Baka6, Fake It Until You Make It

Title: Fake It Until You Make It [Hokuto/Taiga]
Rating/Warnings: NC-17
Summary: Taiga used to think he and Hokuto were just fooling around, but then they went on their fake anniversary date and now he isn’t so sure.
AN: Written for Tomochoco, prompt 26: Friends with benefits accidentally become official. This one isn’t for anybody in particular, but if you like to BS with me about Hokuto and Taiga on my tlist, then enjoy.

Fake It Until You Make It

The thing is that it’s always been easy between the two of them, even at the beginning, when it should have been awkward to do it, much less talk about it. It’s not like the two of them are the most mature guys in Johnny’s. Somehow even that first time when Taiga walked in on Hokuto trying to will away a random erection in the middle of Shounen Club filming, it didn’t feel weird at all.

“We’re on in like ten minutes,” Taiga had pointed out gently. Those costume pants certainly didn’t leave anything to the imagination. Hokuto’s grimace had turned wide-eyed when Taiga added, “Would it be faster if I helped?”

“What?” Hokuto had asked dumbly, but Taiga was already on his knees, yanking at the snap behind the fake belt buckle of Hokuto’s costume pants. Partly Taiga had done it because they really were going to be late otherwise, but when he’s being honest with himself Taiga can admit that it was partly that he’d been interested in getting his hands on Hokuto ever since that last growth spurt. And he was definitely interested in the soft, shocked “Oh” that Hokuto gave as soon as Taiga wrapped his lips around Hokuto’s cock.

Afterwards, Taiga had informed Hokuto he expected him to return the favor after filming, when they had longer than a couple minutes. He’d have let Hokuto off the hook if Hokuto had seemed unwilling, but Hokuto had nodded so quickly he looked like a debauched bobblehead, and anyway that’s how the whole thing started.

It’s been months since then, almost an entire year. Sometimes Taiga sleeps with other people and sometimes Hokuto does, but they always end up circling back to each other. All Hokuto has to ask is, “Come home with me?” and Taiga finds himself agreeing, packing up his bag just a little faster, his step just a little quicker to catch up.

New people are fun and sometimes exciting, but Hokuto is familiar and Taiga likes that too. Taiga doesn’t have to explain how he likes Hokuto’s weight on top of him but not having his wrists held down, how he’s too ticklish for light touches, how he doesn’t care where Hokuto’s mouth has just been before kissing.

“Which way?” Hokuto asks in between kisses, and Taiga likes that too, how Hokuto is good with either one but always asks.

“You pick,” Taiga says carelessly, sifting his fingers through Hokuto’s hair and enjoying the way it spills through his fingers, heavy and still a little damp from Hokuto’s shower. He yanks on it, hard enough to make Hokuto growl against his skin, and Taiga grins to himself. He shifts to one side as if he might roll, watching to see if Hokuto’s expression turns more interested. “Want me on my hands and knees?”

He knows the answer is yes before Hokuto says the word, Hokuto’s answer obvious in his eyebrows and the way he licks his lower lip. Taiga kisses him again, a little rougher, just right, before he rolls over.

Hokuto’s fingers brush over the backs of Taiga’s thighs, his lips over Taiga’s spine, and Taiga calls him a fucking tease as his arms goosebump from it. It only makes Hokuto chuckle, the sound stroking his skin almost as surely as Hokuto’s fingers. Taiga stretches a little, humming in pleasure, when Hokuto’s mouth slides over his tailbone, then lower. Hokuto likes to lick at Taiga’s bare skin first, before the lube, and Taiga only gets on his hands and knees when he wants Hokuto’s tongue exactly there, licking delicately at the sensitive edge of Taiga’s hole.

“Yeah,” Taiga encourages, leaning down harder on his elbows and spreading his legs just a little wider. He wants more, but he doesn’t want Hokuto to stop doing that yet either, especially when Hokuto slides just the tip of his tongue inside, fingers feathering at Taiga’s balls. “Yeah, like that.”

Hokuto hums, obviously enjoying himself and making Taiga’s skin vibrate. Maybe they’re a pair of sexual deviants, but it’s hard to care when Hokuto’s thumb presses inside Taiga and Hokuto moans as Taiga squeezes tight around it.

