"I'm leaving."
I looked hard at the blonde writer. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, his eyes closed and a twisted snake of smoke trailing from the cigarette in his hand. And I hated him then. He made no indication that he'd heard my announcement. Or was it, no sign that he gave a damn? Either way, I hated him.
"Did you hear me, Yuki? I'm leaving!" I raised my voice a few notches.
"Nobody's stopping you." Compassionate, as usual.
I slammed a closed fist hard against the counter, and knew it would be bruised tomorrow. But the tears in my eyes weren't from the pain.
"Damn you, Yuki! Why don't you look at me?!"
Yuki's eyes snapped open, and his expression mirrored my hatred. "Happy, princess? What the hell do you want me to say? If you think I'm going to beg you to stay, you're even more of an idiot than I thought…"
As the tears broke free and slid down my cheek, I turned my back on him.
"Fuck you, Yuki."
And just like that, I left.
Five Years Later…
I don't even remember why we were fighting! I wonder if he thinks about me as much as I think about him. He didn't even give a shit that I was leaving! I bet he hasn't thought about me once since then. I wonder if he ever loved me for real, or if it was all just pretend to him. I miss him…
"Dammit, Shindou, focus!" Fujisaki chided, interrupting my thoughts.
"Huh?" Suddenly I realized that all eyes were on me.
"Daydreaming again, Shu?" Hiro asked, smirking and tossing his head, though it had lost some of the effect it once had. Hiro had cut his hair off one night when we'd gone out drinking. The details are kind of fuzzy. But it worked on Hiro, and Bop Peat magazine had even written an article about how Hiro's fan horde had skyrocketed since then.
"Sorry, I guess I'm just distracted."
"Well, distraction or not, Bad Luck's been scheduled two live appearances today, not to mention we need to lay down that last track for the new CD," K-san repeated. "Have you fixed those few lines that weren't working?"
"Oh, yeah!" I grinned. It had been years since I'd been in a slump, and I almost never missed my deadlines anymore. I fished around in my bag for the paper I'd scrawled the revised lyrics on and passed it over to Fujisaki. He'd grown up a bit, but he still had the same smallish frame and short dark hair.
Fujisaki nodded. "These are good, Shindou-san. And they'll line up perfectly with the music…"
"Good job!" K-san said, in English, complete with a thumbs up and a grin. "Let's get to work on that recording then."
An hour and a half of recording and two live shows later, and Bad Luck was done for the night. We rendezvoused back at NG-R to pick up our stuff and head home for the night. Bad Luck didn't have anything scheduled for three more days, so Tohma had allowed them to take the weekend off and relax.
"'Night guys! See you in a few days!" I called, waving at the others, both still packing up their equipment. I headed out off the recording floor and punched the "down" button on the elevator. The doors slid back, and it took my brain a second to realize what I was seeing.
Ryuichi Sakuma was standing closest to the doors. His hair was longer than ever, down past his shoulders and still the rich dark color it always was. Next to him stood Tohma Seguchi, looking the same as always. Not a hair out of place, not a single crease on his dark purple silk shirt or his black vest. He wore black gloves today, and his hat rested on his golden hair.
And in the far corner of that elevator stood a man I had only seen on television and magazine covers for five years. The media had gone hog wild after they'd heard the news. They called it the biggest break-up in pop culture history. In the five years I had been away from him, I had tried to forget completely everything about him, everything he'd put me through, everything I'd lost for him. But one second of looking at him, and every single memory flooded back, crashing through the wall I had built up around my heart, my brain. The smell of him, his piercing amber eyes, the feel of his tongue on my skin… My heart began racing, and I knew my face was beet-red. Only one person on the planet had the power to make me hard just by standing in front of me with a bored expression on his face, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed behind his dark sunglasses.
"Yu…Yuki?"
A/N: Hi there, readers. This is attempt number three to finish this story. Unfortunately, I feel more like writing Kingdom Hearts one-shots than this drawn-out heavy plotline, so don't expect regular updates on this one (sorry, just being honest). I will still try to post short stories and one-shots, so stay tuned if you're interested in checking them out!
Thanks, guys!
"Yu…Yuki?"
My voice suddenly sounded so squeaky and broken. I was frozen, staring at the man I'd once loved with a flood of confused emotions coursing through me. If I could have felt my legs to move them, I would have turned tail and ran.
"Shuuuuuichi!" It was Ryuichi Sakuma to the rescue. The ex-singer flung himself out of the elevator and tackled me in what can only be described as a glomp.
"Shu-chan?! I miss you! Why don't you ever play with me anymore? Kumagoro said that you hated us and never wanted to see us again but I told Kuma that he was crazy talking like that and if he ever said it again I would punish him by not buying him candies for a whole week and that sure shut him up!"
I smiled at the absolute serious look on Sakuma-san's face. He was slightly out of breath from the incredibly head-on hello and fighting to find his feet after tackling me.
"Of course I don't hate you! Kumagoro must have been afraid that you wanted to hang out with me more than him, don't you think Sakuma-san?" I reasoned.
"Nee, nee! How many times do I have to tell you, Shu-shu? My name is Ryu! R-Y-U-I-C-H-I, Ryu!"
"Right, sorry, Sakuma-san." I smiled and put my arm around him, which in hindsight was not the most convenient arrangement as Ryuichi spun around to face Tohma and Yuki. Of course, that positioned me squarely in front of my ex.
