Blowin' in the Wind
She strokes his hair, quietly. She can appreciate quietude occasionally. It isn't her, but then it isn't herself she loves.
Rui watches them, sitting very silent and very still on the window ledge, a moonlight-soft ghost. These are his people, his loves. This is his life, wrecked and stumbling towards potentially very bad ends. Their girl, his and Tsukasa's; their boy, his and Makino's. We'll be fine, my darlings.
Will they, though? Rui is the watching kind, and Tsukasa has been by his side through all the flowery years and all the dark ones; and Rui has seen what he's wanted to see, he is aware of that. There's always a choice, after all. You can watch Tsukasa beat underclassmen up, or you can study the flow of sunlight over the walls. Who's to say which decision is more valid?
Well, yes, that'd be her. The girl who taught them both that there are certain things you do not avert your gaze from, and that sometimes your silence has to lapse into words.
Yes, he admits to himself, mouth moving minutely, skin pulling pleasantly where Tsukasa hit him, and bit, later. Yes, he has watched Tsukasa always. Hardly ever interfered.
This girl who taught us both, huh. The girl who has been beaten up, kidnapped, threatened and ostracised because she refuses to live a life she is ashamed of – and you did nothing, Rui, you did barely anything at all, and his heart still clenches, a physical sensation of despair, at the thought (silly notion, but ah! he feels its reality). But there have been many times when he should have interfered and didn't. Tsukasa was always my first priority; I always knew the brash little bastard was delicate.
Makino didn't, in the beginning. Makino hit home. Rui will never forget the bewildered wonder on Tsukasa's face, that first time she punched him; nor her wild, sweet face as she did.
Rui is aware she was entertaining a crush on him when this happened, and he played along because everything was going too far and too fast, and he could see Tsukasa needed something, and there was Shizuka, whom he'd loved so hopelessly for so long. I always will, of course.
His parents are empathically different form Tsukasa's, not so vainglorious, leaving him free to roam; watching from a distance, always a distance. He had the flower boys for his family. This means there are five people in this world whom he loves, absolutely loves; and three people he is in love with so his heart is ready to burst from it. And Shizuka is having her own life, in which there is really very little space for a jailbait boyfriend from home trying to cut a place for himself between her French friends and her fierce independence, her goals and her private happiness.
There are those in this world who never get their loved one at all. Having two is not bad, not bad at all.
"Tsukushi…" Ah, Tsukasa's gravely morning voice, accompanying a sleep-dizzy dark eye into the waking world. (Will I ever call her that?) "Where's Rui?"
"He's here," Makino says, smiling so exceptionally softly, bright as the summer sun. Turns towards him at last, angling her body from where Tsukasa is laying with his head in her lap, giving Rui full view of her face, not just the profile anymore, with the adorable, funny-shaped nose he could not stop kissing. "Won't you come back to bed, Hanazawa Rui?"
"Hey, Rui!" Tsukasa laboriously raises himself on an elbow, peering critically at him over Makino's thighs, their shape visible through the thin white blanket. "Fucking snake!"
("Eh?" Makino mumbles. "What do you mean, snake? Oh, you mean snail! You mean snail, right?")
"Fucking snake!" Tsukasa said. "What, you're still hurting from my manly punches?"
"I'm not hurting," Rui says mildly, with a smile, slipping into bed beside them, shedding the dressing gown and leeching of their warmth from under the coverlet. "Just a little sore."
Makino's face goes a brilliant crimson which honestly should not be becoming; Tsukasa's pouty mouth freezes half-open, his eyes a little wild – clearly he is caught between stammering clumsy, apologetic inquiries about Rui's health and outrageously declaring that of course the manly heir to the very manly Doumyouji Group would be well endowed in every possible manly way. Rui strangles a laugh, leans up sideways to brush a kiss over Makino's cheek, sliding along the edge of her mouth.
"Hey!" Tsukasa yells, pushing at him. Laughing openly now, Rui leans into the touch, kisses his boy as well, deeper and wetter because Tsukasa doesn't understand subtlety, and he's wanted to for so long, and the lovely full lips were open in indignant protest. Startled, half displeased, Tsukasa grumbles something into Rui's mouth, around his tongue, creating delicious vibrations.
"Hmm?" Rui mumbles, licks lips, whether his own or Tsukasa's he couldn't say.
"Um," Makino stutters. "Er, um." She's embarrassed again, his sweet girl, and he could melt even as amusement ripples through him, tender as a raw wound.
They're simply too lovely, his idiot darlings. He keeps one arm around Tsukasa's neck, slings the other around her shoulders. We're all united, now. And they still, calmed and comforted, content in this slice of paradise, this brief strange interlude taken out of time. It seems now so natural and perfectly unquenchable, unchangeable, unchallengable, the thick intricate bond between them, but he knows that isn't necessarily so. As late as yesterday night they were fighting viciously, tearing at anything vulnerable they could get their hands on.
Yet another stupid fight, for all the eternal reasons, the problems dogging their heels like the hounds of Hades. Problems like Tsukasa being a selfish, terminally stupid little snot who was raised with too little control and too little affection. Take what you want, be wary of your mother, know how she can strike you down. How Tsukasa has to reassert himself, and can't interact, can't tell people in socially acceptable terms that I'm lonely and confused and I'm empty without you, help me out, like me, be with me. How the heart of gold Rui likes and hates to imagine (when the symbolism gets too literary – gold Tsukasa has, and gold is cold, gold doesn't keep you warm at night, not even now, in bright summer) is covered in several layers of harsh and ugly material.
Problems like Makino being average, sweet and wonderful and brilliant though she might be in some areas she will always be a commoner, with a commoner's way of thinking. There are things she does not, will not, understand. She's a good person, now and forever, but she isn't always perceptive, and pride is in her, stubborn as a weed.
Problems like Rui himself being confused, and stumbling headlong into things, not thinking them through or thinking too much, and regretting and hesitating.
Maybe Tsukasa's mother is right sometimes after all (and let's not pretend she won't be a problem when she finds out. What will be worst? Rui's rich and of the right pedigree, but the way to heirs and white weddings lies not in sodomizing your best friend. Makino is a pretty girl, but her blood is warmly red, never once shading over into blue, and her family's flat is half the size of Tsukasa's walk-in wardrobe): Take what you want!
He supposes they did, in their various ways. He was thinking of them, Makino and Tsukasa, when is he not? He was thinking of them and he stumbled over them and they'd been stupid again, and he decided it was time he stopped being stupid and was stupid too; and that makes approximately as much sense as Tsukasa's mangled idioms, but what did it matter, he couldn't stand it anymore, and he slugged Tsukasa in the jaw (touch me, be real to me) and swept Makino into his arms, fast and brief, kissed her chastely. She did flush, even after all this time, a pleased (dare I hope? I must) anxious rush of redness.
"Rui!" Tsukasa hollered, and decked him, and they fought, brightly, viciously, the culmination of a million childhood brawls. And perhaps Tsukasa was teary-eyed, as he gets during intense moments of emotion, and Makino was yelling at them to stop it, pulling at Tsukasa's shoulder (and he'd never shake her off, and she'd never hesitate grabbing for it, never again, oh Makino my love, oh Tsukasa my other love); and maybe Rui felt like …doing something… too, and crying isn't among his skills, he won't give the world the satisfaction, nor be ungrateful to it, so he laughed, breezy, and it was a kiss Tsukasa was mad about, wasn't it? so Rui tilted his head back, tasted blood and saw Tsukasa, a close-up, flashing eyes in the extreme vicinity of his own; Makino a glimpse of curious, exasperated imperfection clinging to him.
"Jesus," Rui muttered. "Don't be so jealous."
(Who are you to talk, Rui dear?)
He'd loved kissing Makino, but he loved kissing Tsukasa too.
Tsukasa punched him, hard knuckles against his cheek, stared slack-jawed, didn't move. On the ground beside them Makino knelt, tough fingers touching both of them. And here they were, and things happened.
Here we are. Let's go from here, together, my loves.
xxxxx