(no subject)

[life_giver]

[ How I'm feeling|
Blah]
[ What I'm listening to| What if this storm ends- Snow Patrol

Title: The art of being inconvenient
Pairings: Aoi/Uruha
Warnings: Nada.
Rating: R
Summary: We both know how inconvenient I really am. I've got it down to an art.



"You only want me when I'm convenient," I mutter cynically and then smile. We both know how inconvenient I really am. I've got it down to an art. I'm convenient like gum on the bottom of your shoe that you just can't scrape off, or missing your train when you're already an hour late for work. That's how convenient I am.

"Aren't you always convenient?" You force out between laughs that are just a bit too high pitched to be anything masculine. You would skin me alive if I had said that out loud. I consider it for a moment, but decide your tacky little insult doesn't really call for me getting into a hair pulling fight with you. I wouldn't put that sort of thing past you and my hair took three painstaking hours to construct tonight anyway. It had cost me a chewed through lip and the hangover I'm going to wake up to in the morning. You really aren't worth all that trouble are you? I'm forever on a faulty dividing line when it comes to that question.

"Oh ha ha. You never told me you were a comedian," I hiss, letting my already forged smile fade just a bit, until I know it's something between a grimace and a plastic "fuck you". If looks could kill, I'd be a bonafide mass murderer or the fucking al Qaeda, which is one in the same anyway.

"You never told me you were so sour. Does sake do that to you, Uru?" You chuckle and roll over onto your back on the bed next me. I reach out with my foot, as if it's the only thing I can possibly bear to touch you with and push you over, away from me. You never did understand the boundaries of "personal space". And I never did understand the perverted pleasure I got from your ignorance of boundaries, or maybe it was your blatant 'disregard' for boundaries....dividing lines....you and me. I wonder not for the first time tonight why you're rolling around on my bed, hell bent on aggravating me. When you brought in the alcohol with a grin on your face, I couldn't imagine we'd end up like this.

"Don't call me that." You don't know me quite well enough to begin giving me pet names. Actually, I'd say you didn't know me at all, but I'm sure the rest of the world inside our little capsule would beg to differ. "And I'm not sour. I'm sweet as-"

"Honey," You finish for me with a charming wiggle of fine black eyebrows. I narrow my eyes and lean back onto my hands as I look down at you beside me. Your hands are drawing indiscernible pictures on the bed. I'd never noticed how long your fingers were.....how well proportioned they were to the rest of your hand, as if whatever creator or whatever moleculer science had decided to make you had decided to make you the example of what a being with perfect hands should look like.

I'm lying. I'm so fucking good at that, at letting lies slip from between my lips like crumbs for the birds. I'd always caught myself staring as you let your hands slide against guitar strings sensually. I'd always studied the way your fingers bent and curved and caressed your guitar. You worshiped that damn guitar like it was a lover in your bed.

I amuse myself with wondering if you actually did take the thing to bed. I'm one of your kind. I understand the bond a guitarist naturally creates with the guitar of his choice, but you make love to that guitar on stage until it's singing with your body, until it plays you and you are alone with it beneath the heat of the lights. You entrance me when you play. It's almost bewitching when you pick up a guitar and rest it in those perfect hands. But if you've ever caught me staring, it's always for education's sake. I may be lead guitarist but I can always pick up a few tricks and hints. I can always learn something new. I can always forge that fake smile and lie.

"I was going to say sugar. I'm sweet as sugar," I mutter and raise a haughty eyebrow until you reach up as if to swat my cheek and I'm forced to slide away, out of reach. Always out of reach. My face is warm with sake, it doesn't need your hand to warm it any more.

"Honey is better in my opinion," Your voice softens just a bit and you let the hand you reached for me with fall back down to the bed beside you while your other hand brings a lit cigarette up to your mouth so that you can suck in another lungful of suicide.

"Are you saying I'm better?" I know it's cheeky and haughty and bitchy and all the unkind words you've ever called me, but it's what we know best. We don't know how to be any other way at this point do we? You fall silent as you let out a stream of smoke from your nose and stare at something on the other side of the room; The TV perhaps, or maybe the bag of clothes I've dumped haphazardly on top of it. No one's ever praised me on my domestic skills and I could care less. I'm not being paid to clean house, I'm being paid to make my guitar sing for thousands and I've never known many rock musicians to say their best attribute was being neat and tidy. You are probably the only exception to that rule and the bag of clothes is driving you mad, I can see it in the way your foot is tapping against the bed restlessly.

The way you don't even attempt to answer my jibe sets me on edge and I move just a bit more towards the end of the bed where your laptop stands open. I'm surprised you're not tapping away on it, working when you should be resting. I wouldn't be surprised if you worked in your sleep. You're in love with more than your guitar. You're in love with working yourself to death.

