andrew_in_drag (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrew_in_drag) wrote2012-04-15 11:25 am
andrew_in_drag) wrote2012-04-15 11:25 am
Entry tags:
A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON: 8/??
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: 8/??
Previously: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
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 EIGHT:
When they'd been dating for one month - one month to the day, Kaoru established shyly, because that was when he'd first become sure that Toshiya was looking for something a little more than friendship, or feeling something a little stronger than pity - Kaoru had invited Toshiya around to his place for the evening.
It was now March. In just one week, Toshiya would be twenty-eight.
It wasn't the first time he'd been in Kaoru's home, but it felt different - for a start, Kaoru greeted him at the door wearing a wonderfully proud, boyish smile, and had taken Toshiya's jacket to reveal that, this time, he was impeccably dressed, rather than soaked through and dripping water. It was raining again - an early April shower - but this time Toshiya had used his common sense and brought an umbrella with him; he shook it off outside whilst standing in the doorway, his heart pounding unusually fast. He was scared his frantic pulse would be visible; that Kaoru might actually notice his skin twitching underneath his sheer gauze shirt. His client's eyes would inevitably be drawn there, given that the material was essentially translucent: it had always been a winner before, and he wore it a lot on these more intimate dates.
Still, he was actually a little embarrassed to wear it in front of Kaoru; if only because he actually cared, on a personal level, what the other man thought of him.
He immediately chastised himself and stretched out his long arms to fold Kaoru into a hug, smiling at the way his client's hair tickled his nose.
Kaoru's home was a well-loved maze, full of plants and bookshelves and with a real, old-fashioned fireplace that made Toshiya's skin glow warmly through the thin fabric of his shirt. The sofas were the long, low, squashy kind found in old libraries, and when Toshiya settled himself into one he realised that he never wanted to stand up again. Smiling dreamily, he wriggled into position and closed his eyes, feeling even warmer and more content when he heard Kaoru laugh.
Evidence of Kyo was still scattered around; there was still a somewhat disordered coffee table covered in sheets of paper that, the first time Toshiya had seen Kaoru's house, had all been disjointed sections of poems or scribbled thoughts and quotes, in what Toshiya supposed must be Kyo's handwriting. It had been messy and jagged, nothing at all like Kaoru's neat, compact script.
Now, more of the paper seemed to be covered by Kaoru's smaller, neater hand; pages of notes and research that seemed to have to do with some major excavation planned in Greece.
"Sorry," Kaoru said nervously, gathering the papers up and stacking them neatly, "I should have moved these..." he smiled. "Since I've been living alone, I've gathered that running a house alone isn't as easy as it looks."
Toshiya grinned, reaching to take the papers from his hands. "I'll say. It took my first serious relationship for me to realise that there were dust bunnies marching in formation under my bed. When you look at things from someone else's point of view, you see everything you never noticed before."
Kaoru gave him one of those small, sweet smiles that made Toshiya's heart seem to squeeze itself tight in his chest.
Oh, God.
He gladly accepted when Kaoru offered him a glass of wine. Alcohol knocked the rough edges off everything - and when their hands brushed as Kaoru passed Toshiya the glass, Toshiya knew that he needed a drink more than ever.
For his own part, Kaoru just couldn't understand it.
He liked Toshiya - really liked him, almost astonishingly so for the short amount of time they'd known each other - but he couldn't understand him. Toshiya was the kind of good-looking, adept, graceful person that Kaoru had known and been sneered at by in high school; and though those years were a long way behind him, Kaoru had found that the basic principle of relationships was still essentially the same.
And the fact was, Toshiya was the sort of person who really shouldn't have glanced at him twice.
Kaoru looked at him now, leaning into the sofa sleepily, and never could have guessed what was running through his companion's head. He looked for flaws and found none.
If Kaoru was honest, Toshiya's unwavering interest made him feel slightly doubtful; he felt as though he was leading the other man on, presenting a false image that, once wiped away, would leave the other man startled and horrified at what he had really been expressing interest in, all these months. The feeling that he had tricked the other man in some way was not a pleasant one at all, and he stared at Toshiya's hands to try and distract himself from it.
