Jou's been waiting for this for a long time.
He didn't have any expectations for years. It's still something that shocks him, sometimes, realizing he's thinking of the future as more than a burden, thinking of life as something that might look up instead of remaining an inevitable slow descent. And it was easy, before, easier to ask for something he knew he wouldn't get, to avoid facing the truth of wanting something, wanting someone he didn't deserve. If he asked the right question, even the burden of refusal wasn't on him; if he said the right thing, he could get Sugane to refuse over and over and over again, until Jou could shape the words on his own lips as they came out of Sugane's throat.
He thought, for a long time, that was the closest they would ever get.
It was hard to stop asking that doomed question, even knowing what it meant, even knowing that he was giving it up to gain something far greater in the future. The routine was comfortable, and relying on the future was not. Jou nearly made the offer again more than once, he could feel the half-hearted invitation against his lips and bubbling up his throat, but he managed to close his mouth on the words, hold back the question he knows Sugane will refuse.
Sugane never comments on the sudden cessation of Jou's regular drinking invitations. There's not a word, not a blink to indicate that he so much as notices the absence, although Jou thinks the blond might be spending more time watching him than he used to. He's can't be sure, though; it might just be a function of his own greater attention, his ever-improving ability now to see things past his own head as some of his numbness fades, as he relearns how to exist inside the space of an actual life. They still talk, casually, with Jou trying to calculate how close he can stand before it becomes too much and Sugane flushed and smiling like he's catching happiness from Jou's presence instead of the other way around.
Jou considers asking Sugane out somewhere else, for coffee or dinner or some other deliberate 'date' construct, to give the blond the chance to voice the yes that is in his eyes all the time, the pleading reciprocation Jou could see even before, when Sugane's mouth was forming around the reminder, again, that he's a minor, that he can't accept Jou's invitation as structured. But there's a history, now, a habit Jou can't entirely break, and besides, he needs the time to ground himself out, to face down some of the demons that kept him asking impossible things of Sugane instead of risking himself on the possibility of a yes.
By the time Sugane's birthday arrives, Jou has been ready for weeks.
He planned originally to be waiting outside Sugane's classes, to greet him with a grin and maybe a self-deprecating chuckle before echoing his previous question, tasting the words in this new situation. But he's different, now, and Sugane's different; Sugane sees him a little more clearly, and Jou can see himself in the mirror, now, can see the shape of a person in his skin instead of the automaton he sometimes used to feel like. And it feels disingenuous to ask when he knows so clearly what the answer will be, to wait for a suggestion when he thinks Sugane must be all but expecting the question.
He delays for nearly an hour, mulling over options in the back of his head, but when the idea strikes him he knows it to be the right one without thinking, without analyzing. It settles into his head with the weight of the right idea, the power of certainty as if it's a puzzle piece filling in a gap that could never be anything else. Jou's reaching for his NOTE without hesitating, the words forming on his tongue as he opens it, finally certain.
"Sugane." The letters on the page lack the warmth of that name in his mouth, the low purr of pleasure under the syllables, but they are enough nonetheless. "Today we go drinking."
Even over the distance, the flattening of emotion into black on white, Jou is sure Sugane will hear the promise in the words.
