#naruritsuweek

readying her nails to be painted, arashi hums as she files them. she pauses briefly, running the pad of her thumb along the edges of her nails until she finds a small bump and returns to filing. it’s better to find the little imperfections now, after all.

“nacchan,” ritsu says, sitting at the head of arashi’s bed. she’d painted his nails a nice glossy dark purple before she set to start her own. they should be dry by now she thinks.

“hm?” arashi doesn’t look over at him, instead checking once more to if the bump has been filed away. it’s then that arashi feels a slight warmth on her cheek, fleeting before she can even properly recognize it as ritsu’s lips.

she does look over at ritsu then, who stares innocently back at her. the only tells he gives are a slight twitch of his lips and the amused glint in his eyes.

the two of them flirt all the time, ritsu leaning into it far easier than she does. sometimes arashi wonders if there’s more to it, wonder if it’s weird that she wishes there was. she’s had plenty of crushes, but none of them were reciprocated. at least not in the way she wanted them to be.

but now, she can’t be sure where they stand.

heart racing in her chest, arashi whispers, “ritsu-chan?” 

they flirt plenty, hold hands and lean on one another when they sit next to each other. ritsu sleeps in her lap more often than not, but that kiss felt different than their normal antics. it’d felt different, too, that time arashi had gotten so excited that ritsu had somehow found some items from a makeup collection that she’d grown fond of shortly before it was discontinued and given them to her for her birthday. she hugged him tight and kissed him firmly on the cheek. she’d been caught up in the moment, letting him go so she could sort through what all he’d gifted her, and the kiss hadn’t hit her until she was back in her dorm.

they’d continued on after that, seemingly pretending that it didn’t happen, which only made arashi more confused about what exactly they were.

ritsu looks at her curiously, maybe a bit concerned too at her reaction to a little cheek kiss.

arashi searches for what to say. should she ask if ritsu feels the same way she does? would that cross some sort of unspoken boundary between them? she doesn’t know. she could play this off as just a friendly little kiss, but she thinks she’s too far past that now. plus she’s been meaning to figure this out for a while now.

instead, “kiss me,” comes out of her mouth and despite not meaning to say it, she doesn’t completely regret it.

ritsu freezes them, eyes widening.

arashi tries her best to backtrack, feeling silly for having said that. she waves a hand in the air dismissively, a giggle pitched a little too high to be believable accompanying it. “ah, sorry,” she says, refusing to meet his eyes as she goes back to staring at her hands in her lap, one loosely wrapped around the file. “just ignore that, ritsu-chan.”

one of ritsu’s hands come into her vision, resting on her. she can hear him shift closer to her and part of her wants to shrink away, to laugh all of this off. it’s unfortunate she can’t say she has some prior engagement she has to go to and take the chance to run off; they’re in her dorm so she doesn’t have anywhere to hide out until the embarrassment of all of this wears off.

“nacchan, did you mean it?” he asks.

arashi bites her lip. she could say no and let this moment pass by and they’ll never talk about it again, but that also means they might never have a moment like this again. maybe ritsu would back off on the flirting after this. after all, who gets so flustered over a cheek kiss of all things? not wanting to regret her decision later, arashi gives a shy little nod, not quite trusting her voice to respond, not knowing what else might come out on accident.

with that, there’s a gentle pressure — ritsu’s fingers — turning her head to face him. arashi doesn’t have much of a chance to gauge his reaction to any of this as there’s a mouth on hers.

her eyes flutter shut as she leans ever so slightly into the kiss. there’s a strange sense of relief she feels as ritsu kisses her, his lips moving against hers slow and languid. as her stomach does flips, arashi’s hand finds ritsu’s arm. her fingers curl into the sleeve of his sweater to ground herself in the moment. it doesn’t feel real as she kisses back.

when ritsu breaks the kiss, arashi keeps her eyes closed, worried that she’ll wake from a dream. she focuses on the way her lips tingle, the way their fingers are laced together, though she isn’t sure when that happened.

there’s a light bump on her forehead that makes arashi open her eyes. she stares back at ritsu as he pulls back from having pressed their foreheads together for a brief second.

“you’re beautiful,” ritsu murmurs.

with that, arashi surges across the small distance between them, her hands cupping his cheeks as she kisses him herself this time. however, she puts a little too much force into it and she can feel one of his teeth poking her bottom lip. “sorry,” she says against his mouth. feeling the way his breath hitches as their lips brush gives arashi some courage, careful to kiss him more gently this time now that she’s already so close.

ritsu lets her lead this time in a kiss more eager than the first. arashi vaguely notes the hand he sets on her waist, too distracted by him kissing her back and how he’s trying to match her enthusiasm. 

he lets her press a peck and then another to his lips as she reluctantly pulls back. ritsu gets a quick one on her in return before she’s fully retreated.

arashi’s hands fall back to her lap, uncertain of what to do with them now. ritsu’s cheeks are faintly red, lips tinted slightly darker from them kissing. the thing that gets to her, though, is the barely there sheen on and smudged slightly around ritsu’s mouth having been transferred from the gloss she has on.

it’s then that the last couple of minutes click for her. arashi feels hot and she hides her face in her hands. “oh my god,” she whispers. she’d forgotten for a moment that all of this is real and truly happening, that the two of them are sitting on her bed in her dorm, and she’s not having some hyperrealistic daydream.

after some shifting on the bed next to her, a knee bumping against her leg, a pair of arms loosely wrap around her waist and a head is tentatively placed on her shoulder. she’s all too used to ritsu holding onto her like this, using her as a crutch in his early morning sleepiness, although this time is more cautious than normal.

“i’ve wanted to kiss you for a while, nacchan,” ritsu admits after a beat.

arashi’s hands drop from her face as she turns to look at him, only to be met with a face full of his hair on her shoulder. “what?”

“i’ve wanted to kiss you for a while,” he repeats, turning his head so his chin brushes against her shoulder, hovering just enough above it so they could look at each other.

she stares at him. “really?” arashi, of course, has been hoping that whatever was going on between them is mutual, but with having confirmation of that, she doesn’t know what to do, what to make of it.

“did you think all the flirting was just for fun?”

arashi splutters at that. “ritsu-chan, that’s not fair. don’t make fun of me.”

his hold on her shifts as one of ritsu’s hands come up to trace her cheekbone. “but you’re so pretty when you’re all red, nacchan,” he says, a soft chuckle in his voice.

she bats his hand away with a huff. “i didn’t think you would…” she trails off. arashi had been scared about not being loved for who she is, though those concerns have been slowly lessening. she'd, of course, worried about the same thing with ritsu, but that passed quick with all of the kind words and compliments that got her into this whole questioning if her feelings were reciprocated mess. she knows he likes her as a friend at the very least and now... it seems like maybe it really wasn't one sided at all. “that you would want to kiss me.”

“hm? does that mean nacchan wanted to kiss me too?” ritsu rests his chin on her shoulder. the playful shine to his eyes and slowly growing smile lets arashi know this won’t be the end of hearing about this.

arashi turns her head the other way, crossing her arms over her chest. “you already know the answer to that. now stop or else i’ll toss you out.”

ritsu laughs, a pretty little sound, as his arms tighten around her. he nuzzles into her side, his head making its way to her neck where his nose rubs along the side of it. “i’m sorry, nacchan, don’t kick me out,” he says, hardly sounding apologetic.

arashi sighs, one arm lowering to rest on ritsu’s while the other goes up as she pats ritsu’s head. “fine,” she says. “i guess you can stay.”

ritsu hums happily, leaning into her touch as her fingers run through his hair. they sit like that for little longer. he pulls her closer and arashi lets herself lean against him, ritsu’s arms wrapped around her tight but not uncomfortably so. arashi thinks that there really was nothing to worry about.

she’d spent so much time fearing their friendship would be ruined if she ever said anything about her feelings. spent a few too many times burying her face in her pillow and making a variety of noises as she ran through something ritsu had done earlier in the day in her head. she’d even consulted nyanko about this all, only receiving a flick of a tail and a meow.

but seeing that arashi is fairly certain ritsu is falling asleep on her now, there was no reason to be so worried. they’ve stuck together through so much already, so some feelings wouldn’t have pulled them apart in the first place.

but where does that leave them now?

she decides that they’ll figure it out later; ritsu is definitely falling asleep on her and she doesn’t want to be stuck as his pillow just yet. “ritsu-chan, don’t fall asleep on me. i still have to paint my nails.”

ritsu grumbles. “i was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

arashi laughs, ruffling ritsu’s hair as he starts to move away from her. “it’d be hard to not notice, ritsu-chan. we don’t have much longer before tetora-kun will be back.”

after yawning, ritsu huffs. “why can’t we kick him out when he gets back?”

“ritsu-chan,” she scolds, standing to look through her nail polish collection to choose a color.

“what? it’s my nacchan time and i don’t want to be interrupted.”

arashi rolls her eyes, ignoring the fuzzy feelings she gets from him saying that. picking a color, she returns to her bed. ritsu reaches out towards the little bottle.

“let me do it,” he says.

“are you sure?”

ritsu nods resolutely, so she hands it to him. while he’s busy with that, arashi shifts to sit facing him. he looks up at her once the bottle is open and holds a hand out. she offers her right hand right and rather than beginning with her nails, ritsu leans in and kisses her again a little too long to be considered a peck.

with a proud little smile, ritsu starts on her nails.

it looks like she’ll have to get used to him kissing her. not that she minds.

as ritsu feels himself waking up, he pushes his face into his pillow, not wanting to be awake yet. he peeks an eye open after a minute or so to see that the room is still dark, faint moonlight outlining the curtains in front of the window. he quietly huffs. it’s been a while since his more nocturnal instincts made themselves known, waking him up in the dead of night and keeping him awake for no good reason.

he settles, pulling the blanket up over his shoulder when he hears a faint noise in front of him. it’s then that he remembers that he isn’t alone.

