Chapter Text
* * *
Technically, the rumors start because Joe has never heard the concept of an indoor voice. So when he yells at Cherry Blossom—and he seems to always be yelling at Cherry Blossom—there isn’t a person on the mountain in a twenty foot radius who doesn’t hear.
Or maybe they start because Cherry has an inability to not instigate mild bodily harm on Joe when Joe is irritating him. Joe seems to always be irritating him, so the instigation occurs frequently and with very little provocation, which, overall, probably doesn’t help.
It could be that no one at S has once heard the two of them utter a kind word about each other. Whenever Joe is asked about Cherry Blossom’s wins, he says, “Tell that damned maniac to dump his robot girlfriend and we’ll see if he can win,” and whenever Cherry is asked what he thinks about Joe’s cool skating style, he says, “What, not being able to keep your shirt on for five minutes is a skating style now?” This is compelling evidence given that Cherry Blossom and Joe are two of the original founders of the competition; eight years is a very long time to never have uttered one genial sentiment about your fellow competitor. And skaters keep track of these things.
There was also the time when, having watched Joe beat Cherry after using a ridiculous move that involved utilizing all 720 (approximately) of his abdomen muscles, the spectators of S then watched Cherry smack Joe upside the head, causing Joe to lose his balance on his board and go sprawling into a group of extremely besotted young women he had moments ago been flirting aggressively with. Cherry had then stomped away without helping Joe up, which seemed very unsportsmanlike all around.
Whatever the reason—and truth be told there are easily dozens of them—the truth of the matter is undeniable. It is an S consensus.
Everyone who sees them together agrees that Cherry Blossom and Joe? Well, they hate each other.
*
It starts the way it always does: with one of them saying something that no one else has heard. They only notice after the fact and by that time there’s the tell-tale sounds of a classic Joe and Cherry fight—untempered shouting, hurled insults, Joe’s face and Cherry’s face mashed close together, and the veins at their temples pulsing as their voices get louder and their actions more aggressive. Joe pulls the bottom eyelid of his right eye down and blows a raspberry, to which Cherry reliates by trying to kick Joe’s legs out from under him, and to which Joe responds by grabbing Cherry’s thigh. Cherry’s face turns red and he becomes apoplectic as he stumbles over himself—and Joe’s arm—and the both of them go down together, collapsing one on top of the other in an explosive heap.
“You did that on purpose, you brainless imbecile!” Cherry’s voice is the loudest initially as they both groan and try to forcibly untangle themselves from one another. It’s mostly just Cherry kicking Joe and Joe kicking Cherry back.
“Of course I did it on purpose, you kicked my knees! I know your mind isn’t what it used to be, you useless four-eyes, but surely even you can remember what you just did!” Joe’s squabbling voice can barely be made out over the noise of Cherry huffing.
“Get off me, you overgrown primate!”
“You get off me, my little pony!”
The two of them begin to shove each other, Cherry aiming another kick to Joe’s thighs and Joe about to roll over and squash Cherry’s ribs, when someone finally intervenes.
“Hey, hey—” it’s Shadow, of all people. “Hey—knock it off!”
Cherry and Joe dutifully ignore him, opting, instead, to continue physically aggressing each other while yelling low-grade insults. Shadow tolerates this for exactly ten more seconds before he shouts, “Knock it off! You’re scaring the kids!”
The kids in question—Reki, Langa, and Miya—are staring at their skateboarding mentors in horror and disbelief. Miya is holding onto Reki’s sleeve and Reki’s red eyes are big and shocked.
That makes Joe and Cherry finally pause in their fight.
“Oh,” Joe says. “Hi kids.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Shadow says, dragging a hand over his face.
“Your makeup is smearing,” Cherry says calmly.
Shadow lets out a frustrated sound like he’s going to attempt to murder one, if not both, of the founders of S.
Everyone is staring at the group of them, not that Cherry and Joe seem to notice or otherwise care.
“Anyway, do not do it again, asshole,” Cherry snipes at Joe.
“I already told you it wasn’t my damn fault! Do you even listen to anyone other than yourself!”
Cherry just ignores him as disentangles himself from the other man and gets to his feet. His outfit is all askew, as is his mask, and he has a giant bruise that’s forming on his bicep. “Ugh, look what you’ve done.”
