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The train ride from Morinomiya to the station by Rui’s house is a short one even with a stop-off, but the journey still takes Tsukasa the better part of half an hour because his phone signal won’t stop cutting out.
“Yeah, he always gets the lemonade one when he’s sick. Says it tastes the most like ramune.”
Tsukasa’s finger comes to a stop over a pouch of lemonade-flavoured jelly, then skillfully plucks it off the shelf of the convenience store and into his basket. Nene’s voice crackles over the line from where it’s sandwiched between Tsukasa’s cheek and shoulder.
It’s a cold and a fever. Tsukasa had needled the details out of Rui after his initial message had pinged in the troupe’s group chat earlier that morning—a simple I’m sick, so I won’t be coming in today that Tsukasa would’ve been inclined to write off with a get well soon message and a short visit on the way home had it been anyone else.
But it was Rui—the type to skip all three meals to build a robot and show up to practice on thirty minutes of sleep and five energy drinks with ink stains on his fingers and act as if it was business as usual—and he was willingly taking a day off. Tsukasa had exchanged a look with Emu and Nene, and they’d unanimously decided someone should go and check he was still breathing.
“Anything else?” Tsukasa asks. The basket is already about half full between Nene’s contributions and his own tried-and-true sick person necessities, but Tsukasa has never been one to cut corners.
Nene hums, thoughtful. “I’d get some fever reducers, just in case he’s already run out. Oh, but make sure they’re the sugar-coated ones.”
“The sugar-coated ones?”
“You and I both know what he’s like, Tsukasa,” she explains with no small amount of exasperation. “He isn’t going to take them unless they taste like candy.”
Tsukasa nods gravely, even though she can’t see him.
He pays, enthusiastically thanks the cashier, and exits the store, deciding to make the short remainder of the trek on foot.
“Take care of him,” Nene tells Tsukasa as they bring their call to a close. There’s no rest for an actress at a Morinomiya workshop, but she’s assured him that she and Emu will be right behind him the moment they’re free. “You know what he’s like. I’m surprised he even admitted he was ill.”
He can hear the grimace in her voice, but her tone is soft, carrying the same earnest worry Tsukasa had been feeling since he first read Rui’s message.
He nods again as he rescues his phone from its perch on his shoulder with a blessedly free hand. “Leave him to me! Taking care of his troupe is all part of the chairman’s job!”
Tsukasa doesn’t miss the snort that cuts out halfway at that. “Always the show terms with you two.” Nene sounds at ease. “Just make sure you tell him—”
“...? Nene? Nene…!?” Tsukasa pulls his phone from his ear to squint at the screen. He gives it a shake, as if that’s ever done anything to fix a patchy signal, but Nene’s already gone.
Tsukasa clicks his tongue. It’s a shame, but he figures she’ll text him if what she was going to say was of pressing importance. If not, he’ll get it out of her later. Who on Earth builds a store in a blackout area?
Tsukasa figures his usual approach of forgoing the house’s intercom and shouting straight through the window is probably a bad idea when the person whose attention he’s trying to catch almost definitely has a headache. But he doesn’t really want to use the intercom either, because if Rui is asleep then any kind of noise might end up startling him.
Tsukasa circles around the back of Rui’s house, hand to his chin over his disposable face mask as he counts up his options. Calling Rui’s phone is probably the most inoffensive method of getting his attention, he decides, considering the fact that Rui never takes the thing off vibrate.
Tsukasa lets it ring as he comes to a stop in front of the garage door, hoisting the plastic bag up his arm to better hold the receiver to his ear. It rings for several minutes, and Tsukasa’s almost ready to throw his prior caution to the wind and start thumbing the intercom anyway when the call finally goes through.
There’s a short, muffled noise from the other end of the line. Then, “…Tsukasa-kun?”
Rui’s voice is unusually nasally, so thick with his cold Tsukasa only recognizes it as his from the signature lilt with which Rui says his name.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” Tsukasa’s tone is a practiced gentle. “I’m outside. I wanted to stop by and bring you some things.”
“…Hm? Oh.” Rui’s words come slowly, a mixture of bewilderment and grogginess evidencing the fact that Tsukasa must’ve, indeed, woken him. “Thank you. Ah, wait a moment, let me open the—”
He hangs up before he can finish his sentence, but about ten seconds later, the garage door creaks open.
