![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solongsun 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...
After the rainy start, the day has cleared and turned sunny and fresh. They walk through TennÅji Park, not holding hands but keeping so close their hips and thighs keep brushing, and the breeze blows blossom into their clothes and their hair, and Kaoru wonders how it's possible to be this happy. Toshiya stops with his eyes closed, feeling the sun on his face and smelling the air; twenty years old, he's over his hangover already. Kaoru just watches him; thinks to himself as if he's thinking it for the first time: he's so beautiful.
'I'm sorry I couldn't be there,' Kaoru says gently, smoothing an errant strand of hair behind Toshiya's ear. Toshiya shrugs, smiling down at him.
'It's not important,' he says, 'You're here now.'
'Was it a good party?'
'Probably not as cool as parties in the future,' Toshiya says, his lips twisting wryly as he gives his hip a deliberate bump against Kaoru's. 'It was fun. We drank too much.'
'Feel like an adult now?'
'Hardly. I feel more like a kid than ever.'
He laughs, but not really like anything is funny; he tips his head back, scrutinising the blue of the sky, and absent-mindedly starts biting at his thumbnail. Kaoru glances down at his own body, feeling self-conscious; tattoos like his aren't all that common in Toshiya's time, and he's getting a few guarded looks slid his way. Before leaving Toshiya's apartment he had to swap the T-shirt he was wearing for one of Toshiya's – his own was advertising a band that doesn't exist yet – and it's too big on him, the sleeves ending loosely just above his elbows and the hem falling past his hips.
'So something weird happened,' Toshiya says, his voice just a little strained, and Kaoru glances up at him. He looks at the pale skin and the shadows under the eyes and wonders, for the first time, if it's just hangover he's seeing or something else; Toshiya's teeth continue to tug at his nail and Kaoru pulls his hand away from his mouth gently.
'Yeah?' he asks, and Toshiya gives a lop-sided shrug.
'Yeah. It's just...before you got here, last night – or, this morning, I mean...Kyo came onto me.'
He tangles his own fingers together anxiously, his eyes flicking up to Kaoru's face to check the expression there, a sort of emotional weather forecast; Kaoru's features are impassive, but there's a stiffness to his shoulders that wasn't there before, and his steps along the path are slowing.
'I see,' he says carefully, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere just below Toshiya's lips. 'Was it...did you— I mean—' he interrupts himself with an abrupt silence, pressing his lips together. In the middle of the path, he comes to a complete stop, and Toshiya steps edgily out of the way of the group of people coming up behind them.
'It wasn't reciprocated,' he says gently, quickly, 'Of course. I mean...' he sweeps a nervous hand through his hair, 'He took me home, after the party; him and Die. But I decided to go up to the roof, to watch the sunrise.' He swallows. 'We – it wasn't really a fight, but we talked about you.'
'All good things, I assume,' Kaoru says, an odd sort of joke because neither of them feel like smiling. Toshiya feels his own fingernails dig into the skin at the back of his neck.
'He put me to bed,' he says in a tense voice, 'And...and he kissed me.'
Kaoru blinks up at his eyes quickly before his gaze returns, steady and level, to his chin. 'In bed?' he asks, his voice careful, and Toshiya gives a nod that looks more like a flinch.
'I pushed him away,' he says in a quiet voice, 'I think I hurt him. I – I guess there was half a second before I pushed him back, but only because...' he breaks off helplessly, shaking his head. 'Only because I was drunk, and I...I've been missing you, so much. I've been...pretty lonely.'
Kaoru lets out a long breath. The breeze catches his hair, long and dark brown at present, and he pushes it out of his face vaguely.
'Was he drunk?'
'No, not drunk. He doesn't drink.'
Kaoru gives a faint nod. 'Is he even...?'
'Gay? No.' Toshiya laughs nervously, 'No, he's completely straight, as far as I know. Knew.'
Kaoru nods. He closes his eyes for something longer than a blink, and Toshiya reaches out for his hand.
'Kaoru,' he says gently, 'I know you like to think things through in your own time, but will you just look at me for a moment? You're scaring me a bit.'
Immediately, Kaoru's eyes open and he pushes a small smile onto his face; he squeezes Toshiya's fingers lightly.
