Coping Methods Arc #3: Kumo (Clouds)
Title: Kumo (Clouds)
Pairing: Hiyo/Mari, but a great deal of the rest of the boys, as usual.
Series: Coping Methods #3
For: typhoid_mary, for giving me Mari in the first place.
Disclaimer: Once again... I only wish. Oh, wait. Mari's mine, isn't she...?
Notes: This takes place a little after Kekka (#16), a year or so before Oshimai (#17.) And how amusing--I finished this story a year ago today...
Kumo (Clouds)
Japan, Mari had always thought, really did have an overabundance of matsuri. She understood having a festival day, yes, but did there really have to be a season for them?
Well, all right, perhaps that wasn’t fair. She had nothing against summer vacation-because frankly, if she had to deal with the Hyotei Regulars every day of the year, she really was going to go more than a little batty. A little batty she could deal with. Meddling in their problems ten months out of the twelve was much more enjoyable than she’d ever anticipated, but if she had to spend her summer vacation untangling all the little snags the Gay Institution of Japan tied in each others’ hair the way most high school girls tied ribbons in their ponytails, her aunt would probably have reason to commit her to a mental institution.
That honestly didn’t explain why she’d picked up the phone and said ‘Sure, where?’ virtually the moment when Atobe demanded that his fanclub president join the lot of them for fireworks and a picnic. (She considered it ‘asking,’ since it hadn’t come with any implicit threats or overt references to how far beneath him she was.) Apparently, summer vacation and a lack of things to do did very strange things to her head, since only the most devout fanclub members (of which Mari was wholeheartedly not one) showed up at the Regular team summer practices.
Her agreement had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it had been three weeks since she’d seen one Hiyoshi Wakashi, since they obviously weren’t walking home together from the commuter rail station after Regular practice, and she’d been busy enough at home that her dojo hours had lately been when he was out, or doing chores. Nonetheless.
Really, considering that she’d thought it likely that she’d have to prepare the picnic-and she’d been so surprised when she’d arrived at Atobe’s house to find a beautifully arranged bentou of chilled assorted fruit and light finger foods, just for her, that she hadn’t commented on the fact that it was in a lovely lacquer box in wedding-day white, as opposed to the black lacquer boxes prepared for the boys-it should have been an indulgence.
But really, did they always have to celebrate summer festivals with such… aplomb?
Well, it was an Atobe-sponsored event. Of course they had to.
She really was spending far, far too much time around the boys. She loved them all, every last ridiculously attractive and criminally tennis-obsessed one of them, but there were definitely times when they were rather as grating as the fact that the lot of them could sit cross-legged, while she was stuck in seiza whether or not she wanted to be.
Mari admitted, rather sourly, that she’d probably have liked festival days much better if she hadn’t let herself be coaxed into a yukata, again, by an enourmous-eyed Jirou and a wheedling Gakuto. (Jirou was simply unbearably cute, but the truth was that she put on the wraparound summertime kimono mostly to stop Gakuto from whining.) Atobe might have been heartily surprised when she’d shown up at his house in her favourite pair of slacks and a button-down, but she was willing to wager that no-one else had been-and she’d known there’d be trouble when the boys had trickled in, and every single one of them had been wearing traditional men’s festival wear.
It really should have been illegal how the seven of them looked so good in something that really was nothing more than a set of glorified pyjamas. Well, at least, it had looked like seven boys in glorified pajamas once she reached over and pulled Jirou’s yukata actually closed, despite the fact that Atobe gave her a vaguely dirty look about it. Not to say that her most-of-the-time best friend looked particularly bad like that, really, and it always did surprise her a little whenever she realised that, despite his wiriness, Jirou really did have a ridiculously nice body-but he’d probably take it as a compliment if she told him that the open yukata made him look like a cross between a harem boytoy and a lecherous old samurai. In miniature. With a heavy slant towards the boytoy. It was just easier not to explain.
And concentrate on meticulously squishing the part of her brain that was wheedling with her to reach out and adjust Hiyoshi’s yukata to show just a little more chest. He wouldn’t even blink if she did it, too…
Atobe glared, but, happily, didn’t ask. The nice part about being Atobe’s fanclub president was that he automatically assumed that she tended to do things for his benefit, even if they weren’t directly to him. Well, Mari wasn’t going to be the one to disillusion him. She’d wasted enough brainpower on that over the past three years.
Besides, Atobe honestly should have been thanking her anyway-didn’t the idiot even consider what would happen when they arrived at the festival ground, and all the girls started googling and cooing over his so-very-pretty, partially-naked little boytoy with a body that just asked to be petted?
She wasn’t even going to go into how unfair it is that Gakuto could apparently do somersaults even wearing a pair of geta, because she was still figuring out how to walk without mincing in the heavy wooden clogs. Without, really, all that much success, from the way she couldn’t seem to take a step that took her further than, oh, an inch or so.
She’d laid her hopes-admittedly, rather misplaced-on the fact that even if they did want to stuff her into the little kimono-y thing (and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about it the moment she’d stepped out of the house) but she’d hedged her bets on the fact that none of them would know what to do with it even if they had one to stuff her into.
She hadn’t counted on Oshitari. Maybe they did things differently in Kansai.
Ah, well. At least they’d picked one for her that had phoenix patterns on it-a blue background and yellow firebirds, not flowers. And she’d get to tease a certain bespectacled Osaka boy about where in the world he’d learned how to tie an obi-what more an obi with just a hint of the inside-colour showing in a careful fold at the front, precise as the placement of a geisha’s combs. Because she’d counted on that being her one out. Heck, she didn’t know how to tie an obi-she actually doubted that her aunt would have been able to do as good a job as their team tensai had.
On second thoughts, no, perhaps she’d better not ask. There was a pretty fair chance she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Watermelon was all very well, but the firework displays-and the boats? Why did they have to watch fireworks in a boat? -really were an extravagance, because after about the first fifteen minutes, the ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhh’ and ‘that’s pretty’ in her mind quickly gravitated towards ‘gracious, that’s a lot of pollution, and how long am I going to have to keep watching Shishido snuggle into the crook of Ootori’s shoulder? I don’t want to know what Oshitari and Gakuto are up to so I’m not going to turn around. Jirou really shouldn’t be nuzzling Atobe’s lap like that if he doesn’t want to end up in the water… though it’s anyone’s bet whether it’ll be Shishido who chucks him in, or me…’
Summer vacation honestly was slowing down her reflexes, because she should have known that the reason for the delicate finger foods and the cool sweet fruits was, of course, so a certain three couples could enjoy a lover’s meal in the light of a firework display, floating calmly in the middle of a river. She’d really thought that Gakuto and Oshitari were going to be the two fish of relative sanity flopping and gasping for air in this boatful of sap-because once Atobe had hauled himself out of his own metaphorical Egyptian river, he and Jirou had, in their own way, become worse than the Purity Pair-but after seeing the way Gakuto wrapped his lips around a strawberry like that, lips moving in slow sucking motions, Oshitari smiling as he watched his boyfriend over the edge of his glasses with the fireworks reflecting in the lenses… well, she’d been careful not to turn around again.
Which left her. And Hiyoshi. Carefully not looking at each other, or at anyone else, as they sampled from their boxes and watched the fireworks, in the very middle of the boat, or at least, she was being very careful not to look at him, because as it was, in the close quarters, her skin broke out in a rash of goosebumps every time the sleeve of his yukata brushed with the briefest rasp of fabric against hers.
Right this moment, she would have killed for a certain oversize, silently looming presence, but she’d been informed, when she’d asked, with a careful lack of panic in her voice, that said presence was, at the moment, celebrating with his equally oversize family.
No, she certainly didn’t need to ask whose idea this expedition had been.
Mari… was going to kill a certain little sleepy boy who saw far, far more than anyone ever meant him to see. Jirou really was honestly one of her best friends, and he’d squeezed her hand through some of the darkest periods of her life, but the little meddling matchmaker should have known better… wasn’t it enough torture that Hiyoshi actually saw her when he looked at her, nowadays, and smiled, sometimes, when he did?
Well, all right, so that was her fault. Still.
Glaring at Jirou when he was alternating between swooning with sleepy bliss against Atobe’s chest, occasionally bouncing and pointing at a particularly impressive barrage of fireworks, playing the Pocky game (with a very, very short piece of Pocky) and nibbling bits of watermelon off of the slice Atobe was holding….
She doubted very much that a nuclear bomb would have bothered the boy, and much as she was good at glaring, she wasn’t that good.
All right, maybe finally getting him and Atobe together when they had hadn’t been the brightest plot to ever cross her mind. She definitely hadn’t thought that the honeymoon glow would last… four months.
Ri-ight, when it took them three years to get here? Who’s in denial now, Mari, hm?
Hiyoshi’s voice-always quieter than what was happening around them, but she could no more ignore him than she could ignore the way Jirou looked so happy with Atobe smiling down at him-interrupted a rather delightful rash of tortures she could inflict on that pretty happy little blonde head. Switch his wake-up chocolates with licorice? Wait, Jirou probably liked licorice. “Your yukata suits you, Mari.”
Whose idea had it been to have him calling her by her first name, just like everyone else?
Oh, of course. Hers.
Still, though, Mari had to smile, even though the sound of him saying her name like that made her spine sparkle like fireworks in the hot night, and she bowed her head to wipe away the sweat on her forehead, and the strands of hair that had escaped from her bun with it. Neither of them had any problems being quiet together, really, and they’d spent hours together doing nothing but reading in silence, but normally, their quiet wasn’t this… awkward. Or perhaps she was the only one who felt it was awkward, surrounded by three kissing couples, with both of them sitting in seiza and a handspan of air between them. It didn’t change anything. It never had. “You say that because you traditional boy-types like your women mincing and housebound.”
But he cocked his head to look at her, and his eyes glittered, just so, in the light of the fireworks. Honestly, that really did the most annoying things to her pulse… “You say that, but you were mincing, today.”
Mari winced. Not least because the boy hadn’t the least clue that the words made it sound, just a little, like he wanted her as his woman. “I’m going to hit you, Hiyoshi-kun.”
If she hadn’t been holding a piece of fruit, she probably would have done it, too. Mostly because wearing these geta, it was annoyingly true, and she did… mince. That didn’t mean he had to say it-though, of course, it was Hiyoshi, he would say it, wouldn’t he?
The expression on his face didn’t change-the wind that was studiously avoiding her tousled his bangs just a touch, and brushed over his smooth, cool brow despite the sticky night-except, perhaps, for the faintest quirk of an eyebrow, and in the light of the fireworks that burst over them, his eyes gleamed with challenge-and, perhaps, maybe just the faintest touch of a dangerous little smile. “You could. Or you could try. ”
If she hadn’t fallen for him three years before, Mari suspected, with a twitch of annoyance, that she probably would have in that instant-the gold of his eyes darker than the showers of light, but brightening when the very edges of his mouth curled into a faint, faint smile. Damn that smile. Damn it, damn it, damn her for not being able to look away from it until he lifted his chin and looked up into the fireworks again, a volley of crimson and gold that showered the river with reflections of light.
That instant, like a hundred, or a thousand, before it.
But his fingertips brushed the inside of her left hand-ostensibly the one she’d have punched him with, and he knew that far, far too well, he’d been her partner in the dojo too often-and she pulled away with a shiver when her blood ran too close to the surface for her to quite be able to bear his touch with anything resembling equinamity. “You know I would try. Except… I’m going to end up in the water if I do, aren’t I?” she chuckled, just a little ruefully. Not least because having him block one of her strikes by grabbing her and pinning her had the irritating tendency to make her knees go very, very weak. Luckily-luckily?-more often than not she was already on the floor by the time that happened, but considering that they were in a flat-bottom boat, well…
His smile quirked again, but thankfully-thankfully-this time, he didn’t look at her. Just let his hair fall over his eyes when he bowed his head, taking the last piece of fruit from his bento box. “Yes.” He considered her, for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder; she watched his eyes wash over the topography of the boat. Well, he was braver than she was, to look back at Oshitari and Gakuto. “And from the way the boat would rock, probably Mukahi-senpai, as well.”
Well, she could definitely see why she’d fallen in love with him.
