Part Two
[ How I'm feeling|
Happy]
[ What I'm listening to| All I need - Radiohead
Title: Requiem for the dead (2/3)
Pairings: Aoi/Uruha, Aoi/Kazuki
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.
XIII.
"Don't." Uruha turns his face away and Aoi's lips are thrown off course and he kisses the curve of Uruha's ear, metal and anger a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue.
"I can smell him on you." Uruha surveys Aoi from the corner of his eye, head still turned away, hands pressed flat to Aoi's chest in a stance of rejection.....disgust.
"What are you talk-" Aoi begins to lie to himself and to Uruha who's always known the truth of this. He's thirty minutes late for another date, with Kazuki still clinging to his clothes in sickening wafts. Aoi's clothes smell of new leather and sharp cologne and clandestine kisses in the dark. This hasn't been going on for very long at this point but already Aoi's tired of this game, tired of lying and his hand aches where it holds the knife in Uruha's chest.
"Do you have to go? Why do you need him so much? Please stay. Stay with me." The desperate whispers are still loud in his ear, and the tugging of finely boned hands in the lapels of his jacket still pull in lingering need.
"Save it," Uruha laughs, and the sound is harsh. Uruha uses the palms pressed to his chest to push Aoi back hard and sends him stumbling over his own feet.
"Pathetic," Uruha hisses, his eyes like hell fire, condemning him, loathing him.
"He's pitiful you know," Kazuki whispers into his ear and Aoi swears and pulls strands of dark hair through his fingers, pulling until he's sure his hands will come away with loose strands clutched in them. In these moments it's almost as if madness is taking over him, as if Kazuki is still there with him, taunting, challenging Uruha with Aoi in the middle, the one who started it all. If there's a hell for all the sins he's committed, he figures that this should be it.
"Stop it, Aoi." Uruha jerks his hands away from his hair with a forceful tug and when Aoi looks up into the face he expects to see the hatred he knows so well by now, there's only a pity in the downturn of Uruha's lips and the gaze that traces over Aoi's face and he knows then who the pitiful one is.
XIII.
"Stay," Uruha whispers again, fingers curling against the palm of his hand. Aoi's eyes catch on this gesture, watches the trembling of his hand, knowing that it's taking everything in Uruha to ask this of him. He wants to cross the room and uncurl Uruha's hand. He wants to kiss him the way he had at the airport that day, full of hard need and a desperate want for more.
He doesn't want this to end yet. He needs more time, just a little more time to make things right. But he knows that nothing could ever be right again and he's just chasing the tatters of an old life at this point.
XIV.
"And I still love you," Uruha forces out between a sob he chokes on and hiccups through and tries desperately to drown in the cold bath water he's sitting in. His hair lays in dark wet rivulets over pale knees pressed to his chest.
"Even after everything you've done. You still make me love you and I hate it. I hate it." Uruha's hand hits the surface of the water and Aoi watches the water spill from the tub and creep along the floor to seep around the soles of his shoes, dress shoes because Aoi had wanted to take Uruha out, to surprise him and to smother the sounds of Kazuki's harsh breathing against his ear. He wanted to wipe the stain of Kazuki's mouth against Uruha's shoulder and love Uruha the way he had before they'd hit this unmoving wall in front of them.
He'd left Kazuki that morning with the promise of an end in sight. He had erased his name from his phone, the husky voicemails, and the seductive messages and he'd left Kazuki staring at a closed door. He had convinced himself that it had only been his imagination mocking him when he'd caught the tilt of Kazuki's mouth before the door shut closed between them. Now he knew it hadn't been a trick of light or his mind making up things to torture him. Kazuki had known that this wasn't the end. Nothing ever ends or rights itself so easily.
Uruha swears and spills more water onto the bathroom floor, soaking Aoi's expensive shoes, and he knows.....knows that they've fallen too far to pretend like children that nothing ever happened, that Aoi hadn't buried a knife into Uruha's chest just so that Uruha could put one into his back as they kissed and made up. Aoi kneels by the bathtub and pulls on Uruha's arms, ignoring the struggle until Uruha relents and wraps his arms around his neck.
Aoi's dinner jacket, the silk vest and nice pants all become soaked with Uruha's wet skin against him but he doesn't care. The feeling of Uruha in his arms, warm and damp, the smell of soap on Uruha's skin all become an aphrodisiac as he buries his face into Uruha's neck. Weak and begging for forgiveness is more than he's been allowed in weeks, weeks of a dry summer, leaving him parched and starving for a kind touch from Uruha though he knows he deserves much worse than silence and rejection from him.
Uruha still loves him. The confession had been as much of a relief as it had been a stabbing pain. He almost craves the day Uruha will turn on him and lock him out for good.
XV.
"I can't imagine losing this." Uruha presses his lips to the back of Aoi's hand where it lays on the table between them. Aoi turns his hand palm side up and catches Uruha's chin in his fingers, caresses it, and then slides his fingers across a sloped cheek and buries them in hair the color of rich caramel. Uruha looks up at him, head still lowered, and it looks too much like submission.
"I feel too much," The words are uttered beneath Uruha's breath, but Aoi hears them and his eyes catch every movement, the way Uruha sits back and allows Aoi's hand to fall away and then he tucks his hair behind his ear and smiles over at him. The smile is an embarrassed, self conscious sort of smile, punctuated by a little shrug of the shoulder.
Aoi knows exactly what Uruha feels, the newness of this relationship and all the overwhelming passion and obsession that comes with new things. It's almost like drowning, but instead of trying to save himself and clawing for the surface, Aoi smiles blissfully and sinks beneath the waves, glad to be submerged, naively glad to be sinking towards his own death.
A year later, Aoi sits across from Uruha, a trampled battlefield between them, strewn with too many lies and causalities, their hands too stained with one another's blood to be washed clean now. Aoi watches Uruha's finger trace the rim of his tea cup, slowly, thoughtfully, and the moment Aoi let's the question fall from his lips, Uruha's finger stops mid motion, frozen there against porcelain.
"Why don't you walk away?" Aoi has turned this question over and over in trembling hands every night for months as he lay staring at the back of Uruha's shoulders, stiff even in sleep. It's the first time he'd ever asked, let the words metastasize into something real and loud.
