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Youichi’s been awake all night. The sliver of moonlight visible through the curtains slowly turns to the pale colors of dawn against the ceiling, and all Youichi can think about as he watches it change is how fucking uncomfortable their couch is to sleep on, and how much that pisses him off. That had been his number one priority when he’d bought it half a year ago; Waseda’s not too far from home, but Youichi’s still managed to widen his social circle a little bit since high school, and sharing a dorm room with an actual popular guy like Narumiya Mei meant that they had no shortage of mangy strays from their respective friend groups begging for a place to crash after a late Saturday night in Shinjuku. Miyuki must’ve slept on this thing a dozen times by now and he’d never said a word about it.
Restlessly, Youichi rolls onto his side, scowling as the metal frame punches him in the ribcage. He feels like an asshole.
The brightening morning light dyes their living room pink as it creeps across the floor, slipping beneath the edge of their bedroom door, shut tight. Youichi’d left Narumiya alone in there last night—even sleeping on his own side of the room had felt like too much then, overbearing or intrusive or—something, he doesn’t know, but now that he’s sitting alone with it in the light of day, Youichi wonders if that might’ve been wrong of him to do.
It’s not really the couch that’s been keeping him awake, after all. It’s Narumiya.
It’s the way his face had looked as he’d slowly closed the door between them: the stomach-churning state of it, the dark blood crusted around his swollen nostrils, the bandages, their edges peeling away where his tears had soaked them. The way the pain shone in his blue eyes, so clear Youichi’d almost felt a throb of it himself for a moment, phantom sensation. And it was only for that one small moment, but Youichi could’ve sworn that what showed on Narumiya’s face had looked a little more like hurt.
Somewhere behind the bedroom door, the first of Narumiya’s six alarms goes off. The sound’s so faint Youichi knows he’s shoved his phone deep under the ridiculous pile of pillows occupying half his bed, which means he’ll sleep through all six, which also means that whenever he does get around to getting his ass out of bed, his first order of business will be to pick a fight with Youichi for not waking him sooner. Youichi swings his legs sideways and heaves himself upright, yawning so wide his jaw cracks. That’s how it usually goes, anyway, on any regular morning. Life with Narumiya Mei.
Instead of delivering a flying elbow drop through Narumiya’s impenetrable cocoon of blankets, his usual favored method for rousing the beast, Youichi shuffles into the kitchen and lights the stove. He even sticks one of Narumiya’s nasty flavored coffee pods into the little pink futuristic-looking machine, hoping the nauseatingly sugary smell of the caramel will lure him out.
Youichi’ll make breakfast, he decides. Big breakfast. Enough food to force-fill at least a little of the weird hollow hole that had opened in his gut after watching Narumiya take a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball to the face yesterday, because so far, everything he’s tried has only seemed to carve it deeper.
—
Sure enough, Narumiya’s rumpled blond bedhead pokes around the doorframe sometime after alarm number three. His phone’s still blaring in his hand, but he’s paying it no mind, squinting instead at Youichi across the room. He looks annoyed, though Youichi can’t really tell how much of that’s due to the swelling and the—
Holy fuck, he almost says out loud. (Thank god he doesn’t.) The bruising’s spread past the ends of the bandages that hide most of his nose and out into big purple-black half-moons beneath Narumiya’s eyes. Youichi didn’t make it through his delinquent years without taking his own fair share of punches to the face, but he can’t remember ever coming out of any fight looking half as bad as—that. He quickly turns back to the stove to hide his sympathetic wince.
“Don’t use my Nespresso. It’s expensive,” Narumiya huffs. His voice is nasally. Youichi’d make fun of him for it if it didn’t make his stomach lurch to think about.
“It’s for you, dickhead,” Youichi volleys back over his shoulder, pretending to fiddle with the knobs on the stove even though it’s already off. “I made breakfast. It’s on the coffee table. Might have to warm it up a little, though.” He swallows. “Dickhead,” he says again. For emphasis.
When Youichi finally flops onto the couch next to Narumiya with his own piled-high plate and a mug of (plain black, like a civilized person, thank you) coffee, Narumiya’s plate is still right where Youichi’d left it on the table, untouched. He’s looking down at it with a weird expression on his face that Youichi doesn’t have a name for.
“What?” Youichi leans closer to peer down over Narumiya’s shoulder at the spread. It’s nothing impressive, just whatever Youichi could think of that wouldn’t require much chewing. Sweet tamagoyaki, because Narumiya’s a sugar-toothed toddler, and oatmeal with brown sugar and bananas, and. Just. Whatever.
