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Ritsu’s game is Thursday, face-off right at sundown, which works fine for Shou. His own game isn’t all the way until Saturday, and it’s not like he’s got much better to do. Besides, going is just right. Shou’s oughta see if he’s actually improved after spending nights throwing pucks at Ritsu’s face and all. And, well, okay. He really likes seeing Ritsu when he can. It’s part of the crush thing that Teru said he had, the crush thing that feels pretty accurate. He likes seeing Ritsu and talking to Ritsu and hanging out with Ritsu and just in general, he likes Ritsu. He’s done nothing but like Ritsu and play hockey for the past week. The only people who have any problems with that are his teachers, but he doesn’t give much of a shit about them. Black Vinegar will keep him enrolled so long as his father keeps paying tuition, and he’s pretty sure the old man would drop dead at the mere thought of his son in a public school, so Shou is safe.
He spends his money on some cheap stadium fries. Wheat District Stadium fries are kind of trash, he discovers upon eating one, but a good kind of trash. Tasty trash, even if Shou will definitely regret eating something that’s just grease on a loosely-fry-shaped-object later. He gets a good spot towards the center of the rink, and it’s close enough to the ice itself that he won’t break his neck trying to see past some overly-tall bastard. No one’s too close to him. He’s got two empty seats on either side of him, and Shou takes a look around and discovers that he’s the only person that’s sitting by themselves. No one he knows seems to be good at being by themselves, now that he thinks about it, except maybe Ritsu. Ritsu’s pretty solitary, but they’re solitary together. He likes that. A solitary team of two.
Face-off! Wheat District takes control of the puck, gets a shot on goal within thirty seconds. Ritsu stops it effortlessly. Another one right after that, and that one doesn’t get through Ritsu, either. His movements are precise and quick, but there’s no jerkiness to them. They’re all effortless. Salt’s defense finally wakes the fuck up and gets the offense out of the net, but that delay is annoying to watch. Really, they have one job and can’t do it right. Which, okay, the same thing could be said about Shou when he misses shots, but that’s not important right now.
What’s important is that Ritsu gets a second to stretch out, watch the game move to the other end of the rink, maybe send a glance out into the crowd. Shou hopes he sends a glance out into the crowd. He’s not sure why, but he’d really like for Ritsu to look at him, even if Shou would tell him to keep his eyes on the game if he ever caught him at it. It’s weird. It’s a desire he’s entirely unfamiliar with. He likes being seen, sure, but usually he likes to be seen when he’s doing something interesting. Right now, he’s just watching hockey.
End of the first period, a zero-zero game. The frustration is palpable from offense and defense, but Ritsu looks nonplussed from where Shou’s standing. Ritsu’s expressions are so subtle, and it’s a shame Shou isn’t close enough to discern them. But to get close to the net he’s in for one period would mean he’d be on the other end of the rink for the next one, so he has to suffer. There is no love without sacrifice, or however that quote goes, but he figures that’s a little dramatic for the situation.
Beginning of the second sees Salt get a goal, and Wheat is pissed. Ten shots on goal in three minutes, but none of them get past Ritsu.
(One comes close, though, and it’s a spot Shou’s been looking at. He’s been shooting around Ritsu methodically all week, looking for chinks in his armor, and he thinks he may know where it is. He just needs to see someone else hit that spot to get it confirmed.)
Just before the third, it happens. Right-wing passes the puck to the guy in the center, guy in the center aims for the spot between Ritsu’s neck and left shoulder, and the puck sneaks its way in. Ritsu looks...It’s hard to see how he looks. Shou’s seen him react to goals in lots of ways, though. Sometimes he’s annoyed, sometimes he’s angry, sometimes he’s upset, and it’s always at himself. Everything is turned inwards, everything is his fault. Shou wonders who gave him the idea he had that kind of power. But sometimes Ritsu looks nothing but determined, and Shou likes that look best. It suits him.
