Part Three
[ How I'm feeling|
Happy]
[ What I'm listening to| Lana Del Rey - Summertime sadness
Title: The devil wears Prada, Gucci, and sometimes Dior (3/3)
Pairings: Reita/Ruki
Warnings: Just language and sexual situations as always.
Rating: NC-17
Notes: Sequel to Don't hesitate & go but could be read as a stand-alone.
Summary: "I'm the devil and for some reason you still want me." Ruki's whispered words against his hip that long ago night had been like fire against his skin, hot and sensual. But the words themselves, what they alluded to, had had Reita holding Ruki away from him, pulling fingers through sweat soaked hair until Ruki was looking up at him as he knelt in front of Reita, ready to defile him.
"Can you hand me a scarf?" Ruki called from the bathroom, where he was currently teasing his hair into nervous oblivion. Reita was almost afraid he'd pull every strand out if he didn't stop brushing it soon.
"Prada or Dior?" Reita yelled back, his voice carrying across the expanse of Ruki's bedroom and it's vaulted ceiling. He held the two scarves up, one deep black and the other navy blue and thin as gauze. He hoped Ruki would pick the thicker one else he'd freeze to death today. The snow outside didn't look very promising at all.
"Dior today. Sometimes I need bland and solid and dependable," Ruki muttered just as Reita stepped into the bathroom holding the two scarves up and trying to hold in the laughter.
"You look fine. Please stop pulling your hair out." Reita shook the scarves out on either side of Ruki's head as Ruki looked up at him through the mirror. Ruki was silent as he grabbed the black scarf and slid it out from Ruki's hand slowly and then wound it around his neck in a loose circle.
"Do you know what they told me?" Ruki asked, holding the brush up for Ruki take. "Get the back, please."
Reita took the brush and began carefully pulling it through the mess of tangles in Ruki's hair that he'd created with his own hands last night. Reita was silent as he concentrated on not pulling Ruki's hair too hard. He was tender-headed, and even though Ruki had pulled out half his hair this morning already, if Reita snagged a tangle, he was sure he'd get the brush thrown at him in the sort of mood Ruki was in right now.
"They told me I could have nerve damage. I could become paralyzed. I could die, or the pain could simply still be there after this surgery." Ruki sniffed derisively and crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Reita through the mirror.
"It almost doesn't seem worth it," Ruki muttered. Reita glanced up at him, catching his eye, before he looked back down and smoothed his fingers through the slight waves in Ruki's hair from yesterday's old hairstyle. He hoped Ruki wouldn't decide to straighten it to death today. He sort of liked the waves. He imagined them against a surgical table, a sheet draped over Ruki's body as a scalpel came down to pierce skin, and Reita swallowed hard and tried to make his mind blank again.
"Did you hear what I said?" Ruki asked and Reita stopped himself from shrugging because he knew it would come off as uncaring, when at that moment, he cared too much, and was only trying desperately to block out Ruki's morbid scenarios about the surgery's outcome.
"You could become paralyzed, the pain could still be there," Reita repeated, purposefully leaving out the part about death.
"But you have the same doctor that you had during the first surgery and he took the pain away for years. He warned you that it could happen again, but he didn't paralyze you."
"But it could happen," Ruki muttered.
"He said it could happen again, and it did, so everything else could happen too. What would you do if I was paralyzed?" Ruki asked, suddenly turning around, and Reita was forced to pull the hairbrush back before he yanked on Ruki's hair.
Ruki, arms still crossed, looked up at him, waiting for an answer and all Reita could do was finally laugh. The situation itself wasn't funny, the real possibilities of all the things that could go wrong with the surgery wasn't funny, but Reita usually laughed when he was nervous or backed into a corner and that's just where he was now.
"If you were paralyzed, nothing would change," He told him, but Ruki only frowned.
"Everything would change, Reita. I'd be in a fucking wheel chair," Ruki growled, exasperated, and Reita sighed heavily. What do you want me to say? He wanted to growl back, but he knew it was only Ruki's anxiety talking right now, and he was desperately begging for some sort of comfort that Reita wasn't sure he could give him.
"Nothing about my feelings for you would change," Reita corrected himself softly, and with that he put his hands on Ruki's shoulders and forced him to turn back around so that he was facing the mirror. Ruki glared at him through the mirror, but the glare seemed just a tad less intimidating to Reita, maybe even a bit humbled.
"I'd treat you like I've always treated you. I'd push you around in the wheelchair. Hell, I'd decorate the wheelchair for you. We could do it up with some of those Gucci scarves you never wear and you could pop wheelies on stage and head bang even if you couldn't walk." Reita couldn't help but laugh a little at the image that presented, however morbid this whole talk was. He hated talking about issues like death, and imagining Ruki in a wheelchair was not the way he wanted to start this day. He was already going to be chewing his fingernails off the entire morning, worrying himself sick, and forget sleep. His bed would remain empty tonight.
"You're so weird," Ruki muttered beneath his breath, but Reita caught the smirk Ruki tried to hide as he turned his head and took the brush away from Reita.
"Don't come with me," Ruki told him as he tossed the hairbrush back onto the bathroom counter and then turned to look at Reita.
"I'm not. I'm going to drop you off, and I'll see you tomorrow," Reita reassured him for the hundredth time that morning. He knew the reason Ruki didn't want him there was because this was as much fear as he could allow himself to show around Reita. The anxiety attack he would have in the waiting room, and on his way to surgery was weakness in Ruki's eyes. He knew there were other reasons, deeper meanings behind the hospital anxiety and the weakness, but they weren't for Reita to bring up. He knew it would only make things worse.
Reita wanted to lean down and kiss away the frown twisting Ruki's mouth now as if he were tasting something fowl. And maybe the kiss would calm Ruki, but then maybe it would only annoy him further and Reita would be left cleaning up another mess he never meant to make. Timing and patience was what had gotten Reita this far with Ruki, he had to remind himself.
