Chapter Text
“I can bake the cake if you want, we don't need to get one elsewhere.”
“...... We can just buy one, it's okay.”
— —
Tsukasa did not see Rui at school today. He supposes it's possible he just missed him, but they're in the same homeroom class, so that would be sort of difficult. Tsukasa is a little bit relieved that he doesn't have to deal with all of the awkwardness of just seeing Rui, but this outcome just makes him more worried than anything.
Maybe he reacted the wrong way yesterday. Tsukasa isn't sure how else he was supposed to react, he can't even think of something better in his head, the only possible thing he could have done was run away. Still, in his gut, he feels like he's done something wrong.
Tsukasa adjusts his bag on his shoulder. It's not very comfortable. No wonder he noticed that he'd left his book - it actually made walking with this one shoulder not so bad.
Sometimes he crosses over his head with the strap on the way home, but he doesn't feel like it today. It's more comfortable overall in terms of dispersing the weight, but it sometimes leaves a tiny mark on his neck, and he doesn't want it to be seen anywhere. It'll look weird if you could see it through his stage costume.
Is Rui walking home now too, or did he not go in today?
…
It'll be alright.
It's the weekend now, no school for the next two days, and he's sure that, in that time, he'll be able to forget all about what happened.
Tsukasa fishes his keys from his pocket, but decides to try the knob before putting the keys in. It's already unlocked.
Sometimes Saki leaves it open for him when she gets home before him, even though he always says not to if she's home alone. He can't say he doesn't appreciate it, though.
He pushes the door open and is about to start his usual motions of putting his keys on the hook next to the door, then walking to the living room to drop his bag on the table, but –
“Surprise!” Saki calls from the other room. Tsukasa barely has time to look up before she rounds the corner and gently tosses a balloon in his direction. Tsukasa catches it against his chest, instead of trying to catch it with his key in hand.
“S-surprise.?” Tsukasa quirks up his lips into a smile, even though he doesn't know exactly what they're celebrating. He needs a default smile so that it looks like he knew all along, while he uses the time to figure it out.
“Surprise!” Then in comes Toya, a little bit late. He also has a balloon, but is just holding it. “You threw the balloon really lightly.”
“Yeah, but balloons filled with air don't really throw well. If you throw them like you're tryna throw a baseball they just defy you.”
“Oh.” Toya looks down at the pink balloon in his hand. “Wait, but why?”
“It just does,” Tsukasa shrugs, and he tosses his balloon back to his sister. She lets it hit her in the head, then pretends to be knocked back by it.
“Wait, let me..” Toya holds the balloon with both hands, then throws it full force at Tsukasa. It just rolls off his fingers and spins a bit in the air, then starts to fall. “Oh.”
Tsukasa kicks it upwards, then catches it. He finds it easier to actually smile now, messing around, but he's still very aware of the fact that he doesn't know what everyone's talking about.
Saki evidently recovers from the balloon incident and tosses it upwards. “We didn't feel like getting helium ones, but I found these in my room.” it slowly falls down and hits Tsukasa in the head.
“Ah.” He's tempted to fall to the ground, or otherwise overreact when it hits him, but he's too preoccupied with figuring out what's going on. “Uh, aha,” he lets the balloon fall. “What, uh, are we celebrating..?”
Toya tilts his head.
“Huh?” Saki picks the balloon up. She giggles. “I thought out of everyone, you would know it the best.”
“W-well,”
“We even made a cake.” Toya chimes.
Tsukasa turns to him. “Y-you made a cake..?”
“We bought one.” Saki clarifies. “Anyway! A little birdie told me –”
Uh oh.
“that you and Rui –”
Uh oh.
“Are kind of a thing! Am I right!” Saki gives him a little slap on the shoulder. “And since I have been so painfully watching waiting for this to happen for so long,”
What?
“We thought we would throw you a little party!” she laughs. “For your courage.”
“F-for my courage.” Tsukasa's smile goes right back to the awkward ‘i’m finding the strength' smile from before.
This is probably the worst outcome.
Why is this happening? He's very okay with forgetting everything happened. Forgetting that the… kiss. happened. He didn't get anything about it that night, why now!
“C’mon! Like Toya said, there's cake!” Saki takes Tsukasa's arm and starts bringing him to the kitchen, and he goes willingly. Toya follows a bit behind them, picking up the balloon from the floor and closing the door properly behind them.
Tsukasa leans over the counter at the little cake they bought, decorated with white and blue frosting. It says “you kissed him” on it.
He's about ready to die now, thanks.
“Tell me you didn't make a worker write that!” He plays along for the sake of not hurting anyone's feelings or wasting anyone's money. He's sure the cake is great, but he'd really not find out what word Saki cuts his slice to have.
Saki laughs. “Nah, I wrote it!”
“We still wanted to somewhat make it ourselves.” Toya nods. “Since we didn't have time to bake it.”
“Yyeah!” Saki, after a quick pause. “You gotta bake it, then cool it for a while, and then frost it, it would have been a whole thing! We'd have had to leave school early.”
