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Ichiro fiddles with his comic book, pinky sifting through the corner of the pages impatiently. He’d really rather get back to reading, but he couldn’t find any polite way to reject Ramuda when he offered to tell him about the world and wonders of… Instagram.
“It’s all about sticking to a you-nique aesthetic!” Ramuda insists, scrolling through his account to show Ichiro. Ramuda doesn’t actually think this is anything that will ever be useful to him, except for if he gets the idea to advertise his little odd jobs gig on social media, but watching him nod and pretend with all his heart to be interested is just too entertaining. “See this pastel-neon thing I got going on? You can tell it’s Ramuchan’s Insta right away, right?”
Ichiro frowns, but he actually tries to understand it more. As Ramuda slowly drags his fingertip up on the touchscreen, Ichiro takes it all in. All the pictures contrast and complement each other in what he can at least tell is some kind of artistic choice, though they were all clearly taken in different places at different times.
He hadn’t thought that street snaps by glowing graffiti or shiny shots of candy confetti would match so well, but they do, somehow. There’s even a candid photo of someone at the bar of a club, a perfectly-timed flash of some hot pink strobe dyeing the translucent drink in the glass in his hand and his white hair the color of raspberries.
“Ah, it’s Samatoki-san,” Ichiro says, as he realizes. Considering the dark leather, Ichiro’s surprised he’s managed to fit in at all. But then again with the jacket halfway down his shoulders, his undershirt is catching more of that tinted light, too, and next to a post of a strawberry-chocolate parfait, he doesn’t look out of place in the slightest.
Samatoki, who’s been leaning on the armrest on the other side of the couch, sitting dazed and smoking the hour away with his ankles crossed and his feet on Ichiro’s lap, tilts his head and looks at them with an eyebrow raised. It was easy for him to drown out Ramuda’s drivel, but he’s intrinsically and instinctively attentive to Ichiro calling his name. “What’s that?”
Ichiro puts his comic book down and takes Ramuda’s phone, clunky bow and rhinestones and all, fitting his middle finger into the ring of the grip and tapping the thumbnail on the feed before stretching his arm out to face it towards Samatoki. “It’s you in a pic on Ramuchan’s Insta.”
Samatoki cringes at Ichiro perfectly unironically uttering the words Ramuchan’s Insta, but that isn’t as pressing as whatever the hell is on the screen right now: him, tipsy and, what, having a ball of a time from the looks of it, from a couple of couple of weeks ago, one of the first few times he’d gone and spent the night with Ramuda. He snatches the phone from Ichiro’s hand.
“Shit, ow—!” Ichiro curses, when Samatoki yanks the thing with his finger still stuck on it. He snaps his wrist to free himself, but when the ring on the grip slides off his own ring goes along with it, dropping to the narrow space beside Samatoki. He dives after it before it falls into the crack between the plushes of the seat, awkwardly patting around for it by Samatoki’s waist.
Samatoki flicks his finished cigarette into the ashtray on the table beside him to free his other hand, using it then to ruffle the short hair on the back of Ichiro’s head and keep him down on his chest while he glares at Ramuda, mouthing a silent “The heck???”
“You were so cute, Tokisamatan!” Ramuda answers out loud, jumping off the opposite armrest where he’s been chilling this whole time, moving to pile himself on top of Ichiro and Samatoki. “And Ramuchan’s Insta is aaaallll about cute things!”
Samatoki glowers; being called cute with a bastardized version of his given name is whatever at this point, he just isn’t keen on Ichiro hearing about anything he does with Ramuda when it’s just them two. He presses Ichiro closer to him protectively and shoves the phone in Ramuda’s face, demanding: “Friggin’ delete it. Now.”
“But whyyyy?” Ramuda whines, stealing his phone back before Samatoki could think to do it himself, and migrating to the backrest of the couch instead to perch himself there. He smiles down at Samatoki sweetly, darkly. “Weren’t you glad to be taken by me?”
He blinks, and before he can bark out an indignant retort, Ichiro’s shuffled out of his arms, not really bothered by Samatoki’s hold or Ramuda’s weight on him a second ago. He simply straightens back up and rewears his ring, craning his neck to look at Ramuda’s phone again. Then he glances back and forth between them and shrugs. “So you guys are drinking buddies now, huh.”
Samatoki groans, uncrossing his ankles and shifting to put his feet on the table instead. There’s a million reasons he’s a terrible influence, but that he lies to Ichiro isn’t one of them. “Well, it’s not like you or Sensei can drink,” he explains, admits, sounding some kind of defensive for no reason Ichiro can think of.
