The 20th Century Boy: 11/??

[solongsun]

Title: The 20th Century Boy

Author: solongsun 

Rating: mature

Bands: Dir en grey

Pairings: Kaoru/Toshiya

Since early childhood, Kaoru has been using doors to travel backwards and forwards through time: a motion he is sometimes able to control, and sometimes not. At the age of 22, he opens a door to the long-ago autumn of 1996 and finds something he never expected – a man who, decades before Kaoru's birth, seems to know exactly who he is...

The sole of one of his shoes is working its way loose, and it makes him bring that foot down unnaturally hard with every step, stamping through the city. His bass guitar in its case knocks painfully against the bones in his spine, and a filthy, soot-smelling rain is sifting down onto his face and soaking through his hair as he looks blindly around, trying to get his bearings in this place he's never been before. Apart from his bass he's only carrying one suitcase, and it's light; apart from his tapes and a few items of clothing, he doesn't have much. It's weird how easily his life, all seventeen years of it, can be packed up. He thinks of the things he's left behind: the rock posters still taped to his bedroom walls, the one or two empty beer bottles rolling around in the bottom of his closet, a few cigarette butts pitched out of the window. He didn't take his cassette deck because he reasoned it was too heavy; he regrets that already. Without it the tapes rattle uselessly in his bag, like cicada husks.

Tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket is just under ¥134,000 that he saved up from his various part-time jobs and time spent running errands around the neighbourhood during the summer – and, if he's honest, some of which he squirrelled out of his grandmother's handbag – less the ¥6,000 or so that he dropped on the eight hour bus ride from Nagano to Osaka. It seemed like a huge sum before he left, but now that he's here he feels stupid and panicky; is it possible he can even last a month on it? Shelter, and food? Probably not. He makes some estimates, does some quick mental calculations and winces.

He doesn't have a watch on, but the sky is getting dark, and the neon signs are looking more vivid. He knows he's making himself look every inch the naïve country boy he really is, but he can't help but stand still in the middle of the pavement and gawk up at them, his dark eyes wide and his too-long hair sticking damply to his neck; after so many wasted hours spent dreaming about it, here he is. The lights reflecting off him are blue and green and pink and red and orange, flickering in his eyes; the air smells like dirty rain and car exhaust and food being cooked; crepes and takoyaki and steamed buns. He's not eaten in hours but he's never felt less hungry in his life: it feels like he's full up of this, of this huge city, racing and pulsing and flashing all around him. The crowd of people is parting around him, the occasional elbow knocking against his bass and rocking him temporarily off-balance; sometimes a foot or a knee catches his suitcase, held limply by his own legs. He doesn't snap out of it, though, until he feels something actually intentionally touching his bass, at which point his sense of self-preservation kicks in and he whirls around suspiciously.

 

He has to adjust his gaze several feet lower; standing in front of him is a very, very young kid, one arm still outstretched where he was touching the instrument case. He looks up at Toshiya and lets it drop back down by his side, a solemn expression on his face.

Where are his parents? This kid is surely too young to be out alone, and Toshiya stares at him uneasily. He's so young his face doesn't appear fully formed yet; he's maybe three or four. There's something strangely familiar about him, as though Toshiya has seen this kid before, but of course that's impossible.

'Hi,' he says uncertainly, but the little boy just continues to stare up at him in silence. Toshiya's never been around young children before, and he's not sure how much this one should be talking. What age do kids start talking at, anyway? Maybe he can't yet, but that doesn't feel right. He's standing pretty confidently upright, after all, and his clothes aren't baby clothes; jeans, a sweater, and sneakers with trailing laces. Toshiya points at them.

'Your laces are undone,' he says. 'You don't want to trip.'

The kid glances briefly down at his shoes and then goes back to staring raptly at Toshiya's face. Sighing softly, Toshiya squats down and reaches out, tying the kid's laces for him; maybe he's not old enough to do that, either.

'There,' he says, knotting them securely. Squatting down he's near enough at eye level with the kid, and he frowns slightly, wondering why he looks so recognisable.

