On a Highway: 7/??

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: On a Highway
Author: andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Kaoru x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: slash, rock 'n roll, drugs, boyish attitudes to the extreme
Previously: 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Note: beta-read by the lovely lady_sb!

Synopsis: Toshiya is the perfect bassist for Dir en Grey - the only problem is, Kaoru can't stand him. As time wears on it becomes evident that the feeling is entirely mutual, but ambition and stubbornness holds the band together: neither Toshiya nor Kaoru will be the first to quit, and when attraction gets mixed up with animosity, it's obvious that something has to give...


CHAPTER SEVEN:

Toshiya sits in the recording booth, overlarge headphones propped over his ears, and stares blankly into the glass-panelled control room. He can see Yoshiki flitting around the equipment, adjusting a dial here and a switch there, and he watches listlessly. He is waiting to be told he can begin, but his mind is a hundred miles away. His gaze slips away from Yoshiki’s careful flowing movements and lands on Kaoru, a dark shape behind the glass: there, it settles. He has perfected the art of keeping his face utterly expressionless whilst his eyes dote on his bandmate. It’s simple enough to turn all that surprising fondness inwards; to wrap his arms around himself and pretend he’s somebody else.
It’s not that things are so bad. Kaoru talks to him now; he didn’t talk to him before. It’s as if their slate has been entirely wiped clean, and they have regressed even beyond the first hurt feelings: Kaoru is unfailingly polite but also cool, as if Toshiya is an acquaintance he has no desire to learn anything more about. Still, it’s somehow worse than the first few days, when Toshiya would make a grab for Kaoru’s arm in the studio and the guitarist would turn to him, face his tired and sweaty bandmate and say in a hiss that he should take a shower before he goes hitting the sheets again. At least then it was real, no matter how hurtful it was.
Now it’s soulless. Kaoru looks at him and sees someone who’s not there.

So he stares at Kaoru reflectively and wonders how it all happened. Looking back, it seems impossible to imagine a time when he wasn’t thinking about Kaoru, although he knows that there was such a time – one that seems long ago, now, back when he was a child and Dir en grey wasn’t even a thought. It seems to him now that he should have savoured those years, and all the time that he had before everything started to change; before he started wanting to be with Kaoru more and more. He pictures himself back then and it makes him want to laugh: poor kid; poor, stupid kid. He supposes that perhaps it started with something as simple as wanting Kaoru’s approval, setting that challenge for himself, and then – what? Liking him? Desiring him?
Behind the glass, Kaoru discusses some important matter with their temporary producer. Next to him, Kyo sits hunched over and reads a ratty, dog-eared paperback novel. In the darkness of the control room, his little face is white as a knuckle. He glances up and catches Toshiya’s eye and his gaze is one of perfect discomfort: he is sensitive to people and the changes within them. He can feel Kaoru’s hatred for Yoshiki just as clearly as Toshiya can. Calmly, he slips out of his chair and crosses to the door, vanishing into a brighter world. Neither Kaoru nor Yoshiki notice, and suddenly Kyo is smiling ruefully at Toshiya from the door of the sound booth.

“They’ll be at it for a while,” he says. Toshiya nods; tries to smile. Awkwardly, Kyo hovers next to him, and after a few minutes of silence Kyo pats him on the shoulder.
It puts Toshiya so close to tears that he has to yank on his own hair to distract himself, and he sniffs quickly.
“So what’s your book about?” he asks inanely, a forced tone of brightness in his voice. He is almost amused at how he could ask something that he cares so little about.
“Oh.” Kyo frowns at the front cover, as if he hasn’t just been reading it, “A minotaur. Or, I don’t know, really. It’s a bit mythological. The villagers just built a maze for the monster.”
The cover of the book is so torn and faded that Toshiya can hardly see a thing on it, but he strains his eyes and picks out the vague shape of some beast, half man, half bull.
“Oh, right. So, is that good?”
“I don’t think so,” Kyo says gloomily, flicking through the pages, “The monster’s very misunderstood.”
“Oh.”
“So they’re building a maze to keep him contained, so he won’t lose control and kill anyone else. And he’s happy.”
“The minotaur?”
“He doesn’t really understand intentions; he just looks at your face.” He shrugs clumsily. “Anyway. I just wanted to say hello. So, you know. Hello.”
“Hello,” Toshiya replies, smiling naturally at last. He watches as Kyo ducks his head and backs out of the room, his book tucked safely under his arm; he doesn’t reappear in the control room, and Toshiya imagines that he has crawled off to one sofa or another, where he can curl up and read in peace.
Understand intentions, Toshiya thinks; what an odd way to put it. It makes him think of how pleased he had thought Kaoru would be at his winning over Yoshiki; of how he had almost told Kaoru all about how he’d done it for him, to try and make him happy, because everything he ever does is always for him anyway.
“Toshiya?” Yoshiki speaks into the booth, his voice magnified calmness, “We’re ready for you now. Toshiya? Toshiya?”
But the bassist stands vacantly in the middle of the booth, and he watches Kaoru watch him as Yoshiki clucks his tongue and gives up; as he turns it all off, because Toshiya is wasting tape.

Perhaps it’s because of Kaoru’s animosity and perhaps it’s because of Toshiya’s obvious discomfort, but when their album is finally released, it isn’t exactly a joyful occasion.
They’re tired. They’ve preceded the release of Gauze with so many singles taken from it that the album feels old to them already, and now that it’s in shops there is suddenly a lot more tedious work to be done: interviews and dedications, press conferences, photo shoots. To Toshiya it feels like he is in some kind of inescapable vehicle, thundering along a highway with no way to stop, and no way to get out.
He wonders if he is really cut out for this life. He dyes his hair back to black and cuts it shorter and shiny; he puts on the clothes they give him and stands and turns whilst the various outfits are discussed. Kaoru sends him back to change again and again and again.
“You look like a movie star,” he says at one point, and Toshiya brightens hopefully. Kaoru frowns. “You’re supposed to look like a musician. Take it off.”
He pauses, deliberates for a moment.
“You shouldn’t have cut your hair,” he says. “You don’t look like you fit in with the band anymore.”
“I cut it like they told me to cut it.”
“We’ll have to put extensions in.”
Toshiya bites his lip, willing Kaoru to look at him properly. Slowly, carefully, he sets his hands on his hips; feels like he’s playing an old character.
“Maybe next time,” he says, “You could decide what look you want before you go saying yes to everything management says.”
He receives a delicious thrill up his spine as Kaoru’s tired eyes widen with shock; for a second, just for second, Toshiya could swear that they brighten.
“Maybe you could take some responsibility,” Kaoru argues, not even sounding out of practice, “It’s your hair and you are still in this band, even if you couldn’t possibly look further from it.”
“Bite me,” Toshiya says, a challenge, jutting his chin forwards gently, and he sees the colour creep into Kaoru’s cheeks.
“I’d choke,” the guitarist counters, and he stammers only slightly. “Sort your fucking hair out.”

From that point on, there is a fight every day. The air between them crackles with tension and Kaoru feels how alive it is; how it makes him feel like all the blood has returned to his veins. They bicker over who says more in interviews and who says what in interviews; they argue over costumes and makeup and hairstyles. They fight over songs they’re planning for their next album. Kaoru writes a ten-minute song; Toshiya contributes the bass line and says it’s the best thing about it. Toshiya writes a song that Kyo puts particularly explicit lyrics to: they have a meeting with representatives from the board of censorship and standards, and Kaoru blames Toshiya.
“I don’t write the lyrics!” he yells disbelievingly. “Kyo writes the lyrics! Yell at him for once!”
“Peace,” Kyo mumbles from the corner, stabbing at Shinya’s tamagotchi. He wrinkles his nose. “Killed it.”
“You were the one who suggested those lyrics for that song! He was going to put it in a poetry book!”
“They fit.”
“Because you wrote the song with those lyrics in mind!”
“You can’t prove that!”
“Oh what, you’re trying to tell me that you wrote a rap section on a whim?”
“You can’t prove I didn’t!”
“Like it wasn’t bad enough that our bassist looks like one of The Beatles. Now apparently we…masturbate on walls and freebase cocaine and wear chastity belts, too!”
They glare at each other, jaws clenched. Across the room, a cheerful monophonic melody bleeps from the device in Kyo’s hands.
“Restarted,” he says brightly. “It’s alright, Kaoru. I don’t even know where you’d buy a chastity belt, these days.” He purses his lips, perhaps pondering the question of chastity belt shopping. “Anyway, you said the lyrics were fine.”
“Hah!” Toshiya crows, “You said they were fine. So why don’t you churn out a few more for the top ten indies and leave the innovative stuff to me?”
“I’m going to use the song you just wrote for some lyrics about child abuse,” Kyo says happily.
Toshiya stares at Kaoru triumphantly. The guitarist crosses his arms; can’t meet his eyes. He looks at Kyo and sighs.
“That’s fine,” he says. Thin-lipped, he picks up the closest piece of paper he has to hand and stares at it without seeing. As it happens, the paper is their tour schedule, but Kaoru doesn’t need that. He already knows it by heart.

