[fic][pot] Nighttime Job

[fauxfoxus]

Okay, this was something I started a while ago that was originally meant to just be a drabble, however, I got the urge to continue it and so, I have a few. Because they were all originally written as drabbles they may not all fit together all that well in a flowy sense, however they do all connect. So, without further ado:

Title: Nighttime Job
Pairing: Kirihara/Fuji, Tezuka/Echizen as a side pairing, hints of past Tezuka/Fuji
Rating: PG13? No smut yet >_>
Warnings: Crossdressing, cussing . . . thats about it I think
Summary: AU It's just another night on the town for Momoshiro Takeshi, however things spiral quckly from normal when he meets an old senpai.

Momoshiro loved his rare nights out. He had very few of them anymore and so, he cherished each and every one of them by going out to a different bar and getting totally shit-faced.

Sometimes he went to nightclubs, where the music was loud and people were dancing in a way that, in Momo’s mind, was just one step short of sex. Other times he went to quiet pubs, or karaoke bars, where he would, when pleasantly buzzed, grab the mic and start singing, loudly, and terribly off key.

Tonight, he was at a different bar, one he hadn’t been to before. The liquor was cheap, the music played softly in the background, the lights were dim, and the whole place gave off a feeling of anonymity, exactly as he wanted it. He downed a shot and then signalled the barmaid for another.

The girl that brought him his drink was slim, with pretty blue eyes and short mousy brown hair, and Momo could swear he knew her from somewhere. As the girl bent over to place his drink down delicately Momo stiffened in recognition and grabbed the delicate wrist before it could retreat.

“Fuji-sempai?” He asked incredulously.

He saw panic flash through her, no his, eyes and the brunette tried desperately to free himself from his grip. “You-you must have the wrong person.”

The boy’s voice was still light and somewhat feminine, but if you listened closely you could tell. “Fuji-sempai, what are you doing here?” He left the more obvious question of ‘what the fuck are you wearing,’ unasked.

“Please,” Fuji begged, his breath becoming uneven in panic.

Momo released his wrist but the panic did not fade from the brunettes eyes.

Tonight, Momo wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t push. This Fuji was far different from the one he had known in Junior High, far different from the always smiling tennis tensai. Momoshiro didn’t know what had happened to change the other so much but he would find out eventually.

When Momo came back the next day he saw the same panic on his sempai’s face, but, gradually, as the days went by, Fuji became less and less skittish around him. One day, Momo would ask him what had happened, but not today.

Momo had been to Fuji’s bar several times in the past few days, but though his former senpai had become less skittish around him, he had barely spoken two words to him besides, “Would you like a refill,” or, “What would you like to drink tonight?”

Frankly it worried Momo ‘cause as far as he could see, Fuji didn’t interact much with his co-workers either, and tended to spend his breaks alone in the alley out back. As far as he could see, the tensai had cut himself off of most human interaction, despite his job.

Watching the way the other patrons treated him, however, showed Momo that he was very likely the only person in the bar that knew the brunette’s true gender. The way the boy dressed, his slender, delicate form, and slightly pointed features all concealed the truth behind his skirts. He looked, a slightly underdeveloped female, probably somewhere in her teens instead of the twenty-something male he really was.

Every time Momo saw his former-senpai pulled into some drunken man’s lap, or having his ass rudely slapped, he had to clench his fists to keep himself from laying the offender out. He felt sickened by the actions, especially since he had seen such goings on before and had not felt such a strong urge to stop it from happening. Seeing things like that happen to the ones you knew was completely different from seeing it happen to someone you didn’t and it gave Momoshiro a whole new perspective.

He had stopped going to other bars. He always went to Fuji’s bar now, sometimes even stopping by for a quick drink on his lunch break though he had always before disliked drinking during his hours. Normally he preferred to keep work and his nightlife separate. Now, however, he showed up at the bar whenever he could, hoping to get more than a few words from the tensai, though he never did.

It was nearly a month after he had first walked into the bar that he decided he would need some help if he ever wanted to learn anything. So, he went to the only person who he knew, not only had the power to find out what had happened to break the tensai, but was also the last person to have contact with Fuji Syuusuke when they had all split ways after Seigaku.

“Momoshiro,” the brunette said, watching Momo thoughtfully from behind steepled fingers.

