Sixteen

Some time passed, neither of them could say how much for sure, but then they both became aware that they were just making out in a park, so they pulled back, and in Rin's case, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked at each other. Bachira was just watching, with those sunshine yellow eyes, and Rin found it hard to look at him for too long. In all the time he'd known him, he'd never felt so unsure of what to do with him.

"What now?" Bachira asked.

Rin paused. He didn't know. But he did know that he didn't want to leave, or part ways. They couldn't, right? Not when this thing had just crossed over from fake to real and there was so much more to figure out. He didn't really know what to suggest, however. He liked to plan his dates in advance.

"You want to come over?" is what he decided on. Bachira smiled, but he shook his head.

"No offense, but I'm really over being at your house," he said.

Rin laughed. He couldn't help it. "I knew I liked you for a reason."

Bachira looked so genuinely touched by that. It was a maddeningly beautiful sight. Rin tried not to bash Isagi too hard in his mind when he thought about it. Maybe, in some way, he was grateful. Maybe the things that came along with love were hard, but love wasn't. He didn't know for sure, but he didn't think so anyways.

"Do you wanna come over?' Bachira then asked.

Rin didn't hesitate. "Yeah. I do."

Something had shifted, that much was obvious, but Rin didn't know how to make sense of it. Before this, things had felt so real and he had put in overtime work assuring himself that it was just fake, but now that it wasn't, it felt horribly fake. Nice, but fake. Like it was about to be ripped from his hands, like everything else he'd ever had and lost.

So, he enjoyed how steady Bachira's grip was when he held his hand. It was different from the first time, the by accident and then on purpose time on their way to their first fake date. There has been a shakiness to it. Now, it was still. Bachira even swung it a little while he walked, like this was the most natural thing in the world.

Approaching Bachira's house made him more anxious this time that it had either of the times he'd been there before. It made him nervous. Like this was the first. Which it was, he supposed. Even though it wasn't. Yuu made him feel the same way when she heard them go in through the front door and came in from somewhere at the back of the house.

"Oh, Rin!" she called from down the hallway. She opened her arms and was approaching him the second he got his shoes off. "What a nice surprise. I didn't know you were coming by."

"It was kind of a spur of the moment thing," Rin stumbled to say as he accepted the hug. As jittery as he felt, he liked the hug. He still hadn't gotten used to it, but he liked it all the same. "I hope I'm not intruding."

"Not. At. All." She wagged a finger at him with each word to emphasize it. "You're always welcome here. Always. Are you staying for dinner?"

"Oh, I," Rin started.

"Yeah," Bachira answered for him. "He is."

"Wonderful," she said, clapping her hands together a single time. "So, how was the park? Did you guys have fun?"

She started walking away from the foyer and they followed her into the warm, eclectic living room. Rin started to calm. It seemed to invite him in more than it had the first time. He hadn't realized how homey it was in here.

"Yeah," Rin answered. "It was a good time."

"We had the best time," Bachira confirmed.

"Good," she said. "God, you guys are such good kids."

She took a moment to beam at them. Bachira looked horribly embarrassed about this, but much like the hug, it was something else he'd been largely depraved of, outside of his soccer skills that was, so Rin enjoyed it.

"Anyways." She waved her hands a little and started off towards the back hallway that led to, Rin assumed, the studio. "I'm going to start cooking. Let me know if you need anything."

"Okay," Rin said.

"Will do," Bachira said.

They stood in the living room, listening to her retreat, looking at each other.

"Now what?" Rin asked.

Bachira didn't even miss a beat. "Wanna make out? You know, now you like me for real and have a good reason to kiss me and stuff."

Rin paused. He almost found himself falling back into his fake dating knee jerk reaction of no and shoving him off. But he was right. He did like him. He did have a good reason to kiss him now. And besides, he did want to.

Rin looked over his shoulder towards the hallway. It was empty, but still. "Can we at least go to your room first?"

Bachira seemed surprised by the deliberate acceptance. For half a second anyways. Before he started grinning and turned on his heels. "Follow me!"

Bachira's room looked the same as Rin remembered it. As much as he remembered it, that was. Because the last time he stood in this room, surrounded by the knick knacks on every surface and the curtains and bedspread with the aggressive colour scheme, he hadn't had time to perceive much about it because he was a little preoccupied by being horrified by his own feelings.

"This room looks like your brain threw up," Rin said.

"Thank you," Bachira said, as if this was a compliment. Which Rin supposed it was. He then sat down on his horrifically bizarre comforter and reached out to Rin like he was a child waiting to be picked up. "Come here."

"Seriously?" Rin said.

"I think we're a little past the too cool for school act, Rin-chan," Bachira said. Which was a painfully good point.

Rin walked over, shoved him on the arm, and lay down next to him. There was a pause in it, but it wasn't nervousness. It was tenderness. Bachira lifted a hand to brush Rin's bangs, which had fallen askew, out of his eyes. Rin lifted his own hand, not because anything needed fixing but because he just wanted to touch him. Brush his cheek, run his thumb down his jawline, touch his neck.

There was a newness to it, he realized. It was both a continuation and it wasn't. They had been together before and they were together now, but they had crossed over into an entirely different world. Rin realized this while his hand continued to move absentmindedly and Bachira smiled about it. This wasn't for show, it wasn't to prove anything, it wasn't to kill time or to fix things or to artificially make sure the other one got what they needed. This was for them. That's it. There was such beauty in that.

"You're stalling," Bachira said after a while.

I'm not, Rin could have said. And he could have explained himself too. But he didn't. He just figured that the best way to go about fighting back was to prove him wrong.

Kissing was different now too. Better in every way. It wasn't oh god I hope this looks believable enough for my shitty brother and your shitty ex to buy and it wasn't I like you so much and I need you to know that but I'm so overwhelmed that I don't even know what I'm doing right now either. It was just nice. Exploratory. Fun. Rin didn't have much experience with fun, but yeah, this was fun.

"You're such a good kisser," Bachira said between kisses. "I knew you would be. Remember?"

"Yeah, yeah," Rin said back. "You're not half bad yourself."

That part, sneaking words between kisses, messing up the rhythm, finding it again, that part was fun too.

Eventually, it was Bachira who pulled away, gave Rin a bit of a smile, and curled his head onto his shoulder. Rin let him, adjusting to make it more comfortable. This was well treaded ground.

"I want to ask you something," Bachira said.

"Alright," Rin said, despite the fact that something felt deeply wrong. "Go ahead."

The pause didn't make it any better.

When Bachira gathered the nerve, he took a sharp inhale and then released it. "When did it start being real for you?"

Rin understood what he was asking immediately, but found the question had a complicated answer. The answer he could have given, of course, was how terrified he'd been when Bachira joked about their fake breakup, but if he really looked at it, he realized it had been real long before he became aware of that fact.

"I think it always kind of was," Rin answered. "I mean, if I'd called anyone else that day Isagi showed up to my house and was all depressed, I would have been like, okay, whatever, bye."

Rin mimicked hanging up the phone. It made him happy how Bachira didn't cringe upon hearing Isagi's name.

"Okay," Bachira said. "When did you know it?"

He had an answer at the ready. "The first time I came here. You made a joke about after we break up and I hated it."

"What?" Bachira exclaimed in mock offense. He lifted a hand, but this was not a kindness. He smacked his palm on Rin's chest. "But then you broke up with me!"

"I was being self preserving," Rin said, retaliating by shoving his hand right into Bachira's ribs. It made him twist and writhe.

"You could stand to use some communication skills," he said between bouts of laughter.

"I won't fight you there," Rin said. He pulled his hand back. "But you can hardly blame me, now that you know what I dealt with growing up."

Bachira thought about that a second, and then nodded. Rin felt weird about it. He hadn't been looking for pity. He was just making a point. Desperate to get off the subject, he asked, "When did it start being real for you?"

"I'm worse," Bachira said. And then, "Do you want the good answer or the bad answer?"

Rin had to take a second to think about it. "The good answer, I guess."

Bachira pulled back a little and sat up. He motioned towards the sunflower painting that was indeed standing on his nightside. Rin had noticed it when he came in, but now he reached for it, examined it.

"The flowers," Bachira confirmed. "But I mean, you can hardly blame me. We spent a whole afternoon looking into each other's eyes. And then you turned into a bad boy just to cheer me up? Swoon."

"You did not just say swoon," Rin said, groaning, placing the painting back where it was.

"I said it," Bachira confirmed. "And I meant it."

"She did a good job on the painting," Rin said.

"I know," Bachira said, admiring it from where he sat.

Rin was looking up at Bachira, admiring him. "Alright, what's the bad answer?"

Bachira grinned, and then sucked his lips into his mouth like he was just on the verge on being caught doing something he shouldn't of. He lay back down, curled back onto Rin's shoulder, and shoved his face as far into his neck as he could without losing the ability to speak.

"When you told me my soccer was looking for someone," Bachira whispered. "Nobody had ever seen and understood me so quickly like that before."