#ladyseychelles

"Well, we and the kids all adore Ryoga, of course, but I’ve been hoping to meet the rest of the family. Mai talks about you all the time, you know?”

Bewildered, Yukito nearly says, I’m sorry, the rest of the family? and then bites that back and just nods. “It’s nice to meet you as well, Miss Suzuki, I’ve heard a lot about you from Mai.”

Mai, recently gap-toothed and in exuberant good cheer as usual, nods vigorously next to his ear before saying, “Did you drive here in the new car? Can we put the top down? Please? It’s really nice out!”

“I…sure, why not, we’ll drive home with the top down.”

--

It had seemed only natural to invite Ryoga and Mai to stay with him when they returned from America. They had nowhere else to stay but in the room they’d shared over Dino House, and Yukito’s house was far too big to house just himself—he’d bought it several years ago, when he was still buried deeply in the need to spite his father with his financial success. There had always been the unspoken assumption that eventually Ryoga would probably want to find an apartment that he and Mai could call their own, but nothing firmly discussed. At this point they’d been living with him for nearly a year, and it hadn’t ever struck him how much he liked that until he’d spotted Ryoga reading the classifieds and circling rental listings in red pen.

He pulls up to the house, and as the car roof’s going back up and Mai’s making a slightly disorganized attempt to get her hair back in its barrettes he says, “Does your teacher think Ryoga and I are together?"

"You are together! We all live together!"

"No, not like–" He takes one of the barrettes out of her hand and clips her hair back, very gently and carefully. "I mean, does she think we're dating? Does she think I'm Ryoga's…" he hunts for a word, finds several that seem not quite right, and settles on what seems the least wrong as he's fixing another barrette, "boyfriend?"

“Oh. Maybe!” She blinks up at him, nose wrinkling as she thinks about it. “I do talk about you a lot. And we live with you! I drew you in my picture when we were doing pictures of where we lived last week.”

“Ah…that’s…good, thank you.” He reaches into the back seat and retrieves her backpack. “We should get inside.”

“Can I watch cartoons?”

“Not until you’re done with your kanji homework, I know you have some.”

“Only a little, though.”

“You still have to finish it first.”

“Ok!”

--

Yukito and Ryoga aren’t dating.

Not that he’s never thought about it, not that he’s never wished—

One of the first things that Ryoga had done upon returning to Japan was visit Nakadai’s grave. However much Yukito had disliked Nakadai himself, Ryoga had clearly felt something about him, and it would have been worse than tactless to ask Ryoga to dinner when he was still grieving his…his whatever Nakadai had been to him. And after that, of course, Ryoga had been living with him, and Yukito prefers to remain silent if the other option is possibly making Ryoga feel like he owes something.

Except that now Ryoga’s looking at apartments, which means he’s thinking about moving out. Yukito’s not sure how he feels about that.

No, scratch that, he’s terribly, agonizingly sure of how he feels about it. Which in turn means he needs to talk to Ryoga, and despite the fact that Ryoga is one of the easiest men on the planet to talk to, this is terrifying.

--

Of course, first Mai has to finish her homework. Not that she has very much, just a couple of kanji to practice, a few simple math problems, a short diary entry about the day's weather. Yukito checks the math problems for her and lets her read him the diary entry aloud. Then Ryoga gets home, and he's busy in the kitchen making dinner because he actually enjoys cooking and was horrified to learn that when Yukito's living by himself he mainly eats takeout. Dinner, and after dinner there are dishes to do and Mai wants them to watch a show with her and everyone needs to bathe and by the time Mai's gone to bed Yukito's had far too much time to think everything over and get more and more stressed about it.

They're in the living room now, and Yukito's trying to read a well-reviewed new novel but mostly staring at one page without processing anything. At the other end of the couch, Ryoga's got some journal in hand and is busily making notes all over the article he's reading, clearly very absorbed, but when Yukito finally puts the book aside he looks up and grins and says, "Hey, I meant to say, thanks for picking up Mai today, I know it was really last minute."

"Of course, I couldn't just leave her at school. And my afternoon was open."

"How'd it go? The teachers didn't give you a hard time, did they?"

"No, not at all, ah." Yukito stares into space for a moment. "In fact as far as I can tell, Miss Suzuki thinks I'm your. Partner."

"Oh, I…you know, I can see where she'd think that, we do live together. I hope it wasn't too awk–"

"I noticed you were looking at apartment listings this morning."

Ryoga blinks, clearly a little thrown by the apparent change in topic even though in Yukito's mind it had seemed like a perfectly logical transition. "I, yeah, I mean, we've been here almost a year, and it's been wonderful of you to have us, but I figured maybe it was about time we got out of your hair."

"I, ah. No, I don't think—I would like you to be. More…in my hair?" Yukito frowns. "That didn't come out right. I'd like it if you stayed here as long as…as long as it suits you."

More surprised blinking. “You really mean that? I mean, I know Mai would love to stay here, she’s very happy here, but we wouldn’t be too in the way?”

“No, not at all. Not at all. I also, I’d like it if, please don’t think this is conditional in any way, but.” Yukito stares forward at the wall, nearly blanking on the words he wants to say. “Would you have dinner with me?”

“…I’m assuming you mean in a date way and not in the way where we have dinner together nearly every evening already?”

“Yes. Yes, that.”

There’s a silence, and Yukito is genuinely terrified that it’s a lead-up to Ryoga saying no and then he’ll have worked himself up like this for nothing, and then when he glances over Ryoga’s looking at him thoughtfully and saying, “That’s sort of new and unexpected.”

“It’s not new, really, it’s just never seemed like the right moment before now. Since I wouldn’t want you to think that I was putting some kind of, of pressure on you because you’re living here. And before that there was…” Vague gesturing in the air. “You know.”

“...I was still kind of hung up on Nakadai for a while there, yeah.”

“I thought you might be.” Yukito swallows hard. “In any case, as I was saying, you and Mai staying here isn’t at all conditional on your—”

Ryoga reaches over and pulls him closes, leaning their foreheads together. “For one,” he says, very softly, “I have a better opinion of you than that. And for two, you need to give me a chance to say yes before you start assuming I’m going to say no.”

“…ah.”

A soft grin. “You’re such a pessimist sometimes.”

“I—it’s just what I’m like, you know that. Can I kiss you?”