[fic] five things that never happened to hayato and ryu (gokusen, hayato/ryu)

[acchikocchi]

asdjfkls finally done. now that this is out of the way I want to try some new things...

EDITED TO ADD THE MISSING LINE IN SECTION THREE. *facepalms* mananeh is a lifesaver. ♥

title: five things that never happened to hayato and ryu
rating: R
length: 3662 words
notes: thanks to mananeh for allowing me to poke her occasionally for ideas and reactions. (and, I suppose, to absenceofmind to getting me thinking about Gokusen again in the first place...?)


Five Things That Never Happened To Hayato And Ryu

1.

Their new teacher, Onigawara, was a real hardass. Hayato got in a shouting match with him on the first day of class before he was grabbed by the collar and dragged out of the room. Cursing under his breath, he stormed out of school to the café, where he sat brooding for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day was no better, only this time when Onigawara advanced on Hayato, Tsucchi jumped to his feet threateningly, fan in hand, and in the end all four of them - Hayato, Tsucchi, Take, Hyuga - had been tossed out in the hall.

Hyuga rubbed one shoulder, wincing. "Bastard's strong," he said resentfully. "I'm going to have bruises tomorrow."

"'Cause you're so delicate," Tsucchi cooed, "like a princess, right, Hayato - Hayato?"

Hayato was already walking down the hall. "I'm out of here," he said over his shoulder.

By the end of the week none of them had spent more than five hours in class.

"Can we really graduate at this rate?" Take asked Friday night, leaning his elbows on the pool table. There was a crinkle between his eyes where his brow furrowed.

Tsucchi made a noise of disdain. "Who needs to graduate," he said.

Hayato, bent over the table, tapped lightly and sent the last two balls rolling neatly into the corner pocket. He whooped and high-fived Tsucchi. "Not me," he declared, propping his cue carelessly against the table and hoisting himself up onto the edge. "School's a waste of time anyway. Maybe I'll quit."

"Yeah," Tsucchi said, face darkening. "I'm not staying in any class that asshole's teaching."

Take looked down and didn't say anything.

"Cheer up," Hyuga said, thumping him on the shoulder. "We'll get cool jobs right away and you'll be able to impress all the girls."

"Yeah," Hayato said, "your mom won't mind if you don't graduate if you can bring home a little money sometimes, right?"

"No, it's..." Take let the sentence trail away. He was getting that wistful look on his face again, the one that always made Hayato's stomach twist because of what it meant.

Tsucchi, oblivious, said, "What? What?"

"I always thought the three of us would graduate together," Take said, not meeting Hayato's eyes.

Hayato's nails bit into his palms. "So?" he said roughly. "It's too late for that, anyway, even if we did stay."

"Ryu's graduating," Take said. "He's going to graduate no matter what happens."

Hayato felt his spin stiffen. "What does that have to do with me?"

"Hayato - "

"I'm bored," Hayato said loudly. "Let's go out. I hear the Ara High boys have been getting a little cocky lately." He grinned wolfishly, and Tsucchi and Hyuga whooped.

Lying on his threadbare futon that night, nursing a scrape on his jaw and several assorted bruises, Hayato flexed his fists and stared at the ceiling. No matter what happens.

When homeroom started the next Monday, Hayato put his head down on his arms and pretended to sleep, while at the front of the class Onigawara took roll. Finally, he reached Hayato's name. "Yabuki Hayato," he said ominously.

"Here," Hayato said, lifting his head and raising an arm lazily in the air.

"So you had the nerve to come back," Onigawara said. "Talk back to me again and I'll toss your skinny ass out on the pavement this time, you got that?"

"Got it," Hayato drawled, and settled back down onto his desk. A murmur went around the class; Hayato pretended not to notice and Onigawara scowled and brought one hand crashing down on the teacher's podium so that it rattled frenziedly and the murmur abruptly died.

