Shooting Stars

Chapter Nine: Into the Fire


Author's notes: I... don't have words for this chapter. You can't possibly imagine the agony I went through to write this, and any notes I might have would spoil it. Just let it hit you like a ton of bricks and tell me if I should up the rating.

Disclaimer: If they were mine, this chapter would never have happened this way.


I was awakened by an insistent knocking on my door just as I had finally drifted off to sleep after hours of staring at the ceiling. I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away, so I finally got out of bed, managing to stub my toe on the way out of the bedroom. "Why does everyone insist on coming to my door in the middle of the night? Why not in daylight, like civilized people?" I grumbled to myself as the knock on my door repeated, but started undoing all the locks. At this point, I was too frustrated to bother seeing who it was first. I felt just angry enough to send whoever was on the other side of the door to hell. If it was Noriko-san, she would have a firm talking to about how it was her husband's job, and not mine, to feed her midnight cravings. I yanked open the door with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

And all rational thought fled.

"Tohma-san?"

I swallowed, my throat dry. I hadn't seen him in months. I hadn't talked to him in weeks. Why was he here?

"Tohma-san..." He looked like he was struggling with something. He reached out a hand which trembled slightly, stopping within millimeters of touching my face. He looked terrified. "I... shouldn't be here... but I... had to..." His golden eyes were pleading with me to understand something, and I felt a little like I was drowning.

Completely of its own volition, my own hand came up to tuck a lock of his hair behind his ear. He closed his eyes and leaned into my hand, turning the feather-light touch into a caress. His cheek was smooth and warm under my cold hand. It wasn't just his hand that was trembling, I realized. I felt the tremor here too, almost like he was a leaf shivering in the wind.

"Eiri-kun?" My voice was a whisper. I felt like I was walking on glass. "Why are you here?"

He took a deep breath, letting it out in a shaky sigh. "I had to," he answered in the same whisper. "I needed to tell you..." Another shaky sigh. "But I can't." He opened his eyes again, and I could see my face reflected in the amber depths, white as a sheet, my own eyes wide. For a moment, time seemed to freeze, and then the hand he had put up in the air finally moved, sliding up into the hair at the back of my neck, making my mouth drop open with a gasp of shock.

And in a split instant, the electrically charged space between us was gone. He was pressed against me, his heartbeat fluttering against my chest, his hands in my hair, his mouth hot against mine, still trembling, and not entirely with fear...

And then time was no longer standing still, it was flying.

There was a wild freedom here, it flooded into me, replacing my fears, doubts, questions, leaving only burning desperation. Such a foreign feeling, and yet so right, to feel him pressed against me as the blood roared in my ears, his skin hot under my hands when I pulled him closer until I felt every plane of him pressing into me, the gasp I felt as much as heard when I forced his lips open, fell into the kiss with an intensity that was sure to leave bruises. I shuddered when he responded, fisting his hands in my hair so hard it should have hurt.

I couldn't think, couldn't breathe. There were no excuses anymore, only desperation, nameless needs, bursts of white heat. Somehow, his hands were under my shirt, they were ice-cold, yet there was fire in the clinging touch. We stumbled back, forgetting the door, forgetting everything, still locked together. I ran into a table; the pain barely registered. Something fell to the floor with the tinkle of breaking glass. I felt it crunch under my bare feet.

He tripped over something; I caught him up somehow, barely supporting the two of us when the room was spinning out of control. He was still shorter than me, and his back was arched as I leaned over him, barely keeping balanced, pulling him closer by his hips, eliciting a moan when I accidentally nipped his lower lip. The rest of the world was crumbling away, swallowed in the raging inferno centered where our lips were still fused together, and we were tumbling towards the floor, but I couldn't think enough to regain my balance...


I woke up with a start to late morning sunlight and the sound of a single bird calling outside of my window. I felt dizzy and disoriented. The sheets were wet, not just with sweat. I sat up. "Eiri-kun?" I said softly. No answer. "Eiri-kun?" I repeated again, louder.

Silence.

Shakily, I got up. I found my robe hanging behind the door to the bathroom, went in to splash water on my face and try to get my thoughts together. Everything was fuzzy. I remembered Eiri-kun appearing on my doorstep as if by magic. And then...

I blinked a few times at my reflection. I didn't remember actually getting to bed. The floor, the couch, those I remembered vividly, but not my bedroom. When had that happened? And, the most important question... where was Eiri-kun?

I walked out into the hall. The apartment was silent as I stared at the table near the entrance to the living room. The floorboards were warm against my bare feet. I thought I remembered stepping on broken glass... but no, the crystal candleholder was whole and sitting on the table, not in pieces on the floor like I remembered. Everything around me was still. I was clearly the only one in the apartment.

