(Old Friends – 15)
Time moved by slowly for the cast and crew of the Manga. But for Erica it seemed to move all to quickly. While she had shared a couple of kisses with Ryuichi, little else seemed to have changed between them, and neither of them had said the words. That they were together or dating or anything like that. It was infuriating. Neither one of them really knew what the other was thinking.
Things were getting tense though. Tohma had been stricken ill. It was like he had the flu, but no one else around him seemed to get it. Eiri, who was growing more and more impatient with people seemed to think it was due to stress. And made it more than clear that the he was sure the stress came from whatever it had been that Erica had asked him not to talk about. Tohma seemed to Eiri like he was trying to just forget about going home. Talking about buying a house here and settling in for a while.
Whenever Eiri asked him to talk to him further about it he dodged it or blatantly told him no.
Eiri had been drinking a lot. Erica did find out that the reason he hadn't been eating was because she was cooking, and she had a habit of making really spicy foods. He confessed to her that the reason that he didn't eat it was simply because he had a bleeding ulcer and that it might start to act up, causing him extreme pain should he eat anything spicy.
"I know about ulcer's." Erica said. Her and Eiri were sitting in the kitchen while she was making tacos, Ryuichi and Shuiichi were in the living room with Amy playing Super Mario Brothers, which had become the favorite past time in the hotel room. Tohma had been up and moving earlier, but he was so worn out that he had gone back to bed. "If you have a bleeding ulcer, you shouldn't be drinking coffee or beer either."
"Well see the problem is, that I eat bland foods because I have an ulcer, I drink because I am an alcoholic." Erica didn't really know what to think of that as Eiri cracked another beer.
"Maybe you shouldn't drink." She said. Eiri responded with a role of his eyes and a heavy sigh.
"Maybe. But then again, if I wanted a mother, I would go and find mine." Eiri said walking out of the room.
It was like he was a completely different person. He had fallen into the hold habits of taking a lot out on Shuiichi, and Erica did her best to stand up for him, but Eiri had a million reasons why he deserved it, and Shuiichi was willing to take it, so what could she do.
Ryuichi was getting progressively more hyperactive. He was bored. Nothing to do and no one to do it with, he missed home but didn't know if he wanted to leave just yet.
Over all it seemed like the honeymoon was starting to wear off. Over the week they did what they always did. Go to school or work for Eiri. Erica did all her work. Shuiichi alone seemed completely beside himself and odd. Ryuichi hung out with his otaku and with Erica, but she still didn't know if she could officially call him her boyfriend yet.
The biggest benefit recently however was that she went to bed and woke up alone in it all week long.
"I'M BORED!" The little pink rabbit's head would stick up over the edge of the table. Erica looked over from her homework and giggled at it, knowing better than to call it Ryuichi.
"What do you want to do Kumagorou?" She asked, her hand coming over and rubbing over the rabbit's head.
"I don't know! Tohma said that Ryu can take his car!" He said, bouncing Kumagorou around like he was all happy.
"Where do you want to take it?" Erica asked.
"Anywhere but here." Ryuichi said finally, letting the rabbit drop and standing up to his full height, the childish hyperactivity vanishing. "I'm sick and tired of just sitting around up here. Tohma says once he gets over this cold that he is going to get a house and we can have a lot more to do. But Eiri doesn't want that, he wants Tohma to get us back to Japan, so they have been fighting a lot. I just wanna get away. You wanna get away?"
"Actually… yeah." She said softly hanging her head. "I know we can go visit my friends in the town I used to live in! I haven't been back there in almost five years now!"
"Friends!" Ryuichi gasped.
"Yup!"
"YAY!" He bounced forward and kissed her dead on the lips before bounding out of the room. She would stand there and blush some, again the thoughts of where she stood rolling through her mind. Eiri thought that Ryuichi was too oblivious to notice that he hadn't actually asked her out, Shuiichi seemed to be on the same mind frame as Eiri.
"Are you going out?" Tohma asked, he was wrapped up in a bathrobe and looked like hell. For a moment even Erica felt sorry for him. He would let his eyes close slowly, coughing a bit.
"Yeah. We are going to go see some of Erica's friends!" Ryuichi said smiling. "You said I could take your car! Can I can I?"
"Of course, I am a man of my word." Tohma said surrendering the keys to Ryuichi.
Erica and Ryuichi moved down the stairs and to the garage. Ryuichi set Mr. Bear up on the dashboard with a cute little sign around his neck that said co pilot. Erica buckled herself into the car. At one point Tohma had told her never to let Ryuichi drive. He must've really wanted to get them out of the house. Who knew? But she was surprised to see that he actually drove very well. She smiled just watching him as the radio blasted Glaring Dream from the CD that she had burned. Ryuichi sang along as they drove.
It took them a very short time to get from where they were to where they were going. Fifteen minutes from one bridge to the other, seeing as there was a large bridge in both places. He would slow, pulling around the rotary (A road that goes around in a circle to alleviate the traffic from an intersection), Erica told him which exit to get off of and he would pull down into a place affectionately coined 'the park'.
Most of the day was spent moving from house to house down there. Starting with those closest to where their old apartment had been, and moving on to those further away.
