Chapter Text
It didn’t take long for Kazuki to discover that Rei was, nine times out of ten, extremely predictable. He was reliable in that he was a cold son-of-a-bitch. Kazuki could bake him a cake or cook a three-course meal and Rei would only regard such treats with a disdainful glance and little more.
Then, there was the ten percent chance that Rei would do something that shocked him. Like the time when Kazuki showed up at his doorstep at three in the morning soaked from the pouring rain with as many belongings as he could fit in a duffel bag. “Is it cool if I crash?”
Rei did little more than stare. Kazuki hadn’t wanted to elaborate, because what was he supposed to say? I got a girl pregnant and for reasons beyond me, I decided to pull the absolute biggest shitbag move and leave her. Apparently not interested in explanation, Rei stepped aside, a silent signal that was inviting Kazuki in. It should be added that Kazuki was blinking away tears from his eyes, something he wished was just rain droplets. He was sure that Rei noticed, yet again, he didn’t say anything.
Then there was the other time when Kazuki thought it would be a fantastic idea to adopt a kid. Really, Rei had the right to kick him out for such a decision, but he didn’t.
Since Miri’s arrival, shifts have been made, including sleeping arrangements. Rei’s apartment— meant for one occupant— has one bedroom, a couch, and a bathtub. Before Miri, Rei usually slept on the couch (mostly due to falling asleep during his late video game sprees) while Kazuki took the bed. Now, Miri sleeps on the couch while— despite Kazuki offering the other half of the bed— Rei now takes his pillow to the bathtub.
But what Kazuki found interesting was how every few nights, he woke to the sound of the front door closing only for it not to be opened until hours later. Once, out of curiosity, Kazuki poked his head into the hall to see what his roommate was doing only to find that the man was not in the apartment. Kazuki knew better than to ask his whereabouts the following morning as he was sure all he would get was a steely glare.
Kazuki’s first instinct was a secret lover. Hell, Kazuki knew his way around a one-night-stand, but that was him. This was Rei, the man who finds more comfort in a television screen than a human being.
Tonight was surprisingly ordinary, the first typical Friday night since Miri’s arrival. After bribing his roommate with three packs of cigarettes, Rei agreed to stay alone with Miri while Kazuki treated himself to a night out. He’d had his fun, shirt halfway unbuttoned and untucked from whatever girl at the bar he’d tangled himself with this time. He was sure her cherry lipstick left marks on his lips and cheeks and neck that he couldn’t explain.
Opening the door quietly as not to wake Miri, Kazuki yawns, slides off his shoes and leaves them by the door. He was still a little tipsy, his vision blurred around the edges, his cheeks warm even in the cold of winter. Though Kazuki was home earlier than usual tonight (three in the morning) he was expecting quiet if not for the distant blast of Rei’s PC. Instead, there was a hushed voice coming from the bathroom.
“I already told you that I’m not mad,” says Rei. He could blame this on his tipsiness— though really, he was just nosy— and Kazuki presses his ear to the door. He can hear Rei’s feet thump against the ground softly in a fixed tempo. He was likely pacing. Rei isn’t one to pace.
“You sound mad,” is the second voice that comes out of his phone speaker, grainy and drawn. A man’s voice, a stranger to Kazuki. “Why would you ignore me if you weren’t mad?”
“I’m not ignoring you,” Rei grits through his teeth. “Like I said. We don’t owe each other anything.”
“Owe each other— do you hear yourself talking?”
“Actually, yes,” Rei responds dryly. Though Kazuki was bewildered by the lack of context, he cringes. Rei was nothing if not blunt.
“Look, I know how you are, and I know that you’re mad that I cheated on you. See! I admitted it! Will you let me apologize now?”
Kazuki’s eyes widen. Cheated? Has Rei been seeing this man? “It wasn’t cheating,” Rei starts, doing nothing to hide the tire in his tone, “because we aren’t dating.”
“Seriously? What do you call what we were, then?”
“An extended one-night-stand,” Rei offers.
“One-night-stands don’t go out for dinner. Or stay the morning after. Or go out for drinks.” Rei remains quiet this time. “I know I did something shitty, Rei. I feel terrible. Please, just let me make this up to you— won’t you come over?”
“No,” Rei replies curtly, “I’m not your boyfriend.”
The man on the line exhales loudly with enough exasperation that Kazuki can hear it through the door, “fine, be like that. But you can’t blame me, okay? You just— it’s so hard to get through to you. Would it kill you to say a few words every now and then?”
