Hellfire
Their friendship wasn't about showering each other with morning greeting cards, or giving each other huge pats on the shoulder after a hard day. What others mistook as apathy, Ian saw something else entirely. [ Kai, Tala, friendship, post gREV ]
Exploring the dynamics of Kai/Tala friendship from the eyes of former Blitzkrieg Boy Ian. It's been a while, I know. I'm still alive; it's insane.
Myst-san.
Their friendship wasn't about showering each other with morning greeting cards on the refridgerator wall of their shared apartment, nor was it about giving each other a huge pat on the back after a long day at work after exhaustion starts to show on their weary shoulders.
It seemed confusing to others at first.
But those knew better understood their silence exchanged often between the pair as a form of language that not even the closest of friends could master.
It came in the simplest, strange gestures, often times.
Whether it was a small loaf of half-bitten bread from yesterday's dinner leftovers tossed across the morning table into the other hands to make sure the other person had at least a small intake of breakfast to start off the day, or whether it was leaving an extra bento box of sushi in the fridge at night before one retired to bed, it was these tiny minute details that went unnoticed to many.
Maybe to most… but not Ian.
He might be tiny, certainly, often bullied and laughed at for his stock, small figure, but his pair of eyes certainly saw many things that many others could not – and he saw the bond between the old pair of tag-team partners when others mistook it as apathy.
What he saw, he could only describe it... as unearthly telepathy.
It only took Ian two weeks when he stayed over at the older boys' shared apartment in Tokyo when visiting over from Moscow for a short vacation trip, that he observed, and learnt their habits.
Their friendship wasn't loud, or obnoxious. Surely nothing in-your-face. No big gestures like warm hugs at the door upon encountering each other after a long hard day outside, not ever one question of "how are you?" or "are you alright?", or even a good well-wish on the way before they parted ways in the morning. Even on their mobiles, they never exchanged more than a few countable words – "yeah, ok", "Sure, see you later," – lexicons limited by sheer curtness many would have mistaken as discontent, even dislike.
Ian had happened to stay over on the weekend of Tala's 19th birthday, and not even that Saturday was there a single hint from Kai that he had wished the redhead a very good 19th. Not one colored balloon in the apartment in sight, not one single decorated card on the bedlamp, not one single phone call that night.
Instead, Ian came home roughly midnight, to see a leftover pizza (he assumed the boys' shared dinner) in the fridge. He picked it up, and almost laughed to himself when he saw a messy effort of a smiley-face etched clearly in the middle of the pizza, and he roughly made out "HB, you prick" written on the side of the crust.
This, was what Ian meant.
Of which these tiny details of the simplest, albeit endearing gestures could have gone easily unnoticed, but if one simply paused and bent a little closer, they were always there. Subtle, soft, but always omni-present, if only one knew how to look.
Ian picked up the last of the pizza remnants, and happily munched into it, his grin split from cheek to cheek.
From the corner of his eyes, he saw Tala's bedroom door slightly opened, and saw the boys had fallen asleep on his couch gaming Assassin's Creed the entire night on the game console, sharing earplugs from one's ear to another.
They were half-naked; down to their boxers. In the midnight shadows, their chiselled abs and defined jawlines were unmistakable, and Ian immediately understood why even years after their tag-team days, their fanbase had never diminished. Instead, upon hitting manhood and retiring into education and worklife, their female and male fans had only increased parabolically. It seemed the entire world had noticed puberty had treated these two beautiful men well.
In that moment, they looked so strong; yet so vulnerable.
Ian gave a small heartful sigh, rolled his eyes abit (not in annoyance), and approached the sleeping boys. He gave a small tug on the blankets to pull them gently over them so that they cover their exposed bodies from the Tokyo autumn cold, and carefully plucked out the shared earplugs from their ears. He switched off the game console, and tidied Tala's room a bit on his behalf.
Finally satisfied, he was about to step out of the room and let both older boys sleep when he heard a small yawn, and a murmur.
It was Tala. He uttered something along the lines of "I'll beat you the next time, bastard."
Ian bit back a laugh.
Kai had stirred in his sleep, and from the dark, he saw the bluehead raised a feet to kick the redhead in irritation. "Hmph, idiot." His kick ended up as a light nudge in Tala's shin as he immediately fell back to sleep. Ian swore he heard a soft snoring (something very rare, he surmised) from the Hiwatari heir.
"Pfft, fuck you, Kai." Tala returned the favor; sent a small kick which ended up as a missed kick in the air, before he turned on his sides, rolled, and fell asleep in crouching position like an infant, blankets aside all blissfully forgotten.
It was then Ian noticed they had worn each other's boxers wrongly by mistake. Or perhaps it was a dare and someone lost?
He would never know. Either way, Tala had on Kai's Batman boxers, and the latter had on Tala's Spongebob pants.
Ian closed the door behind them.
You see, most people would not have noticed anything like that, because they were either too busy trying to spot the obvious signs of present friendship, that they never paused to see if the signs were already there before them - behind closed doors, during unearthly hours, or when the boys decided no one was watching.
Friendship was never a publicity stunt for the tag-team partners. They had been through way too much in the tag-team championship days to know friendships could be used and exploited by the media to garner fans and unrealistic expectations from the watching world and ruin everything.
For them, being comrades was not about picking the person up when that person fell; it was about punching the person in the face to make sure he sober up and pick himself up on his own.
Being teammates was not about working together and giving in listening to what each other had to say; it was about pushing the other person to their full potential to ensure they were performing to the best of their abilities…simply because they trust in each other that much to do the best they could and believed they could outperform their own abilities each time unfailingly. That, was trust.
…And being companions; best friends, wasn't about writing mushy letters to cover long-distance friendships when the other was in a separate continent miles apart, nor was it about calling the other at 3am to moan about failing at life in some aspects, nor was it about turning up at important events in each other's life.
It was about being there physically – taking the concorde straight down to be by the other person's side when one needed the support, to hit the bar straight for a drink till one lost all sanity and consciousness, and then get a hangover together the next day and laugh it off together (not before punching each other for each own stupidity the morning after). It was about leaving the tiniest of messages on the phone like "fuck you, get better soon," that spoke volumes more so than a 1000-word long poem passed by hand personally. It was about lodging a fist into a stranger's face and ending a fight for your friend simply just because the bastard picked on your friend. (Doesn't matter if it was your friend's fault in the first place, or him being the one who started it.)
Ian saw all this, and he knew.
This was their friendship, albeit small gestures, minute details, the tiniest of messages that could have been missed easily by the human eye.
Nevertheless, theirs was…true, loyal and fiercer than hellfire itself.
FIN