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Shuichi tucks his knees into his chest and listens to the bright, clear sounds of his boyfriend fiddling with his ukulele. He’s tuning it by ear, something that Shuichi doesn’t think he could ever manage himself, but based on the calluses on Rantaro’s rough fingers, he’s probably been playing the thing for a while.
Most ukuleles that Shuichi has seen before are a lot smaller than the one that’s resting in Rantaro’s lap right now. The notes are much are lower too, though Shuichi thinks that the strings are being tuned to the same pitch as the others he’s seen. He doesn’t know anything about the physics of a ukulele, or in fact any string instruments in general, but he assumes that the size of a string and how taut it is are what affect the pitch, because every time Rantaro plucks at a string and the sound isn’t to his pleasure, he turns one of the knobs at the top, and it’ll be higher or lower based on the way that he turned it.
Rantaro is sitting on the bed, one of his legs kicked off the side and the other tucked underneath his knee. Their apartment is cozy, though the scent of durian is still pretty strong from the fruit that Rantaro brought in last night. Shuichi likes durian a lot (though he didn’t eat it much growing up because it’s so expensive) but the smell is a bit overpowering. It’s somehow managed to perforate even their bedroom. He cracked a window upon waking up this morning but the smell hasn’t faded any. At any rate, the detective is sitting on the floor, on the fluffy white rug that they got from the furniture store down the street, and he has a case file lying near him, but he discarded it a while ago in favour of listening to his boyfriend fiddle around with his instrument.
Finally, Rantaro plucks each one of the strings in succession, and they come out crisp and pleasant. Shuichi can tell that his boyfriend is smiling based on the satisfied hum that follows the sound, and the happy little chord he plays. The sound seems to brighten the room in a way, even though it wasn’t dark to begin with (it’s springtime, after all, and early afternoon, which means their bedroom is extremely sunny, especially with the curtains drawn like this) and Shuichi finds himself turning around, meeting bright green (in effect, not in shade) eyes.
“It’s tuned now?” He asks, even though he already gathered that from context clues. Rantaro nods, and scoots forward on the bed before just sliding down to sit on the floor next to Shuichi. The detective shifts over to give his boyfriend space on the rug, and Rantaro in response leans into him slightly, a gesture that is comfortable rather than embarrassing after over five years of being together. “Are you going to play something?”
“Maybe.” Rantaro plucks out another chord, but doesn’t strum. “I might just fiddle with it a little bit. Did you want to hear me play a song?” He looks up at Shuichi, brows quirking, and it’s an innocent question, but now Shuichi does get a bit embarrassed, his cheeks warming. The smile that curls Rantaro’s lip doesn’t help, either, and he nudges his boyfriend with his shoulder, indignant.
“I don’t hear you sing often,” Shuichi mumbles, and scoffs when Rantaro’s smile widens. “Stop it, you’re so full of yourself,” he huffs, and finds himself pouting when Rantaro laughs. “You’re so mean to me,” but Shuichi rests his head on Rantaro’s shoulder anyway, knowing there’s no point in protesting because even after dating for five years, whenever Rantaro smiles like that, any irritation, serious or not, immediately evaporates. It might be a bad thing if they were the kind of couple to argue often, but they really aren’t. The few fights they’ve had have been absolutely miserable and they’re both pretty eager to avoid things like that happening in general so they have pretty good communication on the whole.
“A lot of the songs I know on this are in English.” Rantaro muses, messing around with the highest string on the instrument. Shuichi watches his fingers, thin and dextrous, as they move over the strings. It reads to him as muscle memory, something his boyfriend doesn’t have to pay very much attention to. He wonders how long Rantaro has been playing, and then it occurs to him that he can just ask, so he does. The question seems to be one that his boyfriend has to ponder, because Rantaro’s lower lip draws between his teeth before he responds. “I picked it up just before meeting you.” He decides upon. “After Kei got lost in Australia,” he clarifies, and his tone is light, but Shuichi frowns anyway.
