How to Lose Your Ears in Ten Days

Day 8

By YaoiKitten

For Rahzel, for everything you've done for me and being a sweetheart about it.

Mondays were excruciatingly long for Soubi. He had five classes to teach on Mondays with barely enough time to eat lunch or meet Ritsuka after school. He spent the entire morning behind his desk, trying to hide the obvious nature of his thoughts from his students. His mind was preoccupied, and he could barely keep his wits about him. He abandoned the idea of actually teaching during his first morning class and declared it an in-class work day.

His students were studiously working on their paintings in the studio, the easels set up in a circle more out of habit than any real desire to paint what was in the middle. The semester was well on its way and they were painting individual projects instead of collective subjects. The smell of oil and acrylic paints filled the room with noxious fumes that seemed to be generated from the paint-splattered concrete floor itself.

Soubi sat at his desk and stared off into space, his mind retracing the events of yesterday. Ritsuka panting. Ritsuka covering his eyes. Ritsuka naked with his legs spread. Ritsuka reaching up to give him that gentle kiss and that obvious question. Ritsuka pressed against the pillows, his whole body writhing underneath him.

Soubi was shaken out of his thoughts by one of his students. "Sensei, can you come and look at this?"

Soubi looked down at his lap. "Uhm… can you bring it here?"

The student brought her painting up to his desk. "Are you all right, sensei?"

He smiled. "I'm just a little exhausted from the weekend," he lied.

She showed him her painting, asked a litany of questions about color and composition and whether or not her subject was too much like Kara Walker's. All of this went over Soubi's head and he gave some half-hearted answer that seemed to appease her.

So the day went, a constant influx of students and questions and opinions and erections whenever he was left to his thoughts long enough. It was like being in high school all over again.

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He waited for Ritsuka after school. This was his final break of the day and after he returned to campus he would be in class until 10:30 that night. He breathed deeply and cleared his mind. He didn't want that I've-been-thinking-of-you-naked-all-day look on his face when Ritsuka got out of school.

The bell rang and he held his breath.

Kio had gotten him drunk enough to fall into bed the night before, otherwise he would have stayed up frustrated and awake. He was well rested today, and he had been fantasizing about keeping Ritsuka awake all night, making love to him multiple times before sending him exhausted and earless to school the next day. He knew it would never happen, but the thought refused to leave his brain.

Kio had been supportive, encouraging. Soubi was resolved to do whatever it took to make Ritsuka happy-- and if it would make Ritsuka happy to be pounded into the mattress, so much the better.

Soubi opened his eyes and his object of affection was standing before him. So much for the I-haven't-been-thinking-of-you-naked-all-day look, he thought.

Ritsuka's ears were flat against his head, and his eyes were narrowed and distrustful. The weather had turned bitterly cold the night before and he was wearing his toggle coat closed tight across his body. His messenger bag was a sash across his torso, and his jeans pooled over the top of his sneakers. Everything about him was distant and stand-offish, there was no trace of the vulnerable, naked boy that Soubi had seen yesterday.

Soubi looked to the sky and prayed for infinite patience from whatever deity would listen. Whatever had gotten into Ritsuka today he wasn't up to dealing with. He sighed and reached for a cigarette before he realized that he had quit. His hands fluttered over his coat looking for them out of habit, and it kept him from having to meet Ritsuka's eyes.

"Soubi."

Soubi looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Ritsuka?"

Ritsuka looked away, and it hurt. "I'm going home with Yuiko today. I figured since it is your late class…"

"I can walk with you guys to her house," he offered.

"No, we need to talk."

Soubi's heart sank. "We need to talk?"

"No," Ritsuka clarified. "Yuiko and I need to talk."

Soubi thought this over. At least it was better than them having to talk. A talk between lovers is never good. "Girl talk?" he teased, trying to lighten the situation.

Ritsuka glared. "Something like that."

Soubi sighed and turned away, walking in the opposite direction. "Fine," he called over his shoulder.

Ritsuka shifted from foot to foot as he watched him go. Soubi used every last bit of his will-power to keep walking.

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Ritsuka went back into the school to find Yuiko, and his feet dragged the floor ever so slightly. He hadn't felt this melancholy since middle school.

Yuiko was gathering her books together after cleaning up the classroom. She smiled when she saw him return. "Where's Soubi-san?"

"I told him to go ahead without me."

Yuiko blinked. "Why?"

