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solongsun Dinner that night started out as a subdued affair. Kai didn't appear; he had vanished completely under the covers, and from inside his little nest his radio played on: The Beach Boys were warbling Good Vibrations when Ruki tentatively approached the lump in the bed and gave a gentle shake to what he'd thought was probably Kai's shoulder.
'Are you coming?' he'd asked, but his only answer had been a dense silence and the sound of the radio, so he'd left it. He didn't know what would happen – he didn't know if it was permissible for Kai to skip meals or not – and so he felt a little keyed up as he slipped inside the dining room. The table looked even more sporadically taken up than normal; almost everybody had empty seats next to them. After a quick glance at Kyo, Ruki quickly pulled out the seat next to Aoi and sat down; he was feeling stupidly shy of the other man.
Dinner was fish with rice and broth and green vegetables. Ruki ate quietly. Opposite him, Die didn't pick up his chopsticks but instead lounged back in his chair insolently, his arms folded over his bony chest. Aoi rubbed his hands over his face wearily.
'You have to eat,' he said in a dead voice.
'Fuck you.'
'Sure. You still have to eat.'
'Fuck you. You're not my fucking doctor, Aoi, all right? You're just another fucked-up patient, so butt out.'
'I'm a “patient”,' Aoi repeated quietly, his voice dripping with sarcasm, 'You don't think I'm just a little bit different from you?'
'No, I don't,' Die said flatly, rocking back on his chair, and Aoi rolled his eyes.
'Sure. Sure, I'm just like you. Only, one small difference – I'm not sick. I'm not. And you are. And you know it. And if you don't eat you will actually die, right, and I don't want you to die, so will you do me one small fucking favour and just put some food in your damn mouth?'
Die's one-to-one nurse cleared her throat, and both men turned away from each other obediently. Aoi started eating, chewing each mouthful angrily, and Die toyed with his chopsticks and aligned his bowls so they were all precisely lined up on his tray, little to large.
'Aoi—' Die said hesitantly, and the other man gave his head an angry shake.
'Please don't die,' he said, his voice almost inaudible but clearly furious. Die looked down at his food and shook his head, his long fingers almost as thin as his chopsticks, wound awkwardly around them like vines.
'Sorry,' he said softly. Aoi gave his head an incredulous shake, but a moment later, under the guise of leaning down to better eat his rice, he nudged his head briefly against Die's shoulder.
'It's so fucking annoying when you say shit like that,' Die muttered.
'Like what?'
'Like all that please don't die bullshit.'
'Why's it annoying? Because you don't have an answer for it?'
For a moment Die's eyes looked very far away, but he gave a slight shake of his head and stretched his mouth into a smile.
'No, because everything you say is annoying.'
'Annoying like being woken up at five every – fucking – morning – because your jackass roommate has to do his lunges or crunches or bunches or slouches or whatever the fuck it is you do?'
Die grinned and, very carefully, he placed a small piece of fish into his mouth. He chewed, his face tense, and swallowed stiffly.
A smug, catlike grin curled around Aoi's face. Slowly, very deliberately, he hooked an arm around Die's neck, pulled the other man to face him, moved in close, and kissed him long and slow on the lips.
There was a sort of shocked silence before Die burst out laughing and pulled back, ruffling his friend's hair roughly, but once it had broken for the laughter it seemed difficult to get the laughter to stop: both of them collapsed into fits even as Aoi was pulled firmly but gently from his chair, one orderly on each side of him, and taken out of the room and borne away somewhere down the long, polished corridor.
After dinner, Ruki settled himself down in the TV room. Kai still hadn't appeared, and when he'd stuck his head through the doorway of his room, he'd seen that the lump in the bed had gone. It gave him a vague sense of disquiet; he didn't like a world where people could vanish so easily.
