Title: Care
Author: Hawk Clowd
Disclaimer: ...I haven't written for this fandom in such a long time that there is absotively no way I could own Gravitation. That responsibility has been saddled to Maki Murakami, like it or no.
Blood Type: Cottage cheese
Warnings: This is a drabble, and all drabble-like things go with it.
Author's Note: This was originally written for marsgirlly, an lj friend. She liked it a great deal, so I posted it. End of story. ^.^ Hope you all like it just as much.
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There were very few things in the world that Sakuma Ryuichi actually cared about. One was his teeth. He was very concerned for his teeth, and he was careful to brush them extra well and floss them when necessary and occasionally attempt to whiten them, although Noriko swore that if he whitened them anymore he'd end up blinding people. Another thing was his hair, and he spent a lot of time taking care of that, too. He dyed it to get rid of grays and combed and cut it himself, even though Tohma often cringed when Ryuichi took the man's scissors from his desk, and he occasionally counted all the hairs he could before he got bored and stopped. He also cared for Kumagorou and singing and people who sang and played music, but those were a given. Oh, and shoes. Shoes were very important; if he walked around outside without shoes, he would get glass in his feet and Never Walk Again and Tohma had made it very clear that Ryuichi should not aspire to be disabled no matter how much fun the wheelchairs looked.
Yes, Ryuichi knew what he cared about, and he always took care of the things he cared about because otherwise those things might go away and he'd be all alone without them. He had learned to associate things that needed to be taken care of with things he cared about, and that was okay. It was nice to work for the things he liked.
That was why he was stunned, of course, when Tatsuha rolled over in the bed he occasionally slept in while he was in Tokyo and Ryuichi was around to let him in and sex him up, and asked Ryuichi one tiny little question:
"Do you care for me?"
Ryuichi's gut reaction was to giggle and shake his head no. Why should he care about Tatsuha? He didn't have to take care of him; Tatsuha was a big boy with a motorcycle and everything, and Ryuichi had been on the motorcycle and it was almost as fun as a wheelchair even though it was a lot more dangerous. Also, Tatsuha was a monk and that meant he had special monk powers -- Tatsuha had told him so. Tatsuha could definitely take care of himself.
As Ryuichi's lips shaped to say the word, he paused as his gut went topsy-turvy and spun him around in his head. Tatsuha could take care of himself most of the time, yeah, but could he take care of himself all the time? Ryuichi considered that. Well, when Tatsuha drove to Tokyo in the rain, he always looked like a drowned kitten (and Ryuichi had seen four of those in his life, and that was very sad) and Ryuichi had to help him to the bath and make him warm and fix him tea and make things better. And there was one time when Tatsuha got lost on the way to a concert so Ryuichi had to coerce someone into driving him to go pick Tatsuha up on the side of the road even though it made Ryuichi late for the concert, but that was okay because it was a joint concert with some other band that ran over anyway. There were other things, too. Yes, Ryuichi sometimes had to take care of Tatsuha, even though Tatsuha could mostly take care of himself.
So what did that mean?
Tatsuha furrowed his brow as the silence dragged on and Ryuichi considered his answer, and Ryuichi almost liked making Tatsuha look so worried even though it was mean, because making Tatsuha worried meant he got to make it up to him later. But it was mean, and Tatsuha had told him a story once about people who were mean and got lots of bad karma, and Ryuichi really didn't want to have bad karma because that involved being a bug for the rest of his life or something.
Ryuichi cleared his throat.
Tatsuha looked at him expectantly.
"I care about you when you can't care about yourself," Ryuichi answered.
Tatsuha looked a little surprised by that answer, but he smiled anyway and nodded, stretching on the bed like a dog. Ryuichi curled up next to him and Tatsuha put an arm around the singer's waist.
It wasn't much of an answer, but it would have to do and that was okay -- Tatsuha was used to rolling with Ryuichi's well-intended punches.
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