"Thank you for your purchase, we hope you'll have a nice day." (for defiancebyfire)
Title: "Thank you for your purchase, we hope you'll have a nice day."
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU / Romance
Word Count: 3,367
Recipient: defiancebyfire
Summary: Yuto gets a part-time job at a combini near his campus.
Author's Note: Recipient-san, I hope you like this <3 I'm not really sure if this is what you asked for, but I tried? The idea for this fic was very much stolen from the WinkUp interview.
Ideally, Yuto doesn’t have to work part-time. His parents give him enough allowance for daily expenses and the scholarship covers his school fees.
But Yuto needs the money in case of rainy days, or when Raiya manages to wheedle another few thousand yen for new shoes. Raiya is cute as a button even at seventeen, and Yuto hasn’t learned how to say no to him.
He also has about twelve pairs of shoes in his dorm, besides the ones he has at home, so he isn’t in the position to tell Raiya off for buying too many.
And so Yuto applies for a job at a nearby convenience store.
Initially, Yuto thinks of playing a mental game with himself, in which he tries to guess the number of each product left remaining on the shelf at the end of the day. He only realises that restocking is part of the job when Takaki, his boss, tells him.
“And they say I’m the stupid one,” the older man sighs.
“I… didn’t know?” Yuto mumbles sheepishly, and quickly rushes to restock the fridge.
When he’s done, he finds Takaki leaning on the edge of the counter with an unamused expression. He’s probably in deep shit.
“You know I can kick you out anytime I want to, right?” Takaki deadpans, and Yuto gulps visibly.
“But you’re too cute to be fired, so I guess you can stay~” Takaki grins, and pulls Yuto slightly lower so that he can ruffle his hair and pinch his cheeks.
“Uhm, excuse me?” A voice interrupts Takaki’s cheek-pinching fest, and the victimized boy hurriedly breaks away, rubbing at his abused cheeks. Yuto doesn’t know if he’s imagining things, but he thinks he hears a chuckle from the newcomer.
“May I help you?” Yuto puts on his face-for-customers and a wide grin as he studies the newcomer. Standing in front of him is a relatively short boy with black hair and silver ends, and cute eyes that blink in response. Yuto is pretty sure he’s saying something, but he’s too busy staring at the boy’s eyelashes to care.
“-and I was thinking if I could apply for a job here.”
“How-” Yuto almost blurts out the question, “how old are you,” but it dies on his tongue as Takaki cuts him off mid-sentence.
“I’m the manager here; you can come with me to get the papers filled out.”
As Yuto watches the new boy walk into the back room with Takaki, he wonders why his eyes keep lingering on the boy’s rear-end.
“I’m Yamada Ryosuke, by the way.”
Yuto stares at the hand in front of him, and quickly wipes his palm on the back of his jeans in the most discreet way possibly before taking it. “Nakajima Yuto, I hope you get the job.” He grins, and Yamada grins back.
He doesn’t understand why Yamada’s smiling face is the cutest thing he’s seen this entire week, surpassing Chinen’s embarrassing baby photos.
Yamada eventually does get the job, much to Yuto’s incomprehensible joy. He also turns out to be a very efficient worker - he doesn’t play weird games like Yuto and restocks the shelves like he’s supposed to. Takaki seems to think Yamada’s cute too, judging by how many times the latter’s cheeks get squished whenever he visits, and Yuto feels a strange twinge of jealously at this revelation. He isn’t sure if he’s jealous of the shift in Takaki’s attention or the fact that Takaki gets to touch those very smooth cheeks.
(He doesn’t realise that he’s been staring at Yamada’s cheeks until Yamada interrupts him with a “is there something on my face?”)
“Ne, senpai,” Yamada has an odd habit of calling Yuto ‘senpai’, even though the latter’s working experience only precedes his by a mere four days.
“Hmm?” Yuto is bored; there aren’t any customers around - most customers don’t come visiting their combini at this time.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one, why?”
“Really? Me too!” Yamada beams, and Yuto can’t help but smile with him.
Yuto likes his job. He likes it even more, now that Yamada is here, not that he wants to admit it. He likes greeting customers, and watching their perplexed faces when choosing onigiri flavours, and how their faces light up when they are get rid of the loose change in their wallets.
The beep of the doors opening signals the arrival of a new customer, and Yuto looks up in anticipation. He rolls his eyes when he finds out it is only Chinen.
“Welcome, my most valued customer, are you finally going to buy something or is there a reason that you’re here for the fifth time this week? It’s only Friday.”
