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There's a lipstick smudge on the collar of Makoto's uniform, as innocuous as it is incriminating.
Junpei tugs at it playfully and teases Makoto about who it can belong to while Makoto just stands there like it is nothing and shrugs like it is nothing too and maybe that is what this all truly is to him. Maybe that's what they all are. Ryoji averts his eyes and bites his lip hard enough to bleed and tries very hard to not think of Makoto at all.
A futile effort if there ever was one, especially with him right there, so he counts the space between breaths instead.
One breath, two. Three.
Don't look, he thinks, digging his nails into his palms and wishing he could press them into the curve of Makoto's spine instead, to imprint some trace of himself that Makoto will have no choice but to carry around throughout the day and into the night, undeniable proof that what they did and what they had was real and true.
Four, five. He looks. Of course he looks.
Ryoji looks and Makoto is already looking back and Ryoji's stomach churns, nausea or elation or some sick, euphoric combination of the two, because there's a smile curving Makoto's mouth and it has both the edge of mockery and the glimmer of horrible promise. The sad terrible truth is that Ryoji is too weak to not seize upon the promise in that smile, dragging Makoto into a supply closet and pulling that collar that's been so taunting him aside to mouth wetly at Makoto's neck and scrape his teeth over Makoto's skin while Makoto huffs out a laugh and tilts his head to allow Ryoji better access.
“Who was it this time?” Ryoji mutters, surveying the imprint of his teeth on Makoto's neck with as much tenderness as dark satisfaction. There I am, he thinks, pressing his mouth to it like something precious, mouthing at it like this time will be the one that really sticks, like Ryoji can somehow take the thought from his head and press it past Makoto's skin and carve it into the marrow of his bones. There we are.
Makoto inhales sharply, honest here in a way he never is anywhere else. That's what Ryoji wants to believe anyway. He wants to believe a lot of things. Has hope ever been this wretched? It sits like an ugly thorn in Ryoji's chest, drawing blood when he least expects it, and Ryoji just keeps bleeding again and again.
Ryoji wants to feel that breath hitch against his mouth and so he pulls back but only as far as Makoto will let him with his fingers tangled in Ryoji's hair. Ryoji's world has narrowed down to the sudden twitch of Makoto's lips before Makoto threads his fingers through the hair at the back of Ryoji's skull in a caricature of gentleness and Ryoji's head is wrenched up for Makoto to breathe, hot and mocking, into the curve of Ryoji's mouth: “Do you really want to know?”
Yes. No. I don't know. The words stick in his throat but whatever answer he may have given is swallowed by Makoto as he coaxes Ryoji's mouth open and his tongue presses past the seam of Ryoji's lips. Ryoji moans in the back of his throat, wanting to drape his arms over Makoto's shoulders while their mouths collide again and again and settles for brushing his thumb over the pulse of Makoto's neck. He can feel the thud of his heart there, proof that Makoto has one in the black hole of his chest, that Ryoji is not alone in this, that for this moment at least Makoto wants Ryoji just as much as Ryoji wants him.
It's the little things. The way Makoto laughs, startled, into Ryoji's mouth when the shelf behind him gives an alarming tremble upon rocking their bodies with more urgency against each other; how before they straighten up to leave Makoto finger combs Ryoji's hair into order after messing it up earlier with his tight possessive grasp, his eyes burning strangely bright in his face, and Ryoji tells himself that it is all for him and no one else.
It has to mean something, Ryoji thinks, holding Makoto back for one more kiss and letting his nails bite into Makoto's back as one becomes two and two becomes three. It just has to.
“You know, usually you're asking out every girl in a five foot radius,” Yukari says, “but these days you're not doing that as much. It's kind of a welcome change.”
They've been assigned clean up duty together but have worked largely in silence until now, though admittedly not without some attempts to spark conversation on Ryoji's end, something inside of him chafing at the prolonged silence.
