FIC: The Twelve Ways of Christmas, Multipairing, NC17 (2/3)
Title: The Twelve Ways of Christmas (2/3)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: Up to and including NC17
Pairing(s): Multipairing (aka, lots of different pairings)
Wordcount: 21 000
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created by Konomi Takeshi. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: Gackt, infidelity, some het, and Keanu Reeves. Concept borrowed from Love, Actually-wouldn't Yuushi approve!
Author's notes: Big thanks to my beta, mayezinha! Written for the community at santa_smex 2008.
This fic has been truncated into 3 parts due to length. These parts are NOT CHAPTERS. This is a one-shot fic.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
5.
He calls at half-past seven to say, "I'll be home late."
The sigh hangs on the line between them, and he almost feels guilty.
Until Dan-san knocks on his office door. "The delivery from New York arrived an hour ago, Atobe-sama," he says.
Atobe nods. When Dan stands there chewing his lip, Atobe rolls his eyes and tells him to open the expedited parcel. New assistants, Atobe thinks.
In retrospect, however, the new assistant is working out far better. Dan doesn't talk back, he doesn't mutter behind Atobe's back, he doesn't dick around with post-it-note airplanes all day either. Really, Atobe can't figure out for the life of himself why he ever agreed to hire Oshitari Yuushi in the first place. His generous spirit clearly couldn't be contained, until that incident.
With the recession, the company's stocks have fallen, just the same as everyone else's. However, that in no way affects the holiday spirit of Atobe Keigo towards his beloved wife.
Dan opens the parcel by peeling off the fabric tape in long, ripping rolls. "Watch it," Atobe says. Dan apologizes. He opens the box, and pushes aside the Styrofoam beads. Kabaji packed it well. Not even the teal box has been dented on the flight over this morning.
Dan hands it to Atobe, who opens the box. The emerald glitters in the Tokyo skyline that floods his office window. The golden band gleams. Atobe holds it up to peer through the stone-there isn't a single flaw.
Just like himself.
Well, and his wife, too.
Atobe sets the box down. Dan wraps it up in the silk bag. "Should I call your chauffeur now, Atobe-sama?"
Atobe says hn.
Dan scuttles out of the room and Atobe leans back in his chair for a moment. From the office window, he can see the panorama of Roppongi lights, all decked out in red and gold for the holidays. He strokes the leather arm rest and swings back around. The German clock reads eight. He can be back at home before the end of the hour to surprise her. Atobe smirks to himself. Christmas Eve will be perfect.
The car is filled with the haunting thickness of choral music, all Christmas numbers, all picked out and arranged by Kabaji last month. Atobe sips on a glass of champagne as the car rolls through the streets of the city. He loosens his tie-it's been a long day, but the promise of tonight awaits.
As the driver starts to pull up to the front gate of the house, Atobe says, "Use the back. I want to surprise her."
"Of course, Atobe-sama," the driver says.
Atobe takes another sip of his champagne. He shivers. Dan chilled it a bit too well.
Mind you, anything is better than Oshitari drinking half a bottle of Erbacher Markobrunn Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese Cabinet 1937 and offering Atobe the bottle to drink from.
The memory sits stale in the back of Atobe's mind. He pushes it aside as the car stops. The door opens. Atobe slides across the buttery leather seat to step out. Even the back of the house is hung with so many boughs of cedar and pine from Sweden that the air smells like a forest. Real mistletoe balls hang in the windows as vegetal chandeliers. Bloody hollyberries stud the hallway arches. A maid rushes between the back kitchen and the corridor. She ducks her head and murmurs, "Atobe-sama." Atobe hands her his coat.
Usually, his wife is upstairs in their suite. Atobe catches sight of himself in the antique silver mirror. He pushes back a wayward hair from his eyes, then he winks. The Tiffany bag is slippery in his hand, so he pockets it. At the top of the staircase, he checks it. Still there, he thinks.
There are voices catching in the corridor. Atobe listens, but he can't make them out. A giggle follows hushed laughter. His smirk deepens: if her friends are here, all the better to make public a gesture of Atobe's festive magnanimity.
He pushes open the door.
Atobe walks inside and pulls the bag from his pocket.
For all Oshitari is a tasteless Neanderthal who indulges in trashy tv dramas, the scene plays like one. The mirror on the ceiling reflects the motions in a double-play like the lagoons of Venice. Atobe stands there and stares. The bodies in the bed-his bed-writhe. Her body is entirely eclipsed by the broad shoulders of someone else on top, but her red nails splay across his back. She giggles. He says, "Wait."
Atobe's jaw drops to the floor, right alongside the silk back.
Echizen climbs off Atobe's wife. The initial flush of shock is replaced with a cocky smile. She grabs the sheets and screams. "You weren't supposed to come back yet!"
Echizen pulls on a pair of boxer-briefs. Atobe walks backward into the wainscoting.
"Hey Atobe," Echizen says, "surprise, hn?"
Mada mada dane.
Atobe walks out of the room. Something crunches underfoot. He looks down to see a can of grape Fanta seeping into the Persian rug. It smells cheap, and of teenagers.
He walks out of the house through the back door. A maid runs through the corridor with his coat. "Atobe-sama!" she calls. Atobe ignores her. The gilded garlands and the boughs of imported pine branches smell like artificial grape flavouring. Echizen doesn't follow him-and neither does his wife.
Atobe walks through the neighbourhood. He walks into the next, and the next. Cold winter makes him shiver, but not nearly as much as the image burned into his mind: Echizen's back, straining and sweaty, his butt clenching and his legs shifting as he fucks Atobe's wife in Atobe's bed on Christmas Eve.
Kabaji is gone, probably on his flight to Aruba with Sachiko-san from the filing department. In a show of company kindness, he gave Dan the night off as well. Atobe stops under the overhang of a convenience store. He rubs his arms for the first time and his face feels wet with anger, shock and a hundred other things. The champagne of before burns the back of his mouth.
His cellphone rings.
For a moment, Atobe thinks that he could answer his wife's call. He could listen to her apologize for allowing to be seduced by Echizen. Atobe has seen the newspapers splashed with Echizen's face. He won a Grand Slam in August.
The ladies love him.
Instead, Atobe's lip curls up at the name appearing on the LCD screen. He throws the cellphone against the wall of the convenience store. He seethes through his teeth, but it does nothing to dispel the growing cold inside.
Atobe keeps walking until his toes are numb. He looks around for the first time. This place is unfamiliar, packed with narrow streets and seedy-looking ramen joints packed with half-drunk salarymen. One bumps into Atobe's side. "Watch it!" Atobe snaps. His voice breaks half way.
The salaryman glares at him before he stumbles over a parked bicycle and pukes.
In hindsight, he should have been smarter. Oshitari used to joke about installing hidden CCTV cameras at home to check up on his wife. "She's very pretty," Oshitari would say. And then he would nullify everything but leering at Atobe and stroking the corner of Atobe's laptop. However, nothing can change the fact now that he's married to an adulterer who is sleeping with Japan's latest tennis sensation.
Atobe grinds his teeth to the gum. He pants through his nostrils until the frost bites them too deep and he sneezes. He shivers. He holds his arms tight, and his wallet tighter when another salaryman trips into him. The people around here are dirty, and they smell of cheap beer and BO.
The stink is too much.
Atobe dives into the first semi-clean place he finds.
Which happens to be an izakaya. In the lobby, a large tank of fish swim their dying laps around the aquarium. It's too loud for Atobe to hear what the server asks. Glasses clink and the wooden walls echo with the calls of patrons for more sake, more beer, another whiskey.
Atobe sits down at the bar. He slams down a note and says, "Whatever this buys."
"Long day?" the bar tender asks.
Atobe looks up and gives his best death glare. His skin scrawls from the commonness of the bar, but his mind craves the numbing alcohol set down in front of him. He downs the sake shot in one go.
And then he coughs it all back up.
"Hyoutei's Atobe?"
"Atobe?"
"Hey, it's that guy Sanada-senpai hated!"
Through a veil of blurred eyes, Atobe looks over his shoulder. Three of the hoi polloi have approached him, and they know his name. Raw sake burns his stomach and the alcohol pumps through his veins as fast and irritating as the cheesy American Christmas music playing in the izakaya.
"My wife is sleeping with someone else," Atobe says.
"Dude," the brown guy says.
The youngest of the three whistles. He looks the most familiar, but Atobe really, truly cannot bring himself to care who these people are.
"Since it's Christmas, we'll buy you a drink. Come and sit with us," the other says. His round face lights up in the hazy smoke of the bar when he adds, "We have Christmas cakey…"
By far, this is the most unperfect Christmas Atobe knows he will ever experience. The bar is filled with drunken riff-raff ranging from barely-old-enough university students to desperate old men who smell worse than the cigarettes they smoke. Photographs of Guam stud the walls, and the floor is sticky underneath his shoes.
The three guys stare at Atobe.
"Cakey?" the fat one asks again.
So Atobe sighs, and follows and is offered the fattest slice of department store Christmas cake that no one-not his wife, not his servants, not Oshitari-ever shared with him.
It doesn't cost a single yen.
6.
By nine, all three of them are waiting outside the pub. Kirihara buries his face into his scarf. Jackal waves hi from down the alley. He's got a hat with those tassel-y things that Kirihara sorta kinda wants, but can never remember to buy.
"Nice hat, senpai," he says.
"Thanks," Jackal says. "Mari bought it for me."
Kirihara makes a face.
Jackal laughs at him. "Don't worry, she's got lots of pretty friends who would like you, Akaya."
Kirihara says, "Really?"
Jackal nods. "Really really."
"Sweet," Kirihara says.
"This is even sweeter," Marui says. He's got a cake in a plastic bag and he's right on time, because Kirihara's cell reads the hour exactly. Jackal says let's go in. Marui says let's not wait a moment longer.
The bar is smoky and crowded with people-but not too many, since they find a table at the back, behind the bar. Kirihara peels off his coat and his mittens and his scarf and he dumps them on the floor, just like Marui. Jackal picks it all up to hang on the coat hook. Marui sets the cake out on the table.
"Delicious, isn't it?" His eyes are glowing the way Kirihara's do when he gets pissed with the ball boys at tournaments. Except Marui-senpai isn't throwing his racket around, he's taking the lid off the cake to lick a finger of cream icing.
"Good?" Jackal asks.
Marui looks at him. "Duh, Jackal. Shintarou made it for me."
"He's…?" Kirihara scratches his head. Jackal flags a waiter down and orders a round of Kirin.
"To celebrate, of course," Jackal says.
"Shintarou plays the drums," Marui says.
"Is your band doing any better?" Kirihara asks.
Marui snorts. He waggles his finger in front of Kirihara's eyes, and Kirihara sorta watches it. Because it's distracting and all and he's had a long day at the university centre working on that new serve style for January's tournament in Dubai.
"We have a gig lined up for New Year's," Marui says. "Not playing outside Shibuya station, not playing in Yoyogi Park-this time Racks is for real!"
"Sweet," Kirihara says.
"No word from the agency?" Jackal asks.
Marui narrows his eyes. He sucks on the finger he stuck back into the cake. "He said that we were just too talented to sign with them. It's understandable, I guess. My-our-Genius is just a bit much for some people."
Jackal looks at Kirihara. When their eyes meet, they both start to snicker at the same time.
"Shut up!" Marui shouts.
The beer shows up and Marui forgets about being mad. Kirihara forgets about wanting the same hat as Jackal and Jackal lifts his bottle up to toast.
"To friends," he says.
"And kicking ass this year," Kirihara says.
"And hot chicks," Marui adds.
They kampai over that. Kirihara chugs back a couple big gulps of beer until his face feels hot. The end of Marui's nose is turning red. Jackal lets out a big belch.
"No Asian flush for me," he says.
Kirihara and Marui tackle him across the table. Jackal shouts and calls uncle.
"You can order the next round, too," Marui says. "We can't help that our genes love lady alcohol more than you."
"Yeah," Kirihara adds.
Jackal raises his eyebrows over his bottle. Kirihara's smirk splits into another bout of laughter. The beer makes his stomach buzz in a good, warm, Christmas-y sorta way.
"Any plans for tonight?" Marui asks. "I mean, post-guys time."
Jackal rubs his chin. "Mari wants to check out this one gallery in Aoyama. But maybe shopping instead."
"Art's boring," Kirihara says.
"It's, like, naked pictures by some famous photographer. There's all sorts of geese and women and mythological stuff. But mostly naked women," Jackal adds. He winks at Kirihara. Kirihara's face feels even hotter.
"Aw, don't worry, kiddo," Marui says. He slings an arm over Kirihara's shoulder. Kirihara tries to wiggle away from Marui's beer breath. He smells a bit cheesy from the cake's icing. "You'll have sex one day."
Kirihara gets a punch to Marui's arm. "Shut up," he says through his teeth. His face is hot enough that it's gotten explode in flames. Like the frying fish in the bar kitchen.
"And don't call me 'kiddo'!" he shouts.
Marui and Jackal both laugh. Kirihara wishes they would just drop it. He looks around the bar. Marui orders a platter of the seafood special. There's a tank of fish by the entranceway filled with screaming little sardines and eels just waiting to fill bellies tonight. Kirihara licks his lips.
"Isn't Yukimura supposed to get back from Australia soon?" Marui asks.
"I think so," Jackal says. "Or did he go to Hawaii with his girlfriend?"
Hawaii would be nice and warm and filled with cute girls. Kirihara shivers in a draft of cold air from someone coming into the bar. "Didn't Yukimura and his girlfriend break up?" Kirihara asks.
"No," Marui says.
"But when I saw him in London he said they broke up," Kirihara says.
"Yeah, maybe that's right," Jackal says. "But he told Niou that he was coming back at Christmas to see someone."
Marui snickers. He prods Kirihara in the side with a soft elbow. "Sure as heck wouldn't be Sanada," he says.
Kirihara snickers with him. "Totally."
Marui pushes the bottles to the edges of the table to make room for the cake again. "Shall we?" he asks.
The waiter brings the seafood platter. The cake gets pushed back to the edge. Fried fish sizzles. Baby octopuses are so fresh from the fryer that they practically wiggle. Kirihara's tummy growls. Jackal stabs one of the grilled scallops with a chopstick and pops it into his mouth.
Kirihara goes for the octopus. The grease burns his tongue, but the little sucker is so fresh and buttery between his teeth. Kirihara's eyes roll back. This is way better than that soggy katsudon bento he had for lunch.
"Definitely the best izakaya food since that place in Sendagaya," Marui says. He chews with his mouth open. Bits of fish fly across the table. Kirihara moves in on another octopus.
"Mn hn," Jackal says.
Kirihara groans over the next octopus. He gives his senpais a thumbs-up before he slides down in his seat. The beer's getting to his head in a good way. The food is doing the rest. Being here is way better than hanging out at an arcade by himself, or eating dinner with his manager.
Or, worse of all, staying home with his mom and his sister, and his sister's new boyfriend. Yuck.
The seafood platter is decimated before the next beers show up. Kirihara burps, Marui belches and Jackal tops them all with the first few bars of the national anthem in belch-form. Kirihara lifts his beer.
"That was awesome," he says. "Kampai?"
"Kampai!" Marui says. They clink Jackal's bottle. He bows and nods and says thank you very much in pretty darn good English-that's the only stuff Kirihara knows, since he needs it to say to reporters in America and London after tournaments.
There's another cold draft when some salaryman plunks himself down at the bar counter. Marui taps Jackal with his bottle. Kirihara looks at them both, then he watches where they're both looking. The guy at the bar looks sorta like-
"Hey, isn't that the guy who Sanada-senpai hated in school?" he asks. He scratches his scalp, but he really can't remember the guy's name. He was rich and obnoxious and had his own helicopter and stuff.
"Yeah, it looks like Atobe," Marui says.
"Atobe!" Jackal calls.
Atobe doesn't listen to them. He's hunched over the bar nursing a drink like he's just lost his job, or something. So the three of them all look at each other and stand up. Marui lingers over the cake, but no one's going to touch it if they're just at the bar, Kirihara is pretty sure.
Kirihara pokes Atobe in the back. "Oi, you," he says.
"Atobe," Jackal says.
Atobe stares at them. His eyes are red. He smells like a fruitcake. "My wife is sleeping with someone else," he says.
Marui whistles. "Harsh."
"Damn," Jackal says.
Kirihara smiles to himself. He doesn't have that problem to worry about, luckily. He whistles anyways, just so he doesn't seem like an asshole.
Marui says, "Since it's Christmas, we can buy you a drink, dude. Come and sit with us."
Kirihara looks at Jackal. Jackal looks at him. Maybe if they get Atobe drunk enough, he can buy them the expensive wagyu beef on the menu, or the sake special. They all look at Atobe, and it doesn't take him long enough to stand up.
Marui offers cake. Atobe follows them after that. They pull an extra chair up and shove over. Atobe is sandwiched between Kirihara and Jackal and the empty plate from the seafood. He looks really uncomfortable.
"You still play tennis?" Kirihara asks.
Atobe blinks. "Maybe I should," he says. He sounds kinda like a robot. Jackal nods to the waitress, who brings Atobe a beer.
"Yeah, so, none of us are married," Marui says.
"Not yet," Jackal says.
"Well…" Marui sniffs. "It'd be weird if we were, Jackal. We're too young. We have to enjoy our youth! Spread some wild oats! Explore the world before we're bogged down with shitty jobs and bitchy wives."
Kirihara gives Marui a high-five.
Atobe's eye twitches, the side with the big mole on it.
"Er…" Jackal says.
"Cake?" Marui asks.
"Definitely," Jackal says.
"I want that part," Kirihara says. He points to the part of the cake all the way across from himself, with the reddest strawberry.
"Atobe?" Marui asks. He doesn't answer, so Marui gives him a big slice. Guests first and because it's Christmas Eve and all that.
The waitress brings them four forks. She's kinda old, but young enough for Marui to offer her a piece too. She shakes her head. Marui waggles his eyebrows and mouths, "Later?"
"I have a boyfriend," she mouths back.
"Nice play, Bunta," Jackal says.
