Relax, My Beloved, 2/2, the GazettE, Reita/Uruha/Aoi
Title: Relax, My Beloved
Author: losseflame
Chapters: 2/2
Genre: Slice of Life, Angst, Romance, AU
Warnings: internalized homophobia, whoompy!asthmatic!Aoi, potential triggers for self harm, eating disorders and suicide attempts
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Uruha/Aoi, Reita/Aoi, Uruha/Reita, Reita/Aoi/Uruha, Ruki/Kai, Aoi/Yune (sort of)
Synopsis: But then, no one in their little group is anything close to normal. They’re manic depressive art students and co-dependant alkies and self-hating closet cases, so really, what’s a small-town boy in a big city with dreams like wildfire?
Comments: So I found this, half-finished, in the depths of my computer, and I decided to finish it. C:
Part 1
Tries, here being the operative word, because once he starts going lightheaded and the warped view of his bathroom ceiling starts to go fuzzy, he remembers the way Kai grabs his wrist before he leaves, asking Aoi to please be well until Kai sees him again. The way Ruki cuffs him over the head and gifts him with things like sunglasses or weed or chocolate when Aoi’s had a shitty day at work. The way Reita looks at him sometimes, like all the pieces have clicked into place and Reita understands.
The way Uruha first smiled at him in the train station, after he put his hand over Aoi’s and asked him to join the band.
It’s re-directing a hurricane or climbing a mountainside or running for ten miles without stopping, but Aoi manages to lift his hands to the side of the bathtub and curl them over the edge, lifting himself to the surface.
His lungs burn more once there’s air in them, and he coughs, hooking his abdomen over the bathtub and hanging there, too tired to do much else. Finally, finally, he places trembling hands on the ground and heaves himself out of the bathtub, crashing to the ground.
The breaths sound wracked and broken and edging on an animalistic whine, and it makes him think of the sad, betrayed sound his mother made when she opened the door to his bedroom to see Yune whispering sweet nothings, makes him think of the first few minutes of an asthma attack, when your chest first starts going tight and panic buzzes like cicadas in high noon through the inside of your skull.
It hurts enough that Aoi wonders if it would have been better if he just stayed in the water, but his muscles are uselessly loose and his eyesight is swimming with exhaustion and soap grime, so before he can decide if he’s going to crawl back to the tub, he falls asleep.
.:.:.
When Aoi wakes up, he is cold and wet and shivering and someone is pounding at the door, calling his name loudly.
Aoi ignores them as he gingerly slides to his feet, stumbling out of the bathroom as his muscles seize. He finds his inhaler, takes two puffs, strips out of his clothes, goes back to the washroom and starts draining the tub.
By this point, the person has left, and Aoi sighs tiredly, thinks of sleeping pills and razors at the wrong (right) angle and tall buildings with no safety rails. Then he slips on sweatpants and a t-shirt he took from Reita and never gave back, falling into his bed and tugging the covers up to his chin, thinking of when once-upon-a-time his mother told him he could create anything, be anyone, do anything, and she’d love him forever.
He wishes she said love anyone, too.
.:.:.
Aoi falls into a certain routine after a couple days, his phone turned off and his door locked and his fridge stocked enough that he doesn’t have to leave for at least another week if he starts up his old eating habits of barely eating anything at all.
It’s probably (definitely) not healthy, Aoi thinks, but he doesn’t want to see anyone, doesn’t want to deal with questions or small talk or the betrayed light he’s probably going to see for being, in Uruha’s words, ‘a little bit of a bitch’.
So he watches bad daytime TV with the lights off, cleans his house, avoids the door when someone starts knocking, covers his ears when the person knocking starts talking.
He’s acting a bit like a five year old if he’s being honest, but honesty is no longer his policy and probably never will be again, so he just ignores this fact in favour of watching a re-run of a show that was bad the first time around.
.:.:.
Uruha wakes him up by poking his shoulder repeatedly, and Aoi groans and curls tighter into the foetal position on his bed, trying to bury his head into his pillows unsuccessfully. “What the fuck, Uruha.” He doesn’t grace the sentence with a question mark, pressing his hands against his face and rolling away from the hands that are now trying to get him into a semi-vertical position.
“The band took a poll and we decided that enough was enough.” Uruha says by way of explanation, and Aoi wants to hit something as much as he wants to find a corner to curl up and hide in.
