Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

   Nitori is bent at the waist, towelling his hair off in the locker room when he feels the presence behind him - bare feet on the slippery tiles, even steps, in no hurry at all. Most of the team have long since cleared out by now. He must be the last of them still getting changed, but the facility is so huge and the locker rooms and showers so numerous that there's no way to tell.

   Another damp towel hits him square in the middle of the back, and Nitori doesn't have to turn around to know who has come looking for him.

   Rin clears his throat before addressing him, as though to get his attention. "Good race," he says. It's the same way he speaks to the team after practice, when they're all lined up at the side of the pool. The most generic of his praises, but Nitori doesn't mind at all.

   "Thank you!" he replies, straightening up and hoping that Rin won't somehow notice that he hasn't gotten around to putting anything beneath the lilac towel that's only loosely tied around his waist. His words don't echo anywhere near so much as Rin's did in the enclosed space. "But-- I'll do better next time!"

   Rin makes a noise of acknowledgement, like he already knew that without Nitori having to tell him. At least, that's how he chooses to take it.

   "He wants your number," Rin says, and Nitori does turn around then, just for the opportunity to see Rin standing there, leaning with his shoulder against a row of lockers, tracksuit on, his hair tied back but still dripping onto waterproof fabric. "Just so you know."

   Nitori blinks at him. "Hazuki-kun?"

   He nods. "Nagisa."

   Nagisa - the one who had winked at him before the relay, and there Nitori had been relieved to have an opponent who wouldn't have the advantage of height and longer limbs, because what were the odds?

   Nagisa from Iwatobi, who, like seemingly everyone else from Iwatobi, Rin has been friends with since the beginning of time but never wants to talk about. These are the people that Rin doesn't want to share, and one of them is reaching out.

   Nitori manages to shimmy into his tracksuit bottoms without an accidental flashing - no underwear, but Rin isn't exactly giving him the opportunity for privacy. "Did you give it to him?"

   "I didn't think I should. Not without asking you first." Rin stares at the adjacent wall with at least some degree of nonchalance, like it's fooling anyone. "I mean, I wasn't sure if he meant... you do know about Nagisa, right?"

   Nitori has a sudden, vivid mental image of picking his way through a minefield.

   "I think so," he says, carefully. He doesn't know anything of the sort, but he can parse Rin's meaning anyway. The sound of zipping up his bag cuts through the impending silence; like he's expected to say more, but at the same time, he isn't supposed to.

   Rin nods, very slowly, at the blank wall as it though it had answered his question. "So you understand there's a chance he's...?" 

   Nitori wants to narrow his eyes, but doesn't. Instead, he just slings his bag over his shoulder and tries to become the picture of uncomprehending innocence as he tosses Rin's towel back to him.

   Rin catches it easily, and then sighs. "...Asking for your number that way. You know." He puts his towel over his shoulder and his hands in his pockets as they head, together, for the door. "I had to warn you. He's an okay guy, but he isn't exactly subtle."

   "He's not going to eat me, Captain, it's okay. You should give it to him." Nitori grins - can't possibly help but grin at the way Rin looks at him like he's just stepped over the edge of a cliff or sold his soul to the devil. "Tell him I said good race."

oOo

   Nitori mostly knows about Hazuki Nagisa due to the fact that Facebook has been suggesting him as a mutual friend for months now. He's watched Nagisa cycle through a different profile picture every two days or so, and he had beaten Nitori to the punch when it came to leaving happy birthday messages for both Kou and Rin this year - but he's never had the courage to do anything about it, and neither, apparently, has the oh-so-unsubtle blond making peace signs at the camera in the little icon beside his name. 

   On some level, he understands. Rin mentions him like he mentions the others, vague asides about Nagisa said or Makoto thinks without elaborating much on who they actually are. And there are enough Nagisa saids that Nitori comes to the conclusion that Nagisa actually says an awful lot.

   Which is why it's so surprising when Nagisa texts Nitori with his own number, his message dinging in while Nitori is on the bus home that weekend, and then not at all.

   Nitori comes to the swift conclusion that Rin forgot to tell him good race.

   Not that it was the greatest conversation starter of all time, but at least it was something.

   So, after three days of radio silence, Nitori takes the plunge and sends Nagisa a friend request, along with the rest of the Iwatobi team.

   They come back four accepteds and an emoticon-laden IM asking when he's in town next and if he wants to go for a run sometime, like that something people just ask.

oOo

   For the first time in a while, Nitori's phone stops being almost purely decorative.

   It's not that he doesn't get texts (he does) or that he doesn't have friends (he has the team and classmates and people from middle school who ended up at different academies) - it's just that it's always been kind of a functional thing. A where r u, meet me by the vending machines, what the hell is the homework thing. He's found that he doesn't have much to say on a platform where he actually has to read his words back to himself beforehand. He's also found that, maybe because of this, he isn't the person people text when they're trying to combat the crushing boredom of waiting in a dentist's office or procrastinating on school-work. And he's adjusted to that. It's a lifestyle.

   A lifestyle that comes crashing down hard.

   And it's not until it's one in the morning on a Tuesday -- when Rin grunts out, "Ai," from the bottom bunk, "would you put your damn phone off," and Nitori looks at the screen with bleary eyes and sees, as though for the first time, bubble after bubble of asinine chatter about TV dramas and music and swimming and just about everything else under the sun -- that he realises what's happening.

   He says goodnight, shuts his phone off, and falls asleep smiling into his pillow.

oOo

   "It's this thing Gou-kun is making us do," Nagisa explains, two weeks later and like she isn't standing about two feet away from him on the pavement. He pulls his calf behind himself, stretching it off laboriously, even though they haven't done anything yet. "A brutal workout to build our stamina and blah blah blah running is boring without fun people around, and you seem like a fun person to me, Ai-chan."

   He shoots Nitori a sunny, toothy grin. The three of them are out in their sweats, loitering by a road that spans the coast, giving all the view of the sea without the added effort of running through the actual sand. Nitori still isn't sure why he packed his running shoes and came to Iwatobi for the day, but when Nagisa says it, it seems like the simplest thing in the world. It's not like he has anywhere else to be.

   He does find it hard to believe that after two weeks of occasional text messaging and Nagisa has somehow, bless his soul, come to the conclusion that he is fun.

   Nitori can only smile hesitantly back at him.

   "I'm fun too," Kou protests, her ponytail swinging with the force of the way her head snaps around to look at Nagisa in the most accusing way. "I'm a good manager and I'm fun."

   "Gou-kun." Nagisa shakes his head and rests one hand solemnly on her shoulder. "You try. But you'll never surpass Ai-chan here. You don't text me about anything except protein and regimes."

   Just like her brother, Nitori doesn't say, because it's not even strictly true. Rin did text him about a cafeteria menu change once. Even if it was a mass text, so what? Those count.

   "I think you're fun," Nitori offers, and truthfully. He's only met Kou in passing a handful of times, but he's always liked her. And she, at least, is forthright with her social media.

   A car goes by, and the relative brightness of the headlights reminds them all that time is ticking on. It's drawing closer to sunset, though not at any real speed. It's too late in the spring for the nights to sneak up on them, but too early for the weather to be any real deterrent to be outside - it's perfectly mild. Half the Samezuka team have been out every morning this week, at approximately the crack of dawn.

   Admittedly, Nitori thinks running is boring too, but he's never admitted it, and he can't fault Kou for her training.

   "Thank you," Kou says, more to Nagisa than anyone. She rolls back the sleeve of her hoodie to check her watch, and while her head is bowed, Nitori watches Nagisa stick his tongue out at her.

   They manage one long lap that feels like it goes around the entire town, and by the time Nitori gets back to the train station, his thighs are burning and his throat aches from trying to keep up with the demanding pace of conversation.

   It was hard and gruelling and bizarre, but not boring, not even for a moment.

   "Let us know when you get home safe," Kou tells him as his train pulls up, and Nagisa nods enthusiastically from behind her. Nitori has a feeling they'd exchange hugs if they weren't all so gross and damp.

   "I will," he says, and when he gets back to the dorm and promptly forgets, the two phone calls he receives catch him off guard more than he could have anticipated.

oOo

   "I'm not actually fun."

   Nitori's confession comes a week later, when it's Nagisa's turn to deal with the train journey for a day out at the arcade. Nagisa being a beast at DDR isn't surprising, really, and after being beaten twice, Nitori finds himself content to watch, resting his forearms on the red bar of the empty station while Nagisa works through his fourth song without even breaking a sweat.

   "Yes you are," Nagisa says without taking his eyes off the screen. "I think you're great."

   Nitori doesn't know what to say to that, so he says, "We hardly know each other, though."

   "Well, I'm like that. Sometimes I just take a shine to people, I can't help it." A group of middle-school girls come to a halt nearby, watching Nagisa dance, but they don't break his focus with their awed whispering. "Especially not when they're as super-fun as you are? It's like they're a magnet and I'm - well, I'm another magnet, maybe, and we just have to be friends."

   The thumping music doesn't screech to a halt, but from the way that statement gives Nitori pause, it should. It's in the way Nagisa says it like it's mined straight from the core of his brain, unfiltered. Unashamed and unembarrassed. His feet still tapping out a harsh rhythm as though he hasn't said anything out of the ordinary at all.

   "You want to be friends? With me?" Nitori has to double-check - he has to. He pulls his phone from his pocket to fiddle with the charm, just for something to do with his hands. His phone full of back-and-forth with Nagisa for weeks, contained in little bubbles. He almost never has to text first.

   "We are friends," Nagisa tells him, and for a moment there's no room for argument. The sky is blue and the Earth is round and the soles of Nitori's feet ache from their modest sightseeing and they're friends. But then Nagisa says, "Aren't we?" in a way that implies nothing of second-guessing himself and everything of checking for some kind of consent.

   Consent that he shouldn't even need. Nagisa wouldn't come all this way to see someone who wasn't a friend. Nitori doesn't know why it took him so long to realise that himself.

   "Sure. Yes." he nods, hopes Nagisa can't see the way he's blushing, flustered in the dim neon of the arcade. "We're friends."

Chapter Text

   Nitori very quickly convinces himself that final exam season must be infinitely easier for students who don't go to boarding schools. When he imagines Kou and Nagisa, he pictures them on inflatable sun loungers, sipping virgin Piña Coladas in the Iwatobi High pool, a million miles away. All the pleasures of being free from the bubbling pot of stress that's all contained in the brick walls of Samezuka academy.

   Wherever he looks, at any time of the day, someone is hunched over a textbook, or scribbling notes on the backs of their hands, or crying -- though, granted, he's pretty sure he'd see less crying if he wasn't sharing a room with the main perpetrator.

   But their correspondence tells another story. About half the texts from Kou are accidental, intended for someone else, and he's reassured that most of the texts she means to send him are meeting a similar fate. Even without swim club on her mind, she seems scattered.

   Not dissimilarly, Nagisa's emoticons begin to increase at an exponential rate and become near incomprehensible. It gets to the point where Nitori is almost afraid to ask if a particular one is supposed to be a cat or an upside-down angry human -- and even more afraid when he realises that it wouldn't really change the tone of the message either way.

   Nagisa doesn't talk about school beyond gossip about his friends and the team. Nitori puts it down to him simply being cooler and more interesting than Nitori himself is, but now, Nagisa is an island of idle conversation in a sea of drones who are obsessed with grades and figures and applications. Even his other friends have been pulled under by the tide; Nitori doesn't see them much outside of class, but they're dead-eyed zombies and Nitori is becoming one of them too.

   And in just a few days, it'll all be over. 

   One Friday, when the smiley faces start edging into Stepford territory, Nitori shoves his own chemistry book under his pillow, tries to ignore the sniffling coming from the bathroom, and thumbs out an invitation to Nagisa to meet halfway for ice cream.

   The reply takes twenty entire minutes.

   Nitori stops imagining the Piña Coladas.

oOo

   Google Maps finds them a very small, very pink, touristy little diner with shiny white floors and enough room in the booths for three people on each side. Rather than bouncing, Nagisa slides into the booth the same way Nitori does, and it's in that instant that Nitori knows that the vibe he picked up from Nagisa's texting habits was very, very accurate indeed.

   Nagisa has looked better. Both times Nitori has met him before, he was vibrant and too cheerful to keep up with, but now, his eyes are dull and he's wearing a blue t-shirt that isn't even pastel.

   He knocks the heels of his shoes against the bottom of the booth when Nitori asks if he's looking forward to being a second year.

   The waitress comes, and Nagisa immediately orders a triple-chocolate brownie sundae with extra fudge sauce and tries to convince Nitori to do the same. "We'll go for a swim and burn off the calories! I'll race you, Ai-chan--" he turns to the waitress. "Hey, is there a pool around here?"

   "Not really," the waitress says. Nitori imagines that if they were in a real retro diner, she'd be popping her bubblegum.

   "Um. Anyway, we'd get cramps. We couldn't," Nitori adds, ordering a more reasonable portion instead. He hesitates. Thinks about asking Nagisa to please stop calling him Ai-chan, while he's at it, but he would be fighting a losing battle and they both know that. "How- how do you swim so well when you eat like that?" he asks instead.

   "Sugar is energy," Nagisa tells him plainly.

   With anyone else, Nitori would let the statement go with no reaction but for a long-suffering look at an imaginary camera. But he finds himself smiling a little when, instead, he speaks up. "A triple-chocolate brownie sundae with extra fudge sauce is more than just sugar."

   "All right, Rei-chan," Nagisa says, rolling his eyes in the most exaggerated way as the waitress leaves. Nitori recognises Rei as the butterfly swimmer who neglected to bring his swimsuit that time - the one he's pretty sure is Nagisa's best friend, but it's hard to tell because Nagisa acts like everyone is his best friend. But he's heard slightly more details about Rei's life than he has about Mako-chan's or Haru-chan's; Nagisa has a knack for dragging in the most random asides about Rei's athletic history and his glasses and the growth progress of the plants he keeps in his bedroom.

   Combined with what Rin told him after the relay, Nitori has his suspicions.

   He also wonders, briefly, if Rei doesn't like ice cream or something, but Nagisa answers the question before he can even ask it. "You're just like him sometimes, worry worry worry, all, Nagisa, it's not healthy or safe to do this and that!" He huffs a sigh up towards his fringe, displacing it a little with his breath.

   But then the apparent mood passes and he grins from ear to ear, resting his chin in one hand, elbow on the table. "Live a little," he says, as though it's an invitation rather than a condemnation. A hand extended.

   The waitress returns with Nagisa's sundae in an elaborate glass that's as tall as the length Nitori's forearm. She sets down Nitori's modest two scoops of strawberry in a bowl in front of him. Nagisa frowns at it.

   Nitori can acquiesce. With the toe of one foot, he pokes at Nagisa's calf under the table, down around the line where his socks meet bare skin. "I could share some of yours, maybe."

   Nagisa takes his long-handled spoon in hand. He has to kick his shoes off and shift up onto his knees in order to comfortably reach the top of the mountain of ice cream in his glass. "Maybe maybe," he chirps, and then scoops a massive chocolatey spoonful into his mouth.

oOo

 
   Somehow, Nagisa convinces him to come back to his house and stay the night.

   "I couldn't," is his immediate response, and Nagisa shoots back, "Why couldn't you?" and Nitori starts drumming his fingernails against the metal bench they're sitting on at the station, shifting in his seat because he has no idea why he couldn't.

   The sun is already edging towards the horizon, painting the beams and benches in long shadows across the paved ground. Samezuka won't miss him. Weekends are open, and it's likely that nobody will even notice he's gone. He scuffs the toe of one shoe against the pavement. Time has gotten away from him, and maybe that's a reason not to stay. He's heard that love makes time stand still, but this is the opposite. A whirlwind, and suddenly it's three hours and two milkshakes later and he has to go, but doesn't have to go. 

   Nagisa, undeterred, offers to let him borrow anything he might need, and the only thing he'd need from home that Nagisa couldn't provide for him - his inhaler - is in his bag as always. There are no excuses not to go except not wanting to, and that one wouldn't even be accurate. Nitori doesn't stop to let himself wonder why he puts up roadblocks to keep himself from something as simple and harmless as a sleepover with a friend. He practically has sleepovers with Rin every single night.

   Which counts.

   He doesn't know what it is that actually convinces him. It could be the fact that Nagisa has been acting like next week's exams are going to literally kill him, or that Nitori can't bear the thought of Nagisa being halfway through the train journey before the inevitable cataclysmic stomach-ache hits him while he's alone. He certainly doesn't think about the small bonus of Rin not knowing where he is for a night -- or perhaps Nitori could take the opportunity to tell him that he's staying over with someone and not to wait up for him. He bites his lip at the thought.

   There's also the plain fact that he just likes being around Nagisa. And being around Nagisa for a whole night feels like something he could do without worrying himself into a state about the rules, the etiquette, whether or not it's rude to insist on taking the futon if when his host offers him the bed - Nitori doesn't do sleepovers, hasn't done sleepovers since he was in elementary school and quite frankly has no idea about any of it.

   "What are we going to do tonight?" he asks when they're settled on the train, Nagisa across from him with his feet up on the empty seat beside Nitori's, tapping at his phone with one earbud in. He glances up at the sound of Nitori's voice, magenta eyes lidded even though it's still evening. Outside, the sky is almost the same deep shade of pink.

   "We can do whatever you want, Ai-chan." Nagisa's gives him a lazy little smile, like just thinking of the possibilities has brightened him. "We can listen to music, or watch movies, or bake some cookies, or talk about--" He cuts himself off, a little sheepishly. "Whatever you want."

   Somehow, they deviate from the plan. When they arrive at Nagisa's house (no parents, but Nitori can hear girls talking when they come in the front door, and the sound fades as they go upstairs), Nagisa gives Nitori a brief tour of his bedroom before he starfishes face-first onto his own bed, leaving Nitori to quietly find somewhere to put his bag and then sit down at the foot of the mattress, limbs drawn in close to his body. 

   Nagisa must be crashing -- luckily, he isn't puking. He makes no move other than the occasional squirm to get comfortable, and so Nitori entertains himself by looking around the room instead. All of is pink and blue pastel, as though Nagisa had splashed his own colour scheme onto every surface he could, bar the smaller accessories. The radio on the nightstand. The glow-in-the-dark star stickers all over the ceiling, arranged in some semblance of order. The potted plants that he can't imagine Nagisa remembering to water, but they're healthy and alive, even in the heat.

   Nitori really isn't one to judge people for their neatness, but he can't help noticing the papers and books all over Nagisa's desk. It looks like his own desk.

   He tells Nagisa as much, and Nagisa lifts his head briefly from the duvet to fix Nitori with a serious stare. "I've heard the stories," he says, darkly, before he flops back down again.

   They stay like that for a while, conversing about nothing very much until Nagisa finally sits up and says, with his newly un-muffled voice, "Do you like magazines?"

   It brings an involuntary flush to his face, but Nitori nods. "Yes. Of course I like magazines," he says, trying not to let his voice show that he's sceptical of the concept of there being anyone out there who doesn't like magazines.

   Nagisa kneels and then leans over the side of the bed, pulling a stack of them out from underneath it with an air of pride that Nitori doesn't particularly understand. There are no pink covers to be seen, thank god, because Nitori isn't ready for that level of friendship at all; instead, the front pages are all splashed with blue and white and skin tones, images of rippling indoor pools the backdrop to one athlete or another with goggles on their foreheads.

   Nagisa then repositions himself to the floor, lying on his stomach. "You ever read these?" he asks, conversationally, tossing the one on the top in Nitori's direction.