“I see.” Tsukasa pipes up again. He sits down at the kitchen island, sort of hoping to eat cake and then go upstairs and scream into his pillow. He's not sure how long Toya can stay over, but it's not usually that long after school. It might be different because it's not a weekday tomorrow.
“Oh- the,” Saki turns and finds a sheet of parchment paper still on the counter.
Toya laughs lightly. “Tsukasa got here earlier than I thought, so I didn't have time to put it away.”
Saki puts her hands on her hips. “Kind of a shame too, these are really nice stars.” she shrugs. “I guess we can eat ‘em either way!”
Toya must've made some frosting stars on parchment. Tsukasa taps his finger on the countertop. He decides now is a good time to put his bag down on the floor. He just drops his keys on top of it, assuming they won't grow legs and walk away the moment he lets go. He does sort of miss holding onto something though. Hopefully, soon, it'll be a fork.
“Do we want paper plates?”
“Why paper plates?” Toya tilts his head.
“I dunno.” Saki shrugs. “Just gives off more party vibes, like paper plates at a birthday party!” She reaches up into the cabinet to grab some. When she comes back down, she snatches a large knife from the knife rack and turns back towards the table.
“We got ice cream too, but I figure we should wait till after dinner. I know cake and ice cream is a lotta sugar at once!”
“Y-yeah.” He actually does prefer to have sweet things after meals, so that's nice she knows, at least.
“I tried to get mom to come and make pasta, but she's working.”
Tsukasa's mouth quirks up further. “Th- that's fine.! I don't mind.”
— — —
Maybe this wasn't a good enough reason to get written up for being late.
It wasn't like it was on purpose! Rui just could not physically force himself out of bed. After he'd realized he would be late, he decided to just tank the tardy and get there after his classes with Tsukasa. They're all in the morning. Then he can hide during lunch and go about his business as usual.
Just paying a little visit to Nene in her class at the end of the day to help her clean up!
And she didn't say anything. Anything about it. Rui wants to take that as a good sign, but he wonders if she were to be the sort of person to say something either way.
… He does not think so.
Rui thinks he might be able to see her playfully punching his shoulder or maybe looking at him like a proud parent, but the only fact of the matter is that she didn't.
Rui rolls over in bed. He doesn't like being so inactive. It feels weird, after spending so long dancing after each school day. They'd slowed down by now after the near-opening-night cram to have everything right. And it was sort of stressful, but Rui is sitting here doing nothing now.
He picks up his phone and holds it with both hands up in front of his head. Talking to someone is the easy way to get over boredom.
He navigates to Nightcord and sends a video call request to Mizuki. Their conversations always get entertaining. Maybe they'll inspire him to build something, or to get out of the house.
There is one more possibility he didn't really consider.
“A little early, huh.” Mizuki opens the call with. “What's up?” they smile at the camera from an odd angle, but then it starts moving.
Rui sits up in his bed just to have a slightly more photogenic angle of him in the corner of his screen. “Nothing all that much, we just don't have practice anymore on Fridays. I’m bored.”
“Ah.” Mizuki finishes setting up their phone, leaning it against something to show them and the shirt they’re working on on their mannequin. They adjust their headphones, then turn away from the screen and pick up their sewing needle and thread. “Well, I’ve met my quota for being outside today! Why don’t you hang with your boyfriend?”
“ What?”
“What you what, it’s your boyfriend.”
Rui pauses for a minute, then comes to the conclusion that this is indeed not something that is stuck with just him, Tsukasa, and An.
“A-ah,” He figures he needs to clear this up. He’d feel bad lying. “Mizuki, it’s really not- like that, it was,”
“You don’t have to hide!” They giggle. “I know what happened, An told me all about it.”
“Yeah, I figured she did..” Rui sighs. “Look, it really actually isn’t what you’re thinking. I misjudged the situation, a lotta things were happening really fast, uhm,” he pauses, and Mizuki’s voice, for once, isn’t there to fill the silence. He just sees them smiling at their sewing. This sounds like excuses, and he knows it, but it really isn’t! “Don’t smile like that,” he laughs a little, “it’s– it was, uh.”
He huffs. “Okay, listen.”
“Listening.”
“You know how I feel about him and you know I would have told you if something actually happened, but it didn’t. I’m telling you, you’d be the first to know if anything did happen!” Rui sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “I was so content where I was, and where we were, but I think I’ve really messed up this time.”
“Well,” Mizuki pauses, then suddenly flinches. They put their finger in their mouth for a second, evidently having pricked it, “I say this every time, and you never listen, but I think it’s important to talk about it with him. Maybe you were content just being friends even though you know you wanna be more before , but it’s important now that you smooth things out.”
Rui sighs really heavily.
Mizuki is certainly one to talk about communicating.
“... Yeah, I think that’s the best thing to do. I don’t think I can do anything else, and it’ll be really awkward if we can’t get past this.”
Mizuki nods knowingly. “Right. Now, why don't you tell me what happened,” they giggle, evidently right back to the playful attitude from before, “An told me, but you were the one directly involved.”
“... Fine, but I don’t want you telling anyone else.”
Mizuki barks a laugh. “Of course I won't!”
