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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...
The light's dim, and as the wall seals itself behind him Kaoru wanders closer to the window, setting his hands lightly on the sill. Outside the sun isn't up yet; the small clock sitting on Toshiya's bedside table says it's just gone four. He's sleeping peacefully, his long body twisted and tangled amongst the bed sheets and his pillow dragged into his arms. One pale foot sticks out from the covers, and it's funny, how Kaoru's palms almost prickle with the desire to touch it.
It must be sometime in 1998 or later, because this is Toshiya's new apartment – or what Kaoru thinks of as his new apartment, despite the fact that he will probably move out of it long before Kaoru is born – the one he moved into alone after four years of living with Kyo.
It was supposed to be just a six-month arrangement, the two of them living together, and not for the first time Kaoru wonders exactly when it was that Kyo fell in love. Falling asleep next to him, waking up next to him every day; working with him, creating with him, eating with him – would he have had any choice? Could it have been that the sheer fact of Toshiya's continuous presence wore him down?
Kaoru moves closer to the bed, taking off his shoes, and knows that isn't it. He knows as well as Kyo does that the man they love is far too complicated, far too endearing and daring and silly; that their love is too strong and too strange to be solved by such a simple equation: presence, plus time.
Even after all these years, far too mysterious. Closer to Kaoru than his own skin, but always able to surprise him.
Trying to be quiet, Kaoru strips to his underwear and climbs under the covers next to his lover, slipping a careful arm around his waist. Toshiya's skin is smooth and warm from sleep and he's cut his hair; it's shorter than Kaoru has ever seen it on him, ruffled wildly around his pretty face. Lightly, Kaoru runs his fingers through it, smoothing it behind his ear. In his sleep, Toshiya shifts softly and mumbles something incoherent.
Sighing, Kaoru squeezes their bodies tight together and nestles his chin into the hollow between Toshiya's neck and his shoulder. His hand finds Toshiya's flat belly and strokes it in slow circles, enjoying the feeling of the skin. He presses a kiss to the little patch of skin behind his ear.
This apartment is about as small as the last one; it's just a studio, and it's in a bad part of town. The bed is big enough for two, though, and Toshiya says he enjoys the privacy even if Kaoru wonders if living alone is really what's best for him. Left to his own devices, Toshiya tends to get lonely; he's the type who likes to be filled up to the brim by people.
It's brighter than the last place, though; there are more windows, and the little strip of kitchen is more modern, and there's a laundry room in the basement of the building so he doesn't have to haul his dirty clothes to the launderette any more. The minutiae of his life is familiar to Kaoru's as his own, and he hugs onto him harder, feeling Toshiya start to stir in his arms.
'Don't wake up,' Kaoru whispers, but uselessly. Toshiya makes a soft noise, something like a groan, and his eyelids flutter open; disoriented by the darkness, he rubs at his face, and then his long finger move to tangle sleepily with the hand resting against his skin.
'Hi,' he whispers, and Kaoru can hear the smile in his voice.
'Hi.'
'Have you been here long?'
'Only a few minutes. It's early; go back to sleep.'
Toshiya yawns widely. 'No way.'
He pulls himself up into a sitting position, blinking as he struggles to focus without his glasses. He stretches, his shirt riding up, and Kaoru can't keep his hand from following the exposed skin, fingers running up the long line of his back.
Smiling, Toshiya turns in his hold. He's still smiling as they kiss, and Kaoru thinks that it's written into his memory; the way Toshiya kisses; encoded into his very muscles and nerves, the way his lover feels against him.
'How old are you?' Kaoru asks against his lips, and Toshiya strokes his cheek gently.
'I'm thirty-three. You?'
'Thirty-seven.'
Toshiya pulls back slightly, studying him in the dim light, his dark eyes unusually hard to read. His thumb traces a slow line against Kaoru's jaw as he thinks.
'Will you go somewhere with me?' he asks at last, and of course Kaoru nods, because they both know that there's nowhere he wouldn't go with Toshiya by his side.
The sky is still dark when they leave the building, and Kaoru shivers a little in the chill of the night. A cold wind ruffles their hair as they start walking, but they don't go far; Toshiya leads him through TennÅji park to the Horikoshi Shrine, deserted and slightly eerie at this early hour. Quietly, they wash their hands and faces and bow their way through the gate, and Toshiya slips his hand into Kaoru's as they climb the steps. At the top they circle the shrine itself quickly, and Kaoru feels a hint of unease in the pit of his stomach as Toshiya hesitates and looks around, an uncertain expression on his face. It's like he's looking for something, or struggling to remember something he can't quite grasp; his face is almost distressed, and Kaoru squeezes his hand.
