Confessions & Cigarettes

Where were they again?



Hiro stared at himself in the mirror, trying to muster up enough energy to take a shower and change into something soft before collapsing into bed. He didn\'t know how the older people on this tour managed to stay so energetic, but yet he and Shuichi had to drag themselves to their hotel rooms leaving the members of Nittle Grasper still bouncing around the back stage party, swiping drinks, posing for hungry crowds and playing pieces of music. Shouldn\'t Bad Luck be the ones in charge of the party while the old timers retired for the night?



Yet here he was, clinging to a basin while trying to muster enough strength to make it into the shower and wash the dried sweat off his skin. At least this was the last concert they would have for the next month – something about some kind of show they needed to prepare for. He hadn\'t been paying attention when K was talking to them during Grasper\'s first set.



It was hard to pay attention to anything when they suddenly started stripping each other while performing, showing off the fact that their clothes were actually covering a second set of clothes that could have them arrested if they wore them any where else in the world. Tohma and Ryuichi helped each other and then they both went to Noriko, Tohma lifting her up and Ryuichi using his mouth on her zipper and, well, Hiro had blanked out everything for what felt like hours until he was on stage with the rest of Bad Luck.



And now he was here, wondering if this tour was slowly making him go insane. He certainly looked the part. All he needed now was a blood-stained shirt, some green-tinted foundation and he would be ready to go haunt the tour bus. But first, his legs needed to start working again.



"Hey, you okay?"



Hiro jumped, wind-milled his arms to keep from falling into the shower and looked over at the open bathroom door. Leaning against the door frame was one Ryuichi Sakuma, still in his full stage gear complete with a bright pink rabbit sitting on top of his head. Hiro swallowed and clutched the front of his shirt, feeling his heart pound rapidly. He didn\'t even hear the door open, let alone see the singer enter the room.



"I mean, you were staring so hard into the mirror and hanging onto the sink I thought you\'ve died or something," Ryuichi continued, his voice a little louder than it needed to be in the small room. "Or are you high? That\'s really not something you should do, getting high only makes you crash harder after a gig."



"Ah, no. . . I\'m not high," Hiro said, managing to get a word in and wondering how he knew that bit of information. Ryuichi blinked at him for a moment and then grinned. With the stage clothing and makeup, the smile looked less like something a child would use and more like a devil playing at innocence.



"Okay! Are you gonna take a shower?"



Hiro glanced at the shower. Since the scare had him able to feel his legs again, the idea of one sounded good. "I was just going to."



"Then I can wait!"



The singer nodded and bounced across the room, a feat that Hiro found himself watching with less innocent thoughts because of how tightly his clothing clung to Ryuichi\'s backside. Some how, the tight clothing was far more provocative than nothing at all, and Hiro yanked his mind away from the path it was going. Closing the door also helped and Hiro was finally able to crawl into the shower.



He pulled on some sleeping pants and combed his hair out, feeling tired but yet not as bad as before. Hiro tied his hair back and looked at the steamy mirror for some kind of answer behind Ryuichi\'s appearance in his room. He had thought that it had been just a single night since after that first night, Hiro had been rooming with Shuichi, but again here he was, in the same room with the Grasper frontman. Not that he had a tough time with the singer; on the contrary, Ryuichi had been so normal outside of that kiss.



Stepping out into the main room, he found Ryuichi tucking Kumagoro into that small pet carrier, humming to himself. The older man looked up from his task, touching his lips with his right index finger and Hiro found himself being extra quiet as he settled on the bed without the guitar case and digging out the song lists for the next few dates. Ryuichi snuck around the room before disappearing into the bathroom and Hiro remembered that he really didn\'t need to look at the lists since they were doing something special in a month\'s time. Inhaling, he rolled his shoulders and put the lists away. He fidgeted for a moment before turning on the tv but after flipping through the stations, he turned it back off. He glanced at the half-open bathroom door and got out his cigarettes.



Half way through his second one, Ryuichi came out of the bathroom with his stage gear under one arm and a towel in his other hand as he scrubbed at his hair. Hiro again saw the hint of some kind of tattoo as the singer passed - a slash of black riding his hipbone and disappearing under the low-riding plaid pants he was wearing. Ryuichi tossed the stage gear on top of the guitar case and bent down, snagging the strap of a messenger bag and tossing it onto the bed as well. The towel was slung over his right shoulder and the singer dug out a couple things, set them aside and shoved the stage gear into the bag before pushing it off the bed. Then glancing at Hiro, Ryuichi tossed one of the items at him.



Hiro caught it without thinking, cellophane crackling under his fingers. Looking up as he heard a familiar slap of a pack of cigarettes hitting the palm of a hand, Hiro raised the new pack in a half-salute. Ryuichi smiled and ripped off the cellophane from his pack, tapped the top twice and opened it. The first cigarette he took out he flipped over and pushed it back into the pack before selecting a different cigarette.



