A New Start on Old Habits // chapter 6
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
It was substantially further past breakfast time than Yumi Matsumoto would have preferred it to have been when her youngest son let himself in silently through the front door. Considering that he had walked out of their family meal over twelve hours previously, she thought it a little rude of him to stroll back in without a word of apology or explanation.
However, she watched him from the kitchen, taking his shoes off and then his jacket. The sweater he was wearing wasn’t the same as the one he had left in - this was a dark purple long sleeved T-shirt whereas the night before he had worn a tight, knitted white sweater with a hood. He didn’t acknowledge her standing there as he walked past, sitting heavily on the sofa and laying down over the cushions closing his eyes as if to go to sleep.
“Go on,” Hoshi gave her a reassuring nod as she stirred antacid powder into a glass of water, setting it down in front of her pale husband who was seated at the small square table in the corner. Their early morning walk had been a little too much for him considering the volume of alcohol which he had consumed the night before. “Talk to him Yumi. He may be lots of things to lots of people…” She smoothed her hand over Kazuo’s hair as he leant his head weakly against her hip, sipping at his ‘medicine’. “But he’s still your son.”
Yumi nodded and wiping her hands, she left the plates in the sink and followed Ruki into the living room.
“Takanori..?”
He opened his eyes and looked across at her, not moving from his curled position on the sofa. And then slowly he stretched out and as if it was far too much trouble and sat up to make room for her to sit next to him. Pulling the too long sleeves of his borrowed sweater over his hands he yawned into one covered palm before tucking them both between his knees, awaiting her words.
Hoshi was right, he certainly was lots of things to lots of people; Yumi especially had infinite memories of many different incarnations of her son. From the tiny wailing bundle of fluffy white blankets and dark hair to the bleached blonde young man she had watched so proudly at the Budokan not so many months before, taking the stage and enchanting thousands with his voice and his guitar - somewhere along the line she was sure he had even been a girl at times - but he would always be her son; her baby; her Taka-chan.
It was a sudden rush of love for the man in front of her that prompted her words, “Your father and I are both very proud of everything that you have done. Sometimes though…” she took a step towards him and stopped as if not wanting to move any closer lest she lose her nerve and not dare say the things that she so desperately needed to say. Sensing that something important was about to be said, he rolled his sleeves even further over his hands and sank as low as he could into the cushions and not even the feint scent of Reita on the sweater could calm his worry.
Yumi perched daintily on the cushion next to him, barely resting on it, her hands clasped together on her knees.
“Sometimes Taka-chan, your father and I forget that we have two very wonderful but very different sons and although you are the complete opposite of everything which we hoped that you would become...” turning her head to look at him she smiled a tiny little smile, so brief and fleeting one might miss it in a heartbeat. “You're our family and we do love you and Kazuo; Hoshi and…” Yumi lowered her voice, even though no one was within earshot, “… Akira.”
And without waiting for a reply, for she and Ruki both knew that he would say nothing, she nodded and stood up. The son watched her leave.
“I love you too…” he whispered, a gentle smile grasping the corners of his lips and he rocked backwards on the sofa, hugging his arms around his chest before laying down and letting sleep claim him for an hour or more.
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Ruki looked at his fingertips through the bath water, the skin was pale and wrinkled. Somewhere along the way he had completely lost track of the time since disappearing into the steamy bathroom but it had been long enough for his just washed hair to have dried into a very unflattering style and his fingertips to have taken on this prune-like appearance.
The ringing of his phone jerked him out of his semi-stupor and he reached out to dry one hand before reluctantly lifting himself out of the bath just enough to grab the device.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. What are you doing?” Reita.
“I’m in the bath.”
“You’re naked?”
“No, I bathe fully clothed.”
“Hmm… How are things at home?”
How were things at home? Ruki thought about the hours that had just passed. After his mother’s brief speech, his sleep had been interrupted by a somewhat recovered brother giving him a rather boisterous hug which he rightly believed said a lot more than it’s face value. Following that, things had become increasingly strange. Not only had his father spoken to him, but he had been civil - almost interested and had inquired about his work schedule for the remainder of the week and seemed pleased to hear that his son would have little free time upon his return to Tokyo due to the workload.
“Are you sure that you didn’t say anything last night at dinner after I left?” Ruki relaxed back into the water, absentmindedly running his hand over his crotch and curling one finger in the tidy nest of dark curls at the base of his cock.
