2/2
This is part 2/2 of Birthday Project. You wouldn't want to start from the middle, so in case you see this first, check the link.
Part 1/2 this way!
**** **** ****
"Can you stay awake if I leave you sitting right there for a split second?"
"Nnh."
"Toshiya?"
"Y...es. Yes, I'm awake, I'll fight it until you're back."
The living room was warmly lit with a single yellowish light. The furniture was soft and warm, air was warm too but it still managed to feel fresh and not quite too dry, the carpet on the floor was thick and seemed to be swallowing Toshiya's feet inside.
Everything was so comfortable and calm around him that the dizziness took a real grip of his head and made the horizon ripple and fade.
In this case, the horizon was a wall of CDs set in dark wooden frames. The oversized player was quietly sitting between the two frames, and Toshiya felt like it was going to get eaten by the thousand discs and covers around it. Some were on its top, too, carelessly left there in uneven piles.
The bassist yawned, listening to Kaoru's steps behind his back. The man had left the room, but Toshiya could still hear him well.
Everything in the apartment had the older's scent imprinted on the surfaces, even the air was filled with his unique mix of cigarettes, aftershave, apple shampoo and the scent of his skin together with the fabrics he wore.
Toshiya wondered why the guitarist had brought him there. It was private territory, and he wasn't allowed there, or at least he shouldn't have been - yet, there he sat, trying to keep himself awake by making notes about the room.
He was starting to feel blue again, too. He was tired and he was annoyed for no reason it seemed. He had passed the uphill and was now heading down, and it'd get worse if he couldn't get to bed soon. Sometimes Toshiya wished he had been like Kyo, or at least as ignorant to general social rules: he'd have asked Kaoru if he could stay for the night. That way he wouldn't need to get out and to the metro again. He hated the metro.
Besides, he smelled like old beer, smoke and sweat. He didn't want to go out like that.
He wished he could at least use the shower or even better, take a bath and make Kaoru periodically check on him so he didn't black out and drown in there.
Toshiya sighed, looked behind his back and when he didn't see Kaoru and realised he couldn't even hear the older anymore, he once again drew out his phone and opened an empty mail field.
"I wish I was socially retarded. Like you.
Sorry, I feel horrible and your stupid bandmate dragged me to his apartment and fuck, really, I just want to sleep."
He hadn't meant to send it, but he only remembered that when the message was already being transferred to Kyo's phone - Toshiya would have paid to get it back, but it was gone.
Message sent.
The end.
Moments passed him slowly. Kaoru's steps were now echoing down from upstairs. Nothing happened for a minute, and then a dull vibrating feeling shook Toshiya's hand and startled him. For a moment he was confused about his surroundings, then the memory hit him and he sighed disappointetly. He had dozed off for a second or two, and receiving a new mail wasn't the kind of a wake up he wanted.
"Fuck you, Toshiya.
I hope it's Die you're talking about, because if it's not, it's Kaoru, and I don't feel like cleaning up after you tomorrow."
Toshiya didn't understand anything past the "fuck you"-phrase. However, Kyo's reply was far more pleasant than he had feared.
"I don't know what you're talking about", he typed back, but I really hope you use your advantages and go to sleep."
A moment passed, then the phone started buzzing again.
"I was asleep until you woke me up with your...
Just don't break him apart, Toshiya. Just please don't do it. I'm too tired to be a part of that mess."
The bassist gave up, he understood he wasn't going to get anything out of the messages that night. He didn't understand what was the other talking about, and he suspected Kyo didn't really know himself, if not for anything else then just for being so tired.
He shrugged it off with a short "sorry"-message and hoped Kyo would just go to bed and forget the awkward wake up he had had in the middle of the... morning.
The clock was passing five and thirty when Toshiya glanced at the clock hanging from the wall on his left side.
When the longer pointer hit 32, Kaoru's steps caught Toshiya's attention again as the older walked in the room.
"Still awake?" the guitarist asked quietly, apparently not willing to wake Toshiya up in case he had dozed off.
"No, but that was one hell of a wait. Can I go home soon?" Toshiya rolled around on the sofa and face the older.
Something was quite different about the man, but Toshiya didn't catch what it exactly was.
Kaoru walked to him and sat next to him with a warm yet somehow confused smile on his face. Toshiya kept staring at his chest until he finally got a grip of the change; the older had switced on a long-sleeved shirt.
Wonderful, Toshiya thought, I waited all this time for him to switch on a clean shirt.
"I'm sorry", Kaoru said, still as quietly as before even though Toshiya wasn't asleep for sure now, "I shouldn't have held you up like that."
"No, you shouldn't have but you did, so get to the point."
Toshiya heard a surprising tone in his own voice. He sounded amused.
He hadn't known he was amused at all, but apparently he secretly was.
Kaoru gave out a laughter, leaned back and locked Toshiya into an eye contact.
"I'm sorry for bringing you here in the first place, but it's important for me, so I hope you can excuse me for that."
"The point."
"The point, right - I'm nervous, heh. Even with all the alcohol it's... not easy."
"The point."
"I'm getting there. So..."
*
When Toshiya woke up, his head was aching. It took him a while to realise that he was hungover - it hadn't happened in a while, it wasn't something he'd expect.
He rolled around and hid his head into a pillow.
Took him another moment to notice the unfamiliar smell on it. Or not exclusively unfamiliar, more like unexpected yet very familiar - he rolled around again and examined the walls with a suspicious look. He didn't know the room, and to his knowledge he hadn't been there before.
There was fresh, steaming hot tea on the table beside the bed. Toshiya didn't see anyone else around so the tea must have been his.
He rose up to sit on the bed's edge, picked up the cup and a note that had been folded underneath it. He read it while sipping the sencha, feeling sick and confused.
"Hey, Toshiya,
When you wake up, give me a call. The tea you probably already drink is for you, don't worry. I added in some sugar, it might help with the hangover.
Hopefully you won't remember last night.
If you do, it was my fault, so feel free to hate me for it.
If you don't, please don't ask me.
~ Kaoru"
The bassist placed the note back on the small plate he had taken it from.
The whole deal confused him: he remembered being confused last night, too, but nothing much past it. His drunk memory was bad and everyone knew it.
Whatever the truth was, he felt like banging his already painful head to the wall and screaming. Nobody was telling him anything, on his own birthday.
A number popped out from the blackout that had been his short-term memory about 15 hours ago, but he couldn't hold on to it long enough to decipher the message.
It had something to do with the bar he had been at.
His phone was laid on the table on the same tray the cup and the note had been on, so he thought it might be the easiest and least annoying thing to do if he just called Kaoru and told him to explain whatever there was to explain and whatever was so irritatingly kept secret from him.
"'ello, I'm awake. Explain."
Kaoru laughed.
"Well, good morning to you too", he said and Toshiya could hear him grinning, "I specifically asked you not to ask me, so I'll just pretend you didn't say anything just now. I'm coming home soon, if you want to leave before then be my guest, but I'd like you to stay until I get there so I can drive you home. Traffic is insane today, but I take a wild guess and say the metro's worse."
"Uh, I think I'll wait. But it's not like you'll get away by changing the subject. Tell me."
"What do you want to know, exactly?"
"Umm - I don't know, and that's my very point. I'm confused. Nobody's telling me anything."
Another laughter from the other end of the call.
"You're curious."
"So would you be, if some people you called friends would hide things from you and talk all secretively and... you're making me crazy!"
"Who else has been keeping things from you lately?"
"Uh, I - Kyo?"
"Kyo?"
"Yeah, I sent him a ---"
Toshiya felt a stone fall onto his heart.
It pressed air out of his lungs and made him breathe heavily out.
"You - you - you and..."
"... oh shit."
"You better come fast, I want to hit you hard on the face."
"Please don't."
"I will", Toshiya snarled.
"You know what that's called, Kaoru? It's called abuse. Get here. You deserve to bleed."
"Are you actually threatening me, or..."
Toshiya heard a car's door slam closed.
"... are you just genuinely pissed off?"
"I'm pissed off."
"Good, I was reconsidering the whole 'come back home' part of my plans. You have every right to be so, though."
"Yes, I do. And you will pay for what you did."
"Well..."
The car started.
"Because you deserve it."
"Well... yes, I do, I agree. I have to hang up now, I can't trust to survive this traffic without 100% concentration."
"Pfft."
Toshiya hung up.
He curled up under the blanket and nibbled on the cup in his hands. The tea was good and it seemed to be settling his stomach. At least he wasn't feeling that sick anymore - there seemed to be slight improvement about the pain in his head, too. The pressure on his brains and skull had lessened, the two felt less like exploding and it felt like they had stopped brushing against each other.
The man freed his right hand from the tea cup and dug it into his hair. He tried to gather up the memories he had suddenly regained even though digging through them made him feel uneasy and embarrassed.
He had been falling asleep on the sofa when Kaoru had returned from wherever he had been, and he had missed half of the things the older had said, but he for sure hadn't missed the touch on his cheek and he hadn't missed the rogue hand sneaking up onto his thigh.
No, he had in fact enjoyed them with his all drunken glory, so much he'd actually crossed the line himself - he'd kissed Kaoru and he had been the one pulling the guitarist on him.
Toshiya sighed. He was positive about two things; first was he'd never drink again, and second that he would change his mind about that - probably during the following 24 hours nonetheless.
He tried to stop the flow of memories and was partially succesfull, forcing the taste of sen-tea to fill all possible areas of his mind. Its soft, delicate first taste, the bitter shade that was left lingering on his tongue after he had swallowed the drink, the dull aftertaste that dried his mouth after he had swallowed twice.
The odd shade of sugar in it. He didn't remember when he had last had sugared tea: it had probably been when he was just a kid, or when he had been very sick with flu in his 20s. He remembered a foreign friend telling him they always put sugar in their tea in other parts of the world. European tea was sugared, American tea was sugared. Everyone used sugar, at least one or two cubes. Or even three, like the girl who had been doing Toshiya's hair on the day almost everyone from the staff had called in sick with a stomach sickness.
It tasted wrong.
Every now and then he had flashbacks interrupt his pleasant tea-filled thoughts. He closed his eyes and suddenly remembered Kaoru's hardened fingertips tracing his stomach or the warmth of his body next to Toshiya's own skin. The taste of Kaoru's lips and his own breathless laughter.
The comfort of the older's arms around him, the pleasure his hands had given him, the insecuredness turning into confidence and trust, guilt and excitement mixing together and their bodies turning into one being with a shared heartbeat.
Sex was a strange thing.
Toshiya coughed.
Tea, he reminded himself, think of the tea.
And he thought of the tea again.
The cup's warmth was no longer burning against his skin, it was about as warm as he was, so he couldn't really tell where the cup's sides were unless he was looking at it.
There was only a little bit left of the tea inside, too. Both the drink and the cup would eventually turn colder than his skin and he would start feeling the difference again. Currently, he was one with the cup.
Like he had been one with the older the night before.
I'm a slut. Why the hell does it feel like I was having sex with this tea right now? I'm just holding it right here. Why won't the thoughts just leave me alone?
Go away.
Go away.
Go away.
Goddamn memories ruining my already shitty day. Happy birthday, Toshiya.
You really should grow up.
You're old.
The door opened and closed downstairs. Toshiya swiftly placed the tea back on the tray and hid beneath the blanket, not really thinking twice about his doings. He just wanted to get out of everyone's sight. He didn't want to be seen, he didn't want to exist in his current state.
He felt his pulse in his jaws, fingertips and forehead, behind his eyes and in the tips of his toes. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Steps from the stairs mixed with his heartbeat, thump thump, thump thump, creak, thump thump, thump.
The steps stopped in front of him.
"Thanks for the tea", Toshiya mumbled to break the lengthening, awkward silence.
"... well... you're... welcome."
Weight pressed down the edge of the bed, and Toshiya rolled around, hitting his back to Kaoru's back. The blanket between them got warm fast.
There was another long awkward silence, during which Toshiya noticed that it was really, really hard to breathe under the blanket. He tried to resist the need for fresh air until the lack of it made him dizzy. He pushed a small hole between the blanket and the bed, gasped for air and pulled back in again.
Kaoru laid a hand on his side, and Toshiya could feel him trying to find a spot that wouldn't feel too invasive or too formal. When he was satisfied with the area his hand was on Toshiya felt the full weight of the hand land on him. He wondered how much it actually weighted - it was a little heavier than he remembered a hand's weight to be, but not heavy by any means.
"So, are you going to hit me or not?" Kaoru asked softly.
"Nnh. I don't think so."
"Why are you hiding there in the first place?"
"I don't know."
"Come out, you're supposed to be an adult."
"I don't want to."
"I know. I don't want you to come out, either, but I don't think we can talk if you don't."
Toshiya considered it. He didn't want to talk to Kaoru.
His head ached.
He wanted to throw up just to get the feeling out of him, but he doubted he could without stuffing his fingers in his throat and he knew by experience that was a bad idea.
After a moment he did crawl out and sat on the blanket. He couldn't look into Kaoru's eyes, so it took him a while to note that the older was efficiently hiding his face behind his hair again.