"Oh shut up," Marui says. He's flushing, but laughing a bit too. Kirihara snickers. He looks at Atobe, and even he has a little bit of a smirk on his face.
It doesn't matter if the cake turns out to be sorta stale ("But Shintarou said he made it this morning!" Marui insists), because it doesn't really matter.
Spending Christmas with friends is the number one way.
Totally.
7.
The Mai Tais are pure ecstasy.
Shiraishi leans back in the beach chair. He's lain here so long that his back sticks to the wooden slats. Condensation drips down the side of the high ball glass, all the way down his arm. He plays with the bendy straw and takes another sip.
Ecstasy indeed…
There is no one hovering over his shoulder as he decants chemicals. There is no stack of lab paperwork to fill out before he can crawl back home at midnight. There are no sulphurous fumes burning his nostrils.
No, in Guam, there's nothing but the salty smell of the ocean next door, and the clink of mixing drinks at the hotel bar. If it wasn't for the wedding in three doors, Shiraishi reckons he could probably lay here by the pool forever, and then some.
Cold winter in Osaka has been replaced with sun-kissed girls in bikinis who wave to him before they tiptoe into the pool. Shiraishi works his Mai Tai. Another girl winks at him. Her cleavage spills out from her bikini top. Sorry, chickie, maybe try being a little less overt next time?
He flips his sunglasses down again. By the end of the week, he’ll have a tanuki mask around his eyes.
So long as the drinks keep flowing, it's all good. It's probably noon, or a little after, and he's drunk his way through a Singapore Sling, two Mai Tais, and the resort special: the Groovy Guam. Just what the Groovy Guam includes, Shiraishi isn't quite sure. There's a hint of mango, overtones of pineapple and lychee and maybe something minty. It's laced with rum and woven with something that makes the sun blur into double.
Shoju? he thinks.
There are an awful lot of Korean tourists here, after all...
And maybe he has had a bit too much to drink. What happened to watching his health? That went down the drain with all the chemicals in the laboratory at work. Childhood fantasies of traipsing around Thailand to find himself, and practicing yoga in gaudy Hindu temples in India have gone the wayside. Shiraishi thinks about it sometimes-he's not jealous of Chitose, but at the same time, the hours slogged at work make him wistful on occasion.
As do the Mai Tais, it seems.
But Chitose is hundreds of miles across the Pacific, and the only people Shiraishi knows here are his immediate family, who are far too busy with the wedding to notice that he's wandered off to spend another day schlumping around the resort pool and watching perfect Korean babes parade by.
Even if he doesn't do anything, he can admire their lean curves and small mouths. They smell of shampoo, and fruity sunscreen and it turns his inhibitions off and his arousal on. One girl with a pony tail creeps by; she's blocked by her friends, who strut by in string bikinis and Prada sunglasses. They cast long looks towards him. He ignores them. The girl with the ponytail is prettier times three because she doesn't pay attention when he sets his drink down and walks up to her.
In his best English, he says, "Hi."
She doesn't have those fake, round eyes of her friends. But her eyes widen when he smiles at her. The idealized, plasticized bodies of her friends are nothing compared to the natural flush creeping over her cheeks.
They spend the afternoon in the botanical garden. Hibiscus plants and palm trees drip from the garden canopy. Shiraishi reads the Latin names on the placards. In broken English, she says his French is perfect. The air is thick and humid and filled with negative ions. The alcohol sweats off his skin. Shiraishi almost regrets the alcohol haze of this morning, until he kisses her in the hotel elevator.
His room has a view of the tennis court seven floors down. He knocks once or twice-she doesn't need to know that he's sharing a room with his parents-but luckily, they're off at a meeting with the photographer before his sister's Big Day.
Perfect, he thinks.
He peels the bathing suit strings from the back of her neck. Her skin is white beneath them against the golden tan. They kiss for a while, and share a joint on the hotel balcony. She blushes and stammers and says no, she's not like this, and it only makes it better. Shiraishi's head floats as his body sinks into hers. The health-conscious part of him was smart enough to stop at a conbini at Kansai International before the flight. The condoms come in handy.
It's not ecstasy of the highest level, but it feels good to fuck her until the headboard bangs into the wall. She squeaks and squeals in Korean. Her breasts are small and her nipples are big. Days by the beach have marked the bikini on her skin. Shiraishi kisses the gilt of her stomach, and then the smooth ivory skin on the swell of her bum.
There's a restaurant overlooking the back gardens of the hotel, closer to the golf course than the stretch of white beach. Swans splash through the fountain as they eat. Shiraishi sips on another Mai Tai. The Korean girl doesn't drink. She doesn't really eat, either, but instead picks at a salad with bird-like accuracy.
It's not very healthy.
Shiraishi sucks on the Mai Tai. He chews on the straw, and stirs the ice around-he checked with the waiter, it came from bottled water, not tap. There will be no hepatitis C for him. He thinks about her bony body and the greasy feel of the sunscreen on the tops of her arms as he held her down in bed.
Really, the Mai Tais are much sweeter.
His eyes roll back as he chews on a stray string of pineapple. Ecstasy in a high ball…
When they say good night, Shiraishi doesn't ask for her cell number. She hesitates, but the English never comes and he doesn't understand Korean. Another drink at the bar and she's sliding into hazy memory as his body sinks into the wooden beach chair again. The pool glows with eerie blue lighting at this time of night. Insects hum and buzz, and strings of light hang from palm fronds. It might be Guam, but it's still the holidays.
Against the velvet sky, which melts into the Pacific with an indeterminate horizon, the palm trees stand out, white lights decked through the black branches. Shiraishi orders a drink from the bar; this time, a Sex on the Beach. The Mai Tai leaves a warm tingle in his belly, akin to the post-sex relaxation that still lingers in his limbs. It stretched him out, like a good round of yoga.
He can't remember the last time he had time for that. At the hotel, there are morning yoga classes. Too bad they're a bit too early for anyone except seniors in Hawaiian print shirts.
The bar attendant doesn't watch him walk toward the boardwalk with his drink. Shiraishi pads across the wooden walkway. It leads into the jungle in a pathway of kitschy Santa Claus lights propped up between azaleas and the occasional ornamental cactus. The beach is footsteps away. Grains of sand drift across his naked toes when the wind shifts off the ocean. He closes his eyes and breathes in the heady smell of the sea. With the drink in hand, it's almost perfect.
It's too bad that Fuji Shuusuke has to ruin everything. Fate can be the only explanation why Shiraishi opens his eyes at the sound of one of the swans from the hotel fountain, hissing at him from deep inside the thicket of planted orchids. He creeps back along the boardwalk and his Sex on the Beach isn't as appealing now, with the juice melting down his hand as he slops it on a stumble.
Shiraishi downs the last of the drink, then he sets the glass down on the edge of the boardwalk. He slips through the slats of the railing down toward the beach. When his feet sink into the warm sand, he sighs. Ecstasy…
Someone snorts in the darkness. Up from the water's edge, that same someone approaches. It takes a moment for the alcohol to slither down Shiraishi's body and uncloud his mind.
"Shiraishi Kuranosuke," Fuji says.
Shiraishi doesn't quite believe that Fuji is standing three feet away from him. "What are you doing here?" he asks.
Fuji's smile sets him on edge. It creeps up his nerve endings and undoes the calming, slinkiness of the alcohol. Shiraishi narrows his eyes. The light from the hotel resort illuminates the beach enough that he can see Fuji hold up a camera. "Did you know it's jellyfish season?" he asks.
Shiraishi raises his eyebrows.
Fuji nods to his hand. "Aren’t you worried about that poison hand of yours?"
Only then does Shiraishi respond: with a little laugh of his own. "No one but Kin-chan believed that story," he says. "That was years ago."
But we meet again.
Fuji walks along the sand. Shiraishi, with nothing better to do, and nothing to return to back in the hotel room, except his parents, walks with him. Years lap at them the way the tide does, creeping under the sand that pulls away under Shiraishi's thongs. Once or twice, Fuji pauses and takes a shot of the ocean, the boardwalk, and even the cantankerous swan that patrols the garden.
"What are you doing here?" Shiraishi asks again.
Fuji blinks at him. "I'm a wedding photographer," he says. "Your sister is getting married."
The motion of the tides is rhythmic, and as thick as the silences between them. Shiraishi walks ahead of Fuji. The hotel diminishes with each passing step in the ephemeral sand. He stops to look back, but his eyes catch nothing but the flash of a photo being taken. Shiraishi frowns.
This makes Fuji's smile widen. "You don't mind, do you?" he asks. "I like to take photos to remember my trips…" The sides of his lips curl up sharply. All of the fluidity from the alcohol has solidified as the waves roll up to Shiraishi's calves. The water clings to his skin as it pulls back into the ocean. Tiny crabs skitter across the luminous surface of the sand when the water breaks.
"This place is ecstasy, don't you think?" Fuji holds his camera up to the moon, which hangs in the sky in a pearly slice.
Shiraishi looks at him. He lifts his chin up. It's a good thing that the night is deep enough to mostly hide the hint of the smile pulling at his lips.
"Not quite."
