The Promise
Title - The Promise
Author - unwritten_ideas
Rating - PG-13 (swearing, m/m)
Word Count - 2,277
Pairing - Gackt x You
Characters - You, Chacha, Gackt
Disclaimer - don’t own squat and if I did, I’d be posting this with pictures
Summary - Chacha is tired of seeing You and Gackt dance around each other and tries to take action. He gets more than he bargained for when You tells him about a promise he made many years ago…
**
“Why do you do it?”
The question was simple but ambiguous enough for You to pause in his cleaning of the expensive camera lens that was cradled in his lap. The softly spoken words were an unwelcome intrusion into the little bubble he was trying to lock himself into, a bubble where all that mattered was the already sparkling lens in his lap and that the outside world stayed, well, outside.
Chacha stood just before You, hands planted on slim hips and his right foot frantically tapping a tune against the plush carpeted floor of the random room in a random concert venue that was being used as their impromptu dressing room. It was both an unconscious habit caused by far too many years of living through music and a nervous twitch that he couldn’t quite stop.
The conversation he was about to have with You, whether You wanted to discuss it or not, always bought out that nervous streak that Chacha usually hid so well. His fingers itched for a cigarette but the days of smoking backstage had long since gone - a stark reminder that as much as some things stay the same, some things change beyond recognition.
“I think that’s as clean as it’s going to get. Clean anymore and you won’t have a lens left.”
You ignored the comment and resumed cleaning. Anger was never a healthy emotion for him, it always bought out that little obsessive-compulsive part of his personality that just had to see something, somewhere, be sparkling clean and pure.
Usually, it surfaced whenever the most important thing in his life started to look a little sullied and dirty in his usually blind eyes.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, it isn’t…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Cha,” You said snappily, effectively cutting off the speech that he knew was coming.
He had long since learned that the only way to avoid having your ass verbally handed to you by Chacha was to cut him off before he could get into his groove of saying all of those words you never wanted to hear.
Chacha, however, was nothing if not persistent.
“You need to hear it. Again. And again until you stop doing this to yourself.”
You applied additional pressure to his frantic rubbing of the lens and he could almost feel the plastic casing cracking under the fierce grip of his fingers. “I’m not doing anything. This is all due to Gac-.”
He frowned and shook his head. He didn’t want to hear that name right now. He didn’t want to think about him, didn’t want to speak of him and didn’t want that man breathing the same air as him. You tried to grab hold of the protective bubble that kept everything out but it was too late. That little place in his head that was reserved purely for Gac-, that man, was screaming for attention and displacing everything else that he was.
The lens fell to the floor with an unceremonious thump.
Chacha sighed. You’s head was still bowed, his eyes fixed onto the space that had once been occupied by the discarded and likely broken lens (oh, You would pitch a fit about that when he was back to being himself). He wanted to be gentle with You, wanted to right everything bad in the world with one wonderful sentence but he also wanted to smack some sense into him and it was difficult to chose which approach to take.
He settled for something in-between. “Gackt isn’t doing anything wrong, You-kun.”
You stiffened, his fists clenching in his lap. “You’re happy about this? About him doing this again?”
“Am I happy that Gackt (oh, don’t wince You it’s only his name) and his latest trick are currently wrecking our dressing room an hour before the show is due to start and have forced us into changing here, next to the slowly rotting and smelling sashimi? Of course not. But he’s a single and attractive young man, You-kun. He can’t be expected to live like a sexually repressed monk just because you’ve chosen to.”
You scowled. He knew that it gave him the look of an elementary school kid who had just been told that there was no more ice cream left in the freezer but he didn’t care. This was Gac-, that man, dammit Gackt’s fault. He couldn’t just screw his new play toys quietly could he? No, he had to introduce them, plan meals so everyone could get to know each other and You, in his unenvied position of being Gackt’s Best Friend Forever, was expected to welcome each new, poor unexpected victim into the ‘family’ with open arms.
It was all Gackt’s fault.
You nearly believed himself.
“I know he’s never discreet about these things,” Chacha decided to ignore the unpleasant snort from You, “but it’s his life. We can’t stop him, we can only pick up the pieces when it’s finished.”
“I’m tired of picking up the pieces, Cha.”
“Then do something about it.”
