Koyomi finally left the room, saying something about being done with dinner and using the word "pyon" one too many times. Chika and Shito were left alone in Shito's room, the remains of dinner sitting beside them on the floor. Chika dared an upward glance at Shito's face—blank as ever, and he quickly darted away, with a let down expression. He considered his options. Option one: try to act lighthearted, horse around, see if he could get a reaction. Option two: ignore it, get up and go to his own room like always. Option three: just say something. But he was too afraid. He just sat there, legs crossed, biting his lip, wishing his eyes weren't stuck to the floor so fiercely. One hand held onto a soda can, feigning a loose grip, and on the other fingers traced his kneecap subconsciously.
Option two, he thought, resigned. He rose slowly, his face showing the pain the he didn't want to betray for just an instant—or that he thought he didn't want to betray. He crossed the room without a word, but moving deliberately slowly, hoping that Shito would say something, but knowing that he wouldn't. He stopped for just a brief moment, his hand on the old gold-colored doorknob. It was enough. It was what he had been wanting for weeks by then.
"Akatsuki." He said it in that voice of his…that voice that only he could manage. He puts the emphasis on a weird part of my name, thought Chika, but his breath snagged despite himself. "What are you acting weird over?"
Chika turned back into the room, glowing, but not betraying anything besides his normal confident smirk. "What makes you think I'm acting weird?"
"You're not talking," said Shito. Chika looked at him, expecting to see his friend focused on his food, but instead found his eyes met with a cold and steady stare. Suddenly, his momentary happiness turned to anger.
"Don't look at me like that, dumbass!" he yelled, taking a step further back into the room and slamming his foot to make a point.
"You and your short temper…" Shito said in a voice that almost sounded playful, but he wasn't smiling. He looked away from Chika and down at the floor.
"Hey! Don't talk about me like that, Shito! And don't look away from me! We're talking, aren't we?"
"Don't use the term 'talking' so loosely, Akatsuki."
"Don't say my name in that weird way!" he yelled, but he regretted it a second later.
Shito finally looked back at him, giving him a cruel glare. That's all I wanted to see, Shito, thought Chika. Just as his anger was about to defuse, though, Shito said, "Get out."
Chika, who had been midstride in another step towards his friend on the floor, froze. His about-to-outreach arm went stiff and he let out a faint little half gasp. He bent back upwards so that he was standing straight, and covered his eyes with the hand he wasn't busy shoving in his pocket so that Shito couldn't see his clenched fist. But, despite the fact that both boys could feel the aura of anger about him was stronger than ever, his words came out evenly, even a bit sad, as he spoke.
"Shito…"
"What is it you want exactly, you jerk? What is it that compels you to fuck around with me so dutifully? Huh?"
Chika was taken aback, and he whipped his hand from his face and slapped it to his chest as he yelled again, anger turning into something new he couldn't quite recognize. "Fucking around with you? What the hell do you mean?" He found some strange satisfaction in the conversation—if it could even be called that by that point.
"Don't act like you don't mean to do it!" Shito snarled, finally shooting up from the floor. "One minute you're pouting like a kid on the floor, won't say anything, and the next you're yelling at me at the top of your lungs!"
"And what about you, Shito? What do you think you're doing?"
"SHOVE IT, AKATSUKI!" Shito roared. Silence flooded the room and Chika's face turned to show his shock. And then, he had the sudden urge to get off of his feet. He fell hard onto the bed and sat, hunched over himself, elbows resting on his knees. Shito only paused for the moment, for a second unsure of exactly what was overcoming him, but then he was contorted by anger again and exploded once more. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Get off my bed! Get out of here!" His eyes clenched shut and he pointed violently in the direction of the door.
More silence. Shito breathed hard, panted, loud enough for the both of them to hear, and they just stayed like that for a moment. Finally, Chika spoke and sliced through the brutal coldness of it all. "Fine," he said, and stood to head for the door. But he was stopped once more with a hand on the handle.
"Akatsuki…why…are you leaving so easily?" Chika liked to imagine that he heard sadness in Shito's voice, but there was nothing. Just the usual vacancy that he had grown to expect.
