Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ Miserable Lie ❯ Chapter 1

What hurts more? Being an ass, or knowing that you are an ass? The knowing… There's that unsaid excuse, like some strange hope, that it isn't really true. Self deception. A lie you tell yourself. What difference does it make? Everything- everything- is such a lie.

 

Shuichi sleeps on my sofa. Even this is a lie, in the sense that I want him to be here, with me, in this bed. No, not him. I want someone else. A lie inside of a lie.

 

So many lies. So many that I can't say what is true, anymore.

 

And I am supposed to know enough to write about love? What a joke. In the end, that's what it all amounts to. A joke.

 

I can hear your laughter.

 

One day, I was sitting at my desk, pretending to describe some great cosmic secret between the lines of this pretense I call my book. I realized, as I wrote what was essentially trash, that I wanted to write was a letter to you.

 

I almost did. Almost. Instead, I wrote that book. Tangerine Dreams, Lemon Tarts, Acid Cream… It was all a waste of paper. Something that should have been deleted. If I had the power to take it all back, to recall it with my delete key, I would. But I can't delete paper. I can't recall a second or third press.

 

I hide myself, instead. No, I know I don't do it well. I pretend to hide. From you. I see you through the television set, in interviews, like a ghost calling out to you through your screen. I hide in the press junkets. The publicity. I use the veil to reach out without being there. I can't risk the possibility that you…

 

I have to lie to myself, you see.

 

Shuichi, does he understand? Does he know what I am trying to find in our sex? That irretrievable innocence you loved so much, in me? The innocence. It teases me, comes and goes, like a little bird. Innocence is coy, it is cruel. When you know what it is, the little bird flies away. And all I am left with is myself, one giant lie.

 

“Yuki!”

 

Even my name is not real. It suits a liar.

 

I don't bother to answer.

 

“Yuki! Are you done with your work?”

 

“No. It's done with me.”

 

“Come in here. I'm lonely.”

 

“So?” We're all lonely. “Little idiot.”

 

The pillow feels like a rock. The shadows paint my room in drama. Sheets stick to my corpse. Die, jackass. Why can't you just…

 

“Yuki!”

 

“Fine!” I throw the pretense of sleeping away and march forward, into his line of sight. Little soldier Shuichi is standing at attention, daring me, with his ridiculous pink nightgown, to sneer at his courageous angst.

 

He thinks he can save me.

 

“You wanna fool around?”

 

“My hand hurts from writing.”

 

“So?” He unties the ribbon around his neck and silk falls to the wooden floors. Moonlight describes a boy's body. Innocence.

 

“Why would I want to fool around, if my hand hurts too much to jerk off?” I turn my back on it. I always do. Not because I don't want innocence. I just prefer to be chased.

 

“You're such an asshole!”

 

“Aw.” I make a beer run, an easy slink into the kitchen for my favorite whore. I guzzle it down, waiting for the Little Soldier, my easiest whore. When he comes close, through the beer bubbles, I smile.

 

Innocence, it came for me. “You know I love you.” The three of us, together, we make up terrible lies.

 

“Do you?” He wraps his arms around me, slides them under my shirt. “Do you really love me, Yuki?”

 

Innocence, you coy little shit. “Oh, shut up!” I throw him against the wall and he smiles. Because I can't say no. I can… never say no.

 

“You're so full of shit,” he says, just before I let go and take him.

 

All this time, I am thinking of you. I can hear you. I can hear you laughing.

 

++

 

“Was that supposed to be funny, Mr. Sakano?”

 

I almost feel sorry for this fool, Sakano. Almost, but I won't. He's just another fly caught in the honey trap. There've been so many for you. All we can do is hope we amuse you. It's pointless, though. He knows it, too. I can see it in the heavy shuffle of his scuffy black loafers, in the greasy catch of light on his hair. He flaps uselessly and smiles, willing himself to find the right words, the magic notes to play. But he knows it is impossible; and yet he tells himself a little lie and tries again.

 

“Perhaps you heard the one about-“

 

My sister rolls her eyes. A small mercy. And you… you're rich like cream and sweet as mothers milk with your feathered smile.

 

“Please stop.”

 

“It's a party, company-boy.” Mika puts a hand on her hip: She's the coutier bouncer. “Not a stand up club. Honestly, you are absurd.”

 

Honestly. Mika thinks so much of herself: She imagines that she is a truth teller.

 

“What a bitch.” Shuichi gives me some chemistry experiment in a martini glass. “Here,” he says, after the fact.

 

“What is this thing?” I watch her take you away. Your boa trails the floor as you disappear behind French doors. But your cologne lingers.

 

“Oh.” Little Soldier's standing proud- I half expect him to salute- “It's a Cosmopolitan.”

 

“It's…”

 

“Pink!” He says this, like he owns the color.

 

“I was going to say ridiculous.” Because I wanted a scotch. Like you were drinking. I wanted to have the same flavor you had in your mouth. “Take it back.” I shove it in his hand.

 

“More for me, then.”

 

“Oh, goodie.” My tie is strangling me. The people are sucking up all my air. “Your boss is gone. So finish that up. I want to go home.”

 

“Can't wait to have me drunk?”

 

“Oh, is that a threat?”

 

“Sex isn't a threat, Yuki!”

 

“Depends on who's doing the propositioning.”

 

I stay by his side. This time I don't want Innocence to chase me. I want to be alone, tonight.

 

“Let's go.”

 

++

 

He's so silent, as we move together, man and boy. Death and the maiden. And he comes for me. He always comes…

 

When streetlights turn on the night black ceiling and ground out cigarettes curl like fingers, beaconing me… I see your face. I see you laughing. And your voice is music, a magic flute, a secret song. I dream of you, I live in those dreams. And cry as I dance with a partner, because it is not you.

 

“I love you.”

 

“Really?” Shuichi touches my face, wriggles in the tangle of this epilogue. “Do you really love me, Yuki?”

 

I asked that same question, exactly, once. Word for word. I let out a smoke plume, it hovers, like a ghost. I have its name.

 

“Yes.”

 

He was a liar, too. But you knew that, didn't you? You always knew. I wish I could see your face, like I hear your laughter.

 

“I love you, too.”

 

I close my eyes. It is all such a fucking lie.