"And I SWEAR she looks such a babe! If I were so inclined, I'd do her in a second." Toshiya giggled into his cigarette, snorting smoke out of his nose in an unflattering way.
"So everything went okay then?" Kyo poked his meal around his plate and listened attentively as Toshiya chattered on.
"Yep! Of course she has to be careful not to get anything infected and rest easy for a week. She doesn�t want to burst any stitches. And also she needs to find a job. I hope to God that she doesn't end up working in McDonalds, it will WRECK her hair. But at least she's got through it, you know? I think now she's herself, she can deal with anything."
"Good." Kyo put down his chopsticks and smiled. "How are things with Miki?"
"I don't know to be honest. She didn't look so good when she turned up for Shinju waking up. Not dreadful, but not so good either. She hasn't told him about the baby, but I think the stress is starting to get to her. Are you not going to eat that?" Kyo shook his head and pushed the plate over to Toshiya, who stubbed out his cigarette and started munching contentedly. "I feel sorry for Shinju, she can't eat anything for like a couple more hours and even then it's probably only going to be dry toast. Operations suck."
"Yeah� at least they don't have hi- her on intravenous. Those things are nasty. Bunging a needle in your arm and giving you blood or food or what ever else they think you need. When does Shin�ju get out of hospital?"
"Tomorrow morning I think. Should be anyway, unless there are any complications. Did Die say anything?"
"Nah� he doesn't seem all that fussed. Although he was a little miffed about going round Shinju's to talk and he wouldn't answer."
"Strange. Shinju didn't mention anything about Die dropping by. But who knows? How is work going? Any fantabulous discoveries as of late?"
Kyo shook his head glumly.
"No� Nothing much is really happening. It's just checking sample after sample� I never thought I'd get so bored so early on in my life. This was where I was headed for so long and now I'm here and there's nothing to do. I guess a promotion, or specialisation change wouldn't go a miss, but I'm already head of my department. What about you? Do you ever get bored of being where you are?" He looked inquisitively over the top of his glasses.
"Hmmm�" Toshiya chewed a chopstick thoughtfully. "Yeah kind of. I'm looking to leave the club as soon as I can find somewhere better to work. With better contracts or something� ugh the entertainment business sucks. You want to trade places?"
"What?" Kyo looked up, startled.
"Y'know, like I'll be the clever scientist guy and you can be the glitzy entertainer!" Kyo raised a disbelieving eyebrow as Toshiya giggled.
"Yeah I'm not exactly the performing kind Toshiya. You may like the spotlight, but it's really not my thing."
"Nonsense! Anyone can prance around to music, come on, you must have a sound system in here somewhere! Aha!" Toshiya stood up and wandered over to the stereo, turning it on and starting the CD playing. As Toshiya started to bop happily around to the music, Kyo just shrank further into himself.
"Really, its okay I-" Toshiya grabbed him by the hand, yanked him off his seat and dragged him over to the area least crowded with paper and started dancing again, keeping Kyo's hand tightly locked within his own so that there was no choice but to join in.
"Yeah! Aww come on Kyo put some effort into it! What will your adoring fans be thinking if all you do is shuffle from one foot to the other?"
"Gah! What adoring fans? What are you on about Toshiya, I don't want to dance, I don't know HOW!"
"Well then its about time someone showed you! Else how are you going to attract some attention? Now observe!" Toshiya sidled over to the stereo and turned it from CD to radio, flicking through the stations until he found something he deemed 'dance-able' enough. Then he sauntered back into the space and began to move to the music.
Although it was fair to say that Toshiya had been perfecting these moves for some time, it was also clear that he had a fair amount of talent. Here he danced without embarrassment, dancing only for Kyo to some random chart number. Toshiya seemed quite enamoured with his own company - dancing around an imaginary pole, grinning madly and turning to give Kyo a cheeky wink as the song ended. It promptly cut into another and Toshiya bounded over to him.
"Your turn!"
Kyo pouted.
"No! I don't- I can't- Urgh, it just doesn't work! I can't be dancing alone; I don't like the attention!" Kyo squirmed again - a second ago, he had enjoyed being the object of Toshiya's perky gaze, but now he found himself disliking the intensity, the feeling that he had to live up to something, to be beautiful.
"Then I'll dance with you. Is it really that bad to feel like the only person in the room?" Toshiya moved slowly to the beat of yet another pop song - this one was western - some diva from the States releasing their material over in Japan. He motioned for Kyo to copy.
"Yes� because if you screw up, everyone is watching. Besides, who would want to watch me? I'm not fun to look at." Kyo was now attempting to follow Toshiya's steps, clumsily, shyly.
"You are a paradoxical little guy, you know that Kyo? You say you don't want to be looked at and yet you bleach the living daylights out of your hair and pound your face full of metal. Why is that?" Kyo slowed down further as he thought of an answer. Multi tasking was really not his thing.
"I�" he faltered. "I want to be me� but I don�t want to be� stared at. I don't want to be noticed." He looked down at his feet and their stumbling movements. Toshiya laughed.
"But you are noticed! By lots of people. You shouldn't hide because people notice you. What is there that people wouldn't want to see?" They had both stopped moving and just stood, suddenly oblivious to the music playing in the background.
"Everything. I just- I like being there, but not noticed because if no one notices you, they don't see you when you fail."
"Really? Do you think you're going to fail that much? If you're noticed, the people who notice you catch you when you fall. If you're noticed, people don't care that you fail."
"Yes but what if they do?" Kyo looked up in earnest question. Toshiya looked back.
"Yes but what if they don't?" When Kyo did not reply, Toshiya continued. "I mean at the club all the way back then. You met me. And at the time I was failing. You've been through a lot Kyo, but you're still noticed. And that's good because if I hadn't noticed you, we'd never have got talking and never become such good friends."
Kyo nodded, and Toshiya could have sworn he blushed. He drew Kyo in for a hug.
"I'm glad I noticed you." The embrace tightened, and Toshiya wondered how long he could make it last before it would become sexual. He let it linger.
"Me too." Kyo turned his face to the side, able to see the room now and not just the stripes of Toshiya's shirt. He was glad Toshiya had noticed him too. He wondered what the taller man was thinking. Thoughts of saunters and little glances exchanged streamed through his own brain. The track on the radio stopped and a news-flash broke in-
---A man has been shot dead outside a club in Osaka, police are looking into it�The stocks have fallen drastically since last August and it's thought the previously multimillionaire company may go bankrupt some time in the near future� We have been informed that former E member and current producer of several popular bands, Hayashi Yoshiki has stormed out of an important press conference without his bodyguards or associates. His location has yet to be disclosed. His representatives refuse to comment. Our reporter is---
Neither one of them was listening particularly. None of it was very important. Kyo stood back but Toshiya caught his chin, chipped nail varnished brushing over the square of him jaw line. Toshiya had chosen to make this intimate - he was just awaiting the reaction. "Really?"
There was a moment. One of those times when something should be said, but then it isn't, but then its too late to say something so more nothing is said. Kyo looked at Toshiya, and thought about the man who had danced for him and just now held is face in his hand. The moment ended as he whispered "yes" and slipped from the embrace all together. He wandered over and turned off the radio.
"It's getting late Toshiya. I have work again tomorrow." He buried his hand into his shock of blond hair and smiled shyly.
"Yeah." Toshiya smiled back "I had better be going. Shows to perform tomorrow and a Shinju to pick up. I'll see you around." He waves cheerily and let himself out. Kyo flopped down onto the sofa, somehow missing the various piles of paper and went to sleep.
*
It was raining outside and Hideto had no beer left. This was not good. He cursed the fridge and he cursed the weather. With the lights low and the television on, he couldn't quite bring himself to get off his backside, put on a raincoat and go out to buy some more alcohol.
