day by day.
HAPPY SHO DAY.
Momentous occasion because
a) Sho is 27, and it is not hard to be happy about that
and
b) I finished a fic.
Hot damn. Everyone pull out the party crackers! This is the Sho/Jun baby that I started back in...October, was it? When stat was still easy so I typed up my section 1.2 stat notes, printed them out, and started a fic underneath all the definitions. Yeah, that's why I do my homework at the last minute.
title: time to run
pairing: Sho/Jun
rating: R
notes: High School!AU. :))
summary: Sho is happiest watching Jun run. (Or, what do you get when you put Jun on the track team and give Sho a pair of well-trained eyes? Then throw in a homework session at the Aiba household. Oh yeah.)
time to run
There's something evil about the way Jun is opening and folding the map.
Anything Jun can do is evil in just the slightest way, Sho knows, but this time it's different. Jun's fingers sliding over the city landmarks, the way his palms are rubbing generously across the intertwining lines of the latitude and longitude, and even his face, the way it's so miraculously focused on this one subject-all of it makes Sho wonder.
So he says, "Jun," and when there's no answer, he tries again-"Jun."
Jun looks up but gets a mouthful of Aiba as he does: "Sorry, Jun-chan! This couch, it's just-ow. Ow! You're not supposed to be there!" Sho watches Aiba move a couple of pillows and affix his legs to a more comfortable position, which involves a couple of angles no other human could possibly emulate. His limbs are everywhere; a jumble of skin and bones and random freckly parts and giggles.
Sho watches Jun's fingers move to Aiba's elbow-a gesture of mostly help and also affectionate annoyance. "Your hip," Jun says, "Aiba, your hip-."
Aiba moves some more, upsetting cushions and throw pillows and the cat, which jumps lightly into Sho's lap. "Oh, sorry, Jun-chan, sorry about that, hold on, I've got it…"
There's got to be more time in the world for Aiba than there is for anyone else, Sho thinks, because he spends more of his time trying to get comfortable than anyone else does. And Jun is always right next to him, settling in and out of positions, saying, oh Aiba, your hip, and, oh Aiba, your knee, and dammit, Masaki, could you stick your fingers somewhere where they won't bother me-
Jun says, "Oh-did you want something, Sho?"
Sho looks up. Jun is looking back at him, all eyelashes and perfectly curled hair, right down to the strand (is this embarrassing? Sho wonders. No, it can't be, how could anyone else say otherwise?). His pupils are smirking, and so are the edges of his cheekbones, all lit up from the fluorescent lamp by his head; he raises the map and one side of his face is suddenly enveloped in dusty shadow. The edges of his lips are raised, bowing upwards in some unholy manner that makes something in Sho scream evil, but there's no way he could brush this feeling off with a simple mind-flick.
"Ah," Sho says, struggling to keep up, to stay sane, "can we switch maps? I'm done with mine."
Jun glances down at the map in his hands-"Oh, sure," he says, and takes several moments to fold it back up again, fingers folding like profane swans, lithe and masked with delicacy and undoubtedly malicious.
Sho can't recall when he started dreaming about Jun-or rather, when his dreams of Jun became so lucid and frenzied that during the day certain images come back to him: single flashes of skin, bones, and heat, rolled together with contrasting colors and fading notes from muted conversations.
Mostly, they're good dreams. Rarely can Sho say that he's had a nightmare involving Jun, because the outcomes of his Matsumoto-laced dreams usually involve little clothing and fuzzy smiles. They are, in fact, comparable to the kinds of movies his sister liked to watch in the living room, the kind with chocolates on the bed and red wine in mirror-like glasses and sex, lots of sex.
Sho wakes up sometimes and thinks, in hurried strands of random words, why nudity Jun Jun sex Jun kisses running wind salt sex sweat Jun racetracks wild. When he goes back to sleep, he falls right back into dreaming.
But if his dreams were always so fascinating, Sho can't remember. Perhaps, at first, they were normal dreams, defined by confusing sets of images: Jun running at a track meet, Jun raising his hand in class, Jun resting his chin on Sho's shoulder while studying for exams.
Those dreams were nice, and Sho never asked his brain to come up with something different, but it did and he never once complained. Gradually his dreams progressed into something more-the scenarios were the same, but the endings were different, and longer, and better.
There is one that Sho likes the best.
