How to kiss a girl
Title: How to kiss a girl
Pairing: Morimoto Shintaro/Tanaka Juri
Rating: PG
Word count: 3612
Beta: elindar, thank you! ♥
- - -
“Shintaro, is it true?” Jesse asked after the dance practice and sat down on the floor to stretch with Shintaro. “Does your brother have a girlfriend?”
“Uh, yeah. How do you know about it?” Shintaro answered and frowned. It wasn't public information by any means, and ever since the cigarette scandal he had felt like it was his responsibility to keep up a clean image. Besides, he did not need to hear any more nasty gossips about his older brother.
“Taiga asked me if you had told me something about it. I guess he had seen them together somewhere.” Jesse explained and Shintaro sighed. He wished Ryutaro would be a bit more responsible with his actions but at the same time he couldn't quite blame his brother. He would probably have dated someone too if he was doing anything else with his life than singing and dancing and wearing flashy clothes in an idol company.
Yet it didn't even depend on his profession only, he thought and glanced across the room where Juri was still polishing up some difficult dance moves they had learned that day.
Idol or not, the one he would have wanted to date wasn't an option.
“What is it?” Jesse asked, “You don't seem too happy about it. Don't you like the girl?”
“It's not that,” Shintaro answered, avoiding the other boy's curious gaze. “I just...” He fell silent when he realized he didn't know how to explain the problem without sounding like a jealous child.
“They've been together for some time already, and he talks about her to me all the time. It's not that I mind listening to him but it gets boring after a while. And on the other day I saw them in his room. They were kissing.”
“Wow, but isn't that cool?” Jesse asked and Shintaro let out a frustrated whine.
“I'm happy he's happy with her but he could at least have closed his door! It's as if he's showing off with the normal life he can have now that he's not here anymore,” he blurted out with one breath. “I like working but, you know, sometimes I wish it didn't restrict our lives so much. At this rate I'll be a middle-aged old man before my first kiss! And who wants to date a man who can't even kiss properly? Drama kisses don't count, even if I'd ever end up acting in such a drama.”
Jesse was quiet for a while, looking both sympathetic and thoughtful.
“Don't get me wrong,” he started hesitantly, “but aren't you being a bit jealous of your brother?”
“Hell yes I am,” Shintaro retorted, and Jesse nodded.
“I can’t help you with the other problem but who says you can't practice already?” Jesse said slowly. Shintaro chuckled in a bit disbelieving amusement.
“How do you think I could do that?” he asked and Jesse flashed him a bright smile.
“You need a teacher who knows what they're doing!” Jesse said as if it should have been clear without asking.
“Eh, what do you mean?” Shintaro said and suddenly realized what Jesse was planning to do. “No, really! I'm fine, you don't need to --”
“Juri!” Jesse hollered across the room where the boy had just stopped to stretch for a while. “Come here!”
“I'm fine!” Shintaro hissed but Jesse either didn't notice his huff or he just didn't understand Shintaro wasn't joking, and Juri was already jogging towards them.
“What is it?” he asked and wiped some sweat from his forehead on the towel he had around his neck.
“Nothing,” Shintaro said quickly but Jesse hushed him quiet and beckoned Juri a bit closer so nobody would hear their conversation.
“You have kissed girls many times, haven't you?” he asked and Juri raised his eyebrows with a surprised laugh.
“Yeah, why? It was only one girl, though.”
“One girl is enough as long as you know how to do it,” Jesse accepted. “You'll help a friend in need, won't you?”
“Anytime,” Juri said with a grin, as if he already had an idea where it all was going, and Shintaro tried his best to look at anything else but Juri's face. Anyone, he thought desperately, out of all the people they were close with, couldn't Jesse have asked anyone else but Tanaka Juri?
“Shintaro wants to know how how to kiss a girl,” Jesse explained and Shintaro sighed. He had never said he wanted to kiss a girl, even though it was for the the best to let Jesse think so.
“Oh. Sure!”
“I don't!” He said pointedly, and when Juri and Jesse both burst out in laughter he realized they were just making fun of him.
“Sorry, sorry. Just joking,” Juri said and had a wide smile on his face when he looked at Shintaro. Shintaro made the mistake of answering to the look and suddenly his throat felt very dry and he was very aware of his frizzy hair and ugly t-shirt he was wearing, and how clumsy he felt when changing his position on the floor to stretch other muscles.
