Work Text:
Fresh off of celebrating his 26th birthday just a few days ago, Ritsu woke up in Takano’s arms for the nth time in just the past week.
Perhaps it was the time of year—seeing the excessive amount of cherry blossoms overwhelming you at every turn, be it on walks or while passing by any storefront’s seasonal selection, but it was as if all the pink transported them back to simpler times, when they were both very much in love as teenagers.
It was starting to get to his head that perhaps settling down and not fighting anymore wouldn’t be so bad…but maybe that was just all the nostalgia rotting his brain away. Maybe it’d be best to wait it out until all the trees become green and he wasn’t being swayed by the mood cherry blossoms put him in when Takano was by his side.
…But then his eyes strayed to Takano’s still sleeping face and his stupidly long eyelashes and his heart did that thing it did where it took over for his brain. Being with Takano wouldn’t be all bad, and he had perhaps begun falling in love all over again. Was he ready to take that big of a step yet though?
“Mm.” Takano let out a small groan from the back of his throat as his eyes fluttered open. “Morning. Did you sleep okay?”
“G-good morning, Takano-san.” A bit disappointed, though he would never admit to it, that his staring had to be cut short so soon, Ritsu greeted him, fighting his instinct to run off. “I slept fine.”
“Hm, so I make a good body pillow then?” Takano rolled over onto his back, pulling Ritsu with him towards his bare chest. “That’s good, you should use me as one more often, I wouldn’t mind.”
“I never said that.” Ritsu not so subtly avoided answering the question.
“You don’t have to, I already know you like it.” The arms wrapped around Ritsu pulled him in closer, and Takano laid a gentle kiss atop his head. “And I’m sure you like my face plenty too, since you were getting your fill staring at me just now.”
“I…I wasn’t…” Ritsu turned his head downward, chin curling in. It wasn’t worth arguing with Takano when he was looking at him with that soft expression that made his stomach churn knowing it was reserved for him. “...Shouldn’t we be getting up for work?”
“Mm, I'd rather just call in sick and cuddle with you all day, how does that sound? Your body must be sore, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I overworked you in that state when it’s all my fault.”
His lower back and legs throbbed at the sudden reminder, and he resisted the urge to groan.
“Absolutely not.” Ritsu pushed off of him, sitting up. “We’re going to work.”
“Don’t wanna.” Takano wrapped his arms around Ritsu’s waist, nuzzling against his stomach. “At least stay in bed for a few more minutes.”
“...” Ritsu found it hard to say no when he looked so content cuddling him under the covers, but when he was met with the distinct feeling of kisses working their way downwards from his belly button, he quickly scooted back to put distance between the two of them. “Takano-san!”
“What?” He rolled onto his side, staring at Ritsu as if he were completely innocent.
“I’m leaving!” His sappy feelings having dried up for the morning, Ritsu threw his legs over the side of the bed and began to collect his clothes off of the floor where they’d been discarded the night prior.
“No.” A hand tugged at his wrist, and Ritsu fought the urge he had to turn around, because the second they made eye contact his reason would crumble all over again like it always did. “At least come back over for breakfast.”
“...Fine.” Breakfast was fine, he could come back after changing into some fresh clothes for the day. “Breakfast and nothing else.”
“Aw, there go my plans of walking out from the kitchen in nothing but an apron…”
“Takano-san!”
The very first thing that Ritsu saw upon walking into the Emerald department alongside Takano that morning was an entire mug of coffee spilled onto his closed laptop.
“Aghh!” He rushed over to his desk in a panic, looking for something to clean it up with, absolutely frantic thinking about all the important files that he very much needed for work there. The one night he hadn’t brought it home with him to do extra work!
“Onodera.” Takano clapped a hand on his shoulder, completely calm as Ritsu desperately rubbed the paw of one of the many stuffed animals against the spill to no avail.
“T-Takano-san, are there any paper towels? Tissues? Something!” He grabbed a fistful of Takano’s hoodie, shaking him a bit harder than he probably should be.
“It’s not real.” Takano plucked up the ‘spill’, a slimy mixture that had somehow been dyed to look like coffee pouring out of a mug with Marukawa’s logo on it.
“...Oh.” Ritsu collapsed into his chair out of relief, only to be shocked at the inappropriate noise that blew out from below him. “Wh-what the-?”
“Seriously? A whoopie cushion?” Takano began scanning Ritsu’s space for any other possible little pranks, when he heard quiet laughter breaking out from around the corner. “I know this wasn’t Hatori’s idea, so why don’t you two come out?”
Kisa and Mino came out of hiding, still laughing from Ritsu’s earlier panic.
“I don’t recall being hired to look after a bunch of elementary schoolers all day.” Takano crossed his arms over his chest, glaring the two of them down. “Lay off the childish pranks and get to work.”
“Ehhh?” Kisa almost whined, stuffing away who knows what into his pockets that he had certainly been about to torment Ritsu with. “But Takano-san, today is-”
“I don’t care what day it is.” He spoke more sternly, brows furrowing. “Unless you want more work, lay off Onodera and get working.”
