![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solongsun April 8, 1970: the day of the Ten-Roku gas explosion, and the day that 22-year-old Ruki attempts to end his life. Less than two weeks later, he finds himself committed to the Yamauchi Hostel, a psychiatric hospital in the Kyoto hills. Kept on a ward with a number of other ill young men, Ruki is sometimes frightened and sometimes enthralled by his new friends – and none more other than the 'untreatable' Kyo, whose hospitalisation hides a legacy of dark secrets...
The next week or so passed in a strange blur.
To Ruki it was dead time, as if what Kai had done had left some kind of curse over the sanatorium, like an evil miasma in the air: whole days passed more or less without feature, so Ruki kept on sitting down to a meals and finding himself unsure whether this was supposed to be breakfast, lunch or dinner; the afternoons dragged, the air feeling stagnant and the minute hand on the clock standing still, a strange shimmer in the grey light; the evenings fell suddenly, all dark all at once, and the collection of men would look around them in confusion, like animals sensing an earthquake. The few points that did add some colour to the slow, grey days were depressing ones, like news bulletins delivered in a voice like falling rocks: that Uruha was getting worse; that Die was declining. On a day that might have been a Tuesday, Shinya jumped up from a nervy contemplation of the phones and started shouting out, battering the rotary dial with the receiver and succeeding in pulling the entire thing off the wall before he was caught and sedated, and perhaps what they gave him wasn't quite strong enough because he was an invisible, sobbing presence in the isolation room for the next few days, another black cloud to add to the growing dark sky over the ward. When he was finally led back into a communal mealtime, wan and downcast as a child, it was no more than a few minutes before he went off again, tears pouring down his cheeks as his fists beat against the table and his legs kicked out, his back arching, head snapping forwards; and when they took him away after that time there was nothing but silence – days and days of quiet, and worried expressions, and dreams that felt like real life because they were all just about clock-watching, and about shadows moving, and nothing seemed to make sense any more.
Since the first night after Kai had died, Ruki had carried on sleeping in Aoi and Die's room. It wasn't something any of them had spoken about; he just left his bedding there and left it up to either of them to tell him if he was making himself unwelcome, but they didn't. Die did snore, just as Aoi had threatened, but never for long; if he kept it up for more than five minutes, the steadiness of the sound would usually be interrupted by a harsh whisper from Aoi, admonishing him to roll onto his side instead, and Die would give a low groan and obey, and there would be quiet again.
Most nights, Uruha joined them. That wasn't discussed, either, and he was never there in the evenings when they went to bed; he would simply show up at some point during the night, unwilling or else unable to sleep alone, twitching and flinching miserably as he stood at the door, which he would open and close twelve times before entering the room – a new development. When he slept, it was with a copy of one of his father's books clutched tight in his arms, The Local's Guide to Brazil or Russia or Germany held flush against his chest, which Aoi complained about because it meant he woke up with the sharp spine of the book digging into his ribs. However sharp his reproves, though, Ruki would hear him whispering quietly later, and it was that more than anything else that seemed to calm Uruha down – Aoi murmuring to him, Die's gentle snores in the dark. Simple, comforting things.
Forbidden, of course.
It seemed there were two breaking points, in that period, that led them to do what they did. The first was that Ruki and Uruha were told, point blank, that they had to start sleeping in their own rooms again; the second was that they were informed, as a collective, that attending Kai's funeral was not considered to be in their therapeutic interest. Perhaps noting the foreboding look on Aoi's face, the head nurse had explained calmly that Kai's ashes were to be buried in Tokushima anyway, in the family grave, and that it would be flatly impossible for the sanatorium to ship a group of patients clear across the country just to watch some ashes being interred.
There were rumblings, though, after that announcement. The six of them gathered mutinously in the music room as the rain lashed at the windows, a bluish haze of cigarette smoke gathering in the air like a bad spirit, and for a long time the only sounds were of the record playing – The Byrds' Mr. Tambourine Man, that day – and of Uruha's rhythmic rocking against the wall, and the occasional snapping of a lighter.
'It's not fair,' Die offered up gloomily, and there was a long silence until Aoi finally shifted himself to agree with him.
'No, it's not fair,' he said. 'I don't want that for him.' He gazed around at all of their faces, 'I don't want him to have a lonely funeral out on some stupid island. There won't be anybody there who cares about him. There won't even be anybody who knows him.'
He kicked out angrily, his bare foot making a hollow thunk against the shiny side of the piano. Shinya had been sitting on the piano's stool and resting his head glumly against it; he blinked blearily at the noise, but that was all.
'We should have our own funeral,' Ruki said. 'A real one.'
