writetomyheart | [team 2] "The next morning"

Here's 1400-ish words for the beginning of chapter 11 of my fic Red, White, and the Rising Sun. Jesse/Hokuto, G.

There is a strange knocking noise. It belongs in Jesse’s dream, though he’s not completely sure how.

Jesse squints at the window. It’s bright daylight out there, but with the blurred glass he can’t tell whether it’s sunny or cloudy. He has no idea what time it is, but somehow he knows it’s very early. He definitely hasn’t slept enough yet. So he closes his eyes again and, tugging the duvet up to his neck, snuggles closer to Hokuto. The other man is still sound asleep, his bare skin wonderfully smooth and warm against Jesse’s own. Completely, utterly comfortable and relaxed, Jesse wraps his arm around Hokuto’s waist and smiles against Hokuto’s shoulder.

There is a very loud and insistent knocking noise, and this time he’s immediately aware of its origin. He jolts up, gasping and blinking at the door. Hokuto sits up slower.

“What’s that?” Hokuto grumbles, rubbing his eyes with his palm. His hair is pressed flat from one side of the head and a fluffy mess on the other side, and Jesse wants to touch it so badly. He can’t though, because the next knock is accompanied with heavy kicking on the door.

“Jesse! Open the door-” Taiga bellows, his voice loud and clear even through the door. “-or I’ll call your mother and tell her where you are in three, two, o-”

“Alright, alright,” Jesse yelps, stumbling up to his feet and towards the door without a second thought.

He’s barely managed to twist open the lock before Taiga storms into the room, his eyes sparkling with anger.

“You goddamn fucknugget,” he snarls, picking up Jesse’s pants from the middle of the floor and shoving them into Jesse’s hands. “It’s too fucking early for me to have to stare at your junk.”

The question of ‘at what hour of the day would you rather stare at my junk then’ pops up on Jesse’s tongue, but for once he does the clever thing and swallows it right away, instead starting to pull up the pants. It should probably be disturbing that Taiga can recognize his clothes with barely a glance. Lucky for Jesse, they were actually his pants and not Hokuto’s.

Right. Hokuto. Jesse glances at the bed, but Hokuto has vanished. Oh God, he must be hiding-

“Where is she?” Taiga narrowed eyes scan the room like a hawk seeking for pray. “I can’t believe you let that shit of a princeling to find you a…a...sex worker-” Bless Taiga. Even when boiling angry, he’s too decent to use derogatory words of ladies of any profession. “-and help you run off with them!”

“There’s nobody else here,” Jesse says, noticing Hokuto’s dress shirt on the floor next to the bundled-up bed cover and trying to inconspicuously poke the shirt under the bed cover with his toes. “They… They left early.”

“It’s early now,” Taiga snaps. “And she left her phone here,” he adds and points at the bedside table where Hokuto’s phone is indeed lying next to Jesse’s. “Probably filled with snapshots of your sleeping ass, all of which she can sell to whichever magazine offers her the biggest price.”

“How did you find me?” Jesse stammers in a feeble attempt to distract Taiga while Taiga strides across the room, looking into the the bath room and frowning when he finds no-one there.

“There is a tracker on Prince Hokuto’s phone,” Taiga says, and pokes his head into the cupboard by the door. “Kochi made me wait until the morning before coming here. He’s in the next room by the way, probably giving the prince an earful of his own.”

“Oh. Alright.” Jesse picks up his shirt and, while Taiga’s turns his back to peek behind the long curtains, shoves Hokuto’s jacket under the duvet on the bed.

Hands on his hips, Taiga turns around to sweep the room with his gaze again. Suddenly, he lets out a darkly satisfied laugh.

“You better come out, miss,” he says in a professionally cool voice. “I can see your feet.”

With numb horror, Jesse watches how Hokuto, butt naked, sheepishly crawls from under the bed.

“Good morning, Kyomoto.”