"You didn\'t have to give me a new pack," Hiro said, setting it down next to his open pack.



"I know, but this way I won\'t smoke all of it at once," Ryuichi replied around his cigarette. He struck a match and inhaled. "Touring always turns me into a freak with the smokes if I don\'t watch it."



"Why?" Hiro bit his lip and looked away. He really shouldn\'t be questioning someone like Ryuichi all the time.



"You know, I don\'t think anyone has asked me that before," Ryuichi said. Hiro looked up at the singer, seeing a tired, rueful smile spread across his lips. "Noriko and Tohma get worried that I will ruin my voice so I\'m always sneaking out to have one before bed, but they never really asked why I need it so much."



"Maybe they already figured it out without needing to ask."



"Probably. They got me to cut back before we really started making it big." Ryuichi tossed the towel across the room and snapped open the guitar case, taking out the same apple green guitar he had been playing the last time they shared a room. "I guess it\'s a way to get my mind to calm down. It is part of a ritual, you know?"



"Like the guitar playing?"



Hiro wondered what happened with his manners even as Ryuichi looked up from the guitar, wet bangs curling against his face and shadowing his blue eyes. The singer stared at him for several moments, smoke curling around him, and then he snorted to himself, reaching up and taking the cigarette out of his mouth. With his other hand, he wrapped his fingers around the neck of his guitar and held it out to Hiro. Hiro stared at the guitar, at the square-edged body and the cat-eye soundhole, the strong fingers wrapped firmly around the neck, and then he gently took the guitar.



It was heavier than he would have thought, but what had he thought exactly when he first saw that guitar? The green sunburst finish was worn in a few places, the fretboard with the shark-fin inlays showing signs of heavy use and there was a cigarette burn on the upper horn of the body. Hiro ran his fingers over the \'Rickenbacker\' logo on the head, the golden pickguard, and the four stove knobs. Hiro strummed a chord and listened at the sound until it faded. A sweet voice with undertones of a growl, although the color. . . Hiro held the guitar out to Ryuichi and the singer took it back.



"Nice," Hiro said, and ground out his cigarette butt in the ashtray. "Did you get it refinished to get that color?"



Ryuichi strummed a couple chords and shook his head. "No, it\'s the original finish. Grandma said that an American sweetie gave it to her as a goodbye present."



Hiro looked over at him, and Ryuichi laughed at the expression that crossed his face.



"She wasn\'t that," he said, rolling his eyes. "I swear. . . Grandma did a lot of work with the government as an interpreter and stuff like that for the different businesses and people visiting the country."



"She did?" Hiro wasn\'t sure if that was better than his original thought or not. Ryuichi glanced at him, winking as he played an F-flat chord.



"Grandma was something else. It always made Father annoyed when she showed up with a new tale and something to give me."



"What did her husband think of her?"



"Grandpa? He usually just let her prattle on. He said the best woman was one that completes one\'s nature instead of bowing to it."



"That. . ." Hiro looked at the odd-color guitar and the singer holding it, blue eyes old against a youthful face while smoke curled around him. "Sounds like a very wise man."



"Sometimes, I think he was wiser than anyone I had ever known."



"And other times?"



"I think my whole family was mad." Ryuichi put the guitar back in its case and closed the lid before setting it on the floor. He leaned over and put his cigarette out, blowing a small smoke ring as he exhaled. "Do you feel like you can sleep now?"



"I. . ." Hiro paused and thought about it. He had felt tired before, but it was the kind of tired that would have made him awake while trying hard to sleep. But now, he felt relaxed enough to where he could sleep, all the thoughts and the wrung out tightness of his muscles gone. "I think I could."



"That\'s good," Ryuichi said and kicked his blankets down, wiggling under them and yanking the rest up over his head. "Tomorrow\'s going to be brutal."



"Tomorrow. . . what?"



"Goodnight, Hiro!"



He stared at the lump that Ryuichi had become for a long moment before huffing and grabbing another cigarette. Maybe after he had another one he would get the questions that comment gave him out of his head. That is, if he was lucky.







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Author\'s Notes: Rickenbacker guitars were made famous by bands like the Beatles and the Byrds during the 1960\'s. Ryuichi\'s guitar is a semi-acoustic hollowbody deluxe 330 model with an extremely rare green glow finish instead of the more common Fireglo, Jetglo, and Mapleglo finishes of the times. Information of Rickenbackers can be found at www.provide.net/~cfh/rick.html for specs, and a database for various Ricks can be found at www.rickresource.com/main/ where an article (under articles then Rickenbacker stories and then Factory Shaded Green) shows a couple pictures of what the green colored Rick looks like. Also Ryuichi refers to his grandparents using a familiarclose tone while his parents are in a more formaldistant tone if he was speaking in Japanese. English doesn\'t have that level of distinction save in a very weak way as shown here.

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