Shift. Shift. Shift.
Shuichi gulped as they passed a red Volkswagen, missing it by barely a few inches. He shut is eyes tightly, expecting the car to go spinning across the road at any second, though it never did.
Shift.
Shuichi gripped tighter onto the car door. He whimpered and focused on something that wasn't zipping by them at dangerous speeds. Tohma was looking straight forward, frowning, and appearing as though his full attention was on the road in front of him, which, of course, Shuichi hoped it was. However, Shuichi got the feeling that Tohma's attention was divided. After all, that was almost the exact copy of the look Yuki always wore when something was bothering him, only Tohma-ized.
"Unnnn… Seguchi-san?" Shuichi said just loud enough to be heard over the engine. Tohma only seemed to respond by accelerated even faster, so Shuichi continued. "Are you mad at me?"
Tohma moved his gaze to Shuichi for the briefest of moments, only to quickly divert it back onto the road. He cranked the wheel over just in time to avoid a collision with a car in front of him. This one was blue, only Shuichi couldn't tell the make because it went by so fast.
"No I'm not," Tohma said simply, though his tone was humorless.
"If it's about what happened last night—"
"Shindo-san, I said I'm not mad at you," Tohma repeated, though Shuichi still detected a hint of animosity in it.
"But—" Shuichi started, though he cut off quickly when Tohma shot a dark glare his way. He fell silent and returned to staring out the window at the blurs of the fellow cars. Of course, when the fear of a collision rose up again, he turned his attention back to Tohma. "Don't you think you're going too fast?" he asked. It was the first time he had mentioned anything of the sort.
"Don't worry," Tohma replied. "I never get—"
He was interrupted by the dull sound of sirens from behind. Cursing softly, Tohma's hand made its way over to the stick and hovered over it for a few moments, in which he seemed to be debating whether to pull over or take off in a high-speed chase. Shuichi whimpered softly, and he noticed that Tohma's eyes flashed over towards him before he slammed on the brakes, sending the car into a screeching stop.
Shift.
Shuichi sat for who knows how long, oblivious to the world around him, breathing heavily and wondering if it was possible that the seatbelt across his chest was able to squeeze his heart so much that it exploded. However, when he ran his finger down his wrist, he found that he still had a pulse, meaning maybe it was actually his kidney that had burst.
This worried him greatly. He remembered hearing about those people who had to have kidney transplants. He didn't want that to happen to him. Of course, he didn't quite know what a kidney was, what it did, or where it was located, but he was pretty sure that that popping sound had indeed been his kidney, if not his heart.
"Your driver's license please?" an exceptionally high-pitched voice put an abrupt end to Shuichi's worries as he turned to look at a small girl in a uniform peering into the car through Tohma's window. Tohma handed her a card, and she began to write notes on her clipboard using it. Shuichi took this quiet pause to study her carefully.
The uniform she was wearing was that of a policeman, though Shuichi had never seen a girl policeman…or policewoman…before. However, her face looked vaguely familiar—not because he had met her before, but because she looked exactly like the majority of his fan girls. Her long hair was pulled into two pigtails and bleached. It was a horrible bleach job, too. It simply looked fake. Of course, Shuichi noticed that most Japanese people with bleached hair looked fake, but this girl took it to the extreme. He assumed she had done it herself, since he doubted any professional could make anyone's hair so incredibly ugly, but her hair was merely a crusty mass of dead yellow. It clashed horribly with her eyes, which were a dark brown, too. Not like Tohma.
Shuichi lifted an eyebrow at Tohma. He had never really thought about it before, but Tohma must have bleached his hair too. He couldn't be another naturally blond Japanese person like Yuki, but Tohma's looked so normal that Shuichi never thought that his true hair color might possibly be black. After all, his hair had been blond throughout his entire career with Nittle Grasper, so he would have to have had kept re-dying it for years. Plus, the color matched his eyes. His eyes were a really pretty bluish color…
Shuichi squeaked when he realized what he was thinking and turned away. There were a few more minutes of awkward silence before the police girl spoke.
"Wait, Seguchi Tohma? THE Seguchi Tohma?"
Tohma smiled at her, though it was not his usual smile. It was more of a seductive gaze, accented when he rested his cheek in his palm with his elbow set on the door. Shuichi frowned.
"Yes, that would be me," Tohma said in a voice a bit deeper than normal. Shuichi's frown became even larger.
"And then, your passenger…" the police girl said as she bent lower down to look through the window at Shuichi. There was a flash of disappointment across her eyes as she realized that it was not Sakuma Ryuichi, though recognition hit and the disappointment soon vanished. "Shindo Shuichi?"
Shuichi smiled shyly and lifted his hand in an awkward wave. This only set the police girl off into a high-pitched squeal in which she bounced from foot to foot and shook her clipboard excitedly. Finally she calmed herself down, though her face had become very red and her breath accelerated.
