Fifteen Years: 14/15

[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 | 12 | 13 
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 FOURTEEN: 25/9/2009

It’s been almost a year now, since that last night we shared in America. I haven’t written a single thing in this journal for all these months; there’s been no reason.
I almost expected something long and drawn out. I thought that there would be endless days of arguments; that he’d try to fight for me; I even thought that we might figure something out, in the end.
Of course, real life doesn’t happen that way, and I’ve come to realise that those thoughts were only fantasies anyway.
Wounds do heal, though. We have a friendship that reminds me of a tree I once saw when we were touring through California. It looked fine and whole from the outside, but running down the middle there was this fine, faint line, and if you touched it, however gently, then the outermost bark fell away to reveal this huge, black, gaping hole.
That’s what we’re like. That hole is the hurt feelings between us; that bark is the common ground and history we can’t ignore. Tap it, and it’s gone. But it always grows back.
That said, we aren’t machines, and we can’t just go back in time, or pretend that the past thirteen years never happened. It’s a part of us. For me, Toshiya made me who I am: if not exactly happy, then at least secure enough to say that I’m gay. That, you see, was all him. He achieved that because he was the only person who I fell in love with so strongly that their gender ceased to matter.
The secret of it all, of course, is no secret at all: that I miss him more than he will ever know.
So we keep separate, now. We are friends, but only just: sometimes I date, but most often not. I don’t know about Toshiya’s love life, but he is with Kyo a lot. I don’t know what I want to think or say about that. I suppose I hope they’re happy. Somewhere inside of them, they are both delicate people. And they are both my friends.

Die set his guitar down gently, pulling his ponytail off the back of his neck to cool himself down. Winter was coming on fast, but their studio was warmed by hours of physical exertion, the rigour of their rehearsal steaming up the windows and causing the sweat to bead on Die’s temples. He wiped his face with a towel, noticing dimly that several small cuts had opened on his fingers. Inwardly he shrugged: too bad. Kaoru never got cuts, but his fingertips felt like sandpaper.
Die studied his own hands, finding all the ways in which they looked older compared to the last time he had stared at them. The veins seemed more pronounced; the skin was going just a little grainy. Sometimes, after he finished a particularly vigorous session on his guitar, they would tremble for hours afterwards.
Glad for the break, Die patted his pocket for evidence of his cigarettes and lighter and hurried towards the fire escape. He was even grateful for the cold air that hit him; though once it had passed its stage of pleasant coolness, it instantly became far, far too cold, and Die shivered heavily as he lit up.
“You should wear a jacket.”
Die frowned, squinting as smoke got into his eyes.
“Oh.” He nodded awkwardly. “Yeah. Hi, Kyo.”
“Hi.” The vocalist leaned against the wall next to him, totally composed despite the fact that he and Die did not really speak that much anymore. In fact, Kyo didn’t really speak to anyone. Die had noticed that it often seemed to be Toshiya following Kyo, more than the other way around; always the bassist looking limp, looking for somebody to tell him where to go. He was looking older. Die didn’t think it made him less attractive, but it did make him a little sad. He wondered how much of it was his fault.
“You were in a dream I had this morning.”

Die jumped and turned, surprised. Since they had stabilized the singer’s medication, he said he didn’t really remember his dreams anymore.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You were forgiving me.”
“Kyo—”
The vocalist waved a hand dismissively.
“Just making conversation,” he said, and his voice made it sound as if he didn’t really matter. “I don’t expect you to do it in real life, or anything.” Kyo laughed a little nastily. “Since they turned me all normal on these things…” he rattled a bottle of pills, “I don’t really understand other people’s emotions anymore.” 
He paused, his bitter smile fading. “I am sorry, though.”
Die’s eyebrows shot up.
“I thought you didn’t do apologies,” he said a little flatly, “Or regrets.”
“Don’t be a dick about it.”
“I’m not being a dick.”
“Yes you are. I’m trying to apologise.”
“Well—” Die caught himself almost smiling; shy, he bit down on the insides of his cheeks, but he couldn’t stop his lips from twitching. It was so easy, he thought, to fall back into old habits. It always shocked him how close the past was to the future. “Well…” he repeated, a little uneasy, “Well, you don’t really have to apologise. All’s fair in love and war, I guess. It just…you know. If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else.”
He flushed a little, and busied himself with his cigarette.
“Yeah.” Kyo nodded slowly, “Yeah, I suppose.”
He paused again. “But still—”
“Kyo, seriously, it’s fine.” The vocalist frowned, and Die shrugged. He was aware that, for the first time in all their years of knowing each other, he finally felt as old as Kyo. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise – after all, the other man was younger than him, and he supposed he had to have caught up in the end – but it did all the same. He thought of the advice Kyo had given him, all those years ago.
Grow up.
It seemed he had finally followed it.

