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solongsun Note: I seem to be saying this a lot, but I'm going away again. Hopefully I'll be able to update in 10 days or so!
'Goodbye, goodbye to Rome,
City of a million moonlit places,
City of a million warm embraces,
Where I found the one
Of all the faces far from home...'
Aoi's face was directed towards the television screen, but he didn't seem to be watching. His eyes were blank and unfocussed, and he didn't flinch when the syrupy music was broken up by a burst of fuzzy static; he was completely still, his limbs gathered in a loose sort of way before him and his face resting against the arm of the chair he'd chosen. His face had gotten a little better over the days that had passed, but it was still puffy and bruised around his nose and eyes.
He was alone, too. That was the weirdest thing: the absence of Die or Uruha around him. It was as if the two of them had contributed to his general personhood: without them, he looked smaller, his face paler, hair thinner, and everything that had seemed so forceful about him seemed now pathetically insubstantial, like a shadow.
But Uruha had been hiding in his room for the past few days, and seemed unlikely to come out.
And Die...
'Maybe you should turn it over,' Ruki suggested tentatively, 'You don't want to watch this.'
On the screen, grainy and wavery, Takashima Hayato flipped a coin into the Trevi Fountain's churning waters. The music swelled as the camera lingered fondly on the face of Oceanus, Abundance and Salubrity, cut to a shot of the rockwork and panned serenely across the horses. The last shot was of the fountain in its entirety.
Then, it cut to an advert that featured young women in flippy miniskirts wearing slim Seiko watches. Carefully, Ruki got up and turned the volume down.
'Think he's still alive?' Aoi asked dully. Halfway through tapping a cigarette out of his pack, Ruki hesitated.
'I'm sure he is,' he said. 'They would tell us, if he wasn't.'
'Would they,' Aoi said, not bothering to add a question mark.
'They haven't moved his things out of your room or anything,' Ruki added hopefully, but Aoi's only answer was a dense silence, and Ruki bit at his lip. 'Die's tough,' he tried. 'He'll make it.'
It was the same conversation they'd had countless times over the past week. Ever since Die was taken away, their conversations ran in circles and stagnated; nothing was new, there was no inspiration. The advert on the television changed to one for Kodak cameras. A nurse popped her head around the door, regarded them both briefly, and moved on along the corridor.
'He spoke about himself in the past tense,' Aoi mumbled. 'He gave up.'
'The tense isn't important,' Ruki said a little desperately, 'It's what he said that's important. Aoi, he said—'
'What he said doesn't matter,' Aoi said sharply, 'Because even if I could have saved him, I didn't. I didn't. I got mad at him, and I told him he should go ahead and die if he wanted to, and now for once in his life he's actually doing as he's fucking told.'
There was an ugly silence. Ruki rolled his cigarette between his fingers.
'He knew you didn't really want him to die,' he said quietly. 'And he doesn't want to die, either.'
Aoi sighed, pulling his body loosely upright. The adverts were over and for a moment he watched quietly, a strange look in his eyes, as Uruha's father stood and gestured towards the Coliseum behind him. There was a road built by it; Ruki hadn't known that. The cars zipped by almost soundlessly and it was odd to look at, those three layers: Takashima Senior, the cars, and the Coliseum. Foreground, middle ground and background, all utterly irrelevant to each other: it felt disconnected, like a dream. It made him feel almost dizzy, and he set his gaze on the window above the television instead. For the first time, he thought, it really looked like winter: the sky was a flinty blue and the surrounding hills had a tight, huddled sort of look, as if they had all shrunk down into themselves and hardened their edges.
'I talk such a big game,' Aoi said at last, his voice slow and quiet and measured, 'But I'm a coward.'
'You're not a coward, Aoi.'
'No?' he smiled bitterly, 'Everything I said to Die, hurting him, pushing him away; it was because I was scared. I was so scared that I wanted to stop caring, because I thought not caring would be easier than watching him die.' He gestured uselessly, a horrible empty look on his face. 'I said sorry, but even then I couldn't say anything that mattered.'
'Like?' Ruki asked gently, and Aoi half-laughed, lighting up a cigarette.
'Like I love him; like I've been really fucking stupid and fallen totally in love with him.'
Ruki shifted awkwardly in his chair.
'What about...?'
'Uruha? Yeah, that's the best part: I'm head-over-fucking-heels for him, too.'
Ruki wasn't really sure what to say to that, but Aoi didn't seem to be expecting a response. He simply shook his head and sat back, the smoke from his cigarette curling up around his face, tears glinting in his eyes.
'Hey,' he said tiredly, 'Leave me alone for a bit, yeah?'
Ruki bit his lip. 'Sure,' he said.
Before he left the room he changed the channel on the television, but it was no good; all the other stations were getting mostly snow, and Aoi didn't seem to be watching anyway.
