Hanabi 39/40 - ReitaXRuki
Title: Hanabi
Chapter: 39/40
Author: chuu ( akichuu)
Fandom: JRock, Gazette
Pairings: ReitaXRuki. Some other pairings in the background that you might find later on...
Overall Rating: PG
Genre: Drop dead fluffy.
Warnings: n/a. Un-beta-ed mistakes.
Summary: The party that was going to be held at the inn turned out to be... Uruha's birthday party?
Comments: The summary sucked, but if you're wondering, no this chapter will NOT talk about Uruha... not too much. Ahahah~
Hanabi: 39
Well it had only been two weeks or so from the very last time Reita visited the inn, but it seemed like he had missed a lot during the time and now that he was back here again, he felt a little lost. Not like he couldn't recognize the place, no; the inn still looked pretty much the same despite some furniture re-locating and such. Even the old fish tank had been replaced with a bigger one because apparently Jii-chan's fishes had bred and along with the population increase, someone had decided to buy a bunch of decorations to be put inside the tank. Somehow Reita didn't think Jii-chan had been much of a fan for fake, glittery corals or purple and orange clam shells, so these new ornaments must have been someone else's idea. Probably Kai-Baa-chan. Or Uruha.
Speaking of Uruha, he was actually the main reason why Reita felt a little left behind on news, here at the inn. Everyone was suddenly talking about Uruha's birthday party - the party that Hayama-san had once informed Reita about, and Reita found it very, very weird because a couple of days ago, nobody had known Uruha's origins or even his real name. And now they were holding a birthday party for him? It was just... incomprehensible.
It wasn't really helping with the way Baa-chan was passing the whole information to him; he was talking with a speed of a Shinkansen train that Reita could barely catch a word.
"What...? Wait! So you're saying that Uruha isn't Uruha?" Reita frowned, "What on earth are you talking about?"
"No, his real name is Kouyou, but he said he would still like to be called Uruha, I don't really know the reason why but I personally think the name suits him better. Uruha, that is. We asked his mother, of course, and she said -"
"Whoa! Whoa! His mother?? What?? Where? How...?" Reita stuttered, scratching his scalp when it wasn't even itchy.
Baa-chan laughed and Reita immediately pouted. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Baa-chan said, "You look really funny just now, Reita-chan... Well, yes, as I was saying, his mother wouldn't mind us calling him Uruha. She even said that she liked the nickname we have given him. As for the person, we'll meet her soon, later today actually. She's going to help me with some new recipes. Now isn't that sweet of her? From the very first time I met her I already thought she was a very nice person..."
Everything that Baa-chan had just blabbed in front of Reita hadn't exactly answered Reita's question; who was this person he had mentioned as Uruha's mother? When did Uruha find her? But even as Baa-chan kept on talking (about a completely different topic now: tomorrow night's menu), Reita became more and even more confused. Sighing, he slouched back on his seat, helplessly opening his ears to listen to Baa-chan rambling about a new barbeque sauce he had just discovered. If he needed to find out about Uruha and whatever it was that had been going on that he hadn't known of, then he had no other options but to go straight to the boy himself.
~
"Wait, wait! Ruki, you go that way!! I'll block it from here!"
"But it's running that way! Uruha, catch it! Catch it!!"
"Okay! I'll get it... OWWW!!"
"What?? What happened???"
"It scratched me!! Bad cat!!"
"Oh nooo! Uwaah~ It's running away again!!"
Reita gave a sympathetic smile toward Jii-chan, who, as he saw him, was rubbing his temple with one hand, watching the two supposedly-grown-up teenagers as they were in their mission to wreck the recently-cleaned-up inn. Reita had witnessed him yelling and scolding and even threatening at those two ignorant boys for the last half an hour, but apparently none of his efforts had done any good. If it had been only Ruki, it would've been so much easier, and poor Mimi would have had her peace and quiet by now. But now that Uruha had joined him, they made an unstoppable duo of doom. Now who would have thought those two could get along so well with each other? Reita found it weird too that Ruki could be playing a very, very childish game with Uruha like nothing had ever happened in his past, like Ruki had never experienced Uruha giving him his first heart-break - well, not that Uruha had any idea about it, of course. But now they looked like they had been friends for ages, friends who happened to have a similar hobby of torturing Baa-chan's cat to its death.