He was so different from Kyo, Kaoru mused, in so many ways. Kyo's fingers had been permanently ink-stained, and the sides had been hard and callused from writing so furiously; when they'd held hands, Kaoru's fingers would slip and he'd feel like shivering, as if somebody had walked over his grave. Kyo's hands had been angular and complicated, his fingers crooking around his pen like a bolt around a screw; he was a small person but his hands were large and capable, bigger than Kaoru's and living testament to how much Kaoru needed him.
But then Kaoru looked at Toshiya's hands, and the way his long fingers tangled around the stem of his wine glass. Kaoru thought of how big and warm the other man's palms were, and how his hand and Toshiya's came together as if they were cupping something as fragile as a moth within them, spun like a secret between their two skins.
Toshiya felt anxious, as if aware that Kaoru was seeing something to him that he had never considered before. Hastily he took another sip of wine, imagining it pouring like honey over all the thoughts that collected like burrs in the back of his mind, coating them in amber so they could be looked at, but never touched.
He realised that he had been silent for a good minute or so and jumped, collecting himself and reassembling his thoughts until he was sure that he wouldn't choke on his words.
"You know," he said suddenly, but softly, so that when Kaoru jumped it was followed by a smile, "It's so selfish of me, but I - I'm almost glad that you had to do what you did, that day in the library. I was just about to leave when you appeared there in front of me." He smiled, as if embarrassed. "I thought you looked so good."
It touched his heart when Kaoru's expression turned to one of honest-to-God surprise. Standing up, he set down his empty glass and placed his hands gently on Kaoru's hips.
"Why me?" he asked interestedly, if only to pull the blush that he enjoyed so much from Kaoru's cheeks.
"It nearly wasn't you," Kaoru answered seriously, looking him straight in the eyes, "I thought you were too beautiful. I thought you'd laugh at me. It was difficult to ask when I thought I knew you would say no, but I had to take the chance. I knew I'd always wonder if I didn't."
Toshiya stood, held in his client's spell for a few moments before moving back slightly and laughing, nervously at first, because he was letting himself get carried away again.
"So you were hoping to get a date out of it," he teased, and then Kaoru laughed shyly and the situation was safe once more.
"Only if it was with you," he said, and though his voice was playful Toshiya somehow thought he might have been, at least to some degree, truthful. He passed it up, though; he kissed his client gently on the forehead.
And it occurred to Kaoru now that sometimes whole days passed without him thinking of Kyo. When he realised that, he pictured it like a break in the fog that surrounded him, and he saw that the hands tempting him out into the sunshine were the large, open, loving hands of the man before him.
Later that evening, when Kaoru was certain that Toshiya had been wined and dined to satisfaction - he was adorably earnest, Toshiya thought, to the effect that Toshiya was a little full and drunk - the two of them curled up sleepily in front of the fire, every now and again glancing at a movie that neither of them could honestly say they were really watching.
"How long have you lived in the city?" Kaoru asked absently, sliding Toshiya's fingers through his own.
2Nearly ten years, now," Toshiya answered, truthful for once. "I moved here from Nagano when I was eighteen, because I wanted to get into fashion." He shrugged, "It didn't work out, of course...but I stayed on anyway. I like it here. I miss Nagano, but I guess Tokyo is my home."
"Nagano?" Kaoru's thumb began to stroke the back of Toshiya's hand steadily, "I've never been there."
"My family used to run a hotel around a hot spring," Toshiya mused - also the truth. He couldn't count the number of lies he'd told to clients when he'd wanted to sound more...oh, more interesting, or more connected to them in some way. In fact, he and his family had never exactly been that close - Toshiya's conservative parents tended to think that fashion wasn't the type of career a boy should seek, and they had never really understood his ambitions - but still, Toshiya's childhood around the hot springs had been idyllic.
"In winter, my friends and I would go skiing on the mountains," he remembered, "The snow would last until mid-spring. It stayed cold until April."
"Would you like to go back?" Kaoru asked, and his voice sounded so close and intimate in the half light. Smiling, Toshiya sat up straighter and looked Kaoru in the eye.
"Right now I'm happy where I am," he said honestly, and was met with a smile so wide and trusting that he found it hard to breathe.
