FIC FOR UEPIXIE
For: uepixie
From: imifumei
Title: Bomb in a Birdcage
Pairings/Characters: Koki/Ueda
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This is kind of really sappy. I mean super really. AU
Notes: This was inspired by the lyrics of What I Wouldn't Do by A Fine Frenzy. uepixie, I had intended to write you gen, but it just worked better with romance, so . . . I hope you like it. :Dv?
Summary: Koki returns to his hometown and a love he denied.
Koki couldn't say if he'd ever been on this specific train car before. He wasn't the type to follow when they retired certain trains or traincars, but he did know exactly how long it had been since he'd ridden this line. The last time had been in the opposite direction; out of his hometown, a small village really, to the city, the place where he'd made a life for himself. It had been eight years. Yet somehow, this traincar smelled exactly the same; old, sun-warmed vinyl and country air with a faint whiff of the hot metal scent of the track and the crisp green of spring. It was a fragrance he didn't realize he missed. City trains smelled different than these ones heading out to the country where he'd grown up. He inhaled deeply.
His parents were of retirement age now and his clothing design firm was successful enough that he could afford to buy a house of suitable size for them to move in with him. His brothers had helped them pack up and he'd sent a moving truck out for them and their things and it wasn't until after he'd gotten them all settled into their new home that he realized what a mistake it was not to go see the old place one last time. Secretly, Koki was something of a sentimental fool, so he'd decided to take a day and go out to say goodbye to the place he grew up, now that he no longer had any connections there.
The silence of the empty traincar allowed him to hear every clickety-clack it made on the rails. He smiled at the way the lack of buildings let the late afternoon sun stream through the train windows. It was nearly blinding, but his happiness colored it with the nostalgia of special weekend trips to the city as a kid, getting sleepy with the warmth of the compartment and dozing off on his father's shoulder.
For a brief moment Koki wondered why he hadn't done this sooner. He was always asking his family to come to him; inviting them into the city to visit, sight-see, live with him. But no one had gotten very ill or died so he never went back to the country and deep down he knew exactly why. He did not allow himself to regret it. It was what it was. He wasn't sorry for his feelings but he also wasn't sorry he'd left without admitting them.
In Koki's mind, the people who admit their feelings to people they know don't return them are just being selfish. They are burdening someone else with something they should be keeping to themselves. It's rude and in some cases cruel and Koki thought that if you really loved that person, you'd never want to make them feel bad like that.
Koki hadn't just loved him, he had adored Ueda Tatsuya.
They grew up together and at first it had been so easy. No, Koki reminded himself. Not at the very first. When he met Ueda, they'd been five and seven years old, both trying to climb the same tree, the only one on the little hill past the park where he used to play. They argued over which one of them was Ultraman. Koki recalled there being some disagreement over whether Ueda's fancy complete costume made him the more likely Ultraman or Koki's self-declared superior strength and bravery made him the better hero. Eventually they'd decided each to be a different version of him and they would team up to fight against monsters and injustice and other nasty things like bedtimes and homework. They became inseparable.
In the years that followed, Koki found in Ueda a person with whom he could always be absolutely himself. 'Himself' was a confused, unsure boy who alternately strove for conformity or individualism, who laughed at weird things, who had trouble expressing himself without the occasional use of his fists. But all of those things were okay because Ueda was those things too sometimes, so he got it and he was there to remind Koki to be himself or to tone down the rebellion, to laugh along, and to fight right alongside him or hold him back if the situation warranted it. And Koki did the same for him.
They complemented each other, which was strange because for all that they were similar, they were also very, very different. Where Koki had been one to boast, Ueda was more modest. Where Koki was brash and cocky, Ueda was quiet and reserved. Not all the time, but enough that Koki noticed.
It was always especially evident in the silences. As an adult Koki was able to realize just how important the silences were in a relationship. If you can't have them, if you can't just be with each other without having to fill the void, it will never work. At the time, Koki could never have articulated why that was so precious to him, but he did recognize it.
In their preteen and teenage years, he actively sought the solace of Ueda's soft white bedroom. Koki's house was loud an busy but at Ueda's they could sit for hours, not talking, and read manga together or do homework. Sometimes Koki would draw while Ueda practiced piano, it had been there, nestled into Ueda's fluffy down comforter that Koki had first begun dreaming up graphic designs for what would one day become a successful line of street wear.
Being with Ueda genuinely made him happy which, he figured, was exactly what a best friend was supposed to do. Of course it all went to shit when he was sixteen years old and for the first time ever, he experienced the total agony of being in love. A realization as big as that should have come in a flash; world-view-changing events are supposed to, so you know what they are and can deal with them like the big deals they were.
What they aren't supposed to do is quietly sneak up behind you and bash you over the head with feelings you neither want nor are equipt to deal with while you are minding your business discussing music with your best friend under your tree.
Ueda had just been saying how the soundtrack of Rurouni Kenshin may very well revolutionize the face of pop music forever when Koki went suddenly quiet. Having just caught himself having an entirely disturbing daydream featuring Ueda's lips being too occupied kissing his own to be nattering on about pop stars, Koki had been understandably shocked into silence.
Being with Ueda usually suffused Koki through to his fingertips with a warm glow of comfortable, pleasant happiness, but the fluttery tingle of heat in his stomach was something reserved for secret thoughts of attractive celebrities or stolen peeks at the pink pages.
Koki had jumped up and left him there, sitting under their tree in the waning evening light, but the feeling stayed with him. It never left, in fact. Even years later when Koki was alone on a train running through the countryside, he couldn't deny the fact that the mere thought of Ueda still gave him butterflies in his stomach.
Koki both loved and hated that feeling, that memory. It haunted him even now, mocking him when in each new attempt at a relationship he never felt anything akin to what he had felt for Ueda. Of course, he told himself, nothing would ever measure up because it was a love that he ran away from, so he had set it up on a pedestal as some kind of ideal. It could never be achieved and if he had stuck around and confessed to Ueda it would never have turned out the way his memories colored it.
But in all honesty, he could never have done it. As a sixteen-year-old, and even for the year following his ghastly realization, Koki was not a strong enough person to admit his feelings outside of his own thoughts. He had longed for the simple days of childhood when it was still okay to say you loved another boy because no one thought it was weird and you could prove your love with mudpies and making presents of frogs in jars and holding hands on the walk home. But that would never again be possible.
Locked into himself, they made him feel fragile and helpless. Nurturing a love that is sure to remain unrequited is hard work but Koki did it for a year. It made him feel cold and alone at night, crying on the inside, curled around his pillow, rife with self-pity and self-loathing. It started as a bright, tentative flame flickering inside his heart but with time and the self-disgust that only a teenager can muster, it eventually changed into something small and cold, but potentially explosive and therefore dangerous. A bomb in a birdcage; he wasn't built to contain a heart like this. It was bound to go off and when it did, it would ruin everything.
So he left. He met his beloved under their tree and told him in his best excited voice that he was leaving to seek his fortune and only days later he was gone. Nevermind that running away from the friendship did as much to destroy it as any simple confessions of love ever could. At the time it seemed like the only option; to leave before someone got hurt, before he got hurt. It was an act of selfishness, but also of control. Ueda had seemed surprised but offered his congratulations and exhortations for Koki to do his best.
Later, he'd hear in passing that Ueda had asked after him, but that was to be expected of old friends. Koki never harbored any hopes of his feelings being returned. He did what everyone does. He grew up and moved on.
Koki took a few deep breaths and tried to clear his head of regrets he didn't want to dwell on anymore. He wasn't going out to the country to rehash old feelings for his best friend, he was coming to say goodbye to his childhood home, to finally cut ties and be free of all that. And to be fair, it was an absolutely gorgeous day.
It was sunny and unseasonably warm for the late spring. The train arrived at his old station and set out into the fresh air to walk to his old neighborhood. It was strange to him how short the walk seemed from the station to his old house, but it was always like that when you did as an adult something you hadn't done since you were a kid.
Things that once seemed large now were impossibly small and one wondered at how one ever could have imagined them to be so big. His once-imposing high school looked small and unassuming now, the tiny row of businesses on the main street now appeared quaint and out-dated rather than modern and contemporary.
He wandered into stores and greeted the owners who responded with delight to the realization that little Koki had grown up. A boutique store in the shopping street proudly presented a display of Koki's clothing line with a sign proclaiming his home-grown talent. He couldn't contain his pride. He beamed with it.
Overcome with a wave of nostalgia, he continued down the street and turned off down the well-worn path through the park where he'd spent so much time as a child. He was pleased to see that this place, at least, was unchanged. Koki passed the swingset and the rocking horses. There was a short path through a few trees before he got to the clearing. He broke through the trees and looked across the field, expecting to see the lone tree on the empty hill.
The sight that greeted him, however, was not exactly as expected. Yes, the tree was there, full of memories and the gossamer light of the setting sun. But the hill was not empty. Sitting alone, bathed in the golden light of dusk, was the spark that ignited a fuse in his heart that Koki could no longer delude himself into believing was dead.
