Silhouettes [1/3]
Title: Silhouettes
Author: calorie-zero
Chapter: 1/3
Pairing: Reita/Ruki
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Romance, Angst
Warnings: Drugs
Disclaimer: Unfortunately fiction. *tear*
Summary: Ruki had always thought they were too good to be true-and he hadn't been good enough to keep Reita away from self-destruction.
Notes: My Reituki-chibis have returned again, in all their angst. Supposed to be a one-shot but I am oddly incapable of writing shorter fikkus.
Reita leaned against his unmade bed, fingers tapping restlessly on the cold wooden floors in beat with the tick-tock of the grandfather clock. His eyes, dark and blank just the way he knew Ruki hated them, wandered across the dark canvas of his room until they found the smallest of cracks in wall and rested there with the tiniest of thoughts fleeting in the back of his dulled mind. The room smelled sickeningly sweet, suffocated with a sort of loss he couldn't quite figure out. He felt like he had lost something important but he couldn't remember what it exactly was.
An ashtray sat still next to him, stuffed with smoldering butts, in its crystalline glory. Reita slowly glanced at it in disdain. He felt like he had lost something because of that ashtray, but he shut his eyes and shook his head. It couldn't be. He couldn't have lost anything because he had never had it in the first place. All he had ever had was that ashtray and its smoking contents and his hand unconsciously groped for the last joint he had brought home in a plastic bag.
Hand rolled in a thousand yen bill was what he had always had. Reita stuck it nonchalantly between his lips and lit it, taking in a deep breath of the saccharine and overwhelming flavor. Smoke plumed into the air, circling around his head before dissipating out the open window. The night was below twenty degrees and the heater had died, but Reita laughed at how cold he felt; it made him feel new somehow, fresh in a strange way, and perhaps in the morning, the sun would melt him back into the human he once was.
His glazed eyes wandered back to the crack in the wall. It always started with the smallest of cracks-the kind you could barely even see-to create a broken heart, or two.
________
For once, the sky was blue. Ruki smiled at it, lying flat across the concrete park bench with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun and let the warmth wash over his body. For the last three months, it had been raining almost everyday and he had come to dislike the gray. But now that it was gone, he missed it...almost. As lovey-dovey as it was, he knew there was enough gray in Reita's eyes to last him an entire lifetime.
A familiar song danced its way through the air buzzing with cicadas. Laughing, Ruki sat up and dashed towards the open door of an old grungy car that had parked crookedly on the curb. The plush of the seats still smelled like summer bleach and ocean salt and the cologne that had spilled in the backseat. It smelled like Reita.
"Sorry I'm late. My baby needed an oil change," Reita apologized when Ruki opened his mouth to say hello, patting the dusty dashboard of his beat-up Honda. From the grease stains on Reita's shirt, Ruki already knew, but the other man was still unaware of his lover's observational skills so he opted to keep quiet and simply nodded, smiling. His heart beat a little faster when Reita reached over to buckle his seatbelt for him, discreetly taking the chance to stroke his thumb across Ruki's pale collarbone. Ruki knew what it meant. They were going to go somewhere hidden, but romantic in Reita's mind, and Ruki was going to let Reita kiss him until he was dizzy against the car window.
"You should put on your seatbelt too," Ruki said, biting the side of his lip. He secretly hated it when Reita tried to protect him but was hypocritical about himself. As expected, Reita shook his head and changed the gears, the car wheels clunking back onto the main street and speeding down the street. Reita lived life like he drove, Ruki thought with a half-smile, fast and furious.
"I can't believe we only started going out next and I'm already making you wait on me," Reita sheepishly pointed out, chuckling apologetically in the back of his throat.
"It's okay, really. The weather was nice today so I didn't mind," Ruki told him. He tried not to stare at Reita's easy and relaxed form with one arm draped across the open window and only one hand on the wheel. In the silence that followed, he wondered if the other man ever felt nervous. It didn't seem like it.
The car, still silent, slowed to a stop at a red light. Ruki shifted uncomfortably in his seat, picking at the threads in his torn jeans. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reita's hand slide from the wheel towards him and his breath hitched for a second until he noticed that Reita was only changing the song on the CD player. The familiar song that he had heard before played its soft piano melody again. He looked up to see Reita dancing the best he could in his seat and raised a brow.
"Come on, you love this song. Sing it for me." Reita continued to move his head from side to side, pursing his lips in a way that pleaded for Ruki to sing along. Opening and closing his mouth futilely, Ruki tried to think of the lyrics but found that they had left him at this inconveniently. "Come on. Just don't think about it," Reita gently strung him a bridge, mouthing the first few words.
"'Every breath that you will take when you are sitting next to me will..." Ruki closed his eyes, the feeling of bliss spreading down through his fingertips, and sang it for Reita over the radio and the traffic noise.
A yellow butterfly fluttered past the windshield in the early summer air.
________
The vanilla ice cream melted over Reita's fingers, dripping to form puddles on the concrete, and went unnoticed because he was too busy being captivated by Ruki's lips. The hand stroking the back of his neck felt soft and small but strong, just like he liked it. Peeking underneath his eyelids, Reita watched as Ruki's face became flushed when he concentrated harder on the kiss and this secret entertainment only further imprinted it in his mind. He would be replaying this scene for weeks to come.
Ruki pulled back after another minute, shyly avoiding Reita's gaze. Though it left him feeling a bit empty, Reita enjoyed this little moment because in the end, Ruki's eyes would trail back to his face. Always. Veiled by the drooping willows, this display of affection would be only theirs to remember.