I frown and settle down onto my stomach in front of the laptop drowning in gratified stickers. One of Ruki's Black Moral designed stickers stands out on top of the rest in the very center and I absently drag my nail across it. I wonder fleetingly why Ruki never gave me any stickers and I turn and give you a nasty curl of the lip you couldn't possibly understand. You stick your tongue out at me in return and then go back to staring at my bag on the television.

"Don't close my windows. I'm working on something," You breathe out through a lungful of smoke and I roll my eyes.

"Porn I'm sure." I tch and move the cursor on the screen to open one of the minimized windows....just to see if maybe my tease will hit home. It doesn't unfortunately. What pops up is just another sound board and a page of lyrics.

"Don't you ever know how to have any fun?" I ask as my eyes greedily drink in your words. You never let me see your lyrics and it feels like sinking my fingers into the deepest folds of your secrets as I read the snatches of songs and scattered musings across the screen. You make no move to stop me and I feel like a child, slipping candy onto my tongue, hoping it's not taken away before I can stuff my mouth completely. You're always so damn secretive that any little thing about yourself that you drop behind for me to pick up is like a river, a waterfall in my hands.

"I have fun. I have lots of fun," I hear you say, but really I'm more focused on the song lyrics than you trying pitifully to redeem yourself and pet your bruised ego. Don't you understand that it's far too late for that? Your reputation has been dragged through the mud time and again mostly by your own hands and everyone who knows you at all, knows you're married to your work. You were never really a bachelor after all were you?

"I'm having fun right now, watching you dig through my shit. You're so fucking nosy," I hear you hiss through your teeth, and if I'd had any sense, I would have caught the annoyance in your voice and closed your laptop, but this is far more fun than playing word games with you and irritating the hell out of you. I'm sinking my hands beneath your skin here and I'm pulling up treasures. I'm digging for your core and feeling the molten center with my finger tips as I let your words imprint themselves on my brain. It feels like stepping onto the edge of a precipice and holding my breath. Maybe if I take another step and plunge head first into your abyss I would finally know you.....the face you hide from me so stealthily on a daily basis.

"Language," I reprimand off-handedly, waving away your complaints while scrolling down further, sinking my hands deeper, reaching....pulling.

"Oh fuck!" I screech as the top of the laptop comes smashing down on my hands. I slide my hands quickly from between the closed laptop and glare scathingly at you; mass murderer, al Qaeda style. I want to grab that pretty black hair between my fingers and yank it out at the roots. I want to pull until you're screaming as I drag your skinny ass behind me. This scenario flashes through my mind in a quick filmstrip as my hands throb in my lap.

"Language," You mock me, wagging your finger in front of my face like the preening asshole you really are. I growl and take a snap at your finger with barred teeth and revel in the way you fall back with a start but then fold into yourself laughing at my expense. I nurse my hands pitifully, pressing my lips to red knuckles and making sure you feel the heat of my infuriated gaze on you as you roll around on the bed laughing. You're wasted and I'm sure if I kick you, you'll go rolling off the bed and stumbling on the floor, but you'll probably keep laughing and so I decide to continue nursing my hands and pouting.

"This is why I never hang out with you," I mutter against the abused skin of my knuckles. You stop laughing long enough to give me a pointed look, but you're still grinning that damnable scheming grin of yours. I've given up trying to decipher the meaning of that grin. It follows me onstage as we make our nightly traipses around one another and it follows me when I deny you, again....and again.

"And here I thought it was because you didn't like me." You mutter and there's still laughter hiding beneath your breath, just itching to erupt again at my slightest misstep. If I give you even one reason to keel over, I'm sure you'll laugh yourself into a premature heart-attack. At the moment, I almost believe I wouldn't mind. But then, I like you well enough....maybe too well and I feel my anger die down and then eventually fizzle out at the nasty thoughts I allowed myself to entertain. I'd never hurt you with anything but words. Though words can be scathingly painful can't they? I settle back against the headboard of the bed and curl my feet beneath me. I watch you again as you regain that smug air and suck the rest of the life from the stub of cigarette you now hold between thumb and forefinger.

Without thinking, my gaze flickers to the smoke detector you deactivated earlier as I watched on, a silent observer, smiling and lighting up my own form of suffocation. I'm not your partner in crime, but I've always watched and wished I could be brave enough to match my step to yours, to follow you on your little wild adventures and be a miscreant with you. But to follow you I'd have to be your partner, to be your partner I'd have to be your friend, and I've never known what we are to one another....I'm not sure you do either.....

I bite into my thumbnail, worry it between teeth and feel my toes curl tighter into the bed beneath me as you stub out the cigarette on the edge of the nightstand. It leaves an angry black circle in the nice wood you'll have to pay for when the bill comes around. It's okay, I can imagine you saying with a careless flick of your wrist. Why not? We have money to throw around. We could fill a bathtub with paper yen and set it on fire and still not feel a jab in our bank accounts. That's not being arrogant or cocky, that's just being honest. I've dipped my hands into that paper and brought up handfuls to buy happiness, nights of happiness to chase away loneliness, shiny things to take the place of human companionship, fast toys to caress and rev instead of a warm body.

For a brief moment I wonder if sex with you would be wild. I wonder if I would claw your back, leaving long red welts in the wake of my nails. I wonder fleetingly if sex with you would chase away this infinite gulf that is always following at my heels, threatening to pull me under, or would it finally catch up to me? If I touched that core I'd always searched for inside of you, would I merely just sink beneath the waves? You seem like the sort of person that let's your lovers drown. You pull them in with those smug grins and those perfect hands and then you watch them go under. I thought I had decided long ago I was done with that sort of suicide. I'd rather smoke myself to death.

My eyes follow your hands as they rake over your face and push sweaty hair from your forehead. You're still not looking at me, just pretending to stare at the ceiling and then glance across the room. At any moment I expect you to tear across the room and fling my overstuffed duffel bag into the closet to get it out of your sight. I almost consider doing it for you so you'll stop obsessing over it.....and look at me. You raise up onto your elbows and tap out a rhythm on the bed. At any moment you're going to roll over, go back to your own bed, tell me you're tired and then turn out the light as you've done for the last five nights.....no....what you've done for the last five years.

I keep asking management to put me in a room with someone else, not because you're annoying as I like to tell you, but because it frustrates me to no end being so close to you and feeling like I'm halfway across the world. You're as good as I am with putting distance between things you'd rather not face.

"You only want to hang around me when no one else wants you," I mutter, without thinking. But then I do think and I suddenly wonder how you would react to the words formulating in my mind. I gather the courage to spew a little word vomit and hope you don't end up hating me for it. I want to know what makes you tick.

"Why is it....that you can only string together words when we're alone? Or you're wasted on an entire bar of drinks?" I put my words together carefully, eyeing you all the while as you fall back onto the bed and reach your hands towards the ceiling in a lazy stretch. I stare at the lithe lines of your body as they curve beautifully. If I was more convenient as you had joked earlier, maybe I would take the liberty of running my hand over your long torso to feel for myself the way your muscles stretch and bend beneath soft skin.

I don't know why I say it, why I suddenly accuse you. Maybe it's the sake I've tipped back by the glassful but in all honesty I'm more sober than I was during the concert earlier tonight. The alcohol has already worn off though I wasn't even drunk to begin with. It takes more than you buying me a few rounds of drinks to have my shorts around my ankles and me bending over. Oh.....secrets. I press my curled forefinger to my lips and smile behind it, keeping my lewd, corrupt fantasies to myself.

"You think you're hot shit up there don't you?" You suddenly mutter and already you're reaching for another cigarette in the front pocket of your expensive designer jeans. I'm almost afraid your lungs are going to burst the way you've been lighting up one after the other between drinks tonight. I can't tell if you're joking or not with that comment and so I just shrug and decide to play the game we've always played, the game we play for the writhing, screaming mass of bodies we cater to night after night.....or maybe we're catering to one another. But either way, I know how to play these games, having learned from the best. You learn from being the victim of them before you can become the master.

"Have I ever given you a reason to think otherwise?" I hiss. It's still playful banter, but just a little less friendly, a little less naive and a whole lot more dangerous. I keep smiling but I know I've hit a nerve. You push yourself up into a sitting position again and turn to face me. Your entire face has changed from teasing and juvenile into that familiar falseness that oozes irritation only you will ever fully understand. I've never even understood my own anger.

"Do you enjoy humiliating me out there?" You say this with such a straight, serious face my entire body freezes for the slightest of moments and my heart seems to jump into my throat before thrusting itself into a wild frenzy against my ribcage. I feel my pulse bounding against my throat and I'm sure you can see it and I'm sure you're going to call me out on it, but your eyes don't move from my face in the slightest. This gives me the second I need to recollect myself, to mentally slap myself across the cheek and not lose face. You would eat me alive if I fell to my knees in front of you right now.

"Humiliating you? You do that well enough by yourself. I just let you and then I laugh at you." And then I do throw in a laugh for good measure; a loud, mocking laugh, hoping it will wipe that unsettling look from your face. I don't like things I don't understand and this entire situation has already been too much for my flighty tastes. Why are we poking at one another? As if by poking long enough and viciously enough, we'll eventually break and then what? What comes after the fall?

"You're always such a bitch, you know that?" You utter it under your breath, and for some reason when someone utters something under their breath, it gives whatever that person mumbled that much more truth. It means it's the stinging kind of truth that person doesn't have the balls to force out above a mutter.

I scowl and push myself off of the bed. I don't even look at you as I duck through the small entryway into the adjoining room and slip into the bathroom. I hear you call my name distantly but I'm already turning the lock on the bathroom door and the sound the lock makes as it slides into place is almost comforting. I don't know where it comes from, the sudden dampness on my cheeks, but I wipe it away with the back of my hand and pretend it's.....what? Water? It tastes salty as it creeps into the corners of my mouth before I can erase all trace of it entirely.

You were right. You're always right. I am a bitch and I play that card to it's ultimate potential. I do enjoy humiliating you, watching the slight disappointment distort your features as I reject you playfully....always playfully. I pull just a bit tighter on the leash I've somehow managed to tie around you on stage and I lick my lips as you try again and again. But wasn't it always a harmless game? You do the same and I've never accused you of being a bitch. And who am I to stand here with my back against the bathroom door blubbering like a teenage schoolgirl with self-esteem issues on her wrists? I've been called much worse by you and never batted an eye.

Everything about tonight has been fucked up and twisted into something incomprehensible. It feels safer in here, away from your accusing stare, and that uncharacteristic 'seriousness' I saw in your face as if at any moment you were going to ask me 'why'. I've never known the answer to that. I can't answer you truthfully at the moment.

I smooth the front of my shirt and decide I can just lie as I always do about this ridiculous little display. Something got into my eye or I had an emergency bathroom calling, we can all sympathize with that, but just as I'm about to turn around and tug on the door handle, you knock on the frame; once, twice, and there's an uncomfortable pause before you knock once more. I raise an eyebrow and can't help but smile at your awkwardness. I love it much more when you're awkward and silly than what I was faced with just moments ago. I don't understand that side of you. It's part of that core you never let me see and it terrified me for the brief second you looked at me unmasked. You just don't understand......what you do to me.....

"I was only joking," I hear your voice as if it's right next to my ear and maybe it is. I have the side of my face pressed to the wood of the door and I almost imagine I can feel the vibrations of your voice through it.

"Hey, Uru...." That nickname again. "Did you see Ruki almost fall off the stage tonight? I thought I was going to piss in my pants I was laughing so hard." You change tactics as if you know I'm squirming uncomfortably here about running out on you. Let's not talk about things that make us uncomfortable. We know how to do that don't we?

"I don't know if you even saw. I kept trying to signal to you, but you were busy having your minions bow down before you. Or maybe you were fooling around with Reita, I don't know." I feel a smile edge it's way to the very corner of my mouth and I almost want to blurt out teasingly "Jealous are you?" but it never quite makes it to my trembling lips and so it just sits there, like me on this precipice; watching....waiting. Somehow, imagining you struggling on the other side of the door to force out words calms me.

Or maybe I'm just sadistic in watching you torture yourself while pulling conversation from your ass. It isn't like you ever do this, though you're always the first to complain that we never talk enough. I want you to talk to me and keep talking to me until you run out of words or breath, whichever comes first.

My back slides down the door and I sit on the floor. When you speak next, maybe it's my imagination but your voice is next to my ear again as if you've followed me down to the ground. I frown but don't move away. I wouldn't dream of moving away. I imagine you raking your hand through mussed hair that's been through too much tonight to be anything but "fucked up" as you would say. I can see in my mind's eye the way you moisten your lips and then slide the silver ring on your middle finger back and forth, around and around until I just want to grab your hand to stop your fidgeting, or just grab your hand to grab it....

My hand instead wraps around the neck of a cold bottle and I realize I've dragged the sake into the bathroom with me. How convenient. It's always there when I really need it isn't it? It's in my bed to keep me warm, always there to keep me company. I raise the bottle to my lips and finish what's left. It's only a small shot but it's enough liquid heat to keep me sitting here with you against this door between us. For once, I truly don't want to be alone right now with this empty bottle of alcohol. I wish I wasn't such a coward and that you were sitting next to me here.

"I always try to signal to you and you always look too late, or I move too fast, or I lean in too slow. I don't understand how two people could be so clumsy and uncoordinated but so perfect in the way we sync our guitars. Does that make any sense?" Here you pause for a breath as if you truly expect me to answer you, but when I don't, you go on and I let out a soft sigh and let my head roll to the side against the door. I can smell the heady scent of smoke coming from the other side and I know you're sucking on that damn cigarette like your life depends on it. Keep it up and you won't have a life to depend on. But then who am I to point fingers when I'm searching frantically for a cigarette of my own?

I know I had a few left in the case before the show. I'm not quite as bad as you are with these things. Ah, there we go. I slide out the last one and stick it between my lips before I realize I don't have a lighter. I let my head fall back against the door with a resonating thump and let the craving eat me from the inside out. The cigarette hangs there in the corner of my mouth and I shrug and then chuckle just the slightest for no other reason but to laugh. Life is always laughing at me so why not laugh with it?

"We got it right once do you remember it?" You continue and I let my silent chuckling die down and nod as if you can see me. Maybe you can imagine me agreeing with you as I'm imagining you on the other side of the door, sweating, smoking, driving me wild with only a piece of wood to separate us. We got it right that one time, fuck....did we ever.

"Maybe it was because you were the one that tried it. I always fucked up, but you got it right that one time and I-" You stop abruptly as if you've caught yourself rambling on, on the verge of saying something you really shouldn't. I pout, something I've been told I'm pretty good at....no not pretty good, but perfect at, and turn to look at the door. I can see you worrying your bottom lip between your teeth, maybe flicking cigarette ashes all over the floor. For such a clean person, when you're drunk you could care less about what you do with those damn cigarettes. Maybe you're berating yourself as I glare at the door, frustrated beyond the point of patience. Just say it. Say whatever the hell you were going to say and get it over with. Talk to me.

'And you what?' I want to yell. Did you enjoy it? Did you like it when I took matters into my own hands and grabbed you and planted a clumsy, messy kiss to your mouth? Your mouth had been partly open, pursed into a shocked "Oh" and I had gotten more teeth than anything, but it had been a kiss none the less and I'd nearly creamed myself from the feel of you on my lips. Just to touch you always sets my skin on my fire. You bastard, you'll never admit if you liked it or hated it or you just don't really give a fuck will you?

I'm sitting up on my knees now, palms pressed flat to the door and I'm staring at it like some sort of maniac. When did I move to sit up? All I know is that I'm waiting for the sky to fall and I know it won't. I want to press my lips to the door and say your name, to let you know that I'm listening to you, but for some reason the words die in my throat and empty apologies and confessions sit idly on my lips. These are the truths I don't think I'll ever have the guts to tell you if you don't tell them first. I am like a child in that manner. I realize how ridiculous I am....how inconvenient I am.....but I don't know how to be any other way.

A guitar screams out in the silence and for a moment I'm confused before I realize it's your phone going off. The ring is cut off abruptly and there's more silence. I wonder briefly if you've shut your phone off or if you're tapping away to some random person. You seem to always be talking to someone, always Mr. Popular. You can't shut up around your friends and your little minions, but then you look at me and you close up and duck back into your protective shell. I want to call you a fucking turtle sometimes but 'asshole' always slips out instead. I smile just the slightest at where my mind is wandering to.....the way you laugh at me when I insult you, the way you're always probably calling me a bitch in your mind. You never did say it out loud until tonight......Maybe we're getting somewhere finally.

"Hey Uru....I know this probably isn't the best time to mention this......but I really have to take a piss." You hit your knuckles against the door and I sit back away from it abruptly, startled momentarily. I debate whether to let you sit out there and suffer a bit longer or let you inside.

It could all just be a ploy to get me to open the door, but hell.....I'm tired of kneeling here feeling sorry for myself and I'm tired of imagining what you're doing on the other side of the door. I'd rather see you. I reach up and twist the knob so that I can pull the door open enough for me to stick my head out. You seem mildly surprised to see me. This bitch usually humiliates you, makes you trip over yourself trying to make things right, laughs when you stumble and fall, and generally gets a kick out of making you suffer. But this bitch doesn't feel very vindictive at the moment, just tired......and horny.

"Hey." Your frown suddenly turns into a wide grin and you stub the rest of your cigarette out on the bottom of your shoe. You're surrounded by an island of ashes as I knew you would be. There's even grey smudges on the tops of your black jeans as if you've been rubbing your palms over them repeatedly.

"Hey," I mutter. "Were you talking to yourself just to hear yourself talk?" I want to brush the ashes from your thighs and then...I scoff and cut off that particular filmstrip of thought and look you in the face. I try not to look away, because looking away somehow equals guilt and I may be guilty but that doesn't mean I have to confess to it.

"Maybe, if no one else was listening." You dig around in your pocket and fish out a lighter to hold out to me. When I only look at you like a mute idiot, you duck your head imploringly and flip open the top of the silver casing and I remember the cigarette hanging from the corner of my mouth. Light me on fire.

"I thought you had to piss," I mumble around the cigarette and watch the smoke curling from the lit end. You take away your cupped hand and shrug. I knew it before I opened the door, you bastard.

"I wanted to see if you were still alive in there," You chuckle. Were you worried about me? Is that what you're getting at or am I just fishing for things bigger than what's currently in this pond of ours? You lean your head back against the door and then glance back over at me. That look, it forces a shudder to run through my body and I hope to whatever creator made you and those perfect fucking hands that you don't see me shiver. I've already given away more to you tonight than I ever thought I'd have the balls to give.

"Come join me out here on the floor. I'm about to start round two of the party." You hold up a new bottle of sake you've somehow magically pulled from your side. I slide out from behind the door and then fall back against it. The door closes behind us with a thud and I curl my arms around bent knees.

You take a swig of the sake and then hold the bottle out to me but I wave it away. The thought of even trying to down another glass of alcohol makes my stomach turn. Unbelievable isn't it? The thing is....if and when you finally force me down that chasm, I want to fall sober. I've used my liquid lover as an excuse for far too long now. I'd rather you weren't drowning yourself either but you're talking....and that's more than you've ever given me and I don't want you to stop. If you stop, I don't know how I'll ever face you again. If you need liquid courage, take it, drink the entire bottle. Here, I'll even tip it back for you. Just tell me you want me.

"I'm alive and well." The sarcasm that drips from my words is a nice shield for these sweaty palms and the nervous skittering of the pulse against my neck. "And tired as all hell. How long do you plan on keeping this party going?" I only want to urge you on, tired of this mindless banter, these drawn out, repetitive steps. We've been stepping on one another's toes and stumbling for so long now, I'm not sure we even understand what dance we're trying to follow or if we're even dancing anymore so much as stumbling along blindly.

"Until we both pass out. Is that long enough?" You raise an eyebrow and I shrug again as if I don't care. You must think I'm the most uncaring person in the world the way I brush everything off, you included, as insignificant, not worth my time. I wonder what you would think if you knew I cared too much, that when you ask me if I want to go to dinner with you, that I get weak in the knees. Or when you ask me those rare times to come over to your place to help you with a song, I want to scream 'yes, I want you!' Instead you've gotten accustomed to my derisive laughter, the cold shoulders, the flippant dismissals. I really am a bitch aren't I? If you only knew how hard I work to keep myself in check, to not reach for you and pull you towards me and give you a real' kiss. The kind of kiss that would get your toes to curling and your body to trembling. The kind of kiss you would feel with your entire body. I could give you one of those....but I don't. Fear of the unknown has always held me back.

"You just want to get me wasted. I know how you people are," I breathe out between a lungful of toxic smoke. I suck the cloud of smoke back in and then part my lips and let it curl from my mouth slowly. I've always enjoyed playing with fire. I can see you watching me from the corner of my eye.

"Who is this 'you people'?" You laugh. I shrug. We don't want to talk about what just happened. No one wants to ask why I ran off to the bathroom or why we're sitting here on the floor now talking about nothing at all. It's more than we've ever done alone together and the thought excites me. Maybe a bit too much. I curl my legs tighter against my chest and rock forward, sucking hard on my cigarette. I have to fight to keep my fingers steady.

"When you're drunk I don't understand half the shit you're going on about." You tilt your head back and laugh and I can see my teeth there at the base of your throat, sinking in. My body as it so often does, on and off stage around you, is beginning to rebel in the most embarrassing of ways. I rest my head against my knees and look at you. I know I'm adding to the growing pile of cigarette ashes around us but I don't care. It isn't like we were given an ash tray in a non-smoking room, so fuck it.....as you would so gracefully say. I'll trash the hotel room all I want with our label's pocketed cash.

"For your information, I'm perfectly sober right now," Which is more or less the truth. You hold up your bottle of sake in a salute and tip it back against your lips. I don't even think of stopping you this time.

"Well, I'm glad one of us isn't seeing double." You put the bottle of sake down hard on the floor between us and then you look at me with that damnable smile.

"I hope the other me looks as good as I do." I pretend to primp and flip my three hour salon made hair over my shoulder and then crack up laughing. Laughing lessens the trembling in my fingers, the racing of my heart. Teasing has always been our safety net hasn't it? Oh....your hand slipped and brushed my thigh again. Laugh it off, call me a name, get me irritated with you and the whole thing will be as if it never happened. I've looked at you too long...no, staring is the correct term, so a nasty comment about your tousled appearance that day will suffice just fine. Who let you out of the house looking like that? And as soon as you turn away, I'm back to staring, still wondering who the hell let you out of the house looking like sex incarnate. I don't want to think about what you did to give you that mussed hair, but I do wonder how it would be if I were the reason for it...

I imagine you at the point of delirium, face flushed as it is under the stage lights, chest heaving and sweating, muscles working to the point of exhaustion. The veins in your forearm would stand out against your skin and I would trace them with my tongue, mapping them out slowly and tasting salt and soap, and you. Maybe your skin would taste the way your mouth had tasted, of mint and something clean and crisp. I'd trace the veins in your neck as well, the way they stand out when you're straining. I use the way you play guitar as a map to how you would fuck me between the sheets.

