We Don't Give Up On Each Other

"It is not in the big, beautiful, romantic moments where I remember how much I love you; it's the small, everyday instances that remind me of how important you are in my life. When I first met you, you just looked like a timid little girl. Yet, underneath, I could tell that you were independent, strong, and brave. I love you for the homely food that you cook, the way you treat your friends and family, and your kindness to strangers, including me when I first met you. I don't know where I would be without you. I promise to stay by your side forever and always, until the ends of time meet, and even after that. Je t'aime de tout mon coeur. I love you with my whole heart…Hinako Inui." Kojiro Shinomiya finishes his wedding vows with a flourish, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, but he can't help but smile a little bashfully at his romantic promises to his wife-to-be. Meanwhile, Hinako's entire face flushes in red, nearly the same color as Kojiro's hair, as she finds his hand to hold. Two of the most popular chefs to have graduated Totsuki had decided to marry in a grand yet isolated Japanese tea garden far from the city to avoid the whispers, gossip, and paparazzi that their union would undoubtedly bring upon them. Hinako shines in her elegant white dress, her skin glowing not just from the sun but from the radiance of her shy smile. Across from her, Kojiro adjusts his powder blue suit. Surrounding them on the pavilion are carefully curated bonsai trees and a vast assortment of flowers amidst the walkways made of off-white pebbles.

"Ugh," Ryo grimaces at Kojiro's words. A romantic he is not.

"Shut up, that was so cute!" Alice squeal-whispers, nudging his ribs with her elbow. Today she wears a long silk dress hanging onto her pale shoulders with spaghetti straps which crisscross down her back. In the backdrop of the quickly sinking sun, the color of the dress is dusty pin starkly painted against her porcelain skin. When they received the invite to Kojiro and Hinako's private wedding, Alice was so excited that she immediately set out on shopping trips for the perfect shoes, dress, accessories…dragging Ryo alongside her. It's not even her wedding, Ryo would roll his eyes (but went along anyway). A romantic she definitely is. "I swear, they make me want to get married one day."

"As if you didn't want that before?"

"I didn't!"

"Yeah, sure," he scoffs. "Remember all those romantic comedies you'd watch when we were kids? That you made me watch?"

"Oh, those were just for fun! I don't know, marriage just seems like a hassle if you think about it. I wouldn't want to give up — "

"Shhh!" Erina hisses beside Alice. Next to her, Soma chuckles inside his hand before Erina turns on him with a glare. "Hinako is about to start her vows!"

Ryo and Alice share a quick smile — almost like an inside joke, someone else who saw them might note — before settling down to listen to Hinako's cheesy (Ryo) and beautiful (Alice) words.

"That was such a gorgeous wedding!" Alice chirps, waving her designer handbag in the air. Ryo sighs and takes it from her hands. "Don't you think so?"

Trudging down the gravel road, Ryo ponders the question. "It was pretty," he says at last. "A little sickening, I guess. But pretty."

"Of course you'd say it was sickening. That's mean to say about someone's wedding!"

"I called it pretty too."

"Hmph, Ryo!"

The wedding had just ended. Since the tea garden was so far from the rest of the world, they realized that they had to walk for a bit to get to the bus station. Alice would never ride a public bus ("It's too icky," she always complained) but there probably would be service there for them to call the family car. Actually, Ryo had arranged for a driver to pick them up after the wedding, but Erina and Soma left without them, seemingly forgetting about the pair ("Why would she do that," Alice had whined).

"How much longer to the bus stop?" Alice asks, stopping in her tracks. "I'm tired!" They hadn't even been walking for too long, but Ryo suddenly realizes that Alice is wearing high heels — stilettos, even — so her feet must be in pain.

"I'm not sure. Hinako said we'd see it after walking a mile or so."

"A mile? Is she crazy? I can't walk that! Damn Erina…"

"Take off your shoes."

"I can't. I'll get cuts on my feet."

"Do you want me to carry you?"

