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Toge’s mouth pressed flat into a line.
It wasn’t his fault. Not really.
He couldn’t have done anything to prevent the situation. If anything, he could argue it had been completely out of his hands. Figuratively and literally.
Panda, his overly large black and white chow-chow mix of a dog, was missing. He had slipped his collar, gotten loose, and run off when Toge hadn’t been looking.
And it wasn’t his fault. Not really.
They were walking like they normally did. Every day. Twice a day. As routine dictated. And he had been paying attention, mostly. But maybe, he looked away once or twice, clicking something on his phone. Changing a song or reading a message. Maybe. He couldn’t remember exactly. It didn’t matter.
All Toge could remember is that he pulled the leash one way and Panda pulled it the other and then his dog wasn’t pulling at all anymore because he was off running in the opposite direction, attention grabbed by something Toge hadn’t even managed to see.
So it wasn’t his fault. Not really.
Toge slumped against the wall outside of his apartment, tucked a stack of posters under his arm, and fumbled with his keys in his hands, trying to find the one he needed to open his door.
It wouldn’t even be a problem if he could have called out, refocused Panda’s attention on him, and gotten him to stop. But Toge’s own stunted vocal cords prevented him from talking louder than a whisper without intense pain and thus there was no way for him to stop the events once they were already in motion.
And that was frustrating.
He’d tried to sprint after him, but Panda was too far ahead at that point. Toge had lost his trail almost immediately.
He should have been paying more attention. Why hadn’t he been paying more attention?
It was his fault... Definitely, actually.
After he had squarely lost Panda, he’d sent a frantic, desperate, SOS text to his long-time friend Nobara and she’d been kind enough to spend the rest of that afternoon searching with him. But when darkness fell a few hours later, they decided to call it, having come up empty and dogless.
On Nobara’s suggestion, the next day, Toge’d printed out a series of missing posters, complete with a small reward for safe return or any information. She had pointed out that Panda looked weird enough to be recognizable and for how big he was, surely someone must have seen him somewhere.
It made sense, really, but Toge couldn’t help letting his poignant skepticality bleed in.
He’d seen other posters around the city for cats and dogs, sometimes even birds, but mostly, they stayed up for weeks and weeks, presumably unanswered. He figured they were an unspoken signifier of a lost cause. And he really hoped that wasn’t the case for Panda.
His keys slipped out of his hands and hit the ground with a light clatter. Toge let out a soft huff before leaning down to pick them up again.
Toge wasn’t experienced at owning a dog. Truth be told, he never really thought he’d be a dog owner. It happened unexpectedly, just a few years ago, when Nobara dragged him along to visit some local shelter that her sometimes sour-looking stoic friend volunteered at because she wanted not just a second, but a third opinion about which pet to adopt. It was there he encountered a small ball of black and white fluff with eyes that seemed to stare at him in such a way he couldn’t look away from. The end result of the entire experience had Toge walking out of the shelter with a new dog wrapped in his arms and Nobara walking out with nothing at all.
Toge had named the dog Panda based on his odd coloring. They had bonded almost immediately, becoming almost inseparable in Toge’s self-contained little life.
So he was worried. How could he not be?
What if Panda got hurt? Or ran into something that wanted to hurt him? What if he was scared and alone somewhere? Or stuck. Panda was absolutely the type to get stuck in things. He was probably stuck somewhere waiting for Toge to come and find him. God...
Toge exhaled a breath out of his nose. This sucked for so many reasons, but it sucked the most because he knew when he opened the door his apartment would be empty in a way it hadn’t been in such a long time.
Even if it had only been a few days since he’d gone missing, Toge missed him. He half-wondered if he should go back out and look for where Panda was probably stuck. He half-wondered if he’d ever see Panda again.
Then, in the sort of way that didn’t feel real, he heard a too-familiar bark from just down the hallway. Swiveling his head to the side, Toge’s eyes widened as he saw the source of the sound.
There was his dog.
His big, stupid, fluffy, missing dog.
Right there.
Right. There.
Attached to some makeshift rope leash haphazardly tied around his neck, being held by some tall dark-haired stranger Toge had never seen before in his life.
He wished he had longer to form an initial impression of whoever this guy happened to be and why he happened to be standing in his apartment hallway, but Panda saw Toge almost as soon as Toge saw Panda.
His dog’s ears perked up and his tail wagged once and it took everyone in the hallway about .2 seconds to realize what was about to happen.
Panda took off down the hallway towards him, jerking the stranger along with him with a loud “URK” and then a frantic “ No no no no no no--”
Two paws connected to Toge’s chest as Panda collided and pushed him backward. The posters he’d had tucked under his arm flew up into the air as he lost his balance and fell, pinned to the ground with a loud thud.
Almost immediately, the stranger began to apologize profusely.
“Sorry! I am so, so sorry! I didn’t mean to--He surprised me and then I didn’t have a good grip and--”
It was a rough landing, something he’d normally be upset about, but honestly, Toge was too relieved to care at this exact moment. Toge reached a hand out through Panda’s fluff and attempted to signal that he was okay and this was, honestly, not even that uncommon of a thing. The stranger’s fretting continued until Toge reached over, grabbed one of the fliers that had fallen to the ground, and handed it up to him.