“I could report you to your boss, y’know? He’d fire you.” Chinen comments dully, but Yuto senses the smugness in his voice.
“How could you do such a thing to your dear roommate?” Yuto fake gasps in an overly dramatic voice. “Oh wait, you can, because you have no interest in anything that isn’t in my boss’s pants.”
“Took a while for you to catch on, huh.”
“Please,” Yuto scoffs, although he only did find out recently about Chinen’s fixation on Takaki’s ass. “I’ve known since you walked in the first time and wouldn’t stop staring.”
Chinen laughs, and wiggles his eyebrows. Yuto thinks he looks ridiculous doing that. “It’s the same for you and Mr. Tight-leather-pants over there isn’t it?”
Yuto has barely enough time to tell his eyes to stop, but they don’t listen to him and skim over Yamada’s ass for the tenth time since he arrived. It doesn’t help that Yamada is currently squatting to arrange the boxes on the bottom shelves, his ass sticking in Yuto’s direction.
Yuto groans and buries his face in his hands. He can already feel his cheeks heating up. “Please don’t remind me.”
“Oops, too late.” Chinen giggles.
Yuto sighs again.
“So are you going to give me his schedule or am I supposed to spend another week harassing you for it?”
“You never buy anything anyway,” Yuto mutters under his breath.
The thing about working with Yamada is that Yuto doesn’t get to do it often. Yuto has only 4 days of work each week and Yamada only shares two of them. On other days, he has to deal with Takaki’s endless teasing, the occasional (but seemingly more frequent visits from Chinen), and the bimbo who insists on painting her nails during working hours. He wonders why Takaki hasn’t fired her yet, only to find out that she was Takaki’s ex. Firing her would mean meeting her, and Takaki isn’t prepared for a shoe in the face.
“Thank you for your purchase, we hope you have a nice day!” Yuto chirps, sending the customer a grin.
The doors of the combini beep as the customer leaves, and Yamada lets out a very loud snort.
“What?” Yuto asks, mildly annoyed because Yamada’s face says he knows something that Yuto doesn’t.
“Come on,” Yamada groans. “How did you miss that? She was obviously flirting with you.”
This time, it’s Yuto’s turn to snort.
“Jealous?”
“Psh, no”, Yamada grunts as he grabs the mop and goes back to cleaning. Yuto ignores the stinging in his chest, and turns back to the cashier.
“Besides, who the hell buys chicken-flavoured ramen anyway? Everyone knows that mushroom-flavoured ramen is the best.”
“Ew, mushrooms.” Yuto scrunches up his nose in disgust.
Yamada stops cleaning altogether and turns to Yuto, appalled.
“What is wrong with you?!”
Yamada is an awkward child, Yuto realises. He masks it with suggestive tones and flirty winks, so that the stuttering one becomes Yuto, and not him. Yuto hates how knowledge of this does nothing to stop him from falling for Yamada’s tricks.
(He also falls for Yamada, but Yamada did nothing to trick him.)
“Ne, senpai,” Yamada starts.
“Hmm?”
“Do you want to go for ramen after this?”
“When we stare at cup ramen all day?” Yuto has a twenty-paged assignment due the next day and he’s only partially done with it. But it’s Yamada, and so he agrees. “Sure.”
Yamada pouts, but quickly regains his composure. “You’re paying because you’re the senpai.”
“That’s not fair!” Yuto cries. “You’re the one inviting me, and you’re older!”
“Only by a few months. Thanks for the treat, senpai~”
Yuto face-palms.
“Thank you for your purchase, we hope you have a nice day!”
“Oh he’ll have a nice day, alright,” Yamada comments, once the previous customer is out of earshot, and Yuto giggles at the implications.
“Who needs four boxes of condoms?”
“Someone who is about to have a very nice day.”
Yamada wears an extremely psychotic grin as he dry humps the air exactly four times, and Yuto almost cries because everything hurts from laughing.
(“My spleen, it hurts,” Yuto cries out, still giggling, and Yamada rolls his eyes.
“You can’t hurt your spleen by laughing too hard.”
“It’s my spleen, not yours!” Yuto retorts childishly, but he doesn’t miss the tiny smile of amusement on Yamada’s lips.)
“By the way, the store has cameras.”
Yamada eyes go wide and he remains speechless, so Yuto leans close to whisper, “But it’s alright, it probably looks like you’re trying to seduce me.”
Yuto is shoved away and gets the silent treatment for about an hour, but he decides that it’s worth it - he gets to see Yamada’s cutely embarrassed face.
