Our beneficent Halrloprillalar intimated that InuKai kissing drabbles were in season, and thus, a Christmas drabble.

it certainly has the potential to be a wonderful life

The sharp knock at Inui's front door continued all the while that Inui pulled on his sweat pants, put on his glasses, ran down the stairs, checked that it was Kaidoh through a side window, and opened the door. Kaidoh stood on the porch, in the streetlight, breathing forty percent faster than normal. Oddly enough, his expression was one of restraint.

"I need--" he said, stepping closer. "May I come in?"

Inui nodded and moved back out of the doorway. Kaidoh came in and Inui shut the door; Inui flicked on the hallway light and winced. Kaidoh, looking up at him from where he was leaned against the foyer wall, knee drawn up, tugging off his shoes, said, "I saw an angel."

Inui frowned. Kaidoh was wearing a jogging suit with a winter coat and scarf thrown over it, and his hair was loose. His eyes were narrowed, not dilated, not manic, but intent. "Oh?" said Inui.

"I was thinking-- I was angry--" Kaidoh's dropped his shoes and nudged them neatly against Inui's shoes. He straightened. "I went running on Track B2." Track B2 was a five-mile circuit at East Downtown that circled a park. Inui nodded. "I stopped at the bridge for a minute, and I was thinking-- looking at the water, I thought--" Kaidoh stopped and made a frustrated gesture toward himself, toward his chest, as if to say, moody. "I thought things would be better if I'd never been born."

Inui's frown deepened. "Why would you think that?" Two days ago, Kaidoh had lost a match in their game with Ginka, but it hadn't really cost them anything in the way of ranking, and Kaidoh grew so much as a player every match. Of course, there were other things going on-- money issues, arguments with his father-- and of course, as Kaidoh had intimated: moody.

Kaidoh took a sudden step forward. His breathing hadn't slowed, which made it about sixty percent unlikely that the breathlessness resulted from the running or the knocking.

"Are you alright?" Inui asked.

Kaidoh said, "An angel came and showed me what the world would be like, if I really weren't ever born."

Inui's frown had deepened as far as it could go already, so instead he looked past Kaidoh to the darkened living room. He pointed. "Let's go into the house." He held out a hand-- a sort of shepherding hand-- and moved to walk past the other boy, but suddenly he found himself touched at the waist and cornered against a wall.

"You were the same," said Kaidoh, "It didn't matter. He showed me you in this house at your computer, analyzing ranking matches. You were the same. Everything was in the same place."

It wasn't that Kaidoh was not physical; he was always grabbing at Momoshiro or jostling his way through the crowded school hallway; but there had always been an insulation of politeness around Kaidoh where his senpai were concerned. Inui wasn't wearing a shirt. He shook his head, startled.

"That's not--" he began, but Kaidoh interrupted him with a hiss, then by leaning up and pushing his mouth against Inui, hard, almost more to the side of his face than to his mouth. His lips were damp from shallow breathing. He unbunched his hands and slid them, open-palmed, up Inui's chest.

Inui's mouth fell open.

Kaidoh said roughly, "I want it to matter."