[One-shot] Breakeven (Table 2, 048. Even)
Title: Breakeven (Table 2, 048. Even)
Author: shiroikazex
Group/pairing: Hikaru/OC, with guest appearances by Yabu and Inoo
Genre: Romance, angst, a bit of humor
Rating: PG
Summary: They fight, he runs out and hooks up with another chick for one night, and she settles the score by making out with his best friend. What happens after, when he realizes just how much he had screwed up?
Disclaimer: Not mineee.
Notes: Unbeta'd!!! Inspired by this joke I read somewhere, that a wife was being exceedingly nice to a husband after he came back drunk. He wondered why, and she said that the night before when she tried undressing him to clean him up, he flung her off and was like "Stay back, woman, I'm married."
So maybe he had expected this.
I mean, she was the type to settle scores, in this case, by making out with Yabu. In front of him. Which would have led him to punch the teeth out of his best friend if not for the bewildered look on his face, suggesting that he had no part in this scheme.
She finally stepped back and fixed Hikaru with the coldest glare that he had ever gotten from her.
"We're done," she uttered and turned on her heel.
He missed the tears brimming in her eyes.
He knew the second after he had woken up that it had been the worst decision of his life. It had been a typical post-argument scenario: he stormed out of her apartment and into a club, and after a large dose of alcohol everything blurred. The next thing he knew he had woken up in a love hotel with a pink vibrator on the night stand and his right wrist shackled to the bedpost. After fumbling around for the key (he found it wrapped in a pair of lacy black thongs underneath the other pillow, along with a note that said 'As a souvenir, xoxo'), he managed to save his clothing and proceeded to exit the dodgy place as quickly as he could.
Not quickly enough, he realized the next day, when she strode up to him in the middle of the library and gave him a crisp, loud slap across the face.
"What the hell?" he spat, earning both of them stares from the other students and a loud "SHHHH" from the middle-aged librarian. She grabbed him roughly by the wrist and dragged him all the way out of the library to the courtyard, where Yabu stood, confused, under the cherry blossom tree.
"One of my cousins run that love hotel," she said coldly. "And I really don't want to even ask what you were doing in there."
"Look, I--"
And the snogging commenced, unfolding before his eyes like a cheap romance film. She grabbed Yabu by the collar of his shirt and planted--forced--a kiss on his lips.
Hikaru's insides froze over, along with time, it seemed. It took forever for her to face him again.
"We're done."
Their relationship died out in the months that followed. She might as well have vanished from the campus for all he knew. The only way that he knew she was still in school was through looking at her Facebook updates, stuff about homework and other school-related issues. His messages to her remained unanswered.
"You fucked up big time, bro."
He realized, even without the constant reminders from his best friend. He dialled her number yet again, for the umpteenth time since she broke up with him, hoping for her to get frustrated enough to actually answer, but alas, she was keeping up with the cold shoulder act, and he was greeted once again by her voice mail.
"Listen--I'm sorry, I... I don't think it'll ever be enough, but I'm sorry, I really am, I felt sorry the moment I woke up in that place. I knew I did the worst thing possible to hurt you, and I honestly don't even remember what happened. I really don't. One moment I was still drinking and the next, I was just there. Please believe me. I love you, and I'm sorry. Just... Call me back when you're ready."
The next time he called, the number was no longer in service.
"Aren't you being a little hard on him?"
She glared at her best friend.
"If you knew what was best for you, Inoo Kei, you would keep your mouth shut."
"I'm just saying--"
She slammed her textbook shut and steepled her fingers.
"What? I'm sick of listening to his voice mail, so let's see if you have anything different to offer."
"Well, you've said it yourself before, he's not a liar--"
"He was not a liar."
"Why do you assume he's lying now?"
"About what? Sleeping with a cheap whore he picked up at a club? Being at that place? My cousin had the nerve to call me after that."
"What did she say, actually?"
"She said that he went in with another girl--"
"And?"
"Nothing else. I hung up after that. How much more detail do I need to know?"
"Maybe they didn't even actually do it--"
"Shut up, seriously."
"You know, to guys, sex is just sex. There's hardly any feelings attached."
"So you're saying that all the nights he spent together with me meant nothing. Great."
"No! I didn't mean that," he rubbed his temples. Words were not in his area of expertise. "I meant that, of course with someone we love it's different, we'd want to make that one girl feel special, but apart from that, there really isn't much to it apart from the physical with other girls. For all that you know he might have been thinking of you when he was doing her."
"Comforting. But you aren't the most representative male I know."
"Not the point," he glared. "I'm just saying... You guys were fighting, he got mad, he made a mistake... And now he's practically begging for you to forgive him, you should at least hear him out."
"Oh and get my heart broken even more, right, brilliant idea."
"Jeez, why are you so irritable today?"
"When your uterus is practically murdering you by cramping every 2 minutes--" She jabbed a finger at his nose. "You would be this angry. Talk to me when you've lost your balls and grown an extra opening down there."
Inoo Kei learned that day to not cross a woman on her period. Even if that woman was your best friend.
"--Look, sweetheart, when I told you that he came in entirely drunk, I meant it. She practically had to carry him in. And she dumped him in one of our rooms and came out a few minutes later with no signs of having had done it--trust me, I would know what a post-sex face looks like, and she looked as un-sexed up as she did when she walked in the doors earlier--"
She raised an eyebrow at her aunt, just as a middle-aged salaryman came in with a giggling teenager. Distasteful place.
"--and so I asked her what went down in there, because, well, that's your man we're talking about here. She sighed and was like, 'Well firstly, he was too drunk to even get up by himself, and if it wasn't for the fact that he seemed like a really nice guy I wouldn't even have bothered to get him out of that club. Secondly, when I did stripping him in there, he told me he was married and demanded that I stop.'
'Married?', I asked her. She shrugged and lit a cigarette.
'Yeah, I was surprised too, he looks so young. And he mumbled on about how he was gonna woo his girlfriend with his guitar and make it up for fighting with her, and how she would be so dazzled that she would marry him on the spot. I thought it was adorably naive and just left him in there in a amusing position, just to scare him a little, y'know? He's a nice man. So rare.'
And I was gonna tell you all of this but you hung up on me and I could never get through to your phone after that. I hope you haven't cut his balls off yet."
"I... I need a coffee."
"Have a beer instead," Her cousin offered. "In the vending machine over there, sweetheart, help yourself."
"I told you so."
She groaned and hit her head repeatedly against the dining table in his apartment.
"I'm doomed, my love life is doomed, I should just never have another boyfriend. I don't deserve nice guys."
"No, you just have some anger management issues. And that you jump the gun faster than assassin's pull triggers. Why don't you just call him up?"
"It's embarrassing!"
"Oh, another problem to add to your list: you are too proud for your own damned good."
"Inoo, you're not helping."
"I am, you just refuse to take any of my advice."
"He probably hates me."
"His phone calls beg to differ."
"If you make me cry now, I swear to God you are going to di---"
"So cry! You're always more rational after you let all your irrationality out," he set a mug of chocolate down in front of her. "And of course, after a mug of chocolate. Go on."
Her lips trembled.
"I hate you."
And the waterworks came like a torrentious wave.
October arrived amidst a warm swirl of gold and orange, and Yabu surprised Hikaru in the morning one day with news of a masquerade dance that was to be held later that month. After painstakingly stalking her Facebook updates, he confirmed her attendance, and managed to get his outfit done up just in time. A fedora to hide his hair, and a full-face mask to hide his more characteristic facial features.
Though when he stepped into the school function hall that evening, he felt like he didn't need all the get-up at all. He could hardly tell his classmates apart, but it was easy to find her. She was wearing the special perfume he had conjured up at one of those DIY stands, a Valentine's Day present.
Halfway through the dance, after turning down 5 invites, he spotted her heading out of the hall into the gazebo, and he squeezed through the crowd to reach the doors, nearly losing his hat along the way. He checked his disguise in the glass panel before he stepped out and followed her to the central fountain.
"Well, hello there," he said in a faked, low voice. She turned around, the dazzling eye-mask she had on reflecting the light from the nearby lamp post.
"Hi," she answered with a smile.
"You were at the dance alone."
"Well my boyfriend decided that he would rather sleep with another woman, so what can I do?"
He cringed.
"That's pretty horrible of him. But what made you think he doesn't still love you?"
She didn't answer, and instead sat down on the edge of the fountain. He swallowed, and asked, "What's your name?"
"The point of a masquerade is for you to not know the other person's name."
"I was just wondering, you know, maybe I could catch you around school some time."
She stood up with the samesmile, and touched a hand to his mask.
"What are you playing at, Yaotome?"
A second later his mask was removed, and her eyes darkened behind her mask.
"I--I..."
She flung the mask into the fountain and turned to leave, but this time, he caught her by the wrist and refused to let go.
"D-Don't." She hadn't expected him to follow her out.
"Please, just 5 minutes of your time, and it's up to you to decide if I stay or vanish from your life."
"I thought I had made my intentions clear a couple of months ago."
"Please."
She stopped struggling but refused to look at him.
"I don't know if you got my phone messages. I don't think repeatedly apologizing would do us any good anyway..."
"Why didn't you stop me the last time?" Her voice was barely audible. "If what you claimed over the phone was true, and what you told the other girl in the hotel was true... why didn't you?"
"Wait--What did I say? How did you know?"
"T-That's not important," she cast her eyes down, realizing what she had said.
"Tell me!"
"My cousin told me that the girl you were with told her that... You... You told the girl when she was taking your clothes off that... That you were gonna apologize to your girlfriend and marry her. So the girl stopped and left you there as a joke."
"Oh god. That's what happened?" Mentally, he knelt down and thanked the heavens.
"Why didn't you stop me?"
"Becuase I honestly thought that I had... done stuff--back then I thought that I really slept with her--I mean I don't remember ever saying those things, they must have been subconscious I suppose, so stopping you would only have made things worse. And I assumed you hated my guts and that you would probably find some other guy who could love you better--"
"But I loved you!"
She faced him, finally, face still masked but there was something else glittering on her mask apart from the rhinestones.
"I thought you felt the same, Hikaru."
"I did--I still do."
"Can I believe what you told her?"
"Duh--I mean, of course, if I could remember that I had you when I was dead drunk, how much more proof do you need? It's one of those subconscious facts of life," he grinned.
"Damnnit, Yaotome," her voice trembled. "Don't make me trust you so easily."
"I'm sorry---"
"Stop saying that!" she slammed a fist into his chest and burst into tears. "The past months I've been wondering if... If I had never started that fight, maybe you would never have stormed out and we would never have broken up. Wondering if it was all my fault. Wondering if it's right for you to be apologizing now."
"Babe, relax--"
"The more you apologized, the guiltier I felt for getting angry, for kissing Yabu-kun and for jumping to conclusions. I don't know. Maybe I'm the one at fault. I don't deserve you--"
He embraced her, unable to stand her illogical self-blaming any longer, and she sobbed quietly into his chest.
"I'm so sorry."
"Look, whatever it is, I forgive you, even though it isn't your fault in the first place. I just... I just hope you can forgive me too. And then we can put this behind us, and start over. And promise that this would never happen again. I can't stand to see you cry like this."
The sobbing stopped gradually, but she made no move of stepping away, and instead wrapped her arms around his torso like all the times she had done before.
"I've missed you, more than I care to admit."
"Well," he chuckled while stroking her hair. "Ain't that something rare to hear from your lips."
"Shut up," she grumbled, but clung on tighter. "I'm cold."
"Let's head in."
"Mm."
"Are you free tomorrow?"
"Don't get your hopes up so fast. I'll keep you posted."
"...It's a start."
He stole a quick kiss from her tight lips, and the tiny hint of a smile that he earned was all the comfirmation he needed that the mistake was put in the past, for now at least.
~END~
There is weird shit I write, and then there is this ._________. Thank you physics, this idea suddenly came to mind when I was mugging for Physics yesterday. But with this, I ONLY HAVE ONE MORE FIC TO GO TILL I COMPLETE MY 50 FICS CHALLENGE \o/
Author: shiroikazex
Group/pairing: Hikaru/OC, with guest appearances by Yabu and Inoo
Genre: Romance, angst, a bit of humor
Rating: PG
Summary: They fight, he runs out and hooks up with another chick for one night, and she settles the score by making out with his best friend. What happens after, when he realizes just how much he had screwed up?
Disclaimer: Not mineee.
Notes: Unbeta'd!!! Inspired by this joke I read somewhere, that a wife was being exceedingly nice to a husband after he came back drunk. He wondered why, and she said that the night before when she tried undressing him to clean him up, he flung her off and was like "Stay back, woman, I'm married."
So maybe he had expected this.
I mean, she was the type to settle scores, in this case, by making out with Yabu. In front of him. Which would have led him to punch the teeth out of his best friend if not for the bewildered look on his face, suggesting that he had no part in this scheme.
She finally stepped back and fixed Hikaru with the coldest glare that he had ever gotten from her.
"We're done," she uttered and turned on her heel.
He missed the tears brimming in her eyes.
He knew the second after he had woken up that it had been the worst decision of his life. It had been a typical post-argument scenario: he stormed out of her apartment and into a club, and after a large dose of alcohol everything blurred. The next thing he knew he had woken up in a love hotel with a pink vibrator on the night stand and his right wrist shackled to the bedpost. After fumbling around for the key (he found it wrapped in a pair of lacy black thongs underneath the other pillow, along with a note that said 'As a souvenir, xoxo'), he managed to save his clothing and proceeded to exit the dodgy place as quickly as he could.
Not quickly enough, he realized the next day, when she strode up to him in the middle of the library and gave him a crisp, loud slap across the face.
"What the hell?" he spat, earning both of them stares from the other students and a loud "SHHHH" from the middle-aged librarian. She grabbed him roughly by the wrist and dragged him all the way out of the library to the courtyard, where Yabu stood, confused, under the cherry blossom tree.
"One of my cousins run that love hotel," she said coldly. "And I really don't want to even ask what you were doing in there."
"Look, I--"
And the snogging commenced, unfolding before his eyes like a cheap romance film. She grabbed Yabu by the collar of his shirt and planted--forced--a kiss on his lips.
Hikaru's insides froze over, along with time, it seemed. It took forever for her to face him again.
"We're done."
Their relationship died out in the months that followed. She might as well have vanished from the campus for all he knew. The only way that he knew she was still in school was through looking at her Facebook updates, stuff about homework and other school-related issues. His messages to her remained unanswered.
"You fucked up big time, bro."
He realized, even without the constant reminders from his best friend. He dialled her number yet again, for the umpteenth time since she broke up with him, hoping for her to get frustrated enough to actually answer, but alas, she was keeping up with the cold shoulder act, and he was greeted once again by her voice mail.
"Listen--I'm sorry, I... I don't think it'll ever be enough, but I'm sorry, I really am, I felt sorry the moment I woke up in that place. I knew I did the worst thing possible to hurt you, and I honestly don't even remember what happened. I really don't. One moment I was still drinking and the next, I was just there. Please believe me. I love you, and I'm sorry. Just... Call me back when you're ready."
The next time he called, the number was no longer in service.
"Aren't you being a little hard on him?"
She glared at her best friend.
"If you knew what was best for you, Inoo Kei, you would keep your mouth shut."
"I'm just saying--"
She slammed her textbook shut and steepled her fingers.
"What? I'm sick of listening to his voice mail, so let's see if you have anything different to offer."
"Well, you've said it yourself before, he's not a liar--"
"He was not a liar."
"Why do you assume he's lying now?"
"About what? Sleeping with a cheap whore he picked up at a club? Being at that place? My cousin had the nerve to call me after that."
"What did she say, actually?"
"She said that he went in with another girl--"
"And?"
"Nothing else. I hung up after that. How much more detail do I need to know?"
"Maybe they didn't even actually do it--"
"Shut up, seriously."
"You know, to guys, sex is just sex. There's hardly any feelings attached."
"So you're saying that all the nights he spent together with me meant nothing. Great."
"No! I didn't mean that," he rubbed his temples. Words were not in his area of expertise. "I meant that, of course with someone we love it's different, we'd want to make that one girl feel special, but apart from that, there really isn't much to it apart from the physical with other girls. For all that you know he might have been thinking of you when he was doing her."
"Comforting. But you aren't the most representative male I know."
"Not the point," he glared. "I'm just saying... You guys were fighting, he got mad, he made a mistake... And now he's practically begging for you to forgive him, you should at least hear him out."
"Oh and get my heart broken even more, right, brilliant idea."
"Jeez, why are you so irritable today?"
"When your uterus is practically murdering you by cramping every 2 minutes--" She jabbed a finger at his nose. "You would be this angry. Talk to me when you've lost your balls and grown an extra opening down there."
Inoo Kei learned that day to not cross a woman on her period. Even if that woman was your best friend.
"--Look, sweetheart, when I told you that he came in entirely drunk, I meant it. She practically had to carry him in. And she dumped him in one of our rooms and came out a few minutes later with no signs of having had done it--trust me, I would know what a post-sex face looks like, and she looked as un-sexed up as she did when she walked in the doors earlier--"
She raised an eyebrow at her aunt, just as a middle-aged salaryman came in with a giggling teenager. Distasteful place.
"--and so I asked her what went down in there, because, well, that's your man we're talking about here. She sighed and was like, 'Well firstly, he was too drunk to even get up by himself, and if it wasn't for the fact that he seemed like a really nice guy I wouldn't even have bothered to get him out of that club. Secondly, when I did stripping him in there, he told me he was married and demanded that I stop.'
'Married?', I asked her. She shrugged and lit a cigarette.
'Yeah, I was surprised too, he looks so young. And he mumbled on about how he was gonna woo his girlfriend with his guitar and make it up for fighting with her, and how she would be so dazzled that she would marry him on the spot. I thought it was adorably naive and just left him in there in a amusing position, just to scare him a little, y'know? He's a nice man. So rare.'
And I was gonna tell you all of this but you hung up on me and I could never get through to your phone after that. I hope you haven't cut his balls off yet."
"I... I need a coffee."
"Have a beer instead," Her cousin offered. "In the vending machine over there, sweetheart, help yourself."
"I told you so."
She groaned and hit her head repeatedly against the dining table in his apartment.
"I'm doomed, my love life is doomed, I should just never have another boyfriend. I don't deserve nice guys."
"No, you just have some anger management issues. And that you jump the gun faster than assassin's pull triggers. Why don't you just call him up?"
"It's embarrassing!"
"Oh, another problem to add to your list: you are too proud for your own damned good."
"Inoo, you're not helping."
"I am, you just refuse to take any of my advice."
"He probably hates me."
"His phone calls beg to differ."
"If you make me cry now, I swear to God you are going to di---"
"So cry! You're always more rational after you let all your irrationality out," he set a mug of chocolate down in front of her. "And of course, after a mug of chocolate. Go on."
Her lips trembled.
"I hate you."
And the waterworks came like a torrentious wave.
October arrived amidst a warm swirl of gold and orange, and Yabu surprised Hikaru in the morning one day with news of a masquerade dance that was to be held later that month. After painstakingly stalking her Facebook updates, he confirmed her attendance, and managed to get his outfit done up just in time. A fedora to hide his hair, and a full-face mask to hide his more characteristic facial features.
Though when he stepped into the school function hall that evening, he felt like he didn't need all the get-up at all. He could hardly tell his classmates apart, but it was easy to find her. She was wearing the special perfume he had conjured up at one of those DIY stands, a Valentine's Day present.
Halfway through the dance, after turning down 5 invites, he spotted her heading out of the hall into the gazebo, and he squeezed through the crowd to reach the doors, nearly losing his hat along the way. He checked his disguise in the glass panel before he stepped out and followed her to the central fountain.
"Well, hello there," he said in a faked, low voice. She turned around, the dazzling eye-mask she had on reflecting the light from the nearby lamp post.
