Hanabi 25/?? - ReitaXRuki
Title: Hanabi
Chapter: 25/??
Author: chuu ( akichuu)
Fandom: JRock, Gazette
Pairings: ReitaXRuki. Some other pairings in the background that you might find later on...
Overall Rating: PG
Genre: Drop dead fluffy.
Warnings: n/a. Un-beta-ed mistakes.
Summary: Lack of sleep brought headaches and so many other aches, now Reita just realized it...
Comments: I don't think I can say 'sorry' enough to you guys for keeping the updates long overdue. Well... I'm sorry anyways. Here you go, Chapter 25.
Hanabi : 25
Sunday morning, unlike usual, seemed to be gloomy and cold and specifically unfriendly when Reita fluttered his eyes open. The first thing he could distinguish was the sun shining through his window with such a faint, dim crimson light, and with that as the only lighting, Reita's sight found the clock. It was still so early, only thirty minutes away from 6 a.m.. He yawned as he rolled around in bed, eyes hadn't left the face of the clock, wondering if he hadn't seen it wrong. How could he be up at this hour? He would not normally use his Sundays to wake up late at noon (his mother would never allow that!), but it was also abnormal to be opening his eyes at a time this early.
Well, to think again, it wasn't as if he had had the best sleep ever.
He had hardly even slept, actually, that it felt like he had only closed his eyes for a minute before he woke up just now. The whole night had passed with him drowning inside his futon and blanket and he had had his eyes tightly closed inside the darkness, but he couldn't remember he had actually fallen properly asleep. Every time he had succeeded to reach a spot, knocking on the door to dreamland, the worst of imaginations came waking him up, startling him back into the inconvenience of the lonely little room; it had been like that, over and over again, until now.
So, what had he had? Half an hour, an hour of sleep? That much or so.
Lack of sleep had always been bad and he knew it brought headaches. With that being a knowledge he held in mind, Reita shifted very, very carefully from bed; lifting his head inch by inch as best as he could without startling it - he wanted to avoid any kind of pain as much as possible. He sighed as he reached a sitting position, eyeing the silent, dim bedroom where he was in. The lighting hadn't changed much, with only a minute or two passing by. He wasn't sure he wanted to go to the window and shrug open the curtain, to let more light coming into the room. He wasn't sure it wouldn't be painful for his already sore eyes.
He waited until he was completely sober, until the drape that was blurring his sight slid aside, until he was able to focus at one insignificant sight long enough without faltering. And when he finally was fully awake, a question hit him hard: What should he do now?
The silence of the morning was breached with a very soft humming from downstairs, the voice that soon Reita recognized as his mother's. He didn't wonder why his mother was already up this early - it was her habit. She would mop the floor, cook her children breakfast and wash dirty clothes and hang them up to dry at the backyard. She would water the plants and chat with neighbors. She liked to start her day early - unlike her spoiled children.
Reita smirked as he thought of that. Oh how his mother would be so surprised to know he was already awake.
He figured, a minute or two later, that it might not be so bad to look at the world at such an early hour; to know what his mother had been seeing when she woke up in every day of her life. So Reita stood up - immediately his head throbbed like crazy. He clenched his forehead with one hand, the other propping against the wall, stopping himself from falling back down. His mind worked hard driving away the dizziness out of his head, suggesting it to calm down, but Reita barely managed to control it. With the unstoppable splintering pain in his head, threatening to tear his skull into two, he dragged his weak legs towards the door - hoping he wouldn't stumble and fall, rolling down the stairs because that would be terribly, terribly awful.
Reita stepped on the first floor safely - thank God - and walked the excruciating walk to enter the dining room. His mother was still humming a song that Reita didn't recognize; Reita could see her as she was standing in the kitchen with her apron wrapping around her, cooking something that by the smell, Reita could guess as fried eggs. And as he had expected, he startled his mother when he came close enough to her and made his presence known.
"Akira?" his mother smiled widely, "You're up already?" She found Reita waking up early so very amusing, and Reita could see it clearly on her face.
"I couldn't exactly... Sleep..." Reita mumbled, feeling the harsh straining in his throat as he spoke. He took a glass, filled it with water and gulped down the whole liquid to try to soothe the pain.
Reita sat on the chair that he painfully remembered he had sat on last night while he was being a prisoner under interrogation, setting the glass on the table in front of him. His mother walked to him, and Reita closed his eyes when he felt his mother laid her hands on his head; it felt really soothing when she started to rub him with her strong yet caring fingers. "My poor baby," she murmured - and should it be embarrassing to be called a baby as if he was still two months old, Reita didn't feel it at all. All he felt was, it was really nice to have his mother alleviating the pain with her magical touch.
The eggs in the pan crackled; the noise made his mother gasp a little in surprise before she left Reita to rescue her cooking. It was a mournful loss, as those fingers left his head, but Reita couldn't complain.
"Kaa-san," he whispered, wasn't expecting his mother to hear him, but she actually did. She turned her head to look at Reita while her hands placed the well-cooked eggs on a plate - another magical thing she could do flawlessly, being a mother that she was. She could do a lot of different things at once and not failing any of the tasks.
"Kaa-san... Is... Is he..." Reita gulped, "Is Ruki still here...?"
His mother's smile faltered a bit to a pitiful stretch of lips - it wasn't something to be called a smile. She nodded, walking towards Reita with a plate of sizzling eggs on her hand. "Yes, he's still here, Akira. He's still asleep in your sister's room," she answered, "Your sister had to move in to my room. I believe..." she set down the plate on the table and sat herself on the chair right next to Reita, "... She is also still very deeply asleep right now."
For a moment, Reita thought about the unfairness of it: of how the rest of the people in the house seemed to have a good night sleep, while it had been so impossible for him to doze off, even for a second. But then again, could he blame it upon anyone?
"She talked with Ruki for hours last night..." his mother said.
By the sound of his mother's voice when she spoke, Reita had a feeling that she knew all about it, that maybe she had been told about Reita's not-so-simple problem. He sighed, thinking that it was inevitable, that even if Nee-chan hadn't informed his mother, she would know it by herself. It was that maternal instinct, probably, that allowed her to know all about her children, down to the most hidden matters.
Reita slumped his aching head onto the table, pillowing his forehead with his own arm. "What should I do, Kaa-san?" he whispered, desperately. If his mother had already known all about it, he might as well just ask, see if his mother had a solution that his sister couldn't provide him last night.
"About Ruki-chan?" she asked, gently. Reita breathed heavily as he felt her hand return to his head, rubbing his scalp between his hair. "My dear Akira, although it pains me too to see you hurt..." she continued, "I can't make a decision for you, and I really don't have the right to tell you what you should do... But I suppose there is something you need to know: it's better to try to untangle a problem than to sit and wait for it to clear out by itself - which we know is impossible. I wouldn't dare suggesting you to talk to him, but if that's the only thing that can make things better, clearer..."
Reita sighed, seeing the hard and painful reality inside his eyelids... It was the reality he was bound to face, sooner or later. "What should I tell him, if I get the chance to talk to him?" he asked, although the answer he already knew... He was just afraid of facing it, he understood that.
"Tell him what you want to tell him," his mother answered, and it was not very helping... Because what Reita was supposed to be telling Ruki; that very, very urgent matter, it was probably the hardest thing in the world for Reita to say.
"He's going to hate me if I tell him..." Reita murmured, suffering in every bit of painful reality in his statement.
"Aww, Akira, how can you just conclude that?" his mother said, "Do you remember when I told you... There was that something special between you and Ruki-chan?" his mother murmured, her voice soothing Reita's tense nerves, "It's still there, my Baby. It's still there, when you two were together, when you looked into Ruki's eyes. It's there, and I know it is something strong that will not vanish even as time goes by."
"I don't know if he... If Ruki... Feels the same way too..." Reita mumbled, "Even before I talk to him, he might already hate me so much right now."
It was exactly what he thought, and after what he had done, wasn't it only logical? He could bet his life that Ruki would never want to see his face, ever again.
"Oh, my Akira..." Reita could feel a soft kiss on the crown of his head, his mother giving him a remedy that not a single doctor on earth would ever be able to give. "Listen to me," she said, "Ruki-chan might be stubborn, ignorant - you may say, but I don't believe that he forgets about friendship so easily. He is almost like our own family. I know him like he's one of my own child. I know him almost like I know you, and to know him that much, I can say that he is more than just a silly blonde who gets around infuriating people," his mother chuckled gently, "No, despite his attitude, how he might seem to despise you for what you've done, I don't think he will - ever - seriously hate you."
