PoT: driving manual for the slow-speed trainwreck relationship
For sesame_seed: happy birthday!
A/N: Sort of rambling, floating, not quite normal. ._. sorry.
1. [yield]
You are both going to high school, so you suppose that he has reason, now, to be rebellious, to smoke and to skip school, to beat up guys after school. To completely quit tennis. What Ryoma did to him was forgivable. What losing did to him was forgivable. What he does to himself now is forgivable, if you let it be. You forgive him. Them. You don't miss him. Did you even know him? Did you share classes with him? Did he ever register your presence, did you speak to each other, was your relationship casual and accidental, acquainted when you least expected to be? You've forgotten.
Smoke in the tennis locker rooms after practice.
Now both of you have reasons and now you shadowbox with his elusive presence, setting yourself up for disappointment and happy, occasionally, when he lets you in like prying open a screen door in the summer to shoo in the flies. Dusty, unused to people. You have grown, and so has he, filling out his frame, muscles to skin tone to depth. You are stronger than you used to be.
I should try the boxing team, you tell him, spread-eagle on the riverbank grass. He ignores you and flicks his cigarette in your direction, careless about the ashes. Why should he care? Should he? Do you expect him to? You don't wrestle with the questions, let them pass instead, river water.
He pretends you are not there.
No, don't you think? you ask, needling unnecessarily. Akutsu? Don't you think I'd make a great boxer?
Shut up, he says, puffing out smoke.
He admits your presence, so you close your eyes, having accomplished something. Thinking about the gum you have in your pocket, the feel of a tennis racket in your sweaty palms as the sun goes down on the courts. Boxing, which you had done before; two people in an imaginary closed off bit of space, murderous intent. Hurting. Pain. Where you more afraid of him before, when he knew that he could hurt you specifically if he wanted to?
Stop, Sengoku. Unfair to draw comparisons, extrapolations. Later, later.
When you know him better.
2. [merge]
Isn't he a thug? she asks you. Blonde pretty girl, the kind you fall for, pigtails and small breasts. Cute pink barrettes in her hair. Perky, bright, upbeat. She reminds you of the dozen of the other girls you have liked before. Normal and therefore accessible, you can connect. Connections are good.
A thug? Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. He has an unlucky presence, you answer, pulling trademark smiles out from behind your jaw. Offer her gum, slightly squashed and warm from your body heat, and because she is not a prissy girl because you don't like prissy girls, she accepts, smiling. You snap yours noisily, shoving your hands in your now empty pockets.
It's that he. He dyes his hair. And he smokes. And he skips class.
She wrinkles her nose. And his eyes scare me.
They scare you too. At least you two are on the same page, then.
She smells like a girl. Soft. Sweet, flowers? Teddy bears. You like her, which is sort of pathetic because you know why. You take her out to ice cream. She likes strawberry, pink, sugar.
You like her. No, really. You do. You think.
3. [hidden entrance]
The thing is, maybe, that he is used to winning or losing but both completely. He is a very incomplete dysfunctional person. Violence is never good or stable--stability, on the other hand, is useful to have around. But he likes to do things completely.
You wonder how much of you he has put down as complete. Skeletons in anatomy class, empty, hanging ribs. Starving outlines of personality, reading astrology charts of strangers. Like filling in the colors of a coloring book. The crayons. The choices. The selection. The misleading shades. Who does he think you are? Does he treat you the way he does because of what you become to him?
Should you expect him to know when you don't know him?
Is that unfair?
You test this scenario out in your head. Macho buddy-buddy friendship. You would say, Oh Akutsu, how I would like to get to know you better! We could have picnics in the park! Early morning walks in the dew! Trade pick-up lines with each other! I would drink your beer from the some bottle, mouth to the neck the same as you do, we would get sick together! Chase girls together! Manly things in manly ways, together! Forever! Oh how we would thrive and survive, how our friendship would pull us through!
He would say, you crazy dipshit.
You don't know him. No, you suppose you don't know him at all, after all. Pushing weights of your unknowingness, your-- your-- stupidity. The empty spaces of him you sketch in with hypothetical situations and questions, monologues on repeated loop in your brain when you are dozing off in class. Completeness. Stability. Unity.
This is about perception, you had once been told. Tennis or art or people? You don't remember anymore. How you look at him, his angles, his curves, his linear brinks and links.
So you ask him, Do you have a cell phone, Akutsu? With a number?
Why the fuck would I have a cell phone without a number?
Who knows, you say, chipper, and steal his phone later, when he has his head turned. Fast hands, Fast colors. His number, flashing on the screen, and you know he has to know. He isn't stupid. You aren't blind.
You'll never call him.
4. [right lane ends here]
If you ever call me at goddamned 1 AM in morning ever again--
Akutsu.
What.
Don't you ever wonder why your voice sounds different over the phone?
No.
How much sleep do you need to get usually?
More than what I'm getting now.
Aren't you going to ask how I got the number?
No.
Are you mad?
What do you think?
Hey, Akutsu. Are you mad?
I'm hanging up.
Wait a sec--
5. [wrong way/ do not enter]
First date. You tell her your best jokes. She laughs at them, which is why you've always liked girls better. Better than what? Other people. Boys at school. Teachers, coaches. Tennis players, opponents. Parents. Dogs.
Him, you guess.
You walk with her down the streets and when she's excited she slips her hand into yours. Small fingers, slim wrist. Bright lips that say a lot. She has chapstick on that smells like glitter, perfume like candy. In a skirt that brushes her knees. You buy her a cell phone chain and she buys you a complementary one, blue moon to her stars. She tells you about her family, her sister. Her grades at school and which teacher she likes, her favorite stationary.
Functional. You think you could probably deal with this. You don't think of him. What is there to think about? Parks and children pass you by. You walk her home and ask to kiss her. She offers you her cheek, wide expanse of innocent untouched pavement and you are the first footprint in the wet cement. You touch lightly, feathering, brushing. Baby's butterfly kiss, baby's breath and roses. She giggles, running to her front door and waving exuberantly. Untamed happiness. You could be her first boyfriend.
You like her.
You call him up afterwards, the little plastic ends of your cell phone key chain thudding against your wrist. You hold your breath. Traffic passes you, the lights change. You are no more than a block away from her house. The rub of her fingers against your palm, her lotion. The sidewalk is hard under your feet, for which you are grateful. You dial his number, your fingers trembling on silver buttons. Anticipation is good, healthy. Adrenaline rush. Taking risks. Your luck is good today.
Breathless, unreasonably optimistic: Come have dinner with me. Eat with me. I'll pay. We can get drunk.
The smell of tobacco in the tennis locker rooms after practice.
6. [pedestrian crossing]
"Why not."
7. [construction work ahead]
Over miso ramen and beer, you ask him, Why do you have a cell phone anyway?
I can have a cell phone if I want to, he answers moodily, taking a decided slurp of his food. His shoulders hunched over and bent, he looks much older than he is. You think maybe you do too. More confidently, you take a drink of your beer, wondering how it got sold to you. Maybe it's him. A thug, she had said. Gangster. Gangrene. Guilt.
Yeah, but, honestly? It doesn't seem like your thing, you say.
He pauses. This is the first time. He holds his chopsticks with textbook perfect form. You didn't expect that. He mutters, my mother.
And what is she like? you probe, like a little spaceship out in the wilderness. Cold planet. Computer error.
He turns away. Drinks from his glass of beer, fingers stiff, holding on. Arching his neck up like a bird watcher or a constellation seeker. You want him to guess how many fingers you're holding up. Squints of his eyes, dangerous, murderous. Oh, you see now. You're still afraid.
Shaking his head, he says, Crazy.
Have I met her before?
He rolls his chopsticks between his fingers. Considering, deciding, remembering? Finally he lays them across the edge of his bowl and reaches across for you, pulling on the front of your shirt. This is sudden movement. Killing intent? You are back in the boxing ring again, scrawny wet weight against muscle. You don't move.
Bastard, he says. You even tried to pick her up.
A moment of purely personal panic, followed by, What does she look like?
Blonde. Short hair. Like me, you dumbass. His mouth does not smell of anything but the food he has just eaten. Stop smoking, Akutsu. Stop killing yourself. You look like a--
I must have really taken her for a high school student, you answer, shaping in the attributes he hasn't mentioned, the ones that would have attracted you to her. Round chin. Lipstick? Warm voice. Bright eyes, I will take care of you overtures. Nourishment, nutrition, excess flavor. You wonder if you asked her for her astrological sign.
