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KHR Rarepair Week Rain: Opposites Attract
It's kind of funny, he has to admit, what people think should be his type.
Like, it's not even what his type actually is, or what he shows any interest in. Every time, it's always that they assume because he's one way that he then should be with a person who's that way. Most of the time, at the very base of it, an example of this exact phenomenon is that he should be with a girl.
Even when they don't explicitly spell it out, it's pretty clear how they expect his romantic life to go. And sometimes they do spell it out, although usually it's from older people who are doing their best to give him a compliment. They talk about how surely he'll get a nice pretty girl who is popular and kind and pretty, or how he's sure to get a wife that will be dutiful and loving. He's so nice, they say. He's so energetic. He's going to succeed in baseball and have a handsome face forever.
It's not like he's upset about those words. Why would he be? After all, he knows they're just adults and seniors who are wishing him the best in the only way they can conceive of. It's a nice sentiment. They want him to be happy and they want him to not have to worry about his home life. It'd be kind of petty to be upset about it, right?
Especially because their words don't really matter to his own life at all.
That's kind of the truth for everyone else, too, actually, like the guys in the baseball club or all the people in his classes when he goes to school. They all have this idea of what matches his image, so they put that into his hands without really thinking twice about it. How surely he'll date Sasagawa Kyoko who always remains the most popular whether in middle or high school, or maybe a smart student council president from some prestigious all girls academy. (He knows they're thinking of Haru there, even if they've never met her, only seen her at a distance.) Because that's what you're supposed to do, allegedly, when you're a super popular baseball start who's already being scouted by college recruiters.
Personally, he thinks that's just falling for trends they see in those dramas on television shows, or in some manga that they've read. The sort of thing that, for real life, is just way too simple and neat.
Then again, he supposes that if he were to say that he really likes a teenage criminal from an entirely different country on a different continent, that would also sort of come off as something that's really based off of some sort of crazy manga or television show. Which is just another reason to not be too harsh on people like that, he thinks!
But maybe more than him being a criminal from another country... He thinks they wouldn't really get it because they wouldn't really be able to see just how on earth a guy so dreary as Kakimoto Chikusa would be his type.
It's okay. He's never really asked for any other person to truly understand him. Sometimes this has made problems for himself, he has to admit, like when he kept everything in on himself until Tsuna broke through that one serendipitous day, but other times it's just... really freeing.
Of course, just because he doesn't ask doesn't mean that there's no one in the world who understands him. And Chikusa honestly does that so easily, for all that people don't think he would match him at all. No one could get it. Or maybe they would get it, if they could see the way those pale eyes of his look straight through him as though he's clear as an untouched lake, and he says, "You seriously... take enjoyment in slipping past everyone, huh...?"
Hearing it put so plainly makes him laugh, and grin, and he has to wonder if Chikusa can see the way that it's so different when it's with him compared to a lot of other people at school. If he's learned to sense the differences in his smiles and grins like Tsuna has. It can be hard to tell with Chikusa sometimes.
"I wouldn't call it enjoyment. That makes me sound like some kinda nefarious villain!" he laughs, stretched out so comfortably in the wild grass outside of the old Kokuyo Entertainment center. It's the weekend, which is the only reason he's been able to make it out here in the first place. Well, that, and there's some big nonsense happening with the mafia world again, so Tsuna is here to try and talk with Mukuro about stuff. "But I guess it's kind of interesting? I mean, you think so too, right?"
Because he thinks Chikusa does it too, although he doesn't do it in the exact same way that he does. Other people wouldn't get it. Of course they wouldn't. If they got it, then they wouldn't let him do what Chikusa just described: slipping past everyone, like water from the heavens and over the eaves and into the gutter.
