Day 23 ~ Creature Comfort PG-13

[everlind]

23

Creature Comfort
Can be read stand-alone, but is a sequal to Man's Best Friend

It's quite late when Shishido finds himself standing before Choutarou's house.

The sky is pitch black and it is freezing cold out. It snows a little, too. The flakes catch on Shishido's eyelashes and create tiny starbursts when the light from the windows reflects on them. Out of his peripheral vision can see them cling to the strands of long, dark hair as well, where it drapes over his shoulders.

In a way, it is a beautiful night. The sort to make a perfect setting for a movie. Soft and hazy. Magical.

Even Shishido would be able to appreciate it, if it weren't for the cold dread sitting like a brick under his ribs, colder than any snow -or ice- could ever be.

He sighs. His breath mists into the air, the minuscule droplets glimmering.

Something is wrong with Choutarou. He saw it first thing when he appeared at practice and lingered throughout the whole day. Shishido was at him with every opportunity he got, trying to pry 'it' out from him like a metaphorical crowbar, but Choutarou is and always has been sorta private about his more intense sort of emotions and by the end of the day he only got to face the distant icy smile. One: that pissed him off. Two: it made him worry ever more so.

After all, what can be so bad that Choutarou wouldn't tell him?

So Shishido finds himself standing before his partner's house at an hour that's kinda beyond common decency, but he couldn't take it anymore.

He tried phoning, mailing, IM-ing, bugging Hiyoshi, pestering Kabaji, heck, even contacting that guy from music class that's a friend of his, everything. Choutarou ignored all of his efforts, as he had treating been his verbal ones at school. His friends hadn't noticed anything amiss, when Shishido prompted them. Apparently he'd acted as he always does.

For one single moment Shishido had known doubt.

But then he'd shaken it off and here he is. He's not imaging things, it's Choutarou and he knows he's right.

So he walks up to the door and rings the bell.

There is no expressing his endless relief when Choutarou's grandmother opens the door.

"Ryou-kun?" she croaks.

She's ancient, but Shishido kinda likes her. She's a feisty old thing and he can't figure out how someone as cool as her spawned someone like Choutarou's dad. Then again, Choutarou's dad somehow managed to get and raise Choutarou who turned about, well, Choutarou. Maybe awesomeness skips generations in the Ohtori family?

Either way.

He bows, a little lower than needed. His hair trails soft and silky against his cheeks. "I am sorry for disturbing you, Ohtori-san," he says. "But is there any chance I might talk to Choutarou?"

There's a pointed silence.

Awkward, Shishido straightens again. Snow melts as the warmer air from inside escapes into the night, beading into shining crystal droplets on his face.

"Choutarou-chan might not feel up to visitors," she says, not unkindly.

Shishido shifts his weight, waits.

"But as it is you…" she continues after a thoughtful moment. "Yes, he might need you, even though he'll like to pretend he doesn't."

Shishido blinks. Was that a yes?

The door opens wider, beckoning him inside. With a grateful dip of his head, he steps inside.

Always he feels out of place and… well, the commoner Atobe likes to call him. Grubby. Uncultured. Plain. Of course Choutarou's house isn't like Atobe's, not even a tenth. But he guesses that it is 'second best' on the fanciness scale, or whatever. It is both more traditional, as well as more western in places. And huge.

And clean.

Not that his mom doesn't clean or anything, but there's usually stuff all over the place -admittedly mostly his or Sho's- , cosily messy. It's lived in and kinda cramped, but home. For all the stamp of money on this house, Shishido has to admit he likes is own place better. It smells of home, of the cleaning detergent his mother uses, of food -because three men in a household requires a lot of cooking to be done-, of boys and dirt, of mown grass in the summer and burning heaters in the winter. It used to smell like dog, too, not flattering, but still.

Of course there is no dog anymore.

But it used to.

Choutarou's house smells like… nothing. Not even like cloying roses the way Atobe's does, or cigarettes like Oshitari's.

After leaving his shoes in the genkan -neatly lined up, not the way he dumps them at random back home- he ventures up the stairs. They don't have that predictable creak like the ones at his place do, these are silent and sturdy. There are also pictures on the wall, trap-wisely aligned with the ascending level, of the family. All of them show them smiling, perfect.

