Chapter Text
Ritsu knew ever since his classmates were old enough to get their heads out of spy shows and cartoon superheroes and talk about the ‘important stuff’, aka, the trials of romance, he’s been pretty hot on the market.
Why that is the case, completely does a bouncer on his head. He doesn’t talk to a lot of people, much less girls. It’s not like he’s repulsed by the female gender, he just doesn’t have a reason nor a will to talk to them; so unless they approach him first, he’s not going to be the one asking for their attention by any means (unless of course, it’s a necessity). And not just with girls, he’s pretty much the same with most of the people in his school. He just likes being in his small bubble, engrossed with studies and council duties and reading books and solving puzzles and talking to Shigeo and maybe three other people in the student council.
So it baffles him how on Earth he got targeted for the most eligible bachelor in their grade for about 7 years straight. How he got storms of Valentine’s Day cards everywhere he went, how he got boxes and boxes full of cookies and chocolates to feed an entire starving village, how he got more confessions than all the other people in his class combined, from juniors and seniors alike, even though he had shown blatant disinterest in dating.
But it was alright. Sure it was tiresome and exhausting, but it was alright. Ritsu has had crushes before, he knew the feeling of wanting to take that off your chest and confess. He’s never done so before, option to instead bury his feelings until they faded away; but he knows and sympathizes with that. He’s not mad. He understands that, as confusing as it is, and accepts all of them with smiles and gratitude and politeness.
It, however, does become a problem in the later years, specifically when he enters high school, which is far more challenging than middle school has ever been. He transformed from a desirable student to more of a prize to be won among the students. Like capturing his heart would be a great victory that would amount to anything in the future. And while the efforts were a bit more...intense, they were harmless, so Ritsu took it all in his stride and went on with his day, blocking everything out and focusing on what mattered. The problem, however, started when the constant stream of admirers started interfering.
For instance, on this normal but stressful one for Ritsu. He was rushing in between various club presidents and the school president and then the secretary and the treasurer and lord he was going to collapse if he walked up the stairs with a stack of papers once again. He managed to fulfill most of his duties, though, even with attending classes and helping Shigeo revise before a test of his. He just has a few trips to go, and as his third last, he got stuck with collecting information from the president of the art club, who had never made an effort to hide her crush on him, ever. And she, like any other girl infatuated, tried her darn best to prolong the time he was in that room, making a show for him he wasn’t the least bit interested in. He was a fresh, new recruit in the council and he was trying to get a job done before the last bell rang to make a good impression. He didn’t have the time nor patience to deal with her, and yet, he couldn’t leave without getting information. And taking that advantage under her wing, she took the longest time in giving him all he needed, laying it on thick with the flirting at the same time.
He was, eventually, about half an hour late. And even though they never openly showed their disapproval, he was sure he didn’t make the best impression that day.
Ritsu nearly cursed in front of them.
Another instance, a normal day at class, he entered after lunch to his classroom. He reached into his bag and reached in to take out the homework for that date. And his hands touched not the plastic binding of the book, but…
“Eugh-”
He shot his hand out, repulsed, presuming it was something gross and slimy, a practical prank.
But instead, he was met with the sweet scent of chocolate.
And, on further inspection, it wasn’t a prank, but someone really serious about this confession and decided to keep an opened box of chocolates in the sweltering summer to melt all over his notebooks. He wanted to scream and yell and get to the bottom of who did that and give them a piece of his mind.
Instead, he held back. He sighed. Some students offered their handkerchiefs to wipe that off, but no one came out and said that this little gift was from them. He took his bag, asked the teacher, and went to the toilet to take care of the mess.
While his psychic powers did clean more of his bag than using a regular handkerchief and water might have, it still didn’t fix the ruined homework. It was drenched and soaked and messy and tiny ants were feasting on ink and chocolates. He angrily tore off a page and gritted his teeth, and did nothing more.
This was utterly ridiculous.
And there were more instances. What started as this harmless yet embarrassing mass admiration turned into something...dreadful.
And the last straw for him was when he was cornered by a bunch of hunks and gangsters who all threatened him because one of the boy’s girlfriend apparently left him because she thought she'd have a chance with him. And before Ritsu could even express how ridiculous and contrived this all seemed to be like, he was shoved to the back of the wall with fists near his mouth.
Shigeo came to help before they could do any real harm (bless him a million times), handling all of them with only a little help from his powers.
Ritsu realized that it was enough and he needed to get rid of this issue firsthand before it all boiled down to something ever worse at this stage.