After Jun passes through the finish line (first, he is always first, and in Sho's dreams he is first by miles), Nino and Ohno and Aiba and Sho walk down to the track to do group-smirking and say, geez, Matsumoto, don't you ever get tired of winning? And then the other three wave good-by and walk off, and Sho is left with Jun.
Then Jun looks at Sho and says, Sho-kun, just wait for me, okay? We'll go home together.
But Dream-Sho takes the initiative. He will not wait in the cold by himself. He says,
Can't I just come with you?
And Jun just smiles.
Sure.
"Sho?"
Sho looks up from his new map. He was actually reading it this time-his actual reason for being over at Aiba's finally dawned on him after Aiba asked if he'd found any good places to set up camp yet. He hadn't, of course, unless Aiba was asking if he'd found any nice areas of Jun he'd like to camp in, but that was not the question even if he knows all the correct answers to it.
"Yes?"
Jun is looking at him in that same evil way he did before, only now it is more muted, like smudged ink or a vaguely phrased question. Sho knows this face, he sees it often, and he wonders every time what lies behind those inquisitive lips (and if he can somehow get behind it, visit, live there).
"Nothing," Jun replies, mouth twitching slightly, like he's got a big secret that he can't wait to tell the world about. "Just…"
Next to him Aiba moves again, swinging his legs onto Jun's lap, snuggling into the softness of the couch. He's buried under maps and is concentrating wholeheartedly, eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed, on squiggly colored lines and highway numbers and misshapen bodies of water. At this rate, nothing could disturb him unless you were willing to speak in cartographer's language, or write it out on a map.
Sho says, more to distract himself from the graveyards of Jun's eyes than anything else, "Aiba?"
Aiba makes a humming noise. "Latitude," he mumbles, and crosses something out with red ink, "goes horizontally, right?"
Jun smirks. "No, it goes the other way," he says, and just when Sho is about to correct him and scold him because they just had a test about that, Jun removes Aiba's legs from his lap (very carefully, Sho notices, each touch a deliberate message) and slowly gets up from the couch.
"Bathroom," he says casually, but it still sounds like a very important public announcement. "I'm going to the bathroom."
He looks at Sho when he says it, dark eyes showcasing some breathy secret that Sho swears goes something like, won't you come with me?
Sho's mind is blank for a few very long seconds, and then his jumpy heart kicks in, screaming sure, yes. His eyes widen with the response and his body goes hot all at the same time and he fears he might explode, and Jun-Jun just smiles.
There was a time when Jun offered to run with Sho a few weeks before their physical fitness test-to keep him motivated, he said, to make sure that he wasn't straining himself. The words hung in the air for quite some time, because Sho simply didn't know what to say, until Nino nudged him in the side and said, "Well, since Sho-chan doesn't seem very eager, I'll run with you, Jun."
Everything in Sho's head was screaming fuck you, Ninomiya but he knew it was just a ploy to get him to wake up and say yes, yes Jun, thanks, I would be glad. Nino nudged him again, this time digging his sharp elbow into Sho's gut.
"Okay," Sho managed to choke out then. "I'll do it."
So every morning Jun would stop by Sho's house at an ungodly hour of the morning (five!) and say, "Sho-kun, it's time to run," and Sho would slime down the stairs and drink a glass of milk and slime out of the house in his sneakers. Then he would somehow get to the school track with Jun prodding him along, saying things like, "You'll do fine, you just have to find a good pace and stick with it. I'll help you."
And then they ran: two times around the oval for Sho, four for Jun. During the first lap they would run together, but as they started out on the second Sho would start to lag behind and Jun would enter his Zone, where you could not pass him and if you tried he would just run faster. But this was perfectly fine, because Sho cared far more about being able to watch Jun run than passing a fitness test (which he ultimately did, though barely).
Sho is happiest watching Jun run.
The others have asked Sho countless times why he always likes to be there when Jun runs during practice-there is nothing exciting about it, they say. He is not running to win; there is no point to it. Sho has tried to explain it to them, but every single time he gets tongue-tied, flustered, red. He makes ridiculous hand gestures and says, "Well, it's like this, you see-," but he doesn't know anything on earth that it’s like, and so he can't go on.
Ohno came close, once.
"Don't you think that Jun is beautiful?" he said during a meet as the four of them followed Jun's movements around the track. "When he runs, I mean. A perfect shape."