'Toshiya?'
Toshiya smiles at him and gives a shy pull to his hand, leading him over to the little stone steps that lead up to the altar itself. There, they sit down with their backs to the benevolent god, and Toshiya tugs Kaoru's hand into his lap, turning it palm upward as if he's examining it before simply wrapping both of his hands around it again. He sits hunched against the wind, his face a little pale from the lack of sleep, and he glances briefly at Kaoru's face before turning his dark eyes back to the view in front of them.
'I'm sick,' he says.
The way he says it tells Kaoru that he means something more than a cold, and Kaoru stills.
He has the dim impression of feeling the way a stone must feel, hard and smooth, the wind whistling over it. He wonders if inside every rock there's a secret pulse, beating frantically the way his is now, making his throat dry and his eyes water.
Toshiya studies their entwined hands as if he's never seen anything like them.
'You can probably cure it in your time,' he says, his voice strained like he's trying for a joke, 'But not so much in mine.'
Effortfully, he looks up at Kaoru. 'Did you already know?' he asks painfully, and Kaoru hesitates before giving a tentative nod.
Toshiya's hands slip out of his and the two men curl into each other instead, forming one body against the wind. Toshiya is shivering uncontrollably, his teeth banging together, and Kaoru wraps an arm around him fiercely. He holds him tight even though it will do nothing to help.
'How long have you known for?' Toshiya asks at last, the words sounding uncomfortable in his throat.
'A long time,' Kaoru says heavily. 'I've seen you at – lots of ages.'
'Have you seen me when I have it...properly? Really badly, I mean?'
Kaoru nods, and Toshiya starts biting at his thumbnail.
'Hope I don't look too awful,' he says jaggedly, and Kaoru shoots him a sharp look that softens almost instantly.
'You have been beautiful for every single day of your life,' he says simply, and Toshiya gives him a lop-sided smile, knocking their knees together.
'I suppose you know how it – ends?' he asks, his voice deliberately light, and Kaoru nods slowly.
'It's not that want to keep things from you,' he says softly. 'I just don't think it would be good for you, to know. To be counting days.'
'But I wouldn't—'
'You would,' Kaoru interrupts gently. 'You wouldn't be able to help it. Nobody would.'
Toshiya sighs. With weak hands he lights up a cigarette, and Kaoru thinks that the sun will be coming up soon. They sit quietly as Toshiya smokes, and Kaoru strokes his back, and the sky grows lighter. The air has a blue-grey quality that's fading into white; it smells ashy, flinty, almost metallic.
'Will you tell me something else?' Toshiya asks at last, and Kaoru squeezes his knee.
'What do you want to know?' he asks, and Toshiya smiles at him with reddened eyes.
'If I'm not going to see it,' he says, 'I'd kind of like to know what the future's like.'
He waits then, not sure how the older man is going to react. The light is getting steadily stronger, the sound of traffic growing louder; he presses his cold hands between his knees.
'It's hard to know where to start,' Kaoru says finally, and Toshiya sniffs and wipes his face.
'You don't have to tell me,' he says, and there's a short silence.
'Are you sure you want to know?' Kaoru asks carefully.
'Yeah. I am.'
There's another short wait whilst Kaoru lights up a cigarette of his own, and he watches its tiny flakes of ash blow away on the breeze as he chooses his words.
'When I was a young adult,' he says, 'I worked in a rift bar. I disappeared so much; I got fired so often...they had a sort of seedy reputation, back then. It was the only kind of work I could easily get, because nobody wanted to do it. Rift bars were...kind of like internet cafes, I suppose, but for virtual reality games. Or – at least, they started out as games.' He pauses. 'Virtual reality is...big. It got treated like a fad when the rift bars first started to show up, but now they're everywhere, and they're full. People have virtual houses; virtual jobs. Virtual currency is strong.'
He smiles, but it's a bitter sort of smile that doesn't really suit him. 'It's occurred to me a few times,' he says, 'That I could put you inside the rift. Recreate your image; download packs that imitate your personality. There's a world where I could be with you all the time; forever. But it wouldn't be the same.'
He sighs, his cigarette smoke blue-coloured in the early morning light. It's too cloudy to see if the sun is up yet or not.
'A lot of people have done it,' he says quietly, 'Created their perfect lovers, inside the rift. In the real world, there's not much love around any more. Too messy; too time-consuming. Too difficult. People like you don't really exist any more.'
'Like me?' Toshiya asks, his eyes wide, and Kaoru shrugs.
