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For Endo, the interior of Sakura’s apartment was, in a word, depressing. It was functional in the way a prison cell is functional: a bed, a desk, a single chair, and walls so bare they seemed to echo even when no one was speaking.
Endo stood in the center of the small room, his hands on his hips, looking around with an expression of genuine physical pain. "Sakura, listen... I’ve seen abandoned warehouses with more soul than this. It’s like living inside a cardboard box."
Sakura, who was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, let out a defensive huff. "It’s clean, isn't it? I have a bed. I have a roof. What else do I need? I’m not here to host parties."
"You’re here to live, not just survive," Endo countered, stepping toward the window. "First of all, these curtains. They look like they were stolen from a hospital basement. We need something cool…velvet, maybe. Deep burgundy or a midnight blue. Something that says 'cool boy lives here,' not 'I’m hiding from the police.'"
"Velvet?" Sakura scoffed, walking over to yank at the cheap, thin fabric. "That’ll just collect dust. These are fine… They let the light in."
"They let the despair in," Endo corrected. He turned and pointed at the floor. "And this floor... it’s freezing. We need a rug. Something plush, dark. A place where we could... well, do more than just stand." He gave Sakura a suggestive wink that made the younger boy’s face instantly flare red.
"We aren't doing anything on the floor!" Sakura replied. "I like it simple. Rugs are just things to trip over. And burgundy curtains? This isn't a vampire's lair. I was thinking... maybe a gray rug if you’re going to be so annoying about it."
Endo groaned, throwing his head back. "Gray? Sakura, your life is already gray! You need texture. You need a leather armchair, something broken-in and expensive. Imagine sitting there with a drink while I... distract you."
"I don't need a leather chair! I have a desk chair!"
"That's a plastic folding chair, Sakura! I’m surprised your spine hasn't filed for divorce!"
The taller boy marched over to him, closing the distance until Sakura was backed against the bare wall. "You’re so resistant to comfort. Why? Does it scare you to have a place that actually feels like you belong in it?"
Sakura looked away, his jaw tight. "I just... I don't see the point in getting attached to things."
Endo’s expression softened, his hand reaching out to catch Sakura’s chin, forcing him to look up. "It’s not about the things, Sakura. It’s about making a space that’s worthy of you. Now," his voice dropped to a low, commanding hum, "we’re getting the velvet curtains. And the leather. And if you’re a good boy and stop fighting me on the decor, I might show you exactly how 'functional' that new rug can be."
Sakura bit his lip, his gaze darting from Endo's eyes to his lips. "Fine," he whispered, his bravado crumbling under Endo's intense stare. "But no burgundy. Forest green. Or no deal."
Endo grinned, leaning in to seal the compromise with a kiss. "Forest green it is. I can work with that."
The automatic doors of Nitori slid open, and Sakura immediately felt like he was walking into a trap: it was bright, organized, and filled with couples looking at duvet covers, a nightmare for someone who preferred to blend into the shadows of an alleyway.
Endo, however, was in his element. He grabbed a cart with a flourish, leaning on the handle as he scanned the aisles like a general planning a siege.
"Alright, Sakura. Mission: Operation Stop Living Like a Fugitive. First stop, textiles," Endo declared, steering the cart toward the curtain section with purpose.
"I told you, I don't need a whole 'operation,'" Sakura hissed, trying to keep his hood pulled low. "And stop saying my name so loudly! People are looking."
"Let them look. They’re just jealous they aren't shopping with the cutest guy in Bofurin," Endo teased, reaching out to brush a hand against Sakura’s lower back. He pulled a sample of the forest green velvet they’d discussed. "Feel this. This is the quality you deserve."
"It's... soft," Sakura admitted, his fingers lingering on the fabric for a second before he jerked his hand away. "But it’s expensive, Endo. Look at the price tag. I can just get the polyester ones."
"No," Endo said, his tone shifting from playful to firm. He tossed the high-end curtains into the cart without a second thought. "I'm paying for this. All of it."
The boy stopped dead in the middle of the aisle. "The hell you are! I’m the one living there. I pay for my own stuff. I don't need your charity."
