Part One

[life_giver]

[ How I'm feeling|
Sick and grumpy]
[ What I'm listening to| Radiohead- Last flowers, Purity Ring- Lofticries

Title: Requiem for the dead (1/?)
Pairings: Aoi/Uruha, Aoi/Kazuki
Bands: The GazettE/Screw
Warnings: Just language and sexual situations as always.
Rating: NC-17
Notes: Written for the lovely nori_chan412. Because we obviously like our boys jealous and tortured. Same page indeed.
Summary: "Let's go back to bed," Uruha whispers with Aoi's cheek in his marred hand. This is the only thing left to do anymore and so they go back to bed, limbs retracing an old dance, sighs penetrating pillows, with the waltz they're so used to, skipping on the same part, the same tired excuse, his very own requiem for the dead.



I.

"I like having no time to wash the dishes or take out the trash or even call my mother," Uruha laughs, head cradled in Aoi's lap. Aoi's fingers are caught in the light strands of Uruha's hair. He curls pieces of it around his fingers and then pulls them taught, letting them slip between his fingers like silk.

"I like having no time to do anything because I'm spending it all with you." Uruha smiles up at Aoi and Aoi looks down at the man in his lap and thinks, this is too perfect, too good, too dangerous. It seems that Uruha is thinking the same thing because his smile falters and his eyes become distant, distracted in a way that Aoi only sees when Uruha is worried.

"It's almost as if I'm waiting for something to ruin it all," Uruha says before he sits up and brushes his matted and mused hair back into place with trembling fingers. Aoi misses the warmth of Uruha's cheek against his thigh and tells him so.

"I'm already late. You always make me late." Uruha's chastise falls short as he leans forward to press his lips against Aoi's mouth, letting him drink one last time from a fount that is usually endless before pulling away and leaving him alone on the couch.

They had lived like hermits together the entire weekend, fucking amongst the wreckage of Aoi's apartment, wallowing in the mess that Aoi was too busy to clean. For once being neat and tidy seemed trivial in the face of Uruha's passion.

He spent hours with his head in Uruha's lap, watching the smoke curl from his lips and float to frame Uruha's face as he read or he slept against the headboard of the bed. Sometimes Uruha would bend down and inhale the smoke from Aoi's lips and blow it back out against the hollow of his neck, warm and teasing. If he were feeling particularly teasing, he would trail the smoke down from Aoi's neck to his chest and then along the slender lines of his stomach. In those moments, Aoi would tremble, catching Uruha's gaze as he slid lower, his lips parted, the smoke swirling in the confines of the mouth Aoi knew so well.

Aoi watches Uruha move about the room now, picking up his scattered clothing like defeated comrades, lying where they fell the night before; a rumpled shirt by the door where Aoi had been too impatient to wait until they could stumble into the bedroom together, his shoes near the kitchen counter where Aoi had hoisted Uruha for better leverage, better access, and his pants that hung limply from the lampshade in his living room. Uruha leans down to give Aoi another quick kiss on the cheek as he's clasping a necklace around his neck. Uruha's necklace becomes a tether between them as Aoi keeps him there for a moment longer, finger hooked in the chain, greedy for more than he deserves.

"If I had more time, I'd even give you that," Uruha says on his way out the door, and the worst thing of it all is that Aoi believes him, knows without a doubt that Uruha would drop anything for him if he asked. It's only the worst thing because Aoi knows he's going to ruin it all. He can feel it like an insistent tap on his shoulder, reminding him that he isn't worth this happiness, that he doesn't belong in monogamous bliss. His hands are too clumsy for that.

He brings his hand down hard on the coffee table, scattering Uruha's sheet music, his books, and Uruha's coffee mug, empty and stained, rolls off the table and smashes into a dozen tiny shards on the floor beneath his feet and he thinks... There. That is better. That is chaos and mess. That is real because this can't be Aoi's reality can it? Uruha is too good for him.

The fall comes on even quicker than he anticipated.

II.

"Your eyes are red," Uruha notices this with his hand pressed to Aoi's cheek and all Aoi can do is laugh it off.

"Contacts are acting up," He mutters, wiping hastily at his cheek in case any evidence is left behind. He pushes Uruha's hand out of the way in the process. The excuse is lame, straight out of horrible textbook excuses, but Uruha only shrugs and looks away.

"You had your phone off today," Uruha notes softly, dropping his hand away from Aoi's face, and when he looks over at Aoi again, there's an accusation there in his eyes, in the tight lines around his mouth. But as usual, Uruha would rather leave the blame unspoken and let Aoi wallow in the guilt he owns to the very last shifty gaze.

"I turned it off because I didn't want anything to do with the world today. I have enough to think about and too much to do," Which is the truth, but not all of the truth, and Uruha hums in agreement as if he understands, but doesn't really.

"You should tell me when you don't want to have anything to do with me," Uruha says in a voice that leaves no room for guessing at turbulent emotions. His tone is full of the tremor Aoi feels when Uruha presses his hand into the middle of his back during the night, pushing him down to the bed, and whispers into his ear that he loves him.

They are standing in the very back of the stadium with their spines pressed to a wall, their arms crossed over their chests like soldiers at attention, or spoiled children which is one in the same to them, and they watch the people hurrying across the stage, setting up lights and equipment. Row upon row of chairs flood the floor in front of them.

