[Fic] After the Cold (for wiccanlilly)

[postingwhore]

Title: After the Cold
Author:  reposoir
Recipient: wiccanlilly
Pairing: Shinji/Shishido
Rating: R
Summary: Trying to escape the past, Shishido is found by someone unexpected.
Notes: Dear Radford, I hope you like this, even if there isn't much to warrant a high rating. P.S. Thanks to my helpers for all the suggestions!!


He rushes down, carving the mountain with the knife's edge of his board. He leans back a little, lifts his head, and squints through his goggles into the blinding gleam from the snow. It's a black diamond run, steep and riddled with hairpin turns. The freezing air burns his face. He flexes his body to release the pressure, and his speed increases, the trees becoming a blur of pine behind him.

Near the finish the run collects more boarders. Shishido veers a hard left, then left again to avoid a lesson in progress, where students even fall over on the bunny hill t-bar. He skids to a stop near the resort cafeteria, stashes his board, and shuffles inside. His face is on fire, prickling with heat and frost-bite all rolled into one. His goggles steam up. His stomach starts to rumble.

Shishido sits by himself at the end of a Formica table. He shovels down a bowl of ramen. The salt sticks to his lips, and chaps them even more. To his left, there's a group of university-aged girls in North Face suits checking their cellphones. Across the table, there's a young couple: the girl leans into the boy, bats her lashes, plays with his discarded ski gloves.

Shishido clenches his jaw. He drains the last of the broth from his bowl, hobbles to the bathroom for a piss, and makes for the slopes again. He doesn't give himself a moment to think, to check his cellphone, or to play with the discarded gloves of a partner.

He grabs the chairlift for the run on the back side of the mountain: double black diamond this time. He watches the sheer drops of rock under his feet. Two girls in the chairlift ahead start to shriek. Shishido adjusts his goggles. His snowboard sits in the empty space beside him. His cheeks prickle anew with frostbite, and he doesn't really care.

~*~*~*~

At half-past seven he crawls into his room, bowlegged and wincing. It's not much bigger than a closet, but it's mostly warm from an electric heater and there's a thick futon to crawl under. Shishido closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore the throbbing in his muscles.

His mind drifts a little. There's probably fresh powder gracing the ground outside his window. Snowflakes clinging to the glass pane, sliding down in a melting death. He reaches his hand out. His eyes snap open. There's nothing except a cold tatami floor.

Shishido swallows.

In the morning, he'll get up, pull his snowsuit on, and do it all again.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

~*~*~*~

If Shishido listened, he would hear the inn's owner in the kitchen at breakfast time. The rice cooker hisses, and she's got her middle-aged daughter manning a pot of miso soup.

"That boy in room six, all by himself…" She clucks her tongue.

"Better him than the couple in room four," the daughter says. She blinks, bleary-eyed and awake since half-past five to start cooking. "They kept me up half the night."

The owner swats her daughter with the rice spoon, but she still laughs under her breath.

Budget inns near the ski resorts tend to attract young people, from Tokyo, Osaka, even Naha, on occasion. Shishido doesn't look out of place in the breakfast room. He eats his soup and shovels down three bowls of rice. The pickles he saves for last. He wriggles his toes under the table. Above his head, there's a postcard of a tropical island. Palm trees sway. The water is translucent. The beach is a different kind of white powder from the snow here.

Shishido stiffens, and his chest tightens up. He looks away. He's halfway to the door before he realizes the owner asked him if he'd like more rice.

Shishido yanks his ski cap down over his ears. The voices of the other guests are muffled, and so is the sound of another guest entering the lobby, asking if there's room, if there's a toilet at least, just came from the overnight train out of Tokyo and would really like to get some good sleep…

Shishido doesn't hear any of it. He grabs his snowboard, slips his feet into his boots, and pops a stick of mint gum into his mouth. As he steps outside a rush of cold winter slams into his face.

Almost like a scud serve.

~*~*~*~

It's pitch black before he's back at the inn, saddle-sore all over again. His stomach growls worse than Birdie back home. Shishido counts eight, ten months since he last saw her, pet her silky ears, pressed his face into her warm, breathing side. That was before the vet appointment, and the phone call that left Shishido sitting in the apartment with wet sleeves.

He can't feel anything now. He peels his thick gloves off, and the tips of his fingers are white.

"You have a phonecall," the owner says. She waits for him to peel off his snowpants, and, damp with sweat, stink up her foyer. A couple walks into the breakfast room, for dinner. Shishido's head swims with the smells of fried fish and lamb hot pot.

The owner hovers with her smile. She won't let him go until he answers the phone. Shishido swallows hard, and says hello. He waits a beat for his mother's voice.

Instead, Atobe says, "You can't hide, Shishido."

Shishido rolls his eyes. He opens his mouth to tell Atobe to fuck off, but the owner is there behind him, to do her duty and make sure that Shishido takes this call.

"What do you want?" he says. His voice is gravelly and foreign. He hasn't said more than 'size twenty-six' to the clerk in the ski rental shop in a week.

"Your mother contacted me last week after you pranced off and left your cell behind."

Shishido pulls the receiver from his ear. The owner is behind him. Her presence prickles the back of his neck. With a sigh, he cradles the phone to his ear. Atobe talks enough for two.

