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Kazuya knows how to be charming.
It’s a useful skill to have, especially when you’re on a neverending quest to get what you want. A carefully phrased word here, a bewitching smile there, and he gets to go through life with minimal obstacles, at least the ones he can take constructive action to avoid.
Kuramochi calls him a manipulative little shit, Sawamura calls it mind-control and something about “using the force”, and Kazuya just laughs.
But there’s a difference between being deliberately charming, and possessing an innate knack for it.
"Thank you!” Sawamura smiles at the two middle-school girls who’d held the door open for them, and Kazuya watches how both, hair in pig-styles, clad in navy-blue sailor uniforms, automatically smile back at him – mimic that warm, genuine action.
“Thanks!” Sawamura chirps again when they settle down at their booth by the window, and the waiter that brings them the menu cards, a high-schooler probably no less than a year younger than the southpaw, actually loses the edge of the sullen frown that’ll probably leave wrinkles on his forehead if he keeps working here.
And then, while Kazuya’s still scanning through the menu, studying their options, he glances up to ask Sawamura what he’s having and finds him pulling faces at some kid outside the window.
A tiny smile pulls at Kazuya’s face, one of the few natural ones that he doesn’t actually have to fake, and he smothers it, choosing to drawl instead, “Either you’re going to get arrested for harassing little children, or you’re going to get committed as a deranged lunatic.”
Sawamura pauses in his wholehearted attempt at amusing the little boy Kazuya can see giggling and jumping up and down on the pavement as he waits with his mother, presumably for his dad to come pick them up. The kid falters a little, disappointed.
But he doesn’t have to be, because Sawamura’s only taken a long enough time-off to stick his tongue out at Kazuya, sing “Boooo!”, before turning straight back and engaging in whatever weird game he’s invented on the fly with a stranger child he doesn’t even know and will probably never see again.
Because that’s just who he is. That’s quintessential Sawamura Eijun for you – he’s loud and brash and impulsive and completely tactless, but his heart is so pure he probably couldn’t keep it hidden even if he tried. It might not be the same kind of charm that Kazuya’s notorious for – affected, contrived, an ulterior motive sheathed in pretty words and pretty smiles –
It’s charming nonetheless.
When a car pulls up close by, and the fondly smiling mother says something to the excitable toddler frolicking as much as the hand holding his would allow, and the kid responds by grinning broadly, all tiny milk teeth punctuated with tiny black gaps, and Kazuya can hear him shout, muffled through the glass, “BYE BYE ONII-CHAN” before he and his mother head off home, there’s a giggle from the booth behind them, a giggle that just confirms what Kazuya’s suspected all along, that this guy sitting in front of him, obliviously waving off his new little friend, is just like that – childlike and innocent and vibrant, a personality so magnetic he doesn’t have to try to make people happy.
He wishes, and he just does.
And Kazuya, even though he’s hiding a smile of his own, fond and secretive, into the sleeve of the hand he’s supporting his chin on, because even a cynic like himself can’t help, help the contagious effect of this guy’s sheer enthusiasm for life, his ability to get so happy about the tiniest, most insignificant things –
Even though this is what makes Sawamura Eijun who he is, it scares Kazuya a little, sometimes.
Because Kazuya’s a sheltered guy, no matter how skilled he is at fooling people otherwise. He builds walls that are invisible, walls you’ll never know are there and forever hold you at arm’s length. He uses his words and his smiles like weapons, tools for a greater end, tools that he’ll discard when they’re of no use to him.
But Sawamura’s not like that. The middle-school girls, the waiter, the little kid outside, the elderly lady who’d dropped her purse and Sawamura’d jogged backwards to help, the twenty-something woman he’d volunteered his seat to on the train, his friends, his teachers – they gravitate round him, because he exudes this aura, has this pull that’s warm and comforting and real, that you can’t help but be attracted to even if you spend all your energy trying to resist.
And Kazuya’s scared, because eventually, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a couple of months, Sawamura is going to see, he’s going to notice the throngs that amass round him.
Someday, he’s going to realise that if he puts his mind to it, if he focuses all of that raw untapped charm on one person, they’re going to be helpless to refuse him.
Kazuya’s scared that that person won’t be him.
He stops Sawamura with a motion of his hand when he’s about to get up. “My treat,” he says, with his typical lopsided smirk, and makes to hoist himself out of the upholstered booth bench.
Sawamura frowns at him.
“What?”
“Why are you being nice to me?” the southpaw asks immediately, suspicious slits for eyes.
It startles a laugh out of him.
“Kouhais should just keep quiet and accept their senpai’s generosity,” he croons, idly ruffling the soft, soft mop of hair on Sawamura’s head as he brushes past.
It’s a better answer than trying to explain the misgiving that roots deep into his gut at unleashing this guy on to a wider world – more people that he could – should – pick over him.
After all, what does he have to offer? Selfishness for selflessness, darkness for sunshine. A twisted personality that’s far too damaged and far too jagged to fit in anywhere seamlessly – a puzzle piece that’d been broken long ago and no one had bothered to mend. He can’t meet Sawamura’s honest, earnest sentiments without thinking of how to leverage on them, use them for his own advantage – for every sweet smile or every wholesome act that Sawamura bestows on him, sometimes without thinking, he has nothing but warped wit and dishonest sarcasm to give back.
As he reaches the counter, the girl at the cash-register, probably around the same age as himself, looks up. From long experience, Kazuya immediately recognizes the flirty smile that slants her mouth.
“Hey there,” she says, coy, and “What’ll we be having today?”
Kazuya struggles not to roll his eyes at the suggestive use of pronoun, and flashes one of his disarming smiles. It works almost instantly – the girl reddens a little, and her smile gets broader, more intent, too friendly.
He recites their order, nonchalant, or doing a good job of trying to be, and casts a look back at Sawamura, tries to quell the ridiculous, silly, stupid relief he feels to find him occupied with his phone – and not one of the girls that’d giggled at his displays of childishness moments earlier.
Kuramochi’s right. I have it bad.
“So…you come here often?”
His default smile comes right back, reflexive, at this conversation opener – it’s not even original, not even subtle, but it’s clear she isn’t trying to be.
A part of him thinks, why can’t it be that easy with him
A part of him knows, because he’s too important for that
For half-hearted feelings and hollow, insincere words.
“Yeah,” he says, smile in place, sliding the tray carefully off the counter, before adding, “My boyfriend loves the food here.”
And he saunters back to their table, laughs a little at the wary way Sawamura eyes his smirk, and hopes that he’s right in his estimation of the cashier as the gossipy type – hopes that she’s going to tell everyone that’ll bother to listen that Sawamura Eijun is already taken.
Because although Kazuya’s means for getting what he wants might be underhanded, he’s certainly not above using them, and he’s far too selfish to let go.