My first shounen-ai (I think...) fic. First POT fic. First Gross...I mean, Pleatinum pair fic. First fic. Wah, there're so many firsts for this one!
Most of my knowledge of this couple is based on fandom's great minds, not from the official book :)) There's no guarantee I'm not gonna make some very fanmade-but-sounds-quite-canon materials. Anyway, there's a first for everything!
*******
Without lens
"So, that's it, isn't it?"
His lips were barely moving, his tongue barely rolled in his mouth, his words hung in the air so barely that for one moment, you even doubted its presence.
You didn't dare to rise up your eyes to look at him. It was not what you saw that might hurt you, it was what you did NOT see that hurt the most. Because in his eyes, there was no pain, no sadness, no begging for you to stay, no warmth. There simply was nothing.
"Won't you at least make up for the late announcement?"
It was a sentence, merely asking without the usual teasing tone in his voice. And it froze your jaws, preventing you from answering.
"Close your eyes."
So you did. You felt his footsteps coming to you, his hot but casual breath lingering in front of your face, the tinge of smoke and the very distinctive scent of the muddy playground after the rain, his surprisingly warm fingers trailing the skin on your bare forehead, to your left cheek, then your lips, then the back of your ears…
When you opened your eyes again, the world was white. You tried to search for him, you waved your hands in the air hoping that they'd touch him, you tried to look for his footsteps in the snow, so as to convince yourself that true, he was here.
In the end, the only evidence for his meeting with you was the disappearance of your glasses.
You got yourself a new pair of glasses, but he never came to the airport. Yanagi sent you a meaningful glance and Marui handed you a box full of sweets and biscuits as if you would never be able to eat them again. Jackal patted gently on your back, while Yukimura and Sanada gave you actual warm smiles. You thought that it was warm and sweet, and it couldn't be any better for friends to come for farewell.
Still, when Kirihara came late and smiled sheepishly to his senpais and blinking around in confusion and asked "Where's Niou-senpai?" and after you were already half-way on your plane did you realize that it was not warm enough, and you missed his lingering touch on your face.
And it suddenly felt very, very cold.
The new continent welcomed you with the heat of the summer, with shining sun and warm breeze. You moved in the new apartment 30 minutes from your school by train, next to a seem-to-be-always-drunk guy who didn't come back home until early morning.
School was with new friends and new culture and new everything, and even though you were proud of yourself as a well-adapted person, it took some times to get used to Western things. You made new friends, had another harem of fangirls who wanted to get into your bed so bad that they confessed every week or so. You studied hard for the scholarship and outshone any geniuses they had in town. The place was fun with intersting people.
But still, none of this kept you away from an email or two to Yukimura and Yanagi, with an occasional one for Jackal. It was from him that you knew the keeper of your glasses had vanished to god-knows-where, and no one had heard of him for a long time.
At first you didn't think about it too much, but one day, when you woke up and found out that your glasses were gone from the cabinet, you started to wonder.
That was your 16th birthday.
It was Christmas. Yukimura asked you to come back for a party with the club and you parents asked you to join their skiing trip in Hokkaido.
It was the party that made you go and buy the ticket to Japan. But it was him that made you consider going to the party.
You hope was thrown out of the window when you walked into Sanada's gate only to be greeted by the sugar-high Marui, the clinging of Kirihara, the chuckling of Jackal and the Big Three, but no bleached rat-tail.
You were glad to be at the party and spending time with your old teammates. You liked it to see them again, around the Christmas tree and mistletoe and Sanada in Santa's clothing. You loved the atmosphere of coming home. You made sure to tell them all how much you enjoyed it.
You just didn't tell them that you didn't enjoy yourself.
Still, on Christmas day, you woke up with a missing pair of glasses again, and you thought you actually could enjoy yourself.
It was Valentine's day.
You were buried in chocolate and love letters. You had to avoid the girls all day, received glares and such from other guys, up to the point you started to have this very nostalgic feeling of Japan, where he used to experienced the same thing.