You would cradle my legs around your waist and melt into me. You'd sink between my legs and roll your hips sensually the way you do against your guitar. I can tell the times you're hard behind unresisting wood. I can tell by the way you rub against your guitar and tilt your head back, lost in the music, that you're imagining fucking....that maybe you are fucking on stage for the world to see. It's your natural state, this sexualized energy. You have so much energy inside of you that I see you spending it on either that boundless hyper-activity I want to slap you for at times....or sex. You have to rid yourself of that energy somehow, and I can only roll over in bed and slide my hand between my thighs, imagining you spending it on me. Would your moan against my ear be husky? Or would it hold that delicately high tenor that you say my name in?

"You both look pretty good to me," I hear you say and it takes a moment to realize I've been staring at you with a blank expression for the past few minutes and you're staring back with a grin full of teeth. And you've stolen my cigarette.

"Give it back," I mutter, holding out my hand. You take a long drag, your eyes squinted just the slightest as you watch me and suck in. You cough as you let the smoke filter from your lips and then you slip the cigarette back between my spread fingers.

"And did you just....compliment me?" I wonder, with a raised eyebrow. Real compliments from you are like pulling teeth, painful and almost impossible. What happened to inconvenient and bitchy? I toss the dead end of the cigarette towards the waste basket some feet away. It lands off to the side pitifully. Soccer was always my game anyway.

"I might have complimented you." You shrug and for some reason it isn't so unlikely anymore....that you would hand me a compliment so easily. You sat outside a bathroom door trying to talk to me and for a moment I almost believe you would have slept there leaning against the door if I had decided I wasn't coming out and I wanted to torture you a bit more. You've been enduring me for years now and you're still around. I don't understand you.

'Tell me more.' I want to urge. But instead I distract myself with watching you, something I've become so good at over the course of this....friendship, if we can call it that. You thread your fingers through your hair in that way that let's me know you're either frustrated to the point of anger or nervous or bored. I hope to hell you aren't bored with me, but neither do I want you to be frustrated and angry with me. I know how infuriating I can be. Believe me, I anger myself....when I can't look you in the eye, or say what I mean to say and end up insulting you or turning away.

"I like the way you look." You say it slowly without looking at me and I can only continue staring at you and I'm sure you're going to turn to me at any moment and yell at me to stop being such a creep. "I always have."

"If you like the way I look, then look at me." The words tumble out and fall into my open palms before I can stop them and I almost slap a hand over my mouth at the stumble. Something audibly snaps between us when, without missing a beat, you raise your head and look over at me. There is no teasing or laughter in your face, just a hunger I've never seen in you before. I'm grasping my bold words and I'm squeezing them in my hands until my nails are digging painfully into the skin of my palms. If I look down I know I'll see blood. There is no safety net to catch me this time around.

I don't pull away or turn my head when you lean towards me. We aren't on stage and this is no act and it isn't even a game when your lips find my own. I lean into a kiss that's more an innocent press of lips than anything, but somehow I feel it down to the tips of my toes and fingertips even more so than when I kissed you on the teeth that one time. Your lips are as soft and pliant as I remember them....and you still taste like mints beneath the alcohol. I smile against your mouth and I'm still smiling when you pull away slowly.

Your face is still only inches from mine as you lean against your hands and search my face with eyes that are too clear to be as wasted as I thought you were. I don't say anything, don't need to say anything as I close the distance between us once more and kiss you with parted lips. I want to taste more of you. Your lips aren't enough. I want my lips wet with your own. I want to know your tongue intimately and the perfect teeth you've flashed me arrogantly for so long now...I want to know the inside of your mouth like I know the moves of your body when you play guitar. I want every detail ingrained into my flesh.

There is something untamed that I can feel beneath your lips as I knew there would be. It almost overwhelms me as your tongue dips into my mouth and you press forward as if it's too hard for you to hold back, to kiss me softly. You need it all at once, as greedy as I am, and I can't find any reason to fault you. I cup the side of your face in an attempt to ground myself against your abandon but my fingers end up curling into the wild strands of hair at the nape of your neck and pulling. I could melt into you here and now with your fingertips on my jawline and your teeth scraping my bottom lip. I hear you moan or is that me? I can't tell with your mouth against me, but I can feel you trembling and it's the most erotic thing I've ever experienced.

"Is....this okay?" You whisper between the wet presses of our lips and I have to laugh just a little even as I kiss you. I can't think of stopping now that you've started this. I don't think you know exactly what you've done....but if this wasn't okay, we wouldn't be here now. If we hadn't known this was going to happen we would have stopped teasing one another in every sense of the word, long ago.

