Smoke and Signal Fires // Gokusen 3 SP
Smoke and Signal Fires
Ogata Yamato/Takasugi Reita
PG-13, 3760 words, Gokusen 3 SP
To Reita, Yamato represents a lot of firsts. Their back story, based on the Gokusen 3 SP and movie.
Reita first discovers cigarettes when he's fourteen and Yamato is fifteen.
It's the first day of the school year and he and his best friend are separated by the one year difference in their ages. In the morning, when Reita goes straight ahead to his last year of junior high, Yamato turns away down a side street towards Akado High School. It feels funny to walk the rest of the way to school by himself when they'd been going the whole way together for years; but as Yamato heads down the new path, he raises his hand in a casual wave without turning around, and Reita smiles at the characteristic gesture.
He spends all of his first day of school looking out the window and wondering what the high school is like. He tries to imagine it but the most he can do is picture a bigger version of his own classroom, Yamato sitting at a desk in a back row just like he's doing himself.
After school, they meet up at their regular hangout in the back lot of the neighborhood pachinko parlor. Reita breathes a mental sigh of relief when he's greeted with Yamato's usual crooked grin. He isn't sure what it was that'd had him so on edge all day, just a tiny niggling worry, like an itch in a place he can't reach.
"Yo," he says, tilting his chin up as a greeting.
"Smoke?" Yamato offers without preamble, holding up a pack of Luckies.
Reita opens his eyes wide in surprise. Apparently high school is a lot different from junior high. But he quickly schools his expression back into nonchalance, not wanting to look like a baby in Yamato's eyes, and sticks out his hand for a cigarette.
Yamato, who had evidently made good use of his first day of school by learning how to smoke, explains everything patiently. He teaches Reita how to suck in a mouthful of smoke and hold it in his lungs, how to hold the cigarette lightly between thumb and forefinger, how to flick it so the ashes drop neatly away.
Reita feels cool and grown up, slouching against the cement wall of the building and breathing out thin streams of menthol.
Eventually, they discover that Reita is more adept with the lighter and that makes him puff out his chest in pride, glad to be keeping up with his best friend.
"Ne, Reita, do you think we can finish this pack today?" Yamato asks, giving the box a light shake.
Reita smiles and reached for another stick.
He feels the rawness in his throat first, not even halfway through his second cigarette, and starts coughing, though Yamato follows soon after. They lean against each other and cough and cough, and laugh too, when they can catch a breath.
~
Reita gets to look at real porn for the first time at Yamato's house, when they're in the middle of a video game marathon.
They're just getting into the flow of things when Reita's character stops responding and he realizes it's because his controller's run out of batteries. "Fuck! Shit! Ass!" he curses - mostly because he's still young enough to enjoy the way the forbidden words feel on his tongue - and scowls at his unmoving character on the TV screen.
"Come on, keep up!" urges Yamato, who hasn't noticed and is still pounding away on his controller, "Why aren't you moving?"
"Controller's out of batteries," says Reita, "Piece of crap."
"Just reach behind you, there's batteries in that box under the bed," Yamato tells him, eyes still glued to the TV screen.
Reita fumbles for a moment with his hand behind his back, but there's more than one box and he can't figure out what's what by touch only, so finally he tears his eyes from the game and turns around so he can look properly. There's a whole bunch of shoe boxes piled willy-nilly under the bed, and Reita snorts inelegantly at the back of Yamato's head. He takes the lid off the closest one and finds a pile of decapitated action figures; the next box reveals a handful of baseball collector's cards; then a box that actually contains shoes; and then-
"Duuude!" Reita exclaims, dragging the box out from the bottom of the pile with total disregard for the ones stacked on top, which come tumbling down. "Jackpot! Where'd you get these?"
"Huh?" Yamato's attention is still on his game, so it takes a long moment for him to turn around. But when he does, he's met with a full two-page spread of a bikini-clad gravure model rolling around at the beach, legs spread invitingly.
"Fuck! Hey - aw man-!"
Reita lowers the magazine and looks at him with a glint in his eyes. "You asshole, why haven't you shared the wealth with me, huh? Hoarding all this by yourself."
"Oh come on, how was I supposed to know you didn't have your own?" But Yamato's sheepish shrug belies his words - of course he knows Reita doesn't have his own stash.
"Yeah, like you don't know my mom makes surprise raids into our rooms for this shit," Reita scoffs, "You suck. Can't believe I call you my best friend."
