Fandom: PoT
Chapter Title:(There shall be one)
Chapter title: Chapter1: Devil Inside
Characters: Niou Masaharu, Yagyuu Hiroshi, Kirihara Akaya and mentions of Yukimura.
Notes: Oh, it's D1 fic but there's mentions of NiouYuki and NiouKiri and YagyuuOC around.
Summary: Future AU, Yagyuu's getting married, Niou's having affair with Kiri, nothing is just the way it should be.
Somebody once told Niou Masaharu that life is beautiful because of the imperfection of it. At the time, Niou agreed, because anything perfect would end up boring after a while. Imperfection means fractures in the pattern, broken pattern means countless possibilities - a result Niou finds pleasing. Well, at least he thought so before.
Years after, vision unclear, the dusty wind of lazy summer evening sweeping dirt through the front yard of the characteristically seedy motel just outside Tokyo, painting Niou's sweaty chest with splatters of gray sand dust. The cigarette hanging between his shaking fingers, beginning to burn his skin but he doesn't notice. The beauty of life is now somewhat lost to him. He's more familiar with the irony of it.
A truck wheezes past, lifting more dust to the lazy wind. The scent of city on its wake, the inevitable tick of time, Niou feels the ground moving under his feet. The word shifts, without caring if he can adapt or not.
Engagement party… Hope you'll be there, Masaharu… Saturday night, six o'clock sharp. Don't forget.
Niou first meets Yagyuu when they are just babies. Not many know that their mothers were old high school friends. Niou doesn't remember much before his family moved. But his mother likes to mutter how sweet a child he was back then. Everybody else finds it hard to believe; he seems to dedicate his life for trouble and misbehaving from the moment he is transferred to the new school. His sister loses her accent in few weeks to talk like the other kids, he picks up new accents to mix with his old one. Mariyo is nervous of having new friends and fitting in, he deliberately doesn't want to.
Few years later, when Yagyuu's family moves after them, Niou against all expectations has finally adapted into a new school and city. The school psychologist says he just has too much imagination and no patience. And he feels like proving her right. He stops going to the appointments she has arranged for him.
They aren't strangers when they meet again; Niou has a pile of letters under the bottom board of his closet (he likes them being his and only his) to prove the fact. He never has written back, but he has called few times. They aren't strangers but could be as well, that much they have changed. Yagyuu is more Yagyuu and Niou more Niou. Yagyuu has glasses now, Niou a big bruise on his left cheek. And still they hit it off because of the similarity both of them know is there, like a twisting mirror image. Niou shrugs it off with a smirk but Yagyuu finds himself amused by the fact for years to come.
Like the distant scents from childhood they both recognize, dusty taste of water from the public beach their families used to go, Niou's shampoo on Yagyuu's pillow from the countless sleepovers, the sound of Yagyuu's sleepy voice over the phone when Niou is sick and he has promised to keep Niou company for the whole night, they are bind together. Even if their first conversation starts with Yagyuu accusing Niou 'you stole my magnifying glass' and Niou answering lazily 'don't take things so literally; I don't even remember you having one', they still seem to both answer the same compelling beat of one heart that throbs in time with the other's.
They play games through high school. Games of distance and clever words. Names are only meant for the audience, they rarely address each other by name while being alone, they have roles for classroom, tennis club, home… They never speak of them. Not even once. Niou sometimes wonders if they have roles for themselves but forgets it the next time he sees himself mirrored in Yagyuu.
Playing doubles in tennis is a game too, a challenge for yet another make believe. It becomes a little more, but only a little. Their combination is perfect, the control of the game shifts smoothly and the lack of stability can confuse anybody, which is when they know the game is theirs. Niou is surprised even years after when he realizes that he actually cared for the damn tennis team and the freaks that Yukimura had managed to dig up. And for some odd reason the unexpected loyalty brings balance for his proximity with Yagyuu. Yukimura warns him once that he's playing with fire but Niou shrugs it off by telling him that he likes it hot.