It was weird, the sanatorium being so quiet. The music room was empty and he toyed with the idea of putting on a record, just to fill some of the silence, but the thought of flicking through Die's collection of LPs made him feel sad and tired before he could even begin. Instead, he just snatched Kai's small radio off the top of the piano. It had sat there untouched ever since he'd gone, and there was a fine film of dust on it; carefully, Ruki wiped it off. When he turned it on it gave a friendly hum of static in his hands, a fizzing sort of noise that gradually resolved itself into the Rolling Stones' Sympathy For The Devil. Quietly, he gave a sigh of relief and took the little radio with him back to his room.
He had expected Hara to be lying on his bed, out of it; he was almost always that way, if not asleep then still near dead to the world. When Ruki walked in, though, he was sitting up on his bare mattress – he'd stripped all the sheets off to wrap them around him, and even through their bulk Ruki could see him shivering. Slowly, he sat down on his own bed, laying the radio down beside him carefully.
'Are you okay?' he asked stupidly. With his eyes squeezed tightly closed, Hara made a face somewhere between a grin and a grimace.
'No,' he forced out from between gritted teeth, 'I feel like I'm going fucking crazy, Ruki.'
'At least you're in the right place,' Ruki said tiredly, and Hara's eyes snapped open.
'You're mental,' he breathed nonsensically, 'They must give you drugs.'
Ruki shrugged uncomfortably and Hara leant forward. Beads of sweat were banding his forehead and his lips were so chapped them looked almost white; he ran his tongue over them.
'What do they give you?' he asked, his voice almost a whisper, 'Do you have any you haven't taken? Anything at all?'
'No. Sorry.'
'Does anybody?'
'Nobody keeps any medicine around any more, Hara,' Ruki said, surprised by the sharpness in his own voice, 'Not since my last roommate used them to kill himself.'
Hara sort of froze up at that, and then tugged his blanket tighter around the skinny cage of his ribs.
'Sorry,' he muttered. He rubbed his arms and started to sway lightly, rocking himself back and forth like it was a comfort. Ruki shrugged uneasily.
'That's okay.'
Smiling weakly, Hara nodded towards the radio. 'That's nice. You like the Stones?'
'Yeah, I do.' Ruki held up the radio and gave it an awkward sort of waggle, 'This was Kai's. Nobody's used it since he died, but I think he'd kind of want us to.'
'Sounds like he was nice,' Hara said, 'That Aoi guy seems to think so.'
Ruki had it in him to wince a little at that: in the days that had passed, Aoi hadn't gotten any friendlier with their newest arrival, flying instead between ignoring him one moment and spitting insults at him the next.
'Aoi's going through a hard time,' Ruki said slowly. 'Kai meant a lot to him, and...I don't know, he feels guilty over what happened with Die. Not just because he feels like it's his fault, but – he sort of made a promise to Kai that he'd protect us all.'
He eyed Hara suddenly, daring him to laugh or roll his eyes at that, but the other man simply nodded. Pulling the blankets tighter around him, he leant back against the wall, looking exhausted.
'What are you in for?' he asked, licking his cracked lips again, and Ruki hesitated for just a moment.
'I tried to kill myself.'
Hara blinked at him. 'For real?'
'Yeah.'
'Why?'
Ruki shrugged. 'I don't know, really. I know that sounds lame, but it's true. I was just unhappy all the time. And I didn't want to be unhappy any more.'
With a trembling hand, Hara wiped away some hair that his own sweat had stuck to his neck. 'That's as good a reason as any, I guess.'
His whole body was shaking uncontrollably, Ruki noticed. He sat forward.
'What's up with you?' he asked bluntly. 'Are you actually sick?'
Hara gave a limp shrug. 'Coming down.'
'Coming down,' Ruki repeated, the words a little strange to him, and Hara snorted a laugh.
'This is what happens to your body when it's really, really used to having heroin in it.'
'So why would you take it, if you know you're going to end up like this?' Ruki asked curiously, and Hara gave a dreamy shake of his head.
'Because it's the best feeling in the world,' he said simply. He tried again to wipe hair from his face, but his hand faltered limply around shoulder height and fell back to the bed.
'So it's worth it?'
'Probably not, but it doesn't matter. I need it.' He coughed.
'I hate needing things.'
'Everyone needs something,' Hara said, but gave a tired grin. Ruki gave him a small smile back.
'So what does it feel like? Coming down?'
'Horrible. Like being tired all the time, but you can't sleep. Like hurting all the time. It was worse; that was when they had me upstairs. I couldn't really look after myself. Plus, I was spewing all the time.' His grin widened, the expression oddly boyish and endearing on his waxy, haunted face. 'Both ends, if you catch my drift.'