They were perfectly in accord when he raised an eyebrow at her, and she grinned back.
“If you two are done with your foreplay,” the drawl came from behind her, and she’d probably would have jumped if she hadn’t been focusing so hard on not letting her hand drift over in Hiyoshi’s direction to beg for another brush of his calluses against the tingling inside of her wrist, “would you like some more watermelon?”
Her murder list was getting longer by the minute. Swat went her mental flyswatter on Oshitari Yuushi’s head.
Hiyoshi, of course, didn’t even twitch. Well, neither did she, but she’d had three years’ worth of practice at it. “You’re not one to talk about anyone’s foreplay, Oshitari. Remember, I’ve seen you-” she shot over her shoulder-before blinking down at the hand offering her a slice of watermelon just underneath her nose.
She’d taken it and was thanking Hiyoshi for it by the time she blinked again, and realised that she hadn’t said that she wanted one. And that Oshitari was snickering behind her.
Her accusing glance in her seatmate’s direction found him calmly taking a bite out of his own slice, with the faintest quirk of amusement making the edges of those tilted, exotic eyes slant upwards-gentler with unvoiced laughter than she’d ever thought she’d see that fierce gaze. As he, rather carefully, did not look at her. “I don’t want to know what you saw Oshitari-senpai doing, Mari.”
“All right,” Mari growled, just under her breath. “Who told you that giving me food was the best way to shut me up?”
He was blunt, but he’d always been, his shoulders moving in a silent shrug. “No-one. Didn’t you say watermelon was your favorite?” his eyes slanted to hers again-not feigned curiousity, knowledge, and he was as confident in the answer as he’d ever been on the courts.
Mari blinked again. She couldn’t remember ever having mentioned it, though there’d been that time when they’d had it at his place, but… “Well, yes, but…”
Her new, improved murder list was going to start with one Hiyoshi Wakashi, because if he kept doing things like that… who remembered their friends’ favorite fruits (who weren’t as crazy and organised as she was?)
“Then it’s fine.” His shrug rippled his shoulders again, careless. “Have you written your wish yet?”
“Wish? What-oh. Tanabata, right.” Typical Hiyoshi. Topic change at the drop of an eyelash. Well, she’d never thought a great deal of Valentine’s, or White Day, or, for that matter, most holidays. Still, though, Tanabata, with its bridge of birds, its weaver, its shepherd… well, she’d been charmed by it quite despite herself. Not least because the sight of the Hyotei Regulars pestering each other over little slips of pastel-coloured paper was far more adorable than she’d ever given the lot of them credit for. “That’s… day after tomorrow? Just how many of the things am I going to have to write?”
Well, if the night was clear this year, perhaps she’d let herself believe that the wishes that they wrote on their little irogami, their coloured slips of paper, and hung from bamboo branches for the Weaver and the Shepherd to see as they met halfway, walking on the backs of swallows… perhaps she’d let herself believe this year that they came true. Perhaps she’d let herself believe that writing dozens of the things to hang in the classrooms, and club room, and wherever anyone kept Tanabata bamboo branches, actually did something other than make Japan rather resemble a uniquely Asian Christmas tree.
“Just one more.” He shrugged, again, casual. Well, he’d know as well as anyone just how many irogami they all had to write, and she’d gotten rather good at writing the characters for hers so that they actually looked like they were supposed to… “Otousan says you’re as much a student as anyone else, so you can hang one in the dojo, if you want. To counteract the sheer single-minded idiocy of mine, he said.”
She had to chuckle-well, at least as much because Hiyoshi didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow when he said that. Hiyoshi’s father, head of the dojo, really was a character, on occasion. He probably wouldn’t have done too badly if he’d had daughters instead of sons, she’d thought sometimes, which perhaps was why he’d taken so strongly to her, but she never bothered to ask. Well, perhaps she hadn’t asked because it was an answer that struck just a little too close to home, because she wasn’t part of Hiyoshi’s family, no matter how much Hiyoshi’s father wistfully commented that she and his son made such a nice pair, and Hiyoshi actually talked about things other than martial arts and tennis around her… “Please tell me you didn’t write ‘gekokujou’ on yours again.”
“Mari.” He just raised an eyebrow at her, brows furrowed with genuine puzzlement. “Why would I want to write anything else?”
Why, indeed?
Her mouth moved in something that perhaps would have been a smile at any other time. She could have said something about gekokujou over whom, and teased him about that narrow focus of his until he frowned, considering that virtually everyone else on the Regular team had written something about their significant other… but the joke filled her throat like the smell of an overstrong perfume, heavy and thick and cloying, and she choked it down. “I suppose that’s true enough.”
It wasn’t disappointment in her voice, in the back of her mind, because he’d never wanted anything else. Perhaps she’d fallen for him for that very reason, because Hiyoshi never wanted anything else, and it was the reason they could be friends, and the reason she’d never mention to him how she felt. Why, really, wish for something that couldn’t come true?
But her heart was full to aching, to bursting with old pain and comfort and quiet, the warmth of him that she could feel even with the handspan of air too thin between them, the sound of fireworks and the way the watermelon was cool in her mouth and in her hand, and Mari closed her eyes, and sighed.
She wrote ‘serenity’ on her irogami the next day, the way she had every year, before she arrived at Regular practice to hand it to Hiyoshi. Well, she could have probably simply walked to his house-it certainly was much closer than school and the tennis courts-but if she was going to be honest with herself, she’d missed the sight of her boys having their fun-well, fun as far as ‘fun’ took over one’s life and most of one’s being-on the courts. Just a little. Well, just a little enough that she pillowed her chin in her hands and sighed with silent contentment when Jirou cheered his way through a point against Hiyoshi, dancing over to the adjacent tennis court to declare his momentary victory to Atobe. Something… about a bet.
Though, frankly, from the gleam in Atobe’s eyes, she wasn’t going to ask for what the stakes of that particular wager were. There wasn’t a person on the Regular squad or otherwise who actually believed it when Atobe wrote, ‘To get Jirou to sleep on his own side of the bed,’ on his irogami-when the idiot savant never even considered the fact that he’d just admitted that he and Jirou slept in the same bed to anyone who read his Tanabata resolution.
Well, not that there was anyone who didn’t know, by this point…
But Hiyoshi’s eyes were bright with his (rather unusual) victory over Jirou when he invited her over to pick a branch of bamboo to hang it from herself, and she had to smile when she realised-of course Hiyoshi’s father would insist on having everyone hang their irogami from a young, live bamboo plant, not a mere dried clipping. The leaves and stem were smooth and delicate between her fingers, her palms faintly sticky with the heavy humidity and the closeness of Hiyoshi watching her from the edge of his garden’s pond, close enough that she could have reached out to push him in, when she fumbled with the ribbon.
And Hiyoshi’s hands came over hers to help her tie it, their fingertips brushing, and the faint electric rasp of his calluses against the back of her hands wore at her control until she pulled back with her breath just this side of unsteady, her irogami hanging awkwardly from its own little branch beside his.
It was easier to let everyone, including herself, believe that when she wished for ‘serenity,’ she meant her own peace of mind when she brushed it down in neat strokes of her pen-not the grace of Hiyoshi’s callused, ugly hands whether they were moving in a form or tying a neat bow, or the way he’d closed his eyes and sat back on his heels, a rind of watermelon lying gently in his slack, open palms, and let the light of the last barrage of fireworks sing over his face before they’d drifted back to shore.
Tanabata dawned cool, and gray, but Jirou was warm and heavy sprawled on her lap, Atobe leaning at her side, when they looked up into a night so empty of rain-clouds that Jirou pointed out, rather dreamily, that the stars were crystalline, and the night around them shone. It was a good night for wishes, he murmured, and when he looked over at Atobe, at present asking his butler for some apple juice for all of them… he should have sparkled in the dark like a gigantic firefly, he was so happy, the dear little thing that he was.
Even if he was a distinctly evil dear little thing who did things like making very sure that she and Hiyoshi were the only unattached people on a boat full of happy couples feeding each other from the tips of their fingers.
Perhaps this year, she’d let herself believe-maybe.
But when she looked into the sky, she had to wonder-though there was no scent of rain in the air, perhaps what Jirou was seeing was just the stars in his own eyes when he looked at Atobe, because the clouds from the fireworks two days before dangled in the air-heavy, still, thick and gray and low-hanging as the bellies of nightmares, with the stars a thin film of light behind the smoke.
So she looked at Jirou, instead, draped over her like a boneless little blanket of papery-thin shirt and shorts, inching over and pulling her with him until he could put his head into Atobe’s lap again. “You know, I hope you realise that once all this matsuri nonsense is over and the gods are no longer watching, I’m going to hurt you.” She considered his smile, and cocked her head. “Perhaps badly.”
Mari wasn’t completely sure how it was that a voice so utterly blurred with sleep could be sly, but Jirou’s was, a quirk tilting his eyes when he tilted his head upwards and grinned at her. “Mari’s nice. You wouldn’t do something like that. ”
Her stock choice of threatening to make sure he never had children really was a very, very moot thing indeed. And if he and Atobe… okay, no, she wasn’t going to even think about that. “Yes, well,” she patted the small of his back-far too gently for the message she was trying to convey, really, “You’ve never tried to set me up with someone before.”
Jirou blinked over his shoulder at her, sheepishly, and reached for his glass of juice. The boy really had mastered the art of doing everything in a semi-reclining position. “Well, no, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had a dream about it, even. And it was okay, right?”
It was difficult to glower at someone who looked rather like a smug, happy carpet, but she made a good faith effort at it. “Only because he’s as oblivious as the characters in those books you like so much. Just you wait. When August comes, and we’re back in school…” they’d just see how much Jirou liked it when Atobe was surrounded by some of the cutest, most boyish members of his fanclub, basking in their adoration…
Well, no, not really, Atobe wouldn’t care, but it was amusing to think about it.
But Jirou’s grin didn’t so much as flinch around the edges. “Um, I guess. But maybe by then you’ll be too busy with someone else to get mad at me?”
There definitely had to be some demon blood in that boy somewhere.
Atobe’s chin jerked in her direction, sharply, from his contemplation of the stars. “Mari, you’re not going to be so crass as to leave the fanclub for another man. It would be far too much inconvenience to have to find another president to take over.”
She had to laugh-deeply, from her belly, whooping with it until she was doubled over over Jirou’s back (he complained that she was heavy, but he had no right to talk, when he was on her lap) and she wondered if perhaps that silly aching heart of hers might provide her with some air, since it didn’t seem to be good for much else, really.
And, again, at Atobe’s indignance when he declared that he was perfectly serious.
Some things never changed. But sometimes, perhaps…
Perhaps, she’d thought, perhaps this was the year she’d let herself believe that. Maybe things like wishes came true, and miracles happened, and pigs sprouted wings, and Oshitari and Gakuto stopped being the most perverted people she knew…
Yeah. Right.
Mari grinned to herself, faintly, as she comfortably silenced Atobe’s ranting into her ear about the inconvenience of irresponsible fanclub presidents by hauling Jirou into his lap like so much curly-headed deadweight, and wondered, vaguely, at the patch of clear, speckled with stars like the spots on a robin’s egg, that shone through the twilight of firework smoke.
~owari~
Start: July 3, 2004
End: July 3, 2004
Tanabata Matsuri is celebrated on July 7-it’s a festival where, well, as you guys have probably figured out, people write wishes and resolutions on irogami (coloured paper slips, otherwise also known as tansatsu) and hang them from bamboo branches. The legend behind the matsuri is that the Weaver and the Shepherd fell in love, but were not permitted to marry, and so were set on opposite sides of the Heavens. The birds felt sorry for them, so if the night of Tanabata is clear, swallows (or magpies, the stories differ) form a bridge for them to walk over so that they can be together for just that one night of every year. However, if the night is cloudy, the swallows can’t see their way to the heavens, and the Weaver and the Shepherd have to wait one more year to meet. I’m not entirely sure what the wishing has to do with the legend behind the matsuri-no-one I’ve asked is, either, really, but my boss hypothesised that since Tanabata is the festival of an impossible love fulfilled, it makes sense that it could be the festival of dreams becoming reality, too.
Well, not for Mari, but… I suppose that can’t be helped. ^^;
A happy Tanabata, everyone, and may all your wishes come true!
Pairing: Hiyo/Mari, but a great deal of the rest of the boys, as usual.
Series: Coping Methods #3
For: typhoid_mary, for giving me Mari in the first place.
Disclaimer: Once again... I only wish. Oh, wait. Mari's mine, isn't she...?
Notes: This takes place a little after Kekka (#16), a year or so before Oshimai (#17.) And how amusing--I finished this story a year ago today...
Kumo (Clouds)
Japan, Mari had always thought, really did have an overabundance of matsuri. She understood having a festival day, yes, but did there really have to be a season for them?
Well, all right, perhaps that wasn’t fair. She had nothing against summer vacation-because frankly, if she had to deal with the Hyotei Regulars every day of the year, she really was going to go more than a little batty. A little batty she could deal with. Meddling in their problems ten months out of the twelve was much more enjoyable than she’d ever anticipated, but if she had to spend her summer vacation untangling all the little snags the Gay Institution of Japan tied in each others’ hair the way most high school girls tied ribbons in their ponytails, her aunt would probably have reason to commit her to a mental institution.
That honestly didn’t explain why she’d picked up the phone and said ‘Sure, where?’ virtually the moment when Atobe demanded that his fanclub president join the lot of them for fireworks and a picnic. (She considered it ‘asking,’ since it hadn’t come with any implicit threats or overt references to how far beneath him she was.) Apparently, summer vacation and a lack of things to do did very strange things to her head, since only the most devout fanclub members (of which Mari was wholeheartedly not one) showed up at the Regular team summer practices.
Her agreement had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it had been three weeks since she’d seen one Hiyoshi Wakashi, since they obviously weren’t walking home together from the commuter rail station after Regular practice, and she’d been busy enough at home that her dojo hours had lately been when he was out, or doing chores. Nonetheless.
Really, considering that she’d thought it likely that she’d have to prepare the picnic-and she’d been so surprised when she’d arrived at Atobe’s house to find a beautifully arranged bentou of chilled assorted fruit and light finger foods, just for her, that she hadn’t commented on the fact that it was in a lovely lacquer box in wedding-day white, as opposed to the black lacquer boxes prepared for the boys-it should have been an indulgence.
But really, did they always have to celebrate summer festivals with such… aplomb?
Well, it was an Atobe-sponsored event. Of course they had to.
She really was spending far, far too much time around the boys. She loved them all, every last ridiculously attractive and criminally tennis-obsessed one of them, but there were definitely times when they were rather as grating as the fact that the lot of them could sit cross-legged, while she was stuck in seiza whether or not she wanted to be.
Mari admitted, rather sourly, that she’d probably have liked festival days much better if she hadn’t let herself be coaxed into a yukata, again, by an enourmous-eyed Jirou and a wheedling Gakuto. (Jirou was simply unbearably cute, but the truth was that she put on the wraparound summertime kimono mostly to stop Gakuto from whining.) Atobe might have been heartily surprised when she’d shown up at his house in her favourite pair of slacks and a button-down, but she was willing to wager that no-one else had been-and she’d known there’d be trouble when the boys had trickled in, and every single one of them had been wearing traditional men’s festival wear.
It really should have been illegal how the seven of them looked so good in something that really was nothing more than a set of glorified pyjamas. Well, at least, it had looked like seven boys in glorified pajamas once she reached over and pulled Jirou’s yukata actually closed, despite the fact that Atobe gave her a vaguely dirty look about it. Not to say that her most-of-the-time best friend looked particularly bad like that, really, and it always did surprise her a little whenever she realised that, despite his wiriness, Jirou really did have a ridiculously nice body-but he’d probably take it as a compliment if she told him that the open yukata made him look like a cross between a harem boytoy and a lecherous old samurai. In miniature. With a heavy slant towards the boytoy. It was just easier not to explain.
And concentrate on meticulously squishing the part of her brain that was wheedling with her to reach out and adjust Hiyoshi’s yukata to show just a little more chest. He wouldn’t even blink if she did it, too…
Atobe glared, but, happily, didn’t ask. The nice part about being Atobe’s fanclub president was that he automatically assumed that she tended to do things for his benefit, even if they weren’t directly to him. Well, Mari wasn’t going to be the one to disillusion him. She’d wasted enough brainpower on that over the past three years.
Besides, Atobe honestly should have been thanking her anyway-didn’t the idiot even consider what would happen when they arrived at the festival ground, and all the girls started googling and cooing over his so-very-pretty, partially-naked little boytoy with a body that just asked to be petted?
She wasn’t even going to go into how unfair it is that Gakuto could apparently do somersaults even wearing a pair of geta, because she was still figuring out how to walk without mincing in the heavy wooden clogs. Without, really, all that much success, from the way she couldn’t seem to take a step that took her further than, oh, an inch or so.
She’d laid her hopes-admittedly, rather misplaced-on the fact that even if they did want to stuff her into the little kimono-y thing (and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about it the moment she’d stepped out of the house) but she’d hedged her bets on the fact that none of them would know what to do with it even if they had one to stuff her into.
She hadn’t counted on Oshitari. Maybe they did things differently in Kansai.
Ah, well. At least they’d picked one for her that had phoenix patterns on it-a blue background and yellow firebirds, not flowers. And she’d get to tease a certain bespectacled Osaka boy about where in the world he’d learned how to tie an obi-what more an obi with just a hint of the inside-colour showing in a careful fold at the front, precise as the placement of a geisha’s combs. Because she’d counted on that being her one out. Heck, she didn’t know how to tie an obi-she actually doubted that her aunt would have been able to do as good a job as their team tensai had.
On second thoughts, no, perhaps she’d better not ask. There was a pretty fair chance she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Watermelon was all very well, but the firework displays-and the boats? Why did they have to watch fireworks in a boat? -really were an extravagance, because after about the first fifteen minutes, the ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhh’ and ‘that’s pretty’ in her mind quickly gravitated towards ‘gracious, that’s a lot of pollution, and how long am I going to have to keep watching Shishido snuggle into the crook of Ootori’s shoulder? I don’t want to know what Oshitari and Gakuto are up to so I’m not going to turn around. Jirou really shouldn’t be nuzzling Atobe’s lap like that if he doesn’t want to end up in the water… though it’s anyone’s bet whether it’ll be Shishido who chucks him in, or me…’
Summer vacation honestly was slowing down her reflexes, because she should have known that the reason for the delicate finger foods and the cool sweet fruits was, of course, so a certain three couples could enjoy a lover’s meal in the light of a firework display, floating calmly in the middle of a river. She’d really thought that Gakuto and Oshitari were going to be the two fish of relative sanity flopping and gasping for air in this boatful of sap-because once Atobe had hauled himself out of his own metaphorical Egyptian river, he and Jirou had, in their own way, become worse than the Purity Pair-but after seeing the way Gakuto wrapped his lips around a strawberry like that, lips moving in slow sucking motions, Oshitari smiling as he watched his boyfriend over the edge of his glasses with the fireworks reflecting in the lenses… well, she’d been careful not to turn around again.
Which left her. And Hiyoshi. Carefully not looking at each other, or at anyone else, as they sampled from their boxes and watched the fireworks, in the very middle of the boat, or at least, she was being very careful not to look at him, because as it was, in the close quarters, her skin broke out in a rash of goosebumps every time the sleeve of his yukata brushed with the briefest rasp of fabric against hers.
Right this moment, she would have killed for a certain oversize, silently looming presence, but she’d been informed, when she’d asked, with a careful lack of panic in her voice, that said presence was, at the moment, celebrating with his equally oversize family.
No, she certainly didn’t need to ask whose idea this expedition had been.
Mari… was going to kill a certain little sleepy boy who saw far, far more than anyone ever meant him to see. Jirou really was honestly one of her best friends, and he’d squeezed her hand through some of the darkest periods of her life, but the little meddling matchmaker should have known better… wasn’t it enough torture that Hiyoshi actually saw her when he looked at her, nowadays, and smiled, sometimes, when he did?
Well, all right, so that was her fault. Still.
Glaring at Jirou when he was alternating between swooning with sleepy bliss against Atobe’s chest, occasionally bouncing and pointing at a particularly impressive barrage of fireworks, playing the Pocky game (with a very, very short piece of Pocky) and nibbling bits of watermelon off of the slice Atobe was holding….
She doubted very much that a nuclear bomb would have bothered the boy, and much as she was good at glaring, she wasn’t that good.
All right, maybe finally getting him and Atobe together when they had hadn’t been the brightest plot to ever cross her mind. She definitely hadn’t thought that the honeymoon glow would last… four months.
Ri-ight, when it took them three years to get here? Who’s in denial now, Mari, hm?
Hiyoshi’s voice-always quieter than what was happening around them, but she could no more ignore him than she could ignore the way Jirou looked so happy with Atobe smiling down at him-interrupted a rather delightful rash of tortures she could inflict on that pretty happy little blonde head. Switch his wake-up chocolates with licorice? Wait, Jirou probably liked licorice. “Your yukata suits you, Mari.”
Whose idea had it been to have him calling her by her first name, just like everyone else?
Oh, of course. Hers.
Still, though, Mari had to smile, even though the sound of him saying her name like that made her spine sparkle like fireworks in the hot night, and she bowed her head to wipe away the sweat on her forehead, and the strands of hair that had escaped from her bun with it. Neither of them had any problems being quiet together, really, and they’d spent hours together doing nothing but reading in silence, but normally, their quiet wasn’t this… awkward. Or perhaps she was the only one who felt it was awkward, surrounded by three kissing couples, with both of them sitting in seiza and a handspan of air between them. It didn’t change anything. It never had. “You say that because you traditional boy-types like your women mincing and housebound.”
But he cocked his head to look at her, and his eyes glittered, just so, in the light of the fireworks. Honestly, that really did the most annoying things to her pulse… “You say that, but you were mincing, today.”
Mari winced. Not least because the boy hadn’t the least clue that the words made it sound, just a little, like he wanted her as his woman. “I’m going to hit you, Hiyoshi-kun.”
If she hadn’t been holding a piece of fruit, she probably would have done it, too. Mostly because wearing these geta, it was annoyingly true, and she did… mince. That didn’t mean he had to say it-though, of course, it was Hiyoshi, he would say it, wouldn’t he?
The expression on his face didn’t change-the wind that was studiously avoiding her tousled his bangs just a touch, and brushed over his smooth, cool brow despite the sticky night-except, perhaps, for the faintest quirk of an eyebrow, and in the light of the fireworks that burst over them, his eyes gleamed with challenge-and, perhaps, maybe just the faintest touch of a dangerous little smile. “You could. Or you could try. ”
If she hadn’t fallen for him three years before, Mari suspected, with a twitch of annoyance, that she probably would have in that instant-the gold of his eyes darker than the showers of light, but brightening when the very edges of his mouth curled into a faint, faint smile. Damn that smile. Damn it, damn it, damn her for not being able to look away from it until he lifted his chin and looked up into the fireworks again, a volley of crimson and gold that showered the river with reflections of light.
That instant, like a hundred, or a thousand, before it.
But his fingertips brushed the inside of her left hand-ostensibly the one she’d have punched him with, and he knew that far, far too well, he’d been her partner in the dojo too often-and she pulled away with a shiver when her blood ran too close to the surface for her to quite be able to bear his touch with anything resembling equinamity. “You know I would try. Except… I’m going to end up in the water if I do, aren’t I?” she chuckled, just a little ruefully. Not least because having him block one of her strikes by grabbing her and pinning her had the irritating tendency to make her knees go very, very weak. Luckily-luckily?-more often than not she was already on the floor by the time that happened, but considering that they were in a flat-bottom boat, well…
His smile quirked again, but thankfully-thankfully-this time, he didn’t look at her. Just let his hair fall over his eyes when he bowed his head, taking the last piece of fruit from his bento box. “Yes.” He considered her, for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder; she watched his eyes wash over the topography of the boat. Well, he was braver than she was, to look back at Oshitari and Gakuto. “And from the way the boat would rock, probably Mukahi-senpai, as well.”
Well, she could definitely see why she’d fallen in love with him.
They were perfectly in accord when he raised an eyebrow at her, and she grinned back.
“If you two are done with your foreplay,” the drawl came from behind her, and she’d probably would have jumped if she hadn’t been focusing so hard on not letting her hand drift over in Hiyoshi’s direction to beg for another brush of his calluses against the tingling inside of her wrist, “would you like some more watermelon?”
Her murder list was getting longer by the minute. Swat went her mental flyswatter on Oshitari Yuushi’s head.
Hiyoshi, of course, didn’t even twitch. Well, neither did she, but she’d had three years’ worth of practice at it. “You’re not one to talk about anyone’s foreplay, Oshitari. Remember, I’ve seen you-” she shot over her shoulder-before blinking down at the hand offering her a slice of watermelon just underneath her nose.
She’d taken it and was thanking Hiyoshi for it by the time she blinked again, and realised that she hadn’t said that she wanted one. And that Oshitari was snickering behind her.
Her accusing glance in her seatmate’s direction found him calmly taking a bite out of his own slice, with the faintest quirk of amusement making the edges of those tilted, exotic eyes slant upwards-gentler with unvoiced laughter than she’d ever thought she’d see that fierce gaze. As he, rather carefully, did not look at her. “I don’t want to know what you saw Oshitari-senpai doing, Mari.”
“All right,” Mari growled, just under her breath. “Who told you that giving me food was the best way to shut me up?”
He was blunt, but he’d always been, his shoulders moving in a silent shrug. “No-one. Didn’t you say watermelon was your favorite?” his eyes slanted to hers again-not feigned curiousity, knowledge, and he was as confident in the answer as he’d ever been on the courts.
Mari blinked again. She couldn’t remember ever having mentioned it, though there’d been that time when they’d had it at his place, but… “Well, yes, but…”
Her new, improved murder list was going to start with one Hiyoshi Wakashi, because if he kept doing things like that… who remembered their friends’ favorite fruits (who weren’t as crazy and organised as she was?)
“Then it’s fine.” His shrug rippled his shoulders again, careless. “Have you written your wish yet?”
“Wish? What-oh. Tanabata, right.” Typical Hiyoshi. Topic change at the drop of an eyelash. Well, she’d never thought a great deal of Valentine’s, or White Day, or, for that matter, most holidays. Still, though, Tanabata, with its bridge of birds, its weaver, its shepherd… well, she’d been charmed by it quite despite herself. Not least because the sight of the Hyotei Regulars pestering each other over little slips of pastel-coloured paper was far more adorable than she’d ever given the lot of them credit for. “That’s… day after tomorrow? Just how many of the things am I going to have to write?”
Well, if the night was clear this year, perhaps she’d let herself believe that the wishes that they wrote on their little irogami, their coloured slips of paper, and hung from bamboo branches for the Weaver and the Shepherd to see as they met halfway, walking on the backs of swallows… perhaps she’d let herself believe this year that they came true. Perhaps she’d let herself believe that writing dozens of the things to hang in the classrooms, and club room, and wherever anyone kept Tanabata bamboo branches, actually did something other than make Japan rather resemble a uniquely Asian Christmas tree.
“Just one more.” He shrugged, again, casual. Well, he’d know as well as anyone just how many irogami they all had to write, and she’d gotten rather good at writing the characters for hers so that they actually looked like they were supposed to… “Otousan says you’re as much a student as anyone else, so you can hang one in the dojo, if you want. To counteract the sheer single-minded idiocy of mine, he said.”
She had to chuckle-well, at least as much because Hiyoshi didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow when he said that. Hiyoshi’s father, head of the dojo, really was a character, on occasion. He probably wouldn’t have done too badly if he’d had daughters instead of sons, she’d thought sometimes, which perhaps was why he’d taken so strongly to her, but she never bothered to ask. Well, perhaps she hadn’t asked because it was an answer that struck just a little too close to home, because she wasn’t part of Hiyoshi’s family, no matter how much Hiyoshi’s father wistfully commented that she and his son made such a nice pair, and Hiyoshi actually talked about things other than martial arts and tennis around her… “Please tell me you didn’t write ‘gekokujou’ on yours again.”
“Mari.” He just raised an eyebrow at her, brows furrowed with genuine puzzlement. “Why would I want to write anything else?”
Why, indeed?
Her mouth moved in something that perhaps would have been a smile at any other time. She could have said something about gekokujou over whom, and teased him about that narrow focus of his until he frowned, considering that virtually everyone else on the Regular team had written something about their significant other… but the joke filled her throat like the smell of an overstrong perfume, heavy and thick and cloying, and she choked it down. “I suppose that’s true enough.”
It wasn’t disappointment in her voice, in the back of her mind, because he’d never wanted anything else. Perhaps she’d fallen for him for that very reason, because Hiyoshi never wanted anything else, and it was the reason they could be friends, and the reason she’d never mention to him how she felt. Why, really, wish for something that couldn’t come true?
But her heart was full to aching, to bursting with old pain and comfort and quiet, the warmth of him that she could feel even with the handspan of air too thin between them, the sound of fireworks and the way the watermelon was cool in her mouth and in her hand, and Mari closed her eyes, and sighed.
She wrote ‘serenity’ on her irogami the next day, the way she had every year, before she arrived at Regular practice to hand it to Hiyoshi. Well, she could have probably simply walked to his house-it certainly was much closer than school and the tennis courts-but if she was going to be honest with herself, she’d missed the sight of her boys having their fun-well, fun as far as ‘fun’ took over one’s life and most of one’s being-on the courts. Just a little. Well, just a little enough that she pillowed her chin in her hands and sighed with silent contentment when Jirou cheered his way through a point against Hiyoshi, dancing over to the adjacent tennis court to declare his momentary victory to Atobe. Something… about a bet.
Though, frankly, from the gleam in Atobe’s eyes, she wasn’t going to ask for what the stakes of that particular wager were. There wasn’t a person on the Regular squad or otherwise who actually believed it when Atobe wrote, ‘To get Jirou to sleep on his own side of the bed,’ on his irogami-when the idiot savant never even considered the fact that he’d just admitted that he and Jirou slept in the same bed to anyone who read his Tanabata resolution.