Rui looks awful. His face is flushed with fever, and his eyes are heavy-lidded and unfocused, sunken in a way Tsukasa hasn’t seen since the time he lectured Rui for pulling two all-nighters in a row. His hair is, at best, a finger-combed bedhead, and there’s a gel cooling patch under his bangs that, Tsukasa suspects from the look of its peeling edges, lost any effectiveness some hours ago.
Rui blinks at Tsukasa as if still trying to process that he’s there, and Tsukasa realises they’re on what’s essentially eye level from how heavily Rui is leaning on the doorframe. He feels his expression soften. An illness this bad would be hard to ignore, even for Rui.
“Here, let me come in so I can put all of this away,” Tsukasa says, already busying himself with the contents of the bag. He’ll have to figure out where the Kamishiros’ medicine cabinet is. “You need to go back and lie down, Rui.”
Rui doesn’t move. “…Mm?”
“I can’t look after you if I’m stuck at the door, can I?” Tsukasa says.
Rui blinks again. He seems to take a moment to register what Tsukasa has said, and his eyes suddenly widen. “You…”
There’s a look on his face that Tsukasa doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. It’s somewhere between unguarded confusion and dumbfoundedness, but it flits across his features for only a fraction of a second, and it’s gone before Tsukasa can open his mouth to prod at it.
Rui shifts his weight against the doorframe, his face rearranged into what looks like an attempt at a teasing smirk. “You’re coming in? I’m almost definitely contagious, you know.”
How strange. Tsukasa feels a little like Rui’s had some kind of enormous, dawning realization over his head. But Tsukasa hasn’t said anything so weird that he’d need school himself. Tsukasa doesn’t say weird things at all, thank you very much.
But the moment has passed, so Tsukasa blazes forward, in the language they both understand best.
“I wouldn’t be a very good chairman if I didn’t take care of our director while he was sick.”
It’s not really a challenge, but there's a concession in Rui’s throaty chuckle. He lets Tsukasa shepherd him back to the couch, and watches dazedly as he fusses over where to put what and how much fridge space he can take up with his spoils without bothering Rui’s parents. Tsukasa decides he can dig at whatever that was once he knows Rui’s needs have been met.
Tsukasa’s done this a million times before, so the docket is complete and ordered neatly in his brain before he begins to cross any of it off.
First priority is taking Rui’s temperature, which he successfully confirms is only at miserable fever level and not potentially-needing-to-call-an-ambulance level. A fantastic start, considering how prepared Tsukasa realises he’d been to fall at that first hurdle.
Next, he has Rui replace the old cooling patch that’s been clinging feebly to his forehead with one that doesn’t look about ten years old. It takes Rui a few tries to push enough of his hair out of the way to stick it on, but he manages it, so Tsukasa decides he’s probably lucid enough to take the medicine he’d brought.
(Sugar-coated, of course, because Nene had made the right call. A face scrunched with dissatisfaction at the prospect of taking pills was a sweeter look on seven-year-old Saki.)
“Have you eaten today?” Tsukasa asks as Rui swallows and sets his water bottle back on the table. Feeding Rui is point four, now that he’s started to wake up a little.
Rui has arranged himself on his side with his head propped up on the couch’s arm so he can comfortably meet Tsukasa’s eyes, and he pauses thoughtfully to consider the question. “I don’t think so. I’ve mostly been asleep.”
“Do you feel like eating? I have jelly, porridge, and pudding, but I can fix you something else if you don’t mind me stepping out to buy the ingredients.” Tsukasa lists on his fingers as he talks. “And, of course, I’ll have to borrow your kitchen. Name your choice! Oh, but nothing heavy on the stomach, though!” Rui hadn’t mentioned any nausea, but making him even sicker is the last thing Tsukasa wants to do.
“Oh my, what choice.” Rui laughs, but his voice is too raw for it to come out quite right. “Mmm…acqua pazza, maybe? With authentic Italian whitefish?”
“Wha—!? You mean, from Italy?”
Rui nods against the couch. His expression is the height of innocence. Is he serious? He can’t be serious.
“…Actual Italy? In Europe?”
“I think you could get there and back in a day if you put your mind to it.”
Tsukasa almost rises to it, but he stops himself with an exhale. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m glad you’re feeling good enough to joke around, but I need to know what you want if I’m going to make something for you.”