Shishido knows that his own aren't as perfect. There's one where he's a pouting baby brat and also one where he's smiling for the camera, gap-toothed as he's losing his baby teeth. There's one where his mother is fresh out of bed and frowning over a cup of strong tea (the one where she looks so like him, even he believed it a picture of himself at first glance), of his father wearing silly Mickey Mouse ears at Disneyland (incidentally also the same picture in which Shishido looks thunderous because he was pulled out of the Space Shuttle pre-maturely), of a vacation where his brother was so sunburned Shishido called him lobster-butt for two weeks.

Somehow his own seem more real. He can't help but somehow feel bad for Choutarou even though he arguably is better off than him. It's a gut-feeling, something he can't explain, but there's evidence of it when Choutarou stays over and glows like a star when Shishido's mother gushes over him, serves him his favorite dishes.

He pads through the hallway, gets a glimpse into Choutarou's sister's room. Which is twice the size his own room is and all white and baby-blue, with posters of boy idols plastering the walls and a make-up table that has more junk on it than his mother has ever used and will use in her entire life. Then again Shishido thinks his mother is the most beautiful woman on earth and doesn't need it (…so what if he's a mama's boy? Problem with that, huh?).

At the end of the hallway is Choutarou's. Evidently, he likes Choutarou's room best. It looks most like his own, if less chaotic and messy, with decidedly less junk on the floor and no lightsabers, Nintendo games, comic books and tennis balls covering every available surface. Yes, there's a lot of music-themed stuff about, but also posters of tennis players and cutouts of articles, rackets and strings in a corner, a familiar jersey hanging on a hook on the wall. Same middle-school picture on his desk, of the team.

The door is open, a little, and opens further when Shishido raps his knuckle on it. "Choutarou?"

Choutarou is lying on the bed, on his side. He lifts himself, slowly. Then stands up. "Shi-Shishido-san?"

"Hey," Shishido says, stepping inside.

"What are you doing here?" he asks. It sounds flat and defensive.

Even from where he is standing he can feel the distance emanating from him, the slight accusation.

Often they don't need words anymore.

Choutarou's very intonation, in that one sentence, asks this question also: 'You knew I wanted to be alone. You knew I didn't want to talk about it. Why are you here?'.

Shishido walks further inside, sits on the bed. His hair slides against his nape, thick and almost familiar again. The front of his bangs and most of the top half is tied into a loose ponytail, the rest hangs lose. Some wayward strands caught at a stubborn stage escape the elastic and feather around his cheeks, static thanks to the weather and his wool scarf he wore to come over.

They look at each other.

Choutarou still looks like hell. Nothing physically shows, he's cool and collected, but Shishido can tell the pain even if it doesn't show. Choutarou is strange at showing his emotions, painfully and almost embarrassingly open sometimes and yet… yet almost as proud as him, at times, so he hides it and pretty well at that. But Shishido can tell. They are not touching, but Shishido can feel it, between them, raw and not alright at all.

"Tell me," Shishido says softly.

"It is nothing," Choutarou says. "Please, senpai," he adds.

Shishido sighs. Looks at the worn knees of his jeans. There's no light in the room. Choutarou didn't have one turned on and Shishido didn't either. The door is closed and any light that sneaks in does so through the window.

"Was it something I did?" Shishido whispers.

An intake. Choutarou turns towards him. "No, no of course not." He says.

Shishido deflates with relief.

It is hard. What he feels for Choutarou… it's difficult. Often he says things, does things, things he shouldn't. They aren't bad, or even overly explicit, but they are there. He worries about the rising intensity between the two of them, he worries about how Choutarou occupies his every single thought, he worries about how he shouldn't, but how it is there no matter how fervently he wishes for it to stop.

He worries about how there seems to be something… something he can't put his finger on, something Choutarou seems to answer to but not really, never so that Shishido knows. It's something wild and dangerous and Shishido fears it is all in his head. That the something is all him and that there's nothing coming from Choutarou but that what he imagines there to be. What he wants and hopes -though he shouldn't- there to be.

That aside…

"Then what is it?" he asks.

Choutarou positively flinches. The he composes himself, strong and sealed off.

"It's nothing," he says steadily. "Don't worry about it, senpai."

"Choutarou…"

"Shishido-san, please, I don't want to talk about it! It's nothing."

"If it is nothing," Shishido reasons back at him, "then you can tell me what's wrong."

It's a harsh and unfair challenge and Shishido sucks balls at this comforting business, but it is the only way he knows how to.

