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“Move it, furball. You’re too damn big.” A low growl rumbled and echoed in the thin hallway, and Taketora only gave a laugh in reply. One of his hands ran over the fur of the tiger at his side, fingers combing through the orange and black. “You take up way more room than I do, don’t even try it.”
Still rumbling, the tiger shoved her weight into his side, sending him off-balance for a moment. Tora caught himself, though, a hand planting against the nearest wall. The plastic bag in his hand swung, the contents banging against the wall with the force. A quick glance inside eased any concerns he had about the contents being broken, before he shoved the tiger in return, another laugh dancing on his tongue
“You’re lucky you didn’t break his,” Tora chided, adjusting his hold on the bag before his other hand returned to petting fur as he walked. “Or I’d have to give him yours.”
Reaching their destination didn’t take much longer, and Tora had to hold the door open for the tiger to race into the warmth before he could even think of taking a step inside. He closed the door behind him and toed off his shoes with a call of, ‘I’m home!’ into the small apartment. He placed the bag down on a small table beside the shoe rack and slipped out of his winter coat. After hanging it up, he picked up the bag again and stepped into the living room, opening his mouth to speak but interrupted by a sudden laugh.
“I noticed,” Suguru narrowed his eyes over the mountain of fur and muscle that had settled on top of him, his hair sticking up in all directions and a moistness to his face. He struggled, fighting to free even just one of his hands from underneath the dead weight of the tiger that had decided to curl up on top of him, but eventually gave up when the tiger seemed to just make herself even heavier. His eyes narrowed even further and met Tora’s, almost daring him to laugh. “Fix it.”
Taketora laughed, loud and heartily. He placed the bag in his hands down on the coffee table before taking the tiger’s face in both of his palms. “I told ya, you’re too damn big,” he teased, pressing a kiss to the tiger’s forehead before he stepped away and opened the bag. “Come on. You can warm up in Conda’s room. How’s that sound? I’ll even let you eat in there tonight.”
The offer, paired with Tora producing two packets of steaks, was enough to have the tiger excitedly moving from on top of the poor, crushed Daishou suddenly enough to cause more harm than good in the moment. Taketora lead the tiger to a nearby door, pushing it open and stepping into the warmth. He navigated his way over the large, coiling tail, pausing to pet the large snake’s head once he finally found it, and began to split the steak between a pair of bowls. He spent a few extra moments petting both familiars, apologising to Conda for the lack of large live rodents to eat, before stepping out of the heated room and pulling the door closed behind him.
When he reached the sofa again, Suguru had moved. He was sitting up, now, with one of the heated meals from inside the bag on his lap and chopsticks in hand. His expression was still displeased, even as he huddled further into the pile of blankets around himself, and tucked his folded legs in closer to give Taketora more room to shift past between the sofa and the table.
“Want a drink?” he asked as he fished his own meal from the bag, placing the disposable chopsticks on top before he began to roll up the plastic bag to add to their stash. Taketora glanced to the side, waiting for an answer. A shake of the head and he sat down, pulling his own meal onto his lap. “I looked for the coffee you wanted but they’d run out of it, and all the other options were just gross. That was the last katsu meal, as well. A bunch of high school students came in right before me. Kenshiko damn near tried to eat a bird one of the kids had.”
“You should have let her,” Suguru scoffed before lifting his chopsticks to his mouth, pointedly only looking at Taketora out of the corner of his eyes. “And then let her eat the kids, as well.”
Tora let a laugh escape, loud and hearty, and he shifted closer to his boyfriend, enough that their legs were touching. “You can’t solve all your problems by getting Kenshiko or Conda to eat them,” he chided, teasing. He leaned over, enough to press a kiss to the corner of Suguru’s lips before his own pulled into a grin at the glare he received. “Y’want me to make you some tea? Or do you just want some hot water?”
There was a long pause of silence as Suguru thought, and they both filled it with the sounds of chewing and swallowing as they continued to eat. Taketora kept their legs touching, and Suguru allowed it, even leaned into the weight of it and leaned his upper body until their shoulders touched as well. It lingered, dragging out, and it wasn’t until Suguru had entirely emptied his takeout container of rice and pork katsu that he finally answered with a shake of his head.
“You have to stay right here,” he said. It came out as more of a demand or an order, as he leaned forward to place the empty container and dirty chopsticks on the coffee table next to the others. “You have to make up for leaving me to freeze while you went out.”
Taketora laughed, though he held back on pointing out that Suguru was the reason he had had to go out at all. Instead, he stood and tugged his boyfriend to his feet as well, ignoring the sneer he got at the manhandling. He then set to reorganising the blankets that Suguru had been curled up in before, carefully layering them and laying the excess over the back of the sofa. Once he was done, he lay down on the blankets and rolled onto his side to press his back as far against the back of the sofa as he could. One arm laying across the seat, he beckoned with the other.
Suguru clambered onto the sofa, almost shivering as he lay on his side and cuddled in close to Tora’s chest. Tora pulled the blankets from over the back of the sofa and lay them over the top of them both, reaching over Suguru first to make sure he was properly covered, and then for the remote on the arm of the sofa. He paused at a thump against the door of Conda’s room, and then a scuffle of paws and a loud chuffing before he relaxed again.
“You took too long,” Suguru chided, the bottom half of his head covered by blankets and his face half-buried against Taketora’s shoulder. “Got us both cold.”
“Sorry, Su’,” Tora apologised with a gentle laugh and a kiss to the top of the elder’s head. “We’ll keep you both warm.”
“You better, or I’m leaving you.”
Another laugh escaped Taketora, muffled against the dark strands of hair. He pressed a kiss to the top of his head and ran his fingers through the strands. “Sure you will,” he hummed, clicking through the channels until he found a familiar show he was certain he’d seen before and lowered the volume to provide white noise. ”Just like you left me when I didn’t come home with you for New Years. And when I spent extra hours at school studying for exams. And for that time when I forgot to buy a replacement bulb for Conda’s heat lamp and came home late. And when I hung out with Numai-senpai and left you alone with Sakijima-san.”
Suguru’s shoulder shook in a sharp snort, and he tilted his head back to look up at the younger’s face, his chin resting on Tora’s collarbone. “I’m glad you’ve learned your lesson,” he said simply, reaching up to bite at his boyfriend’s chin, gently tugging on the skin. He let go quickly, screwing up his nose. “You need to shave. You’re all prickly.”
Taketora grinned.
Suguru narrowed his eyes, suspicious.
Taketora laughed and then, “We match.”
Disgusted, Suguru sneered and shoved at the younger’s shoulders, before he rolled over and shifted away just enough to still be under the blankets without touching the other at all.