Wordless Exposition
Disclaimer: I don't own SD boys, Inoue does. The events that follow are not included in the original plot but enjoy anyway.
Summary: One look betrays the rest. One shot. RuMitRu
A/N: Just a total nonsense with a blah blah plot, you know, a little variation of the cliché; tommyrots, yeah. I feel like writing anyway; I haven't done that in quite a while now. Just enjoy, read, and if you want, comment on it.
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It was more basic than puppy love. He figured it out immediately despite being juvenile on his analysis. Admiration, wasn't it? He had felt that before; sometimes in a short while, sometimes long enough to keep him crazy. At any rate, such things happened on a temporary basis, temporary being widely defined as something less than forever. It could last a month, it could last a decade, who the hell knows?
But with him, everything came too suddenly and it didn't positively feel that it would ever stop at one point. And that should've never happened. When before he'd have needed to detect a certain kind of perfection in someone (and it could be anyone) before he could confirm his feelings (and you bet it's a long and tedious process), now all he had to do was to look straight at him, capitulate so tamely and say, 'Eureka! I have found the one.' And what was odder, what was far, far odder is that Kaede Rukawa wasn't perfect. He couldn't be. He was nothing like Mari Su, the captain of Shohoku Cheering Squad who was also the school's valedictorian, who fiddled with boys' feelings as if they were rubber toys, who turned the whole Slam Dunk world into a glamorous and pestilential cliché. Rukawa was just a boy with excessively limited self-disclosure, whose core of mind Mitsui never had access to. He was a very difficult person; he had built fences around him that were immovable and high, and Mitsui could only hope to jump over them.
In the realm of theoretical possibilities, Hisashi Mitsui's sexuality should've been fairly safe, shouldn't have been compromised no matter fucking what. He was born a man (probably even with an overwhelming count of male hormones), raised like one and fated to die like one. But things do happen against infinite odds, and in spite of how extreme they measure in the weirdometer. Like 'falling' for the same sex, and it hits like a catastrophe; so much so it could sweep you by surfuckingprise the way Mitsui was.
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Yawning was not to be made illegal. Should this antediluvian educator in front of him send him out, he would miss another crushing bore of a lecture; yet it would amount to much the same thing as he never quite listened to everything this old male bitch said. Maybe for the fifth time or sixth, or even for the final time, this day was a mere replay of that. Fuck it. Just fuck it, okay? The last time the wimp went hostile on him wasn't very long ago; it must've been just two days since he was caught—what was he doing then?—Oh, looking lethargic. Funny he should be when the whole classroom offered less excitement than a funeral parlor.
He began scribbling down interesting hokum on his notebook, doing it with an instinctive approach and without much thinking. Anyway, it was better than opening an ear at something he'd rather not hear, ever. It passed unnoticed until the teacher blared.
Out, Mr. Mitsui. Didn't I tell you that taking down notes while I'm talking is a no-no? Out of my sight, you ugsome---
He didn't let him finish; he hated to hear him weaseling out archaic words at him. He loosed himself to the liberty of the corridor and walked, mused, until he finally started fantasizing about Rukawa in his subconscious domain. When something snapped inside him, he was more than shocked to discover the traces of his delusions. What he had been thinking about was an arrant continuation of his activity back there in the classroom. He opened his notebook and found words he never thought he'd write. A letter, a full account of the nature of his feelings for Rukawa, bounced back his eyes. This was the interesting hokum he was up to. It was this accident/weakness—whatever it was—that stirred his concentration for the game into a constant crumbling of anything good, bad…just everything. But which were bad things and which were not? Was attraction bad? It wasn't. Was attraction towards a team mate a nasty thing? It seemed far from that. Of the same sex? Could be. He just lacked the criterion to come up with a sound conclusion; fathoming his situation and its entirety was definitely harder than he thought.
He went to the restroom. He felt a bizarre and urgent need to see his reflection on the mirror. Not because he cared what others might see in his physical state now which he surmised to be a little haggard, but just because the mere need and desire were present. He took a peep and saw a mammoth distance from his supposed self and to that one in the mirror; he looked breathless, airy and knocked out. His cheeks seemed firm and upon closer inspection, his whole face seemed rigid, probably stiffened by the owner's vanity. He paused expressionlessly when someone shuffled into sight. A tall and white skinned someone. Mitsui frowned as his eyebrows morphed into a flummoxed curl. He spun around to see Rukawa's back on him.