8.
mchan: hi there
meganeman80: Hello
mchan: i saw ur profile
mchan: how r u?
meganeman80: Well, thank you
meganeman80: How are you?
mchan: ww im lookin
meganeman80: For something?
mchan: for someone
mchan: special
mchan: r u that person?
He clicked on the profile: I like long walks on the beach and boys with glasses. I like to have a GOOD TIME. I work at an engineering company and I'm 24. In the future, I want a dog and to travel to Italy.
She sounded perfect-maybe a Christmas cake and desperate-but he imagined her to have short, dyed hair with a big, toothy smile. He imagined that her name was Mariko-chan, or maybe Mayumi. She was an OL, or a secretary, and Yagyuu was looking for someone just like her.
They emailed for weeks. Yagyuu would come home from the office and check his phone again. He checked it four or five times on the train already. When his inbox recorded a new message, his heart would flutter.
meganeman80: Let's meet. Christmas Eve?
mchan: ok
mchan: r u sure?
meganeman80: I am certain. We could go to the park, or the beach, if you would like.
meganeman80: mchan?
mchan: im here
mchan: what if u dont like me?
meganeman80: I know I will ^-^
meganeman80: Please, let's meet.
She said she would wear a blue scarf.
Yagyuu phoned Marui to tell him he couldn't make it to the izakaya after all.
"Hot date?" Marui asked.
Yagyuu cleared his throat. "…yes."
"Don't forget the condoms!" Marui said.
Yagyuu hasn't. He pulls the box of mints from his pocket to pop one into his mouth. The neighbourhood where they are meeting is familiar enough that Yagyuu recognizes the convenience store at a street corner. Niou-kun lives not too far away. Yagyuu crosses the road at the green light and he walks past the store. Something catches his eye from the pavement. Gleaming in a cold puddle is a purple cellphone. Yagyuu picks it up. He turns it over-there's a crack in the screen, but the phone looks like a new, expensive model. There are pedestrians walking behind and ahead of him, but no one stops for the cellphone. Yagyuu hesitates, then he slides the it into his coat pocket. It wouldn't be right to leave the phone on the sidewalk to freeze overnight.
His phone buzzes. His heart skips a beat. Yagyuu fumbles with his own cellphone.
i dont think we should meet
Yagyuu steps under the overhang of a fish shop. It smells heavy like the ocean. He pushes his glasses up and types a message back.
Please, I want to meet you! I'm almost at the street.
Mchan doesn't respond. Yagyuu double-checks the time-he's five minutes early-and the address of the flower shop mchan suggested they meet at-it's two minutes away. Yagyuu rushes down the main street, careful not to slip on the icy film covering the pavement. His glasses fog up from effort. He turns down the street. At the very end, there should be a flower shop before the next intersection.
It's a quiet, residential street with slightly-seedy apartment buildings. Across and kitty-corner to the street is a lot selling fresh pine trees. Yagyuu takes a deep breath to inhale the resin. Bicycles and scooters line the empty planters and corrugated shop fronts that are closed for the night. The first veil of evening lights has descended as the light dies. Yagyuu runs down the street before mchan changes her mind.
She's just scared, he thinks.
Inside his pockets, his hands are sweaty.
Me too, Yagyuu thinks. The closer he gets to the flower shop, the more his heart palpates. There is a single figure standing outside a shop front, just far enough from sight that Yagyuu sucks in a breath. Anticipation is the sweetest emotion. Yagyuu exhales. In the reflection of a men's barbershop window, he combs down the stray hairs at the back of his head. He pushes his glasses up.
The blue scarf is the first thing he notices. Mchan's back is turned to him. She's got a tight pair of jeans and military-style boots to her knees. Her coat is dark, and her cap is too.
"M…chan?" Yagyuu asks. He steps closer.
Mchan turns around.
"Niou!" Yagyuu says.
Under the faded street lamp light, Niou isn't laughing at the joke. Yagyuu's mind swirls with heavy thoughts about office ladies and emails for the past month, the condom he has in his pocket and the hotel room he booked by the beach. His heart slams into his stomach and he feels ill.
Niou looks even more ill.
"Told you this was a bad idea," he mutters.
Yagyuu shakes his head. "But-you-I don't understand…" There's nothing else to do besides shake his head again. "Why did you do this?"
Niou stops scuffing his boot on the tarmac. His back moves with a heavy sigh. His breath hangs in the air in a crystalline cloud. Not once has he looked Yagyuu in the eye yet. He stares at the barren planters across the road instead. "Isn't it obvious?" he mutters. His head half-turns to Yagyuu and he snorts. When Yagyuu doesn't say anything, Niou's mouth twists into a sick little smile.
Niou-the mchan that never was-walks away. The scuff of his pace echoes out to the main intersection. Red light from a curtain of holiday lights at a nearby hotel bounces off his slumped shoulders. Yagyuu's heart continues to shiver.
"Wait!" he shouts.
He runs to Niou. He grabs Niou by the shoulders before Niou has a chance to get any further from him. Yagyuu shakes him a little. Niou's head snaps up. There's a thick, cold lump in his throat that Yagyuu has to push down before he says, "We have a date, remember?"
Niou's eyes gleam from red to white in the glow of the traffic rushing by. They waver too much for this to be a joke. Yagyuu wipes his sweaty hands on the inside of his pockets. In one, he can feel the condom. In the other, he can feel the cracked cellphone.
"Are you joking?" Niou whispers.
Yagyuu shakes his head. "Do you still like walks on the beach?"
The beach is an hour away by train. There are enough people commuting from Tokyo to the suburbs south of Yokohama that Yagyuu stands across from Niou, who stares out the window. Once or twice, or maybe eight times, Niou pulls milk candies from his coat pocket. He slurps on them. Yagyuu wipes his glasses with a cleaning cloth when the train hits a smooth, straight stretch of tracks just past Ofuna. Through the breaks between salarymen and high school couples on dates, the sea is visible in a big, silken wash of ink.
They change to another line in Kamakura. At the train station, Yagyuu looks at Niou, who buries himself in the blue scarf. "Do you want to get something to eat?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou shakes his head.
At this time of year, the beach is empty. The next station is nearly empty, but there are swathes of cheap gold garland draped around the adjacent noodle bars. Yagyuu has been here in the summer-he's been here with Niou before and he fully expected to take mchan tonight. They would have held hands and she would have blushed and giggled like a girl.
Instead, Niou is here, standing with Yagyuu over the cold, brittle sand. The waves are white-capped and swollen as they crash into the rocky piers to the far south. Yagyuu starts to walk through the frozen sand, which is surprisingly yielding under his shoes. Niou falls behind him.
"Aren't you going to ask why I did it?" Niou asks. His voice sounds hollow. The waves continue their crash into the shore. The blue scarf whips up from around Niou's neck and the ends unravel. They writhe in the wind.
Yagyuu thinks, He must be cold.
He says nothing. It doesn't take an idiot to piece two and two together. Yes, he's surprised and confused, but tonight is also Christmas Eve.
So Yagyuu reaches out to catch the ends of Niou's blue scarf. He wraps them back around Niou's face and as Niou's eyes widen, Yagyuu's lips do, too. His heart flutters the same way it did with mchan's messages.
When he kisses Niou, his heart flies into his throat. Niou is stiff. His shoulders are tight under Yagyuu's hands. There is a moment of panic when Yagyuu thinks, Maybe this was all a joke. Except Niou's little whimper changes everything. The wetness in his eyes gleams in the weak moonlight. The sand shifts under their feet and Niou shifts under Yagyuu. His lips open a little. Finally, their tongues slide together in a hot, wet dance of tentative touches searching for something more. Yagyuu pulls back for a moment. Niou licks his lips. He avoids Yagyuu's eyes in a strange, shy new way that sends little shivers of pleasure to his belly.
Niou's breath frosts his scarf. His hair is dyed the colour of the winter moon. Yagyuu's imagination wasn't completely off. He reaches for Niou's hand. It's icy between Yagyuu's fingers. Slowly, though, Niou loosens his fingers to allow Yagyuu's weave. "Should we walk a little further?" he asks.
Niou's hat moves when he furrows his brow up. Yagyuu's glasses slip a little. He tries to wiggle them back up his nose by wrinkling it. They slip further. His heart shakes when Niou shivers.
"Or…" Yagyuu says. He thinks about the condoms in his pocket. It won't be an OL with a high-pitched voice and heels bouncing around his bed tonight after all. Yagyuu lets the silence cover them as he thinks about his words. He closes his eyes to the sea. His mouth searches for the milky taste of Niou's kiss. His mind searches for a new image, of Niou in that hotel bed tonight. His legs would be spread and his cock would be hard and his face would be flushed. He would moan and sigh Yagyuu's name. He would dig his cold hands into Yagyuu's shoulders. He might keep those military boots on, but the blue scarf would be unwound onto the floor.
The image doesn't bother Yagyuu in the least. He squeezes Niou's hand. The bird in his chest threatens to fly out his mouth when Yagyuu asks, "Or, I have a hotel room booked. We could, if you want," he says. "Mchan?"
Niou stares at him.
Yagyuu clears his throat. "We could have a Good Time?" he offers.
