cloudy with a Chance of freedom

chapter 41

In retrospect, needing a week to realize he might actually be in a relationship with his Sun was a bit embarrassing. The clues had started out simple enough.

First had been the little touches. Skull was used to those by this point, though these were a bit more...intimate...than the ones Fon, Verde and Viper all used, with the rare occasion of Blaise. Luna often gave him surprise hugs because she was one of the rare few who could get away with it and not have him flinch the second he registered anyone within his personal space.

Renato used fleeting touches that would get him all hot and bothered, while smirking until Skull had enough and pounced on his Sun.

Skull would have cursed teenage hormones...if it wasn't for the fact he was actually having fun with them for a change. Last time he was fifteen his life had straight out sucked. And that wasn't getting into the sheer amount of anger issues as his Cloud instincts had been going haywire from being caged for so damn long and kept out of the loop.

So yeah, he was enjoying this maybe a bit too much.

The second clue was the outings. Skull originally though it was Renato's way of bonding with his Sky, which he didn't spend nearly as much time as he would like with over the school year. He was very grateful Skull went out of his way to make his Sun a bit more comfortable despite the separation issue and the fact that he should technically be stuck in a boarding school in the middle of nowhere (and Renato had checked the GPS coordinates for Hogwarts...it LITERALLY fit the definition of "middle of nowhere") for several months.

The third clue was the flirting...though to be fair, Skull was rather dense when it came to that sort of thing and originally thought it was some sort of game to see who could compete for the best pick-up lines.

Skull's experience when it came to dating (of either gender) was laughably limited at best, and disastrous at worst. He could count a grand sum of ten dates before the curse, quite a few of which ended rather badly or didn't really take off. To say nothing of the nightmare that was his school years, where such things were pretty much off the table.

Hence why it took Renato taking the initiative and kissing him in public with a smug smirk before he realized what was going on.

He almost hexed that damn Sun for being so bloody smug about the fact he hadn't figured out they were going out on dates in the first place. That being said, when he finally did figure it out it took him days before he could look Renato in the eye without blushing.

It took him a month before it fully hit that he could tentatively call Renato his boyfriend.

By that point he was fervently hoping Reborn didn't kill him when he got his memories back, or that he at least had one hell of a head start before the rather chaotic Sun came after his ass and not in a good way.

In France...

"That blond looked like he had seen a ghost," said Renato, openly amused and fascinated.

Considering the 'blond' looked far too much like a much younger Colonello (he looked really weird out of military fatigues) and the fact he had been staring pretty hard at Renato with what could only be shocked recognition, Skull was betting that they had found the Rain.

Which made trolling him far too much fun, especially since Skull's "Marauding Sense" told him that they'd have more fun if he cross-dressed today. Renato had been delighted that Skull didn't actually mind looking like a girl for the day, or that he could pass as a very pretty one if he put his mind to it.

The fact Colonello hadn't figured out who Renato's "girlfriend" was, either as Skull or Harry Potter, meant that they could spend a lot of time trolling him until he finally realized that the 'girl' was in fact a boy.