Shooting Stars
Chapter Nineteen: Hold On
Author's notes: You know, I have yet to decide whether I want to use Sleepless Beauty in the context of this story, but after this chapter I'm thinking it's probably going to make it in. I mean… look at the underlying theme and chapter title. It's the chorus of the song O.o; On that note, is it me, or does this story just get more and more deeply sexual? I can't seem to help it—sex seems to be an intrinsic part of Tohma's catharsis in this section. But I'm probably apologizing over nothing at all; you're loving this fanservice, aren't you? Besides, the flashback in this chapter…
Otherwise, thank you all for your reviews and your patience in letting me have a nice vacation with my family! I'm back in France now, and though I'm in the middle of finals, that's… probably not going to stop me. The third section of this story is wrapping up pretty soon, maybe one or two more chapters we move on to phase four! C'mon, don't tell me you're not looking forward to seeing Sakano :lol:
I wonder how many people are going to kill me for the ending of this (way too long) chapter…
Disclaimer: You know, considering how many people have told me they're starting to see this as the lost part of canon, I think maybe these characters own me. The Tohma in my head certainly doesn't act like I'm in charge.
Despite the fairly strong sense of duty that had been instilled in me from birth, I seriously considered skipping the Kyoto show. An hour to curtain, I had never felt so unmotivated. My hands were still aching and had been on and off since Sapporo, my stylist's suggestion for my stage costume, considerably more revealing than anything they usually put me into, irritated me, and the idea of playing to a crowd of teenage fantasies made me feel miserable. Because I knew exactly what was wrong with me and because Ryuichi-san was watching me with wisely knowing eyes, I made myself smile and do the show anyway.
There probably weren't many people in the audience who caught the three mistakes I made in the first half, but Noriko-san certainly did. During intermission, her worried and bewildered gaze joined Ryuichi-san's.
I made two more mistakes in the second half; none of them had been glaring, but right about then, I certainly felt as though it would have been better to cancel after all. I knew I was lacking stage presence and charisma, because I had never seen either Ryuichi-san or Noriko-san perform quite as brilliantly as they did that night, covering for my lackluster presentation. When we came offstage, K-san grabbed my arm in the usual backstage commotion and told me calmly, "If you're going to give me halfway, I don't want you going up there. The fans deserve more than that from you."
Though I knew he was completely right, I didn't answer. I didn't really know what to say.
"That said, it was a stupid thing to do this at the show you invited your girl to," he added. "She's waiting to see you already. Your dressing room."
I nodded my thanks that he was letting me off so easily after my throwing the performance and headed back. There would be others with backstage passes, of course, but generally K-san had them kept out for a few minutes to let us get our bearings. It seemed he approved of Mika-san on some level, though he hadn't at the start, if he continued to bend his backstage rules to accommodate her.
The door to my dressing room was open, and when I headed in, I discovered both Noriko-san and Ryuichi-san had already installed themselves there. Noriko-san was chatting animatedly with Mika-san, outwardly without a care in the world. "I'll introduce you to the designer," she finished. "Yoshiaki's always glad to have a new model to work with, and he personalizes to perfection. You can hardly tell our clothing was made by the same person; he's got a very good sense of what suits." She looked up at me, smiled brightly, all traces of the worry on her face gone. On occasion she was a stellar actress; there was no way she wasn't dying to know what was wrong with me and go about fixing it. Ryuichi-san was in the corner, and I could sense the pain and worry in him, though anyone else probably wouldn't be able to. "Tohma-kun, you're late!"
Mika-san smiled at me a little too brightly, which was the only warning I had before she threw herself into my arms, hugging me tightly and burying her face in my shirt. I blinked, dumbfounded, as Noriko-san gathered up Ryuichi-san and Kumagoro. "We'll chat later," she said brightly. "You need to catch up."
"I'm sorry," Mika-san said guiltily, nonetheless keeping her grip on me.
"Oh please, don't be silly," Noriko-san waved her off. "Come on, Ryu-chan." She bustled him out of the room and shut the door.
For a few minutes, Mika-san held on to me as if I was the only thing anchoring her, like she had in New York, then she released me a little to smile up at me and I realized her eyes were overly bright and she was near tears. "Thank you," she said fervently.
