number 1 in dumbfuckery

Nowadays the blood stained memories fade faster than the ones of you— that peculiar look in your eyes and the curl of your lips. It’s only bits and pieces, a montage of moments that trigger that tight feeling in his chest. It’s restrictive. He can’t help but want to resist it— to feel like he can breathe again, to feel the rumbling boom of fireworks coursing through his body, to set his heart rate back to a normal pace. But it skips and stutters instead, a memory of sparks between your hand and his fingertips shoving its way into his head. 

It’s annoying. He can’t get rid of you, even when you aren’t around. He’ll have to seek you out, he thinks, to eliminate your incessant presence. Surely, it's the only way.

The door is locked when he arrives. Annoying. You never bother to announce your arrival in his mind, so why should he have to announce his? He jiggles the handle hard, to no avail. As he takes a few steps back, rearing up to kick it down, he hears a chime. Ding. Slowly, his wide eyes trail upwards, and he makes contact with a glowing blue ring.

Your voice sounds out through an unseen speaker, “Hi, Takiishi.” He blinks, putting his leg down, standing there, and staring up at the camera version of you. “...Can I help you?” 

“Open the door.”

You sigh, “Do you know what time it is?”

Crickets sing in the bushes around him. “No.”

A few seconds of silence, and the glowing blue light fades away. He rears up again before he hears the chime once more, followed by a mechanical whirr.

“Wait, it’s open, it’s open!” you huff, “So impatient.”

When he walks inside, everything is dark. He’s familiar with the layout enough to be able to walk where he thinks the bathroom is. A few steps, and a loud clunk, and if he hadn’t been wearing boots he would’ve stubbed his toe. “Takiishi!” you groan, exasperated, turning on a lamp and crossing your arms over your chest. He blinks rapidly. He hadn’t even known you were in the room. As his eyes adjust to the light, they sweep over you, just briefly.

He’s seen you like this, riddled with sleep, messy hair and disheveled clothes more often than he’s seen you dressed up. (On account of his barging in, of course.) It’s not like he looks any better– equally messy and disheveled, and also covered in drying blood. Something about it is stylish on him.

Just as you’re about to ask him what the hell he was on the verge of breaking your door down for, he speaks up. “I want a bath.”

You scoff, “Of course you do.” Turning and beckoning him to follow with a slight tilt of your head, you trudge to the bathroom, slippers sliding lazily against the floor. His boots clunk behind you. You have a feeling they’re leaving blood stains, but you’re too tired to care. Nothing a new rug can’t fix. (Until he comes and bloodies that one up, too.)

As you plug the drain and run the water, you snide, “Maybe you should start getting into fights by your place. You have a bathtub.” Silence. You stand to meet his eyes. “...You also have your own personal maid who would be more than happy to lather you up at three in the morning.”

He tilts his head at that, like a confused animal. You roll your eyes. Poor Endo.

With the light on, you take a better look at him. Even covered in blood and scars— especially, even— his hands are so pretty. Tanned knuckles and lithe fingers, adorned in heavy rings that probably hurt like hell to be on the receiving end of— not that you'd ever know. You sigh, motion for him to sit, and turn to grab the first aid kit. You know the routine by now.

When you turn back to him, he’s already staring up at you. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen someone so unsettlingly beautiful. It’s daunting, but you decide to clean his face first, because if you know anything about Takiishi, then you know that blood on his face certainly isn’t his. That makes things easier for both of you– no wounds, no flinching. 

Your eyes are too busy moving around his face to notice him noticing you. He watches your irises flit around, lashes obscuring his view as they trail down his face, so he watches as your eye rolls around under the flesh of your lids instead. Your eyes linger in some spots, even after you pull the rag away. He wonders what you find so interesting, and yet, he can’t look away either. His heart thumps a little louder in his chest. His fingers twitch.

Just as you’re finishing up, you yelp as his fingertips press into the backs of your thighs hard enough to knock you into his lap. You stare at him in shock, met with one of his many unreadable expressions.

You take a really, really deep breath. “Why…would you do that.” The smell of dirt and iron lingers on his clothes, and you just washed these pajamas, not to mention your bedsheets. Ugh. 

He blinks at the proximity, even though he’s the cause. Why did he do that? 

He says the first thing that comes to mind. “You’re warm.”

You avert your eyes. His stare is too intense. “Yeah, well. So is the bath,” you deflect, “and it looks about ready.”

You figure that’s a good enough cue for him to let go, but he grips onto the hem of your sleep shirt. "Takiishi. The bath will overflow if you don't let go." It's a useless statement— you know he'll do whatever he wants. You're a bit surprised to see he looks…conflicted. As if he can't make up his mind on what to do. His gaze flits over to the tub, and then back to you, and then he's wrapping his opposite arm around your waist and using the other to stop the running water for you. For you. You try not to think about that.

