brightside [one-shot]
title: brightside
author: hika_nishi
pairing: masuda/tegoshi
rating: r
disclaimer: I own the computer I typed this on. That's it.
summary: If he’d had the presence of mind to think about what he was doing, he would have taken note of who he was dealing with, the rumors and the reputation. He probably would have laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. But he didn’t think.
note: prequel to Paradise. Nothing else to say, really.
It’s not a particularly special day, and he’s not a particularly special person, just another face in a sea of black uniforms moving in a common direction down the sidewalk, joking with friends about something that, in retrospect, wasn’t that funny. It’s December and his biggest concern right now was wondering what to get his family for Christmas. The only difference between today and any other day was when he almost got clipped by some kid hurrying along on a bike. He’s tempted to shout at him to what where he’s going, but that’s not really something he’d do.
Masuda sees the boy again outside the school, chaining the bike up to a railing. His face turns a noticeable pink shade when the boy sees him staring at him. He didn’t seem to have much of a problem with it, smiling and winking in Masuda’s direction as he heads into the building. He feels distracted for the rest of the day.
++++
From his seat in the back of the classroom, through the window in the door, Masuda sees him again, the bike kid. He’s walking by with an older woman, a teacher most likely, and a red faced girl who looks like she’s crying. He catches Masuda’s eye as he passes by, smiles at him before he disappears from view. Masuda can’t identify why he recognizes him.
In the cafeteria at lunch, Masuda points the bike kid out to a friend, casually mentioning that he almost collided with him this morning. “You know him, Shige?”
Kato stares for a few second before snapping his fingers, “Yeah, it’s that kid. Fuck, what was his name?” He hits the guy next to him with the back of his hand, an older friend named Koyama.
“Uh…Tagochi?”
“Yeah, yeah! Something like that.” He gestures for Koyama and Masuda to lean in. “I heard they caught him again this morning.” With that, Masuda remembers why he knows this kid. He can’t think of his name, Tagochi didn’t sound quite right, but he had a relatively famous reputation. Pretty much every guy in the student body envied him for the tally of girls he’d hooked up with in the school’s various restrooms. How far he got was a matter of speculation, the facts somewhat blurred in myth. Rumors said there were more than a few guys in that number, too, but no one was entirely sure. They’d suspended him the first dozen times, but that stopped once they realized he wasn’t learning from it. Today’s conquest must have been that girl with him this morning.
When Masuda glances at him again, he sees him, winks and mouths something Masuda can’t quite make out. He can’t explain why it makes his cheeks start burning.
++++
Over the next couple of days, Masuda sees him several times. Sometimes he notices, sometimes he doesn’t. Masuda starts to wonder if they always crossed paths this much, if he just never notices it before. He bumps shoulders with Masuda in the hall that day, smiles at him over his shoulder. Masuda can feel his face turning red and it embarrasses him. He faces the ground and ducks into the men’s room, quickly turning a knob on a faucet and splashing his face with cold water. He doesn’t want to walk into class like that, doesn’t want Shige smirking and poking at him. He’s distracted, so much so he doesn’t notice the door open and someone enter until the sink beside him is running.
“Hey.” Masuda’s head snaps up, catches his reflection in the mirror. His laughs at Masuda’s nervous expression, “You’re funny.”
Masuda shakes his head, tries to think of something to say, if anything at all. “You…uh…You almost hit me the other day.”
“I did?” he says with a slight tilt of the head. “Oh, sorry.” He turns off the water, shakes off his hands. “Is that why you’ve been staring at me?” Masuda stutters over words, making the boy laugh again. “Too bad. I thought maybe you liked me or something.”
“I…What?”
He smiles, takes a step toward Masuda, an invasion of personal space. “You’re cute, you know that?” Masuda blinks at him, confused, an involuntary smile crossing his face that he wished would go away. “What’s your name?”
“My…name?”
“Yeah, you know, what people call you.” The statement seemed slightly insulting in wording, but somehow it didn’t sound that way.
“Masuda.”
“Masuda,” he repeats. “Do you want to kiss me, Masuda? Since you’re cute, I’ll let you.”
If he’d had the presence of mind to think about what he was doing, he would have taken note of who he was dealing with, the rumors and the reputation. He probably would have laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. But he didn’t think. He chose the option that, at the time, seemed the foolish one, pressing his lips against the boy’s. When pulls away, he has a question of his own. “What’s your name?”
“Tegoshi. Yuya.”
“Tegoshi,” he says, mimicking. “Can I kiss you again?” Tegoshi responds by closing his eyes, pouting his lips. Masuda has other ideas, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him, into the stall against the back wall of bathroom, before leaning in to kiss him again, licking Tegoshi’s lips. He moves along the boy’s jaw, down his neck, Tegoshi tilting his head back to give Masuda room.
“You know,” Tegoshi says between deep breaths, Masuda unfastening the top button of his uniform, “I’m usually the one who takes the lead.” He giggles when Masuda’s lips brush over his collarbone. “But this is good, too.”
When Masuda feels a hand run up his thigh, touch between his legs, he suddenly changes his mind. This was a very good decision.
Or at least it was, until Masuda’s homeroom teacher pushes open the stall door. Then he’s mortified.
++++
They were sitting outside the closed door to the office, but Masuda’s could still hear his mother’s voice clearly, yelling at the principal that there had to be some kind of mistake. He kept his head down, utterly embarrassed to be in this situation. Unsurprisingly, Tegoshi didn’t look at all troubled.
“You think we’ll get suspended?” he asks, voice low, leaning in Tegoshi’s direction slightly.
“No,” Tegoshi says, calmly, “You can just blame me and they’ll believe you. As for me, maybe they’ll finally expel me and get it over with.”
“I don’t want you to get expelled.”
“Well it’s not really up to you, unfortunately.”
When they call Masuda into the office, he says it was all his fault. His mother cries, he gets one week suspension.