The older boy turned, his expression softening into something uncharacteristically earnest. He stepped closer, ignoring the elderly couple nearby eyeing them. "It's not charity, stubborn brat. Think of it as an investment."
"An investment in what?" Sakura grumbled, his face heating up.
Endo leaned down, his voice dropping to a private, romantic murmur. "In us. I want you to be comfortable. I want to know that when you're tired or hurt, you’re coming back to a place that feels like a home, not just a room. Because one day, Sakura... we aren't going to be shopping for your apartment. We’re going to be shopping for ours."
Sakura’s heart did a violent somersault. He looked down at the floor, his ears glowing a bright, unmistakable red. "You... you shouldn't say things like that in the middle of a department store."
"Why not? It’s the truth," Endo chuckled, grabbing a plush, dark rug and tossing it on top of the curtains. "Now, let’s go find that leather chair. And don't even look at the receipt. Your money is no good today."
"I hate you," Sakura muttered, though he didn't move to take the items out of the cart. Instead, he tentatively reached out and grabbed the sleeve of Endo's jacket, holding on as they moved toward the furniture section.
"Love you too, Sakura," Endo beamed, placing his hand over Sakura’s on the cart handle. "Now, let's go find a bed frame that won't creak... for practical reasons, obviously."
"Endo! Shut up!"
Sakura stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs as he stared at the massive king-sized bed. The charcoal-grey fabric looked soft enough to sink into, and the sheer scale of it made his tiny apartment back home feel like a shoe box.
"We aren't buying this," Sakura managed to choke out, his voice cracking. "I told you, I don't have the space. And I don't have the... the need for something this big."
Endo didn't move. He just sat there on the edge of the mattress, his long legs spread casually, watching the way Sakura’s heterochromatic eyes darted everywhere except at him. A slow, knowing smirk spread across Endo’s face.
"Of course we aren't buying it today, Sakura," Endo purred, his voice dropping to a low, intimate vibration that seemed to travel straight up Sakura’s spine. "But look at it. Just imagine... a few years down the line. A place where we don't have to worry about schools and rival gangs"
Endo reached out, his fingers grazing the plush duvet. "Imagine waking up and the first thing you see isn't a bare, white wall, but me. Sprawled out right here next to you. No cramped singles, no kicking each other by accident. Just... space."
Sakura’s face didn't just turn red: it turned a deep, violent shade of crimson that spread down to his neck. His mind, usually so focused on the next fight, was suddenly flooded with images he wasn't prepared for: Endo’s messy dark hair against those grey pillows, the warmth of another body under the covers, and the terrifyingly domestic peace of it all.
"Stop. it." He hissed, though he didn't pull away when Endo stood up and stepped into his personal space.
The older boy leaned down, his lips ghosting against the shell of Sakura’s burning ear. "I can see you thinking about it. You’re imagining where you’d put your head, aren't you? Or maybe you're imagining me pinning you into these expensive sheets until you can't breathe."
"Endo! We are in a Nitori!" Sakura almost screamed, shoving Endo’s chest with both hands. He was trembling, half from irritation and half from the sheer, overwhelming intensity of Endo’s gaze.
The taller boy let out a delighted, throat-clearing laugh, caught Sakura’s hands in his own, and squeezed. "Your face is glowing, Sakura. If we stay here any longer, you're going to set off the fire sprinklers. Come on, let's go pay for the curtains before you actually pass out."
Sakura let himself be led away, his legs feeling like jelly. He refused to look back at the bed, but the image of it (and the promise in Endo’s eyes) remained burned into his mind, hotter than any fever.
The walk back to the apartment was a blur of heavy shopping bags and lingering tension. By the time they kicked the door shut behind them, Sakura was practically vibrating with a mix of exhaustion and the leftover heat from their time in the bedding department.
"Alright, no more running away," Endo said, dropping the heavy forest green curtains onto the floor with a satisfying thud. He began unzipping his jacket, his movements slow and deliberate as he watched Sakura. "Time to turn this bunker into something you can actually relax in."
Sakura stood awkwardly in the center of the room, clutching a bag of smaller household items. "We don't have to do it all right now. It's late."
