the laundry list tonight.
“Y-yeah. That's fine.” said Akito with a decisive gulping down of the frog lodged in his throat. “Which one are we startin’ with?”
“Wh- Yeah! It's totally cool!” An declared twice as loudly, though it was rather obvious she was only doing so to save her ego from the inevitable bruising it would receive by being the only one to chicken out.
“I see… That's wonderful.” said Toya with a smile, bright enough that Akito could confirm then and there that whatever came next would be worth it. “Then let's start with… this one.”
Within only a few minutes, the disc had popped into the player and the movie began to play. The film began with a darkened shot of an awful storm, the cling of static making it difficult to see what exactly the camera was in such a rush to pan through. The musical score was dramatic to the point that it was nearly corny – absolutely nothing like what you'd see in a modern film – but it still did strangely well in making one tense up with anticipation.
Finally, the lens settled on the window of a house, after which the shot changed to show a half-dressed girl in her bedroom. Immediately, it felt gratuitous enough to make Akito cringe. Why were Americans obsessed with sneaking so many boob shots into their movies…?
The music lowered itself to a subtle hum in the background, almost like it had been left outside, as the girl clasped on her bra and began to pamper herself in front of her vanity. It didn't really make sense for her to partially dress and then start doing her makeup, but whatever. The motive was clearly to give her something to distract herself with as the camera changed to a POV shot behind her.
The music swelled ever so slightly, its pitch shrill as the mysterious second figure slowly crept out of the closet. The girl remained ignorant to who – or what – was behind her, allowing it to encroach unobstructed until finally…
“BOO!” called a voice as the camera changed to jumpscare the viewer with a monster's face over the girl's shoulder. Akito unconsciously jumped at the suddenness of it, a little grunt of surprise – which might as well have been mute in comparison to An's shriek – forced from his throat.
A moment later, the girl tore off the monster mask of her ‘assailant’, smacking it over the head of the child who had scared her. According to the subsequent dialogue, it seemed these two were meant to be brother and sister, though it was difficult to get immersed in that dynamic when the actress was visibly at least 30 years old trying to act like a teenager…
“Are you alright, An-chan?” Kohane quietly asked as the movie slowed its pace, cuddled up to her partner's arm as if protecting her from the scares ahead.
“Y-yeah! Nothing bad's really happened yet.” An tried her best to sound convincing, though her face was nearly void of circulation. “They really got me with that one part, though…”
“That's cuz you're a total wuss.” Akito played it casual with a shrug, punctuating the cheeky insult by tossing a piece of popcorn into his mouth.
“What about you, Akito?” Toya asked sincerely, a gentle hand placed upon his partner's shoulder. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Of course I am…” Akito huffed, sulking at the (evidently correct) notion that he'd let himself get spooked by some crappy 80s horror movie. “I'm not a little kid, y'know.”
“I'm aware. I just felt it was my duty as your partner to check up on you.” Toya spoke with an affectionate pat to his partner’s shoulder before returning his attention to the movie – though Akito's cheeks had suddenly turned far pinker for it.
With that, the film continued. The girl who'd gotten jumpscared earlier met up with her boyfriend, as well as two other people who were presumably the same age… despite also looking about a decade late to the casting call. Together, they attended a Halloween carnival, which was clearly meant to be the movie's main setting if the box art spoke to anything.
“...Dude, why is there another sex scene?” Akito commented less than 30 seconds later. He thought maybe they'd finally gotten to the actual scary part of the movie, but apparently it was way more important to watch this dude – whose name hadn't even been said onscreen yet, Akito just realized – screw his girlfriend for the third time in the last half hour.
“Apparently, this was a very common horror subgenre at the time.” said Toya as the very awkward and exceedingly fake-sounding scene continued. “Cedric said they're called ‘exploitation films’. Low budget works that chase trends and capitalize on shock value.”
“And that means I've gotta look at this guy's ass more than his face…?”
“Apparently so.”
Finally, after half the runtime was devoured by unnecessary exposition and excessive nudity, the plot moved forward. The four teens snuck into the carnival's funhouse after dark, only to be chased throughout by a deformed monster (that was clearly just a guy in a mask) armed with a hatchet. Despite the outdated practical effects at play, it was still a little tense watching as they ducked and dodged trying to evade the killer's notice.
At some point, the second girl got separated from the rest of the group and ended up in a hallway with a huge fan at the end… because that made sense. She panicked when the killer appeared down the end she wandered in from, stumbling on absolutely nothing and starting to wail as he slowly approached. To be blunt, though, her performance was the farthest thing from convincing.
“Come on, get up and run already…!” An urged, shaking Kohane's arm as if sharing a hair color with the character onscreen somehow formed a psychic bond between the two. Shockingly, it didn't work, forcing the girl to level herself onto her knees and start pleading for her life.
“Wait!” she shouted out, to which the killer actually stopped the imminent swing of his hatchet for whatever reason was meant to be apparent. “I-I know what you really want! You just want somebody to love you, right?”
