Tetsuya doesn't realize Kasanoda is in the room at all until he turns around.
He would have offered a greeting if he had known, would have been a little more controlled in his movements. But he thinks he's alone, is humming under his breath and cleaning with a few more flourishes than necessary to punctuate the music in his thoughts, and when he turns around to see he has company he can't help the way he stumbles backwards.
"Young lord!" The vase in his hands teeters, nearly falls; he fumbles himself back into a hold on it, turns to carefully set it aside before he faces Kasanoda again. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were there."
He's flushing, he knows. His heart is racing with the embarrassed adrenaline of being caught with an audience when he thought he was alone, his head reeling back through his actions over the last few minutes with as much panic as if he really has anything to be guilty about. There's nothing, other than the embarrassment of singing a few off-tune catches of words as he worked, but he still casts his eyes down, lets the weight of his bangs fall in front of his face to grant him some level of privacy. "Did you need something from me?"
"Not really," Kasanoda grates, the gruff edge in his voice that sounds like irritation and Tetsuya knows as embarrassment. "I just...wanted to see if you wanted to hang out." He clears his throat, too hard and too loud. "Like. As friends."
"Of course, young lord," Tetsuya says, agreement coming soft with sincerity. It's easy to forget his own self-consciousness in the face of Kasanoda's far greater embarrassment; hard to be flustered and shy when Kasanoda is struggling even to find words to ask for something so simple. "Do you want to go outside? It's getting late but the sun should still be up for an hour or two."
"Nah," Kasanoda says. When Tetsuya risks looking up Kasanoda isn't looking at him, has his shoulders hunched up until his school jacket is nearly touching his ears. "I was thinking we could...just talk. Maybe."
He sounds like he's expecting a fight, like he's ready to come to blows over the inevitable refusal. It makes Tetsuya smile, reach out to brush his fingers against Kasanoda's sleeve like he's offering affection to a half-feral cat.
"Sure," he says, careful and easy on the word. "Do you want to go to the main room?"
"Here's fine," Kasanoda says to the floor, and then he's dropping to sit without any further announcement. It pulls his sleeve away from Tetsuya's hand, leaves him blinking and feeling faintly lost, but it's nothing particularly out of the ordinary for Kasanoda. Tetsuya folds to his knees, kneels in front of Kasanoda's cross-legged sprawl, and waits for some of the tension to fade from the other's slouched-in shoulders.
It doesn't. If anything it gets worse, climbing up his spine and tilting his head farther forward. Tetsuya can see the frown on Kasanoda's lips, the strain pressing his fingers in hard at his knees, and he's just starting to suspect there's more here than just talking when Kasanoda says, "Hey, Tetsuya, can I ask you something?"
"Of course," Tetsuya says, as evenly as if the reassurance is really necessary at all.
Kasanoda's head tips down farther. He must be staring directly at his feet now; Tetsuya can't see anything of his face but the curtain of scarlet hair hanging in front of it. There's a pause, stretching so long Tetsuya is considering repeating himself in case Kasanoda didn't hear him, or maybe offering some kind of additional reassurance, and he's just opening his mouth to do so when Kasanoda's head comes up all at once and he demands, "Do you like me?"
There's a single involuntary shudder that runs from the top of Tetsuya's head down to the bottoms of his feet, a brief chill like Kasanoda's words are made of ice. Then it's gone, swept aside along with his guilty-conscience interpretation of the question, and he's smiling easy and gentle and disarming.
"Of course," he says, the words as sweet as they are misleading. "Everyone in the group likes you, young lord."
Kasanoda shakes his head, hard and fast so his hair swings in front of his face. He's staring at Tetsuya, his brows drawn low and focused over his eyes, and Tetsuya knows, then, that he's done for.
"That's not what I mean," he growls. "I mean like like."
The chill is back. It's aching at the back of Tetsuya's tongue, pressing heavy at his chest until it's hard to take a breath. His hands are starting to tremble against his knees.
"Young lord?" he tries, one last desperate attempt to plead ignorance.
Kasanoda waves a hand through the air, the motion probably more violent than he intends it to be. "You know," he attempts, his cheeks starting to flush with all the color that's drained out of Tetsuya's. "Like. Dating. Holding hands and kissing and...stuff."
