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there is nothing quite like waking up to the sight of kamishiro rui.
rui wakes up very slowly. he takes his time to get up, so often that tsukasa has to call him multiple times in the the morning to make sure rui wouldn’t be late for school. sometimes, the loud ringtone from rui’s phone as tsukasa calls him wakes nene up first before him. this resulted in angry, half-awake key jangling at rui’s door, then stomping, as hard as nene’s feet could go, then loud yelling into his phone to stop calling. even then, rui would still be unconscious, in his own dream-world.
this morning, the sun is shining into the room through the half-parted curtains, though tsukasa doesn’t remember noticing its burning glare until now. he supposes rui was too bright for him to even look at the sun.
suddenly, rui makes a noise. a trained professional, tsukasa has learnt how to identify each and every one of the sounds he makes in his sleep. he has even learned to tell if rui is waking up from a bad dream. his eyebrows will furrow ever so slightly, his hands will ball up in fists, no matter where they may be, and his lips will curl into a grumpy frown. however, he knows rui would never live it down, so he keeps his musings to himself.
“i dreamt of you, my star,” rui mumbled once, hazy from sleep. intrigued, tsukasa leaned in closer to get a better listen. “i shot you out of a big, bright canon! and then, everybody in the audience clapped as we hugged.” he has the audacity to coo happily right after, with satisfied, dazed eyes and a wide smile.
tsukasa blinks at him in horror.
“—you’re not shooting me out of any canons!”
still, it was waking up next to rui, one who lit up his mornings, so at that, it was a dear memory in his heart.
the noise he made today was one that came from a pleasant dream, affirmed by the fact that he’s smiling against tsukasa’s shirt. rui is still asleep, head tilted with closed eyes to face tsukasa. it is the most divine thing he’s seen.
on mornings where they had the luxury to wake up next to each other, although a good time to catch up on rest, tsukasa wakes up early anyway. and it’s to admire rui while he’s sleeping.
the light touching his skin made him look like a heavenly being. his calm, steady breathing that only meant he felt safe around him, safe enough to fall asleep and cuddle up to. he looks so peaceful, and tsukasa has never fallen in love with someone more than he has in this moment.
yet, something heavy stirs within him. it feels dark, compared to the sight before him.
mirroring his thoughts, the sight before him stirs, even frowning a little, although still unconscious. tsukasa has woken up next to him enough times to know that it was the stray bits of hair that bothered him, that tickled his forehead and disrupted his peaceful dream. he reaches out to tuck the purple hairs that covered rui’s closed eyes behind his ear, smiling softly to himself as he watches rui twitch in the slightest, reacting to his feathery touch. it takes him everything in his being not to kiss his forehead, a kiss that would have interrupted rui’s slumber.
he suddenly realises he’d been holding back a lot more lately.
as if responding to his thoughts again, rui shifts ever so slightly, humming another small noise of contentment at the hand that just swept the hair covering his face. tsukasa watches in awe.
in the awe that somebody this bright was his boyfriend. someone as soft as anybody could go, in his arms. as many times as they've fell asleep to each other’s voices, on many different occasions, as just friends, as troupemates, as lovers, tsukasa still felt like he would never quite get used to this feeling of staring at someone who looked so safe in his arms.
“..’kasa-kun?”
the colour on rui’s face deepens when he finally opens his eyes, blinks a little, to see tsukasa staring. his lips curve into a shy smile before he nuzzles himself back into tsukasa’s neck to fall back asleep. like a lifeline, the embrace on him tightens, just as eager as tsukasa is to be greeted by a sight like that first thing in the morning. rui’s bated breaths are warm against his bare skin, heating up tsukasa’s body despite how fuzzy rui already made him feel.
tsukasa could barely remember what he was thinking about previously — too entranced by rui’s eyes, blinking slowly, from a pale yellow to a deeper, more saturated sort of gold in the middle, or entranced by his hands, soft despite being hands of an inventor that had been wounded by all sorts of metal, hands that pressed firmly by his waist, or entranced by that warm smile, dazed by the haziness of just waking up. he’s bright, maybe too bright, but never unbearably so. rui is so bright to tsukasa that everything in his surroundings just fades away.
whether it’s a peaceful morning, in which rui just smiles groggily and opens his eyes just halfway as he tilts nuzzles himself closer, or a grumpier morning, mostly likely due to tsukasa getting out of bed first to attend to something, he tosses himself on the bed, swaddles himself in the cold blankets of betrayal, and buries his head in his pillow like a child, tsukasa eventually returns to watch him. although tsukasa knows he feels embarrassed by it, rui has never commented on it, but neither has he. it is a sort of comfort nothing else in the world can bring tsukasa.
“go back to sleep,” he mumbles it against tsukasa’s forearm, words slurred together and already trailing off from the very start of his sentence.
shaking his head, he pulls rui closer. “you interrupted my thoughts.”
rui’s hands come up to meet tsukasa’s forehead, but not without blindly feeling around his face, and a little grab at his cheek that didn’t feel so accidental to him.
“thinking very hard this early might ruin your brain,” he says softly, sure of his credible knowledge. “go back to sleep with me.”
tsukasa snorts. “i’ve never heard of ruining a brain by thinking.”
”hush,” rui grumbles in defeat. “let’s sleep again.”
“rui, it’s almost 11..”
eyelids glued shut, rui’s already dozing off once more before he is even able to listen to his reply. in response, tsukasa gives him a tight squeeze.
though, as harsh sunlight could be at 11, the boy before tsukasa is too bright not to peel his eyes off of.