Beer Boat Float [Tag: Kato]

[HIKARI ARAI]

"Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beeeer! Take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall!"

Drunken song in a Japanese accent filtered to the shore from the horizon as Hikari's inflatable lifeboat came into view. The clearly intoxicated man lay back waving a bottle of sake above his head more or less in time with the song, occasionally stopping to take a long swig. More bottles, most of them empty but some still untouched, surrounded him, along with a duffelbag that held two changes of clothing and some toiletries. Though he wore a gray, long-sleeved, button-down shirt with a black vest and black pants, he didn't seem to feel the sun's rays glaring down at him, probably due to the fact that he was piss drunk.

When the lifeboat bumped up on the white sand of the beach, Hikari hardly noticed. He paused in his singing and briefly wondered what he was doing out here, alone, stranded, with nothing but booze to keep him company. Ah yes, that's right, he'd gone out looking for his friend, Kato, and run into these two guys who said they'd take him in their boat for half the price of the helicopter ride he'd been looking at. But the night after they set sail, he happened to overhear them talking about shoving him overboard and leaving with all his stuff.

Probably should have known they weren't legit by their shady looks, but what could he say? He'd been strapped for cash, and he didn't know how much time he had to look for Kato. For all he knew, the guy was dead by now. So he'd quietly put his bag (and all the alcohol he could grab) into the little inflatable lifeboat and paddled off in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the guys didn't come looking for him, but now he was in the middle of nowhere with no real hope of rescue. He figured he would simply sit there drinking himself into oblivion.

[eleni]

He was there again, eyes bloodshot, brows furrowed, he watched the sea in a hazy state of mind.

Hours away, minutes spiraling in constant distance, something was happening. A truck could be striking a small toddler this very second. A young, innocent school couple could be conceiving a baby right now with an accidental slip of protection. An uncle, or a grandfather, an ancient relative could be waiting on his death bed, silent cheers hidden in the veil of lies and sobs, false acts of despair.

And he was missing it all, one right after the other, each tragic loss too far away to meet his eyes, brush past his ear, caress his mind. Things that were never a bother, much less important, to him - now, he was craving for unrelated news, immature gossip, even the bark of a small puppy.

But he wasn't crying - there was just something in his eye. Something tiny, something microscopic, something - ...something only made-believe, a desperate alibi for the salty tears threatening to leak out like dying ink.

He didn't like what was stuck in his mind, either - Arai Hikari, bastard of a lifetime, womanizer, deranged alcoholic. In other words, his best friend, his polar opposite, the man who could as well be more incubus than human, the fuckface who had no knowledge of another's personal bubble. How could he, of all the half-decent people Yukimura knew, possibly even be the centre of all his thoughts right now? Wait, don't answer that.

"Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall - "

What the fu - speak of the devil, it was the devil's great-great-grandson. No, the incubus shook his head, furiously blinking the tears away, this was just not possible, this was not Hikari, this was a retard, an avatar gone wrong. The blinking continued as he let his remaining doubts bombard his entire brain - he was not going to buy this, was this a prank, or a dream? A nightmare?

No, this was reality. It told him. They told him:

The faintest quickening of the heart.
The tiniest crack of goddamn hope.
The all-too-familiar spark of nostalgia.

Oh, Hikari, Yukimura wanted to cry, wanted to drop to his knees and let it all out. But he couldn't - his ego wouldn't let him. So he stood there, feet glued to the sand, eyes not as hazy as they once were - they grew impossibly large at the sight of his wasted friend nearing shore. Nearing him.

He began running, sand shooting up like dry fountains around his body, and soon his feet were sinking in the saline waters, dead at night, sea reaching mid-calf, then past his waist. It didn't matter, though - he had a friend to catch.

[HIKARI ARAI]

He'd always been able to hold his liquor pretty well, but being out on the waves was getting to him. For one thing, he seemed to hear splashing getting closer and closer. There wasn't a shark trying to get at him, was there? That certainly wouldn't be fun. Hikari sat up, swaying slightly, and tried to find the source of the splashing. The sight that met his eyes caused him to gasp and drop his half-empty bottle into the sea.

'No way...' he thought, rubbing his eyes, but the vision of his friend didn't disappear. 'This must be an alcohol-induced hallucination, right? I may have set out to find him, but I never thought I actually would!'

Kato Yukimura, that strikingly handsome but eternally depressing Japanese Hikari called his best friend, was a sight for sore eyes. Sure, his hair was a mess and his clothes were a bit worn and tattered in places, but he was still the guy he'd known since elementary school, no doubt about it.

