DEG:Kaoru/Toshiya: Five Years From Now
Title: Five Years From Now
Author: rheak
Pairing: Kaoru/Toshiya (Dir en Grey)
Rating:PG
Summary: Five years from now Kaoru pays Toshiya a visit
Disclaimer: The events and characters depicted in the following piece of work are completely fictitious. Even though similarities with the members of Dir en Grey, or other public personae may be found they are in no way implying that any of the events or character traits are true. I do not know the members of Dir en Grey, and am in no way affiliated to them, the story itself is completely untrue and is in no way meant to reflect the private lives, actual practices, or activities of any persons named. No harm, libel or disrespect is intended. No statements whatsoever and no commercial gain are made out of the work archived here; this is simply for entertainment purposes.
Fanfic Archive: pinkucellphone Thank you to everyone who follows us and reads and leaves a word or two behind. Thank you for the beautiful words, the encouragement and support you leave behind. You are invaluable and greatly cherished. Happy New Year!
A/N: Written for kurenai_tenshi in the Christmas exchange challenge at jrockurisumasu . Thank you mods for everything, for putting up with us, for so brilliantly mixing the authors together and generally speaking for making such an awesome challenge come true. It's been a pleasure and an honour to have been a part of this. This fic took a while to start getting shaped, but the journey reminded me of my love for both the band as well as the process and i'm grateful.
five years from now
He’s smoking. Same stinging, sharp tasting leaves since forever, Marlboro red, in, out, like promise, like pause and lingering moments with no interruption. Too bad it always takes less than two minutes. He inhales, drags the smoke through the teeth and enjoys it streaming in slices towards his tongue; despite the fact he knows it deepens the yellow in his teeth. Yeah, well, whatever. He stretches, craning his neck to the left, to the right, then yawns, momentarily shutting his ears to the noise outside the kitchen, the voices, the music, the laughter.
It’s a birthday party and the yawning makes his eyes water, then prop himself better against the sink. It’s a birthday party and he smokes in the kitchen, away from it.
It’s not his, not anyone he knows, he's here by accident, in a foreign country, dropping by.
The floor is black and white checkered and he’s studying it, his mind flying in random directions, he almost misses the door opening and someone entering.
"There you were."
Toshiya, his hair black and in his face, a small smile curled around the corner of his mouth. It reminds him of something cute, always did, a baby, or a small cat. His mind makes him snort at the association, he knows Toshiya better than that. He didn’t change that much. A few grey hairs, a few small wrinkles perhaps, his cheek is maybe harsher than he remembers it and Kaoru shifts his gaze towards the city outside.
Toshiya grabs a beer from the fridge, it hisses at the break in and Kaoru rolls his tongue in his mouth. In the distance Hong Kong is luminous.
"I wouldn’t think you’d move here he says," his words half directed to the city, half to Toshiya’s reflection starting to get clearer over the urban blur.
"Yeah, well, neither did I. You know I didn’t really want to leave Tokyo, it just…"
He pictured him somewhere different, more… American, he guesses. But in the aftermath of everything it didn’t really surprised anyone, least of all him, that their bassist took off, that he tried to rebuild his life in some other way that would make sense now that everything had been shattered. He heard of a woman and, if he didn’t know better when he entered and saw the children playing at the party he wouldn’t have been surprised if they were Toshiya’s own, instead of the neighbor’s.
“Besides, Hong Kong is good. It’s great, even.”
Toshiya speaks slowly and ends his sentence in enthusiasm, Kaoru could almost believe him. He exhales a long funnel of smoke then turns to him. Their gazes cross for a second then Toshiya looks towards his beer.
Die sometimes visited him in Hong Kong and even though they kept contact and emailed regularly, it was Die who told him of the sleepless nights, the fights, the problems, the failing marriage, the new celibacy. Toshiya never said anything and Kaoru wasn’t supposed to know. When he looks towards his hand Toshiya wears his old blue stoned ring. No other commitment.
“You didn’t change much,” and Toshiya looks up, then back to the metallic lid full of foam in his hands, says, “neither did you, not really.”
But they both lie, of course they do. How much is it? Four years? Five?
