#musicprincess655
This is a gift for the lovely @wamuura! I hope you enjoy it.
Ryou stared at his phone. This was an inconvenience. A major inconvenience. But maybe…
Also…
An opportunity.
But if he was going to take advantage of it, he was going to need Kuramochi. If he was quick, he could catch Kuramochi just as he left his last class for the day.
A green head of hair coming out of the art building told him he was, in fact, quick enough. It was easy enough to get Kuramochi’s attention, and the goofy grin that split his face was gratifying enough that Ryou wasn’t even annoyed by having to sprint across campus.
“Hey, Ryou-san!” Kuramochi greeted him easily, just the barest hint of a blush on his face. “Why are you over here? I thought you had class in the math building before now?”
“Maybe I came to see you,” Ryou suggested silkily. It was true, but he could still make it sound suggestive just to watch that faint blush bloom pink across Kuramochi’s cheeks. “Can I buy you a coffee? I have a business proposal for you.”
“A business proposal?” Kuramochi asked. “And isn’t it a little late for coffee? Wouldn’t you rather get dinner?”
“Are you offering to take me out to dinner, Youichi?” Ryou asked. If he was a better person, he’d feel bad about the way Kuramochi spluttered. But he wasn’t a better person, and it just amused him.
“I don’t…I mean…you weren’t…” Kuramochi was turning steadily redder, and Ryou finally took pity on him.
“I’m buying if you want dinner,” he said. “I actually do have a proposal for you. A favor to ask, if I’m honest.”
“The world is definitely ending if you’re asking me for a favor,” Kuramochi said, the worst of his fluster fading out. “You know I’m gonna say yes. As long as it’s not illegal. Well, too illegal.”
“I’ll explain when we get there,” Ryou said, turning to walk by Kuramochi’s side. “What do you want to eat?”
They walked side by side, close enough to touch, nearly touching…but not quite.
And that was the opportunity. Ryou had been interested in Kuramochi since their time at Seidou, and he knew Kuramochi had been interested back almost – at least? – as long. Kuramochi’s reaction just now was proof enough that the interest hadn’t gone anywhere.
What Ryou couldn’t figure out was why Kuramochi wouldn’t respond to a single hint he dropped. For almost five years now, Ryou had been trying to subtly – and then not so subtly – get Kuramochi to realize what was going on, and all he’d gotten for his trouble was a whole lot of blushing and a whole lot of nothing.
And sure, he could’ve just asked Kuramochi out himself, but at this point, where was the funin that? He’d come this far, he might as well see it through.
At first, he’d thought maybe Kuramochi was in the closet – kind of ridiculous, in hindsight. Kuramochi had never been shy about who he was, and this was no different. He flirted with boys as much as girls, and flirted badly, but in a way Ryou found disgustingly endearing. He even called himself bisexual if asked.
Then, for a rough couple of months, Ryou had considered the possibility that maybe Kuramochi wasn’t interested back. But Kuramochi had done a pretty good job of convincing him otherwise. No one else made him fluster like that, and Ryou took a special pride in that blush that was specific to him.
The idea that maybe Kuramochi was scared his parents wouldn’t approve was out, too. Ryou was fairly certain Kuramochi’s mother was one certificate away from adopting him as her own.
So all Ryou was left with was one thing. Kuramochi, amazingly, hadn’t realized Ryou’s interest. This had led to an escalating war of attrition that Ryou knew nothing about but that Miyuki did, and was amused by until Ryou sweetly reminded him of his own failures with a certain loudmouthed pitcher.
Ryou had gotten less and less subtle in his hint dropping and flirtation, and it earned him expressions he’d never known Kuramochi’s face could make, but so far, no date.
They sat across from each other at a family restaurant, a favorite at their university for the cheap food and staff that didn’t mind college kids looking all kinds of exhausted as they powered through finals.
“So what’s this favor?” Kuramochi finally asked after they placed their order. In answer, Ryou slid his phone across the table. Kuramochi picked it up and scanned over it quickly. “You’re presenting at the Symposium?”