"RUKICCHI!! URUHA!! STOP THAT!!!!" And just as Reita was thinking about the poor cat's owner, the man came, strutting down the hall, chasing the two boys to stop them from scaring Mimi any further. Mimi scrambled off to the backyard while Baa-chan blocked the two delinquents from chasing it any further, giving them each a knock on their foreheads.
Still somewhat busy laughing at those two's facial expressions (Ruki grinning as wide as ear to ear and Uruha jutting out his lips in a lovely pout), Reita almost jumped miles away from he stood and would've flown through the nearest shouji*1 if only Jii-chan hadn't been standing there between him and the mentioned shouji. The lady who walked in to the scene wasn't exactly a total stranger, but that was probably why Reita had been so surprised to see her here. Her presence brought Reita to the questions: what was she doing here? Had she some business to do with someone at the inn? Or maybe she was a guest?
"Okaa-san!"
The rather gleeful voice startled Reita even more; his eyes followed the hurried movements of Uruha nearing the lady, a made-up frightened expression was carved on his face.
"Okaa-san," Uruha hugged the lady, "Kai-chan hit me!"
Reita swore his jaw had dropped from his face and his eyeballs were probably bulging out of their holes at the sight. While Baa-chan was muttering out some arguments against Uruha's accusation and Jii-chan was giggling in amusement, Reita felt the world was spinning in an incomprehensible speed around him, spewing out images he couldn't recognize - like a TV with a crappy signal reception.
So THAT was Uruha's mother?! The lady from the vegetable shop???
~
Reita couldn't say that he fully understood and accepted Uruha's reasons, and neither could he say that after he found out the truth, he would still see Uruha as Uruha - not as Kouyou or whatever name he actually went by with. It felt weird, if not uncomfortable, to find out that the person you thought you knew wasn't really the person you thought you knew and now you were supposed to re-adjust to the situation, to consider how you were going to treat that person from now on. Reita knew that although he was very confused, he wasn't in the position to judge. He hadn't even the right to explore any further, to question for details. He had been told the full story only so that he knew what had been going on, and that was it.
Well, everybody had their reasons to do what they did and choose what they chose, and Reita supposed, so had Uruha. Even if his deed had caused Jii-chan and Baa-chan a bit of a problem, at least now Uruha found what he had been looking for. It was all over now - or rather, a very promising new beginning had come, and the sand-colored haired boy had never looked happier, thus making Jii-chan and Baa-chan happy as well. Seeing this, Reita knew he could only be happy for them too.
He smiled when he looked around, the happy faces that he found were signals enough for him that he hadn't a reason to feel doubtful or even the slightest bit bad; the past was the past and right now there was only the present, and the present was filled with cheerful people who were busy preparing for tomorrow's party. The crowd had grown a little from the time Uruha's mother joined them, Hayama-san had come about half an hour ago and Reita's sister just a good five minutes ago. Reita wondered who had told his sister to come but probably Baa-chan had invited just about everyone they were familiar with. He was very curious, though; Nee-chan had come carrying a big plastic bag and she wouldn't let him see what she had inside it. She had only given him that trade-mark grin of hers that was telling Reita something was coming up, she was conjuring up a plan and Reita wasn't going to know until she decided to execute this plan. Baa-chan, apparently, was involved in her plan because he was also grinning and refusing to tell Reita what was going on when Nee-chan went to hide the plastic bag in his room.
The ladies (and Baa-chan) were now preparing a barbeque stove at the backyard and were chit-chatting aloud; Uruha had been busy in the garden, picking up flowers for decorations and Aoi-jii-chan had accompanied him the whole time. Reita himself had been working with the paper lanterns - or more like, fixing the artistic mess Ruki had made out of bamboo straws and papers and glue. He wondered how the blond had ever succeeded to glue a paper to his hair, and now he was laughing as he watched Ruki pouting while struggling to take the red-colored piece of paper off of his head.
