haruhi suzumiya: in the privacy of our love
In the privacy of our love
Written for the Haruhi Suzumiya S2 kink meme. Kyon/Itsuki. 4000 (?!) words. The last time before Haruhi found out. Probably NC-17 for sexual content.
A/N: The prompt asks for "the last time before Haruhi found out," but this is more like "the last time after Haruhi finds out." Is that a big enough difference? You tell me. Also, this was written entirely to the soundtrack of "Colors", by Utada Hikaru, but named after the Hot Chip song. IDK what that means, guys. Also this is kink meme quality even if it is not kink meme length. Please be kind.
The thing is you even told him it'd be a bad idea. We're going to get caught, you had said. Koizumi, listen to me, you had growled, Nagato could-- hey, those are my pants! For fuck's sake, Koizumi, Haruhi might just think to look in and--
"How long?" she asks you now, her hand fisted around your tie.
"Haruhi, it's not what it looks like," you say, but you can't figure out what it looks like. Impromptu cosplay session? Pro-wrestling practice? You were thinking of filming a girls~ only~ special~ for The Adventures of Mikuru? But his hands were in your underwear, and you were both red, and he had backed you against the table, in the same spot you always sat, drinking Asahina's tea. You don't know what it looks like when he kisses you. You always have your eyes closed.
"How. Long," she asks, and it's the worst when you can't decide if she's furious or just hurt. You never meant it to hurt anyone. That's naive, you realize now. But it's been months of naivete and stupidity, selfishness and Itsuki's mouth, needy and dirty when he whispers in your ear. You haven't been thinking straight since the first touch.
"I don't know actually know how long," you admit. "But it's not--"
"I can't believe you. I can't-- and in the club room?" She jerks her hand back, as if too disgusted to even touch you anymore. "I just want to pretend this whole thing didn't happen, that I didn't see any of it."
"Haruhi--"
"I thought something felt wrong today! I thought-- Argh, I don't even know the two of you anymore. I wish you two had just never existed!"
Her face is expressionless, flat. Irrationally, you want to tell her to be careful, that if she wished for it, she'd probably not know you, you'd probably not exist, that if she wished hard enough she could get that all, and you'd get nothing. But it's the way her face falls, the way it looks like something shuttered closed, something latched shut so nothing can come in or out, that makes you feel unbelievably guilty, despite the fact that it was really none of her business. You open your mouth to say something, anything, but she snaps, "I can't even look at you!" and storms off, ribbons flapping indignantly.
It is Wednesday. You are standing in the hall of North High School, and you are looking at an empty hallway. Something in the air seems to shift, become dense, and dangerous, and fragile, like the air before an electrical storm. You want to believe it's your imagination, but you think it isn't. You think you know what's going to happen, and it's like your stomach has dropped out of your body, like you're walking around hollow, numb, half-dead.
You feel your skin prickle under your shirt in the places where he kissed you, and that too, you're convinced, is a sign.
*
Nagato catches you during a passing period, puts her hand on your sleeve, and forcefully tugs you into an empty staircase. For a while the two of you just stand there, her on a lower step, so that, more than usual, you are looking down at her small face, her cool unblinking brown eyes.
"Do you already know?" you manage to croak out. She nods. In the hand that isn't clutching your sleeve, she is holding a book against the side of her leg. You can tell from the cover it's something intricately sci-fi, and it's a little bit of normalcy you can hold onto.
"We've begun to sense an aberration in the fabric of the time-space continuum," she says. "A localized anomaly is interfering with the progression of this particular plane of reality. As a result, Suzumiya Haruhi is in a volatile state. There appears to be an unacceptable level of dissatisfaction accumulating in her thought processes."
"Nagato, what does that even mean?"
Silence. You realize, with shock, that she is hesitating. She grips the book tighter, then, as if coming to a decision, raises her head. "There is a possibility she will attempt to modify the attributes of this reality that displease her." She pauses again. "It might be more commonly phrased as 'destroy the world'."
You're sure that in hell, there is a special ring of craziness reserved for you. You're convinced, actually, that you're living that damnation right now. "It's not fair," you snarl. "It's not fair that everything I do--" but Nagato is watching you carefully, with a face that's not unlike the statues of buddhas you see in temple, the face of someone who has already accepted, who has already balanced weakness with strength, cowardice with courage. It's not her fault either, and you swallow the nasty things you want to say. "Thanks for telling me," you awkwardly finish.
She turns to go, opening her book at the same time. You realize she means to read while she walks back, and even now, even under these circumstances, that action is so like Nagato that it makes you smile. Still, though, at the last minute you grab her wrist, stopping her. The book falls at her feet, its pages crunching under the weight of the hard cover. You feel her start, and wonder, absently, if this was programmed in her, or if this was real shock.