++++
His mother is fuzzy on the details when his father gets home, simply saying that he and another student had been caught breaking some kind of rule. The man is still furious. Masuda is grounded, made to do extra chores around the house while he’s home from school.
On the first day of his suspension, Tegoshi is waiting outside his house when he takes the trash at night. “Today sucked,” he says, as if Masuda had asked him a question on how school was.
“Couldn’t snare some fool like me in your trap today?” It sounds mean, though he meant it as a joke.
“I kept looking for you and you weren’t there.” He shuffles his feet on the ground. “I’d apologize for getting you in trouble, but I told you to just blame me. Why didn’t you?”
“Like I said,” he puts the top on the trash can, “I didn’t want you to get expelled. I wouldn’t want my days to suck because I was looking around for you.”
Tegoshi closes the gap between them, gives Masuda a light peck on his lips. “You’re different,” he says before walking away, looking over his shoulder after a short distance. “I like it.”
++++
We’re friends. That’s what Tegoshi says when he invites Masuda out to the beach on the first nice day of summer. Masuda wonders about his definition of friends, since it seemed to include hungry kisses and hands teasing dangerously high on Masuda’s thigh. He had nothing to compare it to, though. Tegoshi didn’t seem to have any other friends.
It’s not that Masuda minded it. He liked Tegoshi, really liked him. He figured that much out when he started mumbling his name when he dozed off in class, or the first time he dreamed about him, woke up with a hand down his pants. It upsets him that his mother doesn’t let Tegoshi come over, but then again, he didn’t have a very positive first impression with her.
On his birthday, when his mother is out buying a cake, he invites Tegoshi over. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday? I might have gotten you something,” he says as Masuda leads him up the stairs to his room. “How old are you anyway, Masuda?”
“Seventeen.”
“Masuda’s getting old,” Tegoshi laughs.
The room is quiet for a while, save for the occasional sound of Masuda clearing his throat, as if he has something he wants to say. “There’s something I want that I thought…you could help me with, Yuya.”
“What’s that?”
He looks away, not wanting his eyes to meet Tegoshi’s when he says, “I want sex,” in a quiet voice.
“Want me to hire someone for you?” Tegoshi says with a wink. He can’t tell if that was serious or sarcasm.
“No,” Masuda shakes his head quickly, makes a few stalling noises. “I mean, with you.”
Tegoshi laughs and Masuda feels like he wants to crawl in a hole and die, walking into a corner of the room and standing there as though it would make him invisible. He hears the sound of his bed creaking, followed by Tegoshi’s voice saying, “Hey, Masuda.” He turns around, Tegoshi’s sitting on his bed, leaning on his elbows, the first four buttons of his shirt undone. “If you want me, come and take me.”
Masuda hesitates, unsure, yet again, if Tegoshi is being serious or just pulling his leg. He decides now isn’t the time to try to dissect his behavior, taking long two long strides in his direction. His movements are quick and clumsy, fumbling with the other buttons of Tegoshi’s shirt. He laughs, “You’ve never done this before, have you, Masuda?” He nervously replies, no. “Me neither.”
His fingers loop into the waist of Tegoshi’s jeans. “Seriously?”
“I’m not a slut.” Masuda almost spits out a rebuttal regarding his reputation, but that would probably ruin the moment. He kisses him instead, sloppy and wet, pulling the denim material down to his ankles.
It’s a different side of Tegoshi that he sees after that. There’s no smart remarks or winks or pouty lips. He seems embarrassed, to Masuda’s surprise, and nervous, asking if this was going to hurt. Masuda can’t answer him, because he doesn’t know himself. He feels bad when Tegoshi’s face winces in pain, nails digging into Masuda’s arm, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. When that fades, Tegoshi mumbling Massu, Massu in breathy moans, Masuda thinks he’s in heaven.
That’s when his mother came home.
++++
She overreacted. Okay, maybe her reaction to seeing her son going at it with the boy that got him suspended all those months ago was justified, but Masuda couldn’t see it that way when she was screaming at a pitch that made her incapable of being understood except when she was calling Tegoshi a series of derogatory words. Whore and pervert seemed to be her favorites.
It was the first his father heard of that incident in the restroom. Combined with what happened tonight, he was blindly agreeing with his mother. Now they both considered Tegoshi a negative influence. His father was pretty obvious about his feelings, grabbing Tegoshi by the collar of his shirt and pulling him out the front door.
“Get the fuck off my property,” he says, tossing Tegoshi onto the street. “And stay away from my son.”
++++
He pulls Masuda into a janitor’s closet at school the next day. “You could just say hi in the hall like a normal person,” is his initial response.
“Right, I’m sure you want everyone to know you’re friends with me.” Masuda doesn’t want to admit that it’s true. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“Don’t be.” He leans forward, kisses Tegoshi’s cheek.
He sees Tegoshi reach into his pocket, pull out some paper which, upon closer inspection, he noticed was really money. “I got this from my parents’ dresser. I thought we could go somewhere special.” He pauses, lips a mere inch from Masuda’s face. “I never did finish giving you your present.”
++++
Tegoshi pays for a hotel room with his parents’ money. It’s not a fancy place, but it’s fine for a couple of teenagers who want to hide from mommy and daddy. They move slowly tonight, Masuda undressing him, leaving kisses down his limbs as he peels away clothing. Tegoshi is more talkative than Masuda thought he’d be, muttering nonsense amid repetition of yes, yes, yes and Massu, Massu, Massu.
He thinks he likes this Tegoshi even more than the outgoing one he met what seems like an eternity ago. He looks so small, so innocent, curled up on the opposite side of the bed, eyes closed, bangs in a mess across his forehead. It’s the first time Masuda really realizes he’s only fifteen.
Masuda reaches for his phone on the bedside table, calls Kato, says if anyone asks, he’s spending the night at his house. Next, he calls his parents with the alibi. He shakes Tegoshi gently, asks if he needs to call home with some excuse.
Tegoshi shakes his head, “They won’t care.”
++++
Their relationship continues like that. Sometimes they go to a hotel on the weekend, if they don’t have money, they go somewhere else, more public, more risky. There was one time in the back corner of a crowded movie theater during a bad horror movie, another time, Masuda fucked him against the shelves in a rarely visited corner of the public library. That’s the way it had to be. Tegoshi wasn’t allowed on Masuda’s property and his parents didn’t allow Tegoshi to bring people to his house.
Every day that goes by, Masuda likes him more. As autumn goes on, he thinks he’s falling in love.
But they still don’t talk in school, at least not in the hallways or cafeteria or any other public place. The often vacant janitor’s closet becomes their meeting ground when they want to see each other. Masuda notices a group of boys gathered around Tegoshi one day in the cafeteria. Something they say is apparently amusing to all of them, but not to Tegoshi. He catches Masuda’s eye across the room, mouths Don’t when he can tell Masuda wants to help.
Masuda finds him at the end of the day, sitting on the floor of the janitor’s closet, staring at the wall. He asks if he’s okay, asks what happened at lunch. “They called me a homo,” he says, eyes focused on a paint can on the back shelf, “asked who was the guy I’m fucking. Stuff like that. Don’t worry, I didn’t rat you out.”
“Yuya, I…”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“Are you upset about it?”
“No.”
“You look a little pale.”
Tegoshi turns his head, looks at Masuda with a smile. “I’m just not feeling that well, it’s fine.”
++++
“Something on your mind, Massu?” Tegoshi looks up at him, pressing kisses on Masuda’s stomach.
He’s unfocused tonight, counting beams along the underside of the bleachers and noting the cool ground under his bare back, rather than responding to Tegoshi’s attempts to please him. “I was just thinking…it’s getting cold out here,” he lies.
“Well,” Tegoshi starts, shifting his body, legs on either side of Masuda’s hips, “you’re the one who wanted to do it outside in late October. And then you don’t pay attention when I’m trying to warm you up.”
Masuda sighs, works up the courage to say what he’s thinking. “Do you like spending time with me, Yuya?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he laughs.
“I love being with you.” Tegoshi smiles at that, leans down to kiss Masuda’s neck. “I love you, Yuya.”
It’s not a good feeling when Tegoshi sits up in response, rolls himself off Masuda, and starts fixing his own shirt. “Don’t say things like that.”
“What’s wrong?” Masuda sits up, looks at him, confused, “I thought people liked to hear others say that to them.”
“We have a good thing, right?”
“Right.”
“Feelings like love ruin things like this,” he points back and forth between Masuda and himself. “So fall out of love.”
Masuda doesn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. “So, what, you don’t feel anything for me?”
“I do,” Tegoshi stands up, brushing dirt and grass off his clothes. “You’re my best friend.” He throws Masuda's shirt at him. “Put this back on, it really is getting cold out here.”
++++
Things cool off significantly after that. It’s not that want Tegoshi anymore, quite the opposite. It’s that he can’t do what Tegoshi wants him to, he tries, thinking of any negative quality that pops into his head, but he even loves those. No, things change because being with Tegoshi becomes painful, the realization that he won’t ever have his love in return.
When Tegoshi calls or talks to him in some private corner of the school, he acts like everything is okay, like that rejection just rolled off his back, but their conversations have gotten less personal, less intimate, and it wasn’t just from Masuda’s side. It felt like Tegoshi was pushing him away bit by bit. Masuda doesn’t even notice until two weeks after it that he missed Tegoshi’s birthday.
On December first, his parents sit him down in the living room. His father got a new job - in California. They’re leaving in January. He wasn’t transferred or offered a better job with higher pay, he’d gone out of his way to find a job far away from home. Far away from Tegoshi.
Masuda stares at his ceiling in bed that night, watching light move across it as cars pass down the street. Maybe this was it, the sign that it was really over. They had a good run, Masuda knew he’d never forget this past year, but there was no future there. Time to let it go.
The next day, he stops talking to Tegoshi entirely.
++++
It’s back to normal by the end of the year. On the last day before winter break, he’s just another student, laughing with his friends as they file down the hallway, lost in a sea of black uniforms.
“Massu!” He stops, Kato and Koyama do the same when they notice he’s no longer walking with them. “I know you can hear me, Massu!” Tegoshi is standing in the middle of the hallway, people staring as the make their way around him, his expression a mix of anger and pain. He’s breaking their unspoken rule, addressing him in public.
“Massu?” Koyama says with a bit of a laugh, one that silences when he sees the look on Masuda’s face. “Wait Massu. Masuda? Is he talking to you?” Masuda doesn’t answer him, doesn’t hear it.
“Why are you avoiding me?” Tegoshi shouts, intentionally raising his voice, drawing attention to himself. “How do you go from talking to someone everyday to completely ignoring them when they walk by?”
Masuda takes heavy steps in his direction, not wanting to shout across a crowded hallway. “Maybe I’m sick of being nothing more that someone to help you relieve your sexual frustration.”
“You’re ignoring me because I wouldn’t say I’m in love with you?”
“Will you lower your voice?”
“It got your attention, didn’t it?”
“We’re done, Tegoshi,” he says, turning on his heal and heading quickly for the door, keeping his head down to avoid the stares of other students. Even Kato and Koyama have that expression of shock and amusement on their faces. “What are you looking at?” he snaps at them, pushing his way passed, opening the door.
He hears Tegoshi shouting, “Massu, don’t walk out on me!” choosing not to listen.
He’s ready to move, now.
++++
A week before they leave, Masuda is in his room, packing the last of his possessions into boxes labeled Takahisa. It’s past midnight, but this takes his mind off things, off the bittersweet feeling of leaving the country. He grabs a pile of books to stuff into this current box, curses when they tumble out of his arms and to the floor. As he picks them up, a bunch of photos start slipping out of one, an old literature book his grandmother got him back when he was interested in that kind of thing.
