Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ Ryuichi Blue ❯ one ( Prologue )

Ryuichi Blue

By Nix Winter

Disclaimers: Written for my own mental health, just because I was sad. I don't own Ryuichi or any of the Gravitation peoples or stories. I hope you'll buy the originals. I hope you'll visit my site and see my originals. www.onepinkrose.com

Warnings: This story mentions previous child abuse in Ryuichi's past, it doesn't get to a very happy ending. I want to do more with it. I wish I could figure out and believe in someone who would love him as he is in this fic. I'm working on it.

Ryuichi Blue

There is music. It makes love to me. Melody, sound, soothing over nerves, not caring if I'm crying.

There is a pink rabbit and I hold it tight, soft fake fur pressed against my skin. I know he's not real, my Kumagoro, but I can't let him go, can't relax my arms

One headphone on, one off, so I can hear the world around me, I sit here. I am Ryuichi, Sakuma Ryuichi. I can't stop crying.

What am I living for? Nittle Grasper. That's a lie. I'm not living at all. I died years ago. It's just this shell here, this memory of being alive. I died when he raped me. Years ago.

The only problem is

I don't want to be dead.

So I'm hiding in my mind. I'm hiding, hiding, hiding.

And I'm hiding behind Nittle Grasper. I'm hiding behind Shuichi, behind K.

And I want to believe that it'll all be okay.

But

There has to be

Some way to stop hiding

Because

I don't want to be dead.

I want it not to have happened.

I pretend it didn't.

I want to pretend that it's okay to be alive, but

And then my mind goes blank.

I'm Sakuma Ryuichi.

No one knows me

No one knows why

Hear me sing, see me move, watch me look like I'm alive

And maybe

It's true, that sometimes I can live behind what I'm hiding

I wish someone could see behind what I'm hiding behind and love me.

"Ryu!" Noriko's voice draws me up. She's tugging on Kumoguro's ear, frustrated with me because there are the stage lights, there a few steps away is the crowd, screaming for me. "It's time to sing, Ryuichi!"

She doesn't know. She doesn't know the pit her words are pulling me over. A thousand fans don't know as they call my name. Ryuichi. Sakuma.

I stand, stretching, the stage costume flowing around me, shimmering. Tohma is waving at me, smiling. I love Tohma's smile. If I were going to tell anyone. Maybe I'd tell Tohma. Tohma would be very angry though.

I smile at Noriko. I can feel my smile, all grown up, sexuality incarnate, but it's just me, hiding in plain sight. I am Sakuma Ryuichi.

She puts the microphone in my hand, pats my back, like she's done some miraculous thing, transformed me, got me to do what she wants. She puts her hands on her hips, that wild hair shivering as she laughs. "You had me scared here! I know it was a bad dream, Ryuichi! Dreams aren't real, you know that, right?"

Dreams aren't real. That's nice.

The problem is

This was real.

I was four? Five?

"Dreams aren't real," I say to her, smiling, a smile she knows well, that's so familar to me. It's my don't be silly, I know everything smile, my don't look at me lying to you smile, but she takes it like a Ryuichi wants his crayons smile. That's good enough for me. "I know dreams aren't real, Noriko," say, holding the smile just a moment more. A dream wouldn't tear me to shreds the way this did. A scream is really loud if you can still hear it twenty years later, especially if no one else, who cared, heard it in the first place. I was four, maybe five. Now I'm twenty-four, maybe twenty-five and I'm still saving myself. Maybe that's how it goes, everyone has to save themselves.

I'm Sakuma Ryuichi and everyone would save me, if they could see me. I lay one wrist on my head, let myself fall back into the music that Tohma has started to play, trying to seduce me to the stage. It wouldn't take that much. I love the stage.

I'm wearing tight blue jeans that cling to my legs, my ass, the button just below my belly button, moving with me like a comfortable second skin. My shirt is loose, white, frilly, floating around my skin, over the backs of my hands, brushing my nipples. Running from the violation that echos through decades, I'm still sexual, boundlessly sensual. The stage welcomes me like a lover and the audience screams, a rolling scream like the one of mine that no one ever heard, like the rolling of nature that goes on if you mean it to or not.

I blow them kisses, my body tight, excited, alive as I cross to the center of the stage. Light in my hair, warmth on my lips, my knee is moving, twitching, nervous, but hard to explain. I don't know why it does that.

Noriko is playing her music now. Her and Tohma play like angels together, hitting those notes so perfectly, harmonized, echoing each other. They were my angels, watching my back, guarding me when I couldn't really do it, and I know this. I love them for it, but now, I'm the archangel, and this voice of mine is my sword, peircing the hearts of my lovers before me. It's carried over the sound system, sweet and deep and perfect, as much part of the music as Tohma and Noriko's music. This voice of mine, I'd be dead without this voice of mine, this lovely hiding right out in plain view.

A thousand people would make love to me now, as they listen to me sing. I welcome them, draw them to me. Maybe that's part of it, part of why they like me, because when I'm singing, maybe they know I need them. I'd sing forever to keep them around me. He can't reach me now, not with all of them around me.

Maybe I'm realest now, here, singing. My voice even turns me on, lips so close to the head of the microphone, as if I could kiss, caress. This voice, it doesn't sound like my own, not to me sometimes. Here on stage, in the music and light, I believe I could be kissed, could kiss, rough and sweet, genuine, true, deep! It's the only time though, the only time anyone could reach me.

I don't know how long the concert lasts. I can't hardly tell the difference between the songs, only that I sing, that i know how to do that, that people scream and clap an whistle louder every now and then. This memory that came to me before the concert, it was dark, it was so real. Dreams aren't real. I wish I'd been dreaming.

They have me, now, Tohma on one side, Noriko on the other. They are my angels and we're waving. We're bowing. I'm crying. The audience is sreaming my name. It was a good concert. My angels are tugging me off stage. I don't want to go!

"Ryu!" Noriko hisses. Her mic is off, it's just her and me and Tohma who hear her now. "It's over! Come on! Half an hour over is enough! My fingers need a rest! God will you grow up!"

Tohma understands better, maybe, or maybe he's just stronger. He could really just drag me off stage, if he wanted to. "Ryuichi, it will be alright, come help me find Kumagoru."

As we cross in to the shadows of wing, I break away from them and run back, waving to the crowd, to my lovers. And they scream back. I blow them kisses, give them my soul one last time, and it feels like it'll be my last chance, like I'll never have this chance to breath again.

My angels are angry though, so I run back to them, to keep them from being upset, hurt and Tohma wraps his arms around me, holding me tight, gently. He doesn't understand me. No one does. How can they? But he cares and that means a lot. I want to cry and to make his shirt wet, to tell him. I can't though.

It's all drama after the concert. It always is. I'm watching it distantly, from somewhere within myself. It's not usually this bad. It was what I remembered when I was sleeping. Mr. K's the one that settles it. He threatens to shot me if I don't settle down. He doesn't know I'm laughing inside. He makes me feel safe too. I wonder what he'd do if he knew what I saw when I was sleeping.

Two hours later, we're in the air, on a jet, first class. I have new crayons. I'm drawing something pretty. Shining. Someday I'm going to stop hiding, stop coming up for air every now and then. Logic, which I do have, you know, tells me that I'll be okay, I'll be better then. Everything else says that's the day I'll die, when I can't hide anymore.

Somewhere out there, far below on the ground, maybe there's someone for me, a knight, a lover, just on lover, who'll promise to hold me, no matter how afraid I am or how much I cry, and they'll let me hide in them. That's asking a lot though, isn't it?

"Ryuichi," Tohma asks softly, genuinely concerned, I think. "Are you okay?"

He's not asking Ryuichi the performer, the singer, or Ryuichi the spoiled child, he's asking me, me Ryuichi, and for just a very tiny moment, I'm me, not hiding, not crying. I reach out to him. He takes my hand. I give him a twitching, unfamiliar smile. "I don't know, Tohma. I guess I'm okay. I just had a bad bad dream."

"I understand," he says, sitting down next to me, without letting go of my hand.

He doesn't say dreams aren't real. He understands, I think, that I didn't mean dream, I meant something more. Yeah, maybe I am okay. Somewhere between Taiwan and Tokyo, I fall asleep, knowing he wouldn't let go of my hand or tell me I was dreaming.