He watches the finger curl away from the cup and then press into the palm of Uruha's hand. When he glances up, Uruha's stare is challenging, intimidating, but Aoi doesn't look away as he would if Uruha were angry. Uruha isn't angry now, just tired....just fed up and drained.
"I feel too much." Uruha's words are soft, but set down with a firmness and an honesty that takes Aoi back for a moment. The same words Uruha had pulled him in with now push him to his knees. Uruha's stare is too much then, and Aoi sinks down into those softly uttered words and looks away, down to the table where Uruha's fist lays as if ready for another fight.
Maybe Aoi understands Uruha in that moment, because if he was honest with himself, if their places had been changed, if Uruha wasn't already picking up numbers in the bar, and he just happened to find a Kazuki of his own to play with after hours, would Aoi leave him? Could he have told Uruha to fuck off and walked away like a simple snap of the fingers? When Aoi reaches across the table and Uruha's hand uncurls against his own and their eyes catch and linger, he knows the answer to that. They are both a host to this disease.
He would always stay.
XVI.
Kazuki is damp and hot against his skin, a light weight molded against the side of his body. His limbs are smooth and supple, smaller and softer than what Aoi is used to. When Kazuki raises his head from Aoi's chest, the sunlight glints off of the steel placed delicately on each side of his bottom lip and in the corner of the eyebrow he's forever quirking playfully. Kazuki's piercings had been a charming addition to the list of what had drawn Aoi into this mess in the beginning.
Uruha was too vain to riddle holes in his face. He'd told Aoi that once when Aoi had dared him to get a lip piercing with him. He knew Uruha had been lying that day. He was more afraid of the pain than how it would look. Pain had never been Uruha's friend. He was terrified of it the way some people were terrified of insects and the dark and flying in airplanes. He had always avoided pain at all costs....that was until Aoi had come around.
In a way, he'd been wanting Uruha to turn down the dare to get a piercing that day. Uruha had never needed to add anything to his face for Aoi to think him perfect. The bare palate and soft lines of his face were open and honest. He knew when Uruha wanted him and when Uruha was truly angry and it was best that Aoi sink back into the walls or disappear down to the coffee shop because Uruha wouldn't have anything to do with him until the anger faded. He knew where he stood with Uruha on any given day.
It wasn't so with Kazuki who concealed too much in a face that appeared far more innocent than Uruha's even with the piercings. Innocence was always a lie in Aoi's world. At least Uruha had worn the face of a wolf when hunting. There had never been anything to guess at where Uruha was concerned, but with Kazuki it was all hidden beneath simpering wiles and perfect charm.
Kazuki raises himself above Aoi and Aoi takes the chance to pull Kazuki's face down closer, and he presses his lips to the hard steel in Kazuki's eyebrow and then smooths his mouth across his temple. Kazuki preens under the attention, stretching against him, biting into his bottom lip, and sliding his hand across Aoi's chest caressingly.
"You spoil me." Kazuki smiles and follows Aoi's mouth, catching it up in a slow, deep kiss before Aoi can pull away. Aoi's hands drift against the slender curve of Kazuki's back and presses him closer. The necklace he'd given Kazuki for his birthday that morning digs into Aoi's chest as Kazuki slides against him, legs moving to straddle his waist.
"You deserve it." Aoi smirks up at Kazuki as his hips press down into Aoi's lap, eliciting a hard, sharp pleasure as their cocks brush. Aoi knows that Kazuki is sleeping around, maybe with the vocalist of his band, or the drummer or even the odd stafff member. Kazuki receives too many calls that he has to take with the door closed when they're together and there's always a smell of someone else on the side of his neck where Aoi presses his lips. But then what had he expected? That Kazuki would be as faithful as Aoi? They're cut from the same cloth. They're both walking travesties, and Kazuki does deserve Aoi's attention, because liars always deserved one another.
Kazuki's smirk widens as he leans down and brushes his mouth against Aoi's lips softly, teasingly and then teeth sink down into flesh and pulls. Aoi hisses and runs his tongue over his bottom lip, tasting iron where Kazuki's teeth had bit him and he knows his tongue is covered in fresh blood. Kazuki raises his eyebrow and for the first time, Aoi realizes that the way Kazuki is looking at him isn't teasing at all, but cynical.
It's a slap in the face, the look Aoi had always adored, preened beneath because Kazuki looked up to him, worshipped him almost. Kazuki had always given him that look when he wanted to please Aoi, down on his knees with his face tilted up towards the light shining behind Aoi's head, piercings glinting, fingers slipping.
Now that raise of the eyebrow meant something completely different and for a second, Aoi almost pushes Kazuki away. The look feels too cold and calculating in the time it takes for Aoi to blink, and a shred of doubt forms. He feels the need to get away from the cunning intelligence he sees in Kazuki's face where before he'd only suspected naivety.
"We both deserve this," Kazuki agrees, sinking his teeth into his own bottom lip until Aoi sees blood welling to the surface and drops begin to trickle down Kazuki's chin. Kazuki tilts his head back and rolls his hips in Aoi's lap and Aoi can't help but shudder beneath him, hands sliding against the tops of Kazuki's smooth thighs and then his fingers dig in with the pleasure.
He wants Uruha in that moment, imagines Uruha's face pressed close to his cheek, the scent of vanilla and sharp cologne teasing his senses. He hears Uruha's voice in his ear, calling him home as Kazuki presses a bloodied mouth to his lips and laughs.
XVII.
"Sometimes I don't even think you love me." Uruha's voice is soft and muffled against the bed. When Aoi pulls his fingers gently through the dark blond hair at Uruha's temple and tries to turn his face towards him, Uruha moves away. The motion is familiar, the rejection something that Aoi has become accustomed to like the commune to work or the cup of coffee and smoke he picks up each morning. It's almost routine by now.
"You know I love you," He presses the words to Uruha's naked shoulder and feels the resistance. He let's Uruha turn over and push him away, palm pressed flat to his chest, just another familiar stance.
