Archive of Our Own

“My conclusion is this: an absolutely horrendous film! A stunning example of everything not to do.”

“Really?” Rui asks, turning to raise a brow as they walk out of the theater. “Not a single redeeming feature comes to mind?”

He stifles his chuckle at the grim, disbelieving look Tsukasa aims him with in return. “Tell me—does anything come to yours?”

“I think dwelling on that movie at length is a disservice to the brain,” Rui answers without missing a beat. “But to leave it at that seems like a waste, especially considering we were supposed to be using it as an opportunity to study.”

Here's a secret about Rui’s ideas: they’re plentiful, this is true. But they aren’t constant, and for all that he’s called impulsive he used to be rather patient, sitting with them to finish forming for days. It’s only now that he’s started to prod them, demand from them.

Tsukasa is frowning at him, head tilted. “What do you suggest?”

Give me something he’ll find fun, Rui instructs his brain.

(One hour and forty five minutes in that theater and not a single honest smile. To call that film mediocre was far too forgiving.)

“Well,” he drawls, the words called to his lips as the thought obediently takes shape. “If we’re both so convinced of its failure in its purpose as a romance, then it only goes to follow that we could write a better one, don’t you think?”

Tsukasa blinks, before his face lights up with a grin, cheered in entirety.

Success.

.

.

“If there’s any place to begin, it should be the first meeting.”

Tsukasa declares this standing in the center of Rui’s newly-cleared carpet, hands on his hips. In the meanwhile, Rui simply leans back on his palms to watch him.

“Just like you to jump straight into the worst of their infractions.”

“In arguably the most vital aspect! Yet, the way they delivered it—”

Rui hums in the back of his throat, feeling his nose scrunch as he remembers. Careless delivery, a complete lack of investment, and the most overt sense of disinterest in it all. They’d barely been ten minutes in, and yet Rui distinctly remembers thinking ah, this was a mistake.

“It certainly left a lot to be desired,” he agrees.

Tsukasa scoffs, crossing his arms. “An understatement! The lead carried himself with about all the passion of a robot—”

“No need to be so harsh,” Rui puts in mildly. “I think my creations outstrip him by a fair margin.”

“—but if he was searching for her based on a rumor, the least they could have given him was a bit of intrigue.”

And there’s that delightful warmth that Rui’s been enjoying lately—this simple pleasure of thinking, and turning to always find someone in overly self-assured agreement.

He makes no attempt to hide his smile, but still: “For someone who’s never written a romance before, it’s fascinating to bear witness to your confidence.”

“You know very well that this is the most basic of basics, Rui! Now come,” he bends down, snatching up Rui’s arms by the elbows, “if we’re going to deliver something better, then—”

Mm, no. Rui obligingly lets himself be pulled to his feet, but tugs out of the grip immediately after to take Tsukasa’s shoulders instead, pushing him into position so his lamp light hits his face full on. Then, satisfied, Rui takes a step back, shifting so the same light only barely brushes his cheek.

The lead facing his mysterious girl—Rui won’t discredit himself, of course, but it certainly doesn’t take a genius.

“Shall we begin this way?”

Tsukasa’s lips are pressed together, his eyes twinkling with knowing amusement. “Who’s opinionated now?”

“Your greeting, Tsukasa-kun.”

He huffs, but doesn’t protest as he shuts his eyes. In the silence, Rui hears him take his slow breath, and with it he can almost imagine the distinct buzz of the stage’s herald.

Then, Tsukasa brings up a finger to point at Rui’s face. “‘Kamishiro Rui!’”

Pff! Rui’s wrist barely comes up in time to muffle his snort. “That’s your opening for a romantic first meeting?”

“And what about it? It’s efficient, gets the point across—”

Ah, no good, no good. Commentary is for later, regardless of circumstance he’s supposed to follow the flow, but no one breaks his composure like Tsukasa does. Rui lowers his wrist only once he’s wrestled his expression into something more neutral, and restarts with a clear of his throat.

“‘I was wondering when someone would find me here.’” He puts a finger to one cheek, offering a considering tilt of his head. “‘To think it’d be you, Tenma-kun.’”

“You know who I am?”

“‘How couldn’t I?’”

A tiny furrow appears in Tsukasa’s forehead as he considers how to respond, and Rui fights even harder to hide his grin.

Finally, Tsukasa’s expression clears, widening his eyes a little as if in realization. “‘You’re absolutely right!’” —he grins just as wide— “‘How wouldn’t you have heard of me? And all the best things, I’m sure!’”

