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mitchsmarners · 4 years

Text

Penny for your thoughts, dollar for your insights (Or a fortune for your disaster)

pairing: eddie kaspbrak/richie tozier [reddie] rating: teen & up word count: 7,173 summary: Richie is suddenly forced from his home, his kingdom and his birthright, and sent to live in a shithole town in Maine, he doesn't think he'd could ever be happy here. He's quick to learn that there's more in Derry than he'd ever expected. ⤹ a birthday fic for the amy (@eddiefuckinkaspbrak)

Read on AO3

perma taglist: @jwilliambyers, @stebbins, @lermanslogan, @s-s-georgie, @transrich@eddiefuckinkaspbrak, @edstozler, @emgays, @anellope, @thorn-harvester-ven, @wheezyeds, @vipertooth, @tozierking, @billdenbrough, @starrystoziers, @trashmouthtozierr, @perseusjaxon @loserslibrary (let me know if you want added!)

Richie Tozier was pretty sure he was barely even conscious when he was being dragged out the bed. It wasn’t his bed, because his bed was much higher off the ground with nearly a hundred more pillows than whatever this poor excuse of a mat had. He was pretty sure this blanket was wool, and if his head wasn’t pounding something fierce, he would be raising major complaints.

“Prince Richard must go.” Charles, who had been Richie’s footman for his whole life and sometimes had more to do with Richie’s up bringing than Richie’s own royal parents, hissed in his ear as Richie clutched at his head. “We need to get away.”

“Away? Away from what?” Richie grumbled. It was mostly dark in the room but as they moved, little flashes of light showed through the long, dark curtains that informed Richie and the sharp ache behind his eyes everytime the light touched them, that it was very much daylight outside. “Can’t it wait? My head is fucking killing me.”

His parents had always begged him to control his cursing, and in their ideal world, he simply wouldn’t curse at all. It wasn’t becoming of a monarch, and if Richie wanted his people to love him, then he couldn’t go around cursing like a common sailor. Not that it mattered much, as Richie had ruined any chances of ever being loved by his parents’ people when he came forward and declared how much he loved dick.

“I’m afraid it simply cannot wait, Prince Richard, I’m sorry.” Charles said desperately, nearly holding up Richie’s half asleep form. “There has been discourse in the kingdoms, and it seems it’s no longer safe for you here, Your Grace. It is imperative that you be removed tonight.”

“Moved where?” Richie asked, suddenly feeling much more coherent. He and Charles stumbled out onto the roof of one of the taller towers of his castle home, and the sunlight burned so painfully that Richie was forced to squeeze his eyes shut. “For how long, when am I coming back?”

There was a silence from Richie’s footman that was only interrupted by the chopping noise that could only be a helicopter landing nearby.

“I’m sorry, Prince Richard.” Charles had to shout over the sounds of the helicopter as Charles continued to guide Richie over to it. “At this time, it’s a matter of your safety and your life. You will not be returning to Chamberlain.”

Richie was dazed as Charles pushed him into the helicopter and somebody- Richie couldn’t even be bothered to figure out who- buckled him up. And even as it burned his eyes and made his actual brain throb, Richie watched the Kingdom of Chamberlain disappear from view.

He couldn’t have told anybody how long the ride lasted after Richie couldn’t see his home anymore. Could have been hours, could have been days. Richie felt numb right down to his core, but eventually the helicopter landed on a large landing strip and Richie was being ushered back out. People certainly were being grabby with him today. And his head still fucking hurt.

A man in a formal grey suit was waiting on the tarmac and gave Richie a slight bow as he approached. “Prince Richard, it’s an honour to meet you.”

Richie forced a smile. “There is no need to bow, sir. I know little of what is going on, but it certainly I am no longer any prince. Just Richie is fine.”

The man straightened up and gave Richie a wiry smile. “My name is Donald Uris, and I’m part of a very private branch of the United Nations which works lands such as your kingdom, to provide safety and protection for those of royal blood such as yourself in situations like this. I will do my best to give you an easy transition into your new life.”

Richie nodded and followed Mr Uris back to a small, grey van parked the end of the turmac strip. Richie crawled into the backseat and buckled himself up. Immediately, Mr Uris was pulling out pieces of paper and handed them to Richie. Most of them didn’t make any sense to him at all, with numbers and dates and signatures but something did catch his eye near the bottom of the pile.

CERTIFICATE OF VITAL RECORD. STATE OF MAINE.

TOZIER, RICHARD IRA. MARCH 07, 2003 M LITTLE CANADA, MN

Richie frowned. It was his name, sort of. His first name, certainly, but not last name nor his even middle name. Not his actual date of birth, but the correct year. He didn’t even know what a Little Canada or a Maine was, except that he assumed it was somewhere in America. Just like he was now.

“The story we’ve come up with is that you are the son of my deceased sister, come to live with my family.” Mr Uris said. “All these documents are everything you will need to be a legal citizen and navigate your life here in America. You’ve been enrolled in public high school, though I will warn you that their curriculum is likely behind that of your personal studies in Chamberlain. My son, Stanley is of an age with you and will be showing you around the school and the town and helping you feel at home.”

Richie flipped through the papers again, still not completely absorbing what they said. “Can you…” Richie started, then cleared his throat. “Do you know why I had to come here?”

Mr Uris was quiet for a moment before he started up the van and began to pull away from the drop off. The helicopter was already long gone. “I don’t have all the information, Richard, I’m afraid. All I’m aware of is that an attempt had been made on your life, a very close attempt, and it was the belief of your parents and counsel that the best course of action would be to allow those who harm you to believe that they succeeded, and to get you somewhere safe.”

“They told everybody I was dead.” Richie said slowly. Another awkward silence settled in the space between him and Mr Uris.

“It’s not a cut and dry as that, Richie.”

But Richie was pretty sure that it was.

The Uris’ house was nice. Certainly no castle, but bigger than any of the houses in the village’s under Richie’s reign. Two stories, possibly with an attic. Large windows and front porch with a swing. A front yard with flawless green grass and white mailbox. A wooden fence separated the property to the neighbours nearly identical houses, and there was a large two car garage. Suburban bliss, Richie thought to himself, though he’d never really experienced suburban- or even urban- other than the occasional at times he’d sat down and watched American television.He’d never considered when watching to take notes, that it would end up being his life.

It was only when Mr Uris guided him up the stairs, that Richie realized that he didn’t have any belongings. He was wearing a pair of pajama pants and a white t-shirt that he’d awoken in, possibly days ago, and he suddenly felt disgusted. “Mr Uris, I’m sorry to interrupt but I think I really could use a shower. And I don’t have any change of clothes or anything-”

“Oh yes, of course!” Mr Uris’ eyes widened as though surprised he hadn’t thought of that himself. “The bathroom you and Stanley will be sharing is just down the hall. I will tell you that my son is rather particular, so I ask that you did not touch any of his belongings. We placed shampoo, conditioner and soap in there for you already, and we will take you shopping for anything else you might need or if you don’t like shampoo brands we’ve gotten for you. The Aveeno products are all Stan’s, so please don’t touch them. And the same goes with blue towels and face clothes in the top cupboard, yours are in the bottoms cupboard. Your bedroom is on the left joining side, and there are some clothes in there for you. Nothing fancy or extravagant, but I think it will be adequate for you.”

Richie blinked, information being thrown at him with no qualms.

“This is it here.” Mr Uris opened the bathroom door and Richie was happy to see that it wasn’t much different than that back home. Smaller, but just as efficient. “Take your time, but we do have mandatory dinner at 5:30. You’re free to leave again after the meal, curfew is 11pm.”

Richie laughed. “Thank you, Mr Uris, but I don’t think I need to worry about curfew anytime soon.”

Mr Uris smiled back at him. “You might be surprised. My son has a nice little group of friends and I’m sure they’d be happy to have you along, Richie. Life here might not be as glamorous as royal life, but it’s not too horrible.”

Mr Uris left him alone to his thoughts after that, as Richie turned the water on as hot as it would go and stood under the burning stream. He still wasn’t sure he had un-numbed yet. Richie had never had friends before, not really. There were people around the palace, always, that Richie sometimes chummed around with but the only person Richie had ever really been close to was his sister.

The choking feeling of incoming tears hit Richie hard. God, Reed. He’d probably never see his sister again. She might not even know he was alive, but she was going to be being groomed for rule now. Thrusted into the position after the sudden loss of her only sibling, and her life would never be the same. Reed was sweet, pure, and Richie feared the pressure of rule could crush her.

Richie didn’t mean to cry, but when he came out with dripping hair and red skin, his eyes were no doubt puffy and red as well. He wrapped himself up in the beige towels from the bottom cupboard and pushed open the joining door to the bedroom.

Only to stop dead in his tracks at the sight of two boys in the room. A thin boy with wiry blonde curls and a distinct nose and jaw line that made it obvious he was Mr Uris’ son, Stanley, was seated at the desk in a pastel blue button up and khaki pants. Lounging across the bed, in white T-shirt and red runners shorts, was a boy with day messy brown hair and wide brown eyes.

“Oh, uh- shit.” Richie said, suddenly aware of his obvious nakedness besides the towel around his waist. He was glad his skin was already flushed from hot water, otherwise his blush would be horribly obvious. ”I’m sorry. I thought your dad said my room connected to the bathroom.”

“It does.” Stan said simply, turning back to the door he had previously been reading. “It joins on the other side, the left. I’m sure my father told you. Do you know what left is?”

Richie's mouth dropped and blinked hard at him. “I- yes I know what left is! I got a lot of information in a short period of time. I forgot.”

Stan stared him down for a month before he smirked. “It’s fine. You’re not in a blue towel, so you’re forgiven.”

“Is this your cousin?” Stan’s friend spoke up suddenly, and Richie was aware of how the other boys’ gaze was trailing down his torso. “Richie, right? I’m Eddie.”

Eddie held his hand out but Richie stared down at it awkwardly, his own hands still holding tightly to the towel around his waist. “Yeah, I’d love to shake your hand but I think I’ll do it a little less naked if that’s cool.”

Eddie laughed and that sound made Richie’s stomach jump. ”That seems pretty fair. Your room is on the other side of the bathroom. The bed is really comfortable by the way, I crashed there enough times to know.”

“Don’t mind Eddie,” Stan called over to them, his eyebrows pinched together like he found something deeply amusing. “He’s in the middle of a reborn and he’ll hit on anything that moves.”

“Well, it’s pretty convenient that I am able to move then, isn’t it?” Richie waggled his brow, tried to ignore the fact that he was naked and relished in the way Eddie’s freckled cheeks pinkened slightly. Richie made his way back into the bathroom and let himself into the room on the other side, the room that belonged to him.

It wasn’t too different from Stanley’s, a double bed with a comforter set. A desk pushed into the corner and a large window with flannel curtains. But there weren't any pictures or posters on the walls, or awards or trophies littering shelves. It looked like exactly what Eddie had described it as, a guest room.

Richie sighed and moved towards the double door closet and opened it to a selection of jeans, khakis, button up shirts and white t-shirts. Richie had never chosen his own clothes before, never really considered the option, and this didn’t feel much different. Instead of an assortment of suits, it was just a different type of wardrobe.

He threw on a pair of jeans, cringing when they came up a couple inches short of his ankles. He grabbed a white t-shirt and one of the button ups- pink and white striped- and left it unbuttoned. He shook out his hair that way he always did when he wasn’t forced to style it for some sort of event, and he knew it was how his curls looked the best once they dried. He grabbed a pair of plain white socks from the basket in the bottom of the closet and tugged them. He hung the wet towel on the back of the door and returned back to Stanley’s room.

Eddie chuckled at him the moment Richie entered back into the room, eyes glued to the too short pants. “Your pants don’t fit.”

“Yeah, my dick is so big it’s forcing the fabric up.” Richie shot off.

Stan rolled his eyes in Richie’s peripheral vision but Eddie didn’t seem fazed. “Well you look like an idiot with them like that, let me help you.

Eddie dropped down to his knees in front of Richie, and Richie felt his face burn a bright red. Eddie rolled up the cuffs of his pants just slightly, enough that they looked short on purpose, and popped back up with a grin on his face. “There! Now you don’t look so much like an idiot.”

“Thanks, Eds. You’re really saving my ass.”

“Are you two done?” Stan asked, marking his place in the book and pushing away from his desk. “Because it’s 5:30 so we have to get to dinner.”

Eddie's eyes light up. “Mr Uris makes the best spinach pasta, you’re in for a treat.” He took off out the bedroom and downstairs towards the kitchen Richie had walked through when he’d gotten there. Richie moved to follow but Stan caught his arm before he could get anyway.

“Nobody in town knows who you really are except my parents and myself.” Stan told him seriously. “I don’t like lying to my friends, but I know it’s a matter of your safety so I won’t complain. I just ask you please try not to slip up. I don’t want my friends to think I’m a liar, and it’ll put your life in danger.”

“Your friends are the people who are trying to get me off’ed?” Richie challenged, simply for a lack of any other response.

“The more people who know who you are, the more possibility of your identity getting out.” Stan said dryly. “You should take this seriously. It’s literally a matter of your life or death.”

Richie learned within the week that it was actually rare for Stan to have his friends over to the house. Stan was always jetting out, returning home for his 5:30 dinners then taking off again until curfew. Mr Uris assured Richie that Stan was usually around the house more often that that, but it was the last week of summer vacation and he was trying to suck up the last bit of freedom he had left before going back to school. Richie wasn’t too upset that Stan wasn’t around much, Richie was still getting used to the entire situation.

Richie’s first day in town, Mr Uris had handed him a cell phone and showed him all the sorts of apps. Richie hadn’t bothered to set up any sort of social media, but once Mr Uris showed him a music app called Spotify, Richie had been hooked. It was like having every bit of music ever released at his fingertips in a way that Richie had never experienced before, and it blew his mind that everybody had this sort of access here. He spent days just exploring the apps playlists, learning new artists and devoting hours to their entire discographies if he could.