Fuck teenage and fuck his limbs that didn't work like he wanted them to. How did the other guys manage with their bodies? Shintaro knew he wasn't the only one having got half a dozen inches more height in a short timespan but somehow he felt like he was the only one who was perfectly unable to move as smoothly as before.
“Shin?”
“Sorry,” Shintaro said quickly and flashed an awkward smile to the other boys who were staring at him, “I didn't quite listen to you guys. What did you say?”
“I asked if you're free this weekend,” Juri said. “Want to come over?”
Shintaro wanted to go, he really did, but wasn't sure if he should. He didn't really need to make a fool of himself in front of Juri, and considering how dizzy Juri's mere presence made him feel, the probability of him doing exactly that made him hesitate.
“I don't know,” he said slowly, “I need to call my mother first.”
“It's okay,” Jesse said, “she said you can go.”
For a second Shintaro simply stared at the boy whose grin just kept widening when he handed back Shintaro's mobile phone that he hadn't even noticed Jesse had stolen from his pocket.
“I called your mother and asked if it's okay for you to go to Juri's with me. She said it's fine.”
“She didn't ask why it was you calling from my phone?” Shintaro asked and Jesse gave him a nonchalant shrug.
“She did. I told her you're working and asked me to call.”
“You know, that's called lying.”
“As if you never lie to your parents,” Jesse chuckled and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Anyway, she said it's okay so don't worry about it anymore. I need to go now, see you guys tomorrow!”
Having said that, Jesse stood up, waved his hand and jogged to the dressing rooms, leaving Shintaro and Juri alone in the training hall.
After a few seconds Shintaro's phone vibrated. The message only had a winking emoticon and a heart from Jesse, and Shintaro suddenly got an uncomfortable feeling that Jesse might have an idea of something he didn't necessarily need to know about. He glanced at Juri who kept stretching next to him completely in his own thoughts, and looked quickly away again promptly closing the message before Juri would see it.
- - -
Juri's home was silent when the boys stepped through the door but there was a delicious smell of dinner floating in the air.
“I'm back,” Juri announced and headed to the kitchen, Shintaro following at his heels. His mother was sitting by the kitchen table, reading some women's magazine and looked up with a smile that was disturbingly similar to her son's.
“Welcome back. Oh, Morimoto-kun, you too. It's been a while, hasn't it. Nice to see you!”
Shintaro bowed to Juri's mother while Juri bounced to the stove to peek under the cover of the boiler.
“Where is everyone?”
“Your father will work late tonight, and your brothers should be coming back by seven. I told them to come home for dinner.” The clock on the wall was a quarter to seven so Juri and Shintaro climbed upstairs to wait for an invitation to the table.
“So, you wanted to know about kissing,” Juri said with an amused grin when the door of his room was securely closed, and Shintaro took a deep breath. He had hoped Juri would have forgotten about the matter already. Apparently he hadn't.
“Jesse was joking,” he said quickly, and Juri nodded knowingly.
“Of course he was. But you haven't really kissed a girl before, have you?”
“Well, no,” Shintaro admitted, wishing more than anything that they could just change the topic. He looked away and tried to look like the pattern of Juri's curtains was very fascinating. Then there was a pair of determined arms wrapping around his waist and he winced, looking at Juri with wide eyes.
“It's not difficult really,” Juri said and flashed him an encouraging smile. “First you grab her waist, just like this. Don't be too pushy and don't hold on too tight or you might frighten her away. Just make sure you're holding them firmly. They like it.”
“And you know all this because...?” Shintaro chuckled, sincerely afraid Juri would hear the sound of his racing heart if he stayed quiet.
“Because my girlfriend in junior high school liked it. We did break up but it wasn't because of my lacking skills of handling a girl.”
Shintaro was quite sure Juri was exaggerating his skills with girls a bit but he didn't object, especially when their eyes met and Juri pulled him a bit closer.
“Then you just look into her eyes and do this,” Juri said and dropped his eyes down to Shintaro's lips. It felt weird to have Juri staring at him with such an intense look in his eyes and Shintaro bit his lower lip a bit.
“Yeah, that's good!” Juri praised and looked up again, “That works very well too!”
“Eh? What works well?” Shintaro asked and he was confused enough that he forgot to be nervous for a moment.
