Yuki Eiri set down the magazine and rubbed his weary eyes as he gently settled deeper into his bed. His gaze wandered to the strands of glistening pink hair, still slightly damp from a recent shower, as they moved back and forth rhythmically in line with their possessor's restful breath. Eiri allowed his lips to form a hint of a smile as he slid his arm under his sleeping lover's head and absently began to play with the soft hair lying limply across the pillow. The smile quickly faded into a frown, though, when Eiri remembered his doings of the past few days. Everything was so perfect with Shuichi, Eiri decided, though as he did so, a hint of dread poured through his body.
Shuichi was the most important thing to him then. The little brat had meddled his way into Eiri's life without a second thought of consequences, disrupting the entire structure and routine that he had grown so used to. Though he would never admit it, Eiri had welcomed the distraction; when Shuichi came, Eiri had begun to realize how uneventful and boring his life had been. Eiri liked the chaos that Shuichi had unintentionally brought with him; he fell in love with it, fell in love with the kick it gave to his life, and in turn he fell in love with the very thing that brought it upon him in an attempt to make that kick remain. And yet, now, Eiri realized sadly, he was becoming used to Shuichi. He was starting to grow accustomed to the boy's antics, which, after the amount of time he had spent with him, he realized were actually not unpredictable, but rather just different. When he had first come into his life, Shuichi had provided an escape from the dull schedule of things. Now, however, that very escape had succumbed to the power of the routine, and it was no longer an escape.
Just thinking about it, Eiri realized that as he gazed at the placid face of his lover, the unconventional beauty that he had always secretly admired seemed to fade because it once again was something normal in the life of Yuki Eiri. Briefly he thought back to a time several years ago when he had paid a visit to his brother-in-law, who had seemed to be strangely distant at that time. Seeing Tohma working mindlessly on an almost comically large stack of paperwork had stirred a cynical mood in Eiri, and of course he took the chance to insult Tohma's lifestyle immediately. He had been rather unpleasantly surprised when Tohma donned a smile that went no farther than his lips and agreed to his snide comments with dull eyes.
"Life is so daily. It's seems like I'd be used to it by now," Tohma had said, and laughed bitterly before deciding to ignore Eiri completely and return to his work.
Not being used to it, Eiri realized as he thought it over, was not the problem. Rather it was the opposite; Tohma had been too used to it, so much so that he had grown so bored that he couldn't take it anymore. And now Eiri himself was experiencing the same thing, only his situation was much worse because of Shuichi. Shuichi had shown him what a life with nothing but chaos was like, and now that that was gone, Eiri missed it beyond all other things. He yearned for it back with all his being, to go back and relive the past all over again, from the time that Shuichi had first pushed his way into his life.
That time was as good as his life had the potential to be. And yet, it was already gone. Gone back into the routine of things. There was no purpose in going on anymore, and yet Eiri found himself still here, with his arm around his lover in a compassionate embrace, trying to convince himself that everything was perfect, that he had gotten over his conflicts with his young lover and everything was good again.
He couldn't deny, however, that conflicts were always more exciting.
Everyone he had known had told him that getting involved with Shuichi was a bad idea, that it could only lead to heartbreak. Eiri had shrugged off their warnings with arrogance, conforming to his usual demeanor and allowing absolutely no one to order him around. Now, though, he understood what they had been warning him about. He would never be satisfied; that was just the way he was. It wasn't Shuichi that would ruin his life; it was that he would use Shuichi to ruin his own life. He had used Shuichi for his own purposes, but now Shuichi was once again dead weight that Eiri was uselessly dragging around, hoping that it would just come alive again, just once.
That was the bitterest thought of them all. Eiri loved Shuichi more than anything else, but he still was dissatisfied. It was cruel and unfair to Shuichi, and for that Eiri felt himself the biggest bastard to ever set foot on the face of the Earth. It was Shuichi's own misfortune that made them cross paths and cause Shuichi to fall in love with him. Eiri knew that soon Shuichi would be forever regretting that that happened in the first place. As for Eiri, he knew that he would never ever regret meeting Shuichi, that Shuichi had given him a glimpse of something that was much better than what he had now. Eiri knew that he himself definitely had the better situation of the two, despite that Shuichi deserved it so much more than him, and for that he would always be sorry.
It was Shuichi's own misfortune, Eiri thought again in an attempt to console himself as he softly slid away from his lover and walked to the empty desk as quietly as he could so as not to wake him. He sat down in the chair and opened a drawer, removing a sheet of paper and a black pen. Holding the tip of the pen barely above the paper, Eiri went over the situation again in his mind, and, making his decision final, he proceeded to scrawl out his message in his strangely beautiful penmanship, his unique calligraphy decorating the page with a solemn note. He knew it would take Shuichi a long time to decipher this style of writing, but he wanted to make it look the best it possibly could, perhaps with the hope that Shuichi would have a reason to keep it.
It took him nearly an hour to finish the note, and all the while he noticed that his eyes occasionally panged with the sting of gathering tears, though he managed to contain himself until he signed his name in the beautiful hand, upon which he had to shove the paper forward to avoid ruining it with the water stain of teardrops. He made no sound, and wiped away his tears indifferently, before setting the note among the pile of papers upon which Shuichi's hordes of unfinished lyrics were scribbled in a nearly indiscernible handwriting. Eiri only hoped that Shuichi would be perceptive for once and notice the note before he got to work and looked through the lyrics, so that he would not once again make a fool of himself in front of the entire staff of NG by bursting out in tears, though Eiri didn't have much reassurance, especially considering that Shuichi had failed to notice the fact that all of Eiri's items, including his clothes and laptop, had disappeared completely from his apartment and were currently locked away in the trunk of his car.
Eiri started towards the door of the bedroom, though he immediately turned around and frantically returned to the bedside. Running his hand across his lover's face, he once again felt the tears prick at his eyes and blur his vision.
"Yuki…" Shuichi whispered incoherently, unconsciously leaning into Eiri's touch and smiling slightly in his sleep.
Feeling his breath almost catch in his throat, Eiri quickly removed his hand and swung around. Worrying that he might possibly sob aloud at any moment, he dashed out of the room, out of his apartment, and jumped into his car. He sped away quickly into the darkness of the early morning, not daring to look back in the direction of home lest he change his mind.
He noticed out of the corner of his eye the square of paper that clashed with the dark exterior of the passenger seat of his car—a one-way plane ticket to New York that he had just purchased yesterday. Reluctantly, he gathered it with a free hand and placed it into his coat pocket, unwilling to look at it as if it were the vilest thing on the planet. He had not told anyone, not even Mika or Tohma, of his plans for leaving; he didn't want to be bothered about it. He knew what he was doing was the right thing…he just wished it didn't hurt quite as much as it did.
Parking his car in the vast parking lot of the international airport, Eiri lit a cigarette and sat motionless in the driver's seat for a long time, arguing with himself about this decision. He dreaded leaving his Shuichi more than anything, but he knew that his situation would only grow worse as time went on, and leaving now was the only way to lessen the hurt. Slowly gathering as much resolve as he possibly could, he hesitantly stepped out of his car and took his luggage out of his trunk. Flicking away his cigarette, he gazed up at the building looming before him and allowed the dread to overcome his body and send him into some sort of trance in which his body seemed to work on its own as his mind blocked out all of his senses, and before he could protest, he was sitting on the small seat of the plane, watching the city lights grow smaller and dimmer through the window as the plane soared higher into the sky.
Behind him he heard the muffled electronic tones of a song all too familiar to him, and he turned around to look upon a kid, no older than eighteen, resting against the back of his seat and tuning out the rest of the world around him with his headphones turned up so loud that Eiri could clearly hear the notes of the song, and even the voice of the singer, which, he noted sadly, was the very singer he had just left at home, sleeping in his bed. Eiri resumed his former position and stared at the back of the seat in front of him, trying desperately to tune out the sound of the headphones behind him. A tingling sensation spread through his body as he was once again reminded how much he didn't want to leave Japan, where his lover lay, still unaware of his absence. It was too late, anyway.
This is the best thing for both of us, Eiri thought silently, willing the tears that once again poked at his eyes to go away.
Eiri closed the window of the airplane, removing the last of the glare that still remained of the city. He was starting a new chapter of his life with this decision. He wasn't planning on ever returning to Japan.
After all this time, he was finally leaving Shuichi behind forever.
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Uhn, so this is kinda different from all my other stories, which are all either humor or lemons (which I also find humorous, in a somewhat dirty sort of way). I dunno. This will probably just be a prologue. Maybe. I just really like Yuki x Shu.
o.o
Cassi