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“I mean it, I’m not taking another step until you tell me where the hell you’re taking me!”
Aoi’s voice was whiny and high pitched, even to his own ears. He was aware that he was being moody, if not to say obnoxious, but he couldn’t help it even if he wanted to. They had flown over to Paris only hours before, and he had barely gotten enough sleep before Ruki had pulled him out of bed. He was tired; and when he was tired, he got cranky. Ruki knew as much. And yet, he had still insisted on dragging him out of the hotel into the seeping sun at what had felt like the break of dawn.
“It’s a surprise!” Ruki hummed, bouncing up the stairs of the subway station.
Aoi groaned, and followed suit considerably slower. He hated stairs, especially when he had barely gotten any sleep (much less a cup of coffee). At first, his stomach had fluttered at the thought of going on a date in the City of Love, but from what he had gathered from his peak at the city map in the subway station, the Eiffel Tower (or any other romantic spot for that matter) was miles away from their current location. There surely was nothing romantic about the sticky summer heat and lots of people in a rush to get to work, and even the cool flow of air in the subways barely helped soothe his annoyance.
The only reason he endured it all turned around this instant, a bright, breathtaking smile on his face. “C’mon, Yuu-chan!” Ruki chirped with a happy giggle. Even though his eyes were hidden behind a huge pair of dark sunglasses, Aoi could feel his gaze penetrate him, and his heart skipped a beat. “This is gonna be so much fun! And it’s gonna be cool where we’re going, I promise! Please?” He pulled one of his infamous pouts that made Aoi’s knees weak, and then reached out his hand.
With a defeated sigh, Aoi grabbed his hand, and intertwined their fingers. World Tours sure as hell were exhausting, but the best part (besides meeting all their foreign fans, of course) was moving incognito in beautiful cities all over the world. The feeling of holding hands with Ruki as they walked through the streets side by side set butterflies loose in his stomach. There was something liberating in not having to hide; no one in these large cities knew or recognized them, and nobody minded two men holding hands and sharing tender caresses either. Something he deeply missed back at home. He knew that Ruki felt the same way. He also knew that he would always abide to his wishes, no matter what they were; even if it meant being dragged out of their hotel room at an ungodly hour for an ominous date.
Because God knew Ruki held his whole heart in his hands with that bright smile and the cute pout.
“I hate you, you know that?” Aoi grunted, trying to regain the last remains of his dignity that always ran through his fingers like sand when they were together. He just couldn’t refuse Ruki, no matter what; something he both hated and loved about him at the same time. He had never thought that someone would be able to hold this much power over him, but he had come to realize that he was okay with it if Ruki was the one.
As a response, Ruki tilted his head upwards, and pecked Aoi’s cheek. “I love you, too, Grumpy.” With a giggle, he turned away as Aoi’s cheeks heated up and he looked around them by instinct and in slight panic – only to realize that nobody around them had cared about the kiss. Of course they didn’t. They were thousands of kilometers from home; from a culture that had yet to overcome some of their more conservative attitudes.
Without knowledge of his bitter thoughts or the slightest care in the world, Ruki pulled him down the street, around a corner. An excited squeal left his lips as he spotted something (Aoi still didn’t know what exactly they were looking for), and his pull got stronger as his pace fastened. He only halted shortly, before he cross-walked the street with a hum. Aoi’s head flew around as he regarded the street (it had been much easier to watch traffic in London, since the cars drove on the right side of the street there), too occupied with worrying about getting hit by a car to actually pay attention to the direction they were headed in. Before he knew it, they had halted in front of a plain, rectangular building held in beige, and Ruki started to rummage through his bag in search for something. Aoi gazed at the long queue of people in front of the building, still not sure what to expect in the slightest. Ruki pulled out some papers and presented them to the man at the entrance, who let them in with a nod whilst ignoring the queue and Aoi was hit with the realization that Ruki had planned the whole thing in advance. If weeks or months, he couldn’t say. He cursed inwardly as he followed him inside, still painfully oblivious.