Everyone was looking at him, but the gaze he felt boring into him most deeply was Kyo's, and so it was Kyo he addressed his next words to. 'We loved him,' he said haltingly, 'And we'll do it properly, and remember him the right way.'
'We can play music,' Kyo said soberly, as if it was just him and Ruki having a conversation, 'That's the right way.'
'Yeah,' Die said, looking at Kyo a little dazedly, 'You're right. We should play all the songs he loved, and all the songs that make us – you know – think about him.' He shot a slightly timid glance at Aoi, who nodded.
'That's the right way,' he said slowly, 'But we have to be careful about it. I don't...' he hesitated, 'I don't want it to cause a huge scene with the nurses. I don't want them bursting in and ruining it. I want it to be peaceful for him.'
There was a beat of stillness, and then Die nodded. He placed his hand carefully on Aoi's shoulder and the dark-haired man immediately grasped at it, clutching onto Die's bony knuckles almost angrily.
'It'll have to be late at night,' Kyo said in his tired voice. He had his eyes on Aoi now, but as he spoke they flicked back to Ruki, 'And I think we should do it in your room.'
'My room?'
'It's where he lived,' Kyo said simply.
'It's far from the nurses' station, too,' Die added.
'There's no music in my room.'
Kyo gave a one-shouldered shrug. 'You've stolen keys before. We'll get the keys to the cage in the music room and get the guitars out.'
'As long as we're sneaky about it,' Aoi said approvingly. 'I can play.'
'Me too,' said Die.
'Me too,' said Uruha, surprisingly, and then went back to chewing on his fingernails. He was blinking rapidly, rocking where he sat, and gently Aoi bent down and tugged his fingers out of his mouth.
'If we get caught...' Ruki began tentatively, shooting a furtive look at Kyo, but Aoi shook his head stubbornly.
'We won't get caught. Last time it was different; we weren't trying to hide it. This time...'
'This time I can help,' Shinya said in his quiet, steady voice; the first time Ruki had ever heard him speak in front of so many people. There was a bit of a stunned silence.
'How?' Die said at last, and Shinya gave him a shy smile.
'I can be the distraction,' he said softly. 'Nobody will ever suspect me. I'll go into the bathroom, lock myself into one of the cubicles, and I'll pretend I'm having one of my...one of my episodes. That should buy you enough time.' He swallowed. 'I'm sure I can fake it,' he said. 'I've done it for real enough times.'
He might have noticed the look of warm admiration on Die's face, because he ducked his head and lay his cheek back against the piano.
'You'll miss the funeral,' Aoi said, his tone of voice surprisingly gentle and deferential, and Shinya gave a slow blink that seemed to be a substitute for a nod.
'I know,' he said, 'That's all right. Kai would understand.' He gave a small smile, 'Besides, this way, even if you get caught they can't put anybody in the isolation room. I'll be in there.'
Ruki licked his dry lips. 'Let's do it tonight,' he said.
When he glanced over at Kyo he found the other man was already looking at him, a small smile on his lips. For the first time in days, Ruki felt able to return it.
The surprising thing, the thing that made the night feel almost foreordained – as if it had been planned, somehow, but some sympathetic fates, long ago – was that their plan went off without a hitch.
Shortly after midnight, with the rain still hissing against the trees outside and trickling musically from the eaves, Shinya locked himself inside a cubicle in the bathroom and gave a long, loud cry that, even though he knew it was fake, sent shivers down Ruki's spine. He was lying in bed, where he'd been dozing fitfully for some hours, unable to really fall asleep with the knowledge of what was to come and with the terrible emptiness in his bedroom, quiet and still without Kai. He'd tongued his sleeping pill, but he hadn't been able to put it into the wall; just the thought made his fingers shake and tears come to his eyes. He'd flushed it down the toilet, instead.
Uruha had decided he was to be the one to steal the keys and get the guitars into Ruki's bedroom – 'If any of you get into any more trouble you'll probably get thrown out,' he had said matter-of-factly when the others had argued with him.
Ruki lay on his side, listening to the soft pad of fast footsteps along the doorway and the urgent murmur of conversation. There was some back and forth, and something that sounded like a muffled curse, and then a loud rattling that must have come from the door of the cubicle Shinya had locked himself up in.
Ruki could feel his heart pounding in his ears. His eyes found Kai's empty, stripped bed in the dark, and he squeezed his hand into a tight little fist in the bedclothes.
Whatever happens, he told himself silently, it's worth it.