It's difficult when he's looking at you in that way he always does. It makes you want to hide, but he's got you face to face, and all you can do is avert your eyes. They're growing heavy with sleep, on account of the fact that that's what you should be doing right now. Not this. Not sitting in Takiishi Chika's bloody lap, not nearly nodding off at the feeling of his calloused palms running along your waist, not shivering at the tickle of your shirt falling off your shoulder.

You come to your senses a bit, huffing as he stretches out the neckline of your top, "Are you getting in the bath or not, Chika?"

Ba-dump. Chika. He thinks he might like his name in your mouth, or how often you put it there. Maybe tonight he'll finally make use of yours. Mouth or name, he's not quite sure.

You groan, exasperated, at the way he just stares. You hate that you never know what he's thinking, or if he's even fucking listening. Losing your patience, you tug at his jacket, stripping it off his shoulders. You try not to think about the way he switches his arms to keep holding you as you shed him of his jacket. Instead, you think about how this would go a hell of a lot faster if he did this part himself.

"Alright, that's enough," you sigh, "I'll leave you to it." You wriggle around in an attempt to escape his grasp, but he tightens his hold, and pulls you just a tad closer. There's a mellow defiance in his golden eyes. Under the right conditions, it's a look that would send a shiver up a sane person's spine. In your eyes, it's like a housecat's demand for nothing and everything all at once, with the assumption that you can read its mind.

You close your eyes, desperate for sleep, nearly pouting, "What do you want from me?"

He responds simply, as if the answer is obvious, “Wash my hair.”

You blink your eyes open, slowly, because it was feeling really good to keep them closed. “You can’t do it yourself?”

The weight of his head in your hands makes itself apparent, and his voice goes quieter. “Your hands feel better.”

You finally fluster at that. He sounds tired. It's a rare Chika, a vulnerable Chika, and it's hard to resist.

You sigh. "…Can you at least undress yourself?"

The bath is pink tinged with blood and the sweaty remnants of his freshly dyed hair by the time you’re all done.

You laugh, “This is gross, Chika.” Ba-dump. That irritating jump in his chest again. He doesn't understand it. It’s not the first time he’s heard you say his name. Maybe it’s the first time you’ve said it fondly. He thinks he should say your name too, but he has no real reason to. It sits on his tongue, the way he wishes you would.

…Huh?

He looks the mildest bit bewildered for a moment, and you can't figure out why for the life of you. It's gone nearly as soon as you notice it, so you pass it off as lack of sleep and seeing things.

As you rinse the suds from his ends, he peers over his shoulder at you from the corner of his eye. He stays that way for a minute, unmoving, unblinking. He gives you no indication that he plans to speak up, but there’s an air of something unsaid before he turns back around. You can’t help but smile to yourself about how strange he can be.

When he's clean and dripping wet, sleep wearing down his sharp eyes, you wrap him in a towel. You fight him on drying off, insisting he can do it himself while you blow dry his hair. He agrees, reluctantly— but he won't tell you it's because he wants to prolong the feeling of your hands in his hair.

His hair takes longer to dry than yours, and you're both wobbling, warm and exhausted by the time you're done. With a yawn and a big stretch, he drops his towel, and it's then you realize he doesn't have any spare clothes here. You consider him— one very long, lingering up-and-down look, before turning to dig through your drawers. He watches the whole thing. Neither of you are well versed in subtlety.

You manage to fish out a fresh pair of pajamas for yourself— since yours smell like a fight and a rescue— and a too-tight pair of hot pink sweatpants for Takiishi. Again, he pulls them off as if they were his own. You just hope he doesn't mind going commando.

There's no use in asking him to sleep on the couch at this point— he's already pulled the covers back and crawled in. The two of you lay in the dark, in silence. Cozy, clean air fills the space between you, as does the air of something unspoken. But sleep wedges itself under your tongue like a duvet, and you figure you can save words for the morning.

Moments before you feel yourself drifting off, warm fingertips press into the flesh of your arm. Soft, gentle, before pressing again, hard enough to pull this time. The sheets shuffle as you turn, expectant gaze squinting to focus on Takiishi in the moonlight. He doesn’t let go as your eyes adjust to one another. His stare bores into you, fluffy, freshly dried hair falling over his eyes ever so slightly. It softens up his sharp edges, high cheekbones and the flat plane of his nose, bright eyes against tanned skin. 

The soft edge of his bangs tickles the bridge of his nose and the skin crinkles as he scrunches it up. Cute. He tilts his head to brush it out of the way, revealing sparse little freckles on his nose that you’re not sure you’ve ever been close enough to see. Your eyes widen at the realization. Oh, he’s so close.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. He really hopes you can't hear that.