"O-okay, just, um, just sign here," she pointed spastically to a spot on the clipboard as she handed it to Tohma. "Just, right there, or anywhere's fine really… I just need this…for reference purposes…right, that's it. And…I need Shindo-san to sign too, of course…so we have a record, of course… And then I'll let you off with just a, just a warning, and you can be on your way…"
Tohma smirked as he nicely sighed his autograph across the side of the paper, and then he handed it to Shuichi. Shuichi looked at the paper, noticing it was a ticket only halfway filled out with Tohma's license plate number and part of the make and model of the car, though that stopped mid-word. He suppressed a giggle as he scribbled his name just below Tohma's and handed it back to the police girl. The girl studied the ticket for a few seconds and squealed again.
"Well, then," Tohma said and reached for his keys.
"Oh! Wait, um, Seguchi-san," the police girl said. She leaned into the open window, arching her back as she scratched something onto a blank piece of paper just below the autographed ticket on her clipboard. She giggled as she ripped it and handed it to him. "If you don't want it, then maybe you could give it to Shindo-san or…Sakuma-san?"
"Right," Tohma replied with a smile. The police girl squealed for the third and final time, and then skipped off towards her patrol car. Tohma held the piece of paper in his hand out to Shuichi, whom looked at it curiously. On it was scribbled a name and phone number, of the police girl, Shuichi assumed. "You want it?" Tohma asked.
Shuichi shook his head, at which Tohma closed his fist, crushed the paper in his palm. Shuichi gasped.
"Hey! You shouldn't do that! It's mean!" Shuichi said.
Tohma studied him for a second before breaking into a smile. "Why? It's her fault for pulling me over."
"She was just doing her job. And besides, you were speeding a lot! And she was nice. AND she didn't give you a ticket! She deserves a chance!" Shuichi cried.
Tohma shook his head. "I'll never call her, and you said you didn't want it—"
"That's not the point," Shuichi said sternly with a set frown. He crossed his arms and looked out the window. "You could have given it to Ryuichi."
Tohma chuckled. "Ryuichi-san would lose this within a few hours at the most."
"Humph!" Shuichi stuck his nose in the air, and then let his body droop with a sigh. "You coulda still given it to him. You're just being mean."
He looked back at Tohma, whose lips were pursed in an irritated frown. He sighed angrily and shoved the paper into his pocket, and then started the car again. Being pulled over obviously didn't teach him anything; he was going just as fast, if not faster, than he had been before the incident.
========
"What?" Hiro asked, lifting one of his eyebrows at Shuichi suspiciously.
"I think I'm in love with Tohma," Shuichi replied as he ashamedly looked towards the ground. He scratched his elbow sheepishly, knowing that his cheeks were probably matching the color of his hair by now.
"Tohma? As in Seguchi Tohma?" Hiro asked, lifting the other eyebrow.
"Ye—" Shuichi would have finished, only his voice cracked, sounding about as high-pitched as the police girl's for a second.
"Hmm…" Hiro crossed his arms and yawned. "He's related to Fujisaki, you know."
Shuichi shuddered. "Yes, I know."
"And that doesn't repel you the slightest bit?"
Shuichi clenched his jaw. "I had considered it beforehand."
There was a long pause.
"…Oh? …It's Gravitation…or something like that…" Hiro muttered as he turned and closed the door to the rehearsal studio behind him.
Shuichi frowned and put his hands on his hips. That didn't go quite as he had planned. He had prepared himself for a surprised and irritated outburst from his long-time friend, and he had even figured out just how to counter pretty much everything Hiro could have come up with to argue why Shuichi should not be in love with Tohma—he even considered the blood relative of Fujisaki before he had approached Hiro. However, he never would have guessed his friend would have had that reaction, or lack thereof.
Not any reassurance or attempts to stop Shuichi for his own well-being… Some friend Hiro was. Shuichi was quite disappointed, so much so that he decided to dwell on it for a bit longer, since break wasn't over for another twenty minutes. Therefore, Shuichi found himself wandering about the hallways of NG and getting lost among them as he contemplated his current standing. He was in love with Yuki; that was his undying passionate first love bias—and yet, at the same time, there was something about Tohma that Shuichi had never noticed before, something, he supposed, one only realized after they began to live with him. Shuichi wasn't sure quite what this something was, or maybe he just wasn't as gifted with words as Yuki and couldn't express it with his limited vocabulary, but he was undeniably attracted to it.
Of course, that wasn't a good thing, he decided. In fact, it was utterly awful, due to the fact that he was still with Yuki, and still wanted to stay with Yuki. Meanwhile, even just thinking about Tohma in a positive light gave Shuichi the feeling that he was betraying Yuki, but he couldn't stop himself. Truth be told, Yuki was his first love, and therefore he was having doubts as to whether Yuki was his true love. After all, how could he be sure, when he had nothing to compare it to? And if Yuki was his true love, then why was he straying farther and farther away?