Taiga tries to rush Hokuto, a bundle of impatient nerves when Hokuto’s fingers are slick inside of him, long enough to make Taiga desperate for more. Hokuto knows better than to trust him when Taiga insists he’s ready, just to do it, knows what it’ll feel like when Taiga really is good to go. When he finally feels the blunt head of Hokuto’s cock pushing against his hole, Taiga moans encouragement as loud as he dares when they aren’t the only ones home, trying to push back even though Hokuto’s firm grip on his hip keeps him from really going anywhere.

“Are you this desperate for everybody’s dick?” Hokuto asks, voice breathy, nudging his way into Taiga’s ass with little thrusts that make Taiga want to go right out of his skin. “Or just mine?”

“Nobody else rims me until i can’t fucking think straight,” Taiga hisses back. Hokuto laughs, inside enough to get both hands on Taiga’s hips, and the laugh turns into a groan when he bottoms out with a last, smooth thrust. Hokuto pulls out slowly and pushes back in, and Taiga knows he’s watching his cock slide into Taiga’s ass. Taiga wishes he could watch it too, or at least see Hokuto’s face while he’s concentrating, cheeks flushed and hair curling damp with sweat.

It’s fast and rough after that, Hokuto having apparently teased too long for his own good as well. Taiga loses himself in it easily, spine stretching and fingers curling in the blankets as he shoves back against Hokuto’s thrusts. Neither one of them reaches for Taiga’s cock, even though it’s hard and leaking; he feels too close already to chance their bad timing. If Taiga comes first, he gets uncomfortable fast, and he’d rather Hokuto finish inside him.

Hokuto’s fingers dig in tighter, his breathing ragged, and Taiga shudders with him when he comes, feeling it inside him and all over his skin. Hokuto pulls out just after, and Taiga knows he’s still looking as Taiga’s body clenches around nothing. Taiga arches like a cat, letting him look all he wants, before he demands that Hokuto do something already.

“Hang on a second,” Hokuto says, reaching over the edge of the bed to grab his T-shirt from the heap of their clothes. When he pushes at Taiga’s hip to tip him onto his side, Taiga sprawls on the T-shirt, mildly amused as always that Hokuto doesn’t want to explain weird stains on his comforter but isn’t worried about his mother finding them on his t-shirts.

Hokuto’s mouth is on Taiga’s cock before Taiga has all his bearings back, sucking him in until Taiga bumps the back of his throat while he slides two fingers back inside Taiga for him to squeeze around. Taiga’s head tips back in pleasure, hands winding in Hokuto’s hair to tug at it, pulling harder when Hokuto does something he likes. He could reach for his orgasm to hurry it along, but Taiga doesn’t bother. Hokuto likes blowing him after all, likes it enough that sometimes Taiga wonders if it’s not his favorite thing. He watches Taiga the whole time he has Taiga’s cock in his mouth, eyes looking up through the hair that falls in his eyes no matter how much Taiga pushes it back. He’s still watching when Taiga comes, the long pulse of it seeming to pour right down his spine, leaving Taiga spent and worn out.

When he peels his eyes open, Hokuto is still watching him, grinning up at him as he licks at Taiga’s tip just to make him shudder.

“Quit it,” Taiga orders. Hokuto doesn’t answer, other than to crawl up Taiga’s body for a fierce kiss, settling heavily on top of him. Taiga isn’t a huge cuddler but he does love kissing, so Hokuto learned ages ago how to keep Taiga in bed like this for at least a little while. It doesn’t hurt that Hokuto’s kisses are worth a lot more than letting the mess dry on his skin, deep and unhurried, keeping Taiga’s heart racing minutes after it should have slowed. Hokuto’s hands slide over Taiga’s skin too, so warm, soothing down Taiga’s back. He touches Taiga’s hair with surprisingly gentleness given the force of the kiss, but then again Taiga decidedly does not like his hair pulled.

“It’s getting long,” Hokuto comments when they have to break for air. His fingers are still in Taiga’s hair, scratching gently against his scalp, and every time Taiga almost says he wants to get up and clean up, he decides lying here for just a minute longer is okay.

