ORANGE DRESS by MOON 71
SUMMARY: Set in and around Episode 7 – Ground Zero – Eiri returns to Kyoto to marry Ayaka and forget Shuichi – but his troubled memories aren't the only thing following behind…
RATING: K to T
DISCLAIMER: Don't own an orange dress
DEDICATION: to HRT - The Rainy Season is one of my favourite Grav fanfics and this little story was heavily inspired by it, though this one isn't funny!
NOTES: Yes, it's whinging time again!!! There are many funny moments in Gravitation but for me, Shuichi dressing up as a girl just after being gang-raped was not one of them. It's the sailor suit thing I really hated, not the orange dress (which was rather cute) but "Sailor Suit" would just have been too stupid a title for this story! So here, Eiri vents my spleen for me. And you thought it was all self, self, self with him…
And yes, I suppose it is a bit cheeky to chop up what is essentially a short story into little pieces, but this one had a rather episodic feel so I thought it would be more fun that way!
Evening. In his bedroom.
He hated the room. He hated the house. He hated Kyoto. He hated Japan.
It was amazing how quickly and suddenly the memory of such thoughts flooded back as he sat there, gazing around the room he had never loved. The thoughts of a fifteen year old boy he had almost forgotten fitted quite perfectly into the mind of the twenty-two year old man he had become.
He wanted to go home. Home to Tokyo. Home to a city bustling with people from all over, people who hardly spared him a glance in the street unless they fancied him or liked his books. He wanted his study, his flat, his favourite pictures back on the walls instead of in storage in the basement of NG records.
He wanted…
He wanted fruit-scented hair and warm, fine skin and musical laughter –
Eiri got to his feet and paced across to the window, disturbed by a sudden stirring of desire.
Stop it, you sick bastard. The vehemence of his own thoughts startled him. Stop perving over him. You've had your fun, and he's the one who paid for it. He had love as an excuse, whether you believed him or not. What was your excuse? Even when he was hurting, when he needed you most, all you could offer was more sex. Leave him alone now, you've done enough.
Was that really his voice? It sounded more like that bloody Nakano.
You're the one I really blame.
Wonderful. Now whenever he allowed himself the brief, innocent pleasure of a little fantasy he would have the disembodied voice of Shindou Shuichi's best friend ticking him off.
"Eiri, aren't you going to answer me…?" Mika was asking.
Oh. So Mika was still there, standing in the doorway. Ignoring her hadn't made her go away after all. She had turned up earlier, as ever an envoy from their father, asking Eiri if he would officiate at a funeral the next morning. Great – a funeral on the eve of a wedding. It seemed as though his father had a sense of humour after all.
Eiri remembered the woman whose funeral it would be – an old grandmother a few streets away who could never remember his name but used to give him sweets when Mika wasn't looking. He'd completely forgotten about her and about the sweets until his father had mentioned her name. Well, what the hell? It would keep him busy.
And it wasn't as if he was going to fill the time with writing. The words had died; the ideas had faded. There was nothing. He couldn't even remember how to begin. Odd, how it didn't seem to matter. He supposed things would return to normal soon enough – all artists, even writers, were egocentric bastards at heart. They'd forget to turn up to their own mother's funeral if the muse was talking to them. Even Shuichi couldn't give him permanent writer's block.
"Look, I know it's hard," Mika sighed, "but you really are doing the right thing."
The cliché made his writer's blood boil. What the hell did she know? She obviously thought he had finally come to his senses and decided that a fresh start with Ayaka was really what he needed. Well in she was right in a way – he had come to his senses. Far too late.
His only answer was a surly grunt.
"Eiri…" there was a pleading note in Mika's voice now, a need for understanding, for reassurance. "I know you care about Shuichi…"
"Who says I care?" he muttered, reaching for his cigarettes. "He just made a change from the women. When I realised he nagged and whined just as much as they did I got over it and dumped him."
"Eiri…!"
Mika didn't like that. She was second guessing herself. She always did it. She had a hot temper but it never lasted. Underneath the hard-nosed bitch act she had a remarkably tender heart. If she hadn't, she would have shut Eiri out of her life an age ago - and taken Tohma with her, whether he wanted to come or not. Now that Shuichi was no longer an irritating problem, she could allow herself to look at him with kinder eyes.
Eiri froze in the act of lighting his cigarette. He'd have to speak to her later, he realised, to stop her doing something truly stupid. He could just see her making some clumsy gesture to compensate Shuichi for his loss – some expensive gift; a state of the art synthesiser, a motorbike or even a car if the brat ever stood a chance of passing his driving test. It was too late for her to offer Tohma again. Whatever it was, it would be absolutely guaranteed to make the poor little bastard feel like a fully paid up, card carrying whore… assuming he didn't feel like one already.
He wouldn't tell her the full truth of course, though she was bound to find out from Seguchi soon enough. Eiri would have liked to have kept it from Tohma too, at least until after the wedding, but the need for an ambulance for Aizawa's friend had scotched all chances of that. Seguchi had insisted he would deal with it – which in his case meant hushing it up.
Just like last time.
Eiri could not help closing his eyes, feeling pressure building behind them. To give the man his due, his brother in law would have buried Aizawa and his crappy band along with him if Eiri had demanded it. But Eiri hadn't demanded it. He might have demanded it… if Shuichi had asked him to. But all Shuichi had asked was for Eiri not to leave him.
Shit. Damn. Fuck.
"Get the hell out," he snapped at Mika with sudden heat, "you've got what you wanted, so leave me alone!"
He enjoyed the hurt look in her eyes as she left his room. The attack was completely unjustified of course – he wasn't doing this to please her; he wasn't even doing this because of her. If Ayaka hadn't been there, some other unlucky woman would do just as well. But making Mika miserable felt good just then – facing his father's smug satisfaction was bad enough; the old fool still held out hope of Eiri taking over the temple, regardless of how many times he had reassured him it would never happen. But if Eiri saw the slightest happiness in anyone else that day he thought he would explode.
With a heavy sigh, he began to undress. A shower might get rid of that chilled feeling he could not shake off. He had probably caught something – unless it was just this damned draughty old house.
As the hot water beat down onto his skin, he felt his muscles relax, his body and his mind slowly uncoiling. He closed his eyes, his hands slipping downwards to his loins.
Shuichi pushed up against the tiled wall, soapy water running down his smooth golden skin, eyes half closed, lips parted, softly panting… Eiri, Eiri, oh Eiri… funny how it was always Eiri, not Yuki, in his fantasies…
Shuichi kneeling before him, looking up at him through strands of dripping pink hair. Oh come on, please let me, Eiri… I'll do it really good this time…
Oh well… if he insisted…
Without warning, naked wet Shuichi was rudely replaced by Shuichi in that stupid schoolgirl's uniform, affecting what he vainly hoped was winsome charm. Ready to do anything, anything at all to win Eiri back, even if it meant pretending to be the girl he had got it into his head that Eiri would prefer… and after everything he'd just been through…
What would he have done if he knew the image he presented made Eiri feel physically sick…?
Eiri groaned, hitting the shower wall with his fists. Was this the way it was going to be? Wasn't he even allowed a harmless wank without seeing Shuichi in that bloody sailor suit?
At the very thought of it, other images forced their way back into his head. Shuichi kneeling beside the stack of his belongings Eiri had left in the hall. Shuichi crying and pleading, utterly unprepared for the sudden rejection after a month of apparent acceptance. The confusion on that innocent face as he tried to understand why the tide had turned. The desolation in those big violet eyes as Eiri told him he hated him…
I'll try really hard, and I'll get to where you like me…!
The words still stung Eiri's mind. Why that? Why not well, go fuck yourself then, you sad, miserable old bastard! That was what he would surely have said in Shuichi's position…
Wasn't that, in essence, what he had said? Shuichi might have reacted like hurt child, but Eiri had behaved like a spoilt brat. Go away, the game's over, pack up your toys and go home, I'm tired of playing with you.
That was what it had felt like, at least on the surface. A game. A bit of fun. Eiri wanted Shuichi - if he was honest, he had wanted him from the moment he had seen him in the park, which had made his verbal assault all the more vitriolic - and he was sick of pretending that he didn't, of telling himself he was completely satisfied with his women. Why shouldn't he have him for a while? Who would it hurt?
Himself, actually. It wasn't just Shuichi he had trying to protect after all. He wasn't that philanthropic. That blasted magazine article had finally woken him up, made him realise what was happening.
I'll belong to you.
What the hell had he been thinking, promising something like that to a fanciful boy like Shuichi? And meaning it, too?
He had become infatuated, that was what it was. He had become intoxicated with Shuichi's stage presence, by his fresh, pretty looks, by his… yes, by his pure joy de vie. It was little more than some pathetic, childish crush, no different from the one he had once had on –
Enough of that. Mika had been right to be uneasy about him and Shuichi. How well she still knew him her idiot brother.
But who would have thought some loud, uncultured, scruffy little runt could be so… captivating…
Shuichi, gyrating on the stage in those tight fitting black shorts…
He put his hand against himself once more.
Shuichi in the sailor suit.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit SHIT!
TBC: Night - Eiri unhappily remembers his last moments with Shuichi