“Five,” Toshiya says, a hint of something bitter in his voice, or maybe it’s just Kaoru’s dying cigarette living its last moments over his tongue. He takes it out in a glass ashtray. His hands free he almost doesn’t know what to do with them. It reminds him of other times, of Toshiya and parking lots so many times before. He crosses them as he always does.
Five years ago there was an album and sleepless, countless sleepless nights, a bus and no speaking, there were some stages and then there was a barren room and that was it.
---
Later on the balcony they both lie in rattan recliners and Toshiya props his feet on the concrete parapet. It makes Kaoru follow his motion, digging himself deeper into the chair. Above, the sky is a washed maroon, spattered with a few stars.
Toshiya sighs and, despite the noise in the distance, Kaoru hears him, turns to him at that, finds him looking at the sky, his profile as beautiful as ever. He says, “I thought you’d come to tell me something,” and Kaoru goes hmm, although he knows, he senses where this is going; it never really rested in Toshiya as easy as it did in the others eventually. It never really rested well with anyone, he supposes.
“Have you talked to Kyo?”
There.
“Not in a few months.”
Toshiya snorts and it’s involuntary, or maybe deliberate, at least it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume it was meant to criticize since it was always in his nature to comment back and question. It’s enough to make the pang of guilt resurface anyhow. “You know I tried.”
“I know,” but it sounds resigned almost and Toshiya looks away.
Not that he blames him. In the end, how can he? He knows deep inside he let something happen that took everything from everyone. How it started, where exactly it started, everyone has an opinion about, nobody can pinpoint exactly.
You were the leader, Toshiya spat that time, his face all sweat and mad eyes while Die held him back. You were the leader.
“You know I still get letters,” Toshiya says, his eyes reflecting the lights of the city. “I have them all in boxes.”
The city is familiar and foreign in the distance and it feels cold, the beer just a bitter liquid in his hands.
“Me too.”
---
At Budokan years ago, while the darkness reigned and the voices sang in unison he looked towards Toshiya, his sweaty face glistening in the low light backstage, his hair splattered into his face while each up and down filled him with something unnamed. They’ve all felt it, could not form it into words later when they talked about it, just a mute nodding to each other. Yes, I know what you mean. They all looked towards each other and there was a silence and a tremor barely contained. They were ready, so ready to go back, but it was perfect. It was perfect like that. Each time he remembers it he feels the same goose bumps crawl over his skin. The same feeling of Toshiya’s hand squeezing his shoulder, at the chorus, not letting go until the end.
---
That night he wakes up in a guest bed in Toshiya’s apartment and can’t go back to sleep. The bed is perfect, the sheets are new and powdered in jasmine scent. It’s perfect.
He walks down the hallway to the bathroom, between posters and gifts. The door to the living room is open and he’s staring at the huge wall plastered with polaroids and photos from during the years. In the light of a lampshade he can distinguish laughing faces, drunken faces, memories of a time not that long ago. His own tattooed hands as he runs his fingers over the images a constant reminder, a part of himself he can never let go of and that tugs him back every second.
“Japanese Zombie Heroes.”
He turns towards the voice and Toshiya stands in the door, resting against the frame, then slowly coming towards him.
He focuses on a picture of Shinya and Die. Then one of Kyo and himself. Both grinning. One of them all, all crazy hair and youth and hopes.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Yeah, well.”
Toshiya’s tall, his old Metallica t-shirt crumpled and he’s barefoot next to him, a familiar frame in the corner of his eye.
“Remember this?”
Him and Boo and Toshiya after a show. That night they all got drunk, even Kyo who doesn’t drink usually, smiled and laughed and they joked as usual, Shinya and Die raced themselves into stupor and Die lost and later, when it was just him and Boo and Toshiya they kept drinking till morning. He took Toshiya home that night, and the cab made him dizzy and feeling heavy, or maybe it was just Toshiya’s form slumped over his shoulder, mumbling nonsense to himself, grabbing at his leg without coordination. He barely found the keys to the apartment later, was there when Toshiya threw up and there when they woke up sticky and hung-over. Or maybe that was some other time with Boo. There were many times.
