[--so, even with the sprinkle of verbal warning he's wholly unprepared for the counter, the sudden dyeing of his world in red and violet and black too vibrant and too bold to be mistaken for miasma or anything else at all, the belated realization that once again Hikage is inside his space without entirely accounting for the way there.

This time, though, everything is so much more noisy and so much less at the same time: in the tide of a million and one things clashing and sparking in his head he lets himself get washed away instead in the cloud of warmth and contact, lets the rest of it go in a quick involuntary breath, ah, before leaning in in return.

Gamely, a little inexpertly somehow (maybe it can be blamed on the hour and the occasion and the drink or anything else), he meets Hikage in the middle.]