[Fic] The Patron [Alice Nine][Tora/Shou][Chapter 3]
Title: The patron
Author:
thevamprei
Chapter: 3/??
Pairing: Tora x Shou, may change
Genre: AU, angst
Rating: PG-13 for now
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with the band and do not make money from this.
Synopsis: It wasn’t about the success, it wasn’t about the fame, it was about doing what he loved, and he loved feeding emotions to people, about seeing how his music can affect them. But until he met that man, that gorgeous honey-blonde, he didn’t even know how much of an impact he really had on people.
Warning: disease, illness for now
Comment: At the bottom. Also - English is my second language and I do try not to butcher it, however you might stuble upon some mistakes. Do not feel afraid to point them out since this is unbeta-ed.
( Chapter 1 ) ( Chapter 2 )
What’s an addict to do without his main drug of choice?
Just sit in a bed and whither, I guess, and somehow hope that it will get better and he won’t need it anymore. Or just accept that the reality he lives in isn’t as bad.
But I wasn’t going to accept that. Because the reality I lived in was without feeling of any kind.
He stopped playing at the airport and I felt guilty because I knew somehow it was my fault. Yes, I knew where he lived but common sense didn’t really agree upon me going there and begging him to play, right?
After that day, I couldn’t handle the silence anymore so I spent weeks and weeks looking for music clubs. Ones with live bands playing hoping that, somehow, hearing them play their own songs right in front of me would awake other feelings in me and I wouldn’t need Tora that much anymore. Although, in my subconscious, I told myself I’d never cease to look for him; I was hoping that he’d be there, in one club, playing his heart out on that battered acoustic. But no, I couldn’t find him.
It was a long time I spent without him. A long…agonizingly long time.
Still, it was the beginning of me becoming who I am.
~
His regular table was the one nearest the stage. He needed to be as close as he could with the music; what if it couldn’t reach him spiritually if he wasn’t close to it?
He thought of himself as being obsessed. He found it bizarre that he was thinking so, but his spirit was, even then, on Tora withdrawal and he needed something to at least soothe him a bit.
It had been six months. Six damn months since he last heard the raven sing. And in these six months, he had found himself numerous times on the alley where the brunette’s house was, sometimes even at the improvised door, ready to go inside, but every time, he chickened out.
He couldn’t just go in, he didn’t want to scare Tora even further, or worse, to humiliate him and make him develop hateful feelings. He just had to wait for chance to bring them together, if it ever would, again.
In those six months, however, he had been in countless bars, pubs, music clubs in search for musicians that would awake those same feelings in him. But there was no luck.
That night, though…
He was sitting at his usual table, looking at the band playing. He wasn’t really impressed and he felt horrible because he knew nothing about music, but nothing was appealing to him.
He was sipping on a top shelf whiskey and smoking on a BlackStones Cherry when he walked on stage. He looked at his apparel. A blonde man, quite short but with his presence he filled the whole room. And he went to the mic, being supported by a band behind him.
Then he started singing.
And Shou just sat there, looking at him. He could hear nothing else, not the chatter of the people around him, the clinking of glasses, the giggles of women or the band. It was just his voice.
A voice that sang such a destructive song that he felt his insides tear apart and cling to the ground. His whole being was turned to mush by a voice so deep that went to a higher pitch in merely a second and it all seemed so natural.
“Sayonara…”
He sung from his heart and his whole body appeared to be singing. His movements were broken and he seemed to be manipulated by the feelings he let out through his voice. He shivered as he took in air and it was an inhale turned into a sob. His hands were close to his body as if he was just trying to hold himself together and not fall apart right there on the stage.
Shou felt his eyes watery and his whole existence crushed as that voice took him through the depths of a pained hell. His drink turned to poison; it was like thousands of needles traveling through his system.
Pain.
Then he heard it. A tune he heard months ago while sitting on the cold concrete, one that brought him the same feelings. And that tune sounded so perfectly accompanied by that voice, so hypnotizing that the image before his eyes blackened. A dim light then appeared and all he could see on the stage was his raven haired guitarist and this blonde vocalist, singing and playing together. He felt one with them, even if Tora wasn’t there. Him, the guitarist and the vocalist were just one entity that was being torn apart by feelings he never knew he had or never knew he could relate to them.
When the singing stopped and the band began playing a faster tune, the vocalist was on his knees, scratching the surface of the stage with PVC covered fingers, still broken. Still distressed, still aching.
Shou waited patiently for the concert to end then just rushed in the back to meet the singer. He saw him and the band in a back-room, discussing the concert.