Flipping one over, he remembers what they are and why he shoved them in a book. Each one of them is a photo of Tegoshi, some with Masuda included. The first was from a school party, when Masuda pulled Tegoshi into an alcove, snapped a picture in secret, one of his arms wrapped protectively around Tegoshi’s shoulders. There are numerous others, some similarly sweet, some of a far less innocent nature. He notices a wet drop on one of them and realizes he’s crying.
He spends the next two hours, laying the photos out on the floor, studying each one, remembering every detail of the days they were taken. Sometimes he smiles, sometimes he finds himself wiping his face with a sleeve.
There’s a tapping sound coming from somewhere. He starts looking around the room, following the sound. It’s coming from the window. Masuda pushes the curtains out of the way and looks out, a nearly full moon conveniently illuminating the dark street. Something hits the window, a pebble, Masuda figures from the sound. It’s Tegoshi that threw it, standing there in the moonlight in a black coat and jeans. Masuda thinks he’s never seen anything so beautiful, then laughs at the thought. Tegoshi waves him down, Masuda doesn’t hesitate.
It seems almost too good to be true, but he’s really there. Masuda opens his mouth to say hello, but Tegoshi speaks first. “I heard you’re moving away,” he gets right to the point. Masuda doesn’t say anything, just nods. He’s not sure where Tegoshi got that information, but he doesn’t probe the issue. “Where are moving to?”
“California.”
“You can’t go.”
“Why not?”
Tegoshi steps closer to him, Masuda noticing his eyes, red and wet, shining in the light. He kisses Masuda, lightly pressing lips against his. It’s surprisingly gentle for Tegoshi, compared to what Masuda is used to. “I love you.”
Masuda stands in silence for a moment, watching Tegoshi’s face. For the first time, he looks completely honest. “I thought you said love would ruin what we had.”
“That’s when I thought there was time.”
“What does that mean?”
“I always loved Massu,” he says voice sounding fragile. “But I didn’t want to be a couple if we had all these…restrictions on when and where we could be together. I figured, someday, you wouldn’t care what everyone else would think of you if you were with me. Then we could be in love.”
“That’s…” he wanted to say stupid or ridiculous, but when he thought about it, he could understand. “I’m sorry, Yuya. I’m so sorry.”
What Tegoshi does next is surprising, his arms wrapping quickly around Masuda’s waist. “Then don’t leave me.”
“It’s really not my choice,” arms tightly around Tegoshi’s shoulders. “You know my parents don’t want you near me. And your parents…”
“I don’t want to say goodbye.” Masuda lifts a hand to Tegoshi’s face, wiping a stray tear from his face.
“We can’t be together here.” He pulls Tegoshi close, crushing their lips together, arms wrapping around him as tightly as possible. When he pulls away, he looks Tegoshi in the eye, runs a thumb under his eye. “Yuya, run away with me.”
++++
His feet dig lines in the dirt as he moves back and forth on a swing, waiting on the playground near their school for Tegoshi. He has one bag with him, packed, almost to the point of exploding, with his favorite clothes, food for the trip, and the collection of photos that once had a home in a dusty book. Tegoshi had run home, promised to meet Masuda here with his things. He knew he was on his way, but the wait was driving him crazy.
He finally sees Tegoshi, running in his direction, a bag over his shoulder, guitar in his hand. “Ready, Massu?”
Masuda nods, gets off the swing, throws his free arm around Tegoshi’s shoulders. “I didn’t know you played guitar.”
“Yeah,” Tegoshi smiles. “I thought if we needed extra money, I could always play on the street like one of those people you see in the city. I could write some songs for Massu, too, if you want.” Masuda smiles.
++++
“Where’s the first train going?”
“Tokyo.”
“It should be easy to disappear there.”
They’re seated against the wall in the dark train station, nothing going out or coming in at four in the morning. Tegoshi rests his head on Masuda’s shoulder, hand gripping Masuda’s tightly. “Are your parents going to worry, Massu?”
He shrugs, “I guess. But I don’t care. They’re my past,” he turns his head, kisses Tegoshi’s hair, “you’re my future.”
“Nice, Massu,” Tegoshi giggles. “My parents won’t mind, I think.”
“What makes you say that?”
Tegoshi snuggles closer against him. “They had fun before I was born. My dad said more than once that they didn’t want me. I think they’ll be relieved that I’m gone, if they bother to notice, anyway.”
“They don’t love you at all?” his voice is full of sympathy.
“A long time ago, I figured I was a goldfish. The parents feed it and stuff for the sake of the kid who made them buy it, but when it dies, they won’t be mourning it. My parents are the parents, society is the kid, and I’m the goldfish.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s okay. I have you now.”
++++
The train is peppered with few passengers, Masuda and Tegoshi’s car empty except for them. Tegoshi flips through the photos Masuda brought, occasionally making comments about them, Massu looks good here or I can’t believe you took that. He says he’s keeping one for himself - the one from the school party.
“What are we going to do when we get to Tokyo?” Tegoshi asks, head resting in Masuda’s lap, feet hanging off the seats into the isle.
“I guess we find somewhere to live. We can get a hotel first - did you get money from your parents' stash?” Tegoshi nods, pats his hip which Masuda assumes means his pocket. “Then I guess we find jobs.”
“How well do they pay teenagers?”
“Probably not that well. But we’ll be fine.”
Tegoshi looks up at him, smiling. “You really think so?” Masuda leans his head down, lets Tegoshi’s arm snake around his neck, pulling himself up for a kiss.
“I know it.”
---------------------------------
I spent a long time trying to figure out where this would end. I considered ending it after they'd gotten settled in Tokyo, but really, that's not important for this story. This seemed like a good note to end on, before everything went to hell. This turned out a lot longer than I thought it would XD
This is my leaving for vacation fic XD Maybe I'll come up with something new to write while I'm away :)
author: hika_nishi
pairing: masuda/tegoshi
rating: r
disclaimer: I own the computer I typed this on. That's it.
summary: If he’d had the presence of mind to think about what he was doing, he would have taken note of who he was dealing with, the rumors and the reputation. He probably would have laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. But he didn’t think.
note: prequel to Paradise. Nothing else to say, really.
It’s not a particularly special day, and he’s not a particularly special person, just another face in a sea of black uniforms moving in a common direction down the sidewalk, joking with friends about something that, in retrospect, wasn’t that funny. It’s December and his biggest concern right now was wondering what to get his family for Christmas. The only difference between today and any other day was when he almost got clipped by some kid hurrying along on a bike. He’s tempted to shout at him to what where he’s going, but that’s not really something he’d do.
Masuda sees the boy again outside the school, chaining the bike up to a railing. His face turns a noticeable pink shade when the boy sees him staring at him. He didn’t seem to have much of a problem with it, smiling and winking in Masuda’s direction as he heads into the building. He feels distracted for the rest of the day.
++++
From his seat in the back of the classroom, through the window in the door, Masuda sees him again, the bike kid. He’s walking by with an older woman, a teacher most likely, and a red faced girl who looks like she’s crying. He catches Masuda’s eye as he passes by, smiles at him before he disappears from view. Masuda can’t identify why he recognizes him.
In the cafeteria at lunch, Masuda points the bike kid out to a friend, casually mentioning that he almost collided with him this morning. “You know him, Shige?”
Kato stares for a few second before snapping his fingers, “Yeah, it’s that kid. Fuck, what was his name?” He hits the guy next to him with the back of his hand, an older friend named Koyama.
“Uh…Tagochi?”
“Yeah, yeah! Something like that.” He gestures for Koyama and Masuda to lean in. “I heard they caught him again this morning.” With that, Masuda remembers why he knows this kid. He can’t think of his name, Tagochi didn’t sound quite right, but he had a relatively famous reputation. Pretty much every guy in the student body envied him for the tally of girls he’d hooked up with in the school’s various restrooms. How far he got was a matter of speculation, the facts somewhat blurred in myth. Rumors said there were more than a few guys in that number, too, but no one was entirely sure. They’d suspended him the first dozen times, but that stopped once they realized he wasn’t learning from it. Today’s conquest must have been that girl with him this morning.
When Masuda glances at him again, he sees him, winks and mouths something Masuda can’t quite make out. He can’t explain why it makes his cheeks start burning.
++++
Over the next couple of days, Masuda sees him several times. Sometimes he notices, sometimes he doesn’t. Masuda starts to wonder if they always crossed paths this much, if he just never notices it before. He bumps shoulders with Masuda in the hall that day, smiles at him over his shoulder. Masuda can feel his face turning red and it embarrasses him. He faces the ground and ducks into the men’s room, quickly turning a knob on a faucet and splashing his face with cold water. He doesn’t want to walk into class like that, doesn’t want Shige smirking and poking at him. He’s distracted, so much so he doesn’t notice the door open and someone enter until the sink beside him is running.
“Hey.” Masuda’s head snaps up, catches his reflection in the mirror. His laughs at Masuda’s nervous expression, “You’re funny.”
Masuda shakes his head, tries to think of something to say, if anything at all. “You…uh…You almost hit me the other day.”
“I did?” he says with a slight tilt of the head. “Oh, sorry.” He turns off the water, shakes off his hands. “Is that why you’ve been staring at me?” Masuda stutters over words, making the boy laugh again. “Too bad. I thought maybe you liked me or something.”
“I…What?”
He smiles, takes a step toward Masuda, an invasion of personal space. “You’re cute, you know that?” Masuda blinks at him, confused, an involuntary smile crossing his face that he wished would go away. “What’s your name?”
“My…name?”
“Yeah, you know, what people call you.” The statement seemed slightly insulting in wording, but somehow it didn’t sound that way.
“Masuda.”
“Masuda,” he repeats. “Do you want to kiss me, Masuda? Since you’re cute, I’ll let you.”
If he’d had the presence of mind to think about what he was doing, he would have taken note of who he was dealing with, the rumors and the reputation. He probably would have laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. But he didn’t think. He chose the option that, at the time, seemed the foolish one, pressing his lips against the boy’s. When pulls away, he has a question of his own. “What’s your name?”
“Tegoshi. Yuya.”
“Tegoshi,” he says, mimicking. “Can I kiss you again?” Tegoshi responds by closing his eyes, pouting his lips. Masuda has other ideas, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him, into the stall against the back wall of bathroom, before leaning in to kiss him again, licking Tegoshi’s lips. He moves along the boy’s jaw, down his neck, Tegoshi tilting his head back to give Masuda room.
“You know,” Tegoshi says between deep breaths, Masuda unfastening the top button of his uniform, “I’m usually the one who takes the lead.” He giggles when Masuda’s lips brush over his collarbone. “But this is good, too.”
When Masuda feels a hand run up his thigh, touch between his legs, he suddenly changes his mind. This was a very good decision.
Or at least it was, until Masuda’s homeroom teacher pushes open the stall door. Then he’s mortified.
++++
They were sitting outside the closed door to the office, but Masuda’s could still hear his mother’s voice clearly, yelling at the principal that there had to be some kind of mistake. He kept his head down, utterly embarrassed to be in this situation. Unsurprisingly, Tegoshi didn’t look at all troubled.
“You think we’ll get suspended?” he asks, voice low, leaning in Tegoshi’s direction slightly.
“No,” Tegoshi says, calmly, “You can just blame me and they’ll believe you. As for me, maybe they’ll finally expel me and get it over with.”
“I don’t want you to get expelled.”
“Well it’s not really up to you, unfortunately.”
When they call Masuda into the office, he says it was all his fault. His mother cries, he gets one week suspension.