"Nonsense," Endo hummed, walking over and gently taking the bag from Sakura’s hands. His fingers lingered against Sakura’s for a second too long. "I paid for these, so I want to see them up. Besides, I think you’ll find that a little 'manual labor' is exactly what you need to take your mind off that bed we saw."
Sakura turned away, hiding his deepening blush. "Whatever. Where do we start?"
"Curtains first," Endo decided. He dragged a chair over to the window and hopped up, reaching for the old, hospital-grey fabric. "Hand me the new ones. And Sakura?"
Sakura looked up, holding the heavy velvet. "Yeah?"
Endo looked down at him, his gaze soft and genuinely affectionate, stripped of its usual mocking edge. "Thanks for letting me do this. I know you like your space, but I want you to feel as safe here as you do when I'm holding you."
Sakura’s throat felt tight. He didn't have a witty comeback for that. He just handed the curtains up, his fingers brushing Endo’s ankle. "Just... don't fall off the chair, idiot. I’m not playing nurse tonight."
Endo laughed, a rich, warm sound that filled the once-silent room. "Don't worry. If I fall, I'm taking you down with me."
As they worked together, Sakura holding the ladder, Endo hanging the fabric, the apartment slowly began to transform. The deep green velvet swallowed the harsh moonlight, making the room feel smaller, warmer, and undeniably theirs. Every brush of their shoulders and every shared glance felt like another brick in a foundation they were building, one that went far beyond furniture.
The forest green velvet was finally in place, cutting off the rest of the world and plunging the corner of the room into a deep, lush shadow. Endo was still standing on the chair, his hands lingering on the curtain rod, while Sakura stood just below him, obscured by the thick folds of the fabric.
"There," Endo whispered, his voice echoing slightly in the small space between the glass and the velvet. "Total privacy. No neighbors, no Bofurin, no noise. Just us."
Sakura felt trapped, but for the first time, he didn't want to run. The scent of the new fabric mixed with Endo’s lingering fever-warmth and the faint traces of the winter air outside. "It's... it's a lot darker than I thought it would be" he muttered, his heart thumping against his ribs.
Endo hopped down from the chair, landing silently in the narrow gap. The space was so tight that Sakura was forced back against the cool windowpane. Endo didn't stop until their chests were brushing, his hands coming up to rest on the glass on either side of Sakura’s head.
"Good," Endo murmured, his eyes dark and focused. "I like dark."
Sakura looked up, his breath hitching as he saw the raw, unmasked hunger in Endo’s expression. "Endo..."
"Yes?" Endo whispered, leaning in.
He didn't wait for a snarky comeback. Endo tilted his head and pressed his lips firmly against Sakura’s. It wasn't the playful, teasing peck from earlier. This was heavy, desperate, and possessive. Sakura let out a muffled moan into the kiss, his hands flying up to grip the front of Endo’s shirt, pulling him even closer.
Behind the velvet, the world disappeared. Sakura felt his knees go weak as Endo pressed his body flush against him, pinning him to the glass.
Under the cover of the curtains they chose together, Sakura finally stopped fighting. He leaned into the kiss, giving back every bit of the intensity Endo was pouring into him, lost in the nest they had built.
Endo broke the kiss with a gasp, his eyes dark with mischief and heat. He didn’t give Sakura a second to recover before he hooked an arm around his waist and hauled him out from behind the velvet curtains.
"The curtains are a success," Endo rasped, "but I believe I promised you a demonstration of the rug's 'functionality.'"
"Wait—Endo! Stop!" Sakura yelped as he was unceremoniously dumped onto the brand-new, plush dark rug.
It was incredibly soft, but the "romantic" landing was ruined when Sakura’s foot caught the edge of the coffee table, sending a half-empty bag of Nitori and mangas flying.
"Dammit, Endo! Look at this mess!" Sakura remarked, trying to scramble up, but Endo was already hovering over him, pinning his wrists to the floor.
"Forget it," Endo chuckled, his weight pressing Sakura into the deep pile of the rug. "Isn't it better than your cold, bare floor?"
Sakura looked up, his face a spectacular shade of crimson, his breath hitching as Endo’s knee slid between his thighs. "It's... it's itchy," he lied poorly, his fingers involuntarily curling into the soft fibers.