Reita closed his eyes and breathed a little less-suffocatedly at the faint hope his mother had just given him, and when he opened his eyes, he shifted his head. He looked into her glowing pair of eyes, finding wisdom there - that had been planted by each of the many years she had gone through. "Should I tell him, Kaa-san?" he asked, searching for a little justification before he jumped and risked his heart getting broken once again. It had hurt the first time, and he wasn't sure he could bear the pain if it happened to him again.
"Tell him about...?" his mother smiled, as if teasing Reita - he really didn't need to be teased at the moment... His mother might've seen him pouting, because then she continued: "It's really up to you, Akira. If you think you don't want to risk more than you've already put down on the line, if you think you can live with hiding your feelings for the rest of your life, then don't tell him. But if you're ready for the consequences in case you do tell him, if you're ready to be honest, then you go and tell him. The latter should be hard, really hard, but I can guarantee you peace of mind, because you've got nothing to hide anymore... You don't have to lie anymore."
Reita drowned his face in the crook of his arms. His mother had already given him his choices; she had simplified all the available paths into two, and Reita had to decide which one he should head to. From his mother's words, he could sort out: it was either Reita being wise or Reita being safe.
He could just tell Ruki he was sorry, that it all had been a misunderstanding. He could just say that it had been an accident, he hadn't meant to do it. He could promise Ruki that he would never do it again. He could beg Ruki to forget about last night and just move on, living the friendship that they once had. He could try to bury it all deep inside of him and hope it would not surface again. He could try to live being Ruki's friend, and try to be happy and content for just being allowed to stick around him. It was safer, it was easier, and he might just get his dear friend back by his side.
Or... Maybe he should just take his risk; he had gotten himself in this problem, why not plunging all the way in and get himself wet althrough? Maybe he could just be honest, tell Ruki everything, tell him how he felt. Maybe he could tell the boy that he loved him. And if afterwards, Ruki would leave him behind and never want to be Reita's friend again... Maybe that was just the consequence that he had to face. But there was still hope that Ruki would accept his feeling, and by so, Reita would still be allowed to hang around by his side (he didn't dare hoping that Ruki would feel the same towards him...).
He hated gambling, but this was just like that. He could never guess how Ruki would react if he told him. But then again, he would never know unless he told him... This choice was wise, but of course, it was hard, extremely hard, and he would risk losing Ruki for good if Ruki took it the hard way.
Reita knew living with a lie was painful, and he knew he wanted to be wise... But could he just say it to Ruki? Could he say: 'I love you'?
The feeling of being torn between two options was uncomfortable, and Reita thought he was brought to a junction and he was supposed to choose his way to life while the other way would lead to his death. He knew it wasn't really that drastic, and neither of the choices he had right now would utterly kill him (probably), but it felt just as bad. Being wise, or being safe? Which of the two would he prefer? Reita was so caught up in weighing each of the options, trying to sort out one by one the possibilities that each of the option gave him - when he was startled by a sound of footsteps entering the dining room.
Reita looked up and found a sight that erased all of his evaluations away in a split second... None of it seemed reasonable anymore in the sole presence of the blonde he had been thinking about.
The boy who had been transformed into a cute, cheerful little fox last night, this morning became human again; Ruki was clad in an over-sized t-shirt and soccer pants, his face looked half-sleepy, half-nervous. The blonde stood just a few steps away from the dining table, his hands gripping the edge of his t-shirt. Reita couldn't help to notice the dark shadows under each of those glimmering eyes - deciding that Ruki, just like him, might have experienced one long sleepless night as well. A series of questions and answers ran through his mind very, very quickly in just a short period of time: Should Reita get up and greet him? Should he stay put and shut up? Should he talk to him now? Should he just leave him alone?
But Reita never had the chance to sort out just which action he would better do, because gracefully, his mother took over the situation; she walked towards Ruki, put an arm around the blonde's shoulder, and guided him to the dining table.
