Motivation

by tastewithouttalent

"By the time Tsukumo rounds the turn of the track, he's certain that this is how he's going to die." Tsukumo volunteers for early-morning training and finds to be Yamato an excellent motivator. Yamato/Tsukumo.

By the time Tsukumo rounds the turn of the track, he's certain that this is how he's going to die.

He volunteered for this, even. Early-morning exercise had sounded like fun, like something suitably ascetic and disciplined for his adopted persona, never mind that he's well past the workouts he used to do for his acting roles and has had no more exercise than what pacing out the confines of his cell can grant him for the last few weeks. But Yamato had smiled, and laughed cheer over the suggestion, and Tsukumo had found himself agreeing before he had thought through the logic of actually going out for a ten-kilometer run before the sun had risen over the ocean-distant horizon. He'd been looking forward to this for most of the week, anticipating the variance in the usual mundanity of his day with something like enthusiasm; he drifted to sleep last night with a smile on his face, and his thoughts glowing with the happy imagination of the breathless effort of exercise and the pleasant glow of physical exertion that comes after a hard workout.

As it turns out, Tsukumo's memory lied to him.

"Oh my god," he gasps as he flings himself over the finish line more as a full-body collapse than as the shuffling jogging he managed to maintain for the first few kilometers. "I'm going to die."

"Sixty-nine minutes and forty-three seconds!" Yamato declares, his voice ringing clear as a bell as he reads the numbers off the stopwatch in his hand. He doesn't even sound winded, even though Tsukumo has lost count of how many times Yamato lapped him over the last hour; he hasn't stopped smiling, either, is still flashing the bright brilliance of the cheer he had when he rattled open the door of Tsukumo's cell to announce the start of their morning workout session. "Good job!"

"That's not good," Tsukumo says against the texture of the track currently supporting his face. It's rough against his skin, he supposes it should register as painful on some level; right now he thinks he'd be happy to stay where he's lying forever. "I could have walked that distance faster than that."

"Everyone starts somewhere!" Yamato tells him. Tsukumo wonders, distantly, behind the wheezing inhales he's struggling for against the track, if the other has ever spoken anything that didn't end in an exclamation point. "What's important is that you came out this morning and got it done!"

"Okay," Tsukumo says, not so much because he agrees but because he lacks the breath for any kind of reasonable argument on this point. "Sure. I'm ready to go willingly back to my cell now."

It's strange that something as bright and cheerful as the boom of Yamato's laugh can freeze the blood in Tsukumo's veins. His eyes come open, his attention swings up over the whole height of Yamato standing over him, and even before the other speaks Tsukumo can make enough of a guess to what he's going to say to be groaning "Oh no" preemptively.

"That was just the warm up!" Yamato informs him with as much cheer as if he's telling Tsukumo of some great treat he's been allowed to offer the other. "You don't have to go back yet, we've still got all the rest of the program to do!"

Tsukumo can't even muster a coherent answer to that. A whimper is the best he can do, and even that is mostly lost to the ground currently forming such an excellent pillow for him at the moment. Yamato doesn't hear it, or maybe does and somehow mistakes it for enthusiasm; in either case, he's dropping to a knee alongside Tsukumo and closing his hand with bracing force at the other's shoulder.

"Pushups come second!" he tells him. "First situps, and then squats to finish!" Tsukumo groans at the idea of doing even a single squat - he's not sure he can even stand at the moment, much less muster anything like the strength needed for the workout thus described - but Yamato is pushing him over onto his back without any hesitation for the other's evident unhappiness and without so much as a flicker of his smile. "I'll count for you!"

"What about you?" Tsukumo tries, reaching for a desperate thread of hope as he gazes up at the pale light of dawn spreading over the sky. At least he'll expire in a pretty place. It's distant comfort for the rattle of air still catching in his struggling lungs. "You finished way before me, I can take my turn after-"

"I did mine while you were finishing your run!" Yamato announces, and Tsukumo shuts his eyes as the last hope of survival slips through his fingers to leave him truly bereft. "It'll be more efficient this way. Just a quick hundred situps and then onto pushups!"