Choutarou looks at him. It's just that. Like a look from a stranger and nothing more.

"Miki got hit by a car," he says, "this morning."

Miki. Choutarou's cat. White, soft fur, huge blue eyes. A complete, utter spoiled bitch of a feline. Pure bred. Choutarou didn't care about the last, he simply adored the creature, vile temperament aside. She could've been fished out of a garbage can, missing one ear and smell like a turd, and he'd have loved her. Choutarou loved Miki, his cat, like Shishido loved Mochi, his dog.

Shishido closes his eyes.

Oh.

Fuck.

Shishido Ryou, you fucking asshole.

He opens them, but doesn't see Choutarou now, he sees Choutarou with him in the treehouse in his backyard, face full of concern and saying: 'It's not stupid' and an arm around him while he bawled like a girl over his dead dog.

"Choutarou…" he murmurs, almost too soft for either of them to hear.

But Choutarou hears and flinches yet again. Looks out of the window. Like carved out of marble, almost, so still and perfect is his profile, he himself.

Shishido doesn't know what to do, because he sucks more than just balls at this comforting thing, so he sits there, useless, bleeding for Choutarou. Who'd have thought? He himself dissolving into tears and having to skip school over the death of his dog, while Choutarou sucks it up when his cat gets flattened by a car, goes to school and fools everybody.

Except for him.

"Choutarou," he repeats and reaches. He doesn't know what else to offer, but for what Choutarou offered him: a shoulder to cry on.

"Don't," Choutarou hisses when his hand curls over that broad shoulder. "Don't," he repeats. "Please."

But Shishido shifts until he's right besides him. He doesn't really think it through, it just happens. Instead of one arm and a shoulder, he uses both arms and pulls Choutarou -who bodily resists- against his chest. He holds him trapped and Choutarou -weak with grief- struggles some, limp arms pushing at him. Then he goes slack, like someone tugged the power-supply out of his body, stiff and not real.

Shishido keeps holding him. He doesn't know what else to do, but pathetically attempt to recreate that sense of physical comfort Choutarou offered him past summer, when Mochi died. It seems like the wrong thing to do, because Choutarou is like an icicle and Shishido thinks about the something between them and how it might all be in his head.

Just when he thinks of pulling away, of standing and leaving the way Choutarou all but explicitly begged him to, Choutarou shudders. From the core of his being, the center of his chest it comes, and then a heave of air.

Shishido holds him when he starts to sob, and then cry, softly. Holds him when Choutarou breaks into tiny, hurting pieces. Holds him and feels tears in his neck, soaking his shirt, smells salt and grief. Holds him and murmurs, "It's not stupid."

He holds him and starts to rock, just a little, cradling Choutarou. His cheek is plastered into fair, half-curly hair, his arms are wrapped around Choutarou's growing, awkward, broad shoulders.

After, even, when they sink towards the bed, Shishido holds him, as tight as he dares to and feels his best friend -and the boy he's come to love- cry, honest yet subdued, yet all the more raw for it.

Shishido doesn't need to ask whether it's the first time he's cries, he can feel that, the raw shock only then passing completely through him, hard and destructive yet clearing a pathway for healing instead of festering.

He stays the night.

Nobody asks.

He borrows pajamas, uses a spare brush.

He starts out on the spare futon, but ends up in bed with Choutarou.

It is still not something.

But it is Choutarou who -again wordlessly- asks him to, so Shishido slips under the blankets and spoons him. One hand is flat on Choutarou's belly, over his shirt, the other his under the hollow of his neck and plastered fingertips across his heart. It is his face buried against the back of Choutarou's neck, breathing deep.

It is Choutarou tearless.

It is Choutarou asleep -in his arms.

Only not quite.

"Thank you," Choutarou breathes, sometime past midnight.

Shishido inhales, blinks. His lashes brush Choutarou's nape. "What for?" he murmurs.

Choutarou doesn't answer. Doesn't need to, not for this.

"I'm not just your senpai," Shishido says.

There's a silence. Choutarou nods. Shishido feels it -skin dragging up and down across his lips.

"I know," Choutarou whispers.

They breathe together. Shishido can feel Choutarou's chest expand and contract under his touch.

"That's why," Choutarou slurs after a few minutes, sinking into true sleep. "Thank…" he breathes in.

Shishido smiles.

"… you," he breathes.

They sleep.