Niou's mouth curls into a slow, toothy smile.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: Up to and including NC17
Pairing(s): Multipairing (aka, lots of different pairings)
Wordcount: 21 000
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created by Konomi Takeshi. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: Gackt, infidelity, some het, and Keanu Reeves. Concept borrowed from Love, Actually-wouldn't Yuushi approve!
Author's notes: Big thanks to my beta, mayezinha! Written for the community at santa_smex 2008.
This fic has been truncated into 3 parts due to length. These parts are NOT CHAPTERS. This is a one-shot fic.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
5.
He calls at half-past seven to say, "I'll be home late."
The sigh hangs on the line between them, and he almost feels guilty.
Until Dan-san knocks on his office door. "The delivery from New York arrived an hour ago, Atobe-sama," he says.
Atobe nods. When Dan stands there chewing his lip, Atobe rolls his eyes and tells him to open the expedited parcel. New assistants, Atobe thinks.
In retrospect, however, the new assistant is working out far better. Dan doesn't talk back, he doesn't mutter behind Atobe's back, he doesn't dick around with post-it-note airplanes all day either. Really, Atobe can't figure out for the life of himself why he ever agreed to hire Oshitari Yuushi in the first place. His generous spirit clearly couldn't be contained, until that incident.
With the recession, the company's stocks have fallen, just the same as everyone else's. However, that in no way affects the holiday spirit of Atobe Keigo towards his beloved wife.
Dan opens the parcel by peeling off the fabric tape in long, ripping rolls. "Watch it," Atobe says. Dan apologizes. He opens the box, and pushes aside the Styrofoam beads. Kabaji packed it well. Not even the teal box has been dented on the flight over this morning.
Dan hands it to Atobe, who opens the box. The emerald glitters in the Tokyo skyline that floods his office window. The golden band gleams. Atobe holds it up to peer through the stone-there isn't a single flaw.
Just like himself.
Well, and his wife, too.
Atobe sets the box down. Dan wraps it up in the silk bag. "Should I call your chauffeur now, Atobe-sama?"
Atobe says hn.
Dan scuttles out of the room and Atobe leans back in his chair for a moment. From the office window, he can see the panorama of Roppongi lights, all decked out in red and gold for the holidays. He strokes the leather arm rest and swings back around. The German clock reads eight. He can be back at home before the end of the hour to surprise her. Atobe smirks to himself. Christmas Eve will be perfect.
The car is filled with the haunting thickness of choral music, all Christmas numbers, all picked out and arranged by Kabaji last month. Atobe sips on a glass of champagne as the car rolls through the streets of the city. He loosens his tie-it's been a long day, but the promise of tonight awaits.
As the driver starts to pull up to the front gate of the house, Atobe says, "Use the back. I want to surprise her."
"Of course, Atobe-sama," the driver says.
Atobe takes another sip of his champagne. He shivers. Dan chilled it a bit too well.
Mind you, anything is better than Oshitari drinking half a bottle of Erbacher Markobrunn Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese Cabinet 1937 and offering Atobe the bottle to drink from.
The memory sits stale in the back of Atobe's mind. He pushes it aside as the car stops. The door opens. Atobe slides across the buttery leather seat to step out. Even the back of the house is hung with so many boughs of cedar and pine from Sweden that the air smells like a forest. Real mistletoe balls hang in the windows as vegetal chandeliers. Bloody hollyberries stud the hallway arches. A maid rushes between the back kitchen and the corridor. She ducks her head and murmurs, "Atobe-sama." Atobe hands her his coat.
Usually, his wife is upstairs in their suite. Atobe catches sight of himself in the antique silver mirror. He pushes back a wayward hair from his eyes, then he winks. The Tiffany bag is slippery in his hand, so he pockets it. At the top of the staircase, he checks it. Still there, he thinks.
There are voices catching in the corridor. Atobe listens, but he can't make them out. A giggle follows hushed laughter. His smirk deepens: if her friends are here, all the better to make public a gesture of Atobe's festive magnanimity.
He pushes open the door.
Atobe walks inside and pulls the bag from his pocket.
For all Oshitari is a tasteless Neanderthal who indulges in trashy tv dramas, the scene plays like one. The mirror on the ceiling reflects the motions in a double-play like the lagoons of Venice. Atobe stands there and stares. The bodies in the bed-his bed-writhe. Her body is entirely eclipsed by the broad shoulders of someone else on top, but her red nails splay across his back. She giggles. He says, "Wait."
Atobe's jaw drops to the floor, right alongside the silk back.
Echizen climbs off Atobe's wife. The initial flush of shock is replaced with a cocky smile. She grabs the sheets and screams. "You weren't supposed to come back yet!"
Echizen pulls on a pair of boxer-briefs. Atobe walks backward into the wainscoting.
"Hey Atobe," Echizen says, "surprise, hn?"
Mada mada dane.
Atobe walks out of the room. Something crunches underfoot. He looks down to see a can of grape Fanta seeping into the Persian rug. It smells cheap, and of teenagers.
He walks out of the house through the back door. A maid runs through the corridor with his coat. "Atobe-sama!" she calls. Atobe ignores her. The gilded garlands and the boughs of imported pine branches smell like artificial grape flavouring. Echizen doesn't follow him-and neither does his wife.
Atobe walks through the neighbourhood. He walks into the next, and the next. Cold winter makes him shiver, but not nearly as much as the image burned into his mind: Echizen's back, straining and sweaty, his butt clenching and his legs shifting as he fucks Atobe's wife in Atobe's bed on Christmas Eve.
Kabaji is gone, probably on his flight to Aruba with Sachiko-san from the filing department. In a show of company kindness, he gave Dan the night off as well. Atobe stops under the overhang of a convenience store. He rubs his arms for the first time and his face feels wet with anger, shock and a hundred other things. The champagne of before burns the back of his mouth.
His cellphone rings.
For a moment, Atobe thinks that he could answer his wife's call. He could listen to her apologize for allowing to be seduced by Echizen. Atobe has seen the newspapers splashed with Echizen's face. He won a Grand Slam in August.
The ladies love him.
Instead, Atobe's lip curls up at the name appearing on the LCD screen. He throws the cellphone against the wall of the convenience store. He seethes through his teeth, but it does nothing to dispel the growing cold inside.
Atobe keeps walking until his toes are numb. He looks around for the first time. This place is unfamiliar, packed with narrow streets and seedy-looking ramen joints packed with half-drunk salarymen. One bumps into Atobe's side. "Watch it!" Atobe snaps. His voice breaks half way.
The salaryman glares at him before he stumbles over a parked bicycle and pukes.
In hindsight, he should have been smarter. Oshitari used to joke about installing hidden CCTV cameras at home to check up on his wife. "She's very pretty," Oshitari would say. And then he would nullify everything but leering at Atobe and stroking the corner of Atobe's laptop. However, nothing can change the fact now that he's married to an adulterer who is sleeping with Japan's latest tennis sensation.
Atobe grinds his teeth to the gum. He pants through his nostrils until the frost bites them too deep and he sneezes. He shivers. He holds his arms tight, and his wallet tighter when another salaryman trips into him. The people around here are dirty, and they smell of cheap beer and BO.
The stink is too much.
Atobe dives into the first semi-clean place he finds.
Which happens to be an izakaya. In the lobby, a large tank of fish swim their dying laps around the aquarium. It's too loud for Atobe to hear what the server asks. Glasses clink and the wooden walls echo with the calls of patrons for more sake, more beer, another whiskey.
Atobe sits down at the bar. He slams down a note and says, "Whatever this buys."
"Long day?" the bar tender asks.
Atobe looks up and gives his best death glare. His skin scrawls from the commonness of the bar, but his mind craves the numbing alcohol set down in front of him. He downs the sake shot in one go.
And then he coughs it all back up.
"Hyoutei's Atobe?"
"Atobe?"
"Hey, it's that guy Sanada-senpai hated!"
Through a veil of blurred eyes, Atobe looks over his shoulder. Three of the hoi polloi have approached him, and they know his name. Raw sake burns his stomach and the alcohol pumps through his veins as fast and irritating as the cheesy American Christmas music playing in the izakaya.
"My wife is sleeping with someone else," Atobe says.
"Dude," the brown guy says.
The youngest of the three whistles. He looks the most familiar, but Atobe really, truly cannot bring himself to care who these people are.
"Since it's Christmas, we'll buy you a drink. Come and sit with us," the other says. His round face lights up in the hazy smoke of the bar when he adds, "We have Christmas cakey…"
By far, this is the most unperfect Christmas Atobe knows he will ever experience. The bar is filled with drunken riff-raff ranging from barely-old-enough university students to desperate old men who smell worse than the cigarettes they smoke. Photographs of Guam stud the walls, and the floor is sticky underneath his shoes.
The three guys stare at Atobe.
"Cakey?" the fat one asks again.
So Atobe sighs, and follows and is offered the fattest slice of department store Christmas cake that no one-not his wife, not his servants, not Oshitari-ever shared with him.
It doesn't cost a single yen.
6.