The way he does it is with a smile. With the kind of confidence that says Yeah, I'm a good guy, I belong here, don't worry about it, it's not actually a problem. He does it by bypasing questions and laughing things off and it is a constraint as much as it is a freedom. When they say Rain is Tranquility, he wonders if this is the sort of thing that they meant. If the first person to feel those ice cold flames refract light off of their fingertips and thought, too, of how they could move through society so neatly.
It's a lot of deep thinking, honestly! The kind of deep thinking that Gokudera would stare at him for, because it's not the kind of thinking he'd expect - or maybe he just wouldn't expect for him to say any of it out loud. They've gotten pretty close in the way that only happens with life or death experiences.
But Chikusa doesn't even bat an eye. Doesn't deny that he, too, thinks it's interesting. Except he does it in a different way. He does it despite the fact that he's so much taller than the average Japanese person, yet can skim through life without drawing any undue attention, so long as he's on his own and there isn't his much louder and excitable partner there with him. Kind of hard to be subtle or ignorable when someone like Ken is there. He gets it; he has Gokudera with the same issue honestly.
That just makes it all the funnier to spot the difference between Chikusa with Ken, and then Chikusa on his own. The slump that takes away a good chunk of his height. A dull expression that makes a lot of people depressed and not want to look at it. Voice so quiet that it dulls the edges of any accent he has. All in all, an utterly unremarkable existence hidden underneath a beanie that anyone could grab off a bargain bin shelf.
People don't bother to look at you if you look confident enough to belong. People don't bother to look at you if you're so dull it reminds them of unpleasant things.
A cheery bright spring rain that brings about floods, or a dull rain that makes it a slog to go to work? In the end, it's all the same kind of rain, all the same kind of tranquility, even if people would try to argue on trivial differences to make some sort of line in the mud.
Takeshi doesn't want to care about lines in the mud, stuff drawn sloppily that will just be washed away at the next rainfall that they never expect. Instead, he'd rather just enjoy the feel of rain on his skin, Chikusa's presence besides him, the unity that comes when rain collides with rain out there on the deep ocean. The pitter-patter drops of his voice. The tumultuous current hidden beneath it all.
Depth behind and beneath the rain.
Like, it's not even what his type actually is, or what he shows any interest in. Every time, it's always that they assume because he's one way that he then should be with a person who's that way. Most of the time, at the very base of it, an example of this exact phenomenon is that he should be with a girl.
Even when they don't explicitly spell it out, it's pretty clear how they expect his romantic life to go. And sometimes they do spell it out, although usually it's from older people who are doing their best to give him a compliment. They talk about how surely he'll get a nice pretty girl who is popular and kind and pretty, or how he's sure to get a wife that will be dutiful and loving. He's so nice, they say. He's so energetic. He's going to succeed in baseball and have a handsome face forever.
It's not like he's upset about those words. Why would he be? After all, he knows they're just adults and seniors who are wishing him the best in the only way they can conceive of. It's a nice sentiment. They want him to be happy and they want him to not have to worry about his home life. It'd be kind of petty to be upset about it, right?
Especially because their words don't really matter to his own life at all.
That's kind of the truth for everyone else, too, actually, like the guys in the baseball club or all the people in his classes when he goes to school. They all have this idea of what matches his image, so they put that into his hands without really thinking twice about it. How surely he'll date Sasagawa Kyoko who always remains the most popular whether in middle or high school, or maybe a smart student council president from some prestigious all girls academy. (He knows they're thinking of Haru there, even if they've never met her, only seen her at a distance.) Because that's what you're supposed to do, allegedly, when you're a super popular baseball start who's already being scouted by college recruiters.
Personally, he thinks that's just falling for trends they see in those dramas on television shows, or in some manga that they've read. The sort of thing that, for real life, is just way too simple and neat.
Then again, he supposes that if he were to say that he really likes a teenage criminal from an entirely different country on a different continent, that would also sort of come off as something that's really based off of some sort of crazy manga or television show. Which is just another reason to not be too harsh on people like that, he thinks!
