"Are you mad at me?" asked Mob.

"What? No, of course not. Why would I be mad at you?" Teru was genuinely confused, which was normal enough around Mob, but this was one misunderstanding he couldn't allow to continue. He'd be mad enough if anyone else was mad at Mob, but for Mob to think-

"You've been avoiding me." Mob looked unsure. He shuffled a little in place, even though they were sitting down. They were sitting so close that Teru's unseasonably-light windbreaker made a swooshing sound every time Mob fidgeted. Of course, he was wearing the windbreaker over a sweater so fuzzy and yellow it may or may not have been made out of his old wig.

They had commandeered a play structure at Juniper Park, though there was no one to commandeer it from. Winter had driven the neighborhood kids indoors. Teru was a little disappointed. He hadn't asked the kids to call in onii-san, but even the implication he was half as reliable as Mob left him blushing. Not that showing off was very reliable.

Teru had to school his features so he wouldn't scowl and risk Mob's belief it was aimed at him. His self-control was better than that.

"I wasn't avoiding- I wasn't trying to avoid- Okay. I was avoiding you a little bit, but not because of anything you did. Well, not anything specific," Teru clarified.

Mob still looked unsure.

"I like you," said Teru.

Mob's aura spiked, gray-blue and fragile as icicles. Teru refrained from reaching out with his own. That would be worse, somehow, then going in for a kiss before technically knowing his crush was unrequited, and Teru hated himself for having even considered that in the countless hypotheticals only ever seemed more and more evitable.

He'd made it months without confessing. Months in which his crush had festered into something like obsession. It had become impossible to be around Mob without letting something slip, and not being around Mob was just… not tenable.

Besides, it felt like lying, and lying to Mob felt wrong.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't going to tell you. I know you like Tsubomi-san, or at least not boys, or at least n- not me, so you can pretend I never said that- anything, and I swear I'll get better at pretending too... Or if you d- don't want to me friends with me anymore, I understand, and I don't bl-"

"I like you too, Teruki-kun."

That was the first time Mob had ever called him anything other than Hanazawa. Sure, it was usually Hanazawa-kun, but it was still a family name, like they were strangers, or rivals, or anything other than friends.

Mob still wanted to be friends.

Teru could have started crying in relief, but he had more self-control than that.

"But…?"

Mob's nose wrinkled, and Teru had to bite his lips to keep from kissing it. "But what?"

"But- What?" Now Teru was confused. "Weren't you going to say that?"

"Say what?"

"But," said Teru, but now he felt self-conscious for saying it so much, like he was in elementary school and every homonym for a halfway dirty word was the best thing since sliced sashimi. "But I don't like you like that. Or but I don't like you as much as you like me. Or but you strangled me, and that's kind of a dealbreaker. Or-"

Mob reached out and touched Teru's lips with the pad of his thumb, calloused from all those dumbbells.

Teru did not know what that meant. None of his girlfriends had done something like that, so it obviously wasn't romantic, but-

"You're bleeding," said Mob. Now his nose and his forehead were wrinkled. Teru had to bite his lips even harder to keep from- Oh.

"It's not that bad," he said. Mob didn't unfurrow anything, so he added, "It's just a split lip."

"I like you like that," said Mob, but that couldn't be right, and his face was still scrunched up like the windbreaker between Teru's fingers. Mob started prying those fingers gently apart. Teru had absolutely no idea what that meant- he had no idea what anything meant anymore, but he was starting to get hopeful, and that never ended well. "I don't know how much you like me, but I like you a lot. More than I ever liked Tsubomi-chan, or maybe just different, because- because it's real. It's not in the past or the present, but right now. And I actually know you, which turns out to be pretty important. You did strangle me, but I've done that too, so I know it doesn't tend to be planned out. Please stop trying to hurt yourself."

"I- what- you- I'm not." Teru was actually quite proud of himself for getting out what could technically count as a full sentence.

"You're telling yourself bad things about yourself. I've done it too. I'm trying not to. It may not seem that bad, maybe even better than the alternative, but it can be…" Mob was clearly searching for the right word, "insidious," he settled on, and Teru had to agree, that was a good word.

"You try to be humble and end up believing you're bad. I don't want you to believe you're bad. I definitely don't want you to believe I believe you're bad. I believe you're…" Mob hesitated again, "beautiful."

That was more than Teru had heard Mob say some days, so he figured the least he could do in exchange was shut up for a few minutes and think about it. Except he could feel Mob's aura spike more the longer he stayed silent, and thinking wasn't an option with Mob that close anyway, so Teru did what he did best and fucked shit up.

He kissed Mob.

He was about to pull back, apologize, and possibly offer to commit seppuku, when Mob kissed him back.

Teru kissed back-back, maybe a little too enthusiastically, but Mob didn't seem to mind. He was holding Teru's hands at least as tightly as Teru had been gripping his windbreaker and only stopped kissing Teru when his lip began to bleed again. Teru bit his lip again to keep from chasing Mob's.

"You're beautiful," was all he could say, like he was still on the schoolground, but it made Mob bloom.

Actually, Mob made the flowers bloom. All of them, for as far as Teru could see. Flowers on trees, flowers out of season, even some knotweed and dandelions. Of course, Mob wouldn't discriminate between flowers and weeds. He didn't care a lick about what other people thought. If he thought something was beautiful, he-

"I love you," said Teru, because apparently his self-control was shit.

Their auras swirled together, blue melting into yellow, like Van Gogh's Starry Night.

"I love you too, Teru."