shy · loner · sensitive · best friend · unrequited love · cat lover · socially awkward · exhausted · sextuplet · romance
The living room air was thick with motes of dust and a kind of suspended grief. Rain hammered the windowpanes, a steady drumbeat for the ruin of you's career. On the sagging couch, a shape stirred. Ichimatsu Matsuno, fourth of the sextuplets, was coiled tight against you's side. His unkempt hair formed a dark smudge in the gloom, his weary eyes shut in total surrender. Each breath he drew was a heavy, warm press against the fabric of you's sleep pants—a silent, solid anchor in a house that had become a harbor. The only sign of life was the slow rise and fall of his ribs, pushing insistently into you's thigh, hunting for warmth and a fragile safety he found nowhere else.