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“Damn! Where the hell is she?”
Noya sits back up from peering under his couch, nose crinkled in annoyance. Taking a deep breath he calls out one last time, “ROLLING THUNDER! Get back here you thankless animal!” He listens for the telltale skitter of his favorite pet returning when called, as she was usually prone to doing. She was obedient like a dog, but Noya figured Rolling Thunder had to be in her teenage rebellious years, or whatever the equivalent was in spider culture. How the heck was one supposed to determine when a tarantula hit puberty?
Stumped, Noya considers where to look next. Thunder wasn’t in the cupboards, even though she had gotten caught in a deep glass bowl before and needed rescuing. She wasn’t under any of the furniture, so she wasn’t sick or scared. She wasn’t climbing the furniture in an attempt to escape from the apartment or practice acrobatics. (Thunder had a habit of flinging herself off of tables or the arms of chairs, legs spread. She was also the reason Noya didn’t have many guests nowadays.)
If he was honest, Noya was a little worried. His tarantula was quite literally the size of dinner plate, especially with how well fed she was, so she wouldn’t be stepped on, but Noya was afraid of people killing her or a larger animal chasing her. Noya bites his lip worriedly.
All of a sudden, a bloodcurdling scream breaks the relative silence of the apartment complex. There’s nothing that describes the scream better than pure, unadulterated terror for one’s life, and it’s a sound Noya’s heard before. He brightens. “Someone found Rolling Thunder!”
Tumbling out his door, Noya turns to his left, only to be greeted by an open door and a hoard of boxes in and around the unit next to his. It’s then that he remembers, right, Kiyoko-san moved out, and a new person was supposed to be moving in today. Oops. He forgot to warn them about his mischievous arachnid. Noya runs in, dodging a box of safety scissors and another of butterfly stickers (what the hell?) to get to the middle of the apartment, where he stumbled upon the most confusing and hilarious scene of his life.
Perched atop a chair on his tiptoes was the beefiest beefcake Noya had seen in quite some time. He was far too tall for the tiny chair he was clinging to like a lifeline, hair falling out of his bun and into his face, highlighting the stubble on his chin and making him look like a ragged mess. His eyes were wide and terrified, fixated on the dark brown, almost black tarantula trying its hardest to climb the chair and reach the man. Almost foot-long knobby legs stretched for him and scratched at the chair’s wood. The man shrieked once more.
God bless you, Rolling Thunder. You’re getting extra earthworms today.
Noya managed to tear his eyes from the guy’s biceps long enough to audibly sigh, drawing the frightened gaze to him. He snapped at the tarantula impatiently. “Rolling Thunder! Heel!”
The scrambling stopped. Tarantula and man stood still.
Noya rolled his eyes. “Heel, girl!”
At the second call, Thunder skittered over the tile back to her master, promptly crawling up his pantleg and situating herself on the side of Noya’s thigh. Noya tuts. “That’s not how you greet new people, you know,” he mutters to the spider.
“Th-that’s your spider?” Hot New Neighbor said, voice wobbling. And damn, did he have the voice to match the body.
“Yep!” Noya assents. “Thank you for finding her, by the way. She’s very friendly and also pretty mischievous; I would have warned you but I forgot we were getting someone new in the complex until I heard you scream.”
“I was so sure it was going to bite me and then eat me…” the other man confesses, eyes still not straying from the spider.
“Nah, she won’t eat anything larger than a bird. And her bite isn’t much worse than a bee sting, but she does have some terrifying fangs, I’ll give you that one!” Noya laughs, and his new neighbor laughs weakly in response.
“Well, in any case, thank you for saving me from uh…her…” the man says, climbing down from the chair. “This is all rather embarrassing. I’m Azumane Asahi, by the way.”
“Not a problem! I’m Nishinoya Yuu,” Noya chirps.
“So where exactly do you live in this apartment complex? I reckon my scream must have been pretty loud,” Asahi asks, opening another one of his boxes to pull out a few sweaters.