A grin tugged at Hikari's lips as the fact that his best buddy was right in front of him sunk into his booze-drenched brain. Excitedly, he went to hop out of the lifeboat and slipped straight off into the water, gulping down a mouthful of salty ocean water and coming up sputtering. Acting if this was only natural, he laughed and said to his friend cheerfully:

"Kato, man, you look like shit!"

[eleni]

...Or rather, he had a drunkard to catch. Yukimura sighed, halting to an instant stop at the sight of the all-too-familiar drunkness. This man, in the middle of the sea, on rolling waves, at an island of dashed hopes, and he was wasted like tomorrow would never come.

"Oh, just look at you," the incubus murmured, not unsympathetically. "Just look at you and your - ACK!" Water splashed mischievously on him, crashing down like a stereophonic waterfall on his entire body, soaking him out skin and in skin, gluing clothing to epidermis. Shivers ran down his spine as his fingers vibrated with quasi-convulsion - how long had he felt this cold? Not since he fell out of that helicopter, he was sure of that.

He continued to watch the other, hands still at his sides when the wasted retard dived stupidly into the waters, merely rolling his eyes at the sight of the human shooting up like a spasming goldfish, more seawater spilling out from his mouth. What was he, crazy? Then again, Yukimura couldn't be so sure - Hikari was... unpredictable, to put in simple words. Unpredictable and noticeably madcap; he probably had ancestors from Wonderland or whatnot.

"Shit?" The incubus growled back. No way, Sherlock, you're the one who looks like shit. And he wasn't afraid to telling that to the guy's face, either. "If I look like shit," Yukimura deadpanned, "Then you look like a deranged, half-eaten fried squid."

Yet a friend was a friend, and as much as he tried to ignore it, Yukimura was, inwardly, that is, thankful, not to mention more bliss than bliss itself could ever be defined. Booze was an essence of Hikari's life, his whole existence - it made up around possibly 80% of his psyche and poured like silver cascades down his throat, whether from classy wine glasses or lazy, plastic mugs, Yukimura was certain. Perhaps his alcoholism was a major factor to why the incubus tried his best to keep away from even the tiniest drop of alcohol - he did not know how it happened - or rather, he was too scared of the why that he avoided the unfurling events that somehow led to his childhood friend's obsession with liquor; in the blink of an eye, the flash of violet lightning, the youthful, elementary schoolboy Yukimura knew so well had grown into a worshiper of alcohol.

Anyways, back to topic: booze made Hikari's world go round, and Yukimura, for once, wasn't going to put a stop to that.

"Nice to see you too, cockhead," he finally said, suppressing a heavy sigh at the sight of liquor. "Now let's get you out of here before you catch a cold."

- - - - - - - -

OOC: Ugh, I'm so sorry this is so bland; I'm just really - ...guh.

[HIKARI ARAI]

Hikari felt a rush of relief at finding his best friend again. He hadn't really let himself think about it too much since Kato had disappeared, but he really was miserable without the guy. And Midori had been bugging him all the time about it, since she didn't have her cousin to talk to anymore. Hikari never knew how amazingly talkative that girl was. When he'd finally gone to look for Kato, he told himself it was for her, but it wasn't. Life just wasn't the same without his best friend, and the uncertainty was killing him. He had to find out whether or not he was still alive, or die trying. Now that the two were reunited, Hikari couldn't help but feel the relief and joy that threatened to make him hug Kato and never let go. He wouldn't let it go that far, though. He settled for a hearty clap on the shoulder and a silly grin that just wouldn't leave his face.

"Cockhead? Deranged squid? That the thanks I get for coming here to rescue you? ...Never mind that I have to be rescued now, too. It's the thought that counts, right?"

He grabbed hold of the side of the floating lifeboat full of liquor bottles and his little dufflebag and started tugging it along toward shore.

"Really, though, we ought to find a place to take a bath around here and get you changed out of those clothes. I have some things in my bag you could wear."

Suddenly, the image of a naked Kato taking a bath under a waterfall came unbidden to Hikari's mind and he felt blood rush to his face. What the hell? Damn his weird imagination. He quickly grabbed one of the bottles from the lifeboat that was still full, popped it open, and took a swig. Ah, scotch. Yes, that would do nicely to keep him from thinking such strange thoughts. Maybe.

[eleni]

Even Yukimura's elephant-sized ego had to bow down to the stupidity of Arai Hikari. He was so oblivious, so ignorant, of all the trouble, to put it nicely, he would have to face upon setting foot on this goddamn island. Yet the fact that he even bothered to come rescue (though it was probably - hopefully - transparent to the idiot that he, too, was now stranded with barely any hope of his rescue) the incubus was enough to have Yukimura put down all his barriers and, for once, act as a lesser being.