“I should make you pay for my broken rib,” Joe wheezes as he pushes himself to his feet. “And like I said, I didn’t do anything.”
“If you broke a rib, you have no one but yourself to blame,” Cherry says. He adjusts his mask and steps onto Carla again. His ponytail is askew, but who’s going to dare tell Cherry Blossom that? “Don’t talk to me again.”
Cherry kicks off on his skateboard and starts making his way toward the gates. The crowd parts like there’s a very disgruntled Moses in front of a very concerned and confused Red Sea.
“Gladly!” Joe yells after him. He groans as he finally drags himself to his feet. He dusts his previously white and now sort-of-beige pants off and readjusts his loose jacket over his mammoth shoulders. “Damn princess.”
Joe mutters to himself as he picks up his board. Then he too gets on it and skates away from the scene.
They both leave behind a crowd of people who are wide-eyed and shocked. They’ve seen and felt tension before—they come to an illicit skateboarding competition for fun after all—but there’s normal competitive tension and there’s two people on the verge of murdering one another in cold blood and Joe and Cherry are definitely the latter.
“Shit,” Shadow says.
“They really hate each other, huh?” Reki says slowly. His shoulders finally come down from where they’ve been hunched near his ears. He rolls one aching shoulder and watches Joe’s retreating back.
“I wonder why,” Miya wonders. He’s finally let go of Reki and seems determined not to acknowledge that he had clung to him to begin with. “I thought they’ve known each other for ages.”
“Sometimes when you’ve known someone for that long, you come to dislike everything about them,” Shadow observes, crossing his arms at his chest.
“But weren’t they friends?” Reki asks uncomfortably. “We went on vacation together and everything.”
“I guess not,” Miya says. He’s frowning too, his video game blank in his hands for once. “They must have been hiding it really well.”
“Shit,” Shadow says with a gloomy sigh.
The crowd around them shifts, muttering and whispering as they finally tug each other away to go watch the final race of the night. The atmosphere is still a little tense, but mostly everyone’s just buzzing like little gossiping bees now.
In the middle of this, Reki sighs and gets back on his board.
“Come on,” he says to the others. “Let’s go watch the last beef.”
Miya nods and Shadow gets on his board too.
It’s only when Reki nudges his shoulder that Langa blinks, as though coming out of a trance.
“Hey,” he says, slowly and looks around. “Where did Joe and Cherry go?”
* * *
“Idiot,” Kaoru says. “What am I going to do about this bruise?”
He looks at the ugly purple splotch on his upper right arm in the mirror. It’s a large, angry oval that spreads across the side of his arm and spills onto the back of it. The flesh is tender, of course, but mostly the bruise is insultingly hideous and that, Kaoru refuses to abide.
Kojiro snorts from the kitchen. “Are you planning on changing your aesthetic from classic octogenarian from Imperial Japan anytime soon, because otherwise, I don’t see what the problem is.”
“No one in Imperial Japan would put up with a baboon like you,” Kaoru mutters under his breath.
He inspects the bruise more closely before shifting away from the mirror. Kaoru sighs and slips into the fuzzy, pink slippers he keeps because the floor tiles are too cold on his delicate feet. He’s just emerged from the shower, so his skin is warm and damp and his hair is still drying in a towel over his shoulder. He looks at his reflection carefully, wrinkling his nose at the imperfections he finds, and begins his 12 step skincare routine.
By the time he’s finished, Kaoru’s hair is more or less dry, so he hangs the towel to dry in the bathroom, runs a comb carefully through the silk-like pink strands, and finally plods into the living room.
“There’s nothing wrong with how I dress,” Kaoru sniffs. “My yukatas are comfortable.”
“Did I say they weren’t?” Kojiro says, his back turned to him. “Do you even listen to me or do you just spend all day with your own voice on loop in the mush you call a brain?”
“I think, if you use the 1.5 brain cells you have left in the thick rock piece you call a skull, you will see that you already know the answer to that.”
“Sorry, I stopped listening after you claimed you think.”
Kaoru ignores this, mostly because he’s made his way through the living room into the kitchen and straight into the middle of Kojiro’s back.
Kojiro chuckles lightly and ignores him, which is an offense punishable by law, but Kaoru gets so sleepy and hungry after his baths that all he really has the energy to do is wrap his arms around Kojiro from behind and pretend to gnaw on his shoulder.
