Title: Lock the Door
Chapter: 1/1 (one-shot)
Author: aki (akichuu at LiveJournal)
Fandom: the GazettE
Pairing: UruhaxAoi (one-sided), AoixRuki
Rating: M
Genre: Angst, implicit smut
Warning: Not beta-ed. ManxMan loving.
Disclaimer: the GazettE belongs to themselves and, yes, the Almighty PSC. I, well I own this story. It's fiction, meaning IT'S NOT REAL and I'm making no profit from it (except my 15 minutes of fame). Yes, mind that.
Summary: "I bet you don't know that I know. I bet you think you've got all your secrets safely tucked behind doors. Well I'm sorry to have to inform you that sometimes it's not enough just to keep those doors closed. Sometimes you need to lock them."
Comment: I've already posted this story at LiveJournal. But it'd be nice to try posting it here as well.
Lock the Door
by: Aki
Hey, Aoi.
There's something I've always wanted to tell you, something I've kept to myself for a very long time.
See, I'm not sure if I really should tell you. This is a rather sensitive matter. I'm risking a lot in telling you, because I have no idea how you will react to it. For all I know there are two possibilities. The first one is that you'll be flattered and maybe even happy regarding the things I want to tell you. That sounds nice, but somehow I know that it's very unlikely to happen, which brings us to possibility number two. Possibility number two is that you will be shocked and appalled with what I tell you, that afterwards you'll never ever want to talk to me again. What's even worse is that you might stop acknowledging me, think of me as nothing but a low life pervert. You might even distance yourself from me.
The second possibility seems really painful, doesn't it? But I actually think it is the most believable one. And the fear of this possibility is the exact reason why I've been keeping this a secret for as long as I have.
Well, maybe this will end up what it always has been: a monologue. A piece of letter that won't ever reach the person to whom it is addressed to. I don't know, I'm not really sure about this anymore.
Alright, I'll just do this for my own sake. I'll speak up to let it out of my chest. It has gotten too much, too suffocating to live with day after day.
I bet you don't know that I know. I bet you think you've got all your secrets safely tucked behind doors. Well I'm sorry to have to inform you that sometimes it's not enough just to keep those doors closed. Sometimes you need to lock them.
No, I'm not trying to make up some metaphors. There is a physical truth in what I just said.
The most important thing about secrets is that you can never be too careful in the matter of hiding them. You can't be too confident in the safety you think you've created to keep your secret securely hidden. You always need to check your surrounding, check once and then do it again. I'm speaking based on experience. You know what they all say: experience is the best teacher when it comes to real life.
I know that you never expected any of us to find out or to even suspect that there's something out of the ordinary going on behind our backs. But unfortunately you're wrong. You're making a big mistake… because I know.
Yes, I know. I've seen what you most likely don't want me to see.
When was the first time? Let me think back. It might be sometime around two, two and a half months ago.
It was right before a live and we were backstage, doing all the routines we used to do before going on stage. Not all five of us were in the dressing room backstage; I was in there only with Reita and Kai. Reita was busied by the makeup girl who, apparently, thought that Reita's hair wasn't spiky enough. I honestly believed he could've popped a balloon with his hair, if he wished to. In the mean time Kai was busy with himself, sitting in a corner, tapping away a quick rhythm on his thighs. The sound was seriously getting to my nerves. Sometimes I wish Kai would sit still and stop making us all feel more nervous than we already were. But maybe it was just me, because Reita didn't seem as nervous as I was.
I couldn't help myself but to keep looking around the room for a figure, a certain figure. You. But you weren't in the room, and neither was our vocalist. I wasn't thinking about Ruki, no. He had his habit of disappearing to some other room every time we were on backstage, so I was kind of used to not seeing him around before a live. But you, you were usually around. You were usually sitting on a couch with your guitar on your lap, earphones plugged deep into your ears and your fingers warming up, practicing riffs and melodies. But back then I couldn't find you inside the room.
And suddenly an idea hit me. Why didn't I just go to the bathroom? I might just find you there. I wouldn't make it too obvious that I was out looking for you. Of course not. I would act as if I needed to wash my hand or the back of my neck, relieve the last minute stress that I felt before we went up on stage. And then maybe catch a word or two with you. That would be really nice.
So I took off and headed towards the bathroom with no such thing as a bad hunch inside my head.
I reached the bathroom quickly enough. It was a public bathroom so I wasn't thinking of knocking before pushing the door open. Plus, the door wasn't really closed. It was opened a few inches, and a few more as I pushed it. I hadn't had the chance to open it wide enough for me to pass through because I caught a sight that made me stop dead in the middle of my movement.