Richie had been so immersed in his music library that he hadn’t even noticed the door to his bedroom opening. Richie relished in the privilege to hide in his bedroom, something he was so rarely allowed to do back in Chamberlain.

Eddie had let himself into Richie’s room and was grinning at him. Riche yanked that headphones out of his ears and sat up in the bed. Ever since Eddie had rolled up the cuffs of Richie’s jeans his first day in town, Richie had been trying to continue doing it with the too short selection pants in his closet. He never managed to make it look as good Eddie had. The cuffs usually didn’t reach the same length, one thicker than the other, but Richie didn’t mind too much.

“Stanley isn’t here.” Richie said, resting up against the headboard of his bed. “I actually sort of thought that he was out with you.”

“We have other friends,” Eddie said dismissively. “I’m here to see you. Well, to steal you.”

Richie raised his eyebrows, legs starting to jitter under him. He stood up and moved over towards Eddie. “What like, kidnap me?”

Eddie smiled. “School starts tomorrow, you can’t go in with all these too small clothes. Come on.”

Richie frowned but let Eddie lead him out of his bedroom and down to where Mr and Mrs Uris were sitting at the small kitchen table with steaming mugs in front of them. They glanced up and only Mrs Uris seemed mildly surprised to see Eddie there.

“Edward, we’ve told you that you don’t need to sneak in.” Mr Uris said, voice dripping with amusement.

“Sorry, sir, force of habit.” Eddie chuckled. “Richie needs new clothes.”

Mr Uris blinked and glanced at Richie, two short jeans and button up shirt and chuckled. “I suppose you’re right, Edward.” He stood and pulled his wallet out from the back pocket of his pants, pulling out a slick bank card. “Go ahead and get whatever you need to within reason, but from here on out, if you want spending money you’ll need to do chores like Stanley does.”

Richie blinked. He’d never done any sort of housework before, but he didn’t think he should point that out. He still wasn’t sure what was considered normal, and what wasn’t, and he was pretty sure that not owning any clothes that fit him fell under the “not normal” category. The last thing he needed was to make Eddie suspicious of him, when it had been made very apparent that Richie should be doing everything in his power not to be drawing unwanted attention to himself.

So he let Eddie guide him to the closest bus stop, and pretended to his best ability that he’d taken a bus before at any point in his life. The mall didn’t seem to be anything overly impressive, a long straight hallway with stores. Mostly clothing stores, but there were two or three cell phones shops as well as a bookstore. There was a single As Seen On TV! Store that caught Richie’s eye, but Eddie quickly shoved him into the first clothing store.

“Okay, you need jeans. What size are you?” Eddie guided Richie over the long table with pair and pair of denim pants laid out across it, in different shades of blue and some black. Some were already ripped through the knees and thighs and Richie frowned at them, reaching out and putting his fingers through the rips in the fabric.

“Richie?” Eddie prompted again, startling Richie out of his wonder.

“Oh, uh…” Richie frowned. “Tall?”

Eddie crinkled up his nose and shook his head, before looking Richie up and down slightly. “How does somebody not know what size pants they are? Here.” Eddie started scooping up different pairs of pants in the same style, and tossed them into Richie’s arms. “We’ll get a dressing room, try them all on and you’ll figure out pretty quickly what fits and what doesn’t. We can go from there.”

Richie felt beyond embarrassed to have to ask the workers for a change room, and even more embarrassed to be changing down into his underwear with Eddie standing just outside. Whenever Richie had gone for a fitting before, it had always been himself and his stylist aside from any occasional time his mother would show up to pass her own judgement on whatever they were trying to put Richie into.

He eventually did figure out however, that his pant size was and Eddie quickly started tossing him as many pairs of pants as was allowed in the changing room at a time. He liked the pants that were tighter in the legs and ankles, and while he didn’t really understand why somebody would buy jeans that were already ripped, he couldn’t deny there was something he enjoyed about it when he looked at himself wearing them in the dressing room mirror. He got two pairs of the blue ripped jeans, and another two pairs of the regular jeans, one in a dark blue and one in black.

Eddie nodded with a satisfied smile. “Sweaters and shit are all on back to school sales, so this really is the best time to shop for anything.”

Richie reached his hand out and touched one of the sweaters on the hooks. It was soft, and checkered black and white. He noticed Eddie wrinkled his nose as Richie gave it attention. “It’s not good?” He asked. He wasn’t sure why stores would sell clothes that weren’t nice, and something about the pattern called to Richie, but he wouldn’t want to wear anything that would make him look wrong.

“I wouldn’t wear anything like that.” Eddie said. “But it doesn’t matter what I like, it’s what you like. Get it if you want it.”

Richie turned back to the sweatshirt and smiled slightly. He’d never had this sort of freedom with clothing before, and he pulled the sweatshirt from the rack before proceeding to grab the clothes with the brightest and wildest colours and patterns he could find. He watched Eddie get more and more amused as they moved through the store.

As the cashier rang them through, Eddie turned to Richie. “Do you need anything else for school?”

Richie frowned. “What would I need?”

“Uh-” Eddie faltered and Richie realized he’d asked a “not normal” question. “Like… pens and paper? Binders?”

“Oh!” Richie said, trying not to flush as he put Mr Uris’ card into the machine and put in the four number code he’d given him on his way out the door. “No, no. Mr and Mrs Uris have that stuff coming out of their asses, I’m pretty sure.”

Eddie chuckled. “I don’t think I doubt that. We can just pick up some new shoes for you because you’ve been limping around in those sneakers all day like they’re two sizes too small.”

They were just a pair of black sneakers that Mr Uris had from when he’d gone through a short period of thinking he wanted to go to the gym, and they were certainly hurting Richie’s feet. Eddie led Richie down that long hall again to a store that seemed to sell only shoes, and a pair of thick black boots caught Richie’s eye immediately.

He tried them on, going a full size higher than the sneakers on his feet, and Eddie made him walk and also buy a pair of sneakers because he assured Richie that they were much more practical than the boots. After they finished, Eddie even helped Richie carry his bags onto the bus and back to the Uris’ house. Richie excitedly unloaded all the new clothes and shoes into his closet, and felt a warm flutter in his chest when he thought of going to school the next morning.

He was significantly less impressed with the thought of school when he was dragged out of bed by Stanley at 6:30 the next morning. He threw the first things he saw in the closet, one of the ripped blue jeans with a shirt covered in Hawaiian flowers that was so large on him that it reached the middle of his thighs and threatened to slip off his shoulder. He tossed his hair up into a half-hearted bun on top of his head that he knew would be mostly fallen out by the end of his day and graciously accepted the buttered toast and orange juice that Mrs Uris handed both Stan and Richie as they were being ushered out to Mr Uris’ car.

One of the only other vehicles sitting in the parking lot when they arrived was a big red truck. The paint was chipping on the sides, and a group of teenagers were standing around it and sitting in the bed. Stan gave his father a quick goodbye and took off running towards it, while Richie hesitated in the back seat of Mr Uris’ Sedan.

Mr Uris’ caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “If you’re not ready yet, you can take another day off at home. I know this must all be a lot.”

It was, but Richie cleared his throat and unbuckled himself. “No, uh… It’s probably easier to be the new kid on the first day right? Instead of coming in when classes have already started?”

Mr Uris’ smiled. “It is, yeah.”

Richie gave his new guardian a thanks as he slid out of the car and walked slowly over the group of teenagers that Stan had rushed over to.

“Hey, Richie!”

Richie sighed a breath of relief when Eddie called out to him. While he’d known that Eddie was going to be at school with him- there was only high school in town- it was still nice to see Eddie was already there, meaning one less introduction.

“Guys, this my cousin Richie.” Stan said, lying with such ease it startled Richie. He smiled as Eddie gestured for him to climb up into the bed of the truck and sit down beside him. “I told you he’d be coming to live with us. Richie, this is Mike, Ben and Beverly-” He pointed to each person in turn. “You already know Eddie, and Bill should be coming but he’s late because that’s who he is as a person.”

Mike gave him a toothy grin. “Bill isn’t always late, I usually pick him up but I learned a long time ago not to bother trying on the first day of the school because it would just mean we’d both miss the first period.”

Richie laughed. Eddie leaned into Richie’s space, chin resting on Richie’s shoulder. “Mike and Bill are together,” he whispered in Richie’s ear as the conversation around them swirled into what their first periods were. “We all pretend we don’t know, but they’re not subtle at all.”

The parking lot was quickly filling up with cars and people, and Eddie kept his chin on Richie’s shoulder. “Ben has had a crush on Beverly since like sixth grade when he moved here.” Eddie continued whispering his friends' secrets to Richie as they talked obliviously. “She and Bill dated for like, three years or something, though, it’s just something we don’t talk about. We don’t talk about how Bill and Beverly used to date, either, but it makes Beverly really awkward.”

Richie nodded. “No talking about the love square. Got it.”

Eddie giggled directly in Richie’s ear and it really couldn’t be healthy how his heart jumped, skipping a full beat.

It actually surprised Richie had quickly he got the hang of his new life. Mr Uris hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that their education system was behind that of Chamberlain, and Richie quickly rocketed up to the top of their class. September turned into October, and people stopped giving Richie weird looks in the hallways and started asking him for homework help instead. Beverly officially caught Mike and Bill on a date, and the not secret-secret officially became open knowledge amongst Stan’s friends. Stan got a crush on a girl in his and Richie’s AP math class, and Richie teased him about it mercilessly, but Richie was still the first person Stan came to when he asked her out and she said yes.

As the end of October loomed nearer, Richie quickly realized he rarely spent any time away from Eddie Kaspbrak. They had most of their classes together, and Eddie was over at the Uris’ house almost everyday after school if the group wasn’t all hanging out. Just a couple days before Hallowe’en, Eddie had invited Richie to see some horror flick and paid for the entire thing. He’d gotten scared and spent half the movie with this face hidden behind Richie’s shoulder, and the fluttering in his stomach kept Richie up almost the entire night after he’d gotten home.

Hallowe’en came around and Stan ordered Richie a costume to match all the rest of their friends. They weren’t doing anything like Hallowe’en on American TV, not trick or treating or going to some sort of intense rave in costumes that were basically half naked. They’d all gotten oversized sweaters with Pokemons on them, each of them a different one, and they were all going to have a sleepover out at Mike Hanlon’s family’s farm.

Richie had had a few other sleepovers since he’d come to Derry, but this was the first time that Eddie was going to be there all night. Eddie’s mother rarely let him out of the house overnight, and Hallowe’en was one of the occasions that Eddie felt important enough to argue with her over his sleepover rights. Richie was stupidly excited and painfully nervous.

Richie had never really had a crush on somebody before, certainly not like this. He was only a drink or two into the mix that Mike and Bill had somehow provided and Richie was feeling a buzz under his skin that he did not associate with the glasses of wine he’d be allowed to drink with meals back in Chamberlain, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off Eddie across the campfire in his huge Squirtle sweater.

Richie couldn’t think of any good reason not to, so he crawled around the fire and settled at Eddie’s side. They pressed together from knee to shoulder and Eddie turned to give Richie a slow smile. He was still nursing his drink of the evening and his eyes were bright and alert. “Hey, Togepi.” He said, grinning down at Richie’s sweater.

“I think it’s kind of bullshit that my sweater is the only one that’s white.” Richie said with a sigh. “I’m probably the most likely to get myself dirty.”

Eddie waggled his brow and licked his bottom lip before pulling his drink back up to his mouth and taking a long sip. “It’s eggshell, not white. You’re a fucking egg.”

Something about Eddie deadpanning the term you’re a fucking egg hit Richie hit in the giggles, head dropping down onto Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie shivered as Richie’s breath blew across his neck and suddenly the rest of the sounds in the barn seemed to fade away around them.

Richie lifted his head slightly, and Eddie’s hand came out to rest on his cheek. Richie was pretty sure his heart was in his throat as Eddie leaned into him, but he still found himself- “Eddie, wait.” Richie breathed out. He didn’t want to do it like this, he couldn’t. “I… I have to tell you something. I’m not who you think I am.”

Eddie blinked at him, not pulling away or lowering his hand, but pausing his motions forward. Richie inhaled slowly. “I’m not Stanley’s cousin. I’m not… I’m not related to him at all. I’m… okay this is going to sound insane but I’m actually a … prince.”

Eddie’s hand fell from Richie’s face, dropping to rest on top of Richie’s hands in his lap. “Okay, please, I know this sounds absolutely crazy and you can ask Stan if you need to. I mean, he might lie actually, I’m not sure. I was sent here for my own protection, people in my home country were trying to kill me. Maybe for being gay, maybe for something else, but probably for being gay. I’m not supposed to tell anybody who I am, but I didn’t want you to- I didn’t want us if you didn’t really know who I am because that’s not fair to you. Even though you probably think I’m fucking nuts now.”

Eddie sat there a long moment, just looking at Richie’s face. If Richie had thought Eddie had got his heart racing before, it was certainly nothing compared to how raced with panic now. “I should think you’re fucking nuts.” Eddie said slowly. “But I actually believe you.”

“What?” Richie asked, voice coming out more of a gasp than actual words.

Eddie broke into a shy smile. “It actually makes a lot of stuff make more sense. Like how you moved here without so much as a pair of shoes to your name, and you didn’t know who Lady Gaga was.”

Richie chuckled and Eddie’s thumbs brushed over the backs of Richie’s hands. “Thank you for telling me, honestly. I really like you, Richie… and I wanna like you for who you are. Whoever you are.”

“I really like you, too.” Richie said, feeling himself blush. “I don’t think I’ve ever liked somebody like this before.”

Eddie beamed. “Can we makeout now?”

“Oh. I don’t… I really don’t know how-”

Eddie smirked and reached up to tangle his fingers in Richie’s black curls. “Oh, I think I can show you the ropes.” He tugged Richie in to connect their lips, and Richie was a little shocked to realize how quickly instinct took over. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there with Eddie, could have been hours, or just minutes, but he was brought back into the reality of the party around him when a marshmallow hit him in the side of the head.

