Shooting Stars

Chapter Twenty-One: Coming Unglued


Author's notes: I find I have a million things to say to the readers and I'm going to shamelessly abuse of my right to author's notes! I can't believe I've gotten all the way here! THANK YOU ALL! I'm sure I would have abandoned this monster long ago if you weren't all supporting me… but I will bring it to completion despite myself! I promise! In any case, this chapter is the end of part three!

I've had more than a few offers of fanart and I thank you for that as well! Go ahead and e-mail it to me (you can get the info on my author page or my LJ). In compensation… for each work of fanart I promise a short drabble/ficlet on the subject of your choice. It doesn't even have to relate to Stars!

Now about this chapter: there's a great deal more here in the way of present narrative. This chapter, more than any previous ones, really gives the feeling of looking back. When is Tohma looking back from? Why, from the end of the story, of course, or roughly four years after the manga. Yes, pick your jaws off the floor; I really plan to take it that far. You'll come along for the trip, won't you?

I appreciate feedback and ideas… yes, experiencing this time from Ryuichi's POV would be fascinating, but Shooting Stars is Tohma's story. Perhaps I will write one of the bonuses (like Happy Endings, which I hope you've read!) on that subject eventually? For now, content yourselves with Tohma's narrative and Ryuichi's long, complicated speech that takes up a good half of the chapter, which is followed by Tohma's definitive descent towards what he becomes by the time of the series…

Disclaimer: I suffer from megalomania (see the author's notes of doom!) but not to the point of believing I own Gravitation…


That was when we first started falling apart, I think. Then again, maybe we began falling apart much earlier—possibly before I even left for New York. I'm not really sure when it started, actually, but it seemed to only gain momentum as time went on. I could almost feel something coming, something too enormous and terrible to really comprehend, but I couldn't seem to help any of the choices I made that only lead us closer and closer to the edge.

I brought Mika-san to live with me the near the end of September, and until mid-October Ryuichi-san didn't come to work. That first afternoon, K-san was furious, but something happened between that day and the next that cooled him considerably. In any case, the next day he only said, "I'm afraid I may have been working you too hard. A few weeks won't hurt anything; the new single isn't due for a month and a half and there are no tours planned. Ryuichi is taking a trip to visit his family in Los Angeles and I've canceled your TV spots, so enjoy it while it lasts." I felt like I was still trapped in the same strange alternate world that Ryuichi-san had thrown me into the day before; K-san never gave vacations, he practically didn't give days off, unless something was seriously wrong and beyond his control.

We took the vacation. Forcibly, I ended up spending a great deal of time with Mika-san, and remembered I really did enjoy her, in a way. Living with her was very different than living with Eiri-kun had been, and just as different from the half-cohabitation that Ryuichi-san and I had had. She was an early riser like me, but she was hardly coherent before the first cup of some sort of caffeinated beverage. She always spoke her mind and had a propensity for nagging, but I felt remarkably at ease with her, considering. She was a good cook but hated being in the kitchen with a passion unsurpassed, so I found myself making the majority of the meals. I assumed we'd end up ordering out a great deal once I was busy again, or perhaps I would hire her a housekeeper. She spent hours in the bathroom in the mornings and evenings, reminding me of Noriko-san's time practically living out of my apartment, which made me smile. In general, my experience with women in the past was limited to Noriko-san, and every time I found something the two had in common it was a little easier to resign myself to the way things had become.

She put up with my strange sleeping habits for a few days, then confronted me about it, saying that she understood everything, but was I going to avoid my own bed for the rest of my life? Because if so, she would start sleeping on the couch with me. After that, we slept side by side, though I didn't think to touch her, at least until she took matters into her own hands one night when I was already asleep, and I was too disoriented upon waking with lips and hands on me to think about what I was doing until it was done, and afterwards, bizarrely, I was no longer uncomfortable with her.

She began modifying the apartment and making wedding plans, and I let her have her way in all of it. I didn't want to argue with her because it didn't seem to be worth it, but in a strange way, I found her presence a comforting one. It seemed that over the years, I had become unaccustomed to being alone. It was soothing to hear someone breathing next to me as I fell asleep, though sleep was generally the only thing we shared.

