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The last thing Shigeo said was, “Hmm,” and that was almost ten minutes ago in response to Teru remarking on the coldness of the nights recently, so it doesn’t really settle the matter either way: it’s just as likely that Shigeo’s current protracted silence is the result of his having nothing to say as it is the result of his having so much to say that he needs even longer than usual to get his thoughts in order first – an underconfident pole vaulter taking an extra-long run-up along an extra-long track, building up momentum for the jump.
Either way, Teru doesn’t mind the quiet. When Shigeo’s as deep in thought as this, he’s even less observant than usual – gazing seriously up at the dark ceiling of Teru’s bedroom, grey and greyer in the dimness. It’s hushed. It’s still. It’s the kind of moment Teru can already tell will imprint itself permanently in his memory: streetlight glowing through the curtains, a tiny orange light blinking on his sleeping laptop, the hum of the fridge, his hand between his pillow and his cheek as he watches Shigeo watch the ceiling with no apparent awareness of the fact that Teru’s watching him.
Shigeo stirs. The end of the pole hits the ground, twangs upright, catapults Shigeo after it – the run-up is over; there goes the vault; he does have something to say...
Shigeo says, “You’ve kissed girls before.”
“And boys,” says Teru, who’s never yet missed a chance to plant the subliminal idea that Shigeo has another option right here in bed beside him wearing an unseasonably flimsy combination of T-shirt and shorts while gazing longingly at the neat flat slope of Shigeo’s nose in profile, at the round curve of his cheek, at the movement of his mouth as he says, again, “Hmm.”
Teru waits as long as he can stand it. Shigeo continues frowning up at the ceiling, and says nothing. Teru reaches the limit of how long he can stand it, and says, “You’re not missing much.”
“Aren’t I...?” At last Shigeo looks away from the ceiling, rolling his cheek onto the pillow so he can direct that troubled frown straight at Teru instead. His fringe has split unflatteringly with the movement; a wedge of forehead shows through. It’s very hard to resist the urge to reach out and fix it for him, but Teru keeps his hands where they belong. “I don’t know... Maybe. I think – maybe I am. I feel... like I am missing out.”
“Is this about Tsubomi-chan?” says Teru, with just the sort of gently teasing tone that long experience has taught him best conceals his more uncharitable thoughts on the topic of Tsubomi.
In the gloom, the grey of Shigeo’s cheeks instantly darkens – it is about Tsubomi.
Well, that’s fine. Strategy isn’t just for battle. Teru’s always half-a-dozen moves ahead no matter the situation; the part of his subconscious which is constantly planning tactics has kicked into whirring overdrive, and he’s already half-a-dozen moves ahead right now.
“I only really meant girls, you know – when I said you weren’t missing out. They’re all terrible kissers,” he tells Shigeo, confidentially, and Shigeo listens with that unblinking stare and unflinching trust. “It’s always such a let-down, honestly. Especially if it’s a girl you’ve really been looking forward to kissing.” As though he’s ever really looked forward to kissing a girl in his life; as though he’s ever really kissed anyone for any other reason than to cement their adoration before cutting them off without warning – though he’s long since moved beyond that kind of behaviour, of course: the dark days of his sordid fourteen-year-old power plays are well behind him now. The dark days of his sordid fifteen-year-old power plays are behind him, too. The dark days of his sordid sixteen-year-old power plays are also behind him, or at least about two-thirds of them are; the rest of those days are still a work in progress, but they’ll be behind him too just as soon as they happen. Teru’s always felt that’s one of the more convenient things about the passage of time: everything he does is always behind him, once he’s done it.
Meanwhile, Shigeo’s still looking troubled at the thought of substandard kissing. “But Tsubomi-chan isn’t – she wouldn’t be...”
“Do you think she’s kissed a lot of people?” asks Teru.
Shigeo’s blush is back, an even darker grey. He shakes his head against the pillow. The split in his fringe worsens, that wedge of forehead falling open wider.
This time, Teru reaches out to fix it for him. “Then I’m sure Tsubomi-chan’s also a terrible kisser,” he says, and gives Shigeo a fond private smile to pretend he doesn’t fervently mean every single word of every single insult he’s ever teasingly levelled against Tsubomi, who’s probably a wonderful person, who must be a wonderful person, if Shigeo likes her so much, which only makes the thought of her even more unbearable to Teru. “It’ll be your job to bring her up to scratch.”
Shigeo misses his cue, but that’s fine; he usually misses his cues. He finds it again a minute later, once he’s chewed the thought over until it’s soft enough to comfortably digest. He says, “How?”
It’s not manipulative if all Teru did was guide the conversation to a point where this might have ended up being suggested, where one thing might have naturally led to another and finished here. He just steered things a little. He just put a gentle hand to the rudder and set a course. No one would ever get anywhere if no one was willing to put a gentle hand to the rudder and set a course.
