Work Text:
A gap year was a good idea, Nijimura supposes. It helped put off finding a place to stay for his years at uni, and putting it off further still is deliciously tempting because it proves to be stressful work. His attempts so far have been fruitless, and maybe that’s why he readily takes on the offer of a shared lodging arrangement when the landlord finally calls him back.
The only place available is a suite with another occupant already, but it’s a two person accommodation with separate bedrooms and hot water and that sounds pretty fucking dandy to him.
“I do wish to inform you,” the landlord, Yamada, says over the phone, “that our residing tenant has been claimed...difficult, by previous lodgers.” He sighs. “We’ve got a vault worth of complaints.”
Nijimura chuckles. “You don’t have to worry about filing any from me - I’m used to dealing with troublesome people." The boarding house is too close to the university he’s attending to turn down, so he comes prepared for the worst roommate possible with a smile.
He’s not prepared in the slightest when he walks into the apartment to find Haizaki Shougo lying on the couch - their couch, he realises with a start - with a game controller in his hands and no pants on.
“Shougo-kun,” Yamada sighs. “I told you your new flatmate was coming today, and you didn’t even clean up at all.”
“Aw, Mikio-chan, don’t you think it’s best they see me for who I really am so they can run off without pretense?” Nijimura can hear the mirth in his voice that has somehow lasted all these years without evolving too much and feels slightly shell-shocked.
“I don’t know why I put up with you,” Yamada mutters, then louder, “At least say hello, even in your indecent state.”
Haizaki yawns and pauses the game, looking jaded when he turns around. Nijimura heaves a deep breath and shrugs at him, as if to say ‘here I am’. Haizaki’s eyebrows shoot up when he recognises him, and he’s still got that awful hairstyle but his face looks a little older, somehow, and Nijimura doesn’t quite know how to deal with that.
Seeing Nijimura’s expression, the old man pats his arm ruefully. “Shougo-kun will show you to your room. Don’t hesitate to ask for anything." He leaves and closes the door quietly behind him. Haizaki is still staring.
“So,” Nijimura says, suitcase handle in his grip, "you going to show me around or what?”
Haizaki stays quiet on the couch, before grabbing a pair of jeans strewn across the floor. “Yeah, gimme a fucking second,” he mumbles, jumps around trying to shimmy into them.
“This way,” he says, and leads him down a hallway that ends forking into three rooms. “My room, your room, bathroom,” he points. “There’s a communal laundry downstairs, if you were going to ask.”
“Why are you here?” Nijimura says, because they haven’t even said hello to each other and they’re going to be living together. “You’re in your last year of high school, what are you doing moving out -”
“I dropped out.” Nijimura feels his heart sinking.
“When?”
“End of last year. There was trouble at home, so I quit and I’ve been here ever since.”
Did his mum kick him out? What the hell did Haizaki do? Nijimura wants to know desperately, but he doesn’t want to ask so soon - Haizaki doesn’t look ready to disclose anything, either.
Instead, he wheels his case through the middle of the three doorways.
Thankfully, there’s a stark contrast in the amount of shit covering the rest of the apartment and Nijimura’s room. In fact, the only thing dirtying it is the leopard print thong on the bed. He turns his gaze on Haizaki, who scratches the back of his neck.
“Ah, yeah, sorry. Had a guest over last night.”
(He doesn’t look the least bit sorry.)
“Is there a reason,” Nijimura says coolly, “you couldn’t do that in your own bed?”
“Well,” he starts devilishly, “I didn’t want to clean up - she looked like a squirter, see -”
For the first time in four years, Nijimura swings his fist at Haizaki.
He dodges, and Nijimura notes that he’s gotten better, but it’s not quite far enough and he still ends up winded on the floor.
Once he’s got his breath back, Haizaki laughs and looks up at Nijimura with a smile and a hand clutching his stomach.
“You’ve still got it, huh?”
Nijimura chucks the thong at his face and he realises he’s smiling, too.
-
Living with Haizaki is...weird.