Those seats would be filled tomorrow night, filled with people that didn't know Aoi, but loved him anyway in a way that still unsettled him. If they knew him like Uruha did, beneath all the glamour and makeup, and bullshit, if they knew the wires and contraptions that made up this walking talking disaster, he was sure they'd hate him as much as Uruha did. Uruha had gotten to the core of him long ago, and now stood grimacing at it, because he knew the truth of things.

"I worry about you, that's all." Uruha lowers his voice as a person hurries by, lugging bags full of equipment. Aoi moves out of the way for the man, pressing closer to Uruha's side, and his hand slides down the wall when they're alone again and he allows his fingers to touch the back of Uruha's hand between them. He knows this isn't about worrying as much as it is suspecting and wondering for Uruha.

Uruha swallows hard and without looking at Aoi, without uttering another insecure laced word, his hand turns and his fingers close over Aoi's own.

"Just keep your phone on. That's all I'm asking." Uruha's breath as he says this stirs the hair hanging in Aoi's face. His hair was hastily pulled back this morning on his way out the door, but somehow it still managed to slip itself free and shroud itself around his face and shoulders. Uruha had always liked him this way, casual and just a bit tousled.

Instead of answering Uruha, he slips the phone out of his back pocket and turns it on so that the screen illuminates their faces in the darkness they've been idling in for too long now. Aoi can see their manager standing on the stage, just a blip down below, but Aoi can clearly see the arms waving above his head wildly, beckoning them back to work. He doubts their manager can actually see them in their little corner, but he knows they're up here somewhere, hiding away from the world for the few minutes they're afforded.

"Time to get back to reality," Aoi intones what is meant to be a tired joke. He catches the frosty look Uruha throws him in the glow of the phone light, the shadows ecentuating the frown twisting his mouth, the hard curve of his tightened jaw and Aoi thinks for a moment that Uruha is still beautiful, even when he's pissed and vengeful, beautiful and deadly.

"If this isn't reality, what is this?" Uruha asks before Aoi turns the screen off on his phone, plummeting them back into darkness. Uruha doesn't wait for his answer, but turns away, his hand twisting from Aoi's fingers with a harsh tug, and Aoi can see the dark outline of his body walking away from him, leaving him.

Hell. This is hell, Aoi thinks as he follows Uruha's retreating back down the aisle to the stage. This is a hell of his own making, and he doesn't say a word, because in hell the damned suffer their guilt in silence, and wallow in their sins.
There is no atonement that Aoi could offer Uruha at this point.

III.

"And where are you going?" The words are thrown down on the floor like a gauntlet that neither of them wants to bend down to pick up in hands that are trembling against thighs with the last traces of trust waiting in their tight lipped smiles. Uruha leans back against the wall and his arms cross themselves over his chest with a fluid grace that speaks of a confidence Aoi isn't sure is a lie or not.

Aoi closes his eyes against the image of Uruha leering over at him, as if he knows....knows that Aoi is bluffing as usual with his car keys lying on the counter that Uruha had scrubbed this morning with red hands and an even redder face.

"Somewhere. Anywhere. Just....away from here. Away from you." And the words are dropped between them just as coldly....just as mockingly as Uruha's own, even with the first stirrings of guilt brushing against the back of Aoi's neck like Uruha's fingers in the middle of the night when they aren't speaking to each other.

"Oh is that it?" Uruha pushes himself away from the wall but only steps into the middle of the room, doesn't try to force himself into the space Aoi has reserved for escape because he knows that this is something significant, that one wrong step could be the final touch on this whole macabre affair . But Aoi's hand reaches for the keys on the counter anyway and he watches as Uruha's eyes follow his hand.

Traitor. It's there in Uruha's eyes and the way his adam's apple bobs just the slightest with the long, hard swallow, as if he were tilting back another of his beloved bottles because it's the only friend he can count on these days. Friends, Uruha has an entire cabinet full of them, a whole warehouse that Aoi raids when the guilt comes on in frothing waves and Uruha's locked himself in the bathroom again or gone out to one of the seedy bars downtown.

Sometimes Aoi wonders if Uruha just drinks himself sick in those places. Maybe he drinks until he's single again and allows fingers to roam and lies to spill themselves against his lips the way Aoi used to defile him in some darkened back room with the door half open, because danger was always more erotic and best served hot and shameless.

"This is it, isn't it?" Uruha's voice is barely a whisper, but it cuts through the shadows standing between them. The shadows creep out from the corners of this place they've desecrated together for years, shattering glass, shattering bones and teeth and Aoi's expensive case of music. They've been shattering each other for months now. This is the end of the line and somehow they both know it.

IV.

"And this? Is this more important?" Another disc broken over Uruha's knees as he screams out his frustration and his hands are bleeding and Aoi wants to rush forward, drop to his knees and press those hands to his face, smearing red against his cheek. He wants to kiss away the pain, but he knows that no amount of kisses can undo their trail of destruction. He would only be condemning himself if he threw himself down at Uruha's feet.

"And this." Another scatter of metal and plastic and Aoi's painstaking hours of mixing songs scattered around Uruha's feet.

