A/N: Okay, the link to my illustration didn't show up at all last time.
Just because I'm a review whore, I'll post it here again in hopes it's
visible. Gotta love the
angsty Yuki. Well, part of this chapter was sort of requested...
Specifically, by KrissKittie, who has been a nicely faithful, extensive
reviewer. Oh, well, I'm letting reviews drive a lot of what happens in this
story. So, if you feel like manipulating the little universe herein, drop a
line.
"Shunichi... Shunichi, please, please wake up... Wake up... Wake up..." Yutaka slumped, sobbing, at the side of the bed. He didn't want Shunichi unplugged after all; he didn't care if he was selfishly prolonging the little vegetable's suffering; he just wanted his Shun-chan. Hiroshi had stormed off to scream at Shun's parents, leaving him alone. Tremblingly, he lifted Shunichi's cold fingers to his lips, whispered his goodbye in four different languages- none of them Japanese- and slowly backed out of the room. His thoughts lingered briefly on one last dream of his lover, then shot to the switchblade knife in his coat pocket.
Some odd compassion drove him to park away from any schools or parks, in the red-light district of town. No one else needed a nasty shock out of this. He was struck by a sweet, highly poetic image of a baptism of blood for the holy ground that had held a vibrant, laughing Shunichi weeks before. Unable to help himself, he scrawled a few lines of what might have turned into his best poem on the notepad he kept on the dashboard for just such occasions.
He tested the knife on his finger. Blood spilled onto his lap, a lot for such a small wound. He judged the amount of liquid about even with the tears he'd shed in the first minute after hearing about Shun-chan.
About what was entirely his fault.
About how Shunichi had fought with his parents over is decision to move in with his MALE lover, how his last words to his family had been a shrill "I hate you!" About how he'd blindly rushed into the pitch black, sleety night, straight in front of a delivery truck. That happened to carry a shipment of Yutaka's latest poetry collection.
"Damn irony..." Well, he was about to add some of his own. He'd taken one of the strings from Shunichi's piano and made a noose of it. It would probably break, and he was really relying on the slit veins to do the job, but the symbolism screamed. They'd send each other to the afterlife, and gods help anyone who tried to interfere with their happiness then.
AND THEN SUDDENLY EIRI TURNED AROUND, DECIDED HE WAS BEING SILLY, AND WENT BACK TO LIVING.
AND THEN HE SLUGGED HIS DAMN SISTER AND ASKED HOW SHE GOT INTO HIS HOUSE AND WHY SHE TYPES IN ALL CAPS OVER PEOPLE'S SHOULDERS.
Mika glared at him. "Eiri..."
"Well, you know my name, I'll give you that." He swung around in his chair. "Why does everybody seem to think they can break into my house?"
"You haven't changed your locks for a while, for one thing." She dragged Shuichi's chair out of the corner, and pointedly declined to notice when Yuki bristled. "Wading through the beer cans and cigarette butts was harder than the breaking and entering."
"I should add alligators." He dropped his cigarette in the BAD LUCK ashtray next to his glass of combined coffee and beer. "Do you want something?"
She grabbed his hand in a vice grip. "It's not my wants. It's what you'll discover as needful to your health and sanity in a moment."
Yuki couldn't resist. "...Sounds kinky."
She managed to ignore him. "You're coming with me, right now. We're going back to my house, where Tohma and Tatsuha are waiting, and we're going to sort you out." When Yuki opened his mouth for a witty retort, she dragged him to his feet and out the door.
Yuki, feeling distinctly eight years old, allowed himself to be marched out to Mika's car. "Do you even have a job besides playing Tohma's gopher?" She didn't answer, so he sulked petulantly the whole way to their apartment. His instincts were to get out of this, and quickly, but Mika was rather too persistent for his taste.
Yuki still wasn't sure how he'd ended up in such a predicament when he and Mika entered her dining room, where Tohma was looking pristine and Tatsuha bored. He'd sort of half hoped Yori might be around, but she was probably busy zapping some innocent scrap of matter with beams of solid energy. Unable to squelch his basic stupidity, he ventured a weak one-liner. "Is this party for me?"
"Sit down, Eiri." Tohma's voice betrayed a slight particle of the worry his face never would have.
"I like standing." He slumped against the doorframe, trying to look like the cover illustration on the paperback release of Night With Mamoru, one of his worst insults to literature yet.
"Good, more strawberry shortcake for me." Tatsuha managed to withstand the Mika Death Glare™ that usually knocked Yuki off his feet. Yuki had a sense it would prove he was completely fucked up if he refused his favorite food, thus demonstrating just how lost he was in thinking there was anyone in the room who didn't know it.
"Eiri, we need to talk."
Yuki spoke around a mouthful of cake. "Okay, most truly beloved of brother- in-laws, we are now talking."
"Eiri!" Mika looked a little murderous. Nothing new on that end.