He doesn’t look in Uruha’s direction, still keeps his hands curled into his hair, hiding his face. The mentality is childish - if I can’t see it, it’ll go away - but right now it’s all he has going for him. “How did you even get in?”
“I picked the locks.” Uruha says simply, the bare-faced honesty he’s been showing Aoi since day one going a bit brighter, a bit more obvious.
“Where’s Reita?” Aoi asks, because where there is Uruha there is usually Reita.
“Right now? He’s crashing on the couch to make sure that you’re eating and showering and generally being human until you’re ready to face the world. Oh, and we brought more groceries, by the way.” He doesn’t say ‘we know you haven’t been eating enough’, but the silence implies it, and Aoi curls up tighter.
Uruha pauses for a moment, before grabbing Aoi’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go out for a bit. No one else will be around, I promise.”
Finally, Aoi cracks open an eye and looks at the clock. “It’s four in the fucking morning, Uruha, what the fuck. No.” He sits up, faces Uruha, and is secretly grateful it’s dark enough they can’t make real eye contact. “I’m not going anywhere, okay?”
There’s a beat before Uruha speaks again. “Please, Aoi.” His voice is flat, no humour lightening it, none of the stickysweet concern Aoi was expecting. “Let’s just…find some place.”
Aoi feels like screaming and he feels like cutting and he feels like something dark and hungry is eating away at his organs, but he curls his shoulders forwards as a pre-emptive little shield and nods. “Fine.”
Uruha lets out a laugh, bright and clear, and reaches for the hem of Aoi’s (Reita’s) shirt as he starts talking a mile a minute, giving Aoi a blow for blow account of what happened in the days that he ‘hasn’t been around’. Aoi cringes away from the fingers as they start to lift, throwing down his arms to grab at Uruha’s wrists.
“Don’t.” Aoi has scars there, crisscrossing lines of damaged flesh across his stomach and ribs. He has scars and he wants too much, wants too wrong, wants Uruha to be taking off his shirt in another way entirely, not just because Aoi hasn’t changed in four days because he’s been too busy sulking like child.
Another pause as Uruha freezes, a bare half-inch of Aoi’s skin showing. “Okay. I’ll be waiting outside.” And then he’s letting go and leaving the room, which is what Aoi wanted in the beginning. Only now Uruha has the expectation that Aoi will follow him.
Aoi snarls and curls his arms over his head and thinks about the razor in the bottom of his messenger bag, thinks about letting the darkness out before realizing it’d take too long. So he grits his teeth and whines before changing clothes quickly, keeping his eyes averted from his abdomen and thighs as he does so.
.:.:.
Uruha takes him to a cheap 24 hour faux-diner, and Aoi stares at the cracked floors gone a sickly green in the flickering florescent glare of the lights as Uruha orders for the both of them, the waiter snapping his gum the entire time.
Aoi gets a plate of toast, eggs, and bacon set in front of him, and he feels his stomach squirm uncomfortably at the sight, nausea creeping under his tongue as he contemplates taking a bite.
He keeps staring, the cuts on his thighs itching and the darkness writhing in his veins and his mouth already filling with spit for puking up whatever he eats later. Something snaps, crumples, and Aoi puts his elbows on the table and rests his forehead on his hands. “I can’t eat this, Uruha, I can’t -” His voice goes choked, so he bites his tongue.
One of his hands gets taken between both of Uruha’s, and Uruha presses his mouth to Aoi’s knuckles once. “Just try. Just some toast.”
Aoi sucks in a breath. “You think you’re helping when you do that, but you’re not, Uruha, okay, you’re making it worse, you…” He trails off, biting his lip.
Uruha kisses his knuckles again. “You don’t have to hate yourself for liking this.”
And, of course, naturally Uruha noticed, it was probably the first thing that popped up in his head when he saw Aoi.
Aoi chokes on air, and it’s like an asthma attack only worse, because Uruha’s eyes are button-bright as they hold Aoi’s, and his smile is sugar-sweet as he links their fingers together. “Just try.” He says again.
Aoi gets down a piece of toast and a bite of eggs before he dry heaves and pushes the plate away from him, angling his head so he can’t see it anymore. Uruha, still holding his hand, gets up and tugs Aoi with him, walking back to the apartment with their hands linked.
