Disclaimer: Nakajo owns. She owns bishounen, a cool plotline, your wallet, your savings account, your life, your soul...
Warnings: Shonen-ai (Akiha/Umeda, Umeda+Ryouichi, Ebi+Akiha), most probably some OOC-ness since my grasp of the characters is questionable at best, and pathetic attempts at trying to avoid the angst. First chapter in a three-part story? Debatable.
Author's Note: I think I now know why there isn't any prominent fandom base for Hanakimi. The characters are all so detailed and specific in their designs that any deviation from those set blueprints is suicide. :crawls into her own grave: Akiha is especially hard for me because I didn't want to push him across as too hyper and lose his professional suave; nor did I want to tone down his enthusiasm and make him... weird. Think I failed on both accounts. And this is only the first chapter... so that means, yay! At least two more chapters of linguistic crap after this installment!
Dedication: To the second dango in our dango triad—who promised me a FujiRyo fanart in exchange for a multi-parted Akiha/Umeda fic. Hope this works as a kick off, imoutochan...
Forward Motion Act 1 – Stand Still
by kasugai gummie
Normal people liked to keep regular hours, live stable lives, and have healthy relationships.
Day in, day out, the schedules remain unchanged, predictable and ridiculously close to being canonized. A perfect agenda would regulate for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year... a grand total of three hundred and sixty-five days when ignoring the birthdays of those poor bastards born on the twenty-ninth of February.
Normal people were boring.
Hazel eyes refocused lazily and lifted from the tattered pages of an old scrapbook to the exasperate face of one very irate Ebi Kotobuki.
"How is it that you haven't dropped dead yet?"
They stared at each other as one waited for an answer and the other took the time to... stare.
"Huh?"
Ebi rolled her eyes at the unintelligent response and leaned over the cluttered table so that she was eye-to-eye with her ex-husband turned employer. "How. Is. It. That. You. Haven't. Dropped. Dead. Yet?" She annunciated carefully, raising a slender eyebrow when all she received was a sheepish grin and a nonchalant shrug.
"'Cause I'm not boring?"
The staring match resumed.
Then, "I fail to see how compromising your health has anything to do with how boring you are." Ebi pointed an accusatory finger at the digital figures on the wall's clock. "You've barely slept for more than four hours after the latest contract's deadline was met, and instead of resting like us normal people, you're spending all your free time looking at high school yearbooks!"
The longhaired man watched her gestures thoughtfully before smiling and stretching sinuously as he got up out of his chair.
"But I'm not normal, Ebi. I thought you knew me better than that," Akiha admonished in a teasing tone before strutting jauntily out the door. "I'll be at the local café if you need me! Food calls, and I think want a change today... maybe a nice Western styled breakfast?" His mellow chuckle trailed after him as his chipper footsteps slowly faded away.
The door clicked shut almost apologetically.
"A nice Western style breakfast?" Ebi echoed to the empty room. Left alone in Akiha's office, with only the cluttered spread of photos as company, a tired sigh circulated through the half-lit room. She glanced down at the abandoned pages of old snapshots and traced a manicured nail over the elegant lines of one particular face.
"Normal, I guess not." Her finger stopped to gently rest upon the glossy print. "Dumb ass, most definitely yes."
Akiha brightened as the clinking of commercial dishware, accompanied by the hush of morning conversations, wafted to his ears. The familiar buzz of activity at its minimum that all regular patrons associated the early hour with washed over the tall blond as he stepped through the café's threshold.
Glancing over to his regular booth, he blinked in mild surprise as if the normally empty table had suddenly sprouted a foreign head and body.
Which it apparently did, if the unknown dark haired figure was of any indication...
Akiha pouted. This wasn't fair. Who in their right minds would get up this early to steal other people's tables? Never mind that his name was to be found nowhere near that area, but he figured that other frequenters to the café this early in the morning would have already known of his seating preference.
He turned resolutely to the counter before his irrational urge to go demand his seat back overrode common sense.
"Good morning! How may I help you?"
The normally energetic photographer's mood, which had only seconds before climbed up from its momentary dip, plummeted again.
If he didn't know better, he'd say that there was a huge conspiracy against him. Even the waitress who normally took his order had been replaced!
Forcing a grin that felt weak to even himself, Akiha attempted to address the waiting girl. "Aa—is Sada-san out today?"
Guileless green eyes, no doubt colored through the aid of contacts, flickered before giving him a sympathetic glance.
"Oh! You must be Akiha-san?"
Dumbly, he nodded, smile still somehow plastered to his face.
The girl giggled. "Sada said you'd probably show up around seven in the morning."
Akiha looked perplexed. "Then why isn't she here today?"
"She's sick."
"Oh... um..." the taller man shifted his weight. "... can you still take my order?"
Mildly affronted, but equally amused, the waitress smiled. "Of course! What would you like for breakfast? The usu—"
"Not my usual," Akiha cut in. "I've been indulging a little too much in French and Japanese breakfasts lately. My ex-wife gave me some cooking lessons so I can make sweet grass bean paste on my own now anyway," he explained apologetically before suddenly focusing on the menu board behind the cashier that seemed to draw his attention towards one particular item. "Actually, I think I'll have an extra large Rocky Road and mocha blend sundae, in one of those cute tall glasses please. Also, can you add caramel and cookie bits with the whipped cream topping?"
The girl behind the counter was barely aware of her mouth hanging agape. Her co-worker had warned her to expect strange orders from this man. But this... She decided not to retch at the thought of all that sugar through sheer will power alone. "Uh... will that be all?"
"Oh, right! And don't forget a maraschino cherry on top." Akiha smiled brightly as he finished his convoluted order. "I'd also like to have an extra pitcher of hot fudge to go with." He blasted the poor girl with a ridiculously cheery grin as he chirped his last request. "Just in case."
Bedazzled and a little sick from the prospect of all that unhealthy concentration of sugar, the waitress nodded and mechanically rang up the order. "O-of course." She sincerely hoped that her sallow complexion would go unnoticed.
Gliding to the table nearest his preferred spot, Akiha flashed one last smile to the girl before he sat down to wait for his breakfast. Not quite staring at the back of the anonymous spiky haired male's head, he let himself to drift bemusedly, losing himself to his thoughts.
The morning wasn't going as well as he hoped, but he believed that a trip to his beloved's school would turn around his luck. It'd already been three days since he'd last gotten to spend any quality time with his senpai after all; a week since he was able to sneak in a surprise kiss on the older man (something which had been a stroke of poor dumb luck anyway).
Dimly, he heard the high-pitched ring of a cell phone from his table's intruder's back pocket. Skillfully ignoring the annoyance, he plunged himself into the memories of his senpai's smoldering gaze that spoke to his soul and those thin, softly honeyed lips that put the devil to shame in the game of temptation...
Looking at those old photos had taken him to the past where a freshman Akiha was still in the first stages of awe for one Umeda Hokuto. He remembered when his interest in his senpai climbed from mere older-male-figure worship to something more intimate. He remembered his senpai's graduation ceremony, and how the aristocratic look of disdain had flickered momentarily when he managed to lock eyes with the aspiring doctor. He remembered how his senpai was only interested in one person, out of the whole school, no matter how hurtful the other was. He remembered...
"—f course you can make it. Don't be difficult, Hokuto."
Akiha snapped out of his reverie when his selective hearing kicked in.
"—and I want you to actually wear the gift I got you—"
Brown eyes steadily widened at the obscurely angled profile.
"No, dabbing it on your wrists doesn't count as wearing."
Completely ignoring the heady clink of his sundae glass hitting the table, Akiha stared while the black cropped head turned, as if in slow motion, to reveal equally dark eyes. Even the rich scent of melted chocolate couldn't pull him away from the blasé arrogance found in those depths.
"I'll see you tonight then."
And Akiha remembered...
"Later."
... what an unappreciative ass Kijima Ryouichi was.
End Act 1
Completed: 08/11/04
Revised: 04/02/05