   He catches it, and opens it to an article about the Olympics from two years ago. "Not really. I- don't usually read about swimming, I just listen to what the coach tells me." He shrugs, setting the magazine in his lap and skimming the text. "Rin-senpai does, sometimes?"

   There are stacks and stacks under the bottom bunk in their dorm - Nitori has never touched them, but then, he's never been quite so dedicated as Rin.

   Nagisa laughs. Giggles, really. "I bet he does."

   Nitori looks up, uncomprehending. "What do you mean?"

   In reply, Nagisa just bites his lip and averts his eyes down at the magazine he has spread out on the floor in front of him. A feature on an athlete - an Olympian - with most of the right side of the page taken up by a picture of the man, fresh out of the pool, one hand pushing back his dripping hair, looking into the distance like the picture was snapped completely candid.

   It's cropped to about his mid-thigh, and Nitori is beet red before he even truly registers what Nagisa is implying.

   Not that it means anything. Swimming is just like that. It's not like they can wear clothes in the water - and the athletes have to be strong and hairless and scantily-clad. It's natural. Logical. Nitori may have had to navigate puberty spending half his free time with nearly-naked boys and dealing with all the awkwardness that came with it, but for someone like Rin, a picture like that in a magazine like this wouldn't be anything to bat an eyelash over.

   He wouldn't have assumed that Nagisa would bat an eyelash over it either, necessarily, but then the blond pipes up, "I don't know if this one is my type, though." His eyes are fixed on the magazine, one fingertip brushing idly over and over the guy's six-pack as though he can feel something other than paper there. "What do you think? Isn't he too intimidating?"

   And this is the part where Nitori should run a mile.

   And he would run a mile if Nagisa didn't make it sounds so... normal. If Nagisa didn't have such a knack for making everything seem simple and commonplace and shameless. This has to be Nagisa's way of getting what he wants - by phrasing it like it's something anyone would want. 

   The key to Nitori's best kept secret is in the question, what do you think?, and he isn't running.

   Nitori bumps to the carpet for a closer look. He figures Nagisa wouldn't ask something like that unless he already knows. Somehow. Like a sixth sense.

   "I don't know," he says, after a preliminary critical analysis. "He has nice arms."

   Nagisa hums. "Nice arms," he repeats. "Noted."

   He waits for Nitori to shuffle closer, and then he turns the page.

Chapter Text

   In the morning, Nitori wakes up bleary-eyed and unsure of where he is for all of two seconds before he glances down at the floor and sees blond hair sprawled out on a pillow and a small, limp hand hanging over the edge of the futon, poking out from underneath the blue-striped duvet. Nagisa is turned away from him, silent in his sleep.

   Nitori's phone tells him it's just gone six, way too early to be up on a Saturday.

   He settles back down, closing his eyes against the harsh sunlight. It doesn't take long to feel at ease again. Nitori thinks it must be half due to exhaustion (because they stayed up past midnight, cutting shallowly into Nagisa's movie collection), and half due to the strange, illogical security that comes with sleeping in someone else's bed. The sheets are clean, but they still smell faintly like bubblegum and boy - scents that don't seem like they should mix, but Nitori doesn't mind it at all.

oOo

  
   When Nitori wakes up again, it's to Nagisa gone and the sound of the shower running in the other room. He doesn't get up immediately - just lays there and stares at the ceiling until the water stops, and five minutes later Nagisa comes in, still in his bed-shorts and t-shirt, with two glasses of water and a wide, all-consuming yawn.

   Nitori showers next, and discovers the source of the bubblegum scent - some lurid pink shower gel that he keeps a wide berth of, opting instead to borrow some orange-mango concoction that seems less likely to cause headaches. Afterwards, they make smoothies and send the pictures to Kou, and then go out barefoot and drink them in Nagisa's back garden, sitting on a white-painted bench that looks like it's been there for at least the entirety of Nagisa's life, by the way the wood is split and fraying in places.

   "So this is what the morning after is like," Nitori muses, when his glass is half empty, and watching the progress of the large, gravity-defying spider that's making its way up the side of the swingset has become more uncomfortable than fascinating.

   He blushes as soon as he says it, unsure of what weird recess of his brain he pulled that joke from, but Nagisa just grins at him from side-on. "I won't make you do the walk of shame for a while yet, Ai-chan, don't worry." He leans back, resting one ankle on the opposite knee, and tilts his head to look at the sky, clear and blue above them. "I wonder what Rei-chan would say if I told him I had a boy over for the night."

   "Would he... mind?" Nitori tries to give that weight, mind as in the way Rin might mind or the way his parents might mind. He doesn't know Rei, and he has restrained himself from excessive Facebook-stalking so far, but he doesn't have him pegged as the type. To mind, that is.

   Nagisa sighs. "Probably not. I wish he would."

   He takes it as the wrong kind of mind, and that's telling. Nitori nods along. "I know what you mean," he says, seriously.

   Nagisa drops his legs and starts swinging his heels instead, even though the bench is just barely high enough for him to get away with it. "Do you?"

   Nitori nods, watching the spider again so he doesn't have to see a reaction, and doesn't elaborate. Nagisa, surprisingly, doesn't push. He just turns his head Nitori's way, rests his chin on his shoulder, gives a knowing look that says he knows full and well that he'll find out the details, sooner or later. In truth or dare or another talk or a payment for a favour -- and the weirdest thing is that Nitori almost wants to tell him right there and then.

  
oOo

   Would he mind? is something Nitori asks himself a lot about Rin, mostly because Rin seems to mind several things, but it's the way Rin talks about Nagisa that trips him. The way he said, you know about Nagisa, right?, as though he was some kind of ex-con, as though Nitori was going to say, no, what about Nagisa, and Rin was going to say, well, the thing is, and then Nitori was going to run ten miles in horror. Like that was a likely scenario.

   "When did Nagisa tell you?" Nitori asks, on Saturday evening when they just happen to be alone together in their room. Rin usually makes excuses to study in the library this late in the term, where Nitori's chattering can't bother him, but today he's just reading a book, supine down on the bottom bunk. 

   Nitori, for his part, is staring at the ceiling from his own bed, hands folded over his stomach. He can tell, now, that his clothes smell like bubblegum just from spending the night in Nagisa's room. It's what reminds him in the first place - the sweet scent and the faint memory of Nagisa hugging him goodbye at the platform, and the way Rin had done a double take when Nitori had come back, like something had changed, but he couldn't quite place it.

   The window is open, and there are intermittent shouts and yells coming from outside. Some first-years are playing makeshift soccer on the grass; the kind with discarded clothes as goal-posts and aim so awful that the ball has thudded against the brick directly behind Nitori's head and scared the living daylights out of him more than once.

   "Like," Rin says, and there's a rustle of paper as he maybe turns a page or maybe puts the book down altogether. "Two months ago."

   Nitori wants to ask why, but he doesn't - the only person who could really tell him that is Nagisa himself, but it doesn't stop Nitori going through checklist of hypotheticals in his head anyway.

   It could have been an impulse, or maybe Nagisa just doesn't like to lie. Maybe he had planned to be dating Rei by now and didn't want to shock anyone.

   Or maybe he had tried it on with Rin during the winter, maybe leant Rin a scarf or a sip of hot chocolate, or maybe Nagisa had slipped on ice and Rin had caught him and any one of those things had sparked... something. Changed something. And maybe Nagisa had widened his eyes and parted his lips and said, Rin, I...

   But no, he couldn't, because Rin has sharp teeth and sharper eyes and Nagisa has a type, clear and defined, that Rin doesn't fit. At all. It's almost funny to imagine them together; almost offensive. Almost too close to the way Nitori likes to fantasize about height differences and strength and having his hair ruffled like Rin does sometimes, messed up until it gets to the point of disarray that Nagisa's hair resides at permanently.

   Nitori's phone dings, a text from Rin-Senpai that makes his heart flatline for a moment before he realises how utterly ridiculous it is, because not only is Rin about four feet away from him, but the message doesn't even have words. It's just a screenshot image of a Facebook status dated three months back. Freshly taken.

late for coming out day, but oh well~ i like guys, guys! it's
true... srry to disappoint @Kou Matsuoka, but we weren't meant
to be! <3 & ok, um, if u can see this, feel loved ? (●´ω｀●)

   Beneath it are the likes; Kou and Makoto's names stand out, as well as a few girls Nitori has never heard of. Then, the comments; unfortunately the screencap cuts off in the middle of a fairly long one from Kou, which reads equal parts supportive and teasing and which, someday, maybe Nitori will ask to see the rest of, but not now.

   Nitori clicks his phone off again. "Wow. He's so open about," he hesitates and falters-- "All this. It must be hard... right, Rin-senpai?"

   Outside, there are howls of defeat and victory and the gentle thud of cleats on grass.

   Rin clears his throat. "He knows you know?"

   "He told me." Already, Nitori doesn't say. He doesn't know if Nagisa tells everyone or if he doesn't, but he'll err on the side of the latter.

   He also doesn't clarify that the confession was over swimming magazines that Nitori looked at with the same enthusiasm because really, that's kind of personal, isn't it?

   Rin seems to be mulling it over. "In person? Did he cry?"

   Nitori blinks at the ceiling. "Yes, and... no?"

   "Did you cry?"

   "No! Nobody has to cry, senpai. Besides, I already knew when I met him, so..."

   "Yeah." Rin turns another page, paper dragging on paper, too loud to be accidental. An eloquent shut the hell up. "I know you did."

oOo

   Sunday, the pressure creeps like the tide inching up the shore, and then the wave hits and by Monday afternoon, Nitori isn't sure he has it in him to cope with this entire week.

   He ticks the exams off on his calendar. Chemistry and biology. Someone gets upset and has to leave during the maths exam, and that shakes him up so much that he doesn't sleep a wink before his English exam the next day. He wants, desperately, to ask Rin for some last-minute help with the way the entire language seems to be seeping from his brain, grammar point by grammar point, because not only does he seriously need it, but it would be an excuse to talk to him about something substantial now that practice is over.

   But of course, Rin, with his fluency and infinite wisdom, is a hot commodity and that means he's on edge. Once or twice he snaps and scolds over Nitori's desk being a state or his bed being unmade or his inhaler somehow ending up on the floor, again, Ai, you'll step on it someday and I bet you don't even know where your spare is, do you?

   Then he catches himself and walks out, leaving Nitori to tidy up his mess or do a little searching (how his spare ended up in the bottom of the closet, he'll never know), and a little pacing, and then fruitless studying while he tries to resist the urge to text Nagisa and complain about it. Roommates bickering is normal. They all do it, even the most stoic of the third-years. Complaining would be exceptional, and Nagisa would know that, and then Nagisa would know.

   Later, Rin will come back with his hair tied back and dripping, and with something from the vending machine in hand. He'll set down a bottle of strawberry water and a granola bar and leave again, and later, Rin will be... well, not all smiles, but swimming gets him as close to that as he probably ever will be.

   Nitori wishes he could watch him get there. Sit by the side of the pool and dip his toes in the water as Rin does his laps, powering through until he's aching and tired and calm again, all of the tension drained from him as though by osmosis. Rin would get to show off a little bit - except nobody would be there except the two of them, and it would be dark outside like it tends to be when Rin gets annoyed, the stress of the day becoming too much for him. The two of them and the dim lights and the rippling water reflecting blue off the ceiling.

   A little haven, where Rin would know, from his presence, that Nitori cares. That he understands, because even if he doesn't now, he could. They could be in it together, whatever it is.

   He's considered, many times, what it might be like to be sitting there when Rin stops swimming and then wades over, presses his palms to the tiles and pushes himself up to press a sweet, chlorine-y kiss to Nitori's lips.

   He tries not to consider the infinite ways in which that is never going to happen, just for a little while.

oOo

   There isn't much to do in Iwatobi. "If you've seen the beach, you've seen everything," is what Nagisa says about it, but Nitori doesn't think that's strictly true, even if there is no pool in the entire town that isn't private or run by a school.

   There are outlines of fishing boats all on the horizon; local and fringed, sometimes, with tiny sailboats and speedboats that look like children's toys in a bathtub. A town too picturesque to be real. Set back from the harbour, there are green trees and green hills for what looks like miles - spots of cherry blossoms and maple trees, and winding streets of family homes where people let their cats out because the main road is too far away to worry about.

   These things only grace the outside of the window the next time Nitori visits; Nagisa wants to stay in and invite Kou, so that's exactly what they do.

   "My friends are really cool and you would like them," Nagisa says, conversationally, when they've brought the magazines out again. He's upside down on his bed, head dangling over the edge, legs up with his feet pressed against the wall.

   "Define really cool," Kou says from the floor. She's sunburned all over her forearms today and, most likely, underneath her t-shirt. Nagisa had giggled when he saw her. Nitori still winces when he catches a glimpse of the angry red on her skin, and when, every ten minutes or so, she produces a bottle of aloe vera gel to soothe the heat, he offers to help her apply it, because it's the only aid he can give.

   The room is sotto voce pop music from the radio, the rustle of ink-heavy pages turning, the tap-tap of Kou doing whatever she's doing on her phone. The quiet is unnerving. The walls are thin at Samezuka, and this late in the school year, this isn't what Nitori is used to.

   He sits beside Nagisa, legs crossed and his back to the wall, upright like a normal person. "I like hearing about them," he admits, still studying the athlete on the cover of the magazine that's resting in his lap - Nagisa had deemed him too intimidating as well, even though the article inside reveals that the guy volunteers at children's hospitals and soup kitchens and Nitori just can't get what he means.

   "Because they're really cool! Ai-chan would love the team and you know it," Nagisa insists. "Let me see. Haru-chan is the most amazing swimmer, you've seen him-" and Nitori nods along because he has seen him, even though he can't fully agree that he's the most amazing, because that title goes to his captain, of course, "- and he's a great cook and a great artist even though he doesn't like to tell people. And Mako-chan is so sweet. You'd love him, Ai-chan, but paws off because he's taken, and Rei-chan... Rei-chan is just-" Nagisa lets out an awed gust of breath. "Wow." Nitori catches him looking into the distance like he can see something they can't, eyes all glazed over. "He's so perfect, isn't he?"

   Kou rolls her eyes like she's heard this exact thing a thousand times.

   It's taken all of one entire week for Nagisa to move from gushing over athletes in swimming magazines to boys in general to Rei, and Nitori isn't surprised in the least.

   "I don't know if you want me to agree with you or not," he says.

   Nagisa curls his toes in distaste. "Mm. Maybe not. I might get a little bit prickly when I'm jealous, but I'd have to forgive you, Ai-chan. How could you help yourself with someone like Rei-chan around? It would be impossible."

   Nitori pretends to peruse another article in extreme detail. "M-maybe not... if I already liked someone else."

   Nagisa's eyebrows raise incrementally. "Oooh? Spill the beans, Ai-chan, who is it? Someone from school? I wish I went to an all boy's school, sometimes..." Nagisa trails off in a wistful sigh, and then dissolves into a small fit of giggles at himself.

   "Me too," Kou sighs along with him, and then just barely cracks a smile.

   Nitori did always have her noted as the type to be serious about her ambitions.

   "Um. It might be." He hesitates, then says, "Yes."

   It can't hurt. There are a lot of someones at his school. 

   "An upperclassman," he confirms, with just a hint of pride. There are a lot of upperclassmen too.

   Kou perks up a little at that. Nitori has seen her checking out the upperclassmen on the team before - she's popular with them. Probably has more of their numbers than Nitori himself does. "Is it someone we know?"

   "I think..." Heat flares in his cheeks and Nitori hates himself for blushing so easily. "I think you... you might know him."

   "Oh." Nagisa swiftly twists around to rest on his elbows. "Gou-kun, cover your ears."

   "Why would I have to cover my-" She narrows her eyes, and then they go suddenly wide before she turns on Nitori, accusing but on the verge of laughter. "Really?"

   "I can't help it!" he blurts out, and then covers his mouth in the next second because he could've just played it off like it's Mikoshiba or someone, but it's too late because his skin is burning beneath his hands and they all know why.

   Nagisa is smirking. "Nice arms," he repeats, and nods along like he's picturing them in his head.

   Nitori throws the nearest pillow at him.

Chapter Text

   The thing about Rin is that he seems to exist in a constant flux between emotional constipation and drastic outbursts and no in-betweens. 

   Nitori doesn't really get it, but he's seen it all through the school year. It's in the way Rin will lose his temper at the slightest provocation, sometimes, and other times he locks his phone away for weeks with no trace of ire at anyone. And the way Nitori will wake up, occasionally, in the middle of the night to the sound of sobbing in the bottom bunk, but in the morning Rin will barely even say hello to him. It's in Nitori holding the stopwatch and watching Rin's times getting worse and then better and then worse again.

   When it comes to Rin, Nitori's primary state is admiration and his second is worry and both of them are near enough constant.

   Things are better after the relay, and Nitori puts that down to a support network more than anything. These days, when he overhears Rin on the phone, it's with Nagisa or one of his friends instead of just the gruelling weekly check-up from his mother. When - if - Rin goes out at the weekends, it's not just for a solitary run around the grounds. He chats after practice and doesn't glower at people in the cafeteria. It all makes a world of difference.

   But Rin is still Rin, and he still has those turbulent Rin Moods even though he's learned to put the team first and become softer, like everyone else's existence is no longer just a roadblock on his way to the Olympics.

   At least, that's how Nitori sees it.

   But when term ends with no flourish and Nitori gets back to his room on Friday afternoon only to find it half-empty of possessions and Rin gone without a trace, it doesn't feel soft at all.

   Everything smells like Febreeze. Reeks of some generic fresh linen scent. Rin's bed is stripped, and not even the swimming magazines are left beneath it. Nor is his gym bag or that battered library book he's been hoarding there for six months. His desk is clear, and due to the fact that the doors are lying wide open as though to shove it right in his face, Nitori can see that his closet is too.

   The whole room is spotless and clean, which must have taken ages, and Nitori missed it all.

   He spends several minutes just standing there in the doorway with his schoolbag still in hand, wondering what could have possibly happened. An emergency. Something truly massive that would stop him from waiting around to ruffle Nitori's hair and say see you later Ai because his captain instincts would tell him, subconsciously, that Nitori kind of craves it.

   Maybe Kou died.

   Maybe Kou died and Rin waited around to clean his entire room before he went home to comfort his crying mother. A likely story.

   He doesn't have to spend too long looking with bleary eyes and thinking about why Rin would do something so hurtful as to leave without saying goodbye, because the realisation swiftly hits him that by Rin's standards, this must not be hurtful at all.

   And then it makes sense. He wouldn't have done this unless he didn't care if Nitori did the same to him.

   He can't help being a little misty-eyed at the realisation.

   And by misty-eyed he means crying pathetically in the shower five minutes later, and harder when he notices that Rin's shampoo and body wash are gone too. He hasn't gotten this upset over Rin since the misunderstanding about 'seeing his father', and as much as he'd like to blame it on this being an emotional time of the year, he knows this not what this is. It's the principle of the whole thing. The complete lack of interest. The fact that even though they live in each other's pockets and Nitori has seen every low that Rin has had all year well enough to chart them if someone asked him to, he doesn't even get a simple goodbye before the break.

   He should've savoured the final exams while they lasted.

   After he gets out of the shower and dries off, Nitori does, admittedly, feel a little better. He gets dressed and then gathers his own things, packing up in between answering the door every ten minutes. Most of the visitors are upperclassmen looking for Rin, but some of the team drops by to say goodbye and that helps, too. By tomorrow, only the stragglers will be left, and after that, it will officially be spring break.

