[team one] All I Have To Do Is Dream

[yararanger.livejournal.com]

So I have this headcanon when it come to Endless SHOCK wherein Yara totally loved Koichi all along, and apparently I can't contain it any longer. Title is, of course, from the Everly Brothers' song of the same name.

--

He closes his eyes, and the scene replays itself once more. The same scene that's drifted in front of him every night for almost a year, the scene that replaced the nightmare. This new dream isn't a nightmare any more, not quite, but it's still unsettling to play out the same scene again and again, to have the dialogue burned into his memory so well that he can hear parts even when he's awake. Koichi is there, of course - Koichi was always there, even when he was alive, plaguing Yara even when he actively tried to shut him out. But instead of the nightmare from the year before Koichi isn't a malignant spectre, not some judgemental Shakespearean spirit come to condemn him for his decision to take up that cursed sword that cursed time on that cursed stage. This time, Koichi is… always smiling.

"Why are you here?" Yara asks.

"Because you want to see me," the Koichi in his dream replies, and it hurts, it hurts. Not as badly as it had hurt before, when the Koichi in his nightmares still held Yara accountable for the accident that had happened during the Japanesque scene. But it hurts, all the same. Of course I want to see you, Yara thinks, and inside his chest his heart twists under the strain of all of the things they will never get to see or do together.

"But you're dead," Yara replies.

Koichi smiles; a thin, self-deprecating quirk of the lips. "I know that now," he says.

There are no apologies. Both of them are too proud for that.

"I miss you."

The stage feels empty without Koichi. When Yara was still burning from the guilt and betrayal, he hadn't wanted to admit it. Reach out, higher! he'd sung, thinking that he could make it by himself, that he had the starlike qualities in abundance enough to make it as the lead on any stage if he'd wanted. It was just Koichi always keeping me as the rival, always holding me back as the second role, he had told himself. I can make it on my own now.

It's not something he could ever have said while not sleeping. I miss you. That alone carries more weight than Yara could ever acknowledge, the pain and emptiness that rattles around his chest like a tiny pebble in a shoe, imperceptible to the naked eye but stabbing when least expected. I miss you so much.

"I know." Koichi can't reach out to him, but Yara knows that if it were possible, he would. "I know you miss me, Yara. If I were capable, I would feel the same way."

"But you can't."

Yara's mind automatically fills in the next line. Koichi nods. "But I can't."

But tonight, tonight, the dialogue changes.

"I loved you."

Yara blinks. "…What?"

Koichi shakes his head, smiling his awkward smile, turning away. "No, it's…"

"Koichi, wait!" Yara scrambles, struggling forward against the fog of the dream that always holds him back whenever he wants to move forward. "Koichi?"

Then he's a figure disappearing into the fog, and all Yara can see is his back, all he's ever seen as Koichi continues to be several strides ahead of him.

"Koichi!"

Yara is running, and running, and his heart is still hammering in his chest when he wakes up. The tears spilling from his eyes trickle down his face and onto his pillow, and as he gasps for air Yara claws for the image that is rapidly fading from in front of his eyes. "Koichi…"

Beside him, Rika stirs in her sleep, and Yara feels another, different kind of painful twist. She rolls over, arm sliding around his waist, and all Yara can think is I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, because maybe, maybe they've both been loving the same person all along. And maybe, maybe, everything Yara thought he knew for sure was… not so certain, after all.

~*~

The next night, the dream begins again. It has been playing and replaying inside his skull all day, so when night falls Yara is only too eager to sink his head into his pillow.

"Why are you here?" As before, as before-before; as usual.

"Because you want to see me."

But tonight, Yara forces his words to leave his head, to force a change, to leave the lips of his dream body instead of remaining nestled inside his skull:

"Of course I want to see you."

Koichi's head tilts to one side, confused and amused in the same instant. "You're different tonight," he says.

"I finally realised that I loved you too," says Yara, and as he does so it's as though the tumblers in an ancient lock all finally slip into place.

Then, Yara searches out Koichi's eyes in his pale face. "I'm sorry," he says.

Koichi shakes his head, and turns away. The fog rolls in.

~*~

Yara can't wait to get to bed tonight, and Rika gives him a startled look which he chooses to ignore. He closes his eyes, and speaks.

"You're here." It isn't a question, this time.

"You want to see me." And finally, it's an answer.

"I was so angry," Yara says, and Koichi nods, because of course he knows, of course he does.

"I didn't let you know how much I relied on you," Koichi says, and Yara shakes his head and looks down. There is no ground here, but it feels like the right thing to do anyway.

"It wasn't that." Yara shakes his head again. "I just didn't feel as though I could believe it. I didn't deserve it."

Koichi sighs, and Yara knows it's because he's always been so slow, always the last one to catch on to something while Koichi is always at least three miles ahead. Yara looks up once more.

"I'm lying to Rika, aren't I?"

Koichi shrugs. "That's something for you to deal with," he says.

Yara sighs. "We both needed each other. After you…" After you died, his subconscious completes, but Yara isn't in the mood to listen. Denial has always been a strong point.

"I'm dead, Yara."

The fog is threatening to come back, twisting white tendrils leaking into the air around them.

"Can't you return once more? Like you did last time? Can't you come back?" I wouldn't even mind the cold, thinks Yara, and immediately hates himself for it. Of course, Koichi is shaking his head.

"Look after Rika," he says, as the fog wraps around him. "She's learning to love you."

But I'm not sure, now… Yara thinks, and wakes up, and rolls over onto his side in a foetal position until he can breathe enough to face the day.

~*~

"You're here early." This time it's Koichi who speaks first, and the fog is already hovering around them, on the edges of Yara's field of vision. "Did today go well?"

Yara nods. "We had a full house, and a standing ovation. Everyone loves Rika," he says, and Koichi smiles, eyes crinkling with satisfaction before he focuses on Yara with that transfixing gaze he used to use when seriously considering something.

"And do you?"

Yara blinks. "Love Rika?" He laughs. "I spent three years chasing after her, of course I…"

He falters under Koichi's gaze, and Yara begins to feel the tears forming again, hot and pathetic under his eyelids for long seconds before they spill over his cheeks in the dream, and Yara wonders if his sleeping self is also crying. "We miss you. We both do."

Koichi's expression says everything while Koichi himself remains silent.

Yara tries again. "Koichi, I…"

Koichi shakes his head. "This is the last night I'll visit you, Yara. I… I can't come back any more, I'm not allowed. But… I wanted you to know. That I loved you. And that I wanted you to take care of Rika. We owe that much to her mother, at least."

Yara nods, even as the words take their time to sink in. "We do. I… Wait, Koichi?"

And it's like the third time he's losing him, the third time that Koichi is slipping from his grasp as Yara desperately tries to cling on, to cling to trailing grains of sand that only ever fall through his fingertips. The fog rolls in, and Yara wakes with a gasp choked with tears.

"Rika," he says, rolling over in bed, reaching out beside him for the one constant figure these past few months, the one warm light beside him. "Rika."

Still asleep, she curls against him, and Yara can feel her hair brushing against his collarbones as she nestles against his chest. Wrapping his arms around her, Yara feels the hammering in his ribcage slowly begin to subside as the tears on his face drip down onto Rika's hair. He feels dirty, unworthy, like he's cheated on her even though he's done nothing but sleep.

I'm sorry, he thinks, just as she breathily murmurs against him,

"Koichi…"

and Yara wishes that he could go back to sleep and never wake up.

--

Kira, you're up :3 kira_shadow ♥