Maps: 10/??

[solongsun]

Title: Maps

Author: solongsun  

Rating: mature

Bands: The GazettE, Dir en grey

Pairings: Kyo/Ruki, Aoi/Die, Aoi/Uruha

April 8, 1970: the day of the Ten-Roku gas explosion, and the day that 22-year-old Ruki attempts to end his life. Less than two weeks later, he finds himself committed to the Yamauchi Hostel, a psychiatric hospital in the Kyoto hills. Kept on a ward with a number of other ill young men, Ruki is sometimes frightened and sometimes enthralled by his new friends – and none more other than the 'untreatable' Kyo, whose hospitalisation hides a legacy of dark secrets...

'I can tell you right away that it's not uncommon.'

Ruki was slouched down so far in his chair that his chin was just about propped on his chest. He took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled grey smoke over his own body, like a shroud. There was a bandage on his wrist where he'd injured himself banging it against the telephone.

'I understand that this is worrying for you. When you were admitted, our preliminary diagnosis was that you were clinically depressed. You've been showing improvement. I urge you not to think of this as being knocked back to square one. There is no reason why you can't wake up tomorrow and be as happy as you were last week.'

Dr Sato's office was almost a perfect square, and he had a page-by-page calendar on his desk that said June 18. Apart from his nameplate, it was the only decoration: the rest of his desk was sparse and functional. Notepad, pen, typewriter, telephone. No pictures or ornaments, and not even a fancy fountain pen with its own holder like Kimura had used; just a regular black ballpoint. The clock on the wall said ten minutes past four, and the afternoon was drawing to its slow, golden close.

'Ruki, if you don't talk to me then there is very little point in me wasting my time talking to you. I can tell you that delusions and hallucinations can be found in depressive patients with some regularity; one in five, perhaps, on my own anecdotal evidence. This is not the end of the world.'

He sighed, ruffling his neatly trimmed moustache.

'You were making such improvement,' he said, 'And I can see from your face that you're now intending to waste it. You're going to throw it all away.'

 

Ruki's eyes narrowed.

'I don't want to be here any more,' he said calmly. 'Depression, hallucinations, delusions, whatever. I don't care. I signed myself in; I'd like to sign myself out now, please.'

'That's not how this works, Ruki. You put yourself in our hands; we decide when you are well enough to leave us.'

'You can't just keep me here.'

'Well, actually, we can. You can apply for discharge, of course, and we would be obliged to review and consider your application. But, and don't think I'm making empty statements here, that would be a complete waste of time. There is no chance at all your application would be successful at this stage.'

'You said I was improving,' Ruki said icily, and the doctor raised his eyebrows.

'I did,' he said, 'And you are. But in your relatively short time here, we have two delusional episodes and incidences of self-harm, as well as a certain disregard for the rules.'

'So what does being naughty have to do with how sick I am, exactly?'

Sato sighed, leaning back in his chair wearily.

'I know it seems unfair,' he said. 'But you have to understand that these rules aren't just cobbled together on a whim. We actually think about these things. We study them. And the thinking in this case is that people in your position are often with us because their conditions have left them unable to function within society; society being, after all, just a bunch of rules that everybody seems to have agreed upon. Big rules, like don't kill anybody, and little ones too, like how close you can stand to strangers in a shop and the volume of voice you should be using inside a building. Rules, rules, rules: that's all interaction is; that's all personality is, when you get down to it; an interpretation of the rules, and a decision whether or not to abide by them. Our aim here is to teach you those rules. And that's why rules are important, and why following rules is a pretty good indicator that you're recovering. With me?'

'I knew not to kill people and when to wash before I got here, so no, I'm not with you.'

'No, you didn't. You didn't react appropriately to those rules, because you tried to break one.'

'No I didn't—'

'You count, Ruki. You count. It's no more abiding by the rules to kill yourself than it is to kill somebody else. It's the societal contract: maybe we didn't all agree to it in so many words, maybe not all of us were even asked. But these rules are the price of living in society, and the whole world is society now. You can't run into the woods and become feral if it all goes wrong. You have to make your peace with it; you have to not kill yourself.' He paused. 'What do you think?'