By nine, all three of them are waiting outside the pub. Kirihara buries his face into his scarf. Jackal waves hi from down the alley. He's got a hat with those tassel-y things that Kirihara sorta kinda wants, but can never remember to buy.
"Nice hat, senpai," he says.
"Thanks," Jackal says. "Mari bought it for me."
Kirihara makes a face.
Jackal laughs at him. "Don't worry, she's got lots of pretty friends who would like you, Akaya."
Kirihara says, "Really?"
Jackal nods. "Really really."
"Sweet," Kirihara says.
"This is even sweeter," Marui says. He's got a cake in a plastic bag and he's right on time, because Kirihara's cell reads the hour exactly. Jackal says let's go in. Marui says let's not wait a moment longer.
The bar is smoky and crowded with people-but not too many, since they find a table at the back, behind the bar. Kirihara peels off his coat and his mittens and his scarf and he dumps them on the floor, just like Marui. Jackal picks it all up to hang on the coat hook. Marui sets the cake out on the table.
"Delicious, isn't it?" His eyes are glowing the way Kirihara's do when he gets pissed with the ball boys at tournaments. Except Marui-senpai isn't throwing his racket around, he's taking the lid off the cake to lick a finger of cream icing.
"Good?" Jackal asks.
Marui looks at him. "Duh, Jackal. Shintarou made it for me."
"He's…?" Kirihara scratches his head. Jackal flags a waiter down and orders a round of Kirin.
"To celebrate, of course," Jackal says.
"Shintarou plays the drums," Marui says.
"Is your band doing any better?" Kirihara asks.
Marui snorts. He waggles his finger in front of Kirihara's eyes, and Kirihara sorta watches it. Because it's distracting and all and he's had a long day at the university centre working on that new serve style for January's tournament in Dubai.
"We have a gig lined up for New Year's," Marui says. "Not playing outside Shibuya station, not playing in Yoyogi Park-this time Racks is for real!"
"Sweet," Kirihara says.
"No word from the agency?" Jackal asks.
Marui narrows his eyes. He sucks on the finger he stuck back into the cake. "He said that we were just too talented to sign with them. It's understandable, I guess. My-our-Genius is just a bit much for some people."
Jackal looks at Kirihara. When their eyes meet, they both start to snicker at the same time.
"Shut up!" Marui shouts.
The beer shows up and Marui forgets about being mad. Kirihara forgets about wanting the same hat as Jackal and Jackal lifts his bottle up to toast.
"To friends," he says.
"And kicking ass this year," Kirihara says.
"And hot chicks," Marui adds.
They kampai over that. Kirihara chugs back a couple big gulps of beer until his face feels hot. The end of Marui's nose is turning red. Jackal lets out a big belch.
"No Asian flush for me," he says.
Kirihara and Marui tackle him across the table. Jackal shouts and calls uncle.
"You can order the next round, too," Marui says. "We can't help that our genes love lady alcohol more than you."
"Yeah," Kirihara adds.
Jackal raises his eyebrows over his bottle. Kirihara's smirk splits into another bout of laughter. The beer makes his stomach buzz in a good, warm, Christmas-y sorta way.
"Any plans for tonight?" Marui asks. "I mean, post-guys time."
Jackal rubs his chin. "Mari wants to check out this one gallery in Aoyama. But maybe shopping instead."
"Art's boring," Kirihara says.
"It's, like, naked pictures by some famous photographer. There's all sorts of geese and women and mythological stuff. But mostly naked women," Jackal adds. He winks at Kirihara. Kirihara's face feels even hotter.
"Aw, don't worry, kiddo," Marui says. He slings an arm over Kirihara's shoulder. Kirihara tries to wiggle away from Marui's beer breath. He smells a bit cheesy from the cake's icing. "You'll have sex one day."
Kirihara gets a punch to Marui's arm. "Shut up," he says through his teeth. His face is hot enough that it's gotten explode in flames. Like the frying fish in the bar kitchen.
"And don't call me 'kiddo'!" he shouts.
Marui and Jackal both laugh. Kirihara wishes they would just drop it. He looks around the bar. Marui orders a platter of the seafood special. There's a tank of fish by the entranceway filled with screaming little sardines and eels just waiting to fill bellies tonight. Kirihara licks his lips.
"Isn't Yukimura supposed to get back from Australia soon?" Marui asks.
"I think so," Jackal says. "Or did he go to Hawaii with his girlfriend?"
Hawaii would be nice and warm and filled with cute girls. Kirihara shivers in a draft of cold air from someone coming into the bar. "Didn't Yukimura and his girlfriend break up?" Kirihara asks.
"No," Marui says.
"But when I saw him in London he said they broke up," Kirihara says.
"Yeah, maybe that's right," Jackal says. "But he told Niou that he was coming back at Christmas to see someone."
Marui snickers. He prods Kirihara in the side with a soft elbow. "Sure as heck wouldn't be Sanada," he says.
Kirihara snickers with him. "Totally."
Marui pushes the bottles to the edges of the table to make room for the cake again. "Shall we?" he asks.
The waiter brings the seafood platter. The cake gets pushed back to the edge. Fried fish sizzles. Baby octopuses are so fresh from the fryer that they practically wiggle. Kirihara's tummy growls. Jackal stabs one of the grilled scallops with a chopstick and pops it into his mouth.
Kirihara goes for the octopus. The grease burns his tongue, but the little sucker is so fresh and buttery between his teeth. Kirihara's eyes roll back. This is way better than that soggy katsudon bento he had for lunch.
"Definitely the best izakaya food since that place in Sendagaya," Marui says. He chews with his mouth open. Bits of fish fly across the table. Kirihara moves in on another octopus.
"Mn hn," Jackal says.
Kirihara groans over the next octopus. He gives his senpais a thumbs-up before he slides down in his seat. The beer's getting to his head in a good way. The food is doing the rest. Being here is way better than hanging out at an arcade by himself, or eating dinner with his manager.
Or, worse of all, staying home with his mom and his sister, and his sister's new boyfriend. Yuck.
The seafood platter is decimated before the next beers show up. Kirihara burps, Marui belches and Jackal tops them all with the first few bars of the national anthem in belch-form. Kirihara lifts his beer.
"That was awesome," he says. "Kampai?"
"Kampai!" Marui says. They clink Jackal's bottle. He bows and nods and says thank you very much in pretty darn good English-that's the only stuff Kirihara knows, since he needs it to say to reporters in America and London after tournaments.
There's another cold draft when some salaryman plunks himself down at the bar counter. Marui taps Jackal with his bottle. Kirihara looks at them both, then he watches where they're both looking. The guy at the bar looks sorta like-
"Hey, isn't that the guy who Sanada-senpai hated in school?" he asks. He scratches his scalp, but he really can't remember the guy's name. He was rich and obnoxious and had his own helicopter and stuff.
"Yeah, it looks like Atobe," Marui says.
"Atobe!" Jackal calls.
Atobe doesn't listen to them. He's hunched over the bar nursing a drink like he's just lost his job, or something. So the three of them all look at each other and stand up. Marui lingers over the cake, but no one's going to touch it if they're just at the bar, Kirihara is pretty sure.
Kirihara pokes Atobe in the back. "Oi, you," he says.
"Atobe," Jackal says.
Atobe stares at them. His eyes are red. He smells like a fruitcake. "My wife is sleeping with someone else," he says.
Marui whistles. "Harsh."
"Damn," Jackal says.
Kirihara smiles to himself. He doesn't have that problem to worry about, luckily. He whistles anyways, just so he doesn't seem like an asshole.
Marui says, "Since it's Christmas, we can buy you a drink, dude. Come and sit with us."
Kirihara looks at Jackal. Jackal looks at him. Maybe if they get Atobe drunk enough, he can buy them the expensive wagyu beef on the menu, or the sake special. They all look at Atobe, and it doesn't take him long enough to stand up.
Marui offers cake. Atobe follows them after that. They pull an extra chair up and shove over. Atobe is sandwiched between Kirihara and Jackal and the empty plate from the seafood. He looks really uncomfortable.
"You still play tennis?" Kirihara asks.
Atobe blinks. "Maybe I should," he says. He sounds kinda like a robot. Jackal nods to the waitress, who brings Atobe a beer.
"Yeah, so, none of us are married," Marui says.
"Not yet," Jackal says.
"Well…" Marui sniffs. "It'd be weird if we were, Jackal. We're too young. We have to enjoy our youth! Spread some wild oats! Explore the world before we're bogged down with shitty jobs and bitchy wives."
Kirihara gives Marui a high-five.
Atobe's eye twitches, the side with the big mole on it.
"Er…" Jackal says.
"Cake?" Marui asks.
"Definitely," Jackal says.
"I want that part," Kirihara says. He points to the part of the cake all the way across from himself, with the reddest strawberry.
"Atobe?" Marui asks. He doesn't answer, so Marui gives him a big slice. Guests first and because it's Christmas Eve and all that.
The waitress brings them four forks. She's kinda old, but young enough for Marui to offer her a piece too. She shakes her head. Marui waggles his eyebrows and mouths, "Later?"
"I have a boyfriend," she mouths back.
"Nice play, Bunta," Jackal says.
