Fifteen Years: 10/15

[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 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 
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...

CHAPTER TEN: 13/1/2008

Sometimes it feels like everyone exists in their own personal, private world, and try as you might, you can never fully merge yours with somebody else’s. Where I meet Toshiya is where our universes cross over, and touch at certain points. At other times, he’s gone to me; he’s off exploring parts of his world where there are people I don’t know and places I can’t find. I understand it like I understand heaven and hell: sometimes, people disappear to places where we can’t reach them.
This is where my problems start: I want my world to become his world, and his to be mine. Sometimes it’s not even so much that I want to be with him or have sex with him or whatever, but more that I want to just disappear inside of him forever, and tuck his corners over me so I am squared in the centre of his beautiful, mysterious life.

Die closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of home: of the scents of his skin and Toshiya’s, mixed together on his bed sheets; of cigarette smoke and the detergent he used; of warmth and lazy mornings. He had gone to bed alone, but he woke up with long arms curved around him. Smiling, he wriggled further into them. He always wondered how Toshiya managed to walk around the apartment and climb into bed with him without waking him: Die was the world’s lightest sleeper. It had played havoc with him back in the old days, when they’d shared hotel rooms on tour: Shinya, at least, was quiet, and Toshiya could always be counted on to tire him out so thoroughly he couldn’t help but sleep; Kaoru and Kyo, though, were a nightmare. Kaoru was slightly better, if only because he was steady: Die had spent what felt like a thousand nights lying awake, counting Kaoru’s long, steady snores and helplessly waiting for the next one. Kyo, however, was a different story altogether, and privately Die considered him the worst: although some nights he was perfectly capable of sleeping quietly, on others he would keep Die up with a cacophony of nocturnal noise: he tossed and turned; he yelled and laughed; he murmured nonsensically to himself. When he dreamed, he dreamed obviously: he fought, he fucked.
Warm arms tightened around Die’s waist, squeezing him gently, and sleepily Die turned.
“Morning,” he greeted softly, and was rewarded with a warm and weary smile.
“Hey.”
“I didn’t hear you come in last night. What time did you get back?”
“Oh…” Toshiya shrugged, wriggling his shoulders contentedly, “Four, five maybe?”
Die nuzzled his shoulder, smiling blindly.
“I’m glad you came home.”
“Me too.”

They stayed like that for a while, snuggled together like two sleepy puppies in a basket as they slowly awoke. Slowly, Toshiya stroked Die’s back, his touches becoming gradually bolder and more real – Die always gave a lot of thought to what was real and what wasn’t – and finally Die rolled onto his back, shifting to get more comfortable as Toshiya dreamily stroked his dick to hardness. The morning light turned his skin to molten gold, and Die found himself being lulled into relaxation by the sight and feel of his gentle movements. He felt Toshiya’s own cock firming against his thigh and smiled. It was such a beautiful morning.
“Are you too tired?” the bassist teased, laying a tender kiss over first one of Die’s nipples and then the other, “Old man?”
“Old nothing,” Die said lazily, his hands coming up to rest on Toshiya’s waist as the bassist climbed lithely on top of him. “I just like to watch you.”
“Yeah?” Toshiya kneeled over him, smiling a little mischievously. Gracefully, he bent for a kiss, and Die gladly reciprocated. He loved this: mornings like this. Whatever fears he had about his lover’s secret life, he knew it was all worth it, just for a morning like this. 
“Yeah,” he said, hands rubbing soothingly over the backs of Toshiya’s thighs and his ass, feeling the tight muscles that held him upright. His fingers splayed over the younger man’s hips and the heel of his hand brushed against the head of Toshiya’s cock in a way that he couldn’t really pretend was an accident; gently, Toshiya slapped his hand away.
“What?” Die protested, feeling his own dick twitch anyway, “You don’t want to be touched?”
Toshiya smiled.
“I thought you wanted to watch.”