Yukari has refused to indulge him, having an almost ruthless practicality at times, or the plain truth of the matter is that she just doesn't like him, visibly put off by his flirtatious attitude. Her initiating one now is definitely a surprise and Ryoji leans against the broom he's been using to sweep the classroom floor as he looks at her, tightening his grip on the handle and trying to not let his eyes drift to her mouth. Not out of desire, though Yukari is very much desirable. She's beautiful, of course, and smart and witty and a hundred other lovely things, but Ryoji sees the way Yukari looks at Makoto when she thinks he's not looking and Ryoji can't shake the sense that he is looking at himself, like a time machine or a twisted premonition, or at least a version of Ryoji from before his feelings for Makoto took on their current gnarled ugly shape and there was an almost purity to the sweet agony of his yearning.
Ryoji tries to keep his gaze fixed on Yukari's eyes or the space in between but it ultimately flickers to her mouth: the shininess of it, like she's recently reapplied some lip gloss. Pink, seemingly her favorite color. He doesn't let himself linger on it, not allowing himself to wonder if that's similar to the shade that had stained Makoto's uniform. It would be nothing but a pointless thought exercise, a study in masochism starring none other than a wretchedly in love Mochizuki Ryoji.
The truth is that he tells himself a lot of things but that doesn't make any of them true. He swallows and forces a smile, trying to keep all of this off his face. “I didn't realize you paid me so much attention, Yukari-san. I'm flattered.”
“Jeez,” Yukari says, rolling her eyes, and Ryoji's smile is a little more real now. He can see why Junpei likes teasing her so much.
He's already looking at her face so he sees the exact moment it changes. Her eyes brighten. Her lips curl. It's like a dawn breaking over her face and Ryoji feels sick looking at it, wondering if this is what it is like for someone to hold up a mirror, for all the hope twisting up his insides to be so plainly exposed on another's face. Trepidation is like a stone in Ryoji's stomach; he already knows without turning his head that there is only one possible person who could elicit such a look from her.
He takes in a breath, steeling himself, and Makoto is standing in the doorway to the classroom, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder and his eyes intent on the both of them. He doesn't even have the decency to look uncomfortable, a blank wall if there ever was one.
Ryoji wonders what it must be like for Makoto to carry so many hearts in the palm of his hands and have the power to crush them just as easily between his fingers, exercising none of the tender care with which they were originally given. How careless he is with all the love he has been fortunate to receive. How reckless; how cruel.
“Oh, Yuki-kun.” Ryoji's eyes flicker back to Yukari and she's sporting a slight flush to her cheeks while curling her hair behind her ear. “You're here early. Me and Ryoji-kun were still finishing up.”
Makoto shrugs, lifting a hand to fiddle with his mp3 player. Ryoji would almost mistake it for nervousness if it were literally anyone else but as it is Makoto hardly appears to care one way or another. “It's fine. I can just listen to music while I wait.”
Ryoji looks at Yukari—the glossiness of her mouth, the dashed hopefulness in her gaze—and makes a snap decision.
“How about you go on ahead, Yukari-san? We were just about done anyway.” He's going to break your heart one day, Ryoji thinks. I'm so sorry. But clearly not sorry enough because Ryoji will be helping break it too and knowingly at that, too cowardly to tell Yukari the truth and too selfish to give up whatever it is that they have, even if it has only ever been snatches of moments, hot and hurried, but those moments have brought Ryoji closer to the raw, unvarnished truth of Makoto than anyone else. Ryoji's throat tightens around all the words he keeps choking back but he smiles like everything is fine, like he is nothing to Makoto at all. “I wouldn't want you to keep your date waiting.”
"It's not like that," Yukari says, hurriedly, but she's flushing even harder and it's too weak to be remotely convincing. "We're just walking home together."
“Of course.” He can feel Makoto's gaze like a palpable thing. The sharpness, the intent. Ryoji turns his own gaze to meet it and lets his smile widen and watches the way confusion flickers over Makoto's face with an unprecedented amount of satisfaction, hoping he bleeds on the sharpness hidden in Ryoji's smile. Let Makoto be the one to guess his intentions for once, to tie himself up into knots over what he means or if he means anything at all. Ryoji keeps his voice even for all that he wants to lower it to a murmur and caress Makoto with the syllables. “What a gentleman you are, Makoto-kun.”
“Well, if the prince of Gekkoukan says it then it must be true,” Makoto murmurs in turn. “Mochizuki-kun.”
They leave Ryoji where it all started: an empty classroom, alone with only the shadow he casts on the floor and the dust motes flickering in the afternoon light.
