Gift fic for arboreal_fear
For: arboreal_fear
From: Naughty Reindeer
Title: bring on the light, the morning, the new day
Pairings/Characters: Reita/Ruki (The Gazette)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU
Notes: Merry Christmas dear arboreal_fear. I'm almost sure this is not what you had in mind, but I still hope you'll enjoy it. Also, thank you Naughty Reindeer, you know why.
Summary: Ruki engages in a relationship without any ambition. Or at least that's what he thinks.
bring on
the light,
the morning,
the new day
---
It’s so early again. This time it’s his knee that itches, last time he sweat too much, or Reita’s hand was holding him too close, or…
He wishes he’d keep dreaming, dreaming, dreaming forever, of microphones and glitter pants and this precise scent of Elnett hairspray that seems to fill his every moment behind his eyelids in some improbable alternate reality. He knows it because he’s bought it once, Elnett hairspray, probably still has it somewhere, probably in his bathroom, in a wooden box underneath the sink, a box he's painted clinic white and that hides said hairspray and a long and very pink feather boa and some other things that make him smile and sort of want to look away, to the rooftops across the street, the white sky outside, the sound of crows separating the silence like a natural tick tock. His gaze goes back to the ceiling, the wood, the fan. Nobody really knows about the contents of that bag inside the box. Or those dreams.
Reita stirs a little in his sleep and makes a sound and Ruki turns to him. His subconscious is telling stories to his mind before he articulates them into words he doesn't speak aloud. Not exactly nobody, they say, though it's more like a knowing before it finally becomes words. Yeah, not nobody, of course. Of course. His unspoken words soften and fade as his eyes go over lashes and skin and ears then he focuses behind, on a sliding door to a room closed off. Maybe even Nobuo knows too. But by now Nobuo is like furniture, quiet and unjudging and unpresent. Maybe Nobuo knows too. He'd ask if he didn't already know he wasn't going to get any response. He’s learned to live with that and it doesn't bother him.
What a strange life they have. More like, what a strange life he has.
A relationship with no ambition whatsoever, he called it, right after Reita first kissed him in the parking lot of his McDonalds. His McDonalds because although he barely makes it from day to day without wanting to kill someone, his boss, some newbie worker, some faceless, formless, thickly mashed and pinkish round piece of goddamn artificial chicken, it's his McDonalds, brandished with the mark of his being in the world: a rough Rookie, scratched into the underside of the oil sink. He likes to touch his hand to the prickly metallic scar from time to time while dropping somersaulting frozen wannabe French fries into the bubbling oil. A secret energizer, a secret mana spot between two plastic bags of stardom-dreaming McNuggets, McFries and McWhatever. He touches it in the morning when he puts on the apron and the evening after cleaning Ronald's red and yellow smiley cardboard face or the sign proclaiming that week's new entry in the mctop5. He touches it when he goes outside into the parking lot to smoke, and when he goes back; after a while he touches it when Reita calls or he sees Reita ordering a BigMac and a Bud through the rushing coworkers and shouts. Their eyes lock and Ruki rolls his eyes at Reita's grin, but he touches it nevertheless. His place in the world and he'll make the best out of it.
A relationship without any ambition.
Reita’s nose is shiny, his hair is plastered and fried white over his forehead. Reita has a motorcycle and his roots are black because he didn’t have the money to buy anymore bleach. Reita’s playing a beat up bass guitar and works in a garage by day. Reita has his own dreams and somehow he kept on stopping by the same drive-in, offering the same cigarette at the same time each evening and here they are now.
Ruki takes a long deep breath. It bounces off Reita's face and washes over his own again. Reita's eyelashes are fanned long across his cheek. A lash is balancing slowly on his upper lip.
First time they kissed was the natural progression of a casual "I like you," sort of spoken to his face, or Reita's shoes, or the street full of driving cars and racing wind so Ruki didn't really hear it. He said, "what?" and Reita said something like, "I have a bike," and scratched the back of his neck and actually wanted to say come with me for a ride but it registered wrong to Ruki and after the second what Reita made a point to drag him into a secluded area of the parking lot, in the orange hue coming off a street lamp across and before a third, irritated what came out, pressed his chapped, wind dried lips to Ruki's own and Ruki said mw-oh oh, between tongue and teeth.
He didn't know why he agreed. It wasn't like he needed someone, he'd make it on his own and frankly the scrawny dude was admittedly taller and sort of dashing in that motorbike-riding-clueless-boy-that-laughs-at-whatever-dumb-thing-he-says-sort-of-way, who smokes like he does and seems to like the same music and cooks him food and sometimes looks into the distance like there's something really there. And maybe, yes, maybe he asks himself sometimes whether they both see the same things in that far fetched distance, and maybe what matters most is that Reita sometimes hints that they do
The first time he went for a ride on his vintage Honda (I’ll get a Harley one day you'll see) was terrifying and he clung to Reita's chest, although later on he wouldn't admit it and complain about the uncomfortable ways in which Reita's leather jacket ornaments poked into his face, (he loves that jacket) but it was a short ride and it somehow ended here, at Reita's apartment and he had cold hands and a dizzy mind and a chest somehow pumping like an engine.
That was a while ago.
He falls back asleep and has a dream of roaring voices and the inside of Budokan. When he opens them again it takes a while to not be disappointed. He turns around and Reita looks at him, all small stubbles and quiet, knowing eyes.
His shoulder has flecks of glitter scattered around.
It took him time to learn to sleep here, to eat here, to stay over the night, to have sex here.
First time he came by he wanted to suck Reita off in the hallway, to knead his buttocks and raise his own legs high in the air around him as Reita would pound into him worse than in any porn he jerked off on the internet for years in his empty ldk. But Reita opened the door and said, "Here's where I live," and shrugged, then sort of started to clean up and when Ruki stood barefoot in the middle of the room, feeling himself grow nonchalant and confident Reita turned and said, "and here lives Nobuo, but don't mind him". Nobuo lives into a tiny room behind a closet door that never opens when they are around. "Hikikomori," Reita mouthed before gathering the perfectly arranged garbage outside the shoji and Ruki didn't know what else to say but oh. "He's no trouble and we get along just fine", "We met in high school, this is his apartment actually", "I’m buying him food and cleaning in exchange for a small rent," and maybe Ruki should've left right in that moment, but he found it sort of touching and he helped Reita out with the cleaning, the hanging out of wet socks to dry. Later, they were drinking and talking and drinking and one thing lead to the other and he was under Reita, on the floor, lifting his groin into Reita's palm.
Reita's fingers are long and worn out and they know exactly what to do; his own fingers are short and smell of frying oil and disinfectant.
They didn't do much that first night, although he wanted to, he really did, with every sweaty pore and every huff of hot air from Reita's breath over his skin. But the room seemed small and there were socks hanging down from a clothesline and he felt unusually self-conscious and reminded of when he heard his own parents behind the shoji on an unfortunate day in the summer when he was thirteen and they were at his grandmother's house and his mind stopped at Nobuo. He didn't know back then that Nobuo wears headphones all the time and there's an entire wall of books between the shoji and the space he lives in. He didn't know and with every flick of Reita's tongue and every scrape of teeth he pictured Nobuo, formless and glass eyed, jerking off behind them in unison, his mouth dribbling drool onto the floor.
They didn't do much at all that night and it took a while to get used to it without causing a scene each time. There were other places too, even Ruki's tiny flat, or a borrowed car or love hotels with digital fish swimming on the ceiling above while Reita's face was blue above or under him but in time he settled here and it somehow became a second home, Nobuo included. He realized it didn't matter that he was there, he lost even the tiny thrills of showing off he felt some other times and it became natural.
Reita is looking at him, his fingers tracing the remaining glitter on his face, on his eyelids, his temple.