Tohma had always been rather better at putting up with Yuki's... Yukiness. "What, exactly, have you been doing with yourself the last two weeks?"
Two weeks? Yuki didn't find it all that surprising that he'd missed a few days. Probably drunk. "Writing, mostly. This novel's going longer than I thought it would."
"Oh, okay then." Tatsuha stood and stretched luxuriously. "Bye everybody, I—"A look from Mika sat him down again, where he sulked.
Two half-forgotten weeks before, Yuki surely would have noticed the uncharacteristic tenseness to Tohma's posture, that his knuckles and fingertips were white from gripping the table as an inconspicuous lifeline. "Is that all?"
"I saw Yori a few days ago." He forgot to appreciate his luck in that his most verifiable alibi wouldn't rat him out. He'd never get rid of his interfering family if his conversation with Yori came out. "And I've visited Shuichi a lot." One commonly had to force Tohma to the point.
"Yes, about that..." Tohma set his coffee down. "Has he improved any?"
"No." Yuki had been doing a fairly good job of not thinking about it except through Yutaka, but if this conversation continued he had a distinct sense he'd start crying. Dammit, not with Tohma here...
Mika spoke up imperially. "I found time to have a word with his doctor. There's relatively no chance for recovery at this point. In fact, his vitals have been falling off a little. The tabloids are going mad." Yuki hadn't known any of that, not having been able to bring himself to see Shuichi in... well, some undetermined while.
"Ah. Well, in that case..." Tohma's lips tightened and his gaze lowered. Even Yuki spotted the total insincerity in his apparent remorse. "Perhaps it's time to move on?"
Yuki decided he hadn't heard that.
Unaware that he hadn't spoken, therefore giving Yuki no reason to tear his throat out, Tohma continued. "I've made it no secret that I never approved of your little romance. You may have just been presented a convenient way out."
"You... You godamned fucking bastard!" Before Yuki knew what he was doing—though he probably wouldn't have made a different decision had he thought about it—he slugged Tohma across the jaw. Yuki's weeks living on painkillers, beer, and a few odd cups of undercooked instant ramen probably saved Tohma's life. As it was, his chair fell over backwards and he knocked into the wall only because it happened to be directly behind him, with not much more than a few bruises to worry about.
It probably would have been much worse if Tatsuha hadn't grabbed his wrists before Mika got between him and Tohma. He wouldn't have objected to mutilating his sister to get at her damned husband, but his sibling's combined efforts forced him into a chair, while Tohma stood back up, shaky but relatively unscathed.
Yuki managed to keep himself from strangling the bastard only by screaming. "What the hell would you know about it? You fucking, goddamned, jealous piece of worthless shit!"
"Yuki! Settle down!" Mika slapped him to reinforce the message. "Hear him out."
While Yuki seethed, muttering venomously, Tohma straightened himself out and managed to act like nothing had happened. "Eiri, I am only suggesting that you move on. It's, what, only about a year since you met Shuichi? There's nothing to stop you from readapting. In fact, you might use the opportunity to reassess your life in general. A reasonable period of mourning is understandable, as I can see there was some attachment. However, subjecting those who care about you to the worry you have been— Where are you going?"
Yuki stuck his head back through the doorframe for a second. "To shoot myself. I think it'll work better than an overdose, as long as I remember to lock my door."
Even Tohma couldn't wax stoic. "Eh... Eiri, you don't mean that..."
"Don't I?" Yuki stepped back into the room. "Listen, you pompous, self- righteous, self-serving ass, you don't know what you're talking about. I died when I was sixteen. Nothing you ever did changed that. Shuichi brought me back to life, and I don't have any reason to hold on to it without him. Understood? As for 'subjecting those who care about me' to worry... Bullshit, bullshit and you know it. You need people to need you; you thrive on adoration, gratitude, and outright homage. Tatsuha doesn't care about me any more than any of his drinking buddies, cheap fucks, or free meals. My father hates me. Mika likes being in control of things. I sign my editor's paychecks, and my fangirls wouldn't read the tripe I give them if the author was fifty, fat, and wore glasses. Shuichi was the only one who ever really cared about me, just me and unto myself. Nobody else is really going to be hurt. And that's the end of it."
As if he'd just delivered some casually cheerful announcement of a vacation, he waved and stepped out of the room, then broke into a dead run. He could hear all three of them calling after him frantically—and Tatsuha only sounded frantic when he sensed he wasn't going to get laid or win his hand at poker—as soon as the initial shock wore off. If Tohma had his way, Yuki realized, he'd see his brother-in-law locked up after a delivery like that.
Yuki had lost the presence of mind to take any preventative measures. He simply headed home. In very short order, Yutaka was dead.
