#flipside of students spying on geto-sensei's date!

[yuesya]

Suguru has a conundrum.

“Say ‘aaah,’” says the white-haired gremlin sitting across from him, full of mischief. A fork laden with warm cheese tart is held out in front of his face, right before his lips. “C’mon, Suguru! It tastes really good, I promise!”

The sorcerer purses his lips, doing his best to level an unimpressed look at his companion. “… Really, Shiki?”

A sly little smile is his only response. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Suguru snorts. As a Special Grade sorcerer on par with Satoru, he highly doubts that Shiki failed to notice the first year students conspicuously crouched behind a set of outdoor dining tables on the other side of the street. He makes a mental note to help them train up their stealth –learning to properly hide their cursed energy is one thing, but learning to actually blend in is another. The three of them are getting many strange looks from the passerby… and they all seem completely oblivious to it.

… Probably because they’re too engrossed with spying on their teachers, the little rascals.

“Su– gu– ru–” He does his best to ignore the strange flip-flopping sensation that rises in his stomach upon hearing his name drawn out like that, genuinely pliant and pleading beneath the blatant teasing. From the way Shiki’s smile widens, his reaction does not go unnoticed. Damn. “Won’t you humor me? Just one ‘aaah.’”

Suguru sighs, resigned.

“You’re having entirely too much fun with this,” he accuses her, although without any real heat. Like her brother, Shiki is entirely too playful… and stressful for Suguru’s blood pressure.

“Please?”

Unable to deny her, Suguru opens his mouth and eats the cheese tart.

He’s aware of how it looks from the outside, a man and a woman sitting down at a cafe table together, with the woman feeding the man a bite of her food. But, it’s the only way to soothe Shiki over unless he wants her to be huffy the rest of the evening. It’ll take forever to smooth over her ruffled feathers, and then he’ll also have to deal with Satoru dramatically flopping over him the next morning to complain about how he was ‘bullying’ his little sister.

… If anything, Suguru was the one getting bullied between the two of them!

The man determinedly stares her in the eyes as he eats the cheese tart proffered out to him, biting down and closing his lips over the fork, before slowly drawing back. If Shiki is going to embarrass him in front of their students, he’s not going to be the only one going down here.

The girl’s smile doesn’t waver as she retracts her arm and returns to eating her cheese tart, seemingly unaffected. But Suguru is long familiar with both Shiki’s and Satoru’s habits, and it’s minutely gratifying when her gaze flickers towards the side in a nervous tell, and her cheeks color faintly. She shares that with her brother –Satoru also blushes easily.

Shiki’s gaze returns to him, and she pouts. “You’re terrible.”

“You’re the one who started it,” Suguru responds childishly, instinctively.

“I did,” the girl admits easily enough, to her credit. “But you’re still terrible!”

“And you’re incorrigible,” he shoots back.

Shiki lets out a small ‘hmph,’ leaning back in her seat as she carelessly flips back a lock of long white hair over her shoulder. Hair extensions, apparently, but the way it looks and the way she acts makes it appear as if it’s the real thing. Admittedly, it’s a little startling to see Satoru’s body with long hair like this, and Suguru still isn’t entirely sure about the feelings he has about seeing Shiki –Satoru– in a dress from an obviously feminine angle, no matter the number of times he’s seen them like this already.

… But that’s nothing new on his end. He’s felt this way for years, and at this point Suguru is resigned to the fact that this is going to be his default state around Satoru and Shiki for the rest of their lives in perpetuity.

Somehow, the thought is both full of aching fondness and headache-inducing despair.

“You look like you have something on your mind.”

Suguru shakes himself out of his thoughts. “It’s nothing. Are you done with your food?”

“Mhm,” Shiki nods absently, dangling the fork in her mouth –the same fork that she’d used to feed him, he realizes. Suddenly, Suguru can’t taste the lingering creamy flavor of the cheese tart in his mouth at all anymore.

Shiki eventually releases the fork from her mouth with a small pop and a soft ‘ah.’ She twirls the utensil over her fingers, then levels it directly at him with a sharp little smile that’s all Satoru.

“You know us, Suguru. We don’t play around with our food.”

… Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. These two are going to be the death of him someday.