“Are you kidding me?” Die asked, but he was grinning. His hands slid back around to Toshiya’s ass, and he squeezed carefully as the bassist loosely grasped his own cock. He felt his hands shake minutely, but that didn’t matter. Above him, Toshiya settled himself with a cute little wriggle and slowly started to stroke himself off.
“God,” Die breathed, “You look amazing.”
Toshiya smirked.
“I am amazing,” he said, “And so are you.”  His fingers curved prettily around the hot flesh in his hand, and he groaned lowly as he tugged on his dick. Die could only watch, spellbound, as his lover teased himself: his hands were all over himself, stroking and pinching and loving – he loved himself. Die loved him, too.
“Ah…” Die gripped his hips harder as the bassist bit down on his lip and groaned. He was beginning to look a little undone, his skin flushed and his eyes half-lidded. He was rocking his lips into his own hand now, his chest heaving as his movements sped up, and as Die watched he started to suck lewdly on the fingers of his spare hand. He never broke eye contact; never even faltered as he guided those wet fingers down, down, and Die had to sit up to stop him from falling.
“F-fuck…”
Toshiya’s hand worked fast between them as he slid a finger inside himself, moaning long and low; it was his body, but Die’s breath that caught. All the guitarist could do was gasp and hold his lover as he pumped himself from both ends, his whole body swaying, his dick smearing an indecent trail against Die’s belly.
“Oh fuck, Die—!”
He came, trembling in Die’s arms, and rested his head against his lover’s shoulder. Die could feel him panting, and the way his body shook, and he clutched him tight. He didn’t really want to ever let go.
“Hey,” he said softly, “Where were you last night?”

When Die thought back much, much later, he realised that he found it quite amusing, just how long it took his question to register in Toshiya’s mind. The younger man had always been like that – always so capable of losing himself in what he was doing, or what he was feeling. Die thought of Shinya, who was always so deeply entrenched in his daydreams that you had to shake him to get his attention; he thought of Kaoru, who had a seasoned teacher’s ability to hear even the softest whisper from the opposite end of the bus; he thought of Kyo, who seemed so unmovable, so unreachable, and yet collected their thoughts and their words from them like he collected CDs, like he collected poems and stories, dried flowers, abandoned feathers, and shoved them away in the chaos of his mind.
“Die, I told you…” Toshiya shifted slightly, his arms loosening from where they had been gripping Die’s shoulders for support, “I was out. At a bar.”
Die tried to smile.
“With who?” he asked, and Toshiya moved away from him irritably.
“I told you, with some old friends from home,” he said, agitated, “What does it matter? They came up to visit me and see the city – boyfriends, girlfriends and spouses included. What, are you going to accuse me of having a massive orgy with all of them now?”
“So if it was boyfriends and girlfriends included, then why didn’t you bring me?” Die asked, sitting back against the headboard and crossing his arms. Toshiya’s cum was starting to get sticky on his chest.

“Die,” Toshiya said lowly, “Don’t start this again.”
“No, I want to know. C’mon, were you embarrassed? Ashamed of me, or something? Did you think I might let slip that you’ve been fucking me for all these years?”
“For God’s sake Die, shut up.”
“No!” Die moved forwards so suddenly that Toshiya had no time to react; firmly, he grasped that bassist’s fists in his own, anchoring him where he sat. “No, you are going to hear me out, this time.”
“What the fuck, Die?! Let me go!”
“You said it’d be better when we got back home,” Die said dangerously, “You said.”
“Die, please,” Toshiya begged, “We were having a nice morning, we were—”
“How nice? Out of ten, compared to everyone else you’ve woken up next to this month?”
“Die, stop it!”
“You can’t even deny it!” Die exclaimed, shaking Toshiya’s wrists hard to emphasise his point, “For God’s sake, Toshiya, don’t you even see what you’re doing? I just – I can’t live like this anymore!”
“Die, please,” Toshiya pleaded again, trying to pull himself free, “You’re scaring me.”
“Yeah?” Die let go of his wrists with a little push, his movements so sudden that Toshiya fell backwards. There were tears on the bassist’s cheeks, Die realised.
“Yeah?” he said again, softer, “Well you’re breaking my heart.”

