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“Kei! Kei! Light of my life who loves and values me and doesn’t want me to die!”
Kei closes his eyes briefly, then fixes his stare at the ceiling, as though the ceiling can sympathise with his distress. He does — love and value Tetsurou, that is. A whole lot, a whole lot more than anyone, least of all Tetsurou himself, probably knows. But, he thinks as he replaces the vague fast food receipt he’s been using as a bookmark and places his book down, he loves and values Tetsurou just a little more when he’s not shrieking that he’s going to die whenever he gets cornered in the bathroom by a spider.
If you ask Tetsurou, he’s not scared of bugs. A statement that goes noted alongside him being 6’6”, the big spoon and against karaoke, in a file tucked in Kei’s brain titled “whatever helps you sleep at night”. If you ask Kei, however, he’ll roll his eyes and tell you that yes, technically Tetsurou is not afraid of bugs. Technically a spider isn’t a bug, it’s an arachnid, which Tetsurou will dive into a spiel about every time Kei rescues him from whatever traumatised spider has accidentally trapped his not-quite-6’6” boyfriend in their cramped bathroom.
Kei appears in the bathroom doorway and levels an unimpressed stare at Tetsurou, who’s currently squatting with his bare feet on the toilet seat, eyes fixed firmly on the dark floor, near the shower door. Kei sighs slightly, leaning against the door, and Tetsurou glances at him sheepishly.
“You know—”
“Yes, I do,” Kei deadpans, before his boyfriend can jump into the aforementioned spiel. The spider really is tiny, maybe the size of his pinky fingernail, and remarkably slow, he realises as he kneels next to it. Apparently not tiny or slow enough to not pose a serious threat to his 24 year old man-child of a boyfriend.
“Can you just kill it this time?” Tetsurou whines, a hell of a sight still in his work clothes, tie loosened slightly, knees tucked under his chin as he pouts down at Kei from his vantage point on the toilet seat. Kei doesn’t respond, instead putting a hand in front of the spider and gently nudging it’s back with the other. The spider scurries forward onto his palm, and Tetsurou doesn’t hold back on his exclamations.
“Kei, they just keep coming back in when you don’t kill them,” he practically wails, his pout audible, and Kei’s lips twitch towards a smile in spite of himself.
“I have no idea,” Kei drawls as he straightens up, spider in his cupped hands, “how you even see them considering every surface in this place is either dark or filthy.”
“I have tunnel vision for them. It’s a survival instinct.” Kei’s eyes meet his, still mirthless, and Tetsurou smirks despite his face still being pale.
“It can’t be tunnel vision, or you wouldn’t get anything done. You know, you’re constantly within two metres of a spider. If it were tunnel vision you would never leave this toilet seat again.”
The smirk vanishes in record speed.
Kei hooks his ankle around the bathroom door and nudges it open (Tetsurou isn’t moving from the safety of the toilet seat until he knows for sure the spider is out of a window, and even then he’ll spend as much time as possible on various elevated surfaces of their flat, in something similar to ‘the floor is lava’ except that, again, he’s a 6’5” 24 year old and not a toddler.)
The spider goes out of the kitchen window, and Kei firmly closes the window behind it (as much as he’ll laugh at Tetsurou, he doesn’t really want him to be terrified permanently).
“Alright. Coast is clear,” he calls out into the flat, gaze not leaving the view from the window. They’re only on the second floor, but the kitchen window is big enough to watch the people walking below and feel like they’re in a world of their own, a tiny, overpriced flat but a space belonging to them and them only nonetheless.
There’s a slight thud (presumably of Tetsurou leaving the safety of the toilet seat), the sound of him half-falling down the stairs and then Tetsurou crashes into Kei like a whirlwind, knocking the breath out of him in more ways than one. Strong arms wrap around Kei’s waist as he huffs indignantly, even as he feels his face heat up, and Tetsurou’s cheek presses against his own, nuzzling too close and too warm for the summer heat, but who is Kei to push Tetsurou away? When has Kei ever been able to push Tetsurou away, in six damn years?
Kei huffs again, quieter and fonder, and just slightly leans into Tetsurou. And Tetsurou feels it, even the slightest show of affection, because if he has tunnel vision for anything, it’s Kei. And he’s an idiot, an idiot that shrieks over spiders and doesn’t even know how to walk down stairs without causing a commotion, but Kei… Kei’s alright carrying spiders out for him, he guesses. He guesses it’s worth it.