“I’m literally making dinner,” Kojiro says.
“I’m hungry,” Kaoru says. It’s as much of a whine as he allows. “Feed me.”
“Run me back what I said to you exactly three seconds ago,” Kojiro says.
“Feed me!” Kaoru says louder and playfully bites Kojiro’s shoulder again. It’s through cloth because Kojiro, devastatingly, does not believe in cooking while shirtless, but the cloth is, admittedly, pretty thin and stretched to the end of its life across Kojiro’s mountainscape of a body.
“You are such a brat,” Kojiro sighs. It’s not a real sigh. It’s the sigh he forces himself to heave when Kaoru is being cute and Kaoru knows he’s being cute and he knows that Kojiro knows that he knows he’s being cute and it’s all a ploy to be pampered as soon as humanly possible.
A solid eight times out of ten, Kaoru is very successful. The other two times, Kojiro is usually just asleep.
“It’s not my fault,” Kaoru says. He still has his arms around Kojiro, but Kojiro is stirring something on the stove and the air smells sweet and saucy, with the hint of garlic. Kaoru’s stomach grumbles in response. He sticks his chin onto Kojiro’s shoulder and tries to see what he’s making.
“Uh huh. Excited to hear how it’s my fault instead,” Kojiro says. He reaches for the salt and adds more to the tomato sauce.
“You kicked me so hard, all of the muscles in my body felt it. My bones all shuddered. I might never move again. You might have to carry me everywhere with your disgusting, over-jacked body.”
“If you’re so mad at my body, why are you squeezing my ass,” Kojiro says.
Kaoru, mid-ass squeezing, grins. “I didn’t say I had a problem with your ass.”
Kojiro snorts and swats at him. “Go set the table, you pampered princess.”
“I should be so lucky,” Kaoru says with an aggrieved sigh. He leans up on his toes though and Kojiro, despite being well into cooking and allegedly not believing in spoiling Kaoru (as if), turns his head sideways.
Kaoru leans forward and Kojiro leans back toward him and they meet for a sweet, chaste kiss. Kojiro smiles at him and Kaoru, impulsively, kisses him again.
“More garlic,” Kaoru says as he pulls away.
Kojiro’s smile flickers into a scowl.
“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” he says and Kaoru cackles to himself as he goes to set the table.
Kaoru pours out a glass of wine and a cup of cold water for them each and waits impatiently for Kojiro to bring in the food. There’s a huge bowl of penne alla vodka, a basket of freshly made garlic bread, and an enormous glass bowl of salad.
“Gross,” Kaoru says, eyeing the salad with derision. “I’ll pass.”
“You are literally going to become garlic bread if you don’t eat something green,” Kojiro sighs as he doles out penne onto both of their plates. By the time he sits down, Kaoru’s already on his third piece.
“Nonsense,” Kaoru says. “There’s herbs on this bread. What is this? Parsley. Oregano. ...paprika?”
“Are those the only three ingredients you know?” Kojiro says, mouth twitching. “Paprika isn’t green, you idiot.”
“Shut up,” Kaoru says and kicks him under the table. “I also know salt and pepper.”
“I need wine,” Kojiro says and immediately takes a large gulp. Then he points his glass at Kaoru. “Take the salad.”
It takes a few more minutes of kicking under the table and loudly complaining about how Kojiro is trying to ruin his life, but Kaoru does eventually end up with a decent pile of leaves on his plate.
“This is horrifying, by the way,” Kaoru says as he chews on a single spinach leaf.
“If you’re good and eat your greens, I will let you have two slices of tiramisu for dessert,” Kojiro says.
Kaoru doesn’t like having the wool pulled over his eyes and he likes Kojiro winning even less, but he loves dessert most of all so he weighs all of these options mentally and sighs. He spears an olive with his fork and mournfully puts it in his mouth.
“There’s a good boy,” Kojiro says, grinning wickedly over his glass, although that quickly turns into a loud curse as Kaoru drives the heel of his foot into Kojiro’s shin. “You’re so fucking violent, you deranged hellion!”
That makes Kaoru beam and shovel more penne into his mouth. He enjoys it when Kojiro has to resort to calling him synonyms for the devil or workers of the devil. It makes him really feel as though he’s earned the carbs he’s putting into his well-maintained body.
“Do you think everyone was being a little weird there at the end?” Kojiro asks. He’s already finished his pasta and is scooping more onto his plate.