"Just my fucking luck." He rolled over on the couch and let his hat cover the most part of his face. The television mumbled incoherently and Hideto found himself slipping into the subconscious. His doorbell rang. There was a silence. He decided that if he just shut up, they would probably go away. What time was this anyway? He shut the salon hours ago and the opening hours were posted in the window. Hideto had no sooner sighed in relief than he heard a pounding on the door and the bell ring again.
"FUCK OFF!" He whined in the vague direction of the stairs. He severely doubted that a person behind two doors on the ground floor could hear him, but his brain was screaming the message to anything and everything within a five-mile radius. He dared the bell to ring again.
It did.
Hideto hauled himself groggily off the sofa, trudged over to the door and made his way down the stairs. His hand groped the wall for a light switch, but he couldn't find it, and couldn't be bothered to focus his mind on such a menial task. It wasn't like he needed light to navigate his own salon. There was another knock
"I'm fucking coming, what more do you want from me? Bloody hell you'd think it was normal to start this on a man's doorstep at this time of night!" The keys were on his belt as usual and he fumbled them into the lock and turned. The sound of rain became louder as suddenly the glass barrier between the inside and the outside of the building was opened. It was dark and rainy and he had probably had too much beer, but he knew that figure. It spoke.
"Hideto?"
"Oh so its you." Hideto raised a pessimistic eyebrow. "What the fuck do you want?" He made no sign of welcoming and just stood watching his untimely visitor. "Well?"
"I�" The soaking figure shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, his shoes squelching from the wet. "I heard you were here�"
"And what?" Hideto's pose became almost comical, stance akimbo and arms folded tightly across his chest. "You thought you'd just stroll on by? Like old times? You probably have half the fucking country looking for you and you turn up here? For what, a hair cut? You've missed the bleeding opening hours and if you think I'm going to let you in because I'm half drunk and its fucking raining, you are severely deluded."
The figure took a step forward, closer to Hideto. Light reflected from the street lamps illuminated the golden hair plastered down over his face and made his eyes sparkle. "Please-"
"Oh no you bloody well don't. If you think you can stroll in here after HOW many years and have me greet you with open arms, you are very much mistaken. And don't even-" Hideto stopped as the man swayed, grasped for the wall and collapsed. He waited a few seconds for something more to happen and snorted when it did not. "Well he never tried this one twenty odd years ago, I'll give him that." Much to his own disapproval, he grabbed Yoshiki under the arms and dragged him into the salon. This act of kindness made him feel bad towards himself, so he was sure to be careless in dragging him up the stairs.
*
Yoshiki's eyes fluttered open. He was on a couch, under a blanket and his head hurt. He shivered, clothes still wet from the rain. Hideto sat across the room glaring at him, a cigarette pinched firmly between his lips.
"Thank you. I-"
"Don't even start. Just because I didn't want you to die on my doorstep, doesn't mean I really want you in any way near me." Hideto paused for a second. "What were you here for anyway? I mean what did you want?"
Yoshiki opened his mouth and then closed it, thoughts and reasons posing themselves before him and then hiding again, he seemed incapable of communicating them.
"I'm cold."
"Yeah well, that's what you get for staying out in the rain at this time of night." He exhaled smoke through his nostrils. "Oh for Christ's sake, I'll find you some clothes okay, but then you're leaving."
Hideto dragged himself over to the other end of the room and pulled a shirt and some trousers out of a drawer. He flung them at Yoshiki then turned away from him, almost shyly, to face the wall.
"Get changed then. I don't have all night."
Yoshiki watched the pink- haired man glaring at the wall for a bemused moment before slipping off his wet clothes and pulling on the dry ones. He thought for a second, and left the shirt unbuttoned.
"I'm done." Hideto turned back around again grumpily.
"You look different... from how you did back then." The beer was talking again. Hideto shut his mouth tightly, determined not to say anything more.
"Well, it's been a while. Excuse me if I don't still look nineteen. I had to cut off the hair. But then so have you by the looks of it. Kept the colour though?"
"I like pink." Hideto pouted. "Are you done here?"
"�" Yoshiki didn't answer.