“...Dude, this writing sucks.” Akito immediately griped as he watched the blonde pretend to debase herself for the cheaply costumed monster… only to then slap him and start screaming in place like she'd just forgotten the last 2 minutes. “Does Slade seriously like this crap?”
“A lot of Americans do, it would seem.” Toya responded with a shrug, eyes still glued to the screen despite one of his palms finding its way to Akito's thigh. “It's called… ‘camp’, apparently.”
“Huh…? Camp...? Like camping...?” Akito squinted as he tried to decipher the word in his head, ironically bad enough at English slang that their western colleagues probably saw him as way more polite a person than he actually was.
“No. Not in this context, anyway.” Toya chuckled, patting twice where his hand lay as if hoping to quell Akito's brainache with the touch. “It's supposed to describe something that's so exaggerated and ridiculous it loops back around to being entertaining.”
“Huh…” Akito droned in partial understanding, only to jump when finally the girl took a hatchet to the face with an excessively unrealistic splatter of blood. Before, he probably would've thought ‘This is stupid, there's no way she'd die so fast’ – but surprisingly enough, discarding his usual instincts of seriousness drastically improved the viewing experience. Instead of whining about the lack of realism, he found himself amused by how ridiculous the whole scene was.
Wow… Americans really were talented at turning trash into treasure. Unfortunately, that didn't stop Akito's heart from dropping to his ass every time the movie pulled out a cheap jumpscare. Setting aside shitty writing and his own wanton patheticness, it still got the blood pumping to watch the killer pop out from behind corner after corner as it hunted down the remaining teens.
“Are you sure you're fine, Akito?” Toya murmured at some point, hushing his voice to deliver the query while the girls were still distracted by the present chase scene.
“Y-yeah, totally…” groaned Akito, though he knew damn well he wasn't fooling anyone when the color had long since drained from his face.
“I'm here for you if you need me, you know.” Toya continued with an idle stroke of his thumb, and it wasn't until then that Akito noticed that hand had never left his thigh – until now, anyway. Toya's hand snaked its way around Akito's back until it could land on his left shoulder.
“Dude, I said I'm fine-” Akito was cut off when another gory swing of the monster's hatchet took a killshot at his nerves. He instinctively shrunk toward his partner, who swooped in on the opportunity to gently pull Akito close.
“You can cling to me if you need to. I don't mind.” Toya spoke with such impossible gentleness that Akito was almost weirded out by how well it soothed him. He couldn't deny how nice it felt; being basically cradled by Toya like this… but at the same time, nothing had ever done better to make him feel as lame as humanly possible.
Wasn't this kinda pathetic…? He was practically a grown man, yet here he was gripping Toya's arm through a scary movie like a little kid. His sense of pride was loudly rattling the bars of its cage in an effort to urge him to move away, but the warmth pooling in his heart made him feel way too fuzzy to register it.
Toya always had that sort of effect on him – luring him in with boundless kindness until all the walls he'd spent years constructing suddenly melted like a snowman in spring. Something about leaning his head onto Toya's shoulder and sinking into his hold felt as safe as it was natural, even when he sought to bury himself away at each scare's attempt to yank him out of this coziness.
“That sure was an interesting film.” Toya eventually said, and it wasn't until that moment that Akito realized the movie had already ended. At some point, he'd stopped paying attention to the screen entirely and focused only on cuddling up to Toya… How humiliating was that?
“Guess so.” Akito shrugged, crossing his arms together to make his current state of leaning against Toya's shoulder appear far more nonchalant than it really was.
“Oh, don't act tough!” An huffed, clearly just poking the bear to make herself feel better about getting scared. “I totally saw you jump a couple times! Bet Toya had to hold your hand and everything~”
“Did not.” Akito spewed right back, cleverly slipping in a lie of omission by refusing to specify which accusation he was denying. “Don't go blamin’ me just cuz you're a wuss.”
“You really weren't scared?” Toya's eyes widened, and Akito instantly felt the final nail of his coffin getting slammed into place. “You held on to me so hard during that second kill, though… My arm's still tingling a little bit.”
“Toya…!” Akito strained through his teeth, though the girls were used enough to their banter by now that any further attempt at denial would just be folly.
“Hehe. I think it's alright if you got scared, Shinonome-kun.” Kohane cut in before An could proceed with bullying him to death, ever the calm and reliable mediator. “It's all part of the fun, isn't it? Just like riding a roller coaster.”
“I see… So horror movies are also a form of thrill-seeking…” Toya began muttering to himself in analysis. “Perhaps I'm closer to being able to ride the coasters at PXL than I thought, then…?”
“That ain't how it works, dude…” Akito chuckled, his sour mood instantly growing rich with sugar at the sight of his partner's airheadedness.
“Well, in that case…” An hummed as she lurched toward the table, perusing the selection of movies before snatching one of a particularly spooky-looking variety. “Let's keep the party going! We've got all night to binge these!”
“Oi…” Akito groaned. “It doesn't matter if we're havin’ a sleepover, we should still go to bed at a reasonable time…”
“Whatever, mom.”