“Mm, what do you mean?” Kaoru takes a beat and drinks his wine, although he’s still eyeing another piece of garlic bread.
“I don’t know,” Kojiro says. He spears two pieces of penne and chews on them. “They were all staring at us.”
“Of course they were staring at us, you were being ridiculously loud!”
“Your voice gets at least three octaves higher than mine on any given occasion,” Kojiro says. He has one eye closed and the other is narrowed at Kaoru in a squint.
Kaoru ignores this and takes another mouth full of wine.
“And you were being violent. I should press charges against you.”
Kojiro snorts. He rolls his eyes and eats some more of his pasta. Kaoru reaches for another piece of garlic bread.
“Finish your damned salad!”
“I ate three leafs, anything more is cruel and inhumane to expect of me,” Kaoru says. He tears the bread in half and chews on it. “They’re probably used to it by now, though?”
Kojiro glares at him and rolls his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess. They just had these looks on their faces tonight like...they’d never seen us before. They seemed shocked. Especially the kids.”
“I think that’s just their faces,” Kaoru says. He swallows his bite and finishes the rest of the garlic bread.
“Yeah,” Kojiro says, thinking this over. He sighs and finishes his wine. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“The first sensible thing you’ve said all night—hey! Get that away from me!” Kaoru cries as Kojiro tries to sneak more salad onto his plate. “Don’t you dare! Kojiro! I’ll kill you!”
Kaoru tries to elbow Kojiro away and Kojiro tries to take an entire serving spoon full of salad and force feed it to Kaoru. They end up in one of their usual tousles until Kojiro gets the wind knocked out of him and Kaoru, victorious, finishes his glass of wine and then moves away toward the kitchen.
“For that, I’m going to eat the entire tiramisu!” he says.
Kojiro bolts up.
“Don’t you dare, you goddamned sugar freak! Kaoru? Kaoru!”
Kojiro chases after him. He gets to Kaoru just before Kaoru can get to the cake and wrapping his enormous arms around Kaoru, manages to pull him away from the dessert. Kaoru tries to jab him with his pointy elbows and Kojiro loudly complains, cursing him with passion, until finally Kojiro has him manhandled onto the countertop.
“You are literally the most annoying person I have ever fucking met,” Kojiro huffs out. He accompanies the sentiment with, at most, a half-glare.
“I can’t stand you,” Kaoru announces, winding his arms around Kojiro’s shoulders.
Kojiro sighs and shakes his head, but Kaoru distracts him by tugging on the bottom of his curls.
“You look good in my shirt,” Kojiro eventually says, smiling up at him. He has a large hand at Kaoru’s waist and the other cupped at his neck.
Warmth gathers in Kaoru’s chest and if his face turns warm, he wrinkles his nose in faux distaste to make sure that Kojiro will never know.
“This is my shirt now,” Kaoru says. “It’s the least you can do for giving me a grievous bodily injury.”
“Fine, show it to me,” Kojiro finally concedes.
Kaoru lets go to shove up the overly large sleeve of his right arm. Kojiro inspects the bruise closely and then gently, presses a featherlight kiss to the site of the grievous bodily harm.
“Better?”
“No,” Kaoru says.
Kojiro presses another kiss there, firmer this time.
Something warm curls in Kaoru’s gut.
“Better?”
“No,” Kaoru says again.
Kojiro chuckles. He straights and cups Kaoru’s jaw.
He leans forward and presses a warm, open kiss to his mouth.
“Better?” he asks quietly.
“Close enough,” Kaoru breathes out and then, winding his legs around Kojiro’s waist, pulls him closer so he can kiss him the way he likes.
* * *
It bothers him. It probably shouldn’t, because it’s none of his business, but the more he thinks about the fight at Crazy Rock, the more he doesn’t understand how he hadn’t seen it before.
And once he starts looking, it just really becomes obvious.
Cherry and Joe can’t even be near each other without one of them starting to snipe at the other. Any time they approach a two foot radius of each other, it’s like some kind of a light goes on in their heads and it’s one barbed comment by Cherry and Joe is immediately yelling or it’s some kind of lame, insulting nickname from Joe and Cherry’s trying to literally kick his ass.
They never just chill out and even the few times they seem chill, it’s like they’re just waiting for the opportunity to start arguing again.