"Do I?" Uruha asks, turning his face and looking up at Aoi with too many accusations sitting quietly behind brown irises. The deathly calm Uruha exudes when he's acknowledging Aoi's betrayal is worse than the violent tirades, the hands against Aoi's face, the screaming in his ears. There's something about the way Uruha looks at him steadily as he talks now that dares Aoi to say something, to try and lie and deny that everything isn't perfect between them, that there's isn't someone else shadowing Uruha's footsteps. What is one more untruth against a retinue, an army of untruths standing sentinel at Aoi's feet, ready whenever he needs them? Aoi is never able to hold Uruha's gaze long, and he finds himself looking down to the slender hands pressing against his chest, perfect in their animosity.
"Words are just empty space, something I can't hang onto," Uruha murmurs, fingers curling against his chest. He can feel the nick of fingernails and relishes the momentary pain.
"I think all you love is yourself because you're only making yourself happy. Do I look happy to you?" Uruha asks softly and when Aoi forces himself to look, to take in the face he knows like the back of his hand, he sees the chaos and the misery he's created. He realizes he hasn't been able to look Uruha in the eye for months, and he knows why. He couldn't face the pain and the loathing he sees there now.
"When you love someone, you want to make them happy," Uruha says quietly and his gaze flickers away, focuses on something over Aoi's shoulder, and once again, Aoi becomes the invisible man, the person Uruha can't stand to look at because Aoi can't stop fucking everything up. He wishes once again that Uruha would do the honors of leaving. He doesn't understand this waiting game. What are they waiting for? Everything has fallen to pieces and there's no amount of crawling on their hands and knees and grappling to put the pieces back together that will ever fix this. They're past the point of redemption.
Uruha lays back against the sheets and closes his eyes, breathing deeply, his fingers catching the hair at his temples and clawing it away. Aoi settles down beside him and rests his face beside Uruha's on the damp pillow that smells of Uruha's shampoo and countless washes in Uruha's lemon scented detergent.
He doesn't touch Uruha because he knows he doesn't deserve to. He wishes he could pull Uruha against his body, mold their limbs together, synchronize them the way they had once been with a guitar between them, completely in tune. He was a jarred chord now, ugly, displaced, and useless beneath Uruha's hands.
He no longer knew how to keep tune with Uruha, and he found himself floundering, grasping for things now out of his reach. He didn't know how to make Uruha happy any longer, and he could feel Uruha slipping further away out of reach of the fingers that hovered just inches from Uruha's face, too afraid to touch, because everything he touched these days, he ruined.
He pulls his hand back as Uruha shifs away from him, turning his back on him. Such a frequent sight, the curve of Uruha's back, the long slope of his neck, the scattering of beauty marks on his nape where his hair is swept away.
Aoi reacquaints himself with the vertebrae of Uruha's back and finally allows his hands to roam, his finger sliding down the nape of neck to spine and watching the skin there errupt in gooseflesh. He wonders if Uruha is asleep, or only pretending to be as he presses his lips to a shoulder blade and tries to remember what it was about him that had made Uruha love him in the first place.
XVIII.
"Stay." Uruha breathes out.
"I want you to stay."
Aoi hears the words but he isn't sure whether he should believe in them. He almost expects Uruha to smile and tell him to get the hell out of his apartment, that he was only joking, that he couldn't believe Aoi would think he would want him to stay after everything he'd put him through.
He can hear Uruha's harsh ragged breath against his ear as he whispers that he hates Aoi, that he wishes he'd never met him. He'd heard it time and again, and like a ritual at the altar, Aoi would always bow his head, accept the scathing remarks, and press Judas lips to Uruha's mouth.
XIX.
The first time Uruha ever had an orgasm beneath Aoi's hands is something Aoi will never forget. The way Uruha had tensed and trembled and tugged at his hair in a wild sort of delirium, and the way Aoi had watched him with sweaty hair plastered to his face and his fingers shaking against the sharp bones of Uruha's trembling hips is forever ingrained into Aoi's mind. Uruha's fingers had held onto Aoi's arms hard enough to leave finger shaped bruises on his skin that had faded only weeks later, reminders of how much of himself Uruha had given over to Aoi that night.
Afterwards, Uruha lay against him, pressing tired kisses to the slope of his shoulder in the backseat of his car. Aoi had been promising himself that this was the one, that this was the man he could live for as long as he didn't fuck it up like he had done countless times before. It was always the same sad story, with the same sad ending, and on to the next one he went. There was something in the way Uruha had looked at him that told Aoi this wouldn't be the last time they ended up sweaty and too tangled up in one another for their own good. There were too many familiar promises on the tips of Uruha's fingers as they brushed against Aoi's neck, and in the soft press of lips to his chest.
Something in the way Uruha had held himself above Aoi when the heat between them began to burn again that was oddly familiar as well. Uruha had leaned down and pulled Aoi's lip ring between his teeth hard enough so that Aoi had had to sit up and follow him or else his ring would have been ripped out of his lip. It was a possessive, bold gesture, the sort that had let Aoi know that it was all or nothing with Uruha. He should have known that Uruha would be ruthless if he were challenged, that Aoi's blood was as good as anyone else's if he had to spill it in the end.
In a way, Kazuki had been saying the same thing the night he had shown his true colors. The alcohol had burned on it's way down as Aoi watched Kazuki sleeping next to him, once again the face of an angel on his pillow. There was a bloodstain next to his cheek and he wasn't sure if it was his own or Kazuki's blood seeping into the stark white cotton. Aoi had never had a chance to begin with.
XX.
"I know you don't love me. Anyway, love hurts and I'm afraid of pain. Here, drink."
The bottle is pressed to Aoi's lips and Aoi tilts his head back and lets the liquor do it's job. If it would numb him for the night, it would be a successful evening. He doesn't try to deny Kazuki's slurred confession, doesn't try to shrug it off even, just let's it hang there between them like the smoke from the cigarette they're sharing.
"You love him," Kazuki continues, taking the bottle from Aoi's mouth and taking a long swig from it. When he pulls the bottle away and swings it in an arch to slam it back down to the stage between them, alcohol sloshes from it and seeps into Aoi's jeans. He feels the wetness on his thighs, smells the heady, stomach turning stench of hard liquor, the same liquor that's tracing it's lazy way through his own veins, promising relief for a few hours at least.