'I think you're full of shit,' Ruki said, but he couldn't really have said his heart was in it.

 

When Ruki left Sato's office, he felt filled with a heavy exhaustion. It was costing him all the energy he had simply to keep dragging his legs along the corridors; it was like trying to run underwater.

In the music room, Jimi Hendrix had at last given up some of his spotlight; as Ruki passed, he heard a song he couldn't identify. He paused, hanging limply in the door frame, and found more or less what he was expecting; Aoi sprawled out in an armchair with his feet propped on top of the small table that held the record player, a cigarette burning low between his fingers. He was staring listlessly into space, and he gave Ruki a wary look when he walked in.

'Hi.'

'Hi.' Ruki shifted uncomfortably. 'How's Uruha?'

Some sorrowful emotion flickered briefly over Aoi's face, and he cleared his throat unnecessarily.

'Still out,' he said. 'He's probably Uruha in the sky with diamonds right about now.'

Since Aoi hadn't jumped immediately down his throat, Ruki pulled his tired body into the room and slumped down into the other armchair.

'Who is this?' he asked, gesturing limply towards the record player.

'This? This is Die's newest. Black Sabbath. Paranoid.' He took a deep drag of his cigarette, 'Big in England. They've got people who listen exclusively to this kind of music. Know what they call them? Headbangers.'

'No way.' Ruki shook his head, and then held up his bandaged wrist. 'Well, I guess I can join them. I'm a wristbanger.'

Aoi snorted, his lips twitching, and Ruki let out a long breath.

'I'm sorry I got angry with you,' he said. He didn't feel like he had the energy to dress it up any more than that. He watched Aoi carefully; the other man shrugged, but the expression on his face didn't look quite as casual.

'It's all right. You asked a fair question. But I do have an answer for it.'

'Go on.'

'The thing is, you have to promise to keep it a secret. And I don't mean some high school, oh-I-promise-but-I-can-tell-one-person bullshit, I mean you fucking swear, and you mean it.'

'I swear,' Ruki said simply, and Aoi nodded, accepting it.

'Okay. So. I first met Uruha about five years ago...' he hesitated, his eyes flat-looking, 'We've been here a long time. Anyway – anyway, when I first met him, he was a total wreck. You think he's bad now; you should have seen him back then. As much as I hate this place, I have to admit it's helped him. Back then, though, things were...different. I mean I know it's not super fun all the time here now, but this was – you know, this was 1965. They didn't have all the drugs then, so they did things differently. They had punishments, more than just having your own clothes taken away or restricted to the ward; I mean...punishments. It wasn't a good place. So that's the first thing to remember, okay? No matter what, nobody could leave their kid here and believe it was a good place for them.'

 

He lit another cigarette, looking unsure of how to continue.

'Anyway, back in those days, Uruha and I roomed together. Daddy hadn't bought him a private room yet; that came later. And...fuck.' Aoi shook his head, 'There's only one way to say it: one night, he just got into bed with me. He was – pretty upset. And he started telling me all this stuff, but none of it really made any sense, and the thing was, he was crying, but he was...I mean, he was kind of all over me, too. He was whispering all this stuff into my neck but he was kissing my skin at the same time, and he had his hands inside my clothes, and...he was agitated. Worked up. He asked me to touch him.'

Aoi leant forward, cradling his forehead in his hand.

'I was...younger then. Maybe now I would have asked more questions, but at the time, I don't know. I'm not making excuses for myself, but I was lost, you know? I was alone, and I was scared, and...no offence, Ruki, but you have no idea how shitty it is to be the only non-crazy person here. I'm not saying you guys are all nuts or anything, but you at least have something wrong; something they think they can fix. But me...I'm always going to be what I am. There's no fixing me.' He paused. 'And I felt stuck, and forgotten, and – I did it. I ended up using my mouth on him, and he was incredible; it was like he just couldn't get enough. But he kept saying, please don't get any on me, please don't get any on me. Anyway, I didn't know how serious it was for him, and so of course I accidentally let some cum get on him, and he freaked; completely freaked out. Screaming, crying, whatever. It was scary. After that episode, Daddy bought him the private room, and I – got some pretty bad punishments. But it all kind of came out in group therapy afterwards, at the time, so now I think about it, I guess Kyo knows as well; he was here then. But it all comes out: Uruha's a total OCD headcase anyway, but the one thing that really gets to him, more than anything else in the world, is cum. To him, it's just dirty. It's contamination. It literally drives him insane; even his own, the feeling of his own on his skin, he can't take it. That was why he was so desperate for me to touch him, you see? He couldn't do it himself. He's never been able to.'