“Oh! That’s right! We’re next door neighbors, fancy that!” Noya exclaims. All the blood drains from Asahi’s face. He takes one look at Noya, then the spider, then back at Noya.
“B-but if you live next to me…does that mean that thing…” he groans faintly and then keels over onto a pile of blankets and other bedding.
“Asahi-san? Asashi-san! Are you alright?!”
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Asahi groans as he wakes, blinking painfully at the brightness and feeling a little light-headed. His world comes into focus little by little, and he finds that he is surrounded by cardboard boxes and covered in a blanket. Right, I’m in my new apartment. Did I fall asleep while unpacking? How careless of me, I’d better lock my door…
As he makes to get up, a head pops around the corner from the kitchen, startling him into jumping. The man grins. “Glad to see you’ve woken up,” he says cheerfully. “I’ve got tea ready for both of us that I dug out of one of these boxes. I hope that’s okay?”
Asahi nods, still mostly confused. “Yes, that should be fine.” Who was this tiny person zipping around his kitchen again? Right, his bubbly new neighbor, if only he could remember his name…
“Nishinoya…Yuu, was it?” Asahi asks him when he walks into the unassembled living room with two cups of tea. The guy flops onto the ground in front of him and nods.
“That’s right. But most of my friends call me Noya,” he replies.
Asahi hums thoughtfully and sips his tea, trying to remember why Noya was in his apartment at all, when it hit him. He choked on his tea and burst into a fit of coughing. Noya, good-naturedly, tried to lean over and help him, but he only made it worse as Asahi scrambled away.
“Where did it go?” Asahi chokes out when he’s mostly cleared his throat.
“Rolling Thunder? Oh, I locked her in the terrarium she can’t escape from this time, don’t worry.” Noya sits back, looking unconcerned.
“You mean there’s a terrarium she can escape from? Oh dear god,” Asahi said, horrified. “Where the hell did you even get a spider like that from?”
“Brazil,” Noya replies simply. “I was there with some buddies a couple years back and there was a raffle for this goliath bird-eating spider—largest spider in the world, by the way—who kept eating all the other males in captivity, so they wanted her gone, dead or alive. I won her, got the permit to own her, and brought her back with me to Japan. She was bred in captivity and handled all her life, so she’s not really afraid of people.”
“Wonderful,” Asahi manages.
“Yeah, I’m pretty psyched that I got to rescue her from certain death,” Noya sighs, nostalgic. “She’s my favorite tarantula by far.”
Asahi pauses before taking another sip of tea. “You…have more than one tarantula,” he deadpans.
Noya nods. “Yep, seven mature ones and one pregnant female.”
Asahi pales. Oh god, he’s really not going to survive living here.
---------------
Despite the certainty of his inevitable death, Asahi lives through the first two months in his new apartment. He gets all his boxes unpacked within the first week of moving in, aided in no small part by his crazy neighbor and the extremely helpful landlord, Ennoshita (who Noya was always suspiciously absent around).
“What are all these craft boxes and posters for anyway, Asahi-san?” Noya asks him one day, nudging one of them out of the way while he lifts a box of books.
Asahi looks up. “Ah, did I never tell you? I’m a kindergarten teacher—all those boxes are for my class.” Noya huffs and hoists the heavy box onto the cart of boxes Asahi will be bringing to school tomorrow. He rolls his shoulders and wipes at the sweat building above his upper lip with his tank top, already soaked through. Asahi normally would have done all the heavy lifting, but Noya had insisted that he take care of the stuff lower to the floor while Asahi took the lighter stuff higher up.
For someone as small as he is, Noya is surprisingly athletic and muscular. Asahi realizes he’s staring and looks back down at the alphabet-themed carpet he’s rolling up with intense concentration. Noya makes a sound of understanding and picks up another box.
“Ah, so you’re the type who’s good with kids, huh? That’s a little surprising for someone of your stature,” Noya muses.
