Fifteen Years: 12/15

[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 | 10 | 11
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 TWELVE: 11/11/2008

This year can’t end soon enough.
Even though everything is mostly back to normal again, I can’t help but find myself counting the days until 2008 is firmly in the past. This year has been a struggle for all of us.
I’ll remember it, of course, for the being the year that Toshiya and I gave up – that I grew up, I suppose, just like Kyo told me to all those years ago, although that’s probably not what he meant. Who knows, though?
I can’t wait, too, to get home. I want to take a nice, long break: I want to run into my mother’s arms and let her tut over the length of my hair and examine me for signs of weight loss. I’m far too big, of course, but sometimes I wish my parents could come and carry me home. I want to view the world through their simple, primary-coloured spectrum: I want to live in their storybook universe, where people like Kyo are “a bit of a character”; where Toshiya is madly in love with me, instead of just the other way around.
Speaking of Kyo, I’ll also remember this year for being the year that he experimented with mood stabilisers. I still feel a little sting of shame when I think of the poorly disguised shock on all our faces, when he dully admitted that he thought he needed help; we reacted as if we had all previously considered him absolutely fine.
The faith we had in modern medicine was naïve, anyway. The medicine he took only dammed the flow of his mind, and we watched as he drowned inside himself. Ever conscientious, Kaoru urged him to keep taking all that he had been prescribed, and although Kyo promised dutifully – still in that horrible, flat, dull tone of voice – I saw him pretend to take his dose by squirreling it away in his cheek, and spitting it out when Kaoru’s back was turned.
He must have known, of course, but I think even he saw that Kyo was better when he was crazy.
But our band has come closer this year than it ever has to falling apart. Something has to give. I hope the year breaks before we do.

It seemed that Die was having the most incredible difficulty sleeping. He could drift off alright – sometimes he could hardly stop himself – but no matter how tired he was, he always awoke after a few hours. It was as if there was some kind of alarm clock ringing away inside him, and there was no way of turning it off. He could toss and he could turn, but there was no getting back to sleep.
He started to take walks in the morning. He almost liked it, even though it was so cold. He was up with the mist and the dank, when the birds started to sing; often, when he returned to his room, he found that his feet were soaked and frozen from the dew, and the face he met in the mirror was a poor imitation of his own. It made him stop and stare: he looked tired and grey. It occurred to him, on those mornings, that he was getting older, and that there was nothing he could do about it.
He tried his best to will himself back to sleep. He imagined that he could ball up all his memories just as small and tight as he wanted, and clasp them like a smooth pebble in his hand.

One morning, Die awoke from his light, fitful sleep to a gentle tapping on his door. It was so gentle that he could hardly be sure he was truly hearing it, and even as he strained his ears in the semi-darkness a soft groan escaped his throat. He had been having another dream about Toshiya. It was only early evening, but he had been exhausted. His dreams were a guilty pleasure that he indulged in as often as his body allowed; now, he wanted to return to his sleep, and for his life and all its troubles to disappear for a while.
But still – tap, tap, tap. Die shut his eyes for something longer than a blink and threw the covers back, controlling his irritation as his feet padded across the thin hotel carpet.
“Coming,” he muttered under his breath as he swung the door open, “Coming—”
He paused, hand on the door handle.
“What are you doing here?” he asked awkwardly: as a rule, he and Toshiya generally kept each other at arm’s length. For one to invade the other’s private time for something more than a text message with a dirty joke, or a phone call requesting help with one or another broken appliance, was strictly forbidden: it was an unwritten rule, but a well-kept one.
“I’m sorry.” Toshiya hugged his own chest tightly, and Die realised he was shivering. “I just…” he sighed. “Can I come in? I – I feel so weird.”
Die bit his lip, on the verge of saying no – he knew it was a bad idea; he knew that Toshiya knew it was a bad idea – but hesitated.
“Are you sick?” he asked doubtfully, and Toshiya shrugged a little helplessly. His arms crossing his chest gave him an oddly small, vulnerable look, despite his toned shoulders and firm abs, and so Die stepped back to let him across the threshold. He had the strangest feeling that they had been travelling towards this moment, the two of them, and it had been a long time coming, and when he turned to tell Toshiya to sit down on the bed, he found that the bassist was already there.

“So.” Die sat down next to his bandmate, shifting a little uncomfortably. The hotel mattress was too soft, and he was trying to stop it from rocking them together. Toshiya sat with his legs crossed demurely, and for once he wasn’t moving at all. His hair was slightly wet from the cold rain outside, and it was all pushed back off his face. He looked younger that way. With no styling and no pretence, he could have been a gawky kid, perched on the edge of Die’s bed because he didn’t know what else to do.
“Put your arms around me,” he said suddenly.
“Toshiya—”
“Die, please.”
Die thought about arguing, but instead he sighed softly and just did what Toshiya said, slipping an awkward arm over his shoulders. It seemed he was spending all his time trying to fight with people and barely being able to get a word in edgewise, and the truth was that he was tired of it all. He was tired, too, of being the responsible one. He wanted to put his arms around Toshiya. He looked like he needed it.
“Now pull me close,” Toshiya said quietly. “The way you used to. Please, Die, can’t you make it feel like it used to?”
Die smiled sadly.
“Doesn’t it feel that way?"
“You’re tense.”
“Sorry.” He let a breath out slowly and pulled Toshiya towards him, letting the stiffness out of his arms so that his bandmate could lean into him. His uncertainty waned as Toshiya simply rested his forehead in the place where Die’s shoulder met his neck, and steadily he began to stroke his side, up and down, up and down, lulling himself into a soothed state with his own actions.
“That’s better.”
“Mm.”
“This is a strange year.”
“Yes, it is.” Die rested his cheek on the top of Toshiya’s head, swaying their two bodies gently, as if there was music playing. He closed his eyes. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a break?”
“I took you to Nagano,” Toshiya said, and Die felt the brush of his bandmate’s eyelashes against his neck as his eyes closed. “You owe me. Take me to Mie.”
“There’s nothing in Mie.”
“You’ll be there. And we could go to Ise Grand Shrine. That’s in Mie. We could pray for good luck.”
“I don’t think the gods hand out chart-topping success.”
“I mean for Kyo.”
“Oh.”
An uneasy silence settled over the two of them at the mention of Kyo’s name. In the back of his mind, Die had question after question that he wanted to ask: did you love him as much as me; was the sex as good; did you really, truly connect, in the way I always thought we did?
He wasn’t even angry, not really. He just felt kind of sorrowful.
“We’re a mess,” he commented honestly, and he thought he felt Toshiya smile against his neck.

“We’re doing incredible things,” the bassist said softly, shifting a little further towards Die’s body. His arms finally unfolded from where they had been clenched across his chest, and Die smiled as one tentative hand clasped his knee. “We’re doing things that most people only dream about.”
“And are you happy?” Die asked curiously. He was glad that their tight hold on each other meant they could not look each other in the eyes; that, combined with the near darkness of the room and the sound of the rain on the roof, made it easier to talk. It was as if they were lying in bed together at night, just as they had done hundreds of times, talking softly to come down from the rush and exhilaration of what they had just done, so that they could fall asleep. Die was sure he had told Toshiya every secret he had in those hushed, midnight moments. Something about the darkness and the closeness of the other man made him utterly drunk.
Slowly Toshiya nodded.
“Sometimes when we’re onstage, I’m so happy I could die.”
“And offstage?”  Die asked gently, and squeezed his bandmate’s shoulders. He sighed softly, answered for him: “It doesn’t keep.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Toshiya exhaled heavily, his breath tickling Die’s neck. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I came here. Lately I feel so – so faded. Like the colour is getting all bleached out of me, and if I don’t do something, I’m going to disappear entirely.”
“Like you could scream at the top of your lungs, and nobody would hear you.”
“Right.” Toshiya sighed. “Right. Can we get under the covers?”
Die got under the covers. He watched as his friend pulled off his shirt and dropped it on the floor. He stripped himself naked, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and slid under the withered hotel bedspread. His hands reached out for Die’s body; when they found it, he wound himself around the guitarist like a tourniquet.