Well, not that there was anyone who didn’t know, by this point…
But Hiyoshi’s eyes were bright with his (rather unusual) victory over Jirou when he invited her over to pick a branch of bamboo to hang it from herself, and she had to smile when she realised-of course Hiyoshi’s father would insist on having everyone hang their irogami from a young, live bamboo plant, not a mere dried clipping. The leaves and stem were smooth and delicate between her fingers, her palms faintly sticky with the heavy humidity and the closeness of Hiyoshi watching her from the edge of his garden’s pond, close enough that she could have reached out to push him in, when she fumbled with the ribbon.
And Hiyoshi’s hands came over hers to help her tie it, their fingertips brushing, and the faint electric rasp of his calluses against the back of her hands wore at her control until she pulled back with her breath just this side of unsteady, her irogami hanging awkwardly from its own little branch beside his.
It was easier to let everyone, including herself, believe that when she wished for ‘serenity,’ she meant her own peace of mind when she brushed it down in neat strokes of her pen-not the grace of Hiyoshi’s callused, ugly hands whether they were moving in a form or tying a neat bow, or the way he’d closed his eyes and sat back on his heels, a rind of watermelon lying gently in his slack, open palms, and let the light of the last barrage of fireworks sing over his face before they’d drifted back to shore.
Tanabata dawned cool, and gray, but Jirou was warm and heavy sprawled on her lap, Atobe leaning at her side, when they looked up into a night so empty of rain-clouds that Jirou pointed out, rather dreamily, that the stars were crystalline, and the night around them shone. It was a good night for wishes, he murmured, and when he looked over at Atobe, at present asking his butler for some apple juice for all of them… he should have sparkled in the dark like a gigantic firefly, he was so happy, the dear little thing that he was.
Even if he was a distinctly evil dear little thing who did things like making very sure that she and Hiyoshi were the only unattached people on a boat full of happy couples feeding each other from the tips of their fingers.
Perhaps this year, she’d let herself believe-maybe.
But when she looked into the sky, she had to wonder-though there was no scent of rain in the air, perhaps what Jirou was seeing was just the stars in his own eyes when he looked at Atobe, because the clouds from the fireworks two days before dangled in the air-heavy, still, thick and gray and low-hanging as the bellies of nightmares, with the stars a thin film of light behind the smoke.
So she looked at Jirou, instead, draped over her like a boneless little blanket of papery-thin shirt and shorts, inching over and pulling her with him until he could put his head into Atobe’s lap again. “You know, I hope you realise that once all this matsuri nonsense is over and the gods are no longer watching, I’m going to hurt you.” She considered his smile, and cocked her head. “Perhaps badly.”
Mari wasn’t completely sure how it was that a voice so utterly blurred with sleep could be sly, but Jirou’s was, a quirk tilting his eyes when he tilted his head upwards and grinned at her. “Mari’s nice. You wouldn’t do something like that. ”
Her stock choice of threatening to make sure he never had children really was a very, very moot thing indeed. And if he and Atobe… okay, no, she wasn’t going to even think about that. “Yes, well,” she patted the small of his back-far too gently for the message she was trying to convey, really, “You’ve never tried to set me up with someone before.”
Jirou blinked over his shoulder at her, sheepishly, and reached for his glass of juice. The boy really had mastered the art of doing everything in a semi-reclining position. “Well, no, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had a dream about it, even. And it was okay, right?”
It was difficult to glower at someone who looked rather like a smug, happy carpet, but she made a good faith effort at it. “Only because he’s as oblivious as the characters in those books you like so much. Just you wait. When August comes, and we’re back in school…” they’d just see how much Jirou liked it when Atobe was surrounded by some of the cutest, most boyish members of his fanclub, basking in their adoration…
Well, no, not really, Atobe wouldn’t care, but it was amusing to think about it.
But Jirou’s grin didn’t so much as flinch around the edges. “Um, I guess. But maybe by then you’ll be too busy with someone else to get mad at me?”
There definitely had to be some demon blood in that boy somewhere.
Atobe’s chin jerked in her direction, sharply, from his contemplation of the stars. “Mari, you’re not going to be so crass as to leave the fanclub for another man. It would be far too much inconvenience to have to find another president to take over.”
She had to laugh-deeply, from her belly, whooping with it until she was doubled over over Jirou’s back (he complained that she was heavy, but he had no right to talk, when he was on her lap) and she wondered if perhaps that silly aching heart of hers might provide her with some air, since it didn’t seem to be good for much else, really.
And, again, at Atobe’s indignance when he declared that he was perfectly serious.
Some things never changed. But sometimes, perhaps…
Perhaps, she’d thought, perhaps this was the year she’d let herself believe that. Maybe things like wishes came true, and miracles happened, and pigs sprouted wings, and Oshitari and Gakuto stopped being the most perverted people she knew…
Yeah. Right.
Mari grinned to herself, faintly, as she comfortably silenced Atobe’s ranting into her ear about the inconvenience of irresponsible fanclub presidents by hauling Jirou into his lap like so much curly-headed deadweight, and wondered, vaguely, at the patch of clear, speckled with stars like the spots on a robin’s egg, that shone through the twilight of firework smoke.
~owari~
Start: July 3, 2004
End: July 3, 2004
Tanabata Matsuri is celebrated on July 7-it’s a festival where, well, as you guys have probably figured out, people write wishes and resolutions on irogami (coloured paper slips, otherwise also known as tansatsu) and hang them from bamboo branches. The legend behind the matsuri is that the Weaver and the Shepherd fell in love, but were not permitted to marry, and so were set on opposite sides of the Heavens. The birds felt sorry for them, so if the night of Tanabata is clear, swallows (or magpies, the stories differ) form a bridge for them to walk over so that they can be together for just that one night of every year. However, if the night is cloudy, the swallows can’t see their way to the heavens, and the Weaver and the Shepherd have to wait one more year to meet. I’m not entirely sure what the wishing has to do with the legend behind the matsuri-no-one I’ve asked is, either, really, but my boss hypothesised that since Tanabata is the festival of an impossible love fulfilled, it makes sense that it could be the festival of dreams becoming reality, too.
Well, not for Mari, but… I suppose that can’t be helped. ^^;
A happy Tanabata, everyone, and may all your wishes come true!