age: five thousand three hundred days.

tweedeleets.

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:07:11 GMT

18:38 @nicocoer i want to be 18 and able to vote just so i can put all your awesome posts to use! but for now i just read them and wait 4 yrs... #
18:52 long essay down! personal statement down! only have the short essay to do, and this carolina baby is DONE. #
19:26 ew. my hair is greasy not from being unwashed but because i've been watching it too much. gross. #
19:26 meant washing, oops #

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tweedeleets.

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:03:34 GMT

16:40 sigh. #

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tweedeleets.

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:03:22 GMT

16:27 gah, internetz down for hours or days. who knows. #
17:22 @zoeblaize i have no idea! the internet light on my modem isn't on, but it still works--sometimes. it's having severe mood swings. #

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wild thing, you make my heart sing.

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:13:39 GMT

Happy birthday, my darling Junnosuke. Sometimes I wish the term 'Jun-baited' applied to my personal fandom situation, but I used to think you were A Total Girly Man, mainly because I first saw you on the reverse side of a Yamapi poster. And you were wearing sparkly eyeshadow and your hair looked like it was jealous of Shirley Temple's, and the background was lilac and you were wearing fluffy cashmere. So yeah, I didn't give you a second thought. I went back to the Pi side.

But that's all in the past (even though every time I see that poster I still laugh), and now I love you, alot, even though your hair is in a constant state of metamorphasis. I think I love you the most when you are Miss Bitch, because your eyebrows go funny and you get this look on your face that screams, "Girl, oh NO you diiiiiiiiin't!" and that makes me laugh, or I think maybe I love you the most when you're with Aiba, because it's very cute when you think he's stupid. Or your 'MAJI DE?' moments, or your giggles, or your 'I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this' faces, or your 'Girl, I am SO HOT, I am a SEX GOD' faces, because those are hilarious. I love them all.

And, okay, sometimes you look hot. But most of the time I just wanna pinch your cheeks really hard until you throw me across the room and give you an A- for effort.

So instead of going on about how you are a special boy in my heart, I channeled it through Aiba by writing ~fic~. I know it's supposed to be porn because I initially promised (who? answer: myself) that I would write birthday porn for each of Arashi on their special days, but the PWP I was writing and planning to use today-- the Sho/Jun used-to-be-my-math-notes one--has spiraled out of my control. Instead, I wrote something else that is not sexy, but sappy. OH WELL. So you get your cake here, but you have to eat it somewhere else.

There's no title, and it's sort of Aiba/Jun, Jun/Arashi, Aiba/Arashi and Arashi/Arashi all in one, however vague each one may turn out to be in the fic. Whatever it really is, it's definitely sappy enough to melt all 32 (or if you got four pulled like I did, then 28) of your teeth. :D :D More summary: late-night voicemails, Aiba is probably crying, mention of Jun's 20th birthday, and Ohno says inappropriate things to the cheese.

--

12:25 AM

"Jun-chan, hello? Hello? Oh. I guess you're not really going to pick up the phone, then. Maybe I should just wait a few more seconds 'cos you might wake up, since I called you so late. And your ringer is kind of loud. Well, your normal one's not, but the one you have for me is 'cos I changed it so you'd know when I'm calling you! Then you can't just be all blissfully ignorant because you don't know who it is. And since I bring you great tidings of love and germs, I mean joy, you won't be able to resist picking up the phone. Unless you're otherwise occupied, like now.

"Weeeelll, it's been a few seconds and I guess you're still asleep or partying, or asleep at your party, so I just wanted to tell you happy birthday, MatsuJun! Happy twenty-fifth birthday. You are sooo old now, soon you'll be getting arthritis and osteoporosis and forgetting our dance routines and the lyrics to our singles, which you always say you'll never forget--but old age is the number one killer of seniors, you know, Jun-chan. It eats the brain. Just putting that out there. I bet you didn't know that, huh. Anyway, yeah! Happy birthday, I know I sent you a mail but I decided to call you 'cos I'm still awake even though it's kind of late. It's our day off, so I thought I would do a lot of stuff and then sleep really late! So that's why I'm still up. Um…what else, what else. Oh! Make sure you blow out all the candles on your cake. I hope your wish comes true, whatever it is, even if it involves naked women and a tub of icing. But I seriously think that for your own good you should choose a birthday wish that will carry on into the future, like maybe a wish for Arashi? Something along the lines of, we'll still be together when we're old and creaky like Leader?

"…Oh. Leader just told me very angrily that he's not old and creaky, he's perfectly healthy. We're drinking, by the way. We would have invited you--actually, we did invite you, but you said one of your drama crews was throwing you a party and it would last until really late so you didn't think you could make it to the bar. And then you said we'd hang out tomorrow. So we will, all of us, okay? We'll take you somewhere nice and we'll have a lot of time 'cos it's our day off and then we'll go drinking again and eat ramen and Leader will pay. Right, Leader? Ow! Don't throw cheese at me!

"…But back to the wish, Jun-chan--can you wish that we'll stay together for a long time? Please, MatsuJun? Except switch it around a little because if I know the wish then it won't come true. And I really want it to.

"I know you do, too. Because remember a long time ago, when you just turned twenty, and Nino wrote you that birthday song that we all sang to you--we were on tour, so that night you came to my room and you told me that you were very happy? Remember? Well, I do, and I remember telling you after that that you made me happy and Arashi made me happy. And then you said, 'Me too, Masaki,' and you fell asleep on my bed. So I tried to push you over but you were really heavy, so I slept on the couch and that's why my back hurt like hell the next day. But anyway, I just, I thought that I'd like to have that kind of moment with everyone in Arashi every time it was their birthday, except so far I've only had it with you but that's okay, too, because I know Nino and Sho-chan and Leader feel the same way, but they just don't want to climb into my bed and tell me. So I climb into their beds and tell them, and so far the only one who's kicked me out is Nino, but that's because he said I had cold feet. But I still ended up telling him about it, and he said, 'Yeah, Aiba, I know...me too.' And I think he meant it.

"But do you get it? You know what I'm saying, right, MatsuJun? Can you wish that, ten years into the future, Sho-chan will still buy all the newspapers he can get his hands on and read them, every single article, even the ones that we cut out from older newspapers and pasted into the recent news section? Except he kind of caught on when we tried to get him to read the ones in German, even though he was all for the English ones. And can you wish that Nino will always be telling us to pick a card, any card, and asking us if we feel lucky, pink--oh--sorry, Leader just told me it's punk, not pink. And I also hope, and I want you to wish, that he never stops wanting to prank us, so that when we're really old he'll try to do weird things to our wheelchairs that will probably involve lots of gum and fake animals…right, Jun? And also that he'll never get over video games, but I think that if you were sixty it would be really hard to see the screen on a DS. But maybe Nino will turn superhuman one day, just for that reason.

"And I hope Leader--yes, Leader, I mean you. Eat the cheese; don't throw it at me--hey! Hold on, Jun, I have to wipe cheese off my face. Okay. I hope Leader won't stop making things or drawing or painting even though his hands may get really shaky, and also that his--yours, yes, Lea--taste buds don't go bad so you can still say everything's delicious. Well, actually, that would mean they're already bad--I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY. Wow, MatsuJun, Leader is a very violent drunk. And he's saying that I talk a lot, but I don't think I'm any different, really. Not much, anyway. Um. What else about you, Leader? What about you do you want to keep when you're really old? Wait--hold on, you want to--no, I'm not saying that, Nino's not here and if you knew you said that he would be really mad and I would get in trouble for telling Jun. Anyway, Jun, just so I don't have to gross you out, I'm sure you know what Captain wants you to stick in that wish. It has to do with him and a certain person, which is kind of selfish, but as he has just reminded me, if they got divorced it would kill us all. And I think we all have to agree. So put it in there or else he won't pay for the group ramen dates ever again, okay?

"Oh, Leader is calling Nino. He's getting permission, I think, to say the other thing, except I don’t think he's coherent enough to do that because he's having trouble opening his phone up right now and it's not even a flip phone. And even if he does reach Nino he won't be able to say anything because he's half-asleep in the cheese. Actually…I think he's fully asleep in the cheese. So back to your birthday wish, okay?

"Who's next? Oh, you, Jun, right? Well, I really really really hope that when we're old and sickly and can only remember the refrain from A.Ra.Shi and nothing else, that you'll still be DoS and weak in the morning and really bitchy when people ask you to do things. And I hope your nails will still be painted and also that your hair will still be impossibly soft and perfect, because I, I think that would be really good. And even if none of that stays the same, because we can't force our bodies to comply with our wishes, I still wish that you'll come into my room and want to sleep in my bed, and before that tell me that you love Arashi and Sho and Nino and Captain and me. I wish that you will say it the same way you said it five years ago, when I was brushing my teeth so you thought I couldn't see your face. But I could, because you were looking in the mirror, and you were crying a little bit and hugging the pillow really tightly and your hair was all messed up because Nino put frosting in it--

"--Aahh, this is kind of embarrassing for you to hear, isn't it? And it's embarrassing for me to say it, too, because this happened a long time ago yet I still remember all of it. But I guess that's just what happens when you love someone a lot, right? Yeah, I think so. The embarrassing stuff just comes out and you can't help saying it even if you'd rather die than admit it all. That's what's happening now, I think, because this started out as me just planning out your birthday wish, and it's still that--it just has all this extra good stuff in it, like a panda that's eaten too much bamboo, which is good because pandas have to eat a lot, but it has to wait for awhile so everything can digest.

"Or it's like you with a hangover, MatsuJun, because you don't want to go to work but it's work so you have to go. But you won't do anything unless I tell you funny stories to get you out of bed, and then I get to pick out your clothes and wash your back in the shower and make you breakfast. And even if I make your kitchen really messy and use all the shampoo or use that instead of soap on your body, even so, you still tell me you love me, and that's the extra, really good stuff, right? Right, Jun?

