Because You Never Get Second Chances - Prologue & Part One
Title: Because You Never Get Second Chances
Fandom: Gravitation
Pairings: mainly Eiri/Shuichi, Shuichi/OC, Hiro/Ayaka, Yuji/Suguru, Tatsuha/Maiko
Rating: R, for content and language
Warnings: CHARACTER DEATH
Prologue: Departed; or, this bird has flown
The apartment was filled with noise, and that was the way he wanted it. The stereo played something classical, some CD he’d either bought in New York or gotten from Tohma; it didn’t matter, really, as long as it was playing and playing loud. The phone rang and eventually the machine beeped, and Mika’s voice told him to pick up the phone - sighed - reminded him that Tatsuha’s college graduation was in a week and she expected him there, and - why wouldn’t he pick up the phone - and she had heard about Shuichi. She paused, then, said she cared for him, wished he would please pick up the phone. The TV was on, showing the big news of the night, pictures of America and Shuichi and rings and happiness and a laughing black man with his arm around Shuichi, and Eiri wouldn’t change the channel. He parted his lips, letting the metal barrel push inside, cold against his tongue and teeth. Shuichi had taken his heart when he left, and so there was nothing inside of him to stop beating when he pulled the trigger. He kept his eyes closed, his ears open - the music, Mika, the laughter, Shuichi - and jerked once, shook. Then the insides of his mouth burst and spurted out of the hole in the back of his head.
A day later, Tohma was the first to open the apartment door and see the dark red on the wall.
Part One: Elaborate Lives; or, no time to catch our breath
Grand Central Station was Yuji’s favorite place to people-watch. He often spent at least fifteen minutes of his lunch break with his back against the walls of the large train station, making up lives for the people he saw, frequently with a cheap burger in his hand. His favorite was this man who came through once or twice a week with a rather large sack - which looked as if it held a shovel or something - and a hat with a feather on it atop his head. He imagined that the man led a second life underground with sewer people who worshipped him and gave him a weekly sacrifice and-well, no one ever said his stories had to be realistic, now did they?
Today, however, he was not there to partake in people watching. He glanced down at his watch as a surge of people started to emerge. Right on time. He looked up, eyes scanning the crowd until he spotted that familiar head of pink hair. He raised his hand in order to attract attention and called out, “Yo, Shuichi!” Shuichi’s big, expressive eyes caught his and he couldn’t help but grin. It’d been a long time. As the singer approached, his smile fell a little; it was great to see the boy again, but he wished the circumstances of their reunion were different, happier.
“Hey there, little buddy,” Yuji greeted as his arms enfolded the lean frame in a warm hug. “How’ve you been?”
“Not bad.” Shuichi’s smile was forced and looked like it different fit on his face. He squinted at Yuji curiously. “Did you get a tan?”
“Yeah, I’ve been doing some shows on the Bermuda coast. I think the bronze look is working for me.”
Shuichi smirked. “Bermuda, huh? And I was thinking you’ve just been doing overtime in a tanning bed.”
“Very funny,” Yuji elbowed him lightly. “Nah, the show was with this small troupe and most the performances were for free, but it was cool. I had to be replaced quickly, though, because of the-”
“Yeah.” A quick interjection. He didn’t want to talk about it just yet.
“Yeah.” He didn’t want to, either. “All set? Let’s ditch this joint.”
Shuichi was out with his fiancé Ahmed when the report on Yuki Eiri’s suicide actually aired in their beach house in California. They were at a club with the rest of the band-Ahmed had been Shuichi’s first drummer when he came to America four years before, and he’d been attracted to the smoothness of his dark skin and the contrast to the pearly whiteness of his smile-celebrating their engagement. They were laughing and falling drunkenly into each other’s arms while images of the dark, red stained wall of the Japan apartment flitted across the television screen. They’d had the VCR set to record the news that night, so they could watch their public announcement when they got home. And then again, in the morning, when they weren’t hung over and pawing at each other with the restrained lust that’d built up throughout the busy day.