"One hundred," Tsukumo whimpers. "Are you some kind of a monster?"

Yamato laughs at this, apparently taking it as the joke it's not, and when he moves it's only to come around to Tsukumo's feet so he can kneel before him and close his hands around the other's ankles. Tsukumo's stomach sinks as if Yamato's grip forms the shackles to hold him while he shuffles to his death.

"Ready!" Yamato says, his voice carrying the bright clarity of a bell tolling the hour rather than forming the word to anything like a question. "On my count! Set and one!" And Tsukumo moves, his aching body struggling to obey Yamato's commands with the blank obedience that comes with true, all-encompassing horror. His legs strain, his shoulders ache; and his stomach tenses enough to drag him up from the comforting support of the earth beneath him and towards the sharp angle Yamato is making of his knees. The effort pulls another whimper from his throat and a whirl of dizzy unhappiness from his thoughts; but at his feet Yamato is cheering "Good!" with all the manic enthusiasm of a sadistic personal trainer. "And again! Down, and-"

Tsukumo moves as long as he can. He drags himself upright while he's able to make himself answer the demand of Yamato's count, and then he keeps going, letting his thoughts go hazy and white with the agony of effort burning all through his body while his muscles keep flexing in desperate attempt to meet Yamato's expectations. But he was doomed from the start, he knew he was never going to be able to come even close to the requisite hundred, and the count is somewhere in the sixties when Tsukumo tries to lift himself off the ground, and feels his muscles shudder with the effort, and finds he can't move at all.

"That's it," he croaks. His voice sounds hoarse, like he's been shouting protests instead of just wheezing for air; his vision is blurring at the edges, tunneling in and then going wide and hazy as he gazes up at the sky overhead. The break would be pleasant, he thinks, if he weren't in such bone-deep pain through every fiber of his body. "I'm done. I can't keep going."

"You've got this!" Yamato tells him. Tsukumo wonders if the other isn't blind as well as apparently deaf. "Only thirty-one left to go, I believe in you!"

"That's nice," Tsukumo says. "I can't move, though."

"Sure you can!" Yamato says. "We just have to find the right motivation for you!"

"Nothing is worth this," Tsukumo tells the sky. The blue is washing out to white, now; he can't tell if it's the glow of the sunrise that's causing the change or just that his vision is actually flickering out as he loses his grip on consciousness. "I couldn't do another if my life depended on it."

"Of course you can!" Yamato sounds as cheerful as ever, without any trace of hesitation in his tone; Tsukumo wonders what it must be like to believe so completely in something so patently untrue. Maybe it's liberating, maybe that's why Yamato is always so quick to break into that booming laugh that echoes against the walls of all the cells. "It's just one more sit-up, I know you can do that!"

Tsukumo shakes his head against the ground. "There's no way."

"Just try it!" Yamato's fingers tighten against Tsukumo's ankles; the force of his grip is enough to brace the other's feet harder against the ground, like he's trying to push him to stillness against the texture of the track. "One more, on my count! Ready and…"

Tsukumo wants to die. He can't breathe, his head is spinning; every breath he takes tears at the back of his throat and strains against the inside of his chest like he's choking on it. He can feel every muscle in his body, even the tiny ones he didn't know existed before now, and every single one is adding its voice to the cacophony of pain surging through him. There is no way he can move, no way he can muster the motion Yamato is asking of him; but "Up!" Yamato demands, and Tsukumo's aching body flexes, and he moves, groaning protest to the agony as his body lifts him towards the upward angle of his knees. His back hurts, his vision blurs, all the air in his lungs rushes out of him as he strains himself to upright; and then he's there, and gasping through his exhale, and Yamato is beaming delight at him.