At first I didn't know what I was looking at. There was this moving blur at the opposite end of the room but I couldn't recognize what it was. Maybe it was just my brain refusing to accept what my eyes were staring at as a reality, or maybe the logics failed to make sense. But in the end I couldn't runaway from the fact, not when it's there in front of me, insisting to make itself known.
I saw… I saw you. Well I could only see a part of your face and your hands, but yes, that was you. Apart from what I could see, the rest of your body was blocked by a figure… a man, and not just any random man. I knew that frizzy, curly hair like I knew the back of my hand. I knew that small, seemingly frail body so well, because I met him everyday. But at that moment, in that situation, it was like watching total strangers doing improper things. But then there was your face. I was convinced then that I wasn't just seeing things. That was you… you and our dear vocalist, Ruki.
From there the scene unraveled like a dream inside my head. I stood there but I felt like I was floating a few feet above the floor. I watched you, watched how your head moved, how his head also moved in synch. I watched your hands travel on that small body, on Ruki's back, on his nape, holding him tight as if you didn't want to let go. I watched as Ruki's arms swayed, shifting to curl around your shoulder, almost like a child clinging to his parent.
And of course I couldn't ignore the noises, those unmistakable noises that only confirmed all the gut-twisting suspicions I was having. Your lips and Ruki's seemed to connect and part so many times I didn't even know if you remembered to stop and take a breath. I heard you sigh, followed by Ruki's soft whispering. Your voices echoed inside my ears, so clear despite the distance between us.
I didn't know why I didn't just turn around and walk away. I didn't know why I couldn't take my eyes off of you and him, although I felt like my heart was being crushed slowly, painfully. I didn't know why I didn't do anything to save myself from being hurt more than I already was.
How long exactly I stood there watching, I really had no idea. It wasn't until I heard you speak did I wake up from my stupor. "It's time to go," your voice vibrated through the air around me, but I knew those words weren't directed to me. I knew that because you were whispering them into Ruki's ear while holding him tightly inside your arms.
Thus I remembered about the live I was supposed to prepare myself for. God only knows how I managed to regain the consciousness I seemed to have lost after I saw you in the bathroom. But I finally was able to turn around and leave that spot, leave the nightmare that had emerged from the darkest places inside my head.
I soon found myself standing before a mirror, back inside the dressing room once again. I looked… and I couldn't recognize who that man in the mirror was. He looked like me, but he seemed so lost and sad and it was as if he didn't know where he belonged.
Where do I belong? Well, one thing's for sure, I don't belong with you.
If you think that was the only time I witnessed your encounter with Ruki, then you are wrong. The truth is I've seen more than I needed to see… found out more than I could handle.
It wasn't exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see again. If I had my way I would rather not go through such painful coincidences ever again. But maybe fate likes to play with me, with my feelings, toying with them as if they're nothing important. I had been trying so hard to force myself to forget, to believe that everything I had seen was nothing but a mirage. I almost succeeded, helped by the situation in which you two acted so normal in front of me, making me think I probably had imagined the whole thing after all.
But that night… that night I learned it the hard, painful way that everything was real.
If only I hadn't had my mind so fully occupied with so many things, including the assignment I had to finish that night, which happened to be a very important part for the song we were working on. If only I didn't have to hand in that assignment the next morning. If only I hadn't forgotten to pack up my guitar effector and bring it home with me. If only, oh if only I had considered knocking before I opened the studio's door.
But just like the bathroom incident, I didn't think anyone would be in there at such a late hour. It was already dark when I re-entered the building, most of the lights were already turned off. I really didn't expect I'd be seeing anyone at all, except maybe the janitor.
And then it was like going through a dejavu. There was the door before me, slightly opened. I was in a rush and I really wanted to get things done as quickly as I could, so without thinking twice I pushed the door. It was a heavy, acoustic-layered door so I couldn't just heave it all the way until it was fully opened, not so easily. But thankfully I couldn't. I only added a few inches to the space already available between the door and the frame, but through those few inches I could already see too much.
Funny, actually, that it took me quite some time to digest what it was exactly I was staring at. I felt as if my mind and body were detached in a very horrid way that it was almost like my body, my physical entity was there but my mind was elsewhere, hiding from the real world. It wasn't until a strained moan shattered the silence around me that I finally understood what was being displayed before me.
What—or rather, who did I actually see?
Obviously, I saw you… you and Ruki, again. The two of you were on the sofa and no, I can say without a doubt that you two weren't just sitting there casually. The lack of clothes on your bodies made the situation absolutely unmistakable.
