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The beginning of June surrounds Seasoning City like an empty bag of chips. Id est, with reflective foil and the reek of salt and vinegar.
Maybe, though, that’s just all the sweat.
Ritsu can feel it running down his back, his upper lip, behind his knees. He’s just barely wiped it away with the back of his forearm, avoiding the grime on his palms, when he sees a chunk of pavement sailing straight toward his head. Fucking shit—
A tug at the proverbial vat in his stomach and it’s frozen an inch away, icey blue-purple-pink so close to Ritsu’s face that it makes his vision swim. His unassuming body, his human body, isn’t used to being able to defend itself yet. Ducks anyways. Faraway, Ritsu wonders if Suzuki even knows how to flinch. Maybe it's another thing he just never learned, like how to talk with an inside voice or apologize or make friends with other children in a way that’s nonviolent.
Similarly faraway, Suzuki hacks, somewhere between a laugh and a cough. He’s grinning so wide that his mouth is more gum than tooth, floating animatedly a foot off the ground. Drops to it. Sputters up again. “So much for being attentive!”
“Shut up!” Ritsu shouts back, just a moment before his mind kicks in to remind himself that he shouldn’t even dignify him with a response. Embarrassment makes his aura spit and sizzle around his neck like hot oil, makes Suzuki wheeze harder all the way across the parking lot, makes the asphalt at Ritsu’s feet crack and splinter.
Pan up. The parking lot stretches vacantly around them for what seems like miles, familiar holes and gouges taken out like random, like routine, like someone ripping a packet open with their teeth. The building out front is an old car dealership, almost glumly, in the decrepit way that abandoned houses are still houses even when the only warm pulpy flesh inside are rats. Getting there would normally take a forty minute train ride from Ritsu’s house, but that doesn’t mean much for Suzuki, who can fly, who thinks using his feet for things like moving and not picking up TV remotes is lame.
They’ve been doing this for not-that-long and not-that-often. Not-that-often, that is, until recently. It started a few months ago, back when the blacktop hardened and froze and oozed with slush, when they had to rub at their ears every two minutes because they were collectively too talented at making fun of each other for scarves. Suzuki had said, you wanna get better, don'cha? This is getting better and Ritsu had said, this is a parking lot, and it wasn’t an exchange that was funny enough to remember.
Whenever they come to practice, it’s because Suzuki’s had a whim. Even if Ritsu’s got Suzuki’s number, or, more likely, Suzuki wore Ritsu’s out of him. They text when one of them needs some kind of a distraction, or when Suzuki wants to be some kind of distraction. He still never says when he’s coming over, even then; sometimes Suzuki’s sending Ritsu a message about the new jacket he just bought, he looks at his phone, tap tap, he looks up, Suzuki’s outside his window, has no fucking jacket on. The meetings are subtracted from their everyday life, distanced, a weird little bubble that feels a bit too close to Suzuki to even be in sometimes. It’s always because Suzuki’s had a whim.
(Suzuki’s been having a lot of whims lately, but Ritsu tries not to think too hard about that. He has class. He has better things to think about. It’s just a little bit of horseplay, it’s just some childish fun. Friendship is harder.)
But he’s been having a lot of whims. But they’ve been practicing a lot. The stretch and pull of Ritsu’s powers have started to err on the side of familiarity, all itchy and raw like an uncomfortable sweater. That nameless source of energy is seemingly ever-present and ever-sore, like an unscratchable mosquito bite, like so much more than when he had nothing.
Enough that when Ritsu reels his powers back with things to shove Suzuki’s way, he tears up a shitload, a mound, an alp, a fucking cordillera, enough to topple over the ghosts of not-there Mitsubishis and leave their owners with insurance papers to fill out—and then all of it is arcing over the yellow lines and summertime weeds, right towards the blip of Suzuki’s dumb red hair. Towards his fragile skull, his soft squidgy brain, his, oh fuck, his head, his fucking head, then not his head at all. The brunt of it sails over Suzuki and into the line of trees at the border, crunch, too many yards behind him to even guesstimate, and huh, that’s pretty far, that’s a pretty big distance, that’s aways away. It’s very hot out.
Ritsu collapses.
It’s less that he fainted and more that unconsciousness tugged at every cell in his body and his brain was the only part that refused to go with it. His hands shiver, his shoulders twitch into the hollows of his collarbones, one eye half rolls back into its socket. He tastes copper on the flat of his tongue, feels an open tear inside his cheek from where his molars must’ve caught it going down. If Ritsu’s mouth were open, he’d be drooling, but for once he can’t even worry about what he looks like to Suzuki over the pound pound pound of blood and viscera in his ears, in his head, in his fragile skull soft squidgy brain head fucking head.
The pins and needles show less about panic and more about spreading out into goop. Ritsu feels liquified, feels his personality drip-dropping into the psychic bucket somewhere in his chest. The psychic bucket that is empty. There’s nothing in it anymore. The psychic bucket that has nothing in it anymore. A vacant feeling squeezes against the lining of his insides, so numb that he can feel it pulse through his body. It’s as if most of his organs are missing.
Ritsu sapped himself dry doing absolutely nothing of importance. Ha. Sounds just fucking like him.
With that realization, the exhaustion he’s been holding back from days of all-nighters and years of pent-up stress spills over onto the pavement. He’s so tired that his muscles feel like soup, like broth, like someone put them in a microwave and pushed in seven minutes on the timer. Ritsu forces himself to sit up anyways, even as his abdomen lurches leftways, threatens to leave his head cracking painfully off the ground again. For a second, the pressure behind his eyes fills them up with white. Then, when the white clears, a pair of calloused knees.
The knees jitter, like Suzuki is laughing, except Suzuki isn’t laughing. He’s absentmindedly scratching the indoors part of his nose. “You cool?”
Wow. That makes it so much worse. Ritsu’s vision fills up again, this time with frustrated tears, and then with the dirty palms that he jams into them to wipe the water away. It fucking sucks, and he’s so palpably aware of it, and he’s so inept that he’s somehow managed to make the most friendless person he knows bored.
“Ah, guess not,” goes Suzuki, like he’s just noticed that half of Ritsu’s face was slammed into gravel, that there’s still little pebbles in his cheek. He snaps his fingers all high and mighty. “Hey, Ritsu, calm down.”
The frustration shudders. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
Suzuki uses this as motivation to crouch down beside him, still bouncing on his heels like he needs some stimulation other than this conversation or he’ll die. “Dude, I’ll say whatever. You’re kinda freaking out.” The side of Suzuki’s mouth twitches, but downward, and Ritsu imagines that he’s trying to get his brain to catch up with his leaderly intuition so that he doesn’t end up saying something like you’re also being a baby out loud. “I’d appreciate it if you’d put that much energy into, like, being sliiiightly less intense about literally everything.”
Once more, then. “Don’t tell me what to do.” He swallows, feeling faint again, even the implication of Suzuki being unimpressed making his throat burn when the saliva goes down. It takes a squeaky breath through Ritsu’s nose for him to grit out, “I can’t feel them anymore.”
“Hey, hey,” says Suzuki, somewhere between placating and immensely disappointed. He puts one of his palms up to make a soothing gesture, the other one slumped and hanging thoughtlessly at his side. “It happens to the best of us, dude! Just a sign you need to, like, plug yourself into a wall.”
Ritsu bristles, hard. That’s implying that he is not part of the best, which Ritsu knows and admits, frequently, to sidestep any outwardly apparent shame, yes, yes—this is something different. From the tone, it seems like an admonition, like his inadequacies are something silly he can’t help and not the sour curdling behind Ritsu’s every dissatisfaction. The same clenchy hollow feeling grabs at his sides, and he knows that if his powers weren’t tapped the tiny stones digging into his ankles would be rattling the fuck around, gravity on both sides. “Just a sign,” he says, and his voice is embarrassingly choked, down an octave.
Suzuki doesn’t seem to notice. He picks at the inside of his ear, checks under the nail of that finger. “You gotta sit down, Ritsu.”
“I’m sitting.” Ritsu’s mouth is pulled so taut, the skin between his eyebrows so pinched, that his muscles are beginning to ache. The cut inside his mouth pulls, squelches out more blood into his spit.
“Go downer, then,” says Suzuki, “on your back! Snzz.” Despite the feigned mockery of a snore, it sounds like a directive. He tilts his chin up all absent-mindedly authoritative, even as he mimes placing a pillow under his head and taps his heels together. Suzuki says it like there’s no way Ritsu wouldn’t be grateful to pass out on some asphalt, like it’s so exceedingly obvious that even pointing it out is ridiculous.
It’s the same tone that usually lets him get away with saying anything bizarre. A vocalization of being kicked in the shin and made painfully aware, via good-natured ribbing, that you are not being let in on a joke made at your expense. It’s the way that Suzuki says, yeah, bike locks are kind of the shit, really good for keeping wrists together if you’re bein’ thrifty and I dunno, your brother’s pretty lame in comparison to you, Ritsu, you’re like waaaay better at climbing fences.
If it comes out, it must be true—but if it comes out, it can’t possibly be coherent. Ritsu swallows. Tries for skeptical and derisive, gets something pale and wobbling. “You can’t be fucking serious. I’m not sleeping on the ground.”
Suzuki hums. “You been sleeping?”
“Wha—what, how does,” and Ritsu’s unconvincing pretense of acting like himself is basically just an ugly little picked-at scab at this point, “that relate to—anything. People sleep. Of course I sleep, Suzuki. What kind of question, honestly."
Out of all the embarrassing stuff that Ritsu’s just done, that’s what makes Suzuki laugh. The blood in his mouth pulls in further under his skin, leaving him feeling even more dizzy, even more sweat on his forehead, even more unbearably hot.
The laugh almost seems like a mockery too, though, if Ritsu didn’t know better. For all that his twenty thousand dimples pucker and show, Suzuki’s eyes don’t close up when he does it. There’s a glint in them that’s more reproachful than threatening.
Suzuki seems to waver after the laugh. Just for a second, only if Ritsu didn’t know better. He knows better. The glint gets colder, more strangled.
“Nice verbal tizzy, there,” he says, and it’s with a warmer undertone than Ritsu’s heard since he started sitting, “but I think I know that people sleep!” Suzuki claps, shakes out his wrists, cracks both his knuckles against his jawline, but his gaze never moves too far away. He makes eye contact, looks slightly below his eyes, then to the base of Ritsu’s neck, the soon-to-be-bruise on his cheek, the line of his shoulders, back to his eyes, a series of quick starting glances that remind him of a wasp trying to figure out where to sting. It’s, like—it’s vertiginous. Ritsu feels like he’s gonna vomit just thinking about it.
Before Ritsu can try to snark back, try to get him to be quiet enough that he can regain his bearings, Suzuki continues. Goes, “Final tests are soon, yeah?” Licks the chap of his lower lip like that’ll help it.
Ritsu blinks, whirring behind his retinas, trying to figure that out. “Yeah, they’re soon.”
“You must be studying pretty hard,” says Suzuki, with this weird, raw stress on the must be like his throat is closing around it. His smile shines through the gaps in his teeth. “If you want, practice can be about practicing whatever.”
Something makes a clicking sound in Suzuki’s neck, part of it bobs. He clears his throat.
That’s an opening, kind of. Ritsu’s lip curls, his brow furrows. “You want me… to study with you?” It’s easy to make himself look disdainful instead of throw-uppy. It’s not what Suzuki’s getting at, it can’t be, because otherwise his throat wouldn’t be clicking, but it’s so hot. It’s so hot and he doesn’t want to be having a conversation about something this dumb.
“Nah,” Suzuki says, predictably. His face falls, probably because this is less easy than he usually finds things. From the strain in his chin, Suzuki looks like he doesn’t want to have this conversation either. “I meant, like, practicing how to nap. Can you even nap? How many marathons would that take ya?”
Oh, that’s the patience all gone, then. Ritsu kind of wants for all of this to be over, even if Suzuki’s trying to intone like he’s not still looking at Ritsu all weird.
So Ritsu smiles small and polite. Inclines his head. Clasps his hands in front like he’s making a business proposal. He says, “No thank you.”
Suzuki goes, "Hmm." Ritsu hmms back.
That’s it. And then they restart.
“Unless,” Suzuki says, significantly, and then stops saying, even more so. His peculiar glancing doesn’t stop, but the emotion behind it hardens resolvedly into a toothy grin and sticky wet gums. Suzuki seems to have made a decision, and that takes the uncomfortable swoop out of it, leaves Ritsu with an offhanded version of relief.
Suzuki is good-natured, Ritsu remembers. Really, really friendly. He’s amiable, even irritatingly supportive at the worst of times. Perhaps, though, he is maybe not very kind.
There’s an understanding, there, downright considerate, that Ritsu would hate to be friends with someone who made a big fuss about things that are private. Little things, essentially harmless. Things that are only his own fucking business.
So, absolutely. Ritsu latches onto the line as promptly as he can, even for a person trying to remain as futilely unassuming as he is. His heart is still beating fast enough to hear, smartingly, through all the arteries in his neck. “Unless.”
“Unless you feel game,” Suzuki muses, lazily, on the endearing side of insincere, for all intents and purposes just graciously voicing a thought process out loud, “for hitting each other around. With our fists. I haven’t actually gotten to manually beat the shit out of you yet. Be pretty fun to pulp you all up close and personal.”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” and Ritsu stands up surely, quickly, if not swaying slightly as his knees try and struggle to brace. And then, with feeling, “You’re the one that’s getting pulped.”
Suzuki has this thing he does where his laugh is punctuated, more in the way that a little kid or a really old old person would say YAHOO! than something of emotional intent. It’s an enunciated kind of laughter. Like he really wants to call attention to it, made even more stark by just how loud and clear and pointy it is. Ha ha ha!
It sounds real fucking goofy. It sounds like a threat. It sounds delighted.
Suzuki drags himself up from the crouch with his powers and then promptly stops floating, scraping the sole of his shoes on the pavement just languidly enough to allow Ritsu to tense. Cracks his knuckles, tilts his head to the side real fast like he meant to crack that too but there wasn’t enough gas buildup. He’s smiling.
Ritsu’s mouth twitches in some incomprehensible direction. Almost as an afterthought, he bends his knees.
“Fucking love Saturdays,” says Suzuki, and then he reels a fist back.