means to an end and the best-laid plans
Title: means to an end and the best-laid plans
Pairing: Pi-centric, slight KoyaRyo and one-sided PiKoya
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,860
Summary: (Romeos 'verse) Yamashita Tomohisa, poster-boy for good boys everywhere.
Notes: Pi's backstory leading up to Two's Company, Three's a Crowd. Thanks to beltenebra for her many brainstorming sessions, and to imifumei for helping me out with the rough spots. They're so good to me.
---
No one had been more surprised than he was when his dinky little side business took off like a shot, making him a multi-millionaire in just over a year. Finishing the last year of his degree had seemed redundant but he'd never done things by halves before and he wasn't going to start then. He had moved his mother and sister into a beautiful home the two women picked out together and loaded them with enough money to furnish it in any way they saw fit. He moved himself into a disgustingly large mansion; a rash decision by a young man still angry with his father and the world at large and feeling the need to show his accomplishment through money. He kept it to remind himself of the stupidity of such decisions, should he ever be faced with another.
Yamashita was a hard worker who valued family and constant self-improvement above all else. When he realized, at sixteen years old, that he liked boys, he was understandably upset. All he wanted was to live a happy, socially acceptable life in which he could provide for his mother and sister and also his own family when he was able to start one, preferably after he had saved up a bit of a nest egg. Homosexuality ruined all of his carefully laid plans and he resented that.
Instead, he very carefully built a persona and wore it like a second skin - Yamashita Tomohisa, poster-boy for good boys everywhere. He was polite, politically correct, caring … and about as warm as a frost-covered pond, and just as deep, should anyone try to probe him. And underneath this skin, he festered. He took lovers under the cover of night and false identities but they made him hollow, loneliness echoing in the hollowness - they were false promises of something he could never have.
The year he graduated, just after he'd hit it big and taken up residence in his new home, he felt smaller and smaller, afraid of losing himself inside the person he'd been desperate to become. But it was frightening and painful and in desperation he turned to an acquaintance with his same issue. The acquaintance had, admittedly, different tastes from his own, but Yamashita was too shy to go out and find what he wanted. Not to mention too well known to be frequenting places where he might find what he wanted.
"Well, I say you're only young once. You should get it out of your system while you can, you know."
Yamashita tapped the table irritably, thinking that if it was something he could "get out of his system" he'd have achieved it long before. "I don't want to sleep with anyone."
"That's okay. This one doesn't work alone, anyway, so you can watch."
"This one? Doesn't he have a name?"
"Never asked and he never said. You can name him if you like. You're paying." The man scribbled a number on a slip of paper and slid it across the table, the corner of it catching on the water ring from Yamashita's glass and feathering the ink.
Yamashita picked it up between forefinger and thumb and shook it gently, watching the ink bleed. He shifted and slipped it into his pocket, still tapping nervously at the tabletop with his other hand.
"He's very discreet. Don't worry about that."
Yamashita couldn't tell him that that wasn't what he was worried about at all.
---
He stared at the slip of paper, the ink blurred almost to indecipherability but just barely legible. Pacing back and forth across the room he argued with himself, the same tired arguments he'd been having for the last two weeks since he'd been given the number.
It would be just like paying for his own porn, if he didn't join in. And there was nothing wrong with watching porn. And if he didn't participate, he wouldn't get attached. He could treat it like his own personal porn with plot - a romance novel turned performance for rich men. Right. And he worked hard for his money; he was willing to give up a lot of things for his ideal life. But later. Right now he was only 23 and he deserved to indulge himself while he was still young, right? In a couple years he would change, forget about men. He didn't know how, but he'd figure it out.
Nodding, he flipped open his phone and slowly dialed the number.
Three rings and then a gravelly voice answered. "Hello?" the man asked, the word sharp and quick like a whip-crack.
Shit. He hadn't thought about what to say when he actually connected.
"Hello?" The voice was slightly irritated now.
"Um." Yamashita cleared his throat. "I got your number from a… friend. And I wanted to discuss possible employment," he said carefully.
A short silence. "All right. Which friend?"
"Orihara?"
"Ah, okay. What do you want? I don't work by myself."
Yamashita cocked his head. "Why?" he blurted out and then wanted to smack himself.
"Safer that way," he replied shortly.
"Well, I…"
The man on the other end sighed.
