Title: Dreams
Genre: Romance
Rating: PG-15
Characters: Taka, Ryoma, Fuji, Momo, a mention of Yuuta
Wordcount: 1336
Summary: Taka is having trouble sleeping.
Notes: Written for 5 roses on LJ (there's supposed to be an underscore there, but FFN keeps cutting it out). Set just before Ryoma enters high school.
Warnings: Mentions of incest. Gratuitous use of thistles. The flowers run rampant in this. You have been warned.

Taka hasn't felt rested in over a week. It's not as though he's not sleeping; he gets in somewhere between eight and nine hours every night. The problem is not sleep, but rather his dreams. They're not nightmares, although they sap him of more strength than if they were the worst nightmares of his life. They don't really bother him, either -- they're just a little annoying, considering the fact that he can't tell when they're just dreams and when they're reality. More than a little annoying, actually. These dreams of his are starting to affect his grades and his game (he still plays with Fuji to keep in practice) and while his body seems to hold just as much energy as usual, his mind can't make use of it.

He doesn't talk to anyone about this, of course; he doesn't want to bother his friends unnecessarily. They're just dreams, and dreams don't usually last too long. Even if these dreams stick around, it's not as though he's not getting enough rest -- it just feels that way.

Fuji, of course, notices almost immediately. He is a genius, after all; more importantly, he's Taka's best friend. He's supposed to notice.

"You look tired, Taka-san," he comments from across the bar as Taka coats Fuji's sushi in a thick layer of wasabi. "Aren't you sleeping well?"

Taka glances up, startled. Fuji's eyes are still closed, but his usual smile isn't in place, and Taka knows Fuji has been thinking about this seriously for some time and won't let the topic be dismissed easily.

"I'm not sure," Taka replies as he places a tray of sushi in front of his friend.

Fuji pops a roll into his mouth and Taka watches, fascinated as always by the tensai's oddly high tolerance for wasabi. "How are you not sure?"

Taka sighs inwardly and opens his mouth to explain. It's not entirely dreams, not entirely restlessness; when he sleeps, he dreams he wakes, or half-wakes, in the stifling humidity of summer, the dark night wrapping around him stickily and loosely like his sweaty bedsheets, and he can't seem to fall back asleep. And then sometimes he thinks he really is awake, that this is just like his dreams but real, but then the numbers on his bedside clock are glowing an hour or two earlier than he remembers from the last time he woke like this (or dreams he woke, more likely).

"Saa..." Fuji smiles as the door to the shop opens and Ryoma and Momo enter noisily (or rather, Momo is noisy and Ryoma is his usual prickly, silent self), making their way to sit on either side of the tensai. They both order and Fuji's smile turns into something more secretive, his eyes trained on Taka the whole time. Taka begins to feel a little nervous, just as he always does when Fuji smiles that particular smile.

"If you're having trouble staying asleep, why don't you think of something you'd like to dream about before going to bed?"

Fuji's advice hangs in the air for a moment before anyone responds; then Momo looks at Fuji strangely while Taka slowly asks, "What do you mean?" He doesn't look up from where he's rolling Ryoma's sushi, suddenly overly conscious of the way Ryoma continues to stare ahead in his characteristic bored manner and the way Fuji's secretive smile is slowly widening into something even more secretive and dangerous.

"Well, I like to dream about Yuuta," Fuji replies, smile widening even further. Ryoma chokes on his Ponta, eyes narrowing at the way Fuji's voice seems to caress his brother's name.

"But you'd probably rather dream about thistles."

Taka and Ryoma both blink. Momo stares.

"Thi... stles?" Taka repeats uncertainly.

Fuji's smile grows brighter. "Human ones."

Suddenly, Ryoma snorts. "Does this have anything to do with the way you compared Taka-san to a rose yesterday, Fuji-senpai?"

Fuji chuckles. "Saa..."

That night, Taka dreams not of waking up to his glowing clock and the stifling heat, but of small thistles with little arms and legs and oddly golden (not purple) flowers.

---------

For a few weeks, it seems as though Fuji's advice is working. Taka still isn't sure why Fuji suggested thistles, much less human ones, although he suspects it has something to do with Ryoma's comment about Taka and roses. He also hasn't figured out why the colour of the dream-thistles' flowers happens to match the gold of Ryoma's eyes, or why the weeds are holding tennis rackets, of all things. (He understands the little arms and legs -- Fuji did say human thistles -- and he supposes the tennis rackets must be there simply because he loves tennis and misses being on the team. He has yet to notice that his thistles are all left-handed.) Most confusing of all is that Fuji's thistles have done the trick. Taka simply cannot understand why dreaming about a weed keeps him fast asleep, or why these weeds are so captivating that he likes thinking about them every night before he goes to bed.

And then, suddenly, the thistles begin to change, the twenty dancing, tennis-playing weeds sprouting unruly black hair and morphing slowly into one increasingly humanlike figure... an increasingly Ryoma-like figure.

He mentions this to Fuji; the tensai merely smiles enigmatically. I said 'human thistles', ne, Taka-san?

All of a sudden it makes sense. Now when he goes to bed, he thinks about Ryoma, and Fuji's cryptic way of suggesting things, and Ryoma some more, and now it is not a Ryoma-like thistle that he dreams about. It is the real Ryoma, in all his prickly, silent glory. (Taka maintains that Ryoma is prickly. Not in the way most people are prickly, like Mizuki or Atobe, but in the way that only Ryoma can manage. "Snarky" is probably a better word to describe Ryoma, he thinks, but he prefers "prickly".)

And then he starts waking up again. The first time it is with a start; it takes him several minutes to why his rapidly cooling sheets are wet, and he blushes furiously as fragments of the dream slowly pop into his mind, one by agonising one. It feels as though his face is so warm it should explode, and he swears to himself he won't fall asleep thinking of Ryoma ever again.

Except that two nights later, it happens again. And the night after that. And the next night. And the next.

He's not stupid; he knew what the dreams meant before they even began. He likes them, too, just a little (a veryveryvery little, he chants silently), but he feels guilty thinking this way about a fourteen-year-old boy who hasn't even entered high school.

Embarrassment and guilt (more the latter than the former) win over pleasure in the end, and so it is with only a little regret (a veryveryvery little, of course) that he asks Fuji what he should do now that the -- thistles he likes dreaming about are waking him up. They are in their usual positions at the sushi shop, with Ryoma and Momo on opposite sides of Fuji (the two younger boys seem to have decided sushi is better than fast food and have started joining Fuji in his post-tennis practice meal). Fuji smiles and leans in to whisper in Taka's ear. Taka reddens, blush reaching all the way to his hairline.

"It tires out one's body enough to sleep soundly," Fuji offers by way of explanation as he pulls back, winking at Ryoma. The younger boy scowls suspiciously, knowing full well that whatever Fuji said, it can't have been good. Taka doesn't notice; he is too busy feeling more traumatised at the prospect of doing that while thinking of Ryoma than at the fact that Fuji does that while thinking of his own brother.

He shouldn't have asked. Really. ...Really.

Although he can't help feeling just a little excited anyway, knowing full well he'll try out Fuji's advice tonight. And the night after. And probably the night after that.