Title: false star
Fandom: Gravitation
Theme: #13 - euthanasia
Pairing: Yuki Eiri x Shindou Shuichi
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Boys love each other, Eiri curses a lot. So does Shuichi, coincidentally, when he's pissed. Oh, and I set this story around a year after the end of the manga.
Summary: Sometimes a relationship is not about love.

Another night, another fight. Shuichi cries, Eiri scowls. The pizza is untouched and cold, and Shuichi bitterly thinks about the fact that he could say the same for himself. His cold fingers are clenching tightly, folding into the clammy sweat of his palms; he forces himself to calm his breathing into a semblance of normalcy. He never lets his eyes leave his lover's, preferring instead to pierce into his gaze--Eiri wonders, somewhat amusedly, if Shuichi is trying to literally kill him with a look. It works, partially, but Eiri is much too smart to ever let Shuichi know when he is genuinely hurting him.

"So what are you trying to say?" Shuichi spits out, his voice forceful and wavering at the same time. "Because if the almighty, God's-gift-to-every-woman Yuki is getting sick of his toy, I think his toy would like to know. Assuming that the toy even has feelings, of course."

Eiri groans, massages his temples, and breaks the glaring contest by closing his eyes. "Look, brat--Shuichi--"

"You don't even call me by my name as a default," Shuichi mutters, his eyes filling with tears. "Figures, seeing how easy it is for you to throw people away."

Eiri's eyes snap open, and his hand slaps the pizza off the table and face-down onto the floor. "It's so easy for you to feel sorry for yourself, isn't it," he sneers, inwardly stinging from Shuichi's words but refusing to back down. "My heartless bastard slut of a boyfriend, who could easily replace me with another hole. If that's what you want to think, go right on fucking ahead. If you want to kiss your own sorry ass whenever I tell you how I feel about shit, I'd be better off without you."

"It's so EASY for you to think I'm pathetic, isn't it? Would it really kill you to think better of me for once, Yuki? Is it that much of a stretch for you? Or is it easier for you to keep me wrapped around your finger when you beat my self-esteem into the ground?" Shuichi is sobbing, his vision filling with specs of light and watery color. "Is it easier to fuck me at your leisure, then push me away when I force you to feel?"

"What the fuck could you possibly know about how, or what, or even if you make me feel anything?" Eiri replies softly, his eyes glittering dangerously. "Just because I've tolerated you longer than everyone else--"

"Yuki, we've been living together for almost two years! Who the hell are you kidding?" Shuichi's eyes fall onto the fallen pizza, unable to meet Eiri's gaze. Suddenly, his voice becomes small and tired. "It...this... will never stop, will it?"

The blonde pauses, his angry retort dissolving in the face of Shuichi's revelation. "What are you talking about?"

Shuichi waves his hand over the pizza, the table, the kitchen, and the space between Eiri and him, before viciously wiping his eyes. "Us. This whole thing. Our relationship. I've been keeping track, you know... it's almost two years to the day I moved in. You'd think a healthy relationship would be past this point by now."

Eiri wants to laugh at the thought of his relationship with Shuichi being "healthy", but something keeps him from doing so. "You mean, you think smarter people would be done with this by now." His eyes become half-lidded as he pulls a cigarette from the breast pocket of his wrinkled shirt.

Shuichi suddenly kicks at the pizza on the floor, leaving a smear of tomato sauce on the hardwood. "I know, it's a stretch for me to think of myself as smart," he says, "at least, in your eyes." He looks up as Eiri lights his cigarette with a vengeance.

"It really is easier for you, especially when we fight, to let yourself think that I see you as a fucking idiot," he says drolly, cigarette smoke blowing through his teeth. "Well. Maybe I'm tired, or maybe your stupidity is rubbing off on me, but let me enlighten you on a few things."

"Oh, this should be good," Shuichi mutters, his eyes still overly bright. He crosses his arms over his bare chest and turns his gaze to the living room. Eiri stares at him, at the silhouette his body makes in the dim lighting, and holds the cigarette smoke in his lungs. His left eye twitches.

As he blows out the remainder of the smoke that his lungs choose not to absorb, he has no idea what he means to say. The minutes tick by loudly on a clock in the kitchen, and his cigarette burns out at the filter.

Shuichi still refuses to look at him, but Eiri can see the tears that begin to run down his face again. The guilt that he has been pushing away to the recesses of his mind attacks him in full force, and he throws the cigarette butt across the room in frustration. Shuichi scrunches his face and bows his head, stifling a sob as he breaks the thick silence.

"I should have known better than to hope you would say you see me as more than an easy fuck," he says softly, his hand covering his face. "Anyhow, I'm tired... I can't fight with you anymore, Yuki, I don't have the heart to." He pauses, then turns away. "You win. I'm going to bed."

Eiri stares dully at Shuichi's back, his throat numb with words that his pride won't allow him to voice. He wants to say: Shuichi, you're a fucking idiot, why would I fight against my past so desperately to be with you? Or perhaps: The reason I keep pushing you away, even after two years, even after I tell you that I love you, is because I'm the fucking idiot and I'm so scared of losing you that I can't let you in. His stomach is churning, and he wants to hurl.

I didn't want to win. I didn't want to fight. I don't even remember what we started fighting about. I did what I did because--

"--I didn't want to hurt you," Eiri says, his voice raspy and raw with emotion. Shuichi stops walking away, his frame becomes rigid.

"You, Uesugi Eiri," he says in a small, tight voice, "are a liar. I love you so much I can't breathe..." He exhales loudly, trying to compose himself. "I love you, and I want to believe that you don't want to hurt me. I do, I really do. Pathetic, isn't it? I'll be here tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and all the way until fucking eternity because of how I feel for you, and we both know it. But we both also know that we'll never stop getting into fights, and we'll never have a healthy relationship--by anyone else's standards, anyway--and we'll never stop hurting each other."

"Shuichi--" Eiri barely recognizes his voice and moves to grab his throat with a cold, numb hand.

"We'll never stop hurting each other. Don't lie to me like that, or I'll actually start to hope."

The words cut deep; Eiri finds his strength again and jumps out of his chair, knocking it backwards, before striding over the pizza and holding Shuichi to himself tightly. His arms tingle and nerves spark to life--he holds the singer rigidly, and cannot speak.

They stand in the darkened room for a long while before Shuichi turns around and screams into Eiri's chest, screams random strings of curses and incoherent wishes. After a few minutes, he pulls away to meet Eiri's gaze.

"I wish," he starts saying, trembling. Eiri can't meet his eyes, and closes his own.

"Me too," he says, his face pained. "I wish that, too."

end.

If you're curious, I have a draft of this story written on my fic LJ… so you can kind of see the ickiness I go through sometimes when getting from an idea to a story. Either way, I hope you enjoyed the final product—special thanks to my special beta, Vicki, for taking time out of her busy day to help me out!