Finally, he rolled me over, and knelt over me, looking very hot and flushed. Sweat was shining on his forehead and cheeks, and his eyes were black. He very deliberately captured my hands and pinned them beside my shoulders, then lowered himself and pushed slowly back inside me.
It had grown cloudy while he toyed with me, and a roll of thunder accompanied his descent. The wind picked up as he began to move, but it wasn’t until I was writhing in sweaty ecstasy beneath him that the heavens opened and drenched us.
Kyou spent himself completely soon after, and made no effort to keep his weight off me. I didn’t mind. I needed to cool down, and was not sure I was capable of standing anyway. It was only when the downpour shifted from stinging hard to sheets of water that he made some gesture toward moving, gave up on it for a few breaths, then managed to get to his knees and help me up.
We staggered into the summer house and dripped all over the floor near the door. Kyou fished in the under-seat compartments while trying not to soak everything in sight, and, finding myself dizzy, I sat straight down on the floor after he gave me a towel.
"Dangerously close to heatstroke," Kyou said, dropping beside me and feeling my forehead.
I felt his in return, since he’d been the one putting out the most energy. "Maybe a sprinkler would have been the optimal solution."
He smiled, and began to dry his hair. "Let me know if you start to feel sick," and we sat watching the rain.
"Did Bran try to compete this week?" I asked. "We’re getting very far ahead of him."
"I think so. It’s not necessarily surprising that there’s a week without Bran, but Rin and I discussed what to do if he keeps losing." He glanced at me. "If he hasn’t progressed by the time of the school trip, we’ll ask him if he wants to stop."
A jolt of disappointment made me pause, but then I nodded, and kept towelling my hair. "Do you ever regret becoming part of the student council? All these school events seem to involve a lot of work for you three."
"For the trip, it’ll be an advantage," he said, his eyes hooded in a faintly derisive expression. "It gives us some control over events, and also a ready-made excuse to leave whenever someone’s scheming to throw themselves on us."
I laughed. "You three aren’t the only good-looking boys in this school."
"I know. A group name apparently gives us mystique. But there’s no denying we’re a target for a lot of people, for all manner of reasons, and being busy and always needing to rush off is very useful." He shrugged, then added: "Because so many people are watching us, we’ll have to avoid you like the plague on the trip. I’ll apologise in advance."
"I’m not going, so there’s no effort involved."
He paused, putting down his towel, then shifted his face into a comically disappointed moue. "I was very much looking forward to seeing you in a swimsuit."
I stared at him, then down at my naked self, and raised my eyebrows.
"I know, but it still counts." He stood up and started sorting out his clothes. "Do you truly need to study eight days a week to get into your course?"
"I don’t know," I admitted. "It depends on the calibre of the other applicants. But because I can’t control the possibility of people being smarter than me, it becomes one of the things I can’t mentally put down when I’m trying to sleep. I want to be able to pass my exams with my eyes closed, because I’m scared I won’t be able to prop them open during exam week."
He pulled on underpants and trousers, then sat down on the heavy coffee table. "You thought we’d help your sleep issues. Haven’t these last couple of times made any difference?"
"It has." In fact, there’d only been a single night in the last week when I hadn’t managed to sleep in less than half an hour after turning my lights out, which for me was an excellent week.
"So, your concern is actually lack of sleep during the exam? Then my recommendation is to make this first term a clear, full experiment on the impact of regular sex."
"It’s not that this doesn’t sound tempting…"
"No arguing. Years of being expected to spend my holidays at the family business tells me you’re a typical high-achiever who burns out. Lack of sleep isn’t the only consequence of stress—work some proper breaks into your schedule." He hauled his laptop out of his backpack and soon had the application form for the school trip on screen. There wasn’t a lot to fill in, and he had most of it done in a moment, before passing the laptop over to me.
"You won’t see much of any kind of swimming costume if you keep covering me in hickeys," I remarked, but took the laptop.
"What do you usually do when you’re not trying to study yourself into a competitive field?" he asked, as I filled in the final details.
"Design fantasy cities, read novels, play games, go running or swimming. Lots of things." I handed him his laptop back.
"And have you been doing any of those this year?"
"Just Battle of Lothra on the bus."
"Oh? What’s your ID?"
"Isambard."
He found his phone, and while he poked at the screen I slowly dressed, watching him occasionally glance at me with appreciation.
Kyou’s game ID was Tiny Glittering Flower, which I did not comment on. For the next hour we waited out the rain and played the MOBA, first with some light duelling, and then randomly grouping in the five-man teams that were the mainstay of the game. He was good, I was good, sometimes the rest of the party was good. I enjoyed myself a lot, in part because he insisted I sit next to him with my legs across his lap. And also because the random players decided Tiny Glittering Flower was my girlfriend, and kept complimenting me on her skills—along with a lot of less polite comments. Since neither of us were using voice chat, and typing took too much time, I would just laugh and queue for another battle.
Just when the downpour was finally fading to a more regular rain, Kyou received a call, and chose to exit the game rather than ignore it. While his current champion stood uselessly before the enemy tower, I worked frantically to make up for the sudden absence. We were too close to victory to just give up.
"Hey," Kyou said to the phone.
I couldn’t hear precisely what was said, though I guessed from the voice that it was Bran. Kyou, previously warmly relaxed beneath me, turned to ice, and rapped out a series of terse questions.
"What happened?"
"How bad?"
"Where are you now?"
"On my way."
At that I abandoned the game and lifted my legs off him. Kyou grabbed his tie and looped it around his neck, then looked for his shoes.
"Rin’s been injured; he’s unconscious. Ambulance coming."
"I’ll tidy up here," I said.
He lifted a hand in acknowledgement, grabbed his backpack and hurried out. Whatever mystique the Three Kings did or didn’t have, there was undoubtedly a deep bond between them.
Hoping the rain would stop, I took my time drying the floor and hanging towels on hooks, but it looked like it was going to drizzle on interminably. Retrieving my folding umbrella from its pocket in my backpack, I detoured to fold the picnic blanket over the back of one of the outdoor chairs, then headed out of the garden. Gate locked, bars removed and replaced, and then a quick walk down to the dovecote to decide how I wanted to get home. While it was only five minutes to my next bus, the stop was on the far side of the campus. There’d be a twenty-minute wait until the next.