“I say plenty,” Rei mutters. The man continues,
“It’s like pulling teeth. Why are you always so secretive? Why can’t I ever go over to your apartment?”
“None of your business.”
“See!” the man exclaims, “that’s what I’m— you make it so hard! And— Jesus Christ, it’s like you’re a robot!” Kazuki feels his fists clench. What an asshole— trying to blame Rei for his own mistake? Kazuki’s heart squeezes in his chest, and he feels a protectiveness take him over. Whoever this guy was, Kazuki seriously wanted to kick his ass.
Rei is quiet for a long time. Long enough that the man on the other line has enough time to hear the echo of his own insult and, meekly, as if to check if he was still there, he asks, “Rei?”
“Whatever the fuck this is,” Rei answers, voice level yet quiet, “it’s over.” Then, without waiting a second more, he ends the call, his phone beeping with finality. Before Kazuki can think to flee the scene, the bathroom door slides open, and Rei startles upon nearly bumping into his roommate.
Kazuki’s instinct is to extend his arms out for a hug, or maybe a supportive pat on the shoulder, but he refrains as he knows how Rei tends to recoil from any form of physical contact as if it were burning him. Rei’s eyes are turbulent with emotions, enough to speak for themselves, but all Rei says is “don’t” as he ducks his head and brushes past. “I’m sleeping in the bed tonight,” he announces.
“Sure,” Kazuki says, yet he trails after him into the bedroom. He didn’t feel right leaving Rei alone like this, and even if any form of comfort would be rejected, he needed to at least try. Through the darkness, Kazuki watches Rei’s silhouette as he steps out of his sweatpants for them to pool on the floor, leaving his t-shirt and boxers to sleep in. Kazuki sits on the edge of the bed, and Rei, turning to notice the other still there, pauses.
“What?” he asks, somewhat irritated.
“Do you wanna watch something?”
“No.”
Ignoring him, Kazuki gets up and blindly pats along the bedside table for his laptop. “It can be one of those cooking shows where the chefs get all angry and light shit on fire all the time.”
“I said no,” Rei groans, throwing back the pillows from the bed and crawling in, laying on his side with an angry thump.
Still ignoring him, Kazuki starts up his computer, the brightness lighting up the entire room. Rei practically hisses. “We could even watch one of those gory movies you love so much.” This is tempting enough for Rei to pause in consideration, and the bedsheets rustle as he flips onto his back.
“You almost pissed yourself the last time we did that,” Rei observes, and if Kazuki didn’t know any better, he would say he sounded amused. That was a start, even if it was at his expense.
“I did not!” Kazuki squawks.
“Yes you did.” Rei sits up, and Kazuki takes this as a sign of acceptance. He pulls back the pillows on his side of the bed, and invites himself to scoot back until his back was to the headboard. He sets the computer between them. “The Grudge isn’t even that scary.”
“Yes it is!” Kazuki cries. “You’re insane!”
Rei considered the movie selections. He browses American horror films, considering Hereditary and The Nun. Eventually, he decides on the second Annabelle movie.
“You’re not holding my hand this time,” Rei advises.
Kazuki hated every second of the movie. Dolls were creepy enough as is, much less satanic possessed ones. He had to cover his eyes for more scenes than not, giving enough of a show for Rei to glance over at him in amusement from time to time. Then, as Kazuki watched the gore from between his fingers as the doll flew across the scene in what would be funny if he weren’t so terrified, he hears a sniffling sound. And again. He turns to find Rei, who was once so invested in this movie, pointedly looking away from him.
Rei mumbles something about needing to use the bathroom, but it was hardly believable. Who knows what came over him, but when Rei stood to leave, Kazuki grabs his wrist. Ignoring the sounds of screaming children coming from his computer scene, he searches for Rei’s eyes. It takes a while for his head to turn, but his reaction to tense up was immediate. “Hey,” Kazuki starts, “do you want to talk?”
From the glow of the computer screen, Kazuki can see a deep frustration in Rei’s glossy— glossy?!— dark eyes. Rei wrenches his hand from Kazuki’s grip. Kazuki knew Rei wasn’t one to talk about his feelings. At least, nine times out of ten, he wasn’t one to talk about his feelings.
But here came the ten percent, because Rei, with clear forced effort, makes himself sit back down just as a tear slips down his cheek and catches on the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t cry,” Rei whispers. “It’s stupid. Pointless.”
