fic: tiger & dragon, pg-13.
I saw a bunch of unfulfilled requests over at Yuletide for this fandom and decided to stretch my fic-writing muscles by writing a story for one of them.
Was finished hastily as the archive will close soon for Yuletide 2008 but here we go..
A link to the story in the archive.
the bird seller's wife and other anomalies
fandom: tiger & dragon (jdrama)
rating: pg-13
pairing: kind of gen, with some ryuji/megumi & hints of ryuji/tora
disclaimer: I don't own, I'm not Kudo, I'm not as brilliant as Kudo etc etc.
notes: Written for peroxidepest17 in the New Years Resolutions 2008 challenge at yuletidetreasure.org. Takes place after the drama! The rakugo story mentioned in this story is not an actual rakugo story but made up by yours truly.
He walks onto the stage, sits down, bows, looks at all the anticipating faces, the clapping hands that cease as he takes a breath and begins.
"It's sometimes said that you never notice how much you care for something until it's gone. But some people come to the realization even when they don't lose something. Some people.."
---
"Hey."
Ryuji hears it but he's still asleep and through the haze of sleep he realizes he doesn't want to wake up. It can't be morning yet, and he's very comfortable just sleeping, and unless the house is on fire, he doesn't want to wake up.
"Hey, Ryuji."
Unless the voice is Megumi, Ryuji suddenly considers as a finger pokes at his shoulder, his beautiful girlfriend Megumi who's decided in the middle of the night she wants to talk to him, or better, have sex with him, and though it hasn't happened so far (the suddenly-wanting-sex part, the actual sex part has happened, thank you very much), there's no reason why it couldn't. But just as Ryuji wakes up enough to understand this, he realizes Megumi is actually already lying next to him, her warm arm resting on his midriff, his own arm around her.
And the voice is distinctly male.
"What the fuck, Tora?" Ryuji asks, irritated that he went through all this trouble of waking up, not to wake up to promise of sex, but rather to the stupid face of his stupid friend slash colleague slash --
"How does 'Bird seller's wife' end?" Tora asks.
"What?" Ryuji asks, rubbing his eyes as he all of the sudden remembers why Megumi is lying there, and why he himself is half-naked. For a moment he feels happy, and then he feels weird as Tora pokes him again.
"What's the ending to 'Bird seller's wife'?" Tora repeats.
"How did you get in?" Ryuji asks accusingly.
"I knocked, you didn't reply, I came in. My room's across the hall, you know," Tora replies. "How does it end?"
"I'm half-naked with my girlfriend here, can you just--"
"Good for you. How did the story end?"
"I just told it on stage last night, how did you manage to miss it?" Ryuji asks, now more annoyed that Tora doesn't pay attention to his Rakugo performances than the fact Tora sneaks into his room late at night.
"Tora-chan?" Megumi suddenly asks, raising her head sleepily from Ryuji's chest.
"Hi Megumi," Tora says, and then looks at Ryuji again. "I had to go to the toilet, so I missed a bit of that story."
"Didn't you learn that story in jail already?" Ryuji asks, still annoyed.
"Wasn't in the books," Tora replies.
"Tell Tora-chan the ending, Ryu-chan!" Megumi says, her hand now stroking Ryuji's side, which feels very nice until it dawns on him that if he's half-naked, and they just had sex, then she must be half-naked as well. He hastily covers her with a blanket.
Tora looks nonplussed. "So, what's the ending?"
Megumi looks annoyed. "It's nothing Tora-chan hasn't seen before, Ryu-chan."
"Don't remind me you've slept with him!" Ryuji snaps, exasperated.
"Twice," Tora adds and Ryuji wants to kill him again, a lot.
"The story ends with Ryuji the clothes seller choking his former friend Kotora--"
Tora holds up his hand. "Wait, it was the bird seller, not a clothes seller."
"Do the whole story again, Ryu-chan," Megumi asks, sitting up and Ryuji rushes to make sure the blanket still covers her sufficiently.
"I'm not doing the story in the middle of the night!" Ryuji exclaims.
"Just the ending will do. Oh, why does his wife hate birds?" Tora asks.
"Because it's funny," Ryuji says. "Now go away and goodnight."
He flops down on the mattress next to Megumi but Tora isn't moving an inch. "I can't sleep until I know the ending."
