A Matter of Timing - For bluestraggler
Title: A Matter of Timing
Author: morphaileffect
Recipient: bluestraggler
Rating: G, PG at best
Other Characters/Pairings: Yanagi/Niou
Disclaimer: Konomi Takeshi owns all, except for the clothes.
Warnings: Not much.
Summary: Between these two, timing is all that dictates who gets to
make the first move.
Notes: This is my first time writing Yanagi/Niou and I'm... not all
that confident I can pull it off. I hope you like it though, bluestraggler. And happy holidays!
A Matter of Timing
"Black goes better with his cap," Yanagi pointed out. "And his eyebrows."
"Yeah but blue goes better with the veins that pop out of his neck while he's yelling at Akaya," Niou replied.
"That's going to be hard to explain. Black is a safer bet."
"Who wants safe? Safe isn't sexy! Blue, on the other hand, gets all the ladies. Remember when my hair was blue?"
"Yes, I remember when your hair was blue. I also remember Genichirou threatening to pull it out by the roots. I don't believe blue is a color he can associate with festivity anymore."
They must have been arguing about shirt colors in front of the store window for a quarter of an hour. Passers-by were beginning to stare.
Niou had agreed readily enough to come on this shopping trip - this alone defied expectations. He normally shirked club chores, or found some way to weasel out of them if he was forced to do them. For an even stronger shock factor, Niou had come smelling lightly of an unfamiliar cologne that suited him nonetheless, and with his bleached white hair neatly combed and tied back.
One would think Niou was going out on a date.
Of course, Yanagi did not fail to take into consideration that he had done this just for kicks.
"Ask me what color suits you."
Yanagi raised an eyebrow. "All right. What color suits me?"
"Green," Niou answered cheerfully. "Brings out your eyes." He nudged Yanagi lightly with an elbow, and if Yanagi were less taken by surprise (he was expecting a joke. That was a joke, wasn't it? How come it wasn't funny?), he would have given a dismissive sniff, or at least nudged back.
Neither of them was exactly famous around town for being chatty. But for some reason, whenever the two of them were together a sort of veil dropped, and they were able to converse with each other the way they never could with other people. This was all in the data Yanagi had labeled "Niou Masaharu" - or, at least, what little he had of it.
Niou was a mess of unquantifiable, unpredictable data. And one of the data turned out to be this: the obsessive data-monger who observed him wound up finding him irresistible.
It had taken Yanagi five years - all of middle and most of high school - to arrive at this discovery. But once he had accepted it as a truth and not merely a faint hint of something, a certainty rather than a series of fascinating improbabilities, Rikkai Fuzoku Daigaku's Data Master immediately began to condition himself to take it in stride.
Yanagi liked to think of himself as someone who lived by plans, rules, traditions, and other solid things. He accepted only facts. And the fact was: he was completely, irrationally, drawn to this guy.
"If he tries anything strange, call me on my cell," his friend Sanada Genichirou had even instructed, when he learned the identity of the only person Yanagi was taking shopping for Christmas gifts. As always, his friend was deathly serious.
"We should go inside," Yanagi suggested, wrapping his overcoat tighter around himself - though he didn't feel cold at all, not at that moment. "If we don't, the storekeeper might think we're planning a break-in."
"Hmm," Niou agreed. "Although we can always say it's a free country and bash him in the face if he disagrees." He placed his palm flat against Yanagi's back: a gesture for the other boy to walk on ahead. The gentle pressure was a comfort, though Yanagi kept his head down and his face averted so that wouldn't be too obvious.
Yanagi walked on through the door of the custom-made shirts shop they had been stalking for a good while now. But he stopped when he realized that his companion hadn't followed him.
He turned around, tilted his head inquiringly.
In answer, Niou pointed up.
There was a sprig of mistletoe above the door. And it had taken Yanagi a while of staring before he finally spotted it. It was the only thing Niou could possibly have been pointing at.
"Ah," Yanagi remarked. "...What?"
Niou sighed - a loud, cheeky "I thought you were supposed to be some sort of genius" sigh. Then he stepped in, grabbed Yanagi by the lapel of his overcoat, and pulled him back to the doorway.
When Yanagi was in position, he pointed up again. Yanagi looked up again. Yup, mistletoe still there. And yup, Niou's hand was still on the front of his coat. The storekeeper's sunny greeting of "Welcome" was frozen mid-speech, as he watched the two young men in his doorway trying to ride out the awkwardness of this event.