 

Aoi took a deep pull on his cigarette and let it out very slowly.

'Since then,' he said, 'I've felt like the only person who really understands. Even though it'd gone so badly, we used to sneak into each other's rooms and try again. There was a difference in him afterwards; if he could cum without anything going wrong, he'd be happier; he'd get more relaxed. It was like being normal, for him. Like the noise in his head shut up for a little bit. The doctors couldn't figure it out. And I was careful; we didn't have any other incidents. I was always able to get rid of it for him.' Aoi sighed. 'And that's it,' he said. 'That's the whole story. Since then, we've been doing it...every so often, I guess. Whenever he wants to, but only when he wants to, got that? Because I have never pushed him.'

At that, Aoi smashed out his cigarette in an ashtray and leant forward, staring straight into Ruki's eyes.

'So listen,' he said seriously, 'I'll accept your apology, and I apologise in turn for what you saw, because for whatever reason, I know it upset you. But...' he hesitated, weighing his words, 'Maybe it's hard to understand, why I do it with him; why we take the risk. But don't ever, ever think that seeing him like that doesn't completely break my heart, because it does. And – don't you ever assume that just because I'm the clinical-definition homosexual, I'm some kind of predator. Got it?'

Shakily, Ruki nodded. Aoi remained staring at him, their eyes locked for a long time before he finally sat back.

'I love him,' he mumbled. 'He drives me crazy, but I really love him. And I suppose I wanted to show him that it didn't have to be bad, or scary. Sex stuff, I mean.'

He gave a final long sigh, and forced a smile onto his face. 'Now come on, do me a favour: stick some Beatles on and get Kai in here. I could use some cheering up.'

 

All in all, it turned into a better evening than Ruki could have anticipated, and the horrible weight that had settled on his chest seemed to lift slightly. There was still a lingering unease about what he'd seen, but it didn't feel very specific to Aoi and Uruha.

It was more that he'd been so naïve when he'd met E. O. It had been what the older man had liked about him, he thought; or at least the thing that had attracted him at first and then frustrated him later. It had been like a contest between them; E. O. constantly undoing a button and Ruki doing it up again; E. O. always slipping a hand inside Ruki's jeans and Ruki always twisting away from it. It had been a turn-on for the older man at first; that back and forth, just one big chase. But gradually – Ruki couldn't say exactly when, apart from that it must have been around the time they'd first slept together – he'd gotten bored; it had started making him angry, and he'd begun a careful attack strategy: one moment calling Ruki beautiful and whispering please, please, I'll make it so good for you into his ear; the next calling him a tease and a stupid kid and leaving him to try and melt down huge frozen silences that could extend for days.

In the end, it had been easier to just give in.

 

Ruki sat scrunched up into a ball on the sofa in the TV room, a tense little headache curled up behind his temples. He wondered if what had really perturbed him about what he'd seen between Aoi and Uruha was the strange liberty of it; the complete lack of abandon. Neither of them caring how they looked or sounded. Freedom.

The vague thought he'd had before, that maybe sex with other men would always be like that – always a contest, always a battle to keep composure – had made him feel sick and tired of the whole damn thing. He'd always wanted it with E. O., sometimes enough to beg for it, but in his heart, he was aware that his motives were foggy and mixed up. When he was locked up in E. O.'s body on the bed, his limbs at painful angles and his cheek pressed against the pillow, he felt mostly disappointed: this strange physical struggle hadn't been what he wanted at all. But what, then? Just E. O.'s attention, probably. Just the feeling of closeness.

'“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”'

Ruki felt like he'd leapt about a foot off the sofa, and his head began to pound in protest. Rubbing a hand across his forehead angrily, he tried to make sense of what had just been said. The words didn't seem to mean anything specific whichever way he turned them.

'People always clap...?'