A/N: One last beg that you look at my picture. As my friend put it, "Damn, that actually looks like him!" Well, anyway, end of pimping my artwork. On another note, can anyone really say, in their heart of hearts, that they didn't EVER want to see Seguichi Tohma slugged in the jaw? I thought so. Flame me if you feel obligated, but I needed that out of my system.
"Shunichi... Shunichi, please, please wake up... Wake up... Wake up..." Yutaka slumped, sobbing, at the side of the bed. He didn't want Shunichi unplugged after all; he didn't care if he was selfishly prolonging the little vegetable's suffering; he just wanted his Shun-chan. Hiroshi had stormed off to scream at Shun's parents, leaving him alone. Tremblingly, he lifted Shunichi's cold fingers to his lips, whispered his goodbye in four different languages- none of them Japanese- and slowly backed out of the room. His thoughts lingered briefly on one last dream of his lover, then shot to the switchblade knife in his coat pocket.
Some odd compassion drove him to park away from any schools or parks, in the red-light district of town. No one else needed a nasty shock out of this. He was struck by a sweet, highly poetic image of a baptism of blood for the holy ground that had held a vibrant, laughing Shunichi weeks before. Unable to help himself, he scrawled a few lines of what might have turned into his best poem on the notepad he kept on the dashboard for just such occasions.
He tested the knife on his finger. Blood spilled onto his lap, a lot for such a small wound. He judged the amount of liquid about even with the tears he'd shed in the first minute after hearing about Shun-chan.
About what was entirely his fault.
About how Shunichi had fought with his parents over is decision to move in with his MALE lover, how his last words to his family had been a shrill "I hate you!" About how he'd blindly rushed into the pitch black, sleety night, straight in front of a delivery truck. That happened to carry a shipment of Yutaka's latest poetry collection.
"Damn irony..." Well, he was about to add some of his own. He'd taken one of the strings from Shunichi's piano and made a noose of it. It would probably break, and he was really relying on the slit veins to do the job, but the symbolism screamed. They'd send each other to the afterlife, and gods help anyone who tried to interfere with their happiness then.
AND THEN SUDDENLY EIRI TURNED AROUND, DECIDED HE WAS BEING SILLY, AND WENT BACK TO LIVING.
AND THEN HE SLUGGED HIS DAMN SISTER AND ASKED HOW SHE GOT INTO HIS HOUSE AND WHY SHE TYPES IN ALL CAPS OVER PEOPLE'S SHOULDERS.
Mika glared at him. "Eiri..."
"Well, you know my name, I'll give you that." He swung around in his chair. "Why does everybody seem to think they can break into my house?"
"You haven't changed your locks for a while, for one thing." She dragged Shuichi's chair out of the corner, and pointedly declined to notice when Yuki bristled. "Wading through the beer cans and cigarette butts was harder than the breaking and entering."
"I should add alligators." He dropped his cigarette in the BAD LUCK ashtray next to his glass of combined coffee and beer. "Do you want something?"
She grabbed his hand in a vice grip. "It's not my wants. It's what you'll discover as needful to your health and sanity in a moment."
Yuki couldn't resist. "...Sounds kinky."
She managed to ignore him. "You're coming with me, right now. We're going back to my house, where Tohma and Tatsuha are waiting, and we're going to sort you out." When Yuki opened his mouth for a witty retort, she dragged him to his feet and out the door.
Yuki, feeling distinctly eight years old, allowed himself to be marched out to Mika's car. "Do you even have a job besides playing Tohma's gopher?" She didn't answer, so he sulked petulantly the whole way to their apartment. His instincts were to get out of this, and quickly, but Mika was rather too persistent for his taste.
Yuki still wasn't sure how he'd ended up in such a predicament when he and Mika entered her dining room, where Tohma was looking pristine and Tatsuha bored. He'd sort of half hoped Yori might be around, but she was probably busy zapping some innocent scrap of matter with beams of solid energy. Unable to squelch his basic stupidity, he ventured a weak one-liner. "Is this party for me?"
"Sit down, Eiri." Tohma's voice betrayed a slight particle of the worry his face never would have.
"I like standing." He slumped against the doorframe, trying to look like the cover illustration on the paperback release of Night With Mamoru, one of his worst insults to literature yet.
"Good, more strawberry shortcake for me." Tatsuha managed to withstand the Mika Death Glare™ that usually knocked Yuki off his feet. Yuki had a sense it would prove he was completely fucked up if he refused his favorite food, thus demonstrating just how lost he was in thinking there was anyone in the room who didn't know it.
"Eiri, we need to talk."
Yuki spoke around a mouthful of cake. "Okay, most truly beloved of brother- in-laws, we are now talking."
"Eiri!" Mika looked a little murderous. Nothing new on that end.
Tohma had always been rather better at putting up with Yuki's... Yukiness. "What, exactly, have you been doing with yourself the last two weeks?"
Two weeks? Yuki didn't find it all that surprising that he'd missed a few days. Probably drunk. "Writing, mostly. This novel's going longer than I thought it would."
"Oh, okay then." Tatsuha stood and stretched luxuriously. "Bye everybody, I—"A look from Mika sat him down again, where he sulked.
Two half-forgotten weeks before, Yuki surely would have noticed the uncharacteristic tenseness to Tohma's posture, that his knuckles and fingertips were white from gripping the table as an inconspicuous lifeline. "Is that all?"
"I saw Yori a few days ago." He forgot to appreciate his luck in that his most verifiable alibi wouldn't rat him out. He'd never get rid of his interfering family if his conversation with Yori came out. "And I've visited Shuichi a lot." One commonly had to force Tohma to the point.
"Yes, about that..." Tohma set his coffee down. "Has he improved any?"
"No." Yuki had been doing a fairly good job of not thinking about it except through Yutaka, but if this conversation continued he had a distinct sense he'd start crying. Dammit, not with Tohma here...
Mika spoke up imperially. "I found time to have a word with his doctor. There's relatively no chance for recovery at this point. In fact, his vitals have been falling off a little. The tabloids are going mad." Yuki hadn't known any of that, not having been able to bring himself to see Shuichi in... well, some undetermined while.
"Ah. Well, in that case..." Tohma's lips tightened and his gaze lowered. Even Yuki spotted the total insincerity in his apparent remorse. "Perhaps it's time to move on?"
Yuki decided he hadn't heard that.
Unaware that he hadn't spoken, therefore giving Yuki no reason to tear his throat out, Tohma continued. "I've made it no secret that I never approved of your little romance. You may have just been presented a convenient way out."
"You... You godamned fucking bastard!" Before Yuki knew what he was doing—though he probably wouldn't have made a different decision had he thought about it—he slugged Tohma across the jaw. Yuki's weeks living on painkillers, beer, and a few odd cups of undercooked instant ramen probably saved Tohma's life. As it was, his chair fell over backwards and he knocked into the wall only because it happened to be directly behind him, with not much more than a few bruises to worry about.
It probably would have been much worse if Tatsuha hadn't grabbed his wrists before Mika got between him and Tohma. He wouldn't have objected to mutilating his sister to get at her damned husband, but his sibling's combined efforts forced him into a chair, while Tohma stood back up, shaky but relatively unscathed.
Yuki managed to keep himself from strangling the bastard only by screaming. "What the hell would you know about it? You fucking, goddamned, jealous piece of worthless shit!"
"Yuki! Settle down!" Mika slapped him to reinforce the message. "Hear him out."
While Yuki seethed, muttering venomously, Tohma straightened himself out and managed to act like nothing had happened. "Eiri, I am only suggesting that you move on. It's, what, only about a year since you met Shuichi? There's nothing to stop you from readapting. In fact, you might use the opportunity to reassess your life in general. A reasonable period of mourning is understandable, as I can see there was some attachment. However, subjecting those who care about you to the worry you have been— Where are you going?"
Yuki stuck his head back through the doorframe for a second. "To shoot myself. I think it'll work better than an overdose, as long as I remember to lock my door."
Even Tohma couldn't wax stoic. "Eh... Eiri, you don't mean that..."
"Don't I?" Yuki stepped back into the room. "Listen, you pompous, self- righteous, self-serving ass, you don't know what you're talking about. I died when I was sixteen. Nothing you ever did changed that. Shuichi brought me back to life, and I don't have any reason to hold on to it without him. Understood? As for 'subjecting those who care about me' to worry... Bullshit, bullshit and you know it. You need people to need you; you thrive on adoration, gratitude, and outright homage. Tatsuha doesn't care about me any more than any of his drinking buddies, cheap fucks, or free meals. My father hates me. Mika likes being in control of things. I sign my editor's paychecks, and my fangirls wouldn't read the tripe I give them if the author was fifty, fat, and wore glasses. Shuichi was the only one who ever really cared about me, just me and unto myself. Nobody else is really going to be hurt. And that's the end of it."
As if he'd just delivered some casually cheerful announcement of a vacation, he waved and stepped out of the room, then broke into a dead run. He could hear all three of them calling after him frantically—and Tatsuha only sounded frantic when he sensed he wasn't going to get laid or win his hand at poker—as soon as the initial shock wore off. If Tohma had his way, Yuki realized, he'd see his brother-in-law locked up after a delivery like that.
Yuki had lost the presence of mind to take any preventative measures. He simply headed home. In very short order, Yutaka was dead.
A/N: One last beg that you look at my picture. As my friend put it, "Damn, that actually looks like him!" Well, anyway, end of pimping my artwork. On another note, can anyone really say, in their heart of hearts, that they didn't EVER want to see Seguichi Tohma slugged in the jaw? I thought so. Flame me if you feel obligated, but I needed that out of my system.