with mika out of the country to visit shu, ritsu had managed to convince arashi to stay the night with him. it’d taken some pouting and puppy dog eyes and him saying, “but nacchan, i’ll be so lonely without mikarin here,” for arashi to fondly roll her eyes and finally say yes. it’d taken a little more to convince her to share his bed once she came back, having gone down the hall briefly to her own dorm to run through her nighttime routine.

she gave in easily to that as well, most likely having expecting it all things considered.

ritsu latched onto her quickly once she sat on his bed, wrapping himself around her as they go back to watching the movie that had been on before she excused herself to her room. the last thing he remembers is the two of them laying down, arashi jokingly nagging at him as she said she didn’t want to be stuck sitting up with him passed out on her all night.

once laying down, he’d snuggled up to her back, half asleep, and slung an arm over her waist. arashi had paused for a second before leading his arm closer to her, leaving his hand by her chest. “good night, ritsu-chan,” she whispered.

ritsu hadn’t replied in anything more than an incoherent mumble, sliding close enough to press his forehead to her back to block out the light in the room. he must’ve fallen asleep not long after that.

seeing that she’s now facing him with enough distance between them that ritsu hadn’t noticed her at first, arashi must’ve wiggled her way out of his grasp at some point.

he can tell he won’t be able to go back to sleep anytime soon, so ritsu moves closer to her. arashi is peacefully asleep, a hand curled under her cheek that leaves her mouth slightly ajar in a way that doesn’t look very comfortable, but who is ritsu to judge? he’s fallen asleep in plenty of strange places in equally strange ways over the years.

her hair is tousled with sleep, falling across her forehead in a way that’s oddly captivating to him. though ritsu’s fingers twitch with the urge to fix it, to carefully brush the strands back behind her ear where they won’t stay, he leaves it be. it’s not that often that he gets to see the imperfect side of arashi, the side of herself that she seldom lets others see.

though the room is dim, he can make out the dusting of freckles across her cheekbone and up over the bridge of her nose. normally, they’re dutifully covered up by her makeup. would she let them show more if he told her they’re beautiful?

he’s told arashi that she’s pretty plenty of times among countless other words that mean the same, so he adds that compliment to a future list of things he’ll tell her when they’re awake.

arashi will probably huff and deny anything he throws her way when it comes to what she considers to be imperfections, which is a shame when he truly means every word of it. ritsu likes to think that one day, he’ll break through that wall she has up, get through to her in some way. maybe that day will be sooner rather than later seeings as he trusts him enough to be comfortable without makeup around him. it’s not the first time he’s seen her without it, cheeks littered with freckles and tiny acne scars, eyes not popping quite as much without the liner, and her lips without their eternal shine.

he treats each of those moments as if he’s been entrusted with some well kept secret that he’s sworn to keep until the day he dies, and treasures them all the same.

aside from that, arashi trusts him to sleep so soundly in front of him, vulnerable as she nuzzles into the pillow under her head. ritsu smiles as he watches her. he's fallen asleep in front of her countless times, on her just as many. he trusts her to watch over him, though there's hardly any danger he has to be protected from, and the way her fingers card through his hair as he dozes with his head in her lap serves as a reminder that she'll be there once he wakes.

ritsu wants to be that for her too: a loyal protector, a knight for his queen. arashi is far from a damsel in distress no matter how often she likes to play as one, but he wants to be there for her then. to be able to stand by her side for all the highs and lows, to hold her close and wipe her tears when she's sad, to hold her hand and look on when she shines brighter than any star in the sky is all he wants.

he wants to see all of arashi. ritsu has seen behind her mask before, mostly in fleeting moments, but he wants to be there for it all, for all the happy parts or the ugly parts or whatever she wants to give him. he'd willingly take it all.

sometimes the words i love you seem so ready to fall from his lips.

it would be easy to whisper them now in the quiet of his dorm, but that wouldn't be fair to arashi. ritsu wants to tell her when they're both awake so she can't laugh off his confession as some pleasant dreams of his bleeding into reality. he knows well enough the way arashi's cheeks flush a faint pink, the way the tips of her ears go red, the way she gets just a tiny bit bashful when their normal playful flirting turns more serious. he wonders what she'll look like when he tells her his feelings.

it'd be easy to whisper those words now, but ritsu needs her to know just how much he loves her, has loved her this entire time. and for that, he can wait — has waited — for the right moment so they can live their happily ever after together. until then, he'll stick by arashi's side, content as they are for the time being.

ritsu softly yawns, drowsiness starting to pull at his eyelids, making them wang to stick together as the familiar draw of sleep pulls him back under. blinking his eyes back open, he sees arashi once more. he can smell the faint remains of her usual perfume and something as small as that puts him at ease as if he hadn't already been.

a sleepy smile tugs at the corners of ritsu's mouth as he carefully places his arm around arashi's waist. not wanting to disturb her sleep, especially when she's been gracious enough to let him snooze in peace for years at this point, ritsu decides against pulling her in against him. he instead settles in with his head on the same pillow as hers.

his eyes close once more, no longer fighting the sleep for one final moment of admiring arashi. assured that she will still be there in the morning, ritsu drifts off for the second time that night with the thought that their right moment is one day closer floating around in his mind.

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