“I know,” Kazuki murmurs, and with kind eyes, he watches as a tear falls from his other eye.
“It’s a waste of time,” he adds, and this time, the tear makes it over the curve of his chin and lands in his lap. “And I don’t like wasting time.”
“I know,” Kazuki repeats, voice soft. He has the urge to reach out a thumb and wipe at Rei’s tears until they were nothing more than a distant memory. He wanted to wrap him up in his arms and hold him tight and give him a speech about how he was too good for that guy.
Instead, Kazuki waits. He averts his gaze from Rei’s face and turns back to face the terrible movie, resuming his cycle of jumping, squealing, covering his eyes and asking “is it over yet??” He waits, waits as Rei’s sniffling subsides, and with it the tensity of his shoulder against his. It isn't long before there’s a weight on Kazuki’s shoulder: Rei’s head. Sure enough, his eyes were closed peacefully, chest rising and slowly with deep breaths.
First, the only thing Kazuki can think is his internal voice going awww.
Then, he panics.
What is he supposed to do? Should he wake him? Leave him here? Should he stay still? Kazuki decides to first shut his computer and relieve himself from the terrible movie. The logical thing to do would be to wake Rei and tell him to lay down and go to sleep. Yet, Kazuki felt this would be cruel, for he had never seen his friend look so peaceful. He was well aware of the fact that Rei’s nights were sleepless and often riddled with insomnia. Hell, Kazuki was no stranger to nightmares. Sleep like this was rare.
So, Kazuki gently removed Rei’s cheek from his shoulder and, cautiously, rises to his feet to walk to the other side of the bed. One hand on his back and the other on his shoulder, Kazuki eases Rei into a laying position and pulls the blankets up to his chin.
All Kazuki could think about as he laid awake in the bathtub was surprisingly not about a murderous doll, but instead, the way Rei’s face felt against his shoulder. How his hair tickled his neck, and how his body was warm against his hands.
(Kazuki did have nightmares about a certain satanic possessed doll).
_____
It has been several days since he overheard Rei’s phone call, and predictably, not a word has been spoken about it since. But with his dreams, he wasn’t as lucky. While he did appreciate the break from the nightmares, Kazuki did not appreciate the constant replay of that feeling of Rei’s face against his shoulder.
Mostly, it was confusion that made him awake in a cold sweat from the dreams each night. Kazuki hadn’t ever had a situation like this before, and the feeling in his stomach after waking from those dreams was alien to him. It was something deep, something real he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
About halfway through Miri’s cartoons that evening, Kazuki drifted asleep on the couch. For about the millionth time, Kazuki’s mind dragged him to the familiar memory, Rei’s body next to his, head resting close to his neck, breaths slow. This time, there was something different. Rei wasn’t sleeping. Instead, his eyes were just barely open, yet intention seeped from him. Kazuki’s mind went blank as there was an invisible force pushing him closer and closer to his friend. He glances at his lips and suddenly has the overwhelming need to kiss them, and when Kazuki saw the look in Rei’s eyes, he knew he wanted the same thing—
His eyes snap open, and for a moment, he was upset that it was just a dream.
Then the gravity of the situation hit him.
Kazuki needed to get out. Now.
He glances over to see Miri still enraptured by the television screen, eyes wide with delight. Sensing Kazuki’s eyes on her, she turns her head curiously. “Papa!” she exclaims, “you’re awake!” She crawls on all fours across the couch and leaps to land in Kazuki’s lap. “Let’s play hide and seek!”
Oh God. Anything but that. Kazuki sucks in his breath, “but don’t you want to keep watching your cartoons?”
“No!” she cheers.
“Miri,” he starts, sitting up as to urge her to get off his lap, but she didn’t take this cue and instead clung on to his torso like a koala to a trunk, “Papa has to go out.”
“What?” Miri insists. Oh no. Kazuki could just sense that she was going to give him the puppy eyes, and if that were to happen, he wasn’t sure what he would do with himself. Kazuki didn’t consider himself to be the kind who was good with kids, but for whatever reason, something in him could not stand that pleading, sad look in her eyes when he was about to do something she didn’t want him to do. (This kid was going to be so spoiled…)
Papa needs to go drown his sorrows at the bar. “I promise I’ll be back tomorrow,” he offers, but of course, this was not enough. As if on command, she looked into his eyes with that sad-puppy look. Then, as if she were a wind up toy preparing for a storm of a tantrum, her eyes filled with tears and her mouth opened silently before all at once, the entire room reverberated with the sound of her wailing.
