A Lifetime of Rainy Days [Gravitation, Eiri/Shuichi]
Title: A Lifetime of Rainy Days
Fandom: Gravitation
Pairing/Characters: Eiri/Shuichi
Rating: PG-13, I think, but maybe a light R
Disclaimer: Gravitation and its characters do not belong to me.
Summary: Future fic; Shuichi was there when he came home and then everything got confusing.
A/N: I’m not entirely happy with it, but if I worked at it any longer, I would’ve gone crazy. Also, I probably left some things unanswered, but…well, Lost was my inspiration. So. XD
For kageotogi , who asked for a fic in which Shuichi tells Eiri Big News.
Eiri came home tired after the accident. His neck and shoulders were sore, there was a dull pain in his ribs, and his ears were ringing with the sounds of car horns and screeching tires and breaking glass. He’d hit his head on something hard in the crash-he was fuzzy on the details-but the throbbing was dissipating, the bleeding had stopped. He didn’t bother with the lights; his eyes closed the moment he reached the couch. Though exhausted, he didn’t sleep. He heard footsteps.
“You kept your key?” he asked, without looking.
“Just in case.” The footsteps stopped somewhere behind the couch, and a moment later, Eiri felt Shuichi sit down next to him. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t I look okay?” He opened his eyes then, and looked at Shuichi for the first time in five years.
Why? The question hit him suddenly, somewhere in the back of his mind. Why had he stayed away for so long? He couldn’t remember. He must’ve hit his head harder than he realized. He didn’t dwell on the thought. He was tired and achy and Shuichi was there, reaching out hesitantly and touching his face like he was afraid he might disappear.
“Yuki,” Shuichi said, voice quiet and brokenly relieved (and since he didn’t remember why Shuichi had been gone, there was a chance he’d done something to really piss Eiri off, but at that moment he couldn’t possibly be angry). “I’ve missed you so much.”
[--]
Eiri fucked Shuichi on the floor that night. He ignored his body’s protests. When he moved too much or Shuichi gripped too hard at his shoulders and back, he hid his winces by biting into the crook of Shuichi’s neck.
“I need to tell you something,” Shuichi whispered into his ear.
“So tell me.”
“I, uh-” Shuichi’s breath hitched. “Not now…” He slid his hands up into Eiri’s hair, pulled him in for a kiss. “Not now.”
[--]
The pain was still there when he woke up in the morning, though it had lessened some.
“Did you sleep well?” Shuichi was already up, shower-fresh, rifling through the drawer he’d kept his sweatshirts in. “I did. I haven’t slept like that in years. Yuki, what’d you do with my stuff?”
“Beats me. You should’ve taken it all with you.”
“Hm.” Shuichi drummed his fingers against his chin before opening another drawer, gleefully pulling out a button-down shirt. “Guess I’ll have to wear something of yours, then! Unless you’d prefer me naked.”
“I always prefer you naked,” Eiri muttered, only partly paying attention. He was trying to remember what he had done with Shuichi’s clothes, trying to remember which clothes had been left behind (and why), and finding that he couldn’t.
[--]
Eiri could’ve sworn he’d had a deadline coming up.
The calendar hung on his study wall was completely empty, devoid of notes, birthdays, doctor’s appointments, and the little devil stickers that signified a check-in with Mizuki. There was nothing and that was very strange.
He leaned back in his chair and scowled, rubbing at his sore temple. “I feel like I’m losing my mind…”
“You’re supposed to be resting!” Shuichi scolded him from the doorway, holding a mixing spoon. “Go lie down!”
“Don’t want to.” Eiri crossed his arms over his chest and eyed the spoon. “What are you doing with that?”
Shuichi grinned. “I can cook now.”
“Sure you can.”
[--]
But he could, Eiri discovered at dinner. He cooked well.
“You took lessons.”
Shuichi smiled and raised, lowered one shoulder. “Something like that.”
It was surreal, almost-how clean the kitchen was, how none of Shuichi’s fingers were bandaged, how the food didn’t make him want to gag. How…close to perfect it was. The only things missing were fresh flowers and little animated birds.
If it wasn’t for the pain, he’d think he was dreaming.
Shuichi kicked lightly at his feet under the table. “It’s good, huh?”
