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After school, Minato and Ryoji always meet at the same spot.
Well—it’s more like Minato waits there for him. Ryoji is somewhat of a dawdler ; he readily talks to all the people that pass by him. He’s an extrovert if Minato has ever met one, which means that he has a lot to say, and a lot to say to many people for that manner.
And for that reason, Minato is the one that does the waiting while Ryoji is distracted by just about every single student in the entire school. He doesn’t mind waiting, though, because it gives him time to think and look over class notes.
He’s looking over some example problems from math when Ryoji comes up to him, hands on his hips.
“Studious as ever,” he says, a smile playing on his lips.
Minato looks up. “Haha. Hardly.”
“If you say so. Your grades definitely speak otherwise, though.”
Minato shuts his notebook and sticks it into his bag along with the rest of his things. Compared to Yukari and Mitsuru, his bag is considerably spacious, but compared to Junpei’s, it’s packed.
But that’s just relativity, Minato thinks. Although I’m not sure if something that deep applies to how many items are in my bag.
“You okay?” Ryoji asks, voice a little far away. Minato hadn’t realized that he was spacing out; apparently he was. He zips up his bag and hauls himself to his feet in one quick motion.
“All good,” he says, adjusting the strap over his shoulder. “Anywhere in particular you want to go today?”
“Hm.” Ryoji pretends to think, and then, as usual, he says, “You decide.”
Although they’ve been spending a lot of time together after school (and on Sundays as well), Ryoji never chooses what they’re going to do; he always leaves it up to Minato. And, like the waiting, Minato doesn’t mind. It’s nice to be given so much freedom to decide, but at the same time, some part of him really wishes Ryoji would propose an idea because it doesn’t seem fair otherwise.
But—Minato knows that Ryoji truly doesn’t care about what they do. Maybe that’s an extrovert thing, or maybe that’s a Ryoji thing. It’s hard to say.
“Let’s just get ramen,” he says simply.
Ryoji smiles and the two head out into the cold. The wind whips their hair around in all sorts of stupid directions aaaall the way until they reach their usual ramen spot.
“Hah,” Ryoji says once they’re inside the shop. “Your nose is all pink and cold looking.”
Minato tries and fails to look at his nose, then glances back to Ryoji. “Yours is too,” he replies in a tone that tries to express a retort. It ends up sounding more like he’s stating a fact, which isn’t really false, just not what he was going for.
“Warm up.” Ryoji reaches out and touches Minato’s nose. If it were anyone else, he would have flinched.
It’s like this sometimes. They’re always giving one another gentle touches and friendly pokes and so on, but sometimes it feels just a bit more than that. Yukari pointed this out one day during lunch while the three of them sat and ate and while Ryoji fixed a strand of Minato’s hair.
Because it was sticking up! he had explained, to which Yukari only stared.
Minato doesn’t know what to make of it. It isn’t weird, and he likes it, because—it’s a nice gesture, or something.
He stops thinking about it because they sit down for their ramen. The nose touch is quickly forgotten.
“How did you even get this good at arcade games?” Ryoji asks the next day.
The two of them are at the arcade in the mall. Minato doesn’t think he’s been here in a few weeks, and he refuses to admit it aloud, but he missed playing these mindless games. There’s something so satisfyingly distracting about them in a way he cannot quite put his finger on. It’s almost akin to the way he feels when he’s fighting in Tartarus—his thoughts are elsewhere. Everything is in the moment. He has nothing to worry about besides the thing right in front of him.
Something like that, anyway.
“I’ve played these a lot,” he explains, eyes still focused on the screen. “Especially in the summer. I had a lot of free time in the evenings.”
“Can’t imagine how much money you must’ve spent,” Ryoji mumbles, but there’s no real bite behind it. In fact, it only makes Minato laugh.
“Probably a lot. Definitely more than I should have, at least.”
“Well, spending all that money certainly paid off. You have the invaluable skill of being able to use a crane machine very efficiently.”
Minato laughs again. “I can do more than that!’
“I know.” Ryoji shifts his posture. “I was just mentioning the crane machine specifically because I want you to win a prize for me.”
Hah. That’s a very Ryoji thing of him to ask. And, admittedly, it’s also not that unfair of a request either, seeing as Minato was the one to suggest (as usual) spending time at the arcade. In that sense, he somewhat feels as though he owns Ryoji a prize.
Sort of, anyway.
“Okay, sure,” he says after a moment of thinking all this over. Ryoji makes a clapping noise with his hands, and Minato can’t see it because he’s focusing on his game, but he is certain that it’s some gratuitous display of excitement.
