Tohma sincerely hoped that Shuichi dyed his hair. Pink hair was naturally impossible, in theory, at least. But, then again, in theory a naturally blond Japanese was impossible, due to millenniums of filtration on the genetic level, unless the blood of another race was there to sully it. Yuki Eiri was a naturally blond Japanese, and Tohma was certain that there was none other than pure Japanese blood in the entire Uesugi line that Eiri could have inherited.
Maybe Eiri was just a natural phenomenon. Maybe people really couldn't have naturally pink hair. Maybe Shuichi dyed his hair. Hopefully. But, then again, Tohma thought that having naturally violet eyes was impossible too, in theory. Shuichi had violet eyes. Maybe Shuichi's pink hair was natural, and maybe Shuichi's violet eyes were natural.
Maybe Shuichi wore contacts. Maybe Shuichi dyed his hair.
Hopefully.
But then, the more Tohma looked, the more he noticed how natural it looked. Even professionally done, after a few dye jobs in succession, no one's hair would be able to withstand and retain its natural shine and softness. And yet, Shuichi's seemed to have done just that. Not to mention that even up close, Tohma could not find the circular line of the edge of the contact around the outer rim of Shuichi's iris. It was quite disconcerting.
He had looked into Shuichi's eyes several times that evening, searching for that line, but of course wearing an expression that would hide his true intentions of finding such a line. Whenever Shuichi would look at him, Tohma would smile at him kindly, with his eyes open, of course, but Shuichi always looked away with a frown before Tohma could confirm the absence of contacts.
"There's no point in blaming me," Tohma said, leaning back onto the hotel mattress and crossing his arms behind his head. "I had nothing to do with that."
Shuichi continued to pout in response.
"In fact, you really shouldn't blame me, seeing as though I'm the one paying for this room," Tohma added. He smiled as he looked at the ceiling of the wonderfully lavished room of such a grand hotel—not that the ceiling was well-decorated, being just a plain white since generally one does not look up at the ceiling and therefore there is no point in decorating it, but just knowing how much money he had spent on this room was enough to be able to tell how wonderful it was. Something to brag about, at least.
"You could have stopped him," Shuichi grumbled into his knees, which were pulled tightly into his chest. "He said so."
Tohma laughed cynically. "I'm sure you could have stopped him as well, Shindo-san. If I recall, you really didn't do much to make him aware of your discomfort."
"Normally people don't do that."
"Normally people don't do anything that Ryuichi-san does."
Shuichi spun around and glared at Tohma, the latter of which taking his chance to once again smile as he searched for the hint of contact lenses. Once again, he was able to confirm nothing before Shuichi closed his eyes and buried his face into his knees again. "Why are you being so mean?" he mumbled.
"I'm not being mean," Tohma replied casually, looking back at the ceiling. "You're just looking for someone to tack your problems onto."
"See? You're being mean!" Shuichi cried. "Besides, Ryuichi was acting like he's played that game with you a lot. You knew how to stop him."
Tohma sighed inaudibly and rolled his eyes. "And you could have stopped him as well, and yet you just stood there," he retorted, accenting each syllable to demonstrate his irritation.
"Normally people don't do that."
"Shindo-san, you're talking in circles," Tohma said. He rolled over to his side and rested his head on his elbow as he stared at the pink hair that still looked quite natural.
Shuichi moaned. "Yuki hates me…"
I really hope so, Tohma thought as a cruel smirk touched his lips, though he forced it away just as Shuichi lifted his head from behind his knees. His face was now red, presumably from lack of oxygen as encountered when in a fetal position, and his eyes were gathering tears rapidly. Tohma wondered if contacts would fall out if one cried enough, though he wasn't entirely certain that was a good method. Of course, he knew quite a bit about contacts, being a user himself because he personally thought glasses were just so unstylish, though he couldn't even remember the last time he had cried, so he couldn't be sure.
Shuichi was staring at him tearfully. Tohma only realized this a few moments later, and then began to think of a course of action to take to get Shuichi to stop staring at him. His first realization was that Shuichi was expecting some sort of answer from him, which led Tohma to begin trying to remember what Shuichi had last said. Apparently he took too long, seeing as though Shuichi had burst into tears before he could remember.
"YOU'RE SO MEAN!!!" Shuichi cried in a screechy voice so annoying that Tohma predicted this would show up on his bill the next morning. Tohma slowly pushed himself into a sitting position and stared at Shuichi with a sinister smile.
"Let me guess for a moment, Shindo-san. Today, Ryuichi took you to my office because you told him that you had a crush on me, and he told you that he'd be able to tell you if I liked you back." He paused, sadistically drinking the sight of Shuichi's horrified expression, using all his self-control to stop himself from laughing. "Listen, whatever Ryuichi told you, I do not like you back."
