The Glasshouse: 10/??

[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 | 8 | 9 
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: "You're doing a good thing," I told him stiffly, "A wonderful thing. Toshiya, you are keeping me alive."


CHAPTER TEN:

“He did it again last night.”
“Hn.” I shifted my legs. I was perched on the side of the bathtub in my apartment, absently working my way through the knots in Toshiya’s wet hair whilst he sloshed around in the water. His skin had taken on an extra slick, red-warm coating that sought to attract my hands, but I ignored it. I focused my fingers on his tangles, instead. His hair was long and thick and pretty but got caught up in the most impossible knots, like headphones left loose in a bag.
“We were having sex and he kept saying it. Whispering it against my neck.”
I frowned as I worked at a knot near the base of his skull, reaching for the small comb next to me. He trailed his hands through the soapy water dreamily.
“I wish I could say it back. I want to say it back. It’s like – ouch! – torture.”
“Say what?”
He sighed.
“You weren’t listening,” he reproached. “I was talking about Die saying ‘I love you’.” He paused. “He does love me.”
“Oh, tell me something else,” I said, as gently as I could, “Tell me about growing up.”
“Growing up?” He turned to face me, a pursed little V of a smile on his face. “Don’t be weird.”
“I’m not. Tell me about it.” I brushed his hair out languidly, “Nagano was different to Kyoto. I want to know. Go.”
“But you ask all the time. I tell you all the time.”
“Well, tell me again.”  
He sighed, but not like he was really bothered. I’ve always been able to read Toshiya. There’s nothing he can really hide from me.

“So I grew up in Nagano. I lived with my parents until I was seven.”
“And when you were seven?” I prompted.
“I moved into my grandmother’s house, and she took care of me.”
“Why?”
“My parents were busy. They were going through a divorce and they were both working, so they didn’t have the time.”
“How did you feel about it?” I unravelled a particularly tricky knot and gave a triumphant squawk. He leant back against my hands affectionately.
“I don’t know. Confused and a bit frightened, I suppose. Sad about the divorce. But I liked my grandmother’s house. It was this really thin, tall building. My sisters slept with her in the upstairs, and my brothers and I had this attic dormitory.”
I rubbed between his shoulders so that he closed his eyes and smiled.
“We had those beds like you see in old-fashioned movies. Big high iron headboards, like in a horror film. All the pipes were up there. It always smelled like heat.”
I smiled, digging my thumbs between his shoulder blades in the way he liked. I could picture that room; could smell it. In his childhood, I found I could lose myself much more than I could within my own.
“We lived pretty rurally, so there was nothing around. I was the youngest, so I guess all the time I was growing up, I was concerned with people leaving. I didn’t want them to go. And my grandmother was getting old.” He smiled sadly. “I feel bad now. I wasn’t a good kid. I got a motorbike and I rode with a gang in town. She used to wait up for me all night, worrying. But I guess she felt she was too old to stop me.”
“And everyone else had gone.”
“Yeah.”
“Did your parents see you much?”
“Oh, not often. Dad moved away. My mother remarried.”  
“So they all went away.”
He twisted back to look at me.
“Well sure, but look at me. I went the furthest, in the end.”

It was rare that Toshiya spent an evening with me. I knew that the fact that he wasn’t pressing to get back to Die was, on some level, bad news, but I was too caught up in my own pleasure at having him around. Much as he complained about the dark in my apartment, he brought his own light to it. He made me at least a convincing duplicate of happiness.
“Thanks for doing my hair.” Toshiya twisted it around his fingers experimentally and smiled. It was still damp, and he didn’t seem in any great rush to get dressed. He perched on the side of my bed in the towel I had given him, wringing the water from his hair slowly.
“So I suppose you’ll be wanting to go back to Die’s soon?” I asked plainly. I didn’t want him to stay just to spare my feelings. He shrugged.
“Not really. Can I stay here a bit?”
“God, Toshiya, stay all night. Anything. I mean, as long as you want.”
He smiled at me sadly.
“I don’t really feel like hitting the sheets with him right after you.”
“You don’t have to sleep with him.”
“If I was around him, I’d want to.”
“Oh.”
“When I first met him I thought there was something wrong with me. I just had this enormous urge to have sex with him. I just wanted to jump on him. It hasn’t really changed.”
“It’s probably supposed to be like that.”
“Yeah.”
I patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. His skin was very warm.
“Have you ever had somebody like that?”
“Hm?”
“Like you just look at them and want to sleep with them? I mean…” he gestured awkwardly, “You know. Somebody you just look at and think, I want you. Because you know that you can probably fall in love with them.”
“Are you asking me if I’ve ever fallen in love?”
“Yes, I suppose.” He bit his lip, waiting anxiously, and I smiled because I was sorry to disappoint.

