Urban Hymns

Oshitari/Gakuto; PG-13.
hypercritical: suggests a tendency to lose objectivity and to judge by unreasonably strict standards.
2004 | 880 words

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He likes vanilla ice-cream but, as long as he’s not the one paying, he’ll have just any flavour, really. He’ll complain, of course, he’ll say it’s not as tasty and creamy as fine pure vanilla, but he’ll eat it anyway. Then he’ll lick his fingers slowly, deliberately, lazily, and ask for another one. Yuushi won’t always indulge him, but it doesn’t cost much to try - maybe just a tiny bit of his dignity. But Yuushi has seen him in much worse state through those long, tiresome matches that seem to drag on forever and a day, so begging to be treated to a second cone of ice-cream is not the most humiliating thing Gakuto can think of.

Some days, he’ll smile, bats his eyelashes trying to look innocent and use his most annoyingly high pitched sing-song voice to try and talk Yuushi into getting him what he wants. Other days, he’ll just stare with his best ‘bored out of my mind’ look and blurt out “I want more”, as if it’s nothing but Yuushi’s rightful duty to tend to his bratty needs.

Depending on Yuushi’s mood, or how well or not he fared in the latest exams, he will sigh, will smirk and will go like a good boy bring him a different flavour - never vanilla, Yuushi knows what he likes and Yuushi will never buy what he likes, Gakuto whines to himself. On Yuushi’s bad days, those days when even Gakuto knows not to push him too far, he will give him a once-over, snark something along the lines of no, you’re too fat, shrug and pretend not to see his partner fuming beside him.

Gakuto’s second favourite flavour is pistachio. It’s a flavour he’d never tasted before he met Yuushi, and invariably the one Yuushi will always pick for him. It’s an odd flavour, not sweet, not bitter… more like smooth, velvety, and a whole array of words Gakuto knows are not supposed to describe the taste of things, but are the only ones that occur to him. Smooth and velvety and reminiscent of grass and morning dew, much like Yuushi’s kisses, or at least what Gakuto thinks Yuushi’s kisses taste, feel, sound and beat like.

“You know what’s the problem with people?” Gakuto asks just as randomly as everything else he says, and Yuushi doesn’t even blink anymore, knowing by now that Gakuto’s mind works in weird patterns easy to follow but difficult to understand. “Everyone’s so fucking self-centered,” Gakuto complements, not waiting for an answer.

The irony is not lost on Yuushi. He nods, only half-listening, and gives a “Hm?” as answer that would serve just as well as a what the hell are you talking about.

“They are, you know, all just selfish bastards.” Gakuto licks a path of cream down his hand, making the usual mess of himself, and glares at the ants gathering around his feet on the ground. He doesn’t like sitting on sidewalks, but the only bench nearby is taken by a bunch of old ladies and Yuushi’s too damn polite to ask them to scoop over and let Gakuto take a seat.

“People care too much about themselves and too little about others,” Gakuto proceeds, now talking more to the ants than to Yuushi, because he knows Yuushi is probably not even listening. “Like, when people hear a friend saying that they hate the whole world an everything inbetween, the first thing they’ll do is not saying ‘hey do you wanna talk about it,’ but ‘oh was it something I said?’ because they’re not really interested in what you feel or not, they just wanna get their asses out of the fire line.”

Yuushi raises a brow and glances at him sideways from the corner of his eye, asking before he even notices, “Is this about what I said this morning?”

Gakuto stares at him blankly for a moment, and his brain can’t even come up with a decent answer to that. He rolls his eyes an lets out his trademark long-suffering sigh. Licks the last finger clean, leans back and looks around, trying to spot a proper victim to release his curses onto - preferably an annoying child or one of those stupid gaijin girls who like to ask him to take photographs of themselves with Yuushi, what they call a genuine typical Japanese kid. Oh if they only knew.

“You’re an idiot, you know. Buy me another cone.”

Yuushi chuckles, shrugs and stands up. Straightens the folds in his shirt and trousers, pushes his glasses up and heads to the vendor in that lazy, laid back, corny country boy way of his. Gakuto makes a face to his back, knowing exactly what the other is going to come back with - he’ll never admit that Yuushi’s tongue tastes a lot better after the alien-like green pistachio than after the creamy, tasty, bland, washed out vanilla, but as long as Yuushi pays, pistachio will have to make do.

Sighing to himself, Gakuto thinks that the whole world is really just full of selfish bastards, and hopes that this time, at least this time, Yuushi will be a normal, decent, kind human being and buy him some vanilla.

Filed under Tennis no Ohjisama |