Mito Komon was on, a show Ruki would have never normally watched. He let the plot run mostly past him. Nobody else seemed to be watching, either; Aoi hadn't reappeared after dinner, and although Die was sitting in an armchair facing the TV, he was sunk so low in his seat that his chin was resting on his chest and Ruki doubted he could see. He was occupying himself with his lighter, flicking it on and then snapping it closed again, twirling it through his fingers; without his grin in place, he looked exhausted. Shinya and Kyo were sitting on the floor, a chess game between them, but they didn't seem to be playing; Shinya's voice was too quiet for Ruki to make it out, but he kept moving various pieces around the board and launching into long, inaudible explanations, seemingly to himself. For his part, Kyo looked distinctly unfocussed, and it was that more than anything that gave Ruki the courage to go over. His heart was thumping, he realised, filling his ears with the sound of blood.
He wanted to say something like thanks for earlier, this is for you, but his mouth felt very dry, so he just held his gift out in front of him like an idiot. Kyo blinked up at him.
'It's a book,' Ruki said foolishly.
'Correct.'
'Have you read it?'
Kyo's dark eyes examined the cover searchingly. 'No.'
'Well...do you want to?'
His eyes left the cover and flicked back up towards Ruki, a strange expression in them.
'Really?'
'Yeah, of course. It's – I guess it's kind of a weird book. Nothing really happens. But I like it.'
He'd been expecting some sort of smart-ass response, but he didn't get one. Instead, Kyo remained staring strangely up into his face, and slowly reached out and took the book from his hand.
'Thank you,' he said quietly.
Ruki nodded. He was uncomfortably aware that Die's attention had left his lighter, and was now fixed curiously onto the two of them; it was making him feel slightly hot and ill-at-ease. On the floor, Shinya continued to mutter to the chess pieces, pushing them around into different configurations; Kyo smoothed the cover of the book carefully.
'It's the Catcher in the Rye,' Ruki said pointlessly, hoping to fill the silence, 'It's kind of – well, it's about—'
He was spared by a flurry of activity over by the door of the room; Uruha was back, clutching a book of his own under his arm – a Local's Guide, but Ruki couldn't make out to which country – and without saying anything he weaved efficiently through the furniture and planted himself straight in the middle of the three-seater sofa, directly in front of the TV.
'Dad's show is on,' he announced to the room at large. The remote control was affixed to the scratched wooden coffee table in front of him, and he leant forward and tapped it smartly to change the channel. There was a flare of static – the rabbit ears didn't seem to pick up such good signal here, Ruki had noticed – and Uruha's face went tight, but it mostly cleared and he relaxed again.
'Dad's in France,' he announced. 'I remember when he was filming. I was there. For some of it. We had wine, and I saw the Eiffel Tower.'
Die looked up, but not because of Uruha; there was another scuffing sort of sound from the door, and Aoi was led into the room. He had just one orderly with him this time, holding loosely to his arm, so he seemed to be able to stand and walk alone; something had happened to him, however. His head was hanging low and he was clutching on to his own arms just above the elbows, his knuckles a whitish colour from effort. He didn't say anything, either – perhaps that was the biggest change. He allowed himself to be deposited into an armchair.
Some slightly tacky sounding theme music spewed from the television set – something flowery and vaguely annoying, with an accordion – and a handsome man's face filled the screen, interspersed with shots of various landmarks: the Eiffel Tower, check. Roman Coliseum, check. Big Ben, check.
'Aoi,' Die said cautiously, pulling himself upright in his chair, 'You okay?'
Aoi's head bobbed lightly, like a cork, but he didn't say anything.
'Oh, fuck,' Die muttered, clambering to his feet and striding over, his clothes gaping baggily around his bony body. He squatted before Aoi's armchair and grabbed the other man's face, forcing it to look at him. 'Aoi, man. You all right?'
'Shh!' Uruha said sharply; the static images of the Great Pyramid and Niagara Falls had been replaced with a rolling shot of the same handsome man strolling along a broad French avenue.
'The beautiful Champs Elysées,' he was saying in a public tone of voice, 'One of my personal favourite places in the world; the very epicentre of Parisian spirit and sophistication—'
'Shut up, Uruha,' Die snapped, 'Something's up with Aoi.'
Despite himself, looking uncertain, Uruha's eyes left the screen.
'Yeah?'
'Look at him,' Die said angrily. From the TV set, the narration had been overtaken by a syrupy burst of music: Patti Page was crooning you will find your love in Paris, when you walk along the Seine...