On the last day of the impromptu vacation, I had a solo interview that I had told K-san not to bother rescheduling. When I came home from it, there was delighted female laughter coming from the kitchen. I discovered Mika-san and Noriko-san bent over some sort of magazine and engaging in a fit of giggles that didn't seem to suit my usually serious fiancée in the least. There was a half-empty bottle of wine and the remains of some sort of chocolate cake on the table. My old friend was the first to look up and notice me in the doorway, and she greeted me through her laughter, causing Mika-san to look up as well. "It appears all sorts of people have keys to your apartment," she told me, but this time there was nothing accusing on her face, only good humor. "Your security is shoddy."

"Definitely something I need to look into," I said lightly. Somehow, it seemed that Mika-san could instinctively sense that this was very different from Ryuichi-san.

"Note his not mentioning I practically lived here myself at one point," Noriko-san said brightly.

"I had wondered who the pink lace pajamas I recently unearthed in the spare room closet belonged to," Mika-san said with a smile that had a hint of teasing around the edges. "They didn't look like they would fit Tohma, so I really wondered."

"Oh, is that where I left them?" Noriko-san seemed wholly unconcerned. "God, that was years ago, but I can still remember turning my bedroom at home upside down looking for them! Why didn't you tell me you had secreted away my pajamas, Tohma-kun?"

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Noriko-san, it's been so long since you've gotten yourself drunk at my house. I'm strangely touched."

"I'm not drunk," she protested. She chanced a glance down at the magazine and her giggles returned. "I'm not very drunk," she amended. Determinedly, she stood. "Well, I had better go. Tetsuya should be getting home any time now and I should relieve the babysitter before he gets there and realizes what a bad mother I'm being."

"Bring Saki-chan over next time," Mika-san told her. She seemed considerably more sober than the other woman, but then again she was a good head taller and built more solidly as well. When Noriko-san wobbled on her towering platforms, Mika-san stood as well. "I'll go back in the taxi with you," she said. "Especially since we weren't finished arguing about-"

"Oh yes, yes, yes, right!" Noriko-san exclaimed, cutting her off. "Of course; come along!" Before I could offer to drive them, they were out the door with the air of old friends. Somehow, I wasn't sure whether this should perplex, gladden or sadden me, or if I should have maybe expected it. I had a strange detached feeling, though, as if something very important had been torn from me.

Knowing it would be a good few hours before Mika-san returned, I cut myself a slice of the cake and headed to the piano, because when I was in doubt about anything, I preferred to work.


Ryuichi-san came back the next day, smiling and cheerful as usual, Kumagoro dressed in a ridiculous flowered shirt and doll's sunglasses. It almost gave me vertigo to look at him—it seemed like we had gone years back in time: before that horrible confrontation almost three weeks ago, before my disastrous breakdown, before New York, before everything. It was as if all of it had been erased, almost, but there was something about Ryuichi-san that seemed more than a little brittle now. It wasn't anything particular about his behavior or the way he stood or the way he smiled, but putting everything about him together, there was a strange sort of feeling of fragility, as if he might break at the lightest touch.

For a few days, I managed to work around it. He made it easy by acting as though nothing whatsoever was wrong. But I knew I wasn't the only one who noticed that sort of edge he had acquired—K-san watched him with quiet consideration, and Noriko-san went out of her way to touch him, my direct opposite, and her eyes when she looked at me hardened just a little every time I found an excuse to slip away. But Ryuichi-san worked as well as he ever had, smiling at journalists, charming fans, shedding innocence and replacing it with sensuality each time he was called upon to sing, until I began to wonder if maybe I was taking this harder than he was. It was my work that suffered, just like it had immediately after my return from New York, though on a lesser level. Nothing I wrote satisfied me, my arrangements seemed to fall flat to my ears, my hands ached, and smiling was difficult.

I was probably running again by keeping my distance the way I did. When I look back it seems sometimes that I have spent a good half of my life running from the things I wanted most. I ran from Noriko-san and Nittle Grasper, I ran from Eiri-kun, and when I started running from Ryuichi-san it was almost a habit. As I did when things became difficult for me, I simply lived day by day, note by note by note. There was a large part of me that wanted to take him in my arms and apologize a hundred times for the hurt in his eyes, and perhaps because I sensed that tendency in myself I kept from talking to him about anything more than banal, believing I could only make the situation worse.