Shuichi was torn between his first crush and his new one, and he had no one to vent to seeing as though his best friend had seemingly decided to take a break from Shuichi's problems for whatever insane reason he would do that. And as Shuichi thought about it, he realized that he really had no other friends, bringing him to the conclusion that he really wasn't as popular as he had originally thought. In fact, before he had two people he would screech about his problems at—that being Hiro and Yuki. Hiro being out of the picture for his own reasons, that left Yuki, but even Shuichi knew better than to talk to Yuki about something like this, even if the latter rarely listened anyway. Even now that a new person had entered the picture—that being Tohma—Shuichi was definitely not ready to confess the feelings, because he did not want to get thrown in a state of chaos prematurely, before he even knew if the feelings were real. The only other people… Fujisaki was out of the picture, not only because he was cynical and harsh, but also because he was related to Tohma. Sakano was definitely not a good choice because of his tendency to scream and whine at every little detail that he didn't quite like. K? Well, K had his own unique was of dealing with Shuichi's problems, most of which consisted of a handgun and advice to forget about it because it has nothing to do with music so shut up.
Counting off on his fingers, Shuichi realized that that left no one. Sighing heavily, he leaned against a wall and donned the most depressed look he could manage, just in case someone stumbled upon him and saw, which, to his incredible dumb luck, someone did. It wasn't even one of the cumbersome people whose entire purpose of working at the studio was to annoy Shuichi either. In fact, it was the one person Shuichi had forgotten to count as a possible friend and target for venting his problems; one that he had not even counted on his hand because he had always assumed that that person was much too high up in the social hierarchy of NG and would not even notice him at all; one whom he did not realize considered him to be a best friend.
"Oi! Shu-chan? What's wrong?" Ryuichi asked as he stepped up to Shuichi and leaned forward so that their faces were dangerously close.
"U-uhn, Sakuma-san," Shuichi squeaked as he attempted to lean away from Ryuichi's invasion of his personal space, though that proved impossible when his head hit the wall with a painful thump. "Nothing's wrong."
"Oh? I don't believe you," Ryuichi said. He stopped and reached into his pocket to pull out his Kumagorou. He then held the stuffed rabbit parallel with his head and just as close to Shuichi's face. "Kumagorou doesn't believe you. Nope."
"It's really nothing," Shuichi said as he attempted to shimmy to the side, but he was stopped by Ryuichi's hands on his shoulders, one of which was crushing Kumagorou's neck. Ryuichi giggled maniacally before shoving Shuichi to the ground and straddling his waist as he held the boy's shoulders to the ground.
"I think Shuichi is sad about Yuki," Ryuichi proclaimed proudly.
Shuichi blinked up at the older man. Normally it would have been a good guess. Shuichi noticed that that was always Hiro's first guess…before Hiro had deserted him so rudely. Now Ryuichi was taking his place. Shuichi was happy. And, truthfully, Ryuichi was halfway right, seeing as though the reason his crush on Tohma was bothering him so much was because of Yuki.
Shuichi attempted to sit up, but Ryuichi pushed him back to the ground and stared at him sternly, or at least as sternly as his big puppy dog eyes would allow him. Shuichi held a disapproving pout on his face for as long as his short attention span would allow, and then sighed, deciding that he might as well tell Ryuichi so that he could get up again sometime in his life.
"Na, Sakuma-san?" Shuichi said, though he avoided eye contact. Ryuichi lifted his eyebrows, so Shuichi continued. "Have you ever had a crush on someone but felt bad because you were with someone else at the time and didn't want to leave that person?"
Ryuichi shook his head.
"Oh," Shuichi said. He sighed again, but Ryuichi still had yet to let him up. "Well, that's kind of my situation right now, and, and, and—"
"And Shu-chan wants love advice?" Ryuichi asked, leaning in closer and finally catching Shuichi's eyes. He grinned mischievously. "So, let me see if I got this right… Shu-chan is still in love with Yuki but he's getting a crush on someone else?"
Shuichi nodded.
"Oh, well, does this new person like you back?" Ryuichi asked.
"I don't know," Shuichi replied. "I think it's possible, but then I think it's impossible too."
"Then, who do you want to be with more?" Ryuichi asked.
"I don't know," Shuichi replied. "I don't want to leave Yuki. I'm still in love with Yuki. Yes. I love Yuki, but these feelings for Tohma—" Shuichi gasped and covered his mouth with his hand. He looked up at Ryuichi shamefully, expecting to find the older man with a mocking grin on his face, but instead Ryuichi held a rather somber expression, and his big blue eyes carried a distant look. Shuichi frowned as he attempting to ponder this, but he could not figure anything.
"Tohma?" Ryuichi asked. His head cocked to the side and he remained silent for a few seconds before breaking into another giggle. "Shu-chan has a crush on Tohma? You wanna know if he likes you back?" Shuichi blinked at Ryuichi as the latter grabbed his wrist firmly and dragged him to his feet. "Come on," Ryuichi cried as he began to drag Shuichi down the hallway towards Tohma's office. "I know exactly how to tell."
TBC
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Notes: Nyaa, next chapter is gonna be full of Ryu-chan goodness…I think. Dunno, I haven't written it yet. But, if I'm lucky, my English teacher won't add another essay assignment to the already four existing ones I have, so I'll get it up quick…if that's the case. If not, I'll be sad. Anyway, next chapter will also contain Yuki's confrontation with Tohma, for those of you who are dying to know…
Until next time.
Cassi