“It’s in the way,” Taiga says idly, eyes almost shut. He doesn’t feel that way, but people keep saying it to him. “I should cut it.”

“It looks good,” Hokuto says, then kisses Taiga again, and whatever Taiga was going to say about that, he forgets it.

A few days later, Taiga is eating breakfast in his kitchen, still half-asleep and agreeing vaguely with everything his mother says. He doesn’t even bat an eye when the topic turns to Hokuto, because his mother is an incorrigible gossip and Hokuto is Taiga’s most frequent visitor. Taiga learned to cope long ago with the fact that his mother checks out his friends’ butts and their tastes seem disturbingly similiar.

“Are you boys planning anything for your anniversary?” Taiga-san’s voice cuts through Taiga’s sleepiness, making him choke on his juice.

“Our what?” Taiga asks, coughing.

“It’s been about a year, right?” Taiga-san jerks a thumb towards the window at the winter sky. “I remember the first time you called to say you were eating out late with him it was snowing and I was worried they’d stop the trains. So it must be your anniversary soon.”

Taiga opens his mouth to correct her, and then realizes it’s really not preferable to explain to his mother that Hokuto is just his sex friend. He settles for, “We don’t have any plans.”

“No good~,” his mother scolds, reaching over to flick Taiga in the forehead. Taiga scowls up at her in surprise. “Hokuto-kun seems romantic-type to me. Even if it’s not important to you, you should do something nice with him. Trust me; your dad sucks at this stuff too.”

“I…” Taiga struggles over which part of that to protest over first. “Mom!”

“The way he looks at you,” his mother tsks, shaking her head. “Guess it’s too late to warn him about you Kyomoto men. Hope he knows what he’s gotten himself into.”

“Hey!” Taiga snaps, because there is nothing wrong with dating a Kyomoto thank you very much, even if Hokuto were dating him, which he isn’t. His mother just ruffles his hair and tells him to get a haircut before Hokuto thinks he has a girlfriend.

A few of the things his mother said don’t sink in until a little while later, like the way he looks at you in particular. Taiga frowns at the sneaker he’s tying. And then the whole thing is nagging at him and he has to tie his sneaker two more times before his fingers will do what he tells them.

There’s nothing to get worked up about, he scolds himself. Hokuto isn’t his boyfriend, it’s nothing like that, and just because they’ve been doing it a whole year that doesn’t make it any less casual. Taiga just has a good time with Hokuto, that’s all, and he shoves aside the whole situation as he goes to practice because none of it was weird at all until his mom started talking about it.

So maybe he’s a little aggressive about his response when Hokuto flops down next to him on a pile of dance mats and asks what he’s making a face about.

“We need to have an anniversary date,” Taiga says bluntly.

Hokuto raises an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t that imply that at some point we’d had a date?”

“So this morning my mother said…she’s knows it’s been like a year since we started…” Taiga takes a deep breath and starts over because everything he says just makes Hokuto’s eyebrows rise higher. “Listen, I’m not explaining to her that you’re my hot sex friend and she thinks I’m a terrible boyfriend and she’ll know if I lie about it, so can we just go out and do a thing? Please?”

“Why does your mother know how long we’ve been fucking?” Hokuto asks, seeming amused if anything, which only fuels Taiga’s irritation. Of course Hokuto doesn’t give a fuck and a half about romance and his mother has no idea what the hell she’s talking about.

“Because she has to wash weird stains out of my T-shirts!” Taiga snaps, and Hokuto at least has the decency to look a little sheepish about that.

“What kind of thing do you want to do?” Hokuto asks. “How special does it have to be?”

“I don’t know, how am I supposed to know?” Taiga blows his hair out of his face. “Something we don’t normally do, I guess. Or that we wouldn’t normally do if we ever did anything besides fuck each other.”

Hokuto does something funny with his face, but Taiga figures it’s because they’re talking about their mothers and sex at the same time and Taiga is not cool with that either.

“Take me shopping,” Hokuto decides after a minute’s thought. “I’ll pick out a present for you to buy and we’ll go someplace decent to eat and we’ll even get caught out looking stylish by paparazzi. Maybe if you clean yourself up a little,” Hokuto leans in to tuck Taiga’s hair behind his ear and whisper in it, “we’ll even get Friday’d.”