And then, without warning, Takiishi kisses you in slow motion. You aren’t sure if he’s hesitating or savoring. His lips hover above yours, a tickle of his breath on your skin. Then his bottom lip grazes yours, ever so slightly chapped. Slowly, so, so slowly, he forces you to feel it all. You’ve never felt the moment your skin depresses against another’s. You’ve never sat with the feeling of a kiss so focused, the full press of a bottom lip before the top even reaches you. It feels like it could be the first kiss you’ve ever truly felt, and it’s from Takiishi, of all people.

It’s silent in the room until the soft smack of your mouths rings out between you. He pulls back into that featherlight pressure, eyes open and watching you react. He sees the crane of your neck and the upward tilt of your chin; he sees you chasing him like a tidal wave. He wonders what it’ll take for you to crash over him.

Takiishi melts over you like molten lava, the achingly slow flow of his tongue drags across yours with growing intensity. His pace stays the same as he loses his gentleness, nose digging into your cheek, pads of his fingers melding to your skin. Spit seeps from the corners and he swallows it all up; drinks you in. He breathes through it, through you. It never seems to stop. He trails his palms along your skin, sticky with the beginnings of sweat. He’s red hot and flowing through your veins, seeping into you and carving a path just for his mouth, onto yours.

Takiishi kisses you until you lose all focus, until you’re both messy and losing feeling in the pads of your lips. He sighs and pants as he grazes his lips over your spit soaked ones, eyes lidded and watching you closely. He follows the stretch of your lips into a wide smile, and he almost feels your sleepy giggle against his chest before he hears it. His thumb comes up to wipe the glistening spit from the bottom of your lip, surely a mixture of both of yours. Experimentally, he drags his thumb into your mouth, glazing along the tops of your teeth and stroking along your tongue. 

Now it's your turn to try and steady the beat of your heart. What in the world is going on?

It's moments like these where you wonder at which point you started to anticipate these meet ups for more than what they really are. It started out so strange— and at times, it still is. His reactions, his responses, his touch— should you really be feeling so warm under such analytic hands?

Takiishi has been curious since you've known him. He has always experimented with varying degrees of hesitance to find things he's interested in, and that often means roping you in to these weird situations where you become an observer and a test subject all in one. As soon as you think you know what he'll like, he proves you wrong. As soon as you think you know his next move, he's naked in your bathtub in the early hours of the morning or sticking his fingers in your mouth face to face with you in your bed.

Somewhere along the way, at the exact same time, his experiments with you started to make him feel something, and he's determined to get to the bottom of it. (Or the top. He isn't so sure yet.)

He glides his fingers along the ridges of your teeth like it's the first time he's seen any. And then, along the gummy insides of your cheeks, and pressing on your tongue until you audibly complain. He marvels a bit at all the saliva he forced out of you. It's starting to drip from the corner of your mouth, and the shift of your warm, soft mouth around his digit as you try to suck it back in sparks a glint in his dilated eyes.

You're groaning and pulling away, fighting even as sleep threatens to take over, and he feels something flutter in his gut. It's a strange enough sensation that he pulls his fingers out with fervor, giddy and confused and tired all at once. You sigh contentedly and roll over so he can just barely hear your soft, shallow breaths. He stares into the back of your head, unsettled by the urge to shake you awake and watch you lazily protest against him again.

No wonder Endo can't get enough of irritating him. Maybe it's addictive? He'll be sure to test this theory. For now, he lies restless yet exhausted in the plush of your bed, plagued and comforted by the scent of you all around him.

He tosses and turns with his thoughts, softened skin stretched over sore muscles. He can't get comfortable. His knuckles ache, and something in his chest does too. He kind of wishes you were still awake. So he reaches out, brushing his cracked knuckles over your smooth skin, sighing at the sting. Something about it is comforting. Maybe it's just you.

In a daze, your hand reaches out for his. Nothing else about you moves, completely at rest despite the search for him. He indulges you, indulges himself— it's the whole reason he came here, after all. As he runs his calloused thumb over your skin, wishing he could feel just a bit more— because all Takiishi knows is take, take, take— his brows twist into a knot. This isn't what he came here to do, and it's the whole reason he came here.

He squeezes at your hand, at the vein that runs through your palm, feeling the steady thrum of your pulse. He pinches and prods, silently punishing you for being so confusing. How could the memory of your featherlight touch overpower the crunch of bones under his fists? How could one be such a threat from miles away, that he'd seek them out just to slow the beat of his own heart?

You grunt softly in your slumber, rolling over and plopping your head down in subconscious frustration. The hand he held onto rips itself from his grasp and flops onto his chest in a lazy ball. He's thankful you're dead asleep, so you can't feel the sparks you set off through his chest. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

Annoying.