![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Superstar
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
andrew_in_drag
Pairing: Kaoru/Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: AU, slash, rock 'n roll excess
Synopsis: He's more than a 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 TWENTY TWO:
It was raining in Vancouver. I went out exploring alone and took in the skyline and the boats. I sat on the harbour and dangled my feet into the clear grey water.
I like the thought of myself as a tiny figure on the far Western edge of this vast, vast place, touching the same ocean that washed up on the shores of my own small country. It wasn't warm, but it wasn't so cold either. I looked out towards the green leaves of the island trees and wondered who could make such a peculiar place their home.
It was funny to believe that it was all over. Someday, I knew, there would be a day when he would stop waking me up from my sleep, and there would be a day when the thought of him didn't make me stop breathing. Maybe I would even be able to see him in magazines and on the television without feeling like the whole world had slowed around me.
I stood up and put my shoes on. I gave one last look towards the water and headed back.
It's strange how history repeats itself, isn't it?
Die sat on the edge of my bed, watching me pack with doleful eyes, just like the first time I left them all.
“I guess I don't really understand why,” he said, and I sighed.
“I think I fell in love with him again.” I folded the Dir en Grey T-shirt I'd been given to wear, smoothing out the wrinkles, but in the end I didn't put it into my suitcase. I dropped it onto the bed and tried to avoid Die's eyes.
“It's not self-preservation,” I explained, “It's just that I'm allowed to...I don't know, I'm allowed to forgive myself now. It was always lurking in the back of my head like maybe this – everything that was wrong with him – was all my fault.” I smiled bitterly. “I didn't even stop to think about how arrogant that was. Maybe I even wanted it to be my fault, a little. At least that would mean that I was still important to him. But...”
I shut my suitcase with a snap. “Anyway. It was really good to see you again.”
Die wound a strand of hair around his fingers.
“I had a lot of hopes pinned on you,” he admitted. I shrugged my shoulders uneasily.
“Yeah, so did I.”
“But you didn't come back here to make him love you again, right?”
“No, not that. It's just that seeing him in such trouble, and hearing all about what was wrong with him--”
“What?” Die interrupted hurriedly, “How did you hear?”
“Relax, Die; it's not exactly being broadcast on the news or anything. The official line is still that he collapsed because of heat exhaustion. I heard about it from another roadie. Guy called Miyavi.”
Die humphed to himself.
“A guy to whom a confidentiality clause means nothing, apparently.”
“Gonna sue?”
Die smiled ruefully.
“Don't be an idiot. So?”
“So?”
“Well, you were saying?”
“Oh.” I traced over the top of my case with my nail thoughtfully. “No, it was just...just knowing he was in all that trouble, and all that pain; I felt like he was crying out for something. I kind of thought that it might have been me. Or, no. But I thought that maybe I could remind him of old times, and he'd see the kind of people he was hurting. See you and Kyo better. Or something. I don't know.”
“You're over-thinking it. I think you love him.”
Die caught my look and shrugged, unapologetic. “Well, I think you do. I think you love him so much that you couldn't stand to see him like that. You didn't know if you could help or not, but you had to be near him anyway. That's what I think.”
“Yeah well, you're paid for your guitar skills, not your opinions.”
“And you're paid for helping other people live the life that you should have had.”
“You don't know that.”
“Yes I do. You're the best lead guitar we ever had.”
“Fuck Die, what is this? Are you going to offer me a job? Make all my dreams come true and give me my happy ending?”
He sighed.
“Fuck you,” he said regretfully, “Seriously. I think you're making exactly the same mistake you made ten years ago.”
Awkwardly, he got to his feet, and even more awkwardly he bundled me into his arms and hugged my short body to his taller one.
There was a lump in my throat that had nothing to do with the different air. I swallowed heavily and sort of bumped my fist against his shoulder. He was giving me a look that was somewhere between love and pity, and when I spoke it sounded like I had a cold.
“So...” I cleared my throat, “Take care of him, yeah?”
Die imitated my actions, punching me gently.
“Our flight doesn't leave until nine,” he said, “Just in case you change your mind.”