"Whatever, go away."
"Ryu-chan," Megumi pleads but Ryuji keeps his eyes firmly closed. "Tora-chan should lie down while he waits."
Ryuji's eyes snap open. "No, he shouldn't. He's not staying."
"I am," Tora insists.
"We're not all sharing a bed!" Ryuji shouts, not caring if he wakes up the whole house.
"Megumi can go to her own room, then," Megumi says.
"You stay, he goes," Ryuji replies, holding her back.
"There's not enough blanket for three people!" Megumi notes.
"It's okay, I don't need a blanket," Tora says as he takes Megumi's advice and settles against the floor next to Ryuji's bed.
"This is ridiculous," Ryuji says but feels tired again. He lies back down, edging closer to Megumi and further away from Tora, but Megumi pushes him back.
"Tora-chan needs the blanket, too," she insists and arranges it so they're all under it. "This is nice," she then says and rests her head against Ryuji's shoulder again.
Ryuji closes his eyes, tries to think of happy things and not ex-yakuza's lying next to him and his half-naked girlfriend, but then he has to glance in Tora's direction.
Tora is staring at him but is startled as Ryuji glares at him. "No, go back to sleep. The faster you sleep, the faster you wake up and tell me the ending."
"The birds begin singing and she likes them all of the sudden," Ryuji says, closing his eyelids again.
"Really?"
"Yes."
"So what's the punchline?"
"Goodnight."
"Huh?" Tora asks, but Ryuji is determined not to reply. In the morning. Maybe.
--
"The wife hated the birds, hated the feathers, hated cleaning the cages of the poop while her husband was out in the market place with the birds. She simply couldn't stand it.
But my dear, the husband would explain, this is how I make my living.
Couldn't you follow your father and become a farmer, or your brother and become an accountant, something regular and normal and like this the wife would rant, days and nights, cleaning the cages and sneezing because of the feathers and the dust."
--
At the end of the day, Kotora's method of narration is just that, a method of narration, Donbei thinks. The way reality bends itself to form a circle, where the story ends from the teaching it began from, rakugo itself is like that. What happens in actuality, and how Kotora finds the fiction somewhere amidst the fact, that's just storytelling. It's not as if reality itself is composed of rakugo stories; occurrences and teachings and lessons to be learned.
Or maybe it is.
Maybe Kotora is just the only one who observes it.
"How's Bird seller's wife coming along?" Donbei asks him over breakfast.
Kotora shrugs. "I don't know the punchline yet."
"I thought Ryuji performed it last night--"
"He missed it because he found it so boring," Ryuji comments with an irritable tone.
"I have a weak bladder," Kotora says.
"Right," Ryuji replies, unconvinced.
Trouble in paradise again, it seems.
--
"And the spring would come, but the wife would sleep late into the day, exhausted from the winter and the husband would attend to the bird cages..."
--
"You're the wife," Tora says when Ginjiro steps outside to call Risa and he and Ryuji are left alone at the bar table.
"Eh?" Ryuji says, his drunk brain not entirely comprehending what lead them to this analogy. "Hey, I know we had that misunderstanding but I'm still not gay--"
"In the story, you're the bird seller's wife," Tora continued solemnly. "You've been really irritated as of late, so I thought like, I'm the birds."
"Who's the bird seller, then?" Ryuji asks. Sometimes he's not able to help his curiosity. Sure, it's kind of stupid - stupid and sometimes awesome - how Tora builds his own universe around these ancient stories, making them reflective of actual stories, the every-day ones, but that doesn't mean Ryuji isn't interested.
"That's not the point of the story, though, is it?" Tora asks. "It's more about the birds and the wife."
"Without the bird seller there wouldn't be the birds or the wife," Ryuji disagrees.
"I never got that story," Tora says with a shrug. "But if I'm the birds, what do I have to do?"
"Sing?" Ryuji jokes. "It's getting pretty late, we should get going. Megumi must be waiting for me."
"I thought she went to the movies."
"With who?"
Tora pours himself another drink. "I don't know, some guy."
"What?!" Ryuji exclaims. "That stupid woman, what is she-- god-- I'm breaking up with her. Let's go."
"Where?"
"To the movie theater to break up with her!"