Yes, yes, exactly! And all angles, Sho continued in his head as Nino snickered and Aiba made nonsensical comments, blurry edges melting into the scenery around him. Changes in temperature. Falling leaves. The way it feels when he runs by you, that flutter, the air swirling, everything full of motion and Jun for one hour-long second of your life-
When Sho closes his eyes he sees Jun running around the track in sweats at six in the morning, puffing tiny clouds from his mouth, his elbows bent and fists loose. And the longer Sho keeps his eyes shut, the more tired Jun gets; the more likely he is to plop down next to Sho and ask, breathlessly, "How was I?"
"Fantastic," Sho answers every time, without thought or hesitation. "Better every day."
After the eerie lines of the track have dissolved in Sho's head, after he quits thinking about Jun (for a couple of seconds, at least), he comes to a decision: move. Get up. Walk, crawl, slink-stumble-to the door of the bathroom. Knock. Wait. And see.
He folds up his map haphazardly, bending the paper where it does not want to yield, and carelessly creasing together mismatched corners. Sho thinks, well, that's how I feel! So be it! Then: What did the map ever do to you? It's a map, not your personal stress ball. Then: Wonder how you could get rid of all that stress-
Sho blushes furiously. "No," he says to himself. "No."
At this, Aiba looks up. He is already giggling, the sound traipsing gently over to Sho-a small remedy to his current illness. "What are you thinking about, Sho-chan?"
"Oh, just-," Sho starts, then looks down and begins to awkwardly fold his map again. "Nothing. I'm just kind of hungry," he continues, frantically slapping together a plausible excuse, "but since we're already in the middle of this I thought we should just finish." It all comes out in one hurried, distracted breath. "I mean, I can eat later."
For a minute, Aiba is silent. Then he says, practically bursting at the seams, "Actually, you know-we can eat now! I'm kind of hungry, too. And Jun-chan will eat if we make him." He gets up and crosses the room to the entrance of the kitchen before Sho can stop him, before Sho can protest for the sake of normalcy.
But something in the back of his mind butts in, screaming, Normalcy? May I remind you that you're reading maps of Tokyo, the other two guys that couldn't make it today are probably feeding each other strawberries in bed, and you want to get laid in a bathroom? Which part of that is normal?
Sho sighs.
Aiba squeals, "Carrots! I know we have carrots. We can make carrot soup!" He wanders into the kitchen and begins to call out ingredients; Sho can hear him rummaging around in the refrigerator, throwing things left and right. "Onions! Miso! Poul-poultry! Ne, Sho-chan, I'll make us something good, okay?" He runs back to the kitchen door and sticks only his head out, smiling widely. "Okay?"
"Okay," someone says-Sho jerks around. "Oh, are we eating?"
Jun has his hands in his pockets and looks genuinely interested in what is going on. He leans casually against the back of Sho's chair and looks at Aiba in the doorway.
"Ah, Jun-kun. Back so soon?" Aiba says, still smiling.
Jun shrugs. "Your plumbing's all weird." His eyes turn to Sho when he says this; he looks at Sho with what seems to be all the attention he has in his body.
Then he says to Aiba, "You should get it fixed. I was in there for awhile, waiting for the thing to work, but it never did."
But he is still looking at Sho.
The worst Jun-dream Sho has ever had consisted of a one-minute exchange between himself and Dream-Jun; they were on the track, the sky was cloudy, and Sho was cold. Jun had a sweater, and Jun was sweaty, he had just run, and he was asking Sho if maybe he would like to come inside and wait in the locker room while he got showered? Since he cared-since it was freezing outside, and warm, very warm, inside?
It was a perfect opportunity and it was curling round Sho's wrists, trickling warmth into his skin, seducing quietly. It had nearly solidified.
Then Sho scratched his head and said, "Today's not so good…I might be sick."
And then he left, and woke up.
At the time Sho thought maybe it was because he had been having a bad patch, and was doubtful if anything could ever happen, anything at all. But now, sitting in Aiba's armchair in Aiba's living room, he can only think of it as a warning from his brain (with every organ, each miniscule fiber, all his cells, in complete agreement):
You refuse once, and you're never going back.
From the recesses of the kitchen, Sho can hear Aiba tossing various ingredients and cooking utensils onto a table. With every thud there is some sort of explanation to go along with it. "I've decided!" (Thud.) "Since we have all the right ingredients-at least I think they're the right ones…" (Thud.) "…We're having Aiba Masaki soup." (Thud.) "And it will be delicious, because it's named after me." (Crash.)