“Oh,” The other man’s tone relaxed as understanding finally dawned on him. “He’s yours then? The dog--I mean, um--Panda?” he looked them both over. “I guess he could pass for a Panda. He’s large enough.”
Toge shot him a thumbs-up as the stranger pulled back on the makeshift leash, giving Toge enough room to wiggle out. Panda plopped down next to Toge and Toge acknowledged him with a small pat on the head. The stranger let out a sigh.
“I found him earlier, looking too lost to be a stray. He was friendly but didn’t have a collar, so I was taking him home to try to figure out what to do with him,” he explained, reaching a hand out towards Toge.
Toge took the offered hand and found himself pulled easily back up to his feet in one swift motion.
“But I guess it all worked itself out. Here,” The stranger handed him the rope-leash. “Dog officially returned to his owner.”
Panda let out a snuffly grunt and then grinned up at both of them, tongue flopping out to the side of his mouth.
“Is that your apartment?” The stranger asked, tilting his head and pointing to Toge’s door.
Toge nodded.
“Cool,” He smiled in a bit of a lopsided way. It was unique, if not a little dopey, “Maybe I’ll see you around again.”
Toge then watched as he walked back down the hallway, unlocked the next door down, waved once, then closed it with a click.
○○○
They did see each other around again, as it turned out.
Toge’s neighbor--Yuuta, he’d learned after they’d fumbled through exchanging names around the 4th or 5th time they’d crossed paths--seemed to have an oddly synced schedule to his own. There was about a 50/50 chance they’d run into each other in the hallway, often entering or leaving his apartment whenever Toge did the same.
It was a strange sort of thing, a sort of perpetual happenstance, and it made Toge wonder if maybe, somehow, he’d just never noticed Yuuta before.
It wasn’t that Toge didn’t take notice of his surroundings, but he had this habit of keeping his eyes downcast and earbuds squarely in his ears to block out any sounds outside the ones in his own head whenever he left his apartment to take Panda on walks or go anywhere else.
But then there was this shift that happened after the hallway incident, the small anomaly in his tried and true routine, and he often found himself looking up instead of down, earbuds still tucked into his pocket, glancing over at his neighbor’s door any time he opened his.
This whole new seeing each other all the time thing they had started doing caused Toge a bit of a conundrum. To start, Yuuta had staunchly refused to take the reward for finding his dog, claiming he hadn’t really done enough to deserve it and something about how getting Toge’s dog back to him was reward enough. Although it was probably meant to be a kindness, the idea of that didn’t sit well with him. It didn’t sit well at all.
Because honestly, had Yuuta not found Panda, Toge wasn’t sure he’d even have him back at all. And Toge wanted to make sure Yuuta was aware he was grateful, something he wasn’t exactly great at communicating. It made the seemingly simple gesture, well, complicated.
What were you supposed to do to thank someone for something like that?
Toge crossed his arms and slumped down into his couch. He glanced over at his dog, who was flopped over in the afternoon sunny spot bleeding in from the window, not a care in the world.
I can’t believe you put me in this situation. Toge thought pointedly at him, with a frown.
Panda rolled over onto his back and let out a big, grumbly, unbothered sigh.
○○○
After much too much thought, he’d settled on the domestic approach, as lame as that might be.
It felt like something neighbors did when they were well into their old age, geriatric and timeworn, but actions spoke louder than words or whatever and, he figured, hey, no one really hated getting free food.
He’d made a casserole. Simple and straightforward, filling and with easy leftovers; something someone could eat as much or as little as they wanted, depending on their appetite. It felt like it fit the bill.
So Toge stood there outside of Yuuta’s door, pan in hand, and paused, staring at it.
He was hesitating. He could tell he was hesitating, but he couldn’t pinpoint why he was hesitating. It definitely wasn’t because he was nervous or anything. That would be ridiculous. His too-tall neighbor, who had an awkwardly dopey smile definitely didn’t make him nervous. They saw each other all the time. He’d just... he’d never actually made food specifically for anyone else before. That must be it.
He looked back up at the door and swallowed. Okay, time to just... do it.
Toge reached up and knocked once on the door. As his hand touched the door, it slowly swung inward, interior dim.
Toge blinked as he looked into a much darker apartment than he had expected. Was, uh, was Yuuta even home?
He could have closed the door and left, but curiosity got the better of him and instead of closing it, he took a tentative step and poked his head in.
Yuuta’s layout seemed to be similar to his, but mirrored, which made sense given how the building was laid out. It felt a bit odd actually, sort of knowing where everything was even if he’d never actually been in this place before... although actually, wait, there was a benefit in that. He could leave the food in the kitchen. Attach a note. Make it absolutely not weird that way, but also not have to muster up the courage to try to come back later.
Toge took another step in, fully in the apartment now, and then stopped. Something felt... off. There was a prickling sensation on the edge of his senses. it felt a bit like he was... being watched?
Then he heard a soft hiss and a small shadow darted around his feet, too quickly for him to see.
He side-stepped, trying to avoid whatever it was, but bumped into something else and completely lost his footing.
The dish slipped from his hands with a CRASH! and then his feet slipped from under him and Toge saw the ground rushing towards him. He squeezed his eyes shut, internally bracing for the impact of the floor to hit him square in the face.
But it never came.
