This has been previously published on Archive of Our Own but both websites will be receiving the same updates.

Co-written between Bex (tumblr: labyrinthexpress) and Nikki (tumblr: anywayimnikki)

AO3 link: /works/1089736/chapters/2193071

Please Enjoy!

Hiroomi was later than normal to the literary club after being shut down by his dear sister for the third time that day. She's was being harsher than normal and there was no reason why she would be. He opened his eyes to looked up at the sky, Mitsuki must have something bothering her but he couldn't place his finger on it. He thought a while longer until it began to hurt his head. He sat up on the long bench, his eyes trailed over the empty school rooftop. Maybe he was just over analysing things and there was nothing wrong at all. He sighed and got up on his feet and began walking towards the classroom.

When he entered he noticed that Mitsuki was busy looking over books with a pile she probably made herself put in front of Akkey. "He pulled out a chocolate bar from his pocket and waved it in front of him. "Look what I brought for my beautiful sister!" He exclaimed happily.

Without looking up, Mitsuki held her hand up. She flipped one of the pages and wiggled the fingers on her free hand.

"Give it then, pervert."

Hiroomi gave a deviant smile and leaned forward. "What do you say first?"

Mitsuki sighed and switched her gaze from the books in front of her to her older brother. Sometimes she felt she had to be the only person in the literary club that was actually interested in these books.

"Please," she said in a dry tone, knowing it was by far not what her brother had had in mind.

He let out a sigh, one day he would get her to say the words he was looking for. She never did show much concern for him unless it was a more dangerous situation. Maybe he needed to get hurt or scare her more to have her yell his name in delicious desperation. "Enjoy your chocolate." He gave a frown and placed it in her hands and walked over to take a seat at the table.

As he passed back Akkey he ran his hand through his hair. He let a smirk come to his lips and took a seat next to him. "Is Mitsuki boring you again?"

Akihito lifted his cheek off of his arms and looked at his senpai. "I was hoping that, since she's reading, she'd wear these glasses I brought for her."

He turned to the table again, resting his chin on one of his forearms and poking the frame laid out in front of him. "They're such wonderful glasses too."

Mitsuki, who had already unwrapped the chocolate bar and was nibbling on it, paused to give the blond a look. "Don't try forcing your weird perverted ways on me. I'm not wearing glasses for your entertainment, pervert."

Hiroomi glanced up at Mitsuki with a devious look. "With or without glasses you're still the only one for me." He leaned forward on the table and rested his chin in his hand. "Don't you find her beautiful Akkey? She's such a tsundere."

While Mitsuki stuck out her tongue and went back to reading, trying to ignore the boys, Akihito sighed and sat up straight. "It's all worthless if she doesn't wear the glasses." He picked the frame up, folded out it's legs and held the glasses up in front of him. "Such a waste of a good pair of glasses. You can have them."

With a sudden burst of speed, Akihito placed the glasses on Hiroomi's nose, the curling ends of the legs resting on his ears.

The brunette's eyes widened in surprise when he felt the pair of glasses placed on his face. He didn't really like the feeling of having something on his face and scrunched his nose a bit. He glanced over at Akihito with a frown on his face. "Aren't these girl glasses?"

Akihito took a moment to answer. Weirdly, the frame looked almost... good on Hiroomi's face. He watched them slide slowly down the older boy's nose and had to ignore the urge to tell Hiroomi to push them up in that amazing typical meganekko way.

"Possibly," he managed after a second, "the frame's quite small, but the model would fit anyone. I thought simple grey ones would go well with a book-reading mood."

He stared at him for a moment before he put his middle finger to the middle of the lenses and pushed them back up into place. "Am I as pretty as the naughty megane girls in your magazines back home?" He smirked as he placed a hand on Akkey's thigh.

Akihito was startled by the sudden contact. Well, not really the contact - that was a common enough thing for Hiroomi - but more the combination of that with the fact that Akihito HAD just been comparing him with the girls from his magazines.

He sneaked a glance at Mitsuki, who still seemed completely oblivious to what was going on. Quickly, he snatched the glasses away from Hiroomi, whipping out a cloth to clean them and turning so the warm hand fell away from his leg.

"Glasses are glasses," he said, not lying, but also not revealing anything specific enough for either Mitsuki or Hiroomi to comment on, he thought.

He shrugged and leaned back in the chair. He was growing bored now, Mitsuki wasn't giving him any attention and Akkey was being aloof. To be honest it was hard for him to know what was going on in Akkey's head sometimes, the guy was all over the place, especially when it came to glasses. "Is there anything interesting coming up?" He wondered aloud to no one in particular. Maybe if there was a festival coming soon he could use it as an excuse to hang out with her as just brother and sister.

