The Mountain for vikalpa by violeteyedhair
Author: violeteyedhair
For: vikalpa
Title: The Mountain
Pairing: Tezuka/Fuji
Rating: PG
Summary: Fuji broke up with Tezuka about when they entered high school, but time brings understanding. Can understanding bring true reunions?
Disclaimer: Neither character depicted within the story belongs to me.
A/N: I hope you like it!
The Well
by Pablo Neruda
At times you sink, you fall
into your hole of silence,
into your abyss of proud anger,
and yours can scarcely
return, still bearing remnants
of what you found
in the depth of your existence.
My love, what do you find
in your closed well?
Seaweed, swamps, rocks?
What do you see with blind eyes,
bitter and wounded?
Darling, you will not find
in the well into which you fall
what I keep for you on the heights:
a bouquet of dewy jasmines,
a kiss deeper than your abyss.
Do not fear me, do not fall
into your rancor again.
Shake off my word that came to wound you
and let it fly through the open window.
It will return to wound me
without your guiding it
since it was laden with a hard instant
and that instant will be disarmed in my breast.
Smile at me radiant
if my mouth wounds you.
I am not a gentle shepherd
like the ones in fairy tales,
but a good woodsman who shares with you
earth, wind, and mountain thorns.
Love me, you, smile at me,
help me to be good.
Do not wound yourself in me, for it will be useless,
do not wound me because you wound yourself.
Fuji didn't know when he'd started feeling this way, this calm, cold, chilling tiredness where his eyes were always dry but his body felt weighed down by gallons of water. He stopped playing tennis in his second year of high school, much to the dismay of his brother, but he smiled everyone's concerns away and insisted that his passion had always been in photography, not tennis.
People believed it, knowing the way Fuji never took the sport very seriously at all. He was grateful for that, but it was was only a half-truth. Fuji's photography held a higher importance than tennis and he did try very hard to succeed with it, but his passion was in Tezuka Kunimitsu.
The two boys had a short romantic endeavor in middle school where they were each other's first everything, but it came to an end when Fuji declared it and Tezuka, as firm as he was about wanting to stay together, would not beg him to come back.
Fuji hadn't predicted that. Tezuka always fought, he always played to win, yet he didn't try for Fuji. I'm not a prize worth fighting for, Fuji thought with a small shiver; he had a habit of not dressing to properly suit the occasion simply because he didn't think to, even at twenty-one. It didn't matter much - beyond feeling chilled, it generally didn't affect him, or more importantly, his art, which slowly came to remind him more of the stronger, more serious boy with every capture. He knelt in a small puddle of water in front of a fallen white flower, one of its petals crushed upon the rock surface of the mountain's floor. Someone had stepped on it, leaving it intact, but only enough to survive.
Angrily, Fuji took a shot, angling and focusing his camera all around it until he lost his footing, falling on his butt. He smiled in spite of himself. He didn't know if it was the morning dew, the rain from earlier in the day, or the slowly melting spring snow that made everything damp, but he reveled in his cold, wet jeans loving the living metaphor he was quite literally sitting in. How like his life, to become damaged from his anger at something no one else would have found.
Amused with himself and the situation, he laid back on the wet rock, holding the camera at his face. His coat was wet now too, and his hair and satchel. He loved the image and meaning of himself like this too much to mind it. The fog was very thick today, which he knew before he looked up to see the sky, and he was sure that also contributed to the dampness. The weight of the water in the air impaired his vision just as the weight of the water in his heart.
This day was miserable, and Fuji both loved and hated it. Unfortunately, there weren't many pictures to take today, he realized as he rested the camera on his now slowly moving chest. He reached to the side to lift the injured flower up to the sky and sighed. Why was his every movement still laden with so much weight by his own action from six years ago? He would have never thought depression to be like him, not back then, but people changed when they grew.
Tezuka taught him to feel the consequences of actions.
"Do you know what kind of flower that is?" a stern voice asked from where Fuji had come on the path, bringing him out of his calm daydream. It sounded like Tezuka. Fuji laughed; everything reminded him of Tezuka.
"I don't particularly care," Fuji said lightly, perhaps even arrogantly, as he tossed it aside and closed his eyes. "It's broken."
The stranger let out a small, irritated breath that anybody but Fuji would have missed. Yes, he did sound quite a bit like Tezuka. His smile brightened at the thought - if Fuji had never left him, they could be hiking this mountain together right now.
"You're going to catch a cold laying like that, Fuji."
"Saa." Was it Tezuka? This stranger knew his name. Most of his artistic photography featured this mountain, so for someone who enjoyed both nature and photography, it wouldn't be hard to figure out who he was, a strange man laying on the wet ground with a camera on his chest. To open his eyes would doubly disillusion him: he would either be disappointed that it wasn't Tezuka, or distressed that it was, so Fuji didn't want to try to find out. "But if it's for a good picture, then I don't mind."
Fuji could hear the stranger kneeling next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. To be a touched by a stranger...
Fuji opened his eyes, cold now to be exposed, and slowly, Tezuka Kunimitsu came into focus. Frowning now, Fuji said nothing. This was a hallucination. Normal people don't just run into the person they love on a hike up Mount Fuji.
Tezuka took Fuji by the hand and pulled him up so that he was sitting with his legs out straight in front of him. Dumbstruck, Fuji gazed into his eyes, breathless, thoughtless, unable to comprehend. Today had been so calm and quiet and dull, utterly uneventful - that's not how a reunion like this is supposed to happen. Where was the romance, the fantasy, and the whimsical air of secret passion?
The camera landed heavily on the ground, but Fuji ignored it to lean forward and kiss Tezuka on the lips, using both hands to bring the long-missing near-stranger's face closer. His heart was beating heavily now, but the air was still cold and his jeans still wet. They both remained still with Fuji's hands on Tezuka's face, neither of them kissing the other, their lips still touching.
The photographer was the first to pull back; he looked to the ground, suddenly colder and more uncomfortable than he was before. Tezuka only leaned down and picked up the flower Fuji dropped, straightening its petals. "It's a type of magnolia," he explained, holding it out to Fuji. "They're common during this season, my favorite time to hike." Fuji took it and held it in his lap, looking at up at Tezuka now. "They've always made me think of you."
Fuji nodded, trying to understand the situation. When they walked away from this, would there be any kind of change? Would there be something gained, or something lost? Closing his hands around the flower as if to protect, he whispered the words, "You didn't fight for me."
If Fuji was about to say anything beyond than that, his words and the memory of them vanished when Tezuka pulled him into a tight embrace which Fuji returned in that same instant, feeling tears pool his tightly-closed eyes. The shock and the height were working together to make him dizzy as he clung to Tezuka for the support he'd been wanting for over half a decade.
Tezuka held Fuji in front of him, looking into his bright azure eyes where most people saw pleasantness and pleasure, but he could see the pain and suffering beneath.
"If it hurt you to do that, then why did you?" he asked, his concern genuine. Fuji pressed his forehead against the larger boy - no, the man now, the professional tennis player - and he sighed.
Tears began to silently fall from Fuji's once-again-closed eyes as he smiled his happiest smile, grateful for the warm touch of his former lover. He understood now - Tezuka had wanted what was best for Fuji, but he had misinterpreted Fuji's needs.
"I was lonely," he answered so quietly that if Tezuka was any further away, he wouldn't have known Fuji said anything at all.
"And you've been lonely since." Tezuka's voice was frank, just as Fuji remembered it, but he never remembered them being so piercing. Maybe that offended Tezuka, to say that in a time when they had each other completely, he was lonely. Nodding, eyes still closed, he embraced Tezuka again, this time unwilling to be separated.
Tezuka sighed and wrapped his arms around Fuji once more. "I don't want you to be lonely anymore, Syuusuke," he said gently, kissing the top of his head. "Finish this hike with me."
Fuji nodded. Tezuka pulled him up, off of the damp ground, and offered his hand. Together, through the fog, they finished the climb together, understanding the mistakes in their own ways and each other's, certain they wouldn't make them again.
BONUS ENDING!
Normally, visitors weren't allowed on the practice courts, let alone press photographers, but after a chance or two to... well... reason with the proper persons, Fuji rarely ran into many more problems on that front. Making his way toward Tezuka with a placid smiled on his face, Fuji had just the thing to ease a stressful day.
Tezuka looked at him, worried. Fuji had packed a lunch for him, as he had every day since they moved in together, and left him a note with anything he might need to know in it (which only said "I love you", but there was certainly opportunity for him to say more if need be), and beyond that, Fuji was supposed to be taking pictures at a wedding today. He waved to his practice opponent, asking for a time out, then approached Fuji by the fence, not knowing if he should ask any questions.
Fuji didn't give him the chance. He opened the gate and stepped in, eyeing Tezuka with something obviously hidden in his hands. "I heard about your car troubles, buchou," he said lightly.
"I asked you not to call me that." It wasn't that he minded because he actually rather liked that Fuji still referred to him as the captain, but it became a habit of his to ask Fuji to stop. Fuji seemed to know, however, that if he did stop, Tezuka would be disappointed.
"And your torn shorts," he pressed on, seemingly ignoring Tezuka but reveling in every syllable.
"Was that you?" Tezuka asked sternly, with only the slightest trace of amusement; his shorts had indeed been torn in his bag, but there was mysteriously a second pair in his bag, a smaller pair than what he usually wore, and he seemed to remember Fuji commenting on how "cute" they made his butt look.
"Your cat was sick this morning, too, wasn't she?"
Tezuka said nothing.
"It must be a very stressful day, ne?" Fuji held his hand out, palm facing down, hiding something inside. "I have just the thing to calm your nerves."
Choosing caution, Tezuka eyed Fuji's hand warily. He knew the tensai liked to tease, but how far Fuji would really go was always a question even he couldn't answer. "What is it, Syuusuke?" he asked, hesitation evident in his voice. Was it something he could get in trouble for?
"Something I like when I'm trying to relax a little." He reached forward and took Tezuka's racket-free hand and Tezuka let his muscles loosen for Fuji to open it and drop into it...
Wasabi coated peas. Tezuka let out a short, amused and mostly relieved breath. "You're ridiculous, Syuusuke."
"I love you, too, dear," he purred quietly, standing on his toes to kiss him on the lips. "And I have to return to work." With that, he left Tezuka standing there, shaking his head, setting the peas next to his water bottle on the bench. What a needless thing to do.
But he appreciated it.
For: vikalpa
Title: The Mountain
Pairing: Tezuka/Fuji
Rating: PG
Summary: Fuji broke up with Tezuka about when they entered high school, but time brings understanding. Can understanding bring true reunions?
Disclaimer: Neither character depicted within the story belongs to me.
A/N: I hope you like it!
The Well
by Pablo Neruda
At times you sink, you fall
into your hole of silence,
into your abyss of proud anger,
and yours can scarcely
return, still bearing remnants
of what you found
in the depth of your existence.
My love, what do you find
in your closed well?
Seaweed, swamps, rocks?
What do you see with blind eyes,
bitter and wounded?
Darling, you will not find
in the well into which you fall
what I keep for you on the heights:
a bouquet of dewy jasmines,
a kiss deeper than your abyss.
Do not fear me, do not fall
into your rancor again.
Shake off my word that came to wound you
and let it fly through the open window.
It will return to wound me
without your guiding it
since it was laden with a hard instant
and that instant will be disarmed in my breast.
Smile at me radiant
if my mouth wounds you.
I am not a gentle shepherd
like the ones in fairy tales,
but a good woodsman who shares with you
earth, wind, and mountain thorns.
Love me, you, smile at me,
help me to be good.
Do not wound yourself in me, for it will be useless,
do not wound me because you wound yourself.
Fuji didn't know when he'd started feeling this way, this calm, cold, chilling tiredness where his eyes were always dry but his body felt weighed down by gallons of water. He stopped playing tennis in his second year of high school, much to the dismay of his brother, but he smiled everyone's concerns away and insisted that his passion had always been in photography, not tennis.
People believed it, knowing the way Fuji never took the sport very seriously at all. He was grateful for that, but it was was only a half-truth. Fuji's photography held a higher importance than tennis and he did try very hard to succeed with it, but his passion was in Tezuka Kunimitsu.
The two boys had a short romantic endeavor in middle school where they were each other's first everything, but it came to an end when Fuji declared it and Tezuka, as firm as he was about wanting to stay together, would not beg him to come back.
