Chapter Text
he first feels the increase in his heartbeat and tightening of his chest when he gets to the classroom, trying his hardest to stride in while apologising for being late. his eyes fall on tsukasa first in the room. he’s always either hard at work in class, reviewing notes by or clawing at his head at the material. so, rui always made sure to write down his notes as neatly as he could, in order for it to be legible for tsukasa’s reference if needed. it started out as only for the subjects tsukasa was particularly struggling in, but after two weeks or so it became a habit, and he found that he had picked up tsukasa’s habit of writing tidy notes as well.
he almost halts upon seeing him. he’s wearing his uniform the same precise way he always has, his ironed shirt tucked in neatly with his pristine blazer to match. his styled hair hasn't changed and he's doing the same thing he always does this early in the morning — muttering sentences to himself and leaning over his notebook of scribbles, graphs and colour-coordinated notes that he always had with him. he sees rui and offers him a smile.
it feels like the same day, the same as yesterday’s warm smile and probably the same he'll witness tomorrow, but today there's something so unlike tsukasa that he does so this particular day. rui can't describe it with any word he knows, and neither can he explain why. it was as if nothing had happened hours before.
“sit down please,” his teacher raises an eyebrow toward rui’s awkward position at the door.
slightly brought back to earth by now, rui almost stops in his tracks before approaching his assigned table. he doesn't know why everything seemed to have taken such a toll on him this morning. choosing to glance at anything else, he stares at the clock mounted on the wall, finally noticing that he’s late by a few minutes.
there’s quite a distance between them, and there's no way he could turn to tsukasa to talk or to write him his usual notes, but he feels the need to look away for the sake of his heart rate. he writes down the whiteboard’s wording with shaky hands.
there’s an uncomfortable and stifling silence in the atmosphere, because rui knows today is particularly different. he doesn't know what to do. he’s pretty sure he also will not know how to talk to him like nothing occured after that dream and the undeniable feelings he's admitted to himself since waking up. they had fell asleep in each other’s embrace, there was no way around it. or least on his side it felt out of character for tsukasa. rui suddenly misses the feeling.
‘sorry for not waking you up,’ a note tossed at his direction reads, written in handwriting he can only recognise is tsukasa’s.
rui’s throat dries up. usually he’d have some sort of witty reply to write back, but all that came out on his piece of paper was a pathetic ‘it’s alright’, accompanied by a smiley face to compensate for his lack of wit.
he already envisions tsukasa’s worried furrow of his eyebrows — his way of silently wondering if he had the time to eat breakfast, but he refuses to look, he simply cannot bring himself to. a note, tsukasa’s reply, makes its way onto his desk shortly after.
‘not to fear! i got up early to make you lunch.’
tensing up, rui’s eyes are wider than they’ve ever been and he hopes it's not noticeable. he sincerely hopes no one notices the pink dancing from cheek to cheek and to the tip of his ears, and he hopes no one notices how he holds the note closer to him, as if to safeguard it frim anyone who threatened to take it away. forget any semblance of class, the tsukasa had personally prepared him lunch!
another note. ‘rui, are you free after school?’
rui’s heart skips a beat as he scrambles to write back a ‘yes’.
for the rest of his classes before lunch, he struggles to sit upright, barely able to keep up as he jots down notes along the lines of his notebook. for teachers that seemed to talk on and on, his brain didn’t even have the capacity to comprehend the content or conepts being taught, copying and pasting content on his paper giddy and joyous. words went into an ear and out the other.
when his hand is free of writing, his eyes unknowingly wander to tsukasa, because they always have, but he just hadn't noticed how odd it was until today.
sure enough, tsukasa is bewildered at the material. there’s something almost comforting in the fired up look on his face. it is the homely comfort in the knowledge that he can just tell what tsukasa might be thinking or feeling without even looking at him beforehand.
“—kamishiro, can you answer question two on the board?”
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it’s during lunch, an agonising hour later, when he makes his way to the rooftop to greet emu and nene. tsukasa is off to fetch his lunch.
unfortunately, emu doesn’t return the same sort of greeting. “nene-chan says she saw you leaving the house at two in the morning yesterday!”
“ah, i had to buy more materials,” rui’s heart drops. “for a robot.”
“no wonder! what store is open that late?”
“..one near my house,” he turns to nene, silently finding her gaming habits a huge inconvenience. trust her to stay up late to finish a new game! nene knew exactly what happened, it had to be, from how she’s staring at him with a smile she only wore for moments like these.
“i don’t recall any store like that near our residential area,” nene comments, looking up at rui with mock confusion.
he really shouldn’t have come to school today. “well, it must be as you don’t leave the house often.”
the both of them end up staring at one another, waiting for other to speak, and emu watches their spectacle with great interest. however, the only result that comes from their staring contest is the sinking feeling in rui’s stomach — he knows that she knows.
“i’m back!” a familiar voice, akin to a blast of energy yells from afar. the student strolled his way to their bench, plopped down onto the spot next to rui, and beamed at him. awfully close. have they always sat this close?
rui has never been more grateful to see tsukasa’s lovely smile. “tsukasa-kun, we have been expecting you.”
nene almost looked disgusted at how sweet his greeting sounded. how could she possibly have known anything from him leaving the house alone? he hadn’t been obvious about sleeping over, neither had he made any comments about it.
“here’s your lunch,” tsukasa fumbles with the cover, taking the grand gesture of opening it up for him.
rui is silently panicking again. tsukasa handing him a home cooked meal right after his conversation with emu and nene was not a good look for his case, not to mention the looks of shock from both of their faces. face pale and choosing to look away from it all, rui tastes a bite of his precious lunch, handmade with care,
—and chokes.
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holding tsukasa’s ‘are you free?’ note, rui feels the slightest tinge of regret.
he’s stanced in a defence position looking down, unable to stop the effect that tsukasa’s eyes have on him. it makes him freeze in bewilderment. tsukasa’s gaze had never been particularly soft, but it had been one that radiated with determination whenever they worked on important projects together.
and perhaps rui might just like his eyes, one of weaknesses, in a way that friends can admire the other objectively.
that was a look that motivated him to try harder in the past, but now it sets it with a harder kick, something that tugged at his chest. the pounding of his heart wasn't entirely from tsukasa’s small quips and hums from working but the many additional distractions, like the close proximity when he slumped closer to him when encountering a harder question, tapped out in defeat. although there to help guide tsukasa through his physics worksheet, he couldn’t stay focused for long.
in a state of his flustered catastrophe, rui knew he had to focus. he couldn’t squander the rest of his week away over a dream!
“you’re off today,” tsukasa says, mid-session, while writing down an equation.
rui forces out a fake laugh that sounded more awkward and nervous than anything else he’d have hoped it would. “well, i didn’t get much sleep last night.”
tsukasa looked at him with full eyes that were not annoyed or doubtful, but a little confused and concerned at the same time. concerned that he wasn’t being his usual self, and confused as to why. rui begins to panic. “not until i came to your house, of course.”
“ah, indeed! i’m glad you came to me,” tsukasa breaks into a smile of relief before he quickly catches himself. “..as in, i do not mind if you were to sleep in my room.”
knowing himself, and how his thought process would spiral out of control until he was buried in doubt, rui tried to block his thoughts out with anything and everything else he could think of as he processed this response, determined to not mess up a conversation with tsukasa.
“rui, did something happen last night?”
now, rui finally reaches a realisation — tsukasa had no recollection of the events prior to waking up.
it was only a dream, rui had told himself, the memory beginning to replay like unravelling thread. rui knocked three times on tsukasa’s door, so light he would’ve missed it if not for how awake he was at this very moment. except, he recalls exactly why he’s here this time.
“—can’t sleep?”
the door opens and rui freezes. his mouth agape and dry as it attempts to close, only to drop open again. “i couldn’t fall asleep,” he remembers whispering apologetically, although already knowing that tsukasa knows the exact reason why he had shown up.
“last night..?” rui falls into the regret of asking (and remembering) no doubt faster than the speed of light.
“when we slept together in my bed,” tsukasa mumbles, all of a sudden bashful. rui tilts his head up and their eyes instantly lock. he looks at the ceiling in instantaneous panic.
“ah, we—,” rui’s throat tightens.
tsukasa frowns the longer the vague conversation droned on, essentially headed nowhere. “hey, did i do something bad when i was asleep? you’ve been acting weird since this morning, leaving without talking to me first..”
“we hugged, but it wasn’t bad,” his confession, said so quietly it was comedic, ended up trailing off, unfinished. he doesn’t know how to end it, how to do anything else but sit there, dumbfounded, without moving an inch, for the first time unable to look away from tsukasa’s eyes instead of avoiding them.
“we..” he looked to the floor, probably not believing his own actions. rui nods slowly, wishing he could disappear.
tsukasa sounded just as at a loss as he was, “it wasn’t bad?”
if rui weren’t going through a wide range of emotions now, the way he blinked over and over, trying to make sense of it, his eyebrows raised just a bit higher and his eyes wide, pupils dilated was rather endearing. if it were another situation he might even have laughed, but rui just wanted to run away.
but tsukasa smiled, and something inside him warmed, and he became weightless in comparison with how he felt just a second ago. because it wasn’t one of his prideful or smug grins, it was happiness in the purest form, and rui knew that at the very least, their relationship wouldn’t be irreparably damaged. rui can’t keep his own smile down as tsukasa’s continues to grow.
“i did that?” tsukasa manages a full sentence more confidently this time, almost laughing at the ridiculous confession. he doesn’t say anything, just pulls him by the ends of his cardigan and puts his half-awake hugging experience to use. it’s a bit more rushed and less composed, more of being all over the place, but it is so much like tsukasa, and he knows that this is even better, now that he’s dreaming awake.