Notes: A Ritsu POV fic, since I mostly ignored her in my last story.

Summary: Ritsu doesn't understand love. But that's only part of why she's stuck in it.

Ritsu's Facts of Love

A K-ON! Oneshot by

Nate Grey (xman0123-at-aol-dot-com)

Ritsu doesn't understand love, and probably never will. She sees glimpses of things that may be love, but in those moments, she can never be sure of what she's seeing or feeling.

Yui doesn't understand much of anything, and she doesn't need to. Ui understands everything for her. Between sisters, such a thing should be perfectly innocent. Maybe it even is.

All Ritsu understands, however, is that the warm, bubbly feeling in her chest each time she hears Yui whine, "Ricchan, I'm hungry!" has nothing to do with food.

She certainly doesn't understand why each hug witnessed between Yui and Ui feels like a slab of granite being driven into her spine over and over again. Ui, she suspects, understands that, and much more.

Mio understands, to the extent that someone who had her first kiss stolen by Ritsu in elementary school can, anyway. It should have guaranteed that they would never speak again. Instead, they talk to each other privately nearly every day. Mio never wants to talk about boys, and Ritsu never suggests that they do. Then again, Mio also never wants to talk about the first kiss, or the possibility (or in Ritsu's mind, the eventuality) of a second. Instead, she lashes out, suffers weekly nervous breakdowns, and stuffs lyrics into mailboxes without a thought. And because she is Mio, most people consider these quirks and find them cute. Ritsu knows better, and would love nothing more than to take Mio in her arms every day, reassure her, and let her know that whenever she's ready to give in, they can move beyond mere friendship together, as they were meant to.

Ritsu understands that if Yui is her first crush, then Mio must be her first true love. That she met them and realized this out of order is both fitting and not at all troubling. Yui could never fall for someone that Ui didn't allow her to, and Mio, despite her best efforts, will never be closer to anyone than she is to Ritsu.

Mugi understands everything, and is all the wiser for it. She is satisfied with being in love with others being in love: she never gets hurt, and their joy is her joy.

Ritsu understands that her life would be far simpler and twice as convenient if she had fallen for Mugi instead. But they both know that Mugi could never give her heart to just one person: it's too large for that, and so it belongs to everyone she meets.

Occasionally, Mugi will ask, "Will you tell Mio-chan today?"

And always, Ritsu will distract her instead of answering, either with a mustache impression or by asking if she has any cake. Mugi allows herself to be distracted, but afterwards, she always squeezes Ritsu's hand, and holds it until Ritsu finally asks her to stop. This, Ritsu suspects more than anything else, is a true glimpse of what may be love in its purest form in her life so far.

But she cannot be sure.

Ritsu only knows that Mugi's smiles grow warmer and sweeter with every passing day, that Mugi has never hesitated to give her anything that she needs, and that Mugi has held her hand each time that Mio manages to widen the growing distance between them.

As for the reason, there may not even be one. These are simply facts of Ritsu's life, in the same way that Mio grows more beautiful when her face is flushed with anger, and in the way that Yui can stumble into someone's heart, set up shop, and never leave, all without even realizing it. They complicate and entangle Ritsu's life just by being in it, but Mugi would simply call them "love knots, sprinkled with powdered sugar," and she is always right about such things.

Sometimes, Ritsu wonders if stealing Mugi's first kiss would be a forgivable offense, and if not, if she'd still do it, anyway.

At other times, she knows better: kissing Mugi would be wonderful, to the point where Ritsu would forget to worry about being in love, and then simply drown in it with Mugi. They could easily be happily for the rest of their lives. But that would mean forgetting Yui and Mio, and Ritsu cannot do that, any more than she could forget Mugi.

The truly odd thing is that while Ritsu still doesn't understand love, Mugi could probably write three separate books about it, pass them out among her band mates, and have them all in one big, committed relationship by lunch. But she never would, because she would rather not be in love with any of them. Even from the outside looking in, it looks far too painful.

The End.

Endnotes:

Wrote this over a couple of hours, late at night, hopefully it doesn't show.