Cautiously, curiously, and very, very carefully, Toge reopened one of his eyes. There was the ground, looming beneath him, as he hung a few inches from it, suspended in the air.
Then he noticed the tight tugging feeling on the back of his shirt.
He’d been caught. Mid-air. Before hitting the ground.
“Sorry!” Yuuta’s voice came from behind him, strained and apologetic, “Rika--She--My cat--”
Cat?
Toge craned his head around and was just able to see from his vantage point that Yuuta was leaning forward and had both caught him, and also scooped something up in his other hand. That must be the cat he was talking about... Wait, holy shit, did that mean Yuuta was really holding him up, mostly suspended in the air, with just one arm?
Toge was smaller than most people, but even so, holding the weight of an entire person one-handed was not something just anyone could do.
Toge didn’t have the chance to really think through that particular train of thought before Yuuta declared, “I’m going to pull you up, alright?”
Toge felt himself being pulled back, up, in a steady motion. He staggered one leg forward and put his weight on that, grounding himself and finally standing back up on his own merit.
“Sorry,” Yuuta repeated again, finally letting go of Toge’s shirt, “Are you okay?”
Toge gave a small, affirmative nod, flattening his shirt down. Yuuta let out a sigh of relief.
“I’m so glad you’re not hurt. I heard something crash and I came running out to check,” He reached over and pet the cat on her head and then looked back at the ajar door, “The door must have come unlatched... Or I forgot to close it all the way. This isn’t the first time I’ve had this happen. I’m a little scatterbrained sometimes...”
Toge looked curiously at the cat in Yuuta’s arms. She was black as night and small, almost kitten-sized small, but with a lack of kitten-like fluff and features. Despite her size, the most noticeable thing about her was her eyes, bright, piercing, and blue with a luminescence that almost seemed to glow in the dark.
Now that he had a better look at her, and with the surprise from earlier wearing off, Toge decided she’d been likely been frightened, because of him, the unknown intruder. It made sense. He hadn’t known about her and she hadn’t known about him. He didn’t blame her for being a little spooked. Toge would have been spooked in the same way, had their situations been reversed.
He reached a single finger out to her, slowly stopping at her nose. She sniffed him, blinked once, then her ears tilted forward.
“Ah careful, she doesn’t really--” Yuuta warned as Toge reached up, but he’d already made his move.
Toge’s finger touched Rika’s fur and she sat there, still as stone. Her eyes watched his as his eyes watched hers. Toge gave a tentative pat on the top of her head. Rika looked at him for a few more moments before she closed her eyes, seemingly accepting his offer of scratches.
“Whoa.”
Toge looked up at Yuuta, his eyes were wide. He moved his hand and scratched her behind the ears.
“It’s--you--she--”
Toge raised an eyebrow and tilted his own head questioningly.
“Sorry, it’s just a little surprising. She doesn’t normally take to people right away, if at all,” Yuuta explained, “And she barely lets anyone but me touch her. Most of the time it’s a bit of a nightmare. But...”
Yuuta trailed off. Toge just shrugged. Even though he owned a dog himself, cats were always sort of easy for him to understand.
“Your food got ruined,” Yuuta commented, finally addressing the splattered contents of the fallen pan now coating his floor. “Was it for something?”
Well, there was no reason to hide it. It wasn’t like it had meant to be a surprise or anything.
Toge reached up with the hand he’d been petting Rika with and tapped Yuuta on the shoulder twice.
“Wait, it was…” He pointed at himself. “...It was for me?”
The look on Yuuta’s face was sort of funny. He looked even more shocked at this than at the cat thing. It was cute.
He nodded then looked back down to examine the mess on the floor. Ah, yeah. That was definitely unsalvageable. Cat whispering success aside, this was definitely still an overall failure. The mess could hardly be counted as a thank you at all...if anything, it just caused another mess.
He let out a half-frustrated sigh through his nose. He’d have to go back to square one.
“That's such a shame... It smells great, even on the ground. I bet it would have tasted even better... Um,” Yuuta readjusted the cat in his arms before asking, “M-Maybe you can show me how to make it sometime?”
○○○
‘Sometime’ turned out to be the very next day.
Which turned into once a week.
Which turned into almost every day.
Toge hadn’t intended his attempt at an apology to accidentally morph into some sort of thing with his next-door neighbor.
But, as it turned out, Yuuta liked his cooking. He liked it a lot. So much so that when he returned the large, empty casserole dish Toge had remade not a week later but two days later, Toge wasn’t entirely unconvinced he hadn’t thrown half of it away or something. That concern was immediately subverted when, instead of turning and leaving, Yuuta’s expression twisted into that signature dopey sort of half-smile his face wore so well and asked if they could maybe make something else together again soon if Toge didn’t mind because he absolutely hadn’t eaten something that tasted that good in years.
Toge didn’t really cook for people, the original idea of giving Yuuta food had been a fleeting, in the moment kind of thing. It wasn’t exactly the type of thing he’d normally do or a thing he figured he’d have to do again. But as Toge held the empty dish in his hands he rationed out that, well, it was easier cooking for two instead of one, they could save some money by splitting the cost… and since he’d probably be doing it anyway, some company might not be so horrible to have.
So, sure, he indicated to Yuuta, he didn’t mind, actually.
It ended up going something like this: Yuuta would knock on Toge’s door every other day or so, Toge would open said door, then Yuuta would offer him some sort of something edible he found on his way home from wherever he worked.