"Then tell me why are you here? Why did you come back after all this time? Surely you don't expect me to even want to talk to you after all that happened." At this, Yoshiki seemed to deflate further. "It's not like you had time for me back then." Hideto looked down at his toes and let clouds of smoke dissipate from his mouth.
"Run away with me."
"What?!" Hideto choked loudly on cigarette smoke, staring wide-eyed at the golden blond man before him.
"Run away with me. I... I'm sorry. For everything. So run away with me."
"Oh and how's that going to look in the bleeding tabloids, Yoshiki? Japan's favourite star of the eighties retires to gay relationship and beautician with pink hair? I'm sure your PR manager would be fucking delighted."
"Don't Hideto - I can't take business any more. I couldn't take the band, and now I can't take producing. I can't take that whole stinking life. I walked out and I just want to disappear. But I don't want to disappear without you. Some make-up artist backstage mentioned your name and I� well I've been thinking about you."
"Yeah well maybe you should have thought about all of that before you decided fame was first and foremost."
"But now I have the money to support us both! Not like student slumming! We can just disappear, out of this city, out of this country even!"
"I don't WANT to disappear! I have a LIFE here. Didn't you ever think I could make my own way? I had a choice! I could either get swept up with you and your stupid band and probably end up a screwed up, junkie celebrity, smiling on the outside until I hung myself in some bathroom stall somewhere, or I could make my own life, become a respected and needed member of society. I did the latter! I have customers and a reputation and a nice place here that I had to WORK for. What makes you think you have the right to just waltz in here, all sexy and unconscious and tell me I have to run away with you just because you feel lonely right now?"
Yoshiki appeared quite flabbergasted.
"I um� I had no idea you felt so strongly about the whole matter."
"Yeah well you wouldn't. You were too busy having a torrid affair with your drum kit."
"You came too! You'd been dragging that guitar around long enough, I don't seem to recall you complaining about coming along to practice!"
"Yes well, much as I enjoy guitar, it�s a thing I prefer to do by myself. I only came to those damn practices because you were there. But I had to go my own way. And now we live in different worlds."
"So run a way with me to somewhere else."
"Hell no!" Hideto strode over to Yoshiki. "What part of this don't you understand? You can't just stroll in here and-"
Yoshiki leant forward, plucked the cigarette out of Hideto's mouth and placed his own lips there instead. A cold hand stroked its way through bright pink hair while its counterpart slid round Hideto's waist. Hideto moaned up against the lips he hadn't tasted in almost two decades. For a second, it felt good to be back here again. He drew back suddenly, gasping for air.
�Bastard." He frowned and made a half-arsed attempt at pushing Yoshiki away, but Yoshiki just smiled. Hideto glared. "Fuck off."
"Missed you." Yoshiki drew Hideto in close and they kissed again, chucking the smoking cigarette stub absentmindedly into an ashtray. They staggered backwards against a wall, frantic groping becoming more frantic and the kiss becoming even more involved. Hideto pulled his tee shirt over his head and helped Yoshiki out of his. Allowing themselves to fall onto the sofa, Yoshiki started on his flies. As Yoshiki pulled his trousers off, Hideto laughed nasally. He had missed Yoshiki too.
*
Kyo dreamed. He was singing on a stage and the lighting was so bright he couldn't see anything. He stopped singing, but the crowd began to boo and throw things at the stage. He turned and ran blindly off the stage and straight into someone.
"Toshiya?"
"What's wrong? Don't cry Kyo." Toshiya seemed to reach forward very slowly, and touch his cheek to wipe a tear away. Kyo noticed only then the water that ran freely from his eyes.
"Sorry. I stopped singing. Now they want to kill me." The sound of an angry mob had arisen from no where.
"I'll hide you. Come with me." Suddenly Kyo's hand was in Toshiya's and they were running down some long corridor. "Here, in here, they'll never find you here." They turned into a room filled with white and red.
"I can't hide here." The bathroom from his old house. The room was filled with steam as it had been back then. The water in the bath was clear, but on the mat was a deep red stain that seemed to grow until the entire thing was a thick crimson mass. "Toshiya, I can't hide here."