---
Toshiya’s looking at his bicep, his puffy eyes staring at something there, he says, “I missed this,” but his hand moves in the air, somewhere in front, then between, then towards his shoulder. It’s undefined and Kaoru says nothing, his hand flexing familiarly around the neck of Toshiya’s guitar. It’s a Ganesa model, so not much is different.
In the far end of the room the photo plastered wall stares back to him and Toshiya repeats a riff softly, his white bass another memory that speaks of endless highways and struggle and booing crowds, barriers, barriers and then getting closer despite it all. Smoking with Kyo in a parking lot. How it was just the two of them and the sun was close to setting and Kyo looked into the distance, over the smoke and said, we’ll get through this. They won’t win.
His fingers find the chords without fail, his mind detached, the sounds finding their
way, tangling with Toshiya’s, without direction and end up in Dead Tree and they both snort and smile.
He’s got this memory, sudden, of that narrow tour bus on some American highway at night, watching baseball with Toshiya on the couch. Both of them beat, limbs heavy and buzzing with electricity. They were supposed to sleep already but it was just them for once and they could speak, unhindered, untranslated, free like home. They could make jokes or complain and there was nobody there but them to hear. Shinya was sleeping on the other couch in the far end of the lounge area and Die and Kyo were already asleep in their bunks. Nora passed a couple of times, stepping over their spread legs, Toshiya wore his glasses and his hair was in his face, and he remembers wanting to run his hand through that hair. That feeling that came with it.
Toshiya was resting his head in his palm, his eyes barely open, a slit just enough to let his gaze pierce through. He smiled to himself and looked at him. It felt like home, and he didn’t think of the future.
A simple memory when nothing happened. A simple memory of being content and having everything as he wanted it to be. A simple moment he tried to recreate many times and failed.
---
To his left Toshiya’s close to him, his bass resting against the couch and Kaoru looks at him. In a way it’s just like that, only it’s the future and things are nothing as he wants them to be.
His arm moves to rest against the couch, his fingers close to Toshiya’s hair.
He misses it too, the screaming, the rough palms, the chords, the painful fingers, the throbbing of sound against and through his body, the endless days and nights of touring or being in the studio. Of course he does. There are evenings and nights when nothing really makes sense anymore and he’s strumming until morning.
“I didn’t really stop composing, you know,” and Toshiya looks at him, maybe hopeful, although he can’t see it, can only look at the tips of that hair, or along the couch to the wall.
The last time they talked about it Toshiya accused him of not caring, not giving a fuck of everyone else’s future. It ended in shouting and punching and even the memory of it is wearing him down. Instead he’s trying to concentrate on the curve of Toshiya’s neck, the silver balls of his necklace, the way in which from this particular angle, in this particular light things don’t seem that different from years ago.
“I miss it too, you know.”
And then there’s a moment when they just look to each other, like all these years of hurt and pride have never happened, his thumb brushes the weathered fabric of Toshiya’s t-shirt, then, oh so slowly, Toshiya reaches out, takes his glasses off, his fingers brushing his temple in the process and when everything is just a soft blur and Toshiya’s face near, Toshiya kisses him. It feels soft and humid and afterwards his lips feel cold and absence. He closes the space back between them.
---
There was a winter in Nagano when Toshiya invited them over. It wasn’t that often that he did or rather caught them all together, but that winter he did and he remembers fishing and freezing in the morning in front of a hole in the nearby lake and getting restless by the second and Toshiya telling him the story of his father doing this with him each morning after Christmas. Toshiya was serious and he remembers his face, how he stared at the hole intently, furrowing his brows, not looking at him, and he remembers being embarrassed, this swelling thing, akin to pride and happiness inside, swelling and swelling and he tried to break the moment with a joke, saying, you have to stop this father figure thing and invite me to some other less freezing activities. And he was sorry afterwards, sorry and embarrassed and cold and Toshiya never really told him any stories quite like that anymore. Sometimes he wishes he still did.
---
That night they move together until morning, in remembrance and recreating times long gone. When the sun goes up and starts filtering through the curtains, he’s holding Toshiya close, his lips and nose against his nape, his body molded against the other one, his hand close to Toshiya’s chest, held in Toshiya’s own hand.
Later, while Toshiya makes coffee, and there’s the sound of children running in the apartment above, he dials a number, says,
“Kyo, it's me.”
Author: rheak
Pairing: Kaoru/Toshiya (Dir en Grey)
Rating:PG
Summary: Five years from now Kaoru pays Toshiya a visit
Disclaimer: The events and characters depicted in the following piece of work are completely fictitious. Even though similarities with the members of Dir en Grey, or other public personae may be found they are in no way implying that any of the events or character traits are true. I do not know the members of Dir en Grey, and am in no way affiliated to them, the story itself is completely untrue and is in no way meant to reflect the private lives, actual practices, or activities of any persons named. No harm, libel or disrespect is intended. No statements whatsoever and no commercial gain are made out of the work archived here; this is simply for entertainment purposes.
Fanfic Archive: pinkucellphone Thank you to everyone who follows us and reads and leaves a word or two behind. Thank you for the beautiful words, the encouragement and support you leave behind. You are invaluable and greatly cherished. Happy New Year!
A/N: Written for kurenai_tenshi in the Christmas exchange challenge at jrockurisumasu . Thank you mods for everything, for putting up with us, for so brilliantly mixing the authors together and generally speaking for making such an awesome challenge come true. It's been a pleasure and an honour to have been a part of this. This fic took a while to start getting shaped, but the journey reminded me of my love for both the band as well as the process and i'm grateful.
five years from now
He’s smoking. Same stinging, sharp tasting leaves since forever, Marlboro red, in, out, like promise, like pause and lingering moments with no interruption. Too bad it always takes less than two minutes. He inhales, drags the smoke through the teeth and enjoys it streaming in slices towards his tongue; despite the fact he knows it deepens the yellow in his teeth. Yeah, well, whatever. He stretches, craning his neck to the left, to the right, then yawns, momentarily shutting his ears to the noise outside the kitchen, the voices, the music, the laughter.
It’s a birthday party and the yawning makes his eyes water, then prop himself better against the sink. It’s a birthday party and he smokes in the kitchen, away from it.
It’s not his, not anyone he knows, he's here by accident, in a foreign country, dropping by.
The floor is black and white checkered and he’s studying it, his mind flying in random directions, he almost misses the door opening and someone entering.
"There you were."
Toshiya, his hair black and in his face, a small smile curled around the corner of his mouth. It reminds him of something cute, always did, a baby, or a small cat. His mind makes him snort at the association, he knows Toshiya better than that. He didn’t change that much. A few grey hairs, a few small wrinkles perhaps, his cheek is maybe harsher than he remembers it and Kaoru shifts his gaze towards the city outside.
Toshiya grabs a beer from the fridge, it hisses at the break in and Kaoru rolls his tongue in his mouth. In the distance Hong Kong is luminous.
"I wouldn’t think you’d move here he says," his words half directed to the city, half to Toshiya’s reflection starting to get clearer over the urban blur.
"Yeah, well, neither did I. You know I didn’t really want to leave Tokyo, it just…"
He pictured him somewhere different, more… American, he guesses. But in the aftermath of everything it didn’t really surprised anyone, least of all him, that their bassist took off, that he tried to rebuild his life in some other way that would make sense now that everything had been shattered. He heard of a woman and, if he didn’t know better when he entered and saw the children playing at the party he wouldn’t have been surprised if they were Toshiya’s own, instead of the neighbor’s.
“Besides, Hong Kong is good. It’s great, even.”
Toshiya speaks slowly and ends his sentence in enthusiasm, Kaoru could almost believe him. He exhales a long funnel of smoke then turns to him. Their gazes cross for a second then Toshiya looks towards his beer.
Die sometimes visited him in Hong Kong and even though they kept contact and emailed regularly, it was Die who told him of the sleepless nights, the fights, the problems, the failing marriage, the new celibacy. Toshiya never said anything and Kaoru wasn’t supposed to know. When he looks towards his hand Toshiya wears his old blue stoned ring. No other commitment.
“You didn’t change much,” and Toshiya looks up, then back to the metallic lid full of foam in his hands, says, “neither did you, not really.”
But they both lie, of course they do. How much is it? Four years? Five?
