When the Christmas Lights Aren't Bright Enough -- Part Five
Title: When the Christmas Lights Aren’t Bright Enough
Fandom: Gravitation
Pairings: Eiri x Shuichi, Hiro x Ayaka, Riku x OC, Yuji x Suguru
Rating: Ranging between PG-13 and R
Disclaimer: Gravitation and its characters do not belong to me.
Eiri spent breakfast hiding in his locked-up study. He refrained, surprisingly and successfully, from growling at Souta and Taichi when they slipped bacon underneath the door. He even waited until the sound of their whispers died away before trashing the strips of meat, leaving grease stains on the carpet.
Hanako and Riku stalled. She took a longer shower than necessary, scrubbing at her skin until it was red and she felt she would smell like lavender body wash for the rest of her life. And he pretended to try and do something with his hair.
When Hiro came down, he found Shuichi and Ayaka in the kitchen. Shuichi looked up from unwrapping a Pop-Tart and greeted his friend with a smile and a “G’morning.”
“Morning.” Hiro hesitated for a moment, waited for his wife to swallow a bite of French toast, and said, “Good morning, Ayaka.”
“Good morning,” she replied, soft and cautious.
He placed a hand on her shoulder; she relaxed under the warm touch, and turned her head toward him as he bent down to kiss her. Shuichi watched, silent, and thought of the way lips felt. He looked down at the partially unwrapped Pop-Tart in his hand, the pink frosting peeking out behind the silver package, red sprinkles winking conspiratorially. He thought of blushes, the flushing of human skin, and he lost his appetite for food as something heavier and more painful than hunger swelled in his stomach. He left husband and wife alone in the kitchen and, after a moment of staring thoughtfully at the closed door of Eiri’s study, went to make a phone call.
-
It was a chilly winter morning. The wind blew cold, despite the bright rays of sunshine that struggled in vain to bring warm respite. Suguru shivered when he stepped outside the hotel, followed closely by Yuji-toting luggage-who’d been smiling like a kid in a candy store since the night before.
“Feels like it’s going to be a beautiful day!” He sighed blissfully. “Ah, just smell that fresh morning air!”
Suguru felt that if he dared to inhale, the inside of his nose would go completely numb. He shot Yuji an exasperated look as the other man stuffed their suitcases in the purple rental car and closed the trunk with a gleeful kick in the air. He was kissed clumsily on the cheek while they buckled themselves in and couldn’t deny the way his heart lifted.
He could never stay cold around Yuji.
Yuji opened the map and gave it an once-over before nodding and tossing it into the backseat. Suguru quirked a doubtful eyebrow, but Yuji simply started the engine and crowed, “Ready or not, here we come!”
-
Riku decided that his fathers were hypocrites. He watched them from across the den as they bickered in aggressive whispers. He couldn’t focus on anything else-not Hiro’s gentle strumming of the acoustic guitar Dad-Shuichi kept at the house for their visits, not the landscape masterpiece Souta was creating with crayons, and not the game of Scrabble Ayaka was playing with her two eldest children. All he could was sit and watch them fight, feeling an anger he’d never known building dangerously inside of him.
“Hey Riku, can you make a word out of this?”
He glanced down at the letters Hanako showed him and shook his head. Her brow furrowed as she studied his expression.
“Are you okay?”
He shook his head again.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Again.
“Are you sure?”
Again.
“Let’s go talk about it.”
Again.
“Come on,” she said, taking his hand and starting to get to her feet. “Let’s talk.
“No!”
Once again, Riku found all eyes on him.
“Riku?” Shuichi asked, looking concerned, looking like he cared.
Anger swelled in Riku again and he turned from him, turned from them all, and ran his hands through his hair, an almost-whine of distress slipping past his lips.
“Honey?”
He shook his head, vigorously, violently, and felt the anger rising, making his face burn. He suddenly understood why his fathers' fights always sounded so loud, so passionate; keeping all the anger inside was painful, made his stomach churn and his ears and palms feel as if they were on fire.
“What’s wrong?”
“You!” He yelled, wheeling around to face everyone, but his eyes trained pointedly on his fathers. “You and you, everything about you two is wrong! You tell me not to get married, you tell me to think things through!” The words tumbled out of his mouth, fast and harsh, and he couldn’t stop them, couldn’t hold them back. He’d been silent for far too long. “You tell me all this because you want me to have a good marriage, to enjoy it, but you two don’t even care about your own marriage!”
Shuichi sucked in a sharp breath and Eiri held his palm loosely over his mouth and turned his head to look at the wall.
“Why should I let you tell me that I’m not ready for marriage? You two don’t act married! You don’t smile at each other! You don’t touch or laugh or enjoy each other and it isn’t marriage with you two! It isn’t love!”
“Hey-” Hiro interjected, setting the guitar aside and standing. “Don’t say that. Don’t talk to your fathers like that.”
“Hiro, it’s okay,” Shuichi said softly.
“No.” Hiro shook his head and frowned. “No, it’s not. Riku, you don’t know what your fathers have been through to get to this point. You don’t know what they had to deal with, what they have to live with. They may have reached a snag now, but they couldn’t have reached this point without love.”
Riku listened to Hiro and he understood, and he knew he was probably right, but he was still so angry and hurt and confused that he couldn’t keep it to himself and he had to finally blurt it out.
“Then why are they getting a divorce?!”
His only response was a stunned silence. Everyone was now looking at the couple in question, who only stared at Riku, eyes wide with a mixture of shame and guilt. He glared back at them, seething and unfazed.
The tension broke only when a distant rumbling was heard and the house began to shake.
