Chapter 8: Conclusion?

The Spatula Test – Another Misplaced Citrus: Panda Barrettes

Chapter Eight: Conclusion?

Hiroki awakened the next morning to a pair of warm lips on his forehead: Nowaki was kissing him.

Waking up to find the giant intruding so deeply into his personal space always set him off.

"Idiot! What the hell are you doing?" Hiroki shouted, pushing Nowaki away.

Nowaki just sat back and smiled at Hiroki benignly. "Hiro-san, I couldn't figure out another way to wake you. I already tried to get you up like twenty-two times."

Hiroki growled and rolled over, pulling the covers up over his wild auburn head. He felt the futon shift as Nowaki stood up.

"Please, Hiro-san, go back to sleep if you want," Nowaki said kindly. "It is Sunday after all, but you said last night that you wanted to have breakfast with me before I left for work today."

Hiroki heard Nowaki softly close the bedroom door as he went back out into the main room of the apartment. The professor sighed. He knew that if he wanted to see Nowaki at all that day he had to get up.

Nowaki had graciously agreed to go into the flower shop early to assist the owner with his bi-annual inventory and he was also pulling a double shift at the hospital. This meant once the big dork left, he wouldn't be seeing Nowaki again until Monday morning. Nowaki would be coming home, just as he left for work at the University. Hiroki couldn't wait for Nowaki to finally finish his residency and get his own practice going so that he hopefully wouldn't have to work so much and could maintain some more reasonable hours.

The professor got up very slowly and groaned; he was really stiff, and not in the fun way. Still, in spite of the expected discomfort in his lower half, Hiroki's whole body actually felt marvelously attended to. Hiroki went to run his fingers through his sleep disheveled hair. Looking at his arm as he raised it, he grimaced. He put his hand back down and instead, went over to the closet and began pulling out his clothes.

Nowaki smiled, when he heard Hiro-san move from the bedroom to the bath. He was pleased he would have the chance to see his beloved before he had to leave. He had just finished putting the last of the breakfast on the table, when Hiroki emerged from the bathroom, looking remarkably well put together for a Sunday morning.

Hiroki sat down very slowly, wincing a bit as his backside made contact with the chair. He looked up at Nowaki.

The younger man noticed a flash of silver, lying low on his lover's long neck, just at the lowest point of the open collar of the dress shirt he was wearing.

The two men's eyes met and the activities of the previous day flared in the memory of both. Hiroki blushed deeply and looked away. Nowaki's already goofy smile just increased in goofiness.

After a quick blessing, the couple began eating.

Nowaki studied his lover thoughtfully as he chewed. He eyed Hiro-san closely: something just wasn't quite right about the man this morning. Then he realized what it was.

"Hiro-san?"

"Hmmmm?" Hiroki had picked up one of his books that had been sitting on the corner of the table and was now flipping through it.

"Why are you so dressed up?" Nowaki had realized that Hiro-san was wearing one of the long-sleeved shirts he reserved for teaching. Normally on the weekends when he didn't teach, the man always dressed much more casually.

"Well, I thought I might go into school later and do some work, since I'll be on my own today," Hiroki responded, not looking up as he reached for the teapot to fill his cup. He started, however, when instead of the teapot's handle, he found his fingers carefully clasped in Nowaki's warm hand.

His eyes snapped up and he saw the horrified look on his giant's face, as with his other hand, Nowaki pushed back the cuff of his shirt sleeve. Hiroki's wrist sported a deep purple bruise from where he had pulled against his restraints during the previous day's role-playing.

"Oh, Hiro-san," Nowaki whispered. "I am so sorry."

Hiroki pulled his hand quickly out of Nowaki's grasp. He scowled and a new blush arose on his cheeks. "Dumb ass, it's nothing. I'm fine… I just got a little too far into character yesterday."

"Oh, Hiro-san," Nowaki said again in the same sorrow stricken tones.

Hiroki was pained more by how upset the bruises seemed to make Nowaki, than by the actual marks themselves. "Really Nowaki..." He tried to console the younger man. "It's nothing. So I have to wear long sleeves for a week or so… No big deal, just drop it!" But looking at the expression on the face of his overgrown lover sitting next to him, Hiroki could tell Nowaki wasn't going to let it go. In fact, much to his chagrin, the big dork actually looked like he might be tearing up.

If Nowaki started crying, that would be unbearable. He had to do something fast.

Desperate times call for drastic measures, so Hiroki screwed up his courage and pushed up from the table. He took Nowaki completely by surprise, moving over and settling himself, cautiously, sideways in Nowaki's lap. Hiroki looked deep into his partner's troubled blue eyes and growled. "Okay, Nowaki, I gave you the option to leave it, but you obviously are not going to take my direction, so you leave me no choice."

"What?" Confusion replaced trouble in Nowaki's cobalt eyes.

"Shut up and just sit still!"

Puzzlement turned into shock as Hiroki placed one hand under his giant's chin, gripped it, and turned Nowaki's head to the side. Then he ran the fingers of his other hand through the thick inky hair on the back of Nowaki's head. He used this hand to tilt the tall man's head over.

Then Hiroki did something very bold: he latched on to Nowaki's neck with his mouth.

It took the younger man a moment to realize what Hiroki was doing, but as soon as he did, Nowaki shouted. "Hey!" He started trying to squirm out from under Hiro-san's grasp.

Hiroki was pained a bit in his nether regions by Nowaki's movements. He shot a very cross look at Nowaki and detached himself from his lover's neck only long enough to hiss: "I said, shut up and be still, this is Master Kamijou now!"

