By the end of Bad Luck's second week around Tokyo, Shuichi felt like it was turning into a routine he liked. A routine that didn't involve aggressive and foul-tempered kitchen appliances either.
He went to the rehearsal studio with Hiro and Fujisaki and Sakano every day, and Fujisaki kicked around the melodies and the lyrics, and Shuichi kicked around Fujisaki for criticizing his lyrics, and then they took a break for dinner, and Shuichi found something to pick up and bring home, and he could usually whine at Yuki until Yuki ate it to shut him up.
Sometimes he went back out for later rehearsals or local performances, or to watch Ryuichi and the others; usually Yuki was still staring at his computer screen when he got back, so he would chase Yuki into pajamas and bed with a threat of leftover pizza from some state or another. Yuki seemed to be even more afraid of the leftovers than of the originals. But Shuichi knew he'd heard someone talk about eating cold pizza for breakfast and didn't see why the principle couldn't apply here. In any case, Shuichi wasn't about to let a perfectly good leverage point slide.
"California" pizza involved avocado, nori, mayonnaise, and fungus that looked like it originated from Mars, and Yuki must not have been taking his medicine correctly because he was obviously still having fever-chills. He shuddered any time his eyes focused on the box.
Shuichi grabbed a blanket and plonked himself down in Yuki's lap and started explaining again about the medicine, and Yuki pinched his nose shut to stop him talking.
"...Mou. You could have kissed me again or something."
"You've been putting that in your mouth. No thank you."
Shuichi looked up at him with anxious eyes. "Was America that horrible?"
After a long minute, Yuki said, "Never mind." But he didn't shove Shuichi out of his lap, so Shuichi took the opportunity to snuggle.
"Don't get too comfortable."
"Aren't you done with the book?"
"The story is done, but I still have to finish editing it by tomorrow morning."
"That's what editors are for," Shuichi said happily. "Throw it in the mail, we can go to the park tomorrow or something..."
"That is not what editors are for," Yuki said.
"Then why do they call them editors?"
"How do you like it when Fujisaki rewrites your songs for you?"
Shuichi shut his mouth for a minute, and then said finally, "All right, you win. It's just... you look so tired, but you hardly take time to sleep, and I'm sure you're not taking the medicine often enough, and..." He sighed. "At least it'll be over after tomorrow."
"Sorry," Yuki said, softly. "The reason I have to have the edits done tomorrow morning is that I head into the media feeding frenzy at noon."
"Feeding frenzy...?"
"Book signings, libraries, schools, publicity events, celebrity fundraisers... I wrote it into my contract that they only get me two weeks a season, but they do get me for two weeks. ...And after that I want to sleep for a day straight. So, in two weeks and a day, I'm yours. I
do remember I promised that."
"Can I come with you?"
Yuki blinked. Then he laughed.
"I'm serious!" Shuichi protested. "It sounds like you'd hate it, so I want to be there for you..."
"There's no point in both of us being completely bored out of our minds," Yuki said.
"But..."
"Book stores," Yuki said. "And libraries. And schools. All full of people who go shush and have no appreciation for loud music with electric guitars. What would you do but go stir-crazy?"
"What do you do?"
"I sit and smile for ten or twelve hours, and sign anything that gets put in front of me, and listen to complete strangers ramble on about anything they want to ramble on about." The way he said it made it sound like oral surgery without anesthetics.
"But... they're your fans."
"No," Yuki said, and sighed. "Shuichi-kun... the people who come to see you are your fans. Without you, Bad Luck is nothing -- without your energy, without your life, without your breath and body and your voice singing the words in your soul -- without you, there is nothing for Bad Luck to be. People who go to concerts want to see the singer. Without the musicians, there is no music."
"Without you there wouldn't be any books..."
"No," Yuki said. "Because if I'd had any kind of foresight when I signed the contract, I'd have sat some model in my place for the book jacket photos and sent him on the publicity tours instead. The people who read my books don't want me -- just my words, tidily laid out on a dead sheet of paper. It could be anyone's body sitting in that chair signing those things and smiling for them. You see? I'm only there to give them a piece of fantasy, because all the art has already gone into the book and all that's left for me to do is a bit of media hype. And if they wanted the truth, they wouldn't be reading fiction, would they."
"But it's your dreams they want," Shuichi said. "They want to touch the world you dreamed for them--" Then he stopped.
Yuki nodded quietly. "They want to touch a world that isn't real. The reality is me sitting here living on coffee and beer for two months staring into my computer. There's no romance in that. So I give them what they want instead. I give them what they paid me for. I sit and I smile and I give them snippets of poetry in the voice of some smoky-voiced and completely fictional character... and they don't see me any more than thirty seconds, so it's fine if I can't keep it up beyond a few sentences. I'm paid to lie. This is no different. It's just more tiring to do it in person, and more tiring to deal with the handful of them who do actually want something more."
Shuichi thought about it for a minute, then reached over and grabbed Yuki's book off the table and handed it back to him.
"Took too much sitting after all?" Yuki guessed dryly.
"No," Shuichi said, with sober eyes. "I don't want just your dreams. I want you. I want the reality. All of it. So if these are just bought-and-paid-for lies to you, then I don't want them..." Sniffling a little, he added, "Why do you do it, then? I mean... I sing because there's nothing else I want to do more than singing; why do you do this if you don't love it?"
"Love is for amateurs," Yuki said with a sigh. "Amateurs can just do what they love when they want to do it, and when they have a bad day they go away and do something else. Because all they have from it is love. Professionals do it for money, on someone else's schedule and requirements. I write because I seem to be good at it, and because it's a job that doesn't involve having to stand and smile at the public eight hours a day. I write because it lets me make my own world, where people do what they're supposed to do and it makes a pretty and tidy picture, unlike this world. But love... An amateur is your girlfriend, sincere and a little clumsy. A professional is a whore who earns the money through skills that have been practiced and paid for."
"YUUUUKIIIIIIII--!" Shuichi twisted around, buried his face in Yuki's shoulder, and started soaking his shirt with fountains of tears. "That's... that's so cold..."
Rueful, Yuki stroked the back of Shuichi's hair, and wondered where he got all the tears from. "You're such a child," he murmured.
Shuichi decided that the least he could do was stay up and sit with Yuki while he was finishing his editing. And he wasn't about to be dissuaded by growls or glares or sulking.
"What are you going to do but sit there and stare at me?"
"I don't know."
"I don't write for an audience."
"I don't care."
Yuki went back to his computer screen, and Shuichi sat and watched him.
After about ten minutes of it, Yuki silently stood up, picked up Shuichi by a handful of shirtcollar at the back of his neck, carried him out to the living room, and deposited him in front of the television.
"If you're determined to sit up all night, do it out here," Yuki said, and went back into the office and shut the door.
Shuichi sighed, and plugged his headphones into the keyboard's jack and loaded what he'd saved of the arrangement of Yuki's song.
When his nose hit the keyboard at three A. M. with a horrible noise, Shuichi startled himself awake; he sighed and shut the keyboard off, and took the headphones off.
And then he could hear Yuki coughing.
"Yuki!" Shuichi ran headlong into the office, where Yuki was leaning on the desk trying to breathe; it kicked his panic switch into high gear. "What do I do? Should I call a doctor? Where's your medicine? When did you take it last? Wait, I fed it to you at dinner. Would it be bad to take it again? What's wrong? What do I do?"
With his breath dragging in his lungs, Yuki rasped, "Water...?"
"--Oh! Right! Stay here... wait, I'm not supposed to go in the -- oh, never mind --"
Three seconds later, he was back with a glass of water he'd spilled more than half of on the way back, and tried to pour it down Yuki's face; Yuki growled at him, took the glass away, and sipped at it carefully.
Gradually, he could breathe again without the air choking or rasping in his lungs; anxious, Shuichi rubbed his shoulders, and started on the questions again.
"Should I call a doctor? Can you take your medicine again yet? What's wrong? What should I..."
Yuki set a fingertip to Shuichi's lips lightly, with a careful sigh. "Just too damn tired."
"Then go to sleep!"
"Haven't finished the last two..."
"You wrote it," Shuichi said. "It's got to be beautiful. Call it done and go to sleep."
"Moron." Yuki took another careful breath. "It's beautiful after I edit it, because I edit it. You should try it some time."
"I'm Shindou Shuichi, genius vocalist of Bad Luck, the next great legend of rock," Shuichi said tearfully. "I don't need to edit. Neither do you. Go to sleep."
"Amateur," Yuki said, and ruffled his hair. "Two more chapters."
"Go to sleep and I'll edit them for you."
"Like hell you will," Yuki growled, and shoved him off his lap.
Shuichi started pacing around the room. "Should I get your medicine anyway? How often can you take it? Or maybe some hot tea. And honey. My mom used to make me hot tea and honey when I had a cough... but that would mean the kitchen... what should I do?"
"You should sit down and shut up!"
Shuichi dropped to a seat on the floor hastily, and clamped both hands over his mouth.
Yuki still coughed sometimes, small fretful choking when the air caught and curdled in his lungs; each time he did, Shuichi crept a little closer out of anxiety, until he found himself resting his head against Yuki's knee.
Yuki reached down with one hand and rumpled his hair; the other was still busy on the keyboard. Then he froze, struggling not to start coughing again.
"I can make tea," Shuichi said. "I'm not that incompetent. Do you want some tea and honey?"
"...Thank you."
Glowing, Shuichi picked himself up and half-flew into the kitchen.
Mostly, Shuichi knew he could make tea because the coffeemaker made hot water, which meant he didn't have to deal with the stove, but still it was something he could do that wouldn't burn the kitchen down. He went digging through the cupboards for tea, tossing things over his shoulder that weren't tea; then he crawled up on the countertop to be able to dig further back, because most of what Yuki kept around was coffee. Finally he came up with a canister of tea and the honey jar, and turned around and hopped down...
...and something burst, and then made scattering sounds.
Shuichi looked down at the remnants of a bag of coffee beans under his foot, sighed, and kicked them out of the way while he crunched his way over to the coffeemaker to get cups and a tray.
The sky was starting to lighten in the east when Yuki finally reached over, put a stack of paper in the printer, and shoved his chair back with a heartfelt groan.
"And if the damn thing jams halfway through I'm feeding it to the sales rep..."
Blearily, Shuichi blinked up at him. "You're done?"
"Done for now..."
"Right." Shuichi put both hands on the back of Yuki's chair and started pushing; Yuki made a startled sound and dug his feet in.
"What do you think you're..."
"You're going to bed."
"I have to be at Shinjuku at noon."
"So you're going to bed until eleven."
"Ten. Transit time."
"Ten-thirty. You drive like a demon from hell anyway."
Yuki chuckled hoarsely and stood up, and startled himself by swaying. "All right, ten-fifteen..."
Shuichi insinuated himself under Yuki's arm and half-led half-dragged him toward the bedroom, and it didn't take much of a push to get him horizontal. He tugged at the sheets Yuki had collapsed onto, thinking he should have had enough foresight to get those out of the way first; Yuki tugged on Shuichi's wrist instead of the sheets, growling, "Forget 'em."
Shuichi landed in a tangle half-on-top, half-beside him, and froze there blushing. But Yuki didn't seem to have the energy left to either protest or take advantage; cautiously, Shuichi curled up beside him, and settled his head on Yuki's shoulder so that he'd wake up if he started coughing. That was the last coherent thought he had before the alarm went off.
Shuichi didn't like the next two weeks nearly as much as he'd liked the first two weeks. Yuki left with luggage for three or four days in a row, twice, and he was never around at the same time Shuichi was, and then he would come in late at night wearing expensive-looking clothes and peel them off and fall on his face in bed for a few hours, then get up and wash and dress and leave without eating anything, and he was coughing too much.
Shuichi had a string of evening concerts during the first ten days of what Yuki called his media feeding frenzy, but on the second Thursday night, Shuichi dug in his heels.
"You're taking me with you tomorrow."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"I told you I'm yours next Tuesday. Wait until then."
"This isn't about me," Shuichi said impatiently. "This is about you. Whoever's watching you there -- they aren't making sure you eat or take your medicine or rest or anything..."
"And I said you can fuss at me next Tuesday. Go write some music."
"I'm going with you tomorrow."
"It's a school, a bookstore, and a publicity dinner. You'll be completely bored out of your mind. Go annoy Hiroshi-kun for a while or something."
"Yuki, I want to go with you!"
"You don't have anything to wear to a bookstore, just a rock concert."
"I'll borrow something."
"When? From who?"
"I'll be back in half an hour." Shuichi grabbed his jacket and his cell phone and ran out.
Forty-five minutes later, Shuichi staggered back, gasping for breath but triumphantly waving a startlingly sane-looking maroon dress shirt and charcoal-colored pants.
"See?...see? I told you I could find something... Sakuma-san even said I can keep them... he says he never wears them... because Kumagoro doesn't go with maroon. So you... you have to take me tomorrow..."
"That's not cause and effect, you twit."
"Why don't you want me there?"
"Why do you want to go?" Yuki asked. "I wouldn't, if I had a choice."
"Because I want to support you!"
For some reason, that completely floored Yuki. Shuichi stared at him, bewildered by his bewilderment.
"Why wouldn't I want to support you?" Shuichi said. "I love you. And you sound like you hate this. So I want to be there and support you until you get through it. Why wouldn't I?"
Still completely speechless, Yuki ran a hand through his hair, then took off his glasses and scrubbed the palm down his face. Then he reached over and caught a handful of Shuichi's shirt and dragged him close enough to kiss for a long, long minute.
Finally, he let him go, and said, "You're a complete idiot, you know that? If you had half a brain you'd be begging me not to take you along."
"I don't care," Shuichi said, and snuggled close.