He lets you go, physically withdrawing from the emotional tension, an oyster closing, turtle snapping. You feel for your hands, the cold that's gotten into them. She probably looks like every other bimbo you pick up, he says, impossibly cold, impossibly callous.
But she's-- how do you know what kind of girls I pick up?
He drains his beer expertly. He is his own father figure. You could envy him, for his masculinity, his impeccable ability to make you feel smaller. She's my mother, he says, finishing your sentence for you, shrugging almost helplessly, as if his body is too small or too big for his shoulders. Skeletal signals through the brain in forms of electricity. Shiver. Shock. Sharp.
But why does he know? But why does he care? Does he care? Does he know right now, about this afternoon? Has he been watching? Are you safe from the lies you're about to say?
You still hungry? you ask, and order him another bowl.
8. [detour]
Much later.
Do you know where I live? you ask him, pleasantly buzzed. On a napkin you start doodling a map on the table right there, lines and zigzags and crazy bits of architecture that you label laboriously for his consumption.
He looks at the paper, at you, and then takes the napkin, crumpling it. Large hands, tanner than you, darker than the paper. Pen on his palm, from the writing, slight dampness on the napkin from the condensation. Bleeding. Ink marks, not you.
Hey! It was a good map.
How do you know where my house is?
You stare at him, uncomprehending. What?
How. Do. You. Know. Where. My. House. Is. Not angry, just accentuating the words for the sake of speaking clearer. Louder, as if you had trouble hearing. Of course comprehension is directly proportional to volume. This you know. Power is understanding.
Why?
Your map, he says, shredding it easily into long strips, bandages spread out on the table, abandoned, woundless. You drew the direct route from my house to yours.
You consider for a long, long time, eyeing your now empty beer bottle for an answer. Fizzy, liquid. Bubbles. Green. The team roster, you say finally, safe, saved. Dan-chan probably showed it to me before. Just. Stuck.
He inhales, a sharp gunshot sound. No death.
Okay.
9. [one way]
They are in the last street corner you turn. You're wary, but not wary enough to go away; this explains everything. They are shadows, the kind that made themselves into monsters when you were a child. Faces and voices. You hear his name. Then again, so it's not just a coincidence. Smoke wreathing their heads, their postures casual. You can almost see him as one of them, but not. School uniforms forming divisions, revisions.
Suddenly you are frightened. Shaking, you brush your fingertips off on your palms. Body heat. Sweat. Adrenaline, you remind yourself, is good, healthy, whole.
They take one look at you, mistaking your clothes, and then shake their head, making casual adjustments in their poses to tell you to go away. You should. You can fight, but not against all of them. You wonder where he is. Smart enough to avoid them, probably. Only you would be this stupid. A god who watches over fools and drunkards, you remember. Would need to be both to fight them, all of them probably stronger and more experienced than you. Could you start running now?
Your mouth. Moves. Words. Forming letters, consonant sounds, vowel elongations. They stare at you like you're crazy.
You are.
Fighting his battles for him, probably. He would rather you not, probably. You shouldn't have, probably.
In the end they are stepping on your spine and kicking your ribs, your face bruised and your knuckles busted. This is pain like you feared it, last year, in the early days of summer, from him. He's not here, so you suppose it hurts just a little less, self-humiliation making things worse and loneliness, the solidarity of flesh on flesh. Nothing to say. Your own goddamn fault. Sengoku, the martyr.
A blast of pain. You're waiting for the black-out scene.
And later though you expect it, his face through your swollen eyelids is still a surprise. He's crouching over your corpse-like body, smoking so casually it's as if he really didn't care. His wrists over the curve of his knees, eyeing you from a little distance above. When he sees you're awake, his mouth twists into the horrible parody of a smile and kicks you hard, right where your stomach is.
Shit, you say, turning miserably away from him. What the fuck did you do that for. Hurts, hurts, you moan, gripping your diaphragm. Not puking, thankfully. Pain.
You're an idiot, he says, almost mild. Who the fuck asked you to fight them? What the fuck did you do it for?
You close your eyes. His smoke drifts. Silence. Then, gathering all your leftover rotting courage, you admit, They were talking about you.
