For Howan, a dedicated I'll fan.
Fighters
"Hey, are you okay?"
Toru had thought that the shadowy figure outside the basketball court was a girl. Sure, it had long hair and was skinny. Sure, girls could wear pants. Of course, most girls didn't swear like that, but it iwas/i night-time, and what kind of girl went out grocery shopping at this time of night?
Leaving the flood-lit glow of the basketball court, he could see well enough to notice that it wasn't, in fact, a girl. Just a guy who looked a lot like one.
"Fuck fuck fuck. Goddamn cheap bags, can't even hold a few cans..."
"Uh, hey, do you want some help?"
Can't back away now, after leaving the courts. The guys would want a story when he came back, and you had to feed the collective ego. Besides, this guy had a little more than he could carry in two hands.
He grabbed a few tins, dripping, out of the ditch and shook them off with a grimace. Haru's reformation must have been rubbing of on him. Not nessisarily a good thing.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Toru straightened and looked the guy straight in the face for the first time that night. Not only was he pretty, but he was trying, which just made it...
"I'll help you carry your stuff home. Where are you going?"
"Hoi, Toru! You commin' back?"
By the time he yelled and waved off his friends, who were obviously spoiling for a fight, the guy was giving him a wierd look as he shifted the boxes and cans in his arms.
"You're Toru?"
"Um, yeah. Toru Harada. You know me?"
The guy started walking down the street, as if accepting his presence as nessisary. He had an almost-regal air about him that made Toru want to throw him one to the head.
"You played basketball for that Nationals recruit team. The one Hiiragi went to."
"Whoa whoa wait, you know basketball?"
He jogged to catch up, fumbling with the cans of beer in his arms. iWhat/i the hell was going on here? The pretty-boy seemed to find that amusing, looking over at him from under dark eyelashes.
"I'm in a band with the Kouzu coach's boyfriend."
"Ah."
The sexy one that yelled a lot. Still, very wierd.
They headed down the street for a while, trying not to stare at each other when they passed through the lamp-lit areas. It wasn't untill the misterious stranger headed down a set of stairs iinto the ground/i that he hesitated.
It was natural to be apprehensive about entering closed quarters with a punk-haired, make-up-wearing fag in the middle of who-knows-where who did his shopping at night, right?
"What are you, a vampire?" he grumbled, shifting from foot to foot in the cool air.
The silky-soft voice came drifting up at him again.
"I don't bite - that much, anyways. Nice try."
A light flickered on down below, the harsh yellow light of a bare bulb. Toru hesitantly stepped down, trying not to fall on the uneven cement stairs. After all, the guy was pracitally a waif - Toru could take him easily, if it came to it. And while thinking of scary rock-and-roll guitarists and beating people up, Toru remembered where he had seen this guy before.
"Hey, you're Asakura the traitor, aren't you?"
Toru had only stepped in the doorway when he realized what a bad move it had been. He still had his arms full of groceries and the guy now recognized as Asakura Saki had a switchblade in his hand.
Now, the thing about knives in Toru's experience was that the moment you pulled out one in a street fight the stakes immidiately go dangeriously up. Therefore, you just don't carry them unless you know how to use them. And from the stories Toru had heard, this Asakura did.
"And here I was, thinking you were a nice guy for offering to carry my shit home."
Eternally quick-thinking, Toru eyed the well-used blade and stepped towards a beat-up table that looked like it had been dragged out of a dumpster.
"Hey, whoa, hold up. I'm not picking a fight; I just know the story."
Harada's heart didn't slow down it's feaverishly high tattoo untill Saki lowered his hand slowly. When he was moderately sure he wasn't going to be slashed to ribbons, Toru stepped forward into the room enough to drop the weight in his arms and by the time he finally made sure all the cans of cheap beer weren't going to roll off the wobbly table, Asakura had put his knife away to some hidden pocket and was fiddling with a kettle instead.
"You want some coffee?"
"Ah, sure."
---
"Man, you have The Verve! It's impossible to get their stuff around here... I didn't know anyone but me listened to it!"
Taking the record off the shelf, Toru gingerly removed the vinyl from the cardboard case, eyeing the precious music with something like reverance.
"I got it from a friend in Tokyo who visited America."
Toru was continually being startled by the quiet musician, but he was getting used to it. He just seemed to slink up on you, and his voice was like velvet, coming in out of nowhere.