The blonde vocalist was sitting on the couch, bundled up in an oversized plaid shirt and hugging his chest with one hand, the other resting on his thigh and holding a cigarette. His eyes turned to the door when he saw Shou enter and he gave a slight smile, raising from his seat and going to shake his hand.
“Your singing… just…” the honey-blonde said and held the elegant hand with both of his.
“Thank you, really.”
“I was hoping you’d have a minute to talk?”
The smaller man looked in the direction of the band, seeking for some sort of approval, but they didn’t acknowledge him. He turned back to the honey blonde and nodded, following him to his table.
Shou waved for the waiter and made another order. A glass of top shelf whiskey for him, the vocalist settled for a large cup of tea which, when it came, he took with both hands and drank from it, looking down even when he set it back on the table.
“My name is Shou.”
“Takanori. Pleased to meet you”
Hands were shaken and Takanori put both of his back on the cup, looking at the steam that came from it.
“It may sound odd… but your voice was the only one I’ve heard that brought feelings to me. I appreciate that since it was only one time that I’ve actually felt anything at all, and that was when I met a guitarist.”
“Oh?” the man raised his eyes and looked into the ones of the honey-blonde.
“I’ve led a very apathetic life. A good one, none the less, but apathetic. Do you know how it is? Not to be able to feel a thing?”
“I’m sorry to say that no, I don’t. I can’t picture a life without any sort of feelings”
Shou smiled. “That was mine. I’ve lived mechanically and didn’t find either pleasure or pain in anything. Life just went past me.” And it was true.
“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s one of the saddest stories I’ve heard.”
The honey blonde nodded. He looked at the vocalist and knew he understood where he stood in that moment and his eyes seemed to be not pitying but genuinely soothing.
“Will you listen to a story?”
“Of course”
The two hands hugged the cup of tea again while Shou downed his own drink and set the glass on the table, pushing it aside with the back of his right hand.
“I was ready to board a plane to New York…”
He told the vocalist every detail of that day, watching how his gaze seemed to be contemplating the rash decision he made.
Still, Takanori understood why and nodded, accepting what Shou did and acknowledging it as being a legitimate decision. Shou smiled at the gaze he received and kept telling him how he searched for something to replace the feeling of emptiness the guitarist left in him then explained how his voice sounded perfectly with the song and how it awoke feelings in him, exactly what feelings.
Takanori let out an understanding smirk.
“He never allowed me to help him. He never wanted it. And my life went back to having no meaning to me until I heard you. Hearing your voice and the guitar playing in the background… I just have to hear it again and again.” The honey-blonde fell silent How would you be interested in a record deal?”
“A record deal?”
Shou nodded.
“I’m a very influential person and I can get anyone to sign with you. Your voice is perfect, it’s just the matter of making people hear you.”
“That would be…”
Takanori looked away, seeming to contemplate. He loved the idea, of course. But who was he going to sing with? The band couldn’t really stand him since he appeared to take the spotlight with his presence on stage, so he basically had nothing and Shou seemed to have not realized that.
Of course… there was someone. Two men he knew. They weren’t having vocals in their little duet but they were amazing musicians and he knew they could use this chance, too.
“I agree.” He nodded and looked at Shou with determination in his eyes. “But I’ll need back up.”
“Your band? Of course.”
He shook his head and looked a bit down before looking back at the honey-blonde.
“Two men, actually. A violinist and a pianist. They’re amazing, trust me.”
“Can I meet them, then?”
“Meet me tomorrow at the back-door, here. We’ll go to the club they play in” he raised and shook Shou’s hand in an obvious gratitude. Saying their goodbyes, the vocalist went back into the room he was previously in.
~
His voice haunts me even now. Every time he speaks to me, every time I hear him sing. It’s so strong… it digs under your skin and deep into your soul, planting itself in there so that every single time you hear it, it will only grow stronger and stronger and gets you hooked on it. A seed inside you that needs constant feeding. I became as addicted to his voice as I had been to Tora’s guitar playing.
~
He didn’t know what made the night so serene. Was it the snow glistening in the yellow street light? Was it the tune that kept playing in his head; the same tune that haunted him for the past six months of his life? Or was it the expectation of listening to something even greater?
He was holding his black coat against his body and burying his nose in the grey muffler, waiting for the short vocalist to come. He could feel his hands shiver and his blood rushing in his veins, to keep him warmer. He’d bear with. He had to. He had to meet the two men he was promised he’d meet. Also, he needed to hear Takanori’s voice again, needed to feel the tremor inflicted on him.