He laughs and Sho tries to listen to what he says next, but he can't really concentrate on anything other than the fierce buzzing sound invading his mind. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to tense up too much, but the possibilities of the next minute, and the minute after that, and possibly the next five minutes, if he's lucky, just will not stop coming. And Sho has never been one to exert much endurance.
"Do you need help, Masaki?" Jun calls, and manages to sound concerned-he is, Sho knows, he always is, but he just can't imagine Jun leaving right in the middle of this practically naked (pun not intended, Sho thinks) opportunity.
"I'm fine," Aiba chirps. "You're my guests! Watch the TV or something, or keep on reading the maps, I don’t know-ow, hot!"
"Okay," Jun calls back. Sho can feel movement behind him, but he doesn't dare turn around or even try to look to the side. "We will."
The volume of the television goes up, matching perfectly the volume of Sho's heartbeat in his ears. He can feel every worry in his body seep out through the lines in his hands and wonders if Jun would mind if Sho had clammy hands, would he not like the feeling, would he turn Sho away?
Inside of him the panic rises, and the newswoman on the television begins her two o’clock news story on a train wreck in Oita prefecture. Sho tries to listen, he tries to focus on the details of the accident and not Jun’s exact place on the map, but right now there’s nothing else in his head but slippery images of Matsumoto Jun.
Behind him he can make out a flurry of motions, like someone adjusting a shirt. The noises come closer, and closer still, and Sho wishes he could move but he has all frozen up within himself-
And then he feels something soft, something wet, on the back of his ear.
“Don’t,” Jun mutters, breathing softly, “say anything.”
Sho wills his vocal cords shut and cut off from his brain. He realizes, suddenly, that he is shaking. But there’s nothing he can do about that.
He can feel Jun's lips moving but can hear no sound-only a migration of rabid butterflies in his stomach as Jun's mouth travels from the edge of Sho's ear to his temple.
“Why didn’t you come?” he whispers, and Sho can hear his hands gripping the material of the chair as he leans forward even more-so close that his eyelashes now brush Sho's cheek.
"You didn't come," Jun says again. "Tell me why."
A million things flit through Sho's mind-the meaning of 'come' (damn his hormones to hell, damn them damn them), Jun's tiny flutters of eyelashes and breath and slightly chapped lips and the way they all feel against Sho's skin, the temperature, the steadily rising temperature, explosions, Jun running.
He closes his eyes and tilts his head back into Jun's warmth and Jun shifts forward, Jun shifts forward and suddenly his hand is behind Sho's head and is probing, gently, saying with his fingertips godammit I am going to kiss you and you are going to comply.
Sho mumbles Jun's name, and Jun kisses him.
At first it's almost chaste, just skin against skin and then Sho presses harder; hands coming up to touch every available inch of Matsumoto Jun. He realizes that he hasn't answered Jun's question-why didn't you come when I waited for you?-and he figures that now would be a good time to make up for his silence. Their position is awkward; Jun leaning over the back of the sofa chair and Sho straining upwards but he doesn't care, nothing matters, everything is concentrated into the movement of his lips against Jun's and the way their mouths are moving together, sloppy and wet and wanting.
Jun makes some kind of sound and drags himself away from Sho's mouth for one second to say "I am not going to-like this," and Sho watches him stride around the chair-
-And the next moment Jun is climbing furiously, impatiently, into Sho's lap, all of those beautiful limbs falling into place around Sho and Sho smells genuine Jun-scent. He says, or tries to say, "Do you have enough room," but there is no time for that now and no time for talk because Jun resumes the kissing like it is the only thing he knows how to do.
Sho has his hands on Jun's back, digging his nails into certain areas that he feels are good digging-into places-taut and smooth underneath the t-shirt. He's afraid to do more, which is cowardly of him, he knows, but he still fears that Jun will stop if Sho does the wrong thing and so he strays round the safe edges, and strokes Jun's shoulder blades through cotton fabric, and that's fine with him.
But not fine with Jun. He growls and says, against Sho's bottom lip, "Take if off."
The command makes Sho's heartbeat expand to exponential rates; he can feel it throughout his body-in his legs and stomach and thighs and lips. He says, not to be a tease but just to make sure (and anyway, maybe it's okay if Jun thinks he's a tease), "Can I?"
"Yes," Jun says exasperatedly, "I want you to."
And because Sho can't move fast enough-"Please."
Sho's fingers are fumbling messes of excitement but he manages to rid Jun of his shirt, and when he does, he doesn't know where to start. He remembers kindergarten, when he learned directions-up, down, sideways-but feels that he must learn that all over again in order to make the most of what's happening. He touches Jun tentatively, fingertips probing, hands running down the length of his chest, and Jun gasps-lightly, but Sho hears it anyway.
