Beat Life Back
By Tsubaki

---

"It's a living," he shrugged nonchalantly, in answer to the question.

"But don't you want to do something with yourself?" the boy asked, eyes wide and his head adorably tilted to one side. "Isn't there something you wanted to do with yourself besides sell drugs on the street?"

The man stared down at the youngling before him, eyes narrowed in a manner that usually scared his peers. The kid doesn't even blink. He frowns, glares. Nothing. He figured he must be losing his touch. Maybe the kid is right and he really ought to get into another line of business…

Shit.

The little fool had infected him with goodness. What the hell?!

Ever since he'd met the brat and been faced with all that energetic attention, he had snapped, growled, made to strike. He'd done everything he could think of to scare the kid off save for actually physically hurting him. Nothing worked. If anything, the little runt seemed almost immune to empty threats. It did not translate well into the street-man's way of thinking. It meant that someone had trained the kid, with experience, to recognise the real deal.

It puzzled him. Why would anyone want to threaten such an innocent and sweet looking person? Who would want this beautiful being to be able to recognise real danger? Heck, if he were the boy's guardian, the kid would be under lock and key! Secured away in a safe place, that was the way to take care of this little cherub.

This kid, this little scrap of a being had been around him mroe than a few times over the past year. Each time, EACH time without fail, the brat would go and bug him about something else about his life, nosing and asking all sorts of weird questions. With all the attention he had received in the past, he'd been brought food, been taken shopping, been taken out to eat. It was rather like being wooed, in fact. Their relationship now... there wasn't a description for it. Anyway, the little guy was such a sweet kid; he laughed a lot, too, even if the sound was scratchy and hollow.

He cute, too, you had to admit, with such lovely wide eyes, smooth face and innocent countenance. He had a look that had not seemed to change in the past year, as though he never aged. He was always smiling, always polite, and always very annoying… and always dead-eyed.

"How old are you, kid?" the dealer demanded gruffly.

"Twenty-one," was the reply.

"Don't lie to me," he snapped, annoyed that the shrimp of a man didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to his sour mood.

"I'm not lying," the kid said exasperatedly, obviously very accustomed to the treatment. He fished out an ID card that spelled it all out. He really was twenty-one years old yet the little man didn't look a day over sixteen!

"Shit." He handed the card back.

"Yeah, I get that a lot." The little man grinned, flashing a mouthful of shiny, perfectly white teeth. "So, you ever think about what you really wanted to do when you were my age?" And, back to square one…

"No," he lied.

"Come on…" nags the idiot. "I'm practically a stranger and after tonight, you'll never see me again in your life. Humour me!"

"Most people never even learn my real name," the dealer snarled, the promise of never meeting again ringing loudly in his ears, alarm bells sounding in the back of his head. He was more than a little surprised when the little man didn't even flinch from his harsh tone. "And you want to know about my childhood dreams? Get lost."

"I just bought enough downers off you to smash an army," argued the boy, "the least you could do is be a little grateful for the business!"

"Shut up!" he snapped back. "I don't give a shit if you never buy from me again so just get the hell out of here!"

"That," crowed the boy triumphantly, "Is exactly my point!"

"What?" the dealer blinked, honestly puzzled, not understanding why the kid could so easily ignore his nastiness.

"You don't care!" he exclaimed. "You don't take care of your business because it isn't yours and you don't care about it!" He stabbed a finger into the air, emphasizing his argument. "Which means you have other ideas about what you want to do with yourself!"

"Look," he was getting weary of this bundle of energy. He wished the kid would go away. The boy was cute and a little surprising, but he was too tired to deal with the little Samaritan. "I don't want your help. I don't want to have any part of your 'Clean up the streets one dealer at a time' program. Just leave me the hell alone!"

"No!" was the reply. "Not until you tell me what you—"

"Architect!" he interrupted, frustrated and exasperated.

"Huh?"

"I wanted to take up Architecture and become an Architect," he growled. "Are you happy? Now go away." The boy was still, and blinked at him with wide eyes, the unusual colour of them startling him again. It was the eyes, he decided, that disarmed him. They were sweet and open…

And so damnably sad.