They were led through metal detectors as Ruki’s bag was being checked (Aoi had heard in the news about all the terrorist attacks throughout the last few years in Europe – something he couldn’t even fathom happening in Japan), and Ruki exchanged some broken words in English with one of the staff members. When he turned around to face Aoi, his look was both bewildered and amused. “What’s wrong?” Aoi asked with a frown. Ruki simply pressed his lips together, smiled, and shook his head. Aoi couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling him, and that feeling made his whole body tense up in bad anticipation. He knew this feeling all too well by now, had experienced it far too many times ever since they had started dating.
Whatever he had foolishly agreed to, he would most certainly regret it.
They passed a turnstile (Aoi was too anxious to look around for any clues as to where exactly they were and what was awaiting him), and came upon a circular staircase leading far underground. Aoi frowned. “What the hell is this?” he mumbled, then groaned. “I fucking hate stairs.”
Ruki took off his sunglasses, pushing them up into his blonde hair as he remained silent, only bestowing a mischievous look upon Aoi, his dark eyes glinting with excitement. He took Aoi’s hand, and impatiently dragged him towards the stairwell. Knowing how impossible it was to get anything out of him when he was in this state, Aoi silently acquiesced to his fate. That didn’t keep him from pressing out annoyed groans with each winding that led them further down the stairs with seemingly no end in sight.
It felt like an eternity until they had finally reached the bottom of the stairs. With yet another frown (he feared he would have to use his bangs to cover up the permanent edges of said frown on his forehead for the live), Aoi looked around the small room. The stone-flagged floor threw the echo of their steps back at them, and the brick walls were covered with big tablets made of plastic. Aoi skimmed them, realizing that they were all held in French, with an English translation accompanying them. He didn’t understand any French, barely grasped some English phrases, but there was one word he sure as hell knew what to make of.
Catacombs.
“What the hell is this?” he hissed at Ruki, who was looking around the room curiously. “Catacombs? I thought we were gonna go on a date, not some… funeral site.” In this moment, he was glad that none of the other visitors seemed capable of understanding Japanese, so they were left to their own devices without any curious looks. He glanced around suspiciously, half expecting some ghosts to jump out of the walls. God, how he hated spooky things. And Ruki knew too well.
“Relax, babe,” Ruki hummed happily, the amusement plainly visible on his gorgeous features. “It’s just an exhibit, nothing scary. Just some information that tells the story of centuries old Paris, some relics to look at. You love documentaries and history stuff, don’t you? There’s nothing spooky about this, just some tunnels, and they’re all lit up. Plus, I’m gonna be by your side the whole time, you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about.” He squeezed Aoi’s hand in a display of reassurance, but somehow the carelessness of his words instilled the exact opposite inside of him. His alarm bells were going off loud and clear, meanwhile the pictures of skeletons seemed to jump at him from the slabs mockingly.
This so wasn’t what Aoi had pictured when Ruki had invited him to go on a date in Paris.
“I still fail to see how this is in any way romantic,” he grumbled as his gaze wandered over the pictures of excavated skeletons. He didn’t even bother trying to understand the English texts; he knew enough to get by, but certainly not to read the inscriptions on these walls. “Where did you get the idea that this was a good spot for a date?”
Ruki shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s still Paris,” he debated weakly. “And it’s cool, both in the figurative and literal way, don’t you think?” As his gaze met Aoi’s, his eyes shone again with that excitement. The pout was back on his lips, which gave him a misleadingly innocent air. His blonde curls framed his gorgeous face, and the sun glasses in his hair made him look both cute and stylish. If they had been in any other place, Aoi would have surely felt the urge to bend down and kiss him. However, the ambience around them was far too chilly and spooky for his taste, Paris or no Paris.
He did bend down to Ruki, but his lips didn’t touch his lovers’, they tickled his ear. “I want you to know I’m only doing this because I love you,” he whispered, before he nibbled at Ruki’s earlobe shortly in a tender display of affection. He couldn’t help it; this man was his greatest weakness, even when he dragged him into some stupid exhibition about skeletons.
“That’s what I thought,” Ruki replied with a smug grin, caressing his chest with a gesture of longing desire. But before more could spark between them, he turned around and started to look at the slabs on the walls. Aoi rolled his eyes, but bit back his own remark. He knew that Ruki was expecting as much. He loved to provoke him, and for once, Aoi wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Especially not after he had already succeeded in dragging him here unwittingly.
They looked at the pictures in silence – which Ruki did with far more enthusiasm than Aoi (amongst the two, he was the skull fanatic, after all) – before they left the first room and entered a small, dimly lit tunnel. Ruki began to explain some facts to him that he had read up beforehand, but Aoi was barely able to pay attention to any of it. It was true, the tunnels were lit; that didn’t make the feeling of uneasiness go away, though. Aoi was by no means claustrophobic, and he was not especially tall, either, but those tunnels with their low ceiling and their winding paths on slippery ground still made him feel trapped as waves of restlessness flooded through him.
At one point, when they came across the first dark hole behind a paled gate, he seized Ruki’s hand. “Slippery,” he mumbled as an excuse to not have to admit to him how scared he actually was, and how his agitation was the reason he held onto him so tight. To underline his point, he dragged the sole of his shoe along one of the stone plates in the ground, making an audible crunching sound as the pebbles scraped across the stone surface.
Ruki’s amused grin was enough to tell him that he was by no means fooled by Aoi’s excuse, but at least he was decent enough to not call him out. Instead, he pulled Aoi’s hand closer, placing a ginger kiss on the top of his knuckles, before he fastened their pace to lead him away from the dark hole.
The fluttering feeling in Aoi’s stomach only lasted for a few more minutes, until they entered the next bigger room. He had thought that they had finally reached the main part of the exhibition, but realized soon enough that this room was a singularity. It was small, with only one table at the right side of the room. On top of the table, a few bones were nailed to the wood, accompanied by more explanations in French. Other than that, there were nothing but more plastic slabs that held more gruesome pictures decorating the place. On the left side of the room, there was another doorway. Both sides of the doorway were held in black with one white diamond painted on each pillar of the doorframe. Aoi could feel the looming sensation of doom even before his eyes fell on the message set in stone above the doorway.
ARRETE!
C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT
He didn’t know much French, but since his boyfriend held an inexplicable (to him, at least) fascination for all things death, he fair well understood these words. He gasped as he read them, and his heart began to fasten its pace. This is the empire of Death. He swallowed thickly. The feeling of uneasiness came rushing through him like a tidal wave, swiftly followed by his earlier feeling that there was something Ruki wasn’t telling him. He opened his mouth to say something, or alternatively gasp for air, but no sound left his mouth. It was as though his brain had short circuited, and helplessly, he just let himself be dragged towards the gate of hell by Ruki.
Even though he could tell by instinct that hell would await him, he could have never in his wildest dreams guessed what would await him beyond the doorway. What he saw took his remaining breath away. It chilled him to the bone until he was certain not only his knees, but his whole body was shaking like a leaf. His hands grew damp, all color drained from his cheeks. “W-what’s this?” he croaked out, turning his head this way and that in the hopes of finding a way out of this nightmare.
There was no way out.
No matter which direction he looked, there were skulls everywhere. Endless rows of skulls to either side of the tunnel, lined up properly next to each other as though they were leading the way down into deeper, darker parts of hell. In between the neat rows of skulls, big bones were stacked on top of each other meticulously.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Ruki’s voice seemed to carry through a thick wall of fog. Aoi simply stared at him in horror. “It’s even more impressive in reality than I’d thought.”
“You–“ Aoi pressed out, but his vocal chords failed him. Ruki had known what would await them. Of course he had known. He had known and he had dragged Aoi into this without revealing a thing because he had known that had Aoi had the smallest of inklings what this was really about, he would have refused him. Oh, how he would have refused him.
Seemingly unbothered by the panic on his face, Ruki turned around and marveled at the endless rows of skulls. “In 1785, they started to relocate the remains of Parisians from all kinds of cemeteries to down here,” he gushed, highly intrigued as he neared the wall of bones. He tilted his head to look at one of the skulls, then shifted his attention to the next one. “The cemeteries were crawling with remains, they got so stuffed that they didn’t know where to keep the bones anymore,” he went on, meanwhile Aoi felt a wave of nausea wash over him at the story. Ruki wandered off, and Aoi followed him for the sole reason that he did not want to be left alone in such a creepy place. At a stone slab embedded in between the bones, Ruki halted. Some French words were set in the stone at which Ruki pointed. “Those hold the sources, you know, the names and time of the cemeteries the remains were taken from before they were brought here. Too many people started dying for all kinds of reasons: plagues, famine, diseases. They didn’t have any space left to bury their dead, so they simply dug the old remains up and stocked them here. It is said that the remains of over 6 million people were relocated that way. Crazy, right?” He turned around to Aoi, the most curious and fascinated glint in his eyes.
Aoi pressed his fist to his lips as he felt the urge to gag. “This is sick,” he groaned. “Sick. Who would do this? This is horrible.” No matter the religion, Aoi was certain that to most cultures on earth, death was something sacred. Something respectable. Digging up the remains of dead people was nothing but the highest form of disrespect and degradation. Fearful, he looked around them, but didn’t dare to keep his eyes on any of the skulls for more than a mere second. “It’s said to be bad luck to disrupt the rest of the dead,” he murmured. “Oughtn’t these people have known?”
Ruki shrugged at that. “I’m pretty sure they knew. But well, desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.” He studied Aoi’s face for a moment. “Oi, you’re pale as a ghost.” He reached out to pet his cheek timidly.
“I can’t believe you dragged me into this heathen. This is barbaric.” Aoi grimaced, and shook his head. With that, Ruki’s hand fell limp from his cheek. He felt the same disappointment he saw displayed on Ruki’s face, but he was too horrified to prioritize that right now.
“Of course it is,” Ruki grumbled. “It’s probably one of the darkest moments in Parisian history. But people have always been drawn in by the morbid, haven’t they?” His teeth dug into his bottom lip, and for the first time since the beginning of their date, he looked guilty. “I know it was selfish of me to bring you here, but I’ve been dying to visit this place. And you know none of the other guys would’ve agreed to go here. I just… I really wanted to see it, I couldn’t help it.” Ashamed, he lowered his gaze. As though he was fearing for Aoi to see him in a different light now. As less than he had before because Ruki had craved to see this morbidity with his own eyes.
“I’d never,” Aoi answered his unspoken question. Confused, Ruki glimpsed up to him through his lashes. However, he didn’t dare lift his head to look at him fully. Aoi sighed. He cradled his face in his hand to lift his chin up and make him look at him. “I’d never think of you any less, just because you happen to be one of those people fascinated by the morbid. You know that, don’t you? I’ve always known you to be a bit weird,” he chuckled softly, then winked at him, “I’ve always known you love everything that has to do with death, ghosts and skeletons, even though I can’t, for the life of me, relate. But I love you for all of these things, not despite them. You know I’d let you drag me through a dozen of these things if it made you happy.” He caressed Ruki’s cheek with his thumb in a loving gesture. No matter how much he hated these things, and no matter how quickly he wanted to get out of this hellhole, he would do a damn and ruin it for Ruki. He always indulged his hobbies, his moods, and his antics, so Aoi owed him the same at the very least. “Plus, I knew what I signed up for when I agreed to date you.”
Finally, Ruki chuckled as well. “So, you’re not super mad at me for dragging you here?” he asked sheepishly, before biting his lower lip again.
With a defeated sigh, Aoi tucked a messy strand of hair behind Ruki’s ear. He simply adored him, especially when he was being all shy and self-conscious. “Not if you buy me something once this is over,” he joked. He stepped closer, and brushed Ruki’s temple with his lips. Then, he turned to face the tunnel ahead of them, and his heart sank to his stomach as panic clawed at his heart once more. “Let’s get this nightmare over with.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
Ruki pulled his lips into a pout. “C’mon, babe, please!” As though he was swatting a fly away, he waved his phone through the air. “I want to have something to remember this by.”
Abhorred, Aoi looked from Ruki to his phone to the wall and back to Ruki. “I said no,” he objected, shaking his head heavily as he did so. This was getting too much. The goosebumps on his arms wouldn’t subside, and new chills ran down his spine with every new tunnel full of skeletons they walked down. But if he had thought the whole thing to be absurd before, then this was reaching a new level of insanity.
“I think it’d be really cute,” Ruki continued with his meager argumentation, and his slightly more convincing pout.
“There’s nothing cute about this,” Aoi groaned in disbelief. “We could’ve gone to the Eiffel Tower, I would’ve gladly taken a picture with you there. But not here. Not… with this!” Outraged, he pointed his finger at the wall. Some of the ‘workers’ (who were nothing but coldhearted grave robbers, in his opinion) had taken things even further, had crossed even more lines. In complete disarray, he glanced at the heart-shaped pattern of skulls they had embedded amidst all the other remains. This wasn’t only barbaric, this was an atrocity. And people around them were seriously taking pictures in front of the heart made of skulls. He just couldn’t believe it.
He startled when a pair of hands snug around his neck. “Come on, Yuu-chan. The Eiffel Tower is nothing special, everyone takes pictures on the frickin’ Eiffel Tower.” Softly, he turned his head so Aoi would look at him instead of the preposterous pattern. He ran his fingers through his short strands, filling Aoi with more pleasurable chills than before. In a most appealing gesture, he nuzzled their noses together, breathing against Aoi’s lips. “Please, babe, for me?”
Aoi closed his eyes to try and tune out the pleading stare that got more than his knees weak. He held his breath, trying his hardest not to cave, and stand his ground for once as conflict raged on inside of him. “The answer’s no,” he pressed out with some difficulty as Ruki’s body drew near, and he caught his alluring scent of cigarettes, cologne and cinnamon that always drove him crazy. His heart began to race as he felt Ruki’s lips on his skin as he peppered his face with chaste kisses; his eyelids, his temples, his nose, his cheeks, his chin.
Faintly, Ruki’s lips brushed against his. “Please, babe. It’d make me incredibly happy.”
“I said n–“ Aoi knew he had lost the game before the first syllable was out, or before his voice got cut off by Ruki’s lips pressing against his in hungry impatience. He had lost the very moment Ruki had addressed his happiness. He didn’t even have to coax him into a kiss, the mere thought of fulfilling his wish blew away all of his defenses. But Ruki was already kissing him in heated passion, grabbing and holding onto his nape with one hand as he heard the release of his front camera shut, meanwhile all he could do was melt against his lips and forget everything around them.
Seconds that felt like hours passed in which they stood close and simply kept kissing, even after Ruki had long taken the picture. Aoi didn’t care. He didn’t care about their bickering, about the picture, or the dark tunnels. He didn’t care about the creepy bones anymore, or the morbidly shaped pattern of a heart. He could kiss Ruki for the rest of his life and not grow tired of it. And if he rewarded him with such longing kisses, then he was also willing to take a billion more pictures in front of grotesque things. Their souls had been intertwined for so long and so deep, he always kept forgetting all of his surroundings the moment they connected.
Far too soon, Ruki broke their kiss. Aoi’s eyelids snapped open, and dizzily, he stared at him. A bright smile adorned Ruki’s face, and even in the dimly lit tunnel, he could spot the treacherous redness in his cheeks. His own cheeks burned just the same. By instinct, he looked around them, but as usual on their trips abroad, no one paid them any mind. He felt his heart skip a beat at that thought, and leant forward to catch another taste of Ruki’s lips. “I hate you,” he murmured against his lips, then pecked them again.
Ruki snatched a strand of his dark hair, swirled it around his index finger, and tugged at it lovingly. “I know.” As though nothing had happened, he seized Aoi’s hand to entangle their fingers, and urged him to continue their way through the catacombs.
It felt like an eternal nightmare in which Aoi trotted through the tunnels besides Ruki, clinging to his hand for dear life. Sadly (or luckily, he should say), they didn’t come across any other heart-shaped patterns (though there were crosses and other patterns formed by the skulls). Ruki yelped in ecstasy when they discovered a skull with a perfectly round-shaped hole in its forehead. Most of the skulls were missing parts, either the jaw, or pieces of their skull plates, but most of those missing parts were irregularities with no way to determine how and when they had gotten lost. However, Ruki was without a doubt that whichever poor soul that skull had belonged to must have been shot in the head (it was either that or a gruesome lobotomy, according to him), which had certainly been the cause of death.
Aoi, who had been unaware that his boyfriend had recently acquired pathological skills, had scrunched up his nose, and turned his back on the skull to hurry along.
He almost broke out in cheers of his own when they turned what felt like the umpteenth corner of yet another tunnel, and spotted the bottom of a staircase. He barely even realized the flight finding into his steps and carrying him to the circular stairs, as he dragged Ruki with him, who complained at his sudden haste with a grunt. “Come one, Ru-chan!” he hurried him up, pulling at his hand to encourage him to walk faster as they fought their way up the seemingly endless array of stairs. Aoi didn’t bother, though, since any amount of anything else than skulls and bones was better than this freak show.
He only came to a perplexed halt when they reached the top of the stairs. More security guards were waiting, and they demanded to check Ruki’s bag as they passed them by. “What’d they do that for?” Aoi asked with a frown as he watched Ruki shoulder his bag.
For a moment, he returned his curious gaze silently, as though he was contemplating whether to answer his question or not, but then he shrugged. “Seems that some people take some bones as souvenirs,” he explained matter-of-factly. “That’s why they check visitors’ bags even after the tour. That’s what the guard at the entry told me, anyway, if I understood correctly.”
Aoi blinked in complete disbelief. “People actually want to take these things home?” he blurted out incredulously.
Ruki grinned at his perplexed face. “I told you people are drawn in by the morbid, didn’t I?”
Not knowing what to answer, Aoi shook his head. Soon enough, he had other things to worry about as they rounded a corner and entered the gift shop. Speechless, he looked around the small room filled with nothing but skeletons and skulls wherever his gaze wandered. He looked at Ruki, who had that excited shimmer in his eyes again, and sighed. Ruki opened his mouth, but Aoi beat him to it. “Knock yourself out,” he said, already having acquiesced to his fate. He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb to an unoccupied bench. “I’ll wait there if you don’t mind.”
Ruki’s smile was answer enough, and he trotted over to the bench. With a relieved hum, he sank down onto the upholstery. He rested his back against the wall, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His feet were aching, they must have spent more time walking around than he had realized. Not that he had the time of day or any means to check it since his phone was currently residing in Ruki’s bag. He still couldn’t believe that Ruki had actually dragged him here. Scratch that, he couldn’t believe such a place existed in the first place. He also couldn’t believe that he had managed the whole tour without freaking out (too much), or fleeing in a hysterical fit. Which he had shamefully proven to be very capable of during one of the nameless horror movies Ruki had tried to make him sit through. But there was one particular feeling coursing through his veins he was only able to identify after a few minutes of reminiscence. There wasn’t only the satisfactory exhaustion one often felt after a (more or less) nice trip, but also something else. Something that made his chest swell warmly and his exhaustion fade into background noise: pride. He was proud that he had lived through this ordeal without chickening out and ruining Ruki’s experience, no matter that he was usually a big scaredy-cat.
When a shadow fell before his eyes, he opened them timidly. Ruki was standing in front of him, a big bag in his hands and an even bigger smile on his face. Eyebrow raised, Aoi skeptically eyed the bag. “What’d ya get?”
