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Yuu felt something warm and soft press briefly against the vein on his neck, and then again at the slope of his shoulder.
They’d been standing there, absently, in one of the empty rooms on base (an old classroom half-repurposed and then dropped from the projects list, probably) when, no warning, Mika pulled Yuu into a tight hug. It was nothing—they had been talking about nothing, really, mostly Yuu griping about they way Asuramaru’d been cooperating these days, when Mika got this strange shine in his eye and pulled Yuu in by the waist.
“I have to go work, now, but I’ll be back tonight,” he mumbled, into his skin, then let go.
Yuu stared as Mika’s cloak fluttered out the doorframe, the sudden cold around his middle punctuating the loss. He absently reached up to touch the spot where he’d been kissed.
Mika was officially staying in Yuu’s room. There were a couple reasons for this, none entirely logical, given the amount of unused space in the base: first, nobody was really willing to set up new quarters for a vampire. Second, it’s not like Mika needed much sleep, and when he did, it was during the day, anyway, so it wasn’t going to really be a problem sharing a bed. Third, Guren had instructed Yuu to keep a leash on ‘his bloodsucker’, or there would be ‘consequences’.
Yuu had come about three centimeters from insubordination over that comment, and just might’ve punched someone had there been literally any conflict of interest.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
Yuu looked up from his workstation, which was really all his files dumped over his bedspread like a chaotic paper roost. Mika shut the door quietly behind him and leaned down to unlace his boots.
“Hey, these reports are very important,” Yuu said, which, while he very obviously had gotten no work done, was technically true. They were important, and also disturbingly overdue, since everyone was still too busy to bother teaching him how to write.
(It was also a blatant lie, because what had actually kept Yuu up was searching for some apparently gossip-worthy note Yoichi had passed him over breakfast a few weeks ago. Shinoa needed it, for cryptic reasons, and a few low jabs and one dare later, it had become a matter of pride. Which clearly took precedence over everything.)
“That explains the complex organization system. And the reason why you chose the bed over the desk.” Mika tilted his head up toward him and smiled. Slight and a little smug and barely noticeable, but a definite smile. Yuu would quip back except his chest was too busy bursting because Mika is here with him and he smiled.
After eight months, one would think Yuu’d get over something so small.
“You kissed me earlier,” Yuu said, kicking loose stacks of paper off the bed. Then, realizing what just came out of his mouth, he turned crimson. “I mean! Not me. Just like... you know...”
Blue eyes shot wide, panicked. Mika took one step back toward the door. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking. I won’t–”
“No! It’s fine. Really fine, I promise. I just… wanted to make sure I didn’t imagine it or something.”
There was a pause, where Mika looked down and away and face was shadowed by his hair. He looked back up at Yuu, expression the definition of 'conflicted'. “You probably don’t want to hear anything about vampire culture…”
“Come on, Mika, you know if it involves you I want to hear it.”
And… was Yuu imagining it, or were Mika’s cheeks really growing pink? “It’s... a gesture of trust,” he said, hesitant as walked over and sat himself on the edge of the mattress. “It’s… a promise, putting your fangs so near vulnerable flesh and then not biting. You refuse to drink the other person’s blood without their consent, even with the temptation right there.”
“So it’s just normal for them, right, in Vampire City? Did they make you do it a lot?”
“No. God, no. That would be…” Mika grew stiff. His words were strained. “Horrifying.”
Yuu’s chest bloomed, a cocktail of anger and relief; relief because, well, he hated to imagine anyone so much as briefly touching Mika if he didn’t consent to it. Anger because of the way Mika tensed, the edge to his voice, what the hell kind of place was–
He sighed. “It’s more common to just drink someone’s blood if you’re close to them. This whole thing… it’s more like a precursor to drinking, anyway. Not that vampires get along enough for it to be common. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking. I...”
Mika's fingers curled into the fabric of his pants. Yuu scooted across the bed so that his knee knocked against his.
“You know I totally trust you, right?”
An unspoken ‘well, you shouldn’t, not about this’ hung in the air. It was just one of the disagreements they’d been sitting on for the past eight months. “That doesn’t–”
“Oh, come on! It’s something you were probably used to thinking about and so it just happened automatically. And didn’t I just say I was fine with it? Don’t overreact, geez.”
“‘Don’t overreact?’ Do you even listen to yourself?”
But Mika turned, unexpectedly, folding his legs underneath himself and facing Yuu. He took Yuu’s wrist in his palm—delicately, like it was glass, and Yuu would’ve probably rolled his eyes if they weren’t glued to his best friend’s every movement, if he didn't suddenly stop breathing—then turned it up-facing, dropping his head until warm breath ghosted along the sensitive skin.
Yuu inhaled, sharp.
“This is another traditional spot,” Mika explained, barely more than a mumble, and then looked up at Yuu for permission. He nodded, a little too dazed and a little too enthusiastic for it to be suave, but then Mika dipped to place a soft, lingering kiss over the stretch of veins. And then series of rapid kisses up the length of Yuu’s forearm to the curve of his elbow. And then another kiss down where his wrist connected to his palm.
