Archive of Our Own ^beta

Joshua has to respond. Neku’s eyes are searching his when he pulls away, blue as the midday sky: an expanse he could fall into, the ocean he struggles to surface from. He didn’t expect to be kissed, didn’t ask or prepare for it, caught off-guard as much by the spontaneity as the teenaged enthusiasm of it. Warm hands, an open mouth and chapped lips, Joshua’s back and head colliding with the wall now responsible for holding him up. He barely had time to get his hackles up noticing all Neku’s thoughts had aligned in his direction; until this moment, that served to indicate there was about to be a fist waved in his face. This wasn’t what he’d braced for.

He has to respond. Neku’s making an embarrassed hum in the back of his throat, thoughts crowding each other with doubt, teenaged enthusiasm meeting teenaged self-consciousness. The bricks behind Joshua are warming to his body temperature, snagging on his shirt like his fingers snag in the folds of Neku’s hoodie. Neku looks like something Joshua might like to photograph, framed by sunset and the skyscrapers rising behind him, hair set alight in the headlights of passing cars, his expression a twist of concern.

The hum becomes words, a record-scratch nervous hopscotch of a sentence: “Uhhh, was that—was that okay? How was that, um, for you?”

Was that okay? Joshua runs back over the kiss in his mind. There’d been a paralyzing sweetness coursing from Neku’s at the gesture, spilling over into Joshua, numbing and fizzing at once, bubblegum hues and loop-de-loops and the paradoxical weightlessness of free-fall. A electric charge focused wholly on impressing adoration into the softened, vulnerable medium of his psyche, branding him with Neku’s fondness. Intoxicating. Dizzying. Impulsive and intrusive.

He’d tasted like mouth.

Joshua touches his lips, confused by how Neku had surged past all his barriers, sure nothing he’d done had warranted it—he’d been talking about the construction of the building he was now propped against, trivia on the city they both cared for, nothing out of the ordinary.

There’s a crease drawing itself between Neku’s eyebrows, growing longer as his grip loosens on Joshua’s shoulders. He still has to respond, and goodness, he doesn’t actually want Neku to let go. He wants Neku to hang on, to stand in this alcove with him for the week it’ll take to analyze this event correctly, every faucet of the memory, every passerby on the street and hair follicle on Neku’s head, every minute observation Joshua plucks from his consciousness. There’s a stray hair in front of Joshua’s eyes that’s bothering Neku more than it’s bothering him. He leaves it.

“That was… Interesting?” Joshua tries, lurching towards Neku’s retreating touch as if hooked, stepping forward in the same instant Neku steps back, the two of them moving in sync, drawn into motion by the same puppeteer. Nostalgic.

“Interesting?”

Neku’s face forecasts several different emotions before settling into bewildered hurt, thoughts swirling into an overcast resignation.

Ah, messed this up already. Good going.

“Yes, Neku,” Joshua snaps, confused and wrong-footed, which he never likes to be. “Interesting. So good to hear you can repeat basic words. Maybe we can use those new skills the next time we want to slobber over someone else’s face in public? Hmm?”

Worse. Worse. He’s made this worse. He holds his ground as the hurt in Neku contorts into anger—

And then fizzles out.

Oh.

Well that’s disappointing. He’d been hoping. He’s always hoping. It may be his worst trait.

Neku kicks the ground, hands finding his pockets in one smooth, practiced motion, apologetic. He turns away.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That bad, huh?”

“Like being suckled by a fish.”

Neku cringes. Joshua’s satisfaction in this is dwarfed by the wailing chasm that has spontaneously torn itself open deep in his chest, the sting of loneliness once more rising as he throws up wall after wall. It’s habit. He can’t help how he is.

He can’t help but think it wasn’t so bad to be kissed either, that another jab of whatever Neku had hit him with would suture it shut again. Neku could fix it. Neku had fixed himself, and Neku could fix Joshua, if fixing each other was something people were capable of doing.

He wants to try again, hand on Neku’s forearm before he realizes he does, urging him to follow Joshua back to the wall, less for the physical sensation of Neku clumsily placing his mouth and more for the tumbling cascade that came with it. Oh, to get Neku’s hands on his wings. He wouldn’t still be standing. Not that he would dare have them out with so many people around, but such is the way things go.

This was how it worked, he reminds himself, this is how Neku had done it. One admission and then another, concession and a request.

Joshua opens his mouth, cutting Neku off, and around the lump in his throat and the defensive reflex screaming that this was bad and wrong and dangerous, he tells Neku “this could be the next time, if you want to slobber on my face again.”

Incredulity. Neku is awash with it, from his face to his posture to the slack hang of his fingers and the flat-lining landscape of his mind. Joshua feels the scream inside him grow, ready to burst, when Neku grasps his elbows, throwing him a lifeline.

“Rephrase that for me.”

“No.”

They stare each other down. Neku’s thumbs press into the soft skin of Joshua’s upper arms. He knows it’s soft, because Neku is thinking about it, then he’s thinking about how it’s not as soft as Joshua’s lips, and there he goes hoping again.

“Fine,” Joshua spits. “Ask to kiss me, fishboy.”

Neku laughs. A bloom of fondness tinging his embarrassment like the bleed-out from a gunshot wound, sticky and warm and Joshua’s doing.

“Can I kiss you, Josh?” he asks, following up by miming the slack, open mouth gasping of a fish, aimed threateningly in Joshua’s direction. What a delight Neku is. What a catch.

“Hee hee, yes sir.”

Neku keeps his mouth closed this time, rough lips carefully brushed over Joshua’s, the accompanying spillover from Neku’s psyche into Joshua’s own more a slow, hesitant embrace than the sucker punch from before. Loved. He’s loved.

That’s sickening, he thinks loud enough he’s sure Neku’s heard it too.

“You’re such a bastard,” Neku confirms through his teeth, words slurred from the way he won’t move his lips from Joshua’s to say it. There’s no weight to it, no bite, only more of that heavy, bubbling fondness, knitting shut the rift in Joshua’s stupid little awful heart.

Joshua just hums, eyes closed, and lets Neku’s affection suffocate any other response he could give.