Fuji hadn't predicted that. Tezuka always fought, he always played to win, yet he didn't try for Fuji. I'm not a prize worth fighting for, Fuji thought with a small shiver; he had a habit of not dressing to properly suit the occasion simply because he didn't think to, even at twenty-one. It didn't matter much - beyond feeling chilled, it generally didn't affect him, or more importantly, his art, which slowly came to remind him more of the stronger, more serious boy with every capture. He knelt in a small puddle of water in front of a fallen white flower, one of its petals crushed upon the rock surface of the mountain's floor. Someone had stepped on it, leaving it intact, but only enough to survive.
Angrily, Fuji took a shot, angling and focusing his camera all around it until he lost his footing, falling on his butt. He smiled in spite of himself. He didn't know if it was the morning dew, the rain from earlier in the day, or the slowly melting spring snow that made everything damp, but he reveled in his cold, wet jeans loving the living metaphor he was quite literally sitting in. How like his life, to become damaged from his anger at something no one else would have found.
Amused with himself and the situation, he laid back on the wet rock, holding the camera at his face. His coat was wet now too, and his hair and satchel. He loved the image and meaning of himself like this too much to mind it. The fog was very thick today, which he knew before he looked up to see the sky, and he was sure that also contributed to the dampness. The weight of the water in the air impaired his vision just as the weight of the water in his heart.
This day was miserable, and Fuji both loved and hated it. Unfortunately, there weren't many pictures to take today, he realized as he rested the camera on his now slowly moving chest. He reached to the side to lift the injured flower up to the sky and sighed. Why was his every movement still laden with so much weight by his own action from six years ago? He would have never thought depression to be like him, not back then, but people changed when they grew.
Tezuka taught him to feel the consequences of actions.
"Do you know what kind of flower that is?" a stern voice asked from where Fuji had come on the path, bringing him out of his calm daydream. It sounded like Tezuka. Fuji laughed; everything reminded him of Tezuka.
"I don't particularly care," Fuji said lightly, perhaps even arrogantly, as he tossed it aside and closed his eyes. "It's broken."
The stranger let out a small, irritated breath that anybody but Fuji would have missed. Yes, he did sound quite a bit like Tezuka. His smile brightened at the thought - if Fuji had never left him, they could be hiking this mountain together right now.
"You're going to catch a cold laying like that, Fuji."
"Saa." Was it Tezuka? This stranger knew his name. Most of his artistic photography featured this mountain, so for someone who enjoyed both nature and photography, it wouldn't be hard to figure out who he was, a strange man laying on the wet ground with a camera on his chest. To open his eyes would doubly disillusion him: he would either be disappointed that it wasn't Tezuka, or distressed that it was, so Fuji didn't want to try to find out. "But if it's for a good picture, then I don't mind."
Fuji could hear the stranger kneeling next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. To be a touched by a stranger...
Fuji opened his eyes, cold now to be exposed, and slowly, Tezuka Kunimitsu came into focus. Frowning now, Fuji said nothing. This was a hallucination. Normal people don't just run into the person they love on a hike up Mount Fuji.
Tezuka took Fuji by the hand and pulled him up so that he was sitting with his legs out straight in front of him. Dumbstruck, Fuji gazed into his eyes, breathless, thoughtless, unable to comprehend. Today had been so calm and quiet and dull, utterly uneventful - that's not how a reunion like this is supposed to happen. Where was the romance, the fantasy, and the whimsical air of secret passion?
The camera landed heavily on the ground, but Fuji ignored it to lean forward and kiss Tezuka on the lips, using both hands to bring the long-missing near-stranger's face closer. His heart was beating heavily now, but the air was still cold and his jeans still wet. They both remained still with Fuji's hands on Tezuka's face, neither of them kissing the other, their lips still touching.
The photographer was the first to pull back; he looked to the ground, suddenly colder and more uncomfortable than he was before. Tezuka only leaned down and picked up the flower Fuji dropped, straightening its petals. "It's a type of magnolia," he explained, holding it out to Fuji. "They're common during this season, my favorite time to hike." Fuji took it and held it in his lap, looking at up at Tezuka now. "They've always made me think of you."
