Kin no Shuichi

Kin no Shuichi
Written by: Chochowilliams
Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation or the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Summary: Shuichi and Eiri are working things out after a mistake on both of their parts nearly ended their five-year relationship. But what about Bad Luck? What does the future hold for them?
Chapter Summary: Shuichi’s involvement with Blaze comes out and causes outrage from his band mates
Warning: M/M, romance, angst, OOC-ness, language, Shuichi/Eiri, implied Eiri/oc, implied Shuichi/oc
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A/N: Thank you to Kaoru Sayuri Kamiya, Mrs. Hatake Itachi, fahaar, sun’s and stars, lilgurlanima, secret hidden within me, ferler for taking the time to review. Because the 22nd is my birthday, I am giving you guys all a gift. I will be updating twice more this week! Wednesday and Friday. Yay!

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Chapter 25: Confrontation

Oh. My. Freaking. God.

Why did I answer the phone when I knew she was going to go off like this? Oh. Yeah. Right. It was to get it finished with now. That’s why. It was better to fill your gas tank before the needle got to the “E“.

God! Shoot me now! I beg of you! Put me out of my misery. Please!

Unfortunately, no such luck. Meaning I had no other option but to listen to my mother as she rambled on and on and on and on and on. I knew I should have let the answering machine get it. Bloody hell. Knowing her though, she would have used up the entire storage memory of the answering machine bitching me out.

I found myself sighing. Again. I really should start keeping track of how many times I sighed when I was on the phone with my mother. Maybe I could turn in into a game. It’d definitely keep me sane.

Holding the phone to my ear with one hand, I used the other hand to massage my throbbing temples. My head was killing me. I made a mental note to apologize to Eiri for being such a whiny bi-polar crybaby. Again. It was not often that I was given a does of my own medicine, but being on the phone with my mother made that rarity a reality. Usually, holding a conversation with her was like speaking with the average Joe out on the street. It was just a normal conversation. Hi. How are you? That type of thing. Other times, it was obvious whom I took after and it sure as hell was not my father. I suspect the only reason my father had remained as sane as he has in the thirty years my parents have been married is that he tends to be indifferent about most things. He would allow her to get away with murder if it meant he did not have to get involved in the sanity that was the Shindou household. I sure as hell could not blame him. How Dad could have possibly fallen for someone as completely insane as my mother was beyond me, but then again some people ask the same thing about Eiri and me.

My mother continued to ramble on non-stop without seemingly needing to take a breath. Amazing. Is that how I sound? It’s no wonder that Eiri tunes me out.

Also, she could turn her tears on and off at the drop of a hat. It was just like flipping a light switch. She used this ability so often in order to get her way that it was wearing quite thin, though we all fell for it anyway. Eiri called me a wuss constantly for caving into my mother’s heavy-laden guilt trips. I can’t help it. She’s my mother for crying out loud. How can I possibly say no to her? Some of us are not as…strong willed, let’s say, like him (and no you do not want to know what I was going to say instead).

Not to mention that one second my mother was as high as a kite and the next she was acting as if someone had died. It was exhausting just trying to deal with her out of control emotions. Not that I could blame her. At least not this time. I had only myself to blame.

“…I know…Ma…I said I was sorry…!”

My eyes just about popped out of my head after what came out of her mouth. I could my face growing warm.

“…Ma,” I whined.

By God, she was embarrassing. Did she not realize this was her own son she was referring to? And holy! Bipolar much? First, she bites my head off for being “so stupid” as to pose nude for the cover of some “sleazy porn magazine” (her words, not mine)…

“Are you trying to being shame to this family?”

…and then she claims that it was a pretty sexy photograph of me wrapped in nothing more than ivory sheer material and sprawled on my back with half of my body hanging off the side a Little Miss Liberty Windsor round canopy bed.

Sometimes I just do not understand her.

I mean, there were just some things that a mother should not be privy to and that included nude photos of her son posing erotically.

“…What?!”

The sound of her voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Oh. My. God. You didn’t!”

Why? Why did she insist on doing this to me? I swear by all that was holy that my mother did not know the meaning of the word “privacy”. To her, whatever happened to any member of the family was open for discussion to anybody and everybody, even strangers out on the street who did not give a flying rat‘s behind. For example, when Maiko first started getting her, uhm, her “you-know-what”, Mother bragged about it to everyone she saw. And I mean everybody. Poor Maiko. To say that my baby sister died of embarrassment a hundred times over would be an understatement. When Maiko confronted our mother about her big mouth, all our mother said was, “Nonsense. This is a time for celebration!” Then when Mother learned that I was dating Eiri, she went and blabbed to the entire neighborhood that the famous best-selling romance novelist had “deflowered” her little boy. “Now you know how it feels,” is what my sister said to me in my utter embarrassment.

I was twenty-three years old, married, had a child of my own and lived as far away as I could from her without being out of the city altogether and she was still finding ways of embarrassing me to hell and back. Her reasoning was the same as it always was. She was “proud”.

“Ma, you just said-”

My mother was a walking contradiction. She was angry with me for agreeing to be on the cover of a porn magazine (as if I had any other choice, but I was not going to get into that with her). Then she claims that she found the photographs to be tasteful and sexy (for a “sleazy porn magazine” that is) so she just had to go out and boost to all who would listen (and even those who didn’t want to hear about such things) about her famous singer son. Apparently, she scoured the entire city and when she found a place that sold Blaze, she bought every copy it carried and passed them out to the neighbors.

Dear God. Why? Someone, please explain to me why she did this to me? Seriously. Mr. K, Mr. Sakano and Mr. Seguchi were always trying to discover the source of these leaks concerning Bad Luck that always seemed to spring to life and no matter how hard or thoroughly they searched, they always came up ended handed. I had a feeling that if they were to sit down and speak with my mother, they’d find their leak…So, does that mean that when it came down to it, the source was me since I was the one who ended up telling her everything? I mean, come on, like I said, she was mother. Hey, you try having a conversation with her. I bet you will not get away without having divulged one thing or another.

Besides, not like the whole country didn’t know that I had posed basically in the nude for Yoshio’s magazine, but still…

I heard a beep over the line in my ear. Immediately, I knew it was signaling a waiting call. “Ma. I gotta go. There’s someone on the other line…Yeah, we will. I’ll…I’ll speak with Eiri…Okay. Love you, too. Bye.” A surge of relief flooded through me. Next time, I was going to let the answering machine get it. Or better yet, maybe I could convince Eiri to get rid of the landline phones all together and just rely on our cellphones. That way, my mother wouldn’t be able to call me and drive me completely insane. Then again, scratch that. She had my email address. I think. Did she? Well, whether she did or didn’t, Maiko had it. Meaning, my mother could just fill my inbox instead. Damn. “Yes?” I answered the other line. “Ah!” It was Naoki-kun. “Hey! What’s up?” Uh, oh. Just my luck. Hiro was on his way up. Just great. That was all that I needed. Oh, well. It was something that I was bound to have to deal with eventually anyway. “Yeah, it’s okay. Let him up.” I hung up the phone with a sigh.

Round two begins now apparently.

A creak sounded behind me. A quick check over my shoulder as I hung up the phone revealed Eiri. His dirty blond hair was mused and an unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. Just the sight of him had me squealing like a schoolgirl. I couldn’t help it. It was the effect he had on me. Though he bitched about how I acted gave him ulcers and migraines, I think he secretly enjoyed what just thinking about him did to me. Him? Big ego? No!

“Baka,” Eiri greeted.

I opened my mouth to tell him about Hiro, but before the thought was even half formed, he’d tossed his cigarette aside, grabbed me and yanked me none too gently to him. He held me tightly against the front of him with an arm wrapped securely around my waist. His other hand squeezed my ass, effectively drawing me in even closer. I could feel the hardness of him pressed up against me. It caused my gasp to morph into a moan halfway passed my lips.

Dear God.

His head descended towards mine. My heart was pounding. It was so loud; it was a wonder Eiri did not say anything.

