Credits: Thank you so much to cashewkitty for beta reading & wobblyjelly for the wonderful suggestion
Disclaimer: Free! isn't mine, naturally
Timeline: squeezed before Haruka and Makoto graduated in the final episode
Courting: Dorky Style
"The movie turned out to be even better than its reviews … such beautiful visual effects! Don't you think so, Haruka-sempai?" Rei asked as they sat together on a bench, overlooking the sea.
Haru nodded without any further elaboration, his gaze locked onto the yonder water. Neither the rows of houses distancing the viewing platform from the sea nor the chilly October evening diminished Haru's thirst to plunge himself into nature's watery arms—that much Rei knew.
Haru spoke in his usual flat tone, "When you asked me to go out with you this weekend, you said you wanted to talk after we returned from the cinema."
Rei inhaled deeply, breathed out, breathed again, and finally managed the words, "Before we come to that, may I hold your hand?"
Non-verbal questions were forming in Haru's eyes, but he extended the hand closest to Rei, which the younger boy took tentatively. Twilight unfurled its dark cloak throughout the firmament, as the sun had sunk below the horizon while the boys were climbing the stone steps minutes prior.
Gazing at the twinkle of stars reflected in Haru's eyes, Rei focused on the satiny feel of Haru's skin against his own and soughed, "Do you feel your heart beating faster, your stomach fluttering, or anything else?"
Haru considered it for a moment before replying with a monotonous "No."
"As I thought, I didn't feel any of those either." Rei let go of Haru's hand. "Haruka-sempai, the reason I call you here is to talk about Nagisa-kun—I think I love him."
Completely unfazed, as though already anticipating the statement before it had even been voiced, Haru replied, "And?"
"It was your beautiful swimming style that attracted me to the swimming club. So many times when I watched you cleave the pool water, my chest hurt—how I wished I could swim that way! But just now, the fact that I don't feel anything while holding your hand confirms that I harbor no romantic feeling for you. So, thank you … for your cooperation."
###
"I still can't believe Haruka-sempai ended up wearing a girl's swimsuit and lent his to Nagisa-kun because Nagisa-kun's sisters had swapped out his swimsuit for the girl's." Rei shook his head, but jotted down the information he received from Makoto in his notebook anyway.
"It happened on the first day Nagisa joined the Iwatobi Swimming Club in elementary school," Makoto affirmed, and nostalgic longing in his tone, his eyes unfocused to the portions of the carousel, bumper cars, and drop tower rides visible from the Ferris wheel's window behind Rei's seat.
"I thought someone as carefree as Nagisa-kun wouldn't be too fazed by something like that … I guess I've still got a lot to learn about him; otherwise, I won't stand a chance when up next to you."
"But there's nothing between Nagisa and me," Makoto tried to convince Rei, his mouth quirked at a funny angle. Had this been anyone else less kind than Makoto, a guffaw would have burst from that mouth, no doubt.
Rei adjusted the red frame of his glasses over his nose bridge. "I know. It's just that you're a perfect example of the caring-and-nurturing type that seems most compatible with Nagisa-kun's carefree nature on top of having known Nagisa-kun long before I met him."
"Uh, love isn't where you can always apply 'the early bird catches the worm' motto. I'd say you have a big chance … Nagisa is comfortable around you."
"Nagisa-kun is comfortable around almost everyone," Rei corrected.
Makoto evinced a weak smile, but did not deny the statement.
###
"You what?" Rin barked from the other side of the table, a betrayed look apparent in his eyes. His volume was apparently loud enough to attract attention from the waitresses and the customers at the neighboring tables.
Adjusting his glasses, Rei mentally swallowed his guilt. He had not, in a manner of speaking, lied to Rin, but… "As I said, I asked you out today for a practice date." He took a rather sharp breath. "Besides, after the concert ended, you were eager to tag along as soon as I mentioned that there were dishes from this coffee shop's menu that Haruka-sempai liked other than mackerel."
Rin had the grace of spouting a curse-like growl before grumbling, "Couldn't you just pick a real girl? I'm a boy despite my girly name, dammit!"
"That wouldn't be any good. The one I'm trying to confess to is a guy with a girly name, after all."
At once, Rin stopped slurping his frappé through the straw. He gripped his glass harder than necessary, the flare of suspicion in his eyes eclipsing the iridescent moon peering from the window. "Whoa, hold it there! Don't tell me you're trying to hit on me for real?"