It's a small word, to hold all the thoughts that flood Tetsuya's mind. They're familiar from late-night fantasies, the things Tetsuya allows himself to consider only when the hour is late enough to promise him privacy and his willpower low enough to defeat his attempts at resistance. Usually he can hold them at bay during the day, can smile and bow and speak easy to Kasanoda without being drowned by thoughts of how his mouth would taste or how his skin would feel, but he's not expecting the prompt in the other's rough voice and it takes him shocked and breathless with the thought as Kasanoda continues.
"It's just that you're always so nice to me," he's saying now, and he's crimson as his hair, it would be funny if Tetsuya were capable at the moment of feeling anything other than the chill panic of being caught out. "And you joined the Syndicate to stay with me, right? I've been thinking about it and it's been bugging me."
"Oh," Tetsuya breathes, his throat working on air he can't remember how to breathe.
"You always say you don't mind me talking to you," Kasanoda says. He's speaking faster now, starting to fumble over the words, and there's a pressure in Tetsuya's chest, the affectionate pain he always feels when Kasanoda starts to stumble himself into anxiety. "I guess it's a weird thing to ask, but I keep-"
"Yes," Tetsuya blurts, fast and desperate and so loud he sounds like he used to, when he had subordinates ready to leap to the sound of his voice.
Complete silence rushes into the room. Tetsuya can't inhale for a moment; as far as he knows the space has become a vacuum, absent sound or air or reaction alike. His heart is pounding, thudding so hard in his chest every beat thrums through his entire body, and if someone can pass out from too much adrenaline Tetsuya is pretty sure he's on his way to unconsciousness.
Then Kasanoda lets out a breath, long and low and shaky, and Tetsuya's lungs rush into an exhale like he's been given permission.
"You like me," Kasanoda repeats, the words sounding somehow softer in his gravel-rough voice. "Okay."
"You asked," Tetsuya says, feeling faintly hysterical. "I wasn't going to tell you, you don't have to-"
"Do you want to date?" Kasanoda says, and Tetsuya chokes on his words as his entire body goes rigid with shock. He's staring right at Kasanoda, this must be a dream or some horribly executed joke, but there's no sign of laughter on Kasanoda's red-flushed face, and in Tetsuya's dreams Kasanoda never looks so painfully uncomfortable. His shoulders are still hunched up, his fingers working hard at his knees, and Tetsuya can't align this with any kind of reality he's ever lived in.
"I'm sorry?" he finally asks, more adrift in this moment than he has ever been in his life.
"Dating," Kasanoda repeats, ducks his head far forward again. "You like me, right? Do you want to date me?"
"What," Tetsuya says. "I mean. Yes, I do." He clears his throat, tries to work the cough of confusion free of his voice. "Why are you asking me this?"
Kasanoda's chin comes up. His whole face is red as his hair, now, scarlet from forehead to chin, but he's looking at Tetsuya, meeting the other boy's stare with a remarkably level gaze.
"Cause I wanna date you," he says, like it's easy, like it's obvious. "I've been thinking about it for a while, since I thought you might want to."
"That's not a reason," Tetsuya says weakly, but Kasanoda is waving his hand, pushing aside his logic with a single rushed motion.
"You want to date me," he says again, his voice coming shaky and nervous. Tetsuya doesn't respond, holds Kasanoda's gaze as the other stares at his face for a moment like he's looking for a refusal.
"And I want to date you," he continues, the words coming a little stronger with certainty. Tetsuya keeps staring, words wholly absent in his throat as he waits for this bizarrely realistic dream to give way to consciousness.
Kasanoda heaves a sigh, his hands finally relaxing on his knees. "Okay." He blinks slow, takes a deep breath and sighs again. "So. We're dating."
"Okay," Tetsuya agrees, lost to confusion about how this has become his reality, about the fact that apparently Kasanoda is blushing because of him.
"Good." Kasanoda's shoulders come down, some of the stress giving way in his spine as much as in the grip of his fingers. There's a breath of silence; enough time for Tetsuya to take a breath, let it out, to feel a bubble of hysteria climb in his throat and press taut against the inside of his lips. He holds his mouth shut, attempts to swallow it back, and while he's still invested in this process Kasanoda blurts, "Can I touch your hair?"