Author:
andrew_in_dragPairing: Kaoru x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: sex, swears
Chapter: 8/??
Previously: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
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 EIGHT:
When they'd been dating for one month - one month to the day, Kaoru established shyly, because that was when he'd first become sure that Toshiya was looking for something a little more than friendship, or feeling something a little stronger than pity - Kaoru had invited Toshiya around to his place for the evening.
It was now March. In just one week, Toshiya would be twenty-eight.
It wasn't the first time he'd been in Kaoru's home, but it felt different - for a start, Kaoru greeted him at the door wearing a wonderfully proud, boyish smile, and had taken Toshiya's jacket to reveal that, this time, he was impeccably dressed, rather than soaked through and dripping water. It was raining again - an early April shower - but this time Toshiya had used his common sense and brought an umbrella with him; he shook it off outside whilst standing in the doorway, his heart pounding unusually fast. He was scared his frantic pulse would be visible; that Kaoru might actually notice his skin twitching underneath his sheer gauze shirt. His client's eyes would inevitably be drawn there, given that the material was essentially translucent: it had always been a winner before, and he wore it a lot on these more intimate dates.
Still, he was actually a little embarrassed to wear it in front of Kaoru; if only because he actually cared, on a personal level, what the other man thought of him.
He immediately chastised himself and stretched out his long arms to fold Kaoru into a hug, smiling at the way his client's hair tickled his nose.
Kaoru's home was a well-loved maze, full of plants and bookshelves and with a real, old-fashioned fireplace that made Toshiya's skin glow warmly through the thin fabric of his shirt. The sofas were the long, low, squashy kind found in old libraries, and when Toshiya settled himself into one he realised that he never wanted to stand up again. Smiling dreamily, he wriggled into position and closed his eyes, feeling even warmer and more content when he heard Kaoru laugh.
Evidence of Kyo was still scattered around; there was still a somewhat disordered coffee table covered in sheets of paper that, the first time Toshiya had seen Kaoru's house, had all been disjointed sections of poems or scribbled thoughts and quotes, in what Toshiya supposed must be Kyo's handwriting. It had been messy and jagged, nothing at all like Kaoru's neat, compact script.
Now, more of the paper seemed to be covered by Kaoru's smaller, neater hand; pages of notes and research that seemed to have to do with some major excavation planned in Greece.
"Sorry," Kaoru said nervously, gathering the papers up and stacking them neatly, "I should have moved these..." he smiled. "Since I've been living alone, I've gathered that running a house alone isn't as easy as it looks."
Toshiya grinned, reaching to take the papers from his hands. "I'll say. It took my first serious relationship for me to realise that there were dust bunnies marching in formation under my bed. When you look at things from someone else's point of view, you see everything you never noticed before."
Kaoru gave him one of those small, sweet smiles that made Toshiya's heart seem to squeeze itself tight in his chest.
Oh, God.
He gladly accepted when Kaoru offered him a glass of wine. Alcohol knocked the rough edges off everything - and when their hands brushed as Kaoru passed Toshiya the glass, Toshiya knew that he needed a drink more than ever.
For his own part, Kaoru just couldn't understand it.
He liked Toshiya - really liked him, almost astonishingly so for the short amount of time they'd known each other - but he couldn't understand him. Toshiya was the kind of good-looking, adept, graceful person that Kaoru had known and been sneered at by in high school; and though those years were a long way behind him, Kaoru had found that the basic principle of relationships was still essentially the same.
And the fact was, Toshiya was the sort of person who really shouldn't have glanced at him twice.
Kaoru looked at him now, leaning into the sofa sleepily, and never could have guessed what was running through his companion's head. He looked for flaws and found none.
If Kaoru was honest, Toshiya's unwavering interest made him feel slightly doubtful; he felt as though he was leading the other man on, presenting a false image that, once wiped away, would leave the other man startled and horrified at what he had really been expressing interest in, all these months. The feeling that he had tricked the other man in some way was not a pleasant one at all, and he stared at Toshiya's hands to try and distract himself from it.