Uruha got to his feet and joined Die beside Aoi's chair. 'They've given him something,' he said in a revolted tone of voice.
When you fall in love in Paris, it's a river of champagne...
'This is bullshit,' Die said from between gritted teeth. 'They can't do that. He didn't do anything.'
'Aoi?' Uruha said uneasily, 'Can you hear me?'
'Looks like lithium. Too much of it.'
'You've never taken lithium.'
'I know what it looks like.'
'Lithium's all right,' Uruha said, but he reached out and smoothed down Aoi's hair carefully. 'I don't mind it.'
'Uh huh?'
'Yeah. You can't really think. Not in the same way.'
'And that's all right, is it?' Die asked incredulously.
'I wouldn't expect you to understand,' Uruha snapped. 'You never think. How would you know what it's like to feel like you can't stop? I can never stop.' He sighed heavily. 'I'm so glad I'm getting out of here soon.'
His hands shook a little as they fussed over Aoi's hair, parting it neatly into equal sections and smoothing it around his face. And when Shinya ceased using the chess set along with his mutterings, Uruha sat tensely for a moment and then went over and tidied it carefully, setting out the pieces not ready for a new game but in a neat regiment, two by two, bishop to bishop and king to king, in perfect symmetry.
The Local's Guide was followed by Music Fair, but the guest wasn't anybody good; just some slushy singer whose songs were used on film soundtracks a lot. Nobody bothered to change the channel, though, and then the news came on, which showed footage of the moon rock on display at the Osaka Expo, and then a street so familiar it seemed to hit Ruki like a punch in the stomach: it was the clean-up after the gas explosion. There were houses that Ruki didn't realise that he remembered in their earlier forms, but they were rubble now, almost still seeming to smoke; the news put the death toll at 79 and said that more than 400 people were injured, and spoke optimistically about the work still to be done. After that item, there was more American troops being withdrawn from Vietnam, and then a socialite who had turned up hacked to bits and partially eaten in the trunk of a rental car, and then it switched to the weather: temperatures remaining steady, outlook mostly clear and fair, probably the last really good week to go and see the cherry blossoms before they're all blown away again for another year...
Aoi seemed to be asleep in his chair, and Die had sunk back down again. The night had come up around them, and the flickering bluish light of the TV screen was the only illumination in the room; nobody else felt much like getting up to put a light on.
Kai returned after evening medications were giving out, dressed in pyjamas and looking very pinched and scrubbed and subdued; he smiled, however, and immediately sat down next to Uruha on the sofa, curling up against the other man and wriggling until Uruha finally, irritably, put an arm around him. He had brought his radio, which lay safely next to him on the cushion; the tinny sound of The Doors' Light My Fire competed with the blare of the television until a stern-faced nurse – one of the male ones, with hairy arms – flicked on the lights and turned off the TV set.
'Sitting in the dark,' he muttered under his breath, and then said more loudly: 'Bed in half an hour, gents. Teeth brushed. No more cigarettes; you know the nine o'clock rule. Shinya, get off the floor. This whole room is filled with chairs.'
Shinya was whispering quietly into his palms, and didn't respond.
'Shinya, I know you can hear me.'
There was a warning note in his voice that made Ruki's skin prickle.
'You have three seconds to get off that floor and into a chair, unless you want to spend the next few days in the isolation room. Three...two...'
'Leave him alone,' Ruki heard Kyo say disgustedly; the other man had been sitting silently in a chair for most of the evening, reading the book Ruki had given him. 'It's bed in half an hour; what difference does it make?'
'It makes a difference because I said so and because I'm in charge here, not you.'
Staring at the nurse fixedly, a strange look in his eyes, Kyo took a cigarette out of his pack and lit up. Over on the sofa, Kai's radio had switched to playing Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, and he began humming along distractedly; the nurse rounded on him in annoyance.
'Shut up that noise,' he said sharply, 'And sit up. I want to see you two on opposite ends of the sofa. No more cuddling.' He sighed harshly through his nose. 'You boys,' he said quietly, 'Think you can do whatever you like and we'll all just pander to it. But you are here for treatment. There are rules.'