'You love so much,' he says simply. 'You would confuse people. Nobody wants love any more. Just entertainment. Pleasure. That's the only point that's left, in the future.'
'It sounds like a dystopia,' Toshiya says numbly, and Kaoru shrugs.
'People are happy. They say they're happy.'
'That's really what's waiting for us?'
'That's it.'
'Fuck.' Toshiya stares out over the city, but he's not really seeing it. 'If that's the case, maybe I'm glad I'm checking out early.'
He means it as a joke, but neither of them laugh. Instead, Kaoru takes his hand and squeezes it.
'I suppose,' Toshiya tries, his tone of voice horribly brave sounding, 'We would never have met, in a future like that. Or we wouldn't have had this.'
'If you were born in the future?' Kaoru sighs. 'Maybe not.'
There's a long, long silence, during which they listen to the sounds of the birds and the traffic. It's grown heavy enough to have solidified into one continuous rushing sound, and the sky is almost entirely white.
'I guess,' Toshiya says finally, 'this was never meant to happen. In an ordinary life it would never have happened.'
'Toshiya, it—'
'But we always knew, didn't we?' Toshiya says, and Kaoru sees a tear fall from his cheek into his lap, 'We always knew were just – borrowing it. Stealing it, from the lives we thought we should have had.'
'Toshiya—'
'It's eleven years,' Toshiya interrupts him, 'Until you're born. Think I'll make it until then? I guess you already know either way. I don't, do I? We never live at the same time, do we? There's not a single second of my life that I share with yours.' His words end up distorted, and he scrubs the tears from his cheeks harshly.
'This counts, Toshiya,' Kaoru says quietly. 'It counts for a lot. More than you think.'
Carefully he places his hands on either side of Toshiya's face, using his thumbs to gently but firmly swipe away the tears below his eyes. 'I was born this way,' he says matter-of-factly, shrugging, 'And it's mostly fucked up my life. It wrecked my parents' marriage; meant that I never saw my dad again; put me in danger when I was a kid. But, there's also been you.' He pauses for breath, and then leans forward and knocks their foreheads together gently. 'Sometimes, Toshiya, you've been the only thing that's kept me going. And I can't believe that this wasn't meant to be, because I can't stop myself from coming back to you. It's like you're the centre of it all for me; it's like gravity. I couldn't stay away from you if I tried, Toshiya, I – I'm meant to be here. I know it.'
With their foreheads pressed together, Kaoru can feel how uneven Toshiya's breaths are, and with soft fingers he wipes hair and tears away from Toshiya's face. The air between them is warm and wet; it takes a solid form in Toshiya's lips, brushing tentatively against Kaoru's own.
That kiss he could recognise anywhere; those lips he would know in the dark. He holds him close.
In time they leave, taking a slow walk back to Toshiya's apartment, where they close the door behind them. The clock by Toshiya's bedside reads sometime after six, and after they've taken their shoes off Kaoru pulls Toshiya's cold hands under his T-shirt and against his skin, warming them up. Smiling, Toshiya slides his hands up, pulling the T-shirt up with them until it's up over Kaoru's head and he's dropping it to the floor. Slowly, almost worshipfully, he turns his attentions to Kaoru's arms, tracing the swirls of ink there.
'I always expect it to feel different,' he laughs, 'Raised or something. But it's just skin.'
'It's not as if you don't know anybody else with tattoos. Isn't Kyo pretty covered with them by now?'
'Well, I've never had the urge to touch his,' Toshiya says, his index finger trailing the point of Kaoru's elbow. Gently, he leans forward and just lightly licks the bat on Kaoru's neck. He feels the older man's hands come up around his waist, holding him steady.
'We don't have to do anything,' he mumbles, and Toshiya smiles against his skin.
'If I don't have much time left, I'd kind of like to make the most of it.'
'You have time,' Kaoru says, but he kisses him, feeling Toshiya's hands flatten against his chest before sliding up over his shoulders, one cupping the back of his neck whilst the other buries itself in his hair; it pulls lightly and Kaoru bites at Toshiya's lower lip.
Laughing softly, Toshiya steps back and pulls off his own T-shirt, throwing it carelessly to the floor. As Kaoru watches, he unbuttons his jeans and pulls his underwear down with them, deftly freeing his long legs.
'Nice socks,' Kaoru says, and Toshiya grins at him wickedly as he gets rid of them.
'Thanks.'
He takes a few more slow steps backwards, settling himself on the edge of the bed, and Kaoru swallows hard as he looks at him.