"Well…it's okay….that you're angry," he said, without turning around at first. It wasn't until a moment after that that he actually faced Shito. "I didn't want to make you angry. But I can't have you go on feeling nothing."
Shito's stony face shifted with his surprise. Akatsuki…he thought. What are you doing?...He sighed and sat down on the bed himself, much in the same way Chika had been sitting there. "Just come and sit down," he projected at the floor, but in a voice full enough to reach well across the small dorm room. He placed a hand on the covers next to him, inviting his friend. Chika, completely not expecting this, paused for a moment, but then eagerly went to sit by the boy. When he reached the edge of the bed, he paused awkwardly, then grabbed Shito's wrist and moved his hand carefully from the place where he was being asked to sit. He didn't expect the limpness in his arm that he felt, but now that he looked, he saw that his friend's whole body was rather…the word dead came to mind, but of course he pushed that away.
It wasn't until he was already sitting on the bed that he realized he didn't know where to put Shito's hand. So after a second of apprehension, he just set it in his lap. It wasn't much of a stretch, as the two were only inches from each other on the bed.
"Akatsuki, what kind of crap are you trying to pull?" Shito asked quietly, not looking up from the floor.
"I…I don't know."
"Stop lying. What do you think you're doing? Messing with people like this, it's no fair." He finally looked away from the ground, but turned his head away from Chika and rested it in his hand. Chika leaned in to speak. Without even realizing it, he was clutching desperately to his friend's hand.
"Shito! I don't mean to mess with you! I…I don't…" His words turned into empty gasps after that. He was leaning so far over, just trying to look Shito in the eyes that he was nearly on top of him. It wasn't comfortable, so he turned and rolled back on the balls of his feet, so that he was kneeling on the bed, facing his friend from the side, and still holding onto his hand tightly.
Shito finally turned to look at him. Their faces were inches apart. "Akatsuki…" He was totally shocked by his friend's expression. He couldn't hide it under his usually cool nerves. "You…you're honestly going to start crying, aren't you?"
Chika squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, fighting exactly what Shito had predicted. "Idiot Shito! If I cried, would you? NO! So I don't want to cry! There's no POINT!"
"Ah…I…" Shito was reduced to small noises. Words wouldn't come when he heard his friend talking like that, and the thickness in his voice.
Chika pulled Shito's hand up to his face and held it against his check. His breathing was picking up, and Shito could feel a similar sensation rising in himself. The back of Shito's thumb was just touching Chika's lower lip.
"Your lips…are so soft…" he said, finally moving his limp hand the touch them. For a moment, Chika, after looking into his friend's eyes, felt so quintessentially happy that he could only sit, docile beneath his gentle fingers, eyes closed, totally tranquil. But then, we his eyes opened again, although he still found Shito gazing into them evenly, he recognized in that stare that absence that he had somehow become accustomed to over the past few months.
And, not moving his mouth at all, not wanting in any way to ever make Shito feel even the tiniest urge to take his gently fondling hands away from his lips, Chika wrapped one arm around the boy's waist and with the other clutched his white dress shirt, his fist clenched around it and resting on his chest. And then it happened. Chika's eyes slammed shut in frustration again, and a single tear squeezed between his lids. Shito moved his hand from the boy's lips to wipe it away. Chika only kept his eyes shut tight and held Shito tighter where he had grabbed him, wanting to feel him there but knowing he would be too torn apart by the nothingness he expected waiting in those dark eyes.
"Feel something, dammit."
And then Chika leaned forward and kissed Shito on his perfect, warm, soft lips. And for a moment, as Shito grabbed onto him as well, and kissed him back ferociously, and pushed him gently back onto the bed beneath him, Chika wished that he had opening his eyes before they had kissed. Because he could feel by the way Shito was caressing him now that he would have seen feeling in those eyes. But it was enough knowing it was there now. Chika had not come here for what was happening now, but Shito was feeling…and Chika was feeling too. He was feeling so much that all he could was bury his face in Shito's chest to hide the tears.