Tora looks less than enthusiastic. "Why do you always have to make a scene like that? Why can't you send an SMS like normal people when they dump somebody?"
"What if the guy she's out with is like, a wrestler? I need back up," Ryuji explains while pulling his coat on.
Tora comes with him but not willingly.
--
"Again I went to the cages and all I could find was dirt!
Forgive me, dear, when I went to clean up the cages, the birds would start singing and they would sing so beautifully--
You think I care! For all I know the birds might not even know how to sing, you're just making up these stories..."
--
The alcohol burns the cut on Tora's lip, because Megumi's date for the evening - the one she eventually dumped but not after the guy had unleashed a world of pain onto Tora and Ryuji - was not a wrestler.
But a former underground boxer, he was.
Ryuji, now nursing a black-eye-to-be with a beer bottle, sits down next to him with a sigh.
"She asleep?"
"Yeah."
"You back together?" Tora asks.
Ryuji pauses. "Yeah."
Tora nods. "Good."
He's not even sure he wants to drink right now. Violence is kind of a thing of his past and he doesn't particularly enjoy returning to it. He prefers his current life - the performances, the stories circling in his head, turns of phrases, jokes and puns and all these great things that make him see things differently. He thinks a lot nowadays, but it's pleasant thoughts.
Ryuji looks hesitant but speaks up anyway. "You know, you're not the birds."
"Huh?" Tora asks.
"You don't have to sing or anything."
"I don't?"
"Idiot," Ryuji says, his voice so full of affection Tora can't even look at him. "You don't have to do anything."
"Right," Tora replies. "I still don't get the punchline, though. It's not repeated anywhere before in the story."
"That's the funny part, you don't expect it but it happens and it fits."
"But it doesn't make any sense."
"Then maybe this is not the story." Ryuji finishes his beer. "I'm going to bed."
"Maybe I should just tell this one as a story," Tora says pensively. "Just as a story."
"That's not very you," Ryuji says.
--
"But Mrs Bird seller, the birds suddenly sang, there's more to us than you think."
Kotora bows, and looks up to see among the pairs of clapping hands, the whistles from the crowd, Ryuji's grin that breaks into a chuckle as he continues clapping.
And all he had to do was sing.
Was finished hastily as the archive will close soon for Yuletide 2008 but here we go..
A link to the story in the archive.
the bird seller's wife and other anomalies
fandom: tiger & dragon (jdrama)
rating: pg-13
pairing: kind of gen, with some ryuji/megumi & hints of ryuji/tora
disclaimer: I don't own, I'm not Kudo, I'm not as brilliant as Kudo etc etc.
notes: Written for peroxidepest17 in the New Years Resolutions 2008 challenge at yuletidetreasure.org. Takes place after the drama! The rakugo story mentioned in this story is not an actual rakugo story but made up by yours truly.
He walks onto the stage, sits down, bows, looks at all the anticipating faces, the clapping hands that cease as he takes a breath and begins.
"It's sometimes said that you never notice how much you care for something until it's gone. But some people come to the realization even when they don't lose something. Some people.."
---
"Hey."
Ryuji hears it but he's still asleep and through the haze of sleep he realizes he doesn't want to wake up. It can't be morning yet, and he's very comfortable just sleeping, and unless the house is on fire, he doesn't want to wake up.
"Hey, Ryuji."
Unless the voice is Megumi, Ryuji suddenly considers as a finger pokes at his shoulder, his beautiful girlfriend Megumi who's decided in the middle of the night she wants to talk to him, or better, have sex with him, and though it hasn't happened so far (the suddenly-wanting-sex part, the actual sex part has happened, thank you very much), there's no reason why it couldn't. But just as Ryuji wakes up enough to understand this, he realizes Megumi is actually already lying next to him, her warm arm resting on his midriff, his own arm around her.
And the voice is distinctly male.
"What the fuck, Tora?" Ryuji asks, irritated that he went through all this trouble of waking up, not to wake up to promise of sex, but rather to the stupid face of his stupid friend slash colleague slash --
"How does 'Bird seller's wife' end?" Tora asks.
"What?" Ryuji asks, rubbing his eyes as he all of the sudden remembers why Megumi is lying there, and why he himself is half-naked. For a moment he feels happy, and then he feels weird as Tora pokes him again.
