Fifteen Years: 4/15

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: Fifteen Years
Author: andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Die x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: sex, rock 'n roll, boyish attitudes
Previous Chapters: 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 
Synopsis: What does it mean when the story of your life is all about somebody else? Die unearths his old journal to find that every single entry is dedicated to his bandmate, occasional lover and enduring obsession: fifteen years of friendship and sex; love and fear; beginnings and endings - fifteen years of Toshiya. When he reaches the final page, however, he finds something he never expected; and it seems the story might not be over for Die just yet...
Notes: Finally, I got to write a bit of a softer chapter!

CHAPTER FOUR: 3/12/2000

Toshiya and I haven’t even spoken since that night, but I’ve been writing about it here for nearly three months.
It’s different now. Before, it was like he was flirting with me in some way, or playing some game, but now he won’t even look at me. I don’t even think he’s embarrassed, or even mad; it’s more like he’s just…resigned. Like he’s waiting for something. He’s distracted. Whenever we were travelling, he used to sit next to me and joke around. We’re still travelling, but now he sits up front, by Kyo, and the two of them are as quiet and withdrawn as each other.
I’m so confused. I know in my head that I did the right thing for the band, and that’s without question. Somehow, though, I just can’t fight the feeling that I fucked up – and not in a small way, either. I feel like I did damage. I hurt something, but I don’t even know what.
He’s the last thing I think about before I go to sleep at night; the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. Toshiya, Toshiya, Toshiya. Can’t you see that I did the best that I could? —That sometimes, honestly…you scare me?
You’re too beautiful; too desirable. You’re too much. That’s the frightening part: when I’m with you, I feel like I could just fly apart at any moment. It’s too easy to believe that I’m in love with you.
In this journal, I’m in love with you.
I don’t even know who I am around you.

For almost three months, Die lived the most incredible double life.
Like a family man, like a superhero, like a thousand closet alcoholics or big business embezzlers, Die felt himself splitting almost entirely into two. Sound-checking, performing and meeting fans, he was the same old Daisuke Andou that anybody from his hometown would recognise: cheerful, charming and down-to-earth. When he was fulfilling his duties, Die even felt like that version of himself; it gave him some hope that maybe he hadn’t sold every single good part of himself to finance Dir en grey’s success.  For the most part, he enjoyed himself. It was hard to even get homesick during the daytime, when there was so much going on: there simply wasn’t enough time to indulge emotions like that. Die wasn’t sure if he really believed that wholeheartedly, or if Kaoru had simply told him so many times that it had become truth. Their band leader had a wonderful talent for talking people round, sometimes through clever persuasion and sometimes through sheer verbal force. Kyo often wryly implied that was how he had become band leader in the first place: he had simply told people it was so. The Gospel of Kaoru.
At night, though, Die became his other self. And at night, there was nobody to talk him out of it.