As it turned out, they didn’t even get to their announcement. As soon as the words “romance novelist” and “found dead” and “gun” traveled through Shuichi’s ears to his brain, he went instantly limp, sober, dry. He pushed Ahmed’s hands away and stared in horror at the TV, at the achingly familiar apartment building. He cried. Burst into tears the way he used to before he left Tokyo, when Eiri would toss around harsh words that stabbed at his heart. Ahmed hadn’t known what to do or say; part of him didn’t even know what was going on, still consumed with tequila and thoughts of flesh. Shuichi ended up locking himself in the studio, their work room with a microphone and a drum set and no windows, and cried and raked his fingernails across the wooden floor until he passed out.
The next day, he found himself calling Tohma Seguchi to find out the funeral dates. The band had a concert scheduled two days later in New York, so Shuichi made plans to take a train to Manhattan directly afterwards, and booked himself a flight to Tokyo, Japan.
Yuji had been to Central Park countless times, but he still hadn’t seen the entirety of it. (He still managed to pride himself, however, on having seen the Balto statue and the bridge Shirley McClain falls off of in Sweet Charity.) He now stood in an area of the park he’d never been in, near a small pavilion where piano music was emanating from. A captivated audience sprawled on the grass, sat in lawn chairs and benches, watching the young Japanese man play. Yuji smiled to himself, feeling a silly sort of pleasant swelling in his chest as he watched them admire the pianist. It intensified when the music finished and everyone stood to applaud. He almost didn’t hear it when Shuichi spoke from beside him.
“I’d forgotten how good he really is.”
“Oh, he’s amazing,” Yuji all but gushed. “He’s been doing all these huge concerts in Russia and London, all over. It’s crazy, but it’s great. I keep waiting for his fingers to fall off.”
“I had no idea.” Shuichi’s comment sounded almost like a laugh of saddened disbelief. “I’m really out of the loop, huh?”
Yuji bit his tongue. It was true. He wondered if Shuichi even had Hiro’s new address, or knew what classes he was took in med school, or what TV shows he watched religiously each week.
“Ah, that’s all right.” Yuji patted his shoulder dramatically. “We still love you.”
“Speaking for all of us, Yuji?”
They turned around at the voice behind them. Suguru stood with his hand on one hip, sheet music held tightly in the other. He stared at them with narrow eyes and a frown. Yuji swallowed hard and felt Shuichi’s shoulders stiffen. They stood in uncomfortable silence until Suguru looked pointedly at Shuichi’s low-slung jeans and revealed navel.
“Please tell me that is not a navel piercing.” His scowl deepened when Shuichi nodded hesitantly. “That’s disgusting.”
Unable to contain it, Shuichi shot back, “You’re disgusting!”
Suguru’s eye twitched.
“How childish. You haven’t changed at all.” The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He turned and motioned with his head for them to follow. “Let’s go.”
Yuji felt Shuichi relax beside him, and he smiled. He knew Suguru had said he had reservations about meeting up with his ex-band mate, but he’d figured most of that had been for show. The band’s breakup had been rough on everyone, but four years has passed, after all, and they had all become far too busy to hold any grudges. Or, at least, too busy to think about them.
But still, Yuji relented to himself as they spread out to flag down a taxi, the fact that Suguru and Hiro still kept fairly close contact with each other, while Shuichi didn’t with either, was very hard to ignore. After Shuichi’s popularity spread through the U.S. and he started seeing Ahmed, any close ties he had with Japan and Bad Luck and Eiri Yuki had been severed. Yuji didn’t know why; he’d never tried to find out. He’d just accepted it as life. Suguru had seemed to just get angry about it and had blamed it on Shuichi’s fickleness. Hiro hadn’t taken it so well.
But Yuji didn’t want to linger on those thoughts any longer. He wouldn’t want to end up assuming anything would be fixed by the reunion. After the funeral, he knew, Shuichi would go back to America and they wouldn’t see or hear from him again until some other tragedy occurred. He only hoped no old scars would be reopened when Shuichi and Hiro saw each other again; he didn’t want to have to bandage his brother’s wounds again. Metaphorical wounds, of course. He grinned when he got a yellow cab to stop, opened the door and waved the others over.