'There's nothing to be scared of.'
'Are you...' Toshiya hesitates, struggling to read the weird look in his lover's eyes, 'Angry with me?'
Another squeeze of his hand; more reassuring this time. Kaoru starts walking again.
'Of course not,' he says, his voice low and soft, 'You didn't do anything wrong. Neither of you did.'
Toshiya falters, his hand tensing slightly in Kaoru's. 'He knows I'm with you,' he says uncomfortably. 'He knows—'
'He knows I'm hardly ever around,' Kaoru says gently. 'He knows I disappear all the time. I can't blame him for trying, Toshiya.' He smiles a little sadly, 'You're very easy to fall in love with.'
When they get to the bridge Toshiya steers them off the path and into the copse of trees, where it's cooler; the sunlight is dappled on the ground and the air smells like damp earth. His big hands skim carefully up over Kaoru's hips and mould to the shape of his waist; they guide him back up against the trunk of a tree and Toshiya inclines his head. In the split-second before their lips touch he catches the smell of Kaoru's skin, and he can't help but give a small sigh.
His lips are the same as they have always been; such a precise shape; so soft; the taste of them so familiar. Kaoru's breath catches a little in his throat, and his darkly inked hand curls around Toshiya's cheek.
No matter how many times he has kissed Toshiya over the years, he thinks, the feeling never alters; the contrast between the wiry strength of his body and the softness of his lips. The feeling like all the blood is coming back into his veins, suffusing him slowly with warmth; the feeling of fitting.
He feels the gentle smile on Toshiya's lips as he deepens the kiss.
When they part, he meets the younger man's expectant gaze and thinks about his eyes at twenty compared to how they looked at six, twelve, fifteen; how they're still dark, still beautiful, but not exactly as innocent as they once were. Kaoru's fault, of course. He strokes through Toshiya's hair, smoothing the familiar strands between his fingers.
He thinks about how by the time he moves to Osaka this park has been almost completely destroyed to make way for more apartment blocks – that the zoo is gone and the pond has been filled and the lacy looking white-painted bridge was hacked up and dumped in a skip at some point during the 2030s.
'Have you spoken to him yet?' he asks, and Toshiya shakes his head.
'No. He took off before I woke up.'
Kaoru's hands follow the path of Toshiya's hair down to his shoulders; they pause there a moment before running down his arms to where his hands still hold Kaoru's waist. Carefully, he pushes them from his body and holds them instead.
'How do you feel about him?' he asks a little awkwardly, and Toshiya gives a little flinch, like Kaoru's words have hit at him.
'We're friends,' he says firmly, 'That's all.'
'No, I mean...' Kaoru swallows, looking strangely nervous, 'If it wasn't for me; if it wasn't for us. Do you think you could feel the same about him?'
'Kaoru,' Toshiya says, his tone disbelieving and, underneath it, a little hurt, 'What are you getting at?'
Kaoru falters, his grip limp on Toshiya's hands. 'I think you should consider it,' he says, his voice quiet but very clear.
Toshiya takes a step backward on the muddy ground. The distance pulls his hands out of Kaoru's.
'What?' he says simply, his voice rough with shock. He shakes his head; clutches at a nervous handful of his own hair.
'He's here,' Kaoru says carefully, a miserable sort of tension in his eyes, 'This is his time; his and yours. He won't vanish all the time, Toshiya. You'll never have to miss him. And...' Kaoru shrugs brokenly, 'He cares for you, Toshiya. It's been – easier for me, having to leave you, knowing he's here to look after you. He's...' he pauses, as if it's difficult, 'He's a good man.'
Wordless, Toshiya fumbles for a cigarette and sticks it between his lips. His hands are trembling; he has to chase the tip of the cigarette with his lighter flame before he can get it lit up.
'I don't want anybody else,' he says, his voice quiet and splintery-sounding. 'I would rather have you for one day than somebody else for the rest of my life, don't you get that?'
'Toshiya—'
'Do you think you're being noble?' he interrupts, 'Do you think you're being a good person, offering to give me up?' He shakes his head wearily, 'Kaoru, I love you. I know what you're trying to do, but when you say you could live without me, it hurts. Because I couldn't live without you.'
He glances up sadly, gives a weak shrug before dropping his gaze back to the ground. His cigarette burns ignored between his fingers.
