andrew_in_drag (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrew_in_drag) wrote2013-01-29 10:46 pm
andrew_in_drag) wrote2013-01-29 10:46 pm
Entry tags:
Superstar: 24/??
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
Previously: archive
Synopsis: You're more than a superstar...
Author
andrew_in_drag Pairing: Kaoru/Toshiya
Rating: mature
Warnings: AU, slash, rock 'n roll excess
Previously: archive
Synopsis: You're more than a superstar...
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR:
He shoved his hands in his pockets as we walked, looking uncharacteristically shy. In the past few days, his skin had regained a little of its golden colour, and his hair lay softly around his face as he smiled at the floor.
“It's so pretty here,” he said. “I didn't really look before.”
For the first time since we had arrived in Vancouver, a morning sun was shining. It wasn't warm exactly, but it made the city sparkle, and there was breeze coming in from the mountains that tangled our hair and made the air feel fresh and full of hope.
“How long do you think you'll be here for?” I asked curiously, and he sighed.
“I don't know. We're kind of in unfamiliar territory right now.” He shrugged. “The company's saying they'll sue me for breach of contract – I guess I can counter-sue for misconduct. I don't know. I don't really know anything right now.”
“Sure you can,” I urged him. “They can't force you to tour when you're not well enough, and they can't just inject you with stuff to make you go. It's illegal.”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair pensively. “I guess you'll be going back soon.”
“I guess so.”
“Because of your kid.”
“Yeah.” I paused, feeling awkward, “It's pretty complicated, isn't it?”
He laughed at that.
“You can say that again. Hey, how old did you say he was?”
“Six.”
“Wow.” Toshiya sort of laughed, and he glanced hastily down at the floor. “I'm so jealous.”
I smiled at him. The sunlight was so hard and bright that I had to squint against it, and it blurred the lines of his face like I was looking at him through pebbled glass. “Jealous?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Can I be honest?”
“I hope so,” I said nervously, and he laughed again.
“Alright. The truth.” He bit his lip. “Kaoru, I never...I never wanted this.”
We came to the English Bay and meandered along the neatly kept grass slowly, not holding hands. Toshiya smoked; I kept my hands buried in my pockets and tried to listen more than talk.
“I suppose it all started before I met you,” he admitted. “Kaoru, you – you know what it's like to grow up this way, being this way, stuck in a small town; you feel so – I don't know, so trapped. I used to dream of the day I could run away and live my life how I wanted to.”
He took a bitter drag of his cigarette. “I was so scared that I'd wait too long, get too caught up, and by the time I finally got to touch another boy how I wanted, I'd be too inexperienced or too – I don't know.” He shook his head frustratedly. “I hated it.”
“And then I heard about you.”
He looked at me. “And then I heard about you,” he repeated, softer. “From your school's baseball team. They travelled all the way to play mine, and I heard this rumour about this gay kid who'd been caught. It just felt like...a lifeline.”
He trailed his fingers along an old tree trunk, tracing where two lovers had carved their initials.
“I was never with any teacher,” he confessed. “I made the whole thing up. All I wanted to do was spread it to your school's team so they'd take it back, and I thought that maybe you'd--” he gave me a quick, shy smile, “You'd come find me. Like a smoke signal, or something.”
“Toshiya,” I said wonderingly.
“The only other thing I heard about you was that you were so musical, and that you went around telling everyone that you were going to be famous.” He laughed uncomfortably, “Isn't that such an off-putting thing? But I heard it and I thought, he's just as lonely as me. And so I started saying the same thing, and I saw why you did it. When my rumour got out around school, I realised that you have to make yourself feel like you're above all these people or you start believing what they say; that you're disgusting; that you're ugly; that you don't deserve to be alive...” he smiled. “And then I got to switch. The rumour never got to the school faculty; it never even got to my parents. They sent me to live with my grandparents because they were divorcing and that school was such hell for me. And my grandparents just happened to live...”
“In my village,” I finished, feeling dazed, and he chuckled. Wrapping a strand of hair around his fingers, he gave me a look of pure adoration.
“Like I planned it,” he said dreamily. “So they made me stand up in that assembly and introduce myself, and I was looking around the room; I was looking for you. And I saw you, I mean; I felt who you were. It was like I...I recognised you. And I was looking at you, recognising me.”