It was on one such sleepless night that Die decided that he’d had enough of tossing and turning in bed, muddling his thoughts between the tangles and sharp tugs on his hair and the white, overly-plump hotel pillow.
Like a sleepwalker, he sat up and delicately padded over the floor. He didn’t want to wake Kyo, who occupied the bed across the room: he had wisely – and, Die suspected, deliberately – taken the bed farthest from the telephone, leaving Die to suffer Kaoru’s perky morning wake-up call. Outside, it had been snowing in fits and starts for several hours, and when Die eased the hotel window open he let out a sharp, breathy gasp at the sudden chill. His surprise marked itself as a cloud of white mist that drifted on the air: powerless, he thought immediately of the smoke that had coiled steadily from the tip of Toshiya’s cigarette that time in the rain in Nagano; of the way it had seemed to trace a kind of ladder, like a pathway to the stars.
Die took in a deep, slow breath. The snow on the ground leant a kind of eerie glow to the outside world, and the clouds above looked almost orange. The air was freezing and brittle as glass. On his tongue, it tasted metallic.
“Hey, Stage Left…” the voice behind him was grumpily sleepy, slurred almost beyond coherence, “You better be fuckin’ sleepwalking.”
Die turned in a flash of bright red hair, smiling guiltily.
“Sorry, Kyo. I was just…” he broke off, realising he had no real excuse for why he was standing in front of an open window in the middle of December. He shrugged. “Sorry. Just couldn’t sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Kyo shuffled towards the window, producing a cigarette seemingly from thin air – did he sleep with them, or what? – and lighting up. The flare of his lighter caught the small line Die gained in the middle of his forehead whenever he was worried; thoughtfully, Kyo stared at him.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said at last.
“No?” Die raised his eyebrows, surprised.
“No. I was lying across from you, trying to control your movements with my mind.”
“You were—?” Die started, startled, but then caught himself. To his surprise, he felt a grin fight its way across his face; he even laughed, and was surprised at how naturally it came out. “Bullshit, you little liar.”
“It’s the truth. That’s why you’re standing at the window in the cold and you can’t explain why – you don’t even know why, yourself. I pushed you with my mind.”
Die snorted, snatching the cigarette from Kyo’s hand and taking a quick drag before wrinkling his nose and handing it back: compared to the delicate taste of Die’s own menthols, Kyo’s cigarettes tasted like tar burning. 
“You’re so weird.”
“Only when I don’t get enough sleep.”
“So go back to bed.”
“Why don’t you go back to bed?”
“Don’t be a brat.”
Kyo yawned widely. “No need, no deed,” he agreed sleepily, shoving his cigarette into Die’s mouth again. “Have the rest of that, if you’re not too much of a pussy. My mind powers also got Toshiya out of bed, if you want a nice view whilst you smoke it.”
“What?!” Die whipped back around, smoke from the cigarette stinging his eyes momentarily; sure enough, out in the hotel’s courtyard there was Toshiya, hunched over on a bench and having a little smoking session of his own. In the strange half-light, he looked oddly young and vulnerable. His cheeks were red from cold, Die could tell, and he had flung a coat straight on over his pyjamas. His feet were bare, toes trailing through the snow; he shivered, but made no movement to go inside.
He was beautiful.
“What’s he doing out there?” Die asked vaguely, eyes fixed to the other man.
“He’s rooming with Shinya, so he can’t smoke. Toshiya always wants what he can’t have,” came Kyo’s sleepy reply, and by the time Die’s mind had processed that, Kyo was only willing to answer his questions with loud, fake snores; and Die never did get another chance to ask him exactly what he meant, because the very next evening was when the accident occurred.

Later, it would seem like the whole event passed Die by in a blur – a surreal, stressful blur that began from sometime in the middle of Rasetsukoko and the pyrotechnics, stretched over the way the stagehands had escorted an unusually pale and thin-lipped Kyo offstage, and only ended at the hospital, some hours later, when it sunk in fully that everything was really happening: Kyo was really hurt.
The four of them collected in the corridor outside Kyo’s room, none of them talking much. Shinya, quiet to begin with, went completely mute; he gave in to a rare moment of weakness and chewed at a knuckle compulsively, uncaring of how many times Kaoru bat his hand away from his mouth.  For his own part, Kaoru took up a position by the door to Kyo’s room and might as well have affixed himself to the floor, so little did he move. His mouth was set in a grim line, and every so often he would interrupt the silence to say that the doctor would probably come and talk to them any minute now, any minute now, but the minutes ticked past and nothing happened.
Toshiya and Die were wanderers. Die paced restlessly whilst Toshiya drifted from corridor to corridor, room to room. He collected endless cups of coffee that he distributed amongst the others, though he didn’t take more than a few sips, himself. His eyes were a little red.
The problem, it seemed, was with Kyo’s ear. When they had led him offstage, it hadn’t been obvious, but the next time Die had seen him, the short vocalist had a mound of blossomy tissues pressed to the left side of his head, and his normally razor-sharp gaze had been oddly unfocussed. It was scary, looking into Kyo’s eyes and seeing so little there; it looked as if his fierce intelligence had been somehow dulled, leaving him slack and sedate. He was contrary by nature – point him one way and he’d just as surely walk the other – but when the paramedics had led him into the ambulance he’d followed them, just as docile as a child. 
The sound of a door opening distracted Die from his thoughts; he glanced over just in time to see Toshiya disappear into the stairwell, head down, body limp.
Die shifted.
“I’ll – I’ll go after him, shall I?”
Kaoru looked up at him wearily but did not respond; Shinya gnawed on his finger and nodded vaguely.
Die felt a weird sort of thump in his chest; a new kind of panic that he had not truly acknowledged until that point. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again just as silently, and the only sound in the hallway was the click and squeak of his footsteps as he left the two of them alone.