But maybe more than him being a criminal from another country... He thinks they wouldn't really get it because they wouldn't really be able to see just how on earth a guy so dreary as Kakimoto Chikusa would be his type.
It's okay. He's never really asked for any other person to truly understand him. Sometimes this has made problems for himself, he has to admit, like when he kept everything in on himself until Tsuna broke through that one serendipitous day, but other times it's just... really freeing.
Of course, just because he doesn't ask doesn't mean that there's no one in the world who understands him. And Chikusa honestly does that so easily, for all that people don't think he would match him at all. No one could get it. Or maybe they would get it, if they could see the way those pale eyes of his look straight through him as though he's clear as an untouched lake, and he says, "You seriously... take enjoyment in slipping past everyone, huh...?"
Hearing it put so plainly makes him laugh, and grin, and he has to wonder if Chikusa can see the way that it's so different when it's with him compared to a lot of other people at school. If he's learned to sense the differences in his smiles and grins like Tsuna has. It can be hard to tell with Chikusa sometimes.
"I wouldn't call it enjoyment. That makes me sound like some kinda nefarious villain!" he laughs, stretched out so comfortably in the wild grass outside of the old Kokuyo Entertainment center. It's the weekend, which is the only reason he's been able to make it out here in the first place. Well, that, and there's some big nonsense happening with the mafia world again, so Tsuna is here to try and talk with Mukuro about stuff. "But I guess it's kind of interesting? I mean, you think so too, right?"
Because he thinks Chikusa does it too, although he doesn't do it in the exact same way that he does. Other people wouldn't get it. Of course they wouldn't. If they got it, then they wouldn't let him do what Chikusa just described: slipping past everyone, like water from the heavens and over the eaves and into the gutter.
The way he does it is with a smile. With the kind of confidence that says Yeah, I'm a good guy, I belong here, don't worry about it, it's not actually a problem. He does it by bypasing questions and laughing things off and it is a constraint as much as it is a freedom. When they say Rain is Tranquility, he wonders if this is the sort of thing that they meant. If the first person to feel those ice cold flames refract light off of their fingertips and thought, too, of how they could move through society so neatly.
It's a lot of deep thinking, honestly! The kind of deep thinking that Gokudera would stare at him for, because it's not the kind of thinking he'd expect - or maybe he just wouldn't expect for him to say any of it out loud. They've gotten pretty close in the way that only happens with life or death experiences.
But Chikusa doesn't even bat an eye. Doesn't deny that he, too, thinks it's interesting. Except he does it in a different way. He does it despite the fact that he's so much taller than the average Japanese person, yet can skim through life without drawing any undue attention, so long as he's on his own and there isn't his much louder and excitable partner there with him. Kind of hard to be subtle or ignorable when someone like Ken is there. He gets it; he has Gokudera with the same issue honestly.
That just makes it all the funnier to spot the difference between Chikusa with Ken, and then Chikusa on his own. The slump that takes away a good chunk of his height. A dull expression that makes a lot of people depressed and not want to look at it. Voice so quiet that it dulls the edges of any accent he has. All in all, an utterly unremarkable existence hidden underneath a beanie that anyone could grab off a bargain bin shelf.
People don't bother to look at you if you look confident enough to belong. People don't bother to look at you if you're so dull it reminds them of unpleasant things.
A cheery bright spring rain that brings about floods, or a dull rain that makes it a slog to go to work? In the end, it's all the same kind of rain, all the same kind of tranquility, even if people would try to argue on trivial differences to make some sort of line in the mud.
Takeshi doesn't want to care about lines in the mud, stuff drawn sloppily that will just be washed away at the next rainfall that they never expect. Instead, he'd rather just enjoy the feel of rain on his skin, Chikusa's presence besides him, the unity that comes when rain collides with rain out there on the deep ocean. The pitter-patter drops of his voice. The tumultuous current hidden beneath it all.
Depth behind and beneath the rain.