Chapter Text
i.
Akashi watched the ripples of the pond by his sandals, his arms tucked into the sleeves of his yukata in an attempt to avoid the inevitability of mosquitos. Tokyo's summer heat triumphed even well into the evening, keeping all but the blaring song of cicadas docile and languid.
"What are you doing over there, obocchan? Don't fall in."
"Nijimura-san, I'd be grateful if you stopped calling me that."
"Why not?" Nijimura came to stand by his side with a grin Akashi sensed through his words, spared from straining his neck to look. "It suits you."
Akashi blew out a soft sigh and sent an immediate warning glance before Nijimura's large hand could ruffle the top of his head. "Alright, alright," came Nijimura's amused mutter, stuffing his hand back into his pocket. "Want me to show you how?"
A smile graced Akashi's lips, slow and nearly imperceptible. He said, "if Nijimura-san's willing to indulge me, how could I say no?"
"I'll teach you the proper way. Not like those idiots," Nijimura said, crouching down and rummaging through stones. The idiots he was referring to, Aomine and Kise (with Kuroko caught at the scene of the crime), were squabbling as much as they were competing earlier that day.
"You'll want to find one with a flat edge, see. Like this one. And you gotta get the right angle, so lean down a little. The technique is in the wrist, so if you hold it like this... oi. You listening?"
"Of course."
Nijimura gestured him closer by crooking his finger, and Akashi bent at the knees, bracing his hands atop. Like this, they weren't so different in height. "You got it?"
Akashi's stone counted to a total of nine skips and skidding to a dribble at the end - to Nijimura's measly six.
Nijimura watched the affair with crossed arms, and spoke only a moment after Akashi's stone breached the surface and disappeared.
"Yep," he said, the sound was drawn out, the exaggerated pop of his lips drawing out the 'p'. "That checks out."
Akashi allowed the harassment of his hair this time.
ii. (rakuzan!niji)
"Hey," Nijimura said when Akashi opened the door. "Sorry. Thought you might be awake. Uh. My roommate brought a girl over and locked me out."
Akashi stared. "It's a long walk from your dormitory to mine. If you need a place to stay, there are surely better candidates on campus. Reo, for example."
"Actually," Nijimura scratched his cheek, the neutral scowl of his face enhanced with the situation, "I was going to ask you to help mediate stuff with the supervisor after I've put my foot through the door. Since I'll most likely break it."
Akashi blinked slowly.
"...since you're, you know, good with that kind of thing."
"I see." Akashi said. After a beat, he swung the door the rest of the way and stepped back, allowing Nijimura passage.
"Oh, it's fine. I didn't want to inconvenience you more."
"Come," Akashi said, neither a suggestion nor a demand, and rather a third, more absolute thing. The circumstance had tickled Akashi somehow, he could tell, despite the unerringness of mismatched eyes.
Nijimura paused, hand on the door frame as he frowned down at him.
Akashi smiled. "It would be my folly as captain to merely observe the overexertion of one of our star players." Nijimura had learned fast that if there was amusement, excitement - rather, any stimulation, it would show in the intensifying of Akashi's gaze rather than the cold curl of his lips. "There will be no need for violence tonight."
"Aye aye, captain." Nijimura muttered underneath his top lip, sliding past Akashi into a room that was double the size of his own, and with half a mind to flick his junior-in-middle-school-now-irritatingly-grown-up-and-in-high-school's forehead to prove him wrong. Just as soon as he stopped being ridiculously frightening.
iii.
"You used to be cute." Nijimura told him over lunch at a cafe Mibuchi insisted on to celebrate Sei-chan's graduation but deemed themselves too unwell to attend.
"Used to?" Akashi replied, interested.
"Yeah, when you followed me around like a little duckling." Nijimura leaned back with an expression of mourning. "Now you're a menace."
Akashi raised an eyebrow.
"Devil incarnate." Nijimura rectified.
Akashi placed the teacup between his lips and took a sip, seemingly appeased. "We can revert to that, if you like."
"No way."
The smirk was concealed by the rim of Akashi's cup and his brand of propriety, but Nijimura caught it all the same.
