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sevenswellsTitle: Hoshi no Suna
Author:![[info]](https://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
sevenswells
Rating: NC-17 (but actually PG -13 for this chapter)
Band/Pairing: Gackt/Miyavi
Warnings: This one's kinda OK for work, yaoi, angst, kink and alternate universe.
Word Count: 2 178 w.
Comments: Dedicated as usual tokamexkame who is the most patient and caring and talented beta ever. Nnnngh to you!
Also dedicated tosupacat [Unknown site tag]and thin_lipid because it's so good to squee altogether! ^^
Just a little funny/weird anecdote before starting: when I posted this fic on another fic site in french, somebody told me my description of Tokyo resembled Ryu Murakami's in Coin Locker Babies. The thing is, I've never read that book (or any book by that author), and I've never been to Tokyo either -- I'm even too lazy to do the ground research it's required to be a minimum adequate; the description was actually inspired by my own feelings from when I arrived in Paris.
A couple of days later, I found this translated interview of Miyavi by chance:
"Is it true that the song [Coin Lockers Baby] is based on the famous book by Ryu Murakami? If so, why did you decide to write a song after a book?
MIYAVI: Im often asked about it .I like reading novels, especially books by popular writers such as Kou Machida and Masaya Nakahara, but I hadnt read any novels by Ryu Murakami until after I wrote the song."
Yay! (^____^)v
Author:
sevenswellsRating: NC-17 (but actually PG -13 for this chapter)
Band/Pairing: Gackt/Miyavi
Warnings: This one's kinda OK for work, yaoi, angst, kink and alternate universe.
Word Count: 2 178 w.
Comments: Dedicated as usual to
kamexkame who is the most patient and caring and talented beta ever. Nnnngh to you!Also dedicated to
supacat [Unknown site tag]and thin_lipid because it's so good to squee altogether! ^^ Just a little funny/weird anecdote before starting: when I posted this fic on another fic site in french, somebody told me my description of Tokyo resembled Ryu Murakami's in Coin Locker Babies. The thing is, I've never read that book (or any book by that author), and I've never been to Tokyo either -- I'm even too lazy to do the ground research it's required to be a minimum adequate; the description was actually inspired by my own feelings from when I arrived in Paris.
A couple of days later, I found this translated interview of Miyavi by chance:
"Is it true that the song [Coin Lockers Baby] is based on the famous book by Ryu Murakami? If so, why did you decide to write a song after a book?
MIYAVI: Im often asked about it .I like reading novels, especially books by popular writers such as Kou Machida and Masaya Nakahara, but I hadnt read any novels by Ryu Murakami until after I wrote the song."
Yay! (^____^)v
Mr Toshiro, the owner of the conbini, has a soft spot for me. Although he's quite the tough guy, I know he's susceptible to my charm. Oh no, he's not gay, not at all, it's just that sometimes I can be cuter than a girl. There, for example, I feel he's ready to give in:
-Puh-leaaase...
-No. I know all there is to know about kids like you; give 'em a little finger and they take the whole arm.
I pout adorably.
-That's not true. Look, it's only this once. After that I'll pay with the money I’ll have earned.
-I'ma tell your grandma!
I pretend to be scared.
-Oh no, don't do that, I beg you please! Listen, I know it's wrong, but I need it? You're the only one who can help. Please...
-Hrm. Okay.
I win.
He hands me a pack of Seven Star Box.
-Thanks a million times, I sigh, immensely relieved.
-Goddamn brat!
Off he goes, back to his store.
-Umm...
-What now!?
Flashing a huge smile, I point at the cigarette stuck between my teeth.
-Could you possibly light me up...?
Sitting on a box of Coca-Cola, I take a long, exquisite drag from the ciggy. Ahhh. That's what I'm talking about. I bend my head back, eyes half-closed, filtering morning sunlight through my lashes.
When I open them again, I see, across the street, two middleschoolers staring at me and whispering between themselves. These girly ways piss me off: I can't hear them from where they are anyway. They seem to be carrying a thorough debate. Must be the mohawk and blue-gray hair; since I came back, I never got a chance to dye it black. Then there are also the tattoos on my forearms, that the short sleeves of the conbini uniform can't hide: they must think I'm a yakuza, or an alien -- something they've never ever seen before in any case . I'm ready to give them the finger and go back to work, when I notice that one of them has a cell phone in her hand.
I don't like that. At all.
I step on the stub with my heel and go to meet them, putting on a menacing air, exhaling one last puff of smoke. When they see me coming straight at them, they freeze, nonplussed, like rabbits caught in headlights.
-Hey.
-Hi, they reply in hushed tones.
I turn to the girl with the cell:
-Erase the pictures that you took of me. Every one of them.
-But it's not...
Talking back, are we? I bring my face close to hers:
-Please?
She proceeds feverishly and takes the initiative to show me she has indeed erased it all. Satisfied, I go back to the conbini.
It's not that I'm paranoid or anything, I just don't want to leave any track behind.
Since Mr Toshiro generously provided my vital nicotine shot of the day, I made a point of being as nice as possible to the clients. But most of them wouldn't answer my greetings and stuffed their groceries in the plastic bags by themselves, with brisk little movements, while throwing glances at me sideways. No one looked at me squarely in the eye, except a foxy housewife who gave me an appreciative once-over before going to join her children waiting in her car. She also swayed her hips as a bonus.
Fucking dump where some tattooed bloke at the cash register of a run-down conbini turns into a fucking event. I bet they'll still be talking about it in their fucking county fairs for a few good years to come.
I lean my feverish forehead against the cool metal of the cash register and exhale a deep sigh.
-Excuse me...
A bespectacled fifteen-year-old girl stares intensely at me. On the counter, she's placed a little packet of candy designed with colorful rabbits.
-Fifty-five yen.
She keeps on staring without making any move towards her purse.
-Fifty-five yen, I repeat.
Maybe she's deaf or retarded, or maybe she thinks it's too expensive, either way, I can't do anything about it, so she might as well stop staring at me like that, because it pisses me off.
-May I help you, miss? I ask, trying to contain my exasperation.
She seems to snap out of her reverie : she tries to say something, stops, hesitates, opens her mouth, closes it again, finally she decides to dive in:
-Can... Can I have your autograph?
...and then the shit hits the fan. I didn't see that one coming, visual kei aficionados in this forsaken place. I try not to let it show on my face and grace her with my most bovine expression:
-Say what?
-You're Miyavi, aren't you?
-Nope, you must be mistaken. Wait a minute, aren't you the friend of the cell phone girl I saw this morning?
She doesn't listen to me. Her face is glowing with excitement, or maybe it's just because of adolescence and sebum.
-You must have seen Gackt in the flesh, then?
I never called him that. Maybe once, when we first met. Feels nostalgic. But I don't have the time for that, I have to get rid of the rabid fangirl:
-Listen, sweetcheeks, you're cute and all, but I don't know any Gackt: I'm just a cashier in this conbini. So, either you pay, or you can get out of here, but you'll have to stop bothering me.
That threw her off balance a little, giving me time to go for the kill:
-Tell me, if I really were that Miyavi you talk about, what the hell would I be doing here, selling candy to retarded brats? Do yourself a favor, honey : get real, and go home.
I signal the exit with my chin. She steps back a little. Her baby face is crumpled with confusion. She turns to leave, but at the last moment, she cries:
-I don't believe you!
And runs away.
I start to laugh. "I don't believe you!"? What kind of exit line is that? So very dramatic, your life must be so hard, sweetcheeks. I wonder what kind of movies she imagines she's in, in that tiny skull of hers.
My laughter fades. Who am I kidding? Melodrama is my way of life, and the movies I make up in my head are blockbusters of pharaonic proportions.
The set, Tokyo, the most insane city on the planet. Lights, noises, cars, crowd, everything that's to be expected of a capital, plus, some sort of crackling that fills the air: it's minds and dreams buzzing, that enormous collective energy that swells and pounds deafly without ever stopping.
The star would be him. His name would be announced in big fat letters and would make the female audience squee: Kamui Gackt. No, Camui, rather, as he prefers to write it, european style. A little taller than me, a figure cut for expensive suits, hair dyed blonde. An angular face, full lips that always keep a ghost of a smile, pensive eyes looking at you in an absent-mindedly calculating way, as if you were some kind of knick-knack and he's trying to determine a place for you on a desk or the edge of a chimney, for a better feng shui effect.
An aura of absolute, christ-like charisma. One could search a long time for the flaws of the perfect image he casts off, his measured body language, his precise way of talking and moving.
He's the master demiurge of Tokyo's nightlife. A mere mortal couldn't possibly conceive the extent of such power: he's at the origin of everything, he anticipates on everything; he sneezes and Tokyo gets a cold. The parties he used to throw made fellinian orgies appear like tea time with bridge players: I remember those rises of the day where the ambiant hysteria and excitement, with the help of drugs, made me giddy and turned space into a whole new dimension. Everything went as if in slow motion, or maybe it was me who was projected like a comet through the boiling masses, gravitating around one sole being: Kamui.