“Seriously, fuck you,” Taiga says, giving Hokuto a shove, but he’s grinning because that would hilarious. “And don’t you dare tell Jesse or Juri about this either.”

“Oooh, secret date! Even better,” Hokuto purrs. The more over-the-top into it Hokuto acts, the funnier Taiga has to admit that it is, and after they engage in some token shoving and go their separate ways back to practice, Taiga is feeling much more normal about the whole thing. Hokuto can always put him at ease like that, which is probably why this has gone on as long as it has.

Of course they have to figure out when their anniversary actually is to make the whole thing work, which leads to a debate about whether the original blowjob counts, or if it doesn’t because it wasn’t reciprocated immediately. Hokuto points out that if Taiga wants to count any sex at all, they’re practically on year two and Juri should be coming on the date with them, along with a couple other guys on their hotel floor. Eventually they settle on the first time they went home together on purpose, and Taiga scrolls back through his mails until he finds the date in question.

The whole argument is doubly hilarious because they do it naked and sprawled across Hokuto’s bed, Hokuto on his stomach and kicking his feet in the air a little.

“You really are the girl,” Taiga says as he sets his phone aside, eyeing Hokuto. Hokuto just grins back at him.

“Says the dude with the ponytail,” Hokuto fires back. He pokes Taiga’s side right in the ticklish spot, and Taiga squirms and slaps at his bare back. “Who I bet just put the date in their phone with at least one heart emoji.”

“That’s the most appropriate emoji!” Taiga says indignantly. Hokuto laughs harder, and Taiga gives his hair a yank. “Ugh, I’m breaking up with you right after this date because you’re an asshole.”

“Can we have a dramatic scene in the locker room at work?” Hokuto wants to know, eyes lit up with mischief. “I get to call you a cheating cocktease! I bet we can make Genki cry! Shintarou’ll spend the next week trying to hook us back up, it’ll be hilarious.”

“I can’t be a cheater and a cocktease, idiot,” Taiga points out, and he’s pretty sure Hokuto isn’t serious, but it’s sort of cute how much he loves stirring up drama. “And you just want Shintarou to try locking us in a closet like we’re in a bad fanfiction.”

“YES,” Hokuto agrees right away. “It’ll be the most privacy we’ve had at work all year!”

“Can we please finish planning our anniversary date before we plan our breakup?” Taiga wants to know, because Hokuto will just keep going endlessly if Taiga doesn’t yank his leash a little. “Where are you taking me for dinner, Mr. You’re the Girl?”

“If we’re going shopping…oh, there’s a place I had in mind for jewelry.” Hokuto gets up to grab his laptop from his desk and they end up spending the rest of the time until Taiga has to leave looking at menus, arguing about whether ramen is classy enough. Taiga lets him win that argument and agrees to Italian since Hokuto’s paying, pointing out that Hokuto will have to dress up a little and not just show up in whatever ripped up jeans are in a heap on his floor. Hokuto makes a face but says fine, fine, he wants their paparazzi shots to look good anyway.

Taiga is halfway home before it strikes him that he’s actually looking forward to their date.

The pleasant buzz of anticipation stays in his chest for the rest of the week, and by their next off-day, Taiga feels almost nervous. He tells himself that’s stupid, it’s just Hokuto and their date is fake, but then Taiga’s phone vibrates with a selfie Hokuto took so that Taiga could recognize his hat, and the buzzing ramps up until Taiga has to shove his hands in his pockets to hide the way they’re shaking.

But it fades to a dull humming when Taiga steps out of the station and Hokuto is already waving at him hard enough to make people around side-eye him.

“Why’d you bother with the hat if you’re gonna make a scene yourself?” Taiga asks as he strolls up as casually as he can manage.

“I look sexy in this hat and you know it,” Hokuto scoffs. Taiga rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning too. Hokuto nudges Taiga’s elbow with his own, grinning back, and then sets off towards the store he has in mind, trusting Taiga to follow. Taiga catches him with a couple long steps, elbowing him back, and they settle into a comfortable rhythm. Every now and again, Taiga catches glimpses of them in the glass of the storefronts they’re passing, and he hopes they really do get paparazzi’ed at least a little, because damn, they look good together.