===
fanfic list for previous chapters and other titles.
Chapter: 25/??
Author: chuu ( akichuu)
Fandom: JRock, Gazette
Pairings: ReitaXRuki. Some other pairings in the background that you might find later on...
Overall Rating: PG
Genre: Drop dead fluffy.
Warnings: n/a. Un-beta-ed mistakes.
Summary: Lack of sleep brought headaches and so many other aches, now Reita just realized it...
Comments: I don't think I can say 'sorry' enough to you guys for keeping the updates long overdue. Well... I'm sorry anyways. Here you go, Chapter 25.
Hanabi : 25
Sunday morning, unlike usual, seemed to be gloomy and cold and specifically unfriendly when Reita fluttered his eyes open. The first thing he could distinguish was the sun shining through his window with such a faint, dim crimson light, and with that as the only lighting, Reita's sight found the clock. It was still so early, only thirty minutes away from 6 a.m.. He yawned as he rolled around in bed, eyes hadn't left the face of the clock, wondering if he hadn't seen it wrong. How could he be up at this hour? He would not normally use his Sundays to wake up late at noon (his mother would never allow that!), but it was also abnormal to be opening his eyes at a time this early.
Well, to think again, it wasn't as if he had had the best sleep ever.
He had hardly even slept, actually, that it felt like he had only closed his eyes for a minute before he woke up just now. The whole night had passed with him drowning inside his futon and blanket and he had had his eyes tightly closed inside the darkness, but he couldn't remember he had actually fallen properly asleep. Every time he had succeeded to reach a spot, knocking on the door to dreamland, the worst of imaginations came waking him up, startling him back into the inconvenience of the lonely little room; it had been like that, over and over again, until now.
So, what had he had? Half an hour, an hour of sleep? That much or so.
Lack of sleep had always been bad and he knew it brought headaches. With that being a knowledge he held in mind, Reita shifted very, very carefully from bed; lifting his head inch by inch as best as he could without startling it - he wanted to avoid any kind of pain as much as possible. He sighed as he reached a sitting position, eyeing the silent, dim bedroom where he was in. The lighting hadn't changed much, with only a minute or two passing by. He wasn't sure he wanted to go to the window and shrug open the curtain, to let more light coming into the room. He wasn't sure it wouldn't be painful for his already sore eyes.
He waited until he was completely sober, until the drape that was blurring his sight slid aside, until he was able to focus at one insignificant sight long enough without faltering. And when he finally was fully awake, a question hit him hard: What should he do now?
The silence of the morning was breached with a very soft humming from downstairs, the voice that soon Reita recognized as his mother's. He didn't wonder why his mother was already up this early - it was her habit. She would mop the floor, cook her children breakfast and wash dirty clothes and hang them up to dry at the backyard. She would water the plants and chat with neighbors. She liked to start her day early - unlike her spoiled children.
Reita smirked as he thought of that. Oh how his mother would be so surprised to know he was already awake.
He figured, a minute or two later, that it might not be so bad to look at the world at such an early hour; to know what his mother had been seeing when she woke up in every day of her life. So Reita stood up - immediately his head throbbed like crazy. He clenched his forehead with one hand, the other propping against the wall, stopping himself from falling back down. His mind worked hard driving away the dizziness out of his head, suggesting it to calm down, but Reita barely managed to control it. With the unstoppable splintering pain in his head, threatening to tear his skull into two, he dragged his weak legs towards the door - hoping he wouldn't stumble and fall, rolling down the stairs because that would be terribly, terribly awful.
Reita stepped on the first floor safely - thank God - and walked the excruciating walk to enter the dining room. His mother was still humming a song that Reita didn't recognize; Reita could see her as she was standing in the kitchen with her apron wrapping around her, cooking something that by the smell, Reita could guess as fried eggs. And as he had expected, he startled his mother when he came close enough to her and made his presence known.
"Akira?" his mother smiled widely, "You're up already?" She found Reita waking up early so very amusing, and Reita could see it clearly on her face.
"I couldn't exactly... Sleep..." Reita mumbled, feeling the harsh straining in his throat as he spoke. He took a glass, filled it with water and gulped down the whole liquid to try to soothe the pain.
Reita sat on the chair that he painfully remembered he had sat on last night while he was being a prisoner under interrogation, setting the glass on the table in front of him. His mother walked to him, and Reita closed his eyes when he felt his mother laid her hands on his head; it felt really soothing when she started to rub him with her strong yet caring fingers. "My poor baby," she murmured - and should it be embarrassing to be called a baby as if he was still two months old, Reita didn't feel it at all. All he felt was, it was really nice to have his mother alleviating the pain with her magical touch.
The eggs in the pan crackled; the noise made his mother gasp a little in surprise before she left Reita to rescue her cooking. It was a mournful loss, as those fingers left his head, but Reita couldn't complain.
"Kaa-san," he whispered, wasn't expecting his mother to hear him, but she actually did. She turned her head to look at Reita while her hands placed the well-cooked eggs on a plate - another magical thing she could do flawlessly, being a mother that she was. She could do a lot of different things at once and not failing any of the tasks.
"Kaa-san... Is... Is he..." Reita gulped, "Is Ruki still here...?"
His mother's smile faltered a bit to a pitiful stretch of lips - it wasn't something to be called a smile. She nodded, walking towards Reita with a plate of sizzling eggs on her hand. "Yes, he's still here, Akira. He's still asleep in your sister's room," she answered, "Your sister had to move in to my room. I believe..." she set down the plate on the table and sat herself on the chair right next to Reita, "... She is also still very deeply asleep right now."
For a moment, Reita thought about the unfairness of it: of how the rest of the people in the house seemed to have a good night sleep, while it had been so impossible for him to doze off, even for a second. But then again, could he blame it upon anyone?
"She talked with Ruki for hours last night..." his mother said.
By the sound of his mother's voice when she spoke, Reita had a feeling that she knew all about it, that maybe she had been told about Reita's not-so-simple problem. He sighed, thinking that it was inevitable, that even if Nee-chan hadn't informed his mother, she would know it by herself. It was that maternal instinct, probably, that allowed her to know all about her children, down to the most hidden matters.
Reita slumped his aching head onto the table, pillowing his forehead with his own arm. "What should I do, Kaa-san?" he whispered, desperately. If his mother had already known all about it, he might as well just ask, see if his mother had a solution that his sister couldn't provide him last night.
"About Ruki-chan?" she asked, gently. Reita breathed heavily as he felt her hand return to his head, rubbing his scalp between his hair. "My dear Akira, although it pains me too to see you hurt..." she continued, "I can't make a decision for you, and I really don't have the right to tell you what you should do... But I suppose there is something you need to know: it's better to try to untangle a problem than to sit and wait for it to clear out by itself - which we know is impossible. I wouldn't dare suggesting you to talk to him, but if that's the only thing that can make things better, clearer..."
Reita sighed, seeing the hard and painful reality inside his eyelids... It was the reality he was bound to face, sooner or later. "What should I tell him, if I get the chance to talk to him?" he asked, although the answer he already knew... He was just afraid of facing it, he understood that.
"Tell him what you want to tell him," his mother answered, and it was not very helping... Because what Reita was supposed to be telling Ruki; that very, very urgent matter, it was probably the hardest thing in the world for Reita to say.
"He's going to hate me if I tell him..." Reita murmured, suffering in every bit of painful reality in his statement.
"Aww, Akira, how can you just conclude that?" his mother said, "Do you remember when I told you... There was that something special between you and Ruki-chan?" his mother murmured, her voice soothing Reita's tense nerves, "It's still there, my Baby. It's still there, when you two were together, when you looked into Ruki's eyes. It's there, and I know it is something strong that will not vanish even as time goes by."
"I don't know if he... If Ruki... Feels the same way too..." Reita mumbled, "Even before I talk to him, he might already hate me so much right now."
It was exactly what he thought, and after what he had done, wasn't it only logical? He could bet his life that Ruki would never want to see his face, ever again.
"Oh, my Akira..." Reita could feel a soft kiss on the crown of his head, his mother giving him a remedy that not a single doctor on earth would ever be able to give. "Listen to me," she said, "Ruki-chan might be stubborn, ignorant - you may say, but I don't believe that he forgets about friendship so easily. He is almost like our own family. I know him like he's one of my own child. I know him almost like I know you, and to know him that much, I can say that he is more than just a silly blonde who gets around infuriating people," his mother chuckled gently, "No, despite his attitude, how he might seem to despise you for what you've done, I don't think he will - ever - seriously hate you."
