Author's Notes: Hey, you guys know what's weird? I actually finished this chapter a while ago, but for some reason never posted it. O.o Go figure. Here you go!
Disclaimers:Gravitation and all related characters belong not to me, thank the gods, but to Murakami Maki.
Requiem
Chapter Two - For the Chariot
Hiro sighed as he tossed the last bag in the back of his car. The car he'd bought two days ago with his savings and the money from selling his motorcycle. He couldn't see sticking around here much longer, and though traveling Japan on a motorcycle might make for an interesting adventure, he also didn't fancy starving to death or working as a male stripper in exchange for food and other necessities. So, little piece of crap that it was, this car would be his best friend for the next who-knew-how-long.
"Hiroshi-san, are you sure about this?" Ayaka stood a few feet away, holding the keys he'd handed her as though continuing to hold them would keep him here. He looked at her, though looking at her hurt just a little, and shrugged, slamming the trunk of the car shut.
"Can't stay here." Dear God, he was becoming as reticent as Yuki. Hiro sighed, shoved his hands in his pockets and tried again. "Ayaka-san, this place is where Shuichi and I grew up together. Where we discovered music together, where we practiced together. This is where we got our record deal and where everything good that ever happened, happened because we were together." Stopping to think on that, Hiro gave a small smile. "No, it happened because of Shuichi, but I was there with him. I can't stay. Hopefully I'll be able to come back soon, but right now I just can't stay." He looked at her again, not at all ashamed to put all the pain and desperation he felt into his eyes.
Ayaka sighed, then handed over the keys. Hiro wasn't fooled, he could see the tears in her eyes. They almost did make him want to stay, just to wipe them away. He did love her, more than he loved anyone. But the ghost of his best friend hovered over every memory in Tokyo, and he had to get the hell out.
"I'm sorry, Ayaka-san," he said quietly as he took the keys from her, "but if I stay here I'm going to go insane."
"It wouldn't be the first time I've loved an insane man."
Their eyes caught each other. Neither of them had said the words before this moment, Hiro because he could never be sure she wouldn't go back to pining for Yuki. Now, though, her words gave him an opening he wasn't sure he wanted to take just before leaving Tokyo indefinitely. Ayaka smiled at him, stepped forward, and took the moment herself.
"Hiroshi-san . . . Hiro, I've loved two men in my life. The first finally found happiness, and that happiness didn't involve me. The second man I love, he's in pain right now, pain I can't do anything about. It seems I'm destined to be helpless to help the men I love." She swallowed, the muscles in her neck working to push back the sorrow he saw in her eyes. "I love you, Hiro, and I'll wait as long as my heart can stand it for you to find the peace you need."
"I'll visit you when I get to Kyoto." He promised this quietly, stepping closer to her. He wasn't sure he dared do anything else yet.
"Was Kyoto in your traveling plans?"
"It is now. I promise. I don't know when, but I'll be there."
"Good." Ayaka took another step, closing the last of the distance between them, and lifted herself on her toes to press her lips to his. It was a brief kiss, gentle and so very sweet. Hiro barely tasted her before she pulled away, her face bright with embarrassment but her eyes with something else. "Then I'll be waiting for you."
Before he could change his mind and end up making them both miserable, Hiro turned from her and got in the car. The keys in his shaking hand jingled a little before he managed to fit the proper one in the ignition. He paused only long enough to give Ayaka a last glance through the window, then he started the car, put it in gear, and drove off to whatever peace he could find on the road.
Eiri stared down at Tohma, trying to decide on the safest course of action. One could never be quite sure with Seguchi Tohma, not even the world famous Yuki Eiri. In the end, Eiri sat down in a chair across from the couch, crossed his legs and folded his hands together in his lap. He said nothing, merely watched Tohma, waiting. Only whatever gods make a joke of humanity knew how long this would last if Tohma were in a real mood, but Eiri was in no mood to humor him today, not this far.
Perhaps Tohma sensed this, for it took little time for him to chuckle and put his wine glass carefully on the coffee table. "Goodness, Eiri, you do look gloomy. I had hoped to cheer you up a bit, but it looks as though you might be determined to be unhappy today."
"What do you expect? I'm not like you. I don't smile in the face of all adversity."
"Ah yes, and your lover's funeral was today, and that could be considered adversity, yes?"
Eiri felt his patience going paper-thin, but managed to keep his temper under control. "Despite outward appearances and unlike you, I have a heart."
"Ouch," Tohma winced and put his hand to his heart, though his eyes remained amused, "you wound me, Eiri, truly you do. You know I only have you and your happiness in mind with everything I do."
"Bullshit."
"All right, perhaps not entirely true, but not entirely bullshit either." Now, Tohma rose from the couch and motioned for Eiri to follow him as he set off towards the extra bedroom. Eiri didn't move. Tohma reached the door and opened it, letting the soft beeping Eiri heard before become slightly louder without the door for buffer. He looked back, and seeing Eiri still firmly in the chair, sighed. "Eiri, please. Trust me for once, this is something you need and will want to see."
Debating with himself over whether or not to actually trust Tohma, Eiri nonetheless stood, going to the door and the man standing there.
The room was rather small. Before today it had been relatively empty, holding only a few extra pieces of furniture. As Eiri and Shuichi shared the master bedroom and neither had friends or family who wanted to visit long enough to put a guest bedroom to use, they never actually used the room for anything except storage. Eiri could not imagine what Tohma did with the room, or what he had put in there that could emit that soft, vaguely and disturbingly familiar beep.
"If I find some elaborate and expensive sex toy in there, your ass is mine, and not in a good way."
Still, Tohma found room to be amused. "As much as I would like to test that theory, sadly there is no sex toy in that room, elaborate or otherwise."