"That's not really fair - you tell me I have to get out from my hide but then you're hiding yourself."
"I know."
"Then do something about it."
Kaoru sighed, shook the hair off his face and glanced nervously at Toshiya. Then he pulled his feet on the bed and faced the younger, which resulted in yet another dead silence.
The bassist sighed, looking out of the window again.
"I don't know what to think of whatever we did last night", he started.
Someone had to be a man about it and if Kaoru wouldn't be it, he had to try.
"I'm sorry about it", Kaoru mumbled.
He picked a black ball of fluff from his left sock and started tracing invisible images to the blanked they were now both sitting on.
"Yeah, but I really want to know why we ended up like that."
"It's my fault."
"Stop blaming yourself. I started it."
"No, you didn't. I did. I told you of the things I promised myself I'd never mention, and then I started touching you, and you did the only thing a drunken man can do when someone's on him."
"That someone's you. Hell, even drunk I should have known to draw back at that point", Toshiya growled, "I really have no idea why I did it."
Kaoru looked at him for a moment. He was the one to break off the eye contact first, which made Toshiya feel funny. He wasn't used to the older flinching away like that.
"Do you find me attractive?" the guitarist asked so quietly it was hard to hear at all.
Toshiya tilted his head, feeling a rush of warmth on his cheeks.
"I don't know, I've never considered you as... an option."
"Men in general? Ever?"
"... sometimes."
"Well, that explains why you didn't sprint out of the door when I opened my mouth", Kaoru laughed, glancing at Toshiya.
"I hate acting like a little girl, but this subject always sort of pushes me off balance."
Toshiya nodded.
"I feel stupid talking about this with you anyway. Can we change the subject?"
"You'd like to discuss composition? Or, how about upcoming tour dates? Cover art? No, Toshiya, I don't think we can."
Toshiya smirked.
"I guess you're right."
Crashing noises interrupted their thoughts. It sounded like someone had just trashed a car with a hammer, and the sound definitely wasn't pleasant for Toshiya's sore head.
He tried to gather himself up again.
"So what did you speak to me about, exactly? I remember nothing of what you said last night. I just remember what I did and what you did, but nothing besides that."
His mouth felt dry.
"I don't want to repeat it", Kaoru said with a bitter grin, "it was hard to do while drunk. Impossible while I'm sober."
"Try spitting it out. I know you're bad at doing that, but at least you'll look funny while you're trying."
Kaoru gave Toshiya a murderous look, then closed his eyes and took a deep breathe.
He formed a sentence on his lips, but Toshiya had no idea what it might have been.
He did it again, lowering his head so that the hair fell down again.
"I have feelings for you."
When he said it aloud, it came across calm and clear, but after Kaoru had finished the line he looked like he had received a kick straight to his stomach.
Toshiya laid down and curled up again. He was biting his nails even though he'd promised himself he'd stop it for good.
"So that's it."
"Yeah."
The younger looked at Kaoru, who seemed to have shrunk a few inches.
He remembered how the guitarist's kisses had felt on his neck. For a moment, he let his mind roam those memories without interrupting them, trying to get a grip of a single feeling. Any would do. Lust, love, disgust, anything.
He felt warm inside, but warmth wasn't a real feeling, or at least it wasn't one he could name to Kaoru as an answer.
"It's alright", he finally managed to say.
Kaoru shook his head.
"No", he sighed, "it's not alright, but if you say so it's at least far better than I thought it would be."
"What exactly did you imagine I'd do?"
"I figured you'd be scared or disgusted or anything between the two."
"Really?"
"Yes."
Toshiya had no idea what he was doing, but he had to do it. He pushed himself up, leaned closer to Kaoru and ignored the way the older flinched back. He felt like he was hurting the other when he forced his lips upon Kaoru's dry mouth, but he knew he shouldn't stop or he couldn't face the consequences.
He placed his arms underneath him so he could put his weight on them.
Kissing summoned electric sparks inside Toshiya's chest. A soft growl escaped from his mouth as Kaoru wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him closer.
"Why are you doing this?" the shorter asked breathlessly between the kisses.
"Because long time ago, I learned that acting upon impulses is the only way I can be sincere and honest to myself. Doing what I feel like doing, the moment I feel like doing them..."
The bassist let his long fingers sneak under Kaoru's shirt. He felt the long-haired man relax under his gentle touches. It felt good.
"... is what makes me happy."
*
"I want you close to me.
Come close to me.
Closer.
Please."
*