Reita closed his eyes and breathed a little less-suffocatedly at the faint hope his mother had just given him, and when he opened his eyes, he shifted his head. He looked into her glowing pair of eyes, finding wisdom there - that had been planted by each of the many years she had gone through. "Should I tell him, Kaa-san?" he asked, searching for a little justification before he jumped and risked his heart getting broken once again. It had hurt the first time, and he wasn't sure he could bear the pain if it happened to him again.
"Tell him about...?" his mother smiled, as if teasing Reita - he really didn't need to be teased at the moment... His mother might've seen him pouting, because then she continued: "It's really up to you, Akira. If you think you don't want to risk more than you've already put down on the line, if you think you can live with hiding your feelings for the rest of your life, then don't tell him. But if you're ready for the consequences in case you do tell him, if you're ready to be honest, then you go and tell him. The latter should be hard, really hard, but I can guarantee you peace of mind, because you've got nothing to hide anymore... You don't have to lie anymore."
Reita drowned his face in the crook of his arms. His mother had already given him his choices; she had simplified all the available paths into two, and Reita had to decide which one he should head to. From his mother's words, he could sort out: it was either Reita being wise or Reita being safe.
He could just tell Ruki he was sorry, that it all had been a misunderstanding. He could just say that it had been an accident, he hadn't meant to do it. He could promise Ruki that he would never do it again. He could beg Ruki to forget about last night and just move on, living the friendship that they once had. He could try to bury it all deep inside of him and hope it would not surface again. He could try to live being Ruki's friend, and try to be happy and content for just being allowed to stick around him. It was safer, it was easier, and he might just get his dear friend back by his side.
Or... Maybe he should just take his risk; he had gotten himself in this problem, why not plunging all the way in and get himself wet althrough? Maybe he could just be honest, tell Ruki everything, tell him how he felt. Maybe he could tell the boy that he loved him. And if afterwards, Ruki would leave him behind and never want to be Reita's friend again... Maybe that was just the consequence that he had to face. But there was still hope that Ruki would accept his feeling, and by so, Reita would still be allowed to hang around by his side (he didn't dare hoping that Ruki would feel the same towards him...).
He hated gambling, but this was just like that. He could never guess how Ruki would react if he told him. But then again, he would never know unless he told him... This choice was wise, but of course, it was hard, extremely hard, and he would risk losing Ruki for good if Ruki took it the hard way.
Reita knew living with a lie was painful, and he knew he wanted to be wise... But could he just say it to Ruki? Could he say: 'I love you'?
The feeling of being torn between two options was uncomfortable, and Reita thought he was brought to a junction and he was supposed to choose his way to life while the other way would lead to his death. He knew it wasn't really that drastic, and neither of the choices he had right now would utterly kill him (probably), but it felt just as bad. Being wise, or being safe? Which of the two would he prefer? Reita was so caught up in weighing each of the options, trying to sort out one by one the possibilities that each of the option gave him - when he was startled by a sound of footsteps entering the dining room.
Reita looked up and found a sight that erased all of his evaluations away in a split second... None of it seemed reasonable anymore in the sole presence of the blonde he had been thinking about.
The boy who had been transformed into a cute, cheerful little fox last night, this morning became human again; Ruki was clad in an over-sized t-shirt and soccer pants, his face looked half-sleepy, half-nervous. The blonde stood just a few steps away from the dining table, his hands gripping the edge of his t-shirt. Reita couldn't help to notice the dark shadows under each of those glimmering eyes - deciding that Ruki, just like him, might have experienced one long sleepless night as well. A series of questions and answers ran through his mind very, very quickly in just a short period of time: Should Reita get up and greet him? Should he stay put and shut up? Should he talk to him now? Should he just leave him alone?
But Reita never had the chance to sort out just which action he would better do, because gracefully, his mother took over the situation; she walked towards Ruki, put an arm around the blonde's shoulder, and guided him to the dining table.
===
fanfic list for previous chapters and other titles.