Bathroom Monologue
by Ish
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Disclaimer: All Otomo, baby. All Otomo. Bathroom, though? That's mine. I own that bathroom.
Warnings: Kai Yamagata. Yeah, you read that right – Kai's first. I think it's about time the guy breaks out of his height-induced uke bondage, as it were, and take a bit of control. It's not usually what I write, but heck, I tried. Angry&angsty!Kai and Clueless!Yam abound.
Notes: Inspired from a Kai monologue I started to write in my creative writing journal at school, only this version doesn't suck. And yes, I'm aware it's technically not a monologue. But it's i mostly /i one.
The idea of Kai correcting his own grammar really appeals to me. I've used it before, I know. I think it's cute.
I don't know why I keep writing about mirrors. They're nice symbols, I suppose.
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The bathroom stank of urine, as bathrooms are bound to do. Graffiti of dubious or no artistic value climbed the walls – "Takeshi is a fag!" "Down with the man" "Urine big trouble now LOL" – lending the necessary low class feel to the facility. Sweeps of faint light circled the deep blue room; Kai had just turned the light on, yanked the chain with unnecessary force, setting the bare lightbulb swinging wildly back and forth on its long, filthy string. Half of the room would briefly illuminate before plunging into darkness as the other side stole the spotlight for itself. It was musical, a round, a chorus of odd luminescence. Put to music, it would echo through the bare halls of a gothic monastery. A funny analogy, that – for in that bathroom, lost in his own head, Kai could not feel farther from God.
He leaned forward, putting both hands on the white porcelain sink, now streaked and stained beige with age and dirt and vomit. It was an invitation to the plethora of germs that doubtless infested every inch of the cramped space, but Kai didn't care. He was too busy being furious.
The mirror reflected the top of his head, hair hanging down limply, greasy, untended and showing the trails of fingers that had run through it, frustrated, over and over again. As Kai looked up, he did it again, pushing his hair back from his forehead and frowning at his exposed face, which, of course, scowled back at him mercilessly. A vein stood out on the left side of his forehead; a scar to his sanity.
"You bastard," he hissed at his reflection. "Kaisuke, you damn bastard."
His face was pale. The blue tinge cast across his features by the walls made him look dead, drained. It made him look like a ghoul.
He whispered, "You ruined everything."
All the events of the last twenty-four hours arranged themselves before him – and the events before that, and the events before that, all pertaining to where he was right now, all stretched out before him in neat chronology. He studied it, though unwilling: a record of ambiguous content that he tried to block from his head. He was unable to imagine that it was really there. Verification was necessary. That was why he had come here. He had come here to verify, and verify he would.
He stared his reflection in the eye coldly, and, addressing it, began:
"We never did anything," he said. "You know, never – yeah. We couldn't. Guys do it all the time in prison, I guess, and they don't give a rat's ass. But that's not what I mean. Not really.
"I mean it was too dangerous. How do you think the others would have reacted? Kaneda beat up a fag, once. Like, think if he found us. Tetsuo's the guy's fucking shadow, of course, and once those two get against us, we'd hardly be able to turn to the others. We'd be marked, tainted, and – and so we couldn't. Didn't. Wouldn't.
"We couldn't have even said anything, Yamagata and I. Not really, anyhow. Someone would hear us if we took the chance; that's just how things go. Lady Luck doesn't get friendly with guys like us. We gotta make our own luck, and the D.I.Y. stuff just isn't reliable enough in these situations.
"I – I didn't want to put him at risk."
A smile tried to fight its way onto his face, a mangled, faded thing, trying to absorb some of the bitterness that painted the rest of Kai's face. The smile, quote unquote, soon felt shamed for its feeble efforts, and left with far more ease than it had come.
"He knew about it, though. I could tell he knew about it, and I could tell he felt it, too, and it was cool, I guess, in a stupid sort of caged way. Never saw him look at any girl the way he looked at me, and I never felt about any chick the way I got when I was around him. Like, this feeling, it's like a – like a tear gas canister, the way it opens and spreads all through you. Only it's not painful, you know, it's wonderful, it's beautiful, it's warm, and when you feel it, it doesn't mean there are cops coming to beat you up, it just means you've hit something, this person's hit something, and you never want it to stop.