There was a feather-light, hasty little knock on his door before it opened, spilling light over the floor. Clenching his jaw tightly, Uruha deposited two ancient-looking acoustic guitars onto Kai's bed and tensely set about his strange routine with the door, opening it slightly before whisking it closed again, twelve times in a row, until he finally shut out the light for good and lowered himself onto the floor, shaking.
'Nobody saw me,' he said in a low voice, 'They're all in there with Shinya.' He cast a wary look at Kai's empty bed. 'We'd better keep the light off.'
'Yeah.' Ruki pulled himself up in bed and pushed back the covers, unsure quite what to say. He didn't think he'd ever been in a situation like this with Uruha before; alone with the other man looking quite so lucid and focussed.
'Why twelve?' he blurted, and Uruha blinked at him.
'Excuse me?'
'The number twelve. All the...all the things you do, you do them twelve times, right?'
Uruha gave him a very guarded look; even in the dim light, Ruki could see the reproach in his eyes. 'I suppose,' he said grudgingly.
'So why twelve?'
Uruha studied him for a long time. 'I don't do anything,' he said at last.
'But—'
'I'm getting out of here,' Uruha declared, 'My dad says. In three weeks.'
His voice was so certain that Ruki didn't know what to say to him; just stared at him hopelessly and felt relieved when the door quietly clicked open and shut again, Aoi and Die slipping in through the gap. With them in it the room suddenly felt quite small and cramped, and there was nothing for it; the guitars were picked up and the two of them sat on Kai's bed, looking ill-at-ease. One of the guitars settled in Die's lap, and the other in Uruha's, which surprised Ruki; he'd expected Aoi to make a snatch, but the dark-haired man was leaning back on his hands, his shoulders and neck twisted around and his gaze directed somewhere up at the wall behind him.
'There are dark bits,' he whispered, 'Where his posters were.'
He traced their outlines with a finger that trembled lightly; the places where Kai's colourful posters had stopped the sunlight from fading the colour of the walls. From down the hall in the bathrooms, the noise level was increasing, and even after Kyo joined them – glancing around almost apologetically, as if he wasn't supposed to be there – the five of them sat around in an uneasy silence, listening to the sounds Shinya was making and the efforts of the nurses to get in to help him.
'He is faking,' Die whispered uncertainly, 'Right? There's no way he would have...?'
'He's faking,' Aoi assured him gently, but cast a furtive sort of look at Kyo, 'Yeah?'
Kyo gave a single nod, which seemed to be good enough. He hadn't sat on either of the beds; instead he'd sat himself on the floor between them, leaning back against the bedside cabinet Kai and Ruki had shared. They lapsed back into their tense silence, and at length a steady rattling sound reached them, over the top of Shinya's quietening cries – 'They're unscrewing the cubicle door,' Aoi whispered. 'You'd think they'd have thought of that sooner, after what happened in the music room.'
'Thank you for that,' Kyo said suddenly, his voice quiet but clear. 'I'm sorry you got into trouble.'
A look of surprise passed over Aoi's face, but he wrestled it back fairly quickly and shrugged. 'Any time.'
After that, they waited. They waited until Shinya's cries were silenced and until they heard the sound of the isolation room door opening and closing, and for the footsteps in the hallway to die down, and for the rattling as they reattached the cubicle door to stop. It took a long time, and they were shivering, chilled from the late hour and the damp that seemed to breathe through the walls from the outside. At last, though, all was silent again, and uncertainly Die ran his fingers over the strings of the guitar in his lap. He played a fairly loud chord, cocking his head to listen for any noise from outside the door, and when there was none he looked around at his friends nervously.
'Right,' he said. 'How should we...start? Should we say something?'
Rolling his eyes, Aoi groped for Die's hand and then reached down and grasped Kyo's. He nodded around the circle, and hesitantly all five men linked their hands, Uruha and Die stretching between the gap in the beds and Kyo bridging the space between Aoi and Ruki, the look on his face utterly unreadable. Biting his lip slightly, Aoi lowered his head, and they all followed suit.
'Kai,' he said simply, 'You were our friend, and we all love you a lot. We're not angry at you for what you did. We miss you, but don't feel like your ghost has to hang around here, okay? There are much better places to haunt.' He paused, and when he continued, it was in a slightly strained voice, 'I hope wherever you are, you're happy and safe, and that you're not scared. Don't worry about the others...I'll take care of them.' He cleared his throat and sniffed. 'We're going to play some songs for you now,' he said, his voice heavy and husky, and he raised his head and gave Die a slight nod.
'What should I play?' the redhead asked, looking baffled, and Aoi broke the link between their hands to press his own palms down over his face.
'Anything,' he said, his voice muffled, 'Whatever comes into your head.'