"Great job!" he says. "I knew you could do it!" And then, without so much as hesitating for a breath, he's leaning in over the angle of Tsukumo's knees, and tipping his head to the side, and his mouth is catching to press against the open part of Tsukumo's lips.

Tsukumo's breath rushes out of him at once. His throat tenses on a whimper of shock, his eyes go wide in the first dizzy rush of confusion; but Yamato doesn't draw back, doesn't flinch into apology for whatever insane mistake led to the press of his mouth flush against Tsukumo's. He stays where he is instead, leaning in against his grip on the other's ankles and with the curve of his smiling lips soft and steady against the breathless part of Tsukumo's. His mouth is warm, as firm and certain as the grip of his fingers, and somewhere in the back of Tsukumo's mind comes the realization: it's not a mistake, just as Yamato draws back with careful grace to sigh warmth against Tsukumo's mouth.

"A reward," he says, and he's still far closer than he needs to be, Tsukumo can feel the shape of the other's words coming close against his lips. Tsukumo's thoughts are perfectly blank, his mind wiped clear to match the open-mouthed shock at his lips; but Yamato doesn't wait for a response, just leans back by another span of inches so he can blink at Tsukumo in front of him. His mouth curves up on a wide smile, his whole expression glowing like sunlight as he beams at Tsukumo, and there's no more apology in his expression than there is uncertainty at his mouth. "For your hard work."

Tsukumo stares at Yamato. He wonders if it's oxygen deprivation that is making his thoughts come so cloudy in his mind, wonders if it's the effect of the pain all through his body that is so scattering his priorities, that his next thought isn't why did he kiss me but how can I get him to kiss me again. "What?"

"That was a reward," Yamato says, and he's not laughing anymore, and he's not roaring his usual exuberance; he's speaking calmly, levelly, framing the words with deliberation against his tongue. Tsukumo has never noticed, before, how rich Yamato's voice is when he's not shouting enthusiasm to the sky. "You made it to seventy."

Tsukumo blinks. His thoughts are lagging, they're slow to form and slower to clarify; but Yamato's eyes are clear in the glow of daybreak reflected from the sky overhead, and Yamato's grip is steady at Tsukumo's ankles, and the conclusion isn't that hard to come to anyway. "I thought I had to do one hundred."

"Yep!" Yamato beams at him. "Lie back down and we'll get back to the count!"

Tsukumo blinks. His question is stupid, he knows, he shouldn't put words to this but: "If I do another will you…" His voices flags and fails; for a moment there's no breath in him at all. He has to press his lips together and swallow hard before he can manage a conclusion. "...again?"

Yamato's smile goes wider. Tsukumo hadn't even thought that was possible. "You get a reward for every one you do!" he says with absolute, unflinching cheer. His hands shift at Tsukumo's ankles, his fingers settle into a tighter grip. "Lie down!"

Tsukumo does. It's more of a fall than lowering himself deliberately - his body lacks the stability to make the action anything more structured than a collapse - but he doesn't have any time to think about how he just knocked his breath right out of himself because Yamato is speaking: "Ready and sit up!" with that certainty in his voice that seizes all Tsukumo's body into obedience. Tsukumo's lungs are empty, his muscles are aching, there's no way he can make it through another; but his heart is racing on adrenaline, and his hands are trembling with possibility, and he's moving before he can stop himself, the surge of anticipation in him urging him upright before he can think about the pain.

"Seventy-one!" Yamato announces, all warm smile and bright eyes; and then he leans in again, tipping over the gap between his mouth and Tsukumo's, and this time Tsukumo shuts his eyes in expectation of his reward before he gets it.

It's several minutes before he lies back down to complete his next repetition, and even then his breathing hasn't slowed its frantic rush at all; but Tsukumo is smiling as bright as Yamato, now, and when Yamato tells him "Up!" he moves without so much as flinching from the inevitable ache of effort.

It's amazing what difference the right motivation can make.