"Coward was more afraid'n I was, though. Fear was all over him even when we were talking about the normalest things, the most normal things. He felt what I felt, he had that spreading feeling, and it terrified him. Didn't he know that if we shut up and acted cool, we were safe? Why couldn't he just chill?
"Shutting up and acting isn't what he's good at, though. I'm glad of that, I guess, but whatever. Our friends were way too dense to pick up on any of his shit, anyway, and it was subtle – Yamagata, subtle, who would've thought. But I could tell, though, I – the way he said things to me, there was this tone to his voice. Deeper, almost, or maybe just gentler. He's always yelling things and swearing and laughing all loudly and he never really gets serious unless he's angry, but he was serious to me even when he wasn't, but maybe that doesn't make any sense. He just sounded different. He sounded different, he couldn't help it. I know he's more emotional than he likes to let on; that's why he's always out trying for justice.
"This place is too fucking cruel for justice, and he's gotta stop trying for it. He's just gonna get screwed over."
Kai's stomach tightened at the memory that hit him next. He felt guilty, stupid, and irate, but he had to say this part. This was the most important part.
This was the part he had totally screwed up.
A resigned sigh, and then,
"We held hands, once. I nearly had a heart attack, you know? He was walking one way, I was walking the other, no one else was there, and he just grabbed my hand. Out of the blue, he just took it, he held my hand. He was all shaky and clammy and he wasn't looking at me, he just kept looking straight ahead, as if he were trying to pretend nothing was happening.
"Bullshit!
"I really did think I was going to faint or something, and he was blushing like hell and our fingers weren't really right. I think two of mine were kind of shoved together, and – aw, hell.
"I shouldn't have said anything. It was – nice. I shouldn't have made a mess of things. I wasn't really pissed, but I didn't know what else to do, so I was all 'What the fuck are you doing, man, you wanna get fucking caught by Kaneda? God.'
"Oh, God.
"I don't think he bought it. I had let a few seconds go by, with us just standing there, holding hands, not looking at each other. We'd jumped into this whirlpool of something, of that warmth-spreading feeling, and I could have just stayed there forever, I swear. I could have been completely happy just standing there, barely touching him like that in the empty hallway.
"We were so silent, I could hear him breathing."
He swore under his breath, violently, raised his hand and smacked it back down onto the rim of the sink, sharp pain flooding his forearm. He repeated,
"I shouldn't have said anything. When I said it, he looked so – and I didn't even need to, for God's sake. No one else was even there. No one would have known. That bartender guy, I've got a feeling he's figured it out, but he picks up on everything; it's weird how much he seems to understand."
Kai paused.
"Maybe if I hadn't said anything, we might've somehow, I dunno.
"What a loser. I am such a loser. You know what I was gonna say? I was gonna say we might've talked. Talked. Isn't that fucked up? God."
He stopped talking, then. He stared into the mirror, perfectly still, studying his face. What would have happened, anyway, he wondered, if I hadn't opened my big mouth?
For one thing, I wouldn't have scared him away.
The way Yamagata had reacted to Kai's words recalled itself to him. Momentary confusion, followed by humiliation and then, worst of all, nothing. He had looked so normal, then. He had looked at Kai the same way he looked at everybody else. He had never looked at Kai like that.
"We had both lost," said Kai, now addressing the absent Yamagata. "That didn't mean you had to give up. But it was me, wasn't it? I was the one who made you think you had to, just because I couldn't keep my big pie-hole shut.
"We didn't need to say anything, either of us, did we? What you did said enough.
"I was scared, too, Yamagata."
He dropped his head down again, wincing.
"I'm sorry."
There was a sudden knocking at the door that tore at Kai's stoic composure and sent him flying out his skin. He whirled around and replaced his hands on the sink again, for balance – his heart was knocking in its cage so hard, he was afraid it would send him toppling to the germ-infested floor.
Would I be so out of place there? he wondered, and then sneered inwardly. Cut the unrequited angst. You came here to come to terms, not to resort to stupid metaphorical rhetoric.
"Kai?"
The voice was hesitant and strained, betraying the effort that its owner was putting into making it sound effortless. Upon hearing the voice, Kai's heart stopped thumping at his ribs so violently – now, he reckoned, it wasn't moving at all. He had turned to ice.
A pause flooded the space between the door and Kai, awkward and ominous.
"Kai?" That voice again. "Look, um. Are you done? I don't like hearing you talk like that. It's... it's no good, all right?"