I reached up to stroke her hair comfortingly, for a minute taken back to that time when we had had nothing but each other to lean on. "Don't worry about it," I told her.
"I can't help it," she said. "Not when you do something like this. How did you get him to come home and apologize?"
"Did he?" I said. "I wasn't sure he would. I'm glad. It was the least I could do."
"No, no it wasn't," she told me. Her smile was still a little watery as she looked up at me. I kept expecting her to cry. "I know you think you're doing penance… making up for what happened to him in New York. But whether or not he realizes it, you're the best thing he has going for him." She blinked a few times, fighting back tears. "I can't begin to tell you right now how grateful I am to you. It seems like you're the only thing left to hold on to."
"I'm not going to abandon you," I let myself say. "And I won't let him destroy himself the way he's trying to." Another promise to another person, but the same one, really. "You can keep holding on as long as you need to." As she stood there in my arms, my thoughts were dark.
Yes, keep holding on to me. I'll let you, so hold on tighter and tighter. Hold on until I break from it.
That night I went to bed early, the moment we got back to the hotel. I felt heavy and tired and wanted nothing more than oblivion. The rain falling on the windows was soft and soothing to my ears, and I drifted off immediately. I felt the dream coming on, fought it halfheartedly, then let it take over as always, forgetting I was dreaming, transporting myself back.
At the end of February, it wasn't quite cold enough to snow in New York. Instead, a freezing rain fell upon the city, just heavy enough to make going outside miserable, but not enough to make the roads dangerous.
February twenty-second I kidnapped him out of school, smiling charmingly at the young female history teacher, whose lecture faltered as I walked directly into the classroom and asked for him to be excused to my care. He held his delighted grin back as he followed me into the empty third-period hallway, then let it bloom across his face, lighting up his eyes like sunshine. "What's going on? My birthday's tomorrow," he pointed out.
"But I'm kidnapping you today," I said blithely. "What, didn't you want to ditch school?"
He laughed, the sound echoing a little in the empty hallway. "Always my fondest dream."
It took him a few minutes after I pulled out of the parking lot, then he looked at me with slight confusion as I headed towards the interstate. "This isn't the way home."
"You're so observant," I said with a chuckle. "It continues to astound me."
He smacked my arm with no real heat behind the gesture. "You're insulting me," he complained.
"Oh, I wouldn't ever," I said with a straight face. "Now you're just being silly."
We made our way out of the city, driving north until we were alone on the deserted stretch of highway. The rain had faded out, though the clouds still hung low and gray. Interpreting his slightly hopeful look correctly, I pulled over to the side of the road and switched places with him, letting him drive.
I had been teaching him because he told me he wanted to learn, and gained the same pleasure I did from flying down an empty road. It wasn't entirely legal, but when I had thought of using that excuse not to let him, I had only to imagine eyes full of sarcasm and a statement effectively pointing out that I didn't much concern myself with legality. So I let him, figuring it was all right until we got caught. As with other things in my life, I didn't want to think about crossing that bridge until it was in front of me.
We ended up in some tiny town on the coast, eating amazing seafood in a restaurant with only four tables and a single waitress who doubled as cook, then walking off overfull stomachs on the shore of the winter sea, steely gray and a little mean, but beautiful because of its wildness. The wind was stiff, trying to tear away jackets and hats, and he walked pressed into my side, his arm tight around my waist and his hand tucked into my coat pocket for warmth. We went back to the car only when the low-hanging clouds opened again to let forth snow.
Because the snow showed no sign of stopping and because I had had no real plans for this trip other than getting out of the city, we spent the night in the single bed and breakfast the town contained, tiny just like the restaurant but boasting huge bay windows in the living room that doubled as a reception area. The girl behind the counter, barely past high-school age, apologized over and over about only one single room being available, all the while shooting me glances that clearly stated that she wouldn't mind sharing hers in the least. It took nearly half an hour to get our key and get free of her, smiling politely and trying not to acknowledge her flirtations, and Eiri-kun was frowning slightly as he shut the door behind us. I almost thought of apologizing, though there was nothing really to apologize for, when he tackled me, using the power of surprise to knock me flat and make the lamp on the bedside table my head had barely missed rattle. He gave me a hard kiss, followed by just as hard a bite on the base of my neck. "Mine," he nearly growled.