"And yet you're here with me. What does that say?" Kazuki taps the cigarette against the rim of the ashtray. Tap, tap, tap, slow breath in, steadying slow breath out. The smoke hits Aoi in the face but he doesn't turn away, just continues leaning against the wall, legs dangling from the empty stage, eyes trained to Kazuki as he fidgets.
"He's always smiling at me like we're the best of friends. I know it's because he hates me though." Kazuki passes the cigarette off to Aoi and Aoi sucks on it like he needs air, though he's only filling his lungs with more smoke he doesn't need. He does need air, but he knows he won't get it here locked in this empty live house with Kazuki.
The sign over the bar advertising some brand of beer is blinking in and out, the annoying buzz of it's dying lights driving Aoi just a bit insane. He wants to take up the half drained bottle of alcohol and throw it across the room. He wants to smash it against the sign and let the glass rain down on the deep red bar stools he'd sat on with Kazuki for half the night after their sets were finished.
He hates how Kazuki uses Uruha as a point of interest so much, a conversation starter when they had nothing better to pick one another's minds over. Aoi almost believes that Kazuki is even a bit fascinated by Uruha, the one that makes Kazuki "the other man", because it's the only place he can take with Uruha around.
Maybe he was obsessed with Uruha, but it wasn't in any kind way. It was the way in which one obsesses over a problem in their path that they just can't seem to get rid of. The kind of problem a person drives themselves insane over trying to eradicate. And that's just what Kazuki wanted to do. He knew he would have to get rid of Uruha before he would even have a chance to be more to Aoi than just a convenient fuck in a back room. Aoi was also sure Kazuki knew how fruitless his efforts were.
"We used to be friends you know," Kazuki says, hooking his leg with Aoi's and swings them together, a playful little gesture that has Aoi smiling just the slightest despite the sick feeling pooling in the pit of his stomach. Kazuki's hair is blue beneath the deep indigo stage lights. Aoi decides to let Kazuki talk as they pass the cigarette and the slowly dwindling bottle of liquer between them. He wants secrets, and he wants the truth, though he knows he'll only get half of the truth if anything.
"I liked him. He was blunt. There wasn't any bullshit about him like most people these days." Kazuki finishes off the cigarette and stabs it into the ashtray, grinding it for a long moment as he lets his words sink in. Aoi notices how Kazuki uses Uruha in past tense as if he's already wiped clean from Aoi's surface.
If only Kazuki knew how ingrained Uruha was into the map of Aoi's being, deeper than anything he could merely pluck out with treacherous fingers and discard. He would have to skin and gut himself and then bleed himself out to eradicate where Uruha resided. Aoi wets his lips and trains his eyes to the blinking sign across the dark expanse of empty room, frustration nearly too heady to snuff out with a few sips of alcohol.
"That was until I met you and I learned he was sleeping with you." The ashtray slides across the stage as Kazuki pushes it away. Aoi is forced to look back at Kazuki and there's that smile, the quirk of the eyebrow.
Liar.
Kazuki had known all along that Aoi's bed was occupied and that Uruha was the culprit. Uruha had seen Kazuki coming from a mile away and had always made sure that Kazuki knew where he stood. Aoi almost believed that Kazuki had started off as friends with Uruha just to get where he was today. The sick feeling in his stomach lengthened, tightened, clamped down until he was forced to slide off the stage and walk away. It had always been a cat and mouse game with Kazuki.
"Aoi!" Kazuki's voice carries across the room and he stops at the door, the exit sign glowing red above it, a warning, or maybe a welcoming because he knows it would be better to leave and to keep walking away from here. He turns and makes out the shadow of Kazuki still sitting on the stage, bathed in blue and black, leaning back on his hands, and he can imagine the smile on his face...victorious and sad all at once.
"We're not done here," Kazuki calls out and Aoi frowns, wondering at the comment before Kazuki holds the liquor bottle up. "We can't let this go to waste."
Kazuki had always been good at this, too good. Aoi shoves his hands into his jeans pockets and begins to walk back across the room, shoes clicking against the floor, the echo a rhythmic sonnet, a dead man's walk.
XXI.
Aoi pulls his shirt over his shoulders and winces as a sharp pain shoots down the skin of his back. He looks himself over in the partially fogged mirror. His face is flushed from the heat of the shower, hair hanging wet and dark against the stark white of his collared shirt.
His eyes look tired, his gaze suspicious as it roams over his reflection. It's a familiar expression, the furrowed brow, the untrusting way in which he looks over himself with a grimace. He hadn't trusted anyone, least of all himself, since Kazuki started sharing his bed. He didn't trust Uruha when Uruha told him he loved him those rare nights when Uruha was lonely and his liquor wasn't enough and Aoi was the nearest warmth. He didn't trust Kazuki when he slipped beneath the sheets, out of sight, and smiled against the tender skin between thigh and hip. He didn't trust himself when he held Uruha's hair back away from his face and kissed his forehead, whispering that he didn't want to hurt him. He asks himself the routine question...how can he continue this lie knowing that it was destroying him from the inside out? It was slowly winding it's way through the one person he'd ever loved and it was strangling the life from him. And still Aoi smiled his fake, tight smiles and continued to hold his hand into the fire.
What was there to trust in anymore when he didn't even recognize the man staring back at him in the mirror? This exhausted, haunted man with the wandering eyes and the tight-lipped mouth. He tries to remember the last time he'd smiled in some form of sincerity. The forged smiles he handed out for show were nothing short of ridiculous. Uruha always saw through those mime-like grins and would only laugh at him, his laughter swallowed down into the bottle of expensive champagne Aoi had given to him for his birthday. He fixes the collar of his shirt and turns away from the mirror, preparing for a night celebrating a birthday that Uruha doesn't want.
"What is there to celebrate? I'm just turning into an old man like you." Uruha had smiled against the card Aoi had slipped him that morning, something generic and cheesy, but in the inside he'd folded a letter that Uruha hadn't read. Uruha had picked the carefully folded paper out of the card and set it aside on the end table beside him, his smile slipping as he did this. He knew what Aoi had to say in that letter, but he didn't want to hear it because like Aoi, he didn't trust in anything anymore, least of all Aoi's words.
