(no subject)
title: 30 angsty words
author:
chartre
rating: pg to r
words: 6007
pairing: koyapi, koyashige, ryoshige, ryopi, ryotego, shigetego, tegomass, tegopi
summary: and so love falls.
notes: fictional. au. thirty words. thirty drabbles. thirty angst and vague moments wherein i prove myself as an over-thinker. i apologize for the super!delay last week; it seemed i was not able to finish all thirty as promised (i lacked at least five more last week). but here they are; enjoy. :) refer to this list for the requests. ctrl+f is your friend! yes, i will make another request post, soon. ♥
1. The Two of Us
RyoShige for
ryoshige_otp
Shige mistakes love for loathing when Ryo tries to appeal to him, kisses him briefly until he realizes what’s happening. Shige makes his attempt to hit him right across his cheek, make it swell, but Ryo stops him with a grip on his wrist, tight and unforgiving.
He, Shige, thinks of lavenders and mint, and baby powder when they kiss; it’s either that, or he smells Ryo’s soap, his hair, tastes his toothpaste. Shige still elbows him off, but he’s restraining from that. He doesn’t want it, but wants it; he doesn’t feel it, but it feels.
The point comes when kissing with a dry throat against the wall and arms above his head becomes too pretentious, and Ryo pulls off for a moment. He has the nerve to ask him how it feels. “It. It feels,” but Shige remembers to slap him hard, sees the perfect opportunity to, but kisses him again anyway because he both loathes and loves Ryo.
Now he knows love is made of random kisses and the unpredictable mixture of loathing and feel.
2. The Longing Back Then
RyoTego for
teshi_kun
Ryo thinks it’s easy to love someone like Tegoshi; easy on the lips, easy on the hold, easy on the bed. And having to go without him is easy as well, when easy meant asking himself every night the same question that runs like a song in mind: why did I have to fall in love with you.
He thinks he hasn’t broken any hearts at all, even those before him, before his inability to tell straightforward feelings-and eventually became the cause of wasted two months. He dreams sometimes, opening the door early morning to see Tegoshi sitting there, thinking of what he wants to say to him, but no. He’s just proud, Ryo, and he can’t admit the fact that he has, indeed, broken too many hearts too many times, and shattered Tegoshi’s, especially fragile one. He blames love because he doesn’t know what the hell it is.
So why is he standing at his doorstep with flowers and with what he thinks to be is a dysfunctional mind?
3. Scars
TegoPi for
huey_tsai
They’re on his face, running like fresh blood on the walls of a murder scene. Masuda tries to help him get rid off them with his handkerchief, but they just come back, reappearing when they’ve been ridden.
Tegoshi is in black, holds in his arms the picture of a memory that once began years back, and it’s in black and white, the portrait of this leader.
He dies on a Wednesday; an overdose, because his doctor tells him to double his medication. He couldn’t cope with the heavy schedule, nor with the meds he had to take, and now he’s coping with the end.
“Condolence,” say those who pass them by, place their hands on Tegoshi’s shoulder. Condolence, because it is unfair to let someone like Yamashita go like this, go in the depth of sleep and ghost away before those he loves. Condolence, because Tegoshi is hurting in every way, everyone is just trying to stop him from his suicidal dreams.
Condolence, because Yamashita was Tegoshi’s, and Tegoshi was Yamashita’s.
He still is.
And forever will be.
4. Unreachable Back
KoyaPi for
anjenette
They all shift into position, Shige bumping shoulders with Tegoshi, bumping elbows with Ryo, stepping on Massu’s foot. Neither Koyama nor Pi seems to have problems with positions, standing side by side on stage, holding hands like everyone else. Pi shouts out to the crowd into the headphone microphone, and they go wild. Koyama smiles big, but something happens.
It’s something cliché, like love stories in children’s books: they’re standing on the edge of the stage, but as if he’s never done it-which he hasn’t, in fact-Koyama skids, loses Pi’s and Shige’s grips, does something spectacular for the crowd. They scream, thinking he’s died, thinking Keii-chan fell! This is going to be in the news!
He’s a few words mistaken, when he realizes the fact that he’s holding onto someone bigger than he is (his small frame and all), arms around the shoulders of another, cold sweat and humidity all over, and hands on his small waist. Everyone’s shouting. There’s something going on between two boys on stage.
Koyama later on thanks Pi, but it’s all the conversation he makes with him. Shige approaches, asks him how he is, but he’s not listening. Koyama watches Pi from afar, thinks a little about what everyone thinks about what has happened. Suddenly it’s something between cliché and epic, next to diversity. He watches Pi get ready for his solo, smiles over there, and not here.
5. Promise
RyoPi
They decide to meet on the park bench, the one that faces the west where you can see the sun set in the late afternoon. It’s a familiar scene from old motion picture times, little boys with short pants holding up paper windmills on their bikes with training wheels, riding the wind as fast as they can. They did not have those when they were kids; instead had kites and rubber balls. It’s the same wind that blows his short black hair today from years ago, but there are no kites, no rubber balls, no best-friend-for-life beside him.
He holds into it, counts it for something in his long years of waiting. For years he’s wished for something profound, and for years-
“Sorry I’m late,” Pi tells him, catches his breath, “delayed flight,” and he kisses Ryo.
And for years is he still waiting for his return.
There are no kites, no rubber balls, no best-friend-for-life, no lover.
6. Cold Chain
RyoShige for
lady_akira
He remembers Nishikido from high school: a shorter senior, president of the archery club, student council representative during his freshmen days. He’s never talked to his senpai, however, just formal greetings in the hallway with lost glances, escaped looks and rushed awkward gestures, like that one time on his birthday he mysteriously received a phone strap from an anonymous. His mind set too much on the sender that he bumps into Nishikido-senpai aimlessly.
Today, he sees him again, four years later. He bumps into him-again, still literally-and there are again those nostalgic moments on the hallway. He’s never spoken to his senpai-until today.
He greets him and introduces himself as Shigeaki from high school. He’s surprised Nishikido knows him, and they share a subtle moment.
Nishikido says he wants to hang out today, looks at the strap of his cellphone.
“Don’t you have to meet up with your girlfriend?” he asks just because.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Nishikido laughs, waits for his much awaited answer.
He stares at Nishikido for a moment, notices how he’s grown taller over some years.
7. Memory
RyoShige for
sylviaunited
There are pictures of him and Ryo, mostly purikura because they are the type to go out on dates often. Ryo would call him on the spot, say, “Let’s go out, Kato-kun.” Shige would smile and meet up wit him at once.
He often plays the feminine role, Shige, but it’s all just a basis of casualty and mannerism, how things fall into place. Ryo often holds his bag for him if he brings anything; Ryo often waits for him because Ryo is always first; Ryo holds the door open for him; Ryo pays for their dinner. But Shige doesn’t mind, because it’s Ryo he’s with.
(But, of course, things change in time. Shige changes in time.)
After dinner, they go and take purikura: casual shots, funny shots, random shots, intimate shots. Intimate like kissing in front of the tiny camera; intimate like going home to Ryo’s and fucking in the living room.
These are his old memories; Shige’s. He’s returning them in dusty brown boxes with a note that reads, “I can’t do this anymore. Sorry. Kato”, darkened double-strikethroughs on the word love before his signed name.
8. Unfulfilled Heart
TegoMass for
bamboobranch
It has happened again: Tegoshi bringing an unwanted aura in the house, and he starts crying when he sits down on the sofa beside Massu. He, Massu, squeezes a hand across shoulders, tells him it’s okay; Nishikido-kun is an asshole for not knowing. Tegoshi is not satisfied because he never is, because he’s hard to please and very spoiled. He wants to do it tonight, because he’s in a bad mood, kisses Massu without hesitation and a few renegade tears.
A million things make out in Massu’s head, pictures, ideas, words, when Tegoshi slides his foot across his calf, the skin behind his knee. He thinks he can cope with so much of this, sex in the evenings regardless the emotions and missing feelings. He thinks he can just say it, I love you Tegoshi, I love you, I love you. I love you.
“Nishikido-kun-” Tegoshi mutters in between, and he’s blistering… they both are, but it’s completely different. Tegoshi thinks he’s getting his fill, Massu isn’t.
He thinks he can just say it, I love you Tegoshi, I love you, I love you. I love you. But these words deem no existent feelings anymore. There is no fill, no meaning.
9. Hourglass
ShigeTego
He doesn’t know where to go, doesn’t know what else to do besides watch a friend go. It bothers him, how this is already the fourth time-and still counting-he’s confessing to Shigeaki Kato, and still he leaves him trailing behind him. The minute he turns his back, tears begin to fall, and it disappoints him how no one can see them because it’s dark, it’s cloudy, and the foliage around the city is just about murky.
“Tego,” there is a voice in his head that tells him to let go. The voice on his chest tells him otherwise. It’s a maze, and time is running out.
“Tego,” he doesn’t know how long he has to keep up, but the determination is there, only dying, dying, dying. He’s a debate between his two selves, a choice beaten by the other but there is no sure win. He’s still walking away. His heart continues to hesitate.
“Tego.” He wants to love.
Then it starts to rain. Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter. “Tego, it’s over.”
Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.
10. Not Knowing
KoyaShige for
reuslurid
Koyama lies on the small of his back, holds tight around Shige’s neck, fervent kisses in between hollowed gasps and shattered moans. Shige unbuckles the belt of Koyama’s pants, gets his hands on the zipper through the mesh. He keeps his knees on either side of his hips, kisses him again, harder this time, fingers through his bleached hair, and they roll a bit on the bed, onto the floor. There is a loud thud, but they’re still kissing, kissing with tongue and teeth. Shige mouths Koyama’s lower lip, bites and pulls a little. The latter finds the hem of his shirt and searches the soft skin there, digs deep in between the shoulder blades with his fingernails, lets a needy moan escape him.
“Shige,” he hums his name softly in his eat, the bucking of hips against the hard line between his legs and he mutters again, “Shige…”
Shige makes an unintelligible sound at the back of his throat.
“Pi-Pi’s calling,” Koyama tells him. “Pi’s calling.”
At the corner of his eyes, he sees Koyama’s cellphone in beeping lights, hears his ringtone. “Pi’s calling,” he tells him again.
Shige pretends and lies. He doesn’t see anything. “It’s nothing,” he whispers, breathes on his neck and it makes Koyama shiver.
11. Bitter Cry
RyoTego for
nami_go
There is an entity beneath the covers of his bed; a rise and fall somewhere where the light from the window reflects, hollows out the sleeping form. Ryo checks him for the fourth time that evening, makes sure he doesn’t catch the same flu for the third day.
Tegoshi coughs in his sleep, dryness in his throat. Ryo hurries in quietly, makes sure he doesn’t wake him up. A touch of his forehead is all he needs, and a mental note for the next morning.
“I have to go,” his eyes are still a little red and swollen, and he wears a pale face. Ryo’s standing across him with a coffee mug in hand. He doesn’t know how he’s managed to get up at this rate, a fever with cough and colds, he looks as if he’s dying, and it pains Ryo to see him like this.
“Do you-” he bites his lips, grips tighter onto the mug handle. “Do you really have to go?”
Tegoshi throws him the same look. Ryo knows it’s something else, but the lines under his eyes avert his expressions. “Do you want me to stay?”
Ryo bites his lips harder.
12. Goodbye
KoyaShige for
haruka21
“I don’t want to see you go,” Koyama holds him close to his face, foreheads and noses pressed while he caresses him on either side of his jaws. Shige’s hands search the hitch of Koyama’s hips, rubs some and pulls him against his own, and he looks straight into him, brown eyes and a few straying hairs covering his vision. He kisses him, briefly, slowly, meaningfully. “Promise me,” Koyama says.
The next morning, he searches for a place to rest his head, but a pillow serves him no purpose. Koyama is looking for Shige, but he is no longer there on the sheets, and all he can feel is the vast wide space that stretches through and through. He wants it to stop growing, the immeasurable gap beside him. There is too much torment, too much vexation that it makes him throw a fitful tantrum, why the fuck is he gone.
But Shige keeps his promise: he doesn’t let Koyama see him go.
13. Hand in Hand
KoyaShige
Shige thinks he can make Koyama kiss him, meet him halfway when they have their random urges. It’s difficult for him because he thinks too much, considers too many things at the same time, those that are most especially difficult to imagine, what more, see happening in real life. But Shige is persistent like that, studying the law, hoping to fulfill all his ideologies because he thinks those are important.
Koyama is in one of those ideologies-or in most of them. It’s easier said than done, and he knows that.
One day it starts to hurt him inside, Shige, growing emotions every day and every night.
“Are you okay?” everyone in the group starts asking, and he thinks-again-that there are too many questions. He turns around to everyone who asks at the same time. He sees Koyama ask the same question, and the first thing that comes into mind is that he wants to kiss him. Completely on impulse, he tries, but something happens first.
He wakes up on Koyama’s lap, one hand intertwined with his. He looks up, sees Koyama with a relieved smile. He’s finally awake, and he’s thankful. “You study too hard, Shige-kun. You shouldn’t think too much.”
14. Beloved
RyoTego for
teshi_kun
It’s a longing kiss; wet, slow, quiet. A little more and they count it for passionate, sloppy, short kisses, hurried movements with something magical and wily in between.
Ryo pulls his hair back, slips his tongue into his mouth. Tegoshi kisses him back, plays a little and makes a mess out of him. It’s going to be his first time, when Ryo pushes his shirt up over his head. He breathes in deep, plunges into kisses and breathy gestures, face flushed and eyelids heavy with heat. Ryo squeezes against the bed with his equal weight, rubs his hips and two things happen.
Two things: Ryo breathes down his neck, lips and teeth on hot, smooth skin. Tegoshi stifles a short quiet moan, and feels something deepen beneath his skin. It’s white hot, and burns like cold ice. He mutters his name unintelligibly because he’s weak against him now; hot for him now, grip softened and voice slurry.
Two things: Ryo slowly hovers over him slowly, noses his cheek, the side of his marked lips. He looks at him one last time and pulls the knife plunged into the side of his beloved.
15. The Courage to Shake that Hand Off
TegoMass for
bamboobranch
Tegoshi hates it, hates her, hates him, hates everyone. He’s a son of a gun, but towards no aspect literally, because he comes from a family hard on goods and cash. He’s just like that, they all say, he’s having a phase. It’s no doubt though, when they all agree to tell that he only trusts one entity in the whole world and that is no one other than Masuda: longtime classmate, childhood friend, lover. Maybe if others thought too much, that last bit might as well be applicable, but not for generality. He’s steel and cold fire to everyone else, but a warm bonfire to Masuda. He’s his everything in the God-damned world, every single entity he’ll ever need to live in the whole forsaken lie.
But comes a time when Masuda is gone. He leaves. He migrates. He dies. He changes. He is gone.
Tegoshi cries; he’s at his weakest, and everyone is afraid. Tegoshi hates it, hates her, hates him, hates everyone. He’s a son of a gun, but towards no aspect literally. He just has no one. He hates himself. He wants to get off. He wants. He wants.
“I can’t find Massu. Help me, please.”
He wants.
16. Lullaby
RyoTego
Ryo’s a tempest on nights like this, doesn’t want to talk or be bothered when he comes home from work because he’s tired. Tegoshi compels him to eat the dinner’s he’s made for him: sukiyaki, all the good eats he put in just for him. But he shoves Tegoshi aside, and it’s another fight at home.
Ryo makes his excuses.
Tegoshi retorts.
Ryo yells.
Tegoshi cries, but there is no mercy. No, not until he tells Ryo he will still love him even if a son of a bitch is what he is to him, and Ryo makes the effort to tilt his chin up, kiss him on his lips slowly, quietly, run his fingers through his hair to his jaw and massages, prod his mouth open.
Tegoshi makes this breathy sound, a moan, a hum at the back of his throat and tilts his head heavy. They untangle for a while, faces flushed and heavy eyelids, and there is no longer a tempest.
And it repeats again,
and again,
and
again.
17. Not There
TegoPi for
lullabelle21
Lunch period: Sensei peeks in the corner of the classroom, tries to spot Yuya. He’s at the back of the room near the window on the left, and he’s not touching his lunch again. Sensei calls for the female teacher, says something barely audible from the back of the classroom. She suddenly calls for Tegoshi Yuya.
He looks up, and there is suddenly an interesting shade of color on his face. Sensei smiles, waits for his student to come.
They do it in the clinic again, doors locked, windows shielded with curtains. All they need is a bed, and a little more time.
“Pi-” Yuya (doesn’t call him Sensei anymore) cries over pace, biting his lower lips until they turn red from bleeding. But he’s willing, any way or another-and so it happens more than often every lunch period.
One day he stops coming, Sensei. Yuya is worried, and for every day he fails to come pick him up, the urges refuse to give up more and more. There are suddenly harbored feelings.
“I’m getting married, Yuya,” he finally told him, “In a few days.” To his childhood friend; to a good and deserving young lady; to someone who just comes back from a country far away, to where Yuya stands.
Harbored feelings.
“But I’ll still be here, I promise,” he holds his cold hands, ruffles his hair. “Anytime you need me.”
Yuya stifles missing emotions and grabs his hand tighter. “Congratulations, Sensei.”
Lunch period: Yuya is not touching his lunch again. He hasn’t been, for weeks now, because he hasn’t been going to school lately. They all wonder. Sensei wonders. Yuya wonders. No one knows.
18. Wrist
KoyaShige for
lady_akira
Scented candles, moonlit bathroom, a tub filled with clear water and petals. Shige can relax, he tells himself, back rested on the corner of the tub, his neck craned back and he takes a deep breath. Shige thinks he can safely, promisingly take care of himself from now on, have no one like Koyama back him up in any situation given, since Koyama himself is never coming back to him. Ever.
The truth is he loves him. Shige loves Koyama. A present tense sentence, because even after he has left, it’s still there, this vibrant admiration which he still chooses to keep hidden from the presence of the other. Right now, he wants resilience; to be a solid rock. He is no longer within reach, and it’s a fact. He needs to bend a little, and so he does, uses a pocket knife to slowly cut the tiny veins beneath the skin below his palm.
19. Someone to Lean Back On
RyoPi for
ajmxii
They drive as close to a junkyard, somewhere dark and scary because Ryo is in the mood to scare the wits out of Pi. He obviously isn’t amused, not by one bit, but he’s mistaken-with every little aspect of Ryo’s conscious mind-when Ryo starts undressing him. His shirt is first to go, then comes his belt. Ryo tackles him down, and it’s complicated, shift stick in the way, windows on every side of the vehicle, and it’s Ryo pinning Pi down, wrists above his head.
“What are you doing.” Pi isn’t joking, but Ryo is laughing.
“I want to kiss you.”
“Get off, Ryo.”
And Ryo kisses him. Pi shoves him away, manages a hand from his mindful grip and swings hard. Ryo starts bleeding. Something dark and thick starts spilling at the side of his mouth. Not a second thought or glance, Pi struggles free under him and grabs for the door. Stubborn as it may seem, it’s locked, and the stupid mechanism won’t allow him. For a moment, he notices something, notices Ryo’s immobility. He’s not trying to stop him.
“You’re not going to stop me?”
They stare for a moment, longer, a minute. “Ryo, you know we’ve been best frie-”
“Just go if you want.”
Pi leaves. He knows Ryo is pained, but he doesn’t want to do it. He can’t. It’s Ryo. He can’t, not with him.
20. Kiss
ShigeTego for
antanya
Shige is nervous sitting beside him. He is not sure if he even wants to eat at a time like this: house movie and homemade popcorn on the sofa. He keeps looking at him, at Tegoshi, and it’s an agony he has prolonged for too long: elbows and knees brushing, touching hands during idle trips to the popcorn bowl and suspense through the film. He’s suddenly hot under the collar, slowly tries to look at him again without him noticing.
Tegoshi notices.
Shige stumbles a stare and looks back at the screen.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Shige stammers. “I’m fine.” There is a moment of silence, and there finally comes the realization that it’s a hopeless excuse for a date in the evening.
They kiss in a minute, in the dark, the television closed, the windows opened. There is no sound besides the shifting and stirring, because the kiss is breathless, soundless and still. He looks at Tegoshi again, and for the first time, maybe, he’s in love.
21. Sky
TegoPi for
anjenette
“You should go see her.” It’s something Ryo decides for Pi, like he always does. “You should, Pi.”
She has leukemia. It’s because of that, and the letters. So many letters he’s received, and that final note in pink stationery: I’m dying, Yamapi. I can’t make it. I won’t live long enough to see you in concerts anymore, ah.
He doesn’t know why there are tears blurring his vision of the road, something turning and tossing inside his stomach. He’s fluttering. Fluttering. He’s nervous.
Pi gets off the bus and stares at the white building, a small hospital, a large clinic, or something like that. He’s looking for a girl named Yuya, tells exactly that to the caretaker in the office.
He doesn’t know if he should be confused, or mad, or happy. It’s just anxiety all over when he sees a boy in the garden, a lone yellow flower in his hands while he’s looking up at clear blue vastness. He’s getting it again, something tossing and turning inside his stomach, and he’s fluttering. Fluttering.
“Yuya,” he comes closer, clears his throat a little. He turns to him, eyes wide and mouth gaping. He thinks for a moment, then closes it. “Yamapi.”
Pi looks around, comes closer. He can tell Yuya is embarrassed. “So, leukemia?”
Yuya stutters, but tells him it’s the truth. Yes, leukemia, he’s a boy, and he’s in love. “With Yamapi.”
Pi sighs, looks at him intently. “But you’re pretty, ne,” and makes Yuya smile with a kiss.
22. A Place to Sleep
RyoTego
He has his nightmares again tonight, something like a habit accidentally kept, decides to call Ryo because living alone in a unit is something he should not have done in the first place. He calls his unit. Which is just two floors above his own. Tegoshi asks him if he can come up, because he has every right to, given this right sates that he’s a twenty-one-year-old kid who lives alone deserves some company for just one night in his time of need. To Ryo, it proves him invalidity, but he lets Tegoshi in his unit anyway, lends him a pillow and a blanket, and lets him sleep on the sofa bed right beside his bedroom.
Of course, there is the absence of the comfort of his home, so Tegoshi can’ sleep; also something out of the habit. It’s the same excuse when Ryo finds him cuddles up right next to him on his bed the very next morning.
23. White Lies
RyoPi for
quinnsan
Yamapi is too confused. He doesn’t know what the fuck Ryo is telling him. Calling him four in the morning, meeting up an hour later in the usual café and they order coffee. Yamapi yawns, listens to all the jibber he hears coming from Ryo, someone who shouldn’t be saying things like, “I haven’t found anything to make me really happy besides the times we go out to eat and drink when we’re not working, ah,” or “I might as well be just as miserable to think that someone is thinking of me right now when I am lying down on my bed.” It’s too dysfunctional of Ryo.
“It might be a bother to you but,” he stops mid-sentence, and Yamapi yawns again.
“but I like you.”
Yamapi’s yawn is ruined, and it’s suddenly eating up half of him inside his lungs. He looks at Ryo for awhile, his meaningful eyes, a hopeful look into his blank, careless stare.
“Will you allow me to like you?” Ryo asks, because he’s polite that early morning with coffee on the table between them, makes a hesitating gesture to reach for Yamapi’s hand, but he shifts them somewhere else, on his lap.
“No,” he says profusely, voicelessly. “It’s better, I think, if you didn’t like me from the start, Ryo-chan.”
24. Barefoot
KoyaShige for
jackie_82001
Shige wriggles out of his wet sweater and heads for the bathroom. “You need anything?” he asks, taking Koyama’s drenched shirt. “A towel would be good,” he says, tries to restrain himself from sitting on his couch because his pants are just as soaked. Shige comes back with dry towels, one over his shoulders and the other for Koya-
He stops midway across the damp carpet floor, sees the familiar small of Koyama’s back. He’s standing across the window, watching raindrops on the pane race with one another. He can see it, silhouette curve of his sides ghosting him. It makes Koyama shiver and a little stunned when he feels Shige’s hand on the bottom bumps of his spine, turns around to meet eyes with him.
“Your towel,” Shige says, wraps the towel around his shoulder, eyes still on his face. Koyama is the exact same reflection, cool skin on the side of Shige’s shoulders.
He pulls him in with the towel, Koyama to Shige, and they kiss, slow at first, but a pace picks up, and arms are entangled everywhere, Koyama’s legs around Shige’s hips. They guide themselves through the hallway, and into the bedroom, start tugging on pants and belts.
25. Beautiful Thing
TegoPi
They go out for fun because it’s a free day, and it’s not everyday that this ever happens. Yamapi pays for both their meals, and it makes Tegoshi the least bit embarrassed, the spoiled little brat. But Yamapi doesn’t mind; he likes it this way, being able to take care of his kouhais, Tegoshi being one of them.
He has never come to notice it really, if Tegoshi could be his favorite kouhai. He’s a young man with a child’s mind, doesn’t think too much of work as work, but as a playground and singing contest for fun. He’s amiable like that, and Yamapi is mysteriously allured by it.
They get back to Yamapi’s apartment with a number of paper bags and boxes, try to help themselves into the bedroom to put all their things down and hopefully end up laughing.
Tegoshi starts trying things out, those clothes Yamapi chose for him, bought for him. Jeans are all he wears first, and Yamapi stares. “They bunch up at your feet, ah. It’s also a little loose,” and he sees the waistband of Tegoshi’s boxers.
Yamapi thinks he’s just found out what it really is, what Tegoshi really is, how kouhai isn’t enough to call him so. He walks to him, pulls his jeans higher and kisses him there like that.
26. Darkness
TegoPi for
nami_go
When the lights go out, Yamapi kisses Tegoshi. During the concert. In front of thousands and thousands of blind eyes. When the lights go back on, Tegoshi smiles at him and walks towards backstage. Nothing has happened, nothing happens, nothing will happen.
The next time Yamapi kisses him again, they’re in his apartment. He invites Tegoshi in-who, luckily, did not harbor any misunderstood feelings about what previously happened-and they’re having a casual conversation over coffee. He kisses him once, and he smiles at him, but starts talking about Shige and Koyama. Again after a minute, and he continues on with the same topic.
One day they go out, just the two of them. To the amusement park. Yamapi kisses him again inside the haunted house, and follows the question, “Why don’t you react whenever I kiss you?”
It’s stupid, he thinks, when Tegoshi thinks he’s just joking around, and doesn’t want to think that Yamapi is actually falling for someone like Tegoshi because he himself isn’t a fool for falling for him.
Yamapi blinks for a moment, gets the same smile from Tegoshi.
It’s dark in the haunted house. Yamapi finds a way to kiss Tegoshi again, meaningfully this time.
27. Blurry Eyes
RyoPi for
reuslurid
Ryo watches his brilliance under the sun, baking like softening wax, but he does not melt; and the weight of this brilliance is blinding him. This is where love at nth sight dies.
Ryo caresses his face, whispers his name, Yamapi, in his ear and he can still hear him clearly, the words spoken through and out the lips of a lover. Ryo touches his face, softly and gently like he’s fragile and easily grazed, kisses those heart-shaped lips of his, and they kiss him back. He notices how Yamapi simply stares into one line, like there is nothing else to see but Ryo, and only Ryo. The kiss is enticingly beautiful, the most feeling he’s remembered, and suddenly, Yamapi speaks.
“I love you.” It’s penetrating, an unknown depth somewhere far from reachable,
but what he sees is deception: a dark hole, and he cannot see Ryo.
28. Rainy Night
RyoPi for
ajmxii
And so it’s another epic cliché-if there is such a thing in this redundant world. Ryo has done something to upset Yamapi, he doesn’t show up for anything anymore, stops going to his house. It’s desperation now, when Ryo runs out of the studio and it’s raining hard outside, skids from too much speed but then holds onto a faithful lamppost nearby. Yamapi’s house is an hour and half away by foot, but he’s willing. His lungs are burning, his throat runs dry.
“Pi.” It’s all impulse. Ryo doesn’t know what he wants to say, but he’s already there at the door, the man adjacent to him looking back with nothing to read on his face.
“What are you doing here?” the leader expected him to be at work, trying to do his best. Ryo asks the same question. Yamapi has nothing to say. “Ryo.”
He slides his hands on either side of his jaws.
Yamapi looks at him. “Ryo?”
He pushes him against the door. Cool skin on warm. Wet on dry. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
Ryo pushes their mouths together and the kiss is fleeting, quiet, slow. Something cliché, just like how this is all going, but it gives them both the same feeling, butterflies and Goosebumps.
Yamapi pushes him off gently, hands on Ryo’s shoulders.
“We should have done that in the rain, what you think?” he laughs.
29. Countdown
RyoShige for
ryoshige_otp
They both think it’s nothing, but they’re fighting again. This time it’s a fist fight, and Ryo is winning with scraped knees, a split lip and a broken nose. His one hand is on Shige’s collar, a tight grip until he can no longer breathe-because Shige is fragile like that-and the other flailing into his face again and again, and again, and again. He’s bleeding; they both are, and so go the words hate, despise, loathe, fuck, leave.
Oh.
So who was leaving?
It’s an old suitcase, dusty and worn, but amiably in a good shape. Ryo goes for the bathroom first, washes off the blood on his face, on his shirt-damn, those are going to be hard to wash-and caked on the dips of his knuckles.
“I can’t do this anymore.” Shige finally says with a broken look on his face, behind the bruises on his cheeks and his left eye. He leaves Ryo that very evening, the door slamming right at his face, and it’s the epiphany of held back tears and feelings. Ryo doesn’t stop, until that one day he sees his number on his cellphone, suddenly decides to give him a call.
30. Eternity
RyoPi for
lady_akira
There is a gun, two men, and a single scene where five mean minutes take action for an eternity. The first man is called Ryo; the second, Yamapi. “Pi,” Ryo calls him (for the lack of a better nickname), one last time, and holds the first mentioned item in his hands, trigger towards the head of the latter.
“What do you want,” Yamapi asks not a question, but expects an answer for such morbid action. He looks at him; macro photogenic beyond the gun pressed to his forehead, smiles a little, and then laughs. He realizes he’s not getting an answer.
He already knows.
“I loved you, you know.” Ryo tells him, a little too proudly, and Yamapi just laughs, pretends to ignore what he says. “You know you’re just going to drop that gun and kiss me.”
And so Ryo pulls the trigger.
He takes a minute to look at rapture, and then kills the rest.
Five minutes. Here lies eternity.
author:
chartre
rating: pg to r
words: 6007
pairing: koyapi, koyashige, ryoshige, ryopi, ryotego, shigetego, tegomass, tegopi
summary: and so love falls.
notes: fictional. au. thirty words. thirty drabbles. thirty angst and vague moments wherein i prove myself as an over-thinker. i apologize for the super!delay last week; it seemed i was not able to finish all thirty as promised (i lacked at least five more last week). but here they are; enjoy. :) refer to this list for the requests. ctrl+f is your friend! yes, i will make another request post, soon. ♥
1. The Two of Us
RyoShige for
ryoshige_otp
Shige mistakes love for loathing when Ryo tries to appeal to him, kisses him briefly until he realizes what’s happening. Shige makes his attempt to hit him right across his cheek, make it swell, but Ryo stops him with a grip on his wrist, tight and unforgiving.
He, Shige, thinks of lavenders and mint, and baby powder when they kiss; it’s either that, or he smells Ryo’s soap, his hair, tastes his toothpaste. Shige still elbows him off, but he’s restraining from that. He doesn’t want it, but wants it; he doesn’t feel it, but it feels.
The point comes when kissing with a dry throat against the wall and arms above his head becomes too pretentious, and Ryo pulls off for a moment. He has the nerve to ask him how it feels. “It. It feels,” but Shige remembers to slap him hard, sees the perfect opportunity to, but kisses him again anyway because he both loathes and loves Ryo.
Now he knows love is made of random kisses and the unpredictable mixture of loathing and feel.
2. The Longing Back Then
RyoTego for
teshi_kun
Ryo thinks it’s easy to love someone like Tegoshi; easy on the lips, easy on the hold, easy on the bed. And having to go without him is easy as well, when easy meant asking himself every night the same question that runs like a song in mind: why did I have to fall in love with you.
He thinks he hasn’t broken any hearts at all, even those before him, before his inability to tell straightforward feelings-and eventually became the cause of wasted two months. He dreams sometimes, opening the door early morning to see Tegoshi sitting there, thinking of what he wants to say to him, but no. He’s just proud, Ryo, and he can’t admit the fact that he has, indeed, broken too many hearts too many times, and shattered Tegoshi’s, especially fragile one. He blames love because he doesn’t know what the hell it is.
So why is he standing at his doorstep with flowers and with what he thinks to be is a dysfunctional mind?
3. Scars
TegoPi for
huey_tsai
They’re on his face, running like fresh blood on the walls of a murder scene. Masuda tries to help him get rid off them with his handkerchief, but they just come back, reappearing when they’ve been ridden.
Tegoshi is in black, holds in his arms the picture of a memory that once began years back, and it’s in black and white, the portrait of this leader.
He dies on a Wednesday; an overdose, because his doctor tells him to double his medication. He couldn’t cope with the heavy schedule, nor with the meds he had to take, and now he’s coping with the end.
“Condolence,” say those who pass them by, place their hands on Tegoshi’s shoulder. Condolence, because it is unfair to let someone like Yamashita go like this, go in the depth of sleep and ghost away before those he loves. Condolence, because Tegoshi is hurting in every way, everyone is just trying to stop him from his suicidal dreams.
Condolence, because Yamashita was Tegoshi’s, and Tegoshi was Yamashita’s.
He still is.
And forever will be.
4. Unreachable Back
KoyaPi for
anjenette
They all shift into position, Shige bumping shoulders with Tegoshi, bumping elbows with Ryo, stepping on Massu’s foot. Neither Koyama nor Pi seems to have problems with positions, standing side by side on stage, holding hands like everyone else. Pi shouts out to the crowd into the headphone microphone, and they go wild. Koyama smiles big, but something happens.
It’s something cliché, like love stories in children’s books: they’re standing on the edge of the stage, but as if he’s never done it-which he hasn’t, in fact-Koyama skids, loses Pi’s and Shige’s grips, does something spectacular for the crowd. They scream, thinking he’s died, thinking Keii-chan fell! This is going to be in the news!
He’s a few words mistaken, when he realizes the fact that he’s holding onto someone bigger than he is (his small frame and all), arms around the shoulders of another, cold sweat and humidity all over, and hands on his small waist. Everyone’s shouting. There’s something going on between two boys on stage.
Koyama later on thanks Pi, but it’s all the conversation he makes with him. Shige approaches, asks him how he is, but he’s not listening. Koyama watches Pi from afar, thinks a little about what everyone thinks about what has happened. Suddenly it’s something between cliché and epic, next to diversity. He watches Pi get ready for his solo, smiles over there, and not here.
5. Promise
RyoPi
They decide to meet on the park bench, the one that faces the west where you can see the sun set in the late afternoon. It’s a familiar scene from old motion picture times, little boys with short pants holding up paper windmills on their bikes with training wheels, riding the wind as fast as they can. They did not have those when they were kids; instead had kites and rubber balls. It’s the same wind that blows his short black hair today from years ago, but there are no kites, no rubber balls, no best-friend-for-life beside him.
He holds into it, counts it for something in his long years of waiting. For years he’s wished for something profound, and for years-
“Sorry I’m late,” Pi tells him, catches his breath, “delayed flight,” and he kisses Ryo.
And for years is he still waiting for his return.
There are no kites, no rubber balls, no best-friend-for-life, no lover.
6. Cold Chain
RyoShige for
lady_akira
He remembers Nishikido from high school: a shorter senior, president of the archery club, student council representative during his freshmen days. He’s never talked to his senpai, however, just formal greetings in the hallway with lost glances, escaped looks and rushed awkward gestures, like that one time on his birthday he mysteriously received a phone strap from an anonymous. His mind set too much on the sender that he bumps into Nishikido-senpai aimlessly.
Today, he sees him again, four years later. He bumps into him-again, still literally-and there are again those nostalgic moments on the hallway. He’s never spoken to his senpai-until today.
He greets him and introduces himself as Shigeaki from high school. He’s surprised Nishikido knows him, and they share a subtle moment.
Nishikido says he wants to hang out today, looks at the strap of his cellphone.
“Don’t you have to meet up with your girlfriend?” he asks just because.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Nishikido laughs, waits for his much awaited answer.
He stares at Nishikido for a moment, notices how he’s grown taller over some years.
7. Memory
RyoShige for
sylviaunited
There are pictures of him and Ryo, mostly purikura because they are the type to go out on dates often. Ryo would call him on the spot, say, “Let’s go out, Kato-kun.” Shige would smile and meet up wit him at once.
He often plays the feminine role, Shige, but it’s all just a basis of casualty and mannerism, how things fall into place. Ryo often holds his bag for him if he brings anything; Ryo often waits for him because Ryo is always first; Ryo holds the door open for him; Ryo pays for their dinner. But Shige doesn’t mind, because it’s Ryo he’s with.
(But, of course, things change in time. Shige changes in time.)
After dinner, they go and take purikura: casual shots, funny shots, random shots, intimate shots. Intimate like kissing in front of the tiny camera; intimate like going home to Ryo’s and fucking in the living room.
These are his old memories; Shige’s. He’s returning them in dusty brown boxes with a note that reads, “I can’t do this anymore. Sorry. Kato”, darkened double-strikethroughs on the word love before his signed name.
8. Unfulfilled Heart
TegoMass for
bamboobranch
It has happened again: Tegoshi bringing an unwanted aura in the house, and he starts crying when he sits down on the sofa beside Massu. He, Massu, squeezes a hand across shoulders, tells him it’s okay; Nishikido-kun is an asshole for not knowing. Tegoshi is not satisfied because he never is, because he’s hard to please and very spoiled. He wants to do it tonight, because he’s in a bad mood, kisses Massu without hesitation and a few renegade tears.
A million things make out in Massu’s head, pictures, ideas, words, when Tegoshi slides his foot across his calf, the skin behind his knee. He thinks he can cope with so much of this, sex in the evenings regardless the emotions and missing feelings. He thinks he can just say it, I love you Tegoshi, I love you, I love you. I love you.
“Nishikido-kun-” Tegoshi mutters in between, and he’s blistering… they both are, but it’s completely different. Tegoshi thinks he’s getting his fill, Massu isn’t.
He thinks he can just say it, I love you Tegoshi, I love you, I love you. I love you. But these words deem no existent feelings anymore. There is no fill, no meaning.
9. Hourglass
ShigeTego
He doesn’t know where to go, doesn’t know what else to do besides watch a friend go. It bothers him, how this is already the fourth time-and still counting-he’s confessing to Shigeaki Kato, and still he leaves him trailing behind him. The minute he turns his back, tears begin to fall, and it disappoints him how no one can see them because it’s dark, it’s cloudy, and the foliage around the city is just about murky.
“Tego,” there is a voice in his head that tells him to let go. The voice on his chest tells him otherwise. It’s a maze, and time is running out.
“Tego,” he doesn’t know how long he has to keep up, but the determination is there, only dying, dying, dying. He’s a debate between his two selves, a choice beaten by the other but there is no sure win. He’s still walking away. His heart continues to hesitate.
“Tego.” He wants to love.
Then it starts to rain. Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter. “Tego, it’s over.”
Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.
10. Not Knowing
KoyaShige for
reuslurid
Koyama lies on the small of his back, holds tight around Shige’s neck, fervent kisses in between hollowed gasps and shattered moans. Shige unbuckles the belt of Koyama’s pants, gets his hands on the zipper through the mesh. He keeps his knees on either side of his hips, kisses him again, harder this time, fingers through his bleached hair, and they roll a bit on the bed, onto the floor. There is a loud thud, but they’re still kissing, kissing with tongue and teeth. Shige mouths Koyama’s lower lip, bites and pulls a little. The latter finds the hem of his shirt and searches the soft skin there, digs deep in between the shoulder blades with his fingernails, lets a needy moan escape him.
“Shige,” he hums his name softly in his eat, the bucking of hips against the hard line between his legs and he mutters again, “Shige…”
Shige makes an unintelligible sound at the back of his throat.
“Pi-Pi’s calling,” Koyama tells him. “Pi’s calling.”
At the corner of his eyes, he sees Koyama’s cellphone in beeping lights, hears his ringtone. “Pi’s calling,” he tells him again.
Shige pretends and lies. He doesn’t see anything. “It’s nothing,” he whispers, breathes on his neck and it makes Koyama shiver.
11. Bitter Cry
RyoTego for
nami_go
There is an entity beneath the covers of his bed; a rise and fall somewhere where the light from the window reflects, hollows out the sleeping form. Ryo checks him for the fourth time that evening, makes sure he doesn’t catch the same flu for the third day.
Tegoshi coughs in his sleep, dryness in his throat. Ryo hurries in quietly, makes sure he doesn’t wake him up. A touch of his forehead is all he needs, and a mental note for the next morning.
“I have to go,” his eyes are still a little red and swollen, and he wears a pale face. Ryo’s standing across him with a coffee mug in hand. He doesn’t know how he’s managed to get up at this rate, a fever with cough and colds, he looks as if he’s dying, and it pains Ryo to see him like this.
“Do you-” he bites his lips, grips tighter onto the mug handle. “Do you really have to go?”
Tegoshi throws him the same look. Ryo knows it’s something else, but the lines under his eyes avert his expressions. “Do you want me to stay?”
Ryo bites his lips harder.
12. Goodbye
KoyaShige for
haruka21
“I don’t want to see you go,” Koyama holds him close to his face, foreheads and noses pressed while he caresses him on either side of his jaws. Shige’s hands search the hitch of Koyama’s hips, rubs some and pulls him against his own, and he looks straight into him, brown eyes and a few straying hairs covering his vision. He kisses him, briefly, slowly, meaningfully. “Promise me,” Koyama says.
The next morning, he searches for a place to rest his head, but a pillow serves him no purpose. Koyama is looking for Shige, but he is no longer there on the sheets, and all he can feel is the vast wide space that stretches through and through. He wants it to stop growing, the immeasurable gap beside him. There is too much torment, too much vexation that it makes him throw a fitful tantrum, why the fuck is he gone.
But Shige keeps his promise: he doesn’t let Koyama see him go.
13. Hand in Hand
KoyaShige
Shige thinks he can make Koyama kiss him, meet him halfway when they have their random urges. It’s difficult for him because he thinks too much, considers too many things at the same time, those that are most especially difficult to imagine, what more, see happening in real life. But Shige is persistent like that, studying the law, hoping to fulfill all his ideologies because he thinks those are important.
Koyama is in one of those ideologies-or in most of them. It’s easier said than done, and he knows that.
One day it starts to hurt him inside, Shige, growing emotions every day and every night.
“Are you okay?” everyone in the group starts asking, and he thinks-again-that there are too many questions. He turns around to everyone who asks at the same time. He sees Koyama ask the same question, and the first thing that comes into mind is that he wants to kiss him. Completely on impulse, he tries, but something happens first.
He wakes up on Koyama’s lap, one hand intertwined with his. He looks up, sees Koyama with a relieved smile. He’s finally awake, and he’s thankful. “You study too hard, Shige-kun. You shouldn’t think too much.”
14. Beloved
RyoTego for
teshi_kun
It’s a longing kiss; wet, slow, quiet. A little more and they count it for passionate, sloppy, short kisses, hurried movements with something magical and wily in between.
Ryo pulls his hair back, slips his tongue into his mouth. Tegoshi kisses him back, plays a little and makes a mess out of him. It’s going to be his first time, when Ryo pushes his shirt up over his head. He breathes in deep, plunges into kisses and breathy gestures, face flushed and eyelids heavy with heat. Ryo squeezes against the bed with his equal weight, rubs his hips and two things happen.
Two things: Ryo breathes down his neck, lips and teeth on hot, smooth skin. Tegoshi stifles a short quiet moan, and feels something deepen beneath his skin. It’s white hot, and burns like cold ice. He mutters his name unintelligibly because he’s weak against him now; hot for him now, grip softened and voice slurry.
Two things: Ryo slowly hovers over him slowly, noses his cheek, the side of his marked lips. He looks at him one last time and pulls the knife plunged into the side of his beloved.
15. The Courage to Shake that Hand Off
TegoMass for
bamboobranch
Tegoshi hates it, hates her, hates him, hates everyone. He’s a son of a gun, but towards no aspect literally, because he comes from a family hard on goods and cash. He’s just like that, they all say, he’s having a phase. It’s no doubt though, when they all agree to tell that he only trusts one entity in the whole world and that is no one other than Masuda: longtime classmate, childhood friend, lover. Maybe if others thought too much, that last bit might as well be applicable, but not for generality. He’s steel and cold fire to everyone else, but a warm bonfire to Masuda. He’s his everything in the God-damned world, every single entity he’ll ever need to live in the whole forsaken lie.
But comes a time when Masuda is gone. He leaves. He migrates. He dies. He changes. He is gone.
Tegoshi cries; he’s at his weakest, and everyone is afraid. Tegoshi hates it, hates her, hates him, hates everyone. He’s a son of a gun, but towards no aspect literally. He just has no one. He hates himself. He wants to get off. He wants. He wants.
“I can’t find Massu. Help me, please.”
He wants.
16. Lullaby
RyoTego
Ryo’s a tempest on nights like this, doesn’t want to talk or be bothered when he comes home from work because he’s tired. Tegoshi compels him to eat the dinner’s he’s made for him: sukiyaki, all the good eats he put in just for him. But he shoves Tegoshi aside, and it’s another fight at home.
Ryo makes his excuses.
Tegoshi retorts.
Ryo yells.
Tegoshi cries, but there is no mercy. No, not until he tells Ryo he will still love him even if a son of a bitch is what he is to him, and Ryo makes the effort to tilt his chin up, kiss him on his lips slowly, quietly, run his fingers through his hair to his jaw and massages, prod his mouth open.
Tegoshi makes this breathy sound, a moan, a hum at the back of his throat and tilts his head heavy. They untangle for a while, faces flushed and heavy eyelids, and there is no longer a tempest.
And it repeats again,
and again,
and
again.
17. Not There
TegoPi for
lullabelle21
Lunch period: Sensei peeks in the corner of the classroom, tries to spot Yuya. He’s at the back of the room near the window on the left, and he’s not touching his lunch again. Sensei calls for the female teacher, says something barely audible from the back of the classroom. She suddenly calls for Tegoshi Yuya.
He looks up, and there is suddenly an interesting shade of color on his face. Sensei smiles, waits for his student to come.
They do it in the clinic again, doors locked, windows shielded with curtains. All they need is a bed, and a little more time.
“Pi-” Yuya (doesn’t call him Sensei anymore) cries over pace, biting his lower lips until they turn red from bleeding. But he’s willing, any way or another-and so it happens more than often every lunch period.
One day he stops coming, Sensei. Yuya is worried, and for every day he fails to come pick him up, the urges refuse to give up more and more. There are suddenly harbored feelings.
“I’m getting married, Yuya,” he finally told him, “In a few days.” To his childhood friend; to a good and deserving young lady; to someone who just comes back from a country far away, to where Yuya stands.
Harbored feelings.
“But I’ll still be here, I promise,” he holds his cold hands, ruffles his hair. “Anytime you need me.”
Yuya stifles missing emotions and grabs his hand tighter. “Congratulations, Sensei.”
Lunch period: Yuya is not touching his lunch again. He hasn’t been, for weeks now, because he hasn’t been going to school lately. They all wonder. Sensei wonders. Yuya wonders. No one knows.
18. Wrist
KoyaShige for
lady_akira
Scented candles, moonlit bathroom, a tub filled with clear water and petals. Shige can relax, he tells himself, back rested on the corner of the tub, his neck craned back and he takes a deep breath. Shige thinks he can safely, promisingly take care of himself from now on, have no one like Koyama back him up in any situation given, since Koyama himself is never coming back to him. Ever.
The truth is he loves him. Shige loves Koyama. A present tense sentence, because even after he has left, it’s still there, this vibrant admiration which he still chooses to keep hidden from the presence of the other. Right now, he wants resilience; to be a solid rock. He is no longer within reach, and it’s a fact. He needs to bend a little, and so he does, uses a pocket knife to slowly cut the tiny veins beneath the skin below his palm.
19. Someone to Lean Back On
RyoPi for
ajmxii
They drive as close to a junkyard, somewhere dark and scary because Ryo is in the mood to scare the wits out of Pi. He obviously isn’t amused, not by one bit, but he’s mistaken-with every little aspect of Ryo’s conscious mind-when Ryo starts undressing him. His shirt is first to go, then comes his belt. Ryo tackles him down, and it’s complicated, shift stick in the way, windows on every side of the vehicle, and it’s Ryo pinning Pi down, wrists above his head.
“What are you doing.” Pi isn’t joking, but Ryo is laughing.
“I want to kiss you.”
“Get off, Ryo.”
And Ryo kisses him. Pi shoves him away, manages a hand from his mindful grip and swings hard. Ryo starts bleeding. Something dark and thick starts spilling at the side of his mouth. Not a second thought or glance, Pi struggles free under him and grabs for the door. Stubborn as it may seem, it’s locked, and the stupid mechanism won’t allow him. For a moment, he notices something, notices Ryo’s immobility. He’s not trying to stop him.
“You’re not going to stop me?”
They stare for a moment, longer, a minute. “Ryo, you know we’ve been best frie-”
“Just go if you want.”
Pi leaves. He knows Ryo is pained, but he doesn’t want to do it. He can’t. It’s Ryo. He can’t, not with him.
20. Kiss
ShigeTego for
antanya
Shige is nervous sitting beside him. He is not sure if he even wants to eat at a time like this: house movie and homemade popcorn on the sofa. He keeps looking at him, at Tegoshi, and it’s an agony he has prolonged for too long: elbows and knees brushing, touching hands during idle trips to the popcorn bowl and suspense through the film. He’s suddenly hot under the collar, slowly tries to look at him again without him noticing.
Tegoshi notices.
Shige stumbles a stare and looks back at the screen.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Shige stammers. “I’m fine.” There is a moment of silence, and there finally comes the realization that it’s a hopeless excuse for a date in the evening.
They kiss in a minute, in the dark, the television closed, the windows opened. There is no sound besides the shifting and stirring, because the kiss is breathless, soundless and still. He looks at Tegoshi again, and for the first time, maybe, he’s in love.
21. Sky
TegoPi for
anjenette
“You should go see her.” It’s something Ryo decides for Pi, like he always does. “You should, Pi.”
She has leukemia. It’s because of that, and the letters. So many letters he’s received, and that final note in pink stationery: I’m dying, Yamapi. I can’t make it. I won’t live long enough to see you in concerts anymore, ah.
He doesn’t know why there are tears blurring his vision of the road, something turning and tossing inside his stomach. He’s fluttering. Fluttering. He’s nervous.
Pi gets off the bus and stares at the white building, a small hospital, a large clinic, or something like that. He’s looking for a girl named Yuya, tells exactly that to the caretaker in the office.
He doesn’t know if he should be confused, or mad, or happy. It’s just anxiety all over when he sees a boy in the garden, a lone yellow flower in his hands while he’s looking up at clear blue vastness. He’s getting it again, something tossing and turning inside his stomach, and he’s fluttering. Fluttering.
“Yuya,” he comes closer, clears his throat a little. He turns to him, eyes wide and mouth gaping. He thinks for a moment, then closes it. “Yamapi.”
Pi looks around, comes closer. He can tell Yuya is embarrassed. “So, leukemia?”
Yuya stutters, but tells him it’s the truth. Yes, leukemia, he’s a boy, and he’s in love. “With Yamapi.”
Pi sighs, looks at him intently. “But you’re pretty, ne,” and makes Yuya smile with a kiss.
22. A Place to Sleep
RyoTego
He has his nightmares again tonight, something like a habit accidentally kept, decides to call Ryo because living alone in a unit is something he should not have done in the first place. He calls his unit. Which is just two floors above his own. Tegoshi asks him if he can come up, because he has every right to, given this right sates that he’s a twenty-one-year-old kid who lives alone deserves some company for just one night in his time of need. To Ryo, it proves him invalidity, but he lets Tegoshi in his unit anyway, lends him a pillow and a blanket, and lets him sleep on the sofa bed right beside his bedroom.
Of course, there is the absence of the comfort of his home, so Tegoshi can’ sleep; also something out of the habit. It’s the same excuse when Ryo finds him cuddles up right next to him on his bed the very next morning.
23. White Lies
RyoPi for
quinnsan
Yamapi is too confused. He doesn’t know what the fuck Ryo is telling him. Calling him four in the morning, meeting up an hour later in the usual café and they order coffee. Yamapi yawns, listens to all the jibber he hears coming from Ryo, someone who shouldn’t be saying things like, “I haven’t found anything to make me really happy besides the times we go out to eat and drink when we’re not working, ah,” or “I might as well be just as miserable to think that someone is thinking of me right now when I am lying down on my bed.” It’s too dysfunctional of Ryo.
“It might be a bother to you but,” he stops mid-sentence, and Yamapi yawns again.