After living in California for eleven years, the Uesugi-Shindous were used to the occurrence of small earthquakes, but it was such an unpredictable event that they were never fully prepared.
Despite his earlier words, Riku still reached for his fathers when the earthquake struck; his hands were already clasped in each of theirs before he realized what he’d done. The Nakanos were too perfect to panic. The three children, of course, knew the proper protocol for earthquakes; they scurried underneath the coffee table and reached above their bowed heads to hold onto the edges, moving when it moved. Hiro and Ayaka, having experienced at least one earthquake during their residence in LA, simply crouched low to the floor and held on to one other’s arms for steadiness. They let go and straightened up once it passed, as their children crawled out from under the table. Riku wrenched his hands away and took several steps back before turning from his fathers again.
The tension was still unresolved, but for the longest time, no one knew what to say.
-
“Hey, can you reach back there and get me the map?”
“I knew you would need it again,” Suguru teased with a friendly smirk. He twisted around and searched the backseat with his eyes, but saw only the plastic bag of travel snacks Yuji had bought. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“Where did you put it?”
“In the-it isn’t there? Is the window open?”
“…God.”
“Oops,” Yuji laughed.
Suguru stared at him, eyes wide, unsure if he wanted to punch him or laugh, too.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile. “As long as we don’t see too many armadillos we’ll be fine.”
Suguru was not assured.
-
Ayaka was the first to break the heavy silence that followed the earthquake. Looking up from where she’d been idly moving the letter “L” around the Scrabble board, she asked timidly, “Why are you getting a divorce?”
For a few minutes, no one answered. Riku reached up and tangled his fingers in his hair; he knew, and the knowledge of it was heavy and hot in his heart. But he didn’t want to say it, not aloud. He didn’t want to speak anymore. Finally Hiro, avoiding the eyes of his best friend, answered his wife.
“Shuichi’s having an affair.”
Unprepared to hear it said, Riku felt like he’d been gutted. He lowered himself into his chair with a soft, pained grunt. Hanako turned to him from her spot on the floor and placed her hands comfortingly on his knees. Shuichi bit his lip, ashamed by Hiro’s outing of him and his son’s reaction; Eiri watched him without a word, eyes cold.
“Oh,” Ayaka said, just a bit taken aback. “You’ve found-you’re in love with someone else?”
“No!” Shuichi was quick to answer. “No, no, I’m not in love with him! I just-” He struggled with himself. He knew his reasons, but he didn’t want to reveal them, didn’t want to humiliate himself. “He makes me feel young.”
Eiri scoffed. Shuichi glanced at him and suddenly felt emboldened to explain further.
“I know that’s wrong. I know it’s awful, but you have to understand that I need it. I need to feel young. I need to feel sexy. I need it to come across in my work. No one’s going to look at me if I’m not young, if I’m not hot! I can’t be old or I’ll be nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Eiri muttered.
“What?”
“Eiri-san!” Ayaka admonished, looking concernedly at her two youngest children.
“Sorry,” Eiri said, though he wasn’t. “But that’s what it is.”
“Oh, please, Eiri. Don’t try and act like you have any idea what it’s like-”
“You forget that I started relying on my looks before your career even existed,” he snapped. “You think all those young girls and women that ran out to buy my books really gave a damn about the words I wrote? Anybody can write shit. But I could write shit and get it sold because I had looks and a bit of charm.”
“Exactly!” Shuichi said. “And it’s the same with me!”
“No.”
“Yes, it-”
“No, it isn’t! Because your music isn’t shit!”
Shuichi gaped and stared at his husband as if he’d sprouted a second head, as if he’d stated that apples were oranges and the world was shaped like a box.
“Despite what I’ve always said,” Eiri continued, a bit quieter. “Your music is decent. Good, even. I highly doubt you would’ve lasted this long if it wasn’t. Pretty boy singers are a dime a dozen.” He paused for a second; he saw something glistening in Shuichi’s eyes and it made the back of his neck burn with embarrassment. Had this been any other time, any other place, he might’ve stopped there. But he wasn’t a fool. He knew how close he was to losing Shuichi, and if telling him what he really thought about his music bought him time, so be it. “Your music makes you ageless. Even as you get older and you start wearing slacks instead of shorts and tops that cover your midriff, you’ll still be hot because your music is. Hell, Shuichi, there are singers pushing sixty that are still rocking their asses off on tour! And I’m willing to bet anything you’ll be just like them.”
Shuichi was close to tears. Eiri’s entire face felt warm, but he couldn’t back away now; he’d said too much. And he’d meant all of it. He held Shuichi’s watery gaze for a long moment and felt something between them softening, sweetening, until the singer-inhaling deeply once-took a step towards him, and he realized with a bit of a start that Shuichi wanted to kiss him.
The phone rang.
Shuichi stopped and their gaze wavered with his hesitance. Neither of them made a move for the phone, so Taichi-desperately wanting to escape, anyway-got up and answered it for them.
“Uncle Shuichi,” he called tentatively from the kitchen, “it’s for you.”
Shuichi’s breath hitched and he glanced in the other room’s direction. A cold feeling of dread replaced the hot flush Eiri felt, but he tried to ignore it and dared to hope. And then finally, Shuichi’s eyes dropped to the floor and he mumbled a quiet, “Sorry,” and left to take the phone call.
That hard and horrible blow to Eiri’s heart was all he could take. Turning swiftly on his heel, he flew from the room, and a few seconds later, the front door slammed.
“Dad, wait!” Riku called after him, jumping up from his seat, but Hiro was faster, and soon the front door closed again. When neither of them returned, everyone else fell silent once again and set about putting the Scrabble board and pieces away.