“Biting your lip like that of course. It doesn't work for everyone but you do it really naturally!”
“Oh,” Shintaro said let out a small laugh, “I didn't know.”
“Then you just grab her face - gently, remember - and lean in to kiss her. Don't rush but don't be too slow either. It'll drive her crazy, I promise.”
Shintaro nodded, suddenly feeling like his throat was very dry. Being so close to Juri felt weird and embarrassing and so freaking good at the same time. Neither of them moved, neither of them talked. It took almost a full minute before Juri swallowed and looked up into Shintaro's eyes.
“What are you thinking?” he asked in a quiet voice and Shintaro could not answer. Instead, he leaned closer and pressed their mouths together. Juri let out a surprised gasp but he didn't push Shintaro away and that gave him courage to continue. He wasn't sure if he could have stopped even if he hd tried to. He had been imagining this for so long.
He had touched Juri many times but not like this. He had felt Juri's personal scent whenever the boy was close enough but he had never been quite this close, and this time there was Juri's taste mixed into the scent and the small sounds Juri let out when Shintaro deepened the kiss a bit, pressing closer to him now that he finally could. It was rather hasty and Shintaro felt a little desperate. In the middle of everything there was a small thought in the corner of his mind, asking what he was going to do when they would have to stop but he couldn't answer the question so he ignored it.
Juri's fingers curled around the sides of Shintaro's shirt and Shintaro gasped for breath when Juri ran his tongue over Shintaro's lower lip, luring him to open his mouth a bit and slipping the tongue inside.
Shintaro would never anymore have any doubts if Juri could drive someone crazy with his kisses or not.
A knock on the door made them jump apart.
“Mom told you guys to come downstairs, we'll start eating when niichan comes home!”
“Got it,” Juri yelled through the door to his little brother, trying to brush down his hair that Shintaro had messed at some point. Shintaro smoothed the wrinkles of his shirt and took a deep breath, thankful for Juri's little brother not having simply run into the room like Shintaro's younger sister definitely would have done in a similar situation.
In the middle of all his awkward feelings Shintaro glanced up into Juri's eyes. The boy was looking at him, too, but Shintaro couldn't read the expression and it made him feel even more nervous.
“You're not a bad kisser at all,” Juri finally said and there was a hint of smile playing on his lips, and the silence wasn't that awkward anymore.
The boys rushed downstairs to have the dinner and spent the rest of the evening in the living room, playing video games together with Juri's brothers (the two of them who were at home that night), and going to sleep well after midnight. Nothing weird happened during the rest of the evening and neither of them mentioned the kiss again, as if they had made a mutual agreement of not talking about it.
- - -
The week of spring holiday passed quickly. Of course they were still having work but it was better without school, at least, and every junior in the company enjoyed the well-deserved free time they got.
Shintaro was at home, lying on his bed and leafing through the newest issue of Shounen Jump when the doorbell rang. He heard the sound of someone going to open the door and turned the music on his earphones a bit quieter, just out of curiosity. It was probably the old lady from the next door, or maybe his mother had forgotten her keys.
“Hello? Oh, you,” Shintaro heard his brother's voice at the door and “Oh no, I'm sorry!” when their dog started barking.
“It's nothing,” Shintaro heard a familiar voice saying and his eyes widened in surprise. Juri lived on the other side of the city. What was he doing at the doorstep of his home this late in the evening, especially when the next morning would be a school day again. He got up quickly and went to the hall where Ryutaro was holding the overly-excited dog by the collar.
“Juri?” Shintaro asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi,” Juri said and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry for disturbing, I didn't mean to cause such an uproar.”
“Nah, he's always like that when someone comes in,” Shintaro chuckled, “he loves visitors.”
Ryutaro nodded to Juri and lured the dog back into his own room with some snacks he had in his pockets, leaving Shintaro and Juri to stand in the hallway.
“I, um. Can you come out for a moment? Just for a while. I mean, it's quite late already.”
“Sure,” Shintaro said and was already putting his jacket on. “Why? Is there something wrong?”
Juri shook his head, clearly unwilling to speak more before they would be out of the door.
“Ryu, I'm going out. If mom comes home before me tell her I'll be back soon,” he called from the door and left after having gotten an agreeing noise as an answer.
The boys walked down the street in silence. Juri didn't say a word and Shintaro didn't push him to. He would talk when he felt like that, Shintaro supposed.
“This is really stupid,” Juri finally said, “but I was wondering. What do you think of me?”
Juri's straightforwardness wasn't anything new to Shintaro but he still felt more than a bit frozen when the question sank in.
“What do you mean?” he asked, not quite sure what to say.
“It's just. Well. Um.”
“Yes?”
“It's just something Jesse said. Of course he could be just saying whatever comes up to his mind, you know, sometimes he has absolutely no filter between his brain and mouth, or then he could be meaning something else, maybe I simply understood it wrong, I don't know to be honest, and you know how much he likes to tease me and you, and everyone really, he's always been like that, or at least as far as I know--”
“Whoa, man,” Shintaro managed to say and stop the nervous babbling, “relax and breathe, and tell me what's going on. What did Jesse say?”
Juri glanced at him and quickly away again, and Shintaro raised his eyebrows. It was very rare for Juri to be that disconcerted, and while Shintaro found it rather amusing, even adorable, he pitied the boy enough to keep his face serious.
“Just say it,” he suggested and turned to look on the side so that he couldn't see Juri even from the corner of his eye. “I'm looking away so it won't be that embarrassing, okay?”
“Yeah,” Juri said quietly and took a few more steps before finally letting it out.
“Jesse says you like me.”
Whatever it was that Shintaro had expected to hear, this wasn't it.
“Excuse me?” he asked and felt how his face suddenly went pale, and his heart made a backflip in his chest, landing somewhere near his stomach.
“Yeah. Crazy, isn't it,” Juri said quietly and avoided Shintaro's gaze. “I... Well, I just kind of wanted to know the truth. Do you? It's okay. I won't mind, I just-”
“I do.”
The short silence that fell after Shintaro's words was heavy but for some reason it didn't feel as awkward as he had imagined it would.
“You do?” Juri asked slowly and Shintaro nodded. Now that the secret had been revealed (damn Jesse and his big mouth), he didn't simply find any reasons to hide it anymore.
“Yeah,” Shintaro admitted. “For a while already.”
“Oh.” Juri looked really thunderstruck and Shintaro couldn't help bursting into a contagious laughter that Juri clearly couldn't resist. They laughed together until there were tears flowing on their cheeks and Shintaro leaned to hold on to Juri's shoulder.
“This is quite stupid you know,” Juri said when he gasped for air and rubbed his eyes dry with his sleeve.
“I guess,” Shintaro said until he realized he wasn't sure what Juri meant. “What is?”
“I like you too.”
It was sudden and yet not sudden at all, Shintaro realized, and there was nothing left of the earlier awkwardness when he looked at Juri and smiled, enjoying the warmth that the boy's smile made him feel. There were a million butterflies fluttering in his stomach and his heart was making somersaults again but it all just felt good and funny and all in all perfect.
“Since when?” he asked, just out of curiosity and Juri chuckled.
“Since forever and after the day you came to my place the last time.”
“Which was about a week ago,” Shintaro said and rolled his eyes.
“No, much longer, really. But after the kiss...”
“...it got worse,” Shintaro finished the sentence and grinned, “I know.”
They kept walking along the street until the noise of Shintaro's ringtone alarmed them from their thoughts when his mother called to remind him the next morning was going to be early.
“Shit, you could stay over,” Shintaro realized, “if you just had your things with you. How did you even-”
“My bag is on the floor in the hallway of your house,” Juri admitted. “Of course I didn't think I'd travel back home tonight. With the nighttime train timetables it'd take me around two hours to get there.”
That explained a lot, Shintaro thought. He had seen a familiar bag at the door but he had supposed it was Ryutaro's.
“It's cool to get you in the same school,” Juri said when they turned back towards home. “I've been waiting, you know.”
“Me too,” Shintaro said and glanced around to make sure there were no other people around before he grabbed Juri's shoulders, pulled him closer and pressed a quick kiss on the other boy's lips, stepping back again before Juri managed to react in any way.
“T-that's not how I taught you to do it,” Juri stammered and Shintaro flashed him a mischievous grin.
“You taught me to kiss a girl. I never said I wanted to kiss any girls.”
It was amusing to see how Juri's surprised face slowly melted into understanding, and when he suggested they could practice together how to kiss a boy instead, Shintaro happily agreed.
Pairing: Morimoto Shintaro/Tanaka Juri
Rating: PG
Word count: 3612
Beta: elindar, thank you! ♥
- - -
“Shintaro, is it true?” Jesse asked after the dance practice and sat down on the floor to stretch with Shintaro. “Does your brother have a girlfriend?”
“Uh, yeah. How do you know about it?” Shintaro answered and frowned. It wasn't public information by any means, and ever since the cigarette scandal he had felt like it was his responsibility to keep up a clean image. Besides, he did not need to hear any more nasty gossips about his older brother.
“Taiga asked me if you had told me something about it. I guess he had seen them together somewhere.” Jesse explained and Shintaro sighed. He wished Ryutaro would be a bit more responsible with his actions but at the same time he couldn't quite blame his brother. He would probably have dated someone too if he was doing anything else with his life than singing and dancing and wearing flashy clothes in an idol company.
Yet it didn't even depend on his profession only, he thought and glanced across the room where Juri was still polishing up some difficult dance moves they had learned that day.
Idol or not, the one he would have wanted to date wasn't an option.
“What is it?” Jesse asked, “You don't seem too happy about it. Don't you like the girl?”
“It's not that,” Shintaro answered, avoiding the other boy's curious gaze. “I just...” He fell silent when he realized he didn't know how to explain the problem without sounding like a jealous child.
“They've been together for some time already, and he talks about her to me all the time. It's not that I mind listening to him but it gets boring after a while. And on the other day I saw them in his room. They were kissing.”
“Wow, but isn't that cool?” Jesse asked and Shintaro let out a frustrated whine.
“I'm happy he's happy with her but he could at least have closed his door! It's as if he's showing off with the normal life he can have now that he's not here anymore,” he blurted out with one breath. “I like working but, you know, sometimes I wish it didn't restrict our lives so much. At this rate I'll be a middle-aged old man before my first kiss! And who wants to date a man who can't even kiss properly? Drama kisses don't count, even if I'd ever end up acting in such a drama.”
Jesse was quiet for a while, looking both sympathetic and thoughtful.
“Don't get me wrong,” he started hesitantly, “but aren't you being a bit jealous of your brother?”
“Hell yes I am,” Shintaro retorted, and Jesse nodded.
“I can’t help you with the other problem but who says you can't practice already?” Jesse said slowly. Shintaro chuckled in a bit disbelieving amusement.
“How do you think I could do that?” he asked and Jesse flashed him a bright smile.
“You need a teacher who knows what they're doing!” Jesse said as if it should have been clear without asking.
“Eh, what do you mean?” Shintaro said and suddenly realized what Jesse was planning to do. “No, really! I'm fine, you don't need to --”
“Juri!” Jesse hollered across the room where the boy had just stopped to stretch for a while. “Come here!”
“I'm fine!” Shintaro hissed but Jesse either didn't notice his huff or he just didn't understand Shintaro wasn't joking, and Juri was already jogging towards them.
“What is it?” he asked and wiped some sweat from his forehead on the towel he had around his neck.
“Nothing,” Shintaro said quickly but Jesse hushed him quiet and beckoned Juri a bit closer so nobody would hear their conversation.
“You have kissed girls many times, haven't you?” he asked and Juri raised his eyebrows with a surprised laugh.
“Yeah, why? It was only one girl, though.”
“One girl is enough as long as you know how to do it,” Jesse accepted. “You'll help a friend in need, won't you?”
“Anytime,” Juri said with a grin, as if he already had an idea where it all was going, and Shintaro tried his best to look at anything else but Juri's face. Anyone, he thought desperately, out of all the people they were close with, couldn't Jesse have asked anyone else but Tanaka Juri?
“Shintaro wants to know how how to kiss a girl,” Jesse explained and Shintaro sighed. He had never said he wanted to kiss a girl, even though it was for the the best to let Jesse think so.
“Oh. Sure!”
“I don't!” He said pointedly, and when Juri and Jesse both burst out in laughter he realized they were just making fun of him.
“Sorry, sorry. Just joking,” Juri said and had a wide smile on his face when he looked at Shintaro. Shintaro made the mistake of answering to the look and suddenly his throat felt very dry and he was very aware of his frizzy hair and ugly t-shirt he was wearing, and how clumsy he felt when changing his position on the floor to stretch other muscles.
