Chapter 15: Home Delivery: Egoist

Old AN: Okay, so here is a little chapter I put in just for fun and for my dear OneWingedEggplant (thank you for all the thoughtful reviews) who wanted a Pandasan moment. There will be more I promise.

I guarantee that after this, the pace will pick up again and the drama will resume.

I am sorry PuppyFaceTwo, that I did not do a make-up sex lemon. Perhaps that will be in my future, like the "Spatula" lemons (I added another Chapter to the second "Spatula" lemon yesterday, and am afraid that sexed me out a bit- got to work on my citrus stamina).

Oh, and the boys will tell dear lady Kamijou, but not just yet. (Heh Heh)

As always, thank you for reading and especially for reviewing.

Sincerely,

Cerberus

The Uke Flu

Chapter Fifteen: Home Delivery

Hiroki stood out on the balcony in the lengthening shadows of dusk. A crisp breeze was making the clothes he was gathering in off their lines unruly. The wind felt pleasant, cooling his skin, still flush from the long shower he'd just finished taking with Nowaki.

Fuck, I hate fighting with Nowaki.

Even though he seemed disagreeable most of the time, any true quarrel with his partner automatically set Hiroki's teeth on edge and made his stomach ache. But making up later… Well, that almost made it hard not to want to pick a fight on occasion.

Thinking about this, knowing that on the private platform of the apartment balcony, no one could see him, Hiroki allowed himself a small smile.

While sex between he and Nowaki was most always good, their make-up sex was particularly spectacular. In fact, it had been so splendid today that from that afternoon until early this evening, between them, they had made up no less than five times.

Where Nowaki was getting his energy from, after recently feeling so poorly, was a mystery.

Hiroki paused in his thoughts when he heard the soft knock on the apartment door.

That must be the takeout delivery.

Nowaki was still in the bathroom, so Hiroki set the laundry basket down and went to answer the door. On his way, he grabbed one of his sun-starched work shirts and slipped in to it, since he had not put that much on after the shower, simply re-donning his "lounge about" jeans .

As it was Saturday night, The Kamijou/Kusama couple would have normally made their weekly pilgrimage to Pandasan restaurant for dinner. After all their afternoon activities, Nowaki had expressed a craving for the family style food, but given the recent instability of his stomach he was concerned about dining out. So, Hiroki had made a call to Sasaki, the proprietress of Pandasan, and inquired if there was any way he could get someone from the restaurant to make a delivery. Sasaki, who had unofficially adopted them at some point during the almost nine years that he and Nowaki had been patronizing her establishment, responded with an enthusiastic affirmative.

After hanging up, however, the restaurateur regretted her decision almost instantly. When she asked for a volunteer to undertake the delivery, a huge catfight broke out amongst her predominantly female staff. Each one of the ladies in her employ, having read all of Akikawa Yayoi's Hiroki and Nowaki novels, was determined to be the one to bring the goods to their favorite Yayoi couple.

In the end, once the girls settled down and several non BL related nosebleeds had been staunched, straws were drawn and a lucky young woman named Emiko trundled out the door, delivery in hand.

As she hopped on her scooter and drove to the Kusama/Kamijou home, she tried to envision what she might find there. She'd been given an apartment number, so she knew that it wouldn't be a conventional house. Emiko imagined a plush upscale condo: the two men were both professionals, after all.

After reading so many of Yayoi's novels, with all their lush, erotic settings, Emiko's mind went wild.

She wondered if the couple's front room would be filled with antiques, a collection of throw pillows and tiny dogs wearing jeweled collars and personalized sweaters. Perhaps it would be filled with home gym equipment and artistic photographs of sculpted male torsos or cavorting nude men. Or, just maybe, their front door would open revealing a dungeon setting, complete with flickering candles and a St. Andrews cross; Kusama-san answering the door in a leather harness and ass-less chaps.

Emiko stopped at a light and gave a tentative sniff, checking to make sure this last vision had not caused some fragile vessel in her nose to break.

The young woman had to admit that after her rampant speculations she was a bit disappointed, upon finally arriving at her destination, to find a regular and somewhat modest looking apartment building. Her feelings of being somehow swindled out of a proper BL experience increased even more so, after she climbed three flights of stairs and found herself looking at a completely normal apartment door.

She'd at least been hoping for a disco-ball door knocker.

