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The television was on, playing something that neither of them were really watching.
Altus had one arm resting along the back of the couch, not quite around Nayu but close enough that the intention was obvious. Nayu sat at his end with his legs tucked under him, phone in hand, scrolling through something that had kept him preoccupied past the commercial break until he just wasn’t watching at all anymore.
Which Altus didn’t mind, of course. Not when he was watching Nayu.
This was, generally speaking, how their evenings went.
“Hm,” Nayu hummed.
Altus glanced at the television out of courtesy. On screen, someone was defusing a bomb but it didn’t seem relevant to the sound Nayu had just made, nor was he focusing enough to pay attention to it.
“Something interesting?” Altus asked.
“Maybe.” Nayu kept scrolling. Then he stopped. His thumb hovered over the screen. “…Oh.”
Altus waited.
Nayu turned his phone around and held it up without looking at him, which was the Nayu equivalent of shoving it directly in front of someone’s face with both hands. On the screen was what appeared to be a small merchandise shop, the storefront photo showed a window absolutely packed with small round characters, all enormous eyes and tiny limbs, crammed between acrylic stands and hanging keychains and plushies of varying sizes.
Chiikawa merchandise. An entire store of it.
“Altus,” Nayu said, eyes still on his own screen, “can we go here?”
The bomb on the television was still counting down.
Altus looked at the phone before looking back at Nayu. Nayu was already back to scrolling through the shop’s tagged photos like someone doing serious research for an academic project would, lower lip caught between his teeth, expression stuck somewhere between interested and trying very hard to look merely curious.
“Yes, of course,” Altus said, was that even a question? “Shall we go now?”
Nayu’s scrolling stopped. He finally looked up. “Now?”
“Unless you’d prefer to wait.”
Nayu looked at the television where the credits were rolling. He looked back at his phone, at the shop’s address, at the distance.
“…it’s not that far,” He said, which was not a no.
Altus was already reaching for his jacket.
The shop was, in fact, kinda far.
The shop was also, as it turned out, located on a street that connected to several other streets, which connected in turn to a small shopping district that Nayu had apparently never visited, which was only a problem now because Nayu had noticed it.
They made it to the Chiikawa store first, and at least that had been in the plan. The plan that lasted approximately half an hour, during which Nayu moved through the shop picking things up and setting them down and occasionally holding something at arm’s length to look at it properly.
“What do you think of this one?” Nayu said. He was holding a small plush — one of the round white characters with a tiny worried expression — and looking at it with more seriousness than most people gave to major life decisions.
“It suits you.” Altus said.
Nayu looked at him sideways. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s very endearing.”
“I’m getting it.” Nayu huffed, and turned back to the shelf.
By the time they reached the register, the small worried plush had been joined by a keychain of the same character and a slightly larger version of a different one — this one appeared to be some kind of small creature in a hood, which Nayu had picked up, set down, picked up again, and ultimately tucked under his arm without comment. There was also an acrylic stand that Nayu had found in a discount bin and held up to show Altus with an expression that said don’t make a big deal of this while also clearly being delighted.
Altus took the bag at the register, because Nayu had his hands full sorting the singular receipt, and then simply kept holding it.
They stepped out of the shop into the afternoon, and Nayu looked down the street with a distracted type of focus and Altus followed his gaze. There was another storefront, a few doors down, not a merchandise shop this time, but something with stationery in the window.
“That’s—“ Nayu started.
“Yeah?”
Nayu glanced at him, then back at the shop. “I’m just looking.”
They went and “looked” until Nayu came out with a small notebook with a cover he had described as not bad actually and a set of pens that he said he needed anyway. Altus held the new bag too.
Down another half-block there was a shop with small collectibles — blind boxes stacked in neat rows along one wall — and Nayu stopped outside the window for only a moment before going in, which Altus had learned to recognize as the equivalent of being invited.
“You don’t have to come in,” Nayu said, which definitely meant he can come in. “I’ll only be a second.”
“I know.” Altus said, and followed him through the door anyway.
This one took longer despite being the aforementioned second. There was a meticulous process involved in blind box selection. Nayu picked up each box, turned it over, rattled it gently, checked its weight, set it down, picked up a different one. He did this in near silence, occasionally making small sounds that Altus had catalogued over time: a faint hm for uncertain, a soft exhale for probably not, a very brief stillness of the hands that meant this one.
