The Meaning of Spontaneity; InuTezuFuji, PG, 3398 words, complete.
Tezuka’s in his first lecture of the day. It’s boring him already and he hasn’t even been sitting still for two minutes. The padded chair he’s in is probably only a few years old, but still old enough that so many students have sat in it as to give the blue colour an almost green tint and the fabric a worn, used kind of look.
Someone sits down in the seat next to Tezuka’s and he frowns to himself. There are more than enough seats in the hall that no one needs to take the one directly next to him and it’s unusual, since he’s noticed his classmates often avoid sitting right next to him anyway.
Tezuka finds a way to distract himself from the person next to him easily enough. He pulls out his notebook and places it on the flip-down desk in front of him, reaching into his bag to find his pen, when he blinks, suddenly realising the book isn’t his. It’s green and white like Inui’s but the name on the cover reads ‘Fuji’.
The person next to him leans over slowly, closer and closer until Tezuka clears his throat and frowns, looking up for the first time.
The lecturer is tapping on the microphone now, but Tezuka’s attention is elsewhere.
“I believe that’s mine,” Fuji smiles.
Tezuka shrinks back, almost losing his balance on the seat as he does so.
“What are you doing in here?”
Fuji laughs softly, opening his eyes and looking carefully at Tezuka. “You didn’t want to see me?”
Tezuka shakes his head slowly, almost always unnerved by the clearness of Fuji’s eyes. He imagines that Fuji sees through him and through his thoughts, and he tries to tell himself that he isn’t bothered by Fuji’s appearance when he knows his boyfriend should be three buildings away in a psychology or sociology lecture.
Fuji seems to understand Tezuka’s thoughts and simply reaches to Tezuka’s neck to adjust the collar of his shirt against his cardigan.
“Want to skip out with me?” he asks, but smiles and hangs on the edge of his seat as though he doesn’t expect anything but a stern ‘no’.
Tezuka shakes his head and frowns in response, uncomfortable with the way he can feel people looking at the two of them.
Fuji waits a minute longer as Tezuka holds his breath and the lecturer continues on with his monologue, eyes glancing over the students in rows in front of him.
“Okay, well…” he smiles, “If you think you’ll have more fun with that old guy than with me, that’s okay, but sometimes I think you could be a little more spontaneous.”
And with that, he plucks his notebook from Tezuka’s desk and gets up. He walks down to the end of the aisle and jogs up the steps to the exit of the lecture theatre, his favourite jeans hugging his hips and the cord on his phone hanging out of his back pocket.
Tezuka turns back to face the lecturer at the front of the hall, slouching down slightly in his seat. He crosses his legs and taps his pen against the desk, having nothing appropriate to write on now.
He considers writing notes in the back of one of his library books in pencil and erasing them later but in the end he settles for pulling out his voice recorder and turning it on. He’ll re-listen to the lecture later and write notes then.
***
Spontaneity is not something that Tezuka considers necessary.
He re-listens to his lecture at ten at night, right before he goes to bed. Sitting at his desk, he pauses and plays, pauses and plays the hour-long recording as he jots down dot points and tries to recall the diagrams on the board. He succeeds well enough, but he decides that from now on, he’ll keep a spare pad of paper in his bag, never to be removed except in case of need.
“Why didn’t you ask to borrow a piece of paper from someone else?” Inui asks on the phone.
Tezuka hadn’t thought of that. He considers it strange to talk to the other students in his university course and they’ve never really attempted talking to him either. It would probably be strange to ask them for something after having distanced himself so much since the beginning of the year, whether or not it was ever something he intentionally or accidentally did.
He’s a little envious of Fuji’s ability to attract people to him so easily, and of the large groups of friends Fuji seems to move around with. Even Inui attracts the odd, interested classmate, although Tezuka sometimes wonders if those classmates are a little less interested in Inui and more in the meticulous lecture notes he keeps.
***
Tezuka turns on his voice recorder as he lies flat on his back on his bed, his head on his pillow and his feet covered in a pair of white socks at the other end. If he curls his toes, he knows his feet just stick out over the edge of the bed; a reminder he’s grown more than a foot since he chose the bed out of a room full of beds in a furniture shop in the city.
“You should be more spontaneous,” he speaks into the recorder, feeling foolish for talking to himself in an otherwise empty house.
The phone is on the floor beside him, but he doesn’t want to call Fuji right now and he’s not in need of advice from Inui. He ends up getting it though, when Inui calls him to ask if he has the day free on Sunday and their conversation naturally turns to Fuji.
“Maybe he had something in mind,” Inui suggests, after Tezuka’s explained the event to him.
There’s a pause on Inui’s end of the telephone and Tezuka knows immediately that he’s probably spoken to Fuji since then and already has a hypothesis of sorts in his head. He won’t tell it to Tezuka, even as Tezuka asks him what he thinks of it all, but instead offers his own take on the matter.
“If I were in Fuji’s position,” he began.
“You wouldn’t be asking me to skip out on a lecture,” Tezuka interrupts, unimpressed.
“Yes, but say I did,” Inui ventures, clearing his throat and hesitating. “Would you…”
Tezuka can imagine the look on Inui’s face right now. He’s probably at his computer, one leg crossed over the other, his right ankle on top of his left knee as he jiggles his leg. He’s probably alternating between sitting forwards and leaning back, and probably closing his eyes every few minutes, tired out because he’s had lectures and classes all day since ten.
“Would I what?” Tezuka questions, turning his head to eye the clock, more than wary of the time passing.
That Tezuka knows what Inui’s doing right now and how he looks but does that mean Inui’s predictable? And is predictability bad? It’s not quite the opposite of spontaneity, but Tezuka recognises that the two are in some way connected. It’s possible Inui’s doing the same thing as he is right now, except that while Tezuka can imagine Inui in his head, he imagines Inui sees his actions in percentages and probabilities instead. Eighty-two percent chance that Tezuka’s on his bed and his text books are on his desk, Inui might say, if Tezuka were to ask.
“If I asked you to do something which clashed with something you’d already committed yourself to, what would you do?” Inui asks then.
Tezuka frowns. “What do you mean, ‘what would I do’? I’d probably do whatever I committed to first, unless the thing you asked me to do was more important.”
“And what if it wasn’t more important, in your eyes?” Inui asks.
Tezuka realises with a jolt he’s being tested. He’s not being asked this because Inui wants to know what he thinks of the event; Inui wants to know where he and Fuji lie in Tezuka’s list of priorities.
Tezuka hangs up the phone and drops it over the side of the bed.
Then he picks up his voice recorder again and realises he left it on for the duration of the conversation. He stops it, fast forwards through the file to reach the mark he probably started talking to Inui on the phone, and finds the spot.
He listens carefully, scrolling the volume dial up to the loudest possible volume, but all he can hear is his own end of the conversation and the fact that he doesn’t give Inui a definitive answer to the last question.
***
Do our childhood experiences give definitive shape to our social interactions as fully-developed adults? Use theories to support your argument, making sure to reference all sources.
The essay topic sits typed at the top of Fuji’s open document.
The cursor is two lines down as Fuji flicks absentmindedly through his textbook. He’s studying developmental psychology this semester and while Inui’s physics books are an alien language to him, Inui seems to have no problem deciphering the jargon in Fuji’s book as he reads over Fuji’s shoulder.
Fuji clears his throat and Inui moves away wordlessly, smiling to himself and writing in his notebook. Fuji’s come to Inui’s home to study in peace and quiet, not so that Inui can hover over him just as Yuuta’s friends had been doing half an hour before.
Fuji likes the fact that Yuuta’s now at home again. He’s back in the place Fuji wants him to be; where he should be. He shuffles through the house in the mornings in his track pants and shirt, and Fuji doesn’t mind waking up to the sound of someone complaining about there being nothing to eat in the kitchen at two AM, even though he thinks Yuuta has his priorities upside down at times.
Inui’s apartment is silent, and although it doesn’t quite have the spaciousness of Fuji’s home, nor does it have leather sofas which are as comfortable as the ones in his lounge room, it also doesn’t have Kisarazu Atsushi and his twin brother, and Yanagisawa Shinya.
“When’s it due?” Inui asks, returning from the kitchen and sitting opposite Fuji at the kitchen table.