"No, it's Nagisa-kun," Rei mumbled as he gripped a portion of his trousers in his fist, a faint blush blossoming across his cheeks.
Rin blinked, and then his tense expression relaxed and his grip on the glass loosened.
Rei continued, "I've been thinking… Now that the nationals have ended, Haruka-sempai and Makoto-sempai have officially retired from the club. True, Haruka-sempai still uses the pool almost every day and Makoto-sempai often hangs around with him. Even so, time keeps racing forward and the day of their graduation is drawing closer and closer. Since they're going to Tokyo, Nagisa-kun and I won't be able to see them for a long time. That alone is enough to make me sad. I can't bear to part with Nagisa-kun like that next year. I want him by my side. Always."
In a considerably gentler tone, Rin replied, "Okay, it makes sense that you confess to Nagisa sooner than later. Still, you didn't have to choose me for the practice date, right?"
"It's because you're the only one who successfully taught me to swim strokes other than the butterfly, even the other Iwatobi Swimming Club members tried in vain to teach me. Your teaching method may be most suitable."
"Look, I've been swimming since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but I've never dated anyone. What is there to teach?"
"You've never dated anyone?" Rei mimicked Rin's words.
"What did you expect? I don't swing that way!"
"…"
"Hey, what's with that skeptical look?! If this is about the bed I shared with Haru when we were in Aussie, nothing happened back then. We just slept—nothing more!"
"I didn't even know you slept in one bed with Haruka-sempai." A shade of scarlet dusted Rei's cheeks. "I simply meant that since you were the team captain until two months ago, you're probably popular at Samezuka and aren't lacking for girls."
"Oh." By the time Rei finished his explanation, Rin's face had been immersed in a deeper shade of crimson. "Anyway," he continued after clearing his throat, "I'd rather use my time to swim than to date girls, so I don't know how I can be of help to you in the romance department."
It had never occurred to Rei before that Rin would be so dense with his own , giving Rin a hand here was the least Rei could do since he was eternally indebted to Rin for teaching him swimming.
Rei raked his brain. "You could probably give me your opinion for my mental simulation questions."
Rin's quirked brow pronounced his doubt, but his mouth worded, "Go on."
"Imagine you come into what you assumed to be the empty locker room after a very late swimming practice, but it turns out that Nitori-kun has been waiting for you with a towel and a bottle of drink in hand. He hands you those and tells you, 'Good work today, sempai,' but trips in front of you. You catch him before he lands on the floor. Your hands embrace his body … your hip and his are aligned … one of your legs is parting his knees … his face is just a breath away from yours and you see your own reflection in his eyes. Would you kiss him?"
"Heck, no! Ai is just clumsy like that. I'll scold him to be more careful."
"Then, if the same thing were to happen with Yamazaki-san, what would you do?"
"I'd shove him out of my way, of course!" Then Rin added as an afterthought, "But Sousuke isn't the type who trips easily, so I'd better make sure he isn't hiding another injury."
"What if it's Haruka-sempai who trips over you in that empty locker room?"
To this, Rin's previously receding blush returned in full force, even creeping up to the tips of his ears. "I'd push him aside so that we won't collide!" he retorted vehemently. "What kind of question is that?! Why'd he be in the Samezuka locker room at night in the first place?"
"Calm down, Rin-san; it's just image training." Rei adjusted his glasses, which glinted at the lamp's reflection. "My point is: you answered the first two questions without hesitation, but were four seconds late for the last one. Do you realize what this means?"
###
The next Saturday night, Rei spent over an hour in front of the mirror, mixing and matching his shirts and trousers for tomorrow's outing, since it had to be casual to ensure that Nagisa would feel at ease with him, but made Rei look appealing all the same. When the long-awaited morning finally came, Rei waited outside the train station. He studied his date plan for the umpteenth of time before pocketing the notebook. Next, he inspected whether the straps on his backpack were perfectly tight around his immaculately tucked in blue chambray shirt.
Nagisa didn't appear before him until ten minutes past their appointment time, half-eaten lollipop dangling from his mouth. As much as Rei knew he shouldn't allow his leniency over Nagisa's tardiness to grow into a habit, he swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue along with that bright smile on Nagisa's face, while secretly hoping that Nagisa wouldn't notice how Rei ached to kiss him beneath that mask of solemnity.