“No!” she cries, clinging tight to him until he actually choked on air, “don’t leave me!” The rest of what she was trying to say was incomprehensible warbling, and she stuffs her face into his chest.
Kazuki couldn’t put into words how badly he needed to get out of the apartment— Rei’s apartment— to sort himself out and figure out what was going on in his own head, and this could not be accomplished with a screaming child and the elephant in the room (Rei) himself. So, Kazuki stands, holding Miri in his arms from where she still clung tight to him, and made his way up the stairs to Rei’s office.
Without knocking, he pushes open the door with his arm that wasn’t full of the flailing, whining Miri. The room was dark other than the light of Rei’s two PC monitors. There was a cigarette between his lips and one hand was on his mouse while the other was on his keyboard, his headphones over his ears. He was playing GTA and, despite Kazuki’s action to pull his headphones down until they hung around his neck, Rei did not look up. “What,” he sighs from around his cigarette.
“Could you babysit Miri tonight?” he calls over Miri’s wailing.
“No,” Rei answers without a beat.
“Please,” Kazuki attempts.
“No.”
Without thinking about what he was doing, Kazuki detaches Miri from her death grip around him and places her in Rei’s lap. In shock, Rei’s car crashes, and he looks up at Kazuki as if he placed a handful of worms in his lap rather than a crying child. To make matters worse, Kazuki plucks the cigarette from his lips and dips it in the ashtray. “What did we say about smoking in the apartment,” Kazuki chides.
“We said nothing,” Rei grits between his teeth, his eye twitching as Miri continues to wail and whine and now wrap her arms tight around Rei’s stomach. “You, on the other hand..”
“Please, Rei, it’s only one night,” Kazuki begs, but Rei was too busy trying to pry Miri off of him, but every time he managed to get one arm off of him, a foot would link around his hip and the arm would replace itself around his torso.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” Rei mutters under his breath, “get off of me, child.”
Though, in Rei’s attempt to get Miri off of his lap, Miri seemed amused by his efforts. Her wailing was beginning to be replaced with giggling laughter, and though she still sniffled, there was a grin on her face as she exclaims, “I like this game! I’m like a monkey!”
“I really appreciate it,” Kazuki calls over his shoulder as he makes his way out of the room, and from behind him, he can hear Rei scrambling to stand up.
“Wait a minute,” Rei strains, but Kazuki was already down the stairs and slipping his feet into shoes. When Kazuki turns to take his keys from their hook, he is met with the sight of Rei and Miri who was clinging to his head like a zoo animal. “I’m going to kill you,” Rei hisses.
“I don’t doubt that,” Kazuki replies, and meets Miri’s eyes as he says, “be good to Uncle Rei, alright Miri?”
“Okay!” she cheers. Then, her eyes widen as she announces, “I have to pee…”
Truly, the look on Rei’s face is absolutely priceless and the last thing Kazuki sees before the front door swings shut behind him.
_____
It didn’t take long for Kazuki to settle into his routine. At least, the routine he had before he decided to adopt a child.
He slid onto his familiar barstool, and a glint of recognition reaches the bartender’s eyes as she looks over Kazuki. “The usual?” she asks, elbow leaning on the bar.
“Yup,” he answers.
Five shots later, Kazuki is almost through with retelling his life to the woman. “And do I feel a little bad for leaving a crying child in his arms? Yeah, a little bit, but I knew I had to get outta there and sort myself out.”
“Sort yourself out?” the bartender inquires as she finishes off a few drink orders before sliding them down the counter to her customers. “What do you mean by that?”
“I haven’t been out in a while,” Kazuki rationalizes, and he gropes for another shot glass, “so I think I was going a little stir crazy.” He knocks his head back and gulps the tequila down in one swig before slapping the glass back on the tray.
“Uh huh,” the bartender hums, yet her tone was more questioning than validating. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Do you mind if you pour a few more shots?” Kazuki shoots back. She snorts. “Sorry. I’m tipsy.”
“I’m well aware,” she affirms and pushes him a tray of refreshed tequila shots. “Have you ever been romantically interested in any men before?”
