Chapter 1
The poster slides soundlessly over to Kaz as Hyde smiles and the girl looks keen to drop dead from the smile. Kaz signs the flyer next, looking more than a little distracted, glancing a little after the girl. Her squeals echo back as she hurries away, receiving the twice-signed flyer back from a staff member, and Ava steps forward, fingers threaded together since her CD was taken away by one of the staff, moved to the table.
“Hello.” Hyde signs first, offering a large smile alongside the purred greeting as he slides the CD over for Kaz.
“Konnichiwa,” Ava murmurs out, her face flushing as she manages a small, slight bow. There’s a short pause before she looks more curiously to Kaz. The guitarist appears frozen, pen hovering above the paper. “A—Ahm…” She watches as Hyde bumps him and Kaz quickly puts pen to paper, scribbling his name out. Hyde chuckles and leans over, speaking to one of the staff. Kaz picks the CD up, careful not to smear the writing, and ignoring the staff member that attempts to pick it up. He offers it back to Ava and she blinks, carefully taking the case back with a quiet “Arigatou gozaimasu.” It only seems to fluster the guitarist though.
“Ahm…” The sound makes Ava pause, her holding the CD carefully to make sure that the ink doesn’t smear. “Have a good concert.” He manages out in English and she blinks in surprise before a bright smile overtakes her face.
“Arigatou.” The thanks are more confident this time before the staffer leads her away. Ava keeps her eyes ahead, despite feeling like someone is watching her intently. One of the staff leads her out the opposite door and she blows on the paper a few times, making sure it’s dry before beginning to close up the CD booklet as they walk along.
“Douzo.” Ava steps through the door, thanking the staff member before blinking. She’s in what looks like a back room instead of outside the venue.
“This isn’t… Kore wa…” Ava stumbles over her words and turns towards the staffer just to find the door closed. A click comes from the door and a bit of panic hits her in the chest. “O—Oi!” She grabs the door, attempting to open it and struggling with the locked door before taking a couple steps back, clinging to the CD case.
A half-hour of waiting kills her panic but not her nervousness. Another fifteen minutes raises her boredom up and she wanders the room nervously. Whatever is going to happen, she’s stuck in here and all the fighting she had done with the door in the first ten minutes proved that. Ava’s fingers gently run over a guitar sitting in a stand, the strings singing softly with each touch. It takes another fifteen minutes before she picks the guitar up in annoyance and sits in a chair, strumming it quietly and beginning to play. She starts out simple before moving up to whole songs quickly, trying to loosen her nerves.
“Ooh, she plays.” Ava jumps, almost dropping the guitar at the sound of a voice not far behind her. Hyde grins, leaning in the door as Kaz stands not far inside, holding a piece of paper and looking shocked. The rest of the band seems to be gathered around the doorway, looking in as well. “I’ll leave you to it.” The singer yanks the door shut with a loud slam, shaking Kaz from his shock and jolting Ava up out of her seat. She barely has set the guitar down before Kaz begins arguing with the door himself, yelling a few curses through the door.
“Hyde! Open this door! Right now!”
“Why?” Hyde’s voice is teasing from the other side of the door.
“You don’t understand! I can’t, there’s no way I—” Kaz pauses and slams his fist hard into the door after a glance at Ava. “I can’t! You don’t understand, so open this door!”
“Blah blah!” Hyde calls cheerfully and there’s the sound of laughter fading away. Ava stands still, trembling a little and there’s a long silence as Kaz turns around to face her. He hurriedly takes his phone out, face turning red as he types out a message, looking at the door again and slamming an elbow into it for a second. Ava blinks at something before a small, hopeful look comes onto her face. She hurries over and Kaz freezes up the second she comes close.
“Sorry, let me borrow these.” She reaches up despite the eyes being hard on her and plucks two bobby pins from Kaz’s hair. He’s still frozen as she sticks the end of one into her mouth, teeth tearing off the small bulbs at the end of the metal piece and her face flushes at the attention. His phone jingles happily and his attention gets pulled to it, stiffly moving away as she sticks the other in her mouth, peeling the plastic off that end as well.
She kneels down in front of the door, leaning in to look at it closely before straightening out both pins, putting one back into her mouth despite the taste of hairspray. Kaz’s phone jingles another time but Ava ignores it in favor of the door, working quickly and starting to use the second bobby-pin. They aren’t proper lock-picking tools but she could certainly have them make do for her as long as she works very carefully.
