It's crack. I love it. Written for the LJ rewards challenge comm ficnpic. Go. Join. This is a bit of my old style, which perhaps my older readers will appreciate. Lack of quotation marks, anyone?
Wings
He wasn't really sure how he had gotten there, to this crazy club-party where half the patrons were basketball players. It was after a tournament and usually he was off for a cool-down run at around this time - not dressed up for a night of shameless virtical sex in a hot and shaking club.
He watched the people move around him towards the dance floor, shouting and laughing above the pounding music.
Although, it must certainly use as much energy to be dancing here for a few hours.
There was a table seated with the coach from the Kouzu team, whom he nodded at respectfully before noticing a strange looking guy sitting on the edge of the bench. He was leaning back against the cushions, looking cool and bored, flicking a pocketknife open and shut again.
Who are you? he couldn't help but ask, and the eyes of the teen flickered over his body, sizing him up.
The guitarist was his answer, along with a smirk, as if those eyes had found out something that he didn't know about himself.
That was the challenge.
---
You smoke?
He was offered a half-full package of cigarettes after one was tapped out and placed between two pursed lips.
He produced a negative, reciting the obvious health risks on rote. Instead, he watched long, thin fingers cup around a lighter's flame, then hold the cylinder just so.
If ever he was going to start smoking, now would probably be the time, he knew. There was just something so alluring, so purely sexual about this guy that he couldn't take his eyes off him.
It was cooler, out here, in the smoggy air of the city which practically made breathing just as bad as smoking. He stuck his hands in his pockets and then removed them again. He wanted a basketball in his hands, all of a sudden. Something to prove he wasn't so inferior to this cold bastard.
The challenge was received.
---
He got the invitation from his younger brother, who had grudgingly admitted that the band was rather good.
Now that he was here, listening to another group, he wasn't quite sure why he had accepted and why he had taken so much care in picking out an outfit.
He brushed some hair out of his face and watched as the lights lowered and then came up again.
And there he was. All quiet poise and elegant lines, some sort of subtle form of rock and roll. He noticed, for the first time that in one ear was a spiraling black earring like a fang.
I recently met this guy who inspired this song.
The voice cuts out over the clapping and cheering crowd like a most-favored knife and pierces his stomach. There is makeup on those eyelids, he thinks, but it's just a thought to get around realization the connection there, formed with their meeting of eyes.
He's a fucked up prick who has no sense of style, but I like him. So here we go.
My wings have now forgotten how to fly.
His younger brother has yet again proven his quality for understatement. They're better than good. Maybe it's just the husky, yet clear quality of that voice or the sensual guitars or just everything combined and mixed, rushing into his head like crystal meth.
Because I always just pretended to flap.
If it is possible, he looks even more attractive up on stage, giving his heart to the music and shaping the sound to his will. He realizes that there must be millions of girls more than willing to fuck him. And, as usual, he is not one of the million. Somehow.
Is there a use for wings that cannot fly
He backs down.
---
After the set, he is back beside the stage, finding that guitar being put reverently into its case, laid to rest after an eventful evening abroad.
It was good, he tells him, finding himself unable to express the immensity of what he felt from that music.
Why, thank you, is his snide answer. Because of course I was worried about your opinion.
Well, you invited me, didn't you?
A shrug.
It was your song.
The emotions fall silent as the polite things take over. He offers to drive the guitar and guitarist home. The invitation is accepted. The car is mildly admired and subsequently started up.
They drive until he can't stand the thought any more that this genius person could misunderstand him so completely.
I'm not like that. What you said in your song.
Oh?
The voice sounds interested, curious, even. The window is rolled down and a cigarette lit.
I love basketball. It's my life. I wouldn't do all this for it if I didn't. Not even for my father.
A puff of smoke hovers in the air before being sucked out the window where lights are flashing by.
I apologize.
And he is envious of how it easily it is spoken.
I misunderstood you.
A shrug.
You seem like the kind of guy who feels necessary to do what they are told.
He reaches over irritably, pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, fingertips brushing moist lips, and flicks it out the window.
It's a dirty habit, he growls. It'll ruin your voice.
He thinks maybe he is blushing, staring out at the road, waiting for the light to change. Flowering road, indeed.
When he glances over to see what this crazy man is thinking, he is received by a luminous, vicious wolf-grin.
They stay up all night at his apartment, listening to records and arguing about theology.
Asakura Saki has a tattoo of a sharp-edged butterfly on his back.
Challenge completed.
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