'Right,' Ruki said quickly.
'Heroin fucks with your body,' Hara said conversationally, his body jittering so his teeth clicked together. 'When you're on it you don't need to be entertained, or to eat so much, or to have sex. Now, I'm so fucking horny I can't stand it.' He shrugged. 'Great time to land myself in a ward full of men, huh?'
'D'you have parents,' Ruki asked hurriedly, changing the subject, 'Or something?'
'Everyone has parents.'
'Yeah, but...'
'I have two very nice parents.'
'So – Hara—'
'Toshiya,' he interrupted.
'Huh?'
'You can call me Toshiya, if you want.' He shrugged a little shyly. 'Nobody here seems to go by last names.'
He wiped sweat from his temple and clutched the sheets tighter around his body. 'I don't want to talk any more,' he said, his voice sounding a little weaker. He nodded at the radio. 'Would you leave that on?'
'Sure. Toshiya.'
On the bed, Toshiya smiled briefly and then lay back down, pulling his knees up tightly to his chest and clutching onto them. His shadowed eyes fell closed, and he gave a deep, wrenching shudder.
Ruki left Toshiya with the radio and took to wandering aimlessly around the corridors, mapping them with his feet, pacing the bounds of his little prison. The silence was an unnatural one, the silence of hushed people, almost ghostly. He peered into the music room, pushed back the unlocked door of the isolation room and checked the glass doors of all the phone booths: everywhere was empty. His own heartbeat was audible in his ears.
The thing he hadn't realised about death, he thought, was that it was infectious. Kai had died, and at first it had seemed that everybody would be okay, but now Die was fighting for his life and Uruha was locked up inside of himself and even Aoi seemed to be slipping away. It was as though his dead body was a millstone tied around all of their necks, dragging them down to some unspeakable deep; his seaweed hair, his sweet rotten smell, his blue fingers. Ruki rubbed both hands hard against his temples, feeling a powerful headache forming.
Would his death have done that to his family, he wondered; drag them down, too?
After Hiroshi had died, had they ever really surfaced, any of them?
Blindly, he kicked out at a wall. It didn't make him feel better, so he hit it with his open hand; the impact made his bones feel like they were vibrating, and he curled his fingers into a fist.
The feeling of panic made the inside of his mouth taste sour and his eyes sting. He struck out, gritting his teeth, his thoughts starting to whirl together meaninglessly; he hit again and again and smudges of red appeared on the white wall. He looked at them with hectic eyes, struggling to comprehend them, and then staggered backwards into the nearest door he could find, which took him into the bathroom. The mirrors over the sinks reflected his own frightened face back at him, pale and small and somehow warped, the colours wrong in the dimness; whites too grey and greys too black and blacks too dark, scarily dark, the negative of a person. He gripped one of the sinks, his knuckles stinging. He didn't notice the clattering, rushing noise of water falling until it stopped, and he sank down onto his knees unsteadily. The edge of the sink was wonderfully cool against his face, and he pressed his forehead against it so it caused a hard band of pain that matched the headache inside. A cubicle door clicked open, but he didn't bother to turn around. He bit down on his own lip too hard; he tasted blood. He was aware that his breathing was coming out of him in a strange way, high and wavering, echoing weirdly off the tile and enamel, and that he was crying too, sobbing embarrassingly. There was a sound of footsteps, and of slowly dripping water. A careful arm slid around his waist, making his T-shirt wet.
'I've got you,' said a low voice in his ear, and Ruki closed his eyes.
'Everyone's leaving me,' he said tightly, noting that the voice coming out of him sounded high and thin; nothing like his own at all. He hit out at the sink but a warm hand caught his wrist before he could make impact.
'Nobody's leaving,' said that same, measured voice, and Ruki shook his head tiredly. The arm about his waist squeezed comfortingly and he leant back into the hold, his clothes sticking damply wherever they made contact with the wet skin behind him.
He wasn't quite sure how long the two of them stayed like that. A long time, he thought. The hand pressing gently against his stomach felt almost as familiar to him as his own, and slowly he placed his own hand over it, stretching out his fingers. Kyo's hands were larger than his; he couldn't quite reach. His knuckles felt stiff and sticky with blood, and the raw-looking wounds on them were dotted with powdered plaster that had turned a sick pinkish colour.
A little awkwardly he turned himself around, his nervous gaze meeting with Kyo's level one.
Carefully, the older man pressed his thumb against the little bead of blood on Ruki's lip.
It looked as though he'd only briefly towel-dried his hair before stepping out of the shower cubicle; it was damp and dripping from the tips, droplets of water trickling down his bare shoulders and chest until they reached the hem of his towel, knotted about his waist. Ruki found his eyes were following their progress; hastily, he pulled his gaze away, and Kyo carefully took his hand away from Ruki's face. There was a red smear on the pad of his thumb, and Ruki licked his lower lip, tasting blood again.