"So I am checking up on you."

"Why?"

"Hn." Atobe pauses dramatically, drawing his words out. "To make sure you don't do something stupid. Something melodramatic. You remember back in junior high-"

"Shut up!" Shishido hisses. His face burns, from frostbite, and from shame, too. Lucky for him, Atobe is hundreds of miles away.

Unlucky for him, Atobe knows him too well. He chuckles under his breath. "Have fun drowning your sorrows," he says.

Shishido hangs up. He stands for a moment by the phone, his shoulders sinking, and his energy oozing from his body. The room feels too hot, his face too flush, and the owner is still there, chattering behind him about tonight's supper, and she's so sorry about the eating arrangements.

Shishido drags himself into the breakfast room. His knees creak. His hips ache. The soreness blooms through his body, rubbing his bones and throbbing in his muscles as a reminder he's still here. Shishido lets his mind go blank and focus on the food in front of him.

Across the table, there's someone else. The guy tilts his head a little, and frowns a little deeper. He opens his mouth.

"I know you."

~*~*~*~

Shishido doesn't know him.

The guy reaches for the pickles, and starts to talk. Shishido glances around: all of the other tables are full. His private table has been compromised by some strange guy who asks if Shishido wants his daikon. Shishido grabs his dish, and narrows his eyes.

"Do you work here?" he asks.

The guy blinks. Hair falls into his eyes, and he frowns. "I spent two hours on my hair this morning, and look what happens. The cold up here messes up hair, doesn't it? My hair hasn't looked this bad since Okinawa…"

A knife twists in Shishido's chest. Acrid bile from the daikon starts to climb up his throat. "Jeez," he mutters. "Do you ever shut up?"

The guy talks through dinner. Shishido tries not to listen, and the guy doesn't seem to notice when Shishido stares at the wall instead. Shishido starts to sit up, to get up and leave the stream of babble, but the guy's hand shoots across the table. Warm, damp skin touches his. Shishido locks eyes with him. Don't touch me, he thinks, as he yanks his hand back.

"How long have you been here?" he asks. "I just got in and I'm not sure how long I can handle the cold. It messes up my hair, having to wear a hat all the time. Skiing will make it worse, won't it?"

Shishido's temples pulse with the tight twist of the beginnings of a headache. He looks around; there's only a middle-aged couple in matching grey cable sweaters left in the dining room. And the strange guy, who stands up and follows Shishido down the hallway to his room.

"Don't know," Shishido finally says. "I snowboard." He fumbles with his keys and shuts the door before the other guy can invite himself in.

He stretches out on top of his futon. The mumbling from dinner, the din of a never-ending conversation is gone.

Silence rings in his ears.

~*~*~*~

He's from Tokyo, north-central Tokyo, always lived there. He's got a degree of some sort in Physics or Astrophysics, from a mediocre university. Worked filing jobs once the recession hit and no one wants to hire a guy fresh out of university with no experience besides part-time at a shaved ice truck in summers.

Doesn't Shishido know that well.

He quit the job-or it quit him, contract expired, no need to renew-and lived at home. Travelled to Okinawa and learned to dive. He wants to open a dive shack, or a boat tour company, or maybe run a franchise of A&W. Had Shishido ever had root beer? (No) It's really good, American, foreign. And he likes foreign girls, with their bright, straight smiles.

Tourism's hot in Naha in January. Too many people, crowds, it's too loud. So he came up to Hokkaido-never been, thought it'd be interesting to ski a few different slopes-except the guy never considered that January is prime skiing season. The inns are busy, the slopes are packed with powder, and skiers. It's not Tokyo, but you're still never really alone, except when you're asleep.

Shishido doesn't think about this because he is asleep, dreaming, maybe. His face twitches now and then. He sighs a little, and makes a slow, smacking unconscious noise. He exhales a name at half-past three: the darkest hour, before dawn, and too late for anyone else. His eyes crack open and he sits up to search the room. It takes him a moment to remember that he is here, in the inn, north of the Tsugaru Straight, and there is no one else in the room.

He lies back down and closes his eyes. He doesn't ever realize that his pillow is damp.

~*~*~*~

Wet snow fell last night. It clings to his board, his face, his mittens. Cold creeps under the wrists of his jacket. He's damp before the first run is halfway finished. The trees droop under the weight of the snow, bent over and tired. He takes a deep breath. Ice crystallizes in his lungs, and pierces his chest. Shishido slips on the edge. His board skids left. He flies right, and ends up tangled with himself in the snow. Another boarder shouts at him. Shishido swears under his breath. You can't move very fast in three inches of thermal down, and tied to a snowboard.

He dumps his gear, and sits at the end of the Formica table. Steam curling up from the ramen warms his face. He cups his hands around the hot, ceramic bowl. Voices ebb in and out of earshot, blurring into a continuous monotone.

He lifts his head.

The monotone isn't just from the other skiers. The guy from last night-Shinji or Shuji or something like that-he's sitting across the table, with a bowl of udon and another droning conversation with Shishido.