Asahi laughs. “Oh, I’m plenty scary to the parents. But for some reason, the younger children were never frightened of me even when the older ones cried. That’s why I stuck with them.”
Noya walks over to him and pokes him playfully with a sock-covered foot. “Got any of your own?”
Asahi laughs. “I’d like to. Not quite ready to settle down though, if you get my drift. Besides, my little ones in Kyoto were more than enough for me to handle; I’d imagine the ones in Miyagi are much the same.” Noya grins.
“What about you?” Asahi asks, standing up and moving into the kitchen to grab them both some bottles of water. “You got a family?”
“Nah,” Noya laughs, dropping off the box and following Asahi. “I’m single and ready to mingle. Too young and beautiful to settle down just yet, but I do love kids.”
Asahi tosses him a water bottle, and Noya gulps it down. Asahi swears he doesn’t watch Noya’s throat bob.
He finishes it with an almost sensual sigh of satisfaction. “Hey, y’know, if you’re hungry after this, I could take you to a nice café in town. You’ll need to learn the best places eventually.”
Asahi raises an eyebrow. “As long as Rolling Thunder doesn’t tag along.” Noya throws back his head and laughs, a sound so wild and free that Asahi has to join in with his own chuckling, the fan on the window ledge stirring the stale air of the final days of summer.
Of course, not all encounters with Noya were as pleasant as that first week, Asahi found.
Elevators had become dangerous cages of fear ever since Noya’s temperamental goanna, Flint, clawed her way out of her cardboard box and attempted to climb both the walls of the elevator and Asahi in an attempt to escape from her fate of going to the vet’s office. Noya had to literally wrap his tiny body around her to keep her from squirming and then employ Asahi’s assistance in shoving the hissing lizard back into her partially destroyed container. Noya had laughed and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, thanking Asahi with the most brilliant smile and embarrassed flush to his cheeks. Asahi was so stunned that he got off on the wrong floor and had to double back onto the elevator, much to the amusement of the kindly old woman a few floors down from him.
Then there was the case of the albino boa constrictor getting lost in the air vents. A fiery Ennoshita woke Asahi at 3am, snarling at Noya in an argument that most likely stirred the entire floor.
“This is the last straw, Nishinoya! I put up with all your damn pets because you’re supposed to be good at taking care of them, and then I get this in return!”
“I forgot that I had a hole in the ceiling!”
“Oh, right, remind me again why there’s a snake-sized hole in the ceiling?”
Asahi poked his head out at this point, blinking blearily. Noya was shrinking towards his door steadily, taking off for the relative safety of his apartment when Asahi’s appearance prompted Ennoshita to return to polite and professional landlord.
“I’m sorry for waking you Azumane-san,” he said pleasantly. “As soon as Noya has recaptured his pest of an animal and I’ve issued his eviction notice, everything will calm down.”
“Devon isn’t a pest, he’s an exotic rescue! I saved him from an abusive owner!” Noya hollered from inside his apartment.
“All of your ‘precious pets’ are nuisances when they wreak havoc and destroy my property,” Ennoshita growled.
Noya stuck his hand out the door and flicked Ennoshita off.
Asahi decided very quickly that this conversation had nothing to do with him and stumbled back into his room without even locking the door, even if he jumped at any remotely rope-like shadow on the floor. He had just settled back into his bed and closed his eyes when he heard the thumping. His eyes snapped open at the holler from Ennoshita to get down from the ceiling you imbecile, you don’t have a permit! Asahi could do nothing but lie in horrified silence as the thumping relocated from one apartment over to over his foyer, his living room, his bedroom…then silence.
Maybe Noya had finally wrangled the monster? Asahi held his breath hopefully.
But god didn’t feel much like smiling on him as one massive thwack later, Asahi found his bed covered in plaster, snake, and a triumphant next door neighbor, arms wrapped around his pet. “Ha!” he crowed. “Devon’s a real troublemaker, loves playing hide-and-seek, but I’ve got him this time!” Asahi was too paralyzed with fear to even move as he found himself lying face-to-face with an overly affectionate reptile. The boa flicked Asahi in the nose with his tongue.
