Chapter Text
rui knocks three times on tsukasa’s door, so light he can barely hear it himself.
he doesn't recall very well how he ended up outside his door or when he stepped out of his own. neither does he recall very well waking up from his sleep and getting out of bed, but he knows he has, because the world around him is dark, dead silent like the world at two in the morning. he knows he has when he stares down to see that the only footwear he has on are slippers that he does not remember wearing.
dead silent would be the kind of night it was when rui knocks on tsukasa’s door, knowing very well he'd have been fast asleep hours ago.
tsukasa’s a light sleeper when on schedule, rui thinks as he stands before his door, clutching onto his pillow from home. his brain has been trained to fall asleep and wake up at a certain time every day with or without an alarm. truth was, he was the sole alarm of the house himself, waking the entire house at his precise timings. but during times when they had longer practice sessions, rui also knows he pushes himself so much so that nothing could wake him once he hit his pillow.
another knock, this time even softer. rui hesitates before doing so, silently contemplating making the awkward way home. who on earth knocks on their friend’s door in the dead of the night over such a silly reason?
a silly reason, although rui doesn't remember why he's here at all, until tsukasa’s twisting the door handle.
“..can’t sleep?”
and the reason comes to him, clicking into place in his memory. he couldn’t sleep. tsukasa knows rui couldn’t sleep so he's gonna accompany him and sleep on the nearest mattress he could grab with him. tsukasa is hidden under a thick quilt, only head and hands peering out of the material to greet his unexpected guest. his eyes slowly blink open, looking up to meet rui’s eyes.
“i couldn’t fall asleep,” rui whispers apologetically, although somewhere in the back of his mind knows that tsukasa is already aware of his predicament.
the star looks on for a little more before closing his eyes again, turns around and shuffles toward the stairs, rui’s cue to follow behind. trailing behind a dazed tsukasa, rui also shuffles up the stairs. it felt all too surreal, all too normal that he could just enter in the dead of the night without an actual excuse.
he quietly closes the door behind him and makes his way to tsukasa’s bed, crouching down and spreading out his pillow before curling down on the floor. it wasn’t too out of the ordinary like the other times he had done this, during the times neither of them had the energy to heave a mattress onto the floor.
“rui, what are you doing?”
rui hesitates after hearing that, not really understanding his question. tsukasa is eyeing him from above, albeit to the best of his half-awake abilities, but rui was confused nonetheless. he was doing what he alway had been by inviting himself into his room late at night: he was trying to finally get sleep.
in response, rui blinks at him, a little dazed and definitely not on the same page, mouth slightly agape.
“get up, the floor is too cold.”
“i can sleep on the floor,” is all he manages to get out as a response to such a weird command. puzzled, he looks on as the tsukasa’s head dives for his pillow again and he closes his eyes. rui blinks.
however, tsukasa rolls over, pats a space on the bed next to him and beckons for him through muffled words. it clicks in rui for him to get into that spot, he thinks he understands his actions but he can't possibly be right. tsukasa has never invited anyone to sleep in his bed, certainly not any of his friends he’s known of since they’ve met. perhaps he had misinterpreted this, surely—
tsukasa tilted his head enough to open his eyes, forming the semblance of a glare that zapped right through rui’s fragile heart. he’d really be perfectly content with drifting off on the bare floor, but tsukasa, now looking at him with pleading, expectant eyes, leaving rui with no choice. he had never been good at saying no to him.
a force much too strong for him to resist, tsukasa rolls over and leans over the edge of the bed, tugging on his sleeve and gently mumbling some sentence about pulling him up. if he had been any more coherent, rui would’ve protested — far too worried about the consequences the next morning if he did follow his instructions, but something foolish in him makes him willingly climb up onto the bed.
at rui’s compliance, tsukasa withdraws his arm with a satisfactory huff, and rui misses it instantly. he says nothing, though, just watches out of the corner of his eye as tsukasa leans back into this pillow and goes back to snoring.
how on earth did he manage to get to this stage? — he's laying beside tsukasa, looking towards him and facing tsukasa, who's looking right at him with eyes he wish he could read. slowly, the star’s eyes shut.
rui’s eyes dart back and forth from the wall to his friend in front of him. he can hear tsukasa breathing, his own heart pounding in his throat, and the multitude of thoughts running through his head. he shouldn’t be so nervous over something so simple, rui fumbles with his pillow, his breath hitching painfully. he can’t take this back. he can’t possibly turn around and escape now.
tsukasa’s bed is, in fact, not big enough for both of them. when tsukasa finally settles, they’re almost face to face, their knees brushing together, and rui almost jumps out of his skin at the contact. this was much unlike tsukasa.
every time they shift, their skin touches. an awkward elbow shift, their shoulders, so much so that rui doesn’t even know where to put his hands, his feet, and there’s a strong desire to look at tsukasa but he can’t move because he feels like he’d wake him up doing so.
