[Fic] Unravel
Title: Unravel
Author: analine
Pairing: TutixNagayan
Warnings: None. Worksafe.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,451
Summary: Tuti watches Nagayan on the dance floor.
Notes: I started writing this while watching Nagayan's Live DVD, because I wanted to write something about Tuti watching him dance. At first it was just going to be a short, unrequited!Tuti POV, but then it sort of turned into something that's set after they've broken up, and I'm not sure if that makes it more or less angsty? Anyway. [/rambling] This is for manikineko, because she encouraged me to post this, even though I said it was too weird. ^_~
It’s as if the music and the lights and the alcohol are slowly unraveling him as he moves and sways back and forth in the darkness.
His movements have become decidedly loose over the course of the several hours we’ve been here, and now, the tension that I could see so clearly in the set of his shoulders earlier in the evening has almost completely vanished. His every movement is smoother than the last, every turn of his hips more rhythmic, and when he closes his eyes and tilts his head back slightly, it almost feels as if he could float away, he seems so relaxed.
I feel like I’ve been watching him like this forever, but it doesn’t make any difference. Repeated exposure doesn’t dull the effect at all; this is something I learned a long time ago. The lights cast shadows of blue and green and red across his face as he closes his eyes again. He smiles for a moment before his face turns serious, concentrating, lost somewhere in the rhythm of the bass, and I can feel part of myself unraveling too, as I watch him.
I don’t know why he’s brought me here. I feel dull and pale next to him in a place like this and so I’ve staked my spot out here by the wall - it’s probably been an hour since I’ve moved. I lift my eyes and feel my stomach do a familiar turn, one that I’ve learned to expect, to the point where it doesn’t really affect me anymore, as he bounces a little on his heels, his head tilted towards his shoulder, dark hair clinging to his forehead. He raises his hand, and the movement matches the rhythm of the song perfectly, as he runs his fingers through his hair. He shakes his head a little and his eyes scan the room briefly, until his gaze meets mine.
I can’t read the expression on his face at all, but his eyes are dark and searching, full of energy as he moves towards me.
As soon as he’s in front of me, I can feel the heat radiating from his body - from his neck, and from his chest, as he looks up at me with a half-smile.
“Don’t you feel bad, watching me dance by myself all night?”
He tilts his head at me, his hips still swiveling slightly with the music. I smile, because once Takashi starts dancing, he doesn’t stop - he’ll keep moving like this all night. It’s like a switch is pushed inside of him, or something, and it never fails to amuse me.
“You don’t seem to mind,” I tell him, and in response, he raises his eyebrows, and smiles back at me.
Then he grabs my hand and the touch feels so tender, I wonder if my legs will give out from under me.
“Come on,” he says, and shifts a little closer, until he’s just inside my comfort zone, crossing that line into my personal space, where I’ve been allowing him alone to enter for years now. “I thought you were supposed to be a dancer,” he says, a coy smile on his lips.
His hand is warm and his fingers tangle around mine as we struggle to find the right grip. I can feel his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, the palm of his hand, and everything is soft, and strong… I have no idea how they can still be so soft, when my hand feels so awkward and rough in comparison.
He leads and I follow - my hips find his rhythm easily, and after a few seconds I allow myself to look down at his face. His cheeks are flushed and his hair is stringy, messy, too long - even in the darkness I can see it curling around the bottom of his neck and his shoulders, depending on the tilt of his head. I feel the tips of his fingers clench against the back of my knuckles for a moment.
He opens his eyes and that’s when I realize that we’ve somehow reached this place again. This place where nothing makes sense except us being together. It feels like magic, the space between us is filled with so much energy right now. If I could just keep this energy here, if I could somehow trap it in this place, if I could hold onto it, it feels like things could be okay. It feels like something good could happen. That place that’s always been impossible for us to hold onto somehow seems possible, with this energy.
This is how it felt sometimes for me, being on stage with Takashi. When we would reach this place in front of an audience it was the greatest rush, the highest high. But somehow, reaching this place here, now, without anyone else being able to witness it…this place where we’re moving together, and breathing together, and where the heat from his body and the heat from my body meet in this space feels so special, I’m sure that this time, it won’t end. He won’t move, and our fingers won’t gradually drift apart, and I won’t lean back against this wall, trying to catch my breath as he moves away from me, again.
Instead of letting him go, I’ll grab his hand, and I’ll stay by his side for the rest of the night. When I go out to have a cigarette, he’ll follow me a few minutes later. I’ll look up and from around the corner, he’ll be standing there. One of us will close the distance, and then he’ll press his lips against mine, and…
This thought is too much for me though. My knees really are weak now, and my hand is shaking as I reach into my pocket to remind myself that my cigarettes are still there.
I weave my way through the crowd, feeling dizzy, and when I finally make it outside, I realize that I’ve broken into a cold sweat. The door swings shut behind me, and I take a deep breath. The air is cold against my face, and I lean against the railing, wondering what I’m doing, thinking like this.
When I close my eyes though, all I can see is Takashi, on that dance floor, and all I can feel are his fingers in mine, and his breath against my cheek. Sometimes I feel like I want to be able to let this go, to let everything go, but… It never seems to work out that easily. On nights like tonight, it seems impossible.
I’m three or four drags away from the end of my cigarette when I hear the door open behind me.
He sits down next to me, and I put out my cigarette out of habit. His eyes follow my fingers.
“That was fun, right?” Takashi says finally. His voice is heavy, tired, and when he turns to me, his face is etched with confusion. “I wish I could understand what happens with us during moments like that.”
“Me too.”
“So you could stop it from happening again?” he asks calmly. “Or so you could make it last longer?”
“Both, I think.”
He laughs, and the sound is dull against my ears. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Eventually I follow him back inside, and before I know it he’s lost in the crowd, and I’m alone.
I watch him there, as his movements begin to take the shape of the music again, and I take a small measure of comfort in the fact that even if he doesn’t approach me again for the rest of the night, and even if I don’t have a clue as to what he really thinks about anything anymore, at the end of the night, we’ll leave here together. We’ll drag ourselves into a cab together, and there’s something that we’ll share there in the darkness, with our shoulders pressed against each other. His head will gradually make its way down against my arm, and after we make the first stop at my apartment, if I turn around, I’ll catch a glimpse of him watching me through the window of the cab as it pulls away from the curb… and his face will be beautiful through the glass.
I tell myself that this is all I need. That if this is all there is now, then all I can do is just hold onto it. Maybe this is even true, I’m not sure. I’m never sure. I’m not sure of anything really, except that this tightness in my chest won’t go away until morning, and that I’ve come home alone, again.
***
Author: analine
Pairing: TutixNagayan
Warnings: None. Worksafe.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,451
Summary: Tuti watches Nagayan on the dance floor.
Notes: I started writing this while watching Nagayan's Live DVD, because I wanted to write something about Tuti watching him dance. At first it was just going to be a short, unrequited!Tuti POV, but then it sort of turned into something that's set after they've broken up, and I'm not sure if that makes it more or less angsty? Anyway. [/rambling] This is for manikineko, because she encouraged me to post this, even though I said it was too weird. ^_~
It’s as if the music and the lights and the alcohol are slowly unraveling him as he moves and sways back and forth in the darkness.
His movements have become decidedly loose over the course of the several hours we’ve been here, and now, the tension that I could see so clearly in the set of his shoulders earlier in the evening has almost completely vanished. His every movement is smoother than the last, every turn of his hips more rhythmic, and when he closes his eyes and tilts his head back slightly, it almost feels as if he could float away, he seems so relaxed.
I feel like I’ve been watching him like this forever, but it doesn’t make any difference. Repeated exposure doesn’t dull the effect at all; this is something I learned a long time ago. The lights cast shadows of blue and green and red across his face as he closes his eyes again. He smiles for a moment before his face turns serious, concentrating, lost somewhere in the rhythm of the bass, and I can feel part of myself unraveling too, as I watch him.
I don’t know why he’s brought me here. I feel dull and pale next to him in a place like this and so I’ve staked my spot out here by the wall - it’s probably been an hour since I’ve moved. I lift my eyes and feel my stomach do a familiar turn, one that I’ve learned to expect, to the point where it doesn’t really affect me anymore, as he bounces a little on his heels, his head tilted towards his shoulder, dark hair clinging to his forehead. He raises his hand, and the movement matches the rhythm of the song perfectly, as he runs his fingers through his hair. He shakes his head a little and his eyes scan the room briefly, until his gaze meets mine.
I can’t read the expression on his face at all, but his eyes are dark and searching, full of energy as he moves towards me.
As soon as he’s in front of me, I can feel the heat radiating from his body - from his neck, and from his chest, as he looks up at me with a half-smile.
“Don’t you feel bad, watching me dance by myself all night?”
He tilts his head at me, his hips still swiveling slightly with the music. I smile, because once Takashi starts dancing, he doesn’t stop - he’ll keep moving like this all night. It’s like a switch is pushed inside of him, or something, and it never fails to amuse me.
“You don’t seem to mind,” I tell him, and in response, he raises his eyebrows, and smiles back at me.
Then he grabs my hand and the touch feels so tender, I wonder if my legs will give out from under me.
“Come on,” he says, and shifts a little closer, until he’s just inside my comfort zone, crossing that line into my personal space, where I’ve been allowing him alone to enter for years now. “I thought you were supposed to be a dancer,” he says, a coy smile on his lips.
His hand is warm and his fingers tangle around mine as we struggle to find the right grip. I can feel his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, the palm of his hand, and everything is soft, and strong… I have no idea how they can still be so soft, when my hand feels so awkward and rough in comparison.
He leads and I follow - my hips find his rhythm easily, and after a few seconds I allow myself to look down at his face. His cheeks are flushed and his hair is stringy, messy, too long - even in the darkness I can see it curling around the bottom of his neck and his shoulders, depending on the tilt of his head. I feel the tips of his fingers clench against the back of my knuckles for a moment.
He opens his eyes and that’s when I realize that we’ve somehow reached this place again. This place where nothing makes sense except us being together. It feels like magic, the space between us is filled with so much energy right now. If I could just keep this energy here, if I could somehow trap it in this place, if I could hold onto it, it feels like things could be okay. It feels like something good could happen. That place that’s always been impossible for us to hold onto somehow seems possible, with this energy.
This is how it felt sometimes for me, being on stage with Takashi. When we would reach this place in front of an audience it was the greatest rush, the highest high. But somehow, reaching this place here, now, without anyone else being able to witness it…this place where we’re moving together, and breathing together, and where the heat from his body and the heat from my body meet in this space feels so special, I’m sure that this time, it won’t end. He won’t move, and our fingers won’t gradually drift apart, and I won’t lean back against this wall, trying to catch my breath as he moves away from me, again.
Instead of letting him go, I’ll grab his hand, and I’ll stay by his side for the rest of the night. When I go out to have a cigarette, he’ll follow me a few minutes later. I’ll look up and from around the corner, he’ll be standing there. One of us will close the distance, and then he’ll press his lips against mine, and…
This thought is too much for me though. My knees really are weak now, and my hand is shaking as I reach into my pocket to remind myself that my cigarettes are still there.
I weave my way through the crowd, feeling dizzy, and when I finally make it outside, I realize that I’ve broken into a cold sweat. The door swings shut behind me, and I take a deep breath. The air is cold against my face, and I lean against the railing, wondering what I’m doing, thinking like this.
When I close my eyes though, all I can see is Takashi, on that dance floor, and all I can feel are his fingers in mine, and his breath against my cheek. Sometimes I feel like I want to be able to let this go, to let everything go, but… It never seems to work out that easily. On nights like tonight, it seems impossible.
I’m three or four drags away from the end of my cigarette when I hear the door open behind me.
He sits down next to me, and I put out my cigarette out of habit. His eyes follow my fingers.
“That was fun, right?” Takashi says finally. His voice is heavy, tired, and when he turns to me, his face is etched with confusion. “I wish I could understand what happens with us during moments like that.”
“Me too.”
“So you could stop it from happening again?” he asks calmly. “Or so you could make it last longer?”
“Both, I think.”
He laughs, and the sound is dull against my ears. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Eventually I follow him back inside, and before I know it he’s lost in the crowd, and I’m alone.
I watch him there, as his movements begin to take the shape of the music again, and I take a small measure of comfort in the fact that even if he doesn’t approach me again for the rest of the night, and even if I don’t have a clue as to what he really thinks about anything anymore, at the end of the night, we’ll leave here together. We’ll drag ourselves into a cab together, and there’s something that we’ll share there in the darkness, with our shoulders pressed against each other. His head will gradually make its way down against my arm, and after we make the first stop at my apartment, if I turn around, I’ll catch a glimpse of him watching me through the window of the cab as it pulls away from the curb… and his face will be beautiful through the glass.
I tell myself that this is all I need. That if this is all there is now, then all I can do is just hold onto it. Maybe this is even true, I’m not sure. I’m never sure. I’m not sure of anything really, except that this tightness in my chest won’t go away until morning, and that I’ve come home alone, again.
***