Like a Demon

Robert paced the floor of Jayne’s room in a fury of emotions, while she sat quietly on her bed with her hands in her lap and head bowed in shame. Everyone else had been locked out, and she had no idea what was happening outside her door. She only knew that in the fifteen minutes they had been in that room, Robert had yet to speak.

“I don’t want you to get hurt.” He sighed, finally turning to face her and standing still. “I don’t want this to go wrong, and you be hurt by it. It will cause problems between the bands, and nothing good will come from it. Do you understand where I’m coming from here?”

“I know, no one wants to get hurt in this, but you have to trust him. I do!”

“I know YOU do! But look at the situation, Jayne! You live in the U.S. and he lives in Japan. You’re going home tomorrow! How is this going to work out?”

“We are trying to find a way to keep us from having to go home. I don’t want to go back, Ray won’t want to leave them, and this whole thing just sucks!”

Across the hall in Drew’s room, he and Mei were trying to figure things out as well. Drew, for someone so heavily drugged, was making some very good points to them, and for once was being responsible. It was ironic that it took a chopstick up the nose to make him grow up a bit.

“Look, all I’m saying… is that Jayne and Kyo are fucking cute together! And as hardcore as he is, if you watch, he’s careful with her. And if that son of a bitch ever tried to touch her, he’d probably kill him!”

“We’d all kill him.” Mei scoffed, rolling her eyes as Dex continued gushing about how great Kyo and Jayne were together.

“Bummer for Shinya though.” He sighed, finally calming down about Jayne and Kyo’s relationship.

“Yeah… but he keeps saying he’s happy for them, and I’m pretty convinced that he is.” Drew shrugged.

“You’re such a guy,” Mei frowned, “He IS happy for them, but he’s also hurt because He Loves Her! He has since they met, and she almost knocked Kyo into the trash. Seeing his friend all over her has to be heartbreaking. He’s just trying not to let it show I think. Just watch when he plays, see if he hits his drums a little harder.”

“Put pictures of Kyo’s face on them.” Drew laughed.

“That’s mean!” Dex shouted, throwing a pillow at his friend. Drew almost threw it back, but remembered his nose was injured, and didn’t want to make it worse.

“Do you think it’ll hurt him?” he asked quietly after ten minutes of silence. Mei and Dex just looked at him as he watched Ray sleep. The had stopped trying to be quiet when he slept a long time ago, knowing that if he got used to noise early on, that he would be better at sleeping through the night. “I mean, Jayne and Kyo being together. He’s never had someone outside of us in his life like that. The Tochikura family, sure, but no one so close to Jayne, and no one in the shoes of a father… I’m just worried that maybe he won’t understand really what’s going on. He’s four remember? And in all four years of his life, he’s been raised that he doesn’t need a father. Our family just doesn’t have ‘Daddy’ in it.” he explained.

“I don’t think Kyo would ever hurt Ray.”

“That’s not what I mean Dex.” He laughed, “I mean what if he starts to like having a daddy, and things don’t work out? How do you fix that?”

“We cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now we have other things to work on.” Mei smiled as Ray tossed in his sleep, muttering Kaoru’s name, and something about a fire truck. “I wonder if they’ve ever seen Jayne do that.” She laughed.

“Talk in her sleep? Probably… then again she’s really careful around them, even when she’s asleep.” Drew shrugged, thinking of how tense Jayne tended to be around Dir En Grey, even when she was falling unconscious from exhaustion. She had been judged so harshly through her life that she was afraid to make even a small mistake around them.

“I don’t know… we’ll see what happens I guess. Maybe Ray’ll get a short little half-jap brother or something.” Dex shrugged and fell asleep in his chair. Mei choked from her own laughter, not wanting to wake Ray, and Drew let his head fall and bounce on the bed face first. “I’m gonna shoot him if he stays like this through the rest of the recovery.” He muttered into the blankets.

While Akuma hid in one room, and their singer and manager argued in the other, Dir En Grey was having a much different discussion. Their manager wasn’t angry with Kyo or Jayne anymore, much to their surprise, and Kyo wasn’t arguing with anyone, also a surprise. Shinya had been quieter than usual since seeing the two singers in such a private act, and Toshiya hadn’t told a single joke about it. Die and Kaoru, however, were very opinionated about it. Kaoru’s concerns were for the sake of both bands, but Die was worried more personally about Jayne and her son.

“I understand your point. We never expected to come to this so quickly… neither of us want them to leave the tour, I suppose our emotions took control.” Kyo replied after Kaoru finished his lengthily reasoning for him to allow Jayne to go back to the US with her band. “I also understand that it will hurt her son to say goodbye, and it is breaking her heart. She’s damaged, Kaoru, there is very little left of her that hasn’t been scarred.”

Shinya made a small noise from his place in the corner, but didn’t say a word as the others continued to speak. If only Kyo knew just how true those words were. He had spent many nights either in her room, or having hushed conversations on his phone with her about a nightmare she’s had, or her worries about the tour. Fears of Thomas, fears for Ray, and once after he found her on the roof that day, talking her out of wanting to try ending it all a second time. He had been the one she ran to in her times of need many times, and had heard secrets she had kept from even her band members. As much as he cared for, and respected his friend, he couldn’t for the life of him understand why she had gone to him through all of those times, when her heart belonged to Kyo. And the more he thought about it, the more his own heart ached.

“What do you think, Shinya?” Toshiya questioned, bringing him out of his own thoughts and alerting him to how lost in them he had become. He hadn’t even noticed when their manager left.

“Forgive me, I wasn’t listening.” He admitted, bowing his head.

“To keep them on the tour, what do you think of us taking turns to take Dex’s place until he recovers?” Die asked, gesturing between Kaoru and himself.

“I think that would be great idea! If they agree to it of course.”

“With as glued to Kyo’s lips as Jayne was earlier, I doubt she’ll say no.” he smirked, unknowingly making their drummer feel even worse.

“Now that we have that decided, I think I should be getting to bed. It’s late, and today has been exhausting.” He announced, and quickly left the room.

“Has he been sick?” Kyo questioned, receiving shaken heads from the remaining three band members around him. “Then what is it? The last few days he’s been quieter than normal, and hasn’t been acting himself at all.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kyo. Just worry about you and Jayne-chan right now, and Ray.” Kaoru sighed while standing up and stretching, “I’ll be getting some sleep as well. He’s right, today has been exhausting.” He nodded, and left as well.

“Goodnight.” The other three nodded as the door closed, leaving them in silence as they each thought over the day. They could hear Jayne and Robert now yelling at each other in the next room, but couldn’t make out what was being said. She sounded upset, and he sounded furious. There were a few times they could hear her scream a word or two, and though they couldn’t quite understand it, they could hear the tears in her voice, and it was almost heartbreaking. The night after that was short, before long everyone had fallen asleep to the sounds of Robert and Jayne “working everything out”.