When the Christmas Lights Aren't Bright Enough -- Part Six
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.
PART SIX-
Yuji had no idea where he was. He tried to play it cool for a while, but he was beginning to feel a twinge of nervousness somewhere in his chest and he thought he might even be starting to sweat.
“There’s another armadillo,” Suguru dryly pointed out. He shot Yuji a sidelong glance. “You’re sure we aren’t lost?”
Yuji laughed a little too loudly to be sincere.
“Don’t be silly, my love! We’re fine, just fine! I know exactly where we are!”
Suguru watched him for several minutes until he noticed the way his too-big grin twitched. Groaning, the pianist slumped down in his seat and ran his open palm over his face.
“We’re lost.”
-
Hiro hadn’t been to a bar in years. He’d forgotten how strong the smell of hard liquor was and how dizzying a smoky atmosphere could feel.
“Get comfortable,” Eiri said, gesturing to an empty stool beside him, “if you’re set on sticking with me, that is. I’ll be here a while.”
Hiro obliged, shaking his head dismissively at the barkeep as he drew near. He wanted to keep his wits about him. He didn’t entirely trust the novelist to not do anything foolish.
“So, Doc,” Eiri eyed Hiro disinterestedly over his glass, “you think I need chaperoning?”
“Why, do you disagree?” Hiro teased good-naturedly.
Eiri chuckled-the signal of a truce of sorts, Hiro had come to learn-and returned to his drink. The clink of ice against glass was partially drowned out by the beginning chords of some country-western song. Hiro rested his crossed arms on the surface of the bar and listened to the strumming of the guitar strings, eyes closed. After three songs and a couple of refills, Eiri spoke again.
“There’s a woman checking us out over there.”
Hiro glanced down the bar and saw her. She looked to be in her early thirties with freckles dotting along the skin of her collarbone and upper chest. Her eyes were smiling and the curve of her lips inviting. The fingers of her left hand were bare.
“She’s pretty,” Hiro said, wary, testing.
Eiri nodded, drowned the rest of his glass, and got it refilled again. He looked at Hiro, his voice dropping into a lower register, so Hiro had to lean in a little to hear.
“She is pretty. She’s single, probably lonely, and-judging by how low her shirt is cut-looking to spend her night in someone’s company. I could buy her a drink, and not feel a bit of guilt. I’m about to be divorced, after all. I could buy her two drinks, or three, however many it took for us to get through our introductions and meaningless small talk. Then I could ask, ‘Your place or mine’, knowing, of course, she’d be more comfortable at her own-and, at the same time, not being suspicious by not asking and giving away my marriage. Then I could go home with her and-well, you’ve got three kids, you know how it’s done.”
Hiro swallowed and dropped his stare, unnerved by the strange intensity in the other man’s golden eyes.
“Why don’t I?” Eiri continued, focused once more on his glass. “Why haven’t I? I’ve been coming to this bar for eleven fucking years. There once was a time when I wouldn’t dream of leaving a place like this without a girl on my arm. So why don’t I do it now? Shuichi wouldn’t care. Not like he used to. He doesn’t-” He stopped abruptly, as if he suddenly remembered that Hiro was next to him listening. “Anyway, there’s nothing to stop me. Except one thing.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to.” Eiri laughed then, low and humorless. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Hiro smiled weakly and decided it was probably safe to buy himself a drink.
-
“Maybe it’s better this way.”
“Hm?” Yuji glanced over at his companion curiously before turning his eyes back to the unfamiliar road before them.
“Spending Christmas with them would only drive us crazy. Maybe getting lost is a sign of some sort.”
“We’re not lost.”
Suguru smirked at him.
“Well, anyway,” Yuji said, “I’m flattered you’d prefer to spend Christmas alone with me, but don’t you look forward to spreading our holiday cheer?”
“Not particularly.”
“My, how cruel of you.”
Suguru grinned, a little cheekily, and Yuji’s heart fluttered. Lost or not, he’d never felt so grateful to be alive.