it’s nothing but dead silence. the silence is charged with something rui can’t quite place, crackling in the minimal space between them. physically, rui is not that close to tsukasa, perhaps an inch or more between them, yet it still felt intense regardless.
but when he finally turns, tsukasa didn’t seem bothered at all, a lot more sleepy than himself, his eyes still closed, and his face relaxed without a care in the world. his chest rises and falls at a steady pace, much unlike the heart that hammered in rui’s chest.
rui was resting on tsukasa’s bed, and tsukasa had no reaction to it at all.
he nearly jumps out of his skin when an arm hooks around his back and pulls him closer, much closer, so much so that he now feels tsukasa’s slow heartbeat against his own.
without any warning, since it was pretty clear as to what's about to come, tsukasa leans down in what feels like slow motion and presses his head softly against the other's, locking him in the embrace. this is so unlike him, rui thinks but doesn’t move, the flutter in his stomach feeling as though it is almost painful at how powerful it was. he thinks it's the strangest tsukasa has ever been.
falling into place, tsukasa slips his hand into rui’s hair, and for a dangerous long pause, moves to feel the soft expanse, the smoothness of purple strands under his own and the way they fit almost perfectly against one another. he had gotten himself into a huge mess.
and so rui hugs him back with equal force, placing an awkward arm over him while his heart pounds fervently, unsure but poised with equal want.
ㆍ┈┈ㆍ┈┈ㆍ┈┈ㆍ┈┈ㆍ
and then rui wakes up.
he wakes up alone, covered in a blanket that didn’t belong to him and in a bed that smelled different. tsukasa was nowhere to be found in the room, most likely already up for his usual morning routine. he gets ready for the day, and he can't get a particular vivid image out of his head, the way he looked at him. he can't shake the feeling of tsukasa’s head on his, or the gentle hand that tugged at his sleeve the night before.
it all felt surreal.
but truthfully, he had other things to worry about. looking at the time, he had to rush home in time to get to his school-related belongings, because he knew tsukasa’s uniform would definitely not fit him. and unlike most dreams that he had, this one didn't fade as he went on about his morning, it replayed in his memory in a loop. he’d like to go back, he thinks while folding tsukasa’s blanket, but revisiting a pleasant dream was near impossible.
as he left the house, tsukasa was also nowhere in sight, the only greeting being saki to lock the door when he left. rui supposed it would be fine, he’d meet him in the hallway after class as usual, review his class notes as usual and walk to the classroom, the one they both went to, as usual. everything would be the same, absolutely normal. his absurd encounter wouldn't change a thing.
he makes it home in time to stare at his sleep-deprived reflection in the mirror. if anything, the prominent dark circles on his face would be the first change of the morning.
brushing his teeth, he stares at his panda-eyed reflection. most people jump the gun to assume that tsukasa is just more of a loud force of the school, dragged along for his not-so-occasional troublemaking, but many are surprised by his attitude, care and hard work upon spending more time with him, an endearing quality that impresses him.
everything about tsukasa impresses him, rui thinks absent-mindedly as he puts his shoes on. he knew tsukasa wasn’t one to engage in physical contact unless initiated first, but he finds last night to be as though he had taken multiple blind steps and ripped through caution tape.
it’s hard to pinpoint down where the both of them stand in terms of their relationship. even though rui didn’t second guess himself as much as he used to, when it came to tsukasa, all his feelings felt magnified. there was the time when rui really took a good look at the star during a particular performance and noticed all the tender care he took to every show he had a role in, learning that he could be just as precise and attentive no matter how big or small the part, or the time where tsukasa told him to no longer hold back.
he’s still in the same daze when making his way to school, albeit running in order not to face the wrath of the student council members. he and tsukasa were close friends, at least in the official way where they'll openly admit it out loud, but rui catches himself wondering how close that title meant. they were friends, indeed so, but there were times when he finds himself wishing they were more, and it scared him just to imagine.
but the feeling gnawed at him. gnawing in the way he knew he needed to say something that's always on the tip of his tongue but could never grasp or understand it. something more that he wants to tell him and he can't figure out what it is. something he couldn’t convey in a show, neither was it something he could write down on paper to solve. a slow, almost burning type of yearning to be closer to tsukasa.
“rui, you’re late.”
rui almost trips at kamiyama’s entrance, not even realising he had reached his destination. as her eyes land on him, nene glares at him from the corridor, already on her way to her classroom. “ah, nene. i left something at home and had to return to fetch it,” he fibs all too quickly.
she huffs, shaking her head. “you’d better hurry to class, tsukasa’s already reached far earlier than you have.”
tsukasa, rui stares into the distance, latching onto the name. nene scrunches up her nose in response. “..you smell like tsukasa.”
he freezes. he had really, really gotten himself into a huge mess.