"What if I'm not here tomorrow? Would you regret not coming? Would you regret this?" Ruki touched his arm then, and Reita held back from pulling him closer, from pushing him onto the counter behind him and kissing Ruki hard with everything he wished he didn't have to hold himself back from saying. But Reita only smiled and rose an eyebrow, as if he were impatient, though he was anything but.
"Do you want me to come or not?" He asked calmly and Ruki only tched irritably and pushed past him, making sure to slam the bathroom door on his way out in case Reita had missed the fact that he was pissed. Reita stared at the closed door and let his body sag in exhaustion against the bathroom counter. It was all he could do not to slip down to the floor.
Reita was used to this..doing everything right, but wrong all at the same time, until he was sure doing nothing at all would be easier. But then he'd be at fault that way as well. Sometimes it was a constant losing battle with Ruki, but Reita was sure that progress was being made when Ruki looked up at him, demanding the world, and getting pissed when he was still too damn terrified to tell Reita exactly what he felt for him.
Ruki had wanted Reita to push back, to make him say it, but Reita refused to. He wouldn't threaten to leave, or demand anything out of Ruki because he wanted him to be completely raw and bare when he did say it. He shouldn't have to shake Ruki in order to reveal a truth they were both already aware of. Why did people put such desperate emphasis on words, as if it weren't true unless you said it, even though their bodies and their actions had been confessing these emotions to one another for a long while?
And yet Reita wanted to hear it from Ruki's lips just as desperately as he'd whispered it into Ruki's hair night after night when he was sure that Ruki was asleep. He had become accustomed to the steady rhythm of Ruki's breathing as he buried his heart into the nape of Ruki's neck. This was only just another power struggle for Ruki. Reita was willing to wait, even standing on a crucial edge like this, hoping Ruki's pessimistic worrying, remained only that.
Reita would never forgive himself otherwise.
**********
Sometimes Reita wished that Ruki would talk to him, not in Morse code or riddles he needed to solve. At certain times when Ruki was being particularly confusing, Reita wanted to yell out;
"You're not a fucking crossword puzzle! Stop trying to make me figure you out!"
Speak plainly.
And yet there was a certain type of intimacy in the way Ruki spoke to him when gifts and sweaty skin were not enough for him. It was an intimacy shrouded as was everything in their clandestine relationship, but Reita caught the meaning beneath Ruki's words as surely as he understood the gifts that Ruki handed him with wandering eyes and fidgeting fingers.
Reita hadn't slept the entire night. He'd known that he wouldn't with images of Ruki in his mind. Ruki scared. Ruki grimacing as the needle slid into the skin of his arm, finding veins to drug. Ruki wondering where the hell Reita was when he needed him most. Ruki closing his eyes against the bright overhead light and dreaming.
Reita set down the coffee cup he'd been warming his hands with and looked out the window of the little shop he'd holed himself away in for the morning. The glass was still partly weeping with condensation and it warped the people walking past on the sidewalk, briskly heading to work, people slowly meandering in groups, people chasing dogs who'd escaped from leashes or rebellious children wanting freedom, people idling against the building with thoughts as heavy and murky as Reita's own.
The sun was slanted on the sidewalk near the window, casting shadows of the people going about their lives, and Reita looked down to the shadows, watched them move like memories that weren't flesh any longer, just dark shapes on concrete, wanting to be known again, needing to be acknowledged because they had lessons to teach, or maybe they were cruel and only wanted to torture, selfish things that they were. Reita sank back into the hard plastic chair, sank down into the memories because they were warmer, more welcoming than his worries at least.
"Do you think I'm cold?" Ruki had asked one afternoon, hands buried to the roots of Reita's hair as he worked the kinks out with a comb, hairpins sticking from the makeshift pin cushion of his mouth. The memory was tangible, as if it had only happened yesterday, though it had been a few years ago in the beginning of their relationship as it stood now.
Reita had winced as Ruki pulled more of his hair out than what he had been fastening with the hairpins in sections. Reita had growled and thrown the game controller down beside him on the couch, knowing concentration was useless when Ruki wanted attention. He'd been trying to finish off a game when Ruki had invited himself over, claiming he wanted to fix the failed dye job Reita had done on himself earlier that week because he refused to be seen in public with Reita's hair nearly orange. That seemed a believable excuse given the importance Ruki put on public image.
His toys needed to look as good as he did on a daily basis. His furry children could attest to that, and it was the only thing Reita could pity them for. If he'd been a dog, Ruki would have dressed him in jeweled collars and annoying sweaters. As it was, he had to pretend to like the Fendi jackets and the Chanel sunglasses Ruki heaped on him. At least once a month he'd pull something too shiny or over priced out of his closet and wear it for Ruki's sake. The pleased grin Ruki always shot him was reward enough for his discomfort.
But Reita had known as soon as Ruki walked through the door that day, lugging a bag full of hair supplies and a pained expression on his face, that something was wrong. That this wasn't entirely about keeping Reita up to par with Ruki's standards. And yet Reita had said nothing, turning back to his game as Ruki had settled himself beside him on the couch and began fiddling with his hair.
Reita had kept a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth as Ruki worked on his hair in frustrating silence....until he'd asked that damnable question. It was the first time Ruki had ever asked something along those lines, but it wouldn't be the last time.
Do you think I'm cold?
"No," Reita answered him honestly.
"Am I more a cold fish or a cold block of ice?" Ruki had asked softly, his words slightly muffled from the pins tucked into the corner of his mouth.
"You're a human being." Reita had chuckled, but the laugh never quite made it to his lips as he allowed his fingers a little free reign to draw lazy patterns on Ruki's knee through his jeans. He had felt Ruki's frustration in pulsing waves in the body that pressed against his side, and in the hands that handled his hair with restrained gentleness.
"I'm a block of ice, aren't I? Just tell me the truth. You're the only one I can trust to tell me the truth," Ruki had muttered, running the comb over the hair at the back of Reita's neck. Reita had shivered at the touch and felt his flesh erupt in goosebumps.
Ruki would have been disappointed to know that Reita wasn't always as truthful as he expected. Sure, Reita was the only one that could call Ruki an ass or a brat and get away with it without being murdered, but when it came down to their tug of war game, Reita had been known to deny truths to save Ruki the pain. Wasn't that what anyone would do for someone they loved? Why tell them something that could possibly break them?
After all, he'd been waiting for Ruki to stop telling himself lies, and finally admit the truth. And so they seemed to be stuck in this spiral of half-truths and denial.
Reita had wished in that moment, that they'd already gotten over the biggest hurdle. He had wished that he could turn and pull Ruki against him and smother his doubts with a simple "I love you." that would make Ruki's worrying invalid. He had wished that they could end arguments like most couples did, with sex and whispered intimacies, with bold confessions tucked into collar bones.
You're not cold, because I love you. Just forget about it and kiss me, because I love you.
Reita's reason for doing anything for Ruki; lying, hiding, sacrificing had always been as simple as that. So why couldn't they just admit it to one another aloud, that these motions they went through with one another could only ever be one thing? Why couldn't they throw it into each other's faces after they'd yelled their hearts out?
Why are you screaming at me? Don't you know I love you?
And then the flying mortar would stop mid air and they'd forget what it was they had been angry with one another over to begin with because now they had more important things to do, things that included a bed and bodies that needed touching. They could forgive one another because after all, it was only love that had them arguing like wild things, no longer people, but pulsing masses of jealousy and rage and passion. Wasn't that the way things were with lovers that loved too much?
I didn't mean anything I yelled at you.....I love you.
Such an all powerful set of words that seemed to balance the world on their sharp edges. Yet, instead of admitting defeat to one another, that yes, they'd fallen into the hole that people had been falling into for centuries upon blood-thirsty, ballad inducing, gut wrenching centuries, they instead shared this intimacy. The intimacy of Reita being the only one that Ruki trusted to tell the truth, even when Reita didn't all the time, the intimacy of Ruki burying his insecurities into the roots of Reita's ugly orange hair like secrets meant for Reita only. They argued, they forgave, and they did it in the most frustrating of ways, beneath the silence of touches and gifts.
"Maybe I'm just a cold fish. I don't know anymore." Ruki sighed and stuck another pin into Reita's wrecked hair.
"If you're a fish, you're the best looking one I've ever encountered," Reita had tried to joke in that all confusing moment, and winced at the lameness even as the words fell from his mouth. He was forever making a fool out of himself for Ruki's sake, to make him smile, to get a laugh, to end arguments. But Reita's mortar had been spent that day and his hair had been hurting at the roots from all those damnable secrets Ruki seemed to be working into them with fidgeting fingers.
"Was that some sort of cheesy pick up line?" Ruki had asked, turning Reita's head so that he could catch the distasteful frown twisting Ruki's mouth. He hadn't gotten the smile he'd been gambling for.
"You're not cold, was all I was saying," Reita had sighed. Part of good strategy in battle was knowing when the battle was lost, and gearing up for the next one with new tactics, new ammo, and a strategy that would lead to victory.
"If you say so," Ruki had muttered with an eye roll. He had taken the pins from his mouth and leaned forward to kiss Reita on the lips, soft and unobtrusive, forgiveness in return for forgiveness.
"There's something wrong with me." Ruki had uttered beneath his breath as his fingers slid down Reita's cheek slowly, lips full of themselves for pity's sake, and Reita chose to ignore it.....the self-pity, the insecurity Ruki tucked into his kisses. Ruki bit and then he kissed, ashamed of his own feelings, ashamed that he couldn't make up for all the shame he felt. But Ruki had never understood that there was nowhere Reita could go, or even wanted to go with Ruki here against him despite the ups and the downs, the ecstasy filled yeses and the anger filled nos. Reita was here on this road for however long Ruki wanted him.
"You smell like strawberries," Reita had noted softly as he turned his face into the smooth palm of Ruki's hand. The smell of strawberries to Reita had always been a mix of delicious and sensual. Strawberries for him were an aphrodisiac of sorts, an erotic fruit he wished Ruki could tolerate.
Ruki had pulled away with a curl of the lip and wrinkled his nose distastefully. Ruki hated strawberries almost as much as he loved half priced Dolce and Gabbana items. Reita had wondered briefly what Ruki had been doing to smell like something he hated so much.
"I'll have to douse myself in cologne." Ruki had shuddered, but there had been a glint in his eye that Reita recognized at once. It was the glint of the excitement Ruki got when the perfect pair of shoes were just his size, or album sales were soaring in foreign countries, it was the glint of personal victories and anticipation.
Reita had followed Ruki into the kitchen, hair forgotten in it's state of ridiculous pinned up sections and wild tufts of orange and there Ruki had presented the cake from the bag he'd lugged in with a dramatic flourish of his hands that had had the smallest of laughs escaping Reita's throat. The cake had been a veritable mess of whipped cream and strawberries, and everything that Ruki hated. Reita could still picture the cake, put together with whatever affection Ruki had held for him at that time with clumsy hands. The cake had been as imperfect as the both of them.
When Reita thought back to that day, to Ruki's pained face, to the restless fingers in his hair, and the cake that had looked ready to topple over if someone so much as breathed on it the wrong way, Reita had understood it all too perfectly. Ruki had been battling with himself as he'd walked into Reita's apartment that day. The person that would sit down and painstakingly make something for another person, at his own discomfort even, was a person that felt too much. And people that felt too much had always terrified Ruki. Those were the people that had everything to lose.
