Title: Dashes on the Wall
Author: BlueJey
Anime/Manga: Digimon Frontiers
Pairing: Takuya x Kouji
Warnings: Shounen-Ai
Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon, nor do I own Takuya and Kouji or any other character I would LOVE to own.
Comment: Well, it just hit me. And it demanded to be written. There was't that much I could do. But anyway, I think there are more than just a few mistakes in this, there are sentences in which I had to use wrong grammar because I didn't know how to do it right, I'm sorry! If you find those mistakes, I'd be really, really, really grateful if you told me (the right grammar, that is...)! Thanks in advance, now have fun (if possible)!
Note: I am NOT a Native Speaker, so please don't be too hard on me - I'm trying my very best!
He doesn't know when he's started counting the days he's spent with Kouji.
He doesn't know how long he's doing it already or why he does it.
He doesn't care whether he knows or not and he doesn't care whether his mother gets mad every time she sees the wall next to his bed, covered in hundreds of multicolored dashes, because she's told him to not use the wall but a calender like anyone else does, but he just is not 'anyone else'.
And for every day he spents with Kouji he makes another dash on the wall he's not allowed to use, makes a dash in the same color the day was colored in...
The first dash he made was blue.
Blue, because it was a blue day - a day, colored in calmness and tranquility, colored in dark but soft blue.
If his memory is not too messed up with other things, if he just tries and thinks back, then he remembers it was a rainy day, where everything seemed to be gray and he remembers that he at first wanted to make a gray dash. He wanted to make a gray one, because technically, it was a grey day.
But then he remembers that Kouji was wet when he came over. He remembers that Kouji's black hair reflected the light of the lamp in the doorway and that it looked like it was blue, strong and lively blue, and he knows that grey was the wrong color for that day.
He remembers that Kouji smiled at him, smiled and didn't smile, because his face was not smiling but his eyes were. They were saying 'Hi, here I am' and they were smiling that smile only Kouji could smile while standing in the rain, soaking wet and trembling with cold.
He remembers that his mother told them they were ruining the hallway floor and that she told Kouji to get rid of his clothes or get out and that he just continued smiling while stripping to his boxers. He remembers that he wanted to lend him some of his clothes and that Kouji didn't even listen to him and instead just curled up in his bed and under his blanket and smiled. Smiled like a stray cat smiles when it finds a place to call 'home'.
He remembers that that was the first day he ever made a dash on his wall - a light and soft blue dash - because it was the first day Kouji came over and that he continued to make dashes because Kouji continued to come over every now and then.
There are a lot of blue dashes on his wall.
Some are a lighter shade of blue than the first one, because blue isn't only 'calm'. Blue also is 'cold'.
Those 'cold' dashes... he makes them on those days when Kouji won't talk to him and he doesn't know why and without Kouji, everything is 'cold' in a way it hasn't been before he and Kouji met.
He doesn't like those days.
He cannot stand being in school and sittig next to Kouji - so close, he'd only have to reach out a hand to touch him - but being unable to talk to him. And when Kouji doesn't talk to him, he can't talk back and they sit beside each other in silence.
He's one of those guys who don't like silence, so he feels unconfortable when Kouji doesn't talk.
So everytime he makes a 'cold' dash, he makes it in the evening before he goes to sleep, because he feels like freezing when he makes them. They melt into the swirl of colors and he curls up under his blanket like Kouji did on that first day he came over and he tries to stop shaking.
The first time he made one of those dashes, he started to dislike light shades of blue.
He doesnt't know when he started to paint a picture with those dashes, a living and changing picture of his life, or when they became the swirl of colors they are now. He doesn't know when the blue dashes became the background and other colors began to be the center of his 'life'.
Colors like red - red that is just red, neither crimson nor blazing red. Nothing but red.
It stands for 'warm' days.
Days when Kouji allows him to get closer, not in a physical way but 'closer' like... deepening their friendship. Days like steps on a stair that leads to something he doesn't know.
The first 'warm' dash was the day when Kouji talked about his life, his life at home, about his father and all the things no one else knows.
The secons 'warm' dash was the day when Kouji came over during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but jeans and t-shirt, shaking and trembling and laughing like the world was about to come crashing down... He stayed over night and before he left the next morning he said that his father had hit him the previous day. He smiled one of his smiles - one that made his lips smile but never reached his eyes - and he embraced him to say he was there, though he knew Kouji was aware of that.
And then there is a cluster of 'warmth'.
That is the week Kouji when learned that his whole life up until then had been a lie.
That his mother wasn't dead and his father had lied to him.
That he had a brother, a twin brother.
It is the week when Kouji came over every evening and everytime, he found himself sitting on his bed, unable to stop Kouji's tears but trying to console him nevertheless.
And then, there is the third 'warm' dash which is the day when Kouji introduced him to his brother.
With every inch the dashes get closer to the swirl's center, they become hotter.
'Red' becomes 'blazing red', 'warmth' becomes 'heat'. And days of friendship turn into days that could ruin it all.
The first dash in that color is the day when they were sitting in his room and tried to do their maths homework but didn't understand it because they'd spent the day's whole lesson with staring contests and painting each others hands.
He knows it has to have been a summer day, because it was hot and he was counting the drops of sweat that were running down Koujis neck and disappearing into the collar of his sleeveless, black shirt and he remembers that it was just that day when he realized he was in love with Kouji.
So 'blazing red' is 'desire'.
The days when he wants to kiss Kouji but doesn't because he knows he would bite off his tounge and scratch out his eyes because that's just the way he is. Because that is why he loves him so much.
Because he's free, free and unbound. That's why. Just because.
Then, slowly, 'blazing red' vanishes, becomes an even more 'burning' shade of red. Red that is flames and fire and 'life', that is energy.
'Burning life' is the color of the days when Kouji's angry or just over energetic or when he needs to let of steam. Days when he just comes over and hits him or when he takes him to the park and ties back his hair and they fight - which means Kouji smacks and punches and kicks him, moving too fast to even think of avoiding his blows and striking too hard to leave the opportunity to block him. Still, they fight until he calmes down or rather until his energy is used up and he collapses, sometimes starts to cry, sometimes hissing curses he's never heard before... And when he settles beside him, every muscle and bone and nerv in his body aching, then Kouji tells him what happened and what made him that upset. He doesn't even have to ask.
The colors continue to change.
And at the point where 'blue' begins to disappear in the swirl of colors that is his life, at that point 'burning life' becomes 'pain'.
It becomes crimson. The color of blood. Crimson dashes that slowly focus into the swirl's center.
Crimson is 'pain', is 'hurt'.
Because crimson means Kouji hurt him. Not on purpose, not in a way he cannot forgive, but hurt nevertheless. He hurts him when he - once in a blue moon - underestimates him, when he - every once in a while - says things that should have stayed unsaid or when he - sometimes - comes to the point where he has to test out his limits.
He hates crimson. If crimson only stood for Kouji hurting him, then he would not have a problem with that color. But crimson also stands for blood.
Blood that seemed to come out of nowhere and blood that should not be where it was.
Crimson blood on pale porcelain-like skin.
Blood on Kouji's skin.
Blood that made his heart skip a few beats and blood that made him forget to breath and blood that was just wrong, wrong, wrong...
Because the crimson dash that finally is the swirl's end, the crimson dash that finally finishes the spiral - that dash stands for the day when Kouji tried to kill himself.
And where that dash ends, there is a small black spot on the wall, marking his pictures exact midpoint.
That is the day when they stood on the hospital's roof.
That is the day when the life his little picture is describing ended.
That is the day when he stopped making little dashes to the wall he's not allowed to use because his mother tells him to use a calender like anyone else does.
That is the day when he realized that it doesn't matter what he paintes on that walls of his room.
And it is the day when he realizes that he actually never told Kouji what the dashes were for.
He had asked once, on a 'calm' blue day - one of those 'calm' blue days that nearly fade in the spiral swirl of all shades of red.
He never got an answer because there was no answer to why he was painting his wall in a life that passed him by without him realizing what the person he was sharing that life with was screaming at him... It was not that complicated at all.
When they stood on the cold roof of the hospital and the wind was pulling at their clothes and Kouji's hair, everything changed.
Kouji was crying. But he had no tears anymore.
Kouji was shouting. But his words were nothing more than a whisper that was blown away from his lips.
Kouji was telling him everything he never knew and never had the heart to ask. But it was too loud and his voice too low and so he only clearly understood three words.
But the words he heard were just enough.
'I loved you'
I loved you, but you don't care. I let you in and you don't realize. I'm dying within and you're too blind to see.
'I loved you'
Perhaps he didn't know him as well as he'd thought.
Perhaps he wouldn't bite his tounge off if he just tried to kiss him.
Perhaps he was wrong when he thought that freedom meant to be bound to nothing.
Perhaps freedom meant 'to be willing to bind yourself to something'.
And so, because he didn't know what other color he should take to mark the last day in the life that was painted on his wall, he made a black spot. Not a dash, and not another color.
And now, he is standing here, in front of the wall.
His bed is gone and so is the rest of his furniture. The room he has lived in for more than 18 years is empty.
When he dips the brush into the bucket with the white color, he has to smile. It's a smile he cannot really tell to be sad or content. He supposes it is a mixture of both and perhaps a few other emotions. But it doesn't matter that much...
The paint drips a little and he gives the newspapers he's spread on the floor a short checking glance.
Then he looks at the wall.
And then he makes another dash.
A white one, right through the center, all the way down from as high as he can reach to the bottom of the wall.
He hears a low chuckle.
"Is it that hard to paint a wall?", he is asked - unable to miss the amusement in the gentle voice.
"Emotional value and such things, y'know?", he answers, trying to make his own voice sound teasing but then again doesn't have the words to tease.
"You never told me what that thing is... It was growing over the last years. Perhaps its a parasite torturing your wall to death until it collapses upon someone's head, you thought about that?"
He laughs at how dead serious those words are spoken.
He makes another dash with the white paint and covers another bit of his former life. It's much easier now, he thinks.
And it doesn't take too long until he finishes the wall and his entire life seems to vanish underneath a white coat.
Perhaps his mother really has a point in forbidding him to use black to paint over that picture...
White makes it more clearly that he's not planning on letting it end. Black lookes like 'over and out', white more lookes like... 'let's start all over again'.
It sounds stupid, even to him...
"Why did you paint it over if you value it that much?"
"...what else am I supposed to do? Since Shinya will get the room there was no chance of just letting it be there..."
"You could have taken it along..."
"Take it along?" His voice shows off enough of his disbelieve to cause another chuckle. "It's painted on the wall, I can't 'take it along' that easy, don't you think? ...besides that, we have no room for that, it's too big."
"That's a point..."
"Yeah, it is. Now come over here and collect the newspapers - I'm gonna put away the paint and brush and then we can head home."
With that, he lifts the bucket and turns to leave. Kouji smiles at him and leans in for a short kiss, not very deep but at least, there were no off-bitten tounges...
When Takuya leaves, he can hear the rustling of paper and glances back over his shoulder, just in time to see Kouji not quite smile but grin at him.
And he knows that 'white' is a lot better than 'black'...
I still hope it wasn't as terrible as I fear it is... And again, I'm sorry for every mistake you had to ignore!
Blue