"Hi," she answered with a smile.
"You were at the dance alone."
"Well my boyfriend decided that he would rather sleep with another woman, so what can I do?"
He cringed.
"That's pretty horrible of him. But what made you think he doesn't still love you?"
She didn't answer, and instead sat down on the edge of the fountain. He swallowed, and asked, "What's your name?"
"The point of a masquerade is for you to not know the other person's name."
"I was just wondering, you know, maybe I could catch you around school some time."
She stood up with the samesmile, and touched a hand to his mask.
"What are you playing at, Yaotome?"
A second later his mask was removed, and her eyes darkened behind her mask.
"I--I..."
She flung the mask into the fountain and turned to leave, but this time, he caught her by the wrist and refused to let go.
"D-Don't." She hadn't expected him to follow her out.
"Please, just 5 minutes of your time, and it's up to you to decide if I stay or vanish from your life."
"I thought I had made my intentions clear a couple of months ago."
"Please."
She stopped struggling but refused to look at him.
"I don't know if you got my phone messages. I don't think repeatedly apologizing would do us any good anyway..."
"Why didn't you stop me the last time?" Her voice was barely audible. "If what you claimed over the phone was true, and what you told the other girl in the hotel was true... why didn't you?"
"Wait--What did I say? How did you know?"
"T-That's not important," she cast her eyes down, realizing what she had said.
"Tell me!"
"My cousin told me that the girl you were with told her that... You... You told the girl when she was taking your clothes off that... That you were gonna apologize to your girlfriend and marry her. So the girl stopped and left you there as a joke."
"Oh god. That's what happened?" Mentally, he knelt down and thanked the heavens.
"Why didn't you stop me?"
"Becuase I honestly thought that I had... done stuff--back then I thought that I really slept with her--I mean I don't remember ever saying those things, they must have been subconscious I suppose, so stopping you would only have made things worse. And I assumed you hated my guts and that you would probably find some other guy who could love you better--"
"But I loved you!"
She faced him, finally, face still masked but there was something else glittering on her mask apart from the rhinestones.
"I thought you felt the same, Hikaru."
"I did--I still do."
"Can I believe what you told her?"
"Duh--I mean, of course, if I could remember that I had you when I was dead drunk, how much more proof do you need? It's one of those subconscious facts of life," he grinned.
"Damnnit, Yaotome," her voice trembled. "Don't make me trust you so easily."
"I'm sorry---"
"Stop saying that!" she slammed a fist into his chest and burst into tears. "The past months I've been wondering if... If I had never started that fight, maybe you would never have stormed out and we would never have broken up. Wondering if it was all my fault. Wondering if it's right for you to be apologizing now."
"Babe, relax--"
"The more you apologized, the guiltier I felt for getting angry, for kissing Yabu-kun and for jumping to conclusions. I don't know. Maybe I'm the one at fault. I don't deserve you--"
He embraced her, unable to stand her illogical self-blaming any longer, and she sobbed quietly into his chest.
"I'm so sorry."
"Look, whatever it is, I forgive you, even though it isn't your fault in the first place. I just... I just hope you can forgive me too. And then we can put this behind us, and start over. And promise that this would never happen again. I can't stand to see you cry like this."
The sobbing stopped gradually, but she made no move of stepping away, and instead wrapped her arms around his torso like all the times she had done before.
"I've missed you, more than I care to admit."
"Well," he chuckled while stroking her hair. "Ain't that something rare to hear from your lips."
"Shut up," she grumbled, but clung on tighter. "I'm cold."
"Let's head in."
"Mm."
"Are you free tomorrow?"
"Don't get your hopes up so fast. I'll keep you posted."
"...It's a start."
He stole a quick kiss from her tight lips, and the tiny hint of a smile that he earned was all the comfirmation he needed that the mistake was put in the past, for now at least.
~END~
There is weird shit I write, and then there is this ._________. Thank you physics, this idea suddenly came to mind when I was mugging for Physics yesterday. But with this, I ONLY HAVE ONE MORE FIC TO GO TILL I COMPLETE MY 50 FICS CHALLENGE \o/