Work Text:
The words left Mashiro's mouth almost of their own accord.
"A – As long as it doesn't interfere with PCP, I... I do want Shiratori-kun to be serialized,"
He wasn't lying per se, he really did want Shiratori to succeed, but the words tasted like ashes on his tongue anyway.
He reassured Hattori, Shiratori and Takagi that it was alright, really, that it was in their best interests, but he barely even noticed what he was saying. Everything in his head was drowned out by the wounded screams of his ego. He did want Shiratori to do well, as he kept repeating when Takagi asked, and he did want the other half of Ashirogi Muto to gain even more experience as a writer. But there was a rather large part of him that just wanted to grab the hem of Shujin's shirt and start begging him not to leave him while whimpering like the loser he was.
And yet another part, the deepest, ugliest part of him that he took great pains to squash down, had cried out, wrathful and irrational, against Shiratori. Nevermind that the boy was a better person than Mashiro would ever be. He didn't deserve Mashiro's resentment, unvoiced though it was.
But the mere idea of Takagi working with someone else, sharing the product of his brilliant mind with someone that was not him... it made him want to scream. But how could he justify such childish and pointless possessiveness? Agreeing was the right thing to do.
The following weeks were, as it turned out, torture. More often than not, Takagi and Shiratori could be found on the sofa, bent over a manuscript together, heads close, looking each other in the eye with the intensity of creation...
It made him want to use the G-pen in his hand to stab someone in the eye. Three guesses as to who.
"Mashiro-sensei," Orihara said, mercifully distracting him from his contemplations. He looked visibly perplexed, "Aren't the lines kinda - rough, compared to your usual style?"
"They are?" he asked, mortified. It was one thing to obsess over Takagi's collaboration, quite another to mess up because of it. He was a working professional – this was unacceptable.
"I'm going to fix them," he assured Orihara, "I wouldn't be able to live with myself otherwise,"
The assistant, visibly relieved, replied, "Oh, thank god. I'm sorry for the impertinence, but delicacy is your signature, so I thought I had to tell you..."
Delicacy, huh. There was nothing delicate about the anxious rage he felt. He sighed to himself, starting to erase a few lines. He was pathetic. Had he been as noble and pure as people believed... then he probably would have been genuinely happy for his best friend. But it was a pain he would never speak of. Both Shujin and the assistants were better off thinking him a good soul.
"Are you sure it's okay?" Kaya asked him softly after all the assistants had gone home. She knew him better than almost anyone, and probably saw the signs of his agitation. Takagi and Shiratori were huddled in a corner, talking excitedly, sitting very very close together...
"Of course. I need him to grow as a writer if we want to make an excellent manga that can be turned into an anime – I need to work hard as an artist as well,"
Strictly speaking, it was all true. He was just omitting the fact that the mere thought of Shiratori's eyes, full of worship and admiration, staring up at Takagi, made him want to throw up. Granted, that was nothing compared to the emptiness he felt inside when he caught Shujin gazing down at Shiratori with a fond smile – those times he ended up on the verge of tears, wondering if he really was that weak. He liked Shiratori, and of course Takagi was his best friend, but just seeing them smile at each other was excruciating.
Was this what they called jealousy? His work partner teaming up with someone else felt like he was being cheated on.
The last thought made him wince guiltily. Takagi's actual wife was right there in the room.
In the morning, Moriya came to his desk with a look that was even more pinched than usual – and that was saying a lot considering the assistant behaved as if he had a stick up his ass at the best of times.
"This sketch is a bit rough, if I may,” he observed. “I can't understand what this bundle of graphite here is supposed to be,"
It was true. Now that he looked at the panel in question, the pencil strokes were noticeably heavy and jumbled. You could practically feel the rage oozing off the page. And god, was it embarrassing... his obsessive ponderings were affecting his work again.
Over by the couch, Takagi was smiling down at Shiratori, obviously complimenting something he'd come up with, eyes shining.
He forced a smile. "Ah, I'm sorry, I'll fix it immediately. If you find other mistakes or incomprehensible parts don't hesitate to – "
And now Takagi had thrown an arm around Shiratori's small shoulders with familiarity, as if it was a gesture he'd done before, many times, enough to come natural...