"There's really nothing you can do?" you ask. Her wrist is tiny in your trembling hand, and maybe you are the only one who can tell that behind her blank expression, her mind is racing. She is thinking so hard you are afraid she might explode. You imagine galaxies, universes, whole realities passing by as she blinks, just once.
"The chances of any action on the part of the Data Overmind having a significant impact on the outcome of Suzumiya-san's decisions is trivial at best," she finally says.
You nod. "Sorry, Nagato," you tell her, and she nods. "No, really, I'm really sorry," you say, your voice breaking, and she nods again, picking up her fallen book. The silence of the staircase seems to swallow the both of you, and eventually she walks away from you, her tiny feet barely making any sound.
*
Itsuki is waiting in the club room after school. He has his shirt cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and he's leaning against the window ridge, admiring the view of the front entrance. The sunlight seems to bleach him out in shades of light yellow and white, so that he seems to you like he is fading into the afternoon sky. It scares you, to see something almost disappear. It makes you think that you're out of time already.
"Did Nagato talk to you too?" he says without any preamble.
"Yeah," you say, and close the door behind you, because you're sure no one else is coming today.
There's the remainder of the chess game you had been playing Itsuki still spread out on the table from yesterday. Also, a cup of tea next to a note folded and addressed to you in Asahina's handwriting. You pull the chair out, reveling in how normal, how ordinary the smell of the tea is. It's nostalgic for me to make this for you, the note says. I wish I had time enough to wait for you to drink it. Something unexpected happened. I can't tell you anything more. I'm sorry I had to take little me away. Goodbye, Kyon. Unhelpful as ever, you think, crumpling the note in your hand angrily, then, thinking better of it, spreading it back out on the table.
"What's the Organization say?" you ask. Itsuki twitches, but keeps his face resolutely set in a smile as he stares out the window.
"You know how we are always the last to ever find out anything," he says evenly. There could be bitterness in that voice, you think. But you don't know, you don't know Itsuki well enough for that, and now you never will. After a while, Itsuki clears his throat. "Nagato thinks--"
"I know what she thinks," you bite out. It is not the first time you've been short with him, but this might be the only time you've really meant it. "Sorry," you grunt, pushing the teacup further towards the middle of the table, knocking over a stray pawn. "It's just, well, she already talked to me."
"It's not every day that you get to end the world," Itsuki jokes.
Which is really not that funny to you, and you're sure it's not that funny to him either. "I always knew that it would be a bad idea."
"Oh?" He turns so that his back is to the windowsill. With the sunlight the way it is, you can't read his expression. It's hidden in the backlighting, the afternoon. You can see the lines of the muscles in his thin arms, though, and the way he was tensing against his words, against you and the room and everything else. It's how you know he's serious despite his light tone of voice when he continues, "To be honest, I really enjoyed it. Every minute of it."
You didn't plan it, but it seems natural, suddenly, for both of you to use past tense. It is like the end has already come, and the two of you are just waiting to clean up the mess. He watches you for a bit, silent, from the window. The cup of tea is untouched on the table, and the note looks up at you through its creases, resigned, neither hopeful nor despairing, just accepting. You are inexplicably angry-- with yourself for getting caught, with Nagato for trying her best, with him for still smiling as he watches you now, with the unreasonable parameters of this particular reality. You want to hit something, or punch something, or maybe just scream.
"Koizumi," you say, just to say something. He doesn't answer, and you turn towards him, reluctant. "Hey, Koizumi."
He clears his throat, opens his mouth, then clears his throat again. "Come on," he says. "Let's go." He stretches out a hand, beckoning you to the window. You don't know where he wants to lead you, but it doesn't matter. It is Wednesday, and you think the world is going to end. You're sorry, but not sorry enough to not tug at his shirt, kiss him on the lips, softly at first, then deeper. Not sorry enough not to like it when his breath hitches, when his hips buck.
Not sorry enough to do it all over again, one more time.
*
Itsuki's house is as ordinary as you expect it to be. It's not the house itself, so much as the fact that he wanted to bring you here, that surprises you. You've never been before, and you think now is hardly the time to meet his parents. You've never wanted to be involved in that part of his life before, the part of him that's completely normal and belongs wholly to him. The part of him that's a simple guy from a middle-class family, a guy with good looks and a disgustingly charming personality, a guy who was good at sports and his studies and got too many chocolates on Valentine's Day.
Sensing your apprehension, he throws you a smile over one shoulder, saying, "Don't worry. My parents aren't home."
"Oh," you say, and bite your lip. You don't want to ask, but he fills it in for you anyway.
"They're supposed to be home." He slides off his shoes, dropping them haphazardly by the entrance way and picking a piece of paper off the dining table. "See? 'Father and I decided to go out to dinner by ourselves tonight. Order anything you like!'" Itsuki frowns, but places the paper back down on the tabletop neatly, even lining up the corners. "They never do anything like that."