“Kaspbrak!” Stan shouted from across the fire. “Get your tongue out of my cousin’s mouth!”

Eddie joyously flipped Stan the bird before pulling Richie in for another kiss.

November flew back in a haze of Eddie and colourful leaves. The snow began to fall and Richie began to learn all about Hanukkah from his new found family, and about Christmas from his boyfriend. The amount of things that took place in such a small period of time at the end of December was a little dizzying for Richie, and he expressed as much to Mrs Uris one day as she was helping him making real hot cocoa for himself and Eddie.

“Nothing is expected of you, Richie.” Mrs Uris told him gently. “We know that this must be weird for you, the holidays away from your family. I’m sure Eddie knows it, too.”

Richie’s ears burned slightly. It had taken all of three days into his and Eddie’s relationship for Richie to confess to Stan and the Uris’ that he told Eddie the truth about who he was. Stan had been supportive and happy for him, while Mr and Mrs Uris had still been apprehensive about Richie sharing that information. Stan had tried reminding them they’d known Eddie since the other boy wore diapers, but they’d still been concerned that it put Richie’s safety at risk.

“Richie…” Mr Uris called from the front foyer of the house. “Can you come here, please?”

Richie stepped towards Mr Uris, only to freeze at the sight in front of him. Shedding out of long grey trench coats were Richie’s parents and younger sister, Reed. She gasped at the sight of him, and flung herself into his arms without a care of the snow still hanging off her. Though shocked, Richie didn’t have any hesitation in wrapping his arms around her and giving her a tight squeeze.

“Rich?” Eddie’s voice sounded from behind him and Richie slowly pulled away from his sister’s embrace. Eddie was standing at the bottom of the stairs, Stan and his girlfriend, Patty, just behind him. Mrs Uris was hovering nearby in the doorway between the kitchen and the front hall.

“These are my parents, and my baby sister.” Richie smiled at them and reached his hand out behind him for Eddie. Eddie shuffled over and grabbed hold of Richie’s awaiting hand. “You guys, this is Eddie. My boyfriend.”

Eddie smiled bashfully at them, only half hidden behind Richie’s figure. Reed let out a delighted gasp while his parents donned polite smiles.

“It's lovely to meet you, Eddie.” King Wentworth said, sounding genuine enough. His parents had been loving and understanding when Richie had come out to them, and he knew that most of their wants of Richie to keep things shushed was out of concern for his safety. Rightfully so, it would seem. “Richard, we come with news.”

Richie raised his eyebrows at them, finding himself struggling to slip back into the formal person he knew he should be right then. “Yeah… Uh yes, okay. Let’s sit.”

The merged families sat around the sunny Uris’ living room as Mrs Uris offered everybody their selection of drinks.

“I’m afraid we cannot stay long,” Queen Margaret said sweetly, patting at Mrs Uris’s extended hand. “The royal family cannot all be absent from their places for long. We have pressing issues to discuss with Richard that must have been said in person.”

Eddie squeezed Richie’s knee, and Richie leaned to the side to press a soft kiss to Eddie’s cheek. There was a burning feeling in his gut that told him this was going to get messy.

“We have found the culprit who was making the attempts on your life.” King Wentworth said, eyes only for his son. Richie felt a chill run down his spine. “It was Lord St George of Little Tall Island. He was unhappy when the bethoral between yourself and his eldest daughter, Lady Selena, and he seemed to believe that it would be better to have you dead then it be revealed that you have rejected his kin.”

Richie only dimly remembered Selena St George. A mousy girl with long braids, they’d met only three or so times, and he felt she’d said an equal amount of words in his presence.

“We have him contained and he’s awaiting a trial in our dungeons.” King Wentworth continued. Richie heard Eddie whisper the word dungeon in awe at Richie’s side. “We wanted to let you know that, should you choose to return, it is safe for you.”

Richie was sure for a moment that he’d misheard, but the way every eye in the room was trained on him promised that he hadn’t. “Go… Go back to Chamberlain? I thought… didn’t you tell everybody I was dead?”

“Yes, when we believed it unlikely we would ever find the person responsible for the attempts on your life,” Queen Margaret said softly. “We have found him, and there is no reason to carry on the charade that you’ve been lost to us.”

Richie swallowed audibly. “You said if I choose to, you mean it’s up to me?”

The King and Queen exchanged a look with Mr Uris. “Donald told us much about how you’ve grown the past four months. That you seem… happy. Adjusted here. We would love for you to come home with us, but Donald’s stories prompted us to wonder if that would be what make you happy.”

Richie glanced at his sister, who smirked and pointedly looked in Eddie’s direction. Richie’s boyfriend was sitting stalk still beside him, pale and pressed against his side. Richie thought of their relationship, how they’d only just begun to fall for each other, and he thought of sneaking into Stan’s room at night to talk even though he pretended it annoyed him. Thought of all the clothes in his closet upstairs, every single one picked out by him for him. He thought of Mike, and Beverly and Ben and Bill, the first real friends he’d ever had. He thought of the stories that Mrs Uris and Eddie had told him of Hanukkah and Christmas, and how even though he was nervous about it he wanted to experience the holidays.

“I.. I think I want to stay.” Richie said slowly, looking at Mr and Mrs Uris. “If that’s okay.”

“You are more than welcome to stay, Richie.” Mr Uris assured him with a fond smile.

“You need to be sure that’s what you want.” King Wentworth leaned forward and rested his hands on Richie’s knees. “If you do wish to stay in America, we would continue forward under the premise that you have died. For your safety and your privacy. The privacy of the family who took you in and your friends. We would charge St George with your murder rather than simply an attempt, you would not be able to ever return to Chamberlain.”

Richie’s stomach tensed for a moment before he remembered a simple fact. “I already believed that to be true.” Richie said in his most princely voice. “I had accepted that I would never see you or Chamberlain again months ago, that was what they told me when I came here. I made my own life, and I love it. I love the people in it.” Eddie’s head came down and rested gently against Richie’s shoulder. “And I love you guys, too, so much but I… I don’t want to be a prince, I don’t want to rule or any of that shit. I’m not built for it. This is the life I want, and Reed will be an amazing Queen. Better than I could ever be a King.”

Reed gave him a tearful smile. “You know it, big brother.”

“That’s your final decision, son?” King Wentworth asked his only son.

Richie made only a second of eye contact with Stanley, who offered him up a half twitch of a smile. “Yeah.” Richie said happily. “It is.”

#reddie #reddie fic #my writing #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak

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lisatelramor · 4 years

Text

How (Not) To Say You Love Her

Sooooo. @fugitivehues left a few comment tags on my other hanahaki fic, one of which was how the thought of Kosuke having it was fun and my brain did that thing it sometimes does and went "Oh! Let's play with that!!!" and promptly ignored all the other WIPs I have lying around ^_^;;;;;; So, uh, have a fic Fugitivehues, since you like Kosuke?? Also, like, Kosuke likes Emiko for over a year (based on those White Day presents) which leads to interesting things when combined with hanahaki, haha.

*O*O*O*O*

Kosuke pretended to be listening to his friends, but really he was watching the street beyond their outdoor café table. It was just about time… And there she was. Niwa Emiko, the prettiest girl at the university. She knew it too; she had the sort of presence that turned heads and beautiful red hair that stood out in a crowd. Kosuke watched her leave the much nicer café across the street that she got lunch at every Thursday and walk by, just the width of the street away before she turned the corner toward wherever she went after this. Kosuke had found out about the habitual lunch by chance, a creature of habit himself. It wasn’t weird if they both just happened to like to get lunch at cafés across the road from each other.

He sighed into his mostly cool cup of coffee as the last of her curls turned the corner. Maybe someday he’d get the courage to talk with her, but he kind of doubted it.

“Wow, what was that?” Minako asked, leaning over the table to wave a hand in Kosuke’s face.

“You don’t know?” Katsuma said, snickering. “Kosuke has a ~crush~.”

“It’s not a crush,” he mumbled, hiding his blush in his coffee cup.

“So you come here every Thursday to sit in the same seat at the same time because you really like their coffee?” Katsuma teased.

Minako grinned at his expense as Kosuke blushed harder. “Aww, cute! Though I didn’t take you for the type to gravitate toward pretty faces.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kosuke said, knowing that trying to say he didn’t have a crush again would only get him teased more.

“I mean she has a ton of guys chasing after her on the off chance she’d so much as look at them. Don’t get me wrong, she’s pretty and probably perfectly nice,” Minako said waving a hand, “but she’s kind of weird.”

“Yeah, I’m with Mina-chan,” Katsuma said. “What kind of girl gets confessed to and asks men if they’re man enough to father a son?”

“A quirky one?” Minako joked with a laugh. “How’d she even get on your radar?”

“She was in one of his art history classes,” Katsuma said before Kosuke could try to change the topic. “Sat a few seats in front of him so he kept ~noticing~ her.”

Kosuke buried his face in his hands. They were going to talk about this whether he wanted them to or not.

“Wait, she’s studying art history?”

“Art conservation,” Kosuke mumbled.

“You would know that,” Katsuma said. “She’s probably here for her MRS, if you know what I mean.”

“I dunno, no one studies art conservation if they’re just trying to get married. You go with an easy ride,” Minako said.

Kosuke tuned them out. They were going to talk the topic to death, probably at his expense yet again. He didn’t have a crush. Even if Niwa Emiko was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, it was more that he was curious about her. Why did she choose art conservation? What sort of art did she like? How did she manage to have the courage to deal with all her admirers? She was interesting, and their spheres of life only glanced against each other in moments like this or a rare class overlap. Kosuke was a reclusive person with a few close friends and Emiko was… was bright and effervescent, attracting friends from all different walks of life. People got drawn into her orbit and Kosuke was just another one of them, like a far off meteor as brighter, more outgoing people navigated her gravitational pull.

“And we lost him again,” Minako sighed. “C’mon, Ko-kun. You said you’d help me find sources for my research paper, remember?”

“I’m coming.” He finished the last swallow of cold coffee.

It wasn’t a crush. It was the inevitable fascination that came with being on the other side of a window.

o*O*o

It was a crush. Kosuke felt a strange tickle at the back of his throat as he caught sight of Emiko again, this time on a lunch date. Or maybe an outing with a friend. Either way, it left a tiny pang in his heart and an immediate shame because he was just someone watching from afar. He wasn’t anything to her and he never would be. Emiko was free to love whoever she wanted. To make friends with who she wanted. And Kosuke was… Kosuke was an art history student who would rather dig through dusty records and primary source material than show up at any of the social events Emiko frequented.

Even if he sometimes wished he could get the courage to talk to her.

Just say hello even.

Kosuke coughed absently into his palm. A bitter taste, like the aftertaste of dark chocolate made him frown. There was a tiny speck of something purple on his hand. Odd.

He looked up and could swear for a second that their eyes met across the street, but then her eyes slid off him and he knew he was, as usual, just one more face in the crowd.

His heart ached and Kosuke had the horrifying realization that it wasn’t distant admiration and curiosity drawing him here anymore. He liked her.

He groaned into his hands.

“Bad homework load?” the waitress asked, popping up to refill his coffee.

“Something like that.”

She gave him a motherly smile. “You’re always working hard. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

He gave her a weak smile and proceeded to go right back to burying his face in his hands. Well, he thought, nothing changed. She was still out of his reach and the feelings didn’t have to mean a thing.

The tickle kept buzzing in his throat. Maybe he was getting a cold.

o*O*o

Of course it couldn’t be that simple. Kosuke stared down at a tiny purple flower in his hand he’d somehow coughed up a week later. He’d heard of hanahaki—who hadn’t heard of it?—but he’d never known anyone that caught it, let alone considered he might catch it. He felt panic grip him. What exactly was hanahaki? Didn’t it involve plants growing in your lungs?? Oh no, was he going to suffocate on a horribly bitter tasting plant?

Kosuke spent fifteen minutes having a very quiet panic attack in the back of the campus library over a tiny purple flower.

Then he mentally slapped himself and decided he was an idiot. People got hanahaki all the time. It wasn’t an instant death sentence. Yes, it was vaguely terrifying to think about a plant currently growing in his body. But. All someone had to do was confess their feelings, if he remembered correctly. So. He’d be fine if he did that. Probably.

Kosuke took a shaky breath. He tried to picture walking up to Emiko and saying he loved her. He didn’t get past vaguely approaching her general direction. Oh god, how was he going to confess? He had never confessed to anyone! Or had anyone confess to him either, actually, his romantic life had been pretty barren for someone who was already twenty. No high school romance for him. He’d just been the weird kid who spent ninety percent of his time with his nose in a book.

He almost jumped out of his skin when hushed voices suddenly stopped right near the aisle he was in.

“You have to help me think of something! You’re a girl! What do girls like?” a male voice whispered loudly.

“Look, you could get Mikasa a rock for White Day and she’d be thrilled, stop overthinking it.” The girl walked past Kosuke’s aisle without even glancing his direction.

“Yumi!” the boy hissed-yelled. “Yumi, you’re not helping at all!” He rushed after her and Kosuke slowly unfroze.

White Day. White Day would be a perfect excuse to walk up and confess. No pressure either because there would probably be dozens of her admirers doing the same thing. He could just… walk up, give her a small gift, confess, get rejected, and go on with life cured.

Oh good, he had a plan.

His hands started to sweat. Oh no, he really didn’t like that plan.

“Why am I like this?” he groaned. The bitter taste of whatever that flower was lingered at the back of his throat like a threat. He didn’t really have much of a choice did he? Well, at least this was a perfectly legitimate excuse to actually talk to Emiko instead of sighing wistfully at her from across the street.

Kosuke was embarrassed by Kosuke. Hopefully Emiko never found out about the café thing.

o*O*o

Emiko was within sight. Kosuke had been gravitating nearby most of the afternoon trying to get himself psyched up enough to go over. In that time at least ten guys had come over to give Emiko gifts. They were all really nice gifts too, like perfume or fancy white chocolates or flowers. Kosuke could swear one of them had been a diamond necklace. With every new person his gift of a simple white ribbon felt less and less impressive. A woman like Emiko would probably laugh at something so cheap.

He’d picked it because it was pretty though and he could see it looking nice in her hair… Kind of optimistic of him to think she might possibly wear it though.

Emiko’s latest paramour was turned away and Kosuke saw his chance. He moved closer. Okay, just hold out the little tissue paper package and confess. Deep breath. Just confess. Just… Kosuke froze two meters away, overwhelmed by being this close for the first time since they shared that art history class. She just looked so put together and amazing, not a hair out of place and he had a coat a size too big on with an elbow worn out because he was always leaning on it while he worked.

Kosuke made a strangled sound and ducked away again, having a sudden coughing fit that left a couple purple flowers in his hand, a tiny deep-toothed leaf, and a horrible taste in his mouth.

He couldn’t do this.

Did it have to be a direct confession? Couldn’t he just… leave a note? Wouldn’t that still count as a confession?

He dug into his bag in a frantic motion that probably had nearby people thinking he was possessed and pulled out a scrap of paper that wasn’t covered in notes or absent doodles. What did he write though?? Dear Emiko—no, that was too intimate. Dear Niwa-san, I have greatly admired you from afar—did that sound creepy? Crap, it did sound creepy. Dear Niwa-san, you have captured my gaze and my heart (please give it back).

Why was this so hard?

Niwa Emiko, you make the sun shine brighter when you walk by and my day brighter to see you. You’ve captured my heart and affection. Would you be able to see me fondly back? Love, Kosuke

Well that didn’t sound great, but it was clearly a confession. Good enough. He just had to… somehow get it to her. Emiko had pulled out a book and looked pretty busy reading it. At least she wouldn’t be staring as he approached?

Kosuke edged over to her seat, standing in her peripherals. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He felt like his face was on fire. Oh no, other people were looking in their direction. The curious stares and complete lack of notice from Emiko was enough to break the shreds of courage he’d pulled together. Kosuke set the tissue paper package near her elbow and ran.

It was only once he’d collapsed under a tree on the campus lawn that he realized he’d completely forgotten to drop the letter with it. So he’d failed all of his goals entirely.

Kosuke groaned into his hands.

Well, plan one, failed. That only meant one thing. Research.

o*O*o

Kosuke was not someone to stop at a little bit of information. He’d decided to learn about hanahaki and boy did he now know a lot about the subject. The library contained everything from medical texts—both historical, theoretical, and modernly factual—to collections of fairytales based around the phenomenon, flower species charts with deconstructions of emotional intent versus species, and a good deal of accounts of people who’d experienced the disease. Those ranged from notable historical figures to researchers using themselves as guinea pigs to personal memoirs. A distressing number of those accounts were suddenly cut off with editorial notes about the demise of the writer.

Those books were not good for his anxiety.

But, it was suffice to say that after a month of scouring everything he could find on the topic between working on classwork and occasionally being dragged from the library to socialize and see the light of day by friends, he felt he had a pretty good grasp on the topic. For one, he had a slower growing flower with a soft stem rather than something woody. It wasn’t going to do as much harm as some species as it grew. Unfortunately, his flower was also in the mint family and that meant it was both hardy and eager to spread if it got a chance. Motherwort was a medicinal plant that was used to alleviate female pains, regulate menstruation and calm anxiety. While the former weren’t really applicable to him, he found the latter mildly ironic considering the whole flower-in-lungs thing was causing a certain amount of stress. Its flower language association was ‘concealed love’ which again made perfect sense for the situation, but it didn’t entirely help. Theory held that hanahaki was a twofold illness. One part the body, one part the mind, and that the flowers—while very real—were fed by the mind, not the body. Emotions and thoughts determined how quickly they grew.

Drawing from that, Kosuke had hypothesized that the more he felt like he needed to go unnoticed and hide how he was feeling, the faster his flower was likely to grow. And also how much time he spent thinking of Emiko and whether or not she knew he even existed. (He had to stop that train of thought a lot because it kept leading to coughing fits and his friends were starting to subtly hint that he should go talk to a doctor about his ‘cold’.) The more anxious he got over the whole thing, the more the plant would show up to try and counteract that bit. It was all a bit cyclical with everything feeding back into itself, and the long and short of it was that if he continued at the current rate of growth, he probably had about three months before it reached hospitalization point.

Kosuke did not want to reach hospitalization point.

Obviously.

It made him want to hide away in the library even thinking about getting dragged to a hospital. But if he couldn’t magically confess in the next three months and let his hopeless love run its course, he’d end up there anyway, either because he was suffocating to death or because he went through with a surgery to remove the plant.

Surgery was controversial. It saved lives and continued to improve in safety in leaps and bounds. But it could lead to partial memory loss, muted feelings, or unstable emotions if the surgery wasn’t done right. Sometimes there was scarring to lung tissue or to the throat. And while most people didn’t regret having it done, Kosuke personally thought the idea of removing a whole chunk of what he felt was kind of horrifying. It was like his life was a text and someone decided to revise a key part of it by taking a knife to the pages.

People who had the surgery had a current eighty percent success rate provided it was done before late stage hanahaki. Of those who didn’t get the surgery, there was a thirty percent mortality rate due to inaction and/or inability to resolve emotions for one reason or another (a surprising number of cases involved people moving with no way to contact them). Sixty percent of that number confessed and recovered. Ten percent confessed and still died and why that happened was a greatly debated topic in both historic and modern texts.

Kosuke didn’t think he’d be among the ten percent to suffocate after confession. He didn’t have the black and white, stubborn thinking to clutch onto an emotion until it killed him when it was turned down. He was a lot more likely to just take what he was given and curl up somewhere to lick his wounds.

All said, he had a much better idea of where he stood—not great, because he had hanahaki because of feelings for someone he’d never managed to speak to and he was a shy person, but certainly a lot better than he could have been. The numbers and details soothed most of his immediate fears; it wasn’t an instant and quick death sentence.

He just had to make a plan from here…

He didn’t want surgery, so that really only left confessing. He wasn’t sure how to do that, but… It wasn’t like he didn’t see Emiko around campus. And he saw her at the café. He just… had to come up with a way to approach her. And confess.

Kosuke coughed faintly into his elbow. Yeah, that was going to be easier said than done. Back to square one.

o*O*o

No matter what else was going on in his life, Kosuke still had school. And school at the moment was a research paper that was fifty percent of his final grade in a class on Japanese artists. He’d gone with a local artist because it was rare that they looked at what was right under their noses, and of course, he was rapidly going overboard in researching. He didn’t need to read the artist’s personal journals or go painstakingly through his sketch book volumes, but the university had both in their collection along with a lot of the artist’s personal items and unsold artworks. How often did he get the opportunity to work with this much primary source material?

“You’ve started living in the library,” Minako said to him as Kosuke paged through a biography outlining Takamura Hiseki’s early artistic experience before he gained an apprenticeship with a glassworker. “Have you seen the sun in the last month?”

“I’ve seen the sun,” Kosuke said, not looking up. “I’m outside right now.”

“Because it’s your usual pining over an unobtainable woman day,” Minako said. “I heard that you fell asleep in the library last week.”

Kosuke flushed. He had. It was easy to lose track of time and he’d fallen asleep on a hanahaki book somewhere in the middle of trying to parse through dense medical terminology. He took a sip of coffee only to cough softly as it conflicted with the tickle in his throat. The flowers were still at a manageable level, but from the glance Minako sent him, he was starting to become obvious that something wasn’t quite right.

“Allergies still bothering you or do you have a cold?” she asked.

“I’m fine. You know how it is.”

“Right,” Minako said doubtfully.

Kosuke probably should tell his friends what was going on, but they’d just worry. He didn’t want to be a bother. They already spent more time than they needed to making sure he didn’t get lost in books forever.

Minako sighed. “So what’s got you glued to a book this time? Spill.”

“Takamura Hiseki.” Kosuke held up the book. “Born in Azumano and spent most of his artistic career here, though he studied abroad briefly. He’s mostly known for glasswork, but he worked with pen and ink, charcoal, and sometimes wood. There’s not as much interest in those things though since most of his drawings were done in planning his glasswork.”

“He’s your latest artist crush then,” Minako teased.

“He’s been dead for over fifty years,” Kosuke said with a roll of his eyes. Not that it made a difference. He’d fanboyed over artists from earlier time periods often enough that Minako just grinned at him. “But he’s interesting. I decided to look at a local artist for class, but I wasn’t expecting to find as much about him as I did. Do you know that the university has a room in their private collection dedicated to him? His friend donated most of Takamura’s belongings late in his life.”

“Takamura didn’t donate them himself?” Minako asked.

“No, he died fairly young actually.” From hanahaki, which was the only reason he’d come on Kosuke’s radar with all the binge reading on the disease lately. “I haven’t got permission yet to look at his journals firsthand, but one of his biographies broke down the last few years of his life. It was pretty skeptical of how accurate it was though. Takamura’s account of events apparently is at times fantastical, and the biographer wondered if he had a mental illness.” Kosuke absolutely had to read the primary source material to get his own impression.

Minako gave him a fond, if not completely exasperated look. “You don’t even need to look into half of what you’re doing for class, do you?”

“They want a research essay. I can’t get an accurate read on how much is author bias in biographies without looking closer at Takamura’s own writings,” he said.

“So yes, you’re going overboard again.”

“I remember you trying to reproduce a double-weaving technique for two months straight off of a single surviving cloth scrap, so you really can’t judge me here.”

Minako opened her mouth, then closed it with a pout. “I hate you.”

Kosuke grinned. His friends were all as strangely nerdy as he was. Although speaking of friends… “Where is Katsuma anyway?”

“Katsu-kun is trying to get a date,” Minako said with the despairing tone of someone who had to hear too much about Katsuma’s current crush. “It’s hopeless, but that’s Katsu-kun for you. He always falls for someone who’s way out of his league.”

Kosuke felt a twinge of heartache. He apparently was just the same. He coughed softly again as the flowers tickled his throat. Ugh, bitter taste. “Who is it this time, I don’t remember him saying.”

“You’ve had your head in a book too much,” Minako said without any heat. “It’s a girl from a different university. She’s a senior, Hikari something-or-other. Katsu-kun keeps going on about her looks so I’ve been tuning him out. Apparently she’s some kind of unobtainable ice queen type?”

“So his exact type,” Kosuke said, remembering some of the messes their freshman year.

“Yup. Be ready to go bar hopping tomorrow cheering him up. He’s definitely going to get rejected.”

Kosuke sighed. That meant all of them ending up with a hangover. And Katsuma embarrassing himself while Kosuke played damage control for his two friends. Across the street, right on time, Emiko walked out of the café, and Kosuke paused to watch her.

Her hair was up and she had a pretty sundress on, looking glamorous as ever. There was a man with her, just as handsome as she was lovely. Probably a date. Kosuke coughed again as his heart ached. Today wasn’t the day to try to talk to her either. When he tuned back in on Minako, she was looking at him with pity.

“Katsu-kun isn’t the only one with a thing for unobtainable women.”

Kosuke bit his lip and sunk lower in his chair.

“Not gonna say it isn’t a crush this time?”

“You both called it before I did,” he grumbled. “You don’t have a crush I can poke you back on do you?”

Minako grinned. “Eh, not yet. I have a pretty specific type.”

“What type is that?”

“The kind of lady that could bench press me.”

Kosuke sputtered a laugh, not expecting that in the least. There was the edge of nerves in Minako’s smile at admitting this, but she should know by now that he didn’t judge about those sorts of things. “Have you tried looking into any of the women at the girl’s college? They have athletics.”

The tiny bit of tension in Minako’s shoulders relaxed. “C’mon, when do I have time for something like that? Besides, I’m fine on my own. If something happens one day, it happens.” Her smile went soft. “Though if some girl ever literally sweeps me off my feet… that’d be nice.”

“I’m sure you’ll have better taste than Katsuma or me on ladies,” Kosuke said diplomatically.

“Hell yeah,” Minako said.

Kosuke laughed and leafed through his book again as comfortable understanding settled between them. There was evidence that Takamura had loved his close friend, the same one who had donated Takamura’s belongings after his death. The need to hide those emotions, unacceptable in their target, had been what killed Takamura in the end, though it wasn’t clear why he hadn’t just trusted his friend with the knowledge.

Kosuke tapped a paragraph that detailed Takamura’s private romantic thoughts compared to letters he’d written to his friend and hoped Minako could have better luck in life. There wasn’t a social stigma keeping Kosuke from confessing, just anxiety.

o*O*o

There was no way that this was accurate. Kosuke chewed the back on his pen as he cross referenced dates. Takamura’s diary showed that he contracted hanahaki shortly after his best friend and man he was in love with got married. And yet he’d died over three years later, which should be impossible. Medically speaking, he should have suffocated within a year at most, even if he had the mildest-tempered flower out there.

He’d had a bluebell growing though, which was a plant that spread, and came back, constant as its meaning. That wasn’t a plant that withered. It was a plant that grew just as well in the shade as in the sun.

The theories in biographies had it that Takamura tried experimental medicine to keep the flowers at bay, but if he did, it was something that was beating out modern medical practices because suppressants never got that kind of longevity out of them. Other theories were that Takamura originally hallucinated the flowers only to actually contract the disease later, or that he’d fallen in and out of love with several people, which was ridiculous because it wasn’t supported anywhere in his diary.

Based on the number of rough sketches that snuck into an otherwise work-related sketchbook of a kind-faced young man, Kosuke was sure Takamura had only loved the one friend.

He was missing something.

Kosuke sat back, books and notes scattered all across the table. Secondhand accounts and reproductions of the original materials weren’t enough. He needed to look at the actual source material. Besides, there were occasionally troubling sections of the diary where Kosuke could see why some of the biographers thought he was slowly losing sanity. Things like ‘the cost is worth it. Another day beside him is worth years I might have had without it,’ and ‘the poison is all I taste now, but my lungs pump on, the devil waiting for my last breath.’ It could be a descent into madness, or it could just be the rambles of a man facing his own mortality.

Kosuke gathered up his things. He’d have to hit up the campus conservationists to see if he could touch any of Takamura’s belongings.

The private collections were actually right off the library though, so it wasn’t a long trip to reach them. Kosuke rubbed his eyes. His friends were right that he needed more sleep, but this was interesting.

There was someone working in the collection room, more than one someone because there were voices.

“—one time. I swear you won’t regret it.”

“I’m flattered as always, but still not interested,” Emiko’s voice said.

Kosuke froze.

“Well, can’t blame me for trying,” the man in the other room said.

“Oh, but I really could,” Emiko said with the restrained sarcasm of a woman annoyed by someone that’s pushed one too many times.

The flowers in Kosuke’s chest felt like they were creeping up his throat. He swallowed convulsively. Not now, not in the middle of the library, he pleaded.

“Just finish your half of the project and we’re golden,” Emiko said, footsteps ringing out closer as she walked toward the door. “I will rat you out if you don’t do your fair share.”

“Aw, Emiko-chan, don’t be like that!”

“Jump in a lake, Ueda!” Kosuke stopped breathing as she stopped right in the doorway, attention inward and a scowl on her face. “I should replace all his pens with duds,” Emiko muttered under her breath. Then she stepped forward, casting an uninterested glance at Kosuke as she moved by him. She was so close he could smell her pretty, spicy perfume.

The whole back of Kosuke’s throat tasted bitter.

o*O*o

Kosuke paused on one of the doodles. It looked familiar. Actually, he’d seen one in an earlier journal… He snatched up a diary he’d been reading earlier. Yes, there was the same doodle, just with a slight difference in the middle, like the round design had been rotated a quarter turn. It had been out of place for the diary—Takamura had generally kept his writing journals for writing and his sketching ones for sketching. That was the only reason Kosuke remembered it. It was just as out of place in the sketch journal too though; the ink was a darker black than the rest of the page like it was added at a later date, and none of the other sketches so far had been anything beyond glasswork designs or the occasional nature study where Takamura had gained inspiration from things he saw on his walks. The doodle was abstract, almost geometric if not for the interlocking swirls around the center.

The more he looked at it, the more he had the niggling sensation that he’d seen that exact pattern before, and not in one of the journals.

Kosuke tapped the back of his pen against the table. Where? Where would he have seen it? A drawing? A photo? Maybe something from the exhibit with Takamura’s reconstructed study? He glanced at the brochure, paused. Oh, the desk. It had a pretty, decorative front panel in the center with drawers on either side. It wasn’t any bigger than Kosuke’s fist, but he remembered it looking vaguely like the doodle. He’d thought that the round design had been different though…

The biographies hadn’t found the doodles significant. Nor had the annotated sketchbooks. But… But there were two doodles, if not more…

Kosuke flipped through the diary for any more doodles, finding none, tried another. There. A third doodle… Almost identical to the others but yet another shift in the round central design. It was like… Kosuke paused, sitting up straight. It was like a combination lock. Rotate one direction, then the other, then back again, though what order or how far was difficult to tell based on the simplistic sketch.

Honestly, he should probably not be wasting time puzzling over something like this when it wouldn’t be anything to add to his essay, but it was interesting. And the idea that he’d noticed something that no one else might have filled Kosuke with a tiny thrill of excitement. He had to test this.

o*O*o

The sequence, once he sat down and worked it out had been simple. The desk was never meant to be difficult to open, just not obvious in its hiding spot. The order was sequential based off of when the journals were used. Kosuke pressed a gloved hand carefully on the carved wooden panel and turned the carving just the way the doodles showed. It moved far easier than he’d expect for a piece of wood that hadn’t been touched in decades, almost like it was just waiting to be used again.

When he tugged, a tiny compartment pulled out, perfectly sized and shaped to hold its contents, and probably why no one had realized it existed; it wouldn’t have sounded hollow.

A crystal bottle, tiny and filled with liquid tipped into his palm along with a piece of parchment, folded in on itself until it could be squeezed under the bottle. The vial was beautiful, a master work in glass. Kosuke examined how the light refracted along it before setting it down and unfolding the parchment with careful fingers. Thankfully it wasn’t brittle enough to crack even if it didn’t really want to unfold. On it in Takamura’s spiky handwriting it said:

I sold myself for a few more years with the one I love. May my price grant whoever finds this a few with their love as well.

Kosuke puzzled that, turned the parchment over, but there weren’t any more words. Kosuke could only assume it referred to Takamura’s hanahaki, but what price he paid and how it related to the compartment was less clear. Unless… Kosuke glanced at the bottle. Unless the bottle had something to do with how he’d vastly outlived the average life expectancy of untreated hanahaki. Unless this was the experimental substance that no one had ever been able to find.

What he should be doing was getting one of the staff and showing them what he learned.

What Kosuke did was pocket the vial, feeling like a thief—and wasn’t he one though? Wasn’t it theft to steal from university property?—and calmly walk out of the storage room.

If this was the suppressing factor for Takamura’s hanahaki, it could be revolutionary. Or at the very least it could buy Kosuke some much needed time.

o*O*o

Kosuke almost tried the vial immediately, only the last second realization that ingesting an unknown substance from a vial hidden in a desk drawer was kind of an idiotic thing to do made him pause and realize that this required testing. Testing that required another living thing, which was how Kosuke found himself at the park pond in the middle of the night catching frogs because he couldn’t bring himself to possibly hurt something that was cute or furry. Not that he didn’t feel horrifically guilty catching the frogs; frogs just had less expressive faces than tiny mice in pet shops that blinked wide, dark eyes at him and… Yeah, Kosuke felt kind of terrible about this.

But he also didn’t want to possibly kill himself, so experimentation it was. One of the frogs he’d caught glared balefully at him as he held the vial’s dropper above it, biting his lip unhappily. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “It shouldn’t kill you but I’m sorry if it does.” The frog squirmed as a drop landed on its skin, but nothing happened beyond him holding an angry, squirmy frog. “Oh thank goodness.” But what if it was poisonous if ingested? Or over time?

Kosuke eyed the bowl with foil and holes he’d stashed the frogs in and pulled out another, placing the first back in. After a few minutes of struggle he managed to get a drop in its mouth and other than angry frog croaking, there still wasn’t any, er, croaking happening. Only time would tell if it was just too soon to say.

He put the frog back in the bowl and sat on slightly muddy grass. When he decided to go to university, he never thought he’d one day end up catching frogs in the middle of the night because he had hanahaki and really hoped that a mystery bottle would help stave it off. He never thought he’d get hanahaki at all.

He looked at the vial. Even in the dark with only the moon for light, it was pretty. It almost seemed to glow, though he kind of hoped he was imagining that. This wasn’t the sort of thing he could talk to anyone about either. What was he supposed to tell his friends? That he stole a historical glasswork from the campus museum that no one knew existed that might also maybe kind of sort of be a magic stopgap for hanahaki? Yeah, that would go over just fine. He’d just wanted to pursue his interests, one of which was spending copious amounts of time reading about obscure things. Emotions like love happening never factored into it.

In the bowl, the frogs kept moving around unhappily. At least he hadn’t killed them. Yet. Oof, no that sounded like he wanted to kill them and he really didn’t. Kosuke sighed and reached for the bowl. Except there was a patch of water mint blooming right near it. If the vial did hold a substance that effected hanahaki… He pulled out the dropper again, letting a single drop of liquid fall onto one of the mint blossoms.

Instantly, the whole plant wilted and the flowers went dead.

“Oh.” Kosuke stoppered the bottle. “Shit.”

That was scarily effective. Not even weed killer worked that fast or effective.

He laughed nervously to himself, feeling his breath catch in his lungs on the plant growing there. Well. Well… If the frogs were alive tomorrow, he might test it on himself.

If that worked, he might just have time to think of a proper plan after all.

o*O*o

It tasted disgusting, bitter like his flower was bitter, but also sour and the faintest bit sweet the way rotting things could smell sweet along with the stench of rot. Kosuke grimaced and set the vial back down and waited, holed up in the privacy of his apartment with a bowl full of still-unhappy-yet-alive frogs. A second passed, two, and he could feel his chest ease, his breathing stop aching. It almost felt like before he had hanahaki at all.

He took a deep breath and relished how it didn’t catch at all, how no hint of a cough rattled in his chest. Oh. Maybe he’d been further along in the disease than he thought if one drop made that big of a difference. But he didn’t know how long it would last. Clearly not forever or Takamura wouldn’t have died from it, but it helped, made Kosuke feel better than he had in the last month at least.

He sent his fervent thanks to Takamura, wherever his spirit might be.

Minutes ticked on and he did not die and he kept breathing.

This, he reminded himself sternly, was a stop-gap measure. Not a cure. He still had to confess to Emiko.

It was so, so tempting to just… pretend. Go back to his usual life and throw himself wholeheartedly into working and studying and shove down any emotional issues like they didn’t exist. But doing that would get him killed. Kosuke sighed. Emiko had a birthday coming up so he could try again then. Just one more person in the crowd that had well-wishes and ulterior motives, he thought cynically.

It was no wonder no one caught Emiko’s attention. They were all trying so hard to one up each other, but had any of them actually taken any time to get to know her? Or were they all, himself included he supposed, just charmed by her appearance? Kosuke liked to think he wasn’t that shallow, but he didn’t know her well. He just knew that she cared about art like he did and that she was beautiful and that she was smart if her grades were anything to go by. He wanted to know more though. He didn’t want to snatch her up and have her on his arm like some sort of trophy. He wanted to ask her what she thought about what was considered art, or if she had a favorite artist, or what her thoughts were on the cultural revolution that had left hundreds of art pieces destroyed and culture lost or irrevocably changed for reasons he still couldn’t explain. He wanted to know if she liked research as much as he did or if she believed in restoring art rather than merely preserving it. What she thought about how museums could sustainably and ethically procure art pieces. If she liked history or if she cared more for physical art than where and when it came from…

Kosuke sighed.

For someone so popular, Emiko was a mystery. She was friendly and emotionally open about anything in the moment and completely closed about her family life or what she thought about the big things in life. She wanted to have a son, everyone knew that, but no one knew why.

Kosuke wanted to know her and it hurt to think about if he let himself. He didn’t let himself often.

What, he wondered, fingers playing with the glass stopper in the vial, would she think of the hidden artwork Kosuke found? That he should share it with the world or that it was okay that he was keeping it for his own personal gain for the moment?

That question, like all his questions, had no answer. One day he’d have to actually talk to her and find out.

o*O*o

Kosuke finished his paper on Takamura—above the page and reference count by far which hopefully wouldn’t get too much exasperation from his professor—and dove into finals while plotting how he was going to confess to Emiko. Using a flower as a gift felt a little too on the nose considering the situation, but he wasn’t sure what to give a woman who had nice things and the ability to buy herself far better jewelry or trinkets than Kosuke could afford. Not to mention that she’d receive nicer things from everyone else around her. He’d settled on a pretty bookmark as it was both practical and aesthetically appealing, but even practicing how he’d approach the gift and confession wasn’t going well when it was his own reflection he was talking to.

He didn’t really have much hope about getting it right.

The day came and Kosuke showed up outside one of her class buildings… and promptly got lost in the crowd of six other men there to get Emiko’s attention as well.

Well.

Kosuke watched her manage their enthusiasm and be simultaneously receptive and dismissive, listing reasons why she wasn’t interested in dating them but thanking them for their gift and attention, and he felt… not jealous, but perhaps a bit lost. It was another moment where she felt like she was on a different level than him.

He was so caught up in watching her handle it that he somehow missed the exact moment she managed to disengage from her admirers and sweep out the building. Kosuke was left standing with a gift hidden up his sleeve and a bunch of men comforting each other in their rejection.

“She hasn’t said yes to anyone once,” one said. “But there’s just something about an unobtainable woman…”

Unobtainable. Like she was a prize. Kosuke disliked that line of thinking. But she did feel unreachable. Emiko was as human as any of them but sometimes it didn’t feel that way with how confidently she confronted her world. They might as well be existing on different planes for all that Kosuke seemed to be able to bridge that gap.

What did it say about himself that he’d fallen for someone that he couldn’t even talk to? And yet he desperately wanted to.

Kosuke coughed, coughed again and had to duck into an unused classroom when it became a full blown attack. There were bits of stem mixed in with flower clumps, broad forked leaves. The bitter, bitter taste in his throat. Kosuke slid a cough drop in his mouth just to chase away the flavor with strong, numbing menthol. He was progressing more and more toward full flower stems and less toward scattered flower parts. His emotions hadn’t fully bloomed yet, but they were close.

He took a drop of the hanahaki suppressant. It didn’t remove the strain in his throat, but it let him breathe clearly. He didn’t know how often it was safe to use, but he’d slowly been needing it more, from once every several days to a little more than every other day, depending on the day. How many months would he last with it? How long until he started finding blood or fractured a rib? Soft-stem flowers had a longer threshold of time before they caused bleeding in the lungs. But because of that the coughing attacks could get worse before that point and hurt the body other ways.

There wasn’t much to do beyond keep moving forward.

o*O*o

Summer brought a few weeks of rest between semesters and a move to a new apartment; Kosuke’s old one had been slowly creeping out of his budget range. He needed a part time job to balance things, but he had too much going on in his life to have time for one.

Minako and Katsuma helped him move his things to his new smaller, and much sketchier apartment with the help of Kastsuma’s car. Kosuke pretended not to notice their concern when he was easily winded carrying boxes up one flight of stairs. Or how Minako narrowed her eyes at the couple of coughs he couldn’t suppress.

“Rest,” she pressed when Kosuke tried to start unpacking immediately. “You look like hell lately. Just take the break to actually recover, okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kosuke protested.

Katsuma smacked him on the back. “Sure you are. And there aren’t tanuki rings under your eyes. If I wasn’t going home to visit my family, I’d make sure you got some damn rest. Because I am going home you better call at least every other day to tell me how you managed to relax that day.”

“I’m not that bad,” Kosuke complained. Minako and Kastsuma had their own bad habits.

Minako patted Katsuma’s arm in a solidarity that annoyed Kosuke. “I’ll check in on him. I have more hours at work over break though so I can’t drag him to the beach or anything.”

“If he went to a beach he’d burn to a crisp. He doesn’t see enough sunlight.”

Kosuke rolled his eyes and let his friends help put away all of his belongings in the tiny space. He had a box leftover that couldn’t go anywhere and just sat in the corner.

“You need a job,” Minako said.

“I can’t rest if I’m working,” Kosuke pointed out snidely.

Katsuma cuffed him over the back of the head. “Don’t be an ass.”

Kosuke sighed. “How’s your girlfriend search going?”

Katsuma wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, you’re in a mood. For your information I’ve been exchanging letters with a girl. She likes kind of old fashioned courting. It’s going great.”

Now Kosuke felt like a jerk for trying to dig at Katsuma’s usual insecurity and because he hadn’t even known this was going on. Maybe they had a point that he was getting too caught up in his head.

“Are you visiting your family over the summer?” Minako asked Kosuke.

“No.” Katsuma was close to his family. Minako’s lived on the other side of Japan, too far to casually visit. Kosuke’s family… There had been a lot of absences growing up. There were reasons that books were a refuge. Going months without hearing from his parents or them from him was nothing new. If they ever suddenly took an interest in his life, he wouldn’t know what to do with it.

An awkward silence followed that.

“Well,” Minako said, “my parents are visiting next week. You’re welcome to go out to dinner with us. You know, to prove I can make friends in the big city and all.”

Kosuke smiled, a peace offering. “I’ll think about it.”

Katsuma, proving himself yet again as a good friend, announced they were getting food delivered and having a party to celebrate the new apartment despite it being the least celebratory environment possible.

Kosuke tried to keep in the moment with them for as long as they were there. He hadn’t been the best friend lately.

The move brought unexpected results. As in the fact that Kosuke suddenly found himself sharing a train stop with Emiko. Before they’d occasionally shared a train if they left campus at the same time, but now they lived in a neighborhood close enough that they used the same stop to get to the campus as well as get home. And Kosuke was aware of every meter between them and how Emiko looked radiant in a sun dress.

The universe sure did like to laugh at each new way Kosuke tied himself into knots over things.

o*O*o

It was somewhere between torture and comfort to see Emiko on the train so often. Kosuke could tell when she was having a good or bad day based on how she was dressed, the state of her hair, and how large of a travel mug she had at any given time.

It was probably creepy that he knew that.

There was a bell-curve to how she presented herself. On the days she was at her best and the days she was at her worst, seemed to be the times she was perfectly dressed. Like making herself that much more beautiful was both a pleasure and also a shield.

Kosuke liked the days where she was a bit less made up, where her hair was a bit flyaway and she would read on the way to their stop. She looked comfortable, and more than that, she looked human instead of unreachable. He was never telling her that though.

As the summer ended and they moved back into the next semester, Kosuke found himself orbiting her from a distance, part of the background of her life, but never quite part of it no matter how many times they almost brushed paths or coexisted in space. There were men who came and went around her, and a few bright-faced female friends in her life. There was an older man with graying red hair that sometimes accompanied her who might have been a relative or her father. There were several not-quite-dates he saw occurring in glimpses as he was moving through campus that were more likely Emiko grilling want-to-be beaus on their family history.

There was an invisible line between them that Kosuke was slowly feeling resigned to never cross. Emiko, on the whole, was happy, and he was glad for that. She didn’t need anyone in her life for all that she seemed intent to find someone. As always, he wondered why because she was an independent and driven person. And yet motherhood was one of her main life goals.

Kosuke mentally slapped the judgmental side of himself because, well, who could judge when they didn’t know the motivations? And what was wrong with wanting to be a parent? Even he could admit that it would be nice to have a child someday. To holding a small being and knowing that some part of them came from you. That they were so tiny and new and would one day be as much of a person as any other, living and thinking and dreaming. It was awe inspiring, humbling and terrifying in equal measure.

If he got the nerve, perhaps that would be what he said to her first. Not a confession, but a question. That need to understand outstripped the part of him that said getting a cure to his disease was the bigger priority.

But Kosuke still couldn’t do it, and time dragged on, routine turning into stagnation, and inaction making the task grow from something intimidating to something that felt impossible.

Kosuke knew he was making things complicated and it was all in his head, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t have hanahaki in the first place if his mind and heart didn’t work a certain way.

o*O*o

“This,” a familiar voice said, “is an intervention.”

“Eh?” Kosuke stifled a cough behind his cold mask, looking up to find Minako and Katsuma standing grim-faced in front of him. It was Katsuma who’d spoken. Minako had somehow confiscated half the library books he’d had strewn about the table without him even noticing either of them there. Kosuke blinked and sat back. “An intervention for what? I haven’t even been in the library tw—” He glanced at his watch. “Three hours yet.” It was a weekend day, and normally the only time his friends dragged him away was when he’d spent multiple weekends holed up. But he’d gone out with them the night before. And he’d made a point of arranging brunch on Sunday to try to be less antisocial than he had been lately.

Minako and Katsuma exchanged inscrutable looks. Katsuma set both palms on the table before Kosuke. “We’re your friends,” Katsuma said. “And as your friends, we’ve been trying to give you space and time to talk to us. But there’s only so long we can wait for you. Kosuke, how long have you had that cough?”

As if on cue, Kosuke had to stifle another small cough. “Um. For a while. On and off.”

“Months,” Minako said. “It’s been months. It got a little better, but it never went away. That’s not a cold. Colds don’t last over six months.”

“Maybe I just keep getting sick,” Kosuke said with the sinking feeling that he should have had a cover story ready. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would bring the coughing up, which in retrospect was kind of stupid. Especially when he had friends who cared enough to go out of their way to drag him out to get fresh air and sunlight on the regular.

“You’d have a week here and there being better if that was the case,” Minako said.

“Instead,” Katsuma said, “it’s been getting worse.” He reached out and tapped Kosuke’s mask. Kosuke leaned away. “You weren’t wearing that before. You stopped even noticing when you were coughing so you put that on to stop coughing over everything, right?”

Kosuke felt a bit trapped even though theoretically he could push his chair away from the table and walk away if he wanted to. “I have a cold.” He had actually had a very mild cold, the sniffles making his hanahaki cough worse, but it had only lasted him a few days. He’d kept the mask because his throat never recovered even if the rest of him had.

“Have you seen a doctor yet?” Katsuma asked seriously.

“I…” He hadn’t. Between knowing what they’d tell him about his hanahaki and being a little scared to find out if the magic vial of suppressant was harming the rest of his body he hadn’t exactly been diligent on keeping up with his usual health screenings.

“Well you’re going to.” Minako and Katsuma both put a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t want you to end up in a hospital.”

“I can’t,” Kosuke said uncomfortably.

“You can. It doesn’t take that much time, it doesn’t cost much money, and it’s not worth ignoring your health.” Katsuma was very emphatic and Kosuke remembered with a jolt that his grandmother had gotten pneumonia once and almost died because she hadn’t wanted to inconvenience anyone to the point that she hadn’t sought help. “Please.”

Kosuke should just tell them everything. Except that might make them worry more. Hanahaki could be as fatal as a bad cold or influenza if left untreated too long.

“I’m doing what I can,” he said finally. “I know what it is and I’m keeping track of it.”

Katsuma frowned. At his side, Minako chewed her lip, worry radiating from her.

Kosuke sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. “Just… a little more time? Please? I promise I’m not going to end up in a hospital tomorrow.”

Katsuma shook his head. “That’s not good enough, Kosuke.”

Crap. Kosuke felt genuinely guilty now. Even more when he glanced at Minako’s stony expression. They weren’t going to let this go today. “…It’s hanahaki,” he finally muttered. “Not a cold.”

Both his friends stared. “Wait, what?” Minako said. “Seriously?”

Kosuke’s cheeks burned. “Yes, seriously.”

“But for months? And you’re not coughing up blood by this point?” She froze. “You’re not coughing up blood are you?”

“No!” If he reached that point Kosuke would have to get the surgery. He wasn’t going to let himself die from this, but he was going to try to gain the courage to talk to Emiko right until he had no other choice.

“How?”

“It’s…” Most people would be coughing blood by this point or at least have coughing fits bad enough to land them in a hospital. He was just at the point where it was hard to hide that he was coughing frequently. All the tea and honey in the world couldn’t soothe the constant throat irritation at this point. “Hanahaki progresses differently for everyone. Mine’s just… slow.”

“Oh shit, it’s Niwa isn’t it?” Katsuma groaned. “Why didn’t that even occur to me?”

“…Maybe because hanahaki isn’t that common?” Only about twenty-some percent of the population was susceptible. Or perhaps only twenty percent ever ran into the specific requirements to get it; there wasn’t enough research done on the topic yet but there were strides being made to look into the possibility of genetic correlations for susceptibility but that was still in the early stages.

“Shut up, Kosuke, you’ve been mooning over her for ages, it should have been obvious. Damn.”

“I didn’t notice either,” Minako pointed out. “So… how serious is it then? If you’ve spent over six months…”

“Um.” Kosuke fidgeted with his mask.

“You didn’t ask a doctor about this either did you,” she said with a sigh.

“I did my own research,” he defended. “I haven’t reached any of the chronic markers yet. I’m still in the middle stages.”

“That being?”

“Still mostly parts coughed up, the rare full flower stem. …progressively more frequent cough and throat irritation…”

Minako sighed. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

Kosuke blushed. “I’ve. Um.” He sunk in his seat as both his friends fixed full attention on him. “I keep trying to confess and ending up awkwardly standing in the background.”

Katsuma looked somewhere between resigned and amused. Minako didn’t even bother to hide the twitch of a smile on her lips. “Well at least you’ve been trying.”

“I don’t want to be coughing flowers forever,” Kosuke said, a little annoyed that they both apparently thought he wouldn’t have even tried to confess. Then again, they’d been watching him watch Emiko leave a café once a week for almost a year. So. Yeah. Kosuke buried his face in his hands, coughing slightly. “Please don’t try to intervene.”

“Well maybe it’ll go better with help,” Minako said.

“The problem isn’t an opportunity, the problem is me.”

“So we back you up,” Katsuma said. “Try to help you both end up together alone or literally run into each other or something.”

“Because knocking her to the ground would be a great first impression,” Kosuke mumbled. “She doesn’t even realize I exist.”

“So you have to get her to realize,” Katsuma said realistically. “Try to catch her eye and smile. Wave. Offer to walk her to class.”

“Don’t walk her to class without asking, that’d just be creepy,” Minako said.

“I know!” Kosuke was already starting to regret telling them. “…we ride the same train.”

“Really?” Minako said. “Hmm… Find a way to stand closer? So maybe she picks up on you subconsciously first before you take a step to get her to actually notice you?”

Kosuke thought that if she was going to notice him subconsciously, it would have happened by now. Between having that once class together and then passing by on the same campus and campus adjacent businesses, and now the same train. But sure. Stand within sight range on the regular on the train. Never mind that Kosuke wasn’t sure if he could name three people he regularly rode the train with besides Emiko.

“The problem,” Katsuma said, “is that you chose a girl used to getting looked at by random men. And talked to. And given gifts by. And—”

“I know!” Did they think he hadn’t thought about all of this at one point or another?! He’d had months! “I know I don’t stand out enough!”

“So,” Minako said after a moment, “what are you hoping to happen? Once you confess?”

“That she turns me down lightly without somehow knowing my whole family history?” Kosuke said.

“Not that she might like you back?” Katsuma asked.

Kosuke rolled his eyes. “It’s Niwa Emiko. Who doesn’t know I exist even though we sat three seats away in the same class a year ago. I can be realistic in my expectations. Besides.” Kosuke tugged at the mask self-consciously. “I don’t expect anyone to like me just because I like them. That’s not how any of that works. Ideally I’d get to talk to her and ask her about some things I’m curious about but. I’m someone whose idea of fun is researching obscure topics and whose idea of a romantic gesture is a flower and a ribbon. That’s… not really the sort of person she seems to be interested in.”

“I dunno, she seems to be interested in a guy who’ll give her a son and is into girls who’re extremely forward,” Minako said bluntly. “You’re one of those things. Now if she asked you if you’d father her child…”

Kosuke went scarlet and sputtered.

Katsuma and Minako laughed at him.

“Why are we friends again?” Kosuke asked into his hands.

“Because we’re all nerds and we find your shut-in nature endearing,” Katsuma said slinging an arm around Kosuke’s shoulders. “But seriously, go see a doctor soon. I know you’re not too bad yet and your research skills are top notch, but you’re also not a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination.”

“…fine.”

“He conceded!” Minako cheered. “Good enough! Now you have one more hour with your books before we go for a walk. Spending this much time indoors is bad for you.”

“You both spend hours indoors too!”

“And we’re all going on that walk because we also need it,” Minako said. “Work fast.”

Kosuke swore at them both and dove for his notes. He only slightly dreaded the kind of plans and awkward conversations that were sure to follow telling them the truth.

o*O*o

He did, honestly, mean to go to a doctor. But life got complicated again with more school projects and taking odd shifts as a convenience store clerk for money and trying to follow Minako and Katsuma’s newest schemes to get him to talk to Emiko.

None of which worked, to no one’s surprise. Kosuke had walked into a wall, tripped over his own feet, and stood paralyzed off to the side as Emiko walked by more times than he can count. He’d visited Emiko’s café once instead of his preferred one across the street. He’d walked away dozens of other times because he truly hated how stressed it all was making him and wondered how he could simultaneously start to dread seeing someone and still want to make sure Emiko was doing well from afar.

“This isn’t working,” Kosuke sighed around Christmastime, as the number of couples tripled and suddenly everyone was being overly romantic.

Katsuma, who had recently just started dating a girl from his literature class (who had apparently been the pen pal), patted his shoulder sympathetically. Although a lot less sympathetically than a few months ago. “You know it really is easier if you’re going into it expecting to be rejected.” He’d know at this point with how his crushes had come and gone.

“I don’t know why this is so hard,” Kosuke said. Or why he couldn’t just be brave and march up and say something. He really didn’t expect anything from Emiko.

“It’s probably you overthinking,” Katsuma said, tapping Kosuke between his eyebrows. He gave a smirk. “I still think you should get drunk and then go confess. That’s probably the only way that you’re going to overcome that knee-jerk reaction of yours.”

“I’d die of embarrassment later.” Also, drunk Kosuke wasn’t actually any more forward than he was when he was sober. He just got more impulsive and tended to info-dump on anyone near him about whatever his latest interest was. He was, in Minako’s opinion, ‘one of the least fun drunks ever’.

“Yeah, but it’d be done,” Katsuma said. “Think about it. You only have so much time, you know?”

“Hmm.”

The hanahaki had plateau’d for the moment. He had a persistent cough that brought up bits of flowers all the time now, and rarer bad fits that left stems in his hands and a bitter taste that no amount of toothpaste could scrub away. He only used one drop from the vial a day but the benefit from it was lasting less and less each day. Soon he might have to use it every sixteen hours instead of every twenty four.

“Are you going home for New Year’s?” Katsuma asked, kindly changing the topic.

It wasn’t a much more enjoyable one to think of really. Kosuke pursed his lips. “I suppose I should.” Even his parents were home at New Year’s. Neither of them had talked in months.

“Yeah?” Katsuma said, surprised.

Kosuke shrugged. “I should try, right? To talk to them once a year at least?”

There was sadness in how Katsuma looked at him. He’d been invited to both his friend’s homes before and yet… Sometimes Kosuke wondered what it would be like to have a family. A real one that marked milestones and celebrated birthdays and showed support. He hoped that if he ever ended up a parent he’d do better than his had.

“You don’t have to go,” Katsuma pointed out.

“Mm.” Didn’t he though? They were supporting most of his university expenses. Why, though, did people have children if they had no interest in knowing who they were or spending time with them? Just to have someone to pass a name along to? Because they felt they were supposed to? (Why did Emiko want a child so badly…?) Kosuke gave himself a mental shake. There was no use in dwelling on any of it. It didn’t change what was. Though, some tiny part of him thought, it would be kind of funny to marry into another family. Then he wouldn’t even have a name to pass down from his parents, could be the one to walk away from them rather than the other way around.

o*O*o

New Year’s was quiet. Kosuke thought that perhaps this time they’d find something to say to each other. That he’d talk about his research and school with or without his parents’ interaction like he did as a child. Instead there were mechanical, stilted semblances of polite small-talk and long, uninterrupted silences that made Kosuke want to run to his childhood bedroom and bury himself in the books that had been his solace. Instead he endured, looking at the art on the walls of his family home and remembered a time that his parents did talk and they’d gone to museums and they’d instilled that little spark of interest in art that had grown. It must have died in them at some point, leaving Kosuke with a flame he had initially nurtured thinking it could be shared.

The whole experience was like taking a bite of something and finding it tasted like ash.

Neither his mother nor his father said anything about his cough.

Not for the first time, he accepted that his friends were better family than his actual family. At the first trip to the temple, he prayed for their happiness, not his own. He hoped he could be better in showing that he cared. If he modeled what he’d wanted to see from his actual family toward them… maybe. Maybe.

It was a cold, quiet New Year, but Kosuke knew warmth.

o*O*o

The first time he coughed and felt his breath go wet he had a sinking feeling in his gut. Ah, he thought as he saw the first flecks of blood speckle his handkerchief. Ah.

It was Valentine’s Day and there were dozens of men hoping Emiko would give them confession chocolate, or at the very least, obligation chocolate. There was more than one man who offered her chocolate, gender roles be damned.

Watching it all, his chest had grown tight and he’d had a coughing fit, one bad enough that Katsuma had pulled him aside.

And Kosuke could just stare down at the results with a numb feeling in his chest and pain in his throat.

“Kosuke?” Katsuma said, worried. He glanced at the three flower stems littering the secluded hall floor with bits of purple flowers and leaves. He didn’t see the blood. He didn’t know that the taste in Kosuke’s mouth was bittersweet with how the tang of blood mingled with bitter herbal astringency. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” Kosuke said, tucking his handkerchief in his pocket. He dredged up a sheepish smile. “I just wasn’t expecting how hard watching everyone fall over her would hit this year,” he said. Christmas had been bad enough, but Christmas was more for established lovers. Valentine’s Day was for confessions and new love. He breathed, never too deeply to aggravate his chest and throat. Shallow breaths kept the feeling from catching as much, held back another coughing fit. He’d have to start wearing a mask again. That was fine. Between cold season and the fact that this was the time of year hanahaki showed up most, if it showed up at all, no one would think twice about it. Well, no one but his friends.

Mentally he calculated that he’d have to start using the drops twice a day. Mentally, he knew he had to at least consult a doctor and make plans. Mentally, he knew he’d give himself until White’s Day to actually make plans. Time was running down. He’d just entered late stage. Even that extra month was a stupid thing to draw out.

Katsuma touched his wrist in concern. “Want to walk around? I know we planned a whole confession out but…”

“Please,” Kosuke said.

Katsuma didn’t even joke as they walked away. Maybe Kosuke wasn’t really hiding anything from him after all.

o*O*o

He must still not have looked like himself a few days later because Katsuma pulled him aside. “Hey, remember that artist you were obsessed with last semester?”

“Takamura, who I did a research paper on?” Kosuke said.

“Yeah, that guy.” Katsuma smiled though it looked a little forced. “I was at the public library downtown and it turns out they have some of his art there too. I thought you might be interested since, y’know.”

Oh, Kosuke must really look back because Katsuma is encouraging him to set foot in a place surrounded by books and art he hadn’t got his hands on yet. Kosuke gave him a tiny smile, feeling both guilty and grateful. “That’s cool. Do you know anything about how they got it?”

“Uh.” Katsuma shrugged. “I think it was donated? Probably? I just saw a case with the name, and you’d been talking about him a lot, so…”

Kosuke smiled a bit wider. “Thanks for telling me. Although… what were you doing in the public library?” Kastsuma only used the school one when he had to.

“It was a stop on my date,” Katsuma mumbled, going pink-faced. “Um, Hana likes books and uh, I might be growing to like them more.” He scowled when Kosuke just kept smiling wider. “Fiction. I am not interested in any of your dense history and biographies. Just. Maybe literature isn’t so bad.”

“Thinking of changing majors?”

“Hell no. One of us has to get a degree that will actually get us a job. Business is useful.”

“Well you always have your family business if nothing else.”

“Exactly. And I need to have something steady if Hana becomes an author like she wants to be. That’s not a guaranteed paycheck every month.”

Kosuke blinked. “It’s that serious?”

Katsuma opened his mouth, closed it, face getting redder by the second. “I… maybe. I think I want it to be? I know it’s still early but…”

Kosuke pushed his shock aside. “No. No, you’ve been writing for months. You probably know each other pretty well.”

“Yeah.” Katsuma smiled shyly. “Yeah, I think we do.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise for one of his friends to have a serious relationship but it was. That was the way the world worked, right? People met and fell in love and got married. They planned a future together.

And there was Emiko looking straight to the future of a child without even having a boyfriend in the picture yet.

Kosuke felt a bit like he was falling behind, or maybe not taking things seriously enough. If she asked him the question she asked everyone else… He blushed.

Katsuma elbowed him with a knowing look. Kosuke rolled his eyes and elbowed back. He was fine. They were fine. It would all turn out fine. Somehow. He coughed lightly into his fist and pointedly didn’t notice the worried glance Katsuma sent him. Just fine.

o*O*o

Kosuke had set foot in the public library several times—it was a library, of course he had—but generally he’d gravitated toward the vast research-oriented collections of the university library to the local library’s less specialized collections. Still, it was nostalgic to walk through shelves and see children sitting at tables with picture books or mouthing words as they learned their kana and kanji. Libraries were homey to him in a way that his actual home wasn’t.

The collection Katsuma mentioned was at the back of the nonfiction section near local history books, just a cabinet attached to the wall with thick, shatterproof glass to protect its contents and a little plaque next to it. Kosuke was surprised Katsuma even saw it considering it was so tucked away.

“Glasswork by Takamura Hiseki, generously donated by the Amari family,” Kosuke read. “Items were gifted to the Amari family and Amari Jun in particular by Takamura, evidence of their close friendship.” ‘Close friendship’ was one way of putting it, he thought wryly. All the glasswork was smaller items, all beautiful, but two pieces made his breath catch in his aching chest. One was a bluebell, a perfect glass representation of the same flower that had killed Takamura as he stifled his love. The other… The other was almost a perfect double to the vial in Kosuke’s pocket. It was slightly different, just a bit less polished and the edges cut a bit less cleanly like it had been a prototype to the one he’d found in the hidden compartment, but it could only be its match.

What on earth had gone through Takamura’s mind when he gave Amari those items? What had Amari thought, later, when Takamura died and his hanahaki was exposed?

“There’s supposed to be a match to that,” a young voice said by Kosuke’s shoulder.

Kosuke jumped. A young teenage boy with over-large glasses looked at the same vial Kosuke had been looking at.

“They never found it though,” the boy continued, turning his gaze from the case to Kosuke.

Kosuke could practically feel the vial in his pocket burning against his leg in guilt. “T-They?” he asked.

The boy smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile, was probably the fakest smile Kosuke had ever seen. “Amari’s family. Takamura Hiseki and Amari Jun had matching vials, but Takamura’s was missing at his burial. It’s a pity,” he said looking back at the case. “It’s always sad when there’s only half of a set.”

Kosuke didn’t know how to answer that. Actually, he wondered how the boy knew any of that at all because it hadn’t been in the books Kosuke read. “They must have been really close,” Kosuke said after a moment, “if Takamura made them matching pieces.”

The boy snorted. “Were they by the end? At that point, was it love, selfishness, or cowardice?”

Kosuke really didn’t know how to respond to that, but thankfully the boy didn’t expect him to. He turned and walked away, leaving Kosuke far more unsettled than a child should be able to do. The words resonated though. Was it love, to pine away for someone and die slowly? Or was it just an unhealthy obsession? Takamura had hidden his illness for years. Was it because he was afraid of losing his friend or because he was afraid of hurting him with the knowledge? His diaries had been vague, circling around logic for so much of it. Maybe Takamura hadn’t even known his own reasoning by the end.

Maybe Kosuke was no better. At any rate, true, healthy love couldn’t be one-sided. And it couldn’t start with emotions hidden either.

He looked at the glasswork for a long time, thoughts whirling, indecisive.

When he left, he called the number of a local clinic. White Day would be the last attempt. If he couldn’t confess then, he’d get a consultation about having hanahaki surgery. It wouldn’t be like Takamura dying, leaving his friend shocked and grieving if Kosuke let things continue. Emiko didn’t know him. She wouldn’t care. But he did have friends who would be hurt, and Kosuke didn’t want to give up living just because he couldn’t stop feeling for a woman who didn’t know he existed.

He felt steadier after making the decision. All those months of running himself ragged over it, the choice was made.

Kosuke gripped the vial in his pocket. A bit longer. He’d endure a bit longer. But then he’d let go because it wasn’t healthy to keep doing what he’d been doing.

o*O*o

The ribbon was a tiny weight and pressure in Kosuke’s pocket. In fact, compared to the vial in the other one it should have been unnoticeable. Instead it was all Kosuke could focus on, like it was a highly volatile material instead of smooth silk.

As luck would have it, he’d had an exam on White Day and hadn’t been able to approach Emiko before it because her class (from what he heard; he hadn’t made a point to know where she was at all times, thank you that would be creepy) had happened to be on the exact opposite side of campus. Kosuke was dreading the exam results because it had definitely not been his best showing.

It took a little doing to figure out where Emiko was, and once he found her it was blatantly obvious. There were two different people currently giving her gifts and confessions and getting a few questions before being shot down. Usually Emiko seemed to enjoy the attention, but today she looked like she’d rather be at home than listening to another man try to win her heart. It kind of made Kosuke want to back out because he would hate to stress her more, but this was his self-imposed deadline. He had to do this. When the two men finally backed off, Kosuke took a step forward. Then another, and another until he was only a couple meters away.

And she turned and walked a different direction without noticing him at all.

“Emi—ko…” His voice trailed off, not loud enough for her to have heard.

Right. His hands clenched, sweaty and shaking. Right. Maybe he just wasn’t meant to talk to her.

Kosuke ran a hand through his hair. “Right.” There were flowers crowding his throat and he took a few quick steps to round the nearest building and cough them up with some amount of privacy. Three stems and the bittersweet blood and herb flavor on his tongue. He wiped his mouth. It was so frustrating. Why couldn’t he just do something as simple as walk up to a girl and talk?! The heel of his palms pressed against his eyes for a moment. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter now. You’re going to be letting it all go in a few days anyway.”

It wasn’t fine.

Still, he dragged himself out of the shadows and back toward his last class, and from there to the train station. He couldn’t remember anything that happened in that class at all. In fact he barely remembered the walk to the station until he heard a familiar voice.

Emiko and some of her admirers, one of them one of the men from earlier. He started to look away but—“Hey! Stop pushing!!” Emiko said above the sound of an oncoming train. They were so close to the edge and—!

Kosuke didn’t even think about it, just shoved through bodies and dove for her as Emiko lost her footing. His hand caught her elbow and yanked her back against his chest as brakes shrieked as the train pulled into the station. A pillar smacked against his back and Emiko’s weight crushed the air from his chest. He struggled not to cough, back aching.