You finally looked up from his lap, his hard eyes locking with Chacha’s. “You just said we couldn’t stop him…”
Chacha fixed You with his harshest glare, the one that always made everyone, even Gackt fall into line and spoke in even, measured tones. “You know what I’m suggesting You-kun.”
He did know. Of course he knew. It was something he thought about doing every day of every week of every month of every one of the last fifteen years.
But, it was the one thing he couldn’t do. He’d promised he never would. And You always kept his promises.
“I can’t do that Cha…”
“Why the hell not?” Cha snapped, the rhythm of his foot shifting into higher gear. “Don’t give me any bullshit about Gackt not wanting to hear it. He may fuck these starry eyed fangirls and boys, he might even stick with them for awhile and call it a relationship but it’s you he loves. I know this. He knows this. The whole damn crew knows this so why can’t you accept it?
“Why do you do this to yourself You?” Chacha continued. “Why do you get angry and act like a pain in the ass whenever he finds someone else to give him the love that you won’t? Don’t you understand You? He’s with these tricks because he can’t have you and can’t cope with being alone!”
You stood up, his superior height and looming presence doing nothing other than making Chacha’s jaw set even more harshly and defiantly than before. They’d had this argument so many times as the years had passed and You was tired. Tired of trying to defend something he couldn’t explain.
“I know you want me to rush in there and declare my undying love like it’s a scene from a cheesy chick flick but I can’t. I can’t do that anymore than Gackt can come running out and declare his love to me. And I know he does love me, just as surely as I love him.”
“If you both know how you feel then why….”
“I made a promise, Cha. I can’t.”
Chacha ran his hands through his hair. One day, these kids were going to kill him. Or he was going to kill them, he wasn’t quite sure of the details yet but there would be blood.
“I don’t know who you made this promise to, whatever the fuck it is, but they aren’t worth this pain. It’d be worth losing a friendship to sort this damn mess out! Nobody is as important as listening to your heart, You-kun.”
“One person is,” You replied simply.
Chacha stared at him for a moment, eyes concentrated as if You was a complicated maths problem that needed solving and then he realised. He didn’t understand, but he realised. “Gackt. You promised Gackt.”
You nodded.
“You promised Gackt you wouldn’t love him?!” Yeah, those kids will definitely be the death of him.
You sighed. He’d never told this to anyone. He tried to not even think about it and simply locked it away in that box in his brain that was labelled “painful shit I don’t want to think about”. Sometimes he was reminded though. Sometimes he’d catch Gackt’s eye in the middle of the most innocent of conversations and something would flash behind those brown eyes (because it never happened with those damn contacts) and he knew that Gackt was remembering. The look that would follow and the expression of pure sorrow that would flick across Gackt’s beautiful face would be enough for You’s heart to crack that little bit more.
Gackt nearly always wore his coloured contacts when You was around.
You sighed again. “There was a night… It was the first time I’d seen him after he joined Malice Mizer.”
Chacha nodded encouragingly and gave You’s hand a little squeeze. The poor kid looked so lost, so sad but still there was a steely determination that Chacha had to admire.
“He was different,” You continued. “Sure, the Gackt I knew, the one who would squeal like a girl if he saw a cockroach and would spend weeks searching for the perfect birthday present was still there. But he was hidden. He had hardened, there was this cool detachment and emptiness in him that had never been there before.
“He was fighting with Mana most days. It was tiring him and he was so worried that he was going to lose his dream because of the arguments. I just wanted to make things better for him because underneath the make up and barriers he was still my Gakkun, you know? So I hugged him, like I used to when we were both young and stupid. He didn’t want me to comfort him because I think that made the problems more real but I did anyway.
“Then suddenly I’m kissing him and it felt so right to hold him in my arms like that. We had sex,” You said, a slight blush staining his cheeks, “for the first and only time and then in the morning we talked.”
“What did you say?” Chacha asked although he thought that he probably knew the answer already.
“We decided that we couldn’t do it, that there couldn’t be an ‘us’. He was too determined to live his dream and I didn’t really like the man he had to become in order to live that dream.”
“So you promised to wait for each other,” Chacha stated.
“Yeah,” You confirmed. “I’m waiting for this to all be over and he’s just waiting for me.”
“You could be waiting a long time.”
You smiled. “I already have waited a long time. I can wait a little longer. Just knowing he’s there and waiting for me is enough most days.”
“But not today…”
“Not today,” You echoes. “I know he’s not really cheating on me. I understand that this is his way of dealing with the situation in the same way mine is to be a ‘sexually repressed monk’,” to his credit, Chacha looked a little repentant when the comment was thrown back at him. “I know Gackt doesn’t like being alone and that none of these flings will ever steal him away from me but it’s still difficult… I want to be the one rolling around in the dressing room with him but it’d never work. I love him too much to lose him simply because we couldn’t wait.”
Chacha paused for a few moments as You’s words rattled around his head and unexplained reactions suddenly become clear. He took a deep breath and finally spoke. “You’re both crazy,” Chacha said with a shake of his head.
You chuckled lightly. “Probably.”
Chacha picked up the stray lens and handed it to You. “I think I need a cigarette. I’ll be outside catching some fresh air. Are you going to be okay?”
Before You could answer, the door to the make shift dressing room opened and Gackt entered, his starry eyed lover for the night following closely behind looking slightly crumpled and thoroughly fucked. Gackt smiled as his eyes locked with You’s and he headed straight for him leaving his lover to stand alone in the doorway, an outsider looking in.
“I’ll be fine,” You answered. “I know that he’ll always pick me in the end just as surely as I know that he’ll come running the second I ask,” You added under his breath so only Chacha could hear.
Chacha smiled, both in reaction to You and in greeting to Gackt, before sweeping past the green looking youngster in the doorway (jeez Gackt, is that legal?!) and heading to the parking lot.
“So,” Gackt said, his voice breaking the slight awkwardness that had filled the room, “what have you been doing this afternoon? Taking more photos?” he said with a slight nod to the lens that You was still holding.
“No,” You said with a shake of his head. “I’ve been waiting.”
Gackt smiled wistfully, the lover hanging outside of the door soon forgotten when all he could see was You. A stab of guilt echoed through his mind but this was the course that they had chosen, together, on that night fifteen years ago. Sometimes he wished that he had the same strength of character and flesh that You had but he guessed it didn’t matter. You could be strong enough for both of them.
There was no sign of resignation or sorrow in Gackt’s voice when he spoke next, just the hope and certainty that came from believing in someone fully and unconditionally. “In that case, I guess I’ll wait with you.”
~Owari
Author - unwritten_ideas
Rating - PG-13 (swearing, m/m)
Word Count - 2,277
Pairing - Gackt x You
Characters - You, Chacha, Gackt
Disclaimer - don’t own squat and if I did, I’d be posting this with pictures
Summary - Chacha is tired of seeing You and Gackt dance around each other and tries to take action. He gets more than he bargained for when You tells him about a promise he made many years ago…
**
“Why do you do it?”
The question was simple but ambiguous enough for You to pause in his cleaning of the expensive camera lens that was cradled in his lap. The softly spoken words were an unwelcome intrusion into the little bubble he was trying to lock himself into, a bubble where all that mattered was the already sparkling lens in his lap and that the outside world stayed, well, outside.
Chacha stood just before You, hands planted on slim hips and his right foot frantically tapping a tune against the plush carpeted floor of the random room in a random concert venue that was being used as their impromptu dressing room. It was both an unconscious habit caused by far too many years of living through music and a nervous twitch that he couldn’t quite stop.
The conversation he was about to have with You, whether You wanted to discuss it or not, always bought out that nervous streak that Chacha usually hid so well. His fingers itched for a cigarette but the days of smoking backstage had long since gone - a stark reminder that as much as some things stay the same, some things change beyond recognition.
“I think that’s as clean as it’s going to get. Clean anymore and you won’t have a lens left.”
You ignored the comment and resumed cleaning. Anger was never a healthy emotion for him, it always bought out that little obsessive-compulsive part of his personality that just had to see something, somewhere, be sparkling clean and pure.
Usually, it surfaced whenever the most important thing in his life started to look a little sullied and dirty in his usually blind eyes.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, it isn’t…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Cha,” You said snappily, effectively cutting off the speech that he knew was coming.
He had long since learned that the only way to avoid having your ass verbally handed to you by Chacha was to cut him off before he could get into his groove of saying all of those words you never wanted to hear.
Chacha, however, was nothing if not persistent.
“You need to hear it. Again. And again until you stop doing this to yourself.”
You applied additional pressure to his frantic rubbing of the lens and he could almost feel the plastic casing cracking under the fierce grip of his fingers. “I’m not doing anything. This is all due to Gac-.”
