Relief

The Rental Store

I'd remembered my shades but forgotten my hat to cover my blonde hair. I regretted that almost as soon as I dragged Shuichi through the doors of the nearest video rental store. Teenage girls lurking in the chick-flicks section immediately started giggling and staring, chattering to each other in what they thought were hushed tones. If they didn't recognize me yet, it was going to happen soon.

Thank God Shuichi had remembered his hat, or we would have been busted.

"Let's hurry," I hissed, pushing him into the horror flicks section.

His eyes caught sight of the girls in the corner and he nodded quickly, shuffling forward and scanning the shelves. He took one side, I took the other.

"Look! They have—"

"Not now! We have a mission here. Focus!" I snapped, my eyes flickering to the girls. If he kept going on they'd figure it out soon. I'd almost blown it as it was, coming very close to saying his name at the end of the sentence.

"Right! Sorry." He kept scanning for a moment and then let out a triumphant, and slightly frightened, squeak.

"Got it!"

He held up a DVD with a horrific piece of cover art. Dim lighting, a place in the desert, a dark figure dragging a body behind it with bloody red letters spelling out the title The Hills Have Eyes 2.

I scoffed. "You actually watched this?"

He managed to look abashed. "Yeah…I guess I didn't think it would be that bad, at the time. But I don't know if we should do this. I don't want to watch it again! What if it's worse the second time?" His voice was rising in octaves; I grabbed his arm to hush him.

"I'll be there. If it gets bad, we'll turn it off. Just trust me. This will work."

He was looking up at me through his sunglasses. His eyes were so luminous I could see them through the tinted shades, and his smile was glowing. He was getting teary. I smirked at him. "You're such a baby."

He hit me. "You always have to ruin it!"

I sauntered forward to the counter and Shuichi followed behind, hands shoved into his pockets as he tried not to smile while he pouted. I placed the movie on the counter, then as an afterthought put a box of popcorn and a box of candy with it. Shuichi couldn't pretend any longer, he had to smile.

He grabbed my arm and looked up at me with his goofiest grin. I shook my head at his antics.

Just as the teenaged, pimple-faced clerk was placing our items in a plastic bag, Shuichi made one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

"Thanks, Yuki…"

The fan-girls in the corner had super-sonic hearing. I could have sworn it. They picked up on that small sentence in an instant, and I knew that they knew that all of their conspiracies had turned out to be true. What other tall, handsome, blonde haired Japanese man would wear sunglasses inside and be named Yuki?

I hate my life.

I snatched the bag from the clerk, threw a twenty at him, and grabbed Shuichi's arm before tearing out of the store.

Too late. Screams of "Eiri Yuki!" and "Shuichi Shindo!" followed us out of the store. I unlocked the car and threw myself in the front seat, tossed the bag with the movie and snacks into the back seat, and slammed the power-locks as Shuichi closed the door. He fumbled with his seatbelt.

"I'm sorry Yuki! I'm sorry!" He was saying hysterically.

I turned the car on and threw it into reverse, tore out of the parking space and zoomed forward all in the space of a few seconds. There wasn't a mob…at least not yet, but I gave it about two point five seconds before there would be one. I gunned the engine, ran a red light, and didn't slow down for twenty blocks straight.

"Yuki, I'm sorry! I'm really, really sorry!"

"I know," I snapped. "Don't worry about it. Shit happens."

He was quiet for a few minutes, letting me be angry in peace. Smart boy. But as we neared our house, maybe another five minutes of driving remaining, he looked at me and coughed quietly before saying, "Yuki, I think you should slow down."

I was pushing sixty in a thirty-five mile zone. I honestly didn't give a shit. I wasn't going to let those freaky fangirl's maul me, my lover, and my precious car. Never mind the fact that they couldn't have possibly caught up to us by now…though you never knew. When faced with a celebrity they seemed to multiply like rabbits and had powers like Superman. I bumped it up to sixty-five.

My forehead smacked the steering wheel for the fifth, sixth, seventh time.

"I told you to slow down, Yuki," Shuichi said quietly next to me, trying to push me away from the steering wheel so I'd stop trying to kill myself…slowly…by painful brain pummeling.

"Shut up." I said waspishly. The combination of red and blue flashing lights and the dull throb from whacking my head repeatedly was starting to give me a headache.

"Here you are, sir," the police officer said as he handed me a piece of pink paper and started to walk back to his car.

I smiled as sweetly as I possibly could. It probably looked like I was constipated. "Thanks." I replied coldly.

As the cop drove away I looked at the ticket. One hundred and ninety two dollars.

My forehead smacked the steering wheel for the eighth, ninth, tenth time.

The popcorn was popping wildly in the microwave; Shuichi had dumped the box of candy into a bowl for us to share from. I poured myself a glass of hard-earned wine, downed half of it, and refilled. He filled a glass with soda all the way to the brim and sipped at it slowly while watching the popcorn revolve on the turntable of the microwave. When it beeped he pulled it out and dumped it in another bowl.

I wandered out to the living room, set my glass down, and pulled the DVD out of the bag. The disturbing cover art was enough to make my skin crawl. Better keep the lights on during this one.