"Mashiro-sensei, the pencil! It's broken! There's blood!" Moriya shrieked, uncharacteristically agitated. Mashiro did have a reputation for being a rather calm and patient type. Looking down at his hand, he noticed that indeed, he'd unconsciously snapped the pencil in two, in the process scratching his hand badly enough that rivulets of bright red were flowing copiously onto the page he'd been working on.
"Ah, shit!" he swore jumping up, trying to prevent damage that had already been done. There was nothing to it, he had to re-do the page now. The exclamation had garnered the attention of everyone in the room, and now they were all staring in horror at his hand.
Immediately, everyone jumped into action, Kaya hurrying to get the first aid kit they kept in the studio for just such an emergency, Orihara jumping up and down, panicked, Moriya trying to salvage the unsalvageable page, Shiratori asking loudly in a high-pitched voice if he should call an ambulance.
Takagi was the only one who stood motionless in the chaos. Seemingly catatonic, he was staring at Mashiro's hand with his mouth still open midsentence, his finger still pointed at a corner of the storyboard.
When their eyes met through the confusion, though, Takagi threw the manuscript away, careless for the fact that it landed on the floor – and oh, wasn't that gratifying to an embarrassing degree – and elbowed his way through the panicking assistants to where Mashiro was standing.
Takagi grabbed his wrist with utter reverence, as if he wasn't handling a body part but a priceless artifact, his wide eyes roving up and down the appendage. He poked and prodded at it delicately, pale and intent, and Mashiro could practically hear his brain analyze and calculate every detail of the wound until he was satified that it was only a minor injury, that no tendon or bone had been damaged.
Then he used the sleeve of his shirt – his white shirt – to wipe away every last drop of blood from Mashiro's hand, showing absolutely no regard for the article of cloting he was soaking probably irreversibly.
"Shujin..." he breathed, “You don't have to – ”
"Saiko, you idiot," he said lowly, still cradling his hand like it was his most precious possession, "You need to take better care of your hands! What if you'd damaged them? What if you couldn't draw manga anymore? Without you drawing, it would be meaningless for me to write anymore!"
There was an odd movement beneath Mashiro's sternum. For a moment, he wondered if he was having a heart attack. "You can't stop just because of me –"
"Then be more careful,” Takagi said seriously, almost darkly, looking into his eyes. “Your hands are mine - if you hurt them, you hurt me. If you can't draw, I can't write. So if you don't want the end of my career on your conscience, you better take proper care of yourself!"
Something in Mashiro's stomach twisted at the words. Takagi wanted him by his side. It was good - it was - but it made him feel even worse that Takagi was so obviously devoted to the team while Mashiro kept being childish about his collaboration. But he couldn't be as confident and clear-minded as his partner - he was weak, and he coveted and yearned and -
He would have probably started to cry by now if there hadn't been five people staring at him.
"So cool..." Orihara was whispering to Shiratori, who nodded happily. Meanwhile, Kaya was back with the first-aid kit, which Takagi had immediately commandeered – without letting go of his hand – and started using it expertly to take care of Mashiro's wound with a face so soft and bare that it was choking him up again.
When he was done disinfecting the cut, Takagi wrapped a good bit of gauze around his palm, slowly and carefully. The splinter from the pencil had damaged the flesh between thumb and index finger, a place where no plaster would ever stay in place.
Everyone got back to work when it had been determined that the wound was taken care of, but the solemn silence persisted until the end of the day.
Takagi went back to his discussion with Shiratori.
Mashiro looked at his bandaged hand. It hurt.
Mashiro tried not to hum happily, feel vindicated, or rejoice in any way at the way Shujin was failing to produce a decent manuscript fot the second chapter of Rabuta & Peace. Tried being the operative word. He couldn't help the mean, petty satisfaction coursing through him at the sight of Shujin's lost frown.
The week was made even better by his solo work. Oh yes – he'd been able to write a good one-shot about Azuki, which improved his mood by about a hundred times (the two things he was in love with, manga and Azuki, mixed into one, was bound to have this effect).
Then of course, they'd had The Fight, because Mashiro couldn't just openly say, 'I don't want you working with anyone else, because of reasons I myself don't understand! Please stop being so touchy feely with Shiratori'.
But Takagi himself was strangely angry.