Taiga hasn’t even been to the shop that Hokuto takes him to, but the accessories are definitely Hokuto’s style. They spend a while there, holding up necklaces and putting hats on each other’s heads, trying on progressively bigger and bigger sunglasses until Taiga puts on a pair that makes him look like a little gray alien and Hokuto laughs so hard he cries.

Finally, though, Taiga’s stomach starts to growl since he didn’t feel like eating much that morning, and he stretches his arms over his head.

“Did you pick out something for me to buy you yet?” he asks. Hokuto nods, but to Taiga’s surprise he doesn’t go back to the necklaces or the hats or even the sunglasses. Instead he goes to the rack of earrings and picks one of the little cardboard sleeves without hesitating, then puts it into Taiga’s hand.

They’re simpler than Taiga would have expected, just small stainless steel hoops with a small jet black bead on each one, just enough to be a little distinctive, not flashy at all. When he looks up with a raised eyebrow, Hokuto is looking back at him evenly.

“These?” Taiga asks.

“Those,” Hokuto answers. Shrugging a little, Taiga goes to the counter and pays, sort of amused that Hokuto is making himself such a cheap date when Taiga plans to eat his weight in pasta at their next stop.

Before the shop lady can put the earrings in a bag, Hokuto picks them back up off the counter, surprising Taiga. He’s even more surprised when Hokuto takes one of the earrings off the card and switches it with his own earring right away, dropping the one he just took out of his ear into his pocket. He holds the matching earring out to Taiga.

“Take it,” he says when Taiga just blinks at him. “Just take it,” he repeats, pressing it into Taiga’s hand, and Taiga does, slipping it into the inside pocket of his bag, where he’ll be sure not to lose it. Taiga feels like something just happened, but he isn’t sure what.

They go for dinner after that. The food is good and things between them are relaxed, but once in a while Hokuto turns his head and the light catches on his new earring, and Taiga pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth. It only lasts a second, though, before Taiga shakes it off and goes back to stuffing his face.

“Good date?” Taiga asks as they’re walking back to the station, just because he wants to rub it in his mother’s face that he’s actually a really awesome boyfriend.

“Good date,” Hokuto answers. The back of his knuckles brushes along Taiga’s. There’s no reason it couldn’t have been an accident, but Taiga is sure that it wasn’t, somehow. When he looks over, Hokuto is wearing a smile that is small and a little strange. When he notices Taiga looking, though, it widens into his usual carefree grin. “You’re a little high maintenance, but since you put out, it’s all good.”

“Shut it, you,” Taiga tells him. Their fingers brush again, and Taiga wishes the touch weren’t so fleeting, wanting to grab at Hokuto’s fingers as soon as they’re gone. “I want to go home with you,” he says instead of grabbing at anything. “Or you come home with me, whatever.”

“Mm, me too,” Hokuto says, sounding pleased.

Taiga’s house is more likely to have nobody in it, so they end up there, Hokuto spread out over Taiga’s sheets for once. He looks so good that way, Taiga thinks, limbs relaxed and legs spread just for Taiga, dark hair spread out over Taiga’s pillow. When he tips his head back to moan, his earring catches the light, and Taiga digs his fingers just a little deeper into Hokuto’s hips.

Hokuto reaches for his cock while Taiga fucks him, jerking himself out without holding back. Taiga himself isn’t in a particular rush and Hokuto likes it slow and deep anyway, so it’s not a surprise when Hokuto comes first, spilling over his stomach with a long groan. Taiga doesn’t even pause fucking him while he comes down, because Hokuto always says he likes it better that way.

“Yeah,” Hokuto breathes when he opens his eyes after a minute. “Don’t stop,” he encourages, and Taiga sure wasn’t planning on it. Free to just take care of himself, Taiga drops to his elbows and fucks Hokuto at his own, much faster pace. With Hokuto humming encouragement in his ear, it’s not long before he’s coming too, pulsing himself out inside Hokuto before collapsing on his chest.

For a bit neither of them says anything, Taiga catching his breath, Hokuto brushing hands over Taiga’s shoulders and hair.

“I’m never getting out of this bed again,” Taiga says eventually. All the tension of the last week, whatever it was about, is gone now, leaving him feeling like a relaxed little puddle. Hokuto’s hand leaves his hair, and Taiga whines. “Hey, don’t stop.”

“I should go,” Hokuto says, rolling Taiga off of him with gentle hands. Taiga whines some more, but Hokuto reaches for his shirt and gets dressed anyway. Before he leaves, he gives Taiga a last look. “I had fun today. You did too, right?”

“Yeah.” Taiga feels like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t know what, the words stuck in his lungs.

“Good. See you.” Hokuto gives Taiga a last smile and turns to go, shutting Taiga’s door behind him.

Taiga rolls over, then back to his original side. He feels like he can’t get comfortable, which is stupid because fives minutes ago he wanted to nap forever before stupid Hokuto got up and…oh.

“Don’t go,” he says, way too late, the words that been stuck before. Rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling, Taiga sighs heavily. The stuck feeling in his chest gets both better and worse, because at least now he understands what’s going on, but what’s going on is that he’s going to fuck up his perfectly good sex friendship.

His mom was right. Kyomoto men really do suck at everything.

Taiga tries to soak out his sulk in the bath, but his mother takes one look at him and holds his bowl of curry over her head until he tells her what’s the matter.

“Moooom,” Taiga protests, even more irritated because this entire thing is her fault in the first place. “Don’t be mean to me, I’m hungry! It’s cruel to starve your only child!”

“So dramatic,” his mother tsks, sitting the bowl down with a clink. “No idea where you learned that from.”

“Yeah, I wonder,” Taiga repeats darkly. Even though he just finished complaining about how hungry he was, after two bites, Taiga starts pushing the curry around in his bowl.

“Is this some kind of love triangle thing?” his mother asks, making Taiga choke on his next bite of curry. “Are you thinking about cheating on Hokuto-kun or something?”

“Why do you always blame me?!” Taiga demands, completely out of temper with his mother’s teasing. “Side with your own kid! Maybe it’s Hokuto who’s cheating on me, you ever think of that?!”

His mother looks like she’s trying very hard not to laugh in his face. Taiga scowls back down at his curry.

“Sweetheart,” she says, reaching down to push his hair back from his face, “you really do need a haircut, because obviously you can’t see anything from under there. That kid is so in love with you it’s kind of painful to watch.”

“I…what?” Taiga demands. “Ugh, what do you know anyway.”

“Watch it, you,” his mother tells him, giving his hair a little yank. “I’ve forgotten more about dating idiots than you’ll ever know. And you must be some kind of idiot, since Hokuto-kun’s been putting up with you all year when you don’t even know how much he likes you.”

“This conversation is making me very uncomfortable,” Taiga grumbles, because at this point he just wants it to stop.

“That’s because it involves feelings and the fact that you have them,” his mother says briskly, releasing her grip on him and turning to start the dishes. “And if you think this was uncomfortable, than I suggest you work it out before I get your father involved.”

That’s just not even fair, Taiga thinks, but he’s careful not to say that shit out loud where his mother can hear.

Taiga goes to bed early, and in the morning he still feels unpleasant, but it has less of a panicky quality about it. After he gets dressed, he digs around in his bag until he finds his earring, and then takes out the one he’s been wearing to put the steel hoop in. Taiga examines himself in the mirror, satisfied that nobody will even notice it besides Hokuto.

If he’s especially lucky, maybe Hokuto will be a lot smarter than him and he won’t have to explain anything.

“You want to explain that?” Hokuto asks when Taiga is standing in front of him.

Taiga swallows his knee-jerk response, which is not really. He looks at Hokuto’s face, really looks, trying to see whatever it is that his mother was talking about. All he sees is Hokuto looking back, the same way Hokuto always looks at him, except maybe a little unhappy.

“Are you just fooling around with me or what?” Hokuto asks, more quietly. He doesn’t even look angry, more like resigned. “We’re just fooling around…right?”

“I was,” Taiga answers honestly, and Hokuto flinches. “But you aren’t?” Hokuto hesitates, but then shakes his head. “How long have you felt like that?”

Hokuto shrugs, not answering. That’s when Taiga understands that he isn’t going to see anything different in Hokuto’s face, because Hokuto has always looked at him like that.

Taiga feels so, so stupid.

“The other day,” Taiga starts, and he’s got that feeling like all his words are stuck inside again, but this time he does his best to push through it. “I had a really good time. I didn’t want you to go. I think I want to do it again.”

Hokuto is staring at him, cheeks turning pink but eyes narrowed. “Do what again?”

“Go out,” Taiga says. It’s hard to put what he wants into words, and he has to drop his eyes. “Go on a date. Hang out with you. I think maybe…”

Taiga trails off when Hokuto’s hands slide against his face, palms pressed against his cheeks on either side to lift his head back up until he’s looking at Hokuto again.

“Maybe I want to try being sex boyfriends instead,” Taiga finishes, so quietly he can barely hear himself over the way his heart is pounding. “What do you think?”

Hokuto kisses him, gentle at first and then fiercely, hands still cupped around Taiga’s face as if he’s afraid Taiga might bolt at any moment. Hokuto’s hands are shaking a little, Taiga realizes; then he realizes that his hands are shaking too. He reaches up to squeeze Hokuto’s hands with his own, and that’s when the kiss finally breaks.

“That’s a yes, right?” Taiga asks, afraid to take anything for granted at this point.

“Seems stupid to change our anniversary,” Hokuto says, and all of the tension in Taiga’s chest pops like a bubble as he bursts out laughing.

Being sex boyfriends is harder sometimes than being sex friends. Their schedules don’t line up so often, especially not when one or both of them has drama filming, and Taiga can’t take out his frustration on the nearest willing person like he used to. Sometimes they fight, and Taiga finds worrying about Hokuto’s feelings on top of his own exhausting. Sometimes Hokuto mails him fifty times a day, and Taiga refuses to answer them out of spite even though there’s really no better way to start a fight.

But sometimes Hokuto comes over to spend the night and watches television with his head in Taiga’s lap and flirts with Taiga’s mother over dinner. It feels pretty good when she looks at Taiga with approval instead of threatening to get his father involved with his love life.

Plus they still get to fuck each other in Taiga’s bed. Taiga sure isn’t sick of that part. Hokuto still watches Taiga the entire time he sucks him off, like it’s his favorite thing. Right after he crawls up to kiss Taiga like he wants to drown in it, and Taiga understands that it’s him, not the blowjob, that is Hokuto’s favorite thing.

“Don’t go,” Taiga murmurs when Hokuto’s weight shifts off of him, flailing his hand at Hokuto without opening his eyes. He’s pretty sure he hits Hokuto in the nose.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Hokuto tells him. “Geez, I’ll be right back.”

Taiga says that’s fiiiiiine, he guesses, and Hokuto just rolls his eyes. But he’s smiling a little as he gets up, because really he thinks it’s cute when Taiga gets possessive. And when he comes back and crawls back under the blankets, he kisses Taiga as long as Taiga wants, like they haven’t seen each other in two weeks again, instead of two minutes.

“Being sex boyfriends is pretty good,” Taiga says for no reason, and Hokuto pauses in the middle of reaching to turn off the bedside lamp to look back at him.

“We’re just the regular kind, you know,” he says. “Why do you keep calling us that? I’m afraid you’re going to do it in front of my mom and I’ll have to kill myself.”

Taiga shrugs. “It’s just a habit, now. Does it bother you?”

“No,” Hokuto answers, flipping off the light. He settles back down, half on top of Taiga, tracing the edge of Taiga’s collarbone with idle fingers. “It doesn’t matter what you call it, I guess. I’m glad you think it’s pretty good.”

And even though Hokuto sounds entirely relaxed and agreeable about it, it’s not for nothing that they’ve spent so much time together in the past year plus whatever. Taiga doesn’t suck as a boyfriend quite that much.

“Being regular boyfriends is fine too,” Taiga says, and Hokuto relaxes just the tiniest bit more agains him, so he knows he got it right. This time.

He’ll probably come up with a new way to screw it up tomorrow, but with Hokuto’s weight warm and comforting on top of him, Taiga is hopeful that even when he does, Hokuto will give him all the second chances he needs.