If Yuki was yummy before, the past five years had made him purely mouth-watering. His face was the same sculpture of perfection as always, his hair had grown out a bit past his cheekbones and now fell over his jawline. A pair of large aviator-style sunglasses obscured what I knew to be honey-rich golden eyes that held the ability to in one glance be filled with the promise of ecstasy and your worst fears realized.
"Yuki…" I wasn't sure what to say, but I sure as hell was going to say something. I don't know what I expected in return. But it wasn't what happened next.
I didn't want to hear it, Tohma Seguchi's voice cutting through the thick silence like a knife through aluminum. "Eiri-san, let's not linger in the hallways." No, the voice I'd been pining to hear for five years, that's what I wanted. I didn't want to see Tohma's thin, velvet-dipped hand grasp Yuki's large, slender ones. I didn't want to watch the two blondes pull away from me in disgust, Shacho smiling delightfully at his brother-in-law and dragging him (though without much protest, I noticed with a salt-in-the-wound sting of tears) into a nearby office room. Leaving Sakuma-san and I standing in front of the closing elevator doors in their wake.
The bastard didn't even say a word to me. Not even a word.
But I realized something just then. As much as I hated him, I was still in love with Eiri Yuki. And that was bad for business.
I was remembering waking up next to him, the morning's golden beams playing across his placid face. As soon as he would wake up, his face would sink into his usual scowl, or sometimes a smirk paired with a cutting comment about the pinkish mop that was my hair in the morning. But those few minutes when I could lay next to him, drinking in that angelic image, it was almost worth all of the shit I would have to put up with during the waking hours.
"SHU-CHAN!" Sakuma-san's voice broke into my reverie- and his elbow dug into my ribcage.
"Ow- Oh, Sorry, Sakuma-san! Just got caught up in my head for a second." I thought about shaking off the brief encounter in the elevator, then decided instead to file it away in my brain for safe-keeping. I smiled at my idol. He was still my idol. We'd been fairly close friends for years, and if you crunch the numbers, Bad Luck's record sales and chart-toppers were approaching or breaking the barriers that Nittle Grasper had set years ago. But I still drew inspiration from the man in front of me now. There were three things that made me feel like everything was right, that nothing in the world mattered. One was watching Sakuma-san sing. The second was being on stage singing my own songs. And the third was... Irrelevant now.
"That's okay, Kumagoro just wanted you to know that it's dinner time," the singer explained with the enthusiasm of a child. He looked imploringly at me. "Hungry, Shu-chan?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but my stomach beat me to the punch, grumbling in anguish. My cheeks flushed and I grinned, rubbing the back of my head sheepishly. "Where to?"
After what seemed like an hour of circling the same city block in search of a place to eat, punctuated by Sakuma-san threatening to give Kumagoro a bath in the toilet bowl for getting us all lost, we finally had settled into a lush booth at some sort of jazz lounge. The live music was... Well the singer was amateur, but not altogether horrid. But who goes to a jazz lounge for the singing? The mellow humming of a saxophone paired with the soft brushes on the kit and some sultry bass, peppered with delicate piano chords... That is the reason for jazz lounges. Yeah, I prefer to sing up beat pop songs, but there's nothing like some real smoothe crooning to calm the nerves. Well, that and a martini or four.
Sakuma-san and I (and even Kumagoro) had donned our "disguises"; for me, a bright orange tweed fedora and some thick-framed dark sunglasses, for Sakuma-san it was what you could describe as a cowboy hat (although I have yet to see a western where the cowboy's hat is adorned with hundreds of multicolored rhinestones) along with a pair of aviators, and Kumagoro was dressed to the nines in a miniature suit jacket and trilby. We ordered drinks and starters and began trading stories back and forth about what each of us had been up to in the past few weeks. The further along we pushed the conversation, the further into the back of my brain retreated the shock of seeing Yuki earlier, and that was fine by me.
Five martinis in, and the room was spinning.
No, not the room- I was twirling, on the small dance floor in front of the stage with Sakuma-san, and we were dancing to the quick-tempo hard bop Art Blakey cover that the band was hammering out.
Our dance moves were, admittedly, a little eccentric, but that's the beauty of gin and vermouth. You don't have to worry about looking like a fool any more.
The number ended and Sakuma-san and I struck magnificent finishing poses, to the cheers and smattering of applause from the bystanders. We exchanged a gleeful look and traipsed back to our booth, laughing amusedly at and with one another. I caught my reflection in a decorative mirror across from our table and noticed the bright red patches crawling up my cheeks, my disheveled hair slipping messily from under my hat. The thin glisten of perspiration coated my body, giving me that wonderful chilled tingle. My heart was beating hard and fast, and my breathing was quick from overexertion.
Sakuma-san was downing the last of his drink, a deadly sweet cocktail deemed a "tie me to the bedpost"; pure liquor, but tastes like pure fruit juice. He gestured to the waitress for another round, and slid over along the booth to plant himself firmly next to me, grabbing my hand and catching me off-guard.
"Shu-chan, where have you been?" he asked innocently, poking at a lemon wedge that was artfully perched on the rim of his now-empty glass.
I thought about it for a moment. Since "The Breakup Of The Century", I had broken off social ties with pretty much everyone, except of course my bandmates. I had justified it by telling myself it was therapeutic. A fresh start. I'd gotten my own flat, bought an entirely new wardrobe, even pierced one of my ears and tried dyeing my hair. The bright blue streaks through my bubble gum pink locks had gone over incredibly well with my fans, but I found that blue was one of those colors that is irritatingly difficult to keep up with and changed it back. But part of this new leaf had been cutting ties with all things related to my ex-lover, and through Tohma, that had meant distancing Ryuichi too.