Biting his lip, Die tapped nervously on the guitar. There was a gentle clearing of a throat from across the room, and sitting next to Ruki on his bed, Uruha gently strummed his own guitar strings. He shook his head like he'd missed an easy note, frowning, and then plucked his way hesitantly through a tune that started to sound familiar, melancholy and wistful and nostalgic, and Ruki had just about placed it when across from him, quietly, Die began to sing: 'Living is easy with eyes closed...'
It clicked for all of them, and with shy, broken voices they picked it up, 'Misunderstanding all you see,
It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me...'
Suddenly, Ruki had to stop and clench his jaw tight. The tears welled up in his eyes so suddenly that they stung, and he felt a great silent sob leave him weak.
'Strawberry fields, nothing is real...'
It didn't matter that the words sounded funny in their voices; that they were just doing their best to imitate the sounds. To Ruki's ear it sounded imperfect but not wrong – sweet, and sad, and so tender that he felt his voice kept dying in his throat. He became aware that almost every singing voice was becoming weaker around him; that there were tears glistening on Die's cheeks in the dim light coming from under the door and that Uruha was sniffing and gasping softly, and that Aoi's shoulders were shaking. He looked down at Kyo and found the other man not crying, but looking straight up at Ruki, his eyes dark with emotion. Haltingly, he reached up and clasped Ruki's small hand in his larger one.
'Strawberry fields forever,' they finished finally, voices straggling, and Uruha's fingers stilled on the strings. They sat hunched, all staring at each other, and Ruki thought he felt it as they all felt it: something loosening in his chest – in all of their chests – as if something painful had finally dislodged, and it was now easier to breathe. He managed to smile at Die, and sadly, the other man smiled back and flexed his fingers over the guitar strings.
It became easier after that. Die played a gentle cover of Sittin' On The Dock of a Bay, and Ruki thought about how many times he'd heard the song spill tinnily from Kai's little radio over the summer. Aoi took the guitar and played Ruby Tuesday, which they mostly only knew the chorus to, and then Uruha played Let It Be. The three of them took it in turns, relaxing into it; some songs made them cry, some songs made them smile, but both felt right. The night started to feel warmer with so many of them pressed into the same room, and Aoi stuffed Ruki's bed sheets around the crack under the door to try and muffle the sound further as Die provided a quite raucous rendition of Octopus's Garden, which made them laugh even if it was a tearful sort of laughter. After that, they heard a stirring from down the hallway, and shot anxious looks at each other, but it didn't stop Aoi from setting his face and starting to play the song that Ruki knew would always, always make him think of Kai – even hearing just a tiny snatch of it, even years later – always Kai: Like A Bridge Over Troubled Water. Perhaps they were all remembering the strange stand-off that song had caused in the TV room, because it seemed that was the song to truly tear the grief from their chests and loose it into the world; they didn't know what the words meant but Ruki thought they sang them the way they were meant:
'When darkness comes, and pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down...'
Aoi's fingers faltered on the strings, and he stopped playing abruptly. He was crying in a gulping, unpretty kind of way, rocking back and forth where he sat, and carefully Die gathered him up. Wordless, Uruha leant over and set a gentle hand on his knee, and Ruki was strangely aware of it again: the weird balance that existed between the three of them.
He looked at them, and he looked at Kyo, and a few moments of the night passed by quietly.
None of them were sure how long they had sat there. It was still dark outside, but it seemed to Ruki that it might not have been quite as dark as it once was, and in the quiet between them there was another sound, however faint and patchy: birdsong.
Uruha clutched his guitar tighter to his body, looking at Aoi.
'We should play his favourite song,' he said quietly.
'Yeah,' Aoi agreed, an air of finality in his voice, 'We should.'
He watched the door for a long moment, evidently listening out for any other sounds before making eye contact with Uruha again: together, tripping over each other only slightly, they started to strum, and this time everybody was ready because there was no doubt at all as to what they were going to play.
'What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?'
The last time Ruki had heard it, it was being played for him just outside the door of the isolation room, and he couldn't help but see the parallels between then and now: all his friends gathered around, showing their support for one of their own in the only way they could. The music didn't change anything; it didn't alter the situation at all – it was like wrapping your arms around somebody to shield them from a nuclear blast; it did nothing; it was pointless; but at the end of it all it meant something.
That was the important bit, Ruki thought. It meant something to all of them, and it would have meant something to Kai, and if that was all they could do then it still might be good enough.
'Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends,
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends...'