"I only went down the green run. It's not too bad, is it?" the guy says. Shishido starts to slurp his ramen. The guy keeps talking. He talks over any momentary lapse of silence. He talks about the snow, about the base, about the food he's not eating because he's too busy just talking. "I don't know if I could live here," he says. "It's too cold. I like Tokyo better, but Tokyo seems colder because there's no snow ever, just slush. I hate slush. Don't you? It gets all over your pants hems and makes them dirty. We don't wear snowpants in Tokyo…"

Shishido wipes his mouth off with his sleeve. "Do you ever stop talking?"

The guy stops. He actually takes a breath, looks down at his udon-cold, now, probably, from the hundred opens and closes of the cafeteria doors-and makes a noise of agreement. "I hate noisy people," he says. "It's nice and quiet up here."

Shishido looks around the cafeteria. It's half-past eleven, and packed already. He can hardly hear himself snort, let alone a pin drop.

Shinji nods to the plastic-wrapped sandwich on Shishido's tray. He reads the katakana slowly, like a child. The sounds stumble in his mouth. "I hate English words," he says. "That's why I can't move to Saipan. I've heard it's nice and warm, maybe even warmer than Okinawa. But I've never been there, so I can't tell for sure…"

Sharp pain stabs Shishido between the ribs. He sucks in a breath. The room turns on angle, and his head feels too light and too heavy all at once. His heart thumps against his chest, so tight that the pain flares all over again.

A hand touches his: warm, and a little clammy too. He feels like a fool, a lame fool sitting here, gasping for air with another guy's hand on his, practically holding hands across the table. But at the same time, Shishido doesn't pull away. He pushes the lump down his throat with a wad or three of saliva.

Then Shinji asks, "Do you think I should try the blue run this afternoon? I don't know if I'm ready. What if it's too steep? But the green is boring. Too many people there, too noisy…"

~*~*~*~

He waits at the bar of the joint, nursing a lukewarm beer with frostbitten fingers-again, doesn't he ever learn? There's a rock song on the radio, and he must be early, because the bar only has middle-aged salarymen-types already starting their post-skiing rounds. Or maybe there are no locals here under forty-five. Shishido swirls his drink around. He checks his cellphone, pretends to look less lame, tries to avoid constantly glancing back towards the doorway. He's by himself. At least at the inn, he didn't feel so awkward.

The song changes, and he's got company: Shinji mumbling in monotone like he's been there for the past hour, talking about how terrible the cold is to his hair, how he got lost on the main road from the slopes, is it even possible to get lost when there's only one road?

Shishido says, "No." Shinji keeps talking. He orders a beer, too, even though the bar tender raises an eyebrow. Before he can ask, Shinji pulls out his ID with a scowl, says he's legal. He turns to Shishido. "That always happens. Once, when I was in Ikebukuro with Kamio, they tried to kick me out of the-"

"Kamio?" Shishido asks. It comes out a little thicker than it should, and his face feels warm. He takes a long swig from the bottle.

"We went to school together," he says. "We played on the same tennis team. Don't you remember? We played you in junior high school. You played Tachibana-san. He was our captain. He was so good, he was picked for the Invitationals team even with all the high school seniors playing…"

Tachibana…

For a long moment, as Shinji goes on, Shishido is frozen to the bar stool, with his fingers gripping the bottle hard. The back of his neck prickles, as though it remembers the loss of his long hair, the ponytail that whipped the sides of his face when he ran across the court, chasing those smashes in vain. Tachibana laughed, called him weak, lame, a joke of a player from Hyoutei. And in the stands, his teammates watched, all of them…

"I don't play tennis!" Shishido snaps.

Shinji looks at him from above the rim of his bottle. "…when I was in high school, I pulled a muscle in my bicep, and I haven't played since then. I don't think we ever played Hyoutei in high school. That was when I started writing. It's nice, it's relaxing. Kamio says it's for fags, writing, too artsy for him, but he keeps a blog that he writes on sometimes. I read it once, but it was just about music. I like music, but his taste sucks. This song," He lifts his head to the radio behind the bar, "it's nice, isn't it? American music. They play a lot in Naha, lots of American things there."

It feels like hours that Shinji goes on. Shishido goes through three beers, enough to drown the mumbling out a bit, and to make the faint pulsing in his temples a little more bearable. Any more, and he'd have too much trouble on the tall bar stool. He orders gyoza, and eats four. Shinji orders two dishes of pickles, local-style mountain vegetables in salty brine. Shishido sucks on one, and his face puckers up. His tongue shrivels. Not like I'm getting a word in anyway, he thinks.

But Shinji licks his fingers. The saliva on his lips has a thin sheen in the half-light of the bar. Shishido taps his fingers on the counter to the tune of the music, mindless, easy motions of the rhythm relaxing to his muscles.

"It's Flumpool," Shinji says. "Their latest album. I saw them in concert two years ago. They played in Tokyo, a long show in Akasaka. What was the name of the hall, again? I can't remember. It was two-"

Shishido says the name. Shinji pauses, blinks a little behind his hair. "You went?"

"Yeah," Shishido says. His has to push down the tight, thick lump in his throat. "My…friend, he was supposed to come with me, but he bailed, last minute." He smiles a little, wry, with the bitter taste of stale beer in his mouth. "So I went by myself."

"They're playing again in four weeks," Shinji says. "I don't know if I'll go. I might be away from Tokyo. But I might visit my parents. It's been a while since I've seen them, and they ask, 'When are you coming home?' Do your parents ask that? I'd have to stay with them if I went, and they're so loud, and noisy…Maybe we could go together. Kamio hates Flumpool. He has no taste…"

Shishido strains for the last drops of beer in his bottle. He nods along every few sentences, grunts once or twice, pretends to listen. There's nothing back at the inn, except a cold futon, and another aborted call from home. The stool grows a little taller, a little narrow under his feet, but he raises his hand to the bar tender.

"Another Sapporo?"

Shishido glances over. There's less than a third left in Shinji's bottle. He shrugs, and lifts a second finger too.

~*~*~*~

The room is booked for one last night. "Sorry, we're full after that," the owner says. She bows her head in apology. Shishido shrugs it off, says he has to go home anyway. There's a full day on the slopes ahead, with cold winter rushing across his face, the cushion of snow under his board, and the impartial landscape of trees whizzing by.

His bones have liquefied by lunch. His muscles strain from too much use. Shishido sits in the cafeteria, and debates between one last run, or the hot sake from the counter. It's swill, but it's hot, and fills his stomach with something other than frostbite. The sun is low over the peaks of the mountains, and casts orange shadows through the cafeteria. More people are leaving than coming, and the lengths of silence grow longer and longer.

Shishido exhales deeply, and stands up. His back and thighs ache on the shuttle bus. Atobe would call him lazy, taking the bus instead of walking ten, fifteen minutes to the inn, but Atobe would have also brought his Range Rover-complete with winter tires and chains.

The inn is filled with thick smells of miso broth and something deeper, and meatier, maybe the regional lamb, or beef. Shishido walks past the garden to his room. Snow mounds the bushes and sweeps over the stone lanterns and bamboo fountains, a wave of white. There's absolutely no sound, no birds, nothing here. Shishido swallows hard.

He chills until dinner, with his iPod shuffling through Orange Range and EXILE and Monkey Majik, too. Flumpool's latest comes on. Shishido remembers about their upcoming show in Tokyo-four weeks away, isn't that what Shinji said last night?

Shishido's lips tug. He rolls over, runs a hand through the mess of his hair, and slides his door open. Definitely time for one last dinner here, and his stomach completely agrees.

Since it's his last night, Shishido doesn't say anything when that guy walks in, and sits down across from him. Shinji's monologue diffuses into the background, melding with the sounds from the kitchen, and the clink of chopsticks on bowls. Shishido starts with a Sapporo, and moves on to sake. Shinji alternates between beer and melon fanta. "I went to the conbini," Shinji says, "before I got back. It's so small, and there's nothing except Sapporo. Not everyone drinks only Sapporo, even though it’s Hokkaido. What if I want the new Asahi Light?"

"That's lame," Shishido says, between bites of the tomato soufflé. "Who drinks light beer besides pussies and girls."

"-like Asahi Light sometimes. Sometimes I want Sapporo. Sometimes I just want a fanta, but they didn't have any of that except melon, so I had to buy that…"

He polishes every last dish off, except the pickles, which disappear after he's picked at the grilled fish. Shishido can hardly think straight, with his melted muscles, and his floating head. He's lost count of the beers, but the owner will put it on tomorrow's tab, he's sure. Shinji's on another glass of fanta, and he smells a little too much of hair wax and salt, but whether it's from the pickles or sweat, it probably doesn't matter. The dishes are cleared, and the room quiets as each of the other tourists leave for the bath, or for sleep, or both. The tick of the clock's hand becomes a little louder. Shishido's insides twist a little more. He leans back, and looks around the empty room.

There's nothing but an empty futon waiting for him.

"You want…another drink?" Shishido asks. His voice sits heavy in his ears in the lapsing silence before Shinji answers. Shishido starts to cringe. He regrets asking at all.

But then Shinji shrugs, he can come, he doesn't have anything else to do, there's no cellphone reception, and there's a middle-aged guy from Osaka who keeps stealing the only computer in the inn.

So they sit on the floor of Shishido's room, with the contents of a conbini bag spread out between them, snacking on wasabi peas and the wrong brand of peanuts. Shishido is drunk enough to lie back against his futon, and let his mind drift roughly in the direction of Shinji's mouth, which never stops moving. Shinji asks him something, maybe: it's hard to tell with the words running together and the room a little too lop-sided with alcohol. Shishido grunts, the same as usual, and he thinks, The usual…? It feels like he's been here long enough to drift into the sound of the words. He leans forward, and exhales, and Shinji touches his palm to the back of Shishido's hands. Shinji mutters something under his breath that Shishido doesn't need to strain to hear, because the cadence of the words is sufficient.

Shishido is drunk enough, to lean forward and open his mouth, to answer the question with his lips. His brain is three steps behind. It's easier to not think about this, or anything from before. To let his body just go forward and into the rush, the same way he does standing on top of the ski runs, with the sky at his back and winter blasting any thoughts away.

Shinji shoves his hand down the front of Shishido's pants. It's been ages since he's done any of this: moan when someone's lips brush his jaw, gasp when a hand cups his underwear, hiss when teeth pull sharp on his earlobe. His body burns, sparks fly from nerve to nerve. Shishido digs his hands into Shinji's sweater, and bucks into the fingers weaving through his y-fronts, touching his aching erection.

He didn't even realize he was hard.

His mouth parts with a drawn-out groan, and the noise reverberates in his ears, over and over again, along with the sloppy, saliva-laden sound of Shinji's mouth on his neck. The air brushes over the spots on his skin that Shinji's mouth melted, and there's a cold aftershock. His hand slackens a little. So does his dick.

Shinji looks up, with eyes darker than Shishido has ever seen, the sort of eyes you could lose yourself in. His gaze flicks down, to Shishido's mouth, open and panting, as he licks his lips, tastes the salty, yeasty remains from Shinji that linger on his skin.

"You should come with me," Shinji says. "You should come to Okinawa." He moves his fingers along the top of Shishido's thigh, brushing his dick. But Shishido freezes as his erection withers. He jerks back. Shinji asks what, is he all right, is he not into this sort of thing.

"Shut up!" Shishido says. He grabs at his zipper. Shinji reaches out for his face, and Shishido shoves back hard. His body is heavy and sluggish, it won't move fast enough. Shinji's got to be as drunk as he is, and even though he's thinner, he's faster, grabbing at Shishido's arms and shaking him. Shishido can hear his brain slosh around in his head, and the names pulse against his skull. He blinks fast and hard at the sting in his eyes. He's an utter fool, the lame, pathetic idiot.

"What did I say?" Shinji asks. "Did I say something I shouldn't have? You don't have to come right away-you can think about, coming to visit Okin-"

Shishido slams the door. He glances down at his shaking hands. His nerves buzz from Shinji's hands and mouth, but inside there's a sinking pit that's just as cold and brittle as the snow outside. The voice in the hallway fades, replaced with the rustle of his clothes as Shishido sinks down into his futon. He squeezes his eyes shut, pushing away the frantic beat of his heart.

In the morning, he'll get up to nurse his hangover in the toilet until he drags his body to the reception desk. He'll pay his tab, mumble a thanks or two, and walk to the train station, as alone as he arrived.

~*~*~*~

He had finished the job just past four in the afternoon. It was another gig with leaflets, distributed outside the west exit of Shinjuku station. Fashionable teenagers and twenty-something with too much money to blow-or not enough-had strutted past in their skinny jeans and designer purses, en route en masse to the department stores. He was a nobody to them, ignored and pushed aside as they ran to make the light at the zebra crossing. The pay was dirt cheap, hardly enough for a bowl of ramen. Shishido pocketed the money and took the bus home-his suica card was out of money.

It was supposed to be his last job before their trip. Shishido flopped over the beanbag chair and flipped through the travel guide once more, glancing over to the door at every creak from the building hallway. The clock ticked from five to six, and then past seven, too. He tried email, but there was no response. Shishido scratched his head, wondered, and worried like the pussy he was. Did something happen? Did a train line shut down from another suicide, like last week on the Chuo? By eight, the rain had started: a slithery drizzle down the glass balcony door. The damp autumn had settled into the apartment, now that the a/c had been shut off, and the kotatsu propped up in the corner in anticipation.

He sat down on the floor, with a cup ramen and the tv remote. If Ohtori came home earlier, they could have gone out, maybe played a round at the batting cages or even headed to Shinagawa, to that cheap karaoke joint Shishido liked, the one with the all-you-can-drink-beer-Tuesdays.

Ohtori was probably finishing some last-minute work, Shishido told himself. He works too hard at the conservatory, trying to please everyone, and putting himself last. Shishido ignored the little voice that added his name to the mix, but it pawed at him. It nagged a little. What about me?

It was past ten before the door opened. Ohtori left his umbrella in the hallway to dry, but he tracked wet prints into the foyer. Shishido stood up. "Hey babe, long day?" He leaned in for a kiss. Ohtori didn't move, he just let Shishido press his lips to his chin, the only place he could reach. He didn't even look at Shishido when Shishido asked about the trains, the conservatory, the usual small-talk they never got beyond.

He smelled of wine.

Shishido jerked back. "Was there something on tonight?" He craned his neck. Ohtori put his coat away, and didn't say anything. Shishido tugged his arm, pulling at his shoulder to turn to him. "Was there a school event?"

"Yeah," Ohtori said.

"I was free, you know," Shishido said. His throat felt a little thick, and his words a little forced. "I was done at four today."

"It was a…family thing," Ohtori said. He lifted his eyes over Shishido's head to avoid his gaze.

Shishido took a step back. His hand loosened on Ohtori's arm, and his fingers trailed down to his hand. Which Ohtori didn't take. "Oh."

The rain pattered the balcony, punctuating the lengthening silence. A cold draft of air blew through the room. Shishido shivered.

"…my parents came," Ohtori said. He looked away, to the left, the direction of liars. "I thought you were maybe working late."

"You didn't want me there," Shishido said. The words, which had floated so long between them, and were never said aloud. Ohtori opened his mouth. When he didn't deny it, Shishido just stood there. He shook his head.

He didn't know what else to do.

There had been the June Gala. Ohtori played the piano concerto, or the symphony, or whatever it was. There was a string quartet, and a soprano, whose voice lifted the hairs on the back of everyone's neck except Shishido. He'd been twiddling his thumbs in the back row: it was a last minute ticket. Ohtori's family had been in the fourth row, proud and clinging to his arm at the after party.

Shishido had been told to 'not do anything embarrassing'. He had hung around the canapé table in his jeans. Everyone else in the room was in tuxes and long satin dresses.

There had been the vacation to Aomori-not much of a vacation, since it rained half the time and the inn was double-booked. Ohtori's sister called. They were in the middle of that hike, to Oirase Waterfall, and Ohtori blamed his cellphone reception. Shishido had pretended not to listen to their conversation.

"-yeah, up in Aomori."

"Mmmm…for a week."

It was an anniversary trip. Eight years to the day. Not that Shishido was lame enough to count or anything.

"Just getting some air, Nee-chan. Clearing my head. Naw, just me."

Ohtori had glanced at Shishido. Shishido was ahead, maybe fifty yards ahead through dripping pines and basilican zelkovas. The rush of the stream was loud, but Ohtori's voice was a decibel louder.

And the fact no one had ever to come to visit their apartment, except Atobe, and Oshitari, who crashed for a week when he broke up with that older woman. No one ever left Ohtori messages on the landline. Ohtori never invited classmates over, or his grandmother, the way Shishido did. Ohtori hadn't even come to visit Shishido's family for Obon the last three years, even though they only lived a half hour away.

So now, Ohtori was standing there, with his mouth set in a thin line, denying nothing. Shishido cracked his knuckles, he clenched his jaw, he was desperate to punch Ohtori's mask right off his face.

Except he didn't.

His knees gave out under him. And he sunk to the floor, in silence.

~*~*~*~

The truth is there's no apartment to come back to in Tokyo.

He's got a corner of the spare room in his parents. How shameful is that, to be twenty-something and moved back in with mom and dad. It's dead quiet in the middle of the day, with his father at work, his mom out on errands, and the beagle long dead and crammed into an urn on the shelf. There's nothing available at the agency, not for two months at least. The manager looked at Shishido above the frame of his lenses, "We just took on a bunch last week. You're a little late."

Shishido shrugged his shoulders under his parka, kept a stiff lip and walked out the door, down the street to the first Mr Donuts in sight. He sat at a Formica table, stirring a weak coffee milk and picking at the seasonal special cruller. In the middle of the day, there's only university students and seniors here until the high schools let out.

The streets are stiflingly loud compared to Hokkaido. Shishido walks all the way to the next major station on the Yamanote, weaving between the crowds that don't even bother to dodge around him, instead ploughing right into his path. No one glances at him, no one notices. The pavements are slick with half-formed ice worn down by thousands of feet. He stuffs his hands into his pockets, and glances up into the sky. The city lights gleam in the darkening air, brilliant whites and yellows east toward Roppongi, and murkier toward the western suburbs.

There are thousands more people in the station. The trains will be standing room at this time, and he's got two changes to get back to his parents'. Shishido pushes himself onto the train, face in someone's armpit, and his back pressed to three different suitcases. He's not tall enough for the highest hand holds; the shorter ones are all taken.

So he stands, and sways, and tries to keep his balance. It's not like snowboard in the least.

Rush hour, he thinks. Crap.

The carriage swelters, but the walk back from the station to his parents' is frozen. His mom doesn't say much, she sits on the couch with a cross-stitch, but there's a tepid meal under clingfilm left on the table.

She looks up, as he stuffs a mound of rice into his mouth. As soon as she sets the cross-stitch down, Shishido swallows hard, glances away to avoid her eye.

"If you want to talk…"

He stares at his pickles. Last week, that Shinji was helping himself to Shishido's yellow daikon slices, and shrivelled ribbons of cucumber. He was talking on auto-pilot and Shishido didn't have to sit here, with his mom's eyes prickling the back of his neck, and the silence swelling up in his chest.

"It's fine," he says. It doesn't come out the way he wants at all. His mother lingers a little too long before she sits back down.

~*~*~*~

He lies on the hard bed and stares at the calendar hanging on the wall.

Aren't Flumpool playing the last Sunday of the month?

~*~*~*~

There is something intrinsically pathetic and completely the opposite of dignified in going to the pool halls by yourself in the hopes of butting into a game, and having human contact. Inside, Shishido kicks himself. He toys with the words on the tip of his tongue at the dinner table with his parents. Could I borrow some money to go back to Hokkaido? I wanna check out the slopes in the highlands this time.

But Shishido sits, and slurps his noodles. His father's chopsticks clink on the side of the ceramic bowl. The house groans in the cold drafts under the foundation.

"I'm going out," Shishido says.

His mom looks up. Her eyes seem to crinkle a little deeper around the edges when she nods her head, and says, "Mm."

He chalks up the tip of the cue. The pool hall only has fibreglass ones, and the feel is wrong. It's too hard, there's not enough resonance to make a good shot. The pool hall by the apartment was better, with wooden cues and younger players. Out here, it's old men, salarymen, and a few bored freeters and friends playing Eight-ball. There's a baseball game on mute on the tv screens above their heads, with Osaka up in the sixth inning. Shishido downs the rest of his beer; he feels the heat moving through his belly, before he pushes himself out of the shadows and into a game. His aim is terrible. The break is a mess, with balls veering across the table and bouncing on the uneven surface. Shishido swears at himself. The other players roll their eyes.

