I Blame the Stands
"Shit! What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Hiro was pissed off. No, I take that back. He was way beyond pissed off.
"It means that we have a CD to put out and your lead singer didn't come to work today for some reason or another, so you two have to work overtime to compensate. Next time keep a firmer reign on your friend." K-san waved and smiled "Have fun boys!"
And with that he was gone. Well, that might be counted as a good thing, seeing as Hiro was ready to launch himself on the man and beat him into a bloody pulp and Suguru desperately didn't want to have to clean Hiro's brains up from off the floor, which he would probably have had to do seeing as K-san had proved in the past that he didn't mind using his many weapons against any of his stars if they became a little too unruly.
"I am so going to fucking kill Shuichi after I get out of here!" Hiro screamed to the world in general. "How dare he just ditch us for that damn Yuki again and hope we'd pick up the slack? I'm going to rip out his vocal chords and feed them to him!"
"If you kill him then we'll be out of a job." Suguru pointed out and hooked up one of his many precious keyboards. He was impartial to working this late, he did it on his own most times. The thing that really got to him was the fact the Shuichi had promised that he'd start spending more time at the studio and less time in that author's bed. It was frustrating.
"That might not be such a bad thing. At least we wouldn't have sudden insight into the life of a novelist I don't even really care for all that much. I know way too much about the guy for my liking." Hiro sighed and hooked his guitar up to an amp. "Not to mention the fact that our lives revolve around him. That cannot be a good thing for a guy whose ego is already the size of a rather large country."
"You've got that right. If Yuki has a bad day, then Shuichi has a bad day, then we don't get anything doneand we have to listen to him crying." Suguru grimaced at the thought of having to go through another marathon cry session with Shuichi. "It's almost not worth it in the long run, but it has gotten us this far and asking Shuichi to break up with him would be like going outside and trying to turn the sky purple with green polka dots."
"Perhaps the sky thing would be a bit easier." Hiro agreed in his own little way.
Suguru nodded and dragged out sheet after sheet of musical arrangements. Hiro groaned at the sight. It was going to be a long night and he was already tired from the week before.
Yes, he'd had a long and hard week himself, though nobody bothered to ask him about it. Ayaka just wasn't working out, and he hated to admit it, even to himself, that it had nothing to do with her per se. It was more along the lines that women in any shape or form weren't as appealing to the young guitarist anymore. Needless to say, this sparked many an argument between him and his now ex-girlfriend. She just couldn't see why every guy she happened to like turned gay on her, and it didn't help that Hiro was just as confused about that as she was. The only thing that had made things turn out to be as big as they had been was her reluctance to drop the subject. Hiro was perfectly fine with chalking it up to some odd curse and moving on with his life, but she just had to go on and on about how she didn't deserve to have this happen to her twice and that he had better get his brain, and his dick, back on the right side of the fence.
Hiro wasn't going to stand for it anymore. As if it wasn't enough that she had been pulling the 'I want to be a virgin for my wedding' card on him the whole time they had been going out? No wonder he'd decided to quit in the middle of the games and switch teams. The whole thing had smacked of commitment and Hiro just wasn't ready for that level of commitment when he wasn't even sure if girls were really his cup of tea. There was nothing worse than waking up in the morning knowing that you had most definitely passed something good up for something you know wanted to strangle in her sleep.
And there was the quiet keyboardist. How did Hiro feel about him? There was no way that he could truthfully say that there was nothing there, but there was no way he could place a label on his feelings. Friendship? No. Lust? Perhaps. Love? Maybe.
There was just too much to think about right now and all this work wasn't helping any. What he really needed was some times alone to sort things out, not to be closed up in a small studio room with the object of his lust and or love. You don't just go from straight to gay in a week with no complaints.
"Hiro? Are you OK man?" Suguru was now waving his hand in front of the genius guitarist. "Hello in there."
