Friends With Benefits | Chishiya x Reader

Chapter Thirteen

☆ In which you find that chalk cats can be special. ☆

Today is one of those days where you feel a bit hollow, like all of your inner organs have disappeared and all that remains is the nostalgia from memories past. It's a rather odd feeling, and you don't know what to do with it. 

And so you decide to take a walk. 

You rummage through the shelves of your room and pull out a few pieces of the chalk you'd had when you'd first came at the Beach, and your feet lead you outside.

The day is clear and blue, with the crisp cold air weaving through the trees. You follow the sidewalk for a long time. The city is so peaceful with no one around, and you hum one of the songs you used to play when your friend wanted to scream at karaoke but was confined to the house instead. The memory makes you smile and you skip along the street, spinning every now and again, dancing to your own music. Fresh pink blossoms spin down from the trees with you as the street melts into sidewalk and the Beach grows further into the distance. 

You find yourself at the bus stop you used to wait at until your senior year of high school. The pavement is grey and gravelly, and the rusted sign stands as cheerfully as ever. You kneel and take out your chalk, and begin to draw over the gravel. 

The memory is an older one, dating back to your first year as a high school student. You hadn't collected many happy memories once you'd graduated to university. In your first year, the girl who'd lived next door used to draw murals over the ground in the vibrant colours of the chalk she'd handed to you. She was the only other person who took the bus with you, and so she arrived there every day at the crack of dawn with a pile of cream buns and milk cartons scattered around her chalk paintings. 

"D'you want a bun?" she'd asked around a mouthful of bread. You'd taken the packaged bun she'd offered, and cemented your friendship for the next year to come.  

She moved away after your second year, and the murals vanished along with her. 

You draw mindlessly, chalk houses and cream buns and stick people spilling from your hands. Setsuko's rings clink together every so often. You draw a line of stars. 

"You're not half bad," someone comments from behind you. You turn to see Chishiya, one hand in his pocket and the other suspended in an idle wave, the lopsided amusement apparent on his face.

"How did you know where I was?" you ask, doodling circles over the pavement.

He shrugs. "I followed you."

"That's...kind of creepy, Chishiya."

The man only grins as you stand up to hug him. You still aren't used to the softness that creeps into his eyes lately when you see him, but it's a welcome change - you aren't quite used to the warmth flooding into your chest all the time either. Arms wrapped around him, you glance up at him. "Do you want to draw with me?"

"It's too cold for this," he says, but takes the chalk from your outstretched palm. 

Chishiya draws and you sketch beside him, interconnecting your pictures. It seems that Chishiya's artistic skills never progressed much past the stage of infancy, and you tell him so as he draws the wobbliest rendition of a cat you've ever seen in your life. 

"I didn't know cats could be so ugly," you comment as you add a fish next to his Terrible Cat. 

"It's a special cat," he argues, and proceeds to produce an army of special cats. You laugh and stretch an arm over his shoulder to add a less special cat among his squadron.

You move over to find more space on the concrete, and by doing so you get a full view of Chishiya. One side of his hair is tucked behind one ear and the other spills over his face as he crouches over his picture, reflecting golden in the sunlight. When you study his face, a strange feeling squeezes your chest. He is a picture of childlike enjoyment, with those soft honey eyes and his lips, which are absent of his usual smirk. The corners of his mouth carry the ghost of a smile, and you feel your breath catch in your throat. 

When his eyes suddenly flick up and catch you staring, you quickly look back down and start drawing with fervour. 

You wish your heart would stop beating so fast. 

"Chishiya," you say after a while of silence and willing your cheeks to return to their normal colour. "Look! It's us."

You point at the pavement in front of you, where you have drawn two figures, one of them being you and the other the man next to you. You'd captured your likenesses rather well, you think to yourself smugly. 

The blonde moves closer to peer at your drawing. "Why is my hair so yellow? And my hoodie has a zipper." Ever the cynic, Chishiya points at your chalk picture, the smirk back on his face. You give him a shove and he laughs.  

"There's no chalk colour that exactly matches your weird hair," you say scornfully, adding a choppy zipper to your rendering of Chishiya's hoodie. "I thought my picture was pretty good. You could stand to be a little nicer, you know."

"I am at peak niceness," Chishiya retorts, and returns to his own chalk adventures. 

Time flies until the sunset's pink is beginning to seep into the sky. Chishiya stands, evidently ready to leave, and you eye him from the ground.

"Where are you off to, my good friend?" you ask, getting to your feet as well. He snorts at your use of the title 'good friend' but says nothing more. He'd long since stopped complaining about it.

"I have a game to play," he replies simply. You nod and open your arms for a hug, which Chishiya steps into. 

"May the odds be ever in your favour," you tease, and quickly kiss his cheek before he can object. He blinks.

"Yeah, whatever," he mumbles. His back is already turned and he throws a lazy wave over his shoulder, but you caught the way his eyes changed again. You smile and turn back to the sidewalk, where you observe the array of pictures the two of you had chalked over the ground.

Something catches your eye and you move forward, kneeling to look at a drawing far away from yours.

The shaky lines tell you that it's one of Chishiya's drawings, and you feel your own eyes soften when you realise he has drawn his own version of the two of you. Even in the drawing Chishiya does not smile, but you are drawn smiling from ear to ear. Both of your eyes are misshapen dots and the lines are all wiggly but the smile on your face is no less larger than the one Chishiya has drawn. 

The shirt you wear in the drawing is blue. 

You fondly run a thumb over chalk-Chishiya. The hollowness you'd felt at the beginning of the day was completely gone, and you are smiling so much your face is beginning to ache. 

"He really is a terrible artist," you whisper.