“Fine…” Kisa pulled out his own chair, but carefully checked for any sort of indication of tampering before sitting down. “Sorry Ricchan, we just knew you would have a funny reaction!”
“And we were right, sorry Onodera-kun.” Despite apologizing, neither Mino or Kisa really looked as if they felt any remorse.
“It’s okay, just please don’t do anything like that with my laptop again, I felt like I was going to faint.” Ritsu placed a hand over his still thudding chest.
“Hehe, okay, your laptop is off limits then, got it.” Kisa shuffled a bit in his chair again, obviously up to no good.
“Kisa, do I need to repeat myself?” Takano warned as he held his trusty ruler up, ready to whip it across the room if necessary.
“No, boss!” He chirped, not having been on the receiving end of Takano’s annoyingly accurate throwing arm since before Ritsu had been hired and wanting to keep it that way.
After that, Ritsu almost was able to forget about the mornings’ antics, falling into his usual work. It may have still been early in the cycle, but there was still plenty to keep him busy.
When it came time for lunch, he had sat down with Hatori to eat the lunch that Takano had insisted on packing for him and shoved into his arms as they left his apartment earlier, content to eat a real meal.
His happiness was short-lived however, as when Kisa strolled in looking far too amused for Ritsu’s liking, he could tell something was going on.
Everything seemed innocent enough at first when he sat down with his own meal, and Ritsu briefly thought that maybe he was just over thinking things as usual. But then…
“You know, I think I need some condiments to go with this…I’ll be right back.” Kisa stood right back up and speedily made his way out of the room.
“...Hatori-san, do you think he’s up to something?”
“Who knows…he and Mino have been acting strange all day, probably because it’s April Fo-”
“Onodera!” Takano entered the room now, dragging Kisa behind him by his hood. “Be thankful I’m looking out for you, this little jerk just earned himself a huge pile of work.”
“Eh?” Ritsu looked between the two of them, noting the weirdly shaped ketchup bottle in Takano’s hand. “Isn’t that just what Kisa-san went to find? What’s so bad about-”
Uncapping the bottle in one smooth movement, Takano squeezed it, revealing a fake string of ketchup, lightly hitting the slimy stuff against Kisa’s face.
“Enough with the stupid pranks!” Takano threw the bottle at him too, relishing the small thunk it made when it came into contact with his forehead. “If I catch you messing around again today, I’ll make your life a living hell.”
“More than you already do?” Kisa dared to ask, but quickly regretted it, if the look on his face was an indication. “Um, Takano-san, I-”
Marukawa’s editing floor break room broke out into screams of terror for the rest of the half hour block.
“You didn’t need to be so hard on Kisa-san, you know!” Ritsu admonished Takano as the two of them walked home from the train station. “I can handle a few jokes, I wouldn’t still be working at Emerald if all that got to me.”
“Yeah, I guess bullying you is kind of our thing, isn’t it?” Takano said. “If you’d just stop being the newbie, maybe we’d leave you alone. Well, maybe the other three. I’ll always prefer teasing you over anyone else.”
“How am I just supposed to ‘stop being the newbie’, exactly?” He grumbled.
“You can’t stop until we get someone new to haze with copy runs and all the tedious tasks that need to get done but we don’t wanna deal with. Once you have someone like that around to be a senpai to, you’ll understand.” He patted Ritsu’s head. “It’s the way of life, we all had to be the newbie at some point.”
“I can’t imagine you in that position at all.” Though the mental image of Takano being tormented as much as he was on a day to day basis was appealing to Ritsu, he just couldn’t see him going along with it.
“Oh, you’d be right. When I was back at the company I worked at before I started at Marukawa, I gave all my superiors hell when they tried that crap on me.” He laughed at the memory. “Then when I started at Emerald, Isaka-san put me right into the chief editor position, so nobody was able to get away with anything like that.”
“You worked somewhere else?” It was the first time Ritsu was hearing of such a thing…he had heard of Takano improving Emerald to what it was now in just a year, but he hadn’t thought further back than that before now. “A different publishing house?”
“Oh, I guess I never mentioned it to you before, did I?” Takano looked to the side briefly as if considering something, before continuing. “I was at Shuudansha for a few years out of college before coming to Marukawa through Yokozawa’s recommendation. I used to work with shounen manga instead.”
“Oh, I see…” Was all that Ritsu said aloud, but inside he was a mess.
Questions swirled around in his head, like what titles Takano had worked on, what the title of the magazine he worked with was, how often they did releases, if any of the titles he worked on were still getting serialization…he could just be upfront and ask directly, but that simply wasn’t his style.
“…Shounen manga had its perks, but I’m glad I ended up where I am now.” Takano spoke up again, and Ritsu felt himself in a trance, wanting to know more.
“Why’s that?” He asked, completely unprepared for the answer.