Yagyuu is taking one of his father's colleague's daughters to movies one valentines day when Niou shares his first time with Yukimura. It's their second year at junior high and Niou can't believe he hasn't done it before. Seiichi has soft but demanding touch and a narrow bed that frames their bodies as Niou pins him down, kisses turning needy and his name on Seiichi's lips only a throaty moan. They've had sex countless times after but the first time was the only they both were thinking someone else.
At his graduation party, Niou kisses Yagyuu. Drunk and intoxicated by the false sense of freedom, he throws his arms around his friend's neck and after drawling something very shameless into his ear, he presses his beer tasting lips on the grim line of mockingly smiling lips. Yagyuu slaps him to the face and Niou thinks he deserves it. The next morning he still says he doesn't remember why his lip is swollen and slightly broken, they both know it's a lie and that makes it less a lie and actually just avoiding speaking the truth.
Niou spends most of the next summer in Yagyuu's room, he has brilliantly flaming fights with his father because he didn't get accepted to any college, not that he really tried either. Niou has another kind of plans for the next year. But he patiently works in a nearby flower shop so that in the autumn, when Yagyuu leaves to Tokyo and the university, he can afford a plain ticket out of the country and some pocket money before he finds job and some kind of place to live in wherever he lands at.
The next year, Yagyuu receives post cards from Munchen, Vienna, Belfast, a small envelope with a withered marihuana leaf from Amsterdam or a package with a small gray stone from Stonehenge, a flyer of a rave at St. Petersburg and one drunken phone call from Rome. Niou's sister calls Yagyuu once or twice a month to ask if he has heard from Masaharu. Niou keeps grudges and Yagyuu tells his family that he's alive. Their balance is still intact even if Niou is hundred of kilometers away.
The last days in school Yagyuu feels somewhat anxious. He'll be staying the summer at Tokyo, working in a small medical firm as a lab assistant because his father thought it would be good for him to have some work experiment when the school is finished. Which means he's not worrying about moving like a good part of the other students around him. His small apartment is silent and calm like always, just like he prefers it, and yet something is off. One morning when he's about to leave for school and finds Niou behind his door, he knows what he has been missing. Niou's hair has gotten long and it hangs over the silent seablue eyes, a pale smirk over the narrow line of his mouth. It's like there never was a year between them.
It takes Yagyuu more than a week to finish the letter Niou wrote him during his time abroad. It's like a small novel of impersonal observations, laid out in sarcastic humor. Yagyuu finds himself laughing silently at Niou's sharp tongue and random stick figure drawings on the side of the text. He asks why Niou never sent his letters. Niou shrugs and tells him that Yagyuu doesn't like unfinished things.
Niou doesn't like studying, the three years in college mess up his system entirely. Yagyuu finds hard to find reasons for his friend to go on. But because he knows Niou will do it, if not for anything else, at least for his patient insisting, he keeps them both droning on.
Yagyuu proceeds on his medical career like it was planned a long time ago. His father introduced him to the girl he will be dating as a long time investment, they fit well together. She's determined and beautiful, bright and funny. Niou likes her but teases Yagyuu that in few years he will be married, with one point five children and working long hours in well paid job at allergy clinic as his father's junior partner and die from old age at his thirtieth birthday.
Niou doesn't know what he wants to do so he does right about everything. From selling houses to playing card games as a professional and finally settles down for a while as a freelance reporter. He travels a lot, usually fairs well with his random jobs as long as they don't cage him down for too long and makes a habit of wild one-night stands with both men and women. Yagyuu tells him there's no way he will treat for free Niou's various health problems he's bound to gather with his lifestyle. Niou laughs and tells him he'll pay them by leaving all his earthly possessions to Yagyuu by a secret will which is written in riddles.
Once they have a double date with Yagyuu's girlfriend and Niou's latest muse, like he calls her (Yagyuu wonders in the phone if Niou just forgot her name and Niou chooses not to answer him). Niou has more fun than he has had in years, annoying the hell out of Yagyuu's wife candidate, his girlfriend of the day sulks most of the dinner and Yagyuu finds himself mildly amused until his girlfriend quietly excuses herself to ruin her makeup in the bathroom by crying frustrated tears from anger towards one silver haired trickster. It's the first and last double date they'll ever have.
They still play tennis, every Sunday. Because Yagyuu wants so. Niou will show up at Yagyuu's apartment door every now and then with his racket and demand a game. Sometimes they have the rare possibility to play together, not against each other. Yukimura and Kirihara suck so bad in doubles that it's child's play to beat them but still so much better than stealing points from each other. They don't do the switch anymore, but sometimes Niou feels like Yagyuu and Yagyuu like Niou and it shows in their game. Yukimura tells Niou he's been burned and Niou can't really disagree but does so anyhow out of pure stubbornness.
When Yagyuu has to cancel one of their tennis dates on Sunday afternoon Niou finally has to admit he feels a little jealous. He doesn't care it was for important family gathering and she and Yagyuu had received an invitation together, nor does he care that it's childish. He has always been joking about the anal nature of their tennis dates but now feels like he's betrayed when they have to reschedule.
From the pure irritation, he beats Kirihara in a dirty singles game and they end up drinking and making out on Niou's couch. They wake up half dressed and painfully aware of their position of a choice the next morning, Niou lying on top of Kirihara and pleasantly nestled between the slender thighs. The flush on Kirahara's cheeks is adorable enough that Niou buys him breakfast at the nearby café and they both end up ditching work and going out again, this time ending in Kirihara's bed. Niou didn't realize Kirihara's attraction to men before, later he will curse his poor awareness.
Niou never says anything to Yagyuu about his jealousy, it would be idiotic. Actually, he never mentions it to anybody. It's his private little secret that will go grave with him. The next week Yagyuu tells him he's engaged with his girlfriend and wants to see Niou at the party for the occasion. Something breaks within Niou and like spell bound, he kisses Yagyuu for the second time in his life.
Engagement party… Hope you'll be there, Masaharu… Saturday night, six o'clock sharp. Don't forget.
He remembers how Yagyuu's skin tastes like, how the gentleman's hands on his hips feel, what the world breathless really means. But still he doesn't know why they did what they did. Nor does he know why he has been running away. The whole week, starting from the next day, a new town for every new night.
Kirihara sleeps in the little motel room as Niou stands alone in the dark night, his sweaty skin feeling dirty, the nightly carnage hanging onto him like a dirty moan, shower won't clean him more than the dusty wind will. Oh he hates himself, hates because the longing he sees in Kirihara's eyes is the same as in his and all he wants is to break it, shatter into little bleeding pieces, no matter what the cost.
Eleven past midnight. Eleven past the day that has quickly became the worst in his life. Worse than the day his father first hit him, which has been the top score in that list for a very long time now. Oh poor abused child him? Hardly. But that was the day when Niou counts his childhood ending and something else completely starting. The next day he met Yagyuu again on the school yard, accusing him of stealing the magnifying glass.
Eleven past the day, he muses, his youth ended and the inevitable downward spiral towards death begun. Maybe he finally has to learn how to lie.
He flicks open his cell, the charms hanging onto it slapping against his hand. A marihuana leaf and a little jewelry key he got from Yagyuu when he graduated from college. Niou would jokingly ask if it's a key to Yagyuu's heart and now he yanks it off the phone, ignoring the 23 missed phone calls and punches in the number he knows in his dreams. He doesn't need any keys, nor does he need any hearts either. Never has.
"Masaharu?" Not sleepy, not smiling, worried and tired. Niou feels a hint of regret but only a hint.
"Yo, just called to tell you my congratulations," he murmurs into the phone.
"Are you... Where are you? Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. Just get on with your thing. Tell my regards to the new wifey as well."
"...I'd rather--"
"I'd rather you say nothing. But for every Sunday she steals the tennis from me, she'll own me one. Starting from tomorrow."
As Yagyuu falls silent for a moment, Niou feels a sleep warm body press against him, breath against his neck and lips finding the wing of his shoulder blade. Kirihara's hands are only slightly smaller than his as they round his waist, pressing against the taunt abs and directly under the waist of his jeans.
"Masaharu, should we talk about this?"
"There's nothing to talk. We'll play tennis tomorrow. Good night."
TBC