PoT: foreshortening
For niche, because she asked me to put in trampolines, and earlier she had asked me about Shishido and Ootori and which Tenipuri characters would smoke.
It was easy, and it's still easy.
Too easy, almost, despite the fact that you almost hacked a lung onto Taki's shoe the first time you tried, and Taki had to forcibly remove the cigarette from your lips and pound on your back, but after a while you stopped coughing and the taste was oddly accommodating, as if you had smoked before, but you knew you hadn't. The paper was dry and sweet on your tongue, and Taki was smiling at you knowingly, all of the boys around you smiling at you like you had just lost your virginity or something, and you smiled back, not because of them, but because the smoke curled around your face just so, like a recurring dream, an idee fixe, or a thought you had had before.
You should have known then, but of course, you didn't. That would have been too easy.
*
There are a few things that make the "no smoking" policy Atobe enforces null, not the least of them being that Oshitari smokes himself. Everyone knows that Oshitari keeps a pack in his pockets all the time, and there's a rumor that goes around once in a while when people are bored that sometimes Oshitari gets Atobe to do the same, and they both cup their hands around their cigarettes behind the locker rooms and beside the tennis fences so it's like they're trying to hide away. But Atobe never does it often enough for it to leak out, and no one likes risking his wrath if he finds out, you least of all.
Smoking, you find out soon enough, is really just a whole bunch of metaphors for sex. The way you drag it out, the way you roll it between your fingers, the indecency and the secrecy of it all; smoking in Hyotei is like having sex with your best friend, it's that taboo, that amazing, that convenient, that superficially unauthorized.
That should have been your second clue.
*
Ootori doesn't smoke. Doesn't like the smoke, he tells you. It makes his eyes water. And he doesn't like the way it yellows people's teeth, either, or the way it wastes money. Doesn't like it on principle, and you like him for that, for his principles and the fact that he keeps to them.
You like him for a lot of things, actually, for his height and for his stance, for the way his eyebrow twitches when a senpai says something funny but he doesn't think he should laugh, for the way his shoulders relax when he's doing stretches, for his voice. You like him because he's not Hyotei at all, you'd like to think. He's something foreign and beautiful and clean, and you don't like to think about what Hyotei's going to do to him, because Hyotei's good at what it does. It takes people and runs them through a rinse cycle. The strong ones come out the other end in one piece. The weaker ones get eaten up. And then it's the bleaching, a matter of color, and then the drying, a matter of size. After three years of something akin to an obstacle course, it leaves you standing on so high a peak that for the rest of your life no place feels as high as the top of Hyotei. And then for the rest of your life you hunger for it, that top slot, that unreachable distance.
It makes you respect Atobe, even though sometimes you wish you didn't.
You'll never make it to the top of that mountain. You know that already. You don't have the ambition or the skill and this is one hurdle that all the practice against all the Scud Serves in the world won't help you get over.
And you don't want Ootori to do it either. It's not that he can't, or that he's lacking in anything that'll let him, but you like him a lot, love him a little even, and care for him too much to let him kill himself like that. Ootori is a mutation in Hyotei, something that hasn't gotten ground up and spat out yet, and you want him to stay that way forever, perfect and beautiful and untouched. That's the way you remember him the first time you saw him. That's how you always want him to be: very tall and very white against the sun on a tennis court, spots of green in the corner of your eyes from the tennis balls littered on the ground, the sky blue and high behind him, the same color as the Hyotei jersey, and his smile like something with wings.
*
The third clue crashes into you like a train wreck and it's not so much of a clue as a revelation, an epiphany, and a tragedy.
You're with Taki, having barged in on him and his friends smoking in an empty classroom after school, their hands ready to crumple the cigarettes against the table and air out the room with some paper fans at the slightest sound of a teacher. Taki brushes his hair back behind his ear and bares his teeth at you, his equivalent of a genial smile, so you know what comes next is something he expects you'll either be upset about or want to kill him for. You brace yourself, hook your fingers around the edge of the table you're leaning against, and cough. Sometimes the cigarette smoke still catches you the wrong way.
"I thought Ootori didn't like smoking," Taki says, tapping his cigarette and crushing the ash with his heel judiciously.
"He doesn't," you say. You draw your eyebrows together and look at him pointedly. He coughs out of politeness and turns to his friends, apologetic smile on so you know he doesn't mean anything he says now, that moment of truth gone, "Then I guess it was someone else we saw, right?"
His friends laugh nervously. You hold onto your table tighter and say, "Wait, what?" The way you're standing, the sun is hitting Taki's face so that his hair is all light and gloss, eyebrows perfectly shaped and wickedly dark in the direct light, and when he looks up half his face is glow, not skin or eyes or mouth or face, but pure light.
"Nothing," Taki says quickly, then chattering blindly on, "Only we saw someone who looked like Ootori on the roof with Oshitari and Atobe, and we wondered if you knew." He gives you a look that might vaguely be sympathy and pats his shirt pocket down, taking out a packet of cigarettes. "Want one?"
You take what's offered to you and put it in your pocket, say something that sounds like, "Thanks", and walk out.
*
When is it that you like him the best?
You like him when he's so wonderful and impossible that you look at him and you can't find a single word to describe him. You like him when he's careful and precise even when doing the Scud serve, so careful, so meticulous so that it comes at you in just the right place, and you like him when he doesn't know what to do with himself, and you like him much, much better when he knows exactly what do to.
You like him best, though, when he's solid and you're speechless, and he understands you all the same.
*
What you notice about him that's different when he's there with Oshitari and Atobe than when he's with you are his eyes. They're the same really, but there, on the roof, as you watch him from the window built into the door, your mouth dry and your hands damp, he has his eyelids lower. You could see his eyelashes better, a feathery light-colored fringe that used to remind you of eggshells, but on the roof, now, a haze or a fog over the docks. His eyes are the same color, of course, the same under any light, but the eyelids were heavier, and he looked--
Sexier. Older. His posture too, less parallel and perpendicular lines and more curves. You bite your lip.
Oshitari's saying something, and Atobe has one hand on his shoulder, casual, reaching out for Ootori. Ootori laughs, leans in closer to Oshitari so they're a little triangle with you staring at the point in between Atobe and Oshitari's shoulders, barely seeing their profiles but looking straight on at Ootori. Ootori's making a move for Oshitari's cigarette, and Oshitari jerks back, catching Ootori's hand.
Something from Atobe, who takes Oshitari's cigarette out of his mouth like a caress and carefully putting it in between Ootori's lips. The pads of his fingers linger just a little bit longer than they should, you muse morosely, watching Ootori take an inhalation. It's not his first time, you realize. He's even better at this than you are, taking it out of his mouth with his forefinger and his thumb and letting it dangle in his hands expertly. Oshitari reaches for it, and it's that touch again, the way their fingers stay next to each other longer than they need to.
Oshitari says something else, which makes all three of them laugh before Ootori carefully takes Oshitari's glasses off and leans in, trying not to get his uniform burnt by the cigarette between them, and gives Oshitari a kiss. Atobe's smirking and you think he's saying something else but by now your eyes are kind of blurry and achy, like they've been rampaged by the wind, so you don't watch anymore. You blink for the first time in what seems like ages. Your eyes start tearing up. Walking down the steps back to the main floor of the school, one hand wiping at your eyes, frustrated, you know you look like you're crying.
But you're not.
You should have known.
*
You have to borrow a light from Taki when you get back. You leave as soon as the cigarette he gave you, slightly flattened from being in your pocket for a little while, is lit, moving your hand listlessly in a wave when you walk out the door. Outside Gakuto's trampoline is still there, because he never picks up after himself unless Oshitari or Atobe tells him to.
Everything else on the tennis court is still, painted, and clay. You lie down on the trampoline spread-eagled, your cigarette in your mouth, looking up at the sky, which isn't the same color blue as you quite remember it to be. It's a lot grayer, maybe. Like it's about to rain, and you hope by then Gakuto would have come around to put the trampoline in or else it'll rust. You wonder if maybe you should put it away when you leave.
You tap the ash off the end of the cigarette, contemplate it, and kill yourself a little more by putting the butt in your mouth again. You hope nothing leaves a burn on the paint on the tennis court. You don't think it will, but you don't want to risk it.
The sound of Ootori's feet materializes much sooner than the actual image of his face looming over you, smaller from his height, his hair gleaming and his face dark from the shadow. His hand doesn't shake when he reaches for your cigarette; it doesn't linger, and it doesn't touch your lips either. You're not sure what he does with it. Smash it against the ground, probably, but you're still looking up at his face above you, and you can't look away.
"Don't smoke, Shishido," he says smiling, his mouth moving so that bits of the afternoon sun glide past and hit your eyes. "It'll kill you."
"A lot of things will. French fries, for one," you reply. He hits your kneecap with his lightly. You've forgotten how beautiful he is when he smiles. You remember now, and your fingers itch for the feel of something. The air around you still smells like tobacco and burning paper, achingly so, bitter and familiar.
"So many people smoke now, even though it's not good for them," Ootori remarks, looking at some point off. You prop yourself up by one elbow on the trampoline that squeaks in protest. From this angle you can tell Ootori's just looking at the fence of the tennis courts behind you. You tilt your head, hoping the movement will catch his attention, and when he looks down at you again, you take a deep breath and say, "Tell me to stop."
"Hm?" he murmurs, leaning in a little closer. You get up so you're sitting on the edge of the trampoline, your feet flat on the ground, straddling the side of his legs, and you're holding onto the side of his tennis jersey. He laughs a little, touches your hand against his shirt, but when you don't let go he gives the barest of shrugs and says, "It's not something I can decide for you, Shishido."
"Tell me to stop. Tell me--it's you--I'll do anything for you," you try to justify, drawing him in closer by his jersey. He raps the top of your baseball cap with his knuckles lightly, protests gently with a "Hey, Shishido, come on now," but you're drawing him so close that his shirt is almost against your nose, and you say again, "Anything," before you draw him down. He's taller than you, but sometimes, like now, you're faster than he is, and stronger, and a lot more desperate, so when you lunge up and flip him around in order to end up on top of him when both of you are landing against the trampoline, he can't do much. He doesn't look shocked when he's spread out under you on the trampoline, his hair fanned out like a halo behind his head. You're sort of kneeling around him, knees pressed to both sides of his hips, and your hands are still holding onto his shirt.
A little furrow forms in between his eyebrows and disappears. "What's wrong?" he asks, and his voice is lower, his eyes darker, one hand tensing from where it had landed against the trampoline, the stretch moving from his fingers to his wrist down to his arm where you can see just the slightest of blue from his veins. You think about the way he held your cigarette in his fingers and compare it to the way he held Oshitari's; you think about his eyes and his posture and the folds of his clothing, now, and how he emerges out of it.
"If you don't want me to--" You unclench one of your hands and bring it up to your ear where it habitually tries to brush back a strand of hair that's not there. "If it's you--"
"Don't smoke," Ootori says finally after considering you a long time. He reaches a hand up and touches the back of the hand that's close to your face. "Don't smoke, Shishido. For me," he adds, and so you kiss him, lean down slowly, gently, like the way he leaned into Oshitari up on the roof. There's a little breeze that drifts in between your back and your shirt because the sun's sunk so low it's barely there anymore. You realize that his mouth tastes sort of ashy, very recognizable. It's the taste of cigarettes and smoke, something light and minty too, and you've never discovered it before. You've never thought about it. His hand rests on your shoulder now, tapping the side of your neck to tell you to stop.
"Come home with me today," you say, more begging than anything, tugging at his shirt, at the zipper of his jersey, and you realize how stupid you must look at this moment, the trampoline stretched taut under your knees and your other hand convulsively grabbing for his. He smiles and props himself up on one elbow like you had done earlier.
"I can't. Not today."
"Please. No one will mind. Just this once."
"I can't, Shishido."
"Can't? Or won't?"
"Both. I have a lot of homework," he answers, freeing his hand and folding his fingers together so that he's hooked around the back of your neck. Leans up and kisses you before slipping out from under you so that you're just kneeling by yourself on the trampoline, and you turn around so that you're facing him as he says, "Remember, no smoking. You promised." He's smiling all the while as he backs away, smiling brilliantly, smiling like his mouth has wings, waving a few paces and walking off.
*
You call his cell phone later that night, and nobody picks up. When you call his home phone, his mother tells you that he's out, and do you want to leave a message? You shake your head before you realize she can't hear you on the other end of the telephone line, tell her no politely, thank her, and hang up.
You throw out your last pack of cigarettes.
After all, he asked you to.
*
What do you like about him?
You like that he can't lie to you very well. He blushes and turns red, stammers, can't look you in the eye, and you like that you feel as if you could tell anything to him, but you never do. You like that it feels as if he gives more than he takes. You like that around him it's easy for you to take more than you're given. You like that he never trips. You like that when he stretches and he's long, slender, graceful, supple, and effortless, and you like it that sometimes if you're not careful, you can't hear him breathing.
You like that he knows you better than you know yourself, but also that he knows himself the best.
*
The next morning, you ask him where he was last night, and he looks at you, surprised, and says, "That's strange. I was home all night!"
"Your mom told me you were gone," you say, bouncing a tennis ball up and down with your racket, watching him keep half an ear on Atobe and Oshitari who are a court away.
"I hate it when she does that," he says, biting his lower lip thoughtfully. "I guess she didn't want to distract me. I had a lot of homework."
"Oh," you say, and suddenly reach out, flick the pad of your thumb gently against the muscle of his neck where the sunlight erases the mark you thought you saw earlier. "Hey, Ootori--" but you stop, wrap your hand around his so that your thumb is pressed against his wrist, the rest of your fingers curling in his palm in between his thumb and his index finger, both of your hands slightly sweaty and hot. He warns under his breath, "Shishido," tries to drag his hand away, but you hold on, only let go when he entwines your fingers together briefly and flashes you a smile.
"You know that I'd do anything--" you say, and he's walking away, picking up the ball that's rolled away from you since you've stopped bouncing it, and says matter-of-factly, just loud enough for you to hear, "I know."
*
But the rest of that week you find it hard to give up smoking, not because of any addiction, not because you like smoking all that much, not because you need the nicotine, but because every time he kisses you, you can taste cigarettes like he's some hospital waiting room you're stuck in for the rest of your life, waiting for your turn.
A/N: If this fic sounds ridiculously angsty, that is because I was listening to any number of BAD SONGS to listen to if you want to write happy stories. Lisa Loeb's "Sandalwood", Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars" again, Costeau's "She Bruise Easily", Penny Dai's "Ni De Ai", and Poe's "Center of the Sun". *loves all the people she mooches off of* But espeically Lisa Loeb's "Sandalwood", which actually appears in the summary for this story and of which I had been obsessing about for ages.
Anyway. Questions, comments, concrit, or just crit, or just rotten tomatoes, HIT ME.
It was easy, and it's still easy.
Too easy, almost, despite the fact that you almost hacked a lung onto Taki's shoe the first time you tried, and Taki had to forcibly remove the cigarette from your lips and pound on your back, but after a while you stopped coughing and the taste was oddly accommodating, as if you had smoked before, but you knew you hadn't. The paper was dry and sweet on your tongue, and Taki was smiling at you knowingly, all of the boys around you smiling at you like you had just lost your virginity or something, and you smiled back, not because of them, but because the smoke curled around your face just so, like a recurring dream, an idee fixe, or a thought you had had before.
You should have known then, but of course, you didn't. That would have been too easy.
*
There are a few things that make the "no smoking" policy Atobe enforces null, not the least of them being that Oshitari smokes himself. Everyone knows that Oshitari keeps a pack in his pockets all the time, and there's a rumor that goes around once in a while when people are bored that sometimes Oshitari gets Atobe to do the same, and they both cup their hands around their cigarettes behind the locker rooms and beside the tennis fences so it's like they're trying to hide away. But Atobe never does it often enough for it to leak out, and no one likes risking his wrath if he finds out, you least of all.
Smoking, you find out soon enough, is really just a whole bunch of metaphors for sex. The way you drag it out, the way you roll it between your fingers, the indecency and the secrecy of it all; smoking in Hyotei is like having sex with your best friend, it's that taboo, that amazing, that convenient, that superficially unauthorized.
That should have been your second clue.
*
Ootori doesn't smoke. Doesn't like the smoke, he tells you. It makes his eyes water. And he doesn't like the way it yellows people's teeth, either, or the way it wastes money. Doesn't like it on principle, and you like him for that, for his principles and the fact that he keeps to them.
You like him for a lot of things, actually, for his height and for his stance, for the way his eyebrow twitches when a senpai says something funny but he doesn't think he should laugh, for the way his shoulders relax when he's doing stretches, for his voice. You like him because he's not Hyotei at all, you'd like to think. He's something foreign and beautiful and clean, and you don't like to think about what Hyotei's going to do to him, because Hyotei's good at what it does. It takes people and runs them through a rinse cycle. The strong ones come out the other end in one piece. The weaker ones get eaten up. And then it's the bleaching, a matter of color, and then the drying, a matter of size. After three years of something akin to an obstacle course, it leaves you standing on so high a peak that for the rest of your life no place feels as high as the top of Hyotei. And then for the rest of your life you hunger for it, that top slot, that unreachable distance.
It makes you respect Atobe, even though sometimes you wish you didn't.
You'll never make it to the top of that mountain. You know that already. You don't have the ambition or the skill and this is one hurdle that all the practice against all the Scud Serves in the world won't help you get over.
And you don't want Ootori to do it either. It's not that he can't, or that he's lacking in anything that'll let him, but you like him a lot, love him a little even, and care for him too much to let him kill himself like that. Ootori is a mutation in Hyotei, something that hasn't gotten ground up and spat out yet, and you want him to stay that way forever, perfect and beautiful and untouched. That's the way you remember him the first time you saw him. That's how you always want him to be: very tall and very white against the sun on a tennis court, spots of green in the corner of your eyes from the tennis balls littered on the ground, the sky blue and high behind him, the same color as the Hyotei jersey, and his smile like something with wings.
*
The third clue crashes into you like a train wreck and it's not so much of a clue as a revelation, an epiphany, and a tragedy.
You're with Taki, having barged in on him and his friends smoking in an empty classroom after school, their hands ready to crumple the cigarettes against the table and air out the room with some paper fans at the slightest sound of a teacher. Taki brushes his hair back behind his ear and bares his teeth at you, his equivalent of a genial smile, so you know what comes next is something he expects you'll either be upset about or want to kill him for. You brace yourself, hook your fingers around the edge of the table you're leaning against, and cough. Sometimes the cigarette smoke still catches you the wrong way.
"I thought Ootori didn't like smoking," Taki says, tapping his cigarette and crushing the ash with his heel judiciously.
"He doesn't," you say. You draw your eyebrows together and look at him pointedly. He coughs out of politeness and turns to his friends, apologetic smile on so you know he doesn't mean anything he says now, that moment of truth gone, "Then I guess it was someone else we saw, right?"
His friends laugh nervously. You hold onto your table tighter and say, "Wait, what?" The way you're standing, the sun is hitting Taki's face so that his hair is all light and gloss, eyebrows perfectly shaped and wickedly dark in the direct light, and when he looks up half his face is glow, not skin or eyes or mouth or face, but pure light.
"Nothing," Taki says quickly, then chattering blindly on, "Only we saw someone who looked like Ootori on the roof with Oshitari and Atobe, and we wondered if you knew." He gives you a look that might vaguely be sympathy and pats his shirt pocket down, taking out a packet of cigarettes. "Want one?"
You take what's offered to you and put it in your pocket, say something that sounds like, "Thanks", and walk out.
*
When is it that you like him the best?
You like him when he's so wonderful and impossible that you look at him and you can't find a single word to describe him. You like him when he's careful and precise even when doing the Scud serve, so careful, so meticulous so that it comes at you in just the right place, and you like him when he doesn't know what to do with himself, and you like him much, much better when he knows exactly what do to.
You like him best, though, when he's solid and you're speechless, and he understands you all the same.
*
What you notice about him that's different when he's there with Oshitari and Atobe than when he's with you are his eyes. They're the same really, but there, on the roof, as you watch him from the window built into the door, your mouth dry and your hands damp, he has his eyelids lower. You could see his eyelashes better, a feathery light-colored fringe that used to remind you of eggshells, but on the roof, now, a haze or a fog over the docks. His eyes are the same color, of course, the same under any light, but the eyelids were heavier, and he looked--
Sexier. Older. His posture too, less parallel and perpendicular lines and more curves. You bite your lip.
Oshitari's saying something, and Atobe has one hand on his shoulder, casual, reaching out for Ootori. Ootori laughs, leans in closer to Oshitari so they're a little triangle with you staring at the point in between Atobe and Oshitari's shoulders, barely seeing their profiles but looking straight on at Ootori. Ootori's making a move for Oshitari's cigarette, and Oshitari jerks back, catching Ootori's hand.
Something from Atobe, who takes Oshitari's cigarette out of his mouth like a caress and carefully putting it in between Ootori's lips. The pads of his fingers linger just a little bit longer than they should, you muse morosely, watching Ootori take an inhalation. It's not his first time, you realize. He's even better at this than you are, taking it out of his mouth with his forefinger and his thumb and letting it dangle in his hands expertly. Oshitari reaches for it, and it's that touch again, the way their fingers stay next to each other longer than they need to.
Oshitari says something else, which makes all three of them laugh before Ootori carefully takes Oshitari's glasses off and leans in, trying not to get his uniform burnt by the cigarette between them, and gives Oshitari a kiss. Atobe's smirking and you think he's saying something else but by now your eyes are kind of blurry and achy, like they've been rampaged by the wind, so you don't watch anymore. You blink for the first time in what seems like ages. Your eyes start tearing up. Walking down the steps back to the main floor of the school, one hand wiping at your eyes, frustrated, you know you look like you're crying.
But you're not.
You should have known.
*
You have to borrow a light from Taki when you get back. You leave as soon as the cigarette he gave you, slightly flattened from being in your pocket for a little while, is lit, moving your hand listlessly in a wave when you walk out the door. Outside Gakuto's trampoline is still there, because he never picks up after himself unless Oshitari or Atobe tells him to.
Everything else on the tennis court is still, painted, and clay. You lie down on the trampoline spread-eagled, your cigarette in your mouth, looking up at the sky, which isn't the same color blue as you quite remember it to be. It's a lot grayer, maybe. Like it's about to rain, and you hope by then Gakuto would have come around to put the trampoline in or else it'll rust. You wonder if maybe you should put it away when you leave.
You tap the ash off the end of the cigarette, contemplate it, and kill yourself a little more by putting the butt in your mouth again. You hope nothing leaves a burn on the paint on the tennis court. You don't think it will, but you don't want to risk it.
The sound of Ootori's feet materializes much sooner than the actual image of his face looming over you, smaller from his height, his hair gleaming and his face dark from the shadow. His hand doesn't shake when he reaches for your cigarette; it doesn't linger, and it doesn't touch your lips either. You're not sure what he does with it. Smash it against the ground, probably, but you're still looking up at his face above you, and you can't look away.
"Don't smoke, Shishido," he says smiling, his mouth moving so that bits of the afternoon sun glide past and hit your eyes. "It'll kill you."
"A lot of things will. French fries, for one," you reply. He hits your kneecap with his lightly. You've forgotten how beautiful he is when he smiles. You remember now, and your fingers itch for the feel of something. The air around you still smells like tobacco and burning paper, achingly so, bitter and familiar.
"So many people smoke now, even though it's not good for them," Ootori remarks, looking at some point off. You prop yourself up by one elbow on the trampoline that squeaks in protest. From this angle you can tell Ootori's just looking at the fence of the tennis courts behind you. You tilt your head, hoping the movement will catch his attention, and when he looks down at you again, you take a deep breath and say, "Tell me to stop."
"Hm?" he murmurs, leaning in a little closer. You get up so you're sitting on the edge of the trampoline, your feet flat on the ground, straddling the side of his legs, and you're holding onto the side of his tennis jersey. He laughs a little, touches your hand against his shirt, but when you don't let go he gives the barest of shrugs and says, "It's not something I can decide for you, Shishido."
"Tell me to stop. Tell me--it's you--I'll do anything for you," you try to justify, drawing him in closer by his jersey. He raps the top of your baseball cap with his knuckles lightly, protests gently with a "Hey, Shishido, come on now," but you're drawing him so close that his shirt is almost against your nose, and you say again, "Anything," before you draw him down. He's taller than you, but sometimes, like now, you're faster than he is, and stronger, and a lot more desperate, so when you lunge up and flip him around in order to end up on top of him when both of you are landing against the trampoline, he can't do much. He doesn't look shocked when he's spread out under you on the trampoline, his hair fanned out like a halo behind his head. You're sort of kneeling around him, knees pressed to both sides of his hips, and your hands are still holding onto his shirt.
A little furrow forms in between his eyebrows and disappears. "What's wrong?" he asks, and his voice is lower, his eyes darker, one hand tensing from where it had landed against the trampoline, the stretch moving from his fingers to his wrist down to his arm where you can see just the slightest of blue from his veins. You think about the way he held your cigarette in his fingers and compare it to the way he held Oshitari's; you think about his eyes and his posture and the folds of his clothing, now, and how he emerges out of it.
"If you don't want me to--" You unclench one of your hands and bring it up to your ear where it habitually tries to brush back a strand of hair that's not there. "If it's you--"
"Don't smoke," Ootori says finally after considering you a long time. He reaches a hand up and touches the back of the hand that's close to your face. "Don't smoke, Shishido. For me," he adds, and so you kiss him, lean down slowly, gently, like the way he leaned into Oshitari up on the roof. There's a little breeze that drifts in between your back and your shirt because the sun's sunk so low it's barely there anymore. You realize that his mouth tastes sort of ashy, very recognizable. It's the taste of cigarettes and smoke, something light and minty too, and you've never discovered it before. You've never thought about it. His hand rests on your shoulder now, tapping the side of your neck to tell you to stop.
"Come home with me today," you say, more begging than anything, tugging at his shirt, at the zipper of his jersey, and you realize how stupid you must look at this moment, the trampoline stretched taut under your knees and your other hand convulsively grabbing for his. He smiles and props himself up on one elbow like you had done earlier.
"I can't. Not today."
"Please. No one will mind. Just this once."
"I can't, Shishido."
"Can't? Or won't?"
"Both. I have a lot of homework," he answers, freeing his hand and folding his fingers together so that he's hooked around the back of your neck. Leans up and kisses you before slipping out from under you so that you're just kneeling by yourself on the trampoline, and you turn around so that you're facing him as he says, "Remember, no smoking. You promised." He's smiling all the while as he backs away, smiling brilliantly, smiling like his mouth has wings, waving a few paces and walking off.
*
You call his cell phone later that night, and nobody picks up. When you call his home phone, his mother tells you that he's out, and do you want to leave a message? You shake your head before you realize she can't hear you on the other end of the telephone line, tell her no politely, thank her, and hang up.
You throw out your last pack of cigarettes.
After all, he asked you to.
*
What do you like about him?
You like that he can't lie to you very well. He blushes and turns red, stammers, can't look you in the eye, and you like that you feel as if you could tell anything to him, but you never do. You like that it feels as if he gives more than he takes. You like that around him it's easy for you to take more than you're given. You like that he never trips. You like that when he stretches and he's long, slender, graceful, supple, and effortless, and you like it that sometimes if you're not careful, you can't hear him breathing.
You like that he knows you better than you know yourself, but also that he knows himself the best.
*
The next morning, you ask him where he was last night, and he looks at you, surprised, and says, "That's strange. I was home all night!"
"Your mom told me you were gone," you say, bouncing a tennis ball up and down with your racket, watching him keep half an ear on Atobe and Oshitari who are a court away.
"I hate it when she does that," he says, biting his lower lip thoughtfully. "I guess she didn't want to distract me. I had a lot of homework."
"Oh," you say, and suddenly reach out, flick the pad of your thumb gently against the muscle of his neck where the sunlight erases the mark you thought you saw earlier. "Hey, Ootori--" but you stop, wrap your hand around his so that your thumb is pressed against his wrist, the rest of your fingers curling in his palm in between his thumb and his index finger, both of your hands slightly sweaty and hot. He warns under his breath, "Shishido," tries to drag his hand away, but you hold on, only let go when he entwines your fingers together briefly and flashes you a smile.
"You know that I'd do anything--" you say, and he's walking away, picking up the ball that's rolled away from you since you've stopped bouncing it, and says matter-of-factly, just loud enough for you to hear, "I know."
*
But the rest of that week you find it hard to give up smoking, not because of any addiction, not because you like smoking all that much, not because you need the nicotine, but because every time he kisses you, you can taste cigarettes like he's some hospital waiting room you're stuck in for the rest of your life, waiting for your turn.
A/N: If this fic sounds ridiculously angsty, that is because I was listening to any number of BAD SONGS to listen to if you want to write happy stories. Lisa Loeb's "Sandalwood", Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars" again, Costeau's "She Bruise Easily", Penny Dai's "Ni De Ai", and Poe's "Center of the Sun". *loves all the people she mooches off of* But espeically Lisa Loeb's "Sandalwood", which actually appears in the summary for this story and of which I had been obsessing about for ages.
Anyway. Questions, comments, concrit, or just crit, or just rotten tomatoes, HIT ME.