Ryou had known for a while that he was going to have to present all the research he’d done for his undergraduate math degree at some point. He was even looking forward to it a little. He’d had to comb through a lot of data to get to this point, and he was pretty proud of how far he’d taken it.
But he’d expected to present it to his senior seminar, not at the university’s most prestigious research expo. It was unusual for undergraduates to even be invited, and most of the projects had titles like “The Effect of Military Clothing on Popular Fashion” (a more interesting presentation than he’d expected going in) and “Lesbians in Japanese History and the Failure of Modern Queer Scholarship” (a presentation that had made most of the faculty uncomfortable, which meant it was Ryou’s favorite to date).
As an undergraduate math student, he’d never expected to be invited.
“Ryou-san, that’s incredible!” Kuramochi said, signature grin lighting up his face. “Isn’t this supposed to be good for networking? Especially if you want to go to grad school?”
“It is, but that’s not the favor,” Ryou said. He pointed to the bottom of the email. “See that?”
Plus One was written right next to RSVP.
“You want me to help you find a date?” Kuramochi asked, eyebrows furrowing. “I’m pretty sure you’d have an easier job than me.”
“Not quite,” Ryou said. “I want you to be my date.”
Kuramochi was silent for so long that Ryou was legitimately concerned he’d broken him.
“Youichi?”
“Me?” Kuramochi asked. “You want to bring me as your date?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t this a really big night?”
“Black tie, yes.”
Kuramochi mouthed the words black tie, looking a little awed, before he continued.
“Are you sure you want to…make a statement like that?” he asked nervously.
“Yes,” Ryou said emphatically. “You remember my advisor?”
“The one who made your life a living hell all year?”
Kuramochi had definitely heard Ryou complain about his advisor enough. He’d liked her enough when he’d taken her introductory statistics class, had liked her even more when she’d taught them probability by staging a class-wide blackjack tournament. He’d won, and she’d taken a liking to him.
Or so he’d thought.
Two years later when he’d come back to ask her about undergraduate research, she’d offered him a project starting his senior year that would comb through data on gambling, of all things, organizing it and analyzing trends. He’d thought it was perfect for him.
And it was, but she wasn’t.
At first, he’d just thought her demands that he constantly revise his thesis were just trying to improve his project. If he was charitable, he could even say that as a woman in the math field, she probably knew what it was like to need impeccable work to be taken seriously.
After a year, he wasn’t feeling charitable anymore, and even other math professors had agreed that his work was fine as-is before.
But the final straw had been the homophobic comments. Not aimed at him, of course – he doubted she would have said a word if she thought he was interested in men. But a fair amount of the data she’d given him included sexuality data, and he’d focused in on it, just finding the topic interesting. That was when she’d started mocking it.
“So you want to bring me as your date to annoy her?” Kuramochi asked. “Isn’t that a little too much for a networking event like this?”
“I don’t care about the networking,” Ryou said. “It’s the end of senior year, I’ve already done my job hunting. I want to do this.”
“I’m not gonna say no,” Kuramochi said. “It’s not even illegal this time.”
If Ryou was the eye rolling type, he would’ve rolled his eyes.
“If you haven’t gotten your suit tailored yet, get it tailored before the Symposium,” Ryou said. When Kuramochi made a face, Ryou went on. “Don’t make me drag you, Youichi. I will.”
“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Kuramochi said, making a grab for the check the waitress had brought them. Ryou slapped his hand away.
“I told you I was buying you dinner. I got it,” he said. “You just have to make sure you look as handsome as possible so you look good while we’re making an old homophobe uncomfortable.”
“Is that all?” Kuramochi asked.
“It shouldn’t be hard for you,”Ryou said, putting a special emphasis on the last word to watch Kuramochi blush again.
***
Ryou straightened his bowtie, fixing his already fixed hair in the mirror, and then made a face at himself when he realized he was primping. He felt…
Notnervous,exactly. He already knew Kuramochi liked him. The trick was getting Kuramochi to realize the feeling was mutual. He was pulling out the stops tonight.
Which meant primping, apparently.
He had to go eventually – mostly shoved out the door by Haruichi with a “you look great Aniki!” – to make sure he had time to meet Kuramochi before he had to be at the Symposium. They were just meeting in front of the event center and walking in together, but Ryou still didn’t want to be late.