Fuck teenage and fuck his limbs that didn't work like he wanted them to. How did the other guys manage with their bodies? Shintaro knew he wasn't the only one having got half a dozen inches more height in a short timespan but somehow he felt like he was the only one who was perfectly unable to move as smoothly as before.
“Shin?”
“Sorry,” Shintaro said quickly and flashed an awkward smile to the other boys who were staring at him, “I didn't quite listen to you guys. What did you say?”
“I asked if you're free this weekend,” Juri said. “Want to come over?”
Shintaro wanted to go, he really did, but wasn't sure if he should. He didn't really need to make a fool of himself in front of Juri, and considering how dizzy Juri's mere presence made him feel, the probability of him doing exactly that made him hesitate.
“I don't know,” he said slowly, “I need to call my mother first.”
“It's okay,” Jesse said, “she said you can go.”
For a second Shintaro simply stared at the boy whose grin just kept widening when he handed back Shintaro's mobile phone that he hadn't even noticed Jesse had stolen from his pocket.
“I called your mother and asked if it's okay for you to go to Juri's with me. She said it's fine.”
“She didn't ask why it was you calling from my phone?” Shintaro asked and Jesse gave him a nonchalant shrug.
“She did. I told her you're working and asked me to call.”
“You know, that's called lying.”
“As if you never lie to your parents,” Jesse chuckled and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Anyway, she said it's okay so don't worry about it anymore. I need to go now, see you guys tomorrow!”
Having said that, Jesse stood up, waved his hand and jogged to the dressing rooms, leaving Shintaro and Juri alone in the training hall.
After a few seconds Shintaro's phone vibrated. The message only had a winking emoticon and a heart from Jesse, and Shintaro suddenly got an uncomfortable feeling that Jesse might have an idea of something he didn't necessarily need to know about. He glanced at Juri who kept stretching next to him completely in his own thoughts, and looked quickly away again promptly closing the message before Juri would see it.
- - -
Juri's home was silent when the boys stepped through the door but there was a delicious smell of dinner floating in the air.
“I'm back,” Juri announced and headed to the kitchen, Shintaro following at his heels. His mother was sitting by the kitchen table, reading some women's magazine and looked up with a smile that was disturbingly similar to her son's.
“Welcome back. Oh, Morimoto-kun, you too. It's been a while, hasn't it. Nice to see you!”
Shintaro bowed to Juri's mother while Juri bounced to the stove to peek under the cover of the boiler.
“Where is everyone?”
“Your father will work late tonight, and your brothers should be coming back by seven. I told them to come home for dinner.” The clock on the wall was a quarter to seven so Juri and Shintaro climbed upstairs to wait for an invitation to the table.
“So, you wanted to know about kissing,” Juri said with an amused grin when the door of his room was securely closed, and Shintaro took a deep breath. He had hoped Juri would have forgotten about the matter already. Apparently he hadn't.
“Jesse was joking,” he said quickly, and Juri nodded knowingly.
“Of course he was. But you haven't really kissed a girl before, have you?”
“Well, no,” Shintaro admitted, wishing more than anything that they could just change the topic. He looked away and tried to look like the pattern of Juri's curtains was very fascinating. Then there was a pair of determined arms wrapping around his waist and he winced, looking at Juri with wide eyes.
“It's not difficult really,” Juri said and flashed him an encouraging smile. “First you grab her waist, just like this. Don't be too pushy and don't hold on too tight or you might frighten her away. Just make sure you're holding them firmly. They like it.”
“And you know all this because...?” Shintaro chuckled, sincerely afraid Juri would hear the sound of his racing heart if he stayed quiet.
“Because my girlfriend in junior high school liked it. We did break up but it wasn't because of my lacking skills of handling a girl.”
Shintaro was quite sure Juri was exaggerating his skills with girls a bit but he didn't object, especially when their eyes met and Juri pulled him a bit closer.
“Then you just look into her eyes and do this,” Juri said and dropped his eyes down to Shintaro's lips. It felt weird to have Juri staring at him with such an intense look in his eyes and Shintaro bit his lower lip a bit.
“Yeah, that's good!” Juri praised and looked up again, “That works very well too!”
“Eh? What works well?” Shintaro asked and he was confused enough that he forgot to be nervous for a moment.