Shuichi's horrified expression worsened; his face paled, and he looked on the brink of fainting, though his locked elbows refused to let him fall. Therefore, he stayed awake and choked out a few more words. "Then, that was all for nothing. I lost Yuki…for nothing?"
Tohma shrugged. "Well, at least you know for certain that I don't like you."
He dropped down onto his back again and closed his eyes, smiling faintly, though he soon jolted up again when something smacked him right on the face, seeming to crush his nose straight down against his skull. On instinct, he reached up to his nose to make sure it wasn't bleeding, and upon confirming that it was not, he proceeded to investigate his surroundings to discover the culprit that had caused him such pain. It only took a few seconds for him to notice the pillow lying halfway on the floor, with the other half leaning against the side of his bed, looking suspiciously like it had fallen there. Tohma then glanced at Shuichi, whom was glaring at him as menacingly as possible with Shuichi.
Tohma glared back for a few seconds before snatching up the pillow and hurling it at Shuichi with all his might. Of course, his aim was a spot on target, and Shuichi intercepted it with a high-pitched yelp. Because his reaction time was so slow, however, Shuichi was unable to throw his arms up in time to protect his face, and instead threw his entire body backwards to minimize the shock, though being the idiot he was, he had forgotten to consider that he was not safely on the ground and instead went flying off the bed to end up sprawled across the floor with the pillow gently resting on his right shoulder. Tohma was soon on top of him, straddling his waist and pinning his shoulders to the floor with his hands, very much similar to the way Ryuichi had pinned him earlier that day. Realizing that he was now trapped, Shuichi stared up at Tohma in defeat.
After a few minutes of no response from Tohma, however, Shuichi's defeated stare fell into a worried frown. He did not like the way Tohma was looking at him. It seemed as though Tohma knew very well what kind of a position they were in. Shuichi found himself whimpering as Tohma began to lean closer and closer until their lips were merely a few centimeters apart. He probably would have continued his descent, too, had not Shuichi screamed out again.
"Naa!!! You just said—you just said—you just said—!!!" He couldn't think of how to finish that sentence, so he left it off with that. Of course, to his dismay, Tohma's sadistic smile only widened.
"Forget it," Tohma said as he roughly grabbed Shuichi's collar and forced him onto the bed. Once again, Shuichi felt the few buttons that remained on his shirt being ripped off, and he found himself thinking of a certain comment Yuki had given him earlier that day.
"Go out and screw Tohma for all I care!"
Shuichi had not thought of it as a suggestion before.
========
Yuki took a sip from his coffee mug as he lazily set the newspaper down on the couch before swinging around quickly when he heard his name shrieked at him from behind. Normally, he would have just ignored any sort of mention of his name, be it a whisper, a call, a mock, or a shriek, though he was quite unaccustomed to his name being shrieked inside his apartment. He turned and focused on an object flying towards his head just in time, but of course so as not to lose his cool demeanor, not to mention to avoid spilling his coffee, he forced himself to casually sidestep rather than jump out of the way as his instincts dictated. Not that it mattered—he doubted the object would have hit him even if he had just remained stationary, judging by the way the object collided with the lamp on the coffee table that was quite a distance to his left.
Stepping up to the said coffee table and carefully lifting the lamp, he found himself relieved that it was not broken, not because it was expensive or of any sentimental value, but if it had broken he would have had to put forth the energy to go to the store to buy a new one—a task which he would not take pleasantly. Upon further inspection of the area, Yuki was finally able to confirm what the flying object had been; his copy of his book Cool, which in turn gathered enough of his curiosity to allow him to exert the energy to turn and look towards the direction in which the said book had come from. To no surprise, there stood Sakuma Ryuichi, looking as much like a seven-year-old as ever, though Yuki noted there were dark bags under his eyes, not to mention his hair was ruffled and he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, except the backpack clinging to his shoulders was a new addition to his attire.
"It's a stupid book!" Ryuichi stated emphatically.
Yuki lifted an eyebrow as he took a sip from his coffee mug. After he finished, he lowered the mug and took a breath, trying to prolong his response in an attempt to infuriate Ryuichi. "And, tell me, did you spend all night trying to read it?"
Ryuichi pulled his lips into a small frown and nodded.
"And did you finish it?" Yuki asked. He took another sip from his coffee to keep himself from smiling when he noticed the distant look Ryuichi's eyes took on for a brief second. "Didn't think so."
"I didn't finish it 'cause it was so stupid," Ryuichi said. He swung his backpack off his shoulders with a spastic jerk of his body, and it hit the ground with a dull thud. Yuki once again raised his eyebrow as Ryuichi pulled open the zipper, revealing a multitude of books, including a dictionary, a kanji dictionary, a Japanese-English dictionary, a Japanese-Chinese dictionary, and a Japanese-French dictionary, all of which Yuki realized were the exact same editions that he had in his collection. Curiously, he eyed the bottom shelf of his bookcase, and sure enough, all his dictionaries were gone.