"Liar," Endo whispered, leaning down to nip at Sakura’s ear. "You love it. And you love that I’m the one putting you here."
Endo started to work on Sakura’s belt, but in his fever-recovered clumsiness, he accidentally tugged a bit too hard on the rug's decorative fringe. Rippp.
The sound echoed in the quiet room. Sakura froze.
"Did you just... rip the new rug?" Sakura asked, his voice dangerously low.
Endo paused, looking down at the stray thread in his hand, then back at Sakura with a sheepish, charming grin. "It’s... uh... distressed? It’s a vintage look?"
"I’m going to kill you! I haven't even had it for twenty minutes!"
Sakura flipped them over with a burst of strength, pinning Endo to the floor instead. He was fuming, his hair a mess and his clothes rumpled, but as he looked down at Endo, who was laughing breathlessly beneath him, the anger started to melt into something much more physical.
"You're also paying for the repairs" Sakura growled, leaning down until their noses touched.
"I’ll pay in installments," Endo promised, his hands sliding up under Sakura’s hoodie. "Starting right now."
The heavy forest-green curtains were hung, the rug was laid (and slightly ripped), and the tension was thick enough to cut with a knife, until Sakura’s stomach decided to join the conversation with a roar that sounded like a freight train.
The silence that followed was deafening. Endo, still pinned beneath Sakura on the floor, blinked once, twice, and then let out a bark of laughter that echoed off the bare walls.
"Sakura," Endo wheezed, his hands sliding from Sakura’s waist to his own ribs as he shook with mirth. "I knew you were a fighter, but I didn't know you kept a literal beast in your gut."
Sakura froze, his face turning a shade of purple-red that shouldn't be biologically possible. He scrambled off Endo, but since it was his tiny apartment, he only had about three feet of space to retreat to before hitting his own futon. He sat on the edge of the mattress, burying his face in his hands.
"Shut up! It’s not funny!" Sakura yelled into his palms. "I haven't eaten all day because someone insisted we spend four hours debating the 'vibe' of velvet versus polyester!"
Endo sat up on the rug, leaning back on his elbows and looking thoroughly entertained. "Hey, domestic perfection takes time. But I didn't realize I was starving my favorite person." He crawled across the new rug toward the bed, resting his chin on Sakura’s knee. "Don't look so miserable. It's your house. I can't kick you out, and you're clearly too hungry to kick me out."
Sakura peeked through his fingers, scowling down at the smug man. "I should. You broke my rug."
"I'll buy you ten more rugs," Endo promised, his eyes softening as he reached up to ruffle Sakura’s hair. "But first, we need to silence that monster. Since I'm the guest… and clearly the cause of your malnutrition, I’m ordering in. No arguments."
Sakura let out a long, defeated sigh, his stomach giving a smaller, pathetic sound in agreement. "Fine. But I want omurice. And extra karaage."
"Coming right up," Endo beamed, pulling out his phone. He didn't move from his spot on the floor, leaning his head against Sakura’s leg. "We’ll eat right here on the floor. We can't let this 'distressed' rug go to waste, right?"
Sakura finally cracked a tiny, reluctant smile, his hand tentatively coming down to rest on Endo’s shoulder. "You're an idiot, Endo Yamato."
"Yeah," Endo hummed, scrolling through the delivery app. "But I'm the idiot who got you the nice curtains. Now, let’s eat so we can get back to the 'installments' I owe you."
The wait for the delivery was agonizing, not just because of the hollow ache in Sakura’s stomach, but because Endo refused to let the "moment" die. He stayed on the floor, his back leaning against the side of Sakura's bed, looking like a king who had just conquered a very small, very messy kingdom.
"You know," Endo mused, tapping his chin as he watched Sakura pace the tiny room. "They say hunger is the best spice. I wonder if that applies to... other things."
"Shut up and check the app," Sakura snapped, though he didn't move away from Endo's vicinity. "And sit properly. You're getting cat hair from the rug on your shirt."
"It's our rug hair now, Sakura," Endo teased, reaching out and snagging the hem of Sakura’s hoodie to pull him closer. "Come here. You're making me dizzy with all that pacing."