   By the time most of his possessions are packed away into more bags than he even knew he owned, he's a little achey and mostly tired. He's tempted just to throw himself down on the bottom bunk, but even though it's technically not Rin's bed anymore, it wouldn't feel right, so he climbs up the ladder and settles down in his own bed, picking up his phone and calling Kou (-- because he can't not call her now that he's entertained the idea of her sudden and tragic death --) before his weariness can get the better of him and make him waste the remainder of the day napping on a bare mattress.

   She answers after two rings. "Hiya, Ai-kun. What's up?"

   "Oh... nothing," he replies on automatic, glad his voice has recovered to the point where he no longer sounds like he was just crying. He considers asking her if Rin is back yet, until it occurs to him that he might not even be staying with his family at all. For all Nitori knows, he could be going back to Australia for the week. His heart aches at the thought. "I just got back from class and then I packed my things and said bye to everyone... What are you doing?"

   "I'm..." There's a pause. "We're at a salad bar," she says, with an air of confusion like she isn't quite sure how she ended up there. Nitori wants to ask, until someone (who sounds like Rei) says something (that sounds like it's good for you), and instead, he just laughs.

   "He's laughing," Kou says to someone else. "He's laughing at us, Rei-kun."

   "I'm not laughing at you!"

   "He's laughing at us really loudly and cruelly right now," she announces.

   "No, I'm not! I love salad," Nitori tells her, a mock-affronted. "I actually wish I was there with you."

   "He says we should be eating hamburgers instead." In the background, Nitori just barely makes out one of the others giving an empathetic, "I know,", before Kou starts talking to him again. "And if you want to come, you should come! I'll text you the address in a sec, if you want."

   "I'm at school." It's irrelevant - he doesn't really want to hang around here anymore, not with fake linen scent thick in the air and nauseating. "I'd have to take the train."

   "So take the train, we'll wait for you." She pauses again, this time conferring with someone with her hand over the receiver. "Nagisa wants you to come. He says dress up because we're having a party at Haru's house after."

   "Um." Someone laughs weakly - not Nagisa, probably not Rei, and from what Nitori has heard, Haru doesn't really do laughter. That leaves hands-off-he's-taken Makoto. "I don't think we're having a party-"

   "Just wear clothes," Kou clarifies. "That's the important thing."

   There's a clatter, and then Nagisa's voice is in his ear as though he'd knocked something over in his effort to be close enough to be part of the conversation. "No it isn't!" he chimes in.

   "I think I'll wear them anyway," Nitori says, decisively. There's a crackle and he isn't quite sure when he's talking to when he says, "I'll see you soon?"

   Nagisa hasn't commandeered the phone completely, because it's Kou who confirms, "See you soon," and stays on the line until Nitori hangs up a moment later.

oOo

   When Nitori gets there, he tries to focus less on the trio of tall almost-strangers and more on Kou and Nagisa, standing in front of their table, and the way they collect him into a squashed-in three-way hug when he reaches them. Nagisa jumps up and down a little while they're still attached, and Nitori goes "Nagisa-kun!" into his shoulder and flushes to the tips of his ears, but doesn't ask him to stop causing such a scene.

   When he's released, Nagisa takes him by the arm and makes introductions, even though Nitori doesn't exactly need them. "You remember Haru-chan, Mako-chan, and Rei-chan, right?"

   Nitori nods, but stares only at the blue plastic of the tabletop. Four empty bowls and five half-full glasses, cutlery, two phones, a microfibre cloth. Several napkins soaking up what looks like spilled Coke but smells like spilled vinegar.

   In his periphery, he can barely see Nagisa tilting his head at him in question, which makes him blurt out, "Yes! I do!" before he's dragged into a booth. He glances up to double-check who's sitting where - Kou is across from him, with Makoto next to her and Haru tucked up against the window. Which puts Rei in his own booth, on Nagisa's other side. "I'm-- you can call me Aiichirou," he tells Kou's hand, which is resting palm-down on the table, before anyone can clarify whether or not they've forgotten his name since they last met.

   "Ai-chan," Nagisa corrects him, boldly and for everyone to hear.

   Nitori cringes. "W-well, not..."

   He doesn't finish his sentence, even though he has a feeling that everyone is waiting on it.

   "Ai-kun, let's get something to drink," Kou pipes up, effectively saving his entire life.

   He looks up at her in wonder, just in time for Nagisa to go, "Um?" and twitch his hand in Nitori's direction like he's thinking about physically anchoring him to the seat. "Is something wrong?"

   They stare at each other for a moment, and Nitori's sure from the heat that his face must be the same lurid pink as Nagisa's irises.

   He shakes his head, and then he slides out of the booth and follows Kou towards the salad bar itself without another word. He hears the conversation pick back up in his wake.

   He sidles up beside her, and she immediately picks two bottles of water out from the cooler, but they wait for a minute before they pay for them, pretending to look at the selection of delicate little pastries and cakes. "I feel like I'm meeting in-laws," Nitori mumbles.

   "Really?" Kou looks amused for a moment before she catches the look on his face, and then the smile slips from hers. "Why?"

   Nitori fidgets with his wallet, tries to keep his voice quiet. This place isn't that big, and it would be easy to be overheard. "Rin-senpai's known all of them forever. What if they hate me?"

   He can't bring himself to worry so much about Nagisa, maybe because all the things Nagisa has been saying about magnets and friendship are starting to sink in. But if Rin heard something bad about him from the Iwatobi Swim Club... he isn't sure if he could pull himself back from that. 

   Kou shakes her head, her ponytail bobbing. "Not Rei. Rei is new, and he's known me for longer," she points out, adding a bar of organic chocolate to their tray and bumping his bare arm with hers on the way.

   "W-well, yes, but... there's only one of you!" Nitori glances back over his shoulder to see if he's being watched, and is mildly surprised to find that he isn't. The others are all looking out of the window at something Makoto is pointing at and, presumably, talking about, from the way he doesn't take his eyes off it. He keeps watching them, and consequently his brain takes a vacation and he continues to ramble, "And you were just as intimidating at first, but more because you're really pretty and I'm still not sure what your name is actually--" 

   He stops at the simultaneous sounds of the cash register dinging and her voice. "It's Kou. Don't listen to what Nagisa says." She gets her change and shuffles over, letting Nitori take her place to pay for his own water. "And they like you. I promise. It's hard not to, and I think it's hard for them not to like people in general. I mean, they like my brother."

   She gives him a smile that he returns after just the slightest hint of hesitation, and they they go back and sit down and Nitori tries to pretend that Nagisa doesn't immediately start staring at him like he's from Mars or something.

   "What, um- what were you guys looking at?" he asks, boldly, leaning forward with his elbows on the table to see if it's still there, but there's nothing exceptional about the street outside.

   "Well." Rei pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and Nitori swears he feels Nagisa stop breathing for a second. "It was nothing more than a display of anatomical superiority on the part of a member of the species felis-"

   "A cat," Haru interrupts, taking Nitori by surprise. He lays the back of one finger against the window, pointing where he's still looking. "There was a grey cat on that wall over there."

   "Oh! Oh," Nitori nods rapidly and sits back in his seat. Kou gives his leg a gentle nudge under the table as if to say, see what I mean? They're harmless.   

   "Ai-chan is thinking about volunteering with animals over the summer," Nagisa says, cheerfully picking at his salad - or something that vaguely resembles salad, but Nitori can't quite tell, because it's buried under way too much dressing.

   "With dogs, though," Nitori adds, hastily, like the entire world is going to collapse if they mistakenly think he's going to be working with the wrong kind of animal. "I like cats, but they don't really seem to like me, sometimes..."

   It's Makoto who engages him; unlike Haru, he's no longer looking out the window at the cat which isn't there. Instead, he gives Nitori his attention, which feels... unusual. Now that he thinks about it, he's used to people being distracted when he talks to them; even though it's likely just because the percentage of time he spends chattering while in the company of others is so high that it's really just statistics. "They can be finnicky like that," Makoto says, giving a soft smile so naturally that it's as though he isn't quite sure how to talk without doing it. "Maybe they can sense that you're a dog person?"

   Nitori nods again, once this time. "Maybe!"

   Silence falls. Kou is texting and Nagisa is eating and Rei is silently watching Nagisa eat -- Nitori can't not talk.

   "So! Um, Tachibana-san, Nagisa-kun told me you have a gi--" He's cut off by a covert but forceful nudge in the ribs from Nagisa, and it's then that he realises that Haru's eyes have found his and gone wide and cold. He looks to Nagisa for help and is met only with raised eyebrows. He stammers, turning back, "That is, um... a g-... great technique for swimming backstroke?"

   Makoto either didn't notice his faux pas or is an excellent actor, because he only smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Oh! Well, I don't know..." 

   He's finally struck gold, because the talk about backstroke lasts them through Nagisa finishing his meal, and then all the way to Haru's house, along with asides from Rei about the science behind what Makoto is saying. He can practically hear Nagisa buzzing with pride at that. Every time he mentions velocity or trajectory and Nitori just nods along and Haru looks away, off to the side in a way that can't be a coincidence, and Kou says, "Rei-kun, tell us more about what muscles are being worked when--"; and in that moment, he feels like he's a spore or a dandelion seed that's drifted into another ecosystem, terra incognita, just passing through.

oOo

   It's not really a party, even though the first thing Nagisa does when he throws open the front door is yell "party time!". The action, admittedly, tints Nitori's expectations.

   Snacks are picked up at a convenience store on the way to Haru's house, and after that, Nitori listens to Kou and Rei discussing in extreme detail whether or not, physiologically speaking, they'll 'undo' the salad. Nagisa chips in that maybe that would be for the best. Nitori laughs, and then Makoto laughs along with him and he doesn't wonder why Rin picked these, of all people, do be so attached to.

   It almost makes him feel like he's on the transparent side of a one-way mirror, the way he's heard all about them from Rin, and then even more from Nagisa. All of it carelessly intimate - all of it one-sided.

   "So, what are we doing? Let's get pizza," Nagisa says, after Haru has pulled six cushions out of storage and Nitori has settled around the table with the others, with his calves under him. He's almost prickly in his awareness that Rei is sitting next to him for god knows what reason, the bold red of his glasses never leaving Nitori's periphery no matter which part of Haru's absurdly well-kept front room he's looking at.

   "We just ate," Haru informs him, half-drowned out by Kou tipping all the snacks onto the table. A bottle of cold soda rolls off and directly into Nitori's lap. He makes sure to blush before handing it to Nagisa - he just hasn't done that enough today, apparently.

   "Okaaay," Nagisa says, touching the tip of one finger to the corner of his mouth. "Then let's play spin the bottle instead."

   Nitori watches everyone else at the table exchange looks of abject horror.

   They order pizza.

oOo

   Makoto insists on walking Kou home from Haru's house, and she lives in the other direction, so it's Nitori, Nagisa and Rei who make the walk to the station alone that night.

   Nagisa fills the space between them with his chattering in a way that's more than a little transparent. He walks in the middle, bold and leading the way. Rei is sidled with the two boxes of leftover pizza that Nagisa had called dibs on, no questions asked, and Nitori really wishes he had that kind of nerve. 

   The conversation flits to the week's music charts, but Rei goes quiet then, so Nagisa changes the subject to the movie they watched earlier. "Disastrous," Rei proclaims, and Nagisa raises his eyebrows and gives Rei a look like he doesn't understand what he could possibly mean, even though that's the reason they picked that movie in the first place.

   The subsequent lecture about cinematography begins then, and Nagisa gets a spring in his step that he didn't have before.

   Rei is all sharp angles and matter-of-fact and clothes without creases in them, the starkest contract to Nagisa that Nitori could imagine. But they look good together, he supposes. It's hard not to pay attention to the starry look in Nagisa's eyes, streetlights catching the glint in them when he tilts his head up to talk to Rei, or the way the backs of their hands brush together as they walk along, side-by-side, and neither of them flinches away. Nitori walks with his hands in his pockets and thinks, fleetingly, that Nagisa doesn't know what he has. Doesn't have a clue.

   Nagisa's phone dings while they're waiting on the last train.

   The station is half in darkness, fluorescent light above and behind them but the night is straight ahead while they're grouped together under the little plexiglass shelter. It does nothing to shield them from the wind. The screen of Nagisa's phone is luminescent, and Nitori notices that he has it set so that a little icon of a photograph comes up with the sender. He barely has time to recognise who he's looking at before he's overwhelmed with the realisation that Nagisa has pictures of Rin on his phone and then--

   "R-Rin-senpai is texting you?!" he blurts out, almost snatching the phone right out of Nagisa's hands before he can restrain himself. He just flails instead, bringing his hands before him in a jolt, and then they go to his mouth, the picture of concern. "What about?"

   Even at his most restrained, he's still managed to gravitate a little closer, his head at Nagisa's shoulder but making a conscious effort not to read over it. Rei ambles away at the sight of them huddling together, silent and watching the sky with the pizza boxes still held awkwardly in front of him, but Nitori is barely looking at him enough to notice.

   "Um," Nagisa opens the text, sparing Nitori the embarrassment of being looked at. Nitori waits, impatient and quaking, for Nagisa to scan it. "He wants me to check the train schedule for him because he can't get wifi."

   The informality of it hits him like a ton of bricks and he feels himself go slightly dizzy, slightly sick with dread.

   "Really?" Nitori squeaks.

   He's glad Rei is keeping his distance. Nagisa puts his phone away without texting back and turns to Nitori fully, hesitantly raising one hand like he's about to take his temperature or something, to brush his hair back from his forehead - but he doesn't do anything except ask, "Ai-chan, what's wrong?"

   "He-" Nitori stumbles back, legs weak, until he gets to the bench. He sinks down onto it, unsteady. His voice already sounds broken, like he's about to break down into tears right here in public. "He doesn't like me."

   "No, Ai-chan! Of course he does!" Nagisa plops down beside him immediately, bracing an arm around Nitori's shoulders and pulling him closer, so close he can feel the way Nagisa is shaking through his clothes with the biting cold. "It was just a text!"

   Miserably, Nitori stares at his shoes. "It's not... just the text."

   Nagisa's voice lowers in a way that's nothing short of dangerous. "Did he say something?"

   "No. He didn't say anything." Nitori can feel himself being stared at in that fleeting way, because apparently Rei can only amuse himself with the constellations for so long. At least their voices are hushed enough to go unheard, but he makes sure to whisper the next part anyway. "...He left for spring break and he didn't say anything."

   The train rattles in then, and Rei coughs, and Nagisa takes Nitori's hand fiercely in his own and leans in to say something that seems to get caught in his throat when Rei calls to them, "It's the last train, Nagisa-kun!", so instead he just shoots Rei a smile and a thumbs-up with his other hand and stands up, his fingers still linked with Nitori's, leading him onto the train with them.

oOo

   Nagisa's house is shrouded in quiet by the time he sneaks Nitori in the front door, holding one finger to his lips before leading him up the stairs to his room. Nitori is still sniffling a little, still checking his phone every other minute because some evil part of his subconscious keeps convincing him that Rin, against all odds, is going to get in touch with an apology and also maybe an impromptu love confession to make up for it. But it doesn't happen.

   They get through half a cold pizza and two movies on Nagisa's laptop before Nitori feels like talking, even though he's drowsy and half-asleep and Nagisa's head has found its way onto his shoulder, his soft hair tickling the underside of Nitori's chin. He can tell from Nagisa's breathing that he's awake, though only just.

   "I need to get over him," he sighs, leaning into Nagisa. Waiting for the inevitable rebuttal, which comes after a brief yawn.

   "You don't. We can get him." He can feel Nagisa nuzzle against him, his round little button nose against Nitori's neck, and he's sure it's the sleepiness that makes the action unconscious but it still makes Nitori ten times more aware of his breathing and his heartbeat and the fact he can feel Nagisa's breathing and heartbeat too. "And then he'll see what was right in front of him all along. Trust me, Ai-chan. It'll be just like the movies."

   "There aren't movies about this."

   "There should be." Without his usual bounciness, Nagisa's comforting is something entirely other - his even breaths over Nitori's collarbone, his hands fumbling to pull the covers up over them both even as the movie plays on. "RinRin won't even know what's hit him."

   Nitori doesn't know what else to say, so he murmurs, "Thanks, Nagisa."

   "Mm, 's fine," Nagisa says, snuggling closer when Nitori puts an arm around his waist and ignores the way his half-hazy mind is trying to cling to the idea that this should be weird, too close and too much, because all he feels is warm.

Chapter Text

   "This one says you should invite a guy over for breakfast and impress him with your domestic skills, but be sexy about it?" There's a beat of silence while Nagisa squints at the laptop screen. "But I don't have any domestic skills. And you don't have a kitchen at school."

   The image of Rin in an apron floods Nitori's mind before he can do anything about it. Rin in a gleaming, spacious kitchen wearing whatever he wears when he's at home; maybe the very-non-uniform black track pants Nitori saw him wear once on the weekend, maybe no shirt. Flipping pancakes and pouring coffee into oversized mugs and glancing over his shoulder like, yeah, be impressed. "...I can see why that would work, though," he admits.

   "Yeah..." Nagisa sighs. "But I don't think I can seduce him that way."

   They've been at it for hours, now, but it's still morning. Sun shafts and dust motes and they're both in shorts because it's way too warm for spring. Nagisa lays his hands palm-down on the dining table and pushes himself up from his seat like it takes real effort, stretching his shoulders and spine before he stands and walks, distracted, around to the other side of the table.

   Most of Nagisa's house looks like it was decorated in tandem by investment bankers and teenage girls - which, for all Nitori knows, it might well have been. The kitchen is no different. The floorboards beneath their feet are smooth and well-kept; the decor all sleek but for a neon-pink change jar that has a sparkling '18' on it tucked into the corner of the counters; a few hairclips abandoned next to it; and a purple polka-dot bra slung over the radiator which Nagisa hasn't noticed and Nitori isn't going to bring up.

   Nitori slides the laptop over to himself and, at Nagisa's lack of a protest, starts clicking around. The website is all flashy pink and dating myths and horoscopes - Nagisa has far too many of these advice websites bookmarked even though they're all basically the same. There are notebooks and post-it notes and gel pens all over the table. To an outsider, it must look like they're spending their spring break writing a thesis.

   They also have a plate of sugared doughnuts, bakery-fresh and far more decadent than anything Nitori's parents would allow him to eat on a Wednesday. Nagisa has already had three and is still licking powder from his fingers when he goes to the fridge; Nitori has yet to try one.

   Nitori half-watches while Nagisa pours himself another tall glass of juice, half-scans the website. They're drinking from a pitcher today - some lime and cranberry concoction because it turns out that Nagisa has a knack for things that look fancy but take almost no effort at all. Nitori has a feeling he got the recipe from one of these girly websites, too.

   None of Nagisa's sisters are hanging around the house for spring break, and that had been cause enough for an invitation to Nitori to spend a few days taking up the space they've vacated. Except not literally, because his things are all tucked neatly into his bag at the bottom of the closet and this particular mess isn't his, because he isn't that bad. Not all the time, anyway - and even if he was, it's likely that Nagisa wouldn't mind. They've been in each other's pockets, and being around Nagisa is like basking in the warmth of the sun.

   Nagisa fills up his own glass, and then brings the pitcher over to top up Nitori's half-full one as well. "Did you see the one about washing his feet?"

   "Ew." Nitori pulls a face without looking away from the screen. "I'm glad I didn't."

   The pitcher clunks to the table, and Nagisa takes a drink, giving Nitori the coyest of smiles over the rim of his glass. "Like you wouldn't give 'Rin-senpai' a foot massage if he asked."

   "Well," Nitori says, indignantly, "he'd have to ask really nicely."