"What's the ending to 'Bird seller's wife'?" Tora repeats.
"How did you get in?" Ryuji asks accusingly.
"I knocked, you didn't reply, I came in. My room's across the hall, you know," Tora replies. "How does it end?"
"I'm half-naked with my girlfriend here, can you just--"
"Good for you. How did the story end?"
"I just told it on stage last night, how did you manage to miss it?" Ryuji asks, now more annoyed that Tora doesn't pay attention to his Rakugo performances than the fact Tora sneaks into his room late at night.
"Tora-chan?" Megumi suddenly asks, raising her head sleepily from Ryuji's chest.
"Hi Megumi," Tora says, and then looks at Ryuji again. "I had to go to the toilet, so I missed a bit of that story."
"Didn't you learn that story in jail already?" Ryuji asks, still annoyed.
"Wasn't in the books," Tora replies.
"Tell Tora-chan the ending, Ryu-chan!" Megumi says, her hand now stroking Ryuji's side, which feels very nice until it dawns on him that if he's half-naked, and they just had sex, then she must be half-naked as well. He hastily covers her with a blanket.
Tora looks nonplussed. "So, what's the ending?"
Megumi looks annoyed. "It's nothing Tora-chan hasn't seen before, Ryu-chan."
"Don't remind me you've slept with him!" Ryuji snaps, exasperated.
"Twice," Tora adds and Ryuji wants to kill him again, a lot.
"The story ends with Ryuji the clothes seller choking his former friend Kotora--"
Tora holds up his hand. "Wait, it was the bird seller, not a clothes seller."
"Do the whole story again, Ryu-chan," Megumi asks, sitting up and Ryuji rushes to make sure the blanket still covers her sufficiently.
"I'm not doing the story in the middle of the night!" Ryuji exclaims.
"Just the ending will do. Oh, why does his wife hate birds?" Tora asks.
"Because it's funny," Ryuji says. "Now go away and goodnight."
He flops down on the mattress next to Megumi but Tora isn't moving an inch. "I can't sleep until I know the ending."
"Whatever, go away."
"Ryu-chan," Megumi pleads but Ryuji keeps his eyes firmly closed. "Tora-chan should lie down while he waits."
Ryuji's eyes snap open. "No, he shouldn't. He's not staying."
"I am," Tora insists.
"We're not all sharing a bed!" Ryuji shouts, not caring if he wakes up the whole house.
"Megumi can go to her own room, then," Megumi says.
"You stay, he goes," Ryuji replies, holding her back.
"There's not enough blanket for three people!" Megumi notes.
"It's okay, I don't need a blanket," Tora says as he takes Megumi's advice and settles against the floor next to Ryuji's bed.
"This is ridiculous," Ryuji says but feels tired again. He lies back down, edging closer to Megumi and further away from Tora, but Megumi pushes him back.
"Tora-chan needs the blanket, too," she insists and arranges it so they're all under it. "This is nice," she then says and rests her head against Ryuji's shoulder again.
Ryuji closes his eyes, tries to think of happy things and not ex-yakuza's lying next to him and his half-naked girlfriend, but then he has to glance in Tora's direction.
Tora is staring at him but is startled as Ryuji glares at him. "No, go back to sleep. The faster you sleep, the faster you wake up and tell me the ending."
"The birds begin singing and she likes them all of the sudden," Ryuji says, closing his eyelids again.
"Really?"
"Yes."
"So what's the punchline?"
"Goodnight."
"Huh?" Tora asks, but Ryuji is determined not to reply. In the morning. Maybe.
--
"The wife hated the birds, hated the feathers, hated cleaning the cages of the poop while her husband was out in the market place with the birds. She simply couldn't stand it.
But my dear, the husband would explain, this is how I make my living.
Couldn't you follow your father and become a farmer, or your brother and become an accountant, something regular and normal and like this the wife would rant, days and nights, cleaning the cages and sneezing because of the feathers and the dust."
--
At the end of the day, Kotora's method of narration is just that, a method of narration, Donbei thinks. The way reality bends itself to form a circle, where the story ends from the teaching it began from, rakugo itself is like that. What happens in actuality, and how Kotora finds the fiction somewhere amidst the fact, that's just storytelling. It's not as if reality itself is composed of rakugo stories; occurrences and teachings and lessons to be learned.