-
Hiro’s head was starting to feel a little fuzzy. He wasn’t used to hard liquor, and he’d hardly ever allowed himself to have more than one drink, as he was often the designated driver when he and Shuichi and his brother used to go out. But his thoughts were turning hazy, and the country-western singers wailing about their trucks and their women were starting to get to him.
“She never wanted me to be a doctor,” he found himself saying eventually. “Ayaka, I mean. She felt I was giving up on something good-something that I was good at and that had been good to me. She thought I was trying to prove something that didn’t need to be proven. She didn’t say that, of course, not in so many words. She’s too kind to do something like that. But I know she thought it. I could tell, I always can, by her eyes and the tone of her voice and the way her hands move when she speaks…” He gulped down the rest of his glass and coughed a little. “I invested so much time into my work. I think I probably wanted to impress her, but then I got so caught up in it-I wasn’t doing it for her, or for my family, or even myself. I was doing it for everyone else, everyone I needed to make better. I became obsessed with fixing. Everything, anything, that was broken, I wanted-no, needed-to fix. And I worked so hard… Apparently, I should’ve been focusing elsewhere, huh?” Hiro turned to look at Eiri, who returned Hiro’s questioning look with an indifferent quirk of his eyebrow.
“Do you honestly think I care about your little domestic problems?”
-
The sun was low in the sky. The purple rental car was the only one in the parking lot of the rest stop where Yuji and Suguru had chosen to stop and stretch their legs.
“Check this out!” Yuji called from the car. “Get in your seat,” he urged once Suguru was close enough. “Let me show you what this baby can do!”
Suguru cautiously slid into the passenger’s seat and no sooner had he closed the door than he let out a yelp of alarm as his seat fell back. He glared up at Yuji, unconvincingly, and the other man laughed and let his seat fall back, too.
“Kinda cozy, isn’t it?”
Suguru smiled at him before he could stop himself. Yuji, emboldened, leaned over and kissed him. Suguru was willing and parted his lips and Yuji very nearly lost control. He moved, crawled over, and-managing to only jab Suguru once in the ribs with his elbow-situated himself atop his lover. They kissed again and again, Suguru’s nimble pianist fingers sifting through strands of Yuji’s hair. Their kisses deepened as passion grew and mounted, and then-
“Hey, look…” Yuji pulled away from Suguru’s distracting mouth and reached down, tugging at something under Suguru’s seat. He sat up and dangled the map in front of Suguru’s face like a treasure or a tempting piece of candy.
“Oh. Brilliant.”
-
It felt decidedly like winter when the sun had set, Riku realized as he sat on the beach, knees drawn up to his chest, fingers idly making patterns in the sand. Even so, Hanako’s idea to take her brothers down to the ocean was genius. He would’ve probably ended up outside, anyway. He could only take sitting by the door and waiting for Dad-Eiri to come back for so long, and listening to Dad-Shuichi’s sobs from the kitchen made his heart hurt.
“Hey.” Hanako came to sit beside him, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head, wearily, and she slid her hand up and down his back.
“It wasn’t your fault. I mean, it would’ve come out eventually. You know that, right?”
He didn’t answer and she dropped her hand, instead leaning against him. They sat in silence, eyes trained on the two young boys walking along the shore. Presently, Hanako took his hand in hers and he rubbed lightly at the silver band he’d given her only the previous day-his high school ring.
“So,” she said quietly, “what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. And then added as an afterthought, “But I think I’m going to keep this mohawk for a while.”
