"You didn't leave." He was standing in the doorway, wearing the apron of the music store he worked in, his name tag read only his first name. Not out of a sense of familiarity with his customers, but rather, he actually had given up his surname. This was the first Kyo had actually believed it, that nametag, the harsh black kana, "Iori." Simple enough to be mistaken for a family name, Kyo supposed.

"Couldn't. Don't know where the bus stops."

"I told you."

Kyo huffed, turned off his game. He turned to Yagami. "Why did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Fuck me."

"You wanted it."

"So did you."

"I wanted to bring you, pleasure, I guess, I wanted you, you're beautiful, you don't want me to say it."

"That really why?"

"Yeah."

"Pathetic sap."

"Heartless bastard."

"Y'gotta' be."

Kyo watched him approach, sinking into the couch beside him. His legs string towards the bed, long enough to prop them up on the foot of the bed, his head on the back of the couch. Kyo's hand sought out, flicked the long sheen of hair away from his face, exposing the small scar underneath his eye. Kyo kissed it. Yagami glanced up and their lips collided, this time needing it, wanting it from each side, their tongues met for too short a moment, and Kyo sat up, flicking the television on, ignoring Yagami.

Iori watched his mindless concentration on some technicolored game show, a man in a chicken suit trying to pop balloons with the chicken claws. The computer female voice counted down the timer. Kyo didn't care about these things, he wanted something to think about besides Iori. Besides kissing Iori. He could see it in the knit of Kyo's eyebrows, in the way he bit at his lower lip, wouldn't look at him. Iori could read his expression like his mind, and he moved, running two fingers along the seam on the outside of his jeans. Kyo shifted uncomfortably, moving one leg over the other, turning away from Iori. Iori let him. He let him think, hold his own arms, his face a mask of concentration and mixed feelings. Iori couldn't help him, he had figured that part already, he had to let him work through what they felt for each other entirely on their own. Kyo's hand drifted to the space of couch between them, fingers spread, Iori imagined them deliciously rough over his skin, and moved his hand over. Neither moved, allowed the slight touch, proof that in that moment everything had changed between them. Iori's fingers curved around Kyo's, he let his eyes flutter shut, buried in thought, in the hope this had changed for the better.

Kyo stayed. Inexplicably, he stayed longer, showed no desire to return to his family or his normal life. But their intimacy didn't change, never grew, their touches were frustratingly infrequent. Iori found himself every morning making good friends with his right hand in the bathroom, biting his lower lip, to keep from knowing sounds. Kyo slept in his bed. No announcement was made, no decision, nothing was said of the matter except that Kyo slept there. He wasn't close to Iori, it wasn't affectionate, he kept to himself, curled into his own body, at the end of the bed. He would let Iori touch him occasionally, run his hand down Kyo's shoulder, the back of his neck, the curve of his hip, and he would be allowed but not encouraged.

And he was okay with that.

He would continue to be okay with that, he would whisper his loves late into the night, against the soft, thin brown hairs at the nape of Kyo's neck, holding on to his arms, pretending, imagining there was love left over for him.