"When exactly did you take all this?" Yuki asked absently, gazing at the stack of books in awe.
Ryuichi promptly ignored him as he continued. "You're a bad writer. Books are supposed to be fun to read. They're not supposed to be hard. Like TV. I couldn't understand half of this book. Besides, it wasn't about anything good, either, like ponies or bunnies or puppies. It was just about these two people. It wasn't anything special. I could write about two people too. And there were too many big words. And too much kanji. It took too much thought to read."
"You know," Yuki interjected lazily in the short break of Ryuichi's explanation, "most people think that books are better when one has to think to read it."
"Who thinks that?" Ryuichi asked rhetorically. He rolled his eyes. "Only stupid people like you."
Yuki took a sip from his mug, musing silently. That, he believed, was the first time he had been called stupid since he had started his writing career. Not only that, but it was also the first time his book had been criticized to his face; most people either cried about how great he was or just didn't have enough guts to tell him what they really thought. He couldn't imagine that everyone he stumbled across on the streets liked his books, and as for critics…well, critics were pathetic ignoramuses that flamed everything they read because only the negative critics were the ones that were read, and only the ones that were read were the ones that got paid.
As for Ryuichi's critique, at least it was coming from the heart, no matter how unintelligent it was. Yuki sat down on the couch, setting his coffee mug down on the table, and opened his mouth to say something when he realized that Ryuichi had resumed talking. Yuki hadn't even realized that he had tuned him out in the first place.
"…And the things that those people did together, it was gross. First of all, who really does those things? It's gross. And who likes to read that stuff? It's really, really, really gross. And even if there was some weird reason for them to do something like that, did you really have to go into sooooooo much detail? I mean, I really didn't need to know that much!" He made a sour face. "It was really, really, really, really—"
"If you want to use my shower," Yuki interrupted, looking over towards the bookcase irritably, "you can."
Ryuichi looked reluctant, though when his hand ran through his greasy hair, a hint of resolve entered his eyes, and he scampered off down the back hallway, seeming to magically know where the shower was located. Yuki vaguely wondered how the singer knew his way around so well, but he soon realized it must have been because of Shuichi. After what he had walked in on in Tohma's office the previous day had made him doubtful of Shuichi's 'undying loyalty' to him, and seeing as though Ryuichi had been a part of that whole incident, Yuki didn't see any fault in assuming that Ryuichi must have come to his apartment a lot when he was not in.
Speaking of which, Yuki found himself wondering just how Ryuichi had gotten into his apartment this time. He was pretty sure that he had locked the door that morning after he had gotten his newspaper, meaning that Ryuichi would have to have had a key, though he couldn't have gotten it from Shuichi seeing as though Yuki had reclaimed that one.
Yuki raised thoughtful eyes up the small rack of hooks nailed up next to the front door where he had kept a spare key for Shuichi before since Shuichi had always managed to lose his. Yuki smiled as he let out an amused sigh upon seeing the hook empty.
Yet another thing Ryuichi had taken on his way out the previous night. For all his so-called stupidity, Yuki couldn't help but admit that the man was thorough. Yuki stood up and was about to enter the back hallway when he heard the water of the shower start, and instead he sat down on the couch and picked up the newspaper, listening closely for the water to stop. He would have to be sure to get that key back before Ryuichi left.
Just so he wouldn't be able to come back.
TBC
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Notes: Nope. None. No notes, sorry.
Well, maybe a few. First of all, suggestions are still welcome on anything really, though I'm not guaranteeing that I'll take all of them. That would be quite impossible in some cases, especially if I get a lot.
Nya, give me more relationship suggestions especially! I still dunno whose gonna end up with who, and suggestions or requests might help. Not to mention that I love to see which pairings are the most popular…
So, am I getting back to the humor, as originally intended? Or did that extra hour of sleep last night do nothing for me?
So Tohma and Shuichi finally got together…literally… No lemons for you. Don't you know that the acidic properties of lemon juice cause your tooth enamel to deteriorate? My Grammy made me stop eating raw lemons when I was about ten because she was worried about my teeth… Sorry, I got a lemon request…a long time ago…but I'm gonna leave the lemon out because I think it would take away from this story more than it would add. Not only that, but I'm also not that great at writing lemons, especially in a 'humor' story. Besides, I like PG-13 stories better than R because it's on the first page, and if you're anything like me, you're much too lazy to go to the Rating: All page, so…yeah… And I'd hate to destroy the enamel on you peoples' teeth.
Quite a few notes for no notes, ne?
Until next time.
Cassi
