Ok, I know I left you hanging there. For ages. And I'm really sorry. But endings are seriously the worst thing ever to write.
This chapter was originally the first half of a mega-monster chapter, but then I ended up abandoning my plan completely and wrote an extra 3000 words. So I split it into two separate chapters. I hope I picked an acceptable check point...
Anyway, don't let that worry you. The second half (i.e. the last chapter, shock horror) is already written so I can guarantee it'll be up within a few days.
Also, I sort of crammed half the fic's plotline into just these two chapters, so... it might seem a bit rushed. Sorry about that. I'm not great at this sort of thing.
And thanks to everyone who's stuck with it this far. You deserve an award, seriously.
Love All, Trust A Few, Do Wrong To None
When they break apart, it feels like both an eternity and a nanosecond has passed. Although it feels to Shion as if all the air has escaped his lungs, he keeps his expression cautiously neutral, uncertain now of Nezumi's feelings and unable to predict his next move. And Nezumi truly is capable of anything. Would he suddenly confess reciprocating feelings? Apologise profusely and say it was a mistake? Get unreasonably angry and totally freak out?
As it so happens, Nezumi does none of these things.
He holds Shion's liquid lilac gaze for a moment more, just long enough for Shion to detect the shock in Nezumi's wide-eyed stare, as if he himself has only just realised what he's done.
"I –" Nezumi bites off awkwardly, for once completely open, guards down and walls gone. He clears his throat and takes a quiet step back, eyes flicking about nervously, landing on anything in the room besides Shion. A pale hand reaches up to ghost over his ponytail, thin lips parting in what looks to be some sort of explanation or protest – but no sound emerges, as if his voice is being swallowed up by the heavy blush creeping up his throat. He turns his gaze to the ground and makes a strange expression; tense and stubbornly rigid, unmoving. His hands deliberately work themselves in and out of fists, and his breath is audible even from three feet away.
Grey eyes glance up, and when Shion meets them their intensity burns.
"Nezumi," Shion begins, aiming for quietly confident but sounding a lot more like nervously pleading.
The blush reaches the bridge of Nezumi's nose, and he sucks in a thin breath. He stays silent.
"Nezumi," Shion repeats, a little firmer though his voice still shakes. "I think we should talk."
The taller man physically cringes at the words, and the breath is let out in a stuttering puff of air. For a moment Shion thinks for once Nezumi will listen, but then he quickly sidesteps Shion and hurries out of the hall, the grand door swinging wildly in his wake.
He doesn't look back.
Shion watches him go with an unsettled stomach. Perhaps he should be following, asking Nezumi to just calm down for a moment – because he has never seen Nezumi lose his composure like that – and talk this through like adults… but, truth be told, Shion isn't feeling like much of an adult either. He would much rather let Nezumi collect his thoughts on his own than face him and the possible rejection right now. Besides, right now, after what just happened, he doesn't think he could hold a conversation with Nezumi without passing out.
He swivels his head slowly around, every movement and thought sluggish with an odd numbness that could only be the icy edges of shock. His gaze flutters about the room until the piano catches his eye. Specifically, the sheet music on the stand. Shion moves towards it – he might as well collect the music, while he's here – but all his limbs feel weak and clumsy, as if he's not entirely used to having them yet, and he very nearly trips up the stairs to the stage.
He reaches out for the flimsy paper, but his trembling fingers halt just a half inch away.
His own handwriting. His own uneven scrawl of notes and diagonal bar lines, his writing as much of a mess as the music itself… and yet, when Nezumi played it…
He makes it come alive.
Sounds swim in his ears, echoes of the magic Nezumi brewed at this very piano only minutes before, transforming Shion's own scruffy notes into an overwhelming ocean of octaves, triplets and trills. He still can't quite believe it, that anyone could make music that astounding.
He really is something else.
Behind his eyes, unbidden, flash thoughts – memories – of that kiss just moments ago, and the shiver in his hand streaks up his arm and down his spine, leaving trails of goosebumps tingling along his skin.
A little breathless, he collects the numerous dog-eared, coffee-stained pages and holds them close to his chest. Shion knows he should feel more frustrated about not bringing a bag to carry all the sheets in – but somehow he can't bring himself to think past how warm the paper feels in his hands.
He doesn't really remember the long walk home, apart from the wild thoughts flitting endless and disorganised through his mind. He does remember the drop of his stomach at the realisation that no matter how much time Shion spends with Nezumi, he'll probably never get even an inch closer to figuring the enigma out. He also remembers the stark lack of annoyance at the thought; in fact, there is a distinct fondness surrounding it. After all, Shion has spent his entire life able almost without effort to figure out any and every problem set before him. To be able to figure Nezumi out so easily… well, it would be a bit disappointing, really.
Neither does Shion remember the rest of the night, or even any of Sunday. He's sure that there was at least one conversation with his mother, and he must have eaten quite a lot of dinner at some point, because when he wakes up on Monday morning he can barely stomach breakfast. Karan shoots him a few worried glances, but obviously deems his distracted state something not worth bothering him about. She laughs a little as he struggles to find his shoes, mentioning how the anxious excitement surrounding him reminds her of his very first day of school. He tries his best to look exasperated at that comment, though the effect of his deadpan look is probably dampened by the sweater half-pulled over his head.
He arrives unusually early to school. He isn't entirely sure why; maybe he's eager to get back into his normal routine, or maybe dodging speeding cars on his bike is an easy distraction from his nerves, currently coiled like charged wires.
He has first period in the seat beside Nezumi.
A hollow click echoes through the courtyard as Shion locks up his bike, and he begins meandering to class. Teachers are already scurrying around, and there is a distant metallic clank from the kitchens.
"Shion!"
His shriek ricochets down the corridor.
Safu appears in his line of sight, one eyebrow severely raised. "Are you okay?"
One hand over his chest in a vain attempt to calm his stuttering heartbeat, Shion breathes a heavy sigh. "Yeah. Sorry. Just a bit jumpy." He tries for a comforting smile, though by the look on Safu's face it comes across as more of a tortured grimace.
"I would never have noticed," she deadpans, hands on hips while she gives him a solid look-over, as if checking a machine for loose screws.
Her humour does lighten Shion's mood, even if only a little. The awkward chuckle he gives her is mostly genuine. "It's a long story," he tries to explain, seeing the concern in Safu's stance. "I'll tell you about it at lunch." He huffs, and adds under his breath, "if I survive that long."
Safu's other eyebrow rises to join the first, but she allows the comment to slip past. "So why are you here so early?"
Shion shrugs. "I woke up early, I guess."
Safu very clearly doesn't believe that one bit, but she keeps her mouth shut. To Shion's utter relief, she's feeling amiable enough to let the conversation slide into light chitchat about her weekend, happy to ramble about her grandmother and pie-baking until they reach the end of their mutual journey to class.
"See you at break," Safu says through a grin, waving slightly as she enters her classroom. Shion nods his assent, and opens the adjacent door.
To his surprise, there are already students milling about. His World History teacher is sitting at his desk, looking very busy with papers and books – but at the sound of the closing door, he glances up.
Damn, Shion hisses in his mind. He'd been hoping to get away unnoticed. The last thing he wants right now is a string of disapproving looks from his superiors.
But to his surprise, the man smiles. "Welcome back, Shion. Did you have a nice break?"
Okay, so maybe there was a little sarcasm there. But it didn't seem like he'd fallen entirely out of his teacher's favour, at least.
Shion isn't sure what to say, so he tries for a polite smile and quickly shuffles over to his seat on the back row. It feels strange, pulling out the familiar chair and hearing it squeal in protest as the legs drag along the parquet flooring. So much has happened since the last time he sat here….
He spends the next ten minutes gazing blankly out of the window, through the glass spotted and warped with age, at the meticulously trimmed hedgerows lining the wall of the nearby park. No matter where you go in Chronos, the view is beautiful.
As the minutes pass, the room gradually fills with students; the hushed muttering surrounding him slowly crescendos into a roaring cacophony of sleep-deprived teenagers, and almost without Shion noticing it, one very familiar face slips into the seat beside him like a diamond amongst the dirt.
He's almost afraid to look. The fact that Nezumi hasn't requested a change of seat is a good sign, but…
"Welcome back."
No sarcasm. No witty comments about Shion's nerdy eagerness. Not even a hint of that beautiful lopsided smirk, reminiscent of a cat with a satisfyingly full stomach.
Shion turns to face him. Indeed, the smirk is nowhere to be seen, his expression guarded but not suspicious. Neither a sneer nor a smile in sight. In fact, Nezumi is ever so slightly hunched, his head ever so slightly dipped – and for one heartstopping second, he appears almost shy.
After a pause just a little too long for comfort, Shion manages a hoarse, "Thanks."
It isn't like before. Nezumi meets his eyes without uncertainty. There is no panic in his stance, no shock; his gaze is strong and firm and fierce.
Shion can't look away.
"Shion? Are you even listening to me?"
Lavender eyes blink languidly from beside her on the sidewalk, slowly coming back into focus, and a slender finger pushes glasses up a button nose. Shion sighs. "Sorry, Safu."
Safu echoes his sigh, crossing her arms in weak irritation and resisting the urge to rub the bridge of her nose. She doesn't quite manage to cover her aggressively heavy footsteps. "I thought you were distracted before, but this… This is a whole new kettle of fish." She purses her lips, aiming a pointed glare his way. "Tell me what happened."
His smile is one of fond resignation. "I'm not sure how you'll react," he blurts, honest and frank as ever.
Oh no. Now that was not a good sign. "What do you mean?" she asks, trying not to sound too wary. "Come on, if you're smiling like that it can't be that bad…" But she trails off, and it almost sounds like a question.
Shion sighs again, and this time it's a heavy, weighty sound. He breaks eye contact. "Nezumi…" He stumbles a little over his words, and Safu swears that's a flush darkening his cheeks. "We kissed."
Safu isn't aware that she's stopped walking until she sees Shion pause and turn from three feet in front of her. "You're taking it badly, aren't you," he states. Groans. Cards an aggravated hand through snowy locks. "Oh man."
"No," she amends hurriedly. "It's not – I'm just… surprised."
"Yeah," Shion chuckles breathlessly, lips widening into a dopey grin he doesn't seem to notice he's wearing. "That makes two of us."
That confuses her. But she sets it aside for the moment, deciding to focus on the far larger issue. "You kissed."
Shion half-shrugs, eyebrows raised innocently. "He ran away right afterwards, so I thought maybe it was a mistake, but when I saw him today…" Shion's smile warms and softens.
"You –" She has to cut herself off before she completely loses it. Sure, she'd noticed the looks Nezumi gave her best friend when he thought they weren't looking – and maybe Shion wasn't, but she sure as hell was. She'd known the interest was mutual. Perhaps even before those two knew it themselves.
But she hadn't actually expected it to go anywhere.
Shion is too self-doubting, and Nezumi is too private. She'd been so sure that neither of them would work up the courage to make the first move…
Well. She'd been wrong. There really is a first time for everything, after all.
Safu draws in a deep, deep breath, closes her eyes, and lets all the shock out in one heavy exhalation. Brown eyes open to meet Shion's anxious stare. "I'm happy for you."
The words are a little hard to say – Shion is her best friend. Her only friend. The thought of sharing him is... a little painful, to be brutally honest. But that doesn't mean her words are any less true.
Shion looks surprised. "Really?" he wonders aloud. "I was expecting something along the lines of how unreliable and dangerous and suspicious Nezumi is and that I'd be better off without him…"
Safu sighs in exasperation. "Shion. Really? After I've spent so much time trying to get you two together?"
Shion's jaw hits the floor. "You – what –?"
Come on, she thinks. Don't tell me he didn't even notice.
Safu can't help herself. She bursts out laughing, and it seems to only add to Shion's alarmed confusion.
"Seriously," she affirms between hearty cackles. "I'm really happy for you."
Shion still seems caught and tangled up between relief and panic, and his responding chuckle sounds frazzled at best – but he's smiling. "Thank you."
Safu eyes the mash being pushed half-heartedly around his plate. "So what are you going to do?"
Shion glances up, shooting her his best I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about look from across the lunch table.
Chestnut eyes roll dramatically around in their sockets. "About Nezumi, Shion. Nezumi. You know, the handsome bad boy with a motorbike you shared a passionate kiss with?"
Shion can feel his cheeks throb beet red, and he glances wildly around at the students filling the cafeteria. "Shhh!"
Safu's smirking at him. "Oh come on, Shion. No one's listening." She stabs a bland-looking vegetable with her fork. She stares at him, her gaze sharp. "It's been days since you told me, Shion. And god knows how many more days since it actually happened. But you haven't done anything about it."
"I know –" he begins to protest, the words falling out of his mouth on autopilot – but he stops, because she's right. He's spent days exchanging long, meaningful looks with Nezumi across the classroom, down the corridor, even through the window as he watches Nezumi pull up in the parking lot and try not to let his hair get caught when he takes his motorcycle helmet off.
Sometimes those looks are frighteningly intense, and sometimes Nezumi smiles at him in a way that makes Shion really need to sit down for fear his knees might give way. But neither of them have spoken since their first lesson back on Monday.
"I know," he repeats with a tone of finality.
Safu's expression softens in sympathy. "He's waiting. He's an idiot who expects everyone else to put in all the effort in a relationship without needing anything of him, but – he's waiting for you, Shion. He wants you to approach him. If Nezumi won't come to you, don't just sit around and let your feelings go to waste. Go to him. Carpe diem."
After all that, nothing happened.
Shion had spent his remaining school hours thinking desperately about what to do. He'd run through every possible outcome in his mind… but, in the end, he'd been so preoccupied just thinking about it that he forgot to actually act.
He opens the door and the bells tinkles his arrival. A waft of warm, humid air swaddles him.
"I'm home," he announces, his voice carrying to the kitchen, where his mother is hard at work baking.
Karan peeps around the doorframe, her grin bright and floury. "How was school?"
Shion shrugs, dumping his bag by the entryway with an uncharacteristic bout of lethargy.
Her smile droops into encouraging sympathy. "Not good?"
This time Shion's shrug is a little more forceful. "Not good. But not bad, per se."
Karan gathers the dough with one hand and re-flours the countertop with the other as she waits for him to elaborate.
"Nothing happened. Nothing at all," Shion continues after an exasperated huff. "That's the problem."
It's Karan's turn to sigh – which catches Shion's attention. She's wearing her motherly-yet-firm expression, and she finally turns her back to her baking, arms crossing over her chest. Never a good sign. "Shion."
He tries his best to look like he doesn't know what on earth he could have done to deserve that tone of voice – and, to be honest, he doesn't. "Yes?"
A brown eyebrow rises with just a twinge of impatience. "Something's bothering you."
Oh boy.
"You've been acting strangely for days. I thought maybe if I gave you a little time, you'd explain what's going on… but apparently I need to be direct." Some of her sternness is let out in a long exhale. "I just want to know if there's anything I can do to help."
How I wish there was. "Sorry," he starts, letting himself fall against the counter. He can feel the sharp edge digging into his hip. "It's… about Nezumi." He shushes her protests. "There's nothing you can do, Mama. I think this is something I have to work through on my own." He shoots her his strongest smile. "Don't worry. If things take a turn for the worse, you'll be the first one I'll tell."
Karan puffs out a laugh. "Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
He ruffles his hair, a nervous habit. "I don't know what else to say."
Shion glances around again, agitated and paranoid. The corridor is just as empty as it was ten seconds ago, but that doesn't seem to calm his nerves any.
He fingers the slip of paper in his hand, chewing on his lip in apprehension. Part of him can't believe he's actually doing this. It feels sneaky and wrong, but also a strange kind of exciting – and he pushes the paper under the locker door before he can convince himself out of it, and legs it down the corridor with a shit-eating grin on his face.
Nezumi swears under his breath as he wrestles with three textbooks, a cup of coffee and a locker key simultaneously, wondering why humans couldn't have evolved a third hand.
"Fuck this," he grumbles after another minute, dropping the textbooks onto the lino flooring and sighing in relief. The coffee is passed to his left hand and he opens his locker with his right – "Shit!"
He barely catches the folded piece of paper before it hits the ground.
What is this?
Folders are pushed out of the way inside his locker to make room for his coffee cup and keys, freeing up his hands to unfold the scrap of paper – which, it turns out, is far from a scrap; a near full sheet of lined paper folded into the size of a quarter.
Nezumi spares a moment to marvel at how that's even physically possible, before squinting to read the small, rough writing harshly blurred by the fold lines.
Lost Town Central Fountain 5 pm
Don't be late
He stares for a moment at the blunt message, re-reading it to make sure it's not just a figment of his imagination. Nezumi checks both sides in search of a name, some hint as to who wrote it, but he comes up empty.
He purses his lips in thought. I know that handwriting…
Well. It doesn't really matter. It looks like he'll be finding out the culprit this afternoon, anyway.
Shion's nerves haven't calmed any since this morning. In fact, he suspects they might have gotten worse. He hasn't been able to get thoughts of the note out of his mind all day.
He tugs the worn beanie lower and pushes his glasses further up his nose. The gentle noise of the fountain is calming, and he moves to sit on the edge of the concrete rim. He dips his fingers into the water, and pale eyebrows rise at how cold the water feels against his hands. He thought it would be warmer, considering the sweltering July heat pressing humidly down upon them this afternoon.
Shion checks his watch. 16:56. Nezumi isn't late yet. He shouldn't worry.
Did Nezumi even get his note? He'd shown no abnormal reaction when they passed each other in the corridor. Just a burning stare held a little too long, the ritual they'd somehow established between them over the past week. Perhaps it was because both of them felt that emotions were better seen than spoken.
Until now. Shion doesn't know about Nezumi, but the tension between them is eating him alive. That's why he left a note. No matter what Nezumi might think about the situation, they need to talk.