“Why do you ask?”
The voice on the other end of the line took on a very familiar tone then - Reita was holding something back. There were secrets hidden in that slow drawl but Ruki was sure it was nothing to worry about. Without actually answering his question, Reita had answered his question.
“No reason. Oh I’ve got to go, my mother’s calling me and I’m quite sure I don’t want her walking in here and seeing me naked. I’ll see you later OK?”
"It probably won't be until tomorrow now, my sister is coming back late tonight and I seem to have been volunteered to go and meet her and Dan from the airport. I'll come over in the morning though and save you from family hell if that's OK."
"I suppose. Say hello to your sister for me. In English. Make it sound good..."
"Yeah... I'll do that." Ruki could practically hear the mocking laughter in Reita's voice but he knew that deep down he really did love to inflict his slow moving English skills on his fluent sister and her husband. "See you then..."
"Yeah... Aki, you know I..."
"Yeah, I know."
“Taka-chan? Are you still in the bath?”
There was a light tap at the door and then his mother’s voice, softer and closer.
“Takanori? You have a visitor.”
He sat bolt upright, the warmth of the water doing nothing to stop the cold chill of sheer terror that flooded through his body. There was only one person who this ’visitor’ could be…
Ruki jumped out of the bath, the water slopping out of the tub after him and he grabbed at the first towel his hand touched.
“Who is it?” he said angrily, unsurprised when his mother confirmed his suspicions.
“Your old friend, Matsumoto-san. I’ll tell him that you’re just coming, OK?”
She wasn’t expecting the door to open with such force and took a step back in surprise as her smallest son stormed past her wearing nothing more than a towel and a frown, complaining about unexpected intrusions and disrupted holidays and how was he supposed to relax with the past deciding to call upon him quite unannounced?
She smiled to herself when his bedroom door slammed. “I’ll make some tea shall I?”
It took him less than five minutes to pull on some clothes and rake a comb through his rough un-styled hair, but an infinity to stare at himself in the mirror and desperately try to calm his nerves. That night, it was so clear it could have been hours ago, not years and his own words still rang clearly in his ears. The smile Yune had given him when Ruki had said:
“I’m in, do whatever you want to me Ma-chan”
“You can do this,” he told his reflection, “If you can stand up in front of thousands of people and sing, you can go and talk to one person in your own home.”
He recognised the voice immediately, his hand clearly shaking as he slid the door to the tatami room open. His mother stood and then so did the two visitors, both of them reflections from his past. Ruki stared at the little girl who stared back at him. There was no doubt about it, she was Mari’s daughter through and through and holding her hand was the other piece of the puzzle.
“Ma-chan…” he stared, gob smacked almost, at the man straightening from a bow in front of him. Ruki had waved Yune off at the station all those years before with long, bright auburn hair and a cowboy hat. Now he was something altogether different and the singer had to make a conscious effort to close his mouth and stop staring at him.
“Hello Taka, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” he smiled, a perfect white toothed smile set against tanned skin and dark hair which skimmed his collar in gentle waves. He was wearing the kind of jeans that Reita wore - incredibly loose but somehow fitted at the same time, clinging to his hips two centimetres below a raw-edged T-shirt underneath a neat black suit jacket. He scooped the little girl up and held her in one arm at his hip the way women did. “Takara, say hello to a very good friend of Daddy’s. His name is Matsumoto-san.”
She clung to Yune’s jacket with one small fist, turning away from Ruki and hiding her face in his neck.
“Doesn’t look like she wants to meet with me…” Ruki said, looking across at his mother with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Come on Takachan,” Yune said, nudging her face with his fingers (he was wearing a silver ring like twisted piece of rope and his hands looked well cared for but not manicured as Ruki’s own would be by the end of the week). “Say hello.”
She did look around eventually after a little more coaxing and said hello before turning right back to Yune’s shoulder and hiding her face once more. He laughed, saying something about her being unusually shy and protectively stroked her glossy hair with his free hand.
The four of them sat and the conversation flowed through Yune’s teaching career, the successes of the band and briefly to the other members. Ruki shifted uneasily and glanced at his mother briefly when he was asked how Reita was, his reply a quite abrupt ‘fine’.
It was easy to sense from Ruki’s tone that there were things he wanted to say and feeling this clearly, Yumi offered to take Takara into the garden to scatter some seeds for the neighbourhood birds. At the mention of this, the shy little girl who had been fidgeting on Yune’s knee smiled widely and said a very solemn ‘yes please.’
Alone, Ruki twisted the ring which Reita had given him around his finger, listening to the sound of music playing somewhere softly in another room. He didn’t know who would speak first, he didn’t think that it was going to be him because he knew that he would say something regrettable. He wasn’t sure just what he would say, but it would be bad.
Yune broke the silence, “So, do you have any gossip to tell me?”
Ruki pulled his sleeves down a little further over his hands and thought about the question.
Well, Kai started a homosexual relationship with another member of PSC but didn’t want anyone to know so when he caught Reita and I kissing one night he punched me and I walked out and Reita denied liking me but then he changed his mind and we had incredible sex for nearly a year before he slept with Uruha’s sister when she was still our manager, Uruha who incidentally is fucking Aoi but won’t openly admit to it and Aoi who still loves himself just that little bit more than anyone else in the world but not as much as Reita loves me because he gave me this ring and promised to love me for ever…
“No, nothing much. You know, the usual stuff.”
And then, what Ruki had been dreading. Yune reached across the corner of the table and briefly stroked his fingers along Ruki’s sleeve.
“I still think about us sometimes, when I see you on TV… you remember, don’t you Taka?”
“Yes," he mumbled "I remember.”
“So many times I wished that it had just been you and me that night…” he turned a little more towards Ruki, a note of uncertainty rising in his voice. “I wonder if things could have been different… maybe I would have stayed…”
Ruki couldn’t answer, his throat was tight as the long forgotten sadness of saying goodbye to his then best friend surged back to the forefront of his mind. It had been so hard, watching the lights of the train disappear around a curve in the track and he had even shrugged off the friendly arm around his shoulders that Reita had offered him. How could he have ever accepted any kind of affection, friendly or otherwise from Reita not after he had given himself so easily to the first man who offered him sex.
“I didn’t stand a chance though…” Yune smiled, retrieving his hand from Ruki’s arm and running his fingers though his dark hair. “Not with Akira around. You were besotted with him it seemed. Did you and he ever get together?”
His answer was the right one but to the wrong question, his mind still caught up on the melting pot of feelings that had haunted him for far too long after Yune’s departure. It was the worst timing of Ruki's entire life and if he had only thought for a second longer before speaking the first few weeks of 2008 would have played out very differently. But he didn't think, he just spoke.
“I never told him…”
“Oh…”
Silence. Silent enough to hear the dripping of the water clock outside the door; the music was gone too. So silent enough to hear the thudding of Ruki’s heart when Yune leant over to him and kissed him. And in that moment, as he pressed his lips against Ruki’s, the singer closed his eyes and kissed him back. He had never told Reita about him and Yune, no but the real answer which Yune had been looking for, the one that said 'YES, we are together', the one that would have stopped the kiss before it had even started was fogotten in amongst the sudden rush of adrenaline from this stolen and blatantly wrong kiss.
Footsteps ran up to the door which was slid open but neither paid any attention until a shrill voice cut through the soft sounds of tongues finding each other after many years absence. Ruki knew he really should stop, but Yune's mouth on his felt so good...
“Daddy!“
The singer jumped up sharply, his face instantly crimson and he wrapped his arms around his chest and backed away from the table. Yune slowly stood up too and held out his arms for the little girl to jump into. He ran the back of his hand over his lips before kissing her on the forehead.
“Come on Takara, let’s get going shall we?” he bowed the best he could with a small child in his arms, more of a nod than anything else and then reached into his jacket pocket to produce a pale business card. “Here… for the music school… come and see me again before you leave?”
Ruki took the card with an outstretched arm, he didn’t trust himself to step any closer to Yune. Not now, not after that kiss.
“Thank you. I don’t have a card… I…”
“You’re Ruki. Everyone knows who you are” he said, smiling. “It’s OK Taka, I understand. Right, have a good rest-of-the-new-year. I’ll see you…”
He followed them to the front door, his mother joining as they left and after more formal goodbyes, they were finally gone. Ruki closed the door and leaned heavily against it, hearing the little girl’s voice clear as anything from the other side of the wood.
“Daddy? Why were you kissing that man?”
Chapter 7