"Don't laugh, Reita! Help me!!" Ruki shouted, flapping his hands around his head. His eyes tried to strain up as far as where the paper was stuck on his hair, but he probably wasn't sure about which end he should pull as to not yank his own hair and tear them off his scalp.
"I told you to stay off the glue," Reita was still giggling when he reached forward, shuffling through Ruki's messy blond hair, "You were supposed to just draw on the finished lanterns, Ruki."
"I wanted to make one myself..." Ruki mumbled, watching as Reita carefully peeled the paper off his hair. Thankfully the glue hadn't dried yet, if it had, Reita was afraid he would have to use the scissors for other use than cutting the papers.
"There," Reita shuffled his hand to Ruki's free-from-paper hair, earning a grin from the boy, "You should wash your hair, Ru. There's still some glue on it."
"Mooou... Is that bad?"
"Well if it dries your hair will be stiff and ruined and all," Reita observed the blond hair in his hand, cringing at the amount of glue he found there, "The sooner you wash it the better. It'll be harder to remove when the glue dries up."
"Noooo...!" Ruki jostled from where he was sitting and ran barefooted towards the lawn, reaching for the nearest water faucet and turned it on. The faucet was meant as a water-source in case Jii-chan or Baa-chan needed to water the plants in the garden, but now Ruki was making it his personal shower area. He bowed low to get his head under the running water and soon looking like a dog having just jumped into a pond.
Baa-chan asked what was wrong when Reita walked across the lawn to reach where Ruki was panicking and wetting himself. "He's got glue on his hair," Reita answered, couldn't help the wide grin splaying on his face just as he spoke.
"Oh my," Baa-chan shook his head, "I'll go get a shampoo. How could you get glue on your hair? Rukicchi, honestly... The things you do never stop to make me wonder, they never do..." The tall, slender man was still mumbling comments about Ruki's peculiarity as he walked into the building to get the shampoo.
~
It was already dark outside when they retreated from the backyard and went inside; Baa-chan and the ladies went straightly to the kitchen to prepare some ingredients they would need tomorrow, while the rest of them gathered in front of the television in Jii-chan's massive-sized living room. Jii-chan had gone to take a shower, while Uruha had rushed to the front lobby to feed the gold fishes. The poor fishes had been left to starve the whole afternoon because neither of the people remembered about feeding them, having had too much fun at the backyard. Reita felt a little sorry for those fishes, but was kind of relieved to see Uruha's face when he returned to the living room - at least he knew those fishes weren't dead.
Uruha tip-toed to the spot where Reita had been sitting, trying to make the least of noises as he took a seat right in front of him. He grinned as he watched a certain blond curling asleep with his head leaning on Reita's leg, a towel, half-drying, was wrapped around his small body. The blond's clothes had been soaked during his hair-wash just a couple of hours ago - but Reita supposed that was just normal, seeing how hyper Ruki had become while Reita tried asking him to stay still so that he could flush down the shampoo from Ruki's head, and in an instant, it had gone from 'washing Ruki's hair' to water-splashing war. Not only had the blond drenched himself, he had also made Reita and Uruha - who had joined them later on - soaking wet.
"He's cute when he's sleeping," Uruha stated, tilting his head aside as he observed Ruki. He had changed into dry clothes and only the inner parts of his hair were still dripping with water now.
Reita nodded, lowering his sight and smiled when he found the sight of a slightly-snoring Ruki on his lap. "He is," he approved; nothing could really compare Ruki's excessive cuteness when he was asleep, not even Mimi-chan - that was lying on the tatami, also asleep, not so far away from Ruki's stretched arms. Reita ran a hand as carefully as he could through Ruki's now-clean hair, shrugging the strands that were covering his closed eyelids.
"I seriously thought he would never stop, I mean, he just kept running around and jumping all the places like he wouldn't ever get tired," Uruha said, "And seeing him like this, right now... It almost seems like a miracle, do you understand what I mean?"
Reita nodded again, "Yeah, I know what you mean. He's just like a baby, one moment he's all frenzy beyond control, and one moment he's sleeping soundly."