“Five,” Toshiya says, a hint of something bitter in his voice, or maybe it’s just Kaoru’s dying cigarette living its last moments over his tongue. He takes it out in a glass ashtray. His hands free he almost doesn’t know what to do with them. It reminds him of other times, of Toshiya and parking lots so many times before. He crosses them as he always does.
Five years ago there was an album and sleepless, countless sleepless nights, a bus and no speaking, there were some stages and then there was a barren room and that was it.
---
Later on the balcony they both lie in rattan recliners and Toshiya props his feet on the concrete parapet. It makes Kaoru follow his motion, digging himself deeper into the chair. Above, the sky is a washed maroon, spattered with a few stars.
Toshiya sighs and, despite the noise in the distance, Kaoru hears him, turns to him at that, finds him looking at the sky, his profile as beautiful as ever. He says, “I thought you’d come to tell me something,” and Kaoru goes hmm, although he knows, he senses where this is going; it never really rested in Toshiya as easy as it did in the others eventually. It never really rested well with anyone, he supposes.
“Have you talked to Kyo?”
There.
“Not in a few months.”
Toshiya snorts and it’s involuntary, or maybe deliberate, at least it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume it was meant to criticize since it was always in his nature to comment back and question. It’s enough to make the pang of guilt resurface anyhow. “You know I tried.”
“I know,” but it sounds resigned almost and Toshiya looks away.
Not that he blames him. In the end, how can he? He knows deep inside he let something happen that took everything from everyone. How it started, where exactly it started, everyone has an opinion about, nobody can pinpoint exactly.
You were the leader, Toshiya spat that time, his face all sweat and mad eyes while Die held him back. You were the leader.
“You know I still get letters,” Toshiya says, his eyes reflecting the lights of the city. “I have them all in boxes.”
The city is familiar and foreign in the distance and it feels cold, the beer just a bitter liquid in his hands.
“Me too.”
---
At Budokan years ago, while the darkness reigned and the voices sang in unison he looked towards Toshiya, his sweaty face glistening in the low light backstage, his hair splattered into his face while each up and down filled him with something unnamed. They’ve all felt it, could not form it into words later when they talked about it, just a mute nodding to each other. Yes, I know what you mean. They all looked towards each other and there was a silence and a tremor barely contained. They were ready, so ready to go back, but it was perfect. It was perfect like that. Each time he remembers it he feels the same goose bumps crawl over his skin. The same feeling of Toshiya’s hand squeezing his shoulder, at the chorus, not letting go until the end.
---
That night he wakes up in a guest bed in Toshiya’s apartment and can’t go back to sleep. The bed is perfect, the sheets are new and powdered in jasmine scent. It’s perfect.
He walks down the hallway to the bathroom, between posters and gifts. The door to the living room is open and he’s staring at the huge wall plastered with polaroids and photos from during the years. In the light of a lampshade he can distinguish laughing faces, drunken faces, memories of a time not that long ago. His own tattooed hands as he runs his fingers over the images a constant reminder, a part of himself he can never let go of and that tugs him back every second.
“Japanese Zombie Heroes.”
He turns towards the voice and Toshiya stands in the door, resting against the frame, then slowly coming towards him.
He focuses on a picture of Shinya and Die. Then one of Kyo and himself. Both grinning. One of them all, all crazy hair and youth and hopes.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Yeah, well.”
Toshiya’s tall, his old Metallica t-shirt crumpled and he’s barefoot next to him, a familiar frame in the corner of his eye.
“Remember this?”
Him and Boo and Toshiya after a show. That night they all got drunk, even Kyo who doesn’t drink usually, smiled and laughed and they joked as usual, Shinya and Die raced themselves into stupor and Die lost and later, when it was just him and Boo and Toshiya they kept drinking till morning. He took Toshiya home that night, and the cab made him dizzy and feeling heavy, or maybe it was just Toshiya’s form slumped over his shoulder, mumbling nonsense to himself, grabbing at his leg without coordination. He barely found the keys to the apartment later, was there when Toshiya threw up and there when they woke up sticky and hung-over. Or maybe that was some other time with Boo. There were many times.