There was the man who plunged me into years of turmoil and exhilaration, the merciless god who rules my life and still permeates each and every fiber of me.
Finally, after this mind-blowing introduction, hobbles along the second main character, but the public is starting to lose interest. Because what comes next turns out to be a cold shower somehow.
The unrefined country boy freshly arrived from the back of beyond, raised in the open air, fattened with good grain and boredom; the little hoodlum lacking so much thrill in his life, the rabid fanboy: oresama.
Nothing could have prepared me either to Kamui or to Tokyo. I already wasn't that much of a hot shot when I arrived, accompanied by Takeshi, who was so jaded after his trip to America that he didn't share my fear of the crushing, irregular skyscrapers that smiled bits of skies between their jaws of glass and concrete, vomitting suits and ties intermittently, pushed, hurried; and, towards the inextricable streets of Shibuya, swarmed with the fashionable tokyoite set and where the least square centimeter of wall is filled with an ad or a sign, this sensation of vertigo.
I opened my eyes large, trying to embrace everything I could see, trying to comprehend everything I was perceiving -- no use, Tokyo crashed in on me like a tide and I didn't know where the surface was anymore.
We settled at the appartment of a remote cousin of Takeshi's. He was a bouncer at a night club and a "notorious pansy" as Takeshi delicately put it. Kyo wasn't a bad guy and took a liking to me, to Takeshi's utmost indifference: he could have wrapped me up with a huge red ribbon and hurled me straight into his cousin's bed as long as the other man provided us shelter for an undetermined period of time. I have to say that our "couple" was already going downhill, and maybe it was my fault: we could touch or suck each other, but I obstinatedly refused penetration. First because he already tried fingering me and I wasn't too crazy about it, second because fag or not, I had my pride as a male and I didn't really fancy the idea of being dominated most of the time. Not that I was keeping scores, but as for blowjobs, the deal was generally unfavourable to me: if I had to be fucked in the ass on top of it, I'd have sooner screwn a woman instead. That last option came true for Takeshi who was out almost every night and could thus screw at his heart's content, anything that came by. Unlike me, who was so intimidated by the city that I didn't even dare to interact with its inhabitants, other than the ramen street vendor, the cashier at the small supermarket in our street and finally Kyo, whom I was clinging to like a drowning man.
Contrary to Takeshi's expectations, Kyo had no libidinous intentions towards me: he would smack me on the bum calling me "cupcake" from time to time, but that was it. He thought I remained faithful to Takeshi and that his sleeping around made me suffer, so he tried to comfort me by taking me out to party, along with other charming queers and queens who made up a new kind of jolly family for me. All together, on drinking session nights at the karaoke, we fooled around organizing strip-tease contests; generally, I used to tamper with the votes and bribed with kisses in order to make Kyo win. And by the end of the night, stewed to the gills, I used to sit on his lap, with my arms around his neck, and call him "daddy". He wasn't that old, but was nearing his forties and already losing hair; as for me, I was barely eighteen and far from being an adult. I didn't know anything, I was lost and confused in a city that could only be measured to life in its entirety: it terrified me, gave me the urge to go down and curl under the surface of the earth, never to see daylight again. Kyo was my savior: he reassured me, who never had anybody to do that before. He eventually took his "father image" role seriously: sometimes he brought me with him to jazz bars or indie rock concerts, where I found a spirit and an energy I thought impossible to imagine in Japan. I started to write songs on flying sheets of paper: they were bad, really, but thanks to them, I was starting to tame Tokyo a little; its essence, larger than life, rubbing off on me a bit. Following my request, Kyo offered me my first tattoo: a kanji on the shoulder, ore, "I", in order to reconstitute my dismantled ego.
Finally, it was also Kyo who hastened my destiny, the evening he told me he had tickets for a concert of Camui Gackt.
-Puh-leaaase...
-No. I know all there is to know about kids like you; give 'em a little finger and they take the whole arm.
I pout adorably.
-That's not true. Look, it's only this once. After that I'll pay with the money I’ll have earned.
-I'ma tell your grandma!
I pretend to be scared.
-Oh no, don't do that, I beg you please! Listen, I know it's wrong, but I need it? You're the only one who can help. Please...
-Hrm. Okay.
I win.
He hands me a pack of Seven Star Box.
-Thanks a million times, I sigh, immensely relieved.
-Goddamn brat!
Off he goes, back to his store.
-Umm...
-What now!?
Flashing a huge smile, I point at the cigarette stuck between my teeth.
-Could you possibly light me up...?
Sitting on a box of Coca-Cola, I take a long, exquisite drag from the ciggy. Ahhh. That's what I'm talking about. I bend my head back, eyes half-closed, filtering morning sunlight through my lashes.