Without his lead to follow, Class 3-D seemed at a loss for what to do; a few wads of paper flew at Onigawara's back when he turned to write on the blackboard, but it was overall half-hearted at best. Onigawara clearly attributed the change to his new brand of discipline and peppered his loud, blustering lecture with comments about respect and the food chain and learning one's place. Hayato kept his head on his arms and his eyes on the clock.

Five minutes until homeroom was over. English was next; Shiratori-sensei wasn't that bad, even if she was pretty useless as a teacher. She'd probably pass them all if they dropped a few comments about how cute she looked, actually -

"Hey," Hyuga whispered from his right. "Are you feeling sick or something?"

"Don't bother a sleeping person," Hayato said in an undertone.

Hyuga snorted. "Do you usually sleep with your eyes open - "

"You in the back!" Onigawara thundered. Hyuga jumped; Hayato lifted his head from his arms and watched Onigawara stalk down the aisle toward them, stopping in front of his desk. "Something you want to say?"

Hayato didn't say anything.

"Pay attention when your teacher's talking," Onigawara said, getting right up in Hayato's face. "You're here to listen to me. Or I'll help you leave." He cracked his knuckles.

Hayato didn't say anything.

Onigawara's face darkened. "I know punks like you, and I know you won't learn anything if someone doesn't beat it into you. Are you going to apologize, or do I need to teach you a lesson again?"

Hayato bit down on the side of his cheek, hard. "Sorry," he muttered.

Behind Onigawara's back, he could see Hyuga and Tsucchi staring at him open-mouthed, eyes the size of dinner plates. Onigawara smirked. "Finally learning, huh? Tired of losing to me?"

Hayato tasted blood. He set his jaw and looked Onigawara in the eye. "Yabuki Hayato doesn't lose to anyone," he said.

2.

Ryu still wasn't used to the music; the bass throbbed in his chest uncomfortably and he had a feeling he was going to end the night with a headache. It was a busy night, and he wove in and out of the undulating crowd with comparative ease, from the bar to the tables to the storeroom and back again. It had been a month and he still hadn’t seen anyone he recognized. The club was nowhere near his old school, anyway.

Even so, when he passed a dark alcove and a hand closed around his wrist, he knew who it had to be, knew before he turned and saw the broad shoulders, the falsely relaxed stance, hips cocked, hands jutting from pockets. It was a moment before he could speak.

"You’re still under twenty," he said stupidly.

"So are you," said Hayato. The corner of his mouth curled up. "Guess they don't really care here, huh?"

His voice was trapped in his throat. With effort, Ryu said, "What do you want?"

"Does your dad know you're working here?" Hayato said, instead of answering the question. "Or is this a step up from the losers in 3-D?"

Ryu didn't answer.

Hayato took a step closer. "Better than the violent criminals, huh, the kind of guys who'll beat up anyone for no reason at all?" Another step. "Better than the unreliable, untrustworthy idiots?" Another.

"Don't talk about things you don't know anything about," Ryu said, around the bitter taste in his mouth.

"Then tell me about it," Hayato said, looking down at Ryu, mere inches away. His tone was belligerent but Ryu had not known Hayato this long to misunderstand him now.

Ryu was silent. It wasn't until Hayato's face fell that Ryu could see where the hope had been hidden.

"Are you done?" he said.

"No," Hayato said brusquely. Then Hayato was shoving him backward until he hit the wall hard, blunt fingers surely leaving bruises on his upper arms, and as he tried to shrug Hayato off angrily, Hayato's mouth came down on his.

Of all the ways he'd thought (hadn't thought) it might (wouldn't) happen -

It only took him a second to regain his composure. He kissed back, hard and brutal and biting, and Hayato pressed forward, flattening Ryu against the wall with his whole body.

Ryu shrugged his shoulders again, working an arm free, and twisted a hand roughly in Hayato's impossibly soft hair. Hayato growled and nipped at Ryu's lower lip, fingers dropping to dig into Ryu's hips. Ryu felt his heart racing, double time, fluttering like a wounded bird as his tongue found Hayato's again, teeth catching tender skin, swollen lips. Hayato was the one to break away, mouth trailing down Ryu's jaw to suck none too gently at the side of his neck and Ryu in revenge shifted his hips a fraction and had the satisfaction of feeling Hayato's fingers clench involuntarily on his hips.