"Huh? Wha–? Oh, Suguru. Something wrong?" Hiro was brought back to reality in a flash. Little did he know, but there was now a bit of a light blush staining his cheeks from being so close to the other teen. Well, that caught Suguru off-guard. How many times a day do you get to see the handsome guitarist blush, especially when you were the only other person in the room? It wasn't like he was blushing because of someone else. That was quite a lot for Suguru to handle at the moment so he stored it in his brain for future analyzation. Right now they had work to do and they couldn't do it if one of them trapezed off into La La Land.
"Um. The only problem we have is you blanking out on me over there." Suguru answered even though he was flustered. He knew there was no reason to be. Hiro was completely and totally straight. He was with Ayaka and Suguru himself should be off with some nice girl right now as well, but there was no one who measured up. No one who could replace what he knew in his heart to be true. No one could replace his Hiro.
He had always admired the red head. He had always seemed more down to earth than his pink haired friend. Suguru didn't know why, but he had always felt as though he had some sort of connection with Hiro in this world full of insane people. It was kind of hard being one of the only relatively sane people in this groups of hyperactive, weapon packing, freaking out, probably murderous group of emotionally unstable people. It was enough to drive the two insane, but they seemed to be the only people that were completely unaware of their surrounding. Yes, it was no secret that Hiro and Suguru were the two things that ultimately kept the band together and on the right track in the first place.
Hiro played a few chords on his guitar as if to lighten the mood. Suguru returned to his bank of equipment and tossed a folder full of music sheets in Hiro's direction. He deftly caught it and finished setting up one of those collapsible stands. The damn thing was stuck again and Hiro couldn't get it to unfold into it's normal, upright, ready to hold music form. He cursed under his breath and the war against the stand began.
Suguru watched on with mild amusement as Hiro began his battle against the worthy opponent. Those stupid stands had always given everyone in the music business trouble at least one time in their careers, and no matter how many stands you would try after you discovered one that wasn't going to work with you without major bloodshed, they all seemed to have the same mind set. It was almost as though they all staged a rebellion at the exact same time, and there was nothing the person that wanted to use them could do about it. He would just have to suck it up and fight for his right to use the metal contraption. To this day, the stands had put fifty people in the hospital, and had sent three to the ICU. And yet, the infernal companies that created these monstrosities refused to stop producing them.
"God damn you!" Hiro wasted no time in starting off his ranting at the stands. It was inevitable anyways. Whenever battling against a foe as stubborn as the cursed stands, you were sure to break off into a stream of cursing that would make a sailor cringe, which was normally followed by a rant on how the world had forsaken you by sending the accursed object into your hands. Why he didn't just prop the music up on a nearby chair or table was beyond me.
"Why must life be so cruel to me? All I ever wanted was to have a nice life somewhere, perhaps become a doctor like I was studying to be before joining this band. I just wanted to grow up to be an upstanding member of some community with a wife and a white picket fence. And then I just had to go and meet Shuichi." He didn't even seem to notice that he wasn't alone anymore. He wasn't just ranting at the stand anymore. It was more of a rant that he'd been waiting to release ever since that first fight with Ayaka. Suguru remained silent and waited for the man to finish, not even thinking about what was to be said next.
"He introduced me to this world of music and stages and fans and concerts and CDs. I wouldn't be having any of these problems if it weren't for him and his insane drive to be the best, and he doesn't even help most of the time! And what of this band? We might be riding some sort of high from good CD sales, but there's no way that we can make it with 2/3s of this fucking band as queers. What deranged fangirl would put life-sized posters of band members that she couldn't obtain on her wall? One gay guy was enough, but two would be over the limit. Rock bands might need a bit of controversy to get started, but that would be far too much."
Suguru was stunned. Hiro reallyhad forgotten where he was and that he wasn't alone in the soundproof recording room. And he'd just admitted to being gay, not straight, queer, painting rainbows in the sky, he liked it up the ass, both ends of the stick, and a pouf! There probably more analogies, but Suguru wasn't about to get into them right now. And he didn't think that it helped that the guitarist was facing away from him. Suguru was currently opening his mouth to comfort the distraught guy and end the madness, when Hiro continued down his strange path and finished up the rant with some other things Suguru would never have expected to come out of the sex god's mouth.
"And to think that Ayaka was such a bitch about it. She was the one that said she wasn't going to do it until she was married. How she is ever going to manage to trap a guy like that is beyond me, but there is no way I'm asking her to marry me just for sex. What was I thinking even starting a relationship with her? I don't love her; I don't even like her! She was never right for me in the first place. Temporary insanity I guess. What a loser. Going on about how sad she was and how everyone she loved turned to other guys in the end. What else were we supposed to do? I know that I was scared right out of my stage boots when she brought up marriage and kids. What did she expect a nineteen year old on his way to the top to say when she asked me to quit the band? If I wouldn't do it for my own parents, what makes her think that I'd do it for her?"
The whole time he was ranting, Hiro was indeed still trying to set up the stand. He wasn't getting anywhere and Suguru was now frozen behind his instrument. There was going to be nothing to stop this madness for some time now. Sit back and enjoy the show. Hiro had finally gone and lost his mind. Not that I can blame him, I mean I would have thought the same thing in his position. Who wouldn't have?
"And now I have to contend with sexuality issues. Not like I haven't had those before either, but the urges have never been as bad as they are now. I think I need a vacation. I need to get away from him and have some time to myself to sort things out. Maybe when I come back I'll have thought up enough courage to tell him how I really feel, if there's anything more to tell, that is. I'm just as confused now as I was back then. I guess there's always been something. It's never really just been friendship between us, but I never knew I could feel so strongly. Just looking into his beautiful eyes in an experience that I wouldn't mind still experiencing years from now. There's just something about him that draws me to him, even in the midst of all this chaos. If only I could get up enough courage to tell him, damn it!"
Tears were now threatening to spill down our poor keyboarder's face. He'd known it from the beginning. There had been no hope for him to play a more important role in the man's life. His heart had obviously been taken a long time ago. His heart had belonged to a pair of gorgeous violet eyes ever since they had first met obviously. There was no room for Suguru in the relationship between Hiro and his best friend. Suguru could now see that the singer meant more to his love than anyone ever would. Who else could it be? He didn't stand a chance against Shuichi. There was now confirmation to what he had known for so long, and it hurt like a bitch. Even though he had known from the beginning that his feelings were not going to be returned. It hadn't stopped him from hoping, and now those hopes had been shattered.
But Hiro wasn't done ranting. He was still having problems with the stand and, as some of us know better than others, when you're engaged in a particularly nasty fight with one of the evil objects, you don't stop ranting until you have reached victory. Who knows how long that might last, but the drive to rant stays with you until you have rightfully defeated the evil and are happily practicing on your instrument of choice. I blame the stands.
"Damn it all to hell! I have to say something to him! I'm going insane just waiting and watching. I don't think he's going out with anyone right now, there's nothing stopping me, so why am I so afraid of rejection? Hell! I don't even know if he's gay or not! What if he hates me for it? There's no way that I would be able to live with him hating me, or things being strained between us. I would hate myself for forcing that type of existence on him. What if he chose to quit N-G for good to make sure that we didn't run into each other ever again? I wouldn't be able to go on without at least being able to see him. Talk to him, hear his beautiful voice. What is a man to do in this situation? My heart says go for it, but my head tells me all the things that could go wrong. Which should I believe?"
Suguru was now even more confused than before. He had just admitted to disliking Ayaka, to even go so far as to say that he had never even have had any amount of feelings for the girl. He had outed himself as being gay, albeit the fact that he thought he was talking to an empty room, he was that caught up in the moment and the unfairness of life. And now he had gone from loving Shuichi, which Suguru was now not as sure that he had ever been talking about the vocalist in the first place, to being afraid to confess his love to someone that worked within the walls of this very recording company. But now there was the question of who it was? Suguru knew that he should leave the poor guy to rant alone, but he was now curious about where this was going to end up. He involuntarily ducked down behind one of the larger amps and continued to listen, not even thinking about the fact that if he wasn't eavesdropping before, he was now.