"Ah, and lastly, wish that I'll keep on letting you sleep with me. Because, Jun-chan, you hog the blankets, and even though snuggling is okay, you do violent snuggling and it's hard to sleep like that. Even after the sex. Yeah, even after that.

"Well, I hope that you remember all of that, because I said a lot and I didn't write it down or anything. I couldn't have, I don't carry around pens and I know Captain probably does but he's asleep on the cheese. Your phone is doing a beepy thing, and I think that means I'm running out of time, since it's already been a long time since I started this message, so I'll just stop here, Jun. We're going to have fun tomorrow anyway so I can see you then and tell you all about this, just in case you forget or didn't get a chance to hear it. So, um, happy birthday again, Matsumoto Jun-chan, may you have many more to come, auld lang syne…wait, that's not--wait--oh, good night, okay? Sorry I can't be there tomorrow morning to make you breakfast, but I'll do it the day after tomorrow if I can. Oh, Captain is awake now, he says--he says 'canary pants,' I'm not sure why. Okay, your phone is really beeping now, so I'll go--BYE, JUUUUN!"

beeeep.

6:27 AM

"Aiba, you--you are an idiot. Just so you know, I hope you never get any smarter, because that means you'll just sound stupider and your voicemails will get longer and make less sense than they do now. And I don't think that's even possible.

"I didn't have an official birthday cake yet--they put the wrong number of candles on the cake yesterday, which was…kind of insulting. Do I look like I've just turned thirty? I didn't mind that much, I mean, I was grateful for the cake and everything, truly, but--thirty candles. That's older than Leader!

"Oh, and I just wanted to let you know that if I did wish for everything you told me to wish for on your voicemail, I would probably have to sit in front of that cake for hours before I finished. And by the end of my wish Captain would have inhaled the cake, candles and all, and told me it was 'seriously delicious.' So I'll just come up with my own, much shorter, wish, so I can actually have a piece of my own cake.

"…But thank you for all the ideas. They were great. Um. Yeah, really.

"And I know you're not awake yet, but if you want, when you wake up, you can come over and I'll make you breakfast. Just so you don't mess up my kitchen. And then we can meet everyone later, and have ramen and go drinking.

"…And then you can come over, and…yeah. Sound good?

"Well--call me back, okay? I'll talk to you later. See you."

6:30 AM

"By the way, I don't hog the covers--your blankets just aren't big enough for the both of us."

--

Tomorrow I'll be in Charlotte until Sunday night, so when I get back maybe I'll have recuperated enough to talk about school and life and the horrible college application process--and my new friend who is a sweetie, and also Jack McFarland. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

niji ga kirei da yo!

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:29:23 GMT

Firstly, I thought this wasn't happening until Wednesday, but no, it's the 17th, not the 18th, and as my computer clock tells me it is Tuesday in Japan already. (Yeah, my computer is still on Japan time.) So, because I am a complete dork and have no shame, here we go:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the now 25-year-old Kazunari "I Like Hamburger--Gyoza, What's That?" Ninomiya, EVEN THOUGH HE STILL LOOKS NOT A DAY OVER SIXTEEN. But I love ~~love love love LOVE~~ him anyway--let no one deny that I like my boys just a little on the skinny side. (Say it with me: tall and lanky, TALL AND LANKY. Or at least fairly tall and lanky.)

And just in case you're feeling a little like a pedophile, have some medicinal Ohmiya to counterbalance: one, two, three, four.

MORE LOVE: this is what I like waking up to, shake it!; not only did he write this song, he also committed a mass burglary of hearts at the end; OKOGE NO SUUU-PUUU, supu de okoge! and manly Nino kissin' boys and frocliking on a pretend beach.

I am not good at finding links. My stamina level is very low, even for my favorite JE boy. Oh, life.

BUT ACTUALLY, there is more than just self-gratuitous picspam--there is fic. To be more precise, there is porn. Oh my. I was really intending to finish the monstrous Ohmiya fic by--well, by the time Nino's birthday rolled around, but obviously so much for that. So, to fix this situation, I wrote porn instead. No, really, it was that easy!

This is unbeta'd, even though I read it through once or twice (whilst blushing all the while) for grammar and spelling errors, and also things that make me cringe, although there still may be alot of those.

title: clockwork (or, the untitled nino birthday fic PWP)
pairing: Ohmiya
summary: There's a clock on Ohno's wall, right across from his bed. (Also in this one, Ohno is a machine, Nino doesn't know the limits of his own body, and there are puppies and Aiba/Jun. Who's on crack, now?)
rating: R

Clockwork

Over Ohno's shoulder Nino can see the clock--fat, gigantic, one of those rustic European ones that somehow found its way into Ohno's room. It looks out of place amongst all the sketches and reference materials Ohno has tacked to the wall, but there's an aura of space around it, as if it repels everything within an inch of its frame simply because it's just different.

Above him, Nino can hear Ohno muttering, the sound dropping to nothing and then rising up again as Ohno shifts. He does this a lot in the middle of sex, and Nino finds it endearingly and hopelessly cute, if a little strange (but when isn't Oh-chan strange). Usually Nino tries to pay attention to what Ohno's saying, but he's come to find it's really just a lot of random gibberish punctuated with tiny, breathless Ninos.

"Ah," Ohno's breathing hitches as he's on the downtake, forehead resting above Nino's chest, shifting forward. "Nino…"
Nino smiles, stupidly, boyishly, knocking noses with his boyfriend on purpose. "That wasn't my fault," he snickers.

Every time they do it, it's a game to Nino. It's not that he's trying to belittle the act, or mock it--on the contrary he is, in his own words, 'making it more enjoyable as the days go on.'

Ohno says, that sounds like there's not too many days of this left, and Nino looks at him, pretend-hurt all over his face, and says, no, I am a very creative man, Satoshi. And Ohno agrees.

First it was a pattern of real games, starting with shiritori (it went on for awhile until Ohno, lost in concentration, kept forgetting the previous word), tic-tac-toe (with chocolate syrup--but even Nino won't divulge much about that story), and janken (which had resulted in Ohno naughtily scissoring his fingers together over Nino's fisted rock). Then, when they got bored of that, it became more of a mind, a physiological, thing--on a certain Wednesday, Ohno proposed to Nino a certain situation:

"You pretend you're MatsuJun," he'd said, whispering in their empty room, centimeters away from Nino's mouth, as if his thoughts were much too filthy to be said in a real voice, "and I'll be Aiba-kun."
Nino snorted, already tugging on his shirt. "Only if I can be Sho-kun next."

(He was, and Ohno became Nino.)

"That was kinda dirty," Ohno had said afterwards, panting hard, watching as Nino threw his tie to the corner of the room.
Nino grinned. "No, it was really dirty."

Then, "And you weren't bitchy enough as Jun-kun. I guess we'll have to work on that."

They don't speak of that in public, not even when drunk, and especially not around Sho (but Nino once slipped to a completely wasted MatsuJun and Aiba, who were both, while completely disgusted by the idea, still eerily fascinated (one against his will)).

And after that, it's a free-for-all, a carnival of sorts--Nino has recalled saying, let's pretend we're on camera, while Ohno once expressed a desire to be completely and utterly silent (which was nice, Nino remembers; he likes Ohno's eyes, and will take any chance he can to really look into them, even when they're shut).

Today, as Nino was huddled over the stove, making their dinner, Ohno had come up behind him, smelling like dry sweat (they still hadn't showered, and practice was rough) and laundry detergent, and said, "So, today--."

Nino did not bother to look up. "Let's see," he said, fiddling with the knobs on the stove, "how long you can last, Oh-chan, without going too fast."
Ohno laughed, hands coming up to Nino's shoulders, squeezing playfully. "Whose definition of 'fast' are we going by?"

"Fast, like," Nino answered, finally getting the stove to fire properly, "that one time we did location with the granny cheerleaders, and how fast it took you then to learn that dance--"
Ohno moved away to sulk (magnificently, as only Ohno can). Nino heard him slink off and said cheerfully, "Yes, well, it'll be fun!"

So they're here, now, tangled in some complicated pretzel, and seven minutes have since passed. Nino is watching the clock move in its slow, doomed way, each second ticking off another small burst in Nino's stomach, a tiny firework of sorts that makes his belly spasm and his insides jerk--

"How long--?" Ohno gasps, dripping sweat from the ends of his hair. Nino tears his eyes away from the clock on the wall for a second to watch the tendons in Ohno's neck move, the subtle variance in skin tone as he swallows, hard.
"Ten minutes," Nino answers, voice still relatively calm. He doesn't add how this is as long as he can take it, because that would ruin everything and he would hate himself--he also simply can't find the energy to say anything more. All the thoughts in his head have become purely concentrated into one tight ball of sex, into don't you dare come, motherfucker, don't you dare--

Nino should have anticipated this. No matter how much stronger he is than Sho he's still weaker than Ohno, especially when it comes to stamina and endurance, and the build-up of pleasure he had hoped would lead Ohno to snap is instead tearing him apart. He's hysterical; every cell in his body is screaming Ohno's name to the tempo of the secondhand.