Tetsuya blinks, hard, swallows back the noise on his tongue. "What?"
"Can I touch your hair," Kasanoda says again, like Tetsuya's question was because he didn't hear the question and not because he doesn't understand why Kasanoda would even want that.
"Sure," he says before he has thought, ready as ever to capitulate to this remarkably mundane request.
Kasanoda lets a breath out, another gust of relief; then his hand is coming up, reaching out, and suddenly this feels a lot less mundane, as Tetsuya watches the distance between them close and vanish. Kasanoda's looking out over his shoulder, gaze focused at Tetsuya's ponytail with all the intensity he brings to bear on everything, and by the time there's a flicker of contact Tetsuya has wholly forgotten how breathing works. His spine is taut, stiff nearly to the point of pain with almost-panic, and Kasanoda's fingers are in his hair, curling it around his touch and tugged gentle pressure against Tetsuya's scalp.
"It's so soft," he breathes, sounding starstruck and shocked, and Tetsuya is staring at his face, familiar features so much closer than they have ever been before in anything but his imagination. "I always wondered."
Tetsuya's laugh is a thing alive, catching out of his throat before he can even contemplate holding it back. "You didn't have to ask me out just to touch my hair, young lord."
"What?" Kasanoda blinks, his attention skidding back to Tetsuya's face. "Oh." His fingers curl tight, an unconscious fist dragging into the edge of pain at Tetsuya's hair. "That's not the only reason."
Tetsuya doesn't have to say anything. He's close enough to see the way Kasanoda's eyes drop to his mouth, the way they linger before the other's cheeks crest crimson with embarrassment and his gaze slips away entirely. His heart is pounding all over again, beating out a rhythm in his chest that's stealing his breath as surely as the proximity of Kasanoda's mouth to his, and as the seconds ease past without either of them pulling away Tetsuya can feel his adrenaline coalescing into determination.
"So-" Kasanoda starts, finally, looking up to meet Tetsuya's eyes. There's a question on his tongue, weird softness in his gaze, and for a moment he looks his age, nervous and edgy and breathless as Tetsuya is himself.
If Tetsuya weren't already decided on a course of action, that would do it, the nervousness in Kasanoda's eyes like he's pleading for help. But he doesn't need the encouragement; he's leaning in already, reaching out to ghost his fingers against the sky-blue of Kasanoda's jacket as the other boy goes stiff-still with anticipation.
"Young lord," he says, so soft he can barely hear the sound himself. "May I-?"
Kasanoda doesn't answer in words. They're close already, near from his touch at Tetsuya's hair and the closer from the way Tetsuya is leaning in towards him; Tetsuya can hear his rushed inhale, like he's bracing himself for an impact, and then there is an impact, the hot of Kasanoda's mouth crushing against his.
It hurts, for a moment. The fingers in his hair are dragging unconscious force, the edge of Kasanoda's teeth is digging into his lip, and in the first rush of adrenaline Tetsuya can't think how to breath with his mouth occupied. But then he sucks air through his nose, tips his head away from the first press of Kasanoda's mouth, and when Kasanoda leans in to follow him they fit together better, Tetsuya giving ground and Kasanoda easing the pressure. Then they're there, kissing properly, and Tetsuya's heart is just starting to hammer itself into overdrive when Kasanoda pulls away in a rush of breath.
"Sorry," he blurts, first thing, so fast Tetsuya can feel the beginning of the word against his mouth before Kasanoda is well clear. "That wasn't very good, was it?"
"Oh," Tetsuya breathes, because his mouth is burning, now, all his body tingling itself into delayed-reaction heat. His hand presses in closer against Kasanoda's waist, trembling itself into true, deliberate contact, and Kasanoda is leaning back in again, so close Tetsuya can't make out the details of the flush collecting high on his cheekbones.
"Let me try again," Kasanoda says, low and grating in his throat as he shifts his hand in Tetsuya's hair to press steadying at the back of his neck.
Tetsuya closes his eyes, and tightens his hold on Kasanoda's coat, and when their lips come together this time he's smiling shocked and warm and delighted.