It feels impossible, that such a beautiful body can be so ill. He runs his eyes up the smooth, soft skin, the shape of the muscle and bone; takes it all in before it turns to ash. He hardly realises that he's walking forwards, stumbling like a sleepwalker; he gets down on his knees and, his eyes flicking briefly up to Toshiya's face, lifts his left foot until it's high enough to rest on his shoulder. He turns his face to gently kiss the ankle, and he smiles at Toshiya's expression: intense, focussed, biting his lower lip excitedly.
He knows the body in front of him so well, but he goes slowly, kissing his way up Toshiya's leg until the younger man has his knee hooked around Kaoru's back, his other leg unconsciously spreading wider. He's hard but Kaoru ignores it, placing soft kisses on the inside of his thigh, his hand stroking the trembling muscles there soothingly.
'Kaoru,' Toshiya whispers a little unsteadily, 'I really want you. I—'
Kaoru presses a light kiss to the tip of his cock, and his words get mixed up in a quiet whining noise.
He tastes just the same; just as good as he ever did, and Kaoru licks him slowly, right up the length of him. He feels the skin on his arms prickling like he's cold; feels the hairs on the back of his neck stiffening; he rubs his lips softly over the head of Toshiya's dick, almost nuzzling him. There's a long, soft gasping sound, just a little broken up, and Toshiya's long-fingered hand tangles itself in Kaoru's hair.
'Remember the first time?' he whispers, and Kaoru smiles against him.
'Which one?'
On the bed, Toshiya shivers. 'Yours.'
Kaoru's lips feel soft as they close over the head of Toshiya's cock and slide down the length of him, surrounding him in wet heat, and he arches up from the bed.
'You were so nervous,' Toshiya gasps, his leg tightening around Kaoru's shoulder, 'You were so scared you were going to do it wrong and...' his voice drifts away as his head falls back, his lips working soundlessly, and when he finishes his sentence it's breathless: 'and hurt me. God, Kaoru.'
He hisses faintly as the contact between them is lost, and then shivers as Kaoru speaks and he feels his hot breath against his wet skin: 'I need...'
Wordlessly, Toshiya leans back and jerks open the drawer in his bedside table. He snatches haphazardly at what they need and then presses the lube into Kaoru's hand, feeling mesmerised by the sight of the face he loves so well so close to his cock. He remains staring at it, propped up on his elbows, as Kaoru drizzles clear lubricant over his fingers and then, his eyes meeting Toshiya's, slips his hand carefully between his legs.
Toshiya's breath gets tight and, as Kaoru's fingers rub at him gently, he thinks about how much it feels like the first time. Kaoru's other hand is grasping at his hip, stroking it soothingly as he pushes a finger inside of Toshiya's body; his mouth kisses and licks at the head of his dick, as if to distract him.
He'd been so excited that first time, he'd felt like he was about to come apart at the seams. Kaoru slips another finger inside his body and Toshiya sighs, his eyes slipping closed, because nothing has changed. This, Kaoru touching him like this, always makes him feel like he could fly into pieces. The older man shifts his hand, and the feeling is like dissolving; not quite enough, not yet, but enough to make him dizzy with promise.
He'd known, the first time, that he was lost forever. It had felt ceremonial, almost, like a rite: as if all the kind words and soft touches Kaoru had ever given him had reached their natural conclusion; as if they were being bonded, tied together in some vital way that still, even now, has the power to make him shake.
He bites his lip to stifle a moan as Kaoru's fingers gently explore him, and he sees the older man has his eyes closed, his lips pressing hotly against the underside of Toshiya's cock. He smiles at him even though he can't see it, gasps when those small fingers slip deeper, and tightens the leg slung over Kaoru's back.
'No more,' he says softly, 'I'm ready.'
'You're sure?'
Toshiya's only answer is to shift impatiently against him and Kaoru grins as he gets on his knees on the bed, taking Toshiya by the hips and pulling him firmly into position. Toshiya's hand reaches out, coats Kaoru's cock haphazardly with lube. It's awkward – with his ass tugged up on Kaoru's thighs and his legs either side of his hips, he has to bend himself almost double to reach – but his face is intent, almost adorably focussed, and Kaoru feels the familiar feeling in his chest: the tightness he seems to get there whenever he looks at his lover, as though it's suddenly hard to breathe.
He closes his eyes as he pushes inside him, hears Toshiya's low groan; knows that he will have to leave him again before too long.
But now it's out in the open between them: the fact that Toshiya will leave him first, after all. That there will come a time where he'll never come back.
Kaoru clutches him tight, like he won't let go.
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