He heard the squeak of the metallic back-door opening and light footsteps crunching the snow. Turning his gaze to his left, he noticed a little bundle of wool, with a hat, sunglasses and a black muffler with only a small nose peeking out.
“Let’s go”
Shou pushed himself off the wall he was leaning and followed a eighteen year old Takanori 4 blocks down. They used the back entrance at a more elegant club, one that Shou knew very well.
“You hear that?”
Shou furrowed his eyebrows as if it would aid his hearing. But he couldn’t hear anything.
“Hear what?” he asked, confused.
“Exactly” Takanori smiled and continued his way to what Shou figured it was a back-stage. On the couch were sat two men, one folding and unfolding his fingers and the other keeping a cigarette between his lips and looking over some music sheets. “It’s how silent the public is as they wait for them” the small vocalist smiled again and took Shou by the hand to the before mentioned couch.
“Yutaka, Yuu. Meet Shou. I told you about him”
The grin that occupied one of the men’s face grew ten times over and another time again.
“Oh, pleased to meet you, sir. I’m Yutaka. This is my partner, Yuu.”
“Shou. Really nice meeting you, too.”
“Hate to be rude leave so abruptly, but we have a concert.” Yuu said and got up, shaking Shou’s hand. “Amazing meeting you, I hope you’ll enjoy the show”
Shou never saw them in this club before. Granted, he only came here once or twice and there are many bands that play and of course he’d remember someone like Yutaka or Yuu at least by appearance only.
They seemed to be from another world, so majestic and elegant. So beautiful and flawless.
And then he heard them play. Looking at them, leaning on a pole to support himself - Yutaka’s hands ran on the keyboard of the grand piano so vigorously, Shou couldn’t even catch them with his eyes. And Yuu with his violin, making such sounds as he moved his body in the rhythm his own fiddle created.
They were good. They were amazing. He smiled. Hearing Takanori also humming from somewhere close, hearing them play their instruments.
But somehow, as the concert was finished and he started applauding, he felt his insides boil with guilt and his gaze turned downwards. Besides feeling like something was missing, like even their music wasn’t strong enough, he felt guilt. He felt like he was betraying someone.
~
Takanori was someone who’d understand everything. Every feeling you ever had, every experience, he’d understand it and his voice made you believe he could even relate to it.
He was better than therapy. And Yukata and Yuu, they came at just the right time like some sort of Lythium or a double dose of Lamictal.
Yet Tora was still my heroin.
Author:
thevamprei
Chapter: 3/??
Pairing: Tora x Shou, may change
Genre: AU, angst
Rating: PG-13 for now
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with the band and do not make money from this.
Synopsis: It wasn’t about the success, it wasn’t about the fame, it was about doing what he loved, and he loved feeding emotions to people, about seeing how his music can affect them. But until he met that man, that gorgeous honey-blonde, he didn’t even know how much of an impact he really had on people.
Warning: disease, illness for now
Comment: At the bottom. Also - English is my second language and I do try not to butcher it, however you might stuble upon some mistakes. Do not feel afraid to point them out since this is unbeta-ed.
( Chapter 1 ) ( Chapter 2 )
What’s an addict to do without his main drug of choice?
Just sit in a bed and whither, I guess, and somehow hope that it will get better and he won’t need it anymore. Or just accept that the reality he lives in isn’t as bad.
But I wasn’t going to accept that. Because the reality I lived in was without feeling of any kind.
He stopped playing at the airport and I felt guilty because I knew somehow it was my fault. Yes, I knew where he lived but common sense didn’t really agree upon me going there and begging him to play, right?
After that day, I couldn’t handle the silence anymore so I spent weeks and weeks looking for music clubs. Ones with live bands playing hoping that, somehow, hearing them play their own songs right in front of me would awake other feelings in me and I wouldn’t need Tora that much anymore. Although, in my subconscious, I told myself I’d never cease to look for him; I was hoping that he’d be there, in one club, playing his heart out on that battered acoustic. But no, I couldn’t find him.
It was a long time I spent without him. A long…agonizingly long time.
Still, it was the beginning of me becoming who I am.
~
His regular table was the one nearest the stage. He needed to be as close as he could with the music; what if it couldn’t reach him spiritually if he wasn’t close to it?
He thought of himself as being obsessed. He found it bizarre that he was thinking so, but his spirit was, even then, on Tora withdrawal and he needed something to at least soothe him a bit.
It had been six months. Six damn months since he last heard the raven sing. And in these six months, he had found himself numerous times on the alley where the brunette’s house was, sometimes even at the improvised door, ready to go inside, but every time, he chickened out.
He couldn’t just go in, he didn’t want to scare Tora even further, or worse, to humiliate him and make him develop hateful feelings. He just had to wait for chance to bring them together, if it ever would, again.
In those six months, however, he had been in countless bars, pubs, music clubs in search for musicians that would awake those same feelings in him. But there was no luck.
That night, though…
He was sitting at his usual table, looking at the band playing. He wasn’t really impressed and he felt horrible because he knew nothing about music, but nothing was appealing to him.
He was sipping on a top shelf whiskey and smoking on a BlackStones Cherry when he walked on stage. He looked at his apparel. A blonde man, quite short but with his presence he filled the whole room. And he went to the mic, being supported by a band behind him.
Then he started singing.
And Shou just sat there, looking at him. He could hear nothing else, not the chatter of the people around him, the clinking of glasses, the giggles of women or the band. It was just his voice.
A voice that sang such a destructive song that he felt his insides tear apart and cling to the ground. His whole being was turned to mush by a voice so deep that went to a higher pitch in merely a second and it all seemed so natural.
“Sayonara…”
He sung from his heart and his whole body appeared to be singing. His movements were broken and he seemed to be manipulated by the feelings he let out through his voice. He shivered as he took in air and it was an inhale turned into a sob. His hands were close to his body as if he was just trying to hold himself together and not fall apart right there on the stage.
Shou felt his eyes watery and his whole existence crushed as that voice took him through the depths of a pained hell. His drink turned to poison; it was like thousands of needles traveling through his system.
Pain.
Then he heard it. A tune he heard months ago while sitting on the cold concrete, one that brought him the same feelings. And that tune sounded so perfectly accompanied by that voice, so hypnotizing that the image before his eyes blackened. A dim light then appeared and all he could see on the stage was his raven haired guitarist and this blonde vocalist, singing and playing together. He felt one with them, even if Tora wasn’t there. Him, the guitarist and the vocalist were just one entity that was being torn apart by feelings he never knew he had or never knew he could relate to them.
When the singing stopped and the band began playing a faster tune, the vocalist was on his knees, scratching the surface of the stage with PVC covered fingers, still broken. Still distressed, still aching.
Shou waited patiently for the concert to end then just rushed in the back to meet the singer. He saw him and the band in a back-room, discussing the concert.
The blonde vocalist was sitting on the couch, bundled up in an oversized plaid shirt and hugging his chest with one hand, the other resting on his thigh and holding a cigarette. His eyes turned to the door when he saw Shou enter and he gave a slight smile, raising from his seat and going to shake his hand.
“Your singing… just…” the honey-blonde said and held the elegant hand with both of his.
“Thank you, really.”
“I was hoping you’d have a minute to talk?”
The smaller man looked in the direction of the band, seeking for some sort of approval, but they didn’t acknowledge him. He turned back to the honey blonde and nodded, following him to his table.
Shou waved for the waiter and made another order. A glass of top shelf whiskey for him, the vocalist settled for a large cup of tea which, when it came, he took with both hands and drank from it, looking down even when he set it back on the table.
“My name is Shou.”
“Takanori. Pleased to meet you”
Hands were shaken and Takanori put both of his back on the cup, looking at the steam that came from it.
“It may sound odd… but your voice was the only one I’ve heard that brought feelings to me. I appreciate that since it was only one time that I’ve actually felt anything at all, and that was when I met a guitarist.”
“Oh?” the man raised his eyes and looked into the ones of the honey-blonde.
“I’ve led a very apathetic life. A good one, none the less, but apathetic. Do you know how it is? Not to be able to feel a thing?”
“I’m sorry to say that no, I don’t. I can’t picture a life without any sort of feelings”
Shou smiled. “That was mine. I’ve lived mechanically and didn’t find either pleasure or pain in anything. Life just went past me.” And it was true.
“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s one of the saddest stories I’ve heard.”
The honey blonde nodded. He looked at the vocalist and knew he understood where he stood in that moment and his eyes seemed to be not pitying but genuinely soothing.
“Will you listen to a story?”
“Of course”
The two hands hugged the cup of tea again while Shou downed his own drink and set the glass on the table, pushing it aside with the back of his right hand.
“I was ready to board a plane to New York…”
He told the vocalist every detail of that day, watching how his gaze seemed to be contemplating the rash decision he made.
Still, Takanori understood why and nodded, accepting what Shou did and acknowledging it as being a legitimate decision. Shou smiled at the gaze he received and kept telling him how he searched for something to replace the feeling of emptiness the guitarist left in him then explained how his voice sounded perfectly with the song and how it awoke feelings in him, exactly what feelings.
Takanori let out an understanding smirk.