“No. I don’t look at people that way.”
“What?” He frowned, “What way? What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I flexed my fingers uncomfortably, “I look at people, and even if I want them at first, then I just find faults everywhere. They’re too flighty or too conventional, or they talk too much, or something. I’m so good at finding the bad things that there’s no point in trying to find the good again. Half the time I don’t see it at all.”
“God. What about all of us, then?”
“You?”
“You’re not in love with us, but you don’t hate us, do you?”
“I don’t hate anyone, really.” I paused. “We’re just all ugly, like everyone’s ugly. Nobody else can see it, but I can.” I shook my head, struggling for a way to possibly explain it to him, “I know that sounds mad. But it’s like I’m looking through glass that plays with the proportions and magnifies some things and distorts others, and I don’t know if what you see is real or what I see is real. But you’re ugly and I’m ugly. Everyone’s ugly to me.”
“I’m ugly?”
“Not on the outside. You used to be…” I motioned up and down his body limply, “You used to be fine. Beautiful, or something. It’s my fault, you see. I made you like this. So your ugliness is easier to take, because I know it’s not really part of you.”
“You make it sound like it’s growing on me or something.”
“Right. Like a fungus, or a parasite.”
“And Die?”
“Too ugly to look at.”
“Kaoru? Shinya?”
“They’re ugly, too.”
“How can you say stuff like this?”
“Because I’m the ugliest.” I grinned at the expression on his face. “You’re thinking about it wrong. It’s nothing personal. It’s not that they look bad. It’s just people.”
“People,” he repeated vaguely.
“They’re so ugly they make me sick.”

Toshiya rested his head on my shoulder, and slowly I stroked his hair until it turned from wet to damp to almost-dry. The ends started to curl and I worked out the knots I had missed with my fingers. I could never get over his hair. It soothed me like my mother’s hair had soothed me when I was a baby. I’d used to grab fat handfuls of it. I don’t remember, of course, but she’s told me. I’ve seen pictures, too, so I know she’s not lying.
“If we’re so horrible,” Toshiya mumbled to me, “What’s the point?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “You’re the point. For me. You keep me going, because I’m the ugly side of you.”
“That’s not true, Kyo. I’m not perfect or anything. If everybody is hard to look at, then I should be too.”
“You’re special. It’s why…you work. Nobody else would work. It has to be you.”
It might have been a compliment, but he deflated. He sat up straighter so that he was too tall for me to lean on, and let out a long, shaky breath.
“You should see a doctor,” he said.
I pressed my lips together.
“The way you think; it’s – it’s not normal.”
“But Toshiya—”
“You’re hurting me.” He grabbed me by the wrists, his pretty lips pulled into a snarl, “Don’t you understand that? Even if I am special, it doesn’t change anything. I don’t love you. You’re not even trying to get better and actually, it makes me hate you.”
“Then leave.”
“You know I can’t leave until I can be sure that you’re alright!”
“Well I’m never going to be alright,” I argued, “So go.”
“You’re such a fucking mess,” he hissed, his hands gripping my wrists even harder. “I should just leave you.”
“Go on, then. Stop caring.”
He kissed me hard, crushing the air out of my lungs. He lunged and sent the two of us tumbling backwards off the bed, and we landed hard on the floor. My skull crunched against the wall and for a moment, I saw stars. My neighbours in the apartment below pounded on the ceiling. I writhed for freedom and felt Toshiya’s damp towel tangle around my legs as he pinned my wrists to the floor.
I tasted blood and realised that he’d bitten me; that he was still biting me. He made his way down my neck violently, leaving bruises in his wake; he shoved his hands up under my shirt and pinched my nipples until I cried out. He grasped inside my underwear, greedy, and felt my dick rise hot into his palm. I grabbed his wrist.
And he shoved himself away, sobbing roughly. He covered his eyes with trembling hands and bowed his head whilst I pulled the blanket from the bed and draped it around his shoulders, covering his naked body. I draped him in it completely and then pulled him into my arms.

The alarm bell in my head was ringing so loudly that I felt sick. My vision seemed to be wincing in and out, and I shut my eyes tight.
I could feel him crying and I wished desperately that I had something comforting to say to him. I’ve never been good at comforting people. I don’t have the knack. There just aren’t any soft edges to me; I’m nothing anybody can lean on.
Besides, I had already told him that he was special to me. It was true, but it had somehow taken more courage than a lie. But it had upset him.
So all I did was rock him gently back and forth, like he was some child of mine, and I pictured the two of us sitting there and looking like imposters: hair too long, bodies too small, everything wrong, indefinably, by fragments.
“I feel like a machine,” he whispered. “I just fuck and fuck and fuck. I fuck you and I fuck him and groupies and – and anyone. I’m so tired of it.” 
“Then stop,” I said soothingly, “Just stop.”
“I can’t stop.”
“Yes you can.”
“I love him. You need me.”
I stroked his back, pained. Somehow, whilst I was busy becoming famous, he had become the only other human I could move myself to empathise with. Perhaps to do so with Die would have been too much for me; with Toshiya, though, I felt everything. I felt almost like a normal person, as if his easy welcome into the human race did not exclude me, but touched me also.
“And the rest?” I kissed his cheek and the hot place on his temple where his pulse flashed beneath his skin. He was so alive that I marvelled.
“Buffers,” he mumbled, “They’re the ones that I need. They’re the ones that stop me from feeling like I’m just having an affair. Somehow it’s better to be unfaithful with a lot of people. It’s like…I don’t know.”
“Like you never intended to,” I supplied, and he nodded against my shoulder. The energy of his crying had lessened, but I could still feel his tears wetting my skin. His face felt hot and damp as a newborn.
“You’re doing a good thing,” I told him stiffly, “A wonderful thing. Toshiya, you are keeping me alive.”

Toshiya spent the night with me, sniffling and hiccupping even in his sleep, and after he left early the next morning I wandered around the apartment aimlessly, pinching my lower lip between my thumb and forefinger and feeling light and like to blow away.
The thought of killing myself drifted into my head just as effortlessly as a dream, and I stopped my useless pacing.
My head filled with pills and knives and electricity. I thought about how easy it would be.
The hard part would be making it look like an accident, but it was very important that I did so. I didn’t want to hurt my mother or sister or bandmates in that way. I thought it was likely that Toshiya would figure it out, but he’d be able to live his life with Die just the way he wanted, so maybe he’d forgive me.
It didn’t really occur to me to imagine that it would hurt. I wasn’t thinking about it in ways that would hurt. Cutting my throat or my wrists seemed foolish, because what I wanted to kill was hidden far below those superficial layers of skin. I felt as if I could skewer myself straight through and not touch it.
I thought about drowning and smothering. I could gas myself or shock myself. Now that the fear of death had gone, an electric shock sounded like a wonderful luxury, and it didn’t occur to me to think how strange it was to regard my own death in such a way.
Hanging was too obvious. I thought I could lie in a scalding hot bath and take pill after pill after pill. They would find me and think that I had simply fallen asleep. Everybody knew that I could fall asleep absolutely anywhere.
In the middle of my living room, I began to shiver. I sat down on the floor and wrapped my arms around myself tightly. 


>> to Chapter Eleven >>

Comments

[marasado.livejournal.com]

"I thought it was likely that Toshiya would figure it out, but he’d be able to live his life with Die just the way he wanted, so maybe he’d forgive me."
This sentence... although just so damned saddening, it just shows how much Kyo actually cares... It's a stupid thing for him to contemplate, but at the same time, the way he views it is as a selfless act to give Toshiya and Die what they want... it's just heartbreaking...

[kaiser1103.livejournal.com]

sometimes, I think Kyo did love Toshiya deep down in his heart. But Kyo simply didn't know it, or didn't want to admit it. At least, Kyo confessed to Toshiya that Toshiya was special to him and it took him a lot of courage...

[n3uromanc3r.livejournal.com]

It's so sad that despite all his efforts Toshiya just can't cure Kyo. He's even aware of Kyo's stubbornness of avoiding professional help even after once he promised the other.

I understand Kyo wants to give Toshiya the freedom to finally choose Die but I think suicide would be coward and disappointing...