Hayato, not to be outdone, pressed forward, pushing a leg between both of Ryu's so that Ryu was straddling his thigh. Ryu bit back a moan at the razor spike of raw stimulation and gripped Hayato's broad shoulders, pulling himself up for optimal friction. Hayato reacted predictably; he lifted his head from where he'd been doing his best to leave a mark on Ryu's collarbone and rocked his hips insistently against Ryu, once, twice - then Hayato was moving with intent and Ryu dug his nails into Hayato's shoulders and hung on.

Hayato had never been the smoothest of men, and arousal did nothing to help. He thrust untidily against Ryu with single-minded intensity, breath coming in ragged, clumsy gasps, helpless noises barely reaching Ryu's ears. Ryu, for his part, bit down on his lip until he drew blood as he thrust back as best he could, vision flashing white each time he rubbed against Hayato at just the right angle.

He came quickly, arched and rigid, followed by Hayato, who gave a long, loose shudder that ran through his entire body. Ryu slumped against the wall and Hayato slumped against Ryu, breathing heavily as he rested his forehead against Ryu's shoulder. Ryu squeezed his eyes shut and counted in his head, three, four, five long seconds.

"Yabuki," Ryu said evenly. “I have to get back to work.”

Hayato's head jerked up. He took one, two shaky steps back. Ryu opened his eyes.

Hayato was trembling. There was a bruise at the corner of his mouth, and he clenched and unclenched his fists, helplessly. Ryu realized, with dull shock, that Hayato was about to cry.

Without a word, Hayato turned on his heel, and was gone.

Ryu wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and went back to the bar.

3.

"Hey," Hyuga yelled, catching up to them in the hallway, "hey, hey, hey, guess what? New teacher!"

Hayato and Ryu looked at each other. Hayato sighed mournfully. "Just when I was finally getting used to running the classroom."

"You'll always be my favorite teacher, Yabuki-sensei!" Tsucchi declared in a voice choked with false emotion; Take hid his face in Tsucchi's shoulder and pretended to sob.

"There, there," Hayato said, patting them on the shoulders comfortingly. "I'll never forget Class 3-D! No, I'll treasure our precious memories forever!" He was delighted to see, out of the corner of his eye, Ryu unable to fight down a smile.

"What kind of a teacher?" Ryu asked Hyuga instead.

Hyuga scratched his head. "Well, I didn't hear much before Sawatari caught me listening. But - " he held his hands up to ward off Tsucchi and Hayato's boos - "seems like it's supposed to be someone really tough to keep us line."

There was an explosion of derisive catcalls from Hayato, Tsucchi, and Take. Ryu merely snorted softly.

"Just like the last one, huh?" Tsucchi said. "We took care of him in two weeks!" He pumped his fist in the air and Take, Hyuga, and Hayato cheered.

"It was his first year teaching," Ryu pointed out.

The group paused for a minute.

"Well," Hayato said, rallying, "with the five of us it doesn't matter if he's taught for one year or a hundred years. Even Ara High knows not to mess with us now, no teacher's going to give us trouble." He smirked. "Let's show this guy what 3-D is made of!"

Howling loud war cries, Tsucchi, Take, and Hyuga galloped ahead; Hayato, grinning in anticipation, fell in step with Ryu, and they went into the classroom.

4.

They kept it up longer than anyone expected. It was easier when Ryu was in Canada, actually - easy to pretend that nothing had changed, that the difference between a Canadian university and a Japanese construction yard was no different than Kurogin High School, when their interaction was solely electronic. Hayato had never had the temperament to stick to a schedule for the long term, but he diligently punched out an email to Ryu every week, a real email consisting of more than "I'm fine, everyone's fine, how's school?"

It was harder when Ryu was home. Even vacations were difficult, near the end; even Take, who was the only one of them still going to school - part time at a technical college - said pensively, "Ryu's turning into a different kind of adult than we are, isn't he." Hayato could no longer deny that Ryu was moving out of their narrow sphere, no matter how much he might want to stay.