Erica was glad to see that Ryuichi didn't mind being dragged along. Honestly it was kind of fun, he hadn't been out and about and not getting mobbed since Nittle Grasper hit the big time.
Finally settling in on one of her friend's porches, Ryuichi bounced around talking to random people while Erica kibitzed with her friends. They were all happy to see her, and very few of them actually knew what to think of Ryuichi.
One of her friends, well he was never really her friend but more like a friend of a friend, Bastian was there. He was like the kids at school, didn't have a nice thing to say about Ryuichi or Erica for that matter. But for the most part Ryuichi just let it slide off his back like water off a duck. It wasn't until Erica stood up for him that Ryuichi lost his patience.
"Can't you just leave him alone!" Erica growled. "He's not gay…"
"How do you know?" Bastian taunted. "What are you fucking him?"
A lot of the kids laughed as Bastian made a gesture like he was humping the side of Tohma's car. Ryuichi just stood there blinking, wide eyed. A moment he had been singing Life Styles of the Rich and the Famous by Good Charlotte because it had been on in the car and everyone so far liked listening to him sing, even if his English singing voice was more accented than his English speaking voice.
"It's not a big deal Erica." Ryuichi said grabbing her shoulder. Honestly people always thought he was gay, it was because he was bouncy and flamboyant and because of Mr. Bear, and he knew it.
"It is! I am sick of people picking on you just because you are different!" Erica growled turning her gaze back to Bastian.
"Yeah, well prove it! If it bothers you that much!" Bastian said. "Tell us how good he is in bed?"
Again there was a flurry of nervous laughter. They couldn't tell how far this was going to go.
"I haven't slept with him!" Erica growled.
"Point made. Hell if he won't touch a slut like you!" Where did everyone get off calling her that! She was a virgin! Apparently these people didn't know the meaning of the word 'slut'.
"Hey!" Ryuichi growled looking at him, those wide eyes narrowing. "That wasn't very nice, I think you should apologize."
"Right… like I am going to listen to a faggot like you!" Bastian growled.
"I am not a slut!" She said, her hand coming clean across Bastian's face. As if on instinct her hand met his cheek and his hand, moments later, met hers. She stumbled back clutching her face glaring at him. She would have gone after him but Ryuichi moved in.
"Never hit a woman!" He growled, hands quickly meeting with Bastian's shoulders and his knee would come up into his crotch. Bastian's eyes went wide as he slowly sank to his knees. His friends grabbed him and pulled him out of there. In a moment Ryuichi was next to Erica. "Are you all right? That was dumb, don't get yourself hurt because of me."
"He was wrong. You shouldn't let him talk about you like that." She sobbed, her face stung bad and she was sure that it would bruise.
"It is only air. It doesn't mean anything unless you let it." He said softly, running his fingers through her hair, he would softly kiss the side of her head. "Its just air."
"Ryu?" Erica said. He looked down at her as if to ask 'what?' "Will you sing for me."
He smiled and nodded, getting her back up on her friend Tim's porch. He would go back to singing for a while. He had started really like Linkin Park, which was Erica's favorite band; she always had something of theirs to listen to. Realizing how much like Eiri some of the songs actually sounded. Breaking the Habit. Numb. In the End. And so forth. He ended with a very angry rendition of My Chemical Romance's I'm Not OK. With the line you said you read my like a book, but the pages all torn and frayed! Still ringing in her mind, Erica wondered if he knew or not. He didn't say anything about it then if he did.
Erica seemed upset the whole ride home. She didn't know if she should tell him about it, after hearing him fall completely into the rage of I'm Not Ok she thought he might've known already.
"Are you alright?" He asked looking over at her.
"Yeah, I guess I'm fine." She said. "You were scary back there."
"Sorry." He said vacantly as he pulled out onto the highway. "I didn't mean to be."
"Why were you so mad?" She asked, trying to get a feeling for what was going on. He just shook his head.
"I know. Na No Da?" He said gently some time later, rousing her from her thoughts.
"You know?" It took her a minute for the horror to settle in.
"Tohma knows too." He said.
"Did Tohma tell…" She gasped.
"No." He said softly. "I found out when you were talking to your mother in the morning the first night Eiri was here. I was bored so I started reading your Inu Yasha Manga, then I noticed something I have never seen before, and I read it. I read all of them."
"Ryu… I'm…" She started.
"Don't say you're sorry. Because than you would be sorry for us having come here, and if we didn't come here, I never would've met you." Ryuichi said looking over at her and then back to the road.
"I am not sorry about that at all. I don't think life for me will ever be the same again." She confessed.
"Me either." He said smiling. She couldn't help but smile back at him.
"So we are ok right?" She asked.
"Yeah. We are just fine. I knew from almost the get go. So there is no reason why things have to change between us now. I mean. I knew when we started to get involved. That's why I didn't say anything about my feelings before that. Because I didn't want to get your hopes up and then vanish on you…"
She didn't know what to say, so she didn't. He slipped his hand of the shift and rested it on her leg for a moment, just to be reassuring and then, when he had to shift again, he moved it away.
"So… yeah. We are just fine."