Eiri hummed a noncommittal response and poked at his food. “Didn’t you have something to tell me?”
Shuichi coughed a little. “No. Not yet.”
[--]
After three days, the pain had dulled even more.
He sat at his desk for hours and got nothing done. He had an unhurried feeling, like he could write but he didn’t have to, which didn’t make any sense.
“All you have to worry about is getting some rest,” Shuichi said, gently massaging his shoulders.
Eiri shrugged his hands off. “You haven’t left the apartment since you got here.”
“Neither have you.”
“I know. But you don’t have…things to do?”
“Nope.” Shuichi spun the desk chair around and settled onto his lap. “I’m all yours,” he purred, nuzzling beneath Eiri’s chin.
“You don’t have to work?” Eiri asked, trying to ignore the way his body was tightening in response to Shuichi’s lips on his skin, Shuichi’s groin pressed against his. “Ever?”
“Yuki, you know,” Shuichi murmured between nips along his collarbone, “I don’t do that anymore.”
But he didn’t know that, even though he had a feeling that he should. He didn’t understand and it was driving him crazy. So he fucked Shuichi on his desk until he stopped thinking about it.
[--]
He was on the phone when it happened. Distracted by a very old message from Riku that he had no business listening to at all, because Riku was happy and healthy in New York where he belonged and he didn’t need Eiri to get stupid and sentimental in traffic. But it was raining. And rain made him feel soft and unusual, because it’d been raining on the morning Shuichi left, five years ago.
So he was listening to the message and it was raining and he was stupid.
(“You know, Yuki,” Shuichi had told him once, “you should probably stop thinking so much when you’re behind the wheel. It makes you a pretty lousy driver.”)
The crash. The force, the impact. He hit his head and there was blood in his eyes. Glass went flying and the noise was deafening and for a moment there was nothing-
[--]
He woke up sweating, with Shuichi’s arms and legs around him in a vice grip.
“Let go.”
“I still dream about it, too.”
Eiri frowned. That didn’t make any sense. “What?”
Shuichi just held him tighter.
[--]
After a week, he started finding it strange that no one was bothering him; and he marveled at how easy it’d been to not think about them, like he and Shuichi were the only people in the world; that wasn’t love, that was scariness.
After a week, he forgot that Shuichi had something to tell him.
After a week, the pain was only there when he made sudden movements.
[--]
One morning, Eiri left the apartment. He was bored, restless, and out of cigarettes.
He left while Shuichi was still asleep. He didn’t want company. He wanted to try to untangle his thoughts. (And for some reason, he had a feeling that Shuichi wouldn’t want him to go out. He couldn’t explain why, and it was weird, but it wasn’t any weirder than everything that was going on.)
It was grey outside, like it might start raining at any moment. Eiri wondered if he was doomed to a lifetime of rainy days. (It was pouring the morning Shuichi left. Clothes completely soaked, he grumbled a long string of curses as he followed the singer to the tour bus, silenced only when kissing him goodbye.)
Right. He’d gone on tour. But…
He stopped, realizing he was heading somewhere else. “Cigarettes,” he reminded himself, feeling ridiculous.
The tour, he remembered as he resumed walking in the right direction, hadn’t lasted long. It’d been shorter than most, even. So why had he been gone for so long? Why hadn’t he come home sooner? He tried to remember the phone calls, the video chats, tried to remember if they’d fought, if Shuichi had given any signs of...
He was going the wrong way again, but he didn’t stop himself this time.
[--]
“It’s noisy! What are you up to?”
“I’m at the park. There are all these brats running around-” He let that sore subject drop, quickly. “Where are you?”
“Osaka. I wanna ride the Ferris wheel, but K won’t let me go anywhere.”
“He told me you were sick.”
“He needs to mind his own business,” Shuichi sighed. Then, suddenly cheerful, “Are you worried about me?”
“Just take care of yourself.”
“Oh, Yuki-”
“I don’t want you passing your germs on to me when you get back.”
“-you’re so sweet. Like a rabid bear.”
“That could be a hit song. You’re getting better.”
“I love you,” Shuichi laughed, then coughed, then laughed some more.
[--]
When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on the park bench and it was drizzling, and he remembered.
