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"I can't believe," Yukito sighs and flops backwards onto his bed, "That I have finished high school and never so much as kissed anyone."
Yue is unsympathetic. Yukito could've had his first kiss at any point, particularly in the last few months. He knows, he knows. He's going to, okay, he's nearly ready. The thought of letting things between him and Touya drag on endlessly until they're two old men who are just the best of best friends is nearly as scary as the thought of speaking up unprepared. Before college starts, all right?
It's barely been two hours since his last high school class. Nowhere near college. So let him complain.
"Give me a break." Yukito protests to the unimpressed look he imagines from the feeling of get a move on. "I've only been properly alive for three years and it wasn't in my backstory."
This is where he feels a bit of a separation between them. The first step is always to recognize when the feelings passing through him aren't his, and then it becomes a puzzle to figure out what that means for Yue. Sympathy and grief and pride and separation put together form a solid theory that kissing, at least, is an area that Yue differs from him in. Embarrassment that's not his own tells him he guessed right.
"What's it like, then?" he says to the ceiling. To Yue, if he wants to answer. "A first kiss?"
Yue considers the question long enough that Yukito worries he shouldn't've asked it. They've been trying to establish privacy, rules for how not to overstep, but it's hard to tell what's intruding when the whole conversation is happening inside himself.
"You don't have to tell me right now if you don't want to."
He says that just in case, and in return feels a bit like making a rash decision, throwing caution to the winds. With less practice he might've assumed it was his own feeling, and would spring up from bed to do something foolish. Instead he sinks deeper into his pillows, tries to project a feeling of sharing personal stuff at a sleepover. Yue bristles at that, and Yukito can imagine feathers ruffling. He's going to tell him this to help, so he's prepared. It's not getting open and personal if it's informative. It's teaching. Yukito tries to think his most welcoming and curious and ready-to-learn thoughts back at him and closes his eyes in case it will help.
What he feels is...small, like trying to take up the least amount of space on a chair. Small and uncertain, rooted to the spot and covered- a bit like a rock jutting out of the ocean, when a wave comes in. The rock loves the wave, loves the drowning, the erosion until smooth. If the ocean will gift itself to the shore enough, the whole area will look different, beautifully carved out. But the water is shallow now, dried up in the sun now that the wave has passed, please come back, please-
(Yukito has never, ever felt quite like this around Touya.)
-and the feeling snaps shut, prickly and defensive.
"I'm sorry," Yukito says, though he isn't really sure what he's sorry for. Yue is a ball of pain, tightly wound up. Come on, Yue, no one can know how to help if they don't know what hurts.
It's only through being so unavoidably up close and personal with Yue's thoughts that Yukito can, over the rest of his day, get a feel for why he hurts so badly. It's a bit like feeling the rug pulled out from under him. Yukito feels nervous around Touya sometimes but only in the fear that Touya doesn't return his feelings- which Yue angrily insists is the same thing. It doesn't feel like it, though, and Yue hates knowing that.
"I'm sorry," he tries again, now that he knows why. He's just finished his supper, he has dishes to wash. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad."
Yue is trying so hard to pretend to ignore him that Yukito can feel him listening.
"And I didn't mean to... insult you, or insult Clow's memory, or anything."
That's what it is, that's what makes that tenseness lighten up a bit. Yukito takes note, do not speak ill of the dead, even if the dead are debatably still alive (it's complicated). Something occurs to him, and then it's Yukito's turn to be tense-
"Is Touya going to be a sore spot for you?"
He can try, he really would, to think less about Touya when Yue is awake. It would be an impossible task, not to think about Touya. Touya who is so kind and hard-working and makes him laugh and stops to talk to ghosts on his way to work. Touya who saved his life, who just a few days ago biked over to reassure him and talk to him till he felt stable and clear-headed again when he found his grandmother's birthday pre-printed on a fresh calendar page- he stops his train of thought, has failed the task already. But fortunately he will not have to attempt it. Yue softens at the affection Yukito is lost in, thinks he is foolish to even go down that path, who does he think has been cheering for him to just tell Touya he loves him already this whole entire time.
"If you're sure."
He's sure. Yukito smiles, meant at him- but Yue can't see that, he remembers, not through his eyes- so he settles for holding his own hand, strange as it feels.
A heaviness washes over him. When he wakes up, his dishes are washed. All is forgiven.