When I open them again, I see, across the street, two middleschoolers staring at me and whispering between themselves. These girly ways piss me off: I can't hear them from where they are anyway. They seem to be carrying a thorough debate. Must be the mohawk and blue-gray hair; since I came back, I never got a chance to dye it black. Then there are also the tattoos on my forearms, that the short sleeves of the conbini uniform can't hide: they must think I'm a yakuza, or an alien -- something they've never ever seen before in any case . I'm ready to give them the finger and go back to work, when I notice that one of them has a cell phone in her hand.
I don't like that. At all.
I step on the stub with my heel and go to meet them, putting on a menacing air, exhaling one last puff of smoke. When they see me coming straight at them, they freeze, nonplussed, like rabbits caught in headlights.
-Hey.
-Hi, they reply in hushed tones.
I turn to the girl with the cell:
-Erase the pictures that you took of me. Every one of them.
-But it's not...
Talking back, are we? I bring my face close to hers:
-Please?
She proceeds feverishly and takes the initiative to show me she has indeed erased it all. Satisfied, I go back to the conbini.
It's not that I'm paranoid or anything, I just don't want to leave any track behind.
Since Mr Toshiro generously provided my vital nicotine shot of the day, I made a point of being as nice as possible to the clients. But most of them wouldn't answer my greetings and stuffed their groceries in the plastic bags by themselves, with brisk little movements, while throwing glances at me sideways. No one looked at me squarely in the eye, except a foxy housewife who gave me an appreciative once-over before going to join her children waiting in her car. She also swayed her hips as a bonus.
Fucking dump where some tattooed bloke at the cash register of a run-down conbini turns into a fucking event. I bet they'll still be talking about it in their fucking county fairs for a few good years to come.
I lean my feverish forehead against the cool metal of the cash register and exhale a deep sigh.
-Excuse me...
A bespectacled fifteen-year-old girl stares intensely at me. On the counter, she's placed a little packet of candy designed with colorful rabbits.
-Fifty-five yen.
She keeps on staring without making any move towards her purse.
-Fifty-five yen, I repeat.
Maybe she's deaf or retarded, or maybe she thinks it's too expensive, either way, I can't do anything about it, so she might as well stop staring at me like that, because it pisses me off.
-May I help you, miss? I ask, trying to contain my exasperation.
She seems to snap out of her reverie : she tries to say something, stops, hesitates, opens her mouth, closes it again, finally she decides to dive in:
-Can... Can I have your autograph?
...and then the shit hits the fan. I didn't see that one coming, visual kei aficionados in this forsaken place. I try not to let it show on my face and grace her with my most bovine expression:
-Say what?
-You're Miyavi, aren't you?
-Nope, you must be mistaken. Wait a minute, aren't you the friend of the cell phone girl I saw this morning?
She doesn't listen to me. Her face is glowing with excitement, or maybe it's just because of adolescence and sebum.
-You must have seen Gackt in the flesh, then?
I never called him that. Maybe once, when we first met. Feels nostalgic. But I don't have the time for that, I have to get rid of the rabid fangirl:
-Listen, sweetcheeks, you're cute and all, but I don't know any Gackt: I'm just a cashier in this conbini. So, either you pay, or you can get out of here, but you'll have to stop bothering me.
That threw her off balance a little, giving me time to go for the kill:
-Tell me, if I really were that Miyavi you talk about, what the hell would I be doing here, selling candy to retarded brats? Do yourself a favor, honey : get real, and go home.
I signal the exit with my chin. She steps back a little. Her baby face is crumpled with confusion. She turns to leave, but at the last moment, she cries:
-I don't believe you!
And runs away.
I start to laugh. "I don't believe you!"? What kind of exit line is that? So very dramatic, your life must be so hard, sweetcheeks. I wonder what kind of movies she imagines she's in, in that tiny skull of hers.
My laughter fades. Who am I kidding? Melodrama is my way of life, and the movies I make up in my head are blockbusters of pharaonic proportions.
The set, Tokyo, the most insane city on the planet. Lights, noises, cars, crowd, everything that's to be expected of a capital, plus, some sort of crackling that fills the air: it's minds and dreams buzzing, that enormous collective energy that swells and pounds deafly without ever stopping.
The star would be him. His name would be announced in big fat letters and would make the female audience squee: Kamui Gackt. No, Camui, rather, as he prefers to write it, european style. A little taller than me, a figure cut for expensive suits, hair dyed blonde. An angular face, full lips that always keep a ghost of a smile, pensive eyes looking at you in an absent-mindedly calculating way, as if you were some kind of knick-knack and he's trying to determine a place for you on a desk or the edge of a chimney, for a better feng shui effect.