Toshiya hadn’t gone far. In the concrete stairwell, Die had only to look up to see the dark shape of his form; his feet, looking oddly pathetic where they stuck out over the edge of a step. He was unaware of the sad, fond little smile that crossed his face as he climbed up to where Toshiya had tucked himself away, but when he reached the bassist, he only stood in front of him, unsure; he didn’t know whether his presence was wanted, or even welcome. The other man was staring off into space, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand, and he truly looked more worried than Die had ever seen him.
Quietness did not suit Toshiya. To see the bassist so pensive made Die more nervous than he was really able to acknowledge.
“Do you ever feel,” Toshiya said finally, “Like you don’t realise how much you miss home until you go somewhere really, really different?”
Die tried a smile. “Yeah,” he answered honestly, and Toshiya gave him a weak little smile back. Die felt a kind of warmth, then, as if the very air had been warmed by their unsteady truce: carefully, he sat down next to Toshiya and slid a cautious arm around the other man. There was a slight pause, and Die imagined he might have heard a kind of clicking as they both reassembled themselves, and then Toshiya was gingerly leaning into him. Their knees bumped together and they both laughed a little uncomfortably. Suddenly feeling full of love, Die placed a careful kiss upon Toshiya’s forehead.
“It’ll be alright,” he murmured, his voice coming out strangely warm and soft, “It’s Kyo. Nothing’s going to bring him down unless he consents to it. Besides, he’s got Kaoru looking out for him. He’s not going to leave this hospital until Kaoru’s satisfied that he’s even healthier than he was when he came in.”
Toshiya gave a rueful smile.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I mean, I think I know.” And he relaxed a little more into Die’s hold, leaning his head against the older man’s shoulder.

Content to be quiet, Die rested his own cheek against the top of Toshiya’s head. It felt right, holding him that way. It made him believe his own statements, even if he had said them mainly to comfort Toshiya; it made him feel like everything really could be alright.
Die shifted his head, feeling Toshiya’s hair tickling his chin. The bassist’s hand was resting loosely over his knee, but not sexually; rather, Die was reminded of the way a child might cling to the hem of a mother’s clothing.
He smiled: Toshiya was young. He’d been only nineteen when they’d met: an age which seemed impossible for Die to think about, now. He’d seemed so grown up then, but in hindsight Die could see his slight gawkiness; the remainders of his teenage awkwardness – since that memorable night, he’d seen Toshiya in a thousand different ways, but now they all blurred into one. Die’s smile widened: wasn’t that just typical? People didn’t really change.
He had no idea just how long they sat there: it could have been five minutes or fifty. Toshiya was quiet, but he didn’t seem so distracted anymore; gently, Die took his hand, and he allowed it. They stayed like that until the door to the stairwell swung open on its hinges; then, they sprung apart a little guiltily to listen to Shinya report the news: yes, Kyo was alright; a little dazed, but he would be fine; a little hearing damage – Toshiya let out a smothered gasp – but nothing that would stop him from doing his job; nothing, Shinya made clear, that could not ultimately be fixed.
And as soon as Shinya left the stairwell, perhaps confused by their stillness and quiet – although he didn’t show it – Toshiya uncoiled instantly back into Die’s arms, weak-boned with relief, and for the briefest moment, Die allowed himself to entertain the thought of kissing him.
He squeezed Toshiya’s knee and stood up awkwardly. The side of his body where Toshiya had been nestled flooded with new cold, and despite himself, he winced. Shaking his head a little, he began down the stairs, and it was only when he noticed that Toshiya was not following him that he paused.
“We’re alright?” he checked, and something about his voice sounded so intimate, even in the echoing stairwell, that he couldn’t help but blush.
Toshiya got to his feet. “We’re all alright now,” he said, and smiled strangely. Later, Die could not figure out whether Toshiya had misunderstood his question on purpose or not, but he decided that it didn’t matter. His mind kept replaying the tranquillity of their moment; over and over again, he felt Toshiya’s hands in his. He was astonished by how much the feel of those cool, slim fingers satisfied his palm.

A/N: 1. According to Orchestrated Chaos, ‘Stage Left’ is how other band members (Toshiya in particular) would refer to Die.
2. I love Kyo in this, possibly even more than I love AMLOR Kyo. He’s just so fucking weird. 


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