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The first thing Yamato noticed as he woke up was how warm he was.
This wasn’t all that unusual as a whole; he’d run hotter than most ever since he first summoned Kingburn, who wasn’t the most gentle of spirits. It was why he tended to sleep in light shirts and rarely switched to winter blankets unless it truly froze over outside.
It was the weight that threw him off, gave him an odd sense of displacement, amplified by the relative unfamiliarity of the room.
Right, his bedroom. His bedroom in his own apartment, that wasn’t his bedroom at his father’s place.
There was something warm and heavy resting on his hip; a hand, he realized after a moment, slightly cooler to the touch than the other solid mass draped over his own arm, curled up against his chest.
He opened his eyes, blinking a few times to try and adjust to the near-darkness. It couldn’t be too early because the street lights near his apartment had already switched on, and he could hear the buzz of the earliest commuters reclaiming the city from its nightlife. Five-thirty in the morning, if he had to guess, maybe a little earlier.
Kurosaki was coiled up like a smug, comfortable cat, his hands loosely fisted in the pajamas Yamato only faintly recalled putting on the previous night. The dim light from the window wasn’t enough to make out much detail, but even like this his hair looked like it would be soft and glossy to the touch.
Yamato found himself thinking he kind of wanted to touch it, then realised there wasn’t much of a reason not to. It was a strange thought.
Without thinking, he lifted his free hand -the one Kurosaki wasn’t laying on-, to brush some of the waterfall of brown hair spilled across his pillow away. Behind him a deep voice hummed a wordless protest, as the hand on his hip slid over his stomach to pull him back against Gomaki’s chest instead.
He should probably be freaking out about this at least a little more, Yamato thought as he considered the position he was in. This hadn’t really been the outcome he’d been angling for when he asked those two to help him move into his new apartment.
Instead of freaking out though, he mostly just had to pee. And maybe make some breakfast, though Gomaki probably wouldn’t be up for a while yet. Kurosaki’s sleeping habits he was less sure about.
Somehow he had ended up with Gomaki spooning him from behind and Kurosaki taking advantage of the hollow in front of him to get comfortable, and detangling himself from the knot of limbs wasn’t an easy task, especially with sleeping Gomaki clearly not intending to let go.
He was halfway through gently prying the arm around his waist away when a questioning sleepy noise drew his attention to Kurosaki, who was staring at him with sleepy eyes and very little active comprehension.
“Toilet,” Yamato explained in a sleep-husky whisper, though he wasn’t actually certain Kurosaki was at the words part of waking up yet.
“Just push him off,” Kurosaki replied, voice slightly slurred. “Give him a pillow or something, Tetsu won’t wake up unless he can’t hold on to something.”
Taking the advice, Yamato pried the arm off of him and delicately maneuvered out of reach, pushing Kurosaki into Gomaki’s direction in his stead and earning himself an annoyed swat at the shoulder in the process.
Amusingly, Gomaki did indeed attach himself to Kurosaki immediately, like a large octopus.
Kurosaki, after some minor wriggling to get comfortable, gave Yamato a half-lidded look that made his stomach flip around in his belly in weird ways. “Don’t take too long.”
Yamato hummed his agreement, even though he had no actual intention of getting back into bed. He was an early riser, but it was too early to actually try and argue that. Besides, he was pretty sure Kurosaki was already well on his way to falling back asleep.
He’d make a japanese style breakfast, he decided as he made it into the bathroom, where he grimaced at the disheveled state his hair was in. He didn’t often forget to tie it up before falling asleep, but it was always messy when he did.
His father was more of a western breakfast kind of guy, but he wasn’t here to judge, and Gomaki and Kurosaki both seemed like the type to appreciate something a little more traditional than cereal or pancakes. Besides, he felt like actually cooking something.
In his own kitchen, in his own place. That was going to take some getting used to.
By the time he managed to wrangle his hair into a messy ponytail and finish up the rest of his bathroom routine the streets outside were beginning to sound a little more alive, the quiet early hush of the morning where nobody felt quite daring enough to speak at full volume.
His phone screen blinked to life just as he entered the kitchen, where it laid on the counter innocently, probably nearly empty. Forgetting to charge it wasn’t like him, but his attention had been otherwise occupied the night before.
His father, asking where to find the marmalade. Clearly Yamato wasn’t the only one who was going to have to adjust to things.
He typed out a quick response while trying to remember which one of his own cupboards held what he needed.
The first dashi in a new apartment. He could use powder, of course, but it wasn’t like he was in a hurry. Kurosaki and Gomaki wouldn’t be up for a while yet, most likely, and it felt wrong to start things off in this kitchen immediately cutting corners.
It did feel a little lonely without his father at the kitchen table, planning out his daily schedule while Yamato made breakfast. It had been the two of them in their set little routine for so long, their daily moment that wasn’t about anything except coexisting and having a meal.
He swapped a few texts with his father as he made his soup stock, mostly helping him find stuff or weighing in on whether or not certain meetings were worth scheduling, opting for voice messages twice while he had his hands full trying to figure where to find anything in his new kitchen, which had been well beyond overstocked by a well-meaning Daigo.
The kitchen smelled nice, pleasantly like seaweed and fish and the fresh full pot of coffee he’d made just before he realised he had no actual idea whether either Gomaki or Kurosaki drank coffee, or would be awake in time for it to still be warm.
He was halfway seated on the countertop, phone stuck to a far-too-short charging cable he’d managed to dig out of a still unpacked box next to the couch, typing out a short list of necessities his dad needed to remember to stock up on regularly when he realised he wasn’t alone anymore.
Kurosaki was leaning against the doorframe, looking attractively sleep-tousled and a little squinty in the bright kitchen lights, watching him with dark, unreadable eyes. He was wearing one of his shirts, Yamato realised; a simple maroon polo that was definitely far too big on him, both in height and overall stature.
The pop of color of his boxers peeking out below also seemed familiar, probably likewise borrowed. It made sense, but in the bubble of tranquility the morning had existed in so far it felt oddly obscene.
“M-morning,” Yamato greeted in a low voice, just above a whisper, putting his phone down. This wasn’t the kind of scenario he wanted his dad involved in, even if it was just via a coincidentally open text messenger.
“Good morning,” Kurosaki said, voice rough with sleep. “Tetsu did say you were an early riser, but I didn’t realise he meant this early.”
“I don’t think he has a clue,” Yamato said, half fondness, half awkward nerves. “I don’t think he actively remembers anything before eight.” A nervous cough, then; “Though you’d know that better than me, I guess.”
Kurosaki blinked at him slowly, heavy lidded and meaningfully. He’d read something about that, Yamato thought. Something about cats.
“You’ve still known him longer than I have,” Kurosaki eventually answered, in a mellow tone. “I usually let him sleep in. I guess you’re a tougher task-master than I am, captain Senguuji.”
There was something flirty in his tone of voice, a soft lilt that Yamato was so very used to yet somehow entirely unprepared for. Putting up with Kurosaki’s teasing was one thing when he was safely in the box of ‘dating Yamato’s best friend, off limits’, yet another thing altogether when he’d been pressed in between the both of them less than half a day ago.
Stubbornly ignoring the flush on his cheeks, Yamato hopped off the counter. “I don’t think it works that way when you’ve actively been both my and Tetsurou’s captain. So, I made coffee, but I don’t actually know if you take coffee with your breakfast.”
“And yet you’ve never called me captain properly,” Kurosaki laments, finally slinking further into the kitchen to lean against the countertop instead, just close enough in the center there is no way for Yamato to avoid brushing past him during his breakfast preparations. “I feel like I’ve missed out. Do you have tea?”
It was true Yamato hadn’t been a particularly polite teammate once he’d agreed to join the actual Seidouzan soccer team, sometime after Dragonlink’s formal disbanding, though it hadn’t been because of any hostility between them. It was just, he thought, kind of weird to use titles for someone who had not been particularly subtle about his constant flirting.
“I have tea in… every basic flavor and then some,” Yamato said as he pulled open a particularly well-stocked cabinet filled with teas, coffees, hot chocolate and a number of other drink-related supplies he hadn’t sorted out yet. “And more than enough of it. What kind did you want?”
Kurosaki tilted his head curiously, leaning in closer to study the stacked pile of boxes. “Just an english breakfast will do. You didn’t strike me as much of a tea guy.”