In the end he only bought two.
Outside, Altus shifted the bags to one hand so he had the other free. Nayu had pulled out his phone to check something — the map, it looked like — pulling up nearby shops with what Altus hopes is the intention to stay out a little longer.
A while later, Nayu suddenly stops, Altus looks at him curiously.
“There’s a cafe nearby.” Nayu said seemingly out of nowhere.
“Are you hungry?”
“…it has good reviews.” He said instead, showing Altus the screen. Four-point-eight stars and a photo of something with matcha and what appeared to be excessive amounts of cream. “We could just check it out.”
“Of course.” Altus nodded.
Nayu pocketed his phone and started walking.
Altus, holding four bags, one giant plush, and the drink Nayu had handed him twenty minutes ago while gesturing at a keychain display, followed.
He thought he might be the happiest man in the city.
The cafe was small and warmly lit, with mismatched chairs and a handwritten menu on a chalkboard. Nayu looked at the menu for a long time before ordering something decisive, and then looked at the small display case of baked goods near the register and said “actually” and added something else to the order.
They found a table near the window.
Altus set the bags down around their chairs as a man who had long since accepted his role and was content in it. Nayu wrapped both hands around his drink and looked out the window at the street.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
“You were right,” Altus said eventually, stealing a bite of Nayu’s gluten-free baked good that rested on the plate in front of them. “the reviews were accurate.”
Nayu glanced at him over the rim of his cup. “Obviously.” He looked back at the window. “Good find.”
“Yeah.” Altus agreed.
Nayu’s mouth did something that was almost a smile. He took another sip of his drink and didn’t say anything else, but the way his shoulders had settled — the lack of the faint tension that Nayu sometimes carried without seeming to notice — said enough.
Altus looked at him in the afternoon light and felt something in his chest do something complicated and warm.
Some things were better just held quietly, at least for now.
The sun was lower by the time they made it back to the street. Nayu’s pace had slowed from the brisk navigation of earlier to something more meandering. He still stopped when something caught his eye, still pulled out his phone to check a storefront before they went in, but the urgency of the earlier shopping had softened into something that felt more like wandering.
Altus walked beside him.
At one point Nayu stopped in front of a window display — a shop with small home goods, candles and ceramic things and little objects with no practical purpose — and said “hm” and then “this is stupid” and then went inside.
He came out with a small silver trinket that had different sized pearls shaped on it, which he was holding in both hands and examining with a frown.
“For your bag.” He said, without looking at Altus.
Altus looked at the trinket. “Is it?”
Nayu’s frown deepened slightly, refusing to say anything else, but Altus just knew that meant he was shy.
“Ah,” Altus said. “thank you.”
Nayu handed it over immediately, which was the fastest Altus had ever seen him relinquish anything, and then turned back down the street with his hands in his pockets as if nothing had happened.
Altus looked at the trinket in his palm for a moment, then he carefully clipped it onto his bag and caught up.
Two blocks later, Nayu stopped again. This one was a smaller shop, the kind with a handmade sign and products arranged with careful effort. In the window there was a plush, a different style from the Chiikawa ones, something rounder and softer, with an expression of mild confusion that was frankly quite charming.
Nayu looked at it for five full seconds.
“Go ahead.” Altus gestured.
“I wasn’t going to.” Nayu scoffed, but went inside anyway.
He came back out forty-five seconds later with the plush under one arm, receipt in hand, expression perfectly neutral.
Altus wordlessly opened one of the bags.
“Thanks.” Nayu muttered, and tucked it in.
They walked home as the sky went orange around the edges.
Nayu toed off his shoes at the entrance and immediately migrated toward the living room while Altus began setting down bags, arranging them in a row along the low table to be sorted through properly.
The haul was, in hindsight, substantial. Altus had not kept count during the day — it would have felt rude — but laid out now it was clear that what had started as a simple trip for Chiikawa merchandise had expanded significantly in scope.
He began sorting by shop.
There was the sound of Nayu settling somewhere behind him, then a moment of quiet, then:
“…Thank you for today.”
Altus went still.
He didn’t turn around immediately, which was perhaps the only reason he didn’t show something embarrassing on his face in the first second. He took a brief moment to compose himself before he turned.
Nayu was standing near the couch, arms loosely crossed, looking at a point a few inches to the left of Altus’s face. His expression was doing its very best to be neutral, but there was something around the edges of it — something soft, not quite comfortable with itself yet — that Nayu probably didn’t know was visible.
