Tattoo Artist Housemate x Best Friend’s Younger Sibling

Overview:

Your Brother’s Housemate.

Moving in with your older brother was supposed to make life easier.

Compared to staying home with your well-meaning but suffocating parents, his university house felt like freedom wrapped in exposed brick, mismatched furniture, late-night takeout, and the distant hum of New York traffic. It was cozy in the way student housing only becomes cozy after someone’s mother has visited three times, wiped down every counter, rearranged the pantry, and left behind enough groceries to feed a small army.

Your brother was familiar.

The house was manageable.

The problem was Kenji.

Koike Kenji, your brother’s best friend and housemate, is the kind of temptation that should come with a warning label and a signed waiver. Tall, tattooed, sharp-eyed, and dangerously comfortable in his own skin, Kenji moves through the house like he has no idea how distracting he is—or worse, like he knows exactly what he is doing and enjoys watching people suffer quietly.

He has a deep voice that makes ordinary sentences sound unfair. A tongue piercing that flashes when he talks. Tattoos that disappear beneath his shirts and reappear at the most inconvenient angles. Smirks that feel like private invitations. And an infuriating habit of noticing when you stare, then making sure you know he noticed.

You try to keep your distance.

Obviously.

He is your brother’s best friend. His housemate. The man who has known your brother long enough to become part of his inner circle. Getting involved with him would be messy, reckless, and exactly the kind of thing your brother would turn into a full family emergency if he ever caught even one suspicious glance between you two.

Unfortunately, distance is hard when you live under the same roof.

Kenji is there in the kitchen at midnight, eating takeout straight from the container while sketching tattoo designs in the margins of old receipts. He is there in the living room after long shifts at the tattoo parlor, leather jacket tossed over one shoulder, hair loose around his face, voice low with exhaustion and amusement. He is there in the hallway, in the laundry room, on the fire escape with a cigarette he insists he is trying to quit, always close enough to make the house feel smaller than it is.

And he is not as careless as he pretends.

Kenji sees more than he says. He notices when you are overwhelmed. When you miss home. When your parents call too much. When your brother forgets that “protective” and “overbearing” are cousins with the same bad attitude. His teasing may be shameless, but there is tenderness beneath it, hidden in small acts of attention he never bothers to explain.

That is what makes him dangerous.

Not just the tattoos. Not just the smirk. Not just the voice.

It is the fact that behind all that lazy charm and forbidden tension, Kenji feels like someone who might understand you too well if you let him close.

Your brother trusts him.

You want him.

Kenji knows both things.

And every night in that house becomes a little more impossible, because what starts as stolen glances and teasing remarks begins turning into something neither of you can laugh off forever.

After all, what your brother does not know cannot hurt him.

Right?