Work Text:
It was a lovely spring day, and soon, Nyelv would go on to university. It was a melancholic and proud moment for Suga, seeing his favourite student and kindred spirit leave to make his entrance into the adult world.
The graduation ceremony was over, diplomas given, and now, the former third year students were milling in the courtyard accepting congratulations from their kouhai.
So was Nyelv, who was surrounded by girls whom he politely smiled at and chatted with. Some of the girls were fervently blushing, some looking faint. Some were probably taking that one last opportunity to confess their feelings for him.
"Ah, to be young," Suga murmured, thinking back on his own graduation, where his deceased wife had punched him in the face and stolen his second button. That was a long time ago, now.
No students seemed to be as impulsive as she had been back then– except Glotta who kicked her brother in the shins as she congratulated him, her own diploma grasped in a fist. But she was stolen away quickly by her girlfriend, leaving Nyelv to smile through the pain as more girls and some boys swarmed him to see if he was injured.
"Sensei."
The silky voice belonged to Nyelv, who appeared in the door to the lab the science club usually used. He closed the door behind him as he entered, and it made a silent sound of wood slipping against wood.
Pulling a chair up to the desk Suga sat at, Nyev seated himself opposite him, on the other end of it. "I thought I would find you here," he remarked as he sat, and then his closed fist moved across the surface of the desk, releasing something onto it. It made a soft sound, as Nyelv's red-nailed fingers put the little object down.
When he pulled his hand back and laid it next to the other in his lap, Suga saw that it was a button.
A golden flower, enveloped by a circular frame.
Suga's eyes shifted from the button, to the placket the buttons were usually situated. Two of them were missing. One of the girls must have managed to talk him into getting one, then. Suga picked up the button, turned it around to look at it, then looked back at Nyelv. "You came all this way to give little old me your third button? Shouldn't it go to one of your younger friends, Nyelv-kun?"
"What are you saying, Suga-sensei?" Nyelv leaned back slightly in his chair, his hands clasped on top of one of his knees. He looked directly into Suga's eyes. “My third button fell off when Neesan grabbed me for talking too long to Laage9. “ To prove it, he pulled another button from his pocket. “That," he nodded toward the button on Suga's desk, "is my second button."
Suga almost dropped the button. He blinked rapidly, and he cocked his head to the side. He felt quite confused by the statement, he had to admit. "I'd say that's an even more important thing to give to someone your own age, not an old guy like me."
A corner of Nyelv's lips curled upward. "Probably," he admitted. "But you're the only one I want to give it to. You don't want it, Suga-sensei?"
Suga chuckled, then felt that the situation required him to be a little bit more serious. He was a teacher after all. "It'd look like I was waiting for the moment you graduate to snatch you up, so I could claim nothing happened while you were my student."
"Hmm." Nyelv leaned a little forward, his brown eyes locked onto Suga's. "Or maybe I was the one waiting until I'd just graduated. I'm not your student any more, and you're not my teacher. Suga-san."
San, was it? "You haven't been out of high school for two hours yet, and you're already dropping the 'teacher' role from me, how cold, Nyelv-kun." That was what Suga decided to focus on, rather than the first part of what Nyelv had just said.
"I have decided to move out of the mansion. How could I dare to ask you to help me look for a suitable place with me if I still treat you like my teacher, instead of someone I want to court?"
Sputtering, and really almost dropping the button, Suga cleared his throat. His neck felt warm. "I'm really just an old widower, you know. And so much older than you. And your teacher."
"Former teacher," Nyelv corrected him. He rose to his feet, and made Suga's hand close around the button that he held. His hands around Suga's were warm. His nail polish was glossy and so red. "And there's nothing just about you, Suga-san. You're my brilliant colleague, after all, and I have always seen you as that, before I have seen you as my teacher."
Suga pushed his glasses up with his free hand. "You are so forward today, Nyelv-kun," he commented, and couldn't help but chuckle. He felt a little awkward. The tips of Nyelv's ears were red, but he looked entirely serious.
"I can be even more forward." Nyelv leaned closer, hands still on Suga's, and the beads on his braid tapped against Suga's shoulder as it swayed with the movement. Nyelv was very, very close, so close that Suga could feel his breath on his lips.
For a few moments, they stared at each other in still silence, Nyelv leaned in so near that he was nearly kissing him—
and then, the door clattered open, a voice cutting through the silence between their heartbeats.
"Suga-sensei, have you seen Nyelv-niisa—oh! Niisan, there you are!"
Nyelv had jumped up, practically falling back into the chair behind him, and Suga had snatched his hand away, the button tightly clasped within it.
Shouma looked between them, a confused and clueless smile on his lips.
He had no idea what he had just interrupted, and, perhaps, what he had just nearly seen be set into motion.