He considers you for a while longer, watching you emit low groans and shuffle on your bruised bones. Cigarette falling to the ground, him standing up, grinding it into powder, fine and genteel under his heel. Finally he drags your arm across his shoulders like you're a bag of wet sand, trying to keep him from touching you, trying to hold you close to him. Hoists you up, a puppet leaning against him. You can barely walk by yourself.
Hell, he mutters, in one short blasting breath against your cheek. You're so useless.
I know, you say, grinning despite yourself. His eyes are cats in the dark. Seeing everything, he guides you home, you blacking out against his shoulder occasionally. You wonder-- the map, after all. Scotch tape or memory.
10. [slippery when wet]
What you think first is that he's done this before. On himself, most likely, but he knows how to apply ointments and bandages so that they don't hurt, and though he's rough on you, slapping things down, harshly wiping things off, he is still gentle. Or maybe you just think he is. Maybe you want him to be.
Do you want him to be gentle? After all, you are still afraid of him. Your cell phone is lying on the dimly lit kitchen table as he applies a salve to the scratches on your face. Blue moon. Outside there are probably stars. Night already. You slept too long on the sidewalk. Parents, tomorrow, and muddled explanations of why. You touch your face, your eyes. Your almost broken but bloodied nose. Touch is a soft mutable thing, sacrificed for the great good.
Can't do my homework in this condition, you say, flexing your bandaged hands. Swollen joints. Hard to move, like you're sick or feverish and he's pretending to be kind. He lights another cigarette in the kitchen. You don't tell him no.
Fuck your homework, he retorts, louder than he meant to. His voice echoes in your house, and so he jumps as it comes back to him a little.
And you? Are you leaving? you want to know. Which means stay in every language you can think of, though right now only in Japanese.
It's late, he says. He has you propped, doll-like, in a chair. He stares aimlessly at the clock behind your head, blowing smoke in continuous stream after stream. Rapid smoking means anxiety, you think. Smoking--he's--what sign is he, anyway? Bad luck. Artificial respiration. Blackened lungs and breathing.
He's turning around to leave, typical him, with no goodbyes and no warning, and so you get up out of your chair, falling, grabbing onto the back of his school jacket. Death grip, big joke, his muscles hard, rock-like, solid. Warm, and so he's real. Touch, which you use selfishly. He turns around, grabbing you and hauling you around, slamming you almost violently into the couch. Growls, No, like you're a dog. Takes you by the shoulder and shakes you.
You got beat up. By a bunch of guys. Stop fucking moving and go to sleep.
You pull him down by his face. Stay, you whisper, almost begging. It's late. Don't go. I don't-- stay.
Measurement by time is a typically useless activity you practice with regularity. Biological clock: an hour a day a lifetime, ten seconds. He is unfazed, it seems. You can smell the smoke. You wonder where the cigarette went, if it would leave ashes. You're fixated on the line of his lips, his eyes, the slight brush of a bruise on his jaw. His solid, solid hold on you, pressing you against the couch.
Okay, he breathes, sitting down beside you. Okay. You owe me-- god. This is so stupid.
Smiling, you lay out on your not so broken side on the couch. It's not a big couch but the two of you are wiry light athletic skinny. He lies on his side, cushioning you, keeping you from falling. Barrier. Guideline. Bridgepost, lamppost, light bulb. He's facing away from you so it's almost as if you could embrace him from behind. Can see where his hair touches his nape, how his shoulders join to his arm sockets. Anatomical form, astrologically determined, perhaps.
Later on in the night you wake up to find yourself entangled with him, limbs against each other, through each other, in each other. It's hot and you know you will wake up sore and bruised, unable to properly stretch out or bend or exercise for weeks. But his hand is on the small of your back, completely by accident, and he has tucked your head against his shoulder, under his chin, his breathing irritating the top of your head.
You are in pain, bruising, healing, hurting, and you suddenly think of how much you like him, how real that makes him. How you like him in a way you've never liked anyone else. How you've been searching for that, this object of undeserved unmitigated desire. Craving. You synchronize your breathing. You let your almost broken ribs touch his stomach.
11. [no passing]
In the morning you wake up and he's disappeared, but that's only what you'd expected, and nothing more.
A/N: The lack of quotation marks inspired by Irish short stories, actually, which like to use these little dashes and no quotation marks to signfy speech. Yes, horribly short and bad, but forgive me Chrissie. ;_; I tried to churn it out the best I could, for you.