He frowned and shook his head. He didn’t want to hear that name right now. He didn’t want to think about him, didn’t want to speak of him and didn’t want that man breathing the same air as him. You tried to grab hold of the protective bubble that kept everything out but it was too late. That little place in his head that was reserved purely for Gac-, that man, was screaming for attention and displacing everything else that he was.
The lens fell to the floor with an unceremonious thump.
Chacha sighed. You’s head was still bowed, his eyes fixed onto the space that had once been occupied by the discarded and likely broken lens (oh, You would pitch a fit about that when he was back to being himself). He wanted to be gentle with You, wanted to right everything bad in the world with one wonderful sentence but he also wanted to smack some sense into him and it was difficult to chose which approach to take.
He settled for something in-between. “Gackt isn’t doing anything wrong, You-kun.”
You stiffened, his fists clenching in his lap. “You’re happy about this? About him doing this again?”
“Am I happy that Gackt (oh, don’t wince You it’s only his name) and his latest trick are currently wrecking our dressing room an hour before the show is due to start and have forced us into changing here, next to the slowly rotting and smelling sashimi? Of course not. But he’s a single and attractive young man, You-kun. He can’t be expected to live like a sexually repressed monk just because you’ve chosen to.”
You scowled. He knew that it gave him the look of an elementary school kid who had just been told that there was no more ice cream left in the freezer but he didn’t care. This was Gac-, that man, dammit Gackt’s fault. He couldn’t just screw his new play toys quietly could he? No, he had to introduce them, plan meals so everyone could get to know each other and You, in his unenvied position of being Gackt’s Best Friend Forever, was expected to welcome each new, poor unexpected victim into the ‘family’ with open arms.
It was all Gackt’s fault.
You nearly believed himself.
“I know he’s never discreet about these things,” Chacha decided to ignore the unpleasant snort from You, “but it’s his life. We can’t stop him, we can only pick up the pieces when it’s finished.”
“I’m tired of picking up the pieces, Cha.”
“Then do something about it.”
You finally looked up from his lap, his hard eyes locking with Chacha’s. “You just said we couldn’t stop him…”
Chacha fixed You with his harshest glare, the one that always made everyone, even Gackt fall into line and spoke in even, measured tones. “You know what I’m suggesting You-kun.”
He did know. Of course he knew. It was something he thought about doing every day of every week of every month of every one of the last fifteen years.
But, it was the one thing he couldn’t do. He’d promised he never would. And You always kept his promises.
“I can’t do that Cha…”
“Why the hell not?” Cha snapped, the rhythm of his foot shifting into higher gear. “Don’t give me any bullshit about Gackt not wanting to hear it. He may fuck these starry eyed fangirls and boys, he might even stick with them for awhile and call it a relationship but it’s you he loves. I know this. He knows this. The whole damn crew knows this so why can’t you accept it?
“Why do you do this to yourself You?” Chacha continued. “Why do you get angry and act like a pain in the ass whenever he finds someone else to give him the love that you won’t? Don’t you understand You? He’s with these tricks because he can’t have you and can’t cope with being alone!”
You stood up, his superior height and looming presence doing nothing other than making Chacha’s jaw set even more harshly and defiantly than before. They’d had this argument so many times as the years had passed and You was tired. Tired of trying to defend something he couldn’t explain.
“I know you want me to rush in there and declare my undying love like it’s a scene from a cheesy chick flick but I can’t. I can’t do that anymore than Gackt can come running out and declare his love to me. And I know he does love me, just as surely as I love him.”
“If you both know how you feel then why….”
“I made a promise, Cha. I can’t.”
Chacha ran his hands through his hair. One day, these kids were going to kill him. Or he was going to kill them, he wasn’t quite sure of the details yet but there would be blood.
“I don’t know who you made this promise to, whatever the fuck it is, but they aren’t worth this pain. It’d be worth losing a friendship to sort this damn mess out! Nobody is as important as listening to your heart, You-kun.”
“One person is,” You replied simply.
Chacha stared at him for a moment, eyes concentrated as if You was a complicated maths problem that needed solving and then he realised. He didn’t understand, but he realised. “Gackt. You promised Gackt.”
You nodded.
“You promised Gackt you wouldn’t love him?!” Yeah, those kids will definitely be the death of him.
You sighed. He’d never told this to anyone. He tried to not even think about it and simply locked it away in that box in his brain that was labelled “painful shit I don’t want to think about”. Sometimes he was reminded though. Sometimes he’d catch Gackt’s eye in the middle of the most innocent of conversations and something would flash behind those brown eyes (because it never happened with those damn contacts) and he knew that Gackt was remembering. The look that would follow and the expression of pure sorrow that would flick across Gackt’s beautiful face would be enough for You’s heart to crack that little bit more.
Gackt nearly always wore his coloured contacts when You was around.
You sighed again. “There was a night… It was the first time I’d seen him after he joined Malice Mizer.”
Chacha nodded encouragingly and gave You’s hand a little squeeze. The poor kid looked so lost, so sad but still there was a steely determination that Chacha had to admire.
“He was different,” You continued. “Sure, the Gackt I knew, the one who would squeal like a girl if he saw a cockroach and would spend weeks searching for the perfect birthday present was still there. But he was hidden. He had hardened, there was this cool detachment and emptiness in him that had never been there before.
“He was fighting with Mana most days. It was tiring him and he was so worried that he was going to lose his dream because of the arguments. I just wanted to make things better for him because underneath the make up and barriers he was still my Gakkun, you know? So I hugged him, like I used to when we were both young and stupid. He didn’t want me to comfort him because I think that made the problems more real but I did anyway.
“Then suddenly I’m kissing him and it felt so right to hold him in my arms like that. We had sex,” You said, a slight blush staining his cheeks, “for the first and only time and then in the morning we talked.”
“What did you say?” Chacha asked although he thought that he probably knew the answer already.
“We decided that we couldn’t do it, that there couldn’t be an ‘us’. He was too determined to live his dream and I didn’t really like the man he had to become in order to live that dream.”
“So you promised to wait for each other,” Chacha stated.
“Yeah,” You confirmed. “I’m waiting for this to all be over and he’s just waiting for me.”
“You could be waiting a long time.”
You smiled. “I already have waited a long time. I can wait a little longer. Just knowing he’s there and waiting for me is enough most days.”
“But not today…”
“Not today,” You echoes. “I know he’s not really cheating on me. I understand that this is his way of dealing with the situation in the same way mine is to be a ‘sexually repressed monk’,” to his credit, Chacha looked a little repentant when the comment was thrown back at him. “I know Gackt doesn’t like being alone and that none of these flings will ever steal him away from me but it’s still difficult… I want to be the one rolling around in the dressing room with him but it’d never work. I love him too much to lose him simply because we couldn’t wait.”
Chacha paused for a few moments as You’s words rattled around his head and unexplained reactions suddenly become clear. He took a deep breath and finally spoke. “You’re both crazy,” Chacha said with a shake of his head.
You chuckled lightly. “Probably.”
Chacha picked up the stray lens and handed it to You. “I think I need a cigarette. I’ll be outside catching some fresh air. Are you going to be okay?”
Before You could answer, the door to the make shift dressing room opened and Gackt entered, his starry eyed lover for the night following closely behind looking slightly crumpled and thoroughly fucked. Gackt smiled as his eyes locked with You’s and he headed straight for him leaving his lover to stand alone in the doorway, an outsider looking in.
“I’ll be fine,” You answered. “I know that he’ll always pick me in the end just as surely as I know that he’ll come running the second I ask,” You added under his breath so only Chacha could hear.
Chacha smiled, both in reaction to You and in greeting to Gackt, before sweeping past the green looking youngster in the doorway (jeez Gackt, is that legal?!) and heading to the parking lot.
“So,” Gackt said, his voice breaking the slight awkwardness that had filled the room, “what have you been doing this afternoon? Taking more photos?” he said with a slight nod to the lens that You was still holding.
“No,” You said with a shake of his head. “I’ve been waiting.”
Gackt smiled wistfully, the lover hanging outside of the door soon forgotten when all he could see was You. A stab of guilt echoed through his mind but this was the course that they had chosen, together, on that night fifteen years ago. Sometimes he wished that he had the same strength of character and flesh that You had but he guessed it didn’t matter. You could be strong enough for both of them.
There was no sign of resignation or sorrow in Gackt’s voice when he spoke next, just the hope and certainty that came from believing in someone fully and unconditionally. “In that case, I guess I’ll wait with you.”
~Owari