He’s not going to waste the money he spent on this game, though, and so he continues to play on the machine he’s currently at until he loses. Tickets come streaming out of the little slot lower on the machine and he takes them and hands them over to Ryoji to hang on to.
They make their way over to the crane machine. “What kind of prize are you looking for?” Minato asks as he reaches into his pocket to pay.
“Oh, I didn’t know I would have options ,” Ryoji says. He looks into the machine at the prizes—and they’re all stuffed toys, so in a sense, he doesn’t actually have that much variety. They’re also mostly cat shaped.
“How about a black cat?” Ryoji points to one of the black cat prizes, as if Minato didn’t know what it would look like. “Seems pretty doable.”
Minato nods. “Okay,” he says, then starts up the machine.
It’s a little nerve-wracking, trying to win this stupid prize now that Ryoji is standing next to him, looking over his shoulder and watching him play. But it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, because nevertheless Minato is still quite confident in his abilities. He keeps his eyes right on the crane and his attention does not waver—not even when Ryoji rests his chin on Minato’s shoulder, which is super intimate, but he still—
—manages to drop the prize into the box and win it. He takes it out, wordlessly, and hands it to Ryoji, who is saying something but Minato is having a hard time hearing it because he’s too busy figuring out how to process the feelings he had when Ryoji was so close just a few seconds ago.
Instead, all he says is a very articulate “um.”
Ryoji continues to act as though nothing has happened. He elbows Minato very gently and gives him an are you okay? face, to which Minato laughs at as a response for some reason. Oh, the power of social ineptness.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Ryoji says, holding the stuffed toy on top of Minato’s head.
“How I do what?”
“How you win this stuff so easily.”
Minato shrugs. “Like I said, I’ve spent a lot of money here. It’s almost muscle memory at this point.”
“Hmm.” Ryoji’s facial expression suddenly changes and he stops speaking for several elongated seconds. He stares at the ground in what must be deep thought.
Minato stays silent and waits. He realizes, briefly, that he does a lot of waiting for Ryoji.
“Well, either way. Impressive,” Ryoji finally finishes, giving his usual crescent-moon smile.
“Thanks.” Minato cannot help but smile as well.
Ryoji walks Minato back to the dorm. Their shoulders touch.
It gets cold quickly.
Not quite cold enough for it to snow, but cold enough for Minato to see his breath late at night when he walks back to the dorm (where he is sometimes accompanied by with Ryoji).
They continue to spend time with one another. It’s—well, things are definitely happening between the two of them, whether Minato knows how to label them or not. One night, they were watching television together in the lounge along with Yukari and Ken, and Minato apparently fell asleep on Ryoji’s shoulder. That’s what Yukari told him the next morning when he woke up in his room, having no memory of getting there.
“He carried you upstairs,” said Yukari during breakfast. “Like, bridal style.”
Minato nearly choked. “No he didn’t.”
Really, though, he believed her. He just couldn’t admit to it aloud.
And with all this stuff happening between the two of them, he supposes that it doesn’t really matter what other gestures Ryoji extends to Minato. Like now, for instance—they are stopped just by the school gate, and Ryoji is taking off his scarf and wrapping it around Minato’s neck with more care than anyone has ever shown towards him, ever. His eyes are soft and warm despite the cold of his hands and he has a calm smile on his face, one that is reserved just for Minato—it is a smile that holds the whole world within it.
Minato returns the smile, the smile he keeps just for Ryoji.
“Your cheeks are pink,” Ryoji says, casually, as he removes his hands from fixing the scarf.
“Uh.” Minato glances to the side and sees Yukari looking at the two of them with a very telling grin on her face. “Uh, it’s because it’s cold.”
“Right.” Ryoji doesn’t look convinced, so he reaches up and touches Minato’s face with his hands. If anyone else did this, Minato would jerk away, but instead he does not move a muscle. “Well, okay. Your face is definitely cold.”
He removes his hands. Minato feels like his brain is turning into the sea.
The sea, captivated by the moon’s gravity.
Minato stares at Ryoji. He lets his gaze linger for a moment, taking in all the little intricacies of his face and lips and his beauty mark and everything else.
“You okay?” Ryoji asks, to which Minato blinks a few times.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replies, voice slow and unsure of itself. “Um. Ready to go?”
Ryoji nods. “We’re gonna get some food, right?”
“Uh-huh. It’s cold, so I want soup. I hope you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine with me,” says Ryoji. He takes Minato’s hand and leads him out onto the road so that they can start walking and, honestly, Minato doesn’t think he would have moved from the spot if Ryoji hadn’t done that.