The record was removed from his hands and gently placed on the old-style turntable wired to a bunch of speakers around the room. While he watched Saki bend over and adjust the arm, he saw his shirt lift and eyed some pale skin appreciatively before he caught himself. Damnit, he couldn't be checking out this guy.
But as the raspy, wavy voice drifted through the tiny basement apartment and they sat down on the futon that seemed to serve as both bed and couch, Toru felt some of his resolve slide. It wasn't that he was gay, really, but if they were pretty where was the difference?
And there was no questioning Asakura's attractiveness. He was practically screaming from a rooftop: look at me!
"Richard Ashcroft is one of my favorite singers; he just has such an amazing voice."
"Do you sing? For your band, I mean?"
The look that Saki gave him out of the corner of his eye set Toru's heart to thumping.
"Yes, actually. I sing and play guitar and write."
"Impressive."
---
It was when Harada was standing in the doorway, halfway drunk, more than a little uncomfortable and horny to add to it all. He knew he should go, but the look in Saki's eye - sly, seductive, and almost a little lonely - was holding him back. In a last ditch attempt to find an excuse for staying, he paused at the door and turned to Asakura, who was leaning against the wall in the eternal pose of lead singers everywhere.
The difference was, Saki looked icomfortable/i like that.
And it made Toru's skin crawl. His friends, his gang were loud and brash - dogs, not cats.
"I should get home before my mom gets too upset."
"Aa."
Asakura slinked forward and before the basketball player could get away his chin was caught and drawn down to meet the eyes and then lips of his aggressor. Tasting of coffee and sugar for only a moment before the connection was lost. Toru blinked and opened his eyes in order to hear a smirking Saki say:
"I like nice bad guys. Maybe I'll see you again some time?"
Harada Toru saw his long-held breath steam in the cold night air and stepped inside again, his body having made up it's decicion before the rest of him had even figured out what had happened.
"But I don't really have to go home at all, if you want to..."
The guitarist's smile spread into a bit of a grin before he reached behind Toru's head and dragged him the rest of the way inside by the mouth. iFuck/i, he was a good kisser. Toru was bigger, though, and pushed a hardly resisting Asakura back against the wall.
"Fuck!" Toru breathed, voice low and horse and eyes a little glazed. Saki chukled, adam's apple bobbing in his throat, and eyes glinting.
"I wouldn't have taken you for someone who swung that way, Toru-san."
"Yeah, well..."
If Toru Harada was anything, he prefered movements to words. Lips travelling down Saki's slim and pale throat, he heard and felt the sucked in breath as hands travelled through his usually-mussed hair and down his neck to his back. Something like a hum ran though Asakura's body and his body arched away from the wall to press flush against Toru. Hissing in a breath of his own, he caught some skin between his teeth before sliding his hands down Saki's chest and resting them on his hips for a long moment before sliding them up his shirt, feeling the shivering skin under his basketball-calloused fingers as he removed the offending article of clothing.
When Toru finally looked up, having marked Saki to his satisfaction, his face was flushed and he was breathing heavily, powdered eyelids half lowered. He just looked, well, debauched. Toru was usually against the use of that word (far too fancy for sex), but he had a feeling Saki was using it to describe himself right that very second.
And that was when Asakura Saki attacked - the moment that Toru Harada was distracted. He found himself on his back on the futon, arching his hips with a moan as heavy, male hips ground down against him. Asakura's hands were icold/i, and Toru's breath left him with a hiss as they ran over his chest, bared since who-knew-when.
He caught one in his hand and kissed it forcefully in retribution, feeling the tendons move under his lips. Feeling feverish once again, he reached up and drew the body down as he squirmed up on top again.
It would be a long fight.
---
Toru should have known that Asakura was a silent one the moment he set eyes on him. The barest whimpers and gasps could be wrung from his body as he was driven into the flimsy mattress.
But now Toru was drinking from one of the half-empty cans they had left on the table, one of the cans that he had carried all the way here, one of the cans that had light lipstick stains on it. Saki was asleep, curled under a ragged blanket that Toru had gone hunting for once he had summoned the energy to get up.
"Goddamnit," he sighed, and even he was not sure if he was commenting on the last drop of liquer or the scene in front of him. He set down the can and walked over to the futon, watching the silently sleeping figure for any sign of movement. There was none, untill he sighed and slid under the blanket - that was when Asakura muttered in his sleep and snuggled his skinny cold body closer to the warmth. Although Harada would never admit it, he didn't fight it.