And he must have been wearing it, because that’s the only goal that Wheat gets. They spend the third period shooting and shooting and shooting, but Ritsu has turned into a brick wall. A brick wall with one gap, something that they can close up with foam and mortar. He’s gotta let Ritsu know that he’s found the spot, though. Gotta let him know it’s confirmed.
The game ends, 2-1 in Salt’s favor. Not bad, not at all. Shou lingers outside of the rink and occupies himself with looking occupied. At the very edge of the exiting crowd, he sees Ritsu, and so Shou sneaks his way over. He winds up half a pace behind Ritsu, who’s too busy being in his own head to notice him.
“Hey!” Shou says, tapping him on that blind-spot shoulder, and Ritsu jumps. Turns to face him. His eyes are wide and his hair is sticking up and wow, he looks super cute right now. Kind of like a startled bunny. It makes him feel gooey and warm, like the brownies his mom would make when he was little.
“Hey,” Ritsu recovers, and keeps walking. Shou doesn’t know if he falls in line with Ritsu, or if Ritsu falls in line with him. He doesn’t give much of a shit either way, really, because what matters now is that they’re walking together. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Shou shrugs. “Well, I didn’t have much else to do. Besides, it was a good game! You’ve gotten way better at stopping slapshots.”
“Thanks.”
Ritsu’s looking at the ground, a little flattered, and Shou decides that he likes that. He likes flattering Ritsu. Just as long as he doesn’t say something to embarrass himself too much. He can compliment Ritsu’s hockey skills all day long, but Shou can’t necessarily go blabbing about pretty Ritsu’s eyes look in the dark, almost like they’re blending in with the sky. That would be too much.
“And you’re doing better with a bunch in a row. The ten they got in three minutes didn’t even faze you! Or at least, if it did, it didn’t show.”
“Those shots were all sloppy,” Ritsu deflects.
“But there were a lot of them. It’s hard to stop that many in a row.”
“...There were a lot of them, yeah.”
Success! He’s bullied Ritsu into accepting another compliment. This is fun, kind of. He thinks lots of things are more fun with Ritsu. Shou wishes he could go on all night, but the bus stop that he’s pretty sure Ritsu has to stop at is just ahead, and he has to head clear the other way to get to his own. Damn the Wheat District for being in the middle of their two schools like that.
“I think I’ve finally found your weak spot, though,” Shou says. “And I mean, you’ve only got one major one, which ain’t too bad if I say so myself.”
“Left side?” Ritsu guesses.
“Close, but no cigar.”
They’re at the stop now, and so they’re stopped. Shou steps in front of him and puts a hand on that sacred space, the junction where his shoulder meets his neck.
“Just this part on your left. It goes up to your ear, I’d say, or maybe the top of your helmet.”
This close, he can hear Ritsu inhale. That scar on his temple is right in that blind-spot of his, and Shou wonders what it would feel like to kiss it. If it would be raised higher than the rest of his skin, or a different texture. He doesn’t know what it would feel like to kiss Ritsu at all, and the thought makes him step back, return his hand to his side after a long moment.
Ritsu exhales.
“We’ll fix that spot up,” Shou says. “See you later tonight!”
“See you,” he says, and then Shou keeps walking, hands in his pockets. It’s hard to be sad about leaving Ritsu behind when he’ll see him in just a few hours, but he still has to fight the urge to look back at him. He wins the fight because of course he does, he’s Suzuki Shou and he wins every fight, but it’s a fight that goes on all the way until he’s in his own house, at a distance where he couldn’t see Ritsu no matter how hard he tried.
***
Shou spends two weeks solid working at that spot. Puck after puck after puck aimed just left of Ritsu’s head, and he gets better at stopping them. Faster. Less hesitation. Sometimes he grabs them with a hand, sometimes dives to reach them, and he doesn’t stop wincing, but he winces far less. On the two nights that the ice is utterly unusable, Shou brings tennis balls and throws them at Ritsu until six in the morning. Ritsu’s real good at stopping those, too, and they bruise less than hockey pucks.
