I live in eternal hope that there is at least one other person in the world who ships Tono/Rui, so this is for you. Whoever you are. :P

Fix

dysfunctional doesn't even begin to describe it

x

It hasn't even been that long, but Tono realises that he misses the Academy quite a lot. He looks around the room and is momentarily overwhelmed with nostalgia; he turns away and tries to find the drinks table.

"Getting sentimental, are you?" says a dry voice; Shizune's.

Tono smiles at her, and she scowls back. They'd never gotten along, and it didn't look as if that was about to change now. "Well, I suppose so," he replies. "How are you then, Shizune-sama?"

She gives him a withering look and walks away. Tono snorts under his breath; there goes the only girl who hadn't fallen to his charms. That was alright; she had a good reason.

He'd already caught up with everyone that he wanted to – and besides, he stays in touch just fine with phone calls and infrequent college visits – so maybe there isn't much point staying here. Apart from the free alcohol, perhaps, which he'd already taken advantage of rather a little too well.

He goes into the next room where the drinks are laid out and takes another glass. A sound behind him, laughter? Turning around, he sees him.

Rui looks quietly amused, which is odd – Tono doesn't remember much of him except for crazed bouts of happiness and maybe a few other times which he'd rather not think about right now, but 'understated' is not something that he'd associate with Rui. But there it is, so Tono edges a little backwards, against the table.

"Hi, Akira," says Rui, stepping forwards. Tono moves out of his way and frowns – of course, Rui would be the only person who insisted on calling him that name.

"Tono is fine," he says shortly. He lingers for a moment before turning to leave; well, that's enough of an invitation for Rui.

"Don't go!" says Rui, catching his sleeve. "I haven't seen you for ages… that's what these reunions are for!"

Tono can't quite tell if Rui is being sarcastic or not – after all, Rui knows as well as anyone that there is no-one here glad to see him, except maybe that other Dangerous Abilities boy – he grunts something in reply, and shakes his head. "I was just leaving."

Rui pouts, and brushes some of Tono's hair out of his eyes – he flinches and bats Rui's hand away. "Come on, let's talk." He grins at Tono and drags him outside, smoothly taking a bottle of the table as he does so. "Sooo… what've you been up to, then?"

"Nothing much. Economics degree at uni. You?" Tono isn't sure why he's answering, much less why he's letting Rui lead him anywhere. Possibly the most sensible option is to run, but Rui's hand is tight around his wrist and feels like steel when he tries to shift it.

"Some clone of Kuonji is ordering me around again," says Rui, looking out into the dark before them. "At least this time I'm getting paid for it." Tono steals a look at Rui's face in-between discreet efforts to shuffle further away, and he's surprised by how dangerous he looks at that moment. Rui takes a swig from the stolen bottle, and his expression clears.

"Fun," says Tono. Rui moves to sit down on the step; Tono naturally sits beside him.

"Not so much, without you," Rui says, nudging him. "Right? That was fun..."

The memory of the last shared mission with Rui was one of those things that Tono had vowed never to think about. He closes his eyes tight and says, "Rui, let go of my arm."

He hears Rui sigh; is that disappointment? "Drink?" he says hopefully. Tono opens his eyes to see Rui waving the wine bottle barely an inch away from his nose.

"Let go of me," Tono repeats, more out of necessity than discomfort – because taking the bottle would require his right hand to be movable, because he's not so good with using his left hand, especially with drinks that might spill – how drunk was he? "How drunk am I?" he says out loud.

"Did you do anything else this evening except stand guard by the drinks?" Rui says. He's still not letting of Tono, but he does loosen his grip slightly; enough to move his hand down, gliding over Tono's forearm, so that he can intertwine his fingers with Tono's. For his part, Tono tenses – but doesn't move away. Rui smiles.

"Not true! I… talked. With people," he says. "Are we talking?"

Rui looks at him questioningly, and Tono suspects that he's just said something silly but he can't quite work it out. "I think this is what talking is," Rui says.

"As in… you're flirting with me. So it's not talking, really. I think."

Rui laughs and nudges him again. "You're cute when you're drunk. Lightweight much?"

"Amplification Alice."

"That's just an excuse," Rui says. Tono shrugs, brushing Rui's shoulder in the process. He hadn't meant to, but Rui obviously didn't mind.