Uruha laughed, but quickly covered his mouth when they saw Ruki stir a bit in his sleep. "I thought so too, just like a little baby. He even has his fingers curling like that, look," Uruha pointed at what he was talking about, "So cute. Does he talk in his sleep? Because if he does, then the whole baby-image will be perfect."
"Often," Reita answered, "He even makes funny movements too, sometimes. Like moving his hands and kicking around and stuffs..." He couldn't help as the images of many, many nights where he had been awaken by Ruki's kicking legs or his flapping hands came popping up in his brain. Most of the times Reita would find it disturbing when he really needed a good night's sleep, but now he could just see the hilarity of Ruki's sleeping habit and how lucky he was to be the person who had witnessed it often.
"Really?? Awww... I wanna see that," Uruha mumbled, "You guys should stay over tomorrow night, after the party. We can share my room..."
Just as Reita was about to give his answer to the offer, Ruki stirred again, one of his hands reached a few inches forward and he mumbled: "Nn... Naa, Reitaaa... What?... Ohh... Umm..." He lowered his hand again, "That tick... tickles... Rei... Reitaa... Ngg..."
Both Uruha and Reita had their mouths wide opened - and so had Reita's sister, who had just walked into the room and joined the three boys, sitting right next to Uruha. The three of them set their eyes down on Ruki, watching as the boy moved again, pulling both his arms closer to his body and snuggling onto Reita's thigh.
"Rei... ta..." the blond murmured again, "Hnn??... Yeahhh, sure... Uhhhnn... kiss me... Mmm... more..."
Reita seriously wished the ground would open and swallow him whole at that precise moment - oh did he wish! - so that he wouldn't have to look at Uruha's and Nee-chan's expressions, or that they wouldn't be able to see just how red his face must have been.
~
Notes:
*1) shouji = Japanese style sliding door.
Urgh... I tried not to give too many spoilers for my upcoming story (about Aoi and Uruha) but it was a little hard, since the two stories are linked. It still feels a little bad giving out those small hints, but I sure hope you guys enjoy this chapter.
One more chapter to go...
previous chapters and other titles ==> fanfic list
Chapter: 39/40
Author: chuu ( akichuu)
Fandom: JRock, Gazette
Pairings: ReitaXRuki. Some other pairings in the background that you might find later on...
Overall Rating: PG
Genre: Drop dead fluffy.
Warnings: n/a. Un-beta-ed mistakes.
Summary: The party that was going to be held at the inn turned out to be... Uruha's birthday party?
Comments: The summary sucked, but if you're wondering, no this chapter will NOT talk about Uruha... not too much. Ahahah~
Hanabi: 39
Well it had only been two weeks or so from the very last time Reita visited the inn, but it seemed like he had missed a lot during the time and now that he was back here again, he felt a little lost. Not like he couldn't recognize the place, no; the inn still looked pretty much the same despite some furniture re-locating and such. Even the old fish tank had been replaced with a bigger one because apparently Jii-chan's fishes had bred and along with the population increase, someone had decided to buy a bunch of decorations to be put inside the tank. Somehow Reita didn't think Jii-chan had been much of a fan for fake, glittery corals or purple and orange clam shells, so these new ornaments must have been someone else's idea. Probably Kai-Baa-chan. Or Uruha.
Speaking of Uruha, he was actually the main reason why Reita felt a little left behind on news, here at the inn. Everyone was suddenly talking about Uruha's birthday party - the party that Hayama-san had once informed Reita about, and Reita found it very, very weird because a couple of days ago, nobody had known Uruha's origins or even his real name. And now they were holding a birthday party for him? It was just... incomprehensible.
It wasn't really helping with the way Baa-chan was passing the whole information to him; he was talking with a speed of a Shinkansen train that Reita could barely catch a word.
"What...? Wait! So you're saying that Uruha isn't Uruha?" Reita frowned, "What on earth are you talking about?"
"No, his real name is Kouyou, but he said he would still like to be called Uruha, I don't really know the reason why but I personally think the name suits him better. Uruha, that is. We asked his mother, of course, and she said -"
"Whoa! Whoa! His mother?? What?? Where? How...?" Reita stuttered, scratching his scalp when it wasn't even itchy.