He honestly didn’t know why his brain thought Shou Suzuki was the optimal choice for this, but in hindsight, maybe he was. He didn’t want to do this with someone unknown-- that’ll just be a recipe for disaster. There should be a friend, or at the very least someone who knows him better than his marks and his looks. And when we come to his friends, they were either graduates, or taken, or would say no outright. Shou’s blatant disinterest to romance mingling in his own life made him an easy option to do this with. He won’t make things weird. At least Ritsu hoped he wouldn’t.
It still sounded like acid on his tongue when he said it out loud. It was like reading a diary entry from when he was 6. Made him inwardly cringe and flinch.
“You want to…” Shou started, slowly and carefully, not trying to show the dumbfoundedness and trepidation by the ordeal that had just been placed on the table. Like what had just been propositioned was an extremely well executed delusion his mind conjured up.
“Pretend” Ritsu clarified, voice stable for the most part, but slightly breaking at the edges- as if speaking the plan out loud gave him second thoughts about the whole thing. “Just, not for long, okay? Only until we graduate”
Shou didn’t respond. Ritsu understood his hesitancy. The idea was completely incredulous. Something so fictitious and cheesy, straight out of the rom coms his classmates were obsessed with. Ritsu had gone through other ideas, other plans of action, but all of them either ended up in him ending up as the most hated, ill mannered person in the school, or what he does daily- a strained smile and awkward attempts at consolation and diversion which really didn't help in the grand scheme of things. Stuff that led him to this predicament in the first place.
“Why? Got a lady friend you want to make jealous?” Shou asked, the corner of his mouth twitching in a smirk, hands casually settling at the back of his head, his body now leaning on the chair, rocking it back and forth.
“No”
“Really?” he pressed on, still keeping that teasing smirk, “No person you want to show ‘what they’re missing out on’ or something? Maybe it’s the junior who always talks to you…”
“She’s the vice president, she has queries which I have a duty to aid her in” he answered, calmly, now opening his book. If he’s going to be here to answer all dumb questions Shou is going to keep on the table, he might as well get some reading done. High School books are unnecessarily long.
“Maybe it’s one of the guys. Is it your partner in Chemistry? You two look cozy in the lab. Brewing real ‘chemistry’ if you know what I mean” Shou laughed as if he just made a genius wordplay which Ritsu didn’t find amusing in the slightest.
“We’re supposed to take observations from the same, tiny sample in the tiny test tube, I think we have to be ‘cozy’ to do so. Also how are you even aware of so much?”
“When the teacher’s boring as fuck, you’ve go to channel your attention elsewhere before you doze off”
Okay, not that Ritsu shared the sentiment particularly, but fair.
“Regardless, I already told you my intentions before, so I’m not going to humour you a lot more now. Give me an answer, right now”
“You’re not exactly asking me to take a walk in the park. Give me time”
“Then be quiet, stop asking me dumb questions, and think about it”
Shou shifted on the spot, no longer on the verge of toppling off his chair, but now had his elbows propped on his thighs and his back bent forward, contemplating the decision. Fingers tapped against each other, and he squinted his eyes as he thought more and more about it. Ritsu went back to reading.
“What’s in it for me?” Shou asks, out of the blue. Ritsu glances up, and raises an eyebrow.
“What?”
“I’m saying, if we’re going to do this shtick, might as well reward me with something. Give me compensation. Whatever floats your fancy”
“I asked for a favour” he said cooly, “if you think this is a trade and you think I’m obligated to owe you one, then you’re mistaken”
“You are obligated to owe me one”
“In that case you owe me about a thousand with the amount of times I have had to cover up your vandals and whatnot” Ritsu retorted “Consider one of your many debts paid, or maybe two, because I’m feeling generous” he said, with a smile that didn’t feel generous at all.
“Those were petty things. This needs to be a two way deal, especially when you come up a request like this”
“And why exactly is that?” he snaps, glaring at him fiercer and fiercer as time went by. God, he should have just asked someone else…
“Well for one you’re tarnishing my reputation” he reasoned.
“Reputation?” he scoffs, arching an eyebrow once again “What kind of reputation?”
“You know, the one when I’m cool and mysterious like you because I never say yes to my many admirers”
“ You have admirers?” he scoffed
“Tons of them” he explained, going back into his carefree yet highly dangerous pose of swinging back on the chair. “The difference between me and you, though, is that you’re a bit too polite. You end up giving your fanclub hope that you’ll give them the time of the day. Me on the other hand, make it perfectly clear that I don’t want anything to do with this romance crap”
“Because you’re too cool and above commitment” Ritsu drawled, rolling his eyes.
“My point exactly” Shou had this shit-eating grin plastered on his face which vexed Ritsu in all the wrong ways.