“The hell's that s'posed to mean…?”
“I suppose you're right.” Toya spoke up, his downtrodden sigh instantly ripping away Akito's attention. “I was really looking forward to watching the rest of these movies with you… but it looks like it isn't meant to be.”
“Gh…” Whatever words of protest Akito had left promptly died in his throat. Regardless of whether or not he was aware of it, Toya had sniped his partner’s weak spot in one go…
“Alright… Just one more, okay?” Akito folded like a damn newspaper, and he might've had more time to be embarrassed about it if the way Toya instantly lit up didn't warm his heart so nicely. Once again, he'd proven that if you gave him a choice between making Toya even slightly sad and throwing himself directly into the sun, he'd take the latter with zero hesitation.
“Awesome! I'll put it in~” An hummed, striding toward the movie player to swap out the discs. Akito could only roll his eyes at her bravado, anchoring a hand into the arm of the couch with the aim of swinging to his feet.
“Oi! You still keep the blankets in that closet down the hall?” Akito called as he made his way back, waiting to turn the corner until he heard An yell back an affirmative ‘Yeah!’.
“I'll go with him, then.” Toya declared unsurprisingly. He always had that habit, following behind Akito like a clingy puppy even when the task at hand barely required one person, let alone two… Not that Akito minded the company. He was so used to having Toya by his side that he'd sometimes confuse himself by starting a conversation with a partner that wasn't even there.
“...Y'know I can get blankets by myself, right?” Akito said as he heard the sound of Toya's encroaching footsteps. Regardless, he didn't object when Toya reached up to the closet's highest shelf to retrieve one of An's throw blankets.
“I know.” Toya hummed, stroking the plush material in his hands. “I just wanted an opportunity to speak with you alone.”
“I keep tellin’ you I’m fine, Toya.” Akito scoffed, instantly sensing that his bluff had been called. “I'm not some baby who's gonna get nightmares cuz of a scary movie.”
“I understand. I just don't want you to force yourself for my sake.” Toya spoke with clear-cut concern in his tone, bringing up the hand that wasn't preoccupied with holding the blanket to cup Akito's cheek – a touch that he melted into embarrassingly fast.
Seriously, when did he let Toya turn him into this...? One touch and he suddenly felt soft and gummy all over, heeling like a submissive dog where he'd ordinarily gnash and snarl like there was no tomorrow. Hell, he barely even needed a touch – just looking in his partner's eyes was already doing well to make him forget why he was annoyed just now.
“Forcing myself, huh…?” Akito repeated with an amused scoff. Somehow, after all this time, it seemed Toya still hadn't realized how willing Akito was to do anything for him… even if that only meant sitting through a couple horror movies in this case.
“Well, I can see you have no intention of backing down…” Toya chuckled, face melting into an endeared look of his own. “...but I want you to know you can use me as a lifeline anytime. Hold on to me as much as you need.”
“Why do you think I got the blankets out, dummy?” said Akito with the slightest cheeky inflection, playfully nudging his partner on his way to shut the closet door. He snickered at how quickly Toya's whole face lit up at the prospect of getting to cuddle with him more, swinging an arm around his shoulder as they returned to the living room.
“Oh, you guys are back!” An hummed as the boys returned, already back in her rightful spot next to Kohane by the time they reentered. “We're just about to start the next movie!”
“This film looks a lot more serious than the one we watched before…” Kohane mused aloud as she watched the title screen's animation loop. “The synopsis said it's about a pack of dogs that get infected by a zombie virus.”
“Wha…?” Akito's face instantly turned pale at the mention. Though the girls were (seemingly) ignorant to his longtime fear of dogs, that didn't change that he could barely handle that little chihuahua he'd encounter at the park, let alone sit through a whole movie about freaky zombie dogs…
“That's why I tried to warn you…” Toya chuckled into Akito’s ear, using his spare hand to subtly rub soothing circles into his partner's back as the younger strategically stepped closer to him.
“Oh? Having second thoughts after all~?” An teased, flaunting the remote in her hands as if concealed within were the secrets of life and death… or the death of Akito's image, more concisely.
“As if…!” Akito huffed, predictably snagging the bait in front of him – and with it the remote, pointing it toward the TV and hitting play. “Ain't no way I'm gonna lose to you.”
“Oh, Akito…” Toya sighed to himself as he watched his partner dig his own grave, unfurling the blanket he'd chosen as the rest of the squad began to settle in. Predictably, as soon as the two of them were sufficiently veiled in fabric, he felt an almost crushing pressure burrowing into him.
Well, not that he minded. Quite the opposite, actually – being able to watch these movies with his friends, getting to cuddle up with Akito and being handed an opportunity to care for his partner on a silver platter. He was precisely where he wanted to be, and there were few ways he'd rather be spending his night.
“G…gettin’ scared yet, Akito~?”
“W-we're not even through the opening scene yet… Idiot…!”
“W-wah…! An-chan, you're crushing me!”
…Regardless, it seemed this would end up being a rather long night indeed.