"Oh...and this." There's a satisfying crunch and snap as the first disc he'd ever given Uruha, a mixed tape of sorts straight out of a cheesy romance joins the scattered mess they've created together. Uruha stands in the midst of a wash of glinting fragments, half formed daggers, and Aoi imagines each broken sliver to be a memory they'd kicked beneath the bed so that they could fuck in peace. Making love had gone out of style for them six months ago. Uruha only fucks people he hates.

One of those daggers glints with the staticing of smiles that aren't Uruha's, of hands that are more gentle than the fingers that dig into Aoi's hips when he decides to come home for the night. Another bloodied fragment echoes with laughter that's higher than Uruha's husky chuckle and Aoi's lips form a name that Uruha hates as Aoi surrenders in a foreign bed.

Uruha holds up another disc, intent on carving his legacy into Aoi's ruined case of music and now half shattered memories. He makes as if to break it like all the others but instead, his fingers open and the thing drops and then rolls away and Uruha looks down at his hands and the manic look he'd had in his eyes as he went around destroying half of Aoi's music collection is gone suddenly.

Aoi can see the dawning realization and fear in Uruha's eyes as he bleeds into Aoi's carpet, and instead of yelling back at him and breaking something in turn as he usually would, Aoi pulls Uruha down to the floor next to him and he gently wipes the crimson from Uruha's hands with a dishtowel as Uruha soaks the front of his shirt with selfish, tired tears. He holds Uruha against him, pressing his mouth to Uruha's temple and they rock together like two people in a dance they don't know the steps to. Aoi can almost pretend Uruha feels something for him other than hate with the smell of iron suffocating him and the taste of salt between his lips. He can almost pretend that everything will be alright if only they work at it.

And there had never been an apology from Uruha's trembling lips and Aoi hadn't offered one in return.

"What have we done?" Uruha had asked once after Aoi had come home drunk as Uruha usually was these days, but Uruha always had the courtesy to pass out before Aoi got home and Aoi would be left with the evidence; Uruha lying in the middle of the bed, arm curled beneath his body, face still flushed and warm against the back of Aoi's hand, the stink of alcohol like a cancer seeping into the walls of the room. Aoi never kissed Uruha after he'd been drinking even as he lay sleeping, dreaming of days that weren't so full of silence and secrets. There would never be any logical answer to Uruha's question. There was no way of knowing what they were doing or where they were going, they only continued to walk on to keep themselves alive.

Once, Aoi had slipped the case of the mixed CD, the one Uruha had broken the very next week, from beneath his curled arms. He'd fallen asleep with Aoi's messy handwriting scrawled across plastic, confessing the beginnings of a disaster to Uruha with the sound of their favorite song skipping in the background. They'd been a scratched and broken record for as long as he could remember, always stuck on this same chorus of betrayal and what could have been.

This one proof of Uruha's lingering feelings had always made Aoi pause in the midst of some catty comeback with his fingers around Uruha's wrist, not to hurt, but to hold back because Uruha became a boxer when words failed him, or when Aoi had said something particularly nasty. He felt he deserved each slap, each hit he couldn't deflect that would send them both to the floor, arms and legs tangled, hands restraining fists until Uruha bit down hard into a shoulder, and screamed and then shook against Aoi. Aoi never hit back.

He still loved the body trembling beneath him. His heart still hammered hard against his chest when he pulled strands of honey blond hair between his fingers and brushed them away from a sweaty face that looked up at him with a pent up rage, but also a vulnerability that didn't fit.

Uruha was a storm, had always been a mess of wild things and too loud laughs, and blunt jokes. He had only seemed small with Aoi's cellphone in his hands and the realization that he wasn't in a lone dance with Aoi any longer. There was another pair of feet, mimicking Uruha's steps, threatening to take over the lead, and no amount of breaking Aoi's phone against the counter, of screaming at Aoi, of threatening to drag the unwanted extra in their lives across the stage by his pretty hair and beat his face in in front of everyone at the expense of both of their careers, was going to change anything. Nothing would change the fact that Aoi had fucked up.

And yet his entire being was still connected to this man who held so much contempt inside of him, a rage and a violence Aoi had never imagined could come from someone who used to smile and press his cheek against the long slope of Aoi's back, humming disjointed chords of the music they created together. Now the music between them was music in reverse, no longer reconginziable, but ugly and disjointed, completely out of sync. It was the ugliest music Aoi had ever heard, and he hated it almost as much as he was sure Uruha hated him.

He still loved Uruha even if Uruha couldn't love him back any longer.

V.

"What do you think about when you fuck me?" Uruha asks over coffee one morning and Aoi chokes on the mouthful he'd just swallowed, bitter and dark, just the way Uruha hated it.

"What?" Aoi asks, shooting him a look that's too full of rebuke, something to make Uruha feel ashamed for asking such a ridiculous question. Uruha merely brushes the hair away from his face and takes another sip of his own coffee. Aoi knows Uruha's coffee is sweet as he licks remnants of it from his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. He wants to taste the sticky sweetness resting there on Uruha's lips for himself.

"You're obscene," Aoi mutters into his cup of steaming, liver ravaging liquid. There's a grin pulling at the edges of his mouth despite himself.

"I'm curious," Uruha breathes, eyebrow creeping up in a challenge of wills that Aoi knows he will lose. He always finds himself at Uruha's feet at the end of the day, a sacrifice awaiting execution, willing to do whatever Uruha wants so long as he's able to curl against him during the night.