Sometimes Ruki likes to paint his face in makeup like his idols, thick makeup and crazy hair, glitter and gloss and a face pure to perfection, they put music on the highest level, Reita plays the bass and Ruki screams and for a few hours the room expands to a concert hall, a concert arena, a concert stadium. They fuck afterwards, quick and almost painful, clinging to each other in the roar of music and Ruki feels closer to something intangible, image, dream and reality crossing each other, haloing Reita's face. Reita's palms are holding his nape, grabbing at his hips and his cock goes in and out, in and out, in and out until Ruki can't take it anymore and comes, squeezing the body above between his knees.
That morning Reita makes fried eggs and he’s wearing just a t-shirt. His cock is beautiful Ruki thinks and giggles to himself and Reita asks in that clueless way of his, "What?" and time goes by slowly.
The first day he woke up here he wanted to make French fries for Reita but there were no frozen McFries in convenient sealed plastic bags, just dirty brown potatoes in a sack and no knife and no oil sink, perfect and timed and and he had a small breakdown and there was no secret mana spot underneath the kitchen counter. So later, when Reita was peeling potatoes with his Swiss army knife telling him stories of his mom he kept asking himself, why is he here, why is he in this life and why is this dude telling him stories about his goddamn mom.
They made up two days later and went for a long ride on Reita's new Harley. They stopped at a beach next to Tokyo and Reita said let me show you something, in a small voice, looking more into the distance and taking his hand, pressing it against the metal underneath the backseat until Ruki touched something familiar.
There's your mana spot and Ruki thumbed at the familiar name embedded into the warm metal until he had to curse out loud and laugh into Reita's chest and Reita's lips and Reita's mouth.
One night he dreamt they met in other circumstances, smoke filled club and concert and pink hair and he thinks it doesn't make any less sense.
Weeks later, on the balcony Ruki sits between empty flowerpots full of cigarette butts and smokes another. His hair is spiked up and his fingers smell of Elnett and tobacco. Just as they should be, he thinks, as Reita comes in to tell him he's talked to a friend who plays the guitar and they have a place where they can play.
Maybe he doesn't have to wait for a parallel universe.
---
From: Naughty Reindeer
Title: bring on the light, the morning, the new day
Pairings/Characters: Reita/Ruki (The Gazette)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU
Notes: Merry Christmas dear arboreal_fear. I'm almost sure this is not what you had in mind, but I still hope you'll enjoy it. Also, thank you Naughty Reindeer, you know why.
Summary: Ruki engages in a relationship without any ambition. Or at least that's what he thinks.
bring on
the light,
the morning,
the new day
---
It’s so early again. This time it’s his knee that itches, last time he sweat too much, or Reita’s hand was holding him too close, or…
He wishes he’d keep dreaming, dreaming, dreaming forever, of microphones and glitter pants and this precise scent of Elnett hairspray that seems to fill his every moment behind his eyelids in some improbable alternate reality. He knows it because he’s bought it once, Elnett hairspray, probably still has it somewhere, probably in his bathroom, in a wooden box underneath the sink, a box he's painted clinic white and that hides said hairspray and a long and very pink feather boa and some other things that make him smile and sort of want to look away, to the rooftops across the street, the white sky outside, the sound of crows separating the silence like a natural tick tock. His gaze goes back to the ceiling, the wood, the fan. Nobody really knows about the contents of that bag inside the box. Or those dreams.
Reita stirs a little in his sleep and makes a sound and Ruki turns to him. His subconscious is telling stories to his mind before he articulates them into words he doesn't speak aloud. Not exactly nobody, they say, though it's more like a knowing before it finally becomes words. Yeah, not nobody, of course. Of course. His unspoken words soften and fade as his eyes go over lashes and skin and ears then he focuses behind, on a sliding door to a room closed off. Maybe even Nobuo knows too. But by now Nobuo is like furniture, quiet and unjudging and unpresent. Maybe Nobuo knows too. He'd ask if he didn't already know he wasn't going to get any response. He’s learned to live with that and it doesn't bother him.
What a strange life they have. More like, what a strange life he has.
A relationship with no ambition whatsoever, he called it, right after Reita first kissed him in the parking lot of his McDonalds. His McDonalds because although he barely makes it from day to day without wanting to kill someone, his boss, some newbie worker, some faceless, formless, thickly mashed and pinkish round piece of goddamn artificial chicken, it's his McDonalds, brandished with the mark of his being in the world: a rough Rookie, scratched into the underside of the oil sink. He likes to touch his hand to the prickly metallic scar from time to time while dropping somersaulting frozen wannabe French fries into the bubbling oil. A secret energizer, a secret mana spot between two plastic bags of stardom-dreaming McNuggets, McFries and McWhatever. He touches it in the morning when he puts on the apron and the evening after cleaning Ronald's red and yellow smiley cardboard face or the sign proclaiming that week's new entry in the mctop5. He touches it when he goes outside into the parking lot to smoke, and when he goes back; after a while he touches it when Reita calls or he sees Reita ordering a BigMac and a Bud through the rushing coworkers and shouts. Their eyes lock and Ruki rolls his eyes at Reita's grin, but he touches it nevertheless. His place in the world and he'll make the best out of it.
A relationship without any ambition.
Reita’s nose is shiny, his hair is plastered and fried white over his forehead. Reita has a motorcycle and his roots are black because he didn’t have the money to buy anymore bleach. Reita’s playing a beat up bass guitar and works in a garage by day. Reita has his own dreams and somehow he kept on stopping by the same drive-in, offering the same cigarette at the same time each evening and here they are now.
Ruki takes a long deep breath. It bounces off Reita's face and washes over his own again. Reita's eyelashes are fanned long across his cheek. A lash is balancing slowly on his upper lip.
First time they kissed was the natural progression of a casual "I like you," sort of spoken to his face, or Reita's shoes, or the street full of driving cars and racing wind so Ruki didn't really hear it. He said, "what?" and Reita said something like, "I have a bike," and scratched the back of his neck and actually wanted to say come with me for a ride but it registered wrong to Ruki and after the second what Reita made a point to drag him into a secluded area of the parking lot, in the orange hue coming off a street lamp across and before a third, irritated what came out, pressed his chapped, wind dried lips to Ruki's own and Ruki said mw-oh oh, between tongue and teeth.
He didn't know why he agreed. It wasn't like he needed someone, he'd make it on his own and frankly the scrawny dude was admittedly taller and sort of dashing in that motorbike-riding-clueless-boy-that-laughs-at-whatever-dumb-thing-he-says-sort-of-way, who smokes like he does and seems to like the same music and cooks him food and sometimes looks into the distance like there's something really there. And maybe, yes, maybe he asks himself sometimes whether they both see the same things in that far fetched distance, and maybe what matters most is that Reita sometimes hints that they do
The first time he went for a ride on his vintage Honda (I’ll get a Harley one day you'll see) was terrifying and he clung to Reita's chest, although later on he wouldn't admit it and complain about the uncomfortable ways in which Reita's leather jacket ornaments poked into his face, (he loves that jacket) but it was a short ride and it somehow ended here, at Reita's apartment and he had cold hands and a dizzy mind and a chest somehow pumping like an engine.
That was a while ago.
He falls back asleep and has a dream of roaring voices and the inside of Budokan. When he opens them again it takes a while to not be disappointed. He turns around and Reita looks at him, all small stubbles and quiet, knowing eyes.
His shoulder has flecks of glitter scattered around.
It took him time to learn to sleep here, to eat here, to stay over the night, to have sex here.