Akihito glanced out the window and thought about it for a bit. Life was kind of monotonous for him: get up, school, literary club, home, sleep. There weren't many things to do normally. But if there was something happening in town... "Isn't the film festival from the film academy being held soon?"

Satisfied that the glasses were squeaky clean now, he put them down and pocketed the cloth. He glanced at the boy next to him again, the image of him with the glasses crossing his mind again. Hiroomi, however, had his eyes trained on his sister, as usual.

"They're going to set up a big screen in the park and show all the students' films on it when it's dark out."

Hiroomi's eyes looked back at Akkey, "is that so?" A smug smile crossed his lips. "Do you hear that sister? We can cuddle in a park! If you get scared at all big brother will be there for you." He laughed a little to himself, he was almost positive Mitsuki would decline and turned part of his attention back to Akkey.

"Are you into films, Akkey? Maybe instead we can go on a date and I could fondle your perfect waist." He winked with a charming smile. The likelihood of events would be that Mitsuki would come along begrudgingly but won't even come close to them both and Akkey was going to play as his rebound.

"D-date?" Akihito jumped up, pushing his chair out, which landed on the floor with a loud clanging noise. "Don't say weird things."

Akihito didn't know why exactly he was so flustered about Hiroomi's words. After all, he hadn't said anything weirder than he usually did. But that stupid, stupid image of the way his black hair had fallen over the gray frame of those glasses was still stuck in his head and Akihito was having a mighty hard time NOT putting those glasses back on Hiroomi's face, just to see if he'd seen it right.

Mitsuki looked up at the noise and give both boys a pointed look. "Can you at least be quiet? You two perverts can get married for all I care, but I'm trying to read here." She tapped her book with one digit and Akihito tried to suppress the blush that was creeping up his neck.

His curiosity peaked when Akihito was acting suddenly so flustered, he eyed the fallen chair and pursed his lips. "Akkey, do you like the idea of holding hands with me?" He almost seemed hurt. "Even Mitsuki think's we are good enough to marry each other." He pushed the chair back and stood up, he placed a hand on Akkey's cheek and moved his thumb over his lips softly. " You shouldn't be such a tease."

He leaned in close, close enough to break any personal bubble. But before he could get dangerously close he pulled back and let go of Akkey. He leaned against the table. "There's a youmu coming to the playground in the park tonight."

Akihito blinked at the sudden loss of warmth on his face. His lips were tingling and he couldn't figure out why Hiroomi's teasing had done something else than annoy him.

"How do you know?" Mitsuki interrupted Akihito's scrambled mind and he looked over to see her full attention on her brother for once.

He ran a hand through his hair as he looked over at Mitsuki. "Izumi told me. Apparently it's a big one." He shrugged, "I can take care of it on my own." He was fairly certain he could kill it just fine but there was something Izumi had mentioned about this particular youmu that made him hesitant about facing it. But who can say no when Izumi, the spokesperson of the Nase family, asked you to take care of something? There was a reason for all her actions and words.

Mitsuki's eyes grew a little wider - only a little bit. It was rare for Izumi-nee to only inform one of them. "Are you sure? I can come along if it's necessary."

That is rare, Akihito thought as he shifted his gaze to the black-haired girl. Mitsuki rarely acknowledged Hiroomi's existence, let alone that she showed any kind of worry for him.

"I can come," he offered too, though he knew he'd be pretty useless.

Hiroomi smiled some when he saw Mitsuki's slight concern, he was about to answer her until Akihito offered to come too. He forced his lips into a thin line. "No Akihito, you can't come." He used Akkey's real name to show his seriousness. If he came then what Izumi had warned him about might really happen. He couldn't risk that. "Mitsuki, you shouldn't come either. I said I can take care of it." He flashed a warm smile at her. "You trust me right?"

Both of the first-year students frowned when Hiroomi used Akihito's full name. It wasn't that Akihito liked being called Akkey - in fact, he tried to tell his senpai to stop doing so all too often - but when Hiroomi didn't call him that, he knew something was up.

Akihito did not have a good feeling about tonight.

He and Mitsuki shared a look - just for a second - but it was enough for Akihito to know that Hiroomi's statement didn't sit well with her either. She turned her eyes on her brother once more and returned that smile of his. "Of course I trust you."

Hiroomi blushed a little when he saw her smile. "You should really smile more often…it suits you." He let out a romanticised sigh and moved off the table, "I'm hungry, go get me food Akkey." He decided to change the subject completely now, it was no use in letting them linger on it, especially if it was something that could potentially hurt both of them. Hiroomi shouldn't have brought it up at all.

Akihito puffed his cheeks up, a little offended that Hiroomi dropped the subject like that and just decided to order him around.

"I'm getting myself food. You can come along if you have to."