"PCP won't become an anime... even so, if I work on this and Rabuta becomes an anime, would that make you happy?!" Shujin had said, his eyes flashing with something he couldn't interpret, "If we want an anime, then this situation is really strange! I'm telling you to be more selfish!"
Kaya had then intervened, but the situation had turned even weirder – Takagi had called Shiratori and gone to 'observe Peace in order to write him more dog-like'.
What the hell did that even mean? Was he trying to tell him he didn't want to work with Mashiro anymore, that Shiratori was much preferable?
After Moriya and Orihara went home, Shiratori announced that he was going to stop being an assistant and focus on the serialization with Takagi. In the silence that followed his departure, Kaya sighed loudly.
By now she was like a sister to him – he never lied when he said that he loved her, and he genuinely liked to make her happy. This situation was hard for her too.
"Did you hear? He's staying at his house to observe the dog! What if – what if he cheats on me with Shiratori's sister? She was so hot..."
"There's no way he'll do that," he answered monotonously, trying to remember what he'd been doing. Somehow without Takagi to keep him on track it was difficult to even breathe. God, how needy was he? Anyone would prefer a less desperate, less high maintenance person.
"You really think that? Because she was really hot. I mean, I guess it's genetic since Shiratori himself is so pretty,"
Mashiro's arm made a weird twitching movement, suspiciously similar to a stabbing motion. "He's pretty?"
"Yeah, didn't you look at him? He 's so – delicate, and his face is all - symmetrical and, and beautiful...” she sighed, delighted by the mere memory, “He's got gret hair, too, and he always smells really good... Wait. Do you think Akito-san is having an affair with him?!"
Mashiro's insides went cold, and his brain refused to compute. It couldn't be... could it? Shiratori was rather pretty... but Takagi didn't swing that way, did he? He couldn't help but feel like the old wife abandoned for someone prettier and younger and less pathetic.
He probably said something reassuring, because Kaya – again, the actual wife – immediately calmed down.
"No, you're right," she nodded with the soft mature smile she'd been getting ever since she and Shujin had gotten married, "I trust him. And you do too, I know. We just have to be patient. I'm sure this situation will solve itself, somehow."
It did.
Takagi got home in the middle of the night, when only Mashiro was left in the studio, and said, "I won't write the story for Rabuta & Peace – that's Shiratori's work. That's why I went to his house for a few days... I gave him pointers, taught him a few things. Now he'll be able to write alone,"
Takagi was looking relieved to be done with the problem, but also strangely hesitant, as if expecting Mashiro to get angry and refuse his apologies. Mashiro wanted to laugh.
“Thank god,” he murmured. “Thank god – I thought – I thought you were about to abandon me. I don't think I'd be able to draw for anyone else,”
Takagi, having lost his unsure air after Mashiro had so obviously expressed his relief, was staring at him with his mouth slightly open, as if trying to calculate something.
Then he laughed a bit. “I guess this is the only way for us to function, then.”
“Don't ever write for someone else again,” Mashiro whispered, trying to resist the urge to look away. Takagi had told him he could be selfish, so here he was, exposing himself. No one could have missed the possessive edge in his voice.
And Takagi wasn't just anyone. He looked relieved, pleased even, a rare open expression on his face.
“I won't.” Takagi reached at Mashiro's side to brush over his fingers – then lifted the bandaged hand and rested his lips on it. “I promise,”
It was so intimate, so intense, that Mashiro felt himself tremble. This – this was what they were. Nothing less than everything. He thought of Takagi like a third arm, or better yet, a second head – he was in love with Azuki and nothing was ever going to change that, but that had nothing to do with Shujin. It was something completely different; a part of himself that he couldn't abandon without amputating his own existence.
He wondered if Kaya would hate him if she knew. He suspected she was aware on some level that his and Takagi's relationship trascended the deep friendship they passed it for, the intense kinship many guessed or even the invested love some suspected.
It was something else, something outside of what could be properly expressed with words, or interpreted by established social structures. It was something wispy and elusive, only caught in passing with the corner of the eye, murky and ever-present, shiny and painful like a broken mirror, lingering at the edge of their consciousness. Something that could be chased, caressed and even grazed, but never quite grabbed and held. Dry sand slipping through fingers, the last tendrils of a dream after waking up.
"Saiko..."
The brushing of their lips felt much the same.