Officially, Ryoma was hosting the boy's sleepover, But clearly this didn't mean that Takumi was getting out of helping. In fact, Takumi was pulled into setting up from the moment school ended.
Ryoma was not the kind of person you said 'think small' to, though that would be evident from the moment you met him and wondered how much hairspray he used every morning. This was much the same when Takumi had hesitantly asked his older brother what he was planning to do for the sleepover.
"Oh, nothing much," Ryoma had said, and Takumi had immediately known that the next statement would be at odds with the first, "I was thinking that we could set up in the games room and do some stuff in there."
This 'stuff' had evolved into a full blown and organised games tournament, complete with a bunch of old party console games, a couple of handhelds dug out from a pile of old stuff no one but Takumi ever used anymore, two board games, a chess board, and scrabble. Takumi didn't know why Ryoma wanted to attempt to beat Odin at scrabble, but it wasn't going to happen. This was going to be an absolute disaster, he knew it, and they hadn't even worked out where everyone was going to sleep.
The obvious place for them to sleep, after they would presumably wreak the games room, was split between a few of the bedrooms, or maybe the dining room, or even the games room if everything went on so long that it would be impossible to get anyone out of the room without waking half the neighbourhood (and this wasn't exactly the sort of neighbourhood where houses were closer than an acre of land to each other, so Takumi did not make that statement lightly), but after Takumi had quietly admitted to his mother that last time there was a sleepover, Laslow had been pushed into the pond, she had forbidden them from existing near anything too breakable. This ruled out all of the guest bedrooms, which his mother liked to put fancy vases in, as well as the dining room with its various decorations, including the chandelier that he didn't imagine his father would be happy to see broken. This meant that they were designated an area of the garden to set up in, far, far away from the house. There was a tree house down there, but it was not big enough for the twenty or so people who would be attending tonight. Not that Takumi minded sleeping close to Leo, but he did mind sleeping close to someone scary like Xander or, heaven forbid, Saizo. Ryoma consistently told him that Saizo was nice and not really that scary, but Takumi didn't want to go anywhere near him, even if he was his brother's best friend.
This saw them setting up two eight person tents in the garden at half three that afternoon with only the two of them to do it. It was very, very difficult, and Takumi was despairing about what he would smell like in the big room full of all of them. His parents were great and he loved them, but making them sleep out in the garden was way too much. All getting Niles to walk four hundred metres in the dark guaranteed was that he would start feeling somebody up (Corrin, no doubt).
Despite all the odds, they got all the tents up and equipped with blankets as well as the treehouse before five o'clock, which meant that Takumi had just enough time to put some new clothes on so he could pretend he hadn't just spent an hour screaming at Ryoma that 'no, I don't go to the gym, I can't carry stuff this heavy like you can'.
Subaki was first to show up, equipped as usual with several bags of popcorn. Hinoka said that the girls all brought their own food and then ordered pizza, but it was their tradition to just order whichever takeaway was voted in (usually it was the pretentious sushi place, but his mother had said that if they wanted sushi she'd just make all of them a proper meal) and then they all each brought a bag of popcorn which they made a queue to heat up in the microwave. It was a strange tradition, but it worked.
Takumi lead Subaki through to the games room and told him to write down his 'gamer name' or whatever Ryoma wanted them to do. He didn't get this kind of thing.
"Takumi! Your boyfriend is here!" Ryoma called, and Takumi blushed fiercely, especially when Subaki, young and innocent as ever, asked him who his boyfriend was.
"I don't have a boyfriend," he muttered, leaving the poor boy to his confusion so he could beat his brother up. Maybe Leo would help him, and then they could get away from all the gaming stuff and go and read books or play chess together and then sleep in the same room without a bunch of people in there with them making kissing noises every two seconds because they thought they were funny.
Takumi stopped short at the door. Damn it, Leo just wasn't fair. He was too attractive, it just wasn't funny when he was trying to talk to him and his words got stuck in his throat or shot up into a soprano range. "Hi," he said, waving to the two at the door. Xander looked intimidating as usual, of course. He'd brought that one up with Leo a few times, and Leo told him to take one good look at Xander and judge if his hair, like Ryoma's, was sharp enough to use as a weapon (Leo had said implement of war, but it was what he meant).
"Hello," Leo said, and he smiled his stupidly blindingly white smile that was just completely unfair. "We brought some flowers for your mum to thank her for letting us stay." He handed Takumi the bunch of flowers and Takumi had to drag him and Xander away from Ryoma before the wolf whistles got too noticeable. Sometimes his brother was way too embarrassing to even be in the presence of.
"Thank you," he said, desperately looking around the room for somewhere to put the flowers. Where were all the vases? Where did you even put flowers? His mum was out buying food or something and he didn't know where to put them. "My dad's teaching at the moment and my mum's out, but I'll let them know later." Thinking quickly, he put them in the kitchen and then took Leo and Xander through to the games room. "You have to think of a code name or something. For games." Leo laughed, and Takumi felt a bit better. It wasn't too stupid then, nor too babyish for Leo. He'd been sort of worried about that.
He spent about fifteen minutes running people back and forth and explaining the silly name thing. There were some interesting names by the time they got started, such as 'birate', 'danxer' and Ryoma's own patented 'lobsteryoma'. Takumi had tried to go for something that wasn't too embarrassing, but he still had to explain to a few people what the yumi in takyumi meant.
Then the tournament began, and Takumi was pretty glad that he had a form of experience with all of these games, because he had not expected that Niles would ignore the rules of biology and be so good at aiming things despite a lack of depth perception, and he also hadn't ever thought that Laslow (ylisse3ever) was that good at dancing that he could beat literally everyone in Just Dance. Every single one of them. As predicted, Odin (thegreatandterribleodin) won every game of scrabble, and it turned out that Xander was oddly good at fighting games, and him and Ryoma played a fiery match that almost ended in a fist fight.
They took a break about halfway through to eat the food his mum had prepared for all of them, which was much, much better than getting takeaway again and everyone agreed (especially Leo, who was not much of a fan of sushi but preferred the soup even if he couldn't pronounce it). Then they moved on to the second half of the matches, including the very long chess tournament that involved Xander very obviously letting Subaki beat him when it was obvious he could have won in a couple more turns. There was also the dissolving of all the efforts to keep things appropriate for the younger kids like Arthur and Subaki after Niles' strategy to beat Corrin at chess was revealed to be 'stroke his inner leg and hope he gets distracted'.
It took forever and it was about two in the morning by the time they'd finished counting up all the scores (a surprisingly difficult task considering that half the people in the room could do long multiplication whilst half asleep) and it was revealed that, of all people, Leo and Takumi drew for the top spot. No wonder Leo had let that chess match go to a stalemate, the little shit. The very lovable little shit, but Takumi wasn't going to say that.
There was no prize, but that was probably because Takumi chased Niles out of the room after he suggested that the prize be a kiss from the top placing players. From there, they all stumbled their way down to the bottom of the garden to go to sleep.
No sleeping was done by pretty much anyone except Keaton, who could sleep through the apocalypse, and that was basically what happened, because when his mother came down the garden path in the morning to get them all in for breakfast, there were six people standing at the base of a tree while Hayato sat right at the top, stranded, and Kaden was trying to climb the tree to get him down. Laslow and Odin were both soaking wet for some reason that no one could determine, and Takumi and Leo were half a field away, sitting in a tree and playing chess together. Leo had beaten him three times in a row.