It just bums him out is the thing.
Never meet your heroes or at least, never get to know them and rely on them and get super bummed when you realize they can’t stand each other.
“You’re not eating your lunch,” Langa observes.
Reki usually demolishes the bento box his mother packs him, but today he’s barely touched his chicken katsu even though it smells as good as always and Langa’s leaning over his shoulder as though he can inhale it through osmosis.
“Yeah,” Reki says. He lets his head rest back against the fence. “Hey, don’t you think it’s a little weird?”
“Hm?” Langa is biting into a fried croquette.
“How Joe and Cherry are always fighting,” he says.
Langa swallows his bite.
“I guess I never thought of it before.”
“I thought they were cool,” Reki says. He draws his knees up to his chest. “I guess I thought it was fun, or for show, but they really hate each other don’t they?”
“Do they?” Langa asks. Mostly he’s staring at Reki’s bento box.
“Didn’t you see them the other night? That was so messed up. They can’t stand to be in the same place as each other,” Reki says.
“Hm,” Langa says. He shrugs. “I guess.”
Reki lets out a breath and feels sulky about it. “How are we all supposed to be friends if two of our friends are always fighting? Like. That’s not cool.”
“Shadow’s always fighting with us,” Langa says. Points out. He eats his croquette while watching the chicken katsu.
“That’s not the same,” Reki says. “He fights with us because he’s old and he doesn’t know better.”
“Uh huh.” Langa’s mouth is full of croquette. Now he’s eyeing the can of soda next to Reki as well.
“It doesn’t bother you?” Reki asks. “Like maybe they’ve ignored it all this time, but now that it’s all out there in the open...like, it’s going to change the group, right? We’ll have to pick sides.”
“I pick Cherry,” Langa says, swallowing.
That distracts Reki.
“Wait, really? Why?”
“He’s scary,” Langa says. “It’s kind of fun.”
Reki stares at Langa, but as usual, Langa’s face is sort of dreamy and kind of unreadable. He wishes he was as laid back as his best friend, but Reki is a fire sign and has never heard of the phrase chill. Or at least the stars have seen it fit to make sure he never experiences the concept. According to Koyomi, who’s now obsessed with astrology, but also a little brat, so whatever.
Reki sighs and rests his chin on top of his knees.
“What are we going to do?”
This apparently confuses Langa. He opens his own juicebox and looks at Reki with concern.
“Do about what?”
“Joe and Cherry!” Reki says, flailing his arms. “Haven’t you been listening!”
“Mm,” Langa says. He takes a long sip of his peach juice.
There has to be something they can do, Reki thinks. This can’t be the end of their weird little skating family. Reki’s only just found all of them, practically, and he refuses to let anything happen to them just because Joe and Cherry can’t seem to get their goddamned shits together.
But he needs to know what he’s up against. Maybe they don’t really hate each other and Cherry was having a bad day or something. Or maybe Joe only yells because he doesn’t know his voice gets that loud. He needs to know more...he needs—
“I know!” Reki says and snaps his fingers. He straightens immediately and next to him, Langa startles. “I’ll ask him!”
“Ask who what?” Langa says.
“I’ll ask Cherr—” Reki starts and reconsiders with a shudder. “I’ll ask Joe! He won’t lie to me. I’ll ask him what’s wrong and how we can fix it. We can’t do anything until we’ve uhh—what’s Tanaka-sensei say during science class?”
“Don’t mix unlabeled chemicals,” Langa says.
“No, idiot! We have to uhhh gather more data. Isolate the...variables. To figure out what’s gone wrong or whatever.”
“Okay,” Langa says with an exhale. “Good idea. The variables.”
“Yeah,” Reki says. “It’s just like a science experiment. We’ll ask the questions and get our answers and then start devising a...solution.”
“I think I’m failing science,” Langa says mournfully.
Reki is too pleased at his own machinations to answer that. He feels Langa poke him in the shoulder a moment later.
“Hey,” he says and suddenly Langa’s face is right next to his.
Reki turns a little pink, his heart suddenly beating a little faster at how close Langa is.
“Hi,” he says nervously.
Langa’s eyes are so bright blue this close up that he almost forgets his own concerns—the troubles the others in the group are presenting—and schemes. Up this close, Langa’s eyes remind him of the clear sky and his light blue hair reminds him of snow, which Reki has only seen once, when they went to visit his grandparents in Kyoto, and his mouth looks very soft and is very pink, which reminds Reki of—
Langa leans even closer.