Shuichi knew that Ahmed was mad at him when he heard the drums that signaled the beginning of his cell phone’s voicemail. He frowned a little and hung up. If Ahmed wasn’t going to bother answering, then he certainly wasn’t going to bother leaving a message for him to gloat about to his friends. Hey, hey, come here, listen! He’s totally begging for my forgiveness! Isn’t he cute?
“Whatever,” Shuichi muttered, turning off his cell and tucking it into his pocket. He looked over to where he’d left Suguru and Yuji. They were speaking quietly, appearing exactly as he remembered them-Yuji all sly smiles and handholding, Suguru scooting away and cutting his eyes. He wouldn’t interrupt. He leaned against the wall and watched the crowd of people moving through the airport.
Ahmed had wanted to come with him to Japan.
“I’ve never seen you so upset,” he’d said concernedly. “I want to be there for you.”
He hadn’t understood. Shuichi had never told him much of anything about his intense, whirlwind romance with Eiri, and he hadn’t intended on ever really doing so. He’d considered himself completely over that relationship; he’d left it behind along with everything else. But when he saw that news report… He hadn’t been able to explain to Ahmed. He hadn’t been able to explain it to himself, even with the blood that was caked under his fingernails when he woke up to Ahmed’s knocking, with his cheek pressed hard against the studio floor. He’d felt empty. It had reminded him of times when Eiri would ignore him and he’d slowly go insane with sadness until the novelist looked his way again. But this time there would be no golden eyes locked with his in acknowledgement and acceptance. He didn’t want to reveal this part of himself to his fiancé.
“I need to deal with it myself. I need to handle it by being myself. I don’t want to have to watch what I say or do because you’re there making me nervous or clouding my judgment-”
“You can’t be yourself with me? What the hell…? Aren’t we supposed to be getting married?”
“We are. And that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He hadn’t known. He still didn’t know. But he did know that he wouldn’t be able to think clearly with Ahmed at his side. And he didn’t even want to think about how that looked to the others. Attending the funeral of the man he loved and left, on the arm of the man he left him for. That wasn’t completely true, but he knew how people’s minds worked. He couldn’t take leaving with yet another bad impression.
On to Part Two
Fandom: Gravitation
Pairings: mainly Eiri/Shuichi, Shuichi/OC, Hiro/Ayaka, Yuji/Suguru, Tatsuha/Maiko
Rating: R, for content and language
Warnings: CHARACTER DEATH
Prologue: Departed; or, this bird has flown
The apartment was filled with noise, and that was the way he wanted it. The stereo played something classical, some CD he’d either bought in New York or gotten from Tohma; it didn’t matter, really, as long as it was playing and playing loud. The phone rang and eventually the machine beeped, and Mika’s voice told him to pick up the phone - sighed - reminded him that Tatsuha’s college graduation was in a week and she expected him there, and - why wouldn’t he pick up the phone - and she had heard about Shuichi. She paused, then, said she cared for him, wished he would please pick up the phone. The TV was on, showing the big news of the night, pictures of America and Shuichi and rings and happiness and a laughing black man with his arm around Shuichi, and Eiri wouldn’t change the channel. He parted his lips, letting the metal barrel push inside, cold against his tongue and teeth. Shuichi had taken his heart when he left, and so there was nothing inside of him to stop beating when he pulled the trigger. He kept his eyes closed, his ears open - the music, Mika, the laughter, Shuichi - and jerked once, shook. Then the insides of his mouth burst and spurted out of the hole in the back of his head.
A day later, Tohma was the first to open the apartment door and see the dark red on the wall.
Part One: Elaborate Lives; or, no time to catch our breath
Grand Central Station was Yuji’s favorite place to people-watch. He often spent at least fifteen minutes of his lunch break with his back against the walls of the large train station, making up lives for the people he saw, frequently with a cheap burger in his hand. His favorite was this man who came through once or twice a week with a rather large sack - which looked as if it held a shovel or something - and a hat with a feather on it atop his head. He imagined that the man led a second life underground with sewer people who worshipped him and gave him a weekly sacrifice and-well, no one ever said his stories had to be realistic, now did they?
