The Glasshouse: 8/??

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: The Glasshouse
Author: andrew_in_drag
Pairings: Kyo x Toshiya, Die x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: sex, rock 'n roll, mental illness theme
Previously: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
Notes: this is the companion piece to 'Fifteen Years', covering Kyo's side of the story. Though they go together, they follow the same timeline, so you won't have to have read 'Fifteen Years' for this to make sense. 
Synopsis: I realised he was looking for something. His courage; his resolve. I stayed still and waited whilst he slid a hand down my chest, and I felt his fingers begin to flirt with the sensitive skin below my navel. 
"If I help you now," he murmured, "You have to promise to see a doctor back in Osaka."
I said, "Alright."
I lied. 


CHAPTER EIGHT:

“Hello? Is there anybody in there?”
I was dreaming that I had been put into the body of a cat, and I had a scratching post made out of my old sad body.
It was October, the October of 2004, and we were just finishing a short tour around the country. We were in Tokyo. The leaves were turning and every day the sky broke white, but I hadn’t yet smelled the crisp, woodsmoke smell of the autumn. 
The glasshouse had descended in the middle of August and I hadn’t breathed since. Outside I knew I looked fine, because people still nodded at me and then disregarded me in the same way they always had. It was only when I looked in the mirror that I saw the sick, pale, gasping thing I had become. I felt like the deformed fruit flies we had studied in science class, too fat to fly, buzzing limply, blind.
I felt like some white-bellied fish from the bottom of the ocean.
“Hello? Wake up…”
I slit my eyes and saw Toshiya hovering above me. Looking through the walls of the glasshouse was like peering through a telescope the wrong way. He was small and distorted, and many hundreds of miles away.
“Kyo?”
Doubt prickled in his vowels.
“Kyo, are you alright?”
I moved my mouth but of course nothing came out. I couldn’t see the expression on his face. My tongue swelled in my mouth like a fat and useless slug.
I closed my eyes and wished to die because I thought it was happening anyway.
“Kyo!”
Very faint, now. Very faint. His hands shook as they picked up my wrist and searched for a pulse. He pinched my eyes open and stared into my unresponsive pupils. He began to cry out and shake me.
I thought, I am floating away. Tokyo doesn’t exist and Toshiya doesn’t exist. They are all fading out and soon I will fade out too.
My mouth said, “Toshiya.”
I thought, traitor.

Toshiya didn’t say anything as I pulled myself up and ambled to the shower. I stood under the spray for as long as it was warm and forgot to wash. I ran soap over myself in the cold water and reached for a towel.
The mirror had fogged over with steam, and my face in it looked dribbly and ill-formed as something made of wax. Tears rose hot in the back of my throat, and I swallowed repeatedly and fingered the scar on my thumb until I had myself under control. Drying my hair roughly, I felt my movements slow right down until the towel dropped from my limp, uncoordinated hands.
There was a scream in my mouth that was too big to possibly get out. I turned the tap on in the sink and watched the water swirl, trying to calm myself.
“Kyo?”
I watched Toshiya’s face appear in the water. He laid a big, warm hand on the back of my neck, and I closed my eyes as he steered me from the bathroom. I wasn’t wearing any clothes, but that didn’t seem to matter, and even though he had been the one to wake me, he slotted me back into my hotel room bed like a letter into an envelope. I don’t know if he was talking all the time or not, but he perched next to me on the mattress and began slowly stroking through my damp hair. The alarm bell ringing in my ears recoiled from his touch, and my hearing buzzed into life.
“Alright,” he said softly, “Alright. You’re going to be fine, but you have to tell me what’s wrong.”
My words were gone and the noise I made was ugly and animalistic, like the squeal of a stuck pig. He stared worriedly as my eyes went flat as dark windows. I knew, because I could feel it happening.
Toshiya shifted and pulled until he was curled up next to me on the bed, and his arm was around my neck. His other hand was still stroking my hair, which felt good, and he tucked his face gently next to mine, on top of my shoulder.
“Alright,” he said again, his voice tender and quiet from right next to my ear, “Just tell me.”
I must have made some small noise, because he kissed my cheek, and when he spoke again his voice was strong even though there was a sob in it.
“Remember back in the old days, when you fell asleep in the van, and we left you there?”
He waited.
“It was meant to be a joke, but you were really asleep, and you didn’t wake up for hours. And – and you had to call for help, because you were locked in, and you were freezing.”
There were scratches on my chest and I pictured them rising and falling, rising and falling. I knew I was breathing; I just didn’t know why.
“You need to call for help now.”
He gathered me in his arms.
“I’m listening.”

We had a show that evening, and I suppose Toshiya had woken me up with some purpose in mind, but he stayed on the bed with me until I was able to make my throat work again, as close to normal as I could get it. If I couldn’t sing, there wouldn’t be a show anyway. He knew that.
“There is something wrong with me,” I said in a gritty, alien voice, “And I don’t know what to do.”
And I am so stuck and so scared, and I feel like there is stranger living inside my head where I used to be, and there is a glasshouse over me that I can’t breathe through or touch through, and you are the only person that can help.
I exhaled lowly and realised that I had spoken aloud.
“How can I help?”
He continued to stroke my hair, and I guess from the absent way he was swabbing at my cheeks that I was probably crying. Part of me was ashamed enough to want to roll away from him, but another part was younger and so raw he was tender, and that part of me wanted to push myself into his touch until I got lost inside of him. I thought of him as a place where I would be able to hide forever.
“Sex.”
“I can’t have sex with you.”
My eyes were pricking and I felt like poking them out.
“I know.”
“Don’t you think you should see a doctor?”
“No.”
I swallowed. I wanted to sit up, but I don’t think I could have done even if he hadn’t been holding me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten, or slept for more than two hours at a time.
“I love Die.”
“I know.”
“You should see a doctor.”
“I read books on it.” I swallowed again. It was easier to talk to him if I imagined I was talking to myself. “They’d put me into an asylum.”
“We wouldn’t let that happen.”
“They’d shock me and put me on drugs so I can’t fuck or sleep or think.”
“They couldn’t do anything without your consent. It’s not like you’re mad or anything.”
I sobbed and laughed, because of course I was just as crazy as they came. There were two people inside me and a glasshouse around me, and every time I closed my eyes I fell into a doorless, windowless, shut-in corridor where all I could hear was the screeching sound that my mind was making in my own ears.
“I’m going to be sick.”
He helped me to the bathroom, where I threw up until I was limp, and he helped me brush my teeth and get back into bed. I handed the control of myself over to him readily. He was younger than me, but he was the adult and I was the child.
Finally he said, “Tell me again. Slowly.”

So on that late morning in October, I lay down flat and stared at the ceiling and went through each and every one of my symptoms in a lifeless voice.
I told him about all the things I saw. I told him about my speech drying up. I told him about being unable to write or sleep or eat. Once or twice my voice grew quick and panicky, but he squeezed my hands and forced me to slow down.
I told him all about my plan to seduce him, and about how my face always looked wrong in the mirror, and how sometimes, when I needed him most, the glasshouse broke his face up like a kaleidoscope.
I told him how sorry I was and wished it was something I could go to jail for. He began to cry and I held his head whilst he held mine. That way, I could entertain a fantasy that I was staring into my own reflection, like I was over him and my tears were plopping onto the surface of the mirror, where his lovely face was caught inside.
I told him about my baby and how I felt that since that point, my whole life had turned into a penance for allowing such a terrible, airless death to happen to my child, and how I believed that I had been sentenced to suffer the same fate in all different ways, until I finally gave up and killed myself like Natsumi.
He cried and I cried. Eventually I stopped feeling dreadful and started feeling quiet and empty.  His hand stroked a soothing pattern in my hair. Throughout the time I had talked, he had never stopped touching me. My story petered out, but he kept on caressing and caressing, and laying gentle kisses on my forehead.
I realised he was looking for something. His courage; his resolve. I stayed still and waited whilst he slid a hand down my chest, and I felt his fingers begin to flirt with the sensitive skin below my navel.
“If I help you now,” he murmured, “You have to promise to see a doctor back in Osaka.”
I said, “Alright.”
I lied.

Toshiya undressed himself and pulled the covers off me like he was opening a gift that he was sure contained some horrid joke. His hands on my hips felt uncertain, and his movements were uncharacteristically awkward as he settled himself over me. I kept trying to catch his eye, but his face was like a dark house.
He slipped a hand between my legs and started touching me slowly. I licked my lips and closed my eyes and tried to create a lasting image of him, like I could make his treatment cure me for longer. There were two people bickering over who got to inhabit my body, but for the first time in months I could feel myself starting to push back harder, and I thought I might be winning. I could feel my blood going faster in my veins as he worked me up. When I looked down my body I had the curious perspective of seeing my chest expanding and contracting and my own dick rising hard and flushed between my legs.
I thought of those dark and twisting corridors that scientists think might exist in the universe that lead to worlds and times beyond ours. I thought of wormholes spiralling and linking in all different directions, with Toshiya on one end and myself on the other. From a great distance, he was travelling towards me.
“Kyo…”
A little moan. He dipped his tongue against the head of my cock and collected a drop of pearly liquid.  I watched, hypnotised, and my vision fractured like a fly’s so I was seeing the two of us from above and below and within. From miles away I stretched, and my hand grazed the side of his face in an instant.  
I thought he would fling me off, but he touched my hand and cradled it against his cheek. I felt the outline of my own cock stretching his skin and lips as he fitted himself and swallowed around me.  
A gasp escaped my own throat and I owned myself completely. I twisted a strand of his hair around my thumb and stroked his cheek as he sucked me. I knew exactly what sacrifice he was making for me.
“I – I’m going to—”
He nodded and pulled away, his hand taking over his mouth’s easy up-and-down actions, and a few seconds later I came over his fingers, panting heavily and gripping his upper arm.
“You were pent up,” he said, “That didn’t take long.”
I shook my head. I felt like crying, but only because of what I had done to him. He was my little electric shock and I felt fine and steady again. He looked so sad. I pulled his hand to my lips and began to lap my own cum off his fingers, if only to jerk that miserable face into one of surprise. He watched me and smiled.
“You do look better,” he admitted.
From somewhere down the hotel corridor, a door slammed and I heard something muffled from Shinya and Die’s gawky, happy laugh.
Toshiya hid his face in his hands. It daubed cum around his eye, but he didn’t seem to care. His shoulders were hunched over and his face was hidden and when I put my arm around him, he leaned into me like he was boneless.
“I’m so sorry.”
I whispered it into his hair. He didn’t respond, but I thought he had probably heard.

A/N: 1. The situation with Kyo falling asleep in the band van and then having to call for help because he was cold actually happened. 
2. I am actually a little sad that this fic is not receiving much attention! I'm feeling down about it, because it's difficult to write, and the end product is always something that I'm insecure about. I feel like maybe people think it's boring. Thoughts?


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