"Bring your concert clothes too. The black leather set, not that pink and orange thing."
"Huh? ...why?"
"Because you don't have a dress suit for the cocktail party either. And the black leather can at least make an attitude point. Trousers say 'I don't know what the rules are'; black leather says 'I don't care what the rules are.'"
"So you'll take me?" Shuichi said delightedly.
"Moron..."
On their way through Tokyo, Yuki stopped at a department store and bought a couple dozen generic yellow-paged notebooks, some pre-sharpened pencils, and a cheap package of brush-tipped markers; he put them in his otherwise-empty briefcase, and tossed it into the back seat, and they drove off again.
"What are those for?" Shuichi asked.
"Writing," Yuki said dryly. "That's what most people do with paper, isn't it?"
"Er... well... yeah, but..." Shuichi stopped, and sighed. "What do I do at the school?"
"You were the one who wanted to come." Then he relented, and said, "I'm just teaching a creative writing seminar. Just sit with the teacher, or with the class, or whatever you like. I'm sure they'll have a music room if you want to wander."
"I want to be where you are," Shuichi said, and looked out at the highway going by.
It was almost frightening, when Yuki got out of the car. He tossed the driving sunglasses inside, and straightened, and closed his eyes for a moment. And when he put his reading glasses on and looked up again, it was somebody else behind his eyes.
Caught between awe, intimidation, and worry, Shuichi trailed along behind this tall, graceful, bespectacled stranger who spoke softly and politely and gave the fluttering young teacher who met him at the door a slight rueful smile that had her clutching at the doorframe to keep from passing out. The teacher led them to the staff room and stood around stammering for a while; several other teachers came bustling over to chatter at him, and Yuki was self-effacing and modest... and gradually backing into a corner so that they couldn't come at him from every direction at once. Not from fear; from some gut-level defensive reaction that he couldn't completely hide behind the soft-voiced intellectual character he'd brought out to deal with them.
"Back off!" Shuichi heard his voice say, and clamped both hands over his mouth. "I'm sorry-- I mean -- er -- back off please? I mean..."
Impaled on the end of several teachers' glares and Yuki's devastatingly sardonic one-brow-quirked half-smirk, Shuichi bowed almost double and said, "Look, I'm really sorry, but for God's sake, you've already chased him into a corner, and he's supposed to be teaching anyway, shouldn't somebody be telling us where it is he goes instead of doing the pitchforks and torches scene out of some monster movie? I mean... er... I'm talking too much, aren't I. But still -- jeez, back off, people..."
"Shouldn't you be in class?" one of them asked darkly.
"Excuse me! I graduated last year!" Shuichi protested.
"So what are you doing here now?"
Yuki's eyes glittered golden mirth at him, before Yuki blinked back into that scary hushed-voiced almost-professor and lowered his gaze and said almost shyly -- shyly? YUKI? -- "He's -- with me. I mean, he's... I brought him. If you don't mind..."
Something about the way Yuki said "with me" made Shuichi's face burn. Several of the teachers looked back and forth between them and their eyes started adding up numbers.
Yuki slipped through the crowd of speculative onlookers and walked over and patted Shuichi's shoulder lightly -- and behind the glasses, behind the polite face, there was just a glimmer of his own drily sardonic amusement.
"I'll be fine, really. You don't need to worry so," Yuki said to him, and then turned to the teachers with his hand still resting on Shuichi's shoulder. "He's so solicitous, you know."
Shuichi flinched from the number of 1 1 = 2 signs clicking into place behind the teachers' eyes, and wheezed, "Yuki, you... you... oh, hell..."
"We should go and see if Kaneko-sensei's room is ready for you," one of them said, and they jostled for the door en masse.
Caught between outrage and humiliation, Shuichi stared after them, torn between protesting more and wanting them long since gone. Yuki cupped a hand to his cheek, and brushed a thumb lightly over the curve, and murmured in his own smoke-husky voice, "At least you picked a hair dye the same color as your blushes. It matches better that way."
"Yuki nan ka -- what the hell did you just go and do that for...?"
"Did you have a better cover story in mind?"
Shuichi made fish faces at him, while Yuki turned toward the door.
"Now where are you going?"
"Apparently, to Kaneko-sensei's room," Yuki said. "Are you coming or not?"
Shuichi had to remind himself how his knees worked. "Oh, hell, wait for me..."
This is where I got to in 2002; I've got about half of another chapter that's likely to not get done for months if ever. Flames are fine, but for Pete's sake -- if anyone writes a "why haven't you updated for so long?" review on this thing, I'm going to channel Yuki and rip their head off with a grapefruit spoon, just because I could saw with the little serrated edges and cackle madly at the screams... .