Title: undecided (2)
Author: Scarlet Kozi
Rating: PG-13
Band: La:Sadies
Contains: Violence, adult language, drama
Warning: This is fiction, okay? Don’t sue me.
Comments: This is sort of an unusual piece for me. It’s not too long, and on top of that, it has a less depressing ending than most of my work. And also, it’s less yaoi... but still, it’s important to me, and I think that maybe a lot of you out there might be able to understand too. It was interesting to try to write it from the other person's perspective. Please comment when you’re through with this... I really want to know what you think about it.
Other: This is dedicated to Xelyna. It’s the promise I wish I could make to you.
-----------------------------
Two nights later, Kaoru was still thinking about what had happened at Kyo’s apartment.
But then, nothing had really happened.
Was he making too big of a deal of this, he had wondered? No, that couldn’t be it. Depression was one thing, and cutting was something altogether different. Kaoru was laying on his back in bed, his room completely dark, and his eyes fixed on the invisible ceiling. Gathering the covers around himself, he shivered slightly, feeling a bit cold.
He was trying to sleep, but the image of Kyo’s arms kept resurfacing in his mind, almost annoying in their insistence to corrupt him. He couldn’t forget about them no matter how hard he tried.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he thought to himself. ‘It’s his business.’
But if he only resolved to let it be Kyo’s business, to say nothing about it and allow it to continue, then he knew that he would be the one feeling guilty when something horrible happened. He didn’t want to think of what that horrible thing would be, but he knew that he could never survive with the weight of such a burden on his shoulders.
At first, he was concerned for the band. ‘After all, La:Sadies can’t succeed if the members don’t trust each other, and if they aren’t able to perform.’
However, after that, he was concerned for Kyo. Too concerned. More concerned than he was for the band, really, because after all, it was Kyo with the problem. Fuck the band. Kyo’s life was more important than the success of La:Sadies.
Kaoru felt something hollow and heavy in the pit of his stomach, slowly consuming him with worry.
Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and rolled over, reaching out from the comfort of his bed to grab the phone on his nightstand off the hanger. Dragging it over to him, he held it to his ear and dialed the number.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring---
"Ummph... Moshi moshi?" a groggy and disgruntled voice responded.
Immediately the snake in Kaoru’s stomach subsided a bit, slithering away a few paces, and he let out a sigh of relief. Just hearing Kyo’s voice, sleepy and unconflicted as usual, made him feel slightly reassured. At first he tried to convince himself that perhaps he was worrying over nothing, and should just apologize and hang up... but...
"Kaoru desu."
"Kaoru-kun?" Kyo murmured on the other end, yawning, his voice slightly distorted by the connection. "What is it?"
"Did I wake you up?"
"Hai..." There was slight annoyance disguised in that tone.
"Ahh... Gomen."
"Daijoubu desu." There was a pause, now, as Kyo attempted to figure out what was going on in his half-awake stupor. Slowly, Kyo seemed to become more awake, sensing the tone in Kaoru’s voice on the other end when he apologized. Something was probably wrong. "So what’s up, Kaoru-kun? Is something wrong?"
"Mmm, no, not really. I just... wanted to talk to you."
"Ano... okay..."
Kaoru was silent for a moment. For comfort, he pulled more of the sheets around him and wrapped himself up in them, only allowing his head and his hand to be free, since the hand needed to hold the phone near his ear. Staring into the darkness again, he felt slightly uncomfortable, not sure how to say it, not sure whether he should at all. But fear was pounding in his ears like blood, almost drowning out the sound of Kyo’s breathing on the other line.
"Kyo-kun... why do you do it?"
"Do what?"
"You know. C-Cut yourself."
Silence.
Kaoru choked slightly. "You... You shouldn’t destroy your own body."
For a moment, Kyo didn’t say anything again, and Kaoru was starting to believe that the vocalist had hung up on him. But then Kyo released a quiet, tired sigh, probably scratching his hair, and said softly, "This is about when you came over the other night, isn’t it?"
"... Yeah." Kaoru cleared his throat, trying not to sound too worried.
Kyo didn’t say anything.
"I just... don’t understand." Trying to quell the tremble in his fingers, frustrated with his own weakness, Kaoru shifted onto his other side, pretending as though this was a normal phone call and he was talking about nothing unusual. But when he spoke again, his voice sounded much more meek and hushed than he meant it to. "How can you do something like that to yourself?"
Kyo sounded uncomfortable too, like he just wanted to hang up. "Kaoru, I don’t want to---"
"Kyo-kun, you can talk to me, you know. Is that why you do it? Because you’re upset?" Kaoru swallowed quickly. "You can just talk about it instead, can’t you? It would be so much better than doing that to yourself. You..."
Now Kyo was the one to interrupt him. "Listen, Kaoru, I didn’t ASK for your help. Just forget about it. I don’t want to talk about this." His voice was slightly hard, fully awake now.
"But... I want to help you. You shouldn’t do shit like that, Kyo-kun. It’s not good. Not good for you, and not good for any of your problems."
Quietly, Kyo let out a bitter laugh. "What do YOU know?"
"Not a lot," Kaoru admitted with a sigh, "but I know I saw those scars on you when I went over to your place. It freaked me out, Kyo-kun. I never thought anything like that was going on. Why did you hide it from me?"
"What did you expect me to do, invite you over so you could watch me do it?"
"No... but..."
"Just leave it alone, Kaoru. It’s none of your business."
The words that Kaoru had been thinking earlier echoed in his ears again, this time spoken by Kyo, and he said nothing for a short time. Then he shook his head. "Kyo-kun, please, just hear me out."
"I’m tired. I want to go back to sleep. We have practice tomorrow, don’t we?"
Kaoru stopped abruptly. "Uh... yes..."
"What time?"
"Nine."
"Fucking early," Kyo muttered under his breath, and then, to Kaoru, "I’m going to need my rest, then. I’ll see you tomorrow."
Kaoru sighed, worried. "Hai."
"Ja."
There was a click, and then nothing.
Kaoru lay there holding the phone to his ear, without moving, for a good forty seconds. After a minute had rolled by, the silence on the line gave away and the repetitive beeping sound of a phone being left off the hook interrupted. Kaoru finally reached over and dropped the phone onto the hanger again, killing the noise.
He missed the way he’d felt when Kyo had picked up the phone and reassured him by sounding so normal. The knot of tension in his stomach had started to leave him alone. But now it was back and twice as powerful as it had been before. Instead of feeling better about having called up Kyo to talk about everything, he only felt worse. He tried desperately to see if he could understand what Kyo could be thinking, even in the slightest way, but finally he gave up.
Shivering slightly, he burrowed down into the covers again and closed his eyes, trying to fall asleep.
-----------------------------
The next day, at nine-fifteen in the morning, Kaoru sat on the couch in the studio and waited for Kyo to arrive. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was waiting FOR, but still, he waited, holding his guitar and absent-mindedly twanging on it.
Die was busy cursing at the cords he’d gotten tangled up in, trying to plug in the right instruments to the right amps, and meanwhile, Shinya and Kisaki were talking casually across the room.
Then there was the sound of the door opening, which everyone but Kaoru ignored.
Silently, Kaoru’s eyes flicked up from his guitar, almost desperately searching, and they landed on the slightly small figure that walked in and let the door fall shut behind him. Kyo looked almost painfully normal. Dressed in a pair of jeans and an oversized long-sleeved shirt, since the weather was colder than usual this time of the year, he ran his hand through his hair and put out his cigarette upon entering the room.
"Hey," he greeted everyone mutedly.
Shinya and Kisaki both murmured their hellos, apparently thinking nothing unusual, and then returned to their conversation. Die let out some strange noise, buried underneath an amp, and gasped, "Kyo-kun, give me a hand, will you?"
Kyo raised a slender eyebrow, watching the guitarist struggle for a moment, and then shook his head with a little laugh. "Sure, I’m coming."
Kaoru eyed the vocalist as he helped untangle the cords and rescue Die from the amplifier. If he didn’t know what he did, then like everyone else, like Die and Shinya and Kisaki, he would think nothing unusual. After all, Kyo was usually quiet, and somewhat strange, and everyone had come to accept that. They didn’t suspect anything. And if Kaoru hadn’t seen those marks on Kyo’s arms, he would probably feel the same way.
A moment later, Die went to grab his guitar so that practice could begin, and Kaoru realized that he hadn’t said hello to Kyo. Holding his own guitar by the neck, he wandered past the vocalist and tried to be casual as he said, "Ohayo, Kyo-kun."
"Ohayo," Kyo mumbled, and quickly went past him.
Blinking, Kaoru stopped in his tracks and watched as Kyo suddenly became immersed in setting up his microphone, adjusting it to the proper level. Something was strange about that. He should have known that Kyo would be uncomfortable around him, after all that had happened. Kaoru knew too much about him, after all. He’d seen too much and heard too much.
Kyo tapped his fingers on the microphone, checking for feedback, carefully avoiding the act of looking at Kaoru.
Which he continued to do for the entire practice.
They went through song after song, as usual, and Kaoru continued to survey this strange display of aversion. Kyo was trying his damndest, apparently, to act normal in all respects, but to everyone other than Kaoru. He talked and laughed with the others, sang perfectly well, and joked when he missed a note. But every so often when he turned and caught Kaoru looking at him, he would freeze up and quickly, coldly, look away.
Finally, after covering several songs, Die stretched, his guitar hanging from the strap around his shoulder. "I need nicotine."
"Me too," Kisaki agreed wearily, rubbing at a sore muscle in his shoulder. "Haven’t smoked yet today."
"Okay, then, cigarette break," Die announced gratefully, shooting a pointed grin at Shinya, who frowned in distaste at the idea of smoking. Removing his guitar, Die then turned to Kaoru and Kyo, asking, "It’s okay if we stop for a little while, right?"
"Of course." Kaoru smiled and shrugged. "I need a break, too. My fingers are seizing up."
Kyo just nodded.
Kaoru switched off his amp and removed his guitar also, setting it with the others, and the four of them filed outside. Shinya simply said that he would stay behind and flip through a magazine until they were done, which was his customary habit of avoiding the cigarette smoke.
Outside on the fire escape, perched leaning on the thin wiry rails of the balcony, Kaoru finally managed to get Kyo alone.
The moment that Die and Kisaki decided to start playing around and trying to chase each other down the stairs of the fire escape, Kyo seemed to realize that he needed to avoid this situation, and started to follow them. But Kaoru, moving his cigarette to his other hand, tapped his shoulder.
"Ne, Kyo-kun..."
Cursing under his breath and letting out a small sigh, Kyo leaned his weight on the balcony again and nodded.
Kaoru opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it, having second thoughts. His original plan had been to tell Kyo that he wanted him to stop doing what he was doing. He wanted him to get rid of the knife or the razor or whatever the hell it was he was using to cut himself up, and that was that. But such an order sounded much better in his head than it probably would spoken. And although Kaoru was generally not one to back down to anyone, he for some reason found that he was having difficulty summing up the courage to form the words.
After Kaoru had gone for almost a minute without saying anything, Kyo seemed to grow irritated, and he darted a little glance over his shoulder at the guitarist. "Well, what is it?"
Snapping back to reality, Kaoru blinked and shook his head. "Ano..."
"Yeah?"
"I..."
A pause.
"I don’t..."
"You don’t..." Kyo prompted.
Kaoru hesitated.
Finally Kyo grew exasperated. "I’m fucking sick of this. What? Just say it already! I already know what it’s going to be about. This is bullshit, Kaoru."
Frowning slightly, Kaoru took a short breath and then said, in a voice that was soft but still firm with his determination, "I want you to stop."
"Excuse me?"
"I said, I want you to stop."
Dryly, but weakening a little, Kyo held his cigarette in two fingers and focused all of his attention upon examining it. His eyes were hidden underneath his long bangs, fortunately for him, because he didn’t have the strength to look at Kaoru. "This is ridiculous."
"No, it’s not. I’m asking you not to do it anymore."
"You think it’s that easy?" At last, Kyo turned around and leaned his back on the balcony instead, his elbows supporting his weight on the rail as he looked down, his cigarette dangling slightly as a long trail of smoke drifted up from it. In addition to the smoke, puffs of air were emitted into the air every time either of them spoke, attacking the cold.
"I don’t know." Kaoru tried to be honest, and moved a little closer, leaning on the railing also, as he inhaled from his cigarette. As he spoke again, the smoke and the puffs of air mingled as they streamed from his lips. "I just think that you can find another way."
"Another way... to what?"
"Another way to stop the pain."
There was a moment of silence. Kyo gazed down at his hand with a touch of a smile playing at his lips, and then he took a drag from his cigarette too. At a slow pace, he blew out the smoke before speaking. "The pain," he repeated softly.
"Well... that’s why you do it, isn’t it?"
"... Yes," Kyo whispered.
Kaoru sensed an opening, and moved even closer, forgetting about his cigarette. "Then find another way. There must be something. I mean, if you keep doing this, then someday you’re going to have so many scars that you won’t even remember what your body looks like anymore. Someday you might even get careless enough to... to let it bleed too much. And you won’t realize it until you’re dead. You’ll have done what you wanted, but it won’t really be what you wanted at all."
Kyo flinched slightly, and then a small frown came over his face. "You think that’s why I do it? To kill myself slowly and painfully?"
"Well..."
There was silence.
"Maybe," Kyo assented quietly, shrugging his shoulders. Then, gruffly he dropped the butt of his cigarette, crushed it, and kicked it so that it slid under the bars of the escape and fell down somewhere onto the street. "I don’t really know, either. But as far as I know, I’m not doing it to die. The band’s too important to me, and I don’t think I really WANT to die, not yet."
Kaoru believed him, for some strange reason. However, he continued to anxiously watch Kyo, while finishing off his cigarette and saying nothing.
And then, Die and Kisaki raced back up, laughing, and dragged them back into the studio to finish practice.
---to be continued---
To the next part