++++
His mother is fuzzy on the details when his father gets home, simply saying that he and another student had been caught breaking some kind of rule. The man is still furious. Masuda is grounded, made to do extra chores around the house while he’s home from school.
On the first day of his suspension, Tegoshi is waiting outside his house when he takes the trash at night. “Today sucked,” he says, as if Masuda had asked him a question on how school was.
“Couldn’t snare some fool like me in your trap today?” It sounds mean, though he meant it as a joke.
“I kept looking for you and you weren’t there.” He shuffles his feet on the ground. “I’d apologize for getting you in trouble, but I told you to just blame me. Why didn’t you?”
“Like I said,” he puts the top on the trash can, “I didn’t want you to get expelled. I wouldn’t want my days to suck because I was looking around for you.”
Tegoshi closes the gap between them, gives Masuda a light peck on his lips. “You’re different,” he says before walking away, looking over his shoulder after a short distance. “I like it.”
++++
We’re friends. That’s what Tegoshi says when he invites Masuda out to the beach on the first nice day of summer. Masuda wonders about his definition of friends, since it seemed to include hungry kisses and hands teasing dangerously high on Masuda’s thigh. He had nothing to compare it to, though. Tegoshi didn’t seem to have any other friends.
It’s not that Masuda minded it. He liked Tegoshi, really liked him. He figured that much out when he started mumbling his name when he dozed off in class, or the first time he dreamed about him, woke up with a hand down his pants. It upsets him that his mother doesn’t let Tegoshi come over, but then again, he didn’t have a very positive first impression with her.
On his birthday, when his mother is out buying a cake, he invites Tegoshi over. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday? I might have gotten you something,” he says as Masuda leads him up the stairs to his room. “How old are you anyway, Masuda?”
“Seventeen.”
“Masuda’s getting old,” Tegoshi laughs.
The room is quiet for a while, save for the occasional sound of Masuda clearing his throat, as if he has something he wants to say. “There’s something I want that I thought…you could help me with, Yuya.”
“What’s that?”
He looks away, not wanting his eyes to meet Tegoshi’s when he says, “I want sex,” in a quiet voice.
“Want me to hire someone for you?” Tegoshi says with a wink. He can’t tell if that was serious or sarcasm.
“No,” Masuda shakes his head quickly, makes a few stalling noises. “I mean, with you.”
Tegoshi laughs and Masuda feels like he wants to crawl in a hole and die, walking into a corner of the room and standing there as though it would make him invisible. He hears the sound of his bed creaking, followed by Tegoshi’s voice saying, “Hey, Masuda.” He turns around, Tegoshi’s sitting on his bed, leaning on his elbows, the first four buttons of his shirt undone. “If you want me, come and take me.”
Masuda hesitates, unsure, yet again, if Tegoshi is being serious or just pulling his leg. He decides now isn’t the time to try to dissect his behavior, taking long two long strides in his direction. His movements are quick and clumsy, fumbling with the other buttons of Tegoshi’s shirt. He laughs, “You’ve never done this before, have you, Masuda?” He nervously replies, no. “Me neither.”
His fingers loop into the waist of Tegoshi’s jeans. “Seriously?”
“I’m not a slut.” Masuda almost spits out a rebuttal regarding his reputation, but that would probably ruin the moment. He kisses him instead, sloppy and wet, pulling the denim material down to his ankles.
It’s a different side of Tegoshi that he sees after that. There’s no smart remarks or winks or pouty lips. He seems embarrassed, to Masuda’s surprise, and nervous, asking if this was going to hurt. Masuda can’t answer him, because he doesn’t know himself. He feels bad when Tegoshi’s face winces in pain, nails digging into Masuda’s arm, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. When that fades, Tegoshi mumbling Massu, Massu in breathy moans, Masuda thinks he’s in heaven.
That’s when his mother came home.
++++
She overreacted. Okay, maybe her reaction to seeing her son going at it with the boy that got him suspended all those months ago was justified, but Masuda couldn’t see it that way when she was screaming at a pitch that made her incapable of being understood except when she was calling Tegoshi a series of derogatory words. Whore and pervert seemed to be her favorites.
It was the first his father heard of that incident in the restroom. Combined with what happened tonight, he was blindly agreeing with his mother. Now they both considered Tegoshi a negative influence. His father was pretty obvious about his feelings, grabbing Tegoshi by the collar of his shirt and pulling him out the front door.
“Get the fuck off my property,” he says, tossing Tegoshi onto the street. “And stay away from my son.”
++++
He pulls Masuda into a janitor’s closet at school the next day. “You could just say hi in the hall like a normal person,” is his initial response.
“Right, I’m sure you want everyone to know you’re friends with me.” Masuda doesn’t want to admit that it’s true. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“Don’t be.” He leans forward, kisses Tegoshi’s cheek.
He sees Tegoshi reach into his pocket, pull out some paper which, upon closer inspection, he noticed was really money. “I got this from my parents’ dresser. I thought we could go somewhere special.” He pauses, lips a mere inch from Masuda’s face. “I never did finish giving you your present.”
++++
Tegoshi pays for a hotel room with his parents’ money. It’s not a fancy place, but it’s fine for a couple of teenagers who want to hide from mommy and daddy. They move slowly tonight, Masuda undressing him, leaving kisses down his limbs as he peels away clothing. Tegoshi is more talkative than Masuda thought he’d be, muttering nonsense amid repetition of yes, yes, yes and Massu, Massu, Massu.
He thinks he likes this Tegoshi even more than the outgoing one he met what seems like an eternity ago. He looks so small, so innocent, curled up on the opposite side of the bed, eyes closed, bangs in a mess across his forehead. It’s the first time Masuda really realizes he’s only fifteen.
Masuda reaches for his phone on the bedside table, calls Kato, says if anyone asks, he’s spending the night at his house. Next, he calls his parents with the alibi. He shakes Tegoshi gently, asks if he needs to call home with some excuse.
Tegoshi shakes his head, “They won’t care.”
++++
Their relationship continues like that. Sometimes they go to a hotel on the weekend, if they don’t have money, they go somewhere else, more public, more risky. There was one time in the back corner of a crowded movie theater during a bad horror movie, another time, Masuda fucked him against the shelves in a rarely visited corner of the public library. That’s the way it had to be. Tegoshi wasn’t allowed on Masuda’s property and his parents didn’t allow Tegoshi to bring people to his house.
Every day that goes by, Masuda likes him more. As autumn goes on, he thinks he’s falling in love.
But they still don’t talk in school, at least not in the hallways or cafeteria or any other public place. The often vacant janitor’s closet becomes their meeting ground when they want to see each other. Masuda notices a group of boys gathered around Tegoshi one day in the cafeteria. Something they say is apparently amusing to all of them, but not to Tegoshi. He catches Masuda’s eye across the room, mouths Don’t when he can tell Masuda wants to help.
Masuda finds him at the end of the day, sitting on the floor of the janitor’s closet, staring at the wall. He asks if he’s okay, asks what happened at lunch. “They called me a homo,” he says, eyes focused on a paint can on the back shelf, “asked who was the guy I’m fucking. Stuff like that. Don’t worry, I didn’t rat you out.”
“Yuya, I…”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“Are you upset about it?”
“No.”
“You look a little pale.”
Tegoshi turns his head, looks at Masuda with a smile. “I’m just not feeling that well, it’s fine.”
++++
“Something on your mind, Massu?” Tegoshi looks up at him, pressing kisses on Masuda’s stomach.
He’s unfocused tonight, counting beams along the underside of the bleachers and noting the cool ground under his bare back, rather than responding to Tegoshi’s attempts to please him. “I was just thinking…it’s getting cold out here,” he lies.
“Well,” Tegoshi starts, shifting his body, legs on either side of Masuda’s hips, “you’re the one who wanted to do it outside in late October. And then you don’t pay attention when I’m trying to warm you up.”
Masuda sighs, works up the courage to say what he’s thinking. “Do you like spending time with me, Yuya?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he laughs.
“I love being with you.” Tegoshi smiles at that, leans down to kiss Masuda’s neck. “I love you, Yuya.”
It’s not a good feeling when Tegoshi sits up in response, rolls himself off Masuda, and starts fixing his own shirt. “Don’t say things like that.”
“What’s wrong?” Masuda sits up, looks at him, confused, “I thought people liked to hear others say that to them.”
“We have a good thing, right?”
“Right.”
“Feelings like love ruin things like this,” he points back and forth between Masuda and himself. “So fall out of love.”
Masuda doesn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. “So, what, you don’t feel anything for me?”
“I do,” Tegoshi stands up, brushing dirt and grass off his clothes. “You’re my best friend.” He throws Masuda's shirt at him. “Put this back on, it really is getting cold out here.”
++++
Things cool off significantly after that. It’s not that want Tegoshi anymore, quite the opposite. It’s that he can’t do what Tegoshi wants him to, he tries, thinking of any negative quality that pops into his head, but he even loves those. No, things change because being with Tegoshi becomes painful, the realization that he won’t ever have his love in return.
When Tegoshi calls or talks to him in some private corner of the school, he acts like everything is okay, like that rejection just rolled off his back, but their conversations have gotten less personal, less intimate, and it wasn’t just from Masuda’s side. It felt like Tegoshi was pushing him away bit by bit. Masuda doesn’t even notice until two weeks after it that he missed Tegoshi’s birthday.
On December first, his parents sit him down in the living room. His father got a new job - in California. They’re leaving in January. He wasn’t transferred or offered a better job with higher pay, he’d gone out of his way to find a job far away from home. Far away from Tegoshi.
Masuda stares at his ceiling in bed that night, watching light move across it as cars pass down the street. Maybe this was it, the sign that it was really over. They had a good run, Masuda knew he’d never forget this past year, but there was no future there. Time to let it go.
The next day, he stops talking to Tegoshi entirely.
++++
It’s back to normal by the end of the year. On the last day before winter break, he’s just another student, laughing with his friends as they file down the hallway, lost in a sea of black uniforms.
“Massu!” He stops, Kato and Koyama do the same when they notice he’s no longer walking with them. “I know you can hear me, Massu!” Tegoshi is standing in the middle of the hallway, people staring as the make their way around him, his expression a mix of anger and pain. He’s breaking their unspoken rule, addressing him in public.
“Massu?” Koyama says with a bit of a laugh, one that silences when he sees the look on Masuda’s face. “Wait Massu. Masuda? Is he talking to you?” Masuda doesn’t answer him, doesn’t hear it.
“Why are you avoiding me?” Tegoshi shouts, intentionally raising his voice, drawing attention to himself. “How do you go from talking to someone everyday to completely ignoring them when they walk by?”
Masuda takes heavy steps in his direction, not wanting to shout across a crowded hallway. “Maybe I’m sick of being nothing more that someone to help you relieve your sexual frustration.”
“You’re ignoring me because I wouldn’t say I’m in love with you?”
“Will you lower your voice?”
“It got your attention, didn’t it?”
“We’re done, Tegoshi,” he says, turning on his heal and heading quickly for the door, keeping his head down to avoid the stares of other students. Even Kato and Koyama have that expression of shock and amusement on their faces. “What are you looking at?” he snaps at them, pushing his way passed, opening the door.
He hears Tegoshi shouting, “Massu, don’t walk out on me!” choosing not to listen.
He’s ready to move, now.
++++
A week before they leave, Masuda is in his room, packing the last of his possessions into boxes labeled Takahisa. It’s past midnight, but this takes his mind off things, off the bittersweet feeling of leaving the country. He grabs a pile of books to stuff into this current box, curses when they tumble out of his arms and to the floor. As he picks them up, a bunch of photos start slipping out of one, an old literature book his grandmother got him back when he was interested in that kind of thing.