Hiroomi wrapped his arms around Akkey's neck with a pout on his lips. "Fine, let's go together, love." He pulled Akkey towards the door then. "We'll be back later, dear sister!" He sang the words as let go of Akkey and pushed him out the door.

As they walked down the hallway in silence, Akihito couldn't help sneaking a glance at Hiroomi. He looked concentrated, a little... different than how he usually was. Was that just some fabrication of Akihito's mind, due being flustered because of the glasses-moment? Or was Hiroomi actually acting more clingy because he was hiding something? Akihito really couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about that youmu hunt tonight.

They reached the vending machine and Akihito rifled through his pockets to find some change. He pushed the coins in the slot and pressed a button to get himself a bag of gummy bears. "What do you want? I'll treat you."

Hiroomi had been spacing out the whole time Akkey was working the vending machine. He couldn't get over what Izumi told him-

"The youmu you're hunting doesn't use its own body to fight, it manipulates nearby youmu into its service." Hiroomi leaned against the wall and listened to his sisters words. "So I'm not going to be facing just one youmu?" "That is correct." He sighed and played with the ends of his scarf. "And not only will you be facing more than one youmu, there will be differences in their sizes and strengths. The one manipulating them all will be relatively easy to kill. The hard part is finding an opening through the others." He nodded, this might be a good exercise for him. He kicked off the wall and began to walk towards the door. "And one more thing Hiroomi…" He paused and glanced back at her, "don't let Kanbara-san get close. I doubt the youmu will have the power to unlock him, but I can't say for sure." Hiroomi stared at her for a long moment, he nodded and left.-

Hiroomi's closed his eyes. When he reopened them he saw Akkey holding some gummy bears and staring at him. He blinked, did he miss something? "What?"

Akihito watched Hiroomi pull out of his own thoughts. "I asked you what you wanted. I was going to treat you, but if you're going to act like this when I do, I won't offer again." He pressed the bag of gummy bears into his senpai's hands and rifled through the coins on his open palm. "I have enough, so just choose, alright?"

Hiroomi frowned and glanced out the window at the other side of them. "Juice." He opened up the bag of gummy bears and stuck one in his mouth, not really caring that Akkey had gotten them for himself. Akkey was being rather stingy right now, he probably never once thought that Hiroomi was keeping him in the dark for his own protection. So ungrateful.

Akihito nodded, his eyes already on the vending machine and his hands busying themselves with the coins. When the pack of orange juice - the only kind the machine held - dropped, he picked it out of the slot and turned to give it to Hiroomi.

To his surprise, his bag of gummy bears was already open and just when he looked, Hiroomi popped another one in his mouth.

"Hey! Those were mine! Give that back!"

Hiroomi reached out and grabbed the juice from him but kept the gummy bears. He was in the middle of chewing another gummy bear when he began walking away casually. He was going to take these as payment for the foul treatment Akkey had been giving him. He continued to walk down the hallway while ignoring everything the other said and did.

"Hiroomi!" When Akihito didn't succeed in snatching his gummy bears back, he decided to go about it a different way. Hiroomi was acting strange, he was going form overly hands-on on to absent to moody in a matter of minutes and it was starting to piss Akihito off. His hand shot out and grasped Hiroomi's shoulder, pulling him so he turned around and faced him. Akihito felt his eyebrow twitching in annoyance as he brought his face close to Hiroomi's and asked: "What is up with you today?"

Hiroomi looked at Akkey in surprise when he turned him around so suddenly. Normally he wasn't this forceful. He stared Akkey in the eyes for a moment before turning his gaze away. "Just stay away from the playground tonight…okay?" He was worried about Akkey, he knew how he felt afterwards when he transformed and Hiroomi had to fight him to calm him down. He was confident he could do the same thing as he had always done but he didn't want to see him go through that pain again.

Akihito stared into Hiroomi's eyes for a second more, saw emotion behind them switch from surprised to sullen with something he didn't recognise in between. Then he sighed and let Hiroomi go, putting a bit of distance between them again. He'd been so close, their foreheads almost pressing together even though Hiroomi was slightly taller than him. Too close, he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to feel sorry about it if Hiroomi had the habit of touching him all the time.

"I'm going home," he announced, picking a gummy bear out of the bag instead of stealing the whole pack away from Hiroomi. "Keep those."

Hiroomi didn't say anything to him while he grabbed his coat off the hook outside the literary club's classroom and shrugged it on. Akihito looked at him then. "Be careful, tonight."

He didn't know what it was, but when Akkey was so close to him he felt a warmth inside him grow. And it only grew with every passing second. Why did he feel disappointed when Akkey pulled away? Hiroomi's eyes travelled over the blonde as he pulled his coat on. He didn't respond when Akkey told him to be careful.

What will happen next? HONHONHON - Bex