If the pounding between his ribs was any indication, Yuu figured his heart could give out at any minute. He also figured that if he had to die by vampire, this was definitely his preferred method.
Then Mika pulled Yuu in by his waist like before, dipped him so hid back was against the bedframe. He kissed his shoulder, grazed feather light along Yuu’s collarbone, and then up, Yuu tilting his head back to accommodate. And Yuu became distinctly, distinctly aware that, well, Mika had fangs. And that Mika’s mouth was on his neck. And that Mika had still never tasted human blood and supposedly craved it more than anything.
Yuu trusted Mika, unconditionally. But the understanding somehow made his pulse jump, and his breath caught right as he felt Mika’s lips ghost along his jawbone, and his eyes fluttered half-shut and–
“Goodnight, Yuu-chan.” Mika lifted himself off the bed and Yuu slumped back, trying to catch his breath again. He snapped his head over and shot his nastiest glare at Mika, who was moving to hi usual spot at the desk. How dare you, it called across the whole three feet between them. How dare you stop?
Mika snickered.
Yuu woke early to a dimly-lit room and the penscratch of a Mika diligently at work.
It wasn’t an unusual circumstance, waking up to Mika like this. He stayed in the room as much as possible, it seemed, though he was allowed to walk free within the base under three conditions: one, that he never, ever become a full vampire, feeding instead on the vampires lined up to make Myo-O gear; two, that he never use any vampire abilities unless instructed so by the lieutenant colonel; and three, that he wear a cursed sort of monitoring technology, designed by the Hiiragi family. Yuu was not very happy with that third condition, or even really the first one, after Mika once slipped about how “beyond repulsive” the blood was, and spent a chunk of his free time trying to figure out loopholes.
He wrangled himself free of the blankets, and took one stumble over to the desk, where he leaned over Mika’s shoulder. “Hey, what’re you–”
“Base map.”
...Kind of like how Mika spent most of his free time perfecting various escape plans. Classic Mika, he supposed.
“You’ve got five different versions of that thing. They don’t change between them, y’know.”
“There are subtle differences,” he said shortly. Yuu rolled his eyes, and then reached down, swiping some other documents from underneath the map. Mika peeped in protest, but didn’t move to swipe it from him, so it must not’ve been...
Yuu’s eyes widened as he stared at kanji-written copies of his reports. “You can’t do that!” he yelled, louder enough that he shocked himself awake. “You’re not even allowed to… They’ll know it’s not me, you know that, right?”
Mika shrugged. “Tell them that Shinoa helped you. She has the clearance.”
“Yeah. Right. Shinoa helped me. That’s believable.”
He shrugged again, and took the documents back from Yuu’s hands. Yuu made a frustrated noise, and then hovered for a few long moments, glaring, which Mika efficiently ignored.
Eventually he gave up on being passive-aggressive and moved to get dressed, which was sort of weird with Mika in the room, still, even after all this time.
On his way out the door, he took one backwards glance toward Mika and paused. His hands twitched with impulse; he crossed the distance again and leaned down, pecking Mika lightly on the side of the neck.
Mika’s eyes snapped wide, and his face flushed, and… that wasn’t exactly the reaction Yuu had been expecting, but oh my god. He spread his mouth into the widest grin he could manage, and then clapped Mika on the shoulder in a manner almost comically chummy.
“Have a good day, Mika! Hey, I know you have to do your research stuff in the evening, usually, but if you can come back in before one in the morning tonight, that’d be really...”
Mika snapped back into composure, but a satisfyingly pink twinge still decorated his cheeks. “I can stay out through the night, if I’m bothering your sleep by coming in so late.”
“Oh, no no, don’t do that. Just forget I said anything, in that case.”
And then Yuu was walking down the hall into the cafeteria, feeling very pleased with himself.
One week later, when Yuu got back from a particularly late night of training, Mika was curled up in the bed.
There was a brief moment of huh, that’s strange, before Yuu shrugged and pulled off his uniform and started scouting around for his his pajamas. Every time he caught Mika’s sleeping form out of the corner of his eye, he couldn’t help but turn and stare.
He very, very rarely ever witnessed a sleeping Mika. Possibly never, now that he thought about it.
His muscles cried out in joy as he crawled into bed next to him, and he let out a long breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. It was cramped on a three-quarter mattress for the both of them, but Yuu didn't mind much, because Mika was warm and Yuu was a little high off the novelty of the situation.
“I can’t believe I’m sleeping with Yuu-chan,” Mika said, soft even in the absolute silence. Yuu’s face burned instantly, and he made an indignant sort of squawk, mock-shoving Mika toward the edge of the bed. Mika laughed, and shifted over to his side so that they weren’t pressed so close together.
As annoying as those kinds of jokes were, it reminded Yuu that the easy-going, teasing Mika was still in there, just underneath all the cynical pretenses.
“Oh, you know, I was thinking about that today.” Yuu said after a moment, and stretched his hands out over the bedframe. “S’cute how you still call me ‘Yuu-chan.’”
