Archive of Our Own ^beta

The best thing about Shin’s room, everyone agrees, is the air conditioning—especially during the middle of summer. While the rest of the building has it, yes, there’s something about it that works better in there than anywhere else. It’s led to a lot of loud complaints from Lu, and a lot of silent shrugs from Mr. Sakamoto. Shin argues that since he got here first, he should get the better room. Besides, he likes it in here; he’s carved it into a space of his own.

While that’s usually the best thing about Shin’s room, right now it’s Seba, who’s climbing onto Shin’s lap and kissing him with everything he has. There’s a lot to take in: his lips, soft; his breath, warm; his hands, entangled in Shin’s hair. It’s good enough that it circles back around to being annoying. Why is Shin even doing this in the first place? Why is Seba even doing this in the first place? Shin’s never been able to get a proper read on the guy, despite literally being able to read minds. That hood he sometimes wears doesn’t help, either.

Seba lets out a low noise and deepens the kiss. Ah, that’s why Shin’s doing this. He relaxes his body and loses himself in it, this feeling, one that threatens to overflow and spill out of him. It doesn’t matter why Seba is as long as he’s doing it. It’ll be something to ponder over later, like Shin has many times before.

They’re there for a while, but not too long. Not that Shin’s counting or anything—he’s too preoccupied for that. It feels like both forever and an instant, when suddenly—

Someone opens the door. Without knocking, of course.

“Hey Shin, where did you put my—” Lu starts, and then promptly stops when she finally processes the scene. “What are you…”

“L-Lu…” Shin barely gets out, pushing Seba off him to the ground with an “Ow!”.

Lu’s first thought is, Oh my God.

Shin’s first thought is, Oh no.

Seba’s first thought is, Oh shit.

Shin trudges through the next morning with as much enthusiasm as someone with a bad hangover: full of misery and dread. Mr. Sakamoto is out doing an errand with his family and Lu hasn’t woken up yet, leaving him alone to man the register. While he would usually enjoy it—he gets a sense of satisfaction that he’s trusted enough to handle it on his own—it lets what happened last night simmer in his mind. Well, at least Lu isn’t here to relentlessly tease him. That’s something that’s soon to come, though, as the minutes tick by. It’s going by both too fast and too slow at the same time. It’s slow today as well, so there’s nothing to distract him. That’s why Shin nearly collapses from relief when he sees Mafuyu stride into the store with a purpose.

“Oh, hey there Mafuyu,” he says, keeping his voice steady. “What’s up?” Mafuyu stops by on occasion to buy something and visit (although he would never admit the latter), but it’s always good to see him.

“Are you in love with my brother?” Mafuyu demands in lieu of a greeting.

Shin blinks. “I’m sorry, what?” That was not what he was expecting him to say. A ‘hello’ would’ve been nice, and not cause his heart to sink to the bottom of his chest.

“I said, ‘Are you in love with my brother?’.”

“I heard you the first time,” Shin says. “But what are you talking about?” Where in the world did he get that from?

“Take a look for yourself.” Mafuyu shoves his phone in Shin’s face. Because of course she did, Lu sent him a text last night: shin was making out w ur bro lol followed by a string of emoticons. Shin imagines that Lu actually was laughing while typing that; he can still hear her even now.

“I’m gonna kill her later,” he mutters. It then hits him. “Hang on, how did you get her number?” He didn’t even know the two of them talked to each other besides their occasional interactions at Sakamoto’s.

“That’s not important,” Mafuyu says. “Listen, I don’t care if you’re screwing my brother or whatever, but—”

“I am not screwing your brother!” Shin interrupts, cheeks heating up. “Why would you even think that?”

“That’s what adults do when they’re with each other, right?”

“But we aren’t—”

“Anyway,” Mafuyu continues, “you could’ve at least told me that you two are together. Do you not trust me or something?”

“I do trust you,” Shin says. And he does. Mafuyu’s someone he would call a friend, as pathetic as being a friend with a fourteen-year-old is. His life isn’t exactly the most conventional, though. “Or I would, if Seba and I actually were.”

“You don’t have to keep lying. The cat’s already out of the bag,” Mafuyu says. “How long have you been dating? What’s it like? Do you love him?”

“We are not dating!” Shin shouts, slamming his hands on the counter as he does so.

“Who’s not dating?” Seba asks as he enters the store, because Shin can’t have anything nice today. What’s up with them?

“Go away,” Shin says. Seba’s the last person he wants to see right now.

Seba raises his eyebrows. “Hello to you as well. Thanks for the warm welcome.”

Mafuyu narrows his eyes. “Natsuki, what are you doing here?”

“Hey there, Mafuyu.” Seba ruffles his hair. “I stopped by to visit Shin, but it seems I’m not wanted.”

“Don’t touch me,” Mafuyu grumbles, pushing his hand away and fixing his hair. “You’re going to get me all dirty.”

“Whatever,” Seba says. “Anyway, what were you two talking about?”

“Lu told me about what happened,” Mafuyu says triumphantly, like he finally managed to one-up him.

If Seba’s affected by what he said, he doesn’t show it; he sighs and says, “Yeah, I figured she’d blab.”

