a/n: my, my – it's been a while, hasn't it.

i didn't really wanna write something brand new for this acct, so here's an old tumblr piece from 2015. it was inspired by a buzzfeed video ;v;

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and i skip to the beat just to fall on my face

because even if you avert your gaze,
you'll still fall in love.

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Miku walks into the shared apartment, raising her eyebrows at the sight of her roommate lying face down on the couch.

"Oh," she says, setting her keys and handbag aside before ambling over to crouch beside her friend. "What did he do this time, Rinny?"

"Nothing. That's the problem," comes the muffled groan. Rin rolls over and topples to the floor carelessly, looking about as grey as the overcast skies that evening. "I'm still just 'one of the guys' to him, and that's never gonna change. I might as well give up now."

The teal-haired girl frowns, leaning over to give her a sympathetic half-hug. "Now, now, Len might be a bit of a block-head, but you still have a chance, yeah? And—ah! I know!" She jumps up and scrambles over to her handbag, struggling with it for a couple of moments. "You still have hope, Rinny!"

Rin blinks, propping herself up to sit with her legs stretched out on the floor. "What are you—whoa!" She jerks away when Miku rushes back to brandish something in her face. Her eyes narrow as they take in the words on the page in front of her, before growing wide like saucers.

"Flirting tips?! What the hell—"

"This could be your big break," Miku insists, jabbing a prettily-manicured fingernail at the caption below the article. "See, it's guaranteed for success! It wouldn't hurt to try them, right? I mean..."

We're both already out of ideas, anyway, hangs unspoken in the air.

"Ugh, fine," Rin relents with a grumpy sort of reluctance, plucking the magazine from her friend's hands. "Gimme that. Now, let's see..."

.

'Tip #1: Pull your hair loose from a ponytail holder or clip so he can watch your touchable tresses fall around your face.'

My hair's not even long enough for this, Rin grouses internally, touching her tiny ponytail with ginger fingers just as Len jogs up to her with a wave of his hand.

"Hey, Rin! What's up?"

"Oh, you're here. Awesome. I was thinking about checking out that new restaurant downtown. It seems pretty popular," she says truthfully, smiling as naturally as she can with the stupid flirting tips floating around in her head.

"That's cool! You know I'm always up for great food," he jokes, and Rin can feel her heart triple its speed at his bright smile. Ah, Len, you dumbass, the things you do without even realizing them at all.

After a quick walk to the bus-stop, she decides to get the first one over with, reaching up to tug the hair-tie. "So, Len," she begins, shaking her head left and right with purposeful slowness as her blonde locks bounce to frame her face. "What kind of food do you think they'll have there?"

The boy promptly bursts into chuckles, throwing Rin off.

"What," she growls defensively, grabbing the front of his shirt with an air of menace. "What's so funny."

"Nothing, nothing!" Len says, laughter clear in his voice and glittering in his eyes. "Your hair is super fluffy right now, that's all. Here, let me get that for you."

His palms are large and warm as they smooth down her flyaway strands; she can only stand there, dumbstruck, even as his attention turns to the bus rumbling to a stop before them.

"Come on, let's go!" he calls, snapping her out of her stupor, and she scrambles after him.

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It's rush hour, but after some squeezing Rin manages to park herself into a nice corner of the bus to stand in. Her friend is hovering close by, his body curved towards her and his hand holding onto a hanging strap above him.

'Tip #2: While conversing with a cutie, lean in so you're about six inches from his face, linger for three counts, then slowly return to your original position.'

She peers up at him through her eyelashes. The thing about Len is that he's not particularly tall—something he constantly grumbles about, since Kaito and Gakupo like to use his head as an armrest—so it's a small comfort that she doesn't have to tiptoe insanely just to reach his face.

"So, after that whole bizarre conversation with Ms Sakine, right, she pulls me by the shoulders into this massive bear-hug. I did not expect her to be that strong," Len says, shuddering at the memory. "I almost couldn't breathe when I was smothered in her b—"

He cuts himself off when she leans in, blinking at him in what she hopes to be a cute, playful manner. (Mostly because she can't pull off coy or seductive to save her life.)

After counting for three beats, Rin pulls back with a shrug—at the same time his face seems to drift closer to hers. "Oh," she says, cursing herself for the hitch in her voice. "I thought, uh, there was something on your face."

Len offers an easy grin, turning his head away to cough politely into his fist. "The bus sure is bumpy, huh!"

"Oh," she says again, this time cursing herself for thinking that he'd wanted to give her a ki—okay, she's dumb. End of story. "It's our stop. Time to get down, doofus."

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Rin doesn't quite gather enough non-existent balls to try anything else until they've settled down in the restaurant, waiting for their ordered meals to be served.

She nods absently at whatever he's talking about—the people at his new workplace seem to grow weirder by the day but they're really nice, the things he gets to do on the job are super cool, he's glad the boss gave him another chance after he messed up the other time—and runs the next tip through her mind once more.

'Tip #3: Rub your shoulder like you have a painful crick, then gently sigh. Not only will he find this extremely sexy, but you might even score a massage.'

Massage may be a little far-fetched with a boy this dense, but—eh. Okay.

With calculated casualness, Rin tilts her head to one side and lifts a hand to the nook between her neck and shoulder, exhaling slowly through her lips. She keeps this up until Len stops to give her a strange look.