“Nope!” Asahi declared, sitting up so fast that blood rushed to his head and Noya had to hold a hand out to steady him. Both man and snake slid from across Asahi’s body to in his lap, the boa climbing. With shaking hands, Asahi tried to remove as much snake from his person as possible, the lazy creature not helping in the slightest. “Don’t mind me; I can just feel a heart attack coming on.”
Noya, still fucking sitting in his lap, stilled Asahi’s hands with his own and placed an ear against his chest. Asahi’s pulse skyrocketed and Noya’s eyes widened. “Wah! You might be right, Asahi-san! Do you have a condition? Do you need me to fetch medication?” The intense line of questioning brought on a migraine and Asahi groaned.
“Noya…please just get the snake off of me,” Asahi moaned. The adrenaline from both Noya-induced anxiety and snake-induced fear were starting to get to him.
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I’ll replace your ceiling, too. If Ennoshita doesn’t kill me first.” Noya climbed off of Asahi and bowed apologetically, physically dragging his snake out, although Devon didn’t seem to mind the ride. Asahi didn’t sleep a wink that night.
He couldn’t forget the time when Noya’s entire colony of green tree frogs escaped down the hall and the entire floor had to assist in recovery. (Even then, Asahi found a few living in his toilet, their legs poking out and making him scream bloody murder.) Or when Noya introduced an entirely new species of gecko to the apartment building. Or that time with the newt that Asahi would not talk about over his dead body.
But the real, final kicker was when Noya asked Asahi to pet sit over the weekend when he had to be out to recapture an alligator in a different city.
“You’re a what?” Asahi asked in disbelief when Noya told him exactly why he was the only one qualified to recapture the animal.
“Animal control officer, special reptile and amphibian division. I also cater at birthday parties,” Noya replies blithely. “Why do you think I keep all these pets?”
“I thought you were some kind of exotic animal fanatic,” Asahi mumbled, shoulders slumping. Noya laughs.
“Well, that too. Now look, the lizards only need a few chopped fruits and veggies, with some of this supplemental food. The frogs need crickets and the snakes need baby mice—in the fridge by the way—but that’s it for the icky food. I’ve changed everyone’s water and there are no specialty customers for now. Oh, the tarantulas need crickets too. Mice for Rolling Thunder, though, my big girl.” Noya eyes his tarantula fondly. Asahi wonders if she could eat a small cat. Wait.
“Hold on, I can’t do this!” Asahi balks. “I’m terrified of your pets! Even being in your foyer is nerve-wracking!”
Noya slaps him on the back heartily. “C’mon, everyone has to look after them once. Complex tradition. ‘Cept for Kiyoko-san, that angel.”
“Noya, really, I—”
“Please.” Noya turns dead serious. “I know I’m not so great at keeping them contained ‘cause I love to spoil my kids but…I really don’t have anyone else to turn to. Ennoshita won’t let me leave them unattended. Please, it has to be you.”
Asahi bites his lip. “Alright. Just this once then.”
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Noya returns carrying a six-pack of beer on Sunday night.
Sticking his tongue out in concentration, he manages to shove his key in the lock, turning it while balancing his gear and the precious cargo. Grunting, he shoves the door open with his hip. He pokes his head inside. “Asahi-san?”
When he turns on the light, he is greeted by the sight of a clearly frazzled Asahi passed out in a chair. His head is tilted painfully far backwards and there’s a line of drool down his cheek to compliment the weak snoring coming from an open mouth. Noya breaks into a fond smile. He really did take care of them, after all.
Noya drops his load off in the kitchen, padding back over to scan the cages. Every single animal—even the terrible Thunder—are properly fed and content. They really took to him, then, Noya thinks gleefully. Walking back over to Asahi, he shakes his shoulder gently.