In other words, he couldn't be happier.

Just the thought of dry clothes had sent him to a second's worth of nirvana. He was dirty, he knew it, despite all the waterfall-showering he did on a daily basis - well, tried to; there were days, days like this one, where nearly all emotions abandoned him, left him with nothing but that motherfucking nostalgic spark and eyes dyed vermillion, salty, half-broken pearls stinging his cheeks. He winced inwardly at the sensation of his clothes pressing like leeches against his skin, sucking out all the cleanliness he had in him.

Hikari was indeed a great friend - he could have used all that space in his bag for liquor instead of clothing.

"We can always wash here," Yukimura suggested, then immediately regretted it. Dear lord, that totally made him sound like a - a - well, to be blunt, it made him sound like he had a crush on his best friend, which was not good - he was bisexual, yes, there was no need to say no to the same gender, but that did not mean Hikari was as well. Hell, it was so obvious - the guy was straighter than a strip pole, despite all those awkward moments of falling face-first into a certain incubus's - er, lap, getting way too face-to-face, the suspicious gleam in those non-virgin eyes...

...Okay, never mind. The temperature rose a little in his cheeks. Just a little.

"Don't drink so much," he found himself murmuring, eyes narrowing slightly at the bottle. "Be kind to your liver, Hikari-kun."

[HIKARI ARAI]

Hikari was just happy to have Kato around after having dealt with the guys on the boat. They certainly hadn't been very pleasant company. In retrospect, that might have been an indicator of their shady intentions. Probably not the best decision he'd ever made. Then again, he'd made a lot of bad decisions in his life, and he'd managed to survive thus far. He always came back to Kato's bar in Japan with a good story to tell. Really, Kato was the one constant in Hikari's life. He felt lost without the guy. Maybe it was the booze talking, but he didn't think it would be so bad on a desert island as long as Kato was around. At least they didn't have to worry about debt collectors!

He nearly spewed the scotch out of his nose when Kato suggested taking a bath right there in the sea. Damn, what was he, psychic? Had his earlier dirty thought showed so plainly on his face? Now he had an image of himself and Kato, both nude, splashing each other in the surf playfully with erotic undertones. Damn his messed-up mind. He was suddenly glad to be waist-deep in cool water.

"I think it would be best to wash somewhere that there are bushes, so we can't be seen." 'Oh God, what the hell did that mean?!' "I mean, so we can't see each other!" 'Dammit, Hikari, just stop talking! You're digging yourself in a deeper hole...'

At his friend's request to stop drinking, Hikari complied without protest, tossing the bottle over his shoulder carelessly.

"Fine. It's not helping, anyway," he said flatly with a sigh.

He worked hard to keep a somewhat blank expression on his face as he continued dragging the lifeboat along towards the shore, not daring to look at Kato lest his imagination come up with a worse scenario with which to torment him.

[OOC: I haz homo-erotic lulz, yes? ^_^]

[eleni]

(OOC: Yes, yes you do. You're like mameshiba.)

He stopped dead in his tracks. No,stop, there's no subtitle. His face turned tomato red and volcano hot as the incubus continued to walk, one hand half-consciously reaching up to stroke a particular spot on his neck - damn sensitivity. Why were incubus born with such high amounts of sexual desire? Just the thought of taking a bath with, of all the possible people in the universe, Arai Hikari was enough to send tiny shivers scaling down his spine, tickling his hipbones, hardening his -

For fuck's sake, stop!

By then his face was the colour of fresh pig's blood. He jammed a fist in his trousers pocket and quickened his steps, feet digging into the sand, sending wisps of sand-fairies soaring into the air. They stayed in perfect stillness for a moment, before clattering to the ground like chandelier shards, quasi-coincidentally in tow with Hikari's scotch bottle, a sound that rung transparently in Yukimura's ears.

But he didn't understand - Hikari got rid of it, shouldn't that make Yukimura happy?

"Bushes, huh?" His voice dripped of pure emptiness as he let out meaningless words at random, just an act of diversion. Mellowness was unnecessary now; his best friend was here, and that was all that mattered; screw emotions, shouldn't they be having fun? His head shook violently - stupid subtitles. Stupid hormones. Stupid sex drive.

"There's no soap here," he continued without much thought in his words, "so if you want to be extremely clean, you'll have to scrub at least five times every where, including the places you can't reach." A quiet smirk pulled at his lips. "Of course, did I mention the old perverts? You were right about bushes - everyone's somehow in need of some intensive thrusting here, even with the lack of protection - but there's always a thing called improvisation - you know, anything liquidish can be used as lubrication, and as for condoms... well, I'm not sure, I haven't done it in a long time. What do you think - "

He stopped again, upon realization - what the fuck was he saying to his best friend?

[HIKARI ARAI]

As Hikari finally dragged the lifeboat up onto the beach, he had his head down slightly so his friend couldn't see that his face was becoming increasingly red. The cork had been unplugged from the leak in Kato's brain and a whole flood came crashing out! He always had quite the libido, being an incubus and all, but for goodness' sakes, what was this craziness? Was the island really that deserted? He was going to have to cut a hole in a coconut or something for this guy, or else end up his bitch.

The thought made him stumble over his own feet.

"Even if there were soap here, it would be just my luck that I'd drop it," he said, then tripped again, this time falling into Kato and knocking both of them into the sand.

For a moment, he didn't move, the jolt sloshing his intoxicated brain around in his skull painfully. When he did come to his senses, he realized he was on his hands and knees in the sand on top of his best friend, their faces inches away from each other. He was paralyzed like that, staring at his best friend, his heart beating like a wild creature trying to escape its cage. He could feel Kato's breath against his skin, see every one of his long eyelashes. If he just reached over with his hand right now, he could... Oh God! What the hell was he thinking?!

Why, it was just like old times.

[eleni]

(OOC: I can barely muster any time. Please bear with me until something magical happens. Please. How can anime schoolkids have so much free time on their hands to fight evil on Tokyo Tower?!)

An icy chill swept through Yukimura's spine. His muscles twitched like the near-dead. He gave a quick glance at Hikari, as he assured himself over and over again that this was the wind's doing, that this was perfectly normal, that a breeze, whether large or small, would always be there to blow cold kisses at one's entire psyche. Hikari has nothing to do with this, the incubus insisted silently, before telling himself that he was just too excited about the arrival of his closest friend.

After all, they did every thing together.
Well, almost every thing.

His face flushed at the thought, a certain spot on his neck itching quite violently. There was a withering fly in his body, subconsciously waiting to be caught in the tangles of a particular spider web. He threw another glance at Hikari, taking in the finest, slightly grainy details of each strand of hair protruding from the human's head. Perhaps Yukimura was finally descending down into the abyss of madcap hallucinations, but could it be possible that, of all people, Hikari Arai held a special, invisible glow that could only been seen in the best and worst of times -

No, it was not possible. Yukimura was not going insane.

"What the hell," he muttered pathetically, groaning at the weight of Hikari's body on his. Upon realization, he began to writhe and wriggle.

When his hand shot out to give his friend a hard, instinctive slap on the face, however, all movements froze iceberg-still. Time halted and died a temporary death. The pounding of his heart roared viciously in his ears. The sand, the waves, the tiny pebbles scattered across the beach; they all disappeared in a slow, excruciating flash, and all the world was him and Hikari.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say - whisper. For once the closeness of their bodies did not - could not - matter to him. Apprehension stabbed him like needles to a broken dress.

Then time tumbled through a rebirth, and suddenly he was pushing Hikari away, back on his feet, eyebrows narrowing stubbornly at the retard. "Dude," he spat like he always would, "hands to yourself, buddy, you're not Kylie Minogue in her music videos, okay?"

Oh, but irony dripped just like bitter honey from his tongue. If only.

[HIKARI ARAI]

The slap came as an utter surprise to Hikari. He was used to getting slapped, actually, but he usually deserved it in some way, and it was usually a girl who slapped him. It, along with the stark contrast of cold water and hot sand, had served to slowly bring him out of his drunken stupor to the reality of the situation at hand: being stranded on an uncharted island with no means of rescue or escape. For a moment, he almost succumbed to the despair of it all, but he pushed it out of his mind as well as he could. No way he could show weakness in front of his best friend. He never had, and he wasn't about to start now, no matter how Kato smacked him around.

But even as his friend muttered an apology and shoved him aside, he couldn't think of anything to say. For once in his life, Hikari was lost for words. He looked up at Kato and his devil-may-care attitude dissolved away, leaving only a strong feeling of concern for his best bud in the whole world. Had something happened to him out here on this island to make him so... jumpy? Or maybe he really was just a big ball of sexual frustration right now. Yeah, that was probably it.

"Dude, hands to yourself, buddy, you're not Kylie Minogue in her music videos, okay?"

He grinned at that and stood up himself.

"I'll let that one slide, since you're so obviously screwed up from the lack of sex," he said, chuckling. "But you smack me again and it is on! ...A-A fight, I mean."

He went over to his bag and unzipped it, ruffling through its contents for a moment before changing his mind and tossing the whole thing at Kato.

"Here, it'll be easier if you just pick out what you want to wear. There's a stick of deodorant in there, too, somewhere."