"I give up. I'm going to tell him...AS SOON AS I GET THIS FUCKING STAND SET UP!" And as though realizing that he wasn't supposed to be alone in here, he looked around at the seemingly empty room. "And where'd he go anyways? He's supposed to stay here until I have bested this evil scrap of metal so I can confess my undying love to him. Hm. Maybe he went for coffee or something. Why am I speaking aloud? He could come in at any moment. Thank the gods for mental rants."
Hiro went back to muttering incoherently as he bent over the newest bane of his existence. The stand was so going down, but that's not the important thing anymore. The more important thing was now Suguru, who had almost fainted from surprise. Now there was no way he could get the wrong idea of who it was that Hiro loved, he also had to find a way to sneak out, get coffee, and come back without Hiro knowing that A) he had really been ranting and raving out loud and B) that Suguru now knew who it was that Hiro was madly in love with.
The answer was the one he had been hoping for from the beginning. There was only one person that met all the requirements now and it was him. He couldn't be more happy. The love of his life had done everything but propose to him and all he had to do was come back with coffee and help Hiro vanquish the stand once and for all. It was as though Christmas had come early for our shy, quiet keyboardist.
Operation get out of the room without being noticed had commenced. Suguru thanked the gods that the door leading out of the recording booth was on his side of the room. Hiro once again had his back turned. Suguru began the quick crawl to the door, but was thwarted in a way that no man should be thwarted while he is trying to escape from the room where his love had just finished confessing that he loved him, but you couldn't do anything about it because you were supposed to be out of said room. His knee knocked against one of the tables and a collapsible stand fell on him with enough noise to wake the dead, much less pull an angsty, hormonal teen out of his currently fired-up retrieve.
Hiro jumped and spun around, dropping his own stand. Now, he had placed his guitar off to the side in the middle of his little skirmish, which turned out to be a good thing for if it had been on his lap at the time, it would have befallen a very terrible death due to 1) being slammed up against the falling stand and 2) having the cord becoming irreparable from being ripped out of the amp at an odd angle. Now that the safety of the precious instrument has been established, we shall continue back to the main action. There's nothing really interesting about a guitar with no one playing it anyways.
Suguru immediately jumped to his feet to make it seem that he was just looking for a pencil fo something, that's when he remembered that his pencil was in plain view on the keyboard. Well, there was no getting out of this one. And his damn blush just wouldn't stop getting darker and darker. If Hiro didn't know that he'd heard every word the other teen had said, he did now. Damn his face and it's betraying powers.
They both stood there, in different stages of embarrassment while Hiro racked his brains for the exact point he had realized that he was talking aloud. He located it and groaned, then he set about tracking to the point where he had started to see what all the keyboardist had most likely heard as well. His face went completely white the second he found it. Had he really said all of that out loud? And Suguru had heard it? The boy probably thought he was an idiot and he was probably about to leave the room running like he'd never run before. Suguru was currently contemplating the many rock in the area and deciding on which one would be the best to hide under for the rest of his life. He wasn't quite sure if you could die of embarrassment, but this was taking it a little too close for comfort.
Hiro was the first to break the silence.
"So I guess you heard that rant, did you?" He began a heated staring contest with his shoes. Suguru was amazed. Here was the ever sexy and confident Hiro reduced to blushing like a schoolgirl and staring at his shoes as though they held the answers to the universe. And it was all because of him.
"Only the good parts." Suguru answered. If Hiro could be sexy and mysterious at times, than so could he. There was no law stating that Suguru couldn't confess first. It wasn't as though there was much doubt in his mind at who was the one that had stolen the guitarist's heart. He was tired of sitting in the shadows waiting for someone else to make the first move. Starting now, Suguru was going to be more in charge of his life, and less hiding in the background while it passed him by. No one was going to make any decisions for him ever again. Ok, so he would let Hiro choose a few things for him, but that was different. Everything was going to be different now.
