Chapter Text
Ah, youth.
A wonderful period of discovery, metacognition, and fascinating adolescent development. During this embarrassing series of years, some acquire hobbies, realizing their interests and making friends out of it. Some find skills and knowledge, growing along with their age. And some even yield into the reigns of romance, an exciting affair full of first loves and fluttering experiences. It's truly a beautiful moment in time.
But Ritsu disa-fucking-grees. Youth? Physically, his body is in tip-top shape. Mentally, it is 1867 and he has tuberculosis at age seventy-two.
"Kageyama-kun, you have something on the side of your mouth. No, not there—" Teru, like a protagonist in a shoujo manga, leans forward to swipe his finger on Ritsu's brother's lower lip. Mob blushes, touching his mouth and blinking with fluster.
Enamored by his reaction, Teru, the rat, takes a grape from its bundle on the picnic blanket covered in various foods and feeds it to his lover. Ritsu, who is standing by the doorway with an agonized expression, watches as the duo exhibits the most insufferable displays of affection he has ever had the misfortune of witnessing with his own two eyes. Fine. Okay. Dates are acceptable. Nothing's wrong with two teenagers madly in love having a romantic rendezvous over a light meal.
However.
They are having their fucking picnic date inside Ritsu's godforsaken room. Unhinged and ready to hurl a certain golden boy into the golden sun, Ritsu dazedly looks at his hand, counting up to three with his quivering fingers. The intolerable lovebirds have invaded his room for their tender extravaganzas thrice. There are tears in Ritsu's eyes.
"Why are you in my room," he asks, dispassionate enough to make it sound like an exasperated statement. The two turn their heads to the third wheel, as if he were a visitor in his own fucking room.
His brother at least looks sheepish, replying, "I thought you'd be back late because of your council duties, Ritsu."
Ritsu gestures to the pouring rain. "We postponed the activity." He, too, wishes he could postpone his wretched fate to being a witness to their puke-inducing romance, preferably until forever.
"There was, um," Teru pauses, blushing, "an accident… in Shigeo-kun's room."
Ritsu files away his use of first-name basis into his brain to process for later, instead opting to ask about the glaring, unexplained problem: "Accident?"
The two look like criminals caught committing grand theft auto. Ritsu feels fear, not for once in his fourteen years of living.
He asks again, "What accident?"
Teru, with the tone of a scolded adolescent, explains.
***
"Don't feel too bad about it, Teruki-kun," Mob consoles, testing the name on his tongue and shyly liking the intimacy of it. The boy next to him is still sulking, unhappy about the sudden rain thwarting their planned picnic date. They had already set everything under the tree, only to have their outing get interrupted by a storm.
"I swear I checked the weather." Teru sighs. "Are you sure you don't want to just use our powers to keep the rain away while we stay outside?"
Mob shakes his head. "Don't worry. I had some stuff to show you anyway."
Hesitantly, Teru nods and follows Mob to his room. They set the picnic blanket on the floor and arrange the edibles. There’s a wide range of foods and drinks, and after they finish setting it all, the black-haired esper notices a box left in the bag. It seems like his partner notices it, too, because they both reach for it at the same moment.
They blink in surprise, but they’re used to casual touches like this. (Ritsu is, not at all to his delight, an expert at TeruMob affection.)
They pull out the box at the same time, and it reveals itself to be none other than the classic red and chocolate-flavored Pocky.
Mob is surprised when Teru groans and drops the box to cover his face in his hands.
“Teruki-kun?” Confused, the shorter boy tilts his head. Teru parts his fingers to stare at his now-boyfriend (how surreal it is, still) through his hands. Putting them down, he gives a sheepish grin.
“This seemed a lot smoother in my head,” he admits. “I thought I’d be cool about it, but now it’s just—” Teru interrupts himself with a laugh.
“What’re you talking about—” Mob’s eyes widen, followed by a smile. “Oh.”
Teru smiles back. “It’s Pocky Day!”
“I can’t believe I forgot,” Mob says. He opens the Pocky box and unwraps it. Taking out the stick-shaped biscuit, he offers one to Teru. “What were you worrying about, anyway?”
Teru decides to go for it. “Do you,” he begins, “want to play the Pocky game?”
Mob’s hand pauses in the air. In the span of a second, his face turns comically red.
“Uhhh,” he replies eloquently.
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes.” Realizing that was an awkwardly fast response, he adds, not-at-all just as awkwardly, “Yes.”
They share a few blinks at each other before erupting into laughter.
Teru nods. “Okay, let’s.”
He places the Pocky stick in his mouth, having the chocolate-covered tip face Mob. Carefully placing his lips between the biscuit, the bowl-cut broccoli boy begins the game. Teru takes the first bite, Mob taking the second. Every crunch feels incredibly loud in the quiet room. As the distance lessens, so does their self-control. An inch is left between them, and as Teru takes the last bite, an eruption of magnitudinous esper energy shakes the room, sending objects out of gravity. Whoever lost control first is unknowable. All that matters now is the mess that is Mob’s room.
“I.” Teru wants to cry. Whether in embarrassment or in pain from the pencil now embedded in his back, he doesn’t know. “I am very sorry.”
Mob waves his hands. "No, no. I think that was me. I don't know. Um."
The darker-haired boy fixes his room easily, the aura of his colorful energy encasing floating objects and putting them back to their original place.
***
Ritsu pinches his fingers on the bridge of his nose.
"Wow. Great to hear your relationship is thriving," he says, lying through his teeth. "But what are you doing in my fucking room."
Mob gives him an angelic smile that makes him wonder if his brother is actually fucking messing with him, and he’s been living ignorant of his scheming nature this whole time. He wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them had plotted to ruin Ritsu’s life with friendship and love the moment they exited the womb. "Oh, we just got awkward staying in the same room where we almost ki—Oh! Hehe."
Ritsu's palms meet his own face in an attempt to remove it from existence. He can't stand this anymore. No. No. Stop it. He will give anything to make his brother stop blushing, to make both of them stop blushing. Kidneys, anyone?
Must he listen to their tales of everlasting devotion on top of having to see it? He didn't ask for a verbal reenactment of the most stomach-churning scenario in romantic history. He just wants to know why they're enjoying a picnic date in a fourteen-year-old's room instead of literally anywhere else.
Teru looks disgustingly reminiscent as he smiles and says, "Well, I think it's quite symbolic to have our first date here…"
"Here. You mean my room. Which is neither yours nor Brother’s."
"Yeah! Do you remember, Mob?" They join their hands together, ignorant of Ritsu glaring holes into Teru’s glittering sweater. "This is where I first confessed to you—though you didn't get it through."
Is that something to be proud of??? Failing to confess in your boyfriend’s fourteen-year-old younger brother’s room????
Before any of their lovey-dovey shit continues for the next twenty minutes and an additional eternity, Ritsu announces, "Out. Out of my room."
Mob sulks. "But Ritsu…"
His lover turns to him and comforts, "It's okay. We're done eating anyway. Why don't you show me that book you said you had in your room?"
Smiling, Ritsu's brother and unintentional emotional assailant replies, "Okay, Teruki-kun."
As they leave the room after packing things up, Ritsu wonders tiredly if they'll get married in his room, too. Perhaps this particular spot on Earth, out of all the billions of places and teenager's rooms, is a magnet to unfortunately successful romances.
***
Shou takes a handful of popcorn into his mouth, holding the popcorn bucket on one arm and orange juice on his other hand. He says, incredulously and with a hint of sadistic amusement, “So they kissed and blew up the whole room? Man, after everything I did to fix up your house, too.”
Ritsu glares at the offending orange-haired boy and places his chips and milk on the restaurant table near the movie theatre, sitting down with his friend. They came too early. “Fixing my house was the bare minimum after you set it on fire and essentially kidnapped my parents.”
“I didn’t kidnap them,” he says, hardly sounding innocent. “But isn’t it better now that they’re together and, like, not pining?”
At that, Ritsu can only sigh. “Shou,” the younger Kageyama replies, “Imagine it like this.” He then opens a carton of milk and pours it into Shou’s popcorn.
“Wh—Ritsu, what the fuck. ”
“Taste it.” The milken madlad takes a bite out of the wet, soggy snack and immediately cringes. Shou watches this act of irreversible sin with a look of contempt. “This is them before their established relationship.”
“Wait, Ritsu, don’t—”
“This is them—” he takes out the milk from each kernel with finely controlled telekinesis and places the now-yellowish liquid back into the carton, chugging the sour cream-flavored milk into his unimaginably corrupted system. “—now.”
The last word was spoken so raspily that Shou feels goosebumps from fear, as he continues to stare at his awful companion in sickened shock. “Oh my fucking gods.”
Ritsu closes his eyes and puts his hands together as if he is twenty thousand years old, ancient and wise from incomprehensible hardships. “That’s them. That’s how it feels. No matter what, they’re just nauseating to me…”
Shou nods in horror, continuing for him, “When there’s milk in the popcorn, you’d do anything to get rid of it, but when you do, the milk tastes rotten…”
They sit in contemplative silence, philosophizing about their new Popcorn-Milk on the Subject of Romance Theory like wise men in the Classical Period of Ancient Greece, until they’re interrupted by the first wave of viewers coming out of the theatre. “Let’s go,” Shou says, and Ritsu takes his shitty milk and untouched chips.
“Ah. Is that them?” Shou gestures to the crowd, but Ritsu refuses to look. His fear surpasses his curiosity, so he shakes his head, much to the solemn understanding of Shou. Unfortunately, he is Just Destined to face the looming ruination that is TeruMob, because they walk towards him with bright faces.
Shou whispers, “Do they always have their own sparkly, flowery background behind them, or am I just going insane after watching you eat and drink the worst possible combination of consumable substances in culinary history?”
“Witness theory in practice, Shou,” Ritsu resigns and tells him somberly.
“Wow, you’re here, too!” Teru says, and the younger black-haired boy can physically feel the exclamation mark being punctured into his abdomen.
Shou maintains the unfortunate social interaction. “Yep. Was the movie good?”
As the three carry on normal human conversation, Ritsu allows himself to relax without the presence of romantic affection, given that the two are too engrossed in talking and have, at least, the decency to not publicly endorse their not-marriage.
All is good and right before Shou accidentally drops Ritsu’s milk (sour cream edition!) from the table to the floor. Teru, both out of sheer surprise and out of instinctive and primal need to save his white sneakers, moves back in surprise. Unfortunately, he fails to correctly evade the milk and—
Slip!
He falls, and he falls faster than Ritsu’s ability to process the situation at every passing second. He falls, until, like a scene from a movie, Ritsu’s brother grabs him by the waist and arm, saving him from the evil that is milk. They stay in that pose for a while, staring in shock and gratitude and love, giving the two younger boys front row seats to the abhorrent masterpiece that is adolescent attraction.
“Wow, uh,” Shou breaks the silence. Ritsu thanks him inwardly. “That ended well. Guess there’s really no use crying over spilt milk, huh?” Ritsu takes it back, killing him instantly in his mind. The fire boy should thank him for being one of Ritsu’s more tolerable friends, or else he’d be ending him with his mind and not in it.
The spilt milk joke is received with hearty laughter from Teru and a small chuckle from Mob.
"Wow, you're really funny, Suzuki-kun! We should hang out with you more often," Teru says, and quite unfortunately adds, "With Ritsu, of course."
Shou smiles and nods despite knowing his imminent death marked by the stare glued to the back of his head.
They bid their farewells after cleaning up the mess discreetly with their (really convenient) powers, and part ways. When they finally settle into the movie theatre, Shou tells him, “Sorry about the milk, but, to be fair, it was really bad milk.”
Ritsu only smiles. “Don’t worry about it. I think I’ll be spilling something else today as well.”
“What is it?” Shou laughs nervously.
Ritsu tells Shou, lovingly and without a single threat of violence at all, “Blood.”
***
The high school sweethearts are out on a date, so Ritsu and his parents sit at the dining table for lunch as his brother thankfully smooches the blonde rat elsewhere. It’s a scheduled date, so Ritsu knew they’d be out. Nonetheless, out of utter paranoia and the trauma of being the third wheel, he checked his room for any two certain lovers at least thirteen times and secured it in every way possible. The iconic date spot that is Ritsu’s room is now probably more well-guarded than any other facility in the world, and he’s confident of it. So, of course, there’s no way he’d be seeing his brother with Teru until later in the afternoon.
He eats his chicken happily, finally liberated from the confines of teenage romance. The family is enjoying their meal until the sound of news on the television is overruled by the ringing noise in the Kageyama father’s pocket. Taking it out, he grumbles at the sight of an unknown caller. Ritsu's Romance Radar tingles, and he begins to sweat in dread.
“Answer it. I doubt it’s anything bad,” his mother tells him. He nods.
Taking the call, his father stands to talk elsewhere. But before he can even get out of his chair, the older male startles in shock, hand frozen in its place on the chair. “Huh?!”
Leaning towards her husband, she asks, “What’s wrong?”
Ritsu looks at him expectantly as well. The mysterious call continues while they wait with bated breaths for an explanation.
“I see… Okay, all right… I’ll be there quickly… I understand—Yes, yes. Okay.” He ends the call just like that, and the two other members of the Kageyama household pay attention heedfully.
Sighing, his father grimly announces the most incredulous combination of words that Ritsu would ever hear in the same sentence, “Shigeo’s at the police station.”
Well. Shit.