Work Text:
In the wings of the stage, Rui watches.
There are stars, shooting magnificently across the sky, and lights so bright they sparkle like a thousand fires. It’s so colourful, so beautiful, so completely and utterly mesmerising.
In the wings of the stage, Rui watches.
Tsukasa takes a breath, finally letting go of his character. It floats away, spiralling around him in beautiful turrets of light—not a “goodbye,” just a “see you another time.” It’s masterful.
He’s panting a little under the warmth of the stage lights, beads of sweat glistening over his flushed cheeks and matting his hair, but he’s smiling so wide. He’s happy and he’s proud and Rui feels the same feeling well up unbearably in his chest, contagious.
There’s no audience, but Tsukasa takes a bow.
And then the lights turn off.
“Oi, Rui! I’m not sure if I’m holding my stance right here, can you take a look?”
Tsukasa is a star. Anyone who’s ever met him would know this: no matter if they’d shout it proudly from the rooftops or rather die than ever admit it, it’s just a simple fact.
Rui knows full well. He’s seen it firsthand an endless amount, basked in his warmth more times than he can count.
“Ever the stickler, aren’t you?” Rui calls, handing Emu back her script in favour of walking over to where Tsukasa’s practising.
He’s playing the part of a robot in this performance, and although he’s now able to imitate a robot’s autonomy with far more precision than in their first rehearsal, Rui can’t say it’s quite perfect just yet.
Rui observes his posture.
“Your back is too tight.” he says, one hand ghosting over Tsukasa’s waist, guiding him. “You need to look stiff, but not as if you’re a performer. It needs to be natural.”
Tsukasa moves with Rui’s hand, but his expression tells Rui he’s still confused.
“Have you ever watched a ballet?” Rui continues after a beat.
Tsukasa looks around at him, clearly wondering where he’s going with this. “I have. Why?”
“What you don’t want is tightness.” Rui’s fingertips brush the front of Tsukasa’s costume, not quite making contact, and he moves along with them. “Ballerinas keep their entire bodies tight and precise while they dance, which is what you’re doing now, but that’s not what you want. You’re a machine, so you need to be stiff in a clumsy sense, not a precise one.”
Tsukasa’s mouth forms an ‘o’ of understanding, the analogy landing, and he turns back to the front of the stage to adjust his stance once again per Rui’s directions.
Rui’s hand falls back down to his side.
Once Tsukasa’s satisfied that he’s got it right, he looks back up at Rui and smiles, expression finally triumphant. “Thanks, Rui.”
And god, he’s bright. So bright that Rui almost wants to look away so he doesn’t get blinded.
Instead, he smiles back, clumsy and genuine, and something squeezes almost painfully in his chest.
“No problem.”
Tsukasa is a star. Anyone who’s ever met him would know this.
But the thing about stars is that you can never get close enough to truly touch them.
According to astronomy, and despite how they’re often treated, stars and suns are one in the same.
“Thanks again for helping me.” Tsukasa says, and Rui can’t tell if it’s just the afternoon haze or if he looks a little embarrassed, face slightly flushed in the amber light.
“It’s not a problem. You only skipped out on studying because you were helping out Saki-kun’s band, no?” Rui rifles through his school bag, fingers digging through trinkets and old crumpled worksheets.
Tsukasa nods, his expression still sheepish. “Mm.”
“Then it can’t be helped.”
Rui’s fingertips find the smooth surface of his English textbook, and he plucks it out of his bag, dropping it onto the desk between them.
“Page… twelve, was it?”
Tsukasa nods again, surer this time, and Rui flicks through to the correct page before spinning the book around to face the other boy.
Tsukasa is the sun, and that makes Rui his moon. Rui isn’t very good with metaphors, but that’s how he rationalises it in his head.
He’ll do everything he can to help Tsukasa shine because the only light he himself can emit is simply secondary, passed through by someone else to someone else.
Rui doesn’t resent it—quite the opposite, actually, because the spotlight was never meant for him. He doesn’t want to shine himself, but instead dedicate all he is to making other people shine.
“This word means ‘fly,’ right?” Tsukasa asks, brows furrowed as he studies the textbook.
Rui leans over to follow his gaze.
“Ah, no. That’s ‘leap’—like, ‘to jump.’”
Tsukasa lets out an ohh of understanding, and scribbles something down on the page.
The classroom’s bright in the glow of the late afternoon, and light seems to bounce off the quiet walls, catching the end of Tsukasa’s pen and dancing along his arm, upwards over his cheeks until it illuminates him in a halo of warm gold.
In contrast, Rui feels cold, the shutters allowing him only fleeting bars of sunlight where they’re closed over the window.
Tsukasa is the sun, and Rui is his moon. He’ll stand by Tsukasa as he shines for all to see, and if he finds himself cast in shadow in the process then so be it.
