Work Text:
i.
“Kaito Tenjo, love of my life, do you wanna go out with me?”
“No.”
Kaito looks up from his Physics notes, fixes the small square frames on his nose and glares. He bites his lip and sucks in his breath slowly through his teeth, as if counting the exact seconds that pass until IV got the message of ‘go away’ or maybe ‘fuck off’ or ‘I’m not one of your dumb fangirls’. It doesn’t happen, obviously.
“Don’t see any of the symptoms?” IV asks again, voice too cheerfully. “Accelerated heartbeat? Need to close distances…? Excitement? Widened pupils and shaky hands…? Sweating it too much?” IV offers.
“That’s the same physical reaction as running for your life,” Kaito remarks sourly.
Kaito sighs and staples his fingers and wonders why he puts up with all of this. He is annoyed already by all the outrageous procedure called high school. Well, to be exact, he was angry at Chris and Faker, who closed their eyes and nodded theatrically that he was being a bad role model for Haruto….How dare…?!
Well, anyway, Haruto ended up looking at him with those...admittedly cute big golden eyes, and well...the battle had been lost for Kaito.
IV still stands in front of his desk, and he was still smiling charmingly, like in those fancy ads in which he was paid to do so. Kaito vaguely remembers he’s still 17. Kaito is pretty sure he even had fun doing all this.
“Are you going to go away?” Kaito asks.
“No. Fair, isn’t it?” IV smirks.
“IV...listen. Just because we happen to be stuck in senior year of high school together does not mean I want to have anything to do with your dumb games,” Kaito sneers, pencil tapping, focusing on his calculations.
He doesn’t look up for a long time. Maybe IV’s gone now. It’s so...so still that makes Kaito looks up warily. IV still stands there, but his expression has changed. It is somewhat hard and distant...angry? But he doesn’t look at Kaito, but at a spot far away...was Kaito even still there, in his perception…?
“I have a name you know…”
“...it’s Thomas.”
“Not everything consists of dumb games,” Thomas comments dryly, and he leaves before Kaito can ask him a second time.
ii.
Kaito sees him again sooner than he’d wanted (if he had thought so much about it). It seemed so distant anyway...Numbers and the destruction of the world and dying on the moon (he pretends). Anyway...when Kaito gets out of the bus (Orbital makes people turn around too much), there is IV-Thomas at the entrance smiling and signing autographs for some girls all around him and laughing and swooning.
What an arrogant jerk.
This is school, not some damn fanclub, Kaito thinks. He thinks it and wants to go his way, if it weren’t for the crowd that’s gathered...if only they knew, Kaito thinks darkly. There is that girl that pushes, though, right in front of his vision.
“Can I help you?” Thomas asks.
“You signed this...uhm….Thomas Arclight. Can’t you...uhm sign ‘IV’ again? Nobody knows your new alias!” she pouts, pleading.
At that his gaze turns into stone, and he drops the black marker in his hands. The girls asks what’s the matter, but his face is so...serious now. Kaito would nearly say...furious. “The show is over,” Thomas sneers and disappears through the corridors.
…
Kaito finds himself staring for a moment.
iii.
It’s been a few weeks when he sees him again, he hadn’t thought about it so much more...he hadn’t thought so much of it at all, to be frank. There had been no-one at the entrance but streams of students going to class, and they are in different classes, Kaito thinks. He wonders what Thomas is in...if not in Chemistry or PE?
What he’s interested in.
The answer comes to Kaito that afternoon when he cleans off the blackboard and is asked to help carry some books and supplies back to the other wing of the school. It’s past school time, but still too early for his part-time job at the mini 24-hours supermarket shop thing down the street. Haruto’s already bussed home earlier with Yuma, so that leaves him...here.
When he opens the sliding door to the art classroom with his foot, he does not expect to see Thomas there sitting on a stool in front of a canvas.
“Ah. It’s you.”
“Err...yeah….it’s me.” What a dumb reply, Kaito. Anyway, he stares at him, and Thomas seems startled at first, as if Kaito had learned some secret. But then he lowers his eyes and they wander away again...somewhat darkly.
Kaito can’t help but be curious. He looks at the canvas where an angel dances with a puppet girl beneath a cerulean sky fading to flaming red darkness and fire veins to the bottom. The puppet girl is seemingly falling, and the angel reaches out to catch her, not aware...that the strings guiding her guide a knife, also.
“You’re good,” Kaito says, “Er...I mean the painting.”
“Who’s good? Someone who has never committed a vice, or someone who longs to redeem themselves?” Thomas asks, face to the painting. He seems not to look at, or see Kaito. Kaito stays like that for a long time, and he remarks there is this strange...peace about it. Finally he clears his throat. Thomas jumps as if snuck up on, and he turns for a moment, look open and startled.
“Ah...sorry.”
“I...gotta carry the books in. The sophomores lent them today for History…” Kaito explains, motioning to the stack in his arms, and a drawer next to Thomas, “Don’t wanna disturb, but can you maybe move a little...ehm Thomas?”
Thomas looks perplexed, and then he smiles at Kaito. Genuiely.
Kaito feels his heart skip a beat.
He tells himself it’s some foolish...coincidence.
iv.
The only day that Kaito Tenjo ever skips comes as looming as the grey sky above their heads. It’s a day as sinister for Kaito and as embarrassing for the others that is possible in an institution called school.
It’s the day you bring your parents to discuss your future.
Or kind of. Kaito can’t imagine how to say it. No matter how often he rehearses it in his head. ‘That’s my dad Faker who secretly runs the city and tries to fire his younger son in a canon to destroy an alien world.’ That’s my dad Faker whom I don’t ever call ‘Dad’. ‘That’s Faker who builds lethal weapons and hasn’t cared about his sons since a long while.’
Kaito had decided it doesn’t sound good.
So he stands on the roof. It’s the only day ever that Kaito Tenjo would ever think of to skip.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Kaito comments, and he looks up to see Thomas join him on the roof. Not really joining. But the only two souls who stand on the great wide roof which is actually quite small, so Kaito guesses that counts, too.
“Yeah, didn’t want…” Thomas rubs his neck, the false voice high and careless. “Didn’t want to introduce Dad!”
“I don’t care about introducing Tron.” The second statement is honest. Cold. A light drizzle comes down from the sky, like tiny watery snowflakes that makes you wet or somethin’...but none of them really cared.
“Hope you care enough about sharing the roof. Not gonna move,” Kaito says.
“Guess you got no other choice. Not very fond of ‘Dad’...family stuff,” Thomas replies.
…
“You hate him.”
It’s an obvious observation, Kaito thinks. The way Thomas stands with his hunched shoulders and hands in his pockets, bag slung around his shoulder and looking up into the grey sky. The drops begin to fall. One after another.
Kaito holds a hand out to catch them.
“Stunning observation….” For a while, Thomas is deadly still. Just still. Then he sighs, goes through his hair. “He made me burn a girl...Rio. Her name is Rio. He gave me card, and I played Flaming Hell Blessing. The building caught fire. We could barely breathe. I ran out and held her and lost my eye. Sometimes I think I’d lost the ability to see good... The only girl’s name I’ll always remember...funny, isn’t it? I did it because I wanted to. Be accepted as his son.”
“...”
Kaito said nothing. There is nothing to say.
Nothing he can.
“Father wants a son like Chris. Like Mihael. One who excels at science or culture. Maybe someone like Ryoga who can punch people. Someone like Yuma even, who changes people’s hearts. I bet he’s glad to be rid of me most days.” Thomas laughs darkly. “I dunno if he’s here...maybe it’s Chris.”
“...I don’t wanna see either of them.”
Kaito thinks about Faker, and he slowly nods to indicate he’s understood.
“Well, anyway...why am I telling you my life story. It’s a shitty life sometimes...to be a tool. Sometimes...I’d like to go.”
“Where?” It slips out before Kaito can stop it.
Thomas looks at him, half-drenched, and he shrugs. “Somewhere.”
“Make something. Like don’t waste air and stuff...just jokin’. Use useless hands to make something significant.”
…
The bell rings. People run out of the school building in colourful umbrellas. Kaito stays there standing on the roof with Thomas, and they’re still alone. The corridors empty out, and Kaito motions with his thumb in the direction of the stair house.
Kaito turns around.
“Thomas.”
Thomas turns around, and he looks at him, and for a moment his gaze is open.
v.
Thomas gets suspended. Kaito knows it because everyone knows. It spread around the hallway too quickly. He can’t pass people on the hallway to his locker without hearing. The kid of Byron Arclight the scientist. Ex pop star or pro duelist or something in-between. The kid who never answered during roll call because he wasn’t there. Kaito knows he’s on the bus that carries all the city kids to school everyday, but Kaito remarks he gets out a station early, with a cigarette in his mouth and fishing for alighter.
Kaito doesn’t know why, but that day he sits next to Thomas on the back row. The fabric over the seats is a light grey (a blue originally?), and at the edges torn and rolled back. Thomas sits there and he wears his dress shirt sloppily over his pants, knot of his tie tied right, but too loose, a pencil behind his ear. He looks concentrated, and somewhere he must have noticed Kaito’s presence, but he doesn’t really react. Kaito remarks Thomas has a sketchbook.
It’s the third last station.
Kaito says he likes what Thomas is drawing. He looks so...serene. Deep into his world...Kaito finds it appealing when people have true passion for something..But Thomas looks up at sees him now.
Thomas looks at him and hisses and draws the book to his chest in defense. Kaito keeps staring. Thomas lowers it. Slowly thumbs through the pages, a faint hint of a smile on his lips.
The second last station.
vi.
Thomas’s expression turns into stone. His shoulders turn rigid and he packs his sketchbook and the pencil hastily in his black messenger bag, the equally black strap drawn casually across his shoulder. He slips some kind of black plastic jacket on, too. The city and factories pass them by from the big square bus windows.
He stands up and looks for his pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
Kaito thinks much about it. Maybe he doesn’t. If he thinks back, there might be no more than a few seconds that have passed until he takes action. He reaches out to hold him by his wrist, grip firm and steady.
Determined not to let go.
“Thomas.”
Thomas tries half-heartedly to fend Kaito off. Kaito fastens his grip, shaking his head at Thomas’s attempts and singnaling him he won’t. Thomas still gets off (or rather, he gets out of the bus and drags Kaito with him). It’s...too late to turn back now! Not that Kaito ever had that in mind. Kaito is too stubborn for these things, like giving up or losing... Kaito rushes after him. It’s cold and there is the breeze of summer ending and they’re in a run-down area with some bent fences.
“Thomas.”
Thomas’s head is bowed. It suits the area. The unsusceptible appearance that they were...two teens in the uniform of Heartland High standing at a place that is very much not Heartland High on a Thursday morning. No wonder they still catch attention amidst the empty grey and industry noises. Thomas doesn’t seem to mind them.
“Say it again. Can you...say it again?” - “Say what….Thomas?” - “...I like it when you say it - my name. Nobody does.”
vii.
Thomas has a name. He should be called by it.
viii.
Kaito takes Thomas’s wrist firmly. Again. They walk through the streets with the run-down building, Kaito’s navigation app showing the way. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Thomas. Their environment seems to look the same, with tubes and wires and polished walls of steel. Stone blocks that absorbed noise and blocked their view.
He drags him onwards, and at first Thomas is somewhat slouching, but then he walks. They walk. Kaito thinks of something and turns around to muster Thomas for a moment. “I’ll lend you pencil and paper,” he says.
It rains at some point, and it doesn’t matter, and they keep going.
The area becomes more familiar again. Tall buildings that stretch into the sky with colourful glasses and ads and billboards attached to them. But there is still more than a mile left, Kaito knows. It’s because when he flew over the city with Orbital, he remarked its industry area between the second last bus stop and the last; so there had been no bus station in-between for the school kids, since none of them had to get out to the bus. They walk in silence, and Kaito remarks they are half-way through morning Physics.
Thomas doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t resist anymore, either.
They are drenched to the bone by the time they stand anywhere near the school building. He looks back at Thomas. Kaito is determined to go he last bits. It worked out so far, and they would make it back to school, and sit rain-drenched in Math or something...maybe. Kaito hasn’t thought that far.
At some point Thomas tucks on his wrist, so Kaito stands. Turns around. They come to a stand, still nearly half a mile from school. In ten minutes, the first period would be over.
“Kaito,” Thomas says, “Wait.”
Kaito remarks it sounds good...when Thomas says his name. Surprisingly.
“Wait.”
Thomas says it nonchalantly, with a small smile, and he closes the space between them...and he presses his lips to Kaito's. He remarks it’s not very graceful, and they’re kinda drenched, a bit of wet squishy boots on pavement intermingled with something else which is not expressed in words. Kaito remarks...Thomas’s lips are actually kinda soft...kinda nice.
They break up the same way it’s started.
It’s over, and Kaito tries to catch his breath again, more from the nervousness and excitement. Thomas laughs. He truly laughs. Kaito thinks it sounds nice.
“I’m missing Physics and it’s your fault…” Kaito grumbles -still-, cheeks a bit red. “Let’s go back...shall we?”
“Yeah…” Thomas replies, and he is still laughing, “Yeah, let’s go back!”