Kyo sat down next to Ruki on the sofa, holding up the book he'd borrowed from him.

'It's from the book. It's good.'

'The book?'

'And the quote.'

Ruki felt like his head was spinning. He massaged his forehead grimly.

'I'm glad you liked it,' he said mechanically, and sighed. 'Hi.'

'Hi. I heard you're more of a loony than normal these days.'

'Who said that?'

'I did.'

Ruki scowled. 'Not that it's any of your business.'

'Correct.'

'Everyone says you're the craziest one anyway.'

'Could be,' Kyo said disinterestedly. 'What happened to your wrist?'

'Oh, I...banged it.'

'I know. I'm kidding. The whole ward heard you thrashing around.'

'Brilliant.'

'I was making a point.'

Ruki took a deep breath, trying to control his temper. 'Cool.'

'Anyway, thanks for the book. It was great.'

'Yeah?' Ruki said cautiously.

'Yeah. I can see why you like it so much.'

'Can I ask you a question?' Ruki asked suddenly, surprising himself. Kyo raised his eyebrows.

'You can try.'

'Why don't you ever go outside? Don't you have grounds privileges?'

'I have them.'

'So why not?'

Bluntly, Kyo held up two fingers.

'Groups of two or more,' he said.

'Doesn't Shinya...?'

'Restricted to the ward. Own safety.'

'Oh, yeah. Well, why don't you come out with me, then?'

Ruki might have imagined it, but he thought the ghost of a smile flickered across Kyo's face.

'That an invitation?'

'Can I ask another question?' Ruki said, ignoring that, and this time he wasn't imagining it: Kyo really did smile.

'Fine.'

'Why do you have to wear the hospital clothes? Why can't you wear your own?'

Kyo lit up a cigarette.

'I've been here twelve years. What I came in with doesn't exactly fit any more.'

Twelve years. Ruki felt a strange pressure in his head at that, a dizzy feeling, as if his ears were about to pop.

'Can't your family get you clothes?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'It's a long story. And it's dinner time.' Kyo got to his feet and looked at him, unsmiling. 'So. Grounds tomorrow?'

'Is that an invitation?' Ruki asked sarcastically, and Kyo blinked at him.

'Yes, obviously.'

 

Dinner was some kind of meat stew that came in a thick gravy. Ruki stirred the food around more than he ate it. He had a headache, and he felt sort of sick, and the sky outside had turned from clear blue to a weird lavender colour that made him feel restless. The wind had picked up, too; all the trees kept flipping their leaves the wrong way, and every so often an ominous rumbling would come from the horizon.

It seemed to be affecting all of them. Kai wasn't eating, but sat chewing on his knuckles instead, his eyes very large as he stared at the windows. Uruha had reappeared at last, but he was wan and doped from almost twenty-four hours of continuous sleep; he had to have help spooning his food, and his eyes were unfocussed. Die was a ball of strange energy, moving his food around vigorously; he moved so quickly it made Ruki feel tired just to look at him. The redhead's cheeks burned with a sort of feverish heat, and he stirred his food viciously, blew on the surface to cool it, made mmm noises and lifted little mouthfuls to his lips but always interrupted himself, always had some remark occur to him just before he could actually put the food in his mouth. It kept him chattering almost non-stop, mostly about nothing; when the allocated hour for dinner was up, Die leapt to his feet and started stacking the bowls so that nobody could see that his was still full, and Ruki wondered if the supervising orderly sitting at the head of the table could really be as stupid as he looked. Even Aoi was quiet; he didn't seem to have the energy to make anybody laugh, and the resulting melancholy atmosphere was a little scary. Ruki hadn't really appreciated what a vital purpose Aoi fulfilled with his relentless teasing, but it became apparent at that meal; he was the one who jollied them all along, made them laugh even when they didn't really feel like it; his noise was obnoxious but without it, the place felt more like a hospital full of mental patients than ever. That was Aoi's gift: he made them feel normal. Ruki missed it.

Only Kyo and Shinya were their usual selves, but it was unfortunate that their usual selves weren't really that normal to begin with. Shinya ate steadily but great fat tears kept sliding down his cheeks, and from the fierce look on Kyo's face Ruki guessed that he shouldn't stare or ask what was wrong.