“I know I kind of dragged you out suddenly,” Nayu added, to the air beside Altus’s shoulder. “so.”
He had, in the years he had known Nayu, catalogued many versions of him. The one who said bruh at things that annoyed him. The one who secretly malded during games that never required that sort of reaction. The one who secretly thought of Altus and showed it in his actions with a shy sincerity.
This version — the one who said thank you with his eyes on the wall and his arms tucked across his chest like he was bracing for a reaction — was one of his favorites.
“What?” Nayu said, suspicion creeping into his voice. “Why are you looking at me like that.”
“No reason.” Altus said, holding back a grin.
“That’s not a no reason face.”
“It’s nothing.” Altus said, and took a step closer.
Nayu did not step back, Altus noted.
Usually, when Altus approached with intent — or when Nayu thought Altus was approaching with intent, which was almost as reliable — there was a calculation behind Nayu’s eyes. A brief assessment of motive to which the resulting action was most often a sideways step, or a pointed look, or a don’t even think about it delivered with a tone that had already reached a preemptive decision.
Right now Nayu was just watching him, arms still crossed, expression still trying to be neutral.
Either Altus was being stealthy or Nayu was not thinking straight. Both possibilities were equally charming.
Altus closed the remaining distance slowly — no sudden movements, something in him quietly aware that this was delicate, that Nayu’s gratitude had left him slightly open in a way he would absolutely shut down the moment he noticed — and when he was close enough, he simply lowered his head and pressed one soft kiss to the corner of Nayu’s mouth.
Brief. Gentle.
He pulled back.
Nayu blinked. His expression did something complicated, but he did not move away.
Altus kissed him again, more squarely this time.
“…fine.” Nayu said, which was an astounding thing for him to agree to.
A third kiss and a fourth. Altus brought one hand up slowly, resting it against Nayu’s jaw and Nayu let him, which Altus filed away as evidence that miracles did, in fact, sometimes happen.
The fifth and sixth kisses were less brief.
Nayu uncrossed his arms at some point, which Altus felt rather than saw. A hand settled against Altus’s chest — steadying, maybe, or just present, Nayu tended not to announce these things — and Altus felt the distance between them close another degree.
The seventh and eighth were warmer.
Altus, operating now on a level of confidence he had perhaps not earned but was absolutely going to use, shifted his hand from jaw to waist. Nayu made a small sound. Not a protest and not not a protest either, but the weight of it was pay attention, which Altus was doing very carefully.
He walked them backward.
Nayu allowed it, which continued to be miraculous.
One step, two, then three. The backs of Nayu’s knees met the edge of the couch and Altus timed it exactly right, tipping them down together in a way that landed Altus on his back with Nayu braced above him, hand flat on Altus’s chest, the surprise of the landing sitting bright in his eyes.
Both of them were still for a moment.
It’s a small thing, the timing. The difference between a stumble and something that lands soft, that tips them together instead of apart. He’s had enough evenings end the other way — Nayu catching himself, catching on, stepping back with an expression that closed like a door — that he’s learned to be precise about moments like this one to not waste them.
He can feel Nayu’s hands on his chest, which had been meant as resistance and hadn’t become it. He knows the difference. He’s catalogued it carefully over time, the push that means stop and the push that means something else entirely, and this one had settled into his shirt and stayed there.
He kisses him.
Nayu makes no move to end it.
This is so rare. Altus keeps this reaction internal, where it belongs, and kisses him again.
There is an approach that works with Nayu and it is the only approach that works with Nayu, which is to want nothing further than whatever is currently happening. To be entirely satisfied with exactly this. It isn’t performance — that would never hold, Nayu would see through it in seconds — it’s something Altus has found he actually means, which might be the strangest and most clarifying thing about loving him. Every increment is enough. Every small allowance is its own complete thing.
One kiss. Two. Nayu’s grip on his shirt has loosened into something that isn’t a grip anymore, just contact, just presence, and Altus guides him back against the pillow and Nayu goes without resistance and the fact of it settles warm and heavy in Altus’s chest.
He keeps it slow. This is both strategy and preference as he’s not sure where one ends and the other begins, hasn’t been for a while. Nayu responds to slow. Not immediately, not obviously, but Altus can feel it in the gradual ease of him, the way the tension that lives in his shoulders starts to release degree by degree, the way his breathing changes in a way he probably doesn’t notice himself.