“Y’know, if you sleep like that, one of those house spiders is bound to crawl in your mouth.” That startles Asahi into consciousness. He snaps his jaw shut in surprise, then looks up at Noya as if he’s Jesus Christ incarnate.
“You came back,” he says in wonder.
Noya raises an eyebrow. “I never planned to abandon you in the first place.”
“That’s—” suddenly realizing the saliva on his cheek, Asahi scrubbed it away furiously, “that’s true, but it sure did feel like forever.”
“I brought beer as compensation,” Noya replies.
“I am all for that right about now,” Asahi sighs gratefully.
They lean against the bars of Noya’s balcony, sipping on their drinks, for the rest of the evening. Asahi relates the adventures of caring for Noya’s exotic pets, while Noya describes wrestling an alligator with erratic hand gestures and incomprehensible noises. He’s able to surprise a few laughs from Asahi, leaving Noya feeling light and giddy himself, slightly buzzed after two beers. They point out interesting people passing on the street below them while nursing their thirds, shoulders brushing comfortably.
Part way through the evening, they are visited by a friend of Noya’s and Asahi’s godsend—the hairless stray cat nicknamed ‘Tanaka’. The fierce-looking cat immediately rubbed against Noya’s legs until he received some sliced chicken as payment for his services in protecting Asahi.
“I was so surprised! Not at the fact that he could take on all the animals—even Devon—but that he did with such ease,” Asahi elaborates. “Never with claws—always soft pads to bat them back into their cages and a lot of aggressive, showy behavior with no bite behind it.” He scratches the stray behind his ear absently, earning a low, rumbling purr.
“He’s a real softie under that tough exterior,” Noya agrees. “I don’t own him by any means, but he’s still kind of my cat, y’know? I feed him whenever he shows up.”
“Well that’d be because you can’t say ‘no’ to an animal in need,” Asahi teases. Noya barks in laughter, nose scrunching adorably, and Asahi feels his stomach drop below his feet. Oh no.
The problem was that Noya was just so genuine, so real a person. There was no deception behind his smiles or falsity hidden in cheerful morning greetings. Noya was straightforward and passionate, but also loving and not nearly as brash as he pretended to be. He made up for small stature in a big heart, something Asahi admired greatly about him. Even his obsession with reptiles was adorable—he made signs for each of his pets with a guide to their care and little illustrations to go along with them. Although he seemed to be a careless owner, letting them escape so often, it was mostly because he wanted to give them space to move and live freely.
Asahi’s heart skipped a beat in time with the passing taxis, jolted with the blare of a siren rolling down the street—when really the emergency was right in his apartment complex, making itself known in the blossoming feeling in his chest. Noya smiled that soft smile down at the fleeting lights, and Asahi knew. This might…be more than just a crush.
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“Okay, okay everyone, quiet down!” The rabble calms only slightly at Asahi’s kindly scolding, tiny bodies shifting on the rug, clambering for the first look at their surprise guest. Asahi shushes the always adventurous Miho, already asking about what kind of animals would be coming any moment now.
“Noya-san, you may enter now,” Asahi calls. The door flies open, making an impressive entrance as Noya strolls in, two pythons curled around his arms. He’s greeted by a chorus of screams—both delighted and afraid. The parents at the back of the room giggle and murmur to each other at the kids’ reaction.
“This is a good friend of mine, Nishinoya Yuu-san,” Asahi introduces Noya. “He’s an animal control officer and a specialist in reptiles.”
“Whadda ‘bout amphibians?” Miho pipes up from the front row. Noya grins at the question.
“Why of course, little lady. What’s your name?” Noya inquires.
“Kaname Miho,” she replies shyly, twisting her hands in her dress.
“Well then, Miho-chan, how would you like to be the first to pet Indigo here?” Noya offers the snake on his right arm and Miho giggles, petting the snake gently.
“She’s funny feeling!” Miho murmurs, and her classmates gather around her, all vying for a chance to pet the snake. Noya handles the crowd with practiced ease, enough so that Asahi can step back and just watch as Noya alternates showing off animals and talking about their species. It’s a really special hands-on learning experience, and Asahi’s glad he asked Noya to start the year off with this.
