County Fair Ch. 6

County Fair

By Magewriter/Sheelos-lover

Chapter 6: Love Story

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Kishimoto-sensei except for Ritonno, Seiya (who belongs to Pocky-macine), and the plot.

The chapter title is what the story is now, isn’t it?  It’s not a dumb little humor story about a fair, it’s a love story.  Considering that the characters either have strong relationships or very grounded personalities, it’s actually pretty dramatic.

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At last, Seiya came back down to Ritonno’s room.  They both knew that it would be the second sleepover in two nights, even though it wasn’t yet noon.

“So?  What did he ask you?”  Ritonno asked anxiously almost as the door slid open.

“Whoa!  Slow down!  Let the door close first!”  She smiled a bit.  “Do you have Pocky?”

“Yeah, somewhere.  What kind?”

“I dunno.  Didn’t you have some special pink stuff once?”

“Oh, yeah, that stuff!  It’s awesome!  If I give you a piece, will you talk?”

“Sure, if you tell me what you told Dei-chan.  Leader-sama told me not to tell you.”

“Well, he wanted to know how to make you happy.”

“I’m open to all things cute and/or fuzzy.”

“I told him that he didn’t need to try.”

“Awww!  That’s so sweet!!!!”

“Yeah, I know.  Real sappy, isn’t it?  Now, tell me what Rei-kun told you.”

“First, show me the Pocky.”

“It’s right here, okay?  Now tell me what you told my boyfriend!”  She lowered her voice for the second sentence, not wanting him to hear.

“Well, he asked me what I thought he had done wrong last night.”

“And you told him…?”

“I told him you’d love it if he’d hug you.  And all the basic stuff, like general communication…”

“Did you say anything about… um… kissing?”

“God, Ritonno!  Stop acting like kissing is such a huge thing, okay?  It isn’t!  It’s old-fashioned to think that kissing is suggestive!”

“I know.  Still…”

“Societal morals are collapsing around us and she worries about kissing her boyfriend.  Really, what is this world coming to?”

“I get nervous about these things, okay?  …And we’ve only been together for two days!”

“Two days plus all the time you knew him before.  And what’s to be nervous about?”

“What if I did something wrong?  What if he did something wrong and I had to keep it down because he’s above me?  …And what if it made him more confident and…?”

“Ritonno, he doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would try anything like that.  He’s so nervous – fast speech, occasional blushing, probably sweaty palms –”  Ritonno had been walking quietly to the door.  She now slid it open as fast as it would allow and found Leader and Deidara standing outside the door.  A few seconds later, Itachi came out into the hallway.

“Ritonno, Seiya, would you please keep it down?  I’m trying to read Icha.”  It was nice to have him be polite to her (it had taken a good deal of fighting to get it to be that way), but nonetheless, all attention turned to him.

Then Leader turned to Seiya.  “What were you saying about me?”

“Don’t get mad at her, yeah!  She was just talking to her friend!”

“…About something which I had previously asked her not to talk about.”

“Everyone should be able to talk about things in privacy, Rei-kun.  And it was my fault.  I tempted her with Pocky.”  Ritonno smiled.  It was pretty funny…

He glared at her.  He wasn’t angry, just frustrated.  “There are other kinds of privacy, Ritonno-san.  I had asked her not to say anything about this.”

His use of a formal name ending cut her a bit, and she winced.  “Just…  If you have to blame anyone, don’t blame her.  Blame me; I’m the one who told her to.”

“Okay, then.  Follow me.”  He walked away up the stairs, heading to the only room where they would have privacy.  She was just glad that he wasn’t going outside to spar…

He shut the door in his room.  He had no reason to guard his door since he knew that the other members feared him enough not to listen.

“Why are you doing this to me, Ritonno-chan?”

“What, a minute ago I’m ‘san’, and now I’m ‘chan’?”

“I could never say that to you seriously.”

“Well, you seemed to.  The problem with things like this, Rei-kun, is that in front of everyone else you’re all tough and cold, but then when you’re alone with me you get all nervous…”

“Enough, okay?  There’s cold, hard power for you.  I’m telling you to stop.  It’s… frustrating!  Seiya must have told you that I wanted my conversation with her to be confidential.”