I slipped the disc into the DVD player and pushed play. The previews began and we settled down together to watch.

Once it began, Shuichi clung to my arm. It would probably be numb, or removed completely by the end of the movie. He buried himself into my shoulder, but I jostled him. "I didn't rent it just so you could hide."

He squeaked and nodded.

Within the first few minutes I understood exactly why Shuichi had freaked out so badly. I watched in morbid fascination as a woman gave birth, screaming in pain, with some sick pervert watching. When the baby came out the pervert grabbed it. Still born. Then he killed the girl.

I wanted to gag. "You watched this. Nakano watched this. And neither of you didn't fucking leave the theatre?"

"Hiro seemed to be enjoying himself, and he'd paid for my ticket…I didn't want to ruin it."

"You're a fucking multi-millionaire; you could have paid him back the ten bucks for a ticket, and then some!" Some of my intense anger from the night before was returning. I suddenly wanted to call the long-haired guitarist again and scream at him some more.

"I know," Shuichi said in a small voice, wincing as we watched an army officer pull something out of the skull of a dead man.

"Nakano liked this shit?'

"He likes horror movies," Shuichi responded simply.

I snorted.

We suffered through almost two more hours of gratuitous violence and gore, a disgusting and violent rape of one of the female army officers by one of the fucked up mutant things that were living in the desert, a lot of shooting, some failed escape attempts, and by the end of it only a few of the people survived. We'd paused it four times throughout, each time when Shuichi had gripped my arm tight enough that the blood stopped flowing and buried his face completely in my body. I felt nauseous as the end credits played. It took me a moment to find my voice.

"How are you doing, Shu?" I asked quietly.

He sniffed. "I'm okay. Better than I was the first time."

I hit the Menu button on the DVD remote and scrolled down to the Special Features menu. "Alright. Here's where the therapy begins." I hit the first thing I saw. A commentary on how the movie was made. We watched the make-up artists work their gruesome magic, saw how the camera crew shot certain special effects, listened to the actors describe what it was like to play this role. Some of the actors who played the mutant dudes talked about how difficult it was to act out these disturbing scenes.

Shuichi seemed to brighten after that.

I returned to the menu, and went down to the third one on the menu, skipping the deleted scenes entirely. I didn't want to know what other sick shit had been cut out of this movie. This one was the bloopers. This had to be good.

We watched and laughed as people half-in and half-out of costume got their makeup put on and made faces at the camera, saw people crack up laughing during the scene where one of the soldiers came running out of the porta-potty…and accidentally dropped trou. Saw people screw up their lines. Saw one of the actors in mutant makeup try to come up behind another actor to scare them, and was screamed at and socked in the balls for his trouble. Saw people trip and fall. Saw someone dancing with no rhythm.

When it was over Shuichi was giggling and had released my arm, only holding my hand now, our fingers intertwined. I looked at him and gave him a little smile. He grinned up at me.

"Thank you, Yuki. I think that may have helped."

I kissed his forehead. "No problem, brat."

He laughed at me and turned his face upwards, catching the lips that had been pressed to his forehead with his own. I fumbled for the TV remote, shut it off, and picked him up bridal-style in my arms. "Let's go get some sleep," I said huskily.

"Sleep?" He said and laughed again. "And here I thought I was going to get laid."

I couldn't help myself. That one made me laugh. Just a little.

Late into the night, one Shuichi Shindo rose as quietly as he could from the bed and tip-toed into the living room. As he curled himself into a corner of the couch, he picked up the phone and dialed Hiro's number.

On the fourth ring he picked up. "Hello?" He said sleepily.

"Pay up, Hiro," Shuichi said gleefully. "He helped get rid of the nightmares, just like I said he would."

"No way," Hiro said in disbelief. "So Japan's number one Ice-King actually gave a shit?"

"I told you he cares about me."

"Right. I'd believe that if he wasn't such an asshole. What'd he do?"

"He watched the whole movie with me, and then showed me the extra stuff about makeup and the outtakes. He even risked fangirls and got a speeding ticket, all for the sake of helping me!" Shuichi could hardly contain his glee.

"Alright, twenty bucks. Tomorrow."

Shuichi laughed. "Good night Hiro."

"'Night Shuichi."

As the J-pop singer crept back into the bedroom, yawning and covering himself with the sheets, Yuki turned over in his bed and kissed him. Shuichi froze.

"Pay up, huh?"

Shuichi gulped and laughed nervously. "You heard that?"

"You weren't exactly being quiet."

"Well, I—"

Yuki pressed a kiss to his lips and chuckled. "Do you do this often?"

"No! No, no, no! It was just this once. Hiro and I were talking about my nightmares…he just made this comment and I got all defensive of you 'cause he said you wouldn't care even if I told you, that you'd just get mad 'cause I saw the movie. And…well… you did get mad…but you also helped!"

Yuki rolled his eyes and kissed his lover again to quiet him. "Never again, Shindo."

Shuichi nodded enthusiastically, his breathing became slightly more labored with the force of Yuki's kisses. "Never again. Right. Promise."

Yuki laughed. "Good boy."

End -3

Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think, final thoughts, likes and dislikes.

Until next time, Ja ne!