Baa-chan laughed and Reita immediately pouted. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Baa-chan said, "You look really funny just now, Reita-chan... Well, yes, as I was saying, his mother wouldn't mind us calling him Uruha. She even said that she liked the nickname we have given him. As for the person, we'll meet her soon, later today actually. She's going to help me with some new recipes. Now isn't that sweet of her? From the very first time I met her I already thought she was a very nice person..."
Everything that Baa-chan had just blabbed in front of Reita hadn't exactly answered Reita's question; who was this person he had mentioned as Uruha's mother? When did Uruha find her? But even as Baa-chan kept on talking (about a completely different topic now: tomorrow night's menu), Reita became more and even more confused. Sighing, he slouched back on his seat, helplessly opening his ears to listen to Baa-chan rambling about a new barbeque sauce he had just discovered. If he needed to find out about Uruha and whatever it was that had been going on that he hadn't known of, then he had no other options but to go straight to the boy himself.
~
"Wait, wait! Ruki, you go that way!! I'll block it from here!"
"But it's running that way! Uruha, catch it! Catch it!!"
"Okay! I'll get it... OWWW!!"
"What?? What happened???"
"It scratched me!! Bad cat!!"
"Oh nooo! Uwaah~ It's running away again!!"
Reita gave a sympathetic smile toward Jii-chan, who, as he saw him, was rubbing his temple with one hand, watching the two supposedly-grown-up teenagers as they were in their mission to wreck the recently-cleaned-up inn. Reita had witnessed him yelling and scolding and even threatening at those two ignorant boys for the last half an hour, but apparently none of his efforts had done any good. If it had been only Ruki, it would've been so much easier, and poor Mimi would have had her peace and quiet by now. But now that Uruha had joined him, they made an unstoppable duo of doom. Now who would have thought those two could get along so well with each other? Reita found it weird too that Ruki could be playing a very, very childish game with Uruha like nothing had ever happened in his past, like Ruki had never experienced Uruha giving him his first heart-break - well, not that Uruha had any idea about it, of course. But now they looked like they had been friends for ages, friends who happened to have a similar hobby of torturing Baa-chan's cat to its death.
"RUKICCHI!! URUHA!! STOP THAT!!!!" And just as Reita was thinking about the poor cat's owner, the man came, strutting down the hall, chasing the two boys to stop them from scaring Mimi any further. Mimi scrambled off to the backyard while Baa-chan blocked the two delinquents from chasing it any further, giving them each a knock on their foreheads.
Still somewhat busy laughing at those two's facial expressions (Ruki grinning as wide as ear to ear and Uruha jutting out his lips in a lovely pout), Reita almost jumped miles away from he stood and would've flown through the nearest shouji*1 if only Jii-chan hadn't been standing there between him and the mentioned shouji. The lady who walked in to the scene wasn't exactly a total stranger, but that was probably why Reita had been so surprised to see her here. Her presence brought Reita to the questions: what was she doing here? Had she some business to do with someone at the inn? Or maybe she was a guest?
"Okaa-san!"
The rather gleeful voice startled Reita even more; his eyes followed the hurried movements of Uruha nearing the lady, a made-up frightened expression was carved on his face.
"Okaa-san," Uruha hugged the lady, "Kai-chan hit me!"
Reita swore his jaw had dropped from his face and his eyeballs were probably bulging out of their holes at the sight. While Baa-chan was muttering out some arguments against Uruha's accusation and Jii-chan was giggling in amusement, Reita felt the world was spinning in an incomprehensible speed around him, spewing out images he couldn't recognize - like a TV with a crappy signal reception.
So THAT was Uruha's mother?! The lady from the vegetable shop???
~
Reita couldn't say that he fully understood and accepted Uruha's reasons, and neither could he say that after he found out the truth, he would still see Uruha as Uruha - not as Kouyou or whatever name he actually went by with. It felt weird, if not uncomfortable, to find out that the person you thought you knew wasn't really the person you thought you knew and now you were supposed to re-adjust to the situation, to consider how you were going to treat that person from now on. Reita knew that although he was very confused, he wasn't in the position to judge. He hadn't even the right to explore any further, to question for details. He had been told the full story only so that he knew what had been going on, and that was it.