“She did.  And I pried, and she asked for Pocky and my conversation with Dei-kun, so I told her about it and showed her the package – it was deluxe Pocky, not just the usual stuff – and she told me.  It’s different being in a room with one person than a room with a bunch of Akatsuki members.”

“…But you’re the one who I didn’t want to hear about it…”

“Why?  I don’t think too much on it.  It’s actually really cute…”

“Ritonno, it is not ‘cute.’  If anything, it’s traitorous that you were listening to a confidential conversation.  Treasonous, even, since I’m the leader.  And love is a very delicate subject.”

“I know.  I don’t really care too much about the conversation, per se, just your reactions.  It’s more about you than the conversation.  You could be asking her what colors I like and I would care just as much as if you asked deeper questions.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“Yes, but only because, with questions of more magnitude, the responses are more unpredictable and, therefore, more important.”

He glared at her as well as he could.

“Ooh!  Do you want to do another couples thing tonight?”  She was attempting to lighten the conversation.

It worked.  He chuckled a bit as he said, “Whatever led you to that train of thought?”

“Well, you’ve talked to Seiya and Dei-kun talked to me, so you two can try things out tonight.”

“Do you have a specific movie in mind?”

“Yes.  A foreign classic.  ‘Romeo and Juriet.’”

“’Juriet’?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be ‘Juliet’?”

“…Well, if you’re going to be all specific… does it really matter?”

“It’s such a classic that we know about it here and now!  It was written four hundred years ago in another country!  You could at least get the title right…”

“Whatever.  Anyway, I have a really nice version of it.”

“*sigh* Whatever….  I’m fine with anything.  Ask Deidara and Seiya; they probably care more.”

“Okay…  Well, I’m really sorry for asking Sei-chan, but I promise I won’t do it ever again, okay?  We can start this over again and not care about today.  Sound like a plan?”

“A relatively good one, considering the circumstances.”

“Great!  …Then, I’ll go ask Sei-chan and Dei-kun!”

“Wait a second…”  She paused in front of the door and he continued.  “Why is it that he and I are both ‘kun’ to you?”

“…Well, I guess it’s because Deidara is the ‘chan’ type – all friendly and open and stuff – so calling him ‘kun’ is being more formal and distant.  …And you’re the ‘san’, ‘sama’, or ‘danna’ type, so calling you ‘kun’ is either being insulting or close.  …And I hope it’s interpreted as being close…”

“Oh, it is!  Don’t worry!  …I guess it’s just that I was… concerned because you were calling me by the same name ending as him.”

“I would never do that!!!”  She hugged his arm, cuddling a bit against it.  The muscular definition was almost enough to make her fangirl-squeal – he was a professional fighter, after all – but she managed to contain her fangirliness to a big smile and a stronger hug.

He receded for a moment, surprised, but then placed his free left hand on her shoulder and she could almost feel him smiling that amused, content smile he had…

Finally, the hug-type-thing was over and Ritonno jumped down the stairs two at a time, high-spirited from being hugged by her new boyfriend.

Well, her friends had always said that she should pay more attention to cute guys…

When she reached the bottom landing, she found that Deidara and Seiya weren’t there, so she went to Deidara’s room, where she found them sitting on Deidara’s futon.

“Hey, you two!  You wanna watch ‘Romeo and Juriet’ with Rei-kun and me tonight?”

“Sure!  Sounds fun!”

Or not… Ritonno thought; however, she didn’t voice this.  The movie was well known as a tragedy…

“I’ll watch it if Sei-chan watches it, yeah!”

“Okay!  You guys want anything special?  The mochi was pretty good last night, wasn’t it?”

“Yes!!!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Okay, then.  Do you guys want me to make some tonight?”

“Please!”

“If you want to, yeah.”

“Okay!  I’ll do that, then!”

She set off for the kitchen to start the rice cooker, measuring in the grains and water, then pressing the convenient little button.  She read some yaoi in her room and waited for the timer to go off.  When it did, she went back upstairs to check her rice, taking out the recently-used bowl and mallet and making a large batch of mochi, which she separated into many small lumps, wrapped in saran wrap, and put into the refrigerator for later.  She had had to make the lumps a bit small, but she had managed to make exactly twelve.

After an otherwise-uneventful day, dinner was finally over.  Hidan was gone, but it couldn’t be for one of his Jashin rituals because it wasn’t a full moon…  Kakuzu was there, too, so it wasn’t for some mission… Well, Ritonno had figured out long ago that Hidan was a crazy freak, so she didn’t really mind his absence.