The doorknob rattled briefly as it was tried. The door remained closed; the silence returned. Kai felt like he should break it – no, he knew he should break it, but he was scared. Who was he, calling Yamagata a coward, when he couldn't even move his lips to form words, when he was too terrified to unlock the bathroom door?
"Please, Kai, let me come in."
Finally, Kai worked up the nerve to speak, and his own voice came out angry. "Who let you down here? How did you know I was here?"
The person behind the door didn't respond immediately, obviously miffed by Kai's hostile tone.
"I asked the bartender –"
"The bar's closed."
"Er, yeah. But he knows us. This is our turf. He talked to me, right, he listened, and then he told me you were down here, and –"
"And?"
He cursed himself again. This was what he'd wanted. The odds that the one person he wanted to apologize to would overhear him, would want to talk to him about it, hadn't completely started looking at him the way he looked at everyone else, were infinitesimally low. It seemed that Lady Luck was making up for her previous absence. Here he was, the one Kai wanted to see most, and Kai had pretty well literally put a barricade in front of him.
It took effort. The strain he underwent pushing himself off the sink and onto his own two feet was more strenuous than any impossible weight he'd been forced to lift under the sadistic supervision of the Jaw at school. He walked towards the door and hesitated only for a moment before pulling it open and bracing himself.
Who was he kidding?
He couldn't possibly brace himself to Yamagata. He'd known it in the back of his mind, calling himself a fool for even trying. Now that he was faced with the boy, the subconscious jeering increased threefold.
Yamagata wasn't Don Juan. He was tall, true, but he held his height in the clumsy way of a teenager who hasn't yet learned to wield his suddenly far taller frame with grace. Muscular, slender arms hung gangly out of the baggy, grease-stained layers of shirt he wore. He smelled of oil, metalwork class, and something Kai could only describe as "twilight," though he wasn't one hundred per cent sure what twilight was. He knew it was something calm.
He ran a hand through his hair, sending it into yet more disarray, and gave Kai a nervous grin.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," said Kai. He stepped back, making room for Yamagata to enter, realizing that it was ridiculous to confront something like this in a rank men's bathroom that was covered in a slick coat of filth, but countering this thought with the realization that it was, pathetically enough, the only private and safe place available in their part of the city; their turf.
Yamagata stood at the sink, now, watching Kai in the mirror apprehensively. He was still nervous, Kai realized with irritation. So was Kai, true, but at least he was doing a good job of covering it up.
"I don't know what to do about it," said Yamagata finally. "Er. Us."
Kai walked up beside him and stared at himself, looking at the bags under his eyes and the crease his frown was causing.
"Neither do I."
This was the accepted state of things, for Kai. Neither of them could do anything about their situation; in their society, it was important to maintain masculinity no matter what, and there was little more effective way to destroy said masculinity in a single blow than coming out as a pansy. There was a circle of Neo-Tokyo that would accept things like this, he knew, but they were too low to reach it, now. Where they were, things like this weren't okay, and they weren't able to change that.
Besides, Kai was tired of thinking critically. He was irritated by the work his brain had been through lately, when all he really wanted to do was to have a fearless moment with Yamagata. It was something that ought to have been simple, but instead proved to be the exact opposite.
Looking down, he saw that both his hands and Yamagata's rested on the bowl edge of the sink. Slowly, he rested his hand on top of the other's, hit first by trepidation, and then that exploded-tear-gas-container thrill of warmth that spread inside him. Their fingers intertwined perfectly, now; there was no jamming, no readjustment, no imperfection. Yamagata balled his hand part way into a fist, bringing Kai's grip tighter around his own.
Both had gone so much further than that with their female peers, so many times. This was nothing special; it was what button-up shirt guys from the rich part of the city did on their way to things like prom or a movie; it was below the likes of Kai and Yamagata. It was pathetic and romantic.
But the two of them stood there, staring at their hands touching, marveling at the heat that seemed to course between them through calloused, unwashed skin. It was a hurdle overcome, a revelation, something unbelievable.
Then, somehow, they weren't holding hands anymore; they were holding each other. Kai pressed his face against Yamagata's chest, and felt Yamagata rest his own head against Kai's, breathing in the smell of his greasy, unwashed hair.
They stood like that, pressed together, breathing in unison, pretending to be calm while their hearts thumped hard in their chests.
The minutes passed.
Neither of them needed to speak.