"S'true. Not my fault," Tono says, not really sure what he's referring to. Rui has somehow moved closer – Tono thinks that they're probably close enough already – and the light from indoors is just strong enough so that he can make out Rui's nose and the line of his brow and lips, and he's pretty. Other thoughts briefly cross Tono's mind, namely that anyone, if they so happened to be looking outside towards them, would have instantly realised what was going on; Rui is much too close to be anything but a love interest.

No, not love. Merely a strange sort of attraction.

"Your Alice affects what you drug your body with? Even smoking?" Rui asks, curious. His right hand has moved to join his other, playing with Tono's fingers; it feels strangely comforting, or maybe that's the fuzzy warmth of the alcohol talking – it's a little embarrassing, really, his inability to hold his drink.

"Okay, I was lying," Tono mumbles. "Shut up." Rui opens his mouth to say something; he's obviously not shutting up, so Tono kisses him because he's pretty and it's a moonbright night and it was bound to happen anyway and he's not talking.

Rui's lips are familiar and soft, slightly parted so that Tono can lazily slip his tongue in between them and kiss him properly, appreciating Rui's enthusiastic response. He's a little disorientated, though, and his balance on the steps is waning – Rui pulls away, somewhat reluctantly, and Tono finds his seating again.

"Sorry," he says. "Were you going to say something?"

Rui raises an eyebrow. "Uh... nothing important."

They sit in silence. Tono isn't sure if it's an awkward silence because his mind feels too shaken and drowsy to work it out. Perhaps it should be, but after all, he was the one who should be awkward – Rui was never awkward, so why couldn't he work it out?

"Want to make out with me again?" Rui asks hopefully after a while.

Tono considers this, and says, "I should go back. It's late." It was true – it was really only Shizune and a couple of others in the hall now, and maybe they had also left in the last few minutes.

"I have a hotel near here," Rui says, and Tono might be imagining the suggestion in his voice, he can't tell.

"Cool." A nod of consent.

The taxi jouney is short and uneventful. The driver glances apprehensively at Rui, who smiles prettily and tosses his dark blond hair and speaks perfect Japanese and whose voice doesn't help much either when it comes to questions of gender – uneventful, because that's how it's always been. Tono leans on Rui in the backseat, and Rui pets his arm. The driver looks at them with even more apprehension. Rui giggles and gets closer; Tono doesn't like this baiting, but he doesn't really feel like doing anything to stop it. Besides, it feels nice.

"Expensive hotel, huh?" says Tono as Rui leads him into an elevator.

"I get paid a lot. Seems like not that many people like doing torture, especially when they're not allowed to leave marks..." Rui says with a sideways glance at Tono. "But let's not talk about that! Can we kiss in the elevator? That's always seemed fun to me..."

"No," Tono says, shaking his head. He's not actually sure what he does want to do or why he had agreed to share a taxi to some random hotel in the middle of Tokyo, except for the fact that going home by himself seems terribly lonely. This is probably a very stupid thing to be doing, but Tono doesn't think he can't tell right now. The elevator slows and Tono feels that familiar hint of nausea as it does so, amplified by his current inebriated state.

"Fine," says Rui, looking slightly disappointed.

The room is close; Rui unlocks the door and shows Tono in, before saying, "Well, what did you want to do then?"

Tono shuts the door and kisses Rui hard, pushing him back against it. Rui seems rather surprised, but soon recovers. No, Tono doesn't know what he's doing but all he can think about at this moment is how much he wants Rui and how Rui usually turns his head to his left when he kisses someone so maybe that's why he was surprised when Tono made him go the other way just now, and god that's a stupid thought. Still, Rui's hands are pressing Tono closer to him rather than pushing him away and Tono wants that too – Tono thinks, this is so very wrong and I'm not gay, so why do I want this so much?

It's a little late to stop, so he doesn't.

x

Rui is on his way home and trying not to think about Tono, because that guy is just irritating when it comes to anything but random one-night stands whenever he feels like it. Of course Tono is the hottest ex-student of the school and of course Rui does enjoy doing sexy stuff with him a lot, but it's still a bit irritating.

Tono is also on his way home and trying to forget every single thing about Rui that he has even known or seen or touched. Or whatever. Because Rui is a creepy bastard and Tono is most emphatically not gay and he does not need to have drunk oral sex with other guys on his mind right now.

x

Rui didn't exactly have friends, but he was reasonably friendly with his fellow Dangerous Ability (ex-)students. Hajime Yakumo was one such person.

"Hi it's Rui!" says Rui on the phone to Hajime.

"Oh," says Hajime. "What?"