“I like matcha,” Yamato disagreed even as he grabbed the requested box, which was probably too high-up for Kurosaki to reach it easily. “Reminds me of my mom, she did chadou and stuff. I don’t mind other kinds, but this-” he gestured at the pile of boxes, “-is definitely just dad making sure I don’t starve. Dehydrate? Whatever, I think he just got a little of everything to make sure I’m all stocked up.”
He handed the box over to Kurosaki, then stepped around him to turn on the water cooker, trying very hard not to be too aware of their proximity.
“Daddy’s boy,” Kurosaki teased as he ducked past Yamato to grab himself a cup, apparently having no intention to be waited on as a guest. “I guess some things never change. I didn’t realise your mother was a traditionalist, though.”
Yamato rolled his eyes, refusing to take the bait. His relationship with his father was an old, worn topic that almost all of his friends had opinions on, skewing anywhere from admiring to resentful, with very few of them accepting ‘he is my father and I believe in what he is trying to achieve’ as an acceptable answer. It definitely wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have in his kitchen in the early hours of the morning.
“Mom was raised to be a real lady,” he said instead, choosing the safer subject instead while he resumed cooking, swirling his chopsticks through the egg mixture he’d prepared earlier. “Of course she kind of abandoned that when she eloped with dad instead of marrying someone more, like proper and shit, but she still liked doing stuff like hosting parties and ceremonial stuff. Did you sleep well?”
Kurosaki looked a bit thrown by the sudden change in subject, but gracefully allowed the topic of Yamato’s mother to flow past, too heavy still for a morning already stacked with confusion and the hovering weight of half-finished past conversations that never quite reached a satisfying conclusion.
“I did. Has anyone ever told you you make a very nice hot water bottle?” Then, with a deeply amused look, “Tetsu, you’re up early.”
Yamato looked over his shoulder, away from his tamagoyaki, to where Gomaki stumbled into the kitchen. Awake seemed like a generous word for it; his silver hair was pulled in a loose plait, but seemed hell-bent on escaping it wherever possible, and his eyes were unfocused. The noise he made was probably a grunt of agreement, not exactly the height of eloquence.
The water cooker beeped once, but Kurosaki swatted him on the back of his leg before he could move to get it, picking up his glass and taking it there himself.
“You’re free to sleep some more, you know,” Yamato told Gomaki, because he wasn’t heartless and this wasn’t a soccer practice kind of morning that he needed him not to be a zombie for. “Breakfast isn’t ready yet anyway.”
Instead of answering him, Gomaki stepped further into the kitchen, and decided to upend the precarious balance of ‘not ready to address this yet’ Yamato and Kurosaki had been tip-toeing around all morning by waltzing right into Yamato’s personal space and sleepily leaning against his back, curling his arms around him in what seemed half hug, half attempt to stay upright.
Kurosaki stared at them while dipping his tea-bag into the water, clearly unimpressed, though it was hard to say whether that was aimed at Gomaki’s lack of tact before 7am, or Yamato, who had skipped fight and flight and leapt straight to freeze instead.
“Yamato, your eggs,” he warned gently.
That startled him back into action, limbs stuttering back into the familiar flow of cooking to save his well-intentioned breakfast before it burnt. It was a good thing, he thought weakly, that he wasn’t holding a knife. That could have been dangerous.
With a hiss he pulled his hand back as, as if to prove him wrong, the oil in the pan spluttered at him angrily. Yamato’s hands were worn and rough from years of goalkeeper practice, from Kingburn’s temperamental flames biting into his gloves. Something like this wouldn’t hurt him.
That didn’t override the instinctive need to pull back and look, just to make sure.
Gomaki hummed something against his neck, groggily peeking around his hair to check up on his hand, but dropped his face back against Yamato’s shoulder once he realised no damage had been done.
“Tetsurou,” Kurosaki warned, voice just on the edge of frosty. His captain voice, Yamato recognised, though he wasn’t really the usual recipient of it even after he joined Seidouzan. “You’re being a hazard.”
“Yamato doesn’t mind,” Gomaki muttered sleepily, breath warm and damp and treacherously present against the side of Yamato’s neck, which was in turn making his ears feel dangerously hot. Instead of responding, he chose to reach over his shoulder and tweaked Gomaki’s nose, deliberately focusing on finishing up with his breakfast instead of the betrayed yelp behind him.
“To the table with you, love,” Kurosaki said as he daintily slipped around Yamato to guide Gomaki away.
It was the nickname that shook Yamato out of his odd almost-trance, reminding him of the situation they were in.
Gomaki and Kurosaki, they’d been together for… well, a long time, Yamato had to remind himself. Years, since some point in early high school that neither of them had ever really spelled out for him. It had become one of those things people just found out, so gradually that by the time they wanted people to know, nobody really had to ask.
Or maybe it wasn’t really so long at all, in adult years, beyond the scale and scope of school. They’d outlasted his father’s relationship with Gouenji in any case, even though that wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of a relationship anyone should strive for.
Either way, it reminded him that, even though it was his apartment and he was the one preparing food for them, he was still intruding in a way. And, much like finding ingredients stowed away on the kitchen shelves stocked by his well-meaning father, he was feeling a little lost on where to start the conversation they clearly needed to have.
So instead of speaking, he finished making breakfast in silence, keenly aware that he was being watched the entire time.
Neither of them spoke when Yamato began handing them plates, bowls and chopsticks for their morning spread, though at least Gomaki looked awake enough now to look a mixture of awkward and contrite.
Gomaki drank his coffee black, Yamato knew. He’d convinced him to try the occasional interesting addition before, but according to Gomaki the appeal in coffee was that the bitterness of the blend made whatever he was eating alongside it stand out better.
So he poured his peace offering into a light blue cup and put it down in front of his oldest friend before sitting down in his own chair. No hard feelings.
“So,” he started, “We should probably like, talk and stuff. About what happened.”
“Eloquent,” Kurosaki teased, putting his hands together in a graceful prayer. “Thank you for the meal.”
Gomako echoed him, though far less elegantly, then wasted no time sticking a chunk of salmon into his mouth while looking expectedly at Kurosaki. ‘You tell him,’ Yamato thinks that means.
Kurosaki rolled his eyes. ‘Of course you’re pushing this on me,’ maybe, or maybe it was just a gentler rebuke for poor table manners. Though that would be strange; it wasn’t like Yamato didn’t already know Gomaki tended to descend on food like a starved dog.
“You’re clever enough, Yamato,” Kurosaki said. “I’m pretty sure you know what happened.”
Normally Yamato found Kurosaki’s teasing non-answers charming, sometimes even attractive. Nobody quite challenged him to properly argue his points the way Kurosaki did. Today, though…
“Sure, I’ve got an idea. I’ve got several ideas. I still want you to just tell me straight.”
Yamato looked Kurosaki in the eye as he said it, silently challenging.
The response came with a coy smile.
“Why, we seduced you, of course.”
Feeling his face light up, Yamato stuffed an egg roll into his mouth before he could say something stupid in response to that.
They had seduced him, very much so, one on each side of him on the couch while they’d watched a movie to wind down from the unpacking they’d done the hours before. He would have liked to be able to say he’d been drinking, or perhaps too tired to question what was happening, but the truth had been that he’d known saying anything at all would have stopped things, and he hadn’t wanted things to stop.
“And what comes after seducing me?” he asked, because that was really at the heart of everything right now. “We wake up in the same bed, we eat breakfast. And then? Shuuya is going to kill us all if this gets awkward.”
“Well,” Gomaki interrupted, probably because all three of them know Kurosaki would make him work for every answer he was going to get, especially if he himself was feeling the nervous tension sparking across the table, “ideally you guys stop having a staring contest and we go back to seducing you.”
“Tetsu…” Kurosaki warned, even as Yamato’s face went scarlet.
“What?” Gomaki took a big gulp of his coffee, then gave Yamato a grin that was only slightly tense. “I mean, uh, I meant that in the romantic way. You know, hold hands and stuff. I swear I’m not saying we should go back to fucking immediately after breakfast.”
Kurosaki muffled a very inelegant snorting laugh into his hand, and Yamato kicked Gomaki under the table on principle.
“Can we back up a little,” Yamato said, hiding half his face into one hand. “Like, where did this come from? Why do this now?”
“You make us sound so nefarious,” Kurosaki said, pushing the side of his foot against one of Yamato’s. “I won’t deny we had a plan, but this actually wasn’t part of it at all. You just didn’t say no for once.”
“For once,” Yamato repeated. He would have liked to have sounded disbelieving or miffed, but he sounded resigned even to his own ears. “Wait, you had a plan? For, what, getting me to sleep with you guys?”
“For seducing you, pay attention,” Kurosaki teased. “In the plan we had this conversation before getting you into bed with us, but I’m a big fan of the way things worked out, personally.”
“I mean, the morning after bit needs work,” Yamato shot back, following it up with a big gulp of his own coffee-caramel blend. He was, he realized, digging himself a hole by playing into their banter. Whether that was a bad thing remained to be seen.
“Depends on your definition of ‘work’.” Gomaki gave Yamato a wolfish grin as he said it, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
“Okay, tiger, reign it in,” Kurosaki scolded, poking Gomaki into the side. Clearly sensitive, he shrank back at the touch with a miffed half-pout, apparently more at home in innuendo than in the actual conversation they were trying to have.
With a shake of his head, Yamato planted both his elbows on the table. Grounding, his father called it, usually along with a scolding for trying to drag his goalkeeper habits into conversation instead of using words.
“So, you had a plan. What was in your plan, after getting into my pants?”
“Okay, now you’re making this sound like this is a sex thing.” Gomaki, oddly enough, sounded kind of put out by that.
“Tetsurou,” Yamato started, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “We had sex. I’m pretty sure that makes this ‘a sex thing’ by definition.”
“It’s not meant to be a sex thing.” Kurosaki’s considering stare as he said it made Yamato feel a bit like an insect pinned to corkboard, but he forced himself to stay still and let him finish nonetheless. “Are you worried we’re just using you to spice up our sex life, Yamato? I didn’t expect you to be that insecure.”
“I’m not inse- for fucks sake, Kurosaki, would you stop trying to get into my head and just answer my questions like a normal person?”
Kurosaki blinked one of his slow blinks, a hooded smile on his face. “Would it help if I told you the plan involved a lot more flirting? Like I said, we weren’t expecting you to go along with it so easily this time, considering you’ve never noticed before. Or ignored, perhaps?”
Yamato rolled his eyes. “Okay, no, don’t give me that shit. I’m not stupid , I knew you had a thing for me from the start, you weren’t exactly subtle about it. And before you say it, I know Tetsurou did too, that doesn’t mean-”
He was interrupted by Kurosaki’s stifled laughter and Gomaki’s vaguely insulted ‘dude!’
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing!” Kurosaki’s denial would have probably rang more convincing if he wasn’t hiccuping with laughter as he said it. “I just forget how honest you are sometimes, I wasn’t expecting you to just say it, just like that.”
“I wasn’t that obvious about it, was I?” Gomaki asked, even though denying anything at this point was a bit of a futile hangup. “Like, Makoto wasn’t trying to be subtle but like, we’re bros, right?”
“Tetsurou, you manifested a chess queen right after I got Kingburn,” Yamato said, trying his best to sound reassuring while also glaring at Kurosaki. “You weren’t subt- you know what? Never mind, let me put it this way; you’re not the only friend I have that thinks I’m hot. That’s not really the point I was trying to make.”
Kurosaki, apparently fighting a losing battle, had to stifle his laughter into his hands at that.
“The point I am trying to make here,” Yamato continued on, refusing to be derailed by whatever was apparently so hilarious, “Is that I knew you both were into me before you got together. But like, you’re together. You’ve been together for ages. That’s… There’s an important nuance there that, I personally really don’t care whatever you two decide in your pillow talk between yourselves, but if you’re involving me in it, actually talk to me , not to conversations you’ve had about me.”
Kurosaki took a couple of long, deep breaths to regain his composure, then leaned across the table to briefly put a hand over Yamato’s. “I suppose we have been talking over you a little, sorry about that.”
Gomaki, still a little red in the face from getting called out, tucked some of his hair behind his ear. “Yeah, I guess we did. We just talked about this a ton.”
“And I’m flattered, really, but I’d really like it if someone just said something to make me feel less like a homewrecking dickhead at this point.” Not that he was feeling particularly guilty at this point, not if they’d talked about it as much as they said they did, but Yamato felt pretty sure they’d be sitting here for another hour, twisting and turning around the point if he didn’t keep things moving.
How did these two get anything done , he wondered sometimes.
Gomaki and Kurosaki shared a meaningful look.
"Yamato," Kurosaki said dryly over the rim of his teacup, which seemed to contain a milk tea ratio of mostly milk and a few drops of tea, "I am not exaggerating when I say the cornerstone of this entire relationship was a discussion about whether we preferred your chest or your ass."
"Makoto is a boobs kind of guy," Gomaki added helpfully. "I went with ass."
"We were fifteen," Kurosaki cut in. "I'm pretty sure nobody was referring to Yamato's chest as boobs at the time."
There was an edge of a deeply smug, cat-like grin and a dangerous sparkle of mischief in his eyes as he said it.
"That part came later, when he started properly working out with coach Saginuma."
"What the hell," Yamato spluttered, refusing to dignify Gomaki's encouraging pat on the shoulder with a response. "You guys !"
"Hey, it's convenient to know. No fighting for territory and stuff," Gomaki joked. "The point was that we only got together because we were both into you in the first place. Like, we grew into it over time, but you were kind of the big catalyst."
“Augh,” Yamato told them. “Augh, okay. That’s a lot, but also, now you’re definitely sounding like you’re just trying to get into my pants.”
“What?” Kurosaki actually seemed shocked by that accusation. “We’re telling you we’ve both had a thing for you for years , since well before we got together, and somehow that’s what you get out of that?”
“Yes,” Yamato fixed Kurosaki with a frosty look. “Not because I think that’s what’s going on, but yes, Kurosaki, that’s what you sound like right now. Are you forgetting I’ve been here this whole time, watching you guys be a thing? Do you really think ‘forget all that, it was you all along’ is the right way to be putting this?”
“It was you all along, you contrary jerk,” Kurosaki replied, shoulders tensing up. “Just because we’ve never gotten through to you before-”
“No, no,” Gomaki interrupted, “that makes sense, actually. You’re mad we’re putting our own relationship down to get to you, right? Like, on our behalf. But we’re not like… what we have doesn’t hinge on you, exactly, that’s not how it works.”
Yamato buried his face into his hands with a drawn-out sigh. “Listen, I can’t compete with like, what, two and a half years of private pillow-talk? Can you please just tell me what you want, we can get back to addressing satellite emotional turbulence after.”
“We’re not trying to replace one of us with you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kurosaki started, only to yelp when Gomaki lightly punched him in the shoulder.
“Okay, no, bullshit aside,” said Gomaki, who Yamato felt sorely grateful for in that moment. “Yamato, we’ve both liked you for ages. Go out with us.”
“ Thank you,” Yamato breathed out, feeling some of the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. “I thought that’s what you were getting at, but I wasn’t sure-... Yeah, yeah, okay. Sure.”
Kurosaki blinked at him, clearly unsure of what to make of this turn of events. “Just like that?”
“What,” Yamato challenged, “would you prefer a notarized letter? Should I be submitting a video essay with my answer by Wednesday, nine pm? It’s a yes, no, maybe question, Kurosaki, not rocket science.”
“Makoto,” Kurosaki corrected. “Please just use Makoto. I’m not going to be the only person here being referred to by my family name.”
“Makoto, then.” With the biggest source of awkward tension out of the way, Yamato finally turned his attention back to his remaining breakfast. “Just how long have you been waiting to ask me to call you that, exactly?”
“It was step two in the plan,” Kurosaki said primly while side-eyeing Gomaki, who wasted no time in returning most of his attention to his food. “So, a while.”
“What was step one?” Yamato wasn’t really sure why this supposed plan was apparently an actual, bullet point checklist. “Actually, where on this list was I supposed to be told anything?”
“Letting you get used to living on your own.” Kurosaki was holding up one index finger, then a second; “ask you to use my first name,” a third finger; “drop increasingly obvious hints until you started asking questions. Have a conversation about feelings. Ask you out. It’s a first draft kind of plan.”
Yamato snorted. “You’re so weird.”
Kurosaki looked like he was going to argue that for a moment, then shrugged. “We had to wait a long time before you seemed ready to respond to anything. Waiting a little longer seemed to make sense at the time.”
“I had a lot on my plate,” Yamato said as he speared another egg roll on his chopsticks, chewing thoughtfully. “Like, Shuuya and Dad weren’t legally married or anything, but there’s a lot of fallout trying to settle who gets the cult in the breakup.”
“I’m surprised to hear you of all people calling Fifth Sector a cult,” Kurosaki said slyly, smiling into his almost empty cup.
“It’s called comical exaggeration. It wasn’t technically an actual cult.” Yamato rolled his eyes. He was only willing to engage Kurosaki’s pointed opinions on the way his father had managed Fifth Sector only occasionally, under specific circumstances, none of which occurred before nine in the morning at the breakfast table. “Anyway, I didn’t want to also drag my own teenage drama into dad’s house. That’s why.”
“Wait,” Kurosaki and Gomaki both looked at him with a similar expression of mild disbelief, but it had been Kurosaki who spoke. “You ignored my attempts at flirting because… you were still living with your dad. So this…” He trails off, gestures around the apartment.
Yamato raised his eyebrows in silent challenge. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t have a bulletpoint plan .”
“You accuse me of not being forthright about this, but you could have just given us a timeframe not to bother you in all this time.” Kurosaki looked miffed, but not outright angry at the revelation.
“I was going to figure things out after I moved out. It was a delay on being stupid about my love life, not a deadline on being single.” Then, after a moment; “I also never said this was about you guys specifically, but I guess I’ll give you that one.”
“You still could have just told us to wait for you to move out,” Kurosaki argued. “Just, I’m too busy for this, try again later, instead of letting me flirt with an occasionally semi-interested looking wall for three years.”
“You can have relationship drama without being in a relationship, you know,” Yamato pointed out. “Half-engaging is still engaging. A Senguuji doesn’t start things he doesn’t intend to finish.”
“And you intend to finish , do you,” Kurosaki said, looking adorably grumpy in Yamato’s oversized shirt, with his arms crossed and his hair artfully disheveled.
Unable to resist the urge to take advantage, Yamato leaned in with a grin. “Hell, I sure do, Makoto . Though, you know, at least let me finish breakfast first.”
There was a moment of silence, with both Kurosaki and Gomaki staring at him like he’d grown a second head, before Gomaki broke out in howling laughter and Kurosaki flushed crimson.
“That was really good,” Gomaki hiccupped in between laughter, holding out a fist for Yamato to bump. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Feeling oddly proud of knocking Kurosaki off of his usual composure, Yamato knocked his knuckles against Gomaki’s. Kurosaki glared at them both.
“Red’s a good color on you,” Yamato tried to placate him, a little clumsily. Flirting wasn’t exactly a skill he had practiced extensively, but maybe his experience in being flirted with by Kurosaki would help him. “And I’m not talking about my shirt. When did you even take that, anyway?”
“Oh no,” a still vaguely red Kurosaki told him, pointing at him sternly, “you don’t get to be cute after pulling that on me. Vengeance is nigh.”
“You kind of passed out right after,” Gomaki explained once he’d finished shoveling the last of his rice into his mouth. “Makoto figured clothes were probably a good idea, so we just kinda opened the nearest box.”
Gomaki was wearing an old indie band-shirt of his, one that Yamato himself had reassigned to pajama duty once it became too stretched to wear in public without looking like a slob. He would have assumed Gomaki picked it out at random if he didn’t vividly remember dragging Gomaki and Kamiyama along with him when he went to the concert that particular shirt was from.
“So, is this something to get used to, then?” Kurosaki neatly balanced his chopsticks on top of his rice bowl, apparently having finished as well. It was kind of impressive, actually, because Yamato had measured out equal portions without thinking, and Kurosaki was definitely smaller. “A full breakfast in the morning? Or is today just special?”
“I don’t skip breakfast, if that’s what you’re asking. What I actually have depends on the mood, though.” Or on whatever his father’s plans for the day were, though he supposed that wasn’t too much of a factor anymore now. “How frequently did you just invite yourself over for?”
“Well,” Kurosaki said, stretching the l as he pushed his chair back. “You do live closest to the club. And your bed is pretty big for one guy.”
“I’m not sure you should be deciding you’re going to move in within an hour of getting together,” Yamato said mellowly, rolling his eyes. Sure, he’d maybe leaned on some of his dad’s connections to get an apartment that had both a full kitchen and guest bedroom specifically because he knew neither Kurosaki nor Gomaki would be able to afford an apartment near practice anytime soon, but that particular open invitation hadn’t actually been extended yet.
Apparently realizing Yamato had also finished, Gomaki began stacking plates and bowls to bring to the dishwasher before Yamato himself had the chance to delegate or do it himself. Sometimes, in between Gomaki’s boyish brashness and his straightforward attitude, Yamato forgot that he was actually not as rude as both he himself and Kurosaki could be, in their own ways.
“Thanks.”
Gomaki just hummed in response as he got up to clean away their breakfast supplies, including the cutlery Yamato had left on the kitchen counter to be future Yamato’s problem. Surprising, and a little uncomfortable, considering he was mostly used to taking care of chores and the like himself.
“Yamato,” Kurosaki interrupted his thoughts. He’d gotten up from the table and was now leaning against the backrest of the couch, staring into the still empty half of the living room facing away from the little tv nook they’d put together the day before. “Could you come over here for a second?”
“Uh, sure?” Not sure what exactly was being asked of him, Yamato followed and stood next to him. A cursory glance around the room didn’t reveal much; more boxes, not yet unpacked. A vacuum cleaner leaning against the wall. A few stray bits of confetti, from the popper Gomaki had set off in his face when he’d opened the door to let them in, congratulating him on emancipation.
“Not there.” Kurosaki grabbed him by the bicep and led him to stand in front of him instead, holding him in place with a firm grasp that Yamato didn’t think would take much effort to shake, and giving him an intense, slow once-over, from top to bottom.
Just as Yamato opened his mouth to ask what he was doing, Kurosaki let go of his arms, and with the solemness of a priest delivering some sort of divine edict, reached to grab onto each of Yamato’s pecs, squeezing with intent.
The serious look on Kurosaki’s face didn’t last particularly long, especially not with Gomaki’s muffled laughter in the background, and Yamato tried to put on his best flat look.
“Really?”
“I told you I was going to get my revenge,” Kurosaki replied primly, laughter in his voice. His hands had, perhaps demonstratively, not budged a bit.
“ This is your revenge?” Yamato asked, looking from Kurosaki’s face to his hands and back, unimpressed. “Are you sure you’re not just grasping for excuses to touch?”
“I’m pretty sure these are not excuses I am grasping,” Kurosaki said sweetly, “but let me check to make sure.
Before he could try and find out what that meant, Kurosaki had let go of him and instead pushed his hands up under the hem of Yamato’s shirt, trailing his fingers over his abs teasingly before once again settling over his pectoral muscles.
It was a lot more difficult to maintain unimpressed nonchalance when it wasn’t just heat and weight through his shirt but also texture, the pads of Kurosaki’s fingers catching on divots and irregularities in his skin.
“You know, when I said after breakfast earlier, I was kind of. Not talking about, you know, immediately after-” he could feel his voice doing something wobbly he generally took pride in it not doing, even as he said it.
“Easy, brave little lion man.” Kurosaki was grinning now, like the cat who got into the cream. Yamato was starting to see how retribution might be part of this picture. “We’ve got time. Right, Tetsu?”
And either Gomaki had been practicing Kurosaki’s catlike grace or Yamato had been extremely distracted, because he hadn’t even realised that he’d been snuck up on until two arms circled around his waist and he felt Gomaki’s grin press into his shoulder.
“I mean, nothing wrong with figuring stuff out early, right?” Gomaki’s voice was a husky whisper, the kind that Yamato had heard him use on Kurosaki during team bonding movies, when they forgot he was sitting next to them (or maybe, in light of recent events, didn’t forget at all), but never had used on him, specifically.
“You’re a pair of horny bastards,” he accused, hands hovering awkwardly with no idea where to go. “I can’t believe you’re ganging up on me in my own apartment.”
Kurosaki laughed, then leaned up on the very tips of his toes to press a kiss against Yamato’s cheek. “You asked for it. Also, Yamato? Red is a good colour on you. And I’m not talking about your shirt.”
His comeback, which he was sure would have been clever and inspired, got cut off by Kurosaki’s lips on his, then Gomaki’s hands on his waist, then a hundred thousand other little things that were more important than getting the last word in.
As far as new beginnings went, this one could have gone a lot worse.