“You’re tense again.”
“Well, you’re naked.”
“Does that worry you?”
Die turned to face him, his hands cupping Toshiya’s jaw tenderly.
“Hey,” he said, “What do you want, anyway?”
“You. Everything. I want to feel everything. Do everything. Do you remember when we first met, and I asked what you liked to do, and you said, ‘everything’?”
“Don’t you think—”
“I’m tired of thinking. I think all the time and it makes me fucking sick. I’ve lost you, Die. Do you know how that makes me feel? If you can’t hold me and make me feel like somebody loves me, I think I’m going to scream.”
“But Toshiya—”
“That time in Nagano was my first time with a man.” He sat up abruptly, throwing Die a triumphant glance when he registered the guitarist’s surprise. “You thought it was just yours, didn’t you? You thought I’d done this great huge terrible thing to you. Because I was such a goddamned cheap little—”
“No.” Die sat up himself, laying a firm hand on Toshiya’s shoulder. “No. I felt lucky. I don’t know why you chose me, and I didn’t care, because I was young and confused about my sexuality, and you were like a gift.” He took a breath. “I thought you were magical and rare. I fell in love with you.” He shrugged. “I don’t care if I wasn’t right – because I was wrong, really, wasn’t I? You’re a mess. You’re an absolute fucking mess. You’re the most messed up person I know, apart from maybe Kyo.” He laughed suddenly. “When we first met, I thought I was screwed up. But it’s you. It’s always been you. You can’t even let me have that!”
“D-Die…”
“You say you want to feel like somebody loves you? Well, here I am. I love you. I’ve always loved you. But you don’t really want to love me back, do you? No wonder you’re a rockstar. All those people to adore you, and you don’t even have to know their names; well, I bet that’s just perfect for you. I bet that’s something you couldn’t have even dreamt of—”
“I love you. It’s complicated. Can’t you understand that?”
“How am I supposed to understand anything if you won’t explain?” Die demanded, shaking Toshiya’s shoulder gently with every word. Then, very suddenly, he paused. “You love me?”
“Of course I love you.”

Strangely, Die only knew that there was cause for alarm because Toshiya’s voice was so flat. When they argued, he normally crackled with energy, and his pretty lips spat the foulest language Die had ever heard.
Now, he sounded weary. He had his eyes closed, and his nakedness seemed raw and shocking. Die noticed that there was a large bruise flowering darkly below his right nipple. It was a purple so bright it that almost looked red: that it almost looked like a warning sign. It was ugly. The more Die looked at it, the sicker he felt.
Carefully, he pulled the uppermost off the over-starched hotel sheet and bunched it in his hands, gathering a hold to drape it over Toshiya’s shoulders. It covered the bruise and then swamped him so he looked like a child. Die wrapped him tight, like he would a newborn baby.
A flash from the past in Die’s mind, courtesy of his mother: you have to wrap newborns tight; they’re worried that they’ll fly apart otherwise.
There was a small flurry of movement, like a whirlwind in miniature, and the blanket fluttered over Die’s shoulders. Toshiya was staring at him soberly, hands over his shoulders. The tears that slid down his cheeks were silent; a secret, bound in the middle of their strange cocoon.
In that darkness and that stillness, Die touched him. He caught tears with his lips and let his hands feel how Toshiya’s body shook. He kissed and nuzzled and butted his head forwards gently, seeking more. He had a very dim sense that outside, there was some incredible chaos, and inside there was just the two of them, caught in a moment of safety: the eye of the storm.
“Tell me what to do,” he murmured, “You look fragile. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Hurt me,” Toshiya said gently. “Make me bleed. Bruise me. I want to scream. Break my bones, why don’t you? Smash me into pieces.”
“I love you.” Die smiled sadly. Toshiya bowed his head.
“Everything,” he said softly, “You like to do everything. Do everything.”
Gently, Die did. 


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