'You need help?' he asks cautiously, and just like that the kid spins away and vanishes, squeezing himself back into the maze of grown-up legs; Toshiya curses softly and gets to his feet, straining to look for him over the shoulders of all the people walking by. He thinks he sees a glimpse of him by the buildings that line the side of the pavement, the various stalls and shopfronts, all brightly lit up; he thinks he sees a tiny hand reaching up for the brass knob of a door pressed in between a clothing store and a Family Mart – there are little lit-up buzzers on it with nameplates, so he guesses it must go to an apartment building, maybe where the kid lives – but the weirdest thing; he sees the door open and the top of the kid's glossy head as he steps through, but at the same time, it's almost like he doesn't step through.

Instead, it's almost like he just disappears. And the door is closed too quickly, like it never opened before, and Toshiya realises that he can't remember anything about the room inside the doorway; even whether there were lights on or not. It's more like a void; a complete and total blank in his memory, even though it just happened.

Shivering, Toshiya gives his head a shake, telling himself that he's tired and overwhelmed and reading too much into things. It works, kind of.

 

An hour later, he finds himself in a bar, his eighth or ninth of the night. It's a Tuesday but even so the place isn't empty; all the tables are occupied and there's a line of three or four people waiting to be served. With his hair loose and wet around his face and his luggage with him he knows he must look ragged and unkempt but he has to try; striding up to the bar, he waits impatiently for the bartender – a young man, every bit as tall as Toshiya is but with lividly red hair – to turn to him.

'Yup?' he says automatically, and then eyes Toshiya closely. 'You're not twenty.'

Toshiya bites his lip. 'Any jobs going here?' he asks, trying to make his voice sound confident.

'Jobs,' the bartender says, rolling the word around like he's never heard it before in his life, and Toshiya fiddles awkwardly with the strap of his guitar case.

'I need a job,' he repeats, a little clearer, but the redhead just gazes at him curiously. Toshiya wonders if everybody in Osaka just has this habit of just staring when you talk to them.

'What's in there?' the bartender asks abruptly, nodding towards the guitar case on Toshiya's back.

'Uh—'

The bartender rolls his eyes. 'Guitar or bass?'

'Bass.'

'Bass.' He nods his head in a weird, rhythmic sort of way. 'You any good?'

'Oh, um—'

'You playing with anybody right now? A band or anything?'

Toshiya glances down at the suitcase in his hand, wondering how much of a moron this guy is. 'No,' he says, 'I just moved here.'

'Oh? When?'

Toshiya shrugs. 'About an hour and a half ago.'

The bartender cracks a grin. 'Far out. I thought you sounded country.'

For some reason Toshiya blushes at that, but the bartender shakes his head: 'It's not an insult. I'm from the country too; I've just lived here a while now. So, you got someplace to stay?'

A customer behind Toshiya clears his throat impatiently and the bartender rolls his eyes. 'Stay there,' he says to Toshiya – as if he has anywhere else to go – and gets busy for a few minutes, pouring drinks and shoving them across the bar at the guy in a manner that borders on rude; he plucks the man's cash from his hands and doesn't bother giving him change. He turns back to Toshiya with a thoughtful look on his face.

'My name's Die,' he says abruptly, 'And you didn't answer me. Two questions: you any good with that bass, and do you have a place to stay?'

Toshiya swallows. 'I'm Hara. And I don't have anywhere to stay yet.'

Yet, he thinks a little bitterly: that's optimistic. He forces himself to stand a little straighter. 'And – I am pretty good, actually, yeah.'

Die breaks into a megawatt smile. 'Don't look so scared,' he says, and Toshiya sort of stiffens up his shoulders.

'I'm not.'

'Very good,' Die says approvingly, and gives Toshiya a wink. 'Almost convinced me.'

 

When Toshiya stumbles out of the bar a few minutes later, he has a piece of paper bearing a name, an address and a list very precise instructions, all delivered in Die's almost illegible script. He has almost no idea what he's doing, but he's been suffused with a weird sense of floaty calm: he realises that when you don't have a home, there's no such thing as being lost. It's not exactly freeing – he's aware he's standing tense as a wire, and whenever he breathes too sharply he feels something like an iron band around his lungs, squeezing them painfully – but it is at least countering the panic: he has the comforting sense that he's fallen now, and that he can't fall any further.

He boards the subway as per Die's instructions, his eyes flickering up nervously to check and recheck the signs; he's never been on a subway before in his life and he's surprised by how much it jolts around and how difficult it is to stand upright. Nobody else seems to be having trouble. He plants his feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart and teaches his body how to roll with the motions of the train, rather than struggling against them. He stays vigilant for the different station announcements and gets off at Dōbutsuen-mae. From there Die has drawn him a rather scribbly sort of map, and Toshiya pauses at the mouth of the station, gazing at it in confusion. The streets in front of him look nothing like the map, and none of the names are familiar. The panic is back now, like an old friend: he feels it rising in the back of his throat with a sour sort of taste.

Somebody says his name in a bored sort of voice, and unsteadily Toshiya looks up.

'Hara?' the voice says again, sounding slightly irritated this time. It belongs to a short man with wisps of blond hair escaping from beneath a woollen beanie; his ears glint with multiple metal piercings. His face is set into a frown that looks more or less permanent.

'Yeah,' Toshiya says nervously, 'That's me. Are you...' he looks down at the paper even though he has the name memorised, 'Kyo?'

'Yeah,' the short man says gruffly. 'Die called. Said you're a bassist.'

'Yeah.'

'Our band needs a bassist,' Kyo says. His voice is sort of grudging, and he folds his arms over his chest. He's looking at Toshiya with interest, but it's an aggressive sort of interest that makes Toshiya want to shrink back; his eyes are sharp and they rake over every inch of him.

Still: 'Die said that maybe I could stay with you,' Toshiya says anxiously, wondering what exactly Die is on and how delusional it makes him. Maybe this whole thing is a weird set-up and he's going to end up sold to a ring of pornographers or cannibals or something. Maybe he'll end up lying naked on the middle of a table whilst businessmen eat sushi off his naked body. Maybe—

'Yeah,' Kyo says uncaringly. 'If you're a good bassist.'

He turns and starts to walk away, and uncertainly Toshiya tags along behind, struggling slightly with his luggage; Kyo walks fast and seems to know where he's going, leading Toshiya through a maze of side-streets and alleyways. There's actual graffiti on some of the walls here; Toshiya's never seen that before. There's rubbish around, too, which is new. A lot of people seem to just be sitting on the streets and looking vacantly ahead, and Toshiya keeps stumbling over his own feet because he's trying to take everything in, looking in a thousand directions at once whilst still moving forward. He trips and only just keeps himself upright; flushing hotly, he looks up to see Kyo waiting for him some metres ahead, a strange sort of look on his face. He's standing up against a very nondescript looking wooden door, which he nudges open with his foot. He gestures Toshiya inside rudely.

He doesn't know it yet, of course, but the building he steps into will be his home for the next four years of his life.

 

'You can stay,' Kyo is telling him in that gruff voice he has, 'For one night. Tomorrow we'll try you out with the band; if you're good, you can stay longer. I have a six month lease on this place. I'm not planning on renewing it.' He lights up a cigarette and puffs on it savagely.

The apartment is tiny; it's only about twice as large as Toshiya's bedroom at his grandmother's place. There's a tiny strip of kitchen and then two single beds, one messy and one completely bare, the mattress making a tinny sort of sound when Kyo thumps it. 'Sleep here,' he says, and jerks a stiff thumb at a door behind him. 'Bathroom's through there, just a shower though. You want a bath, there's a bathhouse down the street that's clean.' He pauses. 'You smoke?'

'Yeah,' Toshiya says, and Kyo throws him the pack. It's a fairly big lie; at this point Toshiya has smoked about one cigarette total in his life, made up of little puffs of Kaoru's, here and there when the other man will let him, which isn't often. Most of the time, it's Toshiya stealing the cigarette out of his hands and taking a drag before Kaoru has a chance to react. Now he lights his own cigarette for the first time, pulling the smoke into his lungs the way Kaoru does and forcing himself not to cough. It feels like an initiation; he eyes the cigarette with a hint of pride. When he lets the smoke out, it makes an impressively large grey-blue cloud in the air, and he smiles. He wonders when Kaoru finds him here. He's not worried: he knows it's going to happen.

 

They've had sex nine times now; in Toshiya's bedroom, in the woods, in the field in the middle of the night. That time was the most recent, Kaoru slipping inside him in the field where they first met, one small hand pressing gently over his mouth to muffle the noises he made and the other stroking a soothing pattern over his hip. With the older man's hands on his body and the jolts of excitement running through him every time Kaoru's cock thrust inside him, he'd let his head fall back on the grass and his fingers grip tightly at Kaoru's back under his shirt, and he'd thought fiercely: goodbye to all this. Goodbye field; goodbye woods; goodbye Nagano.