There’s no one on the street, so Aoi doesn’t feel the paranoia he did with Yune as they walk on cracked pavement, Uruha swinging their hands back and forth and whistling.
When they get to the door, Aoi opens his mouth, tries to think of something to say.
‘Thank you’ is inadequate and also not really applicable to the situation. He closes his mouth, opens it again, and Uruha laughs before leaning in and kissing Aoi on the forehead. “Catch you later.” He whisper-grins, and turns on his heel, sashaying down the sidewalk like he owns it.
Aoi spends at least a minute watching him go before opening the door and letting himself in.
.:.:.
Reita is waiting for him when he gets in, and Aoi avoids his eyes and shrugs, heading back to the bedroom.
He doesn’t try to stop Aoi, and Aoi would probably be more grateful for that if Reita didn’t start knocking on his bedroom door every time Reita deemed it acceptable to eat and wouldn’t stop knocking until Aoi left the room. The first time, Aoi had gone with the ‘if I ignore it, it will stop’ approach, but fifteen minutes of rhythmic knocking later had him flinging open the door angrily.
“You’re insufferable.” He hisses, and Reita just smiles, warm and easygoing.
“I’ve been friends with Uruha since we were in diapers. You aren’t going to be able to wait me out, trust me.” Reita shrugs, and Aoi punches him in the shoulder.
.:.:.
The second time, it only took seven minutes before Aoi opened the door, and he takes the plate of food and tries to close the door again. Reita catches it with his hand, and Aoi lets out a snarl.
“Uruha said to make sure I actually see you eat something.” Reita says, and Aoi feels that same piece of him that broke with Uruha - that had just started to build itself back up again - collapse in on itself. His eyebrows twitch up, his eyes burn, and he turns his head to the side, raising one hand to block his face.
Reita steps forwards, uses one hand to push Aoi’s hand down and the other to hold his chin. Delicately, Reita turns Aoi’s face towards his. “It’s okay.” Aoi meets his eyes, which are clear, content, non-judgemental. “Aoi, it’s fine, really. You don’t even have to eat that much.”
Aoi manages to eat half his serving sitting on the floor of his bedroom with Reita before he stands up, walks to the bathroom, sticks his fingers down his throat and pukes it up.
Reita holds his hair out of his face and doesn’t say anything afterwards as Aoi washes his hands and brushes his teeth again.
.:.:.
The third time, Aoi opens his door on the first knock and goes to sit at the kitchen table. Reita grins, and it’s like the slow movement of magma compared to Uruha’s wildfire smile.
Aoi takes six bites before he pushes the plate away, and as he turns to go back to his room, Reita catches his hand. “Do you want to watch some TV with me?” The hold is loose enough that Aoi could break away with no trouble, but Reita’s eyes are pleading.
They settle on the couch to watch soccer, and carefully, so carefully, like Aoi is silk stretched over glass, Reita puts his arm around Aoi’s shoulders and tucks him into Reita’s side.
It takes more than an hour, but eventually, slowly, the tension drips out of Aoi’s muscles, and he stops pressing his hands to his sides like it’ll hide anything. Just as cautiously, Aoi leans his head against the side of Reita’s neck, curling his fingers in the hem of Reita’s sweater because Reita is warm and strong and there, and Aoi is cold and weak and just a little lonely.
Reita makes a pleased noise is the back of his throat and presses a kiss to Aoi’s forehead.
Aoi figures it must be an UruhaAndReita thing.
.:.:.
He doesn’t go back to his bedroom afterwards, dozing against Reita as the noise of the TV fuzzes into nonsensicality. Reita keeps his arm curled around Aoi’s shoulder and his head tilted back enough Aoi has enough room to use him as a pillow, and when Aoi wakes up a couple hours later, he feels the barest stirrings of hunger in the pit of his belly.
Aoi makes sure to hide his smile in the skin of Reita’s neck, because it feels delicate, fragile, and he doesn’t want to expose it to the world just yet.
After a few moments, Reita shifts, blinking twice as he wakes up himself.
“Yo.” He stretches the word out, looking down at Aoi with both eyebrows raised, waiting. Patient.
“Hello.” Aoi says, and it’s not anything like a real conversation but it says more than an essay ever could.
Reita grins.
