Relief
Nightmares and Phonecalls


It is starting to drive me nuts.

Yes. It. Not even him anymore. It.

It is not Shuichi. It hasn't spoken in a voice louder than a car horn in nearly two weeks. It hasn't put on a single piece of trashy clothing so horrible that a stripper would be embarrassed to wear it. It hasn't been singing in the shower, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the car, at the store. It isn't Shuichi anymore, because It hasn't done a single solitary Shuichi-esque thing since It got home from seeing a movie with that stupid punk Nakano. Except maybe forget to turn the light off every time he goes to bed.

I'm about to call that new-age rocker freak and ask him what the hell he did with Shuichi's fucking soul, because this behavior is driving me insane, and to tell the truth is starting to get creepy. I sent my brat off with that long-haired weirdo just fine, and he comes back damaged goods.

I want a refund.

Every time I ask him what's wrong he just smiles and says "Nothing's wrong. Why would anything be wrong? I'm fine." Everything's fine. The world is fine. The entire fucking universe is fine.

I hate the word "fine".


It's two a.m. and the lights in the bedroom are still on.

Shindo Shuichi, lying on his back curled in a ball, bathed in a pool of light from the lamp on his bedside table, is whimpering. My silhouette falls over the room as I stand in the doorway, I can feel a wrinkle forming in the middle of my forehead as I watch him wrestle with night terrors.

A louder whimper, a broken, pleading sound.

Before I can even think about what I'm doing, I've taken two small steps towards him and pause when Shuichi whimpers again. In a few strides I'm at his side, curious—alright, concerned—about what is making him act so strange, watching the smooth planes of his small round face fold with imagined distress. Something's wrong.

"Shuichi?" Heavier breathing, a gasp of fright. "Shuichi?!" Shaking him now, trying to wake him up from whatever nightmare has been plaguing him.

"No!" Shuichi screams as he jerks forward, suddenly awake.

It makes me jumped with the suddenness of his movement

"Yuki! Oh God…Yuki! I...I....I..." Shuichi's stuttered attempts at speech fall flat as he dissolves into tears. I can't do anything but hold his face in my hands and search his eyes for answers.

"What's—" I have to clear my throat of emotion before I can speak. "What's wrong?"

He's breathing too heavily to speak to me, crying too hard to see that I'm here. He can't stop saying my name, it's as thought I'm a million miles away when he needs me right there.

I can't think what to do. In some ways I want to hold him, to tell him it's okay and that I'm there with him, I want to cuddle him close until he's calm and find out what's wrong. In some ways I want to revert to what I know and do best: being an asshole. Letting him cry himself out and coming back when the emotions are under control and I can handle him better.

I stay frozen, waiting. For what I don't know.

"Yuki…" He sighs, his voice rising up high in distress. I grip his face tighter and force his gaze into mine.

"What's wrong?" I demanded, harsh, but calm.

"I'm…I'm sorry." He gasps, eyes spilling over with tears.

I can't speak for a second. "What?"

"S-s-sorry…" he stutters again. "Sorry for…this."

"What? What in the hell are you talking about, Shuichi?"

A gasp. He opens his eyes and locks them on me. "Sorry for…this…this...behavior." His body is racked with sobs and he shudders and curls into himself and cries harder. Sometimes I marvel at his ability to continue crying when anyone else would have been spent long ago.

"Behavior? Shu, you're not acting any less weird than you usually do." Oh. That was not really the right thing to say.

"Always…cry—crying. I'm s-sorry!"

"No!" I say gruffly, trying to bring him back to a calming point. "No, it's okay. You had a nightmare, shit happens. Talk to me about it."

He launched into a tear filled, gasp filled, sigh filled, emotion filled sermon about his nightmare. Half of it flew over my head in the garbled mess of words and crying, and the other half caught in my ears in clumps that I had to decipher. By the end of it I had caught the general gist of his nightmare. Something to do with me being in the army and going on a mission to the desert, being attacked by mutant monster things, being raped, and then being killed and/or eaten by those same mutant monster things.

As soon as he finished and the tears had stopped I brushed the bubble-gum pink hair from his eyes and planted a kiss on his soggy cheek. "I'm right here. Nothing's coming after me. Nothing's going to happen to me…or you, for that matter."

But as I was consoling the tiny boy before me, my mind was moving a thousand miles a second. Where on earth had this kid gotten those ideas in his head? Was this the reason for the lights being left on the last two weeks when he went to bed? For his quieted voice and toned down moods? For the sweatshirts and jeans and the lack of tanks and short-shorts, and the haunted, sleepless looking eyes?

I asked him as much.

He gave me a watery smile. "Maybe a little."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Where on earth did these nightmares come from?"

"Well, you see…"

Things never ended well when he said those three little words.


After tucking Shuichi back into bed and assuring him I'd come to bed myself in a moment, I wandered out into the living room and stared at the phone, then the clock, then the phone again. An angry, frightening grin lit my face as I picked up the receiver from its cradle and dialed the number.

It was three in the morning. Perfect. I wanted to wake that bastard up and rip him a new ass-hole. I was seething with anger.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

"…'Ello?" came the groggy, distant reply.

"Nakano Hiroshi!" I said in a loud, yet subdued voice, trying for a fake happiness in my tone to irritate him. "How are you doing?"

"…Mr.…Yuki…?" A hissing sigh and groan. "What's…what's up? What's wr—" a yawn. "Wrong?"

"Oh nothing's wrong. Nothing at all." I couldn't keep up the fake happiness any longer. My anger was at full-boil. "I was just wondering what the fuck possessed you to take Shuichi to a fucking horror movie?!"


A/N: So this first chapter starts us off at a more serious level, but the humor is going to come out in the next few chapters. This should be a rather short piece, but I hope you enjoy. Review?

Oh, extra cookies to the first reviewer that can guess what horror movie Shuichi went to see with Hiro.