Despite the circumstance I was in, I randomly thought about how that was the very first time ever that I had seen you in your birthsuit, all skin and nothing else. Well if I had to be honest I had imagined you naked, had imagined all sorts of pervert things my mind could come up with regarding you. But what I saw that night exceeded my wildest imagination. Of course there was no way my brain could have imagined you with Ruki, naked and sweaty, hands all over each other. And no, I could never have thought of the burning pain that clawed right out of my heart to infest every single part of my body, the pain that got worse with every second I spent standing there, watching you and Ruki.
It hurt. For God's sake, it hurt like nothing I had ever felt before in my life. It hurt to watch you move your hands all over Ruki's body, tracing his curves, delving into spaces and crevices that should've been restricted from a man's touch. I felt my guts twisting and tying knots inside my stomach as I watched you kiss Ruki, your lips and tongue endlessly touching his skin.
It hurt, but I stood still and kept on watching.
My eyes fell on Ruki, on his thoroughly blushing skin. On his parted lips. On his heaving chest. On his hands that were all over your body. I have to say, he looked so beautiful, glowing like a wraith. Was it the joy he felt that made him seem so radiant? Was it lust? Whatever it was, it made me want to rush in through the door, pull Ruki out from under you and scream my desperation at your face.
But somehow a small part of my brain managed to function properly, and it became my only barricade, stopping me from doing something I most likely would regret in the future. Unfortunately this small part wasn't strong enough to make me move my legs and get the hell away from that spot, from the sight of you and Ruki together.
I don't really understand why it seemed so hard for me to walk away from a situation that was hurting me, cutting me slowly and turning everything inside me into hot, boiling lava that burned as it flowed. Was it curiosity? Was I so desperate to learn about what was going on between you and Ruki that I no longer gave a damn about how I felt inside? Or was I trying to identify Ruki as myself, to see with my own eyes how it might have been if I was in Ruki's position? Being pressed against the couch and fucked to oblivion by you, wasn't that what I had been dreaming of for so long? And back then, standing at the door, I had the VIP seat to witness how it could have been, how I might have felt.
I never realized that I had been clutching on the door handle so hard my hand was becoming numb. My focus was at nowhere else but the couch and what was happening on top of it; at you and Ruki. You were leaning down on top of our small vocalist's body, held him so close until there seemed to be no barriers, not even the thinnest layer of air, between your bodies.
I didn't have to be standing close to you to see but I could already tell that you were so deep inside of Ruki. How did I know that? Well, Ruki's expression didn't hide anything, if you must know, and neither did his voice. It was enough to make my ears burn.
And then you kissed him slowly, languidly, and moaned his name.
That was it, for me. That was my boundary. The wall that I couldn't break through, that stopped me from indulging that desire coming from the sick side of me that I had never known before. The sound of your voice breathlessly pronouncing Ruki's birthname pierced my eardrums, breaking what was still left inside my chest, tearing it to pieces.
The next thing I knew I was wobbling along the alleyway, heading mindlessly towards the exit. I was without my guitar effector, but my brain was far away from thinking about it. There was one big chaos inside my head that didn't allow me to be rational. Truly it was a miracle that I reached home safely without getting lost or worse, killed in an accident.
Now can you understand why I didn't finish my assignment, and why I never wanted to sit on that couch in the studio anymore?
After all I've gone through, you'd think I've learned my lesson and already tried to let you go. But to tell you the truth, no I haven't. I want to, I swear I do, and it's important that I forget you and move on, find my own life and live it peacefully. But have you any idea how hard that is to do when you are around me almost 24 – 7? We are members of the same band, and I have to deal with living day after day interracting with you and Ruki and pretending I've never seen anything that has ruined my life. It's like trying to become someone that I'm not… and that is painful.
But tell me, do I have any other choice?
I can't just throw away the only life that I know, not for such reason. It hurts but I know I have to face it, to take my time and let the wound heal.
About you and Ruki, I really wish you both the best. I've seen enough to say that you two love each other. On stage, I've witnessed the two of you holding back the passion you must have needed to let out but couldn't. I've witnessed secret eye-contacts, seemingly innocent touches and even playful fanservices. Of course you did plenty kinds of fanservice with everyone in the band, even me. But you've never had the same glow inside your eyes that you had right after Ruki walked up to you and touched you or simply smiled at you. It's different, and it spoke louder than words. Everyone else might've missed the signs, but I knew. I saw everything, everything you meant to keep behind closed doors.
In the mean time, I… well I need to find my place in this situation. I'll manage someday. I have to.
I suppose, if you can't lock your door, Aoi, then I'm going to have to lock mine.
=== THE END ===