He was lucky Toge was a good cook. They were both lucky Toge was a good cook because some of the ingredients Yuuta brought over just because it happened to ‘look good at the store’ and he ‘figured it might taste good’ were, honestly, pretty out there.
Goji berries, cardoons, capers, a couple of strangely shaped mushrooms Toge had to cross consult the internet to make absolutely sure they weren’t poisonous, and once a combination of durian and pickles for some reason...
He had several cookbooks and a collection of family recipes that had been passed onto him when he moved out of his parent’s house, but truly, the saving grace for both of them was that he was good at improvising. Only once had he made something that was truly inedible... and that time he blamed the pickles.
Although the original intent had probably been to cook together--Yuuta kept indicating he really wanted to get better at it himself to subvert his particularly bad takeout habit--more often than not, Toge was the one who cooked while Yuuta played with Panda.
Because in addition to liking his food, Yuuta also seemed to like his dog.
Panda took to his neighbor more naturally than Toge’d ever seen him take to anyone else before. It was surprising, not because Panda was particularly standoffish or anything, but more because of the way Yuuta could handle him.
His dog was just, well, big. And to make matters more complicated, Panda didn’t seem to understand quite how big he was. Toge had found that most other people didn’t really know what to do about him when he got a little too friendly or a little too excited and, as a result, a little too in their face. He was well behaved, sure, but there’s a big difference between interacting with an animal who is thirty pounds and one that’s closer to one hundred and fifty. And trying to apologize to someone who was frazzled and upset because your dog got a little too friendly when your own communication was limited was a whole other hurdle of a headache.
Fortunately, Yuuta was also big.
Even though Panda might have caught his unsuspecting neighbor off guard the first time, that was no longer the case. When Yuuta entered Toge’s place at the start of their cooking companionship, Panda’s ears perked up, his tail wagged once, and before Toge could attempt to stop him, he barreled straight at Yuuta, tongue out, big smile on his face. His dog’s front paws collided squarely to Yuuta’s chest with a force Toge was all too familiar with. Instead of losing his balance, however, Yuuta held his ground. He reached up, clasped his hands over Panda’s paws, and smiled back at the dog.
“Nice to see you again too.”
It was sweet, Toge noted at the time, but it turned out Yuuta was pretty sweet in general.
He also talked. A lot.
Yuuta seemed to have no problem filling up the staunch silences that existed in Toge’s life. He filled them easily with conversation that felt a little too natural for how uncommon such things usually were for him. Because where Yuuta was talkative, Toge was quiet, unable to offer much in way return banter. But it was a dichotomy that, strangely, never seemed to cause a problem between the two of them.
Yuuta had apologized at first, when he realized he’d been monopolizing their conversations, claiming that his mouth ran ahead of his brain, and when there was no one to tell him to stop he often just wouldn’t. But Toge shook his head and assured him that it didn’t bother him at all.
There was just something nice about Yuuta’s voice and Toge absolutely didn’t mind listening to it ramble on about whatever random thought happened to enter Yuuta’s brain that day.
Yuuta didn’t pry too deeply into Toge’s quietness at first, but, over time, Toge had managed to convey the nature of his handicap. Yuuta told him in return he absolutely didn’t mind being burdened with carrying the conversation himself.
Despite their strange happenstantial start, Toge found he looked forward more to the nights when Yuuta stopped by more than the nights that he didn’t. Toge was ready to hear him talk, see his face, share a meal in that horribly gross domestic way that he found he really liked but was sure would feel out of character to anyone else who knew him.
So when a knock echoed through his apartment, Toge looked up from what he had been doing, checked the time, and knew that it could only be Yuuta.
Unlocking his apartment door, he pushed it open and stood slightly to the side, like he had done many times before, reaching his hand out, expecting to be given a plastic bag filled with whatever mystery ingredient he’d have to figure out how to cook up tonight. Instead of following any part of the social script they’d written, Yuuta just stood there in the doorway, uncharacteristically empty-handed.
Toge blinked and looked over at Yuuta who looked back, sheepishly. This was… weird.
“Um, actually… I have a co-worker over at my place and we’re going to order something. Pizza, probably. It’s definitely not as good as what you’d make, I’m sure, but um…” Yuuta’s mouth pulled up into that dopey half-smile his face made so well. “Would you want to join?”
○○○
“This is the neighbor you were telling me those things about?” The woman looked up at the two of them in disbelief, “Toge?”
It had been a surprise for him too, walking into Yuuta’s apartment and seeing an all too familiar face sitting on Yuuta’s couch. The woman--Maki--was an accidental acquaintance of Toge’s turned friend from a few years ago. And, it seemed, she also happened to be Yuuta’s co-worker. Weird how that had never come up before.
“Oh, you two... Know each other?” Yuuta said, eyes darting from Toge to Maki as the two of them joined her on the couch as he began to radiate a sudden hesitation about this whole situation he’d accidentally curated, “H… how?”
“Wait, wait, wait, hold on, you won’t believe this...” She leaned forward with a cheshire-like smile.
Toge felt a chill run down his spine. Dread and an old, long-forgotten embarrassment he thought he’d moved past welled up and immediately sank down inside of him. Maki wasn’t seriously going to talk about-- Not here-- Not with Yuuta right there--
“We matched,” Maki pointed at Toge, “On a dating app.”