Although the journey took eight stations to reach the aquarium, this would be worth Nagisa's affinity with penguins—or so Rei had planned.
The sky had started to drizzle the moment they stepped out of the station. The aquarium itself was barricaded by curtains of rain that incited peripatetic travelers to fight their way through the cloudburst. Accordingly, the outdoor penguin show was cancelled for the day—how many spectators would expose themselves to rainfall in a roofless stadium upon availability of other entertainment options?
Uncomfortable with the drenched clothes sticking onto his skin from the running, Rei suggested, "Nagisa-kun, we'd better buy some dry clothes to change into so that we won't catch a cold."
"OK, we can go to a tourist shop that also sells candy," Nagisa replied.
Located on the south bank of the River Zenihira, just up the road from the entrance was a gift shop, where phone straps, key chains, paper weights, plush dolls, and other souvenirs were merchandized. Even though prices were steeper here than in non-tourist-oriented shops, a satisfied smile graced Rei's countenance as he exited: not only did he now share an umbrella with Nagisa, but his T-shirt also matched with his love interest's, albeit the single layers of cotton was too thin for late October's weather.
Left with no choice but to wait until the rain expended itself, the two boys decided to begin their escapade indoors. The pathway adjacent to the first aquarium was lined with the statues of cartoony crabs, prawns, octopuses, and cuttlefish that loomed above the hedgerows.
A dozen species of jellyfish greeted them in the seashore-themed first tank. In the adjoining room stood a shallow acrylic pool where visitors could touch living starfish and seashells on the white sand. The next room exhibited a tank dedicated to lobsters, seahorses, exotic fish, hydroids, sea anemones, and vibrant corals of rich diversity.
Rei consulted his watch and asked Nagisa, "The submarine-like observatory will start its 'voyage' at eleven, where we can discover underwater ecosystems without getting wet. There's also a dolphin show at half past eleven. Unlike the stadiums for manatee, sea lion, and penguin shows, the one for the dolphin pool is roofed, so the show isn't canceled. Which one do you want to do first?"
"Will there be another show in the afternoon for either of them?"
Since Nagisa's visitor's guide had creatively been transformed into a frog origami, Rei glanced at his own and answered, "There's another voyage at three and another show at half past three."
"Then let's go for the boat ride first!"
"It's a submarine, Nagisa-kun."
As they headed out, Nagisa's eyes were fixed longingly upon a larger, deeper touch pool near the exit. There, gloves were provided for a supervised session of stingray petting.
"There's no time for that. We'll have to queue for the glove rent and the voyage ticket," Rei warned him. He almost needed to drag Nagisa out of the building to get his companion to comply.
They promenaded past the fountain sprouting from the mouth of a humpback whale statue. Being a popular spot for photography, the waterfront was more crowded than any other outdoor areas in the aquarium. A running toddler bumped into Nagisa, but quickly resumed running without an apology, his umbrella-clad parents chasing warily a few steps behind.
"Are you all right, Nagisa-kun?" Rei bent to inspect Nagisa's waist, unintentionally causing their shared umbrella to slant along.
Nagisa laughed. "Rei-chan, you're such a worrywart."
"Sorry." Rei stood upright again as quickly as possible.
Their luck proved to have run out when the aquarium staff pulled the retractable belt between the stanchions to cut off the queue line at the family of five in front of them. "The eleven 'o' clock voyage is full. Please return for the three 'o' clock voyage later."
The people who were queuing behind them could understand that the youngest child of the family at the foremost booed, but most of them threw a dirty look when it was Nagisa who did so, too. The nearest one complained, "What a bad-mannered youth!"
Rei led Nagisa to the dolphin stadium, listening to his companion's long grumble that they should have waited to pet the stingray instead.
It was a blessing that the stadium was capacious enough to accommodate all the enthusiastic spectators-to-be. A fence separated the blue lower tiered seats from the red higher rows.
"I wanna sit in the front."
"But Nagisa-kun, it says 'splash zone.'"
"Rei-chan's afraid of a bit of water. Rei-chan's afraid of a bit of water," Nagisa repeated the phrase in a singsong.
Rei tried to reason with him, "But we just got ourselves these T-shirts. Must we buy even more?"