Kawasaki, Amagasaki, Nagoya. Their hometowns are plotted on their tour map by little red dots: Kyoto for Kyo, Osaka for Shinya. They play Kobe but bypass Kaoru’s birthplace of Hyogo; this makes Toshiya smug until Kaoru points out that they are driving straight past whatever mountain hick town he is from, too.
They stop for two nights in Nagano. Kaoru has an impression of Toshiya straining at the leash like a dog; he sits in the minibus with his nose almost pressed to the window, drinking the familiar sights. He hasn’t been home in more than three years.
In Nagano, they draw straws to see who will share a room with whom, and for the first time Toshiya and Kaoru end up together. It’s not unexpected – they are the last to draw – but the air is tense all the same; Shinya offers a swap but is tersely turned down.
“We’re fine,” Kaoru says thinly. “We’re adults, aren’t we?”
“Some of us are,” Toshiya mutters.
This is brushed off. They eye each other edgily but neither one suggests changing.
“Well,” Die says nervously, “That’s good. Maybe you two can start a new golden age of friendship, ha ha…” and he laughs awkwardly until Kyo shuts him up with a look.
So it’s decided, and they all go upstairs to unpack. Toshiya makes sure to fix his face into a scowl, and he flinches away when Kaoru’s shoulder accidentally brushes his in the elevator.
He is aware, though, that his heart is beating faster, and he is unable to stop the little noise he is making under his breath: a humming noise, a warm noise, not all that dissimilar to a purr.

A/N: 1. Were parts of this chapter born from me coming round from anaesthesia and thinking about how much I didn’t like Toshiya’s Cage-era hairstyle? Of course they were!
2. Early-chapters-of-Fifteen-Years style Kyo is back and being weird. Hurrah!
3. Obviously the song being discussed is Egyirys Cimredopyh, one of my favourite DEG songs.
4. I also apologise for this chapter, because it was kind of necessary for pacing, but I think I kind of erred a bit. There are bits I like, but the whole thing is kind of blah. Hopefully the next will be better!
5. I bet Shinya still has a tamagotchi now, and he is on like, the thousandth line of original egg descendants.  


>> to Chapter Eight >>

Comments

[palmon.livejournal.com]

thank you very much for this chapter!! hope you're feeling better =)

I like your Kyo very much... it's just so him. xP I can't use anything else to describe him really!
and the stress of it makes sense. I actually think they aren't that excited when their albums release due to the immensely insane work they've been through. so tired by the release date!

looking forward to KT rooming together.

[mad-stalin-69.livejournal.com]

Hey! :) Hope you're all right now!! ^^ *hugs*

I can't wait to see how those two will behave :D Hopefully they'll sort things out between themselves at least somewhat :P

And yay, Kyo ^^ Weird as always in your stories, but I like it :P

[kaiser1103.livejournal.com]

oh you are welcome! I hope you are feeling better! Take care!

KT sharing the same room... I am so looking forward to the next chapter!

[libra-iruka.livejournal.com]

Real Shinya is a bit odd in his own right and has too many pets. He probably really does have a tomagotchi. He probably has like nine of them.

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Agree 100%. It always tickles me how in the fanfiction canon, Shinya's character is all sweet and girly and sensitive, when in reality he comes across (to me, anyway) as the most delightfully weird little alien man. I don't think he's really that interested in people at all. And yes, he does have too many pets. Like, one gender-confused cat and one turtle too many.

So yes, I think he probably does have many, many tamagotchis, and I bet he feels genuinely emotional when they eventually die of old age.

[libra-iruka.livejournal.com]

He has like what? a cat and two turtles? The little dog Yuyu is probably still around, but considering how long ago he got Miyu, I'm pretty sure she's gone to the big dog park in the sky (aww, I just made myself sad).

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's something like that. You're probably right about Miyu, too, although chihuahuas do live for a pretty long time, so she might still be about.
I am jealous of his turtles, but I wonder who looks after the doggy catty ones when he's on tour? I feel like he would probably marry somebody just so they would do that.

[viciousfaye69.livejournal.com]

I just have to say that I want more!!!!!!!

[tora-robin.livejournal.com]

hi, im just dropping by to tell you how beautifully written this story is.
even without exaggerated flowery words, you managed to capture my attention, almost effortlessly.
i've left this fandom years ago but i still found it in myself to enjoy the read, i mean, how can i not?
i had so much pleasure reading, i just hope this fandom would spring back to life.

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Gosh, thank you! I'm totally with you about the fandom - I've loved Dir en grey ever since I was 13 years old (!) but I left the whole fan world for about two years. When I came back, it was almost empty!
But I'm so glad you enjoyed this, so thank you so much for stopping by and commenting!

[n3uromanc3r.livejournal.com]

I prefer them quarrelling instead of the frozen atmosphere that hurt and disappointed Kaoru created and kept up that long!


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Music: JYJ - Get Out