[an] I thought of this one night and I was like, "Why not?"

"Ne, Ryuuji," Rin came into his room with an armful of small boxes.

Ryuuji glanced up from his textbook. "Yeah?" He had an inkling of curiosity about what Rin was holding, debated to himself whether or not he should act upon it.

Rin beat him to the punch, waving one of the boxes in his face. Closer up, Ryuuji deemed it to be an innocuous box of pocky and not one of the other's harebrained schemes. "Let's play the pocky game."

"...Why?" If he ever felt like kissing Rin, then he would have done it already.

"Because I heard it was fun—or someone wins or something," the blue-haired teen mentioned offhandedly as he withdrew a matcha-flavored pocky stick. "Whoever—"

"—whoever breaks off first loses," Ryuuji interrupted, turning toward the other, "yeah. I know." Rin looked cute with the pocky stick dangling from his mouth, leading to untimely and unsavory thoughts. Ryuuji quickly dispelled them with heated cheeks and an imperceptible twitch of the eyebrow.

The half-demon regarded him inquisitively and Ryuuji waved it off by a shake of the head, taking the other end of the pocky stick with his lips to silently shift the topic. Rin counted down from three with his fingers before they started to chew at their respective ends. Unsurprisingly, it ended with a kiss and nothing more.

Rin pulled back an inch and furrowed his brows at the anticlimactic result. "Who won?"

"It was a tie," Ryuuji stated, rolling his eyes. "We done here? I gotta study."

"Not until someone wins," stubborn, Rin was already reaching into the open box, again had the pocky stick in his mouth. Ryuuji wrangled with the desire to kill and reluctantly surrendered to Rin's pleading face.

Eight ties later, the aria-in-training was conflicted between throwing the pocky box at Rin's head and dragging the idiot into his bed. "The test is in two days, dumb ass," he glowered at the pocky stick shoved in his face. "No one's gonna win."

"You're gonna ace it anyway," Rin easily dismissed Ryuuji's words with an honest opinion, "you're so smart you probably don't even need to study."

Ryuuji wasn't sure how to react, flustered by the compliment. Instead, he took the pocky stick into his mouth, grumbling in the duration that he could. That time however, Rin groped a handful of his bottom and Ryuuji jolted so much so that he broke the pocky stick. "Wha—"

The half-demon gloated. "I won!"

Ryuuji's jaw dropped. "That was a damn dirty trick, Rin." He snatched the box from his partner, scowling, "You won't win this time."

And the battle began. Neither held back from squeezing, pinching, or twisting whatever they got their hands on. Eventually, they could no longer surprise each other. They settled with stomping on each other's feet or bending back fingers until the loser yowled in pain. They even tickled each other every few rounds in. Eventually, they arrived to the last pocky stick, scores thirty-two to thirty-two with numerous ties in between, and their glares were rippling flames. They were both ready to do whatever it took to win and the cards were all on the table.

That is, Ryuuji's crotch became target for a squeeze and Ryuuji captured Rin's tail at the base. They stayed in that position for a moment, the half-demon molding the solid shape in his palm, Ryuuji gently kneading the trembling extremity. There was a moment where they paused at their pocky ends, breathed heavily through their noses as if to control themselves. It was exceedingly difficult with their eyes locked, revealing mirrored lust in darkened brown and graying blue. Just two breaths in and they lunged at each other. The competition was taken to the back burner as the furry tail tugged Ryuuji closer and their mouths hungrily met in the middle. The round inevitably ended in a resounding tie as the two forwent the tacit goal of the game and started a new game.

The squeezing, pinching, and twisting was then used for more pleasant reasons and Rin soon became hard for him, writhing and gasping under his touch. Their lips overlapped with lewd wet noises and searching hands. It seemed as if their clothes faded away through the spinning lapse of time, and suddenly their bodies were intertwined. There was no breaking away from the squeezing heat as he rolled his hips, growled breathlessly through a moan, "This ain't over."

"No—" Rin agreed in a nearly pained gasp and they kissed again, hard and deep, "—it's not."