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When they arrive at Shanghai, the skies are gray and it’s raining lightly so that Ruki can see the raindrops fall but can’t feel any. Nonetheless, his shoes become damp after walking for a few minutes, which may or may not be due to the fact that Junki is purposely dragging his luggage through water puddles in front of them and splashing water everywhere. Next to Ruki, Shosei mutters something about how his feet are cold. I thought you liked it when rains, Ruki teases, but Shosei just shuffles closer to him and pouts and says that he only likes it when he’s warm and comfortable indoors. Ruki smiles and ruffles Shosei’s hair, ignoring his whines as he attempts to slap Ruki hands away before his hair gets messed up. They walk in relative silence, basking in the noise of the city around them and the noisiness of their groupmates until they arrive at the hotel, all 11 of them piling into the lobby with their big suitcases and damp clothes.
It takes some time to check them into their rooms and some more for them to actually get to their rooms. On the way up, Shion jokes about calling dibs on not being Ruki’s roommate because he would very much like his beauty sleep, and Ruki rolls his eyes. Shosei, somehow still next to Ruki, smiles and says, I’ll do it and take one for the team. Junki gasps dramatically and Syoya feigns concern, asking Shosei, are you sure you’ll survive?, and Ruki just rolls his eyes more and turns away from the disrespectful children. He fixes his hair with the elevator mirror instead and catches Shosei’s gaze in the reflection, soft and mischievous through his blonde bangs that are getting too long.
There are two beds in the room and Shosei drops himself onto the one closest to the door as Ruki sorts through his own suitcase. He doesn’t find the need to unpack when they’ll only be staying for a few days. He picks out his toiletries and pajamas and decides that’s enough for the rest of the day. He sits on the bed Shosei is still lying on and replies to the messages on his phone, reassuring his mother that he has arrived safely, letting Yuto and Genta know when he’s free to hangout, and leaving an angry react on Honda’s message for him to not bother everyone too much too late into the night.
Shosei rolls over to put his head on Ruki’s lap, and Ruki’s free hand automatically finds itself stroking Shosei’s hair.
“You’ve been here before, right?” Shosei tugs on the end of Ruki’s shirt sleeve to get his attention.
“Yeah, a few years ago.” Ruki puts his phone away and pulls Shosei up so that the younger boy is half lying in his arms, back half against his chest, and loops his arms around Shosei’s body. Shosei shifts a little into a more comfortable position and melts into Ruki, and it is at times like these that Ruki thinks Shosei is really, really, like an affectionate house cat.
“You should show me around on our off day,” Shosei says. “I’ve never been here before. And I want to make a vlog.”
“Of course,” Ruki smiles. Shosei turns in his arms and brushes a quick kiss against the corner of Ruki’s lips before burying his head in the curve of Ruki’s neck. They stay like that until they had to sleep, knowing that this is the only free time they’d have before the performance.
As expected, the next few days blur together like a whirlwind as they go through practice, practice, and more practice for their first concert in Shanghai. The preparation gets tiring, exhausting, as it always does, but it’s also all that keeps Ruki going, the thought of standing onstage, presenting performances that have been perfected over and over again, seeing the smiles and feeling the excitement of the audience, and of course, Shosei by his side throughout all of it. It’s almost like a drug, one that he can’t get enough of even if it pushes him to his limit.
Their hard work pays off and the concert goes well. Ruki pulls out the only Chinese phrase he knows - “my name is Ruki, I love you”, learnt hastily before he performed in Shanghai last time, and the fans go wild. It’s so different from what Ruki remembers as he looks around the stadium, so much more, but of course, the last time he came he was pretty much a nobody, so of course it’s different now, when he – they – got both national coverage and international attention. It makes him feel some kind of way, a little strange but not necessarily bad. It’s like finally letting go of regrets from the past, the regrets he’s carried for so long it’s as if they were a part of himself. But at the same time a new weight comes, the weight of hope, hope for the future, but Ruki thinks that this is a feeling he can get used to.
And when Shosei comes over to hold his hand briefly during Sayonara Seishun, an are you okay in his gaze but offering comfort to Ruki exactly how he needs it, Ruki smiles I’m fine and squeezes Shosei’s hand lightly before letting it go. He feels light now, lighter than he’s felt in a long time, light enough to fly if he wanted to.
The concert ends and they all get back to the hotel late, still high on adrenaline and feeling like they’re on the top of the world. They gather into Keigo’s room to burn up their post-performance high until 4am, when their manager comes in and tells them they should probably go sleep, and for once it isn’t Ruki’s fault that they’re all up so late.
Shosei grumbles a little when Ruki cheerily wakes him up the next morning at 9am, saying something about how he doesn’t understand how Ruki can survive on only 5 hours of sleep, but he lets Ruki drag him up and shove him into the bathroom (by himself, so he can get ready to go out).