"So why are they out today?"
He shrugs, the smile returning to his lips, the fake one that he shows you only when something deeply disturbing has disrupted his world. "Probably because Suzumiya-san thinks we fuck at my house. It can't be yours-- you have a sister."
He turns to the kitchen, probably to get you a drink, and it's the way his pants show his ankles as he walks that gets you, the thought that you might never be alone with his bare ankles again, so without warning you slam him up against the wall, grinding your crotches furiously together. "Wait--" he gasps, dropping his bag as he grasps your shoulder. "Wait--"
"That's awfully considerate of her," you growl in his ear. You're already reaching for his belt. He scratches the back of your hand in his hurry to help you, and it goes so deep it draws blood, but what the fuck, you think, it won't be there tomorrow anyway. Was that the same as healing? You don't think so, but your hand is against his cock, and he's already wet and moaning for it, and who the fuck cares anyway. You tear his shirt away from him, plunging your hand into his underwear. He chuckles, because he's a sly bastard, which is just the way you want him, the way you've always wanted him, the way you'll want him for your last time together.
There are only a few things you've wanted to do with Itsuki that you never have. You do all of them that afternoon, and fall asleep, and wake up in the evening thirsty and horny and desperate anyway. It's a curse, you've never felt like that before. Desperation is a good aphrodisiac, he whispers. You bite him on the throat to shut him up. He pours you cold barley tea that you both drink completely naked, but he's not even half-way finished with eating the leftovers in the fridge when you straddle him on the dining room chair and tell him to fuck you, hard, bringing his shaking hands to your ass and swiveling your hips down. It won't matter that later he'll eat dinner with his family in the same place. Neither of you will remember it. Or maybe you'll both be dead, and that's the same as not remembering.
Or at least, almost the same.
*
These are well-worn grooves, the grooves of Itsuki's fingers and moans and the way his hair tickles your stomach as he sucks your cock, and it is easy to fall back on them. This is a crisis ("a crisis of faith?" he jokes, and you don't even laugh), but one that you don't know how to overcome. You can't go back in time-- Asahina is gone. You can't have Nagato store the two of you away in a room for three years. You can't have Itsuki fight it. You briefly consider the possibility of this being an iteration, one of almost 6000, but it doesn't work. For you, for the you of now, of this iteration, tomorrow might be the end of the world.
"I'm wondering if we're doing this because Suzumiya-san's imagining us doing this," he says, leaving a trail of kisses in a perfect straight line from neck to your navel, and even lower.
"Stop wondering," you beg him. "But please don't stop, oh, Koizumi, there, there--"
You don't want to fuck, because it'll be according to her plans. You don't want to fuck, because it'll be proving her right. You don't want to fuck, because why the hell should she get what she wants? You should be trying to prove her wrong, you should be arguing your case, you should be telling her that she was insane, there's no way you're fucking Koizumi, what did she think you were, a faggot?
But then you're fucking on his bed, and his skin is like ivory in the moonlight. You've read that phrase so many times in literature, you never believed it until you see him writhing against his own sheets, the only light in the room the moonlight outside. It inspires a strange frenzied savageness in you, and you take him a little harder than you probably should have. He just makes a sound into his pillow, pushes back against you, as if he's determined to take everything from you, everything that he can before tomorrow.
"You know," he tells you, "the worst thing isn't this," as he draws circles with the tips of his fingernails down your spine. "It's that tomorrow we might not even be friends anymore. I wish I could have that at least." You kiss him then, hard, with your hands pulling his hair, because you don't want to see him smile like that. "Like what?" he whispers, breathlessly, and you tell him, like you're never going to see me again.
A memory comes back to you, of walking down the hill with him one day. Do you think it was fate that we met? he asked, one hand flourished in an unnecessary gesture, leaning in close so that his face was just a few centimeters away from yours.
Don't be disgusting, you had told him, and punched him in the arm so that he wouldn't see you smiling.
Now you watch him sleep, the sheets lifting and falling with each breath. You take in the way he curls into you so that his knees dig against your stomach, the way his snores start up and falter. All the books are wrong, you think. It would have been better if you never met him. It would have been better if you never knew--the temperature of his inner thigh, the smell of his sweat after sex, the way Haruhi's face dropped when you said, I don't know how long. It would have been better to have lost, even though it would mean losing. You know that there are different kinds of losing, and this is the worst.
God, you think, if you're out there--
But you already know that God is out there. There's no point finishing your prayer. So you shut up and tuck Itsuki's head as tenderly as you can under your chin. Curled up in fetal position, his body is too awkward for your to take him in your arms, but that's okay. Or maybe it's not okay, but it is the closest to okay that you have, and that has to be enough for this one last time.
*
Your homeroom teacher is sick on Wednesday morning, so instead of studying in the classroom, you wander over to the club room. Next to the remains of the chess game you were playing against yourself, Haruhi has deposited a little heap of videotapes on the table, the ones from last weekend, and you sigh. You know that at the end of the day, it's going to be up to you, and probably Nagato, to edit the poorly pieced together footage all of you filmed. It was enough that you had to waste your time filming Taniguchi completely failing to read his lines when faced with Asahina in a maid outfit. You don't blame him in the least, but even if you had Stephen Spielberg directing the film, nothing good could come of it. A few special effects wouldn't make it any better.
There's a noise from the door, and you look up. A guy in a gakuran jacket is just standing there watching you. He has a pin on his collar that's the Kouyouen Academy logo. He looks vaguely familiar, but you wonder if it's just a combination of how generically good-looking he is: perfectly styled hair, a well shaped face, a smile that seemed to be ripped off the pages of an idol magazine. You've never seen him before, you're sure. Or if you have, you've tried your best to forget him. You've always been rather annoyed at guys like that, the nice ones with the fake smiles that could afford to turn down girls when they confess.
"Can I help you?" you ask, standing up.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he says.
"Well, you are standing in the doorway like a stalker. Did you need something?"
"Oh." He flashes you a smile, but doesn't step in. "Not particularly, no."
"Just, you know, Kouyouen is--" you jerk your thumb towards the window, encompassing the hill, the street, everything in between.
"I'm meeting a friend," he explains. "He goes here. Just killing some time until he calls me."
You nod, distracted. Something about him reminds you of that weird air around Nagato and Asahina sometimes, the otherworldliness. But it can't be-- you're just being paranoid. If he were something special, he'd have to at least be a student here. He'd have to at least try to get close to Haruhi. This was just a random stranger after all. You yawn, satisfied that you've justified him enough. You need to get out of this club room, hang out with some normal friends sometime. Soon you'll be just as full of conspiracy theories as Haruhi. The very thought makes you shudder.
"I see this is the club room of the SOS-Dan," the guy says.
You groan. "Don't ask," you tell him. "You don't want to know."
"Oh?" He grins, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Try me."
"Well--" You're interrupted by his cell phone ringing. He turns away from the door to answer it, and to give him some privacy, you start to clean up the chess pieces. If you're right about what's in store, you won't have much time to finish the game anyway. A few minutes later, you happen to glance up, and you realize the guy is watching you again, that fake, disconcerting smile on his face. "What?" you asks, a little self-conscious.
"Sorry to have taken up your time," he says. "My friend just called. I'm leaving now."
Nutcase, you think, folding the chessboard up. "Yeah, see you," you call after him vaguely.
He turns back around to wave over his shoulder. "By the way," he adds, "I'm Koizumi Itsuki."
"Huh? Oh, right, yeah, I'm--"
"Kyon!" Haruhi barrels into the club room, almost knocking the guy into the door. Without even acknowledging him with a glance, she makes a beeline towards you, grinning manically. "Kyon, you won't believe what I just got from the Computer Society!" She unceremoniously dumps a mound of manuals and computer discs onto the table, right onto the videotapes. You wince. "Look at all this stuff! We can definitely make The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru look fantastic with this! Here, Kyon, read this and tell me how it works," she says as she throws one of the manuals at you.
You barely manage to catch it before it smacks you in the face. "Did they just give this to you free, or did you do something again?"
"They were very gracious after I threatened to tell the principal they've been stealing test questions and spreading them online after scanning them."
"Have they? I could use a good grade, you know."
"'Course not," Haruhi answers dismissively, throwing open the window. "Anyway, Kyon, who was that guy you were talking with? A long lost relative of yours? A mysterious transfer student? A childhood friend returned from the dead?"
You snort. "No, it's just--" You turn towards the door, but he's no longer there. You decide he must have left. Getting shouldered by Haruhi, then ignored, probably made him lose interest. You scratch the back of your head, shrugging. "It was just some guy. I've never seen him before."
"What if he were an alien or an ESPer coming to tell us important information?" Haruhi demands. She climbs onto the desk, sitting Indian style and balancing a pen on her upper lip. "You're so useless sometimes, Kyon."
"Yeah, yeah," you sigh, fanning yourself with the manual as you fall into your chair. But for a minute, you pause, trying to remember what the guy looked like. It's strange, because despite the fact he hadn't been gone for more than a few minutes, you can't even manage to hold onto simple facts: hair color or eye color, how tall he was, what he sounded like. You can only remember how white his skin was in the sunlight coming from the window, almost polished like ivory. You can only remember that he smiled like he knew you, or at least wanted to. You can only remember--
*
Or maybe you don't remember anything at all.
*
A/N: I am a fervid Kyonist, so in my mind, Kyon is the one who remakes the world. That's why he gets to meet Itsuki again, and this time the way Itsuki wished they could have met, as ordinary boys. A small silver lining.