He looks behind himself one last time—just because he’s curious—and spots Yukari a good few yards away from him. She’s still got that grin on, and Minato knows that she’s going to talk to him later tonight about everything that she just saw, but—
—he can worry about that later on. Because right now, Ryoji is holding Minato’s hand, and that’s the important thing in the moment.
Or—no, that’s not what he was thinking about. They’re going to get food , that’s what’s important! The hand-holding is like an added bonus.
Right?
Minato doesn’t know.
Either way, Ryoji is still holding onto him. And now Minato is turning around, and Ryoji is pulling him closer, and for a second Minato wonders if they’re going to kiss, because it certainly feels like it.
But they don’t, of course. Instead, Ryoji hooks his elbow around Minato’s arm and they continue walking.
That weekend, Minato finds himself lying on his bed with Ryoji.
Technically, they aren’t lying; they’re sitting. They’re hunched over a game of chess that is on the verge of being abandoned because Ryoji brought over the laptop and is now looking up music videos. It’s supposed to be something just for background noise, but he keeps looking over at the screen and pointing out everything that’s happening.
“It’s your move,” says Minato, waving his hand around dully. “It’s been your move, actually.”
“Oh, patience,” Ryoji replies. He tacks on a joking hush at the end of it and grins.
“We don’t have to play if you don’t want to, y’know. You can just tell me.”
“We can keep going, sorry. Guess I’m just a little distracted today is all.” Ryoji looks down to the chess board and moves one of his pawns.
“Hmm.” Minato stares at the spot he's moved to. “Is something on your mind?”
He isn’t sure if Ryoji is going to respond with anything honest. Sure, he’s a generally open person, but he doesn’t ever tend to talk about anything deeply personal. That’s okay, though—Minato doesn’t like to either.
Maybe that’s what draws him to Ryoji: the fact that they’re similar opposites. Similar similars.
To his surprise, though, Ryoji replies with a cautious, “I guess you could say that.”
Minato raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to talk about it?”
The room seems to get about six times more quiet as it was before when he asks this. For a moment, it feels as though Minato said something wrong. Perhaps he asked too personal of a question. Perhaps—
“What do you think of me?”
Minato tears his eyes away from the chessboard and up to Ryoji’s face. He’s got a smile on his face and the way that he looks in the dark, illuminated by the moon, is enough to make Minato feel as though the wind has been knocked right out of him.
“Um,” he manages, “I like you.”
For some reason, Ryoji laughs. Minato doesn’t think it was that funny. “I like you too.”
“Were you worried that I didn’t like you or something? Because that’s not the case. Promise.”
“No, that wasn’t it. I was just…” He sighs a little and reaches over to pause the music. “I just feel… haha. You know.”
This isn’t like Ryoji. It isn’t like him to be stumbling around words. “What do I know?” Minato asks, raising an eyebrow ever so slightly.
“Nothing, nothing. Pretend I didn’t say anything, I feel a little silly.”
Minato wants to press on, though. At the same time he doesn’t want to come off as too aggressive, so he goes the vague route. “Are you sure?” Pause. “You can… you can tell me anything.”
Admittedly, that last part was not something he planned on saying.
There’s a silence. It’s tense and tilted, something that doesn’t usually exist between the two of them. The feeling dissolves away, though, when Ryoji wordlessly places his hand over Minato’s and looks at him, eyes so clear and focused that they could end the world.
“You have nice hands,” Minato whispers, not sure what to say.
Ryoji laughs in a manner that could be delicate. “Thanks. Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Have you ever been kissed before?”
Minato wonders whether or not he should be taken aback by this. In the movies, he thinks, this is the point where he would start blushing and stutter over all of his words.
Instead, he gives it genuine thought. “Don’t think so,” he replies, easy as ever.
“Would you like to?”
Minato exhales. “You were so awkward earlier that I was afraid you were going to tell me some awful news, but instead you’ve just been thinking about this the whole time, huh?”
“I guess I’m guilty on that end,” Ryoji says. He smiles. “Well?”
And— well , time moves so slowly after that. Minato thinks that he must have said sure or yes or something, because suddenly Ryoji’s hand is cradling his cheek and then his lips are on his mouth and then he becomes aware that he is having his first kiss.
Moonlight shines through the window.
They break apart, and the first thing Minato says is, “You use so much chapstick.”
Ryoji looks at him with the most dumbfounded, sparkly grin the world may ever see, then presses a kiss to Minato’s temple. “ So sorry about that.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Minato mumbles, unable to say that it was nice. He makes up for it by reaching for Ryoji’s hand and clasping it in his.
In the morning, Yukari watches the two of them eat breakfast with a very self-satisfied look on her face.