Kazuki chokes on his tequila. “Uh, what? No?” Talk about a sucker punch. For Kazuki, it was always women. Since he was a kid, he never looked the other way. It was a no-brainer.
“So you’ve never kissed a man?” she confirms. He opens his mouth to confirm, but closes it in thought. Her brows raise, and images of a college party flood into his mind,
“I think I did once or twice as a dare or something,” he ponders. He remembered the taste of cheap liquor and the sound of booming rap music blasting over the drunk cheers and whoops of drunk teenagers. He remembered the feeling of kissing someone with stubble, how different the angles and tastes were from that of women.
“Interesting,” she concedes.
“What does this have to do with Rei?” Kazuki asks. Then it clicks. “What!” he exclaims, loud enough that the man sitting on the barstool next to him turned to give him a side-eye. “You’ve really lost it now— you think I’m into men?”
“Not think,” she insists, “just suspect…”
After briskly changing the subject, the bartender returned to her job, and Kazuki stumbled his way to a club. He bounced around, taking shots with strangers and weaving his way onto dance floors. He found comfort in the fact that he didn’t know a soul in any of these cramped spaces, how even in the sea of faces he couldn’t recognize a single one.
One AM turned to three, and tipsiness evolved into drunkness. He knew he was too drunk to be at a club alone, much less blocks from home. Through the darkness of the room and the neon lights lining the club’s walls, Kazuki watched as his intoxicated vision swam around him, colors bleeding together into an incomprehensible mush mixed with warmth and buzz. As Kazuki makes his exit from the dance floor, he stumbles past strangers, bumping against shoulders and mumbling haphazard apologies.
Then, almost to the door, Kazuki runs into someone’s back.
“‘M sorry,” he says reflexively.
The stranger turns around and raises his brows, looking down to him. “No worries,” he replies. “Hey, I think I saw you on the dance floor… you’ve got moves, you know.”
Kazuki, amused, grins brazenly. “Yeah? I think so too,” he warbles, and if not for the fact he was piss-drunk, he liked to think he would’ve said that with more suave.
The man chuckles. “Can I give you my number and next time we can dance together?”
First, Kazuki considers taking out his phone.
Then, he has the overwhelming wish that it was Rei who was standing before him. Rei who was asking to dance with him. Rei whose head was on his shoulder. Rei who, in a dream reality, leaned in to kiss him—
“Sorry,” Kazuki mutters, “I have to go-” and without thinking, he pushes past the innocent stranger to the doors. His drunk mind was spinning, attempting to ground itself in what the fuck just happened. Kazuki walks himself home, meandering from one side of the sidewalk to the other like a drifting ping pong ball ricocheting between walls, and really, it’s a miracle he makes it back to the apartment without getting lost or throwing up on the side of the street (both of which have happened… a few times).
Kazuki trips his way up the stairs, the entire time replaying the face of the man who tried to ask him out. Thick brows, kind eyes, impressive musculature, charming grin. Conventionally attractive. There wasn’t a gut feeling in Kazuki that said no, I’m not into this. No alarms went off. Nothing. And Kazuki could trick himself into thinking this was drunkness and he certainly would proceed to do so, but deep down, he knew. He knew that this wasn’t mere intoxication, and he knew that bartender was onto something, but he knew he didn’t want to admit it.
Kazuki didn’t want to consider the notion of his sexuality because he didn’t like complicated. It wasn’t the bisexuality that was bothering him, but rather, the arising truth of his feelings towards his roommate. That was beyond complicated. That was a disaster.
Kazuki pushes his hand into his front jeans pocket clumsily, and he fumbles to get his key into the apartment lock, which was a harder task than it should be thanks to his kaleidoscope vision.
Finally, the door complies with Kazuki’s incessant rattling of the doorknob, and it creaks open. He doesn’t have the strength to so much as kick off his shoes, and instead, drags himself and his heavy limbs into the apartment. He does manage to nudge the door shut behind him, yet feels the need to rest his forehead against the wood of the door until he gathers the energy to shuffle across the kitchen. He bumps against the kitchen counter, then the barstools.
The living room was bathed in light from the television, and though Kazuki’s vision was too blurry to make out what was on it, he could tell it was video games. He trudges forward until he stands in front of the couch to see Rei holding a controller and Miri fast asleep in his lap. A blanket was tossed over her, and she couldn’t be sleeping more soundly. The sight was surprisingly domestic, and very unlike Rei. Somehow, Rei managed to surprise Kazuki again.