Written for the Haruhi Suzumiya S2 kink meme. Kyon/Itsuki. 4000 (?!) words. The last time before Haruhi found out. Probably NC-17 for sexual content.
A/N: The prompt asks for "the last time before Haruhi found out," but this is more like "the last time after Haruhi finds out." Is that a big enough difference? You tell me. Also, this was written entirely to the soundtrack of "Colors", by Utada Hikaru, but named after the Hot Chip song. IDK what that means, guys. Also this is kink meme quality even if it is not kink meme length. Please be kind.
The thing is you even told him it'd be a bad idea. We're going to get caught, you had said. Koizumi, listen to me, you had growled, Nagato could-- hey, those are my pants! For fuck's sake, Koizumi, Haruhi might just think to look in and--
"How long?" she asks you now, her hand fisted around your tie.
"Haruhi, it's not what it looks like," you say, but you can't figure out what it looks like. Impromptu cosplay session? Pro-wrestling practice? You were thinking of filming a girls~ only~ special~ for The Adventures of Mikuru? But his hands were in your underwear, and you were both red, and he had backed you against the table, in the same spot you always sat, drinking Asahina's tea. You don't know what it looks like when he kisses you. You always have your eyes closed.
"How. Long," she asks, and it's the worst when you can't decide if she's furious or just hurt. You never meant it to hurt anyone. That's naive, you realize now. But it's been months of naivete and stupidity, selfishness and Itsuki's mouth, needy and dirty when he whispers in your ear. You haven't been thinking straight since the first touch.
"I don't know actually know how long," you admit. "But it's not--"
"I can't believe you. I can't-- and in the club room?" She jerks her hand back, as if too disgusted to even touch you anymore. "I just want to pretend this whole thing didn't happen, that I didn't see any of it."
"Haruhi--"
"I thought something felt wrong today! I thought-- Argh, I don't even know the two of you anymore. I wish you two had just never existed!"
Her face is expressionless, flat. Irrationally, you want to tell her to be careful, that if she wished for it, she'd probably not know you, you'd probably not exist, that if she wished hard enough she could get that all, and you'd get nothing. But it's the way her face falls, the way it looks like something shuttered closed, something latched shut so nothing can come in or out, that makes you feel unbelievably guilty, despite the fact that it was really none of her business. You open your mouth to say something, anything, but she snaps, "I can't even look at you!" and storms off, ribbons flapping indignantly.
It is Wednesday. You are standing in the hall of North High School, and you are looking at an empty hallway. Something in the air seems to shift, become dense, and dangerous, and fragile, like the air before an electrical storm. You want to believe it's your imagination, but you think it isn't. You think you know what's going to happen, and it's like your stomach has dropped out of your body, like you're walking around hollow, numb, half-dead.
You feel your skin prickle under your shirt in the places where he kissed you, and that too, you're convinced, is a sign.
*
Nagato catches you during a passing period, puts her hand on your sleeve, and forcefully tugs you into an empty staircase. For a while the two of you just stand there, her on a lower step, so that, more than usual, you are looking down at her small face, her cool unblinking brown eyes.
"Do you already know?" you manage to croak out. She nods. In the hand that isn't clutching your sleeve, she is holding a book against the side of her leg. You can tell from the cover it's something intricately sci-fi, and it's a little bit of normalcy you can hold onto.
"We've begun to sense an aberration in the fabric of the time-space continuum," she says. "A localized anomaly is interfering with the progression of this particular plane of reality. As a result, Suzumiya Haruhi is in a volatile state. There appears to be an unacceptable level of dissatisfaction accumulating in her thought processes."
"Nagato, what does that even mean?"
Silence. You realize, with shock, that she is hesitating. She grips the book tighter, then, as if coming to a decision, raises her head. "There is a possibility she will attempt to modify the attributes of this reality that displease her." She pauses again. "It might be more commonly phrased as 'destroy the world'."
You're sure that in hell, there is a special ring of craziness reserved for you. You're convinced, actually, that you're living that damnation right now. "It's not fair," you snarl. "It's not fair that everything I do--" but Nagato is watching you carefully, with a face that's not unlike the statues of buddhas you see in temple, the face of someone who has already accepted, who has already balanced weakness with strength, cowardice with courage. It's not her fault either, and you swallow the nasty things you want to say. "Thanks for telling me," you awkwardly finish.
She turns to go, opening her book at the same time. You realize she means to read while she walks back, and even now, even under these circumstances, that action is so like Nagato that it makes you smile. Still, though, at the last minute you grab her wrist, stopping her. The book falls at her feet, its pages crunching under the weight of the hard cover. You feel her start, and wonder, absently, if this was programmed in her, or if this was real shock.
"There's really nothing you can do?" you ask. Her wrist is tiny in your trembling hand, and maybe you are the only one who can tell that behind her blank expression, her mind is racing. She is thinking so hard you are afraid she might explode. You imagine galaxies, universes, whole realities passing by as she blinks, just once.
"The chances of any action on the part of the Data Overmind having a significant impact on the outcome of Suzumiya-san's decisions is trivial at best," she finally says.
You nod. "Sorry, Nagato," you tell her, and she nods. "No, really, I'm really sorry," you say, your voice breaking, and she nods again, picking up her fallen book. The silence of the staircase seems to swallow the both of you, and eventually she walks away from you, her tiny feet barely making any sound.
*
Itsuki is waiting in the club room after school. He has his shirt cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and he's leaning against the window ridge, admiring the view of the front entrance. The sunlight seems to bleach him out in shades of light yellow and white, so that he seems to you like he is fading into the afternoon sky. It scares you, to see something almost disappear. It makes you think that you're out of time already.
"Did Nagato talk to you too?" he says without any preamble.
"Yeah," you say, and close the door behind you, because you're sure no one else is coming today.
There's the remainder of the chess game you had been playing Itsuki still spread out on the table from yesterday. Also, a cup of tea next to a note folded and addressed to you in Asahina's handwriting. You pull the chair out, reveling in how normal, how ordinary the smell of the tea is. It's nostalgic for me to make this for you, the note says. I wish I had time enough to wait for you to drink it. Something unexpected happened. I can't tell you anything more. I'm sorry I had to take little me away. Goodbye, Kyon. Unhelpful as ever, you think, crumpling the note in your hand angrily, then, thinking better of it, spreading it back out on the table.
"What's the Organization say?" you ask. Itsuki twitches, but keeps his face resolutely set in a smile as he stares out the window.
"You know how we are always the last to ever find out anything," he says evenly. There could be bitterness in that voice, you think. But you don't know, you don't know Itsuki well enough for that, and now you never will. After a while, Itsuki clears his throat. "Nagato thinks--"
"I know what she thinks," you bite out. It is not the first time you've been short with him, but this might be the only time you've really meant it. "Sorry," you grunt, pushing the teacup further towards the middle of the table, knocking over a stray pawn. "It's just, well, she already talked to me."
"It's not every day that you get to end the world," Itsuki jokes.
Which is really not that funny to you, and you're sure it's not that funny to him either. "I always knew that it would be a bad idea."
"Oh?" He turns so that his back is to the windowsill. With the sunlight the way it is, you can't read his expression. It's hidden in the backlighting, the afternoon. You can see the lines of the muscles in his thin arms, though, and the way he was tensing against his words, against you and the room and everything else. It's how you know he's serious despite his light tone of voice when he continues, "To be honest, I really enjoyed it. Every minute of it."
You didn't plan it, but it seems natural, suddenly, for both of you to use past tense. It is like the end has already come, and the two of you are just waiting to clean up the mess. He watches you for a bit, silent, from the window. The cup of tea is untouched on the table, and the note looks up at you through its creases, resigned, neither hopeful nor despairing, just accepting. You are inexplicably angry-- with yourself for getting caught, with Nagato for trying her best, with him for still smiling as he watches you now, with the unreasonable parameters of this particular reality. You want to hit something, or punch something, or maybe just scream.
"Koizumi," you say, just to say something. He doesn't answer, and you turn towards him, reluctant. "Hey, Koizumi."
He clears his throat, opens his mouth, then clears his throat again. "Come on," he says. "Let's go." He stretches out a hand, beckoning you to the window. You don't know where he wants to lead you, but it doesn't matter. It is Wednesday, and you think the world is going to end. You're sorry, but not sorry enough to not tug at his shirt, kiss him on the lips, softly at first, then deeper. Not sorry enough not to like it when his breath hitches, when his hips buck.
Not sorry enough to do it all over again, one more time.
*
Itsuki's house is as ordinary as you expect it to be. It's not the house itself, so much as the fact that he wanted to bring you here, that surprises you. You've never been before, and you think now is hardly the time to meet his parents. You've never wanted to be involved in that part of his life before, the part of him that's completely normal and belongs wholly to him. The part of him that's a simple guy from a middle-class family, a guy with good looks and a disgustingly charming personality, a guy who was good at sports and his studies and got too many chocolates on Valentine's Day.
Sensing your apprehension, he throws you a smile over one shoulder, saying, "Don't worry. My parents aren't home."
"Oh," you say, and bite your lip. You don't want to ask, but he fills it in for you anyway.
"They're supposed to be home." He slides off his shoes, dropping them haphazardly by the entrance way and picking a piece of paper off the dining table. "See? 'Father and I decided to go out to dinner by ourselves tonight. Order anything you like!'" Itsuki frowns, but places the paper back down on the tabletop neatly, even lining up the corners. "They never do anything like that."
"So why are they out today?"
He shrugs, the smile returning to his lips, the fake one that he shows you only when something deeply disturbing has disrupted his world. "Probably because Suzumiya-san thinks we fuck at my house. It can't be yours-- you have a sister."
He turns to the kitchen, probably to get you a drink, and it's the way his pants show his ankles as he walks that gets you, the thought that you might never be alone with his bare ankles again, so without warning you slam him up against the wall, grinding your crotches furiously together. "Wait--" he gasps, dropping his bag as he grasps your shoulder. "Wait--"
"That's awfully considerate of her," you growl in his ear. You're already reaching for his belt. He scratches the back of your hand in his hurry to help you, and it goes so deep it draws blood, but what the fuck, you think, it won't be there tomorrow anyway. Was that the same as healing? You don't think so, but your hand is against his cock, and he's already wet and moaning for it, and who the fuck cares anyway. You tear his shirt away from him, plunging your hand into his underwear. He chuckles, because he's a sly bastard, which is just the way you want him, the way you've always wanted him, the way you'll want him for your last time together.
There are only a few things you've wanted to do with Itsuki that you never have. You do all of them that afternoon, and fall asleep, and wake up in the evening thirsty and horny and desperate anyway. It's a curse, you've never felt like that before. Desperation is a good aphrodisiac, he whispers. You bite him on the throat to shut him up. He pours you cold barley tea that you both drink completely naked, but he's not even half-way finished with eating the leftovers in the fridge when you straddle him on the dining room chair and tell him to fuck you, hard, bringing his shaking hands to your ass and swiveling your hips down. It won't matter that later he'll eat dinner with his family in the same place. Neither of you will remember it. Or maybe you'll both be dead, and that's the same as not remembering.
Or at least, almost the same.
*
These are well-worn grooves, the grooves of Itsuki's fingers and moans and the way his hair tickles your stomach as he sucks your cock, and it is easy to fall back on them. This is a crisis ("a crisis of faith?" he jokes, and you don't even laugh), but one that you don't know how to overcome. You can't go back in time-- Asahina is gone. You can't have Nagato store the two of you away in a room for three years. You can't have Itsuki fight it. You briefly consider the possibility of this being an iteration, one of almost 6000, but it doesn't work. For you, for the you of now, of this iteration, tomorrow might be the end of the world.
"I'm wondering if we're doing this because Suzumiya-san's imagining us doing this," he says, leaving a trail of kisses in a perfect straight line from neck to your navel, and even lower.
"Stop wondering," you beg him. "But please don't stop, oh, Koizumi, there, there--"
You don't want to fuck, because it'll be according to her plans. You don't want to fuck, because it'll be proving her right. You don't want to fuck, because why the hell should she get what she wants? You should be trying to prove her wrong, you should be arguing your case, you should be telling her that she was insane, there's no way you're fucking Koizumi, what did she think you were, a faggot?
But then you're fucking on his bed, and his skin is like ivory in the moonlight. You've read that phrase so many times in literature, you never believed it until you see him writhing against his own sheets, the only light in the room the moonlight outside. It inspires a strange frenzied savageness in you, and you take him a little harder than you probably should have. He just makes a sound into his pillow, pushes back against you, as if he's determined to take everything from you, everything that he can before tomorrow.
"You know," he tells you, "the worst thing isn't this," as he draws circles with the tips of his fingernails down your spine. "It's that tomorrow we might not even be friends anymore. I wish I could have that at least." You kiss him then, hard, with your hands pulling his hair, because you don't want to see him smile like that. "Like what?" he whispers, breathlessly, and you tell him, like you're never going to see me again.
A memory comes back to you, of walking down the hill with him one day. Do you think it was fate that we met? he asked, one hand flourished in an unnecessary gesture, leaning in close so that his face was just a few centimeters away from yours.
Don't be disgusting, you had told him, and punched him in the arm so that he wouldn't see you smiling.
Now you watch him sleep, the sheets lifting and falling with each breath. You take in the way he curls into you so that his knees dig against your stomach, the way his snores start up and falter. All the books are wrong, you think. It would have been better if you never met him. It would have been better if you never knew--the temperature of his inner thigh, the smell of his sweat after sex, the way Haruhi's face dropped when you said, I don't know how long. It would have been better to have lost, even though it would mean losing. You know that there are different kinds of losing, and this is the worst.
God, you think, if you're out there--
But you already know that God is out there. There's no point finishing your prayer. So you shut up and tuck Itsuki's head as tenderly as you can under your chin. Curled up in fetal position, his body is too awkward for your to take him in your arms, but that's okay. Or maybe it's not okay, but it is the closest to okay that you have, and that has to be enough for this one last time.
*
Your homeroom teacher is sick on Wednesday morning, so instead of studying in the classroom, you wander over to the club room. Next to the remains of the chess game you were playing against yourself, Haruhi has deposited a little heap of videotapes on the table, the ones from last weekend, and you sigh. You know that at the end of the day, it's going to be up to you, and probably Nagato, to edit the poorly pieced together footage all of you filmed. It was enough that you had to waste your time filming Taniguchi completely failing to read his lines when faced with Asahina in a maid outfit. You don't blame him in the least, but even if you had Stephen Spielberg directing the film, nothing good could come of it. A few special effects wouldn't make it any better.
There's a noise from the door, and you look up. A guy in a gakuran jacket is just standing there watching you. He has a pin on his collar that's the Kouyouen Academy logo. He looks vaguely familiar, but you wonder if it's just a combination of how generically good-looking he is: perfectly styled hair, a well shaped face, a smile that seemed to be ripped off the pages of an idol magazine. You've never seen him before, you're sure. Or if you have, you've tried your best to forget him. You've always been rather annoyed at guys like that, the nice ones with the fake smiles that could afford to turn down girls when they confess.
"Can I help you?" you ask, standing up.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he says.
"Well, you are standing in the doorway like a stalker. Did you need something?"
"Oh." He flashes you a smile, but doesn't step in. "Not particularly, no."
"Just, you know, Kouyouen is--" you jerk your thumb towards the window, encompassing the hill, the street, everything in between.
"I'm meeting a friend," he explains. "He goes here. Just killing some time until he calls me."
You nod, distracted. Something about him reminds you of that weird air around Nagato and Asahina sometimes, the otherworldliness. But it can't be-- you're just being paranoid. If he were something special, he'd have to at least be a student here. He'd have to at least try to get close to Haruhi. This was just a random stranger after all. You yawn, satisfied that you've justified him enough. You need to get out of this club room, hang out with some normal friends sometime. Soon you'll be just as full of conspiracy theories as Haruhi. The very thought makes you shudder.
"I see this is the club room of the SOS-Dan," the guy says.
You groan. "Don't ask," you tell him. "You don't want to know."
"Oh?" He grins, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Try me."
"Well--" You're interrupted by his cell phone ringing. He turns away from the door to answer it, and to give him some privacy, you start to clean up the chess pieces. If you're right about what's in store, you won't have much time to finish the game anyway. A few minutes later, you happen to glance up, and you realize the guy is watching you again, that fake, disconcerting smile on his face. "What?" you asks, a little self-conscious.
"Sorry to have taken up your time," he says. "My friend just called. I'm leaving now."
Nutcase, you think, folding the chessboard up. "Yeah, see you," you call after him vaguely.
He turns back around to wave over his shoulder. "By the way," he adds, "I'm Koizumi Itsuki."
"Huh? Oh, right, yeah, I'm--"
"Kyon!" Haruhi barrels into the club room, almost knocking the guy into the door. Without even acknowledging him with a glance, she makes a beeline towards you, grinning manically. "Kyon, you won't believe what I just got from the Computer Society!" She unceremoniously dumps a mound of manuals and computer discs onto the table, right onto the videotapes. You wince. "Look at all this stuff! We can definitely make The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru look fantastic with this! Here, Kyon, read this and tell me how it works," she says as she throws one of the manuals at you.
You barely manage to catch it before it smacks you in the face. "Did they just give this to you free, or did you do something again?"
"They were very gracious after I threatened to tell the principal they've been stealing test questions and spreading them online after scanning them."
"Have they? I could use a good grade, you know."
"'Course not," Haruhi answers dismissively, throwing open the window. "Anyway, Kyon, who was that guy you were talking with? A long lost relative of yours? A mysterious transfer student? A childhood friend returned from the dead?"
You snort. "No, it's just--" You turn towards the door, but he's no longer there. You decide he must have left. Getting shouldered by Haruhi, then ignored, probably made him lose interest. You scratch the back of your head, shrugging. "It was just some guy. I've never seen him before."
"What if he were an alien or an ESPer coming to tell us important information?" Haruhi demands. She climbs onto the desk, sitting Indian style and balancing a pen on her upper lip. "You're so useless sometimes, Kyon."
"Yeah, yeah," you sigh, fanning yourself with the manual as you fall into your chair. But for a minute, you pause, trying to remember what the guy looked like. It's strange, because despite the fact he hadn't been gone for more than a few minutes, you can't even manage to hold onto simple facts: hair color or eye color, how tall he was, what he sounded like. You can only remember how white his skin was in the sunlight coming from the window, almost polished like ivory. You can only remember that he smiled like he knew you, or at least wanted to. You can only remember--
*
Or maybe you don't remember anything at all.
*
Click to viewA/N: I am a fervid Kyonist, so in my mind, Kyon is the one who remakes the world. That's why he gets to meet Itsuki again, and this time the way Itsuki wished they could have met, as ordinary boys. A small silver lining.