rocky road #5: bedroom
Author: Marika Kailaya
Title: as winter melts in the sun
'Verse: Nagekawashii; Lap Dog
Challenge: Rocky Road 5. bedroom
Toppings/Extras: N/A
Wordcount: 1497
Rating: R (particular mention that this is a couple with a significant age gap)
A/N: directly post-epilogue.
He breathes deeply for the first time in three years, and sees Ijirashii clearly in the too-bright overhead light of two A.M.
"Your hair is so short," is what he ends up saying. He feels himself saying it before he is aware of wanting to say it. He's been awake too long.
Ijirashii surprises him, makes a face and runs his fingers through the sweat-damp white strands that frame his face and bristle up from the back of his neck. "I hate it," he remarks. "I'm growing it back out."
"Yeah?" Lavender says, blinking at him, trying to take him in. He is thinking something, something about the way Ijirashii really looks in this bizarre light on this bizarre night, just off the edge of his consciousness, but he can't find the words to voice it.
"I cut it short for school, so I could play male roles without any more criticism than normal. Blah blah you have to be a real man now Benjamin and that means cut your hair blah blah," he mutters, wandering around Lavender's bedroom and running his fingers on surfaces: the crowded, disorganized bookshelves, the chest of drawers from which clothes are tumbling: the cardboard box in the corner that Lavender wants to jump up and drag him away from. But Ijirashii doesn't open it or look inside. He just keeps investigating, naked and prowling and unashamed of either fact. "The worst part was I couldn't even donate the solid twenty-eight inches I cut off. I just had to throw it away."
"Oh?" Lavender asks, feeling only half-awake, half-alive. You look so...
Ijirashii glances up at him. "Albinism. Who wants a wig made of white hair?"
"Your hair was beautiful," Lavender says defensively.
"Yeah, I know that, that's why I'm growing it out again." Ijirashii turns away from him, crossing the carpet to the bedroom door and peering out. He leaves wordlessly and returns a few seconds later with a glass of water, still looking around, and Lavender understands what he's looking for (the time Ijirashii found a shot glass inside a champagne flute stacked atop a wine glass on the coffee table, in the old place; the time Ijirashii caught Lavender seriously considering drinking Ijirashii's cough syrup).
"I don't drink," Lavender says awkwardly, "anymore."
Ijirashii raises his pale eyebrows and sets the glass, untouched, on the nightstand. "What, is that why you started fucking Blair? So he would give you pills instead?" he says sarcastically, and then looks startled by his own words. "Sorry," he adds. "I'm sorry."
Lavender sits up, spreads his hands in front of him. "No. It's fine. I didn't." He pauses. "Either thing. I didn't do either thing, by the way. They made you cut your hair?" he asks, changing the subject in a hurry.
Ijirashii sits on the edge of the bed, perched on the red and white quilt that matches him color for color. "Nobody made me. I just...learned. There are a lot of things," he begins, and then purses his lips.
"Benjamin? Really? Benjamin?" Lavender presses, thinking of the nametag Ijirashii had been wearing at the coffee shop.
Ijirashii laughs in a way Lavender has never heard: it's not the soft, nervous chuckle from when he was sixteen, or the hysterical laugh from his madness. It's just an ordinary laugh, a little bitter. "I understand a few things now. I'm not like you, Lavender. I'm too much of a freak, I'm even worse than you, there are too many things against me. I took on a nice American name. I cut my hair. I..." He puts one hand on the scars that stripe ugly and vivid across his stomach, runs his fingers absently down to the ones that wrap around his genitals, disconcerting in his openness and in his strange mutilation. "I'm not like you," he repeats in a quieter voice. "I couldn't be myself and live in the real world."
"You will note," Lavender says gently, "that I do not live in the real world." He reaches out and takes Ijirashii's hand, and Ijirashii lets him, moves forward to lie beside Lavender.
"Yeah," Ijirashii agrees. "Even now?"
"Especially now," Lavender says. "Christ, I don't have to live at all now. I never have to write another book."
Ijirashii turns his head to look at Lavender. "What?" His forehead crinkles.
You look so... Lavender thinks again, but can't finish the thought. Instead he clears his throat before saying, "I don't have to work. Or write. Between the government and...and..."
"Yuku?" Ijirashii offers.
"Well, I've been paid a lot of money to never write again," Lavender says after a minute, and then points at the box, feeling lightheaded. "The Midnight stuff," he elaborates, biting off the words. "It's in there. I was instructed to burn it but I... I haven't written a word. I guess I never will."
"Lavender," Ijirashii starts urgently, turning over onto his side. His red eyes look bright and scared. "Lavender, please don't say that. Not to me. Don't you dare. I stayed alive because of your writing. I stayed alive all this time thinking...there would be a story, or anything... I stalked all the magazines, the newspapers; any pen name you used, I would've known."
It clicks what Lavender has been trying to figure out in his head, seeing Ijirashii look at him so longingly, so desperately. "You look so much older," Lavender interrupts, wide-eyed at the realization.
Ijirashii ignores him. "We are here because you wrote that book," he continues.
"I thought we were here because I was broken and you were conveniently comforting," Lavender murmurs.
"I was anything but convenient for you," Ijirashii hisses, sitting up and facing Lavender. He crawls on top of Lavender, pinning him (like he did a thousand times before, when he would dig his sharp teenage elbows into Lavender's chest). "I was a liability. I was always just one more thing on the long fucking list of shit you belonged in prison for but my god, Lavender-"
(Trapped in the apartment above the bar, broken glass in his scalp, a needle in his arm, too-small plastic puppy ears on his head, waiting for a filmed rape, a filmed death, dreaming of Lavender, thinking his heart hurt more than his head injury, thinking Lavender would like that pitiful turn of phrase: write that down, Lavender. please write that)
"-your writing, even that stupid awful book, made my life better."
"It nearly killed you!" Lavender protests.
"Whatever happened to me after I met you was better than everything before. And after!"
"You're the one who left," Lavender says, struggling beneath Ijirashii's weight and feeling dimly surprised he can't move Ijirashii off of him. But Ijirashii is muscular now, the way he must've been before they met. Ijirashii has spent the last handful of years dancing. And Lavender...
Lavender hasn't been drinking. To drink would imply he wants to find a way to cope with this unending miserable consciousness: he has instead been racking up half-hearted suicide attempts, hoping to end it. That's all.
"I loved you and you left," he says without meaning to. "And the worst thing is you should've left a long time before that. I should have never-I loved you but I should've made you go."
"Oh, you definitely made me go. You hurt me," Ijirashii points out savagely.
Lavender wants to laugh. "You were a child, Ijirashii. If I hurt you, it was to save you and make you go."
"I am older now!" Ijirashii bursts out wretchedly, points of red flaring on his white scarred face.
"I love you," Lavender says again, and reaches his hand up to touch Ijirashii's too-warm face. Ijirashii takes in a few shaky breaths, and puts his hand in Lavender's hair. Still long, but dark, unbleached. Lavender is thinner now, crackwhore thin again, but he resides in this place under his real name, his undyed hair, his sharp brown-yellow eyes. It relieves Ijirashii, somehow, that all this time Lavender was in plain sight, always himself.
He stretches out, lying atop Lavender and resting his head on Lavender's chest, and Lavender wraps his arms around him and presses their bodies together.
"I missed you," Ijirashii says, and hot tears prick at his eyes and drip onto Lavender's skin. "I can't be myself in the real world but I can't exist at all without you. I missed you. I thought I would wait until a book came out. I thought you would write another book. This whole time, Lavender-"
"I love you, Ijirashii," Lavender cuts his babbling off. The name hits Ijirashii's ears like aloe on a burn. No one has said it in years. "I never wanted to live without you."
"Okay," Ijirashii says, catching his breath, burying his face in Lavender's neck, feeling Lavender's heart beating beneath his: a little tachycardic, a little unstable. "Okay."
Lavender inhales, holding Ijirashii hard, and together they sleep as the world reorients itself around them.
Title: as winter melts in the sun
'Verse: Nagekawashii; Lap Dog
Challenge: Rocky Road 5. bedroom
Toppings/Extras: N/A
Wordcount: 1497
Rating: R (particular mention that this is a couple with a significant age gap)
A/N: directly post-epilogue.
He breathes deeply for the first time in three years, and sees Ijirashii clearly in the too-bright overhead light of two A.M.
"Your hair is so short," is what he ends up saying. He feels himself saying it before he is aware of wanting to say it. He's been awake too long.
Ijirashii surprises him, makes a face and runs his fingers through the sweat-damp white strands that frame his face and bristle up from the back of his neck. "I hate it," he remarks. "I'm growing it back out."
"Yeah?" Lavender says, blinking at him, trying to take him in. He is thinking something, something about the way Ijirashii really looks in this bizarre light on this bizarre night, just off the edge of his consciousness, but he can't find the words to voice it.
"I cut it short for school, so I could play male roles without any more criticism than normal. Blah blah you have to be a real man now Benjamin and that means cut your hair blah blah," he mutters, wandering around Lavender's bedroom and running his fingers on surfaces: the crowded, disorganized bookshelves, the chest of drawers from which clothes are tumbling: the cardboard box in the corner that Lavender wants to jump up and drag him away from. But Ijirashii doesn't open it or look inside. He just keeps investigating, naked and prowling and unashamed of either fact. "The worst part was I couldn't even donate the solid twenty-eight inches I cut off. I just had to throw it away."
"Oh?" Lavender asks, feeling only half-awake, half-alive. You look so...
Ijirashii glances up at him. "Albinism. Who wants a wig made of white hair?"
"Your hair was beautiful," Lavender says defensively.
"Yeah, I know that, that's why I'm growing it out again." Ijirashii turns away from him, crossing the carpet to the bedroom door and peering out. He leaves wordlessly and returns a few seconds later with a glass of water, still looking around, and Lavender understands what he's looking for (the time Ijirashii found a shot glass inside a champagne flute stacked atop a wine glass on the coffee table, in the old place; the time Ijirashii caught Lavender seriously considering drinking Ijirashii's cough syrup).
"I don't drink," Lavender says awkwardly, "anymore."
Ijirashii raises his pale eyebrows and sets the glass, untouched, on the nightstand. "What, is that why you started fucking Blair? So he would give you pills instead?" he says sarcastically, and then looks startled by his own words. "Sorry," he adds. "I'm sorry."
Lavender sits up, spreads his hands in front of him. "No. It's fine. I didn't." He pauses. "Either thing. I didn't do either thing, by the way. They made you cut your hair?" he asks, changing the subject in a hurry.
Ijirashii sits on the edge of the bed, perched on the red and white quilt that matches him color for color. "Nobody made me. I just...learned. There are a lot of things," he begins, and then purses his lips.
"Benjamin? Really? Benjamin?" Lavender presses, thinking of the nametag Ijirashii had been wearing at the coffee shop.
Ijirashii laughs in a way Lavender has never heard: it's not the soft, nervous chuckle from when he was sixteen, or the hysterical laugh from his madness. It's just an ordinary laugh, a little bitter. "I understand a few things now. I'm not like you, Lavender. I'm too much of a freak, I'm even worse than you, there are too many things against me. I took on a nice American name. I cut my hair. I..." He puts one hand on the scars that stripe ugly and vivid across his stomach, runs his fingers absently down to the ones that wrap around his genitals, disconcerting in his openness and in his strange mutilation. "I'm not like you," he repeats in a quieter voice. "I couldn't be myself and live in the real world."
"You will note," Lavender says gently, "that I do not live in the real world." He reaches out and takes Ijirashii's hand, and Ijirashii lets him, moves forward to lie beside Lavender.
"Yeah," Ijirashii agrees. "Even now?"
"Especially now," Lavender says. "Christ, I don't have to live at all now. I never have to write another book."
Ijirashii turns his head to look at Lavender. "What?" His forehead crinkles.