First time he came by he wanted to suck Reita off in the hallway, to knead his buttocks and raise his own legs high in the air around him as Reita would pound into him worse than in any porn he jerked off on the internet for years in his empty ldk. But Reita opened the door and said, "Here's where I live," and shrugged, then sort of started to clean up and when Ruki stood barefoot in the middle of the room, feeling himself grow nonchalant and confident Reita turned and said, "and here lives Nobuo, but don't mind him". Nobuo lives into a tiny room behind a closet door that never opens when they are around. "Hikikomori," Reita mouthed before gathering the perfectly arranged garbage outside the shoji and Ruki didn't know what else to say but oh. "He's no trouble and we get along just fine", "We met in high school, this is his apartment actually", "I’m buying him food and cleaning in exchange for a small rent," and maybe Ruki should've left right in that moment, but he found it sort of touching and he helped Reita out with the cleaning, the hanging out of wet socks to dry. Later, they were drinking and talking and drinking and one thing lead to the other and he was under Reita, on the floor, lifting his groin into Reita's palm.
Reita's fingers are long and worn out and they know exactly what to do; his own fingers are short and smell of frying oil and disinfectant.
They didn't do much that first night, although he wanted to, he really did, with every sweaty pore and every huff of hot air from Reita's breath over his skin. But the room seemed small and there were socks hanging down from a clothesline and he felt unusually self-conscious and reminded of when he heard his own parents behind the shoji on an unfortunate day in the summer when he was thirteen and they were at his grandmother's house and his mind stopped at Nobuo. He didn't know back then that Nobuo wears headphones all the time and there's an entire wall of books between the shoji and the space he lives in. He didn't know and with every flick of Reita's tongue and every scrape of teeth he pictured Nobuo, formless and glass eyed, jerking off behind them in unison, his mouth dribbling drool onto the floor.
They didn't do much at all that night and it took a while to get used to it without causing a scene each time. There were other places too, even Ruki's tiny flat, or a borrowed car or love hotels with digital fish swimming on the ceiling above while Reita's face was blue above or under him but in time he settled here and it somehow became a second home, Nobuo included. He realized it didn't matter that he was there, he lost even the tiny thrills of showing off he felt some other times and it became natural.
Reita is looking at him, his fingers tracing the remaining glitter on his face, on his eyelids, his temple.
Sometimes Ruki likes to paint his face in makeup like his idols, thick makeup and crazy hair, glitter and gloss and a face pure to perfection, they put music on the highest level, Reita plays the bass and Ruki screams and for a few hours the room expands to a concert hall, a concert arena, a concert stadium. They fuck afterwards, quick and almost painful, clinging to each other in the roar of music and Ruki feels closer to something intangible, image, dream and reality crossing each other, haloing Reita's face. Reita's palms are holding his nape, grabbing at his hips and his cock goes in and out, in and out, in and out until Ruki can't take it anymore and comes, squeezing the body above between his knees.
That morning Reita makes fried eggs and he’s wearing just a t-shirt. His cock is beautiful Ruki thinks and giggles to himself and Reita asks in that clueless way of his, "What?" and time goes by slowly.
The first day he woke up here he wanted to make French fries for Reita but there were no frozen McFries in convenient sealed plastic bags, just dirty brown potatoes in a sack and no knife and no oil sink, perfect and timed and and he had a small breakdown and there was no secret mana spot underneath the kitchen counter. So later, when Reita was peeling potatoes with his Swiss army knife telling him stories of his mom he kept asking himself, why is he here, why is he in this life and why is this dude telling him stories about his goddamn mom.
They made up two days later and went for a long ride on Reita's new Harley. They stopped at a beach next to Tokyo and Reita said let me show you something, in a small voice, looking more into the distance and taking his hand, pressing it against the metal underneath the backseat until Ruki touched something familiar.
There's your mana spot and Ruki thumbed at the familiar name embedded into the warm metal until he had to curse out loud and laugh into Reita's chest and Reita's lips and Reita's mouth.
One night he dreamt they met in other circumstances, smoke filled club and concert and pink hair and he thinks it doesn't make any less sense.
Weeks later, on the balcony Ruki sits between empty flowerpots full of cigarette butts and smokes another. His hair is spiked up and his fingers smell of Elnett and tobacco. Just as they should be, he thinks, as Reita comes in to tell him he's talked to a friend who plays the guitar and they have a place where they can play.
Maybe he doesn't have to wait for a parallel universe.
---