Work Text:
Blue skies and clouds
We’ll grasp for the sun
I smile because you’re here
Sad partings
And wonderful meetings
Are miracles born here
1. Summer, Chiba
When Midousuji is forced into accompanying Yuki on her visit to some far-flung aunt and cousin in Narita over by Tokyo for a weekend, he hadn’t thought it likely he would run into anybody he knew in passing. The city boys around metropolitan Tokyo weren’t notable riders, probably because of their city upbringing, so the chances of encountering somebody worth any kind of mention were rather slim, and he assumed that Narita was enough out of the way that nobody from that school would be out here without good reason.
Or so he’d thought, and then he crossed paths with Onoda Sakamichi at a sunflower farm of all places.
Onoda initially glanced his way, turned back to say something to who was presumably his mother, and then did a double-take, whipping his head back around with eyes ridiculously wide behind his round lenses. Midousuji, meanwhile, stared blankly at him without blinking as a feeling akin to disappointment set in. There could be worse people witnessing him walking around a bunch of farm animals and sunflowers, he reasoned with himself as Onoda stumbled his way over and began stammering out his awkward funny-seeing-you-heres and how-have-you-beens.
“I have family in Tokyo,” Midousuji says abruptly after some long-winded explanation of why Onoda happened to be there with his mother, which he hadn’t cared at all to hear in the first place.
“O-Oh!” Onoda says, blinking, seemingly taken aback at getting any sort of verbal response out of Midousuji. He asks gingerly, as if trying to conceal some kind of hopefulness, “Do you visit them often?”
“Almost never,” Midousuji replies flatly, shrugging one thin shoulder limply, and when Yuki loudly demands that he look at the goats he turns and walks away without another word.
He puts Onoda out of his mind as he follows the trill of the girls’ laughter over hill and dale, past the fruit orchards and the wide-open fields dotted with cows. When they pass through the long rows of towering sunflowers, he makes sure the coast is clear before he takes out his phone and snaps a few photos to use as his new wallpaper.
Onoda appears again as he is milling about the gift store with phone in hand, tapping away at the screen to add filters and crop and resize his pictures from before. “U-Um! Midousuji-kun!” Onoda stammers, red-faced with bravery, and Midousuji lowers his phone ever so slightly to look at him. “Here!”
He thrusts something at Midousuji and then scurries away out the door of the gift shop as soon as Midousuji unwillingly accepts it from him. He watches Onoda go without saying a word in thanks or parting, and then he glances down, turning the flat gift bag over. He detaches the gold sunflower sticker from the paper and tips the contents out into his hand.
Two sunflower seed bags tumble out, and attached with tape to the back of one is a little slip of paper written in rather childish handwriting. It was nice running into you, Midousuji-kun! If you’re ever in the area again and want to hang out, let me know! Following the crookedly-written message is a series of numbers, no doubt the gross little otaku’s phone number.
Midousuji takes off the note from Onoda, folds it up, and stores it in the front pocket of his pants. He slips the seed packets into Yuki’s backpack when she isn’t looking, and later, when she is sorting out her things from the day and asks him where the little envelopes came from, he half-jokingly accuses her of stealing them.
That night, he sends a text to the new phone number he had eventually given in and added to his address book. My little sister just punched me in the arm over those seeds you gave me. You’re gross.
2. Fall, Chiba
Onoda manages to instigate an impromptu race with Midousuji up the nearby winding mountain road, which becomes increasingly strewn with fallen leaves the higher up they climb. Towards the peak, the tree branches are all but bare, while the asphalt beneath their tires is blanketed with a still-crisp layer of vibrant reds and oranges and earthy yellows and browns, and Onoda sounds awed and delighted as they zip around a gentle curve that gives them a breathtaking view of the city down below.
Midousuji wins their little contest of course, though it may have been a bit closer if Onoda hadn’t ridden into a patch of older, decaying leaves that cause his tires to nearly slip out from underneath him. They stop to take a break at a small clearing near the top, where a few lonely benches and tables and a couple of weather-beaten vending machines are all that await those who manage to make the climb.
“You’re as fast as ever, Midousuji-kun,” Onoda says as he nears Midousuji, who picks at stray clumps of slimy leaf gunk stuck in his wheels with a broken-off stick. Midousuji turns to look at him over his shoulder and realizes that Onoda is holding out a bottle in his direction. “Because you won,” Onoda explains with a smile, and when Midousuji finally accepts it, his smile gets impossibly wider. Witnessing it at point-blank range like this is kind of blinding, and Midousuji flicks his gaze downward as he silently uncaps the Pocari Sweat.