.:.:.
Aoi repeats multiple times that he needs a little more time, at least a few more days, that eating an entire PopTart and keeping it down doesn’t make him ready (Reita doesn’t ask him what he needs to be ready for, and it’s times like this when Aoi thinks that maybe Reita is what everyone else needs to be like), and Reita nods and grins and grabs Aoi into hugs at random intervals.
“Take as long as you need.” Is the most Reita contributes aside from comments about last night’s soccer match and musings about whether birds would make good pets.
There’s something nervous tangled up in Aoi’s ribcage and something dark hiding in between the tremble of his hands, but there’s also hunger in his stomach and want in his fingertips, and Aoi thinks that that’s close enough to bravery for him. He eats and he sleeps and the razor stays at the bottom of his messenger bag, relevant but not necessary, and he thinks that when he leaves his apartment to go to band practice with Reita tomorrow, the first thing he’s going to do is ask Uruha to go somewhere with him.
Not because Uruha is sulking like a child or because Aoi needs the company, but because he wants to hold Uruha’s hand as they walk down the street and kiss his knuckles and maybe do more, later. Maybe let Uruha see his scars because Aoi’s verging on sure that Uruha won’t think him ugly for them.
Hope runs in his bloodstream parallel to fear when he tells Reita that they’re going to Uruha’s the next day, and Reita’s eyes crease as he smiles, reaching for Aoi like Aoi’s seen him to do Uruha and dragging him into a smothering hug.
“Can I call Uruha to tell him that, please? That would make him happy.” Reita asks, quietly. “It’d make everyone happy, Aoi.”
And Aoi is scared and hopeful and not as lonely as he used to be, leaning against Reita and thinking that maybe Reita is just a little wonderful, trying to hide a smile in his shoulder and failing miserably.
.:.:.
It’s the middle of the night, and Aoi is in his room to sleep for the first time in a couple days, the pillows not seeming nearly as comfortable as the crook of Reita’s neck, and he hears the door to his apartment creep open, the hinges screeching quietly.
Aoi frowns, panic starting to hum in the back of his throat when he thinks about what he’s going to do tomorrow when Reita isn’t there, but then he hears a quick, near silent whisper. “So I figured I’d crash with you and be part of the welcome committee in the morning.”
And then the hum goes from panic to something else entirely, because that’s Uruha’s voice, Uruha is in his apartment, and all Aoi has to do is open the door and step out if he wants to see him. He breathes out across the empty space of the bed, thinks about what the bed would look like if someone’s in it with him, and decides that that’s just what he’s going to do.
In a few minutes, is all.
“Awesome. He’ll be good with that, I think.” Reita whispers back, the sound soft and comfortable. “He’s asleep right now, though.”
Uruha laughs breathily, quietly, and Aoi feels the sound like a punch to his gut. If punches to the gut suddenly became pleasant. “Well, we have a long night ahead of us, then.”
There’s a creak as Uruha sits down, presumably on the couch, and all of the surrounding noise of the apartment is lost to the sound of Aoi’s heartbeat in his ears, wrangling up the energy to get up and get out, to say he woke up when Uruha got in, to sit near him and talk.
It’s not all he wants, but he’s not so horrible with people that he doesn’t realize that asking someone out in front of another person could be considered bad form. So for another few minutes, he curls around himself, pressing one hand to his chest and the other to his smile, before sliding off the bed and walking towards the door.
His feet are bare and the hinges are oiled, so he’s quiet when he opens the door and steps outside his bedroom, heading down the short hallway to the living room.
It turns out he shouldn’t have bothered, though, because -
Because when he looks into the living room, he sees Uruha with his head thrown back and his legs curled around Reita’s waist, Reita’s arms around Uruha and his mouth biting Uruha’s neck. And Uruha makes a soft, muffled noise when Reita rolls his hips, pleading and sweet and terribly, hideously affectionate.
And he should have expected this. Seen this coming from the smiles Uruha and Reita have just for each other, for the very fact that there is an UruhaAndReita.
He should have expected this.
Aoi freezes for a moment, something cold and hard solidifying in his chest as he turns around and walks back to his bedroom, just as quiet as he was the first time. He closes the door and thinks about the razor, still tucked away, before pressing his face into the pillows on his bed and screaming.