And I couldn't help laughing because of how marvelous this all was, sprawling on the floor and deliriously happy to be marked as his even if it was ridiculous to feel that way. He cut off my laughter with another kiss, this one going deep and dark and a little dangerous, and by the time we broke apart for breath I was no longer entirely sure of who or where we were.
"I have this sudden vindictive desire to be really loud," he said breathlessly, his eyes dark and promising from where I had flipped him over to pin him to the floor.
"Really bad idea," I told him.
"Yeah, I know. Damn it."
So we were quiet like we had learned to be, swallowing gasps and sighs and whimpers, and by the time we crawled into bed it was dark and quiet in the small house, made more so by the dampening blanket of snow that continued to fall outside the windows. It was too dark to see the small alarm clock by the bed, but it didn't really matter what it read. Time was fluid at that time, in that place.
He snuggled into my side and I felt him already sinking into sleep. He nuzzled at my neck, the same spot he had bruised earlier, and murmured, "Time slows down when it's snowing, and the world gets smaller. There's nothing except you."
"That sounds like something out of a book."
"It might be, someday." Holding on to me, he fell asleep.
I awoke to the bedside clock reading a blurry three-forty in the morning through the tears at the edges of my eyes. My body was tense and aching for something I knew I couldn't have as I sat up, shaking off the last vestiges of the dream, and looked blankly at the window. The pane was still being splattered with late winter rain. I felt just a little closer to breaking than I had earlier that evening, so I stood and dressed, and after a moment of self-loathing went out of my room and across the silent hotel hallway.
It was more difficult than I had imagined to knock on Ryuichi-san's door, to see his face, completely miserable, as he opened it. It seemed much more than a week since Sapporo. There was a towel around his neck and he was shirtless. The television was murmuring softly in the background and the bed was made—clearly he hadn't been sleeping. His hair was wet, and his eyes were adult and hurting. After a moment of silence, he reached out a hand, smoothed it over my cheek, and smiled. It seemed to take a moment of effort for the pain on his face to vanish.
"I'm so-" I started to apologize, but he put a hand on my lips, effectively stemming the statement before it was complete.
"Don't worry about it," he said, smiling, his eyes wiser than most ever gave him credit for. "Come in."
He pulled me in by my beltloops, shutting and locking the door behind me and stood on his toes to kiss me lightly, a whisper against my lips that had very little of the sexual in it, but served somehow to comfort. "I really-" I started again, but he only shook his head, once again cutting off what I was saying.
"Don't," he told me. "It's all right. I understand, really." And by his eyes, it seemed he did. "I'm so happy you came." And I believed him, though he didn't look it. He drew me towards him, letting my face settle in his hair, damp and smelling of shampoo. His hands danced over my back, then settled around my waist. "I should be the one apologizing," he murmured unintelligibly, his face pressed against my neck. "I told you to hold on to me. It shouldn't hurt so much when you only do what I ask you to." He kissed the spot his breath tickled, then a little higher on my neck, the spot that had been bruised in the dream of what seemed to be another life. Light kisses continued, landing soft as raindrops up the line of my jaw, lingering just under my right ear. "Don't say anything," he whispered to me, anticipating that I was about to speak. "Please. Just let me."
Because it was easier and less painful than arguing with him, and because he so rarely made requests of me, I closed my eyes and did.
That was the first time he fell asleep immediately, after. I was the one left awake as he slept exhaustedly next to me, his weight familiar curled against me and his hand holding on to mine even in sleep, fingers loosely laced together. He had never fallen asleep like that before, curled into the curve of my body, head resting on my chest; generally Ryuichi-san sprawled over his side of the bed and mine for good measure. It was Eiri-kun who had always slept like this, as if he couldn't be quite close enough to me, even in sleep. It felt somehow like some sort of barrier had been broken between us, that he allowed himself to lose consciousness in this position, looking young and vulnerable.
So I let my free hand rest on the small of his back as he slept, breathing deeply and evenly against my chest, and tried to shut off my brain.
They can keep holding on to me, and I won't break. I won't break, because I'm holding on to you.
