Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ How I Know ❯ How I Know ( Chapter 1 )

Something about the stage makes him look like a soldier. It's the pose: the easy way he rocks that shoulder back and aims the microphone at that audience. He is a soldier: a fearless motherfucker ready to walk that line, walk it with no fear- just all balls. He knows he can kill them. He knows he can break their hearts with one note and fuck them in their seats.

 

He knows. Rock and roll, baby. That little son of a bitch is a god, when the spotlight's on. Man, he's cute.

 

"What do you think?" Tohma Seguchi doesn't have enough glitter to dazzle me out of this vision. "Your silence says enough."

 

The lights roll, the screaming crests, and Shuichi falls when darkness hits.

 

"It's like an orgasm, isn't it?"

 

"Tohma, I realize you're being clever and ironic." I light my cigarette as stagehands slip between us. Sakano the Dog is screaming- I can imagine him panicking with that headset- and I can feel Shuichi sliding by with the rush. "I appreciate it." I have to raise my voice. "It just feels a little off key."

 

When the backstage lights come up, when the insanity is cleared, when my soldier's been rushed into his dressing room, when it is time to look him in the eye and deal with the recriminations and guilt, I drag on that hot-boxed cigarette and let the smoke curl, from between my teeth, and I. Smile like that bastard Tohma has never seen me smile before.

 

"That was mean, Eiri-boy."

 

I am mean. I am one mean motherfucker. "I'm not your sweet little Eiri-boy, anymore." And he'd better not forget. "And it is like an orgasm, when Shuichi's finishing up his act." I turn my back on shock and sadness. I turn my back and shake my head, to follow the crowd and forget Tohma. "When you explain that to me, it's like explaining a joke." I look over my shoulder. There's a frown in his eyes. Too bad. "Don't do that."

 

"I don't have your sense of language or storytelling."

 

It's an apology. I stop because I can't abide an excuse. I go back because I need to explain this- this simple thing Tohma never understood. "You..." I point my cigarette right at him, between the eyes. The curtain, behind him, rises. The audience is leaving. I can see that over his shoulder. "You never respected other people's work."

 

"Yuki?"

 

I forget everything, at the sound of that voice. My anger dies, and my sense of irony and romance blooms. I can see them growing when I go to him, when I look into his eyes, when I shrug.

 

I pretend. I play this way to show my cool. To make him hot for me; to make him come to me. To show me more of what he was, on stage. "You weren't that bad, tonight."

 

I can hear Tohma walking away. He is, to me, like an autumn leaf: already gone.

 

"Not bad?" Shuichi's fresh, raw, sweating, real. He stinks, like body odor. His face is streaked with face paint, stage makeup. He's high- probably something that Hiro gave him. And he's... he's so... "Aw, come on. Admit it."

 

"No." I try not to blush, so I hide behind some smoke.

 

"Say it!" Shuichi shoves my shoulder. "Say it. Admit it."

 

"No."

 

"Aw..." He inches his way up my inner thigh. It's like a flame. I can see the heat in his eyes. "I was...."

 

"No." I refuse to say it. To admit- out loud- that he has any sort of power over me. "Absolutely not."

 

"Aw, you know you want to..." He snickers. "Say I'm cute."

 

"I will not."

 

Then he slaps me. Slaps me hard, right across the cheek. Slaps hard enough to smack the cigarette out from between my cheeks. Then he laughs. "That's what I like about you, Yuki." Then he winks. The little fucker can make a slap look so... sweet.

 

"What's that?" I rub my cheek. Fuck- that feels good!

 

"You are so fucking funny."

 

That's how I know he's the one.