Reki’s brain short circuits.
“Are you going to eat that?” Langa asks and points at the bento box.
Reki collapses against the fence and Langa looks at him mildly in concern.
* * *
“Do you know, the weirdest thing happened to me earlier,” Kojiro says through a foamy mouth.
Kaoru looks at him with faint disgust, but he also has a foamy mouth and so very little room to complain. He spits out the toothpaste and fills his cup with water.
“Someone told you your food was good,” Kaoru says.
Kojiro snorts and spits out his toothpaste too.
“Yeah, asshole. It was you, when you were stuffing your face with my chicken piccata.”
“I don’t need to tell you how filthy that sounds,” Kaoru says while kicking his foot up. It connects with Kojiro’s ass and Kojiro gives him a half-assed glare for the effort.
Kaoru takes a mouthful of water and swishes it around as Kojiro returns the toothbrush to his mouth to continue brushing.
Kaoru spits out the water and wipes the back of his mouth on the back of his hand.
“Go on.”
“One of the kids—Reki—came over in the middle of the afternoon,” Kojiro says. He takes the toothbrush out of his mouth and holds it up for a second as he talks. “He was upset. Well, he was trying to act like he wasn’t upset, but it was pretty obvious that he was upset.”
“That one’s always upset,” Kaoru says. He picks up his toothbrush as well to brush a second time over. “He is what my college psychology course would call emotionally turbulent.”
“I think that’s called being a teenager, but sure,” Kojiro says. “Anyway, he was actually upset this time and I think he was upset about….us.”
Kaoru stops mid-brush. His brows draw together and he pulls back his hair to spit into the sink.
“Us? What about us?”
“He seems to think that we...hate each other,” Kojiro says.
Kaoru stares at him.
“What?”
“And he’s….not the only one?” Kojiro says. He frowns as he starts to move the toothbrush in circles again.
“What are you talking about?” Kaoru says. “We don’t hate each other.”
“Well I know that, sunshine,” Kojiro says. His mouth is foamy again.
“Will you stop doing that,” Kaoru gripes at him.
Kojiro glares for a half a second and then spits out the foam.
“Although sometimes I’m open to reconsidering.”
“Ha ha,” Kaoru says. He takes another mouthful of water and rinses out the remains of toothpaste from his mouth and spits into the sink. “Seriously, what are you talking about?”
Kojiro reaches out for the cup and Kaoru hands it over to him. He waits while Kojiro also rinses out his mouth and sets the cup aside. Kaoru turns on the faucet again for Kojiro to rinse his toothbrush. Then he takes both of their toothbrushes and sets them back in their cup.
“Thanks,” Kojiro says, smiling at him.
“Who thinks we hate each other?” Kaoru asks. He looks at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and reaches for his hair tie.
“The kids, apparently,” Kojiro says. He shucks off the thin excuse for a t-shirt he’s wearing as Kaoru ties his own hair up into the messy bun he prepares before sleeping. “And half of S.”
“Mm,” Kaoru says.
He slides off the soft, lavender-colored yukata he wears in the evenings and hangs it from his hook behind the bathroom door. Under, he’s wearing sleep shorts with strawberries on them and one of Kojiro’s loose, extremely beat up tank tops. It’s a blue that’s almost turned blue-grey with age and has the Italian national football team’s crest on the chest. Kojiro had bought it when he had done his culinary training in Florence back during college and gotten really into football, and Kaoru had found it in his old box of clothes a few years ago and pilfered it for himself. It’s unbelievably soft, even though the arm holes are so stretched out they nearly go down to his hips.
Koijro doesn’t mind that though—he likes to stick his arms into the stretched out holes and rest his enormous hands against Kaoru’s bare sides. Kaoru only tolerates this because he’s always so cold and Kojiro’s hands are so warm, although he’s also helplessly ticklish, so sometimes it works out to neither of their benefit because Kojiro will start to tickle him and Kaoru will try to throw him out of the window in response.
Anyway.
“Is this about the other night?” he asks.
“I guess,” Kojiro says.
Kaoru leaves the bathroom and Kojiro turns off the light and follows after him.