An aura of absolute, christ-like charisma. One could search a long time for the flaws of the perfect image he casts off, his measured body language, his precise way of talking and moving.
He's the master demiurge of Tokyo's nightlife. A mere mortal couldn't possibly conceive the extent of such power: he's at the origin of everything, he anticipates on everything; he sneezes and Tokyo gets a cold. The parties he used to throw made fellinian orgies appear like tea time with bridge players: I remember those rises of the day where the ambiant hysteria and excitement, with the help of drugs, made me giddy and turned space into a whole new dimension. Everything went as if in slow motion, or maybe it was me who was projected like a comet through the boiling masses, gravitating around one sole being: Kamui.
There was the man who plunged me into years of turmoil and exhilaration, the merciless god who rules my life and still permeates each and every fiber of me.
Finally, after this mind-blowing introduction, hobbles along the second main character, but the public is starting to lose interest. Because what comes next turns out to be a cold shower somehow.
The unrefined country boy freshly arrived from the back of beyond, raised in the open air, fattened with good grain and boredom; the little hoodlum lacking so much thrill in his life, the rabid fanboy: oresama.
Nothing could have prepared me either to Kamui or to Tokyo. I already wasn't that much of a hot shot when I arrived, accompanied by Takeshi, who was so jaded after his trip to America that he didn't share my fear of the crushing, irregular skyscrapers that smiled bits of skies between their jaws of glass and concrete, vomitting suits and ties intermittently, pushed, hurried; and, towards the inextricable streets of Shibuya, swarmed with the fashionable tokyoite set and where the least square centimeter of wall is filled with an ad or a sign, this sensation of vertigo.
I opened my eyes large, trying to embrace everything I could see, trying to comprehend everything I was perceiving -- no use, Tokyo crashed in on me like a tide and I didn't know where the surface was anymore.
We settled at the appartment of a remote cousin of Takeshi's. He was a bouncer at a night club and a "notorious pansy" as Takeshi delicately put it. Kyo wasn't a bad guy and took a liking to me, to Takeshi's utmost indifference: he could have wrapped me up with a huge red ribbon and hurled me straight into his cousin's bed as long as the other man provided us shelter for an undetermined period of time. I have to say that our "couple" was already going downhill, and maybe it was my fault: we could touch or suck each other, but I obstinatedly refused penetration. First because he already tried fingering me and I wasn't too crazy about it, second because fag or not, I had my pride as a male and I didn't really fancy the idea of being dominated most of the time. Not that I was keeping scores, but as for blowjobs, the deal was generally unfavourable to me: if I had to be fucked in the ass on top of it, I'd have sooner screwn a woman instead. That last option came true for Takeshi who was out almost every night and could thus screw at his heart's content, anything that came by. Unlike me, who was so intimidated by the city that I didn't even dare to interact with its inhabitants, other than the ramen street vendor, the cashier at the small supermarket in our street and finally Kyo, whom I was clinging to like a drowning man.
Contrary to Takeshi's expectations, Kyo had no libidinous intentions towards me: he would smack me on the bum calling me "cupcake" from time to time, but that was it. He thought I remained faithful to Takeshi and that his sleeping around made me suffer, so he tried to comfort me by taking me out to party, along with other charming queers and queens who made up a new kind of jolly family for me. All together, on drinking session nights at the karaoke, we fooled around organizing strip-tease contests; generally, I used to tamper with the votes and bribed with kisses in order to make Kyo win. And by the end of the night, stewed to the gills, I used to sit on his lap, with my arms around his neck, and call him "daddy". He wasn't that old, but was nearing his forties and already losing hair; as for me, I was barely eighteen and far from being an adult. I didn't know anything, I was lost and confused in a city that could only be measured to life in its entirety: it terrified me, gave me the urge to go down and curl under the surface of the earth, never to see daylight again. Kyo was my savior: he reassured me, who never had anybody to do that before. He eventually took his "father image" role seriously: sometimes he brought me with him to jazz bars or indie rock concerts, where I found a spirit and an energy I thought impossible to imagine in Japan. I started to write songs on flying sheets of paper: they were bad, really, but thanks to them, I was starting to tame Tokyo a little; its essence, larger than life, rubbing off on me a bit. Following my request, Kyo offered me my first tattoo: a kanji on the shoulder, ore, "I", in order to reconstitute my dismantled ego.
Finally, it was also Kyo who hastened my destiny, the evening he told me he had tickets for a concert of Camui Gackt.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 08:57 am (UTC)