Bath Time
By Kitsune no Alz
White porcelain gleamed in the rays of early morning sunlight dripping in through the frosted-glass window. Curls of steam wisped up from the bathtub, negligent and caressing. The only sounds were the occasional plink of a rebellious bead of water dripping from the faucet and the shush of the brimming bathtub and the nigh-inaudible fuzzy burble of dozens of bubblegum-colored bubbles popping and foaming on the water's surface.
Eiri Yuki snorted in disdain at the last; pink bubbles, courtesy of the bubble bath formula Shuichi had picked up from the convenience store last week. A childish thing, but then again quite characteristic of the rising popstar. Groggy from rising early (for him) at eleven o'clock after a sleepless (but not entirely unpleasurable) night, Yuki had mistaken the plastic bottle he'd grabbed from under the sink for the soothing lavender-scented bath-oil he normally preferred. The result was a bath that was as hot and relaxing as he'd wished, but with towering bubbles the color of Shuichi's hair redolent with the pink, sugary scent of bubblegum.
He should've noticed. No other bottle in the bathroom—or even in the entire house—was such a disgustingly girlish pink, blazoned with the universally-recognized image of Hello Kitty.
Ah well. He'd rolled his eyes and muttered disparagingly of his lover, but slid into the bath anyway. It was the water that mattered, after all. It soothed the muscles that were sore from hours hunched over his laptop, wrists held frozen as fingers tapped away at the keyboard, and he closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift from characters and plot devices towards nothing at all.
It was nice to be able to kick back for once. He opened his eyes briefly and glanced toward the counter where both the morning newspaper and his glasses lay, but could summon neither the strength nor the inclination to reach over and pick both up. One or the other he was fairly certain he could manage, but both? Impossible and not worth the effort.
He closed his eyes again and sank deeper into the bath, arms splayed and dangling over the edges of the tub. The heat soaked into him and soothed tension in places he hadn't even known could be tense. Drowsily he hoped he wouldn't drown...but that might not be such a bad thing...it was definitely a pleasant way to go, drifting into sleep, soothed and relaxed as he hadn't been in weeks...
"Yuuuuuuki!"
Yuki's eyes snapped open. The sleepy, indolent dream vanished with the suddenness of a popped bubble. He sat bolt upright to glare at his lover, who was supposed to be at the studio recording his latest song and was now for some reason inexplicably here, back at home, peeping over the edge of the tub with his eyes huge and shiny and iridescently bright as purple bath-bubbles.
"What are you doing here?" Yuki demanded, raking his damp hair back with one hand. He didn't notice that the action left a crest of bright pink bubbles trailing over his head.
"Hiro has a date with Ayaka-chan, Fujisaki has a cold, and Sakano-san had a seizure when I was the only one to show up for recording today, so Seguichi had him sent to the hospital and I came back home and here I am, Yuuuuuki!"
It was amazing the number of words the kid could cram into a single breath. And before Yuki could do anything else but glare and open his mouth to release a torrent of scathing abuse, Shuichi leaped into the air and, fully clothed, did a grand cannonball right into the bathtub. The result was a geyser of bubbles and hot water that exploded in the relatively tiny bathroom and coated everything in wet, foamy pink.
"Yuuuuuki!" Shuichi crowed a third time, now glomping Yuki, who sputtered in combined outrage and indignity and immediately began to do his damnedest to pry the bubbly little punk from him. You'd think that the soap would make him slipperier and easier to pry off, but no—
"There's nobody else here," Shuichi said slyly, peering at him from beneath a lathery shock of hair. His orange sweatshirt had somehow grown larger over the night and was now beginning to slip appealingly off one shoulder, revealing the fact that he wasn't wearing anything else underneath. And from the view Yuki had as he looked down at the boy sitting in his lap, he could tell that, in fact, the orange sweatshirt was the only article of clothing Shuichi was wearing. "And you know I bought these bubbles especially for us..."
"What?" Yuki demanded, mental calculations of imminent Shuichi-homicide brought to a pause by this revelation.
"For us." Shuichi bit his lip and made a moue at Yuki. He hunched closer. The orange sweatshirt slipped a little further. "For something like this..."
"For something like wh—"
Shuichi did something.
"Oh," said Yuki. He wasn't used to Shuichi taking matters into his own hands.
Literally.