 

Dinner had been so oppressive that as soon as he'd been allowed to leave the table, Ruki had made a beeline for his bedroom. Kai had been right behind him, but that was okay; for once he didn't have his tinny little radio switched on, and the quiet suited Ruki fine. His greatest ambition at that moment was simply to lie down, close his eyes and allow his mind to drift a welcome few inches up and out of his body.

From the music room, he could very faintly hear that somebody was playing a record; Flowers, by The Rolling Stones. Ruby Tuesday played without incident, but by the time the track had switched to Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow? Ruki was becoming aware of a growing whooping noise, an inhuman sort of noise that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut. On the bed just a few feet away from his own, Kai made a low, worried moaning noise.

The whooping grew louder. At first it had sounded happy, but now it sounded afraid, and it was rising in pitch and shaking unsteadily; Ruki heard the sound of fast footfalls, and the thud of bodies colliding.

The asylum noises: the shush now, come on now, shush now. The whooping grew weaker and died down. Ruki opened his eyes to find Kai staring at him solemnly.

'Shinya,' he said, and Ruki nodded.

'Right.'

The record had been stopped. Between that and Shinya's sudden quiet, the sound of the wind was very clear outside, and Kai clapped his hands over his ears. Every few seconds, a handful of rain would be flung against the window, and Kai would make a small whimpering noise.

Ruki didn't know quite what to do. He sat up awkwardly on his bed, his stomach feeling tight.

'Are you all right?' he asked warily, but before Kai could answer or even look at him, the door opened and yellow light spilled over the both of them. Ruki blinked; he hadn't realised they'd been sitting in the dark.

'Medications,' a harried-looking nurse announced. 'They'll have to be early tonight. Sorry, boys.'

Without waiting for a response, she doled out some pills to each of them – sleeping pills and another little round Valium tablet for Ruki; sleeping pills and two unrecognisable red-and-blue zeppelins for Kai – and handed each of them a cup of water.

In equal silence, both men tipped their cups to their mouths and swallowed. Ruki could taste the bitterness from having the pills clamped under his tongue. As soon as the door closed behind the nurse, he spat the pills out, and was surprised to see Kai do the same.

'Shouldn't you—?' he began uneasily, but Kai shut him up with an unusually grown-up look.

'I have a place where I put them,' he announced in a quick, breathy sort of voice. 'You can put yours there too. They never find them. They don't see anything. They don't see it ever. Not ever.'

He squatted on his heels beside his bed and nimbly began to twist one of the white-painted screws holding the skirting board in place. He must have done this many times before, Ruki thought; the screw wound itself out neatly, and the panel of skirting board fell away with a small clatter. It left behind it a small hole that looked as though it had been stuffed with cotton; on closer inspection, it appeared to be a tissue. Kai pulled that out, and Ruki was able to just make out a fair hollow containing a collection of different pills.

'I put them in here,' Kai said in a fast whisper, his shaking fingers adding that night's pills to his hoard, 'Every time I don't want to take them. I don't always want to take them. I don't. They can't make me.'

'I can see that,' Ruki said uncomfortably. Kai looked at him, seeming almost surprised to find him there.

'Yours too,' he demanded, and Ruki handed them over. Kai pushed them quickly into the hole, stuffed the tissue back in after them, and neatly replaced the panel of skirting board.

From the outside it was completely undetectable.

Kai began chewing his knuckles again, and Ruki watched as a thin dribble of blood trickled down his wrist.  

Comments

[thehamhamheaven]

Well. I didn't think Aoi was forcing Uru, and it's good to know that whatever's going on is entirely at Uru's instigation. Even so, I wonder why he's so particular about THAT substance. Makes me think that maybe the accusations about his father touching him were more than Aoi being angry.

The offer to go out into the grounds is probably the closest Ruki can come to a date in that place. I look forward to seeing him and Kyo in the open. In the meantime, poor baby Kai is scared of the storm. It's understandable why he wouldn't want to take his pills, but I have the feeling he should have.

[solongsun]

Thanks again for reading and commenting!

Poor baby pretty much describes Kai at this point. (Your feeling about his is correct, for many reasons.)