"Tacchan," Koki said in a shocked whisper, barely even audible to himself. It certainly wouldn't have been audible clear across the field but Ueda's head came up as if on cue and he stood, squinting into the sunlight to see Koki standing in the shadows of the woods.
He stood stock still. After all these years, he didn't know how to go to Ueda but thankfully that didn't matter because suddenly Ueda was coming to him. Seeing Ueda move toward him so quickly, with such clear purpose, finally spurred Koki to action. He went forward to meet him, just clearing the shade line of the trees into the light when Ueda reached him. He shook his head slowly back and forth, trying to think. He knew he was the cause of the stricken look on Ueda's face. There had to be an explanation. But he couldn't come up with any words. "I. . ."
Ueda wasn't looking for an explanation. He stopped Koki's head from shaking by placing his hands on either side of Koki's face and pulling him in for a kiss. It was cautious and hesitant at first but Koki quickly sank into it, like a dream in yellow candyfloss; hazy clouds of sweet temptation, perfect and delicious and fleeting. He expected it to melt away by the time he opened his eyes.
But Ueda's hand snaking around to the small of Koki's back and gripping him closely was too solid to be a dream. The way his tongue traced the seam of Koki's lips, desperately seeking entrance and devouring him hungrily when it was granted were amazingly real. Koki kissed him back for all he was worth, slanting his lips over Ueda's again and again until they were both out of breath and he had to pull back.
"I'm sorry," Ueda said, "but I promised myself that if I ever saw you again, that's the first thing I would do."
"I should never have left," Koki admitted.
"No, of course you should have. You did well for yourself."
"But I-"
"You should have come back."
Koki nodded. He wanted to say more, ask if Ueda would forgive him, try and figure out where they'd go from there, but words and feelings had never been his strong suit. All at once things changed. It seemed appropriate that it should happen here.
With just a kiss, a touch, Ueda had diffused the bomb and transformed it into the bird it always should have been, fluttering in its cage, roosted comfortably and safely exactly where it belonged. Ueda's fingers laced through his, leading him up the hill shining in the last light of day toward their tree. There was something about being there, having come full circle, and the amazing relief he was feeling and the warmth of the hand in his own that made Koki feel at that moment like he could take flight. But it was that same hand, confidently gripping his like it was never going to let go, that made him sure that even if he flew, he'd always know just where to return home.
From: imifumei
Title: Bomb in a Birdcage
Pairings/Characters: Koki/Ueda
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This is kind of really sappy. I mean super really. AU
Notes: This was inspired by the lyrics of What I Wouldn't Do by A Fine Frenzy. uepixie, I had intended to write you gen, but it just worked better with romance, so . . . I hope you like it. :Dv?
Summary: Koki returns to his hometown and a love he denied.
Koki couldn't say if he'd ever been on this specific train car before. He wasn't the type to follow when they retired certain trains or traincars, but he did know exactly how long it had been since he'd ridden this line. The last time had been in the opposite direction; out of his hometown, a small village really, to the city, the place where he'd made a life for himself. It had been eight years. Yet somehow, this traincar smelled exactly the same; old, sun-warmed vinyl and country air with a faint whiff of the hot metal scent of the track and the crisp green of spring. It was a fragrance he didn't realize he missed. City trains smelled different than these ones heading out to the country where he'd grown up. He inhaled deeply.
His parents were of retirement age now and his clothing design firm was successful enough that he could afford to buy a house of suitable size for them to move in with him. His brothers had helped them pack up and he'd sent a moving truck out for them and their things and it wasn't until after he'd gotten them all settled into their new home that he realized what a mistake it was not to go see the old place one last time. Secretly, Koki was something of a sentimental fool, so he'd decided to take a day and go out to say goodbye to the place he grew up, now that he no longer had any connections there.
The silence of the empty traincar allowed him to hear every clickety-clack it made on the rails. He smiled at the way the lack of buildings let the late afternoon sun stream through the train windows. It was nearly blinding, but his happiness colored it with the nostalgia of special weekend trips to the city as a kid, getting sleepy with the warmth of the compartment and dozing off on his father's shoulder.
For a brief moment Koki wondered why he hadn't done this sooner. He was always asking his family to come to him; inviting them into the city to visit, sight-see, live with him. But no one had gotten very ill or died so he never went back to the country and deep down he knew exactly why. He did not allow himself to regret it. It was what it was. He wasn't sorry for his feelings but he also wasn't sorry he'd left without admitting them.
In Koki's mind, the people who admit their feelings to people they know don't return them are just being selfish. They are burdening someone else with something they should be keeping to themselves. It's rude and in some cases cruel and Koki thought that if you really loved that person, you'd never want to make them feel bad like that.