A/N: Sort of rambling, floating, not quite normal. ._. sorry.
1. [yield]
You are both going to high school, so you suppose that he has reason, now, to be rebellious, to smoke and to skip school, to beat up guys after school. To completely quit tennis. What Ryoma did to him was forgivable. What losing did to him was forgivable. What he does to himself now is forgivable, if you let it be. You forgive him. Them. You don't miss him. Did you even know him? Did you share classes with him? Did he ever register your presence, did you speak to each other, was your relationship casual and accidental, acquainted when you least expected to be? You've forgotten.
Smoke in the tennis locker rooms after practice.
Now both of you have reasons and now you shadowbox with his elusive presence, setting yourself up for disappointment and happy, occasionally, when he lets you in like prying open a screen door in the summer to shoo in the flies. Dusty, unused to people. You have grown, and so has he, filling out his frame, muscles to skin tone to depth. You are stronger than you used to be.
I should try the boxing team, you tell him, spread-eagle on the riverbank grass. He ignores you and flicks his cigarette in your direction, careless about the ashes. Why should he care? Should he? Do you expect him to? You don't wrestle with the questions, let them pass instead, river water.
He pretends you are not there.
No, don't you think? you ask, needling unnecessarily. Akutsu? Don't you think I'd make a great boxer?
Shut up, he says, puffing out smoke.
He admits your presence, so you close your eyes, having accomplished something. Thinking about the gum you have in your pocket, the feel of a tennis racket in your sweaty palms as the sun goes down on the courts. Boxing, which you had done before; two people in an imaginary closed off bit of space, murderous intent. Hurting. Pain. Where you more afraid of him before, when he knew that he could hurt you specifically if he wanted to?
Stop, Sengoku. Unfair to draw comparisons, extrapolations. Later, later.
When you know him better.
2. [merge]
Isn't he a thug? she asks you. Blonde pretty girl, the kind you fall for, pigtails and small breasts. Cute pink barrettes in her hair. Perky, bright, upbeat. She reminds you of the dozen of the other girls you have liked before. Normal and therefore accessible, you can connect. Connections are good.
A thug? Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. He has an unlucky presence, you answer, pulling trademark smiles out from behind your jaw. Offer her gum, slightly squashed and warm from your body heat, and because she is not a prissy girl because you don't like prissy girls, she accepts, smiling. You snap yours noisily, shoving your hands in your now empty pockets.
It's that he. He dyes his hair. And he smokes. And he skips class.
She wrinkles her nose. And his eyes scare me.
They scare you too. At least you two are on the same page, then.
She smells like a girl. Soft. Sweet, flowers? Teddy bears. You like her, which is sort of pathetic because you know why. You take her out to ice cream. She likes strawberry, pink, sugar.
You like her. No, really. You do. You think.
3. [hidden entrance]
The thing is, maybe, that he is used to winning or losing but both completely. He is a very incomplete dysfunctional person. Violence is never good or stable--stability, on the other hand, is useful to have around. But he likes to do things completely.
You wonder how much of you he has put down as complete. Skeletons in anatomy class, empty, hanging ribs. Starving outlines of personality, reading astrology charts of strangers. Like filling in the colors of a coloring book. The crayons. The choices. The selection. The misleading shades. Who does he think you are? Does he treat you the way he does because of what you become to him?
Should you expect him to know when you don't know him?
Is that unfair?
You test this scenario out in your head. Macho buddy-buddy friendship. You would say, Oh Akutsu, how I would like to get to know you better! We could have picnics in the park! Early morning walks in the dew! Trade pick-up lines with each other! I would drink your beer from the some bottle, mouth to the neck the same as you do, we would get sick together! Chase girls together! Manly things in manly ways, together! Forever! Oh how we would thrive and survive, how our friendship would pull us through!
He would say, you crazy dipshit.
You don't know him. No, you suppose you don't know him at all, after all. Pushing weights of your unknowingness, your-- your-- stupidity. The empty spaces of him you sketch in with hypothetical situations and questions, monologues on repeated loop in your brain when you are dozing off in class. Completeness. Stability. Unity.
This is about perception, you had once been told. Tennis or art or people? You don't remember anymore. How you look at him, his angles, his curves, his linear brinks and links.
So you ask him, Do you have a cell phone, Akutsu? With a number?
Why the fuck would I have a cell phone without a number?
Who knows, you say, chipper, and steal his phone later, when he has his head turned. Fast hands, Fast colors. His number, flashing on the screen, and you know he has to know. He isn't stupid. You aren't blind.
You'll never call him.
4. [right lane ends here]
If you ever call me at goddamned 1 AM in morning ever again--
Akutsu.
What.
Don't you ever wonder why your voice sounds different over the phone?
No.
How much sleep do you need to get usually?
More than what I'm getting now.
Aren't you going to ask how I got the number?
No.
Are you mad?
What do you think?
Hey, Akutsu. Are you mad?
I'm hanging up.
Wait a sec--
5. [wrong way/ do not enter]
First date. You tell her your best jokes. She laughs at them, which is why you've always liked girls better. Better than what? Other people. Boys at school. Teachers, coaches. Tennis players, opponents. Parents. Dogs.
Him, you guess.
You walk with her down the streets and when she's excited she slips her hand into yours. Small fingers, slim wrist. Bright lips that say a lot. She has chapstick on that smells like glitter, perfume like candy. In a skirt that brushes her knees. You buy her a cell phone chain and she buys you a complementary one, blue moon to her stars. She tells you about her family, her sister. Her grades at school and which teacher she likes, her favorite stationary.
Functional. You think you could probably deal with this. You don't think of him. What is there to think about? Parks and children pass you by. You walk her home and ask to kiss her. She offers you her cheek, wide expanse of innocent untouched pavement and you are the first footprint in the wet cement. You touch lightly, feathering, brushing. Baby's butterfly kiss, baby's breath and roses. She giggles, running to her front door and waving exuberantly. Untamed happiness. You could be her first boyfriend.
You like her.
You call him up afterwards, the little plastic ends of your cell phone key chain thudding against your wrist. You hold your breath. Traffic passes you, the lights change. You are no more than a block away from her house. The rub of her fingers against your palm, her lotion. The sidewalk is hard under your feet, for which you are grateful. You dial his number, your fingers trembling on silver buttons. Anticipation is good, healthy. Adrenaline rush. Taking risks. Your luck is good today.
Breathless, unreasonably optimistic: Come have dinner with me. Eat with me. I'll pay. We can get drunk.
The smell of tobacco in the tennis locker rooms after practice.
6. [pedestrian crossing]
"Why not."
7. [construction work ahead]
Over miso ramen and beer, you ask him, Why do you have a cell phone anyway?
I can have a cell phone if I want to, he answers moodily, taking a decided slurp of his food. His shoulders hunched over and bent, he looks much older than he is. You think maybe you do too. More confidently, you take a drink of your beer, wondering how it got sold to you. Maybe it's him. A thug, she had said. Gangster. Gangrene. Guilt.
Yeah, but, honestly? It doesn't seem like your thing, you say.
He pauses. This is the first time. He holds his chopsticks with textbook perfect form. You didn't expect that. He mutters, my mother.
And what is she like? you probe, like a little spaceship out in the wilderness. Cold planet. Computer error.
He turns away. Drinks from his glass of beer, fingers stiff, holding on. Arching his neck up like a bird watcher or a constellation seeker. You want him to guess how many fingers you're holding up. Squints of his eyes, dangerous, murderous. Oh, you see now. You're still afraid.
Shaking his head, he says, Crazy.
Have I met her before?
He rolls his chopsticks between his fingers. Considering, deciding, remembering? Finally he lays them across the edge of his bowl and reaches across for you, pulling on the front of your shirt. This is sudden movement. Killing intent? You are back in the boxing ring again, scrawny wet weight against muscle. You don't move.
Bastard, he says. You even tried to pick her up.
A moment of purely personal panic, followed by, What does she look like?
Blonde. Short hair. Like me, you dumbass. His mouth does not smell of anything but the food he has just eaten. Stop smoking, Akutsu. Stop killing yourself. You look like a--
I must have really taken her for a high school student, you answer, shaping in the attributes he hasn't mentioned, the ones that would have attracted you to her. Round chin. Lipstick? Warm voice. Bright eyes, I will take care of you overtures. Nourishment, nutrition, excess flavor. You wonder if you asked her for her astrological sign.
He lets you go, physically withdrawing from the emotional tension, an oyster closing, turtle snapping. You feel for your hands, the cold that's gotten into them. She probably looks like every other bimbo you pick up, he says, impossibly cold, impossibly callous.
But she's-- how do you know what kind of girls I pick up?
He drains his beer expertly. He is his own father figure. You could envy him, for his masculinity, his impeccable ability to make you feel smaller. She's my mother, he says, finishing your sentence for you, shrugging almost helplessly, as if his body is too small or too big for his shoulders. Skeletal signals through the brain in forms of electricity. Shiver. Shock. Sharp.
But why does he know? But why does he care? Does he care? Does he know right now, about this afternoon? Has he been watching? Are you safe from the lies you're about to say?
You still hungry? you ask, and order him another bowl.
8. [detour]
Much later.
Do you know where I live? you ask him, pleasantly buzzed. On a napkin you start doodling a map on the table right there, lines and zigzags and crazy bits of architecture that you label laboriously for his consumption.
He looks at the paper, at you, and then takes the napkin, crumpling it. Large hands, tanner than you, darker than the paper. Pen on his palm, from the writing, slight dampness on the napkin from the condensation. Bleeding. Ink marks, not you.
Hey! It was a good map.
How do you know where my house is?
You stare at him, uncomprehending. What?
How. Do. You. Know. Where. My. House. Is. Not angry, just accentuating the words for the sake of speaking clearer. Louder, as if you had trouble hearing. Of course comprehension is directly proportional to volume. This you know. Power is understanding.
Why?
Your map, he says, shredding it easily into long strips, bandages spread out on the table, abandoned, woundless. You drew the direct route from my house to yours.
You consider for a long, long time, eyeing your now empty beer bottle for an answer. Fizzy, liquid. Bubbles. Green. The team roster, you say finally, safe, saved. Dan-chan probably showed it to me before. Just. Stuck.
He inhales, a sharp gunshot sound. No death.
Okay.
9. [one way]
They are in the last street corner you turn. You're wary, but not wary enough to go away; this explains everything. They are shadows, the kind that made themselves into monsters when you were a child. Faces and voices. You hear his name. Then again, so it's not just a coincidence. Smoke wreathing their heads, their postures casual. You can almost see him as one of them, but not. School uniforms forming divisions, revisions.
Suddenly you are frightened. Shaking, you brush your fingertips off on your palms. Body heat. Sweat. Adrenaline, you remind yourself, is good, healthy, whole.
They take one look at you, mistaking your clothes, and then shake their head, making casual adjustments in their poses to tell you to go away. You should. You can fight, but not against all of them. You wonder where he is. Smart enough to avoid them, probably. Only you would be this stupid. A god who watches over fools and drunkards, you remember. Would need to be both to fight them, all of them probably stronger and more experienced than you. Could you start running now?
Your mouth. Moves. Words. Forming letters, consonant sounds, vowel elongations. They stare at you like you're crazy.
You are.
Fighting his battles for him, probably. He would rather you not, probably. You shouldn't have, probably.
In the end they are stepping on your spine and kicking your ribs, your face bruised and your knuckles busted. This is pain like you feared it, last year, in the early days of summer, from him. He's not here, so you suppose it hurts just a little less, self-humiliation making things worse and loneliness, the solidarity of flesh on flesh. Nothing to say. Your own goddamn fault. Sengoku, the martyr.
A blast of pain. You're waiting for the black-out scene.
And later though you expect it, his face through your swollen eyelids is still a surprise. He's crouching over your corpse-like body, smoking so casually it's as if he really didn't care. His wrists over the curve of his knees, eyeing you from a little distance above. When he sees you're awake, his mouth twists into the horrible parody of a smile and kicks you hard, right where your stomach is.
Shit, you say, turning miserably away from him. What the fuck did you do that for. Hurts, hurts, you moan, gripping your diaphragm. Not puking, thankfully. Pain.
You're an idiot, he says, almost mild. Who the fuck asked you to fight them? What the fuck did you do it for?
You close your eyes. His smoke drifts. Silence. Then, gathering all your leftover rotting courage, you admit, They were talking about you.