Sakura grumbled but eventually sat down next to him on the plush fibers. The room felt different now. The forest-green curtains blocked out the streetlights, making the space feel like a private cave and the air was thick with the scent of the new fabrics and the lingering, electric charge between them.
"I'm really going to make you pay for that rip" Sakura whispered, his voice losing its edge as he looked at the slight tear in the rug's fringe.
Endo turned his head, his face inches from Sakura’s. The playful smirk was still there, but his eyes were dark and serious. "I told you, I’ll pay. In every way you want." He leaned in, his nose brushing against Sakura's. "Starting with the omurice... and ending with me showing you exactly how sturdy this floor actually is."
Sakura’s breath hitched. He wanted to push him away, to call him a pervert, to defend his dignity, but then his stomach let out a tiny, pathetic click, and they both burst out laughing.
"The beast is impatient!" Endo yelled, throwing his arms around Sakura and pulling him into a messy, wrestling hug on the floor.
"Get off! You’re crushing me!" Sakura gave an evasive smile, his hands pushing against Endo’s chest even as he leaned into the warmth.
Just then, the buzzer rang.
"Saved by the delivery guy," Endo whispered, stealing a quick, deep kiss that tasted like promise before jumping up.
The doorbell rang with a sharp, insistent chirp that made Sakura jump nearly a foot off his brand-new rug. He scrambled to his feet, smoothing down his rumpled hoodie and trying to force his face to look like a normal, non-aroused human being.
"I’ll get it!" Sakura shouted, far too loud for a room that was only ten feet wide.
"Nonsense, Sakura," Endo hummed, effortlessly sliding past him. "I’m the one who ordered. I should be the one to greet our savior."
Endo flung open the door with all the dramatic flair of a theater curtain being pulled back. Standing there was a lanky delivery guy in a bright orange windbreaker, holding two steaming bags of omurice. He looked tired and cold, as if he had witnessed far too much of Makochi's eccentricity for one shift.
“Delivery for... Endo Sakura-chan?” the guy read off the receipt, his voice flat and emotionless.
Sakura, who was standing just behind Endo, let out a noise like a dying teakettle. “He wrote what?!”
Endo didn't even flinch. He leaned against the doorframe, exuding smugness. "That’s us. Sorry for the wait; we were right in the middle of decorate house It's exhausting work."
He took the bags from him, but didn't pull back. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a generous tip and dangled it between his fingers.
"Hey, man," Endo said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper that was definitely loud enough for Sakura to hear. "Do you sell earplugs? My friend here is a screamer when he’s hungry. And probably when he’s full, too."
The delivery guy looked past Endo and saw that Sakura's face was now so red that it practically glowed in the dark hallway. He looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him, rug and all.
"I just deliver the food" the guy muttered. He snatched the tip and bolted for the stairs as if his life depended on it.
Endo kicked the door shut with his heel, grinning like a shark as he turned back to Sakura. "He seemed nice."
"I'm going to kill you!" Sakura hissed, snatching the bags from Endo’s hands. "I can never order from that place again! They know where I live! They have my name on a list now!"
"Oh, relax," Endo chuckled, following Sakura back to the rug. "By the time we’re done tonight, you’ll have plenty of other things to scream about. Now, let’s eat. You’ve got a lot of energy to recover."
The omurice had been an unqualified triumph. Sakura sat slumped against the side of his futon, spine curved in the boneless, unapologetic slouch of a boy thoroughly defeated by a good meal, his body pleasantly heavy with the kind of food lethargy that made the rest of the world feel very far away and entirely irrelevant. The forest-green curtains had swallowed the afternoon whole, sealing the room in a dim, amber-tinted warmth that pressed down on his eyelids like a gentle, insistent hand. The silence was the dangerous kind, full and thick and almost breathing, the sort that invited a person to stop thinking altogether.
Endo, characteristically, had not received that invitation.
He was perched at the edge of the new rug with the coiled, purposeful energy of someone who had absolutely no intention of napping. His phone was in his hands, and he was tending to it with concentration, thumbs hovering, wrist rotating by careful, almost imperceptible degrees. Sakura caught it in his peripheral vision: the slow, deliberate tilt of a screen being angled in his direction, the way Endo's elbow tucked in just slightly, as if trying to make himself smaller, less noticeable.