“Hey, everyone, just so you know, there’s some mochi in the fridge, so if you want it, you can have a piece, and if you don’t, there’s someone else here who does.  There’s one piece for everyone, though, so only take one.”  There was a general rush to the fridge.  When the crowd of men cleared, Ritonno and Seiya followed to get their pieces of rice-based pleasure.

“Thank you for making this, Ritonno… um… kun, yeah!

“No problem, Dei-kun!”

Leader said nothing, just took the same couch that they had had the previous night, walking next to her and allowing her to sit down first.

“Oh, no, I have to start the movie!”

“I can wait.”  He stood annoyingly still with his hands behind his back as she put the DVD in.  She grabbed a blanket, as Deidara and Seiya already had, grabbed the remote, and sat down.  Leader followed.

“Do you want some?”  She asked, indicating the blanket.

“If you want to share it with me, then yes.”

His way of speaking was a bit… intimidating.  The formality and consideration were…  Flustering.  It made her a little bit nervous.

She started the movie after telling the DVD player and the menu screen that they were stupid and making a few more remarks to the technology, then sat back.

She fell backwards, expecting to hit the couch cushion, but her left shoulder landed on Rei-san’s torso (he had his arm over the back of the sofa).  They both jumped a bit and apologized, turning away from each other and blushing, as Seiya stifled giggles.  Deidara hadn’t been paying attention, so he was simply confused.

The movie started, and both girls squealed when a closeup of Romeo came up, earning strange looks from their boyfriends, who then looked confusedly at each other, trying to make sense of the women.

Partway through the movie, Ritonno heard Leader muttering, “He’s wrong.”

She paused the DVD.  “What?”

“He’s wrong.  He didn’t say the line correctly.”

“Well, then, would you like to tell us what it’s supposed to be?”

“What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek…”

He softly ran the back of his hand down the side of her face, and for a moment the world didn’t exist outside the two of them.  He held the back of her head in his hand and moved his left hand up under her chin, but made no further advances.  Ritonno was okay with that, though…

“…So kiss her or tell us the misquote!”  Seiya demanded, impatient, and the world snapped back into being.  Both of their heads jerked around to glare at her.

Leader composed himself very quickly.  “He forgot the ‘they’ in ‘they in her head’.”

“Then why go on and on like that, yeah?”

“It’s poetry.  Starting in the middle is bad enough…  He could at least have murdered a monologue that wasn’t that famous.”

He turned his head back to Ritonno.  She was the only one who saw the anger in his eyes.  “I would never display affection for the amusement of anyone other than myself or Ritonno.”

“Aww, don’t get mad, Rei-kun.”  She ran her hand down from his shoulder to the middle of his upper arm, smiling kindly, trying to calm the unsettling anger in his face.  “They’re not like us; they don’t mind being in love publicly.”

“Just start the movie again, yeah!”

Grudgingly, she took the remote and started up the DVD.  They were at the end of the scene.

Then came the end.  The girls called Juliet stupid and all sorts of things, but the movie ran its course, as it was meant to do.  Seiya curled up crying and Deidara, completely unaware of why she was so upset, held her next to him.  Leader, foreseeing Ritonno’s reaction, hugged her from behind and held her closer when she began to cry.

Then the movie was over and Deidara was finally able to voice his question.

“Why are you both so upset, yeah?”

They both paused.  Seiya jerked out of his grip and ran out of the room.

“What did I say, yeah?  It was a movie!  Seiya-chan…  Come back, yeah!”  He ran after her.

Ritonno began to giggle through the tears.

“Wait.  Are you laughing, or…?”

“I’m laughing!  Dei-kun is just so… he’s such an amateur!”

“Heh.  Yeah…  really, though.  It’s just a movie.  There’s no reason to get so worked up because of it.”

“No, not unless you paid attention to the plot.”

“Heh.  …So, what were those screams when Romeo came on?  You sounded like dying piglets.”

“We were fangirling over him.  For this kind of movie, it doesn’t work if the main characters aren’t attractive.”

“Mmh.”  He nodded a bit.  “Are you okay now?”

“That depends.  Will you stop hugging me if I am?”

He laughed and she got totally freaked out because a) Leader never laughed and b) Leader was never loud.

