Speaking In Different Tongues (1/?)
Title: Speaking In Different Tongues
Fandom: Kinki Kids
Pairing: Kotsu
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: probably slightly depressing.
Summary: When an accident changes both of their lives, Kinki Kids decide to stick together beyond the music, for what is going to be the adventure of a first-time friendship, and the most difficult one at that.
Koichi couldn't help it.
It entered his thoughts like a waking nightmare, whenever he was not occupied enough with other things - that moment he wasn't there, that one moment he couldn't witness.
It happened every day, one wrong step, one moment of carelessness, followed by the sharp squeak of brakes, the sickening crunch of bones.
Koichi remembered.
He remembered standing in that cold and impersonal room, the smell of disinfectant constant and sickening, as his eyes followed but refused to see, and his ears listened but refused to hear.
The doctor drew a long line with his pointer, down from the brain to the internal auditory canal, stopping and circling black spots on an x-ray.
That x-ray was Tsuyoshi's, just like that accident was his. To Koichi, this was an odd setting. He felt like a stranger, looking at someone else's head, and it felt like understanding just wouldn't dawn on him.
It's too personal a thing to watch. He shouldn't have been standing in a hospital together with his manager and look at his partner's head, “But this is the reason,“ his mind told him, “You are his partner.”
And both of their lives were going to change.
**
When Koichi entered the room, Tsuyoshi looked fine.
He was nowhere near fine, broken bones and bruises and cuts and a particularly bad looking bloody bandage, but he smiled when their eyes met and Koichi followed the sudden urge to rush to his bed and squeeze his hand.
“For how long have you been in here?” he asked, not knowing what was is you ask in those situations.
“Only four days,” Tsuyoshi said, and when he answered, his voice sounded ever so slightly raspy.
Koichi wanted to apologise for not having come sooner, but this was not how they worked, and thus Tsuyoshi would not judge him for it.
His parents themselves kept quiet for a long time after the crash, only coming forward with the news when the reporter's guesses on television concerning who had been in the crash became more accurate.
“I'm sorry... I would have come sooner.”
After all, what else was there to say?
Tsuyoshi smiled fondly at him.
“Nonsense,” he mumbled and Koichi listened to him as if he was actually saying something really important, committing his pitch, intonation and vocal colour to memory as best as he could.
**
Koichi did not come back until he knew Tsuyoshi had been told.
He came prepared for the sight, but the way his partner stared at him with cold, dead eyes was still painful.
There it was, the pain he waited for, seizing his heart harshly, forcing him to face reality.
“Coward,” is what Tsuyoshi called him, and he deserved it.
“It wasn't my place to tell you,” Koichi said defensively, but one look from his partner was enough to silence him.
“I've said so many times... so many times over so many years... how this band belongs to both of us, so how can you possibly claim it wasn't your place?”
Koichi heard the tears creep into his partner's voice with every word that follows.
“This... it's going to... end everything. Everything for us, everything for me. Everything...”
There was nothing Koichi could say to console him.
It was the truth, and Tsuyoshi had every reason to fear it.
Even though he knew all this, Koichi was trying, he was trying hard to find something, anything to say, to convey just a single emotion.
To show that he could grasp what is happening to them. He thought about it, of course. The trouble it meant for Tsuyoshi's family, the adjustments everyone would have to make, but just thinking about it felt surreal, mechanical, as if he was studying a role for a drama, as if he was reading about someone else's life.
Things like that only happened on television after all, didn't they?
Tsuyoshi's slight cough caught back his attention.
“I'm not waiting for you to say anything. Maybe you should... leave.“
Koichi opened his mouth and closed it again. With no idea what to say, it was best just to do as he was asked to.
“I'll see you at the press conference.”
Koichi's eyes widened.
“You'll attend it?”
The smile he got in response was sad, but earnest.
“I owe my fans that much, don't I?”
**
“So that's it then,” Tomoya said over the phone, in a horrible monotone that was nothing like him, it felt worse than being scolded, being shouted at.
“Well, it's not as if I'm his f-”
“So you'll just go from colleagues to strangers? Vague acquaintances? You'll close the book on almost twenty years of your life with the same person? I know you care more than that. Listen, Tsuyoshi is not going to die, he will...”
He would lose his hearing.
“...he will lose his hearing, so if there was ever a time to be a friend and nothing but that, it's now.”
Koichi sighed.
“He told me to leave it,” he tried to argue, “And he's strong, so...”
“Oh, Koichi.” There was something sad and deeply reproachful about the tiny laugh that followed these words.
“Of course he isn't. He would do anything right now to make you believe he can handle this on his own. He has always hated asking for help, and this is the ultimate blow to his pride.”
Koichi understood perfectly, and he knew what was required of him. Still, the only words he had that would be of any use to Tsuyoshi were too precious and too hard to say.
**
When the Kinki Kids met for what would be their final press conference, Tsuyoshi was already wearing a hearing aid.
A weird sort of grim determination seemed to lace the smile he gave everyone, but Koichi was ignored.
He probably didn't do it on purpose, they didn't have a lot of contact at work, either. Idle chit-chat just wasn't necessary. It was a dilemma that marked their entire relationship, where questions like “how do you do?” just weren't uttered often enough.
