Personal: Yesh, this mentions a certain movie with Kevin Spacey in it. Is it instrumental to the plot? No, so don't worry if you haven't seen it. Did it inspire this fic? Certainly not--this idea's been bumping around in my head for a little while, now. Is the movie any good? The beginning blows and is pointless, but certain points made m gasp in horror and almost break down in tears. Kevin Spacey r0x0rz.

Disclaimer: Gravitation ain't my baby. Sue me as you'll be about three dollars richer. Whee!

Warnings: ...uhm...none, I guess. Incomprehensibility? I dunno... ^^;;;;;; Tell me what you guys, think.

Kousai/Brilliance 1/1

I'm going to become an astronaut.

Shuichi stared down at the simple phrase scratched onto the back of a supermarket receipt. He flipped it over to check the light blue ink on the other side. Cigarettes, bok choy, beer, toilet paper, a litre of milk, a pack of instant pudding. Again, he read the previous statement, obviously written in Yuki's exactingly neat phrasing.

I'm going to become an astronaut.

Shuichi blinked, and wiped an unruly shock of pink bangs from his face. He realised he was breaking out in a sweat and he didn't quite know why. Why would this sentence of Yuki's send him into such a...a...

His hand fluttered up to rest on his breastbone beneath a loose tank-top where the boy could feel the frantic beating of his heart. An astronaut. Why did that thought make his insides feel such...dread? Fear? Trepidation? Possessive indignation?

Of course, there was no doubt that anyone but Yuki had written the note. Shuichi glanced up to where he could see the blonde back of his older lover's head over the top of the black leather couch where he was sprawled in long-limbed repose watching some American movie. Shuichi hadn't bothered to join him--he was hungry, and hadn't felt like digesting another one of the heavy plotlines or blindingly fast subtitles. What was this one called?

Kei-Pakusu. Shuichi remembered, and recalled in the same instant it was about some kind of mental institution. Why did Yuki persist? God knew he seemed disturbed enough without immersing himself in those kinds of films.

In the most casual walk that he could force his limbs to, Shuichi sauntered the wide expanse of floor, note clasped tightly in hand, and approached the couch. Yuki was completely immersed in the film, eyes wide and cigarette laying unsmoked in his right hand.

Shuichi could see that the light from the screen washed the writer's features into a soft mesh of fish-belly pale flesh and blank, unreflective eyes. He was blue, all of him. The lips and tip of his nose were stained blue from the screen in some mocking parody of death. Yuki's lips were parted just so, like he was living in the same world as the characters, breathing the very same air. But his chest... the singer looked down. Yuki's chest barely caused the black sweater to rise and fall in tiny, insignificant puffs, like the pattern of inhalation-exhalation was a mere habit he kept up strictly for someone else's benefit.

Like Yuki could stop at any moment, and never start up again..

Abruptly, Shuichi shuddered.

Yuki really was a spaceman. He could see it now. The icy blonde wasn't on Earth or anywhere else that Shuichi could imagine. He floated somewhere between the movie and nowhere and a place achingly beyond the moon.

Maybe...just maybe, Yuki would forget to come home. Settle on some distant planet far, far away from himself. Shuichi's soft eyes prickled harshly with the arrival of salty tears. Yuki...Yuki may leave tonight. And what was there to do?

And so he administered the only first aid he was capable of.

"Yuuuuuuuki!" He cajoled, and threw his arms around the graceful swan-neck he loved so. Yuki blinked and growled, trying to dislodge Shuichi with a deft twist of the boy's arm. Shuichi, already long used to his lover's symbolic evasive manoeuvres easily shifted to a new position and maintained the lock.

Yuki paused for a moment as if testing Shuichi. Would he leave as if this were only a passing greeting? Or was there something else?

"Jesus on crutches, brat," he muttered from the side of his mouth. "Won't you ever let me be?"

"Never."

"..."

"..."

"Then don't hang off my goddamn shoulders all night. Get on the couch or get your untalented face somewhere else. Let me watch this in peace." Yuki's eyes maintained their unflexible, icy appeal that thawed somewhat with Shuichi. The boy grinned hugely and slithered over the top. Yes! A movie with Yuki! An incomprehensible movie, perhaps, but a movie just the same!

What a treat.

"Ow! Watch your knee!"

Shuichi saw that his bare kneecap had jabbed into Yuki's thigh and immediately commenced in spouting apologies as he hurriedly made himself more comfortable on top of Yuki.

Better than a blanket. He decided, and leaned heavily against the writer's lean torso. It was pleasant like this, with the movie blaring nonsense that Shuichi understood only scraps and rags of, and Yuki sucking on his cigarette every so often.

Easy.

"...Eiri?"

Yuki looked down sharply, suddenly, and paused with the white smoke half way to his mouth. He grimaced, and turned his face away. "...Did I say you could use my name, brat? But what is it." The last was a statement, not an answer. Designed by Yuki the same way he designed his handwriting--to state a purpose, to demand a satisfaction for whatever surely reasonable request made. Yuki was always wise and always reasonable.

Answer, he demanded of Shuichi, and Shuichi could feel himself willingly obeying.

Nervously, the boy toyed blunt fingers along the front of the consuming black sweater that muffled the writer's precious heartbeat, running his bitten nails down the ribs in the fabric, knowing Yuki wouldn't allow himself to respond. Because Shuichi had trespassed over sacred territory. His name.

"You aren't really...a spaceman, are you?"

Yuki glanced towards the television, more than half surprised that Shuichi picked that up from the screen and his behaviour, then looked down to the boy. Shuichi shook his head to indicate his ignorance of English and the movie.

"No," he continued. "From this." And held up the shopping paper.

Yuki blinked at the scrap. It looked vaguely familiar to a piece he had been working with in the kitchen before the movie. Was it...? Click-click. Mind assembling all the pieces with a blinding speed, a talent Yuki was well aware he possessed. Yuki didn't pause a second in his demand. "Give it." He watched as the boy struggled with himself for a moment, then handed the sheet over.

Shuichi, again, felt compelled to obey. He surrendered the paper.

You're going to become an astronaut. Chanted Shuichi in his mind, large eyes again filling with tears as he watched Yuki's expression as the paper was read. You're going to settle, and leave me alone here.

Yuki's face was a blank canvas, a broad expanse of no expression as he read, then re-read his writing.

"You idiot," he said, lifting those tiger-like eyes that burned with the fires of a thousand defeats. "Can't you tell poetry when you see it?" The writer cleared his throat, and then completed his unfinished haiku.

"Soro soro ga

uchuhikoshi natte

danki ja nai." [1]

Shuichi blinked suddenly, and compulsively wrapped his arms tightly about Yuki's middle as the television burned unheeded at the other side of the room. The older man looked down, surprised again at Shuichi's seemingly erratic behaviour. "I'll never let you go." Shuichi whispered fiercely, lips moving against the thick fabric, grip tighter than a boa constrictor's as he clutched his left hand in his right in a binding ring.

And Yuki felt himself pulled in from deep space by the sheer force this tiny little life imbued.

Yuki may have been an astronaut, floating in the coldness of space, but Shuichi was a blazing sun, unmindful of that lone figure's wishes, taking him into his gravity well.

Desire, of course, is no match for gravity.

So, you see, Shuichi shouldn't have worried--he needn't ever worry, because of his sheer weight. Yuki was as helpless as a kitten in a sack against Shuichi's blazing heart, and on some level, both knew this as clearly as the constellations in the sky.

Yuki may have been a cold spaceman, but he would always have his guiding star.

-End-

[1] Gradually, steadily, quietly, soon,

I'm going to become an astronaut

Without a springtime.

m-_-m I apologize for my haiku.