Still, stubbornly, he kept up the emails, asked when Ryu would be back for break, made sure to call him the first night he was home with no consideration for jet lag.

The last vacation, before the spring of Ryu's senior year, they drove out to the coast, stopping at a lookout where they fiddled with the large metal telescopes, a hundred yen for 15 minutes. They, or rather Hayato, talked about nothing in particular - the latest entertainment scandal, classmates, Kurogin.

"What are you doing after graduation, anyway?" Hayato asked lazily, leaning his elbows on the rail overlooking the sea. "Have a job yet? You never seem to go on interviews."

Ryu paused. His gaze was fixed on some point in the distance, far across the steely gray water. "I have been, actually," he said. "In Canada."

"You can interview in Canada?" Hayato said appreciatively. "Wow, that's really nice, are they just international companies, or - " He stopped as Ryu looked at him.

"I think I'm - no," he corrected himself. "I got a job offer last week. I'm going to work for an investment company. In Vancouver."

"Oh," Hayato said blankly. "Oh."

"I got the job on my own," Ryu said. "Without my father."

Hayato nodded. "That's good," he said automatically. He shook himself. "Sorry, sorry," he said, smiling widely. "Congratulations! Now you can join the rest of 3-D as productive members of society!" He clapped Ryu on the shoulder, perhaps more heartily than usual.

"Yeah," Ryu agreed. The corner of his mouth turned up, in what seemed to be an attempt at a smile. "It'll be good to be on the same level as you guys again."

Hayato's smile slipped.

When Hayato leaned over, blindly, and pressed their mouths together, Ryu let him. It lasted only for a second, maybe two, then Hayato pulled away and put on a smile again.

"Right," he said, "want to go get something to eat? I'll even treat, to congratulate you on your new job. Since you're still a poor student, after all." Ryu nodded mutely.

They walked down the hill to the parking lot side by side, elbows bumping, just like any day during high school, and it was then that Hayato finally realized even the silence had changed.

5.

Ryu wasn't sure what made him accept the invitation - he'd only just barely gotten to know Takeda, whom he had two classes with, and while he thought they got along well enough that a night out wouldn't be too awkward, he should have said no the moment Takeda had mentioned his high school friends. He'd foolishly agreed, however, and now it was time to face his sentence like a man. He squared his shoulders and ducked through the cloth curtain into the little ramen shop.

He spotted the group of boisterous young men almost immediately. The first one, tall and imposing, had the second one in a headlock so that all Ryu could see was his back; Takeda had his head on the table, laughing hard enough to cry; and the fourth was leaning back, one arm hooked around the back of a chair, balancing his own precariously on two legs and grinning widely.

He was halfway across the room before the fourth boy noticed him heading toward their group and nudged Takeda. Takeda shot up and waved a cheery hand at Ryu, calling unnecessarily, "Over here, Odagiri-kun!"

"This is my classmate, Odagiri Ryu," Take introduced him once he reached them. "Odagiri-kun, this is Tsuchiya," - the tall one - "Hyuga," - the tall one's victim, carefully brushing his hair back into place - "and Yabuki." - the balancer, who brought his chair down on all four legs with a resounding thud.

"Nice to meet you," Ryu offered, bowing his head politely.

"You're in Take's class?" the victim - Hyuga - said. "That must be the reason he's passing! Thank you for taking care of him," he continued over Take's protests.

"Sit down, sit down," Tsuchiya said, waving a hand at the empty chair at the end of the table. He gave Ryu a wink. "Don't worry, we'll behave, we don't want to scare away Take's only friend at college. Then we'd be responsible if he got lonely and dropped out.”

"I wouldn't drop out from loneliness!" Takeda cried, half-indignant, half-laughing.

"Oh, so he really is your only friend?"

"No!"

Ryu slipped into the indicated chair, across from Yabuki, who appeared deeply engaged in tying the laces of Hyuga's abandoned shoes together while his attention was occupied defending himself from hecklers.