But what are you holding on to?
I wanted to ask him but knew I wouldn't dare. I felt inexplicably sad as I drifted off into sleep after him.
Everything was the same, yet just a little different after that. I wasn't sure if I liked the change, though I couldn't quite put my finger on that which had changed. In any case, Ryuichi-san seemed, on the surface at least, to be more content than he had been before. I caught myself thinking sometimes that it was an act, that he was actually indescribably miserable. These thoughts came from nowhere, because he never gave me cause to believe something of that nature. He was bright, energetic and affectionate, just as he had always been. Nothing about him signaled the breakdown I felt unreasonably must be close at hand.
Somehow, it never came.
Almost a year passed this way. I got through the summer on strength of will alone. Once the heat began to fade a little and the days began shortening, it was a little easier going with every day. By the time the autumn rains began to fall, I had once again settled into a pattern of existence that was repetitive, saved from monotony only by Noriko-san and Ryuichi-san's spontaneity and penchant for trouble. Saki-chan had begun babbling in nonsensical baby-talk, and Noriko-san brought her by the studio sometimes now when her nanny had a day off. The little girl very quickly became the office darling; even K-san wasn't immune to her big-eyed charm. In fact, he was remarkably good with her.
"My wife and I have a son about her age," he told us once by way of explanation, bouncing the little girl, who was shrieking with giggles and trying to work the gun on his belt free of its holster.
We all had to blink at that; I hadn't even known he was married.
Mika-san and I stayed in touch. We generally talked on the phone at least once a week, though I hadn't seen her since February's Kyoto show. On occasion she would give me news of Eiri-kun, most of it not positive. None of it seemed quite bad enough for me to make good on my threat to go and knock sense into him, only just bad enough for Mika-san to need my metaphorical shoulder to cry on. So I continued to hurt and let her take her pain and frustration out on me, and then Ryuichi-san pulled it out of me and I felt almost human until the next time she called with word of some new escapade that it was difficult to equate with the sweet, playful boy I had known.
He was going to school, but seemed to have no desire whatsoever to continue on to college, nor to learn his father's trade. He stayed out of trouble for the most part, but he came home with his clothes and breath smelling of cigarettes more often than not. He went to therapy because Mika-san made him, but was surly and rude to the psychiatrist (something I didn't blame him for in the least, though I never told Mika-san so). He took the medicine he prescribed but it didn't seem to help his dark moods and frequent silences. He wrote alone in his room at night, but he snarled at anyone who approached him and wouldn't let anyone see what he was working on. He had stopped fighting with his classmates, but instead was making the rounds of all the girls in his school, carelessly dropping them after a few days, sometimes a week if the girl was lucky.
It was this last trend in his behavior that I found particularly worrying, and the roundabout reason for my eventual return to Kyoto, a place I was beginning to hate as much as I longed for it. Mika-san called me in tears one afternoon in late September, and by the time I had her coherent and had pulled the entire story out of her, I was already halfway out the door. Apparently, he had come home bloodied and bruised after an altercation with someone over something he wasn't willing to disclose. When Mika-san had pried him for details, he had slammed out of the house, holding on to his side as though his ribs pained him.
So, because she asked me to and because I had made promises I had never expected to be keeping in this way, I left Ryuichi-san a voicemail postponing the tentative dinner plans we had made and headed for the airport.
Once in Kyoto, I didn't even bother going to the temple, choosing instead to make a circuit of the neighborhood just around, assuming correctly that hurt as he was, he wouldn't have gone very far to lick his wounds. A few questions asked were enough; not many injured blond teens would be wandering around. My efforts paid off late into the night when I finally located him in the corner of a bar he had no right being in. The bartender didn't seem to care, but then again, with the way he had shot up in the past several months, Eiri-kun didn't really look underage. That aside, with the way he looked that night in particular it wasn't too surprising that no one bothered to look too closely. He had washed off the blood and most of the injuries I assumed he had were masked by the dim light, but he had a large bruise on his cheek and a swollen lip, and looked more than a little mean and ready to pick up the fight with the next person to challenge him. So I didn't say anything about the low-quality beer he was nursing, ordering a martini and slipping onto the bench on the other side of his booth. There was surprise in his eyes before he schooled his face to impassivity. "You," he said flatly.
"Yes, I just keep coming back. I must just enjoy your company that much." I spoke lightly, nonchalantly, but I was hungrily drinking in his presence, little details about him. The way he slouched was new, speaking of height gained quickly and someone who was unaccustomed to being tall. He would tower over me a great deal now if he stood. It had been months since we had seen each other, and again it seemed he had changed. He wasn't as starved-looking as he had been the last time, but his eyes were more narrow and cold than ever. He had had a haircut recently, probably at his family's insistence and the too-neat crop didn't suit him at all; the slightly long, untended look had always looked best on him. He still had the earring, though, and he was still more beautiful than I knew what to do with.
"I figured you'd be along eventually," he said, downing the rest of his beer and grimacing. The undertones of that were clearly that he wished he knew a good way to get rid of me.
"Smart," I told him. "What did you do to yourself?" I adopted the tone of the frustrated parent or sibling because it was easiest.
"You're supposed to be the genius," he said with a bitter little smirk. "Got thrashed, obviously."
I sighed. "Eiri-kun, that was obvious the moment I walked in here. Why?"
"Damn female," was his only response. He pulled a cigarette and lighter out of his pocket; I was so distracted I let him.
"You fought with a girl?" I asked incredulously.
"Of course not," he sneered. "Chiharu just had a bit of a memory lapse." He smiled sourly. "We know all about that, don't we? Threw herself at me, pulled me into bed of entirely her own volition, then decided she wasn't so fond of the idea of me moving on. I mean, fun's fun, but I never promised to keep her around. Shit." He rubbed at his side absently; I remembered Mika-san's theory about the hurt ribs. "Suddenly, her three giants of brothers are after me for being a rapist. Kind of like being a kid again, actually, three against one. Then, I come home, and Mika's being a hysterical cow as always, and Tatsuha's looking at me with huge owl eyes and saying he hopes I mutilated the other guy. So I left, because I didn't," he finished, taking a drag of his cigarette and letting out a cloud of smoke, hiding his features for a moment. "Hit back, I mean."
He reached for my glass and sipped at what was left. At this point, I let him. "What?" I asked. I couldn't imagine him putting up no sort of fight at all.
He shrugged. "I figure, if I can kill a couple of guys for trying to rape me, the least I can do is let those three knock me around a little if they think I did the same thing to their kid sister. Be kind of hypocritical if I didn't, wouldn't it?" He took another drag; I watched his face through the smoke, and marveled at how far away he seemed. "Never mind that she came herself and asked for it. Apparently, so did I, so," he shrugged, "you know, all that karma shit. Good for the old man's business, and all it cost me is a couple of ribs and a split lip."
Before he had quite finished this horrible statement, considerably before I had realized what I was doing, I was on my feet, my hands gripping his arms and pulling him up from the other side of the table. I didn't even notice the look of pain on his face as I did so; I was half blind with a million thoughts and feelings, the most paramount of which were rage, guilt and some sort of blind hope that I somehow hadn't managed to quash yet. "What do you remember?" I asked him, trying to keep my shaking voice low, failing when I saw a flicker in his eyes that was almost recognition, almost the old Eiri. "Damn it, what?" I knew I was practically shouting and didn't care. When he didn't answer me quickly enough, I pulled him closer and shook him slightly, the part of my mind detached from this marveling at the fact that I was capable of physical violence at all. I was holding on to him as tightly as I was holding on to those last threads of hope.
The strange look in his eyes was back for a moment, pain layered over confusion. "Nothing," he finally said, pulling his eyes away from mine. "Not enough. Words, phrases, faces. Yuki-sensei, mostly." He looked back at me then, and all traces of the old Eiri-kun were gone, leaving only the new one. "That not what you wanted to hear? Are you going to fill me in?" Before I could even process what to answer, he shook his head, looking clearly terrified. "Never mind. I don't care, all right? Are you going to let me go? You're hurting me."
Dazed, I let go of him, still feeling the urge to somehow shake the memories out him, to remove this new unfamiliar creature by force and bring back my Eiri-kun. "It wasn't your fault," I said softly, making myself look at him however much it hurt. "I'm going to have to tell you at least that much, no matter what you don't want to hear. Not your fault, Eiri-kun. My fault. All my fault. How could you be stupid enough to blame yourself?"
I felt tears close at hand. I knew he saw them, because he seemed on the verge of reaching out to me, so close I almost held my breath, but then he slammed down a wall of indifference. "Whatever. People are staring. Aren't you supposed to be famous or something?"
At this point, that was the farthest thing from my mind. "I don't care." My biggest and only fear was breaking down while he was still there to see. I didn't think I'd be able to survive it.
He gave me a disgusted look. "You're here to take me home, right? Let's go, but if Mika or anyone else gets on my case, I'll tell you all to go get fucked. Got it?"
"Fine." I followed him out, willing myself to just hold on a few hours more, only until I could get back to Tokyo and lose myself in Ryuichi-san's arms for a little while, because he was the only one allowed to see me break down, and the only one with any hope of putting me right again.
I was only lucky that the next day was Sunday, and we could sleep late; I had shown up at the door of Ryuichi-san's apartment at a quarter to five in the morning, and couldn't be grateful enough that he roused himself enough to let me in without saying a single reproachful word. We slept through the morning and lazed through the afternoon, eating the sushi he had ordered in, him and Kumagoro watching some sort of anime full of explosions on television, me reading absently from one of the books I had begun leaving at his apartment for days such as this.
We didn't need to be in the studio until the evening, and when we got there I felt refreshed and ready to work, only to discover K-san was nowhere to be seen. Noriko-san was sitting at the computer in the practice room calmly playing solitaire instead of doing any actual work. She hit a dead end, stuck her tongue out at the computer, and quit the program as we walked in. "Hey guys," she said. "You know what the plan is for today?"
"I have no idea," I told her, settling on the piano bench and experimentally playing a few chords.
"Well, if you have no idea…" She shrugged, opened her game again and recommenced sorting computerized cards. Ryuichi-san settled on the floor near the piano bench, putting Kumagoro away on his head and pulling a little notebook out of his jacket pocket to doodle on. It seemed our lazy afternoon was stretching into a lazy evening.
"We should probably try to do something," I said with no real energy. My hands wandered over the piano keys almost unconsciously, playing scales, arpeggios, background noise to warm up my fingers.
"Like what?" she said.
"I wonder where K is?" Ryuichi-san mused from the floor. His drawing looked a little like one of the monsters that had been exploding in this afternoon's anime. "He's never late. He shoots people who are late."
"Probably just held up in traffic," Noriko-san said without looking away from her computer. "Damn it, where is the ace of hearts?"
Neither of us had a chance to answer this all-important question as the door slammed open and K-san appeared on the threshold. I had never seen him look more angry; it was actually terrifying. He had some sort of papers clutched in his fist. He looked around the room with barely suppressed rage. "You and you out," he said, pointing at Noriko-san and Ryuichi-san. His eyes fixed on me. "You stay."
I looked up at him in utter confusion as Noriko-san nearly fled the room, pulling Ryuichi-san by his shirt cuff. "What's going on?" I asked slowly.
"Hopefully, you can tell me that," he said, throwing the papers at me. I caught them reflexively. "These are pre-prints of tomorrows papers, and don't think I didn't have to bleed just to get this much warning."
Under his burning gaze, it was actually difficult to get the papers straightened well enough to be able to see what was on the pages. Then it was no longer K-san I was worried about, as the photographs and headlines jumped out at me to my unending horror. Photographs I had not noticed being taken, myself, hands tight on Eiri-kun's arms, a mere breath away from him. The look of undisguised hope and wanting on my face that I was sure anyone could interpret, and fear and near-panic on his, a face that was easily recognizable as his despite the dim lighting and the swelling on his lip. Some enterprising soul had clearly gone to the trouble of finding out his identity, and his name was there, thrown across the top of the page with mine, and other photos of him, in school uniform, looking impossibly young, and speculations, not all of them false…
I felt myself gripping onto the piano with a discordant clash of notes, because if I didn't hold on, the world was going to turn over and this utter nightmare would be real.
"Right now would be the time to start explaining." I heard K-san's voice as if from far away. "And I'm really, really hoping it's good."
