![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Kaoru x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: sex, swears
Chapter: 4/??
Previously: 1 | 2 | 3
Synopsis: When it comes to healing broken hearts, Toshiya is a professional. Good-looking and charming, he makes his living by gently helping the jilted to go on with their lives, whilst steadfastly refusing to settle down himself. Boasting a one hundred percent success rate, Toshiya is sure his method is flawless - until he meets Kaoru, a lonely academic who, despite Toshiya's better judgement, starts to get under his skin...
CHAPTER FOUR:
"Well." Kaoru pulled up the collar of his jacket awkwardly, biting his lower lip, "Thank you for doing that."
Toshiya arched an eyebrow. "Is he always that nice?"
Kaoru laughed gently, his breath a cloud of white mist in the cold air.
"I am...sorry. Tolerance isn't one of Kyo's strong points, and I think..." Toshiya caught the slightest hint of a blush on Kaoru's cheeks, although it could have just been the sudden chill wind, "I don't think he really expected to see me with somebody...you know, like you."
"Like me?" Toshiya tilted his head to the side, watching the colour on Kaoru's face deepen: definitely a blush, then.
"Well," his client stuttered, "I think he was maybe expecting somebody a little more average."
Toshiya pulled a sweet-shy smile out of his repertoire of facial expressions.
"Maybe he just wasn't expecting a Hyogo native with a Nagano accent," he said wryly, leaving Kaoru to grin embarrassedly.
"Yeah," he said quietly, "Sorry about that. You were really quick, I mean - you were really good, coming up with all that stuff. So thank you."
"It's okay," Toshiya shrugged and smiled, "It was my pleasure. Being seen on somebody's arm does do something to give the impression you're coping alright, after all..." he faltered; Kaoru had fixed him with a strangely intense look. "I mean, he backtracked hastily, "It's fine."
"Would you..." Kaoru interjected carefully, "Would you perhaps let me buy you a drink, or something? To say thank you? Or, no, what am I thinking; it's the middle of the day. Or—" he hesitated, "Or maybe I should ask somebody a bit more average."
"I should probably get back to work," Toshiya lied regretfully - the first meeting should be no more than twenty minutes, in his experience - "But I'd really like it if you called me sometime."
Truthfully, it was immaterial whether or not his client chose to call him. Toshiya knew he'd manage to run into him again sooner or later.
But Kaoru looked quietly pleased to have Toshiya's phone number scrawled across the back of his hand, and so Toshiya pushed the thought from his mind.
The flat in which Toshiya lived was a small, pokey place, stuffed into the third floor of a narrow ex-townhouse, which once might have looked quite grand but was now beginning to crumble and show signs of age. Like a person, Toshiya thought drily, once the make-up had been stripped off and the years had done their work.
Usually, Toshiya liked to keep busy for as long as possible before he truly ran out of things to do and was relegated to curling up sadly before the television, but on that night he didn't. Instead, he walked into his apartment and threw his keys on the nearest available surface before simply sinking back into his sofa.
He couldn't explain why the day had affected him so much. Kyo had been rude, but he'd expected that and, even though he normally tried to avoid confrontation like the plague, he somehow knew that it wasn't Kaoru's ex-partner that had fazed him - but rather, it seemed to be Kaoru himself.
He thought of what he would say if he had the choice.
I'm sorry; you seem to be a very nice person, but...
But nothing. Toshiya shook his head wearily: there was nothing wrong with Kaoru, apart from the fact that he was maybe a little lonely lost, and there was no reason at all why Toshiya should feel like this wasn't a good idea.
He shifted uneasily. The trouble was, he had a strange gut feeling about his client, and his gut feelings usually turned out to be incredibly accurate. Instincts about other people were what made him so good at what he did, but Kaoru...
He just couldn't read the man, and it irked him. Moreover, he had an overwhelming feeling that, encouraging though their first meeting had been, something about his handling of the situation would soon go horribly wrong.
He sighed heavily and wondered what it would be like to kiss his client. Kaoru's lips were delicately shaped, just like the rest of him; they were dark red and complicated. The had looked good when he spoke.
Well, anyway.
Toshiya slept badly that night. His client wove in and out of his fitful, half-there dreams; he spent whole blank periods of time trying to find patterns in the ceiling. If he started long enough, he found that the paintwork disintegrated into thousands of tiny dots that milled around before his eyes.
He sighed and shifted, trying to find a cooler spot on the pillow. Maybe his previous client had been a little too much for him; maybe Toshiya wasn't quite over him yet. As he got older - and wasn't that the thought to keep him awake - he seemed to be growing more and more easily dented; more susceptible to the individual charms of his clients. They left an impact on him, now. He missed them.