"Hmm…" Alice contemplates it. "No, I can walk. It would slow us done a lot, you carrying me. Don't you know that I have a lot of practice walking in heels? I'm not weak!"

"Then don't complain," Ryo jokes.

"Hey!" She reaches out to slap his arm, but he jogs out of the way, laughing. "Come back here, Ryo!"

As she tries to chase after him, the clouds above them start to crease and then drip raindrops onto their heads. Alice abruptly stops moving. "Is it supposed to rain, Ryo?"

One of his tasks is to look up the weather for the day and prepare them for it. This morning, the forecast promised, "Beautiful sunshine! Not a hint of rain in the sky!" Liar, Ryo thinks. He doesn't have an umbrella or even a jacket on him. Should've been more prepared, damn. In response, he pulls off his blazer from the fancy suit today and holds it up over his head like a tent. "Come in here!" Ryo yells to Alice.

The makeshift shelter from rain forces the two to huddle next to each other, Alice tucked under his arm and Ryo straining under the effort of protecting them both from the rain. It reminds him of the time years ago, when he first started out as her aide…

"Ryo! Ryo! Stop a minute!" Alice shook his shoulder angrily, forcing him to jerk to a halt. "You have to slow down! I can't walk that fast and I'm getting drenched!"

"Then hurry up," he snapped but slowed down anyway, making sure that the black umbrella hovered over them both. It was a particularly rainy day, one darkened by storm clouds and swirls of spring mist crowding the air. He had been her aide for three days and was already regretting it. Ryo do this, Ryo do that, nonono not that! Her voice was constant in and out of his mind, almost like the relentless howl of the wind beating against their backs. They were walking in an empty cobblestone street in Denmark, side-by-side but not nearly close enough for the umbrella to cover them both, as is the nature of two adolescents just

"Wait, stop there, I have to fix my shoe! Ugh, don't angle it like that, you're getting water on my dress! Bring it closer to me!"

She was really getting on his nerves. Her and her stupid white dress that couldn't get wet or else she'd be too cold to walk, and God forbid that she walk a little bit faster to keep up with his pace.

"You're my aide, Ryo, you have to follow my every command!"

That was it. "Why don't ya take the damn umbrella, then?" Ryo yelled, shoving it into her dampened chest. "And find another aide while ya at it!"

"Ryo, wait, stop it!"

Without looking back, Ryo stalked away into the swirl of rain, head down and shoulders slouched forward.

"When was the last time it rained so much?" Alice remarks, her fingers tangled within Ryo's untucked shirt. Soaked, the white cloth clings to his torso and her palms press flat onto his ribs, sending tingles down his spine — from which, he does not know. Evidently, her heels are weighing her down as if her ankles are tied to boulders.

Ryo chuckles a little. "The last time, I'm not sure," he says, even though he remembers it dimly. It was that day back in Denmark, when he left her alone for the first time with the black umbrella. He can't quite remember what happened after walking away, though. "Are you sure you don't want to take your shoes off? Looks painful."

"Actually, I might," she replies. "Hold on." Grabbing onto his shoulder, she wiggles off her heels. "Much better!"

"Still need me to carry you?"

"Awfully chivalrous today, Ryo! I think the wedding mood is getting to you," she snickers. "Hey, don't make that face! What's wrong with weddings?"

"If I recall, you were the one that said marriage was a hassle," Ryo reminds her. "I just don't like the sappiness of it."

"I love the sappiness," she gushes. "I just feel like you lose some independence when you get married."

He stops to think about it. "Marriage is like a partnership, right?"

"Yeah, I guess. What's your point? Whoa, is your arm tired? Let me hold the other side, you've been holding it awhile," she insists as she grabs the other side of the blazer. Underneath the shadow of the his hair, Ryo cracks a crooked smile. A partnership, you say? he thinks.

"A partnership is like…"

"Like?"

"Like still being independent, but you have someone else to count on no matter what," Ryo finishes. "You can still be your own person. A partner doesn't have to inhibit you but help you reach beyond what you could do yourself." What the hell am I trying to imply?

"A partnership," she says thoughtfully. "If you think about it, we're kind of like a partnership. So we're basically married!" She immediately jumps to what he alludes to, x to y, Point A to Point B. He hadn't expected her to even though he insinuated it himself, so he almost stops, almost fumbles with an agreement. But instead, he remains silent. The silence was natural, seamless between Alice's demands and Ryo's occasional retort and usual compliance. It tied them together like an invisible string, sealing their fates to be intertwined inexplicably and indelibly, forever lost in each other. Perhaps through the relationship of aide and mistress, or perhaps through something more.

Suddenly, Alice breaks from his body, letting go of her side of the blazer. By now, the rain has weakened to a drizzle, becoming nothing more than a silver flurry of water. "Ryo," she laughs, spinning around in her bare feet, her heels clinking together in her fingers.

"Miss Alice, you're getting all wet," he remarks but doesn't stop her. She looks so beautiful, like an angel, that stopping her would send him to hell.

"It tastes like summer," she says, pausing to look at him. In that moment, her red eyes are glittering with pure, unadulterated joy. She sticks out her tongue to catch the rain. Only Alice can salvage an unsalvageable situation; only she can make Ryo want this long road to extend forever; only she can create sunlight in the darkest, rainiest times.

Humming behind them is the whir of a beaten-down car, Ryo recognizes, drawing closer and closer to them. Then, he realizes that Alice, dancing on the side of the road, moves beside a rather large puddle. As the car rushes closer, he realizes it will race across the puddle, creating a huge wave that will soak Alice.

"Hey, watch out!" Ryo yells, lunging forward. Just as the car hurtles forward next to them, he grabs Alice by the wrist and pulls her inside his arms, his back to the mini-wave so that it completely soaks his shirt but Alice is untouched by the fingers of the muddy water; instead, only his own fingers encircle her.

"Ryo, you're completely drenched!" Alice gasps, shocked.

He can only smile in return, his teeth chattering, because he remembers something more from that distant memory in Denmark, long ago, when he left her with the black umbrella…

Ryo is completely and utterly drenched. "Why does rain have to be so damn cold?" Ryo growled to himself as he navigated through the winding roads of the European city, basically empty during the twilight hour. Only a few people dared to traverse the broken cobblestone at this time, and they immediately crossed the street when they saw him, muttering that he was a dirty, wet beggar. He certainly looked the part.

If only Alice hadn't been such a whiny boss. He was sure they'd be back safe at her house, surrounded by too much warmth and puffy cakes and loving parents. In fact, she was probably there now, crying to Leonora on how Ryo was such a big meanie and she regretted ever picking him up. He would be abandoned at the pub. Perhaps for good reason. What kind of aide just ditches their boss, no matter how annoying they were?

Looking up at the sky, he could see the heavy, looming clouds darkening into gray blankets obscuring any light from the sun. It would be dark soon, and he had no home, no bed, no shelter. Turning into an alleyway, Ryo huddled into the corner, attempting to conserve any heat he had left. He shuddered out frozen breaths that wracked his chest and clutched his sleeves to his body. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps his fate was one punctuated with cold, rainy days and slouched shoulders and frozen, aching breaths struggling to escape from his cracked lips.

Suddenly, the rain stopped. He didn't feel warm right away, but the coldness seeped away in bits at a time until he could feel his appendages again. He looked up and his heart stumbled. There Alice was, like a ray of sunlight, holding the black umbrella above his crouched body so that no rain dared to touch him at all. Her face was flushed, perhaps from the cold, perhaps from running around the streets trying to locate her runaway aide.

"I finally found you! Don't run away next time," Alice snapped, and Ryo pulled away from the bite in her voice, waiting for the harsh rebukes like the vicious insults commonly hurled around in the pub he used to work at. "Come back with me. We don't give up on each other." Her head was turned away in a moment of embarrassment so only one side of her face was showing, but her words were still there, her hand extended out as if to say, "Take it. I can't promise you anything but a world where we can depend on each other."