It’s a Tuesday when Yuto arrives at work an hour early, much to the relief of the girls from the previous shift. They’re rushing to meet some friends at a concert of some sparkly idol band, and it’ll be hard to get seats if they’re late, they say.
Shrugging, he takes a carefully placed container out of the plastic bag he made sure to hide from the girls, and begins to sketch.
A beep makes Yuto jump up from his seat, and he hurriedly chucks the container on the shelf behind him.
“Wel-Oh hi, Yama-chan.”
“What? No welcome? Why are you so e-” Yamada stops talking mid-sentence and his eyes go wide, letting out an extremely girly squeal.
Yuto cringes, confused.
“W-what’s that behind you?”
Yuto turns, and realises that everyone in the shop can see Kuro-chan.
“Oh right, that’s Kuro-chan. I need it for my assignment,” he shrugs. He should probably place Kuro-chan back into the bag, in case some male customer tries to buy it. Or worse, a female customer sees it, freaks out and tells on him. Takaki’s already mad that Chinen has his number - though in Yuto’s defence, Chinen has the password to his phone.
“How do you even look at that thing?” Yamada’s eyes are still wide, and Yuto fights the grin that threatens to form because of how adorable he looks. But then again, Kuro-chan is a pretty large bug.
“What can I say? I’m pretty impressive,” Yuto winks, leaning against the counter. He thinks he’s starting to be immune to Yamada, in a good way.
“Yeah, sure.” Yamada scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Remember the time when you almost broke through the roof of the closet because you jumped so high -”
Yuto grabs both of Yamada’s cheeks and squishes them together, effectively catching the latter by surprise. “You will never speak of that again,” he adds in a low voice, but all Yamada does is to roll his eyes and slap Yuto’s hands away.
Nobody needs to know what happened in the closet, and he’s not going back in there anymore.
“You wanna go for-” Yuto starts to say when they exit the shop, but is cut off by a pair of cold lips against his.
Yamada’s lips are cold and slightly chapped from the winter, but they send sparks tingling through Yuto’s body, warming him up to his toes. Yuto has dreamt of kissing Yamada, has dreamt of doing more than kissing, but he doesn’t expect it to actually happen, and when it does, it scares him more than anything.
Yuto stops moving entirely, his eyes fluttering shut, trying to memorise the feeling of Yamada’s lips on his (he doesn’t count on it happening again).
When Yamada pulls away, he stares at Yuto expectantly. Yuto stares back.
Yuto wants to ask him so many things, like “why did you kiss me? Do you like me the way I like you? Or did you do that because you knew I liked you? Can we do it again?”
All he manages to say is, “I-you-huh?”
Yuto is very coherent, most of the time.
Yamada sighs, seemingly exasperated by Yuto’s confusion. “I like you, okay? I don’t know what it is about you; your stupid face when you think you’re right or how you stutter when you get embarrassed and your ears turn completely red. I just like you a lot.”
Yuto blinks. “Did you just call me stupid while confessing?”
Yamada groans.
“That’s not the point! I know you probably don’t feel the same way and that’s okay, really.” After a moment, he adds in a small voice, “please don’t think I’m weird?”
“You were weird before this,” Yuto chuckles, and Yamada groans again.
“Just… forget about this, okay?”
“B-but-” Yuto rushes to say, but Yamada has already sped off, and Yuto can only blink at Yamada’s footprints in the snow. Yamada is nowhere in sight, and Yuto doesn’t expect his voice to be able to reach him, needless to say his legs.
He returns to his dorm, slamming the door behind him, and face-plants onto his pillow.
“Why so glum, useless bum?” Chinen drawls, swinging his legs idly from the top bunk.
“Yamada kissed me,” Yuto blurts, and promptly returns back to his pillow. He wants to squeal like a schoolgirl and roll around on his covers thinking about how Yamada’s lips are perfectly shaped, and how soft his lips were, but there is a nagging feeling at the back of his head that triggers an unexplainable sadness coupled by a wave of guilt in him.
Yamada is very possibly mad at him and he isn’t going to get Yamada kisses anytime soon, Yuto thinks.
“Wait, wait - hold up there, lover boy.” And then there is a poke at his side, followed by more pokes demanding to know more. “You’ve wanted this since a long time ago, right?”
Yuto nods slowly against his pillow.
“Then what happened? Is he a bad kisser?”
Yuto shakes his head.
“A stripper? I knew it, the leather pants were a clue weren’t-”
Yuto shakes his head, a little more violently this time. He hates his brain for coming up with the image of Yamada as a stripper - no, stop it.