He paused long enough to give Ryu a quick nod and put a finger over his lips in the universal request for silence. Ryu nodded, bemused, but it was no use; Hyuga happened to turn just as Yabuki was occupied with a particularly complex knot and snatched his shoes back with a cry of outrage.

It continued throughout dinner: the silly banter, indignant protests, and liberal physical violence, while Ryu watched with the odd feeling he was observing an alien society. None of the boys at his private high school had acted like this - at least not around him.

"Next?" Hyuga prompted when their bowls had been cleared away and the bills argued over. ("But I didn’t get to eat any of my gyoza, Hayato stole them all!")

"Karaoke!" Yabuki and Takeda cheered in unison.

"But we always go to karaoke," Tsuchiya whined.

"Not with Take's university friends," Yabuki said, smacking him lightly on the arm. "No whining, Class 3-D has to make a good impression."

"'Good impression'," Tsuchiya grumbled. "You're not fooling me."

Yabuki had good reason to like karaoke, Ryu discovered, as he opened the round with a pitch perfect rendition of "My Heart Will Go On".

"If only Yankumi could hear you now," Takeda sighed, fluttering his eyelashes at Hayato. "She'd realize the true depths of your feelings and aaaaaaaaghhhh!" He lost the rest of his sentence as Yabuki attempted to throttle him from across Tsuchiya’s lap.

Ryu's brow furrowed. "Ex-girlfriend?" he asked Hyuga, who was grinning wickedly at his side.

"Homeroom teacher," he said. "She was totally crazy." He sighed reminiscently.

Ryu privately thought that she would have to be really crazy to beat out her students.

As the night wore on, he found to his surprise that he was having a good time; while he would never be a professional singer, he could carry a tune decently and the bizarrely amusing antics of Takeda and his friends seemed never to cease. When Takeda started yawning helplessly in the middle of a jangly pop song, however, Tsuchiya declared the night over - which meant it was time for another round of wrangling over the bill.

"But Hayato hogged the mike again," Hyuga was saying, "just like he always does! He probably sang at least twice as many songs as me."

"And you kept skipping me, saying it was 'punishment' for getting low scores," Tsuchiya said. “So then I should pay even less."

"If I was singing so much then how come you and Take always had another duet in the queue?" Yabuki demanded. "I have to rest my voice sometimes, you know."

Takeda looked at Ryu helplessly. We’ll never get out of here, he mouthed.

Ryu cleared his throat. All eyes turned on him.

"We're really paying to use the room, right?" Ryu said. "And we were all inside for the same amount of time. So if we split it five ways it should be fine."

The boys were silent. Then, lightning-fast, Yabuki rolled up the song book and smacked each of the others over the head once. "That’s right!" he said. "Why didn't any of you think of that, huh? And you’re supposed to be high school graduates!"

"You didn't think of it, either!" Hyuga squawked indignantly, rubbing his head. "Stop showing off!"

Yabuki pounced. The scuffle was quick and one-sided; within minutes Yabuki was sitting on Hyuga's stomach, arms crossed over his chest. "That's what you get when you try and challenge the great Hayato-sama," he declared grandly, as Takeda and Tsuchiya clapped wildly in the background.

The snort of laughter escaped before Ryu was really aware of it; he tried to disguise it with a cough, but it was too late. A delighted smile spread across Yabuki's face. He hopped up, freeing Hyuga to get to his feet with much exaggerated groaning. Yabuki paid no attention as Takeda and Tsuchiya fussed over their wounded companion, sticking his hands in his pockets and grinning at Ryu.

"You're coming with us next time, right?" he said. "Take," he called, without waiting for an answer, "make sure Odagiri comes with us next time."

"Sure," Takeda called back, dropping Ryu a wink. Ryu, taken aback, looked back at Yabuki.

"Call me Hayato," Yabuki offered, again with that wide, confident grin.

Ryu could feel the corner of his mouth quirking upward.

"Ryu," he said.