[--]
“Tell me.”
Shuichi looked up from wringing his hands, eyes wide. “Tell you what?”
Eiri closed the door, locked it, like that mattered. “Tell me about your tour.”
“My…” Shuichi stood, shaking his head and forcing a smile. “Yuki, you’re all wet.”
Eiri stood still as Shuichi went over to him and started unbuttoning his shirt. “Tell me about how you started sounding weaker and weaker each time you called me.”
“If I’d known you were going out,” Shuichi murmured, fingers brushing against cold exposed skin, “I would’ve made you take an umbrella.”
Eiri let Shuichi push the shirt off his shoulders, arms. “Tell me about the emergency room.”
“Yuki, don’t kill the mood.”
“Stop it.” Eiri grabbed Shuichi’s wrists before his hands could make any more progress on his belt. “You’re dead.”
Shuichi didn’t look at him. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against Eiri’s chest. “So are you.”
[--]
He hit his head and there was blood in his eyes, glass went flying and the noise was deafening and for a moment there was nothing, and that nothing was death.
[--]
Eiri wished he’d bought more cigarettes.
“I knew your cooking was too good to be true.” He leaned back into the couch, still holding Shuichi’s wrists. “What now?”
Shuichi sighed, held his hands open apologetically. “Time to move on, I guess.”
“Move on to what?”
“I don’t know.”
Eiri looked at him, eyebrow arched sharply. “You don’t know. What were you doing for five years?”
Shuichi bit his bottom lip, and Eiri watched with a pang of guilt as tears slowly welled up in his eyes. “I was…” He stopped, sniffling. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and broken, like it was a week ago, when he touched Eiri’s face and said how much he’d missed him. “I was waiting for you.”
Eiri kissed him quickly, to keep him from crying, to keep his heart from hurting. “Idiot.”
“I wanted to hold on to you, just in case…we don’t like what comes after this.”
Eiri released Shuichi’s wrists so he could move closer. He wanted to say something reassuring, but he wasn’t very good at that kind of thing. He sifted his fingers through Shuichi’s hair and kissed his head and said, “As long as I can get cigarettes there, it’ll be fine.”
And it would be nice if it didn’t rain, too.
Fandom: Gravitation
Pairing/Characters: Eiri/Shuichi
Rating: PG-13, I think, but maybe a light R
Disclaimer: Gravitation and its characters do not belong to me.
Summary: Future fic; Shuichi was there when he came home and then everything got confusing.
A/N: I’m not entirely happy with it, but if I worked at it any longer, I would’ve gone crazy. Also, I probably left some things unanswered, but…well, Lost was my inspiration. So. XD
For kageotogi , who asked for a fic in which Shuichi tells Eiri Big News.
Eiri came home tired after the accident. His neck and shoulders were sore, there was a dull pain in his ribs, and his ears were ringing with the sounds of car horns and screeching tires and breaking glass. He’d hit his head on something hard in the crash-he was fuzzy on the details-but the throbbing was dissipating, the bleeding had stopped. He didn’t bother with the lights; his eyes closed the moment he reached the couch. Though exhausted, he didn’t sleep. He heard footsteps.
“You kept your key?” he asked, without looking.
“Just in case.” The footsteps stopped somewhere behind the couch, and a moment later, Eiri felt Shuichi sit down next to him. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t I look okay?” He opened his eyes then, and looked at Shuichi for the first time in five years.
Why? The question hit him suddenly, somewhere in the back of his mind. Why had he stayed away for so long? He couldn’t remember. He must’ve hit his head harder than he realized. He didn’t dwell on the thought. He was tired and achy and Shuichi was there, reaching out hesitantly and touching his face like he was afraid he might disappear.
“Yuki,” Shuichi said, voice quiet and brokenly relieved (and since he didn’t remember why Shuichi had been gone, there was a chance he’d done something to really piss Eiri off, but at that moment he couldn’t possibly be angry). “I’ve missed you so much.”
[--]
Eiri fucked Shuichi on the floor that night. He ignored his body’s protests. When he moved too much or Shuichi gripped too hard at his shoulders and back, he hid his winces by biting into the crook of Shuichi’s neck.
“I need to tell you something,” Shuichi whispered into his ear.