Today, however, he was not there to partake in people watching. He glanced down at his watch as a surge of people started to emerge. Right on time. He looked up, eyes scanning the crowd until he spotted that familiar head of pink hair. He raised his hand in order to attract attention and called out, “Yo, Shuichi!” Shuichi’s big, expressive eyes caught his and he couldn’t help but grin. It’d been a long time. As the singer approached, his smile fell a little; it was great to see the boy again, but he wished the circumstances of their reunion were different, happier.
“Hey there, little buddy,” Yuji greeted as his arms enfolded the lean frame in a warm hug. “How’ve you been?”
“Not bad.” Shuichi’s smile was forced and looked like it different fit on his face. He squinted at Yuji curiously. “Did you get a tan?”
“Yeah, I’ve been doing some shows on the Bermuda coast. I think the bronze look is working for me.”
Shuichi smirked. “Bermuda, huh? And I was thinking you’ve just been doing overtime in a tanning bed.”
“Very funny,” Yuji elbowed him lightly. “Nah, the show was with this small troupe and most the performances were for free, but it was cool. I had to be replaced quickly, though, because of the-”
“Yeah.” A quick interjection. He didn’t want to talk about it just yet.
“Yeah.” He didn’t want to, either. “All set? Let’s ditch this joint.”
Shuichi was out with his fiancé Ahmed when the report on Yuki Eiri’s suicide actually aired in their beach house in California. They were at a club with the rest of the band-Ahmed had been Shuichi’s first drummer when he came to America four years before, and he’d been attracted to the smoothness of his dark skin and the contrast to the pearly whiteness of his smile-celebrating their engagement. They were laughing and falling drunkenly into each other’s arms while images of the dark, red stained wall of the Japan apartment flitted across the television screen. They’d had the VCR set to record the news that night, so they could watch their public announcement when they got home. And then again, in the morning, when they weren’t hung over and pawing at each other with the restrained lust that’d built up throughout the busy day.
As it turned out, they didn’t even get to their announcement. As soon as the words “romance novelist” and “found dead” and “gun” traveled through Shuichi’s ears to his brain, he went instantly limp, sober, dry. He pushed Ahmed’s hands away and stared in horror at the TV, at the achingly familiar apartment building. He cried. Burst into tears the way he used to before he left Tokyo, when Eiri would toss around harsh words that stabbed at his heart. Ahmed hadn’t known what to do or say; part of him didn’t even know what was going on, still consumed with tequila and thoughts of flesh. Shuichi ended up locking himself in the studio, their work room with a microphone and a drum set and no windows, and cried and raked his fingernails across the wooden floor until he passed out.
The next day, he found himself calling Tohma Seguchi to find out the funeral dates. The band had a concert scheduled two days later in New York, so Shuichi made plans to take a train to Manhattan directly afterwards, and booked himself a flight to Tokyo, Japan.
Yuji had been to Central Park countless times, but he still hadn’t seen the entirety of it. (He still managed to pride himself, however, on having seen the Balto statue and the bridge Shirley McClain falls off of in Sweet Charity.) He now stood in an area of the park he’d never been in, near a small pavilion where piano music was emanating from. A captivated audience sprawled on the grass, sat in lawn chairs and benches, watching the young Japanese man play. Yuji smiled to himself, feeling a silly sort of pleasant swelling in his chest as he watched them admire the pianist. It intensified when the music finished and everyone stood to applaud. He almost didn’t hear it when Shuichi spoke from beside him.
“I’d forgotten how good he really is.”
“Oh, he’s amazing,” Yuji all but gushed. “He’s been doing all these huge concerts in Russia and London, all over. It’s crazy, but it’s great. I keep waiting for his fingers to fall off.”
“I had no idea.” Shuichi’s comment sounded almost like a laugh of saddened disbelief. “I’m really out of the loop, huh?”
Yuji bit his tongue. It was true. He wondered if Shuichi even had Hiro’s new address, or knew what classes he was took in med school, or what TV shows he watched religiously each week.
“Ah, that’s all right.” Yuji patted his shoulder dramatically. “We still love you.”
“Speaking for all of us, Yuji?”