They wander around the streets after grabbing breakfast from the hotel lobby, looking at the small street-side stores full of clothes, toys, and tourist items. They go into a subway station somewhere along the way, and the Pearl Tower greets Shosei when he follows Ruki out the exit.
They make it to the entrance of the tower and Shosei watches in awe as Ruki pulls out two tickets.
“Shall we?” Ruki grins, offering his arm to Shosei with just a little too much flourish, truly looking like a prince.
Shosei giggles and loops his arm through Ruki’s. “We shall.”
They take the elevator up, 200 meters above the ground. On the lower observation deck, Shosei marvels at the view both out the window in front of them and through the glass floor, bouncing around and taking pictures and videos like a child who’s just been given candy. Excited Shosei is so cute, and Ruki tries his best to hide the probably super dumb smile that’s pulling at his lips, but it so hard to not smile when Shosei is running around all excited so Ruki gives up after a few seconds and lets himself smile like a lovestruck idiot as he keeps an eye on Shosei (in case he got too carried away by his excitement) and enjoys the view himself too.
“I’m beginning to regret taking you here,” Ruki jokes as he walks up to Shosei sometime later, where the younger boy is taking yet another video by the window. He wraps his arms around Shosei’s waist and places his head on Shosei’s shoulder – the only time he’s grateful he’s shorter than Shosei because or else this position would be uncomfortable – and whispers into the younger boy’s ears, “It seems like you like the views a lot more than you like me.”
Shosei ends the recording and turns around. “You’ll always be the best view to me,” he smiles, eyes scrunching up adorably. He takes one of Ruki’s hands and interlaces their fingers. “So, now that I’m only paying attention to you, where to next?”
They have lunch in the revolving restaurant a few floors up, at a window seat Ruki made sure to reserve a few days before. After lunch, they go across the river to walk around the bund, where Shosei takes more pictures and videos, of the buildings across the river, of the boats on the river, of Ruki, of himself, and of himself and Ruki.
It ends all too soon, with them catching a subway back to the hotel to have dinner and then pack, because their flight is first thing tomorrow morning.
“Today was fun” Shosei says with a yawn as Ruki walks over to turn off the lights in their room.
“Yeah?” Ruki looks back, finding Shosei half propped up on his bed and looking straight at Ruki himself. “I’m glad.” He turns off the lights and gets into bed.
“I wish we could spend more days like this,” Shosei’s voice comes again, after a few seconds, just a little softer and sadder.
“I know,” Ruki swallows. “Me too.” But we can’t do anything about it hangs in the air, unsaid but not unheard.
He feels rather than sees his bed dip as Shosei climbs in.
“Goodnight, Shosei,” Ruki smiles as he feels Shosei curl up next to him.
“Goodnight.”
“Let me show you the vlog I made,” Shosei says as he slides into the seat next to Ruki on the plane, lifting the handle between them up so he could sit closer to Ruki. Ruki raises an eyebrow, and almost says isn’t that Ren’s seat before he decides that it’s probably better if he doesn’t ask. An airpod is shoved into Ruki’s ear before he can think of something else to say, already connected to Shosei’s phone that he’s placed on Ruki’s tray table already. Shosei scoots closer to Ruki in his seat and taps “play” on a video with a smug smile on his face.
The black intro screen, with the trademark “Film by shosei:)”, fades as the colors come in. There’s a clip of Ruki, back facing the camera as he tells Shosei about what’s changed and what hasn’t changed from what he remembers of visiting Shanghai a few years ago. Ruki, trying on tourist shirts and looking silly. Ruki, buying ice cream for the two of them. Ruki, eating lunch and stealing meat from outside the frame (from Shosei’s tray). Ruki, smiling at himself while looking out some window, not noticing that Shosei shifted the focus of his phone from the scenery to him. Ruki, taking Shosei’s hand in his own…
The video comes to an end as it fades to black again, and Ruki catches the xoxo in the background music before it fades out too. He touches his cheek with the back of his hand and finds that it’s burning a lot more than it should be. He can imagine how red the tips of his ears are. He hides his face in his hands.
“Shosei..”
“Aww, even our prince gets shy~” Ruki can practically hear the tilde in Shosei’s voice.
“Shut up,” he tells Shosei, and he wants to maybe kiss Shosei forever, but they’re on a plane and there are people around so he hugs him instead, so tightly Shosei laughs as he says, “let me go, Ruki, I can’t breathe.”
Ruki relents and finds Shosei’s hand instead, leaning his head onto Shosei’s shoulder.
“So I’m taking your reaction as you liked the vlog I made?” Shosei’s still teasing, and normally Ruki would tease him back but this time, he just presses himself closer to Shosei. Shosei takes the hint and shuts up, and pulls up some movie on his phone for the flight.
And as the plane takes off and Ruki feels Shosei begin to doze off next to him, he thinks that, in this life that he chose, down this road of being an idol - although, busy, tiring, even draining at times, the moments and memories that he shares with Shosei are all that he really needs to keep going.