Disclaimer: Do. Not. Own.

Warnings: Relationships between men.

Additionally: Based on the Repeat prompt from dropDead-Dreamer. Man, this one haunted me for days. WIP.

Prompt: Repeat: The past has a tendency to repeat itself.

At 18.

"Move in with me."

Sena lowered his Starbucks cup.

Kengo looked so...serious.

"Huh?" said Sena.

"Move in with me." Kengo was looking directly at him, without wavering, not even a hint of teasing to his face. "I know you want to move closer to Enma. Monta said you were looking at apartments. So. Move in with me."

Sena frowned. "Is your apartment even big enough?"

"No," said Kengo, and there was that flash, that spark of the beginnings of a high-voltage grin. "But we spend all our time on the field anyway."

The Starbucks was crowded. At the table beside them, a group of high school girls had been eyeing their Enma letter jackets with keen interest for at least thirty minutes. A tall, modelesque girl with long black hair was glancing at Kengo's profile and nibbling at her lip.

Kengo didn't seem to see it. He was looking straight at Sena.

"Um." Sena took another sip of his soy chai. "I don't know..."

"I wouldn't mind having a roommate," said Kengo, and he was very, very casual. "I guess I haven't gotten into the habit of living by myself yet."

Sena wanted to smile at how diligently Kengo was avoiding using the term boyfriend. It was something he'd asked Kengo to do. And he wanted, in some weird way, to bite his lip at how he could so clearly hear what Kengo was very deliberately not saying.

"It's only been four months," said Sena. "Maybe you just...need a little more time."

The press of Kengo's lips. "Man, four months is forever. I think I'm just going to have to admit I'm not big on space."

Sena had never been good at math. Four months plus two months minus eight months plus another imaginary two months...

No.

"Well," said Sena, "maybe."

There—that blinding smile, bright and golden, like looking into the sun. Sena almost wanted to put up a hand, shield his eyes. "Hell yeah! I'll clean up tonight—I know you're kind of a neat freak—"

"I didn't say yes," said Sena, trying to frown and failing.

"Uh-huh," said Kengo happily. "I know you, man. A maybe from you is like a yes, please from anyone else."

There was...something about that that should have bothered Sena. But Kengo was grinning, all bright hair and bright face, and the affection and pleasure in his eyes were like a kind hand on Sena's face. Sena pushed away his doubts and smiled back, thinking that maybe four months wasn't too crazy and trying to imagine a seemingly endless succession of early, early mornings where the alarm went off and he woke up with this long, golden body pressed up to his back, that protective arm stretched across his field of vision.

I love you, mouthed Kengo, when he figured no one was looking, and winked.

Sena blushed, which he knew Kengo still liked to see, even after four months.

The modelesque girl's eyes were round.

Kengo left him outside the Starbucks. He had plans to meet up with Kakei and go to Akiba, and then he would pick up Sena again to get something to eat. Sena, meanwhile, was going home to try and get either his statistics homework or his laundry done and then to finish boxing up the last of his things.

Kengo's hand on his shoulder, delaying just a few seconds too long, made Sena think of the long, lingering kisses Kengo pressed to his neck and face and mouth when they were alone and about to part, as if Kengo was leaving last-minute instructions on Sena's skin.

This is happiness, thought Sena.

The day was cool and windy and gloriously blue. Sena saw nothing of the short train ride back to his neighborhood, because his eyes were full of Kengo and Kengo's apartment and what it would look like when it was their apartment. He would have to tell Monta, and Suzuna would want to know, and there was no way to keep it from Riku. He didn't think it would be too shocking to anyone else, either, since most everyone on the team knew Kengo and Sena were together, and obviously Kakei-san would know almost immediately—

Unsui would probably promise not to say anything. And Sena would thank him politely, and that would be that.

Don't think about it, Sena told himself.

He tried to think instead about the futon situation (since Kengo would insist, and neither of their single futons were big enough for both of them—maybe they could lay them out together?), the kitchen situation (since Kengo ate like a starving man but cooked like his own disaster area, probably Sena would have to be in charge of all culinary activities), the key money (Sena would insist that he pay at least half of that too, in addition to the rent), and what he was going to tell Mamori (since she was fully capable of marching over and demanding to know what Kengo's long-term intentions were), and before Sena knew it, he was walking up the stairs to his second-floor efficiency, a little breathless at the thought of—

"Fucking trash."

Run away, a little voice told Sena, but his legs wouldn't move and he stood there, one hand in his pocket and the other on the strap of his bag, and stared.

"You busy?"

Sena was gripped by an insane urge to turn around and run as fast as he could down the stairs and back up the street. He had ten minutes to make the next train, and if he ran—if he ran, he could probably still catch Kengo at Akihabara Station, he could catch Kengo and ask him to please change his plans and stay with Sena for the day, would he please come and help him pack his things, he was really sorry about Kakei-san but if Kengo could just do this for him, just for today, for tonight—

"You don't look busy."

The right thing to do here, knew Sena, was to walk away. He knew exactly what to do: turn around, walk away. The end. That was the right thing to do. Because Kengo...

Because Kengo...

The hand that slipped over the back of his neck made Sena's knees go weak.

"How have you been, trash?" And then, meanly, cruelly, because it was him who left, it was him who vanished without a word, it was him who stopped answering calls and stopped coming over and totally, completely cut Sena's legs out from under him, "You miss me?"

Something inside Sena was shaking, and that same little voice was saying But Kengo...

The grip on his neck tightened. "You going to invite me in, trash?"

No, shouted that little voice in him, no! Go away! Sena could take a beating, if that was what it took. And he could tell Kengo later, ah, I fell on my face, and Kengo wouldn't believe him and would demand to know what had happened but Sena could reassure him that it was an accident and it would never, never happen again—

But that little voice seemed to just—extinguish, or maybe drown—under the heat of that hand on his neck, and it was a small, needy, pathetic, other voice that said, "Maybe."