Altus notices.
He notices everything, when it comes to Nayu. He’s tried to scale this back over the years and found he can’t, so he’s simply become very good at not showing the extent of it.
Nayu says his name once, into the space between kisses, and Altus makes a sound back because he doesn’t trust himself to use words right now without saying something that would end the evening immediately.
He kisses along his jaw.
Nayu’s chin tips up.
This is the thing about Nayu, Altus thinks, distantly, warmly — the thing that he will still be thinking about in forty years probably — which is that his instincts and his decisions are constantly at war, and his instincts keep losing, and Altus has a great deal of affection for both sides of that conflict. The Nayu who decides things is careful and defended and would never tip his chin up on purpose. The Nayu who runs on instinct already has.
He comes back up and kisses him properly again and Nayu meets him.
Altus straightens enough to allow Nayu’s wandering fingers to pull his shirt off. He drops it and doesn’t make anything of it, just comes back down and picks up where they were, and he hears Nayu say something and kisses him before the sentence can finish and feels the brief shape of almost-protest dissolve.
His hands find Nayu’s waist.
Nayu’s hands find the back of his neck.
The room is very quiet, only the sounds of their mouths repeatedly meeting as background music. The bags are still on the table, waiting to be sorted, and they are both not thinking about this.
Altus is thinking about the afternoon — not deliberately, it’s just there, surfacing without permission because that’s what led them to this. The way Nayu had looked at shop windows. The weight of the bags, four or five or six of them by the end, which Altus had carried without being asked because of course he had, because he’d have carried twice that weight for twice as long if it meant another hour of watching Nayu decide between keychains he didn’t need but definitely wanted.
Altus presses closer and Nayu pulls him in, and the warmth of it is enough to undo a man entirely.
Some minutes pass but Altus isn’t counting them.
There’s a shift — he feels it before he understands it, a change in weight and leverage — and then Nayu’s hand is flat on his chest and pushing, and Altus lets him go without resistance, Nayu sitting up above him, pinning him down, and something about the angle or the pause seemed to reach Nayu through whatever pleasant fog had been keeping him agreeable for the past several minutes.
Altus watched the awareness come back into his face.
He watched Nayu look at where he was, watched Nayu look at who he was on top of, watched Nayu’s expression shift, by very clear degrees, from unguarded to recalled.
“…Altus.” Nayu said slowly.
“Yes, My Love?”
“You’re unbelievable.” He scoffed.
“So I’ve been told.”
Nayu was already climbing off him, straightening his shirt with sharp efficiency, not looking at him. His face was doing something between embarrassed and affronted. His ears, Altus noted with great warmth, were slightly pink.
“I literally—” Nayu stopped, pressing his mouth together before restarting. “I said thank you, that’s all, and you— “
“I simply wanted to return the sentiment.”
“You don’t return a thank you with that!”
“I thought it was appropriate.” Altus shrugged, refusing to bring up that Nayu had oh-so-conveniently forgotten to mention that he agreed to Altus’s deviousness or whatever he sees this as.
Nayu dropped his hand and turned toward the table, toward the bags, toward the project of sorting that had been so rudely abandoned, and began removing things from the first bag. “I’m sorting these. Don’t talk to me.”
“Of course.”
“And put your shirt on.”
“Fine.” Altus sighed.
Nayu made a sound of profound irritation and extracted the small worried Chiikawa plush from its bag, setting it carefully on the table. Then the keychain. Then the other plush, the hooded one, which he smoothed out with both hands before setting it beside the first.
Altus settled back against his hands and watched Nayu sort through their purchases with total concentration — plushies arranged first, then keychains, then the acrylic stand retrieved from the discount bin. The blind boxes from the collectible shop, not yet opened, set aside in their own small row. The stationery.
Every now and then Nayu paused at something and a very small expression crossed his face. Not quite a smile, something quieter than that, something that came and went before it committed to anything.
It was, Altus thought, an extremely good day.
“Stop staring.” Nayu said, without looking up.
“Sorry.” Altus said, but he wasn’t really sorry at all.
He looked at Nayu sorting plushies very seriously.
The way he was standing here right now, slightly unkempt from Altus’s hands, carefully arranging small round characters by size and expression, and calling it sorting.
Altus thought he might be the luckiest man alive.