Standing by the tree, Kaoru wants to reach for him but he feels frozen. He wants a cigarette of his own, but his hands curl numbly by his sides, empty without Toshiya's long fingers nestled against them.
'You deserve better,' he says woodenly, and when Toshiya looks up at him again, his eyes are red-rimmed.
'The only thing I deserve,' he says in a hoarse voice, 'Is to be taken seriously. Kaoru, I'm not a kid any more. I know what I'm doing.'
'Do you?' Kaoru asks. 'Toshiya, do you realise that there's no guarantee you'll ever see me again after today? I could get hit by a car tomorrow and there's no way you'd ever know; I could carry on opening every door I see and still never, ever end up back in your time.'
'Don't you think I already know that?' Toshiya says exasperatedly, 'I've known you since I was six, Kaoru. I've known about your travelling since I was eleven. Do you seriously think the idea that I might never see you again hasn't occurred to me in all that time? What, do you think I'm stupid?'
'Toshiya, I don't think you're stupid, I—'
'I think about it all the time,' Toshiya interrupts, his voice clear and sharp. 'How one day is going to be the last time I'll ever see you, and how I might not even know it for a really long time. Don't you realise that every time you go away, I think that? That I end up just – tearing through all my memories,' he says, making a violent ripping gesture with one shaking hand, 'Trying to figure out the oldest I've ever seen you; trying to work out how much life you get, so I know if I'll get a chance to see you again?'
'But this is my point,' Kaoru says desperately, 'This isn't what I want for you, Toshiya.'
'What about what I want? Does that matter?'
'Of course it matters!'
'So listen to me,' Toshiya says, his voice strained. 'Kaoru, there's no debate about this. It's you or it's nobody for me. That's just the way it is.'
The silence between them is heavy. Toshiya stubs out his cigarette and leans back against a tree, letting his head fall into his hands; Kaoru stands still, a ripped-up feeling in his chest, like something is bleeding.
'You're so young,' he says at last, each word an effort, 'To make that choice.'
'That's the thing,' Toshiya says tiredly, 'It isn't a choice. It never has been.' He shrugs limply, 'You're the one for me.'
'Toshiya—'
'No.' He shuts him up, glaring, 'You don't understand. You've always been here, do you get that? I don't know anybody like I know you. There's a reason for this whole thing, can't you – can't you see that?'
His voice sounds a little desperate as he breaks off, and Kaoru does about the worst thing possible: he shrugs helplessly.
'There's always a choice,' he says quietly, and Toshiya crosses his arms over his chest.
'So what,' he asks, his voice soft, 'is this you making it?'
'I just want you to consider it.'
'You just want me to consider being with somebody else. Right.' Toshiya's face contorts into a grim smile, and he looks off to the side sharply. 'God, you're an asshole sometimes.'
He lights a new cigarette and touches it to his lips shakily.
'Toshiya—'
The younger man just shakes his head wordlessly. A tear falls down his cheek.
They stand like that for a long time, neither of them speaking, the day gradually growing less golden around them. They smoke, off and on, and a few times it seems that Toshiya might be about to say something, but he doesn't.
They can hear the hum of the city around them, the occasional splash of the fat koi surfacing in the pond nearby. An aeroplane drones overhead and Kaoru glances up, following its passage through the visible patches of sky between the leaves. He hasn't seen one flying like this in a few years: the new planes are much faster but they have to go higher; it's rare that you see them unless you live near an airport.
Finally Toshiya says: 'Did you see it, in the future?'
Kaoru shoves his hands into his pockets awkwardly. 'See what?' he asks, and Toshiya sniffs and blots his eye with the back of his hand.
'Me and Kyo, together. Or me and anyone.'
'Ah,' Kaoru says quietly. 'No, I didn't.'
'Right.' Toshiya nods shakily. 'So why...?'
'I don't know if you get to change it or not,' Kaoru says carefully, 'But it was worth...'
'A try. Right.'
Toshiya nods woodenly. 'You ever tried to change the future before?'
'No. Not exactly.'
'Not exactly.'
'I used to try to warn you of things,' Kaoru says painfully, 'When you were a kid. Warn you not to go off with strangers, stuff like that.'