“What an interesting response,” Rui huffs a laugh, one side of his mouth curving up. “But, no, I haven’t ‘heard’ anything. Rather, I’ve been watching—”

…Hm?

Rui stops short, mouth still open. Where exactly is he going with this?

Hasn’t the scenario felt a little too familiar for improv?

“...Rui?” Tsukasa calls when the line dangles, watching him with expectant eyes.

(Expectant eyes, an interesting boy running laps around the school to ask after him, and…)

Oh.

Voice well and truly stolen, Rui puts an uncertain hand to his mouth. “It seems I… lost track of where I was going.”

“Really?” Tsukasa frowns. “I thought there was a clear direction, weren’t you going to say—”

(“Look up.”

“Hm? Wh— Is that a drone?!”)

Rui can tell exactly when it hits—Tsukasa pauses abruptly, blinking several times. Their eyes meet in a moment of complete and deeply empathetic confusion that for once Rui can provide no answers for, only let it stretch into awkwardness.

Then, Tsukasa does three things: he coughs, nods, and—

Blushes.

“The trap of familiarity,” he announces gravely in spite of his red cheeks. “Hm! As artists, I suppose it was inevitable we fall in it at least once.”

Rui bows his head in acknowledgement—this has the helpful side-effect of tearing his eyes from Tsukasa’s skin.

Recycled material aside, I still think that was a rather effective first meeting, he wants to say. But he can’t, distracted by the conflicting scoff in his head: of course it was, it was ours.

He clears his throat instead, stepping away to raise a finger. “I believe we can still count that success. The intrigue was… definitely there.”

Tsukasa nods, lips pursed. He's still blushing—Rui tries valiantly to ignore this.

“How about brainstorming a more direct problem?” he offers, spreading his hands. “Like… the scene of them on the park bench.”

“Agh!” Tsukasa's face instantly scrunches, eyes and fist squeezing shut in disgust.

The over-the-top reaction makes Rui snort, grin pulling one side of his mouth. “Did I hit home? I thought I might've heard you grinding your teeth in the theater.”

“I've never been so frustrated in my life!” Tsukasa cries. “Every time I thought it might go somewhere— when she’d start saying something, or he gave her a look—it just turned right around again and again until it ended, and nothing had even happened.”

The scene in question: the couple’s first major conflict, when playful flirtation gave way to crossed wires and the heroine walling the boy off, finally culminating in what should have been an honest moment. It’s easy to understand Tsukasa’s frustration—the vapid conversation they’d disguised as a resolution had been honestly insulting. But Rui wonders…

“Once they began to get closer, their problems began too,” Rui says slowly, eyelids falling shut as he thinks back. “It may have been just a base issue with compatibility, rather than their conversation.”

“Their compatibility?”

Perhaps it was presumption to analyze barely-established characters. But for what few traits they’d impressed, the grind of their cogs at odds with each other was the one thing the movie did get across—he struggled to understand her, and she was no closer.

“They’d barely known each other before she frustrated him. I wonder if they just weren’t fit for…” Rui trails off, raising both brows when Tsukasa starts shaking his head before he’s even finished.

“No,” Tsukasa says firmly. “He wanted to know her.”

The corner of Rui’s mouth quirks, endeared. “Which counts for a lot, I agree. But even still.”

Tsukasa shakes his head again, brow furrowing. “It makes a difference! They’d have earned that scene’s resolution if he’d just told her that—”

With a low, frustrated sound, he reaches to grab Rui by the wrist. Blinking in surprise, Rui catches on by Tsukasa’s second tug, stepping backwards until they’re sat side by side on the couch in a mimicry of the actors.

“Told her what?”

“Something like…”

Tsukasa doesn’t let go of his wrist, fingers trailing down until both his hands are clasped firmly around one of Rui’s own. Rui knows this only by feeling, because he finds his gaze gripped in amber.

“‘I don’t mind when you’re difficult,’” Tsukasa scoffs the line. “I mind when you pull away like you’re doing me a favor.’”

Head blank and barely breathing, Rui stares back.

“...I stand corrected.”

Tsukasa blinks, intensity dissipating, before beaming. “You felt it?”

(“All this potential, and you’re holding back on me!”)

“I did. That was a rather… moving line, you came up with.”

“Hm hm! Of course it was!”

Rui’s chest tightens with a Halloween memory, because that’s what this line is, isn’t it? Boiled down, it’s that same argument, that same fierce acceptance of don’t hide, show me, how dare you think that I’d ever want any less of you?

It doesn’t look like Tsukasa has noticed. Should Rui say something? Point it out? That’s twice now that they’ve defaulted to their own relationship in trying to portray a romance. While the first was an awkward coincidence, the second feels like a hypothesis.

Three occurrences could form a pattern.

…Could Rui make that happen?

He’d barely had to think to do it the first time. If he tries again, tries to search his heart for romance with his eyes on Tsukasa, watching, like he always does, every single micro-expression so he can reach out and respond to questions that haven’t yet been asked—

“Intention,” Rui muses. “It does solve quite a lot. That might have been where she fell short as well, now that I think about it.”

Tsukasa perks in interest. “What are you thinking?”

“If you fix the first resolution with such a strong declaration of intent from his side…” Rui shifts, turning to face him more fully. “Then it follows that she should return it, further along. Be unwavering as well, in her own way.”

He reaches before he can think twice, hands grasping Tsukasa’s shoulders to carefully pull them inwards, pressing his posture into a hunch. It takes a second before Tsukasa’s eyes light understanding, and he follows by hanging his head.

“In his moment of doubt, she was there,” Rui narrates in a murmur, dropping his hands but leaning closer. “She should say something to make that clear, so that he can take it for granted. That…”

He lifts his gaze to catch Tsukasa’s again and lets his mind go blank again, this time on purpose. He forgets the exercise, takes in instead the uncertain look on Tsukasa’s face, that purse of self-doubt in his lips, and the words come unbidden.

“‘However much you believe in yourself, I might believe in you more.’”

Tsukasa’s eyes widen, red painting his cheeks again.

“You…”

Rui swallows, stifling his smile. “Hm?”

“You’ve said that to me before.”

“Have I?”

“You have! Or rather, you do, all the time, like when we were working on Two Androids and…”

(“You’re you, Tsukasa-kun, so I know you can go farther.”)

Handed the confirmation in memory, Rui laughs, a little disbelieving. At the sound, Tsukasa stops, searching his expression in suspicion.

“...Did I do that too?”

Rui lets his smile stretch wide in response, a warm flush spreading up his face, and Tsukasa shuts his mouth, his own blush growing darker.

“It still remains a romantic line,” Rui reassures him.

“It does,” Tsukasa agrees, more quietly.

The implication is clear—it was a romantic line, perfectly suited and delivered for the scene. And it may have been just as heavy, delivered by Tsukasa all those months ago.

Rui’s smile softens at Tsukasa’s wondering realization, at the way he bites his lip, looking Rui more solidly in the face. At the way he doesn’t pull away.

“It’s rather poetic, isn’t it?” says Rui lightly. “All this because we thought we’d never written a love story, and yet…”

He stops there, unwilling to be any more explicit for fear of the fragility of the words. Unfortunately, or perhaps very fortunately, this is the sort of thing that Tsukasa has always caught instantly.

“Is that what we have?” he asks, unwavering. “A love story?”

And it’s more oblique than Tsukasa normally ever is, but somehow still completely transparent in what he wants. Rui’s heart stutters, tuned into the undertone of longing.

“I’d like it to be,” he admits.

Happiness has always suited Tsukasa. But this is new, the way it bubbles, lighting Tsukasa gradually, from the curl of his hands in his lap to the deep inhale that straightens his spine, chest filling like it might burst from his happiness. The rise of his chin, finally ending in the wide, gleaming smile that makes his eyes crinkle and glow brighter than the sun.

“Then,” Tsukasa says, and oh, his voice is just as flush with it, warm and giddy, “that changes the challenge.”

Rui feels the stretch in his cheeks, unable to keep from beaming back. “Oh?”

“We’ve left that film in the dust! But for all that we’ve written, it still has one thing we don’t.”

“And what would that be?”

Rather than answer, Tsukasa reaches one hand to tangle in the fabric of Rui’s sleeve, leaning closer. And perhaps his nerves falter a bit, because his eyes lid as he glances briefly down then up again.

“You… remember how it ended, right?”

Oh. Rui's heart skips, and he wets his lips with a nod.

Willing himself not to stumble, Rui reaches first to wrap one hand carefully around Tsukasa’s shoulder. Then, touches light fingers to the curve of Tsukasa’s jaw to lift it. He hears the quiet click of Tsukasa’s swallow as he obliges, angle allowing the light of Rui’s floor lamp to flood his skin.

The scene is set.

“Close your eyes,” Rui whispers, and leans in to finish the story.