Yuuta all but choked on nothing. Toge felt himself flush.
“I-I…” He stuttered out as soon as he could speak again, looking at Toge, then back at Maki, then over at Toge again, uncertainty morphing into disbelief, “I’m sorry-- Wha--”
Toge swatted at one of her arms. It had probably been one of the most awkward moments of his life, honestly.
Maki and her stupid mouth.
“For real, right!” The joy in Maki’s voice made it obvious she found the whole situation hilarious. “He’s pretty enough, so I couldn’t tell, you know?”
“I mean, yeah, you’re right, but,” Yuuta said, looking at a loss then quickly added, “W-What do you mean you couldn’t...tell?”
Maki snorted, then made a motion with her hands.
“Would you believe his hair used to be longer? Like shoulder length.”
“No-Wha-Really?” Yuuta looked over at Toge and Toge blinked back up at him, praying that his face didn’t look too red. “It’s so short now. W-well not like, it’s still nice, but...”
Toge ran his hand through his hair and looked away from them both, trying to get the temperature of his body under control. It wasn’t that short. He’d had it shorter in the past. He’d just gone through a phase of not cutting mostly because of laziness until it felt excessive and unmanageable. Why did they have to be talking about this now? Why did they have to be talking about this at all?
“This idiot apparently didn’t fill out his profile correctly,” Maki continued, ignoring both of them, “So I thought he was a girl. Big surprise to me when we met up in person.”
Toge let out a small indignant huff. The thing was, he hadn’t even filled that profile out. Nobara did it for him out of a fit of self-pity after she had given an evaluation of what she considered to be his too lonely of a life. She had all but demanded he give some new app a try and absolutely would not hear the end of it until he handed her his phone. Matching with Maki had been sort of a surprise to Toge too, honestly. He had fully expected not to match with anyone.
“We still gave it a shot, but eh...”
Maki shrugged.
“Nothing against you boys, I’m sure you’re both lovely, but, just...” She raised her hands up in a dramatic gesture, “Women, you know?”
“Um…” Yuuta fidgeted in that polite way he did when he felt uncomfortable but wasn’t willing to admit it out loud. “Sort of.”
Toge swatted her arm again hoping she would get the hint and just shut up.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” She reached over and ruffled Toge’s hair before leaning forward to rest her head on her hand, “That was like, what, three or four years ago? Time is so crazy. I don’t even think you had Panda at that point. Now I’m finding out you’ve been living near Yuuta this whole time? Cooking fancy dinners together every night or whatever the hell. I didn’t know you could even do that.”
“Next to, actually,” Yuuta corrected the added. “And it’s nice. He’s very good at it.”
“The world remains so small,” Maki smiled, glancing over at Toge. “I learn new things every day.”
He frowned back at her, readjusting the hair she’d just messed up. She narrowed her eyes and then looked back over at Yuuta.
“Heeey Yuuta, did you know Toge’s got dimples?”
“He–Huh?” Yuuta’s head swiveled over to Toge, “Really? I didn’t--I’ve never seen them?”
“Yeah because he doesn’t smile like 90% of the time, but trust me,” She grinned and poked at Toge’s cheek, “They’re cute as a button. Try to see if you can get him to show you sometime.”
Toge swatted her arm for a third time, much harder than before. Maki laughed loudly.
Almost as a response to that outburst, from down the hall, there was a soft, sad-sounding yowl. Yuuta flinched as both Toge and Maki’s heads turned towards it.
“Sorry,” Yuuta said, embarrassment bleeding into his tone now. “It’s Rika. I put her in my room for the night, but she gets really antsy when she doesn’t have free range of the apartment.”
“I’d argue she’s still antsy then too,” Maki said, nonplussed, “I swear, you and your feral cat--”
“Maki, I told you, she’s not feral--”
“Tell that to the scar on my wrist --”
“I apologized for that! And she’s getting better. She is!” Yuuta looked over at Toge for backup, something Toge was not sure how he was supposed to give before another yowl pulled all their attention away.
“This is why you never have anyone over,” Maki commented. “Demon cries echoing everywhere. People must think your place is haunted.”
“Shut up--” Yuuta began but was cut off by another distressing sound that did sort of sound a bit like a demon. “H-Hold on--”
Yuuta rose from the couch and shuffled off down the small hallway towards the bedroom.
Maki looked over at Toge. Toge looked back up at her in turn.
“At least Panda can get along with people. Even if he’s not exactly perfect either. That big lug never really understood the concept of personal space.”
Toge flattened his eyes and frowned at her indignantly.
What does my dog have anything to do with your vendetta against cats?
“I don’t hate cats,” She shot back, understanding, but feeling the need to defend herself. “I just don’t like when they’re the bitey kind. And Rika’s always bitey.”
Before Toge could respond, Yuuta came plodding back into the room, a small ball of fur wrapped up in his arms.
It was always so interesting to see Yuuta hold his cat. If Yuuta was sweet with Panda, he was absolutely saccharine with Rika. He held her delicately, with more care than was probably needed. One hand under her tiny body, propping her up so her head could peak out over the crook of his arm. It was such a stark contrast to the way he often interacted with Panda; energetic and high energy, unafraid to be a little rowdy if needed. He had this way of being so strong and also so soft at the exact same time. Two sides to the same coin.