Seeing Kuramochi for the first time, he was reallyglad he hadn’t been late.
Kuramochi had obviously followed Ryou’s instructions to get his suit tailored, because it hugged the lines of his body perfectly. He was facing away from Ryou still, giving Ryou a perfect view of the way his pants showed off his butt, and…
That was it. If Ryou couldn’t get Kuramochi to ask him out by the end of the night, he’d do it himself. He wanted to get his hands on that butt, and he wasn’t going to treat Kuramochi like a one night stand.
Maybe Kuramochi could feel him looking, because he turned and grinned, only looking a little uncomfortable in the fancy suit.
“Ryou-san!” he greeted, smile slowly sliding off as he took Ryou in. Ryou tried not to obviously preen under the attention as he felt Kuramochi’s eyes trace over his body. He looked good, and he knew it, and he was pleased that Kuramochi obviously knew it too.
“Shall we go in?” he asked, offering Kuramochi his arm. Kuramochi tucked his hand into Ryou’s elbow, letting him escort them both inside. “You’re not going to be too bored, are you?”
“You’re asking now?” Kuramochi asked. At Ryou’s sideways look, he continued. “No, I like listening to you talk about all this. I don’t understand it much, but you’re interesting to listen to.”
Ryou had no idea why that was making Kuramochi blush, but he decided to roll with it.
They followed one of the many volunteers to the room Ryou would be using to present. The first two hours of the Symposium was just researchers presenting their projects in the classrooms throughout the building, and the last hour was in the ballroom where everyone sucked up to the rich and powerful who came to see the best and brightest the university had to offer.
Kuramochi settled himself off to the side as Ryou got his PowerPoint set up. It was mostly just graphs he could reference during his speech.
It wasn’t long before other people started to filter in. The Symposium had begun.
Ryou explained his research in the simplest terms he could, outlining the methods he’d used to organize and analyze his data, taking the audience through his conclusions and finishing up with recommendations for future studies and rounding it off with the website he’d created to store all his conclusions. Everyone clapped politely when he was done talking, as people did at academic events.
He’d done well, and he knew it.
He answered a few follow up questions, and then he was done. He found Kuramochi waiting for him by the door.
“You did great,” Kuramochi congratulated him. “You really explained all that math stuff.”
“You didn’t understand a word I said, did you?”
“I did,” Kuramochi said defensively. At Ryou’s raised eyebrow, he sighed. “I understood what you were looking for, and what you found. Just not so much how you got there.”
“You’re better than most freshman statistics students, then,” Ryou said. “Barely, but better.”
Kuramochi cackled.
“So what now?”
“The other half of the presenters still have to go before they break out the champagne,” Ryou said. “Want to go watch one?”
“I don’t know…oh!” Kuramochi exclaimed, flipping through the program. “There’s a graduate student presenting on restoration techniques of Azuchi-Momoyama paintings!”
Ryou must have looked blank, because Kuramochi’s face fell a little.
“Or…something else?” he suggested. “That might be a little boring for you.”
“You just listened to me talk about math for an hour,” Ryou said. “I’ll go with you if you want to see this.”
“We don’t have to.”
“You got excited. We’re going.”
Ryou understood the presentation about as well as he thought Kuramochi had understood his, although it was a lot more scientific than he’d expected. It was worth it, though, for the way Kuramochi’s face lit up the entire time. Even if Ryou was a little lost, Kuramochi was fascinated.
“You weren’t too bored?” Kuramochi asked when they walked out.
“It was interesting,” Ryou said. “I didn’t know so much went into keeping folding screens from disintegrating. Besides, I was mostly watching you.”
“Me?”
“You’re cute when you’re interested.”
It was hardly the least subtle hint he’d ever dropped – one time he’d blatantly said he wanted to get into Kuramochi’s pants – but it still got a blush out of Kuramochi.
“Ready to go get some fancy food?” Ryou asked. “And ruin my advisor’s evening?”
“We should probably get into the champagne first,” Kuramochi suggested.
“I knew I liked you for a reason.”