(He remembers standing in the dark, cold wings of the stage, and, for some reason, he aches.)
It’s one in the morning when Rui finally understands.
Notes and pens and half-finished robots are spread out over the floor of his garage, a mess he proudly sits in the middle of because although no stranger would understand what all of these scribbles mean, that doesn’t mean he’s alone.
Tsukasa’s passed out beside him, leant against the front of Rui’s couch. His pen’s slipped out of his hand, and his notes have fluttered lightly to the floor.
When Rui looks over at him, takes in his sleeping face, something inside him hurts.
Admiration is odd in the way it works.
Know someone for years and only be able to talk about what they’re like on the surface, those trivial tidbits of information they give to sate polite curiosity, like answers to security questions.
Know someone for a week and if you really hold them in high regard start to notice all of their little idiosyncrasies, fall into a pattern of habits with them that just makes sense.
Rui couldn’t say what Tsukasa’s favourite colour is, doesn’t know how he likes his coffee if he even drinks it. But if asked about his little mannerisms, how he always likes to take the window seat whenever they go to diners, how he furrows his brows when deep in concentration, how he writes so big when he’s excited that he burns through twice the amount of paper Rui would use but still has to be the one drafting because Rui’s handwriting is, to quote, ‘illegible’—well. There’s little that Rui couldn’t comment on, to say the least.
He’s always admired Tsukasa. Of course he has, because who wouldn’t? Tsukasa had single-handedly made every dream of Rui’s come true, had accepted him despite his many, many flaws and treated him so kindly as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
That’s why Rui’s stayed so vigilantly at his side. He owes Tsukasa the world, and he’ll be damned if he lets anything get in the way of him delivering it.
But what Rui hadn’t anticipated was for these feelings to grow, to bloom into something else entirely.
A foul, ugly beast has reared its head inside of Rui. That’s what tonight has lead him to realise.
He loves Tsukasa.
And he thinks, as he watches his best friend sleep soundly without a care beside him, that this is something he can never, ever tell him.
A chill blows through the garage, a window foolishly left unshut, and Rui feels himself shiver.
There’s a blanket strewn over the far side of the couch which he stands up to grab, draping it as lightly as he can around Tsukasa without touching him.
And then he stays there for a minute, looking at him. Tsukasa’s bangs have fallen into his eyes since he’s been asleep, strands catching in his eyelashes, and suddenly Rui wants so badly to reach out and brush them back away.
But he catches himself, remembers the situation and what he can’t, mustn’t do to a friend who already trusts him enough to fall asleep in his company.
So instead of leaning over, he stays sat where he is. Tsukasa’s already given him the world, and he couldn’t possibly be so selfish as to ask for even more.
He exists in the shadows to push Tsukasa into the light. That’s his role and he will stick to it, his own feelings placed aside on the backburner.
Tsukasa lets out a snore from beside him, blissfully unaware.
All’s fair in love and war, but falling in love isn’t always fair.
There’s a candy store around the corner from Phoenix Wonderland that Rui likes to visit sometimes.
He’ll wander in after rehearsal, take in the displays and jars that line the walls and admire how the lights have been meticulously strung up to brighten the darker corners of the store.
Then he’ll find himself, as does now, at the ramune candy section. He picks out several bottles of his favourite kind, pays for them, and then listens out for the telltale ding of the door’s bell as it shuts behind him.
He opens one bottle and pops a piece of candy into his mouth, but it doesn’t really taste like anything.
Rui supposes that makes sense. Comfort comes in many forms, after all, and this is only the first of them that he’s tried.
He has a whole list of things he likes to do at times like this: taking walks in the sunset, boisterous feet slapping the sidewalk behind him. Sitting in his room in the dead of night, the witching hour when only artists are awake by choice, and listening to the gentle snores come through the other side of the receiver. Showing up to practice early for a meaningless conversation because he knows there’s always going to be someone there to talk to.
Ah.
As he runs through his list, he finds he understands why the candy is so tasteless today.
When he wanders into the candy store after rehearsal it’s always with Tsukasa in tow. Tsukasa, who comments on how pretty the displays are, whose features are lit by the strung up lights, and who follows Rui to the ramune candy section, making comments like, Ah! Ichika loves this flavour! Or was it Shiho…? and I should really pick up some treats for after Saki’s practice to fill the air between them.
Rui can’t help but feel empty as he polishes off half the bottle, not a single piece tasting as it should.
It’s not fair. Not to him and not to the star he’s trying so desperately hard to keep shining.
He shouldn’t have these feelings, shouldn’t be held back because of something he can’t control.
Oh, how Rui wishes he could control them, or have someone step in and control them for him.
But he can’t, and there’s nobody there to step in, either.
So he just keeps eating the tasteless candy, piece by piece, and pretends it’s a form of comfort.