So he keeps on going; he closes his eyes and concentrates on touching Jun's body and kissing Jun's lips and affixing his legs around Jun's legs. Sho thinks to himself, what next what next what next and his dreams all come to the surface screaming this is what's next, no this, wait this is, and he can't even begin to think of what could happen beyond this moment, with his hand on Jun's heart. Nothing, he honestly believes, could compare.
Until Jun pulls back (with difficulty-Sho is getting used to this) and says, breathing heavily, "We are going to die if we stay on this thing. Quick-get off-to the couch."
Confused and slightly drugged, Sho stares. "What? Why?"
And Jun just smiles.
Somehow, by the force of nature (or Jun's hands doing a good job of poking Sho in the right spots), Sho makes it to the opposite side of the room in one piece-or two pieces, if an attached Jun counts.
"But what-," Sho mumbles as Jun, scrambling over the couch, kisses him once, twice, three times. "-What if Aiba-chan-?" Jun's tongue does something marvelous and Sho has no choice but to moan the last part of the question into Jun's mouth.
"Finds us?" Jun says, still kissing Sho and at the same time (Sho thinks, how does he do it) removing pillows from beneath their bodies, "Comes in? Sees us? Asks us to taste Aiba Masaki soup?"
"Uh-huh,” Sho agrees, swallowing hard. He's not sure what he's answering to, but it could go either way. "Um-yes, that's what I meant-oh."
Jun chuckles, still continuing whatever he's doing, whatever fantastic thing he's doing, with his tongue. Sho is struggling to maintain what little composure he has left by trying to adjust his position underneath Jun's body, but he can't move at all-he's puddling, instead, into the fabric of the couch.
From the kitchen come hissing noises; from the television, a group of schoolchildren being interviewed about their annual school festival. Sho can hear only the straining sounds in his head, high-pitched whistles and clanging bells and a steady drumbeat, too fast for him to follow.
Suddenly Sho feels pressure in a lower region and gasps, trying out of instinct to squirm away from whatever’s touching him there, but Jun has a firm grip on Sho.
“Stop moving,” he says, “or this isn’t going to work.”
“What’s not going to work?” Sho asks, panicking, but Jun doesn’t answer, just keeps moving things around and putting his legs in places and making sure that one of his hands is always on Sho. It’s kind of comforting, Sho thinks, and he has to keep reminding himself that he is not dreaming, which is proving to be a harder task than he first imagined.
Except for, of course, the movement, the rhythm, that Jun is currently initiating with his hips.
“Jun,” Sho mumbles. He can feel his mind clouding over and knows that he is blushing a severe red but he doesn’t want anything to stop; he just wants to say something coherent to mask whatever else will come out of his mouth if he doesn’t. “Jun, um…”
“What?” Jun asks, and Sho realizes for the first time that Jun is breathing exceptionally hard. Despite that, though, he looks genuinely concerned about Sho. “What is it?” he asks again.
Sho just stares. “Nothing, just…” He struggles to find something to say that is relatively normal, something that is perhaps removed from this Jun-straddling-Sho situation, possibly something that is not a garbled mess of sexual tension.
Possibly, though not necessarily.
“Don’t stop,” he finally finishes, barely audible. “Please don’t stop.”
Jun grins and the word lecherous pops into Sho’s mind. “I wasn’t planning on it,” he smirks, and starts moving again, slow motions that start somewhere in Jun’s hips and end up in Sho’s stomach as balls of electricity, sending sparks throughout his body.
Sho focuses on breathing, a task which is becoming more and more difficult by the second. At the same time he has his hands, still, on Jun’s naked torso, slipping and sliding all over skin that Sho has seen countless times and has always wanted to touch like this. He thinks without actually thinking arms, stomach, wrists, nipples and touches them all, hands gliding without any real destination as Jun, on top of him, keeps up a steady, rocking speed.
He’s not sure if he wants to tell Jun yet that he’s dreamed about doing this, that these dreams come practically every night and even sometimes during class. But maybe Jun knows already, maybe he has some sort of inkling about the reasons behind Sho’s intense concentration during his track meets; Sho knows the word subtle is far from his grasp and so maybe Jun gets it. Why else, after all, would he be doing this, why would he be moving his-like-
“Oh God,” Sho gasps, and then regrets it. “Didn’t say that,” he mumbles, but the flush on his face gives him away and Jun laughs breathlessly.