It’s not utter shit, because Haizaki can cook (it’s a happy surprise; apparently he taught himself over the years) and they get random trays of snacks left at the door for his first two weeks
(“Mikio always gets so excited when there’s new meat,” Haizaki says as he stuffs a lemon square in his mouth. Nijimura wrinkles his nose at the crumbs that go flying when he keeps talking. “Once a guy only stayed a fortnight and left, then the next person came so I got a whole month of this - it was great.”)
It’s chaos at the start, because it’s like forcing Haizaki to come to practise at Teiko except for twenty four hours, seven days a week, and they bicker so much Nijimura worries Yamada will kick both of them out. It lessens after the initial clash, though, even if Haizaki still breaks into his underwear supply when he’s out of clean pairs (“Do your own fucking laundry, I have to burn those now you punk.”) and their sleeping schedules get so mismatched Nijimura will wake up at four in the morning to a hollered “No you stupid FUCK I shot you I shot you!”. But Nijimura wasn’t lying when he said he was good at dealing with difficult people, and Yamada only smiles when he gets handed Haizaki’s video game collection to hide somewhere at his own place.
It’s weird because it’s not utter shit, honestly. It’s weird that Nijimura is living his life right next to Haizaki’s, and he finds out a hell of a lot more about the kid than he ever thought he would.
Things like: he likes the passageway light on when he sleeps so it’s not completely dark, and he wears socks like all the time, even if he didn’t bother to put on pants. And that the reason for that is he once stepped on a bug barefoot in this very apartment and now lives in fear.
The most startling is, of course, not any of those things, but his “job”. But Nijimura doesn’t find out about that until later.
Right now, he’s in the living room looking over his timetable when Haizaki walks in scratching his stomach under his t-shirt, and it’s then Nijimura gets a glimpse of a tattoo.
Seriously? He walks up and shoves Haizaki’s arm out of the way, which earns him a yelp Haizaki will deny later, and pulls the shirt up by the hem unceremoniously.
It’s black, and swirly with fine lines of detail that make some sort of emblem that covers the skin on Haizaki’s right hip and disappears under his waist band. It makes Nijimura think of henna, and he absentmindedly runs his fingers over it.
Haizaki smoked, at one point, undoubtedly drank before anyone else Nijimura knows, so he's not sure why this is as much of a surprise as it is.
“When did you get that?” he demands.
“Last year,” Haizaki says. He flexes his stomach and laughs when Nijimura’s hand jumps along with the tattoo. Nijimura wrenches his hand away as if burned.
“How the hell did you get away with that?” Haizaki isn’t even eighteen until November, and there’s no way his mother would have allowed him to get that done in his second year of high school.
“My friend knew a guy.” Nijimura frowns.
“That’s dangerous. You could have gotten an infection by someone that sketchy, if he was so unprofessional he’d tattoo a sixteen year old.”
Haizaki grins. “But I didn’t.”
Nijimura stares.
“Do you like it?”
It looks good. It makes the v of Haizaki’s hips more of a feature, makes your eyes draw focus to the shadowed dip under the jut of his hipbone. Nijimura finds himself wanting to taste it.
“It looks stupid,” Nijimura says. Haizaki yells after him as he walks into the kitchen.
-
Living with Haizaki goes from weird to downright painful very quickly, the main reason being: Haizaki would probably be a nudist if he could.
Nijimura gets his first eyeful when Haizaki pads into the kitchen in boxer briefs and nothing else; he almost spits out his coffee.
“Put some fucking pants on,” he says when he trusts his voice again. Haizaki raises an eyebrow.
“Um, I’ve been here way longer than you. You can’t tell me how to live.”
Nijimura rolls up his sleeve. “You sure?”
After that encounter with Nijimura’s fist, Haizaki complies
- barely.
He walks around either shirtless with sweats, or pantless with a loose t-shirt and Nijimura has never ground his teeth this much out of sleep.