The atmosphere in the room was awkward as Die carefully got up and put his boxers back on. He was still semi-hard, but he could deal with it later. He left Toshiya quietly dressing as he strode to the bathroom to clean the other man’s cum from his skin, and stayed there a few moments longer just to splash some water on his face: inside, he felt sick and scared. He bit his lip, and took a deep breath before he joined his bandmate again, stopping only to pull a big holdall down from the top of his wardrobe. Toshiya stared as he threw it down on the bed. In Die’s absence, he had wiped the tears from his face and put on the stereo; music always cheered him up.
“Going somewhere?” he asked bitterly, armoured up again, but Die did not answer. Instead, he walked quietly around his room, opening drawers and throwing clothes into his bag.
“Die…” Toshiya’s voice had softened, “Die, please. You’re shaking.”
And then, with alarm, “Die, those are my clothes!”
“I know,” the guitarist said calmly, “I don’t want them here. Or you, until you figure yourself out.”
“What? Die!”
“Once,” Die said, his voice utterly controlled, “Kyo gave me some good advice about you. He said: ‘grow up’.”
“Die—”
“I guess I grew up too fast for you.”
“Die, please, will you look at yourself?!” Toshiya scrambled towards him fearfully, cupping his face in his hands, “Die, you’re crying.”
The guitarist swallowed heavily, and brushed the tears from his cheeks. Carefully, he took Toshiya’s hands and guided them away from his face.
“Put some clothes on,” he said, “Take a shower, if you want.”
The bassist burst into tears. Die tried not to let the surprise show on his face: he had thought Toshiya was utterly impervious.
“Don’t do this,” he sobbed. “We’ll go away – we’ll go to Nagano again, or somewhere else—”
“Toshiya, stop it.”
“But Die, I—” Toshiya bit his lip, “I thought you loved me.”
And he said that so wistfully that even Die softened, and stopped packing to put his arms around him briefly – a quick hug, a friendly hug. He patted him gently on the shoulder.
“I do love you,” he said. He tried to smile, but the tears in his eyes left him blind. Toshiya was no more than a blurry muddle in front of him, the colours and shapes of him all broken up. He blinked, and his lover appeared as the tears slid down his cheeks.
“I do love you,” he said honestly, “But I wish I didn’t.”

Later, after Toshiya had left, Die took a long, hot soaking shower, where he could cry without having to truly face his own tears. He screamed into a pillow until there was absolutely nothing left inside him, and then he sat down at the kitchen table and opened his journal.
Toshiya, Toshiya, Toshiya. Words and postcards, scribbled notes, cartoons, photographs. The original entry, the night he’d met Toshiya, accessorised with a picture of him messily cut out of an indie rock magazine. He looked so young he was barely formed. It was funny to think that he’d seemed so old, back then, and so sure of himself.
Die flipped through the pages. Sex; fights; a black and white copy of a photo of Toshiya, smiling onstage at some point during the Macabre Tour in the year 2000. A magic marker speech bubble sprouted from his lips: inside, in Die’s sprawling script, “I’m a bitch!”
He smiled sadly.
A photo of Toshiya taken in Nagano, sat naked on the wooden jetty. He was smiling so widely in the sunshine that he looked as if he could simply burst open.
Receipts, ticket stubs, pictures and headlines and columns clipped from magazines. A picture of the five of them; a picture of the two of them; a picture of Toshiya alone. The smiling faces of his past crowded him; they made the day bearable.
Die closed his journal gently. In the new silence of his flat, he heard the pages shuffle quietly back together; heard the slight creak of the spine. 
Memories. He traced a finger over the imprint where the word had used to be. He was quite alone.

A/N: Bad news: I’m afraid I’ll be unable to post updates on Friday and Saturday, since I’ll be with my grandparents, and they don’t have internet, because…well, they’re old. Major apologies, and I will catch up with you all on Sunday! X

>> to Chapter Eleven >>

Comments

[xxbakanishi.livejournal.com]

This part made me cry, honestly (which may be due to the fact that I had a shitty day including being deaf on one ear XD). I could really feel Die's emotions and especially his pain. Every time I'm reading your stories I feel that I am a part of it, like a bystander or something, because the way you describe everything makes it easy to do so. I hope you know what I mean, because every time when I try to express my feelings, my English is getting worse ^^"
And I'm looking forward to the next chapter, although it will be hard to wait so long for it ;D

[n3uromanc3r.livejournal.com]

The way you make Die express himself, how he writes about his feelings for Toshiya is so beautiful, I really like this story!

[cadkitten.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. *pats Die*