He thought of his previous client: a man slightly older than he'd expected but sweet, sweet and and lovely and kind and sad; a businessman and a classical pianist with way more money than could ever be spent on one person alone. His lover had died - had quietly slipped away, early in the morning, by asphyxiation - and Toshiya could tell that his client would never fully get over it, not really.
The sad thing was that Toshiya felt jealous - jealous, of the wreck of a person his client had become - because the man had so obviously experienced true love, and even though it had all gone wrong, Toshiya had to wonder what it was like to feel something so perfect.
He hated having to lie awake in the middle of the night. He had no way of controlling his darker thoughts, and they threatened to overwhelm him.
But at least, he thought to himself, but at least...
Toshiya fell asleep thinking about it: but at least there was one person who felt worse than him. At least, right now, Kaoru would be at home, thinking over the phone number on his hand and wondering if he was ready to move on - if he would ever be ready; if he even had the guts. At least Die was at home worrying about his friend, and praying for Toshiya's success, and wrestling with himself over whether or not he'd done the right thing. At least even Kyo might be at home and lying awake, listing all of the ways he differed from Toshiya and thinking of those things as inadequacies; at least maybe, at last, he might be feeling a little bad about what he'd done. Maybe at last he was thinking that he had made a mistake.
It was a comforting thought. Maybe Toshiya would wake up tomorrow and find that Kyo had gone back to Kaoru, jolted by seeing him with someone else, and Toshiya's job would be over before it'd begun, and he could forget the bizarre feelings he'd been having all day and move onto somebody less delicate, less sad; somebody less touching when they looked at Toshiya like that, with all the loneliness of the world in their eyes.
Author:
andrew_in_dragPairing: Kaoru x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: sex, swears
Chapter: 4/??
Previously: 1 | 2 | 3
Synopsis: When it comes to healing broken hearts, Toshiya is a professional. Good-looking and charming, he makes his living by gently helping the jilted to go on with their lives, whilst steadfastly refusing to settle down himself. Boasting a one hundred percent success rate, Toshiya is sure his method is flawless - until he meets Kaoru, a lonely academic who, despite Toshiya's better judgement, starts to get under his skin...
CHAPTER FOUR:
"Well." Kaoru pulled up the collar of his jacket awkwardly, biting his lower lip, "Thank you for doing that."
Toshiya arched an eyebrow. "Is he always that nice?"
Kaoru laughed gently, his breath a cloud of white mist in the cold air.
"I am...sorry. Tolerance isn't one of Kyo's strong points, and I think..." Toshiya caught the slightest hint of a blush on Kaoru's cheeks, although it could have just been the sudden chill wind, "I don't think he really expected to see me with somebody...you know, like you."
"Like me?" Toshiya tilted his head to the side, watching the colour on Kaoru's face deepen: definitely a blush, then.
"Well," his client stuttered, "I think he was maybe expecting somebody a little more average."
Toshiya pulled a sweet-shy smile out of his repertoire of facial expressions.
"Maybe he just wasn't expecting a Hyogo native with a Nagano accent," he said wryly, leaving Kaoru to grin embarrassedly.
"Yeah," he said quietly, "Sorry about that. You were really quick, I mean - you were really good, coming up with all that stuff. So thank you."
"It's okay," Toshiya shrugged and smiled, "It was my pleasure. Being seen on somebody's arm does do something to give the impression you're coping alright, after all..." he faltered; Kaoru had fixed him with a strangely intense look. "I mean, he backtracked hastily, "It's fine."
"Would you..." Kaoru interjected carefully, "Would you perhaps let me buy you a drink, or something? To say thank you? Or, no, what am I thinking; it's the middle of the day. Or—" he hesitated, "Or maybe I should ask somebody a bit more average."
"I should probably get back to work," Toshiya lied regretfully - the first meeting should be no more than twenty minutes, in his experience - "But I'd really like it if you called me sometime."
Truthfully, it was immaterial whether or not his client chose to call him. Toshiya knew he'd manage to run into him again sooner or later.
But Kaoru looked quietly pleased to have Toshiya's phone number scrawled across the back of his hand, and so Toshiya pushed the thought from his mind.
The flat in which Toshiya lived was a small, pokey place, stuffed into the third floor of a narrow ex-townhouse, which once might have looked quite grand but was now beginning to crumble and show signs of age. Like a person, Toshiya thought drily, once the make-up had been stripped off and the years had done their work.
Usually, Toshiya liked to keep busy for as long as possible before he truly ran out of things to do and was relegated to curling up sadly before the television, but on that night he didn't. Instead, he walked into his apartment and threw his keys on the nearest available surface before simply sinking back into his sofa.