"Oh shut up," Marui says. He's flushing, but laughing a bit too. Kirihara snickers. He looks at Atobe, and even he has a little bit of a smirk on his face.
It doesn't matter if the cake turns out to be sorta stale ("But Shintarou said he made it this morning!" Marui insists), because it doesn't really matter.
Spending Christmas with friends is the number one way.
Totally.
7.
The Mai Tais are pure ecstasy.
Shiraishi leans back in the beach chair. He's lain here so long that his back sticks to the wooden slats. Condensation drips down the side of the high ball glass, all the way down his arm. He plays with the bendy straw and takes another sip.
Ecstasy indeed…
There is no one hovering over his shoulder as he decants chemicals. There is no stack of lab paperwork to fill out before he can crawl back home at midnight. There are no sulphurous fumes burning his nostrils.
No, in Guam, there's nothing but the salty smell of the ocean next door, and the clink of mixing drinks at the hotel bar. If it wasn't for the wedding in three doors, Shiraishi reckons he could probably lay here by the pool forever, and then some.
Cold winter in Osaka has been replaced with sun-kissed girls in bikinis who wave to him before they tiptoe into the pool. Shiraishi works his Mai Tai. Another girl winks at him. Her cleavage spills out from her bikini top. Sorry, chickie, maybe try being a little less overt next time?
He flips his sunglasses down again. By the end of the week, he’ll have a tanuki mask around his eyes.
So long as the drinks keep flowing, it's all good. It's probably noon, or a little after, and he's drunk his way through a Singapore Sling, two Mai Tais, and the resort special: the Groovy Guam. Just what the Groovy Guam includes, Shiraishi isn't quite sure. There's a hint of mango, overtones of pineapple and lychee and maybe something minty. It's laced with rum and woven with something that makes the sun blur into double.
Shoju? he thinks.
There are an awful lot of Korean tourists here, after all...
And maybe he has had a bit too much to drink. What happened to watching his health? That went down the drain with all the chemicals in the laboratory at work. Childhood fantasies of traipsing around Thailand to find himself, and practicing yoga in gaudy Hindu temples in India have gone the wayside. Shiraishi thinks about it sometimes-he's not jealous of Chitose, but at the same time, the hours slogged at work make him wistful on occasion.
As do the Mai Tais, it seems.
But Chitose is hundreds of miles across the Pacific, and the only people Shiraishi knows here are his immediate family, who are far too busy with the wedding to notice that he's wandered off to spend another day schlumping around the resort pool and watching perfect Korean babes parade by.
Even if he doesn't do anything, he can admire their lean curves and small mouths. They smell of shampoo, and fruity sunscreen and it turns his inhibitions off and his arousal on. One girl with a pony tail creeps by; she's blocked by her friends, who strut by in string bikinis and Prada sunglasses. They cast long looks towards him. He ignores them. The girl with the ponytail is prettier times three because she doesn't pay attention when he sets his drink down and walks up to her.
In his best English, he says, "Hi."
She doesn't have those fake, round eyes of her friends. But her eyes widen when he smiles at her. The idealized, plasticized bodies of her friends are nothing compared to the natural flush creeping over her cheeks.
They spend the afternoon in the botanical garden. Hibiscus plants and palm trees drip from the garden canopy. Shiraishi reads the Latin names on the placards. In broken English, she says his French is perfect. The air is thick and humid and filled with negative ions. The alcohol sweats off his skin. Shiraishi almost regrets the alcohol haze of this morning, until he kisses her in the hotel elevator.
His room has a view of the tennis court seven floors down. He knocks once or twice-she doesn't need to know that he's sharing a room with his parents-but luckily, they're off at a meeting with the photographer before his sister's Big Day.
Perfect, he thinks.
He peels the bathing suit strings from the back of her neck. Her skin is white beneath them against the golden tan. They kiss for a while, and share a joint on the hotel balcony. She blushes and stammers and says no, she's not like this, and it only makes it better. Shiraishi's head floats as his body sinks into hers. The health-conscious part of him was smart enough to stop at a conbini at Kansai International before the flight. The condoms come in handy.
It's not ecstasy of the highest level, but it feels good to fuck her until the headboard bangs into the wall. She squeaks and squeals in Korean. Her breasts are small and her nipples are big. Days by the beach have marked the bikini on her skin. Shiraishi kisses the gilt of her stomach, and then the smooth ivory skin on the swell of her bum.
There's a restaurant overlooking the back gardens of the hotel, closer to the golf course than the stretch of white beach. Swans splash through the fountain as they eat. Shiraishi sips on another Mai Tai. The Korean girl doesn't drink. She doesn't really eat, either, but instead picks at a salad with bird-like accuracy.
It's not very healthy.
Shiraishi sucks on the Mai Tai. He chews on the straw, and stirs the ice around-he checked with the waiter, it came from bottled water, not tap. There will be no hepatitis C for him. He thinks about her bony body and the greasy feel of the sunscreen on the tops of her arms as he held her down in bed.
Really, the Mai Tais are much sweeter.
His eyes roll back as he chews on a stray string of pineapple. Ecstasy in a high ball…
When they say good night, Shiraishi doesn't ask for her cell number. She hesitates, but the English never comes and he doesn't understand Korean. Another drink at the bar and she's sliding into hazy memory as his body sinks into the wooden beach chair again. The pool glows with eerie blue lighting at this time of night. Insects hum and buzz, and strings of light hang from palm fronds. It might be Guam, but it's still the holidays.
Against the velvet sky, which melts into the Pacific with an indeterminate horizon, the palm trees stand out, white lights decked through the black branches. Shiraishi orders a drink from the bar; this time, a Sex on the Beach. The Mai Tai leaves a warm tingle in his belly, akin to the post-sex relaxation that still lingers in his limbs. It stretched him out, like a good round of yoga.
He can't remember the last time he had time for that. At the hotel, there are morning yoga classes. Too bad they're a bit too early for anyone except seniors in Hawaiian print shirts.
The bar attendant doesn't watch him walk toward the boardwalk with his drink. Shiraishi pads across the wooden walkway. It leads into the jungle in a pathway of kitschy Santa Claus lights propped up between azaleas and the occasional ornamental cactus. The beach is footsteps away. Grains of sand drift across his naked toes when the wind shifts off the ocean. He closes his eyes and breathes in the heady smell of the sea. With the drink in hand, it's almost perfect.
It's too bad that Fuji Shuusuke has to ruin everything. Fate can be the only explanation why Shiraishi opens his eyes at the sound of one of the swans from the hotel fountain, hissing at him from deep inside the thicket of planted orchids. He creeps back along the boardwalk and his Sex on the Beach isn't as appealing now, with the juice melting down his hand as he slops it on a stumble.
Shiraishi downs the last of the drink, then he sets the glass down on the edge of the boardwalk. He slips through the slats of the railing down toward the beach. When his feet sink into the warm sand, he sighs. Ecstasy…
Someone snorts in the darkness. Up from the water's edge, that same someone approaches. It takes a moment for the alcohol to slither down Shiraishi's body and uncloud his mind.
"Shiraishi Kuranosuke," Fuji says.
Shiraishi doesn't quite believe that Fuji is standing three feet away from him. "What are you doing here?" he asks.
Fuji's smile sets him on edge. It creeps up his nerve endings and undoes the calming, slinkiness of the alcohol. Shiraishi narrows his eyes. The light from the hotel resort illuminates the beach enough that he can see Fuji hold up a camera. "Did you know it's jellyfish season?" he asks.
Shiraishi raises his eyebrows.
Fuji nods to his hand. "Aren’t you worried about that poison hand of yours?"
Only then does Shiraishi respond: with a little laugh of his own. "No one but Kin-chan believed that story," he says. "That was years ago."
But we meet again.
Fuji walks along the sand. Shiraishi, with nothing better to do, and nothing to return to back in the hotel room, except his parents, walks with him. Years lap at them the way the tide does, creeping under the sand that pulls away under Shiraishi's thongs. Once or twice, Fuji pauses and takes a shot of the ocean, the boardwalk, and even the cantankerous swan that patrols the garden.
"What are you doing here?" Shiraishi asks again.
Fuji blinks at him. "I'm a wedding photographer," he says. "Your sister is getting married."
The motion of the tides is rhythmic, and as thick as the silences between them. Shiraishi walks ahead of Fuji. The hotel diminishes with each passing step in the ephemeral sand. He stops to look back, but his eyes catch nothing but the flash of a photo being taken. Shiraishi frowns.
This makes Fuji's smile widen. "You don't mind, do you?" he asks. "I like to take photos to remember my trips…" The sides of his lips curl up sharply. All of the fluidity from the alcohol has solidified as the waves roll up to Shiraishi's calves. The water clings to his skin as it pulls back into the ocean. Tiny crabs skitter across the luminous surface of the sand when the water breaks.
"This place is ecstasy, don't you think?" Fuji holds his camera up to the moon, which hangs in the sky in a pearly slice.
Shiraishi looks at him. He lifts his chin up. It's a good thing that the night is deep enough to mostly hide the hint of the smile pulling at his lips.
"Not quite."
