Title: Stationary Behaviour
Summary: There's a time and a place for everything. For Tala and Bryan, it's seven a.m and 5 letters, empty space, 5 letters.
Rating: T
Pairing: It's for YuBo-wave, people. Take a wild guess what the pairing could be.
Warning: Contains people who are perverted and queer.
Disclaimer: Beyblade, it's characters, Britney Spears or any other American celebrities do not belong to me. Shock, ne?
The waiting room of one of Moscow's many railway stations was relatively empty at half past six in the morning. A train had just left, taking most of the people with it. Only two individuals were left behind to look through the windows as the train became into an escaping little dot on the horizon. Or at least one was looking. Bryan was never quite sure with Tala.
They had arrived at the station several hours before their train was supposed to depart. If it had been up to Bryan, at this very moment he would have still been lying in bed, or possibly sitting at the dinner table, drinking coffee while nonchalantly trying to steal Ian's cookies. In any case, he'd be at home. But no, Tala was "the captain" and he had his ways of doing things - God help anyone who tried to mess with that. One could ask "do we really need to sit around for hours in silence and boredom when we could be doing all sorts of fun things at home?" and the only reply would be an icy "yes, we do". Bryan was wise, or possibly accustomed, enough not to trouble himself for nothing.
The clock seemed to notice that Bryan was staring at it and ticked even slower just to piss him off.
"It isn't going to move any faster if you keep staring", Tala pointed out. To ruin this otherwise credible statement, which radiated with sensibility, he dug out their train tickets from his pocket and checked them through, as he did about once in every five minutes.
"They won't suddenly disappear or magically turn into gift certificates if you don't look at them all the time, either."
Tala glared, but said nothing back.
Silence surrounded them again. But it wasn't one of those awkward silences when you have nothing to say but you feel you should talk anyways. They had both agreed that talking too much in public was always a bit risky, especially now when every Russian dirt-magazine seemed to be on the look-out for pictures of them together in romantic or otherwise interesting settings. Both Tala and Bryan were used to the silence. And why should it matter, at least they knew they were silent together.
They both had mp3-players to help them in their attempt to ignore the surroundings. The most recognized aria from the Magic Flute told Bryan that vengeance of Hell was boiling in the heart of the Queen of the Night. Only Bryan's team-mates knew what kind of music he listened to. If anyone else dared to ask what he had on his play-list, he would fix a rigid stare at the person, keep it for about five seconds, then slowly grin with a manic gleam in his eyes and answer "Britney Spears". No one seemed to question that, for some reason.
Bryan took a quick glance at Tala, who was nodding his head and humming something with his eyes closed.
"Queen?"
"Bee Gees."
Bryan never seemed to get it right. But at least he could always say that he had a better taste in music than Tala did.
The waiting room was slowly filling up with people again. Businessmen in suits, families with small children, friendly neighbourhood hobos, smelling of cheap booze...
"Money?"
One of these friendly neighbourhood people had decided to try his luck. Tala didn't seem to even notice; Bryan stood by and waited for things to happen.
"D'ya have spare money, my dog's sick and it needs", the man muttered, belched, and then rambled on, "some dog medicine."
"Bryan", Tala said calmly. Just a simple word, a name; Bryan knew it was actually an order. He focused a death glare on the homeless person, the kind that promised pain and suffering in the immediate future. The man maintained his droopy stance for a couple of seconds, then his eyes widened a bit and wisely he decided that getting money was not worth a lot of agony.
Tala didn't thank Bryan, or even acknowledge that his request had been fulfilled, in any way. It didn't matter, as Bryan wasn't really expecting him to. There was time to be thankful and prove it with certain actions when they would be away from all these other people.
Somewhere inside the station, a small child started crying. Two young boys pretended to beybattle in the corner, much to their mothers' displeasure. Bryan felt somewhat amused to see that the one who pretended to be Tyson was flailing his arms and shouting dramatically while the one who pretended to be Kai had his arms crossed and kept on saying "hn" to everything.
The boy who played Tyson noticed him and went pale.
"Ivan, look, it's them, the former team, look, I can see them right there –"
"Shutup shutup shut uuuup, you are making us look like kids!"
"But it's Tala and Bryan!"
Bryan resisted the urge to grin. He was almost certain Tala had been listening to the exchange of words, too. And the redhead had a certain soft spot for kids who liked beyblading and marvelled him as a hero of some sort.
Tala stood up.
"I'll go get us something to eat."
Another wordless agreement. Tala knew how Bryan disliked overly cheery cashiers, unfamiliar shops, and how he would never do the grocery shopping if he could somehow avoid it. Out of the duo, Tala had always been the one to handle people who weren't the kind that should be driven away.
Tala walked away without giving further information of his intentions. The two boys looked at Bryan and then, while trying not to look like they were in a hurry, scurried after the redhead. Bryan knew they would ask for an autograph and Tala would give them one, because he was sometimes a Nice Person like that.
Even though Bryan didn't like dealing with unfamiliar people, he didn't exactly enjoy being alone in a middle of a big crowd either. He felt uncertain. There was no one who would glance at him reproachfully or mutter his name sharply if things started looking bad.
He tried to add the volume of his music to fade the voices and speech around him. He could still hear his name mentioned now and then.
Habanera from Carmen wasn't loud enough to mute down one rather tourist-looking man who talked on his phone as if he had been yelling to someone on the other side of the hall. He was also talking in a foreign language. Bryan recognized it as something that was spoken in one of Russia's neighbouring lands and would have been painful to learn; Language Project had been part of Abbey training but Bryan was very gifted at saying "no" to studies he didn't feel like doing.
The man was taking some papers from a safe deposit box; he laughed loudly at some joke only he understood. Bryan heard his name to be mentioned. He forced himself to act as if he didn't even notice.
A small girl, possibly about four or five years old, was looking at him intently. He made a point to look everywhere else but in the direction of the girl.
After a few minutes, the girl was still staring. Bryan felt uncomfortable.
The girl started walking closer. Bryan tried to ignore her. The girl seemed hurt by this and showed it by running in circles around his bench. Some people were staring at them, now, in hopes of a free show or a good picture for some magazine. Bryan looked around to find the person guilty of bringing this wretched child into the world.
"Blyyan."
The girl had stopped right in front of him and smiled cutely. She looked as though she knew she had said the name wrong but that most of the people would just find it adorable.
The child was evil.
"Bly. Blyan. Blyyyyaaaan!"
The child was now tugging at Bryan's sleeve - a Physical Contact that was not allowed if you didn't happen to belong to his closest friends. Bryan recalled Tala once mentioning something about children needing more forgiveness than adults, but this particular one seemed to be an a mission to aggravate him to the boiling point. He snapped.
"WHAT?!"
Child smiled.
"Hi."
She giggled and ran away.
Bryan decided never to have any kids.
"Natural father figure in action. How are you doing?"
Tala had made a sly come-back.
"I need a drink."
"A bit early for that, isn't it now?"
"I blame the people around me."
"As usual."
A baguette in a plastic package was thrown at Bryan. Tala had bought a muffin and a crossword magazine for himself.
The code of silence resumed as they ate their poor excuses of breakfast. Tala had materialized a pen to his hand and was now altering between eating chocolaty goodness and filling letters into little squares. Bryan tried to focus on his slightly rubbery bread but he was painfully aware of a group of young girls, staring at him quite openly. They giggled and whispered to each other a lot, too.
For the millionth time Bryan reminded himself that Tala would be disappointed if he did not behave himself in public. Cursing at girls for being annoying was obviously not very good behaviour.
Bryan had to sneak a peek at Tala to remember the reason he was putting up with all this. To his mild surprise, Tala was glaring at the rallying of girls.
"Their sense of style is horrible and those clothes do not suit them at all."
Someone with a dictionary of Tala-normal speak-Tala could have translated that as 'hands and eyes off my man, bitches'.
"Next thing on your list will probably be a rant about that blonde's hat, huh?"
Dictionary of Bryan-normal speak-Bryan would have suggested several translation options, the most popular among the users seemed to be 'thanks for being jealous over me, darling'.
"Well, it is horrible, even you admitted it. That beige does not suit her. Makes her look like she's that one tacky American celebrity."
"Who, the one who got famous by showing too much skin?"
"Bry, you do realize I'm obliged to now point out that there are dozens of those?"
The girl, who remained oblivious of the apparent fashion crimes her hat committed against humanity, said something to the others. The girls giggled in an overly giddy way. One of them was brave, or possibly over-daring, and waved at Bryan. This caused a lot of happy squeals from the others.
"Wow, Ci-Ci, you really did it, you waved at Bryan!"
"Isn't he hot?"
"Maaan, that look, I just wanna take him home and do things to him..."
Bryan wondered if filing lawsuits for sexual harassment would be the wrong thing to do.
Tala rolled his eyes.
"One of these days, to make sure these obnoxious people get the message, I'll put a collar around your neck and attach you to a leash."
The idea of that kept Bryan amused for the next five minutes.
Another train arrived and departed. People came and left. Tala and Bryan still remained seated.
There was a sigh; Tala was looking at the crossword puzzle again.
"Of the lips, 6 letters."
"Labial."
It was one of their little rituals. Bryan had always been good with crossword puzzles, but never had the enthusiasm to do them. Tala was fairly good with them, and did them from time to time in order to kill time. This had lead to an unassigned collaboration. Whenever Tala would be doing crosswords with Bryan somewhere in close range, he'd ask about a word or two. Bryan came up with the answer almost immediately and he felt somewhat proud that Tala, a person who always wanted to do things on his own, would accept his help.
But then, Bryan also knew that there were only a few things in the world that Tala considered more satisfying than a completely solved crosswords puzzle. He'd be willing to accept some help from certain people in order to get to there.
Tala was staring at the little empty boxes on the paper. Bryan could feel the pressure of boredom on his shoulders. He was listening to the same songs for the third time now and they still had about a half an hour before their train would arrive and then leave.
He wasn't supposed to question Tala and his little quirks, but there are times when one just wants to ask, "What the hell are we doing here?".
Tala was, no doubt, having the time of his life. He chewed the end of his pencil, grinning victoriously as he placed a word here and there after a moment of consideration.
Bryan experienced a worrying desire to be the pencil.
He shifted uneasily and almost sighed. He stopped himself just in time.
"A place where to have sex in a railway station, 5 letters, empty space, 5 letters."
"Photo booth."
It took Bryan some time to realize what they had just said.
He had to actually turn to look at his lover, who was still peacefully doing his crossword puzzle. Tala's face was rather expressionless.
Of course, this was one of their mutual quirks. Even though they most of the time remained distant in public, they could suddenly search for excitement in very interesting ways. This habit of theirs had lead to wild rumours, several bans from several shops, and even some lawsuit threats concerning public obscenity.
Usually it was Tala who started it - Bryan just went along for the ride.
This was a situation that held many dangers. If Tala hadn't actually meant anything by his comment and Bryan were to act, it would be a very icy next seven hours in train. On the other hand, if he would ignore the whole thing and Tala did have some ulterior motives, Tala might get offended and they might end up having a Talk. Bryan had always felt that Talking was highly overrated.
Several uncertain minutes passed by. The place had hardly any living souls, everyone else seemed to be in other waiting halls or just not there. The photo booth was in an isolated place in the corner, away from curious eyes.
Bryan really wanted to have some kind of physical contact with Tala.
He groaned and stood up. Tala was quick to grab his wrist and hold him still.
"Where are you going?"
"To take photos of me in deep regret and wonder why I even volunteered to come with you on this trip", Bryan muttered, yanked his wrist free and wandered to the booth. Tala looked at him go and, after making sure no one was there to see it, smiled slightly.
Bryan disappeared to the booth after giving Tala a stare. Most would have interpreted it as 'my god how this sucks', but Tala, who happened to have an advanced copy of Bryan-Tala-Bryan dictionary attached into the depths of his mind, translated it as 'please get over here I really need you and I've just spent hours in boredom to prove my love for you so damn it I want a hug'.
Tala waited for about 15 seconds and then nonchalantly hurried to the photo booth.
Bryan just happens to like opera, alright? Nothing weird about that, I'm sure. And Tala is on the mission to bring disco back.
Tala and Bryan are both perverted. Just accept this as a fact; you know it's true...
Kudos to the next lovely people:
Norman: You were there in the railway station with me when the idea of this whole story was born. And let us always remember the Legend of the Evil Kid.
LaDyFiCtIoN: Thank you so much for the beta-reading and the general help you have been giving me with this fic. I am still your fangirl and willing to build more altars.
Feather-duster: So much to thank for, so much to say... But since writing it all down would take a lot of time (and space), I'll go for the Extremely Surprising Comedy Choice. "Ladies, please don't fight. Bryan is here all night."
Reviews are much welcomed and loved.