He took her hand gently. Maybe that was the first sign that he was going to fall in love with her.

Going to fall in love with her? What was that memory? Ryo blushes at the thought, but Alice takes his redness as a sign of sickness from the cold and immediately chastises him, "Why did you do that? Now you're gonna be all sick, and what can I do with you then?"

"We don't give up on each other," he says simply, echoing her words from years ago. He doesn't think she remembers, and she doesn't because she ignores him and busies herself drying his hair with his blazer, now dripping with water.

He suddenly notices their close proximity to each other. Sitting on the dirt ground on the side of the road, Alice has her knees folded underneath her, not caring about the muddy stains on her silk pink dress, positioned between Ryo's legs. Cloth to cloth, skin to skin, and breath to breath. Her face is angled upward so her eyes can focus on the droplets of rain on his forehead, and the first time that day, Ryo thanks the storm for occurring and the car for splashing water onto him. Now, he can soak up the sight of her in all its delicate beauty the way his shirt soaked up all that water, pressing frigid tingles to his torso. And for the first time in his life, he wonders, Am I in love with you?

She suddenly stops running the blazer through his wet hair and just catches his eyes staring at hers. Usually, he would have jerked away, embarrassed, pushing her off in a rapid desire to escape, but today, his fight-or-flight sense yearns to fight. So he continues staring. A stolen glance transforming into a shy, emboldening gaze.

Am I in love with you?

His hands move on their own, as if controlled by the same invisible strings tying their fates together. He presses one palm, then another, on her cheeks, cradling her face the way you might hold a butterfly: softly, hardly touching, so as not to break its wings. They watch each other without speaking, not wanting to shatter this familiar, butterfly-esque silence. It is in silence that they know each other best. It is in silence that they are the closest they have ever been, escaping the loudness of the world. Only the sheer cloth of a button up shirt and dusty pink silk fabric separate their skin, her hands on his shoulders, his on her face. Moments lapse with nothing but shaky exhales and silence polluted only by the rustle of leaves in the wind. All he needs to do is stoop down to kiss her. He begins to move slowly. Alice waits. Anticipating. Barely breathing.

Am I in love with you?

Abruptly, the rain halts and the only thing touching their skin is each other. Alice must have registered that because she slides out of his grasp and stands up, Ryo's heart twinging with every movement. She puts her hand out to help him up, just like that distant memory in Denmark, his heartbeat drumming just the same, perhaps a little faster. "The rain finally stopped," she murmurs absentmindedly, gazing ahead. "The bus stop is probably close."

The ghost of her skin still on his fingertips, Ryo tightly pinches at the blazer in his hands as they advance forward, a foot of space and no words between them. They had been too close before, so close that it seemed like something would change — something they were both afraid of. Speaking would threaten what they had built for years: a mutual, careful trust of each other without going any further. The silence now weighs heavy in the air, unnatural unlike before. Now, he doesn't know what she's thinking. Now, she seems miles away, lost in her own thoughts while undoubtedly still analyzing what had just happened, parsing through every word, every action, every breath unreleased.

Just as the sun dissolves into the horizon, they spot the graffiti-corrupted bus stop just over 100 meters away. "It's over there, over there, Ryo!" Alice squeaks in excitement, grabbing his elbow. She is the first to break the silence as if nothing has happened. Now, he understands the conclusion she has reached: everything will stay the same.

He ignores his heartbreak hell and the unspoken promises of forever on his lips. Yes, despite that, the words in his mind continue drumming like an unspeakable desire, an unstoppable heart, a collusive whisper.

Am I in love with you?

Am I in love with you?

Am I in love with you?

Hi guys! This chapter certainly moves things along! My vision for this fic was a series of series of semi-related oneshots, but I think they're almost becoming something more...Each chapter builds upon the previous one to help Ryo develop his relationship with Alice. Right now, I think I'm going to have 10 chapters in total, so 5 more left! Almost there! What do you think will happen?

And, of course, happy reading & reviews are appreciated! :)