Chapter Text
Yukimiya is brandishing a piece of paper back and forth when Karasu finally trudges into the meeting, Otoya on his heels. Nearly everyone else is there already - only Shidou’s missing - and they’re all squished onto the chairs and couches strewn about the house living room. Karasu forgoes trying to find a spot anywhere and opts to lean against the wall instead, Otoya choosing to lean against him in turn.
“Rush week schedule is finalized,” Yukki says, with a small smile on his face, and the piece of paper in his hand suddenly becomes twice as interesting to Karasu. “Shidou should be here soon, I want to wait-“
There’s a loud bang from back by the kitchen, the back door clattering shut, and then Shidou’s in the living room, hands shoved deep in his jogger pockets and wide grin on his face.
“Sae said the rush week schedule’s in,” Shidou says. He wedges himself onto the couch nearest him, forcing his way in between Reo and the armrest, and Otoya snorts from where he’s perched against Karasu, his chin hooked over Karasu’s shoulder.
“Toddler,” Otoya huffs, barely audible - Karasu only catches it because it’s said right into his ear. He cocks a grin, but then Yukimiya’s speaking again, and Karasu’s attention shifts back to him.
“As you all know by now,” Yukimiya starts, fluttering the paper again, “Reo and I just got back from the Inter-Greek meeting. The rush week schedule is, indeed, finalized. It’s a week late this year - first week of September - and the sororities are rushing the week after.”
“Just tell us what day we got,” Raichi yells, from somewhere over in the corner arm chairs. Karasu can’t really see him from his spot on the wall, not with Gagamaru’s massive frame in front of him.
Yukimiya just smiles benignly, holding a hand up in Raichi’s direction. “Thank you, Raichi.” He pauses for effect, his smile twisting up just a little bit sharper, and Karasu’s lip curls up in a smirk. “We’ve got the Friday slot again this year.”
There’s a chorus of fuck yeahs around the living room, and Karasu claps his hands together a few times, grinning. He jostles Otoya as he does so, and Otoya’s quiet grumbles echo in his ear as the rest of the brothers high five each other.
“What day did Beta Mu get?” Raichi hollers, above the excitement, and from where Karasu’s standing, he has a direct line of sight to Reo. As the frat’s vice president, he’d gone with Yukimiya to the meeting, and with the way Reo’s mouth is twisting itself into a smug little smile, he knows something went down during the schedule organization.
Yukki’s grin’s a little bigger, too, as he continues. “Beta Mu is on for Thursday,” he says, and the room gets even louder, cheers erupting again.
“Upsilon Tau?” Barou asks, over the din, and Karasu doesn’t think he’s imagining the way Yukki’s smile tightens, or the way Shidou’s gets a little bit wider.
“Well,” Yukimiya starts, readjusting his glasses. It’s a nervous habit of his, Karasu knows, when he’s trying to find the words for something. Over his shoulder, Otoya seems to catch it, too, hmm-ing questioningly in Karasu’s ear. “Upsilon Tau has Saturday.”
Raichi and Barou’s twin groans drown out half of the room, though everyone seems let to out a grumble, Karasu included.
“Why the fuck-“ Barou starts, but Yukimiya cuts him off almost immediately.
“I gave it to them intentionally,” he says. “I took Friday for us and forfeited the Saturday spot on the condition that they helped keep Beta Mu on a weeknight this year.”
“I would’ve given so much money ta see Kaiser’s face during this meeting,” Karasu mumbles, only for Otoya to hear. Otoya snickers, tilting his head a little bit from it’s resting place.
“I wish Reo’d recorded it,” he says, almost wistfully - or as wistful as Otoya’s tone ever gets, anyway.
“In any case,” Yukimiya says, voice climbing a little over the rising volume of the room, “I’ve got the full schedule here, it’ll be posted in the kitchen. Reo and I will be at all of them, but I want a good showing across the board. I am, however, requiring everyone to be at both the Beta Mu and the Upsilon parties.”
There’s a grumble of agreement around the room, and Yukimiya grins at them all, nodding.
“Thank you. If you’re interested in having a little this semester, please let me know as soon as possible. Remember that you need have been an active brother for a full semester to be eligible. Meeting dismissed.”
The room breaks into a shuffle at Yukki’s words, and Otoya peels himself off of Karasu’s back. Shidou’s grinning maniacally across the room, him and Reo wrapped up in what sounds like a recap of the Inter-Greek meeting, and Karasu can already hear Raichi’s overly-loud complaining about having to go to the Beta Mu party.
Karasu’s not thrilled about it either, in truth. The less time he has to spend around Kaiser’s smug face, the better, and the idea of bracketing it against having to deal with Aiku’s bullshit at the Upsilon party is already giving Karasu a headache.
Rush week is always draining; when he was a freshman, him and Otoya had pledged Beta Lambda - alongside Yukki and Barou and Shidou - and that had been it’s own unique hell, but the expectation to make a showing at all the other frat’s parties had put a strain on the following year, too. His sophomore year he’d been expected to attend the whole week of parties, and his upperclassman status had only gotten him out the Monday & Tuesday ones last year. This year, finally, as a senior, he thought he’d be able to kip off all expect Beta Lambda’s own.
“Yukki’s on his way over,” Otoya says, nodding his head over Karasu’s shoulder, and he glances back to see Yukki only a few steps away. Karasu dips his chin at him in greeting, settling back in against the wall.
“Yo, Specs,” he says, and Yukki’s eyes crinkle in the corners.
“I wanted to see if either of you would consider a little this year,” Yukki says, quietly, once he’s close enough, and Karasu’s mouth turns down. He’d forgone taking a little every semester since he’d been eligible - both he and Otoya had, actually - using the excuse of classes and soccer making them both too busy to have one. Never mind the fact that Yukimiya has classes, soccer, a part-time gig modeling for the art department’s figure drawing classes, and is the frat president, and he still found the time for it.
In truth, Karasu probably does have the time for it, but the idea of mentoring a new pledge through the whole process and helping him through it just seems so tiresome, and it’s not like they’re low on brothers - there’s more than enough eligible bigs in the frat, and Karasu would much rather hole up in his room and hang out with Otoya than have some underclassman crying on his shoulder because Raichi screamed at them a little too loudly.
“Specs,” Otoya says, deadpan, and Yukimiya holds up his hands in surrender, soft grin still on his face.
“I just thought I’d check, with it being our senior year. If you change your mind during the spring semester, you’re more than welcome to take on one of the spring pledges.”
Karasu snorts, and Yukimiya gives them both a quick clap on the shoulder before winding his way over to Kunigami, who’s been trying to catch his attention since the meeting ended.
Otoya glances at him, pinching his thumb and forefinger together and holding it up to his mouth. Karasu nods, once, tightly, and they wind their way up the stairs to the third floor as quietly as they can. It’s only their room, Yukimiya’s, and Barou’s up here - Shidou’d opted to take a second-floor room with Reo, though he was more often then not over at Upsilon with Sae, anyway. Karasu probably could’ve pulled some strings with Yukimiya to get his own room, if he’d tried, but him and Otoya have been together since freshman year in their shoebox dorm room, and when Yukimiya’d asked them about room assignments back in June, both him and Otoya’d forgone their senior privilege to a single and chosen to share the last third-floor room instead.
Otoya flops down on his bed once the door’s closed, pulling an overstuffed joint out from the box on his end table, patting around in his pockets for a lighter. Karasu tosses him the one from his own pockets, yanking on a hoodie before falling onto the bed next to him. He takes the joint once Otoya offers it, smoke curling lazily out of Otoya’s mouth and towards the ceiling.
“I don’t want ta go ta Beta Mu,” Karasu grumbles, sucking in a deep inhale. Otoya snickers.
“Dude, I don’t want to go to Upsilon,” he says. “At least at Beta Mu I can be an asshole and Specs won’t care. I’m going to have to play nice with fucking Aiku and Sae and the rest of them.”
“Yeah, but with Mu I have listen ta Kaiser’s bitching and whining,” Karasu says. He slumps back against the wall, passing the joint back to Otoya, blowing his exhale upwards. “At least we don’t have ta be at Mu Chi or Pi Xi Gamma or whoever the fuck else this year.”
Otoya hums. They chatter aimlessly for what feels like an hour, Karasu’s limbs going soft. He doesn’t smoke nearly as often as Otoya does, doesn’t usually like the way it makes his brain spin slower, but he has to admit it feels nice tonight. Him and Otoya end up with Naruto on at some point, one of the earlier Shippuden episodes, and they’re in a lazy argument over whether or not Shikamaru’s actually smart or if everyone else in Konoha is just an idiot, when Reo bursts through their bedroom door.
“Oi,” Karasu says, waving a hand limply at him, “learn ta knock, Heir.”
“For real,” Otoya affirms around a yawn. “We’re broadening our minds in here.”
Reo arches a perfectly manicured eyebrow, craning his neck to look at where Asuma’s getting his ass beat by Hidan. “Mmm,” he says, “I’m sure. Anyway, Nin, Nagi’s over and he wants to smoke-“
Otoya groans exaggeratedly, but he shifts against Karasu anyway, reaching for his bedside drawer, and Karasu belatedly realizes how close him and Otoya are pressed against each other; their legs are tangled up together, and before he’d moved, Otoya had been practically draped across Karasu’s chest. It makes something in Karasu tighten, somewhere around his ribcage, and his hoody, oversized and baggy though it is, suddenly feels too tight on him.
Otoya tosses a ziplock bag at Reo, who catches it deftly, and Karasu tries to shake the feeling, half-watching Shikamaru’s breakdown in an effort to distract himself.
“Give me sixty,” Otoya says, turning back over and reassuming his previous position, head resting squarely on Karasu’s chest again. Karasu wishes he hadn’t smoked so much, wishes his brain was up to the task of trying to figure out what the fuck his heart and lungs are trying to tell him right now.
“You said it was forty-five last week,” Reo whines, and Otoya flips him the bird without looking. Karasu desperately tries to focus on how Shikamaru’s crying.
“I’m up charging you for annoying me,” Otoya says, and he fucking nuzzles himself against Karasu. Karasu can’t tell if the weed’s given him a panic attack or if the way his heart Is stuttering is from something else. “Give me sixty and get out.”
“Fine,” Reo says, and he taps on his phone for a few seconds before there’s a muted ping from where Otoya’s phone is trapped somewhere in the blankets. “Thanks, Nin,” he says, and Otoya flips him off again.
Karasu flips him off on his way out, too, just for something to do that feels normal, and Reo narrows his eyes as he shuts the door, his stupid, too-eager gaze flicking over the both of them once more.
“I’ll knock next time,” is all he says, and Karasu curls his lip at him on the way out, but then Otoya points a finger at the screen, to where Shikamaru’s explaining Hidan’s technique.
“This is what I mean,” Otoya says, “all this shit Shikamaru noticed was obvious. Kotetsu’s just stupid.”
“It’s only obvious because ya watched Shippuden, like, five times, dude,” Karasu says, and whatever it was that had a stranglehold on Karasu’s chest loosens into something warm and pleasant as Otoya hums again, continuing their argument with no real heat or annoyance to it.
_____________
The two weeks leading up to the rush week party pass in a hazy blur. Karasu’s got a full course load, and he’s a TA this semester for one of the lower-level psych classes, and he spends a lot of time crammed in Ego’s office with him, grading the baseline tests Ego’d given on the first day against the absolutely insane rubric the professor’d come up with. He’s got soccer on top of that, with practice every afternoon and a game a week, and any free time he gets is spent doing drills and playing one-on-one with Otoya.
And, after all of that, any time he has left is snapped up by getting the house ready for the rush week party. Yukki, Reo, and a handful of the underclassmen trudge out to the Monday and Tuesday parties - Mu Chi and Phi Chi Beta, respectively - and Yukki reports, predictably, that the pledge turnout at both was fairly low.
Wednesday evening sees the house fluttering with activity by the time Karasu gets home, with everyone trying to get as much done as possible before they have to trudge over to Beta Mu the next night. He ducks under Raichi and Kunigami arguing over streamer placement as he climbs the stairs, neatly dodging Iemon and Gagamaru as they haul a papier-mâché Poseidon statue down from the attic. They’d voted on an ‘under the sea’ theme this year, which Karasu thinks is cheesy, but it means they can re-use most of the decorations from when they’d done a pirate theme a few years ago, which ultimately means less work for Karasu, so he’d kept his mouth shut.
Otoya’s in their room already when Karasu gets there, nimbly tying letters together for a banner. Karasu tries to read it, but with the way its spilling onto the floor and twisted in on itself, he can’t quite make it out.
“Yo,” Karasu says, by way of greeting, and Otoya pauses his work to flash him a peace sign back. He dumps his school bag onto the bed, shucking off his shirt and tossing it into the pile in their closet before starting to rifle through the hangers. “Who’s tonight?” he asks, and when Otoya doesn’t respond immediately, Karasu peers over his shoulder.
Otoya’s still on pause, it seems, with his hands halfway through stringing a gold letter B to the banner, and he’s staring at Karasu, eyes seemingly trained on Karasu’s back. That same funny feeling coils in Karasu’s chest, and he tamps it down as he raises an eyebrow.
“Oi,” he calls, “Nin.” Otoya finally moves at that, flicking his eyes to Karasu’s, cocking his head to let him know he’s listening. “Who’s got a party tonight?”
“Pi Xi Gamma,” Otoya says, like nothing weird’s happened, and then he goes right back to stringing together his banner. Whatever it is that lives in his chest now seems to coil a little tighter, and he clears his throat as he turns back to the closet, yanking a hoodie and a pair of joggers out of it.
“You going?” he asks, peeling his jeans off and adding them to the dirty pile as well, and Otoya huffs behind him.
“Fuck no. Yukki said I could stay up here if I did the banner for him for Friday. I told him you were helping me to get you out of it, too.”
Karasu could kiss Otoya on the mouth for that. He’s dead tired after an overly-long day in Ego’s office, and the prospect of arguing with Shidou over streamers has been hanging over him like a cloud. He grabs his clothes and gives Otoya an over-exaggerated kiss on the top of his head as passes, emphasizing the mwah sound to make it less weird. Obviously.
“You are the fucking best,” Karasu says. “Let me grab a quick shower and then I’ll order a pizza or something for us.”
By the time Karasu’s out of the shower and in his clean sweats, Otoya’s nearly finished stringing it up, and Karasu puts in a delivery order on his phone while Otoya hangs the banner on the wall to take a look at it.
“Should be here in, like, twenty,” Karasu says, sliding his phone into his jogger pocket, and Otoya makes a noncommittal noise.
“Good, because we have to do this all over again,” Otoya says, and Karasu glances up at the wall to see that Otoya’s tied every single letter on backwards. They try flipping around the whole thing first, just to see if that fixes it, but while that rights the letters, it flips the message backwards.
Otoya starts at one end and Karasu on the other, and they go one by one, towards the middle, flipping and re-tying. It’s slow work, and Otoya puts Naruto back on at some point, which only makes them move slower as they pause every few seconds to watch whatever’s happening on screen. Kunigami pokes his head in through the open door at some point, proffering a cardboard box.
“Crow, you order a pizza?” he asks, and Karasu’s stomach growls as the smell wafts into the room. Otoya’s stomach gives an answering growl, and Kunigami laughs, stepping into the room proper.
He sets it down on the floor next to them, twisting his head to look at their banner. “Why’s it backwa-“
“We’re fixin’ it,” Karasu cuts him off, waving his hand.
“Creative license,” Otoya says, at the same time, reaching for the pizza box. “You wouldn’t get it.” Kunigami just quirks a smile, tossing a wave over his shoulder as he backs out of the room, shutting the door most of the way behind him.
Otoya sighs, crumpling into a heap, half spread over Karasu’s lap. “My fingers hurt,” he complains, holding one of his hands limply in front of Karasu’s face. “They’re going to get all knobbled and wizened. I’m going to look like an old man.”
Karasu snorts, batting Otoya’s hand away, trying to ignore the fact that Otoya is in his lap right now. They’ve always been touchy with each other, have always leaned into each other’s space, but it’s never made Karasu feel like this. Ever since the other night, when Reo barged in on them, Karasu can’t help but be aware of every time Otoya touches him. And he’s realized they touch other a lot, more so then he’d thought.
Some of it he’d known about, like how their shoulders are constantly brushing every time they go somewhere, or how Otoya uses him to slouch against.
But some of it - like how they’ll twist up into each other, practically cuddling when they watch TV, or like how Otoya is spread across his fucking lap right now - have been a shock even to Karasu. He doesn’t know how he didn’t realize it before, doesn’t know where all these lines got blurred and smudged, doesn’t know when ‘Karasu and Otoya’ turned into ‘KarasauandOtoya’.
And the worst part, he thinks, is that Karasu likes it. That thing in his chest purrs and stretches whenever Otoya drapes himself over him, perks up and pulls tighter when he catches Otoya doing things like staring at his bare torso earlier. And Karasu’s not an idiot, he knows what this all likely means. He’s just completely at a fucking loss over what to do about it.
Otoya’s his best friend, in the frat and at the school and in general. They’re a pair, a unit, complete with a ‘do not separate’ sticker slapped across them. They’d chosen to share a fucking room their senior year, when they very much had the option not to. Karasu can’t risk losing this, not until he can get some kind of a handle on it all. Can figure out when or how it started and if maybe he’s just in a dry spell and if maybe the whole thing will pass.
For now, though, he has a lap full of Otoya to deal with, and he sighs inwardly, silently, as he finishes re-tying on the last letter. “C’mon, knobby-knuckles,” he says, prodding at Otoya’s shoulder, “get up so I can take this downstairs.”
Otoya makes a show of grumbling as he rights himself, sitting up and stretching his arms above his head, his shirt riding up to show off a strip of his toned lower back. Karasu very pointedly Does Not Look At It, rolling to his feet with the banner in his hand.
“You want to smoke?” Otoya asks, shuffling over to his end table, and Karasu shakes his head.
“Nah, not tonight,” he says. “I’m going to run this downstairs, I’ll be back in a second.”
Otoya shrugs, tongue poking out through his teeth as he searches for his lighter, and Karasu tosses him his own on his way out the door.
Downstairs is significantly quieter than earlier, with half of the underclassmen off to Gamma with Yukki and Reo, and Karasu gets Barou to help him string the banner up against the far wall in the living room, Beta Lambda Welcomes You to Rush Week spelled out in gold letters, glittering under the lamplight.
Barou waves his pack of cigarettes at him once they’re done, one eyebrow raised in question, and Karasu follows him out onto the back deck, the September evening pleasantly cool. They puff in silence for a few minutes, watching the evening breeze ruffle through the treetops.
Karasu debates saying anything at all, because he’s still not sure how he feels about the whole thing and because it’s Barou, of all people - he’s not exactly known for his emotional intelligence - but when Karasu glances up at the house, he can see the dim light from his and Otoya’s window, and that thing in his chest squirms happily at the thought of going back upstairs to a stoned, sleepy, cuddly Otoya.
“I think I want ta sleep with Otoya,” Karasu says around an exhale, partly just to test how the words sound out loud, but then Barou’s eyebrows pull together, his mouth turning down around his own cigarette.
“The fuck are you talking about?” Barou grunts.