As she knocked, Emiko still secretly hoped that the door would be opened by Kusama-san. He was always so sweet and smiley when he came into the restaurant. It did not hurt at all either, that the man was completely gorgeous.

Many of the Pandasan ladies wondered what it was that kept him with his auburn-haired partner, the man they believed truly penned the Yayoi novels.

Kamijou-san was certainly handsome, that was true, but he seemed so grumbly most of the time. He was kind of bookish too. It amazed the Pandsan posse that, so often when the couple came into eat, he would sit there and read throughout the meal. It was a wonder to the women that even with the thin-framed reading glasses perched on the end of his academic nose that Kamijou-san could still be so blind.

How can he sit across from a creature as lovely as Kusama-san and not be simply dying to give him his complete and undivided attention?

Despite these thoughts when Hiroki opened the door, Emiko found it almost impossible to suppress the "squee!" that rose unbidden in her throat.

Tonight the professor was not looking professorial at all.

Kamijou-san was standing before her barefoot in the sexiest pair of tattered jeans she had seen in a long time. He was not wearing his glasses, so his large hazel eyes were unobstructed; his expression, while serious, was not at all scowly; and he had obviously just recently gotten out of a shower or the bath because his tousled hair was still a bit damp and he smelled strongly of a slightly spicy shampoo.

All of this was intoxicating to the poor fangirl, but what really did Emiko in was that Kamijou-san had not bothered to button the crisp, white dress shirt he wore. Where the garment hung open, she got a very good view of the slender man's torso.

Wait. Is that a hickey on his collarbone?

Now she knew at least one of the reasons for Kusama-san's attachment. Professor Kamijou is freaking hot! Who would have guessed that beneath his bookish exterior he was hiding a set of abs like that?

Emiko found herself suddenly needing to swallow in order to keep from choking on all the extra saliva that filled her mouth.

Hiroki looked at the silent, wide-eyed young woman, who seemed to be standing, paralyzed in his front doorway.

He frowned and unconsciously gathered the front of his shirt together, his cheeks acquiring a soft blush. Hiroki was disconcerted by the expression in the young woman's eyes.

"Ah, come in, please," he offered returning the young woman's blushing bow and stepping slightly to the side. "If you don't mind waiting here a moment, I have to get my wallet."

Emiko could not think of any reasonable response, so she just held the bag of takeout before her like some supplicant making her offering to the yaoi gods.

Hiroki's brow furrowed and he cautiously took the bag from Emiko's outstretched hands. He turned and moved into the front room, setting the sack on the dining room table. He then moved over to open a pocket in his bookbag that was sitting on the table, next to the pile of essays it had recently contained.

Finally, Emiko found her voice. "Sasaki-san said there was no charge tonight, Kamijou-san" she called out softly.

"Eh?" Hiroki was not really listening as he searched in his bag for his wallet.

Now that Kamijou-san had moved away from her, Emiko found she could breathe again. "Sasaki-san said there was no charge tonight, Kamijou-san," she repeated a little more loudly.

While the professor was ignoring her in his search, Emiko took in as much as she could from where she stood in the front hallway. She knew that she would be expected to give a full report to the other ladies when she returned to the restaurant.

As she scanned the apartment, the delivery girl found herself once again feeling rather let down. The size of the apartment was nice, larger than many, but by no means extravagant. To her surprise, the feeling of the place was actually quite spare. There was minimal furniture, a small television with an older gaming console beneath, a modest stereo system too, and not much of anything on the walls.

As she glanced over into the kitchen, even the refrigerator door was free from adornment, save for a calendar featuring a picture of a cute puppy hanging on its side. There was also one photo held to the face of it by a panda magnet that showed the couple sitting rather chastely side by side.

The apartment itself was very tidy. Emiko wondered who did the cleaning. She could see laundry hanging out on the balcony. For some reason, this open sign of domesticity in an all-male household struck her as rather sweet.

Hiroki had at last located his money.

Apparently he had heard her, as he responded, "No charge… Nonsense." Hiroki had set the money down on the table and was fastening the middle buttons of his shirt. Emiko's expression when he'd opened the door had made him feel embarrassed.

I should have known better than to open the door half-dressed, the poor girl probably thought she was going to be ravished.

Emiko sighed as she watched Kamijou-san pick the money up off of the table. The girls would be so disappointed. Outside of his abs there was nothing really to see here and now, these too were concealed.

