My Mate Is My Roommate?

Chapter 5 - Fake Dating Proposal

By Sunday Kaito was human again, and mortified beyond human.

He tried to pay Renji back with cash, folded bills from his part-time cafe job. Renji pushed his hand back. "My cousin's pharmacy gives family discount. It was thirty percent off. Don't worry." He tried to cook to make up for it, but he was a terrible cook and the porridge came out too salty and the egg too hard. Renji ate half without complaint and said it was good, which made it worse. He tried to avoid eye contact in the small room. Renji let him, giving space, not commenting on the way Kaito sprayed blocker three times a day now and checked his pill case each morning like a ritual.

It was Renji who broke first, because Renji was braver.

They were doing laundry in the basement on Sunday evening, folding clothes side by side on the warm dryer. The basement smelled like detergent and damp. Renji was folding his practice jerseys with sharp creases, efficient even here. Kaito was folding his oversized hoodies, trying to make them small.

"I need a favor," Renji said, not looking up.

"Anything," Kaito said instantly, then blushed at how eager he sounded. "I mean - what? You helped me, of course."

"My mother," Renji said, folding a towel with too much precision. "She thinks I need to date. She thinks lacrosse is not a life. She keeps sending me omegas from family friends, photos, lineages. One is coming to the campus mixer next Friday. A Beta girl named Mika, she is nice, but I don't want - I don't want that. I told my mother I am focusing on captaincy, she doesn't listen."

He looked at Kaito then, direct. "Will you be my fake boyfriend for the mixer? One night. We hold hands, we tell people we are together, she tells my mother, my mother stops for a semester."

Kaito dropped a sock into the dryer gap. "You want me - to pretend - with you? Like - boyfriend?"

"It would also help you," Renji added quickly, as if he had rehearsed this part and was nervous. "If people think you are taken by an Alpha, especially me, other Alphas will not bother you. Especially after -" He gestured vaguely, meaning the bathroom, the heat, the way Kaito's scent had filled the hall. "Daiki and others leave taken Omegas alone. It's stupid but it's true."

Pretending to be Renji's boyfriend. Letting Renji hold his hand, maybe his waist, calling him Renji in public. Having an excuse to stay close enough to smell cedar without shame, to be called his. Kaito's heart did a complicated, painful thump.

"It won't be real," Kaito said, testing the words, tasting them.

"Not real," Renji confirmed. His ears were red. It was the first time Kaito had seen him not composed. "We will set rules. No kissing unless you want. No - no real marking. We can practice holding hands so it looks natural. We can -"

Practice. The word hung in the damp laundry air, soft.

"Why me?" Kaito asked, quiet, looking at his hands. "You could ask anyone. You are the captain, everyone likes you. The whole team would pretend for you. Why me, who you just met?"

Renji folded the last towel and set it down. He looked at Kaito, steady, honest in a way that made Kaito's chest hurt.

"Because I trust you," he said. "You trusted me with your medicine. And because you are the only person here I want to hold hands with and not feel like I'm lying. When I helped you Friday, I wanted to stay, not leave. I think about that."

Kaito's heart did something painful and sweet and terrifying. He looked at Renji's hands, large, scarred from lacrosse sticks, holding his laundry, offering.

"Okay," he said, before he could talk himself out of it. "Okay, I'll be your fake boyfriend. For the mixer."

Renji exhaled like he had been holding his breath since the basement. "Good. Rule one - we eat dinner together this week so people see us. Rule two - you call me Renji, not Takamori or senpai. Rule three - if you are uncomfortable, you say stop and we stop, no questions."

"Rule four," Kaito added, surprising himself with boldness, "you let me pay you back for the medicine by letting me do your ice wrap for your ankle every night. And you let me do your laundry when you have late practice."

Renji laughed, a real laugh that changed his whole face, made him younger. "Deal. That's a terrible deal for me, you know."

That night they ate in the cafeteria together at a middle table where everyone could see, not hidden in the corner. Renji bought two trays and carried both, ignoring Kaito's protest. He sat close enough that their shoulders touched, their knees under the table. When Kaito reached for salt, Renji's hand brushed his and stayed a second, fingers overlapping. It was practice, Kaito told himself, and tried not to notice how warm Renji was.

Across the cafeteria, the lacrosse team stared openly. Someone at the next table took a photo. Kaito saw the flash.

Kaito's phone buzzed that night with a message from an unknown number: "So you and Takamori? Since when? Cute. - Sota (2nd year lacrosse)" He showed Renji, panicked, holding the phone like it burned.

Renji read it, raised an eyebrow, and typed back from Kaito's phone without asking, his thumb sure: "Since the beginning of semester. He is mine. - Renji" Then he looked at Kaito's shocked face and said, "Too much? I can delete."

Kaito, smelling the possessive spike in Renji's cedar, sharp and warm, whispered, "No. It was perfect. It felt - real."

They both looked away, both pretending their hearts weren't racing, both wondering how long fake could stay fake when it already felt like this.

They practiced holding hands that week after dinner, in the room, because Renji was serious about practice. Hold it like you mean it, he instructed, lacing their fingers, thumb stroking Kaito's wrist where his pulse was. Kaito laughed nervously and said, I don't know how to mean it. Renji looked at him and said, like this, and held his hand tighter, warm. They practiced sitting close in the cafeteria, Renji's arm on the back of Kaito's chair, a touch that looked casual but was deliberate. By Thursday, people were talking. Is that Takamori's boyfriend? He is pretty. Lucky. Kaito heard it in the washroom and his face burned, but part of him, the part that had been lonely for a year, liked being called lucky for being with Renji.

They fell asleep that night with the laundry still warm on the chairs, two dinners paid for, and a practice plan for holding hands that neither dared to call what it really was: wanting to touch.

They practiced the story: how they met, when they started dating, what Kaito liked for breakfast. Fake details felt strangely real when Renji remembered them without writing down.

Renji held out his hand to practice, palm up. Kaito stared at it, then placed his hand in it, and the word fake suddenly felt thinner than their fingers laced together.