Summary: Tatsuha tells Eiri a modern fairy tale about his quest for Ryuichi. Humorous one-shot. Tatsuha x Ryuichi.
Disclaimer: Gravitation belongs to Maki Murakami, not me. I am not making any profit off this story.
Warnings: M/M scenes, swearing, and crossdressing.

Aschenmonch by HRT

"What the hell happened?"

"Hey Aniki, that's not a nice thing to say."

"Oh, yeah? It looks like you stuck your head in a bucket of iron filings, swished your noggin around, and combed with a magnet. Do you realize I'm never going to be able to keep a straight face at dinner again? The sight of you and Dad sitting next to each other will be too much."

I looked at my hair in the mirror. Just a little more gel and I'd have perfect verticality.

Eiri picked up a sheaf of Shuichi's lyrics and brought it down on my head.

"There. Fixed."

"Auugh! My beautiful hair!" I was now wearing a gelatinous, sagging mortarboard.

Eiri ignored me, picking distastefully at the lyric sheets. "You've gunked them up. I suppose Shuichi will cry. What the hell was the hair thing for, anyway?"

"ASSHOLE. If you want to know, I was visiting NG the other day, and someone said, 'Miss, if you'd comb all that pretty hair back off your face, you'd look so sweet.'

"What? Who?"

I feigned deafness.

Eiri smiled savagely. "I can always make inquiries."

"Fuck you," I replied with hauteur. "It was Ryuichi Sakuma."

Eiri snorted. "He called you 'Miss?' Not even Sakuma's that stupid. Maybe he was talking to Rage instead."

I put down my comb. "When a sexy rock God reaches out, slowly pulls all your hair back and holds it together in his fist behind your head, and says that with a soul-gratifying leer, yeah bro, I'd say he noticed."

"But he didn't detect that you were male?" Eiri sniggered.

"It may have had something to do with the clothes I was wearing."

"I'm already regretting I asked. Why did you go to NG in a dress?"

"Hey, you don't think Tohma invited me inside the building, did you?"

"Now I remember. You were banned for life, I recall. And wasn't there something about Tohma ordering his security goons to shoot on sight?"

I began to comb upwards again, trying to recreate my masterpiece. It was taking all the patience, care, and craftsmanship that--

"Say, what's the name of the guy who made those Stradivarius violins?"

"Stradivari."

"Whatever. Great Buddha, look what you did. This is going to take an hour to fix, asshole."

He only lit a cigarette and took a drag, smiling politely. "So you were wearing a dress when you broke into NG. One of Mika's pseudo-lingerie things, I suppose?"

"Nah. They show too much leg. My legs are too masculine for a short dress, so I had to wear one of her ball gowns. It was hell trying to find the proper accessories. Do you know our sister owns armpit-length black velvet gloves? With a bracelet and rings over the gloves, and one of her clutch purses, I thought I made that pink taffeta look pretty damn smart."

"But of course," Eiri replied heavily, "you were still instantly recognizable as Tatsuha Uesugi."

"No I wasn't. I bleached my hair blond. Or is it blonde with an 'e'?"

My brother paled. "You didn't. You did not go into NG and tell them at the front desk you were Eiri Yuki."

"Of course not. That was my backup plan. I told the secretary I was Mika Seguchi. Hey, I look like her, don't I?"

The only reply was a welling of tears in my brother's eyes, and the violent, smothered vibrations inside his abdomen. "You told them you were Mika?"

"Sure. It worked perfectly. Of course, the sunglasses helped."

"I'm trying to picture you, or anyone else for that matter, wearing a ball gown with a pair of sunglasses. Have you ever heard the phrase, 'fashion emergency?'"

"I'm not up on female clothing. Anyway, the secretary at the desk was suspicious about the sunglasses, so I told her Tohma and I had had a fight last night and he'd popped me a good one. The secretary turned a funny color when she heard that, but she let me in."