Reita had thanked Ruki in the most most generous of ways that evening. Generosity deserved love in return, and loyalty fell somewhere between the two. Reita had never had a problem with practicing all three when it came to Ruki.
"Happy early birthday. I thought we could celebrate tonight....just the two of us," Ruki had murmured, as he had pulled Reita up to the table. Reita had watched as Ruki had leaned down, lighting the candles he had placed on the cake, and he remembered the light against Ruki's face, the shadow of flames licking at his cheek as he'd looked up at Reita.
"Make a wish," Ruki had murmured, but as Ruki's knuckles grazed the bottom of his lip that night and Reita had turned his face into hands that smelt of strawberries and too much sugar, he had known he had no use for wishes anymore. He'd spent years wanting something more from Ruki and ending up empty handed. He'd used up his wishes long ago. And now at a time when things seemed to be going the right way for him for once, he'd only smiled at Ruki and blew out the candles one by one, one spent wish for each year he'd spent hurting for Ruki, and each year he would spend making up for that time.
Shadows reminded Reita of that day, of the light playing against Ruki's cheek like memories that had come even before that time. Reita brought the quickly cooling coffee cup to his lips as his gaze strayed away from the window and fell on the watch around his wrist.
It was time to face down yet another fear and he knew he'd be grappling in the dark as he did so. But then he was used to this....this blind walk he'd been on since he'd met Ruki. He'd learned to feel his way around since that first night Ruki had walked out on him, flinging words like harsh slaps to the face, with Reita's heart buried in the pocket of Ruki's jacket. He hadn't asked Ruki to pursue him, to make him want him, to make him love him, and then to pull it all out from under his feet once he'd fallen too hard. But this is what had happened. It was the same dance now but with different steps and Reita had learned to lead and he had learned to walk on with hands out stretched tentatively.
********
The walls of the place were blindingly white, sterile white. Reita tried to pretend they weren't there as he hugged the paper bag tighter against his body, but the walls were too bright and ugly to ignore and pretend that they weren't what they were... hospital walls.
For as long as he could remember, he'd always had this phobia of hospitals with their antiseptic, chemical smell, that somehow mixed with the smell of latex gloves, and the stench of sickness. He hated the stern faced people that hurried by cradling clipboards with the verdicts of people's lives and deaths scrawled messily and carelessly like traffic tickets on them.
A nurse hurried past him just then and accidentally brushed the hand balancing a plastic tray of two drinks. The tray wobbled and nearly tipped over, but the nurse stopped for the briefest of seconds to apologize in a rushed breath and steady the drinks for him before she was on her way again, flats click clacking against the resin of the floor. The door numbers on the doorways began to increase as he continued down the hall;
230, 231, 232, 233.....234.
Reita stopped in front of room 234 and stared at the hard wood of it for a long minute. He even checked the watch on his wrist and studied the time. It was already past the lunch hour rush and he worried for a moment that he had come too late, that he'd rushed down to the nearest fast food restaurant and literally ran back, crossing a highway and dodging cars, and nearly getting run over, for nothing. Of course it had all been to buy time enough to build up the courage to walk into this room, but even so....he'd risked his life for this damn food.....for him.
"Are you going in this time?" A voice from behind him called out and he turned to see one of the nurses leaning over the counter of the nurse's station, smiling at him.
"He's awake," She said and nodded towards the door he had just been staring dumbly at as if it would leap out and bite him at any moment.
"He's been asking for you all morning." The nurse smiled, and Reita blanched.
"Umm....yeah...I'm going in," He mumbled, guilt eating at him from the inside at the woman's words. Ruki had been asking for him, though he shouldn't have had to ask, because Reita should have been there throughout it all. He should have pressed Ruki against the bathroom counter and kissed him and whispered the truth of it all that morning. Even if Ruki hadn't uttered a single word back, at least it would have been out in the open, no longer hidden in their touches and looks.
Maybe Reita was just as scared of being left alone with a handful of words he couldn't take back as Ruki was of the entire idea of this. Reita wished for a moment that he was reckless in the way that some of his friends were, the way Uruha was with his blunt tongue, or Aoi with his guitar smashing ways, or even Kai with his reckless affection for anything that moved.
And yet still he stood there in the hallway and inwardly cringed as the nurse's smile became just a bit too knowing and she shook her head and went back to whatever she had been doing behind the counter before Reita had shuffled in like a man at his own execution. The nurse had witnessed his earlier failed attempt at a visit, but luckily she had pretended not to notice his awkward presence lingering around outside of Ruki's room. Reita wasn't anything close to any of his friends, wild and bold, and yet Ruki still liked him,and in that respect, the respect of not being wild or bold enough, they were almost one in the same.
After a moment more of anxiety-ridden staring, he finally decided it would be too much work to lug the food and drinks back downstairs, or at least that's what he seemed to convince himself of. It did the trick though, and he knocked on the door frame and then pushed the door open a crack slowly.
"Come in," He heard Ruki's voice call from inside. Reita pushed the door open further, slipped inside, and then kicked the door closed with a click. The first thing he saw were all the Get Well balloons and cards and flowers that had taken up every available surface of the room, testimony to how truly loved Ruki was. Reita had expected nothing less.
"Reita?" Ruki asked from the bed, genuine surprise in his voice, and Reita felt ridiculous standing there, hiding in the shadows of the entryway, shuffling his feet like he had nothing better to do.
Ruki was propped up against the headboard of the bed, drowning in a sea of pillows that made him look smaller than he already was. Reita had never wanted to see Ruki here, hooked up to beeping machines, his face pale and twisted in pain. The relief at seeing Ruki well and talking was enough to blot out every other feeling coursing through Reita's trembling body.
"Why are you standing there in the dark staring at me? You're such a creep. Come here." Ruki's laughter was a comfort, and Reita stepped further into the room as Ruki waved him over.
"Hey," He muttered lamely and then cleared his throat as his voice came out hoarse and broken....from lack of sleep he told himself, that was all. He tried again as he walked further into the room.
"Hey...how are you feeling?" He knew it sounded too fake and conversational, but it was all he could think to say at that moment because inside, he was a bundle of twisted nerves and he felt as if he was about to faint or vomit, or maybe both. He almost laughed at the thought of fainting in front of Ruki when Ruki was the one hooked up to tubes and looking like a sick child playing grown up in bed.
Reita pulled one of the room's only chairs closer to the bed and sat down. He set the food and drinks on the bedside table and smiled as Ruki's eyes flitted to it curiously. He knew without a doubt that Ruki was probably cussing the nurses out on an hourly basis and demanding something other than the food they served here. Ruki was picky when it came to anything, from the socks he put on his feet, to the food he put in his mouth. Reita was also sure that Ruki's family was in a routine of bringing him food regularly though.
"I feel like shit," Ruki answered bluntly, honestly, as he had always done.
"I want to press the call light for more drugs but I know they'll just tell me to deal with it. Fuck, it hurts," Ruki swore and slid down further in the bed, pushing the pillows away from his back restlessly. Reita was out of his chair in a second, helping to pull the pillows away and toss them onto a chair across the room so that Ruki could get a little more comfortable. Reita would have done anything to ease Ruki's pain, even taking it for himself if he possibly could have.
When Ruki was settled again, and Reita had sank back into the chair beside the bed, Ruki smiled over at him and reached for the paper bag on the nightstand. Reita chuckled and watched him pull out the food like a starving man at a banquet.
"Junk food. I've missed this," Ruki groaned, unwrapping the cheese smothered burger that Reita knew he shouldn't have picked up. But knowing this little indulgence would bring Ruki some comfort, had had his morals disappearing, that is, if he'd even had morals to begin with. To see Ruki now, one would have thought he'd unwrapped gold and Reita took minute pleasure in watching Ruki sink back into the bed, eating with a satisfied smile plastered to his face.
"This is heaven compared to the shit they serve here and try to pass off as food. I wouldn't feed it to my dogs," Ruki mumbled around a mouthful and Reita chuckled, sipping his soda, and smiling when his eye caught the sunlight from the window glinting off of the charm bracelet he'd given Ruki the previous night.
"You feed your dogs caviar and steak," Reita pointed out and rolled his eyes when Ruki just shrugged, making no move to even dispute the claim, because they both knew it was true.
"Caviar dog treats?" Reita had exclaimed incredulously after he'd pulled down a bag of dog treats from the cabinet one night. The bag had had a picture of a milk bone piled high with caviar. He'd been babysitting Ruki's dogs that evening while Ruki was out and he'd never questioned anything to do with Ruki's dogs ever again after that incident.
"Everyone else has already been here." Ruki held up a stuffed bear that had been lying next to him in bed. The bear was clutching a red heart that read the customary Get well soon that was plastered to half of the things in the room. Ruki smirked and waved the bear in the air before setting it back down in his lap.
"Compliments of Kai. The cards by the television are from Uruha and Aoi and the balloon over there is from Saki." Ruki gestured to the cards and balloon flippantly.
"They couldn't stay long but it was nice that they came up here." Ruki trailed off and played with the arms of the bear idly while Reita looked on, feeling guilty and just a tad stupid for waiting so long to come here.
"My parents left an hour ago." Ruki set aside the crinkled paper from his demolished burger and shrugged.
"I didn't think you would come." Ruki suddenly admitted, his voice soft and unassuming as he avoided eye contact with Reita and took a sip from his drink. If he hadn't been used to it by now, the switch from irritated and bitchy to insecure and needy would have had Reita's head spinning.
Instead he only shrugged and handed Ruki his fries and Ruki took them, still avoiding his eyes. Reita hated hospitals like he hated pestilence and wars and stormy days, and being alone, but he loved Ruki more than his own fears. He would have been here sooner if his nerves had let him. Hell, he would have sat in the waiting room the entire time Ruki was in surgery biting through his nails if Ruki had allowed him to.
"Don't be stupid," Reita muttered. Any other time, Ruki would have been railing at him for insulting his intelligence even if it had only been a passing tease, but Reita knew it was the right thing to say at this moment. Ruki needed playful, honest banter with a needle stuck in his wrist and the smell of antiseptic and some underlying strange medicinal smell Reita couldn't quite pinpoint, hanging in the air between them. Ruki smiled around the straw in his mouth, and only looked up when Reita unslung the shoulder bag he'd been lugging around all day and set it on the bed by Ruki's feet.
"I figured you were probably bored to death, so I brought your laptop and sketchbook." Reita gestured towards the bag and Ruki leaned over and pulled it into his lap with a small grin.
"You can only watch so many television dramas and game shows before they all start sounding the same," Ruki chuckled, fingers already running over the sleek black top of his computer. Reita had known Ruki wouldn't be able to stay in bed without something to distract his mind and his hands. The nursing staff was already probably having a hard time with keeping him in bed.
"I wish they'd let me out to smoke. They're only letting me walk from here to the bathroom right now. Maybe you could sneak me out later." Ruki looked up and grinned and Reita chuckled, knowing he'd do it to keep the shaking from Ruki's hands. They trembled slightly now as Ruki dipped his hand into the shoulder bag again.
"I found a pack of your pencils on your desk. I wasn't sure which ones you used..." Reita began but Ruki waved his comment away as he pulled out a cloth that he unrolled in his lap to reveal pencils in varying sizes and shades and even colors.
"These are fine," Ruki reassured, smiling over at Reita. Reita felt himself flush under the smile, under the look that Ruki gave him as if he found Reita the most peculiar and amusing thing. He hadn't flushed in front of Ruki in a long while, or at least not often since they'd stepped over the line from friends with very...very good benefits, to two people in an ever changing relationship. But the way Ruki was looking at him now, it was as if Reita somehow confused him....
