Live For Me and Live Forever - by Harukami author's notes: Hmm. *fumbles around in a hat and draws two slips of paper* These two today I see. Very interesting. Expect the types of warnings you usually see in my fics. Oh, and this was written under the influence of Malice Mizer's "Transylvania". It could be worse. Illuminati. Every day he stayed alive, the despair tried harder to drag him down. He smiled, though more rarely than people seemed to remember, he created beauty through his fingertips, and yet it was never enough. He couldn't find that spark, that hint, that one shining idea, shining hope that he could sense just outside his reach. Once, a long time ago, a time when two children laughed and sat together and created beauty, he had held that shining thing. Youth was fickle; it let value slip through its fingers and showed the path to hopelessness instead. Some things never returned when they were lost, and yet people looked for them. Life. Virginity. Hope. One might find a fascimile but one would never find the full value of hope. He wondered when the Kaichou had lost his. A long time ago. Touga was too far buried in the fascimile for it to have been recently. Juri... more recently. It sat around her like a dark, violent storm cloud. He saw it whenever he was around her. He didn't even think about Saiounji-sempai. He had asked once, when they were closer, but it had caused the rift between them. Saiounji-sempai didn't need anyone except whoever he refused to talk about. Nanami. That was easier to name. Her brother. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Miki tilted his head back against the couch arm. Heavy headphones covered his ears, pouring Bach's organ music into it. Beautiful. Distant, long dead, still beautiful. There was pain in it. He wondered what shining thing the composer had been trying to reach again when it was written. Had he found it? Could anyone? Delicate, dark fingers unfastened the collar of his school uniform and slid down inside, warm against cold flesh. Breath whistled past Miki's lips but he couldn't hear whether it had been complaint, gasp, moan. Organ music covered all background noise. The pale violet hair brushed his cheek as lips pressed wetly on his jawbone under where the headphones were placed. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, listening to the music as his body responded. His breathing fell into automatic synchronization with the pulse of the music. From Toccata to Fugue. A-B-A-C-D-C-A-B-A. Basic chords. Well-tempered music. That person was talking, or at least a whisper was reaching Miki's ears through the music. It was in time with the music. Three eight. He couldn't make out the words spoken. It didn't matter. Miki knew what he was here for. His shirt was gone. He hadn't taken it off. It didn't matter. Reality bent around that person. His back arched and if he made a noise he couldn't hear it. Music rose, teasingly, fell back into a low rush of sixteenth notes. Only the left hand was playing now. Deep, hard music. He could hear a word now and then from that person's speech. Not complete sentances. "Pain... devouring.... hope.... sometime." It didn't matter. His eyelashes fluttered. He didn't open his eyes. He didn't need to see. He could hear the music. "Like.....beautiful...... far.....mine." He was burning now. The music was speeding up. The couch was hot and sticky against equally hot and sticky skin. When had his pants gone? It didn't matter. Hands everywhere. Mouth and heat. The music was fast. Bach had been a talented composer. The notes dropped though still fast. Lower, lower, louder, vibrant, shaking his body. He was shivering, heat pressed down on top of him. It was segueing into the final movement, the repeat of the A-B-A sections. "Deep.....long time.... why?....why?....why?" The music was drowning out more of the figure's words. It was speeding up. A sudden leap in tone. Pain. Perhaps he cried out. Strong arms held him down. He couldn't hear his own voice. The organ music swelled around him, inside him, through him. Beauty created by hands, but never quite enough. Deeper again. Harder again. It was Moving into the final A section. His throat hurt. Was he screaming? Warm, painful face. Was he crying? It didn't matter. There was beauty here. It wasn't enough, but he lived with it. And whenever it got too much to bear this happened. Gave him a taste of something shining that snapped him alive enough to keep fighting, struggling, falling, rising, struggling. Just a hint. Humanity thrived on hope, even if they couldn't find it and knew somewhere deep inside they never would. A piece of that hope stuck inside him. Something alive. Music pounded in his ears. He didn't open his eyes. Hard cords, complexity, moving into the cadance that would end it. Moving from a minor to a major. An explosion of blindingly shining light, hope, pleasure, the final chord of music in the piece. It rocked his body with it, drawing out to the faintest after echoes. There was no noise outside of it. His mind lost itself in the final dying echoes of the music as his body lost itself in the few last rocking waves of pleasure and his mind bobbed lightly above the surface of despair, seeing that... that... that shining /thing/ he needed in the distance, too far to reach now, but with effort, with hope, with trial, with the pure miracle of being able to tread water with the hope of not drowning with the weight of knowing he'd be buoyed up again whether he wanted to be or not. That person disengaged, and in the tiny bit of dying music Miki could hear through the quality headphones, he heard a chuckle. He opened his eyes. Silence. There was nothing but the shadows there in the dark room around him while he lay, hot, naked, still breathing hard. The piece was finished. "He looks like a freaking JEDI! You know, "Star Wars: The Unsexy Menace" - MikoMiko re: Gackt's new promo video