I can't seem to write anything lately. Bah humbug. This is the best I've got. And the ending is so cheezy you could spread it on your bread, but whatever. Enjoy.
Organic
These days there were more nights spent crawling into bed, curling around each other, maybe with a book. More curling arms and lingering kisses, and fewer jump-tackles, flung pillows and randomly flying socked feet.
Hitonari drank coffee with lots of milk and a little sugar, Akane drank tea black.
There was more achingly long lovemaking than whimperingly hard sex, and sometimes they even went for walks.
In short, they had slowed down. Sure, they could have been concidered slow teenagers, compared to some of them. They had always preferred a nap in the sun to a party, the ocean to any other kind of music, a soft snowfall to confetti. But now, it seemed as though their pulse had slowed.
It was a far cry from when they had been caught and forcibly pulled out of the closet by a certain Yoshikawa Sumire. They should have expected it, and hadn't. It was just generally assumed that the guys knew not to stay overly long in the locker rooms after practice, because they were both up for a good grope after a hard practice.
They had been doing just that when she had knocked nerviously on the door and poked her head in. Hiiragi Hitonari found it somewhat disconcerting afterwards how easily she had done it, because he, if anyone, knew how unusually shy Tachibana was about his male bits. He was so innocent that it was almost funny. Except Hitonari would never make the mistake of laughing at Tachibana Akane.
Nevertheless, Akane's pride more often than not had Hitonari backed up against the lockers (one artfully dented in a stint of unusual anger, full of unwelcome memories), and had one hand up the back of his shirt and the other down the front of his pants - just to keep things even - when Sumire had come hesitantly looking in.
Hitonari had been moaning into a heavy kiss as his basketball partner's hands skimmed over the front of his boxers when Tachibana suddenly started back.
"Sumire-!"
And she was gone. They could both hear the tapping footsteps go running down the hallway, and the sobs that left at the same rate. And while Akane's mind was racing with the possibilities and the problems, Hiiragi already had it figured out.
"Tch"
"What?"
Hitonari was glaring at the floor, Akane's hands removing themselves from his person as his eyes went icy-frozen.
"You'd better go get her before she drowns herself or something."
His voice was dull, lacking any and all the feeling that had been in it only moments before.
And they both remember the frozen moment, of Akane's step towards the door, sudden rush backwards, and Hitonari only had a moment to wonder if Akane was actually going to kick him, before his face was seized between two hands. His eyes widened as he stared donwn golden-brown ones.
"I'll meet you at the tower, okay?"
And then he had run off, and Hitonari had felt second best for one of the rare times since he had met the basketball player on the courts of Kouzu. But he had gone to the tower and waited, and at sunset he saw Akane come walking down the rough road, with the girl at his side.
iNo. He's not bringing her here./i
But he had waved her off, and she had left, waving, and maybe Hitonari thought he should have thought about how this would hurt Akane, having to break the heart of a friend whom he had loved for so long.
But then, Hitonari had never before assumed that he would be the one who would be chosen, at the end of all things.
And the calmness that came over him then was like an ograsm in itself, making his chest clengh and tears come to his eyes, just sitting there with their backs up against the cold metal, staring up at the darkening sky with his head in Akane's lap.
That was maybe when the slowness had started creeping into their lives, the real slowness that made everything real and the future so much closer than it had been before. Back then, he had thought that his brother was too old to know anything, and now here he was, just as old as his brother had been back then.
They had learnt new pleasures along with the old ones. The exhileration of a basetkball game never grew old, but neither did the sight of Hitonari when he was just waking up, or the smell of their aftershaves mingling in the bathroom, or the moments just after sex when their foreheads just rested together and they watched each other's eyes, waiting for the other to fall asleep first.
It was arguable which was better - the fast, hot days of teenagerhood, or the cool blossoming flower of adulthood, but as long as they were together they figured it would be alright.