'Want to talk about it?' the older man asked. His voice was calm but sounded a note or two deeper than usual, and Ruki shrugged uselessly. He realised that his eyes were on Kyo's chest again and quickly looked back up at his face, feeling flustered, his cheeks warming.
'Everything's a mess,' he said in a halting voice, and Kyo gave a slow nod.
'Correct.'
'It's all falling apart,' Ruki said helplessly, and the older man smiled at him.
'Maybe.'
'So...' Ruki struggled, 'I don't see what the point is. I don't know why anybody is trying. Nothing's going to be the same.'
'No, it's not.'
'So why bother?'
'Because you're still breathing,' Kyo said simply. 'While you're breathing, you have hope.'
Perhaps the look Ruki gave him was too intense. His head felt like it was racing, beating like a heart, too many different thoughts turning around in it pointlessly; there was Die, Uruha, Aoi, somewhere beneath all that there was Eiji, deeper still Hiroshi: there was so much hurt, so much shame that his skull felt stuffed to the brim with it, too full for reason to squeak through.
And he wanted, he thought desperately; he wanted to be held, and helped. He wanted release, something powerful enough to crack him apart so all the dark thoughts could swirl out of him, and with a hungry look he suddenly lurched forward, pressing their mouths together hard. He felt more than heard Kyo's sound of surprise and bit down on the older man's lower lip fiercely, hands clutching at him, touching him everywhere they could reach; his skin was still damp and Ruki's palms slid against it easily: over his shoulders, tense with shock; he ran his fingers over the scars that were so old they felt almost like nothing; felt the hard muscles in his abdomen. His hand hit the snag of Kyo's towel and feverishly he started fumbling at the knot that held it in place; he gave up quickly and simply slipped his hand into the fold, grabbing at Kyo's legs, nudging between them; his cock was warm to the touch and starting to get hard and Ruki wrapped his fingers around it, stroking jerkily, biting down harder on his lip—
And then he was stumbling backwards, breath coming out harshly and lips stinging slightly from their hard kisses, mind foggy. Kyo had pushed him, he realised – pushed him away, and was now clutching protectively at the towel wrapped around him, expression unreadable.
Ruki swallowed, gripping hold of the hard edge of the sink to stabilise himself.
'I'm sorry,' the older man said stiffly, still clinging so tightly to his towel that his knuckles were white, 'I didn't mean to push you.'
'No...' Ruki finally found his voice, weak and shaky-sounding, 'I'm sorry. I'm really – I don't – I don't know what—'
'It's all right.'
'Did I hurt you?'
'No, you didn't hurt me.'
Kyo looked at him closely, making him flush. He stepped closer and, cheeks feeling hot, Ruki leant back again and slid a hand inside his underwear, rubbing at his own cock tentatively, but Kyo's hand wrapped itself around his wrist and so he stopped, feeling slightly foolish.
'You don't want this,' Kyo said to him, very softly but clearly, 'Not this way.'
'But – I—' Ruki stammered, and carefully, Kyo kissed him on the forehead.
'You're not hard,' he said as gently as he could, and Ruki wavered.
'I...'
He couldn't meet Kyo's eye; he focussed lower. Kyo's bottom lip was deep red where he'd bitten down on it, and he felt a hot flush of guilt go through him. 'I'm really sorry,' he said lamely, and the firm hand holding his wrist softened its grip, stroking the skin there soothingly.
'I said it's all right.'
'But I know you're not ready for—'
'Don't make me repeat myself,' Kyo warned, the hint of a smile in his voice, and carefully he linked their fingers together. He sort of swung their hands awkwardly, seemingly at a loss for what to say, and a good minute or so of silence passed between them. Miserably, Ruki forced himself to meet his eyes.
'It feels like too much,' he admitted softly, 'And I'm scared.'
'Scared?'
'I'm losing people, and I don't – I don't feel in control. I don't feel in control of myself, and I'm scared that if they see they'll do something to me; they'll put me in the isolation room and I'll be all alone and I—'
'Ruki,' Kyo said, his voice quiet but clear enough to cut through the younger man's anxious babbling, 'Don't panic. That won't happen.'
'But they might—'
'Yes, they might,' Kyo said plainly, 'But I won't leave you.'
Ruki swallowed, feeling his chest rising and falling unsteadily.
'Promise?'
'Yes.'
'But how can you—'
'Ruki.' Kyo hesitated. 'Trust me.'
Ruki closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and then nodded.
'Okay.'
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Not sure how I feel about what happened between Ruki and Kyo, but I'm glad it didn't go any further than that. Is it just me or does Kyo specifically not like having his groin handled?
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