“So tell me.”
“I, uh-” Shuichi’s breath hitched. “Not now…” He slid his hands up into Eiri’s hair, pulled him in for a kiss. “Not now.”
[--]
The pain was still there when he woke up in the morning, though it had lessened some.
“Did you sleep well?” Shuichi was already up, shower-fresh, rifling through the drawer he’d kept his sweatshirts in. “I did. I haven’t slept like that in years. Yuki, what’d you do with my stuff?”
“Beats me. You should’ve taken it all with you.”
“Hm.” Shuichi drummed his fingers against his chin before opening another drawer, gleefully pulling out a button-down shirt. “Guess I’ll have to wear something of yours, then! Unless you’d prefer me naked.”
“I always prefer you naked,” Eiri muttered, only partly paying attention. He was trying to remember what he had done with Shuichi’s clothes, trying to remember which clothes had been left behind (and why), and finding that he couldn’t.
[--]
Eiri could’ve sworn he’d had a deadline coming up.
The calendar hung on his study wall was completely empty, devoid of notes, birthdays, doctor’s appointments, and the little devil stickers that signified a check-in with Mizuki. There was nothing and that was very strange.
He leaned back in his chair and scowled, rubbing at his sore temple. “I feel like I’m losing my mind…”
“You’re supposed to be resting!” Shuichi scolded him from the doorway, holding a mixing spoon. “Go lie down!”
“Don’t want to.” Eiri crossed his arms over his chest and eyed the spoon. “What are you doing with that?”
Shuichi grinned. “I can cook now.”
“Sure you can.”
[--]
But he could, Eiri discovered at dinner. He cooked well.
“You took lessons.”
Shuichi smiled and raised, lowered one shoulder. “Something like that.”
It was surreal, almost-how clean the kitchen was, how none of Shuichi’s fingers were bandaged, how the food didn’t make him want to gag. How…close to perfect it was. The only things missing were fresh flowers and little animated birds.
If it wasn’t for the pain, he’d think he was dreaming.
Shuichi kicked lightly at his feet under the table. “It’s good, huh?”
Eiri hummed a noncommittal response and poked at his food. “Didn’t you have something to tell me?”
Shuichi coughed a little. “No. Not yet.”
[--]
After three days, the pain had dulled even more.
He sat at his desk for hours and got nothing done. He had an unhurried feeling, like he could write but he didn’t have to, which didn’t make any sense.
“All you have to worry about is getting some rest,” Shuichi said, gently massaging his shoulders.
Eiri shrugged his hands off. “You haven’t left the apartment since you got here.”
“Neither have you.”
“I know. But you don’t have…things to do?”
“Nope.” Shuichi spun the desk chair around and settled onto his lap. “I’m all yours,” he purred, nuzzling beneath Eiri’s chin.
“You don’t have to work?” Eiri asked, trying to ignore the way his body was tightening in response to Shuichi’s lips on his skin, Shuichi’s groin pressed against his. “Ever?”
“Yuki, you know,” Shuichi murmured between nips along his collarbone, “I don’t do that anymore.”
But he didn’t know that, even though he had a feeling that he should. He didn’t understand and it was driving him crazy. So he fucked Shuichi on his desk until he stopped thinking about it.
[--]
He was on the phone when it happened. Distracted by a very old message from Riku that he had no business listening to at all, because Riku was happy and healthy in New York where he belonged and he didn’t need Eiri to get stupid and sentimental in traffic. But it was raining. And rain made him feel soft and unusual, because it’d been raining on the morning Shuichi left, five years ago.
So he was listening to the message and it was raining and he was stupid.
(“You know, Yuki,” Shuichi had told him once, “you should probably stop thinking so much when you’re behind the wheel. It makes you a pretty lousy driver.”)
The crash. The force, the impact. He hit his head and there was blood in his eyes. Glass went flying and the noise was deafening and for a moment there was nothing-
[--]
He woke up sweating, with Shuichi’s arms and legs around him in a vice grip.
“Let go.”
“I still dream about it, too.”
Eiri frowned. That didn’t make any sense. “What?”
Shuichi just held him tighter.
[--]
After a week, he started finding it strange that no one was bothering him; and he marveled at how easy it’d been to not think about them, like he and Shuichi were the only people in the world; that wasn’t love, that was scariness.
