#word count less than 1k

[ He has his elbow propped on his knee, wrist suspended, loosely, off the edge. He looks like he ought to be in a period movie – instead of Inari, then, like a fourteen-year-old Japanese James Dean: burning bright, burning out. ]

***
i am ready to owe you anything
Author:pennyofthewild
Prompt: @souharuweek2015 day 1: firsts/childhood
Word count: 820 
Ratings/Warnings: T+, smoking, brief strong language
Summary/Notes: middle school souharu ft. delinquent!haru for @buttleronduty because this is literally all her fault (please accept this humble offering).

[listen]
***

The school’s rooftop garden began as an accident, really – born of an enthusiastic seventh grade science experiment and nurtured by Iwatobi’s yearlong mild weather. Years later, it is an overgrown, untidy jungle of experiment plants grown dense and thick: muggy like a rainforest in summer, eerie and lifeless in the winter.  

On a hot afternoon in late spring, Sousuke finds Nanase perched on the balustrade, sitting on the concrete wall with one knee drawn to his chest, the other stretched out in front of him, surrounded by garden plants run wild. Like some sort of reincarnation of Inari – the hopeless nerd in Sousuke thinks – what with the gently waving leaves hovering over him, and the sunlight filtering through the canopy to dapple, pale gold and gray, over his face and hair and summer uniform, arms gleaming with afternoon sun.

The image is ruined, however, by the large, mottled bruise on his chin, varying shades of yellow and purple, and the cigarette in his mouth, smoke curling out the end like a slow obscenity. Sousuke’s matching bruise stings. Nanase hears him and looks up. His eyes flicker over Sousuke, narrow to blue slits.

“I’m not going to apologize,” Sousuke says, before Nanase can deliver one of his rare, but infamous, tongue-lashings.

Nanase’s eyebrows hitch upward, as if to say, good, because I’m not going to accept it.

“I stand by what I said,” Sousuke tilts his chin, crosses his arms over his chest. Nanase remains staunchly un-intimidated. “But we’ve got another English period and Nakamura-sensei said he would have the principal call your parents if you don’t come to class.”

“Fuck you, Yamazaki,” Nanase spits, cigarette resting in the fork of his index and middle fingers. He has his elbow propped on his knee, wrist suspended, loosely, off the edge. He looks like he ought to be in a period movie – instead of Inari, then, like a fourteen-year-old Japanese James Dean: burning bright, burning out. He looks like Rin.

The thought smarts: like Nanase’s punch, earlier – but duller, deeper, heavy in Sousuke’s chest. He shrugs. “Maybe some day, when we’re older and you know what you’re doing, I might let you.”

He can see when what he’s said sinks in: Nanase’s eyes widen, the tight line of his mouth loosening – and then he laughs – short, sharp, mirthless – like a thunderclap. Sousuke wonders, briefly, what he would sound like really laughing.  The thought closes his throat.

“Maybe,” Nanase says, “if the offer is still standing.” The promise hangs low in Sousuke’s belly – a vague, pleasant heat. Nanase moves to stub his cigarette, swings his legs off the wall.

“Wait,” Sousuke gestures at the cigarette, runs his tongue over his lips. “Don’t put it out just yet.”

Nanase pauses in his half-crouch, one foot on the ground, and looks up at Sousuke from underneath raised eyebrows, an amused smirk dancing around his mouth. “Oh? What brought this on? You’re usually just as much of a scaredy-cat as Rin.”

As usual, the sound of Rin’s name spoken aloud causes a pang in Sousuke’s chest, like peeling the scab off a day-old wound. Nanase is watching him carefully, though, so Sousuke shrugs. “I’m not against trying something new.”

A flicker crosses Nanase’s face – something between a grimace and a strange wistfulness – but then his expression clears, and he scoffs, “yeah right,” derisively, but he holds out the cigarette anyway.

Sousuke takes it, cautiously, holds it as far away from the lit end as he can. He looks down at it – it is so innocuous – a rolled-up paper stick – but strangely heavy in his hand. He can feel the weight of Nanase’s gaze on his face, and perhaps it is the idea that Nanase is waiting for him to back down – but Sousuke swallows his hesitation and lifts the cigarette to his mouth. He sucks in a quick, shallow breath, feels heat coil in the back of his throat.

It burns.

Letting the smoke escape his mouth, Sousuke decides it isn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling, but probably not something he’d do regularly. The paper is damp where Nanase’s mouth had been, and belatedly, Sousuke’s ears heat up.

“First smoke, first indirect kiss,” Nanase’s voice is its usual expressionless drawl, but Sousuke detects amusement underneath the surface, “my, my. Big day for you, isn’t it, Yamazaki-kun?”

Sousuke watches him stub the cigarette out with his heel. He swallows, looks down at his feet, attempts a light, teasing tone. “Well – you know. Have to start somewhere.”

When Sousuke looks up, Nanase is smiling at him. It isn’t a smirk. It is a smile: a soft, fond smile that brightens his eyes and lights up his face. Sousuke didn’t know Nanase could smile like that – at least, not at him. 

Sousuke’s heart sputters.

“Well then,” Nanase says, still smiling that heart-stopping smile, dimples deepening. If he hadn’t been head-over-heels for him before, Sousuke thinks, then he definitely is now, “where would you like to start?”

college hijinks #1

***
an awkward situation
Character(s): Shigino Kisumi, Yamazaki Sousuke
Word Count:800
Rating:G+
Notes: written off one of the “aus” prompts, to combat writer’s block, mostly? please be reminded that this blog is a “dump” for a reason.

i’m not sure, but i’d like to add to this in the future, maybe? obviously, i make no promises /bites nails

***

Standing by the fridge in the middle of the university dorm room he shares with Hazuki Nagisa, Kisumi realizes he is in a bit of an awkward situation.

Before he’d so blithely invited the stranger currently seated on a couch in the middle of the room – sure in his assumption that said stranger was his roommate’s boyfriend –  inside, Kisumi (probably) should have thought to remember that the only things he knew about Nagisa’s boyfriend were

a)      He was taller than Nagisa

b)      He had dark(-ish?) hair

c)      He was a second-year Engineering student, here at Toridai

and

d)      He was sort of reserved and somewhat (a whole lot) strange, in an (according to Nagisa) endearing sort of way

Exactly four pieces of information.

Four pieces of information that could have applied to any number of students studying at Toridai, and definitely weren’t reason enough to invite  the first tall, dark-haired, reserved-looking guy to knock on the door into their room with a cheery, “oh, it’s you! Nagisa-chan just popped out for a moment – why don’t you come on in – ”

Kisumi doesn’t even know Nagisa’s boyfriend’s name. Hell, he’d just met Nagisa – over the weekend, all of forty-eight hours ago.

Classes are due to start the next day, and the two of them have only just settled into their dorm room. Really, the only reason Kisumi knows so much about Nagisa already (and Nagisa about Kisumi) is because they both happen to be extroverted, gregarious sort of people.

In most other situations, it would have taken Kisumi a while – say, the first month of term – to really get to know a roommate, much less a roommate’s boyfriend.

Oh my God, Kisumi thinks, this is sort of an awkward situation, isn’t it? Man, I don’t even know his name.

It - the thought – occurs to Kisumi when he is halfway through pouring a glass of juice for his (yet unnamed) guest. He gives himself a mental kick, plasters on his bestest, most charming smile (one hundred percent little brother approved!) and turns around, approaching the couch-and-its-occupant with the juice in hand.

Kisumi notes, amused, that his guest is sitting with his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze fixed somewhere on the floor, as if he’d been forcefully made to sit down and don’t move now, you hear? Kisumi supposes he had probably been a little enthusiastic about his invitation.

“Oh, I am sorry,” Kisumi says, setting the juice on the well-worn coffee table in front of the couch, “I don’t believe I introduced myself – I’m Nagisa’s roommate, Shigino Kisumi – but you can call me Kisumi! And you are – ?”

He receives a blank look and a brief, “Yamazaki Sousuke,” delivered in a deep monotone, and accompanied by the slightest uplift of a thick eyebrow, as if to say, I have no idea who you are or what you are talking about.

“It’s great to meet you, Yamazaki-san!” Kisumi presses on, undaunted. Just because Nagisa isn’t here doesn’t mean Kisumi can’t be a good host. “You know – Nagisa told me he’s been trying to contact you since Friday night! I guess Engineering students really have it rough, huh?”

Another raised eyebrow, more pronounced this time. His eyes, Kisumi notes, are a deep, vivid teal, like a tropical lagoon, or something. Very poetic.

“I’m not an Engineering student,” Yamazaki says, and there is an amused lilt to his baritone, this time.

Kisumi blinks. “Not an – ”

Yamazaki stands, tips his jaw. “And I have no idea who this Nagisa is, either.”

“No idea who,” Kisumi begins, going slack-jawed. Awkward is too light a word to describe what the situation has become.

“I’m the RA,” Yamazaki continues, blandly, “I came to look in on the occupants of this room – oh, you know – as part of my job. Thanks for the juice, by the way.”

The juice in question sits, untouched, on the table.

“Sure – uh, no problem,” Kisumi manages, manfully resisting the urge to lower his burning face into his hands.

At the door, Yamazaki turns back for a moment and says, with a curious little half-smile, “you might want to think a moment, next time, before you pull a random stranger into a room. You do know what impression you gave off, don’t you?”  

And he slips through the door, leaving Kisumi to – belatedly – process this last, enigmatic statement. He gives in to the urge to cover his face when he does, finally, process it – but only for a moment, after which he throws the door open and calls down the hallway, at Yamazaki’s retreating back,

“Say I invited you in again, what would you say?”

Yamazaki pauses. Kisumi can hear the smirk in his voice when he replies, halfway down the corridor as he is, “well, I’m not dating Nagisa-kun, am I?”