“That was hilarious!  …And why would I stop hugging you just because you’re not upset?”

“I don’t know.  Last night, it seemed like you were afraid to touch me.”

He started to laugh again.

“Okay, are you going to do that again or can I stay in here?  …Because you laughing is scary.”

“Heheh…  Face it, Ritonno, you’re hilarious.   I just wasn’t sure of the boundaries.  I didn’t want to offend you or anything…”

“…So you shrank back when I tried to touch you?  It was like, ‘No!  Don’t touch me!  I’m a vampire!!!’”  She went into a high-pitched voice for the “I’m a vampire” part, making it purposely funny.  They both laughed, but Ritonno was expecting it, so she didn’t mind.

Then Leader somehow managed to shift the mood to serious and put his hand on her shoulder.  He looked into her eyes.  “I said that I wouldn’t display affection for the purposes of anyone other than us.”

Ritonno’s eyes widened as she realized what he was about to do.

“…But, if you have no objections…”  He put his hand on the back of her head again, near the top of her neck.  His other hand shifted to the back of her shoulder.  They both leaned in closer, and Ritonno would have sworn that her heart rate sped up.  Somehow, without her knowledge, her hands worked their way around his shoulders and hugged him.

Again, the world was just them.  There was no one else, no objects…  They broke away from each other, but the feeling of only the two of them remained.  “Who needs poetry?  Your eyes aren’t the stars.  They’re crystal.  Such a clear, light blue…  Or they could be flames.  Only the hottest fires burn blue.”  He chuckled.  “But then, I wouldn’t be complimenting you if I were one of the people you had been angry at recently.”

Ritonno didn’t know what to say.  Was she in too deep, already?  She couldn’t focus like that on just one part of him!  She just thought that he was cute and nice and that she had a crush on him, but obviously he was in much deeper that her.  Seeing the troubled look on her face, his expression turned to one of surprise.  “What?  Is something wrong?”

“I can’t do the poetry thing like that.  I can’t say that your eyes or your hair or some part of you is better than another or special or anything…  It makes me sort of sad.”  She smiled a bit.

“I don’t mind.  I want to be with you…”

This was all interrupted by a high-pitched squeal.  The world returned, full of distractions, and Seiya was standing next to them, fangirling away.  “You two are so cute together!!!!!!”  She hugged Ritonno.

“Seiya, you just ruined it!”

Suddenly, Seiya screamed and her body jerked to the side.  “OW!!!!!  Rei-sama, what did you do that for?!”  But Leader was already walking away.  Ritonno’s head turned from him to her female companion as she heard Seiya moan.  “Owwwww….  Why’d he have to hit me like that?  Why can’t he get angry the normal way?”

Leader spun around.  “Why couldn’t you let us be?  We don’t need commentary!”  He was mad.  It was not good.  Not good at all…

Deidara came in a moment before Leader had left.  “Sei-chan!  Are you alright, yeah?”

“Yeah, except that Rei-sama just punched me because I was fangirling over him and Ritonno-chan…”

“He hit you, yeah?!”

“Yeah.  Why else would I be holding my arm and yelling?  I’m going to see Sasori…”  She walked away, holding her upper arm.

“Wait!  Do you want me to go with you, yeah?”

“Dei-chan, it’s just Sasori, okay?  I don’t need help!”

“Okay, yeah…”  He sounded hurt.

“Oh, don’t worry about her,” Ritonno said, comparatively.  “She’s just mad because her arm hurts.”

“Why did Rei-sama have to do that, though, yeah?”

“Well, he was being all sweet and stuff, and then she fangirl-squealed, and he got mad…”

“That’s just mean, though, yeah…”

“I never said it was justified, just that that’s the reason it happened.”

“Aren’t you going to talk to Leader-sama, yeah?”

“Yeah, I probably should…”  She stood up and left, heading upstairs for the attic.

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Woot!!!!  Seven pages!!!!  …Now, THIS is a chapter the way that I used to write!  …And frankly, I actually like this length better.  Akatsuki fanfiction is just so fast-paced, though, that it’s easier to end my chapters earlier…  That’s actually a line from “Romeo and Juliet,” by the way.  Rei-san just started saying it to point out the misquote, decided to say it to Ritonno, and came up with an excuse later.  Aren’t they cute together?