Ritsu Onodera's phone buzzed impatiently in his coat pocket. He glanced up at his apartment building to shoot a glare toward where Masamune Takano was surely spying on him.
"Takano?" he said, holding the phone to his ear. "What is it?"
"Turn around and come back."
"Wh-"
"That's an order."
"You are acting like a child."
Hoping Takano was watching, he made a show of hanging up, turning around, and marching away.
Takano sighed. He'd turned off all the lights and wandered into the bedroom, where he sat down on the floor. This felt like fucking acid filtering through his heart's chambers, making it blackerand bittererthan it had been before.
Takano checked the clock and groaned. Scratch that. It hadn't even been five minutes.
He went to bed early, hungry, and embarrassed. But, the images of Onodera that his unconscious mind conjured up irritated his sleep, which brought the bags under his eyes and the burn in the back of his throat. The next morning, he called Onodera, itching for the sound of his voice, lost without it. It was also 4 AM, approximately, but Takano didn't care.
"What is it?" Onodera answered irritably.
"I forgot to tell you something important."
"Oh, okay. Is it about work? Did something happen?"
"I love you."
Onodera hung up; Takano resisted breaking his phone into a thousand pieces.
He was whipped and denying it would make the rope burn worse.
Takano was the first to arrive at work. He was also the first to finish. He was the first to make snap comments at Kisa, who brought cookies into the workplace. He was the first to fall asleep while sitting on a heap of paperwork and angry phone calls. He was the first to go home, but only because Yokozawa dragged his ass down to the lobby and kicked him out of Marukawa for the day, on the grounds of "bad attitude" and, when Takano had begun to protest, "insubordination".
He couldn't stop fucking thinking.
Onodera was having fun without him, probably, with his family and his cousins and his distant relatives. And those cousins'friends. Onodera was- probably- mingling with those relatives, no matter how the little shit was at socializing; mingling, merrily, smiling smiles that should be reserved for Takano. Ritsu Onodera's smile had always been the light of Takano's life. Obviously, everyonenoticed it. And, because of that smile, he was probably getting hit onby the cousins' friends. Not just the smile, but the dorky way he stood and the manner in which he talked about books, like a child talking about race cars. Onodera was air-headed, too. He wouldn't realize what was happening with those idiot girls until it was, indeed, happening, and Onodera would be hitched with some chick from Hokkaido before Takano knew it, and that would be the tragic end of their not-really-real-but-it-almost-happened love story.
Takano groaned. He'd dragged himself into the elevator of his apartment complex on autopilot. He didn't want to think about all the innocents he'd probably rammed into in his Ritsu-induced, jealous fantasy. He dragged his feet down the hallway.
Ritsu should have been in his apartment, but he wasn't. Takano knew he wasn't. God damn it.
Rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, he opened the door to his apartment and flicked the lights on. Immediately, something was wrong. He could tell, exactly, without looking up, without even looking around, without even opening his eyes, that something was wrong. He could tell, because he tripped the second he tried to take the step into his apartment, falling flat on his face on bare floor. One, his apartment had a little floor rug covering most of the interior. Where the hell had that gone? Two, he didn't own a pair of brown slip-on loafers. Defying all logic, there they were, in size 26.5 cm, hazardously left in front of the door. Who the hell did that?
This wasn't his apartment. It was Ritsu's.
This was a mistake. He should get out of here like a decent, respectful person, who cared about the privacy rights of his neighbors would. Hurriedly, Takano got his ass off of the ground, shutting the door and locking it.
"That stupid fucker…."
He took off his shoes. He grinned, taking in the interior of Ritsu's apartment. So, Ritsu's vacation would shape up to be fun after all.