"Never played before?" they ask.

Shishido snorts. He loosens his grip and adjusts his sweaty hands, but his next shot is worse. Osaka's shortstop hits straight to right field and bags the team another two runs. He cracks his hands, cracks his back, and leans down to make a shot. He stares straight down the cue, lining the cue ball up with the eight, pushing back the sounds of the snickers over his shoulder. He breathes through his teeth, closes his eyes, and concentrates.

His pocket vibrates.

The eight ball bounces over the edge.

"Fuck it," Shishido says.

~*~*~*~

"This wasn't a bad time, was it?" Atobe says.

Shishido narrows his eyes. "Since when do you care about whether you're calling at a bad time or not?"

"Hn…I've been known to be extremely benevolent, you know."

"When the mood strikes, and there's something in it for you."

Atobe snorts. Shishido huffs. He's on the bus back home: the pool hall was a bust and he's out the thousand yen borrowed from his mom. Slushy rain collects on the windows outside and blurs the suburban lights. "What do you want, Atobe?"

"You should know…he's got someone new."

The bus stops. So does Shishido's heart. His pulse throbs in his ears, and he can barely keep himself from sliding onto the floor from the heavy ache in his chest.

He tries to swallow, tries to ask how long Atobe's known, tries to think about anything other than the last moment he saw Ohtori, standing in their apartment with his shoulders tall and tight and his eyes black as he said those words…

It's over…

Atobe's voice recedes into the background as Shishido presses end, hands shaking so bad he drops his phone to the floor of the bus. He stands up at the next stop, and walks off onto an empty street he doesn't recognize. Melting snowflakes drip down his coat sleeves, freezing his bare hands. He looks up into the sky.

There's not a single star up there, nothing but a wash of light pollution and the sticky, sloppy flakes falling down, blanketing everything in silence.

~*~*~*~

When Shishido is done moping in his bedroom behind a closed door for two days, there is an email waiting on his cellphone. The sender is no one in his address book, but instead someone who bothered to track him down via old contacts: like Atobe, who knows everything and shares with few.

Shishido will shuffle to the kitchen, drawn out of his hibernation by the pangs of hunger eating his insides. He'll have a microwave sukiyaki bowl from the conbini that tastes rather stale and of too much nori and greasy mayo. He'll reach for his cellphone and flip it open to read a verbose greeting, a longwinded explanation, and, finally, an invitation in the last line.

He'll think back a few weeks to the snippets of memory that haven't faded. He'll think on the invitation for a day or two-but no more-because although he's marginally annoyed and bemused all at once, he's also Japanese and polite to a fault. Even though the email won't say anything about what happened, the first characters Shishido types in response are:

I'm sorry for being a dick back in Hokkaido.

Followed by,

It sounds cool.

After he presses send, it's the first time in a long while that his stomach flutters with something that isn't self-pity.

~*~*~*~

The concert will be held in a venue Akasaka, or maybe nearby Azabu-Juban, which is slightly less business and more hip. They meet a couple hours ahead of time to exchange money and tickets-or, Shishido has anticipated this, and brought an extra ten thousand. But Shinji will shake his head, and mutter something about it doesn't matter, he had the ticket anyway, because he hoped someone would have better taste than Kamio and actually come to the show with him. They order a pitcher of beer and split it, then pizza covered in shrimp and corn and potato. Shishido pulls at the slices, cheese pulling away in long, stretchy strings that he gobbles up.

"Do you like cheese a lot?" Shinji will ask.

Shishido will nod. But he'll leave out the part of it being his favourite food.

In order to avoid the legions of pubescent girls from the fanclub they won't go to the venue until the last minute. Instead, they wander through the streets, close enough that sometimes their arms brush or their footsteps fall in sync. Once, years ago, Shishido remembers that he and Ohtori would walk like this on their way home from tennis practice. Ohtori had to slow his pace down, and Shishido had to speed up.

Now, Shishido will turn his head a little, glancing out the corner of his eye to see Shinji at eye-level, and think, Hn. He'll let himself drift in and out the conversation Shinji has, talking about the set list and the guitar solos, and the recent LP he bought one afternoon in Shibuya.

"You collect?" Shishido will ask. He raises his eyebrows, impressed.

Shinji shrugs, says he has a collection at his parents', but he's not sure what he'll do when he goes back.

The venue will be tight, and packed with too many bodies in too many layers. The storage lockers were long picked over by teenage vultures, so Shishido stands, crammed into Shinji's side, with his coat tucked under his arm. Shinji's lips move, but the buzz of the crowd drowns him out. Shishido closes his eyes for a moment, and tunes everything, and everyone out. It's been forever since he's been to a show, and the first notes from the bass pulse through his body, flip his nerves inside-out. Shinji elbows Shishido; his eyes glow blue in the strobelighting.

Shishido will raise his arms, and scream with the crowd, with Shinji beside him when the lead singer runs onstage. He leans back a little as the music rushes through his body-maybe they are standing too close to the speakers after all-but in this first moment of the vocals rippling across the crowd, all of them singing along, Shishido feels lighter than air.