Yuuta slumped down on the couch next to Toge, angling closer to him than they’d been sitting before. Their shoulders bumped together ever so slightly and Rika looked up from Yuuta’s arms and chirped contentedly at them both. It almost seemed impossible something like her could have made the sounds they’d been hearing earlier.
Yuuta looked up from her and shot Toge a desperate Please pet my cat so I can prove I’m absolutely not crazy look.
He exhaled out his nose, and, not being one to disappoint, did the same thing he’d done a few times before. Reaching a single finger out, Toge stopped at her nose. Rika sniffed him, blinked once, then tilted her ears forward. He moved up and scratched her between her eyes as she gave a small purr in return.
“Look, see? It’s fine,” Yuuta looked over at Maki. “She’s fine.”
“Didn’t you two start hanging out like a month ago or whatever?” Maki frowned as she watched Toge move to scratch behind Rika’s ears. “How is this even fair? The last time I tried to touch her she threw the biggest fit. I thought she was going to claw Yuuta’s arm off.”
“She’s never scratched me actually,” Yuuta corrected quickly as if making sure he clarified that was important, “And some people just click better with pets, I guess.” Yuuta looked up, eyes meeting Toge’s.
“Rika likes Toge.”
There was something about the way Yuuta had said that and the way he was looking at him that made Toge’s face involuntarily heat up again, but not in the flooding, embarrassing kill-me-on-the-spot way from before.
They were interrupted by a low, annoyed hum. Yuuta blinked once, breaking their eye contact before shifting his attention back over to Maki.
“Y-you could try again? She seems like she’s in a good mood right now.”
Toge turned his head and looked over at Maki too, raising an eyebrow.
She huffed out a breath through her nose at both of them.
“Fine.”
Maki narrowed her eyes. Then slowly, carefully, cautiously she reached her hand out. Before she could even get within petting range, Rika opened her two blue eyes then opened her mouth revealing two small rows of sharp, pointy teeth. She darted out faster than any of them could see and chomped down, sinking her tiny fangs into Maki’s closest finger.
○○○
“There’s something I want to ask you. And you’re more than welcome to say no…” Yuuta trailed off, as he poked the food on his plate and glanced over to Toge, who had just placed the pot he’d finished cooking in into the sink.
Toge’s eyes moved up to meet Yuuta’s, an action that was followed by Yuuta diverting his and reaching up and scratching the back of his head, “But, uh…”
Yuuta trailed off again and Toge felt his heart speed up. It was just a little, the tiniest quickening thump thump thump that bubbled up from within his chest as he noticed the tiniest pink flush dusting Yuuta’s cheeks.
They’d moved up from ‘neighborly acquaintances’ and been settled squarely into the ‘established friendship’ classification for a while now. It was easy. It was comfortable. It was… nice.
But they’d also been dancing around these kinds of moments too: Accidental touches that lingered a bit too long, ever-increasing excuses to perpetuate the time they spent together, exchanged looks and caught words that felt like they had something else to say but never quite managed to do so.
And nice was nice, but, truly, that wasn’t what Toge wanted. Not really.
The realization hit him out of the blue one night when he’d been laying in bed not quite awake but not quite asleep, in a swirling half-state of consciousness where half-formed thoughts pushed their way in through the cracks.
It hadn’t been a dream. More, it was a reflection of reality. A memory that wasn’t exactly true, but one that could have been more than believable.
They were walking together at the park with Panda, no wait, they were in Toge’s apartment cooking, ah, wait, no actually, they were in Yuuta’s apartment watching some movie on his couch.
The context didn’t matter, what did was that in whatever the moment happened to be, Toge decided to fixate on how good the curve of Yuuta’s lips looked. How the deep blues in his eyes came out when they caught in the light of the screen. How big his hands were and how strong he was and how much Toge wanted Yuuta to touch him.
And then Yuuta had leaned forward and Toge hadn’t leaned back and--
That thought caused such an off-kilter feeling of vertigo that it immediately pulled Toge out of whatever comfortable sleep-state he’d almost fallen into. He ended up staring at his ceiling until the sun peeked through his window the following morning, banishing the quiet what-ifs of the night away and leaving him exhausted and acutely aware of how much time he’d just spent thinking about his neighbor in a more than “established friendship” sort of way.
The feeling reinforced itself one hundred thousand-fold when he felt the same spinning sensation when he saw Yuuta later that day. And again whenever Yuuta made that one face he always did right before he broke out laughing. And again when Toge caught Yuuta humming to himself when as he did the dishes. And again when he lifted Panda up like he weighed nothing. And--
He knew it was foolish to call it something it wasn’t at this point, and he wasn’t going to try to convince himself it was something else. He definitely had a crush. A big fat crush. On his neighbor. Who he saw almost every day.
And he really had no idea how to even breach that subject without potentially upsetting the very specific status quo they’d developed.
But…
Yuuta wanted to ask him something… So, maybe… Could he also…
“I-I have to go out of town for two weeks. For work. It’s sort of sudden, I know…” Yuuta continued, poking at his plate of food, “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind looking after Rika while I’m gone.”
Toge did his absolute best not to visibly deflate.
Oh.
Right.