Fuji nodded, trying to understand the situation. When they walked away from this, would there be any kind of change? Would there be something gained, or something lost? Closing his hands around the flower as if to protect, he whispered the words, "You didn't fight for me."
If Fuji was about to say anything beyond than that, his words and the memory of them vanished when Tezuka pulled him into a tight embrace which Fuji returned in that same instant, feeling tears pool his tightly-closed eyes. The shock and the height were working together to make him dizzy as he clung to Tezuka for the support he'd been wanting for over half a decade.
Tezuka held Fuji in front of him, looking into his bright azure eyes where most people saw pleasantness and pleasure, but he could see the pain and suffering beneath.
"If it hurt you to do that, then why did you?" he asked, his concern genuine. Fuji pressed his forehead against the larger boy - no, the man now, the professional tennis player - and he sighed.
Tears began to silently fall from Fuji's once-again-closed eyes as he smiled his happiest smile, grateful for the warm touch of his former lover. He understood now - Tezuka had wanted what was best for Fuji, but he had misinterpreted Fuji's needs.
"I was lonely," he answered so quietly that if Tezuka was any further away, he wouldn't have known Fuji said anything at all.
"And you've been lonely since." Tezuka's voice was frank, just as Fuji remembered it, but he never remembered them being so piercing. Maybe that offended Tezuka, to say that in a time when they had each other completely, he was lonely. Nodding, eyes still closed, he embraced Tezuka again, this time unwilling to be separated.
Tezuka sighed and wrapped his arms around Fuji once more. "I don't want you to be lonely anymore, Syuusuke," he said gently, kissing the top of his head. "Finish this hike with me."
Fuji nodded. Tezuka pulled him up, off of the damp ground, and offered his hand. Together, through the fog, they finished the climb together, understanding the mistakes in their own ways and each other's, certain they wouldn't make them again.
BONUS ENDING!
Normally, visitors weren't allowed on the practice courts, let alone press photographers, but after a chance or two to... well... reason with the proper persons, Fuji rarely ran into many more problems on that front. Making his way toward Tezuka with a placid smiled on his face, Fuji had just the thing to ease a stressful day.
Tezuka looked at him, worried. Fuji had packed a lunch for him, as he had every day since they moved in together, and left him a note with anything he might need to know in it (which only said "I love you", but there was certainly opportunity for him to say more if need be), and beyond that, Fuji was supposed to be taking pictures at a wedding today. He waved to his practice opponent, asking for a time out, then approached Fuji by the fence, not knowing if he should ask any questions.
Fuji didn't give him the chance. He opened the gate and stepped in, eyeing Tezuka with something obviously hidden in his hands. "I heard about your car troubles, buchou," he said lightly.
"I asked you not to call me that." It wasn't that he minded because he actually rather liked that Fuji still referred to him as the captain, but it became a habit of his to ask Fuji to stop. Fuji seemed to know, however, that if he did stop, Tezuka would be disappointed.
"And your torn shorts," he pressed on, seemingly ignoring Tezuka but reveling in every syllable.
"Was that you?" Tezuka asked sternly, with only the slightest trace of amusement; his shorts had indeed been torn in his bag, but there was mysteriously a second pair in his bag, a smaller pair than what he usually wore, and he seemed to remember Fuji commenting on how "cute" they made his butt look.
"Your cat was sick this morning, too, wasn't she?"
Tezuka said nothing.
"It must be a very stressful day, ne?" Fuji held his hand out, palm facing down, hiding something inside. "I have just the thing to calm your nerves."
Choosing caution, Tezuka eyed Fuji's hand warily. He knew the tensai liked to tease, but how far Fuji would really go was always a question even he couldn't answer. "What is it, Syuusuke?" he asked, hesitation evident in his voice. Was it something he could get in trouble for?
"Something I like when I'm trying to relax a little." He reached forward and took Tezuka's racket-free hand and Tezuka let his muscles loosen for Fuji to open it and drop into it...
Wasabi coated peas. Tezuka let out a short, amused and mostly relieved breath. "You're ridiculous, Syuusuke."
"I love you, too, dear," he purred quietly, standing on his toes to kiss him on the lips. "And I have to return to work." With that, he left Tezuka standing there, shaking his head, setting the peas next to his water bottle on the bench. What a needless thing to do.
But he appreciated it.