   It's nice, to be able to joke about it with someone who understands. Who believes, against all odds, in his as-yet-uncovered ability to seduce anyone he wants. When it comes to unfavourable situations, here's moping and then there's fixing, and Nagisa doesn't waste much time on the former.

   Nitori likes the way he thinks. It keeps him sane, this proactivity.  

   Rin could be flirting his way through the entire continent of Australia right now and it wouldn't even be a blip on his radar... only the thought has him wincing, so really, the point is that no matter how many blips there are, Nagisa being there to soothe him and order takeout is the most important thing.

   The fact that Nitori hasn't been thinking about those possibilities very much at all is just as important. He's been invincible for the last few days, and it shows in the clear of his skin and the depth of his sleep. 

   Something in the article catches his eye. "This one says you should let him see you all soaked with water." He looks up to give Nagisa a can you believe this look, only to find him already shuffling back over, looking interested, his drink abandoned on the counter, coaster-less. Nitori's too busy laughing to point it out, the sound ringing high and clear through the empty room. "Have you-" he gasps between giggles, "tried that yet?" 

   Nagisa comes to a halt behind his chair, gripping the back of it while he reads over Nitori's shoulder. He's on his tiptoes, leaning in close - Nitori can feel hot little gusts of breath on the back of his neck, making his pulse quicken involuntarily. He waits, marble-still and no trace of that laughter left about him, until Nagisa finishes the paragraph and moves away to fling himself down in a different chair, sideways, one arm splayed out over the back of it.

   He addresses the ceiling, or maybe the gods - he looks that frustrated. "I guess the second phase of the plan is the hardest." 

   Nitori closes the laptop lid and folds his arms over it, leaning forward, eager. "You have a plan?"

   "Yeah!" Nagisa brings his hands, with fingers curled in, together before himself, and then draws them apart again, out to each side, spreading his fingers in a flourish as though framing his next words in neon lights or fireworks. "I call it: The Rei-chan Seduction Plan." He rights himself so he's facing the table, and then begins searching around through the notebooks, sending pens flying all over the place as he does. "I even wrote it down."

   Nitori hums. It's a good idea, he thinks. A plan of action. An itinerary of things to do that consist of more than swim better and freak out every time he looks at you - it makes sense, even though, when Nagisa offered to help with his boy problems, this is not exactly what Nitori had had in mind. "Wait, what was the first phase?"

   "Letting him know I like guys." A notebook, rejected, skids down the length of the table and hits Nitori on the elbow. "That part wasn't on the website, so I had to improvise. Plus, it means that if he likes guys, I have about a one-in-three chance of being the first to know. Isn't that smart?"

   At a guess, Nitori would say that Nagisa would have been among the first to know regardless. He has a way of drawing things out of people - at least, Nitori hopes that Nagisa's ability to scoop out well-kept secrets applies to more than just him. "So that's why you told your friends?" He's tapping at a piece of ice with his finger, watching it sink and rise again, lost in thought.

   "Of course." Nagisa shrugs like it's nothing - he's too busy hunting for his manifesto to notice Nitori get halfway through giving him a Look before suddenly aborting it. Live a little. He has to be brave. Isn't that what love is all about, anyway? He thinks he read that somewhere, maybe. "But after that, in the second phase, you're supposed to... frame yourself better. Like, make him notice you as more than a friend. You know what I mean?"

   Nitori knows - it's exactly what he hasn't managed to do, ever. Liking someone means fumbling his words and dropping things and accidentally hitting the object of his affections in the face with a soccer ball during gym class, and it always has. Not that he expects Nagisa to understand that kind of thing. He could probably break a guy's nose and play it off as flirty, somehow.

   He nods along, and Nagisa is still going. Nitori takes a doughnut from the plate and eats it carefully while he listens. "So then, when you think he wants you because you've been driving him crazy with your totally nonchalant sex appeal," and Nitori burns to the tips of his ears hearing Nagisa say that word even though it's really only half referring to him, "-you have to let him know you're receptive. You need to show him that you're making a special effort, but in a subtle way. Like... what's one thing Rin likes that you don't?"

   Nitori grimaces around his mouthful. "Running."

   "Right! So maybe you could time a run perfectly so that you bump into him sometime." Nagisa pauses to write something down, and then he underlines it, twice, forcefully. Without looking up, he asks, "What else?"

   Nitori has to focus, searching through his memory of the past year - he doesn't really see Rin outside of swim club and their dorm room, and even then, he's always coming back from a run or from class, changing while Nitori struggles not to look from his covert position on the top bunk, opening his laptop-- "I don't know, he... he always watches this weird Australian drama after school?"

   Nagisa nods, eyes wide like Nitori has hit the jackpot. "So you should watch it too. Engage him about it, that's what the website says. Don't be forward, just... open. You know? You don't want to scare him off."

   Nitori tilts his head in question, and asks with his mouth half-full, "So how do you make him know you like him for real without scaring him off?"

   Nagisa blinks twice at him, then looks away with a shrug. "I haven't really figured that out yet," he admits. He has a pile of notebooks to his left now, and Nitori can see smudges of ink on his fingers. "But I will! This is going to be the year I get a boyfriend, and then I'll use my expertise in seduction to get you a boyfriend too. That's the final phase."

   "Aw, Nagisa!" Nitori bounces in his seat, reaching out to grasp Nagisa's hand before he realises he's doing it, but he doesn't let go immediately. Just holds on with both of his own for a few seconds, his fingers leaving sticky sugar behind on Nagisa's skin - and then he frowns and releases it, though gently. "You can't seduce Rin-senpai for me, though."

   Nagisa rolls his eyes, though he smiles along. "You don't even need my help, you're just shy and have questionable taste."

   To say the comment takes him by surprise is an understatement. Nitori lets himself cycle through the possibilities of Nagisa having some kind of serious vision impairment that's gone under the radar all this time, but no, Nagisa is reading through one of his notebooks right now without even squinting, so Nitori lets himself huff, just a little bit. "I don't have questionable taste, Rin-senpai is... I see people looking at him all the time! Girls and boys," he adds with emphasis. "That's why I can't... I can't seduce him when he slept with probably a hundred girls in Australia and I don't even know how to kiss!"

   His voice raises a few octaves and he half-wails the last part. His blush is vicious by the time he's done, the fiery shame spreading across his face and down his neck and threatening to swallow him whole.

   But Nagisa's gaze is soft, his head tilted slightly in question, book all but forgotten, his grip on it slackened. "You've never been kissed before, Ai-chan?"

   "No..." It shouldn't be embarrassing enough that it makes him tremble, but it is and it does. He glances at Nagisa from beneath his eyelashes. "Have you?"

   "A few times," Nagisa says, as though it's something that doesn't require any kind of backstory. Nitori tries -- struggles -- to hide his incredulity, because he kind of trusted Nagisa not to be kissing people behind his back when they were supposed to be in the same hopeless boat. Has Nagisa had a secret boyfriend before, he wonders? The possibilities are infinite, from day-dreamy to concerning. Could have been some awkward experimentation with Kou? Or did the swim club actually give in to playing spin the bottle once? He's about to ask, but then Nagisa has to go and stun him silent when he adds, "I could teach you how."

   Which is when Nitori's heart proceeds to stop in his chest for about five entire seconds.

   "Teach me? To kiss?" Nitori touches the sugared tips of his fingers, fleetingly, to his own lips. Like the solution is just that simple. "With... with your mouth?"

   "If you want," Nagisa says, smiling in a weird sort of benevolent way, like he's offering to walk Nitori through a cheesecake recipe or an history essay or something else that isn't kissing.

   "Um." Nitori nods dumbly before he can register that nodding means yes, and then he shakes his head once, and then decides to stop with body language altogether and goes rigid. "I... I'll think about it."

   "Sure," Nagisa says, and then shrugs, and then he adds, "What do you want for lunch?"

Chapter Text

   Nitori thinks about it.

   He thinks about it a lot. In detail. He doesn't quite know the word for the way he thinks about kissing Rin, but he'd equate it to whatever he opposite of a fantasy is. Some kind of waking nightmare, where Rin says, Ai, you're just so cute, and Nitori goes up on his tip-toes for a kiss only to abruptly lick Rin's face or drool on him or something else so embarrassing that it sends a shock through his system that's enough to make his toes curl.

   Even in the daydreams where Rin takes the lead - pins him to a wall or the side of the pool or declares his love in front of the entire cafeteria and pulls Nitori into one of those passionate dip-kisses - it only gets that far. Lips touch, and then Nitori screws it up. Noses bash or saliva goes where it shouldn't, because he doesn't know how a good kiss should feel, but he can definitely imagine the logistics of a bad one.

   But Nagisa knows.

   Or at least, Nitori assumes he does, if he's good enough to be offering lessons.

   He finds himself staring that day, even though he tries not to. He wishes Nagisa would leave him alone with his laptop for longer so that he could take to searching for his own answers. Is it normal to kiss your friends? Is it okay? - because for all he knows, this a thing people are doing across the nation and he just hasn't gotten the memo yet.

   Or this could just be a thing Nagisa does. He makes everything casual, so why would kissing be any different?

   It's not that he's surprised that anyone would want to kiss Nagisa, either. Or even that lots of people would. He seems to have more experience under his belt than Nitori does in everything - including parties, sleepovers, swimming, self-acceptance and now, apparently, this is just another thing to add to the pile.

   So no. It's not that it's surprising. Not really. It's not that he can't imagine someone seeing Nagisa's smile and the way he permanently glows - and noticing, as their heart skips a beat, that Nagisa's lips look so soft and smooth and probably taste like strawberries. Perfectly maintained for this exact purpose. He wouldn't blame anybody's mind for going straight to kissing after that.

   He even thinks that maybe, if he wasn't so helplessly head-over-heels for Rin and if Nagisa wasn't so blatantly not interested in anyone else but Rei, that that might have been where his own mind would have gone at some point, too. Maybe.

   But the bottom line is that Nagisa is cute, and it's undeniable. And Nagisa is safe. And, well, Nagisa is offering.

   It's not like Nitori doesn't need the help, after all.

oOo

   When they turn in that night, Nitori can't stop thinking about it, because Nagisa insists on letting him take the bed again and then just crawls right in with him a moment later, settling so that they're hip-to-hip. Nitori gets it when Nagisa drags his laptop up across their thighs and puts a movie on - something from a black-and-red DVD case. When he warns Nitori about how scary it is, he only has to whisper, they're so close.

   It wasn't like this last time. That had been an accident. A product of exhaustion and misery and in the morning Nitori had woken up to an otherwise empty bed and neither of them had talked about it because there wasn't anything to say. That time, he hadn't been able to feel the skin of Nagisa's calf sliding against his own whenever he fidgets, or hear Nagisa's excited little gasps of exhilaration and fear and what sounds like his anticipation of Nitori's fear, which doesn't really make sense because the movie isn't that bad until suddenly it is.

   Nitori lasts all of fifteen minutes total before he has himself buried under Nagisa's duvet and he's trembling all over. "Nagisa--" is all he has to whimper out against the fabric before the laptop is closed and pushed away and Nagisa is flipping the bedside light on, and the first thing Nitori sees when he pulls his himself back out and opens his eyes are Nagisa's own blinking down at him, concerned, his mouth in a pouty little frown.

   "It's just ketchup, Ai-chan," Nagisa says, hushed, reaching out to brush away an unconscious tear from Nitori's cheek. He's blushing red-hot with shame by the time Nagisa takes his hand away again.

   "I know," Nitori sniffs, because he does know, but his brain isn't quite getting the message. "I know it is."

   They're close enough to kiss, and Nitori can only blame his racing heart on the fear for so long.

oOo

   Nitori runs down the data on his phone with his research in the dead of night, huddled under the covers and trying to keep as still as possible because Nagisa has one arm slung unconsciously over his waist, bare skin on bare skin where Nitori's shirt has ridden up.

   Nitori has come to a sort of muted acceptance about the bed sharing, even though he's pretty sure Nagisa wouldn't mind if he objected and asked for the futon instead. It feels nice in the most alien way, to have a warm body at his back all night. Nagisa clings in ways that he probably wouldn't if he was awake, but Nitori can't complain, because he's sure that he, himself, is prone to a little kicking and possibly some snoring, and Nagisa hasn't complained about that.

   In the morning, they'll likely wake up tangled together again, and Nitori will sit up and stretch his arms above his head, and Nagisa will watch him in that new and glowing silence until Nagisa decides to mumble, "hey", and Nitori mumbles it back and settles down and they kill some time with pillow talk. Like lovers do, Nitori imagines.

   This morning, he wasn't thinking at all about what it would feel like to kiss Nagisa.

   He has a feeling that tomorrow morning won't be the same.

   He researches, and the websites all say the same thing. It's okay to kiss your friends, but inadvisable because of Feelings. It's okay, but your first kiss really should be with someone special. And, the weirdest of all: it's okay, but in the responder's personal opinion, kissing someone of the same gender is just kind of disgusting.

   Nitori ignores all of that. He already knows how he feels about Nagisa - Nagisa is his best friend, but he doesn't get those butterflies he gets with Rin, or worry about impressing Nagisa with his inevitably terrible kissing because the worst thing that could happen is them laughing about it together, and that's a Feeling strong enough in itself. Nagisa's presence may not come with that helpless sense of desire, but he is just as special. And, well, Nitori is definitely not adverse to kissing someone of the same gender. He already figured that one out years ago.

   It isn't until he digs deeper that he realises that this might be a thing. There are anecdotes of no-strings-attached platonic makeout sessions and half-desperate New Years kisses, buried in the later pages of the search engine. Entire passionate affairs that died back into friendship when the night was over. One website even reports that in some countries, kissing practice is near-epidemically popular with students in single-sex high schools, and Nitori has to take a moment to turn his phone off and calm down because that makes him dizzy in exactly the way he doesn't want to deal with when he can feel Nagisa's fingertips resting on the mattress just a few inches away from his hips.

   They're already close enough to sleep in the same bed, to cuddle, even, and Nagisa knows him better than anyone. Nitori can't think of anyone he would rather share his non- existent kissing skills with.

   So in the morning, when Nagisa returns, as usual, dripping from his shower, and that sweet bubblegum scent washes over him, Nitori sits up at attention and blurts out before he can even think twice, "I want to kiss you."

   As the soft, hesitant little smile begins to unfurl on Nagisa's lips, Nitori blinks twice in quick succession and sort of mentally slaps himself.

   "I- I mean- after I get ready," Nitori adds, lamely, clambering out of bed and feeling Nagisa's inquisitive gaze on him while he goes to retrieve his toiletries from his bag. Nagisa isn't talking, which only makes his heart beat faster as he roots through his things, kneeling on the floor. It's too quiet. He's half-tempted to bury his head in the bag and never come out, like an ostrich. 

   There are footsteps, floorboards creaking faintly. Nagisa is moving around, but not coming his way. Nitori can't look. For a moment, he can't even think.

   "You want to kiss me for real?" Nagisa says at last, and Nitori places him as idling by the desk. Maybe leaning on it, and then a drawer opens and closes. There's a clink of weak metal, like Nagisa is fidgeting with something - Nitori is too busy tripping over his own words to pay attention to it.

   "To practice. You said you'd teach me." Unless Nagisa offering had been a cruel joke, but he wouldn't. He's never been cruel before. Nagisa is all penguin keyrings and pastel colours and sugary giggles that can brighten up any sordid situation - he just doesn't have it in him, Nitori thinks.

   As a precaution, he gathers up his inhaler as well as his shampoo and toothbrush, because possibly the only thing that could make this more awkward would be dying of a stress-related asthma attack in Nagisa's bathroom. Then, he stands and turns around, facing Nagisa with his body but still looking determinedly at the floor. He takes a deep breath. "Can we do that today? Is... is it okay?"

   The blur of Nagisa in his peripheral vision comes closer, closer, until he's standing right there and Nitori feels one crooked finger touch beneath his chin, gently tilting it up until he has no choice but to look Nagisa in the eyes. Those eyes. Permanently sparkling and bright even when his brows are drawn with the slightest hint of worry - Nitori can't look away, captivated by some internal determination to let Nagisa know, wordlessly, that this is really what he wants.

   While he's distracted, Nagisa slips something cold into his other hand, and then grins at him. "Go and brush your teeth so I can smooch you senseless, Ai-chan," he says, in that exact chirpy way he does when he's saying things that don't make Nitori's breath catch with bubbles of incredulous laughter in his throat. He's dizzier than he's ever been, and Nagisa takes advantage of his moment of weakness to walz right out of the room and thunder down the stairs for breakfast without looking back.

   Tease.

   When Nitori has the presence of mind to look down, he finds that the thing in his open hand is a round, metal tin of vanilla-honey lip balm, and he smiles to himself in the easy silence.

oOo

   The shower goes in horribly slowly. Nitori can feel the hot water throbbing along with his frantic heartbeat and he has to consciously remind himself of where he is and who he's with. Nagisa. His friend. Safe. Platonic. Not a big deal.

   None of those words do anything to calm the exhilaration that's coursing through him, zipping up and down his spine like it doesn't know where else to go, but he has to try.

   When Nitori gets out, he towels off his hair and brushes his teeth more thoroughly he has in his entire life. He spits into the sink, rinses his mouth and lets the anxiety get the better of him for a second, just a second, as he leans in as near to the mirror as he can in an attempt to see what his face looks like close up. His pores and the length of his eyelashes. He narrows his eyes at himself and pouts his lips. And then he reels back, because he's almost kissing the mirror and that's a low he doesn't need to hit right now.

   When he's dressed, he applies a thin but hopefully adequate layer of the lip balm. It's sweeter than anything he'd buy for himself, and far more sugary than he'd usually want someone to taste on him, but in a way, it's comforting. Fun, almost. He's only ever used the menthol drugstore kind, and he can imagine Nagisa licking that taste off his own lips, transferred, and wrinkling his nose at it, and the thought has Nitori's heart skipping beats again.

   When he returns to the bedroom, his gait all awkward from the nerves and the teal of his inhaler peeking out from between the tightly-clasped fingers of his left hand, he finds Nagisa sitting on the bed with his legs crossed. Hands on his knees, expression open, waiting. He takes one look at Nitori and then he says, "breathe, Ai-chan," and Nitori does. One deep breath, a little shaky on the exhale. "Come here," Nagisa says, patting the covers in front of him, and Nitori does.

  
oOo

   "Just breathe," Nagisa says again, when Nitori is sitting cross-legged in front of him. They're facing each other, and Nitori is tripping over the fact that Nagisa looks as close to calm as he ever does, maintaining earnest eye contact and nodding carefully along with all of Nitori's breaths, encouraging him to relax.

   "I'm so glad Rin-senpai isn't here," Nitori tells him, managing to crack a smile, which Nagisa returns immediately and in full force. "I'm really nervous, Nagisa."

   "Me too," Nagisa agrees, and Nitori's breath catches, which he frowns at. "Hey, don't stop now. You were almost back to normal."

   "You're nervous too?"

   "Of course. I've never kissed anyone as cute as you before," he says, by way of explanation. Predictably, it makes Nitori blush pink before he even realises the gravity of the compliment. Nagisa doesn't pause for long enough for him to really process it, and he continues, "It's okay, though. The butterflies part is the best. When you're in each other's space..." Nagisa smoothly moves to sit up on his knees and shuffles closer, close enough to be uncomfortable if it were almost anyone else. "..and you're looking into each other's eyes," and all Nitori can see is striking magenta and fair lashes, "and you know it's going to happen but you're waiting for one of you to make the first move and you can hear your own heartbeat and you want it so much..."

   Nitori swallows, loudly. "What should I do with my hands?" he whispers into the space between them. The negligible difference. Nothing and everything at the same time.