"Do you want to watch? That's mostly what my clients want. If you want a one-on-one, I can probably get you someone's number."
"No! No, I mean." Yamashita sat down and put his head in his hand. "I want to watch. I don't want anyone to touch me."
"We can work with that."
The next twenty minutes were the most awkward and harrowing minutes of his life. The questions were intrusive and embarrassing and he wasn't sure whether to be more uncomfortable or relieved at the clinical way they had been delivered.
"Ah!" Yamashita exclaimed just before the man hung up the phone. "I… my friend said he didn't know your name, but… I'd rather have something to call you by."
There was a pause and then, "Nishikido is fine," he said, and the line went dead.
Yamashita closed his phone and cradled it in his hands, staring blankly at it. For good or for bad, it was done. He realized he was both nervous and excited.
---
He sat waiting in a love hotel in Ueno, nervously resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his steepled hands. When there was a firm knock on the door, he nearly jumped out of his skin, rising quickly to open the door and step back, wiping his sweaty palms on his pants.
He wasn't sure what exactly he'd been expecting but this wasn't quite it. Two men practically fell through the now open door, hands fisted in material and kissing like it was the last thing they might do. But it most definitely wasn't. The short, dark-haired man was all hard lines and forceful actions, hands jerking against cloth or roughly pulling hair. The taller, lighter-haired man was languid and teasing and verbally expressive in a way Yamashita found himself responding to already as they tumbled past him toward the bed, and he hurried to close the door after them. It was like he didn't exist, as he'd requested. He watched them undress each other and they moved like strippers - each article cleverly removed in a way that left him aching for more, each movement calculated for show. He faded into the background and touched himself through his slacks. He felt guilty but they moved just like porn stars and he forced himself to forget.
---
He created his own story for them, one he carried in his head and paused at the end of every tryst to pick up the next time he saw them. They never touched him, but over time he became bold enough to touch them sometimes, when they were just so beautiful he couldn't hold back. Nishikido's face as he lost it, all his stern control washed away as he finished, and he couldn't help running his fingers across Ryo's straining lats as he moved harder and faster seeking his ending. And Jin was beautiful in the same way as a big cat, all slitted eyes and languid movements that had Yamashita dragging fingers over his chest to get his attention so he could watch the fire building behind his eyes.
When Nishikido called to tell him one night that there would be a change of partners, Yamashita was too shy and embarrassed to tell him no. No, because it would ruin the story, ruin the fantasy he'd created. What he wasn't prepared for was his reaction to the newcomer. He was similar to Jin in that he was like a cat, smooth and sensuous, but where Jin had always been sort of empty, this man was vivacious, completely intent on Nishikido and completely open about the way he felt. It took his breath away.
He might, on a very deep level, admit to himself that he was in love with the redhead, with his unguarded eyes and his heart on his sleeve. But it was straightforward: he was in love with him because he had something he wanted, something he wanted to be. Sometimes he’d let himself dream, think about them together, about falling so far that he took on the other man’s better qualities and became something more. But then he’d think about the mansion, and his mother who had worked so hard to raise him alone and would be devastated, and he let it slip away. He didn’t even know the man’s name, anyway.
Every time he saw them together he fell harder and faster until he wanted to take the tall man all for himself, tear him from Nishikido and make him love him instead. To distance himself he found them more work. Yamashita didn't think either of them did the job because they liked it, and if he could help them in this way, he would. But by doing this he also forced himself to recognize that this was just a game and that, in the end, the redhead would never be his. He knew Nishikido was falling in love before Nishikido did, he decided. But that didn't make it hurt less. He was lulling himself with more false promises and there had to be an end. He was almost twenty-four. It was time to start moving on.
He thought for months about the best way to do it, telling himself he needed to do it properly or he'd relapse. He knew he was just making excuses because he wasn't ready to give up the redhead yet, or the burgeoning love between him and Nishikido that he often pretended was his own. In the end he always knew what it would take.
"Nishikido," he said casually into the phone.
"Yes?"
"Tuesday?"
"Same time?"
"Yes. And. Bring Jin, too. All three of you."
A pause. "Anything in particular you'd like him for?"
"No," Yamashita replied, distracted. "Nothing special."
Nishikido sounded reluctant when he finally agreed, but he did agree and Yamashita felt sadness settle across his shoulders and he frowned. He'd always been bad at goodbyes.
Pairing: Pi-centric, slight KoyaRyo and one-sided PiKoya
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,860
Summary: (Romeos 'verse) Yamashita Tomohisa, poster-boy for good boys everywhere.
Notes: Pi's backstory leading up to Two's Company, Three's a Crowd. Thanks to beltenebra for her many brainstorming sessions, and to imifumei for helping me out with the rough spots. They're so good to me.
---
No one had been more surprised than he was when his dinky little side business took off like a shot, making him a multi-millionaire in just over a year. Finishing the last year of his degree had seemed redundant but he'd never done things by halves before and he wasn't going to start then. He had moved his mother and sister into a beautiful home the two women picked out together and loaded them with enough money to furnish it in any way they saw fit. He moved himself into a disgustingly large mansion; a rash decision by a young man still angry with his father and the world at large and feeling the need to show his accomplishment through money. He kept it to remind himself of the stupidity of such decisions, should he ever be faced with another.
Yamashita was a hard worker who valued family and constant self-improvement above all else. When he realized, at sixteen years old, that he liked boys, he was understandably upset. All he wanted was to live a happy, socially acceptable life in which he could provide for his mother and sister and also his own family when he was able to start one, preferably after he had saved up a bit of a nest egg. Homosexuality ruined all of his carefully laid plans and he resented that.
Instead, he very carefully built a persona and wore it like a second skin - Yamashita Tomohisa, poster-boy for good boys everywhere. He was polite, politically correct, caring … and about as warm as a frost-covered pond, and just as deep, should anyone try to probe him. And underneath this skin, he festered. He took lovers under the cover of night and false identities but they made him hollow, loneliness echoing in the hollowness - they were false promises of something he could never have.
The year he graduated, just after he'd hit it big and taken up residence in his new home, he felt smaller and smaller, afraid of losing himself inside the person he'd been desperate to become. But it was frightening and painful and in desperation he turned to an acquaintance with his same issue. The acquaintance had, admittedly, different tastes from his own, but Yamashita was too shy to go out and find what he wanted. Not to mention too well known to be frequenting places where he might find what he wanted.
"Well, I say you're only young once. You should get it out of your system while you can, you know."
Yamashita tapped the table irritably, thinking that if it was something he could "get out of his system" he'd have achieved it long before. "I don't want to sleep with anyone."
"That's okay. This one doesn't work alone, anyway, so you can watch."
"This one? Doesn't he have a name?"
"Never asked and he never said. You can name him if you like. You're paying." The man scribbled a number on a slip of paper and slid it across the table, the corner of it catching on the water ring from Yamashita's glass and feathering the ink.
Yamashita picked it up between forefinger and thumb and shook it gently, watching the ink bleed. He shifted and slipped it into his pocket, still tapping nervously at the tabletop with his other hand.
"He's very discreet. Don't worry about that."
Yamashita couldn't tell him that that wasn't what he was worried about at all.
---
He stared at the slip of paper, the ink blurred almost to indecipherability but just barely legible. Pacing back and forth across the room he argued with himself, the same tired arguments he'd been having for the last two weeks since he'd been given the number.
It would be just like paying for his own porn, if he didn't join in. And there was nothing wrong with watching porn. And if he didn't participate, he wouldn't get attached. He could treat it like his own personal porn with plot - a romance novel turned performance for rich men. Right. And he worked hard for his money; he was willing to give up a lot of things for his ideal life. But later. Right now he was only 23 and he deserved to indulge himself while he was still young, right? In a couple years he would change, forget about men. He didn't know how, but he'd figure it out.
Nodding, he flipped open his phone and slowly dialed the number.
Three rings and then a gravelly voice answered. "Hello?" the man asked, the word sharp and quick like a whip-crack.
Shit. He hadn't thought about what to say when he actually connected.
"Hello?" The voice was slightly irritated now.
"Um." Yamashita cleared his throat. "I got your number from a… friend. And I wanted to discuss possible employment," he said carefully.
A short silence. "All right. Which friend?"
"Orihara?"
"Ah, okay. What do you want? I don't work by myself."
Yamashita cocked his head. "Why?" he blurted out and then wanted to smack himself.
"Safer that way," he replied shortly.
"Well, I…"
The man on the other end sighed.
"Do you want to watch? That's mostly what my clients want. If you want a one-on-one, I can probably get you someone's number."
"No! No, I mean." Yamashita sat down and put his head in his hand. "I want to watch. I don't want anyone to touch me."
"We can work with that."
The next twenty minutes were the most awkward and harrowing minutes of his life. The questions were intrusive and embarrassing and he wasn't sure whether to be more uncomfortable or relieved at the clinical way they had been delivered.
"Ah!" Yamashita exclaimed just before the man hung up the phone. "I… my friend said he didn't know your name, but… I'd rather have something to call you by."
There was a pause and then, "Nishikido is fine," he said, and the line went dead.
Yamashita closed his phone and cradled it in his hands, staring blankly at it. For good or for bad, it was done. He realized he was both nervous and excited.
---
He sat waiting in a love hotel in Ueno, nervously resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his steepled hands. When there was a firm knock on the door, he nearly jumped out of his skin, rising quickly to open the door and step back, wiping his sweaty palms on his pants.
He wasn't sure what exactly he'd been expecting but this wasn't quite it. Two men practically fell through the now open door, hands fisted in material and kissing like it was the last thing they might do. But it most definitely wasn't. The short, dark-haired man was all hard lines and forceful actions, hands jerking against cloth or roughly pulling hair. The taller, lighter-haired man was languid and teasing and verbally expressive in a way Yamashita found himself responding to already as they tumbled past him toward the bed, and he hurried to close the door after them. It was like he didn't exist, as he'd requested. He watched them undress each other and they moved like strippers - each article cleverly removed in a way that left him aching for more, each movement calculated for show. He faded into the background and touched himself through his slacks. He felt guilty but they moved just like porn stars and he forced himself to forget.
---
He created his own story for them, one he carried in his head and paused at the end of every tryst to pick up the next time he saw them. They never touched him, but over time he became bold enough to touch them sometimes, when they were just so beautiful he couldn't hold back. Nishikido's face as he lost it, all his stern control washed away as he finished, and he couldn't help running his fingers across Ryo's straining lats as he moved harder and faster seeking his ending. And Jin was beautiful in the same way as a big cat, all slitted eyes and languid movements that had Yamashita dragging fingers over his chest to get his attention so he could watch the fire building behind his eyes.
When Nishikido called to tell him one night that there would be a change of partners, Yamashita was too shy and embarrassed to tell him no. No, because it would ruin the story, ruin the fantasy he'd created. What he wasn't prepared for was his reaction to the newcomer. He was similar to Jin in that he was like a cat, smooth and sensuous, but where Jin had always been sort of empty, this man was vivacious, completely intent on Nishikido and completely open about the way he felt. It took his breath away.
He might, on a very deep level, admit to himself that he was in love with the redhead, with his unguarded eyes and his heart on his sleeve. But it was straightforward: he was in love with him because he had something he wanted, something he wanted to be. Sometimes he’d let himself dream, think about them together, about falling so far that he took on the other man’s better qualities and became something more. But then he’d think about the mansion, and his mother who had worked so hard to raise him alone and would be devastated, and he let it slip away. He didn’t even know the man’s name, anyway.
Every time he saw them together he fell harder and faster until he wanted to take the tall man all for himself, tear him from Nishikido and make him love him instead. To distance himself he found them more work. Yamashita didn't think either of them did the job because they liked it, and if he could help them in this way, he would. But by doing this he also forced himself to recognize that this was just a game and that, in the end, the redhead would never be his. He knew Nishikido was falling in love before Nishikido did, he decided. But that didn't make it hurt less. He was lulling himself with more false promises and there had to be an end. He was almost twenty-four. It was time to start moving on.
He thought for months about the best way to do it, telling himself he needed to do it properly or he'd relapse. He knew he was just making excuses because he wasn't ready to give up the redhead yet, or the burgeoning love between him and Nishikido that he often pretended was his own. In the end he always knew what it would take.
"Nishikido," he said casually into the phone.
"Yes?"
"Tuesday?"
"Same time?"
"Yes. And. Bring Jin, too. All three of you."
A pause. "Anything in particular you'd like him for?"
"No," Yamashita replied, distracted. "Nothing special."
Nishikido sounded reluctant when he finally agreed, but he did agree and Yamashita felt sadness settle across his shoulders and he frowned. He'd always been bad at goodbyes.