He collects lots of information about Ritsu in that time. Useless shit, nothing to do with how he plays. It’s stuff like how he snorts if you get him to laugh hard enough, or how he always reaches out to stray animals so gently. Stray animals always have a knack for finding Shou, and so he gets to spend a decent amount of time seeing Ritsu’s kindness. It’s a careful little thing, faint, but startlingly beautiful. It makes him feel all sorts of things that he doesn’t know what to do with, so he usually goes back to talking about hockey and throwing pucks at him as fast as he can.
And it’s not just his actions that are beautiful. He’s really pretty. Ritsu is so pretty that it’s unfair, and Shou has to spend two weeks staring at his collarbone. There’s a real purpose for it, really, but god. That collarbone. That shoulder. That skin of his, that wild hair. It looks so soft. He can’t think of a good excuse to touch it, and Shou decides to avoid sleeping because he’s had two dreams involving his hands in Ritsu’s hair, which is way too embarrassing to really cope with.
So he’s in deep. It happens, he guesses. And Ritsu will like him back at some point, but it’s gonna be a hell of a time waiting for that to happen. He’s going to have to be patient. He doesn’t know how, really, but he shoots puck after puck after puck, and he starts to learn.
***
And in the midst of it all, schoolwork. Or, well, schoolwork that Shou doesn’t do. He’s never given much of a shit about schoolwork anyways, especially not math, but he was usually pretty good at hiding if he was behind from his old man.
Key word: usually.
Instead, now he has a month’s worth of undone math worksheets in front of him. Shou really oughta have just burnt them, but it’s too late for that now.
“You’re not leaving this house until these are done,” his father says, and Shou decides not to fight him on it. His old man is in some kind of mood, and Shou doesn’t want to see the results of that. And Shou does need to get at least a couple of them done at some point, after all. He can do like, a quarter of them, and then sneak out to see Ritsu like always. No need to worry.
“I want to see all of them completed at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Well, shit. Nevermind then.
Or maybe not nevermind. Shou could always Google around, see if he can find the answers, copy down some work, and then—
“I’ve taken your laptop and put it in the safe. I’m taking your phone, too, and I’ve put the locks back on the windows.”
Motherfucker. Shou knows he changed the lock system on that safe, too, after the sixth time Shou managed to break into it. “Well, can I at least text my friend and let him know I can’t hang out?”
Touichirou considers it. “Be quick about it. I’m leaving in five minutes, and it’ll be locked up by then.”
“Fine.”
So Shou’s quick about it.
so my dumbfuck old man is forcing me to do math and has gone draconian about it. locks on the windows and shit. sorry i can’t come tonight :(
Ritsu gets back to him in an instant.
What’s the homework on? I might be able to help.
Now that’s a solution Shou likes. Sure, he’s bad at math, and having Ritsu see him at not his best might not be great, but he’ll get to see Ritsu at his best. Shou knows his grades are good, just knows it. It’ll even out.
Shou is definitely not allowed to bring friends over, though, even if they are going to help him with homework. Shou’s good at fucking up window locks, though, and Ritsu looks like someone who can climb up to the second story.
come to 456 walnut street at 6pm. go around the house, and wait outside the window that looks out onto the house next door. don’t approach the front door. there’s a doorbell camera there. and don’t respond to this message! you gotta delete it once you have the address memorized.
Shou deletes the messages from his own phone (telling him to go to 456 is safer, really, and then Shou can yell out at him from 458), and then places it on the table for his old man to grab. He gets a pen and makes himself look adequately resigned, writing his name on all of the papers.
His father leaves after putting the phone in the safe. Locks the door, as if he thinks that a door lock will do anything against him. He has one hour until Ritsu will come, and Shou doesn’t doubt that he will. He wonders if this makes him a fairy tale princess waiting for a knight in shining armour, and that gets a good laugh out of him as he tries to do algebra.
***
Shou cracks the lock ten minutes before Ritsu is set to arrive and has finished all of one sheet. Sheets are stupid. Math is stupid. Everything is stupid. There’s a game on tonight that Shou would rather watch, but the punishment for not doing his dumb math will be worse than any dumb math could actually be, so he’ll suck it up and get it done.