“What happened?” Chinen prods, poking at Yuto’s side again.
“I told him he was weird,” Yuto mumbles into his pillow.
“Huh?”
The lamp on the table looks oddly bright when Yuto turns, and Yuto has to squint to make out Chinen’s face. “I told him he was a lot more weird before this.”
Chinen blinks. “You are telling me the whole story or I’ll sit on you and pee. Be quick, my bladder’s bursting.”
Yuto earns a smack on the head from Chinen with the pillow that was originally under his head.
“Are you serious? You’ve been pining for this guy like a lovesick child for four whole months and you tell me the only thing you did after he confessed and kissed you was to call him weird?”
Yuto whines and slams his face back onto the pillow. It’s embarrassing enough now that Chinen knows. If life would allow it, he isn’t going to move from this spot ever again.
Yuto feels a poke at his side again, and he squirms.
“Promise me you’re going to at least tell him how you feel?”
Yuto sighs and nods; he knows Chinen isn’t going to leave him alone unless he agrees.
“Okay, I need to pee and you should go to bed.”
Yuto doesn’t think he falls asleep. He is wide awake when the alarm rings, and drags himself to class as per normal. Except that Yuto is vaguely aware that walking into doors and tripping over his own feet are not extremely normal things to do.
He gets a call from Takaki almost immediately, because Yamada requested to change shifts. Yuto doesn’t ask why, he knows. But knowing that Yamada probably hates his guts doesn’t help the stinging in his chest, which only intensifies with Takaki’s phone call.
“Yamada hates me now, doesn’t he?”
He hears a deep chuckle at the end of the line. “Funny, you both say the same things.”
“He really hates me?” Yuto asks, but it comes out as a really small voice, because half of him doesn’t want to know the answer to that.
“No! Ugh, you guys are fucking stupid. I don’t know what happened, just fix it, okay?” And then the line goes dead.
Maybe, Yuto thinks, this will last for a day, at the very maximum, and he’ll be able to fall asleep like he used to again. Except that every time Yuto closes his eyes, he sees Yamada, sees his broken eyes as he runs away, sees himself rooted to the ground. He wakes up cold, despite the blanket draped over him, and three words threatening to slip from his lips.
For the third day in a row, he drags himself to class with eye bags heavier than his school bag. The weirdest thing about it all is how he doesn’t ever fall asleep in his classes, even during Calculus.
He spends his Calculus lecture glaring at that obnoxious couple in the class who can’t keep their hands off each other until he notices a familiar sheen of silver. Yuto groans, does the universe have to mock him by putting Yamada everywhere?
There’s another student in this class with black hair and silver tips, Yuto reasons, but somehow Yuto can’t stop staring, because his back view looks exactly like Yamada’s.
Yuto misses Yamada.
It has only been two days, eleven hours and twenty-two minutes. Yuto hates that he counted, and is still counting.
Yuto really misses Yamada.
His breath catches in his throat as the boy turns, because it is Yamada and Yamada is staring right back at him. Yuto’s eyes go wide as Yamada stares back and frowns, before turning away from him and back to the teacher.
When the lecture comes to an end, Yuto all but runs out to catch up with Yamada, the latter already down the hallway.
“Yamada!” He calls out, but Yamada continues to run.
Yuto finally corners Yamada at the end of the hallway near the stairs, grabbing Yamada by the arm and pulls the smaller boy towards him.
Yuto sees the panic that flashes before Yamada’s eyes, but the latter quickly turns it into a well-practiced scowl.
“What do you want?” He snaps, and Yuto is really scared that Yamada may just punch him or kick his balls and run away. But Yuto is stubborn, and his hold on Yamada’s wrist doesn’t loosen.
“Can we talk?”
“No, I don’t want to,” Yamada grits out, and turns to leave, only to be restrained by Yuto’s fingers around his wrist again.
“Can you please just listen to me?” Yuto pleads, and Yamada finally turns around to face him, a scowl gracing his face.
“I like you too, okay? I know you’re probably mad at me and you don’t want to see my face ever again but I never answered you that day. Heck, you’ve probably moved on and-”
Yuto stops talking when Yamada grabs his collar, yanking him down to his height and pressing his lips onto his. Yamada tastes like an odd mixture of cigarettes and strawberries, and Yuto can’t help but want more.
When they finally pull away, he hears a small whine, only to realise that it was him who made the noise.
Yamada chuckles at his blazing hot ears, suddenly smooth and suave again.
“I’ve been waiting,” he says with a contented sigh, and Yuto is hyperaware of his body reacting to Yamada’s sounds.