Onoda takes a seat next to him and opens his mouth to ramble in between sips of his own drink. “The leaves around here are so pretty! I wonder why more people don’t come to see them? Well, I guess it is kind of out of the way… It’s almost easier to get here on a bike or on foot than it is to come by car. But I bet these leaves don’t compare to the ones in Kyoto, huh? Do a lot of tourists come every year around where you are, Midousuji-kun?”
Even when Midousuji doesn’t respond, Onoda takes it all in stride and keeps on chattering away, filling up the silence between them with a stream of oddly comforting inane talk about bikes and leaves and what he he’d like to eat for dinner. He had always thought that Onoda blathered like this when he was nervous or anxious, but lately it seemed like Onoda had come under the impression that Midousuji was in fact listening and participating, albeit very quietly, in an actual conversation that was being held between the two of them.
“—and then it turned out that… Oh, are your hands cold?”
Onoda extends his hand toward Midousuji, apparently offering his own body heat to warm him, and Midousuji screws up his face and jerks his head away with a sharp turn and crack of his neck. “Gross, no,” he replies peevishly, curling his fingers tighter around the bony jut of his knees, not that this helps with the fact that they are rather cold. Onoda’s offer is somewhat tempting, judging by the heat emanating from just his shoulder, which hovers next to Midousuji’s arm, but he’s not about to hold hands with the gross little otaku over something as trifling as poor circulation.
“My mom says that people with cold hands have warm hearts, but I think she just likes to say that sometimes because her hands get cold often too,” Onoda says without missing a beat, chuckling faintly as he withdraws his offending limb. “You know, Midousuji-kun, you have really pretty fingers! They’re so long and elegant. When I was a kid, my mom tried to make me learn how to play the piano so my hands would get bigger, but I hated practicing, so…”
“Grooooss,” Midousuji interrupts tartly, rocking back onto his feet and stomping back to his bike, drink hanging limply from one hand. “You talk too much, Saakamichi.”
Onoda scrambles after him and almost trips in another sludgy pile of leaves. He sounds slightly panicked and more than a little screechy when he asks, “Does it bother you, Midousuji-kun?”
Midousuji clicks his tongue as he slots the bottle into the second drink holder on his bike. “You’re about as gross as you usually are,” he says airily, pointedly tilting his head toward the bright blue sky above.
He feels a small burst of vicious pleasure when Onoda sputters weakly at being slapped with Midousuji’s favorite label, but when they kick their feet back onto their pedals to coast downhill, Onoda easily starts up his one-person conversation again without paying any heed to Midousuji’s permanent frown and tense shoulders.
Midousuji half-listens and offers a gross every now and then, and the fact that Onoda seems delighted with his occasional one-word responses bothers him less than it should.
3. Winter, Chiba
Onoda rises and trots away to get something from the kitchen while they’re sitting at the kotatsu in the living room, peeling leftover oranges from New Year’s, and he comes back with a white-and-pink cake box and something clumsily bundled in suspiciously Christmas-y wrapping paper.
“Happy birthday, Midousuji-kun!” Onoda says brightly, carefully setting down the box in the middle of the table. “I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t get you a real Christmas present, because, um, after the holidays and the team gift exchange I was pretty broke, so I got you a birthday gift with my Christmas money—”
“You didn’t have to,” Midousuji interrupts brusquely, refusing to take the gift until Onoda practically shoves it at him. Something soft, like fabric, gets crushed against his chest, and he sticks his tongue out as he holds the crinkled package in his hands. He hopes against hope that Onoda didn’t get him some hideous otaku apparel that he’d just have to set fire to later. “Birthdays are gross.”
Onoda pouts but continues on undeterred. “W-Well! I mean, you do get older, and, uh, I guess that can get a little morbid, but… But birthdays are a celebration of the day that you came into the world, you know?”
Midousuji lowers the gift so he can stare at Onoda with a proper amount of incredulity. “Gross, Sakamichi, did you really just say that?”
“T-Thank you!” Onoda blurts, his hands fisted on his thighs, and Midousuji gets hit by incredible waves of secondhand embarrassment as he watches Onoda try to channel his inner Fukutomi in order to say something bound to be ridiculously lame. “Thank you for being born, Midousuji-kun! You’re a wonderful friend, and I—I’m incredibly grateful for you!”
There is only one possible thing he can respond to that with, but if he doles out the reflexive “gross” with a little less vehemence than usual (because a strange mix of unfamiliar feelings squeeze at his throat and his heart), nobody mentions it in favor of moving forward with inhaling the cake.
The present turns out to be a cheery yellow scarf, which Midousuji pointedly calls gross at first but quietly folds with great care into his bag before he leaves. Yuki ties it into a big fluffy bow around his neck one morning a few days later, and nobody dares to make eye contact with him for the rest of the day at school.
4a. Spring, Chiba
Midousuji watches a trio of fallen sakura petals drifting downstream until they are out of sight, and then he turns to look at Onoda, who hangs over the railing (rusty and grimy, gross) with a dopey smile on his face. “Why are we here?” he asks gruffly, fidgeting with the straps of his face mask.
“Huh? Oh, well, I figured,” Onoda says clumsily, straightening up a little too quickly for it to seem natural, “we’ve spent the whole day biking, so I thought that maybe we could… take a, um, relaxing stroll by the river and view the flowers, before they all fall?”
Why does he sound so hopeful? Midousuji makes a face but shrugs, and Onoda breaks out into another smile. Together they head down the river, and when Onoda prattles through his stream of usual mindless one-sided dialogue, it sounds oddly stilted. His sentences end on awkward upward lilts, as if he is constantly asking questions of Midousuji, and every time that this fails to inspire any kind response, Onoda breaks off into nervous laughter and looks away at the river in embarrassment.
They stop to sit at a deserted bench, and in the unfamiliar silence that ensues, Midousuji avoids looking at Onoda as much as he can, as he can feel the idiot’s lingering gaze practically burning a hole into the side of his face. At least a minute passes without a word being spoken until Midousuji gives in under the burden of it and snaps, “What is it, Sakamichi?”
“Oh!” Onoda starts and his hands fly up to his chest as if in fright, and then he awkwardly lowers them back down to his lap. “U-um, nothing! Nothing at all!”
Midousuji gives him another half-minute to change his mind and confess, but when Onoda only continues to rock back and forth in his seat as if gathering momentum for something (probably stupid and drastic) and says nothing, Midousuji heaves an impatient sigh and stands back up. “We’re wasting our time here,” he grumbles, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he begins to shuffle away. “Didn’t you say you wanted to show me some parts you were thinking of—”
Onoda jumps up and dashes after him, and he stops a little too far into his personal space bubble for Midousuji’s comfort. “M-Midousuji-kun, wait! Could we, um, maybe, if it’s alright with you…”
“What?” Midousuji practically screams, craning his head around to glare down at Onoda’s disgustingly pink face, with its big blue watery eyes and trembling lips. “What is it now, Sakamichii?”
“If… If you didn’t mind, I wanted to…” Onoda glances downward, eyebrows drawn. Midousuji scrutinizes him as he squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath, and then shakes his head. “…No. Never mind, no, it’s nothing.”
Midousuji’s hand snaps out from his side like the crack of a whip. His long fingers grip just enough of Onoda’s hair to yank his head back so he can witness Midousuji looming down from above, his back curving impossibly so he can get as close as possible to eye level. “You are wasting my time, small fry,” he hisses angrily, his tongue lashing out dangerously close to Onoda’s face. “Now tell me what you’re acting all gross over already.”
When Onoda hesitates, Midousuji tugs a little harder. Onoda winces but manages to look Midousuji in the eye when he finally stammers in a small voice, “I wanted to… to hold hands with you.”
He probably almost breaks Onoda’s neck with how forcefully he flings him backward and away from his person, but he feels no remorse whatsoever, even when Onoda stumbles over his own feet and goes sprawling onto the bench they had just been sitting on. “Gross!” Midousuji screeches, tongue lolling about everywhere in his agitation. “Gross, gross, gross, gross Sakamichi! You wanted to hold hands? Why? Why on earth should we hold hands? To share your disgusting otaku germs? Gross!”
Even now, Onoda manages to sound abashed and apologetic despite being the one who had just gotten violently thrown like a rag doll. “Sorry… You’re right, Midousuji-kun. It was gross of me to suggest it, wasn’t it?” He slowly eases himself back upright on the bench, adjusting his glasses with a smile that completely fails to reach his eyes.
“Tch,” Midousuji spits, and without waiting for Onoda he spins on his heel and marches away. Dumb gross Onoda and his need to get his dumb gross germs on anything within reach. How filthy of him.
The rest of his stay is about as horrifically awkward as that afternoon, and when he takes his leave (a little earlier than usual, because he felt suffocated being in the same room as Onoda), the sakura mercilessly pelt his face and sting his eyes as he bikes down the tree-lined road leading out of Sohoku.
4b. Spring, Kyoto
He doesn’t get it until Onoda texts him a day later. Are we still friends? it reads. Midousuji is about to mash out an angry string of letters bemoaning Onoda’s typical grossness and stupidity when the words swim viciously across his vision, and he remembers everything about that incident by the river with a newfound clarity he had completely missed on the first go-around.
An empty bench. Endless fidgeting. Wanting to hold hands. Onoda’s defeated face.
Are we still friends?
His stomach lurches; his eyes cross. Everything feels stiflingly gross all at once, but at the same time, something quietly, finally clicks inside of him. It feels like—shifting into the next gear for a climb, getting a perfect score on a difficult test, listening to music in the warm sunlight of late afternoon on a Sunday. Something has, at long last, slid into place. It might be another lock on his heart falling away; it may just as well be the thud of his common sense falling to its knees in defeat.
Everything seems like it has been tilted an nth of a degree on its axis, and the minute distortions make him want to curl in on himself and rethink everything he has known about his place in the world. At the same time, the strange energy that now thrums through his long, gawky limbs urges him to keep moving forward, one step at a time, like he always has.
He throws his phone down on his bed and springs to his feet. The first thing that comes to mind are the sunflower seeds Onoda gave him—suddenly those seem of the utmost importance, and he has to find them right now.
Even though he has no recollection of ever seeing them in his room, he still claws angrily and desperately through every drawer of his desk, upturning the contents all over his floor without care to the disarray. He takes a cursory look through his dresser and shelves, but he’s sure he would have seen it before in those locations, so he expands the area of his search to the rest of the house. By the time he begins to sift through all the odds and ends of the kitchen, Yuki takes notice, and she asks him what he is looking for so frantically.
He tells her without saying why, and she cocks her head and says, “I think I saw them in Mom’s sewing box, in the closet?”
There they are, the two packets of seeds, still sealed shut and barely aged. He flies back to his room without answering her questions, and once he is alone, he belatedly comes to the conclusion that he has no idea what to do with them. What kind of soil did they need? Was this the right season to plant them? Would they even germinate after months on end spent in the darkness of the linen closet?
His aunt finds him staring speculatively at the long-fallow garden in their backyard a little while later, sunflower seeds clenched in one hand. “Do you want to plant something here, Akira?” she asks curiously, crouching down beside him.
He mutely holds out the packets toward her, and she takes them, flipping them over to read the planting instructions on the back.
She hums in thought and then straightens back up. “Well, we should be able to plant them right about now. Truth be told, I wanted to turn this patch of dirt into a vegetable garden again eventually, but…”
Midousuji’s neck cracks loudly as he quickly swings his face up towards her, eyes wider than usual, and when she sees his expression she chuckles and begins to walk away toward the small shed in the corner of their property.
“Don’t worry, sunflowers sound nice. I don’t mind. But if you really want to grow those, Akira, you’re going to have to help me!”
What follows is far more information about soil preparation and slug repellant than he thought he would ever need to know in his lifetime, and after his aunt puts him through his paces in the basics of using a shovel without causing himself bodily harm, he has dirt permanently stuck underneath his nails and palms full of blisters. But the seeds are planted, and now all they have to do is wait.
He keeps flicking open Onoda’s last message to him in his downtime, and he feels certain that Onoda is waiting disconsolately by his phone for a reply that he’s not sure he even wants to read with every minute and every hour that passes in silence between them. A little thorn of guilt twists into his side every time he sees the forlorn question sitting in his inbox, sandwiched in between emoticon-heavy group texts from the team, but he can’t bring himself to reply. Not until the sunflowers germinate, he decides with steely determination, though he has no idea what purpose this serves except to stall for as long as possible, especially given the very real possibility that they may not germinate at all.
The first little green nubs won’t appear out of the soil for at least five days, but even knowing that he finds himself constantly casting glances over his shoulder in the direction of the empty garden, and he wonders why he felt so compelled to believe that growing a few flowers would prove anything at all to anyone important. He finds himself staring at the text from Onoda again, but after a short while he sets his phone aside and starts his homework.
And so several days pass in which he gazes out into the yard whenever his mind wanders from biking and his studies. After a week of silent demands and prayer to the gods of the earth, one little green sprout tenaciously emerges from the soil. Then another pops out, and another, and another—until, miraculously, the little square of dirt is covered with a wiry blanket of fragile green buds in about two weeks’ time.
The new life in his garden vindicates his silence somehow, but now he really can’t ignore Onoda any longer. His fingers tremble with a strange, unfamiliar, and very gross feeling as they hover over the keys.
Do you want to visit Kyoto sometime, he texts to Onoda, the closest he’ll get to a long-overdue apology without having to force himself into choking the words out. We can do that dumb anime marathon you’ve been talking about since forever.
He gets a line of !!!!!!!!!! immediately in response, followed shortly by I’d love to!!
5. Rainy, Kyoto
When they bike down to the nearby convenience store, the skies are still only partly cloudy and the wind doesn’t smell that strongly of rain, so they opt (against Midousuji’s better judgment) not to take their umbrellas with them. Within the five or ten minutes that they’re inside, though, the sky opens up and a world-ending deluge begins to pour down in torrents onto the city.
Midousuji and Onoda stare at the unrelenting rain for several long seconds before Onoda turns to glance at their drenched bikes, and he makes a deafeningly high-pitched noise of terror at the water streaming down its frame in thick rivulets. He dashes outside and runs frantic, useless circles around his bike, all the while screaming like he was on fire. Midousuji sighs, ties the knot on his plastic bag of snacks a little tighter, and steps out into the rain to do some damage control.
Biking back at a high speed in the pouring rain probably isn’t the brightest of ideas Midousuji’s ever had, but all he wants to do is get out of the downpour as soon as he can, even if the added slickness to the road greatly increases their chances of skidding out. Midousuji isn’t particularly worried about himself, as he’s done far more reckless things on a bike before, but Onoda isn’t exactly the most graceful of riders, so when he hears a panicked shout and a crash, followed by a thud that is audible even over the sound of the falling rain, he is more exasperated than he is surprised.
Onoda appears particularly miserable as he slowly clambers back upright, pushing shakily at the glasses gone askew over his face, but nothing seems broken at least when Midousuji gives him a once-over. “We can walk the rest of the way,” Midousuji suggests, and when Onoda begins to protest, he reminds him sharply, “My house is just around the corner. We can walk.”
However much he tries to hide it, Onoda totters with a slight limp even with the support of his bike. No amount of side-eyeing or less-than-subtle glaring will make him admit to anything, and Midousuji is too annoyed to exercise his limited supply of human compassion and offer him a hand. By the time they finally make it back to the shelter of Midousuji’s home, they are soaked to the bone and their bikes are about as waterlogged as if they had drawn them up out of the ocean, and Onoda wobbles everywhere he goes.
“You sprained your ankle,” Midousuji states flatly after watching Onoda very gingerly put on a new pair of pants while sitting on a corner of his bed. Onoda opens his mouth, but Midousuji turns and leaves the room before he can say anything.
He returns with a bag of ice, some towels, and a throw pillow from the living room and proceeds to rearrange Onoda without heeding any of his yelps of pain or protest. For good measure he bundles Onoda up into a strange blanket concoction, mostly to prevent him from poking at his injury and causing himself any more grievous harm.
“Baakamichii,” Midousuji sniffs as they sit together on his bed a little while later, watching with varying degrees of attention the overly-saccharine pastel content of the magical adventures of some preadolescent girl playing out across the computer screen, “you can’t pretend not to have a sprained ankle.”
“I know,” Onoda sighs, wiggling from side to side in his burrito. “I’m sorry, Midousuji-kun, I know we were just trying to get out of the rain as fast as we could, but then I ended up almost falling and—”
Midousuji gruffly slaps a hand on the top of Onoda’s skull, cranking the dumb otaku’s head toward him so it rests awkwardly on Midousuji’s very bony, pointy shoulder. “Shut up, Sakamichi. Also, you didn’t ‘almost fall,’ you definitely fell. You hit a street sign on the way down, I saw you.”
Even through the layers of blankets, Midousuji can feel Onoda’s body go entirely rigid against his, and he wonders if he’s already messed things up. After asking to hold hands that one time, surely a little physical contact like this couldn’t be that far out of Onoda’s comfort zone? (At least, that was what he had gleaned from the absolutely absurd advice columns on the internet. On second thought, trusting anything written by “Anonymous” had probably been a bad idea.)
After a needlessly long and incredibly sparkly transformation sequence has occurred onscreen, Onoda relaxes back into his little cocoon with a hum of contentment. “Midousuji-kun?”
“What now?”
“Can we… hold hands?”
“Gross.” But Midousuji releases his hold on Onoda to plop his palm on top of the little hand that has managed to fight its way out of the otakurrito. Onoda laces their fingers together a moment later, and Midousuji lets him.
Both of them are asleep before the end of the next episode.
Epilogue: Summer, Kyoto
As soon as Onoda sees the patch of tall, gangly sunflowers, he gasps and runs straight into the thick of them and completely disappears. Midousuji locates him by his squeaking and squealing and the rustle of the long, leafy stems against one another, and the occasional sway of a sunflower head towards his face.
“Midousuji-kun!” Onoda says with delight, arms wrapped around a clump of flowers without heed to their innumerable little bristles. He’s going to be covered in ants later, and those ants will end up inside his room, Midousuji thinks with resignation. “Did you really grow all of these?”
“I said I did, didn’t I?” Midousuji replies blandly, brushing a looming yellow-and-brown face out of the way to peer down at Onoda. Though it’s a redundant question at this point, he asks with surly diffidence, “Do you like them?”
Onoda smiles up at him, equal parts impish and angelic. “Of course I do! They’re so tall and happy, just like you!”
Midousuji contorts his face at the strange comparison. “Gross, Sakamichi, you’re so gross,” he grumbles, and he is met with warm laughter and a hot, slightly sticky hand finding his through the dense foliage. He tries to recoil, but the sunflowers crowd in close at his back and Onoda’s little fingers cling to his wrist with tight tenacity. “Ugh, your hand feels disgusting—”
The sunflowers part, and Onoda appears before him, no longer obstructed by the greenery. His smile is much more demure this time, eyes gentle and sincere, and something gross and strange flutters through Midousuji’s stomach and up somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “I think they’re lovely,” Onoda whispers, his lips parting to reveal a flash of white teeth before he ducks his head shyly, and the small hand clasping Midousuji shifts and grasps him by the hand with strange surety.
He turns his gaze back upward, and Midousuji meets Onoda’s eyes for as long as he can manage before he has to look away to prevent himself from self-combusting. Onoda rocks up onto his tiptoes, and almost instinctually Midousuji leans down to meet him halfway, even as his shoulder jumps from Onoda’s other hand alighting close to his neck.
They are close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off Onoda’s swelteringly red face when those big blue eyes flutter wide open again, and Onoda says even the tritest words with the most terrible sort of genuine kindness: “They’re lovely, just like you, Midousuji-kun.”
His eyes close and his lips pucker slightly, and even though he feels on the verge of melting or exploding or dying from everything that has happened in the past ten seconds, Midousuji knows what’s expected of him, and somehow he finds it in himself to extend his long neck just a little farther to close the gap between them.
The press of their mouths is brief and thankfully dry, and all in all kind of underwhelming given how ferociously his heart thumps inside his chest, but when he draws away, Onoda is beaming. “Was that your first kiss too?” he asks loudly with all of his usual energetic fervor, eyes gleaming brightly, and Midousuji makes some kind of terrible wailing sound and launches himself into the shade of the house.
Later, they will shyly practice kissing some more in between bites of cold watermelon (that Midousuji takes care not to spray everywhere), and silly promises about Blu-Rays and cosplay and bets over the winner of the next Inter-High will be made over the whirr of the floor fan. Onoda is a noisy, fidgety little furnace of stifling warmth, who likes to hold hands and to curl himself up within the thin circle of Midousuji’s arms no matter how hot it is outside, and Midousuji finds it all, including himself, perfectly disgusting. He even says as much to Onoda, but Onoda responds with a smile and a laugh now, perfectly immune to everything but the slowly-burgeoning, begrudging affection hidden somewhere underneath the constant wintery rasp of Midousuji’s voice.
The next time they see each other once Onoda goes back home will be at the Inter-High, and after that—who knows. He’s probably overdue for a visit to Chiba again, and Onoda had mentioned before how he had wanted to see the changing of the leaves in Kyoto during the fall, and maybe for his birthday in January, they could even…
Midousuji shakes himself out of his stupor and huffs a sigh in the direction of his sunflower garden, turning back to his unfinished notes on the team. He can think about plans with Onoda later; he has an Inter-High to finalize his strategies for at the moment.
The race is a mere three days long, after all. He has all the other long sultry days of summer that stretch into the coolness of fall, and then the snowy winter and budding spring, to spend as he pleases with Onoda.
The leaves start to color
The snow starts to dance
The sakura petals start to scatter
The sun starts to shine
Always yellow, the shape of my love
My sunflower