He’s got a good body. A broad back Nijimura wouldn’t mind draping his calves over, and a slim waist that runs into sharp hipbones and muscular thighs. It’s that good that it’s no surprise Haizaki comes home with a different girl on his arm far too often. The girls always stay so late but Haizaki makes them leave by morning.
The walls are thin and Nijimura tries to think about old people and dying kittens when Haizaki's moans match in time with the rough creaking of the bed.
-
Nijimura finds out about Haizaki’s job when he’s looking for his aftershave in Haizaki’s room (his things have turned up in weirder places, plus Haizaki tends to retaliate when Nijimura confiscates his games) and he finds a plastic packet of white powder that is most definitely not icing sugar.
Haizaki can bake, you see, and would never leave ingredients out of the kitchen.
Nijimura grits his teeth, and decides to wait in the room until Haizaki gets home to confront him. He ends up changing Haizaki’s sheets - who knows the last time he did it himself, and Nijimura doesn’t want to sit on museum archives worth of filth - and is glad that Haizaki isn’t accompanied by a girl when he waltzes in at 11pm.
“Uh,” Haizaki says eloquently. “Yo?” His eyes narrow in on the packet in Nijimura’s hand.
“...shit, Niji -"
“No.” Nijimura clears his throat. “Just - tell me where you got this.”
Haizaki sighs, and plonks down next to him on the bed. “From the supplier. I...Niji, I just deal, I swear.”
Wait. What? “Wait. What?” Nijimura says. Haizaki looks at the package he’s still holding.
“I knew you’d find out sooner or later. It’s who I work for - Yami, not like knowing his name tells you anything - I deal this shit.”
Nijimura has never had to do this sort of thing. “Do you...use it or -” Haizaki shakes his head, and Nijimura has never seen him look so serious.
“Not this. This is the harder stuff. I’m in it for the money.” Nijimura thinks of a younger Haizaki smoking weed and is startled to find it’s a comforting thought compared to this.
“Did your mum find out?” he asks, because if they’re airing out the dirty laundry now he might as well.
Haizaki’s eyes are like mixes of every animal ever caught in the headlights. “No, why - you’re not going to fucking tell her, are you, because you can’t -”
“No, Haizaki,” Nijimura doesn’t like the way Haizaki’s eyes look widened like that. “I thought you were kicked out over something and that’s why you’re staying here. Drug dealing kind of fit the bill.”
Every one of Haizaki's muscles seem to slump. "Good. I mean, nah, but. Yeah. I’m staying here because I don’t want to do this shit living in the same house as my mum. She's in a bad spot and she needs the money so I can't have someone..." Haizaki trails off. "I can't have those shits tracing anything back to where she lives. She's stressed enough as it is."
This is a lot to process. Still, Nijimura nods. "How do you make enough to support yourself as well as her?"
“I get a bit. I’m good at my job,” he smirks, “don’t doubt me, Niji. Plus, I got a steal with rent - Mikio owed me.”
Nijimura quirks a brow. “Yamada-san does coke?”
“No! I saved his dog from drowning once, oh my God.” Haizaki starts laughing and Nijimura wishes he found this whole thing quite as funny.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and looks at the clock. It really is late.
Haizaki says, "Yeah."
They're probably both too tired to be having this conversation, but Nijimura can't stop himself from saying, "You don’t have to keep doing this."
Something sets in Haizaki's jaw. "I’m going to."
“Shougo..”
“I’m going to.” Haizaki shoves away from Nijimura. “You’ve been gone,” he says, distressed, “for years and I never heard from you and now you’re telling me what to do again. You don't get it.”
(You've been gone. The ‘from me’ went unsaid but it’s loud in Nijimura’s head when he finally tries to get to sleep.)
-
The girl Haizaki fucks the next day is far too loud; she drowns out every sound Haizaki makes and her moans are like nails on a chalkboard.
Nijimura shoves his head under his pillow when he realises he was listening out for Haizaki's voice.
-
“You really have to stop bringing people home,” Nijimura says while making coffee the next morning. Haizaki glares.
“What did I say about telling me what to do?” he says, only half threatening through a mouthful of cereal.