"Haha, please, call me Totchi. Don't worry, they won't find you here." He smiled perkily, with the aura of someone who knows they are helping.
"No Toshiya, you don't understand, I can't hide here, I can't. I can't hide here, I-" Kyo started to cry again. In the mirror, his image flickered between the man he was now and the boy he was then. "I can't hide here." He sobbed, squeezing his eyes shut and feeling more lost than ever. "I just can't."
Suddenly he was within a warm embrace, and when he opened his eyes, he was in a room with blue walls. Toshiya loosened the embrace.
"Don't cry Kyo. You can hide here instead, with me." Instantly the room was recognisable as Toshiya's. "You can hide here with me where it's safe."
"Thank you." Kyo managed a smile. He sat down on the bed with Toshiya.
"No problem. I'm glad I noticed you." Toshiya's arm was around his shoulder.
"Toshiya, I'm tired."
"I'll look after you, don't you worry." A hand snaked from Kyo's arm to his head, bringing him closer in so that his cheek rested on Toshiya's chest. "Don't cry." Kyo looked up at Toshiya's face, which seemed faintly to glow, as if his entire form was somehow just that bit brighter than everything else in the room.
"I'm not crying any more." He whispered. Toshiya smiled and brought his face down close to Kyo's.
"I know." His hand combed absently through Kyo's hair and he caught Kyo's lip between his own. For some reason, this seemed as natural as the location hopping, as the singing, as the whole dream. That the possibility of this occurrence scared him witless in his waking hours seemed irrelevant. He lay back gently, as the kiss began to expand and hands began to traverse his body. He returned these affectionate movements, running his fingers down Toshiya's spine. Toshiya broke his lips free and breathed heavily onto Kyo's face, smiling all the while. "I'm glad I noticed you."
Kyo awoke, sweating and rather petrified by his mind's nocturnal deviation. He peeked under the sheets and felt his cheeks glow with embarrassment. That sort of thing hadn't happened since he was a teenager. And what's more never over someone he knew. Toshiya was his friend. What the hell did his brain have to go and dream stuff like that about him for? Stupid brain. He got up and washed his face, then went back to bed, wary of any more disturbing dreams.
*
Hideto adjusted his position on the couch and reached for his cigarette pack. Before he could grasp the box, Yoshiki had pulled him back into his arms, laughing heartily.
"Fucker." Hideto snorted almost sensually into Yoshiki's ear, joining in with a chuckle.
"Don't act surprised. I've been missing you since you left me. What did you think we'd end up doing? Of all the world, where do you think I would go when I'm lost?"
"Dunno, the bar? That�s where I usually end up."
"I tried there before I came here. The bartender said you must be drinking from home tonight."
"You never did."
"Sure as hell did." Yoshiki reached over Hideto's chest and, being careful not to tip them both off the sofa, grabbed the cigarette packet. He took one and held it between his teeth.
"Hey, that's my last one!"
"Then it looks like we'll have to share. I'll buy you a whole new packet if you run away with me. A whole new carton. A crate. Do you have a lighter?"
"Haha, it's in my trousers. And my trousers are somewhere over there." Hideto sniggered at Yoshiki's look of irritation. This was just like old times.
"Well then." Yoshiki grinned evilly and pushed a naked Hideto off the couch. He stood up and stretched, wrapping the blanket round his waist. "I'll have to go get it won't I?" He smirked and wandered to the other side of a coffee table, rummaging through the pockets of Hideto's trousers. "Ha!" he held up the lighter triumphantly "I got it." He lit up and put the lighter back into the trouser pocket.
"Screw you Yoshiki."
"I believe we already did that part." Yoshiki chuckled while Hideto shivered.
"Come back here with my smoke AND my blanket, I'm fucking freezing." Yoshiki smiled.
"I'm sorry." He waltzed forward; taking the blanket from his hips and wrapping it round the both of them. "Better?" The cigarette hung loosely on his lip as he spoke, and Hideto seized the moment and the cigarette, grinning and wrapping his arms around Yoshiki's warmer body.
