Superstar: 14/??

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: Superstar
Author andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Kaoru/Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: AU, slash, rock 'n roll excess
Synopsis: He's more than a superstar...

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:

The aeroplane gave a sudden, sick drop  that made my seatmate gasp. On either side, the craft was buffeted by thick layers of greyish cloud, and I peered out at it anxiously. When it broke, I would have my first glimpse of the world that my old love had managed to make his home

Miyavi had come through for me. He'd used his quick connections with Dir en Grey's tour manager to find me a spot in what he had privately described as their travelling circus, and less than a week after that phone call, I had found myself racing, shaky-handed, to the airport

“So what's the deal with all this?” Miyavi had asked me, obnoxiously crunching nuts on his end of the phone, and I had told as close as possible to the truth.  

“We grew up together,” I said simply, “We were best friends."  

“No way!” he'd exclaimed. “That's so weird. You don't sound like you grew up in the same place at all."  

And sitting on the edge of my sofa, I had winced and covered my eyes with my hand. 

We landed at a fake-feeling two o'clock in Denver, Colorado. The air there had a cold sting to it that was like nothing I had ever experienced at home, and at first it took my breath away. A freezing wind gusted flurries of snow around grey-edged buildings and made my eyes tear, but I hailed a cab and carefully read off the name of the venue.  

“You following that Jap band?” the cabbie asked cheerfully, but I pretended not to understand, blinking in confusion. His radio was playing Heroes, by David Bowie. You, you will be mean; and I, I'll drink all the time...I realised I was humming along when I caught sight of the driver's grin in the rear-view mirror.  

“You like Bowie?” he asked, enunciating carefully. “I danced to this at my prom, myself. My girl--” he flipped down the sun visor over the passenger seat to reveal a photograph, “Isn't she a beauty? We're married now. Eighteen years together, god love her."  

I made no comment, but leant forwards to peer at the photograph obligingly. David Bowie finished and was replaced by something I didn't know so well – something modern, I guessed. Somewhere along the way all the music I liked had become old. How long had it been since I'd heard something I recognised on the radio? In the old days it had been fine: X Japan and David Bowie, The Clash and Lou Reed; they had all seemed so real to me.  

But at least I had Dir en Grey. Somehow, despite all my efforts, I seemed to have memorised every single one of their songs.  

I sat back in my seat and stared listlessly out of the window. The streets here all ran in straight lines, in grids, like something out of a science fiction movie. The buildings were concrete. The sky was white and the ground was grey, and the people on the streets were bulkily jacketed and braced against the wind.  

The music changed again, a song I didn't know, and my cabbie steered us into a vast parking lot before a building with DIR EN GREY written on the marquee. A scratchy queue of people had already built up beside the doors, fenced in by metal poles, and it looked like some had slept there. I wondered how they could stand it, spending all night in the cold just for a one little moment of closeness.  

I paid up and stepped out of the cab. Unaccountably, the song I didn't know had gotten stuck in my head, its winding melody threading through the wind, and for a moment I just stood, and thought about where I was, and I wondered how I had gotten so far, and how I would ever get home from here.

Inside, everything got more familiar. I heard same old sounds of set-up, of sound-check; I heard a confusing babble of languages; I followed the compass in my brain that told me the way to find backstage. There, people were rushing around madly, and I ducked out of their ways: before any gig, no matter how practised the team or how famous the band, there is always the sense of some recent disaster.  

“Tour manager?” I asked, and was nodded towards a shortish, untidy-looking man in jeans and a dark T-shirt: so, not the suit I had pictured. He was of indeterminate age, anywhere between thirty and sixty, and he was jabbering into the tiniest cell phone I had ever seen

“What do you mean, you're still at the hotel?” he was snapping now, “This needs to stop! You need to be be here!”

A pause.

“You can't wake him up?"  

“Kaoru, right?” An efficient-looking woman hooked her hand around my elbow and led me away, “This way; Inoue will have to see you a little later.” Briefly, she sized me up, looking over my arms and shoulders. “Right now,” she said briskly, “You come with me to the band's hotel. We are going to pick them up."  

“Oh, but--”

“I need somebody strong with me,” she said matter-of-factly. She had very shiny, very black hair, cut precisely in a bowl shape over the tops of her ears. She wasn't wearing any make-up, and she had paired her tiny, trim pair of denim shorts with knee socks. “Somebody to help get him into the car if he's not walking."  

“I – what?"  

She swept along, beckoning me with a sharp-nailed and heavily ringed finger. “Oh, he usually walks. And don't worry if he doesn't move at first,” she told me. “It takes a little coaxing. What I like to do is stir a little coffee into a coke and have him drink that. Wrap him in a blanket and guide him along; he can walk any place you need him to."  

Don't worry, she had said, and I gave her a fake, tense smile. Inside, my heart was fluttering like a bird, beating against the bars of its cage, desperately wanting out. 

Dir en Grey were staying in a hotel with two swimming pools and a full fifteen storeys. Inside the lobby, everything was plush and immaculate, red-carpeted, marble-countered, but my guide strode purposefully across the floor – a small and underdressed little person in a world of suited bellhops – and marched me into an elevator. There was an attendant who opened his mouth to ask her, what floor?, but she leant across him and stabbed the button marked 15. Everything had to be done with the pads of her fingers, to spare her nails. I noticed that she was wearing earrings as intricate as chandeliers, hanging all the way to her shoulders. We made the ride in silence: I couldn't think of a single thing I would have to say to her. She didn't seem to mind. She whipped out a cell phone and frantically texted until the doors slid open.  

“Alright,” she said breezily, patting me on the shoulder, “Fifteen-oh-seven, then--"  

She led me to the right door and flashed me a smile, knocking on it perkily. “Knock knock?” she called.  

No response. “Coming in, then!” she sang, and removed an electronic keycard from her pocket. She whipped the door open and placed a hand between my shoulder blades, shoving me forth. “Good luck,” she chirped, in the same singsong voice, and I raised my eyes to my new reality. 

It was the type of hotel room that doesn't open straight into the bedroom. There was a little corridor where the bathroom door was, and from there it led into a generously-spaced living area. On a sunny day, it might have been beautiful, but the floor-to-ceiling windows were curtained, shutting out the harsh white light. It was empty, but I heard murmuring voices coming from an adjoining room.  

I wanted to stand still. I wanted to take a moment and decide whether it was still possible to back out; to go back to Japan and pretend I had never gone on this stupid, stupid adventure.  

Whilst I was frozen, the bedroom door was flung open. I felt my heart stop. He was older, sure, and his face had an ultra-realistic quality that came from looking, in microscopic ways, just slightly different from the reams and reams of posters and photobooks and live DVDs: so older, sharper, but for the most part unchanged, and utterly unmistakeable.  

“Kyo,” I said. He stopped dead in his tracks. A shallow step marked the path from living room to bedroom, a mere few inches, that put us both eye-to-eye.

“I don't believe it,” he said simply.  

It was something I thought would never happen: the day such an unreadable, outrageous person would ever have something in common with me. I wanted to say that; I didn't believe it, either. In a hotel in Denver on a dimming afternoon, I looked at my life and suddenly couldn't believe a single thing.    

Comments

[velvet-liquor.livejournal.com]

You are a tease, stopping right there should be forbidden TwT

[mad-stalin-69.livejournal.com]

I completely agree - you can't stop here! :O Where's the next chapter?! :D

I kind of don't want to read more, because I don't want to read a bad ending :( I just can't handle something else than Toshiya forgiving Kaoru! :(

Well, I guess I'll see... :P Waiting for more :) <3

[wither-ne.livejournal.com]

..and then they really meet again! I can't wait for the next chapter to be posted :O I really hadn't expected them to meet in this way so I'm really curious what'll happen now and how they react on each other.

[xadowangel.livejournal.com]

*jumps out of the window in frustration*

[virtualdisorder.livejournal.com]

Bloody Hell.

That was a bit cruel of you, wasn't it? (laugh) Somehow it's still perfect, though - that Kyo is the first person he meets again after all this time isn't obvious, but definitely fits. Ermahgerd please update soon because I don't know if my heart can take this any longer haha please seriously

[kaiser1103.livejournal.com]

I didn't expect Kaoru to fly to USA right away... Like after so many years, Kaoru finally realised how much he cared about Toshiya, and how much Toshiya meant to him...
How can you stop there? I can't wait for the next chapter !!

[it-killed-you.livejournal.com]

Somewhat afraid to read your stories every time.
It's not that I don't like them, I am just scared for the characters, what you make them go through!
I always feel like these stories could be real.
And then, when I read all the chapters I'd missed '7-14' I can't stop. It's the pause in between them that makes me angstious.
But now I really want to read further, and I'm glad with reading this story again, it's so good!
Really good job, yet again!

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you! I know, I do put those poor boys through a lot...but I do usually give them a happy ending, right? ;)

Well, unless it's Kyo...

[it-killed-you.livejournal.com]

Yea that's true! And your stories are genius, and unique, so I love them^^
I must say, I never finished reading glasshouse, even though I told myself to.
I think I should try again, but after this has been said, I don't know if I dare, 'when' I do, you will get a comment^^

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! Yeah, Glasshouse was a really big emotional one for me. I found it really hard to write anything else after that (hence why On A Highway went down the tubes) because that voice I'd given Kyo was still really strong in my head.

It was a little scary, because to write in that way I had to sort of think that way, so in the end, I ended up kind of depressing myself. Or just getting really quiet and kind of insular.

Even so, it's my favourite, out of everything I've written! I think it had a lot of my heart in it ;)

[it-killed-you.livejournal.com]

I think I should read it from the beginning again, I wouldn't want to fall in the middle of the story again. Though I think I finished most of it already.
If it's your fav. I really can't not read it..^^
If you can devote yourself so well in your work I am really amazed even more by your skill.
You're really one hell of a writer, please keep doing it forever!
I saw you uploaded the new chapter ^^ I'll go and read it in a sec. :)

[andrew-in-drag.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you so much :)
It's really sweet of you to say, but I really hope you don't feel any obligation to read it. It's a really 'heavy' fic, so for some people, that's just exhausting! I think at times it's really hard to read, so please don't sweat it :) xx

[it-killed-you.livejournal.com]

No worries, I only obliged myself to read it, it's also because I know you write well, and I will eventually love it… I also think I need to read it for myself, I love different visions of the worlds, and I really want a fragment of understanding how people would feel. I don't want the world to be this big round thing where everything and everyone is happy, I want to experience the things that are wrong, are painful in this world. Even though I'll always be aware of the happiness here, there's more. I want to be able to prepare myself for the future, for feelings, for anything.
I think glasshouse would be a story not to read for a nice read, it's the story tht stays with you. And honestly I fell in love with the first chapters.
I felt almost guilty, I feel as if when I stop Kyo will stop hurting, but when I read, everything becomes real.
Now it's official, I've made myself /want/ to read it! It will take me one hell of a long time probable, but I will!