“What do ya mean, what am I talking about?”
“Haven’t you and the little ninja freak been doing that this whole time?”
Karasu chokes on his next inhale, ashing his cigarette over the back deck railing as Barou thumps him hard on the back. “What are ya talking about?” Karasu asks, once he’s gotten his lungs under control, eyes watering as he takes another drag.
Barou just stares at him, incredulous. “You mean to tell me,” he starts, and he points the lit end of his cigarette dangerously close to Karasu, “that you and Nin haven’t been fucking this whole time.”
“Why would ya think we have? He’s had a rotating door of partners the last four years, I kept sleeping with that one girl in sophomore year, not to mention-“
“I just thought you two had some weird open relationship shit going on,” Barou interrupts, and Karasu can’t believe how absolutely bewildered Barou looks right now. “You two are always up each other’s assholes, I just figured you were sleeping together. The whole house thinks you are,” he adds unhelpfully, almost like an afterthought.
Karasu drops his head into his hands, his still-lit cigarette trailing smoke from between his fingers. He’s spent the last two weeks trying to figure out when this whole stupid line got blurred with Otoya, only to find out that maybe the line never existed for them in the first place.
He sighs, taking another drag and blowing the smoke out into the dark backyard. Maybe this makes it easier. Maybe he can’t ruin anything between them if they were always hurtling towards this end, anyway.
Next to him, Barou makes a strangled sort of sound that could either be a laugh or a snort or a choke. Maybe all three. “You two are fucking weird,” he says, stubbing his cigarette out on the railing. “I knew it the second we pledged together.”
“Ya didn’t know shit,” Karasu bites back, though his heart isn’t really in it, not when his mind is focused on what - or who - is two stories above their heads.
Barou just rolls his eyes, trudging back inside the house, leaving Karasu alone on the deck. He lets his own cigarette run down to the filter, the red of the end fading into a dull gray, and he tosses it in the ash tray they keep on the deck.
His head’s a mess as he climbs back up the stairs, Barou’s words replaying in his skull on a loop. The whole house thinks you are, Barou’d said. How could Karasu have been so oblivious to not only his own actions, but to everyone else’s response to them? How was Reo the other night his fucking tip-off to the whole thing? Would he have ever noticed it if it hadn’t been for that?
Otoya’s slouched underneath a blanket when he gets back to the room, Naruto still on and joint burning between his fingers. He nods at Karasu when he walks in, and he looks so fucking comfortable and soft and Karasu’s brain is spinning wildly out of control, and he opens his mouth to say something normal like hey or yo or oi, but what comes out instead is, “The whole frat thinks we’re sleeping together.”
Otoya raises one single eyebrow, his expression otherwise unchanged, and raises his joint back to his lips. He pats the bed next to him - and Karasu realizes belatedly that Otoya’s squished himself against the wall so that Karasu can join him - and holds the joint out to him as he exhales.
“Okay,” he says, like Karasu had simply told him it was raining outside. “You want to watch? Team Ten’s about to go get revenge with Kakashi.”
Karasu feels deranged. Nothing makes sense him right now - not his own feelings, not what Barou said to him, not how Otoya’s reacting to it. He feels like he stepped through a parallel world when he went out on the back deck a few minutes ago.
He declines the joint, but he falls onto the bed with Otoya, letting Otoya wrap himself around Karasu, their legs threaded together and Otoya’s head on his chest in a mirror image of the other night. Karasu’s fingers automatically wind themselves through Otoya’s hair. How many times have they ended up in this exact same position without realizing it?
“How often do we do this?” he mumbles, more to himself than anything, his fingers still twisting through Otoya’s hair. Otoya shrugs.
“Does it matter, at this point?” he asks, and Karasu’s brain is fuzzy enough that he can’t see the hole in that logic, and the thing in his chest is all warm and languid with Otoya pressed this close, so he lets it slide, lets himself pick up their Shikamaru argument again, lets himself just enjoy how nice this feels, how content he is.