“Nothing,” Narumiya says after a moment, and then picks up his chopsticks. “I—um. Nothing. Thank you.”
For some reason, Youichi has to look away as Narumiya takes the first bite.
—
Me [11:48 AM]
Just like
wtf do i do Miyuki
For him
To like help him
Or make him feel better or
Idk fuck
This just sucks so fuckin bad dude
Captain [11:54 AM]
All of that could have been one text.
Youichi rolls his eyes. Then, five minutes later, his phone buzzes in his pocket again.
Captain [11:59 AM]
He’s not a baby, Kuramochi. If he really needs something, he’ll ask you.
But what does it mean if I want to baby him, Youichi wants to reply but doesn’t.
—
A week later, Narumiya ignores the strict doctor’s orders taped to the front of their fridge and shows up at practice to sit on the bench. He has the brim of his hat pulled low over his forehead, but it doesn’t do much to hide the bandages. It’s a little bit of a relief for Youichi to watch Narumiya simply jut his chin against the stares of their teammates and pretend that nothing’s amiss. Youichi knows it could’ve been worse—he’s read the papers on the fridge so many times by now he could recite them from memory, moderate nasal bone fracture corrected by manual realignment, administer prescribed pain relief medication as needed—but still, he’s spent this past week watching Narumiya surreptitiously Googling things on his phone like broken nose shortest time healed and can i go to the gym broken nose and best concealer bruising.
It’s been frustrating to watch. He can’t imagine how it feels. But when he’d tried talking to Narumiya about it, all he’d gotten was an akanbe and a sing-songy Don’t worry about me so much, You-chan! It’s creepy.
Youichi sits up from his hamstring stretch to frown at the back of Narumiya’s head while he bends to tie the cleats he isn’t allowed to be wearing. He must have left their dorm some time after Youichi had so Youichi wouldn’t try to stop him. Sneaky little shit.
He returns to his stiff hamstring, leaning in as far as his body will let him, and stays there staring down at the grass until it starts to burn.
The cleats appear in front of him. Youichi looks up, shielding his eyes against the sun.
“Help me with mine next,” Narumiya commands, loud enough that everyone around them’s sure to hear, including Coach. He points to where Youichi’s still pressing his thumb into the side of his thigh to try to massage the stubborn muscle looser. “Coach says I can stretch, at least.” His mouth twists sourly. “But only with a partner.”
“Not doing that,” Youichi replies. “Go home.”
Ten minutes later, Youichi’s rolling his eyes skyward, loosely holding Narumiya’s ankle as he whines and complains through his calf stretches. Really, this is all kind of Miyuki’s fault. If he really needs something, he’ll ask you has been pinging around Youichi’s head since he’d said it, and it’s only here, now, that he’s realizing why.
He’s been waiting all this time for Narumiya to ask him for something. For anything at all.
—
In the middle of practice, Narumiya bends to pick up a stray ball that rolls into the dugout. He throws it back. If it hurts him—Youichi’s sure it hurts him—it doesn’t show on his face.
Youichi watches Narumiya stand there for a long time after the ball returns to play. His eyes are so bright beneath the shadow of his ball cap. He looks like he’s never wanted anything in his life as badly as he wants what’s right in front of him; what he can’t have right now. Funnily enough, Youichi can relate.
—
Their sex is so good that sometimes Youichi feels a little scared if he thinks about it for too long. Sure, part of that’s the startling revelation that Narumiya’s on an unceasing quest to one-up himself daily in the depraved little freak department—fuck me after our doubleheader games without showering, You-chan, let me hold it while you pee, You-chan, et cetera—but the bigger part of it is that it’s just so good. Too good. Good enough that Youichi’s kind of starting to feel like he never wants to fuck anyone who isn’t Narumiya Mei, which is a thought that falls strictly outside the bounds of their—arrangement. Or whatever.
The two feet of shadowed space between their dorm beds feels right now to Youichi like an uncrossable ocean. He’s long since relocated from the couch, but he’s still not sleeping well.
They’d last fucked a couple of days before the game against Meiji where Narumiya’d taken the ball to the face. Narumiya had wanted it rough so that’s how Youichi was giving it to him, fists curled over the top of the headboard to keep it from banging into the wall, and also to keep himself from doing something stupid like trying to hold Narumiya’s little hands where they were gripping at the pillows. Youichi’d been trying to talk, he remembers, because Narumiya hates when Youichi gets all quiet during sex, but something about the sight of himself sinking into Narumiya’s beautiful body spread out below him had knocked all the breath straight out of Youichi like a punch, and he couldn’t think of anything to say.