He visits the dorm on one of their days off under the pretense of seeing Junpei and plays dumb when he is told Junpei is already out with other plans.
“Oh,” Ryoji says, smiling charmingly at Fuuka who is perched on the couch with a laptop and half an armful of Shiba Inu, curiously flicking her eyes between the screen and Ryoji's face. “That's just too bad. Is Makoto-kun here then? I thought I might say hi.”
Fuuka replies in the affirmative and off Ryoji goes only to be stopped on the second floor by Aigis once he's rounded the stairs, her mouth thinned into a line and her eyes hard in her face. She somehow still strikes an imposing image for all that she is wearing a truly fetching blue dress. He wants to tell her as much but something tells him she wouldn't appreciate the compliment.
“Ryoji-san,” Aigis says, conveying an impressive amount of feeling in her normally placid voice, none of which is positive towards him in the least. “You may go no further unless you state your purpose.”
“Kind of existential for the middle of the day,” Ryoji says just to be petty, still smarting from her insinuations that he is dangerous, “but alright, I'll bite. How would you feel if I said we're all in the midst of a long journey—”
Aigis’ frown deepens. “You pretend you do not comprehend. Allow me to rephrase. What is your purpose in this hallway?”
"Aigis."
They both freeze. He watches Aigis turn around hastily, as if to block him from view, but it's too late and it wouldn't have been possible anyway with their height difference. Makoto has approached, hands casually in his pockets, and he just has a way of filling a room with his presence, of making people turn towards him like how flowers turn towards the sun.
“Makoto-san—”
“I got this,” Makoto says. “Don't worry about it.”
Ryoji can't see her face now that she's turned her body away from him. Aigis doesn't shake her head or anything like that but she gets more tense, her body coiled as tightly as a spring. “But he is dangerous—”
“Probably,” Makoto says like it's nothing. “But not to me.”
They look at each other for a long moment, something passing silently between them, before Aigis nods and steps aside for Ryoji to step fully into the hall, Makoto's words reverberating inside his head and lodging painfully inside his chest.
“That has yet to be proven but I will leave it for now, Makoto-san. I shall remain on standby should you need me.”
She turns one last withering look on Ryoji before heading down the stairs. Ryoji hears Fuuka call out a greeting and Aigis most likely answers in kind but whatever Aigis’ response is is drowned out by the barking of the dog and then the muffled sound of laughter.
Ryoji follows Makoto into his room and leans his back against the door once it's closed behind him. Makoto steps right into his space, close enough to feel the very warmth of him. Ryoji places a hand flat on his chest to keep him at bay and watches Makoto watch him right back like Ryoji is some kind of fascinating specimen, like he's trying to take Ryoji apart with his eyes and piece him back together.
“What was that?” Ryoji asks, his heart pounding in his throat. “Probably? Is that really what you think?”
“You know what I think.” Makoto sounds almost bored. Ryoji hates how he can just stand there and look and sound so apathetic while Ryoji wants to tear at his skin and be someone, anyone else, someone who isn't heart sick over the last person in the world who deserves it or riddled with all these confusingly volatile feelings. “I've told you before.”
Ryoji usually recalls every moment spent in Makoto's company with a singular sharp edged intensity. This particular bit, though, has been dulled by his purposeful pushing away of it, not wanting to examine it or himself too closely. He swallows, dredging the words up once more.
“That there's something not quite right about me,” Ryoji says, dully, and then laughs, feeling wild and strange, halfway into hysteria. “But I have no idea why you think that. I'm as normal as they come.”
Makoto's eyes seem to be laughing at him. “Sure you are.”
Ryoji fists a hand in Makoto's shirt, whitening his fingers with how tight his grip is. “Don't do that,” he says, angrily. “Don't just say stuff like that and not tell me why—”
“Because you don't want to know why,” Makoto cuts in, the amusement flickering in his gaze chased away by that easy cruelty that suits him far better than any veneer of politeness. He doesn't raise his voice but his words silence Ryoji all the same, cutting him to the quick. Ryoji trembles, feeling like they are on the precipice of something, that there is really and truly no turning back. “Not really.”
“I do,” Ryoji lies. His eyes are blurring. His voice is hoarse. “So tell me.”
And so Makoto does.