Rantaro’s gaze is averted. “Why did you decide to learn?” Shuichi asks, rubbing his face against Rantaro’s neck in hopes of distracting him from the topic of the last sister he lost. The green-haired man hums in reply, and Shuichi feels the squish of his cheek resting against the crown of his head.
“My father bought me one. An ukulele, that is. I think he felt bad.” Rantaro says after a moment. It makes a bit of sense that the elder Amami would’ve felt guilty about that. Kei got lost in Canberra because while she and Rantaro were alone there, Rantaro got sick; she snuck off to get help, and didn’t return after that. What an awkward position to be in as a father.
Though, in Shuichi’s honest opinion, he doesn’t think that buying an instrument is a very good apology for what happened. Amami’s daughters getting lost wasn’t his fault, but the way he responded to the situation wasn’t, and still hasn’t been very good at all. For the longest time Rantaro’s parents didn’t even believe that the search was worthwhile. The doubt died down a little bit when they found Mina, and again when they found Kasumi, and as they’ve only just returned from Europe with Tsubaki in tow, Shuichi is pretty sure that the Amamis have some reason to have faith in their abilities to locate people by now. Even so, the doubt shouldn’t have been there to begin with. It’s still a sore spot for Shuichi. (The first time he met Rantaro’s family, he yelled at them about it. It wasn’t really his proudest moment and things are still awkward with all of them whenever Rantaro isn’t around. Save for Miss Hamada, perhaps, but she doesn’t talk much.)
“It’s not difficult to learn a few chords. That one I played when I first got it tuned, that was C major.” Rantaro presses his ring finger down on the fourth string, the highest one, and strums the sunshiney-sounding chord again. “It’s the first one you learn when you play, typically-- though I’m all self-taught, myself,” he adds with a cheeky smile. Shuichi scoffs again but doesn’t retort. It is impressive that Rantaro taught himself the instrument. He has the right to be a bit cheeky. “I like to play it to double check that everything is in tune. It’s harder to tell with minor chords.”
“Ah, what’s the distinction?” Shuichi unfortunately knows pretty much nothing about music, save for what he thinks sounds good, and even there his standards are pretty low. (His music taste is far from being at all picky.) “Between minor and major chords, I mean?”
“That’s a bit complicated to explain since you don’t have much of a background in music theory,” Rantaro starts to say, and makes to continue.
“Oh, sorry,” Shuichi frowns. “I didn’t realise it would--”
“Hey, shh, I’m not done talking,” Rantaro lets go of the neck of the ukulele and reaches over to flick Shuichi’s nose. (The detective scrunches up his face before rubbing his nose with the back of his hand, which makes Rantaro laugh. Bastard.) “Chords are what you call any combination of three or more notes. C major, for example, is the combination of C, G, and E natural.” He sounds relaxed, but knowledgeable. It’s easy to listen to, though it’s also pretty easy to fall asleep to Rantaro’s voice-- it’s soothing, alright-- so Shuichi sits up so that he can listen fully. “Uh, every note is divided by what you’d call steps-- it’s like when you shift the pitch of a note up or down a little bit, the very slightest shift is what you call a half-step, and more than that is a whole step.”
To demonstrate, Rantaro plays the largest (and lowest) string, which he tells Shuichi is the C string, and then presses his finger down on the first blank space on the string, which he calls a fret, and plays it. It’s higher; not significantly, but enough to be noticeable. Rantaro explains that that’s a half step, and then shifts his finger to the second fret before plucking the string again. After switching back and forth between the naked string and the second fret for a moment, Rantaro explains that that’s called a whole step.
“So a major chord,” Rantaro smiles. “Is when the three notes are separated by two whole steps.” He plays C major again, and then plucks each of the strings individually. “E is two whole steps above C, and G is two whole steps above E. It sounds the most comfortable this way, in my opinion. The happiest.” Shuichi nods. He likes listening to Rantaro talk. He has a really nice voice. (Of course, it helps that the subject matter is interesting, too.) “A minor chord is kind of what you’d use to refer to any other variation other than the neat separation by two half steps, but for what you’d call C minor, it’s when the note in the middle, in this case E, is shifted down a half step. So it would sound like this instead.” Rantaro lays his index finger across the third fret, pressing down on all of the strings except the top one. G, Shuichi thinks. He plays the chord, and it does sound similar to C major, but there’s definitely a notable difference. And Rantaro is right that it sounds more sad.
