If Music Be the Food of Love…

By Kitsune no Alz

Shuichi has always prided himself on his voice. It goes up and down, and around and around, and it makes sound, and he can sing, sure, yes, anyone who's got a voice can do that. But what he's really proud of is that when he sings, he's not just belting out a tune like the drunkard taking over the karaoke machine, he's putting his heart and his soul into the music. And he figures that's a pretty awesome thing, a hell of a lot better than another combination of organs and metaphysical concepts, and way impressive too.

It comes to him naturally. Tunes rocket up in his head like fireworks, all sparks of inspiration and sparkles of musical scales, runs, and notes, and then it's easy! Pop them onto paper, transmuting the glorious crescendoing musical shimmer in his head into a bunch of little black dots, and play the day away with Hiro and Fujisaki. Couldn't be easier if he had a little button in his brain marked "Songs: Push on Demand".

Same with the keyboard, which he still plays for his own sake, even if Seguchi insists he concentrate on vocals and composition.

So. He's got the voice and he's got the melody and he's got the talent…

…so why the hell doesn't he have the lyrics?

It comes down to this, sitting in a studio at two o'clock in the morning with K-san on guard outside the door (snoozing, undoubtedly, but with a magnum in one hand and a Desert Eagle in the other neatly shooting down the merest hint of an idea of escape) and Sakano biting his nails in his sleep in fear that Shuichi won't make the deadline. Fujisaki is stretched out on the couch, his breathing slow and even, and Hiro sits across the table from Shuichi with his arms crossed and his head nodding to a sleepy rhythm only he can hear. They're all here for moral support—or rather, because smiling, sweet-voiced Seguchi will have their heads artfully arranged on a silver platter if there are any further delays in the release schedule of their next album. Not very encouraging a thought, that, although it does admittedly provide a certain incentive for Shuichi to hurry the hell up and fit some words to the music lying on the paper in front of him.

He stares at the bars and notes, the clefs and signs, and wonders what Yuki is doing right now.

Probably sleeping. Asleep all by himself in the bed, tucked under the covers and glorying in the fact that he can stretch fully out and not worry about a pillow in the face or being kicked in the shins or being drooled upon for the entire night. Probably happy that Shuichi is awake and locked up in a halogen-lit box of a room with only four sleeping co-workers for company. Probably smiling in his sleep.

Shuichi pouts, resting his chin on his hands and his elbows on the table. It's not fair. Yuki's a mean bastard even in his imagination! Perhaps if Shuichi wasn't hit with a bad case of writer's block and wasn't mentally exhausted and wasn't blocks, miles, light years away from Yuki, said imaginary Yuki would be a little kinder to him. Put his arms around Shuichi, hold him close and mold his body against him, tilt up Shuichi's head and lower his own and kiss him, gently at first, and then harder, more urgently, demanding, and off come the clothes and off go the lights and—

With a wail of despair and hopeless, helpless, thwarted lust, Shuichi flings himself onto the tabletop and rolls around in an agony of deprivation, clutching his knees to his chest and whimpering as piteously as an orphan puppy in the rain. Sheets of paper blizzard through the air and flutter to the floor. His coworkers hardly stir: Fujisaki rolls over in his sleep; Hiro jerks upright momentarily with glazed eyes, muttering something about being awake, really, mom, studying hard; Sakano doesn't even twitch; and outside there's a creak as K-san shifts comfortably in his chair. They're all used to Shuichi's antics by now.

Tears tsunami from Shuichi's eyes and he hiccups, his lower lip quivering. Look at them! All of them and Yuki too, sound asleep and a big fat lot of help they are to him. He wants his Yuki! Even the magnificent Sakuma-san has his Kumagoro. Shuichi imagines a Yuki plushy in his arms with fabric flaps of soft blond hair and a narrow piercing gaze embroidered in brown thread. If he really did ever get a Yuki plushy, the real Yuki would probably run Shuichi over with his car and refuse to apologize and probably accuse him of using the plushy doll for some kind of erotic voodoo.

Oh, Yuki. Shuichi's Yuki. He can't even have a Yuki plushy in his imagination because the imagined real Yuki would murder him for it. And now Shuichi isn't even making any sense in his own head—imagined real Yuki? Isn't that some kind of oxymoron or paradox or something? It doesn't make any sense. But then Shuichi loves Yuki crazily, from the top of his mussed blond head as he rolls out of bed in the late morning all the way down to the tips of his adorable toes. Shuichi loves the liberal doses of verbal abuse and the sneers that cover what Yuki feels because he's too embarrassed to actually say it, and somehow sense doesn't matter anymore. After all, since when has love been sensible?

And now the tap opens and the lyrics burst out.

They come pouring out, rushing out, a flood of words that roll with the flow of his Yuki-centric thoughts. He pictures Yuki sleeping, laid out on the bed with his shirt open and the moonlight throwing a pale gleam across his chest, a restlessly sleeping prince passing the night while he awaits the return of his lover. There's Yuki lying awake, maybe, staring into the empty darkness and thinking—no, pining!—for his beloved, his heart welling with that lonesome sensation known as sadness, that Shuichi is not there. And here's Yuki sitting up in the kitchen at the table with the light on, slouched down on his elbows and smoking a cigarette with a sour expression, contemplating his Shuichi-less state of being.

This is, Shuichi knows, love. Shuichi is an expert in love. He experiences it everyday (and every night, or at least he wants it every night) and love songs, he decides then and there, are his specialty. He fills his mind with Yuki—his low velvet voice spilling insults off an acidic tongue, his simmering, pinpoint eyes heavy-lidded, the way his finely-tapered fingers tap ash from his cigarette and the way his lips feel on Shuichi's skin, silky and pliant—all these things Shuichi dashes off onto paper, phrasing them as lyrics, framing them in music, and just as the dawn heralds a new day Shuichi is half-sprawled across the table, sound asleep and dreaming of Yuki, his beautiful, sarcastic Yuki, with two-dozen sheets of lyrics pillowed under his head.

…play on.

-fin