Narumiya had turned his face away to hide it in his pillow. He always cries when he comes, which would be flattering, Youichi guesses, if it didn’t wreak such havoc in his chest every time it happened. But that time Youichi caught him halfway there, his fingers pressing into the softness of Narumiya’s flushed pink cheeks to hold him still. To watch him. He’d used his thumb to rub away one of the little tears sparkling at the corner of his eye.
Wanna see your pretty face, Youichi’d managed to whisper, even though it made him feel like someone was squeezing his heart through a juicer. Narumiya had liked that a lot.
He slides out of his bed and crawls onto the edge of Narumiya’s. Suddenly, Youichi really needs to say it to him again.
“Mei,” he murmurs, curling his fingers around the slender shape of Narumiya’s ankle under his layers of blankets. “Hey.”
Youichi leans closer. The bed dips beneath the press of his knee. His hand moves up to Narumiya’s calf, knee, thigh.
He’s stopped by Narumiya’s other foot against his chest.
“Are you seriously trying to fuck me while my face looks like this?” Narumiya hisses.
Youichi’s heart drops into his stomach. On its descent, it burns up all the nerve he’d gathered to say—well, that thing he’d wanted to say, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff he also suddenly really wants to say right now, because Narumiya needs to know that Youichi doesn’t especially give a shit what his face looks like—which, maybe now’s not really a great time to say that, either. Youichi gapes into the air between them like a fish, trying to speak, failing. “I wasn’t trying to—I just wanted to—”
“To what?” Narumiya’s head hasn’t moved from his pillow. His eyes are two silver pools in the blue dark.
“Kiss you,” is what Youichi decides to go with. His face burns.
“Oh,” Narumiya whispers after a long stretch of quiet. “Well. Fine. C’mere.”
Youichi kisses him slow and careful, which he knows probably makes it a little less exciting than usual for Narumiya. He moves against Youichi like he likes it, though, pulling Youichi down until he’s splayed out on top of him like another blanket, until there’s no place where their bodies aren’t touching. Narumiya’s mouth is soft and warm and slack with sleep.
Youichi doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but when he eventually climbs back into his own bed with his lips numb and blood-buzzing, his heart’s pounding in his chest like he’d just run for miles.
—
Me [7:04 AM]
Should I say something to him like
Idk like
Something sympathetic
Like sorry about what happened to your face
Captain [8:28 AM]
Do not say that to him.
—
Youichi doesn’t have enough room to even spit into the sink around the towers of potions and creams and bizarre little torture instruments that make up Narumiya’s bajillion-whatever-the-fuck-number-of-steps Korean skincare routine, but it doesn’t stop him from stubbornly taking up as much space in their tiny shared bathroom as he can while he brushes his teeth anyway. He brushes for the full dentist-prescribed two minutes. He’d go for the floss, too, just to be extra annoying, but Narumiya’s already bullied his way between Youichi and the edge of the countertop to hog the mirror and peel some slimy-looking patches off his undereyes, and he’s purposefully pressing his ass back into Youichi’s hips in a way that will make them both very late for practice if Youichi doesn’t decide to be the bigger man here. He relents.
The bruises beneath Narumiya’s undereyes have faded to a shadowy stain that mostly just makes him look tired. He’s still wearing a skin-colored bandage over the worst of it across the bridge of his nose, but Youichi knows it’s mostly for vanity’s sake, until the scab is gone. In the reflection of the mirror, Youichi watches Narumiya struggle with the wrapper for a fresh bandage. His fingers are all shiny, slick with leftover lotion.
“If it doesn’t heal straight it’ll ruin my whole face,” Narumiya says out of nowhere. He doesn’t look up from where his thumb is picking uselessly at the corner of the paper. “I’ll be ugly.”
Youichi leans in to spit into the sink over Narumiya’s shoulder. Narumiya squawks as he’s bent halfway over the counter beneath Youichi’s weight, and he quickly abandons the wrapper to spin around and shove hard against Youichi’s chest with both of his greasy hands. Gross.
Youichi picks up the bandage from the countertop and peels apart the wrapper. As he sticks it carefully onto the cut between Narumiya’s wide, startled eyes, Youichi says, “I think you’re pretty.”
