Disclaimer: Gravitation doesn't belong to me – if it did, Shuichi will be long dead by now XD I'm just borrowing its characters for my own malicious ways. I'm not making any money out of this either, just enjoyment.
A/N: The new layout bit probably displays the fact that I've been gone for a year… something like that. Here's a Chapter 18, yay! After one whole year, I chuck out Chapter 18! There's been a time lag here, actually. That part was seriously lagging so I decided to skip the buildup between Eiri and Yukito and to leave it to the readers' imaginations. For next chapter, I'm planning on doing Kyoko part and from then on I feel like things will be fast, and short.
I got a new beta btw: the great HawkClowd/kageotogi (I hope I spelled that right) and she's helping me very much. I'm learning proper grammar XD! I hope I did her help justice….
Anyway, I hope people still enjoy this fic even though it just takes forever to finish. I promised a lemon but I don't think it's ever going to happen. I can't write lemons, my skills aren't there, so I'm not going to force it. Waah, I'll be honest, I want comments! Gimme comments, by the way, and make this fangirl happy!
Chapter Eighteen: Flower of Pain
The character in his novel was quickly turning into Shuichi, and it was rapidly breaking something in Eiri. It wasn't the sadness threatening to break wet tears in his eyes again. It wasn't the agony and the loneliness threatening to bleed again like a peeled, bloody ulcer on the skin. What was breaking as the words he wrote formed to describe Shuichi in all his glory and nature and life was his rage. Anger was boiling up from within him and he knew why. He certainly knew why.
He hissed through gritted teeth and slammed his laptop close, not caring for the files within its precious hard drives. Twenty thousand words could go down the drain for all he cared as long as it would take away the filth and disgust. Outside, the sound of DDR was booming in the living room again, seeping into the rooms like angry tendrils made to annoy him and remind him of Shuichi.
"YUKITO!" Eiri roared angrily as he stalked out of the room and broke into a run toward the dancing brunet Yukito had barely turned when a fist slammed into his left cheek, throwing him off guard and across the room.The unique-blue-eyed teen looked up from the floor to a seething Eiri and began to open his mouth to object, but Eiri was quickly kneeling beside him, a big hand clamped over his mouth.
"Shut up. Just shut up, brat." Eiri hissed. "You want to be him? You want to be called Shuichi, Shu-chan?" Yukito's eyes widened and Eiri sneered at the fear he saw in them.
"You want to pester me, to be the ball of energy of my life – was that Ryuichi's intention? Or did you beg him to make a way to whore yourself to me, Hn. ShuShu?" Eiri leaned closer until their breath mingled. "Do you want to be fucked like him? Do you want to know how I touched him and made him moan?"
The blue eyes that became like a mirror to Eiri's face went round but its owner remained still, deep in shock. A passing thought inside Eiri's mind suggested what could have been going on in the younger man's mind but he brushed it off, unconcerned.
"Then stop acting like him! Stop trying to be all," Eiri allowed think sarcasm to mix with his voice, "nice and helpful, Fujiwara-san. Bouncy and…" Eiri paused and calmed himself down. "Happy"
The author clamped his hand harder over Yukito's mouth. But this time, having seemingly regained control of himself, the teen fought back and unclamped the hand. The smaller man was hissing, but the punch he threw the author was a warning, a mere play punch to the chest. It was a far cry from the full-force punch meant to bruise and break from several nights before.
"I do not want to be something else! I am not Shuichi!" Yukito yelled, glaring and breathing in long, slow, calming, breaths.
Eiri saw it vividly right in front of him. Shuichi, pink-haired, slim, slender – like Yukito – tossing Kumagorou at him angrily. The words rang in his mind, replacing the words Yukito had just screamed.
I'M NOT KITAZAWA YUKI! (1)
It snapped, completely in him. It was a thinning stick that was threatening to break at any moment. Snap. It was gone, and Eiri's mind went pitch black.
000
"I'm trying to convince you to go to that reunion thing, that's why I'm doing this. That's all," Yukito explained in an even voice though the lines of his eyebrows and the wrinkles on his face as he frowned told more.
Eiri rolled his eyes and sneered, before craning his head and wondering why they were in so familiar a place. "Ryuichi," he whispered under his breath, suspecting the childish man's part in this excursion. The sound of beeping and simulated gunfire was all over the place, reminding him he hadn't been in this place for what seemed like eternity. He had avoided anything that would re-open the wounds Shuichi had left in him. And here he was, standing in the middle of the same amusement park they had gone to in their first date with a bunch of teenagers and a particular one who looked just like Shuichi himself. Ryuichi was out to reopen those wounds, or something else… something more malicious…
"Ryu-chan! Our picture displays the love between us!" the one Eiri had come to know as Juni screeched, in his opinion. "You're going to put it on your cell phone won't you? Won't you? Ne, ne, ne, Ryuu-chaaaan!"
He heard Yukito's laughter, completely resembling Shuichi's for some reason. "I'll stick them all over mine. I'm sure Ai will understand."
And the stick thinned.
000
When Eiri regained consciousness, he was on a bed, naked and sweaty. He didn't have to get up to know who the one crying and vomiting in the washroom was and it brought bitter laughter bubbling up his throat. It was pitiful. He stared at the ceiling and with bitter sarcasm thought of how the situation, himself and everything had evolved to this. He couldn't begin to imagine how this happened, but it had. How? Why? Hahaha…. In his mind the single-word questions and the hysterical laughter were ringing like an endless alarm. It was deafening and inescapable as it was in the mind – it wasn't a physical thing.
Eiri began remembering another, deeper pain – an older pain. It made him laugh. Somebody had peeled of the long, stitched gash within him. Pain. Pain. It was flowing through every vein in his body, refusing comfort for even an inch of it. His vision was wavering and then he saw it again – the men – the fat and ugly men that had touched his youthful body in places that should have never been touched at that age. He remembered the way they had taken his innocence and wounded him, carved the long deep gashes in him that would take years to heal.
And then finally, he remembered him. The betrayal. And the man he had truly become.
It was disgusting, filthy – the words he had learned in English and Japanese just couldn't describe it.
But the laughter did.
000
In and out. In and out. Thump thump.
He could hear them clearly, rumbling in his ears: the sound of his deep breathes, the rapid and irregular thumping of his heart. He watched the brownish-red mixture pooling in toilet bowl and found he couldn't summon any sort of emotion. Even the pain felt muted – there but not quite there. His joints hurt, he had bruises all over and up there, where the ultimate abuse, was a burning pain that refused to leave and let him forget what had transgressed.
I love you, Yukito, lapsed with other memories of the like within the sacred bed of natural bonding. What he had done was unforgivable: the defiling of a man's natural processes and the betrayal of his love. He had cheated, not by his will, but slept with another man, a literal man. Not a human being, a woman within the catchphrase, 'man', but a man. He was a man too, a teen on the verge of adulthood. He could and should have been able to defend himself against threats like this – he'd punched Eiri and almost broken his nose. He'd protected Anne in dangerous situations. And there he was, on the floor, open legged with blood dried around the cleft of his buttocks, covered with a mixture of his and another man's sweat. He was defiled and de-virginized in another way – Yukito began trembling as he began breaking into another bout of uncontrollable tears – by a man, and he couldn't do anything about it.
Ignoring hygienic conditions, he began rubbing his face on the rim of the bowl as he cried, knowing very well that he looked like a lunatic. "Yuki Eiri…bastard," he whispered weakly and then froze. His body was still racked by small spasms when he slowly stood up and wiped the tears away from his swollen eyes and cheeks. He took a deep breath, staring at the waters with the remains of his vomit He then slowly turned around and, ignoring the difficulty he had in moving his legs, marched to where his assailant could see him outside the bathroom.
"Leave," Yukito began in a quiet whisper, his eyes listless as he stared at the naked blond before him. "Yuki Eiri-san, I don't know what Shindou Shuichi saw in you, but whatever it was… it has made my respect for him even greater. Music-wise, Emotion-wise—" He paused, gritting his teeth, "Physically-wise."
"You disgust me." Yukito finished, and then they stared at each other. He couldn't have possibly seen the metaphoric flower of pain blooming within Eiri to a splatter of blood, or noticed the same betrayal eating through him mirrored in the older man.
The cool and reserved wet fantasy of Japanese women worldwide was laughing, laughing, and laughing harder in the most uncharacteristic way possible. It was surreal, just like the pain he felt in his body now and the events that led to where he was now.
And the laughter continued.
000
In the dark main office of N-G Records, Seguchi Tohma sat with his face pressed against entwined fingers, a picture of extreme concentration.
"Ryuichi," he breathed as his eyes made out the figures on the paper through the light from the wall-window. The familiarity was as striking and shocking Like it had been taken years ago. It was disturbing.
Eyelids closing slightly to calmly study the figures in the pictures, the gears in Tohma's mind began to work. When he had come up with a satisfying plan, he unlaced his fingers and sat up. He lifted his chin and stared down at the surveillance pictures and then lifted his right arm to reach for the pictures with a claw-like hand.
There was a loud rumbling sound as his palm slammed against the pictures. He took a deep breath and readjusted his gloves. His lips straightened into an unusually thin line before he quietly whispered, "Ryuichi, you've gone too far."
000
A/N: Thank you for everyone who has stayed with this fic this long, by the way. The fact that you're still reading makes me happy and extremely grateful. Right now though, to be honest, my memory has some holes in them – a result of a very recent hospitalization due to a health problem. But the hospitalization really convinced me I needed to darn well finish this fic, and all my fics in general so… XD Hopefully, in a few chapters, YUKI will close and that will be three years of 'work' on this fic done. XD
Oh and;
(1) I own the manga in Chinese, actually, so that may not be the literal translation for Japanese or the translation in the English release.