It was a song to grow warmer on, and as they finished it, Ruki saw that he was right: the sky really was getting slightly brighter over at the horizon line; the black had turned to purple, almost blue, and he knew soon it would fade to grey and the sun would start another slow struggle over the hills. Nobody said anything, but Aoi gathered up both guitars, and their small funeral began to break up. Die and Aoi left quietly, tiptoeing away one by one, and when Uruha left he took both guitars to stash under his bed until they could figure out some way to replace them.
That left just Kyo, and when he stood up to go Ruki gave him some kind of look that seemed to stop him in his tracks. Standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, he jammed his hands in his pockets and gave a loose kind of shrug.
'Sit down,' Ruki suggested, his voice slightly hoarse from singing and crying. Not looking at him, Kyo did so, perching next to him on the bed.
'It was a good idea,' Ruki said after a short silence. Kyo gave a slow nod, and Ruki glanced up at him a little cautiously. 'You held my hand,' he said. There was another nod in response, tireder this time, but now Kyo was looking at him. Ruki gave an awkward shrug. 'I thought you didn't like being touched.'
'I...' Kyo shut his mouth and shook his head. 'It's not that.'
'Then what is it?' Ruki pushed gently, and Kyo shot him another unreadable sort of look.
'Nobody touches me like you do,' he said haltingly. 'I'm not – used to it. It felt different.'
'It made you uncomfortable?'
'I just didn't know what to do.' Kyo sighed, his eyes moving slowly around Ruki's face, taking in his pale skin and his nose and his lips, examining them for any sign of untrustworthiness. 'I can't read it, the way you touch me. I don't know what you're telling me; I don't know what you want. But you're doing something. You're – you're getting to me, somehow. Inside. You're making me think about you. You're pushing your way in.' Kyo shook his head exhaustedly, and Ruki bit down on his own lip gently.
'When it was raining,' he said hesitantly, 'You covered me with your umbrella.'
'Correct.'
'And when I was locked up, you sat outside the door all night. And when – when I told you about Eiji, you never made me feel like an idiot, or like I was delusional. You made me feel like he was the wrong one. You made me see that he – he treated me badly. And it was wrong.'
Kyo shrugged lop-sidedly, and Ruki faltered. 'So you pushed your way in, too,' he said.
Clumsy, Kyo leant forward and pushed their lips together. His hand found a shaking hold on Ruki's hip before it fell away and he pulled back, looking almost horrified; he didn't look away, though. His deep brown eyes remained fixed on Ruki's face, huge with whatever emotion was making him look so torn up, and slowly Ruki reached up and touched his own lips.
He couldn't tell exactly what he was feeling, because it seemed like he was feeling everything all at once; that he was full of the sensations of his heart racing and his lungs contracting and the neurons in his brain firing off their tiny electrical signals; of each strand of hair stiffening in its follicle and the feeling of the air next to his skin and the way his cock was stirring between his legs, taking in the sight of the other man, tired and scared and beautiful anyway.
Most of all it was the look Kyo was giving him, scared but still steady and unwavering – as always; as it always had been, and as Ruki hoped it always would be. When they kissed again Kyo immediately put both hands behind his back, as if to prove that he meant no harm, but it didn't matter; the blood was rushing in Ruki's ears and he slipped his own hands around Kyo's waist, pulling him closer. Kyo's lips were an unusually angular sort of shape, like words written in a foreign language, and there was a fullness to them that made Ruki want to push hard against him, but he didn't. They were soft, too; they were so soft. They were softer than Ruki had thought a man could be.
He liked it. It was a truth too glaring to ignore, how much he liked it.
It was a feeling like falling, he thought, because he was terrified. But he felt free.
From:
no subject
Those kisses at the end. Kyo's emotional vulnerability there, not quite understanding what Ruki is doing to him, yet opening himself up to it. *fans self* I swear kisses like that are hotter to me than any full-on sex scene in existence.
From:
no subject
Sorry, this is not a proper response to your comment, but I feel like this has been inside me for days and it chose you to come out to. I apologise.
From:
no subject
"Dick" and "cock" tend to be two very distinct sub-camps of the group of people using explicit terms; I don't know that I've ever seen someone use both in the same work. The non-explicit group tends to use all sorts of verbal gymnastics to avoid stating the obvious - "length" being IMO the least giggle-worthy. "Manhood" is just awkward and feels a little transphobic to me for some reason?
From:
no subject
'Length' isn't too bad; I can take 'length' (sorry again, mum). 'Manhood' is the biggest cringe though, and needs to burn now. I can see where you're coming from with transphobic. I think that's the thing that makes it sound ridiculous to me - it's outdated enough to sound more or less Victorian. Blech.
From:
no subject
Yes, "manhood" does sound very outmoded. I'd put that in the same category as "bosom": words that should remain in the 1800s.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject