Fic, Fujicest, "Alternative Normality" #6
Sixth part of Alternative Normality. Shuusuke gives Yuuta a reason to look forward to coming home...
One | Two | Three | Four | Five
"I didn't know you owned a whip."
Or, maybe it wasn't a game at all.
Aniki had responded with "I... don't? Was that enjoyable for you...?" and Yuuta wasn't sure what was going on anymore. He'd expected his brother to start talking about leather, or maybe spanking (although the thought of aniki saying things like that made him blush horrendously), not for him to sound... confused? Or, not quite confused, but certainly more normal than Yuuta was used to. It sounded as if aniki was humouring him. Had Yuuta made up their flirting game entirely on his own, in his head?! That was impossible, right? Yuuta wouldn't imagine such a thing without very good reason, surely?
He'd deleted most of the messages that could have told him otherwise in his fit of panic the other night, though. All that remained was the messages leading up to "Think of me when you make yourself feel good tonight", which, however he looked at it, was actually most relieving, because there was no way that aniki had meant that in any way other than flirtation. Absolutely no way. But... had he changed his mind? Did he not want to flirt with Yuuta anymore? He'd been distant and distracted on the phone, after all, and now he wasn't participating in what Yuuta had thought was a texting game.
"It wasn't so much enjoyable as it was weird." That was neutral. How would aniki react?
"I'm relieved. I'd never be able to hurt you like that, Yuuta."
Yuuta felt he should be glad that his world was going to be definitively whip-free from now on, but he was too preoccupied with the tone of aniki's message to be so. Aniki still wasn't committing anything!
"Er, I'm glad to hear it. Same goes for you, I guess. I thought you said you were busy?"
"I am. Good night, Yuuta."
Yuuta found himself unable to sleep properly that night. It was because he'd snacked just before bed, he told himself, and not because he was feeling insecure about aniki. The disturbing dreams did not return (he didn't remember dreaming at all), but when he awoke to the objectionable yet insistent beeping of his alarm clock, he found he was both tired and in a state of unfortunate discomfort. His hurried shower was to mark out the rest of his day, as unwanted thoughts of aniki plagued him at the very worst and most shameful moments.
The day passed much as a regular Monday (maths and PE, but also art, which always frustrated Yuuta - he smudged things, or drew them at just the wrong angle, or forgot some important feature until it was too late, and he hated making models out of clay or stupid toothpicks), but with added aniki. His brother was everywhere, it seemed; a phantom chuckle over his shoulder, an imagined touch across his neck, daydreams when he was supposed to be putting his all into hurdling in the late afternoon. A particularly vivid and unexpected image of aniki kissing him late at night had made him clip his right foot on the top of his final hurdle, and he'd come crashing down onto the track, the hurdle landing on top of him with a clatter and a muffled sort of pain.
He'd been sent to the sick room to be taken care of, but he'd just been told to lie on one of the beds until he felt less shaky (he'd hit his head really quite hard) and until the painkillers started to take effect (he'd scraped himself and given life to a new generation of bruises as well), and Yuuta daydreaming on painkillers was just a recipe for disaster. He'd wanted to leave and head to dinner early, because food always made things better, but he would never have left without permission of the nurse, who had gone to deal with a student who'd fainted at the other side of the building, so he was left there feeling a little spacey and warm until her return. Images from his shower earlier, of aniki unbuttoning Yuuta's shirt and running his fingers down over his chest, kept washing over him, and he was too woozy to be able to properly shake them off. When the nurse finally arrived back, Yuuta was feeling too light headed for dinner to be an attractive proposition anymore, so he sloped off back to his room to lie down.
The first thing he did was check his phone.
Nothing.
Aniki might be ringing later, so he better take a nap now, he thought. He didn't want to be sleepy and woozy and therefore vulnerable if he did call. Who knew what he'd say if his inhibitions were down?
When he woke up at nine pm, his leg hurting again where he'd scraped it (the plaster was pulling at the hairs on his leg when his trousers moved against it, too, which was really distracting), aniki still hadn't rung him, or left any sort of message at all. What was going on? Aniki always rang when he said he would, and always took any possible opportunity to talk to him! Something was definitely up, but what was it?
He thought he'd have to take matters into his own hands, but how? The last time he'd phoned his brother, the conversation had been stilted and weird, and if he was fretting about it now, he didn't want to be experiencing it double if he phoned again. Besides, would aniki think him annoying? Aniki never seemed to worry about that sort of thing when he phoned Yuuta, but aniki never seemed to worry about anything annoying he did to Yuuta. And really, Yuuta never did either; he'd just never tell anyone that.
Except, maybe he should.
"I like it when you call me up, aniki." He wrote that, and then erased it, thinking it seemed a little strange just out of the blue like that. It was also maybe a bit more honest than he wanted to be, when he hadn't yet come to terms with how he felt about what they were becoming. If they were becoming anything at all. It was stupidly complicated! Everything had been easier when aniki had said weird things to him and he'd just grumbled at him in response. Teenage brain chemistry was most troublesome.
He worked through a few more versions of the sentiment, before finally settling on "If you're worried about calling me for some stupid reason, you shouldn't be." It lacked the friendliness of his first attempt, but this one was much safer and said pretty much the same thing. Sort of. He pressed send, and was then surprised when his phone beeped and vibrated in his hand straight away, too quickly to be a response to his own message.
It was from aniki.
"I have some things I want to tell you, but over the phone will not do, I have realised. I shall tell you when we are alone together on Friday night. Is that all right?"
Yuuta felt stupid for having sent his message when he did. He hoped aniki would realise they'd sent them at the same time, else he'd look insensitive now. His phone beeped again, though, and he realised he should have given his brother more credit, than to have worried about such a thing.
"We appear to have a psychic message connection - isn't that wonderful? <3"
And then:
"As much as I know you're dying to hear my voice, I shall have to stand firm on imparting my words to you in person. You can last until Friday, right...? ;)"
Waiting 'til Friday was going to be very, very trying, Yuuta decided. As soon as he'd seen the words "I have some things I want to tell you", his pulse had started to race, and his condition hadn't been helped by the jolt of excitement that had run through him at "alone together on Friday night" - it all sounded as if aniki was serious again, and Yuuta's mind was leaping through possibilities of what he could be told, and what could happen afterwards. Some of the possibilities disturbed him a little bit (a particularly vivid one was aniki confessing his undying love over popcorn and a dreadful chick flick, and then pulling him in for a movie-style kiss), and he was feeling very unsettled by all of the uncertainty, but, as his brain had told him before, he actually quite enjoyed being confused...
At least he'd been given some warning, so that he could use the rest of the week to work out how he felt and what he wanted. If aniki were to make confessions of love, as doubtful as that actually was, Yuuta had to be prepared! If he wasn't, he'd stutter and get embarrassed and say something painfully stupid regardless of whether it was a rejection or an acceptance, and for his first true excursion into love, Yuuta wanted to be smooth and in control. That would only ever be a far-off hope, of course (the being smooth and cool, not aniki being his first love!), because everything sincere that Yuuta tried to do ended up with him nervous and pink-cheeked, but time to think could only ever be a good thing.
Of course, the likelihood was that aniki wanted to tell him something else entirely - would it be about their father...? - and this was really quite relieving, but Yuuta figured that it couldn't hurt to think over all the possibilities.
Did he actually think he could say yes to any invitation of aniki's...? He really wasn't sure. Just the fact that a few days ago he would've scoffed and told him to stop being weird if he did say he wanted Yuuta to be his boyfriend (that sounded bizarre) made him wonder just how much affection and interest in his brother had been hidden under the surface - would there be more to come, later? Would he eventually come to love aniki as more than just a brother, as more than just the person who'd accompanied him for his entire thirteen years of existence? Yuuta felt scared at the prospect, but he didn't feel a lot of the other emotions he thought he should be experiencing when thinking about falling in love with his brother.
He had three and a half days left to figure out what he felt before aniki and Yumiko would be driving him and his belongings home for the summer. He'd have to be very careful with his thinking, because if he messed up, he and aniki would still have to spend four long weeks together, and it would be awful if relations between them were strained. Would his brother take rejection well? If it was Yuuta, then probably he would, just because aniki seemed remarkably sacrificing for him, but Yuuta didn't want aniki to be sad for the entire holiday. Nor did he want to be entering into something that would escalate into kissing and touching and... more, just to make aniki happy, though. Yuuta's more was very important to him.
Three and a half days. He swore to make the most of them; as Mizuki would no doubt tell him if asked, love was serious business.
When Yuuta fell asleep that night, he was holding Bun-Buns more carefully than usual, and he had dreams of doing something with aniki in a big pool of popcorn. He would spend all of the next day trying to remember exactly what that something had been.
He would also be wondering whether it was something he'd actually like to do.
Without the popcorn, of course. That was sticky.
The next few days would be troubling for Yuuta.