Rui keeps procrastinating on his starting time, then he sighs and sits up. He puts his phone down. “I have to build something.”
He gets up, and starts walking to his desk. He can't sit here and do nothing all night, he has to be productive somehow, even if it’s just a tiny thing.
“Hey don’t forget me!!”
“Oh -” Rui turns and reaches for his phone. He turns again and walks to his workshop desk, sits down, sets his camera up, then starts looking around for the things that he has to make things with. He has lots of little pieces of wood up here, maybe he should make a little wooden robot, like he used to a long time ago. He’d always make tiny robots when he was bored in late middle school and early into highschool.
“I assume An told you everything, but listen, it was my bad.” He takes a metal ruler to a thin board of wood. He pulls a wooden pencil over to himself. “I really misjudged the situation, she just came in at a really unlucky time. Like, I think that was the worst possible second she could’ve walked in.” he sighs. “What matters is that Tsukasa is not my boyfriend. Wish he was!” He falters slightly in the last statement - he’s talking to Mizuki, he tells Mizuki everything, they already know this. But it’s still a bit hard to say out loud.
Especially after yesterday.
Ugh.
“But I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”
“An said he looked pretty chill about it.” Mizuki shrugs.
“But she walked off before Tsukasa said anything to me, and I really do not think he was happy.” Rui huffs.
“What’d he say?”
“Asked me if we could forget about it.”
Mizuki audibly winces. “Oh, yeah, that's not good. Okay, listen, I really think you should talk to him. I can tell him you want to talk to him, if you want.” Rui catches them smiling as he looks over at his screen. “Orr, he could’ve been into it but just embarrassed. But! Either way you really do gotta clear this up, you can’t just avoid him every day, you work together.”
Rui sighs really, really heavily. He leans down on his hands. “... Okay.”
–
The weekend was… less than calming, to say the least.
Tsukasa barely got through that ‘party,’ and he was so embarrassed he didn't want to come.out of his room the whole two days. He went downstairs and he ate breakfast and he stole the cat off the couch and brought it upstairs. Then read over his lines and did some practicing. Then ate dinner.
He really doesn't want to make it seem like he's ungrateful or something.
He's really not! He had fun, aside from all the problems, and the cake was good, and it was really nice to see Toya out of school, and it was fun to spend time with him and Saki, but oh boy could the circumstances not have been worse.
It's so embarrassing. Tsukasa can't say that he has ever wanted to scream into his pillow, usually stifling himself isn't the biggest of his concerns, but he can't really let anyone know, he doesn't think.
His face probably let on way more than he wanted it to, but it wasn't enough for anybody to ask him. Toya and Saki aren't the kind of people not to ask when they think someone's upset. So he must have done something good at least.
This is a mess he sort of got into himself, so now he has to roll with it. He doesn't want to disappoint anyone by clearing it up, he has to play along! He has to play the part. He's an actor! A world future star! If he can't handle something like this, then he'll never make it.
It's a little bit of method acting, if you will!
He doesn't have the role he's practicing for just yet, but that means he just has a head start!
Yeah.
…
Ugh he doesn't wanna fuckin do this.
It'll be okay though, because he has a plan.
Everybody thinks they're dating now, which he can take from the very trustworthy sources of Saki and Toya (while Saki usually means maybe like 50% of people when she says ‘everybody,’ Toya is very literal with these kinds of sayings).
If they think he and Rui are dating, oh, he'll show them dating.
His reputation's on the line, and Tsukasa Tenma is not a bad boyfriend.
– –
When Tsukasa reaches the school gateway, the first thing he does is scan the premises and sidewalks outside of it for Rui. It's not going to work out if he isn't here again.
In his rush to get out of the house, maybe he's just gotten here a bit early. So, he parks himself up and waits by the entrance. He pulls out his phone and scrolls between his home screen tabs, sort of just pretending to be doing something, pretending to be busy.
Rui is a little bit more than just noticeable in a crowd - he’d be noticeable even just because of his height, nevermind more than vibrant hair color. Tsukasa barely has to glance up to see him approach the gates.
His eyes flit down to the pavement, and he puts his phone away. Tsukasa pushes off the wall and also starts walking. He catches up with Rui pretty quickly, though he doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes forward.
Yeah, he can do this… He’s pretty sure.
Tsukasa straightens his back and squares his shoulders. He glances up at Rui, maybe a little hesitantly. He considers, maybe, just talking to him, but he’s not sure what they’d talk about. And he doesn’t think he considers that PDA. He thinks that Rui might look a little bit too stiff for that too.
Whatever, it’s fine. He made his peace with God and he has to do this, for the sake of everyone they’re in the eyeline of right now, their friends, siblings, and most importantly, the two of them.
Tsukasa reaches out his hand.
Why is everything moving in slow motion? Is that just him? Don’t say he’s actually just moving this slowly.
Frankly, he’d like to make it clear to any little nagging voices in the back of his mind that this has nothing to do with how he actually feels for anybody in particular. Including Rui. He’s acting, method acting, and it’s for the sake of not letting anybody down.
And nothing else.
Tsukasa grabs onto Rui’s hand, and intertwines their fingers.