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It took a while before Chibita noticed it, the blood beneath Karamatsu’s fingernails. It was the last clue in a list of many, and the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. There were only so many little things that Chibita could ignore, so many little tells and idiosyncrasies that he could dismiss as Karamatsu being Karamatsu. The way his nose wrinkled up when Chibita put anything but meat in front of him. The shockingly good knife skills he’d displayed when Chibita had asked him to help with dinner. The nights when he’d go missing and then breeze back in the next morning with a grin and a tale that Chibita wanted to believe more than he actually did.
Chibita wondered if they were all like that, or if it was just his Karamatsu. Did they all share Karamatsu’s dining habits, or did the others dig into salads the way Karamatsu dug into steak? Did the rest of them get that faraway look in their eyes, that flat, unknown stare, or were they all just as flighty as Karamatsu had once seemed? Did they all taste like that when kissed, that slight, coppery tang of blood?
If so, when on earth had those shitty sextuplets managed to get a taste like that? Chibita didn’t know, couldn’t pinpoint a time when they’d been anything other than what they were now, and like so many other things, he was afraid to ask.
Because Karamatsu was sweet. He visited Chibita’s cart on slow nights and kept him company, and he whispered sweet nothings in his ear as they drifted off to sleep. He surprised him with roses when there was no special occasion, and he composed increasingly terrible love songs just to make him laugh. Karamatsu was sweet, and his presence was making Chibita’s tiny, cramped apartment feel like a home. Losing him now would be like losing a part of himself that he hadn’t even known existed before Karamatsu had situated himself into Chibita’s life.
And so Chibita stewed. He thought about the ins and outs of it, the half-formed theories and the horrifying repercussions. The whys, the hows, and most horrifying of all, the whos. He thought about it so much that he thought his head would burst with it, and he planned.
All said, Karamatsu was really better at the romantic gestures than he was. Karamatsu was the one to slip love letters in the spokes of his cart, and Karamatsu was the one to recite shitty, shitty poetry at him in public. Chibita had never even needed to do anything like that; the slightest hint of affection was usually more than enough to send Karamatsu into fits of rapture. So maybe he was really just out of practice.
The preparation took time, and it took work, and it took a sort of intestinal fortitude that Chibita had never known that he possessed. But.
But.
“Hey, Karaboy. I’m trying out a new type of oden… My own special recipe,” he said, and Karamatsu looked up from his magazine with a dopey smile and a half-tilt of the head. God, he loved him. “Will you try it for me?”
Karamatsu’s face did something complicated when he took his first sniff of the bowl that Chibita set in front of him on their table. It was the look of a man trying to recall something half-remembered, a brief strain of a long forgotten song, the word dangling just off the tip of his tongue. He frowned, then took off his sunglasses so he could get a better look. “What’s in this?” he asked.
“Well,” Chibita said, only barely managing to keep his voice light, “I thought I’d try something other than a fish-based broth this time. I changed some of the meat, too.”
That look of confusion, that expression of trust, remained on Karamatsu’s face until he took his first bite. Then all was recognition, startled, disbelieving recognition, and he nearly dropped his bowl. “This is--!”
Chibita swallowed hard and took his seat next to Karamatsu at the table. “It’s for you,” he said. “Just for you. Something told me you might like this recipe.”
Karamatsu did drop his bowl then, and it only just managed to land safely, and then only by luck. But he didn’t seem to care, neither of them did, because he was grabbing Chibita’s wrist and pulling him in close, and then he was kissing him harder than he ever had before.
Chibita could taste it there, thick and heavy and dark. He could taste it there, that slight coppery tang of blood. He opened his mouth, and he kissed Karamatsu back.