Taiga blinks at him several times. Then, it’s easy to follow the process of realization as Taiga’s eyes leap from the bed to the phone on the bedside table, to the few pieces of clothing on the floor that Jesse hasn’t been able to hide yet, to the two pairs of shoes by the cupboard, and finally to Kochi, who has just appeared in the room and calmly leans against the door frame with his arms crossed.

It’s easy, and terrifying.

“You’re kidding me,” Taiga whispers, running his hand across his face and through his hair.

“I’m sor-” Jesse starts, but it’s too late. Taiga turns to glare at him, his wrath is even fiercer than it was before.

“How long has this been going on?”

“Uh. Since the New Year party?”

“Who else knows?”

“Only you, Kochi, and Juri.”

“And I told Shintaro,” Hokuto points out, beaming at Jesse while pulling on his boxers. “I forgot to mention it to you! He was absolutely thrilled for us. Told me to say hi, too.” Jesse’s stomach bubbles with warmth at his words and he smiles back at Hokuto. So both their best friends know now. Somehow, it makes whatever it is that’s going on between them feel much more real.

“You were supposed to befriend the prince, not stick your dick into him!” Taiga shrieks, crashing Jesse back into the present moment. Jesse winces, because Taiga is a friend who didn’t know yet, and he is kind of right. At the same time he knows that nothing Taiga says will ever convince him to stay away from Hokuto.

“It’s not his fault,” Hokuto valiantly tries, “I-”

“I wasn’t talking to you, sir,” Taiga snarls, and Hokuto snaps his mouth shut.

Shutting his eyes for a moment, Taiga rubs his temple with his fingertips. “Oh, gee. I can’t wait until your parents hear about this.”

Horrified, Jesse feels color vanishing from his face. Surely taiga wouldn’t- he wouldn’t. Right? “Please don’t tell my-“

“Oh, I’m not going to tell them anything. You are.”

“You can’t force me out of the closet,” Jesse insists. Taiga can’t deny that.

“Jesse. Even if your nightly companion wasn’t an unknown lady, what if someone saw you last night?” Taiga asks, and while his voice still isn’t anything close to warm, it’s not unkind either. “If anyone saw you two last night. Do you want to take the risk of your mum hearing about this through some malevolent piece of gossip in a trashy tabloid magazine?”

Jesse drops all his resistance at once, his throat squeezing at the thought of his mother’s disappointment and his father’s sadness. If something like that happened while he’s in Japan, he’d have to face them through a video call, which he really, really doesn’t want to go through again. His mother’s call after the disaster at Hokuto’s brother’s wedding was bad enough already.

Taiga nods like he’s been reading Jesse’s thoughts directly through the air.

“Right. So I want to see you in the car in five minutes. You’re calling your mum as soon as we get back to your grandparents.” He strides to the door and looks back, staring daggers at Hokuto. “Your royal highness,” he grumbles, shortly jerks his upper body in a way that could be loosely interpreted as a bow, and pushes himself past Kochi, muttering to himself as he goes, “I’m not paid enough to deal with this shit.”

For a few seconds Jesse and Hokuto stare after him. Jesse meets Kochi’s apologetic expression, and it brings up something Taiga said. He frowns at Hokuto.

“Did you know about the tracker?” he asks, totally ready to be indignant for Hokuto’s behalf. To his surprise, Hokuto’s face twists into a grimace similar to Kochi’s.

“I did. Even though I switch off my phone, he still knows where I go.”

Jesse doesn’t know what to say. Being followed wherever he goes is sometimes frustrating enough. He can’t imagine being actually tracked. Then again, if Hokuto is fine with it- Kochi interrupts his thoughts with a fake cough.

“I’ll wait outside,” Kochi says mildly and closes the door, leaving Jesse and Hokuto alone.

“You should take the first shower,” Hokuto says, flopping down to sit on the edge of the bed. “I bet Kyomoto is counting those five minutes of yours with a stopwatch.”

Taiga isn’t usually one to bother with pointless punctuality, but just this once he just might. Jesse groans, drops his pants back to the floor and heads for the bath room.