“Friday,” Fuji answers, continuing to flick through his book. He’s looking for a particular theory he remembers reading about, but the problem with academic essays is that he’s not allowed to write much without having to stamp a name to it; a name other than his own. He can’t remember who came up with the theory he’s looking for, nor can he remember its official title, only that he briefly thought of Tezuka when he first came across it.
He thinks of Tezuka now and wonders if he should apologise for what he said on Monday morning. Knowing Tezuka, he probably won’t be able to let the statement go until he’s thought it over and lost sleep over it, but Fuji can’t quite bring himself to want to take his words back. They were true to an extent, but probably not to the extent that Tezuka might have believed.
***
Tezuka’s parents have well-worn routines. They’re predictable most of the time, and tend to avoid doing anything without telling Tezuka about it first, presumably so he has time to decide whether to nod his approval or voice his objection. His mother’s grown a little more leisurely during the past few years, but she still keeps herself busy meeting friends, going to work and going for outings with his father.
So it comes as a slight surprise when Tezuka gets home at four on Thursday afternoon and finds a small note on the kitchen table.
His parents are meeting after work for dinner and won’t be back until midnight.
Tezuka clasps the note in his hand. He thinks spontaneity and he thinks Fuji. He looks in the fridge and flicks through recipe books. His mother hasn’t left anything for him to eat, but there’s fresh chicken and there are shallots, ginger and spices he knows how to cook with.
He picks up the phone and debates for ten minutes before he calls Inui first.
***
“Tezuka?”
Inui pushes the front door open, almost faster than Tezuka can open it. He looks a slight mess, his hair in fuzzy tufts because he’d been in the shower when Tezuka had called and the tone of Tezuka’s voice seemed to dictate that it was an emergency of sorts.
From the way Tezuka’s standing in the hallway in a pair of shorts, a shirt, house slippers and an apron, Inui thinks he perhaps surmised incorrectly.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
Tezuka gives a nod, slightly curter than he’d meant it to be. He’s nervous and he realises now that he hasn’t even taken a shower since he got home. His feet probably smell like his sneakers.
Inui walks in further and pushes the door closed behind him, flicking the lock. “Did you call Fuji too?”
Tezuka nods, and begins walking to the kitchen. “My parents went out for the night, so I thought we could do something.”
He hopes Inui can’t read his mind to know what the ‘something’ is.
“The dinner’s going and the chicken should be cooked in ten minutes or so,” he says, to change the topic. Inui’s always been happy about cooking together - he’s not good at it, but he is enthusiastic, which is more than can be said for Fuji. - so Tezuka’s almost relieved he’s the one who arrives first.
“Ah, your parents are out tonight? How unusual,” Inui comments.
Tezuka’s about to nod when Inui pulls him against the wall and kisses his lips.
Spontaneity is Tezuka kissing Inui back, feeling fingers undoing the apron ties at his waist and dragging him into the next room to push him against the sofa.
He’s halfway through getting his shirt off when the doorbell rings again and he has to get up to answer it, surprising Fuji with his manner of undress, surprising him by greeting him with a kiss. It’s a little awkward because Tezuka isn’t used to being the one to initiate things with Fuji, but Fuji doesn’t seem to mind as he murmurs his greeting in between brief kisses on Tezuka’s lips.
“I think I’m late,” Fuji smiles when Tezuka leads him into the lounge room where Inui’s waiting for them, looking equally dishevelled as Tezuka.
“You’re not,” Tezuka answers.
“You are,” is Inui’s response, and Fuji chuckles, pulling off the shoes Tezuka hasn’t even let him take off yet. Inui takes his wrist and pulls him down onto the sofa and Fuji lets his arms slip around his waist as he reaches up to pull Tezuka into their embrace too, more than content to simply go along with what the other two boys had already started before he arrived.
***
The dinner ends up burning beyond recognition; meat turned to charcoal in the fry pan.
“At least it’s non-stick,” Fuji smiles, and turns off the stove. He picks the frypan up by the handle, amazed that the chicken has burnt so thoroughly but everything else in the kitchen is untouched. It’s easy enough to tip the frypan’s contents into the bin.
Tezuka and Inui cough at the door and Inui blinks tears away as he wades through the grey, smoky air to reach the kitchen window to open it. Tezuka looks a little shaken at the fact that he’d forgotten entirely about the dinner, but Fuji simply pulls out the phonebook and flips through a few pages before pointing to a pizza restaurant nearby.
Tezuka thinks his effort to be spontaneous is a slight failure.
***
Spontaneity, Tezuka thinks, is not quite the same as not being predictable.
And in his first lecture of the day on Monday, he finds himself bored again.
He closes his notebook, pushes it down into his bag along with his pen, and walks out of the lecture theatre.
***
Fuji flicks his pacer between his fingers, spinning it and playing with it faster and faster until the spare leads inside it make enough noise that the boy in the row in front of him turns around to frown.
Fuji’s sitting by himself today, having come into the lecture late and not having wanted to climb past ten of his classmates to get to the spare seat they were pointing at. So he’s a little surprised to find someone walking into the hall even later than he is, and taking the seat beside him.
He glances sideways, about to turn back to staring at his book when he realises the person is Tezuka, and for a moment he’s struck speechless, lips frozen as he can’t decide what to say to him.
Tezuka opens and then closes his mouth, settling for a self-conscious “I hope I’m not intruding” for a greeting.
Fuji gives up trying to find something to say, and shakes his head, smiling.
“Not at all,” he says after a minute. “Did you come in here just to sit with me? Or did you come in here to rescue me from Fukuyama-sensei’s preachings?”
Tezuka glances at the lecturer, feeling strange enough that he’s walked into a lecture for a subject he doesn’t study and doesn’t have the slightest understanding of.
“I think… I came in here to ask if you wanted to… go somewhere else,” he whispers cautiously.
Fukuyama glances in their direction, startling them both with a frown and the motion of a finger at his lips.
“There was a thirty-six percent probability that you would turn up in this lecture this morning.”
Fuji and Tezuka glance at each other for a moment, both wondering if they’ve imagined Inui’s voice behind him. Tezuka turns around first and stares, seeing Inui sitting there with his legs crossed and his notebook on his lap, green eyes only just visible as he rubs at a smudge on his glasses.
“What are you doing here?” Fuji asks.
Tezuka thinks that’s his question, not Fuji’s, but the look on Fuji’s face is one of genuine surprise and Tezuka knows that for all the expressions Fuji’s mastered perfectly over the years, surprise isn’t one of them.
Inui smiles and leaned forward, arms on his knees, talking low so that his voice won’t carry to the front of the room.
“I thought I’d do something spontaneous for once.”
It takes a minute for Tezuka to realise that Inui’s just said something that doesn’t quite fit, and he frowns at him, almost annoyed that Inui’s managed to upstage his own appearance in Fuji’s lecture.
“Something you’ve planned can’t be spontaneous,” he points out.
“But I planned it spontaneously,” Inui smiles back, thoroughly amused.
“You didn’t plan this too Tezuka?” Fuji laughs.
Tezuka’s cheeks turn a slight shade of pink, caught out in front of them both. He has no answer to Fuji’s rather accurate observation, and it only makes Inui smile harder and Fuji laugh more, taking Tezuka’s hand between his two and squeezing it.
Fukuyama-sensei grows tired of their whispering after another minute, and after a well-directed glare at Tezuka, who he suspects started the conversation, the three of them hurry up the steps to the exit of the theatre and let the door slam shut behind them.
“I think there’s a reason why I don’t do these things,” Tezuka mutters to himself.
“Because you’re an old man at heart?” Fuji snickers.
Tezuka shakes his head, clutching his bag as though it will settle his nerves. “Maybe I should just go back to my lecture.”
“You could,” Inui says, “or you could come with us and get some lunch.”
“Breakfast,” Fuji says.
Tezuka can’t quite believe Inui is the one telling him to miss the rest of his classes for the day, but his stomach rumbles at the mention of food and before he can protest, he finds a boy on either side of him, dragging him down the hallway in search of food.
Tezuka isn’t really spontaneous and he doesn’t think he ever really will be.
Inui and Fuji likewise, are particular in the ways in which they behave, whether they realise it or not. Their habits aren’t things they can change overnight or even on demand, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Tezuka likes them just the way they are.