“Practice, I suppose,” says Teru, carelessly.
“Practice...?” says Shigeo. He’s staring hard at Teru. “With... Tsubomi-chan...?”
“It’ll be a little late to practise kissing Tsubomi-chan by the time you’re kissing Tsubomi-chan, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” says Shigeo, crestfallen. “But who else...”
Teru waits. And waits, and waits – and rearranges himself beneath the blankets, still lying on his side, but now with his arm propped in the dip of his waist just to bring attention to the particularly enticing looseness of his T-shirt’s thin hem – and waits, and—
—and gives up waiting. “Don’t you remember how you started this conversation, Kageyama-kun?”
Shigeo thinks hard. “No,” he says at last, decisively.
“You,” prompts Teru, “asked me...”
“If you’d kissed girls before,” says Shigeo, suddenly, as his eyes snap wide in realisation. “Yes – yes, I do. I remember. Ah – so do you... know any girls, Hanazawa-kun...? Who I could – who wouldn’t mind...?”
It’s difficult to be so badly in love with someone so dense he probably wouldn’t even float if he jumped into the sea wearing a lifejacket and inflatable armbands. “I’m afraid not,” says Teru. Then, to help coax him on the way, he adds, “But kissing girls is really just the same as kissing boys, you know.”
“You said it wasn’t,” says Shigeo at once. “You said girls are all terrible kissers.”
“That’s true,” concedes Teru. “But in that case, doesn’t it make sense to practise with someone who’s not?” A smooth save – but he’s become very good at those, over the years; Shigeo’s perceptiveness seems to work best only when Teru’s banking on it not working at all. “Someone... who knows what they’re doing? Someone... with experience?”
“Hanazawa-kun’s got experience,” says Shigeo. He’s frowning again, concentrating hard; thoughts are clearly in slow, creaking motion behind that stare. “And... you’re a boy.” He thinks harder. Teru says nothing, but he says it encouragingly. And though it takes much more effort than anyone should need to reach such an obvious conclusion, Shigeo’s hard work pays off, the way it always does: he gets there eventually. Slow and steady might not win the race, but it does at least generally complete the race. “So – you... Would you...?”
“You’re asking me?” says Teru, feigning astonishment like the first premature notes of a victory fanfare haven’t been sounding jubilantly in his heart for a while already by this point.
“I think so,” says Shigeo, faintly bemused to discover that it’s true. “If that’s okay. If you don’t mind.”
“Oh, don’t mention it,” Teru says generously. “I’m always happy to help out a friend. So long as you’re sure, Kageyama-kun...?”
Shigeo nods, mutely. He’s looking at Teru like he’s never seen him before, or maybe like he’s just found himself balanced at the narrow precarious edge of a bridge in the middle of a bungee-jumping class he doesn’t remember signing up for. But that heavy black stare travels down to Teru’s mouth, and lingers. He nods again, more thoughtfully.
Teru’s seized the day every day of his life; it’s the middle of the night but he’s still ready to seize it now. He shakes the blanket off his shoulders and props himself up on his elbow, ruffling a hand back through his hair both to get it out his eyes and to make sure Shigeo can fully admire its effortlessly tousled style... and although he’s not complaining, obviously, Teru still can’t deny the distant, wistful spark of regret that flashes through him: that this is how it has to happen, when in his daydreams he’s worked through the logistics of engineering a million and one circumstances for kissing Shigeo all of which – any of which – would have been a million and one times more impressive than this one; a million and one times more dramatically striking, more emotionally resonant, occurring at the peak of a nicely choreographed narrative arc which would cement his role at Shigeo’s side as rival and sidekick and love interest – never protagonist, obviously, but for Shigeo he could be all of the next best things...
But Teru’s too pragmatic for that regret to be more than a flicker: something is better than nothing, and this is far more than just something. He braces a hand on Shigeo’s other side, getting that last small distance between them comfortably closed. Shigeo’s dark stare is still lingering thoughtfully on his mouth, and Teru lives his life ready at any moment to seize the moment, so he seizes this moment too and kisses him.
Carefully gentle and chastely closed – better to avoid coming on too strong; he’s not risking startling Shigeo into stumbling at the very last hurdle. And a long moment, but still only a moment – the starter dish should always be smaller, sample size, to whet the appetite for the main course to follow...
Shigeo’s dark stare is still thoughtful when Teru moves back again, still hard to read in the gloom, in the ambient streetlight glow. If his heart is accelerating into a sprint at anywhere near the same flat-out rate as Teru’s then it’s not immediately obvious. “That seems easy,” he says. “I don’t know how Tsubomi-chan could be bad at that.”
Every single possible response which leaps up to offer itself to Teru would be inappropriate at best and far worse than that at worst, so with difficulty he swallows them all back down. If Shigeo really, really, really wants to pit him in competition against an imaginary version of some painfully unremarkable high school girl who as far as he can tell lacks any notable attributes whatsoever beside the fact she occasionally plays tennis in a very short skirt...
...then Teru’s absolutely not going to lose. He shifts his weight more fully over him, and kisses him again – but properly, this time; as properly as he knows how, neither briefly nor chastely; he does know what he’s doing, and he’d bet anything Shigeo likes that his precious Tsubomi-chan wouldn’t – he’d bet she wouldn’t have even the first clue of where to start, let alone of how to continue – of the best way to escalate, the optimal combination of tenderness and efficiency, gentle pressure growing firmer, warming Shigeo up to the idea that there’s a lead to be followed here, and that lead is Teru’s...
If nothing else, Shigeo’s a quick learner when it comes to recognising authority; he’s quick to follow the lead once he realises there is a lead. It takes him a little while to recognise that he’s being coaxed to part his mouth, but as soon as he gets the message he obeys it, and immediately he makes a sound of startled interest at the discovery of Teru’s tongue on the other side, though really Teru doesn’t know what else he was expecting to find there. He gives it a cautious lick like he wants to verify his own discovery; pleased, he does it again.
His damp and clumsy curiosity catches Teru very nearly off guard, very nearly knocks his focus; it makes his heart feel like it’s being blended down into a healthy breakfast smoothie, and it’s very nearly enough to make him forget his own best efforts at teaching by example – teaching, specifically, by artful and sophisticated example – but he keeps it together. Everyone has to start somewhere, and there’s an innumerably long list of reasons why Shigeo couldn’t have started anywhere better than with him. There’s an equally innumerably long list of flaws in Shigeo’s fledgling technique, but those they can set aside to address together later.
A moment later Teru pulls away again. “You can touch me, you know,” he says. “You don’t have to just – lie there.”
“Oh,” says Shigeo. It takes him even longer to process this than it takes him to process most things, like his mind’s drifted so dazedly far away he has to reel it back in before he can use it. “Okay,” he says eventually. After some further consideration, he nods, apparently satisfied. “That’s good. I wasn’t sure.”
Another protracted pause. Then he lifts his hand, tentatively, to Teru’s shoulder; he touches cautiously with his fingertips like he’s testing the heat of a pan fresh out the oven – so Teru takes the initiative on Shigeo’s behalf, and reaches up to close his hand for him. Shigeo’s grip tightens. Abruptly he grabs Teru’s other shoulder. When Teru dips his head to him again that’s all it takes for Shigeo to acquire a new exploratory zeal, holding on tight and prodding his tongue vigorously, clumsily around like all he wants is to find out if Teru’s mouth really does have all the same parts as his own – roof: check; teeth, above and below: check; gums, all the way around: check, check, check...
Objectively, it’s one of the least sensual physical interactions Teru’s ever had with another human being. And yet it manages against all the odds to toss a lit match into the flammable substance of his heart – he lost any ability to be objective about Shigeo a long time ago.
He gets his knee between Shigeo’s so he can clamber over him, settle more comfortably on top of him. The angle’s much better, that way; he can slide his hand through Shigeo’s hair and leave it there, he can draw back more easily when Shigeo’s exploratory zeal gets a little too zealous – a sort of gentle, wordless teaching moment: that this is when Shigeo should be letting Teru kiss him. The thick fabric of Shigeo’s blue tartan pyjamas rubs itchily against his own bare skin, but it’s fine; it’s more than fine. To be in love with someone means suffering for that love, after all – and in any case, having to see Shigeo wearing those pyjamas in the first place has caused Teru far worse suffering before now than any amount of mildly uncomfortable fabric friction ever could.
The next time he moves back, Shigeo’s breathing as quick as though he’s just run a mile. No, that’s not fair – Shigeo really has got fitter since middle school. Like he’s just run two miles. Teru cups a hand against his cheek, taking advantage of being able to admire him as closely as he usually has to pretend he isn’t.
“Well?” says Teru.
Shigeo blinks slowly, several times in a row. “Well... what?”
“Well,” repeats Teru, who feels he could afford all the patience for Shigeo in the world right at this particular moment, his heart grown warm and overfull with generosity, “what did you think?”
Shigeo’s gaze drifts away from him, beyond him, to the shadows of the ceiling above him, as he considers this with the same grave seriousness he tends to consider most things. “Wet,” he says, eventually.
“Wet?” says Teru.
“Yes,” says Shigeo. His gaze drifts back to Teru just as Teru’s vowing silently but fervently never to ask anyone for a review of the experience of kissing him again. “I liked it. Can I – can we—”
“Yes,” says Teru, heartfelt for more reason than one. Shigeo’s got that look like he’s about to make another interesting observation about the experience, about to offer up some more reflective feedback; hurriedly Teru kisses him again before the words can make it out.
Shigeo can only kill the moment so many times before even Teru loses the ability to resurrect it.