Flipping one over, he remembers what they are and why he shoved them in a book. Each one of them is a photo of Tegoshi, some with Masuda included. The first was from a school party, when Masuda pulled Tegoshi into an alcove, snapped a picture in secret, one of his arms wrapped protectively around Tegoshi’s shoulders. There are numerous others, some similarly sweet, some of a far less innocent nature. He notices a wet drop on one of them and realizes he’s crying.
He spends the next two hours, laying the photos out on the floor, studying each one, remembering every detail of the days they were taken. Sometimes he smiles, sometimes he finds himself wiping his face with a sleeve.
There’s a tapping sound coming from somewhere. He starts looking around the room, following the sound. It’s coming from the window. Masuda pushes the curtains out of the way and looks out, a nearly full moon conveniently illuminating the dark street. Something hits the window, a pebble, Masuda figures from the sound. It’s Tegoshi that threw it, standing there in the moonlight in a black coat and jeans. Masuda thinks he’s never seen anything so beautiful, then laughs at the thought. Tegoshi waves him down, Masuda doesn’t hesitate.
It seems almost too good to be true, but he’s really there. Masuda opens his mouth to say hello, but Tegoshi speaks first. “I heard you’re moving away,” he gets right to the point. Masuda doesn’t say anything, just nods. He’s not sure where Tegoshi got that information, but he doesn’t probe the issue. “Where are moving to?”
“California.”
“You can’t go.”
“Why not?”
Tegoshi steps closer to him, Masuda noticing his eyes, red and wet, shining in the light. He kisses Masuda, lightly pressing lips against his. It’s surprisingly gentle for Tegoshi, compared to what Masuda is used to. “I love you.”
Masuda stands in silence for a moment, watching Tegoshi’s face. For the first time, he looks completely honest. “I thought you said love would ruin what we had.”
“That’s when I thought there was time.”
“What does that mean?”
“I always loved Massu,” he says voice sounding fragile. “But I didn’t want to be a couple if we had all these…restrictions on when and where we could be together. I figured, someday, you wouldn’t care what everyone else would think of you if you were with me. Then we could be in love.”
“That’s…” he wanted to say stupid or ridiculous, but when he thought about it, he could understand. “I’m sorry, Yuya. I’m so sorry.”
What Tegoshi does next is surprising, his arms wrapping quickly around Masuda’s waist. “Then don’t leave me.”
“It’s really not my choice,” arms tightly around Tegoshi’s shoulders. “You know my parents don’t want you near me. And your parents…”
“I don’t want to say goodbye.” Masuda lifts a hand to Tegoshi’s face, wiping a stray tear from his face.
“We can’t be together here.” He pulls Tegoshi close, crushing their lips together, arms wrapping around him as tightly as possible. When he pulls away, he looks Tegoshi in the eye, runs a thumb under his eye. “Yuya, run away with me.”
++++
His feet dig lines in the dirt as he moves back and forth on a swing, waiting on the playground near their school for Tegoshi. He has one bag with him, packed, almost to the point of exploding, with his favorite clothes, food for the trip, and the collection of photos that once had a home in a dusty book. Tegoshi had run home, promised to meet Masuda here with his things. He knew he was on his way, but the wait was driving him crazy.
He finally sees Tegoshi, running in his direction, a bag over his shoulder, guitar in his hand. “Ready, Massu?”
Masuda nods, gets off the swing, throws his free arm around Tegoshi’s shoulders. “I didn’t know you played guitar.”
“Yeah,” Tegoshi smiles. “I thought if we needed extra money, I could always play on the street like one of those people you see in the city. I could write some songs for Massu, too, if you want.” Masuda smiles.
++++
“Where’s the first train going?”
“Tokyo.”
“It should be easy to disappear there.”
They’re seated against the wall in the dark train station, nothing going out or coming in at four in the morning. Tegoshi rests his head on Masuda’s shoulder, hand gripping Masuda’s tightly. “Are your parents going to worry, Massu?”
He shrugs, “I guess. But I don’t care. They’re my past,” he turns his head, kisses Tegoshi’s hair, “you’re my future.”
“Nice, Massu,” Tegoshi giggles. “My parents won’t mind, I think.”
“What makes you say that?”
Tegoshi snuggles closer against him. “They had fun before I was born. My dad said more than once that they didn’t want me. I think they’ll be relieved that I’m gone, if they bother to notice, anyway.”
“They don’t love you at all?” his voice is full of sympathy.
“A long time ago, I figured I was a goldfish. The parents feed it and stuff for the sake of the kid who made them buy it, but when it dies, they won’t be mourning it. My parents are the parents, society is the kid, and I’m the goldfish.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s okay. I have you now.”
++++
The train is peppered with few passengers, Masuda and Tegoshi’s car empty except for them. Tegoshi flips through the photos Masuda brought, occasionally making comments about them, Massu looks good here or I can’t believe you took that. He says he’s keeping one for himself - the one from the school party.
“What are we going to do when we get to Tokyo?” Tegoshi asks, head resting in Masuda’s lap, feet hanging off the seats into the isle.
“I guess we find somewhere to live. We can get a hotel first - did you get money from your parents' stash?” Tegoshi nods, pats his hip which Masuda assumes means his pocket. “Then I guess we find jobs.”
“How well do they pay teenagers?”
“Probably not that well. But we’ll be fine.”
Tegoshi looks up at him, smiling. “You really think so?” Masuda leans his head down, lets Tegoshi’s arm snake around his neck, pulling himself up for a kiss.
“I know it.”
---------------------------------
I spent a long time trying to figure out where this would end. I considered ending it after they'd gotten settled in Tokyo, but really, that's not important for this story. This seemed like a good note to end on, before everything went to hell. This turned out a lot longer than I thought it would XD
This is my leaving for vacation fic XD Maybe I'll come up with something new to write while I'm away :)