[drabble] Happy
Title: Happy
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Genre: Angst
Pairing: Takaru
Notes: Despite the misleading title, this is angst, not a mistake in the genre section.
Request for Rei (nahc_ier ).
~
A flicker of movement, and the shadow standing at the door of the dressing room slipped away into the hanging darkness of the corridor.
He stumbled blindly in the thick darkness, not caring where he was going, just wanting to find somewhere - anywhere - away from that room with the pale soft yellow light that but smoothly through the inky black.
His foot hit something, and he stumbled, tumbling onto the floor with a muffled cry. He didn’t get up, just lay silently on the cold floor for a while, breathing hard and trying to sort out his thoughts.
Why?
Eyes strained to keep open, as though the scene would reply itself over and over again the moment his eyes fluttered shut.
A trembling arm slowly stretched out, as though to grab hold of something - something incorporeal - but fell down limply again onto the floor, drained of energy.
Why? I don’t understand.
He lay like that for a while, an unmoving sprawling tangle of limbs heavy with misery and hurt, eyes dimmed and emotionless.
A few crickets chirped as they winged their way through the night, and the quiet hum of the vending machine reverberated through the echoing corridor. The light in the dressing room had probably flickered off, and the two in the room had probably left to go home.
He was alone. Alone in this huge building reeking of emptiness and solitude. But he didn’t mind.
He figured he needed to be alone to think.
Time slipped by like sand through a sieve, uncomprehendingly fast and too swift for him to count the individual minutes. It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been several hours that he lay sprawled there at the side of the corridor, thoughts swirling amok in his mind as he tried to reorganize them.
But finally, he heard a soft sound in the distance, a continuous tapping that grew louder as it drew closer.
Footsteps.
The faint beam of a torchlight raked the walls, banishing cobwebby shadows for a brief instant before swinging in another direction. The light swung a few more times, then unexpectedly, shone on his face.
He squinted his eyes against the relatively bright light, and the face of his rescuer came into view.
“Yuuyan! There you are!”
He groaned, and weakly flung an arm across his eyes.
“Not now, Hikaru.”
The torch was put down gently on the floor, and he felt the other slowly helping him up, to let him lean brokenly against the wall.
“Yuuyan,” he whispered, “are you alright?”
He remained silent.
His heart gave a little start as Hikaru reached up and brushed his cheek gently. In the darkness, he could see those eyes, glittering with worry as they looked at him.
“You’ve been crying,” he deduced, “you’re definitely not alright. What’s wrong?”
Funny. He hadn’t even realized he’d been crying.
“…Not now, Hikaru. I just want to be alone.”
The hand on his cheek withdrew, and Hikaru looked at him with a piercing glance.
“You can tell me. I can help you, you know.”
Yeah, right, he wanted to scoff. Hikaru was known for being a joker, and the mere thought of the sunshiney boy trying something even remotely close to comforting someone was ridiculous.
But this Hikaru was different. This Hikaru, the Hikaru at this very moment, did not seem like the normal Hikaru that he was used to. His eyes just seemed so deep and he felt as if he was drowning in those almost-glowing whirlpools the longer he kept Hikaru’s gaze.
Hikaru shifted, to lean against the wall next to him.
“Tell me?”
There was something unspoken in that simple question, something that made him want to pour out everything and just forget about all of it, to just spill out his worries and drown contentedly in the ocean of forgetfulness-
“I saw them. In the dressing room,” he heard his own voice say.
Hikaru kept silent, prompting him to continue. He did so, compelled by some strange desire to get it off his chest as quickly as possible.
“It’s not like I was stalking him or anything, you know? I just went back because I forgot my water bottle and I saw them there, the only two in the room-”
He broke off, as a sob threatened to rack his body again.
“…Yabu-kun?” Hikaru asked after a long, stretched silence.
He nodded silently, then fored back the tears - he’d cried too much already - and continued in a muffled voice.
“He was just-just standing in the middle of the room and hugging Inoo-chan…”
Hikaru’s arm wrapped around his shoulders in a semblance of a comforting hug.
“The rest of JUMP hugs each other too-”
“But not like that! And then they were about to kiss, too!” He continued, a slight note of hysteria in his voice.
Hikaru’s eyes softened.
“Yabu-kun’s liked Inoo-chan for ages, Yuuyan,” he said, awkwardly, “and I’m pretty sure the feeling’s mutual.”
“I know!” he snapped irritably, “But that doesn’t help in the slightest to dull the kind of pain you feel when someone you’ve liked since - oh, I don’t know, since forever - falls in love with someone else and doesn’t notice you at all!”
His angry words drifted in the silence for a while, and he buried his face back into his bony knees, the sorrow welling up all over again.
There was a long pause that followed, before Hikaru spoke up in a gentle voice.
“Yuuyan, do you know what it means to truly love someone?”
“To be happy to be by their side every day of your life,” muttered Takaki indistinctly. “To want to make them happy for the rest of their life.”
“Then,” said Hikaru softly, “shouldn’t you do just that, since you love Yabu-kun?”
“But I can’t!” spat Takaki, “he’s already got Inoo-chan, and they love each other.”
Hikaru’s brows furrowed a little, though the movement went unnoticed.
“But you can still love him,” he said quietly, honestly, “Love means that no matter what, you’ll always be happy for them, and you’ll always want to make them happy, even when they’re down in their darkest nights. Right now, he’s happy with Inoo-chan, isn’t he? Then you should be happy for him. I suppose he’s happy, so you should be too, instead of acting like this.”
“But it hurts.”
Hikaru sighed.
“Yes, it hurts. But if you love him, no matter how much it hurts you, you’ll want him to be truly happy. If you mope like this, you’re only going to worry him, and he’s going to be unhappy because he doesn’t know why you’re being moody. So just open your heart, and accept the fact that it’s probably best for you to remain as good friends.”
“But-”
“Yuuyan,” Hikaru interrupted, sounding stern, “how do you think Yabu-kun would feel if you ended up breaking apart him and Inoo-chan?”
“…I guess…he’d be really unhappy?”
“Exactly. So be happy for him, for his sake. If you truly love someone, as long as they’re happy, that’s all that matters.”
He remained silent for a while.
“Hikaru…I never knew you were this deep.”
Hikaru snorted.
“I can when I want to be.”
He didn’t say anything in reply to that.
But what could he have said anyway? Perhaps, if he’d known the reason behind Hikaru’s sudden insight, he’d have more to say. Perhaps if he knew what Hikaru was thinking…
Of course, he wouldn’t have known. He wouldn’t have known that Hikaru had liked him for perhaps as long as he liked Yabu. He wouldn’t have known that Hikaru’s advice was simply what Hikaru had done to patch up his own heart, every time he noticed his own blatant crush on Yabu.
He wouldn’t have known that Hikaru wasn’t being insightful or deep, just understanding.
If you truly love someone, as long as they’re happy, that’s all that matters.
He wouldn’t have known that those words were the exact same ones Hikaru had repeated to himself every day for the past five years.
He wouldn’t have known how much heartbreak Hikaru had suffered knowing that he’d never be able to be with the one he loved, only able to stand from afar as a friend and comfort him as best as he could.
He wouldn’t have known that Hikaru had resigned himself to knowing that his crush would probably never love him back. But as long as he was happy, Hikaru would be happy.
No matter how much it hurt.
Because that’s the way true love works.