“Mr. Sakamoto’s going to kill me,” Shin mumbles to himself, already in the deepest pits of despair. There’s no guessing how many people she’s already told—maybe even the whole world. Broadcasted it on a billboard or something. It sounds like something she’d do.

“Shin’s not answering my questions, though,” Mafuyu says.

“I am, but you aren’t listening to me!”

“Mafuyu tends to do that,” Seba informs.

Mafuyu shoots him a dirty look. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you two are dating. Am I a joke to you?”

“Hang on, hang on, stop!” Shin says. “Okay, so maybe it happened once or twice—”

“Or twice?” Mafuyu echoes, horrified, like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him before.

“More than that, actually,” Seba says. Smug bastard that he is. Mafuyu whips his head to stare at him, and he shrugs.

“—but that doesn’t mean we’re dating,” Shin finishes. Firm, to illustrate his point. Maybe that’ll make Mafuyu finally understand.

Seba studies him. He has very nice eyes, Shin suddenly realizes, dark and mysterious but mesmerizing all the same. But that’s not what’s important right now. What’s most concerning are his thoughts. What is he talking about?

“Are we not?” he says.

Everything screeches to a halt. “What do you mean, ‘are we not’?” Shin says. “We aren’t.”

“But we are.” Seba looks at him with a concerned expression on his face. “Dating.”

“Wha— No we aren’t?” It wasn’t meant to come out as a question, but it does.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Mafuyu asks, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

“I came here to ask if you wanted to go public, since Lu caught us last night,” Seba says. “Did you seriously not know?”

“I think I would know if we were together,” Shin says. What does Seba mean by that…? Is Shin not hearing him correctly or something?

“Remember that time a month and a half ago, when we were walking home after going to the arcade? You asked me about what was on my mind since my thoughts were so loud.”

“I guess so?” Shin says. Seba was stupidly good at all of the games there; he walked out with enough tickets to buy one of the big prizes.

“I then looked you in the eyes and said, ‘I like you. Let’s go out’,” Seba says slowly, like he’s trying to explain it to a child. “You then said, ‘Huh? Oh, sure’.”

“I thought you meant, like, go out and do something!” And go out and do something they did. Seba took Shin to a history museum; they spent the majority of their time in the weapons section hand in hand, where he extensively studied them with a glint in his eyes. Shin didn’t mind, because it was pretty cool hearing him rave about them and how ahead of their time they were. He’s usually so disinterested in everything that seeing him so passionate was enough to make the trip worth it.

Seba stares at him for a few seconds, enough to make Shin squirm. Is he only pretending to be this stupid?

“I heard that!” Shin says.

“I told you I liked you,” Seba says. Idiotically, Shin’s heart flutters in his chest. Seba likes him, which shouldn’t make him feel the way he does—happy.

“You can like someone platonically,” Shin insists.

Seba runs a hand down his face and groans. “You’ve slept over at my apartment.”

“So you are sleeping together!” Mafuyu cries out in victory.

“We are not!” Shin snaps. He remembers that night as clear as can be, though. Seba invited him over for dinner and Shin accepted, because that’s the polite thing to do. He was a surprisingly good cook—better than Shin, who didn’t consider himself too bad at it. Seba showed a few projects he had laying around the house and then led Shin to the bed and kissed him senseless. Shin wasn’t planning on staying for the night, but Seba’s arms were warm and he was so tired that he didn’t fight it. He was late for work the next day, but overall he had a good time.

“We’ve kissed. Gone on dates. Held hands.” Seba ticks off a finger with each word he says. “If we aren’t dating, then I don’t know what else is.”

It’s true that they’ve done all of those, yes. Shin considers it. From what he’s seen from movies and in real life after leaving the lab, it’s true that people who are with each other typically do that sort of thing. But friends can do it as well. That must be the case, since that’s what he and Seba are doing. It doesn’t matter that he’s not doing this with anyone else. Right?

…Right?

“Oh my God, we are dating,” Shin says with his head in his hands.

Mafuyu’s laughter is eerily akin to Lu’s from last night, bordering on the verge of hysterics. “He seriously didn’t know!” he says with tears in his eyes, clutching his stomach and pointing at him.

“Do you… not want to be?” Seba asks. “I’m not going to force you or anything.” Am I making him uncomfortable? In that moment, he looks so much younger than Shin’s ever seen from him before, unsure and awkward and scared.

Shin likes Seba. Enough time has passed that he’d consider him a friend, even with how much they argue and the whole ‘Seba-trying-to-kidnap-and-kill-him’ thing. He likes that they’ve been hanging out more often, plus their whole… arrangement. If he rejected him now, would what they’ve been doing stop? He doesn’t want that.

“No, we can,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

“Oh,” Seba says. “Well, good.” There’s a ghost of a smile on his face. He doesn’t do so very often, so Shin’s been keeping count of each and every one. They're… nice, if he really thinks about it.

Shin’s face feels hot as he stares at the ground; Mafuyu’s laughter fades into the background. He smiles and thinks to himself—Well, maybe this doesn’t sound too bad.