He does call Yamato his best friend though, and Yamato reminds him of why this is by tossing aside his own controller and reaching under his bed again for yet another box of magazines, and a couple of ecchi mangas. These are way more graphic than the gravure stuff and Yamato doesn't hesitate to show Reita all of his favorite spreads. Some of them make Reita open his eyes wide. He learns a lot.
But some of the pages that Yamato flips past quickly catch Reita's eye too, and after a while he puts a hand on Yamato's to stop his page flipping.
"Let me see that." He pulls the magazine over and flips back a couple of pages.
It's a series of pictures of two young men, in varying degrees of nudity, kissing and petting each other.
"Don't look at that," Yamato tells him, trying to twitch the magazine out of Reita's hands again, "That's gross. You can't help finding stuff like that in these things sometimes, they have to cater to all audiences. Come on, let me see that, I wanted to show you this one girl!"
Yamato speaks smoothly but there's something just a tiny bit constricted in his tone that makes Reita suspicious. He's pretty sure there are lots of magazines that contain photos of girls only. Either way, he doesn't really care, but Yamato obviously does, so he pretends not to notice the way Yamato's eyes linger for a moment on the men before he turns the page, or the way Yamato casually drapes a sweater over his own lap.
~
When Reita gets to Yamato's house, he finds Yamato waiting for him out on the curb - which in itself is not so unusual - but then the first words out of Yamato's lips are "let's go to the beach today" and that is pretty weird.
Not only does Yamato hate "nature crap," it's a bit late in the year for going to the beach. The sky is a bit overcast; the wind isn't cold, but strong enough to kick up the dead leaves lying around and send them whirling in little spirals at their feet; and it's getting pretty late anyway, so that by the time they manage to get to the beach it'll be nighttime.
Reita points all these things out to Yamato, and then adds, "How are we going to get there anyway? If you hadn't noticed, we live smack in the middle of the city."
"Bus," Yamato shrugs. He puts a hand into his pocket and takes out a fistful of bills. "I'll even pay for you, so come on!"
Reita's mouth is actually open to ask Yamato where he'd managed to get so much money when he hears a distinct crash from inside Yamato's house, followed by masculine yelling and feminine shrieks.
He feels Yamato flinch more than sees it, but it's enough for Reita to understand the situation.
"... Fine, let's go."
It's an inauspicious beginning to the trip, though, and accordingly, the rest of it limps along just as awkwardly. Yamato doesn't say much, only responds to Reita with one-syllable answers when talked to. It takes two hours by bus to get to the seaside. Yamato spends the whole time staring blankly out of the window.
Even when they get to the beach, it barely seems to register in Yamato's mind. He just loiters along after Reita, following wherever the younger boy leads. And when Reita finally gives up and plops down on a random bit of sand, Yamato sits down next to him and leans his head on Reita's shoulder as though his thoughts are too heavy for him to hold them up alone.
But then Reita makes the mistake of trying to broach the topic of what had happened at Yamato's house, and Yamato turns all sullen and angry.
"Why are you getting so mad at me? I was just trying to help, shit."
"Well you're not doing a very good job of it."
"Excuse me for trying, then!"
"You don't even understand anything, Reita."
"Then tell me. I'm not a fucking mind reader."
"Look, just leave me alone!"
In the end, neither of them get anything out of the trip other than a really long lecture from their mothers for going so far away without telling anyone.
~
Reita's first kiss isn't anything like he'd imagined it would be.
For starters, he'd always thought he'd have his first kiss with a girl. She'd be someone with long black hair, a nice smile, maybe cutely crooked teeth, and he'd have to lean down a lot to match her height. And while he hadn't exactly planned it out like some of his girl classmates seemed to have done, he'd at least thought it would be somewhere vaguely nice - a park, maybe, or under the soft light of a street lamp as he walked her home from a date.
Instead, it's awkward and sloppy and feels almost like an accident, with him pressed up uncomfortably against a telephone pole in an empty alley and Yamato's weight heavy against his torso. One of his hands is pinned awkwardly behind his back, and he tries to push Yamato off him because he can feel splinters digging into his palm, but it only makes Yamato lean against him harder.
"Yamato, stop!" he finally manages to pull away long enough to say.
"Fuck, sorry." Yamato jumps back like Reita's hit him or something, looking everywhere but at Reita. "I just - I don't know - sorry."
He looks like he's about to bolt, so Reita reaches out and grabs his wrist just to make sure. "That's not it, Yamato. It's just that you were crushing me, okay, and I was getting all these splinters."
"Then... are you okay with the kiss?" The look Yamato gives him is so hesitant it makes Reita's heart squeeze in his chest. Yamato has always been bigger, cooler, older, and Reita doesn't know what to do these days, with this new Yamato who leans on Reita and asks for Reita's permission to do things.
"I-" Reita pauses. He wants to say it's fine, that Yamato can do whatever, but this this isn't just dicking around, and he should offer Yamato the truth, right? That's the grown-up thing to do, right? "Honestly, I don't know. I don't hate it, but... I just. I don't know."
Yamato bites down on his bottom lip and looks up at Reita from under his eyelashes. The mixture of insecurity and sensuality almost has Reita giving in right then.
"Just... just give me some time to figure it out, okay?"
Yamato doesn't answer, just looks away silently, and Reita hopes that's a yes.
~
Usually, Yamato is the one who speaks his mind freely, while Reita has always been the shyer of the two. So it's a new thing to Reita when Yamato starts to hedge around issues that are still invisible to Reita.
"Let's go to your house instead," Yamato is always saying these days, though they've always hung out at Yamato's house.
"But you were going to teach me to play billiards," Reita objects.
"We'll play at your place."
"Uh," Reita blinks at Yamato like he's stupid, "We don't own a billiards table."
"Then we'll go somewhere else! What the fuck Reita!" Yamato explosion comes suddenly, takes Reita by surprise.
"Okay geez!" Reita puts up his hands in a defensive gesture. "Calm down. You can just tell me if something happened at your house, you know."
Yamato practically growls in response. "There is nothing the matter at my house! Don't just assume shit!"
Honestly though, Reita isn't stupid. It's not like he hasn't heard Yamato's parents fight, not like he hasn't seen Yamato become unhappier and unhappier these days. And he wants to help, but he doesn't know how if Yamato only lashes out like he's been doing these days.
Plus, Reita is getting rather tired of being a verbal punching bag. Yamato has just been so hard to talk to these days - either he's silent and apathetic, or else he's getting mad at Reita for absolutely nothing. At first Reita had thought that the anger was better than the lack of emotion, but he's far from being the most patient person, and all the pointless yelling is getting old. And anyway, he doesn't want Yamato to be apathetic or angry. He wants Yamato to be himself again, and happy.
~
The first time Yamato ditches Reita, he just shrugs it off. It's not like he has some special claim on Yamato or anything, and everybody forgets things.
The second Yamato ditches Reita, not nearly long enough after the first time, Reita isn't quite so happy or willing to let it go.
The third time it happens, Reita is really pissed.
The fourth time it happens, Reita doesn't bother to wait more than five minutes before he gives up and goes home. Later, he gets a text message from a sanctimonious Yamato asking where he is and why he's being a ditcher. He's torn between anger and guilt, and more anger at the fact that he's even feeling guilty, and more guilt that he can't help with Yamato's whole family situation, until he just deletes the message from his phone out of pure disgust.
~
Yamato is on his third cigarette in an hour (they'd given up trying to chain smoke after that first time) so Reita doesn't need him to say anything to know there's something on his mind.
"There's this guy at school, right..." He pauses again, puffs some more, and Reita thinks that this newfound insecurity doesn't suit Yamato at all.
"Does this guy have a name?"
There's a brief moment before Yamato answers, and in that moment Reita sees Yamato's eyes look in on himself and then soften, as though he's thinking about someone precious to him. When Yamato speaks, too, his voice is all soft and sparkly and infatuated. "Ren."
Reita raises his eyebrows, expression hardening. He breathes out a bit too hard and it makes a derisive "huh" kind of sound. (Involuntarily.)
"What?" Yamato snaps, abruptly defensive.
Only this time Reita's defensive too, and Yamato's attitude just adds to Reita's irritation; he can feel his own temper curdling along with Yamato's expression.
"Having guy problems, huh? That was quick wasn't it?"
At this, Yamato looks genuinely confused, and that really makes Reita mad, because wasn't Yamato the one who started all this anyway?
"Quick? What are y-mmph!"
Without waiting to blow out his lungful of smoke, Reita leans in and smashes his lips against Yamato's. It's frankly disgusting, smoke and saliva and chapped lips mixing together into some horrible mish-mash, but it's about how Reita feels at the moment.
Finally, Yamato pushes him away, coughing and coughing, and it's like a distorted reminder of the first time they'd shared smokes (not quite the same kind of sharing) right at this spot, their spot, behind this ugly and derelict pachinko parlor.
~
Reita's first initiation to the world of violence happens on a really nice day. It's finally starting to look like spring again, and honestly, honestly, Reita is having a good day until Yamato ditches him yet again.
He doesn't know why he bothers to wait anymore; gravel and cigarette butts and the kitschy music that filters out from the back of the pachinko parlor can hardly be considered good company. Yamato never comes around these days, never bothers to remember his childhood friend because he's too busy hanging out with his new, cool, high school friends.
Reita makes a disgusted sound. Fumbles in his jacket pocket for a cigarette, only to find that he's forgotten his lighter at school. Kicks at a crumpled soda can lying on the ground and gets satisfaction from the cacophonous sound it makes as it bounces along the ground and stops at... the feet of a group of rough looking kids.
They're wearing high school uniforms, so Reita knows they must be students, but their clothing is rumpled and dirty, and they're decked out in all sorts of flashy jewelry that announces them to the world as delinquents.
"Watch it, punk," growls the leader of the group. He makes his hand into a fist and brandishes it under Reita's nose menacingly.
He should run, Reita knows, but today, he doesn't feel like it.
Instead, he looks straight into the eyes of the delinquent and smirks. "Make me."
The resulting fight is nasty but quick. Reita gets punched once, twice, thrice, and then he's caught squarely in the stomach by the guy's fist. He doubles over in pain, staggers to the ground, and then the entire group surrounds him, kicking and stomping on him wherever they can reach.
It hurts like a bitch, but strangely enough Reita stops feeling it after a while, as though his body becomes conditioned to the pain. He's not sure if he spaces out or blacks out but suddenly he discovers that the kids are gone before he's even realized they're leaving.
He can't go home like this, so he sends Yamato a text, saying it's an emergency and can he come over just for a second, just to get patched up? He's wary of Yamato's mood swings these days, especially when anything related to his house is mentioned, but Reita doesn't really know who else to turn to. Besides, at this point, he'd take Yamato's bitching over Yamato's silence.
Yamato never responds.
~
The first time Reita meets Ren, they both end up with split lips and bruised fists.
Ren doesn't even offer a greeting before his fist is smashing into Reita's nose. Reita still isn't much of a fighter yet, but he gives it his best and comes away having given as good as he got.
"He's miserable," Ren grinds out, spitting blood.
Reita glares, ready to throw another punch. "Then why don't you make him happy!"
~
Reita is actually being good for once, properly doing his homework, when Yamato barges into his room and demands of him in an angry voice, "Why did you fight with Ren?"
Reita slams his pencil down on the table (it breaks in half), before sighing with sudden fatigue. He's so tired of Yamato's moods, tired of Yamato assuming things of him without trying to verify his facts at all. "Seriously? Are you seriously asking me this?"
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean!"
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? It means he's the one who started the fight, why are you blaming me?"
"Oh my god, 'He's the one who started it'," Yamato taunts in a sing-song voice, "You're so childish Reita."
For the first time ever, Reita raises his fist against his own best friend.
It's a sloppy punch and Yamato dodges it easily, though it's not as if Reita would really have punched Yamato anyway.
But it might have been better if he had hit Yamato. Maybe they would have been able to fight it out and have their catharsis, instead of snarling at each other, barbed words and hooked insults ripping into already-painful emotional wounds.
In the back of his mind, Reita knows this. It's just that Yamato's stinging words are tearing through his head, filling his brain with the roar of fury, and he's just too angry to do anything but lash back. By the time he can think clearly again, can let his anger take a backseat to his friendship, it's too late to fix things.
~
("...a pity, what's happening with the Ogatas," Reita overhears his dad say to his mom. He's sneaking out for a late night smoke - not a first - when he hears the murmur of low voices from his parents' bedroom and stops to listen.
"Ogata-san said Yamato's been taking it especially hard," his mom replies, even lower, and Reita has to press his ear against the door to hear her properly. "Said he's been getting into all sorts of delinquencies at school, just to get his father's attention these days. It's too bad his friendship with our Reita wasn't enough to keep him anchored, and I can't deny I'm a bit relieved that Reita seems to be drifting away from him if he's turning into such a bad kid.")
~
On Reita's first day of high school (not the same high school as Yamato, because fuck if he'll stand being under the same roof as that asshole every day), he makes friends with a kid with blond highlights in his hair and a ton of accessories on his person.
"Got a smoke?" Reita asks, careful to keep his voice casual.
The guy looks at him - judges him - for a beat, before reaching into the pocket of his blazer. "Here."
It's not his usual brand. Reita's been smoking Luckies for so long, simply out of force of habit, that the gold packaging of SevenStars he's being offered easily catches his attention. Of its own will, Reita's hand pauses for a split second over the proffered packet, but he catches himself before the guy has the chance to notice and quickly plucks out a cigarette.
"Thanks," he says, flicking his lighter on with practiced ease. "I'm Takasugi Reita, by the way."
Ogata Yamato/Takasugi Reita
PG-13, 3760 words, Gokusen 3 SP
To Reita, Yamato represents a lot of firsts. Their back story, based on the Gokusen 3 SP and movie.
Reita first discovers cigarettes when he's fourteen and Yamato is fifteen.
It's the first day of the school year and he and his best friend are separated by the one year difference in their ages. In the morning, when Reita goes straight ahead to his last year of junior high, Yamato turns away down a side street towards Akado High School. It feels funny to walk the rest of the way to school by himself when they'd been going the whole way together for years; but as Yamato heads down the new path, he raises his hand in a casual wave without turning around, and Reita smiles at the characteristic gesture.
He spends all of his first day of school looking out the window and wondering what the high school is like. He tries to imagine it but the most he can do is picture a bigger version of his own classroom, Yamato sitting at a desk in a back row just like he's doing himself.
After school, they meet up at their regular hangout in the back lot of the neighborhood pachinko parlor. Reita breathes a mental sigh of relief when he's greeted with Yamato's usual crooked grin. He isn't sure what it was that'd had him so on edge all day, just a tiny niggling worry, like an itch in a place he can't reach.
"Yo," he says, tilting his chin up as a greeting.
"Smoke?" Yamato offers without preamble, holding up a pack of Luckies.
Reita opens his eyes wide in surprise. Apparently high school is a lot different from junior high. But he quickly schools his expression back into nonchalance, not wanting to look like a baby in Yamato's eyes, and sticks out his hand for a cigarette.
Yamato, who had evidently made good use of his first day of school by learning how to smoke, explains everything patiently. He teaches Reita how to suck in a mouthful of smoke and hold it in his lungs, how to hold the cigarette lightly between thumb and forefinger, how to flick it so the ashes drop neatly away.
Reita feels cool and grown up, slouching against the cement wall of the building and breathing out thin streams of menthol.
Eventually, they discover that Reita is more adept with the lighter and that makes him puff out his chest in pride, glad to be keeping up with his best friend.
"Ne, Reita, do you think we can finish this pack today?" Yamato asks, giving the box a light shake.
Reita smiles and reached for another stick.
He feels the rawness in his throat first, not even halfway through his second cigarette, and starts coughing, though Yamato follows soon after. They lean against each other and cough and cough, and laugh too, when they can catch a breath.
~
Reita gets to look at real porn for the first time at Yamato's house, when they're in the middle of a video game marathon.
They're just getting into the flow of things when Reita's character stops responding and he realizes it's because his controller's run out of batteries. "Fuck! Shit! Ass!" he curses - mostly because he's still young enough to enjoy the way the forbidden words feel on his tongue - and scowls at his unmoving character on the TV screen.
"Come on, keep up!" urges Yamato, who hasn't noticed and is still pounding away on his controller, "Why aren't you moving?"
"Controller's out of batteries," says Reita, "Piece of crap."
"Just reach behind you, there's batteries in that box under the bed," Yamato tells him, eyes still glued to the TV screen.
Reita fumbles for a moment with his hand behind his back, but there's more than one box and he can't figure out what's what by touch only, so finally he tears his eyes from the game and turns around so he can look properly. There's a whole bunch of shoe boxes piled willy-nilly under the bed, and Reita snorts inelegantly at the back of Yamato's head. He takes the lid off the closest one and finds a pile of decapitated action figures; the next box reveals a handful of baseball collector's cards; then a box that actually contains shoes; and then-
"Duuude!" Reita exclaims, dragging the box out from the bottom of the pile with total disregard for the ones stacked on top, which come tumbling down. "Jackpot! Where'd you get these?"
"Huh?" Yamato's attention is still on his game, so it takes a long moment for him to turn around. But when he does, he's met with a full two-page spread of a bikini-clad gravure model rolling around at the beach, legs spread invitingly.
"Fuck! Hey - aw man-!"
Reita lowers the magazine and looks at him with a glint in his eyes. "You asshole, why haven't you shared the wealth with me, huh? Hoarding all this by yourself."
"Oh come on, how was I supposed to know you didn't have your own?" But Yamato's sheepish shrug belies his words - of course he knows Reita doesn't have his own stash.
"Yeah, like you don't know my mom makes surprise raids into our rooms for this shit," Reita scoffs, "You suck. Can't believe I call you my best friend."
He does call Yamato his best friend though, and Yamato reminds him of why this is by tossing aside his own controller and reaching under his bed again for yet another box of magazines, and a couple of ecchi mangas. These are way more graphic than the gravure stuff and Yamato doesn't hesitate to show Reita all of his favorite spreads. Some of them make Reita open his eyes wide. He learns a lot.
But some of the pages that Yamato flips past quickly catch Reita's eye too, and after a while he puts a hand on Yamato's to stop his page flipping.
"Let me see that." He pulls the magazine over and flips back a couple of pages.
It's a series of pictures of two young men, in varying degrees of nudity, kissing and petting each other.
"Don't look at that," Yamato tells him, trying to twitch the magazine out of Reita's hands again, "That's gross. You can't help finding stuff like that in these things sometimes, they have to cater to all audiences. Come on, let me see that, I wanted to show you this one girl!"
Yamato speaks smoothly but there's something just a tiny bit constricted in his tone that makes Reita suspicious. He's pretty sure there are lots of magazines that contain photos of girls only. Either way, he doesn't really care, but Yamato obviously does, so he pretends not to notice the way Yamato's eyes linger for a moment on the men before he turns the page, or the way Yamato casually drapes a sweater over his own lap.
~
When Reita gets to Yamato's house, he finds Yamato waiting for him out on the curb - which in itself is not so unusual - but then the first words out of Yamato's lips are "let's go to the beach today" and that is pretty weird.
Not only does Yamato hate "nature crap," it's a bit late in the year for going to the beach. The sky is a bit overcast; the wind isn't cold, but strong enough to kick up the dead leaves lying around and send them whirling in little spirals at their feet; and it's getting pretty late anyway, so that by the time they manage to get to the beach it'll be nighttime.
Reita points all these things out to Yamato, and then adds, "How are we going to get there anyway? If you hadn't noticed, we live smack in the middle of the city."
"Bus," Yamato shrugs. He puts a hand into his pocket and takes out a fistful of bills. "I'll even pay for you, so come on!"
Reita's mouth is actually open to ask Yamato where he'd managed to get so much money when he hears a distinct crash from inside Yamato's house, followed by masculine yelling and feminine shrieks.
He feels Yamato flinch more than sees it, but it's enough for Reita to understand the situation.
"... Fine, let's go."
It's an inauspicious beginning to the trip, though, and accordingly, the rest of it limps along just as awkwardly. Yamato doesn't say much, only responds to Reita with one-syllable answers when talked to. It takes two hours by bus to get to the seaside. Yamato spends the whole time staring blankly out of the window.
Even when they get to the beach, it barely seems to register in Yamato's mind. He just loiters along after Reita, following wherever the younger boy leads. And when Reita finally gives up and plops down on a random bit of sand, Yamato sits down next to him and leans his head on Reita's shoulder as though his thoughts are too heavy for him to hold them up alone.
But then Reita makes the mistake of trying to broach the topic of what had happened at Yamato's house, and Yamato turns all sullen and angry.
"Why are you getting so mad at me? I was just trying to help, shit."
"Well you're not doing a very good job of it."
"Excuse me for trying, then!"
"You don't even understand anything, Reita."
"Then tell me. I'm not a fucking mind reader."
"Look, just leave me alone!"
In the end, neither of them get anything out of the trip other than a really long lecture from their mothers for going so far away without telling anyone.
~
Reita's first kiss isn't anything like he'd imagined it would be.
For starters, he'd always thought he'd have his first kiss with a girl. She'd be someone with long black hair, a nice smile, maybe cutely crooked teeth, and he'd have to lean down a lot to match her height. And while he hadn't exactly planned it out like some of his girl classmates seemed to have done, he'd at least thought it would be somewhere vaguely nice - a park, maybe, or under the soft light of a street lamp as he walked her home from a date.
Instead, it's awkward and sloppy and feels almost like an accident, with him pressed up uncomfortably against a telephone pole in an empty alley and Yamato's weight heavy against his torso. One of his hands is pinned awkwardly behind his back, and he tries to push Yamato off him because he can feel splinters digging into his palm, but it only makes Yamato lean against him harder.
"Yamato, stop!" he finally manages to pull away long enough to say.
"Fuck, sorry." Yamato jumps back like Reita's hit him or something, looking everywhere but at Reita. "I just - I don't know - sorry."
He looks like he's about to bolt, so Reita reaches out and grabs his wrist just to make sure. "That's not it, Yamato. It's just that you were crushing me, okay, and I was getting all these splinters."
"Then... are you okay with the kiss?" The look Yamato gives him is so hesitant it makes Reita's heart squeeze in his chest. Yamato has always been bigger, cooler, older, and Reita doesn't know what to do these days, with this new Yamato who leans on Reita and asks for Reita's permission to do things.
