Nozaki has never been in love.
He is aware, in a sort of distant way, that most of his readers would find this fact alarming. He writes about love all the time, how can he create stories based on an experience he has never had? He has never seen anything that odd about it - he also writes from girls' perspectives, and he has no experience with that either - but he doesn't talk about his lack of knowledge much. It seems unnecessary, at the least, and inexplicably alarming to his fans at the worst.
But there's no one around right now but Mikoshiba, on his stomach on Nozaki's bed and idly paging through one of Nozaki's old manga, and Nozaki is accustomed enough to the other boy's presence that he doesn't even look up to make sure Mikoshiba is listening before he asks, "What's it like to be in love?"
He doesn't bother asking if Mikoshiba has been or is currently in love. Either he knows, and will speak from personal experience, or he doesn't, and his imagination and secondhand exposure will pick up the slack for him. Nozaki doesn't care, much. It's not for reference, this time, just curiosity, and Mikoshiba's inventions are at least as much and often more entertaining than his truths. For his part, Mikoshiba barely hesitates; he glances over just as Nozaki looks up from the page in front of him, then tips his head as if considering, brings an arm up to prop his head on his hand. The manga falls to the side to land face-down and forgotten on the floor.
"The whole experience?" he asks without looking back, and Nozaki shakes his head without realizing that Mikoshiba won't see the reaction.
"Not the general stuff. The specifics. What does it feel like? How can you tell when you're in love?" This is something media of all sorts has failed to convey, in Nozaki's experience. It seems a grievous oversight, to offer the hazy backgrounds and the gold-filtered sunsets without any of the details. After all, it's the details that are important, right?
Mikoshiba frowns in concentration. A line forms across his forehead, creasing down between his eyebrows. "How can you tell?" he repeats back, like maybe the words aren't making sense.
"Yeah." Nozaki straightens from the table entirely, angles his arms behind himself to brace himself upright. "There must be some way or people would never know."
Mikoshiba looks perplexed. "Well. Just. I guess you...want to be around them. All the time."
Nozaki nods sharply, but this is too general still. "What else."
"And you want to…" Mikoshiba hesitates, turns pale pink, but keeps talking. "Kiss them. Um. And...and more."
Nozaki knows what Mikoshiba is trying to say around his rising color. "Sex, yeah." The other boy makes a faint noise of protest, turns towards Nozaki in the first fluster of shock; then he looks away quickly, tips his chin in towards his hands so his hair falls in front of his face. "What else?"
It takes a moment before Mikoshiba resurfaces; when he does come up he's still crimson, and he won't look at Nozaki, which is ridiculous but charming, as so much about Mikoshiba is. He takes a breath, and goes on speaking, and even if his voice is a little higher than usual his words are clear enough. "And you think about them all the time, even when they're not there, even when you're supposed to be doing other things." His blush is fading off a little bit as he loses himself to his description. "And you feel hot when you see them, like you're blushing everywhere at once."
"What, like a sunburn?"
"No." Mikoshiba bites his lower lip, slides his teeth across it while he reaches for the words. Nozaki's eyes catch the idle motion; his own hand comes up to rub at his mouth in unconscious imitation while he waits for Mikoshiba to go on. "More like…" He lets his lip go, huffs a sigh. "More like the room is too hot, or the air is suddenly a lot warmer. Or your heart's beating too fast, like you can't quite breathe."
Nozaki sighs, drops his hand. "That's no good, Mikoshiba."
"What?" The other boy turns his head to look at Nozaki. "Why?"
"Because I know what that feels like." Nozaki leans back, idly drags a hand through his hair. "There's got to be something else, more than kissing and feeling warm and thinking about the other person."
Mikoshiba whimpers, like Nozaki's demanding the impossible. "I don't think there is, though. I mean that's what you're supposed to feel when you're in love." He lifts a hand. "You think about them all the time." He folds his finger down, like he's checking something off. "Like how sometimes I think about you in the morning, before I get to school." He touches his second finger. "You want to kiss them."
"We've kissed," Nozaki supplies helpfully.
Mikoshiba hesitates, still touching that second finger. "Mm. Yeah." When he folds it down this time it's slower, like it's taking actual effort. His forehead is starting to crease again. "It's hard to breathe around them. And you feel too warm."
"Like, you blush a lot when they're around?" Nozaki asks.
Mikoshiba's hands go still. He's still touching the tip of his third finger, but his eyes go slowly wide in time with the true scarlet of the flush that creeps up from the color of his shirt to wash his face into glowing red.
"Oh my god," he says, very softly. He still hasn't folded his third finger down. "I'm in love."
"What?" Nozaki sits up straighter, leans in. "With who?"
Mikoshiba looks up, like Nozaki's question is dragging his gaze unwillingly upward. "You."
There's a pause. Mikoshiba cannot possibly flush darker without passing out, but his mouth comes open in horror at what he's just said; then he brings both hands up to cover his face, collapses back onto the bed and buries his face in Nozaki's pillow. Nozaki can still see the color staining Mikoshiba's ears to match his hair.
"You're in love with me?" he asks, but there's no response from the other boy beyond a faint wailing sound against the sheets. It's evident that he's going to be more useless than usual for a moment; Nozaki sighs, looks down at his own hand in an attempt to call up Mikoshiba's list.
Thinking about someone a lot. Well. It's true he does think about Mikoshiba a lot. But they're friends, that makes sense. Of course he'd think about seeing the other boy on his way to school, and during class, and at lunch, and before he goes to sleep. That one barely makes sense, really. Nozaki has to admit the kissing one is true, too; they had good reasons for it, the first time, but he has some trouble remembering how they got as far as they did the second time. He knows it made sense when they started, but right now the most he can call up is the way Mikoshiba's mouth felt under his, how the other boy went warm and desperate under his touch, the sound of his name drawn shaky with want in Mikoshiba's throat. The memory sings through his skin, draws his body too-tight with a weird flutter of tension and then heat, prickling like he's covered with electricity or maybe trying to melt through the floor.
Nozaki stares at his three fingers for a moment, turns over the evidence in his mind. Then he reaches out, sets his hand flat on the table in front of him, and sighs.
"Well. If that's all there is to it, then I guess I'm in love with you too."
There is a moment of silence so intense Nozaki is pretty sure Mikoshiba has stopped breathing. Then the other boy shifts on the bed, pushes himself up off the mattress so he's kneeling instead of lying down, though he's still not looking at Nozaki and what the other boy can see of his skin is still scarlet with self-consciousness. Mikoshiba lets out a breath of air loud with panic, and when he speaks his voice is strained high and desperate. "You are?"
"Yeah." Nozaki is not sure why Mikoshiba sounds like he's forgotten how to breathe. This does not seem nearly as complicated as he always expected being in love would be.
Mikoshiba looks up for a moment; he snaps his head away as soon as he's made eye contact, but it's still progress. Nozaki waits out the other boy's whimper, the inevitable teeth against his lip. "But - does that mean we're dating?"
"We could be," Nozaki says. After a moment he adds helpfully, "That's how it's supposed to go, after a confession."
Mikoshiba glances at him, forgets to look away this time. "Was that a confession?"
Nozaki considers this. "I think it was. The setting is unusual but we have all the necessary pieces."
"Oh." Mikoshiba still looks sunburn-red, but some of the panic is fading from his shoulders.
Nozaki nods, looks back down at the paper in front of him. He's just thinking about reaching for his pencil when Mikoshiba speaks again, blurting out the words like he can't restrain them. "Are we?"
"What?" Nozaki looks up again. "Dating? I guess so."
"Oh." There's still a crease in Mikoshiba's forehead; this time Nozaki waits out the other boy's tight-wound consideration, keeps watching the drag of teeth on mouth until Mikoshiba lets his lip go, forms his mouth around the words, "Can I kiss you?"
"In general?" Nozaki asks, but he's not looking at Mikoshiba's eyes or Mikoshiba's blush, and he's forgotten about the pencil in front of him entirely. His skin is going warm again. "Yeah."
"Right now?" Mikoshiba is frozen in place, locked still on Nozaki's bed like he's awaiting some inevitable rejection.
Nozaki is still staring at his mouth, still feeling the spark of sensation ghost over his skin. "Yeah," he says, but he's getting to his feet, too, coming around the edge of the table without looking down. Mikoshiba doesn't move, just tips his head up to watch Nozaki approaching; he doesn't shift even when Nozaki sits down on the bed alongside him. Nozaki's not even certain he's breathing until he reaches out to curl his fingers gently against Mikoshiba's shoulder; then the other boy takes a huge, startled breath, like he didn't see the contact coming, and Nozaki is reaching out with his other hand to hold Mikoshiba's head steady as he comes in to press his tingling mouth to Mikoshiba's lips. He just has time to think that maybe being in love isn't so strange after all, to start smiling against the other boy's mouth; then Mikoshiba sighs, and opens his mouth, and when his hands come in at Nozaki's waist to pull the other boy closer Nozaki stops thinking at all, and lets himself be pulled down to the mattress over Mikoshiba.