Just then Nowaki walked out of the bathroom and into the main room wearing nothing but a towel. Actually, he had two towels, one tucked loosely around his trim waist, the other covering his shaggy head as he rubbed the dampness out of his thick, inky hair.

Here was the Pandasan ladies BL Adonis: his long muscular limbs gloriously defined as well as his torso. Emiko could see the sweet sprinkling of hair that formed the wispy path to life running down his taut lower belly from his navel to what Yayoi had so often described as his "glorious member"… And here, there was nothing between this and Emiko's eager fangirl eyes but that thin swath of cotton.

"Hiro-san..." Nowaki couldn't even really see from under the towel, he was navigating the apartment from memory and using his built in Hiro-san radar, coming to rest only a few feet from his lover. "I heard you talking, but I couldn't understand what you were saying through the door."

At Nowaki's appearance, both Emiko and Hiroki's eyes had grown large in equal measure, but for entirely different reasons: hers with delight, his with horror.

This time Emiko simply could not contain herself.

"SQUEEEEEE!"

At the sound of her dolphin-like pitch, Nowaki pulled the towel down from his head, draping it around his neck and over his broad shoulders. His dark blue eyes looked a bit startled but not particularly embarrassed, seeing the Pandasan delivery girl standing in their front hall.

Hiroki, however, was beside himself. "Nowaki, you big idiot! Get in the bedroom and don't come out until I tell you, you can!"

It was Hiro-san's tone of displeasure, not his own nakedness that brought a touch of pink to Nowaki's cheeks.

Nowaki's head dropped just slightly. "Okay, Hiro-san," he said meekly. As he turned to head into their bedroom, Hiroki reached up and grabbed the towel from Nowaki's neck. With lightning speed and an expert's aim, he wound the towel and snapped it across the departing giant's backside.

"Ow!" Nowaki yelped, but said nothing more. He reached back to cover one stinging cheek with his large hand as he disappeared into their bedroom, softly closing the door behind him.

"So sorry about that, please excuse us." Hiroki had mistaken Emiko's fangirl enthusiasm for terror. "I hope Kusama-san didn't scare you too badly. He's really quite harmless." He walked back towards Emiko, flush with embarrassment and held out his money. "Please, if Sasaki-san won't accept this, you keep it… for all your troubles."

Using the hand she had not otherwise employed pinching her nose, the delivery girl took it from him with shaking fingers. "Thank you, Kamijou-san," Emiko gasped nasally and promptly fled the apartment.

As the door behind her was swinging closed, she could here another door inside swing open and Kusama-san ask in a rather pleading voice, "Hiro-san, can I come out yet?" This was followed immediately by a very authoritative "No!"

All the way back to the restaurant Emiko found herself wondering why Kamijou-san would write himself as the uke in his Boy's Love novels, when what she'd just witnessed had clearly shown he was not. She also wondered how the girls at the Pandasan would react when she told them that from the exchange she'd witnessed between the two men the height rule had quite obviously been broken.

Hiroki watched Emiko flee and knew that he and Nowaki would have to offer her a more formal apology the next time they saw her at Pandasan. The poor girl had obviously been severely traumatized.

Still, he was grateful she had at least not fled while holding their food. After all their "making up," he was feeling particularly hungry. Hiroki's thoughts of dinner, however, were interrupted once again by Nowaki calling to him from the bedroom.

"Hiro-san?" Nowaki was peeking tentatively around the edge of the door.

"What?"

"Are you still mad at me?"

"What?"

Hiroki found himself being pulled at by his giant's sorrowful tones. "Uh… no, Nowaki…"

"I can't believe you hit me, Hiro-san."

"Yeah, I'm sorry, Nowaki… How's your ass?"

"Isn't that my question?" Nowaki asked, not sounding nearly so sad. He was sticking his dark head now well past the door frame, his blue eyes shining.

"I suppose it is." Hiroki shot Nowaki an almost playful scowl.

"Hiro-san?"

"Hmmmm?"

"Did that count as a fight?"

"I suppose it could have."

"Do you want to make up again, then?"

Hiroki unbuttoned the few buttons he had fastened on his shirt, slipped it off his shoulders and draped it over one of the dining room chairs. He picked the Pandasan bag up off the table.

"Okay, I suppose I could always use an appetizer."

He made his way to where Nowaki stood beaming at him just inside their bedroom door.

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