He considers you for a while longer, watching you emit low groans and shuffle on your bruised bones. Cigarette falling to the ground, him standing up, grinding it into powder, fine and genteel under his heel. Finally he drags your arm across his shoulders like you're a bag of wet sand, trying to keep him from touching you, trying to hold you close to him. Hoists you up, a puppet leaning against him. You can barely walk by yourself.
Hell, he mutters, in one short blasting breath against your cheek. You're so useless.
I know, you say, grinning despite yourself. His eyes are cats in the dark. Seeing everything, he guides you home, you blacking out against his shoulder occasionally. You wonder-- the map, after all. Scotch tape or memory.
10. [slippery when wet]
What you think first is that he's done this before. On himself, most likely, but he knows how to apply ointments and bandages so that they don't hurt, and though he's rough on you, slapping things down, harshly wiping things off, he is still gentle. Or maybe you just think he is. Maybe you want him to be.
Do you want him to be gentle? After all, you are still afraid of him. Your cell phone is lying on the dimly lit kitchen table as he applies a salve to the scratches on your face. Blue moon. Outside there are probably stars. Night already. You slept too long on the sidewalk. Parents, tomorrow, and muddled explanations of why. You touch your face, your eyes. Your almost broken but bloodied nose. Touch is a soft mutable thing, sacrificed for the great good.
Can't do my homework in this condition, you say, flexing your bandaged hands. Swollen joints. Hard to move, like you're sick or feverish and he's pretending to be kind. He lights another cigarette in the kitchen. You don't tell him no.
Fuck your homework, he retorts, louder than he meant to. His voice echoes in your house, and so he jumps as it comes back to him a little.
And you? Are you leaving? you want to know. Which means stay in every language you can think of, though right now only in Japanese.
It's late, he says. He has you propped, doll-like, in a chair. He stares aimlessly at the clock behind your head, blowing smoke in continuous stream after stream. Rapid smoking means anxiety, you think. Smoking--he's--what sign is he, anyway? Bad luck. Artificial respiration. Blackened lungs and breathing.
He's turning around to leave, typical him, with no goodbyes and no warning, and so you get up out of your chair, falling, grabbing onto the back of his school jacket. Death grip, big joke, his muscles hard, rock-like, solid. Warm, and so he's real. Touch, which you use selfishly. He turns around, grabbing you and hauling you around, slamming you almost violently into the couch. Growls, No, like you're a dog. Takes you by the shoulder and shakes you.
You got beat up. By a bunch of guys. Stop fucking moving and go to sleep.
You pull him down by his face. Stay, you whisper, almost begging. It's late. Don't go. I don't-- stay.
Measurement by time is a typically useless activity you practice with regularity. Biological clock: an hour a day a lifetime, ten seconds. He is unfazed, it seems. You can smell the smoke. You wonder where the cigarette went, if it would leave ashes. You're fixated on the line of his lips, his eyes, the slight brush of a bruise on his jaw. His solid, solid hold on you, pressing you against the couch.
Okay, he breathes, sitting down beside you. Okay. You owe me-- god. This is so stupid.
Smiling, you lay out on your not so broken side on the couch. It's not a big couch but the two of you are wiry light athletic skinny. He lies on his side, cushioning you, keeping you from falling. Barrier. Guideline. Bridgepost, lamppost, light bulb. He's facing away from you so it's almost as if you could embrace him from behind. Can see where his hair touches his nape, how his shoulders join to his arm sockets. Anatomical form, astrologically determined, perhaps.
Later on in the night you wake up to find yourself entangled with him, limbs against each other, through each other, in each other. It's hot and you know you will wake up sore and bruised, unable to properly stretch out or bend or exercise for weeks. But his hand is on the small of your back, completely by accident, and he has tucked your head against his shoulder, under his chin, his breathing irritating the top of your head.
You are in pain, bruising, healing, hurting, and you suddenly think of how much you like him, how real that makes him. How you like him in a way you've never liked anyone else. How you've been searching for that, this object of undeserved unmitigated desire. Craving. You synchronize your breathing. You let your almost broken ribs touch his stomach.
11. [no passing]
In the morning you wake up and he's disappeared, but that's only what you'd expected, and nothing more.
A/N: The lack of quotation marks inspired by Irish short stories, actually, which like to use these little dashes and no quotation marks to signfy speech. Yes, horribly short and bad, but forgive me Chrissie. ;_; I tried to churn it out the best I could, for you.