Feb 14th; Gravity (Yanagi/Inui); genderswap (meaning they're girls); word count unknown.
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What goes up must come down, which is what Yanagi tells herself as she stumbles, trips, and the clay of the courts is suddenly growing much closer than it should be. That's the first thing that goes through her mind, body automatically reacting to the fall to lessen the impact, and she doesn't have to think about the fall itself, even when she hits on the clay courts and knows she's going to have a bruise: she thinks about what caused it.
There was nothing on the ground to cause her to trip; her shoe laces were properly tied. It was a simple stumble and fall. But Yanagi was well aware of her own grace, not given to falling over for no reason; she didn't stumble over her own two feet or trip when some boy called out to her, only when she received a big shock, one that did not fit into the mental map she had of her world.
Yanagi sat up carefully, pushing herself up to her knees, leveling her open-eyed gaze at her friend, standing across the courts from her. There are glasses covering Inui's eyes, but Yanagi knows the expression is shocked behind them. Inui's never seen her trip because of some harmless comment.
Yanagi's never known herself to do so, either. But she's never prepared for this situation, either.
"Sakae," Yanagi begins, "I think we should call it a day."
Across the net, Inui clears her throat and opens her mouth to speak; Yanagi knows the questions that will be asked, and cuts them off.
"I'm fine. But I do not think I can play any longer." She smiles and stands up carefully, running long fingers down her just-as-long legs, making sure nothing is too badly injured. It was just a fall; she'll be fine.
Inui takes a step closer, and Yanagi picks up her racket, glances at her friend, and for the second time in her life, walks away from her friend without a word.
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Halfway down the street, five minutes later, because all Yanagi had done was grab her things and rush from the locker room, her phone starts ringing. Yanagi silences it, and runs the rest of the way to the train station, and the train that will carry her back to Kanagawa and her school and the friends that she has there and her family: the normal world, not the world of Inui and shared secrets and data and not having to worry about being misunderstood or ridiculed, the world that was even more stable than the norm, and has just been ripped out from beneath her.
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"You seem quiet today Ren," her mother says over dinner, and conversation stops: Yanagi shifts uncomfortably under the gaze of her parents, and grandparents, and older brother, fearing they will see it in her eyes and know. She doesn't want them to know.
"I'm fine," she mumbles into her rice. "Just nervous about an essay."
"It must be quite an important essay, if you are worried about it," her brother teases and her mother frowns, more concerned now. "You don't look good. Are you coming down with something?" She even reaches out to touch her only daughter's forehead, only Yanagi jerks back before she can.
"I'm fine, Mom," she says, and pushes away from the table without an excuse to run up the stairs. She doesn't want her mother to look at her any closer, or her brother to tease her, or her father to read her.
She's shaking when she reaches her bedroom, slamming the door behind her barely in time to hide her first sob. Yanagi doesn't even look at anything, simply throws herself onto her bed and cries, feeling as if her heart is breaking.
It's not, she's got enough common sense to know the heart is not capable of breaking, but it still feels like it.
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"Why don't you stay home today, Ren?" Her mother sighs and presses her wrist to Yanagi's forehead. "You feel feverish." She frowns. "You never worry this much over school, usually."
"It's nothing Mom, I'm fine." Yanagi struggles to sit up, but gives up after a moment and pulls her blankets tighter around her shoulders; her eyes close as if it will block out the rest of the world. Her mother murmurs something, kisses her forehead, and leaves.
In the hall, Yanagi hears her mother's voice, and then her brothers, and reinvents their conversation - i "Your sister is staying home today," "Why does she get to stay home and I can't?" "You're not sick. Get going or else you'll be late." /i . She can hear her brother complaining, a little more, daily complaints about how he is in college now and doesn't need to go every day, and their mother responds, and Yanagi waits until she can not hear them in the hall any longer before moving.
It's only a couple of steps across the room to her desk, where she picks up her cell phone. It's been off all night, doesn't register the missed calls, but there are a number of voicemails, and just as many text messages. She ignores them all, writes a few quick messages to the people who will notice her absence in class, or later in the afternoon, all except to one person, who will be the most likely to notice but who wouldn't even see her until much later in the day.
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It's noon, or at least Yanagi thinks it is; she's never been in bed so late, but the direction of her window and the angle of the sun's rays tell her it's got to be close to noon. A glance at the clock confirms it.
There's no disorder or disarray in her mind, no question of why she's at home in the middle of the day or fuzziness, thoughts that it is Sunday. The only thing she wonders is what woke her up. Her family, with the exception of her grandmother, have left, and the sounds of her grandmother moving in the kitchen are there but part of the mental scheme Yanagi has of her family, her house; it's familiar and comforting, in a way. What woke her up was something different: a dissonant note in the music of the house.