Rei slides his headphones off his ears and lets them dangle around his neck. He stifles a yawn. Had he been waiting for Kazuki to get back? “You’re drunk,” Rei observes.
“Nooooo,” Kazuki drawls. He slinks onto the couch, hiccuping. Now that he was sitting, the world seemed to be moving around him even more, as if he had been spinning in circles and suddenly stopped. Rei clicks something on his controller, and the television’s once-bright light is now dimmer. “So blurry,” Kazuki assesses.
“What?”
“Everything. It’s blurry. You. You’re blurry,” he babbles. He leans to the side until he’s pressed against Rei because suddenly, he needed to be near him. Rei shrugs him off. Kazuki groans. “You slept on me,” he rationalizes, “now I sleep on you.”
“What?” Rei mutters, “what are you talking about? Just— you need to go to sleep.” Rei points the remote at the television and bathes the room in complete darkness. Kazuki hears rustling, likely Rei moving Miri off his lap and tucking her in before he rises to stand, his silhouette contrasted by the dim moonlight coming in through the windows behind him. “Kazuki,” he says sternly, “go to bed.”
Kazuki, still slouched on the couch, practically whines, “can’t,” he laments, “’s all too blurry…” Rei’s silhouette lags for a moment before he’s reaching down and tugging Kazuki upwards onto his feet, and this time doesn’t shrug Kazuki off when he drapes himself over the other. Together, they maneuver around furniture, though Kazuki was more dragging his feet than walking.
“Rei,” Kazuki rambles as Rei manages to drag him to the bedroom before promptly dumping him onto the bed. “Shoelaces… can’t do ‘em.”
Gravity pulls at him until he cedes and flops onto his back, still on top of the covers and fully dressed. Rei sighs, yet the bed dips with his weight as he tugs Kazuki’s shoes from his feet and sets them on the floor. Feeling Rei’s weight at the end of the bed begin to release, Kazuki fumbles around in the darkness, forcing himself upward to pat along the bed until he finds an elbow, and grasps it. “Wait,” he whispers. He tugs until Rei groans and stands, allowing himself to be dragged to Kazuki’s bedside. “Don’t go,” he mutters, and leans his head forward until it’s resting on Rei’s stomach. The man tenses, and doesn’t embrace him, but doesn’t shove him off, either.
“Why did you go?” Rei asks softly.
Kazuki shakes his head against Rei’s shirt, “no. No, don’t wanna…” He lifts his head and looks up at Rei, face hardly visible in the dark. His stomach clenches with anxiety, and before sobriety can kick in, inebriation pulls the words from his tongue and he blurts, “I think I’m bisexual.” His throat feels tight, and the anxiety has him in a chokehold before he opens his mouth to take it back, explain, anything to fill the settling silence, and—
He vomits.
Right on Rei’s shirt.
(So it wasn’t just anxiety that was making his stomach churn…)
Rei curses under his breath, and Kazuki wrenches himself away immediately. “Oh my God, ohmigod, I’m, I’m so sorry,” Kazuki sputters, yet the bile was rising, and he has to clasp a hand over his mouth to keep it from spilling.
This time, Rei grabs Kazuki by the elbow, pulls him up and leads him to the bathroom where Kazuki sinks to the floor and retches into the open toilet. His arms drape around the toilet seat, and he rests his forehead on his forearms as he continues to throw up and try to forget about the fact that he just vomited on Rei after telling him he was bisexual???
Then, he feels cool fingers on the side of his head, then brushing against his forehead, gathering the bangs from his face and pulling them away. Rei back his hair, not saying a word as Kazuki coughs and spits and heaves, waiting for the sickness to pass until all Kazuki did was sit there with his eyes closed. Finally, he finds the energy to lift his head, Rei lets his bangs fall back to his face, and he flushes the toilet.
Rei rises and, looking down at Kazuki, says, “good for you.” He didn’t need to specify what he was talking about, for the tone of his voice said it all. Though the comment was meant to be sarcastic, it came out to be warmer, softer, more understanding and empathetic. Kazuki knew Rei long enough to translate this into thanks for telling me.
And the moment is gone because Rei motions downward to his soiled clothing and adds, “you owe me a new shirt.”
Kazuki groans, ignoring the warm feeling blooming in his chest and he instead lays on the cool tile floor of the bathroom. He never managed to gather the strength to get to the bed, and instead, spent the night sprawled over the floor.