Ritsu arrives, and Shou takes a moment to be greedy and just stare at him. He’s facing the wrong way, thinks Shou is in the other house, and so Shou can only see his back. He doesn’t mind. He can still look at the way Ritsu stands, the veneer of calm just barely hiding fear. Or, it’s just barely hiding to him. He’s pretty sure most people would be convinced by it, which is one of many reasons that Ritsu’s admirable.
Shou flings the window open. “Hey, Ritsu! Feel like climbin’?”
He startles and turns towards him so fast that it’s a wonder he doesn’t fall on his ass. A wonder, and the result of training. “You couldn’t have picked the first floor?”
“Locks are easier to pick up here,” Shou says, which is a lie. The locks are the same everywhere. He could have just as easily picked the kitchen. The reality is that he sort of wants to see Ritsu climb his way up here, like in one of those stupid drama movies his mom used to watch. It’s probably in the top ten list of dumbest things he’s ever wanted, but Shou once spent thirty whole minutes thinking about Ritsu’s collarbone. His brain is just gonna do and want stupid things around him. That’s his life now.
Ritsu rolls his eyes, but gets climbing. There isn’t much purchase on the side of the house, but Shou knows that Ritsu won’t fall. There’s a tension in his back and a grip on his fingers that looks practiced, like he’s done this before, and he’s at the window faster than Shou would have expected.
“You used to climbin’ into people’s windows?” Shou asks as he pulls Ritsu the rest of the way through. His hoodie is insanely soft. His skin’s warm, too. Pleasant. Like a heating bag he can kiss.
“My improvised ropes could fail,” he says. “I have to be prepared for that.”
Shou smiles, obscenely fond. He’s so goddamn cute that it should be illegal. But also if it was, Shou would definitely hide him from the cops.
“So, what’s the math?” Ritsu asks, and right. Schoolwork. He has a real reason for being here.
“Algebra. Lots and lots of algebra. I got behind and my old man flipped shit when he found out. I also don’t understand any of it.” Shou gestures to the papers sprawled across his bed, and Ritsu picks up the one he’s already finished.
“You do your math homework in pen?”
“You don’t?”
Ritsu makes a face as if someone told him that the moon is made of cottage cheese and glue, which is definitely not something Shou believed until he was seven. No way. “I don’t even think math professors solve things in pen. How else are you going to fix mistakes?”
“I’m just not gonna make them!” Shou declares, and that makes Ritsu snort.
“That’s not how math works. Here, let me just…” He looks around, searching for something, and then plucks a pencil off of his desk. “You don’t mind if I borrow this, do you? I might have one in my pocket somewhere, but—”
“It’s yours!” Shou says. “I’ll be back, I’m gonna get some popcorn for this. I feel like you working on math is gonna be real entertainin’.”
“The real entertainment will be you doing it,” Ritsu counters as he leaves, and Shou is quick to make up a bowl and return. Ritsu is still standing by the sheets on his bed, and Shou gathers them up, and makes a spot big enough for the both of them. But just barely big enough for the both of them.
“Come on!” He says, sitting down. “I’m not gonna make a guest do math standing.”
The size of the spot forces them to sit with their knees touching each other, which Shou is definitely not complaining about.
“So, just looking at this sheet, I think your biggest problem is organizing it, and there is a method for this sort of thing,” Ritsu says, and he starts scribbling all over Shou’s paper. It looks like magic, how he orders the mess of letters and numbers and puts them into neat columns. His hand looks nice when he writes. The movement of his wrists is sharp, certain. He could watch Ritsu write for the rest of his life.
“Like that,” Ritsu says, and then hands Shou then pencil. “Try the next one.”
And Shou didn’t get it, not really, but he has Ritsu’s numbers in front of him and Ritsu’s gaze on him. For that, he tries and gets something sort of right.
“And from here, you just solve for this variable. To do that, you have to get everything else on the other side of the equal sign in a way that makes sense.”
“And how the hell do you do that?”
“Math,” Ritsu says, and then scribbles down some more shit. It makes some sense, actually, and he tosses the paper back to Shou. He can see the pattern of Ritsu’s work, and he follows it to the best of his ability, going back to it every so often.
At some point, he realizes that Ritsu is looking at him. Shou sneaks a glance, and the expression he’s wearing is weird. Gentle. Shou can see the red in his eyes, but it’s not the intense burning from before. It doesn’t look like it wants to set him on fire. It looks more like it wants to keep him warm, and Shou doesn’t know what the hell to do with that. He looks away quickly and then throws the paper back at Ritsu.
“See if those ones are right! And you can eat some of the popcorn, you know.”
Ritsu takes a handful and looks over his work, munching thoughtfully. “You dropped a few negatives, but other than that, it’s all correct. You’re not bad at this when you actually try.”
Shou snickers, trying to focus on the absurdity of caring about math instead of Ritsu telling him he did something well. “And why the hell would I do that?”
“Because your coach will probably suspend you from play if you flunk algebra?”
“...Fair. Give it back, then, I gotta finish that fucker.”
“Knock yourself out. I brought some work I have to do, too.”
Ritsu pulls out a book, and time passes like that. They eat and do homework and exist in each other’s space. There’s no roar of an audience, no hiss of blades on ice, no undefinable chill in the air. It’s just him and Ritsu, silent and alone. And yet, they’re together.
Something is bubbling in his chest. The urge to speak. It’s so...It’s so fucking terrifying, honestly, to have all these soft things he wants to say. God. It’s a horror show, to feel something like this. He’s been good at putting it off, pretending like vulnerability was no big deal, but now he can see the rise and fall of Ritsu’s chest and it crushes him. It destroys him. It annihilates.
But Shou is no coward. He’s not gonna be defeated by something like fear, and if he’s scared of it, it’s the thing he has to do. He cracks his neck, rolls his ankle, prepares for it like he’s about to go onto the ice, and then says “You know, I like spendin’ time with you.”
“You do?”
Shou doesn’t look away from the math in front of him, even though Ritsu’s book is shut and he can feel those eyes on his face. “Mhmm. Whether it’s hockey stuff or this or whatever else. I think I just like to hang out with you. Think you’re just a cool guy.”
“I think you’re cool, too,” Ritsu admits, and Shou feels warm all over, like he’s caught some kind of flu.
“I’m glad. I like being a person that you like,” Shou says, and god, where did that come from? It’s true, though. It’s absolutely true.
Ritsu responds by gently kicking him. Well, it’s not really a kick. More of a touch of their feet together. A loving bit of pressure. Shou forces himself to look at him and there’s color in Ritsu’s cheeks, a smile on his face that Shou’s never seen, a sort of relaxed tension.
“What if I kissed you?” Shou blurts out. “What if I kissed you, like, right now?”
“I’d like that, I think.”
The words are so quiet that he almost doesn’t catch them, but he does. Shou turns towards him and Ritsu’s eyes are closed. His long eyelashes cast a small shadow on his face and his face is kept carefully blank. There’s a pressure there, strain to keep it that way.
Shou doesn’t know where to start. He’s never kissed anyone before. This is new and weird. He pushes Ritsu’s bangs back, gets a solid grip in that dark hair, and allows himself to fear. Just for a second, and then he dives in.
The kiss is short, but Ritsu returns it. It’s the second part of that fact that matters.
“You still need to finish your math,” Ritsu whispers against his lips.
“Can’t I get a kiss first?” Shou smirks, hides the genuine desire behind a bit of a joke, but he thinks Ritsu can interpret it. He thinks Ritsu knows him. He doesn’t mind that.
“One,” Ritsu says, and yet Shou manages to get two before they go back to work.
Nothing changes after that, really. Not much on the outside, except for the fact that their spare hands are interlocked as they work. It’s a small change, but it’s a small change that makes a world of difference. Shou’s pretty excited to see that world, he decides, even if it’s new and weird and scary.
Ritsu squeezes his hand once, idly, and pretty excited turns into overjoyed effortlessly, like the way that Ritsu stops a puck. And Shou, for his part, can’t stop smiling.