One month

2|after

Tsukasa flops into his mattress, and Rui goes to find some blankets. Lying on his back and staring up, Tsukasa notices that Rui's room has glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the ceiling. He holds up a hand, peering at the far-away stars and the glow that surrounds them. Rui arrives with a ginormous stack of blankets, sheets, and pillows. They laugh together as the pile slowly collapses. It's all very lovely until Tsukasa is drifting off to sleep. Because that's when the night-terrors come. Stalking, swirling, there's no escape. He wakes up, heart pounding so loud, that Tsukasa is sure that Rui heard it. Maybe he did, as Tsukasa feels warm arms wrap him into a hug. He looks up through tear-filled eyes at Rui and smiles a tiny bit at how Rui's duvet looks like a cape. Super Rui notices and Tsukasa can hear a chuckle vibrating from him. Then they slowly fall asleep, listening to each other's soft breaths.

Fast forward two weeks

*knock knock

*knock knock knock!!

"Hello?"

Ena opens the door to see the gays cuddling. She closes it again and writes a note to tell them that she'll be in her studio, leaving it on the counter.

It's many hours later when they finally wake up to make pancakes. Rui adds way too much nutella, and Tsukasa steals it when his back is turned, trying to stop the nuttellery chaos that Rui's pancake has turned into, hypocrite much, as his pancake has rather a lot of whipped cream and star sprinkles on it. Rather a lot. Mizuki turns up just in time for the last pancake, and they probably have the best-dressed pancake of the lot. Tsukasa tries to avoid thinking about how nice Rui's arms around him felt, and maybe would've managed if Mizuki hadn't made a pancake person. Maybe...

All of a sudden, it comes rushing back as Tsukasa is stacking the dishwasher. He sneaks a peek at Rui, who is lost in his world of gears, cogs, and wheels, and sketching out a blueprint on the table. Like literally on the table. Ena is watching the project form, and correcting his perspective

and Tuska is blushing. Mizuki? Mizuki's mizuki-ing.

KING (Rui's part) starts playing from somewhere and then Rui starts looking for his phone. He eventually finds it amongst his transformers, and when he answers it, he puts it on speaker so he can get back to inventing, so Tsukasa, Mizuki, and Ena all hear Emu excitedly screaming.

"OMWONDERHOI!!! NENE AND ME ARE FITFJHBKNALLYDA TNGTCTFCAN SHEI'S SOKOKO SWEE!!!!!!!!"

No one can understand what she is saying except for Mizuki who starts excitedly squealing in response. Ena can understand them and she translates for Ruikasa. Once they get a grip on what Emu was getting so excited about, Rui and Tsukasa are too. The house is full of screaming teenagers when Ichika walks in. Her expression is a humongous contrast to the rest of theirs, being filled with sadness and dread, not joy and WONDERHOY.

Her next sentence reveals all.

"Pack your bags Tsukasa. Saki's in the hospital, and you need to get there now."

Then she walks out again, leaving a storm cloud behind.

Rui sneaks a glance at Tsukasa, and casually starts chauffeuring him back to their room. While Tsukasa sits on their bed, shell-shocked and shivering all over, Rui packs some of Kasa's clothes, then making up his mind, packs some of his too.

Then they get into Rui's rerrari from Walmart. Vroom.