"Just kiss me," I breathe back. Shut up and want me like I've wanted you for so long now. I feel your fingers in my hair and I reach up to cup your hand and press kisses to the corner of your mouth and to your jawline. My mouth decides to roam on it's own a bit, down to the wild pulse in your neck. I rest my mouth there, fascinated by the feel of your heartbeat against my lips. I imagine the heart that it takes to pump the blood through your veins so quickly. Your heart is racing as I inhale your cologne, something that isn't quite as masculine as you always hope to be, but something clear and crisp and you.

When I glance up to your face, you're watching me curiously, heatedly, waiting to see what I'll do. I swirl the tip of my tongue against your pulse and then make my way back to your mouth. There will always be time for discovering heartbeats and hidden scars if you want to make that time with me. When you pull away, I see how much of an effort it takes for you to hold yourself back and calm the wild in you. You're used to taking what you want without abandon and yet here you are....trying to tame the untamed. It's my turn to look at you curiously and you only shake your head as if in answer.

"You don't know how long I've wanted to do that," You finally force out. Your hair has fallen in a curtain of disarray around your face, thanks to my fingers who have a blatant disregard for tidiness when lust is involved. The band you had used to pull back some of your hair away from your face has found it's way around my wrist and I finger it idly, trying to calm my erratic breathing. My face feels hot and flushed and my body is still thrumming. It hasn't had enough of you just yet.

"Yes I do know. You've tried to kiss me at least once a night for a year now." I laugh and the laugh comes out breathless and shaky. You flash me a pout, a frown, and I think for a moment that it really doesn't suit you to pout. That's my area of expertise. When you pout you just look like a spoiled child. I'd rather have you smirking and pretending to be a tough asshole, something of which I've always known is only an act. Assholes don't sit outside of bathrooms making a fool of themselves and waiting for inconvenient brats to acknowledge them. You would hate me for telling you, that you may have the makings of a good guy.

"At least you were brave enough to try. I'm useless when it comes to these things. I only braved it once because I couldn't stand it any longer not knowing what your lips tasted like and then I went back to treating you like shit because you terrified me," I mutter under my breath. Maybe that's why I've always liked you. You think nothing of stepping off of cliffs and running headlong into things you really shouldn't.....like me. Most people would call you foolish and reckless, and maybe you are, but that excites me. You've always been my kind of poison.

"You aren't useless, and I'd rather you treat me like shit than ignore me completely." You laugh and the breath that hits my lips sends heat rushing through my body. We're still so close that if I leaned in just a bit, we would be kissing again.

"Besides, I had to down an entire bottle of sake to even attempt this...." You counter thoughtfully, that roguish grin a reminder of what I simultaneously love and hate about you.

"That's not very encouraging." I mutter with a disgruntled curl of the lip. "I have to get people drunk to kiss me." I roll my eyes, but the jest falls empty.

"Maybe if you had let me kiss you before now, we wouldn't be at each other like nervous teenagers." You shrug and the curl of the lip is back in place, because I know you're right.

I tch and shake my head. I look down at my hands splayed in my lap, open and empty and decide I don't like them that way. I reach for you again, tired of mindless banter, and slip needy fingers behind your neck and pull you back towards me. I'd rather not think too much about what we're doing. We've done enough of that. My eyes flit down to lips that are tilted into a grin, smug and confident now that you have me grabbing for you, kissing you like I've never kissed anyone before. I press my lips against your mouth and dive headfirst into the chasm I was so terrified of all these years.

"This feels dangerous," I whisper, lips still tucking kisses into the corners of your mouth. I'm making up for lost time and it seems you are as well with restless hands against the small of my back. You're no Casanova, just a man desperate like me for what he's wanted for too long now.

"This is dangerous." You smile against my mouth and a hand slips beneath the hem of my shirt. Your palm against my bare skin sends a shiver sliding up my spine. You're still an asshole as you grin against my trembling lips and your fingers crawl higher up my shirt. Maybe you're even more of one because you're enjoying the way my knees are buckling with every touch of your lips and I'm letting that hand creep higher, and I'll let it creep as high as it wants to tonight. Maybe I like danger and assholish grins and irritating banter. I must because I'm being convenient right now to the point of delirium.

"Just shut up and kiss me," I hiss. I'm sinking my hands deep into your core and coming up with handfuls of questions and fears and lust. We're either going to sink or float but for a moment we're just two people locked in a kiss and suddenly it isn't so terrifying anymore.

The End.

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A/N: Hullo there! Lately I've been trying to dust off old works and finish them up :D This is one of the results of that effort taha I'm trying to get to the series again as well :oo *rolls around*