Of course. Of course, that was it. That made sense. That made total sense. Perfect sense. The cat. Of course, he meant the cat.
That was a very normal, totally sensible thing for him to ask.
Toge wiped his hands on his shirt, drying off the last bit of water that remained on them. He crossed the small room and the table and gave a small, affirmative thumbs up, trying to poignantly ignore that increasing weight of disappointment that had begun to supersede the rush of adrenaline from a few moments earlier.
“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” Yuuta reached forward and grabbed his hands, squeezing them slightly. “I have a spare key you can have and, um, I’ll make sure that--”
Yuuta kept talking but Toge couldn’t hear what he was saying exactly, distracted by the larger hands holding his smaller ones and felt his chest tighten in a way that was growing increasingly common.
Man, he was going to be up late thinking too hard about this again.
○○○
Apartment sitting wasn’t a difficult task, not really.
Although they did spend more time in Toge’s apartment, he wasn’t unfamiliar with Yuuta’s place. They had the same apartment layout, after all.
The only real thing Toge had to do when he stopped by was to make sure Rika didn’t slip out the door when he opened it. It was something he absolutely hadn’t expected her to do the first afternoon after Yuuta had left. He then chased her up and down the hallway for the better part of an hour. She seemed determined to search for Yuuta, who, for all she was able to understand, had suddenly gone tragically missing and might never ever return again.
The main problem he ran into was her crying.
Toge did not know how something so small could cry so loudly.
He heard her at 2 am literally through his walls. Her only barely muffled yowls sounding like--as Maki had said--some demon crying. They even woke Panda up, an impressive feat as that dog would sleep through almost anything.
Toge had pulled on the closest pants and slipped on some slippers and all but ran over to the next-door apartment. After some quick searching, he found her in Yuuta’s room--a place Toge had not imagined he’d be entering under quite these circumstances--buried in a pile of blankets Toge was sure she’d mussed up herself. He scooped her up despite her squirming, trying to hold her in the way he’d seen Yuuta do before. As he pressed her to his chest and pet her as soothingly as he could as, her distressed howls petered off into smaller, sad-sounding chirps. Toge scratched her ears. If cats could actually cry, he was sure she’d be tearing up right now.
You miss him a lot, huh?
Truthfully, Yuuta’s apartment felt wrong without him here. The apartment building felt wrong without him here. Toge’s life felt wrong without him here… and he hadn’t even really noticed how much of a hole Yuuta had created for himself in it until he was gone.
He looked down at Rika, feeling a strange comradery with this cat.
Yeah, me too.
He ended up crashing on Yuuta’s couch the following night. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but the act of him simply being there seemed to subvert Rika’s unending desire to wail... even if she still plodded around back and forth through the apartment, trying to find something that definitely wasn’t there.
He took it slowly, attempting to use a combination of treats and gratuitous attention. By day 3, he’d managed to get her to play with him. By day 5, she rubbed up against his leg. By day 7, she greeted him with a chirp and followed behind him as he walked. Toge assumed this meant he had successfully crossed over into some sort of ‘not Yuuta but still acceptable’ category.
He brought Panda over as well, one because he had been told by Yuuta before he left it was fine and two, because he was starting to spend about 75% of his day in the other apartment, anyway. Although he had agreed to watch Yuuta’s cat, he still had a dog to take care of as well.
Their introduction went much smoother than he had hoped.
Rika bat Panda on the nose a few times, hissed once, and, after getting no reaction back, stalked away indifferently, deciding that this new beast that was over 10 times her size was absolutely not a threat and she could probably take him if she needed to. Panda then followed her around, wiggling his tail the whole time.
Toge settled into the couch, wrapped up in one of the warmer blankets he owned, brought over from his place. The seasons were changing, and the nights were growing colder. Yuuta didn’t have any of his own that Toge could find readily available apart from the ones on his bed... and Toge wasn’t brazen enough to take one of those.
Rika was curled up on his lap; Panda, sprawled into a large lump at his feet. Two distinctly different-sized balls of fluff pressed comfortably against Toge in a reassuring kind of way.
He glanced out the window, noting the setting sun and the orange and red hues painting a gradient in the sky between the puffs of clouds. It was pretty. A bit like a picture or a painting. He idly wondered if Yuuta was looking at the same sky.
What would he say about it? Probably some random fact about light diffusion or some interesting comment about the color. Yuuta was so full of facts. It made him so interesting to listen to and Toge wished he could listen to him now.
Toge sighed. He should get up, make dinner, do a few small chores around the place, but…
It was so warm, and he’d absolutely have to disturb both the animals to get up… which meant it would be pretty much against the law to move at this point, right?
Toge looked out the window one more time, before giving in and accepting the unmovable nature of his fate and deciding that maybe today a late afternoon nap would be okay. He closed his eyes and listened to nothing. He wondered, offhandedly, if he could pick out any sort of nuance through the room, the sound of something distinctly, unequivocally Yuuta... but the only sounds he heard were the small snuffly snore of a dog and the rolling purr of a cat, creating its own semblance of white noise.
Although wait.
Did he hear something else?
A small rustle of something... No, it was... a voice.
One that felt both far away and very close at the same time.
“Cute.”
