Chapter 4: Honesty

Hiroki was not happy with how dinner was going. They'd ended up at the restaurant Nowaki had been getting takeout from that day he saved Hiroki from being run over. It wasn't a bad place, he'd admit, but their waitress had been eying Hiroki's flowers since she took their orders. He ended up ordering a beer, figuring he deserved to get drunk since it was Friday night and he'd survived the first week of the new semester.

Nowaki, for his part, just smiled and answered the increasingly personal questions. Hiroki's inhibitions were easily washed away by alcohol, it seemed.

"Don't you have a girlfriend or something? You should've sent these things to her," Hiroki said, tossing a glare at the sunflowers lying on the table beside him.

Nowaki hadn't been partaking in alcoholic beverages, so he just smiled over his glass of iced tea. "I don't have anyone, Hiro-san."

"Geeze, if you can't get a woman…" He didn't finish that thought, instead gazing down at his empty plate. The waitress had brought him his third and fourth drinks since they'd both finished eating, but didn't seem to think it appropriate to take the dirty dishes away. They did, however, find it appropriate to giggle at the pair whenever Nowaki gave Hiroki that warm, friendly smile of his. "Not that I care. Never been interested in women, anyway."

"Your mother did say your first love is literature," Nowaki said.

Hiroki scoffed and picked up his beer glass, only to see that it was empty. He frowned and said, "My mother doesn't know I'm gay so of course she'd say that."

Nowaki blinked in surprise, at least until he noticed that their waitress had stopped cold as soon as Hiroki uttered the word 'gay.' When Nowaki saw her, though, she started towards them again and put the bill down on the table. "Have a good night, gentlemen."

"Thank you," Nowaki said with another one of those smiles. Hiroki scoffed when he saw it, before Nowaki got up, holding his wallet. "I'll be right back, Hiro-san."

"There's no way in hell I'm letting you pay for everything!" Hiroki said indignantly, quickly getting up from the table. His world started spinning, though, and he stumbled on his feet until Nowaki caught him. He blinked twice and, instead of bursting out in anger, he said, "You're really warm, you know that?"

"Ah, I do have a naturally high body temperature…" There was a long silence between the two, during which Nowaki simply held Hiroki in his arms and Hiroki tried to get his bearings again. Finally Nowaki said, "Are you okay, Hiro-san?"

Hiroki mumbled under his breath and pushed Nowaki away before stomping out to wait in the fresh air. Apparently he had given up his bid to pay for part of the check. Nowaki, for his part, just smiled and went to take care of it.

"It's stupid, anyway." Hiroki had started ranting as they walked. He didn't live that far away from the restaurant, and Nowaki had suggested that the night air might help clear his head. Not that Hiroki particularly wanted to get his head cleared, but he probably wouldn't have done that well on the subway. "I've had a crush on my best friend since we were ten and my mother hasn't even noticed. She even tries to set me up with girls."

"Your best friend?"

"Well not really a crush I guess. It passed that a long time ago." Hiroki scowled down at the sidewalk, but not able to watch where he was going proved to be a bad idea, and Nowaki had to pull him out of the way before he crashed into someone. "Would you not touch me?"

"I'm sorry, Hiro-san," Nowaki said amiably, removing his hand from Hiroki's elbow. "Is this friend that man I met the other day?"

"Akihiko, yeah." Hiroki averted his eyes again, but he was at least aware of people coming from the opposite direction. "But I never get a chance. Stupid Akihiko, always after one guy or another, not even looking at me." He flinched when he felt Nowaki's hand on his head, petting his hair in a way that reminded him too much of Akihiko. Except, he mused as he realized that they'd finally gotten to his apartment building, Nowaki's hand was warm where Akihiko's was always freezing.

"Do you need help up to your apartment, Hiro-san?" Nowaki asked, his hand still running through Hiroki's hair in a way that was much too affectionate for how little they knew each other.

Hiroki batted Nowaki's hand away, but instead of telling him to go home, he folded his arms and said, "Whatever."

He did need help up to his apartment, it turned out. When his confessional stage of drunkenness wore off, he tended to be left with nothing but an overwhelming feeling of tiredness, and he fell asleep in the elevator almost as soon as he hit the button for his floor. He was leaning against the wall of the car opposite Nowaki, having done it pointedly and in a way that made it obvious he didn't want to be touched anymore. Nowaki complied, at least until the elevator dinged for the floor beneath them and Nowaki realized he should probably wake Hiroki up.

"Hiro-san?" he asked just as the elevator reached their floor and got ready to open. Hiroki woke up fairly easily, but he spent most of the time until the doors opened looking confused as to where he was, why he was there, and who Nowaki was. "We're almost to your apartment."

"…oh," Hiroki said, finally seeming to realize what was going on. He pushed past Nowaki and left the elevator, then glanced back at him. "What, you're not coming?"

Nowaki quickly nodded and pushed open the doors when they started to close on him. Hiroki was grumbling the entire way down the hall to his apartment, but he didn't seem to have any qualms with Nowaki being in his apartment.

