Written for the third round of the YuGiOh Fanfiction Contest, Season 8. Prompt: Protectshipping.
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.hh.
It's a girl's room, portraits of musicians adorning the walls, dolls with intricate clothing sleeping on the dressers.
The boy looks at himself in the mirror, pensive. Behind him, satin and lace and sequins are mingling on the bed, in the form of dresses and skirts and ribbons. He will put them away later, for he is running late and his ride is coming in a few minutes. He eyes two shades of pink lipstick, undecided; blue will do the trick for a costume party.
He wonders whether he will meet interesting people. He can't imagine himself addressing a stranger, much less in a place as loud and disruptive as a dance club. He's anxious. He's dialed his friend's number three times, then hung up, afraid she would shun him for changing his mind. He looks good, all his fans say so, but he's not confident people will like him in person. If his sister was there, she'd tell him otherwise, but she's not.
He grabs an old photo and looks at it closely. He barely recognizes himself, a slightly younger, anxious teenage boy avoiding the camera lens, as if though he felt uncomfortable in the square frame of the image. Beside him there is a girl who looks like him but only for her facial features; she looks strikingly alive and energetic, her black lips and black dress contrasting with her white skin and malicious eyes. His exact opposite. His complement. The kind of person who is missed.
He kisses the picture and slips it in his purse. With it, he feels like he can do anything.
.hh.
"Just get in, Honda! It won't kill you!" A bubbly eyed, blue haired girl wearing a too big male tux shoved a young man about twice her size in the empty elevator cage. "You should be thanking me for this."
"For blackmailing me into a freak show? Ow!" He rubbed his shoulder.
"It's for your own good. Are you planning on wearing this all night?" She pointed a gloves finger at the full face helmet. His motorcycling gear was the closest to a costume Honda was ready to wear, and Miho found it was a decent compromise, considering how hot it made him look.
"I will if you promise there's no one I know in that place." He did, albeit reluctantly.
"Ohhh, I can guarantee that you will only see new faces tonight," she replied slyly.
He narrowed his eyes. "Why do I always get the feeling there's a catch in anything you say?"
"Because you're stuck up, Hiroto." She stuck out her tongue playfully and exited the elevator before her male friend could think of anything to say.
"Rebecca's here," she yelled over the high profile DJ music that was assaulting their young ears. "Oh! Hi guys!" She turned her attention to a pack of partygoers she knew (she knew everyone), leaving Honda on his own. He surveyed the crowd, wondering how many of these girls really were boys.
After much deliberation, he kept his jacket on, locking away only the helmet, and felt the burning gaze of a stranger upon him as he put the padlock in place. "Hey Honda. So you came, after all."
He jerked his head to whence the voice was coming from. "Jou?" It was familiar face framed by a neatly plucked eyebrows, a long orange wig and too much makeup. It washed Honda's good manners away.
"Are you shitting me?"
When his friend twirled a copper bang in his hands, rolling his eyes seductively, the brunet just froze, mouth agape.
"Looks like someone doesn't appreciate true beauty," said a tall man whose suit cost more than the building they were in.
"K-Kaiba?" He knew about their relationship, but he never would have imagined that the CEO would attend an underground event such as this one.
"Oh Hiro you found them! Hi guys!" Miho was grinning mischievously, handing the male man a plastic cup filled with sweet liquid.
"What the hell? Miho! I thought..."
"You thought there wouldn't be anybody you knew, and that's the case. This is Serenity," she pointed Jou, "and that's Kaiba-without-the-pole-up-his ass." Said person was in the process of pinching his partner's derriere... and Jou didn't budge. Honda was horrified.
"Oh come on, you thought we didn't know? Girl have on you the same effect a pile of coleslaw does." Thankfully Jou was speaking with his normal voice. It would be scarring, he found, to hear his best friend speak with the nasal, high pitch voice so characteristic of some drag queens.
"Whatever! Did you just let Kaiba grope you?"
"That, and all kinds of naughty things." The music sort of halted during the latter two words, and the fake redhead burst out laughing. "Come on man, loosen up! We're just having fun." Honda had a hard time believing his friend could talk so casually about the whole ordeal.
The blue haired host did some small talk with the gang for a while and Kaiba went for another drink; the next thing Honda knew is that he was being taken across the dance floor by his female counterpart to a quieter corner of the club.