My cab driver that day had his radio set to a station called Classic Rock 101. I rested my forehead against the window and looked out at the rain and listened through a list of old favourites; Led Zeppelin, Guns 'n Roses, Nirvana. The dreary rhythms of Something In The Way combined with the driving of the rain and made me feel lost and lonely, and I was glad when the announcer switched to The Beatles. Norwegian Wood. I liked the twanging sound of the sitar behind the gentler guitar, and the way the singer kept his voice so simple.
I once had a girl, or would you say she once had me?
I saw a sign for the airport and settled uncomfortably back in my seat. I couldn't seem to stop checking the clock on my cell phone, even though I knew I had plenty of time. Three; three thirty.
When I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown...
It was a nice image. I thought of birds flying into eternal blue skies, nothing but air below or above them. I knew the lyrics were really talking about a person instead of an actual bird, but it still made me breathe easier.
Norwegian Wood resonated to a close and an advert took its place, but the melody stayed in my head, meandering and wistful. The spaces it had opened up clamped back to a tight close, and I suddenly felt breathless.
“Stop,” I said, more urgently than I intended, and the driver swerved hastily over to the side of the road. A chorus of car horns rose up around us, and I spilled through the door of the taxi gratefully.
The driver wound down his window, looking at me with a sort of annoyed concern. I nodded at him breathlessly.
“Thank you,” I said, my English clumsy, “I...” I pointed at my throat and my chest. His eyes widened in alarm.
“In car,” he enunciated carefully, “Back in car.”
But I leant against the door and gasped, my chest tight. The asthma that I thought I'd left in my childhood was now gripping my lungs with a cruel little hand. The driver must have assumed I didn't understand, though, and he got out of his seat and guided me back into mine, clucking sympathetically.
“Hospital,” he said clearly, and I shook my head, but he was already making his way back to his seat. His hazard lights flashing, he steered straight out into the traffic, and we cut a fast, jerky path through lanes of other bemused drivers. He put all the windows down, and cool fresh air battered the side of my face. I sagged with no seatbelt, breathing in a way that sounded all wrong, but I didn't want to miss my flight. I didn't know how to say that it was alright; I'd be fine when I got onto the plane and left this country where so many bad things had happened
He snapped the radio off for this important drive, but music wove through my mind.
This bird had flown...
And we screeched up to the hospital's main entrance before I realised it. I felt very helpless, all at once. My driver marched me inside and began a rapid conversation with the receptionist. I couldn't even begin to keep up. He must have made it sound more important than it was, because I was whisked through triage and bundled into a wheelchair, where a male nurse whisked me up to a ward with impressive urgency
I'm fine, I kept trying to say, but there was no air to put behind the words, and I doubled over wheezing.
They took me to a ward with beds all in a row, separated with curtains that were all pushed back. My vision was going somehow dark, like the lights going out on a stage, and I dimly noticed a flurry of activity in the bed next to mine, and a whirl of beeping noises and shouting voices in English.
I thought I must be dying. The darkness gathering at the corners of my eyes descended all at once in a thick black fog, and as my thoughts spiralled away I could have sworn I felt a great warm palm, clutching my smaller hand within it, telling me I wasn't alone.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 10:45 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 11:12 pm (UTC)From:I guess I should patiently wait to see how you finish it, as if I could do anything else :D There's too much sadness and I still hope for a happy ending for both of them :) Well, at least your updates are comming quite steadily ^^ Will be waiting for the next chapter ^^
Oh, by the way, I hope that was Toshiya holding Kaoru's hand in the end!!! :(
no subject
Date: 2013-01-25 04:12 am (UTC)From:I wish it's Toshiya holding Kaoru's hand, not just his hallucinations...
no subject
Date: 2013-01-25 10:14 am (UTC)From:But if Toshiya was really in the bed next to Kaoru's at the hospital it's a very bad sign! Overdosing maybe?
I can't wait to know what exactly happened!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-25 02:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-26 03:10 pm (UTC)From:omg, what a chapter!!
i can't wait for the next one.