“Thanks for taking time to see me Tezuka-san,” Momo said somewhat nervously. The former buchou of Seigaku had risen in the world since their days as middle school student, and had become a powerful force to reckon with, the youngest company president in Japan and one of the most influential people in the country. Though Momo couldn’t remember exactly what the company did, he was pretty sure it had something to do with computers, most of the big corporations now dealt mainly with computers after all.

“Not a problem,” Tezuka replied, in his usual, five-words-or-less fashion.

Momo didn’t meet the business tycoon’s eyes, instead, looking around the expensively furnished office and shifting on his chair uncomfortably. Tezuka had been intimidating as buchou of the tennis team, now, with as much power and influence he had, well, it was enough to make most sane people very uncomfortable, further proof that Echizen wasn’t the poster child for sanity after all.

Though the papers hadn’t yet caught on to the tycoon’s more than friends relationship with the young tennis star, Momo was privy to information they were not, as he still kept in contact with the once cocky teenager.

Tezuka sighed slightly, pushing his glasses up his nose as he sat back in his chair, “You came to ask me something?”

Momo nodded as he thought how best to phrase his question.

“You remember Fuji?”

Tezuka blinked, visibly startled. “Of course.”

“Did you . . . keep in touch with him after Seigaku?”

Tezuka looked at him strangely, a question in his earthen eyes. “For about a year, yes, after that, not at all.”

“Oh,” Momo said somewhat disappointed.

“Why?”

“Can I ask, why you fell out of contact with him?”

Tezuka frowned, studying him intently, “Why should I answer your, rather random questions when you’ve made no attempt to answer mine.”

“I . . . want to find out what happened to him.”

“Why? What would you do if you found him anyway.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to find him Tezuka-san, I said I wanted to know what happened to him.”

This time Tezuka seemed to catch the meaning of his choice in wording, as well as what Momo hadn’t actually meant to imply. “You’ve found him already then?”

“Hai.”

“Then why don’t you ask him?”

“Because he won’t talk to me!” Momo snapped impatiently.

“Well then, perhaps, Momoshiro, you are not meant to know.”

“But, Tezuka-san, you don’t understand, you didn’t . . . you didn’t see him. I wouldn’t pry normally, but I . . . I don’t think I can help him unless I know what happened to him. Onegai, Tezuka-san, I just want to help him.”

“I kicked him out.”

Momo blinked, looking up at the young tycoon with confusion, “Nani?”

“You asked why we fell out of contact. He was . . . living with me for a short time, but things didn’t work out. We fought one night, things were said and I told him to get out, so he packed his things and walked out the door. I didn’t see him since.”

Momo understood the implications of the brunette’s words, and why he had been so hesitant to reveal too much about Fuji. Things like that, secrets, could easily be used against him, and one could make a good sum of money handing such secrets over to the press. Momo was almost angry that the other man trusted him that little but really, in the business world, Momo knew, you could only trust yourself. “That’s a lonely way to live Tezuka-san,” Momo muttered, knowing the other man knew exactly what he was talking about.

“I’m used to it.”

Momo nodded, the silence in the office now felt suffocating, and Momo longed to just leave, but he still needed something from the other man. “Tezuka, could you, maybe use you’re contacts, find out what happened to him.”

“Maybe Momoshiro, you should just let sleeping dogs lie,” before Momo could protest, Tezuka stood, and fixed him with a look so intense, it rooted him to the spot. “I will do what I can, though I can’t guarantee you’ll like what you learn.”

Tezuka turned his back, allowing Momo to release a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, “Thank you, Tezuka-san.”

“Don’t thank me Momoshiro.”

Momo could think of nothing to say to that, and nothing seemed to be expected of him. So he turned with a polite goodbye and left the office, missing the pitying look the tycoon sent him as the door shut behind him.

Ryoma didn’t know why he had to do Tezuka’s dirty work. Really, if he wanted to scout out a new sleazy bar, that was his problem, there were plenty of people at his company who would bend over backwards to please him. And stab him in the back just as quickly, Echizen brutally quashed the thought and sat down at one of the barstools, his muttering just barely audible.

He was glad to find he wasn’t recognised here. Most places in the city now recognised him, and outside it for that matter, as the young tennis prodigy of Japan. He hated crowds, he hated his random cheerleaders, and most of all he hated their sickening hero worship. Still, he knew, by the other tennis players, and more than one television network, he was far more hated than adored, for his bad attitude both on and off the court.