The pins in the door slip a few times and she mutters a curse under her breath before inhaling deeply, pausing, and then starting again, much slower. She’s on the last pin when a prickling sensation on the back of her neck kicks in and she shivers. She catches the pin and the door springs open, letting her jump to her feet and hold the door open. Ava snatches her CD from where it sits on a table nearby before her eyes catch on Kaz.
He’s staring at her, fingers dug deep into the couch back he’s almost sitting on. In fact, it looks like his fingers are tearing into it with how much force he’s putting on the fabric. His eyes seem darker, more focused and Ava shivers softly at having those eyes on her. There’s a small tearing sound that breaks the stillness and Ava drops the bobby pins. In the silence, they land with a quiet clinking noise. When she turns to flee out the door, ready to find her own path out of the venue, she swears that she sees something bright red though no part of the guitarist had been red.
The hallways are confusing and she winds her way quickly through them to get back outside, ignoring staff members that pause to stare at her. Her skin is warmed by the sunlight and she takes a few deep breaths of the outside air before figuring out where she is and taking off in a different direction. She needs a drink after that to figure out what just happened.
Kaz lays face-down on the couch and gives a soft groan. He’s going to kill Hyde. Another day, it might not have drawn such a response from him but this is a different circumstance. And the singer seemed to not want to understand that. The text messages back and forth had varying degrees of Hyde not seeming to care, in fact, he had never replied to the last one.
“They got out?” Kaz recognizes Ju-ken’s voice and there’s a short pause.
“Yeah, someone picked the lock.” Hyde’s voice, however, makes Kaz sit up and glare towards where the band is filing into the room. The singer is leaned down, picking up the destroyed bobby pins that had been used to unlock the door. Kaz pulls himself up and slams the door shut in a staffer’s face before pinning Hyde to it. The pair of bobby-pins hit the ground for a second time immediately after.
“I’m going to kill you, you fucking asshole!” Hyde gives a loud noise of surprise and pushes to get free, nails raking over skin that heals as fast as it’s damaged.
“Oi! You wanted her. I just gave you what you wanted.” Hyde bares a set of sharp teeth at him, eyes reddening and showing his vampire side. “Don’t get pissed at me because you let her get away!”
“I told you before. You don’t understand!” Kaz slams him once into the door, anger overwhelming the senses. He can feel eyes on him, well aware that he’s probably showing off his other side just as much as Hyde is if not more. “I couldn’t because she is my one you fucking idiot! And you went and ruined any chance of that!”
“What?” Hyde’s dumbfounded expression only makes Kaz dig his fingers in harder, seeing red in more ways than one.
“I couldn’t lay a finger on her because I would’ve ended up killing her. I’m repeating this again for you but she is my one my singular one that I wasn’t prepared for. I don’t get a second one though, it’s a singular one not plural ones!” Kaz isn’t sure where his voice is sitting any more, whether he’s shouting, screaming or hissing. “And you, you fucked up any chance I had. So I now get to live with the fact that she is gone and I missed that chance. That I never had a chance thanks to you!” Another slam as the astonished expression on Hyde’s face grows less annoyed. Kaz’s throat closes at the fact that he’s just spouted out, a strangled, keening noise coming from him before he lets Hyde drop to the ground. He snatches someone’s cigarettes and lighter from a nearby table, almost crushing both in his hand.
“Hey, you quit,” someone states but the red is too blinding to see anything through.
“Go to hell.” Is the sharp, venomous response as Kaz slams out the door and slips out the back of the building. The air is crisp and he moves out of sight of the door, shakily loosening his grip on the lighter and pack. He plucks a cigarette from the pack and lights it, holding it to his lips for a second before simply placing his head in his hands. The rough brick of the building is painful on his back as he slides down, collapsing to the asphalt. The cigarette slowly burns, smoke trailing upwards as a strangled sob shakes the guitarist’s body.
“Holy shit.” Ju-ken’s voice is quiet as Hyde picks himself up from the floor. “I’ve never seen him like that before.”
“Not the only one,” Hyde responds, rubbing at his throat before he reaches down and picks up the yellow bobby pins again.
“You think he’ll play later?” Arimatsu questions quietly.
“He will,” Hyde answers, looking the bobby pins over, especially interested in the teeth marks on the ends. “Hey Jin, could you track her?”
“You don’t have anything of hers.”
“I have a pair of bobby pins that were in her mouth. I think that can count as hers.” Hyde grins a little at Jin. The keyboardist pauses before giving a nod of agreement.
“I think that could work.”
“Good. I want to know if she comes back for the concert. She has a ticket.” Hyde hands the pair of pins over to Jin who looks them over carefully.
“Will do, Boss.”