Ruki opened the bag so he could peak inside, but all Aoi saw were undefinable pieces of cloth and more plastic bags. “Hmm, let’s see,” Ruki hummed as he rummaged through the bag, “A hoodie with a skull, an umbrella with cute skulls, a few books with concept arts about skeletons, oh hey, a special edition of The Nightmare Before Christmas – you know how much I adore that movie.” Aoi shook his head with a grin. Oh how well he knew how much Ruki loved that movie – he made them watch it together every Christmas and Halloween. “A lighter and some cool cups. They’re only for decoration but they look really cool, don’t you think?” He took one of the cups out and unraveled the thin white protective paper to show it to Aoi.
“That’s not going in our living room,” Aoi commented dryly, to which Ruki pouted, but put the cup back in. However, Aoi knew that he had far from won that discussion, and that Ruki would eventually somehow convince him to put them up in their apartment nevertheless. “What’s that?” he asked as he spotted a small black box at the bottom of the bag.
“Oh, that!” Ruki grinned ominously. He put the bag down on the bench next to Aoi, and dug the black box out. “That’s for you.”
Aoi’s eyes widened, and his heart pounded. “For me?” he repeated dumbfounded. “You know I was only joking when I told you to get me something, right?”
Ruki’s grin grew soft. “I know. But I wanted to get you something anyway. And when I saw this I simply had to get it. It’s perfect for you!” At his words, curiosity sparked in Aoi, and he reached for the box to inspect his gift. However, Ruki shook his head no. “Uh-uh. Close your eyes!” he instructed with a mischievous glimmer in his eyes.
Dreading yet another episode of doom, Aoi warily did as he was told. He heard Ruki open the box, then tear up some plastic foil. Then, he felt him grab his arm, and lift it up slightly. Something cool touched his skin, and the faint clicking of a clasp was audible, before Ruki dropped his arm again. “You can open your eyes,” he chimed happily.
Again, Aoi did as he was told. He had already been able to guess the nature of the gift when he had felt it close around his wrist, and his suspicion was confirmed when he lifted his arm; a silver bracelet made of weirdly shaped pearls dangled from his wrist. He scrutinized the pearls, and gasped when he finally identified their shape. “Is this… a spine?!” he breathed utterly stupefied.
Ruki giggled. “Yep! You know, because you showed a lot of spine today, going through all this with me.”
Aoi looked at him as though he had lost the last remains of his sanity. That prideful feeling from earlier vanished as shame colored his cheeks in a deep red. Embarrassment filled him from head to toe, and sulkily, he started to fumble with the bracelet. Ruki had hit the mark dead on with his teasing gift, and it abashed him completely. “You’re the worst, you know that?” he grumbled sourly. But he wasn’t as much mad at Ruki as he was about his own cowardice and jumpiness. “First that horrible tour and now this. I hate you, and I hate this stupid bracelet.” Of course his words were nothing but a blatant lie. He could never hate Ruki, and he could never hate any gift he gave him. Especially none that was as poignant as this one. If anything, he hated himself for being this predictable, a book far too easy for Ruki to read.
His thumb and index finger came to a halt at the clasp of the bracelet, after they had run their course along the individual vertebras of the spine. As he regarded the bracelet more intently, he found his cheeks were no longer tinged red by shame. They were tinged red by happiness. How could a stupid bracelet bought by Ruki to tease him even further make him this ridiculously happy? How could it evaporate his shame so easily? How was it that this man held so much power over him in everything he did?
Aoi already knew the answers to those questions.
Because he loved him, for better or worse.
“Do you want me to return it? Since you hate it so much,” Ruki probed completely unfazed, stretching his palm out to him so Aoi could drop the bracelet back in his hand. By the lack of expression on his face, Aoi knew that Ruki could see right through him. The amused glint in his eyes betrayed his blank expression, giving Aoi the reassurance that no matter what, he couldn’t fool him. Ruki knew him too well for that.
Puffing out his cheeks, Aoi wrapped his right hand around the bracelet on his left wrist, and pressed it against his chest protectively. Pursed lips and squinted eyes, he looked up at Ruki as to keep him from stealing his new bracelet away from him. “No, I’m keeping it. That’s my spine now, you can’t have it back.
“Now let’s go, before we’re late for rehearsals, and leader-san tears us a new one.”