Black & White - Ruki/Aki
Title: "Black & White"
Author: papermaskerade
Bands: the GazettE, SID.
Pairings: Ruki/Aki
Rating: PG-14/Light R.
Disclaimer: This didn't happen, I don't own the characters. This is just for fun and is a product of my own imagination.
Summary: Because sometimes the face we hate the most is the one we see in the mirror -- and because sometimes the one person we shouldn't trust is the one who knows us best.
Notes/Comments: Just something I wrote for my own little enjoyment. I'm not a GazettE-fandom dweller, but Aki and Ruki jive in this universe. AU, oneshot, sorta experimental in style. Universe is co-authored by/borrowed from diamond_fall.
Black & White - Ruki/Aki
The apartment is dark when he comes in, silent and cool like the grave. He doesn't expect anything else, never does - he's alone here, for the moment. He comes through the door with his head lowered, wind-blown and chilled from the autumn night. How long he's been wandering, he can't say - only that he left sometime before dinner and hasn't touched anything or anyone in hours. Leather gloves are tugged off slim hands and thrown down on the nearest surface as he swings the door shut behind him with a light kick. Weary eyes blink slowly, hidden behind dark lacquered frames and unmarred lenses that catch the scarce moonlight illuminating the smallest corner of his apartment - before he pries them from the bridge of his nose and throws them down carelessly on the table. The haze of silver light in his vision disappears and everything goes wispy-intangible around the edges - a world out of focus.
In the dark, that doesn't matter. There is nothing here, no one here; there are no witnesses to the lack of fight, the softened eyes. Wreathed in shadows, there is no one there is no one to see him slip slowly free of the heavy coat over sloping shoulders, the clink and weight of chains catching the dim light as they fall, twisted together with the leather. The drag of the gun hooked at his hip tugs a studded belt lower on petite hips, the additional presence of paired blades tucked carefully into holstered sheaths only pulling the band lower; he pulls them free, unhurried and lethargic as he sets them far out of easy reach on the dining room table. With the belt gone, the dark jeans cling to his thighs and hips in a relieved embrace, the tails of his gun-metal grey button-down pulled free in disheveled carelessness. His hair dips and twists, hanging before his eyes, but he can't be bothered to lift a hand and brush it away. He's tired, so damn tired, and the apartment is pressing in on him; he's fifty-thousand feet under water and the abyss is looming up on all sides.
But he's home - as home as he's going to get, and now he finally surrenders to the dull ache in his head, the restless exhaustion which saps all his strength. He's been walking for hours, one foot in front of the other, hands shoved deep in his pockets; he always makes a point to keep his eyes turned low, though he can't help but see everything. It's what he's good what, what he does. Observe. Even while he walks, drifting from place to place in this reflective, glass-and-light city, he sees everything. Tonight, wandering aimlessly beneath the glitter and the glow has burned broken bokehs behind his eyelids, but even still he navigates the dark distance between his front door and the bathroom unimpeded. Slow, careful - but without accident.
The bathroom door is cracked open - as he left it - and he pushes it open blindly with the flat of his hand, fingers curling against the panel in a barely-there flinch as he reached for the light switch with the careful, searching touch. Cool tile met his fingers, then satin-finished plaster; finally, neutral unyielding plastic. He stabbed at it with his thumb, trying for the millionth time to smother the life out of the mechanism.
Again he failed.
And again, light flooded into the bathroom, fluorescent and cruel, touching every imperfection and emphasizing it. The faint groan-and-buzz of false warmth encased in more plastic set into the ceiling above his head only adds to the fluttering-hornet noise making homespace in the hollow of his skull. He has plans for that light though - sometime soon, when he can find the will. There's a screwdriver in the drawer under the sink and a stepping stool somewhere in the apartment; the barely-there hum is a cacophony that catches in his ears - and it will end, one way or another.
But not tonight.
Tonight, he puts up with it - for the millionth time, for the ten-millionth. He tells himself he'll take care of it soon, always soon, but it's been another night and still it remains. Where the rest of the apartment has been pitched into blessed, silent, obscuring shadow, one light remains. He hates it with vivid distaste even as he leans against the porcelain edge of the countertop and hangs his head to catch a silent, barely-taken breath.
Damnit, he hated this place.
This, this place - the last bastion of his nightmares; the stomping ground of the enemy that will never fade, of a tormentor he can never beat back. It drinks in those lights, bathes in them - but this last source of false-glow, it remains.
Because against this enemy, of all of them, he is powerless.
