Notes:

+ Thanks for your comments on the previous oneshot! They always make me happy to hear and I'm glad people enjoyed it. :)

+ Chapter Summary: Touka eats too many summer treats. (Written for the prompt "Summer." And kinda-sorta for "Candy" too idk)

+ CW for blood.

+ Hope you enjoy~

Summer Dessert

His voice through her phone speaker is tinny.

"Touka-chan? Are you alright?"

Touka drags her phone with her beneath the blanket. "Yeah," she mumbles back. "Why?"

"Um, Hinami-chan said you've been feeling really ill. And you…haven't been to work…?"

"I'm fine," Touka mutters, curling into a ball.

Summer is always excruciating. She's sure there isn't any other time of the year where there are so many things that humans are supposed to eat in such quantity. And inpublic. And in close, close company — the kind that can't be easily escaped to spit out morsels into a plastic bag to stuff into her pocket.

Shaved ice, in rainbow colors and crowned with milk and sugar (the consumption of which is like eating gravel and newspaper congealed in a gutter). Soft serve ice cream, in spiraled pastels and crisp wafer cones (like cold mud piled into a milk carton). Watermelons, all dripping with ruby juice (which tastes, ugh, pungent and rotten, and the gross crumbly texture doesn't help).

"There's always room for dessert!" Yoriko had laughed brightly. And what the hell wasn't dessert? They'd had bowls of eel and rice, and popsicles, and dango, and cotton candy, and taiyaki, and —

And now her stomach is gurgling and growling like it wants to kill her.

Whatever. Her stomach can make all the noise it wants. It's just when it starts twisting that she can't —

Ah. Ugh. Ugh.

She clutches her belly with a groan.

"Touka-chan?" Kaneki calls. "What was that?"

"Don't worry about it," she gasps into the phone. "Just focus on your own problems for once and stop bothering other people, won't you?" She jabs a button to end the call, and rushes to the bathroom.

The next day she feels even worse. She calls in sick again and apologizes to Hinami, who shakes her head — no, no, she'll be fine going by herself to fetch food. Touka manages a little water and tosses and turns in bed. At this rate, she thinks in misery, I'll never fall asleep.

So it's a shock when she wakes up and realizes two things: firstly, that she managed to doze off after all. And secondly, that someone is here.

And it's not Hinami.

Her eyes — red and stinging with exhaustion — blink, and become a furious black. She yells and throws off her blanket and her skin twitches, tightens, bursts as her kagune flare out of her and spit sparks. She aims a blow right at the person's head, and is shocked when they catch her arm, as coolly and perfectly as if she'd told them what she was going to do.

Only one person knows her like that.

"Kaneki," Touka realizes dizzily. Her kagune fade — no big deal, she sees, since they'd hardly managed to come out at all in her weakness. What she'd thought were sparks look now like they couldn't have been any more intimidating than drizzle. She crushes her hand to her throbbing head.

"The hell," she mutters. "You scared me."

After some time, she realizes that he's trying to talk to her.

"Huh?" she manages. "What did you…I…ugh."

The words Go the fuck away are on the tip of her tongue, but she can't muster the effort to push them out. She waves her hand in a vain attempt to shoo him off, but he catches it again. She can't tell if it's her growling now, or her belly again.

"Touka-chan," she hears, and looks up. Her mouth opens, to say something, and is immediately filled with something wonderful and juicy and soft. She chews and swallows before thinking, and before she knows it there's another bite, and another, each more glowing and delicious and soothing than the last.

Her stomach finally quiets — and then, abruptly, squirms again. She licks her lips, and focuses on savoring her next bite — which, this time, moves against her tongue.

"Sorry," she hears as Kaneki's hand hastily pulls back from between her teeth. "It's all gone."

"Oh no!" Hinami cries. "Onee-chan, do you need more?"

"Touka-chan? …Hello? Touka-chan?"

"What?" Touka snaps, rubbing her aching head.

"Yeah," Kaneki says, "we better get some more."

"Okay. Stay here and watch her, Nii-san! I'll be back soon!"

"H-Hinami, wait —"

The door shrieks open, and crashes shut. The pause that follows is broken only by too-heavy breathing (her own), and another tentative call: "Touka-chan?"

"I'm…fine," she insists, bowing her head. "Just…a minute."

But he doesn't back away. He maneuvers a water bottle to her lips, arranges the blanket around her shoulders, pushes her hair behind one ear. In any other condition she'd fuss about it. Right now, the best she can manage is "I'm fine."

"Right," he says. Her vision is still swimming, but she thinks she sees him scratching his chin as he regards her. Sees him glance back at the door. Sees him scoot closer, place a hand on her shoulder, tug down the collar of his shirt. He eases her toward him as he leans forward, and her nose falls into the dip of his collarbone.

Ah.

His skin smells — good. Her tongue flicks out, sweeps up summer sweat that is savory, and sparkly, and that's all the encouragement her weakened body needs. She rakes her fingers down his sleeve, exposing his skin further, and her teeth sink in.

The taste of him is rich — exquisite. Like wine, she imagines. Or — beer? Or — sake. It fills her with the same warmth she sees flushing businessmen at bars. Hunger and nausea had knotted themselves into her every muscle, but with each swallow, her tension miraculously uncoils.

It doesn't take long. She doesn't need much. The instant her rhythm slows down from ravenous desperation, she can't keep up with with his speedy healing. She straightens, blinking until the shades and sharpness her vision recede back into the blur and vibrancy of human-eyed sight. She licks her mouth, wipes it. Swallows, grimaces.

"Um," she says, "thanks."

"You're alright?" he asks.

She frowns. "I was always alright."

A faint smile. "Right." He holds the collar of his shirt away from lingering smears of blood, and scans the room. She puts a hand on his as he reaches for a tissue box, and draws closer, laying her mouth once more on the supple crook between neck and collarbone. She laps up what remains, and this time, instead of rough and frantic, she is gentle, slow, indulgent. She feels him shiver against her tongue, feels goosebumps rise under her lips and the fingers sprawled beneath his shirt.

His whisper is warm. "Are you really feeling better?"

"Yeah," she whispers back, and kisses him. As usual, the trembly flavor of him is filled with a sweetness that fills her down to her toes.

Yoriko is right after all: there's always room for dessert.