8.
mchan: hi there
meganeman80: Hello
mchan: i saw ur profile
mchan: how r u?
meganeman80: Well, thank you
meganeman80: How are you?
mchan: ww im lookin
meganeman80: For something?
mchan: for someone
mchan: special
mchan: r u that person?
He clicked on the profile: I like long walks on the beach and boys with glasses. I like to have a GOOD TIME. I work at an engineering company and I'm 24. In the future, I want a dog and to travel to Italy.
She sounded perfect-maybe a Christmas cake and desperate-but he imagined her to have short, dyed hair with a big, toothy smile. He imagined that her name was Mariko-chan, or maybe Mayumi. She was an OL, or a secretary, and Yagyuu was looking for someone just like her.
They emailed for weeks. Yagyuu would come home from the office and check his phone again. He checked it four or five times on the train already. When his inbox recorded a new message, his heart would flutter.
meganeman80: Let's meet. Christmas Eve?
mchan: ok
mchan: r u sure?
meganeman80: I am certain. We could go to the park, or the beach, if you would like.
meganeman80: mchan?
mchan: im here
mchan: what if u dont like me?
meganeman80: I know I will ^-^
meganeman80: Please, let's meet.
She said she would wear a blue scarf.
Yagyuu phoned Marui to tell him he couldn't make it to the izakaya after all.
"Hot date?" Marui asked.
Yagyuu cleared his throat. "…yes."
"Don't forget the condoms!" Marui said.
Yagyuu hasn't. He pulls the box of mints from his pocket to pop one into his mouth. The neighbourhood where they are meeting is familiar enough that Yagyuu recognizes the convenience store at a street corner. Niou-kun lives not too far away. Yagyuu crosses the road at the green light and he walks past the store. Something catches his eye from the pavement. Gleaming in a cold puddle is a purple cellphone. Yagyuu picks it up. He turns it over-there's a crack in the screen, but the phone looks like a new, expensive model. There are pedestrians walking behind and ahead of him, but no one stops for the cellphone. Yagyuu hesitates, then he slides the it into his coat pocket. It wouldn't be right to leave the phone on the sidewalk to freeze overnight.
His phone buzzes. His heart skips a beat. Yagyuu fumbles with his own cellphone.
i dont think we should meet
Yagyuu steps under the overhang of a fish shop. It smells heavy like the ocean. He pushes his glasses up and types a message back.
Please, I want to meet you! I'm almost at the street.
Mchan doesn't respond. Yagyuu double-checks the time-he's five minutes early-and the address of the flower shop mchan suggested they meet at-it's two minutes away. Yagyuu rushes down the main street, careful not to slip on the icy film covering the pavement. His glasses fog up from effort. He turns down the street. At the very end, there should be a flower shop before the next intersection.
It's a quiet, residential street with slightly-seedy apartment buildings. Across and kitty-corner to the street is a lot selling fresh pine trees. Yagyuu takes a deep breath to inhale the resin. Bicycles and scooters line the empty planters and corrugated shop fronts that are closed for the night. The first veil of evening lights has descended as the light dies. Yagyuu runs down the street before mchan changes her mind.
She's just scared, he thinks.
Inside his pockets, his hands are sweaty.
Me too, Yagyuu thinks. The closer he gets to the flower shop, the more his heart palpates. There is a single figure standing outside a shop front, just far enough from sight that Yagyuu sucks in a breath. Anticipation is the sweetest emotion. Yagyuu exhales. In the reflection of a men's barbershop window, he combs down the stray hairs at the back of his head. He pushes his glasses up.
The blue scarf is the first thing he notices. Mchan's back is turned to him. She's got a tight pair of jeans and military-style boots to her knees. Her coat is dark, and her cap is too.
"M…chan?" Yagyuu asks. He steps closer.
Mchan turns around.
"Niou!" Yagyuu says.
Under the faded street lamp light, Niou isn't laughing at the joke. Yagyuu's mind swirls with heavy thoughts about office ladies and emails for the past month, the condom he has in his pocket and the hotel room he booked by the beach. His heart slams into his stomach and he feels ill.
Niou looks even more ill.
"Told you this was a bad idea," he mutters.
Yagyuu shakes his head. "But-you-I don't understand…" There's nothing else to do besides shake his head again. "Why did you do this?"
Niou stops scuffing his boot on the tarmac. His back moves with a heavy sigh. His breath hangs in the air in a crystalline cloud. Not once has he looked Yagyuu in the eye yet. He stares at the barren planters across the road instead. "Isn't it obvious?" he mutters. His head half-turns to Yagyuu and he snorts. When Yagyuu doesn't say anything, Niou's mouth twists into a sick little smile.
Niou-the mchan that never was-walks away. The scuff of his pace echoes out to the main intersection. Red light from a curtain of holiday lights at a nearby hotel bounces off his slumped shoulders. Yagyuu's heart continues to shiver.
"Wait!" he shouts.
He runs to Niou. He grabs Niou by the shoulders before Niou has a chance to get any further from him. Yagyuu shakes him a little. Niou's head snaps up. There's a thick, cold lump in his throat that Yagyuu has to push down before he says, "We have a date, remember?"
Niou's eyes gleam from red to white in the glow of the traffic rushing by. They waver too much for this to be a joke. Yagyuu wipes his sweaty hands on the inside of his pockets. In one, he can feel the condom. In the other, he can feel the cracked cellphone.
"Are you joking?" Niou whispers.
Yagyuu shakes his head. "Do you still like walks on the beach?"
The beach is an hour away by train. There are enough people commuting from Tokyo to the suburbs south of Yokohama that Yagyuu stands across from Niou, who stares out the window. Once or twice, or maybe eight times, Niou pulls milk candies from his coat pocket. He slurps on them. Yagyuu wipes his glasses with a cleaning cloth when the train hits a smooth, straight stretch of tracks just past Ofuna. Through the breaks between salarymen and high school couples on dates, the sea is visible in a big, silken wash of ink.
They change to another line in Kamakura. At the train station, Yagyuu looks at Niou, who buries himself in the blue scarf. "Do you want to get something to eat?" Yagyuu asks.
Niou shakes his head.
At this time of year, the beach is empty. The next station is nearly empty, but there are swathes of cheap gold garland draped around the adjacent noodle bars. Yagyuu has been here in the summer-he's been here with Niou before and he fully expected to take mchan tonight. They would have held hands and she would have blushed and giggled like a girl.
Instead, Niou is here, standing with Yagyuu over the cold, brittle sand. The waves are white-capped and swollen as they crash into the rocky piers to the far south. Yagyuu starts to walk through the frozen sand, which is surprisingly yielding under his shoes. Niou falls behind him.
"Aren't you going to ask why I did it?" Niou asks. His voice sounds hollow. The waves continue their crash into the shore. The blue scarf whips up from around Niou's neck and the ends unravel. They writhe in the wind.
Yagyuu thinks, He must be cold.
He says nothing. It doesn't take an idiot to piece two and two together. Yes, he's surprised and confused, but tonight is also Christmas Eve.
So Yagyuu reaches out to catch the ends of Niou's blue scarf. He wraps them back around Niou's face and as Niou's eyes widen, Yagyuu's lips do, too. His heart flutters the same way it did with mchan's messages.
When he kisses Niou, his heart flies into his throat. Niou is stiff. His shoulders are tight under Yagyuu's hands. There is a moment of panic when Yagyuu thinks, Maybe this was all a joke. Except Niou's little whimper changes everything. The wetness in his eyes gleams in the weak moonlight. The sand shifts under their feet and Niou shifts under Yagyuu. His lips open a little. Finally, their tongues slide together in a hot, wet dance of tentative touches searching for something more. Yagyuu pulls back for a moment. Niou licks his lips. He avoids Yagyuu's eyes in a strange, shy new way that sends little shivers of pleasure to his belly.
Niou's breath frosts his scarf. His hair is dyed the colour of the winter moon. Yagyuu's imagination wasn't completely off. He reaches for Niou's hand. It's icy between Yagyuu's fingers. Slowly, though, Niou loosens his fingers to allow Yagyuu's weave. "Should we walk a little further?" he asks.
Niou's hat moves when he furrows his brow up. Yagyuu's glasses slip a little. He tries to wiggle them back up his nose by wrinkling it. They slip further. His heart shakes when Niou shivers.
"Or…" Yagyuu says. He thinks about the condoms in his pocket. It won't be an OL with a high-pitched voice and heels bouncing around his bed tonight after all. Yagyuu lets the silence cover them as he thinks about his words. He closes his eyes to the sea. His mouth searches for the milky taste of Niou's kiss. His mind searches for a new image, of Niou in that hotel bed tonight. His legs would be spread and his cock would be hard and his face would be flushed. He would moan and sigh Yagyuu's name. He would dig his cold hands into Yagyuu's shoulders. He might keep those military boots on, but the blue scarf would be unwound onto the floor.
The image doesn't bother Yagyuu in the least. He squeezes Niou's hand. The bird in his chest threatens to fly out his mouth when Yagyuu asks, "Or, I have a hotel room booked. We could, if you want," he says. "Mchan?"
Niou stares at him.
Yagyuu clears his throat. "We could have a Good Time?" he offers.
Niou's mouth curls into a slow, toothy smile.