“So patient,” Yuto grins, and leans down to kiss Yamada’s pout away.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU / Romance
Word Count: 3,367
Recipient: defiancebyfire
Summary: Yuto gets a part-time job at a combini near his campus.
Author's Note: Recipient-san, I hope you like this <3 I'm not really sure if this is what you asked for, but I tried? The idea for this fic was very much stolen from the WinkUp interview.
Ideally, Yuto doesn’t have to work part-time. His parents give him enough allowance for daily expenses and the scholarship covers his school fees.
But Yuto needs the money in case of rainy days, or when Raiya manages to wheedle another few thousand yen for new shoes. Raiya is cute as a button even at seventeen, and Yuto hasn’t learned how to say no to him.
He also has about twelve pairs of shoes in his dorm, besides the ones he has at home, so he isn’t in the position to tell Raiya off for buying too many.
And so Yuto applies for a job at a nearby convenience store.
Initially, Yuto thinks of playing a mental game with himself, in which he tries to guess the number of each product left remaining on the shelf at the end of the day. He only realises that restocking is part of the job when Takaki, his boss, tells him.
“And they say I’m the stupid one,” the older man sighs.
“I… didn’t know?” Yuto mumbles sheepishly, and quickly rushes to restock the fridge.
When he’s done, he finds Takaki leaning on the edge of the counter with an unamused expression. He’s probably in deep shit.
“You know I can kick you out anytime I want to, right?” Takaki deadpans, and Yuto gulps visibly.
“But you’re too cute to be fired, so I guess you can stay~” Takaki grins, and pulls Yuto slightly lower so that he can ruffle his hair and pinch his cheeks.
“Uhm, excuse me?” A voice interrupts Takaki’s cheek-pinching fest, and the victimized boy hurriedly breaks away, rubbing at his abused cheeks. Yuto doesn’t know if he’s imagining things, but he thinks he hears a chuckle from the newcomer.
“May I help you?” Yuto puts on his face-for-customers and a wide grin as he studies the newcomer. Standing in front of him is a relatively short boy with black hair and silver ends, and cute eyes that blink in response. Yuto is pretty sure he’s saying something, but he’s too busy staring at the boy’s eyelashes to care.
“-and I was thinking if I could apply for a job here.”
“How-” Yuto almost blurts out the question, “how old are you,” but it dies on his tongue as Takaki cuts him off mid-sentence.
“I’m the manager here; you can come with me to get the papers filled out.”
As Yuto watches the new boy walk into the back room with Takaki, he wonders why his eyes keep lingering on the boy’s rear-end.
“I’m Yamada Ryosuke, by the way.”
Yuto stares at the hand in front of him, and quickly wipes his palm on the back of his jeans in the most discreet way possibly before taking it. “Nakajima Yuto, I hope you get the job.” He grins, and Yamada grins back.
He doesn’t understand why Yamada’s smiling face is the cutest thing he’s seen this entire week, surpassing Chinen’s embarrassing baby photos.
Yamada eventually does get the job, much to Yuto’s incomprehensible joy. He also turns out to be a very efficient worker - he doesn’t play weird games like Yuto and restocks the shelves like he’s supposed to. Takaki seems to think Yamada’s cute too, judging by how many times the latter’s cheeks get squished whenever he visits, and Yuto feels a strange twinge of jealously at this revelation. He isn’t sure if he’s jealous of the shift in Takaki’s attention or the fact that Takaki gets to touch those very smooth cheeks.
(He doesn’t realise that he’s been staring at Yamada’s cheeks until Yamada interrupts him with a “is there something on my face?”)
“Ne, senpai,” Yamada has an odd habit of calling Yuto ‘senpai’, even though the latter’s working experience only precedes his by a mere four days.
“Hmm?” Yuto is bored; there aren’t any customers around - most customers don’t come visiting their combini at this time.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one, why?”
“Really? Me too!” Yamada beams, and Yuto can’t help but smile with him.
Yuto likes his job. He likes it even more, now that Yamada is here, not that he wants to admit it. He likes greeting customers, and watching their perplexed faces when choosing onigiri flavours, and how their faces light up when they are get rid of the loose change in their wallets.
The beep of the doors opening signals the arrival of a new customer, and Yuto looks up in anticipation. He rolls his eyes when he finds out it is only Chinen.
“Welcome, my most valued customer, are you finally going to buy something or is there a reason that you’re here for the fifth time this week? It’s only Friday.”
“I could report you to your boss, y’know? He’d fire you.” Chinen comments dully, but Yuto senses the smugness in his voice.