"I don't know why you do all this for me." It's what people who love one another do, Reita wanted to say, but he only smiled and leaned forward to take out Ruki's sketchbook and hand it to him with a raised eyebrow. Ruki took it, but continued to look over at Reita curiously, waiting for an answer.
"I'm the devil and for some reason you still want me." Ruki's whispered words against his hip that long ago night had been like fire against his skin, hot and sensual. But the words themselves, what they alluded to, had had Reita holding Ruki away from him, pulling fingers through sweat soaked hair until Ruki was looking up at him as he knelt in front of Reita, ready to defile him.
That night had been too full of lust and hunger. There had been no room for Reita's nagging emotions and Ruki's guilt.
"I like doing things for you. It makes me happy." To see you happy. Reita shrugged, pushing that night to the back of his mind where it belonged. He didn't know what more he could say on the matter, because that was the only explanation he had as to why he did so much for Ruki, why he would always sacrifice to make Ruki happy. When Ruki smiled at him, or laughed, it made Reita's entire day. It wasn't complicated to understand that much at least.
"I wish I was better for you," Ruki said quietly and Reita said nothing to that, because he knew what Ruki would do if he tried to argue against him....he'd brush Reita off and Reita wasn't in the mood for one of their pointless fights. He hated flinging useless words at Ruki just so Ruki could fling them back and they could make up hours later, naked and wearing their apologies on their skin.
"Why don't you sketch something? It'll keep your mind off the pain until you can have the medication," Reita urged and was happy when Ruki finally looked away and opened the sketchbook to a blank paper. Reita settled back into the chair as Ruki smoothed a hand over the paper and then slid one of the pencils from it's pack and tapped it against his chin.
"I don't know what to draw. I'm all out of ideas for designs right now." Ruki sighed, pencil tracing his bottom lip thoughtfully. Reita's gaze followed the pencil and the way Ruki's lips pursed against it, and then Ruki smiled and a perfect row of teeth appeared between his lips.
"Tell me what to draw, and I'll draw it," Ruki said and Reita thought for a moment.
"Draw the first thing you think about," Reita suggested when nothing came to mind right off. He was bland and unimaginable when it came to art in any form. That was Ruki's area of expertise. Ruki was usually full of ideas, his hands never still as he sketched page after page after page of designs and cover art and ideas that wouldn't stop. He knew Ruki should have been working on his clothing line designs if he was going to sketch anything at all but Reita was truly curious about what Ruki was thinking about at that moment. Ruki's mind was a constant maze, a mystery that Reita was sure he would never have enough time to ever completely solve.
"Fair enough." Ruki nodded and bent his knees so that he could place his sketchbook on his thighs where Reita couldn't see what he was drawing. And then Ruki's hand was sweeping over the book with a quiet ease that Reita always found fascinating. Where Ruki was usually talkative and distracted most of the time around people, with a sketchbook in front of him, Ruki suddenly became concentrated and quiet and generally very....Un-Ruki-like.
And though the room suddenly became silent except for the hum of the IV pump next to the bed and the soft scratch of pencil to paper, Reita was glad that Ruki seemed suddenly a world away, where pain wasn't clawing at his back like a knife. Reita watched him for a while, loving the way Ruki's tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth the slightest bit as he tilted his head and worked on whatever he was creating in his sketchbook with an intense concentration. Reita hadn't noticed he was so exhausted until he'd drifted off into a light doze. At some indeterminable time later, he faintly heard the door close and footsteps come into the room.
"It's time for the morphine," A woman's voice said, and Reita opened his eyes to see one of the nurses standing beside Ruki's bed, tending to his IV. The sky had darkened outside of the window and the room was dim except for the light above Ruki's bed. Ruki had set aside his sketchbook on the nightstand and was looking up at the woman like she was his savior and his enemy all in one.
"I needed this an hour ago," Ruki muttered, dropping his head back onto the pillows and gritting his teeth as the nurse administered the morphine with a calmness Reita admired with Ruki as a patient.
"An hour ago, you would have overdosed on this stuff." The nurse rose an eyebrow and Ruki scowled up at her.
"An hour ago, it felt like someone was stabbing me in the back. I should be able to overdose on this shit if I want to." Ruki shot back as the nurse finished with his IV and shook her head. "The pain doesn't seem to be getting any better, just worse." Ruki finished in a near whisper.
"There's no use arguing with him." Reita laughed to dispel the worry he could hear in Ruki's voice and the nurse turned to him as if she'd just noticed him there.
"I'm learning that." The nurse tched and Reita grinned as he watched her leave the room before he turned to Ruki and sighed. He knew that Ruki was only lashing out because he was afraid, perhaps because the pain was still there. But then the doctor had warned there would probably be pain after the surgery, and that it would most likely diminish or....the surgery could have been a failure. Call him an optimist, but Reita was going to believe that the pain would diminish until he was forced to face the truth if it didn't.
"You're such a pain in the ass," Reita muttered. Distraction was key until the medicine started to work. Ruki shot him a very unpleasant gesture with his hand and then sunk back down into the bed, pulling the bed covers around his body. Reita was sure he'd be passed out in another twenty minutes when the morphine started to take effect, and that was probably the best thing for him. He could see the pain in Ruki's face each time he moved and he was glad he would soon have some relief.
"You like me in your ass when you're in the mood for it." Ruki chuckled and Reita sighed again. He couldn't help the smile that spread across his face as Ruki turned away for a moment to switch the overhead light above his bed to dim, leaving them in a comfortable semi-darkness.
