MP100 Valentines Week
Day 5; Lanterns
pairing: terumob
Story tag
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Shigeo’s immediate group of friends might not actually be very good for Teruki’s general well-being.
“So,” Tome says in an overly-casual, faux-disinterested tone that puts Teruki on his guard immediately, “you and Kageyama, huh?”
He shuffles his feet, trying not to feel as though he’s under surveillance. It would be easier, probably, if he wasn’t actually under surveillance. There’s a girl across the schoolyard leaning out from behind a tree with a small digital camera, and it looks like she’s taking verbal notes with a pocket tape recorder? Why?
“Is that strange?” he finds himself asking. “We’re going to the movies after school, and since the theater is nearby, I thought I could just meet him – ”
“The movies, huh?” Tome smacks her gum, leans a little heavier against the gate, and looks him over. Teruki isn’t shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot but that’s only because he’s steeling himself to maintain composure. He’s stared down delinquents and adult espers, he won’t squirm now. He won’t. “What are you gonna go see?”
“A new action movie. Shigeo picked it.”
Her eyebrows fly up. “'Shigeo’ picked it?”
“Um.”
Teruki looks away, mind racing. Surely Shigeo has other friends who call him by his first name. Dimple calls him by his first name. There’s no reason to panic about something as small as this. There’s no reason for Tome to stare him down like he just confessed a great and terrible secret, right? Right? Right?
He squirms. Just a little.
“I’m not certain what you – ”
Crunching footsteps cut him off as they approach, and he glances over into Shigeo’s heavy-hooded eyes, and relief balloons in his chest with enough strength to crack bone. Tome smacks her gum again, and her eyes bore into the side of Teruki’s face like a finger jabbing him sharply on the cheek.
“Hi, Teruki,” the other boy says, unaware that his arrival doubles as a daring rescue. Tome mouths ‘Teruki’ to herself, looking some combination of incredulous and impressed. “Sorry to make you wait. Ritsu is home sick, so I picked up his schoolwork for the day from his teacher. Is it okay if we take this to him first?”
“Of course,” Teruki says, intensely grateful for an excuse to leave immediately. “We’d better hurry then.”
Shigeo nods, and looks at his older classmate with a smile that only those who know him well would recognize as fond. “Thank you for keeping him company, Tome.”
“No problem,” Tome says, pushing herself upright. “Have a good time, boys. I expect a text later on tonight,” she adds, with a conspiratorial wink at Shigeo.
Shigeo blinks at her, but manages a belated, confused-sounding “okay” as she leaves, and then Teruki is all but dragging him away before that other girl with the camera decides he needs to be cross-examined.
Ritsu looks like his brother in small ways, the color of his eyes and the shape of his nose and the curve of his mouth when he smiles; but Ritsu is cold in all the places Shigeo is warm, and watches Teruki through a very narrow gaze.
Not that it’s anything personal, Teruki thinks. Ritsu seems to look at everyone that way.
“Brother says the two of you are going to the cinema,” Ritsu says by-way of greeting, the moment Shigeo leaves the room to put his bag away upstairs. “Who’s idea was that?”
“Mine,” Teruki replies, buckling down for another interrogation. Shigeo’s inner circle sure are a curious bunch.
But then, Teruki is desperately new to this – maybe this level of scrutiny and suspicion is just the way close friends and close family work. If it is, it certainly won’t be the worst thing he’s ever had to make the best of. And spending an evening with Shigeo is worth making the best of a lot worse.
“We watch a lot of movies when he comes to my house,” he adds, courteously instigating conversation to cover the full, uncomfortable silence eating up the space between them, “and a sequel to one of our favorite films came to theaters last weekend.”
Ritsu doesn’t answer right away, studying him the way Shigeo studies algebra at Teruki’s small table; struggling to make the numbers come together in a way he understands.
Footsteps thump softly down the stairs, once again heralding Shigeo and his second unintentional rescue of the day, and Ritsu seems to come to an abrupt decision. He leans forward across the table with something fierce in his eyes.
“You better not let my brother pay for anything. And don’t let any weirdos near him. And if you hurt him in even the smallest way, I will find you.”
By the time Shigeo wanders back into the living room, Ritsu is back to being a sickly, blanket-swaddled lump on the sofa, and Teruki is gaping wordlessly at him.
“I’m ready,” Shigeo says quietly. “Are you sure you don’t need anything before I go, Ritsu?”
“No, I’m okay,” his brother replies warmly. “Thank you for bringing me my homework. I really hope you have a fun time.”
Teruki has no idea how Ritsu made even that sound like a threat, but he’s breaking out in a cold sweat as Shigeo pulls the door closed behind them.
The movie lets out a little later than Teruki expected, so they go to dinner a little later than he expected as a result, and dusk is falling by the time they finish eating.
Shigeo keeps giving him odd little looks every now and then – because Teruki jumped to pay the check at the restaurant in much the same way he had all but elbowed his way forward to pay for the movie tickets earlier in the evening.
“I have money,” the smaller boy said quietly, both times, and Teruki babbled something idiotic along the lines of “no, it’s okay, I want to,” because even that sounded better than “I’m afraid of your fledgling-esper little brother.”
Honestly, Teruki thinks to himself as they walk, it’s not like this is the first time he and I have spent time together. As protective as all of his friends have been, you’d think this was something monumental.
“Oh ho, and what do we have here?”
“Shishou,” Shigeo is saying as Teruki turns around. And it honestly isn’t surprising to see the psychic approaching them leisurely from out of nowhere – that’s just the kind of day they’ve been having. “What are you doing here?”
“This and that,” the man says with a careless wave of his hand. “I should be asking you two the same thing. It’s a little late to be out, don’t you think?”
“It is a little late,” Shigeo agrees, blinking up towards the light-polluted sky. The streetlights are coming to life up and down the street. “We went to the movies, and then we went to dinner, and before we knew it, it was dark out.”
Reigen’s eyebrows climb his face slowly, all but disappearing in his hairline. True to form, though, he’s hardly at a loss for words. “Dinner and a movie, huh? Doesn’t that sound nice.”
“Yes. We’re on our way home now, though.”
Reigen is still looking at him with that odd expression on his face, but he follows it up with a crooked grin and shakes his head. “So that’s how it is. Well, you both certainly could have done worse.” He ruffles Shigeo’s hair, and then Teruki’s in the same fond, familiar way, and adds, “Glad you had a good time.”
It’s approval, maybe? Or permission? Teruki isn’t sure. It feels out of place. But he’s warmed by it, whatever it is, and his step is a bit lighter as they leave. Shigeo walks close to him so they don’t misplace each other in the crowd, close enough that their fingers brush with every other step.
The buzzing streetlights overhead shine down on every street; noisy, conspicuous guides they didn’t ask for, and would probably be lost without.
i didnt stop wearing swimsuits and “revealing” clothing bc im fat i stopped bc i kept getting made fun of for being hairy (being fat didnt help but anyway)
