Love Blossom
cellphone
"I'm going to take a nap before the case meeting," he says after they both step into her apartment.
Haruka nods and heads to her kitchen table. Remembering that she still has to finish taking notes on her psychology reading and finally write a conclusion to her 17th century literature essay, she slumps onto a chair and curls up. She tries to remind herself that she has faced worse, but it's still not a fun task. On top of everything, Haruka had told Yakumo to come early from the meeting so they could have dinner together. She decides to just call for some Thai takeout later.
Not ready to start her homework just yet, she curls up into herself even further. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and prepares herself to face war, but is hit with a scent that unexpected, but nice and familiar.
Oops. She still has Yakumo's jacket on, she realizes. It might be spring, but unlike Yakumo, she is more sensitive to the cold.
A groan erupts when her hands gets caught in the sleeve, but quiets when she remembers that Yakumo is sleeping. During her struggle of getting the darned thing off, she discovers his cellphone. She throws the jacket on the ground.
Holding the device firmly by the edges, she stares at the black screen and contemplates.
He had browsed through her phone a few times, given her permission, when he was bored, but he had never returned the favour. Or maybe she just never asked.
Either way, Haruka thinks turning on the phone wouldn't hurt. Besides, Yakumo only uses his phone only during dire times. She would only do a small thing—look at his screensaver. Just to see what it was.
She wonders. Maybe his screensaver was his sleeping bag, he was far too attached to the thing. Or maybe, a cup of tea? She knows he loves tea. He had gotten her hooked after all. What else did Yakumo adore... maybe a picture of Nao?
Or... maybe a picture of herself?
No, she thinks. Yakumo would never. He wasn't that kind of boyfriend. It's not like her's was like that either, but that is because her friends were always grabbing at her phone so she kept a simple picture of a kitten for her phone.
Haruka doesn't admit it, but her heart slightly sinks when she sees a default fireworks background. Ah, his cellphone was just as boring as her's.
Well, it was perhaps time to change that. And then get started on her homework.
Later that night, when Yakumo joins her for takeout, she hears what happened during the investigative team's meeting. However, it is not from Yakumo, he was quiet the whole evening. But because Gotou-san calls her.
It turns out, Yakumo had pulled out his cellphone to show pictures he had taken of the crime scene, but abruptly stopped talking during his explanation as he stared, dumbfounded at his phone. He quickly snapped out of it and continued, but Gotou-san and Ishii-san noticed that he looked out of it suddenly. When Gotou-san asked later, Yakumo had said, "It's her doing," yawned and then pretended to nap.
Gotou-san asks Haruka what Yakumo meant, but Haruka merely apologizes for disturbing the meeting unintentionally and hangs up.
When she turns around, ready to question Yakumo, she finds that he had already fled into the safety of her bed. His phone was left on the table, so Haruka decides to pick it up and double-check something.
She smiles when she sees they're still there—all ten pictures that she had taken of herself and the other thirty she had taken of Yakumo sleeping.
Settling quietly into bed so as not to wake Yakumo, she thinks about her mission for tomorrow: to swindle Yakumo into taking a few pictures as a couple with her.
Besides, it was time she changed her screensaver to something a little less boring.
A/N: I should probably change the title of this fic to "How Many Ways Can Yakumo Suffer?"
Chances are Yakumo would not appreciate her changing his screensaver so Haruka didn't mess with that (I don't think he liked the ones she took of himself either), but I think he can tolerate, and possibly appreciate, pictures of his beloved. He would never delete them and claim their only purpose is, "So I can give Gotou-san a picture for when you finally get yourself in enough trouble that you go missing for days."