Koki hadn't just loved him, he had adored Ueda Tatsuya.
They grew up together and at first it had been so easy. No, Koki reminded himself. Not at the very first. When he met Ueda, they'd been five and seven years old, both trying to climb the same tree, the only one on the little hill past the park where he used to play. They argued over which one of them was Ultraman. Koki recalled there being some disagreement over whether Ueda's fancy complete costume made him the more likely Ultraman or Koki's self-declared superior strength and bravery made him the better hero. Eventually they'd decided each to be a different version of him and they would team up to fight against monsters and injustice and other nasty things like bedtimes and homework. They became inseparable.
In the years that followed, Koki found in Ueda a person with whom he could always be absolutely himself. 'Himself' was a confused, unsure boy who alternately strove for conformity or individualism, who laughed at weird things, who had trouble expressing himself without the occasional use of his fists. But all of those things were okay because Ueda was those things too sometimes, so he got it and he was there to remind Koki to be himself or to tone down the rebellion, to laugh along, and to fight right alongside him or hold him back if the situation warranted it. And Koki did the same for him.
They complemented each other, which was strange because for all that they were similar, they were also very, very different. Where Koki had been one to boast, Ueda was more modest. Where Koki was brash and cocky, Ueda was quiet and reserved. Not all the time, but enough that Koki noticed.
It was always especially evident in the silences. As an adult Koki was able to realize just how important the silences were in a relationship. If you can't have them, if you can't just be with each other without having to fill the void, it will never work. At the time, Koki could never have articulated why that was so precious to him, but he did recognize it.
In their preteen and teenage years, he actively sought the solace of Ueda's soft white bedroom. Koki's house was loud an busy but at Ueda's they could sit for hours, not talking, and read manga together or do homework. Sometimes Koki would draw while Ueda practiced piano, it had been there, nestled into Ueda's fluffy down comforter that Koki had first begun dreaming up graphic designs for what would one day become a successful line of street wear.
Being with Ueda genuinely made him happy which, he figured, was exactly what a best friend was supposed to do. Of course it all went to shit when he was sixteen years old and for the first time ever, he experienced the total agony of being in love. A realization as big as that should have come in a flash; world-view-changing events are supposed to, so you know what they are and can deal with them like the big deals they were.
What they aren't supposed to do is quietly sneak up behind you and bash you over the head with feelings you neither want nor are equipt to deal with while you are minding your business discussing music with your best friend under your tree.
Ueda had just been saying how the soundtrack of Rurouni Kenshin may very well revolutionize the face of pop music forever when Koki went suddenly quiet. Having just caught himself having an entirely disturbing daydream featuring Ueda's lips being too occupied kissing his own to be nattering on about pop stars, Koki had been understandably shocked into silence.
Being with Ueda usually suffused Koki through to his fingertips with a warm glow of comfortable, pleasant happiness, but the fluttery tingle of heat in his stomach was something reserved for secret thoughts of attractive celebrities or stolen peeks at the pink pages.
Koki had jumped up and left him there, sitting under their tree in the waning evening light, but the feeling stayed with him. It never left, in fact. Even years later when Koki was alone on a train running through the countryside, he couldn't deny the fact that the mere thought of Ueda still gave him butterflies in his stomach.
Koki both loved and hated that feeling, that memory. It haunted him even now, mocking him when in each new attempt at a relationship he never felt anything akin to what he had felt for Ueda. Of course, he told himself, nothing would ever measure up because it was a love that he ran away from, so he had set it up on a pedestal as some kind of ideal. It could never be achieved and if he had stuck around and confessed to Ueda it would never have turned out the way his memories colored it.
But in all honesty, he could never have done it. As a sixteen-year-old, and even for the year following his ghastly realization, Koki was not a strong enough person to admit his feelings outside of his own thoughts. He had longed for the simple days of childhood when it was still okay to say you loved another boy because no one thought it was weird and you could prove your love with mudpies and making presents of frogs in jars and holding hands on the walk home. But that would never again be possible.
Locked into himself, they made him feel fragile and helpless. Nurturing a love that is sure to remain unrequited is hard work but Koki did it for a year. It made him feel cold and alone at night, crying on the inside, curled around his pillow, rife with self-pity and self-loathing. It started as a bright, tentative flame flickering inside his heart but with time and the self-disgust that only a teenager can muster, it eventually changed into something small and cold, but potentially explosive and therefore dangerous. A bomb in a birdcage; he wasn't built to contain a heart like this. It was bound to go off and when it did, it would ruin everything.