After the show, his ears will ring for an hour and he'll barely be able to hear Shinji's invite back to his home. His sisters are out. His parents are away visiting his grandfather two, three hours to the north. And there's a six-pack of beer in the fridge. The trains will still be running for an hour or two, but the passengers at this hour are mostly gals and drunken salarymen, staggering, sloshing, slipping on the platforms. Shishido will sit next to Shinji, with a respectable half-seat between them. Shishido will hum the melody to the encore song under his breath, and when Shinji glances at him with those black eyes, Shishido will stop, self-conscious and lame. He'll try to ignore the tightness in his belly, and the guilty erection between his legs. His eyes will drift again and again to Shinji's mouth, to take in the curve of his lips as he speaks, to trace over the contours when he stills for a breath or two.

"We don't live very far out," Shinji will say, "We've lived here for a long time, before I started elementary school. It used to be my uncle's house, then he defaulted on the mortgage. He lives in Ueno Park now. I can't remember the last time I saw him. He smells gross, probably does his laundry in the duck ponds. Have you ever seen the ponds there?" He grimaces.

Shishido drifts into the monologue. "Eh?"

"I hate ducks," Shinji will start. "There was this guy, who played on a tennis team we played in junior high. He quacked like a duck. He looked like a duck. Kamio used to call him-"

The train will pull into the next platform, at the station where they used to live together. The familiar name will make Shishido freeze. His feet will be glued to the carriage floor, and he'll trip a little when Shinji says this is the stop. Shishido balls his fist, clenches his jaw, calls himself a fucking lamewad for the sting in his eyes when they'll pass through the automated gates and walk to the station exit. They lived ten minutes from the west gate.

Shinji won't sling an arm around Shishido's shoulders, and he won't hold hands, either. He just walks a half-step in front of Shishido, moving east through the echoing corridors. "It's not very far," Shinji will say. "Did I tell you that we've lived here since before I started elementary school…?"

Shishido will almost roll his eyes and tell him to shut up.

Almost.

~*~*~*~

They'll be lying on the couch-a puffy, homey old thing-with their tongues down each other's throats and hands down each other's pants when the door latch clicks. Shishido will moan as Shinji drags his hand away, making sure to squeeze Shishido's dick tight. Shinji won't say more than a single word, "Shit," as his fingers fumble with his plaid shirt. Shishido's face will burn hot and shamed as a girl flicks the lights on and stands in the doorway.

"Was I bothering you, Nii-san? Sorry, I got back early. My date wasn't going so well and I didn't want to stay any longer. I thought I really liked him, you know? We worked together and we always had good chemistry in the office, but in public, he was a totally different person. Talk talk talk, him him him, I couldn't say anything, you know…?" She'll touch her forehead, and start to complain about a headache, about how the restaurant was too loud, and the food not so good. It was Italian, and she can't stand capsicums.

"I don't like them either," Shinji will say. Shishido's foot will squeak on the parquet floor when he tries to slink away, though he's not sure where he'll hide in the open concept room with Shinji's sister talking in the foyer, and Shinji answering from the couch. Shinji's sister will look over at him, and smile, and offer a long-winded introduction to the story of her life.

"I should head out," Shishido will say. He'll say it once, then again, since he seems to be talking to himself in the corner. But Shinji will cock his head just enough. He must have heard because he starts to frown, and say he should walk Shishido to the station.

"It's late, and you might not remember how to get back from here," Shinji will say. "The main road isn't easy to find."

"It's fine," Shishido says. He pulls on his shoes, and takes his coat from the closet. He'll pull his hat down far over his ears and mumble something in the direction of Shinji's sister, still narrating her autobiography beside him.

Shinji will walk Shishido to the station anyway. He'll stop Shishido in a cavernous street, and push him into the side of a glowing vending machine. Shishido's breath will plume between them, tiny condensed icicles settling on his lips before Shinji's mouth does. Shishido will sigh into the heat, and even though it's public, and anyone can see, he'll wrap his gloved hand around the back of Shinji's neck.

He might be lame enough to say this was nice. He might just say "Thanks."

He might say, "When are you around?"

Or he might just kiss Shinji back a little longer, their tongues slowly twisting and tasting and warm one last time.

"You should come," Shinji will say on the train platform. Shishido will pretend not to hear as he sits down, and the train doors close behind him. It's the last train of the night. He won't look back, but in the reflection of the window, there's a lone figure with black hair watching the train pull away and into the night.

The train ride home is deathly quiet. Shishido will listen to himself breathe as too many thoughts swirl in his mind.

~*~*~*~

He steps into the arrivals terminal and looks around. The air swelters: heat and humidity cling to his skin already, even in the constant air-conditioning. Shishido pulls at the brim of his cap to shield his eyes against the glare of the sun through the wide windows. There are palm trees outside.

There isn't a sign to greet him, but instead someone asking, "How was your flight? It's hot today. Yesterday wasn't this bad, but maybe there will be a wind off the ocean. Did you see it from the airplane? Maybe you couldn't, if you didn't sit by a window…"

Shaking his head, Shishido snorts. He tries not to smile when he steps close, right up into Shinji's personal bubble. He could say "Hello", but instead, he presses his mouth to Shinji's and says, "Shut up for a bit."