You look so... Lavender thinks again, but can't finish the thought. Instead he clears his throat before saying, "I don't have to work. Or write. Between the government and...and..."
"Yuku?" Ijirashii offers.
"Well, I've been paid a lot of money to never write again," Lavender says after a minute, and then points at the box, feeling lightheaded. "The Midnight stuff," he elaborates, biting off the words. "It's in there. I was instructed to burn it but I... I haven't written a word. I guess I never will."
"Lavender," Ijirashii starts urgently, turning over onto his side. His red eyes look bright and scared. "Lavender, please don't say that. Not to me. Don't you dare. I stayed alive because of your writing. I stayed alive all this time thinking...there would be a story, or anything... I stalked all the magazines, the newspapers; any pen name you used, I would've known."
It clicks what Lavender has been trying to figure out in his head, seeing Ijirashii look at him so longingly, so desperately. "You look so much older," Lavender interrupts, wide-eyed at the realization.
Ijirashii ignores him. "We are here because you wrote that book," he continues.
"I thought we were here because I was broken and you were conveniently comforting," Lavender murmurs.
"I was anything but convenient for you," Ijirashii hisses, sitting up and facing Lavender. He crawls on top of Lavender, pinning him (like he did a thousand times before, when he would dig his sharp teenage elbows into Lavender's chest). "I was a liability. I was always just one more thing on the long fucking list of shit you belonged in prison for but my god, Lavender-"
(Trapped in the apartment above the bar, broken glass in his scalp, a needle in his arm, too-small plastic puppy ears on his head, waiting for a filmed rape, a filmed death, dreaming of Lavender, thinking his heart hurt more than his head injury, thinking Lavender would like that pitiful turn of phrase: write that down, Lavender. please write that)
"-your writing, even that stupid awful book, made my life better."
"It nearly killed you!" Lavender protests.
"Whatever happened to me after I met you was better than everything before. And after!"
"You're the one who left," Lavender says, struggling beneath Ijirashii's weight and feeling dimly surprised he can't move Ijirashii off of him. But Ijirashii is muscular now, the way he must've been before they met. Ijirashii has spent the last handful of years dancing. And Lavender...
Lavender hasn't been drinking. To drink would imply he wants to find a way to cope with this unending miserable consciousness: he has instead been racking up half-hearted suicide attempts, hoping to end it. That's all.
"I loved you and you left," he says without meaning to. "And the worst thing is you should've left a long time before that. I should have never-I loved you but I should've made you go."
"Oh, you definitely made me go. You hurt me," Ijirashii points out savagely.
Lavender wants to laugh. "You were a child, Ijirashii. If I hurt you, it was to save you and make you go."
"I am older now!" Ijirashii bursts out wretchedly, points of red flaring on his white scarred face.
"I love you," Lavender says again, and reaches his hand up to touch Ijirashii's too-warm face. Ijirashii takes in a few shaky breaths, and puts his hand in Lavender's hair. Still long, but dark, unbleached. Lavender is thinner now, crackwhore thin again, but he resides in this place under his real name, his undyed hair, his sharp brown-yellow eyes. It relieves Ijirashii, somehow, that all this time Lavender was in plain sight, always himself.
He stretches out, lying atop Lavender and resting his head on Lavender's chest, and Lavender wraps his arms around him and presses their bodies together.
"I missed you," Ijirashii says, and hot tears prick at his eyes and drip onto Lavender's skin. "I can't be myself in the real world but I can't exist at all without you. I missed you. I thought I would wait until a book came out. I thought you would write another book. This whole time, Lavender-"
"I love you, Ijirashii," Lavender cuts his babbling off. The name hits Ijirashii's ears like aloe on a burn. No one has said it in years. "I never wanted to live without you."
"Okay," Ijirashii says, catching his breath, burying his face in Lavender's neck, feeling Lavender's heart beating beneath his: a little tachycardic, a little unstable. "Okay."
Lavender inhales, holding Ijirashii hard, and together they sleep as the world reorients itself around them.