He won’t go back to what he was doing before, he won’t, but Aoi thinks he’s allowed this, allowed to muffle screams and twist his fingers into his sheets like he’s trying to break something.
It feels a little like dying, to be honest.
.:.:.
Eventually, he falls asleep, and it’s to him straining his ears to see if he can catch anymore sounds coming from his living room.
.:.:.
Eventually, he wakes up, and it’s to Uruha jumping on his bed and flinging himself next to Aoi, smiling at him quick and bright. “You ready for the day?” He asks, before pausing, frowning, and looking closer at Aoi. “Are you okay?”
Aoi’s not sure what he looks like, but he figures his eyes are red and his lips are swollen from how hard he’d been biting and when he looks down at his wrists there are angry, dull scratches from his nails covering them. “I had a nightmare.” His voice is dull, and slowly he drags his lips up into something like a smile. “But I’m fine. I’m ready for the day.”
Uruha looks at him for a few seconds, his expression worried, before he nods, slowly. “I’ll let you get changed, then.”
He walks out of the room and before the door clicks shut Aoi hears Uruha say “I thought you said he was doing a lot better”.
Aoi doesn’t hear Reita’s response.
He sits at the side of the bed for a moment, rolling his shoulders, lacing his hands together and then unlacing them, but he can only do that before Uruha and Reita start to worry. So he heaves himself to his feet and dresses in plain jeans and a plainer t-shirt, shrugging on an oversized sweater he belatedly realizes is one of Reita’s.
For a moment he wonders how petty it would be to burn it, but then he remembers soccer games and quiet conversations and smothering hugs and shudders once, because he has no one to resent for the situation he’s in except himself.
It’s becoming a pattern, really.
Aoi presses his lips together and resolves to make it through the day with no visible breakdowns, and after he swings his messenger bag over his shoulder he shoves his hand to the bottom, running the pad of his thumb over the smooth edge of his razor and thinking about how much better he’d feel if he had enough time to use it. Taking his hand out, he pushes open the door and walks to the kitchen, where Uruha and Reita are sitting at the table, heads angled close together as they talk in quiet tones.
Yeah, Aoi should have expected it.
“I’m ready to go.” He says, clearing his throat. They both look up and survey him from where he stands in the doorway, and Uruha’s eyes soften as he grins.
“Alrighty, then. Let’s do this.” He stands up and brushes by Aoi, grabbing his hand and squeezing as Uruha walks by. Aoi takes in a sharp breath, hates the little knife-twist of pain under his ribcage, and steps back, away from the contact.
Uruha frowns and turns his head to the side, two steps away from Aoi but still close enough to reach him. Aoi shrugs and looks down at the floor. Carefully, Uruha opens the door and takes the first step outside, standing to the side to let Aoi by. Before Aoi has a chance, Reita walks beside him and taps his wrist.
“You can take another day if you need it.” He mutters, inclining his head to the door. “No pressure.”
And Aoi wants to laugh and to cry and maybe shove someone in front of a train, because it’s not fair.
But he learned life wasn’t fair a long time ago, when his older brother got smiles and praise and Aoi got chilly expectations for better results for the same accomplishments. So he squares his shoulders and raises his chin and looks Reita in the eye when he says he’s ready. Reita holds Aoi’s eyes for a beat longer than necessary, like he’s trying to figure out if Aoi’s lying, but eventually nods and puts a hand to the small of Aoi’s back as they both walk towards the door.
Uruha’s eyes flicker with something Aoi can’t name as he watches this, but he can guess, can guess what Reita’s closeness might look like to someone else. Aoi smiles at Reita and takes a few quick steps forwards to distance himself from the hand on his back.
For all that he’s angry, hurt, tired of the whole damn thing, he still wants Uruha to be happy.
He sort of wishes it was with him, but he’d also wished that he and Yune would stay together forever.
.:.:.
When he gets to Uruha’s apartment, Ruki steps up to Aoi and puts his hands on Aoi’s shoulders. “I don’t know what your issues are, alright, I really don’t, but let’s get this cleared up right now: don’t do that again. You are the only person who reads proper literature here, for fuck’s sake. I refuse to lose you to emotional issues.” Ruki rolls his eyes, stark from how they’re lined with kohl, and shoves a plastic baggie of weed into Aoi’s hand. “Cheer the fuck up, emo kid.” With that, he nods resolutely like the issue is solved, pats Aoi on the shoulders, and sits down again.