There a few stools and high tables lurked about, covered in dirty glasses and purses and scarves. Miho jumped on a blonde woman with a brand new buzz cut and a firefighter inspired outfit, while Honda awkwardly nodded to greet the androgynous white haired person dressed in a long sleeved, high neck dress.
Rebecca demanded his attention (and everyone else's). "You're Honda-san, right? Do you remember me?"
He had never really cared for girls or good at remembering faces, much less when said face had undergone puberty between two sightings.
"Erm... no."
She laughed heartily in that characteristic loudness only Americans could display. "I love your friend, Miho, he's hilarious."
"I think he's just shocked." And also highly amusing, by her own twisted standards.
The two girls started talking to themselves, switching to body language in a matter of seconds, and Honda understood he was no longer part of that conversation. He asked the mute girl if she wanted to go outside, and she nodded eagerly, holding onto his hand through the crowd and to the elevator. Then their hands, hers cold, his warm, parted awkwardly.
"You're a guy, aren't you. I can tell from your bone structure." He pointed his own Adam's apple, and the frail boy, a slight blush peeking through the white foundation, nodded again shyly.
Outside the air was chill, the streets not so lively anymore, and Honda wondered why he was here - why she was still here. Either of them could be going back up, trying to pick a date, or go back home, crunching numbers or whatever else the boy did for a living. Somehow, the biker found himself drawn to the boy's strange demeanor, and his feet refused to move.
"So... is it your first time here?"
"Yes."
"Me too."
Silence.
"You look cold." He put his own jacket over the girl's shoulders - she probably would like to be referred to as a girl, he realized - as if it were the most natural thing to do, and an embroidered name on her purse caught his attention.
"I take it your name's Amane?"
A pause. Somehow a great wind was brought forward by that innocent question, a wind that reached the meek flame in the pale boy's heart and made it waver for a second, causing the very glow that once adorned his lovely chocolate eyes to sink into his ever widening pupils:
"It's complicated."
.hh.
In the end the curious creature that was Amane piqued more than Honda's curiosity. He felt compelled to be with the boy who dressed as a girl who acted insanely shy around people but who still managed to be interesting. They both found the party (the one that did bring them together) ridiculous; they had been coaxed by their respective friends who wanted them both to get to know more people (the secret code was: to get laid). Closing their eyes to the irony of the situation, they declared the idea of enrolling in the meat market to meet a mate officially 'retarded', in Honda's terms. To which the boy simply nodded.
Ryou (that was his real name) sang in an obscure indie rock band. The whole dress up was his stage attire, which meant he had received every piece of hand sewn fabric and accessory from female fans, while Honda spent most of his senior year's evening working part time to pay for his gear. 'He' grew up in a rural town and 'she' in all but three countries members of the Commonwealth because of 'her' diplomat father. They had amazingly similar tastes in people and music and movies and values despite their amazingly different appearance, and before they parted on the porcelain creature's doorstep, their next meeting was planned already.
It wasn't going to be a date, they agreed. They picked sunlight and greenery for their backdrop, picnic food to chew on, plenty of time and plenty of comfortable silence to share. They discovered they both valued freedom highly, or at least they longed for it; for that reason, Ryou (that was his real name) declared he would absolutely love to ride on Honda's bike. The brunet still wasn't ready to be seen riding along with another guy by his neighbours, so he would be coming over to Ryou's house to pick him up.
When the biker showed up at his white doorstep in a ragged, brown winter jacket and jeans, the frail boy was ready for him at the door.
"Hey." Their heads were at the same level and their feet. Honda caught himself thinking it would be a great kissing spot.
"Hey."
Honda wondered if the same thought had crossed the other's mind. He studied him as he nonchalantly brushed a white bang off his eyes: delicate yet masculine, his real hair going wild north, south, east and west, a thin golden chain clashing with the triangle of matte white skin peeking from a tasteful woolen V-neck. The dash of black eyeliner defined his face, making him him look more edgy than feminine.
Above all, he looked more confident than he had the night they met. And much more pleasing to the eye as a boy than as a girl. What little hopes Honda had about not being gay vanished, but the magnetism of the stranger before him won over his anxiety.
"Are you ready?" What Honda really meant was, 'you look like a completely different person'.
"I am." And to reply to the unspoken question he would used the same words. He followed the lead to his vehicle.
