andrew_in_drag | Oneshot: The Book of Love

Title: The Book of Love
Author:

andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Kyo x Toshiya
Rating: soft R
Warnings: language, slashy bits
Synopsis: A list of things I don't like about you.

The Book of Love

When I was a kid, I compulsively kept notebooks. I drew plants I saw and animals I dreamed of. As I got older, I drew people I wanted. I drew you. I kept lists, books and books of lists.

A list of things I don't like about you:

Number one: You're a bitch. Actually, you can be a real cunt. And so irritating. God, I've never met anybody as irritating as you. Put simply, nobody else makes me sweat the way you do. Nobody else gets under my skin that way.

When I first told you that, you were in the bath and I was washing your hair. You had your eyes closed against the shampoo, and your face was fresh as a child's. I accidentally said it tenderly and the meaning turned on me, somewhere between mind and tongue, just a little slip. You wriggled your toes in the warm water.
“That's the most romantic thing you've ever said to me,” you responded tiredly. “You know, this is a twenty-five thousand dollar bathtub.”
“What?”
“Italian marble. Designer taps. Well made. Strong sides.”
You cracked an eye open.
“What I'm saying is that it's big enough for two people.”

Number two: I can't even fucking insult you properly, then, can I?

“Why do you like it?” I asked incredulously, arching over you. I dipped and bit a nipple; listened to you groan. I'd called you selfish, but maybe I'm the selfish one. I can never cope with anything but your fullest, most undivided attention.
“That's just Kyo, isn't it?” you remarked, guiding my head with your hand.
“It's nice to know I can still irritate you. That we haven't relaxed into complacency.”
“You're mad.”
You snorted.
“Domesticity is death. I ought to get that tattooed somewhere.”
“Please god, fucking don't.”
“Just sit at home with bare skin and look at my illustrated man?”
You traced: the skull leering over my left nipple; the tiger clawing at my navel. Your fingers turned admiringly over the ink, and I got distracted as they started telling their own story. They touched my cock and you smiled.
“I still turn you on.”
“I could be thinking of somebody else.”
“No,” you smiled indulgently, “I know you're not. Irritating you takes care of that, doesn't it? You're like a really, really smart...dog.”
I growled, and realised that didn't really disprove your theory. You grinned, bit my earlobe.
“What I mean is that I have to keep you entertained. Nobody's going to keep your attention by being bland. I like knowing that I'm the only thing in your head, my dear.”
Your hand on my cock got just a fraction tighter, and your lips on my ear felt like something rare.
Softly you whispered, “When you're angry, we fuck so much harder.”

Number three: You drink too much.

I don't drink. You always say you're compensating for me. We have a wonderful house that you filled with things you loved, and because I love you my adoration somehow stretched to all those things as well. They're little extensions of you. I see you in the cream-coloured rug you love to cushion your feet in on cold days, and that's why I got so mad when you spilled all that red wine on it. My stomach clenched with sympathy pains.
I've never cared about a rug in my life.
When you drink you get silly. That's about seventy-five percent of the time. The remaining quarter is when you get quiet and thoughtful, and I know you're thinking about home or about us or about other impossible things that hurt, and that really, you're gone. You're in a sectioned-off part of your mind that I'm not allowed to go to. You sit on the sofa screwing your hair up into a ponytail, and then you let it drop around your shoulders, and you stare and stare.
“Kyo...”
There go the sentences that live and die on your lips. It's nice to know that you'll still let me sit with you and that you'll still get comfort from the feeling of my body close to yours, even if I'm the source of the tragedy playing out in your head. It's nice to know that you don't lose every single thing, the way I do.
“Don't drink anymore,” I say, every time.
“You're not the boss of me,” you slurred on one occasion.
“This is stupid.”
“Wel I'm stupid. I've always been stupid.”
You fixed me with a sudden, sharp-eyed look. “Is that what you wanted? Somebody not too bright? Just sweet and kind?”
“Don't be ridiculous. Actually, you're sweet and kind around everybody all the time. It's only me that gets your dark sides.”
“Mm, I wonder why that is.”
“Toshiya, you're drunk.”
“You didn't say I wasn't stupid.”
“I'm not going to, unless you put that bottle down.”

Number four: You are...the fucking Queen of Sheba, aren't you? I never met anybody so vain. All the times I got weak and foolish and drunk on your skin, and I said beautiful things, you took it to heart. And that's something I always told you not to do, every year before we got together, and every year after.

Your teeth are ugly. I can make unfavourable comparisons about you all day long. Your eyes are black as tar in photographs but when I look at you, they're actually dark brown: layered, like you. They're sunbeams through muddy water. They're sort of greedy with light, hoarding it like gold; your pupils get fat on it.
You keep up a tan for so long that I forget until it turns to midwinter, and then you're corpse-white again, a ghost in the corridors.
And your hair tangles like I wouldn't believe. You moult periodically, a fucking phoenix. Snarls of hair lie on my pillow, woven into your hairbrush, all over the floor and the cushions and in the sink. I love untangling your hair, always have. It's soothing. Sometimes I tug too hard. That turns you on.
These are ugly things. I'd never, ever tell you how lovely they are to me.

Number five: I love you.

You could reasonably ask me why that's such a goddamned hard thing for me to say. You've been in my house for three years; in my bed for four; in my heart for fifteen.
I think I almost said it once, but I got lost on the way. You were naked, still underneath me, and your skin and hair was so enticing that I got distracted and started touching you all over again; that I buried my lips and face in the warmth of your neck.
You say it about once a day: when we have sex, or when I make you laugh so hard you cry, helpless; you're so wonderful, I love you.

When I was a kid, even though my parents didn't keep a photo album, I always thought of my life like that. I pictured all the different glossy photographs, all the different stages, flicking past my eyes in perfect order. Being with you, I've opened up new chapters. The story's changed.
What I've found out: the book of love, actually, is long and boring, and it's full of things that I don't understand. Some parts of it are just euphoric.
Some bits are just really fucking stupid. Like the music we write; it can be transcendental, or it can be nuts.

But you should know that I've got love for you like an entire orchestra, somewhere inside this painted body.
And that the book of love is long and boring. But I love it when you read to me.