I barely caught myself and fell into the nearest chair, my head in my hands. A dream... just another impossible dream on my first day off in a month. Just a regular morning when I was indulging myself by sleeping in. Of course I had woken alone. Of course he wasn't answering.

I had dreamed him, as I always did, so vividly that coming back into reality was like the shock of a bucket of ice water being upended over my head. He wasn't real. It wasn't real. It was never real.

I picked up the candleholder and threw it on the floor, getting a perverse satisfaction from the melodic tinkle of broken glass, the shattered pieces glittering on the floor.

I hid my face in my hands, precariously near tears.


"Yes, Mika-san. Of course I would be happy to arrange it. I'll send a CD and a promotional poster, too." I tried not to sigh into the phone pressed between my shoulder and my ear, steering my car (which I had been permitted to keep as long as I had the windows tinted) through late afternoon traffic. I had spent the morning composing, slowly and tediously because nothing worthwhile would come. It had the desired effect of dulling the aftereffects of the dream, however.

"I don't want you to send her anything," Mika-san snapped on the other end of the line. "Just scribble your name on a napkin or something. Just so she'll leave me alone."

"Err... right," I said, deciding not to argue with her. On the one hand, she seemed very proud of her connection to me. As far as anyone outside of our families was concerned, it was only that our parents were old friends and we vaguely knew each other. However, as tenuous a connection as that seemed, Mika-san's friends were constantly harassing her for autographs. Mostly she said no, trying to downplay the connection. When they got to the point that this one had—namely, to the point of stalking her after class and faxing notes with reminders and pleas in the middle of the night—she generally called me with her own plea: to save her sanity. If it was Ryuichi-san or Noriko-san who was her friend's current favorite, she took it fairly well. If it was me... well, it wasn't particularly pretty.

"I mean it, Tohma-san, a napkin. A used one." She paused. "No, she'd probably like that."

"Right." No, definitely, definitely better not to argue.

I had a slight headache by this point, wondering how to politely end this conversation. Traffic was vicious, and concentrating was difficult. Just as I was about to say something to that effect, there was a commotion on the other end of the line. "Eiri wants to talk to you," Mika-san said, exasperated. "He keeps trying to get the phone away from me. He—no, Eiri, I will not, why don't you go... study or something? I'm busy here and Tohma-san can't be bothered—I'm sorry, Tohma-san, I think I need to go-" Then the line had gone dead.

My tentative good mood evaporated like smoke.

I had to work at erasing a scowl from my face as I stalked into a nearby florist's, paid for a dozen roses, and stalked out again. I drove unsafely, jerking the wheel around, cutting off other drivers, getting honked at. I couldn't understand why I was quite this angry, only that I was. Anger born of futility.

But the crazy driving helped. My usual unreadable facial expression was back by the time I screeched to a stop outside of a posh high-rise apartment building. The doorman bowed me in, and I took the elevator to the top floor, ringing the bell and waiting politely until a voice from inside called, "Come in!"

I shook my head at her lack of concern for security, but walked in, slipping out of my shoes and setting my hat on an end table before proceeding into the main room of the apartment that took up the entire fiftieth floor.

"You look good," I said, setting down the flowers I had brought into a nearby vase. She was lounging around on the sofa, wearing an impossibly tiny top and a pair of shorts that seemed made to showcase her rounding stomach, looking entirely satisfied with herself.

"I feel even better," she announced, popping a cherry into her mouth. "I think pregnancy agrees with me."

"I think you're right," I agreed. She sat up and patted the couch next to her, indicating I should sit down. "Is Tetsuya-san at work, then?"

"He has a lecture today," she shrugged. "He'll be home eventually. And he'd better not forget to bring home dinner this time." She looked righteous and miffed. "Please, as if I can cook in my condition!"

I kept myself from pointing out that not only was she still performing actively (and therefore not an invalid), but that she could not cook in any condition, pregnant or otherwise. "It's still hard to imagine you a married woman," I said instead with a shake of my head, helping myself to one of her cherries. "But I think that agrees with you, too."

"Right, and who would have thought, huh?" She giggled. "At least the media buzz has mostly died down now. And Tetsuya says he hasn't had any hate mail in two days. That's some kind of record."

I laughed. "How has he taken that?"

She shrugged. "It could be worse. We didn't think it would be easy."

"Did you think at all?" I asked jokingly. She hit me with a pillow. "Well, as long as you're getting through it, I suppose."