He couldn't explain why the day had affected him so much. Kyo had been rude, but he'd expected that and, even though he normally tried to avoid confrontation like the plague, he somehow knew that it wasn't Kaoru's ex-partner that had fazed him - but rather, it seemed to be Kaoru himself.
He thought of what he would say if he had the choice.
I'm sorry; you seem to be a very nice person, but...
But nothing. Toshiya shook his head wearily: there was nothing wrong with Kaoru, apart from the fact that he was maybe a little lonely lost, and there was no reason at all why Toshiya should feel like this wasn't a good idea.
He shifted uneasily. The trouble was, he had a strange gut feeling about his client, and his gut feelings usually turned out to be incredibly accurate. Instincts about other people were what made him so good at what he did, but Kaoru...
He just couldn't read the man, and it irked him. Moreover, he had an overwhelming feeling that, encouraging though their first meeting had been, something about his handling of the situation would soon go horribly wrong.
He sighed heavily and wondered what it would be like to kiss his client. Kaoru's lips were delicately shaped, just like the rest of him; they were dark red and complicated. The had looked good when he spoke.
Well, anyway.
Toshiya slept badly that night. His client wove in and out of his fitful, half-there dreams; he spent whole blank periods of time trying to find patterns in the ceiling. If he started long enough, he found that the paintwork disintegrated into thousands of tiny dots that milled around before his eyes.
He sighed and shifted, trying to find a cooler spot on the pillow. Maybe his previous client had been a little too much for him; maybe Toshiya wasn't quite over him yet. As he got older - and wasn't that the thought to keep him awake - he seemed to be growing more and more easily dented; more susceptible to the individual charms of his clients. They left an impact on him, now. He missed them.
He thought of his previous client: a man slightly older than he'd expected but sweet, sweet and and lovely and kind and sad; a businessman and a classical pianist with way more money than could ever be spent on one person alone. His lover had died - had quietly slipped away, early in the morning, by asphyxiation - and Toshiya could tell that his client would never fully get over it, not really.
The sad thing was that Toshiya felt jealous - jealous, of the wreck of a person his client had become - because the man had so obviously experienced true love, and even though it had all gone wrong, Toshiya had to wonder what it was like to feel something so perfect.
He hated having to lie awake in the middle of the night. He had no way of controlling his darker thoughts, and they threatened to overwhelm him.
But at least, he thought to himself, but at least...
Toshiya fell asleep thinking about it: but at least there was one person who felt worse than him. At least, right now, Kaoru would be at home, thinking over the phone number on his hand and wondering if he was ready to move on - if he would ever be ready; if he even had the guts. At least Die was at home worrying about his friend, and praying for Toshiya's success, and wrestling with himself over whether or not he'd done the right thing. At least even Kyo might be at home and lying awake, listing all of the ways he differed from Toshiya and thinking of those things as inadequacies; at least maybe, at last, he might be feeling a little bad about what he'd done. Maybe at last he was thinking that he had made a mistake.
It was a comforting thought. Maybe Toshiya would wake up tomorrow and find that Kyo had gone back to Kaoru, jolted by seeing him with someone else, and Toshiya's job would be over before it'd begun, and he could forget the bizarre feelings he'd been having all day and move onto somebody less delicate, less sad; somebody less touching when they looked at Toshiya like that, with all the loneliness of the world in their eyes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-04-11 02:44 pm (UTC)From:You make me happy reading this you know that ^^
PS: Errrr *small voice* there is that one line where Toshiya says Hyogo native with Nagano accent. But in the last chapter I think you changed it to Kobe? ^^;;
no subject
Date: 2012-04-11 02:48 pm (UTC)From:And thank you! Kaoru's just too cute :D
no subject
Date: 2012-04-11 04:17 pm (UTC)From:Kaoru is just adorable <3 although these days he probably doesn't like that LOL
no subject
Date: 2012-04-11 11:21 pm (UTC)From:I felt this way when I read it first time that from the moment he approached Toshiya, Kaoru didn't seem as broken and lifeless as Die described him, I like how the positive effects of Toshiya's personality already started to work.
Once again...
Date: 2012-04-12 07:26 am (UTC)From:Hello, mamzelle!!
Very good job! I love them and I slightly regret that they couldn't spend more time together but...! I think that Totchi's caught in his own trap XD Think this client wouldn't be so easy to fix because Toshiya himself is going to have his heart broken =3
Great, Miss, so please write on... I can't wait for Toshiya to fall in love with the dark-sided bearded man ^^
Re: Once again...
Date: 2012-04-12 11:15 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 11:24 pm (UTC)From:( I decided to read this one- it took me a while to decide where to start from your archive)