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Asa and Denji missed the last train back to Tokyo because of a particularly troublesome devil with the gall to be running around the streets of Kyoto during their fall school trip. Because Asa refused to fall asleep in the station station, they discovered they had just enough funds to stay at the shitty old inn nearby.
“Finally!” Denji gasped, flopping facefirst onto the awaiting itchy hotel room bed in his stained and wet school uniform. Right before they entered the lobby, the sky cracked open and rain came down in torrents.
“Off! Gotta check for bedbugs!”
“Ugh, fine.”
Denji rolled off of the bed’s itchy wool-like bedcover and onto the pale wooden floor. Asa checked underneath the sheets and in the piping on the mattress for the telltale signs of the pesky little insects while Denji watched her. To her relief, none could be found.
Stepping back to observe their hotel room, Asa sighed. She would’ve preferred a futon, but oh well. A crappy bed would do in a pinch like tonight.
“You showering?” she asked Denji.
“A quick rinse and that’s it. I’m beat.”
“Fair,” Asa conceded. “I’ll take a shower afterwards, then.”
“Cool.” Denji stood and went to the bathroom.
Asa paused and waited expectantly for the devil who shared her body to make some sort of sarcastic quip about the day, the fight, or the fact she was about to spend the night with a very particular boy. Instead, she heard incorporeal snoring. It seemed that Yoru decided to check out already and leave Asa and Denji to their own devices.
Great.
A bead of sweat rolled down Asa’s back. Denji and her…their relationship was better now than when they first met, but Asa still wasn’t convinced that they were just friends. She casually developed crushes—even undesired ones—every other Tuesday, but she couldn’t decipher any of Denji’s opinion of her through his body language.
He did do one weird thing, though. She caught Denji staring sometimes when he thought she wasn’t looking. He always wore an attentive and gentle expression in those moments. It was a look that put butterflies in her stomach, but the question remained. Did he look at her like that because he was kind, or because he liked her like she kinda liked him?
“Hey. You want the bathrobe?”
“Huh?” Asa asked, realizing that she had been staring into space and not listening.
“There’s only one bathrobe,” Denji reiterated, his face peeking at her from around the corner.
“Oh—I can go get another one.”
“Nah, I think that costs more money. I think I’m okay if I sleep in my underclothes, so…you look cold, so it’s probably a good thing that you take it.”
“Oh…okay. Thank you.”
“No prob. It’s hanging behind the bathroom door for ya when you’re ready.”
❦
Asa emerged from the bathroom with unwashed hair hanging down her shoulders, but other than that she was clean. The provided body wash smelled like green tea and persimmon, but apparently soap and conditioner cost extra at the front desk. Asa, being the cheapskate that she was, decided she would put up with not the cleanest hair if it meant she didn’t have to spend money she didn’t really have.
Apparently Denji had used the body wash for everything, for his hair was still slightly damp and his arms were rubbed until they’d turned pink.
Denji noticed Asa's presence from where he sat on the unmade bed with a hot springs tourist pamphlet in his hands. He smiled at Asa in a way that made her heart flutter despite her exhaustion. Asa cautiously pulled the tan bathrobe around herself, feeling rather exposed despite the fact that she still wore her underwear and bra underneath the slightly itchy terry cloth garment.
“Want the bed?” Denji asked hesitantly. He wore his white short sleeved undershirt and a pair of boxers.
“I mean…there’s enough room to share,” Asa said bluntly.
“Eh? I’m okay sleeping on the floor, ya know.”
“No…stay,” Asa said softly.
“…You sure?”
Asa nodded. “There’s plenty of room, and I don’t mind sharing a bed. Do you?”
“Nah…my…my other sister who wasn’t Nayuta used to sneak in bed with me sometimes. I’m used to it.”
The mention of another sister was new to Asa, but now wasn’t the time to pry.
“How are ya doing, Mitaka?” Denji asked in a light voice when Asa didn’t respond. He must’ve noticed the weariness in her features. Asa was almost always exhausted after showering, but the fight she participated in today drained her energy in a big way.
“Tired, and kinda sad.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah…”
“Can I do anything?” The fact that Denji was simply asking made Asa’s heart warm up, but there was no way in hell she’d ever acknowledge such a thing.
“No. Just need some sleep.”
“Okay, but before that, I gotta question.”
“Yeah?”
“So…you’re ticklish?”
After Asa sat down on her side of the bed, she gave Denji a skeptical look.
“When did I tell you that?” she asked.
“Uh, that one time I carried you over my shoulder.”
Ah.
Asa must have mentioned it when Chainsaw Man (who she didn’t know the true identity of at the time) put her in a fireman's carry to get away from a particularly pesky Primal Devil. She had a bad tendency to have a knee jerk reaction to kick to even the slightest ticklish sensation, which is probably why she mentioned her ticklishness.
“Well, are you?”
“…I am,” Asa sighed. She finished reviewing her tasks for the weekend and set her planner on the nightstand.
“Ah,” he said bluntly.
“…You’re not going to do what I think you’re able to do, are you?” Asa queried bitingly. He’d done things like this before—silly things like miraculously coughing up flowers to get a reaction out of her. Stupid at first, but Asa soon caught on. He did this stuff to distract her from her depressing thoughts and moods.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Denji said innocently.
“You know, like—”
Her sentence was cut short by Denji’s tickling attack. Asa burst into a screeching fit of laughter, twisting in Denji’s arms to get away from his determined fingers moving over the sides of her tan bathrobe.
“Hey—!”
“What?” Denji responded teasingly. His attack grew in intensity. Asa gasped for air. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she squealed loudly through her gritted teeth.
“Really? What—what are you? Fif—five?” Asa said in her fit of laughter.
“No, I’m seventeen!” Denji declared, not comprehending her sarcasm.
“I know that,” Asa bit out. Denji pressed his fingers deeper into her sides and her heel shot out and made contact directly with Denji’s jaw. This headshot didn’t deter him one bit. Instead, it made Denji grin even wider. Physical attacks were no use. Asa would have to appeal to the very little commonsense he had.
“Stop—we…we’re going to wake up other guests.”
“Oh…okay.”
Denji’s tickling ceased as soon as she requested him to stop. He withdrew his hands, rolled over on his back, and rested his intertwined hands flat against his stomach.
“Sorry about the kick,” Asa wheezed.
“Oh, that? All good.”
Asa smiled a little, but she couldn’t help but feel some wicked resentment deep inside.
No fair.
No one just tickled Mitaka Asa and got away with it. Thus, she wasn’t going down without a fight.
While she caught her breath, Asa saw the window of opportunity. When it seemed like Denji wasn’t expecting it, Asa straddled him across his hips and went on the offensive.
Her initial mindset went something like this: “What’s going to get a bigger reaction than over-clothes tickling? Under-clothes tickling, of course.”
Her hands darted underneath the hem of his plain white T-shirt and she pressed her fingertips into his armpits. He didn’t laugh. Instead, he stiffened under her. No big deal. He didn’t say “no,” nor was he trying to push her off. Sometimes it took a few seconds of poking and prodding to find where someone was ticklish.
Asa changed her techniques and trailed her fingers downwards into his sides. Instead of laughing like she would, Denji stopped breathing underneath her. That concerned her. Asa looked up into Denji’s face. His countenance was completely flushed. He kept his eyes lowered too, as if concentrating on something.
“Hayakawa…?” Asa asked awkwardly with her hands still pressed into his side. She stretched out the first syllable with her words. “You good?”
“Oh, what? Yeah,” Denji responded hastily with a nod.
“Can I keep…?”
“Mhm. Go ahead,” he insisted with a slight grin that faded as quickly as it appeared.
Asa resumed the light touches over his side. Here at the small of his waist was nice to touch, she realized with slight horror. Kinda soft and velvety, like he took really good care of his skin or something. Asa’s pokes and jabs turned into long, sweeping strokes of her thumbs as she processed this new sensory revelation. Asa spaced out until Denji tried to suppress a very specific kind of noise. They stared at each other with gobsmacked expressions.
“Did…did you just moan?” Asa laughed self-consciously, trying to break the cringy silence.
“…No?” Denji lied, but his flushed expression was the closest thing he could probably feel akin to embarrassment that Asa had ever seen on his face. He looked a little dazed, like he hadn’t drank enough water before going outside on a hot summer’s day.
Asa went to remove her hands, but Denji stopped her.
“You can keep going. If ya want to,” he added hastily.
“…You sure you didn’t just moan?”
“Uh…yep.”
Liar.
Asa compulsively repeated the same motions. Denji squirmed under her weight and swallowed down another hum of pleasure. Asa rolled her eyes, but couldn’t bring herself to stop touching Denji. The act tickled her brain in a cautiously satisfying way. As a matter of fact, Asa wanted to touch more of him.
“Can I…?”
“Do whatever ya want,” Denji said hurriedly, his voice cracking in the middle of the sentence.
“Alright,” Asa confirmed, trying to not sound too eager.
Her hands drifted to his front as she cautiously felt around his abdominals in a way that she hoped wasn’t too weird. Light touches, no grabbing or anything. Denji watched her cloth-enclosed hands with a wide-eyed expression.
He was strong, Asa realized, well, kind of. She’d always been vaguely aware of that fact, but she could feel every muscle loosen, ripple, and tense under her fingers. It was an empowering feeling, him letting her do this.
Could I…?
Asa’s hands strayed further up Denji’s torso. She paused at the widest part of his rib cage, her thumbs right below his pectoral muscles. Denji’s chest expanded and shrunk with every tense breath as he waited for her next move.
Any higher seemed…too intimate, but Asa really wanted to continue.
Denji shifted, going from sitting up with both palms pressed against the bed to propping himself up on one elbow. He used his free hand to pull his shirt up to his collarbones.
She’d seen him shirtless just once before—right after she witnessed Chainsaw Man’s red helmet melt off of his face for the first time. There was something dirty-feeling and rather scandalous about seeing her hands on his bare skin. Asa felt her face heat up. She began to sweat more—continuous rivulets ran down her spine.
“Why…?”
“I wanna watch, okay?” Denji murmured, giving her an embarrassed glance. “Just so we’re being careful.”
Watch what? Asa thought dumbly. Gathering courage, she ran her hands over the sides of his chest.
“Wait—be stupid careful of the cord,” Denji added in a trembling voice. The black starter hung limp along his sternum.
Asa exhaled unevenly and gave her hands generous space from the cord. Yoru would want to mess with it, but Asa couldn’t care less.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful,” she reassured him with a smile. “Won’t touch it.”
Denji gave her a limp smile before his eyes flitted back down to her hands. Despite the rather warm hotel room, gooseflesh covered his skin. Asa noticed that his nipples were hard. She thoughtlessly swiped her thumbs across both in her exploration of his exposed body.
She might as well have pressed a switch. He bit his bottom lip and gave another strangled humming moan before he limply slid down to lay completely on his back. His freshly washed and uncombed hair spread around his face in an appealing way.
The thought that Hayakawa Denji was “good-looking” had flitted across Asa’s mind numerous times before, much to Yoru’s horror, but the notion that he was also “utterly adorable” was new to her.
“Ah…are you okay?” Asa asked stupidly.
Denji laughed, but there was a tinge of sadness to his voice that Asa couldn’t place. His face sobered for briefest moment.
“Hell, Mitaka, ya just don’t know how crazy ya make me, do ya?”
Denji shifted a bit under her, a movement which unintentionally brought attention to what was between her legs. Namely, the erection in his boxers that was held in place only by old elastic. Asa felt her face grow hot.
“What the heck does that mean?” she retorted, removing her hands from his chest.
“It means I like you, Asa.”
“Asa.”
Holy crap. He called me by my first name.
Asa sat back a little, which pressed his clothed cock firmly between her legs.
That also felt good.
Denji looked up at her with a questioning stare.
Asa leaned forward, again experimentally shifting her weight against his erection.
“You like me?”
Denji bit back a huff. He was having difficulty focusing on the conversation at hand. “Yep.”
“What…if I told you that I like you too?”
“You…you like me?” Denji asked, shock clear in his words.
Denji lifted his hips slightly, accommodating Asa on top of him. Asa moved aside her bathrobe, leaving only two layers of clothing between their bodies. For someone as paranoid about getting pregnant as she was, Asa also knew that grinding like this would probably be fine according to her sexual education at school.
“Mhm. I do.”
Asa rolled her hips experimentally. The sensation left electric sparks radiating up her spinal cord.
Denji caught the memo. He soon went from accommodating her to taking over the grinding rhythm between their bodies. He was good at this too. She knew nothing about penises beyond anatomy textbooks, but Denji seemed skilled with his. She wondered if he was a virgin or not.
When Denji finally picked up speed, Asa braced herself with an outstretched arm on either side of Denji’s head. The wet tip of his covered dick pressed up in just the right place. Asa responded with small, rapid hips circles to repeatedly press their bodies together as she liked it to be.
“You ‘like-like’ me, right?” he asked in a small voice. Denji finally had the courage to look up into her face with a unsure grin.
“What do you mean?” Asa said breathlessly. She felt hot—she found herself stripping off the robe. Despite this, Denji’s eyes didn’t waver from her face. Instead, he wriggled completely out of his shirt as a response and threw it off the side of the bed.
“Could I be your boyfriend? If not now—then soon? After…we’ve been on more da—real dates?” Denji asked in a scattered manner.
A knotted tightness spread from below her navel to just above her thighs. Asa didn’t know exactly what this feeling was, but she had her suspicions. She needed to test her hypothesis.
“Yeah, you could maybe be my…my boyfriend, after more dates.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Denji broke out into a genuine smile. He reached up, ran her fingers through her tangled hair, and gently brought her face closer to his. When it was clear Asa wasn’t going to reject his advances, he kissed her lightly. His lips trembled under hers, but he bravely continued. It felt somehow familiar, Asa thought, even though they’d never even gotten close to kissing each other.
That innocent kiss was enough to send Asa over the edge. The knot released under her navel and she saw stars. As she rode the weird high, she kissed back briefly before collapsing on top of Denji without a sound. Her ear pressed against the base of his starter cord.
The returned kiss must’ve done something similar for Denji. He let out a weak “shit” and shook as he reached his own climax underneath Asa. As the aftershocks shook through his body, he propped himself back up on one elbow.
“…Asa?”
Reality washed over her sobered brain in a millisecond.
Oh…oh, wow. I just had an orgasm, didn’t I? Did…Denji have one too?
She noticed the wet cloth between their legs for the first time and balked at the sensation. Even though sperm definitely couldn’t move through clothes as she knew from her sex education, the notion of “Could I get pregnant from this?” still reverberated through her thoughts and triggered her nerves.
“Did you…did you ejaculate?” Asa whispered aloud as she grabbed for the robe and wrapped it around herself.
“Um…yeah. A little. Did you?”
Asa moved off of Denji’s softening erection to straddle his lower belly instead.
“I think I did?” Asa responded.
“Oh…was it your first?”
Yep, it was definitely her first. While it felt kind of good, Asa wasn’t sure if she liked orgasms. The sudden loss of bodily control…that was…that was scary. Combined with the self-imposed but yet likely improbable pregnancy scare, a weird mix of anxiety and guilt bubbled up into her chest.
Denji didn’t follow up on his question, instead choosing to hug Asa to his chest. The panic that caused her heart to burst into a pitter-pattering frenzy ebbed away when Denji wrapped his strong arms around her shoulders. Asa listened while his pants lessened into deep breaths. It was…it was like he knew that she needed some space and quiet to process all these new experiences.
I..I think I like this more, Asa decided. At least, for now.
“Denji?” Asa whispered, testing his first name on her tongue.
“Yeah?” His bare skin smelled good. His natural scent and drying sweat mixed complimentarily with the inn-provided body wash scent.
“If we date, I think I need some time before we do more…stuff like we just did,” Asa admitted. “That…that just now felt good, but I think I got too ahead of myself.”
Denji nuzzled her forehead.
“‘Course. All cool.”
The last of Asa’s anxiety drained out of her body and she let herself lean her entire body weight against Denji’s solid form. His heart thumped loudly.
“No matter what, I always want you to be comfy with me, okay?” Denji added hastily. “You need to tell me if I’m doing anything you don’t like.”
“Deal.”
They laid there for a while longer. Denji drew abstract doodles on her back with his strong fingertips. Asa started dozing.
“Asa?” Denji asked one more time. His voice was rough and laden with newfound exhaustion.
“Hm?”
“You’re okay with cuddling, though, right?”
“Hm? Yeah. Cuddling’s nice.”
Asa had never cuddled with anyone who wasn’t her parents, but it didn’t seem to be a hard skill to master. In fact, she had been looking forward to doing it with someone she liked for a long time.
“Awesome,” Denji said happily. His cinnamon brown eyes sparkled in a way that made her chest tight. “I want to cuddle a lot, okay?”
Asa gave one exhausted laugh before she went completely limp.
“Hah, you got it. Plenty of cuddling coming right up.”