He was not immune. No matter what had happened to him, no matter everything he had lost, those eyes opened the floodgates of his humanity. They reminded him of how things used to be, of how things were supposed to be and he missed it. He'd been dealing since he got out of High School five years prior. He might not have looked it, being tall, built and a little scruffy, but he was only two years older than this kid… this very sad and broken little man.

"Why didn't you go to college?" the boy asked.

The ruffian huffed and walked away, but the brat followed. He made it two blocks down before he stopped and faced his 'tail'. He bitterly decided the boy won every argument he ever got into just out of sheer stubbornness. He was supposed to be a hardened street thug and he was a drug dealer for fuck's sake! But this scrap of a man, who stood barely a few inches over five feet, was getting more information out of him than anyone had ever done in his life.

"I couldn't afford it," he told the kid quietly, keeping his voice low in case someone should overhear. He supplied the rest of his story before the dumb shit could bug him some more. "I'm an orphan and, when I turned eighteen and graduated, they kicked me out of the system. They gave me a little pocket money and sent me on my way, washing their hands of me and here I am." He sighed, pulling out a cigarette, lighting it and waiting for the little fool's next move. Might as well get it out and over with.

The kid mulled over that one for a long while, and he started to get impatient.

"Well?" He asked when he was done with his cigarette. He tossed it to the ground and crushed it under a heel.

"Would you like to go back to school?"

"What?" He must not have heard the boy right…. Right?

"Would you like to go back to school, I asked." Those eyes again… they seemed to look into his soul.

"Yeah," he answered, tasting his own reply, rolling it off his tongue and seeing how it felt. "Yeah, I would."

The boy smiled.

It was a scary smile, the dealer noticed. One that was pleased, sure, but it was also final. He had seen that expression before out here on the street, those dead eyes and that 'last hope' glimmer. It was the look of someone who had given up, but wanted to do something good. Something to make the loss of hope and their giving up mean something, so they could move on. It meant that this pretty little boy, this deceptively youthful-looking man, was already dead.

He was just trying to leave a legacy behind.

It was a form of control, dying. The dealer understood, he'd had to in his line of work. When life jacks you over, you jack it over right back. You can take back your life by living it or leaving it, it was really that simple. And this boy had made his choice, his eyes displayed that clearly. With that horrible smile still in place, the boy handed him a card, a savings bank account card. It was new and had no name embossed, just an extra long number across the front. The dealer took it and turned it over in his hand, then glared at the trusting idiot before him… the trusting, walking dead idiot.

"I could take this and empty it out, you know," he whispered. "I could start my own drug-dealing ring." He narrowed his eyes at the kid, glowering. No reaction. Instead, the little man gave him a beatific look and a casual shrug.

"You will empty the account," he said. Those beautiful eyes dimmed further, the mission almost accomplished. "But you're going to use it to get back to school and finish what you started. Then, when you're settled and happy, you can help someone else." He reached out a hand and clutched at the dealer's shirt. "Promise me you'll give this favour to someone when you've got what you want and have something to offer."

He stared down at the little man, memorising his face, wondering what an angel of a person this was who had looked past his hard exterior and seen the man beneath. He wondered what kind of an idiot the kid was, and who the bigger fool was who'd broken the kid's heart. All he knew was, this was the chance of a lifetime and he sure as hell was not about to pass it up.

"I promise," he said. He even meant it.

He felt sad, watching the glimmer in those beautiful eyes finally die. It was over and he had played his part, taking on the brat's last wish. The promise had been so little to give in return for this great future that had now been laid ahead of him. He was thankful, so much so that he wanted to know more, wanted to have more of this innocent's life to think about and give thanks for. If the kid was leaving this world, then the least he could do was take on the legacy properly… and help.

"Hey, kid," he wasn't tired anymore. "You wanna watch the sun rise? It's better than sun sets. Those are just sad, but the sun rise, those are the beginnings of a new day, you know?"

"I won't have a new day," said the boy. His voice was flat and emotionless, the last of his hope fulfilled and gone. "I don't want a new day."

"Well, you gave me one." He wanted to be there, he decided. He wanted to hold this angel when he slipped away… he even toyed with the want to take the body back to the person who had beaten the spirit within. He wanted to make that person know what their actions had resulted in. "You gave me a… tomorrow. The least you could do is watch me start it."

The kid shook his head. "I have someplace to go, a lot to do."

"Let me take you," he insisted. H gestured to the boy's pocket, where the drugs were. "I know where you're going and I'll hang around for the ride. I can wait and… make sure you're gone." The boy's eyes lifted to his, interested. "And then after I can make sure that you… sleep in a safe place."

He took the boy to the Tokyo Tower. He had a friend there who worked night shift maintenance, who would let them up to the top. Up there, with the city at their feet, the lights glittering, was the perfect place. There, they waited, watched for the first signs of daybreak in respectful silence. And when it was time, he pulled the boy down to the floor between his knees like he would handle a child and let the kid lean back against his chest. He took a syringe and filled it, then plunged the drugs into the boy's system. There wasn't even a flinch, the kid was so disconnected. From between his legs, leaning back into his arms, the drugs took effect and the boy whimpered. He held the small frame close to him, and asked the boy questions.

He learned that the kid was a singer, that all his life there had been music in his head. It was like everything around him was alive and transmitting music into his brain where it all just bounced around until his emotions gave it all direction… so he could write it out into songs. The boy sang a little, his voice remarkably strong despite his condition, and the dealer was surprised to recognise it. He quickly figured it out and realised the kid was a celebrity!

There was a family. A mother, father and kid sister… and the thug had been angry a moment at the singer, for taking his family for granted. Having had none of his own, blood relations were special to the dealer but he understood, in a way. Family was too close, too near to see what was wrong or help solve the problem. Then the little singer said he'd had a lover, a beautiful and terrifying man who wrote love stories for a living.

Love stories! He scoffed.

The singer laughed a little at that, a hollow and horribly empty sound. It was the lover, he said, who had made him understand in the end. He explained, they had both at one point each in their lives, been raped. So much had been stolen from them and they'd not known how to handle it. The world kept going and left them behind. They had kept up appearances and behaved as normally as they could; they'd done their jobs and lived up to expectations. But then again, you can't expect a structurally damaged composition to remain standing after all the abuse. Something had to give.

And it did.

Well, that was that. Off his medication, the lover had lashed out with everything he had stored up, all the blame and pain and memories. All the injustice, the terror and fear, it was all hurled out. When the lover had coughed blood after the tirade and was rushed to the hospital, it had been the last the singer had ever seen of him. Caretakers and family had barred the singer ever since, had held him back from finding the missing writer.

In the end, a phone call was all he'd had to be consoled with. A call where the love of his life told him that he was better off without a lover saying things he didn't mean; better off without a lover who would only say hurtful things and never learn to love him back.

He had tried to tell the novelist that it didn't matter what happened, that all the he wanted was to be there. He only wanted to love the writer, live the rest of his life by the man's side. But he was turned away. He was told off for being selfish and obnoxious, and for being a bratty little spoilt celebrity… and told that he was not loved or wanted.

The singer's music died that day.

All the sound, the rising crescendo in his soul just fluttered down and faded away. He had never lived in silence before and it had frightened him. His heart was completely broken. His lover, along with the music, was gone, his life and livlihood with them … nothing made sense anymore. The pain was a constant throbbing that never faded, had never eased throughout the whole year of waiting, of hoping, that his lover would return. Neither the man nor the music ever did; the singer had never heard from either since.

He was tired now, and all he wanted was to rest.

As the sun broke fully over the horizon, the dealer leaned forward, sensing the irregular heartbeat and knowing it would all soon be over. He told the singer his name. The real name he had been born with, the one that appeared on his birth certificate. And as he did, he watched the sunlight reflect in the startling colour of the boy's eyes making it flash with purple fire. Looking over his shoulder and up into the dealer's gaze, the singer thanked him before snuggling back, body relaxing.

He held the boy close and tried to memorize everything about the singer. He wanted to remember that precise shade of violet, that smooth skin and those gentle features. He tried to imagine how the kid looked happy --he must have been absolutely mesmerizing when he was happy. Sadly he watched those magnificent eyes slip shut, knowing with a twist in his heart that they closed for the last time. With a sigh, and a soft smile of relief, the singer whispered his last words,

"Wherever you are, I love you, Yuki."

-

-

-

-
Please leave a review or comment! Thank you.