"Ah, another morsel for the tabloids. You're so thoughtful, little brother. At this rate, Mika and Tohma will end up divorced whether they want to be or not."

I frowned. The front part of my hair was now restored, but I realized I'd made a production error. I couldn't see what the back of my head looked like with all this jungle camouflage in the way. Unwilling to admit my mistake, I turned around and sat on the sink to comb, using a hand mirror reflecting off the larger mirror behind me so I could sculpt the back. "I don't know that their marriage is so good, bro. I ran into Tohma right in front of his office."

"Thus you were pitched out, end of story."

"Uh, no. You see, I'd taken off the sunglasses, and Tohma didn't recognize me."

"No way! Tohma knows bloody well who you are."

"Not quite. Remember the blonde--I guess it is an 'e'--hair?"

"Fuck," said Eiri, beginning to understand.

"Seguchi apologized for the collision, and asked me if I was all right. He even insisted that I come into his office. He seemed shaken for some reason, and he kept staring at me strangely. I told him I was fine, and made up this story about being a friend of Noriko's, when he said, 'Pardon me for being so forward, but I think you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. You remind me of someone I've wanted for so long, but could never have."

"Oh, no," Eiri groaned. "What happened next?"

"He seemed confused and embarrassed, and then, like he'd suddenly made up his mind about something, he threw his arms around me and mauled me like a kid who'd just been given permission to unwrap all his Christmas presents at once. I tried to yell, but he snaked his tongue down my throat in the most grotesque, brother-in-law-spit-ick sort of way. I nearly threw up. We fell on top of his desk, knocking everything off--by the way, that I Love New York mug you gave him for his birthday got broken--and he only quit lapping at my tonsils to beg me to marry him. He said he'd divorce Mika the second I asked."

"Now you know why I've always avoided Tohma," said my brother dryly.

"Anyway, I kept trying to punch his head--I really had to fight for my virtue, I'm telling you--while he tried to have sex with me all the way across the top of his desk. I was forced to do a Grace Kelly in whatever-that-Hitchcock-movie-was with a pair of scissors to get him off."

"Damn! Did you hurt him?"

"Not much. He just reeled backwards like the guy in the movie, and I was able to scramble out of the room. But he came flying down the hall after me, yelling that he was sorry, and saying that he only wanted to marry me. He said he'd give me anything I wanted if I said yes. He almost had a sale there, for a moment."

"What? You're kidding!"

"No, I was serious. I said, 'Okay. Give me Ryuichi and you've got a deal.' Then he got this weird look on his face and said, 'Dammit, you're Tatsuha! You little son of a bitch!' I don't know why he was so upset. I told him I didn't mind a threesome, and that I'd even give up part of my closet space for his hat fetish if that would clinch the deal, but by this time he'd yanked one of the fire extinguishers off the wall and was aiming it at me, so I ran."

"I'm amazed you escaped," Eiri commented.

"So am I. Anyway, I had to go down to the lunchroom to hawk up all that brother-in-law spit and repair the damage to my decolletage--is that the word? Seriously, I don't want to know what he had for breakfast THAT WELL ever again in my life. Our stomach acids were almost mating."

"You've used the term incorrectly. 'Decolletage' means the cut of the dress leaves your neck and shoulders bare." My brother gave a small smile. "I've read a few romances in my time."

"Consider Seguchi my new dress designer, then. That's a good description of the way he left me. Anyway, I was spitting into the lunchroom sink when I felt a hand on my hair, and there was Ryuichi. He thought I was a girl. I thought, okay, if he wants a girl, he'll get one. So I worked my hand up one of my sleeves and propped up my pecs, leaned my head back so he'd get a good look, and started some deep breathing."

"You're kidding."

"Hey," I said, waving my comb and scattering slimy green gel everywhere. "Do I ever joke where Ryuichi is concerned?"

"No. You are a joke where Ryuichi is concerned. Carry on."

"You asshole, you're laughing at me. Romancing Ryuichi Sakuma is serious business. Stop snickering."

My annoying brother was bent over a towel rack, trying to smother his laughter. "What then?"

Irritably, I studied myself in the mirror. No, I decided. Pink streaks might work for Shuichi, but I needed silver. Maybe some silver eye-makeup, too. I squinted. Or was that too goth?

"Speaking of artificial enhancements, we were on the subject of your bosom."

"Oh, yeah, he was admiring my decolletage and his face was getting closer to my--"

"--ivory-columned throat," Eiri intoned poetically, "your soft bare shoulders, your millimeter wrinkle of chest bulge."

"Fuck you. I do have noticeable pecs. However, I was pushing upwards so hard my hand popped out of my bodice and poked Ryuichi right in the eye. Thank the Buddha, he wasn't hurt. But just when he was apologizing to me like it was all his fault--oh man, he is so sexy when he's being dumb--Tohma sprayed us with the fire extinguisher."

"So wedded bliss was not to be?"

"It's difficult to exchange vows when your evil-brother-in-law is screaming at you to get out. He is such a shit at times. I was grabbed by his security detail, hoisted into the air, and carried off. It would have been romantic in a fairy-tale sort of way if I hadn't been so pissed. I was yelling and struggling, and Ryuichi was trying to hang onto my ankles, but I was so wet with foam that I just slid out of his grasp. Poor Ryu fell backwards and lay there watching me disappear, clutching my tennis shoe in his hands. He looked so forlorn, I could have cried."

"Has he started his quest with the glass slipper yet?"

"Huh? That sucker was canvas."

"Old European fairy tale, you ignoramus. It's called 'Cinderella,' or 'The Cinder-Girl.' 'Aschenputtel' was the Grimm brothers' title for the story. The heroine was forced to clean the ashes out of the family hearth every day, and thus was always filthy. The prince met her at a ball and fell in love, but she fled at midnight, leaving behind only her magical glass slipper. The prince rediscovered her again by making all the women in the kingdom try it on, and only Aschenputtel's foot would fit. Actually, 'glass' is a mistranslation. It's supposed to be 'fur.'

"Huh. Fur sounds like Seguchi's kink. Anyway, our brother-in-law must have been really mad this time, 'cause the security detail threw me into the dumpster behind the building. The shoe thing won't work either, since Tohma stormed out a moment later and threw it into the dumpster with me. Now, you think you've seen disgusting? It was disgusting beyond disgusting. There were roaches and mice in there, and I had a hell of a time getting out. Ever try to climb to the top of a trash pile in a ball gown? I'd work upwards a foot or two, then slide back down. It must have taken me forty attempts to get to the top, and by that time I was like the little plastic ball inside a paint can that's supposed to mix the paint up. I think I'd churned through every speck of trash inside there. When I climbed out, I was sodden with dumpster juice. It began to dry after I stood there for a few minutes, and it turned my clothes and hair as stiff as starch. That's when I realized my hair was standing up on its own, pointing in every direction."

I paused, gazing at my gelid creation in the hand mirror. Perfect verticality.

"And?" my brother prompted.

"I was about to bawl, since it was a rather shitty situation, when I heard someone open a window above me. I looked up, and there was Ryuichi. He shouted, 'I was right! You are pretty with your hair off your face.' Just then that rat bastard Seguchi yanked him back inside, but not before Ryu managed to throw down a piece of paper with his phone number on it."

I slid off the washbasin, and put the mirror and gel away. "So. I have a date."

Eiri doused his cigarette, and shook his head. "He knows you're a guy, right?"

"Hah! That's immaterial. Can I borrow the keys to your car?"

"Only if you bring the pumpkin back before midnight. One other thing. May I write this incident into my latest novel?"

"If you change my name," I said, snatching the car keys from him. "What would my dear brother do for subject matter without me?"

"Use Shuichi, of course."

The bastard ruffled my hair on the way out.

The End