The Language He Left

Chapter 2: Shindou Shuuichi

            Eiri’s novels weren’t terribly original.  He wrote the same story again and again in different settings and with somewhat different circumstances but with certain elements.  There was always a heroine.  She might be a ballerina or a student of classical piano, a painter in the court of Marie Antoinette, an angel fallen to earth or a simple office girl, but she was always in love.  Always enthralled, infatuated, consumed by love. 

            Her beloved, the man she loved, made her feel like no one else could.  He was the world to her, the master of her and she usually went through absolute hell for him and because of him.  He was usually devoted to his dead wife or dedicated to his art or had some bullshit dysfunction that kept him from her or made him treat her badly even though he loved her.  If she loved him, she put up with it.  If she put up with enough abuse, mistreatment and angst, she proved her love, and she got to put up with him forever.  That was a happy ending.

            Sometimes, for variation, he’d write a heroine who didn’t put up with it.  These stories without fail ended in tragedy.  He didn’t do it very often because tragedy wasn’t a big seller. 

            And, of course, every single novel he’d ever published had a variation of the same love scene.  A scene where the love-struck heroine was about to get exactly what she’d been begging for the entire book from the object of her affection.  She always said “stop.”  The hero never stopped.  He hated that scene, hated that he always included it, hated that he always got off writing loving descriptions of the starry-eyed ninny getting screwed into the ground. 

            “Yuki!  You’re not locked in your office anymore!” He’d fallen asleep on the couch. Shuuichi’s voice pulled him out of it.  He opened his eyes.  Shuuichi’s face hovered over him--all purple eyes and pink hair and adoration.  As usual, Eiri wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss him or smack him.  “Were you asleep?  Were you dreaming about me?”

            “Off,” he said harshly, pushing Shuuichi away as he sat up.  He put his glasses on, then took them off again.  “Are you wearing women’s underwear?”

            “I borrowed them from Noriko-san!  She keeps an emergency pair in the studio.”

“Do you spend all your time trying to think of new ways to annoy me?” Eiri muttered.

Shuuichi looked crestfallen.  His small, bare shoulders slumped.  “It’s just that you’ve been hiding out and avoiding me for days.  I wanted to do something to make an impression.”  Eiri touched his cheek, his quivering little chin.

“Don’t get all upset,” Eiri said.  “I wasn’t avoiding you.  Something happened with my brother that really freaked me out.  It’s all right, it wasn’t what I thought, but the whole thing shook me up.  Some of the stuff Tatsuha said is really making me wonder about a lot of the things I do.” 

Shuuichi perked up immediately. 

“Tell me!” he cried.  “You can tell me anything.  Anything at all.  I want to know everything about you.  Please confide in me.” 

Eiri didn’t have the slightest idea how to explain it.  Instead, he ran his hand over the silky curve of Shuuichi’s butt.

“You really do look kind of cute in those things,” he said as he pulled Shuuichi onto his lap.  “Noriko’s going to murder you when she finds out you took them.”    

When they were together, when they were fucking, Eiri always felt compelled to screw the starry-eyed ninny into the ground.  Only afterwards, when Shuuichi had long since surrendered completely and lay stupefied in a post-coital daze, did Eiri actually feel like he could tell him anything.  Only after the brat had proved he could take it.   

“My little brother can be fairly intelligent when he isn’t groping the nearest body,” Eiri said, stroking the pink head resting against his chest.  “He says Kitazawa Yuki still owns me, and I think he might be right.  He was my first friend; the first person I loved.  I thought he was going to be my first lover.  He taught me what friendship and sex and love were.  Even though he’s gone, the definitions he made hold.”

            “Even with us?” Shuuichi asked, snuggling against him.

            “Do you remember the first time we were together?” Eiri asked.  “You were scared … you said it wasn’t what you wanted, and you asked me to stop.”

“You didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.  I was crazy about Kitazawa; I wanted him so much, but I didn’t know what I was doing.  I didn’t know what he was doing.  When he started undressing me, touching me, I’d panic.  I’d beg him to stop.  He always did.  Even when he’d been drinking, even when he was hard and desperate and it killed him, he would stop.  I thought it meant he loved me, but it was him learning to hate me.  It would have been better if he hadn’t stopped.  It would have been better if he’d just done it.  Maybe we’d still to together … maybe I would have realized how fucked up things were between us, and it would have ended for good.”

“Sometimes,” Shuuichi said, “when we’re together, it does feel like I could be anybody.  That it’s about something else, and what you’re doing with me doesn’t really have anything to do with me.  Not that I don’t like it.”

  “What’s it like for you, anyway?” Eiri asked.

“Love?”

“Love.  Sex.  Friendship.  All the things I can’t figure out.  What are they like for you?” 

“They just are,” Shuuichi said.  “With Hiro, there was just something right.  We accept each other, and I know we can fight and fight and piss each other off, but we’ll still always love each other.  It was like that with you, too.  I just knew being with you was where I belonged.  It was meant to be.  You always say when we’re making love that I come too soon, and I don’t have any control, and I guess I don’t.  I just feel what’s happening, and it carries me.  What’s supposed to happen happens.  It’s like that when I sing; when I’m on stage, something bigger than me takes over and I let it.  That’s what love’s like for me.” 

Eiri knew what he meant when he talked about singing, about being taken over.  Sometimes it happened with his writing.  Sometimes the story flowed through him, but it wasn’t something he could count on … it wasn’t something he could trust to be there.  And as much as he wanted to believe it was love that carried Shuuichi along, it seemed a lot more likely that it was him.  That Yuki Eiri was the force Shuuichi yielded to, just as Kitazawa Yuki should have been the one Uesugi Eiri gave in to. 

If change were possible, if he changed, if he unlearned everything Kitazawa Yuki had taught him about how to love and be loved, he would cease to be that force.  He would not be Shindou Shuuichi’s definition of love or destiny.  He would cease to be masterly; he would not be in control.  He could not imagine Shuuichi loving him if he stopped being that force.  He could not imagine Shuuichi staying with him without being screwed into the ground and left gibbering and dazed and overwhelmed.