Matchmaking

Sengoku was walking dead.

Walking, talking, breathing dead, which would change as soon as Akutsu got Taichi off the damn streets and into some clothes that actually counted as clothes, as in that they actually covered him up.

"Akutsu-sempai?" asked Dan, looking out of breath and embarrassed, "Are you going to be angry at Sengoku-sempai?"

Jin grunted something unprintable that more or less marveled at Dan's naivety, cursed Sengoku's insanity, and cast disparaging slurs on the parentage of most males within a ten-mile radius.

"You-you shouldn't be angry at him, Akutsu-sempai, Sengoku-sempai was really being very nice, lending me these clothes after he accidentally spilt water on me."

Akutsu contrived to express his disbelief and disagreement at both Sengoku's 'helpfulness' and the classification of his lendings as clothes.

Dan looked down at the tiny shorts that could have been spray-painted on and artfully ripped black mesh shirt and laughed weakly. "But-but it was really lucky that he had these clothes with him, Akutsu-sempai, and he even offered to wash my uniform for me so that I wouldn't get scolded by my okaa-san, but then he disappeared and…"

…left the damn kid in a park near Akutsu's usual haunts, dressed like some kind of under aged hooker and bereft of his wallet and cellphone ("Oh… I guess they were in my uniform, which Sengoku-sempai… took away…"), figuring that eventually Akutsu would either wander past or hear about the kid in a green headband sitting in a park pathetically, occasionally calling for 'Sengoku-sempai' in an even more pathetic way.

…Sengoku was dying in as many painful and inventive ways as Akutsu could administer. After he beat the fucking idiot's face in with a racquet.

The long and short of it ended with him half-dragging a pedophile's wet dream through various dark alleys while Taichi was flushed, panting and looking at him with pleading eyes.

…Sengoku could bloody well go fuck himself. It didn't matter how molestable Taichi looked in those indecently tight shorts or how much the pale exposed curve of his shoulder begged to be marked. He was not laying a single damn finger on the kid's skinny little gropable ass, served up on a silver platter (or black mesh shirt, as it were) though it was.

…fuckit, he was not.

The time Sengoku walked in on the aftermath of Akutsu scaring some posers off his territory (and Taichi) didn't fucking count. He'd been under the influence of adrenaline and Taichi's worshipful gaze.

"…Akutsu-sempai?" said Dan, looking up with- shit, not the eyes, not the fucking sparkly eyes- "Are you angry with me?"

"Wha- No. Shit no. Just with that fucking idiot. I already fucking told you to stay away from him, remember?"

"Ye- yes, Akutsu-sempai, bu-butt are you- are you angry about what happened last week when you saved me?"

Shit. Couple more blocks and they would have been at a bus stop, where Akutsu could have left him and gone on his way without any more thoughts of Taichi's mouth.

"Forget it," he snarled. "'shouldn't have happened, you're just a fucking kid."

And then- fuck, that was not taichi's hand almost under his shirt and on his fucking hipbone, pushing him a little aside with his big, big eyes gleaming- "Akutsu-sempai," said Dan fairly steadily, "I want it to happen again."

And then Akutsu kissed him, because he couldn't not kiss him, not when Taichi was being all sparkly and hopeful and upfront and shit and no way in hell was this little kid going to get away with making the first move.

Sengoku was still dead, though. Just after Akutsu convinced himself to throw Dan back home, which would probably a long time in coming.

-end-