It was a hot and humid summer day, to a college boy the season was sacred as the holy sabath, but at the moment it felt like purgatory. The air was thick and stagnant, poignant with moisture, and his peice of shit car was stingy with its airconditioner. So he was babying it, had the windows rolled down and endured the thick hot soup that sloshed inside when he managed to get up to more than five miles per hour.
Kanda Yu faught and so far won his battle with the tiny narrow dirt roads leading down from the isolated village and equally isolated camp site his people were calling temporary home and towards the bigger city miles away. The pretty little silver Ford Taurus was not made for backwoods roads, but so far she held up well enough. Why he had gotten the sleek little car while studying in the crowded streets of Tokyo had less to do with actual transportation and more to do with being able to actually say he owned a car. That it was a foreign car was a big bonus.
Hindsight, he should have left his pretty little fourth-hand car and borrowed the jeep, or the truck, or just fucking walked. But none of those options had a back seat, or tinted windows, or air conditioner, even a temperamental one, and all three of those things were needed for the goal he was working towards.
That goal, or a main factor of it, was sitting in his passenger talking away, elbow on the rolled down window, long elegant fingers resting on the chicken stick in a lazy, casual way.
More than a week home and Kanda was still struck at how much the younger man had changed. The sexual tug low in his gut wasn't unfamiliar, at the wizened age of nineteen he had experienced a variety of eye opening and awkward lusts, but it was a big difference feeling them for someone he had until this point seen as little more than a toddler.
The thing was, Kanda had always shrugged him off as Cross' s annoying little tow along, unnervingly polite and impossibly naive, who wouldn't survive a single day outside of middle class Europe. He had firmly held the belief that the brat needed to be dumped back into whatever British schoolhouse Cross had hauled him out of.
It had been with some suprise and interest that he had driven up nine days ago to find that apparently someone had finally gotten around to bashing his cherubic little face in with the puberty stick.
So he was in his car, in shorts several inches above customarily male, contemplating the steps necessary to convince his chatty passenger to join him in the back seat, where he would finally utilize the temperature controls and the tinted windows and the fantastic rear suspension.
"I was really suprised to find it was such a joke. It's actually incredibly dangerous, sometimes people get injured, even killed, doing the tricks. So I figured if I was going to spend a few months in America for school I'd try out right? Well it turns out in spite of my years of circus experience the boys are almost never involved in any actual stunts. The boys are the "tossers", and believe me I made use the double meaning every chance I got after I didn't make the squad, can you believe they actually call it a squad? Anyway the boys are the tossers, the girls are the 'tossees.' Well technically they're called 'fliers' but that's mental because they don't actually fly, okay? They're TOSSED, but they call them fliers. Might be similar in the UK but I never went to high school in the UK, did you know America calls their state funded schools public schools? I didn't. Anyway, I did some of my more impressive tricks but since I lacked the upper body strength to toss someone I didn't get in. When is stupid, and I told them so, and I called them names, not out loud of course thats rude, but in my head. I felt bad about that later when one of the girls fell and broke her collarbone.
"Which brings up the science lab accident I saw! Actually, okay no it doesn't, they are in no way connected, but it did remind me." God, talk talk talk, did the kid ever shut up. He had better be a really excellent lay to have to endure all this nonsense.
He didn't actually think he'd get much resistance when he broached the idea, but it was time consuming finding the right moment to do so. It had been no secret the kid had a crush on him for years, though he figured the boy would like to convince himself he was discrete, teenagers never were. Still it was a precarious hop on a slipery stone between innocent crush and backseat interlude. It helped that he was driving, that way if he fucked up royal the first time bringing it up he could try again after the skinny little beanstalk cooled down.
An hour is a long time alone in a tiny car with your childhood crush, who is now showing interest in you.
Short term purely sexual interest, but the kid didn't really need to know that. Besides he could play it like a long distance thing. Maybe have some fun on school breaks when he was out in bumfuck with his stupid family and the pickings were slim. Too damn bad all they had in way of privacy back at camp were tents, and his was shared with a fucking new guy, some green asshole with a doctorate named Krory who was apparently a big financial backer wanting in on the field work. Otherwise he would have tested ground a bit more boldly. As it was he was barely ever left alone, between his childhood friends, by force of proximity instead of his own choice, and family he had been lucky to use the can without someone insisting on tagging along.