Ruki wasn't sure what it was that made him do it; maybe just the bruised, creased look that came over Kai's face when he was told to stop the music. He found himself getting to his feet, though, and pointedly placing himself on the sofa next to Kai, sandwiching him between himself and Uruha. Glaring at the nurse, he put his arm gently around the other man's shoulders. He had displaced the radio; he placed it carefully back in Kai's lap and, heart thudding high in his throat, hesitantly started to sing along. It was embarrassing to be the only voice in the room, especially as he didn't know all the words exactly, just the vague sounds of them, but it felt good, too; it felt right. It didn't take long for Kai to join him, a slight uncertainty to his voice, and then there was a depression in the sofa on Ruki's other side; Kyo had sat down next to him, closely followed by Die. The five of them squashed together, arms wrapped around shoulders and heads resting against heads, all singing along angrily. Even Shinya roused himself sufficiently to beat out the rhythm on the wall; Aoi didn't move or open his eyes but Ruki thought the other man might have been mumbling vaguely along with them:
'Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down...'
The shock to Ruki was so sudden that he almost stopped singing: the lightness in his chest, the warmth and light that seemed to glow from somewhere inside of him – he was cross, but he was happy. He was, in that moment, truly and honest-to-God happy; almost vicious with it. It was a feeling that had grown so unfamiliar it was hard to recognise right away, but once identified there was no mistaking it, and he caught himself squeezing the men on either side of him hard, doing his best to keep singing whilst laughter was bubbling up in his chest at the look on the nurse's face:
'If you need a friend, I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind.'
The song ended and they were grinning at each other like idiots; like real crazies, Ruki thought, but it wasn't a thought that bothered him. Uruha was stroking Kai's hair soothingly, and Die was lighting a cigarette from the glowing end of Kyo's, and Shinya was beaming into his hands. Ruki shifted himself into a more comfortable position and found himself smiling up into Kyo's face. He wasn't naïve enough to think his good feeling was going to last, but it was such a relief in the moment that he couldn't wipe the happy expression off his face; for just a few minutes he didn't have to worry about where he was, or what E. O. was doing, or who Kaito was, or even what the future was going to bring. He had the last few moments: they belonged to him.
After the stunt they'd pulled, a few orderlies crowded into the room and started bossing people around; cigarette packets were confiscated and the group on the sofa was disbanded, sent off to get changed and brush their teeth with a warning to get into bed quickly. Die tugged Aoi out of his chair, his muscles straining like ropes beneath the skin on his stick-like arms; the other man still wore a dazed expression, but he allowed Die to lead him gently away. His walk was mild and shuffling, so unlike his usual strut that Ruki felt something like a bruise forming in his chest. His happiness evaporating, he went off to brush his teeth, and found a nurse waiting for him as soon as he had come out of the bathroom. From a brown tray, she handed him his two bitter little sleeping pills along with a paper cup of water. Ruki frowned.
'I don't need these,' he said, but the nurse – a middle aged woman with a pad of loose flesh under her jaw – simply raised an eyebrow.
'You can discuss it with your therapist in the morning,' she said, not unkindly, 'But in the meantime I'm going to need you to swallow them for me, please.'
'But—'
'We don't want to have another problem, Ruki. The lot of you are looking at no visits for a week as it is; please don't make things worse for yourself. Come on; down they go.'
Ruki glowered, but knew he was fighting a losing battle. Reluctantly, he pressed the two little tablets between his lips, and was tipping his head back to wash them down with a mouthful of water when he caught the eye of Die, leaning out of the door of his bedroom. The redhead stuck out his tongue, showing two round white sleeping pills balanced on its tip; he winked, and quick as a flash he had them in his pocket instead.
Tucking the pills firmly under his tongue, Ruki took a big swallow of water and nodded. 'All done,' he said, his voice only slightly distorted, and the nurse gave him a small bow.
'Thank you. Off to bed now, please. Sleep well.'
She turned to go, and Ruki shot Die a small smile. Aoi's words seemed to echo in his ears: if you want to stay sane here, you're gonna have to break some rules.
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