FicWad

Crash & Burn

Yeah, we're all fast breakers comin' out of the gates
takin' chances. We're the crash and burn.
Yeah, there is a way with beauty, but you never gave
a love cross the line where none return....
I heard the wind a whisperin',
strong magic comin' on!
They comin' out for sure.
Come see your children; yeah, they're lighting up the skies.
Won't recognize them any more.

"Light Up the Sky" Van Halen


The evening traffic had been light, and Yohji got home earlier than he'd expected. He frowned as he unlocked the door of the apartment - it was dark and apparently empty. He knew he'd told Tai to be in by six. Teenagers...they never listened to anything you said. And the kid had been even sulkier than usual lately...another damn phase...

Yohji flicked on the living room light.

"Shit. It's my dad."

"Tai? What the hell are you doing on the floor in the dark - and who's -"

Looking over his son's bare shoulder, the redheaded boy met Yohji's eyes - and smirked.

*

Tai knew he was in trouble when he got a good look at his dad's face; he felt the cold starting in his stomach and working its way along his arms and legs.

" Go to your room, Taiji. No, I don't want to hear it - I'll talk to you later. And you/..." His father had been staring at Alex like he was an alien species - "get out of my house, and tell your - tell /him that if this is his idea of a joke...it wouldn't fucking surprise me. And tell him I'm looking for him. "

Whatever the hell that had meant.

But Alex had been so /cool /- he'd gotten to his feet, shrugged into his uniform jacket and picked up his backpack... all without losing the crooked half-smile he usually wore. He'd even stopped at the door and bowed to Tai's dad - a respectful, graceful bow at just the right angle, which somehow happened to reveal the new love-bite on the side of his neck that Tai hadn't been able to resist giving him. "Goodnight, Kudou-san," he'd said, as if they'd all just had a nice family dinner together. "See you later, Tai-kun."

"The fuck you will," Tai's dad had said in a low, cold voice. "Get out."

Then his father had gone into his own room and shut the door. Taiji could hear him on the phone, but he couldn't make out what was being said, and when the sound of something heavy hitting the wall shook the apartment, Tai had scuttled for his bedroom.

He was scared of his father, of what he suspected the man was and what he could do, but truthfully, Tai was more scared of Alex. Pretty much everyone at school with any brains was afraid of Alex, even the snottiest senpai, even the captain of the tennis team, who was also the most popular person in the history of the world. Even Morikawa was, and everyone knew that Morikawa's father was yakuza.

Bad things happened to people who tried to fuck with Alex; bad things that involved smoke and sparks and small explosions. Carelessness, coincidence, and faulty wiring, the school said. Yeah, right. Everyone knew it was Alex. And because he was....Alex...it had taken him less than a term to earn a serious place in the hierarchy of Hasujiwa District High School.

Getting into Tai's pants had taken him even less time than that.

HDHS was a big place, and Tai figured he might have lived and died without ever actually having met Alex, if not for the two girls who shared the locker next to his.

"That guy? The new one in Aoki-sensei's modern lit class? Anything?" the girl with pink and white hair and striped Rori-con stockings asked the girl with the waist-length braid and Inuyasha backpack.

"You mean Yuuzai? Skinny? Long orange hair? Freckles? He's weird."

"He's hot. Goro-kun saw him in the boys' changing-room and says he has pierced youknowwhats. I'm going to give him chocolates on Valentine's Day...and maybe he'll show them to me, neh?

Inuyasha Backpack misted herself with something that smelled like melon. "You'd be wasting your candy," she said. "Better keep it and eat it yourself. Shunsuke says he doesn't like girls. Shunsuke says he only likes those bosozoku he hangs out with."

"Waa. Wouldn't you know..." Rori-stockings shoved an armload of books and a bag of puffed rice treats into the locker and banged the door shut. "The pretty ones only like each other." She glanced up and caught Tai listening. "Isn't that right, Kudou-senpai?"

Tai growled and thought of the perfect thing to say back - a minute and a half too late, as usual. The girls had already giggled themselves off down the hall.

He hadn't had to think at all at break that afternoon; he just went. West side of the parking lot, where the guys with the badass motorcycles parked their rides and showed off for whoever wanted to look at them. They were there, their black school uniforms looking strange against the screaming carnival colours of their bikes. Tai didn't know anything about motorcycles and didn't care, but even he could see that one of them was different - low and black and heavy as a stormcloud among the sleek Suzukis and Yamahas - and he recognized the blue and white shield on the petrol tank: BMW.

Sprawled across the saddle was the nearest human equivalent to candy that Tai had ever seen. He had a lot of sticky-looking hair the exact shade of a freshly-licked orange ice-pop, a sleeveless Hello Kitty t-shirt a size too small and a huge pair of mirrored sunglasses resting on his freckled nose. It had to be the Yuuzai everyone was talking about. There couldn't be two people who looked like that...

Taiji stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to look like he wasn't staring. /Holy shit/. If you put every fantasy he'd ever had into a bag and shook them together, this is what would have fallen out.

One of the /bosozoku/, a big, dark kid, sauntered up to the BMW and leaned against it, sticking a cigarette in his mouth. He said something to the bike's owner, who grinned and made a flicking gesture with his fingers. The end of the cigarette burst into flame. The guy's eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head, but he pulled himself together enough to laugh, then reached out and palmed the back of the redhead's neck possessively.