“You won’t do it?” Rui makes that pleading face of his, the one he’d initially engineered to persuade Tsukasa into juggling three confetti bombs during a previous show and has apparently concluded is still an effective method of bending Tsukasa to his will. He is, unfortunately, right.
Tsukasa splutters. “You— I mean…” He grimaces. How long is a flight to Europe again? “I suppose if you really want it…”
Rui laughs again, a proper belly laugh this time. But it only takes a moment for his laughter to break into a fit of coughs, and they begin to wrack his body as his hand finds his mouth and he curls harshly in on himself.
Tsukasa immediately poises to help, but Rui weakly holds up his free hand—a gesture of I’m fine, don’t touch me, it’ll pass on its own, so instead he sits back down and takes Rui’s water from the table to hold out to him. Thankfully, the fit passes quickly, and Rui’s able to take the bottle from an anxious Tsukasa to clear his throat.
“Are you okay?” Tsukasa asks, and Rui nods.
“Sorry about that.”
He smiles at Tsukasa again, but it’s more subdued now, and his laughter has all but vanished. Concern rises in Tsukasa’s throat, but before he can start saying anything, Rui continues.
“The porridge is fine, thank you.”
“The… Oh! Are you sure?”
Rui nods again. He looks frail in a way he hadn’t before his fit had broken off their conversation, and is evidently uncomfortable to have been the one to end it so unceremoniously. So, Tsukasa shelves his thoughts and flashes his most reassuring grin.
“Porridge it is then!”
The kitchen is no more than a stone’s throw from the garage, but Tsukasa is hesitant to leave Rui by himself immediately after a coughing fit, so he reluctantly compromises by leaving both connecting doors ajar.
The porridge he’d brought is the instant kind, so, blessedly, it only takes a moment to prepare and heat up. Tsukasa waits a few moments for it to cool, and then brings it back through to the garage.
Rui hasn’t moved from where he’d slumped on his side, but his eyes have fluttered shut, only the slightly raggedy sound of his breathing indicating he’s still conscious. He stirs when Tsukasa announces his entry, and slowly manages to pull himself up into a sitting position so Tsukasa can hand him his meal.
He speaks again, once he’s had a few mouthfuls and Tsukasa has sat back down by his bedside. “I’m sorry to have made you go out of your way. It’s very kind of you to do all of this, Tsukasa-kun.”
Tsukasa tips his head to one side incredulously. “You sound as if you didn’t think I would.”
Rui stares at the bowl in his hands. “No, it’s in your character to look after others. It’s not really that, it’s just…” There’s a kind of dumbfoundedness in his expression again, like there had been for a second at the door, but this time he looks as if he’s trying to formulate how to express it. He draws his eyebrows for a moment before giving up and relaxing his face again. “Ah, I don’t know. I’m not really all there today. I just…appreciate it, considering you skipped a day of a workshop for me.”
Tsukasa tips his head an inch further. Skipping? Is that what this is about? There’s a heart behind Rui’s words now, but he doesn’t seem to be tipping his actual hand, and Tsukasa isn’t sure if prodding at him will bring the cards closer to or further from his chest.
“The workshop—” he tries, and then stops. Rui looks at him. “…You know I’d always put your health above a show or anything like that, right?”
Rui nods, slowly, and he’s making that face again, but Tsukasa can tell he hasn’t touched the center of— whatever this is. “It’s still kind of you, though.”
The dumbfoundedness is more akin to awe now, but Tsukasa doesn’t understand why. Was it such a big deal that Tsukasa had come here over Morinomiya? Did Rui think he had been the only one willing to do so?
Tsukasa had learned very quickly that Rui is awkward about being taken care of, and it’s not difficult to figure out why: care is a vulnerable thing to admit to needing. But Tsukasa had also learned from the meal skipping and the bad sleeping habits and the energy drinks that he’s not the best at gauging his own limits, so this is far from the first time Tsukasa has checked in on him or offered him something to eat or drink.
It could just be the illness making him act uncharacteristically—granted, this is just off the back of a coughing fit—but it feels like there’s something weighing on Rui’s mind that he isn’t saying. Or maybe, from the struggle he was having to formulate it, something he hasn’t figured out how to say.
“…Are you upset you’re missing the workshop?” It doesn’t sound quite right, but Tsukasa tries anyway. “Neither of us can get back to it until you’re better, so you can think of me coming here as speeding up the process. It’s my duty as your chairman, after all!”
“I suppose that’s true.” That seems to placate Rui, who nods again and continues eating, but Tsukasa is almost certain that wasn’t it.
He purses his lips.
“You’re not upset that I—” Tsukasa is cut off by a sharp ding! from his pocket, and he abandons his question with a huff to check who’d interrupted him.
Emu’s big grinning contact picture beams up at him from his messenger app.
>> Tsukasa-kun!!!! We’re gonna be there soon okay???? Tell Rui-kun!!!!!
Tsukasa huffs again, but it’s mostly just for good measure. It’s hard to get annoyed at Emu, and Nene had told him ahead of time that the two of them would be over later.
“It’s Emu and Nene,” he tells Rui, who’d looked over at the screen with mild interest. “Is it okay if they drop by too?”
“The more the merrier.” Rui smiles back.
<< I’ve told him. Don’t shout when you’re outside.
Tsukasa presses send and looks back up at Rui. He’s happily eating his porridge, and as Tsukasa opens his mouth to pick up where he’d left off, he realises there’s no sign of their conversation from on Rui’s face anymore. He seems to have eased back to how he was before the fit, and the strange mood is all but gone.
Tsukasa closes his mouth and furrows his brows. Well, it’s a good thing—of course it’s a good thing. It must be the energy from the food in his stomach and the prospect of seeing the rest of their troupe.
But Tsukasa’s bothered, even more so than he had been at the door, because it’s of the utmost importance that the chairman knows what it is when there’s something ailing his director, and he’d been so close to prodding it out of him.
He considers piping up anyway, and then purses his lips again. For the second time that day, Tsukasa decides to wait.
“Rui-kuuuun!”
“Thanks for having us.”
“Hi Emu-kun, Nene. Sorry, I probably won’t be much fun today.” Rui smiles at them from down on the couch.
Tsukasa gets the door—had insisted he’d be the one to get the door, because sick people should be lying back down after they’ve eaten—but Emu practically bursts through by herself, throwing herself to Rui’s bedside as Nene watches in fond exasperation.
“No, no, you don’t need to be! We wanted to come see you because we were worried!!” Emu’s wearing her exaggerated frowny-face, and it makes Rui chuckle.
They settle in—bags down, shoes off, voices indoor mode instead of reaching-the-back-of-the-Wonder-Stage’s-audience mode: all by Tsukasa’s insistence as today’s chief Rui worrier.
“Anyway, I’m glad it’s only as bad as it is.” Nene remarks. She’s taken the stool at Rui’s desk with her back to the group so she can organize her notes from the day.
Rui quirks an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“You don’t look half-dead. I’m shocked.”
“And why, pray tell, would I look half-dead?”
Nene turns her head to grimace at him. “You know how badly you used to get sick as a kid. Don’t act like you don’t remember the time a common cold had you bedridden for a whole week.”
“A week!?” Tsukasa whips around to stare at Rui in shock.
Rui’s propped up on his side again, and only looks physically better than he had when he’d answered the door that morning because of the fever reducers Tsukasa had gotten down him, but he still has the gall to bring a hand to his chin in mock consideration. “Hmm…no, I don’t think I do remember that one.”
Tsukasa crosses his arms. “It must be because you don’t eat your vegetables,” he says, sternly, ready and willing to go there now that Rui has perked up. “You know biology, Rui, you should know they abet the immune system.”
“I thought you almost failed biology?”
“Nuh-uh!” Emu cuts Nene off before Tsukasa can make an indignant comment about whose side she’s on. “It’s because Rui-kun’s brain is always going whoosh! so fast his body can’t keep up!”
“I think I like Emu-kun’s idea better.”
“You’re going to have to learn to tolerate them one way or another, you know.” Tsukasa says, and Nene nods.
“I agree. You should’ve chopped some into his food, Tsukasa.”
Rui gasps dramatically, which Tsukasa is frankly impressed he’s so capable of considering how bad his throat sounds, and puts a hand to his chest. “Tsukasa-kun, Nene…! You wouldn’t poison a sick person, would you?”
Tsukasa’s mouth twitches, because he mustn’t laugh—this is serious business, and eating healthier could make more than a dent in the otherwise poor lifestyle choices that have probably contributed to his illness!—but Rui is a very charming actor, and Emu’s already joining in.
“Don’t bully Rui-kun!” she says, her cheeks puffed out in a pout. “You shouldn’t make him eat things he doesn’t like when he’s already wibbly-wobbly. That’s mean, Tsukasa-kun!”
Nene snickers.
“Wh— Don’t put this all on me! Nene was agreeing with me too!” Tsukasa retorts. “Besides, I’m right!”
“How cruel, Tsukasa-kun…” Rui says with a tearfulness Tsukasa knows he means none of. Tsukasa should be more indignant about it, but he can’t stifle his smile.
It’s nice. This is nice. He’s glad Rui is relaxed again, and that he doesn’t seem so awed by the fact that Emu and Nene are here to sit and joke with him the way he had been when Tsukasa first came in.
“But anyway! We were super-duper worried when you messaged, Rui-kun.” Emu picks up from before they’d gotten off track. “I’m happy you’re doing okay now! Tsukasa-kun must be a really good nurse.”
“Hahahah! The best in the worl— wait, a nurse? I’m more of a doctor, surely?”
“Men can be nurses, Tsukasa-kun.” Rui points out.
Tsukasa folds his arms, eyebrows pinched. “Well, yes, but it’s more about the role. Doctors are the most widely regarded of all, are they not? If I was in the medical profession, I’d be the one running diagnostics.”
“That’s for computers.” Nene tells him, and it’s starting to feel like they’ve all pre-planned this to tease him.
“Whatever! You know what I mean!” Tsukasa huffs, and then realises he’s using his Wonder Stage voice and softens his tone again. “But I’m glad if you’re feeling better too, Rui.”
“I am. I appreciate you all checking in on me.”
“Of course,” Nene says, and Emu nods along enthusiastically from beside her. “We worry about you, you know? It’s not like you to call off even when you are sick.”
“I know. I wasn’t going to, to be honest.” Rui explains with a remorseful laugh. “But I figured it’d be more of an inconvenience to the people at Morinomiya if I came in a state where I couldn’t do anything.”
“Hm? You were worried about that?” Tsukasa asks.
Rui looks sheepish. “Well, it’s not a great look, is it? Ah, but I told them not to worry, and I don’t want you worrying, either. I assure you, you won’t be missing a director for long.”
And that’s when the penny drops. Suddenly, Tsukasa understands what Rui had been trying to say earlier, and what he hadn’t understood from Tsukasa’s replies—and he wilts, because even after all three of them visiting him, Rui still doesn’t understand it.
Nene turns around to catch Tsukasa’s eye over Rui’s head with an exasperated smile. It’s clearer than day now what she’d been trying to tell him when the signal had cut off at the convenience store.
“As long as you know we were super-duper-mega-ultra worried.” Emu is frowning again. It seems it’s dawned on her as well. “Oh! But we probably shouldn’t stay too much longer, right? You’re still sick, Rui-kun! What if we get too much and it makes you go bzzzt-bwoom!”
Rui smiles at her as if he perfectly understood whatever that was supposed to mean. “You’re not overwhelming me, Emu-kun, it’s alright.”
“She is right though,” Tsukasa says. He almost winces at the thought of leaving on a note like this, but he has more than overstayed his welcome for an uninvited visit, and he knows Rui isn’t going to be the one to kick them out. “You may be feeling better, but you should rest or else you won’t recover!”
Rui’s smile falls into something smaller. “…If you insist, Dr. Tenma.”
It takes about another ten minutes for Nene and Emu to say their goodbyes, because Rui finally caught notice of what Nene was using his desk for and wants to know all about her role prep, and Emu keeps coming up with increasingly elaborate onomatopoeias to explain how worried she’d been about Rui.
By the time they’re both out of the door, and despite his insistence otherwise, Rui does look overwhelmed, and has sunk an inch further into the couch in his exhaustion. The sight makes something very fond curl in Tsukasa’s heart. He really has never been good at knowing his limits.
Tsukasa turns to the door, and realises Nene is shooting him a meaningful glance through the open crack. I get it, I know, Tsukasa tries to beam back to her with his mind.
He turns to look back at Rui, and Rui gives him a tired little wave. “Take care on your way home, Tsukasa-kun.”
“Rui.”
Rui looks up at him. “Yes?”
