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The cold snap comes mid-April and cuts cherry blossom season docked-tail short. Shou knows that it’s a bit of a shame, technically, that he’s missing almost all of it. His first full spring back in Japan since he was eight and the cherry blossoms will last a day if he’s lucky, eliminated by some freak snowstorm. He’s a little bummed if only because he doubts he’ll be able to draw any proper flowers from it, but it’s not really a huge deal. He’s missed stuff like this before. Holidays, birthdays, pretty weather days, they all got a little lost in the chaos of grabbing Claw by the collar and throwing it to the floor. This isn’t his first time missing something like this; he always has a sneaking suspicion that it won’t be his last. It’s lost all time that Shou doesn’t want to dwell on, so he shakes his head and he doesn’t.
Besides, he’s got better stuff to dwell on now. Freak snowstorms mean that Ritsu will be freezing, and that means the perfect opportunity to buy him hot chocolate. Ritsu gets to not freeze to death and Shou gets to indulge himself in Ritsu’s sweet tooth, in the way his whole face lights up when sugar touches his tongue. It’s a tiny little thing to treasure, but Shou managed to go to half of his school day, and so he figures that he deserves it. He can put Ritsu’s gentle smile next to his collection of rocks and the swatches of interesting colors tapped to his bedroom wall, keep it among his precious things and protect it from whatever harm could come its way. It’s a nice way to spend a Thursday. The best way he can imagine.
The cafe is crowded when Shou enters. He ends up in line behind a mother with three kids and in front of a businessman who keeps tapping his foot, click-click-click on the tiles. Shou takes out his phone, fusses with Twitter just long enough to look distracted, and then takes half a step back and steps on that tapping foot hard. He stops himself short of toe-breaking force, but just barely.
It’s a fast-moving line and Shou’s in front earlier than he expected to be. “And what would you like?” The cashier asks him in a monotone. The poor son of a bitch looks hungover as hell, eyes bloodshot and half-closed as he regards Shou with mild disdain. He doesn’t take it personally.
“Two medium hot chocolates with whipped cream.” He says, handing over his cash before the cashier can even ask for it. “Keep the change.”
The cashier nods and Shou moves to the side, waits for his hot chocolates. He leaves with one in each hand and they both glow faintly orange as he keeps them warm, protects them from the snow that’s still coming down.
Shou could walk the path to Salt Mid blindfolded by this point. He remembers hearing stories about stray dogs, how they’ve been dropped on the other side of the country and still wind up at their usual hunting grounds the next day. It’s that instinctive now. A left on 33rd, straight for three blocks, left-right-left all right in a row, Salt Boulevard meets Salt Street and Shou is early by two minutes and twenty five seconds exactly. He leans against the gates and presses into the snow with the toe of his boot, making an impressive hole in the blanket of white.
The doors swing open at 14:35 sharp. First years first, and they still look at him strange. Blue school blazer against their black gaukerns, undone tie, pierced ears—they all know Shou doesn’t belong here. Still, Shou’s here almost every day. He figured they’d get used to him by now, but here they are. He peers into the cups of hot chocolate and claims the one with less whipped cream as his, trying to increase his chances of getting a whipped cream mustache on Ritsu. Then the second years come out, and they’re used to him, at least. Second years, and then third years, and it’s so easy to spot Ritsu among them. Sure, the student council band helps, but Ritsu has always been distinctive to him. Always easy to find in a crowd. No one walks quite like him, no one tilts their head to the side like he does, no one’s eyes crinkle at the corners in quite the same day.
“Hot chocolate?” He says in lieu of a greeting, raising just one eyebrow. Shou remembers him practicing the look in a mirror a few months ago, trying to master to perfect expression of uncaring curiosity. It’s not quite apathetic, though. Not when Shou knows where to look for his heart.
“Just for you.” Shou holds out the cup and smiles wide, and their hands brush when Ritsu takes it. His skin is alluringly soft and Shou suddenly remembers a drama that Ritsu had conned him into watching. It was an old one, a 90’s classic, and the main lead had kissed his true love’s hand. Now Shou is tempted to do the same, just to find out what that skin would feel like beneath his lips.
“Thanks.” Ritsu snorts in that weird way he does when he’s trying not to be touched, and Shou counts it as a success. All of that pretend cool falls away once he takes a sip and they’re past the school gates, out onto the streets where the cherry blossoms are just about frozen over.
They walk in silence for a few minutes, just sipping on their drinks. Ritsu looks tired from the beginning-of-the-year rush, and Shou is honored to get his little bit of silence. He’s trusted with this exhaustion, is allowed to hold it in his hands and witness it as it is. Ritsu doesn’t need to pretend around him, and it’s something Shou brags about in his head when he has the time for it.
“It’s a shame about the flowers this year.” Ritsu says about half of the way to his house.
Shou shrugs and throws his now empty cup into a nearby trashcan. “Mhmm, it is. I haven’t really gotten to see ‘em since I was a kid, but there’ll probably be next year. No big deal.”
“Perfect shot.” Ritsu tells him, and he’s looking up at one of the trees with his eyes all distant and glassy, the way they get when he has an idea. “Hold on. I think there’s still a way you can see them.”
“I’m holding on.” Shou stops next to Ritsu when he stops walking, and the nearest tree begins to glow Ritsu-blue. He realizes all of the sudden that Ritsu is trying to do something for him, something incredibly and stupidly nice, and a nervousness he can’t remember feeling before jumps up from his stomach and half-closes his throat, makes his voice come out all weird. “Dude, you don’t have to do anything for me if you want, I was just—”
“I know.” Ritsu cuts him off. “I know I don’t have to. I just want to.”
That shuts Shou up nice and proper, and he watches more trees take on the surreal blue glow. There’s always a chance of getting caught, of neighbors peeking out of windows, of someone taking a way home that they usually don’t. There’s a chance they could be seen, something that’s usually Ritsu’s job to be worried about, but he’s the one worrying now. He knows Ritsu cares about getting in trouble, about keeping his reputation, about things Shou has mostly discarded and now Ritsu is discarding all of that to give Shou some sort of experience. Affection freezes Shou to the core Antarctica-style, and he wonders if the force of all this emotion could give him a case of psychosomatic frostbite. He makes a note to ask Fukuda later if he survives it.
The flowers are swept from the trees in one fell swoop and circle around Shou’s head. The snow shakes off of them and all he sees is a vibrant, delicate pink. It’s soft, but doesn’t lack any intensity. It matches something that’s long sense bloomed in his chest, and he wonders if Ritsu knows.
The circle grows and grows until Ritsu and Shou are standing in the midst of their own private tornado. The top of it is gigantic, covers the whole block, but the bottom is just the two of them, together. Through the petals, Shou can see people peering out, trying to solve the mystery, but Shou knows that there is no mystery. There’s just Ritsu, doing what he does every day of his life.
If he squints, Shou can see the snow on the ground and the blue glow around it all. He reaches out and grabs one of them, feels the velvety soft petal between his fingertips. He grabs another, and then a third and a fourth and then turns to Ritsu, holds out his hand. It’s a weak gift in the face of this vortex, but Shou can’t help the urge to give something back.
Ritsu looks at him and a smile blooms on his face and fuck the cherry blossoms and fuck his rock collection and fuck whatever monuments they’ve put up around the world for kings and gods and presidents, that is what art is and that is what living’s about and Ritsu drops his hot chocolate to the ground when Shou kisses him and forces the petals into his empty hand.
He drops his hot chocolate, and then he kisses back.