Toge blinked his eyes open, surprised by the grogginess he felt, unsure how that feeling had overtaken him so quickly. He had just closed his eyes, right? Just for a couple of minutes. Ten, max. Although, as he opened his eyes, he noticed it was much darker in the room than it had been when he opened them last. Had hours not minutes had passed in the time since he’d closed his eyes?
Toge tilted his head upwards, locating the source of the voice.
Yuuta was hovering above him, hands planted firmly on both sides of his head, leaning over the back of the couch.
His hair had fallen forward, untucked from its usual place behind his ear. He had this sort of serene, contemplative expression on his face that Toge couldn’t place but made Yuuta have this overall soft feel overall. Almost like--
Ah, yeah, Toge concluded quickly that he was definitely dreaming. Still very much asleep. Having another one of those Yuuta-centric dreams that were doing nothing but increasing with frequency since he’d left. He really needed to tell his brain to give him a break every so often so he could pine in peace. Yuuta wasn’t even supposed to be back for another 5 or 6 days, there was no way--
But then Yuuta’s mouth quirked into his signature dopey half-smile that, for some reason, felt too real to be fabricated. He shifted his weight on his arms, jostling Toge slightly as the couch moved underneath him. Then Yuuta let out a low raspy whisper that reverberated Toge to the core and made him feel very much awake all of a sudden.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up... but I couldn’t look away.”
Toge tried to comprehend what he could possibly mean by that. Look away? From what? What was-- Wait, oh, right--
The cat.
Toge looked down at Rika, who was still somehow fast asleep on his lap. He had to admit, she was cute, curled up in a ball. Toge scratched her behind her ears. She gave a small murmur in return but didn’t stir beyond that.
“Yeah, sure she’s cute but, um ...” Toge looked back up at Yuuta, whose face had gone that rare shade of pink again. “I was talking about you, actually.”
Yuuta’s eyes met Toge’s, expression changing from soft to uncertain.
“I-I can’t really tell if this is coming out of nowhere or not for you, but, uh, I’ve been thinking a lot and, admittedly, I wasn’t expecting to get pulled away, but I think being away sort of made me realize I was dragging my feet…”
Yuuta paused and bit his lip, looking a bit like he was trying to push through some sort of apprehension.
“I uh, missed you. A lot, actually. Would…Would you want to get dinner sometime--not like, not like how we normally do. More like, um… on a date. With me?”
Toge blinked at him. Actually, take back what he said before. He was still very much dreaming. He had to be. It felt too good to be true. He felt his palms start to sweat, his heart sped up, and, oh god, he needed to remember to breathe--
Yuuta seemed to take the pause as hesitation and leaned back, throwing his hands up defensively.
“I-if that’s a thing you’d be interested in doing, I mean! I guess we have dinner together all the time, so maybe that wasn’t the best sort of suggestion, but I, um--”
Quickly Toge reached up and grabbed at Yuuta’s arm, pulling him back towards the couch, cutting off the start of his ramblings. Toge was sure he was blushing now, feeling the heat of a flush rise up his neck to his ears, but he didn’t care.
Because yes, absolutely. Dinner or whatever--truly anything really. Just, yes a date, god, please.
He nodded in the most adamant way he’d ever nodded before, needing to make sure Yuuta undertook him and didn’t want to change his mind about this.
Yuuta’s eyes widened as he realized he was not being met with rejection.
“Ah, do you mean... is... is that a yes?”
Toge nodded again.
“Okay, yes... Okay, yes!” Yuuta exclaimed as he began tripping over his own words, talking a bit too quickly, “I’ll figure out the details later. I-I still want to be able to surprise you a little. But uh, great! That’s great! Can-can I join you then? Actually, hold on, I need to go--”
Yuuta leaned back, turning away, but Toge held his arm firmly, in an almost vice grip, and shook his head.
“I just got back from the airport. I should change.”
Toge shook his head again, frowning in a way that had no real bite behind it. He didn’t care. He was not going to let him leave again.
“Okay,” Yuuta relented, “But you’re not allowed to make fun of me if I smell stale.”
Toge rolled his eyes, but finally released Yuuta’s arms so he could round the couch. Toge lifted up the edge of the blanket and tilted his head in a join me motion. Yuuta quickly settled in next to him, pulling half of the blanket over himself as they both shifted closer.
“Sorry,” Yuuta breathed out, “For the abruptness. I was really nervous about all of this since it felt so unexpected...”
Toge could actually feel the tension seep out of Yuuta the moment their shoulders bumped together and he sank into the couch. He turned and gave Toge another smile full of warmth and relief and exhaustion.
“But maybe ‘unexpected’ is sort of our thing, huh?”
Toge smiled back, in a way he rarely did, lips parting and dimples denting into his cheeks. Because that was true. In a strange sort of way, unexpected absolutely was their thing.
He might have been caught up in the moment, emboldened by the close proximity between them and just a bit too damn happy about everything but Toge decided right then and there to do a thing that might be a bit unexpected himself.
He angled his head upward and leaned forward.
It was purposeful, with a conviction he normally wouldn’t have in most other circumstances, because it felt too forward, too exposing, too... well, unexpected.
But god, this moment between them felt too right to let this kind of opportunity just slip away.
And Yuuta didn’t lean back.
As Toge closed the rest of the distance between them, connecting their mouths together like two pieces finally finding a fit, a hand found his under the blanket, laced their fingers together, and squeezed tightly.