“but I like you.”
Yamapi’s yawn is ruined, and it’s suddenly eating up half of him inside his lungs. He looks at Ryo for awhile, his meaningful eyes, a hopeful look into his blank, careless stare.
“Will you allow me to like you?” Ryo asks, because he’s polite that early morning with coffee on the table between them, makes a hesitating gesture to reach for Yamapi’s hand, but he shifts them somewhere else, on his lap.
“No,” he says profusely, voicelessly. “It’s better, I think, if you didn’t like me from the start, Ryo-chan.”
24. Barefoot
KoyaShige for
jackie_82001
Shige wriggles out of his wet sweater and heads for the bathroom. “You need anything?” he asks, taking Koyama’s drenched shirt. “A towel would be good,” he says, tries to restrain himself from sitting on his couch because his pants are just as soaked. Shige comes back with dry towels, one over his shoulders and the other for Koya-
He stops midway across the damp carpet floor, sees the familiar small of Koyama’s back. He’s standing across the window, watching raindrops on the pane race with one another. He can see it, silhouette curve of his sides ghosting him. It makes Koyama shiver and a little stunned when he feels Shige’s hand on the bottom bumps of his spine, turns around to meet eyes with him.
“Your towel,” Shige says, wraps the towel around his shoulder, eyes still on his face. Koyama is the exact same reflection, cool skin on the side of Shige’s shoulders.
He pulls him in with the towel, Koyama to Shige, and they kiss, slow at first, but a pace picks up, and arms are entangled everywhere, Koyama’s legs around Shige’s hips. They guide themselves through the hallway, and into the bedroom, start tugging on pants and belts.
25. Beautiful Thing
TegoPi
They go out for fun because it’s a free day, and it’s not everyday that this ever happens. Yamapi pays for both their meals, and it makes Tegoshi the least bit embarrassed, the spoiled little brat. But Yamapi doesn’t mind; he likes it this way, being able to take care of his kouhais, Tegoshi being one of them.
He has never come to notice it really, if Tegoshi could be his favorite kouhai. He’s a young man with a child’s mind, doesn’t think too much of work as work, but as a playground and singing contest for fun. He’s amiable like that, and Yamapi is mysteriously allured by it.
They get back to Yamapi’s apartment with a number of paper bags and boxes, try to help themselves into the bedroom to put all their things down and hopefully end up laughing.
Tegoshi starts trying things out, those clothes Yamapi chose for him, bought for him. Jeans are all he wears first, and Yamapi stares. “They bunch up at your feet, ah. It’s also a little loose,” and he sees the waistband of Tegoshi’s boxers.
Yamapi thinks he’s just found out what it really is, what Tegoshi really is, how kouhai isn’t enough to call him so. He walks to him, pulls his jeans higher and kisses him there like that.
26. Darkness
TegoPi for
nami_go
When the lights go out, Yamapi kisses Tegoshi. During the concert. In front of thousands and thousands of blind eyes. When the lights go back on, Tegoshi smiles at him and walks towards backstage. Nothing has happened, nothing happens, nothing will happen.
The next time Yamapi kisses him again, they’re in his apartment. He invites Tegoshi in-who, luckily, did not harbor any misunderstood feelings about what previously happened-and they’re having a casual conversation over coffee. He kisses him once, and he smiles at him, but starts talking about Shige and Koyama. Again after a minute, and he continues on with the same topic.
One day they go out, just the two of them. To the amusement park. Yamapi kisses him again inside the haunted house, and follows the question, “Why don’t you react whenever I kiss you?”
It’s stupid, he thinks, when Tegoshi thinks he’s just joking around, and doesn’t want to think that Yamapi is actually falling for someone like Tegoshi because he himself isn’t a fool for falling for him.
Yamapi blinks for a moment, gets the same smile from Tegoshi.
It’s dark in the haunted house. Yamapi finds a way to kiss Tegoshi again, meaningfully this time.
27. Blurry Eyes
RyoPi for
reuslurid
Ryo watches his brilliance under the sun, baking like softening wax, but he does not melt; and the weight of this brilliance is blinding him. This is where love at nth sight dies.
Ryo caresses his face, whispers his name, Yamapi, in his ear and he can still hear him clearly, the words spoken through and out the lips of a lover. Ryo touches his face, softly and gently like he’s fragile and easily grazed, kisses those heart-shaped lips of his, and they kiss him back. He notices how Yamapi simply stares into one line, like there is nothing else to see but Ryo, and only Ryo. The kiss is enticingly beautiful, the most feeling he’s remembered, and suddenly, Yamapi speaks.
“I love you.” It’s penetrating, an unknown depth somewhere far from reachable,
but what he sees is deception: a dark hole, and he cannot see Ryo.
28. Rainy Night
RyoPi for
ajmxii
And so it’s another epic cliché-if there is such a thing in this redundant world. Ryo has done something to upset Yamapi, he doesn’t show up for anything anymore, stops going to his house. It’s desperation now, when Ryo runs out of the studio and it’s raining hard outside, skids from too much speed but then holds onto a faithful lamppost nearby. Yamapi’s house is an hour and half away by foot, but he’s willing. His lungs are burning, his throat runs dry.
“Pi.” It’s all impulse. Ryo doesn’t know what he wants to say, but he’s already there at the door, the man adjacent to him looking back with nothing to read on his face.
“What are you doing here?” the leader expected him to be at work, trying to do his best. Ryo asks the same question. Yamapi has nothing to say. “Ryo.”
He slides his hands on either side of his jaws.
Yamapi looks at him. “Ryo?”
He pushes him against the door. Cool skin on warm. Wet on dry. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
Ryo pushes their mouths together and the kiss is fleeting, quiet, slow. Something cliché, just like how this is all going, but it gives them both the same feeling, butterflies and Goosebumps.
Yamapi pushes him off gently, hands on Ryo’s shoulders.
“We should have done that in the rain, what you think?” he laughs.
29. Countdown
RyoShige for
ryoshige_otp
They both think it’s nothing, but they’re fighting again. This time it’s a fist fight, and Ryo is winning with scraped knees, a split lip and a broken nose. His one hand is on Shige’s collar, a tight grip until he can no longer breathe-because Shige is fragile like that-and the other flailing into his face again and again, and again, and again. He’s bleeding; they both are, and so go the words hate, despise, loathe, fuck, leave.
Oh.
So who was leaving?
It’s an old suitcase, dusty and worn, but amiably in a good shape. Ryo goes for the bathroom first, washes off the blood on his face, on his shirt-damn, those are going to be hard to wash-and caked on the dips of his knuckles.
“I can’t do this anymore.” Shige finally says with a broken look on his face, behind the bruises on his cheeks and his left eye. He leaves Ryo that very evening, the door slamming right at his face, and it’s the epiphany of held back tears and feelings. Ryo doesn’t stop, until that one day he sees his number on his cellphone, suddenly decides to give him a call.
30. Eternity
RyoPi for
lady_akira
There is a gun, two men, and a single scene where five mean minutes take action for an eternity. The first man is called Ryo; the second, Yamapi. “Pi,” Ryo calls him (for the lack of a better nickname), one last time, and holds the first mentioned item in his hands, trigger towards the head of the latter.
“What do you want,” Yamapi asks not a question, but expects an answer for such morbid action. He looks at him; macro photogenic beyond the gun pressed to his forehead, smiles a little, and then laughs. He realizes he’s not getting an answer.
He already knows.
“I loved you, you know.” Ryo tells him, a little too proudly, and Yamapi just laughs, pretends to ignore what he says. “You know you’re just going to drop that gun and kiss me.”
And so Ryo pulls the trigger.
He takes a minute to look at rapture, and then kills the rest.
Five minutes. Here lies eternity.