Honesty, a prince of tennis fanfic

Title: Honesty
Series: Side-short-fic to the Peacock's Thighs and Moonlit Balconies and Worth It

Author: Gold, aka Alsepang, aka AlseGold
Pairings: Oshitari/Gakuto.
Guest Stars: Atobe Keigo and Shishido Ryou figure in a very minor way. Ohtori Choutarou and Hiyoshi Wakashi are name-dropped.
Rating: PG-13, for gay pairings and language.
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis is created by Konomi Takeshi. This work is a piece of fanfiction and no part of it is attributed to Konomi-sama or any other entity holding any legal right associated with and arising out of Prince of Tennis . It was written purely out of fanservice and it is not to be used for profit or any false association with Konomi-sama or aforesaid entities.
Summary: Set after the boys have graduated from university and gone on to bigger and better things.

Mukahi Gakuto has always prided himself on his honesty. In fact, throughout junior high and senior high school, he was such a blisteringly honest person that he had been called names, been cursed (elaborately, in some cases, if inaccurately, with people buying voodoo dolls in his image and then sticking pins in or writing curses and sticking them on the dolls) and been avoided like the plague, and some people unkindly said that it was more sheer tactlessness or incredibly low emotional quotient rather than honesty. Shishido Ryou was one of those people, and it was really rich coming from him, since Shishido prided himself on his brutal honesty and he'd been named Tactless Ass of the Year many, many times over in not-so-secret Hyoutei polls.

Atobe Keigo snorted when he heard what they had to say, and then told them with his usual candid arrogance that he, Atobe Keigo, was the most perfectly honest of them all, and they could either agree with him or run two hundred laps and do another two hundred and fifty push-ups. In their combined brutal and blistering honesty, Shishido and Gakuto chose to run the two hundred laps and do the two hundred and fifty push-ups. The fact that the only thing they got out of it was that they'd managed to insult Atobe into giving them the silent treatment for seven weeks straight (a real record, that was) didn't dampen them a single whit and it took the combined efforts of Hiyoshi Wakashi, Ohtori Choutarou and Oshitari Yuushi to squash Shishido and Gakuto into some semblance of meekness so that Atobe wouldn't feel obliged to take out a hit on them. Someone, after all, had to stop the two honest folks from continuing to be too brutally and blisteringly honest for their own good.

"It's a very good thing to be honest, Gakuto—but too much of a good thing can kill you sometimes," Oshitari Yuushi told Gakuto then, half-amusedly, half-exasperatedly. "Don't either you or Shishido have any sense of self-preservation?"

Many years later, Gakuto remembers this, on the day that Oshitari proposes to him. Too much of a good thing can kill you sometimes. He doesn't know what makes him remember this and he doesn't know why he goes on to say what he does, even though he has a feeling it may just kill him—

"It's just that... I don't believe in forever like you do, Yuushi." What if one day we wake up and you don't love me anymore?

"I don't know what will happen tomorrow. It's not that I don't... care... enough, it's just that so many people..." So many people out there, Yuushi, and you pick me. Maybe one day you'll realise I'm not the one.

"... just... if you like someone else some day, and you don't want... and, just let me know, okay? I won't stop you." I'd rather die than stop you. Must be all the sappy movies you make me watch with you—making me say all this stuff. Yuk.

—and Gakuto says all this, with bowed head, and something inside him breaks and twists, and shouts Where is your sense of self-preservation—

But this is Oshitari Yuushi and he knows, more so than anyone in the world, what Mukahi Gakuto's like. Someone else may prefer to waste time in banally accusing Gakuto of not loving him enough or not trusting them enough or something equally preposterous, but Oshitari's possessed of a lot more common sense than that.

—Because, really, between honesty and self-preservation, Oshitari would much rather have Gakuto in all his blistering honesty than a Gakuto who lies and hides behind a curtain of self-preservation.