It was true that Reita had been letting Ruki fuck him more lately. He enjoyed the look on Ruki's face when he was above him, between his thighs, satisfied and bold, and the feel of Ruki there was something completely different than having Ruki beneath him. Ruki's jest didn't fall flat as he remembered their earlier struggles with equality from each other. The balance between them had always been tilted one way or the other, but these days it was slowly righting itself, becoming the even scales Reita had always hoped for.
"Did you finish what you were working on?" Reita asked, remembering the calm in Ruki's face as he'd completely engrossed himself in whatever he'd been sketching.
"It's nothing much." Ruki shrugged, sliding the sketchbook from the bedside table and then holding it out to Reita. Reita took it, unsure what to expect, and when he looked down, he was surprised to see his own face sketched onto the page in the faint light he was afforded.
"I don't know. I feel like it's all wrong...but it took the pain away for a little while..." Ruki shrugged again and looked off out the window as Reita studied the drawing. It was simple, just his face, his eyes looking off in much the same way as Ruki was now, distractedly, embarrassed, but there was a hint of an amused grin tugging at the corners of Reita's mouth in the sketch...as if whatever he'd been thinking about at that moment had been something good.
"Why did you draw me?" Reita asked, looking up from the sketchbook and wishing that Ruki would just look at him, but Ruki continued staring off out the window. The curtains were still open, and the city was bright and alive even at this time of night. Reita wanted to be out there now, with Ruki pulling him from place to place until they collapsed, exhausted and maybe even drunk into Ruki's bed just as the sky began to lighten into morning.
"Well you asked me to draw the first thing I thought about." Ruki finally did look back at Reita then as he said this.
"That's usually you, as cheesy as that sounds." And that did sound cheesy, but coming from Ruki's mouth, it was almost a confession of sorts, almost an 'I love you' in disguise. Reita looked down into his own face, a face that was distracted and thoughtful, and then closed the sketchbook and set it back on the nightstand.
He wasn't sure what to say, or if there was anything at all he could say in the face of Ruki's emotions. He'd never known how to deal with Ruki when he was being raw and honest. He knew how to deal with the catty, moody, and sometimes vindictive Ruki like a professional at his hobby of choice, but he'd only known this bare Ruki in moments and glimpses, still too much of a stranger to have acquainted himself with him fully yet.
Ruki suddenly laughed, and Reita looked up quickly, wondering what Ruki found so funny and almost laughed himself as he watched Ruki sinking down into the pillows the nurse must have tucked around him again.
"It sort of feels like I'm floating." Ruki smiled and bit into his bottom lip and Reita realized that the morphine was starting to take effect finally.
"This stuff is amazing. Can you ask them if I can take some home?" Ruki grinned, his whole embarrassed and unsure composure suddenly gone. He reminded Reita of how he was when he was drunk off his ass, silly and too full of laughter at the most inappropriate things, completely uninhibited. It was a layer of Ruki Reita wished he could see more often without the aid of alcohol or morphine drips.
"I'm pretty sure that would be illegal or at least I wouldn't trust you with morphine at your disposal," Reita informed him and smiled as Ruki sighed and stretched out on the bed, obviously feeling much better than he'd been feeling since Reita had arrived. Reita hoped the morphine would last for awhile so that Ruki could finally get a bit of sleep. He could tell that Ruki hadn't had much rest by the tired rings beneath his eyes. Of course, he wouldn't inform Ruki of the fact that he was looking attractive as always, but less than perfect today. It was essential he got as much rest as he could to recover.
"Why don't you try to get some beauty sleep? You don't want to greet the world tomorrow looking half dead." Reita laughed when Ruki shot him a disapproving scowl.
"Are you trying to tell me I look like shit?" Ruki asked, suddenly disgruntled.
"No, but you will look like shit if you don't get some sleep," Reita answered him honestly and was glad when Ruki couldn't hold the scowl in place, mostly due to the medicine Reita was sure. Ruki sighed and closed his eyes, a satisfied, far away sort of smile beginning to creep onto his face.
"I never look like shit," Ruki muttered beneath his breath and Reita tried to hold back the laugh that was itching to erupt.
"You don't," Reita reassured him and was almost sure that Ruki had drifted off to sleep as his face became lax and his breathing came out even and deep, but then Ruki cracked one eye open and Reita rose an eyebrow questioningly.
"Come lie down with me. This bed is too big." Ruki patted the space beside him insistently. Reita hesitated for a moment, looking back to the closed door behind him and wondering if it was against some sort of hospital policy for visitors to share beds with patients, and what if someone happened to walk in and he was lying in bed with Ruki?
"Get over here," Ruki ordered more than suggested this time and Reita knew he would just be in a losing argument if he didn't do what Ruki wanted him to do, as was usually the case, and really, Reita himself wanted nothing more than to be close to Ruki right now. The moment he'd walked into this room, he had wanted to touch Ruki, to bend down and kiss him and run his hands over the mussed hair at his temple, but he'd held back until Ruki gave him some sort of sign that he wanted the same. Affection in public was still up in the air until Ruki gave the verdict.
Reita stood and toed off his sneakers before he crawled onto the bed, careful to avoid Ruki's legs and arms and the IV tube and then sank down beside him on top of the thin covers. He made a mental note to ask the nurse for a few extra blankets. He knew how cold Ruki could get during the night, and this place was freezing. Reita pulled out some of the pillows tucked around Ruki and tossed them back onto the chair so that Ruki could turn over until they were face to face. Ruki grinned over at Reita.
"Hey," Ruki whispered, seeming suddenly very innocent and playful, all effects of the drug coursing through his body, Reita knew, but he couldn't care at the moment, because he was enjoying Ruki's sudden demand for closeness....
"Hey," Reita murmured. Ruki reached out and slung an arm around his waist, and Reita's pulse began to race as it did every time Ruki touched him.