Well, everybody had their reasons to do what they did and choose what they chose, and Reita supposed, so had Uruha. Even if his deed had caused Jii-chan and Baa-chan a bit of a problem, at least now Uruha found what he had been looking for. It was all over now - or rather, a very promising new beginning had come, and the sand-colored haired boy had never looked happier, thus making Jii-chan and Baa-chan happy as well. Seeing this, Reita knew he could only be happy for them too.
He smiled when he looked around, the happy faces that he found were signals enough for him that he hadn't a reason to feel doubtful or even the slightest bit bad; the past was the past and right now there was only the present, and the present was filled with cheerful people who were busy preparing for tomorrow's party. The crowd had grown a little from the time Uruha's mother joined them, Hayama-san had come about half an hour ago and Reita's sister just a good five minutes ago. Reita wondered who had told his sister to come but probably Baa-chan had invited just about everyone they were familiar with. He was very curious, though; Nee-chan had come carrying a big plastic bag and she wouldn't let him see what she had inside it. She had only given him that trade-mark grin of hers that was telling Reita something was coming up, she was conjuring up a plan and Reita wasn't going to know until she decided to execute this plan. Baa-chan, apparently, was involved in her plan because he was also grinning and refusing to tell Reita what was going on when Nee-chan went to hide the plastic bag in his room.
The ladies (and Baa-chan) were now preparing a barbeque stove at the backyard and were chit-chatting aloud; Uruha had been busy in the garden, picking up flowers for decorations and Aoi-jii-chan had accompanied him the whole time. Reita himself had been working with the paper lanterns - or more like, fixing the artistic mess Ruki had made out of bamboo straws and papers and glue. He wondered how the blond had ever succeeded to glue a paper to his hair, and now he was laughing as he watched Ruki pouting while struggling to take the red-colored piece of paper off of his head.
"Don't laugh, Reita! Help me!!" Ruki shouted, flapping his hands around his head. His eyes tried to strain up as far as where the paper was stuck on his hair, but he probably wasn't sure about which end he should pull as to not yank his own hair and tear them off his scalp.
"I told you to stay off the glue," Reita was still giggling when he reached forward, shuffling through Ruki's messy blond hair, "You were supposed to just draw on the finished lanterns, Ruki."
"I wanted to make one myself..." Ruki mumbled, watching as Reita carefully peeled the paper off his hair. Thankfully the glue hadn't dried yet, if it had, Reita was afraid he would have to use the scissors for other use than cutting the papers.
"There," Reita shuffled his hand to Ruki's free-from-paper hair, earning a grin from the boy, "You should wash your hair, Ru. There's still some glue on it."
"Mooou... Is that bad?"
"Well if it dries your hair will be stiff and ruined and all," Reita observed the blond hair in his hand, cringing at the amount of glue he found there, "The sooner you wash it the better. It'll be harder to remove when the glue dries up."
"Noooo...!" Ruki jostled from where he was sitting and ran barefooted towards the lawn, reaching for the nearest water faucet and turned it on. The faucet was meant as a water-source in case Jii-chan or Baa-chan needed to water the plants in the garden, but now Ruki was making it his personal shower area. He bowed low to get his head under the running water and soon looking like a dog having just jumped into a pond.
Baa-chan asked what was wrong when Reita walked across the lawn to reach where Ruki was panicking and wetting himself. "He's got glue on his hair," Reita answered, couldn't help the wide grin splaying on his face just as he spoke.
"Oh my," Baa-chan shook his head, "I'll go get a shampoo. How could you get glue on your hair? Rukicchi, honestly... The things you do never stop to make me wonder, they never do..." The tall, slender man was still mumbling comments about Ruki's peculiarity as he walked into the building to get the shampoo.