“Biting your lip like that of course. It doesn't work for everyone but you do it really naturally!”
“Oh,” Shintaro said let out a small laugh, “I didn't know.”
“Then you just grab her face - gently, remember - and lean in to kiss her. Don't rush but don't be too slow either. It'll drive her crazy, I promise.”
Shintaro nodded, suddenly feeling like his throat was very dry. Being so close to Juri felt weird and embarrassing and so freaking good at the same time. Neither of them moved, neither of them talked. It took almost a full minute before Juri swallowed and looked up into Shintaro's eyes.
“What are you thinking?” he asked in a quiet voice and Shintaro could not answer. Instead, he leaned closer and pressed their mouths together. Juri let out a surprised gasp but he didn't push Shintaro away and that gave him courage to continue. He wasn't sure if he could have stopped even if he hd tried to. He had been imagining this for so long.
He had touched Juri many times but not like this. He had felt Juri's personal scent whenever the boy was close enough but he had never been quite this close, and this time there was Juri's taste mixed into the scent and the small sounds Juri let out when Shintaro deepened the kiss a bit, pressing closer to him now that he finally could. It was rather hasty and Shintaro felt a little desperate. In the middle of everything there was a small thought in the corner of his mind, asking what he was going to do when they would have to stop but he couldn't answer the question so he ignored it.
Juri's fingers curled around the sides of Shintaro's shirt and Shintaro gasped for breath when Juri ran his tongue over Shintaro's lower lip, luring him to open his mouth a bit and slipping the tongue inside.
Shintaro would never anymore have any doubts if Juri could drive someone crazy with his kisses or not.
A knock on the door made them jump apart.
“Mom told you guys to come downstairs, we'll start eating when niichan comes home!”
“Got it,” Juri yelled through the door to his little brother, trying to brush down his hair that Shintaro had messed at some point. Shintaro smoothed the wrinkles of his shirt and took a deep breath, thankful for Juri's little brother not having simply run into the room like Shintaro's younger sister definitely would have done in a similar situation.
In the middle of all his awkward feelings Shintaro glanced up into Juri's eyes. The boy was looking at him, too, but Shintaro couldn't read the expression and it made him feel even more nervous.
“You're not a bad kisser at all,” Juri finally said and there was a hint of smile playing on his lips, and the silence wasn't that awkward anymore.
The boys rushed downstairs to have the dinner and spent the rest of the evening in the living room, playing video games together with Juri's brothers (the two of them who were at home that night), and going to sleep well after midnight. Nothing weird happened during the rest of the evening and neither of them mentioned the kiss again, as if they had made a mutual agreement of not talking about it.
- - -
The week of spring holiday passed quickly. Of course they were still having work but it was better without school, at least, and every junior in the company enjoyed the well-deserved free time they got.
Shintaro was at home, lying on his bed and leafing through the newest issue of Shounen Jump when the doorbell rang. He heard the sound of someone going to open the door and turned the music on his earphones a bit quieter, just out of curiosity. It was probably the old lady from the next door, or maybe his mother had forgotten her keys.
“Hello? Oh, you,” Shintaro heard his brother's voice at the door and “Oh no, I'm sorry!” when their dog started barking.
“It's nothing,” Shintaro heard a familiar voice saying and his eyes widened in surprise. Juri lived on the other side of the city. What was he doing at the doorstep of his home this late in the evening, especially when the next morning would be a school day again. He got up quickly and went to the hall where Ryutaro was holding the overly-excited dog by the collar.
“Juri?” Shintaro asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi,” Juri said and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry for disturbing, I didn't mean to cause such an uproar.”
“Nah, he's always like that when someone comes in,” Shintaro chuckled, “he loves visitors.”
Ryutaro nodded to Juri and lured the dog back into his own room with some snacks he had in his pockets, leaving Shintaro and Juri to stand in the hallway.
“I, um. Can you come out for a moment? Just for a while. I mean, it's quite late already.”
“Sure,” Shintaro said and was already putting his jacket on. “Why? Is there something wrong?”
Juri shook his head, clearly unwilling to speak more before they would be out of the door.
“Ryu, I'm going out. If mom comes home before me tell her I'll be back soon,” he called from the door and left after having gotten an agreeing noise as an answer.
The boys walked down the street in silence. Juri didn't say a word and Shintaro didn't push him to. He would talk when he felt like that, Shintaro supposed.
