Arabinose


Takahiro comes and goes and leaves a few books and half a ton of sweets. Misaki spends half an hour lining the packets up on the kitchen counters, arranging them by type and colour and any other half reasonable criteria he can think of. Akihiko ignores this organisation except to frown at the lack of space for his coffee cup. He won't touch any of the treats, Misaki knows, because he really doesn't like sweet things. On the other hand, the younger man will eat all of the sugary junk he can, safe in the knowledge that all the chocolate in the penthouse is his and his alone.

He still offers Akihiko a handful of sugared jelly things to be nice, scowling when the author shakes his head and refuses.

"Why don't you like sweet things?" he asks, dropping down with a sigh in the seat beside Akihiko. The man is, for once, not reading or writing or even procrastinating, but just sort of lounging about with a mug of coffee. It is, of course, black coffee, bitter and strong, with nearly the same consistency as melted tar.

Akihiko shrugs, taking a deep sniff of his coffee, and then rumbles, "I just don't. I eat everything else, don't I?"

They both say, "Except green peppers," at the same time.

Misaki smiles and pops another jellybean in his mouth. "Did you like them when you were small?"

"What, green peppers?" Akihiko sips his coffee. Misaki corrects him, and the man considers for a moment. "No. I don't think so. Rarely got them anyway."

Misaki was well dosed with sweets for all of his childhood, even the times when he and his brother had little money for anything at all. "You didn't get sweets when you were small?" he doesn't mean to sound so shocked, but can't help it.

"My mother sometimes forgot to feed me at all. I'm not amazed she never gave me treats." He smiled into his coffee, in a rather creepy way. "I never got the taste for sweet things. I remember my first sweetie, you know; a teacher gave it to me for doing well in my spelling." He grimaces slightly. "It was some horrible chalky, insipid bonbon thing, and I remember nearly choking on it, because I had never realised you could actually make something so vile."

In one of the myriad of packets on the kitchen counter, there are a heap of chalky, insipid bonbon things: Misaki dashes off to fetch them and slips a couple into his hand before he pads back to the sofa. He pauses behind Usagi-san and reaches out to pat the man's head. His silvery hair is soft and slick between Misaki's fingers, infinitely touchable. Akihiko rolls his head back slowly, giving Misaki a lecherous grin right up until the second Misaki shoves the bonbon in his mouth. Almost immediately he cracks the sweet between his teeth, which Misaki thinks is a probably a sign of having too many things poked in his mouth when he had been a very pretty teenager and much easier to take advantage of.

Usagi-san makes a face and crunches the sweet again, and again and again, like a dog determined to get through a bone. Before Misaki can escape and cackle in the safety of the kitchen, a big hand grabs the front of his tshirt and drags him down. Akihiko kisses him hard, slipping his tongue into his mouth and transferring the chalky, claggy remains of the bonbon to an unwilling recipient. Misaki recoils with a muffled cry of horror and Akihiko sinks back down in the sofa and swills a mouthful of bitter coffee to rinse the taste away.

"If you do that again, I'll repeat the experience considerably further south," he says, with a certain degree of smugness.

Misaki decides not to chance it.


Found in gum Arabic, which is an important ingredient in soft drinks, gummy sweets, marshmallows (mmmmmmm, marshmallows….) and various other pleasantly sweet objects. Including edible glitter, which I've never heard of before but now I rather want, just to make my insides all sparkly.