The question catches him off guard and Aoi finds himself thinking, imagining Uruha laid out beneath him. He allows himself to sink between Uruha's thighs and lose himself for a time and the chills roll down his back and the pleasure is something like death, mysterious and unexplainable. One won't understand death until it happens to them, but even then, whose to say there will be understanding. Maybe there is nothing after death, just a whole landscape of barren wasteland....emptiness.

Being with Uruha is something akin to this. He surrounds Aoi completely when they're tangled in bed with one another and the whole experience is too mind-numbing to explain or even understand. And afterwards, when the pleasure has faded into sweat soaked sheets beneath them, Aoi can feel the emptiness at the tips of his restless fingers. He reaches for Uruha in those moments, afraid that Uruha will leave him in that place one day, alone and empty. Uruha's hands always find his face and his lips smother the fear in Aoi for a little longer.

"I don't think about anything," Aoi mutters after a long silence in which the people around them stand in for the noise they can't bring themself to make just yet. The sounds of glasses clinking and the low murmur of voices in the little coffee shop is a soothing mantra.

"My body takes over my thoughts." Aoi shrugs and Uruha regards him with a look Aoi can't quite place, something between curiosity and a sneer of disbelief.

"Isn't it the same for you? For everyone?" Aoi mixes a bit of cream into his black coffee and watches the liquid swirling in the cup, turning from black to a lighter brown. He pretends he's preoccupied with mixing coffee he won't drink with the feel of Uruha's gaze on his cheek. When he looks up, Uruha is still regarding him, but now he is bland and bored. He looks so natural here, a nice fixture in this place with the dark rimmed glasses he hates perched on his perfect nose, an art snob, or the brooding musician he really is hanging out at a coffee shop with his gay boyfriend. Maybe they'll go home later to listen to long dead bands and drink themselves into a stupor.

Aoi shifts in his seat and waits for Uruha to say something, anything, but Uruha only smiles cattily at him and takes another sip of his coffee. He's pleased that he made Aoi squirm in his seat. Maybe it was all some morbid inside joke that Aoi wasn't part of. Uruha was funny that way.

"I think about how good your cock feels in my ass," Uruha says after a moment and Aoi stares, wondering if Uruha is trying to joke with him or just stating the obvious facts. Maybe he's only being lewd because he knows the women at the next table can hear them and have been stealing covert glances at them, scandalized and oh so debauched. Their panties are probably wet and Aoi starts laughing and when he starts he can't seem to stop. Uruha's grin widens and he begins to chuckle with him and then they're leaning over the table laughing together as if they'd just told one another the universe's idea of the best joke. And maybe it is.

After their laughter has died down, Aoi sits back in the hard, uncomfortable confines of his seat and watches Uruha bent over the table, forehead pressed to his arm as he shakes with now silent laughter. The women behind them have picked up their bags and laptops and are long gone, having hurried away during their manic moment together.

Aoi reaches out across the table and tugs on Uruha's arm so that Uruha's head rolls away and he let's it drop to the table with a thud. He looks exhausted from the laughter and Aoi realizes he isn't quite sure why they started laughing in the first place. It wasn't the girls and it wasn't the crudeness of their words....it was.....

When Uruha looks up at him, his cheeks are damp behind the dark rims of his glasses, and he isn't smiling. Aoi wants to bolt from the table, and at the same time to gather Uruha into his arms and kiss him repeatedly in repentance depite the mid-morning crowd ambling around the shop.

He knows now what Uruha had been laughing at, and what he had been inadvertently clutching his stomach and howling over. The joke is on him. Uruha knows Aoi's mind isn't empty during sex. It's the beginning of the end in Uruha's eyes as he sits upright in his chair and straightens his clothes. He doesn't bother to wipe his face as he slings his shoulder bag into place and taps the table between them with a black painted nail, the signal for Aoi to catch the bill this time. Uruha will pick the bill up tonight when they go out to dinner if Aoi remembers. Aoi reads all of this in that one fingernail tap, like a film put on high-speed, the whole gist of it all in a mere millisecond.

"See you at home," Uruha whispers hoarsely, bending down to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, a rare, undeserved gesture in this people infested place. Uruha clears his throat and turns away. Aoi watches Uruha's retreating back until he's far down the road and disappearing into the subway before he palms his cheek and feels the traces of Uruha's lips there. Something ugly is stuck in his throat as Uruha's laughter rings in his ears. Life did enjoy a good joke on occasion.

VI.

"This doesn't mean anything anymore," Uruha whispers against his ear as Aoi takes what isn't his for the second time this week. I don't love you anymore. He imagines Uruha branding the skin of his back with these words, with the nails that rake against his skin like bold confessions, angry welts that are actually only slaps in the face.

"I miss this meaning something," He catches Uruha uttering beneath his breath as he kicks the dishwasher one morning, willing it to work with a pent up violence Aoi is sure will be directed at him if he so much as whispers a word in response. And so that comforting silence settles over them as Uruha continues wishing there was meaning to this "relationship" of theirs and Aoi continues ruining their lives.

"Punish me again," He wants to whisper back in the heat of the moment. "Punish me until there isn't anything left of me to hate."

He'd wear Uruha's sins the entire week like battle scars to remind him that he'd begun this, and eventually, he would have to end it. He would never be strong enough to walk away and Uruha was too bent on revenge to close the door on him. He'd given up the hope that Uruha stayed with him out of some lingering crumb of love. There wasn't any emotion in Uruha's eyes except anger as he lay beneath Aoi when they'd decided the silence had gone on long enough.

