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The second night of Tsukasa’s fast is a Thursday. To Rui, Thursday night means his mother working late, which also means his father sending guilt-trippy radio waves in the general direction of his son until Rui cedes and sits with him instead of loading one or two plates and eating in his workshop like he usually does. His father says look who decided to come out of his den but he does order pizza, and halfway through the meal he breaks their comfortable silence to ask, “Is it the wrong one?”
Rui looks up, pulled out of his thoughts. “I’m sorry?”
“The pizza,” his father says, face pinched. “Is it the wrong type? You don’t like it? I thought it was your favorite.”
Rui blinks, looks at the slice in his hand. It’s a Neopolitan pizza, which hasn’t been Rui’s favorite since he was thirteen. He realizes when his brows relax in his puzzlement that he’s been frowning at the food. He… can’t help it. He’s so radically aware of every bite sliding down his throat, of the oil and fat resting warmly in his stomach. “It’s fine,” he says blandly, wipes the grease off his fingers. “I’m just not that hungry tonight.”
He stops at two slices instead of his usual four, fills a glass of water to the brim and bids his father goodnight, retreating back into his den.
It’s been thirty-four hours since Tsukasa last ate. It’s the only thing Rui can think about, this hourglass dripping in the back of his mind. He’d scoured online for firsthand accounts and medical advice, just to canvass out expectations and warning signs. Water fasting, it turns out, wasn’t as uncommon a practice as he first thought. Side effects include: dizziness, low blood sugar, fatigue, muscle cramps, headaches.
Hunger. By the third day, the hunger is supposed to disappear, leaving only the occasional pangs, but the first and second day remain the hardest to overcome. Painful, gnawing.
Rui sits at his desk, watching the glass of water on it, hands limp on his lap.
He—
—wants to be with Tsukasa.
The idea sprouts in his mind a tiny seed and like that one fairy tale, grows to overtake every nook of it. Unlike that one fairy tale, Rui has long ago realized that he has been given a gift. And what is he doing here wasting it? He doesn’t want to be here, he thinks, sweeping his workshop with a look—his half-finished robots and static dolls, the floor littered with rolls of fabrics, with toolboxes, craft paper, garlands, wreaths, notebooks–
It’s all meaningless. He wants to be with Tsukasa.
Rui stands up, grabbing the jacket from the back of his chair with a sort of renewed vigor, an agitated impatience. He can live with it, he thinks, if Tsukasa is cross with him for overstepping boundaries. What he can’t forgive is not being there when Tsukasa needed him.
On stage, everytime Tsukasa blindly reached back, his hand had never, not once, grasped at air. For it to happen now was absurd.
Unfortunately he does arrive at this conclusion late. Late enough that knocking on any front door would be beyond propriety. Rui sidesteps this problem entirely and knocks on Tsukasa’s balcony window, waiting dutifully in the nocturnal chill of autumn, fingers torturing his sleeve.
Several long beats pass before the corner of the curtain shifts, the corner of it lifted to reveal Tsukasa’s wide eyes peering at him.
Tsukasa blinks in quick succession, shock and surprise blooming over his face. He mouths Rui’s name through the glass and Rui responds with a wave and a placid smile. The curtain is fully pulled to the side in a swift motion, and Rui laughs when he sees that Tsukasa’s hand is curled around the base of his nightstand lamp, chord dangling.
He slides the window-door open. "What on Earth are you—? Nghh, you know what, I'm too tired to say the things I'm thinking right now. But I am thinking of them."
"Does one of these thoughts involve the lamp?" Rui inquires curiously.
"You would not like that one!"
Tsukasa is staring at him like he can’t quite believe Rui is here, a slight furrow in his brows. It’s clear that Tsukasa is trying very hard to have the responsible reaction, but his amusement and his disbelief are peeking through this disapproving façade, and his eyes… are shining. Humid. Transparent.
He steps back, turns away, lowers the hand holding the lamp. “Can it wait?” he asks quietly, setting it back on his nightstand. It thumps.
Transfixed in place, Rui stares at him. “Hm?”
“Whatever is happening that you had to break into my house at this hour,” Tsukasa turns around and leans back against his nightstand, fingers curling to hug its rough edges, a small frown, “I’m really sorry, but I have to focus on myself for now. Whatever it is, I’d really like it to wait, if possible. Can you do that for me, Rui?”
Rui blinks. “It depends,” he replies, “I suppose, entirely on you. You don’t seem very patient with yourself.”
Rui is a playwright, an artist. A symptom of this disease is that it bleeds into the way he thinks. More than once Rui has caught himself reframing a boring detail into a more palatable element of a wider narrative, something that makes sense in Rui’s grand plan for himself. Empty tables, eyes wandering over him. Lone street shows. Kamishiro, you should seriously think about transferring.
It’s… it was the first act, that’s all. Poetry.