“This is really stupid,” Juri finally said, “but I was wondering. What do you think of me?”
Juri's straightforwardness wasn't anything new to Shintaro but he still felt more than a bit frozen when the question sank in.
“What do you mean?” he asked, not quite sure what to say.
“It's just. Well. Um.”
“Yes?”
“It's just something Jesse said. Of course he could be just saying whatever comes up to his mind, you know, sometimes he has absolutely no filter between his brain and mouth, or then he could be meaning something else, maybe I simply understood it wrong, I don't know to be honest, and you know how much he likes to tease me and you, and everyone really, he's always been like that, or at least as far as I know--”
“Whoa, man,” Shintaro managed to say and stop the nervous babbling, “relax and breathe, and tell me what's going on. What did Jesse say?”
Juri glanced at him and quickly away again, and Shintaro raised his eyebrows. It was very rare for Juri to be that disconcerted, and while Shintaro found it rather amusing, even adorable, he pitied the boy enough to keep his face serious.
“Just say it,” he suggested and turned to look on the side so that he couldn't see Juri even from the corner of his eye. “I'm looking away so it won't be that embarrassing, okay?”
“Yeah,” Juri said quietly and took a few more steps before finally letting it out.
“Jesse says you like me.”
Whatever it was that Shintaro had expected to hear, this wasn't it.
“Excuse me?” he asked and felt how his face suddenly went pale, and his heart made a backflip in his chest, landing somewhere near his stomach.
“Yeah. Crazy, isn't it,” Juri said quietly and avoided Shintaro's gaze. “I... Well, I just kind of wanted to know the truth. Do you? It's okay. I won't mind, I just-”
“I do.”
The short silence that fell after Shintaro's words was heavy but for some reason it didn't feel as awkward as he had imagined it would.
“You do?” Juri asked slowly and Shintaro nodded. Now that the secret had been revealed (damn Jesse and his big mouth), he didn't simply find any reasons to hide it anymore.
“Yeah,” Shintaro admitted. “For a while already.”
“Oh.” Juri looked really thunderstruck and Shintaro couldn't help bursting into a contagious laughter that Juri clearly couldn't resist. They laughed together until there were tears flowing on their cheeks and Shintaro leaned to hold on to Juri's shoulder.
“This is quite stupid you know,” Juri said when he gasped for air and rubbed his eyes dry with his sleeve.
“I guess,” Shintaro said until he realized he wasn't sure what Juri meant. “What is?”
“I like you too.”
It was sudden and yet not sudden at all, Shintaro realized, and there was nothing left of the earlier awkwardness when he looked at Juri and smiled, enjoying the warmth that the boy's smile made him feel. There were a million butterflies fluttering in his stomach and his heart was making somersaults again but it all just felt good and funny and all in all perfect.
“Since when?” he asked, just out of curiosity and Juri chuckled.
“Since forever and after the day you came to my place the last time.”
“Which was about a week ago,” Shintaro said and rolled his eyes.
“No, much longer, really. But after the kiss...”
“...it got worse,” Shintaro finished the sentence and grinned, “I know.”
They kept walking along the street until the noise of Shintaro's ringtone alarmed them from their thoughts when his mother called to remind him the next morning was going to be early.
“Shit, you could stay over,” Shintaro realized, “if you just had your things with you. How did you even-”
“My bag is on the floor in the hallway of your house,” Juri admitted. “Of course I didn't think I'd travel back home tonight. With the nighttime train timetables it'd take me around two hours to get there.”
That explained a lot, Shintaro thought. He had seen a familiar bag at the door but he had supposed it was Ryutaro's.
“It's cool to get you in the same school,” Juri said when they turned back towards home. “I've been waiting, you know.”
“Me too,” Shintaro said and glanced around to make sure there were no other people around before he grabbed Juri's shoulders, pulled him closer and pressed a quick kiss on the other boy's lips, stepping back again before Juri managed to react in any way.
“T-that's not how I taught you to do it,” Juri stammered and Shintaro flashed him a mischievous grin.
“You taught me to kiss a girl. I never said I wanted to kiss any girls.”
It was amusing to see how Juri's surprised face slowly melted into understanding, and when he suggested they could practice together how to kiss a boy instead, Shintaro happily agreed.