~
It was already dark outside when they retreated from the backyard and went inside; Baa-chan and the ladies went straightly to the kitchen to prepare some ingredients they would need tomorrow, while the rest of them gathered in front of the television in Jii-chan's massive-sized living room. Jii-chan had gone to take a shower, while Uruha had rushed to the front lobby to feed the gold fishes. The poor fishes had been left to starve the whole afternoon because neither of the people remembered about feeding them, having had too much fun at the backyard. Reita felt a little sorry for those fishes, but was kind of relieved to see Uruha's face when he returned to the living room - at least he knew those fishes weren't dead.
Uruha tip-toed to the spot where Reita had been sitting, trying to make the least of noises as he took a seat right in front of him. He grinned as he watched a certain blond curling asleep with his head leaning on Reita's leg, a towel, half-drying, was wrapped around his small body. The blond's clothes had been soaked during his hair-wash just a couple of hours ago - but Reita supposed that was just normal, seeing how hyper Ruki had become while Reita tried asking him to stay still so that he could flush down the shampoo from Ruki's head, and in an instant, it had gone from 'washing Ruki's hair' to water-splashing war. Not only had the blond drenched himself, he had also made Reita and Uruha - who had joined them later on - soaking wet.
"He's cute when he's sleeping," Uruha stated, tilting his head aside as he observed Ruki. He had changed into dry clothes and only the inner parts of his hair were still dripping with water now.
Reita nodded, lowering his sight and smiled when he found the sight of a slightly-snoring Ruki on his lap. "He is," he approved; nothing could really compare Ruki's excessive cuteness when he was asleep, not even Mimi-chan - that was lying on the tatami, also asleep, not so far away from Ruki's stretched arms. Reita ran a hand as carefully as he could through Ruki's now-clean hair, shrugging the strands that were covering his closed eyelids.
"I seriously thought he would never stop, I mean, he just kept running around and jumping all the places like he wouldn't ever get tired," Uruha said, "And seeing him like this, right now... It almost seems like a miracle, do you understand what I mean?"
Reita nodded again, "Yeah, I know what you mean. He's just like a baby, one moment he's all frenzy beyond control, and one moment he's sleeping soundly."
Uruha laughed, but quickly covered his mouth when they saw Ruki stir a bit in his sleep. "I thought so too, just like a little baby. He even has his fingers curling like that, look," Uruha pointed at what he was talking about, "So cute. Does he talk in his sleep? Because if he does, then the whole baby-image will be perfect."
"Often," Reita answered, "He even makes funny movements too, sometimes. Like moving his hands and kicking around and stuffs..." He couldn't help as the images of many, many nights where he had been awaken by Ruki's kicking legs or his flapping hands came popping up in his brain. Most of the times Reita would find it disturbing when he really needed a good night's sleep, but now he could just see the hilarity of Ruki's sleeping habit and how lucky he was to be the person who had witnessed it often.
"Really?? Awww... I wanna see that," Uruha mumbled, "You guys should stay over tomorrow night, after the party. We can share my room..."
Just as Reita was about to give his answer to the offer, Ruki stirred again, one of his hands reached a few inches forward and he mumbled: "Nn... Naa, Reitaaa... What?... Ohh... Umm..." He lowered his hand again, "That tick... tickles... Rei... Reitaa... Ngg..."
Both Uruha and Reita had their mouths wide opened - and so had Reita's sister, who had just walked into the room and joined the three boys, sitting right next to Uruha. The three of them set their eyes down on Ruki, watching as the boy moved again, pulling both his arms closer to his body and snuggling onto Reita's thigh.
"Rei... ta..." the blond murmured again, "Hnn??... Yeahhh, sure... Uhhhnn... kiss me... Mmm... more..."
Reita seriously wished the ground would open and swallow him whole at that precise moment - oh did he wish! - so that he wouldn't have to look at Uruha's and Nee-chan's expressions, or that they wouldn't be able to see just how red his face must have been.
~
Notes:
*1) shouji = Japanese style sliding door.
Urgh... I tried not to give too many spoilers for my upcoming story (about Aoi and Uruha) but it was a little hard, since the two stories are linked. It still feels a little bad giving out those small hints, but I sure hope you guys enjoy this chapter.
One more chapter to go...
previous chapters and other titles ==> fanfic list