"I mean, it really suits you," Mao says, looking over the promotional pictures Ritsu'd been sent a few days after his photoshoot. "I was kind of upset that you didn't ask for my opinion, but... Man, this is nothing I would've been able to think of."

"That's Ecchan for you." Ritsu stretches out on his bed with a little noise, oomph-ing straight into the softness right after. He turns his head so his voice isn't too muffled by the duvet, watching Mao thumb through the photos. "I'm happy with it, 'cause it really sets me apart from Anija, too... Since he's got the whole vampire thing goin' on."

Mao agrees with a hum, then turns to look at him; he stares for a moment before he goes over and flops right on him, snickering at Ritsu's grunt of irritation.

"Yeah, and soooomehow they gave you a princely vibe... I really can't imagine that, no matter how many times I see it."

Ritsu huffs and wiggles until Mao lets him up; he rolls away and almost off the edge of the bed, eyes widening before he catches himself. Mao lets his hand drop, a sigh of relief loosing from his lips, and sits back on his feet. Yeah—Ritsu's a lot of things (his best friend, his childhood friend, the person who's always been by his side, one of the only people in the whole world who can make him lose his cool), but prince isn't one of them. He almost backtracks on that thought when Ritsu sits up, too, and slides across the bed, taking his hand and smiling; his eyes are half-lidded but attentive, and he curls his fingers under Mao's.

"Is that so, Maakun?"

"—Maybe in the spoiled prince way," Mao says after a moment, jerking his hand away, "but not, like, you know, in the whole... Charming and kind prince way, like in fairy-tales. I know what you're actually like, Ritsu, we grew up together."

Ritsu laughs and drops into his lap, and Mao pets his head without thinking.

"I wonder if that's how a prince's playmate feels," Ritsu says softly, closing his eyes. "Y'know, like in all those stories... The person he grew up with. A knight, or something."

"No, only princesses have knights, right? And they're usually the love interest..." He lowers his gaze, watching as Ritsu's breathing slows and evens out; it isn't completely gone, though, so he knows he isn't asleep. Ritsu truly looks like a corpse when he does, chest barely moving and only the faintest of breathing expelling from his lips. "But I guess sometimes there's stories like that, yeah. Then they fight over a girl... I guess," he continues, nose scrunching, "in this case, that'd be Anzu?"

"Anzu and I are just friends." Ritsu nuzzles his lap, arms tucked against his chest. "I'd never fight over her... But I guess I would fight for her, and with her, too. If she liked the same person I did."

"Anzu'd have to be interested in girls then, huh?" It's not like he's never thought it before—the possibility she'd have an interest in them, even a little bit. It's hard to think Ritsu means the other way—or rather, it'd throw a wrench into their relationship, or it feels like it would, and a lump rises in his throat until he swallows hard and moves on. "Speaking of, she's the one who made your outfit, right? It looks really nice—"

And so on, until Ritsu's answers get too quiet and there's too many seconds of silence between them. Mao rests his hand beside his leg, tired of stroking Ritsu's hair, and without asking his mind drifts right back to Does Ritsu like guys?

It'd be fine, objectively, if he did. Ritsu would still be Ritsu, and it's not like he doesn't already know anyone who seems to throw their weight in that direction anyway—yet thinking about it makes his stomach turn a little. All of those things he had passed on Ritsu just being Ritsu, or just as jokes designed specifically to mess with him... If Ritsu'd been serious all that time, then—Mao closes his eyes. He'd be such an asshole in retrospect, wouldn't he? No, they had to be jokes, because thinking about breaking Ritsu's heart a little more every time he blew him off in some way makes his chest feel too tight. It's not an easy conversation to have though; he doesn't even know where he'd start. Asking Ritsu is out of the question; asking his unit might be a little better, but Knights—as completely unintimidating as they actually are in real life—still scare him a little, if he's honest. Eichi's out, because he'd probably just tease him instead, and there's no way he could ask Hajime or Mika that kind of thing.

He settles on Koga—or, well, it's more of a spur-of-the-moment thing. They're the only ones at band practice at the time, the twins and Rei not yet arrived, and the fact he's troubled over something is apparently something Koga can smell, because he kicks his chair to get his attention and asks, none-too-politely, what the hell is up.