“Because if I hadn’t started at Emerald, I wouldn’t have met you again.” Takano reached out and took his hand, and Ritsu felt his entire stomach get stuck in a knot.
What was up with him, always having to drop lines like that could destroy Ritsu at a moment’s notice?!
“…oh. I see.” Was all that Ritsu was able to squeeze out of his mouth. He couldn’t manage anything further than that right now without spiraling into a babbling mess.
Cherry blossom trees shaking above them gently illuminated by the streetlights, Ritsu once again felt as if he’d been thrown back in time. But this was something new, separate from his feelings back then. He was in love with Takano, not some past version of him that lived in his memories.
The realization hit him waves, and there was little he could do about it.
They walked the rest of the short walk to their apartment building in silence, and remained in their own little bubble up until they made it to the twelfth floor, where Ritsu just couldn’t hold in what he’d been feeling anymore.
“Um, Takano-san?” Ritsu stood there awkwardly, shifting his weight from side to side as Takano fished the keys to his apartment out from his bag.
“What?” He turned to look at him, straightening up upon seeing the distressed look on Ritsu’s face.
“I…” His heart pounded in his ears, his entire body beginning to burn from embarrassment. There was no point in talking any further when the longer he blabbed, the more of a chance he had to chicken out, so he might as well get straight to the point! “Takano-san, I’m in love with y-”
Before he could begin to pour his heart out, Takano threw a hand over his mouth, frowning.
“Is this some kind of cruel joke?” The gentle bubble that had built up around them popped all at once, and Ritsu was faced with an upset expression he wasn’t even quite sure he had seen on Takano’s face before.
“…?” Ritsu felt panic begin to take over as Takano began to retreat into his apartment, having to stop the door with his foot. “W-what are you talking about, I thought you would be happy if I-”
“On April Fools Day?”
Oh.
Suddenly the excessive pranking from his co-workers clicked into place, and Ritsu felt his stomach drop.
“April-oh my god, no, that’s not why I-” Ritsu slapped a hand to his forehead. “I’m so sorry if you thought I was joking, I didn’t even know that’s what today was! I just thought at work that they were messing with me a little more than usual today, I swear!”
“…Really now.” Takano shifted on his feet, leaning against the frame of his doorway. “That’s convenient timing.”
“I swear, I would never joke about something like that, why would you think I’d ever do something like that when… God.” Ritsu’s legs let out from under him and he sat on the floor of the hallway, clutching down hard on his stomach as breathing suddenly became much more difficult.
“You really didn’t know?” Now Takano was feeling bad, because Ritsu looked as if he was about to be thrown into a panic over his assumption of something that would have been wildly out of character for him.
“No! I didn’t! After what happened when we were younger, why would I ever joke about something like that?!” What had sounded as if it was going to be the start of blubbering quickly shifted right back to anger.
…Anger was better than panic, though it was likely the wrong direction to push Ritsu in if he wanted him to finish his thought from earlier, so he took a different route.
Squatting down onto the floor, Takano hugged him, not letting go despite the weak struggling that was Ritsu pushing against him.
“I won’t interrupt you this time, so could you say it again?”
“...No. I don’t feel like saying it anymore.” Despite his words, he leant into Takano’s hold. “Chalk it up to me having a momentary lapse in judgment.”
“...Y’know, I was being nice by not playing any tricks on you today, but I don’t think I’m feeling so generous anymore.” Takano’s hands shifted upwards, grabbing onto Ritsu’s by the underarms.
Ritsu’s stomach dropped for a completely different reason when he was tugged past the boundary of Takano’s front door, the door slamming shut behind him.
“Wait-waitwaitwait!” In an all too familiar situation, Ritsu was being pulled up and along towards Takano’s bedroom.
“Since you had a change of heart, I’ll just have to convince you to change your mind again, I’m sure that won’t take very long at all.” Takano remained persistent, his hold on Ritsu’s arm staying firm. “You’ll be saying you love me by the end of the night for sure.”
“What could possibly make me want to say any such thing to you?!” Ritsu didn’t want to believe that Takano would think that bedding him would result in what he wanted (After all, it hadn’t worked yet, and they’d had relations how many times already in the past few months?), but his persistence to get to his bedroom was making him think otherwise.
“Simple.” He sat the two of them down on the bed and clung tightly to his not-quite-lover. “I’m going to recount every single embarrassing thing that I remember you doing in front of me from high school. The only way I’ll shut up is if you say it.”
“...What?”
“Remember that time you were so distracted watching me walk by that you walked right into that support beam?”
“H-how is this supposed to be an April Fools joke?!” Ritsu squirmed in Takano’s arms, desperately wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of there.
“It’s not,” Takano said, clinging to him impossibly tighter. “I’m just messing with you. Isn’t walking down memory lane so much fun?”
“Takano-san, something like this won’t make me-”
“Remember when you dove onto my bed the first time you came over and sniffed my pillow?”
“NOOOO!”
Not even five minutes later, Ritsu gave in.