There was a painstakingly customized acoustic sitting in Aoi's closet with a big bow tied around it. Uruha had practically salivated over the thing in the music shop down the street months ago. Aoi had watched him running his fingers over the solid spruce face of the thing and down the fine mahogany sides and along the neck, his fingers dancing....caressing in a way that had Aoi's chest tightening. He had wanted to be that guitar in that moment, drinking in the tenderness and affection he'd been missing for so long now.
Uruha's thumb had slid over the rosewood fingerboard and the chrome die-cast tuners with a thoughtful slowness, the way he'd once trailed his thumb along Aoi's bottom lip. There had been a small smile playing at the edges of Uruha's
mouth as he did this, before he had asked the store clerk to take the guitar down for him. Aoi had been sure Uruha would walk away from the store carting the guitar in his shoulder case, but he'd only sat in the store for an hour or more, strumming the thing and fawning over it before setting it back in it's place and leading Aoi out of the store.
Aoi didn't expect to gain anything from buying Uruha the guitar. He never expected anything in return from Uruha. It was enough to see him smile, something that was getting more rare by the day. He didn't expect Uruha to thank him or give him back the affection he craved like a thirsty man stranded in the hot desert. He only wanted the smile. That was all.
XXII.
"I get the alcohol while he gets your paycheck wrapped around his wrist and throat. I'd like to wrap something else around his fucking neck." Uruha flexes perfect hands against the bottle he holds against his lips. Kazuki had made it well known to everyone in the company and everyone else in the entire world where his birthday gifts had come from that year. Aoi had only ducked his head and said nothing throughout the whole foray. He couldn't deny the truth at this point.
Uruha taps the rim of the bottle of Moët against his chin as he surveys Aoi, a clinical sort of perusal, cold and unfamiliar. Aoi had known Uruha would want to get wasted tonight. It was the only way he was going to face a birthday celebrating getting another year older, and it was the only way he would be able to stand to look at Aoi. The acoustic guitar still sits in his closet as Uruha tips back the champagne he thinks is his only gift from Aoi tonight.
Aoi sinks back against the uncomfortable black leather of the booth and almost welcomes the body that barrels into his shoulder. His lap his suddenly full of Kai laughing in a drunken fit and Aoi smiles even while Uruha still regards him from across the table with the look of someone contemplating homicide.
"Happy birthday, Uruha." Kai slurs and Uruha acknowledges him with a slight tilt of the head, face still a frozen mask of contempt for Aoi. Kai knocks over Aoi's glass when he tries to sit up and Aoi hisses and moves out of the way as the table is flooded with cheap beer. Yeast and lime fill Aoi's nostrils and he has the sudden urge to run to the bathroom and empty his stomach. This was almost too much for him tonight. He'd been here for almost two hours already with Uruha ready to throttle him. But he's stuck there as Kai pins him against the booth and the wall and leans over to whisper something against Aoi's ear.
Would Uruha like a dance from one of the girls? The band is buying more beer and sending it to the table. Kai has to piss but first he's going to give Uruha his gift and then maybe Ruki can bring the cake out. Aoi somehow gages all of this from Kai's drunken slurring and nods to agree. Uruha will shoot down the dance, welcome the beer, and kill Ruki for the cake they're going to bring out. Aoi had helped pick it out the day before. A guitar shaped cake or a pair of glorious tits had been the question of the day with Reita laughing in the background and Ruki stroking his chin thoughtfully in front of the frosted glass, truly in debate over the two choices. Which one would have Uruha turning red and sputtering was what Aoi had asked and they'd all agreed which cake would be the best for tonight.
Maybe the cake would stop Uruha from throwing his hate across the table at Aoi in sickening waves. Maybe Aoi could pretend Uruha was happy for once when the rest of the band came back to the table and took back Uruha's attention.
He had wanted to invite more of Uruha's friends to distract him but then somehow the band had ended up making plans that only included the five of them as per usual. It's depressing how anti-social and alienated they could be. It was almost like being in a sad, exclusive club for bachelors with no life outside of work. Maybe that was why Aoi had reached out to anyone and everyone outside of their circle over the past few years. His only regret was catching Kazuki's eye in the process.
Kai slides a prettily wrapped box across the table and Uruha takes it but doesn't open it. He's still looking over at Aoi as if he expects Aoi to talk or to answer the question that had hung between them for months now.
Why?
Kai doesn't seem to notice the tension or Uruha's dismissal of his gift as he leans against Aoi and smiles over at Uruha. Aoi feels a tug to the sleeve of his shirt as Kai stands from the booth and tries to pull Aoi with him unsuccessfully.
"You coming, Aoi?" Kai manages a not so subtle tilt of the chin towards the bar where Ruki and Reita are lurking, ready to cart in the cake and the rest of the gifts. Aoi is just about to stand from the table, eager to get away from Uruha's death glare, when Uruha laughs softly.
"Oh, you'd know if Aoi was coming." Uruha is smiling slightly as he holds Aoi's gaze. "He starts shivering and his face tightens up, and there's this certain little groan he does....." Uruha's tongue touches his bottom lip and his grin widens as Aoi stares at him, wondering what he's getting at, what nerve he's trying to touch with Aoi.
"What?" Kai asks, and his face is a comical mask of drunken confusion.
"How would you know?" Kai chuckles, thinking it a joke in his blissfully ignorant, wasted state of mind, and it is a joke, but not the sort Kai is mistaking it for.
"Who doesn't know." Uruha snorts derisively and looks away, back to Ruki and Reita who duck back into the crowd with the oversized cake box to avoid ruining the already ruined surprised.
"Forget it." Aoi mumbles. "I'll meet you in a minute." He catches Kai's wandering gaze and exaggerates a persuasive smile. Kai would forget the conversation with the hangover he'd be nursing in the morning at least. Uruha had just been fucking with them both out of spite, he realizes. There's no hidden agenda there, just old jealousy and the need to retaliate and hurt.
Kai shrugs and begins a stumbling trek back into the crowd and Aoi almost has a mind to cut Kai off from the alcohol but then he didn't want to ruin anyone else's night. He'd already fucked it up for the most important person at the party as it was. Uruha's still looking off across the room, and Aoi recognizes the stiff shoulders, the bored drumming fingers on the table, the rejection. And yet Aoi remains sitting, refusing to surrender to silence.
"Let's get out of here." Aoi says, and Uruha turns his head and shoots him a suspicious look. He's waiting for the others to get back to the table so he can pretend surprise at their efforts just so he can get home and hug the toilet with Aoi's champagne lacing his veins. But there are more important things than the laughter of Uruha's red-faced embarrassment and little gifts in pretty little boxes. There's Aoi and Uruha and the pitiful thing Aoi's trying to salvage between them.
Aoi's back tingles and throbs through the thin material of his shirt as Uruha nods and they stand from the table together. Uruha let's him curl their fingers together once they're outside and away from the noise and eyes of countless strangers and their soon to be furious friends. When Uruha leans over to kiss him in the car, hands sliding down Aoi's back with hard suggestion, Aoi gasps into Uruha's smiling mouth at the burn he feels beneath Uruha's fingers. It's a friendly reminder of something that Aoi should never forget. Uruha won't allow him to forget, that much is certain.
Last night, Kazuki had traced the long red lines from Aoi's shoulder to the middle of his back with a thoughtful finger. He hadn't asked, because he'd already known what they were. Four angry red lines on each side of Aoi's spine. Fingernail marks.
Uruha had wanted him the night he'd made the marks, with desperate hands and pleading moans against the side of his neck. And Aoi had been overwhelmed in the face of Uruha's sudden passion. He'd been delirious with the prospect that Uruha still held this kind of lust for him, the kind that had them grabbing and kissing any inch of skin they could reach, knocking over expensive lamps, splitting lips and bruising arms with relentless fingertips.
Only after they'd had their fill of one another, sucking in air deeply as they lay next to each other staring up at the ceiling in a haze, did Aoi feel the sting on his back. He hadn't noticed Uruha's fingernails digging into his skin and raking down his back with the pleasure wracking his body, his only thought on how to satisfy that pleasure completely, how to give them both what they needed the most.
His sweat had seeped into the scratches and made them burn so much that Aoi had rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face into the pillow. Uruha had pressed cool lips to his shoulder blade and the feeling of Uruha's fingers tracing over the welts had been all at once, soothing and painful, an intoxicating sensation.
Maybe Uruha had known that Kazuki would trace the scratches on Aoi's back in much the same way, and wonder at them. Maybe he would see red as Uruha did when he'd known that Aoi had been out with Kazuki. Uruha had raked his nails down Aoi's back knowing that he was leaving a piece of himself there for Kazuki to see. Those marks said something that Uruha would never willingly say to Kazuki's face. That would require Uruha to actually look at Kazuki instead of over his head. He would have to acknowledge Kazuki as a human being and that was asking the impossible from Uruha at this point.
The nails marks were message enough. What was Uruha's would remain his. He wasn't going anywhere.
XXIII.
The night Aoi had stepped off of a cliff and gone plunging into this abyss known as Uruha is a night as hot and sticky as Kazuki's thigh pressing against him as they lay in Aoi's bed, the ceiling fan whiling slowly above them. The fan does nothing to cool their bodies in this mid-summer heat, only adds to the dampness of the room in wafts of vanilla from the relics of Uruha that lay scattered all about the room. Uruha's jacket is draped over the chair by the door. Pieces of Uruha lay discarded on the nightstand; a notebook he scribbles ideas and lyrics and music into when the palm of his hand is too full of ink stains, a broken charm from his cell phone that Aoi had promised to fix for him months ago, and a pin from his hair.
The pin's long lost brothers can be found in the sink in the bathroom and in the crevices of Aoi's couch, lost refugees that Aoi will never get around to finding and cleaning up. Even the pillow beneath Kazuki's head is Uruha's, brought from his own bed because Aoi's pillows were too hard and he couldn't sleep in Aoi's bed when he stayed over because of that. Or maybe it was because his bed was hardly ever used for sleeping when Uruha was here and naked and looking like too much temptation.
Aoi sighs and passes a hand over his eyes and sees Uruha's face as it was the night Aoi had found something to believe in.
"Come with me." Uruha's hand fits perfectly inside of Aoi's own gloved hand and he allows himself to be pulled through the cold, empty streets of Tokyo. He would have been happy to follow Uruha anywhere, as long as Uruha wanted him to follow. Uruha looks back and smiles once, reassuringly as if to say he isn't bringing Aoi into a back alleyway to get mugged, or to leave him on this side of the city that Aoi is still so new to.
Without Uruha, he would have been lost in seconds, and so follows with the eagerness of the blind following the seeing. Aoi had always trusted Uruha, since the night he had dropped his car keys into Uruha's hand and Uruha had just smiled over at him and told him to get in for the ride. There was something untamed and wild in Uruha that Aoi had always found himself trying desperately to replicate. But that spontaneity was all Uruha's own, and Aoi was merely the person hanging onto Uruha's arm for his life, hoping Uruha didn't leave him behind one of these days.
Uruha led him to an offset neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The buildings looked like skeletons against the night sky, the distant city lights pinpoints in the background. The area was a construction site and most of the buildings were only built half-way, cut off in midair, the rooms open to the elements, ghosts of what would be in the coming months.
Uruha laughs and kicks over a sign that announces the latest apartment sector will be coming to the citizens of Tokyo later this summer. Aoi almost finds himself bending down to pick the sign back up, because he was a bad boy with a little moral and just a tad bit of manners left in him, but Uruha is already pulling him into the apartment sector. They have to climb over a rickety fence and jump down into the area, the most daring thing Aoi had done the entire week, if letting Uruha blow him in the practice room after hours didn't count that is.
"Where are we?" Aoi asks in hushed whispers, ready for a flashlight with a cop at the end of it to jump out from behind one of the buildings. But Uruha laughs and then cups his hands over his mouth and shouts, something like a war call, long and loud, and Aoi watches him in stunned silence for a moment.
"You do it now," Uruha urges, elbowing him in the ribs until he relents and decides he couldn't risk his ego and his bad boy image being tarnished in front of Uruha just yet. They'd only been together a couple of months, and so far Uruha was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and somehow this felt right like all the others hadn't. He cups his hands as Uruha had done and yells. His voice bounces off the towering buildings surrounding them and the half-formed walls seems to amplify his voice and throw it out farther.