Perhaps Ryuichi-san knew me better than I knew myself at the time, though. He let me run for a few days, then somehow got around me and was waiting for me by my car when I finally left the building much later than the rest of the team. He was wearing enormous sunglasses and it made his expression impossible to read. "Can I talk to you?" he asked quietly, and that was the sort of thing I couldn't refuse, so I opened the car and he got into the passenger side. We left the garage with a strange sense of déjà vu, especially when he pushed in the first CD he saw and pressed the random button, and the song that came out was the first half-failed single we had released after my return from New York. He didn't grimace this time, or sing along; he let it play quietly.

We were quiet for almost an hour as I maneuvered us out of central Tokyo. Once the roads were more deserted than not and we were cruising fairly easily through the southern edges of the suburbs, he finally spoke. "I hear that Mika-san is settling in. I'm glad." There was absolutely no accusing in his voice. It seemed as if he was sincere.

"Yes, she's doing well. Tokyo seems to please her." I didn't want to be discussing Mika-san with him, but I could find nothing else to hold on to. All the thoughts and possible conversation topics seemed to slip past my mental grip.

"You're getting along fairly well, looks like." He cracked the window open, let in the night a little. It was dark, but he kept his sunglasses. "I've been talking to Noriko-chan," he said by way of explanation. "She and I had a long talk… maybe some of the things she said were hard to swallow, but she was right, you know. I think I never apologized for the things I've done so thoughtlessly for the past two years." A slight smile touched his lips, but it wasn't one of his usual smiles—it seemed somehow more somber than tears would have been. "I might have been trying to help you, but I've been trying to help myself, too." He turned towards me, still smiling lightly. "You'll listen, all right? Just listen. I have a hundred things to say and I might not say them all if you interrupt me."

So I nodded, because I had nothing to say in any case. I wondered what Noriko-san had said to him to have him looking like this and saying such things. Though he had always been the one with a talent for words, I wondered how he could apologize so calmly—although I couldn't really put myself in his place, it made no sense that he would react so coolly and rationally. It seemed like I was the one who needed to apologize, but as always he was lightening my load, making it just a little bit easier for me.

"Good," he sighed. He let his head rest back against the seat and I had the impression that he might have closed his eyes before speaking again. "I had no right to you, not from the very beginning. I knew it, you know. You were never mine, no matter if we slept together or not. I knew that, I did, but I couldn't seem to help myself. So because you were weak, I told myself you needed something stable to anchor you, but really I was never so stable, you know? And when I tried to use that weakness to tie you to me and it didn't work, I got angry and frustrated and sad, and I shouldn't have, because I said I was only doing what I was doing to help you, and I don't know that loving me would have helped you at all. So instead I kept hoping things would change and I let you keep hurting me and I said nothing because maybe in a way I enjoyed it—at least it was me you were hurting, you know? I think maybe it's harder to hurt someone important. Almost like… it takes trust. Trust in their strength, or in your own ability to fix it later or… I don't know, but has to be one of the hardest things to do, hurting someone you love… so you can almost enjoy the pain that comes from being hurt that way.

"Noriko-chan warned me about it from the very beginning. You weren't mine to console, she told me, and I was asking to be broken if I let myself become your leaning post because you needed less from me than what I needed to give to you. 'Don't hurt yourself,' she told me. Not, 'Don't let him hurt you.' I didn't listen to her, though, because I was selfish and I told myself that whatever was wrong with your heart would magically heal itself if I only gave you mine. And that was a mistake, too, but it's a mistake I'd probably make again, and I'm sorry."

We were out of the city entirely now and he rolled his window all the way down, leaning on the frame, letting the wind hit his face. "It's not that I'm guilty and you're innocent. It's just that things aren't black and white like that, you know? There isn't much of a difference between us, really, except… I really do love you, you know. I've always loved you, since before I even knew you very well. It just… was. Kind of like… magnets, maybe. You've always pulled at me like that, and so even though I knew you weren't mine, it didn't matter and I won't apologize for it. I can apologize for the rest of it, I can even apologize to… the one I tried to pull you away from… but I can't be sorry that I loved you.

