Alone Together

20: Regretting to his lonesome (and now heres a sad face: ;-;)

The lips against Ryou's own had felt more realistic. A gentle lip lock with the stranger in his dream had seemed clearer. The big heart in Ryou's chest fluttered each time he was pulled in for another kiss.

At the sound of the alarm, Ryou reached across from himself, finding nothing but cold, empty sheets.

He felt horrible. Not only did he feel even lonelier than before, he couldn't help but feel like he was forcing Mariku to be his replacement. He was probably making him feel uncomfortable.

Ryou reached out further for the alarm, but couldn't seem to find anything. His hand blindly roamed the surface in attempt to shut off the beeping, but his alarm...wasn't there.

"Hm?" Ryou felt more groggy in the morning, so his voice was weak and quiet. Still, he felt his mind was playing a trick on him.  Rubbing his tired eyes, Ryou sat up, yawned, stretched, and looked around. "Where...?"

So he stood up and began to aimlessly wander around his bedroom to find that missing alarm clock.

He tried to open his curtains to check the weather and let some light in, but the curtains wouldn't budge. Ryou tried pulling them apart, but didn't use all of his strength with the chance he may have ripped them. He got down on all fours and crawled under, then sat onto the window seat, met by a cloudy sky and another rainy day.

"...safety pins...?" He wondered aloud, seeing that those were what kept the curtains tightly drawn  together.

Ryou undid a few but quickly grew frustrated, deciding he would leave the rest for later. He crawled back under and faced his room again, now catching sight of the missing alarm that sat under his nightstand, still beeping.

"So that's where you've been?"

He turned it off and put it in its rightful place. Ten minutes of his morning were already wasted; and he needed to get to work.

Across the hallway was the bathroom, and when Ryou walked in he raced for the shower and turned it on, knowing that he would still need to hurry if he wanted to make a bigger breakfast than a hurried piece of toast and orange juice- he wanted tea and no one was going to stop him.

Ryou, with only a towel to cover himself, turned on the shower and brushed his teeth as he waited for the water to warm up.

As he listened to music and the running water, he felt he heard a crash of some sort outside the bathroom. Ryou couldn't help whether or not he felt frightened in the slightest. Mariku might've been awake but, it was still quite early...

Was Mariku behind the safety pinned curtains and the hidden alarm clock? There wasn't any other explanation-- of course, unless a ghost felt like pranking instead of terrifying.

But why would he?

Ryou lifted a hand and felt the spot on his face where Mariku had kissed him. His lips were chapped, yet warm and sweet...

Like...in his dream...?

"No...no..." Ryou just scrubbed the bar of soap at his face where he was kissed. "I'm just lonely and quite desperate...you only wish you would be kissed again, Ryou!!!"

Ryou shut off the water and dried himself off, brushed his hair as quickly as he could. He speed-walked across the hall in just his underwear and was surprised to find that Mariku wasn't there to harass him.