It’s bitchy and insensitive and also probably exactly what Aoi needed to hear, because he smiles and for the first time since he woke up it doesn’t feel fake.
Kai just smiles serenely from his seat at the drum set and says that he hopes Aoi is doing well, like the last time they saw each other was two days ago instead of two and a half weeks. Aoi feels some tension leave his shoulders and he shrugs. “I’m doing alright.”
And Kai, because Kai is more likely an angel or a faerie or something than a human, meets Aoi’s eyes with something open and kind smeared across his features. “It makes me very happy to hear that.” His eyes are relieved and pleased and his voice is achingly sincere, and Aoi pats him on the shoulder awkwardly before going to sit next to Ruki, leaving the loveseat for Uruha and Reita.
Aoi swallows the lump in his throat as he watches them settle beside one another, hands brushing for just a second. Really, now that he’s aware of it, all he can see are the little signs that pointed towards this since the first time he’d seen them together.
It’s typical that Aoi would go for the guy who already met his soulmate.
Ruki nudges him after chatter picked up and jerks his head towards the loveseat with a questioning frown, pursing his lips. Aoi shakes his head, and Ruki examines him for a second with a critical look, eyes clear and razorblade sharp, before shrugging and pulling a nail file out of his bag, holding out one hand for inspection.
Sometimes Aoi thinks that if he knew Ruki before, he never would have needed the cuts in the first place. Ruki’s expressions are enough.
As they band continues to not practice and talk instead, Aoi notices Ruki’s quick glances up to Kai, something hungry and desperate and maybe a little needy glinting in his eyes, before he looks back down to the task at hand equally as quickly. Sometimes, ever so often, one of Ruki’s glimpses comes close to interceding with one of Kai’s furtively curious looks, wanting and lost as they land on Ruki. Aoi raises his eyebrows just slightly, an empty ache starting in his chest even as he lets the corners of his lips curl up.
When Kai is dragged into a debate over parrots with Uruha and Reita, Aoi kicks Ruki lightly in the shin, and receives a vicious, ‘bitch, I will cut you’ glare. Aoi tilts his head in Kai’s direction and raises his eyebrows, letting his smile grow just a little bit bigger. Ruki’s glare freezes, crumples, and reveals a panicked look.
You should do it, Aoi mouths, and Ruki shakes his head once, a tiny spasm from side to side. He likes you too.
Ruki does a double take at that, looking at Kai as he waves his hands vaguely to make a point in the argument the other three are having. Aoi raises his eyebrows again and shrugs, and Ruki tenses for a moment, pressing his lips together. Then he nods once, jerkily, and Aoi presses a hand to his mouth to hide his smile.
Uruha gazes at them curiously, his interest apparently lost in whatever Reita and Kai are talking about now, and Ruki flips him off. It makes Uruha laugh, leaning against Reita as he does so, and Aoi looks away.
Fingers circle around his wrist, and Aoi is surprised to find a hand with perfectly filed nails there. Ruki squeezes once, giving him a hard, understanding look, his eyes saying that he knows the feeling but the rest of him as perfectly composed as always.
He knows - more than that, he knows about Aoi, and maybe Aoi is expecting panic or shame or embarrassment, but Ruki is a person incapable of feeling pity and is pretty inept at sympathy, too. So instead it just feels a little freeing, and when Ruki lets goes of his wrist, Aoi lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
This, he thinks, surveying the room filled with five dropouts, cigarette smoke, and enough unspoken words to fill a book, is the beginning of the rest of his life.
It’s depressing, but only a little.
.:.:.
They’re frequenting one of their favourite low-cost restaurants, the one with stains on the floor that look suspiciously rusty and a battalion of street-smart, no-bullshit, badly permed waitresses that wear green cotton-polyester blend uniforms and steel-toed shoes, it is three weeks after Aoi made his return to the world, and he is in the midst of having a revelation.
It’s not particularly earth-shattering, and if he were to write it out it wouldn’t get any awards, but it loosens a knot in his chest and lets him join in on the laughter that streaks the air.
He’s alright with Uruha’s friendship.