Or maybe it is.
Maybe Kotora is just the only one who observes it.
"How's Bird seller's wife coming along?" Donbei asks him over breakfast.
Kotora shrugs. "I don't know the punchline yet."
"I thought Ryuji performed it last night--"
"He missed it because he found it so boring," Ryuji comments with an irritable tone.
"I have a weak bladder," Kotora says.
"Right," Ryuji replies, unconvinced.
Trouble in paradise again, it seems.
--
"And the spring would come, but the wife would sleep late into the day, exhausted from the winter and the husband would attend to the bird cages..."
--
"You're the wife," Tora says when Ginjiro steps outside to call Risa and he and Ryuji are left alone at the bar table.
"Eh?" Ryuji says, his drunk brain not entirely comprehending what lead them to this analogy. "Hey, I know we had that misunderstanding but I'm still not gay--"
"In the story, you're the bird seller's wife," Tora continued solemnly. "You've been really irritated as of late, so I thought like, I'm the birds."
"Who's the bird seller, then?" Ryuji asks. Sometimes he's not able to help his curiosity. Sure, it's kind of stupid - stupid and sometimes awesome - how Tora builds his own universe around these ancient stories, making them reflective of actual stories, the every-day ones, but that doesn't mean Ryuji isn't interested.
"That's not the point of the story, though, is it?" Tora asks. "It's more about the birds and the wife."
"Without the bird seller there wouldn't be the birds or the wife," Ryuji disagrees.
"I never got that story," Tora says with a shrug. "But if I'm the birds, what do I have to do?"
"Sing?" Ryuji jokes. "It's getting pretty late, we should get going. Megumi must be waiting for me."
"I thought she went to the movies."
"With who?"
Tora pours himself another drink. "I don't know, some guy."
"What?!" Ryuji exclaims. "That stupid woman, what is she-- god-- I'm breaking up with her. Let's go."
"Where?"
"To the movie theater to break up with her!"
Tora looks less than enthusiastic. "Why do you always have to make a scene like that? Why can't you send an SMS like normal people when they dump somebody?"
"What if the guy she's out with is like, a wrestler? I need back up," Ryuji explains while pulling his coat on.
Tora comes with him but not willingly.
--
"Again I went to the cages and all I could find was dirt!
Forgive me, dear, when I went to clean up the cages, the birds would start singing and they would sing so beautifully--
You think I care! For all I know the birds might not even know how to sing, you're just making up these stories..."
--
The alcohol burns the cut on Tora's lip, because Megumi's date for the evening - the one she eventually dumped but not after the guy had unleashed a world of pain onto Tora and Ryuji - was not a wrestler.
But a former underground boxer, he was.
Ryuji, now nursing a black-eye-to-be with a beer bottle, sits down next to him with a sigh.
"She asleep?"
"Yeah."
"You back together?" Tora asks.
Ryuji pauses. "Yeah."
Tora nods. "Good."
He's not even sure he wants to drink right now. Violence is kind of a thing of his past and he doesn't particularly enjoy returning to it. He prefers his current life - the performances, the stories circling in his head, turns of phrases, jokes and puns and all these great things that make him see things differently. He thinks a lot nowadays, but it's pleasant thoughts.
Ryuji looks hesitant but speaks up anyway. "You know, you're not the birds."
"Huh?" Tora asks.
"You don't have to sing or anything."
"I don't?"
"Idiot," Ryuji says, his voice so full of affection Tora can't even look at him. "You don't have to do anything."
"Right," Tora replies. "I still don't get the punchline, though. It's not repeated anywhere before in the story."
"That's the funny part, you don't expect it but it happens and it fits."
"But it doesn't make any sense."
"Then maybe this is not the story." Ryuji finishes his beer. "I'm going to bed."
"Maybe I should just tell this one as a story," Tora says pensively. "Just as a story."
"That's not very you," Ryuji says.
--
"But Mrs Bird seller, the birds suddenly sang, there's more to us than you think."
Kotora bows, and looks up to see among the pairs of clapping hands, the whistles from the crowd, Ryuji's grin that breaks into a chuckle as he continues clapping.
And all he had to do was sing.