Nowaki, for his part, slipped off his shoes and looked around the apartment in wonder. It was bigger than his own by several times, and while it had a TV, it didn't seem that prominent compared to the bookshelves surrounding it. They were all full, and the books had started overflowing onto everything else. Some were open on the coffee table in between the two couches, with tons of loose papers surrounding them.

"You don't have to stay you know," Hiroki said, his voice having turned a little pouty. It seemed he changed his mind pretty easily while drunk as well. "I've been worse off than this and not killed myself." Nowaki didn't respond, and he huffed and said, "You want coffee or something?"

"No thank you," Nowaki replied. When Hiroki responded to that by just collapsing on the couch, he continued with, "Perhaps you should just go to bed, Hiro-san. You did fall asleep in the elevator, after all."

Hiroki eyed him and said, "I'm not going to bed as long as you're here."

"…I wouldn't take advantage of you like that," Nowaki said, his voice quiet and even. He walked over to Hiroki and leaned down, pushed a piece of his shaggy hair out of his eyes. He blinked in surprise when Hiroki leaned in and kissed him, a sloppy, desperate kind of kiss that he'd never experienced before. He pulled away when he felt Hiroki's tongue trying to push into his mouth.

"I'm nowhere near as noble as you, it seems." Hiroki's eyes carried a surprising lucidness in them after all the time he'd spent stumbling and ranting since dinner, and it caught Nowaki off-guard enough to be completely pushed over when Hiroki pushed him out of the way. "I'm going to bed."

Nowaki just nodded from his place on the floor, touching his lips and looking amazed.

xxx

Hiroki woke up the next morning sprawled out on his bed and wearing the dress shirt and slacks he'd worn to work Friday morning. He also had a pounding headache and a distinct lack of memory as to what happened the previous night much beyond when he and Nowaki finished their food. There were brief flashes here and there, nothing too bad but ones that led him to believe he might've told Nowaki a little more about himself than he was prepared to deal with.

Nowaki wasn't there in bed with him, though, and other than the horrible headache and a bit of stiffness, his body felt fine. He was more than prepared to believe that he hadn't done anything stupid that night. At least until he managed to stumble out of his room and saw Nowaki was still there, standing in his kitchen and cooking.

"…what the hell are you doing." Hiroki's voice was flat, and he said it in a quiet voice. Even loud sounds from himself were sure to make him feel even more like crap. He knew how these things went.

Nowaki turned, and he smiled when he saw Hiroki standing there. "I stayed to make sure you'd be okay, Hiro-san, and I guess I fell asleep. But, since I was here anyway, I thought you'd like some breakfast. Your mother says you don't eat as well as you should."

"What the hell does my mother know?" Hiroki asked, but never-the-less, he rubbed at a particularly throbbing place on his head and left Nowaki to it. But then he turned back from where he was about halfway to the couches and said, "I didn't do anything… weird… last night, did I?"

Nowaki turned away so Hiroki couldn't see the expression on his face and said, "No, Hiro-san. You pretty much went to bed as soon as we got here."

Hiroki had been prepared for Nowaki to tell him he'd at least attempted to give him a handjob or something, and he frowned at that. He supposed it was good for him, but he couldn't help but feel like he was missing something.

Before he could comment, though, the intercom sounded, and Hiroki froze.

"Hiroki? Are you home?"

Nowaki looked out curiously, probably not recognizing the voice. Hiroki did, though. Of course he did; he'd recognize Akihiko's voice anywhere. He scrambled to his feet and ran over to answer despite himself. He could never ignore Akihiko; that was, he supposed, why he had such a hard time letting go of his feelings after all those years. In contrast to how desperate he'd looked as he went, though, he answered with a gruff, "What do you want?"

"Ah, I was worried you'd gotten lost last night when I came over and you weren't home," Akihiko answered like he thought Hiroki had been dying in a ditch somewhere but couldn't say he actually cared. "You never finished looking over my latest manuscript." Not even a 'would you like to do it now?' because normally, Hiroki would've dropped whatever he was doing and done it. Because, in the end, he was under Akihiko's thumb, whether the guy was in unrequited love with Takahiro or screwing Takahiro's younger brother on what Hiroki was sure was a daily basis.

Hiroki glanced back at Nowaki, humming happily as he cooked eggs, and said, "I can't right now. I have someone over."

There was a long pause and then, "So? I'm sure they wouldn't mind."

"Well maybe I mind!" Hiroki yelled, startling Nowaki enough to look over and see what was going on. "Besides, I still have work to do. If you need to turn that thing in to your editor, just make the corrections I gave you and do so. You give that poor woman enough grief." He pressed a button to turn the intercom off and was about to go over to the kitchen. He couldn't help it, though; he went out to his small deck and looked down, since it faced the street. He was too many floors up to see the expression on Akihiko's face, but he could tell the man was continually pressing the button, confused as to why Hiroki wasn't still answering.

As he turned away before Akihiko could get the idea to look up and spot him, he couldn't help but feel like he'd be getting hell for all this later.