"Good." Giving the pale-haired man a glare, Eiri passed Tohma and walked over the threshold of the little-used room. Where he stopped dead in his tracks. "Kami-sama . . . ."
"Calling to God was never your specialty," Tohma murmured from behind him.
In that room, cleared of all excess furniture, there was now only a sterile hospital bed, heart-monitoring equipment, and an IV unit. Eiri, his breath heavy from being held inside him, took a step closer, then another and another until his steps brought him to the side of that bed. The unconscious person's head hid in a bandage and the face was swollen and horribly bruised, though the bruise had begun to turn greenish and yellow on the edges. A ventilator tube obscured the bottom half of their face, distorting the mouth. Still, despite all the deformities, Eiri knew that face. Such a precious face, one he'd thought he would never see again. Those lips, the ones that brushed his so gently and lightly that day, those lips Eiri also knew.
Looking up from Shuichi's battered, sleeping face, Eiri couldn't even bring himself to feel ashamed as his voice cracked and broke. "Wh-What's going on?"
Tohma leaned against the door, his head resting on the doorframe and his arms crossed. The amusement died from his expression. "The first bullet came close to his heart, dangerously close. If not for the brilliant surgeons I paid, it would have killed him anyway. The second bullet didn't penetrate his skull. It came close, and its speed as it flew past his head helped. Imagine the spinning bullet carving a gouge across his skin all the way to the skull as it passed. After that, it didn't even have the momentum to strike the wall behind him. My investigators found the bullet on the stage floor before the police arrived."
So much information, but Eiri took it in and processed it with the mind of an author who has researched any number of subjects for his books. His gaze fell back down to Shuichi, to the bruise that marked the passage of the near-deadly bullet.
"If it didn't penetrate his skull, why is he . . . ."
"In a coma? It seems he did flat line on the table for quite some time. The surgeons nearly gave up on him. I was told, however, that just before the head surgeon could call the time, his heart suddenly started again, and his vitals returned." Tohma's footsteps announced his entry into the room. "It seems a genuine miracle, doesn't it? Still, being clinically dead for so long seems to have caught him in this comatose state." A hand on Eiri's shoulder, gentle yet firm. "You must understand, Eiri, that if he wakes--"
"When."
"Of course. When he wakes, he may not be the same. The doctor's can't be certain there wasn't some permanent damage done by the lack of oxygen to his brain."
Eiri swallowed. He tried to imagine a Shuichi who wasn't Shuichi, tried to imagine his life now without the ever-smiling boy. What if Shuichi woke and really wasn't himself? What if he woke and looked on Eiri without seeing him or without knowing him?
What if he IS himself?
That thought silenced all others, an Eiri found himself clutching Shuichi's limp hand. Before Shuichi, he had been in danger of losing himself, falling through an oblivion of his own making. He thought he'd wanted that, to just be alone forever, to forget his past and present and ignore the possibility of a future. Then came Shuichi. Shuichi, who refused to let him sink, who forcibly dragged Eiri from his personal Hell back to the world. Shuichi, who tried but in the end never could give up on him.
How could Eiri give up on Shuichi, then?
"I assume you brought him here for a reason," Eiri finally said to Tohma.
"Yes. You must know I am inclined to keep the secret of Shuichi's survival."
"The go-ahead for the funeral was a tip-off."
"It seems rather pointless to allow the general population to know he survived if he is comatose, and again when he wakes, if he isn't himself." Tohma's eyes settled on the prone form on the bed as he spoke, nothing but clinical, professional detachment in those eyes for Shuichi. "When he wakes, if he is Shuichi, then we can work on what to do next."
"You mean you can capitalize on the publicity of Shuichi's public return from the dead." Eiri knew Tohma, knew him all too well and how his ruthless mind worked. Nothing in the world was sacred to him, nothing at all. "When he wakes, and when he recovers enough to discuss the matter, it will be his decision what to do, not yours."
"Eiri--"
"No, Tohma." Eiri did not let go of Shuichi's hand, merely raised his eyes to the musician's, letting them be as cold, as unfeeling as they had ever been to his lover, his own lover. "You no longer control Shuichi's life, if you ever really did." He felt his lips curling in a smirk. "Shuichi always did have that way of getting around what you wanted for him, even knowing nothing about your manipulation. He always managed to do things his own way, and that grates at you, doesn't it? The only reason you can control him now is because he's in a coma."
Tohma's face paled as Eiri spoke, but his expression didn't change. If anyone could rival Eiri in the area of frigidity, it was Tohma. The president of N-G did so now, crossing his arms and giving Eiri an artic glare.
"So are you going to go off and announce Shuichi's survival to the world on public television, like you announced your love affair with him?"
"No." Eiri didn't let that barb affect him. Announcing his relationship with the young singer had been the best thing Eiri ever did, not knowing it at the time. "You'll get your intrigue, Tohma, at least that far, but know I'm not doing it because it's what you want. I'm doing it because I'm going to take care of Shuichi and I don't want idiotic fangirls beating down my doors. So to the outside world, Shindou Shuichi will remain dead. He will remain dead until Shuichi himself decides he wants to return to life, and if you try any of your bullshit to force his hand, I will kill you."
That made Tohma's mask break, and the young man stumbled back at the tone of Eiri's voice. Eiri meant it, he meant every word, and he knew Tohma knew. Nothing in the world, nothing and no one, was more important to Eiri now than Shuichi. Shuichi once let himself be raped and humiliated to spare Eiri pain, and now Eiri would do anything in order to offer his lover the same protection.
"Get out, Tohma."
Eiri turned his attention back to Shuichi, and when Tohma finally decided to obey his order, he didn't know.
End Chapter Two.