Insidious, it lives and breathes in his lungs. Ever-watchful, it sees with his eyes; cunning, it speaks with his tongue - and vain, smirking with his lips. It clings to his skin like wet silk and wraps lies around his shoulders; veils of smoke cloud his expression and leave him scented like sin. It thrives in the light, basks in the glitter-glow - and moves him with all the deceptive grace of hell's own.
And that is what the enemy is - what the enemy has always been.
In the mirror, it smiles at him, wearing his face - and a smirk he'd never own up to. In the darkness there are no reflections; there are no lights, no center-stage. But this is the domain of another creature altogether and he feels the world tilt thirty-degrees on a different axis when he tries to focus, tries to summon words.
But he can't. What is there to say, to that person hiding behind the glass? Just above the solid and beneath the unreal, there's a figment of fiction staring him right in the eye and daring him to try.
To that face in the mirror - his face, for all its falsity - there's nothing to say.
That reflection in the glass is no more his own than the name he's been given, or the life he's living; all of it belongs to him - to it. Once, it used to be clear where he started and where Ruki left off - and now there are some days when he's not sure there's even a distinction anymore.
If the smug twist of Ruki's lips in the looking-glass is any indication, he is far beyond redemption. But he isn’t someone who gives in to fatalism with good grace. He'd rather close his eyes - or tear them out - than live day to day thinking the subtle innuendo written into that biohazard smile is anything close to truth.
"Why?" He hisses in the dead of the silence, "Why do they see you when they look at me?" His grip on the edge of the sink turns white-knuckled for the briefest second before his breath is slipping from his lips on a fanned exhale that goes nearly silent. "Why can't I be rid of you?"
Why can't I end you?
But the lips in the mirror don't answer him; no, instead, they continue to give him that you-fucking-wish expression - with his eyes too - and he curses under his breath as he pushes away from the porcelain counter.
The world shifts again around the edges - wavers and warps like there's something more to be seen, but his glasses are off and he doesn't want to fucking see any thing tonight. The shadows beyond the open doorway of the bathroom are darker than a moment before, dotted in star-points that made a constellation of a curving, inviting smile. And that smile is a bit too much like Ruki's for his taste - so maybe his words, when they come from the back of his tongue to the forefront of his lips, maybe they're a bit sharper than he intends.
"I thought it was agreed that we shouldn't socialize," he might have half-growled it, but the sounds fell a bit flat - because as annoyed as he was, it never did him any good with this intruder. "As I recall, that means you shouldn't be here..."
The moment of silence isn't one of denial - neither one of them is going to pretend he's not there - but it is one of amusement. Even still. "Probably not," comes the barely-fazed reply, a low chuckle accompanying the words. Silver catches false-light and bounces it up around curving lips. "But that's never stopped me before..."
"Reckless."
"Paranoid," came the purred answer.
"Invasive," he retorted.
"Touchy."
Despite himself, a snort of reluctant amusement leaves him. "You're one to talk." He channels the will - ever so slowly - to stand upright, his eyes catching the reflection in the mirror just once more before they're tugged away. "You, who touches everyone but is so determined to remain untouched. Mister moonlight."
A low laugh and there's a body detaching from the shadows, stepping into the faint halo of light shining from the bathroom to wash over a body taller than his own, slim and wreathed in white silk; a dress, slipped over slim shoulders and hugging close to hips that swayed with too much flair to go unnoticed. Silver-streaked eyes and ribbons of nightfall hair against the subtle backdrop that is the pale luminescence of unblemished flesh; and those lips, bowed and tempting. "You know," came the murmured, velvety words, "I've always liked the way that epithet rolls off your tongue, Taka."
Takanori's lips tugged up at one corner in a wary, tired smile. "You like the way lots of things come off my tongue, Aki -- and above all else, your dick in particular." He falls back against the wall, casually, crossing his arms over his chest more to comfort himself than to ward off his uninvited visitor. Not that it would do a bit of good - because Aki doesn’t respect boundaries and probably never would.
And maybe that’s why Takanori doesn’t bother reinforcing the locks, of barring the windows - why he hasn’t killed Aki himself, or tried. Maybe it’s because he knows that it doesn’t matter what the rules say, what he says - Aki will come and he’ll invade; he’ll come with his moonlight smile and his melting-starshine eyes to claw his way under Takanori’s skin and be with him. For a few minutes, for a night - for a handful of stolen moments that defy definition. It’s for them, just them. For Aki, for Takanori. They come together that way. For a scant instant, in this place he hates - in this existence he both loathes and can’t live without - Aki is with him.
With him - not with the illusion that wears his face.