This eye-opener occurs to him when Uruha nudges Aoi’s ankle with his foot after Aoi spaces out, bringing him back into the conversation with a smile and a quick, teasing “Don’t let me loose you to the inside of your head, bro”. And Uruha is sitting next to Reita and they are probably holding hands under the table in a fit of quiet romanticism, but the both of them are looking at Aoi with something like love in their eyes.
It’s not the kind of love Aoi wants from Uruha and it’s not the kind of love he thinks he deserves from Reita, but it’s there and they’re happy and Aoi isn’t as sad as he used to be.
He grins back at Uruha, meeting his eyes after avoiding them for weeks, and he takes a moment to feel guilty at the pleased surprise Uruha shows before Uruha starts to smile twice as bright.
The world goes on, Aoi thinks, sort of distantly, and when Ruki catches his eyes at the end of the night, Ruki nods once, like he knows this feeling, too.
The world goes on, and Aoi isn’t going to let it pass him by anymore.
.:.:.
They’re a week out of winter and the air is just starting to go thick and useless in Aoi’s lungs when Ruki sweeps into band practice with dramatic flare and announces that he’s got them a gig.
It isn’t big, fifteen minutes of playing time to open for a band than really isn’t popular enough to be opened for in the first place, but it’s the most they’ve ever gotten and Aoi can feel the excited tension start to build in the air, and no one says anything for a few minutes after the announcement until Kai breaks into a sweet smile.
“I suppose we’ll have to actually start practicing now, won’t we? And possibly come up with a name.” He says, and his voice is carefully controlled, happiness thrumming at the edges of his words but not overwhelming them.
“I already took care of the name.” Ruki flips open his ever-present sketchbook, and on one page, The GazettE is scrawled across the empty space in stylized writing, beautiful and viciously sharp and ever so slightly overdone.
Not unlike Ruki himself.
“I like it.” Aoi says, and he means it.
.:.:.
The gig is just the right kind of a train wreck, leaving people screaming their names and howling with hyped-up, chemically enhanced laughter.
Aoi stumbles off stage and thinks, off-hand, that perhaps letting Ruki get trashed before performing is one of the best-worst things anyone has ever done, ever, scraping hair back from his face with one hand and smearing the eyeliner Ruki had attacked him with as he does so. At least Aoi kept himself just barely baked, high enough to get a boost in confidence but sober enough to keep his balance as he walked. He lets out a whoop of laughter, feeling strung out and electrified, his nerves snapping with spare energy. Reita, bare inches from Aoi’s side, laughs as well, and captures Aoi’s hand with his own, squeezing gently.
Reita’s hand is hot and callused and Aoi is not sober enough to avoid shivering at the feel - he gets horny when he’s high, alright?
“Come with me.” Reita breathes, not exactly stone cold himself, and Aoi giggles as Reita starts to lead him out of the backstage area, staggering into an empty dressing room and letting Aoi lurch in after him.
“What’s up?” Aoi asks, stretching his free hand out and letting Reita crowd him against a wall, head spinning in all the right ways.
“Yo.” Reita says, stretching the word out and putting one hand on Aoi’s cheek and letting the other drag up Aoi’s arm, leaving sparks under the skin.
A smile breaks out across Aoi’s face and he laughs. “Hello.”
And then Reita leans forwards and kisses him, biting lightly on Aoi’s bottom lip and pressing closer when Aoi gasps. It’s good, it’s so good, all heat and slow, steady movements with the barest hints of roughness, of the kind of strength Aoi couldn’t really fight against, to them, and Aoi presses a leg between Reita’s legs as his hands go up to twine in Reita’s hair, still rough from bleach.
It’s only when one of Reita’s hands migrate down, under, and up to reach the bare skin of Aoi’s sides - of Aoi’s scars, and he’s not okay with people seeing those yet, he really fucking isn’t - that he realizes just what the hell they’re doing.
So he jerks back, swallowing a moan. “Uruha, what about him, what the fuck -”
“You’re really obtuse sometimes, you know that?” Uruha’s voice comes from the doorway, and Aoi jerks his head around to see Uruha looking at them with a smile, and -
Aoi’s just really confused at this point. “Um?” He tries to put a little space between himself and Reita, but Reita tightens his hands on the bare skin of Aoi’s waist, and one of his fingers brush against a scar.