For a second Taiji thought the redhead would take it, but the bosozoku suddenly jerked away as if he'd been bitten, staring at his hand. Tai heard him say, "Hey - what the fuck is wrong with you, you little bastard?" Yuuzai's grin got wider. A greasy coil of smoke began to leak from the engine of a blue Kawasaki across the lot.

The biker said, "/No/," and took off.

Everybody else had moved back, too, and there was a weird silence.

The shining lenses turned in Taiji's direction, as if their wearer had felt him looking. Without meaning to, Tai took a few steps towards him. Yuuzai shoved the sunglasses up onto his forehead; his eyes were the colour of smoke and mirrors, and Tai thought he could see himself in them, small and indistinct.

Still watching Tai, the redhead slid up on the saddle, turned the key and kicked the starter.

"Kudou Taiji?" he said, over the growl of the engine, allowing the bike to creep forward.

Tai blinked. "Yeah."

"Get on."

Tai gave up even trying to figure out what was happening and climbed on. He could barely hear all the yelling as the motorcycle picked up speed, scattering gravel and students and heading for the open gate.

"I've got a calc exam last period," he shouted at the back of Yuuzai's head, trying not to get a mouthful of flying orange hair.

Yuuzai threw a glance back over his shoulder. "Leave it all behind, Kudou."

Yuuzai took him to the harbor, to the end of a long concrete pier that pushed out into the dirty water between two warehouses. When the bike's engine quit, everything seemed suddenly quiet, except for the sea smacking against the pier and the distant sound of machinery.

The redhead flicked down the stand, then shifted himself along the seat until he was sitting between Tai's legs, ass-to-crotch, back-to-chest. This was exactly the position Tai had been picturing him in for the last twenty minutes or so, and it felt even better in reality.

"Yuu -" Tai began, but he was interrupted.

"Alex."

"What?"

"My name's Alex."

"Then what's 'Yuuzai?' "

"Just a word. Easier to say than my real name. My father picked it out - his sense of humor's a little warped."

"It is a pretty weird thing to be called. If you think about it."

Yuuzai-Alex shrugged. "We're a weird family. But, whatever. It's not important." He stretched and leaned back against Tai. His hair smelled like scorched caramel, and Tai gave in and buried his face in it, pushing Alex's shirt up so he could run his hands over the smooth, bare skin.

"Mmmmm. Nice. Hey - you've got kind of a hard-on, Kudou," Alex said, and Tai could hear the grin in his voice. "Is that for me?"

"Well, yeah. You're the one jamming your ass against it, right?"

The redhead laughed and did it a little harder, making Tai suck in his breath. "It's good that it's for me, because - this is for you." He took Tai's hand and slid it between his legs. "Welcome to Alex World, Kudou. Enjoy your visit."

Ohyeah. He was so going to miss his calculus exam...


Tai rubbed his eyes. The memory of Alex's skin against his and Alex's mouth around his cock was all mixed together with the sound of the water and the gradually darkening sky over the harbor, and the fires of the refinery across the bay flaring up like burning clouds...Alex lifting his head and saying, We're crash and burn, Kudou, we're crash and burn...


And when he had gotten home that night, late, and taken off his clothes, he noticed the mark on his shoulder, angry red and black around the edges, like a flower drawn with a soldering iron. He hadn't even felt Alex doing it.

It was still there.

Tai touched it and shivered. He was afraid of what Alex could do, all right, with that power his mind had to scorch and sear and reduce things to ash, but with a strange feeling in his stomach, he knew that he was more afraid of what Alex would stop doing.

The door of his bedroom opened and his father was standing there with his coat on, dangling his car keys, graying blond hair pulled back from his square, sharp-edged face. Taiji wished once again that he'd inherited more of his dad's looks than just the light eyes - how cool would it be to have hair like that, instead of just straight black that was always falling in his face and looked just like everyone else's...what someone as hot as Alex saw in him...

" Gods. Shut your mouth, Taiji, you look like a... anyway. Try to focus for me here -"

Ooh, sarcasm. His dad was still pissed off.

"You obviously have no clue what you've gotten your lameass self into, and now I have to go and see if I can get you out of it. Don't leave this house. You get hungry, call for a pizza or something. I mean it. Stay here." He started to leave, then turned back. "That redhaired kid. What did he tell you his name was?"

"Yuu...Yuuzai," Tai said, stumbling over it a little. "That's what everyone calls him at school."

"/Yuuzai/? Shit. That would almost be funny if it wasn't so...not. Right. Like I said, stay here. I might be gone a while."

The door smacked shut, and Tai heard his father's footsteps going away. The front door slammed and quiet came down again.

What his father hadn't said was, "I can't believe you were doing another guy on my living room floor..." like Tai assumed most fathers would. It was all way, way weird. And of course he hadn't explained anything - he never did. Just - stay in the house, lameass.

Yeah, right. He'd give it half an hour to make sure his dad was really gone. Then he'd go out - he knew Alex hadn't gone far...he knew it. Then maybe they could take the bike and go away somewhere...

And light up the sky...