“Ah.” Shuichi nods after a moment, touching his chin with a hand. “That makes a lot of sense, thank you.”
“Sure. I’m no Kaede, so my explanation isn’t going to be perfect, but-”
“I thought your explanation was great.” Shuichi interrupts Rantaro before he can finish self-deprecating, offering a cheery smile in response to the slightly flustered look that Rantaro shoots him. “Alright! Play me a song now.” He beams, and Rantaro chuckles, shaking his head.
“How’s your English doing? If I played you a love song in English, would you get it?”
“That really depends on the song,” Shuichi’s smile turns a bit sheepish. “I think I could understand, ah, the Elvis Presley one, but--”
“I’m not playing Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Rantaro says, exasperated. “I have more creative song choices than that. I’m not a normie.”
Shuichi snorts.
“Hey!” Rantaro pouts. “I’m not.” The look he receives from the detective leaves him the one huffing this time, and Shuichi covers his hand with his mouth as he laughs at the mock-annoyance on his boyfriend’s face. His green eyes are loving, which really makes it difficult for Shuichi to buy the needling. “I know a Japanese version of a song I like. It doesn’t work as well, but I think it’ll be fine.” Rantaro plays a chord on the ukulele that definitely isn’t C major, offering a teeny tiny smile. “It’s kind of high for me,” he remarks.
“Thankfully,” Shuichi begins, leaning back against the bed. “I’ve heard what I’m sure are much worse voice cracks than what you’re about to do while you’ve been in the shower.”
Rantaro gasps, like he’s offended, but any negative emotion in his expression evaporates quickly, leaving a silly and lopsided smile on his face as he starts to strum.
It’s so nice, sitting in their bedroom like this and seeing all sorts of smiles from Rantaro. Back in high school, when they were first meeting, it was like the green-haired man was constantly wearing a mask. He was always acting like he was incredibly happy, but it couldn’t have been more obvious that he wasn’t, after a while, not to Shuichi. It’s hard not to be constantly in awe of the fact that they’ve come so far.
And Shuichi doesn’t want to jinx it, because no matter how nice things are, they could still end at any moment. Something could go terribly wrong on a trip, or Rantaro could suddenly fall out of love, or any number of things could happen, and all of it would come to a crashing halt. To be honest, Shuichi doesn’t know if there’s anything in the world that sounds worse to him than that. It would be an incorrect statement, to say that Shuichi depends on Rantaro for emotional security, but… damn, he really helps. And there are so many things about him-- that winded, breathless smile he gives whenever they’re laughing, the fact that he snorts when he laughs too hard, the pale freckles that he usually covers up with foundation, how he cycles through pairs of indoor shoes because he can’t decide which ones he likes the best-- that Shuichi knows now and can never stop thinking about, especially in times like these, where they’re back from a trip and everything is peaceful.
When Rantaro starts to sing, Shuichi’s thoughts immediately fly out of his head. His voice is so nice. It’s rich, and gentle (though maybe that’s just the nature of the song, since the lyrics are about being higher than the moon and hid[ing] [his] blushing face and trip[ping] on [his] shoelaces) and it sets off butterflies in Shuichi’s chest for the first time since high school ended.
Idly, Shuichi wonders if it’s possible to fall in love with someone all over again while still being in love with them. He wouldn’t really know; Rantaro’s the only person he’s ever loved in this way, despite all the crushes he had before he got to know the green-haired man.
But if it is, Shuichi figures that he’s probably fallen in love with Rantaro too many times to count.
Rantaro doesn’t get to finish singing the song, because just as he ends the bridge, Shuichi grabs his shoulders and pulls him into a kiss, and the ukulele is put away for a while.
I fall into a pile, on the floor
Puppy love is hard to ignore
When every little thing you do, I do--