---
Toshiya’s looking at his bicep, his puffy eyes staring at something there, he says, “I missed this,” but his hand moves in the air, somewhere in front, then between, then towards his shoulder. It’s undefined and Kaoru says nothing, his hand flexing familiarly around the neck of Toshiya’s guitar. It’s a Ganesa model, so not much is different.
In the far end of the room the photo plastered wall stares back to him and Toshiya repeats a riff softly, his white bass another memory that speaks of endless highways and struggle and booing crowds, barriers, barriers and then getting closer despite it all. Smoking with Kyo in a parking lot. How it was just the two of them and the sun was close to setting and Kyo looked into the distance, over the smoke and said, we’ll get through this. They won’t win.
His fingers find the chords without fail, his mind detached, the sounds finding their
way, tangling with Toshiya’s, without direction and end up in Dead Tree and they both snort and smile.
He’s got this memory, sudden, of that narrow tour bus on some American highway at night, watching baseball with Toshiya on the couch. Both of them beat, limbs heavy and buzzing with electricity. They were supposed to sleep already but it was just them for once and they could speak, unhindered, untranslated, free like home. They could make jokes or complain and there was nobody there but them to hear. Shinya was sleeping on the other couch in the far end of the lounge area and Die and Kyo were already asleep in their bunks. Nora passed a couple of times, stepping over their spread legs, Toshiya wore his glasses and his hair was in his face, and he remembers wanting to run his hand through that hair. That feeling that came with it.
Toshiya was resting his head in his palm, his eyes barely open, a slit just enough to let his gaze pierce through. He smiled to himself and looked at him. It felt like home, and he didn’t think of the future.
A simple memory when nothing happened. A simple memory of being content and having everything as he wanted it to be. A simple moment he tried to recreate many times and failed.
---
To his left Toshiya’s close to him, his bass resting against the couch and Kaoru looks at him. In a way it’s just like that, only it’s the future and things are nothing as he wants them to be.
His arm moves to rest against the couch, his fingers close to Toshiya’s hair.
He misses it too, the screaming, the rough palms, the chords, the painful fingers, the throbbing of sound against and through his body, the endless days and nights of touring or being in the studio. Of course he does. There are evenings and nights when nothing really makes sense anymore and he’s strumming until morning.
“I didn’t really stop composing, you know,” and Toshiya looks at him, maybe hopeful, although he can’t see it, can only look at the tips of that hair, or along the couch to the wall.
The last time they talked about it Toshiya accused him of not caring, not giving a fuck of everyone else’s future. It ended in shouting and punching and even the memory of it is wearing him down. Instead he’s trying to concentrate on the curve of Toshiya’s neck, the silver balls of his necklace, the way in which from this particular angle, in this particular light things don’t seem that different from years ago.
“I miss it too, you know.”
And then there’s a moment when they just look to each other, like all these years of hurt and pride have never happened, his thumb brushes the weathered fabric of Toshiya’s t-shirt, then, oh so slowly, Toshiya reaches out, takes his glasses off, his fingers brushing his temple in the process and when everything is just a soft blur and Toshiya’s face near, Toshiya kisses him. It feels soft and humid and afterwards his lips feel cold and absence. He closes the space back between them.
---
There was a winter in Nagano when Toshiya invited them over. It wasn’t that often that he did or rather caught them all together, but that winter he did and he remembers fishing and freezing in the morning in front of a hole in the nearby lake and getting restless by the second and Toshiya telling him the story of his father doing this with him each morning after Christmas. Toshiya was serious and he remembers his face, how he stared at the hole intently, furrowing his brows, not looking at him, and he remembers being embarrassed, this swelling thing, akin to pride and happiness inside, swelling and swelling and he tried to break the moment with a joke, saying, you have to stop this father figure thing and invite me to some other less freezing activities. And he was sorry afterwards, sorry and embarrassed and cold and Toshiya never really told him any stories quite like that anymore. Sometimes he wishes he still did.
---
That night they move together until morning, in remembrance and recreating times long gone. When the sun goes up and starts filtering through the curtains, he’s holding Toshiya close, his lips and nose against his nape, his body molded against the other one, his hand close to Toshiya’s chest, held in Toshiya’s own hand.
Later, while Toshiya makes coffee, and there’s the sound of children running in the apartment above, he dials a number, says,
“Kyo, it's me.”