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Tohru wasn't a night owl by any stretch of the imagination: she tended to both fall asleep and wake up early. Kyo, however, was even more of an early bird than her. Rare was the day that he wasn't up and around by five.
Which was fine. There was no reason that should cause friction. After all, she got along perfectly well with Yuki who was almost the definition of a night person. On non-school days, it was unusual to see Yuki up and around before noon.
Once she and Kyo became a couple their sleep habits stayed largely the same, albeit with a few modifications. Tohru and Kyo went to bed together at the same time: while he tended to fall asleep right away, she would read in bed until she got sleepy. In the morning, Kyo woke up first and did some physical training, and would have a pot of tea ready by the time Tohru woke up.
They both got to sleep for their preferred hours with the added bonus of getting to see their partner sleeping cutely.
Tohru especially enjoyed seeing Kyo asleep. He wasn’t the cat anymore, but she couldn’t help but notice any time his behavior struck her as catlike.
(She swears she heard him purr once, but he loudly denied it. “But Kyo, you were asleep, how could you know?” “I don’t care if I was asleep or not, I didn’t purr!”)
Tohru closed her book with a sigh. When were the main couple finally going to kiss? It was almost over: get on with it, fictional people! She was tempted to read another chapter, but she was feeling sleepy.
She looked over at her boyfriend next to her in bed. For as rambunctious as he could be awake, his sleeping face was adorable.
“I want to kiss him.”
They had kissed good night, of course, less than an hour ago.
“I want to kiss him.”
She leaned over, but stopped herself. “Is it wrong to kiss him without asking?”
Of course, ever since they’d finally had their first kiss, he’d never displayed any reluctance to kissing her, as long as they weren’t in front of their friends. “Our friends aren’t here.”
Then she remembered: the fact that he stubbornly continues to refer to their first kiss as their second. Turnabout was fair play, right?
She leaned over and kissed him. “Good night,” she said quietly as she put the light out.
Tohru was stretching when Kyo opened the bedroom door. “Hey, you’re awake. Good morning.”
“Morning, Kyo!” she said brightly. She reached out to him: taking the cue he held her in his arms.
“I love you,” he murmured as he went in for a kiss.
“I love you, too,” she said after their lips separated. She giggled.
Kyo cocked his head. “What are you laughing for?”
“Oh, just something I know that you don’t know. Want to know?”
“Yeah, sure. What is it?”
“We’re even.”
Kyo rapidly tried to remember any context that would lend any sense to that statement. “What?”
“We’re even.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’re even’?”
“I mean, you did something, and now I did something, so we’re even.”
“What something are you talking about?”
“You kissed me. Then I kissed you.”
Kyo chuckled. “Pretty sure it was the exact same time.”
“Nope. Remember when you kissed me? The one that you call our first kiss even though our first kiss was actually when you confessed and the curse broke?”
“Yeah?” he said with mild trepidation.
“Last night I made up for that. You were asleep and I kissed you. Right on the lips! So now, we’re even.”
That made him snort. “Seriously?”
“We’re even.” He may have been the one who used to be the cat, but she was the one smiling like she’d just eaten the canary.
“That’s a bit cheeky considering I know where you live.”
“Do your worst, Kyo” she smiled (adorably) smugly.
That night’s goodnight kiss carried a certain frisson.
First of all because just before the kiss, they’d been very intimate indeed. They took advantage of a rare evening when both Yuki and Shigure would be away and made love. Tohru had put on a nightgown afterwards, but Kyo was still nude.
But the knowledge that there was now a contest between them. To see if they could kiss the other without them knowing it. Kissing each other was already one of the best things in the world, but now there was a competitive element? Even better.
When Tohru woke up, Kyo was sitting on the edge of the bed next to her. “Kyo!” She lifted her arms up. “My favorite!”
“Morning, beautiful.” He leaned down and kissed her deeply. Deeply enough that…
As they separated, Tohru asked, “Do you want?”
Kyo shook his head with regret. “I do want, but Shigure’s back.”
Tohru sighed sadly. “Then it's best we don't.”
“Shishou asked if we'd mind the dojo this weekend. Lots of privacy there.”
“I'll look forward to it. And by the way, I'm now ahead.”
“Nope. Thanks to you sleeping like a babe, you are not.”
“Ohhhhh.” Tohru sighed in disappointment. “We're even again?”
It was Kyo’s turn to be smug. “I kissed you twice this morning. You are behind, sweetness.”
“But… but that's not fair!”
“They say that in love and war, everything is fair. Seeing that a kissing war is both of those things…”
“It's not fair! You broke the rules!”
“There are no rules.”
“There’s a rule that if you kiss me when I'm asleep, it only counts as once!”
“Since when was that a rule?”
“Since I found out that you cheated!”
There was a gasp from the hallway. “Kyo is a cheater?” asked Shigure in mock-appalled times.
“NOT LIKE THAT!” Tohru and Kyo yelled together.
Eventually, Kyo did agree with Tohru's rule. Only one kiss per time asleep.
Thanks to a period of poor weather, driving him to exhaustion, Kyo took numerous naps. Tohru took advantage of that to run up the score.
Kyo found it monumentally unfair, but managed to get his own back. He discovered it was almost impossible for her to stay awake through a film on video. He’d kiss her, gently jostle her awake, then wait for her to fall asleep again. Tohru protested this as interference, so Kyo agreed to let it go, as long as she didn't take advantage of his rainy day fatigue.
It was a game they never tired of. They continued it when they moved away, and in every home they ever shared together.
Their kisses together were always full of love, but there was something about kissing the other when they were asleep that gave them an oddly satisfying feeling winning a competition.
And if you ever asked them who was winning, they'd both say “I am!”
And they both were.