Uruha is grinning at him, his cheeks flushed against the cold wind. He leans over and kisses Uruha, wanting to make him flush more. He loves the way the blood rushes to Uruha's face, capillaries filling to bring color to his usually pale cheeks when Aoi presses their lips together. Uruha's beautiful when he's excited and windblown.
Uruha pushes him away after greedy mouths have had their fill of one another. Aoi catches the way Uruha's grin lengthens and he runs his tongue over his lips as if tasting Aoi, and something inside of Aoi's body pulses with need. He's sure he will never have enough of this with Uruha's body pressed too close to him and memories of back alleyway sessions still fresh on his skin.
"I've been coming here since they started building it. They'll be done in a few months, so we better enjoy it tonight while we can," Uruha explains, stepping his way over the building materials and scaffolds lying haphazardly around the area. Aoi follows him, their hands still clasped tightly as they stumble around clumsily and then finally duck into one of the completed buildings.
It's dark inside the place and Aoi has to run his hands along the walls beside him to keep from falling down the steps to his death even though Uruha seems to know his way and dutifully pulls him along. Aoi watches the shifting lines of Uruha's back as they climb flight after flight of stairs in the darkness. Aoi feels his eyes adjust slowly to the change in light when Uruha finally pushes open a heavy door and Aoi finds himself standing seven stories high on a roof.
"This is my place." Uruha spreads his arms wide, does a little turn and then stands near the edge of the roof. He is too close to the edge for Aoi's comfort. Aoi wouldn't have admitted in that moment that he was terrified of heights because he was still in the stage of trying to impress Uruha with everything that he wasn't really, as men sometimes did.
"I want to rent a room out here when they complete it. I don't like living inside the city." Uruha crouches down and then sits on the cold concrete, letting his legs dangle over the edge and Aoi knows he will have to join him or risk Uruha finding something better to play with. He settles down beside Uruha, sidling close so that their arms and their thighs press against one another, trading body heat and beneath that, the stirrings of lust and human needs.
"I can think up here, it's so quiet, not like the inner city. " Uruha's voice is hushed and Aoi feels a hand slip into the side pocket of his jacket. Uruha hadn't brought gloves and Aoi can feel the cold of his fingers seeping through the fabric. It's comforting in a way. Despite his fear of heights, he has to admit that it was beautiful here in a quiet sort of way. Unfinished buildings had a charm to them, not the dilapidated mystery of old crumbling buildings with too much history, but of empty skeletons, waiting to be filled with the pulse of human life and all the pain and triumph and struggles they came with.
"You come here alone?" Aoi asks, already knowing the answer, but wanting Uruha to say it aloud, to admit that Aoi was the first to step into this territory with him. Aoi had always been cursed with the greediness of his sex, the need to be the first, to be everything, to have everything. He'd planted his footprint here on Uruha's space and somehow that seemed significant.
"I like you, Aoi." Uruha suddenly mutters, and when Aoi turns to glance at Uruha in surprise, Uruha is watching him curiously, as if waiting for some sort of dramatic reaction to his confession. Maybe he'd thought Aoi would run, because that's what most guys did once they'd gotten what they wanted in the backseat of their car.
"If you like me, don't fuck with me."
Aoi was used to Uruha's bluntness, the way in which he ran headfirst into anything and everything and hoped for the best. But Uruha's words held a real warning in them, a warning that told Aoi to run now if he was only playing around. And for the first time, he didn't feel the need to turn and kick up gravel.
In fact, if Uruha hadn't been looking at him so intensely he would have pressed closer. He wanted to press against Uruha until there wasn't any space left between them, the way their bodies molded when they were naked and needy against one another. It wasn't fair that they lived in these separate vessels, lonely and cold.
And Aoi knows that Uruha is the lonely type, the type that has hundreds of people saved into his phone and never returns a phone call, but instead goes off to sit on the edge of buildings at three in the morning to think. He is the type that rejects every hand that tries to touch him , every person who tries to get where Aoi is now, so close to Uruha's side that he imagines if he moved any closer, he would fall into Uruha and be lost.
People like Uruha didn't fall until they had something worth falling for, and when they did, there wasn't a way back. There was only a nothingness that couldn't filled any longer until madness settled in. So it was with people who gave everything in the face of nothing.
Don't fuck with me. Don't hurt me.
"People forget so easily," Uruha mutters, leaning more heavily against Aoi.
"One day you mean something to them, the next you're insignificant. Just a memory. Just a dot out there somewhere. It's terrifying." Uruha raises a finger and from where Aoi is leaning, one eye squinted closed, it looks as if a star is resting on the tip of Uruha's finger.
"I'm here with you now," Aoi murmurs, because he is here now, not back at the bar hitting up the usual suspects, the pretty boys that had always been Aoi's downfall. He is here with Uruha, cold and shivering on the edge of a gutted building, and he is happy for once. It is all he has to offer Uruha, this confirmation that he is here beside Uruha and he isn't going anywhere. It's the only sure thing Aoi has known in a long while.
He can hear a siren wailing somewhere in the distance and the sound is eerie and alien in the quiet of this place. Uruha looks away from him and leans back onto his hands, his face tilted up to the sky. When Aoi slides down to lie on his back, the cold from the concrete seeps into his skin, but it's only a momentary distraction. He's awed at how many stars he can see here that are usually hidden beneath the florescent lights of the city. It's almost frightening how small he feels beneath a sky that has no end. He feels Uruha lie down beside him and Uruha's body takes some of the cold away as he presses against Aoi's side.
"You don't have to promise me anything." Uruha's breath is warm against the curve of Aoi's ear, and the stars seem to wink at Aoi encouragingly. He loses himself in the vastness above him and beside him in all that Uruha symbolizes.
"Just be with me." There's the scent of cheap convenience store alcohol on Uruha's breath, alcohol that they had stood out in the streets drinking and laughing over earlier. Aoi's buzz had been killed hours ago by the cold walk over here, but he can tell that Uruha still feels good. Things become warmer with Uruha's body against his own and hands that spread the heat to more vital areas of Aoi's anatomy.
Uruha's fingers thread their way along the buttons of his jacket and he pulls on them while teeth scrape against the side of Aoi's ear. Aoi closes his eyes and he sees pinpoints of lights against his lids, ghost stars that fade to black when Uruha's warm tongue traces over his cold lips slowly. When his tongue follows Uruha's, he tastes beer, cigarettes, and bubble gum and smiles. It tastes like exactly where he needs to be.