"Ah, long time, ne," says Ohno like he's talking about the weather, the fucking weather.
Nino says, "Yeah, a fucking long time," and it comes out more like a cross between a hiss and a growl--but Ohno likes that, and makes a tiny sound in the back of his throat, barely noticeable (but Nino always notices).
"Do you like the way I say that?" Nino says now, running a shaky hand through his drenched hair and then moving to Ohno's neck, "do you like the way it's not just fucking, it's fucking--yeah, you do, Satoshi, don't you, you like that first bite, you like the cck sound, it makes you feel good inside, doesn't it--"

He splays his fingers, then curls them in as Ohno starts to mutter again, this time more urgently, with less breath. Nino thinks, maybe I can win this--

His eyes flick from the hellish clock to Ohno's face, one to the other, faster and faster until eventually they blur into one thing and Ohno is the one who's ticking, like a bomb yet to go off. Fifteen minutes, Nino whines in his head. Just not twenty--God not twenty--

"Say it again," Ohno grunts suddenly, body slick, moving just a bit quicker, "say that again--"
"What, Oh-chan?" Nino smirks, despite his inner hysteria, "fuh--no, wait, why don't you make me say it."

Ohno's knees knock into Nino's legs and he can feel it, through their connection, he can feel the way the coil is slowly loosening, bit by bit. "Come on, Kazu," Ohno moans--it's the first one of the entire evening, even though he's completely soaked in his and Nino's sweat. "Just say it--just--"
"You're making this harder on yourself," Nino whispers, if only because he's afraid that if he raises his voice he'll scream. "You've gone longer, I know, come on, Satoshi--"

Inside his head, though, it's a different story altogether. Just let go, just come, come on--

Ohno moans again. Nino feels a surge in his stomach, different from the already-present ache--it says something like, you damn stubborn bastard. But he ignores it; channels it out through his lips instead--

"You damn stubborn bastard," Nino growls, "you want to win, don't you."
"No," Ohno replies, without hesitation, and there's a change in his tone. "I know I can win," he says, like he's known it all along.

In his present state Nino is not so alert, and gasps when Ohno leans down to lick a solid trail from Nino's collarbone up to the corner of his lips and then kisses the spot. "You're the stubborn one," Ohno says, giggling slightly. "You'll lose."
"Wh--?" Nino begins to say, then cries out, completely surprised, when Ohno changes his angle just an inch to the left. The smile on his face is brilliant and victorious and Nino wants to scream and kick and throw a tantrum but he's too busy trying to blink away the stars behind his eyelids--he's too busy trying to keep in control when clearly, he's out of it.

"Hm, Ohno mumbles, glancing quickly behind his shoulder, "Twenty-three minutes--this is a record, for you."

"You fu--," Nino groans, hips arching, eyes screwed shut, willing every part of his body to just hold on for one more second, "you fucking--"
"Sorry, Kazu-chan," Ohno laughs, reaching up to stroke Nino's cheek--and the gesture seems so out of place, but it makes Nino moan anyway--, "you lose."

He thrusts against Nino one more time, knocking their hipbones together and grinding--it reminds Nino of how they dance backstage, it reminds him of--oh God, if only he could think right now, but Nino loses it completely right then. He doesn't even care about the damn clock anymore, doesn't care about how he'll never beat Ohno's record time of twenty-six minutes with his right hand--he just goes, and as he starts to come hears the chime of the hour play--ding…ding...ding...six...o'...clock.

Nino attempts to hold some sense of balance and thinks, ah, wait, keep up! as his brain and body go wild, he tries to control the waves that come over him but really, he was never a great swimmer. Vaguely he feels Ohno's nose poking around in the hollow of Nino's throat, like a puppy seeking comfort or play--Nino's still shaking, and trying to catch his breath, and is a little annoyed at the puppy squirming around on top of him but he can't ignore it even if he tried.

"Ahh," he breathes, finally settling down, but he still feels electric, like if he rubbed his hands together they would burn. "I hate you," he tells Ohno, throwing a hand over his face just for the effect. "Hate you."
Ohno laughs loudly, only it comes out slightly muffled; he's still nosing around Nino's neck. "Didn't you say this would be fun?"
"Oh yes," replies Nino dryly. "It was loads of fun, I bet, for you--"

But Ohno is up, now, and turning them both around so that he's the one lying on his back. He says, "It'll be fun for you, don't worry," and moves them around a little so that Nino is curled up on Ohno's torso, completely strung-out--but still, of course, up for anything.

"What," Nino says, confused. Then he notices where he is. "--oh."
"Yeah," Ohno says, smiling. "Sorry, you were the only one."

Nino, who is still miffed at the reverse victory, sits up on Ohno's stomach and folds his arms over his chest. "What was your record again?" he asks.
Ohno pretends to think. "Twenty-six minutes, but with--." He holds up his right hand. "You weren't there. Well, you were, but on the phone--."

"Mmm," hums Nino, and slowly begins to slide down Ohno until his chin bumps against something hard--yes, hipbones, he thinks, and feels around with his lips just to make sure he's going in the right direction. "Why don't we go for thirty-six right now?" he proposes, wiggling his fingers on Ohno's stomach and scratching a little with just the tips of his nails. "--If you can, that is…"

He hears Ohno whimper; at the same time his thighs go taut. As Nino opens his mouth, he steals a quick glance at the clock and marks the time in his head --start time, six oh-two, he thinks, end time--six-ten on the dot.

-fin

notes: According to my guy friends (and educational Internet resources), twenty-six minutes is a really long time, but it is possible if you really have that much endurance. They don't know about thirty-six, but then again, neither does Ohmiya. Also, if you haven't seen the granny episode of Mago Mago, you must. Basically Ohno and Nino had to learn this cheer dance and it took Nino about two seconds to learn, whereas Ohno took half of the episode. Poor boy. XD

And that concludes my spastic birthday post for Nino--if you never come back to my journal, I completely understand. :D REAL POST TOMORROW.

eta: OH MY GOD I HATE RICH TEXT SO MUCH

bambina~

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:41:15 GMT

I seem to have written fic.

It's been a LOONG time, folks, but I suppose now that it's summer my writing gland wants to partay it up. Not only do I have two fics in the making (one in planning stages (a collab) and the other, an Ohmiya, a whopping 13 pages already), but I'm writing a short story that's not even close to being done at 20 pages. This is all Word, folks, 12 pt Times. And it's not like I started them in March and am picking them up again--I started the Ohmiya yesterday and the short story a few weeks ago. I never write thirteen pages in two days. I usually don't even write things that are thirteen pages, let alone twenty, single-spaced.

I have officially exploded.

Anyhow, I know you all came here for the fic, but since you're going to read that anyway I decided to ramble a bit. :)

title: Charmed (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE TV SHOW. I wanted to name it 'Third Time's the Charm,' but whyjennifer already has a fic named that, and I know it doesn't really matter but IT DOES TO ME. D:)
pairing: Koyato, a touch of RyoPi
genre: Y'all are mature. PG.
summary: It might have begun with a game of spin the bottle mixed with truth or dare--Shige doesn't really remember.
notes: This is, first and foremost, REALLY LATE ~*~*BIRTHDAY FIC*~*~ fic for saturnial , who had requested, on her birthday spam post, comment spam and/or comment fic. But I was super duper late so I decided to make up for it by writing her this monstrous thing (that includes, on her vague request, 'Koyato fluff, awkward and inefficient, with Pi and Ryo on the side') that may merge on badfic (not kidding). However it is love- and fun-filled, I assure you of that. <333

ENJOY THE RIDE.

Charmed

Shige doesn't know how it started--it might have, perhaps, begun with a simple game of drunken spin-the-bottle combined with truth or dare (Pi likes those games, and Shige can't comprehend exactly why). Someone might have spun the bottle around to Ryo for the tenth time, gotten tired of asking questions of an explicit sexual nature, and instead nudged the bottlemouth over to Shige.

"Sooo, Shige," this someone had slurred. "When's the last time you got some?"
Shige had turned red. (Maybe.) "I HAVEN'T EVEN PICKED TRUTH OR DARE YET! And that's not even a truth or a dare! Truths are yes or no questions! Dares are--"
"Can someone shut him the fuck up?" Ryo had perhaps screamed. "Why does Shige have to be the only one who talks his ass off when we drink?"

The certain someone (Shige's memory is a little blurry, and can't really match the antics to the face, if of course this happened at all) had clapped Shige on the back and brought their foreheads close together. "Now now, Shige. This is a matter of utmost importance. You have to tell us--I mean me. Just me. Focus on me, Shige."

Shige could feel four other breaths sneaking into the neck of his shirt. To calm down, he started reciting multiplication tables under his breath. "Fourtimesthreeistwelve," he'd breathed, or he would have, if this had happened at all, "Fivetimesisxisthirty…"
"Oh godammit," Ryo sneered, pressing his nose against Shige's neck and causing him to forget what seven times ten was. "Obviously the man hasn't gotten any since his first."

There was a pause.

"That is, if you had a first at all," Ryo finished, laughing maniacally.

Ten times ten is a hundred, Shige thought, but the equation stuck in his throat. Drinking wasn't exactly his forte, and he, when fully intoxicated, spouted the truth like nobody's business. He'd decided to keep his mouth shut. (Or he would have kept his mouth shut in a circumstance like that, anyway. Shige just knows.)

After that nobody was around Shige anymore, and legs and arms had scrambled over him to form a huddle around the bottle. So Shige had sat pouting in the corner, thinking about girls he'd almost had but never did and maybe that one time when he was drunk, with that boy, but--

"'Kay," Koyama says, raising his arm and waving it around. "I got one."
"Ooh," Tegoshi giggled. "It's not gonna be better than mine, though."

Shige was a little lost. He tried to crawl towards the rest of the group, but the somebody accidentally on purpose kicked him in the shins and he collapsed onto the futons.

"So my plan," Koyama had said, with a thumbs up, "is that we are gonna set Shiggy up with the woman of his dreams."
"Ohmigod! That was my idea," Tegoshi giggled again.

Shige still didn't really know what was going on, but by the way Massu had put a reassuring hand on his back and handed him a carton of chocolate donuts, he should have known.

"Mmmkay, so I hereby declare," announced Pi, if Shige remembers correctly, "the initiation of Operation Get Shige Laid. Whoever sets him up correctly and with good favor wins my good lovin.'"

Koyama had raised his glass to the middle and whooped, with the rest of them following suit (except for Shige, who was, by that time, out cold).

And maybe that's how it started. Shige can't really focus on the moment--drinking's not his strong suit, after all.

But the next day at work, while Koyama was feeding him hangover pills, Pi came over and pressed his forehead right against Shige's.

"Operation Kill Shige's Virginity begins now," he bellowed, and stood back.

(And Jin had wandered in right after that. "Virginity?" he said, very excited. "You're betting on Shige's virginity?"

"I am not--," Shige began, before settling into a sulk.
Koyama nodded. "Whoever wins gets Pi's good lovin', apparently."

Jin clapped his hands. "Fun! Can I join?"
"No!" Shige screamed, horrified. "I don't want Akanishi betting on my--I mean--if I am at all, that is!"
Pi looked up. "You're in that de-nile thing, aren't you? The river in Egypt?"

Ryo couldn't stop laughing all through practice.)

I.

In accordance with the plan, Tegoshi sets him up.

By the matchmaker alone Shige should have deducted that the entire thing would never work. Most likely whoever he was going on a blind date with would be a hairdresser, or be one of those scary girls with too much makeup that he tried to stay away from on the streets. Tegoshi would, undoubtedly, give Shige not a date, but hell. He could feel it already.

So he tried to back out. "Tegoshi, you know, maybe it's not such a good idea if…I mean, you don't have to do this."
And Tegoshi had giggled. "Nonsense, Shige! Maria-chan is a nice girl. Plus she's very experienced. She'll give you a good time." Wiggly eyebrows ensued.

Shige, afraid he would be covered in strawberry syrup and hung to the wall with ropes of taffy, made Koyama come with him.

He'd agreed, but reluctantly. "This is supposed to be your blind date," Koyama had said as they walked along the route Tegoshi had given Shige. "I don't want to be a third wheel. Or the third--ew. Nevermind."
"But," Shige started, choosing to ignore the last comment, "I mean. What if she. What if I don't come out alive."

"Don't be dumb," Koyama said, turning Shige into a narrow alleyway. "I'm sure she's nice. Tegoshi can't have a ton of crazy friends, there's got to be one that's--"

Suddenly, in the awning beside them, a girl materialized (that's what happened, Shige swears up and down) out of thin air ("Maybe she did," Koyama had said, wide-eyed, "I didn't see her before that. HOLY CRAP").

She had braids pinned up in buns on the side of her head, and her hair was a vibrant shade of pink. And she was wearing a dominatrix uniform.

"Hi, I'm Maria!" she said, sweetly. Then, noticing Shige's look (he'd just noticed that she had a whip tucked into one of her thigh-high boots), she crossed her legs and blushed.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I couldn’t change after work, but Tego-chan said that was okay with you…"

Koyama, who was inching backwards, tugged instinctively on Shige's arm.

Shige, nearly frozen, bowed stiffly and took a few steps in the direction he came. "Um, no, that’s actually, I have--I have this thing to do, I'll let Tegoshi know we couldn't work out today bye!"

They ran all the way back to the station. On the train ride home, Koyama wouldn't stop making bondage jokes, and Shige had to keep apologizing to the old ladies sitting next to them.

II.

After Tegoshi has a serious pouting session in Ryo's lap (Koyama explains the whole thing the next day at work, complete with a vivid description of the cones on her bra that Shige had tried not to look at too much), Pi takes Shige out for coffee.

"Well," he says, pursing his lips, "I guess we all know what Tego's into now."
"SHUT UP," Shige had yelled, right in the middle of Starbucks. "SHUT UP I DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT."

They order. Shige gets one for himself and Koyama, who always complains that Shige is a selfish coffee-drinking bitch and ends up drinking out of whatever Shige bought, and Pi fills up a venti with shots of espresso for Ryo ("He needs his perkiness").

While waiting at the counter, Pi taps his finger against his chin and hums. "You know, I've been thinking," he says, looking intently at Shige through his sunglasses, "if Koyama were a girl, you guys would be perfect for each other."

Shige explodes. "Huh?" he says, knocking over the sugar with a spasm of his elbow. "What the hell are you talking about?"

A disgruntled store clerk comes over to wipe up the spill, and both of them bow politely before slinking off to the side. "I mean," says Pi, "that you guys are best friends, right?"
"Well, yeah, but I don't see--"
"And I've seen you two drunk. It's like softcore porn, you know that?"

The barista handing them their coffee shoots them a look, and Shige dies a little inside.

"No, I don't know that. I didn't want to know that," he grumbles. "But that aside, it's still weird, you know, to think of your best friend as your--your--anything other than that."
Pi shrugs. "I got used to it."

Shige watches him pour a ton of sugar into Ryo's huge cup of coffee, and tries to let the words sink in. "What?" he finally says, except it comes out more like, "Is that why you and Ryo are always late to morning meetings?"
Pi shrugs again and turns to hand Shige his drinks. "Boys are fun. Did you know that there's a number on your coffee sleeve thing?"

Not knowing which statement to address first, Shige just looks down at his own coffee. There is, indeed, a cell phone number written in bold, green ink on the outside sleeve, neatly placed aside the Starbucks logo.

This is a first for Shige. It's also a first for Pi, apparently, because after the realization that there is a phone number on Shige's coffee cup sinks in, he goes wild.
"Let's go," he says, pulling Shige earnestly out of the café, "we have to tell everyone."

Shige's mind flits to Ryo, then, inevitably, to Koyama. "W-why?"
"Because this is epic, Shige. Do you know how this is gonna work out? We're gonna steal your cell and call that number. Then you're gonna get laid."

He gets them a taxi and they pile in. Shige is still confused. He checks Koyama's cup, just to make sure there's not a number on there, but there is--the same one, in the same exact place.

"Whoever it was tried twice," he tells Pi, who is sucking down his own coffee like it's water. "I mean--look." He shows Pi the other cup, and Pi gives a thumbs up.

"Bow chicka wow wow, Shige," he says, licking off his foam mustache suggestively. "That's a good sign. You're gonna get lucky tonight, boy."

Boy? Shige thinks. Like, 'boys are fun?'

He looks at the number again. As each second in the car passes, the situation becomes intriguing, and almost, as it plays out in Shige's head, illicit.

III.

Pi drags Shige across the hallways of the jimusho with such force that some coffee spills out onto the floor, and Shige prays that no sempai will notice and come running after them.

Once they bust through the doors of NewS' break room, though, he's praying for different things.

"Okay, everyone, listen up," says Pi, thrusting Ryo's cup of espresso into his hands and setting his own empty coffee down on the table. "Through my divine intervention, Shige is going to get laid tonight."

Tegoshi cries what he probably imagines to be some encouraging war cry, even though it sounds more like it could break a mirror. Shige cringes.
"But wait," Koyama says to Pi, "if you win this thing, who gets the good lovin'?"

Ryo and Pi both point at each other. The whole room nods in understanding, but Shige cringes again and thinks, are boys really that fun?

"Anyway," Pi says, grabbing both coffees from Shige's hands, "lo and behold, people, there are phone numbers etched onto Shige's coffee cups. What's more, they're in green--which everyone here knows is associated with erotica."
"Is that one mine? Can I have it?" Koyama says, reaching for one, but Pi snatches it out of the way.
"No. This is an important specimen that must be preserved and tested for good lovin' purposes. Quick, someone! Get me Shige's cell phone."

The whole room rises in an uproar. Shige is startled as he feels something digging into his pocket and looks down to see Koyama's hands on his pants. He screams.

"I buy you coffee, and this is how you repay me? By getting on your knees and--"

Across the room Shige hears Ryo approve in an illicit manner.

"--HEY--and helping the enemy?"

Koyama grins. "You can't say you're not interested in who wants to get in your pants, Shige."
"Why are you?" Shige inquires, just as Koyama finds his phone.
"Because the number was written on my coffee cup as well, so I have the right to know," Koyama answers, and tosses the phone to Pi. "Dial!"

Everyone gathers around the table. It's reminiscent of the night this whole thing started, except Shige is now placed in the middle of the circle, smack in between Pi and Ryo.

Ryo dials, and Pi giggles loudly behind his hands. Shige feels like he is once again in middle school, at some kind of lewd sleepover, but then he realizes the first time he had a lewd sleepover was when he joined NewS. This knowledge is not comforting.

"Ssssh, it's ringing!" Pi stage whispers to silence. Tegoshi muffles a squeal.

After a few rings and dirty comments from Ryo, someone picks up. The entire table shakes, and Shige drops his head in his hands (but keeps his mouth uncovered).

"Hello?" someone says. It's a male voice, and everyone leans into the table.
"H-hello?" Shige chokes out, after Ryo elbows him in the gut. "Did you…leave your phone number on my coffee cup?"

There's a long, long silence, and then the man laughs shortly. "Oh. Um, wow. Well, I guess, yeah."

Ryo falls off his chair. Pi, on the other hand, is shaking the table uncontrollably.

Before Shige can say anything else, though, the man goes on. "Look, this is going to sound weird, but--"
"--I have the gay hots for you," Koyama whispers, nearly inaudibly, and Pi kicks the table hysterically.
"--You're not the woman in the red dress, are you?" finishes the man.

Suddenly, Ryo and Pi stop making so much noise and Koyama's mouth drops open. Shige himself is at a loss for words.

"N-no," he says, clearing his throat. "Wait, did you mean…"

Pi starts shaking the table again, but this time in a more panicked way.

"Yeah, I meant to leave it on hers," the man says, then coughs. "Um. Yeah. Sorry, I must have done your order on accident. Wow."
"Yeah, wow. I'm gonna kill that sonofabitch," Ryo snarls, and Tegoshi slaps him on the arm.

Shige, surprisingly, feels a tad murderous himself. "Uh, well, okay. Bye," he says, and hangs up.

After that everyone sits around for awhile, unmoving. Shige is bewildered by how shocking the whole thing was, and even more so at how everyone is so let down.

"God, this is so depressing," Pi pouts, and stands up. "I'm gonna get another coffee."
Ryo stands up with him. "I'm coming," he says. His voice has dropped, it seems, an octave or two. "Tego, come with."

They leave, with Massu trailing behind, and Koyama slumps forward on the table. "That was crazy," he mumbles.
Shige sighs. "Yeah." Then he drops his voice to a mumble. "You know, I'm kind of disappointed."

Koyama laughs quietly. "I thought you'd be. But that's okay. So you wanna have dinner later?" he says, stretching his arms so that Shige is trapped in between them. "You pay, since it's your misfortune."

Shige hits him on the head.

IV.

After dinner that night, Koyama makes Shige come over.

"It's so lonely at my place," he says, "and it's raining, it might thunder. Come and keep me company."
Shige rolls his eyes. "This is the first time I've heard you complain about thunder."

But he comes over anyway. They run through the rain like they ran through the alleyway away from Maria-chan the dominatrix, and Shige asks Koyama if he remembers that night as they toe off their shoes in the doorway, dripping and soaked through.

"Of course, it was only a week ago," Koyama says, wiping his wet forehead with his wet sleeve. "And you can't really forget someone with pink hair and cone boobs."
Shige laughs. "And thigh-high boots."
"And a can of strawberry syrup in her belt loop," Koyama says, opening the hall closet and tossing Shige a towel. "No, I'm just making that one up."

Koyama says something about tea, and Shige drops onto the couch in the living room. He marvels at how the apartment is large enough to have a living room, and notices how the place is warm. From the kitchen comes tinkling sounds from the cups, and the hiss of the stove, and everything's so inviting, but at the same time so…

"Kei," Shige says, still dripping, "why don't you have a girlfriend?"

The tinkling noises stop, and Koyama turns around. "What?"
"I mean--you have such a nice apartment, you really should have someone else to share it with," Shige says matter-of-factly.
"I won't have such a nice apartment if you keep watering my couch. That's why I gave you a towel, dumbass," Koyama says, smiling.

Shige knows he's avoiding the question, but the questions in his head keep on coming. It was the saké--too much of it and he'll never shut up. "But why don't you, Kei?" he tries again, this time muffled through the towel.

"I don't know," Koyama replies, as the kettle starts to whistle. "I did. You know that."
"I remember her, yeah. Did she not like it here or something?" Shige asks. He realizes he's slurring his words, but he's not sober enough to attempt to stop.

Koyama shakes his head, but doesn't go on. He pours the tea and brings it over the couch, which is by now entirely damp. Shige takes a cup, brings it to his lips, and sets it down again.

"Do you think I'll ever get a girlfriend?" he whispers.
Koyama turns to stare at him. "You really do talk too much when you're drunk, you know that?" he says. "Why do you keep thinking about it, anyway? I thought you never wanted to do this Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu plan anyway."
"That's not the name of it," Shige says indignantly, and, seeking something to lean on, settles against Koyama, who is stove-heated and comfortable. "But I don't know. It's already failed twice. Maybe I'm just not lovable."

It's silent. Shige takes a sip of tea, and closes his eyes.

"Can I stay here?" he asks, resting his head on the nearest solid surface.
"Not on my shoulder," Koyama says, without conviction. He laughs. "I guess. I can't send you home like this, your mom would kill me."

Shige makes some noise of agreement. Moments later he feels fingers on his hands, soft and seeking, and then the teacup is gone.

He dreams about that--fingers giving him teacups, and warmth, lots of it. It makes no sense, but he's satisfied.

V.

A day later, after practice for their upcoming tour, Pi pulls Shige aside.

"I heard you fell asleep on Kei," Pi says in a dramatic voice, his hands on Shige's shoulders. "I'm telling you, Shige, just go out with him."
Shige, who is hungover, pretends he didn't hear that. "What? Speak up. I have a headache."
"Screw Koyama's brains out," someone else whispers, and Shige turns slowly to find Ryo glaring at him. "You are such an idiot. I'm even starting to feel sorry for Koyama, which is impossible, so I'm not. But I am."
Shige blinks. "What?"

Ryo sighs exasperatedly. "Why am I wasting my time? I hate prudes. And picky eaters."
Pi cuts in. "What Ryo means, Shige, is that Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu (we changed the name, by the way, when you were in the bathroom that one day) was designed for you to find a good person to take care of you and kiss you goodnight. Obviously since you've failed twice, the third time's the charm, right?"

He doesn't really get it, but Shige nods anyway.

"So for the third time, go for Kei. It'll work," Pi says, taking his hands off Shige's shoulders and pinching his cheeks instead, "because it already is."
"Except for Mr. I-Have-To-Protect-My-Virtue, here," Ryo sneers. "Do you wash yourself with vinegar every night?"

VI.

On the train home, Shige contemplates Ryo and Pi's words. He thinks about it through every stop, and even when he's going through the ticket barrier, so he almost goes through the ticket-in booth instead of the ticket-out one. Shige keeps on thinking, thinking, thinking; eventually he winds up with a killer headache. He wonders why Aogaku never taught him anything about this.

He thinks about it when he's walking along the dark streets, completely alone, so that he sometimes curses aloud and stops in the middle of the road just to go over something in his head.

So for the third time, go for Koyama. It'll work. Because it already is.

It doesn't really hit him until he's home, having tea at the table with his mother.

"Mom," Shige says, bringing the mug to his lips, "how do you know when someone's good for you?"
His mother blinks, a little taken aback at her son's sudden interest in romance. She can't say she's not grateful, though, and chooses her words carefully.

"Well," she begins, "when you know that you're safe with that person. And you know that, no matter what, that person will take you into their home and let you stay there."

Shige nods and looks into his teacup. "Okay," he says quietly. "Thanks."

Then, just in case, he asks his mom if she's ever heard of Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu. His mother, who once picked up the phone when her son was asleep and accidentally had a (very polite) conversation with Yamashita-kun and Nishikido-kun, lies and says of course not.

VII.

So the next day, after work, Shige asks Koyama if he can come with him.

"You mean, to my house?" Koyama asks, a little confused. "Sure, but--"
"Let's talk," Shige says, swallowing down every other irrelevant thing in his mind. "I want to talk to you."

Koyama's mouth opens, then closes. He has one hand on the table and the other in mid-air, as if he wants to reach out and grasp something (Shige half-hopes it's him). "Okay…"

They walk through the city in a silence far from relaxed. Shige tries to talk about how Ryo offered him, this morning, to give him a couple of phone numbers for his 'ladyfriends that don't mind someone inexperienced,' and Koyama responds and laughs in all the right places, but the conversation dies down after that. It's awkward, and Shige is wondering if he has decided to do the right thing.

He probably hasn't, he thinks to himself, and bites his nails off as they near Koyama's apartment.

"What are you doing?" Koyama snorts when he turns to see Shige gnawing at his nail. "That’s gross."
"I'm nervous," Shige says, then immediately tries to cover up, "for, um, our upcoming concerts."

Koyama looks at him strangely. "This is like, the fourth tour we've done. You can't be nervous."
Shige shrugs and looks away. "You know I get nervous every time."

Except he doesn't, and that's the problem. As they reach the apartment building and Koyama pulls his keys out of his pocket, Shige wonders if he could get used to seeing that, if indeed Koyama is the charm that will make this third try work.

In the elevator, though, he realizes that he's already used to seeing the keys, and riding up to the fifth floor, and stopping at 507, and watching Koyama jiggle the lock until it gives. Thinking about this makes it easier.

When they walk into the apartment, it's still warm, just like last time. Shige, whose hands are shaking, exhales loudly.

Koyama looks at him again. "You're weird," he says. "And that's what you usually say to me."
"Kei--," Shige starts, then clears his throat. "I--um--Ryo and Pi, they--in the--it was scary, Kei, like you wouldn't believe, so I--." He's a nervous wreck, and stops before he says anything even more stupid.

Koyama turns away, in the direction of the kitchen. "I'll make tea."

VIII.

Shige wonders if this is what girls feel like when they're on the verge of confessing to someone they just realized is Mr. Right, and then wonders if it's okay that he's referring to Koyama as Mr. Right. It confuses him, so he accepts the teacup that Koyama passes to him and talks to it instead.

"So a couple of weeks ago," Shige starts, "when Pi and I went to Starbucks, he told me that boys are fun."
Koyama splutters, and when Shige turns to look at him, he's got tea running down his neck. "What the hell? What kind of come-on is that, Shige?"

Shige's mouth drops open. "Oh my God. I didn't mean it like that. Shit, shit, shit, I am such a bad person, shit," he says, and buries his face in the throw pillow next to him. "SHIT."

He hears Koyama giggle, and then try to disguise it as a cough. "It's okay. Start over."

Starting over is harder, because Shige's entire plan (that he devised at his kitchen table) is now worthless and he has to start from scratch. "It's kind of weird how you're reassuring me," he grumbles, and takes a gulp of his scalding hot tea.
"Yeah, it is," Koyama says, and Shige can hear the grin in his voice. He refuses to look, though.
"Well," Shige continues, "yesterday I asked my mom how you would know if someone was right for you, and she said if they kept you safe and let you come home with them or something. And that's what you--I mean, it made sense." He wonders how much he's blushing. "Oh, and before that, Ryo and Pi accosted me in the hallway and shook me around and told me you'd be my third try. And third time's the charm--"

He's cut short when Koyama suddenly leans over close, very close, and rests his chin on Shige's shoulder. "Go on," he says.
"--Third time's the charm," Shige repeats, this time with a squeak at the end. "In Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu."

Koyama laughs, softly, into his ear. "So is it working? Am I charming you?"

Shige shrugs (on the shoulder Koyama is not on). "I guess," he mumbles.
Koyama comes closer so that his lips are brushing against Shige's neck--though not quite fully there. "How about now?"

The correct answer, Shige knows, is that Koyama has been doing his awful charming thing for the past two or so years, and Shige has been stupid enough not to notice until now. But he's too embarrassed to say this, and just, very slowly, turns his head so that his face is now in Koyama's hair.

"Yeah," Shige says, quietly, daring to snuggle just the tiniest bit. "Yeah, okay, now."

EPILOGUE:

Pi strides into the break room with a venti cup from Starbucks. Ryo follows soon after and even Jin tries to wiggle his way into the Very Important Meeting about Shige that was called.

"You're in KAT-TUN," Ryo roars as he slams the door on Jin's foot. "GO DO SLUTTY THINGS."
"You guys are being slutty right now!" Jin whines, trying to squeeze in the tiny crack. "Let me in!"

After putting his coffee down carefully on the table, Pi turns around and whispers something to the door; not unlike in the way one would speak to a puppy. Jin's eyes and mouth both open wide and then he nods and turns. All of NewS, seated at the center table, can hear him running down the hallway.

"What did you tell him?" Tegoshi asks.
"That he can have the winning prize later," Pi says.

Ryo says something very nasty about the size of Jin's--

"Not that prize!" Pi yells, indignantly. "The one I found in my bag of chips today. Anyway, I hereby call this meeting of the Operation Shige Rabu-Rabu Forces together."

He sits down and adjusts his glasses, which Shige bets he wore especially for today.

"So this meeting has been called to announce that Koyama Keiichiro has successfully completed this operation as of--," Pi squints down at his notes, "--twenty-three hundred hours last night."
"Don't you mean zero?" Shige says. "Wasn't it midnight?" he asks, turning to Koyama.
"No," Koyama says, "that was the--"

Pi slams his coffee on the table. "Okay, nobody needs to know about that, as ecstatic as we all are that Shige finally got some, which means that Operation Get Shige Laid was also a success. However, after certain pieces of evidence were presented to me about a week ago, Operation Kill Shige's Virginity was not a valid task due to the fact that Shige, one time in high school, did the thing. With--well, you guys know."
Shige pales. "Who told you that?"

Pi, trying to keep a straight face, snorts. "Ryo-chan and I called your mom," he says, and gets up and runs out of the room as Shige howls defiantly.

EPILOGUE TWO:

Shige is beginning to appreciate Koyama's couch more and more.

They're on it again (though not at it, Shige thinks, yet), stretched out lazily, Koyama all intertwined within Shige so that the latter can't move at all.

"Oh, so I was thinking," Shige says, in his immobile state, "who started this whole thing? You know, Operation Thing?"
Koyama, his head buried in Shige's arm, says something unintelligible, but Shige can make out the words 'drunk' and 'Pi.'

"But," Shige mutters, thinking to himself, "weren't you the one that said, your plan was to set me up with the woman of my dreams?"
He can feel Koyama blush.
"Are you a woman?" Shige says, trying not to giggle.

Silence. Then:

"I like to consider myself feminine at heart," Koyama says, muffled in Shige's arm.
"Uh-huh," Shige snorts. "Why do you have a skirt in your closet, then?"
"Look, the plan was to set you up with someone, it didn't really matter what gender--THAT WAS LEFTOVER FROM A DRAMA, OKAY."

-end

Note: Green isn't really associated with erotica, at least from what I could find online. It came from a conversation my friends had about M&M's that went something like, HAY GUIZ, GREEN M&MS R APHRODISIACS! It turned out not to be true, though. Even when we tested it with a real bag of M&M's. :3

on the real idol finale!

Thu, 22 May 2008 02:12:37 GMT

YAY DAVID COOK!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

i've run out of clever subject titles

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:31:28 GMT

LAST ONE. This baby is actually slowing down my computer. Oi.

XII
“I’m a Filthy Whore”

Years after my secluded and fiery affair with Purchase and everything that resulted from it—which is a lot, mind you—I live in a Princeton dormitory, attending the college that my father and mother forbade me to go to simply because ‘it wasn’t Yale’. But here I am, majoring in anthropology and psychology (both pertaining to people—ironic for me, isn’t it), finally living a normal life that does not include broken pieces of anything, thumping heartbeats, or redheads.
Actually, I still keep in touch with Samson. He is a backpacker—a tourist, he keeps on telling me to call him, but I insist on backpacker, for the word tourist brings up images of Hawaiian shirts and large cameras and that is not Samson. But at the moment, he is in Thailand, and I am in New Jersey, and we are practically worlds apart. He tells me to keep in contact with him because, as he puts it, being away from me feels like that first car ride.
“What?” I was truly bewildered by this confession the first time he told me so—the night before his trip to New Zealand. “What do you mean, being away from me feels like—”
And he kissed me, to shut me up, which he soon found out was the only way that worked. “It’s not hard. Figure it out.”
The next day while he was on the plane, I thought about it. It was not easy, because my memory disposes of certain details that may be important after a period of time, but I managed to figure it out. For documentation and novel purposes, I repeat the memory as it stands here, for others to sift through, to figure out what in the world Samson was going on about. I promise that it makes sense.
On that day, Samson drove carefully and ideally, as if he had gone through driver’s education a million times just to get everything right. I couldn’t understand why he had put so much blame on driving, as I saw his skills fairly better than mine—he’d never come in close contact with a passing pedestrian, for instance, whereas I had almost run over a man in a wheelchair on my way to school once. This is why I take the school bus now.
But on the corner of 23rd and Pierriot, we came to a red light—and passed it, going steady with our speed limit, but passing it cleanly all the same. The very first thing I did after we ambled across the no-go zone was check for police or angry drivers. Upon finding none, I turned to Samson, making sure I had a very confused look on my face, like the kind that actors and actresses must perfect for the obligatory scene in which one kills another for no reason at all. Why the big deal, you may ask? Taking my personality into account, it really may not seem so, but I am very in tune to driving rules, and am always absolutely apalled when anyone breaks them.
I had thought of Samson taking a dagger out of nowhere (just like the whistle) and stabbing Purchase many times. Apparently this image worked well with my facial features, for when Samson caught sight of me he turned pale instantly.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair to shake it off, “why are you looking at me like that?”
“You just ran a red light,” I screeched, pointing back to the offending corner. “It switched to red seconds before we’d gotten to the light and then you just passed it. Did you even see it? Did you?”
Still pale, I watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the passing shade of the side-road trees. “Oh, yeah.”
“Yeah, what? You saw it and you passed it? On purpose? What?”
“See, um, that’s why I hate driving so much,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact with me—so different than before, but then again, I guessed he wasn’t expecting me to exhibit such an outburst. “I miss red lights a lot. It’s a habit of mine.”
My jaw dropped. “A habit?”
“I mean,” he quickly said, to cover up his mistake, “it’s not a good habit. It’s just, I look more at the road than at the sky, because that’s what I was told to do, years ago in Driver’s Ed, so sometimes I miss lights and I pass the red ones, just because I don’t catch them fast enough.”
That’s so stupid, was the first thing that ran through my mind, but I knew saying so wouldn’t be such a good idea. It was, after all, our first meeting, even though I’d forgotten that long past already. “You could get killed,” I stated firmly, turning away from him and crossing my arms across my chest, “all because your reactions aren’t fast enough. This is why you take the bus, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Well, yeah. I don’t have to worry about it, then.”
We sat in silence from then on, me still angry at how little a thing could potentially damage someone’s life so easily, and he trying to concentrate on the traffic a little more (for my sake only, he confessed later). As we neared Vermont, he asked me where I wanted to be dropped off.
“St. Abernathy’s, if you know where that is,” I replied, understanding fully how one could miss the fact that the poppy-drowned mound was a school and not a sanitarium. “It’s down the road, that big…”
“I know,” he said, and I noticed his tone was a little subdued—in fact, he sounded almost shocked. “Can I ask why?”
“No,” I said, a little scared. He looked a little wary now, as if offering me his hand and a ride was a mistake, and he would now have to suffer awful consequences. (Oh, how little I knew of him then!) “I mean—why are you asking?”
He shook his head, shifting uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. I noticed his grip on the steering wheel had become tighter. “It’s nothing. Weird place, that’s all.”
“I know what you mean.” Really, do I know, I finished silently.
551 Vermont came faster than I expected—and when it was time for me to leave, it was harder than I expected. Here I was, sitting in a nice car with a nice guy who I’d never even met before. What could I have said? Thanks for the ride, and then never see him again, like I was using him? But he was the one who offered! I was still frustrated as we pulled into the miniscule parking lot littered with poppy petals, and when he turned off the ignition and turned to me, I look up at him angrily.
“Um,” he said, retreating back into his own seat. I realized he had been reaching over me to unlock my door. “Sorry.”
“Oh,” was my feeble reply. I could feel my face getting warm, and I knew it was another one of those times that I hated being a soft thinking and delicately made woman. Curse the lesser sex, indeed. “No, it’s not your fault.”
Taking this as approval, he leaned over me once again to unlock my door. For a split second, I smelled eau de businessman: slick oily smoke from bars, a hint of alcohol from too-late nightclubs and expensive cologne to try and cover it all up. But he pulled back quickly, the lock only having been a latch and Samson having been the politest guy ever, and I lost that feeling of infatuation, the feeling of being in the dark.
“Do you need a ride back? I don’t live far from here,” he said, looking out onto the not-really-there grounds of St. Abernathy’s Non-Correctional School for Girls. “Since the bus station is closed, and all.”
“No, I’ll be fine. I have a ride back,” I lied.
He turned to me, looking a little apprehensive. “Then I’ll be seeing you.”
There was no other word for the situation than awkward. Quickly I got out of the car, trying not to kill myself by doing so, as that is how I usually ended up with car doors. “Try not to die,” I called by way of farewell. “You’re a pretty nice guy. It’d be a shame.”
And I shut the door, leaving his words unsaid. I heard them muffled through the window, but that was all. As far as I was concerned—which was really not a lot—that was the last time Samson and I would be in such close quarters. I forgot about him soon enough.
It was the tingly realization that I was finally in the same place as Purchase, breathing her air, stepping on gravel that she herself had walked on, that allowed me the same adrenaline I’d lost minutes before to shoot through my body once more. I went from relaxed and even listless to hyper and jumpy in mere nanoseconds. With amazing speed, I ran from the parking lot to the backfields of St. Abernathy’s—a short run, but it took me a long time to catch my breath.
When I reached the green—not really green, but I am going on the brochures here—I stopped and panted, ashamed at my total lack of physical endurance. My hands on my knees and my head light, I looked around and saw nobody. The dry, yellow fields full of weeds were completely empty. Catching my breath in my throat, I began to panic: was I too late? It was only half past noon, surely Purchase would have waited, or if she had left, I would have seen her in the empty distance. But I saw no one; no matter in which direction I turned to look.
I bit my lip. Was it over already? Had I lost my first and very possibly last chance? The organs within me oozed defeat and rejection; and I slid down to the spiky earth, the cold fence behind me my only support.
Just as I was thinking how much the emo-kid scene became me, I felt something probing the back of my neck. It was cold and sticky, and…it was giggling. I immediately jumped up from my dejected position and looked around frantically, ready to kill (in figurative terms) whatever thing had crept up on me.
“You’re early,” said the attacker. I instantly ruled out insects and mute serial killers, and then turned around, trying to make sight of whoever it was.
“Who’s…?” I mumbled, turning back to the fence.
And in the middle of that little square of dead wildlife, wearing bright colors as if to rub in my face how completely oblivious I could be—there stood Purchase, hands behind her back, (fake red) bangs swinging flirtatiously in her eyes. Once again every inch of my fragile anatomy imploded, and as we stood there looking at each other, I wondered if she could sense that I was hyperventilating on the inside.
With one finger, she beckoned me towards her, a smile spreading slowly across her soft features. She looked almost devilish, almost as if she was calling me over to devour me with her brightly painted lips. But I didn’t care. Let her have her way with me, I thought, and with a burst of pride that was almost rancor I threw open the fence gate.
And just like in the movies, things slowed to a complete stop and the heroine is allowed time to dig deep into her skull, pulling questions out of nowhere, coming to conclusions that no one else can see. What was I expecting on that day? Life, liberty, and/or the pursuit of happiness? A girlfriend, or a lover? Hell, or heaven? Thinking about it now, I know that I wasn’t expecting anything. All I knew was that I wanted Purchase. Where, I don’t know or don’t remember—perhaps in my arms, or standing behind me, breathing down my neck, or in my bed, or in my mind (and she succeeded in that). I opened that gate not because I wanted something I could deal with in my spare time, but because I wanted someone who would tell me what to do when I didn’t know—something that had the potential to break me, because I was tired of being the one who broke things.
(The allowance of thinking time is over, and my movie returns to normal speed. I am waking, it seems…and now I am walking…)
“As I said,” Purchase purred, taking my hand in her cool, bony fingers as I neared her, “you are early, my dear.”
(It did not take me long to learn that Purchase could sensualize anything, if she so put her mind to it. I don’t even think she needed to concentrate—it was an involuntary reaction, second only to breathing. “Darling, pass me that cake,” she would think she was saying, only it would come out in a low, deliberate hiss so that everyone within five feet of her felt the same chills along their spine that everyone else was. As it was then, the word early came out eaaaarly, like the vernacular of a witch, and I wanted to die…just die.)
But her accusation made me dizzy nonetheless. “What do you mean, I’m early?” I asked her, looking at her watch. It was quarter ‘til one. “You said noon, didn’t you?”
She laughed. “Heavens, no.” Squeezing my fingers in her hands, she pulled me towards the back door of the art room. “I specifically wrote down one o’clock. I remember exactly. Maybe it smudged.”
It hadn’t smudged—the handwriting was as clear as day, the ink precise and thin. But I decided to play along. Common sense was outdated, according to my subconscious standards.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said meekly. “So where are we going?”
“In here,” Purchase said smoothly, unlocking the metal door and then pushing it open. “You’ve been in it before. My room.”
Never actually having gone on a real date before, I had no idea how to act. I had a general idea—you don’t get to be seventeen without knowing the basic facts of ‘going together’—but actually living it was a different matter entirely. As soon as we were both in the art room (well, now I had my doubts as to what the room actually was), and the door was securely locked behind us, we stood together, saying nothing, showing everything. I was nervous. She was complacent. I was sweaty. She was perfectly composed.
“Soah,” I mumbled, and then swore. I’d meant to say so, uh, but it came out soah. Like the ebonics version of ‘soar’. It seems as if that day, I’d lost my ability to put together words properly.
Purchase giggled.
I tried once again to speak correctly. “So, um…” That started out well, so I went on, pronouncing every word like I’d learned it yesterday. “Why is this your room?”
“I live here,” she answered, not batting an eyelash.
“Oh yeah?” I didn’t believe her. She was cracking her knuckles now, and averting my eyes. My people skills were at it again.
“Yes, really. I was disowned as a teenager,” Purchase told me, loud and with better diction than I could have ever mustered. “St. Abernathy’s took me in when I was fifteen. Ever since, this has been my home, and I’ve been trying to reform…”
It was like watching a bad documentary. The ligthing was mediocre, the script mild, and the story bland. It was because of my own insensitivity that I refused to believe Purchase’s story; my own ignorance that created this very first rift in our relationship. I just thought she was high, but she was completely and utterly sober. I’d thought she was merely telling a story, but she had chosen to expose her life to me. In short, I am a horrible person. Do not let anyone deny it to you.
“Okay, wait,” I finally cut in, tired of hearing what I thought was complete bullshit. “You’re telling me that you were disowned by your family, so you came crawling to this place, and they took you in, and now you live here? In this room? I thought this was an art room. At least, that’s what they told me…and are you high?”
She smiled, only this time, it was sad. Seeing such a change in Purchase-atmosphere immediately made me feel like a bitch: had I done this? Was I the reason for that sad smile? It hurt me, it really did.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, truly apologetic. I shuffled around to her side, pulled out a stationary metal stool from underneath one of the tables and tugged on her sleeve. When she turned to me, her face was so doe-like—eyes so wide against her frame of red—that the urge to kiss her was nearly overpowering.
But as most things go, I had to resist. “Sit down,” I said to her instead, offering the chair in place of my lips. Thankfully, she accepted this choice and straddled the metal circle, while I went and sat on the one across from it. It wasn’t much of an improvement to our simple little date (my pathetic first, and probably her more experienced zillionth), but at least we were at eye level.
“So keep on going.” I was ashamed for my earlier disbelief. Surely if she had dragged me all the way down here she wouldn’t be telling me lies, was my more thought-out reaction. Surely if the story had been purely mythical, she would be laughing by now.
Before speaking, she reached across the empty space that stretched between our chairs and took my hands—still warm—in hers, still cold. “I have this thing about contact,” she explained to me, running her fingertips over my palm lines. “It drives me crazy if I don’t have any physical connection with the person I’m talking to.”
It explained future mishaps of Purchase grabbing the people she was talking to in public, causing bouts of molestation accusations, but I could not find any prior evidence. I didn’t care, though. Her hands were soft. “Okay.”
So then she continued her story. Abandoned—no, not abandoned, just ‘dropped off’—at the age of fifteen, St. Abernathy’s took her in as a student and an art teacher. She went to school on weekends, with the adults, learned the same things that everyone else her age did but all she was to them was a more advanced delinquent, one who had done something so horrible that she had to be removed from the other masses and put into the congregation of the grown-ups. The reason that Deidre and Sandy (DG #s 1 and 2, she told me, quite amused at my made-up labels for them) knew her was because they smoked together on the weekdays. Or, as Purchase put it—‘sometimes we smoke, and sometimes we do…other things.”
“Do the teachers know about this?” I asked, my voice foreign to my own ears. It had been awhile since I’d spoken.
“Of course they do, but they won’t say anything as long as we don’t cause scenes.” Her face contorted into that same melancholy state and I wanted again to kiss it away. “Last time you came—I caused a scene.” And she laughed.
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Oh, no. I’m not a regular student, so they don’t treat me like one. They just took away my cigarettes.”
And she gestured to her empty cardigan pocket—where she kept her smokes, I guessed.
“They call it a non-correctional facility, but anyone who really steps in this place isn’t fooled,” she breathed, her little girl’s voice sounding like a hush-hush secret. “We’re all different, just like in a normal school, only we’re all out and about, like in a real correctional institute.” Her fingernails began to wander around the inside of my wrist. I imagined my veins popping, blood pouring out everywhere. “Deidre’s in here for drugs. So is Sandy. NyQuil—” That one didn’t have a real name, apparently. “—Is in here for stealing. I’m the worst one of all, though.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. I tried to look her in the eyes, but I was too scared. So I focused on our intertwined fingers, instead. “Oh yeah?” I murmured, like I already knew that it must have been something dreadful. And in a way, that’s how I felt. But I tried to cover it up, tried in vain to remove my foreshadowing thoughts. “Tell me.”
With deliberate slowness, as if all the frames in our movie for two had been poisoned, she leaned towards me and put her smoking gun, hush-hush lips to my ear. “I’m a filthy whore,” she whispered, and all blood immediately rushed to my head.

XIII
The Naming of Olive

I felt as if I had been obliterated to pieces and no one had bothered to tell me. Here I was, sitting on a stool in what might as well have been state prison, my knuckles white with fear, my pores exploding with sweat, my mind running fast, like a freight train on crack. And I owed it all to this beautiful, poisonous, whore of a woman—who was leaning over me, her pined-after red hair spilling over my face and shoulders, her bombshell lips sliding themselves (on their own volition, yes) across my jawbone and neck, leaving gardenia-dripping promises on my skin, sewing hush-hush secrets deep into my blood vessels.
She pulled away suddenly and I bit my lip hard, biting the urge to ask her to do that again. My hands, which were cold and clammy, were now submerged in her warm ones. The roles had reversed. I now existed to be comforted, and she was there to make sure I didn’t bust into a million pieces (although I was quite sure she would paste me back together).
“You’re a…” I began, my voice hitting an octave I didn’t know was possible.
Laughing, Olive squeezed my hand securely. “You look so shocked. Yes, I am. And they’re trying to fix me here—non-correctional facility, my ass—but I just don’t see how you can fix something like that.”
Everything moved into place, like techtonic plates or a ghost directing a jigsaw puzzle, but there was still one thing I didn’t understand. “But—how were you caught? Or did you turn yourself in?”
She licked her teeth, wiping all traces of lipstick from their white surfaces. It was her way of remembering. “They caught me on the rue de Bellavance…”
The fictitious street in the French-themed nature park, in the city. Quite a pretty place by day, but a haven for who-knows-what kind of people at night. And now I knew. But she wasn’t finished talking.
“…With my main catch. A man in a suit.” She closed her eyes. “If only we’d picked a different place…”
I didn’t want her to think of him. I softly squeezed her hands, and she fixed her attention back on me. “So…”
There was a period of silence. I was trying to sort out of my thoughts: was this man in the suit the same one who I’d seen her with that fateful day against my willow tree, smearing lipstick and tugging ties? Did she love him, and do they still keep in touch? Could she ever love again…why did she start selling herself in the first place? Selling, that was the correct word, wasn’t it? They won’t arrest you in this place unless you’re parading your body for money. But within my own school of the rich, I’d heard different—not to my face, but in bathroom stalls with your feet placed on the door in front of you.
“Did you do it for the money?” I blurted out, then turned away, blushing scarlet. “I mean, I’m just…”
But she laughed, instead. I was getting used to that laugh, the same one that had bewildered me to nothing, when I had first met her. Now it was like birdsong, or a television droning in the background. “Yes, I did. I sold myself, if that’s the correct way to introduce yourself as a whore.” And she winked.
What happened next can only be described as a Corny Moment—whether it be in a movie, a book, on television, or in real life, I am sure all of you know what I mean. It’s those times in fiction, or life, when everything fits together, things make sense, and gears start turning. Wherein the sun came gliding miraculously over the hilltop, I felt…calm. I wanted to kiss her again, this redhead (and at the moment I didn’t care whether the color was fake or not) with the canary-yellow cardigan and the bright blue jeans. I watched my hand begin to slide out of our web, and then up to brush those crazy bangs out of her eyes. Yes, cue the sappy music, folks. And turn up the sun.
But none of the sliding or the brushing or the staring deeply into each other’s eyes until we turned to mush actually happened. What did happen, though, was that Olive was christened. By me.
“Sold yourself,” I repeated, in a whisper.
“Yep. For money and all,” she whispered back.
(And now, the music crescendos…)
My backup reasons for my next action were, in this order: 1) well, she’s a whore anyway, so I’m sure she gets it a lot, 2) I can’t help it, 3) it’s my first date anyway, I might as well break the rules, and 4) who else is possibly going to know?
Who else, indeed.
I asked her, “How would you like to be Purchase, instead?”
She grinned. “Why can’t we just stick with Olive?”
And I replied, in a steadily waning voice, “I hate that name…”
And then I kissed her.

XIV
In Love with an Asylum

After that, everything seemed to fall into place, as if whoever was Up There had taken pity on me and then decided to send me everything I needed to make the rest of my first date non-disastrous. And for the most part, it worked. I could speak in full sentences without slurring words together to form phrases from other dialects, I did not act rude and shameless (or I might have, but being seventeen, I did not consider it rude and shameless), and I kept my urges under control (thank the Lord).
But I had kissed her once, and she had not resisted in any way, shape, or form, so I took this as a good sign. Urges were caged, yes, but that does not mean I let them go once in awhile. Through fields that we made real, because we wished so (dry, yellow grass turned lush green in the blink of an eye), I reenacted scenes from old films, mostly ones in which heroines were kissed.
“Frankly, my dear,” said Purchase cheerfully, watching me strut in the sunset, “I don’t give a…”
And I hated that line, so I kissed her again.
We frolicked. That is the only word to describe what we did. She responded when I called her Purchase, and she called me out with lines of poetry. No flower was left trampled, no careless little bunny rabbit left uncaptured (and, of course, there really were no flowers or bunnies. Imagination does do wonders, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise). Little was spoken between us, except for a few outbursts of thankful clarity, but we spoke. I found it magical. I’d never been high before, but I was willing to bet that it felt like being with Purchase, as cliché as it sounds, because all the tingling, all the buzzing, all the worlds imploding within my head…it sounded about right, if the druglords at my own school were correct in their advertisements.
Dusk fell and we with it, on a mound of raised, soft dirt. I was exhausted, from running and jumping and screaming and blowing dandelions to dust and, above all, Purchase.
She was a nuthouse, an asylum. A book of mental diseases stored into one person, she personified the word crazy with simple gestures and words. But it wasn’t scary crazy, like when you walked into a hospital and you tried not to make eye contact with anybody or like in horror films where the crazy people are always at fault. She was good crazy, in my opinion; her unorthodox formality and brightness making me hum with excitement. Of course she had her bouts of normality, but I knew in the back of my mind that if she had acted like my best friends or any other normal person I knew back then, I would have kept away from her like the plague.
“The end,” sighed Purchase, her hand reaching for mine. She’d let go a few times within the past few hours, and yet it already felt odd and chilly without her fingers intertwined with mine. I felt, strangely enough, like a child that had finally let go of her mother’s hand in a crowded street.
“Already?” I murmured into dark sky. There were no stars that night, which is the detail that sticks out the most in my mind. We were staring at our bottomless galaxy, our endlessly soaring abyss. “So soon?”
“I’m afraid,” said Purchase gravely, her hand turning cold in mine, “that all good things must come to an end.”
And yet we lay there still. Either we were too caught up in the day or each other or the night sky to get up, or we were just really, really tired. Myself, I was aiming for both. Purchase, I think, was falling asleep at even intervals of five minutes, which explained the fact that she would remain silent every time I asked her a question, and then five minutes later she would answer it.
I thought it was one of those intervals, and that she was asleep, when suddenly I turned to see that she propped herself up on her elbows and was blinking sleepily at me.
“Do you have a ride back home?” she asked conversationally, as if she had just woken up and found me lying next to her, not having the faintest idea how I had gotten there.
“Ah, um, yes,” I lied again, cheeks flaring. Thank goodness it was pitch black.
“Mmm, really,” she said. She obviously didn’t believe me. So much for thanking the dark. “I’ll call you a taxi, shall I?”
I watched as she pulled out a sleek pink cell phone (the colour clashed horribly with her hair, and I savored it) from her cardigan pocket and speed-dialed a number. The line rang a couple of times, and when it clicked she asked for a taxicab in front of St. Abernathy’s.
“Oh and,” she said, winking to nobody, “it’s me, Olive.”
That could have meant a few things, and me, being seventeen and in denial of my sexual ignorance, chose to think that she was talking to some guy she’d had an affair with, or a group of guys that she had been hired for. (For all I really knew, it could have been a relative or something. But then why the wink? There were so many catches.) I sunk lower into the dead grass, sighing to myself. Was she mistaking me for a payer? Did she expect money at the end of this date? I hoped not, for various reasons, one being that I wanted a relationship and not a one-night stand, and the other being that I had no money whatsoever.
But when the taxi pulled up and the door opened for me, the only thing Purchase bothered to do was blow me a good-bye kiss (I liked the familiarity, but I did not enjoy the loss of intimacy we had shared over the past several hours). When I was halfway in the cab, though, she came towards me, leaned in close to my ear and said, “I’ll write ya, cutie. Write me back. We’ll talk that way.”
To be honest, I didn’t think she’d write. Or even more truthfully, I didn’t want her to write—what if it caused another scene like the last one, and Christal or my father (not my mother, because she is usually not in touch with such things until they hit her smack in the face) found out the whole story? But she kept her word, and wrote it down, even. In her first letter, written this time on beautiful, gardenia-scented stationary, she gave me two addresses: one for 551 Vermont, and the other for a 263 Ophelia Avenue, which was the street right off of Vermont.
“That,” she wrote in curly script underneath, “is my home address. I go there often, just to make sure that my brother’s doing okay without me. You can send letters to this address, too—nobody will know. I swear on it.”

And, from November 1st - 30th, 2006, this is what I made of National Novel Writing Month.

TO BE CONTINUED?

....

Yes. Promise. :)))