NB: Writing on a plane is the best cure for fear of flying. Hope this drabble cures what ails you too. This is pre-relationship, although you likely would have guessed that.
Circus' Second Captain is inscrutable outside of his obvious fetish for tormenting others.
This is the only secure deduction one might make regarding Hirato. Everything else about the man is a carefully-constructed house of cards, a deft legerdemain concealing whatever's within. Apart from a tendency to send acquaintances into homicidal rages, nothing surfaces.
So Akari is supremely bewildered when the cunning devil suddenly stops taunting.
He notices at Round Table. Tsukitachi is expectedly feckless, lithe legs crossed impertinently atop the table. By comparison, the second commander typically looks attentive, although he intermittently tosses rather lascivious glances at Akari. The researcher often wonders if this flighty flirtation intimates any genuine sentiment or is simply another means of vexation. But today, Hirato is downright engrossed in their superiors' conversation, leaving a slightly disquieted doctor wondering when tissue samples became so thoroughly captivating.
Akari registers the clawing sensation in his stomach; it's definitely hunger and not disappointment.
Afterwards, there's suggestion of yet another tea party. The physician's mind flickers to the ungodly stacks of paperwork monopolizing his desk, but he attends nonetheless, driven by Tsukitachi's coercion and not his own curiosity vis-à-vis Hirato's seeming apathy. The occasion is unusually subdued, with Tsukitachi being characteristically effusive and Hirato being uncharacteristically silent. Ruby orbs appraise the brunet furtively, but if the weight of their stare is felt, the commander does not indicate thus.
Later, Akari rearranges the medical journals and reference volumes crowding his bookshelves - because the task is long overdue, and not because he's having trouble smothering the dull ache settling in his chest. After a third attempt at placing 'Theoretical Particle Physics' in proper alphabetical order, he concedes that he should perhaps interrogate his own feelings rather than Hirato's. A light knock interrupts said contemplation.
The object of his thoughts strides in, clearly having abandoned all pretense of reserve. There's mischief in the twist of his mouth, roguery in violet eyes. Even that prowling gait is suggestive of things that Akari loathes himself for imagining.
The doctor forces anger in compensation for such indecorous ideation. "What do you want?" he snaps.
"Why so irritable, Akari-san? Have I done something to upset you?"
"Your mere presence upsets me."
Bemused regard is the other's only response. "Admit it," a vibrant baritone mocks, "you missed my teasing."
"Who would miss being tormented by an incorrigible bastard?" Akari scoffs, turning his back before the blush creeping across his cheeks betrays.
A displacement of air signifies that Hirato is now immediately behind him, as does warm breath licking his neck. Honestly, he moves like a predatory cat, the blond thinks before quirked lips press against his ear. He'd have been successful at biting back the resultant gasp had he not been ambushed like so. "No?" The captain's laugh sends shivers along a taut spine; his very proximity is heady. "That's too bad. I could tease you forever."
Sure, Hirato is largely indecipherable. At times, however, an intelligent man might intuit his motives with little difficulty.