He paused, a little flushed. “You sort of know how it went from there. I mean, you don't know all of it: I did so much stuff just to get you to notice me. You were so cool,” he smiled. “So distant. I didn't know how I could even get you to look at me, let alone--”
“Toshiya,” I said quietly, “I was looking at you.”
My words came out more emphatic than I'd intended, and he glanced up at me in surprise. In that moment, he looked so much like he had done as a teenager that I had to look away from him. I found my hand reaching out for him, and quickly I crossed my arms and looked away
“I was looking at you,” I said again.
Toshiya's story left me feeling a little disorientated, as if the earth had shifted suddenly and dramatically under my feet. We walked along mostly in silence, Toshiya smoking thoughtfully whilst I muddled through his words.
But if you didn't want it--?
But then why would you--?
All the questions I wanted to ask faded out before they could even reach my lips, and I studied him quietly. From the side, he was unreadable, a sheet of black hair disguising his face from me, and before I could stop myself I reached out and tucked it cautiously behind his ear
He went very still and tense, but his hand slowly rose to touch mine.
“Why did you stay,” I blurted, “When I left? I know I didn't give you any reason to come with me, but if you didn't want it, why did you stay with them?”
He sighed, tangling his fingers in mine and pulling me to the ground. The sun had dried the grass, and we settled comfortably under its glow
“Have you ever loved somebody so much,” he asked carefully, “That you felt like you were...I don't know, a part of them, or something? Like you started to like the things they liked and hate the things they hated?”
He shrugged sadly.
“I wanted it for you. I got so caught up in it, and how much you believed in it. I thought maybe if I became a star, you'd love me the same way.” He grinned, pulling a blade of grass from the ground and starting to shred it precisely, “And it was so easy, Kaoru. So easy just to pretend. You know, you can put on all the make-up you can get your hands on, and you can dye your hair all the colours you want, and if you just stand where you're told and smile when they tell you then you can fool everyone.” He sighed. “I know that must sound horrible, but I...I just wish we could have switched places for a day. Because it's...it's the best and worst thing in the world.” A little gasping laugh escaped his lips. “I was never insecure until I got up on a stage. I was never really unhappy until I lost you. It's like being two different people, all the time. Being pretty and ugly. You've got to be a rockstar, you've got to play the part, and then every day becomes a hangover, and it's just...”
He cut himself off. “I know how this sounds. This was your dream and I'm not even grateful.” He looked at me sharply. “Do you resent me?” he asked simply. “I resent you, a bit. You got the family; you got what I wanted. I got what you wanted. So, do you?”
It was a difficult question to answer. I had been, at different times, very, very jealous of him.
“I...”
But that had been when I thought I'd known what he had; that had been before I'd seen him out of his mind on smack and out of his body on sadness, and with loneliness: now, I looked at him, and I couldn't feel jealous.
“You don't understand,” I said at last, not unkindly, but meaning it. “Being famous was my dream. But I met you, and I loved you, and my dream grew around you; don't you see that? In the end I didn't want to just...just be a rockstar. I wanted to be a rockstar with you.”
He nodded slowly, taking that in. It made him smile, although not really happily.
“And I wanted my family to be you,” he said, expressionless. He leant his head against my shoulder, and I let my cheek rest on his hair. I drank in the warmth of him; the weight of him. It felt like my skin had been thirsting for it for years.
“Impossible dreams,” he said finally. I nodded, and he must have felt it, but we put our arms around each other anyway.
“Do you love me?” he asked at last, sounding shy. I closed my eyes.
“I think I'll always love you.”
He didn't say anything, and I wasn't really expecting him to, but he did squeeze me just a little tighter. And I felt it when he smiled, right against my neck, pressing it into my skin like a secret.
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i know bloody how that hurts.
please give them a happy ending! please!!!
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I'd'like it if Toshiya met his little boy :)
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i can't...
i'm so surprised at this i don't even know.
toshiya's confession and his whole plan to meet kaoru i... this never crossed my mind.
their love is incredibly tragic
it makes it incredibly beautiful.
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I can't wait to know what happens next!