"I-" Reita pauses. He wants to say it's fine, that Yamato can do whatever, but this this isn't just dicking around, and he should offer Yamato the truth, right? That's the grown-up thing to do, right? "Honestly, I don't know. I don't hate it, but... I just. I don't know."
Yamato bites down on his bottom lip and looks up at Reita from under his eyelashes. The mixture of insecurity and sensuality almost has Reita giving in right then.
"Just... just give me some time to figure it out, okay?"
Yamato doesn't answer, just looks away silently, and Reita hopes that's a yes.
~
Usually, Yamato is the one who speaks his mind freely, while Reita has always been the shyer of the two. So it's a new thing to Reita when Yamato starts to hedge around issues that are still invisible to Reita.
"Let's go to your house instead," Yamato is always saying these days, though they've always hung out at Yamato's house.
"But you were going to teach me to play billiards," Reita objects.
"We'll play at your place."
"Uh," Reita blinks at Yamato like he's stupid, "We don't own a billiards table."
"Then we'll go somewhere else! What the fuck Reita!" Yamato explosion comes suddenly, takes Reita by surprise.
"Okay geez!" Reita puts up his hands in a defensive gesture. "Calm down. You can just tell me if something happened at your house, you know."
Yamato practically growls in response. "There is nothing the matter at my house! Don't just assume shit!"
Honestly though, Reita isn't stupid. It's not like he hasn't heard Yamato's parents fight, not like he hasn't seen Yamato become unhappier and unhappier these days. And he wants to help, but he doesn't know how if Yamato only lashes out like he's been doing these days.
Plus, Reita is getting rather tired of being a verbal punching bag. Yamato has just been so hard to talk to these days - either he's silent and apathetic, or else he's getting mad at Reita for absolutely nothing. At first Reita had thought that the anger was better than the lack of emotion, but he's far from being the most patient person, and all the pointless yelling is getting old. And anyway, he doesn't want Yamato to be apathetic or angry. He wants Yamato to be himself again, and happy.
~
The first time Yamato ditches Reita, he just shrugs it off. It's not like he has some special claim on Yamato or anything, and everybody forgets things.
The second Yamato ditches Reita, not nearly long enough after the first time, Reita isn't quite so happy or willing to let it go.
The third time it happens, Reita is really pissed.
The fourth time it happens, Reita doesn't bother to wait more than five minutes before he gives up and goes home. Later, he gets a text message from a sanctimonious Yamato asking where he is and why he's being a ditcher. He's torn between anger and guilt, and more anger at the fact that he's even feeling guilty, and more guilt that he can't help with Yamato's whole family situation, until he just deletes the message from his phone out of pure disgust.
~
Yamato is on his third cigarette in an hour (they'd given up trying to chain smoke after that first time) so Reita doesn't need him to say anything to know there's something on his mind.
"There's this guy at school, right..." He pauses again, puffs some more, and Reita thinks that this newfound insecurity doesn't suit Yamato at all.
"Does this guy have a name?"
There's a brief moment before Yamato answers, and in that moment Reita sees Yamato's eyes look in on himself and then soften, as though he's thinking about someone precious to him. When Yamato speaks, too, his voice is all soft and sparkly and infatuated. "Ren."
Reita raises his eyebrows, expression hardening. He breathes out a bit too hard and it makes a derisive "huh" kind of sound. (Involuntarily.)
"What?" Yamato snaps, abruptly defensive.
Only this time Reita's defensive too, and Yamato's attitude just adds to Reita's irritation; he can feel his own temper curdling along with Yamato's expression.
"Having guy problems, huh? That was quick wasn't it?"
At this, Yamato looks genuinely confused, and that really makes Reita mad, because wasn't Yamato the one who started all this anyway?
"Quick? What are y-mmph!"
Without waiting to blow out his lungful of smoke, Reita leans in and smashes his lips against Yamato's. It's frankly disgusting, smoke and saliva and chapped lips mixing together into some horrible mish-mash, but it's about how Reita feels at the moment.
Finally, Yamato pushes him away, coughing and coughing, and it's like a distorted reminder of the first time they'd shared smokes (not quite the same kind of sharing) right at this spot, their spot, behind this ugly and derelict pachinko parlor.
~
Reita's first initiation to the world of violence happens on a really nice day. It's finally starting to look like spring again, and honestly, honestly, Reita is having a good day until Yamato ditches him yet again.
He doesn't know why he bothers to wait anymore; gravel and cigarette butts and the kitschy music that filters out from the back of the pachinko parlor can hardly be considered good company. Yamato never comes around these days, never bothers to remember his childhood friend because he's too busy hanging out with his new, cool, high school friends.