"I had sex with Akira Tonouchi!" Rui says, bouncing (though Hajime couldn't see that part).

"What?" says Hajime again.

"Me. And Akira."

"You're joking," Hajime says. There's a pause. "Really?"

"After the reunion party, at my hotel room. Blow job," Rui explains, still with that note of glee in his voice.

"I wasn't at the party."

"Yeah, I know. But yeah. I just wanted to tell you!"

"Great." Another pause. "This is unfair."

"And he gave me a hand job at the end of last term," continues Rui.

"How come you get Tono and I can't even get a girl to look at me?"

"I think it's the bandages," says Rui fairly and not very comfortingly.

x

Why does lying in the arms of a possibly psychopathic sadist of indeterminate gender (though he definitely has a penis) feel even the slightest bit comforting? It shouldn't. It really, really shouldn't.

It seems to happen quite a lot, like a regular cycle. Tono wakes up next to Rui and vows never to do stupid stuff like that again. A few weeks or months pass. Tono suddenly decides to take a trip down to Rui's flat, ends up in Rui's bed and the cycle returns to its start.

Plus, he has a proper girlfriend now. He really does like Kana, really – not like those other short-lived girlfriends who were more like passing acquaintances that he was allowed to make out with – he really does like Kana. She's smart, funny, beautiful (the guys pointed out that her mouth was a bit large when she laughed and that she keeps chewing pencils, but Tono doesn't think that those are bad things) and does Business Studies so they have more things in common than a mutual let's-get-naked factor.

This time, when he leaves, every single part of his insides hurts with the thought of cheating on her. He struggles with his thoughts all the way home, and all the way through everything.

Kana knows that Tono is an Alice. She knows that he went to a special school for Alices for his teenage years. She knows that he's quite the flirt, and that he's had several girlfriends in the past and that he has some history of cheating, smoking and drinking. She doesn't care (Alices have nothing to do with them right now, he always comes running back to her anyway, it's not like she's perfectly innocent in that respect either, and unlike him she's never quit the cigarettes). He's a genuinely nice person, and she knows that he could never do anything to hurt her. So she doesn't understand why he's so guarded about some of the past (he seems so easygoing that it's hard to spot, but she can tell when he's hiding something), or why he looks so tortured this week. She hopes he hasn't found some other girl to fall in love with. Still, she wouldn't even mind that so much if he'd just talk about it with her.

She doesn't know that he's helped to torture people, that he's been part of undercover government missions, been to the hidden depths of the Academy's darkness – thankfully, he's only ever skimmed the surface of that life. Maybe that's why he's drawn to Rui, who breathes that darkness like life itself.

x

"Hi Akira!" says Rui as he bursts gleefully into Tono's dorm room. Tono looks at him with disbelief.

"What the... what are you doing here?" he hisses, shutting the door.

"Since you always come to my place, I've never come to yours! So I decided to come down here and surprise you," he says, grinning madly.

Of course, with Rui there was no way of telling whether he really meant that and only that, or if there were a few other things behind it. Tono has long decided that there isn't much point in trying to work out what Rui's really thinking, so he usually just plays along.

"Great," he says distractedly. "Uh... yeah."

"Uh... yeah? Aren't you pleased to see me? You could at least act a bit more enthusiastic!" Rui says, still grinning and pulling Tono down onto the bed. "Hey, are you rooming with someone?"

"... Do you see another bed here?"

"No... they could be sleeping on the floor or something! Or even..."

"No," Tono says firmly. Rui shouldn't be here, it's not right, he shouldn't...

"What's wrong?" Rui says.

"Nothing." But there is something wrong, isn't there? Rui is his private weakness, and for him to be out here where the rest of his life is – maybe, thinks Tono, he's never quite realised that Rui is a real person.

"Cool," Rui says, not really caring, and kisses him happily and greedily.

Tono closes his eyes and says, "Not here."

x

A/N: Hey, fandom. Guess how long this has been in storage? One and a half years. It hasn't been edited since then either, so I'm going to apologise for the pile of batcrap that this is. Yes, ok, this might just ruin my whole writing reputation and so what. If it makes even just one person happy to find this fic - good for them! That's why I decided to post this stuff when I cleaned out my fanfiction folder today instead of sending it straight to the Recycle Bin (or as it is called on my laptop, Natsume's Brain. Because it is full of rubbish).

This fic is a collection of bits and pieces from various Tono/Rui-centric scenes that were never finished. I have rather a lot of these, so there will be one or two more installments. Get ready for more.