“He never allowed me to help him. He never wanted it. And my life went back to having no meaning to me until I heard you. Hearing your voice and the guitar playing in the background… I just have to hear it again and again.” The honey-blonde fell silent How would you be interested in a record deal?”
“A record deal?”
Shou nodded.
“I’m a very influential person and I can get anyone to sign with you. Your voice is perfect, it’s just the matter of making people hear you.”
“That would be…”
Takanori looked away, seeming to contemplate. He loved the idea, of course. But who was he going to sing with? The band couldn’t really stand him since he appeared to take the spotlight with his presence on stage, so he basically had nothing and Shou seemed to have not realized that.
Of course… there was someone. Two men he knew. They weren’t having vocals in their little duet but they were amazing musicians and he knew they could use this chance, too.
“I agree.” He nodded and looked at Shou with determination in his eyes. “But I’ll need back up.”
“Your band? Of course.”
He shook his head and looked a bit down before looking back at the honey-blonde.
“Two men, actually. A violinist and a pianist. They’re amazing, trust me.”
“Can I meet them, then?”
“Meet me tomorrow at the back-door, here. We’ll go to the club they play in” he raised and shook Shou’s hand in an obvious gratitude. Saying their goodbyes, the vocalist went back into the room he was previously in.
~
His voice haunts me even now. Every time he speaks to me, every time I hear him sing. It’s so strong… it digs under your skin and deep into your soul, planting itself in there so that every single time you hear it, it will only grow stronger and stronger and gets you hooked on it. A seed inside you that needs constant feeding. I became as addicted to his voice as I had been to Tora’s guitar playing.
~
He didn’t know what made the night so serene. Was it the snow glistening in the yellow street light? Was it the tune that kept playing in his head; the same tune that haunted him for the past six months of his life? Or was it the expectation of listening to something even greater?
He was holding his black coat against his body and burying his nose in the grey muffler, waiting for the short vocalist to come. He could feel his hands shiver and his blood rushing in his veins, to keep him warmer. He’d bear with. He had to. He had to meet the two men he was promised he’d meet. Also, he needed to hear Takanori’s voice again, needed to feel the tremor inflicted on him.
He heard the squeak of the metallic back-door opening and light footsteps crunching the snow. Turning his gaze to his left, he noticed a little bundle of wool, with a hat, sunglasses and a black muffler with only a small nose peeking out.
“Let’s go”
Shou pushed himself off the wall he was leaning and followed a eighteen year old Takanori 4 blocks down. They used the back entrance at a more elegant club, one that Shou knew very well.
“You hear that?”
Shou furrowed his eyebrows as if it would aid his hearing. But he couldn’t hear anything.
“Hear what?” he asked, confused.
“Exactly” Takanori smiled and continued his way to what Shou figured it was a back-stage. On the couch were sat two men, one folding and unfolding his fingers and the other keeping a cigarette between his lips and looking over some music sheets. “It’s how silent the public is as they wait for them” the small vocalist smiled again and took Shou by the hand to the before mentioned couch.
“Yutaka, Yuu. Meet Shou. I told you about him”
The grin that occupied one of the men’s face grew ten times over and another time again.
“Oh, pleased to meet you, sir. I’m Yutaka. This is my partner, Yuu.”
“Shou. Really nice meeting you, too.”
“Hate to be rude leave so abruptly, but we have a concert.” Yuu said and got up, shaking Shou’s hand. “Amazing meeting you, I hope you’ll enjoy the show”
Shou never saw them in this club before. Granted, he only came here once or twice and there are many bands that play and of course he’d remember someone like Yutaka or Yuu at least by appearance only.
They seemed to be from another world, so majestic and elegant. So beautiful and flawless.
And then he heard them play. Looking at them, leaning on a pole to support himself - Yutaka’s hands ran on the keyboard of the grand piano so vigorously, Shou couldn’t even catch them with his eyes. And Yuu with his violin, making such sounds as he moved his body in the rhythm his own fiddle created.
They were good. They were amazing. He smiled. Hearing Takanori also humming from somewhere close, hearing them play their instruments.
But somehow, as the concert was finished and he started applauding, he felt his insides boil with guilt and his gaze turned downwards. Besides feeling like something was missing, like even their music wasn’t strong enough, he felt guilt. He felt like he was betraying someone.
~
Takanori was someone who’d understand everything. Every feeling you ever had, every experience, he’d understand it and his voice made you believe he could even relate to it.
He was better than therapy. And Yukata and Yuu, they came at just the right time like some sort of Lythium or a double dose of Lamictal.
Yet Tora was still my heroin.