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Gone and nowhere to be found were the days he had pined for Hanamichi Sakuragi, as if the center of gravity that held him attached to the read-head had left and went somewhere else. An old fashioned description would have gone similarly if Rukawa's heart was to be opened. Used to be that he would ache unceasingly because of that, and night was the only time he could find solution to this strange disease, as he secretly named it. He would think of him then until it pushed him to insomnia where fantasies were replaced by distress; and in the grey area between the 2, he felt the unhealthiness of this habit. He had truly had more than he bargained for in this stupid little crush stuff; He wouldn't sleep, he possibly couldn't. Not with the red head hottie's name circling around his mouth like a mantra and around his head like a halo. He tried, but sad to say failed, to cut off any receptacle that held his soft spot with Sakuragi. He hated to be so into Sakuragi, the bare thought nauseated him. But knowing what he hated didn't help to find out what he wanted, what he wanted in Sakuragi to be specific. He just liked him, the kind of attachment that couldn't be found in the vast sense of 'anything', hence he couldn't just possibly like Sakuragi because of anything. There must be something, and he laboriously kept searching for that something.
That is until he saw Mitsui. He knew prima facie what he wanted in him; everything. From the way he spoke to the pattern of his gaits. He was perfect. This should be enough. It was certainly minus the perplexities in Sakuragi's case; yeah, it was better this way though not good enough as to explain everything. Still, having the feel of sureness was a relief and soon, Sakuragi's name was severed from Rukawa's enclosed world to be replaced by Hisashi Mitsui.
Rukawa was free of his shell shock depression for a while when he still had the power to moderate his inner feelings for the senior, but as the days passed slowly, gently, and he continued to see more of Mitsui everyday, he went back to his former ill self. Mitsui was never the dream he could shrug off first thing in the morning as he yawned; the more Rukawa thought of him, the more he became sticky until he was the very cells that made up Rukawa's brain. Basketball practice was, no question, a great contributory factor to this derangement. Rukawa couldn't help admitting to himself that the senior was an excellent player and contrary to expectations, he didn't feel envious of Mitsui's talent. He felt admiration, awe, attraction, desire. He then started to write numerous, long anonymous letters for Mitsui; most of which narrated his insanity and the cause of it. But none of them were sent. He phoned Mitsui once, held one of the letters with the intention to read it to him in case they could talk; but when he heard Mitsui's voice on the speaker, he hurriedly slammed the thing down and felt the resultant sweat drops all over him. When he reread the letter he realized that it wouldn't do any justice to what he had for Mitsui. He should really give every letter he wrote to him. After that incident, Rukawa carried the letters in his bag everyday to school but without much success of getting them to their destination.
Rukawa could've taught himself to just ignore him during the early stages as he had with Sakuragi before, but Mitsui proved to be a stubborn case. How many times had Rukawa caught Mitsui looking at him? Once? Twice? The whole goddamn time? Rukawa would return a glance oftentimes, hoping to make out its meaning; and as soon as he started on it, Mitsui would turn away, seeming guilty as charged. If he didn't fucking look at me that way, I would be in a little more ease than in my fucked-up state of mind right now, if he didn't respond the way I wanted him to maybe there wasn't much to be sick of right now. Could it be...?
But any suspicion left much to be desired and additionally, it was a big 'if', a cousin to delusion.
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Rukawa looked outside. He couldn't sleep in this class, his insomniac fits held him from falling down. He could hear his English teacher babbling about some John Keats and Lord Byron. He tapped his pencil and the thought of writing another letter to Mitsui welled in him. He thought of what he was going to write only to be disappointed that he had revealed the whole of his soul to those letters already, thus writing another one would render him redundant.
He stood up, didn't even shoot a look at his professor, and slammed the door behind him. He forgot to provide an excuse; it would have been as easy as saying he needed to pee or maybe that was more than he had energy for. He felt lanky and dotty again as he headed to the men's washroom.
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For once they didn't have anything to say to each other. Mitsui would normally say 'hi' and Rukawa would give a nod back then, but now that formality seemed to want to be erased with a little more intimate gesture. Like a high five or something like that, stupid as it sounds. Mitsui tried to smile but it fell off as an offer the other pretended not to see. Rukawa looked straight at him. His stare was expressionless but the mere fact that he'd look at the senior presented so many meanings. Mitsui stood electrified, silent, thinking of reality. Was this really happening? When does unreality stop and when does reality start, in here, between Rukawa and I?
The silence flowed to the brim like excess water oozing from a glass. No conversation was struck up, no contact was made; only an exchange of look that could hardly amount to a talk tête-à-tête.
Mitsui stepped forward, determined to break the silence.
'Rukawa,'
Rukawa was as static as a photograph image, Mitsui observed.
'I know.'
Mitsui nodded. No long-winded explanation could have sufficed it better than those 2 words. Rukawa knew and that was what supremely mattered. It was wonderful.
Rukawa smiled for the first time. There'd be no need to hand Mitsui those letters; they'd better be cremated and things, his love for instance, were better left unstated. Mitsui understood and that was all that counted. It was wonderful, too.
They left the washroom, learning that words do not always come in handy.
END