When Aoi pulls his hands away from his face, the fan is still spinning slowly above him, circulating hot air onto his skin and Kazuki has shifted against him, his face now buried in the crook of Aoi's neck. Uruha had never gotten the apartment on the outskirts of the city. He'd grown out of those youthful dreams and grown into the business of the band, living in the city with the rest of them for convenience. Responsibility over freedom in more ways than what consisted of the band. Had Uruha changed, or had Aoi been the one changing all this time?
Aoi's hand slides against Kazuki's back as he let's Uruha's face fade back into the stillness of the room. That night on the roof seems tainted and warped as his fingers trace the sleeping lines of another man's face against his shoulder. Uruha would always deserve better and so Aoi wraps the better times in ribbons and lace and slides them back under the bed with their lost shoes and the dust, a place of dead and forgotten things.
XXIV.
Kazuki usually likes it in the small, dark spaces where harsh breathing and bruising fingers stand in for creased brows and faces painted with pleasure. Aoi almost prefers it here as well, hidden with his knee digging into the small of Kazuki's back as he fights with his belt.
Aoi finally gets the belt loose and unzips his pants. The sound of the zipper is loud and urgent and condemning in the cramped hallway. The light above him had seen it's last day years ago Aoi was sure, and the light at the other end of the hallway is yellowed and near to death as well, flickering like the light in the live house the night Kazuki had started this game.
Aoi likes the deprivation of sight because it heightens the sense of touch. When Kazuki wrestles Aoi's knee out of his back and presses his mouth to Aoi's shuddering stomach, the warm wetness there is amplified tenfold. Aoi groans and the back of his head hits the wall behind him. If he could see, he would catch the quirk of Kazuki's eyebrow, and the smug tilt of pink pierced lips, the look he's well acquainted with by now.
It's easy enough when Kazuki's hand slips into Aoi's pants and his mouth follows like the greedy thing that it is, to let Aoi's mind separate from his body. It's easy to pretend here that he isn't a person with morals or a person with a boyfriend waiting for him at home, or even a person at all, just a mass of writhing pleasure....just a body at the mercy of someone else's sins. With the feeling of Kazuki's mouth on his cock, the small fingers pressing into his hip hard enough to bruise, there is only one thought left in Aoi's mind;
Kazuki would always swallow.
XXV.
"You keep your little bitch away from me, Aoi. Keep him away because I swear I'm going to rip his throat out the next time he talks to me." Uruha is livid, his face red and his hands where they're fisted into Aoi's shirt are trembling. He pushes Aoi away from him and begins to pace the room, from one wall to the next like a caged animal as Aoi tries to wrack his brain for excuses he hasn't already used yet. He can't imagine what Kazuki has said this time to throw Uruha into a fit, but then Uruha was easy to piss off these days and Kazuki was good at baiting and Aoi was just good at letting it all happen.
"You're lucky I haven't gutted him by now," Uruha growls, heading to the familiar cabinet in the kitchen, the one used for emergencies and times like this when Uruha is murderous and seeing red.
"Who are you talking about, Uru?" The usual idiotic question when Aoi has nothing better to come up with. He wants to stop Uruha, to put his hand over the cabinet door and lock it back up and hide the key. Though he was sure that Uruha would be at it with a screwdriver the next time Aoi fucked something up again. It was easier trying to drown himself in alcohol than to leave.
"Oh drop the act, Aoi," Uruha scoffs, hands wrapped lovingly around an unopened bottle of some clear concoction that was sure to knock Uruha on his ass for the evening. Uruha's past time of drinking has spiraled into something messy and unhealthy with Aoi as the culprit. Uruha's fingers are shaking as he takes the time to pour the liqueur into a cup, an odd thing to do when they both knew he was going to down the entire bottle and then some. The lip of the bottle clinks against the glass as he tries to hold it steady and the sound is grating.....depressing. The air around Aoi feels oppressive, his head heavy and stuffed with cotton. The collar of his shirt is damp and he pulls it away from his neck and swallows through the tightness in his throat.
"Could you tell Aoi thank you for the jam session yesterday evening?" Uruha suddenly says in a mocking tone, an ugly caricature of Kazuki's higher pitched voice. His eyes look at Aoi in disgust as he tips the glass back and downs the entire thing in one long swallow before slamming the glass back down to the counter between them. The counter acts as a barrier as Uruha leans over it and suddenly he isn't human anymore, just an angry face staring back at Aoi in rage. The wildness in Uruha that had drawn Aoi in in the beginning has become something morbid and bitter, and Aoi shrinks back in the face of it.
"So much for working all night on your computer. Where is the fucking piece you promised me? The one you've been working on every night this week. Show it to me. I want to see it." Uruha curls his fingers and then holds his hand out insistently between them.
"Stop it, Uru." Aoi swallows hard again. He suddenly wants to lie down, to bury his head beneath a pillow and never come out. Maybe he'd suffocate himself, but then that would be the easy way out, the coward's way out, and Uruha would only hate him more for it.
"Show it to me now," Uruha demands, leaning forward and thrusting his hand closer to where his fingers brush Aoi's chest. There is something carnal in the way Uruha leans against the counter, his hair a golden lion's mane around a face that is still pretty even in fury. Pretty would be the death of Aoi in the end. He was beginning to hate pretty things and the way they always fell into his hands just so he could tear them apart.
"I don't have it," Aoi mutters between gritted teeth.
"That's what I thought." A low derisive laugh comes from the back of Uruha's throat as he sweeps the bottle of alcohol up by it's neck and turns to walk away from Aoi.
"Uru-" He begins to utter, but he knows better than to follow as Uruha waves his hand in the air dismissively, not even turning to look at Aoi as he walks away.
"There's something wrong with you, Aoi. I don't know who you are anymore. Go away. Do whatever the hell you do when I'm not around. I'm going to be busy this week." Busy killing himself slowly. Aoi frowns and it's all he can do to keep himself pinned against the counter because his legs want to give out on him. They want to bring him to the ground and keep him there. He watches as Uruha disappears into his bedroom and slams the door. He knows that if he tries to follow, it will be locked against him.
TBC...