Midsummer Ambedance - A Free! Fantasy AU

The Afternoon of May the Seventeeth

The market had calmed down around the lunch hour, but his heart hadn't. He could still feel the salty tang on his lips, and the image replayed over and over in his head. A small blond boy with eyes like raspberries. His cheeky smirk and defiant wink; how he laughed in the face of death. How he had leaned in - only for a second, but long enough to leave an impression - and run off like he was never there...

Nagisa.

That was his name. It couldn't be too difficult to find him. After all, he seemed to be a rather high-profile criminal, or at least a noticeable one. He was certainly leaving a lasting impression on the young man, for sure, but maybe that was just the kiss haunting him. He pushed up his glasses in thought.

"Ryugazaki!" His name was shouted from across the stalls. Damnit: his old boss. What did he want?

He was a similar height to Ryugazaki (perhaps a little taller), and sported similar glasses, but had purple eyes replaced with light teal and black in place of dark blue hair. He gave a gentle smile as he approached Ryugazaki. He was holding a book between two fingers; he had clearly been reading on a break.

"Nice to see you, Ryugazaki," he said. "By the way, someone came looking for you earlier. They seemed to think that you still worked for me! Told 'em you'd already moved on -"

"Wait," Ryugazaki felt his breath tighten, his heart pumping faster than it already had been. It couldn't be...? "Who was it, do you know? Where were they from? What did they look like? Did they -"

"Woah, slow down there," his boss gave a slight chuckle. What was with this sudden tenseness? "I doubt you knew them. They were from around these parts, but I'd never seem them before. Hard to tell if it was a girl or a boy to be honest, they were so short..."

Ryugazaki allowed himself a sigh of sweet relief. So it wasn't him... wait!

Just as the uneasy possibility of it being who he thought it was had cleared, he found himself panicking again. A short person? With both masculine and feminine features? It could only be one person. Nagisa.

"I, uh, have to go, Boss - I mean Saro," Ryugazaki stuttered. He stood up and awkwardly shuffled around tables of pottery, tripping once or twice over some rolled-up rugs. The canopy of the tent-like stalls masked his obvious fearful blush. Freed from the makeshift maze of wares, he pelted at full speed down the market alley. Then stopped so suddenly dust clouds exploded beneath his feet and a screech screamed out from his abused shoes.

He spun around. "Which way did he go?!"

Saro looked up from his book. "Same way you're going!" Ryugazaki nodded in earnest thanks and sped off once again. The older man shook his head with a small grin in his face. "That boy..."

Ryugazaki was fast. He trained. Despite his poor ability at seeing close-up things, he was exceptional at searching far-off places. It wouldn't be long until he found Nagisa again, even if he was hiding.

But he wasn't hiding. No sooner had Ryugazaki turned the corner did he see the familiar lithe figure, leaning casually against a wall, some kind of stick (probably candy) hanging lamely from his mouth.

"Been waiting for you," he mumbled through whatever was stuck between his jaws. He was surprisingly calm. "Nice to see you again, cutie." He walked towards him. Sauntering, in fact. Playful, almost provocative. He dislodged the thing from his small, shiny mouth - now revealed to be some kind of lollipop - and discarded it in disinterest. Pulling Ryugazaki's matted leather vest forwards and down: towards him, he brought his face closer, inhaling shallowly. Lips scarcely parted like the petals of a flower, he leaned in...

And felt two hard palms shove against his slight chest. Once again, just like earlier, he was sent crashing to the ground, mirroring his emotions. His breath fluttered as the impact knocked the oxygen out of his lungs, and he lay there shocked for a second or two.

"Are you serious?!" Ryugazaki screamed, his voice cracking on the second-to-last syllable. He clutched his shirt with burning-white knuckles, face contorted into a surprise-fuelled rage. He ground his left heel into the dust. "You steal from me, attack me, run away, and now you have to the nerve to - to do THAT again?!" His heel dug so far into the ground he began to feel the softer clay from beneath begin to mould around his foot. "You're truly insane!"

Nagisa propped himself up on one forearm and wiped away a tear produced from breathing too hard. Like before his scarf had fallen from around him: only now revealing a dusty bandage wrapping the circumference of his slender neck. Ryugazaki had wounded him with that knife. Badly, it would seem. Nevertheless, he squeezed his eyes shut with the force of a wide smile.

"Just what do you want from me?!" Ryugazaki continued, blathering now in a fluster. "If you want something other than money, I suggest you move along. I have no business with the likes of you... common criminals!" Nagisa gave a false pout at the weak stab of an insult.

"Aw, really? That's a shame," he was on his feet now, on the attack again. "You were such a pretty one, too. You even gave me a little something to remember you by." He probed at the trace of the wound just above his right collarbone: gently, teasing. "You beat me up real good back there. Especially here." He lifted his yellow shirt, to show an ugly black-red bruise spanning the entire length of the front of his ribs. "It hurts real bad, too. I was hoping you'd kiss it better for me."

Ryugazaki felt vomit at the back of his throat. This sickly-sweet kid was making him angry. He had some nerve, alright - returning to the scene of the crime was bad enough, but for the one reason to beg for more kisses? Disgusting.

Yet there was something about him...

"Here," he offered his torso like a gift to Ryugazaki. With no sign of decency or restraint, he took his hand and pressed it to the bruise. Long, hot fingers. Gentle, yet shaking with anger. Funny, Nagisa thought to himself. It should hurt, being touched so roughly, but it was almost soothing to him. "See what you did? Don't you feel even a little bad?" Like he had touched a hot iron, Ryugazaki retracted his hand.

"No," he insisted. "Not at all. You got what you deserved. You should feel lucky to still be alive." He folded his arms.

"So you don't feel any sympathy?"

"No."

"Not at all?"

"Absolutely not!"

"Even though you liked the kiss?"

Ryugazaki felt his face blush red. He averted his eyes, searching the walls and the dust for an answer, at comeback. Had he enjoyed it? He wasn't sure himself. In a half-hearted attempt at keeping it cool, in denial, he pushed his glasses up his nose. "What makes you say that?"

Nagisa pivoted on the ball of his heel, spinning in small, whimsical circles. He pursed his lips and held his own hands behind his back in an intricate mess of fingers. "You kissed back."

Did he?

"I - I did?"

"You did."

He did. He remembered himself clearly now, gently pushing back on the surprising force of such a small boy; placing his left hand down and curling it into the sand, fingernails grinding up soft clumps of dirt as his muscles tensed; how he allowed his eyes to slip closed as he savoured the moment. And in this particular moment now, he hated himself. For being so foolish.

"Ah, yes, I suppose I may have allowed myself too much enjoyment out of that... well I..." he was stuttering in a mixture of shock and confusion - at his own stupidity, the boy's confidence, the kiss in question. He cleared his throat in domination of the situation. "Well then, I suppose there's only one way to settle this."

Nagisa looked on in anticipation. He found Ryugazaki's intense emotional rollercoaster intriguing to say the least. As well as extremely, tragically adorable.

Ryugazaki sighed in defeat. With stiff, wooden movements, he strode closer and closer towards Nagisa, not daring to make eye contact - or any kind of contact - not yet. He recognised his dilemma: and he acknowledged its only solution. The only way to solve this... was to see if he felt himself pushing back again.

He placed both hands atop the smaller's shoulders, shivering as a jolt of nervous electricity coursed through their bodies. It was now or never - he wouldn't let himself hesitate. On the boy's next inhale he leaned down and threw himself into the kiss.