“I had a dream about you, too,” he said, surprising himself. “You and Toshiya stopped fucking around behind everyone’s backs and just admitted to it already.” He shrugged. “Probably doesn’t mean anything.”
Kyo snorted derisively.
“I don’t think it’s much to you, but we’re not. Fucking, I mean. Actually.”
Die whirled around, his ponytail flying.
“No?”
“No.” Kyo frowned, looking annoyed. “He’s dead these days anyway. I don’t want to have sex with dead things. And anyway, we had a…” he gestured helplessly, “A serious talk, I suppose. Even if it was too late. He said I didn’t need him anymore.”
“Right.” Die scratched at the back of his neck, irritated at himself for reacting so strongly. “Well, that’s…good, I guess.”
“Don’t be fucking stupid. It’s because of you.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to apologise.”
“Open your eyes, Die. Are you really jealous? Or are you just afraid that he’s weak?”
Die had to smile at that.
“I’m not scared of anything,” he said honestly, “Anymore. I’ve just had enough. You know, I used to worry all the time. I used to worry that I just couldn’t be the man he wanted me to be. I tried hard, but…” he shook his head, “It didn’t matter. That’s why I don’t blame you. I mean, you did a shitty, fucked up thing, but it’s not actually your fault that Toshiya and I turned into such a mess.”
“Is this you forgiving me? Because you’re fucking terrible at it.” Kyo shook his head. “I never meant to come between you, you know. I was just…” he frowned, stealing Die’s cigarette from his fingers and taking a long drag, “I wasn’t very…connected.” He pulled at his own hair agitatedly. “Toshiya helped connect me.”
Die sighed.
“You don’t need to justify it."
“Justify my ass, Die. Even if you don’t care anymore, I know a part of you will always wonder why he kept turning you down. I’ve got the answer, so d’you want to hear this or not?”
Die shrugged sullenly. Sneaking a glance at Kyo’s resolutely unimpressed face, he sighed and nodded.
“Fine. Yes, tell me.” He hesitated. “Please.”
“Since you asked so nicely,” Kyo said sourly. “I started going through a really bad time. My emotions were all over the place and I was having flashbacks, and I just felt so distant from everything. I tried to explain it to you, but even talking to you, I could feel it.”
“Feel what?”
“That glass dome over me,” Kyo said simply, “Blocking you off.” He took another long pull from Die’s cigarette. “Being was Toshiya was the only way I felt normal for a little while. Talking to him, he was just like anyone else, behind the glass, but fucking him – it was like the glass lifted, just a few inches, just for a little while. And all this cool air came circulating in, mixing with the stuff I’d turned bad. It was like I could breathe again, just for a few minutes. Like I was a human, with human lungs.” He shook his head sadly. “I was trying to put him and me back together, so I could stay attached. But we didn’t exactly match up. He tried so hard, for my sake, but he wasn’t mine, see; he was yours.”

Kyo looked at him very seriously, and laid a hand on Die’s wrist. Unaccountably, the guitarist felt like crying, but he met Kyo’s gaze steadily.
“Are you understanding me?” the vocalist said clearly. “I always knew I was only borrowing him.”
“He—”
“He let me. He cared about me. Cared about you, too.” Kyo smiled a strange, cracked smile. “I was weak, see. He’s got a soft heart. I wrecked him, though. Do you see him now? He’s a zombie.”
His smile turned fierce. “I’m infectious.”
Die swallowed hard, closing his eyes for a few moments. He couldn’t explain why he suddenly felt such a need to cry, or why such incredible exhaustion was coming over him. It was taking all his effort just to stay on his feet and not let his legs simply crumble the way they wanted to.
“You’re not bad,” he said finally, heavily. “And you’re – better.”
“Am I?” Kyo studied Die carefully. “Sure.” He smiled. “Sure.”
“So it all meant something.”
“Well it was always going to mean something, Die, why on earth should someone fuck me by accident?”