That had been last night, and it made him almost giddy to think of how far he'd come in such a short space of time.

They'd cum together; that had been the amazing thing. He'd done some research – or more accurately, a large amount of experimentation – and learnt that if he grips the base of his cock tightly, he can put off cumming.

It's a fascinating development.

The grass prickling at his body, his breath coming out in high little panting sounds, he'd done it, his fingers trembling harshly around his own skin, and he'd felt it as his own body became almost overwhelmed, his hips bucking up uncontrollably to meet Kaoru's thrusts and his heart thudding in his chest. He'd heard Kaoru groan, and his movements start to become more erratic, and then the older man had knocked his hand aside and replaced it with his own, pumping his cock desperately, and— the feeling had been so strong and so sudden Toshiya had almost yelled; his own orgasm hitting him as a Kaoru made a sound like a growl and clutched at his thigh. He thinks he'll never forget it; the sudden rush of warmth deep inside him; Kaoru pushing himself deep as he could possibly go; the way their bodies sort of collapsed together at the end. The best thing in the world.

Kyo is staring at him curiously and his cheeks colour hotly; the cigarette is half burned down and he realises that he's been more or less staring vacantly into space for at least a few minutes, completely lost in his own thoughts, and that he's definitely at least semi-hard. He drops the hand holding the cigarette down in front of his own crotch casually, hoping it's not noticeable.

'How many in your band?' he asks inanely. Kyo stares at him silently for a minute.

'Three,' he answers at last. 'Die, guitar. Shinya, drums.' He taps himself on the chest, 'Vocals.' He pauses, eyeing Toshiya critically, 'You'll audition with us tomorrow afternoon, when Shinya gets out of school.'

'School?' Toshiya asks incredulously, and Kyo gives him a flat sort of look.

'That's where you go to learn to read and do maths and stuff.'

Forgetting himself, Toshiya gives him a withering look; it's not as dangerous as he would have thought though, because something close to a smile twitches at the corners of Kyo's mouth. He finds himself wondering who in the world this weird little man is, but he can't exactly ask that.

'How old are you?' he asks instead, his tone curious.

'Nineteen,' Kyo asks promptly. 'Die's twenty. Shinya's sixteen. You?'

For an insane moment Toshiya considers lying, but he decides against it. 'Seventeen.'

If Kyo's surprised, he doesn't show it; he simply lights up another cigarette.

'One more thing,' he says gruffly. 'If you're good, if you fit, you're in the band. Yes?'

It's a mild relief that somebody is asking him, at last – as if he has any choice in the matter. Toshiya nods nervously, and Kyo sits down on the messy bed. 'You join the band, you become one of us,' he says simply. 'Family. I'm not calling you by your last name. Either give me your first name or choose something you want to go by.'

'It's Toshimasa. I mean – Toshiya, everyone calls me Toshiya.'

It's another pretty big lie. Everybody at school has always called him Toshimasa; his family, for the most part, have avoided calling him at all. It's only Kaoru, he realises, who calls him by his chosen name.

'Right,' Kyo says harshly. 'Toshiya if you're in. Hara if you're out.'

 

It's Toshiya. 

Comments

[thehamhamheaven]

Risky business,just wandering around a city and going wherever some red-headed stranger tells you. Although, Die just looks trustworthy, so I guess I don't blame Totchi too much for believing him. Kyo must think him a complete flake, though.

So Totchi didn't recognize baby Kaoru. I'm surprised the brass doorknob didn't give him a clue to who he'd just spoken to, particularly since that knob's been appearing in his bedroom so often.

[solongsun]

Yep, Toshiya is kind of unforgivably dense in this chapter. The idea I had was really that he's never seen Kaoru younger than 21, so he's not really looking out for a child to be him.

Officially a Stupid Boy all round in this chapter, though.

[thehamhamheaven]

We'll blame it on information overload being in the city. His poor brain just short-circuited a bit.

[reilaflowers]

Looks like Toshiya was lucky to end up with good men and a place to sleep. Didn't even recognise Kaoru though.