He was so different from Kyo, Kaoru mused, in so many ways. Kyo's fingers had been permanently ink-stained, and the sides had been hard and callused from writing so furiously; when they'd held hands, Kaoru's fingers would slip and he'd feel like shivering, as if somebody had walked over his grave. Kyo's hands had been angular and complicated, his fingers crooking around his pen like a bolt around a screw; he was a small person but his hands were large and capable, bigger than Kaoru's and living testament to how much Kaoru needed him.
But then Kaoru looked at Toshiya's hands, and the way his long fingers tangled around the stem of his wine glass. Kaoru thought of how big and warm the other man's palms were, and how his hand and Toshiya's came together as if they were cupping something as fragile as a moth within them, spun like a secret between their two skins.
Toshiya felt anxious, as if aware that Kaoru was seeing something to him that he had never considered before. Hastily he took another sip of wine, imagining it pouring like honey over all the thoughts that collected like burrs in the back of his mind, coating them in amber so they could be looked at, but never touched.
He realised that he had been silent for a good minute or so and jumped, collecting himself and reassembling his thoughts until he was sure that he wouldn't choke on his words.
"You know," he said suddenly, but softly, so that when Kaoru jumped it was followed by a smile, "It's so selfish of me, but I - I'm almost glad that you had to do what you did, that day in the library. I was just about to leave when you appeared there in front of me." He smiled, as if embarrassed. "I thought you looked so good."
It touched his heart when Kaoru's expression turned to one of honest-to-God surprise. Standing up, he set down his empty glass and placed his hands gently on Kaoru's hips.
"Why me?" he asked interestedly, if only to pull the blush that he enjoyed so much from Kaoru's cheeks.
"It nearly wasn't you," Kaoru answered seriously, looking him straight in the eyes, "I thought you were too beautiful. I thought you'd laugh at me. It was difficult to ask when I thought I knew you would say no, but I had to take the chance. I knew I'd always wonder if I didn't."
Toshiya stood, held in his client's spell for a few moments before moving back slightly and laughing, nervously at first, because he was letting himself get carried away again.
"So you were hoping to get a date out of it," he teased, and then Kaoru laughed shyly and the situation was safe once more.
"Only if it was with you," he said, and though his voice was playful Toshiya somehow thought he might have been, at least to some degree, truthful. He passed it up, though; he kissed his client gently on the forehead.
And it occurred to Kaoru now that sometimes whole days passed without him thinking of Kyo. When he realised that, he pictured it like a break in the fog that surrounded him, and he saw that the hands tempting him out into the sunshine were the large, open, loving hands of the man before him.
Later that evening, when Kaoru was certain that Toshiya had been wined and dined to satisfaction - he was adorably earnest, Toshiya thought, to the effect that Toshiya was a little full and drunk - the two of them curled up sleepily in front of the fire, every now and again glancing at a movie that neither of them could honestly say they were really watching.
"How long have you lived in the city?" Kaoru asked absently, sliding Toshiya's fingers through his own.
2Nearly ten years, now," Toshiya answered, truthful for once. "I moved here from Nagano when I was eighteen, because I wanted to get into fashion." He shrugged, "It didn't work out, of course...but I stayed on anyway. I like it here. I miss Nagano, but I guess Tokyo is my home."
"Nagano?" Kaoru's thumb began to stroke the back of Toshiya's hand steadily, "I've never been there."
"My family used to run a hotel around a hot spring," Toshiya mused - also the truth. He couldn't count the number of lies he'd told to clients when he'd wanted to sound more...oh, more interesting, or more connected to them in some way. In fact, he and his family had never exactly been that close - Toshiya's conservative parents tended to think that fashion wasn't the type of career a boy should seek, and they had never really understood his ambitions - but still, Toshiya's childhood around the hot springs had been idyllic.
"In winter, my friends and I would go skiing on the mountains," he remembered, "The snow would last until mid-spring. It stayed cold until April."
"Would you like to go back?" Kaoru asked, and his voice sounded so close and intimate in the half light. Smiling, Toshiya sat up straighter and looked Kaoru in the eye.
"Right now I'm happy where I am," he said honestly, and was met with a smile so wide and trusting that he found it hard to breathe.
no subject
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Music: JYJ - NINE