The Mandatory Vday Fic, in stages. (Stage 1)
A/N: I hope I finish this by Vday; school is being a bitch though, and I'm not sure this is quite up to standard :x Please excuse sad attempts at humour and plot. If you do not get the Jin ref, go google it, the song cracks me up so much.
Oshitari Yuushi is widely acknowledged to be a tensai nearly equal to Fuji Syuusuke of Seigaku.
This implies that he should not at all be incapable of coming up with a perfectly good plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day with Mukahi Gakuto. He has a good deal of background research, for one thing, and an entire arsenal of resources at his disposal.
The only problem with all his preparation is: (a) aforementioned has no idea of his feelings; (b) all background research applies exclusively to females, because very few people have caught on to the idea of writing romance novels about boys that don’t involve poncey outfits, fighting, dodgy descriptions of a carnal ilk, more fighting, etc etc etc.
None of which apply to Gakuto, really. (except the fighting, but that’s only when Gakuto meets Kikumaru Eiji in the street without either of their doubles partners around to halt the fireworks. Then there is real trouble.)
Oshitari groans and buries his head in his hands. They should really have a how-to manual for this. Or at least a commiseration club, success stories inclusive.
Speaking of success stories, though -
*
Ootori is beginning to look just the slightest bit unnerved by Oshitari having trapped him into a corner of the clubroom and looking at him in a predatory manner over the rims of his glasses.
No point in beating around the bush, since if he got caught Shishido would be beating him around the head. Oshitari takes the plunge.
“So, Ootori. I have a couple of questions for you.” Ootori is nervously fiddling with the chain around his neck, twisting and untwisting, glints of silver threading through his fingers.
“Since I think it was pretty obvious to everyone except Shishido himself that you were - if I might be so blunt - pining for him, when and how exactly did let him know?” Oshitari crosses his arms over his chest and waits for the answer; it will come, because Ootori is hardly capable of saying no, especially to a senpai and even to such a direct and potentially mortifying question as this one.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
“Senpai....” he manages weakly, before Oshitari’s mental countdown hits zero and the blush that was originally a mere flake of pink on either cheek at the start of the question has bloomed into a full-fledged crimson flush.
Bingo.
*
Oshitari reviews his notes carefully. Apparently the trick to this is to find somewhere nice (“Where both of you will feel comfortable,” were Ootori’s exact words. He did dispense pretty good advice once his initial prudishness had dissipated); in Shishido and Ootori’s case this was... A street tennis court.
How surprising.
He supposes that Gakuto would be pretty happy in a gymnasium, but he might die from an aneurysm remembering the *disastrously embarrassing ordeal that was his gymnastics module test. Perhaps a dance club, then? Or there might be some truth in that song that boyband-which-Gakuto-learns-dance-moves-off’s member - is his name Jin? - sang, the one with the lyric in English that goes go club get drunk. Well. He’s not sure that’s the... desired outcome, so he crosses that off the list, too.
Which leaves a) the planetarium; b) the park, for a (hopefully romantic) picnic; c) the amusement park, because there’s a bouncy castle there.
*
He’s always thought the planetarium would be a good place for a date; stars and the connotations of ‘heavenly bodies’ and whatnot. Evidently he has reckoned without Gakuto’s short attention span.
“Come on, Yuushi, there’s nothing happening! Why’re we lying on these stupid chairs staring up at a stupid dark ceiling with stupid little white lights anyway?” Gakuto’s tirade is punctuated with yawns, and his eyes are fluttering shut.
Oshitari’s not sure how anyone could not find astrology exciting, but he tries to explain it to Gakuto anyway, the precision of the orbits, the comets trailing light, drawing rainbows of light across the sky, chasing the edges of the galaxy; the dying of the stars, black holes with their endless hunger.
(Sometimes, though, the romantic in him thinks that the black holes could just be lonely, because they are no longer beautiful, no longer stars that people look at and long for, they are the absence of what people yearn for.)
Midway through his explanation about the Little Dipper he looks closely at Gakuto and realises that he is fast asleep. It is one of the few times he has seen Gakuto completely at ease, without the tension in the line of his spine and the nervous energy that ignites at the smallest spark; Gakuto looks extraordinarily small in the dark, huddled on his chair in the dark. Without his usual larger-than-life presence he suddenly looks too delicate, all angles and spindly limbs, palely luminous in the dark, quite possibly as distant and unattainable as the moon.
Oshitari stifles the urge to reach over and smooth away the hair falling (quite beguilingly) over his forehead; Gakuto sighs and turns over, murmuring a little in his sleep - and suddenly flails. His arm is a sudden stripe of warmth across Oshitari’s stomach, and Oshitari stills and forgets to breathe for a few long moments.
Eventually he relaxes and leans back in his chair, feels the leather of the seat against the back of his neck, textured and smelling of polish, of age, listens to Gakuto breathing evenly beside him.
With moments like this, it is okay to wait a while more to tell the truth.
*
It is time to implement Plan B: a picnic in the park.