16A/N: Well, well, it's my second ever attempt at writing some fully-fledged Takari, and I am both excited and scared out of my wits! Why? Because I am posting this as a work in progress, so nothing is complete, and there is a huge risk that it will never get finished. BUT… this idea has consumed me for months and I really, really, really needed to just air it out.
So, here we are.
Note: if you've read any of my other fanfics, you know I write TK as a bit of a mischievous, subtly pretentious, and naïve boy. His characterization here is no different, but may be even more exaggerated.
Enjoy and happy reading! Reviews/comments/criticism are appreciated!
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Stop the Presses
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Summary: College AU. When bright-eyed budding writer, TK Takaishi, is assigned to cover the art exhibit of no-frills photographer, Kari Kamiya, his report ends up sounding more like a declaration of love than a newspaper article. But with his feelings aired, and his entire university in on the drama, can his words truly impress, perhaps, the most decidedly unromantic girl on the planet? Takari.
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"Takaishi, check this out."
A paper flung at him, seesawing through air before gliding to a stop atop his table.
He pulled the lip of his coffee cup away from his mouth, blue eyes peeking south at the advertisement. Overhead, the Canto's editor-in-chief made her pitch, as if he needed much persuasion to go on assignment. As he read, his ears followed his editor's movements in the room: close, then behind him, trailing to her desk. Her name was Catherine, and she was blonde, beautiful, and all business.
"An art show?" he questioned. He kept his curiosity purely clerical. To inflect on "art" would suggest disappointment in the subject, which was not true. Drawing out "show" would suggest dubiousness about the type of event. And to stress "an" would only make it sound like he was questioning otherwise perfect English grammar.
"Thought you'd like it," said Catherine. TK swiveled in his desk chair, parking feet on the tiled floor as soon as she filled his line of vision. She stood by their newsroom copier, smoothing the rumples in her black pencil skirt as she waited for her print job. Her professionalism for even a student newspaper should have shamed TK (a few of his colleagues had opted to sport button-ups and khakis when writing on and off-site), but he preferred comfort to class.
"You know me so well, Kat." He sighed, picking up the flyer she had tossed him and laying it over his heart.
"Of course I do," she retorted. She snatched her draft from the print tray and paged through it, strutting by him to return to her chair. "I play to my strengths. You have an aesthetic eye, and I intend to put that to my use."
TK watched her round her desk. To his credit, he kept his eyes on the back of her blond head and not upon her other... assets.
"What gave me away, if you don't mind my asking?"
Catherine sat and wheeled herself closer to her monitor screen. In seconds she was clacking away at the keyboard.
"Your first assignment with me was to do the police blotter," she announced over her typing. "The main incident was a ruptured septic tank in an old frat house on campus and you proceeded to spend three long paragraphs literally describing shit."
"Oh, yeah." TK recalled the memory with fondness, face upturned at the glaring overheads. He blinked, tearing himself away from one of many seconds spent on nurturing his vanity. "I did that tastefully, mind you."
"I know. This is what you wrote, and I quote." Catherine grabbed a note tacked on a neighboring wall. "'The result was a river of refuse," she orated, "'streams of the digested, the discarded, the dispelled, the earth wet with waste, a bed of soiled soil that glittered, and stank, and steamed.'" She set the note down carefully. "That's when I knew."
He laughed.
"I hope you realize that I..." He smirked. "bullshitted my way through that article." TK paused in the echo of his own witticism, mouth frowning as if he were discovering food he had eaten had gone bad. "Bullshat?" he wondered, correcting himself.
The typing stopped. Catherine peeked blue eyes over her monitor and promptly raised her arm, pointing a finger at the exit.
"Out," she said.
xXx
Quaint.
It was TK's first thought as he entered the small, vexingly quiet gallery. The silence held in the air like mesh, nearly palpable, profound enough to suggest people were even afraid to breathe. He stepped further in, taking the pamphlet offered to him by a perky gallery greeter.
"Enjoy the show," she whispered, and he felt like tiptoeing toward the nearest framed piece in the most exaggerated of manners: arms curled, knees bent, like a rabbit—or a thief.
He opted instead to slide into position in front of the first photograph in the lineup, which measured about two by three feet and hung smack in his line of vision. One studio light of many shed an iridescent gleam on the glass, spotlighting its top center. The subject was a bee probing a sunflower, the yellow of both insect and blossom popping, sticking out against the vivid background of blue. He stared at it another five seconds and moved on.
Just a photo taken in someone's backyard, he surmised. Nothing that halts digestion.
He continued his surveillance, feeling deliciously snobby. He was the outsider. At his disposal was a broad range of cutting (albeit amateur) judgments. What have your eyes captured? he wondered, assessing the displays. What are you trying to show me?
Mostly, he marked clichés. Tree in a sunset. A house in a sunset. A couple in a sunset. A sunset. There were occasional outliers: a homeless man in the rain, a woman in her sweeping red coat, an ant's-eye-view of fall foliage.
Notes were scribbled at random, usually when he felt something. The rarity was marked with a pause in his steps, a response to the visuals that scrunched a heartbeat out of him like a click. These he would highlight. These he would immortalize in print, and he memorized the photos like promises he swore to keep.
He stopped when he heard voices.
Up until then, the gallery had been dead quiet—insanely, unreasonably quiet, as if he were attending a funeral. To hear voices, even soft ones, seemed a huge and profane disturbance. He turned.
A ways off from him was a young woman, her back facing him and her front fronting a pair of young men who had to have been both twice her height and weight. He recognized one as a newsroom colleague, the head editor for the sports section and a member of the collective that imitated Catherine's business casual dress code. Part of TK wanted to intrude and point out that the soccer game was that way, but his colleague also had writing chops. Perhaps he was genuinely interested in art.
His friend, though, was clearly more interested in the artiste.
Discreetly, TK brought out his phone, bringing it close to his face as thumbs tapped the screen, providing his internet following instant verbatim updates on the conversation going down behind him.
After mistaking the subject of one photograph for a feral man ("I can't believe it! How did you snap a pic of a genuine Neanderthal?") TK could no longer stay mum. He turned and hailed his colleague, impelled to glimpse at the real neanderthal in their midst.
"Hey, Takaishi!" his colleague greeted. "Boss got you covering this?"
"Who else?" he replied, grinning. Hands were shook. TK stepped back, feet planted apart, at leisure, hands in his pockets. He pressed his elbow deeper into his side, keeping his notebook firmly wedged under his armpit. Smiling, he swept a glance at the faces around him. "Enjoying the view?"
The girl frowned. He looked down at her. "I meant your vistas captured here." He gestured at her photographs. "Nice eye you have."
She stared at him, her gaze gripping, the irises limpid despite their warm amber color. TK straightened his neck and swore he felt an invisible pull keeping him trussed. He felt a pinch in his chest, heard an echo in his brain that sounded like a snap.
Click.
"If I were a cyclops," she said, "I'd be flattered."
He shrugged, laughing. His notebook slipped, and his hands fumbled to catch it before it fell to the floor.
"Or a pirate with an eyepatch," he said, recovering. He smiled, aware of the rising heat pooling at his throat. He swallowed, brain, meanwhile, on a desperate search for a calming agent—a memory, a blip. Eventually, they settled on the mysteries of his older brother's collected persona.
Stay cool like Matt, TK told himself. Cool like Matt. I am a cold and aloof, emotionally cognizant and musically gifted college male. He paused. How the hell does Matt stay like this all the time?
He caught himself mid-hand-rise, fingers open and reaching to smooth back locks of golden hair, one of his brother's signature mannerisms, and one that never failed in attracting female attention. It was then that TK realized he was wearing a hat. A beanie, in fact. Knit, wooly, and bound to hide matted, knotty thatches of blond hair. In short, his brother's pileous opposite.
He fake-coughed over his shoulder.
"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
TK discovered distraction in action, and the slippery notebook that would have been his bane became his salvation. He opened it and pulled the pen always tucked behind his ear, clicking the butt and setting nib to blank page. The girl retracted a little. TK remembered the two other people in his periphery. "Sorry, guys," he said, smirking. "Working here."
When sportscaster and crony left, TK glimpsed the sudden subject of his curiosity. She was a petite person, the embodiment and epitome of bubblegum sweetness, though he doubted its depth. No cupcake cinnamon roll hurled "cyclops" into everyday conversation.
"Tell me a little about your photographs," he prompted, when she said nothing.
She murmured her reply, the lack of clarity not helped by the fact that she was cringing, if her elevated shoulders were any indication. Miraculously, he still managed to understand every word.
"Here I thought you were going to ask me questions..."
The regular zip and zap of TK's functioning neurons fizzled to burnt ends, like sparklers reaching the ends of their wires. He cleared his throat, pretending to scribble notes on his pad of paper. His scrawl read, messily:
'Though she be but little, she is fierce.'
P.S. - Going to need ice for this burn.
P.S.S. - I am a blender of blunders.
P.S.S.S. - Damn. That was good, Takaishi.
"That can easily be rectified," he bandied, side-stepping toward the nearest of her works. He gestured at it with the added flourish of a twirl of the wrist. "How about you tell me about your photographs? Hmm? Better?"
She turned her head, focusing her attentions on her art, though TK caught himself tilting forward, seeking her reaction. He snatched only a flash of it, her reflexes too quick, but was pleased with his findings. The corner of her lips had curled. Her eyes had lowered. A smirk. She was smirking.
Subconsciously, he was, too.