Aoi curls up on himself, grabbing one of Reita’s wrists. “Don’t.” He says sharply, and Reita just grins, easyslow, and moves to kiss Aoi’s neck.
“You’re beautiful, Aoi.” Reita scrapes his teeth down the side of Aoi’s neck after those words, which is - lovely, wonderful, pushing away the edge of self-disgust Aoi was feeling like nobody’s business, but that still doesn’t really address the issue of Uruha and Reita and Aoi and whatever is happening right now.
The only thing that comes out of his mouth is a gasp, though, and Uruha smiles again at the sound, sidling forward and pushing Reita out of the way with a quick “stop hogging him, dumbass”.
Then he’s cupping Aoi’s face in his hands and pressing their lips together and it feels like every nerve in Aoi’s body has been transformed into a live wire. It’s everything that Aoi wanted it to be when he allowed himself his fantasies, shocking and demanding and a little bit forceful.
“Come home with us.” Uruha murmurs, kissing Aoi between each word. Reita has his arms around both of them at this point, and he’s alternating between sucking hickeys onto Uruha’s neck and dragging his teeth down Aoi’s.
And Aoi figures he should be asking a lot of questions right about now, the main one starting with ‘what’ and ending with ‘the fuck’, but this is what he wants, what he didn’t even realize he wanted until Reita kissed him the first time.
So he nods, frantically, and Uruha laughs before grabbing his and Reita’s hands and leading them out of the dressing room and back to Uruha’s apartment.
.:.:.
When Aoi wakes up, he is caught with Uruha facing him on one side and Reita pressed against his back, all three of them squeezed onto Uruha’s bed.
This is not the worst thing to wake up to, Aoi muses, if you wake up to it completely out of context.
But Aoi has the context, and he feels panic edge through him and anxiety trap his lungs in one position. Very slowly, he tries to disentangle himself from the other eight limbs he has surrounding him, only to have Reita clap one arm around his waist.
“Please stay.” Reita slurs, sleep still clinging to his words thickly.
“Do you…do you want me to, or…” Aoi says, nervousness making his voice loud and high. Uruha stirs next to him and groans, Aoi freezing at the sound.
“Of course we want you to,” He mutters, rolling his head into the pillow underneath him and keeping his eyes closed. “Why else would he say it? Now, will the both of you kindly shut up? It’s probably something like eight in the morning, there’s no reason to be awake.” He then throws one arm over Aoi’s waist, just like Reita did, and goes still again.
Reita grins, Aoi feeling it on the back of his neck, and stretches his other arm out underneath Aoi’s ribs to grasp at Uruha’s free hand.
Aoi is not reassured by this. “Alright, okay, you guys have that soulmate telepathic mental link thing going on, so you two know what you want and how you want it but I’m out of the loop, so it would be really great if maybe you could -”
“For fuck’s -” Uruha starts, before cracking open one bloodshot eye and peering at Aoi. Aoi frowns back at him. Uruha sighs, like he can’t believe he has to explain something so obvious, and raises his hand off of Aoi’s waist to gesture at the air. “This is you,” he points at Aoi, “This is me,” he points at himself, “This is Reita,” he pokes at the hand holding his, “And this is us.” He waves his arm around in a vague circle. “I think it’s safe to say that we’re all happy where we are, and will continue to be happy if we find ourselves in similar positions, and - Jesus, Aoi, can we just have you here? Can that just…” Uruha trails off. “I’ve wanted it for a while.”
Reita is nodding behind Aoi, and Aoi elbows him in the ribs. “You’re ruining the moment.” He says, and Reita nips at his shoulder.
“Stop being bitchy.” His voice is just a little rough with unspoken promise, and Aoi shivers because -
Well.
Uruha is smiling hopefully at him, and belatedly Aoi realizes it’s because he’s waiting for an answer.
“Yes, yeah, of course.” The words stumble out of his mouth clumsily, and Uruha grins before kissing him silent.
“Alright.” He nods. “Now, let’s go back to sleep. Once again, eight o’clock in the morning, and eight o’clock in the morning is something that happens to other people that aren’t me.”
So they go back to sleep.
(The razor in the bottom of Aoi’s messenger bag becomes largely irrelevant, and Aoi throws it away later that day.)
A/N: I originally thought that this was going to be 6000 words, tops. D8 Feedback makes an author happy~