"You don't deserve what he does to you." The words are spoken softly, sweetly into his ear, and a shiver follows them down Aoi's neck. That breath that he knows so intimately now whispers exactly what he wants to hear, as if rehearsed, or maybe Kazuki is just smooth like the alcohol Uruha drinks only when he's happy. Uruha pours the harder stuff into Aoi's wounds and makes sure it burns and that he remembers when he leaves Kazuki's bed.

"Did he do this?" Kazuki presses the question into the busted knuckles of Aoi's hand and Aoi holds back a wince because he isn't weak. He isn't weak for burying his face into this neck that smells as sweet as the face that looks down at him. Nothing of the sultry danger, and wild abandon he's used to makes itself known in the soft lines of Kazuki's jaw line, the lips that tilt at the corner slightly, half saddened, half pitying. And maybe beneath that, there is even some vicious triumph that Aoi is here now, lying against Kazuki, tucking secrets into his neck that he couldn't tell Uruha. Kazuki's naked thigh brushes against Aoi's leg and for a moment it's only sweet-faced Kazuki and there are no ghosts here with them in these sheets.

"I did this to myself." The statement is a colossal mess of meanings. Everyone in this relationship knew who's fault it all was, who they could blame if someone finally broke down and did something regrettable.

He had ruined his hand against the stairwell outside of Uruha's apartment after Uruha had kicked him out again that week. Uruha's number would be on his phone in the morning, a tentative voice mail perhaps, a furtive message carefully typed that let Aoi know that he could come back, that the fire had died down.... That they could make up as they had countless times before. A ritual of fools.

"Go to him. Maybe he'll take you in. Fucking bastard." Uruha had alerted the entire apartment building with his yelling and Aoi had nearly been knocked over, tripping on the stairs when his duffel bag hit him in the chest, as if to punctuate Uruha's words. The newer neighbors, the ones that didn't know the ritual had come out to stand in their doorways and observe like spectators at the zoo, shaking their heads at the youth of today and all their youthful problems and raucous noise.

"I hate you," Uruha growls against his ear as Aoi's hand slips against the shower door.

"Do you even know how much I hate you?"

He could have taken a guess, somewhere near murderous and "If you died, I wouldn't shed a tear." That sort of hate was deadly. When had they become these animals? What had been the turning point between passion and hate? Strands of wet hair hang limply in front of Uruha's face as he stares Aoi down, caught between the shower wall and Aoi's naked chest. He had never understood how Uruha could hate him and still stay with him or how he could love Uruha and still go back to him when Uruha decided enough was enough and they were through. And on and on it went.

"He's pitiful you know." Kazuki presses his lips against his ear, and it takes everything in Aoi to only push the man in his arms away and grimace. Somehow Kazuki's words are worse than Uruha telling him that he hates him, worse even than coming home to find Uruha wasted with tears still standing on his cheeks. The wrist in his grip feels fragile, even more so than the wrist he holds down when Uruha wants to hurt him as physically as he'd been hurting Uruha emotionally for months.

The look that Kazuki gives him isn't afraid, and is somehow less innocent than it had been earlier with Aoi's head in his lap and their lips meeting and parting, meeting and parting, restlessly affectionate. Kazuki is smooth like the alcohol that Uruha hates most.

VII.

It had started with teasing phone calls and flirting in the shadows of a nearby bar. If Uruha were too busy and Aoi not busy enough, there was always Kazuki, eager and ready to spend the entire night passing shots between the two of them like the shared cigarette they couldn't help but indulge in because one of them always forgot their pack of cigarettes and lighter conveniently. And then when Uruha was too tired, and Aoi couldn't stand to stare any longer at the sinewy lines of Uruha's naked back in the darkened room, Kazuki was always waiting somewhere for him, faithful with praises on his full lips.

Meet me at the corner bar. You make me laugh.

I miss you.

Uruha never found Aoi funny in the way he once had. Raunchy jokes and cheeky taunts had no room in this fast life of theirs any longer.

"You think this is funny?" Uruha's eyes would flash and the smile would be gone from Aoi's face, extinguished like the fire that had once been insatiable between them.

"Grow up, Aoi. I'm tired of everything being a joke to you." There was always work to be done, serious faces to throw around at serious meetings and serious business deals. There was always exhaustion and too little time and "maybe tomorrow" until Aoi was sure he had imagined Uruha ever liking the carefree side of him.

"I love that you can be silly. You make me laugh," Uruha had whispered against his ear once, smile curving against his jaw line as their fingers roamed, not sexually, but playfully, tickling things that his fingers were.

You make me laugh.

If laughter drove people to become miserable, tired bastards....if it was so easily replaced with scowls and harsh tones after a year worn thin, then Aoi wasn't sure he could trust it. He'd never trusted that bold, open side of him that said whatever was on his mind, however pointless. It was what he'd loved Uruha for ultimately, that Uruha would let him be himself, and would only chuckle behind his hand and then kiss him hard on the mouth if he felt as if Aoi were talking just a bit too much. Uruha never criticized, he never poked and proded. He laughed and he loved. But that had been a different Uruha, not the stand in he knew now that cut insult from his bones and made them jagged and vindictive.