"But maybe I knew from the beginning that things couldn't be simple the way I wanted them to be. Do you remember that day we went to the beach? We were sitting and watching the sunset, and we talked about wanting things we shouldn't and couldn't have, and about unreachable dreams."

"I remember," I spoke for the first time since he had started, because that day had stayed fresh in my memory as something important. "You told me that if you ever reach your unreachable dream, you die." A morbid philosophy, but one I had started to believe; just a soft touch on the edges of my dream had destroyed not only me but everyone around me. I often remembered those words recently; something K-san had said—I had always found it odd to hear such fatalistic words had him at their source. He seemed full of optimism and determination to defy the odds.

Ryuichi-san hummed in agreement. "Yes, that. I'm sorry for that, too, because I didn't tell you the rest, because I didn't want you to know. K told me once that if you ever reach your unreachable dream, you die." There was that half smile again, and I could tell in the half-darkness that his cheeks were damp, and I realized the sunglasses and the wind in his face were simply so I wouldn't watch him grieve, and I immediately felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. "But he also told me… if you don't reach for it anyway, even knowing that, you're already as good as dead."


I took him home eventually, though it was very late by the time we got there. We didn't really talk once he had finished, I only drove and he only watched the road. There were too many things I wanted to say and no way to say them, so I let the silence grow long and heavy. I realized then as I had never before that however well I grew to know him, I would never be able to truly get into his head. The only thing I understood was that his heart was enormous and giving, and that he could struggle to take away some of my guilt and pain all the way to the very end.

And it did feel like an ending. There was something very final about the way he reached across to run his fingers through the hair at the back of my neck, once, achingly familiar, before leaning over and placing a soft, chaste kiss on my lips. Then he was out of the car and smiling from behind the ridiculous sunglasses he refused to remove. "Thank you for the ride, Tohma," he said, as though I had simply been doing him a favor by dropping him off after work. "Call Mika-san; I'll bet she can't sleep wondering where you've vanished to." I noticed once again that he accorded her an honorific, as he did with practically no one else. I couldn't decide if it was genuine respect or resentment that caused him to do it—it could have been either. "Good night."

"Good night, Ryuichi-san," I replied, and closed the window and drove away, marveling at how final this felt, as if he had stepped not only out of the car, not even only out of my bed, but out of my life. Which is ridiculous, because I am going to see him at work tomorrow. In a few days, I may even be able to look him in the eyes. Maybe someday, we'll go back to the way we were before. But whatever I told myself, I felt the tears growing somewhere behind my eyes, not quite ready to brim and fall, but coming dangerously close.

I picked up my cell phone and hit the speed dial for my home number. Three rings in, Mika-san answered, her voice husky with sleep. "Moshi moshi?"

I considered just hanging up, but the damage was done. "Mika-san, I apologize for waking you. I realized I hadn't warned you I would be back late tonight."

She yawned, then made a sound like some sort of sleepy feline. That had to be genetic—I had certainly heard something similar out of Eiri-kun before. "Noriko came over and told me," she said on a yawn. "Were you going to be gone until morning?"

The question was voiced neutrally, without a hint of any sort of accusation or, indeed, concern. "It's already morning, Mika-san. But no, I'll be back in half an hour." The feeling that washed over me was uncontrollable, terrifying helplessness. The feeling, though I didn't know it then, that invades you when your life is falling slowly but relentlessly to pieces. I had never felt more like a failure to everyone and everything than in that moment, possibly not even during those hellish hours in a New York emergency room. At least then I had had a hand to hold on to and naiveté enough to think that maybe things were not past saving.

It was a terrifying feeling, every bit as terrifying in its way as love was, and just as beyond me and uncontrollable. I had a desperate need to do something, anything that might remind me I was still in control, of anything at all, as she yawned again and said, "If that's all then…"

The inspiration was immediate, and I didn't think it through, only blurted out, "Wait, one more thing: what was the name of that girl? The one Eiri-kun was dating right before he got hurt. Chiharu something or other? I'm afraid I forgot." More like he didn't mention it. But Mika-san would know, even if he had never brought the girl home, because she worried.

"At this time of…" she made another frustrated, sleepy noise, as if she couldn't be bothered with me. "Takagi, I think?" she said finally, clearly giving up on understanding why I was asking for it. "Can I sleep now?"

"Yes. I'm sorry again, Mika-san. Good night."

"Don't wake me when you get home," she murmured. "'Night," she tagged on, though this sounded more like a vocalized yawn than anything, and the line went dead.

I held the phone for a moment, then chanced looking away from the road to find another number in my repertory and hit dial. The voice that answered this time was male, and didn't sound sleepy at all. "Yes?"

I switched to English. "This is Seguchi," I told him, assuming correctly he wouldn't need any more than that. K-san's acquaintances were nothing if not efficient, and over the years I had gathered one or two contact numbers, mostly for "emergency purposes", as K-san liked to say when he passed me the contacts. I had never really thought to use them this way before, though I assumed it was something K-san did with some regularity.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Seguchi?"

"A favor, I hope," I said mildly, suddenly at peace despite my earlier turmoil. This, at least, was entirely under my control. Strangely enough, I felt no guilt whatsoever, but rather clear relief. "Takagi Chiharu. Probably a student at Shinonome High School in Kyoto. She has three brothers, all older. I'm afraid that's all I have."

"I can find her," the voice on the other end of the line said. There was a confidence in the lack of expression in that voice; I never doubted he would. "What did you need her for?"

"Not her, precisely" I responded. "One of her brothers. I need him in the hospital with two broken ribs and a broken jaw," I continued, neatly doubling the gravity of Eiri-kun's injuries. "No more, no less. If you would then pass a warning to Miss Takagi, cordially reminding her that lying is highly unladylike behavior, that will be quite sufficient."

The man didn't sound surprised, shocked, or pleased. He sounded nothing at all. He only asked, "Which of the three would you prefer?"

"It doesn't much matter which. Whichever is convenient, I suppose."

"Consider it done, Mr. Seguchi. I'll be in touch." The line went dead and I replaced the phone on its car charger. It was just that easy to change a life—I knew that if I had asked for the boy to be eliminated entirely, or even the young girl herself, I would probably have gotten the same dryly efficient response, only been asked for a slightly higher remuneration.

Some part of me knew I should be disgusted by myself, that I was sick and this was wrong, and another part of me was strangely calmed by this, even a little drunk on the power I realized I held at my fingertips, and yet another only laughed at my indecision and spat Ryuichi-san's words back at me.

And that was a mistake, too, but it's a mistake I'd probably make again, and I'm sorry.

But sorry was sorry, and sorry didn't mend broken bones or broken hearts or broken lives.

So while I still don't know when we started falling apart really, I do know that for me it became definitive then, that night when I said good-bye to Ryuichi-san and altered someone's fate consciously, without regret. It was the kind of first step that would lead to a second that couldn't be stopped, rather like the very first time Noriko-san had pulled me onto her piano bench. Only she had made me something shining, and everything I have done since seemed to serve only to tarnish and darken that part of me, and the things around me, but then, as now, I didn't know how to stop.

Perhaps it was because once Ryuichi-san withdrew his steadying hand, there was nothing but whatever the three of us could be together that I could hold on to. And by then, the link between us was already strained, and Noriko-san, the glue that held us together, suddenly seemed to be less and less capable of upholding that function in the face of everything that was so hideously wrong. So because I felt I could no longer hold on to the idea of "us", too afraid it would break if any more pressure was put on it, I turned instead to my only other constant, the desire, love, regret, responsibility, guilt, and obsession I felt in connection with Eiri-kun, as something to hold on to, and a little more of the shine I had had at the onset faded into darkness.

But all of these thoughts weren't clear then; all I really knew was that I was wrong about a lot of things but it didn't really matter. So instead of going home that night as I had promised I ended up in a bar somewhere, and when I was good and drunk and it was almost time for last call and the handsome, dark-haired man who was considerably more drunk than I was half-slurred, half-stammered out a proposition, I smiled as innocently as only I could and said, "I could be persuaded," swallowing the last drops of my martini. It tasted bitter, like defeat.