"I just didn't want to deal with him today."

Yuiko chewed on her inner cheek, thinking this over. She buttoned her coat and put on her backpack before lacing her arm through Ritsuka's to pull him out the door.

"Where's Yayoi?" Ritsuka asked while they walked down the hall.

"He has cram school on Mondays," she replied.

Ritsuka allowed her to lead him out of the building. She waited until they were alone and out of ear-shot of everyone else before she started talking.

"Do you want to talk about what is going on with you and Soubi-san lately?" she asked.

Ritsuka had predicted this question, and had been anticipating it. He kept his eyes on the ground, examining every crack as it passed under his feet. "Not really."

"Then why are you walking home with me instead of Soubi-san?"

Ritsuka looked at her and she giggled that little-girl smile at him. Still the same Yuiko despite her becoming a woman before his eyes.

"So what is going on?" Yuiko asked, "You guys seemed to be getting along so well lately."

Ritsuka laughed bitterly. "Almost too well."

Yuiko looked at him, obviously confused.

Ritsuka shifted his bag over his hip so he wouldn't have to look at her when he said "We've become a lot more physical lately."

Yuiko reached out and touched his ears. "They're still real."

He batted her hand away. "I would never wear fake ears, unlike some kids."

She shrugged. "They do it because of their parents or they don't want to have the attention at school the next day."

"It is lying to yourself, betraying your lover, and lying to the world," Ritsuka said. "I prefer to live my life honestly."

"So what is the problem?" she asked.

Ritsuka took a deep breath. "He just left me there. He went out with Kio instead of finishing what he started…"

She blinked. "Huh?"

Ritsuka blushed and continued to stare at the ground. "We started…then we had to stop…my mom, she…so he left and wouldn't come back so that he could go drinking with Kio…"

"Did you get in trouble with your mom?" she ventured.

"No, she just knocked on the door. She didn't come in. Thank God, she has never even seen Soubi before, I can't imagine what would happen if she came in and saw him and I…like that."

She giggled at the thought. "I think she would figure it out real quick."

"Oh God, Yuiko, that is something that I never thought of before!"

"What's that?"

Ritsuka looked panicked. "If I don't have my ears anymore, how can I face my mom? She doesn't even know that I'm seeing anybody!"

Yuiko laughed to herself. "Then don't let him take them."

"I can't be a virgin all my life."

"So let him take them."

"But my mother…"

"Ritsuka," Yuiko interjected sharply. "You are being a woman. Stop it. Make up your mind."

Ritsuka fell silent beside her, mulling his options over in his head. He wasn't used to Yuiko, of all people, snapping at him.

"You just have to decide what is more important to you--keeping your mother's delusion of you being single or doing it with Soubi-san. Or fake ears. Take your pick."

"I want to do it with Soubi…" Ritsuka whispered, almost to himself.

"Huh?"

"Since when did you become so mature, huh?" Ritsuka challenged, not willing to clarify what he had said. "Who are you to give me relationship advice anyway?"

Yuiko looked momentarily stricken, then tears began to well up in her eyes. "I just… I just thought that… thought that maybe you…"

Ritsuka patted her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. Inside, he was relieved. She was still a baby, despite all of her grown-up talk. He would never admit to anyone that he had made her cry on purpose to reaffirm himself of that.

"You're right, I just needed to get it out. I still feel so unsure of everything that has been happening lately."

"Don't you love Soubi-san?"

Ritsuka pulled back as if he was bitten. "What?"

"Don't you love him?" Yuiko asked. She cocked her head to the side inquisitively. "You have been with him for about five years now. You have to love him."

"I guess I wouldn't put up with it if I didn't," Ritsuka agreed, though a bit begrudgingly.

Yuiko's eyes went wide, and her tears dried on her lower lashes. "You mean to tell me that you have never TOLD him that you loved him?"

"It… never came up?"

"Five years? Five years and it never came up?"

"Well, maybe once or twice…"

"And you never told him?"

Ritsuka scuffed the concrete with the toe of his sneaker.

"He's told you," she insisted.

"Yeah, he's told me. Since the first time we met me he told me."

She looked at him, all traces of the scolding that she had gotten earlier were gone. She was scolding him now. She spoke very slowly to make sure that her words got through. "Maybe if you told him, you wouldn't be so conflicted. I think once you tell him, your decision will become clear."