“Your job is your problem, and I’ll stay out of it. But I sleep in the room next to you. I hear everything and I need to fucking sleep, okay?”
Haizaki sniggers. “Why don’t you come out with me sometime and we’ll get you laid, too - would that get the stick out of your ass?”
"We're not doing that," Nijimura sighs and rubs his temples. Haizaki leans in with a sneer.
“Or is it you don’t want me to see anyone at all?”
“I don’t want to hear another fake moaning plastic barbie,” Nijimura snaps.
“So guys are fair game?”
Nijimura punches him and walks out of the room before his flush grows visible.
-
Haizaki comes home drunk one night and Nijimura looks at him resignedly before proceeding to clean him up and put him to bed.
Haizaki puts up a fight, all flailing limbs and incoherent garble.
“You’re hot,” his words slur. “You know that?”
“Sure,” Nijimura says offhandedly, trying to force Haizaki’s arms under the covers.
“I mean. In middle school. If I had to pick a guy.”
“Thank you, Haizaki,” he says wryly. He finally manages to get Haizaki to stop squirming, and silently commends himself.
He turns to go, but apparently he celebrated too soon, because there's a hand grabbing his wrist.
“I had this dream, once,” Haizaki’s voice has gotten so low, Nijimura notes idly, “after you’d already left. We totally got it on.” He manages to execute a smirk, even in his drunken state. “It was so fucking hot.”
Nijimura wrenches his hand out of Haizaki’s grasp.
“Go to sleep.”
He closes the door quietly, and runs a shaky hand over his face when he realises he’s gotten hard. He gets himself a glass of water, ignores it as he’s brushing his teeth.
Once under his own covers, he guiltily slides his hand under his waistband.
-
It would have been bad enough, Nijimura fumes inwardly, it would have been fucking bad enough without Haizaki’s change of heart.
Regarding his hair.
The cornrows are gone, and it’s back to silver and fluffy and a fringe that falls in his eyes.
(Nijimura always liked it like that.)
“Why,” he says tightly when Haizaki pulls the milk out of the fridge. Clad only in old basketball shorts (and probably nothing underneath), he looks over at Nijimura.
“You always made fun of my hair, anyway,” he pours himself a glass. “What’s the problem?”
The problem is, it makes you look really fucking good. “I just can’t believe you dyed it back to your natural colour,” Nijimura scoffs. “How girly.”
Milk gets thrown just as Yamada opens the door with a tray of tarts.
-
Haizaki sings in the shower. He sings in the shower and Nijimura is a student, goddamnit - he needs silence to finish this fucking chapter. He's been reading the same line for the last four minutes as Haizaki blasts a rendition of some undoubtably mediocre punk song.
So sue him, Nijimura isn't a huge music person.
He walks up to the bathroom door and raps on it loudly.
"Shut the fuck up," he calls, and is pleased to hear the water shut off as well as the singing.
Good, he thinks, and goes back into his room.
The only reason he looks up from his text book is because it, and the rest of his desk, and shoulder, are getting soaked with water droplets.
"Haizaki," he says exasperatedly, and when he turns around he actually jumps to his feet, because not only is Haizaki's hair dripping wet, but the rest of him is as well, and the towel low on his hips looks so loosely tied.
"Sorry to bother you when you're having so much fun," Haizaki says, slyly, "but did you say something while I was in the shower?"
Yeah, Nijimura thinks. Yeah, he almost definitely did. But Nijimura feels slow in the head looking at his chest like that, water sliding over his tattoo just to soak the towel, and he feels unwarrantedly angry.
“Stop being naked all the time,” he grits out, and Haizaki laughs and shakes his hair dry like a dog, spraying droplets everywhere.
“What are you gonna do about it, senpai?” His grin is lopsided, and he looks so fucking good in that moment the snap in Nijimura’s resolve is practically audible.
Haizaki slams into the nearest wall with the force of the kiss and everything is blurry and fast but most importantly, Haizaki is kissing back.