Standing on a podium, spotlights disturbing his view in a way he was already used to but would never be able to fully tolerate, Koichi wanted to scream at the reporters for their insensitivity whenever Tsuyoshi answered questions after his well-being in painfully polite speech.
Things like “Well considering the circumstances” and a “positive outlook for the future” could only be lies, the kind of lies that both of them were well-practised in.
Still, there was this one question he himself wanted an answer to.
“What are you going to do from here on?”
A pause. Koichi glanced over to Tsuyoshi, but his partner's face gave nothing away.
“I am going to attend a school where will be taught shuwa. They have a dorm I which I can live with other people facing the same troubles.”
A few more moments of silence accompanied this confession, it was an expected answer, but not less stunning to hear.
“Domoto Koichi-san!” a reporter addressed him suddenly, “Is there anything you would like to say to Tsuyoshi-san as means of encouragement?”
He should have expected the question since reporters always loved to coax them into interaction, but it caught Koichi unawares, and so the only thing that immediately came to mind was the truth.
“Of course I will... stay by his side.”
This prompted a few uneasy coughs, since some of the reporters certainly wouldn't put an attempt at fanservice past him even in a situation as dire as this, but once out, the words seemed to develop a life of their own:
“With or without music, Kinki Kids will always remain a duo.”
**
Tsuyoshi lightly hit him on the shoulder. It reminded Koichi instantly of their usual playfulness towards each other, not more than a cover that allows them to take the sting of seriousness from their words.
“Why did you have to say those things? There was no need for you to.”
Koichi's mood instantly darkened.
“I said them because I wanted to.”
“I know you thought you were being clever,” Tsuyoshi said and smiled inexplicably, “But they will probably think it was a bit of a cheap move to...”
“You listen now!” Koichi interrupted him forcefully and everyone around them froze instantly. Koichi did not have a reputation to get angry.
“I said nothing but the honest truth out there, so stop making fun of it!”
Tsuyoshi frowned deeply before pulling him into an empty meeting room and shutting the door behind them.
“Koichi, if this is about some sort of guilt that you feel... or if you feel like you have to do something for me because we were a duo... it's really not necessary.”
“You don't get it, do you?” Koichi shouted, no less despite the anger slowly ebbing away at the sight that is a profusely confused Tsuyoshi,
“This is not about some sort of obligation! This is about me wanting to do something for you an having no idea how to go on about it! After all if you refused your parent's help, and I know that you did, how would I ever get you to take mine?”
“Koichi... what...”
“I want to be your home.”
Fandom: Kinki Kids
Pairing: Kotsu
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: probably slightly depressing.
Summary: When an accident changes both of their lives, Kinki Kids decide to stick together beyond the music, for what is going to be the adventure of a first-time friendship, and the most difficult one at that.
Koichi couldn't help it.
It entered his thoughts like a waking nightmare, whenever he was not occupied enough with other things - that moment he wasn't there, that one moment he couldn't witness.
It happened every day, one wrong step, one moment of carelessness, followed by the sharp squeak of brakes, the sickening crunch of bones.
Koichi remembered.
He remembered standing in that cold and impersonal room, the smell of disinfectant constant and sickening, as his eyes followed but refused to see, and his ears listened but refused to hear.
The doctor drew a long line with his pointer, down from the brain to the internal auditory canal, stopping and circling black spots on an x-ray.
That x-ray was Tsuyoshi's, just like that accident was his. To Koichi, this was an odd setting. He felt like a stranger, looking at someone else's head, and it felt like understanding just wouldn't dawn on him.
It's too personal a thing to watch. He shouldn't have been standing in a hospital together with his manager and look at his partner's head, “But this is the reason,“ his mind told him, “You are his partner.”
And both of their lives were going to change.
**
When Koichi entered the room, Tsuyoshi looked fine.
He was nowhere near fine, broken bones and bruises and cuts and a particularly bad looking bloody bandage, but he smiled when their eyes met and Koichi followed the sudden urge to rush to his bed and squeeze his hand.
“For how long have you been in here?” he asked, not knowing what was is you ask in those situations.
“Only four days,” Tsuyoshi said, and when he answered, his voice sounded ever so slightly raspy.
Koichi wanted to apologise for not having come sooner, but this was not how they worked, and thus Tsuyoshi would not judge him for it.
His parents themselves kept quiet for a long time after the crash, only coming forward with the news when the reporter's guesses on television concerning who had been in the crash became more accurate.
“I'm sorry... I would have come sooner.”
After all, what else was there to say?
Tsuyoshi smiled fondly at him.
“Nonsense,” he mumbled and Koichi listened to him as if he was actually saying something really important, committing his pitch, intonation and vocal colour to memory as best as he could.
**
Koichi did not come back until he knew Tsuyoshi had been told.
He came prepared for the sight, but the way his partner stared at him with cold, dead eyes was still painful.
There it was, the pain he waited for, seizing his heart harshly, forcing him to face reality.
“Coward,” is what Tsuyoshi called him, and he deserved it.
“It wasn't my place to tell you,” Koichi said defensively, but one look from his partner was enough to silence him.
“I've said so many times... so many times over so many years... how this band belongs to both of us, so how can you possibly claim it wasn't your place?”
Koichi heard the tears creep into his partner's voice with every word that follows.
“This... it's going to... end everything. Everything for us, everything for me. Everything...”
There was nothing Koichi could say to console him.
It was the truth, and Tsuyoshi had every reason to fear it.
Even though he knew all this, Koichi was trying, he was trying hard to find something, anything to say, to convey just a single emotion.
To show that he could grasp what is happening to them. He thought about it, of course. The trouble it meant for Tsuyoshi's family, the adjustments everyone would have to make, but just thinking about it felt surreal, mechanical, as if he was studying a role for a drama, as if he was reading about someone else's life.
Things like that only happened on television after all, didn't they?
Tsuyoshi's slight cough caught back his attention.
“I'm not waiting for you to say anything. Maybe you should... leave.“
Koichi opened his mouth and closed it again. With no idea what to say, it was best just to do as he was asked to.
“I'll see you at the press conference.”
Koichi's eyes widened.
“You'll attend it?”
The smile he got in response was sad, but earnest.
“I owe my fans that much, don't I?”
**
“So that's it then,” Tomoya said over the phone, in a horrible monotone that was nothing like him, it felt worse than being scolded, being shouted at.
“Well, it's not as if I'm his f-”
“So you'll just go from colleagues to strangers? Vague acquaintances? You'll close the book on almost twenty years of your life with the same person? I know you care more than that. Listen, Tsuyoshi is not going to die, he will...”
He would lose his hearing.
“...he will lose his hearing, so if there was ever a time to be a friend and nothing but that, it's now.”
Koichi sighed.
“He told me to leave it,” he tried to argue, “And he's strong, so...”
“Oh, Koichi.” There was something sad and deeply reproachful about the tiny laugh that followed these words.
“Of course he isn't. He would do anything right now to make you believe he can handle this on his own. He has always hated asking for help, and this is the ultimate blow to his pride.”
Koichi understood perfectly, and he knew what was required of him. Still, the only words he had that would be of any use to Tsuyoshi were too precious and too hard to say.
**
When the Kinki Kids met for what would be their final press conference, Tsuyoshi was already wearing a hearing aid.
A weird sort of grim determination seemed to lace the smile he gave everyone, but Koichi was ignored.
He probably didn't do it on purpose, they didn't have a lot of contact at work, either. Idle chit-chat just wasn't necessary. It was a dilemma that marked their entire relationship, where questions like “how do you do?” just weren't uttered often enough.
Standing on a podium, spotlights disturbing his view in a way he was already used to but would never be able to fully tolerate, Koichi wanted to scream at the reporters for their insensitivity whenever Tsuyoshi answered questions after his well-being in painfully polite speech.
Things like “Well considering the circumstances” and a “positive outlook for the future” could only be lies, the kind of lies that both of them were well-practised in.
Still, there was this one question he himself wanted an answer to.
“What are you going to do from here on?”
A pause. Koichi glanced over to Tsuyoshi, but his partner's face gave nothing away.
“I am going to attend a school where will be taught shuwa. They have a dorm I which I can live with other people facing the same troubles.”
A few more moments of silence accompanied this confession, it was an expected answer, but not less stunning to hear.
“Domoto Koichi-san!” a reporter addressed him suddenly, “Is there anything you would like to say to Tsuyoshi-san as means of encouragement?”
He should have expected the question since reporters always loved to coax them into interaction, but it caught Koichi unawares, and so the only thing that immediately came to mind was the truth.
“Of course I will... stay by his side.”
This prompted a few uneasy coughs, since some of the reporters certainly wouldn't put an attempt at fanservice past him even in a situation as dire as this, but once out, the words seemed to develop a life of their own:
“With or without music, Kinki Kids will always remain a duo.”
**
Tsuyoshi lightly hit him on the shoulder. It reminded Koichi instantly of their usual playfulness towards each other, not more than a cover that allows them to take the sting of seriousness from their words.
“Why did you have to say those things? There was no need for you to.”
Koichi's mood instantly darkened.
“I said them because I wanted to.”
“I know you thought you were being clever,” Tsuyoshi said and smiled inexplicably, “But they will probably think it was a bit of a cheap move to...”
“You listen now!” Koichi interrupted him forcefully and everyone around them froze instantly. Koichi did not have a reputation to get angry.
“I said nothing but the honest truth out there, so stop making fun of it!”
Tsuyoshi frowned deeply before pulling him into an empty meeting room and shutting the door behind them.
“Koichi, if this is about some sort of guilt that you feel... or if you feel like you have to do something for me because we were a duo... it's really not necessary.”
“You don't get it, do you?” Koichi shouted, no less despite the anger slowly ebbing away at the sight that is a profusely confused Tsuyoshi,
“This is not about some sort of obligation! This is about me wanting to do something for you an having no idea how to go on about it! After all if you refused your parent's help, and I know that you did, how would I ever get you to take mine?”
“Koichi... what...”
“I want to be your home.”