Or not. He was not hiding with you, was not teasing you with endless gifts while he himself also received quite a collection. He was not here to tell the girls that sorry, this guy's taken and kissed him on the lips openly in front of the whole school.
When he came back home, exhausted, he met his busy-maybe neighbour of his who happened to see his bags full of presents and letters. "Tough being popular huh, lad?", he said, and smiled to himself as he walked in his apartment.
He didn't hear you replying: "More than I can ever imagine."
You hit your glasses under your clothes that night. But they were gone on the next day.
On White's day, your next pair of glasses remained under the clothes, but they were the only thing that stayed. Somewhere among the folded shirts was the fainting scent of smoke and mud.
You didn't smoke. You hadn't been playing in mud for the longest time you could remember.
You knew exactly whose smell it was.
The years afterwards, you were no longer surprised by the disappearance of your glasses on special occasions. You tried to hid the glasses a few times, locked them up or even put them on when you went to bed, but eventually they all went disappear.
"This is so wicked. Go tell the police Yagyuu. Glasses aren't cheap stuff, you gotta put an end to this!", said Marui and Jackal when they heard the story. True, this really was weird, and you didn't consider buying at least 4 pairs of glasses every year. How you didn't listen to them was something that you didn't quite understand.
And your glasses remained vanishing.
It was his 25th birthday. In a few weeks you would be back to Japan forever.
Which, you assume, the reason why your strange neighour brought over some wine for celebration. He simply said: "We've been neighbours for years and never really get to talk. Might as well start to know something about you before you're gone for good."
He opened a bottle and you two emptied your glasses and he opened another bottle. You talked a little, so did he. Around the 2nd bottle or so, you actually wondered how he could get to know you more with so few words and so much alcohol. But somehow you didn't care, and went with the flow of the burning liquid that he kept emptying in his glass.
You couldn't remember seeing him so close before. Now that you thought of it, he didn't look that old and drunk, only a bit...out-of-character for some reasons. His eyes kept staring at yours, his black not-very-neat hair looked nostalgic but not. His hand was somewhere near one of yours. And his clothes reeked of tobacco smell.
After the 8th bottle, your body was so tired and you felt weird and couldn't move a muscle. But you were anything but unconscious, no, you knew what was happening. You knew that he lifted you up and carried you into bed, pulled the blanket over your body, had his fingers in your hair for too long, suddenly looked at you real close and walked out of the room. You heard him collecting the bottles, cleaning up your mess of vomit from earlier and closed the door.
You were left alone in the room, with the sour smell of vomit still hung in the air, the smell of drunk and the tobacco clinging on your shirt. You drifted into dreamland with your glasses still on, since you were so sure that they'd disappear the next day, as usual.
You woke up with a clear view of the room and you eyes felt weird. You touched your eyes only to find the glass. You were confused. This didn't make sense. Yesterday was your birthday for sure, then how…
You thought of being abandoned. You wondered what you did wrong. You wondered why now, but not sooner or later, and if it really mattered at all. You glanced at the calendar to make sure that it was one day after your birthday, and stared at the glasses to make sure that they were still in your hand. It wasn't pain or sadness or accusing that you were thinking, it was nothing at all.
You were not the one at fault. You were alone for years and he just came by to get your glasses anytime he wanted to. He knew where you are, while you weren't allow to know anything about him at all. He was so much, and you were nothing.
He was like the tobacco that he smoked, annoying and dangerous and the smoke comes up high in the air but when it sticks to you, it stays forever and whenever you go, they know that it's him and you together. He was also like the mud from the playground after the rain, sticks to your sneakers and follows you home, provoked your clean-freak instinct of your mother, but you love it because it proves that you're with the gang of kids on the street who defy their mothers and soaked themselves in the rain and are proud of it.
You didn't realize that you walked yourself into the living room. You didn't realize you were picking up the pairs of glasses that were suppose to be stolen from years ago, lying randomly on the coffee table. You didn't realize various sketches of your own on each of the lens of the glasses. You didn't realize there was the strong scent of tobacco and wet mud in the room that overwhelmed your own scent. You didn't realize the guy who walked out from the next door house, with a lone suitcase, had bleached hair with a rat-tail and a sorrow smirk on his face. You didn't realize he was looking at your house entrance, the stare stayed for so long it was as if he was burning a hole on the door. You didn't realize the cab waiting for him. You didn't realize the slam of the car door when he told the driver to get him to the airport. You didn't realize anything in the end.
Nor did you realize the single drop that triggered down your left cheek, feeling hot and ticklish and everything. Before you knew it, you were driving in your car, to god knows where but you just knew that you needed to go.
"How greedy, you have a bagful of glasses at home and now you're here to take the last one from me?"
You were panting from running around the place and slamming on the glass wall when you saw him just before he turned a corner and disappeared forever. Your face was a bit bruised from the guards who thought you were a maniac in dirty shirt and jeans and didn't shave for the day. Your eyes, unlike last time, were fixed to his, no matter what there were in them. Your hand was holding his arm, refused to let go unless you got an explanation.
"Explain."
His eyes were empty, again. And it hurt even more that if they held just something, even if it was hatred or disappointment. But you refused to back down, because you weren't there for nothing.
"What's there to explain, Yagyuu?"
What did you want him to explain? Why he took away your glasses 10 years ago? Why he abadoned Kanagawa and follow you? Why he disguised himself as the neighbour drunk man who worked so hard just to live without a certificate? Why he kept taking your glasses every year? Why did he return them all, but the one which he took away in the first time?
"Well?"
You saw a tinge of something in his eyes. It was a strange feeling of not begging, not asking, not commanding, but inviting. You let out a breath that you didn't know you were holding and loosened your hands.
"Well, where's my ticket? Explain why there wasn't one with me when I woke up."
"You must know by now that I'm not going to Kanagawa."
"Does it matter?"
"Nor Japan."
"Does it matter?"
"It's the flight to a faraway land in the depth of South America which…"
"Fuck, Niou-kun, doesn't it even matter to you where we're going to?"
Ah, there it was. The light in the orbs that you was once so familiar with. The genuine smile deep within the smirk growing on his face. The relief in your eyes that reflected in his.
And the glasses on his nose shimmered with morning sunlight as he threw the suitcase into your face.
"Go and change, Yagyuu, or we're both kick out of the plane!"
"Hi~ro~shiiiiiii!!!"
"Yes, Niou-kun?"
"You're soooooooo gonna make up for my 3 long years in that damn boring high school with damn fucking chicks wanting sex, sex and sex, damn fucking guys who care nothing but their reputation in those bitches' eyes, damn damn DAMN fucking teachers who see you in me and kept saying "Mr. Yagyuu, I expect you whatever in my fucking class whatever…" and if I didn't study til my head came off they were so sending the paper to your parents and they were so gonna find out and we could finally elope together and even though its sooooo tempting I'm still saving your reputation here!!!."
"Yes yes, I know that Niou-kun."
"Nuh-uh, no you do not!! The worst was those fucking years in that college that you parents sooooo wanted me wanted you to join. More goddamn years among stupid people and chicks with wriggling butts and guys trying to impress them by their bragging about sex experiences and…"
"Okay Masaharu, I know it was really tough to left home and deceived the whole world of who we are. But you enjoyed it didn't you?"
"You're kidding Hi~ro~shi?? Being you for 10 years can make anyone sick BUT ME!! Years doing labour work and traveling destroyed your wonderful brain, sweetheart!! See what happened when I'm not around to remind you who you are?"
"I should have left you at the airport last month, Niou-kun. Or tear off the ticket. At least you won't keep reminding me."
"You're sooo cold Hi~ro~shi, and I though that there was something bet... Nnnnhn! BASTARD!!!!!"
"That should teach you a lesson about whining when having a dick up in your ass, my dear Masaharu."