And then, quiet as a held breath, faint as a moth's wing, the soft, synthetic click of a digital shutter.
Sakura's entire body went rigid.
He knew that sound the way he knew his own heartbeat. Every fibre of his self-preservation instinct screamed at him to lunge across the rug, rip the phone from Endo's treacherous hands, and delete the evidence before it could be used against him in a court of law or, worse, the internet.
But he didn't move.
He wanted to see how far Endo would push it.
He let his eyes drift half-shut instead, softening his expression into something that he hoped read as drowsy contemplation, the portrait of a boy peacefully adrift in his own thoughts, utterly unaware of the scheming happening three feet to his left.
Endo studied the screen. His thumb moved, zooming in, Sakura realized with dawning horror and then a sound escaped him: low, muffled, pressed back behind closed lips but unmistakably there. A snicker of pure, uncut mischief, the kind that comes not from fondness but from the intoxicating discovery of leverage. He glanced up at Sakura, satisfied himself that his subject remained "asleep," and turned back to the phone. His shoulders had begun to shake with the tremors of a laugh he was barely containing, a silent, wholly self-satisfied convulsion of private delight.
The unease pooling in Sakura's stomach curdled into something sharper and more specific. That was not the soft, reluctant laugh of someone who had taken an accidentally cute photo. That was the laugh of a man composing a caption. Maybe the laugh of someone who had already, in his mind, selected the most damning thumbnail and was now only deciding between posting it immediately or saving it for maximum strategic deployment.
"What's so funny?"
The words left him like the crack of a whip, splitting the warm silence clean in two.
Endo startled so violently that the phone lurched from his grip, nearly skidding off onto the rug before he snatched it back with both hands. In one fluid, deeply suspicious motion, he killed the screen, tucked the device against his chest, and arranged his features into an expression of such profound, luminous innocence that it was, in itself, a confession.
"Nothing!" The word came out bright and blameless. "I was just checking the news, actually." He tilted his head with the serene confidence of a man who had rehearsed this. "Apparently, the forecast for today is cloudy with a chance of adorable brats."
"Give me the phone, Endo." Sakura sat up, the last remnants of his post-meal softness evaporating on contact with the open air. The room, which had felt so heavy and warm a moment ago, now crackled with something more familiar, the particular electric charge that preceded every single one of their arguments, that specific frequency of tension that felt, humiliatingly, like home. "I heard the shutter. You took a photo of me, didn't you?"
"I genuinely cannot imagine what you're referring to." Endo's voice was a study in wounded dignity. He had already begun shuffling backwards across the rug, phone disappearing smoothly behind his back as though it had never existed. "Perhaps what you heard was simply the reflection of your radiant personality catching on the lens."
The smile he offered was beatific.
Sakura's eye twitched.
"You," he said, with quiet and deliberate calm, "are a dead man."
He launched himself off the bed.
Sakura didn't waste a single second on deliberation. Propelled by white-hot humiliation of having been photographed at his most unguarded, he threw himself across the rug with the total commitment of someone who had nothing left to lose. He scrambled over Endo in an ungraceful, determined tangle of limbs, planting his knees squarely on the older boy's shoulders and bearing down with his full weight, pressing him into the plush fibres they had only recently nearly come to blows over.
"Give." He reached behind Endo's back, fingers scrabbling. "It." Further. "Up."
"Sakura," Endo wheezed beneath him, his voice strained with laughter and the considerable effort of twisting his torso in three directions simultaneously to keep the phone out of reach. "You're being aggressive right now." A pause, punctuated by another breathless laugh. "Not that I'm registering any formal complaints."
What followed could be described as a struggle and less charitably as a small, private catastrophe: a furious knot of elbows and wrists and muttered threats, Sakura lunging and Endo deflecting, the phone passing between their grasping hands like something sacred and contested. But Sakura was motivated in the way that only genuine embarrassment can motivate a person, which is to say: completely and without mercy. He got there in the end, wrenching the device free with a sound of grim triumph.
He swiped the screen open. Endo hadn't even bothered with a passcode, an act of either supreme carelessness or supreme confidence that Sakura filed away to be furious about later.
His prepared outrage died somewhere in his chest before it could reach his mouth.
It wasn't a blurry, unflattering snapshot of him mid-chew, sauce on his chin, eyes vacant with the effort of chewing. It was something else entirely. The photo was candid and unhurried and technically immaculate: Sakura, caught in three-quarter profile, his gaze lifted toward the new curtains. His expression was soft in a way his face rarely permitted itself to be in company. Quiet. Unguarded. The particular quality of stillness that belongs only to people who have, without quite realizing it, stopped performing and simply existed in a space for a moment.
He looked, in short, like someone who was exactly where they were supposed to be.
"Delete it," Sakura said. The command came out flatter than he intended, stripped of its usual edge. He kept his eyes on the screen. "I look... stupid."
"You look like you're home."
Endo's voice had changed register entirely, the teasing warmth of it had receded, leaving something quieter and more unguarded in its place. His hand rose slowly, hovering at the edge of Sakura's waist, not quite settling. "Please, Haruka." There was no performance in it now. "Let me keep it. I want to remember the first night we actually made this place yours."
Sakura's jaw worked. He stared at the photograph, at his own face, softened past recognition, caught in a moment he hadn't known anyone was watching and felt something turn over slowly in his ribcage. He was aware, academically, that Endo had an almost reverent relationship with captured moments, with the aesthetics of the everyday made permanent. But seeing himself refracted through that particular lens, framed with that particular care, felt different from knowing it in the abstract. It felt uncomfortably, inescapably intimate, in the way that being truly seen always does.
"Fine," he muttered at last, and shoved the phone back into Endo's sternum with perhaps more force than strictly necessary. "But the moment that appears on SNS… those curtains are gone. I will burn them. I will stand in the street and watch them burn."
Endo grinned,that particular grin, the one that meant he had already won and was simply enjoying the view from the top. He tucked the phone away.
He did not, however, let Sakura up.
His hands had settled at Sakura's hips with a calm, proprietary ease, holding him in place with no apparent intention of releasing him anytime soon. "Actually," he began, in the measured, exploratory tone of a man about to propose something he already knew the answer to, "I've been thinking about something." He tilted his head up, considering. "I have a great many photos of you. A perhaps unreasonable number, if I'm being honest." His thumbs pressed in, just slightly. "But I don't have a single one of us."
The heat that Sakura had only just managed to walk back flooded his face again in a single, treacherous rush. "Together?" The word came out higher than he intended. He recalibrate. "A photo. Of us. Together." He said it again, flatly, as though repetition might make it sound less catastrophic. "I don't do selfies, Endo. It's embarrassing. It's the kind of thing people do and then cringe about for the rest of their—"
"Just one."
Endo's eyes had gone dark and unhurried and very, very persuasive, the particular expression he deployed when he had already done the calculation and knew exactly which words to use. "Think of it as a commemorative photograph. For the rug." A beat. "Or, if you prefer… a preview. Something to look back on later. When we're doing this for real."
Sakura looked away sharply, fixing his gaze on a neutral patch of wall somewhere over Endo's shoulder. His heart had taken up a rhythm that was frankly unreasonable for a conversation about a photograph. He despised, with some regularity, how efficiently Endo could locate the precise load-bering wall of his defenses and walk straight through it just by saying something quiet and sincere about their future.
"One," Sakura said finally, to the wall. "Exactly one. Non-negotiable. And if you make a strange face, I'm deleting it myself and we never speak of this again."
"I make absolutely no promises," Endo said, already laughing, already pulling him down, one hand curling warm at the back of Sakura's neck, guiding him until their cheeks were pressed together, warm and close, as the camera lens rose to meet them both.
Endo's thumb found the capture button before Sakura had so much as drawn breath to object. The shutter fired. For one suspended instant, the small apartment was washed in the cold, democratic light of a camera flash, every corner briefly exposed, every shadow briefly banished, and then the dark rushed back in, warmer than before.
"Let me see." It came out as neither a request nor quite a command but something occupying the uncomfortable territory between the two, a growl with a plea buried inside it. Sakura didn't wait for an answer and he leaned across Endo's shoulder, not bothering to negotiate the space between their bodies, and looked at the screen.
The silence that followed lasted exactly as long as it took him to understand what he was looking at.
Endo had timed it with the instincts of someone who had been paying very close, very patient attention. The frame had caught Sakura in the precise instant he'd glanced away, cheek warm with a blush that was entirely genuine and entirely unperformed, eyes soft with something he kept carefully off his face in every other waking circumstance. He looked, in the photograph, like a person who had briefly forgotten to be guarded. Like someone who had, perhaps without noticing, let himself feel something uncomplicated and good.
Endo, beside him, was grinning with the wholehearted, slightly unhinged radiance of a man who could not quite believe his luck, his head tipped toward Sakura, his entire expression a single, undisguised declaration. It was not a subtle photograph and it wasn't trying to be. It had taken two people pressed together on a second-hand rug in a small, sparse apartment and made of them something that looked, unmistakably, like a home.
Sakura's throat closed.
He stared at the image for a long moment, it was, by any honest measure, a very good photograph, the kind that shouldn't exist in a phone camera roll and that should cost something, that should require more intention than a single impulsive thumb press on a weeknight. Admitting that, however, felt less like a concession and more like dismantling the last remaining wall with his own hands and then handing Endo the rubble as a gift.
"It's blurry," Sakura said. His voice came out smaller than he'd intended, barely above a whisper, scraped thin. "And my hair looks terrible. You should just delete it."
"Liar."
Endo said it softly, without any particular triumph in it. His thumb moved across the screen, tracing the image of Sakura's face against the glass with a slowness that felt less like gloating and more like something Sakura didn't have a safe name for. "You look beautiful." He paused, just long enough for the word to settle. His voice carried the quiet certainty of a fact he had long since made his peace with. "I'm setting this as my wallpaper."
Sakura's heart threw itself against his ribs with an enthusiasm that bordered on insubordinate. He looked at the curtains and back at the photograph, then at the curtains again.
"Fine," he said, at last, to no one in particular. "Do whatever you want with it. Just… don't show anyone."
He stopped. Pressed his lip between his teeth.
The wanting crept up on him from somewhere below rational thought, the way it always did when his defenes had been worn down past a certain point. He wanted, specifically, to be able to look at that moment, that particular, unrepeatable configuration of warmth and colour and closeness in the hours and days when Endo wasn't beside him.
The thought of Endo returning to an empty apartment and finding this on his screen every time he unlocked his phone felt, against Sakura's better judgement, like the least he could offer.
"Send it to me" Sakura muttered, angling his face away, far enough that Endo couldn't read the tentative, almost painful openness that had crept into his expression without permission.
The beat of silence that followed was insufferably eloquent.
"Oh?" Endo's grin, when Sakura could hear it spreading into his voice, was enormous and deeply undeserved. His fingers had already begun moving across the screen with the alacrity of someone acting before the other party could change their mind. "The I-despise-selfies, they're-beneath-me Sakura wants a copy for himself? I always knew… I always knew you'd get there eventually."
The buzz in Sakura's pocket was small and ordinary and somehow felt like far too much to look at directly. He extracted the phone, glanced at the notification, and tucked it away again in a single efficient motion, his expression the carefully assembled portrait of a boy who felt nothing in particular about any of this.
"It's not a big deal," Sakura said, his voice pitching slightly too high, his ears going red. "I just… forget it. I have my reasons. They're private. Stop looking at me like that."
"Naturally." Endo was already laughing, that low, helpless laugh, the one without any performance in it, leaning back against the plush fibres and bringing Sakura down with him in one unhurried, inevitable motion, until they were both lying flat on the plush rug, the ceiling above them quiet and unhurried and close.
Endo said nothing for a moment. He was looking at Sakura with an expression that was doing far too much, soft at the edges and unbearably fond, the particular look of a man filing something away in a place he intended to keep safe for a very long time.
"I'm not looking at you like anything," he said, gently, which was a complete and obvious lie. His voice carried the warmth of someone who understood exactly what I have my reasons meant, and had quietly decided that pressing the point would be the one unforgivable thing he could do right now. He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind Sakura's burning ear, his touch unhurried. "Your reasons are very private. Completely understood."
He left the rest of it unspoken. He didn't need to say it.