And it is this same tendency to narrativize realities that make Rui look down at his feet and give that line power. That line, that is: the threshold, separating Tsukasa’s balcony with the carpet of Tsukasa’s bedroom floor.
Rui walked four blocks and climbed all the way here and now he stops there, right before the finishing line. Tsukasa’s eyes watching him, leaning against his nightstand.
“Patient with myself… ? You—” Tsukasa stops. He makes an aborted, twitchy movement, lifting a finger in the air before lowering his hand back down. “You’re here for me?”
"I did say I would keep an eye on you," Rui points out.
"Is your phone in rice again? You could’ve just messaged me.”
It wasn't enough. "I didn't think about that."
"We could have met at the SEKAI.”
"I didn't think about that earlier," Rui shrugs.
Tsukasa frowns. "Earlier?"
"Either," Rui corrects. Hm. "I meant I didn't think about that either."
He keeps telling himself to relax, to focus, but his thoughts are scattered, his heartbeat rabbit-quick. He’s in Tsukasa’s bedroom. Rui’s come over before of course, but never at ten pm, standing alone with him in the dark. He’s wearing his pajamas, which makes it very difficult to ignore that this is where Tsukasa sleeps.
Rui’s thoughts are static, scrambled. Tsukasa is easier to keep track of, slow and sluggish as he is. Exhausted, freshly showered, his hair limp and falling into his eyes. A faint smell of citrus. His name stitched on the chest pocket of his shirt. Tenma Tsukasa: afterhours.
The full picture stands right before him, staring right back. “Rui,” Tsukasa says, extremely seriously.
Rui laughs, endeared. Happy to be here. “Tsukasa-kun.”
Tsukasa pushes him away with a small shove. “You should leave. I’m not good company tonight.”
“You’re alright,” Rui dismisses, unmoving. His gaze flicks down: Tsukasa’s bare feet are stepping over the line.
“I might yell at you.”
“Did I say something that upset you?”
A pause. Rui waits.
“I don’t seem patient with myself,” Tsukasa repeats, and this time he lets the undercurrent in his voice loose. It’s indignation and anger, and his hand curls into a fist around the fabric of Rui's jacket, but he’s not yelling, just stating, “Would you be, Rui? With this? Because I know the answer to that question!”
Rui can’t really think. Tsukasa’s fist feels like it might smolder his jacket and his shirt, burn through his flesh and his ribs like phoenix fire.
“I haven’t had to find out,” Rui answers truthfully, a little breathless. He doesn’t think it has much to do with Tsukasa’s grip on his collar.
It seems like the correct answer, but after a moment of contemplating it Tsukasa sighs, the fight going out of him.
“Everything hurts,” Tsukasa whispers in admittance, letting his forehead rest against Rui’s shoulder. “What if I don’t make it?”
“Then I suppose you’ll just go hungry forever, like Rio,” Rui simply says, arms limp by his sides. He leans into the tickle of Tsukasa’s hair, presses his cheek against the top of Tsukasa’s head. “That wouldn’t be very interesting for me, though, so I’ll do what I can to help you. In our future shows.”
Tsukasa looks up with a frown, like he’s having trouble processing. “Our future shows?” he repeats.
Rui raises an eyebrow. “There will be others, no? If you fail here, then you fail. It doesn’t mean this is the end. We’ve barely started, remember?”
“But what if I never get better?”
“You think I will let you?” Rui counters.
“You won’t stay with me forever though,” Tsukasa points out, very reasonably. “And I’d never ask that of someone like you.”
Here, it’s Rui’s turn to frown. “…someone like me?”
“You know,” Tsukasa gestures vaguely at Rui’s general self, “You’re like a god or something.”
“What?” What? “W-what are you saying,” Rui stammers, flustered, “all of a sudden?”
“You know this,” Tsukasa huffs, and… no, Rui very much does not. “We tell you this everyday. Do you think I don’t mean it? You’re a prodigy, Rui. Why are you so surprised? Your work is always so incredible. Everything unfolds exactly the way you say they will, everything you do you excel at. You make the impossible happen. You know I steal from you?”
Rui takes a step forward, enraptured. “Do you?” he murmurs.
“Yes,” Tsukasa replies, waving wildly, “sometimes, the way you think! And, I don’t know, your sense of detail, and the way you’re so methodical about things. Sometimes I try to emulate it when I’m overwhelmed and it’s very helpful, actually!” he huffs, looking mad about it.
Rui takes another step forward, over the line and into the room. Tsukasa doesn’t look at him at all, busy walking two steps back and forth, “honestly, it all comes so easy to you and sometimes I think that if I had a fraction of your–” He rakes a frustrated hand through his hair, “No, see, you should’ve left when I asked because I don’t mean it like that. I don’t want to say this. I admire you so much! I’m just–”
Rui taps him gently on the arm. “Hey, breathe.”