(Nijimura lets it all go to hell, because Haizaki’s a guy and would have noticed his hard on soon enough anyway, and that smirk in particular always pissed him off.)
He never thought it would cumulate like this, with desperate grinding and biting kisses but he’s not complaining, and pays it no further thought when Haizaki slides down his body and yanks down his jeans and boxers. He gets him in his mouth so quickly Nijimura is going to have to get Yamada to call the maintenance guy about the dent in the wall his head makes, but right now Haizaki is tonguing sloppily all over his cock, mouth dirtier than Nijimura could have ever anticipated. Maybe it’s not even that superb, not the most stellar blow job of all time, but it’s the fact it’s Haizaki and Haizaki’s mouth and hands and hair in his fist that has him coming down his throat in record time.
His throat, Nijimura thinks headily, and they’re already on his bed before he can think any more.
(He gets to see the whole tattoo, and it goes down far enough Nijimura wonders where the inker put their hands while stabbing around Haizaki’s crotch with a needle. He licks it, laves his tongue flat against the plane of skin and almost gets a concussion when Haizaki shoves his hips up so suddenly.)
-
Actually having sex instead of seeing half of Haizaki’s bare skin from afar all the time is a big improvement, on his life, really. He doesn’t feel like the world’s most sexually repressed nineteen year old anymore - nor the guiltiest, because he doesn’t have to jerk off to the thought of Haizaki while painfully awfully aware that the boy is just through the wall. It doesn’t improve upon the horniness issue - if anything it enhances it - but at least he has an outlet now. Another good thing is that it means Haizaki has an outlet, too, an all hours easy access outlet and he becomes slightly more tolerable to be around, albeit insufferable in bed. But, it’s the price he has to pay.
“What are you making?”
Nijimura slips his hands into the front pockets of Haizaki’s jeans and takes pride in the way he stiffens. Haizaki breathes out slowly, leans back into him slightly.
“Jus’ a stir fry.” Nijimura hums, presses his mouth onto Haizaki’s neck. He starts sucking gently. Haizaki trembles barely and his stirring hand stills.
“Don’t...”
Nijimura scrapes his teeth over wet skin. “You don’t mean that.”
He doesn’t, and dinner ends up getting burnt.
-
Nijimura has a part time job working as a sales assistant, which actually has hours and a paycheck, unlike Haizaki’s sporadic and sometimes dormant line of work.
Checking his phone during his breaks always turns out to be a bad move on his part.
[5:18] why are you so late
[5:22] niji
[5:26] niji
[5:27] senpai
[5:31] ….that always gets you
[5:40] u ded
[5:40] ??
[5:49] n
[5:49] i
[5:49] j
[5:49] i
[5:49] m
[5:49] u
[5:49] r
[5:50] a
What a shit, Nijimura thinks.
coworker got sick, i have to stay until half past six
[5:59] hurry up im bored
that means you want to do it, right
[6:00] no, i want to plan our wedding
[6:01] what the hell else dipshit
Nijimura will make him pay for that later, but for now he silences his phone and ignores it just to piss Haizaki off.
-
Haizaki tops. Haizaki goes balls deep and makes Nijimura’s toes curl and fucks him up against the wall, once, all straining muscles and dripping sweat. But he yields under Nijimura’s hands, and his mouth, and looks every bit like he likes it when Nijimura pins him down and leads - so he never really ruled out Haizaki wanting to take it.
“Fuck,” he says hoarsely, and Nijimura wonders if he’s let anyone else do this, ever laid so openly for someone before. Haizaki makes these breathy sounds as he starts to thrust in and out, and he hopes he hasn’t. He’s so pliant like this, letting out noises at all the right times and after a few goes they’ll discover senpai is a huge turn on for both of them.
“Oh - shit, right there, yeah - fuck.” Haizaki sounds so gone and all Nijimura can do to barely hold on is talk.