“That’s true,” Ichiro just agrees, like his being underage is any bit comparable to the beast Jakurai turns into when he gets even a drop of alcohol in his system. He carries on, rubbing the ache out of his middle finger, flexing it casually and spinning his ring around it idly. “Aren’t you two smoking buddies, too?”
Now it’s Ramuda who feels defensive, tensing from where he is though neither Ichiro nor Samatoki notices. Ichiro is busy looking down at his ring, relieved that he didn’t end up losing it, and Samatoki is busy rolling stiffness out of his shoulders, picking out a new cigarette to start on.
“Every now and then, yeah,” he drawls, rolling his eyes now, too. He takes a fresh drag. This, Samatoki guesses, he’s less hesitant to tell Ichiro about, because Ramuda aside his nicotine addiction’s something the guy’s known about him since they met anyways. “It’s not like you or Sensei can smoke, either.”
“That’s true,” Ichiro just agrees again, again like his being underage is any bit comparable to the fact that Jakurai is a normal amount health-conscious given his current profession. He carries on carrying on, leaning forward and scooping Samatoki’s shins into his forearms to put on his lap again, his poor comic book laying ignored on the floor. “That makes sense, yup.”
Samatoki hums, but Ramuda doesn’t know what on earth Ichiro means by that. Which part of that makes sense to him, exactly? Sure, the partying and showing off to everyone for likes is just a part of Ramuda— the Ramuda that Ramuda’s carefully put together, anyway— but the smoking was this ugly monochrome thing he couldn’t color-match with customized filters or hue balance sliders. Good on Samatoki for being able to handle his grays with grace, but that’s not how it is for Ramuda.
It’s not part of Ramuda’s impromptu contemporary artsy smartphone photography course, and not part of the image Ramuda wants Ichiro to have of him, so maybe Samatoki should shut up instead of acknowledging it. Besides, when did Ichiro ever see them? Wouldn’t that mean he’d caught Ramuda pretending that he didn’t have his own lighter just so he could pull Samatoki down by the collar and touch the end of his yet-unlit cigarette to his?
Not that Samatoki gives even a single shit, the bastard, now preoccupied tickling Ichiro and playing around with him like he’s all innocent when he sure damn isn’t. Ramuda clicks his tongue, clicks the lock button of his phone harshly, and hides it in the back pocket of his jeans when he hops off the backrest to stand behind it. He bends over it instead to loop his arms around Ichiro’s neck, nuzzling into his hair. “Say Ichirouuu, me and Samatoki are one more type of buddies, y’know! Can you guess?”
Ichiro’s chuckles patter out when Samatoki takes his legs off of him for good, and then he’s putting a knuckle to his chin, letting out a curious, serious “Hmm…?” Ever the Ramuda humorer, Ichiro is, and Samatoki shakes his head at how this is probably the parent-friend bullshit with Jakurai all over again, at how Ichiro hasn’t learned his lesson with Ramuda’s dumbass riddles. Ichiro doesn’t even try that hard, already giving up after a few seconds: “What’s the answer?”
Ramuda springs up, twirls to the spot ahead of them by the table, and makes a victory sign with his fingers which he then starts to wiggle around like a pair of scissors. He winks at Samatoki; so he’s bad at keeping secrets? That’s fine. Two can play at that game. “Ramuchan and Tokisamatan are also fuc—”
“—Fucking tired,” Samatoki cuts in to finish for him, barely belatedly realizing what Ramuda was getting at. The goddamned asshole. He’s putting his cigarette down on the ashtray, getting up, grabbing the hood of Ichiro’s jacket, and hauling him over, unsympathetic to how he’s cursing with ow’s again and telling him to wait up so he can at least retrieve his comic book. “Let’s book it, where’d you say you wanted to go for dinner again, Ichiro? My treat—”
“—Really, Samatoki-san?” Ichiro immediately raises, comic book and Ramuda and all this Insta talk instantly fleeing his mind. His eyes sparkle as Samatoki puts an arm over his shoulders and starts to lead him out of the TDD home-base, fixing his red hoodie back in order for him as he raves on, “My brothers really wanna try the…”
Samatoki, guiltily, drowns Ichiro’s excited chatter out this time, though not without muttering noncommittal yes, yes’s in reply. As they turn, Samatoki spares a glance back at Ramuda, who’s grinning at him around his abandoned cigarette, like he knows that Samatoki knows that he wasn’t actually going to say it, they’ve both just had enough.
That’s their so-far unspoken and will-continue to be unspoken hard limit. They can continue this strange arrangement as is: Samatoki meeting Ramuda in his neon-pastels, Ramuda meeting Samatoki in his grays. Whatever that in-between is between the two of them… Well, no one has to know. Not Ichiro, not Jakurai. Not even themselves.