Reita makes a disgusted sound. Fumbles in his jacket pocket for a cigarette, only to find that he's forgotten his lighter at school. Kicks at a crumpled soda can lying on the ground and gets satisfaction from the cacophonous sound it makes as it bounces along the ground and stops at... the feet of a group of rough looking kids.
They're wearing high school uniforms, so Reita knows they must be students, but their clothing is rumpled and dirty, and they're decked out in all sorts of flashy jewelry that announces them to the world as delinquents.
"Watch it, punk," growls the leader of the group. He makes his hand into a fist and brandishes it under Reita's nose menacingly.
He should run, Reita knows, but today, he doesn't feel like it.
Instead, he looks straight into the eyes of the delinquent and smirks. "Make me."
The resulting fight is nasty but quick. Reita gets punched once, twice, thrice, and then he's caught squarely in the stomach by the guy's fist. He doubles over in pain, staggers to the ground, and then the entire group surrounds him, kicking and stomping on him wherever they can reach.
It hurts like a bitch, but strangely enough Reita stops feeling it after a while, as though his body becomes conditioned to the pain. He's not sure if he spaces out or blacks out but suddenly he discovers that the kids are gone before he's even realized they're leaving.
He can't go home like this, so he sends Yamato a text, saying it's an emergency and can he come over just for a second, just to get patched up? He's wary of Yamato's mood swings these days, especially when anything related to his house is mentioned, but Reita doesn't really know who else to turn to. Besides, at this point, he'd take Yamato's bitching over Yamato's silence.
Yamato never responds.
~
The first time Reita meets Ren, they both end up with split lips and bruised fists.
Ren doesn't even offer a greeting before his fist is smashing into Reita's nose. Reita still isn't much of a fighter yet, but he gives it his best and comes away having given as good as he got.
"He's miserable," Ren grinds out, spitting blood.
Reita glares, ready to throw another punch. "Then why don't you make him happy!"
~
Reita is actually being good for once, properly doing his homework, when Yamato barges into his room and demands of him in an angry voice, "Why did you fight with Ren?"
Reita slams his pencil down on the table (it breaks in half), before sighing with sudden fatigue. He's so tired of Yamato's moods, tired of Yamato assuming things of him without trying to verify his facts at all. "Seriously? Are you seriously asking me this?"
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean!"
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? It means he's the one who started the fight, why are you blaming me?"
"Oh my god, 'He's the one who started it'," Yamato taunts in a sing-song voice, "You're so childish Reita."
For the first time ever, Reita raises his fist against his own best friend.
It's a sloppy punch and Yamato dodges it easily, though it's not as if Reita would really have punched Yamato anyway.
But it might have been better if he had hit Yamato. Maybe they would have been able to fight it out and have their catharsis, instead of snarling at each other, barbed words and hooked insults ripping into already-painful emotional wounds.
In the back of his mind, Reita knows this. It's just that Yamato's stinging words are tearing through his head, filling his brain with the roar of fury, and he's just too angry to do anything but lash back. By the time he can think clearly again, can let his anger take a backseat to his friendship, it's too late to fix things.
~
("...a pity, what's happening with the Ogatas," Reita overhears his dad say to his mom. He's sneaking out for a late night smoke - not a first - when he hears the murmur of low voices from his parents' bedroom and stops to listen.
"Ogata-san said Yamato's been taking it especially hard," his mom replies, even lower, and Reita has to press his ear against the door to hear her properly. "Said he's been getting into all sorts of delinquencies at school, just to get his father's attention these days. It's too bad his friendship with our Reita wasn't enough to keep him anchored, and I can't deny I'm a bit relieved that Reita seems to be drifting away from him if he's turning into such a bad kid.")
~
On Reita's first day of high school (not the same high school as Yamato, because fuck if he'll stand being under the same roof as that asshole every day), he makes friends with a kid with blond highlights in his hair and a ton of accessories on his person.
"Got a smoke?" Reita asks, careful to keep his voice casual.
The guy looks at him - judges him - for a beat, before reaching into the pocket of his blazer. "Here."
It's not his usual brand. Reita's been smoking Luckies for so long, simply out of force of habit, that the gold packaging of SevenStars he's being offered easily catches his attention. Of its own will, Reita's hand pauses for a split second over the proffered packet, but he catches himself before the guy has the chance to notice and quickly plucks out a cigarette.
"Thanks," he says, flicking his lighter on with practiced ease. "I'm Takasugi Reita, by the way."