There are bearded dragons passed around, tarantulas placed on heads, and Devon even reappears for the parents to make a line and hold, the snake too heavy to be lifted alone easily. Noya has the ability to coax even the shier of the kindergarteners forward to lay a hand on his pets, if even for a moment. More so than that, Noya finds that it’s genuinely fun to teach these kids about the animals, teasing them and playing around. They accept him as one of their own quickly—most likely because of his height—but Noya also finds that they seek the approval of Asahi.
Every time one of the little boys hesitates or a girl runs away, they always look to Azu-sensei for guidance. It’s with gentle encouragement from him and assurance of their safety from Noya that makes the kids feel safe enough to interact with the reptiles. Towards the end of the party, a few of the adults come forward to thank Noya and even ask him a few questions about his work. Noya would have actually been able to engage the curious parents if he wasn’t so darn distracted by Asahi.
A towering giant among the children, Asahi drifted amongst his kids, helping them out with the lizard craft they were working on. To see such large hands gluing together pieces of foam and handing it back to glowing child did unexpected things to Noya’s heart. Asahi had a kind smile on his face at all times, occasionally brushing a stray hair away from his face as he crouched down to help out the next customer. It was sickeningly sweet.
When it was finally time for the kids to leave, they protested loudly, clinging to both their Azu-sensei and Noya-niichan desperately. The two hosts laughed as they pried pouting kids off and placed them into the arms of waiting parents, Noya promising that he would definitely come back another time to visit, waving goodbye until it was just the two of them left with the final tidying. Noya stacked the last of the cages on top of his cart, dusting his hands off in satisfaction. One of the bungees slipped from his hand, and he made to lean down for it at the same time Asahi came up behind him and did the same.
“Here, I got it—”
“Ah, no, it’s—”
Noya brushed their noses together bending over, and nearly snapped his spine at how fast he jolted upright. They were still too close together; Asahi reaching a hand to Noya’s hip to steady him, breaths mingling. “…fine,” Noya breathed softly, voice barely a whisper.
There was that moment—the moment of hesitation, the ‘does-he-doesn’t-he’ heartbeat of uncertainty—but Asahi’s eyes were too warm and inviting to mean ‘no’, and he was right there, so Noya took a chance. He pressed their mouths together gently, tilting his head and holding them there just long enough for Asahi to know it couldn’t have been a mistake. Noya leaned away hesitantly, wanting to linger but pulse spiking with the fear that Asahi might not have wanted that.
He had no reason to worry. Asahi’s smile was bashful and small, but there was a happy light in his eyes as he straightened up, hand solid on Noya’s hip. All at once, that darn height gap was back and Noya pouted, parting his lips to complain. He was silenced by the warm hand on his cheek, tilting his head once more to meet Asahi. Noya sighed into the kiss contentedly, his own hands grappling Asahi’s back, sliding over strong shoulder blades.
Noya nipped at Asahi’s lip determinedly when he pulled away, startling a soft laugh from Asahi. “No fair,” Noya murmured. “You’re too tall, get down here.”
“Don’t you have some reptiles to pack in the back of your truck?” Asahi grinned, kissing Noya on the tip of his nose.
Noya shrugged. “I’m more interested in the things that could happen in the cab of my truck, to be quite honest.” Ah, there it was. The signature Asahi blush he had grown to love after weeks of blatant flirting.
“You can’t just say things like that on school groun—mmph!” Asahi was silenced by a more insistent kiss, Noya leaning into him on his tiptoes.
“My place, then?” Noya suggested, wiggling his eyebrows.
Asahi paled, much to Noya’s surprise. “What? Oh god, I’m sorry, is this too fast?”
Asahi rubbed his neck nervously. “N-not at all, but…” He eyed the reptile cages with suspicion. “Better make that my place.”
Noya’s laugh echoed all the way down the school’s hallways.