"Just dandy."
"Good." They both stood beneath the blanket, staring at each other. It had been so many years. "So�"
"What now?"
"Exactly.
"Well� I was hoping that we�"
"Just because you still hold the miraculous ability to get into my pants after all these years, doesn't mean I'm leaving, Yoshiki."
The smile left Yoshiki's face, and a morose look taking its place.
"But� what was that then? Just make up sex?"
"No, but we've been over this. I can't leave here, it's my home." He shrugged, and the blanket began to slip from his shoulders. Yoshiki, tugged the fabric up again, and held it tighter round them both in an almost parental manner.
"But, we could just escape, to Spain, or Bulgaria or some place, I don't know. I can't leave without you after all this, things shouldn't work like that."
"Yes well they did first time round, didn't they?"
"Which is why we can't let it happen again! Please..." His arms were around Hideto's waist and he rocked them both back and forward slowly
"Look at it this way. What would happen? You can't just disappear, you have a job to maintain, and other bands depend on you. So we go back to yours. I get to become your personal stylist, the mysterious man with pink hair who has to share a bedroom with you for reasons unknown? I get to watch you up close as you take some pretty girl on your arm to some conference or some premier? I get to sit aside in public because the press would have a field day if they ever found out that Yoshiki was shagging his hairdresser?" Hideto took his hand from the small of Yoshiki's back and ran it down his face.
"As much as I would like to be whisked away by a handsome prince to live in a castle made of clouds, I'm not sure I could actually deal with the reality of it. Put yourself in my situation, could you do it? Could you honestly become the secret, and live your life that way? I have a big mouth, you of all people know I can't be quiet and blend in to save my life."
"I don't want you to be a secret!" Yoshiki whispered back, "But� if you come and live with me, we can work it out some how! We'll work it out and then I'll be with you and you an do what ever you want!"
"I want you with me. But I want to stay here�" Hideto pouted, some how managing to look sweet, even with a lit cigarette held between his lips and smeared eyeliner over his face.
Yoshiki remained silent. What could he say?
"So�" Hideto began again. "Stay here. With me."
*
Yoshiki stared wide-eyed at the pixyish face before him.
"Stay here with me. Manage your affairs from home. Say you've retired to the country and will take all calls from your mobile from now on. Become the mad old recluse of an ex-rock star. Like you said, you can support yourself. Get your piano installed and stay here with me."
"I�" Yoshiki stammered, at a loss for words.
"Not that simple, is it?" Hideto smirked.
"But� is there enough room?"
"Sure. I'll move my wardrobe down into the basement and you can have a room with a window for your office. I only have the one bedroom, but I'm sure you won't have any qualms with that. I dunno, we could work something out. Why, what's the matter? Spent too long in comfy mansions to live in the vaguely cushy apartment above a beauty salon? Or are you scared?" he grinned and let the smoke pour out of his nostrils. Yoshiki pouted and took the cigarette back, taking a long drag before he started talking.
"Maybe. Maybe I'm scared out of my mind. But maybe I'm so hysterical that I like the idea." He cleared the locks of messy fluorescent hair from Hideto's face. "What if that's the case?"
"Then� stay here. And you can be my secret. Or not, it's not like it matters here. You can hide from your fans and your work whenever you want to. And get free haircuts. Your choice, I'd have you if you'd let me. After all this, I would. Now will you stay here with me or won't you?" Hideto's voice was filled with so many different emotions; cynicism, pride, fear and somewhere, hope. He was not sure what was to become of all this.
"Yes. I� I want to. I'll call someone, see what I can get sorted out." Yoshiki smiled gently. "I can't believe I'm doing this." Hideto giggled in response.
"Me either. Shit� sort it out in the morning will you? It's like three, and I am tired. I'm going to bed, and you, being coincidentally entangled within the same blanket as myself, will have to join me." Yoshiki nodded in agreement and followed to the bedroom the unnatural pink bombshell of a man he would gladly follow into hell and back.
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