And Niou was looking at Yanagi. Expectation was the only thing Yanagi could positively read from his expression, but Yanagi knew him well enough to know there should be more to it than that.
Was this one of those things he would do just for kicks?
"Niou." A hand on the hand on his coat. "I didn't think - "
"That's a first." A corner of Niou's lips twitched. Nervously, Yanagi imagined.
"Hey," the storekeeper said, sounding bored as all out, "Could you two kiss or get out of the way already? Other people might be wanting to use the weed."
"Sorry," Yanagi said before Niou could whip out a comeback or even a middle finger. Avoiding Niou's eyes, he quickly stepped into the store.
After that awkward incident, Yanagi realized that he was not particularly eager to be near Niou again. If Niou had decided that he was abandoned at the doorway to the clothing store and it was a good time to take off, Yanagi wouldn't mind. The next day, he would just go back to keeping his distance. Maybe this was, in fact, as far as they could get.
"What didn't you think?" Niou pestered. "Hey."
Yanagi didn't turn around, though he heard Niou approaching. "It's nothing." He picked up a folded button-down shirt that was an especially sophisticated oxblood color. "This would suit Yagyuu, wouldn't it?"
There was no answer. When Yanagi turned around, finally, he saw that he was alone.
On impulse, Yanagi reached for his cell phone. He didn't know who he was going to call, exactly - perhaps Niou, who was always changing numbers, or perhaps Sanada, who was always there in case of anything.
In the end, Yanagi decided he didn't know, and kept the phone safely hidden.
Niou may have perceived avoidance as a rejection. Hence the perfectly understandable hasty departure. Yanagi sighed. It was all a matter of timing , really - but it was difficult to explain. It wasn't exactly easy to lay out numbers, figures and case studies... but when he wasn't ready to be made a move on, he wasn't ready to be made a move on. And because it was this simple, it was pointless to mourn lost opportunities.
Maybe Niou had taken off. Who knew. Who cared, at this point. At least he'd made the first move and asked Niou, of all the people he could have asked, out to take him through the generally unpleasant task of Christmas shopping. And Niou had come; all the signs had been put up and responded to.
There was no way Yanagi was emerging the loser after all of this; he should at least get the actual shopping out of the way.
He picked out some articles of clothing that he felt would do well enough for Christmas gifts. A necktie here, a belt there, a classy shirt and a sporty cap - something for everyone who was not present. He was aware he was taking long looking for things alone, but he would rather be slow than ill at ease.
As Yanagi was moving off to look at another shelf, something fell around his shoulders. It was a long piece of cloth and it seemed to take on a life of its own, winding round his neck loosely and gently and with expert swiftness; Yanagi could not bring himself to move.
Niou stepped into sight. His smile and his magician's hands were everything Yanagi had imagined they would be up close, making the act of wrapping a scarf around his taller teammate's neck seem more delicate, more sensual than it had any right to be.
"Here," the person holding on to his upper arms said. Yanagi was steered off to a mirror, where he saw himself wearing an expensive-looking scarf of an elegant shade of dark green.
And behind him, the smiling magician who had Yanagi in his grip.
"I didn't see this." Yanagi had gotten a scarf for Akaya. He was sure this wasn't in the scarf shelves. "Did you find it here?"
"In this dump? You're kidding." Niou sniffed. Well, the chances of this shop stocking up on exceptionally fine articles of clothing was, admittedly, less than 4.36%.
"So where - ?"
"Not telling." Was that more than the usual hint of mischief he just heard? "Until you tell me what it was you were about to say earlier."
Yanagi raised an eyebrow. He couldn't help but smile; Niou was thoroughly intrigued. His lack of a plan was turning out well after all.
"You know better than to get me curious," the trickster said up close, close enough to come in loud and clear.
When his companion's breath touched his neck, the only thought that crept up Yanagi's consciousness like a shudder was: I can't keep letting him take me by surprise.
"You know better than to blackmail me," he said calmly. "I'll only consider a fair trade."
"So underhanded!" Niou exclaimed, chuckling, stepping back. "All right, since a fancy scarf obviously isn't enough of a bribe... what is it that I can offer in exchange for the information, Master?"
