somebody pinch me

March 3, 12:15

"Kouya, the hell are you up to this time." It's phrased like a question but comes out sounding like a sigh – normal protocol for someone all too used to Kouya Ashihara's nonsense.

"It's a social experiment," Kouya says, leaning across the table they share, some parts of him moving more noticeably than others. To be exact – the pair of cushions he'd shoved down his shirt. "To see if people really would react to me differently if I were a girl."

"And you thought that shoving that down your chest would make people see you as a girl, even when every other part of you looks the same as always." Seijun sighs. Kouya's still wearing the normal Tensho Academy male uniform, even if the slim line of his physique had since been marred by the cushions, making their presence against Kouya's chest aggressively known. "Huh. You look the same as always to me. If but a little more stupid than usual."

"Sei-juuuuuuunnnn." Kouya trills, drawing out the second syllable of Seijun's name longer than he has a right to. His one eyebrow is raised and really, that look on Kouya's face would probably have been properly termed as a smolder on some other person, someone who wasn't an obviously awkward young man with obviously fake D-cups hanging down his poor overworked sweater. "Do you really think that?"

"Of course I do. Why would I ever think that you look anything other than stupid right now?"

"'Cuz, when we were doing that talk with the Japanese Research Club, and Shido-kun suddenly begun talking about...some things..." Kouya trails off, flushing a bit pinker as he makes hesitant, awkward hand gestures at around the vague generality of his chest and the stuffing it currently sports, a complete one-eighty from his casual manner earlier. "And, and you said that you quite liked 'em...y'know, big."

"I do," Seijun says, without even batting an eyelash, "But not on you."

(What Seijun doesn't say, though: I don't really have a preference. Just wanted to see how pink your cheeks would've gone if I said I did. Whaddya know, you were just a shade shy of Mon-tan. The thought almost makes him smile.)

"Oh," Kouya trails off, his voice a bit uncertain, for some reason.

"Yes, exactly." Seijun says, nodding, although he's still a bit unsure as to what exactly Kouya is mulling over right now. And who could blame him? For all his easy cheerfulness, and predictable constancy, Kouya's sometimes been a pretty hard guy to read. "Oh."

They spend the next few minutes of their shared meal in silence, Kouya sometimes taking moments out of his eating to look at his borrowed pair of endowments and frown at them. They...are admittedly quite impressive, and if only Seijun were some lesser man and Kouya weren't...well, Kouya, Seijun would've found himself as distracted as Kouya was, probably. Maybe. There's really no way for him to make sure.

"Did you get any good reactions yet?" Seijun quips instead, keeping his gaze calm and even when Kouya looks back at him, even when Kouya ends up making some weird strangled noise and ends up using his extra fluff as a rather convoluted kind of armrest.

"Well, I ran into Shido-kun when I was on my way to class this morning,"

"And?"

"He told me something along the lines of 'please leave me here, I can die happily knowing that I've seen heaven', so I just left him there to bleed all over the hallway."

"Kouya."

"What? I was running late, okay?" Kouya blurts out, with conviction, like he was in a debate and Seijun was his fiercest opposition. "And 'sides, the last I saw of him, Iimori-kun was cleaning up after him and muttering something about how Shido-kun should've made his life easier and let his nose bleed over the sink instead. When I passed by again the floor was spotlessly clean."

"That's the Beautification Club for you. Anyone else?"

"When I handed some papers over to Mitsuki-senpai, he did that little chuckle-thing he does sometimes, and he said that whatever I was planning, he wished me luck. Mitsutsuka-kun just looked really confused...and Enjouji-kun looked like he wanted to say something, but he...didn't say anything. At all. Uozu-kun just told me he wanted no part of this –" Kouya's eyes brighten, and he looks back at Seijun with renewed interest. "Hey, does that mean he doesn't really like being around girls, then? Since I'd heard that he doesn't really care for Kiyosu-senpai and Hanakuma-senpai's regular nanpa sessions..."

"I...don't think so. It's not that easy to us to say." Maybe he just doesn't want a part in your stupidity. But then again Uozu's always been quite a hard guy to read, too. "Anyway, I think that's enough data for you to get your answer now, don't you think?"

"What do you mean, Seijun? But I don't think that amounted to anything, I mean, they didn't even say anything about it –"

"They aren't treating you differently because you're a girl, or trying your hand at posing as one," Seijun says, enunciating his words by piling on the vegetables from his lunch on top of Kouya's bowl of rice, "They treat you differently because you're Kouya. Well. Save for Shido-kun, I guess, but he's always been kind of an outlier. "

"Really? But I haven't really noticed something out of the ordinary in the way they've been treating me..."

"...oh, but there's definitely something." Seijun says, smirking. "Because, when you pull something like this, we don't immediately assume that you've lost your mind. Even if it sure as hell seems like you have."

"Seijun, don't be mean!"

"I'm not, you brat. Just honest." Seijun says, capping off his words with something that could almost be called a smile. "It's different when it comes to you 'cuz we know you tend to take your experiments seriously. That's why nobody else is saying anything about it."

"Well, why are you saying something about it, then?"

"Hey, you asked me, didn't you?" Seijun shrugs, and Kouya frowns, mulls that over for the rest of lunch break.

It's almost time for class when they walk back from the cafeteria. Kouya takes both the offending appendages in his arms and frowns at them, saying, "Argh, heavy. They're more trouble than they're worth. I think what I've come away from this is that girls have it harder than we do."

"It took you this along to notice that?" Seijun says, quirking an eyebrow at his friend, before looking at him, really looking, and taking a step back. "Wait a sec."

His hand reaches up of its own volition, and before either of them know it, the elastic tying most of Kouya's hair back is out of its ponytail and tangled around Seijun's fingers.

"Seijuuuuuuuunnnnn, what was that for?"

Seijun takes another step back, and considers.

With his bubblegum-pink hair framing his face and curling around the tops of his artificial chest like that, thin lips pursed and big teal-green eyes looking at him morosely, Kouya could almost probably pass for a girl. Probably. If he finds some way to cover up that Adam's apple of his. Maybe he could button his collar over it?

(But, for some reason he can't really decipher, himself, Seijun thinks that things still wouldn't change if this were his reality, because – because no matter the gender, Kouya would still be the usual annoying Kouya he's known. Not that he'd tell him anything about this, though.)

"Huh. That's surprising. You don't look completely stupid." Seijun eventually says, hiding his mouth behind a hand as he walks away.

"Seijun –" Kouya starts. Stops. Ends up running after him. "Sei-jun, don't just say something like that and leave, you're being rude!!!"