Mika chuckled. “Mm. Would you prefer just ‘Yuu’?”
“Fuck, no. That just sounded weird!”
“So, Yuu-chan.”
Yuu paused. “Yeah?”
“Can we sleep now?”
You started it, you hypocrite, Yuu thought, but he took pity on his poor sleepy… person, and decided not to say anything more. Instead, he shifted forward, draped one arm over Mika’s side, and pressed one soft kiss onto the back of his neck.
Mika choked, and went to grip Yuu’s hand. Probably harder than he meant because, okay, ow? But when Yuu wriggled his hand so that Mika's gripped relaxed, he breathed out, long and content, and Yuu felt a lightness in his chest that he hadn't felt in ages.
He fell asleep to Mika’s heartbeat under his palm.
“Wait, why ‘star-crossed lovers’?”
Mitsuba glanced over at him, arms crossed, face close because they were shoulder-to-shoulder and any kind of human contact was welcome after a day of dealing with demons. Confusion flashed across her face, and in a universe where Yuu had even an ounce of awareness, he'd have thought it funny that she seemed more lost over a simple conversation than she ever did dealing with weapons known for psychologically torture.
“I figure because that’s what you are? If you seriously thought that was a secret, Yuu, I don’t even know what to tell you.”
“Okay, right. Except we aren't.”
Mitsuba stopped dead in her tracks. Yuu skidded, and then flipped on his heel so that he was looking at her. She stared at him. He stared back. She opened her mouth, just to remain slack-jawed as she continue staring.
Finally: “Oh my god. You’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious!” he snapped. “What the hell made you think we were like that, anyway?”
There was a considerably shorter period of staring, this time, before she croaked out, “Oh, god. Poor Mika...”
“Whoa, what does that mean? Are people giving him shit about a rumor? Because I swear to god I’ll–”
Mitsuba held up a hand and shook her head. “I actually can’t process this,” she informed him. “I think, of everything I expected from you, of everything I know about how dense you can be… I actually can’t believe this one.”
Cryptic and condescending? Check. Shinoa must’ve been rubbing off on her, which… actually, what the hell, it’s not like their relationship was exactly a secret, either, so fuck you, Mitsuba. Both of you can go fuck yourselves.
Haha, wait. ‘Either’?
Okay, then.
Mitsuba sighed and started back down the hall without him, leaving Yuu to contemplate in the vastness of the empty hallway. Or rather, seethe. Because it pissed him off his friends were assuming things about his and Mika’s lives (more on Mika's behalf than his own), and it pissed him off even more that, well, now that it was on his mind, he wasn’t super opposed to what they were suggesting.
Yuu walked (stalked) the rest of the way to his door. It wasn’t like he wanted, necessarily, to be Mika’s boyfriend. What was the point of the title? It was more like he was just happy to be close to Mika in any way, including kissing and all that couple stuff. If Mika didn’t want to do it, he wouldn’t really care, but the idea was appealing nevertheless.
That was probably really weird, though. Huh.
He stumbled in the threshold of his room. He camped in that spot for a few moments, door open, thoughts swimming.
“You’re just standing there,” Mika said, and Yuu jumped.
“Huh? Oh, sorry.”
He hummed, content. “Oh, no, feel free to stand there all you want. I just thought, perhaps, you weren’t aware, and figured you’d like to be.”
Yuu didn’t move, though, and instead stared at his… friend? Family? Person? He opened his mouth, and then closed it, and then opened it again, tactless in impulse: “Are we star-crossed lovers? Mitsuba said that.”
Mika didn’t even twitch. Didn’t pause his writing, or turn his head, or tense his shoulders. “Is that what you'd want us to be?”
Yuu shrugged. “Have to admit I’m not big on the ‘star-crossed’ part.”
Then Mika’s pen hit the desk with a clang. He started to laugh—genuinely laugh, leaning on the desk with trembling shoulders and pressing his palm against his mouth all in half a second. It was… fucking jarring, actually, and Yuu was about to snap something defensive when Mika dropped his head onto desk and clutched the sides of his shirt, breathy and shaking.
“Uh, holy shit, are you okay?”
He pulled himself up, swiveled, and looked up at Yuu. His face was wet and red and stretched wide—uncharacteristic and ineloquent but colorful with emotion and christ, was it beautiful to see Mika with emotion.
Mika grabbed the side of Yuu’s shirt and pulled. He wrapped his arms around Yuu and laughed into his ribcage, which felt really funny and made Yuu squirm but he was smiling so big it felt like his face could split in half.
It took a minute for his breathing to settle, before Mika pulled back slightly, so that he could look at Yuu. “Okay,” he said, then averted his gaze, weirdly bashful. Yuu’s pulse hammered. “Okay. That’s what we are, then.”
“Okay,” Yuu said, and then he had one knee on the chair, leaning down and kissing laughter-tears off Mika’s cheeks. Mika started again, breathy against Yuu’s ear and neck, and this time Yuu joined too, bracing himself on Mika's shoulders.