"It's fun most of the time," she said. "Anyway, we're going to have to go on hiatus pretty soon here, and as long as we make it that far, Tetsuya and I will settle in well enough before I'm back on active duty." She leaned back against the cushions. "I have to say, I'll miss the stage during that time, though."

I nodded. The fans didn't know about the pregnancy; Tetsuya-san had it hard enough after the press conference announcing Noriko-san's marriage. K-san had said that if the fans knew she was expecting it would probably be a great deal worse, so we hadn't told anyone. For a while, that had been easy, then the costume designer had had to get more and more creative. I expected him to throw up his hands any day and announce that there was nothing further he could do about hiding it. Then Nittle Grasper would go on hiatus to "write new songs" until Noriko-san was back in stage shape. She intended to keep her child out of the media if she could manage it. There were tentative plans to record once or twice during that time, but mostly she would be too busy for a little while to travel and keep our insane hours. As for myself and Ryuichi-san...

"What are you going to do with your break?" Noriko-san asked me, as if reading my mind. "I mean... half a year to do whatever you want. It seems insane. I can't remember what that's like."

"You'll be busy putting together your family life," I told her. "I doubt you'll get too bored."

She smiled contentedly, linking her fingers on her stomach. "No. I'm going to have a good time with it."

I ate another cherry. "Look at you. You're so content and placid you're almost... normal. It's a little scary."

"I think they said that's the hormones," she said lightly. Her dreamy smile turned wicked, and the glint I was accustomed to came back into her eyes. "I wouldn't be getting used to it if I were you."

I nearly choked on my cherry. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"So, what about your vacation?" she persisted. "It wouldn't be like you to just do nothing."

"Saa..." I said, leaning back to stare at the ceiling. In truth, the thought of so much time with nothing to do terrified me. Maybe I'd take on a production position at Shinjin. Anything to keep busy. Anything to keep from thinking too much.

"Ryu-chan's going to take his family on a trip this upcoming summer, I think," Noriko-san told me. "Midori-chan has this obsession with going to the Eiffel Tower, God knows why, so he told each of them to pick one place and is going to be flying all around the planet." She grinned. "What a father he'd make."

"He doesn't need more than the four he already has," I said. "He is their father. And his stepmother's father, if it comes to that." It had recently come out that Ryuichi-san had spent a considerable amount of his earnings to finance his stepmother's treatment in some high-tech facility in Switzerland. Another chunk went to tuition at an exclusive all-girls' boarding school in the United States after Akane-chan had complained that she was having a hard time learning English in school. I had not been aware of any of this until K-san had mentioned finding the school at Ryuichi-san's request. It had always struck me as odd that although he had a large apartment now it was practically empty. It hadn't occurred to me that almost everything he earned got immediately sent overseas. On occasion, the singer still managed to throw me for a loop.

"Speaking of Midori-chan and the rest of them, weren't you saying something about getting Eiri-kun a place studying abroad?" she asked abruptly.

I did choke on my cherry this time, coughing until I felt tears come to my eyes. Noriko-san patted me helpfully on the back a few times.

"Poor Tohma-kun... you should be more careful. But anyway, about Eiri-kun," she continued blithely, "I haven't seen him and you haven't talked about him in a while... is he doing all right?"

I lowered my head between my knees, trying to recapture my breath and not groan with complete and utter helplessness. I could never escape him, but that day it seemed especially so. "Fine. Wonderful. I'm sure he's wonderful," I said tersely.

"Are you all right?" Noriko-san asked quizzically. "I thought you liked Eiri-kun."

"I do. I just don't want to talk about him."

"I... see," she said slowly. "Are you going to sit up?"

"In a moment," I practically snapped. I knew it wasn't her fault, but my temper was frayed. "Would you just give me a damn moment?"

The hand on my back was immediately withdrawn. "I can see you're distressed, so I won't slap you for speaking to me in that tone of voice," Noriko-san said coolly. "However, if you do not sit up and explain to me what the hell is wrong with you lately, you can see yourself out."

It took me a moment, but I sat up slowly, lifting my head which felt so heavy suddenly. I met her eyes though I didn't want to. "I apologize," I said heavily. "It's not your fault."

"No," she agreed. "But I think it's time you stopped pretending you can handle your problems on your own. Clearly you need to talk about it. So talk."

I shook my head. "No."

She pursed her lips for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was impatient. "Fine. If you think you're all-powerful, it's not my place to beat sense into you. But if you think I'm going to let you torture yourself into a hole, you're wrong."

I looked at her blankly. A part of me was marveling that this was only the second time she had yelled at me like this. The first had been when I had refused to acknowledge music as my life's course. She had cried back then, but she looked nothing short of coldly angry now.

"Listen to me, Tohma-kun. I don't know how you define love, but the definition is not 'endless suffering'. If it's making you this unhappy, you have to do something about it."

"But-"

"No, you will listen to me this time," she cut me off ruthlessly. "You can't keep sitting on your hands and saying 'it's all right' when it so clearly isn't. So get up and fix it. It's not like you to be a coward."

"That's easy for you to say," I said bitterly when I could get a word in edgewise. "It's not so hard when you have a nice cozy life with your husband and a child on the way-"

She cut me off again. "Let's review, shall we? I had to convince a man twice my age to marry me because I was pregnant with his child, and only discovered later that to my immense luck I can learn to love him after all. Oh yes, come to think of it, that was a real walk in the park." She glared. "How selfish can you be? We all have problems."

"This is different," I said, feeling like the worst person in the world.

"Of course it's different. It's different for everyone. Life is like that," she said. Suddenly her sharp glare and tone softened, and she closed her hand over mine. "Tohma-kun... this isn't supposed to be easy. But you are supposed to work through it, anyway. That's life too." She smiled very lightly. "It's terrifying, but if you don't break the stalemate, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering. And love is love... whoever it is, it doesn't matter. So stop killing yourself over it. There is no 'wrong' when it comes to love."

I looked into her eyes for a few endless moments, then squeezed her hand. "I think I need to go."

"I think you need to, too," she said, and let me go.


I didn't think as I drove to the airport. I didn't think as I bought a wildly overpriced last minute ticket to Kyoto. I didn't think as I boarded the airplane. Somehow I knew that if I started thinking I'd stop going, as if I was running on momentum that could be halted by one coherent thought. So I ruthlessly shut my mind off as the plane took off, listening to music with the provided headphones, thinking chord progressions and composition techniques, refusing to let anything else filter through.

When the plane landed, I disembarked and found a taxi on autopilot. I looked at the clock; it was almost nine in the evening. "Where to, sir?"

It only took a moment, then I was rattling off the name of the cram school Mika-san had told me Eiri-kun attended, and if the driver seemed a little startled, at least the car was moving, and we were traveling unfamiliar streets, and my mind was still carefully blank, even when the driver recognized me and asked an autograph for his daughter. I signed the back of a Shinjin business card, handed over too much money for the fare, and was already out of the car when he tried to give me change. I walked up to the building as if enchanted, knowing that I was a moth drawn to an inferno and for the first time not caring.

There was the sound of laughter, and a girl and a boy walked out of the building, then a group of girls, two boys, another girl—and then there he was, walking all by himself a few moments later when the street was already deserted, a somewhat sullen look on his face, the top two buttons of his jacket undone though it was cold outside. I stood still in my tracks when I saw him, feeling ridiculously that all of my life up to this point had only been leading up to this moment...

"Eiri-kun."

He turned. There was confusion in his eyes, then surprise, then pleasure, a warm and golden wave washing over me.

"Tohma-san?" he said, walking up to me, reaching out a hand to touch my jacket that was trying to blow away in a gust of wind. "What are you doing here?"

And I let myself take that hand in mine, marveling how warm it was, though he wasn't wearing any gloves. The heat seeped into me, just like the warmth and trust in his eyes. He didn't pull away from me, only looked at me inquisitively. Trust. It was all about trust.

In a minute, he may not trust me anymore-

No. Don't think about that.

Don't think.

"I came to see you," I said.

In the end, I can't keep my distance. This something between us is a little like gravity, and we will be thrown together until something or someone changes...

"Well, we will all be glad to see you; I'm sure Mikarin will be thrilled-"

"I didn't come to see your family. Just you."

He stared up at me for a few silent moments. It would be easy to drown in eyes like these, I thought, so big and gold and innocent and warm. "Why?" He asked at last, his voice very quiet. His hand was shaking ever so slightly.

Just like then...

But this isn't a dream.

This time it's real.

"Because I can't keep my distance like this and stay sane. It's killing me." Those eyes held nothing I could read. Confusion, apprehension...

But no fear.

"I need you. More than I should. More than I thought I could need anything."

I meant to kiss him once, lightly, barely a brush of lips, a whisper. I only meant to let myself taste that innocence for a brief moment, not knowing what would happen after, unable to think past that hesitant contact. I only meant to flirt with that fire, to pull away after the first intoxicating touch of that wild, impossible thing that could swallow me whole.

Except suddenly, the innocent kiss wasn't innocent, and those warm hands were clutching at the front of my jacket, and I was already burning away to nothing.

Except this time, it's not a dream.

This time it's real.