   In lieu of a reply, Nagisa takes them into his own, tangling their fingers together and squeezing tight. He doesn't back away, and he's close enough that Nitori can almost feel, rather than see, his smile. Almost.

   "And," Nitori interrupts again, right when he feels Nagisa move closer, and then flinch away again. Nitori has to squeeze his eyes closed before he can ask, "what should I do with my tongue?"

   "Nothing," Nagisa tells him, after a brief pause, as though he didn't see the question coming. Nitori manages a nod and thinks that Nagisa must be able to hear his heartbeat by now as well, it's so cataclysmically loud in his own ears.

   The last move his tongue makes is over the word, "Okay." Nitori relaxes his eyelids so that they're resting closed rather than squeezing, and he feels Nagisa's left thumb sliding, comfortingly, over the knuckles on Nitori's right hand.

   He tries not to feel stupid, even though he's pretty sure that Nagisa is looking at him still. Contemplating him, maybe. If he couldn't feel Nagisa's fingers linked with his, or the lithe weight of him on the bed, or his huffs of anxious breath, Nitori might imagine that he had gotten up and left. He focuses on those things, willing himself to remember them. The butter-soft linens beneath him, the sound of birds chirping, nesting in a tree outside. The hard plastic of his inhaler against his thigh, digging in because he's kind of sitting on it, and he really should have moved it beforehand, and Nagisa's breathing suddenly sounds closer--

   Nitori is thinking so hard that he barely feels the press of plush warmth against his lips, there and then gone again. There's a sound that breaks the silence, a breathless squeak that Nitori realises too late has come from him. Nitori's eyes fly open and he claps a hand over his mouth, going somehow pinker than he already was, cheeks possibly darkening into tones of red.

   The way Nagisa is watching him now can only be described as half-hearted coy, barely fighting a genuine grin, holding back. "How did that feel?"

   His head is spinning with how it felt. Nagisa must know that, because he waits patiently for Nitori to reply. "Like I want to do it again," he eventually settles on, letting his honestly get the better of him.

   "Good," Nagisa mumbles, before leaning in to kiss his lips for a second time.

oOo

   The next twenty minutes of Nitori's life are heartbeat-skipping and mildly pleasure-hazy, and after that, it’s kind of hard to stop.

   It goes from teaching to practice, and then it’s impossible to justify, so Nitori stops trying. He learns to meet Nagisa's kisses with enthusiasm, and then to let his hands wander to cup the back of Nagisa's neck, card his fingers through blond hair, glow under the muttered confirmations that he's doing well. 

   He learns what to do with his tongue and that, when they're all wrapped up in each other and Nagisa dips his head to nip at Nitori's jawline, Nitori can say it's too much and Nagisa will understand. And that, afterwards, they can go straight to playing The Sims on Nagisa's laptop and not feel awkward at all, even after having just made out. Which is kind of incredible, he thinks.

   He learns that when they're watching pasta boil at the stove that night, Nagisa will check the time and then ask, "Can I kiss you again?" while he's unconsciously twisting the ball of his foot in half-circles on the floor, unable to keep still. 

   He learns that saying yes to Nagisa is heavenly. 

oOo

   The next day, they go grocery shopping and on the way home, arms full of paper bags, Nagisa pulls him down into one of Iwatobi's narrow alleys to press him to the wall and fit their lips together. Apples and oranges thud to the ground when Nitori goes lax, distracted with the kiss; Nagisa just barely catches a loaf of bread. They giggle together, collecting the fallen fruit, hushed as someone strolls by, walking their dog; oblivious.

oOo

   When Nitori goes back to his parents' house for the weekend, it's with a notebook full of Nagisa's handwriting; tiny gifts of candies in pink wrappers; a tube of strawberry chapstick; a fleeting kiss goodbye just behind the closed front door, Nagisa's hands grasping the straps of his backpack, drawing him in.

Chapter Text

   After picking him up from Nagisa's house, Nitori's mother opens the conversation with "Friend from school?" and Nitori has to restrain himself from touching his fingers to his lips to cover them. They still tingle, missing the contact, and he almost believes that she can tell. He tries to concentrate on looking out of the window instead, enjoying the winding streets of Iwatobi before they close in on the countryside.

   "No," he says, not looking around for fear of blushing and the fear of what she'd think if she saw it. "A friend of a friend from school."

   The drive takes about an hour, not counting the pit stop at McDonalds, and Nitori entertains himself for most of it by texting Kou and humming along with the radio as he does. Tactfully, he thinks, she doesn't mention Rin. Or maybe less tactfully, because it sounds like she's been spending half her break not-swimming down at the beach, and he thinks that Rin probably wouldn't have been invited to that anyway, even if he was in town.

   Nitori sips at his gross, watered-down Coke while he mulls that over. He's been avoiding his social media accounts lately, mostly because, with Nagisa around, it was easy to tell himself that he didn't care what Rin was doing. Or anyone else, for that matter. He's been in his own little world -- their own little world -- but now, mostly alone with his thoughts, it's clearer that really, he just doesn't want to know.

   He doesn't want to deal with potentially being the last to find out if Rin has failed all his classes and dropped out, or if he had some kind of relapse while they were apart. Or, worst of all, if Rin has found someone else and decides to show the true, romantic colours that Nitori has always suspected that he has deep in him; splashing pictures of their clasped hands and kisses all over Instagram.

   Nitori swipes the backs of his knuckles across his mouth and then moves to rest his cheek in his palm, averting his eyes towards the gearstick.

   On some kind of envious adrenaline high, or maybe out of desperation, he decides to send Rin a text right there and then. His phone in one hand, anxious fingers typing and retyping. Deleting. Picking away until he finds, at last, the perfect way to express what he wants to say.

   hi, the text says.

   Two minutes later, Rin texts back, Hi.

   Nitori smiles at his phone because it's a start.

oOo

 
   After the first day of classes, Nitori is treated to a twenty-minute Skype call with Nagisa. He sits at his unnaturally tidy desk and watches the blond rolling around on his bed, stretching as though trying to work the monotony of the school day out of his joints. He's wearing his pyjamas though it's only five in the evening; Nitori's uniform is starting to suffocate him and he wishes he could do the same.

   "School is the worst," Nagisa declares. He's on his back at the moment, hair splayed out around him and head tilted back, arms thrown up somewhere around his head. Nitori can see, barely, where his shirt has pulled up to expose a peek at his stomach. "I think it's high time we dropped out and started a freelance dog-walking service, don't you think?" 

   Nitori doesn't mean to be watching him. He has his music collection open behind the Skype window, abandoned and forgotten as soon as Nagisa had called and launched into full chatterbox mode. Nitori can see himself in the box in the corner, hair mussed from his headphones, chin in his hands.

   "Don't say that! Your parents might overhear you and have a heart attack." Nitori says it with genuine concern - he's heard stories about Nagisa's family - but he still gets a peek at Nagisa's outstretched tongue for his trouble. "Anyway, the Iwatobi dog shelter has two places this summer, I checked. So it might happen sooner than you think."

   "Do they offer room and board?"

   Nitori shifts in his seat. "I'll figure something out. Don't you think it would be fun?"

   "Maybe. With you." Nagisa pouts. "You talk about it like it isn't a million years from now." 

   "It isn't." Nagisa makes a noise of scepticism, and Nitori smiles at him, clasping his hands on the desk. "Do you have other plans for your summer?"

   Nagisa stretches one leg up while he thinks, and then brings it back hard to the mattress with a dull thud. "Well, I'll probably have a boyfriend by then, so, tough luck, Ai-chan." Nagisa sighs and pretends to check his nails, deadpanning for all of about five seconds before his facade collapses all at once with a bright smile. "Actually, I hope we can hang out as much as possible. Even if it means walking dogs. It's just so weird not being able to see you whenever I want." Nitori switches tabs for a moment and when he returns, Nagisa's hands are outstretched towards the camera and making half-hearted grabbing motions.

   "You're so dramatic, Nagisa. You can see me right now!" Nitori is unable to hold back a giggle at the way Nagisa gives up on the grabbing and throws a forearm over his eyes to prove how dramatic he is, arching slightly off the bed in his anguish and gasping as though in desperate thirst. It gives a too-good view of Nagisa's neck, all the places along it where Nitori has vowed to pepper with kisses as soon as he possibly can. He catches himself staring again.

   "I miss you," he blurts out. He looks away from the screen, embarrassed and not just because they've only been apart for a few days.

   Nagisa goes still, then lax again, almost quickly enough that it's doubtful that he never reacted at all. He frowns at the camera.

   "Aw, don't miss me. I'll keep you caught up with everything." There's a clatter somewhere in Nagisa's house, the call of a woman's voice, and he scrambles to right himself, looking over his shoulder. "I'll see you this weekend," he promises, eyes darting back towards the webcam. He blows a kiss to the camera before he goes.

   Two minutes later, he sends an apologetic <3 Nitori's way.

   Two seconds after that, he gets one back.

oOo

   The first swim practice of the year is chaos.

   Between every tired "don't call me Captain" and trying to sift through the new arrivals, Rin doesn't have a moment to spare for Nitori other than instructions thrown back over his shoulder. He's prowling around like a cat in new territory; like he isn't yet sure what he owns, but he's ready to take what he can.

   Nitori, for his part, spends most of practice standing by the side of the pool, working a stopwatch because he's gotten pretty good at it by now, and declaring whether or not the qualifying time has been met by those looking to join. There are at least twice as many people in the annex as he's used to, some loitering, some clamouring. Nitori remembers feeling small and crowded and half-naked this time last year; it feels like no time at all since then, but so much as changed. He's one of the team now. He's keeping order.

   Or at least, he's trying. On all sides, there are new people to acquaint himself with and disheartened first years to comfort. One of the younger-looking ones even bursts into tears when his time is too slow.

   Nitori looks over the top of the kid's bowed head and catches Rin's eye from the other side of the room. They exchange what Nitori is almost certain counts as a knowing look, and he hesitates for a moment before guiding the first-year off towards the changing room to calm down.

   "There's always one," Rin mouths at him. Nitori hadn't been aware until now that someone could smirk and look sympathetic at the same time. 

   Nitori smiles and nods like I know, because he does. If he, himself, hadn't made the qualifying time, it would've been him at fifteen, bawling like a child at the side of the pool.

   (And okay, there had been some happy-tears later, in private, but it's not like Rin needs to know about that.)

   At the other end of the room, the rest of the second-years are loitering and look like they're trying to drown each other. They wave at him while he hands his stopwatch off.

   "I heard someone was looking for members to start a tea club," Nitori tells the first year, like it's a well-kept secret.

oOo

   By the time practice is over, Nitori is more than ready to crawl right into bed and sleep for days. Rin seems to have the same idea, because he skips dinner and the two of them amble back to their room together with the barest pretence of idle chatter ushering them along.

   "How was your break, senpai?" Nitori asks, politely, closing the dorm room door behind him. Rin is already inside, sorting out the linens and preparing to make his bed. Nitori has already decided that he's sleeping on the bare mattress tonight and no amount of judgement will stop him.

   "It was fine," Rin says, offhand while he's stuffing pillows into their pristine cases. Nitori stays by the door, watching with his hands clasped in front of him, his sports bag at his feet. "I was pretty busy."

   Nitori gives his best nonchalant nod. He can't help asking, "Were you in Australia?"

   "What?" Rin looks back over his shoulder like he might have misheard. "I was in Iwatobi."

   "Oh." Nitori nods again, more eagerly. "Me too! And I was busy too." He's fidgeting, shifting from one foot to the other. His muscles are starting to ache. "I was doing a lot, actually."

   Rin lets the sheet billow out before him, and then bends to tuck it beneath the corners of the mattress. Nitori has to look away to keep from staring; he gathers his pyjamas while Rin's back is turned, oblivious to his struggle. "Really?" he asks, voice a little strained. "What were you doing?"

   Nitori darts into the bathroom to change while Rin is still grappling with the mattress. He lingers in the doorway, one hand on the knob, letting the silence stretch on until he's sure that Rin is just about to glance over to see why he hasn't answered yet.

   "A lot," Nitori assures him, and then slowly closes the door, keeping his fingers grasped around it, visible, and then sliding them out of the way just in time. Very mysteriously and sensually. He's sure of it.

 
oOo

   Nitori looks over the notebook that night.

   He keeps it well hidden beneath his mattress, and he shifts it out and reads by torchlight. It's hard to stop once he starts; he's seen flashes of the contents and heard excerpts read aloud, but the real thing is so much more. It's a scrapbook of articles detailing date ideas, flirting tips, gourmet breakfast recipes. A stapled-in leaflet full of advice on coming out to friends, wherein none of the suggestions involve making a Facebook status. Further in, there are inked pages with playlists and doodles and yet more date ideas. Nitori brushes his fingers over the paper and wonders how often Nagisa spends daydreaming about this.

   Nothing in the book is specifically about Rei, (except the inside of the cover, where 'Rei-chan Seduction Plan' is printed in massive lettering - it looks more recent than most of the contents of the notebook and Nitori tends to skip right by it), and he's glad, because that would be a little on the creepy side.

   In truth, Nitori thinks it reads more like the Nagisa Fantasy Romance Journal.

   Nitori treats it like a precious thing, because it is. He can't imagine the amount of hours that must have gone into this weird little hobby of Nagisa's - the daydreaming itself, and the scrapbooking, and the writing and the revising and notes scribbled in the margins.

   And if he can't imagine that, then there's no way he can even begin to imagine the trust that went into passing it along.

oOo

   They instate movie nights on Fridays, and Nitori takes the initiative to mark every Friday in his planner with a purple-inked 'N' all the way through to the end of the academic year. In class, he finds himself scribbling in the margins the titles from his watchlist; both movies he hasn't seen and ones that he has and would see again because he knows that Nagisa would like them too, even if none of them are in the horror genre.

   They fall into a routine. Nitori shows up at Nagisa's front door with takeout in the evening, and they shut themselves in Nagisa's bedroom and eat through the first movie. Then they put on a second and pay attention for approximately ten seconds before one of them shifts too close, and fingers get intertwined or the conversation runs dry, and Nagisa is straddling his hips by the time the beginning credits have finished rolling.

   It's something Nitori comes to anticipate. When their plates are cleared away and Nagisa slides the next DVD into his laptop and Nitori knows it wont be long before he's lost in delicate kisses and carefully wandering hands.

   "Nothing below the waist, okay?" he manages to ask the first time Nagisa dares to let his fingertips skate up and down Nitori's sides beneath his shirt. He's already distracted enough with the way Nagisa has discovered the sensitive juncture of his neck and shoulder and is doing his best to make Nitori squirm with the slightest scrapes of his teeth.   He's already hot just thinking about how he wont be able to hide the marks at practice, even though he'll regret it later.

   Nagisa hums okay against his skin and Nitori relaxes into the mattress, letting his eyes slip closed.

   
oOo

   As it turns out, it takes all of two seconds for the other boys in the locker room to notice that Nitori has had his towel around his neck since he came out of the changing cubicle. Three seconds for them to start pointing and elbowing each other, and twenty-six seconds for the closest team member to whip the towel right off and expose the furious, still vaguely throbbing bruise just above Nitori's collarbone.

   "It was an accident," is his lame, loud, and shrill excuse when the teasing starts coming in from all sides and he blushes all the way down to his bellybutton.

   "I swear I can see teeth marks," is the rebuttal, followed by raucous laughter and palms extended for high-fives that Nitori doesn't return.

   He has no choice but to wear the lovebite like a badge of shame throughout practice, even though most of his teammates treat it like a badge of honour. He tries to stay in the water as much as he can and as deep as he can, but it does little to help. Some of the second-years crack lewd jokes; most of the first years laugh along too hard to be convincing. The coach just gives him one flickering glance and rolls his eyes like he's seen it all before. Rin, his captain, seems oddly preoccupied with sorting out the raining regimen and doesn't even look at Nitori once.

oOo

   Days pass, and then weeks, and nothing really changes in a hurry. That first weekend, Nitori had left behind a Samezuka full of dozing teenagers with recovering sleep schedules, but they all fall back into their old ways with only the subtlest of differences. New teachers and new gossip. The temperature rises with only a few spatterings of rain; rumours swirl about every benign thing from swim meets to homework.

   When Nagisa has a dentist appointment in May, Nitori skips class to hold his hand in the waiting room.

   When Rin gets a new phone in June and casually asks for Nitori's number again the very next day, Nitori thinks that this is going to be a very good summer indeed.

Chapter Text

   Nitori throws on a hoodie and his little-used running shorts first thing on Sunday morning.

   It's barely sunrise, everything outside pale and clear, and Rin is already gone with no trace but for a granola bar wrapper in the bin and his trainers missing from just inside the door.

   Nitori looks himself over before he goes out. Ruffles his hair to give the impression of carefree athleticism. The shorts are a little tighter than they used to be, and they have neon blue skirting the edge of his thighs and trailing up the sides. He thinks they compliment his eyes and make the best of his figure. On a whim, he takes a picture in the mirror and sends it to Nagisa, and judging by the string of shocked and heart-eyed emoticons he gets back even though it's not even seven yet, he agrees.

   Outside, the air stings at his bare legs more than he thought it would, but he powers through. He's heard a hundred times from Rin that no matter the weather, when you're running you're only cold for five minutes at the most, and Nitori thinks that at least he can distract himself with the scenery and the sound of his own huffing breaths while his blood starts pumping. Rin usually takes a few laps around the path that goes around the grounds and skirts the forest, rather than running alongside the road and into town, so Nitori goes the same way. There are solar lights stuck into the grass at intervals and he takes passing every one as a victory.

   He's close to collapsing by the time he finally rounds a corner and sees Rin, jogging along with his earphones in and the bottom of his trousers splattered with grass stains.

   Nitori isn't cold anymore - he's prickling with heat all over, his entire body flushed and damp and seriously regretting the hoodie. His calves burn and so do his lungs, desperately, but it's too late to back out now. He speeds up, cringing at how much his body protests, until he's out-pacing Rin altogether. And then he runs right by him, praying to every god there is that Nagisa's theories have at least some tried-and-tested basis in reality.

   "Ai?"

   He hears Rin's footfalls come to a stop, and he lets his own do the same as soon as his momentum allows it - and then he doubles over, unable to stop himself, hands on his knees and panting, trying to get himself under control so that he can actually talk to Rin instead of just--

   "Ai? What are you doing out here?" Rin puts a hand on his shoulder. His gross, sweaty shoulder - though Rin probably can't feel it through the fabric.

   Nitori straightens up and turns around, plastering a friendly smile onto his face, trying to look casual with his hands in his pockets and absolutely not staring, even though Rin looks to be at the healthy-and-bright stage of working out that Nitori sailed right past about twenty minutes go.

   "Oh- Rin-senpai-" He tries to feign surprise without letting his mouth drop open, which is hard when he needs it to because breathing through his nose sounds harsh, like an angry horse. "It was... such a nice day, so I thought I would just-- go for a-- haah--"

   He has to bend again, bracing himself and taking in deep, wheezy breaths through his mouth to assuage the ache in his chest. It takes him a moment to realise that Rin is rubbing his back, but when he does he forgets to breathe altogether and ends up coughing and spluttering, staring wide-eyed at the path beneath him.

   "Are you okay?" Rin must be getting impatient by now; Nitori knows how much he likes to run on Sunday mornings. He doesn't sound it, though. He just keeps rubbing in those awkward. but still somehow soothing, circles.

   "Just-- working out." Nitori nods, frantically, and makes another attempt at standing upright. He stumbles, knees weak - Rin catches him by the elbows and holds him steady. "I wanted to--" wheeze, "push myself, senpai, that's all."

   "Looks like you pushed yourself too far," Rin observes. Nitori can hear the clack-clack of his earphones resting at Rin's collarbone, the cord slung around the back of his neck - other than Rin's voice and his own wheezing, he can't hear much else. For some reason, Rin presses the back of one hand to his sweat-damp forehead before saying, decisively, "We should take you to the nurse."

   Nitori shakes his head. "I'm fine, I just-- don't have my--" Nitori struggles; words fail him and tears prick the corners of his eyes. "...Stupid."

   He clenches his fists and braces himself for an I told you so.

   "The nurse," Rin repeats. His grip on Nitori's elbows means he can easily lead him in the direction of the school, and Nitori is so dizzy for so many reasons that he can do nothing except let himself be led.

   Ten minutes later, Nitori sits on the infirmary table while a half-awake and irritated school nurse makes a procedure-only phone call to his most likely equally half-awake and irritated mother. His thighs are sticking to the paper sheet. He never wants to wear these shorts again.

   Rin sits in the chair beside him. He has his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and he's considering the floor like he's not sure whether to be sorry for dragging Nitori here or proud of himself for averting whatever emergency he was expecting.

   "We should get her some coffee," Rin says, without looking up. "As soon as she lets you go, we should go down to the cafeteria and get her a latte or something." He sighs. "We woke her up."

   "Okay, senpai," Nitori says.

   Rin draws his shoulders up. "Don't look so annoyed."

   "I'm not." Nitori pulls his hoodie tighter around himself, all of Nagisa's advice going straight out the window. "I'm embarrassed." He glances towards the doorway, where the nurse will be back any second, probably with a lecture. He shivers. "This is so embarrassing."

   Rin's sharp gaze lands on him and he shivers again. "Your health isn't embarrassing. You want to make the relay team, right?" He doesn't wait for Nitori's reply. "That means you have to be in top condition."

   "Yes, senpai."

   "That means you probably shouldn't go running." Rin pauses. "Which... uh, shouldn't be a problem for you. I thought you hated it."

   Nitori hangs his head. "Yes, senpai."

   Rin makes a modest sort of hmph sound and pushes his hair back from his face. Shifts a little closer in his chair. "You and your 'yes senpai'."

   Nitori musters the trace of a rueful smile. "Yes, Captain."

   "Oi." Rin punches him playfully on the arm, just in time for the nurse to come in and give him the death glare to end all death glares.

   Slowly, as though trying not to startle a wild animal, Rin draws his hand back.

   For the rest of the day, Nitori's skin tingles at that spot.

oOo

   "...So then, he took me down to the cafeteria and bought me a hot chocolate, but we didn't go back to change first so I was still wearing those shorts! And I was really sweaty and gross and he was kind of sweaty and gross too and I just..." Nitori buries his head in his hands, defeated. "I failed. I really failed the plan, Nagisa."

   They're sitting cross-legged, facing each other on Nagisa's bedroom floor with a pizza box between them. Nagisa is clearly physically unable to stop laughing, but he tries and Nitori appreciates that. "You can't fail the plan. And this is nowhere near as bad as you made it sound on Skype," he points out, struggling to catch his breath. "He bought you a drink, what's wrong with that?"

   "A hot chocolate! Nagisa, it's June!" Nitori clutches fistfuls of his hair like he's about to tear it out. "Why would he do that! It doesn't make sense!"

   A slow, devious grin spreads across Nagisa's face. "Maybe your shorts were so little that he thought you must be getting cold."

   Nitori's mouth drops open, but then he collects himself and scowls the best he can. "I wish I had that hot chocolate again so I could throw it at you."

   "And then you'd lick it off me to say sorry, right?" Nagisa prompts around a bite of pizza. He twirls stringy mozzarella around his outstretched tongue, playing at sexy but it mostly just looks ridiculous and Nitori struggles to control his facial expression.

   "No," he deadpans. Defiantly, he looks away from Nagisa altogether, focusing instead on picking pepperoni circles off a slice and putting them in a pile in one corner of the pizza box. "You would have second-degree burns. You would have to go to the hospital."

   A pause. "Or maybe I would just go to the nurse's office."  

   "Nagisa!" Nitori chucks a piece of pepperoni at him - it's not enough to show his anguish, and even less so when Nagisa pops the projectile into his mouth and eats it. Nitori readies another pepperoni slice, clutching it bare in his hand, a threat. "I had a traumatic experience!"

   "I know. You were so brave, Ai-chan," Nagisa reassures him, ever the diplomat even when he seems to be paying more attention to dunking a piece of crust in barbecue dip than anything else. "And it all paid off because now you have an excuse to buy bim a drink sometime to make it even. See?"

   Nitori freezes. "But I don't even know what drinks he likes."

   Meaningfully, Nagisa gestures at him with the piece of crust. "And now you have a conversation."

   Nagisa really does know everything. Nitori tells him as much, chewing thoughtfully.

oOo

   The arcade is different at night. With the lights down and the glow from the machines casting all in a neon glow, and the crowds denser, older; the front of the building is open and at this hour it brings in a draft, but Nagisa is visibly sticky all over regardless and Nitori can't stop watching him and the way he's tied his shirt up to expose his navel, like a girl would, instead of just taking it off. He's been dancing so long that his hands slip when he tries to grab the metal bar behind him.

   "One more?" he says, and extends a hand to Nitori. He's bone tired and preoccupied with worrying about missing the last train, but he still takes it without hesitating, and steps up to the machine with all the grace of a bride at the altar.

   "Your choice," Nagisa says, offering up the panel.

   Nitori picks a song at random and they dance until it's over, and Nagisa hits the high score just like that.

   Nitori has barely any time at all to register Nagisa's awed inhale before he's being pulled into a crushing kiss, Nagisa's fingers locked at the small of his back, his tongue in Nitori's mouth and then not, slick and perfect and over before it's really begun. His pulse doesn't stop racing, but all he can think is that he's glad he brushed his teeth again after dinner.

   Nagisa throws himself forward to type his name in before it times out; Nitori looks around in a panic to find absolutely nobody paying attention to them.

   It's never really just 'one more', especially when Nagisa is winning, so when he doesn't bother to put another coin in the machine, Nitori knows it isn't over. When Nagisa grabs his hand and leads off him towards the bathroom, Nitori's heart skips a beat at the thought that it's probably just beginning.

 
oOo

   Nagisa's height does nothing to stop him all but slamming Nitori back against the wall of the cubicle the moment after they've locked themselves inside. It's nowhere near hard enough to hurt, but it's enough to make Nitori's breath hitch in the moment before their lips meet, just as urgently as before. Before, in public, when Nagisa had kissed him... Nitori's head spins with it. Spins with the way Nagisa is kissing him now, in a bathroom stall of a crowded arcade where they could be caught at any moment. The way he can't help himself from clawing at the shallow wall behind him, restless and helpless.

   When they have to stop for breath, Nagisa stays leaning forward so that their noses touch at the tips, eye contact locked, and Nitori can see that his irises are mostly black.

   "You're a fast learner," Nitori whispers, which earns him a smile.

   "You're so cute," Nagisa whispers back, and Nitori's breath hitches again.

   For a while, they just stare at each other. Nagisa is a little pink in the face still, and dazed, like he can't stop looking at what he's looking at and Nitori knows how he feels. Nagisa's eyes are deep pools of ink and magenta, framed by the halo of gold lashes, so familiar by now that Nitori can't imagine looking into someone else's eyes this way and seeing that same honesty there. That same nakedness.

   Nagisa presses forward to kiss him again, and Nitori melts into it. Nagisa takes control because he's good at it, with his soft strawberry lips and the way he makes sure that Nitori can't tell the passage of time by anything but their shared, tiny gasps and whimpers. Sometimes Nitori wonders how he ever got along without it. This. The way Nagisa makes him feel.

   He can feel something.

   Literally.

   His choked, embarrassed sound breaks off their kiss. Nagisa draws back, but only slightly; at some point, their fingers have ended up entwined and Nagisa gives a little squeeze of reassurance.

   This has happened before. In fact, it happens more often than not that the reason they end up stopping is because of their bodies being too demanding, rather than because they actually want to. Nitori knows it's normal, that he doesn't have some kind of convenient off switch for his reactions, that he can't just filter out the excitement so that he can just kiss Nagisa forever and ever -- he knows it's normal, but that doesn't make it any less blush-worthy when the time comes that they have to calm down before things start escalating.

   He's pulled from his thoughts by Nagisa cupping the side of his face in his hand, caressing and holding him steady at the same time. His eyes are bright and alert, fluorescent as the lights above them. "Can I ask you something?"

   Nitori nods wordlessly. He's sure that that first kiss, with all its passion and danger, stole away his ability to speak.

   Nagisa bites at his own swollen bottom lip, seemingly tripping over his question before he finally says, carefully, "Would you still want to stop if we weren't in a toilet right now?"

   Nitori opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again. He isn't in a place where he can really think. Not when his mind is staticky and his brain feels tender, like it's been wrung out, and his eyes sting because the room is too bright for the time and everything smells like bleach and sweat. He doesn't want to make any decisions, so when he does eventually manage a raw sort of laugh under his breath, all that comes out after it is, "That's such a mood-kill question, Nagisa."

   They exchange hesitant smiles, and Nitori thinks that they must be on the same page.

Chapter Text

   They eat noodles from cartons, perched on a half-height brick wall on a deserted side street, and Nitori's blush doesn't go down until they're almost finished and Nagisa is pulling his phone from his pocket to call one of his sisters. "I need a ride," he says, eyes averted to stare at his knees, kicking his heels against the wall. Nitori stays hypervigilant, looking around the dim, just in case somebody tries to mug them or something. The brick scrapes at his bare calves and it's getting cold. "I do know what time it is," Nagisa insists, shoving another helping of noodles into his mouth. He chews on them as his sister, what -- lectures him? He doesn't look fazed, so it's hard to tell, but whatever she's saying takes a while. "Okay. Just don't tell mom and dad," Nagisa says, and winks Nitori's way. It's enough to trigger a sudden adrenaline rush; the feeling that they're doing something bad, secret, and they're in it together, like partners in crime.

oOo

   Nagisa calls right after school.

   Literally, right after school - Nitori is only just pulling his phone out of his pocket and switching it on and after a dutifully switched-off day of classes when the name flashes up on his screen, along with a picture of Nagisa mid "hey wait don't take that right now" protest. He's still in the languages corridor, swimming in a crowd of uniform-clad boys when he answers, holding the phone to his ear and covering his other one with his palm.

   "Rei-chan is sick." Nagisa's voice rings out immediately. "Can you come over?"

   "What do you mean by 'sick'? Is he okay?" A few people turn to stare at that, but Nitori just ducks his head and keeps walking.

   "I don't know. He didn't say, but he hardly ever misses school unless it's really bad." Nagisa sounds pained. "It must be really bad, Ai-chan."

   "Aw, I'm sure it's not." Nitori tries not to sound like he's gritting his teeth - he swipes his keycard once, twice, the magnetic lock unyielding because that's the kind of day it is. So hot he left damp marks on his desk where his bare forearms were, and this morning the fan in his room was sputtering like it was about to die from overuse. It goes through on the third try and the door clicks open. He pushes inside, throwing his bag down on the floor and making a beeline for his desk chair. He takes one look at the fan and decides not to risk it. "Why do you need me to come over?"

   "I wanted to make him some soup," Nagisa all but whines. "But I don't... I don't know how to cook anything like that, and it wouldn't be the same if I got it from a restaurant, and you're so thoughtful with gifts and I really don't want to mess this up."

   Nitori toys with one of the cow plushies on his desk, twirling the furry little tail around one finger. "You didn't ask Nanase-san?"

   A long pause. "He was busy. He couldn't miss practice."

   "But you think I can miss practice." Nitori gets up and considers the contents of his cupboard, holding the phone up with his shoulder while his hands keep the doors wide open. His sports bag is on the shelf, already packed.

   "I thought you didn't have practice today," is Nagisa's excuse, and Nitori can't fault him because he usually doesn't, but his captain has been working them all much harder lately. Nitori closes the cupboard. "At least tell me what you think he'd like?"

   "You know him way better than I do and you know it!" Nitori says, sitting back down at his desk and opening his laptop. He types easy soup recipes into the search box. "So... I think it depends what kind of sick he is. If he has a cold, then you should make something creamy and warm. If he has a fever, then it should be something light. Right?"

   "That makes sense," Nagisa agrees. "And he would still come to school if he had a cold."

   "A light soup?" Nitori scrolls through the list, all decorated with pictures of petite bowls and contents which do not look easy at all. "Does he like chicken noodle?"

   "I don't know." Nagisa pauses for a moment, deep in thought. "I think he prefers vegetables?"

   Which is how Nitori ends up in a supermarket in Iwatobi, at four in the afternoon, pushing the cart along and glancing every so often at the list open on his phone. Nagisa darts all over the aisles, fetching the ingredients and other things that just look interesting -- including a cherry-vanilla lip balm. "You can't kiss him if he's sick," Nitori points out, keeping his voice low. Nagisa just tosses the lip balm into the cart, watching it land between a spring onion and a pair of socks, the tin clattering against metal. Nitori tries to be reasonable, and sighs his worry. "What if it's contagious?" he asks, but Nagisa is already wandering off towards a rack of DVDs and either doesn't hear, or doesn't care. 

   They go back to Nagisa's house (deserted) and start cutting vegetables and sorting out the utensils. Nitori does most of the work, but only because Nagisa gets all dithering and nervous whenever he tries to do anything useful except reading the recipe aloud. He does, at least, manage to add a sprinkling of slightly-too-much white pepper to the pot, and press the lid down on the tupperware container after Nitori has poured it inside and let it cool some.

   It's probably not the greatest soup ever, but it /smells/ good, the whole room heavy with the ginger and the garlic making his stomach clench in a firm reminder that he hasn't eaten since lunch. When Nagisa ties a slightly askew lavender ribbon around the container like he's wrapping a gift, Nitori thinks that it looks pretty good, too.

   "I can't believe your parents have a ribbon drawer," he comments, while Nagisa slides the lip balm underneath the knot of the bow. They're side-by-side, but Nagisa is bent over the counter, eye-level with the plastic, both thumbs against the tin, easing it into position -- he bites his lip in concentration, his brows all furrowed. Nitori wants to take his own thumbs and smooth out all the little wrinkles forming on Nagisa's forehead. "It makes it look so cute."

   "Really?" Nagisa tilts his head up, but the way he can't hold back a smile tells Nitori that he agrees.

   "Really." Nitori knocks his hip against Nagisa's, and Nagisa knocks back. "I don't remember this part of the plan."

   "I'm improvising," Nagisa explains, pulling the bow straighter. "Improvising is the most important part."

oOo

   Nitori has to sort of loiter on the other side of the street from Rei's house while Nagisa goes up to the front door, because it's the best he can do in terms of delivering both moral support and privacy at the same time. It's a muggy sort of day, with humid air and a sky bruised with storm clouds. The sun is hiding, but Nitori still has to shrug off his jacket and tie it around his waist, and he feels a twist of sympathy at the thought of anyone having a fever in this weather.

   It's the kind of day where he wishes that Samezuka had an outdoor pool like Iwatobi. If it did, he wouldn't have skipped practice today. Not even for Nagisa.

   Nitori scuffs the toe of his shoe against the pavement, biting his lip to keep from laughing. Why does he lie to himself like that?

   It's sweet, he thinks, to see Nagisa standing there. The from-behind view of him in his summer uniform with his backpack on and his hands in front of him where he's holding the container, ringing the doorbell and bouncing a little in place while he waits. Rei's front garden is neat and well-kept, and the whole picture reminds Nitori of some kind of vintage courtship. Nagisa's crisp white shirt and his feet firmly together. Probably staring earnestly at the wood pannelling, his heart all fluttery, ready to offer his support and his sweetcorn soup.

   The front door opens and it's Rei, and Nagisa's shoulders drop a little bit in relief because Rei doesn't even look sick. He's dressed, but not in his uniform, and he's standing straight up rather than hunched over and wrapped in a blanket. Nitori would bet that Nagisa is surprised about that too, but he wouldn't let on, and it hardly matters because when Rei's eyes drop down to the container, he looks surprised too.

   They chat a little before Nagisa hands it over, and Nitori can't hear them but he can pretty much imagine the conversation. Nagisa's Hi, Rei-chan, I knew you were sick so I made you some delicious soup because I have a huge crush on you by the way and Rei's Oh, Nagisa-kun, you shouldn't have, and then Nagisa's eyes would glitter and he'd say, But Rei-chan, I couldn't bear the thought of you all alone and feeling low, I want to look after you! and then Rei would say, But Nagisa-kun, I don't want you to see me like this--

   Nagisa gives the container to Rei and Nitori notices -- they all notice -- when Rei's hands brush against Nagisa's smaller ones, and he doesn't move them right away because he freezes, goes rigid and stares at them, where they're touching, and Nagisa's head tilts down and it looks like he's doing the exact same thing. Rei goes tomato-red in an instant and Nagisa lets go like the container is burning him, but he looks back up at Rei and Nitori can imagine his lips parting, in wonder, and the way he might be saying, Oh no, Rei-chan, did I embarrass you?, but probably isn't.

   Rei looks a little awkward standing there with the soup in his hands and his blush unrelenting, but Nagisa holds up a hand as if to say, Oh, I almost forgot, and then shrugs off one strap of his backpack, shifting it around to the side of his body and digging around in it until he finds some papers. Missed schoolwork. He hands those over too.

   Rei says something that looks like, Thank you so much, Nagisa-kun, and Nagisa nods, probably smiling and saying No problem, Rei-chan, call me if you need anything!. But Rei doesn't close the door, and for a few seconds they just stare at each other. Nitori remembers the magazine's advice -- three seconds of eye contact, then look away.

   Rei looks away, probably following Nagisa's lead.

   Nitori gasps, very quietly.

   Rei steps aside and holds the door open, asking if Nagisa want to come inside, and he's still talking, most likely saying I don't know if we have anything you like for dinner-- or My parents will be home late tonight so-- when Nagisa waves it off. He gestures back behind him, and Rei's eyes flick up and find Nitori standing there. Obvious in his stark-white uniform and yet unnoticed all this time. He says, "Oh," definitely, and shifts the container and the papers into one hand so that he can wave.

   Nitori waves back, sheepishly, and the moment is thoroughly over, so Rei says something like, See you tomorrow, to which Nagisa would definitely reply, See you tomorrow, Rei-chan, but in a way that sounds more soft and suggestive than Rei said it, which would of course leave him wondering. Rei steps back inside and closes the door, and Nagisa turns on his heel to face Nitori and he's beaming so much that Nitori has to beam back at him.

   "How did it go?" he asks, pointlessly, when Nagisa is already shoving his hands in his pockets and humming along as they start the walk back to the train station, a giddy spring in his step, bag still unfastened.

oOo

   After the end of term, they have a "movie date", in Nagisa's words, for the people who need it most. Namely, the second years, because everybody knows the second year is the hardest -- "Right?" Nagisa adds at the bus station, winding his hands in the hem of his shirt, and huffing a moment later at the three sympathetic looks thrown his way.

   When the bus turns up, Nagisa offers Nitori the aisle seat, which Nitori takes as an act of kindness. He's a little surprised that Nagisa even wants to sit next to him at all, leaving Rei and Kou in the row across the aisle; that is, until Nagisa settles with his back to the window and his calves over Nitori's thighs.

   Nitori plays his fingertips absently over Nagisa's bare ankle, not complaining.

