[Fic] december

[suchacharmer]

Itachi gets to his feet, beckoning Sasuke to follow. For a second, I don’t think he’s going to reply at all. His glances weren’t sincere enough. But, after a few long seconds where Sasuke simply stands in place, waiting for something to happen, he gives me hope for him yet. “Another night, then,” he says quietly, sealing it with a nod.

Sasuke bounces on the balls of his feet, looking over at Itachi as if he’s some exciting stranger. I crook my finger at him, borrowing him for another minute. I don’t think Itachi minds, all in all. He doesn’t call him back, doesn’t ask me what I’m doing as I pick up the marble I wasn’t able to sneak into his end of the star. “Take this,” I instruct, loudly enough for Itachi to hear me but not for Iruka to hear from the kitchen. Sasuke holds out his hand for it without hesitation. Confusion, but not hesitation. “Bring it back when Itachi is ready to play. Not a day before.”

“Should I bother asking why?” Sasuke ask, his fingers closing around the marble nonetheless.

I close my hand around his. Both of our hands are chilled. “You should always bother asking questions, Sasuke.” Even if my answers aren’t really answers, he should never stop asking questions. That’s how he’s going to figure out the too big world.

“Okay,” he agrees. I let go of his hand to let him put the marble in his pocket. “I’ll keep it.”

“Good.”

Sasuke waves goodbye as he joins Itachi in the doorway, slipping into his jacket between waves. Then they both head out, the porch boards creaking in their wake. They head out into the night, Itachi in no jacket and Sasuke in Itachi’s, marbles and promises in their pockets.

There are some battles out there, I tell his departing backside, that we can still win.

“That was sweet.”

He’s been standing there for a few minutes. I knew that already. At least since Itachi declined to play, if not before that. I wouldn’t have bet money on him speaking up, though. Ever since Mizuki picked him up at the house, he’s been elusive. He lingers in the kitchen if we read the paper in the living room; he stays upstairs if we play chess in the kitchen. Some nights, he didn’t come back to the house at all.

It’s almost domestic violence, the way he’s been hiding.

“Sweet like sugar,” I reply indolently, rearranging the board so that the marbles are clustered back in their respective ends. At this point in the night, the temperature has to be down to forty degrees or so. I probably should offer them a ride tomorrow night.

Iruka clicks his tongue against his teeth. The marbles clack against the wood.

“Done with the dishes?” He should be, since he’s been washing them for over an hour. No housewife could have done better.

He doesn’t answer. And that’s fine. I’m not in the mood for small talk. I’m never in the mood for small talk. Especially with a person I’ve known for years. That’s the most awkward kind of small talk. At least small talk with strangers is fleeting. You chat about the slow service at the restaurant and Red Sox game for a few minutes, then walk away forever. No harm, no foul, no tension mounting with every second you spend talking about things you couldn’t give a damn about.
Silence has worked for me so far. All I need to do is ride it out. Let him do all the talking. The only thing I have for him is small talk.

I’m not willing to do more than that.

“They’re here a lot.” He braces his hip against the door, watching me switch from arranging the marbles correctly to making patterns. “Every night, actually.”

Black white, black white, black white. All the way across the board. “I need company when you aren’t here”

“Bullshit,” he mutters softly, and I know I’m meant to hear it. Bet he wishes I give a damn. There was a time when I would have, but that was too long ago to remember.

Wind whistles more in the winter than it does in the summer. I’ve never been able to figure out why cold is sharp and hot is soft, but I love it. Heat is summer, fire, debate, sex, comfort. Cold is tension, winter, marriage, quiet. Cold is now, that sharp wind whistling through the door and snaking around my knees. Iruka feels it too, walking across the floor that creaks like old bones. The door has been open for hours; outside and inside have merged into one.

He sits across from me. Indian style. Like Sasuke a few minutes ago. The Santa Fe blanket is curled around his legs too, appearing considerably shorter. Sasuke drowns in it. Iruka makes it look like nothing but a regular old blanket, only good for keeping him warm. “Can I play?” he asks quietly, picking up one of black marbles. “Since I’m here and all.”

Since he’s here. Since he invited himself in and I made the stupid choice to let him stay. My sticky little matter of morals got in the way of good judgment on that one. Things might not have been perfect between us before he moved in, but they were better than this. He thought I need to see a psychiatrist after Asuma died. By this point, he probably thinks I should be admitted to a psychiatric ward. And he doesn’t know that half of it. He sees doors open in the winter, bedroom windows that can’t be shut, blankets that can’t be used; a clock in the bedroom that I keep an hour behind all the others and a watch on my wrist that’s accurate to a millisecond. He’s seen it all before, of course, but now he lives with it. I’m different between visits and stays. I’m different now from college. No one else knows but him.

Being around me night and day: I’m surprised he’s lasted as long as he has. I’m surprised he still wants to play games.

“You want to play with me?”

“Why not?” he replies with a shrug. It’s the same shrug I remember from college, the one that threw me every time. The one where he pretends not to know better. “You’ve been playing with a kid for so long. Thought you might want an actual game.”

I reach across the board, plucking the marble from his hand. “The kid can play, Ruka.”

“So can I, Kashi.”

“One of the marbles is missing,” I remind him, putting the pilfered one back in its place in the pattern. “Sasuke took it home.”

Iruka rolls his eyes pointedly, rearranging his legs so that his feet graze the edge of the board. “Do you think you could go a night without mentioning him? He’s here all the time.” He pauses, pulling his foot back. “He’s here more than I am.”

“That’s because you go home with Mizuki.”

I don’t know how long he’s been seeing other men. I don’t care. It’s not my place to care about where he goes, who he goes with, and what he does with who he goes with. I’m not his boyfriend. Never have been. Never will be.

I don’t care.

“Christ,” Iruka mutters. He looks me straight in the eye, his three times as expressive as mine. It’s like a one-way mirror. I can see what he’s thinking but he doesn’t have an inkling as to what I think. “If that’s what you think our problem is, you definitely missed something.”

I’m sure I missed plenty between everything we haven’t said. “Oh?”

“Mmhm.” He props his chin in his hand, looking at the board instead of me. “Did you know, for starters, that I gave up on the idea of being your boyfriend? Back in April?” He shrugs, as if it means nothing to him to give up on me. And maybe it did. Who am I to judge? “I don’t even know where I got the idea in the first place, but it managed to stick around for a while. Until I wised up. I am intelligent, you know.”

He sounds like I doubted that. “I know you are,” I tell him honestly.

Back to my eyes. He’ll pick a place to stay eventually. “You should know I figured some things out then.” He shifts all of his weight, his body, getting on his hands and knees. My heart does a hop-skip against my rib cage. I’m a big fan of Iruka on his knees, Saturday or not. “Things you don’t like,” he murmurs as he plants himself over the checker board. Straddling the checker board. “Things you do.”

His lips close on the lobe of my ear and I forget how to count the days.

What day is it? Monday? Wednesday?

I don’t care anyway.

“I figured out how to stay out of your way the best I could. You had to have noticed all the efforts I’ve been making.” His long exhale fans out over my wet earlobe, making me shiver. “You know, for years?”

I groan as he bites down, one hand snaking around to the small of my back and pushing in slightly. “What, do you want a reward or something?”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

The board is knocked aside as Iruka’s leg hits the side moving to push me on my back. I see the ceiling, see Iruka, hear the marbles scatter across the room. Black black white black white white all across the floor. Rolling under shelves, couches, my legs. Iruka is on me, chest grazing mine as he switches from my ear to my neck. It’s unconscious the way I throw my head back for him. I let him have free reign across the overly sensitive skin above my collar bone, let him spread my legs open wider. More marbles roll away, breaking and creating where they land.

I wonder if Mizuki and Iruka will end up on like this. On the floor of their airy kitchen in the great afternoon sunlight.

Don’t care.

“Does your boyfriend know you’re here?” I hiss out between clenched teeth. He bit down the exact moment I uttered the first syllable. Uncanny.

He licks the abused area in what I think is an apology before he bites again. That’s going to leave a mark. “Your concern is touching. Really.” The sarcasm in his voice is so audible that for a second he is the old Iruka, the one that predated 522 Thoreau Street. The one that got snarky while giving me head and made me love every minute of it while his roommate pounded on the door, demanding to be let back in. “But could you do me a favor and not talk?” He rolls his eyes, almost but not quite grinning at me. “I know how incredibly hard that is for you.”

I do shut up. I shut up and tilt my head back to let him roam my neck. Bruises form. I don’t have to see it to know my skin is mottling purple and black and blue. I don’t have to see to know that Iruka has a wry twist to his lips. That’s the way Iruka does sex. He isn’t predatory, lustful, some kind of sex kitten. He likes to play, though, tease and taunt and play games with his mouth. That’s the Iruka I know. Before, not after. This Iruka nipping at my neck and dragging one of my arms over my head is the one I remember at night, the one I haven’t seen since June. The one who hasn’t been here until now.

Of course, this isn’t the real thing. This is a surreal, out of place moment in olden times. Front door open for anyone walking by to see, between my knees, indecent exposure at our most vulnerable state. This is Dali at the Metropolitan, painted with lies and the silences in-between. We aren’t, can’t be in the here and now.

Iruka shifts until his legs straddle both sides of my thighs, pushing a hand up under my shirt. His finger are cold because we left the window over his bed open, the discount on-sale tie-dye curtain hanging crooked from the shower rod billowing miniature maelstroms. There’s a rip in the screen like the rip in his jeans in the inner thigh where my fingers try to find purchase. Marbles scatter under my fingertips, rolling through the door that’s still open out into the hallway that smells like that cheap, illegal beer we loved so much and popcorn burnt brown. The floor is hard under my ass, the metal bar of the bed digging into my back, as he goes down on me. “It’s half the fun,” he murmurs against my straining cock. “The threat of getting caught, you know?” By the resident advisor, by the boys down the hall, by poor Ms. Hannigan across the street who got more than she ever bargained for closing the blinds.

The blinds in your sunny afternoon kitchen.

His breath is hot on the dry skin of my jaw and cool on the slick curve of my cock. Problem is, I can’t tell where one sensation ends and the other begins. Right from wrong, past from present, memory from reality.

Sunday from Saturday.

Tendrils of memory, everything this house has been and seen since September, wrap around my head. The mind is the center of sensation, from the sight of Iruka’s duffle bag barely crossing the threshold, to the sound of Sasuke asking me not to call him pretty bird. I smell coffee in the kitchen, cranberries on the sheets, and vanilla on my wrists. I taste sweat on Iruka’s forehead, cheese and pepperoni on my tongue. I see Itachi perched among lace and gaudy pink flowers and on the floor with us, half in, half out like the suitcases. Sasuke spread across the kitchen table, blowing on his sugary drink and Iruka spread out on the bed, waiting to blow me. I hear Iruka call me baby. I feel the wind from the window I told him not to open, smell summer, winter, pancakes with raisins, stone under my palm. I feel Sasuke’s small hands pushing back against mine, hear his voice with quiet confidence saying, “Its not Saturday.”

Except that it is Saturday. I’d forgotten, what with all the marbles breaking, changing, rearranging without my consent under my own fingertips.

Air leaves his lungs in a hurry when I push against his chest, a mass exodus of carbon dioxide. Our legs tangle and untangle, scraping and kicking, and we’re on out feet, standing off and breathing heavily. But that’s no different than any other night. Between lies and silence and the god-awful confusion in decoding, all we do is breathe at each other.

“What now?” he snaps, bypassing rationality and civil discourse. “For the love of god, what now?”

Useless, meaningless air. “You know I don’t believe in god,” I say quietly. I don’t believe in the afterlife. I don’t believe in moving on. The past does not let you leave it behind, but follows you along. It stays with you until you die. “So I want you to leave. Walk out that door right now and promise me you won’t come back.”

Iruka crosses his arms over his chest, shaking his head. “My stuff’s still here, Kakashi. I’m not just going to…”

“You can come back for it tomorrow. It’ll be on the porch.”

“I’m not going to do this with you right now,” he says angrily, stepping back into my personal space. “Its way too late for you to be pulling this shit on me.”

“No, we are going to do this right now,” I insist, the steel of my tongue cutting my own throat. “Because it is too late for this. We should have broken this off a long time ago.”

“This?” Iruka laughs hysterically. “What the hell is this? Do you know what we’re doing, Kakashi, because I lost track one hell of a long time ago. I remember friends with benefits pretty clearly, but after that, fuck, we got all messed up didn’t we?”

“The name we give it doesn’t matter.” I’m not yelling. I’m not going to yell at him. Not now. “What matter is that we don’t see each other anymore. In any capacity.”

Iruka takes a small step backwards so that he can look into my face. Though I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to find there. “You honestly think that’s the solution, don’t you? Keeping me as far away from you as possible? Well I have news for you, you fucked-in-the-head, emotionally stunted jackass, distance is the last thing you need. You need to be in close quarters with someone who can talk some sense into you.”

“Don’t-”

“You aren’t some eccentric, harmless character from a book.” His steel cuts at me now. I’m bleeding all over. I knew it would happen. Knew he would not understand. “You worry me. All the time, you worry me.”

He worries about me. What a saint. Good for you, Iruka, but you aren’t the only one. “I don’t need you to-”

“You fucking talk to the clock in your hallway,” he interrupts again. He determined not to let me get a word in edgewise. “Sane people don’t do that, Kakashi. You need to talk to somebody.”

Somebody. Somebody like a psychiatrist. With orange bottles and little white pills. “Don’t tell me what I need to do,” I hiss, breaking the cool I’ve kept up until now. Oh well, he’s the one who broke it, not me. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Because you won’t tell me.” He takes a few steps back, flattening his back against the wall. Almost slumping against the wall. “Which is a real killer, since you apparently told Sasuke,” he scathes, “your deepest, darkest secrets.”

I frown, inching forward before I can stop myself. Sasuke. Why does he keep bringing up Sasuke? “Sasuke has nothing to do with this, Iruka.”

Iruka propels himself from the wall, a black marble bouncing away from his shoe. “Sasuke has everything to do with this. I’ve known you for four years, been your friend for four years. You’ve known that kid for five months, five months, and he’s the one you pick to be your confidant?” He looks up at me, brown eyes a storm. I see his emotions swirling in them. His hurt, his anger, his worry and confusion, willing and ready. “Do you have any idea how much that hurt? I watched you play chess with him every night, take him to some secret place every Saturday, watched you make him special coffee. And I ignored it. That was stupid of me, ignoring what I knew was going on. I saw us going downhill from the very beginning. From college.” He walks closer, slowly but not hesitantly, back into a place where I could touch him if I wanted. “Friends with benefits, you liked that, but ever since I moved in I got the feeling we weren’t quite friends anymore. Now, you don’t even want the benefits!”

“Oh cry me a goddamned river, Iruka.” I’m not going to feel bad about this, about hurting him. He kept coming back on his own. I called, but he decided to come. I didn’t ask him to be my callboy. “You want someone to fuck you so bad, go off and find your little boyfriend. I’m sure he’ll gladly do it!”

The scream is foreign coming out of my mouth. It’s familiar coming out of his. “This isn’t about Mizuki! And it’s not about the goddamned sex.” His hands go to his hips, bracing, because something has gone wrong. We went wrong. We were probably never right. “This is about you, me, and the nine-year-old boy you picked over me in the only way that actually matters.”

The sound of his head hitting the wall barely registers as I throw us both forward. He winces, jerking in vain as he tries to wrench his arm from my grasp. It’s the same position we were in five minutes ago, only vertical and in reverse. “Shut up,” I demand through clenched teeth. We’re too much for either of us to handle. Jealous of a little kid. He’s jealous of a little kid who barely comes up past my hips and I don’t have a single thing to say to contradict him. Sasuke is important to me. I didn’t ask him to be and I didn’t want him to be, but he is. In ways that Iruka and his suggestions of pills will never be. “Shut up and get out.”

“Not until….fuuck” he hisses, head slamming into the wall again as I physically stop him from going any further with that train of thought. I don’t want “until” anything. I want the end.

“Get out of my house, Iruka.” I have my cool back, my words and breathing even. “Get out and let this be the end of it.”

This isn’t such a bad way to end. I never asked for a boyfriend and I never got one. And Iruka was right anyway. We haven’t been friends since he moved in.

Thinking about it, I doubt we ever were.

“You have to let go first,” Iruka says levelly, flexing his arm to remind me that I still have him in something of a death grip.

Without a word, I release his arm and step away from the wall. Without a word, he stalks around me, gets his shoes, jacket, and keys and, without a goodbye of any kind, walks through the door. The man without a name is gone. He leaves me in the house filled to the brim with memories he never knew about and ghosts that even I don’t understand. He lets me be in a house he never had a chance of calling home, standing among scattered marbles that once belonged to a star and not regretting a barely noticeable splotch of blood where his head hit the wall. And I know already that I’ll remember the screams tomorrow, next week, next year. The way everything collided.

It’s almost domestic, this violence.