“Fine,” Ritsu conceded, groaning at the back of his throat “What do you want in return. If it’s anything crass, I will annihilate you, and that’s a promise”
“Don’t worry, we’ll both have clothes on for this” he said, crassly, winking. Ritsu picked up the heavy mathematics book off the table, fully ready to aim it at Shou’s head. Shou merely cackled out loud, waving his hands dismissively “Man you’re real easy to rile up. I haven’t the slightest of indecent intentions, trust me” Ritsu kept glaring and placed the book back on the table, fingers still curled around the hard binding, just in case “Just give me all the answers to your Mathematics and English homework, and we’ll be even”
Ritsu looked at him questioningly “Somehow, I think there’s a catch”
“Well, the catch is that you might have another boy in your competition of one-upping you, but don’t worry. I can’t copy shit during examinations. Assignment marks are going to keep my grade better”
“Not to be rude, but since when did you start caring about grades? Weren’t you doing well in the thing you got the scholarship for?”
“Since Ootsu started getting on my ass about them. But that’s a different story”
“Okay, I’ll let you copy my answers. But if the teacher asks, I have nothing to do with your jarring boost of grades”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, of course I’ll change some things here and there”
“Glad to know you have some brain.” Ritsu said. He was losing his cool with him. Shou had this incredible ability of draining his patience, no matter the situation. Maybe it’d be easy to stage this thing with him, no one wants to get in the business of a fighting couple. At least Ritsu knows he doesn’t.
“Okay” he finally answers. Ritsu is mildly shocked, to be honest, but all the more relieved. He closes his book with a resounding slap. He stands up and places his hands on his hips. Shou looks up at him questioningly
“Let’s lay out the conditions then, shall we?”
“Conditions?”
“Rules of conduct. Things that are forbidden, things that are allowed”
Shou glanced at him wryly “You really thought this through, haven’t you?”
“Yes” he replied “I really don’t want any plans of mine to fall flat on my face. I won’t tolerate it. It’s only intelligent”
“Okay ma’am” he joked, then stood up to face him “Lay it all out”
“First. No pet names. No calling me dessert names or whatever. It’s embarrassing”
“What about animal names?” he asked, teasingly “Bunny, boo-bear-”
“None of that” he snapped “If you even so much as try doing so, I will murder you on the spot, no exagerrating”
“Not sure how you can do that, with me being ten times more powerful and all” he smirked, “But alright. No calling you bunny bear, my sweet little angel”
Ritsu chose to ignore that.
“Second, if you so much as do anything beyond holding my hand, it won’t be pretty” he warned “And the hand thing will only happen in dire situations. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal” he said, faking a salute.
“Third, when you show up in front of my parents, I’ll do all the talking. And if you say or do something stupid…”
“Yeah, I don’t want to face that either” he shuddered. Awkward family dinners weren’t his favourite thing, nor a dinner with a bunch of people weary of him in general.
“Fourth, not even Shigeo can know about this arrangement. If your mouth slips, it’s all over for you”
“Geez, why are you so intense about it? Is your popularity really that irritating to you that you’re willing to kill your bestest friend?”
Ritsu merely looked away, suddenly very interested in the chipping wallpaper on the bottom of his walls, and the tiny ants that crawled there. Shou raised his hands in surrender
“I get it. Maybe it is, I’m not one to judge. Now I’m going to lay out a few conditions of my own, okay?”
Ritsu nodded. It was only fair. He didn’t want to overstep any boundaries Shou had, and he certainly didn’t want it to put Shou at an uncomfortable place. He drew his attention back to him.
“I only have one condition” he said, “With this out of the line, we can ‘date’ as long as you want us to”
“Go on” he nodded slowly.
“If I grow genuine feelings for someone else, we’re going to break this up”
Ritsu opened his mouth to retaliate that this condition, though fair and completely valid, had a major loophole which can be easily used to his advantage. But before he could say that, Shou started
“I’m not gonna lie out of that. I don't hate you that much. Yet" he snorted at his own joke "Only if I’m sure about that, okay? But if my stone cold heart gets captured, you’ve gotta let me live that out. Deal?”
“Well, considering that same stone cold heart hasn’t been thawed after you having ‘many admirers’” he bent his fingers to quote him, “I won’t be too worried”
He took out his hand. Shou caught on a few moments later, but took out his own and shook his.
First condition: No pet names are to be called.
“Hey babe!!”
Ritsu gasps on his bench, as everyone in the room whips their hear towards the door where a striking mane of red hair is spotted.
Either he’s dreaming, or it’s someone else with an astonishingly similar voice to him, or one of his worst nightmares just came true.
“Babe, hear me out!!”
Ritsu didn’t even have to look up from his desk to see who was calling him.
He groaned audibly and slammed his head onto his desk.