Eiri’s lips were a hairsbreadth away when a harsh pounding that sounded just this side of knocking the door in emitted through the condominium. I cringed when Eiri’s hold on me tightened and he uttered words best left to the imagination under his breath at the intruder. That was when I remembered that Hiro was here. Crap in hell.

“I know you’re in there, Shuichi,” yelled Hiro through the door.

Eiri’s eyes narrowed dangerously. I hurriedly stepped out of his grasp and started towards the door. Eiri was very protective of me. Very. Okay. Maybe not very protective. More like extremely overprotective of me. Best friend or not, Eiri would have no qualms with beating Hiro into a bloody pulp for even raising his voice at me. Hey, he did beat up poor Maa-kun in order to get to sourpuss Taki Aizawa and then very nearly killed Yoshio a couple of months ago.

“Eiri, stop! Stop!”

I could still hear my pleading voice as I stormed into the hotel where Yoshio was staying. I’d been forced to watch helplessly as Eiri pinned Yoshio up against the wall with one hand wrapped so tightly around Yoshio’s throat that his face had turned an unnatural shade. Eiri had been using his other hand as a battering ram.

“Please, Eiri, let me handle this, okay?”

I could see the war raging within him as he considered my plea.

Yoshio pleading and begging with me to pose for his magazine had brought back some very unpleasant memories.

“What the fuck is this?!”

Eiri had stormed into the bathroom and found me kneeling over the porcelain throne. At the time, I wasn’t aware of his presence or the photograph in his hand. All I could see was sourpuss’ sneering, self-satisfied face, feel as I was torn apart, watched as my whole world came crashing down around me and heard those not so veiled threats whispered again in my ear.

Then nothing.

When I woke up, it was to an empty condominium. Feeling lightheaded and warm with fever, I stumbled groggily out into the dining room in search of my Eiri and that was where I found “it” laying on the table. I had to wait until my eyes could focus, but when I did, I realized what I’d found was a photograph taken in a strange room that I did not recognize, but at the same time it hit me with a strange sense of déjà vu.

In the photo were two figures. They were entwined together on a bed in a dimly lit room. In the next second, I realized both people were male and they were not practicing for the upcoming wrestling competition with their rivals. In the second after that, I recognized one of the figures. He was on his back with his knees pointing at the ceiling. His head was tossed back. His back arched off the mattress. His mouth open in a silent scream. His hands gripping the dark head bobbing up and down between his splayed legs, a dark head that had no business being there.

In an instant, that night came flooding back and I flew back to my porcelain throne, disgusted once again at myself for committing the same sin I had chewed Eiri out about not twenty-fours earlier.

As I lay sprawled there over the toilet, trembling from head to foot, it hit me fast and furious. If Eiri had seen this photo, then…

I was not aware of where I was going, but my feet did and they took me right to the hotel where Yoshio was staying, the same hotel where several years earlier he had taken me and violated our friendship.

It was stupid to get in between them, but it was the only choice that I had at the time. How else was I supposed to get them to stop?

“Fine,” is what Eiri eventually said.

Thank you God for small favors, I thought to myself with a sigh.

Eiri pulled me roughly against him and captured my lips in a kiss that stole my breath. Then he stalked off back to his office, leaving me reeling in his wake, but not without a last scathing look at the front door of the condominium. He pushed through the swinging door that separated the living room from the bedrooms and called over his shoulder, “If he wakes Sayo or makes you cry, I swear to God, I will kill him.”

The threat left me shuddering. It was not wise to take Eiri lightly.

“Shuichi Shindou!”

Taking a deep breath, I gained what courage I could and went to answer the door and the million and one questions that I knew my best friend had.

---TBC---

Preview: “Take the Egg and Shave It”

A/N: I would say that we’re getting down to the wire, but that would be a lie. You see, this is chapter 25 and I have all the way up to 34 prewritten and there’s still no end in sight. I have to admit that this one of my favorite stories that I’ve written so far. Oh! And btw, the title of the next chapter is a Chinese proverb. I think. I forget what it means.