It was a funny word on his lips. Every other person who had ever used it for Yanagi, used it with real, honest-to-god reverence. Only Niou made it sound half as a taunt, and half as a term of affection. Yanagi enjoyed hearing it from him.
Yanagi handed the items he had selected over to his companion, draping them wherever he could, artlessly dumping the shirts and caps and belts and neckties onto the surprised Niou's arms. When he was done, he threw the draping end of his new scarf over his shoulder and looked at Niou expectantly.
"Yeah," Niou said dryly. "I already got you a scarf, I'm broke now."
"Who said anything about paying?"
Yanagi beamed.
Niou blinked.
"...Doesn't sound like a very fair trade to me," Niou remarked.
"If it makes things easier, think of this as merely... employing your talents for a worthy cause."
For a moment he looked like he was ready to go with it. The trickster liked a challenge: that at least was in Yanagi's data. But a second later and the look was gone - impishness was replaced with disbelief.
"You mean, saving you a little cash."
"Exactly."
There was a long pause. Niou looked uneasy, as if there was something he wanted to get out, but couldn't - certainly a rare event, at least while Yanagi was around to witness it.
Finally Niou said, "So this was why you brought me along?"
Both of Yanagi's eyebrows rose now.
"Of course. Why else did you think I brought you along? To have a good time?"
When Niou looked away, he looked like he flinched. This was probably not an answer he expected, and so it hit him harder than he thought.
Yanagi had fought the smile hiding behind his lips for too long now. He let a little of it show. Someday, when the timing was right, he was going to tell Niou everything. He was going to tell Niou, for example, that he was sorry, but he had just discovered that he enjoyed having the upper hand.
...That he liked Niou even more when his guard was down. Found Niou most attractive at that fleeting second when his face betrayed that he had run out of tricks.
And that he knew that this, this, was the perfect time for a kiss.
The boy didn't know what was coming. When Yanagi leaned forward and tilted his chin upward slightly, he didn't have the presence of mind to drop everything he was carrying and put a stop to it. And when Yanagi's lips touched his - he didn't have the presence of mind to do or say anything at all.
He just stood there, stunned out of a comeback or an escape route: the victim of perfect timing.
"It's never," Yanagi quietly informed him, "just to have a good time."
Author: morphaileffect
Recipient: bluestraggler
Rating: G, PG at best
Other Characters/Pairings: Yanagi/Niou
Disclaimer: Konomi Takeshi owns all, except for the clothes.
Warnings: Not much.
Summary: Between these two, timing is all that dictates who gets to
make the first move.
Notes: This is my first time writing Yanagi/Niou and I'm... not all
that confident I can pull it off. I hope you like it though, bluestraggler. And happy holidays!
A Matter of Timing
"Black goes better with his cap," Yanagi pointed out. "And his eyebrows."
"Yeah but blue goes better with the veins that pop out of his neck while he's yelling at Akaya," Niou replied.
"That's going to be hard to explain. Black is a safer bet."
"Who wants safe? Safe isn't sexy! Blue, on the other hand, gets all the ladies. Remember when my hair was blue?"
"Yes, I remember when your hair was blue. I also remember Genichirou threatening to pull it out by the roots. I don't believe blue is a color he can associate with festivity anymore."
They must have been arguing about shirt colors in front of the store window for a quarter of an hour. Passers-by were beginning to stare.
Niou had agreed readily enough to come on this shopping trip - this alone defied expectations. He normally shirked club chores, or found some way to weasel out of them if he was forced to do them. For an even stronger shock factor, Niou had come smelling lightly of an unfamiliar cologne that suited him nonetheless, and with his bleached white hair neatly combed and tied back.
One would think Niou was going out on a date.
Of course, Yanagi did not fail to take into consideration that he had done this just for kicks.
"Ask me what color suits you."
Yanagi raised an eyebrow. "All right. What color suits me?"
"Green," Niou answered cheerfully. "Brings out your eyes." He nudged Yanagi lightly with an elbow, and if Yanagi were less taken by surprise (he was expecting a joke. That was a joke, wasn't it? How come it wasn't funny?), he would have given a dismissive sniff, or at least nudged back.
Neither of them was exactly famous around town for being chatty. But for some reason, whenever the two of them were together a sort of veil dropped, and they were able to converse with each other the way they never could with other people. This was all in the data Yanagi had labeled "Niou Masaharu" - or, at least, what little he had of it.
Niou was a mess of unquantifiable, unpredictable data. And one of the data turned out to be this: the obsessive data-monger who observed him wound up finding him irresistible.
It had taken Yanagi five years - all of middle and most of high school - to arrive at this discovery. But once he had accepted it as a truth and not merely a faint hint of something, a certainty rather than a series of fascinating improbabilities, Rikkai Fuzoku Daigaku's Data Master immediately began to condition himself to take it in stride.
Yanagi liked to think of himself as someone who lived by plans, rules, traditions, and other solid things. He accepted only facts. And the fact was: he was completely, irrationally, drawn to this guy.
"If he tries anything strange, call me on my cell," his friend Sanada Genichirou had even instructed, when he learned the identity of the only person Yanagi was taking shopping for Christmas gifts. As always, his friend was deathly serious.
"We should go inside," Yanagi suggested, wrapping his overcoat tighter around himself - though he didn't feel cold at all, not at that moment. "If we don't, the storekeeper might think we're planning a break-in."
"Hmm," Niou agreed. "Although we can always say it's a free country and bash him in the face if he disagrees." He placed his palm flat against Yanagi's back: a gesture for the other boy to walk on ahead. The gentle pressure was a comfort, though Yanagi kept his head down and his face averted so that wouldn't be too obvious.
Yanagi walked on through the door of the custom-made shirts shop they had been stalking for a good while now. But he stopped when he realized that his companion hadn't followed him.
He turned around, tilted his head inquiringly.
In answer, Niou pointed up.
There was a sprig of mistletoe above the door. And it had taken Yanagi a while of staring before he finally spotted it. It was the only thing Niou could possibly have been pointing at.
"Ah," Yanagi remarked. "...What?"
Niou sighed - a loud, cheeky "I thought you were supposed to be some sort of genius" sigh. Then he stepped in, grabbed Yanagi by the lapel of his overcoat, and pulled him back to the doorway.
When Yanagi was in position, he pointed up again. Yanagi looked up again. Yup, mistletoe still there. And yup, Niou's hand was still on the front of his coat. The storekeeper's sunny greeting of "Welcome" was frozen mid-speech, as he watched the two young men in his doorway trying to ride out the awkwardness of this event.
And Niou was looking at Yanagi. Expectation was the only thing Yanagi could positively read from his expression, but Yanagi knew him well enough to know there should be more to it than that.
Was this one of those things he would do just for kicks?
"Niou." A hand on the hand on his coat. "I didn't think - "
"That's a first." A corner of Niou's lips twitched. Nervously, Yanagi imagined.
"Hey," the storekeeper said, sounding bored as all out, "Could you two kiss or get out of the way already? Other people might be wanting to use the weed."
"Sorry," Yanagi said before Niou could whip out a comeback or even a middle finger. Avoiding Niou's eyes, he quickly stepped into the store.
After that awkward incident, Yanagi realized that he was not particularly eager to be near Niou again. If Niou had decided that he was abandoned at the doorway to the clothing store and it was a good time to take off, Yanagi wouldn't mind. The next day, he would just go back to keeping his distance. Maybe this was, in fact, as far as they could get.
"What didn't you think?" Niou pestered. "Hey."
Yanagi didn't turn around, though he heard Niou approaching. "It's nothing." He picked up a folded button-down shirt that was an especially sophisticated oxblood color. "This would suit Yagyuu, wouldn't it?"
There was no answer. When Yanagi turned around, finally, he saw that he was alone.
On impulse, Yanagi reached for his cell phone. He didn't know who he was going to call, exactly - perhaps Niou, who was always changing numbers, or perhaps Sanada, who was always there in case of anything.
In the end, Yanagi decided he didn't know, and kept the phone safely hidden.
Niou may have perceived avoidance as a rejection. Hence the perfectly understandable hasty departure. Yanagi sighed. It was all a matter of timing , really - but it was difficult to explain. It wasn't exactly easy to lay out numbers, figures and case studies... but when he wasn't ready to be made a move on, he wasn't ready to be made a move on. And because it was this simple, it was pointless to mourn lost opportunities.
Maybe Niou had taken off. Who knew. Who cared, at this point. At least he'd made the first move and asked Niou, of all the people he could have asked, out to take him through the generally unpleasant task of Christmas shopping. And Niou had come; all the signs had been put up and responded to.
There was no way Yanagi was emerging the loser after all of this; he should at least get the actual shopping out of the way.
He picked out some articles of clothing that he felt would do well enough for Christmas gifts. A necktie here, a belt there, a classy shirt and a sporty cap - something for everyone who was not present. He was aware he was taking long looking for things alone, but he would rather be slow than ill at ease.
As Yanagi was moving off to look at another shelf, something fell around his shoulders. It was a long piece of cloth and it seemed to take on a life of its own, winding round his neck loosely and gently and with expert swiftness; Yanagi could not bring himself to move.
Niou stepped into sight. His smile and his magician's hands were everything Yanagi had imagined they would be up close, making the act of wrapping a scarf around his taller teammate's neck seem more delicate, more sensual than it had any right to be.
"Here," the person holding on to his upper arms said. Yanagi was steered off to a mirror, where he saw himself wearing an expensive-looking scarf of an elegant shade of dark green.
And behind him, the smiling magician who had Yanagi in his grip.
"I didn't see this." Yanagi had gotten a scarf for Akaya. He was sure this wasn't in the scarf shelves. "Did you find it here?"
"In this dump? You're kidding." Niou sniffed. Well, the chances of this shop stocking up on exceptionally fine articles of clothing was, admittedly, less than 4.36%.
"So where - ?"
"Not telling." Was that more than the usual hint of mischief he just heard? "Until you tell me what it was you were about to say earlier."
Yanagi raised an eyebrow. He couldn't help but smile; Niou was thoroughly intrigued. His lack of a plan was turning out well after all.
"You know better than to get me curious," the trickster said up close, close enough to come in loud and clear.
When his companion's breath touched his neck, the only thought that crept up Yanagi's consciousness like a shudder was: I can't keep letting him take me by surprise.
"You know better than to blackmail me," he said calmly. "I'll only consider a fair trade."
"So underhanded!" Niou exclaimed, chuckling, stepping back. "All right, since a fancy scarf obviously isn't enough of a bribe... what is it that I can offer in exchange for the information, Master?"
It was a funny word on his lips. Every other person who had ever used it for Yanagi, used it with real, honest-to-god reverence. Only Niou made it sound half as a taunt, and half as a term of affection. Yanagi enjoyed hearing it from him.
Yanagi handed the items he had selected over to his companion, draping them wherever he could, artlessly dumping the shirts and caps and belts and neckties onto the surprised Niou's arms. When he was done, he threw the draping end of his new scarf over his shoulder and looked at Niou expectantly.
"Yeah," Niou said dryly. "I already got you a scarf, I'm broke now."
"Who said anything about paying?"
Yanagi beamed.
Niou blinked.
"...Doesn't sound like a very fair trade to me," Niou remarked.
"If it makes things easier, think of this as merely... employing your talents for a worthy cause."
For a moment he looked like he was ready to go with it. The trickster liked a challenge: that at least was in Yanagi's data. But a second later and the look was gone - impishness was replaced with disbelief.
"You mean, saving you a little cash."
"Exactly."
There was a long pause. Niou looked uneasy, as if there was something he wanted to get out, but couldn't - certainly a rare event, at least while Yanagi was around to witness it.
Finally Niou said, "So this was why you brought me along?"
Both of Yanagi's eyebrows rose now.
"Of course. Why else did you think I brought you along? To have a good time?"
When Niou looked away, he looked like he flinched. This was probably not an answer he expected, and so it hit him harder than he thought.
Yanagi had fought the smile hiding behind his lips for too long now. He let a little of it show. Someday, when the timing was right, he was going to tell Niou everything. He was going to tell Niou, for example, that he was sorry, but he had just discovered that he enjoyed having the upper hand.
...That he liked Niou even more when his guard was down. Found Niou most attractive at that fleeting second when his face betrayed that he had run out of tricks.
And that he knew that this, this, was the perfect time for a kiss.
The boy didn't know what was coming. When Yanagi leaned forward and tilted his chin upward slightly, he didn't have the presence of mind to drop everything he was carrying and put a stop to it. And when Yanagi's lips touched his - he didn't have the presence of mind to do or say anything at all.
He just stood there, stunned out of a comeback or an escape route: the victim of perfect timing.
"It's never," Yanagi quietly informed him, "just to have a good time."