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Kafka’s apartment is exactly what Reno expects.
What he doesn’t expect is his own reaction to it. His blankets are a rumpled mess on his bed in the corner, his jackets hanging in a row next to the door. If someone had asked Reno if he knew what Kafka smelled like, he would have said no.
He would have been a liar. It hits him now like a blow as he follows Kafka inside, settling over him so that he is warm all over.
“Sorry about the mess,” Kafka says, shrugging as he hangs up his keys and steps out of his shoes. “I don’t mind having company, but I still don’t think this is going to make a difference. It’ll be fine!”
The second stage of the Defense Force exams are coming up soon, and Kafka is still mostly failing at keeping himself human when his mind starts to wander. He’s lucky that it has only been Reno around to catch him, but that luck will run out if they aren’t careful. Reno tells himself he is trying to repay the debt he owes Kafka for saving his life.
Reno tells himself that it isn’t because he feels braver with Kafka behind him.
Reno tells himself that his first fight with a kaiju hasn’t made him afraid.
“Your face was bone and had horns in the konbini today,” Reno fires back, and Kafka doesn’t have a retort for that, so he heads into his kitchen with a sigh instead.
Kafka starts banging around with pots and pans as he gets dinner started. Reno can see him over the bar that separates the kitchen from the rest of the apartment, and periodically nags at him without looking up from his phone.
“Kaiju,” he says, bored, when Kafka has claws for fingernails. “Kaiju,” he says again a few minutes later, when Kafka’s eyes are nothing but hollowed out sockets on a monstrous face. “Sir, are you even trying?” Reno asks finally, when Kafka accidentally shifts for the third time in fifteen minutes.
“Shut up!” Kafka sputters, flushing and turning around to tend to some nonexistent crisis on the stove. “Makes me nervous having someone in here. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone in my apartment before that wasn’t a maintenance guy or something.”
Reno frowns at his back as he shuffles around the kitchen, making something that resembles ramen closely enough that Reno isn’t going to protest.
“I’ve seen you waist deep in kaiju intestines, I don’t think this is the thing that will suddenly make me realize you’re a mess, old man.”
Kafka does better keeping himself human when he’s eating, but whether that’s because of the task or because Reno is right across from him at the low table, he can’t say. He does seem to be doing better at not reverting into his kaiju form at the end of the night; Kafka scratches his head as he sees Reno out the door.
“Well, I seem to be doing a lot better, so,” Kafka trails off, obviously hoping Reno will drop it.
“So it was good practice. I’ll see you tomorrow after work, sir.”
He turns to leave with Kafka still stuttering objections behind him.
-
Reno lays down in his own bed, in his own apartment, and thinks of the way Kafka smells. There’s the ever-present almost military grade soap he uses, the work of dismembering kaiju lingering in his sinuses even when he is clean again and there is truly no scent left behind. The overly floral smell of cheap laundry detergent, and even cheaper cologne.
Thinks of Kafka’s arms around him as he pulls Reno close, ears ringing from the impact after he’d almost been eaten by a kaiju. Thinks of Kafka’s drawn brows, relief flowing into his features when he realized Reno was okay.
Kafka is a kaiju now. Kafka is so fucking strong.
Kafka is so fucking stupid.
Reno wants him so badly it makes him angry, fury gathering in his tense jaw, in his clenched fist. He lays down and gets a hand between his thighs; it’s more like punishment than getting off. Reno glares at nothing with his lips parted, working his fingers into his cunt, brows furrowed as he gets close, close, closer. Kafka’s strong hands. Kafka’s guileless smile.
He hisses like he’s burned when he comes, knees snapping shut as he rocks against his fingers, cunt pulsing wet around them. Reno twitches for a while, helpless little shivers.
Then, he tries to sleep.
-
They work tearing kaiju corpses to pieces, both of them keeping their head down, then they go back to Kafka’s apartment. Reno insists it is because Kafka needs the practice keeping his human form in check, and it’s true.
Reno tells himself it’s just to repay the debt he owes, and that’s a lie.
On the fourth night or so, Kafka only slips up once, when he burns himself on the stove. On the fifth, he does not slip at all. The second half of their exam is in less than a week.
If Reno makes it and Kafka does not, they won’t see much of one another again. Being in the Defense Force doesn’t offer a lot of down time, and especially not enough to spend with people who aren’t also officers.
Kafka knows that better than anyone.
He’s grinning across the table at Reno, the both of them still sitting there even though they’d cleaned up dinner a while ago, and are just talking shop. Kafka is trying to give him a crash course on kaiju anatomy he hasn’t had to deal with yet, regaling him with a god-awful story about a bile sack rupturing and giving a whole disposal crew second degree burns, but Reno isn’t really listening.
He’s staring, watching Kafka’s hands when he gesticulates, getting caught up in his eyes. Reno doesn’t notice when he falters and falls silent. Not at first, at least.
“Ichikawa?” Kafka asks, cocking his head to the side. “You okay?”
Reno laughs, cheeks burning. He’s got a vicious crush on a washed-up disposal crew captain turned kaiju who is on course to failing the Defense Force practical exam and possibly being euthanized and used for weapon parts.
“Not in the slightest,” Reno says, rubbing his palms up and down his face. All he has ever wanted to do is fight the kaiju, but now he is aching to fall into bed with the only one that’s escaped extermination in years.
“What’s the matter?” Kafka asks, blissfully oblivious. Reno could wave it away, tell him it’s a joke. He’s nervous about the exam. He’s nervous about Kafka’s self-control with his inner kaiju. There are a hundred different excuses, none of them even lies.
“I want you to kiss me,” he says instead, and Kafka blinks.
“Oh,” he says, and Reno looks up to see him wide-eyed with something like realization on his face. “Oh. Uh. Okay. You… you sure about that? Me?”
He points at himself, as though there is someone else in the room with them Reno could be referring to, and Reno laughs again. This is so fucking stupid.
Reno is so fucking stupid.
“I’m sorry, sir. Forget what I just said. I must be tired.” Reno glances around, looking for his phone and keys. “I’ll get out of your hair, and—”
Kafka is kissing him, fast and hard enough to steal his breath.
“I won’t,” Kafka says against his mouth, then kisses him again. “I won’t forget. I’m surprised but I won’t forget, Ichikawa, fuck.”
Reno has done his share of awkward fumbling with other people, but none of them have kissed him like this; Kafka’s got his broad hands on either side of Reno’s face, and it has been years since he felt this small. This delicate.
“Please,” Reno says, and doesn’t have to ask again.
Kafka doesn’t stop kissing him. Not while he stuffs his thick fingers into Reno’s cunt, not when he fucks him right there on the floor, not when he carries Reno to bed after. Not until Reno breaks away, finally, and Kafka mouths at his neck instead, holding him so tight it hurts.
“God, kid, you’re gonna be the death of me,” Kafka says. He’s panting like he’s run for miles but he’s smiling so wide it looks like it hurts.
“The Third Division will be the death of you if you don’t learn to control yourself.”
Reno runs his fingers across teeth that have shifted into something inhuman now that Kafka isn’t kissing him. He rolls his eyes, and Kafka’s mouth recedes back into something more recognizable.
He kisses Reno’s fingers, and they don’t go to sleep.