They turned around at the voice behind them. Suguru stood with his hand on one hip, sheet music held tightly in the other. He stared at them with narrow eyes and a frown. Yuji swallowed hard and felt Shuichi’s shoulders stiffen. They stood in uncomfortable silence until Suguru looked pointedly at Shuichi’s low-slung jeans and revealed navel.
“Please tell me that is not a navel piercing.” His scowl deepened when Shuichi nodded hesitantly. “That’s disgusting.”
Unable to contain it, Shuichi shot back, “You’re disgusting!”
Suguru’s eye twitched.
“How childish. You haven’t changed at all.” The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He turned and motioned with his head for them to follow. “Let’s go.”
Yuji felt Shuichi relax beside him, and he smiled. He knew Suguru had said he had reservations about meeting up with his ex-band mate, but he’d figured most of that had been for show. The band’s breakup had been rough on everyone, but four years has passed, after all, and they had all become far too busy to hold any grudges. Or, at least, too busy to think about them.
But still, Yuji relented to himself as they spread out to flag down a taxi, the fact that Suguru and Hiro still kept fairly close contact with each other, while Shuichi didn’t with either, was very hard to ignore. After Shuichi’s popularity spread through the U.S. and he started seeing Ahmed, any close ties he had with Japan and Bad Luck and Eiri Yuki had been severed. Yuji didn’t know why; he’d never tried to find out. He’d just accepted it as life. Suguru had seemed to just get angry about it and had blamed it on Shuichi’s fickleness. Hiro hadn’t taken it so well.
But Yuji didn’t want to linger on those thoughts any longer. He wouldn’t want to end up assuming anything would be fixed by the reunion. After the funeral, he knew, Shuichi would go back to America and they wouldn’t see or hear from him again until some other tragedy occurred. He only hoped no old scars would be reopened when Shuichi and Hiro saw each other again; he didn’t want to have to bandage his brother’s wounds again. Metaphorical wounds, of course. He grinned when he got a yellow cab to stop, opened the door and waved the others over.
Shuichi knew that Ahmed was mad at him when he heard the drums that signaled the beginning of his cell phone’s voicemail. He frowned a little and hung up. If Ahmed wasn’t going to bother answering, then he certainly wasn’t going to bother leaving a message for him to gloat about to his friends. Hey, hey, come here, listen! He’s totally begging for my forgiveness! Isn’t he cute?
“Whatever,” Shuichi muttered, turning off his cell and tucking it into his pocket. He looked over to where he’d left Suguru and Yuji. They were speaking quietly, appearing exactly as he remembered them-Yuji all sly smiles and handholding, Suguru scooting away and cutting his eyes. He wouldn’t interrupt. He leaned against the wall and watched the crowd of people moving through the airport.
Ahmed had wanted to come with him to Japan.
“I’ve never seen you so upset,” he’d said concernedly. “I want to be there for you.”
He hadn’t understood. Shuichi had never told him much of anything about his intense, whirlwind romance with Eiri, and he hadn’t intended on ever really doing so. He’d considered himself completely over that relationship; he’d left it behind along with everything else. But when he saw that news report… He hadn’t been able to explain to Ahmed. He hadn’t been able to explain it to himself, even with the blood that was caked under his fingernails when he woke up to Ahmed’s knocking, with his cheek pressed hard against the studio floor. He’d felt empty. It had reminded him of times when Eiri would ignore him and he’d slowly go insane with sadness until the novelist looked his way again. But this time there would be no golden eyes locked with his in acknowledgement and acceptance. He didn’t want to reveal this part of himself to his fiancé.
“I need to deal with it myself. I need to handle it by being myself. I don’t want to have to watch what I say or do because you’re there making me nervous or clouding my judgment-”
“You can’t be yourself with me? What the hell…? Aren’t we supposed to be getting married?”
“We are. And that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He hadn’t known. He still didn’t know. But he did know that he wouldn’t be able to think clearly with Ahmed at his side. And he didn’t even want to think about how that looked to the others. Attending the funeral of the man he loved and left, on the arm of the man he left him for. That wasn’t completely true, but he knew how people’s minds worked. He couldn’t take leaving with yet another bad impression.
On to Part Two