Because Takanori isn’t the only one who sees everything - and he doesn’t mind it so much, that way. Like he doesn’t mind the way Aki steps into the bathroom with a slow, cocky saunter that is half-invitation and all reckless attraction. A come-hither gaze that too often works dark magic on tempted souls - it’s directed at him, and him alone. There’s that smile that says Aki knows exactly what they need - what will satisfy them both, one way or the other; it’s there, painted into the pretty curve of coral lips. Trust me, trust yourself.
Let me. Let yourself.
And Takanori allows it - accepts it and invites just that much more, cocking a hip against the tiled wall in silent welcome. The nearer they come, the more the rest of the room - this small, cramped bathroom - disappears. The air around them hums with a tension that they reserve just for one another and it only worsens with each second. Aki closes in, nearer and nearer - and with the flick of deft fingers (fast, too fast) the room is plunged into satiny darkness.
That false glow - extinguished.
The mirror - vanished in the shadows.
It’s like a spike of pure relief - staked down through his core.
He’s reaching up to twist his fingers in silken locks, tugging, pulling - dragging, until Aki’s quiet chuckle is smothered against his lips. There’s no more laughing then, no teasing - only Aki’s lips parting under the pressure of his own and a deviant, delicious tongue spiked through with the taste of silver dancing against his own. Yes, he wants to growl, yes, just like this.
Hands are suddenly roving, his body - and Aki’s - while hips pressed tight, rocked slowly, ground together. This is their dance, in the grip of darkness; mouths melding, fingers plucking and pulling; a knee presses between slim thighs while material slides against smooth skin. Off, get it off - all of it. The desire to have at naked flesh, it’s consuming. They don’t fight it - they welcome it.
More, give me more.
They go to bed in the cradle of shadows, limbs twisted together in an embrace that is as intimate as it is absolutely fucking forbidden, but there are no borders when material slides away from skin with a near-silent hiss and legs are wrapping around slim hips to drag them together. There are no rules, no boundaries - only flesh and the heated touch of fingers skimming over shoulders, hands hooked there for a hold on something less tangible than reality, more solid than hazy twilights. It's not love, but it's need and warmth and something different to break the monotony. There are no words here, no need for them. There is only black and white, tangled and melting together slow and hungry beneath the crisp-cool of crimson sheets.
Author: papermaskerade
Bands: the GazettE, SID.
Pairings: Ruki/Aki
Rating: PG-14/Light R.
Disclaimer: This didn't happen, I don't own the characters. This is just for fun and is a product of my own imagination.
Summary: Because sometimes the face we hate the most is the one we see in the mirror -- and because sometimes the one person we shouldn't trust is the one who knows us best.
Notes/Comments: Just something I wrote for my own little enjoyment. I'm not a GazettE-fandom dweller, but Aki and Ruki jive in this universe. AU, oneshot, sorta experimental in style. Universe is co-authored by/borrowed from diamond_fall.
Black & White - Ruki/Aki
The apartment is dark when he comes in, silent and cool like the grave. He doesn't expect anything else, never does - he's alone here, for the moment. He comes through the door with his head lowered, wind-blown and chilled from the autumn night. How long he's been wandering, he can't say - only that he left sometime before dinner and hasn't touched anything or anyone in hours. Leather gloves are tugged off slim hands and thrown down on the nearest surface as he swings the door shut behind him with a light kick. Weary eyes blink slowly, hidden behind dark lacquered frames and unmarred lenses that catch the scarce moonlight illuminating the smallest corner of his apartment - before he pries them from the bridge of his nose and throws them down carelessly on the table. The haze of silver light in his vision disappears and everything goes wispy-intangible around the edges - a world out of focus.
In the dark, that doesn't matter. There is nothing here, no one here; there are no witnesses to the lack of fight, the softened eyes. Wreathed in shadows, there is no one there is no one to see him slip slowly free of the heavy coat over sloping shoulders, the clink and weight of chains catching the dim light as they fall, twisted together with the leather. The drag of the gun hooked at his hip tugs a studded belt lower on petite hips, the additional presence of paired blades tucked carefully into holstered sheaths only pulling the band lower; he pulls them free, unhurried and lethargic as he sets them far out of easy reach on the dining room table. With the belt gone, the dark jeans cling to his thighs and hips in a relieved embrace, the tails of his gun-metal grey button-down pulled free in disheveled carelessness. His hair dips and twists, hanging before his eyes, but he can't be bothered to lift a hand and brush it away. He's tired, so damn tired, and the apartment is pressing in on him; he's fifty-thousand feet under water and the abyss is looming up on all sides.