Would have been better from the beginning if he had just ignored the change, forced himself to see him as the scrawny preteen he always did. Would have been better still if Allen fucking Walker had given the impression of absolute disinterest. But no… That leap in growth hadn't hindered his little boy crush, Kanda's eyes followed Allen through the camp, and he saw the boy's own gaze slide towards him, enormous white grey eyes that used to take up half his stupid face and annoyed the fuck out of Kanda, now they made his juices swim.
So with a stingy two days left before his trip back he snatched up supply run duty with the Beansprout, and firmly, thoroughly, booted Lavi and Lenalee out of the party.
As subtle as Chernobyl.
He never volunteered for supply run, he couldn't say why he was doing so now, when a man didn't like to mix with people what rational excuse was there to mix with them? He could only blame the crazy impulse on hormones bottled up so tight from nine days sexual frustration, and he really didn't care how obvious he was being to any of them at this point.
"Nice day," Allen said with a sigh. If the idiot considered this 'nice' he was stupider than Kanda originally thought, "looks like we may just get that rain." When all he got was a grunt as response he continued undaunted, "This conversation thing is tough for you, I realize, so I'll make it easier and ask why you dragged me of all people down into town with you?"
That suprised him, not that he let it show. He might have to add a few points back onto the asshole's IQ for that. "Figure," Kanda said after a moment of thought, wouldn't hurt to smooth the way with a line or two, "if I'm stuck in a hot car for an hour with anybody, it might as well be you."
"Huh. Odd." He let that alone a moment, but it irritated him too damn much. "Why?"
"Because I don't believe you've done more than growl and curse at me in the four years we've known eachother."
"That's a fucking lie." Wasn't it?
"You've always been mean to me, but you're mean to everyone so I didn't take it to heart."
"I just don't want people fucking bugging me, all you ever did was tag along and get in the way." Were they arguing? Were they really fucking arguing? Maybe there was a reason they didn't interact much.
"This isn't tagging along?"
"If you get in my way out here I'm dumping you out the car."
"I'll keep that in mind - Oh!" Allen let out a laughing sound of pleasure and leaned over, gripped Kanda's thigh, pointed out the windshield. "See! Did you see?" Argument and iritation forgotten. A ball of heat kindled direct center in his body and his vision doubled, so no, he hadn't seen, but the hand firm on his leg he was very much aware of. "Wow. I realize I should be used to it, but wow. Can you believe it? Right over the road. Balls or arrogance?"
"What was it?" Hand still on his thigh, shorts rode up in the car, warm hand on his bare thigh. Did he think the past week was torture? It was Basic fucking Training.
"What? You didnt see the Gibon? Big black one? Bent the tree like a bow.
"Nope. Missed it." He said through his teeth. Don'tgetaboner dontgetaboner.
Allen gave his thigh a light smack and a mock pouty whine, "How could you miss it? Sucks to be you. God. I love these trees. We were in Borneo last month, got some great shots of the Orangutans and Mikacks, but I saw a clouded leopard."
"You did not." Noone would have shut up about that if it had happened.
"I did." He sighed lustily, "didn't snap a picture, it was early morning, and I was utilising the toilet. It was perched on a branch a few yards ahead of me. Right where I walked to come from camp. I swear I probably walked right under it."
"Gave you a good kick?"
"Better than coffee. Of course I never told Cross, wouldn't have believed me."
Kanda thought about that a moment. "Cat would have left marks, tracks. Easy enough to prove."
"And I could have spotted them, made it up." He slumped back into his seat, but the pout was still mostly fake. "Best idea was to keep it to myself. Avoid the remarks."
Coss had them in plenty so as far as ideas go… "Meh, didnt suck."
"I think there was a compliment in there somewhere but you dropped it. Give me a moment, let me search the floor."
"You're hilarious. "
"Oh, see? Guess you found it."
He might have brought up the whole backseat 'lets get partially, and if your enthusiastic enough mostly, naked and see if that puberty stick hit all of you' but the trees were thinning and there was foot traffic on the road now. He honestly didn't know the policy here in Thailand for passing locals spotting the vague outlines of two males getting it on in the backseat. So he would table it for the return trip.
Fingers crossed.