“You lived overseas,” Makoto says. “Where did you live overseas? What city? What country?”
Ryoji feels each word like a physical blow. “That's—”
“What was the name of your last school? Was it public or private?”
The burning in Ryoji's throat feels like a permanent thing. There's no swallowing past it. He supposes it will just be a part of him forever now, just like the Makoto shaped ache inside him. “I don't—”
“What are the names of your parents?”
“I don't know,” Ryoji bursts out, the words wrenched out of him.
He's crying but in an almost furious way. He's an island of a boy, helplessly set adrift, nothing to anchor him in the way of his existence. What a fool he is for all of it: the deception of normality, the idea that this could be anything more than playing pretend. This should be the end of it, both him and them, but how strange that even after everything Ryoji still wants to cling to as empty a husk of a human being as Makoto. He wants to crumble against Makoto's chest while he sobs and feel Makoto's arms wrap around him in an embrace. He wants to hold and to hurt and to travel back in time so he never meets Makoto and he wants Makoto to be the last thing he sees behind his eyelids when he closes them and never opens them again.
Ryoji closes his eyes while he cries and is startled when he feels something brush against his face. He opens them to see Makoto has just drawn his thumb away, collecting some of the moisture from Ryoji's wet eyelashes on the underside of it, and Ryoji's fingers that are still tangled in Makoto's shirt in a death grip tighten marginally then slacken in his confusion.
“I pushed you too hard,” Makoto says, sounding hushed and regretful, like that wasn't his aim from the start. “I'm sorry.”
“No you're not,” Ryoji bites out and kisses him, a furious open mouthed thing, fisting both his hands in Makoto's shirt and pulling him closer.
He's still crying just a little, his mouth salty and wet from his tears, but Makoto's hands cup around his neck and face and there's a tenderness in it that Ryoji has never felt from him before that only makes his eyes burn more.
His mouth moves with an almost painful slowness against Ryoji for all that Ryoji tries to increase the pace into something more frantic. Makoto's hands slide down from Ryoji's face to curl around Ryoji's fingers. He tangles them up between his own and squeezes them and then uses his grip to tug Ryoji with him as he walks back towards his bed.
Makoto sweeps Ryoji up with him like a tide in his wake and they fall back together on the bed, Ryoji swallowing and shifting so he is sitting with his knees bracketing Makoto's hips, his arms braced on either side of Makoto's head, his eyes widening at the gentle curl of Makoto's mouth before Makoto buries his fingers in Ryoji's hair and pulls down Ryoji's face to meet his own.
"Let me be kind to you," Makoto murmurs, his eyes flickering between light and shadow. "Okay?”
Ryoji laughs into the curve of his neck, the sound cracked and bitter. “That's not like you,” he murmurs back, pressing his lips to whatever skin of Makoto he can reach. His neck, his chin. Ryoji realizes now it will never be enough, that a part of him will always be straining for more. The question that plagues him almost as much as the conundrum of his existence: How close is close enough? “Do you even know how?”
Makoto curls a hand under Ryoji's chin and tilts up his face.
“I don't know,” he says and proves he is a fast learner when he gently presses his lips to the corner of Ryoji's mouth. Ryoji makes a small gutted noise, the sweetness of it nearly causing him to come undone once more, and he can feel the way Makoto smiles at that against his mouth. “But let me try.”
Ryoji wakes up to an afternoon that is shining and golden, the world awash in light. He turns into the sleep softened curve of Makoto's body and observes the way the sun slants onto Makoto's face lax in sleep, innocent in a way Ryoji has never seen, like a version of Makoto he has never met but wants to hold as tender and close as the rest of him now that they have been introduced.
He traces the curve of Makoto's forearm spread carelessly out over the sheets and smiles, having a front row seat to the way Makoto's eyes flutter open as he blinks the last vestiges of slumber from his eyes.
They open fully and Makoto falters slightly at the sight of Ryoji, something flinching behind his eyes, before he swallows and tentatively cracks a smile back.
“Good morning,” he murmurs, his voice still rough with sleep, “Ryoji.”
And maybe Ryoji is just doomed to never learn but somehow, inexplicably, Ryoji thinks that maybe it will be, leaning in to kiss Makoto good morning despite not having brushed their teeth and murmuring it back.