In fact, the only person who seemed able to put up with him was Kunimitsu and Momo, Kumicha, his manager too sometimes.

He wasn’t sure exactly what Tezuka wanted here, but somehow, he had wrangled Ryoma into coming, with the only the vague instruction of ‘learn all you can’.

“Cosmopolitan,” Ryoma muttered when the bartender asked for his order, missing the look the man gave him as he glared at the shiny, polished oak of the bar as if it was the cause of all his misfortune.

He had been sitting at the bar, randomly sipping his very gay looking drink, for nearly an hour until he realized why his lover had sent him there. Briefly, his blood boiled as he spotted his slender, once-senpai.

He calmed abruptly, rage leaving almost as soon as it had come. The man waiting tables, and wearing a short skirt was without a doubt, his former-senpai, Fuji Syuusuke, but it wasn’t the same Fuji he had known. Wasn’t the same Fuji that had mockingly stolen Tezuka right out of his hands, just to show he could, and then a year later, broken the poor man’s heart just as cruelly.

This Fuji was more delicate, fragile, and more like the woman he pretended to be. Not that all women were breakable, he knew too many hard-assed women to ever even begin to make that assumption.

He didn’t think he had ever seen his senpai so thin, so battered and broken and despite himself, Ryoma felt himself pitying the other man. Whatever he had done to him in the past, it was not the same man, and he had obviously suffered.

He grabbed the thin boy’s arm, as he walked by, startling the brunette and making him just like a jack rabbit, startled. “What are you doing here Syuusuke?” Ryoma whispered, unable to keep his voice level, his tone pulsating with anger.

“P-please, le-let me go,” the brunette said, his voice a panicked murmur and in shock Ryoma did, giving the boy time to flash a half relieved, half terrified look before running out.

Ryoma had never, ever seen such a look on the tensai’s face before. The sheer terror in his gaze had been enough to set horrible guilt to churning his stomach. Shaking his head, Ryoma stood, throwing money on the counter for his drink and stepping out of the bar.

Tezuka had some explaining to do.

Fuji was shaking by the time he finished his shift, hands pale and quivering much like the rest of his slender body. It just wasn’t his week. Panic built and swirled in his chest, constricting his throat and making it hard for him to breathe in the cold winter air.

His legs wanted to fold beneath him, tremors shaking them so badly it made it difficult to balance as he rode out hysteria, sanity balancing atop the thin edge of a knife. It took nearly ten minutes before he felt back to himself enough to even attempt to move to escape the dingy alley that the bar’s back door opened up into.

The coat he pulled around his bare shoulders was threadbare, ragged and tore in the sleeves, more suited for spring than for the start of the winter months. But it was something.

His heeled shoes clicked ominously on the pavement as he made his way from the alley, the black stiletto’s far nicer than his coat, strappy and trendy stylish. He hated them. He often watched women now with a strange sort of respect and disgust for willingly wearing the things day after day. The first time he had put them on he had nearly broken his ankle just trying to walk, however he had eventually gotten used to them, as he had to the make-up and short skirts.

He supposed, after a while, humans could get used to anything. It was only when change came about they began to question themselves and become disquieted. After the week Fuji had just had, he felt he had a reason to be so discomforted.

First Momoshiro, and now Echizen. He had gotten the shock of his life when he had noticed who he was serving Monday night and tonight he hadn’t handled the shock any better. If people from his old life were going to continue to pop in on him like that, he was going to have to find somewhere else to work. It was too much a shock to his system to see them again and Fuji wasn’t even sure what he would do if he saw Tezuka again.

Foolishly distracted by his inner turmoil Fuji didn’t quite look where he was headed and crashed headfirst into someone’s back, sending him tumbling to the ground in an ungraceful sprawl.

The former tensai made a soft sound of pain as he made to stand, finding it more than a little painful to put weight on his left foot. He tested it, and found it to be only badly twisted, not sprained. “Sorry,” he murmured, not looking up at the man he’d crashed into.

“Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be wandering around alone,” the man said greasily, grabbing his arm, tight grip and stronger muscles effectively trapping Fuji. He once might have been able to shake the man, in a far away place and time when he’d been surrounded by friends, his slender body lithe muscle from tip to tongue. Once upon a time, he might have lifted his chin to his confronter and levelled him with an eerie open eyed stare, his bright cerulean eyes disconcerting.