It amazed Die, sometimes, that things changed so fast. No matter how much he wished for a break, a kind of freeze in time, the earth kept on turning. The seasons would change: to that first difficult spring, to summer, to autumn; even back to winter again, he knew, in the end. The year would change. They’d all grow older; continue to change their clothes and their style and their hair. They’d develop wrinkles, even, in the end, and he wondered how long it would be before they were no longer bleaching their hair from black, but dying it from grey.
The world turns, he would write in his journal, and even if you try and hold it back, it’s impossible. You’re fighting against everything that ever has been, is, and will be.
That afternoon, he allowed himself to return to his favourite hobby: Toshiya watching. He set himself up to the left of the bassist and drank in all the dear details of him; the shaggy way his hair was growing back – now that he had cut it shorter, it almost curled, and Die could hardly look at it without feeling it on his fingers – and the muscles working in his arms; even the padded black brace that supported his wrist; the tired little circles under his eyes.
A chasm that was thirteen years wide had opened between them, but Die was comforted by the fact that he could still see Toshiya on the other side of it. He considered the fact that the other man would always be there, really; that he’d always have him around. He’d be a constant reminder of everything, and Die found that he really didn’t mind the idea of that too much.
It even made him smile a little. In his mind he took Toshiya’s basic form and superimposed all the various guises he’d found him in, working backwards; the sideways hair, the American punk, the band T-shirts and the suits, the blue dreadlocks; the corsets and the skirts; the platform boots; the pageantry, the nakedness.
All those different Toshiyas, crowding in on him, and he thought about what he had found in him: the dregs and essence, that pure, sweet core of him.
The costumes and hair, the groupies and guitars; before Die’s eyes, they all became insubstantial. They swirled to the ground like dead petals from a strong and evergreen stem. Those things, they could alter.
Die looked at Toshiya; looked at his long fingers, at his dark eyes, at the way he looked back at him.
For a moment their eyes locked and, without thinking, they smiled at each other.
He never really changed.
And Die had never really claimed that he would stop loving him. What could stop him, even a hundred years from now?
After all, it was only time.

It wasn’t something that Die bothered to mention in his journal, but later that day, he found the book had gone missing.
Naturally, he panicked. He carried it everywhere; for it to have escaped from his bag suggested foul play to him, and he began to tear the studio apart in earnest.
“Hey, Die.”
He turned around to see Toshiya, smiling at him sadly. He stood like something broken, and Die caught a strange liquidity in his red-rimmed eyes.
“You dropped this.”
And the book, outstretched. Die snatched it almost without thinking, muttering his thanks.
Their fingers touched, and a tear rolled down Toshiya’s cheek. He scrubbed at it roughly, and they both got into their separate cars and drove home.

A/N: I finished this chapter, and wrote Chapter Fifteen, this morning. It’s all done, wahhhh!


>> to Chapter Fifteen >>

Comments

[juuu-chan.livejournal.com]

WOW!
I believe it. That's the thing with your writings.
You make me believe every word that was written to describe this story.
And I'm glad that Toshiya helped Kyo.
It made me feel bad because it seemed it was more, a deep kind of relationship.
But then i was happy for them not just doing it because.
It makes me feel less angry, because I have to admit I was, at Toshiya.
He's a good person, he's broken but he's a good person.
Die seems to understand even though it may hurt, but it's good he understand.
“I’m infectious.” < this made me feel shocked.
I feel sad that Kyo felt that way, it's hard to live like that.
That little sentence nearly made me cry.

I'm looking forward, but also scared to read the next chapter, because it will all be over...
Promise me the ending will be well written? It has to be this great chapter for the ending of such a story.
But knowing your writing, you'll be able to make it so...

[n3uromanc3r.livejournal.com]

Did Toshiya read the whole journal?

I can't wait for know how the story ends!

[jade-lil.livejournal.com]

UNEXPECTED.

JUST. WOW.

LET ME RE-PHRASE MYSELF, WHAT WITH THE COMMENT I LEFT BEFORE THIS CHAPTER. SO OKAY, TOSHIYA'S NOT AT FAULT, BUT I STILL FEEL HE SOMEHOW OWED DIE AN EXPLANATION. A HUGE ONE, TO BE PRECISE.

KYO, OH, KYO... THIS GUY'S BRAIN IS SO FUCKING DEEP THAT I FEEL LIKE I NEED SOMEONE TO INTERPRET HIS REASONING (THAT MEANS YOU, MS. WRITER COZ YOUR BRAIN IS AWESOME LIKE THAT) BUT I GUESS IT MADE SENSE.

AND THE END, GUH, FELT LIKE HUGGING TOSHIYA, SQUEEZE HIM TIGHT AND TELL HIM EVERYTHING'S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT. OH GOD, ONE MORE CHAPTER LEFT. CAN WE EXPECT SOME KIND OF ANGSTY, MAKE UP SEX? *grins*

oh, sorry for the CAPS abuse. I actually want to bold the letters but I'm afraid you'd ban me from visiting your journal if I did, ahahah.

cheers! see on the last!