"Too bad I can't strain my back for awhile," Ruki whispered and then laughed and Reita's skin heated at the thought of what they had done the previous night, breaking the rules, straining things that shouldn't have been strained. But Reita knew that they'd have to be very careful now and for a good while as Ruki recovered.
"Maybe you should try to get some sle-" Reita began, but Ruki cut him off as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Reita's mouth in a lingering kiss. It wasn't hard, or desperate, or even demanding, just soft...and silencing. He felt Ruki's hands in his hair, tangling, fingers curling around the longer strands of his hair as he did some days in public when no one was looking. The gesture was usually playful, sometimes languid, and Reita was sure Ruki wasn't even aware that he was doing it as people turned their backs on them and left them to their own devices.
"I will, if you'll stay here with me," Ruki murmured against his mouth and then pulled back, his gaze lazy and content, and Reita knew Ruki was on the verge of sleep, that he'd be passed out in a few minutes whether he stayed with him or not.
"I don't think they'll want me sleeping here while they're trying to take care of you. I'm just going to be in the way," Reita said in hushed tones as Ruki pulled him closer until they there wasn't any space left between their bodies and only an inch between their faces on the pillow.
"You were afraid for nothing," Ruki whispered, his eyes closed now, his hand still and cold against Reita's cheek. He wanted to pull Ruki's hand beneath the covers and warm it, and yet he wanted it to stay pressed against his cheek this way as Ruki struggled against sleep. He liked the heavy press of Ruki's hand mixed with the scent of Ruki's breath against his lips...sweet cola and toothpaste, and just a hint of cologne from his neck. Ruki hated the scent of hospitals as much as Reita did.
Reita could have laid here forever, memorizing the feel and smell of Ruki in a way that he usually wasn't allowed. For a moment, it seemed that Ruki was just talking out of his head from the morphine but then Reita realized what Ruki was alluding to.
"I'm still here. I'll always be here. I couldn't see myself anywhere but with you," Ruki muttered, and Reita watched shadows playing on Ruki's face, the lights coming in from the window slanting across his hair and cheek. Ruki's words had a strange effect on Reita's chest, a sort of tightening feeling, the feeling one got when they were scared or surprised by something and it left them just the barest hint of breathless. Somehow Reita knew it was a mixture of both of these emotions, surging through his limbs and his chest like wildfire. It seemed that Reita should have been the one saying that, usually was the one saying that, and once again, Reita was pushed into silence because he didn't know what to say any longer....
Ruki's hand tightened in Reita's hair for a second, just a pulse, a twinge, as if Ruki was merely stretching in sleep, but Reita felt that pulse for what it really was.
"I love you," Ruki said it so softly that Reita almost missed the words, but he saw them playing on Ruki's lips the second they fell from them. He'd been waiting for Ruki to say them for so long, that for a moment it almost seemed unreal, as if he'd only imagined them, but he was lying here with Ruki hanging on to him in this hospital bed, and the hand in his hair didn't lie, the warmth of their bodies curled around each other didn't either.
Reita didn't make a big deal out of the confession, didn't jump up and shout or even move, only smiled slightly, because he'd known it all along. Since the day he'd found Ruki huddled over his sketchbook, drawing furiously, he'd felt Ruki's emotions beneath any biting remark or scared touch Ruki had ever given him. Ruki had always spoken in layers, touched him with underlying meaning, and left it up to Reita to decipher it all. He didn't make a big deal out of it, because...everything with Ruki was either blunt or confusing and right now....he wanted simple and honest.
"I love you too." Reita's brow creased as he let the words linger on his tongue and then spill from his mouth in a whispered rush.
Ruki moved his face closer to Reita on the pillow, a gesture he knew well by now, and Reita slid down in the bed so that Ruki could lay his head on his chest. That one simple gesture had always been an open confession to Reita in itself and in another time he had felt it would have been enough to sustain him if Ruki hadn't set his feelings into words. He knew now it wouldn't have ever been enough.
"Hey, Reita...." Ruki mumbled sleepily and Reita waited, perhaps for another confession, as he watched Ruki's face, eyes moving just a little behind his lids as if he were already dreaming, but his self-satisfied smirk said otherwise.
"The nurse said I could only get bed baths today." Reita watched Ruki's smile widen. "I'd rather you help me with it than her." Ruki cracked an eye open and looked up at him and Reita rolled his eyes. He had known two confessions in one day was stretching it a bit.
"Oh, would you?" Reita chuckled, tone sarcastic, but playful.
"Maybe after you've slept some," Reita suggested. He knew Ruki would claw someone's eyes out if he didn't get some sort of bath today, being the clean freak he was. And since Reita was the nearest person to him at that moment, he'd carry Ruki to the shower if he had to, but sponging him down here seemed just as appealing.
"I would do the same for you," Ruki muttered, hiding his smile in the folds of Reita's jacket until Reita couldn't hold in the laughter any longer and this time Reita believed those words. Without naked bodies and delirium in the middle of the night, something rang true for Reita here in this hospital room where they'd been laid bare for one another, clinging to each other not because they only had each other, but because they wanted to.
There was something in the dusky undertones of Ruki's comment that screamed devotion to Reita. One would have to know Ruki the way that Reita did to fully understand the implications of it, the sticky sweetness of passion and affection beneath the teasing tone of voice.
This was the victory Reita been struggling for for so long now and on his mental chalk board he drew a line over the entire board, over the small battles he'd fought Ruki against and somehow won. In the end, Ruki had knocked over this chess board they'd been crawling across anyway to end the game his own way, a very Ruki thing to do. But Ruki had finally stopped struggling against him, and as they lay there tangled in one another, Reita was reminded of the roots of a tree, hidden, but strong and endless.
END
A/N: Yeah, the fluff monster attacked me over this, and obviously he won. I was so tired of torturing Reita into oblivion,and I think they both deserved some sort of happy ending. So, I hope this was to your liking. I really hope so -________-