Aoi's ego couldn't help but appreciate Kazuki, who appreciated laughter and a good joke, who handed out compliments freely, shoving them into Aoi's arms even when he didn't want them. And his ego adored Kazuki, who with one too many drinks in his system found himself kneeling on a dirty bathroom floor in front of Aoi night after relentless night. Aoi's fist hit the stall door each time Uruha's face came to mind. Let his boy think that it was only the pleasure that had him gritting his teeth and tilting his head back with closed eyes, not the guilt over the man that would always come first.

And Kazuki was only a boy. Compared to Uruha, Kazuki was a kitten with claws he didn't quite know how to use yet. He hissed and he cut when he could, but Uruha would always cut deeper, and Kazuki would always be new to this game. Kazuki could call Uruha a raving bitch all he wanted in the confines of Aoi's sheets but those times that the two had had to cross one another's paths, Aoi had been afraid he'd be peeling Kazuki from the practice room floor.

But Uruha was always cordial, painstakingly so, and each jab and hit was meticulously set down....not thrown, but placed in front of Kazuki to examine. And Uruha would merely smile as Kazuki left the room in a flurry of hair and red face. Aoi always expected a fight, with his dead body in the middle of it all, but there had always only been the stinging words and the leers. Uruha kept his hands to himself until Aoi came home to him.

"I'll see you at dinner tonight, Aoi," Uruha says, soft enough to be unobtrusive to the people milling about, but just loud enough that Kazuki, sitting behind Aoi at a nearby table, can hear him. Kazuki would always know his place as long as Uruha was still in the picture, and every day Aoi was more convinced that Uruha wouldn't be, that he'd finally push Aoi down one last time, tired of the lies and the bullshit, and the humiliation, and he would just walk away.

"Bring your music. We'll make a night out of it." Because Kazui is a real muscian in Uruha's eyes like Santa Clause is real at their thirty-something age. The words are so simple, so unassuming to anyone outside of this war zone, but the hits are like Uruha's hands against Aoi's chest when they've given up words for bodies that are confused. Do they love or do they hate, or do they not care any longer?

Uruha tacks on a little laugh as his eyes stray for just a second to Kazuki, and then he's gone, leaving behind another mess for Aoi to deal with it. But then he deserves these messes because he's weak and Kazuki wants none of his excuses or comfort and shrugs him off until he's left alone again, just the way he should be.

VIII.

"It's funny the way couples work these days," Uruha begins, eyes trained to the sheets of music he'd been looking over for the last thirty minutes, eyes behind black rimmed glasses sweeping back and forth, and then up to Aoi's face for a second, before they continued back and forth slowly again.

Aoi pretends to tune his already tuned guitar because his hands are restless and embarrassed and this is just work like any other day. They're the only two in the building tonight after everyone has already shuffled away beneath the atmosphere of two guitarists who are silently fuming within the confines of skin and bones.

Outwardly they bow their heads and go along with everyone else, spinning their web of tension tighter and tighter until Aoi is sure that everyone in the room is holding their breath, just waiting for something to happen. Maybe Aoi would strike first this time, but Aoi knows he won't. Aoi had only struck once in this relationship, and it was the blow that had brought them to this.

"They're in separate relationships most of the time," Uruha continues, eyes sweeping back and forth, back and forth, pausing only long enough for Uruha to turn a page, and for Aoi to tighten a string to it's breaking point.

"Completely different relationships and they have no idea what the fuck is going on." Aoi jumps as Uruha stresses the 'fuck' just so, a tad louder, harsher....angrier. His guitar makes an ugly sound as his fingers fumble and when he looks up at Uruha, there's no change in the way Uruha's eyes steadily move and then flicker up every few lines just to see if Aoi is still there, because sometimes they forget the other is in the room with them pretending to be stones, cold and silent.

"But that's relationships for you," Uruha says this beneath his breath and then turns a page.

Back before Aoi had understood himself to be in a relationship, back in those days of wild abandon and bachelorhood, he'd still been looking at Uruha out of the corner of his eye. He was a man that knew what he wanted, and he knew every trick in the book on how to get it. He had all the gadgets that lured most people in to accompany his finely tuned charm. He collected fine race cars like some people collected vintage wine. He had exceptional taste in most things and he knew what people liked and how to play on them.

"I've always wondered how it would be to fuck in one of these," Uruha had commented idly as he slid into the driver's seat of Aoi's car. That in itself should reveal a world of things, that Aoi had let Uruha slide into the driver's seat. A man never gives that seat up lightly and Aoi should have known exactly what that meant that day.

Uruha had pressed his back against the fine seat and stroked his hands over the steering wheel while revving the engine and all the while Aoi had been thinking how nice it would be to lay the seats back and just get down to the business they'd both come here for. And they had of course, with Uruha ruining his expensive seats and Aoi not giving a care in the world because seats could be replaced, but Uruha was something unique.

They'd started their relationship in a car, and cars became bars, and bars became hotel rooms, and hotel rooms became apartment rooms, and finally apartments became Aoi in his ridiculously expensive car again, foot pressed down to the floorboard, not caring if he ruined the car or his life or both.

Because everything was ruined now anyway and he was learning just how easy it was to be replaced.

IX.

"He's pitiful you know." The words echo in Aoi's mind until he sees his hands closing over Kazuki's throat, though he only meant to cover his mouth, to keep him from spitting on the one thing he still cared about. He cared about Kazuki in the way men with too many toys care about their things. He cared if Kazuki's feelings were hurt, and he cared when Kazuki was angry, but Kazuki knew where that care ended. And maybe that was what drove Kazuki on, calling him at all hours of the night even when he knew that Uruha was lying next to Aoi in bed.

Uruha would only look at him and scoff and his phone would ring on and Aoi would let it ring, an uncomfortable medley to ruin whatever argument they'd been engaged in. If they'd been fucking, Uruha would laugh as if it didn't hurt, as if it were all a funny joke, because he was still the one Aoi always came home to eventually, and his legs would tighten posessively around Aoi's waist.

Sometimes Uruha would turn the phone off and toss it onto the nightstand with a flick of his wrist, and Aoi imagined when Uruha looked back to him with that disconcerting smile that Uruha could just as easily toss him aside with that same careless flick. He wondered why Uruha still held on to something so useless, so bound for destruction.

X.

"This is us." Uruha's breath is warm against the back of his neck as fingers slide against Aoi's own and the one instrument becomes enough for the both of them. They allow the guitar to connect them and their separate minds always seem to work as one in these moments. It was one of those things that had convinced Aoi in the beginning that Uruha was more than a fuck in the backseat of his car.

"We aren't strings and metronomes, Uru." And his name slips from Aoi's lips so familiarly, a husky whisper, roll of the tongue.

"But aren't we?" Uruha presses his cheek against the side of Aoi's neck, and Aoi drops his head back onto Uruha's shoulder as he allows Uruha to take over the song where his fingers had left off.

"You play me, and I keep time with you." Uruha tucks those words into the side of Aoi's neck, and there is the truth.

Sometimes Aoi's convinced that Uruha isn't so much angry at the fact that Aoi has slept with someone else. Anyone can defile a body and it will only be that in the morning, just a warm body, and a fleeting thrill. When Uruha rages around the house, his gaze sliding from Aoi to the guitar they'd played together night after night, Aoi imagines it's the music that sends him into the rages. It is the fact that Kazuki sometimes sits cross-legged across from Aoi while their fingers brush against the strings together and Kazuki asks questions he already knows and pointers he doesn't really need.

Aoi could fuck a dozen people and not drive the stake as deep as he did when he created music with Kazuki. And yet only Uruha could pull sonnets and masterpieces from him, only Uruha knew the dips and dark crevices of his mind better than he knew them himself.
Kazuki's hands were clumsy in their supposed innocence, but there was nothing innocent in the way Kazuki looked over his shoulder at Aoi as Aoi pushed him against the wall and plunged his hands deep into Kazuki's core. Aoi was beginning to learn Kazuki as he would a new song pushed into his hands, line by slow line.

There was nothing pure in the way Kazuki spread his legs willingly, hands sliding down between thighs that Aoi knew less intimately than others. It was all an act on Kazuki's part and beneath the harsh light and the grand applause, they both knew it was only that....just a stage performance to keep up the ruse a little longer. It was an irritating tick in the back of Aoi's mind knowing that Kazuki was a hunter as much as Aoi was a liar.

XI.

Aoi misses the way Uruha used to love him. At one time Uruha enjoyed making love to him with desperate hands and lips that always wanted more. Now he only holds himself above Aoi, and the only time he opens his eyes to look down at Aoi is when his hands are against Aoi's neck, thumb pressing gently against his jugular as if to strangle him. A little more pressure and a tightening of fingers and Uruha's hate would manifest itself finally.

He feels Uruha's fingers twitch in those moments and then tremble against the skin there. It always reminds Aoi of the night he'd wanted to tighten his fingers around Kazuki's neck and suffocate his own frustration. But Uruha never presses hard, only caresses and then his hands move away thoughtfully....or maybe only flippantly, and Uruha looks up to the ceiling or the bedpost, never at Aoi, and his hands press themselves into the pillow beside his head. Aoi always releases his held breath then.

XII.

Sometimes Aoi likes to run his fingers over the better parts of their lives, the frozen memories he has stored somewhere in the back recesses of his mind. He takes them out like cherished old photographs and studies them, wondering if there had been warning signs hidden beneath their smiling faces and racing hearts. There are always warning signs but they are ignored with the promises of perfection wound in their clasped hands.

Aoi watches the people hurrying around the airport and he wonders how many of them are flying out to meet with lovers while their spouses lay dreaming in bed, their phones ready on the nightstand, waiting for that call to let them know their loved one has made it safely....into another person's bed.

Uruha stands at the end of a hall, a duffel bag in each hand, looking this way and that way, and Aoi lets him for a long moment, thinking how curious people are when they don't know they're being observed. Uruha sets one of his bags down and bites on his thumbnail distractedly in a way he wouldn't do if Aoi were in front of him. Aoi notices the way Uruha's eyes stray to the pretty girl with the ass that walks by in breakneck heels. He watches her openly in a way he never would around Aoi because he's so good at looking but not looking when his boyfriend is beside him.

