A/N: I love Oshitari and Mukahi -- so I decided I would have a go with them However...I find their personalities hard for me to pinpoint. So I’m sorry if this is weird or OOC or anything.
Time to Forget
Mukahi checked his watch. He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes already. He hated waiting. He didn’t even know why he’d bothered to show up in the first place.
He was here because it had been so long since he’d last seen him -- the person who had called him up suddenly, as though he’d just remembered Mukahi’s existence, after forgetting it for a while.
Why did it even matter? That was a good question. Mukahi had at first wanted to say, no, I don’t feel like seeing you again -- but he’d agreed, anyway. Maybe it was for old time’s sake, even though Mukahi had never believed in those kinds of things.
They were in high school now; almost finished high school, and they hadn’t even spoken to each other much since junior high. For a while, they’d kept in touch a little -- but since they were in different high schools, they’d drifted. Naturally. Even though they’d been quite the pair in junior high, getting older changed them...
At least, Mukahi thought that getting older had changed him. So why was he bothering to meet with Oshitari now, after not seeing him for a couple of years?
He had to admit that he was curious if Oshitari had changed very much, or very little...in appearance, in personality...
High school was coming to an end, and it brought up memories of the end of junior high, when he and Oshitari had studied for entrance exams and had ended up deciding to go to different high schools...ending a relationship that had been...interesting.
In fact, Mukahi had never quite forgotten Oshitari. He thought of him often, and he even...
“You came.”
“Yeah, I guess I was just too curious about what you wanted to say.”
Oshitari smiled. No -- he smirked. He had always been good at that. He was a couple years older, and he looked it, but he was still the same Oshitari that Mukahi had spent so much time with in junior high.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Gakuto?”
“It has.”
There was a silence. It wasn’t exactly companionable; it was a silence full of questions that neither wanted to ask, but both wanted to know the answers to; a silence that developed from not knowing what to say to each other anymore. It really had been a while.
“Have you met anyone interesting?” Oshitari asked, finally.
“No one as interesting as you were,” Mukahi admitted. He’d had his share of flings, of course, but none of them had lasted. He’d discovered that no, he really didn’t like girls at all -- and there were no guys who could compare with Oshitari, in any department.
The thought made him want to snicker.
It also startled him. All this time, he’d been comparing people to Oshitari -- which really meant...that he’d missed him?
“What about you?” Mukahi asked.
“Well.” Oshitari shrugged. “Let’s walk, for a while.”
So they walked, side by side; almost touching, and yet, miles apart.
It had been too long...
“Still playing tennis?” Oshitari asked.
“Yeah.”
“Just as flashy as ever?”
“I’m even better, now,” Mukahi said, smugly.
“Still flexible?”
“Heh.”
Another one of those silences ensued. Mukahi could hardly stand it.
“Have you gotten into some kind of fancy college or something?” Mukahi asked. “You were always the genius.”
“I have some options, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet. It depends,” Oshitari replied.
Depends on what? Mukahi wanted to ask -- and yet, for some reason, he stopped himself before he did ask it. The possible answers made him...nervous.
The silence stretched on, and on, and finally, Mukahi snapped. He didn’t care if anything he said ended up sounding stupid, or sentimental, or anything else -- he just had to say something.
“We were really something, weren’t we?” he commented.
“Yes. We were. Something that’s hard to find after you’ve already lost it,” Oshitari replied. That was a statement that could be taken many different ways. Mukahi didn’t know how he should interpret it, so he left it alone.
“Why did you call me?” Mukahi asked.
“I suppose I was feeling nostalgic. The end of high school is almost like the end of junior high was...The only thing missing is you.”
For some reason, that made Mukahi’s heart beat just a tiny bit faster -- and that annoyed him. He’d never been one for emotion. That kind of emotion, anyway.
“Oh? You miss our little ‘study sessions’?” he asked, with a smirk. His smirk had always been able to rival Oshitari’s. Yes, they’d been quite the pair.
“Maybe I do,” Oshitari replied, his own smirk in place.
They faced each other, and actually looked at each other, for the first time that evening. The smirks faded after a few moments, and the silence closed in again.
Oshitari’s hand reached out, and brushed through Mukahi’s hair.
“It’s longer,” he commented.
Indeed, Mukahi’s hair now reached past his shoulders. He shivered at the feel of Oshitari’s hand brushing through it. He remembered that feeling all too well...
“So is yours,” Mukahi pointed out.
Oshitari’s hand rested at the back of Mukahi’s head, and stayed there.
“It’s been too long, hasn’t it?”
“Maybe it hasn’t been long enough,” Mukahi said.
“Maybe.”
They stayed where they were for the longest time; until finally, Oshitari closed in, and kissed Mukahi -- and Mukahi responded to it, because only Oshitari had ever been able to kiss him like this.
“Old habits die hard,” Oshitari said, when they broke apart.
“I guess so.”
“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Do you believe it?”
“I didn’t.”
“Neither did I.”
Predictably, another silence followed. Their gazes never wavered; the two sets of eyes searched each other for answers.
“Why did you agree to meet me?” Oshitari asked.
“I guess I was feeling nostalgic, too,” Mukahi replied.
“It was pretty easy to say goodbye, then, wasn’t it? When we were young and thought that there would be more opportunities.”
“There were many more opportunities,” Mukahi said. “But they all sucked.”
Oshitari laughed. “I think I missed you, Gakuto.”
“I think I actually missed you, too, Yuushi.” Mukahi spoke that name for the first time that evening; a name he thought he’d probably never use again. A name he realized that he’d wanted to speak again, badly.
No, he’d never quite forgotten Oshitari Yuushi -- because he hadn’t wanted to, after all.
Oshitari smirked. “Well, now that we’re all grown up --” this statement followed by a vast amount of snickers -- they’d both been grown up for quite some time -- “I think that maybe we should try again.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it has been too long,” Mukahi said. It seemed that Oshitari didn’t know what to say in reply to that. For a genius, he was quite slow, sometimes.
Before another awkward silence could occur, Mukahi tugged Oshitari closer, to close the gap between them, and planted a kiss on his lips.
No, he’d never been one for those kinds of emotions -- but somewhere along the line, he’d developed some of his own, and they were hard to ignore.
“Then again, I don’t know if it could ever be long enough for me to forget,” he said.
~~~~~