"He knows that I love him without me telling him…"

Yuiko shook her head sadly. "Ritsuka, now you are acting like a man. Stop it."

Ritsuka stood there, perplexed, what he should be acting like.

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The students were getting restless and Soubi was still fuming from his run-in with Ritsuka this afternoon. It was late, there was about half an hour left for class before they could all go home for the day. Teaching the late classes were exhausting, but since he was a new teacher they seemed to get pushed onto him. These were the students that had full-time jobs during the day and could only come to class in the evening. They were an older, more mature lot and he opted out of studio time in favor of a lecture. He needed to get his mind off of Ritsuka and found that teaching kept him busy enough. The studio had a lecture hall adjacent to it with tiered seats and a projector for images. It was still a beginner class, so he was doing art history--impressionism in the Western tradition, from Monet to Manet. It was the most basic of art lectures besides color theory.

He slid slides across the screen and paced around the platform. He wrote on the board, and he quoted passages from books. He got excited when he had a chance to mention rococo art, since it was his favorite. The students looked at him with their yawning faces and tried to stay awake while he stifled his own displays of sleep-deprivation.

He glanced at the clock, fifteen more minutes to go. Then Ritsuka walked in, and his world stopped.

Ritsuka had never, as far as he knew, ventured to his place of work. He wasn't even sure if he had ever set foot upon the campus before. It was a strange feeling to see the subject of his personal life in the setting of his career world. Somehow the two didn't seem to match, and Ritsuka was as glaringly out of place as one of Picasso's prostitutes would have been in Michelangelo's Cistine Chapel.

Ritsuka took a seat in the very back row of the lecture hall and smiled at him sweetly. Soubi could feel the glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose and he quickly pushed them back up. He continued with his lecture.

A couple of the students had noticed the newcomer in the back and shot him furtive glances between fervent note taking. Soubi hurried to finish up his lecture before dismissing the class five minutes early. A couple of the students came up to clarify something or ask another question, but eventually each one filed out the door.

Soubi and Ritsuka were alone in the room, Ritsuka was still seated and Soubi was still standing on the front platform. They looked at each other, and Ritsuka smiled that sweet little smile of his again.

"I came to pick you up for once," Ritsuka said.

Soubi turned away to gather up his things so that Ritsuka could not tell how pleased he was. "Won't your mom be mad if you break curfew?"

Ritsuka stood to meet him in the isle. "My mother is going to be mad about a lot of things from now on."

"What do you mean?" Soubi asked, reaching out and touching his upper arm. His fingertips lingered over the week-old wound there. "I don't want her to hurt you anymore."

"Soubi…" Ritsuka began, and they were walking out the door together. "You promised, didn't you?"

Soubi looked at him inquisitively.

Ritsuka's hair whipped around his face once they got outside. The temperature had dropped suddenly and the weather threatened to snow any day now. He pushed one side of his hair back with his hand so that he could look at Soubi.

"You promised to take my ears."

Soubi stopped mid-step, but Ritsuka continued going. Soubi hurried to catch up.

"I may have…"

"Don't pretend you don't remember it!" Ritsuka said, slapping at Soubi's arm with his hand. "You made a promise with me!"

"So what about it?" Soubi asked, treading carefully.

Ritsuka stopped and turned to him, but there were not enough street lights for Soubi to really see. "When are you going to fulfill it?"

"When I think you're ready."

Ritsuka stepped closer, so that they were only inches apart. The front of their coats kissed, and both of them shivered in the cold wind. "Don't you think I'm ready now?"

Soubi exhaled, and only then realized that he had been holding his breath. "Are you?"

Ritsuka took a deep breath and leaned into Soubi. Soubi instinctively wrapped his arms around the younger man. "Soubi, I… I l-love you and I want to be with you." His voice cracked when he said this.

Soubi's armed tightened around him, and Soubi could feel that strange tightness in his chest. He couldn't breathe and he felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks. He shut his eyes against them and buried his face in Ritsuka's hair. "I've waited so long to hear you say that…"

"I'm sorry that I waited so long," Ritsuka told him. His own tears were soaking through the front of Soubi's coat.

Soubi tilted Ritsuka's face upwards and kissed him, a deep, lengthy kiss that caused electricity to pass between him. There was power in this kiss, a deep electric hum that seemed to form a current through both of their bodies and warm them from the inside out. It was a bond, and they had just formed it.