“How could you do such a thing to your dear roommate?” Yuto fake gasps in an overly dramatic voice. “Oh wait, you can, because you have no interest in anything that isn’t in my boss’s pants.”
“Took a while for you to catch on, huh.”
“Please,” Yuto scoffs, although he only did find out recently about Chinen’s fixation on Takaki’s ass. “I’ve known since you walked in the first time and wouldn’t stop staring.”
Chinen laughs, and wiggles his eyebrows. Yuto thinks he looks ridiculous doing that. “It’s the same for you and Mr. Tight-leather-pants over there isn’t it?”
Yuto has barely enough time to tell his eyes to stop, but they don’t listen to him and skim over Yamada’s ass for the tenth time since he arrived. It doesn’t help that Yamada is currently squatting to arrange the boxes on the bottom shelves, his ass sticking in Yuto’s direction.
Yuto groans and buries his face in his hands. He can already feel his cheeks heating up. “Please don’t remind me.”
“Oops, too late.” Chinen giggles.
Yuto sighs again.
“So are you going to give me his schedule or am I supposed to spend another week harassing you for it?”
“You never buy anything anyway,” Yuto mutters under his breath.
The thing about working with Yamada is that Yuto doesn’t get to do it often. Yuto has only 4 days of work each week and Yamada only shares two of them. On other days, he has to deal with Takaki’s endless teasing, the occasional (but seemingly more frequent visits from Chinen), and the bimbo who insists on painting her nails during working hours. He wonders why Takaki hasn’t fired her yet, only to find out that she was Takaki’s ex. Firing her would mean meeting her, and Takaki isn’t prepared for a shoe in the face.
“Thank you for your purchase, we hope you have a nice day!” Yuto chirps, sending the customer a grin.
The doors of the combini beep as the customer leaves, and Yamada lets out a very loud snort.
“What?” Yuto asks, mildly annoyed because Yamada’s face says he knows something that Yuto doesn’t.
“Come on,” Yamada groans. “How did you miss that? She was obviously flirting with you.”
This time, it’s Yuto’s turn to snort.
“Jealous?”
“Psh, no”, Yamada grunts as he grabs the mop and goes back to cleaning. Yuto ignores the stinging in his chest, and turns back to the cashier.
“Besides, who the hell buys chicken-flavoured ramen anyway? Everyone knows that mushroom-flavoured ramen is the best.”
“Ew, mushrooms.” Yuto scrunches up his nose in disgust.
Yamada stops cleaning altogether and turns to Yuto, appalled.
“What is wrong with you?!”
Yamada is an awkward child, Yuto realises. He masks it with suggestive tones and flirty winks, so that the stuttering one becomes Yuto, and not him. Yuto hates how knowledge of this does nothing to stop him from falling for Yamada’s tricks.
(He also falls for Yamada, but Yamada did nothing to trick him.)
“Ne, senpai,” Yamada starts.
“Hmm?”
“Do you want to go for ramen after this?”
“When we stare at cup ramen all day?” Yuto has a twenty-paged assignment due the next day and he’s only partially done with it. But it’s Yamada, and so he agrees. “Sure.”
Yamada pouts, but quickly regains his composure. “You’re paying because you’re the senpai.”
“That’s not fair!” Yuto cries. “You’re the one inviting me, and you’re older!”
“Only by a few months. Thanks for the treat, senpai~”
Yuto face-palms.
“Thank you for your purchase, we hope you have a nice day!”
“Oh he’ll have a nice day, alright,” Yamada comments, once the previous customer is out of earshot, and Yuto giggles at the implications.
“Who needs four boxes of condoms?”
“Someone who is about to have a very nice day.”
Yamada wears an extremely psychotic grin as he dry humps the air exactly four times, and Yuto almost cries because everything hurts from laughing.
(“My spleen, it hurts,” Yuto cries out, still giggling, and Yamada rolls his eyes.
“You can’t hurt your spleen by laughing too hard.”
“It’s my spleen, not yours!” Yuto retorts childishly, but he doesn’t miss the tiny smile of amusement on Yamada’s lips.)
“By the way, the store has cameras.”
Yamada eyes go wide and he remains speechless, so Yuto leans close to whisper, “But it’s alright, it probably looks like you’re trying to seduce me.”
Yuto is shoved away and gets the silent treatment for about an hour, but he decides that it’s worth it - he gets to see Yamada’s cutely embarrassed face.
It’s a Tuesday when Yuto arrives at work an hour early, much to the relief of the girls from the previous shift. They’re rushing to meet some friends at a concert of some sparkly idol band, and it’ll be hard to get seats if they’re late, they say.
