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Rui stands like a cat on the ledge of a cupboard, watching fish through the glass of a fish tank, but there’s no guppy nor betta nor tetra or whatnot. Just Tsukasa, curled up in the grass.
His cardigan is unbuttoned from the bottom up to just around his heart, and his shirt has ridden up enough to expose his belly button. He looks ridiculous. He’s peaceful.
His hair looks like a halo.
The cat stalks, in its dream a mimicry of an ancestor so slow and powerful, but in reality, its gait is made awkward by the domesticated body, instincts dulled down by years of love. The fish, as if knowing this, doesn’t move. It flaunts its iridescent scales, its shiny black pepperlike eyes, and its round belly. The palms of its hands rest perpendicular to the grass of the high school courtyard.
Then it opens its eyes.
“Rui!! Were you going to jump on me at school again?!”
“…” A nervous swallow that echoes with light-hearted disappointment. “I should be asking you why you’re sleeping on the ground.”
“I’m not! I’m not sleeping! I was…”
“You were?”
Tsukasa hauls himself off the ground, pushing down his shirt with a slight blush and hastily rebuttoning his cardigan as if buying himself time to think up a suitable excuse. He does not succeed.
“…Examining the quality of the grass.”
As if he were stretching out his reactions for the sake of a play, Rui collapses down onto the ground and lets his head fall into his hands, shaking his head in a show of mock despair at Tsukasa’s shitty excuse-inventing skills. Tsukasa yells something offended that can’t quite be separated into words, and then Rui’s face is growing warm against his own fingers as he hears the sound of someone shuffling on their knees very fast towards him.
Thmp. Rui discovers Tsukasa smells like grass right now.
“Rui! I didn’t mean to barge into you like- “and then, there’s a shhf of the fabric of two school cardigans rubbing together.
Rui links his hands together behind Tsukasa’s shoulder blades and pulls himself into a backwards fall, dragging the shrieking boy down with him into the grass. Grass and dirt and dandelions and- “-BUGS RUI THERE ARE BUGS HERE HOLY FUCK LET GO OF ME!!”
Rui doesn’t let go.
“You were sleeping on the ground less than two minutes ago. The bugs have already crawled all over your body and gotten bored of you. They won’t come back.” Tsukasa wails in response.
Rui feels a little bad, so he continues. “Look, I’m shielding you from the bugs with my body, Tsukasa-kun. I’m a human meat shield between you and the ground. Don’t take my sacrifice in vain…”
“Shut up,” is the reply he gets, and then he is gifted a little show of gratitude that feels more like a miracle in the form of physical sensation (a little show of gratitude in the form of Tsukasa’s lips pressing a chaste kiss onto the stretch of skin that lies between the outer corner of Rui’s eye and the inner side of his earlobe.)
There are two lesson periods after the lunch break, and they’re now halfway through the first one. Tsukasa probably hasn’t realised this yet, or is wilfully pretending he doesn’t know, and Rui’s not going to be the one to bring it up to him.
He so badly does not want to be the one to break the sudden tranquil aura that’s crept up on them even though they’re lying on top of each other on the dirty ground just a few metres east of the flowerbeds at their high school where anyone could come by and see them, and also ask them why they weren’t attending fifth period mathematics, and probably tell everyone that weirdo wombo combo were cuddling on the ground instead of attending class, and if that happened then the other students would never stop making kissy-kissy noises at them when they walked through the halls together.
Speaking of flowerbeds, Tsukasa’s right. There are probably a shit ton of bugs here.
Rui knows this because he tends to those flowerbeds all the time, but also because there’s a small ladybug crawling up Tsukasa’s cardigan. He spots it when it’s sitting on the centre of Tsukasa’s back, but the little red trooper quickly scampers up and forward, skirting the edge of the cardigan’s knit collar, and then tumbling down the side till it’s situated on the shoulder seam.
Tsukasa can’t see this, because he’s got his face nuzzled right up into Rui’s neck, left cheek pressed against the skin he'd kissed earlier, nose and mouth buried in purple hair.
Rui determinedly focuses on Captain Ladybug, but the little creature seems to have no desire to serve as Rui’s getaway car from his own gay thoughts, and so it leaps from the cardigan onto the grass and almost instantly disappears from sight.
“Come back Ladybug-san,” Rui whispers without thinking, realising his mistake when every single muscle in Tsukasa’s body tenses. Next comes an unsuccessful attempt at damage control. “It’s an, uh, a song lyric, Tsukasa-kun. There’re no ladybugs. I’m protecting you, remember? I’d never let a ladybug crawl on you. Don’t you trust me?”
“No,” replies Tsukasa, “and, and—the ladybug was CRAWLING ON ME?! ”
“That sounded like Tsukasa-senpai,” comes a familiarly placid voice from twenty metres east, on the other side of the garden beds. “We should go check if he’s ok.”
“Do we have to?”, says a second voice, and then after a pause: “Fine.”
Back on their side of the flowerbeds, Tsukasa has started to frantically pat himself down, wildly kicking about in the process, and it dawns on Rui that in terms of unfortunate and implicative appearances, this is not the best scene for Aoyagi and Shinonome to walk in on. The sound of footsteps is audible now, and they’re getting closer- though it seems that they’ve decided to take the long route around the flowerbeds instead of just stepping through them. Rui finds himself rather pleased about that, but the matter at hand is still Tsukasa.
His arms are moving the most, so he reaches out and tries to catch them. After a few tries, he’s successful, and then as if on instinct he lets his grip glide down the length of Tsukasa’s arms all the way to his hands. Now they are holding hands. Tsukasa stops thrashing about and looks at him.
What Rui should do next is gently turn onto his side, letting Tsukasa slide off and onto the ground (that he has hopefully forgotten is teeming with bugs), and then fall back onto his back and maybe shuffle away for good measure, so it looks like they’re just two weirdos lying on the grass next to each other.
He thinks very insistently that he should do this while he stares at Tsukasa’s face. Large eyes a little more rounded than usual, mouth open just enough that Rui can see the cream colour of Tsukasa’s teeth. He wonders if the other boy knows that the gap between his front two teeth is slightly to the left, that he’s got a sparse dusting of blonde hairs along his jawline, that although his cheeks don’t blush easily the tips of his ears turn red so quick, that he’s handsome, beautiful, spectacular.
That he’s a star in his own eyes but in Rui’s he’s two universes colliding and a glorious explosion of stardust and space matter, the formation of the entire galaxy, the root of existence mired in terrifying and vast beauty. A boy who just looks a little confused and a tad flustered, who’s so easy to kiss and so difficult to push away.
Rui’s never been good at toughing it out. He sweeps the vegetables off his plate and into the garden, kicks the mess under his bed instead of putting it away. Lets the clock tick past midnight, past one am, past three, six, seven, as he works and works on whatever wonder he’s decided to deliver for their next show. Deflects, avoids, hangs out on rooftops, lies down in the grass with his boyfriend sprawled over him and lets his head rise from the ground enough to let their lips brush, and then lets his head rise from the ground more.
The bell signalling the end of fifth period rings, but it sounds so quiet. The grass is rustling but it’s practically white noise. A patch of wisp like clouds is moving across the sun, casting irregular shadows across the courtyard, but neither Rui nor Tsukasa can see it with their eyes closed, pressed together all over, so soft and warm and-
-two universes colliding.
(Rui thinks with a dramatic, sentimental, kiss-addled mind.)
After feeling like a lifetime has passed in a moment, both of them are deaf to the sound of footsteps on grass growing louder.
“Tsuka-- oh!”
“Toya? Why’d you suddenly- hey, hey what the hell are you two doing in public!!”
They both break apart at the same time. Rui lets his head fall back against the grass and Tsukasa darts back like a slingshot, shrieking in an undignified manner. The patch of clouds has since passed across the sky, no longer partially obscuring the sun, which feels like it’s burning brighter than ever, hot enough that it makes Rui’s face red and warm.
“I’m not- this isn’t- “
“Tsukasa-senpai… It’s, uhm, alright, you don’t need to…”
“Why are you doing something like that at school!? I knew you guys were weirdos, but- wait, no, I meant weirdos as in idiots, not-“
“It isn’t what it looks like, I’m telling you!! We were just. Just.”
“… don’t need to lie, senpai. We’re very sorry for intruding, on, your, uh,”
“Just not doing what Akito’s saying, I swear- I would never perform such irresponsible conduct- Who do you think I am!! We were just…”
Tsukasa’s voice dips very quiet on the next single word. “kissing.”
He pauses for only a second before starting up again. “Not anything scandalous or inappropriate, like I said! Right- right Rui? Hey, Rui!”
Rui is too immersed in regret to speak. Jolted unceremoniously out of the afterglow of the kiss, he can only gaze up at the sky and try to bury his embarrassment and regret and also embarrassment at his lack of regret compared to what would be the situationally appropriate amount of regret to be feeling after being caught smooching your beau on school grounds.
Good job Kamishiro, he thinks, now all of Kamiyama High knows you’re gay.
And they probably will, because both Akito and Tsukasa yelled loud, and that was the end of period bell earlier which means there are students in the courtyard now and they’re undoubtedly going to tell all their friends about how 2-A’s Tenma and 2-B’s Kamishiro were caught canoodling and Rui is going to endure kissy faces for the rest of his life.
But he still can’t summon up the appropriate level of regret. Far from it, actually, he finds that he feels… light. Like he’s one of those wispy clouds up in the sky, burdenless and free. It’s a weird way to be feeling when he’s still got a seventeen-year-old boy sitting on top of him.
Rui looks at said boy, looming over him, and realises something about himself.
He’s the cat splayed out on its back, soft belly facing the sky, eyes closed as it basks in the sun. Next to it is a fish tank, and the occupant gazes out at the cat. The cat that comes every day, to watch its scales glimmer, who presses its paws against the glass and meows pitifully. That has long since given up all thoughts of eating the fish.
Entranced by the fish, lost in its own loss, a soft creature nurturing attachment over pride.
Seemingly finished arguing with his juniors, Tsukasa smiles down at Rui like he knows he’s won.