So he left. He met his beloved under their tree and told him in his best excited voice that he was leaving to seek his fortune and only days later he was gone. Nevermind that running away from the friendship did as much to destroy it as any simple confessions of love ever could. At the time it seemed like the only option; to leave before someone got hurt, before he got hurt. It was an act of selfishness, but also of control. Ueda had seemed surprised but offered his congratulations and exhortations for Koki to do his best.
Later, he'd hear in passing that Ueda had asked after him, but that was to be expected of old friends. Koki never harbored any hopes of his feelings being returned. He did what everyone does. He grew up and moved on.
Koki took a few deep breaths and tried to clear his head of regrets he didn't want to dwell on anymore. He wasn't going out to the country to rehash old feelings for his best friend, he was coming to say goodbye to his childhood home, to finally cut ties and be free of all that. And to be fair, it was an absolutely gorgeous day.
It was sunny and unseasonably warm for the late spring. The train arrived at his old station and set out into the fresh air to walk to his old neighborhood. It was strange to him how short the walk seemed from the station to his old house, but it was always like that when you did as an adult something you hadn't done since you were a kid.
Things that once seemed large now were impossibly small and one wondered at how one ever could have imagined them to be so big. His once-imposing high school looked small and unassuming now, the tiny row of businesses on the main street now appeared quaint and out-dated rather than modern and contemporary.
He wandered into stores and greeted the owners who responded with delight to the realization that little Koki had grown up. A boutique store in the shopping street proudly presented a display of Koki's clothing line with a sign proclaiming his home-grown talent. He couldn't contain his pride. He beamed with it.
Overcome with a wave of nostalgia, he continued down the street and turned off down the well-worn path through the park where he'd spent so much time as a child. He was pleased to see that this place, at least, was unchanged. Koki passed the swingset and the rocking horses. There was a short path through a few trees before he got to the clearing. He broke through the trees and looked across the field, expecting to see the lone tree on the empty hill.
The sight that greeted him, however, was not exactly as expected. Yes, the tree was there, full of memories and the gossamer light of the setting sun. But the hill was not empty. Sitting alone, bathed in the golden light of dusk, was the spark that ignited a fuse in his heart that Koki could no longer delude himself into believing was dead.
"Tacchan," Koki said in a shocked whisper, barely even audible to himself. It certainly wouldn't have been audible clear across the field but Ueda's head came up as if on cue and he stood, squinting into the sunlight to see Koki standing in the shadows of the woods.
He stood stock still. After all these years, he didn't know how to go to Ueda but thankfully that didn't matter because suddenly Ueda was coming to him. Seeing Ueda move toward him so quickly, with such clear purpose, finally spurred Koki to action. He went forward to meet him, just clearing the shade line of the trees into the light when Ueda reached him. He shook his head slowly back and forth, trying to think. He knew he was the cause of the stricken look on Ueda's face. There had to be an explanation. But he couldn't come up with any words. "I. . ."
Ueda wasn't looking for an explanation. He stopped Koki's head from shaking by placing his hands on either side of Koki's face and pulling him in for a kiss. It was cautious and hesitant at first but Koki quickly sank into it, like a dream in yellow candyfloss; hazy clouds of sweet temptation, perfect and delicious and fleeting. He expected it to melt away by the time he opened his eyes.
But Ueda's hand snaking around to the small of Koki's back and gripping him closely was too solid to be a dream. The way his tongue traced the seam of Koki's lips, desperately seeking entrance and devouring him hungrily when it was granted were amazingly real. Koki kissed him back for all he was worth, slanting his lips over Ueda's again and again until they were both out of breath and he had to pull back.
"I'm sorry," Ueda said, "but I promised myself that if I ever saw you again, that's the first thing I would do."
"I should never have left," Koki admitted.
"No, of course you should have. You did well for yourself."
"But I-"
"You should have come back."
Koki nodded. He wanted to say more, ask if Ueda would forgive him, try and figure out where they'd go from there, but words and feelings had never been his strong suit. All at once things changed. It seemed appropriate that it should happen here.
With just a kiss, a touch, Ueda had diffused the bomb and transformed it into the bird it always should have been, fluttering in its cage, roosted comfortably and safely exactly where it belonged. Ueda's fingers laced through his, leading him up the hill shining in the last light of day toward their tree. There was something about being there, having come full circle, and the amazing relief he was feeling and the warmth of the hand in his own that made Koki feel at that moment like he could take flight. But it was that same hand, confidently gripping his like it was never going to let go, that made him sure that even if he flew, he'd always know just where to return home.