Postdate (verb): to occur or come at a later date than.

"Hey. What's that?" Karasuma leaned over and examined a streak of silver nestled amongst his lover's russet locks.

"Perhaps I can answer your question if you specified where 'that' is," Asano said as he turned to him, having just finished his bowl of rice.

"Keep still." Ignoring the older man's indignant, half-hearted protest, Karasuma frowned and turned his head back around, guiding one particular area closer to where the light source illuminated it best. Yes. He wouldn't have noticed it had his eyes not been so well-trained to pick out camouflaged objects and people. But it was definitely what he thought it was. "I think… I see a white hair."

Just when he was beginning to think that Asano was somewhat immortal.

"Excuse me?" The violet-eyed man half-turned to him again, his features twisted into an expression of utter bewilderment. "If this is your attempt at a joke, Tadaomi—"

"I'm not kidding. Would you like me to pull it out?"

"Yes."

He carefully sifted through Asano's hair and pinched the lone silver strand in between his index finger and thumb. Then, he gently tugged at it until it came away in his grasp.

"Here," he said.

"My father's hair didn't start graying until he was well in his fifties," Asano muttered, looking a bit disappointed as he stared at the silver strand that was presented to him. He placed his bowl and chopsticks on the coffee table and promptly placed his head in Karasuma's lap with a rather dramatic sigh. He looked up, and grabbed the raven-haired man's hands, interlocking their fingers—his skin was warm and smooth against Karasuma's own rough callouses.

"I suppose I am getting old."

"You're long overdue, anyway." Karasuma slowly raised a hand to ruffle the other's hair. "Let's buy some Viagra later, okay?"

"Oh, be quiet."

Karasuma had faced his homophobic parents, skilled assassins, gun-equipped dogs, deranged ex-soldiers, and an eccentric yellow octopus that moved at Mach 20. He had faced trials that made him question his morals, his drive, and his abilities. He had been in fights that had brought him teetering between his life and the end—the memories of which only visited him in his sleep, when he was closest to death.

But none of them quite compared to Gakuhou Asano, the multitalented, bisexual, and slightly psychopathic superhuman to whom he had lost his virginity.

It wasn't even that Asano was intimidating, or anything. He could be quite tame (and even submissive) if handled correctly.

No, it was something else.

They had been together for a year now, and the man was still a big, blank space.

Karasuma knew stuff. The basics. His name, his address, his birthday. He liked ice-cream, teaching, and learning. He knew almost fifty languages. He went to Harvard. He could pilot a jumbo jet. He spent more time criticizing movies than actually enjoying them. He had a son named Gakushuu. And those were all that Karasuma could list off the top of his head.

Well, the ones that didn't have anything to do with sex. His knowledge on that was far more intensive. He knew Asano's body as if it were his own. He knew where to touch. He knew which spots made him moan in ecstasy and which ones made him look up with a face that said, "Eh." He knew how to make him come fast and come hard. How to make him beg. Those were the pleasures that only Karasuma knew—pleasures that never got old and never got dull. Those were the aspects that he was familiar with. It was the basis of their bond.

The physical realm of their relationship was easy.

The emotional was a different world entirely. An undetermined variable. And if there was anything that Karasuma's training had instilled in him, it was that knowledge was power. Be wary of the unknown. Strength meant almost nothing if you went into a fight blind and dumb. That was why intel-gathering was so important.

With Asano, that advice was, to put it bluntly… rendered useless.

They both had skeletons in their closets, sure. But Asano took it to another level, safeguarding his secrets like a dragon protecting his hoard. Whenever someone got too close, he'd snap his jaws and drive them away.

There were moments when Asano would just pause for several seconds at a time, eyes fixed on some faraway thing that Karasuma couldn't hope to know or see. Sometimes, he'd feel him moving beside him in the middle of the night, tossing and turning. He'd leave the bed and only came back, hours later, after the sun had begun to rise, to tell him that breakfast was ready. What he wouldn't tell him—because they both already knew—was that he hadn't been able to sleep. Karasuma had asked him about his sleep patterns once. He'd gotten a dismissive chuckle and an idiom: "The early bird catches the worm."

He didn't think that worms woke up at 2 a.m.

There were still so many things he didn't know about Gakuhou Asano, so many things that, despite his questions, the other man refused to share. It was understandable—neither of them were much for sappy confessions. He'd learned not to ask questions, learned to wait until the other was ready. Asano had waited for him. He hadn't pried, so Karasuma wouldn't, either, even though he had a feeling that it would take a while until he spilled his secrets.

In a battle of endurance, patience was a virtue. Maybe Asano would be ready the next day. Maybe in a month. Maybe in a year. Maybe longer than that.

But that was okay.

They had time.