He takes a different route home, cold in the icy sun, and keeps his mind pointedly away from the only person who ever seems to occupy it these days.
(Oh, god, how he wants.)
Some things in life don’t go as planned.
Rui isn’t used to the school rooftop being this cold, especially at this time of the year. He also isn’t used to being the one called up here rather than being the one doing the calling.
As Tsukasa stands by the railing, Rui can’t help but notice that his face looks red. Not the same pink it had gone with exertion when he was standing on that stage, nor the embarrassed shade of rose it had been in that summer classroom; but a deep, pretty red that only deepens as he notices Rui’s arrived.
“You came.” Tsukasa says.
Of course I did. I’d go to the ends of the earth if it was for you.
“I came.”
Tsukasa flashes him a smile, but then it drops as it dawns on him that he now has to explain exactly why he’d had Rui come up here.
Tsukasa clears his throat, and Rui waits, patient.
“Well, the thing I wanted to say was…” Tsukasa starts, and then trails off. His voice is tight, but not as if he’s performing. Not clumsily, either, but as if he’s suddenly experiencing that same traffic jam of emotions scrambling to reach the surface that Rui has these past months, which is an odd thing to consider.
He mumbles something to himself—no, no, it won’t work if I say it like that—and Rui feels his lips quirk up.
Then he takes a breath, as if he’s psyching himself up, and—
Some things in life don’t go as planned.
For example, even though Rui had planned to simply stifle his feelings until they went away, he now finds himself stood, rooted to the spot, before the person he loves as said person spills out exactly the thoughts that have been residing in Rui’s own head this entire time.
“I love you.” Tsukasa says, or maybe shouts—Rui can’t really tell what with all the blood that’s suddenly roaring in his ears, the world tipping itself upside down around him.
I love you.
Tsukasa stands before him, face the reddest he’s ever seen it, one hand slightly outstretched towards Rui, and Rui realises he’s waiting for a response.
He blinks, but it doesn’t go away. It’s not a dream, and it’s not fake.
I love you.
Rui isn’t sure if he’s said the words aloud, managed to verbalise the swirling thoughts in his head, until Tsukasa takes his hand into his own, his eyes full of… adoration.
And suddenly Rui’s no longer stood in the wings. Suddenly he’s able to reach those far, seemingly untouchable stars. Suddenly everything is beautiful and it’s bright and it’s warm.
Tsukasa’s smiling at him. It’s such a gentle, genuine smile, complimented by the pretty dusting of red over his cheeks and ears.
Tsukasa’s smiling at him.
He made Tsukasa smile like that.
And that realisation is what makes Rui finally crack.
He quickly closes the distance between them and throws his arms around Tsukasa, burying his face in the soft fabric of his school cardigan. He clings onto the other boy, never, ever willing to let go because Tsukasa returns Rui’s feelings.
He returns Rui’s feelings.
It’s only when Rui feels wetness against his face that he realises he’s started to cry. The silent tears seep from his eyes, not with sadness but with relief. With happiness.
“I love you.” Rui mumbles into Tsukasa’s shoulder, the words muffled, tumbling out like water from a broken dam. “I love you more than you’ll ever know.”
Tsukasa laughs, but it’s not scornful. It’s soft, caring, just like the boy it belongs to. “I love you, too, Rui. I love you so much.”
Tsukasa is the sun, and Rui is his moon. That’s an undeniable fact.
But the most beautiful thing about the sun and the moon is that they’re a pair, equals, and they couldn’t exist without each other. Rui will stand by Tsukasa, but Tsukasa will also stand by him.
Rui laughs into Tsukasa’s cardigan, tears still welling in his eyes. Oh, how could he have been so stupid? It’d been staring him in the face the whole time.
Tsukasa had given him the world, yes, but he’d also served to provide Tsukasa with a world of his own the second he’d taken that spontaneous role and returned to their beloved troupe.
He didn’t have to stand in the shadows, not when Tsukasa wanted to pull him into the light.
The clouds clear, and the sun shines down onto the rooftop. It’s warm. Everything is warm. Rui nestles further into Tsukasa’s embrace.
He doesn’t need to worry about being blinded now, because he, too, is shining.
In the wings of the stage, Rui watches.
There are stars, shooting magnificently across the sky, and lights so bright they sparkle like a thousand fires. It’s so colourful, so beautiful, so completely and utterly mesmerising.
In the wings of the stage, Rui watches.
Tsukasa turns towards him, shoots him an encouraging smile. Come and join me!
And so Rui does. He dashes onto the stage, into the warmth and the light, until he’s standing right there with Tsukasa. Not behind him, not just beside him, with him.
He looks at Tsukasa, and Tsukasa grins. Rui can’t help but grin back, something achingly but oh so gently welling up in his chest.
Tsukasa grabs Rui’s hand, and, together, they take a bow.