Tsukasa tries not to let everything he’s feeling show on his face. “…Message me when you wake up, okay?”
Rui tilts his head. The question is clear in his expression, but he seems to decide against asking it. A message is a promise that he’ll understand later, after all.
“Okay. See you, Tsukasa-kun.”
It’s gone dark by the time Rui cracks his eyes open. He stretches his limbs out with a sigh, content to just lie there for a moment before reality sets in and the grogginess of his cold starts to feel unpleasant again.
He staggers up off the couch to turn on the light, and then sits back down so he can check his phone. It’s 10pm. He has three unread messages from his mother, and one hundred and five from the Wonderlands x Showtime group chat.
According to his messages, his parents had decided not to wake him when they came home, but had left him rice to heat up in the microwave when he got hungry. Rui contemplates it, and then decides he’d rather sit in his room than bother making anything. He’d slept well, but it hadn’t done much to shift his cold yet.
Instead, he scrolls through the messages from his friends, smiling to himself at the thorough rundown of the day’s training Emu and Nene had written out for him, and Tsukasa’s proportionally very overblown reactions to what the girls’ troupe had been getting up to.
Ah, right. He should tell Tsukasa he’s woken up.
<< I’m awake. What did you need me for?
He’s barely hit send when Tsukasa’s contact picture suddenly takes up his whole screen. ‘Incoming video call’ reads the text below, and Rui takes a second to rub the sleep from his eyes before he hits ‘accept.’
“Rui!” The call connects fast, and Tsukasa beams at him from the other side of the screen. “How are you feeling? Did you sleep well? Has your fever gone down at all?”
It’s a bit too much for the first thing after waking up. “Mmn. One question at a time, Tsukasa-kun.”
“Oh, sorry!” Tsukasa frowns. It’s always fascinating how fast his expressions change for someone whose face is always so exaggerated. “How are you feeling?”
Rui takes a moment to consider this. “Better, definitely… It really did help, you coming over today. I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly for it yet.”
He expects Tsukasa’s expression to change again, maybe into a grin, or the signature proud laugh Rui always gets out of him when he praises him for anything, but instead his frown just deepens. “You’re making that face again.”
Rui blinks. “What face?”
“That one! The one you made every time you realized I was going out of my way for you! You— agh!”
“What’s wrong?” Rui feels caught a little flat-footed. Had he done something odd when Tsukasa had visited earlier? Surely he’d remember if he had, but nothing comes to mind other than the coughing fit, which he’s pretty sure Tsukasa wouldn’t count.
Rui’s eyes have adjusted enough to make out Tsukasa’s surroundings—his room, most likely the view from his desk—but it’s hard to see anything past the pout he’s wearing. It’d be cute if Rui knew what he’d done to elicit it.
“When I say I do things as a chairman it’s because it’s me, yes?” Tsukasa begins.
What’s this about? It isn’t really a question, and if it was it’d be a strange one, but Rui gets the feeling Tsukasa wants an answer anyway. “Yes?”
“And when I’m talking about my director, I’m talking about you—and not just you as a director.”
“Yes,” Rui says, “but I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
Tsukasa exhales, like he has something he wants to say but hasn’t figured out how to say it. Rui waits patiently.
“You’re not very good at being the center of attention, are you?”
“What?” Rui can’t help the surprise in his voice. What? “...On the contrary. I’d argue the things I like to do have gotten me pretty used to being in the spotlight.”
“Well, yes, but that’s not what I—”
Tsukasa makes a little frustrated sound, his face pinched. He pauses, mulling over how best to explain himself. Rui keeps waiting.
“Even before we formed the troupe, when you were solo, you’ve always been attracting attention to your show or your skills and not really you, you know?”
Rui blinks dumbly. Tsukasa continues.
“I guess that’s what…frustrates me. I messed up earlier, when I said those things about it being my duty as your chairman to look after you. And those things about wanting you to come back to the workshop as soon as you could. Because, I mean, it’s all true! But I don’t think we were on the same page about it.”
Tsukasa bites his lip, his expression somehow even more pinched.
“It’s just—you should know I’m not just dressing it up. I say I do things because I’m your chairman because that’s who I am. It’s not just a role I play, and any duties I fulfill are ones I do because it’s me and I want to.” He takes a breath. “The same way being our director isn’t just a role you play, Rui.”
Tsukasa pauses for a moment to look at him. Rui isn’t sure what he sees, because he isn’t sure what face he’s making as he listens to Tsukasa’s monologue, stunned into silence, but Tsukasa seems to take his expression as a cue to continue.
“Rui,” he says, and it’s possibly the most sincere Rui has ever heard his name said. “I— We worry about you because we love you and not your merits or how convenient you’re being. That’s what I want you to understand.”
Rui’s breath catches in his throat, which quickly turns into a cough, and he lowers his phone to press his face to the crook of his elbow. It isn’t pleasant, but he’s used to it now, so he clumsily swipes the water bottle Tsukasa had left for him from his bedside to gulp the worst of the fit down.
It subsides about as fast as it had that morning, but Tsukasa’s started to panic on the other end of the line. “Rui? Rui!? Are you okay!?” he shouts, and Rui faintly wonders if the entire Tenma family is going to think he’s died tomorrow. “Rui!”
“I’m okay, I’m sorry,” Rui chokes out in response. He picks his phone back up and holds it up to his face again so Tsukasa can confirm it for himself.
“Don’t scare me like that!” Tsukasa says. He looks stern, but the relief on his face is palpable.
There’s a pause. Neither of them want to break the silence, because doing so means addressing where the conversation had been before Rui had interrupted it, and that suddenly feels very daunting.
“Anyway!” Tsukasa is the one to press forwards, like he always is. “That’s all I wanted to say! I want you to take it to heart, alright?”
Rui realises Tsukasa looks almost bashful through the camera. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was getting flustered after declaring his reassurances so boldly. That’s…intriguing.
Rui opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it again. He realises he isn’t doing much better. His eyes flit to and from the screen, where Tsukasa is staring at him with increasingly pinker cheeks. “Th…Thank you, Tsukasa-kun,” he manages. “I wasn’t aware I’d been…”
“Prioritizing everyone and everything else above yourself again?” Tsukasa finishes. It’s stern, once again, but most of it seems to be bravado.
“I suppose you could put it that way, yes,” Rui concedes.
Tsukasa sighs, but it’s far fonder and a little shakier than his usual lecturing puff. “Morinomiya was the least of my problems when I heard you were ill, and you acted like you’d seen a unicorn when I said I was there to look after you.”
Rui smiles. “I had, to be fair.”
“I am just as wonderful, but pegasi are not the same thing! And that’s beside the point!” Tsukasa exclaims, then seems to steady himself. He breathes in. “You should learn to be a little more selfish, Rui.”
Rui feels his smile soften. At least in this instance, he might be right to say that.
It’s hard to quell an instinct to hesitate, but it’s true, Rui supposes, that it might be far stranger of him not to accept what he’s being offered when a friend goes to the trouble of extending a gesture like that. By Tsukasa’s standards, checking in on someone who’s under the weather is perhaps the most mundane thing one can do to express that they care. Rui just may have gotten a little squeamish about having the ability to take that for granted.
“...I’ll keep that in mind, Tsukasa-kun,” he says, and Tsukasa’s bashfulness drops from his face as he beams.
“Well,” he says, voice so triumphant he sounds like he’s about to burst, “if you’ve gotten that through your head, I won’t keep you.” He flashes another grin for good measure, and then tilts his phone away from his face as he’s taken by the biggest yawn Rui has ever seen.
Rui chuckles, unable to keep the affection out of his voice. “Tired?”
“It’s past my bedtime! I sacrificed my hard-earned rest to wait up for you!” Tsukasa grumbles.
“Ah, you have my most sincere apologies then.”
“...I’ll forgive you, but only because you’re sick.” Tsukasa’s cheeks are still dusted with pink, and it’s really cute. “Get some more sleep, okay, Rui?”
“I will. Good night, Tsukasa-kun.”
“Good night, Rui.”
The call cuts there, and Rui slumps back onto his side against the armrest of the couch, not quite able to stifle the wide smile on his face. How long has he been smiling like that? He’s pretty sure he’s equally as red-faced as Tsukasa had been, but he isn’t sure he cares.
He stares at his phone screen, still displaying Tsukasa’s contact icon. Wonders, with all the idleness of a child on a sugar high, how he managed to miss that he’d had this so readily this entire time.
And he thinks, when it’s being offered with so much willingness, that it might be okay to be a little more self-centered sometimes.