But he's home - as home as he's going to get, and now he finally surrenders to the dull ache in his head, the restless exhaustion which saps all his strength. He's been walking for hours, one foot in front of the other, hands shoved deep in his pockets; he always makes a point to keep his eyes turned low, though he can't help but see everything. It's what he's good what, what he does. Observe. Even while he walks, drifting from place to place in this reflective, glass-and-light city, he sees everything. Tonight, wandering aimlessly beneath the glitter and the glow has burned broken bokehs behind his eyelids, but even still he navigates the dark distance between his front door and the bathroom unimpeded. Slow, careful - but without accident.
The bathroom door is cracked open - as he left it - and he pushes it open blindly with the flat of his hand, fingers curling against the panel in a barely-there flinch as he reached for the light switch with the careful, searching touch. Cool tile met his fingers, then satin-finished plaster; finally, neutral unyielding plastic. He stabbed at it with his thumb, trying for the millionth time to smother the life out of the mechanism.
Again he failed.
And again, light flooded into the bathroom, fluorescent and cruel, touching every imperfection and emphasizing it. The faint groan-and-buzz of false warmth encased in more plastic set into the ceiling above his head only adds to the fluttering-hornet noise making homespace in the hollow of his skull. He has plans for that light though - sometime soon, when he can find the will. There's a screwdriver in the drawer under the sink and a stepping stool somewhere in the apartment; the barely-there hum is a cacophony that catches in his ears - and it will end, one way or another.
But not tonight.
Tonight, he puts up with it - for the millionth time, for the ten-millionth. He tells himself he'll take care of it soon, always soon, but it's been another night and still it remains. Where the rest of the apartment has been pitched into blessed, silent, obscuring shadow, one light remains. He hates it with vivid distaste even as he leans against the porcelain edge of the countertop and hangs his head to catch a silent, barely-taken breath.
Damnit, he hated this place.
This, this place - the last bastion of his nightmares; the stomping ground of the enemy that will never fade, of a tormentor he can never beat back. It drinks in those lights, bathes in them - but this last source of false-glow, it remains.
Because against this enemy, of all of them, he is powerless.
Insidious, it lives and breathes in his lungs. Ever-watchful, it sees with his eyes; cunning, it speaks with his tongue - and vain, smirking with his lips. It clings to his skin like wet silk and wraps lies around his shoulders; veils of smoke cloud his expression and leave him scented like sin. It thrives in the light, basks in the glitter-glow - and moves him with all the deceptive grace of hell's own.
And that is what the enemy is - what the enemy has always been.
In the mirror, it smiles at him, wearing his face - and a smirk he'd never own up to. In the darkness there are no reflections; there are no lights, no center-stage. But this is the domain of another creature altogether and he feels the world tilt thirty-degrees on a different axis when he tries to focus, tries to summon words.
But he can't. What is there to say, to that person hiding behind the glass? Just above the solid and beneath the unreal, there's a figment of fiction staring him right in the eye and daring him to try.
To that face in the mirror - his face, for all its falsity - there's nothing to say.
That reflection in the glass is no more his own than the name he's been given, or the life he's living; all of it belongs to him - to it. Once, it used to be clear where he started and where Ruki left off - and now there are some days when he's not sure there's even a distinction anymore.
If the smug twist of Ruki's lips in the looking-glass is any indication, he is far beyond redemption. But he isn’t someone who gives in to fatalism with good grace. He'd rather close his eyes - or tear them out - than live day to day thinking the subtle innuendo written into that biohazard smile is anything close to truth.
"Why?" He hisses in the dead of the silence, "Why do they see you when they look at me?" His grip on the edge of the sink turns white-knuckled for the briefest second before his breath is slipping from his lips on a fanned exhale that goes nearly silent. "Why can't I be rid of you?"
Why can't I end you?
But the lips in the mirror don't answer him; no, instead, they continue to give him that you-fucking-wish expression - with his eyes too - and he curses under his breath as he pushes away from the porcelain counter.
The world shifts again around the edges - wavers and warps like there's something more to be seen, but his glasses are off and he doesn't want to fucking see any thing tonight. The shadows beyond the open doorway of the bathroom are darker than a moment before, dotted in star-points that made a constellation of a curving, inviting smile. And that smile is a bit too much like Ruki's for his taste - so maybe his words, when they come from the back of his tongue to the forefront of his lips, maybe they're a bit sharper than he intends.
