Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ Cats, Crutches and Babies? Oh My! ❯ Simple Pleasures ( Chapter 21 )

 

As soon as Ryuichi set foot in the pet store, he felt extremely happy, his spirit lifting.

He was finally doing something on his own for once.

The singer felt free knowing that he could buy whatever he wanted in the store and there was nobody that could tell him differently. This pet buying business was just one of the many things that he wanted to accomplish for himself, but for starters it was good enough. The rest would all follow later on.

 

Before going to look at the kittens, which was what Ryu had told Tatsuha he wanted to buy, The singer first made a mad dash for the rabbit cages. Whether it was because of his affixation with Kumagoro, or because they were just way too cute, Tatsuha didn't know.

Upon taking a closer look at them all, the monk saw that there were all kinds of different rabbits. There were black ones, white ones, hairy ones and ones that were really small and fuzzy looking. Tatsuha had always assumed that a rabbit was either white, brown or black and had ears that stood straight up off it's head, though some of the rabbit's in the cages had spots or ears that dragged on the floor next to them.

`You learn something new everyday…' He thought to himself as Ryu ran to ask the teenager behind the counter if he could play with one of the bunnies that had caught his eye.

The spiky haired teenage boy, who looked to be only a few years younger then Tatsuha, was about to tell Ryuichi “no”, when he looked up from his magazine to see exactly who he was talking to. Suffice to say, he quickly changed his answer.

 

Ryuichi smiled and clapped his hands together, his fingers wiggling in anticipation as he dreamed of holding the soft fuzzy little rabbit between them.

 

“Ryuichi-kun, I thought you said you wanted to get a cat?” Tatsuha asked softly from his place beside the enthralled singer as they both watched the young man scoop up the rabbit Ryu had pointed to.

“Did you change your mind?”

 

The brown haired singer shook his head distractedly in a way that pretty much said both yes and no at the same time. Tatsuha decided to set speaking to the man aside into the “lost cause” pile and simply looked on as his lover waited patiently for the bunny.

The one the singer chose was all white with a honey brown spot over it's left hip, it was also a bit smaller then the rest of the others in its cage and one of it's ears was bent into a funny L shape near the tip.

Ryu asked why it's ear was bent and the young man, (whose name tag read Junouchi) explained that sometimes things like that happened in large litters.

Before launching into this brief explanation, however a look of confusion spread over the young mans face, as if to say `Why would a grown man be asking me something that most grade school kids could tell you.”

Tatsuha caught the look and it brought up that one, unanswerable question that always seemed to be lurking in the shadows surrounding his thoughts, waiting to spring up during situations such as these when the monk started wondering exactly what it was that he saw in Ryuichi.

That question was “Is he really all there?”

 

For most people, this would be a rhetorical question used to imply that somebody was stupid, ignorant or had no common sense, but for Tatsuha it was starting to become a serious concern.

Though Ryu was certainly cute and tiny enough to pull off the innocent, little kid act that some famous people (girl bands in general) tried to accomplish, Ryuichi did not seem to be acting. The public rarely, if ever, saw him in this child-like state, but was that because he removed the facetious little boy routine when the cameras came around? or did Tohma-san, Sakano-san, and the other hordes of professional individuals that seemed to swarm around him at a nearly constant rate have something to do with the transformation?

And if not, what terrible experience was the brown haired man hiding in his past that had forced his mind to split itself completely in two like this?

What was such a high spirited, loving person doing cowering behind a stuffed animal? Did he still continue to recoil from the pain in his dreams?

Perhaps that was the reason that Ryuichi hated to be alone. He didn't want to be left with nothing to focus his attention to, but his past.

 

Tatsuha shivered briefly and shook his head to erase his mental slate. Whatever the cause was for his lovers behavior would be much deeper rooted than he felt he wanted to delve at this point in their relationship. It might force him to deal with things that he didn't want to dig up again.

 

The way he had grown up, the closest thing to having a mother was Mika, and his father was always too busy to even pretend that he cared about Tatsuhas concerns.

And then on top of everything else… there was having to deal with Eiri and all of his problems. That had been a challenge all on it's own.

Though Tatsuha had stopped blaming his childhood unhappiness on his brother, there was a time when the young man had wished he never even had one. He hated to admit it, because what had happened to Eiri wasn't his fault, but it didn't exactly help Tatsuhas childhood, having a brother around that did nothing but lock himself away inside his room with his books and take their Father and Sister's precious time and attention away. He had been only eight after all and Eiri nearly seventeen. Tatsuha thought his brother to be selfish, thought that was certainly not the case.

For the most part, the attack on Eiri had rendered him useless as an amiable companion; His emotions were literally ripped to shreds. It was a bloody miracle that he was able to have any form of `normal' relationship with Shuichi at all.

 

As Tatsuha turned his attention back to the present, Ryuichi held out his hands, onto which Junouchi gently set the tiny baby bunny. The same hands that had held a thousand different microphones, written countless number one hits and roamed over the bodies of an unfathomable number of lovers, were now the only thing supporting the miniscule baby bunny, who treated them thusly and curled up into a tiny quivering, ball.

 

When the small thing started to shake with fear, Ryu pulled it closer to his chest, and started to hum softly, uttering unintelligible words softly to it as he stroked it's back, his eyes narrowing into uttermost seriousness.

Tatsuha and the store clerk just watched in rapt silence as Ryu sang softly to the baby rabbit, and stroked it until it finally stopped shaking and looked up at him.

 

“There's my good boy,” Ryuichi whispered softly just before his eyes brightened up with happiness, “I'm not something you should be afraid of Usagi-ko (1), I'm your new friend.”

 

Though it appeared that the bunny was oblivious to Ryu's words, it still seemed much calmer then when the clerk had first picked it up.

 

“Ta-kun, do you think it would be okay if I got a kitty and a bunny?” Ryuichi asked timidly, as though Tatsuha was the one making the decisions.

 

The young monk didn't want to make Ryu unhappy and he wasn't the one that was going to be there looking after it so he told his lover yes.

 

“If you take care of them then what business is it of mine what you buy Ryu?” Tatsuha declared as he started to move towards his lover and his fuzzy new companion, “Get all of the animals if you want! It's you who has to look after them right?”

 

Ryuichi looked from the bunny, to the kitties and then to Tatsuha. His lover was right. If he was the one that was going to look after and pay for things then who could tell him no.

The singer was so used to Tohma spotting his decisions and choosing things for him that it had never even occurred to him that he was more then old enough to decide for himself what was best. Hell he was a whole year older than Tohma!

This thought made Ryu angry and it seemed the rabbit could sense that there was something wrong. It started to wiggle and squirm around, trying to get it's self away from danger.

 

“Would you like me to put him aside for you S-Sakuma-san?” The now nervous teenager asked as he outstretched his hands toward the tiny animal. Tatsuha sympathized with the kid, who had just witnessed one of Ryu's amazing one eighty personality back flips in person. It was really something to see and kind of unnerving, even to him.

 

Ryu was shaken from his thoughts by the boys question and nodded.

 

“So do you want to go over and look at the kittens now Ryu?” Tatsuha asked. Now that the bunny was gone from his lover's hands he was free to hold them again, though he wasn't sure if that was what Ryuichi wanted right now. It was hard to tell which Ryuichi was out right now, because of the singers sunglasses and blank expression.

He stretched his arm out and took Ryu by his left hand gently, as if the man were a cobra that could strike at any time.

 

Ryu looked at the hand on his wrist once, then pulled his glasses down his nose to reveal glittering baby blue eyes, sort of half way between their normal watery look and the steely look that they could sometimes present. The smile that accompanied them was the only thing that really made clear what the singer was feeling. If it were just the eyes, Tatsuha would never have been able to tell.

 

Tatsuha stared into those beautiful eyes and all at once the world stood still. There seemed to be a soft hush over the store, as if the only two people there were the two holding hands right in the middle of it.

Ryuichi reached his free hand over for the one Tatsuha was holding and brought it up to his lips. He flipped the monks hand over and placed a soft kiss right in the middle of his palm.

 

“Yah,” The singer said, his voice almost angelic with happiness, “let's go look at the kitties.”

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With a soft inhale of breath, Shuichi awoke from his third nap of the day. Immediately, said vocalist noticed two things. One, was that he had been using Yuki's arm as a pillow for the duration of his nap and he wasn't dead yet and two, the novelist was still quite bare from the bottom of his shirt to where his pants rested around his knees. The increased heart rate and the cloud of endorphins that their little afternoon soirée had released into the writers blood must have caused him to metabolize the drugs in his system at a faster rate. I.e. he was pretty much dead to the world right now. This could mean one of two things for Shuichi.

Either he needed to wait for his lover to wake up in excruciating pain, and yell at him for seeing him half naked, in pain and acting like a baby, or he could phone Ryuichi back, see why he had called and meet up with them, to get him out of the house. Either way, the blonds nap was not going to end well, and that certainly didn't bode well for Shuichi.

 

The pink haired singer opted for the latter of his two choices. He grabbed a change of clothes from the closet, his cell phone of the bed, and ran down the hall to the apartments main bathroom to take a quick shower.

 

As he was doing his hair in the mirror of the bathroom, a wash of sadness overtook him when he thought about his and Yuki's morning ritual.

`I guess our mornings aren't going to be the same anymore…I like it when Yuki washes my hair…and other things…'

In fact their mornings wouldn't be the only thing that Eiris injury was going to affect. Shuichi was going to have to cook their meals, do their laundry…do everything! Until the authors leg was healed enough for a walking cast, or at least good movement on his crutches their wasn't much he could do, except write and be in a bitchy mood.

 

By the time he grabbed his boots and winter clothing, Shuichi was actually in a rather foul mood himself. It wasn't that he was going to resent do everything for Eiri, in fact that sort of made him feel even more like a wife then he already did, It was the fact that he knew Eiri wasn't going to appreciate any of it.

The man would yell and scream over the smallest mistakes, which was why Shuichi didn't normally volunteer to help with household chores anymore. He had learned his lesson well.

But what was Eiri going to say when he had no choice but to lay there and let Shuichi make mistakes. The singer couldn't fathom the horrible moods Eiri was going to be in…

 

With a brief shudder and a tightening of his boot laces, he stepped out the door into the hallway. What was going to happen, was going to happen and if Eiri didn't like it, Shuichi was going to tell him exactly where he could shove his complaints.

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(1) `Usagi' = Rabbit `Ko`=Child or small one. `Usagi-ko' = Bunny Child, or Baby Bunny.

 

 

Hey guys, LOOOOOOOOOng time no write huh? I know that this chapter was not very good and it took me a long time to write….But my family went through some pretty major upheavals in the past six months (can't believe it's been THAT LONG!!!>.<) and I just sort of lost my will to write…I couldn't have written anything even if I had tried. I know because I have been trying…for months and just nothing that came out of my brain seemed any good. It was all crap and I ended up deleting half of this chapter and rewriting it now that my passion for writing has finally returned. My thanks go out to everybody who is still bothering to read my excuses and to read my pathetic attempts at literature (TraumaticBunnyRabbit I have not forgotten you my love!) . I really appreciate you guys and all your determination to stick with me. I really hope that the rest of this stories few remaining chapters will come out quicker and smoother, now that my home life is quieter and I have managed to find some measure of peace in my life.

Thanks for all that it is worth, I love you all.

 

-Bakayasha