"Do you think Ritsu's gay?" Mao blurts out, then stops and backtracks. "I mean—interested in guys, at least."

Koga stares at him like he's an idiot, which he sort of starts to feel like the longer the question goes unanswered. Eventually, Koga sits back in his chair and goes back to tuning his guitar, scoffing under his breath.

"You're gotta be messin' with me, Forehead. What kind of stupid-ass question is that?"

It's not exactly an answer nor does it assuage his worries (or his feeling like an idiot), but Mao doesn't ask again. He doesn't even bring it up despite the way it weighs heavy on his mind still, though he doesn't let it distract him from practice—that usually happens when he's preoccupied with something about Ritsu, but he thinks of Rei asking after him and immediately feels self-conscious enough to force it out of mind until their session is over. It works a little too well, though, because Rei stays a little longer than usual, and it's only when Mao gets up to leave that he realizes they're the only ones left in the practice room.

The hair on the back of his neck stands up.

"You were quite focused today," Rei says, the picture of nonchalance. Mao laughs a little, rubbing the back of his neck, willing his nerves to settle.

"Ah, well... I'm just really hyped for this song! It's, uh, great. Has a lot of fun chords."

Yeah, that's convincing; Mao has to bite back a cringe at his own words seconds later, and Rei's eyebrows raising slightly doesn't help that. Really, well—honestly—there's probably, technically, no one better to bring this up with than Rei, so after a moment Mao sighs and adjusts his guitar case on his back.

"Actually, Rei-chan—"

"Maaaaaaaakuuuuuun," a voice says beyond the practice room door, seconds before Ritsu throws himself into the room; Mao catches up with a yelp, heart pounding against his ribcage as he steps back to balance the momentum. Ritsu sighs happily, arms immediately latching around his middle and his face going right into his shoulder. "Mmmm, Maakun, I missed you...~"

"It hasn't been that long," Mao replies, but he sighs and lets Ritsu hang off of him for a little while. Rei tilts his head at him expectantly, and Mao shakes his head before he turns his attention back to Ritsu. "It's pretty rare for you to come pick me up... Did Knights have practice today?"

Ritsu nods, and their conversation drifts to regular unit-and-school catching up as they make their way back to the dormitories. Safer seas, until he drops Ritsu off at his dorm room and feels a dainty hand grab his wrist.

"Mikarin's spendin' the night in the handicrafts room again," he says, grip loosening now that he has Mao's attention. "I'm gonna be lonely, and there's not gonna be anyone in your room tonight anyway, right?"

Mao pauses—Kiryuu might be, but Itsuki was in France again, and Sena (being back for a show) had mentioned he'd be out with Chiaki and Kaoru tonight—so he nods, turning back around. Ritsu smiles in that slow way he has when he thinks he's gotten his way, only for it to drop as soon as Mao starts talking.

"You can sleep alone, Ritsu... You did it plenty before—hell, you were crabby about getting a roommate that wasn't me in the first place, weren't you?"

Until he learned it was Mika, anyway, but pointing this out even without that added bit has Ritsu scowling a little and resuming his grip. Mao frowns right back at him, eyebrows pressing together. "Hey, Ritsu—what's up? You don't usually act out without a reason nowadays... Did something happen?"

He pauses, then clarifies: "Did I do something?"

"Maakun's just been regular old Maakun," Ritsu replies, and he doesn't sound mad about that, so it must not be anything related to the usual— "And that includes thinkin' way too hard. You're givin' me a headache."

"Well, sorry. I've just..." He glances away from Ritsu, his head feeling like it's full of soup. Alphabet soup. "Had a lot on my mind. Kind of."

"Then let me take on some of it. We're best friends, right?" Ritsu moves closer, slowly becoming a warm line against his side; the way his chin rests against his collarbone is a little annoying, but the pain grounds him from whatever the hell Ritsu's gentle breath on his skin is doing to his head (read: not helping, for some reason). "I can do that much for you, Maakun."

It's harder when it's about Ritsu, but he lets himself be dragged inside and sat onto the world's softest bed. Ritsu pulls away from him just to peer up at his face, concern reflected in his eyes, and Mao feels so, so bad about it.

If he keeps it vague, though, maybe he can talk about it. He takes a deep breath, holds it, then lets it out slowly.

"So I have a... friend. He asked me the other day if I thought his friend could, uh, be into guys, because of some stuff that friend said, but I didn't really know how to reply. I mean, it seems kind of weird to assume just based on that stuff, right?" Man, asking Koga was kind of an asshole thing to do, in retrospect. "So I guess I've just been thinking about it. If my friend's friend is gay, I mean. Not that I'd have a problem with it, really, so it doesn't super matter, but my, uh, friend... seems kind of concerned about it, 'cause, I guess, it could re-contextualize some of their friendship, maybe."

Ritsu misses childhood.

Not the parts where he watched other children run down the street, laughing and playing with one another, and wished he could join them while aloud grumbling they were too loud, too annoying, too human; not the parts where he'd stand at the door, his parents' hands patting his head gently and his older brother, too, giving him a hug before he left with them; and not the parts where he feared that they'd left him for good and he'd make the trek downstairs, sitting at the cold piano seat and opening the heavy lid to reveal the white and black keys beneath, just to fall asleep playing whatever came to mind to occupy himself and awaking in the morning in his room, his brother peering over him in worry.

He misses the first time Mao came over, the way he had looked around in awe at the European decor the Sakuma family are so fond of; he misses the way they'd sunk into his old childhood bed, the fresh smell of wash on it, and Mao's exclamation that it was way too soft; he misses waiting at the window for Mao to come fetch him to play, swaying as he held onto the sill and then bolting to the front door to open it before a single knock could fall on the wood; he misses being woken up, even if he'd been crabby about it every time, and he misses octopus-ing his arms around Mao's neck and dragging him into bed for a few minutes before they had to get up and go to school. He misses summer afternoons sitting in his family's library, looking over books they could barely read unless Rei was around to help, and he misses looking for four-leaf clovers when the sun began to set to bring their own "good luck," since they were lacking the myrtle shrubs a book had so kindly mentioned signified the same thing.

Ensemble Square is also lacking in myrtle, a tragedy he can't bring up with Eichi unless he wants to get into the convoluted reason as to why he wants it, and all for a boy who won't remember why that particular plant would be exciting to see. What Ensemble Square is not lacking in, at least by the dormitories, are patches of clover. Ritsu looks at them every day he leaves the building, wondering if any of them have four leaves, and then he's found by someone or other who wants to talk to him—Tsukasa or Arashi, or Mika about dinner, Eichi and Hajime, that annoying thing (Rei)...

The one day he doesn't, though, is somewhat naturally the day Mao leans over his shoulder, hands on his knees to keep his balance, and peers past him into the clovers he's carefully looking through.

"Did you drop something, Ritsu?"

Ritsu shakes his head, gently brushing his hands through the green beneath him. It feels weirdly nice—is this why the kids keep telling people to 'touch grass' when they're mad? Maybe the youth are onto something—

"I'm just lookin' for a four-leaf clover," he replies when Mao kneels down. Mao chuckles, setting his bag down a little ways away.

"Like when we were kids? That was..." Ritsu's hands stop as Mao sighs, looking beside him. "Because we found out myrtle meant good luck, right? Rei-chan read it out to us—you wanted to give me a good luck charm for a game or something I was in the day after, but myrtle's not native to Japan, so we went hunting for four-leaf clovers."

Ritsu stares at him, heart skipping in quarter-note time, and looks away when Mao looks up at him.

"...Yeah, just like then." Ritsu smiles to himself, scooting forward a little to keep looking. "We didn't find any—"

"My team still won though," Mao replies, picking a clover and tossing it aside when he realizes it doesn't have enough leaves on it. "Sooomehow... Maybe it was your cheering, Ritsu."

He makes a face, thinking about that day—all he'd done was stick around after school to wait for Mao and shake a maraca one of the girls had given him. Mao had looked pretty cool, though, for a ten year old eating dirt trying to keep a ball from getting in the goal. You would've been a better scorer, he remembers telling Mao, watching him wipe dirt off his face, and Mao shrugged and replied, We needed a goalie, so I just said I'd do it.

"I didn't really cheer that much..." Maybe he had shaken the maraca a little harder when Mao'd been looking his way, though. It was hard to get hyped for a game where Mao was just a goalie—an attack position would've been way cooler and suited him way more. Though, he thinks, protecting everyone's backs suits Maakun, too. "...Watch it."

"Huh? Oh—" Mao moves left and carefully weeds out a clover, smiling when he plucks it out. Four individual leaves peek from between his fingers, and he holds it out to Ritsu. "There we go. Ready to go home?"

Yes. No. Ritsu takes it from him and shakes his head, shuffling closer to the patch it'd come from. Wasn't there a saying that if you found one in one patch, you'd have a higher chance of finding another one? Something like that, he's pretty sure...

"You need one too, Maakun." He drops onto his forearms, the clover Mao'd found for him gently held in one hand while he looks through the patch with his other. "We can go back to the dorms after, 'kay?"

"I don't need one..." Mao replies, but the way he trails off says he already thought this might happen and he'd resigned himself to it, too. Ritsu laughs softly, and they search the grass as fellow idols leave the building behind them. Every so often, one will stop and ask what they're doing, and eventually they have a small team crowding their grassy spot. It's something that might've bothered him in years past—and maybe it still bothers him a little, just a little—but it's nice, seeing how many people want to lend them a hand.

Still—he's a little smug when he finds a four-leaf clover before anyone else does, and a collective sigh of disappointment makes its way around the rest of the group before they get up, chatting and wishing Mao and Ritsu a good night. They do the same in return, and Mao helps Ritsu up with a grunt. Ritsu rests against him with a sigh, holding out the clover; he drops his hand when it's taken from him and follows Mao back to their bags.

At the very least he takes his own; it isn't that heavy, and less things for Mao to carry means more of a chance for him to carry him, though Mao shakes his head when he sees Ritsu shuffling towards him.

"Not a chance, Ritsu. C'mon, it's not that far. You walked all the way here in the first place, right?"

"But looking for clovers tired me oooout... Maaaakuuuun... Pretty please?"

Mao frowns at him, adjusting his bag on his shoulder, and then sighs with his whole body. "Geez... Alright, but I'm not piggybacking you today, okay? You can lean on me."

Good enough, he guesses, and he throws his whole weight on Mao; Mao stumbles a little bit with a soft swear before he catches himself, and a moment later they're off, walking in tandem. Ritsu plays with the clover in his hand, an arm around Mao's waist and his head on his shoulder, and glances down to see Mao doing the exact same thing as him. Mao slowly forms the stem into a ring-shape, then lets it straighten out again, and Ritsu looks back at the clover in his hand.

Three days later, he finishes making a pair of rings; Mao's embarrassed when he takes one, but it fits his thumb nicely, and Ritsu can't help but smile when he rests his hand beside Mao's and admires their matching jewelry.

Mao is wearing a dark, loose shirt today, something anyone would describe as comfy, and something Ritsu would say is his shirt—because it is. It's his shirt, long and comfortable and totally out of character, and he ignores the tired look Mao gives him when Ritsu drops against him and buries his face into his shoulder. This scent, too, is his.

"You know, just because you leave a shirt when you take one doesn't make it even," Mao says, resting his hand on Ritsu's head affectionately seconds before he pushes him off. "Stop stealing my stuff. If you like them so much, I can just buy you a couple—"

"It's not the saaaaame," Ritsu whines, because it isn't: they wouldn't be Mao's shirts then, they would be Ritsu's shirts that look like Mao's shirts. "I trade 'em back, don't I? And isn't it nice to wear somethin' of mine anyway?"

"It's just a shirt."

Mao really knows how to take the romance out of things. Ritsu hmphs, squeezing his middle, and Mao grunts. "Hey—"

It isn't just because he likes Mao's shirts, and it isn't just because Mao looks good in his shirts (subjectively, maybe). It makes him feel like Mao is his, again; it's like a little reminder to other people, when recognition finally flickers to light, that Mao belongs to someone. Conquest of the heart, Eichi calls it over tea, though it doesn't really feel that way—t isn't as if smelling him every day has made Mao fall in love with him or anything—but Ritsu lets him have it, mind wandering to which pair of shirts he can switch next, or if he should go with pajamas instead.