"Oh." There was a huge, uncomfortable silence following the revelation. Hiro risked looking up at Suguru to find the boy smiling. "What the hell are you smiling about?"
"You." Suguru said and almost burst out laughing at Hiro's confused expression. "Its just amusing that you can be so caught up in what you were doing that you didn't even notice that I was standing there the whole time."
"The whole time?" If it was even possible, Hiro looked even paler than before. Suguru nodded and a little light clicked on in the red head's mind. Suguru had to have known who it was that he was talking about, but he hadn't left. He was still standing there, with that odd smile on his face. It was almost as though...he felt the same way and was just waiting for Hiro to make his move. To claim him as his own forever. Well, Hiro wasn't about to pass up an opportunity like that, now was he?
Before Suguru could even blink Hiro was pressed up against him, kissing him senseless. It all felt so good. It was as though this whole thing was so very right. There was no other way to describe it. Hiro had never felt anything like it before. Even when he had been with Ayaka, back in the days when he had thought that he'd loved her, he'd never felt the intense feelings that he was feeling now. He had been turned on before, but there was something more to this. There was something that said it was going to be worth it in the end. That he would enjoy waking up next to this beautiful young man every day for the rest of his life. Nothing like when he'd been with others, male and female alike. So this was love? Hiro could get used to this.
For Suguru, he was now enveloped in a world of feeling, touching, tasting, everything. Hiro was everything. The good, the bad, the in between, none of that mattered anymore to him. All that mattered was what was going on right now, and all of it was good, oh so very good. It wasn't his first kiss by a long shot, but it might as well have been. There was just so much emotion, so much love. Nothing mattered, nothing at all. There were no more problem in the world when Hiro held him like this. There was no high and mighty cousin to be better than. There was no pink haired ball of energy to disrupt recording session. There was no more gun breathing down his neck in case he didn't feel the need to get his work done on time. Hell, there was no more work as far as he was concerned at the moment. There was just them and this, this love.
They both pulled away to look into each other's eyes. There wasn't really much need for words after that point, but they just needed to hear it said one time.
"I love you, Hiro."
"I love you, Suguru."
"You know what this means now, right?"
"Enlighten me."
"There's going to be a lot of disappointed fangirls."
"That's for sure."
Any response Suguru might have wanted to make was swallowed by the next heart-wrenching kiss. Everything was finally right with the world once again.
AN: As you might have noticed from my biased position on the stand issue, I have had a fewe problems with them in the past. And yes, they have led to the insane desire to rant on and on about whatever happened to be bothering me at the time. I assure you, though, that my pointless rants were nothing like dear Hiro's, although I have had a stand fall on my head as I tried to creep into my band room after being a bit late. I got caught needless to say.
Warnings: It might seem dumb to put these down here, but if you haven't already run off screaming from the above work of fiction, you shall see this and know that anyn fllames will be used in my own personaly fireplace come the cold time. If you have a problem with two boys being together, then why'd you even pick up Gravitation in the first place? I think the little brag about it being 'the greatest shounen-ai story to hit Japan from one of the best boy's love authors' in bold letters on the front cover might have told you something, but who knows.
Challenge: I am hereby formally challenging every person that reads one of my Gravitation fics. I want you all to look upon what I have dubbed as 'the lost couples' and help me flood this site with them. I want for those fans of couplings such as this one, Ryuichi/Tatsuha, K/Sakano, Hiro/Shuichi, Ryuichi/Shuichi, K/Hiro, or any other strange coupling for this series to stand up and let our voices be heard. I fully support the Yuki/Shuichi pairing, but I am sick and tired of that (and Tohma/Yuki) being the only pairing I can find. So take up my challenge and spread the good word of the yaoi. The forgotten shall not be silenced!