Narumiya leaves the bathroom so fast that Youichi’s pretty sure he skipped at least ten steps in the skincare routine. He really likes the way Narumiya blushes pink all the way to the tips of his ears. Someday Youichi’ll tell him that.
—
Youichi thinks about Narumiya’s pink ears for a long time after. Like, a whole week after, and by the end of it he’s thought himself all the way around in a circle and then he’s worrying about it, and ugh, god. Youichi’s no good at this kind of stuff; the saying-stuff-out-loud stuff. He’d kind of thought—maybe it’d make Narumiya happy to hear Youichi say something like that outside of a time when they’re actively having sex, but maybe it was too much. Maybe Youichi actually had overstepped their fuckbuddy boundaries this time by saying it aloud instead of just thinking it like he usually does, and maybe that’s why Narumiya’d reacted that way, and why he hasn’t brought it up since.
The time passes in the changing colors of the bruises beneath Narumiya’s eyes. They’re nearly gone now, faint greenish shadows that he covers so expertly with concealer it’s like nothing ever happened at all. It’s not that things in the dorm are awkward, exactly, or really any different (other than the fact that this is the longest stretch of time they’ve managed to stay out of each other’s beds since they’d moved in). Youichi just—can’t stop thinking about it. About him. It’s like he’s spent so much time looking at Narumiya in the past couple of weeks that he can’t remember what it’s like to look away anymore.
He keeps making breakfast, too, because, well. He wants to.
Youichi flips a pancake. Really, he should just man up and talk to Narumiya about it. Ask him if he’d said something he shouldn’t have. If he should stop with the breakfasts.
They don’t have practice or class today, so Narumiya sleeps even later than usual, which only serves to compound the weird anxiety mounting in Youichi’s chest until he finds himself pacing in circles around their tiny kitchen island with the plate of pancakes wobbling precariously in his hands. He’d made two chocolate chip pancakes for Narumiya’s nasty sweet tooth, put them at the bottom of the stack so they’d stay warm, but maybe that was too much, too. Maybe Youichi’s just doing too much. Maybe he should just throw the whole thing away—
He stops halfway to the trashcan. Narumiya’s standing in front of him on the other end of the island. The creases from his pillow are stamped into the side of his face, and his cowlick’s poking in four different directions, and Youichi’s so in love with him it’s making him feel like he’s going to throw up his own heart.
Narumiya blinks blearily around at the disaster Youichi’s made of their kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the back of his sleeve. After a while, he says, “I’m better now.”
“Uh-huh.” Youichi sets down the plate and pushes it over until it’s teetering in front of Narumiya. “Well, uh. Congratulations.”
Narumiya doesn’t reach for the pancakes. Instead, he steps around the edge of the island, his bare feet padding quietly across the tile, and grabs Youichi by two big fistfuls of his t-shirt.
Narumiya kisses Youichi so deeply that their noses smash together. Youichi gasps and tries to pull away as if he’s the one with the healing injury, but Narumiya doesn’t even flinch. If anything, he only kisses Youichi harder, one hand sneaking up to curl into the hair at the nape of Youichi’s neck.
“Youichi,” Narumiya gasps into his mouth. “Couch. Now.”
—
Afterward, tracing lazy circles with his finger along the soft skin between Narumiya’s bare sweaty shoulder blades, Youichi wonders how he’s gonna scrape together the cash for a new couch, because there’s no way in hell Miyuki’s going to sleep on this one ever again.
On top of Youichi, Narumiya dozes in the warm yellow afternoon like a cat. His long eyelashes catch the light, bright strokes against his cheek. Youichi’s heart feels all gooey, like the sunlight’s melted it. They didn’t exactly talk about it, but he’s pretty sure things are a little clearer between them now. He’d just spent the better part of two hours making it clear in just about every way he could think of.
“Y’know, I think the crooked look is cool on you,” Youichi says into Narumiya’s hair. He casts a pointed look from Narumiya’s side profile up to the ceiling in mock-deep thought, frowning so that the cackle rising up in his chest has no chance to escape. “Like a yakuza.”
Narumiya shoots upright so fast it’s like Youichi had pinched him. He slaps both of his hands over his face. “It’s not crooked!” he screeches into his palms. “Shut the fuck up!”
Yeah, Youichi thinks, and his laugh finally bubbles over as Narumiya desperately tries to cover his nose with one hand and pound on Youichi’s chest with the other. He knows. I know he knows. Everything’s gonna work out just fine.