Shrugging, he takes a carefully placed container out of the plastic bag he made sure to hide from the girls, and begins to sketch.
A beep makes Yuto jump up from his seat, and he hurriedly chucks the container on the shelf behind him.
“Wel-Oh hi, Yama-chan.”
“What? No welcome? Why are you so e-” Yamada stops talking mid-sentence and his eyes go wide, letting out an extremely girly squeal.
Yuto cringes, confused.
“W-what’s that behind you?”
Yuto turns, and realises that everyone in the shop can see Kuro-chan.
“Oh right, that’s Kuro-chan. I need it for my assignment,” he shrugs. He should probably place Kuro-chan back into the bag, in case some male customer tries to buy it. Or worse, a female customer sees it, freaks out and tells on him. Takaki’s already mad that Chinen has his number - though in Yuto’s defence, Chinen has the password to his phone.
“How do you even look at that thing?” Yamada’s eyes are still wide, and Yuto fights the grin that threatens to form because of how adorable he looks. But then again, Kuro-chan is a pretty large bug.
“What can I say? I’m pretty impressive,” Yuto winks, leaning against the counter. He thinks he’s starting to be immune to Yamada, in a good way.
“Yeah, sure.” Yamada scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Remember the time when you almost broke through the roof of the closet because you jumped so high -”
Yuto grabs both of Yamada’s cheeks and squishes them together, effectively catching the latter by surprise. “You will never speak of that again,” he adds in a low voice, but all Yamada does is to roll his eyes and slap Yuto’s hands away.
Nobody needs to know what happened in the closet, and he’s not going back in there anymore.
“You wanna go for-” Yuto starts to say when they exit the shop, but is cut off by a pair of cold lips against his.
Yamada’s lips are cold and slightly chapped from the winter, but they send sparks tingling through Yuto’s body, warming him up to his toes. Yuto has dreamt of kissing Yamada, has dreamt of doing more than kissing, but he doesn’t expect it to actually happen, and when it does, it scares him more than anything.
Yuto stops moving entirely, his eyes fluttering shut, trying to memorise the feeling of Yamada’s lips on his (he doesn’t count on it happening again).
When Yamada pulls away, he stares at Yuto expectantly. Yuto stares back.
Yuto wants to ask him so many things, like “why did you kiss me? Do you like me the way I like you? Or did you do that because you knew I liked you? Can we do it again?”
All he manages to say is, “I-you-huh?”
Yuto is very coherent, most of the time.
Yamada sighs, seemingly exasperated by Yuto’s confusion. “I like you, okay? I don’t know what it is about you; your stupid face when you think you’re right or how you stutter when you get embarrassed and your ears turn completely red. I just like you a lot.”
Yuto blinks. “Did you just call me stupid while confessing?”
Yamada groans.
“That’s not the point! I know you probably don’t feel the same way and that’s okay, really.” After a moment, he adds in a small voice, “please don’t think I’m weird?”
“You were weird before this,” Yuto chuckles, and Yamada groans again.
“Just… forget about this, okay?”
“B-but-” Yuto rushes to say, but Yamada has already sped off, and Yuto can only blink at Yamada’s footprints in the snow. Yamada is nowhere in sight, and Yuto doesn’t expect his voice to be able to reach him, needless to say his legs.
He returns to his dorm, slamming the door behind him, and face-plants onto his pillow.
“Why so glum, useless bum?” Chinen drawls, swinging his legs idly from the top bunk.
“Yamada kissed me,” Yuto blurts, and promptly returns back to his pillow. He wants to squeal like a schoolgirl and roll around on his covers thinking about how Yamada’s lips are perfectly shaped, and how soft his lips were, but there is a nagging feeling at the back of his head that triggers an unexplainable sadness coupled by a wave of guilt in him.
Yamada is very possibly mad at him and he isn’t going to get Yamada kisses anytime soon, Yuto thinks.
“Wait, wait - hold up there, lover boy.” And then there is a poke at his side, followed by more pokes demanding to know more. “You’ve wanted this since a long time ago, right?”
Yuto nods slowly against his pillow.
“Then what happened? Is he a bad kisser?”
Yuto shakes his head.
“A stripper? I knew it, the leather pants were a clue weren’t-”
Yuto shakes his head, a little more violently this time. He hates his brain for coming up with the image of Yamada as a stripper - no, stop it.
“What happened?” Chinen prods, poking at Yuto’s side again.
“I told him he was weird,” Yuto mumbles into his pillow.
