Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ On the Outside ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Author's Notes: So a nice person was kind enough to inform me that Touma is thirty-two, Noriko is twenty-eight, and Ryuuichi is either the same as Touma or thirty, I keep hearing varying things. But generally how I have written it so far was with it in mind that Ryuuichi was the same age as Touma, maybe a year younger. Bah, confusing ages... (and Mika being 28 and Yuki 22 and Tatsuha 16 and Shuuichi 19, etc. etc. etc.)

I really appreciate the reviews I have gotten on this and the praise for Tatsuha's characterization. It really means a lot to me. ^^ Thanks and please enjoy.

Chapter Three

'The bar' as Ryuuichi referred it is actually this bar-slash-cafe-slash-multi purpose place. When Mika first started to date Touma -- seems like five million years ago these days -- it was where they would always go. Nittle Grasper was big around then, and the owner of the place was a personal friend of Touma. He would always gladly shut down shop to give them a place to go to when the fame got to be too much.

I went once with Mika when I was younger, with she and Touma. She was stuck baby-sitting me or something, lucky girl. I don't remember how old I was. Maybe ten or eleven. Because she and Touma got married when I was twelve, then Nittle Grasper split up early that year, and were split up for almost three. And since I'm almost seventeen now, I guess that evens out to three years. Or something. Who knows.

Most people look at Mika and Touma and wonder why they even stay together. Popular rumor is that Touma married Mika to be closer to Eiri. And in some cases, it's true. Even I know that. But if it were completely true, do you really think I wouldn't have beat the crap out of him by now? Well... I would try to anyway. No one messes with Mikarin like that.

But I questioned it for awhile too. I'm not an idiot. I saw the looks he gave my brother, these looks that anyone could have read if they were looking hard enough. The whole world saw it, and the whole world wondered why the marriage. Rumors went around in the tabloids that Touma had married to be closer to 'some mystery man.' It was total bull shit.

Touma cares about Eiri. That much is true. He does a lot for Eiri because he cares about him. Mika told me once that Touma feels responsible for him too, for something or another. But from what I can see, that's all it is. Mika and Touma don't look like the world's happiest couple on the surface, but they are happy. No joke.

Anyway. The bar. Like I said, there was the one time with Mika and Touma, and then there was another far more amusing time. It was back when Shuuichi had first moved in with Eiri and I showed up to drop the bombshell about Ayaka-chan. Mika showed up too. Eiri got so annoyed with the three of us, he pitched us straight out the door. So Mika suggested that we go to the bar. Where, would wonders never cease, the former members of Nittle Grasper were hanging out for the evening.

You can imagine my fan boy tendencies went absolutely out of whack.

I didn't get drunk, though I seriously wanted to. Mika wouldn't have let me. I did, however, pretend to come down with some outrageous illness, spattering about the craziest symptoms. The devious little plan worked and I got to spend the entirety of the evening in a back room with Ryuuichi. Not that anything happened, damn it all. He mostly talked about random things and I listened.

We stayed long enough at the studio to listen to Ryuuichi do some vocals for their new album with Noriko doing back-up on the keyboards. Touma was, of course, missing from the scene, but it's not all that surprising. It wasn't a big deal either, since Noriko could manage well enough on her own. Touma is more of an added bonus these days. He's not much involved in the actual making of the music, just in the producing of it and seeing it on the shelves. He goes to the concerts for the sake of millions of undying fans.

Shuuichi and them did a few more songs of their own before they called an end to the day. I asked Fujisaki and Hiroshi if they wanted to come with us, but both declined. Fujisaki on account of being a prude-ish kind of guy (seriously, the word 'fun' is not in his vocabulary) and Hiro because he said that he was expecting a phone call from Ayaka-chan. Shuuichi made a big deal of teasing him about it for awhile before finally letting up on him and letting him go.

Now the problem was Shuuichi, who kept claiming that if we didn't tell Eiri where we were going and who we were going with, and yadda yadda ya, that he'd get pissed with us. I didn't really give a damn one way or another. But just to appease him, I let Shuuichi call him up to say what was up. I could hear him from the cell phone. He didn't sound to terribly interested. Then Shuuichi handed the phone to me and Eiri told me, in his oh-so-deadpan voice, to be back before midnight.

Jerk.

We walked to the bar. By then it was around dusk, but Shuuichi still wore shades. He had learned the hard way that not at least doing something to hide the fact that he was a popular singer was bad news. Which I heard about only second-hand and was really too afraid to bring up. I mean, how do you go around asking a guy about something like that? It's too uncomfortable. I wouldn't do it.

And, with my luck, it would just figure that we would walk in and there would be Touma and Mika. I nearly turned right back around and left. Considering how mad at me Mika was for the last episode, thinking I'd done something apparently (not that I would've been averse to it, hell no), I kind of doubted she'd be too hot on hearing that Shuuichi and I were here to meet up with Sakuma Ryuuichi for some drinks.

They were having dinner. The sign outside had said closed, but since Shuuichi and I both knew about the owner closing it down just for certain patrons sometimes, we figured Ryuuichi might've been there already and went in. Unfortunately, we went in not to the sight of the most gorgeous man in existence (sorry, I'm fan boying again) but to my sister and her husband.

Ouchu.

She leveled me with this piercing gaze from across the room. "Tatsuha?"

I tried to grin. "Hey, sis. Touma."

Touma smiled. One thing I notice him is his utter inability to show anything but absolute calm and charm. Either he's smiling cheerfully at you while telling you you've been fired, or he's being a completely charming prick. He can do one or the other perfectly well. They're his two modes.

I dragged Shuuichi over with me to where they were sitting and pulled up a stray chair. Shuuichi looked like he thought it was kind of rude to interrupt, but I knew them all too well to know it didn't matter. Besides, Mika would want to keep an eye on me, and it would be easier if I was closer and not at the bar.

"What brings you two here?" Touma asked. Nice guy mode. I wondered sometimes when I was younger if he was just putting on some act when he was around me or my family to make himself look better. I'm still not sure on whether or not he was. I don't think it was a matter of doing it deliberately, really, he just seems to be able to do that... get people to trust him so readily with his smiles and charm.

Actually, it's kind of creepy.

Shuuichi pointed to me. "Him."

I made a face back. "Ryuuichi told us to meet him here," I explained.

Mika raised an eyebrow at me. "You two are on a first name basis now?"

I made the same face I had at Shuuichi at her. She rolled her eyes and looked away.

"How are things with Eiri?" she asked after a few minutes of silence. It wasn't uncomfortable silence, but I could tell by the way Shuuichi was twitching he thought it was. Then again, he'd never been very comfortable around Mika from what I knew, and even less around Touma. Being his boss and all, I guess.

"He gave me a curfew," I answered blandly, reaching over to snatch some food from her plate. She tried to slap my hand away, but wasn't quick enough. Grinning, I popped the food into my mouth and munched.

"You have a curfew at home too," she said. Always the peacemaker. I sighed.

"Yeah, but I thought you wanted me to live Kyoto to broaden my horizons. See new sights, meet new people, experience new things!"

"You can do those things before midnight."

Sigh. Sisters.

Shuuichi and I left them and went over to the bar. Mika made a point of telling the bartender not to serve us anything with even a drop of liquor in it. Grumbling under my breath, I asked for a coke. Shuuichi got himself a Sprite.

"Sisters are a pain in the ass," I complained. I folded my arms on the bar top and rested my head against them, glancing at Shuuichi from the corner of my eye. "Don't you have one?"

Glass raised up to his mouth, he blinked at me for a second before setting it back down on its coaster. He nodded. "I have a younger sister," he answered. "Maiko."

"Maiko, huh. Do you get along?"

He grinned sheepishly. "Sometimes."

The radio was playing some low, boring, mood music. I felt like I was standing in an elevator. I crossed my eyes, staring at a strand of hair that always falls out across my forehead, so that it kept fading in and out of focus.

"But you know," I said, watching the strand blur again and having blink my eyes a couple of times to focus normally, "they're good to have. Sisters, I mean. Siblings at all, really." I frowned. "Well, Eiri was better when I was younger..."

Shuuichi looked at me, curiously. "What do you mean?"

I glared at the strand now. As if I could will it away or something.

"He was a lot easier to get along with. He was a quiet kid. He spent a lot of time reading. And he liked to be around Mom and Mika. But when he came home from New York, he was completely different."

I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. Shuuichi wasn't saying anything, and a little confused, I turned to look at him. He was gnawing at his lower lip, eyes averted.

"Hey." I waved my hand in front of his face. He blinked.

"Oh! Sorry." Sheepish smile back in place.

I frowned at him, but let it drop. Shrugging my shoulders, I took another swig of my coke. Would have been better with some liquor with it. Not that I drink. Of course not.

Okay, sometimes.

"I get this feeling somebody's not telling me something a lot of the time," I announced.

"Um... why do you think that?"

"Because everybody probably is," I said pointedly. "Nobody ever tells the truth, they just want yes men."

He gave me a bewildered look. I laughed and reached over to ruffle up his hair.

"Don't worry about it."

Sometimes I really do feel like no one is telling me anything. It's not that I lead a very sheltered life. It was just that it never seemed to cross anyone's mind that it might be necessary to tell me things. I didn't know my mother was sick until she began the treatment. They thought that it would be for my own good not to know, so I couldn't dwell on it. And when they did tell me, they had the balls to look me in the face and say that everything would be all right. They knew damn well that I knew nothing would be all right.

