[leader] single dark search
Dec. 26th, 2011 02:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
songbirdspeaksTitle: Single Dark Search
Fandom: Johnny's and Associates (TOKIO)
Characters: Joshima Shigeru, Yamaguchi Tatsuya, the rest of TOKIO + Mrs. Yamaguchi
Pairings: Yamaguchi/Joshima, Yamaguchi/his wife, Nagase/Aibu Saki
Rating: R for concepts
Word Count: ~1900
Warnings: WEIRD SHIT, angst, possibly triggering suicidal behavior, AU
Summary: Joshima Shigeru's lived ten lives, and now he wants nothing more than to die.
Notes: Izanami no mikoto is the Japanese goddess of creation and destruction. All of this is made up, please don't take my bastardization of mythology seriously. :D;;
WRITTEN FORbasil_ovelby'S BIRTHDAY. I LOVE YOU, LIVY, AND I'M SO GLAD WE MET. You are one of the funniest kindest most talented amazing people I have ever met, and I'm so glad you're doing so many awesome things. I hope you enjoy this. AND CRY lol i don't actually think you will i'm so sorry.
ALSO IF MY GUSSAN SUCKS FEEL FREE TO JUDGE THE SHIT OUT OF ME.
He doesn't know why he loves her. It's clear that Izanami no mikoto isn't interested in a minor sea deity, at least until he makes himself known and helps her shape a lake near what will later be known as 'Kyoto', but when she smiles he hears bells chiming in the back of his head and he can't help but promise he'll follow her anywhere. She pats his head, kindness lining her eyes, and leaves him to his work. When she finds herself pregnant the last time (he doesn't know it's the last time at the time, of course), she returns, and she asks him if he would follow her to the underworld. If she required it, he tells her, he would die. Something hard and frightening lines her face then, and she tells him until he discovers the answer she wants he'll never stay dead. Then the spear--the one she uses with her husband to help shape the land--is in his chest, and he knows death for the first time.
He's lived ten lives, by his last count, and all of them are the same. Every one ends a little differently, of course, death by sword and sickness and swift car accident and, once, from a tumble from a tree. Each time he swims toward the light there at the end of the tunnel and hopes and hopes that this time it's the end.
It never is. He always wakes up, whole and new, in a new time, memories he never lived buzzing between his eyebrows and telling him who he is. He always gets out of bed, figures out how to get clean, and goes to work, wherever and whatever work is. Once he's a pilot in World War Two--that's his shortest life, to date, he'd crashed that very day, and his worst, a slow burn lapping at his boots as he refuses to scream.
Let it never be said he didn't understand honor.
His current life--the one he has now--is maybe his loneliest, probably because he'd been so very close to having everything. Tatsuya at his side, his bandmates a phone call away, and the nebulous purpose for which he'd been cursed with this cycle of reincarnation in the first place becoming clearer every day. He doesn't know why Izanami no mikoto did this to him, but damned if he's not going to beat her, as soon as his walking dreams stop being so murky, a deep shadowy fog that makes him shiver and wake, gasping, his fingers finding the front of Tatsuya's t-shirt and holding on until he can forget her eyes.
Then Tatsuya leaves him, soft sad 'Jo, I can't do this any more' and fingers brushing over his hair until he can push him away, bile rising in his throat, and the dreams fade once again. Cursing everything, he stumbles from a bar and watches traffic speed past in the early morning light, dead-eyed. Maybe if he stumbles into traffic--Unfortunate Accident for aging idol--Johnny's Jimusho mourns loss of their own--TOKIO disbands--no. No. He's committed suicide before, it only makes waking up harder, like Izanami no Mikoto is angry with him for taking the satisfaction from her, and the memories take longer to settle in, like she's angry and unprepared, and it's all just not worth it in the end. He's just as lonely here as he will be in the next life, after all.
He goes home, and sleeps for days. He is as low as he's ever been, as low as the high from debuting had been, a sick parallel after ten years of as close to happiness as someone as dysfunctional as him can get. He drags himself out of bed, eventually, and nothing is wrong, Taichi, he was just feeling a little under the weather, he'd have to make sure he ate more regularly, Mabo, no Nagase he doesn't want the rest of the half-eaten bento, really. He and Tatsuya don't speak much, but then they never had, quiet brushes of elbows and tight meaningful half-breaths in the space between them saying volumes. So no one notices, except maybe Mabo, but then Mabo's always noticed everything in his over-bearing, annoying way, and that's why he likes Mabo.
This life ends alone, but only because by irony or cruel design he's the last to go. He remembers through his dimming vision the way Saki-chan had asked if Tomoya had had anything to drink, the way there had been lines forming outside Mabo's service, Nakai's silent wet-eyed grief when Taichi's body finally gave way, the way he'd had to hold onto Tatsuya's wife, their children grown and looking to help ease her, but her eyes had said that all she wanted was someone who understood the way something had died with her. Joshima couldn't do much--couldn't do anything--but he knows how she feels, a great dim weight over his lungs and in his throat and his eyes, so he holds her against his side. They make quite a pair: she's taller than him, and the motherly curve of her life has changed her. He doesn't remember when he last ate, and the frailness of his wrists when he touches her arm is something he hears mutters about. He almost laughs--his kouhai aren't helpful, really, but none of them really understand him, and their well-meaning kindnesses go over as well as his bandmates' had.
He's used to making other people feel better about trying to help and failing.
He coughs and hacks, a vicious reminder that the dimness in his lungs hadn't only been despair, the consequences of chain-smoking now that he doesn't have to sing or jump up and down or laugh.
He dies, alone, and tears finally come at the end.
He dies, alone, with their names on his lips.
He wakes, alone, in a place that rocks his world.
He wakes, alone, in a room with a wide open window that lets him see the great vast blackness of space, and it's all he can do not to laugh, loud and echoing, or cry, hopeless wracking sobs.
Tatsuya's sprawled on his bed.
He has to bite on the heel of his hand, sucking in desperate gasping breaths to calm down, and topples back over, brain working too quickly. He's never met anyone twice, despite hoping and trying and pleading with Izanami in his final hours. Why now? So he can taste the bitter feeling of seeing Tatsuya leave him again, never remembering anything about him? To see him cry himself to sleep, night after night, when Tatsuya falls in love with someone safer, someone happier?
Tatsuya rolls over, then, a deep sleepy groan, and his eyes flutter open. "…Jo?" he grumbles, "why the hell are you over there?"
Joshima blinks--he's never had the same name twice. "Tatsuya," he says, a slow test of syllables echoing in his mouth.
"Hmmm?" Tatsuya acknowledges, "c'mere."
"You…" Joshima shuts his eyes. "Can you…"
"Tell me something," he says.
He can hear Tatsuya stirring up, now, sitting with knees near his.
"Tell me anything," he whispers, and presses his hands to Tatsuya's collarbones, a stuttered warning of fingers shakily pressed against him.
"Jo, what is wrong with you?" Tatsuya mutters, but he grabs Joshima's wrists and sighs, silent agreement. "They're talking about making you Space Admiral of the ship, you know. No one'll admit it, and Nagase keeps puffing out his chest and bragging, but when it comes to the Plus no one knows more than you. You're gonna say no, though, because you love working on the engines too much. I'll complain that it might get you killed, and then you'll tell me I have motor oil on my nose and to go clean it up, and I'll drag you to the shower. And then Taichi will bitch about is burning his virgin eyes and you'll make some off-hand comment about how much of his commission is spent on whores and that'll shut him up. And then we'll have sex over the window so you can see the big great blackness of space outside and inside you."
"This is a dream," he whispers, "a great cruel dream."
"It's not," Tatsuya answers, sharper now, "you always say that and it's never true."
"It's always been true before. It was true last time. And the ten times before that. I don't know what I did to make her so unhappy. I lived for her. And she cursed me."
"…a woman? There someone I dunno about?" Tatsuya sounds amused, because they both know Joshima's never loved a woman, isn't interested. Apparently that's true in any world.
"Izanami no mikoto," Joshima says, reverence still in his voice despite distance and betrayal, "I was one of hers, when they created the world. She made it so that I wouldn't stay dead. I'll always wake up somewhere else, until I figure out what she wanted."
"Maybe you did, and you just don't know it yet," says Tatsuya, and Joshima giggles.
"Could it really be that easy?" he asks, "I still don't know what she was trying to do to me, what she wanted me to figure out."
"You lived for her," Tatsuya says, "do you still live for her?"
"I live to spite her," Joshima admits, "or I did. Now I just want it all to stop."
"You can't enjoy anything?" Tatsuya asks, "we're all together, now. We all… we all figured it out. We remember. Think--I need you to--think!!"
Joshima blinks, a slow unsteady dawning of something in his mind. "You've all been looking, too," he whispers. "Looking for… each other?"
"For you."
"For… me?! Why would you be looking for me?!" Joshima can't understand that, no one's ever looked for him. He's always the one doing the chasing.
"Where would we be without Leader?" Tatsuya teases, "without Shigeru. Our Shigeru. Joshima-kun. Jo. Shige."
"But why?!" he demands, "what makes me so valuable?"
"The way you'd die for your queen because she'd smile at you for making the sacrifice. The way you'd put your arms around the woman I left you for when I died because she needed a friend. The way you make people feel better when they fail at making you feel better. For knowing more about the Plus' engines than anyone alive, and Mabo designed the damn thing. For making the perfect okonomiyaki and playing guitar and saying poetic things about stars and destiny and for loving us no matter what it cost you. Live, Jo. Live."
Tatsuya seems exhausted by the end of his speech, and Joshima is silent, still. He looks up to see Tatsuya's eyes wet at the edges, and wraps him close, lightness in his lungs. Tatsuya is crying. For him. The light breath of hope settles on his shoulders, and it's like a life on pause starts to play again. He wants to live, and so he will.
The chiming of Izanami's coming nearly goes unnoticed, but Joshima looks up to see her the way she had been before the horror of death had visited her, and she smiles.
Tatsuya's right about the offer to take the ship, and his refusal, and the sex in the shower. Taichi never gets a chance to say anything because Joshima suggests they consider him for the job, and Taichi's so busy mocking Nagase that they do, in fact, get their chance to have sex over the window.
Repeatedly, in fact.
Fandom: Johnny's and Associates (TOKIO)
Characters: Joshima Shigeru, Yamaguchi Tatsuya, the rest of TOKIO + Mrs. Yamaguchi
Pairings: Yamaguchi/Joshima, Yamaguchi/his wife, Nagase/Aibu Saki
Rating: R for concepts
Word Count: ~1900
Warnings: WEIRD SHIT, angst, possibly triggering suicidal behavior, AU
Summary: Joshima Shigeru's lived ten lives, and now he wants nothing more than to die.
Notes: Izanami no mikoto is the Japanese goddess of creation and destruction. All of this is made up, please don't take my bastardization of mythology seriously. :D;;
WRITTEN FOR
basil_ovelby'S BIRTHDAY. I LOVE YOU, LIVY, AND I'M SO GLAD WE MET. You are one of the funniest kindest most talented amazing people I have ever met, and I'm so glad you're doing so many awesome things. I hope you enjoy this. ALSO IF MY GUSSAN SUCKS FEEL FREE TO JUDGE THE SHIT OUT OF ME.
He doesn't know why he loves her. It's clear that Izanami no mikoto isn't interested in a minor sea deity, at least until he makes himself known and helps her shape a lake near what will later be known as 'Kyoto', but when she smiles he hears bells chiming in the back of his head and he can't help but promise he'll follow her anywhere. She pats his head, kindness lining her eyes, and leaves him to his work. When she finds herself pregnant the last time (he doesn't know it's the last time at the time, of course), she returns, and she asks him if he would follow her to the underworld. If she required it, he tells her, he would die. Something hard and frightening lines her face then, and she tells him until he discovers the answer she wants he'll never stay dead. Then the spear--the one she uses with her husband to help shape the land--is in his chest, and he knows death for the first time.
He's lived ten lives, by his last count, and all of them are the same. Every one ends a little differently, of course, death by sword and sickness and swift car accident and, once, from a tumble from a tree. Each time he swims toward the light there at the end of the tunnel and hopes and hopes that this time it's the end.
It never is. He always wakes up, whole and new, in a new time, memories he never lived buzzing between his eyebrows and telling him who he is. He always gets out of bed, figures out how to get clean, and goes to work, wherever and whatever work is. Once he's a pilot in World War Two--that's his shortest life, to date, he'd crashed that very day, and his worst, a slow burn lapping at his boots as he refuses to scream.
Let it never be said he didn't understand honor.
His current life--the one he has now--is maybe his loneliest, probably because he'd been so very close to having everything. Tatsuya at his side, his bandmates a phone call away, and the nebulous purpose for which he'd been cursed with this cycle of reincarnation in the first place becoming clearer every day. He doesn't know why Izanami no mikoto did this to him, but damned if he's not going to beat her, as soon as his walking dreams stop being so murky, a deep shadowy fog that makes him shiver and wake, gasping, his fingers finding the front of Tatsuya's t-shirt and holding on until he can forget her eyes.
Then Tatsuya leaves him, soft sad 'Jo, I can't do this any more' and fingers brushing over his hair until he can push him away, bile rising in his throat, and the dreams fade once again. Cursing everything, he stumbles from a bar and watches traffic speed past in the early morning light, dead-eyed. Maybe if he stumbles into traffic--Unfortunate Accident for aging idol--Johnny's Jimusho mourns loss of their own--TOKIO disbands--no. No. He's committed suicide before, it only makes waking up harder, like Izanami no Mikoto is angry with him for taking the satisfaction from her, and the memories take longer to settle in, like she's angry and unprepared, and it's all just not worth it in the end. He's just as lonely here as he will be in the next life, after all.
He goes home, and sleeps for days. He is as low as he's ever been, as low as the high from debuting had been, a sick parallel after ten years of as close to happiness as someone as dysfunctional as him can get. He drags himself out of bed, eventually, and nothing is wrong, Taichi, he was just feeling a little under the weather, he'd have to make sure he ate more regularly, Mabo, no Nagase he doesn't want the rest of the half-eaten bento, really. He and Tatsuya don't speak much, but then they never had, quiet brushes of elbows and tight meaningful half-breaths in the space between them saying volumes. So no one notices, except maybe Mabo, but then Mabo's always noticed everything in his over-bearing, annoying way, and that's why he likes Mabo.
This life ends alone, but only because by irony or cruel design he's the last to go. He remembers through his dimming vision the way Saki-chan had asked if Tomoya had had anything to drink, the way there had been lines forming outside Mabo's service, Nakai's silent wet-eyed grief when Taichi's body finally gave way, the way he'd had to hold onto Tatsuya's wife, their children grown and looking to help ease her, but her eyes had said that all she wanted was someone who understood the way something had died with her. Joshima couldn't do much--couldn't do anything--but he knows how she feels, a great dim weight over his lungs and in his throat and his eyes, so he holds her against his side. They make quite a pair: she's taller than him, and the motherly curve of her life has changed her. He doesn't remember when he last ate, and the frailness of his wrists when he touches her arm is something he hears mutters about. He almost laughs--his kouhai aren't helpful, really, but none of them really understand him, and their well-meaning kindnesses go over as well as his bandmates' had.
He's used to making other people feel better about trying to help and failing.
He coughs and hacks, a vicious reminder that the dimness in his lungs hadn't only been despair, the consequences of chain-smoking now that he doesn't have to sing or jump up and down or laugh.
He dies, alone, and tears finally come at the end.
He dies, alone, with their names on his lips.
He wakes, alone, in a place that rocks his world.
He wakes, alone, in a room with a wide open window that lets him see the great vast blackness of space, and it's all he can do not to laugh, loud and echoing, or cry, hopeless wracking sobs.
Tatsuya's sprawled on his bed.
He has to bite on the heel of his hand, sucking in desperate gasping breaths to calm down, and topples back over, brain working too quickly. He's never met anyone twice, despite hoping and trying and pleading with Izanami in his final hours. Why now? So he can taste the bitter feeling of seeing Tatsuya leave him again, never remembering anything about him? To see him cry himself to sleep, night after night, when Tatsuya falls in love with someone safer, someone happier?
Tatsuya rolls over, then, a deep sleepy groan, and his eyes flutter open. "…Jo?" he grumbles, "why the hell are you over there?"
Joshima blinks--he's never had the same name twice. "Tatsuya," he says, a slow test of syllables echoing in his mouth.
"Hmmm?" Tatsuya acknowledges, "c'mere."
"You…" Joshima shuts his eyes. "Can you…"
"Tell me something," he says.
He can hear Tatsuya stirring up, now, sitting with knees near his.
"Tell me anything," he whispers, and presses his hands to Tatsuya's collarbones, a stuttered warning of fingers shakily pressed against him.
"Jo, what is wrong with you?" Tatsuya mutters, but he grabs Joshima's wrists and sighs, silent agreement. "They're talking about making you Space Admiral of the ship, you know. No one'll admit it, and Nagase keeps puffing out his chest and bragging, but when it comes to the Plus no one knows more than you. You're gonna say no, though, because you love working on the engines too much. I'll complain that it might get you killed, and then you'll tell me I have motor oil on my nose and to go clean it up, and I'll drag you to the shower. And then Taichi will bitch about is burning his virgin eyes and you'll make some off-hand comment about how much of his commission is spent on whores and that'll shut him up. And then we'll have sex over the window so you can see the big great blackness of space outside and inside you."
"This is a dream," he whispers, "a great cruel dream."
"It's not," Tatsuya answers, sharper now, "you always say that and it's never true."
"It's always been true before. It was true last time. And the ten times before that. I don't know what I did to make her so unhappy. I lived for her. And she cursed me."
"…a woman? There someone I dunno about?" Tatsuya sounds amused, because they both know Joshima's never loved a woman, isn't interested. Apparently that's true in any world.
"Izanami no mikoto," Joshima says, reverence still in his voice despite distance and betrayal, "I was one of hers, when they created the world. She made it so that I wouldn't stay dead. I'll always wake up somewhere else, until I figure out what she wanted."
"Maybe you did, and you just don't know it yet," says Tatsuya, and Joshima giggles.
"Could it really be that easy?" he asks, "I still don't know what she was trying to do to me, what she wanted me to figure out."
"You lived for her," Tatsuya says, "do you still live for her?"
"I live to spite her," Joshima admits, "or I did. Now I just want it all to stop."
"You can't enjoy anything?" Tatsuya asks, "we're all together, now. We all… we all figured it out. We remember. Think--I need you to--think!!"
Joshima blinks, a slow unsteady dawning of something in his mind. "You've all been looking, too," he whispers. "Looking for… each other?"
"For you."
"For… me?! Why would you be looking for me?!" Joshima can't understand that, no one's ever looked for him. He's always the one doing the chasing.
"Where would we be without Leader?" Tatsuya teases, "without Shigeru. Our Shigeru. Joshima-kun. Jo. Shige."
"But why?!" he demands, "what makes me so valuable?"
"The way you'd die for your queen because she'd smile at you for making the sacrifice. The way you'd put your arms around the woman I left you for when I died because she needed a friend. The way you make people feel better when they fail at making you feel better. For knowing more about the Plus' engines than anyone alive, and Mabo designed the damn thing. For making the perfect okonomiyaki and playing guitar and saying poetic things about stars and destiny and for loving us no matter what it cost you. Live, Jo. Live."
Tatsuya seems exhausted by the end of his speech, and Joshima is silent, still. He looks up to see Tatsuya's eyes wet at the edges, and wraps him close, lightness in his lungs. Tatsuya is crying. For him. The light breath of hope settles on his shoulders, and it's like a life on pause starts to play again. He wants to live, and so he will.
The chiming of Izanami's coming nearly goes unnoticed, but Joshima looks up to see her the way she had been before the horror of death had visited her, and she smiles.
Tatsuya's right about the offer to take the ship, and his refusal, and the sex in the shower. Taichi never gets a chance to say anything because Joshima suggests they consider him for the job, and Taichi's so busy mocking Nagase that they do, in fact, get their chance to have sex over the window.
Repeatedly, in fact.