They’d made it through a few plates of fancy food and two glasses each of champagne before Ryou saw his advisor.
“Showtime,” he said, picking up Kuramochi’s hand and tucking it back into his elbow as he made a beeline for his advisor. “Sensei.”
The moment her eyes met his, he could see her running through every single homophobic comment she’d ever made in front of him, and he basked in the panic he could see for a brief moment before she masked it.
“Kominato-kun,” she said, with only an admirably low amount of strain. “Is this one of your friends?”
“This is my date,” he said smoothly. “Kuramochi Youichi, this is my advisor.”
“A pleasure,” Kuramochi said, charming in the worst way. Ryou wanted to bite that delinquent smile.
“Your…date,” she said slowly. She was running through every comment again, this time with the fear that he’d bring up some report on her. He wouldn’t – he was almost graduated, so it wasn’t worth the trouble – but giving her the idea that he might was thrilling. He could barely keep the smirk off his face.
“My date,” he confirmed. “A cutie, isn’t he? I knew he’d be perfect on my arm.”
“Are you sure that’s…appropriate?” she asked delicately.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked with the kind of innocence that only developed from having a sibling and lying straight faced to their parents. He could feel the tremors in Kuramochi’s arm as he suppressed his laughter.
She glossed over his question, clearly trying to shake it off.
“Your presentation was excellent,” she said. “You’ve done good work this year. I wish you luck in your future endeavors.”
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Sensei,” he said. Time to lay the finishing blow. “I’ll fondly remember everything you’ve said to me.”
Her face went white.
“Well…you enjoy the rest of your evening with your datenow,” she said, turning quickly to make her escape. Kuramochi instantly collapsed into laughter, muffling it into Ryou’s shoulder. A few people gave them looks, but Ryou didn’t care.
“That was the best,”Kuramochi said through his cackles. “Did you see her face?”
“Burned it into my memory,” Ryou told him. “Do you have any desire to stay and rub elbows with the wealthy elite any longer?”
“No,” Kuramochi said firmly. “Wanna get out of here?”
Ryou waited for the blush to appear, for Kuramochi to realize what he’d said. But it never did. Because Kuramochi had meant it the way he’d said it.
He meant it.
Ryou let Kuramochi lead him out of the ballroom. They made it all the way into the night air before Kuramochi turned. Before Ryou could process what was happening, lips were pressed to his.
“Wait, crap.” Kuramochi jerked back. “I’m supposed to ask you first.”
“The answer is yes,” Ryou said, yanking Kuramochi back in because he was not done kissing yet. Kuramochi’s gasp of surprise was enough room for Ryou to slip his tongue in. Kuramochi responded after his moment of shock, and then it was good.
“You were flirting with me,” Kuramochi said. “All night.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been flirting with me for a while.”
“Have been for the last five years. Thanks for noticing.”
Kuramochi mouthed five years to himself.
“So…what do you want to do now?” Kuramochi asked.
“Well,” Ryou said silkily, except his voice was a little rough from kissing. “I can text Haruichi to clear out and stay with Sawamura, and I can take you home and…”
He trailed off, watching Kuramochi’s blush deepen as the implication set in.
“Or we can watch a movie,” Ryou said. “Whatever you want.”
“The first one,” Kuramochi said. “Definitely the first one.”
Ryou fished his phone out of his jacket pocket, sending off a quick text to Haruichi.
“Then let me take you home, Youichi.”
A KuraRyou exchange gift for @musicprincess655from @bubblysage
Summary:
Les Retrouvailles (n.) French The joy of reuniting with someone after a long separation. Meeting again, especially after spending a long time apart.
La vie c’est des étapes… La plus douce c’est l’amour… La plus dure c’est la séparation… La plus pénible c’est les adieux… La plus belle c’est les retrouvailles.
-Anonyme
Life is made up of stages… the most pleasant one is love, the hardest one is separation, the most difficult one is saying goodbye, [and] the loveliest one is meeting up with others again after spending time apart.
-Anonymous
aka The story of a series of meetings and separations between Mochi and Ryou.
Words: 30,323
Chapters: 5/5
Tags: KuraRyou, KuraRyou Exchange 2018, College AU