Hearing the ferocity in Hiro-san's voice, meekly, Nowaki complied.

When "Master Kamijou" finally released him, Nowaki had a magnificent hickey well-above his collar-line.

Hiroki got up slowly off of Nowaki's lap, returned to his own seat, sat down regally, if a bit gingerly, and resumed eating as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "There," he gruffed, picking up his book again. "Now we're even, so stop mooning about it."

"Hiro-san?"

"What now?" Hiroki sighed.

Nowaki looked down at his tented lap. Apparently, Hiro-san's attention had ensured that all of his giant was now wide awake this morning.

No wonder Nowaki's lap had felt so uncomfortable.

"Like I said," Hiroki hid his grin behind the pages of his book, ignoring Nowaki's pleading looks. "We're even. Now finish your breakfast, Pervert, and go to work!"

Later that day, Hiroki did actually find himself going into the University.

The apartment seemed terribly lonely without Nowaki and after the events of the previous day; there was no part of their home that did not stir his heart with memories or longing.

As he opened the door to his office, the wafting cloud of smoke that greeted him alerted the junior professor that Miyagi had also come in and had apparently been there for some time.

"Kam-i-jou, my sweet honey!" Miyagi chirped as Hiroki entered the office.

Hiroki scowled at his senior as he set his bag on his desk. As he sat carefully down, Hiroki found himself wishing he had chosen a chair with more padding.

His junior's state had not gone unnoticed by Miyagi.

"Observing how you are moving today, my dear Kamijou, I can tell that big brat of yours has been taking you to task recently. You must tell me how you escaped."

"Funny thing, that notion of escape, Professor Miyagi," Hiroki shot back, as he sorted through some papers on his desk without looking up. "Did your underage boy toy have a play date or something?"

Miyagi grimaced and was suddenly glad that Kamijou had not bothered to look at him. He had been hiding out in his office now for about four hours.

Ever since their incident with the "poisoning,"*Shinobu had gotten some pretty strange ideas in his head about how to help alleviate some of Miyagi's stress about trying keep him satisfied sexually. Miyagi had fled their apartment to get away from Shinobu and his increasingly persistent proposals.

Looking back over at Hiroki, Miyagi knew that he had promised Kamijou's giant the he would cease harassing the younger professor. But sitting here in the state he'd been in all morning, dwelling on all the unpleasantness with Shinobu, the temptation to tease was just too great.

After all, why wallow in such troublesome thoughts when there was the diversion of his easily riled assistant right there?

Miyagi got up and moved over behind Hiroki's desk. He wrapped his long arms around his junior and cooed in to Hiroki's ear. "Oi, Kamijou, why must you always be so cruel?"

"Get off me, Professor!" Hiroki snapped. "You know I don't appreciate being harassed. Can't you please give it a rest for even one day?" As he pushed Miyagi's hands off him, the senior professor's fingers grazed the silver chain around his neck.

"What's this Kamijou?" Miyagi asked, pulling back Hiroki's collar and eying the silver band with surprise. In the years he'd known the younger man, he'd never seen Hiroki wear any kind of adornment. "Did that boyfriend of yours get that for you? A gilded collar to go with that short leash he keeps you on?"

"With all due respect, Professor," Hiroki snarled as he pulled his collar out of the other man's finger's, "fuck you."

"Oh my darling are you offering at last?" Miyagi teased. He latched on to a struggling Hiroki once more, completely unfazed and actually quite delighted by his junior's rage.

Both men froze however, at hearing an angry "Hrrrrumph" issue from the direction of their office door. The two professors looked up in unison into the very perturbed face of one honey-haired, gray-eyed teenager.

"Shinobu-chin!" Miyagi's voice immediately slipped into its most appeasing tone.

His brat, however, was having none of it. "First you promised you'd stay away from the damned Demon, Miyagi and then I find you here offering to let him top you?…When I've been trying to get you to let me do that for the last three weeks!" Shinobu shouted.

"Miyagi, you're an ass… and I am calling Kusama-sensei!" Shinobu declared as he flipped open his phone and stormed out of the office slamming the door behind him.

"Oh, shit." Miyagi muttered under his breath. He quickly grabbed his briefcase up off the floor and headed out the door. "Shinobu-chin!"

Hiroki could hear his senior's voice echo down the University's empty hallways. Finally, alone at last, Hiroki unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves and picked up a red pen.

He found himself returning to what Miyagi had said before his brat had shown up. Hiroki brought one hand up and his fingertips traced the cool chain around his neck.

Collar and leash, eh? Hiroki smiled at this thought. Kami might like that.

He began reading his student's papers, but the back of his mind he wondered how long it would be before he had the opportunity to make a promise to Nowaki again.

The End ?

Omake

Hiroki: *scratching himself* "God damn it Nowaki, why didn't you tell me when I let you shave me that it was going to itch so fucking much when it started to grow back in?"

Nowaki: *with sly puppy smile* "If it's too uncomfortable, Hiro-san, maybe it would be better if you just let me maintain it."

Hiroki: "Pervert!"

Note:*Chapter Thirteen of "The Spatula Test" Shinobu "poisons" Miyagi, medical help is sought and promises are made. If you haven't read it already, I encourage you to check it out.

Thank you all, for accompanying me on this wild and sometimes OOC little fic.

I appreciate all who reviewed, your encouragement, kept me going on this piece which was a bit OOC for me too (though fun, I will admit).

If you'd like me to bring Kami and Kusama back for an encore, you have something else you'd like to see, or you want to make some comments on this piece, please feel free to write a review or send me a PM. All of the above are appreciated.

Sincerely,

Cerberus