Now however, he kept his stare fixed firmly on the ground, tugging ineffectively on his arm to try and free himself. “Now, now little swallow, why don’t you allow me to escort you home?”

Fuji’s head snapped up at those words, breath catching painfully in his lungs at the word “swallow” and the cutting reminder of his triple counters.

He was not surprised to recognise the man hanging on him. He had expected it, though he would never have been able to tell from voice alone. He shuttered down emotion, looking behind the ebon haired man to the others behind him he didn’t recognise, snickering at their friends amusing actions.

Fuji felt like laughing. There was no recognition in those green eyes, the swallow comment was a mere fluke. The former Rikkai regular seemed only to recognise a pretty girl in front of him, nothing more. Thank Kami-sama for small miracles. However, the urge to laugh died as soon as Kirihara’s other hand found a place to rest at the small of his back.

The boy smiled, tongue tracing his upper lip in a way that reminded Fuji eerily of their match in the Kantou tournament and leaned down as if for a kiss. Fuji fought, struggled, but said nothing, fearful of recognition on the other boy’s part, going slack in detached terror as the other’s lips found his.

Kirihara seemed surprised at his lack of response even as he brushed his tongue against Fuji’s lower lip and he drew back a little. It was the chance Fuji had been waiting for.

He slammed his head as hard as he could into the others, feeling pain flare in his skull but knowing that it would hurt Kirihara just as much, and knock him off balance too due to the unexpectedness of the kiss.

However, his grip didn’t loosen, got tighter if anything as he swore and his friends laughed raucously in the background. The curly haired man cursed, twisting Fuji’s arm harshly in an attempt to bring him closer. The brunette snarled and thrashed, all too well aware of the former Rikkai ace’s greater height and strength. He hadn’t trembled the first time he had gone up against blood red eyes, but this time he knew he wouldn’t be able to take it if the eyes that met his turned out to be crimson.

They weren’t, they were the same gem green as always and for that Fuji was momentarily grateful. Until those eyes sparked in recognition, widening to nearly double their size. “Fuji . . . Syuusuke?”

The laughter of Kirihara’s friends died down, and a startled hush seemed to sweep the dimly lit night street, silence only broken by the occasional passing car.

Kirihara didn’t move a moment before turning to his three friends and smiling greasily, “I’m shovin’ off for the night, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” Fuji didn’t have it in him to fight anymore. His shoulders sagged in defeat as Kirihara’s friends laughed and wished him well with the pretty whore.

As soon as the other men were out of sight Fuji felt himself being dragged into a nearby alley and pushed against the wall.

“What the fuck is going on Fuji-san?” Kirihara growled, seeming caught between anger and uncertain curiosity.

“Nothing that is any of your business Kirihara-kun.”

“I’m just to assume you runnin’ into me and the gang wearing a skirt and strutting your stuff like some kind of fucking chick is a fucking coincidence?”

“Believe what you want,” Fuji said resignedly. “Can I go now?”

“No.”

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“Why?” Fuji half shouted, frustrated and bone weary.

Kirihara didn’t answer, just stared at him with those dazzling green eyes of his until Fuji felt like gouging them out just to be rid of the questions in them.

Unexpectedly, the dark haired boy lunged forward until they were nose to nose, and with the alley at his back, and the man’s unmoveable body in front of him, Fuji had no where left to go.

Kirihara tilted his head slightly and leaned in the rest of the way; pressing chapped lips to Fuji’s own rouge stained ones moving against him in a far gentler kiss than the previous one.

“Will you tell me why you’re really out here Fuji Syuusuke?” Kirihara breathed against his lips.

“Never.”

He was kissed again, Kirihara slipping a slick tongue into his startled mouth and proving his worth as he left the smaller boy breathless.

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“I’ll find out eventually.”

“And it won’t be me who tells you.”

Kirihara laughed lightly, “Can I see you again?”

“No.”

“I’ll find you.”

“I’ll disappear.”

“I’ll follow.”

“I know.”

I apologise for the crappy dialogue ending, though it had a purpose, prpbably a puprose only I understand but still, I also apologise for the crappy posting job I'm just too tired to care right now. Go'night