“Yes you did,” he says, thrusting forward on top of Sho, trying to keep quiet and composed but failing horribly at it. He rests his forehead on Sho’s chest and maybe he moans, Sho’s not sure, then he does it again and this time Sho knows.
Sho knows other things, too, at that moment, like that if Jun doesn’t stop moaning Aiba will probably come out of the kitchen and never talk to them again because, well, this is the Aiba family couch and Jun is grinding against Sho on it. Ah, yes, grinding-Sho knows a couple of things about that right now, too-
“Sho,” Jun whispers, sliding his hand down Sho’s arm and then gripping his wrist urgently, “Sho-“
Sho moans quietly and screws his eyes shut as Jun comes in a sudden, trembling rush of heat and tiny cries that Sho savors, as he never pegged down Jun as the whimpering type. Barely two seconds later, with the help of a well-placed knee and Jun’s lips on his jaw, Sho joins Jun’s shuddering with one low groan that he muffles in the crook of his arm.
Long minutes of background noise pass before Sho finally drops his arm from his face and gathers enough courage (because suddenly it’s all hit him-oh God! Just had a-not even on my couch! With Jun, oh shit) to look up. He’s startled when he sees Jun looking back at him with flushed cheeks and hair in his eyes.
“That really happened,” Sho says, voice hoarse.
“Yes,” Jun says lightly, “and don’t you think that it was much better than just watching me run?”
Sho thinks about being shocked but finds that he is too weak to feel anything but satisfied. “Yeah,” he agrees, and then stops to think about it. “Well, actually, they’re two completely different things. You can’t compare them.”
Jun smirks and rolls off Sho’s chest to sit on the opposite end of the couch. “Two completely different things? Are you sure about that, Sakurai?”
“I’m sure, because you’d never let this happen on any track,” Sho replies.
“Well,” Jun begins, grinning in that lecherous way again, “you don’t know that-“
Aiba bounds into the living room then, wielding a wooden spoon and a chef’s hat stolen from the cooking club at school. “Aiba Masaki soup is READY!” he says, waving the spoon around wildly. “We had some problems with the mushrooms, but they’re fungi, after all, so…”
He stops then, and Sho realizes with mounting panic that he is still lying across the couch in a somewhat disheveled fashion. What with that, and a shirtless Jun sitting next to him, he can only hope that Aiba somehow drugged himself into temporary blindness from bad mushroom fumes.
But Aiba just smiles widely and goes on as if he never stopped. “…So, you know, fungi is already rotten so it can’t be poisonous, right? Anyway, I put them on the side, not in the soup.”
Jun throws a pillow in Aiba’s direction. “Are you trying to poison us?”
“We wouldn’t want that, Jun-chan,” Aiba answers smoothly. “Especially since you need all your strength for…you know, track meets and stuff.”
Sho hides under a pillow and curses his friend to hell and back, preferably more than twice.
Once Aiba has retreated back into the kitchen (but not before telling them to come eat before his soup got too cold), Sho throws aside the pillow and looks at Jun sullenly.
“What?” Jun says. “Don’t tell me you want to cuddle.”
“No,” Sho says, aghast. “I don’t want to upset this poor couch any longer.”
“So you’re saying that if we were on, oh, I don’t know, my bed…you’d want to?”
Sho splutters and resolves not to speak to Jun for the next five minutes. He stays on the sofa, however, to watch Jun pull his shirt back on (and to help with that, just a little).
That night, after two text messages from Nino which he would have preferred not to read and one from Aiba that consisted wholly of smiley faces with wiggling eyebrows, Sho gets a call from Jun.
“Hello?” he says, carefully, cautiously, when he picks up the phone.
“Hi,” Jun says, casually, like he is asking about a homework assignment, or inviting Sho to a meet. “Want to run tomorrow?”
But that is certainly not normal.
“Do I want to run tomorrow?” Sho repeats.
“Let’s put it this way,” Jun says, and Sho can practically hear the Matsumoto patience level drop. “Do you want to run with me, or do you want the bottle of leftover Aiba Masaki soup that Aiba-chan gave me today?”
Sho sits in silence for a moment, thinking. The answer should be obvious-the mushrooms in the soup were particularly past their prime-but still, he can’t help but weigh his options.
Then Jun says, “I’ll run with you, this time.”
Sho says yes. When they hang up, he makes sure to set his alarm clock to five in the morning.