“Have you always wanted it like this?” He bites the line of Haizaki’s shoulder, doesn’t let up on the unrelenting pace and revels in the gasps Haizaki makes. “You’ve probably wanted me in you since middle school, fuck you right after practise -"
“God,” Haizaki croaks out before spilling all over his stomach.
(“Was I right?” Nijimura asks in the quiet afterwards. Haizaki shoves him off the bed, but it’s okay if he doesn’t want to divulge anything because Nijimura is never going to admit that middle school Haizaki having a wet dream about him is possibly the hottest thing ever.)
-
“You’ve stopped bringing people home."
Haizaki lifts his head slowly, looks at him like he’s stupid. “We fuck every night,” he says. “Do I need other people?"
Nijimura ignores the weird sensation in his stomach in favour of frowning and kicking Haizaki’s legs to untangle them from his.
“What I’m saying is, we never established any conditions, with what we’re doing, so I thought you’d just keep..”
“Fucking girls left right and centre?”
Nijimura snorts. “Don’t sell yourself as some kind of pimp, it’s called sleeping around.”
After they wrestle - on and off the bed - and Haizaki has seated himself assertively on Nijimura’s lap, he says seriously, “Do you want me to go back to sleeping with more people?”
Nijimura shakes his head no and Haizaki does the most distracting thing with his hand on the small of his back.
“Then that’s that.”
-
Yamada keeps bringing them treats and Nijimura asks him about it when he's chatting with him at the door.
"Well," the old man smiles. "You've lasted longer with Shougo-kun than anyone ever before." His eyes crinkle at the corners. "It was always such a shame that an apartment as nice as this was going to waste."
Nijimura thinks about how Haizaki feels when he slides into him, slow and hard, and the whimper he lets out against his will when Nijimura tugs his hair. He's not putting up with as much as Yamada probably thinks.
"I do my best," he smiles in reply.
By now Nijimura's room goes virtually unused and they purchase a larger bed because neither of them are small guys. It would be redundant, anyway, Nijimura reassures himself, for him to get up and cross the hall just to fall asleep in his own bed. It makes more sense to do it this way, with Haizaki's arm thrown over his waist and shared body heat.
In the morning they kiss before Nijimura leaves for school and he feels flushed under his shirt the whole lecture.
-
It’s just a bit domestic in feel, is all.
-
Also a really nice start to the day.
-
Nijimura is washing the dishes due to their unspoken condition that since Haizaki cooks, Nijimura has to pull his weight in the kitchen side of things, when Haizaki leans against the bench and says, “I think I’ll get a proper job.” Nijimura looks up.
"Really?" Haizaki nods.
“Mum’s doing better and I think,” he shifts on his feet, “I think I want to as well - do better, that is. I don’t want to support this kind of thing anymore.” He runs his hand through his hair and looks a little sheepish. “Congratulations, you changed me.”
Nijimura dries his hands and tries to will the dull ache in his chest away when he says, “I’m proud of you.” And he is, wants to say it a thousand times if Haizaki would listen, and maybe if he did it quick enough he’d make it to one hundred before Haizaki got bored and turned on the TV.
It’s a stupid thought, one that’s quickly replaced with how Haizaki rubs his hand over the back of his neck and can’t quite meet his eyes.
He’s in Nijimura’s soft blue hoodie and looks warm and content, and Nijimura would be an idiot not to wrap his arms around him and kiss him breathless.
-
Haizaki quits. He quits, but like pulling a jagged knife out of a stab wound it’s not a clean cut, and he comes home with blood matted hair and too much swelling. It had to be more than one person who did this, and Nijimura wants to seek out every one and fuck them up as much as he can.
He steers Haizaki into the dining room for the well lit table, and gets out a first aid kit that had been lying unused up until now. Washing blood off someone’s face shouldn’t make one feel nostalgic - that sounds sadistic and horrifying. But it does, and Nijimura ruffles his hair when he’s done for good measure.
Nijimura remembers one time at Teiko when Haizaki came late to practise with a fresh scrape on his cheek, and he had chided him over being tardy and brawling instead of coming straight to the gym. He made sure to keep gentle, though, when he took his chin in his hand and tilted it to get a better look at the swelling; Haizaki breathed out defeatedly, and when he looked at him Nijimura felt like they were about to kiss.