'I remember,' Toshiya says in a soft voice, and gives another small sniff. 'Did it work?'
Kaoru shrugs in a tense kind of way. 'I don't know. There's no way of knowing what would have happened to you if we'd never met, so I don't know.'
'Remember the night you showed up in my village, in the snow? When my parents were...' he makes a clumsy sort of gesture and Kaoru nods.
'I remember.'
'I was going to run away, that night. That was my plan. If you hadn't showed up, I would've done.' He takes a meditative drag of his cigarette. 'Sometimes I think they never would have even noticed.'
Turning towards Kaoru a little, he smiles wryly. 'I needed you,' he says plainly, 'So much, when I was a kid. It was like I wasn't properly formed without somebody loving me like that, and because you were the only one, I moulded entirely around you. That's the shape my heart made.' He shrugs jaggedly. 'That's why nobody else fits.'
'So you were doomed,' Kaoru says, and Toshiya laughs humourlessly.
'Something like that.'
The sun is going down; the reddish light of it keeps glinting off the scanty flashes of pond visible through the trees. Toshiya hugs his arms around himself and gives a light shiver.
'I should go home,' he says in a small voice, and Kaoru nods.
'Will Kyo be there?'
'I don't know. Not yet, probably.' Toshiya sighs, running a hand through his hair. 'Walk me back?'
Kaoru does, keeping a companionable silence next to him in the dying light, and when they reach Toshiya's building and notice the brass doorknob on the outside door, they touch hands together gently.
For Kaoru, it feels panicky: too soon. There are still so many hurt feelings between them; things he needs to say to Toshiya that he can't quite figure out. He's aware that he's let the younger man down, but he doesn't know how to make it right; in the face of that innocently glinting doorknob, he feels helpless.
'I suppose I should...'
'Yeah,' Toshiya says quietly, 'I suppose you should.'
His eyes are red-rimmed again. He gives a sober nod and steps back, giving Kaoru room, his arms clutched protectively around his own body. Reluctantly, Kaoru reaches for the doorknob, feels its hateful familiarity against his palm.
'So between you and Kyo,' he says suddenly, his voice steady but his eyes miserable. 'Nothing...nothing's going to happen, is it?'
The look Toshiya gives him is weary.
'No,' he says. 'Nothing's going to happen.'
'Right,' Kaoru says uncomfortably.
Impossible to explain, the fear inside him: the damage he's done. He hesitates. 'I love you,' he says.
Toshiya's voice is hoarse, almost too quiet to be heard. 'I love you too.'
He opens the door, and the scene changes.
Where he vanishes, Toshiya is left behind. He stands still on the street for a minute, his vision blurry with tears, and then he blinks and it clears and his own building resolves itself in front of him, the door ugly and scratched up as ever and now with just a small hole where a handle of some sort used to be, the way it has been every day since he moved in.
Scrubbing the tears from his cheeks, he goes through it and climbs the stairs mechanically. His lungs feel heavy when he gets to his floor; he's smoked too much. He's almost out of cigarettes, and his head spins a little; when he jams his key into the lock he fumbles it.
Inside, it's silent and still. The place always looks smaller when it's so empty. He takes his shoes off at the door and then simply perches on the edge of his bed, gripping at the duvet as if it's going to keep him in place; he sits, and he smokes even though it makes him dizzy, and he waits as the sun goes down and the night deepens and the hour grows later. He thinks, as much as he can, of nothing. His hands shake, and whenever he catches himself crying he wipes the tears away impatiently.
It's gone midnight before Kyo is back. Toshiya's still sitting when he hears the apologetic scrape of his key in the door, and the smaller man gives him an edgy glance before bending to take off his shoes.
'Hello,' he says shortly.
'Hi.'
There's a beat of silence, and then Kyo looks at him closer.
'You okay?' he asks suspiciously, and Toshiya bites his lip.
'I need to tell you something,' he says. He thinks he catches a flash of fear in Kyo's eyes, but dutifully his friend takes a seat on the bed opposite him. His posture is uncomfortable; he leans forward on his knees stiffly.
'It's about Kaoru,' Toshiya says, and pauses. His dark gaze finds Kyo's; finds it, and holds it. 'He's a time traveller,' he says.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject