![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Protect Me
Author: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Kaoru x Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: sex, rudeness, swears, boyish attitudes, AU
Chapter: 14/23
Previously: prologue >> one >> two >> three >> four >> five >> six
>> seven >> eight >> nine >> ten >> eleven >> twelve >> thirteen
Synopsis: “Toshimasa Hara. Even now I sometimes find it hard to decide if his name gives me heartache or a headache…”
As a police officer in Shinsekai, Osaka, Kaoru has seen his fair share of trouble. Chaos takes a human form, however, in Toshiya Hara, a young local who seems intent on showing him that sometimes the right way is not always the good way, and that sometimes the wrong way can be the path to redemption...
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Somehow, days passed.
My shoulder, without attention, webbed itself over with faint greyish bruises. Each day I used my other arm to lift it up and down, grimacing at the feeling of bones grating out of order but gratified by the sensation of life running back into it; a few times, I tried to pop it back into place myself, but with no success. They cut my filthy, bloody clothes off me and gave me institutional garb that Toshiya had to help me get into: plain dark cloth pants and a plain white T-shirt, both loose and unrestrictive.
I hated everything that they had him help me with. His hands on my body felt like somebody else’s. When he gently washed the blood out of my hair, and sponged it off my neck where it had dried, I had to force myself to believe he was a stranger: another anonymous lackey, handling me carefully so it couldn’t be said that my captors hadn’t treated me humanely, despite our differences.
He brought me food twice a day: plain rice, edamame beans. Sometimes he would sneak me something else, and although I would have liked to have refused his kindness, I couldn’t.
And I wanted to close myself off to him, but I couldn’t do that, either. The man who fed me and bathed me was not somebody who I could equate with the traitor who had introduced me to my fate; nor was he somebody who I could recognise from our shared history. This new person, barely formed, interested me. He was silent in his duties. I could have believed that he’d been captured, too – and wasn’t that true, really? Like me, he was a prisoner; he was free to leave the house but no more at will than I to decide whether or not to return. I didn’t understand what kept him here, but he would show me. Soon, he’d show me.
“Toshiya,” I said one day, “Stay.”
It was hot. It was raining. June is the wettest month in Osaka. I assumed it was still June.
By the sliding door, he hesitated.
“I’m not supposed to. If they find me, I’ll be in trouble,” he said softly. Still, he stood by the door. I forced myself to remain silent, and very slowly he turned around and sat down.
“I don’t want much from you,” I said. My voice had gotten weaker. “But I would like you to talk to me. Nobody talks to me.” I shrugged lopsidedly. “Tell me something.”
He seemed frightened of me. I don’t know why he was frightened. He inhaled deeply, crossing his long legs on the floor in front of him, and pulled his hair over his shoulder so he could worry at it.
“Once,” he said, “There was a boy who grew up in Nagano.”
I stilled. He sighed and shifted. His fingers twisted in and out of his hair.
“He grew up in a house on the side of the mountain that leaned to the left like this—” he motioned, “And his parents both worked in a hydroelectric plant. He was the youngest of eight children.” Toshiya paused. “The boy was raised mostly by his grandmother, but when he was seven years old, she died. After that, the boy felt very alone, and he’d dream of the day that he’d get down the mountain and into a city, where he’d be surrounded by people all the time.”
“Toshiya,” I said quietly, “You don’t have to do this.”
He glanced up at me, tears in his eyes.
“No, Kaoru. I do have to do it.” He took a shuddering breath. “When he was sixteen, his wish finally came true. His uncle met a man who had business contacts in the city of Osaka, where he said he could get me – get him a respectable job at a good wage. It was all a trick, though, and the boy was sold into servitude. He worked in a big house for no money, where they wouldn’t let him leave.”
Pause. He lit a cigarette. “So the boy started to sneak out at night. He did all kinds of things to earn money so that he could get away again…”
“Toshiya, please,” I whispered, feeling the foundations of my world begin to crumble: I had known that his past had been chequered, but what he was telling me now was hard to listen to. It was the fairy-tale way he narrated that made it so unbearable: it made it seem a momentous cruelty that we lived in a world without magic or talismans; with nothing but the grace of god to protect us.
“I—” he shook his beautiful head sadly, “I need to explain, Kaoru. You need to let me explain or I’ll die.”
An odd, overblown statement, but I believed it. I was silent, waiting.
“So the boy…” Toshiya scrubbed tears off his face angrily, “So one evening, this man took me here. To this house. I remember it was so hot that night. The air smelled of smoke, like cigarettes and incense, and it was so quiet. He slept with me downstairs and then tried to kick me out without paying. I argued and he attacked me. He started to choke me. So I hit him over the head with a heavy terracotta plant pot, and he died.”