After a week, he forgot that Shuichi had something to tell him.
After a week, the pain was only there when he made sudden movements.
[--]
One morning, Eiri left the apartment. He was bored, restless, and out of cigarettes.
He left while Shuichi was still asleep. He didn’t want company. He wanted to try to untangle his thoughts. (And for some reason, he had a feeling that Shuichi wouldn’t want him to go out. He couldn’t explain why, and it was weird, but it wasn’t any weirder than everything that was going on.)
It was grey outside, like it might start raining at any moment. Eiri wondered if he was doomed to a lifetime of rainy days. (It was pouring the morning Shuichi left. Clothes completely soaked, he grumbled a long string of curses as he followed the singer to the tour bus, silenced only when kissing him goodbye.)
Right. He’d gone on tour. But…
He stopped, realizing he was heading somewhere else. “Cigarettes,” he reminded himself, feeling ridiculous.
The tour, he remembered as he resumed walking in the right direction, hadn’t lasted long. It’d been shorter than most, even. So why had he been gone for so long? Why hadn’t he come home sooner? He tried to remember the phone calls, the video chats, tried to remember if they’d fought, if Shuichi had given any signs of...
He was going the wrong way again, but he didn’t stop himself this time.
[--]
“It’s noisy! What are you up to?”
“I’m at the park. There are all these brats running around-” He let that sore subject drop, quickly. “Where are you?”
“Osaka. I wanna ride the Ferris wheel, but K won’t let me go anywhere.”
“He told me you were sick.”
“He needs to mind his own business,” Shuichi sighed. Then, suddenly cheerful, “Are you worried about me?”
“Just take care of yourself.”
“Oh, Yuki-”
“I don’t want you passing your germs on to me when you get back.”
“-you’re so sweet. Like a rabid bear.”
“That could be a hit song. You’re getting better.”
“I love you,” Shuichi laughed, then coughed, then laughed some more.
[--]
When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on the park bench and it was drizzling, and he remembered.
[--]
“Tell me.”
Shuichi looked up from wringing his hands, eyes wide. “Tell you what?”
Eiri closed the door, locked it, like that mattered. “Tell me about your tour.”
“My…” Shuichi stood, shaking his head and forcing a smile. “Yuki, you’re all wet.”
Eiri stood still as Shuichi went over to him and started unbuttoning his shirt. “Tell me about how you started sounding weaker and weaker each time you called me.”
“If I’d known you were going out,” Shuichi murmured, fingers brushing against cold exposed skin, “I would’ve made you take an umbrella.”
Eiri let Shuichi push the shirt off his shoulders, arms. “Tell me about the emergency room.”
“Yuki, don’t kill the mood.”
“Stop it.” Eiri grabbed Shuichi’s wrists before his hands could make any more progress on his belt. “You’re dead.”
Shuichi didn’t look at him. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against Eiri’s chest. “So are you.”
[--]
He hit his head and there was blood in his eyes, glass went flying and the noise was deafening and for a moment there was nothing, and that nothing was death.
[--]
Eiri wished he’d bought more cigarettes.
“I knew your cooking was too good to be true.” He leaned back into the couch, still holding Shuichi’s wrists. “What now?”
Shuichi sighed, held his hands open apologetically. “Time to move on, I guess.”
“Move on to what?”
“I don’t know.”
Eiri looked at him, eyebrow arched sharply. “You don’t know. What were you doing for five years?”
Shuichi bit his bottom lip, and Eiri watched with a pang of guilt as tears slowly welled up in his eyes. “I was…” He stopped, sniffling. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and broken, like it was a week ago, when he touched Eiri’s face and said how much he’d missed him. “I was waiting for you.”
Eiri kissed him quickly, to keep him from crying, to keep his heart from hurting. “Idiot.”
“I wanted to hold on to you, just in case…we don’t like what comes after this.”
Eiri released Shuichi’s wrists so he could move closer. He wanted to say something reassuring, but he wasn’t very good at that kind of thing. He sifted his fingers through Shuichi’s hair and kissed his head and said, “As long as I can get cigarettes there, it’ll be fine.”
And it would be nice if it didn’t rain, too.