“I’m trying!” Tsukasa snaps, “I’m trying to catch up with you all the time and now with Asahi and with Seiryuin I feel like I’m just always so breathless!” he yields the word like it was punched out of him, a furious whisper that seems to expel the last of his tension. When Tsukasa stops and looks back at Rui, it’s with a defeated expression, in complete disbelief, “I’m all out of breath, Rui.”
And by now Rui had loved Tsukasa for such a long time already that it’s part of him, nestled inside of him, inseparable from everything he’s ever loved to the point of silence. It’s the most natural thing in the world: “Would you accept mine?”
Tsukasa blinks, surprised. “What?”
“My breath. I want to kiss you,” Rui says so very plainly.
Take away the fat and the saccharine and all the excess and additives and it really becomes that simple when laid bare. Rui recalls his own research. Reason and logic become compromised when hunger is experienced / Such starvation is also expressed through adopting dangerous behaviors / elevates aggression, competition / cannibalism.
Tsukasa’s eyes are wide and full of hesitation, but he doesn’t take a step back and his hand doesn’t move, his fingers splayed out over Rui’s chest.
“No,” he says, the conviction in his voice contrasting with the way he’s looking down at his shuffling feet. “Not yet.”
Yet.
Yet.
Yet.
“I need to do this by myself,” Tsukasa continues, peering at him through his eyelashes. “Is that alright?”
Rui softens, helpless. He reaches up and he reaches out, cupping Tsukasa’s chin between his thumb and finger to tilt his head up. “You once said,” he says, not knowing where he’s going with this, but the need to do burns, “that theater is everything to you. Did you mean that?”
Tsukasa frowns. “Of course!” he whispers, taking offense.
“Then let it be everything,” Rui concludes, swiping the pad of his thumb under Tsukasa's lip. Not yet. Not yet. It echoes in his mind. The future is so exciting. “It can’t just be the victory of a good performance or the satisfaction at curtain call. This is part of it, too. This frustration and this anger and this grief, doesn’t it make you feel like you’re living a real life?”
Tsukasa blinks attentive, still-wet eyes at him, a bit of confusion in them, a bit of fascination. “A real life?”
Hm… it was a bit of an odd phrasing. Rui had never thought to articulate his observations on himself, these detached and routine introspections that’d serve no one unless put into a story. They’d always been for himself only. But Tsukasa’s face is so close Rui can see the glistening of his tears clinging to his lashes, and standing together like this, Rui feels the words come easy. “When I feel anxious, or angry, or when we fight, I always get this sense that I’m a full person living in full, a real life... it's not something I've often felt that I had. To me, at least, it makes it feel like it's worth participating in... the world, I suppose. Does that make sense?”
“I think,” Tsukasa looks completely uncertain. “I can’t say I fully get it… and how does that help me, huh?”
Rui smiles. “I suppose it doesn’t," he says, satisfied.
“You have such a special way of thinking about everything,” Tsukasa comments, looking exasperated. Rui meets his eyes openly, indulging in this feeling — an entire year and he still can’t decide which is more addictive: being seen, or seeing Tsukasa.
Suddenly Tsukasa frowns, looking worried. His eyes are still shiny with tears. “You do know I didn't mean it, right Rui?”
“Mean what?”
“When I said all those things about it coming easy to you and all. I mean—I did mean everything I said, but I hope you're not thinking that I resent you for any of it! I really have nothing but the utmost admiration for you.”
“Tsukasa-kun,” Rui says firmly, and takes both his hands with no care for the surprise it gathers, “Please look at my mouth. I would not,” he enunciates with non-negotiable finality, “fully be myself if you weren’t a part of me.”
Tsukasa blinks.
“So when you admire me,” Rui goes on, “do you understand that you’re admiring your own work?”
Tsukasa stares back at him so speechless and for so long that Rui might have thought he overdid it, was too intense, too much, if it weren’t for the greedy way Tsukasa’s clutching his hands tightly back.
“What,” Tsukasa whispers to himself under his breath, something like wonder in it despite the fact that he sounds like he wants to cry. He briefly looks down at his feet, before turning his head to the right, burying what he can of his face in his shoulder.
Oh—Rui dips his head down a little to see—Tsukasa is crying, the tears running freely down his cheeks.
Rui follows the line of his gaze and meets his own eyes reflected in the mirror.
"Oh," Rui understands. "Are you looking at yourself crying?"
"As suspected I look dashing even in this pitiful state," Tsukasa sniffles.
“…As is befitting of a star such as yourself,” Rui agrees gently, not without sympathy nor amusement.
A small sigh. “...And now all I can think about is that I want to kiss you, too,” Tsukasa confesses, meeting his eyes in the glass, and he manages to actually make it sound admonishing.
Rui's thankful that he has his acting skills to draw on. He doesn’t know how else he’d have pretended his heart isn’t trying to beat some kind of sprinting record. “My apologies,” Rui smiles, “for being so unhelpful.”