"I thought it was agreed that we shouldn't socialize," he might have half-growled it, but the sounds fell a bit flat - because as annoyed as he was, it never did him any good with this intruder. "As I recall, that means you shouldn't be here..."
The moment of silence isn't one of denial - neither one of them is going to pretend he's not there - but it is one of amusement. Even still. "Probably not," comes the barely-fazed reply, a low chuckle accompanying the words. Silver catches false-light and bounces it up around curving lips. "But that's never stopped me before..."
"Reckless."
"Paranoid," came the purred answer.
"Invasive," he retorted.
"Touchy."
Despite himself, a snort of reluctant amusement leaves him. "You're one to talk." He channels the will - ever so slowly - to stand upright, his eyes catching the reflection in the mirror just once more before they're tugged away. "You, who touches everyone but is so determined to remain untouched. Mister moonlight."
A low laugh and there's a body detaching from the shadows, stepping into the faint halo of light shining from the bathroom to wash over a body taller than his own, slim and wreathed in white silk; a dress, slipped over slim shoulders and hugging close to hips that swayed with too much flair to go unnoticed. Silver-streaked eyes and ribbons of nightfall hair against the subtle backdrop that is the pale luminescence of unblemished flesh; and those lips, bowed and tempting. "You know," came the murmured, velvety words, "I've always liked the way that epithet rolls off your tongue, Taka."
Takanori's lips tugged up at one corner in a wary, tired smile. "You like the way lots of things come off my tongue, Aki -- and above all else, your dick in particular." He falls back against the wall, casually, crossing his arms over his chest more to comfort himself than to ward off his uninvited visitor. Not that it would do a bit of good - because Aki doesn’t respect boundaries and probably never would.
And maybe that’s why Takanori doesn’t bother reinforcing the locks, of barring the windows - why he hasn’t killed Aki himself, or tried. Maybe it’s because he knows that it doesn’t matter what the rules say, what he says - Aki will come and he’ll invade; he’ll come with his moonlight smile and his melting-starshine eyes to claw his way under Takanori’s skin and be with him. For a few minutes, for a night - for a handful of stolen moments that defy definition. It’s for them, just them. For Aki, for Takanori. They come together that way. For a scant instant, in this place he hates - in this existence he both loathes and can’t live without - Aki is with him.
With him - not with the illusion that wears his face.
Because Takanori isn’t the only one who sees everything - and he doesn’t mind it so much, that way. Like he doesn’t mind the way Aki steps into the bathroom with a slow, cocky saunter that is half-invitation and all reckless attraction. A come-hither gaze that too often works dark magic on tempted souls - it’s directed at him, and him alone. There’s that smile that says Aki knows exactly what they need - what will satisfy them both, one way or the other; it’s there, painted into the pretty curve of coral lips. Trust me, trust yourself.
Let me. Let yourself.
And Takanori allows it - accepts it and invites just that much more, cocking a hip against the tiled wall in silent welcome. The nearer they come, the more the rest of the room - this small, cramped bathroom - disappears. The air around them hums with a tension that they reserve just for one another and it only worsens with each second. Aki closes in, nearer and nearer - and with the flick of deft fingers (fast, too fast) the room is plunged into satiny darkness.
That false glow - extinguished.
The mirror - vanished in the shadows.
It’s like a spike of pure relief - staked down through his core.
He’s reaching up to twist his fingers in silken locks, tugging, pulling - dragging, until Aki’s quiet chuckle is smothered against his lips. There’s no more laughing then, no teasing - only Aki’s lips parting under the pressure of his own and a deviant, delicious tongue spiked through with the taste of silver dancing against his own. Yes, he wants to growl, yes, just like this.
Hands are suddenly roving, his body - and Aki’s - while hips pressed tight, rocked slowly, ground together. This is their dance, in the grip of darkness; mouths melding, fingers plucking and pulling; a knee presses between slim thighs while material slides against smooth skin. Off, get it off - all of it. The desire to have at naked flesh, it’s consuming. They don’t fight it - they welcome it.
More, give me more.
They go to bed in the cradle of shadows, limbs twisted together in an embrace that is as intimate as it is absolutely fucking forbidden, but there are no borders when material slides away from skin with a near-silent hiss and legs are wrapping around slim hips to drag them together. There are no rules, no boundaries - only flesh and the heated touch of fingers skimming over shoulders, hands hooked there for a hold on something less tangible than reality, more solid than hazy twilights. It's not love, but it's need and warmth and something different to break the monotony. There are no words here, no need for them. There is only black and white, tangled and melting together slow and hungry beneath the crisp-cool of crimson sheets.