Maybe he should have done it. Just closed the gap, Akashi and the rest of the team standing there be damned, because Haizaki was always pretty no matter how many marks blotched his face. Maybe if he started something then, Haizaki wouldn’t have gone on to do some things the way he did, or maybe it wouldn’t have lasted or changed a thing. They’re kissing now, though, and maybe that’s enough compensation.
-
“This isn’t a sex thing,” Haizaki blurts in the silence as they’re lying tangled with each other one night.
Nijimura rolls his eyes, even though it’s not like Haizaki can see. “We’ve had this conversation before, moron.”
“No we haven’t -”
“Well, something like it, anyway.”
There’s quiet. Then:
“But it’s not.”
“We never explicitly said this was just a sex thing,” Nijimura points out.
“Yeah, but,” Haizaki trails off, his arm around Nijimura’s waist tightening.
Nijimura sighs. “What is it?”
“Why do you like me,” Haizaki mumbles, voice so low Nijimura can feel it from his chest. Nijimura wishes it wasn’t so dark, so he could see what expression Haizaki was making. Maybe it’s best he can’t. He breathes in the smell of their shared shampoo from Haizaki’s hair.
“You’re a moron and I’ve kind of always wanted you for my own, I guess.” To put it simply - he’s not sure he’s ready to tell Haizaki all the things about him that make his breath hitch or a smile drop uninvited on his face. Maybe he’ll tell him soon how good his curry is, to start small.
“Well, you got me,” Haizaki says in his faux irritation voice, but he’s flushing warm and won't loosen his hold on him so Nijimura allows him to act grumpy without saying anything, just this once.
In ways of confession, Nijimura doesn’t get much until one night, when Haizaki is especially cuddly and even the city has settled down outside, and he tells him that in middle school he liked having Nijimura’s attention on him more than anyone else’s, even if he suffered internal bleeding. Nijimura feels needle sharp pain pricking in his chest, like if he breathed too deeply his lungs would get punctured for sure, but he still huffs a laugh before pressing his mouth to Haizaki’s and feels the warmth wrap around him like a blanket.
-
It's a sunny day when Haizaki is in a knot of bedsheets watching Nijimura get dressed for work.
He grabs the hem of the shirt Nijimura just pulled over his head. “What time will you be coming back?”
“Five. Why,” he smirks. “Eager?” Haizaki kicks at him and shoves his face under the pillow. A muffled ‘shut up’ filters through the padding and Nijimura would much rather stay at home and provoke Haizaki all day than go to work. He chugs the rest of his coffee he brought into their room and Haizaki resurfaces. “You always drink so much, do you have a piss fetish or what?”
Nijimura changes his mind; he’s going to have fun working today.
(He must never learn because the first thing he does on his break is check his phone.)
[2:02] i didnt ask when you get off so we could fuck you know
[2:04] i just get bored
[2:09] and maybe i miss you sometimes okay?
[2:29] please say something
Nijimura types out a reply and tries to wipe the smile off his face so he doesn’t look crazy to the next customer.
I love you too
They’ll talk about it tonight.
-
Epilogue
Nijimura turned his phone off after that so he would focus on work, but it was quickly filling up with messages:
[2:39] I DIDNT SAY THAT
[2:39] DID I?????????
[2:41] hA I LOOKED BACK I NEVER SAID I LOVE YOU
[2:41] SO YOU LOVE ME THEN
[2:41] AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHHAAHAHAHHHAAAAHaaAAHAAAH
[2:42] what made you think i said i love you?
[2:42] ...crap that came out wrong
[2:42] i take it back
[2:44] so i
[2:44] also may love you.
[2:45] ok bye thanks to you the biscuits are burning now
[2:45] yeah thats right i made biscuits you better fucking love me
[2:46] i do
[2:46] love you, that is
[2:46] OKAY BYE