It takes a moment to place the reason, but once she realizes what it is, it's hard to ignore: no longer is her grandmother moving about in the kitchen, but walking down the hall, which is not odd in and of itself, but there's another person walking down the hall with her. Yanagi knows this as certainly as she knows her own heart is beating in her chest. And Yanagi knows the footsteps, as well as she knows her grandmother's: it's the last person she wishes to see and the only one she does.
Yanagi shifts in bed, pulls the blankets up so they are almost over her head. She hopes it will stop anyone. But it doesn't. Secretly, she knew it wouldn't.
"Ren?" Inui whispers, and closes the door behind her. There's uncertainty in her voice, a note of hesitation that's never been there before, not with Yanagi. This doesn't exist between them, hesitation and silences and secrets, not anymore, since they have reestablished their friendship. But Yanagi's changed that, by shutting Inui out, and even if years have passed between and they are both older and wiser, nothing ever prepares you for this change.
"Ren," Inui says again. "I know you're not asleep."
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Yanagi counts the seconds between her breaths, making it as regular as possible, and squeezes her eyes shut against the temptation to open them and look at Inui. It's not hard, she has made it her life to not see, but she wants for nothing more than to turn around and look up at her friend.
"It is twelve-oh-five, and your grandmother says you went to bed last night before nine," Inui begins and moves to stand right next to the bed. Yanagi has to force herself not to move. Her fingers curl into the blankets tighter. "It is not usual for you to get more than six point five hours of sleep, even on the weekends, unless you are ill, and even then, you don't sleep fifteen hours." Inui pauses; Yanagi knows her eyes on Yanagi's back, watching for a flicker of something. Inui's eyes are not as sharp as some - she knows people who can outmatch either of them with the knowledge in their eyes - but she is sharp. And she knows Yanagi better than anyone.
And that, Yanagi thinks, is the problem.
It makes her draw in closer, and it's her undoing, the shift of legs, curling of her back, sliding of her head. Inui knows how she sleeps, they have slept in the same bed too many times to not know each other, and Inui knows Yanagi doesn't move in her sleep, once she's settled into a comfortable position, especially not to curl up smaller.
"Your grandmother also tells me you didn't finish dinner last night, and the family is worried about you." Inui continues and there's triumph in her voice, faint enough that only Yanagi would notice it, if they were somewhere crowded. Yanagi almost hates the fact that even though things are different between them, there is still that knowledge, that connection; no one will read them like they read each other. "You are not sick; you were not developing any symptoms of a cold yesterday; it is not the flu season, so the possibility of it being that is ten percent; you could have food poisoning, but your grandmother did not mention you were physically ill. She informed me she suspects a boy has broken your heart."
The fact that Yanagi's grandmother said that, thinks that, and that Inui is reporting it back to her with the same tone of voice she uses to repeat data is what makes Yanagi move, a shift of her body, pushing back the blankets and scrambling up on the bed, until she's in front of Inui. Yanagi doesn't know what drives her, what's pushing her to do all of this, but it doesn't matter because her hands tangle in Inui's hair and pull her closer and this is going to be the final break, or the patch that fixes it all.
It's not like her to narrow her options to only two. A fifty-fifty chance isn't predictable enough; she doesn't like the odds.
She takes the chance anyway.
"Not a boy," she whispers, but there's no chance for Inui to reply, because Yanagi presses her lips to her friends, who is now not a friend and more than a friend and everything she once was before.
Yanagi's not sure what she was expecting, or even if she was expecting anything. She's kissed boys before, and learned the ins and outs of kissing, but kissing Inui feels completely different, at once weird and exactly right. She's softer, but not completely soft, like some girls appear to be; it's pleasing, in this weird way that makes Yanagi shiver, but then Inui's responding to her kiss and Yanagi's no longer sure why she shivers. This kiss feels right, better than any kiss from any boy, and Yanagi's enjoying it more than any of those, than all of them combined.
Inui's arms go around her and they tumble back to the bed, lips breaking for a moment, but Inui's lips are back on hers a moment later. There's no more wondering, no more curiosity: a promise is whispered in that kiss that's not so much a promise as it is an affirmation of everything they are, everything they will be, together.
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"This has been a success," Inui murmurs, when she's curled beneath the blankets on Yanagi's bed, and Yanagi shifts to look at her again.
"What do you mean, a success?" Yanagi asks, and her eyes open. "Did you plan-?"
"Not plan." Inui doesn't attempt to hide her grin, because that would be pointless. The grin is obvious in her voice. "He really did ask me to go out with him. But it made me think about what you would say and I thought an experiment would work out best."