"Boo." Nagisa pouted his lips—his adorable, sized-just-right, salmon pink lips that Rei longed to nip.
Rei tried to dispel the thought by conversing. "Do you think Haruka-sempai would strip and plunge himself into that pool if he came here?"
"That goes without saying," Nagisa replied cheerily, his sulk instantly forgotten.
It was not until the show nearly ended had nearly ended that Rei and Nagisa learned that the majority of the splash culprits originated from the deadly combination of the hidden sprinklers and the staff's water guns rather than the dolphin-leaping pool water.
They had a little time for a turtle feeding experience before the rumbles of their stomachs called for food.
The lunch that followed was a hearty affair with seared sea bass and crab croquette. Featuring a glass walkway, beneath which tuna and bonito swam, the dining hall of the semi-alfresco restaurant had no unoccupied table during lunchtime. Hence, Rei and Nagisa sat on the verandah and watched the constant drips of rain from the eaves.
"The rain isn't letting up, is it?" Nagisa commented.
Rei hummed in agreement, but secretly felt mirthful for the temperate weather. The raindrops remained infrangible and perpetual, but sitting here with Nagisa chased away Rei's weariness of its hissing.
The post-meal visit at the main aquarium building was originally the venue Rin had planned for his love confession. Crisscrossed by topiaries, it was home to orca, manta rays, goliath groupers, beluga whales, and several other marine creatures. Nor was it called the jewel in the crown of the Iwatobi Marine Life Park attractions for nothing. Visitors started their exploration of the aquarium on the sixth level and gradually spiraled down floor by floor around the central tank. Some of the tanks stretched over several floors, making it possible to observe the animals from different depths and perspectives.
It was here that Nagisa exclaimed the request Rei hadn't dared to vocalize, "We should get a picture together!"
Rei was too happy to oblige, even though Nagisa's cheerful, carefree disposition divested him of the intention to say the three words that had been haunting him for so long.
One balcony extension created a seabird sanctuary which blended seamlessly with the surrounding natural environments, overflowing with the airs of a marine idyll. Shrubs and trees afforded shade when the sun moved across the heavens or when rain poured down like this. Other balconies were provided for visitors' interaction with walruses, seals, and otters respectively. Again, Rei didn't have the heart to disturb Nagisa from all those animal petting sessions for something as nerve-wrecking as a love confession.
When it was time for them to return to the observatory, the rain started to show signs of ceasing. 'Don't stop yet!' Rei prayed in his heart, 'At least wait until Nagisa-kun and I reach our destination so that I can share this umbrella with him a little longer.'
The observatory was constructed with built-in faux control panels and blinking buttons that children were delighted to push around. In actuality, it was a 360-degree multimedia theater that took visitors on an adventuresome voyage on board a submarine. The panoramic marine vista through the portholes was actually a documentary recording of various environments—from mudskippers, archerfish, silver batfish, and electric eels in the mangrove-forested shore to blue flasher wrasses, squirrelfish, and soldierfish amid the rubble of a shipwreck with a splintered hull. The voyage concluded with the iridescent underwater hanging garden where curious reef fish like the broomtail wrasse, purple tang, and yellowband swam and frolicked among colorful colonies.
"Rei-chan, let's go there!" Nagisa pointed at the Dive with Sharks attraction the moment they stepped out of the observatory.
"Wait, Nagisa-kun, the ticket costs over five times the park's admission fee."
"What?! Why?"
Rei adjusted his glasses. "I suppose it's mainly because of the equipment rental and the diving lesson."
"Sharks…" Nagisa gazed lackadaisically at the signboard.
Rei wanted to say something to solace Nagisa, but his rumination couldn't result in something that sounded neither too pampering nor too unsympathetic.
Nonetheless, when it came to the whimsical Nagisa, a problem often solved itself. The next second, he was already piping up, "Meh, if I can't get real sharks, I'll just imagine diving with lots of Rin-chan then."
'Rin-san? Why?' Rei mused.
The Oceanic Museum became their next destination. Housed in two adjoining buildings, it displayed a diversity of marine flora and fauna replicas. Liberal use of wall glass allowed full viewing of the parkland on the west and running stream on the east, while also admitting sunlight to stream inside in invigorating sensory stimulation.
Too absorbed in the beauty of the architecture, Rei forgot about Nagisa for a moment, and that moment proved to be fatal. As soon as he turned sideways, the shorter boy no longer stood next to him.
