[Fanfic: Extraordinary You] Snapshots

Tease

Note: Inspired by all the times Haru tried to turn the show into a strip tease. It doesn't exactly follow canon and would probably be set around episode 6 (pre-reset)!

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He reads in a book one day that private jokes are a hallmark of close friendships. Dan Oh shares many things with him: her strawberry milk, her hard-earned meals, her plans and hopes and dreams; but among the growing list of items and in all their shared moments, few and far between are marked with the closeness of private jokes. Should they be? He doesn't know, and it's by the simple reason that he'd never had a friend until Dan Oh that he thinks it's worth investigating.

So for a while, Haru strains, wading through memories that slip by one after the next: there's moonlight and fireflies, soft smiles and bright eyes, and flowers—an outgrowth of red, blooming, falling, caught in her hair. But none of these, he decides, are the kind of private jokes the book references. They're special all the same and treasured in a way that lines of text in a book fail to capture, so he lets consternation pinch his brows together. It's only when he hears a grumble from his left that he drops his gaze to the forehead planted deep within the folds of an open book.

Even muffled, Dan Oh's voice rings clearly in his ears. "What's wrong with this author?" Her hands raise to rub vigorously at bare arms. As though sensing his gaze on her, she rolls her head onto its side and stares plaintively up at him, huffing a world-weary breath all the while. "First, it's all the extra medication, now they're dropping the temperature an extra five degrees?! Is my heart going to stop, or do you think I'll sit and turn into an ice pop first?"

Head canting, he moves to sweep stray bangs from her eyes, and it's not imperceptible—the way her eyes widen and the soft breath she sucks in—so he drops his hand back to his side. "Would you like my jacket?" he asks, shifting to clasp the end of the fabric in one hand.

"Yeah, yes, that'd be nice," she ejects the phrase like it's all one word, and perhaps it's the way she's looking everywhere but at him that has him dropping his hand lower until he's tugging the entirety of his top—white shirt, collared uniform, and all—up.

Her face crashes back into the book with an audible rustle of pages, and he pauses mid-action.

"Haru!" Her head lifts long enough to take in the crumpled fabric of his uniform before she shoots straight up with the book in hand, chair rocking from the abruptness of her motions. Wielding the book like a shield, she shoves the object before her face and lets out another rush of hushed words, "This is the library."

"You said you wanted—" he starts, stuttering to a stop when he sees her peer up at him from the edge of worn pages.

"Your jacket." The book flaps before him in time with her words. It's not unlike their first trek through the forest, and it takes considerable effort on his part to stifle a smile.

"Ah," he says quietly and moves to shrug off the outer layer of his uniform, casually ignoring the fact that he isn't wearing a jacket and that she likely knows that as well. The book shifts back and forth like a makeshift fan, and he pretends he doesn't hear the phrases she mumbles beneath her breath either.

Wordlessly, he drapes the fabric over her shoulders, hesitating for the briefest of moments when she mutters into the sunlight streaming in: "I'm not that cold anymore now," and "god, give me strength."

It might not be his book's definition of a private joke, but Haru quickly decides that he rather likes this form of teasing.