“Huh?”
The lamp on the table looks oddly bright when Yuto turns, and Yuto has to squint to make out Chinen’s face. “I told him he was a lot more weird before this.”
Chinen blinks. “You are telling me the whole story or I’ll sit on you and pee. Be quick, my bladder’s bursting.”
Yuto earns a smack on the head from Chinen with the pillow that was originally under his head.
“Are you serious? You’ve been pining for this guy like a lovesick child for four whole months and you tell me the only thing you did after he confessed and kissed you was to call him weird?”
Yuto whines and slams his face back onto the pillow. It’s embarrassing enough now that Chinen knows. If life would allow it, he isn’t going to move from this spot ever again.
Yuto feels a poke at his side again, and he squirms.
“Promise me you’re going to at least tell him how you feel?”
Yuto sighs and nods; he knows Chinen isn’t going to leave him alone unless he agrees.
“Okay, I need to pee and you should go to bed.”
Yuto doesn’t think he falls asleep. He is wide awake when the alarm rings, and drags himself to class as per normal. Except that Yuto is vaguely aware that walking into doors and tripping over his own feet are not extremely normal things to do.
He gets a call from Takaki almost immediately, because Yamada requested to change shifts. Yuto doesn’t ask why, he knows. But knowing that Yamada probably hates his guts doesn’t help the stinging in his chest, which only intensifies with Takaki’s phone call.
“Yamada hates me now, doesn’t he?”
He hears a deep chuckle at the end of the line. “Funny, you both say the same things.”
“He really hates me?” Yuto asks, but it comes out as a really small voice, because half of him doesn’t want to know the answer to that.
“No! Ugh, you guys are fucking stupid. I don’t know what happened, just fix it, okay?” And then the line goes dead.
Maybe, Yuto thinks, this will last for a day, at the very maximum, and he’ll be able to fall asleep like he used to again. Except that every time Yuto closes his eyes, he sees Yamada, sees his broken eyes as he runs away, sees himself rooted to the ground. He wakes up cold, despite the blanket draped over him, and three words threatening to slip from his lips.
For the third day in a row, he drags himself to class with eye bags heavier than his school bag. The weirdest thing about it all is how he doesn’t ever fall asleep in his classes, even during Calculus.
He spends his Calculus lecture glaring at that obnoxious couple in the class who can’t keep their hands off each other until he notices a familiar sheen of silver. Yuto groans, does the universe have to mock him by putting Yamada everywhere?
There’s another student in this class with black hair and silver tips, Yuto reasons, but somehow Yuto can’t stop staring, because his back view looks exactly like Yamada’s.
Yuto misses Yamada.
It has only been two days, eleven hours and twenty-two minutes. Yuto hates that he counted, and is still counting.
Yuto really misses Yamada.
His breath catches in his throat as the boy turns, because it is Yamada and Yamada is staring right back at him. Yuto’s eyes go wide as Yamada stares back and frowns, before turning away from him and back to the teacher.
When the lecture comes to an end, Yuto all but runs out to catch up with Yamada, the latter already down the hallway.
“Yamada!” He calls out, but Yamada continues to run.
Yuto finally corners Yamada at the end of the hallway near the stairs, grabbing Yamada by the arm and pulls the smaller boy towards him.
Yuto sees the panic that flashes before Yamada’s eyes, but the latter quickly turns it into a well-practiced scowl.
“What do you want?” He snaps, and Yuto is really scared that Yamada may just punch him or kick his balls and run away. But Yuto is stubborn, and his hold on Yamada’s wrist doesn’t loosen.
“Can we talk?”
“No, I don’t want to,” Yamada grits out, and turns to leave, only to be restrained by Yuto’s fingers around his wrist again.
“Can you please just listen to me?” Yuto pleads, and Yamada finally turns around to face him, a scowl gracing his face.
“I like you too, okay? I know you’re probably mad at me and you don’t want to see my face ever again but I never answered you that day. Heck, you’ve probably moved on and-”
Yuto stops talking when Yamada grabs his collar, yanking him down to his height and pressing his lips onto his. Yamada tastes like an odd mixture of cigarettes and strawberries, and Yuto can’t help but want more.
When they finally pull away, he hears a small whine, only to realise that it was him who made the noise.
Yamada chuckles at his blazing hot ears, suddenly smooth and suave again.
“I’ve been waiting,” he says with a contented sigh, and Yuto is hyperaware of his body reacting to Yamada’s sounds.
“So patient,” Yuto grins, and leans down to kiss Yamada’s pout away.