"Why not? It seems to be what you prefer," Akashi quipped. Nijimura steeled himself in stone-faced despair, caught into a snare of his own making. Akashi's lips were pale pink and soft and tended to part and curl meticulously around words for clear and precise enunciation, "Senpai."
Nijimura angrily sipped his own tea as though it would alleviate the heat rising in his ears.
iv.
"Ironically, you seem to become cuter as you age." Akashi said thoughtfully, "it's no easy feat to surpass me. I must commend you, Senpai."
"Oh, shut up."
"You're here again," Nijimura says. Blurts out. Behind him somewhere, someone snickers (a mental note to have Tatsuya in a headlock as soon as the cafe closes and no one is there to report him to authorities).
"You make it sound like a bad thing," Redhead says lightly (mental note to somehow kick himself in the ass even later after Tatsuya has left). "I apologise if my presence is unsavory to you."
"It's not. Of course not." Nijimura says in a stilted voice. He places the menu on the table before the man, and averts his eyes when he realises he's been staring too long at the protrusion of collarbones and the shadows that dip below the fabric of a neckline. "Here."
A small smile forms on Redhead's lips. "In that case, I am flattered to have made some kind of impression on you."
"I think you'd have that effect on anyone you come across." It comes out before Nijimura's brain could activate and review, and immediately flushes. "You've got," he makes some helpless gesture, "bright red hair and - shit, I'm just gonna stop talking."
A chuckle. "Please continue. I'm listening."
"No." He said, mortified. "I'm done."
"A shame. You are also exceptionally memorable, though I am certain you know this already."
"... Oh. Yeah. The tatts," Nijimura mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. He tries his best to hide them; the manager's complaints are a ceaseless cover up, you idiot, you're scaring all my customers away and do you ever stop glaring and what are you, a delinquent? Simply put, it's not good for business.
"Well, no," Redhead said, "It's because you are quite handsome."
Every customer service platitude dies on Nijimura's tongue. Any semblance of coherency escapes his brain. He is an unbreathing, immobile, useless mass and this man calmly scans through the menu and then slides it back into Nijimura's stiff grasp.
"Today's special looks delightful. I'll have that." Redhead smiles, "and your number, if you please."
Nijimura's jaw goes slack, and he strangles out some sort of reply and manages some parody of a nod before he beelines to the kitchen.
Later, when he has cooled and checked to confirm that yes, he is no longer red everywhere, he brings the man's order to him. When expectant eyes follow, he exhales, digs into his pocket and offers the sticky note to the man.
The eye contact they share is too long for him to regain his bearings and he feels the blush crawling back with fervour, but forces himself not to look away. He waits in agony for the man to take his offering, but he does not, and is thus subject to further observation. Two striking red irises pierce into his gaze, dangerous and tender.
"I can't win, can I." He groans, blazed skin across his cheeks and ears.
"I wasn't aware we were playing a game." Redhead takes the note and pockets it, radiating a satisfaction similar to that of a cat rich with cream.
"...Yes, you were." Nijimura says dryly.
He grins instead, a sharp, elegant thing. "It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Nijimura-san. I am Akashi Seijuro. May I ask if you are free this evening?"
b. ( senpai sandwich sandwich but nijimura is the filling )
"I cannot concentrate with this abhorrent noise. If you are insistent on such juvenile hobbies, perhaps you may find the bedroom amenable."
"Hey." Mayuzumi clicked his fingers in the direction of Nijimura. "You can tell ojousama over there that the communal area is what...? Oh yeah. A communal area."
Nijimura sighed long and bone-deep, as the quarreling continued over his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Chihiro, really. Although your childishness knows no bounds, this is unbecoming of even you."
"Tell ojousama that if he has a problem then maybe for once in his life, he can move to the bedroom."
As soon as the fight escalated to Mayuzumi rising from the couch to hurl insults, his rhythm game seemingly forgotten, and Akashi responding with retorts to further incense than pacify, glacial grin growing with each word, Nijimura grabbed the back of Mayuzumi's shirt and yanked him down, in the same fashion, whipped his head around to shoot Akashi a dark look.
They both froze.
"Do I need to spank you both?" Nijimura snapped. "Is that it? Because it sounds to me like two annoying little brats are asking for it. Or am I mistaken? Won't someone," The glare he leveled bore the legend of diminishing better men in multitudes, "kindly tell me."
There was silence. Peace, even. For a brief moment.
"Why am I not surprised you're into that?" Mayuzumi rearranged himself on the couch. "It's got your name written all over it."
"Nijimura-san," Akashi tapped the tip of his pen to his lips. "is an organic case. He has been this way since middle school."
"Gross." Mayuzumi remarked. "You were playing into each other's kinks since before puberty."
"That's enough. If Nijimura-san would like to try something, it is only fair that we afford him the same safe space we have generously provided for you and your range of deviancy."
"Well, let's hear it then." Mayuzumi nudged Nijimura with his foot, "don't be shy."
Nijimura found the bedroom was indeed amenable, especially when locked.
(a). a throwback, altered
“They’re staring.”
“For a completely different reason to what you’re thinking, I would say.”
“You should have told me we’d be dining at a place like this.”
“Won’t it then ruin the surprise?” Akashi had his eyes closed, a picture of serenity. The same indifference he used for everything, the bastard. “You’re not too under dressed that anyone here would judge you nor take note of it. You are worrying too much, Nijimura-san.”
“Okay, look. I get it, it’s... nice, but could you at least call me by my first name on a date?” Nijimura said, flushed. He started when a blur of black and gold whirred past the credit card terminal on the counter. “What did you just do.”
“This way,” a smiling cashier gestured to the booth on the far end, the lavish placement more window than wall.
“No Sei, what did you do.” Nijimura followed the nuisance to the table, brows tightly knitted, as what happened when one was on the brink of throwing a fit but had the restraint of an adult. Or something. “Did you just pay for the whole night, you little-”
“It's not a problem for me.”
“The hell does that matter?” Nijimura scowled. It was Akashi's scene, sure, but he in turn had only ever heard of places like this. At any moment, his voice was at risk of being drowned out by the musician by the grand piano on stage. Before they had even entered the restaurant, impeccably dressed staff had gathered the doors for them.
Akashi sighed and folded a napkin over his lap, taking a seat. “As I said, it really is no problem for someone like me. I wish you'd would let me spoil you a little, Shuzo.”
“The thought’s nice, but it’s just…a little overboard? Like this, okay, what the hell,” Nijimura shoved the menu forward. “Orange juice is 1500 yen. Orange juice.”
“I apologise if I've misjudged the situation, I simply remembered your wish for more outings.” Akashi, delicately amused, took the menu from his unimpressed partner and set it down. “Are you truly unable to enjoy yourself here...?”
“No, no, no. It's not like that.” Nijimura rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I guess I'm just... a little overwhelmed. Sorry. I mean, look, you know I appreciate it, right? You're thoughtful and I get that. It's just sometimes there's a lot going on up here," he tapped his temple, "and it takes a second to catch up. I'm not quick like you."
He met Akashi's eyes, steady now, the edge of a smile tugging his mouth. "Thank you for this. I mean it." And then added quickly, "but just once in a while, okay?”
“You’re welcome.” Akashi smiled and Nijimura’s heart skipped a beat.
“I just feel bad, you know,” he sighed. “You do a lot for me.”
“You spoil me plenty.”
Nijimura arched his brow. Other than general support, head pats and other shows of physical affection, he couldn't recall much. He would cook for Akashi often, massage him when he's tense and things like that, but it was repaid in kind and through a narrower frame of free time. It came naturally to him too, habits he was never encouraged to curb and which to Akashi were seemingly alien.
“For example?”
Akashi hummed. “For example…”
Nijimura almost choked on a gasp as the other leaned over the table in one sharp movement, Akashi’s face now hovering above his shoulder. Immobile and irritably perplexed, he could only watch as Akashi turned his head slightly and felt soft breath on his ear. He shuddered.
“You smell really nice. I like this cologne on you.”
A beat.
“That’s how I spoil you!?”