   Nagisa pokes him in the arm with a wrapped popsicle and he takes it. He unwraps it slowly and just scrapes at it with his teeth, barely taking a bite -- he's distracted. He's never been to this cinema before. The bus feels like it's moving over a sea of marbles, bumping heavily up and down every other second, and he has this tragic lovebite on the back of his shoulder and he's slowly convincing himself that the old lady sitting directly behind him can somehow see it or sense it through his shirt. 

   He needs this, though. It's barely a week into summer and he's already tired from the commute to the shelter and the work and the dogs with all their boundless energy and the fact that he's been staying at Nagisa's house a lot lately and having to use someone else's shower is a weirdly tiring ordeal. It's about a million degrees today and he wants to spend all of it in an air conditioned room, zoning out to some quiet 3D documentary about space -- which, he reminds himself, is why voting is a bad system when some people are biased.

   Nitori tries to throw Nagisa a glare, just for the sake of it, but when he looks to the side, he's stunned before he can do anything of the sort.

   Nagisa doesn't notice him. He's focused. Focusing as he sucks the popsicle into his mouth, which is normal until he takes it further, further -- further than anyone could feasibly need to while eating a popsicle, if Nitori is honest. Far enough that Nitori can pinpoint the exact moment where it touches the back of Nagisa's throat, because alarm crosses the blonds' face for a moment before his throat bobs with a swallow and he relaxes some, sliding the popsicle out of his mouth again until his lips just barely rest at the tip of it. Milky fluid gathers there, smearing the pink of of his lips even pinker--

   Nitori squirms, the thin, corded fabric beneath him ridiculously uncomfortable as he does.

   But Nagisa isn't looking at him. When those magenta eyes flick up, it's Rei they land on. Rei, who's... Nitori follows Nagisa's gaze and finds him looking past Nagisa, out of the window behind him. He doesn't blush, his glasses don't fog up with the glowing heat of his embarrassment -- he's fine. Nagisa's pink little tongue darts out to lick the tip of the popsicle, and Rei glances at him, gives him a brief smile, and then looks away again, bowing his head to go back to reading the book in his lap.

   Nitori pushes Nagisa's calves away from his crotch, towards his knees, slightly. His own popsicle is abandoned, melting and dripping blue down his fingers. He lowers it back into the wrapper because he really can't eat it now.

   Rei doesn't look up again, and there's a crunch as Nagisa bites down, defeated.

oOo

   They come out of the theatre dazed and bleary, the brightness of the lobby followed by the searing sun outside more than their maladjusted eyes can handle. Especially considering they've been sitting in the dark watching planets spin for an hour and a half. Nitori feels like a hermit emerging from a cave, or a high-security prisoner seeing the outside world for the first time in years; he rubs at his eyes, and beside him, Kou yawns dramatically.

   "That was so amazing!" Nagisa gushes, mostly in Rei's direction. Nitori hangs back with Kou, who's still standing in the shade and sorting out her bag, throwing all the day's receipts and empty candy wrappers into a nearby trashcan. "When they explained how the telescope works? And all the pictures of the nebulas, they were so- so--!" Nagisa shakes his head in speechless wonder.

   "Beautiful," Rei finishes for him, nodding sagely along. Both of them are, ostensibly, examining one of the posters outside the building, but even from his distance, Nitori can tell they aren't really looking at it.

   "And big! I mean, they're really huge, right, Rei-chan? All those stars. How many stars do you think are in a nebula?"

   Rei adjusts his glasses and opens his mouth like he's going to start explaining something, and Nagisa's face lights up even as he fights a smile.

   Nitori has to look away from them. Not just because he doesn't want to stare, but also because he can't help wondering what it would be like to see a movie with Rin, and whether it would go this well, but probably not. If Nagisa was there, he'd be watching them both like a hawk, which would make Rin uncomfortable and Nitori nervous and his palms all sweaty. He wouldn't be able to use any of the seduction tips.

   And he couldn't get Rin to go with him alone. Probably. He can't even imagine how he would ask, or how it would work -- that is, outside of the lazy daydreams where it's the two of them, after a nice dinner, Rin loosely holding his hand like it's the most comfortable way to be when they're standing at the concession stand, then leaning down for a kiss as soon as they're in the safe, private dark of the back row--

   There' s a metallic snap as Kou fastens her bag and slings it back over her shoulder, jolting Nitori out of his daydream.

   She leans against the wall, her eyes closed. "I'm going to see that giant space telescope printed on the back of my eyelids for the rest of my life," she all but whispers.

   "I know," he agrees, quietly. "It went on forever. But at least they're happy."

   Kou opens one eye to glance over at Rei and Nagisa, still pretending to look at the poster for the movie about single mothers or something, Nagisa still so invested in what Rei is saying that he looks like he's about on the verge of taking notes down on his hand. "We're going to hear about this later," she says.

   "...which is why, Nagisa-kun, I think you meant 'galaxies'," Rei concludes, dramatically, and Nagisa makes a sound like oooh and Nitori has to cover his mouth to stop from laughing.

oOo

   Nothing about Nagisa's bedroom ever changes except the small piles of clutter and the various light, sweet scents that go on some kind of rotation -- Nitori suspects candles, but he can't be sure. Rei has to be home for dinner, but Nitori, Nagisa and Kou see no reason not to go back to Nagisa's house and sprawl on his bed and watch sitcoms for four hours over pizza and leftover popcorn. By the time the topic of conversation rolls around to the usual, they're all so tired there's no use in going home.

   Kou excuses herself to another room while she calls her mother and presumably makes up gratuitous lies about absolutely /not/ sleeping over with two boys, while Nagisa goes to get the spare futons. Nitori stays where he is, trying not to eavesdrop and absorbing the lyrics of the top-40 hit that's playing lowly on the radio more than he otherwise would. Vaguely, he thinks about how strange it is that this will be the first sleepover they've had in a while where he won't be sharing Nagisa's bed. He won't be kissed before he falls asleep, held close all night and then woken with kisses again in the morning, or have to deal with that tingly mix of embarrassment and excitement when he wakes up at two in the morning and feels Nagisa's unconscious arousal pressing against his thigh or his behind. Tonight, they're different. Not 'just friends', because they're already 'just friends', but 'just friends' in the acceptable way that everybody else thinks they are.

   He catches Nagisa staring at him from the doorway, and realises that he must be thinking the same thing.

oOo

   Later, they sit in a triangle on the floor, all three of them pyjama-clad. Nagisa has his legs crossed, grey bed-shorts riding up his thighs and he's wearing that pastel-pink t-shirt with a graphic of a shooting star on it that Nitori despserately wants to borrow sometime. Kou is in borrowed red-plaid pyjama pants, and has her hair in a messy top-knot, her face smeared with the same clay mask that Nitori has painted over the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones, just to try it out. They have ten minutes until they have to wash it off, so Nagisa has called a meeting. A Meeting. With a capital 'M'.

   "You saw it, right?" Nagisa leans forward with his elbows on his knees, eyes wide and beseeching.

   "I saw it," Kou confirms. Nitori nods along. It's the truth, but it's also, probably, what Nagisa wants to hear, considering the way he's giving them both the 'desperate kicked-puppy' look at the same time.

   "And he saw it?"

   Nitori nods. "He saw it."  

   "So what happened!" Nagisa cries out, throwing himself backwards and kicking his legs up into the air. He lands on his back, arms splayed out by his sides, like a starfish. "It was hot, right?" he asks the ceiling, and Nitori earnestly nods along again without thinking. Kou frowns at him. "I didn't look weird, I did it right, didn't I?"

   Nitori and Kou exchange a glance -- not with Nagisa, who is still firmly focused on the ceiling above him as though it has the answer to all his problems written neatly all over it, but with each other. The silence lingers, and Nitori doesn't want to be the one to say it. Admit it. To praise Nagisa for his excellent skill in the popsicle department, because that's just not where this sleepover was supposed to be going--

   Kou is the one to bite the bullet. "You did it right, yes. I think," she adds, somewhat hastily. 

   "But he didn't notice." Nagisa sighs, deeply. His legs -- which had previously been pulled up, knees to the ceiling, feet on the carpet -- fall down like wilted flowers, parting, knees splaying to the side. Nitori gives him an awkward but heartfelt pat on one smooth calf. "How could he just not notice?"

   "It was hard--" Nitori tries, but then he trails off, uncertain, and Kou gives him a look that's a lot more urgent and perplexed than the last. "Hard not to notice! It was hard not to notice because you were-- It was--" The words don't come, and he gestures wildly in Nagisa's direction, hoping that somehow speaks for him. That it conveys, somehow, that the display was, for lack of a better term, enrapturing. That it wasn't Nagisa's mistake because Nagisa was doing everything right, that he was a natural, that Rei was perhaps in need of a new prescription because it was so, so hard to focus on anything except, "--You--," he finishes, weakly, and then gives up, clasping his hands meekly in front of him and bowing his head.

   Nagisa frowns at him and his incoherence and the pink blush he's stewing in, his expression halfway between pity and despair, and then his gaze flicks up to the ceiling again.

   Kou picks up the slack, because she always seems to know what to say. "He never stops talking about you, Nagisa. He's been asking me about what to get you for your birthday for weeks," she urges. Nagisa hums thoughtfully, clearly swayed by her argument, encouraging her to keep going, and she does. "He's thinking about those space documentaries. A box set or something. He thinks actually like them."

   Nagisa half-heartedly kicks out her arm with the toes of one bare foot. "I don't not like them."

   In return, Kou pokes him in the soft spot between the ribs and the hip. "Should I just tell him to take you out for dinner instead?"

   Nagisa sits up again with yet another long-suffering sigh. "Thanks, Gou-kun, but that's too vague." Nitori takes the hint and shuffles closer, winding one hand around Nagisa's waist and pulling him over for a sort of side-hug. Nagisa rests his head on his shoulder without hesitation, and Nitori keeps his own chin up, both because he doesn't want to know if Kou is gawking at them, and because he doesn't want to get the clay mask in Nagisa's hair and mess up the perfect softness of it. Nagisa says, "I want him to go out with me because he wants to, you know? I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong."

   "Neither do I," Nitori tells him, and squeezes a little tighter around his waist. "Maybe nothing? Maybe he's trying to be really smooth about it like you are."

   Kou does something weird with her mouth, and it takes Nitori a second to realise that she's probably trying to smirk, or something, but the weird tight feeling over the bridge of his nose is all over her face and she can't. "Rei-kun doesn't really know how to be--" she sees the way Nagisa's brows furrow and stops herself. "Maybe we should sleep on it?" she suggests instead, testing her face mask with the pad of her finger. It comes away dry.

Chapter Text

   "We need to talk."

   Nitori thinks that if Kou had a flip phone, she would snap it closed at his approach. Hesitantly, he puts his bag down and slides into the booth, feeling very much under scrutiny as she sits there with her hands clasped on the table and her stare unwavering. She's foreboding in her neat sundress and her tight ponytail. Nitori wishes that he had taken more care to change out of the yellow 'volunteer' shirt they gave him at the shelter, which is now dusted with a fine layer of dog hair, or prepared a speech to defend himself before she presumably murders him in the middle of this cafe.

   She narrows her eyes slightly, and then pushes two things towards him; one, a plate with a chocolate muffin on it. Two, a vanilla bean frappe. Nitori stares at them, eyes darting from one item to the other. Blinks at them.

   "Rin wanted to speak to me last night," she says. 

   Nitori's head snaps up, eyes wide.

   "Is he okay?" She hesitates, then nods. He clutches at the front of his shirt, around the neck, a nervous habit. If Rin isn't dying or anything, then that means-- "Was he... was he talking about me?"

   "He was." Kou puts one elbow on the table, and rests her chin in her hand, never breaking eye contact. Nitori's heart is beating a mile a minute and he wonders if the drink or the muffin is poisoned or maybe even both. "Actually, he told me he's noticed your 'suspicious bruises' and that we need to tone it down because I'm way too young and impressionable to be doing that stuff with boys."

   Nitori reels back, struggling to register what she's saying. "You?!"

   She holds her gaze. "I guess he doesn't know about you and Nagisa."

   "How do you know about me and Nagisa?" He catches himself, and shakes his head. "I mean, there isn't a me and Nagisa, we just practice together sometimes. Like friends with benefits. It's not a bit deal."

   Kou stares at him, and then she takes a long, drawn-out drink from her mug (Nitori hadn't noticed it before, steaming, garnished with marshmallows), and Nitori thinks it must be taking her a while to process that information. When her mug clunks back down onto the table, she actually looks slightly pink in the face. "Well," she says, her voice unsteady, "Is Rin knowing about that worse than him thinking we're dating?"

   "No? Yes! He thinks we're dating," Nitori repeats in a daze, because all at once he realises how obvious the whole thing must look. "Rin-senpai is going to kill me! I told him I was really busy over spring break and I..." Kou takes one of his hands into hers, trying to calm him down as he trips over his words. "I think he probably knows I go to Iwatobi every weekend, too!"

   "You could tell him you met another girl in Iwatobi," she suggests. "I could ask Chigusa to cover for you. She's really pretty and I bet he'd be impressed."

   Miserably, Nitori shakes his head."I don't want him to think I have somebody on the side." He starts breaking his muffin into little pieces, smearing his fingers with chocolate. "Or... that he is somebody on the side. If we ever got that far."

   "Yeah," Kou agrees, thoughtfully. "That would be pretty bad."

   They simmer in the silence, both likely thinking just how pretty bad it would really be. The thought of Nitori showing up to their first date, and Rin wondering where the barely healed lovebites on his neck had come from, if Nitori had really liked Rin for as long as he claimed to in the confession that Nitori has, admittedly, practiced in his head about a hundred thousand times. Nitori would never want to hurt Rin's feelings, especially not over this kind of misunderstanding. But would that really be worse than having Rin believe that Nitori is messing around with his sister--?

   Kou clears her throat. "So what do you want me to tell him?"

   Distractedly, Nitori picks up the whole part of his muffin and starts analyzing which angle is best to take a bite from without making a complete mess of himself. "What did you say when he called?"

   She shrugs. "I told him to mind his own business."

   Nitori raises his eyebrows. He knows how much Kou respects her brother -- certainly more than Nagisa respects his sisters, but that response seems more befitting of him than her. "You really said that to him?"

   "I had to. And he should mind his own business, anyway. Our fake imaginary relationship doesn't have anything to do with him." Thoughtfully, she frowns. "Well, unless he wanted to ask you out but now he thinks you're only being nice to him to win him over..."

   Nitori's fingers go slack and he drops half his muffin back onto his plate. "Is that what he said?"

   "No, but I think he seems too worried about this." Kou steeples her fingers like some kind of criminal mastermind. "Plus, he talked to me about it instead of yelling at the guy. That's a new thing!"

   Nitori can believe that. It's not like he's never seen Rin lose his temper before, and over more insignificant things than somebody messing around with his little sister. Nitori fishes his phone from his pocket and checks his notifications, just in case he's gotten any furious missed texts from Rin in the last couple of minutes. He hasn't. He puts his phone away again. He can almost feel the buzzing in his brain as he searches for an explanation. "Maybe... he just didn't want to bring it up with me because we're friends?"

   "Well, I think he's embarrassed," Kou says, matter-of-factly, and Nitori wonders why he even bothered to say that, because he can tell from the look on her face and everything about her posture that she wont be swayed. Somehow, she sits up even straighter. "And I'm his sister so that means I know best."

   Nitori sighs, dramatically throwing himself to the table, not hard enough to displace anything but enough to at least make it look like he's fainting from the sheer exhaustion that comes with being in love.

   He peers up at Kou through his eyelashes, the rest of his face hidden by his forearm, voice muffled. "Why are crushes so complicated?"

   "Maybe you just make them complicated." She shrugs, and then smiles. "Nothing is ever simple when it comes to my brother, though." She pats him on the elbow like he's a three-legged puppy, and he sighs because he might as well be.

oOo

 
   As usual, he meets Nagisa in town. This time, it's outside a bakery down a side alley where Nitori has never been, all potted plants on the ground, brightly-coloured watering cans and at least three stray cats winding around Nitori's legs like he knows them personally. He waits outside the door, and he's taking his phone out to text Nagisa, i'm here, when he hears the creak and the chime and Nagisa comes out of the bakery, calling behind him, "See you, Matsumoto-san-chan!"

   He sees Nitori straight away - he has to, he almost walked right into him - and greets him with a quick hug, before placing a hand on his shoulder and urging him gently backwards, out of the view of the shopfront window. Nagisa has a paper bag in his other that smells like warm doughnuts, damp patches already forming at the bottom. Nitori's careful not to trip over a cat or two as he finds himself pressed up against the brick wall, and he forgets all about the doughnuts when Nagisa presses a sweet kiss to his lips. Literally sweet, too. Nitori recognises chocolate and oranges before the blond pulls away, smiling.

   He kneels to scratch the head of one of the cats, who is more than accommodating. Nitori stays standing and watches him. The way the shafts of intruding sunlight set his hair aglow, and the way his blunt fingernails effortlessly move to where the cat wants them.

   "You're late today," Nagisa comments, because it's true. It's nowhere near sunset, but the heat is starting to become less unbearable. It's already about an hour after dinner is served at school, and Nitori still hasn't adjusted to a summer schedule, which mean he's about a million times hungrier than he usually is by the time he and Nagisa meet up on Fridays. They must be thinking the same thing, because he asks, "Did you have dinner yet?"

   "Not yet." Nitori shakes his head. They stop loitering and start walking, though Nitori isn't really sure where to. "I met up with Kou-kun and it took longer than I thought. She wanted to talk to me about something," he adds, before Nagisa can even begin to wonder why he wasn't invited.

   Nagisa nods along, settling his thumbs on the straps of his backpack. "Was it something important?"

   Nitori kicks a rock into the gutter, and edges closer towards Nagisa, so their arms touch, elbows bumping together as they walk. "It's a long story."

oOo

   He's never more sensitive than when Nagisa is touching him, even when it's just the careful hold on the back of his neck, the confident hands that roam up and down his back, pushing up his shirt. Every moment of contact is a jolt of lightning that leaves thin lines of tingling awareness behind. Nagisa tends to oblige in a heartbeat if Nitori asks for something a little less gentle, but this time, they're just too wrapped up in each other. Too tired from the long day and the meal and too many sweets the one-and-a-half movies they've watched; Nitori's throat is raw from talking, his limbs weary and sore. He doesn't need more pain, even the mild kind that comes with soft moans and bitten bruises that last for days.

   (And they have days -- they have the whole summer.) 

   Right now, all he can think about is how Nagisa has perfect lips and a perfect body; he has perfect teeth and a perfect smile and he would have the perfect reaction if Nitori told him any of those things. He wants to, badly; if he could focus on anything except Nagisa's perfect kisses, he would.

   At any time, he can stop and look down at Nagisa's hair all splayed on the pillow and the slightly dazed look on his face. The light dusting of a blush on his cheeks.

   Nitori can feel Nagisa's arousal against his hip, just there, obvious but demanding no more attention that the rest of him. Nitori's in a similar state, but it isn't urgent yet. There's just a comfortable buzz, an undertone of pleasure in every movement, and it would be something like paradise if he could stay this way forever.

   And then Nagisa grabs his ass.

   Only he doesn't just grab it. That would be worthy of a squeak of embarrassment and a whispered admonishment that he had no idea Nagisa was the type to paw at him like that - would be, if Nagisa had only grabbed. But instead, he pulls Nitori down hips-first against him and shudders, and the time it takes Nitori to recognize that shudder is the time it takes for Nagisa to go completely still all over and give up on kissing altogether, only gasping faintly against Nitori's lips.

   Nitori wants to scrabble to sit upright. He wants to get off Nagisa and get his things together and go back to Samezuka and throw his phone in the pool when he gets there becase he doesn't know what else to do. And then he'd have to throw himself in the pool too, to cool the furious, burning humiliation that's swallowing him whole as he watches the orgasm wrack Nagisa's body in all its little shivers.

   And he would, if it was anyone else. If it wasn't Nagisa gradually going boneless beneath him. He has to force himself to stay and deal with this now because this is Nagisa, and Nagisa deserves better than that.

   Nitori doesn't move. He only looks, stunned, as Nagisa goes completely lax and lets his head fall back against the pillow. He has to ask, but he keeps his voice hushed when he does, still so close to Nagisa's parted lips that he barely even has to vocalize at all.

   "Did you just--?"

   Nagisa lets out the most contented sigh Nitori has ever heard and with it, he breathes out, "Yeah."

   There's no denying it. Nitori knows what he saw and that Nagisa still isn't making any move to do anything but luxuriate there, on top of his sheets that smell like bubblegum. He doesn't know what to say. His brain is stuck, stammering over that one irrefutable fact. Nagisa came. It happened. He just brought his best friend to orgasm completely by accident, and okay, maybe he should’ve expected it from the way things were going, but still.

   Nitori, for his part, has never gone from turned on to paralyzed in such a short space of time.

   Nagisa's eyes flutter open and right away he notices.

   "Are you okay?" he asks, frowning, and Nitori just blinks.

   In an instant, Nagisa is sitting up on his elbows. "You aren't, are you? Ai-chan?"

   Nitori blinks again. He's still holding himself up over Nagisa, but his arms feel remarkably wobbly all of a sudden. 

   Nagisa looks helpless for all of a few seconds before he comes up with a game plan. Nitori can see it in the way his eyes glimmer. The gears turning, settling into place again.

   "Why don't..." Nagisa brings a hesitant hand up to sweep Nitori's fringe back from his face. His palm rests on Nitori's pink, burning forehead. "You go downstairs and pour us some smoothies from the fridge, and I'll... I'll clean up--" Nitori winces before he can stop himself, "and be down in a few minutes, okay?"

   He slides himself out from underneath Nitori's body, sitting himself on his pillow momentarily with his legs drawn up -- to hide the stain, Nitori realises. He sits up too, in the middle of the bed. He bites his thumbnail and stares at his knees, the mattress bouncing as Nagisa gets up and goes to his closet.

   He has to ask, his voice wavering. "What's going to happen in a few minutes?"

   "We'll talk about it," Nagisa says, over his shoulder, like this is something people just talk about.

oOo

   When Nitori goes down to the kitchen, there's a girl sitting at the table.

   He hovers in the doorway, unsure of what to do, but Nagisa told him to get a drink and his brain is so frazzled that he isn't letting anything get in the way of such a clear objective right now. Not even this girl, reading a magazine and completely failing to notice him. Nitori has never seen her before, but she's slender and blonde; definitely a Hazuki, but not the one who drove him back to school after the arcade. Definitely sitting at her own kitchen table while Nitori waltzes in like he owns the place, passing her by without a greeting and making a beeline straight for the fridge.

   "Hey," she says, just as soon as he gets a hand around the carton and thinks he's safe. "You're Rei, right?"

   Nitori straightens up. He turns around, still guiltily holding the carton. "I'm not."

   That's all he can say. He doesn't know where his manners have gone.

   "Oh." She scrunches up her whole face, deep in thought. Elbows on the table, she points up towards the ceiling while she thinks, and then slowly rotates her wrist so she's pointing at him instead, steady like she's aiming a gun. "You're Gou."

   "Kou. And she's a girl," he tells her, turning around to place the carton on the counter. He goes onto his tip-toes, reaching to the high cupboard for a glass. "I'm Ai. Nice to meet you," he tacks on automatically, even though it isn't that nice to meet her at the moment and he wonders when Nagisa is coming back.

   "Oh, you're Ai!" She perks up, suddenly much more interested. "You're the one who took my little brother dancing in the middle of the night and got him grounded."

   "We weren't dancing--" he starts, but then her eyebrows raise practically into her hairline and he gives up protesting. "Yes," he says instead, watching the smoothie glug glug glug into the glass. Nagisa hadn't mentioned being grounded. He shifts from foot to foot. "I guess that... was me."

   "You look like you're about to pass out." She closes her magazine, the pages fluttering - he can hear them. "Do you need an Aspirin or something?"

   "I'm fine," Nitori says, placidly, but before he can add on a thank you, he hears Nagisa coming down the stairs. The very next second, he's flinging himself into the room, bounding in like... like normal. His hair is mussed and he's wearing different shorts than he was before, but he doesn't look like his world's been turned upside down or anything, and Nitori tells himself it's a good thing. It's a good thing that he's the only one who feels like that.

   Nitori grips the counter, hands behind his back, watching Nagisa as he snatches the magazine off the table and glances at the cover for a fraction of a second. His sister goes tense as he does, and Nitori clocks her drawn-up shoulders and strange expression as defensiveness just as Nagisa says, "this isn't yours," and tucks it under his arm. She rolls her eyes, but doesn't deny it.

   Then, both of them turn to look at him, and Nitori fumbles for another glass.

   Nagisa comes up next to him, leaning his palms on the counter, the outsides of their arms brushing together. "You didn't get one for me, Ai-chan?" he jokes, but something in his smile changes when he notices that Nitori actually didn't. It turns uneasy. Nitori tries to focus on the drink, but he still manages to slosh some over the side of the glass, stickying the countertop.

oOo

   "I'm sorry."

   They're outside on the bench in Nagisa's garden. Moths fluttering against the windows of the house, the night humid and mild; glass cupped between trembling hands, feet bare - Nitori breaks the silence with an unsteady voice.

   Nagisa drags his toes through the dry grass beneath them. "What for?"

   "We can't be friends anymore after this, can we?" Nitori sounds like he's about to cry. He bows his head. There's pressure behind his eyes and at the bridge of his nose, his throat aching with the strain of it. "I ruined it. And now everything is awkward."

   He can see it now, their lives on a film reel. After this, he won't be able to look at Nagisa without remembering him with his lips parted and his face flushed, and Nagisa will notice him averting his gaze and blushing and he'll be so embarrassed he can't look Nitori in the eye either. And then, Nitori thinks, they'll gradually drift apart until they see each other at the grocery store in ten years, probably married to other people, or something, and they'll both remember what they had and how it all got ruined because Nitori didn't know when to stop.

  He sobs, dry. A weak little hiccup. He can't help it.

  "It's only awkward because you're freaking out." Nitori stares at the grass. Freaking out is a pretty good way to describe it. "And it's okay. You're allowed to freak out. I'm kind of freaking out too. But not in a bad way?"

   Nitori nods along, even though Nagisa doesn't sound like he's freaking out. He's a little jittery around the edges, maybe, but that could be blamed on the breeze; other than that, he's stable. Which is weird, because Nitori has heard things about hormones and how they can go haywire at times like this, which means Nagisa is the one with the excuse, and yet he's just sitting there. Nitori can feel his eyes on him even though he isn't looking back.

   "Not in a bad way," Nitori repeats, his voice distant. Empty. Swollen with tears, but he's still not giving in, even if he means he has to press the heels of his palms against his eyes. He's not going to be the kind of person who cries after--

   He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and curls his hands into fists. "We just had sex, didn't we?"

   "I don't know," Nagisa admits. Nitori's head snaps up, eyes wide. He's clinging to Nagisa's every word like he needs them to live. "I don't think so. It was just an accident." Nagisa fidgets like it pains him to sit still. He moves closer, then further away again, and then finally settles on pulling his legs up so he can sit with them crossed, right up on the bench. "Actually I thought it was nice, until..."

   "Until I..." Nitori trails off, nodding and sniffling. He doesn't have to finish that thought aloud. "I really wish we'd talked about it. Before. That happened."

   "Me too. It just sort of came out of nowhere." Nagisa covers his mouth with his hand and looks off to the side, hunched over some. "I came out of nowhere."

   Nitori surrenders to a tiny laugh. "I know." He sobers quickly. "But it was because of me, wasn't it? I was... squirming around on you and I didn't stop even though it was starting to feel really good for me too." His voice has been getting lower, more hushed with every word like he's telling a dirty secret. It's barely a whisper when he adds, "I contributed. A lot."

   "Yeah," Nagisa agrees, easily. "But I don't think it counts as sex. I mean, not really. But I'm not a scientist." He pauses, thoughtful. "Maybe we should ask Rei-chan."

   Nitori really has no idea where these laughs are being pulled from. Probably the part of his brain that immediately pictures Rei in a lab coat, with a clipboard, taking notes, making diagrams. "Please don't ask him."

   "Maybe we should," Nagisa insists, grinning. He settles in against Nitori's side and Nitori accepts him, almost on autopilot, with an arm around his shoulders. Nagisa peers up at him. "You could tell him in extreme detail what I looked like and maybe he'd want to see it for himself."

   "Wow." Nitori gasps at the mental image. "That's so dirty, Nagisa."

   Nagisa just cuddles closer, clearly in silent agreement. "But is it still okay?" he asks, hesitant. "To talk about him like that?"

   "Sure." Nitori kisses his temple because it seems like the right thing to do. His hair smells just like peaches. "I don't mind."

   "So we're still friends?"

   "We're still friends." Nitori has to put his glass down on the ground so that he can be enveloped in the right kind of hug - tight, squeezing, and Nagisa lets out a disappointed little whine when they pull apart again. Nitori gives a sheepish smile, clasping his hands in his lap. "You probably think I'm really stupid for crying about this. I really thought you were mad."

   Nagisa bites his lip. "I thought you were mad."

   "Let... let me make it up to you." Nitori turns side on, sits up on his knees and takes Nagisa's wrists in his hands and holds them, earnest. Their eyes lock - Nagisa's wide and confused. "I should've been better. If- if it was your first time I shouldn't have embarrassed you. I should've done it right."

   Nagisa's brows crease. "If it was my first time?"

   "Well..." Nitori shrugs, apologetically. He doesn't let go for Nagisa's wrists, but he softens his grip, just a little. "You're so experienced."

   "No I'm not." Nagisa shakes his head. "You're the only person I've ever kissed more than once." He pauses, looking as stricken as Nitori feels. "Okay, that sounds bad. I just meant-- it was just some weird experimenting. Well, experimenting for them. And it was in middle school. I didn't know what I was doing until we started, um, hooking up. It wasn't serious, like..." He wiggles one hand free and gestures between the two of them.

   "You didn't have to tell me that," Nitori says, after a slight pause. His fingers go slack, and Nagisa's wrists slip from them.

   Nagisa shrugs. "I don't mind telling you things, Ai-chan, you should know that by now." Nitori feels himself blush a little when he remembers the swimming magazines, and he doesn't doubt Nagisa at all. "Anyway, I just wanted to be good at it for someone special." With his newly-freed arms, he points a finger of each hand at Nitori like pistols. "Like you! Or Rei-chan."

   "You are good at it," Nitori insists. "You're the best kisser ever. I mean, I don't have anyone to compare you to, but I'm pretty sure!"

   "You're really good at compliments," Nagisa says, beaming. Nitori beams back at him. He can't help it. "And you're really good at making me want to kiss you again right now."

   Relief floods through Nitori, diffusing up his spine and to the tips of his fingers. "So we're still friends who kiss."

   "I mean..." Nagisa rests his elbow on the back of the bench, and puts his chin in his hand. His eyes glint. "There's always room for improvement, right?"

Chapter Text

   Nitori tries to tell himself that he'll spend the whole summer on volunteer work, researching for volunteer work, training, looking into universities, and preparing for all of his upcoming classes; but all Nagisa has to do is text i'm bored, come make out with me, and it's like a tug on a metaphorical leash.

   Nagisa's parents don't even seem to notice that their son is entertaining one friend in particular more than the others - they never knock on the door, or barge in at six in the morning and find them in bed, curled up together and half-naked with an empty pizza box on the floor and a collapsing stack of swimming magazines in the corner. Nagisa never seems to worry about it, so Nitori doesn't either. He wonders, sometimes, if they really are that preoccupied with work or if they're aware that Nagisa is having a whirlwind summer not-romance and would rather leave him to his own devices. Or maybe they're just lucky. 

   Entire days pass by like that; their shift at the shelter, then dinner, bath, goodbye kiss, "it's not like you have to go to home", impromptu sleepover...

   It's the stickiest summer they've seen in years. So when Nitori stays the night, it's only natural that they discard their shirts, and then, as the days pass and the nights grow hotter, their sleep shorts too.

   And after that, it's a barrier discarded altogether.

   Because when Nitori wakes up in his underwear with kicked-off sheets and decides he wants to start the day with a kiss, he can't exactly tell Nagisa to put his clothes on first. So he bumps their foreheads together, softly, and his eyes are closed but he can feel the sweep of Nagisa's eyelashes against his face as he blinks himself awake. He pulls the smaller boy closer by the waist, easily, their bare skin brushing all over, the hard muscle of Nagisa's lower abdomen against his and then -- wow -- a startling insight into why Nagisa is always up and in the shower nine-out-of-ten mornings after Nitori stays over.

   "Do you always wake up like that?" Nitori asks, genuinely, as Nagisa shifts to bury his face in Nitori's neck, nuzzling at the bruised-bitten skin there.

   "You caught me," Nagisa tells him, and throws a leg over Nitori's hip.

oOo

   The second time Nitori makes Nagisa come is just a few minutes later, and he thinks the 'makes' is an understatement. He doesn't pull the blond towards his climax like the moon pulls the tide; he just is, underneath Nagisa and all wrapped up in his arms, and he feels it approaching by the way Nagisa starts to gasp into their kisses and grinds harder against Nitori's hip. It's so hazy and hot outside that they're sticking to each other and damp and it's anyone's guess how they got here, like this, but it doesn't matter, Nitori thinks, because they always seem to.

   And then those words tumble out of cherry-flavoured lips all at once, between two breaths, "Is it okay if I--?"

   Nitori doesn't make him wait. "It's okay," he says, and opens his eyes to watch the way Nagisa's close, his golden lashes fanning across flushed cheeks.

   He makes quite the picture. The erratic flex and pulse of his abdomen and the trembling of his thighs against Nitori's bare hips - he tries to capture this, to save it in his memory because he will definitely need this image in, oh, about five minutes when he wriggles out from under Nagisa and makes a beeline for the shower where he can finally relieve some of the tension that's been building in him for as long as Nagisa has been sitting atop him, taking his pleasure.

   "Wow," Nagisa breathes out when, Nitori assumes, he gets his ability to speak back. He shifts himself to lie on the bed instead of on top of Nitori's body, head on the pillow but eye contact unbroken, still smiling like he actually, physically can't stop. "That was really good."

   "It was?" Nitori tries to preserve some modesty and drags the sheet up from where it's pooled at the bottom of the bed, letting it rest around their hips.

   He's fidgeting a little, and he knows Nagisa has noticed when he sees the slow, proud smile that unfurls. Nagisa moves closer, making a sort of mm sound while he does; and then he rests his head on Nitori's chest like he's worn out. "It feels so much better than when I do it on my own, you know?"

   "Y-yes," Nitori nods, and then blushes hotly. "I mean, that's what I've heard."

   "Well it's true. And I don't mind," Nagisa all but declares, (he is not quiet), and his hand skitters down to Nitori's waistband, fingertips brushing the elastic, "if you want me to take care of you, too. More directly?"

   Somehow their lower halves have become tangled together - in some ways it's inevitable, considering they're sharing a single bed. Nitori takes the opportunity to tease the back of his calf against Nagisa's leg - teasing the way Nagisa is teasing at the band of his underwear. It feels surprisingly good. Intimate. His arousal isn't dying down at all and he blushes all over again.

   "What would you do?"

   "Whatever you want," Nagisa promises. "I'd do it like how you do it when you're alone. You could tell me. Show me how?"

   Nitori bites his lip. "Nagisa..."

   "No?" Nagisa kisses Nitori's neck, but holds back on the teeth. He must know that those are the key to Nitori's heart, by now; or the key to his underwear, at the very least.

   Nitori tilts his head back, giving better access. He watches the sunbeams shift across the ceiling. "...I think you would laugh."

   "At what?" Nagisa asks between kisses. His lips travel up to Nitori's earlobe, and then down again until he reaches the spot he /really/ likes -- and then he lingers, does nothing but press one chaste kiss after another against the healing bruise that's already there.

   "At my face... the face I'd make." Nitori can barely admit it, it sends embarrassment down to the tips of his toes. "And my, um... noises. I don't really know what I sound like..."

   "Your face is always cute, Ai-chan." Nagisa comes up to eye level again, and Nitori catches the earnest look, his eyes way too bright for his time in the morning. "And so are your noises."

   "You're seducing me," Nitori says, shyly, but he fumbles to place his own hand over Nagisa's on his abdomen, sliding it down, down...

   He's had a hundred million fantasies, but none of them quite compare to the way it feels. None of them took into consideration the way his heart would be beating so fast; the ever-present and reassuring warmth of Nagisa's body pressed alongside his; or the way Nagisa whimpers at the contact, at the moment when Nitori's back arches and his breath hitches, as though their pleasure is one and the same.

oOo

   Nitori summons all of his willpower while he's standing at bathroom sink.

   The room is swirling with steam from the shower, the water warming and the little window closed. Beside him, Nagisa is preparing to go in, already undressed with a towel around his waist. They're sharing the mirror; Nitori brushing his teeth, Nagisa taking a quick picture of himself, and Nitori really hopes he's keeping him out of the frame because he doesn't want to see this online later, shower with ai-chan!!!! ≧◡≦, Nitori with a mouthful of toothpaste and fresh lovebites all over his bare chest, looking even darker under the harsh lighting.

   "We have to stop this when we go back to school. T-this," he clarifies, pointing at the most obnoxious of the lovebites. Furious, deep red on the side of his neck, and so huge that he can't tell if it's an amalgamation of several smaller ones, or if Nagisa unhinged his jaw at some point during their last make-out session.

   "How come?" Nagisa asks, pouting at the camera. Nitori can see the caption now; ai-chan asked me to stop marking him up, why?? ┐(‘～`；)┌

   Nitori spits into the sink. "Rin-senpai noticed."

   Mouth dropping open in surprise, Nagisa stops what he's doing and turns to him. "You didn't say anything!"

   With a shrug, Nitori starts filling up his glass to rinse. "He thought they were from Kou-kun, at first, and he was mad. But now he knows they're not. So I didn't think it would matter until after the summer." He watches the tap water drain, swirling, and there's a flash as Nagisa takes another picture. "And I didn't want to stop, but... people started talking about it at practice and I think we should be more, um, discreet. I'll miss them," he adds, tracing his fingertips over some of his current favourites. "They made me think of you all week, during the semester."

   There's the tap-tap of Nagisa typing something, but Nitori looks over just in time to see his faint smile. ""Aw, quit tempting me, Ai-chan." His fingers flying over the on-screen keyboard; he doesn't even look up to speak. "I need to shower or I'll be gross all day."

   Nitori shifts from one foot to the other, smiling at Nagisa's hazy reflection in the mirror. "We could, um." He turns off the tap and moves to stand behind Nagisa, wrapping his arms around his waist, resting his chin on his bare shoulder. It feels natural, and Nagisa doesn't react to it at all until Nitori says, "We could save water, if you want."

   "Now who's seducing who?" Nagisa jokes, but he puts his phone away, and Nitori's heart only beats faster.