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Akane finds Minamoto in the council room. The school is deserted, the other students having rushed home to try and see their families for the last time. To be with them when it happens. Akane doesn’t bother. He lives forty-five minutes away from the campus on a good day, knows that most of the others do to. It is strange, he thinks, the way they are so quick to run home. To spend their last moments desperate and painful.
Minamoto seems to have realized the same thing. He doesn’t turn when Akane enters, simply continues to stare out the window at the school gardens. It’s disconcerting, how normal the scene is. It’s a sunny day, a slight breeze rustling through the trees, not too cool and not too hot. It would be perfect if it weren't for the bomb heading their way.
“Aoi.” Minamoto’s voice is soft, next to him. Quiet.
“Akane,” he says, finally turning to see Minamoto’s face. To see the way the sun contours his features, shines into his eyes and makes them glow . “There’s no use for formalities now, Minamoto.”
A small smile dances on Minamoto’s lips. “No, I suppose there isn’t, Akane.”
Akane feels a genuine smile grow on his own face, feels the way the tips of his ears heat. He supposes there’s no reason to hide that, now.
“But,” Minamoto continues, mischief in his gaze, “you’ll have to call me Teru.”
Akane’s smile melts into a smirk. “Alright, Teru .” He lets his voice drop as he speaks. He delights at the light flush that lands on Teru’s cheeks.
Without meaning to, his eyes flick to the clock. Six minutes. He sighs, looks out to the garden once again.
“I would have thought you’d be with Minamoto-kouhai.”
“Yes, well. He’s off with one of his supernatural… friends. Has been, all day.” Doesn’t know about the bombs goes unsaid. Akane is sure that Minamoto-kouhai will be devastated when he returns to find everyone dead. To find his brother dead. Akane is sure that Teru knows it too.
“Not going to stop time?”
Akane sighs, “No.”
Teru doesn’t respond, just tilts his head to the side ever so slightly.
“There would be no point. And… I’d like to be human, when it happens.”
Teru hums in acknowledgement, and they go back to watching the garden in silence.
A squirrel sits in the middle of it, gnawing away at a nut. It seems impossible, that it can remain oblivious to everything. That its world will end in—Akane checks the clock—five minutes, and it will never know why. Will never know about the stupid humans and their stupid wars and the lives caught in between.
Teru and he are close enough that Akane can feel the body heat radiating off of him. Akane leans closer, presses the length of their arms together. He watches the squirrel. Teru’s hand presses against his, interlocking their pinky fingers. Akane brings their hands together completely, eyes never straying from the squirrel. Teru’s hand is soft, and there is nothing here stopping him from getting to feel it in his own.
“I think I’m in love with you.” Teru’s voice is sudden, too-loud in the silence that had settled over the space.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Teru’s eyes are so very blue in the sunlight, but it is not them that Akane cannot look away from. It is then, staring at Teru’s lips, that Akane finds that he very much wants to kiss them. Wants to kiss Teru , in all his ridiculousness.
“Can I… kiss you?” Teru’s voice is soft, a little breathless, and Akane knows he has been caught staring.
He cannot bring himself to mind, too occupied pressing his lips to Teru’s.
…They are smiling, when the bomb goes off.