Kaoru goes to his side of the bed and slides out of his fuzzy slippers. Both he and Kojiro peel back the covers and slide into bed. Kojiro turns off the lamp on his side of the room and Kaoru does the same on his.
After they’ve both adjusted to the dark, Kojiro lifts his arm and Kaoru immediately shifts his body closer. It always takes them a few minutes to get their positions exactly correct, but eventually Kaoru gets himself tucked against Kojiro’s overheated chest and Kojiro gets his huge arm around Kaoru’s back.
Kojiro grins and leans forward and Kaoru catches his face between his hands and they kiss. It’s nothing heated—both of them have had long days at work and some nights they like to just fall asleep close together and wake the next morning to rut against each other lazily—but it does have an edge to it, Kaoru pressing his mouth against Kojiro’s hard enough to leave it a little sore. Kojiro chuckles against his mouth and tries to slow him down, moving his hand up and down Kaoru’s back, but Kaoru has a mind only Kaoru can really control so he presses harder against Kojiro, demanding more of the kiss until Kojiro gives in and lets him in.
They make out, content and lazy, Kaoru’s hands roaming across the bare planes of Kojiro’s hot, absurd chest and the 742 muscles (approximately) of his stomach and Kojiro’s hand feels at the soft skin of Kaoru’s side, until Kaoru’s mouth is sore and his blood is pulsing. When he finally pulls back to catch his breath, Kojiro chuckles and presses a softer kiss to his cheek.
“Okay, the way I see it, we have two options,” Kaoru says once he’s caught his breath.
Kojiro raises one green eyebrow. He’s still tracing shapes along Kaoru’s side. That makes Kaoru go a little fuzzy—he loves the feeling of Kojiro’s fingertips along his skin—but he pulls it together to focus on Kojiro’s amused expression.
“Oh, this will be good.”
“Shut up,” Kaoru says. “So two options. One, we can make sure everyone knows we do not hate each other.”
“By telling them we’re—” Kojiro starts, but Kaoru cuts him off by pinching a nipple.
Kojiro hisses and his copper eyes go a little hazy.
Kaoru grins and rubs a thumb over it, which, of course, does not help clear things up for Kojiro any.
“By releasing a sex tape,” Kaoru says. Kojiro turns immediately red and starts spluttering, but Kaoru just snickers and presses a kiss to his mouth. “Or two, we can do the opposite.”
“No sex tape,” Kojiro says, his skin flushing pink. “The opposite of sex tape is no sex tape.”
“We can discuss our sex tape later, Kojiro,” Kaoru says and pinches his other nipple. “Focus!”
“How?” Kojiro groans.
“We can do the opposite and lean in,” Kaoru says. His eyes are shining the way they always do when he has a thought that he also would have had when he was a seventeen year old teenage Okinawan street punk.
“What...does that mean?” Kojiro looks at him suspiciously.
Kaoru grins and kisses him again.
“We can convince everyone we do hate each other,” he says. “Reverse...fake dating. Fake hating.”
Kojiro stares at him like he’s lost his mind.
“You are literally insane, has anyone ever told you that?”
“Carla,” Kaoru says out loud. “Has anyone ever told me I’m insane?”
“Yes, Master,” Carla answers. “Master Kojiro says you are insane at an average rate of five-point-seven times a week.”
“See?” Kaoru says smugly. Then he frowns. “Hey.”
“You can’t gang up on me with your robot sidepiece,” Kojiro says and pinches Kaoru’s side.
“Hey!” Kaoru smacks his shoulder in retaliation. “Who says Carla is a sidepiece?”
Kojiro ignores this. Instead, he looks Kaoru in his eyes.
“Are you asking me to fake hate you, Kaoru?”
He gets his arm around Kaoru’s back again and pulls him in close, until Kaoru is trapped between Kojiro’s ample chest and his rock-solid arm.
Kaoru feels every inch of Kojiro’s body heat. Every. Inch.
“Oh,” Kaoru says, his eyes flickering down. “Hello.”
“I’ll fake hate you,” Kojiro says and presses forward to kiss Kaoru again. Kaoru gets his hand in Kojiro’s hair and his mouth falls open on a sigh. “But first…”
Kaoru pulls back reluctantly, his head already dizzy, his body thrumming with need.
“Can you do that thing to my nipples again?” Kojiro grins and then yelps loudly when Kaoru smacks him upside his head.
* * *