He hesitated. “The plant was fine, though. But do you believe, Kaoru, that – that when you do something like that, your soul or whatever can remain intact? I didn’t even feel sorry. I thought he deserved to die. What kind of person does that make me?” He shook his head. All my body wanted to reach for him, but he was too far away. The rain that fell outside seemed like it was falling between us.
“Anyway, the man was a yakuza. The kyodai came running in because of the noise and found me standing over his body. I thought they were going to kill me straight away, but instead they held me in that room. A man came to see me. He was just a bit older than me, but he seemed a lot wiser. He was some kind of yakuza prodigy. He was younger than all of them, but he was their shateigashira.”
Kyo, I understood immediately, and I didn’t realise I’d spoken aloud until he nodded.
“And honestly, Kaoru…” Toshiya gave a breathy, humourless laugh, “You could see why he was their boss. He had a gift for turning crises into opportunities. So he told me that, in exchange for their forgiveness, I could work for them forever, doing what I did. It meant I wouldn’t ever have to go back to the house again, and they would find me better people. They’d feed me better and give me a little space of my own – a little protection. They said they’d protect me.”
His eyes flicked up to my face and caught there. For the first time, the distance between us seemed to have narrowed. The rain might have been falling in my head. Inside, I touched him.
“Kyo did fall for me, Kaoru.”
He stood up now, pacing as he spoke, treading lightly. “I know that’s hard to believe, but he did. He cut a deal – I don’t know what he did – to make me exclusively his. He started me dealing drugs instead, which was better. For a while, I guess we were almost happy, or something. I didn’t love him, but I felt kindly towards him, because he loved me. That was sort of enough.” His fingers tugged at his hair roughly.
“Of course it all went to shit. He rose in rank and became brothers with the other wakagashira in his family. Brothers in the family share, and they wanted to share me. Kyo refused.” His chin jerked upwards slightly. “So they demanded an apology - for him to cut off the tip of his finger. That’s how he lost it. After that, he re-pledged his loyalty in a ceremony, and distanced himself from me. Started sharing me. And when he was told to carry out the plan to take you—” he shook his head sadly, his eyes pleading with me to understand him, “It’s so simple, isn’t it? So genius. The shop that reported the stolen necklace has a protection deal with Kyo. He told me I’d be arrested; told me what to say. He knew I wouldn’t be put away for something cheap like that. And I got to meet you.” He knelt close to me, gaze fixed upon mine desperately, “And Kaoru, yes, at first you were just a job. But you started to be more. I don’t even know when, but – no, I do. It was when you found the drugs in my bag, but you didn’t take me in. And I knew that you were giving me a second chance. Nobody ever did that for me before – you understand? Nobody ever thought I could ever be something more than what I was; or something better. But you did.” He shifted closer, on his knees before me like he was begging, “Why did you, Kaoru? I always wondered. You knew all this bad stuff about me, but you still believed that I was – that I could be – good.” He stubbed his cigarette out agitatedly. The rain seemed to be easing.
“At first,” he said softly, his voice slower and less fraught now, “I didn’t understand what I was feeling for you. I thought it had to be some momentary thing, like a crush – like I was just trying on a different lifestyle, and I liked it. But it was you. I got – I hated it. When we went to that hotel that first time – I thought, why isn’t he bringing me to a love hotel? The romance thing, it was all wrong. You treated me so well, and I absolutely fell for it. You wanted to see the real me, and…nobody had ever been really concerned with that before.” He touched my hand gently. “Do you see, Kaoru? I fell in love with you so quickly, I couldn’t even stop it. Once I realised, I tried to get away from you, but I couldn’t. You called and sent messages; you wouldn’t let me cut you out of my life. And then there was Kyo. I tried to lie to him, tell him you’d broken up with me and that I couldn’t do it anymore – but he knew. He always knows. He said, you’ve fallen for him, and I didn’t know what I could possibly say, because it was true.”
Carefully, very carefully, I reached up with my good arm and touched his face. His hand covered mine, fingers fanning over it protectively. His story was only half finished: there was more to tell, we both knew, but for that moment we were content to sit in silence, listening as the rain stopped and sitting like statues as a shaft of pure golden sunlight pierced through the blinds.
>> to chapter fifteen >>
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 11:00 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 04:08 am (UTC)From:But...I just finished writing the epilogue to this fic, right this minute. I'm going to have to say goodbye to him! I'm really sad.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 09:46 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 09:44 am (UTC)From:Right after I write, I can't figure out Toshiya you help, nice timing in the story and how it goes.
Even the back story for Kyo,
because it never really is that easy and black and white is it?
Can't can't wait
no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 11:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 09:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 11:33 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-04-02 09:29 pm (UTC)From: