FAKE Ficlet: Adjusting
Title: Adjusting
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ryo, Dee.
Rating: PG-13
Setting: Not long after the end of Vol. 7.
Summary: Ryo spent a long time trying to be straight, so he’s got a lot of adjustments to make now he’s accepted the truth.
Word Count: 572
Written For: My own prompt ‘FAKE, Ryo, He's spent all his adult life trying to be straight, now he has to get used to being gay,’ at
fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
Up until now, Ryo has spent his entire adult life trying to conform, to be as straight and heterosexual as the next guy. He’s dated and even slept with, a number of women; he’s even liked them as friends, it’s just that he’s never really felt any real physical attraction towards them. He used to try to convince himself that it was just because he hadn’t met the right person yet, that when he did the attraction and everything that went with it would be there, but it just never happened.
Until he met Dee.
When he’d thought about the right person he’d always meant a woman, even though deep down in a corner of his soul he tried hard to ignore, he’d been aware that he found the male form far more attractive than the female. Even so, when Dee had swept into his life like a force of nature, Ryo hadn’t been at all prepared for what the proximity of the black-haired, green-eyed man did to him. No woman had ever made him go weak at the knees with nothing more than a smile or tremble all over with a touch, and when Dee kissed him, Ryo might have melted completely if he hadn’t been so intent on resisting the other man’s advances.
Eventually though, Dee had worn him down. Thinking back, it was inevitable; how could anyone keep ignoring someone so magnetic, not to mention persistent, indefinitely? Ryo really hadn’t stood a chance.
Which meant that everything Ryo had once thought he knew about himself had now been turned on its head. He’d gone from being determinedly straight to being gay in what felt like the blink of an eye, and it was going to take a lot of getting used to.
Not that Ryo regrets the abrupt about-turn in his life, he feels more at peace with himself than he ever has, but he’s had to make some major adjustments and despite his attraction towards Dee, it’s not all proving straightforward. For instance, Dee has a much higher sex drive than Ryo does. Maybe that’s partly because Ryo has spent so much of his life repressing his natural urges, and maybe it’s also partly because his physical reactions to Dee scare him more than a little, but whatever the cause, he knows they’ll eventually have to come to some kind of compromise or he might lose the man he loves more than anything.
Dating is another confusing issue. Ryo’s used to picking his date up, paying for dinner or whatever, and returning her to her door. But now he’s dating a man, he often finds himself getting wrong-footed when Dee picks him up for a night out and insists on paying. After a few arguments on the subject, they’ve finally agreed to take turns and that seems to be working better.
Ryo knows he still has a lot to learn about his new lifestyle, and now Dee’s hinting that they should check out some of his favourite gay clubs together, which is making Ryo freak out a bit. How do people dress in those places? Will Dee expect him to wear something tight or revealing? He doesn’t want to disappoint his partner, but he doesn’t want to make himself feel uncomfortable or out of place either.
All Ryo can do is hope that Dee will be patient with him as he comes to terms with his new life.
The End