“Owww…” He may have hit his head too. In his arms Emiko jolted, pulling away. “Hey, it’s—”

“I’m so sorry!” she said, and of all the ways to finally meet, Kosuke thought wryly, this was not how he pictured it.

“I’m just glad I caught you,” he murmured. She could have been a smear along the track, he thought with a lurch in his gut. Thank goodness she was fiiii— “Your ankle! You got hurt!” Oh no, he made her bleed. He hadn’t even managed a rescue properly.

“It’s fine,” she said, one hand fluttering over the injury. “I’ll just tie it up, I’m sure I have a handkerchief.”

“I have one,” he offered immediately, digging into his pocket. “Use this!” He thrust it forward and Emiko’s eyes caught on it.

“Ah!” Her hand caught his. “The ribbon!”

“Oh no.” Kosuke felt his face burst into flame as he realized he’d not only pulled out the White Day gift with his handkerchief, but somehow Emiko recognized it. “Oh no no no.”

“It’s you!” Emiko said with something like joy in her voice. “You’re the one who left the ribbon last year! I wondered.”

Kosuke relinquished both items into her hands so he could bury his face in his own. “Ahhhh, that was not how I was supposed to do that…”

“So it was for me again?” Emiko asked.

When he risked a glance up, she was looking at the ribbon with a soft smile. “Yeah it, um, it is.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me earlier?”

How was he supposed to say that he’d been too nervous to walk up to her for over a year? That it was a miracle he’d given her the ribbon last time in the first place? “I was… waiting for the right time,” he mumbled.

She didn’t seem put out by that, if anything she smiled a bit more. “Well I guess now was the right time,” she teased. She tied Kosuke’s handkerchief around her ankle and Kosuke helped her stand up, letting her tug him over to a bench. The men that started all of this were somehow long gone of course. Emiko’s touch lingered on his fingertips and Kosuke found his hand getting sweaty again.

If Kosuke thought he loved her from afar, actually having a conversation was killing him. A bit literally actually; his chest was feeling very tight. He opened his mouth to confess—because that was kind of the whole point but what came out instead was, “I wanted to ask… why do you want to have a son?”

Emiko gave him a shocked look, like no one had ever asked her that, though he couldn’t believe no one had bothered. It was kind of an integral piece of understanding her.

“Since I was little it’s always been my dream to have a son,” Emiko said, warm and introspective. “I wanted to be the mother of the legendary phantom thief!”

Kosuke didn’t know what she meant by that exactly, or why it held significance to her, but he could tell that she truly felt strongly about it. That she was baring a piece of herself to him in a show of trust to a perfect stranger and that meant so much that his chest ached. He bit his lip.

Emiko looked up at him with a warm smile on her face. “So, are you someone who’d be willing to help me with that dream?”

Kosuke choked and ended up coughing after all, bad enough that Emiko touched his shoulder with concern. He wiped his mouth, damp petals hidden in his hand and just looked at her for a beat because he was actually here, talking to her. She was listening and waiting for him to speak. “I. One day, if you’d care to have me,” he choked out hoarsely. “If you like me, but I know you don’t know me, but I’d like it if you did know me, I mean I’d like to know you but only if you’d like to that is to say—!”

Emiko burst into giggles. “Is that a yes?” she asked, grinning.

Kosuke was going to die of embarrassment before he died from suffocation. “Yes,” he squeaked. “I’d like to have a family with you.”

And there was something in how he said that that she liked because she gave him the most genuine smile he’d seen her give anyone, and he’d been watching her from afar for a year. (Oh no, was he going to have to admit he’d been watching her for a year???) “I think I’d like to get to know you then,” Emiko said. “Although I think we should start with a name…?”

Oh no, he hadn’t even given his name. Kosuke was a wreck. “It’s Kosuke.”

And for the next few minutes they exchanged questions and Emiko learned he was the only son with distant parents, that he didn’t have much family at all, but that he had an unmarried uncle on his father’s side. He learned that she only had her father, but that they were very close and her mother died when she was young. She learned that he liked books and art history, he learned that her family had an art collection and she was learning conservation to take care of it properly. He learned that it was so much better to see her expressions up close and that he had never felt a rush quite the same as when she directed all of her attention his way.

Kosuke didn’t talk to people easily but somehow she coaxed words out of him and had him asking questions back, soaking in knowledge about her the same way he soaked in information about his research. If it wasn’t for the persistent tickle in his throat and the bitter taste in his mouth, he’d have forgotten what he needed to do.

Even with everything he almost let it slide again when Emiko glanced up and noticed the time.

“Oh! I have to get home!”

Another train would be arriving any minute too. “Um, Emiko-san.”

“You can just call me Emiko,” she said, not for the first time.

He really wasn’t ready to call her anything to her face without an honorific. “Emiko-san, I need to say. That is. I’d like to get to know you.” Close but not quite. “I like listening to you.” Still not there. ��I l-like. I mean, you, I like—”

“You like me,” Emiko said, taking pity on him.

“Yes.” Thank goodness one of them could be direct. “I like…I like you.”

“I kind of figured,” she said, smiling fondly in a way that was way more intimate than one conversation merited.

“Do you…?”

Emiko hummed and tilted her head. “I don’t know yet.” Her smile grew wider. “But,” she said dragging out the word, “I’d be interested in finding out. I guess that just means you’ll have to take me out on a date, hmm?”

Kosuke breathed and felt like he could take a fuller breath all of a sudden. “Yes. Yeah, sure, I’ll take you on as many dates as you’ll let me.” He’d pull out full stop romance if she wanted. Flowers and candle-lit dinners and watching sunsets and sharing umbrellas in the rain.

Emiko laughed happily. He wanted to hear that sound forever. “You know,” she said after a moment, “I’ve seen you around before, but you always looked busy.”

She’d noticed him? Kosuke blinked. “I… really like reading.”

“You’ll have to show me some of your favorite books then. I’ll show you some of mine.”

Kosuke was definitely in love. There was no turning back now. Head over heels. It was only going to get deeper because now he knew what it felt like to have her smile at him and mean it. To hear her talk about things she liked and how her hand felt in his own. “Anytime.”

o*O*o

“So, what, you’re dating now?” Minako asked, stirring sugar into her coffee at the usual café.

“I think?” The word ‘dating’ hadn’t been used, but they’d met once for lunch and made plans to do so again. Kosuke’s heart beat fast thinking about it. But since White Day, he’d been breathing easier bit by bit, no more drops from the vial needed. It almost didn’t feel real.

“Well, congrats,” Katsuma said with a grin. “I told you that you could do it.”

“You said I could manage to confess, not that I could get a date with her,” Kosuke pointed out.

“Details,” Katsuma scoffed. “What’s she like?”

Kosuke tried to capture Emiko in words in his mind and kept coming up short. “Bright.” Her smile shone and she was very smart. She was also a bit strange, having some weird interests and he still was trying to parse out the whole thing with a phantom thief, but that was fine. Kosuke looked forward to getting to know her well enough to understand. And they’d talked about art and books and… She made him actually want to be sappily romantic.

“I think we’ve lost him,” Minako teased. “Just one word, lover-boy?”

“She’s…” Kosuke moved his hands helplessly to mean something bigger than he could describe. “I could talk to her for hours. Or listen to her talk.”

“Someone that actually makes you want to talk is good,” Minako said. “I’m glad.”

“If you’re ever up for a double date,” Katsuma said with a wink, “Hana and I are game.”

“I think I’ll stick to single dates until I’m sure we’re actually dating,” Kosuke said.

“And speaking of your girlfriend,” Minako said, nodding at across the street.

Kosuke turned so fast he almost fell out of his seat to see Emiko exit the other café like usual. Only unlike all the other times, her eyes met his across the space and she gave a smile and a wave. Kosuke’s face went red as he waved meekly back.

“You know,” Katsuma mused aloud as Emiko started to cross the street in their direction, “she always asks the same question when someone confesses, so does that mean our shy little Kosuke said yes?”

Kosuke’s face was almost as red as Emiko’s hair and Minako was laughing at him.

“Kosuke!” Emiko said cheerfully with another enthusiastic wave. It hit him right in the heart. He had to have the most ridiculous, sappy expression on his face right now. “I thought I’d seen you here before! Are these your friends?”

“Ah, yeah, this is Katsuma and Minako. Guys, this is Emiko.”

“Nice to meet you,” Katsuma said.

“Yeah, it’s about time,” Minako said with a grin, “since this dummy’s been pining for ages.”

“Guys…”

Emiko laughed. “You know I’ve never been to this café. Is anything good here?”

Kosuke and his friends exchanged a look. “It’s cheap,” they said at the same time. “And they have really strong coffee,” Kosuke added. “It’s good for when you’ve been pulling late nights.”

His friends looked exasperated. “He pulls them too often,” Minako complained. “The books aren’t going anywhere, Ko-kun.”

“So many books, so little time,” Emiko teased, stealing a chair to join them.

“It’ll be nice to have another person reminding him that there’s life outside the library,” Katsuma joked, poking Kosuke’s face.

Kosuke swatted his hand away and Emiko watched the exchange like she was seeing something valuable. He didn’t have words for how her interacting with his friends made him feel. It was a good feeling though.

“We’ll have to work on a work-life balance then,” Emiko said. “I’d be a little put out if he chose books over a date with me.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’d be a problem,” Katsuma said.

“I will tell Hana-san about the time you burned your classic literature book,” Kosuke said, calling back to their first year together as friends.

“No you won’t, I have more blackmail on you than you have on me,” Katsuma said confidently.

“I can list your failed relationships in order of magnitude of how bad they went.”

“Remember the first time you got drunk?”

Kosuke snapped his mouth shut. He very much did not remember parts of that night and that meant he really couldn’t refute if Katsuma made embarrassing things up.

Emiko laughed. “Hmm, I’d like to hear about some of these things.”

“Katsuma, I will pour my coffee down your pants so you have to leave here looking like you wet yourself.”

They laughed at him and Kosuke resigned himself to at least some of his embarrassing college stories being told, though most of them involved the extremes he went to on research benders. Still, it was nice. Emiko was slotting into his life, and maybe she’d let him slip into her life as an equal presence.

o*O*o

“Isn’t this one of Takamura Hiseki’s pieces?” Emiko asked months later, sitting in Kosuke’s cramped little apartment like it wasn’t a few steps above a box. She’d never made a big deal of any of it, not Kosuke’s lack of nice things or how he couldn’t make the grand gestures of other people who courted her. He was pretty sure that part of what she liked about him was that he didn’t give lavish gifts or make grandiose promises. That he was down to earth and showed he cared in small gestures like picking up a coffee or surprising her with a piece of candy or a good book on days where she was stressed. She’d been to the apartment before, but it was only recently that Kosuke stopped carrying Takamura’s vial around and put it on a shelf with some smaller, far less valuable art pieces.

It hadn’t occurred to him that she would recognize the artist.

“Uh.” He bit his lip. How to explain that? “It is.”

“It’s nice.” Emiko turned it over in her hands, letting the light reflect of its cut glass edges. The liquid swirled in it as full as it had been when he found it; he never did figure out how it never depleted. “How did you end up with it?”

Kosuke blushed guiltily. Emiko raised an eyebrow. Kosuke scratched at his cheek. “I did a research paper on him and noticed something odd in some of his journals… There was a secret compartment in one of the furniture pieces he donated to the university and… well.”

“Kosuke.” There was an almost gleeful expression on her face. “Did you steal a piece of art from the university?”

Kosuke flushed harder. “Err. In my defense they didn’t know it existed?”

Emiko laughed. A few months ago he would have expected to be scolded for it, but he was starting to realize Emiko didn’t function on the same moral standards as most of society. It should have bothered him, but honestly it was one more thing he liked about her, how she didn’t match the image she’d built herself up as in public. “You,” Emiko said, putting the vial back, “are perfect.”

“Excuse me??”

Emiko just shook her head and grinned. “How do you feel about meeting my dad this weekend?”

“So fast?”

“It’s not fast; we’ve been dating for months. Although I guess you haven’t introduced me to your parents either.”

Kosuke flailed a little, but stilled as Emiko moved to lean against his side. He relaxed against her. “I’d like to meet your father,” he said. Emiko nodded against his shoulder, snuggling closer. “And um, my parents are, um.” He was having trouble finding words with how Emiko kept getting closer, like she was going to end up sitting in his lap. “Um. We don’t talk, so.”

There was a tiny pause in her getting as close as possible before she gave up even trying to be subtle and draped herself against him. “Well, I guess you’ll just have to become part of my family.”

Oh. She was smiling, but her eyes were serious. Oh. His arms went around her. “Yeah. I’d. I’d like that.”

When she kissed him, he lost all ability to think about anything other than the moment, all his anxieties and insecurities falling away because she was here and she’d chosen him. By some miracle, she liked him back, and it was maybe about as much as he liked her. He felt like he belonged the way he did surrounded by books. Kosuke, finally, felt happy.

o*O*o

At some point, a second, almost identical crystal vial ends up sitting innocently on Kosuke’s shelf. Kosuke, soon to be Niwa Kosuke, never tells anyone how it got there.

*****

Kosuke totally doesn’t tell her about the hanahaki until right before they get married and Emiko is all ‘why didn’t you say something???' Also, I really wanted Kosuke to already have something to do with art because I prefer that to picturing him uprooting his entire life to try and fit with what the Niwas need. So my HC for him is he already was a guy who liked spending way too much time researching things and it just was serendipity that it turned out to be useful for the Niwas.

#dnangel #fanfiction #niwa kosuke #niwa emiko #i am very much not up to date with the manga these days #so if more backstory was given for either of them i'm afraid i missed it #hanahaki #this is one part comedy of errors one part kosuke having an ongoing case of anxiety #spot the cameos #but really kosuke you pined for over a year and never talked to her???#my demi-romantic ass is very ??? at the sheer concept lol #my writing #the real question is how did this end up longer than the satoshi fic #kosuke you're a wordy bastard

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