Even now, and I'm practically seventeen. It's got to stop.

The door to the bar was opened and in strutted Ryuuichi, Noriko behind him. Both of them had changed into more casual clothes than when we were in the studio, Noriko with her hair down and looking less flamboyant than usual, even with hair that kind of lavender, and Ryuuichi with his pushed back from his face with a red bandana. Some strands still fell out across his forehead, making the effort to keep the hair from his eyes a useless one. 'course, those random strands of hair just make people better looking in my opinion. Something about how it makes the shadows fall on their faces. So I wasn't about to complain.

Nah. Not biased at all.

Ryuuichi saw us, smiled and waved, and then noticed Touma and Mika. With a, "Touma~!", he bounded across the room and practically barreled Touma over backwards in one of his killer glomps. Noriko sighed and came to sit with us at the bar.

I sometimes feel out of place with these big celebrity types. My brother is one of Japan's most popular authors, particularly with the female crowd, and all of his books have gone to the best sellers list. His boyfriend just so happens to be an equally popular icon of Japanese entertainment. My sister is married to the president of NG Records and a former member of Nittle Grasper.

And I am a sixteen-going-on-seventeen kid training to become a temple priest.

Hoo boy.

Ryuuichi bounded back over to us. He took the seat unoccupied next to me. Noriko had snagged the one beside Shuuichi, and all for the better, as far as I was concerned.

But then I was rather disappointed to find how tongue-tied I was. I didn't understand it. It's not like I'm a shy person. I'm not at all. I'll tell anyone straight to their face what I think of them, and if I see someone I'm attracted to, I'm on them like ... glue to paper. (Or some other appropriate analogy -- never was good at those.) And I had been anything but reserved the last encounter I had with Ryuuichi.

Maybe I was maturing a bit?

What a joke.

"You're staying with your brother, Tatsuha-kun?"

I looked up, surprised to find that Ryuuichi was looking at me and asking me something. He and Noriko had already ordered from the bar, Noriko a Martini with a cherry and he a coke. I wondered if he had it spiked with anything. He didn't seem like the type to be a drinker. Then again, I wouldn't know. No articles ask Sakuma Ryuuichi if he likes to get a little tipsy.

But I could recite you his shoe size, favorite color, birth date, very childhood toy, very music album, and favorite food in half a second flat.

"Uh huh," I said. I took a swig of my coke. "Mika wants me to uh... broaden my horizons." My God, that sounded dorky. And it wasn't even true. What she wanted was for me to get all my 'wild teenage inhibitions' out of my system so that I could go back home to Kyoto and play the obedient son.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how bitter I sound about that. Not so much resigned anymore, am I?

He smiled at me. Geez. That is one beautiful smile. What makes it so beautiful is the fact he has no idea it is.

All right, getting poetic and fluffy and stupid. Shut up, fan boy brain.

"How long will you be here?" he asked.

"A few weeks, maybe a month at the most," I answered.

"Then you should come to the concert!"

"Concert?"

The smile became a beam. "Bad Luck and Nittle Grasper! Shuuichi and I get to sing together again." He sounded so delighted and enthusiastic about it, it was hard not to smile back at him.

But then I promptly whirled around on Shuuichi, who was talking to -- rather, being talked at -- Noriko. He nearly jumped out of his skin when I clamped my hands down on his shoulders.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me anything about a concert?!" I demanded.

"Wah!" He pulled his arms up over his head, as though to protect himself from an incoming beating. "I forgot about it! Really! I forgot! I'm not lying!"

I frowned at him, but released his shoulders. "You do so lie."

"Do not!"

I reached for my coke. I should have been paying attention. My hand closed around Ryuuichi's instead. He wasn't paying attention either. It wasn't until I tasted chalk-like taste of liquor running down my throat that I realized it was the wrong drink.

So Sakuma Ryuuichi really does spike his drinks, I thought distantly, and then proceeded to nearly hack up my lungs.

"Tatsuha-kun!" Ryuuichi was patting me on the back, looking at me with these adorably concerned eyes. "Are you okay?"

What's a little scalding burning sensation down your throat when you're looking into eyes like those?

"F-fine," I managed to cough out. "Just fine."

My head was beginning to hurt a little. Strong drink.

Actually, it didn't taste half-bad once I got over that initial shock. I haven't really got the stomach for drinking. It goes to my head faster than sugar to Shuuichi's system. I haven't got the taste for it either. It either tastes like absolute nothing and yet is somehow awful or like chalk. It always feels... fuzzy going down my throat. I don't know how to explain it.

But there isn't much to do in Kyoto with your friends when you're feeling rebellious. Okay, so it's peer pressure completely. And while it's fun to be drunk, what you do when you're drunk combined with how you feel in the morning doesn't make it worth the effort.

Not that it stops me.

So really, you get used to the taste, no matter how bad it is and how much I'd just like to spit it all out.

Ryuuichi was still looking at me with those wide blue eyes. I forced a smile.

"Really, I'm okay. It just went down the wrong way." That sounded like a valid excuse.

Mika was frowning at me from where she and Touma were seated. I tossed her my best charismatic smile. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and turned away from me.

I took another swig of Ryuuichi's drink. Hey, he hadn't noticed and wasn't complaining, and some liquor would do good to loosen me up. That was the brilliant theory at the time, anyway.

You'd be surprised how fast I was able to down that drink. I wondered if Ryuuichi was even aware and was just letting me get away with it, or if he really was too dense to notice. Either way, by the time Touma and Mika left, Mika with a harsh warning for me to behave and to be home when Eiri expected me to be, I'd had the entire drink knocked back. And when Ryuuichi realized that, he seemed surprised that he had been the one to finish it so quickly, and he ordered another.

I knocked that back too. And the one that came after that one. And after that one.

By the time eleven o'clock rolled around, I was just a wee bit tipsy on my toes.

"Tatsuha," Shuuichi began, "Yuki probably is wondering where we are..."

"Eiri has absolutely no sense of adventure," I muttered. "That jerk. Midnight curfew! Midnight! Honestly."

Noriko sighed. "I think you've had quite a bit to drink, Tatsuha-kun."

"Yes!" I declared. "Quite a bit."

Looking back on it now, I realize what an idiot I was being. I really do. I just want to make that very clear to you.

Ryuuichi, munching on the cherry from Noriko's Martini, smiled at Shuuichi. "I can make sure Tatsuha-kun gets home okay if you want to go ahead."

Shuuichi looked like that was the worst idea he had ever heard, but was careful to hold his tongue.

"Go, go, go," I said, waving a hand at him. "Tell Eiri I'll be back... uh... later." 'Later' translated of course as anytime within the next week and Shuuichi knew it. He also knew that Eiri would be pissed. He does a good job of pretending like he doesn't care what I do, but he wouldn't have made up that curfew to begin with if he didn't care at all.

Shuuichi sighed. "Okay."

Both he and Noriko left. Alone with Sakuma Ryuuichi.

And I was drunk.

"Shuuichi really cares about Yuki Eiri, huh."

His voice sounded distant. I blinked, frowned a little, and glanced over at him. He had a drink in his hand, a spiked coke I think I hadn't managed to steal from him. But he didn't look like he was interested in the drink. His expression was kind of wistful; thoughtful. I wondered what he was thinking about.

"Yup," I answered. "More than anything. It's good for Eiri. He needs somebody like Shuuichi."

He smiled at me again, the usual dopey smile. "That's good."

"I guess so," I agreed. My vision was becoming blurry. I could already feel a headache coming on. Early hangovers. They exist, I swear. They're a bitch and a half too. Not to mention painful.

"You don't look so good, Tatsuha-kun."

I was beginning to think that wasn't half-wrong. Those eggs I had made that morning weren't settling too happily in my stomach.

"I think I'm gonna..."

I didn't get to finish. Sudden upchucking will do that to you. I picked myself up and ran straight to the bathroom and into the nearest stall. If I hadn't been drunk, I would have realized I was in the women's room and not the men's. But of all the stupid things I'd ever done, I didn't rank going into the wrong bathroom very high on the list. Not when it was either go to the first one I came to or woof my cookies all over the floor.

"Ugh."

I leaned my head against the side of the stall. So throwing up in the women's bathroom really wasn't that bad on my list of Stupid Ass things. Getting drunk in front of Sakuma Ryuuichi and having to run out of the room to throw up, however, ranks right up with number one and two.

Ah, brilliance. Pure brilliance.

"Tatsuha-kun?"

A hand touched my forehead, smoothing away my hair from my face. I cracked open an eye and saw Ryuuichi looking at me with that same concern in his eyes. I felt too sick to think about how cute that was.

"Come on," he said. He looped an arm around my waist and hoisted me up to my feet. I was kind of surprised at how easily he was able to do it. At first glance he has the build of any ordinary awkward teenager. It's hard to remember sometimes he's already past his twenties.

He smiled at me. Not the dopey smile or the disarming smile, but this weird smile. This knowing, amused smile.

"You shouldn't drink so much, Tatsuha-kun. It's bad for you!"

... he had known all along I was downing his drinks. Bastard.

"I'll take you home."

He was still smiling at me. He was getting a riot out of this, I could tell. I was beginning to realize that the Sakuma Ryuuichi I knew from concerts and videos and interviews was nothing like the Sakuma Ryuuichi I was with.

Who cared? I got to be walked home with the arm of an outrageously sexy man around me.

And what sixteen year old in their right mind would complain about that?