Aoi's favorite part is the moment Uruha spots him, and his hand falls away from his mouth and he brushes the fly away strands of hair away from his forehead impatiently. There's a smile as sunglasses are pushed up into his hair and his feet hurry him across the lobby to stand in front of Aoi. Aoi reaches out to fix the crooked scarf wrapped loosely around Uruha's pale neck and then he let's his hands linger on the sides of that neck. Uruha's pulse throbs excitedly against the palm of his hand and Uruha can't hide the smile that settles on his lips. Something jumps in Aoi's chest and there's that tingle of sensation racing through his body...excitement at seeing this face in front of him.

"I missed you," Are the first words from Uruha's bruised and busy mouth. They don't kiss until they're back in the car with the windows rolled up tightly and the doors locking them in against the world outside. And that's when Uruha asks him for the first time...

"Do you love me?" Their breathing is loud in the tight confines of the car they'd started their relationship in on the terms of sweaty bodies and ruined leather. There's a moment in which they stare at one another and they breathe in one another's air deeply, recycling it between their separate mouths, tense and waiting, for what seems like an eternity. Aoi knows this is something significant in their relationship, even though he'd been loving Uruha quietly for a long time now.

"Because I love you," Uruha breathes out in a hurried rush and his eyes are wide with too much hope and that innocence that scares Aoi each time he sees it in someone's eyes. All love eventually turns to hate he'd been finding out as Uruha brings his fist down for the last time on the kitchen counter and screams at him to leave.

There had been a time when Uruha hadn't waited for Aoi's confessions. He'd been completely selfless, and bold, and even a bit naive in his honesty back before Aoi had begun the lies and the waiting game of who would talk first. They'd always been so eager to be the first to confess their sins.

I worship you. "I love you." Aoi presses the words into Uruha's lips, hides the desperate need for Uruha in the confines of his candy flavored mouth, in the teeth that Aoi's tongue runs over slowly, in the hair that he buries his hands in. He presses his face there in the hair spilling out of the hairband Uruha had tried to keep some semblance of neatness to his appearance in.

Uruha was never neat, always scattered and late for everything. Uruha was chaos incarnate, to the shirts he refused to tuck in, to the shoes he kicked under Aoi's bed when he couldn't be bothered with cleaning. But Aoi had always found beauty in Uruha's constant state of disarray, in the way he mussed his hair when something was bothering him or when he was bent over his guitar, fighting with unruly chords and lyrics that needed to be perfect.

Music was the only stable thing in Uruha's life, the only thing that he couldn't stand being imperfect. He would sit on the floor, guitar cradled in his lap the entire night until he'd come to a state of perfection with whatever song he was working on. No amount of kisses to the back of his neck or pleas to come to bed would have pulled him away until he'd turned chaos into perfection.

Aoi had always wondered why it couldn't be that way with this relationship they'd twisted and torn between them. Aoi wanted in those moments of chaos to be Uruha's music, perfect and unfailing. Aoi was too far gone to be anything other than the man Uruha buried his hate into now.

Aoi pulls the band free and gathers wild hair in his hands and Uruha's eyes search his face, questions Uruha will never ask, but probably should before they fall into this, passing over his face in turns. There is a forever in Uruha's face that scares Aoi as Uruha bends to kiss him again. The people around them in the parking garage, hurrying to their different lives and their different betrayals, seem to pulse around them like a sped up film, and they are frozen in this moment, too lost in one another and this new discovery to care of consequences and what they might become.

Uruha had opened a gulf of longing in Aoi that day at the airport, that had never quite closed, only changed forms, but it had always been there, tugging him along, and every day, every month, every year it had become stronger, until nothing was ever enough. He wondered if Uruha had been feeling the same way all along.

Maybe this clawing weakness for more, always more was what had brought them to this precipice. Never satisfied with burying their hands into one another's flesh and pulling out hearts and the veins that pumped blood to them until nothing resided in the cavity of their chests. Nothing but numbness. There hadn't been anything to fight for in a long while.

XIII.

Uruha's back is strained beneath Aoi's hands where they are trapped between warm flesh and the cold stone of the wall behind them. Aoi's arms flex and tremble with the effort of holding Uruha against him. His knuckles scrape against the wall and send a seering pain through his entire hand. His knuckles feel torn and he can feel the slow trickle of blood from them but Uruha's thighs clench around his waist and that feeling is too good. He bites down against the side of Uruha's neck, the vibrations of Uruha's moans beating a hard rythm against his lips.

They stand on the dividing line, the crucial border of no return now and they're desperately trying to salvage any last bit of mercy from one another, anything to save themselves. But they're drowning, gasping for breath as they share one another's groans and spit and the occasional taste of blood from a split lip.

Aoi's name is still gasped against his jaw line with each bone jarring thrust, each tug to abused strands of hair. They're still at the point where "I love you's" are whispered desperately into sweaty necks and shoved forcefully against tensed lips because the words haven't lost their meaning just yet and are therefore game to be thrown around as much as possible in rocky sitations. They're not at the point where numbness has settled in and they sleepwalk around one another in their separate nightmares.

That will come later.

TBC.....

*************

A/N: So I was asked to write a Kazuki story....mainly Kazuki being a homewrecker (taha) and I ran with the idea. To the lovely person who requested this, I hope I'm doing a decent job. Maybe it isn't exactly what you requested....sort of turned out to be a series of depressing vignettes of sorts with Kazu and Aoi as sluts. But that's how I roll. Don't hate on me too much for this ;__;

Hate on Aoi.