"Do you... want some, like, muscle ache gel?"

"Uh." The girl blinks once, twice. Decides to improvise off the top of her head, and says, "That'll be nice, yeah. But it'll be nicer if—"

He's already scooting his chair back to stand up, though. "I'll just head over to the convenience store to get some for you!" he chimes, leaving the restaurant faster than she can stop him.

Rin lets her head drop to the table with a noise of frustration that sounds like an odd cross between a beached whale's groan and a donkey's bray.

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She manages to regain composure by the time Len returns with several different types of muscle ache relief products, from gel to patches to sprays. (Not cream, though, since he knows she hates things that make her skin feel sticky.)

'Tip #4: Use your tongue to get that last crumb off your lips...'

How, she thinks calmly despite her growing underlying hysteria, in god's name does she accomplish this one—without looking like one big idiot who can't eat like a functional adult.

Rin's sort of glad she's picked something off the menu that can leave crumbs on her face—or rather grains to be more precise, she muses wryly as the waiter places a plate of chicken baked rice before her.

As a clean yet efficient eater, the blonde is surprised to discover that leaving something on her lip can be quite a difficult task; apparently it takes more than four tries for one tiny grain of rice to cling successfully to a corner of her mouth.

"Are you sure you don't wanna try some?" she asks, gesturing to her half-eaten meal and praying the grain stays on her mouth for as long as it's required. "This is really good."

Len finishes his mouthful of spaghetti and gives her a small smile. "Nuh-uh, I'm good!" And then his eyes shift downward. "Ah, uh, I think you have a little—"

Her tongue darts out to lick away the grain of rice and retreats almost immediately.

"—oh. Uh, well, never mind. "

Rin kicks herself mentally for doing that with lightning speed due to reflex, like great going, genius, now she can't re-do it over or she'll look like an even bigger idiot who can't eat like a functional adult.

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After the bill's been taken care of—he'd insisted on paying for everything, though Rin had managed to coax him into splitting the amount between them—they head towards the exit.

'Tip #5: Grab his ass on your way into a restaurant.'

Too late for that, but on the way out of the restaurant—now that's where she gets her chance. Reluctant as she is, there's probably no way can she screw this one up.

"So, Rin, do you think you still have room for—"

The girl musters up a bit of courage, swings her hand towards his (admittedly nice) ass—

"—d-dessert," he squeaks, wide-eyed.

Rin is equally wide-eyed, since her hand is way off-target. She takes it back, she's dumb enough to screw it up after all: Len had turned around at the same time she'd swung her hand, and she's touching his—his—

Her face dips into a terribly bright side of red. "I'M SORRY," is all she can manage before fleeing the scene of the crime, pride and love life be damned.

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Rin is lying face down on the couch once again when she hears the door close softly from down the hall.

"I fucked up," she says into the armrest miserably upon sensing a familiar figure crouch beside her. "I basically just squeezed his junk and ran for the hills."

Her roommate remains silent, so she continues, "I dunno how you managed to convince me to do this. The first few were alright, but this—seriously, 'dudes are fans of the ass-grab', my foot. What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to this. He probably thinks I'm a pervert who likes to grab random boys' crotches now, thanks to you."

"To be fair, maybe I'm more a fan of the crotch-grab than the ass-grab."

Rin stiffens at the very much male voice that has responded to her rambling, and lifts her head up with dread pooling in her stomach.

It's a familiar figure, alright—just not the teal-haired girl she'd expected, because it's Len who's currently sitting cross-legged beside her with a guileless smile toying at his lips. "Miku told me where you two hide the spare keys," he explains.

Oh, god, no.

She drops her face back into the armrest without another word.

"Rin—"

"NO, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT."

"But I'm just trying to—"

"I KNOW YOU ONLY SEE ME AS A DUDE, BUT I DID ALL THOSE THINGS ANYWAY. I WAS STUPID. AND ALSO A LITTLE DESPERATE. OKAY, MAYBE A LOT DESPERATE."

A pair of arms wastes no time to latch around her waist, forcibly rolling her off the couch and into his lap. Rin flails, trying to break away, but he locks her legs down with his own.

"IT'S BEEN NICE KNOWING YOU, I'M SORRY I SINGLE-HANDLEDLY RUINED OUR FRIENDSHIP, I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND IF YOU HATE ME—"

The rest of her words are lost to the kiss Len presses against her lips.

He pulls away with this half-exasperated, half-amused expression on his face. "How can I ever hate you," he says, and Rin's heart swells with happiness until he adds, "I've come close, though, seeing how dense you are sometimes."

"What." Happiness, smappiness: he's going down. "How dare you—"

"How dare me?" Len looks downright affronted as he wrinkles his nose. "I'm not the one who moved closer on the bus then suddenly moved away, like what was that, a weird kiss blue-balls or something—"

"Oi, do you have any idea how many times I've agonized over those stupid flirting tips because of you—"

"At least you got a once-in-a-lifetime chance to grab my crotch—"

"IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AN ASS-GRAB—"

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Miku leans against the front door of the shared apartment, stifling giggles behind her palm with a shake of her head.

Guaranteed for success, indeed.

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a/n: ye-ep, you're welcome :3c

i've put up an explanation regarding my absence on my profile – don't really wanna bore everyone else with the details.

disclaimer: i do not own vocaloid, or the lyrics to kagamine len's lll toluthin antenna lll.