"Your cheeks are red, Reita," Ruki told him after some inspection, reaching up to pinch the other man's cheek with a grin.
"And you look all red like Christmas morning," Reita cleverly said in reply, letting go of the ice cream cone to grab Ruki's hand. Vanilla ice cream smeared across Ruki's fingers, melting further between the heat of their palms when they pressed tighter together.
"'Cos I'm the jolly old man buttering up your chimneys at midnight just so I can visit you. Are you calling me fat, by the way?" Ruki joked, rolling his eyes when Reita tried to protest. "As long as you can still carry me from point A to point B in your apartment, I think we'll be okay on this weight thing." They both tried not to think about the time Reita had dropped him on the kitchen tile by accident.
Slumping forward onto Ruki's tiny body, Reita sighed into his neck. The sudden warm breath made him shudder and hold onto Reita's hand tighter, biting the shell of his lover's ear playfully when he heard, "More to love anyways."
________
“This is my favorite cake of all time. Do you like it?” Reita piped up, taking another bite of the lemon cream slice he had ordered and watching Ruki poke at his own slice with a fork.
"It's...okay," Ruki said unsurely, the smile on his face obviously forced. After the first bite, he knew he couldn't possibly take another because there was definitely way too much sugar in it (not a surprise since Reita had such a horrible sweet tooth for cake and pudding). So much, in fact, the sweetness was turning into a sort of bitterness. He took another sip of his barley tea.
"Do you not want it?" Reita asked with a smile, already pulling Ruki's mostly intact cake away from him. “You can have my tea, in exchange,” he added when he saw that Ruki’s cup was empty, save for the few barley seeds at the bottom. It was kind of funny how much Reita loved sugar, despite how much he protested his obsession.
Gratefully, Ruki took Reita’s cup and took a gulp-and almost spit out the mouthful. He had forgotten that Reita liked to put sugar cubes into his tea as well and had dissolved a record of ten into his tea this time.
But on the bright side, it had been an indirect kiss.
That’s what had gone wrong. Ruki was always looking to the optimistic side of things when it came to Reita, even if there wasn’t anything bright or good to look at it. It was detrimental how easily he could craft a believable lie that even fooled himself.
Leaning across the table on his elbows, Ruki grinned and gave Reita a direct kiss. The cake tasted much better this way.
________
It was always the rhetorical questions that got to them: you love me, but are you in love with me? What’s the difference between like and love? Why?
Ruki would say yes, “lovers make you dumber,” and “why what?” Reita would say he didn’t know the difference between any of them and simply plaster that look of pure confusion into his eyes to get away with it.
The smart answer was no (the other questions would go away soon enough).
________
Maybe it had been a secret Reita couldn't tell him. Maybe it was something Reita picked up while they were together. Maybe instead of dedicating himself to Ruki, Reita had dedicated himself to ways of pushing away love for things less real and more destructive. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
In any way, Ruki failed to fit the jigsaw puzzle together in time.
Now he was sitting on a park swing, alone, kicking at the sand half-heartedly. Summer had passed by a while ago, the chill in the air making goose bumps rise on Ruki's arms, and the butterflies no longer perched upon the empty branches. It was dark, the only light being the lamp a few meters away. He missed the way Reita would hold him during the winter, toasting marshmallows in a small pit fire until they were black, melted inside, and dangerously aflame. For the first time in a long time, he noticed how cold it could be.
The children he had been watching play all day had gone home. The skaters with their girlfriends in high heels had gone somewhere more exciting and less romantic and Ruki wondered why anybody even tried anymore.
Biting at the skin around his nails until they bled, Ruki pushed the memory away. Why was he trying to cling to something that had obviously never been his? It was pathetic. There was no reason to be afraid now that it was gone, but thinking this way only made him dig his jagged cuticles into his arm. He couldn't admit that it had hurt.
Even now, he could still smell Reita. The cologne, sweet but distinctly male, wouldn't wash away from his skin or his clothes and it was just one of the few pieces of rubble Ruki had left over to cradle. These memories numbed him.
Fingers icy from the winter cold, he fumbled with the keypad and somehow managed to press the send button on his cell phone and held it up to his ear. The other end rang one, twice, and there was a click as somebody picked up, but after, there was only the sound of the words getting caught in Ruki's throat and of that somebody breathing down the line. No hello. No how are you, are you okay now?
The sunset was glowing all sorts of colors, but to Ruki, the sky could only be gray.
________
It was sad to think about the truth. The reason that they had stuck together for so long was because of the very thing Ruki had tried to get rid of. With or without it, the result would’ve been the same.
Sometimes, when Reita was lucid, he still couldn’t help but think that in the least, they had been happy.
He turned back to his empty bag with disdain. Now he had to take control of his body, which was tired from giggling uncontrollably for the last two hours, and he had the feeling his spine would break if he tried to move it too suddenly from its set position. Slowly and sorely, Reita crawled across the floor on his knees towards the dark television.
Pushing the stop button on the VCR, he ejected the tape that had been playing. Reita stared at the title before pushing it back into the machine to rewind it, turned on the television, and jabbed at the lopsided play button until he felt like he was falling off a cliff and watching his life flash before his eyes.
The camera was shaking, black and white for special effect. The camera was shaking and Ruki was laughing as he stumbled across the playground bridge and climb across the monkey bars. The camera was shaking and they were cramped up together in the tunnel, getting sand down their pants when they moved and tried to kiss each other. The camera was shaking and Reita heard himself say, "I love you."
The camera continued to shake.
________
A/N: It’s almost impossible for me to write this pairing in a fluffy way because they do work out so…badly, in a good way.
Comments are love~