"So how do you like my jacket?"
"It smells nice," he said simply as he secured a retro looking, euro red helmet, on his silver mane. "Let's go."
When Ryou sat behind him on the bike, wearing the jacket he had been keeping all those days, his body warmth immediately spread to the other male's soul, and the ease with which he wrapped his arms around the other's waist made Honda feel guilty wanting to keep their burgeoning relationship secret.
.hh.
"Why do you want to be an engineer?"
Ryou kept saying he liked the outdoors, but he was hiding in what little shade the park's only ginkgo had to offer. He was hot, though, hot enough to take the jacket off.
"I like to know how things work from the inside, but mostly I want to fix things, you know."
He smiled at Honda's enthusiasm.
"No, it's more like, I see that things usually work okay, and most people are fine with things 'working okay', but I'm not. I want everything to run the best they can." He rolled onto his back, then sat up to face his friend. There was freshly cut grass all over his shirt, but he didn't care. "Then the whole world kinda works better, too."
"Can you fix people?"
Honda was too surprised to say anything but "What?"
A short laugh (somewhat bitter) was all it took for the pale one to dismiss his own question. He took a sip of bottled tea, grimaced at the acidic taste of the lemon, and offered the other boy some. When Honda declined, he simply shrugged, his shoulder blades standing out from his upper chest.
"What do you do when you're done? When you 'fixed it'?" Another silent sip, a stretch of the neck.
"I don't know. I guess I get bored." He fumbled, not used to having people genuinely interested in his studies, or in his behaviour. "I usually just move on, and that's that." He mused for a moment. "You're a very insightful person, Ryou. I was never asked that in the past."
Another shrug. The boy's thin arms contrasted with the ample sweater he was wearing, and it looked like it was the sweater wearing rather than the other way 'round. He tossed the bottle away at a murder of crows and closed the distance between him and Honda. They were sitting side by side for a moment, and neither of them said a thing.
After a while Ryou brought his knees to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs. Pensive.
"Are you cold?" Straightforward. Gentlemanly.
The boy turned to face his friend, resting his cheek on his knees, one sun exposed eye closed, the other opening thinly to look at the brunet who was about to lift himself up to bring his jacket over. A cold hand gripped his arm for a second, as if to stop him. I'm fine.
Not knowing how to react, Honda just sat back down, waiting for directions. That earned a croquis of a smile from the white haired boy.
"You are kind."
It made Honda feel all mellow inside.
.hh.
The pier was relatively empty even this late at night. The couples around them were holding each other close by, their arms interlocked. Despite the growing attraction he felt for the boy, Honda couldn't help but want them to look like buddies in public.
Buddies taking a long walk by the most romantic spot in the old city. Buddies who keep their hands close instead of holding them out, nervously nibbling with a bike key or with the worn out edges of an old photograph secretly lurking in a pocket.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure." Dormant fearlessness.
"Why do you dress up as a girl?" The brown haired man bit his tongue, wishing the question hadn't escaped his mouth so quickly. He looked at the boy apprehensively, expecting to have hit a nerve, of to have skipped too many steps. They had only known each other for a week.
"Because it makes me feel complete." Assurance. Discretion.
Both of them were expecting more words from the other. It was Honda who broke the silence. As he did most of his time spent with Ryou.
"So it's not just a band thing, then. There's more to it."
He saw Ryou frantically wringing his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. He took this, and his silence, for an affirmative answer.
"Why do you feel incomplete?"
They reached the end of the pier where street lights are scarce. Their footsteps halted by themselves. "Do you feel incomplete, right now?"
Too many questions. Too complicated.
"Ryou..." A pause, a step forward, few decibels shaved off his already low voice. "We don't have to talk about this, you know."
Honda quickly scanned their surroundings to make sure they were alone, and he allowed the distance between them to vanish, so that Ryou found himself unable to confront his friend's patient stare. His voice fluttered despite his efforts.
"I don't know..."
He felt like his heart would have crawled out of throat if Honda's arms hadn't been there to hold it in. He struggled to free his own from between their bodies, and when he dug his cold fingers in the man's warm hair, he all but forgot about the alien touch of the glossy paper in his pocket.
.hh.
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~fin~
A/N
The lovely shirogane777 has drawn fanart based on the first scene of the fic. Take a look - it's simply gorgeous! .com/#/d336rc3