This Christmas, Taichi decided, had brought him one step closer to becoming an adult. He’d heard things he’d never heard before, and yet somehow, he understood them. He’d always been looking forward to growing up, but the realization that he indeed was, well…it wasn’t as good a feeling as he’d imagined it being. Before, he’d associated being an adult with being a doctor. Doctors fixed people, healed people, and thus, all adults did. Now he knew that wasn’t the case. Before, he had never seen adults look so helpless. He’d been so used to following his father’s example, helping people who were in trouble or in pain, and there had never been a time when he couldn’t help them. But now he knew that there would be a time like that, one day. And what would he do then? Would he run out, like Uncle Eiri? Or turn to someone or something else, like Uncle Shuichi? Would he keep everything inside, like his mother? Or would he not even be able to see the problem, like his father? He didn’t know, and it frightened him. For the first time, he felt like he could wait to be an adult and he wished he hadn’t spent so much time pretending like he was one.
He stood still, letting the night air cool his face and make his wet clothes stick to him even more. He watched his little brother, laughing as a wave knocked him off his feet, and he wondered if Souta would even remember this night, when he was Taichi’s age.
-
It was ten minutes to midnight when Eiri and Hiro came back to the beach house. After a few minutes of searching their pockets, Eiri remembered he hadn’t taken his keys and Hiro remembered he didn’t even live there. They laughed, loud, and then remembered they should quiet and muffled their laughter into their palms. And then they proceeded to knock on the door to the tune of “Jingle Bells”, one several beats behind the other.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Shuichi hissed when he opened the door. “The kids are sleeping!”
“Not anymore,” Hiro mock-whispered to Eiri, who dissolved into a snickering fit.
Shuichi glared at them, and stepped back to let them stumble their way inside.
“Your drunk,” he pointed out with half-scorn, half-incredulity.
“No,” Eiri said, shaking his head. “No, we’re not. You only think we’re drunk, but really-” He paused to keep from laughing as he said, “Really, you’re the one that’s drunk.”
Hiro leaned against the wall, overcome with mirth and Shuichi rolled his eyes. Ayaka came quietly down the stairs and hurried to her giggling husband concernedly, but she stepped away from him with thinly veiled disdain when she smelled the alcohol on his breath.
“Hiro! How could you go out and get drunk?” She scolded through a whisper. “Think of what the children will think!”
“Oh, sure, sure,” Hiro smiled at her in an unkind manner. “Just like you thought about what the children would think when you said you wished you hadn’t married me.”
Ayaka’s eyes widened and her fingers clenched in the fabric of her nightgown.
“Hiro, that wasn’t what I meant!”
“Okay. But that’s what you said.”
“I-You need to lie down. Here.” She went to take hold of his arm. “Let me help you up the stairs.”
“I can do it myself, you-woman.”
Meanwhile, Shuichi berated Eiri as the novelist fumbled with locking the front door.
“Eiri, you never get drunk! What happened? Why did you have to choose this night to go crazy?”
“Let’s see,” Eiri said slowly, feigning thoughtfulness. “Maybe because my husband chose a phone over me.”
“Eiri…”
“Or,” he continued, turning from the door. “Or maybe because my son has lost his mind and wants to get married. Maybe because my life has officially gone to hell.”
“Eiri, stop.”
“What do you care, anyway?” He snapped, eyes reddened. “Even if I drank so much my liver exploded, you’d still have Rafael to keep you company, wouldn’t you?”
“I fired him.”
“You-what?”
“Fired him. When he called. I’m not going to see him anymore.”
“Oh…” He was taken aback, despite his inebriated state, but he held firm in his anger. “Oh, well, how kind of you. How very compassionate. Did you feel sorry for me, since I’m so pathetic?”
“No! That wasn’t why I-”
“Did you hurt his feelings? Did he have to make it better with milk and cookies?”
“I should hope so,” Shuichi snarled. “I should hope it would hurt to lose me, especially to Mount Baldy.”
“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”
“Language!” Hiro reminded him cheerfully from where he was sprawled ungracefully at the foot of the staircase. “Remember, the children!”
And indeed, the children stood at the top of the stairs in their pajamas, looking down at the spectacle below them with wide eyes. Everyone fell silent as the clock struck midnight and a joyful knock sounded at the door. Eiri wrenched it open to reveal Yuji, looking jolly, and Suguru, who appeared somewhat ragged.
“Merry Christmas!”