"Nagisa-kun?" he called as he searched among the museum collection.
Where could that boisterous boy be? He had laughed at the gelatinous mass that was a blobfish merely moments ago and commented, "Now we know where those alien movie ideas came from," when he chanced upon the replica of a giant isopod.
Rei stopped and took out his cellphone in front of the model of a gulper eel of which enormous mouth was capable of swallowing victims far larger than itself. As he searched for Nagisa's number in his call log, something grabbed him from behind, constricting, like a predator who refused to let go of its prey.
"EEK!" Rei screamed in panic, eliciting stares from the other museum visitors.
"Did I scare you?" Nagisa stepped forward, guilt and pleasure mingled in his expression.
Rei wanted to die from embarrassment; even the frilled shark skeleton hung on chains from the ceiling seemed to laugh at his stupidity. It wasn't until five seconds later did he find out that even idiocy had its merit.
Nagisa said, "If you didn't want to get separated from me, you should have held my hand in the first place."
The presence of so many eyes in that hall wavered Rei's resolution, but with Nagisa's childishness, perhaps it could work…? Tentatively, Rei took Nagisa's hand and they proceeded to the next attraction.
The last section before the park exit, next to the museum, encompassed a main tank with a viewing area in its center that immersed visitors with its hypnotic scenes of diving displays amid glittering schools of scads, fusiliers, and rainbow runners swimming in unison. In an instant, the school changed direction with none of the fish colliding into one another.
"So pretty!" Nagisa palpated the glass, his eyes feverish with a childish longing to dissipate the barrier and touch the swimming creatures.
"Yes, beautiful," Rei mumbled. His heart knew that not even all the fish's brilliance could outshine Nagisa's.
The deep water-themed tank in the annex building sported a vast arch-shaped pool around a tunnel, from which visitors could observe various bioluminescent fish from a moving walkway. The tunnel was dark and shielded from the outer world and, by the grace of Fortune, no other visitors were within earshot either; he could confess his feelings without being overheard here.
But what if Nagisa rejected him? How was he supposed to face Nagisa again at classes and in the club? The mere thought of exposing his vulnerability to Nagisa made Rei hyperventilate.
'You can do this,Ryuugazaki Rei!' he tried to assure himself. 'Take a deep breath in. And breathe it out. In. And out again. In and out. In and—'
"Rei-chan, are you into Lamaze?" Nagisa's voice pulled Rei back to the world outside his head.
"Lama … what's that?" 'Yellow alert! How could I not know something that Nagisa-kun did? What if he's turned off by this? I've studied everything I thought could be useful during a first date, but what on earth is that thing? A sub-species of llama? A brand of deodorant?'
Nagisa answered, "It's one of those breathing exercises nee-chan used to do when she was pregnant."
'Pregna—?! I can't do this! Confessing to him is impossible.'
Flabbergasted as he was, Rei could only manage a weak "No."
"Then are you hurt?"
Rei shook his head.
"Really?"
Rei nodded.
"Truly?" Nagisa insisted.
Rei nodded again.
"Really, truly, and genuinely?"
"I'm fine, Nagisa-kun."
"You sure you aren't hiding a shoulder injury like Sou-chan?"
The annoying persistence in Nagisa's voice and the endearing creases of worry between Nagisa's brows gave Rei a tough choice whether he should be miffed or elated. A second later, a third option presented itself: Nagisa had been coming closer with each syllable he urged, and the top of his head finally tickled Rei's nose.
"Achoo!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Nagisa-kun." Rei stared in horror as Nagisa's face was now sprinkled with liquid that hadn't been there before. In his panic, he hastily retrieved the handkerchief from his left pocket but dropped his notebook in the process.
Rei unfolded his handkerchief into a larger square and was planning to hand it over to Nagisa when he saw to his utter horror that Nagisa had picked his notebook and was reading, "In the event that circumstances deem it inconvenient to split the bill into halves during a date by two people of the same sex, the inviter should take the initiative to pay."
"T-that's…" Rei stuttered, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.
The line Nagisa read had been taken from one of the many dating tips websites of Rei's perusal. An imaginary cork plugged his windpipe and temporarily disabled him from breathing; given how full the pages were from his jotted-down notes, now Nagisa would know how long Rei had spent for his research and how much he had fretted over the appropriateness of the date spots for their first.
"Rei-chan, did you dig into this stuff?"
Rei had neither the courage to nod nor the defiance to shake his head. He wanted to shout, 'Don't walk away from me,' but he looked away instead. His chest hurt. If Nagisa found him creepy, it would be over for Rei, for he had grown more dependent on Nagisa than what he allowed himself to acknowledge.
"Just for today?" Nagisa asked again.
"It's only natural that you'd prepare yourself when you go on a date with someone you like!" Rei blurted. 'Nononononono! This isn't the way it's supposed to be. Not like this at all!'
Nagisa looked at him, long and unreadable, making Rei's chest exploded with emotions he didn't want to emerge. The pain pierced him at frightening speed, stealing calmness away and instilling insanity into him.
Then Nagisa smiled. "So, I'm not the only one who feels that way?"
'What?'
Rei's brain could hardly register Nagisa's rejoicing when a pair of arms wrapped themselves around his shoulders. He blinked until his vision crept back into focus and found Nagisa jumping at him. "Rei-chan!"
Had they not reached the end of the tunnel, Nagisa probably wouldn't have let their skinship end with a mere embrace.
Coming out from the last aquarium, Nagisa said, "You know, Rei-chan, I was afraid you'd run away from me if I nagged you with my love confessions—and devil knows how fast you can run!"
Rei didn't know whether he should feel guilty or honored.
Nagisa's voice resumed, like joyful melody keenly played, "That's why I thought I should be happy just having you as a friend."
The two boys strolled along the promenade linking the last aquarium to the park exit. The path was lined with old-growth bushes and decorated with placards bearing "Thank you for visiting Iwatobi Marine Life Park" writings. No matter how much Rei wished that time would drag on so that he could relish the moment of holding Nagisa's hand, the air draped their T-shirt-clad bodies with bitter cold in accordance with the sun's neglect.
"Now that the rain has ceased, where would you like to go next?" Rei asked, while hoping that Nagisa would choose an indoor place. Carousing around the town in T-shirt on twelve degree Celsius was outside his calculation.
"Hmmmmmmm…" Nagisa thought it over.
"Maybe bowling? Or the shopping center? Cinema?" Rei suggested.
Nagisa smirked, a playful twinkle in his eyes. "Save those for our upcoming dates." He snaked his arm possessively around Rei. "It's so cold right now. Isn't there some place where I can snuggle up together with you?"
'Our upcoming dates,' 'our upcoming dates,' 'our upcoming dates'… The phrase deliriously echoed in Rei's head, before his mind found a way back to the issue at hand: Nagisa's question.
"Er, then … my room?" Rei hesitated. Wouldn't this be too fast? But then Nagisa didn't say anything about sex and he'd had three sleepovers in Rei's room already—with nothing more than the brushes of their fingers while Rei was handing Nagisa his CDs and other belongings—so, maybe…
"Perfect! I love your mom's cooking anyway," Nagisa chirped.
'See, he's going there for the food.' Rei calmed himself.
Their railway journey back was enveloped with thick mist of drowsiness. At first, Rei was content watching Nagisa's head slumped onto his shoulder, but the sand of sleep covered his eyes too soon…
"Rei-chan, wake up." Nagisa shook his shoulder.
Rei lifted his glasses to rub his eyes. The sight of the clouds drifting over a mauve sky from the train window was waiting for him. The last glimmering of daylight dimmed out from the ends of avenues; and the trees, swaying in the distance, had lost their verdant color.
"It's sunset! How long have we been sleeping?"
Nagisa, apparently, didn't regard Rei's utterance as a rhetorical question. "Dunno. I dozed off as soon as I got onboard. Your shoulder sure was comfy."
It could be the dimples flanking Nagisa's mouth or the light in his eyes, but whatever the cause was, it sufficed to make Rei dip his head. Nagisa's peach-colored skin melded into dusk under his touch, hushed like the setting sun. Nagisa granted Rei all the time needed to push him away, but Rei froze. How could he do anything more than gawk at the boy with cerise eyes and wheat-colored hair before him, when his sensations heightened to the unseen wings fluttering incessantly in the pit of his stomach?
The train skidded into a halt; they had reached the next station. The jerking motion was a mental slap to Rei—a non-verbal reproach for attempting to kiss Nagisa too early. Just how pathetic was he, trying to ruin their first date like that?
"We'll need to get off here and take the train from the opposite platform," he announced.
Nagisa rose from his seat and followed, hand still latched onto Rei's. To make matters worse, no one else was in the vicinity of the urban area station they were currently at.
'Must. Not. Kiss.'
With this in mind, Rei approached the wall-mounted timetable. Scrutinizing the numerical rows, he then learned that the train they were expecting wouldn't arrive for another ten minutes. Then he sensed a prickling heat on his nape, but he had no courage to glimpse sideways and find out whether Nagisa had been staring at him.
"Let's sit there." Rei pointed at a long metal bench by the north end of the platform.
Nagisa strode behind him, again without a word—which was weird, considering how much of a chatterbox he normally was. Could it be that the boy was nervous or, worse, uncomfortable being alone with him?
"Don't worry, Nagisa-kun," Rei assured his companion, "The train usually comes on time."
A pout reshaped Nagisa's mouth into a downward curve. "I'd rather it arrive late today."
"Why?"
"So I can spend more time with you, obviously."
Rei's breath hitched. How come when Nagisa looked at him, it seemed like time had stopped moving?
"Rei-chan." Nagisa's torso shifted closer as he placed his hand on top of Rei's, preventing any escape in the most suave method possible.
Rei's eyes widened in surprise when Nagisa's face chased his own to a mere centimeters' gap. However, before he said anything, Nagisa had already backed off, mumbling, "Is it too fast for our first kiss?"
"No!" Rei cried, and then, realizing his over-enthusiasm, he spoke in a calmer tone, "I want to."
"Then, I'll…" Nagisa's words trailed off. His face drew closer, lips parted and eyes inflamed with desire.
'Archimedes, Curie, Da Vinci, Edison, Freud, Pascal, whoever is out there… It's happening—my first kiss!' Rei closed his eyes and tried his best to repress his squirm.
One second passed, two seconds, three…
Rei no longer felt Nagisa's hot breath caressing his cheeks, so he reopened his eyes. "What's the matter?"
Nagisa mumbled, "This is wrong."
"Getting together with a guy or letting your guard down next to someone who sprayed you with nasal fluid earlier?" Rei asked, the melancholic tone of his voice reflecting that his heart was breaking into a zillion splinters.
Nagisa shook his head. "It's too tense. Maybe we should wait until we're both ready."
"Oh." Rei's shoulders drooped in a mixture of relief and disappointment.
"Alrighty, quiz time, Rei-chan."
"Okay." 'Anything to keep him happy.'
"Which animals have tentacles, pincers, and wings?"
Rei raked his brain. Could a subspecies of octopus have some membranes that look like wings? Still, could they have pincers, as well?
In the end, he gave up. "I don't know, Nagisa-kun."
"Boo! 'I don't know' is unacceptable. You'll get a punishment for this."
Rei tried to delay a few more seconds, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. But his mind was blanking out.
"The answer's 'iruka.'" Nagisa posed a triumphant grin.
Rei blinked. While in Japanese, "iruka" meant "Is there [such an existence]?," it could also mean "dolphin" with a different kanji spelling.
Making a mental note that he'd better swallow the dictionaries of homonyms, homophones, and homographs to amuse Nagisa in the future, Rei rubbed the back of his head. "Hahaha… you got me there."
"Now then," Nagisa chirped, a devilish glint in his eyes, "Punishment time."
Before Rei could react, Nagisa had mounted him, straddling Rei's hips between his legs and throwing his arms around Rei's shoulders. Then Nagisa's face came too close for comfort, moving out of focus, and…
Rei reopened his eyes after he felt a peck on his forehead. He blinked a few times, heartbeat still pounding crazily, and the vision of Nagisa's smiling face gradually swam back into focus.
"How's that for a punishment?"
Rei adjusted his glasses, which were actually unaffected by Nagisa's chaste kiss. With a tint of crimson flushing his cheeks, he answered, "It needs improvement in terms of frequency."
Nagisa drew himself closer until his body was pressed together with Rei's in a delicious friction and breathed against Rei's earlobe, "Consider it done."
###
A few days later, Rei counted Nagisa and himself lucky that nobody had arrested them yet for public indecency of excessive smooching.
THE END
The conclusion about Rin's feelings will be revealed in my other fic, coming up in a few weeks.